The Light of Scarthey: A Romance. Castle Egerton
tender.
And in the delight of the contrast, Mademoiselle de Savenaye fell into the profound slumber of the young and vigorous.
CHAPTER VIII
THE PATH OF WASTED YEARS
And I only think of the woman that weeps;
But I forget, always forget, the smiling child.
That night, even when sheer fatigue had subdued the currents of blood and thought that surged in his head, Sir Adrian was too restless to avail himself of the emergency couch providently prepared by René in a corner. But, ceasing his fretful pacing to and fro, he sat down in the arm-chair by the hearth where she had sat – the waif of the sea – wrapped round him the cloak that had enfolded the young body, hugging himself in the salt moisture the fur still retained, to spend the long hours in half-waking, firelight dreams.
And every burst of tempest rage, every lash of rain at the window, every thud of hurricane breaking itself on impassable ramparts, and shriek of baffled winds searching the roofless halls around, found a strangely glad echo in his brain – made a sort of burden to his thoughts:
Heap up the waters round this happy island, most welcome winds – heap them up high and boiling, and retain her long captive in these lonely ruins!
And ever the image in his mind's eye was, as before, Cécile – Cécile who had come back to him, for all sober reason knew it was but the child.
The child – ! Why had he never thought of the children these weary years? They, all that remained of Cécile, were living and might have been sought. Strange that he had not remembered him of the children!
Twenty years since he had last set eyes upon the little living creature in her mother's arms. And the picture that the memory evoked was, after all, Cécile again, only Cécile – not the queer little black-eyed puppet, even then associated with sea-foam and salty breeze. Twenty years during which she was growing and waxing in beauty, and unawares, maturing towards this wonderful meeting – and he had never given a thought to her existence.
In what sheltered ways had this fair duplicate of his love been growing from a child to womanhood during that space of life, so long to look back upon – or so short and transient, according to the mood of the thinker?
And, lazily, in his happier and tender present mood he tried to measure once again the cycles of past discontent, this time in terms of the girl's own lifetime.
It is bitter in misery to recall past misery – almost as bitter, for all Dante's cry, as to dwell on past happiness. But, be the past really dead, and a new and better life begun, the scanning back of a sombre existence done with for ever, may bring with it a kind of secret complacency.
Truly, mused Sir Adrian, for one who ever cherished ideal aspirations, for the student, the "man of books" (as his father had been banteringly wont to term him), worshipper of the muses, intellectual Epicurean, and would-be optimist philosopher, it must be admitted he had strangely dealt, and been dealt with, since he first beheld that face, now returned to light his solitude! Ah, God bless the child! Pulwick at least nursed it warmly, whilst unhappy Adrian, ragged and degraded into a mere fighting beast, roamed through the Marais with Chouan bands, hunted down by the merciless revolutionists, like vermin; falling, as months of that existence passed over him, from his high estate to the level of vermin indeed; outlawed, predatory, cunning, slinking, filthy – trapped at last, the fit end of vermin!
Scarcely better the long months of confinement in the hulks of Rochelle. How often he had regretted it, then, not to have been one of the chosen few who, the day after capture, stood in front of six levelled muskets, and were sped to rest in some unknown charnel! Then! – not now. No, it was worth having lived to this hour, to know of that fair face, in living sleep upon his pillow, under the safeguard of his roof.
Good it was, that he had escaped at last, though with the blood of one of his jailors red upon his hands; the blood of a perhaps innocent man, upon his soul. It was the only time he had taken a life other than in fair fight, and the thought of it had been wont to fill him with a sort of nausea; but to-night, he found he could face it, not only without remorse, but without regret. He was glad he had listened to René's insidious whispers – René, who could not endure the captivity to which his master might, in time, have fallen a passive, hopeless slave, and yet who would have faced a thousand years of it rather than escape alone – the faithful heart!
Yes, it was good, and he was glad of it, or time would not have come when she (stay, how old was the child then? – almost three years, and still sheltered and cherished by the house of Landale) – when she would return, and gladden his eyes with a living sight of Cécile, while René watched in his tower above; ay, and old Margery herself lay once more near the child she had nursed.
Marvellous turn of the wheel of fate!
But, who had come for the children, and where had they been taken? To their motherland, perhaps; even it might have been before he himself had left it; or yet to Ireland, where still dwelt kinsfolk of their blood? Probably it was at the breaking up of the family, caused by the death of Sir Thomas, that these poor little birds had been removed from the nest, that had held them so safe and close.
That was in '97, in the yellow autumn of which year Adrian Landale, then French fisherman, parted from his brother René L'Apôtre upon the sea off Belle Isle; parted one grizzly dawn after embracing, as brothers should. Oh, the stealthy cold of that blank, cheerless daybreak, how it crept into the marrow of his bones, and chilled the little energy and spirits he had left! For a whole year they had fruitlessly sought some English vessel, to convey this English gentleman back to his native land. He could remember how, at the moment of separation, from the one friend who had loved both him and her, his heart sank within him – remember how he clambered from aboard the poor little smack, up the forbidding sides of the English brig; how René's broken words had bidden God bless him, and restore him safely home (home!); remember how swiftly the crafts had moved apart, the mist, the greyness and desolateness; the lapping of the waters, the hoarse cries of the seamen, all so full of heart-piercing associations to him, and the last vision of René's simple face, with tears pouring down it, and his open mouth spasmodically trying to give out a hearty cheer, despite the sobs that came heaving up to it. How little the simple fellow dreamed of what bitterness the future was yet holding for his brother and master, to end in these reunions at last!
The vessel which had taken Adrian Landale on board, in answer to the frantic signals of the fishing-smack, that had sailed from Belle Isle obviously to meet her, proved to be a privateer, bound for the West Indies, but cruising somewhat out of her way, in the hope of outgoing prizes from Nantes.
The captain, who had been led to expect something of importance from the smack's behaviour, in high dudgeon at finding that so much bustle and waste of time was only to burden him with a mere castaway seeking a passage home – one who, albeit a countryman, was too ragged and disreputable in looks to be trusted in his assurances of reward – granted him indeed the hospitality of his ship, but on the condition of his becoming a hand in the company during the forthcoming expedition.
There was a rough measure of equity in the arrangement, and Adrian accepted it. The only alternative, moreover, would have been a jump overboard. And so began a hard spell of life, but a few shades removed from his existence among the Chouan guerillas; a predatory cruise lasting over a year, during which the only changes rung in the gamut of its purpose were the swooping down, as a vulture might, upon unprotected ships; flying with superior speed from obviously stronger crafts; engaging, with hawk-like bravery, everything afloat that displayed inimical colours, if it offered an equal chance of fight.
And this for more than a year, until the privateer, much battered, but safe, despite her vicissitudes made Halifax for refitting. Here, at the first suitable port she had touched, Adrian claimed and obtained his release from obligations which made his life almost unendurable.
Then ensued a period of the most absolute penury; unpopular with most of his messmates for his melancholy taciturnity, despised by the more brutal as one who had as little stomach for a carouse as for a bloody fight, he left the ship without receiving, or even thinking of his share of prize-money.