Excerpt
MALICIOUSLY ACCUSED
“Let them think what they like. If I had died I would have been a hero; because I lived I suppose there is nothing in the history of crime that I have not committed.”
Young Captain Code Schofield sprang out of the deep, luxurious chair and began to pace up and down before the fire. He did not cast as much as a glance at the woman near him. His mind was elsewhere. He had heard strange things in this talk with her.
“Well, captain, you know how it is on an island like this. The tiny thing of everyday life becomes a subject for a day’s discussion. That affair of six months ago was like dropping a tombstone in a mud-puddle––everything is profoundly stirred, but no one gets spattered except the one who dropped it. In this case yourself.”
Schofield stopped in his tracks and regarded his hostess with a look that was mingled surprise and uneasiness. She lay back in a chaise-longue, her hands clasped behind her head, smiling up at the young man. The great square room was dark except for the firelight, and her yellow dress, gleaming fitfully in it, showed the curving lissomeness of her young body.
“Mrs. Mallaby,” he said, “when you say clever things like that I don’t know what to do. I’m not used to it.” He laughed as though half-ashamed of the confession.
“Appreciate them,” she directed shortly with a fleeting glance from her great dark eyes.
“Do you demand all my time?” he asked and flushed. The well-turned compliment caught her unawares and she admitted to herself that perhaps she had underrated this briny youth who was again beginning to interest her extremely.
But with the sally he seemed to have forgotten it and recommenced pacing the floor, his hands in his pockets and his brows knit. His mind had gone off again to this other vastly important thing.
She noticed it with a twinge of vexation. She vastly preferred the personal.
“What was it old Jed Martin said to you this afternoon?” he asked.
“That if the opinions of old sailors were of any account Nat Burns could get up a pretty good case against you for the loss of the May Schofield.”
“I suppose he meant his own opinion. He’s an old sailor now, but if he lives to be a hundred and fifty he’ll never be a good one. I could beat his vessel if I was on a two-by-four with a pillow-case for a mains’l. I can’t understand why he has turned against me.”
“It isn’t only he, it’s––”
“I know it!” he burst out passionately. “It’s the whole island of Grande Mignon from Freekirk Head to Southern Cross. Not a man nor woman but has turned against me since that awful day.
“Great God! what do they think? That I wrecked the poor old May for the fun of the thing? That I enjoyed fighting for my life in that sea and seeing the others drown with my very eyes? Don’t they suppose I will carry the remembrance of that all my life? My Heaven, Elsa, that was six months ago and I have just begun to sleep nights without the nightmare of it riding me!”
“Poor boy!”
Her voice calmed him like a touch on a restive horse, and yet he unconsciously resented the fact that it did....