Читать книгу The Admiral's Daughter - Margaret Stuart Lane - Страница 9

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When Marion told, at supper, the story of Jack Poole's arrest, the Admiral had no pity whatever to show. If there was one failing about which he was merciless, it was a sympathy with the rebel cause. The truth might be, as Marion guessed, that his heart was sore for Poole's folly in joining Monmouth's standard, for Jack and Bob Tregarthen had more nearly touched the inner circle of the life at Garth than any other of the villagers; but he gave no sign of it.

'Poole has made his bed, and he must lie on it,' he said, slicing at the collared head. 'And all the more pity for his mother.'

'And Charity Borlase,' softly put in Marion. 'Poor girl!'

'He not only made his bed,' remarked Elise, 'but he turned it when he escaped from Bodmin gaol. 'Tis bad enough to make a bed, but to turn it is sheer folly. Defying fate, I say.'

The lack of sympathy in the girl's tone nettled Marion. Indeed, the words were more than unsympathetic; behind them seemed to lie a touch of hardness, of calculated malice, as if on the whole Elise was pleased at the fisher-lad's detention.

Marion's grey eyes looked hard at her across the table. Something had lately seemed to emerge like a cloud that blurred her old regard for Elise, an instinct, hitherto sleeping, rising to respond to her aunt's criticism of her. And Marion was quite unaware that the sharp-eyed French girl was conscious of a subtle change in the attitude of her friend.

More than once Elise had heartily wished Mistress Penrock had never darkened the doors of her guardian's house. She had had overmuch of Aunt Keziah, more than Marion knew. Elise was genuinely fond of Marion. She had never felt more attached to her than at the present moment, in the relief of the elder lady's departure; but the demon lurking in her heart nevertheless singled out Marion as a point of attack; and Elise knew better than any one else just where to strike. Here was a chance of paying back on the niece the snubs she had received from the aunt.

In the short silence that fell after Elise's remarks, Marion had a sudden vision of the look her aunt would have cast on the speaker. How nearly her own expression resembled that of the old lady at the time Marion did not know, but Elise saw it and her mouth tightened. The Admiral, with his sister's warnings fresh in his mind, glanced at his ward sitting there in her elaborate gown that contrasted so much with Marion's. (For though Marion had taken a keen interest in her gowns since the French girl's arrival, she had a naturally simple and rather austere taste.) The Admiral considered the girl afresh. It was not that Elise's skin was unpleasantly sallow, or her features too sharp; but there was something in the expression of the face that made it seem so. As Mistress Keziah had said to her brother when he spoke of the 'poor girl's' looks, 'Tut, tut, brother, where are those sharp eyes of yours? 'Tis not her face. Her face is well enough for a Frenchwoman. All Frenchwomen are yellow. What's wrong with Elise's face is Elise.'

Though neither knew it, the same thought was passing through the mind of father and daughter.

'It was a very great pity that Jack did not get aboard the Fair Return sooner,' Marion went quietly on. 'She's bound for Virginia, I think, and Jack would have been well out of the way.'

'So you are on his side, as well as Roger?'

Marion started and looked again, harder than ever, at Elise. The French girl's face was set, and a malicious gleam shot from her eyes. The Admiral gave a glance over his shoulder, but the servant was gone to the buttery for more ale.

'I said not Roger was on his side,' said Marion, in her usual even tones.

Elise, angrier than ever in the face of Marion's calm, threw all discretion to the winds.

'But he would have tried to save him had you not stopped him.'

Here the Admiral turned his eagle look full on Elise. 'Not a word before the servants,' he said sternly.

The man came in as he spoke, and filling his master's tankard took his place behind his chair. A dark flush mounted to Elise's face, but she said no more. Presently Peter placed the pudding and custards and went out.

'Was there any one else with you when you saw Poole's arrest?' suddenly asked the Admiral of his ward. He had been thinking a little while Marion, in her tranquil way, showing no sign of uneasiness, had gone on talking of ordinary affairs.

