It was some time after three o'clock in the morning when Grace fell asleep. The heave of the vessel had entirely conquered emotion. She had had no smiles for me; the handkerchief she held to her mouth had kept her lips sealed; but her eyes were never more beautiful than now with their languishing expression of suffering, and I could not remove my gaze from her face, so exceedingly sweet did she look as she lay with the rich bronze of her hair glittering, as though gold-dusted, to the lamplight, and her brow showing with an ivory gleam through the tresses which shadowed it in charming disorder.
She fell asleep at last, breathing quietly, and I cannot tell how it comforted me to find her able to sleep, for now I might hope it would not take many hours of rest to qualify her as a sailor. In all this time that I had been below refreshing her brow and attending to her, and watching her as a picture of which my sight could never weary, the breeze had freshened and the yacht was heeling to it, and taking the wrinkled sides of the swell—that grew heavier as we widened the offing—with the sheering, hissing sweep that one notices in a steam launch. Grace lay on a lee-locker, and as the weather rolls of the littleSpitfirewere small there was no fear of my sweetheart slipping off the couch. She rested very comfortably, and slept as soundly as though in her own bed in times before she had known me, before I had crossed her path to set her heart beating, to trouble her slumbers, to give a new impulse to her life and to colour, with hues of shadows and brightnesses what had been little more than the drab of virgin monotony.
These poetical thoughts occurred to me as I stood gazing at her awhile to make sure that she slept; then finding the need of refreshment, I softly mixed myself a glass of soda and brandy, and lighting a pipe in the companion-way, that the fumes of the tobacco might not taint the cabin atmosphere, I stepped on to the deck.
And now I must tell you here that my little dandy yacht, theSpitfire, was so brave, staunch, and stout a craft that, though I am no lover of the sea in its angry moods, and especially have no relish for such experiences as one is said to encounter, for instance, off Cape Horn, yet such was my confidence in her seaworthiness, I should have been quite willing to sail round the world in her, had the necessity for so tedious an adventure have arisen. She had been built as a smack, but was found too fast for trawling, and the owner offered her as a bargain. I purchased and re-equipped her, little dreaming that she was one day to win me a wife. I improved her cabin accommodation, handsomely furnished her within, caused her to be sheathed with yellow metal to the bends, and to be handsomely embellished with gilt at the stern and quarters, according to the gingerbread taste of twenty or thirty years ago. She had a fine, bold spring or rise of deck forward, with abundance of beam, which warranted her for stability; but her submerged lines were extraordinarily fine, and I cannot recollect the name of a pleasure craft afloat at that time which I should not have been willing to challenge, whether for a fifty or a thousand mile race. She was rigged as a dandy, a term that no reader, I hope, will want me to explain.
I stood, cigar in mouth, looking up at her canvas and round upon the dark scene of ocean, whilst, the lid of the skylight being a little way open, I was almost within arm's reach of my darling, whose lightest call would reach my ear, or least movement take my eye. The stars were dim away over the port quarter, and I could distinguish the outlines of clouds hanging in dusky, vaporous bodies over the black mass of the coast dotted with lights where Boulogne lay, with the Cape Gris Nez lantern windily flashing on high from its shoulder of land that blended in a dye of ink with the gloom of the horizon. There were little runs of froth in the ripples of the water, with now and again a phosphoric glancing that instinctively sent the eye to the dimness in the western circle as though it were sheet lightning there which was being reflected. Broad abeam was a large, gloomy collier "reaching" in for Boulogne harbour: she showed a gaunt, ribbed, and heeling figure, with her yards almost fore and aft, and not a hint of life aboard her in the form of light or noise.
I felt sleepless—never so broad awake, despite this business now in hand that had robbed me for days past of hour after hour of slumber, so that I may safely say I had scarcely enjoyed six hours of solid sleep in as many days. Caudel still grasped the tiller, and forward was one of the men restlessly but noiselessly pacing the little forecastle. The bleak hiss of the froth at the yacht's forefoot threw a shrewd bleakness into the light pouring of the off-shore wind, and I buttoned up my coat as I turned to Caudel, though excitement worked much too hotly in my soul to suffer me to feel conscious of the cold.
"This breeze will do, Caudel, if it holds," said I, approaching him by a stride or two that my voice should not disturb Grace.
"Ay, sir, it is as pretty a little air as could be asked for."
"What light is that away out yonder?"
"The Varne, your honour."
"And where are you carrying the little ship to?" said I, looking at the illuminated disc of compass card that swung in the short, brass binnacle under his nose.
"Ye see the course, Mr. Barclay—west by nothe. That 'll fetch Beachy Head for us, afterwards a small shift of the hellum 'll put the Channel under our bows, keeping the British ports as we go along handy, so that if your honour don't like the look of the bayrometer, why there's always a harbour within a easy sail."
I was quite willing that Caudel should heave the English land into sight. He had been bred in coasters, and knew his way about by the mere swell of the mud, as the sailors say; whereas, put him in the middle of the ocean, with nothing but his sextant to depend upon, and I do not know that I should have felt very sure of him.
He coughed, and seemed to mumble to himself as he ground upon the piece of tobacco in his cheek, then said, "And how's the young lady adoing, sir?"
"The motion of the vessel rendered her somewhat uneasy, but she is now sleeping."
