A Marriage at Sea Part 5

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 ash.o.r.e. 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 I _do_ know, 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."

"_There_ it 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, "to _force_ her 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 little _Spitfire_?"

"Still, Mr. Barclay, supposing she do, sir? You'll forgive me for saying of it; but supposing she _do_, 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 Bella.s.sys, 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 Bella.s.sys 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 the _Spitfire_ along 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 gla.s.s and bra.s.s 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 d.i.c.k 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 pipe _for_ to 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 l.u.s.tre. 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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."