Part 4

The young men listened with respectful disapprobation (for to attempt to stem the course of the admiral's diction was at all times dangerous). When the sea-faring gentleman's invention was somewhat ebbing, Tregurtha was in an undertone acquainted with its source. The moment when it seemed of any use, Roscoria began again on his suit. He pleaded, urged, lost his temper, found it again, represented, reasoned, chaffed the admiral, appealed to his friend--and all in vain. Lyndis was steadily denied to him.

"And Miss Rosetta?" asked the lieutenant; but this question, which to him was most important, got lost, as totally irrelevant to the matter in hand. In despair the tired and heated Roscoria was gently led away by his friend, and the moment they appeared out of doors they were cheered by the sight of the ladies, who were waiting in the garden.

"It has not gone well with you, has it, Louis?" asked Lyndis anxiously.

"Gone well! It has gone vilely, Lyndis. Why do you encourage such a curmudgeon of a peppery old Cambyses as an uncle?"

"_My_ relative, if you please, sir," said the loyal Lyndis. "Why do you get us all into such scrapes, you inconsiderate, duped Hotspur?"

"Because I am in love, most beautiful; they say it affects the intellect. So tell me what we are to do now."

"Well--would you like to give me up?"

"Don't," prayed the lover, with an imploring gaze at his goddess. "Say something cheering, for--eh! it _was_ warm in there."

Lyndis nodded her beautiful head sagaciously, passed her hand over Roscoria's forehead, smoothing it, and smiled to herself to see how his countenance cleared under the comfort.

"Dear one, to me you are an Immortal," he said, reflectively; "but--if you _have_ an age, what might it be?"

"That will not do," said Lyndis; "a minor I am, and a minor I fear I shall remain for a year or two more. But if you will wait----"

Louis threw out his arms with a gesture of impatience. "I had rather run away with you at once," he said. "Let us elope."

"Mr. Roscoria, what a very rash idea!"

"Should you refuse, if I asked you?"

"I hope so," said Lyndis, thereby giving her lover much hope. "And now, as I am really angry with you, you may go."

"Yes, goddess; but I will hear thee again on this matter. May I----"

Lyndis did not expressly say he might not, so he did--that is to say, he kissed the golden head that was resting on his rough coat, from whence it was raised with tumbled bright hair spread abroad like the rays of the sun.

Tregurtha and Rosetta meantime had been looking over a hedge, commenting on scenery, the weather, and the crops. Rosetta was a born farmer. The sailor asked her tentatively:

"Did you agree to this plan of marrying my friend Roscoria?"

"I did," said the maiden, brightly.

"But surely you scarcely knew him well enough to love him? There must have been a strong elective affinity--or, bless me! I can't account for it."

"Love him! I never had spoken to him," laughed Rosetta.

"You would not have given him your hand without your heart?" persisted Tregurtha, with a strange, pained look, which, alas! she did not understand.

"Why, yes. If I had added my heart, think how great the sacrifice would have been. As it was, it was _very_ amusing." Rosetta laughed again, at Roscoria this time, who came up to apologize for the awkward position in which he had stupidly placed her.

"Never mind, Mr. Roscoria," answered she. "I love adventures, and I owe this one to you. Only next time you ask for Miss _Lyndis_ Villiers, let me advise you--'_see that you get her_.'"

VIII.

THE GIRL I LEFT BEHIND ME.

For a fortnight after this failed attempt Roscoria beat his brains in vain to hit on a method of squaring the admiral. He was debarred from any sight of Lyndis herself, for Sir John, cleverly enough, had spirited the goddess off to her mother in London, so that her lover might chafe in the chains of his exacting profession until perhaps, being unable to follow, he might cease to love her.

Having executed this little piece of justice on his sworn foe Roscoria, the admiral turned mighty good-humored, and found that he lacked a companion over pipe and bowl. As he had quarreled for life with almost all the residents in Devonshire, it was natural that the choleric but cheery old fellow should turn his eye on Dick Tregurtha--a stranger, a sailor, a pleasant companion, and a man who could oppose a front of imperturbable and respectful good-humor to any high-handed impertinence which the admiral's temper might offer him.