Elise, taken off her guard by an unexpected question, stammered slightly. 'I, sir? I never said...' Then faced by her guardian's penetrating eye. 'No, sir.'

The Admiral 'humphed' and turned to the pudding. Marion was silent. Then after a pause, in ominously quiet tones he spoke again. 'Tell us once more exactly what passed, Marion.'

The colour came and went in Marion's face as she obeyed. 'It was not that Roger was on anybody's side, sir,' she said at the finish. 'But Roger always had a great kindness for Jack, as I truly have, as we all have, and he was thinking of the boy, not the party.'

'Of course, of course,' came the Admiral's deep voice in hearty assent. 'Roger Trevannion cares neither for Rebel nor Loyalist, Catholic nor Protestant. All he cares for is to be a sailor.'

Her father's words at once dispelled Marion's lurking fears concerning his attitude to Roger, and her face relaxed a little. Then looking up at Elise she saw a peculiar expression in her eyes, and a dim sense of foreboding assailed her.

There was silence for a few minutes. The man at the head of the table was wearing a look his fellows on the bench knew well. His eyes grew round and hard, as if he had borrowed blue granite marbles for the occasion. Marion, fearing a storm, cast about for some excuse to leave the table. While she was pondering, her father spoke.

'What I cannot understand, Elise,' he said, obviously trying to soften his voice, 'is how your father's daughter comes to have such ways. He was never crooked. He could not be. You know full well, as well as I, the truth of what I have just said concerning the direction of Roger's interests. You are shrewd enough.'

The ugly colour flushed the girl's sallow face again, but she said no word.

The Admiral, staunch loyalist as he was known to be, lowered his voice again, glancing at the closed doors. 'From what we have seen here of the results of that miserable rising, you also know as well as I that such words as you spoke of Roger, overheard by the domestics, breathed abroad and strengthened, as is the way of idle tales, are enough to send the lad to the gallows. Were you one of Jeffreys' agents, well and good. Were you not of the family, well and good. All's fair in war, folk say. But, out of idle malice to give away the life of one's own people—Roger Trevannion is almost as my own son—s'death, girl!' the Admiral's fist smote the table, and his voice slipped its leash, 'how comes a de Delauret to act thus?'

Marion sat aghast, trembling.

'Father,' she implored, distressed and embarrassed at the outburst. Never before had she heard the Admiral speak thus to his ward. But before her father could say anything more, Elise rose from the table, tears in her eyes.

'I am sorry to have offended you, sir,' she said. 'And if my presence is irksome——'

The man stirred uneasily in his chair. He could never abide the sight of women's tears.

'Tut, tut—there's no call for weeping. Sit down. We'll say no more about it. Let us have some more of that pudding, Marion.'

Elise wiped her eyes on her lace handkerchief and pulled awkwardly at its border.

'A little more conserve, Elise,' said Marion gently. ''Tis your favourite, you know.'

The awkward moment passed. The Admiral poured out a little wine for the ladies, and calling 'The King!' drained his own glass.

Presently Marion rose, and the two girls, leaving the Admiral to finish his bottle, went into the hall, which served as a general sitting-room. The little drawing-room above had never been used since my lady's death. According to the wishes of the Admiral that apartment had never been invaded by 'the children.' It remained exactly as in the last days of its mistress, with the little card box and the sugar-plum box on the small table by the high-backed chair, and the work frame with its needle, now sadly rusted, where the fair fingers of the lady of Garth had left it. The servants used lovingly to say that their master went to pray there; and certainly he had been seen to come out with a suspiciously dim look in his honest sailor's eyes.

