He passed his silk bandanna across his brow. And yet for a suspicion so shocking, so monstrous, what grounds had he? None, absolutely none! And presently with an effort he put the thought from him, telling himself that he was giving a heated imagination too much play; that it was fancy only that had found in Budgen’s manner that evening a furtiveness new to him and an uneasiness that seemed to smack of guilt. The thought was absurd. The man was not a villain, the Rector told himself, nor business a melodrama.
Absurd! Ay, and monstrous. And yet as he went up the stairs to the drawing-room he could not refrain — for no man is master of his mind — from thinking what a relief from annoyance, what a solution of difficulties it would be if something did happen. If Bligh — if his son-in-law did not return. If the whole ghastly business of his daughter’s mesalliance were ended at a blow. He was sure that the thought had not weighed with him when he gave his consent, that it had had no influence on his mind. But his brow was damp. He passed his handkerchief across it.
CHAPTER XIX
THOUGH the eye that will not see has often a vision of the truth too accurate for the owner’s comfort, this did not apply to the picture of his daughter’s life that Dr. Portnal conjured up, only to shudder at it. The home of the young couple, though it depended on a pittance and was straitened by poverty, was, as we know, neither squalid nor mean. It lacked the luxuries and even the comforts of the Rectory, and space was scanty and room precious. But the neatness that discipline had taught the soldier the limits of ship-life had imposed on the seaman; and to neatness, the woman, casting her part into the common stock, added the gift of refinement — a touch here and a change there. The floors might be bare and the walls whitened, but taste made of bareness a thing not unsightly. When the sun shone through the low casements, and the salt breeze, blowing fresh from the Channel, entered by the doorway and stirred the sea-tang hanging on the wall, or when, the red curtains drawn, the firelight fell on the Captain netting in his comer, while Peggy, with a sparing hand, measured the tea into the brown pot, many a finer room might have seemed less home-like.
True, there were tasks to be done that the girl-wife had never thought to do. But love and youth lightened these for her, and if the men had had their way her dainty hands had never been roughened, nor her feet found cause to flag. And Peggy was true woman, and to care for her men, to cosset them and to spoil them, was, in her day at any rate, the woman’s instinct, inbred in her through generations. So after a while, and merrily, she dethroned the men. She set aside their clumsy efforts, derided their methods and laughed them out of employment. Presently they revolved round her, willing to help but afraid to step in. She swept, she mended, she baked, she singed her thumb trying the heat of the oven — and licked it — and they bore it.
But it was a sad day for the Captain when, in default of the hired woman, she washed his first shirt. Though it might have been better washed, the frills more neatly ironed, there were tears in the old man’s eyes when he donned it. It was to him a sacred thing and an amulet. Harmless, amiable, God-fearing, the old soldier had but the one weakness, and against this he was now doubly armed, alike by remorse for the past and by reverence for the innocent life that had brought hope into his old heart.
Of course Peggy had her troubles, and buoyant as she was by nature, and brightened by youth and hope, there were stray hours when her spirits drooped. She was parted from those beside whom she had lived from infancy. The home that had been hers was forbidden to her. Her sister shunned her, her father froze her with cold courtesy. Nor was it pleasant to be sent to Coventry by her world; to be met with a distant bow where a laughing greeting had been hers, to be taught in the street where all knew her that in the opinion of her equals she had lost her caste. But though wilful, the girl was no fool. She had reckoned on these things and discounted them. She had set the loss against the gain and held herself well paid. Not in her worst moments did she — happy in this beyond her deserts — regret her bargain. She was often anxious and sometimes fearful, foreseeing a new expense that must presently fall on the little household. But for compensation she read in the men’s eyes a deeper tenderness, a more assiduous thought for her; a watchfulness to save her and spare her that provoked the young wife now to tears and now to laughter.