This distinction suited Tregurtha uncommonly well. He liked the admiral, and he liked the admiral's niece. He did not see much of Miss Rosetta Villiers, for that damsel was always either attending to the farm or preparing for an examination. But she occasionally looked in upon the men, and had bright smiles for Richard, and a plate of fruit sometimes. She teased the admiral (who was completely under her rule). Sir John evidently liked and understood Rosetta. Lyndis was a complete puzzle to him. He could appreciate a fine woman; but Lyndis was more; she was a fine lady, and far too calm-spirited for the admiral's taste. She was afraid of him and his imperious way, and he knew it, and took a malicious pleasure in avenging himself on her indifference by startling projects of matrimony for her, accompanied by violent reprimands, which Lyndis took with a calm disdain coupled with fear.

Now, when he presumed to scold Rosetta, she first would melt into a regular child's fit of tears (which used to cause the admiral to clear his throat and blink his eyes, and retract certain over-fierce expressions); then she would flash into a little Spanish passion, pay the admiral back in some of his own coin, with the genuine stamp upon it, and quickly send him to the right-about. And this the admiral understood too, for he was a man who knocked under with a good grace when fairly worsted. Tregurtha was never weary of hearing the two joke together, and noting occasionally how, when the admiral wickedly strove to turn the joke against Rosetta herself or her sex, the young lady would throw her uncle a glance of her black eyes that shone with such masterful warning that the old commander would cough and change the subject, whilst Rosetta broke into a young, irrepressible laugh of victory.

Tregurtha commended himself to the lady by offering his help in the mathematics she required for her examinations. The logic which she also studied was at first beyond his ken, but he got over that difficulty by causing Roscoria to give him a fearful jorum of Jevons every evening, which he then passed on to the pretty student. Rosetta was much impressed; she marveled at the wide and varied talents of a mind that had remembered all the details of logic during a rough seafaring life like Tregurtha's. But if she admired his qualities, how was he affected by hers? Ah! that's the worst of it, always.

For, said Dick to Roscoria one afternoon, as that distinguished preceptor was on the point of joining his adoring disciples:

"Wish me good luck, old comrade: I am off on a forlorn hope."

"That child?" cried Roscoria, dropping an armful of the Clarendon Press series with resounding bang upon the floor.

"That child!" intoned Tregurtha, mechanically, with the voice of a captive spirit from a tomb. "I feel it is utterly hopeless madness; but I shan't be ashore much longer, and I must go to sea with a certainty behind me. I was never a man to go doubting when knowledge could be had for the asking. So I'll go and have my mind set at rest. I shall be satisfied this evening, I trust, and then I'll come back to you, Roscoria."

"Yes, you are sure of me, at any rate. I'm afraid you are making a mistake, old fellow; but I dare say you can't help it."

Pythias whistled sympathetically as Damon went out by the window with his hat over his brows and his teeth set.

Rosetta Villiers was playing about in the admiral's garden. At least, she thought she was working, but the sun was hot and there was a pleasant shade under that chestnut-tree. So she left off weeding and tying up roses, and sat dreamily down on a wooden seat to divide her attention between a book and a flitting dragon-fly. Tregurtha came walking informally through the garden, for was he not hand-in-glove with the admiral? Rosetta looked up brightly, extended her hand to Jevons in smiling appeal, and pointed to the other end of her rustic sofa.

"I'm not up to logic to-day, dear Miss Villiers," said Tregurtha, with quiet despondency; "I have brought you a problem harder to solve than any in that class-book of yours. Do throw it over the hedge for half an hour, for indeed it is not opportune!"

Rosetta's astonishment was instructive to see. She clasped the book tighter and said, breathlessly: "You are strange, Mr. Tregurtha. Sit down here, and please don't look at me like the reproachful manes of my grandfather! There, at any rate, it is only a despairing profile that I see--the full face was unendurable."

"Just allow me," said Tregurtha, and he put Stanley Jevons into his pocket. "There! now I have no rival save the landscape. I say, listen, Miss Villiers. I--oh! but you will never understand--you will not understand!"

"I will do my best," said Rosetta, with a childish touch of pride. "Am I so stupid?"

