Phantom Fortune, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [free e novels .txt] 📗

and a look that was half submissive, half mutinous. 'But I have really been beginning to wonder whether this boat can move.'

'You will see that she can, and at a smart pace, too, if I sail her. Shall we circumnavigate the island? We can set sail after dinner.'

'Will Mr. Smithson consent, do you think?'

'Why does Smithson exist, except to obey you?'

'I don't know if Lady Kirkbank would quite like it,' said Lesbia, looking at her chaperon, who was waving a big Japanese fan, slowly, unsteadily, and with a somewhat drunken air, the while she slid into dreamland.

'Quite like what?' she murmured, drowsily.

'A little sail.'

'I should dearly love it, if it didn't make me sea-sick.'

'Sea-sick on a glassy lake like this! Impossible,' said Montesma. 'I consider the thing settled. We set sail after dinner.'

Mr. Smithson came back to the yacht just in time to dress for dinner. Don Gomez excused himself from putting on his dress suit. He was going to sail the yacht himself, and he was dressed for his work, picturesquely, in white duck trousers, white silk shirt, and black velvet shooting jacket. He dined with the permission of the ladies, in this costume, in which he looked so much handsomer than in the livery of polite life. He had a red scarf tied round his waist, and when at his work by-and-by, he wore a little red silk cap, just stuck lightly on his dark hair. The dinner to-day was all animation and even excitement, very different from the languorous calm of yesterday. Lesbia seemed a new creature. She talked and laughed and flashed and sparkled as she had never yet done within Mr. Smithson's experience. He contemplated the transformation with wonder not unmixed with suspicion. Never for him had she been so brilliant--never in response to his glances had her violet eyes thus kindled, had her smile been so entrancingly sweet. He watched Montesma, but in him he could find no fault. Even jealousy could hardly take objection to the Spaniard's manner to Lady Lesbia. There was not a look, not a word that hinted at a private understanding between them, or which seemed to convey deeper meanings than the common language of society. No, there was no ground for fault-finding; and yet Smithson was miserable. He knew this man of old, and knew his influence over women.

Mr. Smithson handed over the management of the yacht without a murmer, albeit he pretended to be able to sail her himself, and was in the habit of taking the command for a couple of hours on a sunny afternoon, much to the amusement of skipper and crew. But Montesma was a sailor born and bred--the salt keen breath of the sea had been the first breath in his nostrils--he had managed his light felucca before he was twelve years old, had sailed every inch of the Caribbean Sea, and northward to the furthermost of the Bahamas before he was fifteen. He had lived more on the water than on the land in that wild boyhood of his; a boyhood in which books and professors had played but small part. Montesma's school had been the world, and beautiful women his only professors. He had learnt arithmetic from the transactions of bubble companies; modern languages from the lips of the women who loved him. He was a crack shot, a perfect swordsman, a reckless horseman, and a dancer in whom dancing almost rose to genius. Beyond these limits he was as ignorant as dirt; but he had a cleverness which served as a substitute for book learning, and he seldom failed in impressing the people he met with the idea that he, Gomez de Montesma, was no ordinary man.

Directly after dinner the preparations for an immediate start began; very much to the disgust of skipper and crew, who were not in the habit of working after dinner; but Montesma cared nothing for the short answers of the captain, or the black look of the men.

Lesbia wanted to learn all about everything--the name of every sail, of every rope. She stood near the helmsman, a slim graceful figure in a white gown of some soft material, with never a jewel or a flower to relieve that statuesque simplicity. She wore no hat, and the rich chesnut hair was rolled in a loose knot at the back of the small Greek-looking head. Montesma came to her every now and then to explain what was being done; and by-and-by, when the canvas was all up, and the yacht was skimming over the water, like a giant swan borne by the current of some vast strong river, he came and stayed by her side, and they two sat making little baby sentences in Spanish, he as teacher and she as pupil, with no one near them but the sailors.

The owner of the _Cayman_ had disappeared mysteriously a quarter of an hour after the sails were unfurled, and Lady Kirkbank had tottered down to the saloon.

'I am not going--cabin,' she faltered, when Lesbia remonstrated with her, 'only--going--saloon--sofa--lie down--little--Smithson take care--you,' not perceiving that Smithson had vanished, 'shall be--quite close.'

So Lesbia and Don Gomez were alone under the summer stars, murmuring little bits of Spanish.

'It is the only true way of learning a language,' he said; 'grammars are a delusion.'

It was a very delightful and easy way of learning, at any rate. Lesbia reclined in her bamboo chair, and fanned herself indolently, and watched the shadowy shores of the island, cliff and hill, down and wooded crest, flitting past her like dream-pictures, and her lips slowly shaped the words of that soft lisping language--so simple, so musical--a language made for lovers and for song, one would think. It was wonderful what rapid progress Lesbia made.

She heard a church clock on the island striking, and asked Don Gomez the hour.