If only that trouble, fraught with delicious hopes as well as fears, had been all! But it was not. A woman’s love has keen eyes: it does not sleep. Already she knew her husband through and through, knew his weakness as well as his strength, and mothered the one as she worshipped the other. But even his affection could not blind her to the fact that he was not content. The home satisfied her, but it could not satisfy him. She saw this plainly and ever more plainly: saw him grow with every month more moody and less gay. He looked at her and she was happy, but he looked away from her and she knew that his thoughts strayed, and she guessed too clearly their direction. She knew his mind, and knew it set on things that meant little to her but almost everything to him. For — it was natural no doubt — Bligh could not accept his lot, he could not sit down with failure; he rebelled morning and evening, down-sitting and up-rising, against fate. Poverty, and especially her poverty, ate into his heart, and, alas! at times spoiled his temper. Now and again — not often and never unrepented — his humour showed in a hasty word, a sharp look, and she saw clear to the discontent that teased him. More often it betrayed itself in sudden changes of mood, in a restless activity, in the seaman’s habit of tramping up and down his narrow confines.
And she lived so close to him that she could not but see it all, nor did she lack confirmation of her fears, were it needed. The Captain, too, was watching, and was anxious; she discerned it, she read it in his eyes. And by and by there came a time when, with alarm, I she saw the restlessness of the one and the anxiety of the other redoubled. She scented a crisis, she feared everything, but she knew not what; and one morning when Charles, after eating his breakfast, had hastened down to the Cove — he seemed to be unusually busy — she could be silent no longer.
“What is it?” she asked the old man, attacking him with an abruptness that routed him before the battle was joined. “What is it? I’m not blind. He is unhappy and he is afraid. He is thinking of something. What is it? You can’t keep it from me.” He tried feebly to evade her. “What should there be, my dear?” he said. But he had not the wit to hide his dismay. “You — you frighten yourself — indeed, you frighten yourself for nothing! And — and at this time you should not!”
But she was not deceived. “No,” she replied, “that is no use. Tell me! I must know some time!”
He wavered, parleyed, and was lost. “It is just a thought,” he pleaded. “There is nothing in it.
Nothing settled, my dear! And in your state—”
“Never mind my state!” she cried, her eyes wide with alarm. “Don’t you see that you are keeping me in suspense? What is it, this nothing? You have said too much to hide it now.”
“But he will tell you himself,” he protested. “When anything is settled he will tell you! Of course he will, my dear.” But his fencing was useless; her eyes frightened him; he told her. “It is only something that has been suggested about the — the Peggy, my dear. Budgen has — has offered her to him.”
“The Peggy!” she exclaimed, holding her head with both hands and staring at him. “Offered it to him? What do you mean?”
“To take her out — on the next cruise, you know,” the poor man explained.
Her hands fell. “Ah!” she said.
“But nothing — nothing is settled. Nothing! It’s all in the air, my dear. He will tell you himself before anything is done!”
“And he w ould leave me!” she cried. She rose up, a flame of indignation in her eyes. “He would leave me! He wishes to go. Oh, I know he does. He wishes to go!”
The Captain was beside himself. “I don’t know! I don’t know!” he babbled. “I ought not to have told you!”
She made no outcry beyond that: she added nothing. Sh
e sat down again, sat motionless, still and tragic, staring at the bare walls, seeing nothing but her own loneliness, the man’s selfishness, his fickleness! It was for this, for this — to be abandoned on the first temptation, that she had given her all, given up all, deserted home, family, everything! For this! She stood for no more than this in his life!
The poor Captain was appalled at what he had done, and he tried to shield himself. “You will not tell him?” he begged. “He will tell you himself — to-day, my dear, I daresay.”
At that pride came to her aid, and “No,” she said, “I shall not tell him. He will tell me himself. Of course” — she added, but in spite of pride her lip trembled—” he will tell me.”
