CHAPTER III. LAURA JENNINGS.

Sir Wilfrid was coming to the gangway as I entered, leaving his companion, whom I at once understood to be Miss Laura Jennings, standing near the wheel. He grasped my hand, gazing at me earnestly a moment or two without speaking, and then exclaimed in a low faltering voice, ‘You are the dearest fellow to come! you are the dearest fellow to come! Indeed it is good, true, and noble of you.’

He then turned to a man dressed in a suit of pilot-cloth, with[18] brass buttons on his waistcoat and a round hat of old sailor fashion on his head, who stood at a respectful distance looking on, and motioned to him. He approached.

‘Charles, this is Captain Finn, the master of the yacht. My cousin, Mr. Monson.’

Finn lifted his hat with a short scrape of his right leg abaft.

‘Glad to see you aboard, sir, glad to see you aboard,’ said he, in a leather-lunged note that one felt he had difficulty in subduing. ‘A melancholy errand, Mr. Monson, sir, God deliver us! But we’re jockeying a real sweetheart, your honour, and if we ain’t soon sticking tight to Captain Fidler’s skirts I don’t think it’ll be for not being able to guess his course.’

He shook his head and sighed. But there lay a jolly expression in his large protruding lobster-like eye that twinkled there like the flame of a taper—enough of it to make me suspect that his mute-like air and Ember-week tone of voice was a mere piece of sympathetic acting, and that he was a merry dog enough when Wilfrid was out of sight.

‘See Mr. Monson’s luggage aboard, captain,’ said my cousin, ‘and stowed in his cabin, and then get your anchor. There’s nothing to keep us now.’

‘Ay, ay, sir.’

‘Step this way, Charlie, that I may introduce you to my sister-in-law.’

He passed his arm through mine and we walked aft, but I noticed in him a certain manner of cowering, so to speak, as of one who fears that he is being watched and talked about—an involuntary illustration of profound sensitiveness, no doubt, for, as I have said, the yacht lay lonely, and he was hardly likely to dread the scrutiny of his own men.

The girl he introduced me to seemed about nineteen or twenty years old. Lady Monson had been described to me as tall, stately, slow in movement, and of a reposeful expression of face that would have been deemed spiritless in a person wanting the eloquence of her rich and tropic charms: so at least my club friend the young baronet had as good as told me; and it was natural perhaps that I should expect to find her sister something after her style in height and form, if not in colour.

Instead, she was a woman rather under than above the average stature, fair in a sort of golden way, by which I wish to convey a complexion of exquisite softness and purity, very faintly freckled as though a little gold-dust had been artfully shaken over it—a hue of countenance, so to speak, that blended most admirably with a great quantity of hair of a dark gold, whereof there lay upon her brow many little natural curls and short tresses which her white forehead, shining through them, refined into a kind of amber colour. Her eyes were of violet with a merry spirit in them, which defied the neutralising influence of the sorrowful expression of her mouth. By some she might have been held a thought too stout, but for my[19] part I could see nothing that was not perfectly graceful in the curves and lines of her figure. I will not pretend to describe how she was dressed; in mourning I thought she was at first when she stood at a distance. She was sombrely clad, to keep Wilfrid’s melancholy in countenance perhaps, and I dare say she looked the sweeter and fairer for being thus apparelled, since there is no wear fitter than dark clothes for setting off such skin and hair as hers. Indeed, her style of dress and the fashion of her coiffure were the anticipation of a taste of a much later date. In those days women brushed their hair into a plaster-like smoothness down the cheeks, then coiled it behind the ear, and stowed what remained in an ungainly lump at the back of the head, into which was stuck a big comb. The dress, again, was loose about the body, as though the least revelation of the figure were an act of immodesty, and the sleeves were what they called gigots; all details, in short, combining to so ugly a result as to set me wondering now sometimes that love-making did not come to a dead stand. Miss Laura Jennings’s dress was cut to show her figure. The sleeves were tight, and I recollect that she wore gauntlet-shaped gloves that clothed her arm midway to the elbow.

