CHAPTER XI
THE ENEMY IN THE HOUSE
IN the first flood of his astonishment the Frenchman lost countenance and fell back upon the entrance of the cabin. He forgot the efficiency of his disguise. In London he had worn the mustachio, smooth chin, and perruque; and the deft touches of poor Vigot had given him a name for a beau which no art of the tailor alone could have bestowed. All of these were lacking in the rough garments that he wore. When last my lady had seen him it had been in the laces, orders, and all the accouterments of a man of fashion, as befitted his station. Now the deep shadows which the fog of battle had painted under his brows and eyes served a purpose as effectual as the growth of his hair and beard. For no sign passed the lady’s features, though she looked fair at him. A momentary wonder there was, as the Frenchman paused; then a mute and pallid supplication. Two Spanish women fell heavily upon their knees before him, demeaning themselves in every conceivable manner for a look or a word that would lull their apprehension and alarm.
It was not until then that Cornbury saw Mistress Clerke. She looked at him blankly; but he, swearing audibly, fled past Bras-de-Fer to the door.
“Bedad!” he muttered—“the lady in the play!” and vanished into the passage.
Cast upon himself, Bras-de-Fer halted and stammered again. He was daunted by that cold, gray eye, and discovered an inquietude and trepidation greater than he had felt in the presence of a company of pikemen. He wiped his sword and thrust it into its scabbard with something of an air of the blusterer, fumbled at the collar at his throat, and with a gesture tossed back the curls from his brow, finally taking refuge in the women at his knees from that chill glance which seemed to read and reproach him. Then, learning that his identity was still unrevealed, he plucked up courage, and, releasing himself, coldly but with a certain gallantry bowed to the gray-haired Spanish lady who had been the most timorous in her embraces.
“Your fear, señora, pays neither me nor my ship a compliment,” he said, coolly. “Your San Isidro is of a nation that of late has proved itself the enemy of my King upon the sea. I have taken her in honorable battle, and—”
Here Jacquard, leering wickedly, the personification of the very thing the women most feared, with Yan Gratz and a dozen pikes, came rushing in at the door, rendering at naught his amiable intentions, for the women fell to screaming again, and Mistress Clerke raised her pistolet to her breast, it seemed, in the very act of firing. With a hoarse cry Bras-de-Fer quelled the turmoil and sent Jacquard and the men growling back upon the deck; but it was some moments before the qualms of the women were relieved and quiet and order brought out of the tumult.
“Señor, what you say may be true,” said the patriarch who had sought to defend himself, “but not all who bear the warrant of the King of England have so honest a notion of warfare in these waters. What proof have we of your integrity?”
Bras-de-Fer tossed his head with a touch of the old hauteur. He looked past the gray-beard to the casement window, where the last glimmer of the western light was burnishing her hair to gold. He saw only the fair head of the woman who had discredited him, scorned and spurned him as though he had been as low as the very thing he now appeared. The lips grew together in a hard line that had in it a touch of cruelty.
“It is not the custom of officers of the King,” he said, “to give proofs of integrity to prisoners of war. I offer no proof but my word. I shall do with you as I see fit to do.” And stationing two pikemen at the door of the cabin, he went upon the deck, filled with the thought which almost drove from his mind the serious business of bringing the wreck to rights and mending his own affairs.
There was much to be done before the Sally and her huge captive could be brought out into the safety of the broad ocean, away from this dangerous proximity to the Havana. But Bras-de-Fer set himself resolutely to the task, and, putting beside him all but the matter in hand, with a fine, seaman-like sense brought order out of the tangle and wreck of rigging both upon his own vessel and the Spaniard.
The night had come on apace, and with it a rising wind which ground the vessels together in a manner which threatened to make them the more vulnerable to the assaults of the sea. The business of shifting the valuable part of the cargo was going swiftly forward under great flares and ship’s lanterns, which were stuck in the bulwarks and hung from the chains and rigging. Bras-de-Fer, a black shade against the lurid glow, stood with folded arms and downcast eyes at a commanding eminence upon the poop, watching the struggling, dusky, gnomelike figures below him. A hoarse order rang from his lips now and then, which was echoed down into the bowels of his own vessel and mingled with the cries and oaths of the fellows below. Blocks creaked above, and the swaying bales and chests, growing for a moment into fiery patches against the sooty darkness behind them, swept over the bulwarks and into gray shadow again, when they were speedily borne down into the gaping black maws of the brig.
A pale and sibilant presence rustled from the shadows of the mizzen-mast behind Bras-de-Fer. Trembling in limb and more pallid even than the white frock that enfolded her, Mistress Barbara, in a ferment of uncertainty, unattended and unguarded, had crept resolutely and with indomitable courage past the guard at the cabin door to the side of the conqueror of San Isidro. So frail and slender a thing she was, emerging pale and spectral into the glare of the torches, that at the touch of her halting hand upon his arm he started with a quick intaking of the breath and sought his weapon. But when the light glowed upon the brow and hair, and he saw, his hand dropped to his side and he bowed his head to hide his features. With a gesture of annoyance designed to serve the same end, he turned away towards the bulwarks.
