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

to-morrow--shall we not, Gomez?'

She let her head sink upon his breast, and his arm enfold her. Thus sheltered, she felt safe, thus and thus only. She had thrown her cap over the mills; snapped her fingers at society; cared not a jot what the world might think or say of her. This man would she marry and no other; this man's fortune would she follow for good or evil. He had that kind of influence with women which is almost 'possession.' It smells of brimstone.

'Come, my dear good soul,' said Montesma, smiling at the angry matron, 'why not take things quietly? You have had a good many girls under your wing; and you must know that youth and maturity see life from a different standpoint. In your eyes my old friend Smithson is an admirable match. You measure him by his houses, his stable, his banker's book; but Lesbia would rather marry the man she loves, and take the risks of his fate. I am not a pauper, Lady Kirkbank, and the home to which I shall take my love is pretty enough for a princess of the blood royal, and for her sake I shall grow richer yet,' he added, with his eyes kindling; 'and if you care to pay us a visit next February in our Parisian apartment I will promise you as pleasant a nest as you can wish to occupy.'

'How do I know that you will ever bring her back to Europe?' said Lady Kirkbank, piteously. 'How do I know that you will not bury her alive in your savage country, among blackamoors, like those horrid sailors, over there--kill her, perhaps, when you are tired of her?'

At these words of Lady Kirkbank's, flung out at random, Montesma blanched, and his deep black eye met hers with a strangely sinister look.

'Yes,' she cried, hysterically--'kill her, kill her! You look as if you could do it.'

Lesbia nestled closer to her lover's heart.

'How dare you say such things to him,' she cried, angrily. '_I_ trust him, don't you see; trust him with my whole heart, with all my soul. I shall be his wife to-morrow, for good or evil.'

'Very much for evil, I'm afraid,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'Perhaps you will be kind enough to come to your cabin and take off that ball gown, and make yourself just a little less disreputable in outward appearance, while I get a cup of tea.'

Lesbia obeyed, and went down to her cabin, where Kibble was waiting with a fresh white muslin frock and all its belongings, laid out ready for her mistress, sorely perplexed at the turn which affairs were taking. She had never liked Horace Smithson, although he had given her tips which were almost a provision for her old age; but she had thought it a good thing that her mistress, who was frightfully extravagant, should marry a millionaire; and now they were sailing over the sea with a lot of coloured sailors, and the millionaire was left on shore.

Lady Kirkbank went into the saloon, where breakfast was laid ready, and where the steward was in attendance with that air of being absolutely unconscious of any domestic disturbance, which is the mark of a well-trained servant.

Lesbia appeared in something less than an hour, newly dressed and fresh looking, in her pure white gown, her brown hair bound in a coronet round her small Greek head. She sat down by Lady Kirkbank's side, and tried to coax her into good humour.

'Why can't you take things pleasantly, dear?' she pleaded. 'Do now, like a good soul. You heard him say he was well off, and that he will take me to Paris next winter, and you can come to us there on your way from Cannes, and stay with us till Easter. It will be so nice when the Prince and all the best people are in Paris. We shall only stay in Cuba till the fuss about my running away is all over, and people have forgotten, don't you know. As for Mr. Smithson, why should I have any more compunction about jilting him than he had about that poor Miss Trinder? By-the-bye, I want you to send him back all his presents for me. They are almost all in Arlington Street. I brought nothing with me except my engagement ring,' looking down at the half-hoop of diamonds, and pulling it off her fingers as she talked. 'I had a kind of presentiment----'

'You mean that you had made up your mind to throw him over.'

'No. But I felt there were breakers ahead. It might have come to throwing myself into the sea. Perhaps you would have liked that better than what has happened.'

'I don't know, I'm sure. The whole thing is disgraceful. London will ring with the scandal. What am I to say to Lady Maulevrier, to your brother? And pray how do you propose to get married at Havre? You cannot be married in a French town by merely holding up your finger. There are no registry offices. I am sure I have no idea how the thing is done.'

'Don Gomez has arranged all that--everything has been thought of--everything has been planned. A steamer will take us to St. Thomas, and another steamer will take us on to Cuba.'

'But the marriage--the licence?'

'I tell you everything has been provided for. Please take this ring and send it to Mr. Smithson when you go back to England.'

'Send it to him yourself. I will have nothing to do with it.'

'How dreadfully disagreeable you are,' said Lesbia, pouting, 'just because I am marrying to please myself, instead of to please you. It is frightfully selfish of you.'

Montesma came in at this moment. He, too, had dressed himself freshly, and was looking his handsomest, in that buccaneer style of costume which he wore when he sailed the yacht. He and Lesbia breakfasted at their ease, while Lady Kirkbank reclined in her bamboo arm-chair, feeling very unhappy in her mind and far from well. Neptune and she could not accommodate themselves.

