CHAPTER XV
THE EMPTY BOAT
WE reached the wicket gate into the Castle grounds in silence, but my glances showed me that Perdita was in the grip of some emotion. I wondered if it were fear, or anger, or—was it something else? We had not moved a dozen paces from the wall when it flashed upon me out of the smiling heaven that I had directed and she had obeyed. She had entered my garden of roses in implicit obedience to my hand; she had done what I, the man, enforced. She had surrendered herself to me, her will to mine. How much did it mean? Was she still but the child in her terror, seeking refuge with the stronger arm? Or—? That blessed alternative held me thrilled. In that supreme moment of emotion, of leaping and inspiring passion, as of a devotee before his goddess's shrine, I had beheld her turn into my garden. She accepted my lead, and walked shyly, with averted face, with heaving bosom—!
I stared unhearingly into Jackman's face as he met us, deferential and grave as ever.
"What?" I said, conscious only of Perdita and the waving June green. In the distance my eye was caught by an overarching yew, through which lovers might pass. It led into the bowling green, and lovers for generations had, of course, passed under it to play bowls. Drake was playing bowls when the Spanish Fleet hove in sight. To play bowls!
"What?" I said, trying to fix my mind on Jackman.
I knew he was speaking, but my pulse was leaping and my mind was jumping. It had bolted like a fresh or frightened horse. I reined it in.
"And Sir Gilbert being out, sir, I took the liberty of coming to you."
"Yes, yes," I answered. "Quite right, Jackman. I'll see the gentleman. I'll—"
I turned and Perdita had melted away. Only Jackman and I held possession of the copse. I gazed along the path which wound through the hazels with dulling senses, with gradually increasing sobriety. I understood now; Sir Gilbert's solicitor had called. But—the winding little path through hazel and birch was empty. I moved on. The overarching yew was hidden from my gaze. I moved mechanically on, Jackman attending like a shadow.
Mr. Raymond Donaldson was a man of fifty, of exceedingly refined and contained appearance, and of immaculate dress. His thin lips, shaven close, moved almost imperceptibly as he related his story. He had happened to have business in Plymouth, and had taken the chance of finding Sir Gilbert Norroy by breaking his journey.
"He will be chagrined to have missed you," I said. "I suppose it is that matter of the writ."
Mr. Donaldson cast me a glance from beneath his lowered lids. "I have understood from Sir Gilbert Norroy's letter that you are in his confidence in this matter, Mr. Brabazon," he said formally. I bowed. "I am, therefore, glad to be able to talk with you as"—he pulled out his watch—"it does not seem likely that I shall have the pleasure of seeing Sir Gilbert. Yes; it is that somewhat unpleasant matter."
"The history of the debt seems odd," I ventured.
"A little unusual," said Mr. Donaldson, "but by no means exceptional. The purchase of debts is often resorted to for one purpose or another."
"We should like to know the purpose in this case," said I. Mr. Donaldson considered the air.
"It would seem that there is a purchaser for the estate," he said in his dry voice. "I may say, Mr. Brabazon, that I was approached some time back by a firm of solicitors of repute with regard to the mortgage, which I am free, in the circumstances, to tell you that I hold on the property. I, however, would not sell."
"And it is impossible to raise this money?" I asked bluntly.
"The value of the estate," said Mr. Donaldson, precisely, "would not suffice to cover the debts of the estate plus the mortgage."
I was silent. "It seems a hopeless outlook," I said at last.
"To be frank with you, my dear sir," said Mr. Donaldson, "I see no chance of staving off the bankruptcy, if these people proceed to extremities."
"Oh, I think we may take it for granted that they will," said I.
"I have made some inquiries," he went on, "and have found that Mr. Horne is a commission agent in the city, not, I gather, of any considerable position."
"And Naylor?" I asked.
"Naylor!" he echoed. "I do not know of any Naylor."
Of course not; I had forgotten that the connection between the two men had only been established by my observation, and might even be chimerical. Yet had not a Naylor desired to purchase the estate? In my view, this Horne was acting in the interests of Mr. Naylor, who had a fancy for a fine gentleman's country seat. And it seemed as if he would get what he wanted, and had plotted for.
