Part 33 (1/2)

Then came the discharging, and the transporting of their heavy weights to the smaller raft on the lake, which could not take more than half their cargo at a time. So he took her and a portion across to the 'Martha,' and she undertook to have supper ready by the time he got back with the rest.

And surely she wrought pleasanter thoughts even than usual into her cooking that day, for it seemed to him, when in due course he sat opposite to her on the other side of their fire, that he had never enjoyed a meal so much in his life, deficient as it was in many things that he had always regarded as needful.

”We have done a good day's work,” he said, as he lit his pipe at her request.

”I wonder what he will say about it.”

”We will not let it trouble us. He has only himself to blame.”

”I wonder if you and he would have quarrelled if I had never come.”

”We certainly would if he had taken the line he has done. As long as he did his fair share of the providing I did not mind. But the position he took up was an impossible one.”

They fell into reminiscent talk of that great outer world which seemed so remote, and from which, for all they knew, they were now for ever cut off. She had many strange recollections of her earlier life in France, some very terrible ones of the times of the Red Deluge, very mixed ones of the later times in England.

It was amazing to him to sit in that bare cabin of a deserted s.h.i.+p, on an island shunned by all, listening to her familiar talk of men and women who had been but names to him, until her intimate knowledge of them made them into actual living personages.

Her outlook on life had been very much wider than his own. She had lived among the scenes and people of whom he had only read in the news-sheets. He was immensely interested, both in the things she talked about and the way she talked about them. His questionings towards a clearer understanding on points which were to her matters of simplest elementary knowledge amused her not a little. And he got many a self-revealing glimpse into that strange past life of hers, from which she was so contented to escape, but which was yet so full of colour and contrast and vivid actuality that, in spite of all its discrepancies and disillusionments, it had a.s.sumed for her a certain glamour which she averred it had never worn at the time.

”Wait a moment,” he would say, breaking into her flow of reminiscence, ”'Monsieur' is----?”

”The Comte de Provence, the late King's brother, my uncle. My father, the King's next brother, the Comte d'Artois, is 'Monseigneur.' He has become terribly devout since Mme de Polastron died. The abbe Latil is his heart and mind and conscience. In his way he was fond of me, I believe, but since I came to understand the wrong he did my mother, I have detested him. And I have no doubt he was not sorry when I broke away. I was a perpetual reminder, you see----”

”And there is another Countess d'Artois?”

”Oh, yes,--Marie Therese of Savoy, but she is too awful,--a quite impossible woman, one must say that much for him. If ever a man had good excuse for seeking his pleasures elsewhere, he had. She was terrible. She had no more moral feeling than a cat.”

”And Madame Adelaide----? Let me see--who was she?”

”My great-aunt--poor old thing! Those atrocious Narbonnes lived on her and turned her round their fingers.”

”And Madame Elizabeth? It is terribly confusing.”

”Not at all. It is all as simple as can be. Madame Elizabeth was my aunt, my father's sister. She was very sweet. Poor dear! They cut off her head, though she never harmed a soul since the day she was born. She was very good to me. If she had lived I do not think I would be here. She was not like the rest. I could have lived happily with her.”

And so she chattered away,--about the late King--her uncle also,--and of the Duc d'Orleans,--”always a self-seeker, and intriguer, with a very sharp eye on the way things might turn to his own benefit. Oh, I am glad they took his head off. It was righteous retribution.”--And of the Queen---- ”She did foolish things at times, but she meant no harm, and, mon Dieu, how she suffered!”--And of Lafayette, and Talleyrand, and many and many another.

And it was indeed pa.s.sing strange to lie there listening to it all--she clad in her blankets, for the night air had a chill in it, and he in the sea-damaged coat and small clothes of a gentleman of the Duke of Kent's suite, while between them the thin blue reek of the drift-wood fire on its hearth of sand stole up through the half-closed companion-hatch to the lonely night outside.

x.x.xIV

”We shall have a visit from our next-door neighbour presently, I expect,” said Wulfrey, when The Girl came out of her cabin next morning. ”Will you mind stopping below while I dispose of him?”

”But why?”

”He puts things coa.r.s.ely at times, and he will probably be in a very bad humour at having to get his own meals ready.”

”I don't mind him.”