Major Vigoureux

A >> A. T. Quiller Couch >> Major Vigoureux

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

"She is married and lives on Saaron Island. But you know this, of
course? You who seem to know everything about us."

"My sister writes me all the news.... So now," she added smiling, "it
is all explained, and there is no mystery about me after all. Are you
so very much disappointed?"

But the Commandant continued to stare. No mystery? That the fisherman's
daughter with the Island lilt in her voice--well he recalled
it!--should have turned into this apparition of furs and jewels?... And
yet the metamorphosis lay not in the furs and jewels, but in her
careless air of command, of reliance upon her power, beauty,
charm--whatever her woman's secret might be; an air of one accustomed
to move in courts, maybe, or to control great audiences, or to live
habitually with lofty thoughts; an air of one, above all, sure of
herself. The poor Commandant had lived the better part of his life in
exile, but by instinct of breeding he recognised this air at once.
Vashti, however, seemed to mistake his astonishment, for she frowned.

"Well?" she asked, a trifle impatiently.

"Your sister never told us," he stammered. "At least--that is to
say----"

"Do you suppose she was ashamed of me?"

"Ashamed?" he echoed, for indeed no such thought had occurred to him.
If ever a man could have taken _honi soit qui mal y pense_ for his
motto, it was our Commandant.

"Ah, to be sure!" she said slowly, but less in indignation (it seemed)
than in disappointment with him. "Naturally that would be the
explanation to occur to you, living so long in such a place."

She turned on her heel, half contemptuously, and resumed her way,
walking with a yet quicker step than before. The Commandant, aware that
he had offended, but not in the least understanding how, toiled after
her up the steep incline to the garrison gate.

They reached the door of the Barracks. To his surprise it was standing
open, and from behind the ragged blind of his sitting-room--to the left
of the entrance hall--a light shone feebly out upon the fog. He could
not remember that he had lit the lamp there, nor that he had left the
front door open.

Vashti paused upon the doorstep and turned to him:

"My good sir," she said curtly, "run and fetch Mrs. Treacher to me, for
goodness' sake."

He hesitated, on the point of stepping past her to open the door of the
lighted room. Her manner forbade him, and he stood still, there by the
doorstep, gazing after her a moment as she disappeared into the dark
hall. Then, as he heard the door latch rattle gently, he turned to
hurry in search of Mrs. Treacher.

He had taken but a dozen steps, however, when her light footfall
sounded again close behind him. She, too, had turned and was following
him almost at a run.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she gasped.

He swung up his lantern. Her eyes were wide with a kind of horror; and
yet she seemed to be laughing, or ready to laugh.

"Tell you?" he echoed.

"Oh, but it was unkind!"

"But--but, excuse me--what on earth----"

"Why, that you were entertaining ladies!"

"Ladies!"

She nodded, still round-eyed, reproachful. "Two of them--sitting on
your sofa! And, I think--I rather think--one of them is Miss Gabriel!"

CHAPTER VII

TRIBULATIONS OF MRS. POPE AND MISS GABRIEL

"We have only to keep straight on," said Miss Gabriel.

"Ye-es," said Mrs. Pope, less hardily. "I really think the gentlemen
might have waited for us."

"For aught they know," said Miss Gabriel, "it's a matter of life and
death. And we cannot be more than two hundred yards from our own
gates."

"In my opinion," persisted Mrs. Pope, who was apt to turn peevish when
frightened, "a man's first duty is to look after his own."

"Is it?" snapped Miss Gabriel, herself no coward. "Well, you must argue
that out with Mr. Pope, if you haven't made up your minds about it by
this time. For my part, I never wanted a man to look after me, I thank
the Lord."

"It would have been more gallant, and that you must allow." Mrs. Pope
stuck to her point (which is a capital thing to do in a fog), but only
to let it go abruptly a moment later. "Besides," she added, "my new cap
is no better than a pulp already. I can feel it. Sopping isn't the
word."