'Ten,' he said.

'Ten! Surely it must be later. It was past eight before we began dinner, and we have been sailing for ever so long. Captain, kindly tell me the time,' she called to the skipper, who was lolling over the gunwale near the foremast smoking a meditative pipe.

'Twelve o'clock, my lady.'

'Heavens, can I possibly have been sitting here so long. I should like to stay on deck all night and watch the sailing; but I must really go and take care of poor Lady Kirkbank. I am afraid she is not very well.'

'She had a somewhat distracted air when she went below, but I daresay she will sleep off her troubles. If I were you I should leave her to herself.'

'Impossible! What can have become of Mr. Smithson?'

'I have a shrewd suspicion that it is with Smithson as with poor Lady Kirkbank.'

'Do you mean that he is ill?'

'Precisely.'

'What, on a calm summer night, sailing over a sea of glass. The owner of a yacht!'

'Rather ignominious for poor Smithson, isn't it? But men who own yachts are only mortal, and are sometimes wretched sailors. Smithson is feeble on that point, as I know of old.'

'Then wasn't it rather cruel of us to sail his yacht?'

'Yachts are meant for sailing, and again, sea-sickness is supposed to be a wholesome exercise.'

'Good-night.'

'Good-night,' both good nights in Spanish, and with a touch of tenderness which the words could hardly have expressed in English.

'Must you really go?' pleaded Montesma, holding her hand just a thought longer than he had ever held it before.

'Ah, the little more, and how much it is,' says the poet.

'Really and truly.'

'I am so sorry. I wish you could have stayed on deck all night.'

'So do I, with all my heart. This calm sea under the starlit sky is like a dream of heaven.'

'It is very nice, but if you stayed I think I could promise you considerable variety. We shall have a tempest before morning.'

'Of all things in the world I should love to see a thunderstorm at sea.'

'Be on the alert then, and Captain Parkes and I will try to oblige you.'

'At any rate you have made it impossible for me to sleep. I shall stay with Lady Kirkbank in the saloon. Good-night, again.'

'Good-night.'


CHAPTER XXXIX.


IN STORM AND DARKNESS.

Lesbia found Lady Kirkbank prostrate on a low divan in the saloon, sleepless, and very cross. The atmosphere reeked with red lavender, sal-volatile, eau de Cologne, and brandy, which latter remedy poor Georgie had taken freely in her agonies. Kibble, the faithful Grasmere girl, sat by the divan, fanning the sufferer with a large Japanese fan. Rilboche had naturally, as a Frenchwoman, succumbed utterly to her own feelings, and was moaning in her berth, wailing out every now and then that she would never have taken service with Miladi had she suspected her to be capable of such cruelty as to take her to live for weeks upon the sea.

If this was the state of affairs now while the ocean was only gently stirred, what would it be by-and-by if the tempest should really come?

'What can you be thinking of, staying on deck all night with those men?' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, peevishly. 'It is hardly respectable.'

She would have been still more inclined to object had she known that Lesbia's companion had been 'that man' rather than 'those men.'

'What do you mean by all night?' Lesbia retorted, contemptuously; 'it is only just twelve.'

'Only twelve. I thought we were close upon daylight. I have suffered an eternity of agony.'

'I am very sorry you should be ill; but really the sea has been so deliciously calm.'

'I believe I should have suffered less if it had been diabolically rough. Oh, that monotonous flip-flap of the water, that slow heaving of the boat! Nothing could be worse.'

'I am glad to hear you say that, for Don Gomez says we are likely to have a tempest.'

'A tempest!' shrieked Georgie. 'Then let him stop the boat this instant and put me on shore. Tell him to land me anywhere--on the Needles even. I could stop at the lighthouse till morning. A storm at sea will be simply my death.'

'Dear Lady Kirkbank, I was only joking,' said Lesbia, who did not want to be worried by her chaperon's nervous apprehensions: 'so far the night is lovely.'

'Give me a spoonful more brandy, my good creature,'--to Kibble. 'Lesbia, you ought never to have brought me into this miserable state. I consented to staying on board the yacht; but I never consented to sailing on her.'

'You will soon be well, dear Lady Kirkbank; and you will have such an appetite for breakfast to-morrow morning.'

'Where shall we be at breakfast time?'

'Off St. Catherine's Point, I believe--just half way round the island.'

'If we are not at the bottom of the sea,' groaned Georgie.

They were now in the open Channel, and the boat dipped and rose to larger billows than had encountered her course before. Lady Kirkbank lay in a state of collapse, in which life seemed only sustainable by occasional teaspoonfuls of cognac gently tilted down her throat by the patient Kibble.

Lesbia went to her cabin, but with no intention of remaining there. She was firmly convinced that the storm would come, and she meant to be on deck while it was raging. What harm could thunder or lightning, hail or rain, do to her while he was by to protect her? He would be