CHAPTER VI.

LORD ERCELDONNE MARKS THE KING.

On the shore of St. Anne’s, that is a day’s walking from Blackpool, was the wreck of a brig. Dismantled, gaunt in the daylight, black and gruesome at night, it lay canted on the beach a grim sign-post on a coast where the life-boat men are seldom idle.

The lamplighter looked at it as he finished his rounds in the dusk.

“’Tis said it’s haunted,” he remarked to himself, “but ghosts have quieter tongues than Margery! And ’tis the only place she’ll not rout me out of.” His conscience was not clear nor his legs quite reliable as he made an unostentatious progress over the shingle to the wreck. He was not drunk to his own mind, but he would be drunk to a certainty in the eyes of the rate-payers and his wife. Mr. Ebenezer Davids had no mind to be brought up before the vestry or the domestic tribunal.

He scrambled on board the weather-beaten hull of the _Highland Mary_, and made his way below, down a companionway that slanted at a discomposing angle. The darkness of the cabin was musty, but Mr. Davids was not squeamish. He felt his way to a moldy locker and collapsed on it. Something rustled, but he cared nothing for rats. He only turned more comfortably and let the joyful slumber of semi-intoxication possess him utterly.

The tide was rising; it lipped against the seaward side of the _Highland Mary_ with a noise that was oddly like the frightened breathing of a weak creature. But there was no other sound till the lamplighter’s snores began to fill the cabin. Then came a faint rustling in the berth opposite him, a gasp as if a desperate resolve had taken away some one’s breath. The snoring kept on.

In the dark there was a sound of cautious feet; feet that had no strength or weight; but if any one stole up to the lamplighter he did not hear. In his sleep he flung out his arm, and it struck something that gave; something that was bending over him, trying to reach a red cotton bundle that lay between him and the wall. It was his supper of bread and cheese that he had not eaten, and the smell of the cheese, combined with the regular snoring, had drawn a living thing to his side.

He started up, sobered with terror, sweating with fear. What had touched him in the dark? What had screeched in his ear?

“The place is haunted, curse it!” he said, and was frightened afresh. For the instant he spoke a low moaning broke out at his very feet.

The lamplighter was a little man, and not brave. In sheer desperation and terror he remembered that he carried the tools of his trade in a bag at his side, and with a shaking hand he lit his long wax taper. As it burned blue in the close cabin he recoiled.

The place was haunted, indeed!

What was this on the floor, like a white-faced girl, whose long, black hair streamed over her? No living woman could be so thin, could have such strange, golden eyes.

“What--what are you? Get away!” cried the lamplighter wildly. He raised his foot to kick at the thing on the floor.

“Don’t! Oh, don’t hurt me!” The cry was human, utterly desolate. “I didn’t mean to steal, but I’m hungry,” cried the girl, with a sullen sob.

“Hungry!” said the lamplighter stupidly, and his taper nearly fell in his surprise. “What are you doing here if you’re hungry, frightening honest folk?” He grew angry as he remembered how nearly she had sent him flying back to Margery with a bogy tale that would have made him a laughing-stock.

“I’ve nowhere else to go.”

At the answer he stuck his taper upright in a convenient crack in the floor of the _Highland Mary_, and with a rough kindness lifted the girl to the locker. She was a threadpaper slip of sixteen or so, with the queerest eyes he had ever seen; even the lamplighter, who was familiar with poverty, had never seen a human being so thin.

“Why, you’re starved, lass!” he cried. “What ever made you come to this old hulk? You might have knowed there was no roast beef here. Where do you come from?” for his keen little eyes saw that her shoes were not the shoes of a tramp.

She did not answer, except to point to the red handkerchief that smelled of cheese.

“You can have it, certain!” he had a foolish lump in his throat as he stuffed the thick, unappetizing stuff into her hand. And he turned away as he saw how she tore at it with sharp white teeth like a dog’s. But she only ate a mouthful or two.

The lamplighter took a seat on the locker and stared at her.

“Come now, missus,” he said, not unkindly, “let us know what brought you here. You can’t stay here till you die--like this!”

“Where can I go? No one wants me.”