"Fiddlestick!" said Miss Gabriel. "You and your cap!" She, herself, was
not frightened, only a little nervous. "If you ask me, it's better you
were thinking of those poor souls out on the rocks yonder. Little
enough they'll be thinking, just now, of such things as caps!"

"Of course," hazarded Mrs. Pope, after they had groped their way
forward for twenty paces or so, "if you are quite certain where we
are----"

"We are among the Islands," said Miss Gabriel, tartly, feeling the
roadway with the edge of her shoe, for her sole had just encountered
turf; "and this is one. My dear Charlotte, if you could refrain from
bumping into me at the precise moment when I am standing on one
leg----"

"How can I help it, in this darkness?" whimpered Mrs. Pope.
"Besides"--with sudden spirit--"if you want to stand on one leg, I
shouldn't have thought this the time or the place."

"T'cht!" said Miss Gabriel, striding forward with gathering confidence;
but at the seventh stride or so a sharp exclamation escaped her, as she
stood groping with both hands into the night.

"What's the matter?"

"It's a wall, I think.... I had almost run against it.... Yes, this
must be the wall of Buttershall's garden."

"Are you sure?"

"Certain. We have been bearing away to the right; people always do in a
fog."

"Then if this really is Buttershall's garden--and I only hope and trust
you are not mistaken--we can bear away from it to the left, on purpose,
and then as likely as not we shall find ourselves going straight,"
reasoned Mrs. Pope, lucidly.

"My dear Charlotte"--Miss Gabriel was within an ace of calling her a
fool--"if this is Buttershall's garden----"

"But a moment ago you were sure of it!"

"And so I am. Very well then; since this is Buttershall's garden, we
have only to hold on by the wall and go forward, and that will take
us----"

But here the wall ended, and the sentence with it.

"Ai-ee!"

"Are you hurt?... I said," asserted Mrs. Pope, desperately, and with
conviction, "that one of us would break a limb before we finished."

"It seems to be--yes, it certainly is--a pump." Miss Gabriel's voice
had begun to shake by this time, but she steadied it. "For the moment
I--I half thought it might be a man."

"I would to heaven it were!" said Mrs. Pope, fervently.

"My dear Charlotte!"

"My dear Elizabeth, I mean it. And, what's more, I wouldn't care who he
was. A pump? What earthly use is a pump? It must be Mumford's then, if
it is a pump."

"It can't be."

"Why not?"

"For the simple reason that Mumford's is on the other side of the
road."

"Then we _are_ on the other side of the road, as I have been
maintaining all along."

"Would you mind walking round it?... Yes, you are right. It is
Mumford's pump, for I have just bruised my wrist against the handle.
Can you find the trough?"

"The astonishing thing to me," announced Mrs. Pope, groping her way
with trepidation, "is that nobody shows a light. I don't like to call
people unfeeling; but really, with folks in distress out at sea, and
the guns firing, I wouldn't have believed such callousness."

They made the circuit of Mumford's pump, and assured themselves--for
what the knowledge was worth--that it really was a pump, and Mumford's.
But this cost them dear, for at the end of the circuit, or rather of a
circuit and a half, they had lost all sense of their compass bearings.

"And after all," Mrs. Pope began afresh, her mind working
sympathetically in a circle, "I don't understand what Mumford's pump is
doing on the wrong side of the road."

"Don't be a ninny, Charlotte! Of course, it's not on the wrong side of
the road."

"But you said it was." (Pause.) "You really did say so, Elizabeth, for
I remember it distinctly." (Another pause, and a sigh.) "For my part, I
never pretended to have what they call the bump of locality."

The poor lady prattled on, more and more querulously, and to the
increasing exasperation of Miss Gabriel, who on the whole believed that
they were making for home, yet could not shake off a haunting suspicion
that they were moving in a direction precisely opposite. Moreover, the
behaviour of Mumford's pump troubled her more than she cared to
confess, even to herself. It stood on the right of the road as you went
towards St. Hugh's; but they had encountered it upon the left.
Therefore, either they had been walking off the road, though in the
right direction, or--terrible thought!--somewhere or somehow they had
turned right about-face, and were walking away from St. Hugh's....