This which I am writing was my impression, at the instant, of the girl with whom I was to be associated for a long while upon the ocean, and with whom I was to share in one adventure, at all events, which I do not doubt you will accept as amongst the most singular that ever befell a voyager. She curtsied with a pretty old-world grace to Wilfrid’s introduction, sending at the same time a sparkling glance full of spirited criticism through the fringe of her lids, which drooped with a demureness that was almost coquettish, I thought. Then she brightened into a frank manner, whilst she extended her hand.

‘I am very pleased to meet you, Mr. Monson; glad indeed to feel sure now that you will be of our party. Sir Wilfrid has talked of you much of late. You have acted far more kindly than you can imagine in joining us.’

‘We have a fine vessel under us, at all events, Miss Jennings,’ said I, with a look at the unsheltered decks which stretched under the declining sun white as freshly-peeled almonds. ‘She seems to have been born with the right kind of soul, Wilfrid; and I think if your skipper will tell her quietly what is expected of her she will fulfil your utmost expectations.’

He forced a melancholy smile which swiftly faded, and then, with a start and a stare over the rail on either hand, he exclaimed, ‘It makes me uneasy to be on deck, d’ye know. I feel—though ’tis stupid enough—as if there were eyes yonder and yonder on the watch. This restlessness will pass when we get to sea. Let us go below, dinner will be ready by half-past five,’ pulling out his watch, ‘and it is now a little after four.’

He took his sister-in-law’s hand in a brotherly, boyish way, and the three of us descended.

The cabin was as shining and sumptuous an interior as ever I[20] was in, or could imagine, indeed, of a yacht’s internal accommodation. Mirrors, hand-painted bulkheads, combinations of gilt and cream, thick carpets, handsome lamps, silver swinging-trays, and twenty more elegancies which I will not bore you with, made you feel, as you stood at the foot of the companion steps, as though you had entered some delicious, sparkling, fragrant little drawing-room. The bedrooms were at each extremity. The berth allotted to me was a roomy, airy apartment forward, with a stout bulkhead at the end of the short passage that effectually closed this part of the craft from whatever might be amidships and beyond. There was a stand of arms fixed here, and my thoughts instantly went to Colonel Hope-Kennedy and Lady Monson, and the crew of the ‘Shark,’ as I counted twenty fowling-pieces with long polished barrels and bright stocks, with hooks alongside from which hung a number of cutlasses and pistols of the sort you then found in the small-arms chests aboard men-of-war. The pattern of these weapons persuaded me that they had been collected in a hurry, purchased out of hand off some Southampton or Gosport dealer in such ware. They can signify but one sort of business, thought I; but, bless my heart! does he seriously entertain notions of boarding if we fall in with the craft? And do his men suspect his intentions? And has he provided for all things by shipping a fighting crew?

I peered into my berth, saw that it would make me as comfortable a sea bedroom as it was possible to desire, and returned to the cabin, where Wilfrid and Miss Jennings were sitting, he at a small table right aft, sprawling upon it with his elbow, his chin in his hand, his face gloomy with melancholy and anger, and his eyes fixed upon a porthole through which he might just get a glimpse of green shore with a tremble of water yellow under the western light steeping to it; she near him on a short sofa, with her back against the vessel’s side, toying with her hat which lay in her lap, so that I was now able to see that she was indeed a very sweet woman to the topmost curl of gold that gleamed upon her head. Indeed, you seemed to witness her charms as in a light of her own making. There was something positively phosphoric in the irradiation on her face and hair, as though in sober truth they were self-luminous. A couple of fellows were bringing my luggage down the hatch, but very quietly. I knew they were getting the anchor on deck by the dim chink chink of the windlass pawls, but I could hear no other sounds, no singing out of orders, nothing save the pulsing of the windlass barrel to indicate that we were about to start. There was an element of solemnity in this our first step, at all events, along the prodigious liquid highway we were about to enter that was not a little irksome to me. After all, it was not my wife who had run away, and whom I was starting in pursuit of, and, though I keenly sympathised with my cousin, it was impossible that I could feel or look as though I was broken down by grief.

