“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 out warningly: “Nesta, Nesta, do not go in there without a light!”
She turned to reassure him. It was at that moment that she received the impression of a sudden movement somewhere behind her, and the sound of a thud, as if someone had dropped or sprung down into the vault below. She gave a half-stifled scream.
“Papa!” she called out in sudden alarm, “there is someone in here—I am sure of it!”
“Nonsense, my dear,” said the Precentor, joining her on the steps, to which she had retreated. “You heard a rat, I expect—though to be sure that would alarm you more than a human being. Go and ask Mr. Thistleton for the lantern, then; he is just coming out of the Bishop’s Hall.”
Nest caught her father’s arm. “And leave you alone here with . . . No!”
“Nonsense, child, there’s no one here! Ah, there’s Thistleton; ask him to be so good as to come this way with the light.”
Nest darted down the steps on to the dew-wet grass. “Mr. Thistleton, Papa says——” And there she stopped, assailed all at once by a most unwelcome suspicion. What if the person she felt sure was in the ruins were he, the fugitive from the privateer—though why he should be lurking there she could not imagine? But if it were, she had betrayed him, for all her protestations of this afternoon!
“Thistleton, pray bring the lantern here a moment,” called Dr. Meredith, peering meanwhile through the inner gateway. “My daughter thinks there is someone hiding in here. I am not of her opinion, but we might as well make sure.”
Mr. Thistleton limped briskly up, the lantern shedding a circle of light on the weed-invaded steps. Nest did not follow him. Of course it could not be that young man, even if there were anyone there at all.
Suddenly her heart beat harder. Out of the silence and the shadows above her had come her father’s voice, sharp and peremptory:
“What are you doing down there, sirrah? Come out at once and account for yourself!”
And on that there was a sudden scuffling of feet, as suddenly terminated, which suggested that the discovered intruder had not only scrambled up from the lower level of the vault, but was trying to make a bolt altogether. But the operation of clambering up had evidently put him at the mercy of the two gentlemen, and they had seized him before he could get past them. At least that was what Nest, outside, supposed.
“Stand still, stand still now, my man; we will do you no harm! But I demand to know what you are doing in these ruins—in the precincts of the Cathedral!”
“Oh dear, oh dear,” thought the uneasy Nest. “If it is that privateersman, he may be desperate, and ’tis much more likely that he will do Papa an injury!” Bitterly repenting her cry of alarm she tiptoed up the steps and peeped in.
Yes, it was the young seaman, standing defiantly, under the further archway, between her father and Mr. Thistleton, both of whom had hold of him, the Precentor, no weakling, clutching a shoulder with one hand, an arm with the other, while Mr. Thistleton, holding aloft the lantern, gripped the intruder’s other arm with his remaining hand. And even had Nest recognised neither face nor clothes, the fact that the captive had his right trouser leg rolled up above the knee,