As a matter of fact, they were bending away from the road in a line
which would lead them past the rear of their own back gardens. Their
feet no longer trod the causeway. They were on turf, and, so far as
they could feel it in the darkness, the turf seemed to be mounting in a
fairly stiff slope. Miss Gabriel stooped to feel the grass with the
palm of her hand, and just at that moment her ears caught the faint
note of a bell, some way ahead.

She stood erect, with a little cry of dismay.

"That settles it. We have turned round!"

"Why, what makes you think so?"

"Listen to that bell! Can't you hear it?"

"Of course, I hear it?" Mrs. Pope apparently was nettled by the
question. "But I don't see----"

"The church bell--we are walking straight towards Old Town."

"It don't sound to me like the church bell."

"That's because of the fog. Nothing sounds natural in a fog.... The
Vicar is having it rung to alarm the people in Old Town. I heard him
say this very night that it used to be the custom when a wreck went
ashore.... Besides, what other bell could it be? There is no other
bell."

Mrs. Pope was silent, though unconvinced. She did not suggest the
garrison bell, for even to her scattered intelligence it was a thing
incredible that they should at this moment be rounding the slope of
Garrison Hill, at the back of St. Hugh's.

"Anything might happen in a fog like this; and if I don't wake up to
find myself over the cliffs, it's no thanks"--bitterly--"to them we
might have relied on. But I don't believe it's the church bell, not if
you went on your bended knees."

"Then, what do you say to this?" announced Miss Gabriel, triumphantly.

Mrs. Pope would reserve her opinion until she saw what Miss Gabriel had
hold of.

"Railings," said Miss Gabriel. "We are at the corner of Church Lane,
and here's the railing close alongside of us. Now we have only to keep
by the railing and feel our way--if you'll follow me--and we must find
the churchyard gate. The man ringing the bell will certainly have a
lantern, and will take us home."

"I don't fancy churchyards at this time of night," said Mrs. Pope; "and
what's more, I never did."

"You must make up your mind to one, then; that is, unless you prefer to
wait here till morning."

They advanced, feeling their way by the rails, Mrs. Pope close behind
Miss Gabriel's heels. The bell continued tolling, not far away; yet
somehow after three minute's progress they appeared to be no nearer to
it.

"Church Lane was never so long as all this," asserted Mrs. Pope, coming
to a desperate halt; "and you needn't try to persuade me."

"It does seem a long way," Miss Gabriel conceded; "but no doubt the fog
magnifies things."

"You had the same tale just now, about the church bell. For my part, I
don't believe in your church bell, and--listen!"

"Eh?"

"It has stopped ringing!"

So it had. It was too much, perhaps, to say that Miss Gabriel's blood
ran cold, there in the darkness, as Mrs. Pope clutched and clung to
her; but certainly her heart sunk.

"All the better," she said, bravely, clenching her jaw that her teeth
might not be heard to chatter. "Whoever was ringing the bell will be
returning this way presently, and we can ask his help."

But here inspiration came to Mrs. Pope.

"It's my belief," she said, "we are not in Church Lane at all, but in
the churchyard; and these rails don't belong to Church Lane, but to old
Bonaday's grave."

"My dear Charlotte! When we've been following them for at least two
hundred yards!"

"My dear Elizabeth, that's just it. We've been following round and
round them, and at this rate there's no reason why ever we should stop,
in this world."

"You don't say.... But, after all, there's an easy way of proving if
you are right. You walk to the left, feeling round them, and I'll walk
to the right, and then, if it really is Bonaday's grave, we shall
meet."

"Oh, but I couldn't! Elizabeth, if you leave me--if once I lose hold of
you--I shall die next moment."

"Then there's only one thing to be done. We must stay here and cry out
at the top of our voices, and both together."

"Yes, yes.... Why didn't we think of it before?"

