Chapter 9 The Black Swan by Rafael Sabatini
Interlude
It was on a Tuesday of the first week in June that the Centaur was captured by Tom Leach. As a result of Monsieur de Bernis' interview with him early on the following morning, the two ships were brought a point or two nearer to the northerly wind which continued to prevail, and steered a course WSW. Consequently their progress became more leisurely. Nevertheless, by sunset on Thursday the watchman in the cross-trees sighted land. It was Cape de la Vela, a mere haze in the distance, abeam to larboard. Daybreak on Sunday showed them ahead the low-lying group of the Albuquerques, which was their immediate destination.
The five days of that voyage had passed so quietly and uneventfully aboard the Centaur that it almost began to seem to Priscilla Harradine and Major Sands as if there were, indeed, as Monsieur de Bernis had assured them, no grounds for anxiety beyond those begotten of this vexatious postponement of their return to England.
Monsieur de Bernis, coming back from that successful trial of strength with Captain Leach, derived from it an added confidence. Although little or nothing of this was to be discerned on that surface of his being, which he had schooled himself to preserve unruffled whatever wind might blow, yet it existed in the depths of him, and lent an added if indefinable force to his authority.
From this, however, he knew how and when to unbend.
Among buccaneers, whether ashore or afloat, there was little discipline or regard for authority save only when in action. At all other times the latest recruit shipped considered himself the equal of his officers. This, indeed, was the theory of their relations. But in practice some of the authority acquired by a captain in the course of engagements and in matters concerned with the handling and organization of a ship still clung to him at other times, and to preserve it for its own sake they would hold themselves as far aloof as they might without coming under suspicion of assumptions of personal superiority.
In this respect de Bernis presented a curious mixture. Stern, reserved, and cold of manner in all that concerned, however remotely, his command aboard the Centaur, as if he had been an officer of the Crown instead of a buccaneer leader, yet at other times he could so far unbend as completely to cast off the mantle of his rank and fraternize with the men. He would jest and laugh with them, drink with them, and even dice with them, and at seven-and-eleven he revealed himself formidable by the speed which practice had given him in the reckoning-up of chances. Once Wogan beheld him seated on a coil of rope on the forecastle with a crowd of buccaneers about him, listening in rapt silence, broken now and then by bursts of laughter, to his lively account of the taking of the Spanish Fort of San Lorenzo on the Chagres River. On another occasion--that was towards the end of the first dog-watch on the evening on which they had sighted Cape de la Vela--he fetched his guitar, and perched himself on the hatch-coaming, under the new moon, with those wild ruffians swarming about him to listen to the gay, tuneful little Spanish songs with which he enraptured them.
And yet, so delicately did he walk that tight-rope between familiarity and authority that none presumed upon his easy graciousness. Whilst the men came swiftly to an increased admiration, yet they did not entirely lose their awe of him, or a particle of the sense of his superiority inspired by his record, and supported by his bearing, his dress and appointments, and his precise, cultured speech.
Priscilla Harradine had been shrewdly right when she had told Major Sands that she perceived in Monsieur de Bernis a man placed by experience and natural endowments above the petty need of standing upon his dignity.
Wogan looked on in wonder and mistrust, vainly seeking to probe the secret of the magic in which de Bernis appeared to deal. The Irishman knew how to be one with the men at need--he could be as foul and lewd as the vilest of them--and he knew, at need, how to drive them. But he did not know by what arts a man could successfully do both at the same time. He consulted Halliwell upon this mystery. The shipmaster was prompt and contemptuous with an explanation.
'French tricks,' was his terse summary, which shed no light whatever upon Wogan's resentful darkness.
Major Sands was another interested and scornful observer.
Monsieur de Bernis had afforded him facilities for observation. On his return from that visit, on Wednesday morning, to the Black Swan, he had informed Miss Priscilla of the arrangements he had made with his lieutenant and his shipmaster. In future they would take their meals in the wardroom, so that her privacy in the cabin would not again be invaded.
'I would relieve you of my own company at the same time,' he added gravely. 'But the relationship in which it is prudent that we should appear to stand demands that I continue to intrude upon you.'
