Of High Descent

“Louise, my child, quick!” cried Vine. “I cannot answer her now. Quick! get me away, or I shall say words to her that I shall repent as long as I live.”

“I say it is a judgment!” cried Aunt Margaret. “Poor boy! if you had taken my advice – ”

The door closed. They were out in the clear, starry night, hurrying down the path toward the town, but Aunt Margaret’s words were ringing in Vine’s ears. A judgment. Why? What had he done? “Have I been to blame? Is she right? Have I been to blame?” he muttered, as they hurried down, the words being the secret communing of his heart, but they were loud enough for Louise to hear, and as she clung to his arm she whispered emphatically – “No, father, no!”

“No? Louise, what are you saying?”

“That you have not been to blame. My dear, patient, indulgent father.”

“Indulgent?” he said hoarsely. “Yes; indulgent. I have been indulgent, and yet Heaven knows how I have striven to make ours a happy home for all.”

“And you have, father,” sobbed Louise, “till Harry proved so wilful and went astray.”

“Yes; went astray. But he must go, my child; he must not be taken. I have a little money with me, and will send him more. I want to do that which is just and right, but I could not bear to see him taken off to gaol.”

Louise uttered a low moan as they hurried on down the path.

“Where will he go? Where will he hide?” whispered Vine, excitedly. “He could not escape by the road, the railway station is certain to be watched, and there is the telegraph.”

“Stop!” said Louise, holding one hand to her head, as in the terrible confusion of conflicting thought she tried to recall something her brother had said.

“Yes, I recollect now,” she said. “He told me he meant to escape across to France, and that he would ask one of the fishermen to sail with him to St. Malo.”

“Hah! yes. Then he will escape. Whom did he say?”

“I cannot recollect the name, and yet it is familiar.”

“Try, my child, try.”

“I am trying hard, father,” said Louise sadly, “but I cannot recollect.”

“Oh!” groaned her father, as they hurried on down the path, “for pity’s sake, try, my child, try.”

“Yes, I remember,” she cried at last – “Paul.”

“Dick Paul – the man who sailed with us to the rocks near Scilly?”

“Yes, yes!”

“Ha! then if he has escaped so far he will be there.”

“Do you know which is his cottage?”

“Yes, I know. Quick, girl, quick!”

They almost ran down the rest of the way, each looking excitedly about in the expectation of there being a hue and cry, and of seeing the fugitive rush by, hunted by a senseless crowd, eager to see him caught.

But all was perfectly still, the great stars shone down on the sleepy place, the lights burned in windows here and there, and as they reached a turn where the harbour lay before them the light at the mouth shone out like a lurid, fiery eye, staining the calm water with a patch of light, which seemed weird and strange amidst the spangled gleams reflected from the stars. Hardly a sound, till a swing door was opened a short distance in front, and there floated out in harmony one of the West-country ditties the fishermen loved to sing. The door swung to, and the part-song became a murmur.

Vine gripped his daughter’s hand with spasmodic violence, but she did not wince. There was a pain, an agony in her breast which neutralised all other, as she hurried on by her father’s side, thinking now of her erring brother, now of Duncan Leslie. That dream, that growing love which she had tremblingly avowed to herself she felt for the frank, manly young mine-owner, was over, was crushed out, with all its bright-hued hopes of happiness; but he had said he loved her, and offered his aid. Why was he not there now to help, when her brother was in such peril? Why was he not there?

The answer came like a dull blow. She had reviled him, insulted him, and driven him away. Then her heart replied: He loves me, he will forgive my hasty words, and will save my brother if I humble myself and ask.

She started back to the reality from what seemed a dream, as her father hurried on along by a row of ill-built, rugged cottages on the cliff.

“It is in one of these,” he said huskily, “but I cannot recall which.”

As he hesitated one of the doors was opened, and a great, burly merman appeared, pipe in mouth.

“Dick Paul’s,” he said, in answer to a question, “first door furder on. Fine night, master.”

“Yes, yes; thank you, thank you,” cried Vine hastily.

“But he arn’t at home.”

“What?”

“Him and four more went out at sundown to shoot their nets.”

Vine uttered a low groan.

“Good-night!” said the man, and he moved off.

“Stop!” cried Vine, and the man’s heavy boots ceased to clatter on the rugged pebbles with which the way was paved.