"For," argued Miss Gabriel, "a bell doesn't ring of itself; and if we
can hear the bell, very likely the man who was ringing it can hear us."

"Will you begin, Elizabeth? I declare to you my whole cage of teeth is
loose----"

"Help!" called Miss Gabriel. Her voice, despite herself, quavered a
little at first. "Help! Help!"

"Help--help--help!" chirupped Mrs. Pope, much as an extremely nervous
person seeks to attract the attention of a waiter.

"Louder ... much louder. He-lp!"

"Help--help--he-lp! Oh, Elizabeth, and in a churchyard, too!"

"Louder still.... He-el-lp!"

"Help!... It's like waking the dead...."

"He-el-lp!"

"Hi, there! Who is it, and whatever on earth's the matter?" answered a
voice from somewhere on their right.

"Oh, listen, Elizabeth! Heaven be praised!..."

"Who is it?" sounded the voice again, and a dot of light shone through
the wall of fog.

"Answer him, Elizabeth!"

"Him? It isn't a man's voice, but a woman's ... unless the fog.... Hi,
there! Help! Here are two ladies.... Why, it's--it's Mrs. Treacher!"

For the fog had parted suddenly, and through it, as through a breach in
a wall, stepped Mrs. Treacher with a lantern, which she held up close
to their faces.

"Eh? Mrs. Pope and Miss Gabriel? Well, I declare!"

"Bless you, Mrs. Treacher! But, however came you here?"

"Why not?" asked Mrs. Treacher, after a pause.

"Here, in the churchyard!... You don't tell me you've lost your way,
too?"

"No, I don't," answered Mrs. Treacher, shortly, lifting her lantern.
"Churchyard? What churchyard?"

"We thought.... We were under the impression...." Miss Gabriel's voice
rocked a little before she recovered her self-command. "Would you mind
telling us where we are, and what railings are these?"

"You're on Garrison Hill," said Mrs. Treacher, who disliked Miss
Gabriel. "And you have hold of the rails round the old powder magazine.
But what you're tryin' to do with 'em, and at this hour of night, I'll
leave you to explain."

But here, for the first time since their troubles began, Mrs. Pope came
to her companion's help. She did so by leaning back limply against the
railings and declaring that she, for her part, was going to faint.

Mrs. Treacher caught her as she dropped, and with Miss Gabriel's help
supported her up the slope to the Barracks, less than fifty yards
above.

"The Barracks?" exclaimed Miss Gabriel, halting as Mrs. Treacher's
lantern revealed to her through the fast-thinning fog a portion of the
whitewashed facade. "Oh, but I couldn't--on any account whatever!"

"You'll have to," answered Mrs. Treacher, shortly, "that is, unless
you'd rather have her laid outside on the bare road, and in a dead
faint, too."

Indeed, Mrs. Pope was in a state of collapse that silenced all
scruples. Mrs. Treacher--a powerfully-built woman--caught up the all
but inanimate lady in both arms, and bore her into the passage, nodding
to Miss Gabriel to unhitch from its nail a lamp which hung, backed by a
tin reflector, just within the doorway.

"Unhasp the door to the left, please. We'll rest her down in the
Commandant's parlour. There's a sofa--though he do mostly use to keep
his books and papers upon it." She laid down her burden. "Oh, you
needn't fear to look about you! The men folk be all off to the wreck,
and won't be back till Lord knows when."

Miss Gabriel, however, was not looking about her. Her gaze, following
the ray of the lamp as she held it aloft, travelled across the stooping
shoulders of Mrs. Treacher and fastened itself upon a garment of
gaudily-striped woolwork--her antimacassar--lying across the arm of the
sofa where the Commandant had tossed it impatiently.

"Terribly messy a man always is when left to himself," said Mrs.
Treacher, rising and stepping to a corner cupboard. "If he keeps such a
thing as a drop of brandy on the premises, it'll be here, I reckon."

