A Marriage at Sea Part 16

"How is your appet.i.te, my darling?" said I.

"I think I can eat a little of that cold chicken."

"This is very handsome treatment, Grace. Upon my word, if the captain preserves this sort of behaviour, I do not believe we shall be in a great hurry to quit his ship."

"Is not she a n.o.ble vessel?" exclaimed Grace, rolling her eyes over the saloon. "After the poor little _Spitfire's_ cabin! And how different is this motion! It soothes me after the horrid tumbling of the last two days."

"This is a very extraordinary adventure," said I, eating and drinking with a relish and an appet.i.te not a little heightened by observing that Grace was making a very good meal. "It may not end so soon as we hope, either. First of all, we have to fall in with a homeward-bound ship; then she has to receive us; then she has to arrive in the Channel and transfer us to a tug or a smack, or anything else which may be willing to put us ash.o.r.e; and there is always the chance of her _not_ falling in with such a craft as we want, until she is as high as the Forelands--past Boulogne, in short! But no matter, my own. We are together, and that is everything."

She took a sip of the champagne that the steward had filled her gla.s.s with, and said in a musing voice, "What will the people in this ship think of me?"

"What they may think need not trouble us," said I. "I told Captain Parsons that we were engaged to be married. Is there anything very extraordinary in a young fellow taking the girl he is engaged to out for a sail in his yacht, and being blown away, and nearly wrecked by a heavy gale of wind?"

"Oh, but they will know better," she exclaimed, with a pout.

"Well, I forgot, it is true, that I told the captain we sailed from Boulogne. But how is he to know your people don't live there?"

"It will soon be whispered about that I have eloped with you, Herbert,"

she exclaimed.

"Who's to know the truth if it isn't divulged, my pet?" said I.

"But it is divulged," she answered.

I stared at her. She eyed me wistfully as she continued: "I told Mrs.

Barstow the story. I am not ashamed of my conduct, and I ought not to feel ashamed of the truth being known."

There was logic and heroism in this closing sentence, though it did not strictly correspond with the expression she had just now let fall as to what the people would think. I surveyed her silently, and after a little exclaimed:

"You are in the right. Let the truth be known. I shall give the skipper the whole yarn that there may be no misunderstanding, for after all we may have to stick to this ship for some days, and it would be very unpleasant to find ourselves misjudged."

I gazed, as I spoke, through the windows of the saloon or cuddy front, which overlooked the main-deck, where a number of steerage pa.s.sengers were standing in groups. The ship was before the wind; the great main-course was hauled up to its yard, and I could see to as far as the forecastle, with a fragment of bowsprit showing under the white arch of the foresail; some sailors in coloured apparel were hauling upon a rope hard by the foremast; a gleam of misty sunshine was pouring full upon this window-framed picture, and crowded it with rich oceanic tints softened by the ruled and swaying shadows of the rigging. An extraordinary thought flashed into my head.

"By Jove! Grace, I wonder if there's a parson on board?"

"Why do you wonder?"

"If there is a parson on board he might be able to marry us."

She coloured, smiled, and looked grave all in a breath.

"A ship is not a church," said she, almost demurely.

"No," I answered, "but a parson's a parson wherever he is--he carries with him the same appet.i.te, the same clothes, the same powers, no matter whither his steps conduct him."

She shook her head smiling, but her blush had faded, nor could her smile disguise a look of alarm in her eyes.

"My darling," said I, "surely if there should be a clergyman on board, you will not object to his marrying us? It would end all our troubles, anxieties, misgivings--thrust Lady Amelia out of the question altogether, save us from a tedious spell of waiting ash.o.r.e."

"But the objections which hold good on sh.o.r.e hold good here," said she, with her face averted.

"No, I can't see it," said I, talking so noisily out of the enthusiasm the notion had raised in me that she looked round to say "Hush!" and then turned her head again. "There must be a difference," said I, sobering my voice, "between the marriage ceremony as performed on sea and on sh.o.r.e. The burial service is different, and you will find the other is so too. There is too much horizon at sea, too much distance to talk of consent. Guardians and patents are too far off. As to banns--who's going to say 'no' on board a vessel?"

"I cannot imagine that it would be a proper wedding," said she, shaking her head.

"Do you mean in the sense of its being valid, my sweet?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"But you don't see that a parson's a parson everywhere. Whom G.o.d hath joined--"

The steward entered the saloon at that moment. I called to him and said politely, "Have you many pa.s.sengers, steward?"

"Ay, sir, too many," he answered. "The steerage is pretty nigh chock-ablock."

"Saloon pa.s.sengers, I mean?"

"Every berth's hoccupied, sir."

"What sort of people are they, do you know? Any swells amongst them?"

"That, depends how they're viewed," he answered, with a cautious look round and a slow smile; "if by themselves, they're all swells; if by others--why!"

"I thought perhaps that you might have had something in the Colonial bishopric way."

"No, sir, there's nothen in that way aboard. Plenty as needs it I dessay. The language of some of them steerage chaps is something to turn the black hairs of a monkey white. Talk of the vulgarity of sailors!"

The glances of this steward were dry and shrewd, and his smile slow and knowing; I chose therefore to ask him no more questions. But then, substantially, he had told me what I wanted to gather, and secretly I felt as much mortified and disappointed as though for days past I had been thinking of nothing else than finding a parson on board ship at sea and being married to Grace by him.