Mr. Donaldson's time-table called him inexorably away, and he left without helping much to the solution of the problem. His last word was characteristic of the lawyer.
"There is only one possible chance, Mr. Brabazon, and that is that negotiations might prove these people to be lenient."
"They won't; they want the Castle," I said.
He looked at me as though he would ask me on what I presumed to make this astonishing statement. But he apparently decided not to put his interrogation into words.
"So far," he proceeded instead, "the parties are only taking such steps as they are justified in taking to protect their legal rights."
Oh, this jargon! It was designed to snub me for venturing to take a leap in the dark. But I could do sums in my head without counting on my fingers. I saw there was no hope from Mr. Raymond Donaldson.
He rose.
"Naturally I will do anything I can in Sir Gilbert's interests. We will hold our mortgage. The late Sir Edmund Norroy," he nodded, as if by way of explanation, "was a valued client of ours."
As I watched him depart, walking, as he talked, with all due reserve, and no doubt without prejudice, I reflected that a wealthy marriage alone would save Sir Gilbert. And when a little later the motor-car rushed up with two laughing people behind the chauffeur, the thought recurred.
"I say," said Norroy, after Miss Harvey had gone, "those beggars are not gone yet. I saw what's-his-name—Horne—in the village as we came through. Now they've winged me, why don't they clear out?" He meditated. "I've a damn good mind to try and strike a bargain with him," he mused.
I roused him from this brown study to give him news of Mr. Donaldson. Perhaps his idea was right, coinciding as it marvellously did with the lawyer's. Personal negotiation might effect some compromise. But still I remembered Naylor and my theory of the whole plot. I had a friend of splendid capability, deep in London life, a bright man of business, and a rising figure in society. I resolved to write to him to see if he could trace Mr. Naylor. An admirable man of affairs, he would know the ropes better than any one else with whom I was acquainted. As a matter of fact I wrote that night.
"By Jove! I'll do it; I'll see the little bounder," was Norroy's conclusion, on hearing what I had to report of his solicitor.
Miss Harvey had brought with her her own bright atmosphere, and some news that rekindled fires anew in me. If the wondrous weather held, it was designed (needless to say, by herself) to have a picnic on one of the islets in the estuary. They had it all cut and dried. Miss Fuller had expressed her intention of persuading Miss Forrest to go, and, indeed, they had called at Mrs. Lane's on the way back with the express hope of getting her consent. But Perdita had been out. I made the requisite calculation and found that Perdita should have reached home long before their arrival in Southington. She had not, then, gone straight back. Where had she wandered? And why?
A flood of soft emotion filled my heart, and I hardly heard Miss Harvey talking. But I know I assented warmly, nay furiously, to her proposal of the picnic. And after a futile attempt at work on the following morning, I bolted my lunch and went down to the village before the hour appointed. Norroy had gone forth earlier in an attempt to find Horne, and I forgot in my self-absorption that Miss Harvey had hospitably included Mr. Toosey in her invitation. I do not know that this was not a device to pair the party suitably, for otherwise we should have been five. Anyhow, I forgot him and left him to follow by himself.
On arriving at Southington I sought Mrs. Lane's cottage at once, and asked for Miss Forrest. In the sitting-room were both girls, but it was Miss Fuller who came forward to greet me.
"Are you ready?" I asked.
"Oh, but it is n't time, is it? Miss Harvey said four," she cried.
"I am like the boy who got up in the middle of the night to go to his sports," I said lightly. "I have a homesickness for that island."
Perdita laughed over her face, but with no sound, and her face was bright and rosy.
"And you," I said, taking her hand. "You are coming?"
"Yes," she said faintly. "It will be pretty out there, won't it?" she added, withdrawing her hand and arranging a book nervously on the table.
"It will be divine, and, by the way, here is Mr. Peter Toosey, specially got up for the function, as a Venetian boatman. What are you going as?"
They looked eagerly through the window at the estimable Toosey, in velveteens and an "art" tie.
"What are you going as?" parried Miss Fuller, archly.
"Oh, I've been so long masquerading apparently as the proprietor of the Castle, that I'm going as myself for a change. Will you go as yourself, Miss Forrest?" To my amazement she lost her color, and looked at me almost appealingly. "You can't improve upon yourself," I murmured to her in a low voice.