‘We are not a numerous party,’ said I, in a hearty way, seating myself, ‘one less, indeed, than we bargained for, Wilfrid, for I am[21] without a servant. My fellow funked the very name of salt water, and there was no time to replace him.’

‘There are two stewards to wait upon you, and my own valet besides,’ said Wilfrid, bringing his eyes with an effort from the porthole, through which he was staring, to my face. ‘Trust me to see that you are made perfectly comfortable.’

‘My dear fellow—comfortable! Why this is palatial!’ I cried, with a comprehensive sweep of my hand round the cabin; ‘much too luxurious, in my humble opinion; don’t you think so, Miss Jennings? Only figure all these fine things going down to swell the navies that lie green on the Atlantic ooze.’

‘The “Bride” is a lovely boat,’ she answered, ‘and very swift, Wilfrid says.’

‘Swift enough to serve my turn, I expect,’ said he, with what the Scotch call a raised look coming into his face.

‘But why not come on deck?’ said I; ‘no fear of being noticed, Wilfrid. Who is there to see us, and who is there to care if anybody should see us?’

He drew his tall, awkward figure together with a shake of the head.

‘Get you on deck by all means, Charles, and take Laura with you if she will go. I have occupation to last me until the dinner-bell in my cabin.’

‘Will you accompany me, Miss Jennings?’ said I.

‘Indeed I will,’ she exclaimed with an alacrity that exhibited her as little disposed as myself to rest passive in the shadow of my cousin’s heavy, resentful melancholy.

He seized my hand in both his as I rose to escort the girl on deck. ‘God bless you once again, my dear boy, for joining us. Presently I shall feel the stronger and perhaps the brighter for having you by my side.’ He looked wistfully, still holding my hand, at Miss Jennings, as though he would address a word to her too, but on a sudden broke away with a sigh like a sob, and walked hastily to the after passage, where his cabin was.

In silence, and much affected, I handed the girl up the companion steps. Gay and glittering as was the cabin, its inspirations were but as those of a charnel-house compared with the sense of life and the quickness of spirit you got by mounting on deck and entering the shining atmosphere of the autumn afternoon, with the high blue sky filled with the soft and reddening light of the waning luminary, whilst already the land on either side was gathering to its green and gold and brown the tender dyes of the evening. The distance had been clarified by a small easterly air that had sprung up since I first stepped on board, and the Isle of Wight hung in a soft pure mass of many dyes upon the white gleam of the water that brimmed to it. There was a large frigate, as I imagined her, drawing slowly up past Gosport way, heading westwards, and the eye fastened upon her with a sort of wonder; for, though she looked to be hull down, and the merest toy, and indistinguishable[22] by the careless glance as a sail, yet she was too defined to pass for a cloud either, whilst the silver brightness seemed impossible in canvas, and you watched her with a fancy in you of a large bland star that would be presently afloat in the blue; and sparkling there on the brow of the rising night. There were a few vessels of different kinds anchored off Southampton, and the scene in that direction looked wonderfully fair and peaceful, with the spars of the craft gilt with sunshine, and a flash in their hulls where paint or glass caught the declining beam, and past them the higher reaches of the light blue water with the twinkling of little sails that carried the gaze shorewards to the town.

All this my sight took in quickly. The men had quitted the windlass, and were making sail upon the yacht nimbly, but so quietly, even with a quality of stealth in their manner of pulling and hauling, that we could not have been a stiller ship had we been a privateersman getting under way on a dark night with a design of surprising a rich fabric or of escaping a heavily-armed enemy. They looked a stout crew of men, attired without the uniformity that is usual in yachting companies in these days, though the diversity of dress was not sufficiently marked to offend. I gathered that the vessel carried a mate as well as a captain, and detected him in the figure of a sturdy little fellow, with a cast in his eye and a mat of red hair under his chin, who stood betwixt the knightheads forward, staring aloft at a hand on the topsail yard. Captain Finn saluted the girl and me with a flourish of a hairy paw to his hat, but was too full of business to give us further heed.

