Читать книгу King of The Rocks - Ambrose Pratt - Страница 6

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THE air was very still and placid, and rarely a ripple stirred the surface of the sea as the Dido, after rounding the curve of the picnic island, let fall her anchor into the green and lambent waters of the bay. Presently the hiss of escaping steam drowned the hum of conversation on the yacht's deck, and the men and women lying there in easy-chairs looked drowsily forth at the thickly-wooded reaches of the far shore, or the huge sails of the racing squadron of half-deckers lying in the middle distance, which, overtaken by a calm, floated with idly-flapping wings, like great sea-hawks hovering just before their flight to sun themselves upon the surface of the stream.

"How beautiful it all is, but how-idle—how deadly still," said Mara Hescombe dreamily, when the shrill of the steam had ceased.

Cuthbert Stone, smiling, looked at the speaker, herself the personification of idleness as she reclined on a cane lounge, her hands dropping motionless beside her, her heavy-lidded eyes half closed to exclude the glare that flashed up reflected from the waters at the instance of the noon.

"What would you?" he asked, still smiling; "the most beautiful is that which is most peaceful."

The girl, who noticed his prolonged admiring glance, although her eyes seemed to be employed elsewhere, woke suddenly from her languor.

"For my part, I see more beauty in movement." She sat upright, and smartly tapped the arm of her nearest companion with her fan. "Wake up, poet," she cried laughingly. "I do believe you were asleep. Tell us which is the more beautiful, energy or peace?"

The man appealed to was fashioned in heroic mould, but his great limbs were so languidly inclined just then that he scarcely stirred at her quick-spoken command.

"Peace, peace," he muttered drowsily, in deep guttural tones; "let me be!"

All present laughed, but Miss Hescombe arose from her chair impatiently.

"Oh for a wind, a storm, anything, so that we should see a battle among those boats!"

The eyes of Cuthbert Stone followed her as she moved to the railing with swift but graceful stride, and they could not fail to mark how good she was to look upon, with the gracious curves of her well-proportioned figure, the pleasing outlines of her profile, and the golden flashings of her hair, lit then to radiance by the shining glory of the sunlight. He could not choose but follow her.

"How restless you are," he said half reproachfully.

"Oh, but everything is so calm, it is insufferable. Look! the poet sleeps, father sleeps, mother sleeps, the sea sleeps!"

She tapped her foot in a tattoo beat upon the deck.

"I am awake," said Cuthbert Stone.

"Are you? then do something!" returned Miss Hescombe imperiously.

"What do you want me to do?"

"What an-obvious question! Only a man would ask it. How do I know what you are to do? Something, anything—only do it quickly!"

Cuthbert Stone looked over the side of the yacht gravely into the sea.

"Do you know this harbour of Port Jackson reminds me most intensely of you. It is often placid as it is now—as you were a moment past—but not for any length of time. A little cloud the size of a man's hand rises in the blue sky above, Heaven knows whence or why, and the instant after it is transfigured from a peaceful lake into an angry sea, sans pitie et sans remords."

"So I am a creature without kindness or pity. How easily your tongue runs to flattery, Mr. Stone."

"You should be satisfied with my simile, Miss Hescombe, you who find most beauty in energy. The sea is mysterious besides."

"Ah, but that is much better. I can forgive you now for your previous accusation. Am I a mystery to you?"

Cuthbert Stone tried to look into the girl's eyes, but she evaded his glance coquettishly.

"A mystery indeed. I have studied you a whole year, and know you very little even now."

"How seriously you said that."

"It is a serious matter for me."

"My dear sir, you are foolish to consider any woman seriously."

"Miss Hescombe, I have been a long time wanting to say something to you."

The girl gave him a swift sidelong glance, and shrugged her shoulders with a little foreign gesture.

"Nothing serious, I hope. Just consider the day, its altogether too calm, dull, and—your beloved word—peaceful for seriousness; do, for goodness' sake, be frivolous in order to balance things a little better."

"I have waited and waited."

"Whatever for? You see me every day, you can speak to me at any time."

"But——"

"Ah," she interrupted, "I can see from your face that you are about to say something heavy. I forbid you to speak."

Cuthbert's face grew stern and cold. "How unkind you can be," he said.

