The Hand of Ethelberta Part 56

'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 wedding 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 all around 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 lessened upon the senses but one; that was the wind. It mauled their persons like a hand, and caused every sc.r.a.p 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's presence 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.'

'Yes, but--'

'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--'

'O 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 lord 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 a 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.'

'In that case you will live with me at Enckworth. However, we will leave such details till the ground-work is confirmed. When we get 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, they shall not be sad.'

'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.'

'O no. I would not upset a well-considered course on the haste of an impulse. Our will should withstand our misgivings. Now let us see 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 the noise of the 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 part.i.tion, 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.

44. SANDBOURNE--A LONELY HEATH--THE 'RED LION'--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 Old-Harry Point, which lay about halfway along 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 gla.s.sy 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 unpleasantness afloat to make landsmen glad to get ash.o.r.e, and this dissipated in a slight measure their vexation at having failed in their purpose. Still, Mountclere loudly cursed their confidence in that treacherously short route, and Sol abused the unknown Sandbourne man who had brought the news of the steamer's arrival to them at the junction. The only course left open to them now, short of giving up the undertaking, was to go by the road along the sh.o.r.e, which, curving round the various little creeks and inland seas between their present position and Knollsea, was of no less length than thirty miles. There was no train back to the junction till the next morning, and Sol's proposition that they should drive thither in hope of meeting the mail-train, was overruled by Mountclere.

'We will have nothing more to do with chance,' he said. 'We may miss the train, and then we shall have gone out of the way for nothing. More than that, the down mail does not stop till it gets several miles beyond the nearest station for Knollsea; so it is hopeless.'

'If there had only been a telegraph to the confounded place!'