‘We shall be under way very soon now, Miss Jennings,’ said I; ‘it is a strange voyage that we are undertaking.’

‘A sad one too,’ she answered.

‘You show a deal of courage in accompanying Wilfrid,’ I exclaimed.

‘I hesitated at first,’ said she, ‘but he seemed so sure of overtaking the “Shark,” and pressed me so earnestly to join him, believing that the sight of me, or that by my pleading to—to—’ She faltered, flushing to the eyes, and half turned from me with such a tremulous parting of her lips to the gush of the mild breeze, which set a hundred golden fibres of her hair dancing about her ears, that I expected to see a tear upon her cheek when she looked at me afresh. I pretended to be interested in nothing but the movements of the men who were hoisting the mainsail.

‘What do you think of the voyage, Mr. Monson?’ she exclaimed after a little pause, though she held her face averted as if waiting for the flush to fade out of her cheeks.

‘It bothers me considerably,’ I answered; ‘there is nothing to make heads or tails of in it that I can see.’

‘But why?’ and now she stole a sidelong look at me.

‘Well, first of all,’ I exclaimed, ‘I cannot imagine that there is the faintest probability of our picking up the “Shark.” She may be below the horizon, and we may be sailing three or four leagues[23] apart for days at a stretch, and neither ship with the faintest suspicion of the other being close. The ocean is too big for a hunt of this sort.’

‘But suppose we should pick her up, to use your term, Mr. Monson?’

‘Suppose it, Miss Jennings, and add this supposition: that the gallant Colonel’—she frowned at his name, with a sweet curl of horror on her lip as she looked down—‘who will long before have twigged us, declines to heave-to or have anything whatever to do with us; what then?’

‘I suggested this to your cousin,’ she answered quickly; ‘it is a most natural objection to make. He answered that if the “Shark” refused to stop when he hailed her—that is the proper term, I know—he would compel her to come to a stand by continuing to fire at her, even if it came to his sinking her, though his object would be to knock her mast down to prevent her from sailing.’

I checked a smile at the expression ‘knock her mast down,’ and then caught myself running my glance round in search of any hint of ordnance of a persuasive kind; and now it was that I noticed for the first time, secured amidships of the forecastle, and comfortably housed and tarpaulined, something that my naval instincts were bound to promptly interpret into a Long Tom, and of formidable calibre too, if the right sort of hint of it was to be obtained out of its swathing. I also observed another feature that had escaped me: I mean a bow-port on either side the bowsprit—a detail of equipment so uncommon in a pleasure craft as to force me to the conclusion that the apertures had been quite newly cut and fitted.

I uttered a low whistle, whilst I found my companion’s gaze rooted upon me with the same critical attention in the spirited blue gleam of it I had before noticed.

‘Well!’ said I, taking a bit of a breath, ‘upon my word, though, I should not have thought he had it in him! Yes, yonder’s a remedy,’ I continued, nodding in the direction of the forecastle, ‘to correspond with Wilfrid’s intentions if he’s fortunate enough to fall in with the “Shark.” Will she be armed, I wonder? It would then make the oddest of all peppering matches.’

‘If the yacht escapes us, we are certain to meet with her at the Cape,’ said Miss Jennings.

It was idle to argue on matters of seamanship with the pretty creature.

‘Wilfrid has said little on the subject to me,’ I remarked. ‘He was dreadfully overcome when he called to ask me to accompany him. But it is good and brave of you to enter upon this wild experiment with a womanly and a sisterly hope of courting the fugitive back to her right and only resting-place. My cousin will receive her, then?’

‘He means to come between her and the consequences of her—of[24] her folly,’ said she, colouring again with a flash in her eye and a steady confrontment of me, ‘let the course he may afterwards make up his mind to pursue be what it will.’

