The Northern Iron Part 35

"A d.a.m.ned fine woman," he said, "and a bit smitten with me. Begad, these French women have a great deal to recommend them. Thy catch fire at once. A man does not have to spend a month dilly-dallying with them, dancing attendance and looking like a fool while they are as cold as ice all the time. Give me a good full-blooded filly like this one."

"Una," said the Comtesse, when she overtook her niece. "Una, I positively can't stand another day of that man. He's odious. You'll have to do him yourself to-morrow, and let me go to the young man in the cave."

"But, Aunt Estelle, I thought you--you liked it. You looked as if you liked it."

"_Mon dieu!_" said the Comtesse, laughing, "of course I looked as if I liked it. If I had looked as if I disliked it I could not have kept him for ten minutes, and then what would have happened to you, mademoiselle?"

"It was very, very good of you," said Una, penitently. "I can never thank you enough."

"Oh, it wasn't so very good of me, and I don't want to be thanked at all. I'll tell you a secret, Una, and Hannah shall hear it too. I did like it. Now, what do you think?"

"You would, my lady," said Hannah. "I know that finely, I'd have liked it myself when I was young and frisky like you."

"What would you have liked, Hannah?" asked the Comtesse.

"Eh! just what you liked yourself, my lady; just seeing a man making himself a bigger fool nor the Lord meant him to be for the sake of my bonny face. I'm thinking you're the same as another for a' you're a countess and have a braw foreign name. You just like what I'd have liked, and what all women ever I heard tell on liked in their hearts, though maybe they wouldna own up till it, from thon wench, that might have been a gran' lady, too, for a' I ken, who made the great silly gaby of a Samson lie still while she clipped the seven locks off of his head.

She liked fine to see him sleeping there like the tap he was for all the strongness of him."

"You are right, Hannah, you are right. Oh, Una dear, if you could have seen him--but you wouldn't understand. What's the good of telling you?

Hannah, if you'd seen him sitting there like a great woolly sheep, with the silliest expression in his eyes; if you'd seen him putting out his hand to touch me, pretending he did it by accident, and then pulling it away again like one of those snails that crawl about in the sandhills when you touch his horns with the end of a blade of gra.s.s. If you'd seen him. Oh, I wish you'd seen him!"

"Faith, I seen plenty."

"You did not, Hannah; you didn't see half. He was far, far better before you came back."

She burst into a peal of half hysterical laughter. She may have enjoyed the captain's company, but he had evidently tried her nerves.

"But, Una dear," she said, when she grew calm again, "I hope Maurice will come soon, or that American s.h.i.+p, or something. I won't be able to go on very long."

"There's been an easterly breeze since noon," said Una, "and there's a haze out at sea."

"Do talk sense, Una. Here I've been sacrificing myself for you all day, and when I ask you for a little sympathy you talk to me about an east wind."

"But the east wind will bring the brig, aunt. How could she get here from Glasgow without the wind?"

CHAPTER XVIII

The Comtesse underrated her powers of endurance. For two more whole days she encouraged Captain Twinely to make love to her. She sat with him in the sandhills, she walked with him along the strand, she flattered him, ogled him, enticed him, till the man was beside himself with the desire of her. But in private it was not safe to speak to her about the captain. Her temper, when the hours of her love-making were over for the day, was extremely bad. Even Hannah, who was a match for most women in the use of her tongue, shrank from the sharp gibes of the Comtesse. Una tried in vain to soothe the ruffled lady, and had to bear much from her, but Una could have borne anything patiently. The east wind blew gently day and night, bringing--surely bringing--the white sails of the brig.

The sea remained calm and she was able to go twice more to the cave. She saw the yeomen spread over the country, searching everywhere, through fields and hills and along the river banks, by the sh.o.r.e, among the rocks, over the Causeway cliffs, through the sandhills, the ruins of Dunluce, among the white cliffs of Port-rush Strand, at high tide and low tide, everywhere except the one place--the nook where Una bathed.

Estelle de Tourneville secured that spot from the searchers' gaze. No man dared go there. Una could forgive the worst of tempers to the woman who purchased such security. And the Comtesse was excusable. Doubtless, she paid a heavy price for a delicately-nurtured and fastidious lady. No one ever knew what she endured. Neither to Una nor any one else did she tell at the time or afterwards the details of the captain's courts.h.i.+p.

At last, one evening after dusk, Maurice rode in from Ballycastle.

