Major Vigoureux

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He stepped to his writing-table and struck on a small hand-bell.
Promptly on the summons Sergeant Archelaus appeared in the doorway; so
promptly, indeed, that he might have found it hard, under
cross-examination, to rebut the charge of having stood listening
outside.

The Lord Proprietor, however, was in no condition to put a searching
question. He arose, gasping, his eyes rolling from the Commandant to
Archelaus and back. He felt for his hat like a man groping in the dark,
clutched it, and set it on his head with an experimental air, as though
it would not have entirely surprised him to find his feet in the place
of his head.

"I suppose," he stammered, "it has occurred to you that you may pay for
this?"

"It occurred to me," answered the Commandant, coolly and amiably, "that
you might threaten it."

"You shall, by God!"

The Commandant bowed.

"You shall certainly repent this, sir." The Lord Proprietor crammed his
hat on his head.

"May I ask you to observe that my servant is standing in the doorway?"

Sir Caesar turned, shot a glance at Archelaus, and for an instant
appeared to be on the point of including master and man in one
denunciation. But either he thought better of it or his rage choked
him. With a final tap on the crown of his hat, to settle it firmly on
his brows, he strode past the rigid figure by the threshold and out
into the open air.

He had never been so outraged! For fifty or a hundred yards, as he
descended the hill, his fury almost blinded him. His face was
congested; the back of his neck swollen and purple, as though apoplexy
threatened. His ears showed red as a turkey's wattles. He stumbled on
the ill-paved path. What! To be lectured thus by a man whose continued
residence on the Islands was a public scandal--a fellow who, past all
usefulness, lived on in lazy desuetude, content to take the taxpayers'
money while doing nothing in return! And the worst--the gall, the
wormwood of it--was that this despised foe had silenced him--nay, had
silenced him almost contemptuously. "But wait a bit, my fine fellow!"
swore the Lord Proprietor, blundering down the hill. "Wait until we
hear what the War Office has to say about your precious garrison; or
until, failing satisfaction there, I get a question asked in Parliament
about you!"

Could the Lord Proprietor have looked back at this moment into the room
where sat the victorious enemy, he might have been in some measure
consoled.

The Commandant, having dismissed Archelaus with a wave of the hand,
waited while the door closed, and dropping into the chair before his
writing-table, bowed his head upon his hands.... Oh, it is easy to talk
lightly of riches, and of the power that riches give! But in this world
it is not so easy for a man with just one penny in his pocket to stand
up against an enemy solidly backed by a banking account. He feels that
though his cause be right and his conscience clear, his position is
precarious: that the world, if it knew the truth, would regard him
almost as an imposter. The feeling may be unreasonable, the fear
cowardly; but there it is, and it had cost the Commandant all his pluck
to face the encounter out. Moreover, his conscience was not clear.

Sir Caesar, too, had (all unwittingly) planted an arrow and left it to
rankle. "Old enough to be her father!" The Commandant shut his lips
hard upon the pain. He could not expel it: he knew it would awake again
in the watches of the night: but for the present he must ignore it. He
had a second ordeal to face.

As he sat there for a minute or two, his face resting on his hands, his
spirit abandoned to weakness, he heard the steady ticking of the clock
on the chimney-piece behind him. He counted the strokes, and all of a
sudden they recalled him to the present. He pulled himself together,
stood up, and, reaching down a clothes-brush from its hook beside the
door, walked over to the chimney-piece and to a small mirror that stood
behind the clock.

"Old enough to be her father." Again, as he caught sight of his face in
the glass the smart revived; but again he expressed it, and fell to
brushing his worn tunic with extreme care. It had always been his
practice to dress punctiliously before going into action, even on dark
nights in front of Sevastopol, where all niceties of dress were lost at
once in the slush of the trenches. His forage-cap received almost as
careful a brushing as his tunic: and from his cap he turned his
attention to the knees of his trousers and to his boots, one of which
was cracked, albeit not noticeably. He had half a mind to black its
edges over with pen and ink, but refrained. Somehow it suggested
imposture, and to-day he winced sensitively away from the first hint of
imposture. He must walk down-hill delicately, like Agag. To-morrow
Harvey, the Garland Town cobbler, would repair the damage with a couple
of stitches, at the cost of one penny: and the Commandant reflected
with a melancholy smile that he possessed precisely that sum.

