Part 47 (2/2)
Being a little narrow-minded, the excellent creature believed that a scandal among ”good” people was not half so scandalous as an affair in which the princ.i.p.als were tradesmen, ”or worse.”
She confided something of this to her son as they drove homewards, and was very wroth with him when he treated the idea with unbecoming levity.
”My dear boy,” she cried vehemently, ”you don't understand the value of such credentials. You always speak and act as if you were on board one of your hectoring wars.h.i.+ps, where the best metal and the heaviest guns are all-important. It is not so in society, even the society of a small Cornish town. Although I am an earl's daughter I cannot afford to be quietly sneered at by some who would dispute my social supremacy.”
As each complaisant sentence rolled forth he laughed quietly in the darkness.
”Mother,” said he suddenly, ”Mr. Traill and I have had a lot of talk about Enid during the past two days. I have not seen you until this evening before dinner, so I have had no opportunity to tell you all that has occurred.”
”Some new embroglio, I suppose,” she said, not at all appeased by his seeming carelessness as to what the Dowager Lady Tregarthen or Mrs.
Taylor-Smith might say when gossip started.
”Well, it is, in a sense,” he admitted. ”You see, we are jolly hard up.
It is a squeeze for you to double my pay, and, as I happened to inform Mr. Traill that I was going to marry Enid, long before he knew she was his daughter, it came as a bit of a shock afterwards to hear that he intends to endow her with two hundred thousand pounds on her wedding-day. Now the question to be discussed is not whether the adopted daughter of a poor lighthouse-keeper who may be Lord This-and-That in disguise is a good match for me, but whether an impecunious lieutenant in the Royal Navy is such a tremendous catch for a girl with a great fortune.”
Lady Margaret was stunned. She began to breathe quickly. Her utmost expectations were surpa.s.sed. Before she could utter a word her son pretended to misunderstand her agitation.
”Of course it was fortunate that Enid and I had jolly well made up our minds somewhat in advance, but it was a near thing, a matter of flag signals--otherwise I should have been compelled to consider myself ruled out of the game. Therefore, during your tea-table tactics, if the Dowager, or that old spit-fire, Mrs. Taylor-Smith, says a word to you about Brand, just give 'em a rib-roaster with Enid's two hundred thou', will you? Whilst they are reeling under the blow throw out a gentle hint that Constance may ensnare Traill's nephew. 'Ensnare' is the right word, isn't it? The best of it is, I know they have been worrying you for months about my friends.h.i.+p with 'girls of their cla.s.s.' Oh, the joy of the encounter! It must be like blowing up a battle-s.h.i.+p with a tuppenny hapenny torpedo-boat.”
So her ladys.h.i.+p--not without pondering over certain entries in the Books of the Proudly-born, which recorded the birth and marriage of Sir Stephen Brand, ninth baronet, ”present whereabouts unknown”--went to bed, but not to sleep, whereas Jack Stanhope never afterwards remembered undressing, so thoroughly tired was he, and so absurdly happy, notwithstanding the awkward situation divulged at the dinner.
Pyne, left with his uncle, set himself to divert the other man's thoughts from the embarra.s.sing topic of Mrs. Vansittart.
He knew that Brand was not likely to leave them in any dubiety as to the past. Discussion now was useless, a mere idle guessing at probabilities, so he boldly plunged into the mystery as yet surrounding Enid's first year of existence.
Mr. Traill, glad enough to discuss a more congenial subject, marshalled the ascertained facts. It was easy to see that here, at least, he stood on firm ground.
”Your father, as you know, was a noted yachtsman, Charlie,” he said.
”Indeed, he was one of the first men to cross the Atlantic in his own boat under steam and sail. Twenty years ago, in this very month, he took my wife and me, with your mother, you, and our little Edith, then six months' old, on a delightful trip along the Florida coast and the Gulf of Mexico. It was then arranged that we should pa.s.s the summer among the Norwegian fiords, but the two ladies were nervous about the ocean voyage east in April, so your father brought the _Esmeralda_ across, and we followed by mail steamer. During the last week of May and the whole of June we cruised from Christiania almost to the North Cape. The fine keen air restored my wife's somewhat delicate health, and you and Edith throve amazingly. Do you remember the voyage?”
”It is a dim memory, helped a good deal, I imagine, by what I have heard since.”
”Well, on the fourth of July, putting into Hardanger to celebrate the day with some fellow-countrymen, I received a cable which rendered my presence in New York absolutely imperative. There was a big development scheme just being engineered in connection with our property. In fact, the event which had such a tragic sequel practically quadrupled your fortune and mine. By that time, the ladies were so enthusiastic about the sea-going qualities of the yacht that they would have sailed round the world in her, and poor Pyne had no difficulty in persuading them to take the leisurely way home, whilst I raced off via Newcastle and Liverpool to the other side. I received my last cable from them dated Southampton, July 20th, and they were due in New York somewhere about August 5th or 6th, allowing for ordinary winds and weather. During the night of July 21st, when midway between the Scilly Isles and the Fastnet, they ran into a dense fog. Within five minutes, without the least warning, the _Esmeralda_ was struck amids.h.i.+ps by a big Nova Scotian barque. The little vessel sank almost like a stone.
Nevertheless, your father, backed by his skipper and a splendid crew, lowered two boats, and all hands were saved, for the moment. It was Pyne's boast that his boats were always stored with food and water against any kind of emergency, but, of course, they made every effort to reach the s.h.i.+p which had sunk them, rather than endeavor to sail back to this coast. As the _Esmeralda_ was under steam at the time, her boilers exploded as she went down, and this undoubtedly caused the second catastrophe. The captain noticed that the strange s.h.i.+p went off close hauled to the wind, which blew steadily from the west, so he, in the leading boat, with your father and mother, you and my wife and child, followed in that direction. He shouted to four men in the second boat to keep close, as the fog was terrific. The barque, the _John S._, hearing the noise of the bursting boilers, promptly swung round, and in the effort to render a.s.sistance caused the second and far more serious catastrophe. The captain's boat encountered her just as the two crafts were getting way on them. Someone in the boat shouted, they heard an answering hail, and instantly crashed into the barque's bows. The sail became entangled in the martingale of the bowsprit, the boat was driven under and filled, and the second boat crashed into her. All the occupants of the captain's boat were thrown into the sea. You were grasped by a negro, a powerful swimmer. He, with yourself and two sailors, were rescued, and that was all. Your father was a strong man and he could swim well. He must have been stunned or injured in some way. The two sailors jumped from the second boat and clung to the barque's bobstays. The whole thing was over in a few seconds.”
Mr. Traill rose and paced slowly to the window. Pyne stared into the fire. There was no need for either of them to conjure up the heart-rending scene as the sharp prow of the sailing-s.h.i.+p cleft through the seas and spurned the despairing hands clutching at her black walls.
Too often had the older man pictured that horrific vision. It had darkened many hours, blurred many a forgetful moment of pleasure with a quick rush of pain.
Even now, as he looked out into the still street, he fancied he could see Enid's mother smiling at him from a luminous mist.
He pa.s.sed a hand over his eyes and gazed again at the moonlit roadway.
From the black shadows opposite a policeman crossed towards the hotel, and he heard a bell ring. These trivial tidings restored his wandering thoughts. How the discovery of his lost child had brought back a flood of buried memories!
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