I saw both distress and a little hint of temper in her face, and changed the subject.

‘Have you been long in England?’

‘I arrived three months ago at Sherburne Abbey’ (my cousin’s seat in the North). ‘You know I am an Australian?’

‘Yes, but not through Wilfrid, of whose marriage I should have learned nothing but for hearing it talked about one day in a club. A young baronet who had met Lady Monson was loud in her praises. He described her as a wonderfully beautiful woman, but dark, with fiery Spanish eyes and raven tresses’; and here I peeped at her own soft violet stars and sunny hair.

‘Yes, she is beautiful, Mr. Monson,’ she answered sadly, ‘too beautiful indeed. Her face has proved a fatal gift to her. What madness!’ she exclaimed, whispering her words almost. ‘And never was there a more devoted husband than Wilfrid. And her baby—the little lamb! Oh, how could she do it! how could she do it!’

‘With whom has the child been placed?’ said I.

‘With a cousin—Mrs. Trevor.’

‘Oh, I know, a dear good creature; the bairn will be in excellent hands.’

‘Sir Wilfrid was too affectionate, Mr. Monson. You know,’ she continued, looking at me sideways, her face very grave, ‘if you have ceased to love or to like a person, your aversion will grow in proportion as he grows fond of you. It is not true, Mr. Monson, that love begets love. No; if it were true, my sister would be the happiest of women.’

‘Have you met Colonel Hope-Kennedy?’

‘Oh yes, often and often. He was a very constant visitor at Sherburne Abbey.’

‘Pretty good-looking?’

‘Tall, very gentlemanly, not by any means handsome to my taste, but I have no doubt many women would think him so.’

‘The name is familiar to me, but I never met the man. Did he live in the North?’

‘No; whenever he came to Sherburne Abbey he was your cousin’s guest.’

Phew! thought I. ‘And, of course,’ I said, willing to pursue the subject afresh, since it did not seem now to embarrass her to refer to it, whilst I was curious to learn as much of the story as could be got, ‘my cousin had no suspicion of the scoundrelism of the man he was entertaining.’

‘No, nor is he to be blamed. He is a gentleman, Mr. Monson, and, like all fine, generous, amiable natures, very, very slow to distrust persons whom he has honoured with his friendship. When he came to me with the news that Henrietta had left him I believed[25] he had gone utterly mad, knowing him to be just a little’—she hesitated, and ran her eyes over my face as though positively she halted merely to the notion that perhaps I was a trifle gone too; and then, clasping her hands before her, and hanging her head so as to look as if she was speaking with her eyes closed, she went on: ‘I was much with Henrietta, and often when Colonel Hope-Kennedy was present. I had ridden with them, had watched them whilst they played billiards—a game my sister was very fond of—observed them at the piano when she was singing and he turning the music, or when she accompanied him in a song; he sang well. But—it might be, it is true, because I was as unsuspicious as Wilfrid—yet I declare, Mr. Monson, that I never witnessed even so much as a look exchanged between them of a kind to excite a moment’s uneasiness. No! Wilfrid cannot be charged with blindness; the acting was as exquisite as the object was detestable.’ And she flushed up again, half turning from me with a stride towards the rail and a wandering look at the green country, which I accepted as a hint that she wished the subject to drop.

The yacht was now under way. They had catted, and were fishing the anchor forwards; I noticed that the man I had taken to be the mate had arrived aft and was at the wheel. The vessel’s head was pointing fair for the Solent, and already you heard a faint crackling sound like a delicate rending of satin rising from under the bows, though there was so little weight in the draught of air that the ‘Bride’ floated without the least perceptible list or inclination, spite of all plain sail being upon her with the exception of the top-gallant sail.

‘Fairly started at last, Miss Jennings,’ said I.

She glanced round hastily as though disturbed in an absorbing reverie, smiled, and then looked sad enough to weep, all in a breath.

