Read Ebook: A Marriage at Sea by Russell William Clark

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Ebook has 963 lines and 63590 words, and 20 pages

AT SEA

It was some time after three o'clock in the morning when Grace fell asleep. The heave of the vessel had entirely conquered emotion. She had had no smiles for me; the handkerchief she held to her mouth had kept her lips sealed; but her eyes were never more beautiful than now with their languishing expression of suffering, and I could not remove my gaze from her face, so exceedingly sweet did she look as she lay with the rich bronze of her hair glittering, as though gold-dusted, to the lamplight, and her brow showing with an ivory gleam through the tresses which shadowed it in charming disorder.

These poetical thoughts occurred to me as I stood gazing at her awhile to make sure that she slept; then finding the need of refreshment, I softly mixed myself a glass of soda and brandy, and lighting a pipe in the companion-way, that the fumes of the tobacco might not taint the cabin atmosphere, I stepped on to the deck.

I stood, cigar in mouth, looking up at her canvas and round upon the dark scene of ocean, whilst, the lid of the skylight being a little way open, I was almost within arm's reach of my darling, whose lightest call would reach my ear, or least movement take my eye. The stars were dim away over the port quarter, and I could distinguish the outlines of clouds hanging in dusky, vaporous bodies over the black mass of the coast dotted with lights where Boulogne lay, with the Cape Gris Nez lantern windily flashing on high from its shoulder of land that blended in a dye of ink with the gloom of the horizon. There were little runs of froth in the ripples of the water, with now and again a phosphoric glancing that instinctively sent the eye to the dimness in the western circle as though it were sheet lightning there which was being reflected. Broad abeam was a large, gloomy collier "reaching" in for Boulogne harbour: she showed a gaunt, ribbed, and heeling figure, with her yards almost fore and aft, and not a hint of life aboard her in the form of light or noise.

I felt sleepless--never so broad awake, despite this business now in hand that had robbed me for days past of hour after hour of slumber, so that I may safely say I had scarcely enjoyed six hours of solid sleep in as many days. Caudel still grasped the tiller, and forward was one of the men restlessly but noiselessly pacing the little forecastle. The bleak hiss of the froth at the yacht's forefoot threw a shrewd bleakness into the light pouring of the off-shore wind, and I buttoned up my coat as I turned to Caudel, though excitement worked much too hotly in my soul to suffer me to feel conscious of the cold.

"This breeze will do, Caudel, if it holds," said I, approaching him by a stride or two that my voice should not disturb Grace.

"Ay, sir, it is as pretty a little air as could be asked for."

"What light is that away out yonder?"

"The Varne, your honour."

"And where are you carrying the little ship to?" said I, looking at the illuminated disc of compass card that swung in the short, brass binnacle under his nose.

"Ye see the course, Mr. Barclay--west by nothe. That 'll fetch Beachy Head for us, afterwards a small shift of the hellum 'll put the Channel under our bows, keeping the British ports as we go along handy, so that if your honour don't like the look of the bayrometer, why there's always a harbour within a easy sail."

I was quite willing that Caudel should heave the English land into sight. He had been bred in coasters, and knew his way about by the mere swell of the mud, as the sailors say; whereas, put him in the middle of the ocean, with nothing but his sextant to depend upon, and I do not know that I should have felt very sure of him.

He coughed, and seemed to mumble to himself as he ground upon the piece of tobacco in his cheek, then said, "And how's the young lady adoing, sir?"

"The motion of the vessel rendered her somewhat uneasy, but she is now sleeping."

I took a peep as I said this, to be certain, and saw her resting stirless, and in the posture I had left her in. No skylight ever framed a prettier picture of a sleeping girl. Her hair looked like beaten gold in the illusive lamplight; and to my eye, coming from the darkness of the sea and the great height of star-laden gloom, the sleeping form in the tender radiance of the interior was for the moment as startling as a vision, as something of unreal loveliness. I returned to Caudel.

"Sorry to hear she don't feel well, sir," he exclaimed; "but this here sea-sickness I'm told, soon passes."

"Shall I keep the yacht well out, then, sir? No need to draw in, if so be--"

"No, no, sight the coast, Caudel, and give us a view of the scenery. And now, whilst I have the chance, let me thank you heartily for the service you have done me to-night. I should have been helpless without you; and what other man of my crew--what other man of any sort, indeed, could I have depended upon?"

"Oh, dorn't mention it, Mr. Barclay, sir; I beg and entreat that you worn't mention it, sir," he replied, as though affected by my condescension. "You're a gentleman, sir, begging your pardon, and that means a man of honour, and when you told me how things stood, why, putting all dooty on one side, if so be as there can be such a thing as dooty in jobs which aren't shipshape and proper, why, I says, of course, I was willing to be of use. Not that I myself have much confidence in these here elopements, saving your presence. I've got a grown-up darter myself in sarvice, and if when she gets married she dorn't make a straight course for the meeting-house, why, then, I shall have to talk to her as she's never yet been talked to. But in this job"--he swung off from the tiller to expectorate over the rail--"what the young lady's been and gone and done is what I should say to my darter or any other young woman, the sarcumstances being the same, 'go thou and dew likewise.'"

"You see, Caudel, there was no hope of getting her ladyship's consent."

"No, sir."

"Then, again, consider the cruelty of sending the young lady to a Roman Catholic school for no fairer or kinder reasons than to remove her out of my way, and to compel her, if possible, by ceaseless teasing and exhortation, and God best knows what other devices, to change her faith."

"I onderstand, sir, and I'm of opinion it was quite time that their little game was stopped."

"Lady Amelia Roscoe is a Roman Catholic, and very bigoted. Ever since she first took charge of Miss Bellassys she has been trying to convert her, and by methods, I assure you, by no means uniformly kind."

"So you was asaying, sir."

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 ashore. 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."

"We must get the consent of the aunt first."

"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."

"Caudel," said I, "you may ask me any questions you please. The more you show yourself really anxious on behalf of Miss Bellassys, 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 Bellassys 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.

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 glass and brass 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."

"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 Dick 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.

"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.

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 lustre. 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.

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