He nodded. She signed to him to step softly and she went up the narrow stairs before him. She opened a door. The lintel was so low that he had to bend his head to enter the room. He raised his eyes and the first thing that met his gaze was one that he had not taken into his calculations. On a low box, in a corner where the sloping roof was lowest, cowered the old Captain. The unhappy man was rocking himself to and fro, his face in his hands, and at the sight of his dumb agony, and still more at the thought of what the wretched father’s feelings must be, Wyke’s heart that had been hard against him, melted in pity. But then, and before indeed the change had well made itself felt, Wyke forgot the old man and all things save the still white face that lay upon the pillow, already, as it seemed to him, lifeless — so solemn and yet so wondrously fair and young it looked. Peggy’s hair had been gathered into two thick coils that strayed one on each side of her head, and one hand, as white as her face, lay nerveless on the coverlet. Her eyes were closed. Wyke could not see that she breathed.
At that sight, so far exceeding that for which he had prepared himself, the courage that had been strong below, failed him. He stood, not venturing to approach. To break in upon that white tranquillity, that silent presence, that even now seemed not to be of this world, that had nothing any longer to hope or fear, and upon which death had already set its stamp — it seemed a sacrilege, an act beyond his power, profane, unfitting. To lie to her! To deceive her, who had already passed into the palace of truth! To play in this still chamber the gross drama that he had conceived! He felt too late that he could not, that he had not the heart to do it, nor the strength. The man stood shaken, dismayed, dumb.
It was the woman who at the critical moment was firm. She passed by him to the bedside. “Peggy,” she said, her voice low but clear, “there is good news, dear. Do you hear, dear? Sir Albery is here, and he brings news, good news.”
He still hesitated, owning the ordeal to be too great for him. But Charlotte looked at him reproachfully and he went forward. He knelt beside the bed to bring his mouth nearer to Peggy’s ear — but was it not also the fitting posture?— “Mrs. Bligh,” he said huskily, “there is news,” then drawing courage from desperation he raised his voice, and in a fuller tone, “Do you hear, Mrs. Bligh?” he continued. “Do you hear me? There is news, and it is good, good news. The best of news! Your husband is wounded, and a prisoner, but he is alive — alive and safe! I bring the news. Do you hear me! He is alive!”
Peggy’s eyelids quivered, as a butterfly’s wings quiver invisibly in the sunshine. Her eyes opened, and met his eyes. The coverlet moved above her breast.
“Again! Again!” Charlotte muttered, and in the agony of excitement mingled with hope she clutched Wyke’s shoulder and he felt her fingers digging into his flesh. The nurse on the farther side of the bed had risen to her feet, and was looking on with startled eyes.
The perspiration stood on Wyke’s brow, but he had gone too far to retreat. It seemed to him that he was wrestling for this life. “Do you understand?” he cried. “Good news has come! Your husband is alive, Mrs. Bligh! Your husband is alive, alive! The news is here — here in the newspaper! It is in the newspaper!” he repeated, striving desperately to reach the consciousness that seemed to be so distant, so ready to take its leave. He doubted if she heard or, hearing, understood, but “He is safe! He is alive!” he repeated insistently. “He will be here! You must live! You must live for him! He is coming home and he will be here!” The cry came from him again and again, “He is alive!” For presently, he fancied that he saw in her tired eyes a spark of returning life, an awakening.
“He is alive! He will be here!” He repeated it in a very agony of earnestness. If he could only reach her! If he could only reach her, reach through to her on that strange borderland where she lay between life and death. “You must live!”
She was breathing more quickly; yes, for certain she was breathing more quickly. He saw the nurse on the other side of the bed stoop and look closely at her. He saw the coverlet move and stir above her breast — or was he dizzy with excitement, and let his fancy deceive him! Yes, her hand moved, weakly, but as if she had the will to raise it. Her eyes dwelt solemnly on him, and suddenly there flashed into them a gleam of consciousness, of joy. Her lips parted, and though no one caught the word that they failed to frame, they knew that it was “Alive?”
“Yes, alive, alive, indeed!” he swore. “And coming home! It is here, here, in the paper! It is in the paper here!” He held it up for her to see. He tapped it again and again, the sheet rustling in his unsteady hand.
