Part 9 (1/2)
”Then how pleased you must be. Oh, I'm right glad, I tell you; I'm just as pleased as you are. To think that we've never met since you left N'York in such a flurry that you hadn't time even to send me a line--but of course you men are so busy and so smart that girls don't count, and I knew you were just dying to see me, and I sent the boat off saying it was old Burrow--how you love Burrow!--and here you are, my word!”
She spoke laboring under a heavy excitement, so that her sentences flowed over one another. But he could scarce find a coherent word, and began to tremble as she went on,--
”You'll stay awhile, of course, and--why, you're as pale as spectres, I guess. Now if you look like that I shall begin to think that we're not the old friends we were in N'York a year ago, and walk right upstairs to Arthur. You remember my brother Arthur, of course you do. He was your particular friend, wasn't he?--but how you boys quarrel. They really told me two months ago in the city that Arthur was going in the shooting business with you. Fancy that now, and at your age.”
This sentence revealed what was lacking in the character of the girl; it showed that malicious, if rather low and vulgar, cunning which prompted the whole of this adventure; and it betrayed a revenge which was worthy of a Frenchwoman. Maclaren had but to hear the harsh ring of the voice to know that the girl who had threatened him months ago in New York had met her opportunity, and that she would use it to the last possibility.
Every word that she uttered with such meaning vehemence cut him like a knife; his hair glistened with the drops of perspiration upon it; his right hand was pa.s.sed over his forehead as though some heat was tormenting his brain. And as her voice rose shrilly, only to be modulated to the pretence of suavity again, he blurted out,--
”Evelyn, what are you going to do?”
”I--my dear Lord Maclaren--I am entirely in your hands; you are my guest, I reckon, and even in America we have some idea of what that means. Now, would you like to play cards after dinner, or shall we have a little music?”
The steward entered the cabin at this moment, and the conversation being interrupted, Maclaren chanced to see that the companion was free. A wild idea of appealing to the captain of the yacht came to him, and he made a sudden move to mount the ladder. He had but taken a couple of steps, however, when a l.u.s.ty young fellow, perhaps of twenty-five years of age, barred the pa.s.sage, and pushed him with some roughness into the cabin again. The man closed the long, panelled door behind him; and then addressed the unwilling guest.
”Ah, Maclaren, so that's you--devilish good of you to come aboard, I must say.”
The newcomer was Evelyn Lenox's brother, the owner of the ketch _Bowery_. He acted his part in the comedy with more skill than his sister, having less personal interest in it; indeed, amus.e.m.e.nt seemed rather to hold him than earnestness. It was perfectly clear to Maclaren, however, that he would stand no nonsense; and seeing that a further exhibition of feeling would not help him one jot, the unhappy prisoner succ.u.mbed. When the dinner was put upon the table, he found himself sitting down to it mechanically, and as one in a dream. It was an excellent meal to come from a galley; and it was made more appetizing by the wit and sparkle of the girl who presided, and who acted her _role_ to such perfection. She seemed to have forgotten her anger, and cloaked her malice with consummate art. She was a well-schooled flirt--and her victim consoled himself with the thought, ”They will put me ash.o.r.e in the morning, and I can make a tale.” By ten o'clock he found himself laughing over a gla.s.s of whisky and soda. By eleven he was dreaming that he stood at the altar in the church of St. Peter's and that two brides walked up the aisle together.
The next picture that I have to show you of Maclaren is one which I am able to sketch from a full report of certain events happening on the evening of his wedding day. The yacht lay becalmed some way out in the bay of the Somme; the sea had the l.u.s.ter of a mirror, golden with a flawless sheen of brilliant light which carried the dark shadows of smack-hulls and flapping lug-sails. There was hardly a capful of wind, scarce an intermittent breath of breeze from the land; and the crew of the _Bowery_ lay about the deck smoking with righteous vigor, as they netted or st.i.tched, or indulged in those seemingly useless occupations which are the delight of sailors. Often however, they stayed their work to listen to the rise and fall of sounds in the saloon aft; and once, when Maclaren's voice was heard almost in a scream, one of them, squirting his tobacco juice over the bulwarks, made the sapient remark, ”Well, the old cove's dander is riz now, anyway.”