"Rather, how unkind you can be, Mr. Stone; here am I perishing for lack of something to do, to see, to say, and you want to make me still duller with your gravity. I think your conduct downright selfish! If you must be serious, why not go and make your speech to the poet; he will listen to you quite patiently, for I'm sure he's half asleep," she added laughingly.

"Won't you listen to me?" persisted the man.

Miss Hescombe was not required to give an answer, for at that moment, with a noisy clatter, the poet rose to his feet and came towards them, a heavy-browed German giant.

"I was not asleep," he said slowly, mouthing his words in a deep voice, which transformed his "p's" into "b's," his "w's" "v's," and "s's" "z's"—"I was thinking."

"Ach Himmel!" mimicked Miss Hescombe saucily, "the boet vass dhinkging? Vot vaz id dhat the boet vaz dhinkging aboud hein?"

The giant shook a great finger at her.

"Ach, you rascal; my thoughts would not interest a rattle-plate girl like you."

"But indeed they would," declared Miss Hescombe, grown earnest with a swift, capricious change of front; "I am dull as ditch-water. Do tell me, poet dear."

The German was a philosopher, who did not pay too much court to the intellect of woman, but he was not proof against the wiles of beseeching eyes and tender smiles, so he answered her as if Mara had been one like himself.

"I was thinking," he said, "that philosophy is an exposition of maxims, which are admirable until they are submitted to the test of practical experience."

"An example?" demanded the girl.

"It is better to sleep than to wake; to rest than to move——"

"I do not agree with you," cried Miss Hescombe.

The poet shrugged his shoulders.

"That does not matter," he said placidly; "except that you interrupt me."

"Go on, poet dear," with an apologetic smile.

"It is also better to put up with a misfortune than to seek to escape it, and so perhaps encounter a worse. Well, I was thinking these things, and all the while a ray of the sun came shining across my knees from the slit in the awning above, and my legs were made, ach, so hot. I told myself it was better to rest on and put up with this small evil."

"Philosophy or laziness?" commented Miss Hescombe, interrupting again with ardent scorn.

"But," continued the poet, unmoved, "I found that the small thing I speak of drove all the philosophy from my mind, and so at last I arose and came over to you."

Cuthbert Stone laughed heartily.

"The unknown evil you just now spoke about, Herr Siegbert; many thanks! But if a ray of sunshine can make you forget your beloved philosophy, what could not a greater thing such as love effect?"

There was a faint challenge in his voice, suggestive perhaps of by-gone controversies between the two.

"Ach so, love?" observed the poet slowly. "I cannot rest at all now for love."

"What, poet dear, you in love?" Miss Hescombe, who had been inclined to drift from the conversation, became instantly alert and interested.

"That is so," answered the German heavily. "It has come upon me in my old age."

"Oh, do tell me who she is! Is she pretty, is she young, rich, poor, nice?—tell me everything!"

"There is not much to tell, only that the care of the person with whom I am in love is my chief thought. It is an evil this love, for it transforms me from a philosopher into a critic, from a poet into a human being."

"Tell me more," imperiously; "is she pretty?"

"Ach, what matters that," said the German tragically, "it is the evil in myself which concerns me. I, a poet, cannot now lie in the woods alone with Nature to watch a beautiful sunset or sunrise, without being concerned to first inquire whether or not the grass is damp lest I might catch cold and die, and so lose this love of mine. I dare not sit down in the house without first looking to see if I be resting in a draught. I cannot smoke too long my pipe for fear it should affect my heart. When the mood takes me to write, I dare not write too long lest my poor eyesight be offended. Ach, I tell you it is terrible, this love of mine!"

Miss Hescombe had been watching the German with growing disenchantment during this last speech.

"It seems to me that you take a great deal more interest in your silly health than in your love!" she declared scornfully.

The poet submitted with a deprecatory shrug of his huge but shapely shoulders.

"Nein, meine liebe, not more, just so much; that is all."

"Yost so much," mocked the girl. "I wouldn't own you for a lover, poet; fancy being afraid of draughts, ugh!"

"It is the fear born of love!" answered Herr Siegbert, with an ecstatic glance heavenwards.

"Oh, please don't do that," laughed Miss Hescombe, "or I shall be forced to agree with you that love is an evil, since it can make my poor old poet look so silly?"

"So silly, hein? Ach well, let us talk of other things."

"No, you don't," said the girl quickly; "you haven't completed your confession yet.''