Her eyes moved slowly from him. They dwelt on Charlotte; and now the question in them was clear. “Yes,” Charlotte said, her voice trembling with emotion. “Yes, dear, yes! Sir Albery has brought the news. It is in the paper. Peggy, dear, dear Peggy, you must live — you must live for his sake! For his sake, for your husband! He lives!”
She had got it now. They all saw it and were convinced of it. She understood. She closed her eyes and slowly two tears welled from them. “Thank God!” she breathed, and this time they caught the words, faint as they were. Presently she opened her eyes again. They met Charlotte’s. “He is alive?” she whispered.
“Yes, dear, alive,” Charlotte said, lying firmly. “In a few days he will be here. He will be by your bed, Peggy.”
It was Charlotte, too, who with a woman’s wit interpreted the weak movement of the hand, the slow change in the direction of the eyes; who took the paper from Wyke’s shaking hand and laid it on Peggy’s breast, and placed her nerveless hand upon it. The man doubted if he could have done it.
A dawning smile brightened for a moment the white face. Peggy heaved a faint sigh as of infinite satisfaction. She closed her eyes.
Wyke’s heart sank, for he thought that they had failed. He thought that they had ventured all for nothing. But Charlotte’s hand found his hand, and “Come!” she whispered. “Come!” He rose to his feet, and obeying her gesture, he crept after her out of the room and down the stairs. The women below, huddled about the hearth, gazed at them, marvelling — probably they had heard through the raftered floor what had passed. But neither Wyke nor Charlotte heeded them. He was as one who had run a race, or come through some tremendous struggle. He wiped the moisture from his forehead, and turned to the girl. “Have we failed?” he muttered — and how naturally he turned to her! She had been the stronger, it was she who had done it all. But for her he would not at the last moment have dared to utter the lie. “Have we failed?” he repeated huskily.
“I don’t know! I don’t know!” she said. “I think not! I think there’s a chance. It’s — it’s in God’s hands now!” And with a suddenness that shocked him she sat down at the table and, dropping her face on her arms, burst into a passion of weeping. She who had been so strong above!
“Oh, my dear! My dear!” he cried, and careless of the eyes that watched him he put his arm about her shoulder. “Don’t! Don’t!” he prayed.
She shook her shoulders, as much as to say, “Let me be!”
He was waiting for her to recover, all the man in him longing to comfort her, and to tell her what he thought of her, when a hand clutched his arm, and he turned, impatient of interruption. In a second he fell from the clouds. With horror he saw that a fresh trouble awaited them, and that he had not foreseen all the consequences of his act.
For the Captain had crept down after them, and as Wyke turned the old man’s grasp shifted from his arm to his breast. He clutched Wyke’s coat, and with all his feeble strength he tried to shake him. “Is it true?” he gasped, his voice whistling in the ecstasy of his hope, his face haggard and distorted. A lock of grey hair had fallen across his forehead and added to the wildness of his look. “Is it true? Is it true?” he panted.
Wyke collected himself as well as he could. He must not shock the old man if it could be helped. “Silence, sir, silence!” he said. “For heaven’s sake compose yourself. We must make no noise. True? I don’t know! I don’t know! It
may be true! But I don’t know.”
“Then you — you’ve heard — you’ve heard nothing?” the Captain stammered. But there was still hope, a desperate hope in his eyes. He clung to it, it was all that he had to save him from the horror of self-reproach that made his thoughts a hell.
“No,” Wyke said reluctantly. “No. I’ve heard nothing. But it may be true. We don’t know.”
The Captain’s hands fell. The light died out of his eyes. “Then why — why,” he whispered, “why did you—”
“To save her. To save her, man, if it be possible.”
A bitter cry burst from the wretched father, and “Water, water!” Wyke exclaimed. For the shock had been too much for the Captain. He collapsed, and but for the arm the other passed hastily round him he would have fallen to the floor.
“Lay him down!” Charlotte said, wiping away her tears. “Flat! Flat!”
CHAPTER XXXIII
AUGUSTA took a strong view of the matter. “I cannot think it was right,” she said. “After all, the truth is the truth, my dear.”
“And I wouldn’t give a fig for it — out of place!” Charlotte replied. “For all we know it may be the truth. And if it were the biggest lie I ever told in my life, and that would not be a little one, I’d tell it again and thank you!”
