Produced by Al Haines
A MARRIAGE AT SEA
BY
W. CLARK RUSSELL
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.
LONDON
_First Issued in this Cheap Form in 1919_
This Book was First Published (Two Vols.) . . . February 1891
Second Edition (One Vol.) . . . . . . . . . . . February 1892
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE RUE DE MAQUETRA
II. THE ELOPEMENT
III. AT SEA
IV. SWEETHEARTS IN A DANDY
V. DIRTY WEATHER
VI. SWEETHEARTS IN A STORM
VII. THE CARTHUSIAN
VIII. OUTWARD BOUND
IX. WE ARE MUCH OBSERVED
X. A SINGULAR PROPOSAL
XI. GRACE CONSENTS
XII. A MARRIAGE AT SEA
XIII. THE MERMAID
XIV. HOMEWARD BOUND
XV. THE END
POSTSCRIPT
A MARRIAGE AT SEA
CHAPTER I
THE RUE DE MAQUETRA
My dandy-rigged yacht, the _Spitfire_, of twenty-six tons, lay in
Boulogne harbour, hidden in the deep shadow of the wall against which
she floated. It was a breathless night, dark despite the wide spread
of cloudless sky that was brilliant with stars. It was hard upon the
hour of midnight, and low down where we lay we heard but dimly such
sounds of life as was still abroad in the Boulogne streets. Ahead of
us loomed the shadow of a double-funnelled steamer--an inky dye of
scarcely determinable proportions upon the black and silent waters of
the harbour. The Capecure pier made a faint, phantom-like line of
gloom as it ran seawards on our left, with here and there a lump of
shadow denoting some collier fast to the skeleton timbers.
The stillness was impressive; from the sands came a dull and distant
moan of surf; the dim strains of a concertina threaded the hush which
seemed to dwell like something material upon the black, vague shape of
a large brig almost directly abreast of us. We were waiting for the
hour of midnight to strike and our ears were strained.
"What noise is that?" I exclaimed.
"The dip of sweeps, sir," answered my captain, Aaron Caudel; "some
smack a-coming along--ay, there she is," and he shadowily pointed to a
dark, square heap betwixt the piers, softly approaching to the impulse
of her long oars, the rhythmic grind of which in the thole-pins made a
strange, wild ocean music of the far-off roar of the surf, and the sob
of water alongside, and the delicate wash of the tide in the green
piles and timbers of the two long, narrow, quaint old piers.
"How is your pluck now, Caudel?" said I in a low voice, sending a
glance up at the dark edge of the harbour-wall above us, where stood
the motionless figure of a _douanier_, with a button or two of his
uniform faintly glimmering to the gleam of a lamp near him.
"Right for the job, sir--right as your honour could desire it. There's
but one consideration which ain't like a feeling of sartinty--and that
I must say consarns the dawg."
"Smother the dog! But you are right, Caudel. We must leave our boots
in the ditch."
"Ain't there plenty of grass, sir?" said he.
"I hope so; but a fathom of gravel will so crunch under those hoofs of
yours that the very dead buried beneath might turn in their
coffins--let alone a live dog wide awake from the end of his beastly
cold snout to the tip of his tail. Does the ladder chafe you?"
"No, sir. Makes me feel a bit asthmatic-like, and if them duniers get
a sight of me they'll reckon I've visited the Continent to make a show
of myself," he exclaimed, with a low, deep-sea laugh, whilst he spread
his hands upon his breast, around which, under cover of a large, loose,
long pea-coat, he had coiled a length of rope-ladder with two iron
hooks at one end of it, which made a hump under either shoulder-blade.
There was no other way, however, of conveying the ladder ashore. In
the hand it would instantly have challenged attention, and a bag would
have been equally an object of curiosity to the two or three
Custom-House phantoms flitting about in triangular-shaped trousers and
shako-like headgear.
"There goes midnight, sir!" cried Caudel.
As I listened to the chimes a sudden fit of excitement set me trembling.
"Are ye there, Job?" called my captain.
"Ay, sir," responded a voice from the bows of the yacht.
"Jim?"
"Here, sir," answered a second voice out of the darkness forward.
"Dick?"
"Here, sir."
"Bobby?"