He brought glorious news. Captain Getty was on his way. He might be expected off the coast the next day. Maurice had left the brig at the quay at Greenock ready to sail. Next morning he was up early. He took bread and meat and went alone to Pleaskin Head, carrying his father's long telescope with him. All morning he lay on the edge of the cliff peering eastward across the sea. He was strangely nervous now that the critical moment had arrived. He understood that the coast was being carefully watched, that the sight of a s.h.i.+p lying-to a mile or two from the sh.o.r.e, would certainly excite suspicion; that it might be very difficult for him to take his boat round to the cave where Neal lay hidden without being followed. It was absolutely necessary for him to catch sight of the brig before any one else did, to get off from the sh.o.r.e before the brig lay to, to be well on his way to her before any other boat put out to chase him. He knew that his own movements were watched. He was followed from the house to Pleaskin Head by two yeomen.

As he lay on the cliffs he saw them a few hundred yards inland keeping guard on him.

At ten o'clock he caught sight of the topsails of a s.h.i.+p far east, beyond the blue outline of the Rathlin hills. The wind, very feeble at dawn, was freshening slightly. The lower sails of the vessel rose slowly into view. Maurice guessed her to be a brig--to be the brig he looked for. He lay still, watching her intently, till he was sure. Then he went home. He found Una and the Comtesse in the breakfast room. Captain Twinely, on the lawn outside, leaned on the window sill and talked to them. Maurice, uncontrollably excited, whispered to Una--

"Now."

She rose, and followed him from the room. Captain Twinely eyed them sharply. He had ceased to distrust the Comtesse, but he was keenly suspicious of Maurice. Since he had been robbed of his clothes in Antrim he hated Maurice nearly as bitterly as he did Neal, and was determined to have him strictly watched.

"Pardon me, dear lady," he said, "I must give some orders to the patrol."

"Don't be long, then," she said, "I want you to-day, Captain Twinely.

Come back to me."

Their eyes met, and the Comtesse felt certain that her victim would return to her. She leaped from her chair the moment he left her and ran from the room.

"Una," she cried. "Una, Maurice, where are you?"

She found them; they were packing clothes in a hand-bag--clothes, she supposed, for Neal.

"He's gone to give orders to his men about you, Maurice. I know he has.

I haven't a moment to explain. Leave everything to me. I'll manage him, only trust me and do what I say. Una, are you a born idiot? Take those things out of the bag. How can you go about with that travelling-bag in your hand and not excite suspicion? If you must have clothes wrap them in a bathing-sheet. Oh, what a fool you are!"

She left them no time to answer her, but fled back to the breakfast-room. A moment later Captain Twinely found her, lounging--a figure of luxurious laziness--among the cus.h.i.+ons of Lord Dunseveric's easy chair.

"We are going on the sea to-day," she said, "my nephew, Maurice, has promised to take us in a boat to the Skerries. I have never been there, but I hear they are delightful. I hope you will come with us. Please say yes. I should feel so much safer in a boat if you were there. My nephew is very rash. He frightens me. I do not trust him. I shall not feel secure or easy in my mind unless you come, too. Besides"--her voice sank to a delicious whisper--"I shall not really enjoy myself unless you are there."

She stretched her hand out and laid it with the tenderest motion of caress on his hand. Captain Twinely could not hesitate, he promised to go with her. In the back of his mind was a feeling that if he were of the party Maurice St. Clair could not attempt to communicate with the fugitive.

"Maurice," said the Comtesse, "Maurice, are you ready? Captain Twinely is coming with us to the Skerries for a pic-nic. Won't that be nice?

Come along quickly, we are starting."

She took the captain with her, and walked down to the cove where the boat lay. Una and Maurice, with their bundles of clothes, followed.

"Una," said Maurice, "what does she mean? I can't take this man in the boat, and I won't. What does she mean by inviting him?"

"I don't know, but we must trust her. We can trust her. She's been wonderful all these last three days. Only for her I could never have got food to Neal."

"Well," said Maurice, "I suppose if the worst comes to the worst it will only be a matter of knocking him on the head with an oar. I don't want to do that if I can help it. My lord will be angry if he has to get me out of a fresh sc.r.a.pe. It will be a serious matter to a.s.sault this captain in cold blood. I'll do it, of course, if necessary, but I would rather not."

The boat was dragged down the beach. The Comtesse looked at it, and protested.

"Maurice, surely you are not going in that little boat. It's far too small. It's not safe."

"Oh, it's safe enough," said Maurice, "and anyway there's no other."

"There is," said the Comtesse. "There, look at that nice broad, flat boat. I'll go in that."

"The cobble for lifting the salmon net!" said Maurice, with a laugh. "My dear aunt, you couldn't go to sea in that. She can't sail, and it takes four men to pull her as fast as a snail would crawl. Who ever heard of going off to the Skerries in a salmon cobble?"

"Well," said the Comtesse, angrily, "I won't go in the other. I know that one is too small. Isn't she too small, Captain Twinely? Look at the size of the sea. Look how far off the island is! No, I won't go. If you persist in being disobliging, Maurice, you and Una can go by yourselves.

Captain Twinely and I will stay on sh.o.r.e."