She protested with some vehemence against the underlying assumption.
'Can you suppose, sir, that I should be so ungracious as to desire it?'
'It would not be unreasonable when all is considered. After all, I am no better than these men.'
The steady glance of her blue-green eyes seemed to repudiate the statement with indignation. 'I should be sorry, indeed, to be of that opinion, sir.'
'Yet Major Sands, there, will tell you that it is the only opinion possible.'
The Major, in the background, cleared his throat. But he said nothing. It was certainly not in his mind to contradict the Frenchman. Nor could he think that Priscilla need have been so excessively courteous as to have troubled to do so. He was a little shocked, therefore, to hear her not merely persisting, but actually answering for him.
'Major Sands, like myself, has only gratitude for the consideration you have shown us. For all that you have done. He does not deceive himself as to what must have happened to us but for you. I beg you to believe it, sir.'
He smiled as he inclined his periwigged head. 'I do believe it. Major Sands leaves one in no doubt of his warm sincerity.' The Major's colour deepened under the buffet of that irony. But, without looking at him, Monsieur went on. 'I came to tell you also that there is no reason why you should keep to the cabin. You may without apprehension take the air on deck when you please. None will venture to molest you; though if any should I'll make an example of him that will not encourage others. I have had your awning set for you again on the poop.'
She thanked him, and he went out.
'I wonder,' said Major Sands, 'what the sarcastic hound expects of me.'
Miss Priscilla looked at him without approval. 'A little graciousness, perhaps,' she ventured.
'Graciousness? I am to be gracious to him?' He curbed resentment to become pedantic. 'Shall we preserve, even amid these troubles, our sense of proportion, Priscilla? Shall we consider precisely where this man stands and what he has done?'
'By all means. Let us consider, for instance, that he has preserved our lives. Is that nothing? Does it deserve no thanks?'
He spread his hands. 'That is to consider one side only of the question.'
'Is that not enough for us? With that side to consider, would a generous mind consider any other?'
The asperity of her tone pulled him up sharply. This, he perceived, would not do at all. Trouble and difficulty enough arose out of the events. He must certainly not allow them to jeopardize those dearest hopes of his, which had been blossoming with promise of so rich a fruition. He must remember that women were curious creatures, addicted to eccentricities of vision, allowing emotional influences to deflect the light of reason. There was no prevailing with them by hard common sense alone. It provoked their hostility. He saw signs of this in Priscilla, and unless he changed his course to humour her, unless he addressed himself to her emotions, rather than to her intelligence, which he perceived to lie dormant, the argosy of his hopes might founder under him in these very difficult waters.
He assumed an air of gentle, patient melancholy.
'Dear Priscilla, do you realize, I wonder, the wrong you do me?' He sighed. 'You find me wanting in generosity. You are right. And yet how far from right. You are only halfway down my feelings. There are depths you have not suspected. Not suspected, stab me! You imagine, perhaps, that concern for myself is to be found down there; that this makes me impatient--ungracious, as you say. My dear! For myself I care nothing. For myself I could be gracious enough to this man. I should consider only that he has preserved my life. But my thought is all for you. All for you, stab me! If I am impatient, ungracious, it is because of my concern for you; for the distress, the anxieties, the fears that are afflicting you. How can I be patient in the face of this? Damme, Priscilla! How can I?'
Her indignation melted before this display of noble concern which held no thought of self. The fundamental sweetness of her nature welled up to make her ashamed.
'I am sorry, Bart. I am very stupid sometimes. Forgive me, dear.' She held out a hand to him in appeal.
He came nearer, gently smiling, and took it between both his own. He was suddenly inspired by the note of tenderness which penitence had brought into her voice. Dimly he recalled a line heard in a play, a line written by some poet or other, one of those absurd ranters who expressed themselves in stilted, pompous phrases, in which sometimes, Major Sands confessed to himself, one found a grain of sense amid a deal of nonsense. He marvelled at the queer opportuneness with which the line came now to the surface of his memory, not perceiving that it was his own commonplace thought which borrowed for itself the majestic robe of that expression: 'There is a tide in the affairs of man which taken at the flood leads on to fortune.'
