“No,” said Captain Armstrong with a sneer. “Lose one lover, pick up another. She’s a nice girl, Humphrey, and it’s your turn now.”
Mary Dell did not loose the hand she had seized, but darted a bitterly contemptuous look upon her late lover, which made him grind his teeth as she turned from him again to the lieutenant.
“Was I not right, sir, to say he is a coward? I am only a poor-class girl, but I am a woman, and I can feel. Thank you, sir; good-bye, and if we never meet again, think that I shall always be grateful for what you have said.”
At that minute there were voices heard without and the captain started and looked nervously at the door.
“I’m going, James Armstrong,” said the girl; “and I might go like this; but for my own sake, not for yours, I’ll not.”
She gave her head a sidewise jerk which brought her magnificent black hair over her left shoulder, and then with a few rapid turns of her hands she twisted it into a coil and secured it at the back of her head.
Then turning to go, Humphrey took a step after her; but she looked up at him with a sharp, suspicious gaze.
“He told you to see me off the place?” she said quickly.
“No,” cried Humphrey; “it was my own idea.”
“Let me go alone,” said the girl. “I want to think there is someone belonging to him who is not base. Good-bye, sir! Perhaps we may meet again.”
“Meet again!” snarled the captain as the girl passed through the doorway. “Yes, I’ll warrant me you will, and console yourself with your new lover, you jade.”
“Look here, Jem,” cried the lieutenant hotly; “officer or no officer, recollect that we’re alone now, and that you are insulting me as well as that poor girl. Now, then, you say another word like that, and hang me if I don’t nearly break your neck.”
“You insolent – ”
Captain Armstrong did not finish his sentence, for there was a something in the frank, handsome, manly face of his cousin that meant mischief, and he threw himself into a chair with an angry snarl, such as might be given by a dog who wanted to attack but did not dare.
Chapter Two
At the Cottage
“What’s she a-doing of now?”
“Blubbering.”
“Why, that’s what you said yesterday. She ar’n’t been a-blubbering ever since?”
“Yes, she have, Bart; and the day afore, and the day afore that. She’s done nothing else.”
“I hates to see a woman cry,” said the first speaker in a low, surly growl, as he wrinkled his forehead all over and seated himself on the edge of a three-legged table in the low-ceiled cottage of old Dell, the smuggler, a roughly-built place at the head of one of the lonely coves on the South Devon coast. The place was rough, for it had been built at different times, of wreckwood which had come ashore; but the dwelling was picturesque outside, and quaint, nautical, and deliriously clean within, where Abel Dell, Mary’s twin brother, a short, dark young fellow, singularly like his sister, sat upon an old sea-chest forming a netting-needle with a big clasp-knife, and his brow was also covered with the lines of trouble.
He was a good-looking, sun-browned little fellow; and as he sat there in his big fisher-boots thrust down nearly to the ankle, and a scarlet worsted cap upon his black, crisp curls, his canvas petticoat and blue shirt made him a study of which a modern artist would have been glad; but I the early days of King George the First gentlemen of the palette and brush did not set up white umbrellas in sheltered coves and turn the inhabitants into models, so Abel Dell had not been transferred to canvas, and went on carving his hardwood needle without looking up at the man he called Bart.
There was not much lost, for Bartholomew Wrigley, at the age of thirty – wrecker, smuggler, fisherman, sea-dog, anything by turn – was about as ugly an athletic specimen of humanity as ever stepped. Nature and his ancestors had been very unkind to him in the way of features, and accidents by flood and fight had marred what required no disfigurement, a fall of a spar having knocked his nose sidewise and broken the bridge, while a chop from a sword in a smuggling affray had given him a divided upper lip. In addition he always wore the appearance of being ashamed of his height, and went about with a slouch that was by no means an attraction to the fisher-girls of the place.
“Ay! If the old man had been alive – ”
“’Stead o’ drowned off Plymouth Hoo,” growled Bart.
“In the big storm,” continued Abel, “Polly would have had to swab them eyes of hern.”
“Ay! And if the old man had been alive, that snapper dandy captain, with his boots and sword, would have had to sheer off, Abel, lad.”
“’Stead o’ coming jerry-sneaking about her when we was at sea, eh, Bart?”
“Them’s true words,” growled the big, ugly fellow.
Then, after a pause —
“I hate to see a woman cry.”
“So do I, mate. Makes the place dull.”
There was a pause, during which Abel carved away diligently, and Bart watched him intently, with his hands deep in his pockets.
“It’s all off, ar’n’t it, mate?” said Bart at last.
“Ay, it’s all off,” said Abel; and there was another pause.
“Think there’d be any chance for a man now?”
Abel looked up at his visitor, who took off the rough, flat, fur cap he wore, as if to show himself to better advantage; and after breathing on one rough, gnarled hand, he drew it down over his hair, smoothing it across his brow; but the result was not happy, and he seemed to feel it as the wood-carver shook his head and went on with his work.
“S’pose not,” said the looker-on with a sigh. “You see, I’m such a hugly one, Abel, lad.”
“You are, Bart. There’s no denying of it, mate; you are.”
“Ay! A reg’lar right-down hugly one. But I thought as p’r’aps now as her heart were soft and sore, she might feel a little torst a man whose heart also was very soft and sore.”
“Try her, then, mate. I’ll go and tell her you’re here.”
“Nay, nay, don’t do that, man,” whispered the big fellow, hoarsely. “I durstent ask her again. It’ll have to come from her this time.”
“Not it. Ask her, Bart. She likes you.”
“Ay, she likes me, bless her, and she’s allus got a kind word for a fellow as wishes a’most as he was her dog.”
“What’s the good o’ that, lad? Better be her man.”
“Ay, of course; but if you can’t be her man, why not be her dog. She would pat your head and pull your ears; but I allus feels as she’ll never pat my head or pull my ears, Abel, lad; you see, I’m such a hugly one. Blubbering, eh?”
“Does nothing else. She don’t let me see it; but I know. She don’t sleep of a night, and she looks wild and queer, as Sanderson’s lass did who drowned herself.”
“Then he has behaved very bad to her, Abel?”
“Ay, lad. I wish I had hold of him. I’d like to break his neck.”
Bart put on his cap quickly, glanced toward the inner room, where there was a sound as of someone singing mournfully, and then in a quick, low whisper —
“Why not, lad?” said he; “why not?”
“Break his neck, Bart?”
The big fellow nodded.
“Will you join in and risk it?”
“Won’t I?”
“Then