Well, it was a solemn moment for her, I must say. She had her maid with her, it is true; but she was the only lady on board. There was none of her own quality with whom she could talk apart—no other woman to keep her in countenance, so to speak, with the sympathy of presence and sex; she was bound on a trip of which no mortal man could have dated the termination—an adventure that might carry her all about the world for aught she knew, for, since she was fully conscious of the very variable weather of my cousin’s mind, to use the old phrase, she would needs be too shrewd not to conjecture that many wild and surprising things were quite likely to happen whilst the power of directing the movements of the yacht remained his.

And then, again, she was in quest of her sister, without a higher hope to support her than a fancy—that was the merest dream to my mind, when I thought of the little baby the woman had left behind her, to say nothing of her husband—that her passionate entreaties backing Wilfrid’s appeals might coax her ladyship to quit the side of the gallant figure she had run away with.

[26]

Just then the merry silver tinkling of a bell smartly rung sounded through the open skylight, and at the same moment the form of a neat and comely young woman arose in the companion hatch.

‘What is it, Graham?’ inquired Miss Jennings.

‘The first dinner-bell, Miss. The second will ring at the half-hour.’

The girl pulled out a watch of the size of a thumbnail and exclaimed, ‘It is already five o’clock, Mr. Monson. It cannot be a whole hour since you arrived! I hope the time will pass as quickly when we are at sea.’

She lingered a moment gazing shorewards, sheltering her eyes sailor-fashion with an ungloved hand of milk-white softness, on which sparkled a gem or two; then, giving me a slight bow, she went to the companion and stepped down the ladder with the grace and ease of a creature floating on wings. Ho, ho! thought I, she will have her sea-legs anyhow; no need, therefore, Master Charles, to be too officious with your hand and arm when the hour of tumblefication comes. But that she was likely to prove a good sailor was a reasonable conjecture, seeing that she was comparatively fresh from probably a four months’ passage from Melbourne.

I followed her after a short interval, and then to the summons of the second dinner-bell entered the cabin. The equipment of the table rendered festal the sumptuous furniture of this interior with the sparkle of silver and crystal, and the dyes of wines blending with the central show of rich flowers. The western sunshine lay upon the skylight, and the atmosphere was ruddy with it. One is apt to be curious when in novel situations, and I must confess that yachting in such a craft as this was something very new to me, not to speak of the uncommon character one’s experiences at the onset would take from the motive and conditions of the voyage; and this will prove my apology for saying that, whilst I stood waiting for Wilfrid and his sister-in-law to arrive, I bestowed more attention, furtive as it might be, upon the two stewards and my cousin’s man than I should have thought of obliging them with ashore. The stewards were commonplace enough, a pair of trim-built fellows, the head one’s face hard with that habitual air of solicitude which comes at sea to a man whose duties lie amongst crockery and bills of fare, and whose leisure is often devoted to dark and mysterious altercations with the cook; the second steward was noticeable for nothing but a large strawberry-mark on his left cheek; but Wilfrid’s man was worth a stare. I had no recollection of him, and consequently he must have been taken into my cousin’s service since I was last at the Abbey, as we used to call it. He had the appearance of a man who had been bred to the business of a mute, a lanthorn-jawed, yellow, hollow-eyed person whose age might have been five-and-twenty or five-and-forty; hair as black as coal, glossy as grease, brushed flat to the tenacity of sticking-plaster, and fitting his egg-shaped skull like a wig. He was[27] dressed in black, his trousers a little short and somewhat tight at the ankles, where they revealed a pair of white socks bulging with a hint of gout over the sides of a pair of pumps. He stood behind the chair that Wilfrid would take with his hands reverentially clasped upon his waistcoat, his whole posture indicative of humility and resignation. Nothing could be more in harmony with the melancholy nature of our expedition than this fellow’s countenance.

Miss Jennings arrived and took her place; she was followed by my cousin, who walked to the table with the gait of a person following a coffin. This sort of thing, thought I, must be suffered for a day or two, but afterwards, if the air is not to be cleared by a rousing laugh, it won’t be for lack of any effort on my part to tune up my pipes.