Ships in the Bay!. D. K. Broster

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СКАЧАТЬ in the hall, with its panelled ceiling and old music gallery over the door, she stood rather guiltily reflecting, under the eyes of two prebendaries and a bishop. It was true that she had not yet had the chance of telling her father privately about her encounter, and, owing to Mr. Thistleton’s presence, might not get that chance for a little while, but she was not sure that when it came she intended to take it. Would it not be a little like going to a magistrate with information about the runaway, a thing which she had told this Mark Thompson that she would not do? Besides, Papa might be rather horrified at the episode; might even feel inclined to curtail the freedom which had always been hers, since she grew up, the right of roaming unaccompanied about this countryside where she was so well known and loved. The question of telling Aunt Pennefather she never even debated.

      Old Dixon, the English butler, was arranging something in a corner of the hall. Perceiving her standing there, he made an inquiry.

      “Have Bran been fighting, miss, this afternoon when he was out with you? Richards say just now that he won’t eat his supper, and have gone into his kennel, all skeery-like. But he didn’t see no marks on him.”

      “Oh, poor Bran!” exclaimed his mistress involuntarily. Then she pulled herself up. “No, he has not been fighting, Dixon,” she replied, and passed on up the stairs to her bedroom. She had not told a lie, since “fighting,” in the case of a dog, had surely a strictly technical meaning, which did not cover conflict with a human being.

      Thoughtfully she laid upon the bed the parasol which had so unavailingly chastised the culprit, and went and looked out of the window. But the Cathedral seemed to be gazing across at her with sternness—a vast reproof; in purple stone; so she came away again.

      At the evening meal the talk veered round at one moment from the archæological questions which had been engaging Dr. Meredith and his guest to the Dutch prize brought into the Sound (of which Mrs. Pennefather now heard for the first time) and surmise was expressed as to whether the vessel were still there; had Nest heard when she went back to Rhosson this afternoon? A little nervous of approaching the subject at all Nest was thereupon constrained to tell them that the prize had sailed; and in the course of further talk was incautious enough to mention its name.

      “The Vrijheid—indeed! Is that what she was called?” observed Dr. Meredith. “I presume that signifies ‘freedom’ or something of the sort. But how did you learn the name, Nesta? From Mrs. Lloyd, I suppose?”

      Nesta’s napkin slid suddenly from her lap and she stooped after it instead of replying.

      “Miss Meredith has doubtless better eyesight than ours,” Mr. Thistleton meanwhile gallantly observed.

      “Not so very much, I think,” interposed the Precentor, who prided himself upon his. “I looked very carefully as I stood at Porthstinian this morning, and could not see a sign of a name upon the vessel.”

      “You forget, Papa,” said his daughter with a nervous little laugh, “that I had the use of Watkins’s telescope.” And if her colour was rather high as she made this misleading statement it could be assigned to her hasty dive under the table. But she knew that she ought to have bitten her tongue hard to keep back that implicit lie! It was not Watkins’s telescope which had disclosed the name to her . . .

      “The telescope,” here remarked Mrs. Pennefather in her remote voice, and with a dreamier look than usual in her dreamy eyes, “the telescope is a contrivance which I have never been able to employ with profit.”

      “I did not know, my dear Gwenllian, that you had ever tried,” returned her brother.

      “Yes, yes. In younger and happier days I used sometimes to direct my dear husband’s instrument towards the glories of the nocturnal sky—but in vain!”

      “But surely, Aunt Gwenllian,” objected Nest, glad to escape from the purely marine capabilities of the telescope, “you must have seen something! The moon—it is so large through a glass—or some stars!”

      “Alas, they were never revealed to me,” replied Mrs. Pennefather mournfully. “The night was ever starless to my vision.” Here she shut her eyes for a moment and her lips moved; possibly she had realised that this last sentence might be considered to scan and was committing it to memory for future use. And yet there was nothing of the poseuse about Aunt Pennefather; she was a perfectly sincere and warmhearted woman, who contrived to run Dr. Meredith’s house with success in spite of her poetry and her classics. Nest sometimes found her absurd, but she was very fond of her. She thought now, “It is plain that Aunt Gwenllian always shut the eye which she put to the telescope!” But she did not find much amusement in this reflection, for she was pursued by the feeling that this was the point at which to confess, without giving it the air of a confession—rather, indeed, to narrate in a sprightly manner—her meeting with a member of the crew of that Dutch prize, first under a haycock and then in the lane, and its conclusion, with Bran’s attacking and biting him.

      But it was just that bite of Bran’s which seemed to make this avowal impossible.

      Moreover the convenient opportunity had slid by. Her father and Mr. Thistleton were talking of their recent visit to Mr. Jerome Salt, the antiquarian and historian, which Mr. Thistleton appeared greatly to have appreciated. The Precentor remarked that he was glad that he had been able to read the letter inviting them there, for Salt’s calligraphy was really becoming illegible, as he acknowledged himself. “He says,” added Dr. Meredith, “that with this translation of Giraldus Cambrensis on hand, as well as his historical composition, he will have to think of employing an amanuensis.” Nest asked what an amanuensis might be.

      It was later in the evening, when Mrs. Pennefather, still with the air of a not very effective sibyl, had poured out tea for them, that the idea of taking an evening stroll—or hobble, as Mr. Thistleton put it—occurred to the two gentlemen. The soft lucent twilight, which lingers so long in the extreme West, made it seem earlier than the testimony of the clock would allow. And when Nest pleaded to be allowed to accompany them, her father, though he said that young ladies ought by this time to be in bed, and that she would probably catch cold, gave his assent, urged thereto by his guest, who said that Miss Meredith wished no doubt to see the ruins of the Bishop’s Palace by moonlight, which was a most proper and romantic desire.

      It was true that the moon was up; she hung just above the Precentory, but her rays had no power against the remaining daylight, did not even strike a gleam from the Alan when the little party crossed it on the tiny bridge, nor did they light up the beautiful arcading along the top of what Nest in a sudden burst of enthusiasm affirmed to be the finest ruin in the whole world. And certainly, even without the aid of moonlight, the Bishop’s Palace looked beautiful enough, even if a trifle spectral, as they went through the ruined entrance gateway and found themselves in the grass-grown quadrangle. Mr. Thistleton, who had been here by daylight, expressed a wish to enter again the Bishop’s Hall on the left, and Dr. Meredith preceded him in thither with the lantern, brought in view of such a desire—for, though roofless, the interior of the Palace was much darker than outside. Nest, however, did not follow their example, but stayed without, looking at the noble entrance doorway to the King’s Hall in front of her, where over the double ogee of the archway still looked down the statues of the third Edward and his queen. In her heart she was perhaps hoping that the moon would by some miracle kindle suddenly to a real romantic brightness; but as this did not happen she finally and slowly ascended the entrance steps. She advanced, however, no further than the inner doorway, because she knew that in the great hall the floor had collapsed in one or two places, and as the whole range of buildings was supported upon vaulting she had no desire to slip in the gloom into one of the cavities.

      Behind her she heard her father’s footsteps, and his voice calling СКАЧАТЬ