CHAPTER XIII
MONSIEUR LEARNS SOMETHING
WHEN the night had fallen again, Mistress Barbara Clerke went timorously upon the deck in search of Bras-de-Fer. His insensibility and brutality in turning away from her when she would have spoken to him in the cabin had tried her to the last extremity. But the thought of the duty she owed herself and him stifled the impulses of her spirit. And her pride, rebellious and insensate that the man who had so frankly sacrificed himself in London should care so little here, impelled her inevitably. Her fear of him was short-lived. In spite of all she knew to his discredit and the bloody guise in which she had found him, that look of humiliation and distress which she had brought into his face a night so long ago remained ineffaceably written upon her memory. It spoke better than all the proofs she had discovered of the wrong that had been done him.
She found him, by the light of a lantern, directing the repair of a gun-carriage upon the poop. She addressed him timidly.
“Monsieur—er—Bras-de-Fer—” she began.
He raised his head and turned abruptly towards her, and the sense of security from rebuke she had counted upon, in the presence of the men, fled away at the sight of his frowning countenance.
“What are you doing here, madame?” he said, harshly. “The deck is no place for you. Go below at once or—”
But with never a glance at the grinning fellows at her elbow, she looked him steadily in the eyes as she replied, with a will and spirit which surprised even herself:
“I shall not, monsieur.” The voice was low and even. But the small hands were clenched, her head was tossed a little upon one side, and every line of her lithe body, which swung rhythmically to the motion of the sliding deck, spoke of invincible courage and determination. Bras-de-Fer scowled darkly a moment, and even took a step in her direction, but she stood undaunted. With an assumption of carelessness he waved his hands, and presently they were alone.
“I thank you for that condescension,” she said at last.
“Speak your will quickly, madame. I am in a press of business.”
“You must hear me to the end, monsieur. No matter what—”
“Ma foi, madame,” he sneered. “Is it you who command the ship or I? If there is aught you require, say on. If not, you will go below at once.”
“You must hear me, monsieur.”
“Madame”—he scowled and spoke with a studied brutality—“is it not enough that I have done your will once? I am taking you to safety. Try me not too far or—you may find reason to regret your presumption.” And as she shrank a little away from him: “What have you to expect from me? By what right do you seek me or ask me any favor?”
“By the right of a gentle birth. If not by that, by the right of a decent humanity.”
He laughed with an assumption of coarseness which sat strangely upon him.
“And have you no fear, Mistress Clerke? Does your instinct teach you no tremor?” He moved a pace nearer and glanced down upon her. “Do you not see, proud woman? Have you no trembling, no terror at the sight of me? Am I so gentle, so tractable, so ingenuous that you can defy me with impunity? You are in my power. There is no one to say me nay. What is there to prevent me doing with you as I will?”
She had not moved back from him the distance of a pace. And it was his eye that first fell before hers.
“You will doubtless do your will,” she said, evenly. “But I cannot find it in my heart to fear you, monsieur.” And the quietude of her reliance paled his mock brutality into a mere silly effusiveness.
“At the sight of you, monsieur,” she continued, “there is little room for fear in my breast. No, even if you should strike me down here upon this foreign, friendless deck, I believe that I could raise no hand or voice in protest.”
“Madame!” he said.
“It is true. You are powerless to offend. Why, your threats are mere empty vaunts, monsieur! Even in this dusky light I can see it in your eyes. You are clean of evil intent as a babe unborn.”
Bras-de-Fer bowed his head.
“Oh, let me right the great wrong that has been done—”
“It is impossible—”
“When you learn— Listen, oh, listen, monsieur!” she cried, passionately, as he moved away. “When you learn that I have left London for you; that I have given up all I possessed that a great wrong might be righted, a great martyrdom ended, you will no longer refuse me.” The words came tumbling forth any way from her lips in the mad haste that he might hear before he was gone out of earshot.
And as he paused to listen, fearfully: “Yes, yes, monsieur, I have learned,” she cried again. “I know. It is yours—it is all yours.”
Bras-de-Fer turned his body towards her again, but as he faced her his head was still bowed in his shoulders and she could see no other sign of any emotion. The revelation that he had longed for, and feared because he longed for it so much, was made. The secret was out. However he planned and whatever guise of unfriendliness he took, the relations between himself and this woman were changed thenceforward. The struggle for the mastery was fierce as it was brief. And in that moment, no matter how changed his duty to himself and her, he resolved that she should have no sign of it. When he raised his head again to the lantern-light all trace of the storm that had passed over his spirit was gone.
“It is too late, madame,” he muttered. “Too late. I stand by the cast of the die.”
“You cannot know what you say, monsieur. If the estates do not go to you, they will go to no one. It is the end of the house of De Bresac. Your fortune, your titles, your honors—”
“And my good name?” he asked, coldly. “Who will restore to me my good name? No. I shall not return to London, madame.”