The scene below was played vigorously. Evelyn Lenox sat upon the sofa, her arms resting upon the cabin table, her bright face positively alight with triumph. Maclaren stood before her with clenched hands and gnas.h.i.+ng teeth. Arthur, the brother, was smoking a pipe and pretending to read a newspaper, leaving the conversation to his guest, who had no lack of words.
”Good G.o.d, Evelyn,” he said, ”you cannot mean to keep me here any longer--to-morrow's my wedding day!”
She answered him very slowly.
”How interesting! I remember the time, not so long ago, when my wedding day was fixed--and postponed.”
He did not heed the rebuke, but continued cravenly,--
”You do not seem to understand that your brother and yourself have perpetrated upon me an outrage which will make you detested in every country in Europe. Great Heaven! the whole town will laugh at me. I shan't have a friend in the place; I shall be cut at every club, as I'm a living man.”
The girl listened to him, her eyes sparkling with the excitement of it.
”Did you never stop to think,” said she, ”when you left America, like the coward you were, that people would laugh at me, too, and I should never be able to look my friends in the face again? Why, even in the newspapers they held me up to ridicule when my heart was breaking. You speak of suffering; well, I have suffered.”
Her mood changed, as the mood of women does--suddenly. The feminine instinct warred against the actress, and prevailed. She began to weep hysterically, burying her head in her arms; and a painful silence fell on the man. He seemed to wait for her to speak; but when she did so, anger had succeeded, and she rose from her place and stamped her foot, while rage seemed to vibrate in her nerves.
”Why do I waste my time on you?” she cried; ”you who are not worth an honest thought. Pshaw! 'Lord Maclaren, ill.u.s.trious n.o.bleman and great sportsman'”--she was quoting from an American paper--”go and tell them that for ten days you have humbled yourself to me, and have begged my pity on your knees. Go and tell them that my crew have held their sides when the parts have been changed, and you have been the woman. Oh, they shall know, don't mistake that; your wife shall read it on her wedding tour. I will send it to her myself, I, who have brought the laugh to my side now, scion of a n.o.ble house. Go, and take the recollection of your picnic here as the best present I can give to you.”
I was told that Maclaren looked at her for some moments in profound astonishment when she pointed to the cabin door. Then, without a word, he went on deck, to find the yacht's boat manned and waiting for him. He said himself that many emotions filled him as he stepped off the yacht--anger at the outrage, desire for revenge, but chiefly the emotions of the thought, was there time to reach St. Peter's for the wedding ceremony? He did not doubt that lies would save him from the American woman, if things so happened that he could reach England by the morning of the next day. But could he? Where was he? Where was he to be put ash.o.r.e? He asked the men at the oars these questions in a breath, standing up for one moment as the boat pushed off to shake his fist at the yacht, and cry, ”D--n you all!” But the answer that he got did not rea.s.sure him. He was to be put ash.o.r.e, the seaman said, at Crotoy, the little town on a tongue of land in the bay of the Somme. There was a steamer thence once a day to Saint Valery, from which point he could reach Boulogne by rail. He realized in a moment that all his hope depended on catching the steamer. If she had not sailed, he would arrive at Boulogne before sunset, and, if need were, could get across by the night mail and a special train from Folkestone. But if she had sailed!
This possibility he dared not contemplate.
The men were now rowing rapidly towards the sh.o.r.e, whose sandy dunes and flat outlines were becoming marked above the sea-line. The yacht lay far out, drifting on a gla.s.sy mirror of water; the sun was sinking with great play of yellow and red fire in the arc of the west. Maclaren had then, however, no thought for Nature's pictures, or for seascapes. One burning anxiety alone troubled him--had the steamer sailed? He offered the men ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred pounds if they would catch her.
The remark of one of them that she left on the top of the tide begot in him a mad eagerness to learn the hour of high-water; but none of those with him could remember it. He found himself swaying his body in rhythm with the oars as c.o.xswains do; or standing up to look at the white houses sh.o.r.ewards. Another half-hour's rowing brought him a sight of the pier; he shouted out with a laugh that might have come from a jackal when he saw that the steamer was moored against it, and that smoke was pouring heavily from her funnels.