“No, no,” she began, pleadingly; “you must hear me. I am English, like the King you serve. At your hands I have every right to consideration.”
“You sail in parlous times, madame,” he replied, coldly, striving to disguise his voice.
“Listen, sir. I have braved danger of insult, and worse, to come hither to-night. But there is something—I cannot tell what—which says that you will deal fairly.”
“Your confidence, I trust, is not ill-placed,” with averted head.
“Your manner of speaking betrays that you are French. Nay, do not turn away, monsieur. If you are not English, you serve an English master, and that should be the guarantee of all honesty.”
“Honesty is as honesty does,” he replied, turning with more assurance to address her. And then, “You come a cool dove of peace in time of hot war, madame. You have no place in such a scene as this.”
“Give me a word, sir, and I will go.”
His gaze was fixed blankly upon the starless vacancy. “I can promise nothing, madame. It is the fortune of war … or fate.” The last he murmured half below his breath.
“You will take us to Jamaica, monsieur—not the Tortugas—say it will not be the Tortugas!”
“The Tortugas are the lair of the piratos. If I am such, it were useless further to converse. A pirate has small stomach for mercy—much for requital.”
Puzzled somewhat, she grasped her wrap more closely and drew back in dismay. “What do you mean? That you will have no pity, that—” She paused as she saw his bitter smile, stepping a pace back from him in horror.
But the cruel pleasure he had in torturing her, at the sight of her dread and fear was pleasure no longer.
“Madame, forgive me,” he said, with a carefully studied frankness. “I have only said I can make no promises. There are two vessels, and I cannot be upon both. The wind even now is rising, and soon we must be parting company. But I will do for you and for the Spanish lady, your friend, what I may; and now”—bending over her with all his old grace—“now, if madame will permit me, I will conduct her to the cabin.”
The speech, the very words, the very gesture, the very modulations of the voice—where had she heard them before? A hurried winging of thought brought the swaying of colored lanterns—a garden—a graveled walk—a perfumed night; and while she still looked in wonder, a boisterous puff of wind flared up the torch on the mast and tossed his wide-brimmed hat back upon his head so that she saw a scar upon his temple.
She peered straight forward and he turned his head in vain.
“Good God!” she cried. “This! Is it this?”
It was too late to continue the concealment, had he wished to do so. Then, while he in turn was peering at her, startled at the lively expression of horror in her eyes—a horror at his condition and plainly not at himself—she covered her face with her fingers and bowed her head into them, not shrinkingly in loathing as he might have expected from the woman he had left in London, but in an anguish as of penitence, the impotence of a child at the reproof of an angry parent, in contrition, remorse, or humiliation. He could not understand. But, straightening himself with a stern dignity, which sat well upon him, he replied in a tone so low that its vibrant note barely reached her ears.
“This, madame, … even this.”
When she looked up at him again it was with clear, level, unflinching eyes.
“Monsieur—” she began, haltingly.
But he held up his hand. “I had hoped to have withdrawn ere this upon my own ship and to have left you.”
“Thank God that you did not. I would atone to you for many things. Could you have deserted us? You owe me a greater debt of humiliation and abasement than you can ever hope to pay. But would you abandon us to that crew of demons below! Ah,” she shuddered; “it is a vengeance worthy of the name.”
“Madame, the sparks of such hatred as that you bear for me are best unfed to flame. You shall be adequately guarded upon the San Isidro. But before dawn I and my ship will have sailed—”
“No, no,” she broke in. “You must not. You cannot leave—”
The woman in her rebelled at the thought that he could find it possible to do what he promised.
“Must and can are strong words.” He smiled coldly. “There is no must or can upon the San Isidro but mine. The convenances of St. James’s Square are not those of the Spanish Main, madame.”
But the evil she had wrought in this man’s life, though she had wrought it unconsciously, gave her a new humility. She had done and dared much already. She would not go back.
“I pray you, monsieur, in the name of that mother you once swore by—in the name of all the things you hold most holy—I pray that you will heed my prayer. Take, at least, the Señorita de Batteville upon your vessel. Take us from the faces of the men at the cabin door who leer and grin at us with a too horrid import.”
A frown crossed the Frenchman’s features.
“These men will be upon the Saucy Sally.”
“But you, monsieur, will be there—you will not permit—”
“Madame has a too generous confidence in my competency.”
“Ah, it is for you to be generous. A man who can win so great a victory can afford to be kind.” She put her hands forward in the act of supplication, and in doing so the wrap slipped from the shoulder and arm it had so scrupulously hidden. A cloth, dull and blurred with red, was wrapped half-way between the elbow and the shoulder. When he saw that dark patch, his cool composure fell from him like a mantle and he bent forward eagerly, all his perceptions aquiver with sensibility.