But the cupboard was empty. For the sternest of reasons the Commandant
had, for two or three years past, denied himself the taste of strong
waters.

Mrs. Treacher passed the back of her hand across the bridge of her
nose. "I'll step over to the Castle," she announced, "for a drop of gin
I keep against Treacher's attacks." (Let not Mrs. Treacher's idiom
frighten the reader. She meant only that her husband suffered from an
internal trouble which need not be specified, and that she kept the gin
by her as a precaution.)

"And there's a quill pen of the Commandant's on the writing-table," she
added; "if you'll burn the feather of it under her nose."

She bustled off. Miss Gabriel stepped to the table, picked up the
quill, and held it over the lamp's flame; but her eyes still questioned
the antimacassar. She was bending close to it when Mrs. Pope emitted a
fluttering sigh and lifted her eyelids feebly.

"You are feeling better, dear?" asked Miss Gabriel, solicitously.

At this moment the latch of the door rattled gently. She looked up in
surprise, for Mrs. Treacher could scarcely have gone and returned in so
short a while.

The door opened. On the threshold stood a vision--a woman clad in
furs--a woman with diamonds flashing on her white throat where the furs
parted.

Miss Gabriel gasped.

The apparition stood for a moment, looked her in the eyes, and was
gone, closing the door softly.

Miss Gabriel tottered, and sank back against the sofa's edge.

CHAPTER VIII

A BRIEF REVENGE

"Ladies?" ejaculated the Commandant. "In my quarters?"

Vashti nodded demurely. "I think you might have told me," she said in a
tone of mild reproach.

"But--my dear young lady----"

"Thank you--"

"Hey?"

"--for calling me young." She reached out a hand, and, taking the
lantern from him, held it high so that the beams fell on her face. "It
is many years since our first meeting, and unhappily we have the date
of it fixed. Give me credit that I reminded you; for I don't mind
confessing that, though it hasn't come to a quarrel yet, my
looking-glass and I are not the friends we were."

Here, had the Commandant been a readier man, he might have answered
with a compliment, and a truthful one. For indeed it was a very
beautiful face that the lantern showed him, and--here was the strange
part of the business--it had been growing younger since she stepped off
the ship, and somehow it must have contrived, in spite of the darkness,
to convey a hint of its rejuvenescence, for the word "young" had
slipped from him quite involuntarily.

But, after all, there is nothing so subtle as simplicity, and, after
all, the Commandant managed to imply that she must be a witch.

"Then, my dear young lady," he replied, "since you have spirited these
females into my quarters, I can only ask you to go and spirit them away
again."

She shook her head.

"What! You won't?... Very well, then, I must deal with them, while you
go off with the lantern and search for Mrs. Treacher."

"You are a brave man," said she; "and--and I think--by the look of
them--you are going to have great fun."

The Commandant stood for a moment rubbing his chin and staring after
the lantern, as it vanished in the fog. With a shake of the shoulders
he pulled himself together, marched into the Barracks, and boldly
opened the door.

"Miss Gabriel!"

"Major Vigoureux!"

"Certainly, ma'am--these being my own quarters, unless--" He paused and
gazed around, as if to make sure that his eyes were not deceiving him.

"Yes, yes--and at this time of night. As I was just saying to Charlotte
here, 'Think what a terrible construction one might put on it!'"

The Commandant lifted his eyebrows. ("I behaved like a brute," he
confessed afterwards, "but the woman, a few hours before, had shown no
mercy to me.") "Indeed, ma'am?" said he. "A construction? Then you must
invent one for me, please, since I can think of none."

"We have had the most terrible experience, sir--the most terrible
fright! You have seen Mrs. Treacher?"

"Has anything happened to Mrs. Treacher?"

"No--but it all came about through the fog----"

"--and my husband deserting me," put in Mrs. Pope.

The Commandant passed a hand across his brow. The gesture seemed to
express perplexity; in truth it covered amusement and a kind of fearful
joy in his newly-found talent for dissimulation.

