“I understand you, Sir: the work was anonymous, until you saw fit to inscribe my name as its author. Ludlow! Ludlow! how meanly have you thought of the woman you profess to love!”
“That were impossible! I mingle little with those who study the finesse of life; and loving, as I do, my noble profession, Alida, was it so unnatural to believe that another might view it with the same eyes? But since you disavow the letter–nay, your disavowal is unnecessary–I see my vanity has even deceived me in the writing–but since the delusion is over, I confess that I rejoice it is not so.”
La belle Barbérie smiled, and her countenance grew brighter. She enjoyed the triumph of knowing that she merited the respect of her suitor, and it was a triumph heightened by recent mortification. Then succeeded a pause of more than a minute. The embarrassment of the silence was happily interrupted by the return of François.
“Mam’selle Alide, voici de l’eau de la fontaine,” said the valet; “mais Monsieur votre oncle s’est couché, et il a mis la cléf de la cave au vin dessous son oreiller. Ma foi, ce n’est pas facile d’avoir du bon vin du tout, en Amerique, mais après que Monsieur le maire s’est couché, c’est toujours impossible; voila!”
“N’importe, mon cher; le capitaine va partir, et il n’a plus soif.”
“Dere is assez de jin,” continued the valet, who felt for the captain’s disappointment, “mais, Monsieur Loodle, have du gout, an’ he n’aime pas so strong liqueur.”
“He has swallowed already more than was necessary for one occasion,” said Alida, smiling on her admirer, in a manner that left him doubtful whether he ought most to repine, or to rejoice. “Thank you, good François; your duty for the night shall end with lighting the captain to the door.”
Then saluting the young commander, in a manner that would not admit of denial, la belle Barbérie dismissed her lover and the valet, together.
“You have a pleasant office, Monsieur François,” said the former, as he was lighted to the outer door of the pavilion; “it is one that many a gallant gentleman would envy.”
“Oui, Sair. It be grand plaisir to serve Mam’selle Alide. Je porte de fan, de book, mais quant au vin, Monsieur le Capitaine, parole d’honneur, c’est toujours impossible après que l’Aldermain s’est couché.”
“Ay–the book–I think you had the agreeable duty, to-day, of carrying the book of la Belle?”
“Vraiment, oui! ’Twas ouvrage de Monsieur Pierre Corneille. On prétend, que Monsieur Shak-a-spear en a emprunté d’assez beaux sentiments!”
“And the paper between the leaves?–you were charged also with that note, good François?”
The valet paused, shrugged his shoulders, and laid one of his long yellow fingers on the plane of an enormous aquiline nose, while he seemed to muse. Then shaking his head perpendicularly, he preceded the captain, as before, muttering, as usual, half in French and half in English,–
“For le papier, I know, rien du tout; c’est bien possible, parceque, voyez vous, Monsieur le Capitaine, Mam’selle Alide did say, prenez-y garde; but I no see him, depuis. Je suppose ’twas beaux compliments écrits on de vers of M. Pierre Corneille. Quel génie que celui de cet homme là!–n’est ce pas, Monsieur?”
“It is of no consequence, good François,” said Ludlow, slipping a guinea into the hands of the valet. “If you should ever discover what became of that paper, however, you will oblige me by letting me know. Good night; mes devoirs à la Belle!”
“Bon soir, Monsieur le Capitaine; c’est un brave Monsieur que celui-la, et de très bonne famille! Il n’a pas de si grandes terres, que Monsieur le Patteroon, pourtant, on dip, qu’il doit avoir de jolies maisons et assez de rentes publiques! J’aime à servir un si généreux et loyal maitre, mais, malheureusement, il est marin! M. de Barbérie n’avait pas trop d’amitié pour les gens de cette profession là.”
CHAPTER VIII.
“–Well, Jessica, go in;
Perhaps, I will return immediately;
Do as I bid you,
Shut doors after you: Fast bind, fast find;
A proverb never stale, in thrifty mind.”
Merchant of Venice
The decision, with which la demoiselle Barbérie had dismissed her suitor, was owing to some consciousness that she had need of opportunity to reflect on the singular nature of the events which had just happened, no less than to a sense of the impropriety of his visiting her at that hour, and in a manner so equivocal. But, like others who act from feverish impulses, when alone the maiden repented of her precipitation; and she remembered fifty questions which might aid in clearing the affair of its mystery, that she would now gladly put. It was too late, however, for she had heard Ludlow take his leave, and had listened, in breathless silence, to his footstep, as he passed the shrubbery of her little lawn. François reappeared at the door, to repeat his wishes for her rest and happiness, and then she believed she was finally alone for the night, since the ladies of that age and country, were little apt to require the assistance of their attendants, in assuming, or in divesting themselves of, their ordinary attire.
