A Marriage at Sea Part 7

"Yes. Mam'selle was repeatedly leaving me alone with him under one excuse or another. He sent me books--I was taken to ma.s.s--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, _coute que coute_--"

"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 p.r.o.nounce 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 b.a.l.l.s--"

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 pa.s.sed 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 p.o.o.p crossing from rail to rail to look at what was pa.s.sing, 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! The _Spitfire_ has 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 appet.i.te 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 the _Spitfire_. 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 sh.o.r.e 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 n.o.ble ma.s.s 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 the _Spitfire_ would 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 chateau with the strides of a pantomime policeman chasing the clown. What t.i.tterings, what exclamations, what _Mon Dieux!_ and _quelle 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--"

"How _could_ we 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 sh.o.r.e 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 pa.s.sage 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 if _you're_ to 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 the _Spitfire_."

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 G.o.d 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 s.p.a.ce 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 little _Spitfire_. Caudel was below, but the man named d.i.c.k 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 pa.s.sed 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."