A Marriage at Sea Part 6

"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 ash.o.r.e," 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 here _Spitfire_ awalking," 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 gla.s.s-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.

CHAPTER IV

SWEETHEARTS IN A DANDY

For my part I breakfasted with the avidity of a shipwrecked man.

Ash.o.r.e it might have been otherwise, but the sea breeze is a n.o.ble 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 l.u.s.trous, 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-a-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-a-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, s.n.a.t.c.hing 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 must _force_ your 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 in _supposing_. 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?"

"Pere Jerome."

"Well, on your own showing, wasn't this Father Jerome ceaseless in his importunities?"