A little later on Mrs. Barstow came into the saloon and asked Grace to accompany her on deck. My sweetheart put on her hat and jacket, and the three of us went on to the p.o.o.p. My first look was for a ship, and I spied off the starboard bow a square of orange-coloured canvas; but the vessel was going our way and was, therefore, of no use to us. The ocean swept in a blank circle to that solitary point of sun-coloured sail; but it was fine weather at last; whilst we were seated at lunch the breeze had freshened and the sky cleared; the swell left by the gale had sensibly flattened within the past hour, and the sea was trembling and filled with the life of crisp green wrinkles running over the light folds which flowed pleasantly out of the north; the mistiness was gone from the sunshine; the light was brilliant and warm and coloured the atmosphere with a delicate tinge of yellow, though the luminary was yet high in the heavens. The clouds hung in rolls of cream-like vapour, making the n.o.blest and most stately prospect of the sky that could be imagined as they moved slowly over our mastheads in the direction in which we steered.

I had never been aboard a full-rigged ship before--that is to say, at sea, and under canvas--and on quitting the companion-way I stood for some moments heedless of all things in my admiration of the beautiful, in truth, I may say the royal, picture I witnessed. From deck to truck rose three spires of canvas, sail upon sail of a milky softness swelling one above another. The planks of the p.o.o.p deck were as white as holystoning could make them, with a glitter as of dried salt everywhere, and the shadows of the people and of the rigging, swaying with the heave of the fabric, lay like sketches wrought in pale violet ink. There was a frequent flash of gla.s.s; there were star-like glories in polished bra.s.s; and there was an odd farmyard smell of hay in the air, with the bleating of sheep forward and a noise of c.o.c.ks and hens.

"A voyage in such a ship as this, Mrs. Barstow," said I, "should make the most delightful trip of a person's life."

"It is better than yachting," said Grace softly.

"A voyage soon grows tiresome," remarked Mrs. Barstow. "Miss Bella.s.sys, I trust you will share my cabin whilst you remain with us."

"You are exceedingly kind," said Grace.

Others of the pa.s.sengers now approached, and I observed a general effort of kindness and politeness. The ladies gathered about Grace, and the gentlemen about me, and the time slipped by, whilst I related my adventures and listened to their experiences of the weather in the Channel, and such matters. It was strange, however, to feel that every hour that pa.s.sed was widening our distance from home. I never for an instant regretted my determination to quit the yacht. Yet, even at this early time of our being aboard the _Carthusian_, I was disquieted by a sense of mild dismay when I ran my eye over the ship, and marked her sliding and curtseying steadily forwards to the impulse of her wide and gleaming pinions, and reflected that this sort of thing might go on for days, and perhaps for weeks; that we might arrive at the Equator, perhaps, at the lat.i.tude of the Cape of Good Hope without meeting with a vessel to serve our turn. All the wardrobe that Grace and I possessed, we stood in. Small conveniences we should be easily able to borrow, but what on earth were we to do without a change of dress or linen? A voyage half-way round the world was indeed a new and quite unconsidered detail of our elopement. From Boulogne to Mount's Bay was, I had often thought, whilst making my plans, too far by several leagues of water. But what, if in defiance of the keenest look-out for ships, we should be carried to New Zealand? Could we get married there? Did the Colonials impose the restrictions of the old home upon the nuptials of a couple? Should we have to wait for Aunt Amelia's sanction? How long would it take for her ladyship to receive a letter from, say Otaga, and for us to get her reply?

Well, in talking, and in thinking, and in walking, and in looking, that first afternoon pa.s.sed, and at half-past five o'clock we went to dinner. I had had a short chat with Captain Parsons, and from him had learnt that there was no parson on board, though I flattered myself that I had put the question in such a way as not to excite in his brine-seasoned mind the faintest suspicion of the meaning of my curiosity. I had also given him to understand that I was a young gentleman of substance, and begged him to believe that any cost Grace and I might put the ship to should be repaid with interest to her owners.

This enabled me to take my seat at the table with an easy conscience, for though there can be no doubt as to the humanity and hospitality of the British shipmaster, the British ship-owner, on the other hand, I have always heard spoken of as a person eminent for thrift and economy, as is made manifest by the slenderness of the crew he ships, the unsavoriness of the provisions he supplies them with, and the very small wages he gives to his captains and mates.

It was impossible for me to find myself seated with Grace at my side at that cheerful, hospitable, sparkling, sea dinner-table, without acutely realising the difference betwixt this time and yesterday. Some ten or twelve persons sat down, but there was room for another dozen, which I believe about completed the number of saloon pa.s.sengers the _Carthusian_ carried. Captain Parsons, with a countenance varnished as from the recent employment of soap, was at the head of the table with Mrs. Barstow on his right, and I observed that they frequently conversed whilst they often directed their eyes at Grace and me. The setting sun shone upon the skylight, and gleamed in ruby prisms and crystals in the gla.s.s about the table. It was a warm and cheerful picture; the forward windows in the saloon framed a part of the ship--a glimpse of curved white canvas, a fragment of the galley and the long-coat, the steps leading to the forecastle, coils of gear swinging upon pins; the soft blue afternoon sky of the fine weather that had come at last shone betwixt the squares of the rattlines and floated in a tender liquid atmosphere under the arch of the sails; you could see a number of the steerage pa.s.sengers pacing the main-deck, smoking and arguing; a gentle _shaling_ noise of waters broken by the pa.s.sage of the vessel seethed in the ear like a light, pa.s.sing attack of deafness in the intervals of silence at the table.