“Call me, Master Vine?”

“Yes. You know me?”

“Know you? Ay, and the young lady too. Liza Perrow’s Uncle Bob. Didn’t I take you ’long the coast one day?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Vine hastily. “Look here, my man; you have a boat.”

“Third share, master; just going out now. My mates are waiting yonder.”

“In the harbour?”

“Ay. That’s their lantern.”

“Look here, Perrow,” said Vine excitedly, as he held the man tightly by the arm, “you are going fishing?”

“Going to have a try, master.”

“And you will perhaps earn a pound apiece.”

“If we are lucky. P’r’aps naught.”

“Perrow,” whispered the old man, with his lips close to the man’s face, “will you do me a service – a great service?”

“Sarvice, sir? – Ay, sure I will.”

“Then look here. Your boat would sail across to France?”

“To France?” said the great bluff fellow, with a chuckle. “Why, didn’t some of our mates sail to Spain in a lugger a foot shorter than ours, and not so noo a boot! France, ay, or Spain either.”

“Then look here; take a passenger over for me to-night; and I’ll give you fifty pounds.”

“Fifty pounds, Master Vine?”

“Yes. Be ready; take him safely over, and bring me back word from him that he’s safe, and I’ll pay you a hundred.”

“Will you shake hands on that, master?”

“You will do it?”

“Do it for you, Master Vine? Why, sir, bless you, we’d ha’ done it fur five. But if you tempt poor men wi’ a big lump o’ money like that – Do it? I should think we will.”

“But your partners?” said Louise excitedly. “Never you mind about them, miss. I’m cap’n o’ our boot. Where’s our passenger? Lor’, miss, don’t do that.”

The man started, for Louise had caught his rough hand and kissed it.

“I’ll soon bring him to you,” said the old man, with his voice trembling; “but look here, my man – you must ask no questions, you will not be put off, you will not refuse at the last moment?”

“Look here, Master Vine, sir,” said the man stolidly, “I arn’t a fool. Hundred pound’s a lot o’ money, and of course it’s to smuggle some one away on the quiet. Well, so be it.”

“Hah!” ejaculated Vine. “It’s to ’blige you as I’ve knowd for a kind-hearted gent these ever so many years, though there was that bit o’ trouble ’bout my brother’s lass, as I don’t believe took that there money.”

“No, no, she was innocent,” cried Louise.

“Thanks for that, miss, and – say, has young Master Harry been up to some game.”

There was no reply.

“Never mind. Don’t you speak without you like, Master Vine, sir. Yonder’s our boot, and I’ll go down to her, and she shall lie off just outside, and I’ll wait in our little punt down by the harbour steps. Will that do?”

“Yes; and you will trust me to pay you a hundred pounds?”

“Trust you?”

The man uttered a low chuckle.

“How long will he be, master?”

“I – I don’t know. Wait till he comes.”

“Master Harry?” whispered the man.

“Yes.”

“All right, sir. You trust me. I’ll trust you. Night, miss. I’ll wait there if it’s a week.”

“Hah!” ejaculated Vine, as the man’s heavy step went on before them. “There is a way of escape for him. I am a father, and what I ought to do by my friend pales before that. Now to find him, my child, to find him. He must escape.”

Louise clung to his arm, and they stood there on the cliff-path listening, and each mentally asking the question, what to do?

“If I could only get the faintest clue of his movements,” muttered Vine. “Louise, my child, can you not suggest something?”

She did not answer, for a terrible dread was upon her now. Her brother might have been taken; and if so, there was no need to hesitate as to the way to go.

As if the same thoughts had impressed him, Vine suddenly exclaimed, “No, no, they would not have taken him. The man was a stranger, and Harry would be too quick.”

For the next hour they hurried here and there, passing Van Heldre’s house, where a dim light in the window showed where the injured man lay. There was a vague kind of feeling that sooner or later they would meet Harry, but the minutes glided slowly by, and all was still.

Out beyond the harbour light the faint gleam of a lantern could be seen, showing that Bob Perrow had kept faith with them, and that the lugger was swinging in the rapid current, fast to one of the many buoys used by the fishermen in fine weather. But there was no sign or sound apparent; and, with their hearts sinking beneath the impression that Harry had been taken, and yet not daring to go and ask, father and daughter still wandered to and fro along the various streets of the little town.

