Kitabı oku: «Fortune's My Foe», sayfa 12

CHAPTER XXI
A DIVINE DESPAIR

At first he did not dare to raise his eyes to the slim girlish figure standing there, his emotion being too great. Nor, if he saw it, had he dared to take the hand held out to him, but dropped a moment later at its owner's side.

But then, at last, he lifted his bowed head and gazed at her, seeing at one glance that she also was looking full at him. Seeing, too, that the sweet, delicate mouth was trembling, and that the pure, clear eyes were welling over with tears. And he observed also that, as he became witness of her emotion and deep sympathy for him and his despair, she turned her face away, while, moving towards a chair, she made a sign for him to also be seated.

"God bless you," she heard him mutter in a low, deep voice. "God bless you for your womanly compassion."

"Mr. Granger," she said a moment later, and still the sweet mouth trembled and her eyes were full of tears, "I have sent for-asked you to come to me-because I know so much of your past-your hopes. So much, too, of your unhappiness. Oh! Mr. Granger, I was Sophy Jervis's greatest friend."

"I know it," he murmured. "I know it. She told you all: Of my love-nay-it was not love, but idolatry! – of its too bitter ending. Though it is not, never can be ended."

"Ah! Mr. Granger, now you must live for other things. Live to see your wrongs redressed, your honour restored, your name cleared. You have heard from my husband that there is proof of your innocence."

"Yes," he said. "Yes, I have heard." But, still with his head bent, he whispered the same words he had said to Sir Geoffrey outside on the quarter-deck, "It is too late."

"No. No. It is not too late. Geoffrey and I have talked together, and to-morrow he will go to see their Lordships. Oh! Mr. Granger, if you could return to your old calling, if you could once more serve the King in these troublous times, even in a subordinate position, yet with hope before you, would you not do so? Would you not lead a different life?"

"God knows I would, bankrupt as are all my hopes, all my future. Yet-you are aware of what I have been? Of what I am?"

"Yes, I know," and, although he could not see it, there was in her face a look of sublime pity for him. Pity that this man, still young and handsome-how handsome he must have been when first he won Sophy's love she could well understand, even though judging only of him now as he sat before her in his desolation and abasement! – should have fallen to what he had.

"There is," he went on, "no baser thing in all this world than he who traffics in his fellow-men. Yet I elected to do it in my despair and bitterness. I might have earned a living otherwise, but this consorted with what I was, with what I had become."

"It is not too late. Will you not leave this life for-for-in memory of Sophy?"

"Yes," he whispered, "if you bid me do so for her sake-her memory. Yes. If my honour is cleared, but not otherwise, for otherwise it would be useless. If Sir Geoffrey, or any other captain, will take me, I will go back, even though as a seaman before the mast. I will do it for her sake, in return for your gracious pity of me."

"Thank God!" she cried. "Oh, thank God!" Then she rose and went to the 'scrutoire and, opening it, took out the packet of letters that she had shown her husband. "Read them; do with them what you will. Read them now, if you desire." Whereon she put the little parcel in his hand, and, leaving him alone, went into the next cabin.

"My love, my lost love," he murmured, as he glanced at them hurriedly, not knowing that she had gone away to give him ample time for their perusal. "My sweet. And we are parted for ever. For ever! To all eternity. Nothing can bring you back to me."

That he had wept she knew when she returned, yet a man's tears for her whom he has loved and lost need no pardon from another woman's heart; and so she gently bade him take the letters and keep them, extorting only from him a promise that he would in no way endeavour to communicate with Lady Glastonbury.

"For that," she said, "must never be. Neither sorrow nor trouble must ever come to her again. Have I your promise?"

"On my word of honour. As a man-who was once a gentleman-I swear it, yet, oh God! it is hard. Hard to think that I can look upon her handwriting again and the words that are not addressed to me, although concerning me. It is so long," he added, his voice deep and broken, "since a line has come from her. Yet I have promised, and I will keep my word."

"I know it. I take and believe your word."

"But," Granger continued, "if-when you write to her, you could tell her that-that-born of these letters," and he touched his breast as he spoke, he having placed them there, "has come the promise of a better life for me-a life loveless, but no longer smirched and blemished-then I know she would be happier. If you could promise that!"

"I will do it," Ariadne answered, the tears again rushing to her eyes, and all her emotions thrilling at the sorrow and despair of the man before her. "I will do it."

And, now, Granger turned away, knowing there was no more to be said, yet inwardly blessing her who had that day been as a ministering angel to him.