"My little Rosetta, no!" cried Tregurtha, with an excess of tenderness which overwhelmed him; "but this is something which mere cleverness will never teach you, and which I cannot explain to you. Roscoria could have done it," he sighed, "but I am an inferior creature; besides, I shall only be speaking out my own disappointment. Well, best have it over; after all it won't take long. Rosetta, how do you think of me?"

"As my friend," answered Rosetta, promptly.

"Ah! and all the time I am only your lover!"

"My lover!"

"Say what you like now, I am ready," groaned Tregurtha, with hopeless resolution.

There was a long, dreary pause. Rosetta sat still, gazing away over the sunny lawn, and Tregurtha cared not even to see her answer in her face--he knew it; he looked before him also, and listlessly their thoughts dwelt on the daisies, the butterflies playing above them, the shifts of light and shadow, and the birds' half dreamlike song.

"Oh, this is dreadful!" Rosetta at last broke out. Richard drew her nearer, and kept his arm round her, saying quietly:

"I am sorry I distress you."

"Oh, I wish I could suffer anything! I wish anything evil could have happened to me, if only I might not have hurt you so! I did not know it, Richard, I did not know it!"

"No, of course I saw that. You are no flirt, sweetheart, or you would never have been troubled with me. Oh, well, it is over now--the worst part at least--and you must not be too soft-hearted, darling; you will have to break some hearts soon, so steel your own!"

Rosetta gave a long, long sigh, like a child roused from deepest sleep. All this was so new to her, such a revelation of pathos, and herself so helplessly ignorant and unprepared, that she had never a word to say, and all her sixteen bright years of life seemed unreality before this woeful fact--her lover. Involuntarily she laid her head upon Tregurtha's shoulder as if he could help her; then, with a start, as she felt the tremor that went through him at her touch, she raised it up, and bent her startled eyes upon him while she said, so low, with such an effort:

"I ought to try and tell you why I cannot--marry you. But what am I to say? I can find nothing reasonable. You would in your turn fail to understand the fancies of a child like me."

"I should like to hear," said Tregurtha. "Talk to me as long as you will; say what you please to me; I should like to take back some little knowledge of you, instead of the shadowy hope which has now gone to range itself with the endless mass which space is not great enough to hold--men's illusions."

His bitterness seemed to make his distress so real for Rosetta that she gave a deprecating cry and struggled with herself for several moments before she found the heart to continue speaking. Then tremulously she asked:

"Should you care to marry me before I could love you?"

"I don't know," said Tregurtha. "Now I am bewildered by my own love for you."

"Listen, Mr. Tregurtha. I am only sixteen, as you know, and childish for that age. I have lived so much alone and so wrapped up in my examinations and out-of-door pursuits that I simply have never yet had occasion to think of marriage. You see, I have no lady relatives, except Lyndis--and she is so serious! I imagined love would find its own way to me, without my playing with it beforehand. _Now_ I see it needs practice."

"Did the admiral never warn you of your future lovers?" here put in Tregurtha, with some incredulity.

"Oh, the admiral! Who cares what the admiral says? He's an old sailor, what can you expect? They think of nothing else in connection with us women."

Tregurtha gave vent to a dismal chuckle at Rosetta's not altogether far-fetched aphorism on the navy. He was scarcely in a position to controvert it.

"And so you paid no attention?"

"Not much," said Rosetta, blushing. "At least I never dreamt that a man would love me yet, and that I should not be able to return his sentiment. I relied for the contrary on my southern nature, and troubled my head no more about it. Indeed, I used to think that I should like to have a lover, and now--now he is come!" And Rosetta covered her face and broke into low, sad sobbing.

"Oh, you poor little child! And I have done you harm, blundering into your charmed circle of heart-freedom! What a shame it is!"

Tregurtha rose up from his seat, and stood stretching his arms out with a laugh of self-directed irony; before this good and innocent girl, with all her sorrow for him, he felt utterly baffled, hopeless, and cast back.

"Let me try to explain myself further," pleaded Rosetta, with as much eagerness as if it were her fault that she could not love Tregurtha.