Here now was the tide running strongly in his favour. Let him take it at the flood.
'My dear! What man in my place, loving you as I do, could have any other thought?'
'Dear Bart, I understand. I should have understood before.' She looked up with soft entreaty in her candid eyes.
He stroked the hand he held. Gently by that hand he began to draw her nearer. She suffered him to have his way.
'Do you suppose that it is easy for me to have patience, with such circumstances surrounding the woman I love?'
His tone had sunk to a fond, crooning murmur. Suddenly she seemed to freeze where she stood, almost in his arms. Her breath quickened, the colour ebbed from her face, and the candid eyes, that a moment ago had been so tender, held only alarm.
'What are you saying, Bart?' Her right hand was withdrawn from between his fondling palms; her left pushed him gently away. 'Are you...' she choked a little. 'Are you making love to me?'
In profound dismay he spread his hands. 'My dear!' he cried, protesting vaguely.
'Oh! How could you? How could you at such a time?'
What he understood from this came mercifully to temper his dismay. It was the time that was ill-chosen. He had been deceived, then. The tide, after all, was not yet at the flood. Her mind, distraught by peril, could hold the thought of nothing else. He had blundered by precipitancy. He had startled her. It only remained to beat a retreat in good order, and await a more propitious season for his next advance.
'At such a time!' he echoed. 'But--stab me!--it is just that. It is the time...the dreadful events...these terrible circumstances that quicken my tenderness, my urgent wish to have you know that you have beside you a man ready, as I have said before, to give his life for you. If I did not owe this to my affection for you, damme, there was my friendship for your father, my sense of duty to his memory. What is there here to dismay you?'
The trouble in her mind--reflected in her eyes--was hardly lessened; but it had changed its course. Her glance faltered. Confused, she turned away, and moved to the stern-ports through which the sunlight was now flooding.
With anxious eyes he followed the slim figure, admiring the graceful lines of it, the quiet elegance of her movements, and so waited. She spoke presently, when she had mastered herself.
'Forgive me, Bart. To be sure, I am a little fool. Don't let me appear also an ungrateful one. I owe you so much. I must have died, I think, but for the knowledge that you were standing by me in this awful time. You have made me realize it. It should not have been necessary.'
'It is not necessary now,' said he, very noble. 'Sink me if it is.' And then, being a fool, he must go on to spoil it. 'But I rejoice to hear, at least, that you are no longer in the persuasion that you owe everything to this French rogue.'
Now that is just what, in her generous anxiety to make amends for the injustice of her assumption, she had been in danger of forgetting. His words, acting as a sharp reminder, tempered her penitence. But she did not pursue the matter, intent at the moment upon making her peace with him.
She turned, and smiled a little shyly in the consciousness of the enormity of her late assumptions. 'Shall we take the air on deck, Bart?'
They went, and beyond the leering eyes of Wogan and Halliwell, on the quarter-deck, following her passage thence to the poop, none seemed to notice them.
Monsieur de Bernis was in the Captain's cabin, which he had now made his own, astern, on the summit of the poop. He sat with open doors on account of the heat. Seeing their approach, he rose, and came forth, bringing cushions for her day-bed which she found set for her under the awning of sailcloth as it had been before the invasion of the Centaur by her present crew.
When this was done, he lingered on in amiable talk with them, like a courteous host. He mentioned their altered course, expressed a hope that the breeze might hold, spoke of their destination and the purpose for which they sought the Albuquerque Keys, and in answer to Miss Priscilla's questions regretted that circumstances would delay them there for the best part of a month.
The Major, morose, sat on the tail of the day-bed, of which Miss Priscilla occupied the head, making no contribution to the talk. The notion of spending a month at the Albuquerques filled him with disgust and indignation, and it was only by the exercise of all his powers of repression that he avoided saying so. The cool tone in which de Bernis made the announcement appeared to him as a climax of impudence. And it added fuel to his indignation to observe that Miss Priscilla did not appear to share his feelings. She seemed to accept the situation with a resignation that went very near complacency. His disgust reached its apex at a question which he heard her ask in a tone of quiet wonder.