The evening was soft and warm, full of spring airs, and the doors and casements of the hall were set wide. Without a word Elise settled herself in one of the broad mullioned window seats and took up the embroidery of a petticoat she had in hand. Her mouth was tightly set, her eyes over bright. Marion, her thoughts all criss-cross in her head, like Elise's fancy stitches, sat down at the spinet. She found a relief in drawing out the tinkling airs, and oddly to her as she sat came a dim memory of her mother in a rose-coloured gown sitting on that same stool, playing, when her little daughter, her 'sweet baby,' was taken in to kiss her good night. A wave of loneliness surged over her, and finding her fingers, turned her tunes into sad ones. For the first time she realised that her aunt's presence, while appearing in the nature of a trial, had been a support whose need she had only just begun to realise. She suddenly felt very young, very inexperienced, very forlorn. There was an indefinable change coming over the house, as shapeless as the first wisps that fore-ran the grey sea fogs of the coast. The sad tinkling airs went on and presently drew the Admiral from his bottle.

'Mawfy, Mawfy,' says he, pulling aside the curtain that hung over the dining-room door, 'if you go on much longer I'll be calling to be measured for my shroud.'

Marion smiled and turned into a livelier key but before she had played many bars a door opened to admit Peter bearing a salver.

'A letter, sir,' he said. 'Zacchary found un waiting down to the coaching house to Lostwithiel, sir.'

The Admiral gave a glance at the superscription, then broke the seals.

'Our fair Constance, if I mistake not. Let us see what she writes.'

In a few minutes he laid the letter down with a broad smile.

'None of the Penrocks can write,' he observed, 'and Connie was ever the worst. Her brother has somewhat amended himself since he became his daughter's fellow pupil, but Constance has not had that advantage. Still, the letter has the great virtue of brevity. Read it, Mawfy.'

'Deere brother,' wrote the lady, 'the cumming of your letter was a grate occation of rejoysing for me, I nott having scene your writing this menny years. I am greaved to deny your wish to vissit Garth, but I doe dessire that my littel neace Marion should comme and stay at my house for a space. It will give me grate joy and somme to her I doupt not. I will promisse shee is dressed,—Your trewly loving sister,

CONSTANCE FAIRFAX.'

KENSINGTON, this 29th of March. For my deere brother, thes.

'Oh,' said Elise, as Marion laid down the letter. 'How delightful for you, Marion! London! Balls, the play, the gardens, music. Even, I suppose,' she wistfully added, 'the Court.'

Elise seemed certainly to have recovered from her chagrin, and Marion's heart warmed to her for the unselfishness of her words. The Admiral, standing before the chimney, his favourite place both summer and winter, looked curiously at the French girl and then at his daughter.

'Well, Mawfy, now I suppose you be all of a bustle to forsake your old father and this deadly dull place?'

Marion instantly came and clasped her hands round her father's arm. True to her character, she had made no great sign of the delight the letter had given her.

'Do you want me to go or not, Father?'

'What I do mightily like,' chuckled the Admiral, 'is what Constance says about your dress. Doubtless we are half-clothed savages, here at Garth. Yes, my dear, I think you should go. Go and learn to drop a grand curtsey and hold a fan with a languid air and take on that look of boredom your Aunt Keziah has to such perfection. Never again cheat Zacchary of his saddling to ride Molly barebacked; never again come flying across the garden to leap at your father's neck.'

'Father!' An arm stole up towards the said neck. 'I won't ever leave you if you talk so. All the same, I think perhaps I ought to learn some of these things.'

'But certainly she should go!' cried Elise from her window seat. 'Such an excellent opportunity of becoming a lady.'

'Faith! I never thought of that,' drily put in the Admiral. Elise bit her lip.

At that moment the door opened and Victoire, the French girl's one-time nurse and present maid, came with the glass of milk she considered it the nightly duty of her charge to take.

'Only think, Victoire,' cried Elise, 'here is an invitation from the Lady Constance for Mistress Marion to go to Court!'

'To Kensington,' laughed Marion. 'How your thoughts do run on Courts, Elise!'

