And meanwhile Captain Weaver had received instructions from Captain Acton to continue his chase of the Minorca, and the schooner under full and large breasts of canvas was gently leaning from a pleasant little breeze which had sprung up whilst the Aurora was sending meat and water to the brig, and was sliding with some show of nimbleness through a blue surface that was summer-like in peaceful rippling, in beautiful dyes, and in splendid distances.
The cabin that Lucy was now to occupy had been fitted up and furnished with all possible reference to her needs, for it had been hoped that if she was not overtaken at sea she would be found at Rio, and Acton's and his sister's expectations were not so forlorn but that they believed the Aurora would return with the girl, and the possibility was to be provided for with as much foresight as could be bestowed on the circumstance of her return as a fact. The boxes contained such wearing apparel as she herself might have chosen from her wardrobe. The toilet table was comfortably supplied: indeed nothing that she was accustomed to use in dressing herself was absent.
So, then, as she sat at table she almost looked the same beautiful Lucy Acton who had left her house early one morning for[Pg 369] a walk in which she had met the hunchback Paul and read a letter he gave her. The old rich colour was indeed lacking; no charm of hat, no grace of coiffure, no elegance of costume could immediately qualify or dispel the languor of fatigue in the eyes, the delicate shadow pencilled by worry and an enormous mental strain under the eyes, and a general expression in movements of silence or repose, of anxiety, pain, and another quality which you might have seen was present without being able to give it a name.
One or two questions of no moment had been asked and answered when the Admiral exclaimed: "I beg, dearest madam, and you, Captain Acton, will forgive me for perhaps unseasonably thrusting in, by asking if you can tell me that atrocious, and to me heartbreaking as has been the conduct of my son, he acted nevertheless during his relations with you on board the Minorca as a gentleman?"
"He did. I can assure you on my word of honour, Sir William," answered the girl, with a glow and fervour that caused her father to again attentively examine her face with an expression which changed the look it was wearing. "In my feigned madness I reproached him in language which I knew was not ladylike. I called him a scoundrel,[Pg 370] and a rogue, and many injurious and aggravating words which came into my head I flung at him, acting all the while the part of a madwoman. Yet, sir," she said, turning to her father, "never once did my violent attacks upon his temper and character cause him to forget himself. He bowed to me, he madamed me, he was throughout as gentlemanlike and respectful as I had ever found him when we met at Old Harbour House or in Old Harbour Town."
The Admiral put his hand upon her's.
"I thank you for this gracious assurance," he said, in a voice deep with feeling, with eyes which looked humid as they reposed upon her, and with a faint smile like the first illumination of the face by a dawning happiness.
"Did you act the part of a madwoman?" said Captain Acton.
"Yes, papa. When I found myself his prisoner and at his mercy I quickly thought over what I should do to rescue myself. I understood, first of all, that I must disgust him if possible." Captain Acton and Sir William exchanged a look at this stroke of naiveté and lightly smiled. "How was I to disgust him?" continued the beautiful young creature. "I made up my mind to pretend to be mad."
"And you are so fine an actress as to have been able to persuade so intelligent a man that you were actually mad?" enquired Captain Acton with some astonishment.
"I was determined to try. I could see no other way of frightening and disgusting him."
"The spirit of her mother came to her aid," said the Admiral, who had heard much of the genius of Kitty O'Hara.
"Ha!" exclaimed Captain Acton, looking fondly at his child, "I don't doubt it is in you. But you have suffered it to rest as an unsuspected quality."
"And you made Mr Lawrence afraid of you?" said Sir William.
She answered by relating the story of some of those freaks with which the reader has been made acquainted; she described other acts of madness which had taxed her imagination to devise. She was mad to all who spoke to her because, as she justly said, "it would have been ridiculous for me to have been mad to the Captain and sane to everybody else in the ship."
Captain Acton listened to her with profound interest. He was greatly impressed and moved by his daughter's exhibition of traditionary genius. She recalled his wife, of whom he was passionately proud and fond. He had never imagined that Lucy had the[Pg 372] talent of an actress, but the dramatic character of her narrative and every point in her extraordinary relation convinced him that she was a born artist, and that accident had compelled her to reveal to herself gifts of power, perception, and imagination of whose existence she had been as ignorant as her father.
"My love," said Captain Acton, "will you tell me how it happened that you should have allowed yourself to be lured on board the Minorca?"