I took a peep as I said this, to be certain, and saw her resting stirless, and in the posture I had left her in. No skylight ever framed a prettier picture of a sleeping girl. Her hair looked like beaten gold in the illusive lamplight; and to my eye, coming from the darkness of the sea and the great height of star-laden gloom, the sleeping form in the tender radiance of the interior was for the moment as startling as a vision, as something of unreal loveliness. I returned to Caudel.
"Sorry to hear she don't feel well, sir," he exclaimed; "but this here sea-sickness I'm told, soon passes."
"I want her to be well," said I. "I wish her to enjoy the run down Channel. We must not go ashore if we can help it; or one special object I have in my mind will be defeated."
"Shall I keep the yacht well out, then, sir? No need to draw in, if so be—"
"No, no, sight the coast, Caudel, and give us a view of the scenery. And now, whilst I have the chance, let me thank you heartily for the service you have done me to-night. I should have been helpless without you; and what other man of my crew—what other man of any sort, indeed, could I have depended upon?"
"Oh, dorn't mention it, Mr. Barclay, sir; I beg and entreat that you worn't mention it, sir," he replied, as though affected by my condescension. "You're a gentleman, sir, begging your pardon, and that means a man of honour, and when you told me how things stood, why, putting all dooty on one side, if so be as there can be such a thing as dooty in jobs which aren't shipshape and proper, why, I says, of course, I was willing to be of use. Not that I myself have much confidence in these here elopements, saving your presence. I've got a grown-up darter myself in sarvice, and if when she gets married she dorn't make a straight course for the meeting-house, why, then, I shall have to talk to her as she's never yet been talked to. But in this job"—he swung off from the tiller to expectorate over the rail—"what the young lady's been and gone and done is what I should say to my darter or any other young woman, the sarcumstances being the same, 'go thou and dew likewise.'"
"You see, Caudel, there was no hope of getting her ladyship's consent."
"No, sir."
"Then, again, consider the cruelty of sending the young lady to a Roman Catholic school for no fairer or kinder reasons than to remove her out of my way, and to compel her, if possible, by ceaseless teasing and exhortation, and God best knows what other devices, to change her faith."
"I onderstand, sir, and I'm of opinion it was quite time that their little game was stopped."
"Lady Amelia Roscoe is a Roman Catholic, and very bigoted. Ever since she first took charge of Miss Bellassys she has been trying to convert her, and by methods, I assure you, by no means uniformly kind."
"So you was asaying, sir."
It pleased me to be thus candid with this sailor. Possibly there was in me a little disturbing sense of the need of justifying myself, though I believe the most acidulated moralist could not have glanced through the skylight without feeling that I heartily deserved forgiveness.
"But supposing, Mr. Barclay, sir," continued Caudel, "that you'd ha' changed your religion and become a Papist; would her ladyship still ha' gone on objecting to ye?"
"Supposing! Yes, Caudel, she would have gone on objecting even then. There are family feelings, family traditions, mixed up in her dislike of me. You shall have the yarn before we go ashore. It is right that you should know the whole truth. Until I make that young lady below my wife, she is as much under your care as under mine. That was agreed on between us, and that you know."
"That Idoknow, and shall remember as much for her sake as for yourn and for mine," answered the honest fellow, with a note of deep feeling in his voice. "There's only one consideration, Mr. Barclay, that worrits me. I onderstood you to say, sir, that your honour has a cousin who's a clergyman that's willing to marry ye right away out of hand."
"We must get the consent of the aunt first."
"Thereit is!" cried he, smiting the head of the tiller with his clenched fist, "suppose she dorn't consent?"
"We have taken this step," said I softly, always afraid of disturbing my sweetheart, "toforceher to consent. D'ye think she can refuse, man, after she hears of this elopement—this midnight rope-ladder business—and the days we hope to spend together on this littleSpitfire?"
"Still, Mr. Barclay, supposing she do, sir? You'll forgive me for saying of it; but supposing shedo, sir?"
"No good in supposing, Caudel," said I, suppressing a little movement of irritation; "no good in obstructing one's path by suppositions stuck up like so many fences to stop one from advancing. Our first business is to get to Penzance."
By his motions, and the uneasy shifting of his posture, he discovered himself ill at ease, but his respectfulness would not allow him to persevere with his inquiries.
"Caudel," said I, "you may ask me any questions you please. The more you show yourself really anxious on behalf of Miss Bellassys, the more shall I honour you. Don't fear. I shall never interpret your concern for her into a doubt of me. If Lady Amelia absolutely refuses her sanction, what then remains but to place Miss Bellassys with my sister and wait till she comes of age?"
So speaking, and now considering that I had said enough, I threw the end of my cigar overboard and went below.
It was daylight shortly before six, but the grey of the dawn brightened into sunrise before Grace awoke. Throughout the hours she had slept without a stir. From time to time I had dozed, chin on breast, opposite to where she lay. The wind had freshened, and the yacht was lying well down to it, swarming along, taking buoyantly the little sea that had risen, and filling the breeze, that was musical with the harmonies of the taut rigging, with the swift noise of spinning and seething water. The square of heavens showing in the skylight overhead wore a hard, marble, windy look, but the pearl-coloured streaks of vapour floated high and motionless, and I was yachtsman enough to gather from what I saw that there was nothing more in all this than a fresh Channel morning, and a sweep of southerly wind that was driving theSpitfirealong her course some eight or nine miles in the hour.