“You must return,” she broke in, wildly. “It is a sacred duty. If not for yourself, for the blood that runs in our veins.”
The phrase sang sweet in his ears. But he gave no sign.
“Blood is thicker than water, but it seeks its level as surely. I have made my bed; I shall sleep no less soundly because it is a rough one.”
She struggled to contain the violence of her emotion. “No, no, it cannot be, it must not be. You will learn how I have striven for you. You cannot refuse. It would be cruel, inhuman, monstrous!”
“Mistress Clerke has much to learn of the inhumanities,” he said. And then, with cool composure, “What power availed to convince her, where Monsieur Mornay was so unfortunate?”
“You are cruel, cruel. What had you to expect of me? What had you done in London to merit my favor? Why should I have believed in one of whom I knew nothing—nothing but presumption and indignity? How should I have known?”
“Madame’s advisers—”
“Do not speak of them,” she interrupted. “It is past. The proofs were brought me. That is all. Why need you know more?”
“Captain Ferrers?” he said, insinuatingly.
“Yes, he!” She drew herself to her full height, and he could not fail to mark the lofty look of scorn that curved her lips and brow. “All London learned of the story of your escape. My agents were told that the vessel upon which you had fled was in the American trade. And so I sought service where I might best reach you. Thank God, my quest has not been in vain!”
“Madame sought service?” he said, in a wonder which vied with his cold assumption of apathy.
“I sought service with the Señorita de Batteville, monsieur,” she continued, with a proud lift of the chin, “in the capacity of waiting-woman and duenna.”
The words fell with cruel import upon his ears. He could hardly believe that he had heard aright.
“You serve—?” he stammered.
“Have I not said that every livre of my fortune—”
“Yes. But, madame—to serve!—you!—”
“Is it so strange? Would you have me take that which is not mine? No, monsieur, I am no thief.”
Bras-de-Fer had turned resolutely towards the bulwarks with a mind more turbulent even than the seething waters below him. In the turmoil of his emotions he knew not which way to turn, what to say or what to do. The plan that he had marked for himself was becoming every moment less and less distinct.
It was with an effort that he turned towards her, his resolution giving him an implacability he was far from feeling.
“Madame, your probity does you credit. Were your judgment as unerring as your honesty, I had not left London. As it is, I’ve no mind to return.”
“Monsieur,” she faltered—“monsieur—”
“If you please, madame. I would have you below. ’Tis a rough crew, and I’ll not answer for them—”
“But you will tell me—”
“Madame, you’ve purged your conscience. There your duty ends. At Port Royal it shall be arranged that you are sent to Porto Bello. As for me, my will is made.”
“Ah, you are malignant,” she cried, with a flash of spirit, his cold, sinister eye sinking and piercing deep into her heart like cold steel. “You are not he whom I have sought. He was frank, generous, kind. A strange, bitter, monstrous creature has grown in his guise.” Her voice trembled and broke as she moved to the hatchway.
“May God help you,” she said, in a kind of sobbing whisper, “who have so little kindness and pity for others.” And in a moment she had faded, a slender, shrinking shade of sorrow, from his vision.
When she was gone he fell upon the bulwarks and buried his face in his hands.
“Ah, bon Dieu!” he murmured; “how could I do it! She who has been so kind—so kind.” The new delight that swept over him at the thought of all that this rare, sweet woman had done for him came over him in a delicious flush, which drove away the pallor of his distemper like the warm glow of the tropics upon the frozen north. The heavy burden of his melancholy was lifted. If he crept about with bowed head now, it was because of some failing of the spirit or some craven dishonor of his own. He and his were forever raised to high estate, and no careless proscription of his inconsequent Mistress Fate could cast him down again. The freedom of his soul from the blight which his birth had put upon it lent it wings to soar gladly into the wide empyrean of his imagination. And he gave himself up without stint to the new joy in their motion. Did he wish, he could go at once to London and take a place among the men of his kind, a place which no mere art could win for him.