"I will tell you exactly," said Lucy, and the Admiral bent his ear. "It was a very fine morning and I was awake early, and I thought I would walk as far as the pier and back, intending to be home before you read prayers. I left Mamie behind, as she has a trick of running into the water, and she swims so badly that I am afraid she will one day be drowned. On the way I met the red-haired hunchback whom I had seen about Old Harbour Town at times. There was something in his manner that made me think he was making for Old Harbour House. He saluted me very respectfully, and gave me a letter written in pencil. In my excitement and alarm I did not know what I did with it. If I put it in my pocket it was not there when I felt. It was signed by Walter Lawrence, who wrote that Captain Acton had come on[Pg 373] board the Minorca, had stumbled over something the name of which I forget, and fallen a few feet into the hold, which lay open. Mr Lawrence believed that Captain Acton was not dangerously hurt, but he was in a very bad way and in great pain, and he had asked Mr Lawrence to write to his daughter Lucy and acquaint her with the accident and beg her immediate presence, but she must on no account make the disaster known to her aunt or to any other member of the household.
"I was completely deceived by this letter," continued Lucy, "and hurried to the ship followed by the hunchback, who conducted me downstairs and opened a cabin door. I entered, thinking to find you there, sir. The door was instantly shut, and I found myself alone with Mr Lawrence."
"The villain!" muttered the Admiral.
"But could you suppose, my love, that I should be down at that ship at so early an hour?" said the Captain.
"I was too much agitated to reflect, papa," Lucy answered. "It seemed so natural—so reasonable, and I hastened to the ship, in the belief that you were lying in her seriously hurt."
"But suppose that fellow Paul had not met you?" said Captain Acton.
"Mr Lawrence is very daring," answered Lucy. "I can easily believe that the hunchback [Pg 374]Paul, as he is called, had orders if he did not meet me to go to the house and deliver the letter to me in person."
"But wouldn't Mr Lawrence guess that I should be at home at that hour, and that you would know I was at home?" said Captain Acton.
"The Devil," said the Admiral, "is very bountiful to his servants in his gifts of opportunity."
"True!" answered Captain Acton. "Fortune certainly favoured Mr Lawrence. And now, Lucy, I want you to explain how it was that neither I, nor the Admiral, nor Captain Weaver, could find a single living creature to tell us that you had been seen passing along the wharves to the Minorca?"
"I am sure I cannot answer that question, sir. I was not disguised, nor was my face concealed. I wore my jockey hat. My spirits were in too great a hurry to allow me to take any notice, but I am quite sure that there were very few people about; none of these might have known or observed me, and it is not surprising, therefore, that you should not have guessed what had become of me."
"What excuse did Mr Lawrence make to the men for sending you into another ship?"
"I cannot believe that he made any excuses[Pg 375] at all. He is not a man," Lucy answered, with a faint smile which was certainly not unsuggestive of that sort of expression which the human face puts on when its wearer speaks with secret pride of another, "to make excuses for his conduct to the common sailors under him. Indeed, papa, I don't know which side would be more surprised: he, in excusing his actions to the sailors, or they, that he should condescend to explain. When I first went on deck after being kept in the cabin the scene I witnessed might have been on the stage of a theatre: the crew stood in a body in the fore-part of the ship; two men were a little in advance of them, and at one of these men Mr Lawrence had levelled a pistol. There he stood, pistol in hand, and the sailor, stubborn and defiant, never budged. I felt faint. I feared he would shoot and kill the man."
"He didn't shoot, then!" cried the Admiral.
"No, Sir William; something like a scuffle followed, and Mr Pledge, who, I believe, was the boatswain, acting as an officer on board, holding some irons in his hand, seized one of the men, but I thought in a very gentle, friendly way, and carried him below."
"Did no mutiny amongst the crew follow?" enquired Captain Acton.
"I think not. I am sure not. Mr[Pg 376] Lawrence awed them all. I could never have believed in such a commanding, overwhelming manner as he put on."
The Admiral drummed with his fingers upon the table, looking down.
"But pray, Lucy," exclaimed Captain Acton, "what was Mr Eagle about? Did not he know that you were Mr Lawrence's prisoner, though he might not have been able to guess that it was Mr Lawrence's intention to navigate the ship to Rio to sell her there? Did not he make any effort to rescue you by appeals to the Captain, or by so working up the crew as to determine them to sail the ship back to Old Harbour Town?"