As the misty pink flash of the upper limb of the rising sun struck the skylight, and made a very prison of the little cabin, with its mirrors and silver lamp, and glass and brass ornamentation, Grace opened her eyes. She opened them straight upon me, and, whilst I might have counted ten, she continued to stare as though she were in a trance; then the blood flooded her pale cheeks, her eyes grew brilliant with astonishment, and she sat erect, bringing her hands to her temples as though she struggled to recollect her wits. However, it was not long before she rallied, though for some few moments her face remained empty of intelligence.
"Why, Grace, my darling," I cried, "do not you know where you are?"
"Yes, now I do," she answered, "but I thought I had gone mad when I first awoke and looked around me."
"You have slept soundly, but then you are a child," said I.
"Whereabouts are we, Herbert?"
"I cannot tell for sure," I answered, "out of sight of land anyway. But where you are, Grace, you ought to know. Now, don't sigh. We are not here to be miserable."
A few caresses, and then her timid glances began to show like the old looks in her. I asked her if the movement of the yacht rendered her uneasy, and after a pause, during which she considered with a grave face, she answered no: she felt better, she must try to stand—and so saying she stood up on the swaying deck, and, smiling with her fine eyes fastened upon my face, poised her figure in a floating way full of a grace far above dancing, to my fancy. Her gaze went to a mirror, and I easily interpreted her thoughts, though, for my part, I found her beauty improved by her roughened hair.
"There is your cabin," said I; "the door is behind those curtains. Take a peep, and tell me if it pleases you?"
There were flowers in it to sweeten the atmosphere, and every imaginable convenience that it was possible for a male imagination to hit upon in its efforts in a direction of this sort. She praised the little berth, and closed the door with a smile at me that made me conjecture I should not hear much more from her about our imprudence, the impropriety of our conduct, what mam'selle would think, and what the school girls would say.
Though she was but a child, as I would tell her, I too was but a boy for the matter of that, and her smile and the look she had given me, and her praise of the little berth I had fitted up for her made me feel so boyishly joyous that, like a boy as I was, though above six feet tall, I fell a whistling out of my high spirits, and then kissed the feather in her hat, and her gloves, which lay upon the table, afterwards springing, in a couple of bounds, on deck, where I stood roaring out for Bobby Allett.
A seaman named Job Crew was at the helm. Two others named Jim Foster and Dick Files were washing down the decks. I asked Crew where Caudel was, and he told me he had gone below to shave. I bawled again for Bobby Allett, and after a moment or two he rose through the forecastle hatch. He was a youth of about fifteen, who had been shipped by Caudel to serve as steward or cabin boy and to make himself generally useful besides. As he approached, I eyed him with some misgiving, though I had found nothing to object to in him before; but the presence of my sweetheart in the cabin had, I suppose, tempered my taste to a quality of lover-like fastidiousness, and this boy, Bobby, to my mind, looked very dirty.
"Do you mean to wait upon me in those clothes?" said I.
"They're the best I have, master," he answered, staring at me with a pair of round eyes out of a dingy skin, that was certainly not clarified by the number of freckles and pimples which decorated it.
"You can look smarter than that if you like," said I to him. "I want breakfast right away off. And let Foster drop his bucket and go to work to boil and cook. But tell Captain Caudel also that before you lay aft you must clean yourself, polish your face, brush your hair and shoes, and if you haven't got a clean shirt you must borrow one."
The boy went forward.
"Pity," said I, thinking aloud rather than talking, as I stepped to the binnacle to mark the yacht's course, "that Caudel should have shipped such a dingy-skinned chap as that fellow for cabin use."
"It's all along of his own doing, sir," said Job Crew.
"How? You mean he won't wash himself?"
"No, sir; it's along of smoking."
"Smoking?" I exclaimed.
"Yes, sir. I know his father—he's a waterman. His father told me that that there boy Bobby saved up, and then laid out all he'd got upon a meerschaum pipeforto colour it. He kep' all on a smoking, day arter day, and night arter night. But his father says to me, it was no go, sir; 'stead of his colouring the pipe, the pipe coloured him, and is weins have run nothen but tobacco juice ever since."
I burst into a laugh, and went to the rail to take a look round. We might have been in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, so boundless did the spreading waters look; not a blob or film of coast on any hand of us broke the flawless sweep of the green circle of Channel waters. There was a steady breeze off the port beam, and the yacht, with every cloth which she carried on her, was driving through it as though she were in tow of a steamboat. The scene was full of life. On one bow was an English smack, as gaudy in the misty brilliance of the sunshine as an acquatic parrot, with her red mainsail and brown mizzen, and white foresail topping, aslant, the gloomy black hull from whose sides would break from time to time a sullen, white flash, like a leap of fire from a cannon's mouth, as the swing of the sea swerved the black, wet timbers to the morning lustre. On the other bow was a little barque with a milk-white hull, the French tri-colour trembling at her gaff-end, and her canvas looking like shot silk, with the play of the shadows in the bright and polished concavities. Past her a big French lugger was hobbling clumsily over the short seas, and farther off still, a tall, black steamboat, brig-rigged, her portholes glittering as though the whole length of her was studded with brilliants, was clumsily thrusting through it. Against the hard, blue marble of the sky the horizon stood firm, making one think of the rim of a green lens, broken in places by a leaning sail—a shadowy pear-like shaft. The Channel throbbed in glory under the sun; the full spirit of the sea was in the morning; and the wide and spreading surface of waters gave as keen an oceanic significance to the inspiration of the moment, as though the eye that centred the scene gazed from the heart of a South Pacific solitude.