After a leisurely breakfast, enlivened by talk and laughter, the cabin windows open, the sun shining, the freshening breeze blowing in, Lesbia and Don Gomez went on deck, and he reclined at her feet while she read to him from the pages of her favourite Keats, read languidly, lazily, yet exquisitely, for she had been taught to read as well as to sing. The poetry seemed to have been written on purpose for them; and the sky and the atmosphere around them seemed to have been made for the poetry. And so, with intervals of strolling on the deck, and an hour or so dawdled away at luncheon, and a leisurely afternoon tea, the day wore on to sunset, and they went back to Keats, while Lady Kirkbank sulked and slept in a corner of the saloon.

'This is the happiest day of my life,' Lesbia murmured, in a pause of their reading, when they had dropped Endymion's love to talk of their own.

'But not of mine, my angel. I shall be happier still when we are far away on broader waters, beyond the reach of all who can part us.'

'Can any one part us, Gomez, now that we have pledged ourselves to each other?' she asked, incredulously.

'Ah, love, such pledges are sometimes broken. All women are not lion-hearted. While the sea is smooth and the ship runs fair, all is easy enough; but when tempest and peril come--that is the test, Lesbia. Will you stand by me in the tempest, love?'

'You know that I will,' she answered, with her hand locked in his two hands, clasped as with a life-long clasp.

She could not imagine any severe ordeal to be gone through. If Maulevrier heard of her elopement in time for pursuit, there would be a fuss, perhaps--an angry bother raging and fuming. But what of that? She was her own mistress. Maulevrier could not prevent her marrying whomsoever she pleased.

'Swear that you will hold to me against all the world,' he said, passionately, turning his head to look across the stern of the vessel.

'Against all the world,' she answered, softly.

'I believe your courage will be tested before long,' he said; and then he cried to the skipper, 'Crowd on all sail, Tomaso. That boat is chasing us.'

Lesbia sprang to her feet, looking as he looked to a spot of vivid white on the horizon. Montesma had snatched up a glass and was watching that distant spot.

'It is a steam-yacht,' he said. 'They will catch us.'

He was right. Although the _Cayman_ strained every timber so that her keel cut through the water like a boomerang, wind and steam beat wind without steam. In less than an hour the steam-yacht was beside the _Cayman_, and Lord Maulevrier and Lord Hartfield had boarded Mr. Smithson's deck.

'I have come to take you and Lady Kirkbank back to Cowes, Lesbia,' said Maulevrier. 'I'm not going to make any undue fuss about this little escapade of yours, provided you go back with Hartfield and me at once, and pledge yourself never to hold any further communication with Don Gomez de Montesma.'

The Spaniard was standing close by, silent, white as death, but ready to make a good fight. That pallor of the clear olive skin was not from want of pluck; but there was the deadly knowledge of the ground he stood upon, the doubt that any woman, least of all such a woman as Lady Lesbia Haselden, could be true to him if his character and antecedents were revealed to her. And how much or how little these two men could tell her about himself or his past life was the question which the next few minutes would solve.

'I am not going back with you,' answered Lesbia. 'I am going to Havre with Don Gomez de Montesma. We are to be married there as soon as we arrive.'

'To be married--at Havre,' cried Maulevrier. 'An appropriate place. A sailor has a wife in every port, don't you know.'

'We had better go down to the cabin,' said Hartfield, laying his hand upon his friend's shoulder. 'If Lady Lesbia will be good enough to come with us we can tell her all that we have to tell quietly there.'

Lord Hartfield's tone was unmistakeable. Everything was known.

'You can talk at your ease here,' said Montesma, facing the two men with a diabolical recklessness and insolence of manner. 'Not one of these fellows on board knows a dozen sentences of English.'

'I would rather talk below, if it is all the same to you, Señor; and I should be glad to speak to Lady Lesbia alone.'

'That you shall not do unless she desires it,' answered Montesma.

'No, he shall hear all that you have to say. He shall hear how I answer you,' said Lesbia.

Lord Hartfield shrugged his shoulders.

'As you please,' he said. 'It will make the disclosure a little more painful than it need have been; but that cannot be helped.'


CHAPTER XLIV.


'OH, SAD KISSED MOUTH, HOW SORROWFUL IT IS!'

They all went down to the saloon, where Lady Kirkbank sat, looking the image of despair, which changed to delighted surprise at sight of Lord Hartfield and his friend.

'Did you give your consent to my sister's elopement with this man, Lady Kirkbank?' Maulevrier asked, brusquely.

'I give my consent! Good gracious! no. He has eloped with me ever so much more than with your sister. She