"She shall go as a princess in disguise," flashed forth Miss Fuller, gayly. "Perdita, dear, it's time you dressed the part."
I waited for them, and accompanied them to the jetty, where my old friend Hawes had the boat in readiness. Here we were joined at intervals by Mr. Toosey and Sir Gilbert.
"I've been hunting for that little beggar all the morning," said the latter, plaintively. "He's been at the inn, but they say he went down to the Point. I say, Miss Fuller, would you like my coat to sit on? Those seats are hard."
She looked as if she were going to accept, but refused. "No, thank you. I'm quite comfortable." I knew she was thinking of Christobel. I have never met any one so wonderful as Miss Fuller. Perdita sat by me in the stern, for I had the strings of the rudder, Norroy being ignorant of the craftsmanship of the sea. Miss Harvey arrived late, and overflowing with spirits. We were launched in sunshine and gayety.
Mr. Toosey in his velveteens displayed a handiness in the boat which made my task easy, and we sailed an unruffled summer sea at a gentle pace. We tacked down to the Point, returned along the eastern wood-fringed shore, and finally made our islet. It was a hundred yards or so in length and perhaps fifty in breadth; but it had a generous shelter of trees, and we rested in the ample shade and made our tea, and ate our sandwiches on a table-cloth brought by that judicious housekeeper, Miss Fuller. Then we told tales, and I wish you could have heard Mr. Toosey's story of pirates he had escaped in Barbary. It was horrific, it raised the hair, and protestations from the ladies. What he mistook for pirates were probably artists dressed like himself and of a similar appearance; but I am bound to say his tale was as credible as mine which I frankly stole from a penny-dreadful I had read in the train. So far as I could make out from his involved way of telling his, Sir Gilbert's concerned a horse that he had backed and a man who asked him to fight a duel and one of them was killed. I was left in doubt if it were the horse but hoped so. Miss Fuller's was a story of a romantic gorge in Wales which she had visited, and dealt with a man whose sweetheart was killed by falling over it, and who, thereupon, haunted it till he joined her in the underworld. Miss Harvey told us how old man Simmonds of Chicago bested his rivals in a wheat deal, but I don't think dear Perdita understood it perfectly owing to its technical terms. And hers?
"The cliffs of Outremer," began Perdita in her soft, sweet voice, "were a formidable precipice that descended sheer to the rocks of the seashore, where the waters beat, and the tangles of seaweed forever waved in the breeze. And in the base of the cliffs was a vast cavern."
I stirred, and slowly looked at her. She was gazing before her at the sea which rolled in upon our little beach. "It was an evil cavern," she went on, "and was reputed to be haunted by gnomes and wicked spirits." It thrilled me to think that we had both been captured by the same fancy. We had not exchanged views of the cave, but it had impressed her imagination as it had mine. And she had not feared to carry back my thoughts to that episode. Perdita!
"In the entrance to the cavern, it was said, at times an apparition of a maiden was to be seen, lying on the sands between the rocks and singing a wild song in days of storm. And when the wind was highest, and the night was deepest, mariners who passed those dreaded rocks at sea would hear her voice mingling with the noises of the elements, and would shudder and cross themselves. But one day a young fisherman..."
I listened, rapt, while Perdita's gallant adventurer braved the terrors of the cliffs, and penetrated into the cavern in the moonlight to find the beautiful Loreley who sang. And I heard how the gnomes and the evil spirits of the underworld tormented him, and how he fought them, and at infinite cost to himself conquered them, and how at last he found the maiden, and, behold, she was but a hag in seaweed and kelp, and her face wore the wrinkles of a thousand years of evil; so that the young fisherman in horror fled from her presence, and out into the open, where the waters seized him and buffeted him, and he lay drowned in the depths of the sea.
"And that," said ruthless Perdita," was how the young fisherman met his death for an ideal. If he had been content to live among his own folk he would have married and lived happily ever afterwards. And as to which is the better fate, judge you between them."
"Oh, Perdita, Perdita!" I whispered under cover of a sudden outbreak of comment and protest. "It is all directed at me. But what care I? My faith is fixed. It is among the stars and with Perdita."