I stood leaning over the bulwarks humming an air. Never had my heart beaten with so exquisite a sense of gladness and of happiness, as now possessed it. I was disturbed in a reverie of love, in which was mingled the life and beauty of the scene I surveyed, by the arrival of Caudel. He was varnished with soap, and blue with recent shaving, but there was no trace of the sleepless hours I had forced him to pass in the little sea-blue eyes which glittered under his somewhat ragged, thatched brow. He was a man of about fifty years of age; his dark hair was here and there of an iron-grey, and a roll of short-cut whiskers met in a bit of a beard upon the bone in his throat. He carried a true salt-water air in his somewhat bowed legs, in his slow motions, and in his trick of letting his arms hang up and down as though they were pump-handles. His theory of dress was, that what kept out the cold also kept out the heat, and so he never varied his attire, which was composed of a thick double-breasted waistcoat, a long pilot-cloth coat, a Scotch cap, very roomy pilot-cloth trousers, a worsted cravat, and fishermen's stockings.
I exchanged a few words with him about the boy Bobby, inquired the situation of the yacht, and after some talk of this kind, during which I gathered that he was taking advantage of the breeze, and shaping a somewhat more westerly course than he had first proposed, so that he did not expect to make the English coast much before three or four o'clock in the afternoon, I went below to refresh myself after the laborious undertaking of the night.
On quitting my berth I found the boy Bobby laying the cloth for breakfast, and Grace seated on a locker watching him. Her face was pale, but its expression was without uneasiness. She had put on her hat, and on seeing me exclaimed:
"Herbert, dear, take me on deck. The fresh air may revive me," and she looked at the boy and the cloth he was laying with a pout full of meaning.
I at once took her by the hand and conducted her through the hatch. She passed her arm through mine to balance herself, and then sent her eyes bright with nervousness and astonishment round the sea, breathing swiftly.
"Where is the land?" she asked.
"Behind the ocean, my love. But we shall be having a view of the right side of these waters presently."
"What a little boat!" she exclaimed, running her gaze over the yacht. "Is it not dangerous to be in so small a vessel out of sight of land?"
"Bless your dear heart, no. Think of the early navigators! Of course mam'selle taught you all about the early navigators?"
"When shall we reach Penzance?"
"Supposing the wind to blow fair and briskly, in three or four days."
"Three or four days!" she exclaimed, and glancing down at herself, she added, "Of course you know, Herbert, that I have only the dress I am wearing?"
"It will last you till we get ashore," said I, laughing; "and then you shall buy everything you want, which, of course, will be more than you want."
"I shall send," said she, "to Mam'selle Championet for my boxes."
"Certainly—when we are married."
"All your presents, particularly the darling little watch, are in those boxes, Herbert."
"Everything shall be recovered to the uttermost ha'porth, my pet."
I observed Caudel, who stood a little forward of the companion, gazing at her with an expression of shyness and admiration. I told her that he was the captain of the yacht; that he was the man I had introduced to her last night, and begged her to speak to him. She coloured a rose red, but bade him good-morning nevertheless, accompanying the words with an inclination of her form, the graceful and easy dignity of which somehow made me think of the movement of a bough heavily foliaged, set curtseying by the summer wind.
"I hope, Miss," said Caudel, pulling off his Scotch cap, "as how I see you well this morning, freed of that there nausey as Mr. Barclay was a telling me you suffered from?"
"I trust to get used to the sea quickly—the motion of the yacht is not what I like," she answered, with her face averted from him, taking a peep at me to observe if I saw that she felt ashamed and would not confront him.
He perceived this too, and knuckling his forehead said, "It's but a little of the sea ye shall have, miss, if so be it lies in my power to keep this hereSpitfireawalking," and so speaking he moved off, singing out some idle order as he did so by way of excusing his abrupt departure.
"I wish we were quite alone, Herbert," said my sweetheart, drawing me to the yacht's rail.
"So do I, my own, but not here—not in the middle of the sea."
"I did not think of bringing a veil—your men stare so."
"And so do I," said I, letting my gaze sink fair into her eyes, which she had upturned to mine. "You wouldn't have me rebuke the poor, harmless, sailor men for doing what I am every instant guilty of—admiring you, I mean, to the very topmost height of my capacity in that way—but here comes Master Bobby Allett with the breakfast."
"Herbert, I could not eat for worlds."
"Are you so much in love as all that?"
She shook her head, and looked at the flowing lines of green water which melted into snow, as they came curving, with glass-clear backs, to the ruddy streak of the yacht's sheathing. However, the desire to keep her at sea until we could land ourselves close to the spot where we were to be married made me too anxious to conquer the uneasiness which the motion of the vessel excited to humour her. I coaxed and implored, and eventually got her below, and by dint of talking and engaging her attention, and making her forget herself, so to speak, I managed to betray her into breaking her fast with a cup of tea and a fragment of cold chicken. This was an accomplishment of which I had some reason to feel proud; but then, to be sure, I was in the secret, knowing this; that sea nausea is entirely an affair of the nerves; that no sufferer is ill in his sleep, no matter how high the sea may be running, or how unendurable to his waking senses the sky-high capers and abysmal plunges of the craft may be, and that the correct treatment for sea-sickness is—not to think of it. In short, I made my sweetheart forget to feel uneasy. She talked, she sipped her tea, she ate, and then she looked better, and indeed owned that she felt so.
For my part I breakfasted with the avidity of a shipwrecked man. Ashore it might have been otherwise, but the sea breeze is a noble neutraliser of whatever is undesirable in the obligations which attend an excess of sentiment and emotion.
The cabin made as pretty a little marine piece as ever the light of the early sun flashed into. There were flowers of fragrance and of rich colours; the small table sparkled with its hospitable furniture; the polished bulkheads rippled with light, and the diamond-like glance of the lustrous, dancing sea seemed to be swept by the blue air gushing athwart the sky-light into the mirrors, which enriched this little boudoir of a cabin. But it was the presence of Grace which informed this picture with those qualities of sweetness, elegance, refinement, perfume, which I now found in it, but had not before noticed. How proudly my young heart rose to the sight of her! to the thought of her as my own, one and indivisible, no longer the distant hope, which for weary months past her aunt had made her to me, but my near sweetheart—my present darling—her hand within reach of my grasp.
We sat together in earnest conversation. It was not for me to pretend that I could witness no imprudence in our elopement. Indeed, I took care to let her know that I regretted the step we had been forced into taking as fully as she did. My love was an influence upon her, and whatever I said I felt might weigh with her childish heart. But I repeated what I had again and again written to her—that there had been no other alternative than this elopement.
"You wished me to wait," I said, "until you were twenty-one, when you would be your own mistress. But to wait for more than three years! What was to happen in that time? They might have converted you—"
"No," she cried.
"And have wrought a complete change in your nature," I went on. "How many girls are there who could resist the sort of pressure they were subjecting you to one way and another?"
"They could not have changed my heart, Herbert."
"How can we tell? Under their influence in another year you might have come to congratulate yourself upon your escape from me."
"Do you think so? Then you should have granted me another year, because marriage," she added, with a look in her eyes that was like a wistful smile, "is a very serious thing, and if you believe that I should be rejoicing in a year hence over my escape from you, as you call it, then you must believe that I have no business to be here."
This was a cool piece of logic that was hardly to my taste.
"Tell me," said I, fondling her hand, "how you managed last night?"
"I do not like to think of it," she answered. "I was obliged to undress, for it is mam'selle's rule to look into all the bedrooms the last thing after locking the house up. It was then ten o'clock. I waited until I heard the convent clock strike twelve, by which time I supposed everybody would be sound asleep. Then I lighted a candle and dressed myself, but I had to use my hands as softly as a spider spins its web, and my heart seemed to beat so loud that I was afraid the girls in the next room would hear it. I put a box of matches in my pocket, and crept along the corridors to the big salle-à-manger. The door of my bedroom creaked when I opened it, and I felt as if I must sink to the ground with fright. The salle-à-manger is a great, gloomy room even in day-time; it was dreadfully dark, horribly black, Herbert, and the sight of the stars shining through the window over the balcony made me feel so lonely that I could have cried. There was a mouse scratching in the room somewhere, and I got upon a chair, scarcely caring whether I made a noise or not, so frightened was I, for I hate mice. Indeed, if that mouse had not kept quiet after a while, I believe I should not be here now. I could not endure being alone in a great, dark room at that fearful hour of the night with a mouse running about near me. Oh, Herbert, how glad I was when I saw your lantern flash."
"My brave little heart!" cried I, snatching up her hand and kissing it. "But the worst part is over. There are no ladders, no great black rooms now before us, no mice even."
She slightly coloured without smiling, and I noticed an anxious expression in the young eyes she held steadfastly bent upon the table.
"What thought is troubling you, Grace?"
"Herbert, I fear you will not love me the better for consenting to run away with you."
"Is that your only fear?"
She shook her head, and said, whilst she continued to keep her eyes downcast: "Suppose Aunt Amelia refuses to sanction our marriage?"
"She will not—she dare not!" I cried vehemently; "imprudent as we may seem, we are politic in this, Grace—that our adventure mustforceyour aunt into sending us her sanction." She looked at me, but her face remained grave. "Caudel," said I, "who is as much your guardian as I am, put the same question to me. But there is no earthly good insupposing. It is monstrous to suppose that your aunt will object. She hates me, I know, but her aversion—the aversion of that old woman of the world with her family pride and notions of propriety—is not going to suffer her to forbid our marriage after this. Yet, grant that her ladyship—my blessings upon her false front!—should go on saying no; are we not prepared?"
"But if it has to come to my living with your sister, Herbert—"
"It will come to nothing of the sort," I whipped out.
"Would it not have been better for me," she continued, "to have remained under Aunt Amelia's care until I came of age?"
"Aunt Amelia," said I, "in that sense means your Boulogne school-mistress, and in much less than three years you would have been pestered into changing your faith."
"You think I have no strength of mind. You may be right," she added, looking at me and then around her and sighing.
"But remember, my darling, what you have written to me. What was the name now of mam'selle's confessor?"
"Père Jerome."
"Well, on your own showing, wasn't this Father Jerome ceaseless in his importunities?"
"Yes. Mam'selle was repeatedly leaving me alone with him under one excuse or another. He sent me books—I was taken to mass—only yesterday morning mam'selle lost her temper with me, and quite made me understand that her orders from Aunt Amelia were to convert me,coûte que coûte—"
"Then," cried I, interrupting her once more, hot with the irritation that had again and again visited me when I read her letters where she complained of the behaviour of mam'selle and this Father Jerome; "is there any mortal of our faith, I care not what may be his or her theories of human propriety, who could pronounce against us for acting as we have? My contention is, your aunt is not a proper guardian for you. If it were your father or your mother—both Protestants, whose spirits, looking down upon you, we are bound to believe, would wish you to live and die Protestant to the heart as they were! But Lady Amelia Roscoe!—the most wretched mixture that can be imagined, of bigotry and worldliness, her head stuffed full of priests and dress, of beads and balls—"
I broke off to kiss away a tear, and a little later she was smiling with her hand in mine, as I led her up on deck.
The mistiness had gone out of the sunlight, the pearly, vaporous curls—faint of hue as the new moon beheld in the day—which had given a look of marble to the sky, had melted out or been settled by the breeze over to the English coast, and now the heavens were a pale blue, piebald with bodies of white vapour streaming up out of the south and touching the green and creaming stretch of waters with shadows of violet. There was more warmth in the sun than I should have looked for at that time of the year, and I speedily made Grace comfortable in a chair, a little distance from the tiller—in other words, out of earshot of the helmsman; I snugged her in rugs, and Caudel further sheltered her by what he called a hurricane house—a square of canvas "seized" above the line of the bulwark rail.
She gazed about her out of the wraps which rose to her ears with eyes full of childlike interest and wonder, not unmixed with fear, I saw her eagerly watching the action of the yacht as the little fabric leaned to a sea with a long, sideways, floating plunge that brought the yeast of the broken waters bubbling and hissing to the very line of her lee forecastle bulwark; then she would clasp my hand as though startled when the dandy craft brought the weight of her white canvas to windward on the heave of the underrunning sea with a sound as of drums and bugles heard afar echoing down out of the glistening concavities and ringing out of the taut rigging upon which the blue and brilliant morning breeze was splitting.
She had not been sitting long before I saw that she was beginning to like it. There was no nausea now; her eyes were bright, there was colour in her cheeks; and her red lips lay parted as though in pure enjoyment of the glad rush of the salt breeze athwart her teeth of pearl.
We had a deal to say to each other as you may suppose, and so much of the nonsense that lovers will utter went to our talk that I should be sorry to record what was said. Caudel, conning the little ship, hung about removed from us, but I would often catch his sea-blue eye furtively directed at Grace as though he could not look at her often enough. The boy Bobby came and went betwixt the forecastle hatch and the companion; the fellow at the helm swung upon the tiller with an occasional peep at the broad wake racing, fanshaped, from under the counter into the troubled toss and windy distance, as though he wished to make sure that he was steering straight; the other two of my crew were at work forward on jobs to which, not being a sailor, I should be unable to give a name.
Thus passed the morning. There was no tedium. If ever there came a halt in our chat there were twenty things over the side to look at, to fill the pause with colour and beauty. It might be a tall, slate-coloured, steam tank, hideous with gaunt leaning funnel and famished pole-masts, and black fans of propeller beating at the stern-post like the vanes of a drowning windmill amid a hill of froth, yet poetised in spite of herself into a pretty detail of the surrounding life through the mere impulse and spirit of the bright seas through which she was starkly driving. Or it was a full-rigged ship, homeward bound, with yearning canvas and ocean-worn sides, figures on her poop crossing from rail to rail to look at what was passing, and seamen on her forecastle busy with the ship's ground tackle.
It was shortly after twelve that the delicate shadow of the high land of Beachy Head showed over the yacht's bow. By one o'clock it had grown defined and firm, with the glimmering streak of its white ramparts of chalk stealing out of the blue haze.
"There's Old England, Grace!" said I. "How one's heart goes out to the sight of the merest shadow of one's own soil! TheSpitfirehas seen the land; has she not quickened her pace?"
"I ought to wish it was the Cornwall coast," she answered; "but I am enjoying this now," she added smiling.
"How close do you intend to run in?" I called to Caudel.
He rolled up to us and answered:
"No call, I think, sir, to haul in much closer. The land trends in down Brighton and Worthing way, and there'll be nothen to see till we're off St. Catherine's Point."
"Well, you know our destination, Caudel. Carry the yacht to it in your own fashion. But mind you get there," said I, looking at Grace.
I was made happy by finding my sweetheart with some appetite for dinner at one o'clock. She no longer sighed; no regrets escaped her; her early alarm had disappeared; the novelty of the situation was wearing off; she was now realising again what I knew she had realised before—to judge by her letters—though the excitement and terrors of the elopement had broken in upon and temporarily disordered her perception; she was now fully realising, I mean, that there was nothing for it but this step to free her from a species of immurement charged with menace to her faith and to her love; and this being her mood, her affection for me found room to show itself; so that now I never could meet her eyes without seeing how wholly I had her dear heart, and how happy she was in this recurrence of brightening out of her love from the gloom and consternation that attended the start of our headlong wild adventure.
I flattered myself that we were to be fortunate in our weather; certainly all that afternoon was as fair and beautiful in its marine atmosphere of autumn as living creature could desire. The blues and greens of the prospect of heaven and sea were enriched by the looming, towering terraces of Beachy Head, hanging large and looking near upon our starboard quarter, though I believe Caudel had not sailed very deep within the sphere in which the high-perched lantern is visible before shifting his helm for a straight down Channel course. A lugger with red canvas, the hue of which was deepened yet by the delicate crimsoning of the sun that was now sloping into the Atlantic, gliding betwixt us and the heap of land in the north, brought out the white chalk of the heights into a snow-white brilliance that almost startled the eye at first sight of it.
"I should imagine that a huge iceberg shows like that," said I to Grace.
"I wish I had my paint-box here," she answered, her eyes glistening as she looked.
"Grace," said I, "I have an idea. We will spend our honeymoon in theSpitfire. We will lay in a stock of paint-boxes, easels and lead pencils, sail round the coast, heave our little ship to off every point of beauty, and take our fill of English shore scenery."
"Do you mean to wait till next summer?" she asked, glancing at me shyly through her lashes, though with a hint of coquetry too in the spirit of her look.
I laughed out, seeing her meaning, for to be sure a coastal cruise in a twenty-six ton dandy would hardly fit the winter months of Great Britain, and by the time we should be prepared to enter upon our honeymoon, this autumn that was now dying would, I fear, be entirely dead.
"Then, it shall be Paris, Brussels, and Rome according to your own programme," said I.
She coloured, and said something about there being plenty of time to talk about such a matter as that, and went to the rail and leaned over it, watching the distant noble mass of land in a reverie upon which I would not intrude, so sweet did she look with her profile showing with ivory-like delicacy against the green and blue of the east where the tints were hardening to the gathering of the evening shadow there, whilst her rich hair blown by the breeze seemed to tremble into fire to the now almost level pouring of the red splendour in the west.
When the sun had fairly set I took her below, for the wind seemed to come on a sudden with the damp of night in it, and a bite as shrewd in its abruptness as frost. I had made no other provision in the shape of amusement for our sea trip of three, four, or five days as it might happen, than a small parcel of novels, scarcely doubting that all the diversion we should need must lie in each other's company. And to be sure we managed to kill the time very agreeably without the help of fiction, though we both owned, when the little cabin clock pointed to half-past nine, and she looking up at it, and yawning behind her white fingers, exclaimed, that she felt tired and would go to bed; I say, we both owned that the day had seemed a desperately long one—to be sure, with us it had begun very early—and I could not help adding that on the whole a honeymoon spent aboard a yacht the size of theSpitfirewould soon grow a very slow business in spite of crayons and paint-boxes.
As we lingered hand in hand, she exclaimed, "What will mam'selle have been saying all to-day?"
"The excitement," said I, "has been tremendous. Mam'selle fainted to begin with. Father Jerome was sent for, and I can see him with my mind's eye taking the ground as he makes for the château with the strides of a pantomime policeman chasing the clown. What titterings, what exclamations, whatMon Dieux!andquelle horreurs!among the girls! How many of them would like to be you? When they find that rope-ladder dangling—the burglarious bull's-eye lamp at the foot of it—"
"Howcouldwe have done it?" she interrupted, looking at me with a pale face and a working lip.
When she had withdrawn I put on a pea-coat, and filling a pipe, stepped on deck. The dusk was clear, but of a darker shade than that of the preceding night; there was not more wind than had been blowing throughout the day; but the sky was full of large swollen-clouds rolling in shadows of giant wings athwart the stars, and the gloom of them was in the atmosphere. Here and there showed a ship's light, some faint gleam of red or green windily coming and going out upon the weltering obscurity, but away to starboard the horizon ran black, without a single break of shore light that I could see. The yacht was swarming through it under all canvas, humming as she went. Her pace, if it lasted, would, I knew, speedily terminate this sea-going passage of our elopement, and I looked over the stern very well pleased to witness the white sweep of the wake melting at a little distance into a mere elusive faintness.
Caudel stood near the helm,
"This will do, I think," said I.
"Ay, sir," he answered; "she's finding her heels now. See that there brig out yonder?" and his arm pointed out against the stars over the horizon to a dim green light on the right of our wake astern. "She was ahead of us half an hour ago, and I allow she was walking too—warn't she, Job?"
"Warping, more like," answered the man in a grunting voice.
"You go and smoother yourself!" cried Caudel; "why, damme a heagle can't fly ifyou'reto be believed."
"When are we to be off St. Catherine's Point at this pace, Caudel?" said I.
"At this pace, sir—why, betwixt seven and eight o'clock to-morrow morning."
"What a deuce of a length this English Channel runs to!" cried I impatiently. "Why, it will be little better than beginning our voyage even when the Isle of Wight is abreast."
"Yes, sir, there's a deal o' water going to the making of this here Channel—a blooming sight too much of it when it comes on a winter's night a-blowing and a-snowing, the hatmosphere thick as muck," answered Caudel.
"There'll be a bright look-out kept to-night, I hope," said I. "Not the value of all the cargoes afloat at this present instant, Caudel, the wide world over, equals the worth of my treasure aboard theSpitfire."
Here Job Crew took a step to leeward to spit.
"Trust me to see that a bright look-out's kept, Mr. Barclay. There'll be no tarning in with me this night. Don't let no fear of anything going wrong disturb your mind, sir."
I lingered to finish my pipe. The fresh wind flashed into the face damp with the night and the spray-cold breath of the sea, and the planks of the deck showed dark with the moisture to the dim starlight. There was some weight in the heads of seas as they came rolling to our beam, and the little vessel was now soaring and falling briskly upon the heave of the folds whose volume, of course, gained as the Channel broadened.