And he did tell her that night, noting, no doubt, some change in her manner, and guessing that she suspected. And it was very tenderly with his arm about her that he told her: remorsefully, rather letting her guess his wishes than disclosing them; owning freely that he had no right to go, that in even entertaining the plan he was to blame. And as with her face turned from him she listened, giving him no encouragement, and making no reply, “My own,” he pleaded, “I would not do it — indeed, I would not do it at this time if I could choose. I would not leave you alone with that before you! But it is now or never, to leave or to take. I may never have the chance again. They talk of peace in the summer, and with peace—” He broke off, but his gesture of despair betrayed more of his feelings, of his hopes, of his aspirations, than he knew. It declared as plainly as if he had spoken that with peace vanished his last forlorn hope of rehabilitation. Still she did not speak; and he had to go on, setting before her, baldly rather than with any colouring, the advantages he hoped to win, the increased pay, the chance of gain if a prize were taken, the employment higher, at least, than that he held. Finally — but by this time his voice dragged — he dwelt upon the shortness of the cruise. He would be at sea no more than six weeks; it would soon go. It would pass. He would be back before — before the event, he hoped.
“But you don’t go for these things,” she said, breaking her silence at last, though she kept her face turned from his, and her voice was cold. “You don’t deceive me. You don’t go for these things, I know.”
“If I go,” he said, trying to speak lightly.
“If you go!” she cried, speaking as she had never spoken to him before. “But you mean to go! But it is not for these things, I know. I know why you go, and why you wish to go.”
He temporised. “My dear, I hardly know that I wish to go.”
“Oh, yes, you wish to go!” she rejoined bitterly. “But not for any of the things you name. You think to regain what you have lost. You dream of — of righting yourself. That is all that matters to you. And for that — that dream, that chance in a million, you will fight — fight desperately! Oh! I know you. You will run all risks, take all chances for that. For that! While I wait here!” She strove to retain her self-control, but her voice rose to a tragic note. “While I wait here, and wait and wait! No, sir, it is impossible. It is wicked, wicked, and I will not have it! It was not in the bargain, sir.” She tried to wrest herself from him. “It was not for this, to be abandoned, and slighted, to be alone and wait, that I gave up all! I gave it up for you, and I will have you and keep you. I will not lose you! You shall not go! You have not the right to go!”
“Then I will not go,” he said.
“You shall not!” she declared, anger still uppermost in her. “I will not bear it.”
He swallowed something, he strove to play the man. “Very well,” he said, with as much cheerfulness as he could command. “Then I will not go. Be it so, dear. Be it so, Peggy. And who knows but some day some other chance may come. We will settle it so, and — and no more about it, my dear.” He forced a laugh. “You know me too well, Peggy,” he said. And he tried to rally her. “I have no chance with you. You read me like a book.”
“I should know you,” she said sombrely. “You are my husband.”
“Then look up, dear,” he said. “It is over and done with. Smile at me now.”
She clung to him. “Then you will not go?” she cried, melting. “You promise me? You do promise me? And you forgive me? Whom have I but you?” He swore that he had nothing to forgive; he swore that she was right, and gradually and slowly he caressed her into something like tranquillity — hiding his own pangs, swallowing his disappointment manfully. And presently she slept, her bosom still heaving, the tears still on her cheek. Her arm was about him as if she would assure herself, even in her sleep, of his presence. And now and again in her dreams she breathed stormily, the tempest but half spent.
But the man lay long awake, fighting his battle, subduing his will, and striving to set love above self. For it was no easy victory that he had to make good. For him Budgen’s offer had raised a very castle in Spain. It had laid a foundation for impossible things, and he had built on that foundation, built high and I splendidly, ignoring the probable, losing himself in I airy visions, confident of the unlikely and the romantic.
Weak men might fail, might come home empty-handed; but he would not fail. They counted odds, had petty gain for motive, but he who had everything to win would not count heads. There was nothing that he would not dare, nothing of which, once more at sea, with the sweet brig and the swaying deck under his feet, he would not be capable. He had built high and swiftly, he had seen his name flame on an astonished world. A privateer — no more, and little enough he knew that the Service recked of such! Ay, but his should be such a privateer as men had never dreamed of, never visioned since the days of the fabled and the glorious Fortunatus Wright who, when the navy had failed and sailed away, held the Mediterranean and the Sicilies in fee!
