Major Vigoureux Part 8

He almost lost his temper. "Recommend it? Of course I don't."

"Well, from what I remember of the Plume of Feathers--unless it has altered----"

"Wouldn't it be wiser to turn back?" he suggested, desperately, staring into the fog, in which the lights of the _Milo_ had long since disappeared.

"What? When we have this moment opened the quay-light? There!... didn't I promise you that I knew my way among the Islands?"

In the basin of the harbour the fog lay thicker than in the roads, and they had scarcely made sure that this was indeed the quay-light before their boat grated against the landing-steps of the quay itself. The Commandant, after he had s.h.i.+pped his oars and checked the way on her, pressing both hands against the dripping wall, put up one of them and pa.s.sed the back of it slowly across his forehead. He was considering; and, while he considered, his companion stepped lightly ash.o.r.e.

"Forgive me," he pleaded, recollecting himself. "At least, I should have offered you my hand."

"Thank you, I did not need it."

"But listen, please," he protested, scrambling out upon the steps, painter in hand, and groping for a ring-bolt. "You cannot possibly stay the night at the Plume of Feathers----"

He heard her laugh, as he stooped, having found the ring, to make fast the rope.

"Commandant, have you ever travelled across Wyoming--in winter, in a waggon? Very well, then; I have."

"Surely not in the clothes you are wearing?" The Commandant, as any one in the Council of Twelve could tell you, was no debater; yet sometimes he had been known to triumph even in debate, by sheer simplicity. "The only course that I can see," he continued, "is to seek some private house, and throw ourselves upon the--er--"

"Front door?" she suggested, mischievously.

"--hospitality--upon the hospitality of the inmates. To them, of course, I can explain the situation----"

"Can you?"

The Commandant stood for a moment peering at her, and rubbing the back of his head--a trick of his in perplexity. "Upon my word, now you come to mention it," he confessed, "I don't know that I can."

"Whom shall we try first? Miss Gabriel?" ("Now, how in the world,"

wondered the Commandant, "does she know anything of Miss Gabriel?") "Very well; we go together to Alma Cottage--she still lives at Alma Cottage?--and knock. The hour is two in the morning, or thereabouts.

Miss Gabriel, overcoming her first fear of robbery or murder, will parley with us from her bedroom window. To her you introduce me, by the light of your lantern; a strange female in an evening frock; a female grossly overladen with jewels (that, I think, would be Miss Gabriel's way of putting it), but without a portmanteau."

"We might try the Popes, next door," suggested the Commandant flinching. "Mr. Pope is a man of the world."

"Is he?" she asked, after a pause, in which he felt that she struggled with some inward mirth. "But we cannot so describe Mrs. Pope, can we?

Also we cannot knock up Mr. and Mrs. Pope without disturbing Miss Gabriel next door."

"Nor, for that matter, can we knock up Miss Gabriel without disturbing Mr. and Mrs. Pope."

"Quite so; we may reckon that all three will be listening. Therefore, when Mr. Pope or Miss Gabriel (as the case may be) begins by demanding my name--which, by an oversight, you have forgotten to ask----"

"Pardon me," said the Commandant, simply, "I did not forget. I waited, supposing that if you wished me to know it, you would tell me."

"Ah!" she drew close to him, with a happy exclamation. "Then I was not mistaken: You are the man I have counted to find.... And you are a brave man, too. But we will not push bravery too far and disturb Miss Gabriel."

"If you can suggest a better plan----"

"A far better plan. I suggest that you offer me a room to-night at the garrison."

"My dear madam!" the Commandant gasped.

"It will be far better in every way," she went on composedly; that is, if you are willing. To begin with, you have rooms and to spare. Next, there will be no bother in introducing me, except to Mrs. Treacher."

"Ah, to be sure, there is Mrs. Treacher!" the Commandant murmured.

"But, madam, all the rooms in the Castle are unfurnished, ruinous, and have been ruinous for fifty years. The Treachers occupy the only two in which it were possible to swing a cat."

"Then we must borrow Mrs. Treacher and take her along to the Barracks for chaperon. You may leave it to me to persuade her."

Without waiting for his answer she ran lightly up the steps, the heels of her rose-coloured satin shoes twinkling in the light of the Commandant's lantern as he blundered after her.

The pavement of the quay had not been laid for satin shoes. Much traffic had worn the surface into depressions, and these depressions were fast collecting water from the drenched air. But although the fog lay almost as thick here as at the foot of the steps, she picked her way among these pitfalls, avoiding them as though by instinct. Beyond the quay came a cobbled causeway; and beyond the causeway a narrow street wound up towards the garrison gate. Past rains, pouring down the hill, had worn a deep rut along this street, ploughing it here and there to the native rock, zig-zagging from centre to side of the roadway and back again obedient to the trend of the slope. But over the causeway, and up the channelled street she found her footing with the same confidence, steering far more cleverly than the Commandant, who followed as in a dream, amazed, oppressed with forebodings. It was all very well for her to talk lightly of persuading Mrs. Treacher. If she could, why then she must be possessed of a secret as yet unrevealed to Mrs. Treacher's husband after thirty-odd years of married life. The Commandant, too, knew something of Mrs. Treacher ... an obstinate woman, not to say pig-headed.

Was she a witch--this stranger in silk and jewels who walked in darkness so confidently up the tortuous unpaved street?--this apparition who, coming out of the seas and the dumb fog, talked of the Islands and the Islanders as though she had known them all her life?

As if to prove she was a witch, she paused before the very cottage which once already to-night had given pause to his steps and to his thoughts. The fog had been thinning little by little as they mounted the hill, and at a few paces' distance he recognized the closed door, daubed over with that same staring paint which your true Islander uses for choice upon his boat.

"You remember this door?" she asked, pointing to it as he overtook her.

Witch she might be, but why should he give away to her this innocent small secret?

"Of course I remember it," he answered; "pa.s.sing it as I do, half-a-dozen times a day."

"Yes," she said, almost as if speaking to herself; but her voice, for the first time since their meeting, seemed to be touched with a faint shade of dejection. "Naturally you would not remember it for any other reason."

He was silent.

"Yet," she went on, "you really ought to remember that door, Major Vigoureux, if only for old sake's sake; for it was, I believe, the first you entered when you came to the Islands. That was in the year----"

"Never mind the year," interrupted the Commandant, hastily. "I remember it well. I almost never pa.s.s the door without remembering it."

"Ah!" she cried, putting her jewelled hands together, and the Commandant took it for an exclamation of triumph at her cleverness.

"But other tenants have the house. The man who was master of it is dead."

"You know everything, it seems to me. Yes; he was a widower, and late that evening at the fis.h.i.+ng. It was an evening when he should not have been late; for the door stood open for him, and his daughters--he had two daughters--sat expecting him. It was the open door that drew me to ask my way." Here he paused.

"Go on, please."

"One of the girls was to leave the Islands next morning for the mainland, which she had never seen. She told me this. And she sat reading aloud to her sister, there by the fire."

"Go on."

"That is all. Yes, that is all--except that the book was Shakespeare, and the girl--" He paused again, staring at her between sudden enlightenment and stark incredulity. "You--you don't mean to tell me _you_ were that girl!"

She nodded; and as, forgetting politeness, he held the lantern close to her face, he saw two large tears brim up, tremble, and hang for a second before they fell.

"You?" he murmured.

She nodded again. "I am Vashti--Vazzy Cara, they called me, Philip Cara's daughter. I daresay, though, you never heard my name? No, there is no reason why you should. And my sister, Ruth----"