“Sainte Vierge!” he whispered. “How came you by that?”
“It is nothing,” she said, drawing back at his ardor. “A scratch of broken glass. That is all.”
He bent to the deck for the erring silk. “I did not know,” he stammered, his voice mellow with sympathy. “I did not know. Forgive me, madame.”
“There is nothing to forgive. It is the fortune of war.”
“Is it painful? I am something of a chirurgeon. Let me—” He looked her in the face, and then drew back in a mingling of confusion and pride.
“It is nothing, I tell you,” she broke in, with a stamp of the foot. “Nothing. I do not even feel it.” And when she had enwrapped it again she lowered her voice until it trembled with the earnestness of her entreaty. “Have pity, monsieur—pity!”
The Frenchman had turned away and was looking out into the moonless night. The slender white hand stole faltering forward until it rested upon the coarse sleeve of his coat.
“Take me with you, monsieur. Take me aboard the Saucy Sally.”
And still looking out to sea, he replied, in a voice gruff and rugged, which did not avail to hide a generous courtesy beneath:
“It shall be as you wish, madame. Bid the señorita prepare at once.”
And in a moment, when he looked again, she was gone.
How was it that the thread of this woman’s life had become entangled again with his? Could it be that the hand which controlled his destiny had wrought these miracles in his strange career in a mere sport or purposeless plan? Could it be that, two grains of sand afloat on the winds of life’s desert, they had met, parted, and come together again? In the infinity of wide ocean he had gone adrift upon the tide of another life with nothing but his memories to bind him to the old. But sure as metal to its loadstone his vessel had been driven, in spite of wind and the raging of the sea, with an unerring certainty into the very path of the San Isidro. How was she, the toast of London, the bright particular planet in that bright firmament, divested of all the bright luster of her constellation, alone and all but friendless, adrift in these wild waters? How came this gay paradise bird, despoiled of its plumage, in so foreign a clime? Why had she left London? Had some convulsion of her starry sky cast her down from her high seat? Where was Captain Ferrers? Were they become estranged? What had come of the papers? The enigma grew in complexity. Her speech had puzzled him. Why had she been thankful to have found him? Was it the joy of learning that her captor was one who had not sunk so low that he could do the vile deeds she had feared of him? What atonement was it she offered? And for what? His heart leaped wildly, only to shrink again to a dull, drowsy beat. What did it mean? Nothing, or anything; conciliation, mock humility—a sop to Cerberus. Bah! He was done with hope. There, a shadow of disconsolation, he stood, fixed and nerveless, struggling against the soft, cajoling hand-maidens of Virtue—Gentleness, Beauty, Reverence, Love—personified in this woman, whom, try as he might, he could not pluck from his life.
The pale light of dawn found him where he watched until the transshipping was done, and the cases of coin, the silks and plate, were stowed safely below. The fitful wind, which had tossed up a restless sea, was now become so boisterous that the grappling irons were cast off and the Saucy Sally drifted away from the Spaniard and hung with a backed mainsail a half-cable’s length under her lee. The prisoners of the San Isidro had been carefully secured below and a prize crew of Jacquard, Cornbury, and thirty men had been placed upon her to bring the wreck into port. She was sound enough below. But the rigging, in spite of all their endeavors, was still a mere tangle of useless gearing. The sails drew on the jury-masts, and together, with gathering impetus, the two vessels moved slowly out into the growing light of the East.
The wisdom of the efforts of Bras-de-Fer in removing to the handier vessel the most movable of the priceless freight was soon apparent. For there, dull patches upon the southern sky, were the sails of two large vessels bearing smartly up under the stress of the fine westerly wind. Hoarse curses rang forth, and fists were wildly brandished towards the approaching ships, which, as it was plainly to be seen, were Spanish men-of-war, aroused to alertness by the cannonading at sunset and the night-long flares. It would have been hopeless for Bras-de-Fer to try and bring both vessels clear away, for the unwieldly prize rolled heavily in the rising swell and made scarce a bubble under the forefoot. And in her damaged condition, with crippled spars and many guns out of service, the Sally could hardly hope to repeat her success over the San Isidro with two war vessels fresh from the Havana. The weight of argument lay upon the side of his defeat with the loss of all that he had gained. There were two alternatives—to remain with the San Isidro and fight it out to the last, or take his prize crew aboard the Sally and abandon the San Isidro and her prisoners to her compatriots.
Bras-de-Fer chose the latter. There was only time to effect the change. He called Jacquard and his master-at-arms and the prize crew aboard their own vessel, and, clapping all sail upon the Saucy Sally that she could carry in safety, sailed clear away and abandoned the huge hulk to the approaching enemy.