"What more do you want from me?"

"Lots. First, who is she, a girl or a grown woman?"

The poet considered for a second, his eyes twinkling merrily.

"Neither," he answered at last, "it is a man!"

Miss Hescombe stared at him in amaze.

"A man!" she gasped. "A man!"

"Ja, meine liebe—mine self."

Cuthbert Stone shouted with laughter, but it took the girl a moment to understand, though, when she did, much less a time to show her indignation.

"You fraud," she cried, "I should have remembered that you stolid Germans are incapable of any passion except self-love!" Her anger was apparently quite real.

"A joke," said the German, "does not deserve such hard words."

"But a joke against a woman?" murmured Cuthbert Stone, trying to conceal his pleasure.

"Ach yes, it was very rude of me," said the poet, with contrition.

"Go away, both of you. You"—to the poet—"made fun of me, and you"—to Cuthbert Stone—"laughed at me."

She looked very pretty in her indignation—too pretty altogether to take her at her word.

"I apologise; I am sorry," said Herr Siegbert humbly.

"And I," said Cuthbert Stone, "have thought of something to do."

Miss Hescombe disregarded the poet altogether, but she caught at the other's suggestion eagerly.

"Yes, anything; what is it?"

"You and I will take a boat, row over to those half-deckers, and chaff their crews about their racing speed. Eh?"

"Excellent! a dingey, and you row, eh?" cried the girl, who, even in her excitement, reflected that her companion could not be half as serious while rowing under a November sun as he could sitting beside her in the stern sheets sharing the shade of her parasol; she was a little nervous of Cuthbert Stone's seriousness, be it confessed.

In a moment they were embarked and away, leaving the poet to keep company with the dozing figures of Miss Hescombe's father and mother on the Dido's deck, an arrangement which did not at all displease the German, for he was a man not over-fond of conversation, and he loved of all things uninterrupted converse with his own imaginings.

The girl kept up a ceaseless chatter until the squadron was reached, when she joined her companion in exchanging merry badinage with the crews of the different tiny yachts around which they slowly glided, challenging their owners to a trial of speed, sculls versus sails. Tiring of this amusement soon, however, Miss Hescombe declared it was time for lunch, and ordered an immediate return to the Dido. Obediently enough Cuthbert put the boat about, but his plan of "doing something" had not been conceived in the entirely disinterested idea of serving Miss Hescombe's caprice. Half-way between the flotilla and the yacht he paused in his labour. Coolly drawing in his sculls he placed them across the thwarts of the boat before him, and leaning forward, rested his arms upon the rampart thus formed.

"What is that for?" inquired Miss Hescombe, with some surprise.

"I want to speak to you," said Cuthbert Stone.

Miss Hescombe imagined she knew what would be the tenor of her companion's conversation, and a spirit of perverseness possessed her instantly.

"Well, do your talking while you row," she commanded serenely. "I'm as hungry as—Oh my!"

A sudden puff of wind had come up from the south, which rocked their tiny boat to and fro; they watched it presently catch the sails of the flotilla and careen the racing craft with rude speed almost completely over; but in a second all was still again, and only a fleeting ripple on the waters showed the passing of the baby squall.

"It will blow hard soon," said Cuthbert Stone; "that squall is the precursor of a storm."

"Then let us get back quickly to the Dido," suggested Mara, a little nervously; but the man shook his head with an air of quiet determination.

"Not until I have said my say," he answered.

Mara Hescombe discovered in herself a feverish anxiety to postpone listening to that which the man had resolved to utter.

"Your say," she mocked; and rattled on, "one would imagine you a tragedian, with that frown and those tight lips. Are you rehearsing? What is the character? Mark Antony or Hamlet? Oh, I know, it's Othello, only you should have your face blackened; you'd look lovely with your face blackened, Mr. Stone."

Cuthbert watched her grimly.

"You'll have to listen to me in the end," he remarked; "I can wait."

"Have to listen to you, Mr. Stone? You are very certain about it. Do you often make women do things?" her voice was quietly sarcastic.

"May I speak now?" he demanded.

"Oh certainly, pray go on, don't mind me!" and the girl deliberately covered both her small ears with her hands, while she mocked him with her eyes.

"Mara, Mara, how can you be so unkind?"

The words rang out with a very real appeal.