"Farewell, madam," he said; "I cannot thank you-but-but-" Then, seeing that now she held out her hand again to him, and in such a manner that this time he could not fail to perceive her action, he took it in his own. And, o'er-mastered by her womanliness and supreme sympathy, he raised it to his lips.

"God bless and keep you and yours," he whispered again as he had whispered before; "God bless you for your sweet compassion."

* * * * * * *

Outside, Sir Geoffrey Barry was still engaged with the manifold duties pertaining to a ship which was soon to take part in a war that would doubtless be long, and must be deadly-as was and is ever the case when England and France contend for mastery. Already many things on deck were being stowed away which, when the time came, would be encumbrances. The cutter, too, had just come off from shore, bringing with it, this time, some willing sailors. Sailors who, having been paid off from a disabled privateer, and having spent all their money on sickening debauches on shore, were only too ready to again go to sea and earn some more. A fine band of brawny, dissolute men were these whom George Redway-now installed as captain of the cutter-brought on board with him; men who on shore were nothing but maddened and intoxicated devils, but who, when the enemy hove in sight and when they were at close quarters, would become heroes, nay, almost demigods. For then the old English blood became roused to its fullest and best; then woe betide those who encountered these men.

"A brisk crew of sea-dogs," said Sir Geoffrey, observing the traces of recent emotion on Granger's face but making no remark for the moment. "If I had not my full complement, these are the fellows I should wish to keep."

"There is one at least whom you can keep if you so please," Granger said; "one who will work like, live with, those men there," and he pointed to where half a dozen sailors were swabbing the deck.

"Yourself!" exclaimed Geoffrey, his face lighting. "Yourself! She has spoken to you of a different life?"

"She has spoken to me. In her mercy and goodness! And I have promised."

"Thank God! The trade I found you at a few days ago might well become the man you were supposed to be, not the man you are."

"That trade ends to-day. To-night, I tell the man who employs me that he must seek another tool. Almost directly, if you will have me; I can join your ship."

"We can perhaps do better than you say. Yet, to-morrow, I must speak to their Lordships. As an officer you cannot of course go-"

"I-an officer! I do not dream of that."

"But," Geoffrey continued, "the Resolution wants a gunner's mate. If I can transfer mine to her, you could come in this ship. If I cannot, then the Resolution must have you."

"What can I say? How utter-"

"Say nothing. Granger," he continued, "you have suffered deeply, and-and-we have been brother sailors. If I who sat in judgment on you once and wronged you unwittingly can now help to right you, I will do it." And he laid his hand upon the other's arm as a firm friend might do. "I want to see you once more the Lewis Granger who was known and spoken enviously of when he was in the Revenge," he continued. "I want to see my gunner's mate-if I can have him-back again in his old place amongst us when this coming war is over."

For a moment Lewis Granger stood there looking at the man before him-the man whose life was so bright and prosperous, yet, who, nevertheless, could feel such pity for one whose existence had been so broken.

"You forget," he whispered; "you forget. My disgrace, my ruin was not all. That, it seems, may be wiped out for ever. But what of the rest of my life? What have I been? Even during the past months. And-and-I have sent that man to death, a death in life, if nothing else."

"That counts not. What would he have done? To you-to Anne-to Ariadne! My God! Granger, you have instead saved him-from me. Had he been here now, were he within my reach, I would slay him myself as I would slay a snake."

"Yet I suggested the scheme to him, meaning thereby that he should fall into the trap."

"But not meaning that it should be carried out. He was the villain, and his villainy has recoiled on his own head. Dismiss all recollection of that. Live now to be prosperous and happy."

"Happy-never! Happiness and I are parted; henceforth our ways are far asunder. Let me go," he said, turning towards the side where the boat he had come in was waiting for him, "and if you can do what you say, if you can take me with you, let me know to-morrow after you have seen their Lordships. I shall be ready ere long."

"Farewell," said Geoffrey, with one hand grasping that of Granger, the other on his arm-and on his face the look of noble compassion that not often, but sometimes, passes between man and man-"farewell! To-morrow you shall hear from me-and-fear not. We sail together as comrades yet. I know it. Feel it."

Whatever Lewis Granger had to do to free himself from the hateful life which he had lived for the last few months was quickly done; and, ere another day had passed, he-in spite of protestations and remonstrances from the man whom he served-had cast that life behind him for ever. But still there remained one other thing to do, a journey to make.

