Uncharted Seas (33 page)

A band of six musicians tuned up in the gallery above the top table, and the guests were delighted by the gentle airs of long-dead composers played with considerable skill. None of the islanders had ever heard a gramophone, and when De Brissac spoke with appreciation of the music, Sir Deveril told him that one of their principal recreations during the long winter evenings, when the island was snowbound, was part-singing and that there were very few people on the island who could not play some kind of instrument. He added modestly that he himself was reckoned quite an accomplished performer upon the harpsichord.

The hall was lit by torches in sconces round the walls, each guarded by a metal plate from setting fire to the timbers, and down each of the long tables were set rows of most strangely assorted candlesticks, many of them being of fine Georgian silver. Yonita laughed with her guests about the strange collection of plate that had been brought out in their honour. Instead of the earthenware utensils used at the morning meal a miscellaneous collection of glass and china decked the boards; ranging from old Bristol to cheap Victorian tumblers.

The feast was an admirable one, although its meat courses were confined to pork and chicken, and, to do their utmost honour to their guests, the island council, which arranged all affairs under Sir Deveril’s chairmanship, had raided the common cellar, allocating a dozen assorted bottles to the feast from the small store of wine which had been saved from the wrecked ships.

The dozen bottles provided no more than a few thimblefuls for each person, and De Brissac knew that, except for the Madeira, the wine was long past its best, but they made up for its shortage by ample potations of the island’s finest vintage champagne cider, and afterwards, having drunk the King’s health in the wine, they
broached flagons of excellent old plum, cherry and damson liqueur.

When the meal was done they were offered an entertainment, and the visitors were delighted by the admirable way in which the men and girls selected rendered the old-fashioned airs of a bygone generation. A party of glee-singers was particularly good. The centre of the hall was then cleared for dancing.

None of the islanders had ever heard of jazz, but they trod the barn dance with great gusto, enjoyed several sets of hilarious lancers, and waltzed most gracefully.

It was past one in the morning and the torches were guttering in their sconces when Yonita, having just finished a waltz with De Brissac, said to him: ‘Pardon my frailty, I beg, but my poor feet will stand no more after having been half crushed by that vile crab last night. I do declare I must crave both your indulgence and your escort to Deveril’s house.’

‘
Certainement
,’ he said, ‘forgive me that I was not more thoughtful. I have enjoyed dancing with you so much that I had forgotten your injuries entirely. Let us go.’

‘ ’Tis unpardonable selfish that I should curtail your pleasure,’ she smiled as they edged through the merry, laughing crowd. ‘We can seldom afford such assemblies and methinks most of them will keep it up till morn.’

‘I mean no insult to your friends, but it would be a dull and joyless affair for me once you were gone,’ he assured her. He noted with considerable satisfaction that Deveril was flirting outrageously with a fair girl named Corisande. The young baronet had attached himself to her immediately after dinner, and since, had hardly left her.

Yonita’s hand was resting on De Brissac’s arm and she pressed it slightly as they left the hall for the cool, soft darkness. ‘ ’Tis not that I am fatigued—only that my feet betray me by a scandalous lassitude. If you have no wish to retire permit me to entertain you as far as my abilities allow.’

Twenty yards from the hall he paused and looked down at her. ‘I think for the sake of the little feet I should carry you.’

‘Willingly, if you have strength to compass it,’ she said wickedly. ‘If not you can call on Master Sutherland for aid, as you did this morning.’

‘I was played out then, and I only did so because he insisted. Now it is very different.’ With a quick movement he picked her up and she nestled her head down on his shoulder. Her slight
figure was no great burden to him in the rising excitement of the moment and he managed the few hundred yards to Sir Deveril’s house without inconvenience.

As he set her down she put her hands on his shoulders and laughed up into his face. ‘Have you nothing you would like to ask of me in return for your exertions?’

He hesitated a second. To kiss her seemed an appalling abuse of Sir Deveril’s hospitality, but she hardly waited for an answer and the next moment, standing on tiptoe, she pressed her soft mouth firmly against his.