"See, I am happy here. To some people it is not given to know when they are happy, but I do know. I rejoice in my existence. I want nothing save that love which is beautiful in poetry and tragical in life. Here I am useful; you know the admiral--his dear, quarrelsome ways--who can keep him in order except me? Why, if I did not act as his interpreter there would never be a farm laborer on the place: every plowboy and cowman on it would give the admiral notice to-morrow--if I did! Here is my home, too; I love it. I love every corner of this old-fashioned garden--the corner where the winter violets grow, the nooks to find snowdrops in, and the borders with the scented pinks and heart's-ease in irregular places. I look for each flower as it comes out, and I scarcely care to stray outside our sweetbrier hedge."

"Well, dear child, all I can possibly say is, that it all sounds very pretty. If I were not your lover, I should exclaim, 'How simple are her tastes! what innocence and what content!' I should look on, were another in my place, and say complacently, 'Here is at last a woman who does not court men's admiration. Here is a fair maid who prefers Jevons' "Elements of Logic" to Debrett's "Peerage," and a bunch of mignonette to a tiara of diamonds.' How new, how picturesque, and how refreshing!"

Rosetta gazed in blank wonderment at the imbittered Richard, who, with arms folded and a caustic frown, was haranguing away as if to conjure from him a whole army of demons.

She was not of a mold to stand by and see another really suffer.

"I will do something for you, Richard!" she cried at length. "My lover shall not think me hard. I will go with you, Richard, and let the admiral and the cowman console each other. Between you and your friend it seems as if I were never to be left alone. Well, I am ready; I have plenty of spirit, and I say I will learn the meaning of this love which has made a hypochondriac of my sailor friend. I will be your wife and try to make the best of it--if it will make Richard himself again."

She stopped, excited but steadfast. Tregurtha, with a last laugh of amused wretchedness, said:

"Senorita! no one could deny that you are brave and ready; but beware of your adventurous spirit. You are forgetting what kind of a man it is to whose rescue you would hasten. Why, I would sooner a shark should devour me on my next voyage than that I should have to think of you as a patient martyr--you, my--my---- Oh, good gracious, what a fool I am! My dear Rosetta, go back to your happiness. When the Fates mean you to love, you will--and then--I envy the man! But till then, recollect that there is nothing so hopeless as mistaken heroism. Shun it, pretty one, as you would all evil; for it is a peculiar danger to you women. My darling, shall we shake hands? for I am going."

"And you will not come again? I shall miss you so!"

"I'll write and let you know about that," said Tregurtha.

She stood opposite him, murmuring pathetic words in Spanish. Then she caught her breath, and was silent. A man who knew her less would have thought she really loved him.

"Richard, you should have waited, I believe!" she exclaimed, as by sudden inspiration.

"What do you say?"

"While there is life there is hope; but in sailors, they tell me, there is not always constancy," meditated Rosetta, aloud.

"Not always, dear; only sometimes. Once would be enough for us. But do you know where you are leading me? For Heaven's sake, Rosetta, don't say anything you do not mean!"

"I take back my words, Richard. Perhaps I lost my way in this darkness. I am not well informed in these matters."

"No, dear, so I see," answered Tregurtha, gently, as the high hope of an instant died in his breast forgotten.

"And you have my 'Logic' still in your pocket," suggested Rosetta, melting again into tears.

"So I have! There--don't cry any more to-day. To-morrow I give you leave to cry, because you will then have forgotten all about it. Shall I tell you, senorita, who should have been your lover instead of me?"

"Please," whispered Rosetta, ashamed but curious.

"Job," said Tregurtha solemnly; and, the sailor nature being too strong for him, he kissed her lips, then left her under her chestnut-tree and went away, nor ever looked behind him.

IX.

THE WAY WE BEHAVE WHEN WE ARE YOUNG.

It was past midnight, and the summer moonlight sparkled on the waves as a little boat, with its sail puffed out by a brisk breeze, came gliding, conspirator-like, toward that part of the Braceton domain that runs along by the sea.

It was the night after Roscoria's school broke up, and the first use the master made of his holiday was this--to arrange to run off with Miss Lyndis. There seemed nothing else to be done; the admiral would not yield, the lady would not change her mind, and the lover would not be content to wait. So the young people exchanged letters, and the result was this boat. Tregurtha was in the affair as well, though he strongly disapproved of it. His love of adventure had conquered his conscience; and he was, besides, confident that Roscoria would end all by a blunder if not backed by a cool-headed friend.

