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

decision, all those grand qualites which are needed by the seaman who has to contend with the fury of the elements?

Mr. Smithson and his guests had breakfasted too late for the possibility of luncheon. They were in Cowes Roads by one o'clock. A fleet of yachts had arrived during their absence, and the scene was full of life and gaiety. Lady Lesbia held a _levée_ at the afternoon tea, and had a crowd of her old admirers around her--adorers whose presence in no wise disturbed Horace Smithson's peace. He would have been content that his wife should go through life with a herd of such worshippers following in her footsteps. He knew the aimless innocence, the almost infantine simplicity of the typical Johnnie, Chappie, _Muscadin, Petit Creve, Gommeux_--call him by what name you will. From these he feared no evil. But in that one follower who gave no outward token of his worship he dreaded peril. It was Montesma he watched, while dragoons with close-cropped hair, and imbecile youths with heads rigid in four-inch collars, were hanging about Lady Lesbia's low bamboo chair, and administering obsequiously to the small necessities of the tea-table.

It was while this tea-table business was going on that Mr. Smithson took the opportunity of setting his mind at rest, were it possible, as to the merits of Captain Wilkinson. Among his visitors this afternoon there was the owner of three or four racing yachts--a man renowned for his victories, at home and abroad.

'I think you knew something of my captain, Wilkinson, before I engaged him,' said Smithson, with assumed carelessness.

'I know every skipper on board every boat in the squadron,' answered his friend. 'A good fellow, Wilkinson--thoroughly honest fellow.'

'Honest; oh yes, I know all about that. But how about his seamanship? His certificates were wonderfully good, but they are not everything.

'Everything, my dear fellow,' cried the other; 'they are next to nothing. But I believe Wilkinson is a tolerable sailor.'

This was not encouraging.

'He has never been unlucky, I believe.'

'My dear Smithson, you are a great authority in the City, but you are not very well up in the records of the yachting world, or you would know that your Captain Wilkinson was skipper on the _Orinoco_ when she ran aground on the Chesil Bank, coming home from Cherbourg Regatta, fifteen lives lost, and the yacht, in less than half an hour, ground to powder. That was rather a bad case, I remember; for though it was a tempestuous night, the accident would never have happened if Wilkinson had not mistaken the lights. So you see his Trinity House papers didn't prevent his going wrong.'

Good heavens! This was the strongest confirmation of Montesma's charge. The man was a stupid man, an incapable man, a man to whose intelligence and care human life should never be trusted. A fig for his honesty! What would honesty be worth in a hurricane off the Chesil Beach? What would honesty serve a ship spitted on the Jailors off Jersey? Montesma was right. If the _Cayman_ was to make a trip to St. Malo she must be navigated by competent men. Horace Smithson hated foreign sailors, copper-faced ruffians, with flashing black eyes which seemed to threaten murder, did you but say a rough word to them; sleek, raven-haired scoundrels, with bowie-knives in their girdles, ready for mutiny. But, after all, life is worth too much to be risked for a prejudice, a sentiment.

Perhaps that St. Malo business might be avoided; and then there need be no change in captain or crew. The yacht must be safe enough lying at anchor in the roadstead. By-and-by, when the visitors had departed, and Mr. Smithson was reposefully enjoying his tea by Lady Lesbia's side, he approached the subject.

'Do you really care about crossing to St. Malo after this--really prefer the idea to Ryde?'

'Infinitely,' exclaimed Lesbia, quickly. 'Ryde would only be Cowes ever again--a lesser Cowes; and I thought when you first proposed it that the plan was rather stupid, though I did not want to be uncivil and say so. But I was delighted with Don Gomez de Montesma's amendment, substituting St. Malo for Ryde. In the first place the trip across will be delicious'--Lady Kirkbank gave a faint groan--'and in the second place I am dying to see Brittany.'

'I doubt if you will highly appreciate St. Malo. It is a town of many and various smells.'

'But I want to smell those foreign smells of which one hears much. At least it is an experience. We need not be on shore any longer than we like. And I want to see that fine rocky coast, and Chateaubriand's tomb on the what's-its-name. So nice to be buried in that way.'

'Then you have set your heart on going to St. Malo, and would not like any change in our plan?'

'Any change will be simply detestable,' answered Lesbia, all the more decidedly since she suspected a desire for change on the part of Mr. Smithson.

She was in no amiable humour this afternoon. All her nerves seemed strained to their utmost tension. She was irritated, tremulous with nervous excitement, inclined to hate everybody, Horace Smithson most of all. In her cabin a little later on, when she was changing her gown for dinner, and Kibble was somewhat slow and clumsy in the lacing of the bodice, she wrenched herself from the girl's hands, flung herself into a chair, and burst into a flood of passionate tears.

'O God! that I were on one of those islands in the Caribbean Sea--an island where Europeans never come--where I might lie down among the poisonous tropical flowers, and sleep the rest of my days away. I am sick to death of my life here; of the yacht, the people--everything.'