“Go back to your friends, lass!”

“I haven’t any, I haven’t any money, either, and it was cold and rainy, so I came in here. I’ve been ill, I think. It seems a long time.”

“By gum!” the lamplighter was nonplused. “Why didn’t you beg? Have you had anything to eat?” sharply.

“I hate people, and they hate me. No one would give me anything. I went out in the nights and got water at a brook over there, and I found some bread one evening.” She did not say it was crusts a dog had despised.

“How long have you been like this?” he gasped.

“I don’t know. More than a week. I’ve been ill, I----” Her head fell forward with a stifled groan.

“You’re sick, now, my lass!” he said pitifully. “Come, your way’s with me, and I’ll take you----” He stopped; he dared not take her to Margery, and the only other place was the workhouse.

“I won’t go to a convent,” she muttered, “I won’t!”

“It’s not a convent,” he said, puzzled. “Just a--well, there!--it’s hell on earth to my mind, but it’s better than this,” he broke out roughly, for the strange girl could not hear him; she was in a dead faint at his feet.

Staggering, sweating, Davids managed to carry her up the companionway to the deck that was keeled over at such an angle that, burden and all, he nearly slipped through the broken bulwarks to the stony beach. But he clawed and staggered valiantly, till he had laid the girl, who to his mind was dying, safely on the ground. Then he gazed about him. What was to be done next?

“There ain’t no choice as I can see,” remarked the bewildered Samaritan. “Though she’s gey and heavy for such a bag of bones.”

He shouldered her like a sack of potatoes, fearful that she might die on his hands.

“Here goes, and prays I that Margery don’t hear of it!” he muttered, and with toil and cursing, gained the highway, a ludicrous figure in the light of the November moon. His only thought was by what byway he could come at the workhouse, and as he puzzled at it he ran into a tall man in an Inverness cape who was coming from the opposite direction.

“What the devil!” cried the latter furiously. “Why don’t you look where you’re going?”

“Beg your pardon, my lord,” gasped the despairing Davids. “I couldn’t look, she’s too mortal heavy.”

“She--who? Why, it’s you, Davids! What are you doing?” Lord Erceldonne stared as he had never stared in all his ill-spent life.

“Going to the workhouse,” said the man wretchedly.

“What for? And--why, it’s a woman!” said Lord Erceldonne, with unkind enjoyment. A squint-eyed, frowsy lamplighter with a romance was too delightful.

“It’s a lady, if you ask me,” retorted the man, with some dignity. “And I think she’s over near to dying for laughter.”

“What d’ye mean?” cried Lord Erceldonne, enraged at the just rebuke. Ebenezer told him. But it was too dark for him to see how Lord Erceldonne’s hand flew to his pocket where two letters lay.

“Put her down,” he ordered. “Let me look at her.”

Ebenezer obeyed, with some relief.

Straight and tall, her long limbs as nerveless as if she were dead, the girl lay on the ground. Her white face showed gaunt with famine in the moonlight as her matted, wild hair lifted in the night wind. For a moment both men thought her dead.

Erceldonne knelt down by her.

“Did she tell you her name?” His voice was thick.

“Not she!”

“Then she’ll never tell it now--she’s dead!” There was something so like recognition, exultation, in the pitiless words that Davids looked angrily at the speaker. Then he started.

The pale, worn face bent over the girl was hers almost line for line; allowing for the difference between sixteen years and fifty.

“My soul!” thought the lamplighter. “She is the very spit and image of his lordship.” He turned almost fiercely on the man, as if he had been his equal.

“She ain’t dead, and she ain’t going to die, while I can help it. Move, my lord--and let me carry her to the workhouse while there’s time.”

A stranger look than ever was on Erceldonne’s face. This was fate--but he had conquered fate before. He burst into a cackling laugh that made Davids jump; long and loud he laughed in the light of the moon over the girl who lay dying on the ground.

“Get on with you, then, to the workhouse!” he cried indifferently, but as he turned away his eyes were still full of laughter, in strange contrast to his savage temper when he met Ebenezer.

“I mark the king, it seems!” said Lord Erceldonne to the desolate night. “I mark the king, after all!”