"Here, sir," responded the squeaky note of a boy.
"Lay aft all you ship's company and don't make no noise," growled
Caudel.
I looked up; the figure of the _douanier_ had vanished. The three men
and the boy came sneaking out of the yacht's head.
"Now, what ye've got to do," said Caudel, "is to keep awake. You'll
see all ready for hoisting and gitting away the hinstant Mr. Barclay
and me arrives aboard. You onderstand that?"
"It's good English, cap'n," said one of the sailors.
"No skylarking, mind. You're a listening, Bobby?"
"Ay, sir."
"You'll just go quietly to work and see all clear, and then tarn to and
loaf about in the shadows. Now, Mr. Barclay, sir, if you're ready, I
am."
"Have you the little bull's-eye in your pocket?" said I.
He felt and answered, "Yes."
"Matches?"
"Two boxes."
"Stop a minute," said I, and I descended into the cabin to read my
darling's letter for the last time, that I might make sure of all
details of our romantic plot, ere embarking on as hare-brained an
adventure as was ever attempted by a lover and his sweetheart.
The cabin lamp burned brightly. I see the little interior now and
myself standing upright under the skylight, which found me room for my
stature, for I was six feet high. The night-shadow came black against
the glass, and made a mirror of each pane. My heart was beating fast,
and my hands trembled as I held my sweetheart's letter to the light. I
had read it twenty times before--you might have known that by the
creases in it and the frayed edges, as though, forsooth, it had been a
love-letter fifty years old--but my nervous excitement obliged me to go
through it once more for the last time, as I have said, to make sure.
The handwriting was girlish--how could it be otherwise, seeing that the
sweet writer was not yet eighteen? The letter consisted of four
sheets, and on one of them was very cleverly drawn, in pen and ink, a
tall, long, narrow, old-fashioned chateau, with some shrubbery in front
of it, a short length of wall, then a tall hedge with an arrow pointing
at it, under which was written, "HERE IS THE HOLE." Under another
arrow indicating a big, square door to the right of the house, where a
second short length of wall was sketched in, were written the words,
"HERE IS THE DOG." Other arrows--quite a flight of them, indeed,
causing the sketch to resemble a weather-chart--pointed to windows,
doors, a little balcony, and so forth, and against them were written,
"MAM'SELLE'S ROOM," "THE GERMAN GOVERNESS'S ROOM," "FOUR GIRLS SLEEP
HERE,"--with other hints of a like kind.
I carefully read the letter. Suppose the ladder which Caudel had wound
around his broad breast should prove too short? No! the height from
the balcony to the ground was exactly ten feet. She had measured it
herself, and that there might be no error, had enclosed me the length
of pack-thread with which--with a little weight at the end of it--she
had plumbed the trifling distance. She hoped it would be a fine night.
If there should be thunder I must not come. She would rather die than
leave the house in a thunderstorm. Neither must I come if the sea was
rough. She was acting very wrongly--why did she love me so?--why was I
so impatient? Could I not wait until she was twenty-one? Then she
would be of age and her own mistress: three years and a month or two
would soon pass, and, meanwhile, our love for each other would be
growing deeper and deeper--at least _hers_ would. She could not answer
for mine. She was content to have faith.
All this was very much underlined, and here and there was a little
smudge as though she had dropped a tear.
But she had plucked up as she drew towards the close of her letter,
and, mere child as she was, there was a quality of decision in her
final sentence which satisfied me that she would not fail me when the
moment came. I put the letter in my pocket and went on deck.
"Where are you, Caudel?"
"Here, sir," cried a shadow in the starboard gangway.
"Let us start," said I; "there is half-an-hour's walk before us, and
though the agreed time is one, there is a great deal to be done when we
arrive."
"I've been a-thinking, Mr. Barclay," he exclaimed, "that the young
lady'll never be able to get aboard this yacht by that there up and
down ladder," meaning the perpendicular steps affixed to the harbour
wall.
"No!" cried I, needlessly startled by an insignificant oversight on the
very threshold of the project.
"The boat," he continued, "had better be in waiting at them stairs,
just past the smack, astarn of us there."
"Give the necessary orders," said I.
