Part 70 (1/2)
It was Smithson who handed Lesbia into the boat and arranged her wraps, and hung over her tenderly as he performed those small offices.
'Now really,' he asked, just before the boat put off, 'when are we to be with you to-morrow?'
'Lady Kirkbank says not till afternoon tea, but I think you may come a few hours earlier. I am not at all sleepy.'
'You look as if you needed sleep badly,' answered Smithson. 'I'm afraid you are not half careful enough of yourself. Good-night.'
The boat was gliding off, the oars dipping, as he spoke. How swiftly it shot from his ken, flas.h.i.+ng in and out among the yachts, where the lamps were burning dimly in that clear radiance of new-born day.
Montesma gave a tremendous yawn as he took out his cigar-case, and he and Mr. Smithson did not say twenty words between them during the walk to Formosa, where servants were sitting up, lamps burning, a great silver tray, with brandy, soda, liqueurs, coffee, in readiness.
CHAPTER XLIII.
'ALAS, FOR SORROW IS ALL THE END OF THIS'
Lady Kirkbank retired to her cabin directly she got on board the _Cayman_.
'Good-night, child! I am more than half asleep,' she said; 'and I think if there were to be an earthquake an hour hence I should hardly hear it.
Go to your berth directly, Lesbia; you look positively awful. I have seen girls look bad after b.a.l.l.s before now, but I never saw such a spectre as you look this morning.'
Poor Georgie's own complexion left something to be desired. The _Blanc de Fedora_ had been a brilliant success for the first two hours: after that the warm room began to tell upon it, and there came a greasiness, then a streakiness, and now all that was left of an alabaster skin was a livid patch of purplish paint here and there, upon a crow's-foot ground.
The eyebrows, too, had given in, and narrow lines of Vand.y.k.e brown meandered down Lady Kirkbank's cheeks. The frizzy hair had gone altogether wrong, and had a wild look, suggestive of the witches in Macbeth, and the scraggy neck and poor old shoulders showed every year of their age in the ghastly morning light.
Lesbia waited in the saloon till Lady Kirkbank had bolted herself into her cabin, and then she went up to the deck wrapped in her satin-lined, fur-bordered cloak, and coiled herself in a bamboo arm-chair, and nestled her bare head into a Turkish pillow, and tried to sleep, there with the cool morning breeze blowing upon her burning forehead, and the plish-plash of seawater soothing her ear.
There were only three or four sailors on deck, weird, almost diabolical-looking creatures, Lesbia thought, in striped s.h.i.+rts, with bare arms, of a s.h.i.+ning bronze complexion, flas.h.i.+ng black eyes, sleek raven hair, a sinister look. What species of men they were--Mestizoes, Coolies, Yucatekes--she knew not, but she felt that they were something wild and strange, and their presence filled her with a vague fear. _He_, whose influence now ruled her life, had told her that these men were born mariners, and that she was twenty times safer with them than when the yacht had been under the control of those honest, grinning red-whiskered English Jack Tars. But she liked the English sailors best, all the same; and she shrank from the faintest contact with these tawny-visaged strangers, plucking away the train of her gown as they pa.s.sed her chair, lest they should brush against her drapery.
On deck this morning, with only those dark faces near, she had a sense of loneliness, of helplessness, of abandonment even. Unbidden the image of her home at Grasmere flashed into her mind--all things so calm, so perfectly ordered, such a sense of safety, of home--no peril, no temptation, no fever--only peace: and she had grown sick to death of peace. She had prayed for tempest: and the tempest had come.
There was a heavenly quiet in the air in the early summer morning, only the creaking of a spar, the scream of a seagull now and then. How pale the lamps were growing on board the yachts. Paler still, yellow, and dim, and blurred yonder in the town. The eastward facing windows were golden with the rising sun. Yes, this was morning. The yachts were moving away yonder, majestical, swan-like, white sails s.h.i.+ning against the blue.
She closed her eyes, and tried to sleep; but sleep would not come. She was always listening--listening for the dip of oars, listening for a s.n.a.t.c.h of melody from a mellow baritone whose every accent she knew so well.
It came at last, the sound her soul longed for. She lay among her cus.h.i.+ons with closed eyes, listening, drinking in those rich ripe notes as they came nearer and nearer, to the measure of dipping oars, _'La donna e mobile--'_
Nearer and nearer, until the little boat ground against the hull. She lifted her heavy eyelids as Montesma leapt over the gunwale, almost into her arms. He was at her side, kneeling by her low chair, kissing the little hands, chill with the freshness of morning.
'My own, my very own,' he murmured, pa.s.sionately.
He cared no more for those copper-faced Helots yonder than if they had been made of wood. He had fate in his own hands now, as it seemed to him. He went to the skipper and gave him some orders in Spanish, and then the sails were unfurled, the _Cayman_ spread her broad white wings, and moved off among those other yachts which were gliding, gliding, gliding out to sea, melting from Cowes Roads like a vision that fadeth with the broad light of morning.
When the sails were up and the yacht was running merrily through the water, Montesma went back to Lady Lesbia, and they two sat side by side, gilded and glorified in the vivid lights of sunrise, talking as they had never talked before, her head upon his shoulder, a smile of ineffable peace upon her lips, as of a weary child that has found rest.
They were sailing for Havre, and at Havre they were to be married by the English chaplain, and from Havre they were to sail for the Havana, and to live there ever afterwards in a fairy-tale dream of bliss, broken only by an annual visit to Paris, just to buy gowns and bonnets.
Surrendered were all Lesbia's ambitious hopes--forgotten--gone; her desire to reign princess paramount in the kingdom of fas.h.i.+on--her thirst to be wealthiest among the wealthy--gone--forgotten. Her dreams now were of the _dolce far niente_ of a tropical climate, a boudoir giving on the Caribbean sea, cigarettes, coffee, nights spent in a foreign opera house, the languid, reposeful existence of a Spanish dama--with him, with him. It was for his sake that she had modified all her ideas of life. To be with him she would have been content to dwell in the tents of the Patagonians, on the wild and snow-clad Pampas. A love which was strong enough to make her sacrifice duty, the world, her fair fame as a well-bred woman, was a love that recked but little of the paths along which her lover's hand was to lead. For him, to be with him, she renounced the world. The rest did not count.
The summer hours glided past them. The _Cayman_ was far out at sea; all the other yachts had vanished, and they were alone amidst the blue, with only a solitary three-master yonder, on the edge of the horizon.