"I can assure you, papa," answered Lucy, "that Mr Eagle is a very silly, sour man, in whose rheumatism I shall no longer take any interest. He thought I was mad, and was as much afraid of me as he was of Mr Lawrence, and was careful to avoid me. As I just now said, if I was to be mad to Mr Lawrence, I must be mad to the others, and fully believing that I was mad, the crew would naturally think that the most humane course Mr Lawrence could adopt was to send me home by any ship that would receive me."
"You must have acted your part well, my child," said Captain Acton, viewing the girl with admiration and fondness.
"I was forced to act many parts. Every day the strain grew more and more unsupportable, and I prayed for the end to come in the way I was working for. I was obliged to act many parts, some so base, sordid, even disgusting, that my heart sickened at my imposition, and the internal struggle with my feelings was as hard as my external efforts. I had to invent my parts and rehearse them."
"What were the characters which could convince so shrewd and intelligent a man as Mr Lawrence that you were mad?" enquired Captain Acton, the habitual gravity of whose face was replaced by a constant expression of astonishment.
"I pretended to hear voices, and answered, of course, when Mr Lawrence was present," said Lucy. "I would bow to visionary persons and address them. One was the Duke of Clarence, whose hand I kissed while Mr Lawrence looked on."
Captain Acton's eyes opened wide; the Admiral gurgled a nervous laugh.
"I secreted my rings and some rubbish, and made signs with a mad face to Mr Lawrence to come and look at the treasure I had hidden. I took my meals on the deck crouching like an animal. I would shriek with laughter which had nothing to do with what was said. A later and most difficult effort was to believe that I was Mrs Siddons."
"What on earth have you been reading in your day about madness to give you such extraordinary ideas?" said Captain Acton.
"I can't tell how the fancies came to me," said Lucy. "I know that mad people see apparitions and reply to imaginary voices. I also remembered old Sarah Hutchinson who was thought mad because she was always trying to tear up things: her sheets, her gowns, anything that might be given to her. It was the remembrance of this disease in her that made me rip up my mattress and scatter the feathers about the cabin."
"Some of these days, madam," said the Admiral, "I trust you will favour me with a sample of the genius that terrified Mr Lawrence and led to your recovery, for which God be praised."
She looked at Sir William, and with that look her face underwent a change—the change that had amazed Mr Lawrence, that transformation of beauty into alternate idiocy and bright-eyed madness, that marvellous facial motion which had done more to convince her kidnapper that his act had driven her mad than all the rest of her impersonations put together. Her rich and beautiful eyelids seemed to shrink up into the sockets in which her eyes were lodged; the eyes themselves seemed to sparkle with the uninterpretable passions of the afflicted[Pg 379] brain; the faint bloom which her cheek wore when she stepped on board faded as the picture of a red rose overhanging its reflection in water disappears at the blurring by the wind of its liquid mirror. Her lips were elongated and parted, and grey with tension, and her teeth, white as sea foam, were set. The whole expression of madness was incomparably life-like.
Sir William started back in his chair, crying faintly: "My God! Look at her, Acton!"
The father caught that surprising face of dramatic genius a moment before she composed her features to their natural calm beauty of drooping lid and brooding eye and sweet expression of lip, and the tenderness, the gentleness, the goodness that was her heart's and her soul's, and the foundations of her moral nature.
"Well, Lucy," said Captain Acton, after fetching a deep breath of astonishment, "should I die insolvent, you will know your fortune. You have it in your face: I don't question the rest of your performance. 'Tis the very spirit of her mother, sir. Small wonder that Mr Lawrence was convinced."
"The British stage misses a splendid figure, a shining light, in your neglect of it, madam," said the Admiral.
"Oh, I have no taste for acting. I have no ambition to be an actress. This effort was forced upon me. How was I to disgust him, sir?"
Again at this ingenuous remark the Admiral and the Captain exchanged a smile.
"Do you think, my dear," said Captain Acton, "that the crew know they are being carried to Rio de Janeiro? I believe, sir," he continued, addressing the Admiral, "that in Mr Lawrence's letter that Mr Greyquill brought to us reference was made to certain sealed orders given by me to the captain of the ship to be opened and read to the crew in a position that was or was not named—I forget."