His toilet complete, he took a last look in the mirror to assure
himself that his face betrayed none of the anxiety eating at his heart.
It was paler than ordinary, but calm. He drew a long breath, and walked
out to the front door. At his feet the chimneys of the small town sent
up their mid-day smoke; beyond, the Atlantic twinkled with its
innumerable smile. The hour was come. As he stepped out upon the road
he cast a glance to right and left along his deserted batteries, and
answered the smile of Ocean whimsically, ruefully. If only, as an
artilleryman, he could have summoned Mr. Fossell's Bank by a dropping
shot! This business of hand-to-hand assault belonged by rights to
another branch of the service.

Mr. Fossell stood behind the counter in conference with a junior clerk,
and the sunshine pouring through the windows--the only plate-glass
windows in Garland Town--gilded the dome of Mr. Fossell's bald head. As
the Commandant entered, Mr. Fossell looked up and nodded pleasantly, in
a neighbourly way, albeit with a touch of ironical interrogation. He
had heard gossip from his friend Pope of the doings on Garrison Hill,
and, so far as he allowed himself to be jocose, he meant his glance to
be interpreted. "Well, you are a pretty fellow! And pray what account
are you going to give of yourself?" But very different thoughts
preoccupied the Commandant, and his fears took alarm.

"Good morning," said the Commandant, and forced a smile. "You have been
expecting me, I hope?"

"Dear, dear!" Mr. Fossell affected surprise. "You don't tell me that
pay-day has come round again already?" This again, was a form of
pleasantry which he repeated month after month; but to-day he slightly
over-acted it.

"The--the money is here?" stammered the Commandant.

"My dear Major, I hope so--I sincerely hope so," Mr. Fossell answered,
with a humorous look around him. "I do most sincerely trust we may be
able to meet your demand for--let me see, fifteen-eighteen-six, is it
not?--without being forced to put up the shutters." Mr. Fossell
chuckled quietly.

The Commandant drew a long breath.

"Always supposing," resumed Mr. Fossell, "that the draft is in order,
as usual; on which point, to tell you the truth, I have been too busy
to satisfy myself. But the paper arrived two days ago, and is in my
office--if you will excuse me for a moment."

He stepped towards a door at the back, panelled with frosted glass,
opened it, and disappeared into his office. The Commandant waited.
Three minutes passed.

"Very fine weather, sir, for the time of the year," said the clerk,
blotting an entry and looking up from his ledger.

"Eh? Oh, certainly ... yes, very fine indeed." The Commandant recalled
himself with a painful effort.

"And the glass steady as a rock." The clerk closed a smaller book at
his elbow and replaced it in a line of similar volumes on a shelf above
the desk behind him. "I saw you out, sir, in your boat, the day before
yesterday, to the west of Saaron--fishing for bass, or so I took the
liberty of guessing."

"For bass?... Yes, oh, most decidedly."

"Knowing fish, the bass!" hazarded the young man, combing his
side-locks with his pen and carefully bestowing it behind his ear. "You
found the water a bit too clear, sir, I expect?"

"So far as I remember--" began the Commandant, and paused. (What on
earth was delaying Fossell?)

"You will excuse me, sir, but might I ask what bait you employ as a
rule?"

The Commandant answered that for preference he used sand-eels. The
clerk replied that sand-eels took some getting; and that, if the remark
wouldn't be taken amiss, it was all very well to talk of sand-eels when
you were in a position to employ a couple of men to spend half a day in
netting them for you; but that for a young chap in his position,
sand-eels were out of the question.

"There's the bank-hours, to begin with," he wound up, lucidly; "and,
besides, when you've caught 'em they're the most perishable bait
going."

The Commandant incoherently promised to reserve a portion of his next
catch, and to send Archelaus with a creelful; all this with his eyes
wandering in desperation to the glass door. The young man was profuse
in thanks.

"You will excuse my discussing sport with you, sir? Sport, they say,
puts all men on a level--though, of course, I should not dream of
claiming----"

But at this point the glass door opened, and Mr. Fossell emerged,
briskly, holding what appeared to be a fair-sized stone.

"How will you take it?" he asked, depositing this upon the counter.

"I beg your pardon?" the Commandant stammered, his eyes riveted on the
stone.

"Notes or gold?" Mr. Fossel picked the specimen up, and rubbed it
gently with his sleeve. "Now, that's a queer thing, eh? My
brother-in-law sent it to me last week, and I've been using it for a
paper-weight, not being a scientific man. But just you look into it. He
tells me there are hundreds lying about where he lives--Ogwell, the
place is, in Devonshire, just behind Newton Abbot--and that they're
called madrepores. He's a humorous fellow, too, is my brother-in-law.
You see the joke, of course?"