“Can he have taken boat and gone?” whispered Vine at last.

“No,” said Louise, “there would not have been time, and we should have seen the lights had a boat gone out.”

“George!”

Two figures suddenly appeared out of the darkness, and stopped before them.

“Luke? You here?”

“Yes; have you seen him?”

“No; but is – is he – ”

“No, Mr Vine,” said Leslie quickly. “I have been up to the station twice.”

“Sir!”

“For Heaven’s sake don’t speak to me like that, Mr Vine,” cried Leslie. “I know everything, and I am working for him as I would for my own brother.”

“Yes, it’s all right, George,” said Uncle Luke, with his voice softening a little. “Leslie’s a good fellow. Look here; we must get the young dog away. Leslie has chartered a fast boat, and she lies in the head of the harbour ready.”

“Ah!”

It was an involuntary ejaculation from Louise.

“We’ll have have him taken across the Channel if we can find him. Where can he be hidden?”

“We have been twice on to your house, Mr Vine,” said Leslie, who kept right away from Louise, and out of delicacy seemed to ignore her presence, but spoke so that she could hear every word. “I have three of my miners on the look-out – men I can trust, and law or no law, we must save him from arrest.”

“Heaven bless you, Mr Leslie. Forgive – ”

“Hush, sir. There is no time for words. The men from London with our own police are searching in every direction. He got right away, and he is hiding somewhere, for he certainly would not take to the hills or the road, and it would be madness to try the rail.”

“Yes,” said Uncle Luke. “He’s safe to make for the sea, and so get over yonder. There’s a boat lying off though, and I’m afraid that’s keeping him back. The police have that outside to stop him.”

“No; that is a boat I have chartered, Luke, waiting to save my poor boy.”

“Then before many hours are gone he’ll be down by the harbour, that’s my impression,” said Uncle Luke. “Confound you, George, why did you ever have a boy?”

George Vine drew a long breath and remained silent.

“If you will allow me, gentlemen,” said Leslie, “I think we ought not to stay here like this. The poor fellow will not know what precautions his friends have taken, and some one ought to be on the look-out to give him warning: whenever he comes down to the harbour.”

“Yes; that’s true.”

“Then if I may advise, I should suggest, sir, that you patrol this side to and fro, where you must see him if he comes down to make for the west point; I’ll cross over and watch the east pier, and if Mr Luke Vine here will stop about the head of the harbour, we shall have three chances of seeing him instead of one.”

Louise pressed her hand to her throbbing heart, as she listened to these words, and in spite of her agony of spirits, noted how Leslie avoided speaking to her, devoting himself solely to the task of helping her brother; and as she felt this, and saw that in future they could be nothing more than the most distant friends, a suffocating feeling of misery seemed to come over her, and she longed to hurry away, and sob to relieve her overcharged breast.

“Leslie’s right,” said Uncle Luke, in a decisive way. “Let’s separate at once. And look here, whoever sees him is to act, give him some money, and get him off at once. He must go. The trouble’s bad enough now, it would be worse if he were taken, and it’s the last thing Van Heldre would do, hand him to the police. Leslie!”

He held up his hand, but the steps he heard were only those of some fishermen going home from the river.

“Now, then, let’s act; and for goodness’ sake, let’s get the young idiot away, for I warn you all, if that boy’s taken there’ll be far worse trouble than you know of now.”

“Uncle Luke!” cried Louise piteously.

“Can’t help it, my dear. There will, for I shall end a respectable life by killing old Crampton and being hung. Come along, Leslie.”

The little party separated without a word, and Louise and her father stood listening till the steps of their late companions died away.

Volume Two – Chapter Eleven.

“In the Queen’s Name.”

As they stood together at the lower end of the rocky point listening and waiting, it seemed to Louise Vine as if she were about to be an actor in some terrible scene.

Vine muttered a few words now and then, but they were inaudible to his child, who clung to his arm as he walked untiringly to and fro, watching the harbour and the way back into the town, while when he paused it was to fix his eyes upon the dimly-seen lantern of the lugger lying out beyond the point. The portion of their walk nearest the town was well kept and roughly paved with great slabs of granite, in which were here and there great rings for mooring purposes, while at some distance apart were projecting masses roughly hewn into posts. But as the distance from the town increased and the harbour widened, the jutting point was almost as if it had been formed by nature, and the footing was difficult, even dangerous at times.