"I have no doubt that the crew know that the ship is not being steered to the West Indies," answered Lucy. "In silent weather in my cabin I could hear any conversation that passed in the room where Mr Lawrence or his officers sat at table, and more than once I overheard Mr Pledge and Mr Eagle talking about the ship's navigation, wondering to what port Captain Acton had in his sealed orders directed Mr Lawrence to carry the ship, to sell her and dismiss the crew. I therefore supposed that the rest of the men would know that the ship was not bound to Kingston."
"I judge by this," said Captain Acton, addressing the Admiral, "that my sealed orders"—he smiled sarcastically, and the Admiral listened with a frown—"have not yet been read to the crew by Mr Lawrence."
"Where is the Aurora going?" enquired Lucy.
"We are pursuing the Minorca," answered Captain Acton.
She looked down upon the table with a grave face. "She is not far distant," she said, speaking as though in soliloquy. "It is only three days ago that I was on board of her. This swift vessel is certain to overtake her. And what then will happen?"
And as she said this she suddenly lifted her eyes half-veiled, dark, and beaming to her father's face.
"The Admiral and I," answered Captain Acton, talking as though slightly embarrassed, though moved by other feelings, "consider that we cannot do better than remove Mr Lawrence into this ship, and carry him to England."
"And what after?" enquired Lucy, observing that her father paused with an expressive look at Sir William, "I mean what after as regards Mr Lawrence?"
"You do not wish him to be hanged for piracy, even if abduction be not a hanging[Pg 382] matter," said Captain Acton with a smile in his eyes as he met the Admiral's.
The girl shuddered. "I know they hang for piracy!" she exclaimed. "It is what must happen if you convey him to England."
"He must be prosecuted before they can hang him," said Captain Acton, whilst the Admiral's regard was fastened upon Lucy's face with such tokens of affectionate gratitude and surprise which rose to a passion of delight as made the worthy, poor old man's jolly, weather-scored, truly British countenance moving to behold. "And who is to prosecute him? I alone am the sufferer. I alone can prosecute. Am I likely to do so? Am I the man to bring my friend's son to the gallows?"
"No, sir, no!" cried the Admiral in a deep, trembling voice.
"But though you do not prosecute him, sir," said Lucy, "might not his story become known so that he might be arrested for piracy, and charged and convicted on the evidence of his crew?"
"You are a Portia," said Captain Acton.
"She reasons exquisitely well!" exclaimed the Admiral, slowly and dolefully wagging his head.
"We propose to provide against all that your fears picture, my dear," said Captain[Pg 383] Acton, who could no longer doubt that Aunt Caroline was right, and that there had been, and that there still lived, a deep secret liking or love for Mr Lawrence in Lucy, which had not suffered but rather gained by his rascality, "by landing Mr Lawrence at an English port where he is unknown, where habited in the garb of a common merchant sailor he will seek, and of course obtain, employment before the mast, and sail away clear of all dangerous consequences of his conduct."
"Sail away, madam, into the remotest part of the earth to be seen no more—to be heard of no more," said the Admiral, trying to master his face as he spoke. But he failed and turned his head from his companions, and would have buried his face in his hands but that he would not have them know that his love for his son was deeper than his horror at his conduct.
The silence that followed was eloquent with recognition of the poor old gentleman's trouble. Lucy left her chair, and going close to the Admiral said, yet not so low but that Captain Acton overheard her: "It will not be as you say, Sir William. Indeed it must not be. So fine a character besmirched by acts into which a very bitter necessity has forced him, ought not to be found in the common garb[Pg 384] of a humble working merchant sailor, nor buried in some distant parts where he can never shine as a man of fine and heroic spirit fit to fill the highest position in the service he has left; and above all, and which is best, sir, capable of bitter regret, of deep feeling, of exerting the power by which the humbled man is alone able to struggle—I mean the power of self-regeneration."
She spoke like a young wild-eyed prophetess; her tones had a vigorous, dramatic clearness which made her voice new to her father's ears. Her language, which seemed exalted beyond her age, beyond anything one would look for in the lips of so calm, modest, and undemonstrative a girl, she appeared to make peculiarly appropriate to her years and sex, by her delivery, her melodies of accentuation, the easy grasp with which, it was clear, she held a subject that was deep in human nature.
The Admiral rose, and addressing her as though she were the consort of a king, said: "Madam, as the father of the person you speak of, I ask Almighty God, who is merciful and knows the human heart, to bless you for your words."
Captain Acton was silent. He was astonished. He had never observed his daughter as Aunt Caroline did. He was wanting in f............