A smile in which playfulness trembled shyly with tenderness flitted towards me.
"The beggar ought to have stayed at home," said Norroy, taking the cigar from his mouth. "I only wish I had a home to stay at."
Miss Harvey laughed, and then, "Why," she said suddenly, "I hope that boat is n't coming here."
We all looked, and saw a sailing-boat riding the waters a few hundred yards away. While we stared the tiller was put up, and she went off on a new course the other side of the island.
"Surely, they would n't have the cheek," said Sir Gilbert.
"Let us say the heart," I corrected.
After that Miss Harvey sang some songs in her beautiful voice, and I drew nearer to Perdita.
"Eight o'clock, by Jove!" said Sir Gilbert at last, and rose and turned round, as if he were listening to something.
"Dear me, we must get back," sighed Miss Harvey. "But it has been glorious."
"I'll see about the boat," said Sir Gilbert, and vanished into the bushes; for the boat was on the other side of the island, high and dry, and tied fast to a tree, to secure it.
"Do sing again!" pleaded Miss Fuller, enthusiastically. Good-naturedly Miss Harvey acceded.
"Die schönste Jungfrau sitzet dort ohen wunderbar.
Ihr goldenes Geschmeide blitzet sie Kämmt ihr goldenes Haar;
Sie Kämmt es mit goldenem Kämme und singt ein Lied dabei;
Das hat eine wundersame, gewaltige Melodei."
Perdita caught my eyes on her, and the flush in her face grew deeper.
"But my Loreley has not golden hair," I whispered "and I hope, (oh, how I hope!) she has not a cold heart. Do you know gold hair and cold heart go together, Perdita? Oh, my love is like a red, red rose and has the rich warmth of that color in her heart. Turn your face a little that way, sweetheart. So; your profile is divine, and I can see your demure eyelashes. 'Behold thou art fair, my love? Thou hast doves' eyes within thy locks.' Why did you dare to provoke me with that false tale, Perdita? Oh, how had you the heart? Did you feel me breathe a kiss towards you as I carried you up the cliff? I did—I did, and I am not ashamed; I would do it again. Why did you run away, child? 'Oh, my lost love, my own, own love!' I think you were called Perdita because you are lost to all others—all others that desire you save one. I wonder who that is. I will find out some day, Perdita."
Miss Harvey was singing another German folk-song—"Vergiss mein nicht..." Perdita listened, her head averted slightly from me.
"Will you go away and forget me, Perdita I believe you would if you could, little wanton. But you shall not. I will leave my mark upon you. If you escape the ogre you shall at least remember him. Did I say my love had dove's eyes? Why, they flash like a tiger's. 'Vergiss mein nicht'—forget me not, Perdita!"
"I wonder where Sir Gilbert has got to," said Miss Harvey, as she finished.
Mr. Toosey got to his feet; the water rolled in burnished ripples to our feet, and the setting sun lighted the green fringes of the opposing shore and struck a golden pathway over the water.
Perdita had not spoken one single word, and as I also rose I saw the fulness of her face, and it was flushed like the sunset over the hills and her eyes were deep and dewy. I passed on with Toosey to find Norroy, my heart bright like the morning. Sir Gilbert was not at the little strand where we had beached our boat, and the boat was gone. It occurred to me that he had launched her, and was paddling round the island, but Toosey's voice arrested me.
"It's gone—it's off," he called. "What's that? Look!" I followed his finger, and perceived an empty boat tossing on the broken water a hundred yards away; and from that my eyes carried on to a boat further out with sails set, drawing out down the estuary.
"What the mischief—?" I began, and then raised my voice and shouted.
It was plainly our boat broken loose somehow from the unaccustomed hands of Sir Gilbert Norroy. I shouted to draw the attention of the second boat. But it was sliding down on the outgoing tide, under the quickening vesper breeze. My shouts were unheard; at least they met with no response. And yet I could not think that my voice had not carried so far. I saw her bow taking the spray; she passed momently farther away, leaving our craft a helpless derelict, at the mercy of the sea. In consternation I turned round. Where was Norroy? The island had no trace of him. He had vanished.