But in his excitement Vine did not heed this, going on and on regardless of the difficulties, and Louise unmurmuringly walked or at times climbed along till they were right out at the extreme point where, some feet below them, the water rushed and gurgled in and out of the crevices with terrible gasping noises, such as might be made by hungry sea monsters thronging round to seize them if either of them should make a slip.

Here Vine paused again and again to watch the lantern in the lugger, and listen for the rattle of oars in the rowlocks, the oars of the boat conveying his son to the men who would at once hoist the sails and bear him away to a place of safety. But the dim light of the horn lantern rose and fell, there was no rattle of oars, not even the murmur of a voice: nothing but the sucking, gasping noises at their feet, as the tide swirled by like the race of waters from some huge mill.

Louise clung more tightly to her father’s arm, as he stood again and again where she had often from a rock behind watched her uncle deftly throwing out his line to capture some silvery-sided bass or a mackerel, glowing with all the glories of the sea at sunrise.

“If he should slip,” she said to herself, as she tightened her grasp of her father’s thin arm, “if he should slip!” and she shuddered as she gazed down into the deep, black rushing water, where the star reflections were all broken up and sparkled deep down as if the current were charged with gold-dust, swirling and eddying by. Then she started as her father spoke aloud to himself.

“No, no, no!” he murmured. Then sharply, “Come, let us get back.”

Louise crept along by him in silence, her heart giving one violent leap, as Vine slipped once on the spray-swept rocks, but recovered himself and went on without a word. Again and again she suffered that terrible catching of the breath, as her father slipped, caught his foot in some inequality, or would, but for her guidance, have stumbled over some projecting rock post and been thrown into the harbour. For, as he walked on, his eyes were constantly searching the dark surface as he listened intently for some token of the escaping man.

But all was still as they neared the town, still with the silence of death. No one could have told that there were watchers by the ferry, where a rough boat was used for crossing from side to side of the harbour; that two boats were waiting, and that Duncan Leslie was patrolling the short arm of granite masonry that ran down to the tower-like building where the harbour lantern burned.

“Hist!” whispered Louise, for there was a step some little distance away, but it ceased, and as she looked in its direction, the cliffs seemed to tower up behind the town till a black, jagged ridge cut the starry sky.

“Let’s go back,” said her father, huskily. “I fancied I heard a boat stealing along the harbour; we cannot see the lugger light from here.”

“George!” came from out of the darkness ahead.

“Yes, Luke!” was whispered back sharply, and the old man came up.

“Seen anything of him?”

“No. Have, you?”

“Not a sign. I sent one of the fishermen up to the police to see what he could find out, and – ”

“Uncle!” panted out Louise, as she left her father to cling to the old man.

“Poor little lassie! poor little lassie!” he said tenderly, as he took her and patted her head. “No news, and that’s good news. They haven’t got him, but they’re all out on the watch; the man from London and our dunderheads. All on the watch, and I fancy they’re on the look-out close here somewhere, and that’s what keeps him back.”

Louise uttered a low moan.

“Ah, it’s bad for you, my dear,” said Uncle Luke, whose manner seemed quite changed. “You come with me, and let me take you home. We don’t want another trouble on our hands.”

“No, no,” she said firmly, “I cannot leave him.”

“But you will be ill, child.”

“I cannot leave him, uncle,” she said again; and going back to her father, she locked her fingers about his arm.

“Hi! hoi! look out!” came from a distance; and it was answered directly by a voice not a hundred yards away.

A thrill of excitement shot through the little group as they heard now the tramp of feet.

“I knew it,” whispered Uncle Luke. “He’s making for the harbour now.”

“Ah!” gasped Vine, as he almost dragged Louise over the rugged stones.

“Stop where you are,” said Uncle Luke, excitedly; and he placed something to his lips and gave a low shrill whistle.

It was answered instantly from the other side of the harbour.

“Leslie’s on the look-out. Yes, and the men with the boat,” he whispered, excitedly, as another low whistle was heard.

Then there was a few moments’ silence, as if people were listening, followed by steps once more, and a quick voice exclaimed from out of the darkness,

“Seen him?”

Neither of the group answered, and a man stepped up to them and flashed the light of a lantern quickly over them before closing it again.