'Monsieur de Bernis, how did you become a buccaneer?'
Monsieur de Bernis seemed startled by this question, coming so abruptly. He smiled a little as he looked down at her.
'You ask almost as if the fact were difficult to understand. It is a compliment, I suppose. But can you really be interested to know?'
'Should I ask such a question if I were not? The interest must be strong that drives me to an impertinence.'
'Not an impertinence,' he protested quietly. 'Most pertinent since your present situation depends so much upon the fact.' He paused a moment, and the long narrow face was overcast with thought, the dark eyes grew almost wistful. 'After all, there is so little that you do not know already. Did I not tell you that the Sieur Simon, he whom the Spaniards killed on Santa Catalina, was my uncle? I had come out with him to the New World, in quest of the liberty of action denied me at home in the Old. But there was no thought of lawlessness in my mind. We are Huguenots, we Bernis, from the Toulousain, and for a Eluguenot in France there was only toleration. Today, since the King has revoked the Edict of Nantes, there is not even that. But already when I was a boy there were few opportunities for a Huguenot to find advancement in any career that was open to a gentleman.
'I was the youngest of seven sons, and a career was necessary to me. And so I took the chance my uncle offered me of seeking it in the New World. When he was killed at Santa Catalina, I was alone out here, without possessions and without friends, saving those poor fellows who had escaped with me. With them I went to join Morgan. Nothing else offered. Besides, the massacre on Santa Catalina had bred in me such a hatred of Spaniards that I was glad enough to march in any company that was hostile to Spain.
'With Morgan my rise was rapid. Birth, if it does nothing else for a man, will at least equip him for leadership. Opportunity served me, and I knew how to seize it. I showed Morgan that I knew how to make men follow me. My nationality, too, once I had displayed the gift of leadership, made me valuable to Morgan with whom there was always a considerable French contingent. I became his lieutenant, in command of his French following. With him, too, I learned to fight a ship, and I doubt if there was ever a higher school than his for that.
'When England's affairs ceased to justify her encouragement of the buccaneers, and Morgan decided to accept the governorship of Jamaica, I went with him, and took service with him under the English Crown. After all, there was no man living to whom I owed greater loyalty; and probably no man living whom Morgan trusted as fully as he trusted me.' He smiled down upon her as he ceased. 'That is all,' he said.
'So that,' she commented thoughtfully, 'your career is hardly to be spoken of as lawless, seeing that you ceased to be a buccaneer once buccaneers were declared without the law.'
But this was too much for Major Sands. 'If that was true once,' was his frosty interjection, 'it is unfortunately true no longer.'
Monsieur de Bernis laughed, as he turned to depart. 'But why unfortunately, Major? You, at least, should regard it as extremely fortunate.'
The Major had no answer for that. His look was foolish, and he reserved his comments upon what the Frenchman had told them until Monsieur de Bernis had gone down to the quarter-deck, where Halliwell stood taking the height of the sun.
'Morgan's trust in him hasn't prevented him from betraying it so as to return to piracy,' the Major condemned him.
But Miss Priscilla, wistfully pensive, either did not hear or did not heed him, for she made no answer. And the Major, remembering in time how the topic of Monsieur de Bernis invariably now led to the frontiers of acrimony, did not pursue the subject.
But he returned to it more than once before they reached the Albuquerques. His scorn of de Bernis was stimulated by that man's free and easy association with the ruffians who made up the crew, a matter to which he missed no opportunity of drawing Miss Priscilla's attention, so as to justify himself in her eyes for the feelings she was disposed to condemn in him.
That night when on the forecastle, under the new moon, de Bernis was singing to his audience of pirates, the Major and the lady were enjoying the cool on the poop. Across the length of the ship floated that mellow, moving baritone voice.
'It passes belief,' said the Major, in tones of disgust, 'that a man should make so free with a gang of cut-throats. Stab me, it does!'
He never knew whether Priscilla's words were intended for an answer.
'How beautifully he sings.'