“I do not understand,” she said, as he paused. “Is not that a contradiction in itself?”
“It seems so only. The fact is, Arabella, this unfortunate man has the… the temerity to love you.”
She cried out at that, and clutched her breast whose calm was suddenly disturbed. Her eyes dilated as she stared at him.
“I… I’ve startled you,” said he, with concern. “I feared I should. But it was necessary so that you may understand.”
“Go on,” she bade him.
“Well, then: he saw in me one who made it impossible that he should win you – so he said. Therefore he could with satisfaction have killed me. But because my death might cause you pain, because your happiness was the thing that above all things he desired, he surrendered that part of his guarantee of safety which my person afforded him. If his departure should be hindered, and I should lose my life in what might follow, there was the risk that… that you might mourn me. That risk he would not take. Him you deemed a thief and a pirate, he said, and added that – I am giving you his own words always – if in choosing between us two, your choice, as he believed, would fall on me, then were you in his opinion choosing wisely. Because of that he bade me leave his ship, and had me put ashore.”
She looked at him with eyes that were aswim with tears. He took a step towards her, a catch in his breath, his hand held out.
“Was he right, Arabella? My life’s happiness hangs upon your answer.”
But she continued silently to regard him with those tear-laden eyes, without speaking, and until she spoke he dared not advance farther.
A doubt, a tormenting doubt beset him. When presently she spoke, he saw how true had been the instinct of which that doubt was born, for her words revealed the fact that of all that he had said the only thing that had touched her consciousness and absorbed it from all other considerations was Blood’s conduct as it regarded herself.
“He said that!” she cried. “He did that! Oh!” She turned away, and through the slender, clustering trunks of the bordering orange-trees she looked out across the glittering waters of the great harbour to the distant hills. Thus for a little while, my lord standing stiffly, fearfully, waiting for fuller revelation of her mind. At last it came, slowly, deliberately, in a voice that at moments was half suffocated. “Last night when my uncle displayed his rancour and his evil rage, it began to be borne in upon me that such vindictiveness can belong only to those who have wronged. It is the frenzy into which men whip themselves to justify an evil passion. I must have known then, if I had not already learnt it, that I had been too credulous of all the unspeakable things attributed to Peter Blood. Yesterday I had his own explanation of that tale of Levasseur that you heard in St. Nicholas. And now this… this but gives me confirmation of his truth and worth. To a scoundrel such as I was too readily brought to believe him, the act of which you have just told me would have been impossible.”
“That is my own opinion,” said his lordship gently.
“It must be. But even if it were not, that would now weigh for nothing. What weighs – oh, so heavily and bitterly – is the thought that but for the words in which yesterday I repelled him, he might have been saved. If only I could have spoken to him again before he went! I waited for him; but my uncle was with him, and I had no suspicion that he was going away again. And now he is lost – back at his outlawry and piracy, in which ultimately he will be taken and destroyed. And the fault is mine – mine!”
“What are you saying? The only agents were your uncle’s hostility and his own obstinacy which would not study compromise. You must not blame yourself for anything.”
She swung to him with some impatience, her eyes aswim in tears. “You can say that, and in spite of his message, which in itself tells how much I was to blame! It was my treatment of him, the epithets I cast at him that drove him. So much he has told you. I know it to be true.”
“You have no cause for shame,” said he. “As for your sorrow – why, if it will afford you solace – you may still count on me to do what man can to rescue him from this position.”
She caught her breath.
“You will do that!” she cried with sudden eager hopefulness. “You promise?” She held out her hand to him impulsively. He took it in both his own.
“I promise,” he answered her. And then, retaining still the hand she had surrendered to him – “Arabella,” he said very gently, “there is still this other matter upon which you have not answered me.”
“This other matter?” Was he mad, she wondered.
Could any other matter signify in such a moment.
“This matter that concerns myself; and all my future, oh, so very closely. This thing that Blood believed, that prompted him…, that … that you are not indifferent to me.” He saw the fair face change colour and grow troubled once more.
“Indifferent to you?” said she. “Why, no. We have been good friends; we shall continue so, I hope, my lord.”
“Friends! Good friends?” He was between dismay and bitterness. “It is not your friendship only that I ask, Arabella. You heard what I said, what I reported. You will not say that Peter Blood was wrong?”
Gently she sought to disengage her hand, the trouble in her face increasing. A moment he resisted; then, realizing what he did, he set her free.
“Arabella!” he cried on a note of sudden pain.
“I have friendship for you, my lord. But only friendship.” His castle of hopes came clattering down about him, leaving him a little stunned. As he had said, he was no coxcomb. Yet there was something that he did not understand. She confessed to friendship, and it was in his power to offer her a great position, one to which she, a colonial planter’s niece, however wealthy, could never have aspired even in her dreams. This she rejected, yet spoke of friendship. Peter Blood had been mistaken, then. How far had he been mistaken? Had he been as mistaken in her feelings towards himself as he obviously was in her feelings towards his lordship? In that case … His reflections broke short. To speculate was to wound himself in vain. He must know. Therefore he asked her with grim frankness:
“Is it Peter Blood?”
“Peter Blood?” she echoed. At first she did not understand the purport of his question. When understanding came, a flush suffused her face.
“I do not know,” she said, faltering a little.
This was hardly a truthful answer. For, as if an obscuring veil had suddenly been rent that morning, she was permitted at last to see Peter Blood in his true relations to other men, and that sight, vouchsafed her twenty-four hours too late, filled her with pity and regret and yearning.
Lord Julian knew enough of women to be left in no further doubt. He bowed his head so that she might not see the anger in his eyes, for as a man of honour he took shame in that anger which as a human being he could not repress.
And because Nature in him was stronger – as it is in most of us – than training, Lord Julian from that moment began, almost in spite of himself, to practise something that was akin to villainy. I regret to chronicle it of one for whom – if I have done him any sort of justice – you should have been conceiving some esteem. But the truth is that the lingering remains of the regard in which he had held Peter Blood were choked by the desire to supplant and destroy a rival. He had passed his word to Arabella that he would use his powerful influence on Blood’s behalf. I deplore to set it down that not only did he forget his pledge, but secretly set himself to aid and abet Arabella’s uncle in the plans he laid for the trapping and undoing of the buccaneer. He might reasonably have urged – had he been taxed with it – that he conducted himself precisely as his duty demanded. But to that he might have been answered that duty with him was but the slave of jealousy in this.
When the Jamaica fleet put to sea some few days later, Lord Julian sailed with Colonel Bishop in Vice-Admiral Craufurd’s flagship. Not only was there no need for either of them to go, but the Deputy-Governor’s duties actually demanded that he should remain ashore, whilst Lord Julian, as we know, was a useless man aboard a ship. Yet both set out to hunt Captain Blood, each making of his duty a pretext for the satisfaction of personal aims; and that common purpose became a link between them, binding them in a sort of friendship that must otherwise have been impossible between men so dissimilar in breeding and in aspirations.