He took the coach as the afternoon drew on, and so proceeded some dozen miles into the heart of the country, when, quitting it, he made his way on foot towards a village lying a mile or two from a great town. A little village that, here, rose upon a slight hill and was surmounted by an old church built of flint stones which, in the late March gloom of evening, stood up hoar and grim. And, striding through the village in which now lights were beginning to twinkle through the diamond-paned windows of thatched cottages, Lewis Granger made his way to the wicket-gate that opened into the churchyard, and so round to the farther side, and to a grave-a grave over which was a stone, having inscribed on it the words that told how, very suddenly, the Lady Hortensia Granger had died two years before.

"Ay," her son murmured to himself, as he stood there in the desolate place and felt the night wind rising over the flat country around. "Ay. Suddenly! The blow killed her as it fell-perhaps in God's mercy. Yet, if I could have seen her ere she went-surely, surely, she must have believed my vows that I was innocent. And now, she can never know."

That is the bitterness of it! The bitterness that those who have gone can never know what we would have told them had we not been too late. That that which has happened after they have gone can never be told now. And such bitterness had come to the racked heart of Lewis Granger: the grief and misery of knowing that, of the only two creatures in the world whom he could love, the one had died of horror engendered by belief in his shame; the other had not died, but she, too, had believed.

"Oh, God!" he muttered, standing there in the swift-coming darkness, "if they could only have trusted me; if they could have waited patiently in that trust."

A bitter cry this from an overcharged heart, yet one that has found an echo in thousands of others, and in other circumstances. "If they would only have had faith in us: would only have waited patiently in that faith!" Or, better still, if we who erred and felt and suffered had not scorned to justify ourselves in their eyes; had not defied the present and trusted to the future to right us, and had not taught ourselves to laugh at doubts and be willing to love and lose and leave it to the morrow to make amends. The morrow that is never to be; the future that is never to come! For there is neither future nor morrow on this earth for the loved ones whose ears are dead and cold, and cannot hear our bitter plaint-nor ever any future for us either. The word has not been said-and it is too late! Too late! and only because that word, which would have righted all, has not been uttered. We were innocent, and scorned to proclaim our innocence; we loved and cloaked our love with assumed indifference, with pretended infidelity; we worshipped, and were ashamed to acknowledge our worship. And, now, those are gone who hungered for the avowal, and to whom it would have sounded as the sweetest music ever heard, and we are left, and-again! – it is too late.

CHAPTER XXII
"AS YE SOW."

To roam the seas for months, storm-beaten and tempest-tossed, chilled to the bone with cold at one moment, burnt black by the sun at others; without food sometimes, and sometimes without drink-such has often been the lot of the English seamen in voyages and war-time, and so it was now in "The Wonderful Year," the year 1759.

Only with, perhaps, more added miseries and discomforts during the present hostilities than had been present in earlier times, since, in those days of the past, our enemy-our one great and implacable enemy, with whom it seemed almost that God created us to strive-had ever sought us as eagerly as we sought him. Yet, now, all appeared changed. The more we sought him the more he evaded us; upon the open sea we could never bring him-or very rarely bring him-to battle with us; and, vaunt as he might his determination to crush us, to invade our land, to sink us into a third-rate Power, yet, when we put forth to seek him, he was never to be found. Instead his fleets were in harbour and his ships far up inland rivers; the sight of our topsails was sufficient to cause his own to instantly disappear beneath the horizon. Yet that, at this period, there had been innumerable encounters was still true. Had not Boscawen shattered De la Clue off Cape Lagos, Pocock defeated the French in the East Indies, and countless ships of war and frigates been captured by us? But still the great action-the one that was to be decisive-seemed as far off as ever when "The Wonderful Year" was drawing to its close, and when, after many returns to English ports, Sir Edward Hawke once more put to sea from Torbay, on November 14th, to find, if possible, the great fleet of Conflans, which was known to be lurking somewhere in the neighbourhood of Belleisle.

November, 1759! a month of terrible storm and stress-yet, what is storm or stress to the seaman bent on finding his foe and vanquishing him? – a month when tempest after tempest howled across the seas, when days broke late and nights came early, when land-fogs and sea-fogs enveloped all for hours, so that inaction was forced to prevail. Yet, through all those furies of the elements the gallant fleet went forth, the Royal George (she flying proudly the Admiral's flag) leading twenty-three ships of the line and many frigates and bomb-ketches. It went forth, to be joined later by numerous other vessels, including amongst them the Mignonne, under the command of Captain Sir Geoffrey Barry.

On board the old French capture was Lewis Granger, too, again a sailor, though not yet again an officer; that, Geoffrey said, would come-after the war was over.