"I can't say that I do, exactly," the Commandant confessed.

"Good gracious! Fossil--Fossell: this is a fossil, you see, and I'm
called Fossell: and so he sends it to me. He has made a good deal of
fun out of my name before now, in his humorous way. Not that I mind, of
course."

"I dare say not. Did you say that the papers were all right?"

"The papers?... Yes, of course, the papers are all right. Will you take
it in notes or gold?" "In gold, if you please." The Commandant caught
at the edge of the counter, while his heart leapt, and the bank
premises seemed to whirl around him.

"Fifteen-eighteen-six ... be so good as to verify it, if you please,"
said Mr. Fossell, counting out the coins--the blessed coins! "But I
want you just to take a look into the thing. Looks like a piece of
coral, eh? See the delicate lines of it? And my brother-in-law tells me
it was once alive--a kind of fish--and got itself embedded in this
piece of limestone because it was too lazy to move. A lesson in
that"--Mr. Fossell wagged his head sagely--"if we choose to take it! To
be sure, it happened thousands of years ago; but there it is--and here
are we. For my part, I don't look at things humorously like my
brother-in-law. I like to find a serious moral where I can."

The Commandant counted the coins and dropped them into his pocket.
Their weight seemed to make a man of him again. He bent and affected to
examine the madrepore.

Mr. Fossell bent also. He was on the point of asking--in a low voice,
that the clerk might not overhear--for an explanation of Miss Gabriel's
gossip. But at this juncture a client entered, and the Commandant
escaped. He went up the hill with a new centre of gravity: so different
is a load in the pocket from a load on the heart.

CHAPTER XX

THE GUITAR AND THE CASEMENT

"A parcel for you, sir!"

Sergeant Archelaus had spied the Commandant coming up the hill, and met
him on the barrack doorstep with the news.

"A parcel?" The Commandant had walked straight from the bank to Mr.
Tregaskis' shop, and there paid his account; but he had made no
purchases. "There must be some mistake, Archelaus; I have ordered
nothing in the town."

"From the mainland, sir."

"God bless my soul!"

"Yes, sir, and marked 'Fragile'; a good-sized box, but uncommon light
to handle. The steamer brought it across this morning, and I've carried
it into the office and placed hammer and chisel handy."

"Now what in the world can this mean?" asked the Commandant, a minute
later, after studying the box and its label. He turned to Archelaus,
who had followed him into the office in a state of suppressed
excitement. "It is certainly addressed to me; and yet--It must be
half-a-dozen years, Archelaus, since anyone sent me a parcel from the
mainland."

"There's but one way to discover," said Archelaus, picking up the
chisel. "Shall I open it, sir?"

"No; give it to me." The Commandant took the tools from him and easily
pried open the lid, for the scantling was light, almost flimsy. Within
lay an object in an oilskin case, by the shape of it, apparently a
violin; and yet somewhat larger than a violin.

Yes, certainly it was a musical instrument; and the Commandant had no
sooner made sure of this than with his hand on the string that tied the
wrapper, he paused.

"It is evident, Archelaus"--his tone betrayed some
disappointment--"that this parcel belongs to Miss Cara. Having no
address of her own that could be given with safety, she has ordered it
to be sent to me."

"Ben't you even going to open and take a look at it?" asked Archelaus,
as his master slowly replaced it in the box.

"I think not.... Miss Cara will call for it, no doubt, since no doubt
she has been watching for the steamer's arrival."

Archelaus withdrew, reluctantly, not without a sense of expectation
cheated. Nor, as it proved, was his grievance altogether groundless.
The Commandant stood for a minute or so in a brown study, eyeing the
box. Then, his curiosity overmastering him, he reached out and drew the
parcel forth again; turned it over in his hands, and very slowly undid
the strings, which were of green ribbon.

The wrapper fell apart, disclosing a guitar.

The instrument was clearly an old one, and, as clearly of considerable
value, being inlaid with tortoise-shell and mother-of-pearl in delicate
arabesques that must have cost its unknown maker many months, if not
whole years, of patient labour. Its varnish, smooth and transparent as
finest glass, belonged to the same date, and had been laid on, if not
by the same hand, by one no less careful. Something more than a
craftsman's pride had surely inspired the exquisite workmanship, the
deft and joyous pattern that chased itself in and out as though smiling
at its own intricacy. A gift for the artist's mistress, perhaps? Or a
toy for some dead and gone princess?... Yet it had been played upon,
and recently. One or two of its relaxed strings showed evidences of
fraying; and the sender had tied a small packet of new strings around
the neck.