Miss Hescombe heard them quite distinctly, but she gave no such sign; instead, she regarded the man with a fine show of criticism, and still with her hands to her ears meditatively observed:

"No, it isn't Othello; I was mistaken after all; it's Romeo, with the sculls for a balcony, and I'm Juliet; he's a bad actor though, a Romeo should never sit."

The speech was a cruel one, and its effect disastrous. Cuthbert stood up suddenly, his face grown very white, his eyes aflame.

"You shall hear me!" he cried, and as he spoke stepped over the sculls before him, not entirely conscious of what he was doing, or indeed of what he intended to do.

Miss Hescombe shrank away as he approached her, frightened by his eyes, and next moment both were struggling helplessly in the water, for neither man nor girl could swim, and their boat, floating bottom upwards, had drifted yards beyond their reach.

Their plight could not be seen from the Dido, for a little promontory of the picnic island intervened. The crews of the racing squadron saw, but they were lying half a mile away, still becalmed and helpless.

Two men, however, standing on the bridge of a small coasting vessel that was steaming slowly down the harbour towards the heads witnessed the accident, and into the hands of those men Fate placed the lives of Mara Hescombe and Cuthbert Stone. One was short and stoutly built, with dark, reckless features, narrow-set and evil eyes. The other, taller than his companion by a full head, and of more graceful fashion altogether, possessed a face remarkable for an extraordinary combination of strength and beauty. His forehead and straight thin nose, his chiselled lips and clean-shaven chin, almost faultless in their classic perfection of outline, produced a singular effect of austerity and coldness, resembling in that respect the features of some old sculptured god; but his large grey eyes, looking forth from under firmly marked and level brows, were soft and lustrous, and charged besides with a curiously magnetic and penetrating power.

"Those two fools will drown, Julian," said the shorter man, after they had together watched the struggling figures in the water for a moment.

"Let them drown," replied the other curtly; "there will be then two fools less for this over-burdened world to longer reckon with."

"But those half-deckers yonder see them as well as we do. Hark to that shout; they are calling to us to save them."

"We have no time to waste in nonsense of that sort, Burgess; let the half-deckers save the idiots themselves."

The speaker frowned as he spoke, and the frown singularly marred the comeliness of his face.

"You'd better stop, Julian; the yachts' crews yonder can see we've noticed the accident, and they'd make it ugly for you afterwards if we let them drown."

"Damn them!" said Julian, with an impatient shrug; but he, nevertheless, gave a sullen order, and the vessel's course was changed. Five minutes afterwards Miss Hescombe and Cuthbert Stone were being ministered to in the cabin of the Night Hawk, which vessel lay for the nonce inactive in the stream, to the ill-concealed annoyance of her master, who waited alone impatiently upon the upper deck until his unwelcome guests should be recovered sufficiently to take their departure.

A half-hour passed, and then Burgess approached his captain.

"They are almost right again, sir, but the girl is very weak. They want us to put them on board their own yacht, whose masts you can see there over the point."

"Very well," said Julian coldly; "only for the devil's sake hurry about it; have a boat lowered and manned at once. You had better take charge of it yourself, Burgess."

"What about their own boat?"

"Let it be; we've done quite enough for them as it is."

"Ay, ay, sir."

The necessary orders were given, and with a speed that showed a wonderful discipline the boat was made ready almost in the twinkling of an eye, but the moment after Burgess approached his captain once again.

"They want to see you, sir, to assure you of their gratitude," he said, his lips curled with a faintly humorous smile.

The captain swung abruptly on his heel. "Tell them to go to Hades!" he replied. Then over his shoulder, "Hurry's the word, Burgess; we've lost too much time already."

"Ay, ay, sir." In another minute the face of Burgess appeared once more above the railing of the ladder. "The lady won't leave without seeing her rescuer, sir; she has a will of her own."

His deprecating smile concealed an intense desire to laugh outright at the quaint humour of the situation.

The face of the captain was a study. "Won't leave, won't she, Burgess? Make her!" He swung on his heel again.

Burgess, shrugging his shoulders, departed, and his voice could soon be heard protesting vehemently below; but he had truly said that Miss Hescombe possessed a will of her own, for the young lady presently made her way, supported by Cuthbert Stone, to the captain's private bridge. Julian faced her, black as night, but the frown faded from his forehead, and he doffed his cap as he looked at her, for not even Mara Hescombe's then bedraggled condition could conceal her loveliness.