Victoire's black eyes snapped at the speaker. She was a dark-skinned, vivacious woman, bearing the look of the French peasant without the heavy features that mark that class. Her devotion to her enfant was of an absorbing nature, and came nearer that of confidante than waiting-woman. Marion she treated with a servile deference that was far from the honest humility of the Cornish serving folk.

If Marion had probed her thoughts she would have known that she thoroughly disliked Victoire. But Marion had accepted Elise for her friend in her childhood's days, and (until her aunt had somewhat unsettled her mind) had remained loyal in spite of the drawbacks of the French girl's temperament and character, and for her sake had tolerated Victoire. Frankly, Elise had puzzled her, but Victoire had puzzled her a hundred times more. She refused to discuss her with her own thoughts. And of course Victoire, being a shrewd woman, was aware of the feeling that lay behind Marion's manner towards her. As a result, she became increasingly servile, constantly trying to remind Marion that this person in her household was the poorest of French servants, and that Marion was mistress and heiress of a great house and name.

'But, Madame, how truly excellent!' she cried. 'Madame will certainly go?'

'Yes, I think I shall go,' said Marion quietly.

As the Admiral's curious glance shot towards Elise, he caught a look that passed between his ward and her maid. As the latter left the room the Admiral stepped out on to the terrace.

'How delightful for you, Marion,' said Elise again, as the old man's stumping tread sounded on the stones.

Marion was staring absently out of the window. After Elise's words had died away she became aware of them echoing in her brain, all blurred and mixed up with the magic sound: London. Waking from her day-dream Marion spoke, her fingers on a straying branch that climbed up the woodwork of the casement. 'It is now a long time since you yourself were in London. You have never said much about it. Did you see any of the gay sights while you were waiting for my father to come and fetch you?'

The Admiral's tread sounded coming nearer. There was no reply from the girl in the other window seat. Marion was aware of a slight movement, and then a peculiar stillness, as if her companion was forcibly restraining further motion. Marion glanced over her shoulder and then swung round. On Elise's face was a strange hunted look which gave way to a sorrowfulness that sat strangely on her girlish features. Startled and puzzled, Marion was groping for the right word to say, when the Admiral's figure darkened the window. At the same moment Elise dropped her scissors; and when she was settled in her seat again her face wore its usual expression. The thought crossed Marion's mind that the look had been caused by a sudden homesickness and memory of distant days—France; of her dying father, perhaps. Again her heart softened to the girl.

'What did we do?' said Elise, biting her thread. 'Oh, we did not do much.'

'Come, Marion,' called the Admiral, 'are you so wrapped up in your dreams you have forgotten me already?'

Marion slipped out. It was the nightly habit of the two to wander in the garden after supper. She found her father revolving plans for her immediate departure, and, her thoughts leaping forward to meet the future, the consideration of Elise's affairs left her mind.

For close on an hour the two paced to and fro, and then, finding that Elise had retired, Marion went to her own room. Her sad mood of the earlier part of the evening had disappeared, her apprehensions flown. A bright vista shone before her wherein no mist of doubt was suffered to live. She found the housekeeper, who had combined her own duties with those of waiting-woman, standing by the dressing-table, ready to brush her hair.

'Curnow,' she said as she closed the door, 'you will never guess what has happened. Just try.'

Meanwhile down in the garden the Admiral was solemnly stumping the length of the terrace. The light went softly out of the sky and gleamed on the face of the Channel far below. The scent of the furze, in full bloom, came up from the headland, and over the trees behind the house a slip of a new moon showed.

The serenity of the evening was lost on the old sailor. He was musing on two problems, puffing at his pipe.

What had Elise been doing alone down at Polrennan, on the other side of the water, to-day? That was the only spot whence Poole's cottage, hidden by the winding valley from the sight of Garth, could be seen. And why were she and Victoire so anxious to get rid of Marion?

The night had fully come, and the house was in darkness before the Admiral turned indoors.