A little breathlessly they went into the house. She lit a single candle in the lounge and snuggled down in the corner of a big, old-fashioned chesterfield, pulling him down beside her. He put his arm about her and drew her to him. She sighed contentedly and began to stroke his cheek.

His heart was pounding as though it would burst.

He was filled with an overwhelming desire to crush her slender little body to him in a wild embrace, but suddenly he drew away from her and sat forward mopping the perspiration from his temples. He clasped his hands so tightly together that it hurt.

‘Yonita,’ he said in a half-strangled voice, ‘this will not do. You will think me a prig and a fool. I adore you utterly but this is your fiancé’s house. Every moment that I make love to you that thought makes me miserable beyond words.’

She gave a low, delightful ripple of laughter. ‘I would have wagered that was what was troubling you, but is it not said that when you’re in Rome you should do as the Romans do?’

‘
Bon Dieu
!’ he exclaimed, ‘what is it you are driving at? You have hinted so much before. Explain, and put me out of my misery, I beg you.’

‘You have shown patience enough, so I’ll be kind.’ She sat forward, took his clenched hands gently in hers and turned him towards her. ‘Deveril was discoursing to you this evening of the brutal Red Barracuda, and how he raided our island many generations gone. The fifteen years that he held sway here altered our whole outlook. He was a horrid man, cruel and lecherous. At his death there was no single virgin in the island who was older than fifteen. For years he and his lieutenants had taken their pleasure of the womenfolk just as they listed. In cases where the men were old or ill-favoured that must have been prodigious horrid for the females, but in most instances it seems they confessed a naughty liking for it. We females are not so very different from you men,
but in the old days it was thought immodest to admit our natural pleasure in surrendering to a masterful lover.’

‘How true!’ exclaimed De Brissac. ‘It was only through the old system by which men held women as property that there grew up the custom by which a man was free to have as much fun as he liked while a girl was supposed to remain chaste until her marriage and then continue content with one man, whether she liked him or not, for the rest of her life.’

Yonita nodded. ‘While the Red Barracuda reigned here, a whole generation of young women became accustomed to “living in sin”, as they used to term it, with a succession of men, and, although some of them were forced, most of them made their own choice and were protected from the others by the lovers with whom they were intimate for the time being.

‘After the fourth Sir Deveril hanged the Red Barracuda, these forward females expressed the greatest repugnance to any return to the old system, so unrestricted gallantry became a custom in the island from the time the boys and girls were about sixteen or seventeen.’

‘And did such unusual licence work out satisfactorily?’ De Brissac asked curiously.

‘Alas no, it tended to destroy family life, and no state, large or small, so the history books tell us, can prosper without that. Also, promiscuity, regardless of age, begot jealousy und quarrels. Few couples settled down together for more than a year or two, and the older men of the island saw that something must be done to stop such a parlous condition of affairs.

‘You have been presented to all the members of the five leading families here tonight. As the natural leaders of the people are drawn from them it was thought important to preserve the aristocratic caste that had managed all affairs so successfully until the Red Barracuda turned the island into a state of anarchy. The men of our best families were leaving their wives, after a few years of marriage, to live with females of little breeding, the descendants of rough pirates or mulatto women, and begetting children by them, while their wives were consoling themselves by conducting amours with good-looking peasants, and getting children by them.’

‘Yes—I see it—a bad business for all concerned.’

‘Assuredly. Even prior to the coming of the Red Barracuda there had oft-times been trouble and scandal through husbands deceiving their wives with the wenches, and married women
cuckolding their spouses, but afterwards the females insisted on retaining their freedom to love where they listed and go to bed with their gallants just as the men did with their mistresses.’

‘And how did they get over such a difficult situation?’

Yonita smiled. ‘A solemn council was held and a new resolution taken which has governed the relations of the sexes here ever since. To conserve the blood of the best families, parents arrange betrothals for each boy and girl when they reach the age of seventeen and are of an age to say whether they feel an inclination to the partners chosen for them or not. With our own consent these betrothals are made public, but the marriage is never celebrated until the girl is twenty-five. In the meantime the young couple are permitted to indulge any taste they may have for gallantry without reproaches on either side.’