"I have come to thank you for my life," she said earnestly.

"I, too, must thank you," said Cuthbert Stone, staring curiously at the extraordinary man before him; but Julian noticed nothing except the tears in Miss Hescombe's eyes, and that those eyes were extremely beautiful.

"You go to unnecessary trouble; I want no thanks," he answered curtly. Then meeting Miss Hescombe's glance, he gazed at her long and full, so that the girl rosed under his regard.

"We hope to prove our gratitude hereafter," said Cuthbert Stone.

"Impossible," returned the captain, with a half sneer. "I shall probably never be in a position to do you another service."

"There are exceptions to Johnson's rule," cried Cuthbert quickly.

"Perhaps," said Julian. "At any rate, you are now in a position to render me a service equal to that which you seem to think I have rendered you."

"Only name it," murmured Miss Hescombe.

Julian bowed profoundly.

"By returning, madam, as soon as may be, to your yacht; my boat waits for you below."

Brusqueness such as this Miss Hescombe had never before encountered, and her face flushed with surprise and mortification. Turning haughtily, she moved unassisted to the ladder, her strength returned with the indignation occasioned by this cynical and unprovoked rebuff; but the sight of the water now stirred into wavelets by a fast rising wind made her remember the death she had escaped and the load of gratitude she owed to this rude but wonderfully handsome stranger, for Miss Hescombe had not failed to remark a fact so apparent as Julian's exceptional good looks.

"At least, tell me the name of our preserver," she faltered, looking shyly up at him.

Julian, glancing at her, waited a full minute in the pleasing contemplation of her beauty, while every second her glance would travel to his eyes or to the deck in either the perfection of coquetry or the depth of innocence, just as the watcher might choose to regard it.

Cuthbert Stone decided on the former at once, for he considered the captain to be a very likely person for women to practise their coquetries upon. However, he was wrong, Miss Hescombe had never been so unaffected in her life.

"My name," said the captain at last, "is Julian Savage. Good-day, madam," and with a short bow he left her to resume his impatient pacing on the deck.

"Well, I'll be——," said Cuthbert Stone angrily, under his breath, as he took his seat, and they were the only words he uttered for some time.

Miss Hescombe, less nonplussed, but even more angry than her companion, glanced often backwards as the boat shot over the waters under the united force of four strong arms; she did not trouble at all to remark the little racing yachts which now tore through the waves at full speed, their white sails sometimes gleaming in the sunlight, sometimes darkening as the shadows caught them like the flashing pinions of sea-birds on the wing. The battle of boats, which earlier in the day would have enchanted her, possessed no interest now, for a new experience had come to her unsought; a man, the first she had ever known to do so strange a thing, had treated her curtly, with abominable rudeness indeed—had rejected her advances with disdain, and finally contemptuously dismissed her. The boat commenced to round the point of the island, but instead of looking for the Dido, Mara glanced over her shoulder towards the Night Hawk. Julian Savage was standing with his back to her, looking through a field-glass towards the far shore of the bay.

"If ever," muttered Miss Hescombe to herself—"if ever I get the chance, I shall make that man sorry for to-day."

Then she thought of his eyes, which somehow had seemed softer than his word, and she smiled and frowned, for her thoughts were contradictory.

"Of all the creatures I have ever met," said Cuthbert Stone that evening on the Dido's deck, "that man, Julian Savage, is the most cold and brutal; he froze me like a blizzard."

"I am inclined to agree with you," replied Miss Hescombe. "Did you ever meet with such contempt—such indifference? One would imagine that after saving our lives he'd have been a little gracious, don't you think; why he did not even trouble to inquire our names."

"No; all he wanted was to get rid of us as quickly as possible."

"Perhaps he knows us," said Mara savagely, "no one could really be so incurious as he seemed to be; but," she added wickedly, "what a handsome man he is! A romantic experience altogether, wasn't it?"

Cuthbert involuntarily smiled.

"Will you listen to me now, Mara?" he asked, and placed his right hand on one of hers, which rested idly on the rail. But the girl withdrew her fingers, and moved towards the cabin stairs, where her mother had just appeared.

"I have had enough seriousness for one day," she declared. "Next time you want to be serious with me, please do it on shore; remember neither of us can swim."