“But I thought,” Augusta objected, “that it was Sir Albery who told it, Charlotte. I can understand him.”
“Oh, my dear, you flatter me! Gracious goodness, why should Sir Albery be less truthful than I am, I’d like to know!”
Augusta bent over her work. The two girls were in the drawing-room at the Rectory and through the three tall windows the sunshine of a late spring day was pouring, discovering here and there the faded patch on chair or carpet that wear and a respectable antiquity had wrought. Lady Bicester would not have put up with them, but Augusta knew better, and the room justified her. “Because I can see Sir Albery’s interest in it,” she rejoined. “While I can not see yours, Charlotte.”
“I don’t see that he had more interest in Peggy’s life than I have!”
Augusta smiled. “Don’t you, my dear? Really?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then you are very simple, Charlotte. You know, or you don’t seem to know” — Augusta viewed her work at leisure, her head a little on one side—” that young widows may marry again? He’s been to the Cottage at least once a day since — since it happened, hasn’t he?”
“And if he has?” Charlotte retorted, her colour rising. “What then?”
“He has been there this morning?”
“No, he has not!”
“Then I am sure that there must be a good reason for it.”
“There is.” Charlotte’s tone was dry, and a spark of malice, for really Augusta was too provoking, showed in her eyes. “You see, my dear, he left for London last evening, so he could not call at the Cottage this morning.”
“Left for London?” Augusta looked up. She did not make any attempt to conceal her surprise. “What has he gone there for? And with Peggy picking up so slowly? Well, you have surprised me, Charlotte. It is the last thing I should have expected him to do — at this time.”
“But he has gone all the same. It is on Peggy’s account that he has gone.”
“Ah! Then I understand. But not what he has gone for.”
“He has gone to the Admiralty to see if he can learn anything. To learn for certain what has happened. If he cannot learn there, he talks of getting a safe-conduct for France if it be possible and if he can get one. To make sure there whether — whether poor Peggy’s man is alive.”
“Gracious!” Augusta exclaimed, laying down her work. “Well, he has taken it badly! Nothing stops him, it seems. London, the Admiralty, France! You don’t mean after that to say that he’s off with the old love? Or that he has much doubt what he will learn when he gets there! I declare he is cleverer than I thought him, much cleverer.”
Charlotte looked disturbed. “I don’t believe that he is thinking of that at all!” she said. “He has gone because — well, because we can’t keep Peggy in the dark any longer, and we must gain time. We have had pretty work to keep the paper from her and lie about it till now. We have told her that he has taken it with him, and, while he is away, she will continue to believe, or at any rate to hope — for I don’t know whether she does believe. And by the time we hear from him she will be stronger and better able to bear it.”
“A tissue of lies!” Augusta said dryly. She shook her head. “And presently you will be found out. And all the time you know very well, my dear, that there is hardly a chance that the man is alive.”
“I don’t know,” Charlotte said. But she had lost her cheerful air. She looked gloomily at the carpet. “I really don’t know. I do think there is a chance. And after all,” she continued recklessly, “Peggy is alive and is recovering, and I’d do it again to-morrow. What does it matter? She will be able to bear the news now, whatever it be.”
“And able to reward her knight,” Augusta said lightly. “Of course, my dear, after a decent interval, for I am quite sure that he is not one to override the conventions.”
“I think you are horrid, Augusta.”
“Because I see things as they are? And don’t deceive myself as you do? To be sure, you have seen so much of Sir Albery lately that you ought to be able to judge. But lookers-on see more of the game, and I think you will find that I am right.”
Charlotte rose, her face a little flushed. “Well, at any rate he deserves her,” she said.
“And that is a comfort,” Augusta replied pleasantly, as she also rose. “It is all as it should be, isn’t it? Must you go, dear? Well, I dare say you will meet my father; he is somewhere in the town. Indeed, I don’t know what has taken him lately. He seems to be doing the curate’s work.”
Charlotte, much tried, gave way to temptation. “Well, it was about time he did,” she said. And she escaped before Augusta could scold her.