"After the war is over," Granger would repeat to himself; while sometimes he would repeat the words aloud as the captain uttered them, "After the war is over."

Then he would turn away, saluting his superior if with him, or uttering some muttered ejaculation if alone.

He was not all unhappy now; the work which he had been allowed to resume occupied him sufficiently to distract his memories, and, for the rest, he had fallen easily into his duties. Moreover, he was better situated than he might have hoped to be. Their Lordships had made no objection to his being borne on the books of the Mignonne after hearing her captain's story of the man's innocence, more especially as that captain was one whose destiny seemed of great promise; and so Granger had gone on board the frigate ere she sailed from the Thames. Though that was months ago now-months spent, as told above, in scouring the seas, in hardships, and sometimes disaster. But, during those months, an accident had placed Lewis Granger in an even better position than that which he had at first assumed.

The master-gunner had been killed in a conflict between the Mignonne and a French corvette, which the former was chasing, and Granger had stepped into his shoes. And, though such promotion was not much to one who had once worn the uniform of a commissioned officer, yet it was something. It gave him a cabin to himself where he could brood and meditate-as he did too often! – it enabled him to take his meals alone and be alone. And so, with his various duties, his charge of the ordnance and ordnance stores, his long hours devoted to the instruction of the raw hands who as yet scarcely understood the gunnery exercises, and a thousand other matters, he passed those months away. Passed them thus-and in forgetting, or, rather, in striving to forget.

For he could not forget. That was the curse laid on him and beneath which he had to bow.

"If I could do that," he would say to himself, again and again; and most often when he lay awake for hours in his berth-"if I could do that. If, at last, her sweet, innocent face, her braided chestnut hair, the look of love that never failed to greet me as I drew near, might vanish for ever from my memory! If, too, I could think that she also forgets-then-some day, I might obtain peace. But-I know it! – she no more forgets than I."

Stubbornly, doggedly, as it ever is when a man wrestles with himself, so he wrestled now. And it was all of no avail. It was useless! But one woman had ever dawned a star above his existence; the woman who-star-like! – had fallen away from him for ever.

"Such love should never have been," he would continue musing, "never have been, or, coming into my life, should have stayed always with me. Other men knew better what to do than I-could fool women, for a pastime, into loving them, could lead them on to madness and then grow weary and fling them contemptuously aside. And I despised such men. Do I despise them now?"

But only a moment later he would find his own answer to his own question, and would whisper to himself, "Yes. Even as it is, ours was the fonder, better love."

Keeping much to himself-as much as could be in a ship of war full of action, and chasing sometimes a vessel of the enemy's that hove in sight, or fleeing on others from two or three of their ships with which it would have been madness to risk an encounter-he went about his duties, performing each and all as though he lived for them alone; as though, too, his frame was impervious to fatigue or the burden of a rough, hard life. With Sir Geoffrey he could hold but little communion-that, considering the different positions each was now filling, would have been impossible! – though sometimes they could be together in the captain's cabin for a short time. And then the latter would say words to the other of approbation and approval, as well as comfort, which, had it not been that all his future was blank and hopeless, must have cheered him. But, because such was the case, those words could not do so, and murmuring again, as he had murmured so often, "It is too late," he would withdraw to his solitude.

Yet, now, every day brought it more home to those in the English fleet that, at last, the great conflict was drawing near. Before they had been two days out of Torbay on this their last putting to sea, a French bilander had been captured, from which the Admiral obtained some news of Conflans, while, on the morning of the 17th, the Magnanime (also a capture) let fly her top-gallant sheets as a signal that she had sighted something that might be, or might belong to, the enemy. And a moment later the Mignonne-which had been abreast of the lee line-was signalled to stand to the north to see what she could discover. What she did discover, when under full sail she had set forth in the direction ordered, was a French privateer making off as fast as she could go in the direction of the French coast. Also, ahead of her, some two or three miles away, was a fleet of vessels, which, cruelly enough, did not stand by to assist their slower sister.

"She must be ours," cried Sir Geoffrey now, as, flinging the waves off from her forefoot contemptuously, the Mignonne, with every sheet fisted home, tore through the turbulent waters. "She must be ours. We gain upon her, too." Then he cried to the master, "Lay me alongside of her, as soon as possible. And tell the master-gunner to be ready."

That the privateer knew she was outpaced was evident from the manner in which she tacked-as the hare tacks and twists before the hound unleashed; while she showed that she did not mean to yield without a fight if she yielded at all. Coming round suddenly when the Mignonne was almost close upon her, she fired three of her lower deck guns, the English vessel only escaping being hit by the tossing of the waves which carried her high upon their crests, while the balls passed harmlessly beneath her.

