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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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.