The Commandant, after peering into its pattern for a while, held the
guitar out at arm's length; and, holding it so, broke into a short
laugh--at the thought that this thing had been sent to him.

Yet, here it was. Undoubtedly it belonged to Vashti, and his heart
leapt at the thought that she would be coming to fetch it. For three
days he had been missing her. It seemed that she had chosen to pass out
of his life as suddenly, as waywardly, as she had invaded it; that,
crossing the threshold of Saaron Farm, she had closed its door upon him
and upon a brief episode to be remembered by him henceforth as a dream
only--a too happy dream.

"Ah, had we never met--or, having met,
Had I been wiser or thy heart less wild!"

He had pulled home that Sunday night, to brood alone over a half-dead
fire; and, brooding there, had surmised what the morrow made
certain--that she had taken with her yet more than she had even
brought; that even what colour, what small interest, had formerly
cheered the daily round on Garrison Hill and made it tolerable, was now
gone out of it forever.

Well, for good or ill, this, at all events, would need to be endured
but a little while longer. His discharge was in sight. He had posted
his letter.

He did not tell himself that but for Vashti it had never been written.
Or, if this crossed his mind, it suggested no more than gratitude.
Quite unwittingly she had helped him play the man. He had done the
right thing, let follow what might.

He could not force his mind upon possible consequences, to face them or
to fret over them. Between this present hour and then, one thought,
like a bright angel, stood in the way. Vashti was coming!

Ah, but when? Would she come openly, by day, as she had invaded
Inniscaw?... He spent the afternoon in his office, sorting out useless
correspondence, clearing desks, drawers, pigeon-holes of the
accumulations of years, unconsciously preparing for the day of his
discharge. It kept his thoughts employed, and he worked hard--reading
through the dusty papers, tearing them up, consigning some to the
waste-paper basket others to the fire, which by-and-by grew sullen
under its task. Twilight fell.... She would come, then, after dusk, and
secretly--mooring her boat in the hiding-place under the Keg of Butter
Battery, away from inquisitive eyes. At half-past five Archelaus
brought him his tea. At six, having washed and refreshed himself, the
Commandant fell to work again more doggedly. Only now and again he
broke off for a few moments to listen. But Vashti did not come.

He worked until half-past nine. He heard the clock strike the half-hour
from the chimney-piece, and looked up almost in dismay. It was certain
now that she would not come. Of a sudden, as though to hide from him
the full measure of his disappointment, as he had been hiding from
himself the full eagerness of his hopes, a loathing took him--a savage
scorn of his useless labour. He stared at his grimed hands with a
shiver of disgust, and, rising impatiently, swept together the
fragments of paper strewn about the floor, tossed them upon the dying
fire, and went off to his room for another wash.

She would not come; and there remained yet an hour between him and his
usual bed-time. Returning to his office, he met Archelaus on the
stairs.

"Going to bed, eh?" asked the Commandant.

"Ay, sir," Archelaus answered, and paused for that remark on the
weather which, in the Islands, always goes with "Good morning" or "Good
night." "Glass don't vary very much, and wind don't vary, though
seemin' to me it's risin' a little. Still in the nor'west it is; and
here ends another day."

The Commandant looked at him sharply, but passed downstairs with no
more than a "Good night." So Archelaus, too, was feeling life to be
empty?... Archelaus had bewailed the past before now, and the vanished
glories of the garrison, but never the tedium of his present lot.

The Commandant, on re-entering his office, did a very unusual thing. It
has been said that he could no longer afford himself tobacco. But an
old briar pipe lay on the chimney-piece among a litter of notes and
memoranda that had escaped the afternoon's holocaust. He took it up
wistfully, and, searching in a jar, at the end of the shelf, found a
few crumbs of tobacco. Scraped together with care, they all but filled
the bowl. He lit the dry stuff from a spill--the last scrap of paper to
be sacrificed--and sank, puffing, into his worn arm-chair.

It was in his mind to map out his domestic expenditure for the coming
month; for the settlement with Mr. Tregaskis had made a desperate
inroad upon his funds in hand, and he gravely doubted that even with
the severest pinching he would be able to remit the usual allowance to
his sister-in-law. The question had to be faced ... he was not afraid
of it ... and yet his thoughts shirked it and wandered away, despite
all effort to rally them. "Old enough to be her father...." He had
foreseen that these words would awake to torment him; but he was not
prepared for the insistency with which the pain stirred, now when long
toil should have deadened it--now when, as the clock told him that his
hopes for to-day were vain, he realised how fondly all the while he had
been building on them.