That Granger was at his place was evident a moment later, when, from the gun-deck of the frigate, there poured forth a broadside that, as it struck the privateer, sent her keeling over to her larboard side. Then, as she recovered herself and the Mignonne came round on the wind, another broadside belched forth.

"That has done it," cried Geoffrey. "Fire no more. She will sink in ten minutes. Lower away there to save as many as may be. They are taking to the water already."

However many might be taking to the water, as he said, it was certain that none would escape in the privateer's boats. For now she lay over so much that it was impossible any such should be lowered from her; and that she would founder in a few moments, sucking down with her everything in the immediate neighbourhood, was not to be doubted. There remained nothing, consequently, but for those in the ship to throw themselves into the sea and to take their chance of either being picked up by the Mignonne's boats, or of being engulfed by the sinking vessel, or-which was equally likely-have the breath beaten out of them by the waves that ran mountains high.

Of such who were picked up at last, there were only three-one, a young man, who swam towards the Mignonne's boats with all the vigour of despair; the others being two middle-aged men. As for the privateer herself, she was gone for ever, leaving behind her no traces except a flag tossed on the water, some floating barrels, and a few coops full of drowned fowls.

"Bring brandy," cried Sir Geoffrey, as these men were carried over the side of the Mignonne, more dead than alive, and with one alone, the sturdy swimmer, still conscious. "Bring brandy, and pour it down their throats. They must not die. They can tell much, and tell they shall."

Then, to his astonishment, the mam who had swam so stoutly-the youngest of the three-opened his eyes and looked up at him, saying in English-

"What is it you would have us tell?"

"First," said Sir Geoffrey, "what was the name of that privateer? Next, how you, an Englishman; came in her? You, an Englishman, in a French ship at such a time! Man, do you know what may be your fate?"

"The privateer was La Baleine, of Dunkirk. As for myself and scores of others, we were not there willingly. We were bound for the colonies, and taken out of a schooner called the Amarynth some months ago, and kept-"

"The Amarynth," said a voice-deep and low as ever-in Sir Geoffrey's ear, "was the right name of the Nederland."

"Great heaven!" said Sir Geoffrey, turning round suddenly on Granger, and himself speaking in a whisper now, so that the officers and men who were about should not hear him. "Great heaven! The Nederland! The ship that carried that scoundrel who, had he had his will, would have placed Ariadne and Anne in her."

"Ay," replied Granger, "if he had had his will. He who would have kidnapped them and me."

"Speak," said Sir Geoffrey now, "speak and tell all. How has this thing happened?"

"Thus," said the man, looking up defiantly at his questioner: "Some were kidnapped into her, some went willingly. Bah! you both know that: both of you, sailors though you be. You were the one who led and encouraged the press-gang, who came to his house for men; that other by your side was-"

"Silence!" said Sir Geoffrey, white, and speaking sternly-though hating himself for having to do so. "Silence! and continue your narrative. I command here, and desire no opinion on my conduct. And I, at least, did not press you. Go on."

"We were half across the Atlantic," the fellow said moodily, "when her captain, a Frenchman called Boisrose, took us, and, after fighting contrary winds for weeks, was nearing France to hand us over as prizes. Now-well? now, you have altered all that. What are you going to do with us?"

"That you will know later. At present, thank your God that you are saved-from death, if not worse. At least you are in an English ship. You shall be well cared for. Take them below," he said to the master-at-arms, "and give them food and dry clothes."

"Yet first," said Granger, "answer me one question: There was a man on board named Bufton. Was he there?" and he directed his eyes to the spot beneath which the privateer had sunk.

"There was no man of that name to my knowledge."

"A man whom one could not mistake. A man with a strangely long and pointed chin."

"Oh! He! Oh! yes, he was there. But he was a cur. He could not stand his fate. He had been a dandy, it seems, whose heart was burst."

"Why?" asked Granter, in an even deeper voice, "why? What did he do?"

"Threw himself overboard in despair one dark, rough night-as they told us-a week before Boisrose captured the schooner."

Instinctively Geoffrey and Lewis Granger both turned away at the same time, the latter looking at the other with hollow eyes.

"Take heart," whispered the former, "it was the fate he had prepared for-for-"

"Ay, it was. Yet still his death is on my soul."

"Had they not slain him, his death would have been at my hands. For he would have been killed to-day. He who would have killed others. Take heart. Take heart."