To London! There was a time when that word was magic for him—when, in careless bravado, he was challenging his fortune to deny him what he wished. Now he wondered at the singular distaste which grew at the very thought of the life that had been. With such a fortune and such a name there were no favors or honors he could not buy. He would know how to win his way again. But his spirit was listless at the thought. With the joy at his freedom from the cloud of his birth his pleasure ended. The estates, his titles and honors, dwelt so little in his mind that he marveled again at his change of disposition. He could go to London. But at what cost! Summon the goddesses of his past as he might, their essenced wiles and specious blandishing, distance gave them no added charm. He could only see this pale, proud woman, with a rare and imperturbable honesty which showed how justly she had worn the honors she relinquished, in a pure nobility which brought a flush to his cheek, giving up without a qualm or faltering the life and habits, the high condition, to which she had been born and in which she had been so carefully nurtured. Could he go back to London to leave this woman a wanderer, a servant, whose only hope even for a bare existence lay in the bounty of a Spaniard? The thought grew upon him and oppressed him and drove all the joy from his heart. All this she had done for him—for him. He rolled the thought over and over in his mind, like a sweetmeat in the mouth, with a new taste of delicacy and delight at every turn. She had given it all for him—that he, the man she had affected so profoundly to despise, might be exalted. It was not a triumph, but a quiet joy, the joy that the sick feel at the touch of a ministering angel. It did not matter what the cause, whether she had made this sacrifice for the principle or whether she had made it for the individual. He was the cause of this great outflow of human kindness and self-sacrifice from the deep, warm well-springs of this wonderful woman’s heart, which he had so often sought to reach and sought in vain. The glimmer of a single tear which had trembled a moment upon her cheek in the lantern-light reached to the very quick of the unrevealed secret depths of his nature, where no plummet had ever before sounded. It had glistened a jewel more inestimable than all the wealth she had brought him. Could he leave this woman upon the world, at the mercy of every bitter occasion? He had chosen wisely. Red-handed boucanier he would remain. He would not undeceive her. The light in which she held him removed all chance of an understanding. He would set her safely ashore at Porto Bello; then, with the aid of Cornbury and the English government, so dispose his affairs that the fortune would revert to her in case of his death whether she willed it or no. Then he would set to sea and take the precaution to die as speedily and publicly as might be. So far as she was concerned that would be the end. He would see England no more. It was here that his talents found their readiest employment. Of all his fortune, he would take only the ship upon which he sailed, and under another name, which would serve his purposes as adequately as the one he now bore, he would continue as he had begun, with a wider license only, a free-trader, a picaroon, a pirato, if you will.
It was Jacquard who broke, without ceremony, upon his meditations.
“Monsieur le Capitaine,” he began, with an air of some brusqueness.
“Oh, Jacquard,” he replied, abstractedly, “are we well repaired?”
“Monsieur, it is not that. For some days I have wished to see you. There is a muttering in the forecastle. Yan Gratz—”
“Ah! Well—”
“Monsieur, there is nothing upon the surface; from outward view ’tis placid as a pond. But I know. I have ears upon all sides of my head. ’Tis Yan Gratz. You’ve set his value too low. Gratz will not forget the leopard spots upon him. Like the leopard, he will bite, and as stealthily he will crawl.”
“Pardieu, Jacquard, is it so?” Bras-de-Fer lifted his brows. “And what is the grievance now?”
Jacquard scratched his great nose in perplexity before he replied.
“It is the discipline,” he began, slowly—“the discipline which has wearied them; they have little rum to drink: two tins yesterday, one tin to-day, and, lastly—monsieur will pardon me—lastly, monsieur, this matter of the lady prisoner. Monsieur, they say—”
“Jacquard, it is enough,” he interrupted. “You need say no more. You may tell them that upon the Saucy Sally I command. If there is grumbling, let them come to me openly at the mast and not skulk like cats in the dark.”
“If monsieur will permit, I would think it better—”
“What! You, too, Jacquard? Why, ’tis a very honeycomb of faithlessness.”
“Monsieur, monsieur!” cried Jacquard in an agony of awkward anguish. “You know that it is not so, monsieur. It is not so; I am but giving my opinion. It would be wise to notice them. There is yet time to set the lady upon a vessel.”
“It shall not be, Jacquard. We sail straight forth into the broad ocean, and then by way of the wide passage of Porto Rico, west to Port Royal, in Jamaica. That is my plan. It is unalterable. If we happen upon Spanish prizes, so much the better. We shall take them. But we shall seek none. And as for the lady, she shall be set ashore upon Jamaica, and not upon any passing ship.”
Jacquard, whose jaw had dropped, and whose face had been growing longer and longer during this recital, burst forth at last.
“Mais, monsieur,” he cried, “it is unwise to taunt them so. The Spanish ships are thick about us. In another month the carrying will be less. It is the time of times. Their blood is hot with victory.”
Bras-de-Fer broke in with an oath. “It will be cold with death if they balk me. If Yan Gratz has aught to say, let him come forth like a man,” and then, with a smile, “Perhaps he has the stomach for a little play upon the pike.”
“Monsieur, he will not come. He fears you like the plague. He will do his work the more effectively in quiet.”
Bras-de-Fer paused a moment and then came to Jacquard and put both hands upon his shoulders.
“Mon ami,” he said, “what you ask is impossible. It is impossible. I give you my word. If I could do what you advise I should do so; for what you urge is wise. But I must try to do what I have planned to do. If I cannot do it with you, I must do it without you.”
“Oh, monsieur,” interrupted Jacquard, almost at the edge of tears, “I would do for you always—speak for you, work for you, fight for you—and now, do not doubt me, monsieur!” The appeal shone forth with so true a light from his small, glittering eyes that Bras-de-Fer was truly affected by the demonstration.
“I believe you, mon ami. Go. Tell me all that happens. I will follow your advice as I can.”