Part 25 (2/2)

”He told me of a night very like this. You were standing in this hall, very likely as you stand now, and the door was open and the breeze and the sound of the sea came through the open door as it does now. Only where I stand Cullen Mayle stood, asking you to follow him out through the world. And you would have followed, you did indeed begin to follow----”

So far I had got when she broke in pa.s.sionately, with her eyes afire!

”It is not true! How can men speak such lies? Lieutenant Clutterbuck!

I know--he told me the same story. It would have been much easier, so much franker, had he said outright he was tired of his--friends.h.i.+p for me and wished an end to it. I should have liked him the better had he been so frank. But that he should tell you the same story. Oh! it is despicable--and you believe it?” she challenged me. ”You believe that story. You believe, too, I went to a trysting with Cullen on Castle Down, the night you came, and kept it secret from you and let you run the peril of your life. You will have it, in a word, whatever I may say or do,” and she wrung her hands with a queer helplessness. ”You will have it that I love him. Pity, a sense of injustice, a feeling that I wrongly possess what is rightly his--these things you will not allow can move me. No, I must love him.”

”Have I not proof you do?” I answered. ”Not from Clutterbuck, but from yourself. Have I not proof into what despair your love could throw you?” And I took from my pocket the silk scarf. ”Where did I get this?”

She took it from my hands, while her face softened. She drew it through her fingers, and a smile parted her lips. She raised her eyes to me with a certain shyness, and she answered shyly:

”Yet you say you were not curious to know anything of me in London before you started to the West.”

The answer was no answer at all. I repeated my question:

”How do I come to have that scarf?”

”I can but guess,” she said; ”I did not know that Lieutenant Clutterbuck possessed it. But it could be no one else. You asked it of Lieutenant Clutterbuck in London.”

For a moment I could not believe that I had heard a right. I stared at her. It was impossible that any woman could carry effrontery to so high a pitch. But she repeated her words.

”Lieutenant Clutterbuck gave it to you no doubt in London, and--will you tell me?--I should like to know. Did you ask him for it?”

Should I strip away this pretence? Should I compel her to own where I found it and how I came by it? But it seemed not worth while. I turned on my heel without a word, and went straight out through the open door and on to the hillside.

And so this was the second night which I spent in the gorse of Castle Down. One moment I was hot to go back to London and speak to no woman for the rest of my days. The next I was all for finding Cullen Mayle and heaping coals of fire upon Helen's head. The coals of fire carried the day in the end.

As morning broke I walked down to the Palace Inn fully resolved. I would search for Cullen Mayle until I found him. I would bring him back. I would see him married to Helen from a dark corner in St.

Mary's Church, and when the pair were properly unhappy and miserable, as they would undoubtedly become--I was very sorry, but miserable they would be--why then I would send her a letter. The writing in the letter should be ”Ha! ha!”--not a word more, not even a signature, but just ”Ha! ha!” on a blank sheet of paper.

But, as I have said, I had grown very young these last few days.

CHAPTER XVII

CULLEN MAYLE COMES HOME

The search was entirely unsuccessful. Through the months of November and December I travelled hither and thither, but I had no hint as to Cullen Mayle's whereabouts; and towards the end of the year I took pa.s.sage in a barque bound for St. Mary's, where I landed the day before Christmas and about the fall of the dusk. It was my intention to cross over that night to Tresco and report my ill-success, which I was resolved to do with a deal of stateliness. I was also curious to know whether Peter Tortue was still upon the island.

But as I walked along the street of Hugh Town to the ”Dolphin” Inn, by the Customs House, a band of women dancing and shouting, with voices extraordinarily hoa.r.s.e, swept round the corner. I fell plump amongst them, and discovered they were men masquerading as women. Moreover, they stopped me, and were for believing that I was a woman masquerading as a man; and, indeed, when they had let me go I did come upon a party of girls dressed up for sea captains and the like, who swaggered, counterfeiting a manly walk, and drawing their hangers upon one another with a great show of spirit.

The reason of these transformations was explained to me at the ”Dolphin.” It seems that they call this sort of amus.e.m.e.nt ”a goose-dancing,” and the young people exercise it in these islands at Christmas time. I was told that it would be impossible for me to hire a boatman to put me over to Tresco that night; so I made the best of the matter, and to pa.s.s the time stepped out again into the street, which was now lighted up with many torches and crowded with masqueraders. They went dancing and singing from house to house; the women paid their addresses with an exaggeration of courtly manners to the men, who, dressed in the most uncouth garments that could be devised, received them with a droll shyness and modesty, and altogether, what with liquor and music, the festival went with a deal of noise and spirit. But in the midst of it one of these false women, with a great bonnet pulled forward over her face, clapped a hand upon my shoulder and said in my ear:

”Mr. Berkeley, I hope you have been holding better putt cards of late;” and would have run on, but I caught him by the arm.

”Mr. Featherstone,” said I, ”you stole my horse; I have a word to say to you.”

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