De Brissac stared at her. ‘But are there no—how about children?’

‘If a young woman has the misfortune to find herself in an embarrassing condition, the doctor conveys her infant away at birth and it is reared in company with other offspring similarly begotten. Its mama is not even informed of its sex and later it becomes just one of the peasant population without any social status. By these means the infant does not at all affect her afterlife when married.

‘Knowing something of the customs of the outer world, I fear our apparent laxity must give you but a poor opinion of us,’ she went on quickly, ‘yet our system has proved adequate for close on two centuries and our women now would die rather than surrender their years of youthful freedom. The fashion of having a fiancé when quite young without serious obligation is a pleasant custom too, since he plays the role of an affectionate brother. Betrothed couples are not permitted any more familiar relationship because it would impair their freshness of each other when the time came for them to marry. ’Tis so that all craving for adventure and the ephemeral excitements offered by a variety of amorous experiences is got out of a young female’s system before she marries, and the same applies to the men. Afterwards ’tis found the sexes are almost invariably content to settle down together, and, once they do, ’tis understood that a couple should be utterly and completely faithful to each other. No rule can offer perfection because human beings vary so in their temperaments, but methinks our marriages are of a more happy nature than yours in the great distant world, because they are based on
a more enduring foundation than mere physical attraction. Here in our island, not once in a hundred times does a marriage break up or prove really unhappy.’

‘I see,’ said De Brissac slowly; ‘so you are free as air until you are twenty-five,’

‘La, sir. I am but twenty and have honoured only three gallants with my favours yet. I wearied of the last nigh on a month ago.’ She smiled mischievously and raised her face to his. ‘Now mayhap your tiresome conscience is set at rest and you will no longer scruple to provide me with a little diversion suitable to my age and our present situation.’

De Brissac could hardly believe he was not dreaming. He feared every moment that he would wake up, but he did not. He did not even fall asleep until the sun was stealing through the porthole windows the following morning; and when at last he did, Yonita’s dark head was still resting on his shoulder while one of her soft little arms clung round his neck.

As Yonita had predicted, the party in the great hall was kept up until dawn was breaking in the east. Basil would have thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it had he not felt a vague anxiety about Unity which he could not altogether get out of the back of his mind. The message from the ship had clearly stated that all was well with them now and that Unity sent him her love, but the new calamity that had overtaken the small company in the loss of Jansen and Harlem remained unexplained. The sinister disappearance of Bremer three nights before and his own horrible experience with the giant crabs haunted his mind. What other evil thing might have come up out of the weed to cause the deaths of the old carpenter and the big Negro? Perhaps at this very moment while he was waltzing with one of the bronze-skinned island girls a dire peril might be threatening those who still remained in the
Gafelborg
. They might be fighting for their lives against some hideous thing in the dark loneliness of that evil, tideless sea.

De Brissac having disappeared comparatively early, Basil felt that it was up to him to remain until the end of the party and do double duty as an appreciative guest, but, when at last the gathering broke up, he determined to get back to the ship as soon as it was practicable to do so.

Having had only a few hours’ sleep the previous afternoon and been up all the preceding night, as well as the present one, he knew that it would be foolish to set off now, dropping with fatigue as he was, even if he could have roused out De Brissac to accompany him. The obvious course was to get at least a few hours’ sleep and start about ten o’clock in the morning.

Deveril, like most of his friends and relatives, was mildly tipsy when the party broke up. Yonita’s disappearance with De Brissac did not seem to bother him at all. The young man was in an exceedingly happy and affectionate frame of mind, During the
party he had disappeared for a considerable time with the golden-haired Corisande and he kissed her with ardour in front of them all before she set off home, strange conduct in an engaged man to Basil’s mind, but it was not his business to censor the conduct of his handsome young host, and he knew nothing of the somewhat unusual customs of the island.