Part 21 (1/2)

Even her affection for her father had been dutiful rather than instinctive. She had provoked love, but had never given it. She had been self-centred, compulsive, unrelenting. She had unmoved seen and let her husband go to his doom--it was his doom and death so far as she knew.

Yet, as I thought of this, I found myself again admiring her. She was handsome, independent, distinctly original, and possessing capacity for great things. Besides, so far, she had not been actively vindictive--simply pa.s.sively indifferent to the sufferings of others.

She seemed to regard results more than means. All she did not like she could empty into the mill of the destroying G.o.ds: just as General Grant poured hundreds of thousands of men into the valley of the James, not thinking of lives but victory, not of blood but triumph. She too, even in her cruelty, seemed to have a sense of wild justice which disregarded any incidental suffering.

I could see that Mr. Devlin was attracted by her, as every man had been who had ever met her; for, after all, man is but a common slave to beauty: virtue he respects, but beauty is man's valley of suicide.

Presently she turned to Mr. Devlin, having, as it seemed to me, made Roscoe and Ruth sufficiently uncomfortable. With that cheerful insouciance which was always possible to her on the most trying occasions, she immediately said, as she had often said to me, that she had come to Mr. Devlin to be amused for the morning, perhaps the whole day. It was her way, her selfish way, to make men her slaves.

Mr. Devlin gallantly said that he was at her disposal, and with a kind of pride added that there was plenty in the valley which would interest her; for he was a frank, bluff man, who would as quickly have spoken disparagingly of what belonged to himself, if it was not worthy, as have praised it.

”Where shall we go first?” he said. ”To the mill?”

”To the mill, by all means,” Mrs. Falchion replied; ”I have never been in a great saw-mill, and I believe this is very fine. Then,” she added, with a little wave of the hand towards the cable running down from Phil Boldrick's eyrie in the mountains, ”then I want to see all that cable can do--all, remember.”

Mr. Devlin laughed. ”Well, it hasn't many tricks, but what it does it does cleverly, thanks to The Padre.”

”Oh yes,” responded Mrs. Falchion, still looking at the cable; ”The Padre, I know, is very clever.”

”He is more than clever,” bluffly replied Mr. Devlin, who was not keen enough to see the faint irony in her tones.

”Yes,” responded Mrs. Falchion in the same tone of voice, ”he is more than clever. I have been told that he was once very brave. I have been told that once in the South Seas he did his country a great service.”

She paused. I could see Ruth's eyes glisten and her face suffuse, for though she read the faint irony in the tone, still she saw that the tale which Mrs. Falchion was evidently about to tell, must be to Galt Roscoe's credit. Mrs. Falchion turned idly upon Ruth and saw the look in her face. An almost imperceptible smile came upon her lips. She looked again at the cable and Phil Boldrick's eyrie, which seemed to have a wonderful attraction for her. Not turning away from it, save now and then to glance indolently at Mr. Devlin or Ruth, and once enigmatically at myself, she said:

”Once upon a time--that is the way, I believe, to begin a pretty story--there were four men-of-war idling about a certain harbour of Samoa. One of the vessels was the flag-s.h.i.+p, with its admiral on board.

On one of the other vessels was an officer who had years before explored this harbour. It was the hurricane season. He advised the admiral not to enter the harbour, for the indications foretold a gale, and himself was not sure that his chart was in all respects correct, for the harbour had been hurriedly explored and sounded. But the admiral gave orders, and they sailed in.

”That day a tremendous hurricane came crying down upon Samoa. It swept across the island, levelled forests of cocoa palms, battered villages to pieces, caught that little fleet in the harbour, and played with it in a horrible madness. To right and left were reefs, behind was the sh.o.r.e, with a monstrous surf rolling in; before was a narrow pa.s.sage. One vessel made its way out--on it was the officer who had surveyed the harbour. In the open sea there was safety. He brought his vessel down the coast a little distance, put a rope about him and in the wild surf made for the sh.o.r.e. I believe he could have been court-martialled for leaving his s.h.i.+p, but he was a man who had taken a great many risks of one kind and another in his time. It was one chance out of a hundred; but he made it--he got to the sh.o.r.e, travelled down to the harbour where the men-of-war were careening towards the reefs, unable to make the pa.s.sage out, and once again he tied a rope about him and plunged into the surf to try for the admiral's s.h.i.+p. He got there terribly battered.

They tell how a big wave lifted him and landed him upon the quarter-deck just as big waves are not expected to do. Well, like the hero in any melodrama of the kind, he very prettily piloted monsieur the admiral and his fleet out to the open sea.”

She paused, smiling in an inscrutable sort of way, then turned and said with a sudden softness in her voice, though still with the air of one who wished not to be taken with too great a seriousness: ”And, ladies and gentlemen, the name of the s.h.i.+p that led the way was the 'Porcupine'; and the name of the hero was Commander Galt Roscoe, R.N.; and 'of such is the kingdom of heaven!'”

There was silence for a moment. The tale had been told adroitly, and with such tact as to words that Roscoe could not take offence--need not, indeed, as he did not, I believe, feel any particular self-consciousness. I am not sure but he was a little glad that such evidence should have been given at the moment, when a kind of restraint had come between him and Ruth, by one who he had reason to think was not wholly his friend might be his enemy. It was a kind of offset to his premonitions and to the peril over which he might stumble at any moment.

To me the situation was almost inexplicable; but the woman herself was inexplicable: at this moment the evil genius of us all, at that doing us all a kind of crude, superior justice. I was the first to speak.

”Roscoe,” I said, ”I never had heard of this, although I remember the circ.u.mstance as told in the newspapers. But I am glad and proud that I have a friend with such a record.”

”And, only think,” said Mrs. Falchion, ”he actually was not court-martialled for abandoning his s.h.i.+p to save an admiral and a fleet.

But the ways of the English Admiralty are wonderful. They go out of their way to avoid a court-martial sometimes, and they go out of their way to establish it sometimes.”

By this time we had started towards the mill. Roscoe walked ahead with Ruth Devlin. Mr. Devlin, Mrs. Falchion, Justine Caron and myself walked together.

Mrs. Falchion presently continued, talking, as it seemed to me, at the back of Roscoe's head:

”I have known the Admiralty to force an officer to resign the navy because he had married a native wife. But I never knew the Admiralty to court-martial an officer because he did not marry a native wife whom he OUGHT to have married: but, as I said, the ways of the Admiralty are past admiration.”

I could see Roscoe's hand clinch at his side, and presently he said over his shoulder at her: ”Your memory and your philosophy are as wonderful as the Admiralty are inscrutable.”