But Augusta had known — Augustas always do know — how to touch the tender spot, and for Charlotte, as she walked along the Rectory Lane, the day had lost its spring freshness. The sunshine seemed to be less bright, and when presently a bend in the road below her disclosed the sea, its rippling surface caressed by a west wind, it no longer wore the cheerful glitter that had charmed her as she came. She would have been glad to lay the blame on her friend, and more than once she told herself that Augusta was too provoking. But the change was in herself, and she knew it. She knew that it was with herself that she was annoyed. Silly dreams! Visions of which a peep in the mirror, or a glance at Peggy, would have proved the folly. A grateful look earned by her devotion to another, a kind word flung to her when his heart was wrung for his old love’s sake! Nothing more than that! And never, surely, had a girl bemused herself on flimsier grounds, lost herself in a glamour more unreal, taken for warm sunshine gleams more cold and wintry!— “Well, I must look in the glass!” Charlotte thought, staring ahead. “I must look in the glass! No cure like that, my dear!”
But she thought before she had gone much farther of a better cure, and she halted at a door and knocked. It was a humble door a little beyond the barber’s shop, and the woman who came out was the Jael Cruddas who had stopped Wyke in the street ten days before. He had mentioned the case to Charlotte, and so feeble are good resolutions that it must be confessed that it was the feeling that she was sharing something with him that led her to choose that house out of a dozen.
“Well, Jael,” she said cheerfully — and how was the woman to know that her heart also was sore?—” and how are you this morning? I’ve just looked in as I passed. You must keep up your spirits for the little one’s sake.”
“Well, miss, I’m faring middling,” the woman replied as she wiped her eyes with her apron — that was the proper etiquette in the circumstances. “And to be sure, if anything would do me good it’s the sight of your face, though indeed you’re not looking as pert as common. The Rector he’s not gone five mi
nutes, as I never thought to see wearing out a chair on my hearth! And that forthcoming as shows how one can wrong a body. Twice he’s been in and the same to others, I b’lieve.”
“I am glad to hear it,” Charlotte said, not a little surprised herself, though she had heard elsewhere of the Rector’s activities.
“Ay, and nothing as he could do too much, miss. Right vexed he seemed as the Squire had been before him. But ‘Course we looks to him first, sir,’ I says, ‘as we always have looked, and them as was before us to his. And never found ‘em wanting, I will say!’”
“And I’m sure he will not fail you now,” Charlotte said.
“No, miss, he’s not one to change. But, oh, how I do sicken for news of George. I can’t sleep of nights, and when I get a wink and wake and put out my hand, and he’s not there — I’m that wild I can’t say! I dunno as not knowing isn’t worse than knowing!”
The woman’s words came home to Charlotte. There was the same aching in her breast. “Still there’s a chance, Jael,” she said. “There is hope, you know. And Sir Albery has gone to London to do what he can!”
“God bless him for it! And they’ll ‘tend to him, miss, that’s certain, whoever goes short.”
Charlotte was not so certain of that, but she assented, said another word or two, and passed on. “That’s real sorrow!” she thought, taking herself to task, and recognizing her own weakness. She had gone to hear him talked of and praised, and she had heard it, and what good had it done her? —
“The glass! There is nothing but a good look in the glass!” she thought. “It has come to that, my dear!”
Walking fast to relieve her feelings, she returned to the Cottage by the long road that wound round the landward side of the point, and sought a dubious and ignoble end among the pebbles and flotsam of the beach. Her upward path left the road abreast of Budgen’s house and not thirty paces from the fence that bounded his garden. Charlotte paused at the parting, impressed by the silence and loneliness of the Cove. She had known it alive with the cheerful hum of men’s voices and the clatter of tools, she had been present at more than one noisy launch from it, she had stood on the beach amid cheering crowds to see the Pride or the Peggy start on her venturesome cruise; but save on a Sunday, when Devon men would rather drown than work, she had rarely if ever found the place as silent and deserted as it lay to-day. A moment’s thought reminded her that it was the dinner hour, and accepting the explanation she was on the point of moving on, when her eyes were caught by a figure standing alone on the shore in the angle between the bluff and the water. The cliff above and the level sea beyond dwarfed the form, and as the silence had impressed Charlotte a moment before, the loneliness of this solitary watcher, the only human being within sight, impressed her now. Yet the man was not looking seawards. His face was turned towards her, and wondering what he did there, she shaded her eyes with her hand — there was a shimmer on the water — and she recognized him. Some impulse led her to cross the strand towards him.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 772