It was still early, and the recent interview had deprived Alida of all inclination for sleep. She placed the lights in a distant corner of the apartment, and approached a window. The moon had so far changed its position, as to cast a different light upon the water. The hollow washing of the surf, the dull but heavy breathing of the air from the sea, and the soft shadows of the trees and mountain, were much the same. The Coquette lay, as before, at her anchor near the cape, and the Shrewsbury glittered towards the south, until its surface was concealed by the projection of a high and nearly perpendicular bluff.
The stillness was profound, for, with the exception of the dwelling of the family who occupied the estate nearest the villa, there was no other habitation within some miles of the place. Still the solitude of the situation was undisturbed by any apprehension of danger, or any tradition of violence from rude and lawless men. The peaceable character of the colonists, who dwelt in the interior country, was proverbial, and their habits simple; while the ocean was never entered by those barbarians, who then rendered some of the seas of the other hemisphere as fearful as they were pleasant.
Notwithstanding this known and customary character of tranquillity, and the lateness of the hour, Alida had not been many moments in her balcony, before she heard the sound of oars. The stroke was measured, and the noise low and distant, but it was too familiar to be mistaken. She wondered at the expedition of Ludlow, who was not accustomed to show such haste in quitting her presence, and leaned over the railing to catch a glimpse of his departing boat. Each moment she expected to see the little bark issue from out of the shadows of the land, into the sheet of brightness which stretched nearly to the cruiser. She gazed long, and in vain, for no barge appeared, and yet the sound had become inaudible. A light still hung at the peak of the Coquette, a sign that the commander was out of his vessel.
The view of a fine ship, seen by the aid of the moon, with its symmetry of spars, and its delicate tracery of cordage, and the heavy and grand movements of the hull as it rolls on the sluggish billows of a calm sea, is ever a pleasing and indeed an imposing spectacle. Alida knew that more than a hundred human beings slept within the black and silent mass, and her thoughts insensibly wandered to the business of their daring lives, their limited abode, and yet wandering existence, their frank and manly qualities, their devotion to the cause of those who occupied the land, their broken and interrupted connexion with the rest of the human family, and finally to those weakened domestic ties, and to that reputation for inconstancy, which are apparently a natural consequence of all. She sighed, and her eye wandered from the ship to that ocean on which it was constructed to dwell. From the distant, low, and nearly imperceptible shore of the island of Nassau, to the coast of New-Jersey, there was one broad and untenanted waste. Even the sea-fowl rested his tired wing, and slept tranquilly on the water. The broad space appeared like some great and unfrequented desert, or rather like a denser and more material copy of the firmament by which it was canopied.
It has been mentioned that a stunted growth of oaks and pines covered much of the sandy ridge that formed the cape. The same covering furnished a dark setting to the waters of the Cove. Above this outline of wood, which fringed the margin of the sea. Alida now fancied she saw an object in motion. At first, she believed some ragged and naked tree, of which the coast had many, was so placed as to deceive her vision, and had thrown its naked lines upon the back-ground of water, in a manner to assume the shape and tracery of a light-rigged vessel. But when the dark and symmetrical spars were distinctly seen, gliding past objects that were known to be stationary, it was impossible to doubt their character. The maiden wondered, and her surprise was not unmixed with apprehension. It seemed as if the stranger, for such the vessel must needs be, was recklessly approaching a surf, that, in its most tranquil moments, was dangerous to such a fabric, and that he steered, unconscious of hazard, directly upon the land. Even the movement was mysterious and unusual. Sails there were none; and yet the light and lofty spars were soon hid behind a thicket that covered a knoll near the margin of the sea. Alida expected, each moment, to hear the cry of mariners in distress, and then, as the minutes passed and no such fearful sound interrupted the stillness of the night, she began to bethink her of those lawless rovers, who were known to abound among the Carribean isles, and who were said sometimes even to enter and to refit, in the smaller and more secret inlets of the American continent. The tales, coupled with the deeds, character, and fate of the notorious Kidd, were then still recent, and although magnified and colored by vulgar exaggerations, as all such tales are known to be, enough was believed, by the better instructed, to make his life and death the subject of many curious and mysterious rumors. At this moment, she would have gladly recalled the young commander of the Coquette, to apprize him of the enemy that was nigh; and then, ashamed of terrors that she was fain to hope savored more of woman’s weakness than of truth, she endeavored to believe the whole some ordinary movement of a coaster, who, familiar with his situation, could not possibly be either in want of aid, or an object of alarm. Just as this natural and consoling conclusion crossed her mind, she very audibly heard a step in her pavilion. It seemed near the door of the room she occupied. Breathless, more with the excitement of her imagination, than with any actual fear created by this new cause of alarm, the maiden quitted the balcony, and stood motionless to listen. The door, in truth, was opened, with singular caution, and, for an instant, Alida saw nothing but a confused area, in the centre of which appeared the figure of a menacing and rapacious freebooter.