"My dear Mrs. Pope," he answered, his voice faltering a little, "You
don't mean to tell me that your excellent husband----"

"Of course she doesn't," snapped Miss Gabriel. "She means to say that
the gentlemen were escorting us home, but, meeting the coastguard with
the news of this terrible wreck----"

"A wreck, ma'am?"

"Why, God bless the man! Don't you know? Haven't you heard the guns
going?... But of course you have. Mrs. Treacher told me you were down
helping with the boats--you and her husband and Archelaus, though what
help you three supposed yourselves capable of giving," wound up Miss
Gabriel, reverting for a moment to her customary manner, "I don't
pretend to guess."

"As for that," the Commandant answered gravely, "I am happy to tell you
there has been no wreck. True, a vessel in distress--a large liner--had
found herself among the Hell-deeps, of all abominably awkward places.
But by the mercy of Heaven she managed to extricate herself, and has
dropped anchor, not half an hour ago, in the Roads."

Miss Gabriel stared. "The Hell-deeps ... and at anchor in the Roads?"
she repeated stupidly. "Oh, will someone kindly tell me whether I am
standing on my head or my heels! A large liner?--the thing's
impossible! And in a fog that thick you couldn't see your hand before
your face!"

"Are you quite sure, ladies," asked the Commandant, still gravely,
"that you are not exaggerating the thickness of the fog, somewhat?"

"What?" Miss Gabriel took him up, like an echo. "When we started for
home and found we were half-way up Garrison Hill, and all the time
convinced we were at Old Town, in the churchyard!"

The Commandant shook his head; and it must be conceded that he had some
excuse.

"But why in the churchyard?" he asked, gently.

"Because of the bell. If it comes to that"--Miss Gabriel threw herself
desperately on the offensive--"how do you account for the woman we saw
here, just now?"

"I beg your pardon? A--a woman, did you say?" (Oh, Major Vigoureux!)

"Yes, sir--a woman; a bedizened woman."

"My dear Elizabeth," pleaded Mrs. Pope feebly, "are we quite sure that
we saw her?--that it wasn't a--a sort of mistake? It certainly
seemed--for a moment---- But really, you know, there is no one in the
Islands----"

"My dear Charlotte, didn't we see her with our own eyes?"

Mrs. Pope sighed. "It seems to me I have seen such a number of
things--of incredible things--to-night."

"You are sure it wasn't Mrs. Treacher?" suggested the Commandant,
wickedly.

"Mrs. Treacher! Mrs. Trea---- Does Mrs. Treacher go about in silks and
furs and low bodices with a thousand pounds' worth of diamonds on her
abandoned neck?"

"Certainly not to my knowledge. But," said the Commandant, turning, as
the door opened, "you had better ask her for yourself."

Now, it may be that Mrs. Treacher had also allowed Vashti to bewitch
her. At any rate, she cordially hated Miss Gabriel, and she took, then
and there, what she herself called afterwards, a strong line.

"What are they wanting to know now?" she demanded, addressing the
Commandant.

"Miss Gabriel wants to know"--he answered, in a husky voice, while he
pretended to trim the lamp--"if you go about in silks and furs."

"No, I don't," replied Mrs. Treacher, setting down the bottle of gin.
"And what's more, I don't go a-sheevoing it around Garrison Hill in the
small hours, and a-holding on to railings, and a-clammering for strong
drink."

"That will do, Mrs. Treacher," interposed her master, suddenly reduced
to contrition at the sight of Miss Gabriel, who stood speechless,
opening and shutting her mouth like a fish. "The ladies have lost their
way in the fog, and were, on the whole, extremely fortunate to reach
here without accident. They will agree, I daresay, that the sooner I
escort them home the better. Fetch me a lantern, if you please."

"It--it is extremely good of you," stammered Miss Gabriel.

"My dear madam!" he protested, with a good-natured smile.

Miss Gabriel did not respond to it. But, though bitterly angry, for the
moment she was cowed, and she made no further reference to the
mysterious lady.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20