"Old enough to be her father."--For distraction from the maddening
refrain he rose up, drew the guitar again from its box, unwrapped it,
and took it back to his chair for another examination. He noticed the
wrapper as he laid it aside. It was new; the material new, the
stitching new. She had sent for the instrument with a purpose, and the
oilskin case had been made with a purpose.... How went the old song?--

"Were I but young for thee, as I haz been,
We should have been gallopin' down in your green.
And linkin' it owre the lily-white lea;
And ah, gin I were but young for thee!"

Of a sudden he sat up stiffly, at the sound of a tap-tap on the
window-pane behind him.

Yes, decidedly the sound came from the window. The wind--as Archelaus
had said--was rising; but this was no wind. Someone stood outside there
in the darkness. He sprang up, stepped to the casement and threw it
open. For a moment his eyes distinguished nothing. He peered again and
drew back a little as a figure stepped close to the sill, out of the
night.

"You!"

"Who else?" answered Vashti, with a little laugh. "Give me your hand,
please." He stretched it out obediently, and she took it and clambered
in over the sill.

"It is cold outside," she announced, looking around her with something
between a shiver and a deliberate shake of her cloak. It was the same
furred cloak in which she had come ashore from the _Milo_. Spray clung
to it; and there was spray, too, on her hair. It shone in the
lamplight.

"The wind has been getting up ever since sundown," she announced. "I
have had a pretty stiff crossing; but the boat is all right, under the
Keg of Butter." Then, as he still stared at her, "You don't keep too
warm a fire, my friend."

"I had given you up, and was getting ready for bed."

"Then you expected me? The guitar has come?"

Before he could answer she had caught sight of it, and picking it up
from the arm-chair where the Commandant had dropped it, settled herself
and laid the instrument across her lap.

"Also," she went on, throwing back her cloak, while she examined and
tightened the strings, "I will confess that your guest is hungry." She
looked up with a laugh. "In fact I came not only to fetch my guitar,
but to sup with you and tell you of my doings."

The Commandant turned to the door. His face had suddenly grown gray and
desperate.

"Ah, yes--supper, to be sure!" he said, and strode from the room.

As the latch fell behind him, Vashti glanced over her shoulder, put the
guitar aside, and arose to stir the fire. The poker plunged into a heap
of flaked ashes. "Paper? But the whole grate is choked with it. And,
what is more, the whole room smells of burnt paper."

She turned about, and, with her back to the hearth, surveyed the room
suspiciously. Her gaze fell upon the waste-paper basket, heaped high
and brimming over with torn documents. This puzzled her again, and her
brow contracted in a frown. But just then she caught the sound of the
Commandant's footsteps returning along the flagged passage, and bent
anew over the fire.

The Commandant appeared in the doorway with a plate of ship's biscuit
in his hand, and on his face a flush of extreme embarrassment.

"Do you know, I really am ashamed of myself," he began with a stammer,
holding out the plate. "But Archelaus has gone to bed, and--and this is
all I can find."

"Capital!" she answered gaily. "Let us break into the back premises and
forage. After my burglarious entry that will just suit my mood."

"I'm afraid--" he began, and hesitated. "I am very much afraid--" There
was unmistakable trouble in his voice, and again he came to a halt.

Vashti straightened herself up. Her eyes were on him as he set the
plate down on the table, but he avoided them, attempting a small forced
laugh. The laugh was a dead failure. Silence followed it, and in the
silence he felt horribly aware that she was grasping the truth--the
humiliating truth; that moment by moment the scales were falling from
her eyes that still persistently sought his.

The silence was broken by the noise of a poker falling against the
fender. He started, met her gaze for a moment, and again averted his.

"You don't mean to say----"

Her voice trailed off, in pitiful surmise. Silence again; and in the
silence he heard her sink back into the arm chair--and knew no more
until, at the sound of one strangling sob, terrible to hear, he found
himself standing at the arm of her chair and bending over her.

"My dear!" He used the familiar Island speech. "My dear, you must
not--please!"

"And I have been living on you, ruining you!"

"My dear ... it is all paid for. It was paid for to-day. If ever a man
was glad of his guest, I am he."

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