So here was Tregurtha, steering the boat into a certain safe and sandy cove well in the shadow, where he knew that the eye even of an admiral could not penetrate, whilst Roscoria fetched his lady. Roscoria's heart was on land before his legs, and again and again had he mounted in spirit up that steep pathway, up the cliffs from the beach to the side of the house, where there would be one light in a window, one wakeful inmate to steal out to him through the unbolted shutters and the gate she would have left ajar.

"Are we late?" he asked his friend.

"No, early," said Tregurtha.

"Will she be ready?"

"I have no means of knowing, my dear fellow."

"What are we to do if she is not?"

"Wait."

The boat ground on the pebbly beach, and Dick admonished the lover _sotto voce_----

"Don't--now _don't_ sentimentalize on the way; every minute is valuable; the admiral is not deaf, and the lady's box is sure to be heavy."

Roscoria was off like a chamois-hunter. Tregurtha sat on the beach and smoked a pipe, stretching his legs in great tranquillity. Not that he was ignorant that Rosetta's window also had a light in it, but he knew it did not shine for him, and, considering all things, he thought it wiser to look in the opposite direction.

It was soon, in reality, that two figures began to descend the cliff-path. Roscoria first, bearing a modest trunk on his shoulder, and looking back each moment to see if Lyndis knew her way in the moonlight.

Lyndis herself was muffled up in a large cloak. She did not seem at all nervous. All that Tregurtha noticed, as she stepped into the boat and bade him "good-evening" with a sort of pathetic courtesy, was that her figure stood straight and firm, and that she trod the rocks in the uncertain light with Devonshire decision.

The lieutenant was secretly a trifle shocked by the coolness of the young couple. Feeling himself the incarnation of duplicity and insubordination, he would have liked a more remorseful attitude in the fugitives themselves.

"How do you do, Miss Villiers?" said Tregurtha, doffing his sou'-wester politely, and at that moment he chanced to look up at the house and saw the little solitary light go out.

Rosetta also had found a fearful joy in the adventure. She would dearly have liked the moon-lit row for herself, or, failing that, would fain have waved her hand to Richard--but here conscience stepped in. She therefore watched the party from behind her curtain until she saw them safely into the boat, and took a last critical glance at her own lover, preferred him to Roscoria, blew out the light, and--probably went to sleep; for indeed she had quite cheered up, and Dick had been right in saying that she would only weep one day for his sorrow. Tregurtha smiled mournfully to himself as he reflected that the fiery southern natures may excel us in warmth of feeling, but we of the colder north can beat them in constancy.

They pulled off from shore, after a few instants of great anxiety, because of the pebbles' traitorous noise; and then they made an energetic start. The thoughts of the trio were concentrated on putting distance between themselves and the possibility of pursuit. Lyndis steered until the men lost their first vigor, when she took the place of one of them and rowed with the enterprise of an ancient Phoenician. At first she felt a delicacy taking thus active a part in the escape, but this finally vanished when she looked at Roscoria spreading out his cramped fists in smiling relief whenever she stood up to take his oar.

They had passed the sharp cliff "Gallantry Bower," and began to feel the creeping shiver that heralds the dawn. By the mixed and twinkling light from the fading moon and the glimmering east they were thinking they could discern a suspicion of white houses in the bay for which they were making, when Roscoria, who happened just then to be resting with his hands on the rudder-lines, exclaimed:

"By Heaven, I see a boat!"

"No supernatural phenomenon upon the sea," said Richard, looking out, however, with some uneasiness. Lyndis heaved a deep sigh, and failed for the first time to draw her oar through the water.

"Well, we have the start, if it should be the admiral. It is a case of speed, and the devil take the hindmost. Oh, good gracious, Lyndis! I forgot he was your relation! Change places with me again, and guide us well in the small bay there. Pull for our happiness, Tregurtha!"

On land! The three voyagers broke into varying expressions of relief.

"By Jove, I feel as if I had been reading the 'Agamemnon!'" cried Roscoria, stretching out his arms, exhausted.

"Thank Heaven!" said Lyndis.

"Good," said Dick.