“That’s you, is it?” he said. “I’ll have a word with you by and by; but look here, I call upon you two men in the Queen’s name to help me to take him. If you help him to get away, it’s felony, so you may take the consequences. You haven’t got to do with your local police now.”

The man turned away and walked swiftly back toward the town, the darkness seeming to swallow him up. He paused for a few moments at the edge of the harbour, to throw the light of his lantern across the water.

“The London man,” said Uncle Luke, unconcernedly. “Well, God save the Queen, but I’m sure she don’t want us to help to capture our poor boy.”

Volume Two – Chapter Twelve.

“Oh! Absalom, my Son, my Son.”

Harry Vine had but one thought as he dashed out of his father’s house, and that was to escape – far away to some other country where neither he nor his crime was known – to some place where, with the slate of his past life wiped clean, he might begin anew, and endeavour to show to his father, to his sister, perhaps to Madelaine Van Heldre, that he was not all bad. How he would try, he told himself. Only let him get aboard one of the fishing-luggers, and after confiding in some one or other of his old friends, the bluff fishermen who had often given him a sail or a day’s fishing, beg of him to take him across to Jersey or St. Malo; anywhere, so as to avoid the terrible exposure of the law – anywhere to be free.

“I’d sooner die than be taken,” he said to himself as he sped on downward at a rapid rate.

The way to the harbour seemed clear, and, though the officer was pursuing him, Harry had the advantage of the darkness, and the local knowledge of the intricate ways of the little town, so that he felt no fear of being able to reach the harbour and some boat. He was reckoning without his host. His host, or would-be host, was the detective sergeant, who had gone about his business in a businesslike manner, so that when Harry Vine was congratulating himself upon the ease with which he was able to escape, one of the local policemen started from his post right in the fugitive’s way, nearly succeeding in catching him by the arm, an attention Harry avoided by doubling down one of the little alleys of the place. Over and over again he tried to steal down to the harbour, but so sure as he left his hiding-place in one of the dark lanes or among the fishermen’s stores he heard steps before him, and with the feeling that the whole town had now risen up against him, and that the first person he encountered would seize and hold him until the arrival of the police, he crept back, bathed with cold perspiration, to wait what seemed to be an interminable time before he ventured again.

His last hiding-place was a wooden shed not far from the waterside – a place of old ropes and sails, and with a loft stored full of carefully-dried nets, put away till the shoals of fish for which they were needed visited the shore. Here, in profound ignorance of what had been done on his behalf, he threw himself down on a heap of tarred canvas to try and devise some certain means of escape. He had a vague intention of getting the fishermen to help him; but after thinking of several he could not decide which of the sturdy fellows would stand by such a culprit as he. And as he lay there the bitter regrets for the past began to attack him.

“Louise – sister,” he muttered to himself, “I must have been mad. And I lie here groaning like the coward I am,” he said fiercely, as, thrusting back all thoughts of the past with the intention of beginning afresh, he stole out once more into the dark night, meaning to get to the harbour, and, failing a better means, to take some small sailing-boat, and to trust to his own skill to get safely across. The place was far more quiet now; and, avoiding the larger lanes, he threaded his way through passage after passage among the net-stores and boat-houses till he reached the main street, along which he was walking noiselessly when a heavy regular pace ahead checked him, and, turning shortly round, he made for the first narrow back lane, reached it, and turned trembling as he recognised that it was the familiar path leading by the back of Van Heldre’s, the way he knew so well.

Hurrying on, he had nearly reached the bottom when he became aware of the fact that there was a policeman waiting. He turned sharply back, after nearly walking into the arms of one of his enemies, and was nearly at the top once more when he found that the man whom he had tried to avoid was there too waiting.

“I’m caught,” he said bitterly, as he paused midway. “Shall I dash for liberty? No,” he said bitterly; “better give up.”

He raised his hand to guide himself silently along, when he shivered, for it touched a gate which yielded, and as the steps advanced from front and rear, he stepped down. Fate in her irony had decided that, to avoid arrest, he should take refuge in the premises of the man he had injured. The steps came nearer, and trembling with horror the fugitive glanced upward to see that two windows were illumined, and there was light enough to show that the door leading into the corridor was open. He shrank from it, and was then driven to enter and stand inside, listening, for the steps stopped outside, the door yielded, and a voice said: