Slike strani
PDF
ePub

Her sister laughed. "Let us put on our cloaks-nobody will know us. I am sorry to leave this grim and primitive place, even for Lychworth Court."

They wrapped themselves up, and descended the hill.

On drawing near the battling line of breakers which marked the meeting of sea and land they could perceive within the nearly invisible horizon an equilateral triangle of lights. It was formed of three stars, a red on the one side, a green on the other, and a white on the summit. This, composed of mast-head and side lamps, was all that was visible of the Spruce, which now faced end on about half a mile distant, and was still nearing the pier. The girls went farther, and stood on the foreshore, listening to the din. Seaward appeared nothing distinct save a black horizontal band of water, embodying itself out of the grey, strengthening its blackness, and enlarging till it looked like a nearing wall. On its summit a white edging arose with the aspect of a lace frill; it broadened, and fell over the front with a terrible concussion. Then all before them was a sheet of whiteness, which spread with amazing rapidity, till they found themselves standing in the midst of it, as in a field of snow. Both felt a cold chill encircling their ankles, and they rapidly ran up the beach. "You girls, come away there, or you'll be washed off: what need have ye for going so near?"

Ethelberta recognised the stentorian voice as that of Captain Flower, who, with a party of boatmen, was discovered to be standing near, under the shelter of a wall. He did not know them in the gloom, and they took care that he should not. They retreated farther up the beach, when the hissing fleece of froth slid again down the shingle, dragging the pebbles under it with a rattle as of a beast gnawing bones.

The spot whereon the men stood was called "Down-under-wall: " it was a nook commanding a full view of the bay, and hither the nautical portion of the village unconsciously gravitated on windy afternoons and nights, to discuss past disasters in the reticent spirit induced by a sense that they might at any moment be repeated. The stranger who should walk the shore on roaring and sobbing November eves when there was not light sufficient to guide his footsteps, and muse on the absoluteness of the solitude, would be surprised by a smart "Good-night" being returned from this corner in company with the echo of his tread. In summer the six or eight perennial figures stood on the breezy side of the wall-in winter and in rain to leeward; but no weather was known to dislodge them.

"I had no sooner come ashore than the wind began to fly round," said the previous speaker; "and it must have been about the time they were off St. Lucas's. 'She'll put back for certain,' I said; and I had no more thought o' seeing her than John's set-net that was carried round the point o' Monday."

"Poor feller: his wife being in such a state makes him anxious to land if 'a can: that's what 'tis, plain enough."

"Why that?" said Flower.

"The doctor's aboard, 'a believe: 'I'll have the most understanding man in Sandbourne, cost me little or much,' he said."

"She's better," said the other. "I called half an hour afore dark. "T have taken a favourable turn."

Flower being an experienced man, knew how the judgment of a ship's master was liable to be warped by family anxieties, many instances of the same having occurred in the history of navigation. He felt uneasy, for he knew the deceit and guile of this bay far better than did the master of the Spruce, who, till within a few recent months, had been a stranger to the place. Indeed, it was the bay which had made Flower what he was, instead of a man in thriving retirement. The two great ventures of his life had been blown ashore and broken up within that very semicircle. The sturdy sailor now stood with his eyes fixed on the triangle of lights which showed that the steamer had not relinquished her intention of bringing up inside the pier if possible; his right hand was in his pocket, where it played with a large key which lay there. It was the key of the life-boat shed, and Flower was coxswain. His musing was on the possibility of a use for it this night.

It appeared that the captain of the Spruce was aiming to bring up under the lee of the pier, but that a strong current of four or five knots was running between the piles, drifting the steamer away at every attempt, as soon as the engine was stopped. To come in on the other side was dangerous, the side of the vessel being likely to crash against and overthrow the fragile erection, with damage to herself also. Flower, who had disappeared for a few minutes, now came back.

"It is just possible I can make 'em hear with the trumpet, now they be to leeward," he said; and proceeded with two or three others to grope his way out upon the pier, which consisted simply of a row of rotten piles covered with rotten planking, no balustrade of any kind existing to keep the unwary from tumbling off. At the water level the piles were eaten away by the action of the sea to about the size of a man's wrist, and at every fresh influx the whole structure trembled like a spider's web. In this lay the danger of making fast, for a strong pull from a headfast rope might drag the erection completely over. Flower arrived at the end, where a lantern hung.

"Spruce ahoy!" he blared through the speaking-trumpet two or three times.

There seemed to be a reply of some sort from the steamer.

"Tuesday's gale hev loosened the pier, Cap'n Ounce: the bollards be too weak to make fast to: must land in boats if ye will land, but dangerous yer wife is out of danger, and 'tis a boy-y-y-y!"

Ethelberta and Picotee were at this time standing on the beach a hundred and fifty yards off. Whether or not the master of the steamer received the information volunteered by Flower, the two girls saw the triangle of lamps get narrow at its base, reduce themselves to two in a

vertical line, then to one, then to darkness. The Spruce had turned her head from Knollsea.

"They have gone back, and I shall not have my things after all !" said Ethelberta. "Well, I must do without them."

"You see, 'twas best to play sure," said Flower to his comrades, in a tone of complacency. "They might have been able to do it, but 'twas risky. The shop-folk be out of stock, I hear, and the visiting lady up the hill is terribly in want of clothes, so 'tis said. But what's that? Ounce ought to have put back afore."

Then the lantern which hung at the end of the jetty was taken down, and the darkness enfolded everything from view. The bay became nothing but a voice, the foam an occasional touch upon the face, the Spruce an imagination, the pier a memory. Everything ceased upon the senses but one; that was the wind. It mauled their persons like a hand, and caused every scrap of their raiment to tug westward. To stand with the face to sea brought semi-suffocation, from the intense pressure of air. The boatmen retired to their position under the wall, to lounge again in silence. Conversation was not considered necessary: their sense of each other formed a kind of conversation. Meanwhile Picotee and Ethelberta went up the hill.

"If your wedding were going to be a public one, what a misfortune this delay of the packages would be," said Picotee.

"Yes," replied the elder.

"I think the bracelet the prettiest of all the presents he brought to-day-do you?"

"It is the most valuable."

"Lord Mountclere is very kind, is he not? I like him a great deal better than I did-do you, Berta?"

"Yes, very much better," said Ethelberta, warming a little. If he were not so suspicious at odd moments I should like him exceedingly. But I must cure him of that by a regular course of treatment, and then he'll be very nice."

"For an old man. He likes you better than any young man would take the trouble to do. I wish somebody else were old too!"

"He will be some day."

[blocks in formation]

"Never mind: time will straighten many crooked things."

"Do you think Lord Mountclere has reached home by this time?" "I should think so though I believe he had to call at the parsonage before leaving Knollsea."

"Had he? What for?"

"Why, of course somebody must

"Oh yes. Do you

think anybody in Knollsea knows it is going to be, except us and the parson?"

"I suppose the clerk knows."

"I wonder if a peer has ever been married so privately before."

"Frequently when he marries far beneath him, as in this case. But even if I could have had it, I should not have liked a showy wedding. I have had no experience as bride except in the private form of the ceremony."

"Berta, I am sometimes uneasy about you even now, and I want to ask you one thing, if I may. Are you doing this for my sake? Would you have married Mr. Julian if it had not been for me?"

"It is difficult to say exactly. It is possible that if I had had no relations at all, I might have married him. And I might not."

"I don't intend to marry."

However, we

When we get

"In that case you will live with me at Lychworth. will leave such details till the groundwork is confirmed. indoors will you see if the boxes have been properly corded, and are quite ready to be sent for? Then come in and sit by the fire, and I'll

sing some songs to you."

"Sad ones, you mean."

"No, then they shall not be sad."

66

Perhaps they may be the last you will ever sing to me."

"They may be. Such a thing has occurred."

"But we will not think so. We'll suppose you are to sing many to me yet."

"Yes. There's good sense in that, Picotee. In a world where the blind only are cheerful we should all do well to put out our eyes. There, I did not mean to get into this state: forgive me, Picotee. It is because I have had a thought—why I cannot tell-that as much as this man brings to me in rank and gifts he may take out of me in tears.” "Berta!"

"But there's no reason in it-not any; for not in a single matter does what has been supply us with any certain ground for knowing what will be in the world. I have seen marriages where happiness might have been said to be ensured, and they have been all sadness afterwards; and I have seen those in which the prospect was black as night, and they have led on to a time of sweetness and comfort. And I have seen marriages neither joyful nor sorry, that have become either as accident forced them to become, the persons having no voice in it at all. Well, then, why should I be afraid to make a plunge when chance is as trustworthy as calculation?"

"If you don't like him well enough, don't have him, Berta. There's time enough to put it off even now."

"Oh no. I would not upset a well-considered course on the haste of an impulse. Our will should withstand our misgivings. Now let us ses if all has been packed, and then we'll sing."

That evening, while the wind was wheeling round and round the dwelling, and the calm eye of the lighthouse afar was the single speck perceptible of the outside world from the door of Ethelberta's temporary home, the music of songs mingled with the stroke of the wind across the

iron railings, and was swept on in the general tide of the gale, and noise of rolling sea, till not the echo of a tone remained.

An hour before this singing, an old gentleman might have been seen to alight from a little one-horse brougham, and enter the door of Knollsea parsonage. He was bent upon obtaining an entrance to the vicar's study without giving his name.

But it happened that the vicar's wife was sitting in the front room, making a pillow-case for the children's bed out of an old surplice which had been excommunicated the previous Easter: she heard the newcomer's voice through the partition, started, and went quickly to her husband, who was, where he ought to have been, in his study. At her entry he looked up with an abstracted gaze, having been lost in meditation over a little schooner which he was attempting to rig for their youngest boy. At a word from his wife on the suspected name of the visitor, he resumed his earlier occupation of inserting a few strong sentences, full of the observation of maturer life, between the lines of a sermon written during his first years of ordination, in order to make it available for the coming Sunday. His wife then vanished with the little ship in her hand, and the visitor appeared. A talk went on in low tones.

After a ten minutes' stay he departed as secretly as he had come. His errand was the cause of much whispered discussion between the vicar and his wife during the evening; but nothing was said concerning it to the outside world.

CHAPTER XLVI.

SANDBOURNE-A LONELY HEATH-THE "OLD FOX "-THE HIGHWAY. IT was half-past eleven before the Spruce, with Mountclere and Sol Chickerel on board, had steamed back again to Sandbourne. The direction and increase of the wind had made it necessary to keep the vessel still further to sea on their return than in going, that they might clear without risk the windy, sousing, thwacking, basting, scourging Jack Ketch of a corner called St. Lucas' Leap, which lay about halfway on their track, and stood, with its detached posts and stumps of white rock like a skeleton's lower jaw, grinning at British navigation: here strong currents and cross currents were beginning to interweave their scrolls and meshes, the water rising behind them in tumultuous heaps, and slamming against the fronts and angles of cliff, whence it flew into the air like clouds of flour. Who could now believe that this roaring abode of chaos smiled in the sun as gently as an infant during the summer days not long gone by, every pinnacle, crag, and cave returning a doubled image across the glassy sea.

They were now again at Sandbourne, a point in their journey reached more than four hours ago. It became necessary to consider anew how to accomplish the difficult remainder. The wind was not blowing much beyond what seamen call half a gale, but there had been enough unplea

« PrejšnjaNaprej »