Frenchman's Creek

Dona said nothing, and looking back into the room through the mirror she saw" that Rockingham was watching her.

"It will be an amusing party, do you not think?" he said.

"I rather doubt it," said Dona, "knowing Harry as a host. You will all be under the table by midnight."

She went out of the room and when she had closed the door she called to William softly, and he came to her at once, his eyes troubled.

"What is it?" she said, "you are anxious. Lord Godolphin and his friends, they can't do anything, it will be too late, La Mouette will have sailed."

"No, my lady," said William, "she will not have sailed. I have been down to the creek to warn my master. And I found the ship had grounded with this morning's tide, a rock piercing her planking under water. They were working on her when I went to the creek. And she will not be fit to sail for twenty-four hours."

His eyes wandered from her face, he moved away, and Dona, glancing over her shoulder saw that the door she had just closed had been opened again, and Rockingham was standing in the entrance, playing with the lace at his wrists.

CHAPTER XVII

The long day dragged to its close. The hands of the stable clock seemed reluctant to move, and the chimes every half-hour had a sombre tone. The afternoon was sultry and grey, with that heavy look about the sky that comes when thunder brews but does not break.

Harry had lain out upon the lawns with a handkerchief over his face, snoring loudly, with his two dogs snuffling by his side, and Rockingham sat with a book open in his hands, the pages of which he seldom turned, and when Dona glanced across at him from time to time she would be aware of his gaze upon her, curious and hungry.

He knew nothing, of course, but some uncanny intuition, almost feminine in quality, had observed the change in her, and he was suspicious, suspicious of the weeks she had spent here at Navron, of her familiarity with the manservant William, and of this more than ordinary aloofness towards Harry and himself, which he could swear came not from boredom but from something more vital, more dangerous. She was more silent than of old, she did not chatter, tease, and gibe at Harry as she was wont to do, but sat plucking the stems of grass with her hands, her eyes half-closed, like one who dreams in secret. All this he observed, and she knew that he was watching her, and the tension between them became more marked as the hours passed. It seemed to her that he had the brooding watchfulness of a cat, crouching beneath a tree, and she was the bird, silent amongst the long grass, waiting her chance to escape.

And Harry, oblivious to all atmospheres, slumbered and sighed.

Dona knew that the men would be working on the planking of the ship. She pictured them at low tide, with bare-feet, stripped to the waist, the sweat pouring off their backs, and La Mouette, with the wound in her hull exposed, heeling slightly, her planking grey with the mud.

He would be working with them, his forehead wrinkled, his lips compressed, with that look of concentration upon his face that she had grown to love and to respect, for the repairing of his ship would be a thing of life and of death, even as the landing at Fowey had been, and there would be no time now for idleness, for dreams.

Somehow, before tonight, she must go to the creek, and beg him to sail with the next tide, although La Mouette might still be taking in water, for the net was drawing in upon him, and to linger even one night longer must be fatal for him and for his crew.

The ship had been seen drawing towards the coast, so Rockingham had told her, and now nearly twenty-four hours had come and gone, and much might have been achieved in that time by his enemies, much might have been foreseen and planned. There would be watchers perhaps upon the headlands, and spies on the hills and in the woods, and tonight Rashleigh, Godolphin, and Eustick would themselves be seated at Navron, with God knows what purpose in their minds.

"You are thoughtful, Dona," said Rockingham, and she, looking across at him, saw that he had laid his book aside and was considering her, his head upon one side, his narrow eyes unsmiling. "It must be the fever that has altered you so," he continued, "for in town you were never silent for five minutes at a time."

"I am getting old," she said lightly, chewing a stem of grass, "in a few weeks I shall be thirty."

"A curious fever," he said, ignoring her words, "that leaves the patient with gypsy coloring and eyes so large. You did not see a physician, it seems?"

"I was my own physician."

"With the advice of the excellent William. What an unusual accent he has, by the way. Quite a foreign intonation."

"All Cornishmen speak likewise."

"But I understand he is not a Cornishman at all, at least so the groom informed me in the stable this morning."

"Perhaps he is from Devon then. I have never questioned William about his ancestry."