'This air is too relaxing, Lady Lesbia,' the girl murmured, soothingly; 'and you didn't have your natural rest last night. Shall I get you a nice strong cup of tea?'

'Tea! no. I have been living upon tea for the last twenty-four hours. I have eaten nothing. My mouth is parched and burning. Oh, Kibble!' flinging her head upon the girl's buxom arm, and letting it rest there, 'what a happy creature you are--not a care--not a care.'

'I'm sure you can't have any cares, Lady Lesbia,' said Kibble, with an incredulous smile, trying to smooth the disordered hair, anxious to make haste with the unfinished toilet, for it was within a few minutes of eight.

'I am full of care. I am in debt--horribly in debt--getting deeper and deeper every day--and I am going to sell myself to the only man who can pay my debts and give me fine houses, and finery like this,' plucking at the _crépe de chine_ gown, with its flossy fringe, its delicate lace, a marvel of artistic expenditure; a garment which looked simplicity itself, and yet was so cleverly contrived as to cost five-and-thirty guineas. The greatest effects in it required to be studied with a microscope.

'But surely, dear Lady Lesbia, you won't marry Mr. Smithson, if you don't love him?'

'Do you suppose love has anything to do with marriages in society?'

'Oh, Lady Lesbia, it would be so unkind to him, so cruel to yourself.'

'Cruel to myself. Yes, I am cruel to myself. I had the chance of happiness a year ago, and I lost it. I have the chance of happiness now--yes, of consummate bliss--and haven't the courage to snatch at it. Take off this horrid gown, Kibble; my head is splitting: I shan't go to dinner.'

'Oh, Lady Lesbia, you are treading on the pearl embroidery,' remonstrated poor Kibble, as Lesbia kicked the new gown from under her feet.

'What does it matter!' she exclaimed with a bitter little laugh. 'It has not been paid for--perhaps it never will be.'

The dinner was silent and gloomy. It was as if a star had been suddenly blotted out of the sky. Smithson, ordinarily so hospitable, had been too much disturbed in mind to ask any of his friends to stay to dinner; so there were only Lady Kirkbank, who was too tired to be lively, and Montesma, who was inclined to be thoughtful. Lesbia's absence, and the idea that she was ill, gave the feast almost a funereal air.

After dinner Smithson and Montesma sat on deck, smoking their cigars, and lazily watching the lights on sea, and the lights on shore; these brilliant in the foreground, those dim in the distance.

'You can telegraph to your Rio Janeiro friend to-morrow morning, if you like,' said Smithson, presently, 'and tell him to send a first-rate skipper and crew. Lady Lesbia has made up her mind to see St. Malo Regatta, and with such a sacred charge I can't be too careful.'

'I'll wire before eight o'clock to-morrow,' answered Montesma, 'You have decided wisely. Your respectable English Wilkinson is an excellent man--but nothing would surprise me less than his reducing your _Cayman_ to matchwood in the next gale.'


CHAPTER XL.


A NOTE OF ALARM.

That strange scene in the old house at Fellside made a profound impression upon Lord Hartfield. He tried to disguise his trouble, and did all in his power to seem gay and at perfect ease in his wife's company; but his mind was full of anxiety, and Mary loved him too well to be for a moment in doubt as to his feelings.

'There is something wrong, Jack,' she said, while they were breakfasting at a table in the verandah, with the lake and the bills in front of them and the sweet morning air around them. 'You try to talk and to be lively, but there is a little perpendicular wrinkle in your forehead which I know as well as the letters of the alphabet, and that little line means worry. I used to see it in the old days, when you were breaking your heart for Lesbia. Why cannot you be frank and confide in me. It is your duty, sir, as my husband.'

'Is it my duty to halve my burdens as well as my joys? How do I know if those girlish shoulders are strong enough to bear the weight of them?'

'I can bear anything you can bear, and I won't be cheated out of my share in your worries. If you were obliged to have a tooth out, I would have one out too, for company.'

'I hope the dentist would be too conscientious to allow that.'

'Tell me your trouble, Hartfield,' she said, earnestly, leaning across the table, bringing her grave intelligent face near to him.

They were quite alone, he and she. The servants had done their ministering. Behind them there was the empty dining-room, in front of them the sunlit panorama of lake and hill. There could not be a safer place for telling secrets.

'Tell me what it is that worries you,' Mary pleaded again.

'I will, dear. After all perfect trust is the best; nay, it is your due, for you are brave enough and true enough to be trusted with secrets that mean life and death. In a word, then, Mary, the cause of my trouble is that old man we saw the other night.'

'Steadman's uncle?'

'Do you really believe that he is Steadman's uncle?'

'My grandmother told me so,' answered Mary, reddening to the roots of her hair.

To this girl, who was the soul of truth, there was deepest shame in the idea that her kinswoman, the woman whom of all the world she most owed reverence and honour, could be deemed capable of