"Well," said I, with a bit of a shiver, and hugging myself in my pea-coat, "I'm cold and tired, and going to bed, so good-night, and God keep you wide awake," and down I went, and ten minutes later was snugged away in my coffin of a bunk sound asleep, and snoring at the top of my pipes, I don't doubt.
Next morning when I went on deck after nine hours of solid slumber, I at once directed my eyes over the rail in search of the Isle of Wight, but there was nothing to be seen but a grey drizzle, a weeping wall of slate-coloured haze that formed a sky of its own and drooped to within a mile or so of the yacht. The sea was an ugly sallowish green, and you saw the billows come tumbling in froth from under the vaporous margin of the horizon as though each surge was formed there, and there was nothing but blackness and space beyond. The yacht's canvas was discoloured with saturation; drops of water were blowing from her rigging; there was a sobbing of a gutter-like sort in her lee scuppers, and the figures of the men glistening in oilskins completed the melancholy appearance of the littleSpitfire. Caudel was below, but the man named Dick Files was at the helm, an intelligent young fellow without any portion of Job Crew's surliness, and he answered the questions I put.
We had made capital way throughout the night he told me, and if the weather were clear, St. Catherine's Point would show abreast of us.
"There's no doubt about Caudel knowing where he is?" said I, with a glance at the blind grey atmosphere that sometimes swept in little puffs of cloudy damp through the rigging, like fragments of vapour torn out of some compacted body.
"Oh, no, sir, Mr. Caudel knows where he is," answered the man. "We picked up and passed a small cutter out of Portsmouth about three-quarters of an hour ago, sir, and he told us where we were."
"Has this sail been kept on the yacht all night?" said I, looking up at the wide spread of mainsail and gaff topsail.
"All night, sir. The run's averaged eight knots. Night hand equal to steam, sir."
"Well, you will all need to keep a bright look-out in this sort of thickness. How far off can you see?"
The man stared, and blinked, and mused, and then said he allowed about a mile and a quarter.
"Room enough," said I. "But mind your big mail boats out of Southampton! There are German skippers amongst them who would drive through the devil himself sooner than lose five minutes."
The promise of a long, wet, blank day was not very cheering. In fact, this change in the weather was as damping to my spirits as it literally was to everything else, and as I entered the companion way for shelter, I felt as though half of a mind to order the yacht to be headed for some adjacent port. But a little thinking brought back my resolution to its old bearings. It is a hard thing to avow, but I knew that my very strongest chance of gaining Lady Amelia's consent lay in this sea trip. Then again, there might come a break at any moment, with a fine day of warm sunshine and clear sky to follow. I re-entered the cabin, and on looking at the barometer observed a slight depression in the mercury, but it was without significance to my mind.
Somewhere about this time Grace came out of her berth. She brought an atmosphere of flower-like fragrance with her, but the motions of the yacht obliged her to sit quickly, and she gazed at me with laughter in her eyes from the locker, graceful in her posture as a reposing dancer. Her face lengthened, however, when I told her about the weather, that in short there was nothing visible from the deck but a muddy, jumbled atmosphere of vapour and drizzle.
"I counted upon seeing the Isle of Wight," cried she; "there has been no land so far except those far-off high cliffs yesterday afternoon."
"No matter, my sweet. Let us take as long as possible in breakfasting. Then you shall read Tennyson to me—yes, I have a volume of that poet, and we shall find some of the verses in wonderful harmony with our mood." She gave me a smiling glance, though her lip pouted as though she would say, "Don't make too sure of my mood, my fine young fellow." "By the time we have done with Tennyson," I continued, "the weather may have cleared. If not, then we must take as long as possible in dining."
"Isn't it dangerous to be at sea in such weather as this?" she asked.
"No," said I.
"But the sailors can't see."
I feared the drift of her language and exclaimed, "It would be dangerous to attempt to make the land, for we might blunder upon a rock and go to pieces, Grace; and then farewell, a long farewell to the passions, emotions, the impulses, the sensations which have brought us together here," and I kissed her hand.
"But it would be pleasant to lie in a pretty harbour—to rest as it were," she exclaimed.
"Our business is to get married, my darling," I rejoined; "and we must hasten as swiftly as the wind will allow us to the parish where the ceremony is to be performed, for my cousin can't publish the banns until we are on the spot, and whilst he is publishing the banns we must be treating with her ladyship, and, as the diplomatists would say, negotiating a successful issue."
She sighed, and looked grave, and hung her head. In truth, she took a gloomy view of the future, was secretly convinced her aunt would not consent, was satisfied that she would have to reside with my sister until she had come of age, and my lightest touching upon the subject dispirited her. And, indeed, though I had talked big to Caudel, and to my darling also, of my sister taking charge of her, I was not at all sure—I ought undoubtedly to have asked the question of a lawyer—that Lady Amelia Roscoe could not, as her guardian, claim her, and convey her to school afresh, and do, in short, what she pleased with the child until she was twenty-one years old. But all the same I felt cocksure in my heart that it would never come to this. Our yachting trip I regarded as a provision against all difficulties.
My mind was busy with these thoughts as I sat by her side looking at her; but she loved me not less than I loved her, and so I never found it hard to coax a smile into her sweet face and to brighten her eyes.