And all this and his high hopes he must resign — for her sake and the sake of the babe that was coming! He must put away his dream, decline ambition, trample on his last chance. The splendid edifice that fancy had reared, that had charmed his longing eyes for days, wavered, shook, nay, melted into grey mist, leaving all empty, cold and comfortless. Or no, God forgive him for the thought, not comfortless! He had her, and he loved her and she was precious to him, endeared by gratitude as well as by love. But the man in him prized honour also, and the good word of his fellows, never so highly valued as when lost; and the struggle was hard and bitter. To win through to the resignation that he had promised her, to accept his lot with cheerfulness, and a mien that should never reproach her — this was a hard task for one of his nature; and again and again he rebelled against his fate, though he strove to stifle the discontent that would rise in him. No wonder that sleep was long in coming, that he moved restlessly, staring with wakeful eyes into the darkness. But at last he slept.
When he awoke, roused by some movement near him, he missed Peggy from his side. It was early, the room was still shadowy, and he sat up, sleepy, and wondering. Then he saw her. She was standing, a thin wrapper about her, gazing through the window, her figure outlined against the grey light that fell on a patch of bare floor, and on the wall beyond it. He called her by name. “What is it, dear?” he asked. “Is anything the matter?”
“Nothing,” she said. She turned from the window, and came to his side of the bed and leant over him, putting her arms about him. “Nothing, nothing,” she repeated, but there was a tone and a solemnity in her voice that drove from him the last remains of sleep. “Nothing is the matter, dear. All is well. Very well.”
“But,” he asked, startled and perplexed, “why are you up?”
“Because I awoke and I could not sleep until I had spoken to you. I have been looking at the mist on the water, Charles. You can see nothing. The sea and the point, all are blotted out. You can see nothing. But they are there, we know that; we know that they are there, and as surely as I hold you now the sun will rise and we shall see them again — with the light upon them!”
“Of course we shall, dear,” he said, bewildered. “Why not? And you are cold, you are shivering! Get into bed!”
“When I have told you
,” she answered. But she was slow to go on. She drew his head to her heart and held him closely. Then, “Charles,” she said, “I was wrong last night, and I see it now — selfish and wicked, thinking only of myself, thinking, oh, so meanly! But to-day I am brave. I am myself, I have looked into the mist, and I know that the light is behind it, I know that the light will shine through presently. I have learned my lesson and I thank God for it. You shall go, you must go. Your wife shall be no coward, no drawback to you. Nor your child. You must go.”
He was awake with a vengeance now. “Peggy! Peggy!” he cried. “You do not mean it! You are not yourself, dear!”
“But I do mean it, and I am myself. I mean it with all my heart. Do you feel my heart, dear, beating against you? Is it not beating strongly, calmly? No, you must go, Charles, for my sake as well as your own. For I see clearly now. I see that it is only so that I can keep you and be sure of you, sure of your love and worthy of it.”
“But — but have you thought?” he protested. For, oh, he could not accept this! He was shaken, shaken by a very rapture of love and remorse. How could he, how dare he take advantage of her and of this? Of the love and self-sacrifice before which he felt himself so mean, so small, and his ambitions and his hopes a nothing?— “Have you thought? For there is a risk. You know, dear, there is. I may not, you know I may not — —”
“Come back? No, I know,” she said. Her voice trembled, but it grew full and strong again. “I know, Charles. And have I thought? Oh! have I not? You may not come back. But do you not see, dear, dear love, that I lose you either way, and better, oh, better,” she cried, tears in her voice, “far better this way! I give you that I may keep you — keep your love, living or dead, keep you whole, entire, all my own! No, Charles, you must go, you must go!” She repeated it, swaying herself a little, holding him closer and closer to her in a passion of abnegation. “And God give you back to me, as I believe He will! The mist may lie long, but it will rise some day, and you will be mine, my very own!”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 760