He did so swiftly, bidding two of the men to be at the stairs by one
o'clock, the others to have the port gangway unshipped that we might
step aboard in a moment, along with sails loosed and gear all seen to,
ready for a prompt start. We then ascended the ladder and gained the
top of the quay.
A _douanier_ stood at a little distance. As we rose over the edge of
the wall he approached, and by the aid of the lamp burning strongly
close at hand, he recognised us as persons who had been coming and
going throughout the day. Caudel called out "_Bong swore_," and moved
off that his bulky frame might not be visible. The man in a civil
voice asked in French if we had any fire-arms on us.
"No, no," I responded, "we are going to fetch a friend who has
consented to take a little cruise with us. The tide is making, and we
hope to be under way before two o'clock."
"You English love the sea," said he, good-naturedly; "all hours of the
day and night are the same to you. For my part, give me my bed at
night."
"Here is something to furnish you with a pleasant dream when you get to
bed," said I, giving him a franc. "When are you off duty?"
"I am here till four o'clock," he answered.
"Good," said I, and carelessly strolled after the portly figure of my
captain.
We said little until we had cleared the Rue de l'Ecu and were marching
up the broad Grande Rue, with the church of St. Nicholas soaring in a
dusky mass out of the market-place, and the few lights of the wide,
main street rising in fitful twinklings to the shadow of the rampart
walls. A mounted gendarme passed; the stroke of his horse's hoofs
sounded hollow in the broad thoroughfare and accentuated the deserted
appearance of the street. Here and there a light showed in a window;
from a distance came a noise of chorusing: a number of fellows, no
doubt, arm-in-arm, singing "Mourir pour la Patrie," to the inspiration
of several glasses of sugar and water.
"I sha'n't be sorry when we're there," said Caudel. "This here ladder
makes my coat feel a terrible tight fit. I suppose it'll be the first
job of the sort ye was ever engaged in, sir?"
"The first," said I, "and the last too, believe me. It is nervous
work. I would rather have to deal with an armed burglar than with an
elopement. I wish the business was ended, and we were heading for
Penzance."
"And I don't suppose the young lady feels extray comfortable, either,"
he exclaimed. "Let me see: I've got to be right in my latitude and
longitude, or we shall be finding ourselves ashore. It's for us to
make the signal, ain't it, sir?"
"Yes," said I, puffing, for the road was steep and we were walking
rapidly; "first of all you'll have to prepare the ladder. You haven't
forgotten the rungs, I hope?" referring to three brass pieces to keep
the ropes extended, contrivances which had been made to my order,
resembling stair rods with forks and an arrangement of screws by which
they could be disconnected into pieces convenient for the pocket.
"They're here, sir," he exclaimed, slapping his breast.
"Well, we proceed thus: The bull's-eye must be cautiously lighted and
darkened. We have then to steal noiselessly to abreast of the window
on the left of the house and flash the lantern. This will be answered
by the young lady striking a match at the window."
"Won't the scraping of the lucifer be heard?" inquired Caudel.
"No, Miss Bellassys writes to me that no one sleeps within several
corridors of that room."
"Well, and then I think you said, sir," observed Caudel, "that the
young lady'll slip out on to the balcony, and lower away a small length
of line to which this here ladder," he said, giving his breast a thump,
"is to be bent on, she hauling of it up?"
"Quite right," said I; "you must help her to descend whilst I hold the
ladder taut at the foot of it. No fear of the ropes breaking, I hope?"
"Lord love 'ee," he said heartily, "it's brand new rattline-stuff,
strong enough to hoist the mainmast out of a first-rate."
By this time we had gained the top of the Grande Rue. Before us
stretched an open space dark with lines of trees; at long intervals the
gleam of an oil lamp dotted that space of gloom; on our right lay the
dusky mass of the rampart walls, the yawning gateway dully illuminated
by the trembling flame of a lantern into a picture which carried the
imagination back into heroic times, when elopements were exceedingly
common, when gallant knights were to be met with galloping away with
women of beauty and distinction clinging to them, when the midnight air
was vocal with guitars, and nearly every other darkling lattice framed
some sweet, pale, listening face.
"Which'll be the road, sir?" broke in Caudel's tempestuous voice.
I had explored the district that afternoon, had observed all that was
necessary, and discovered that the safest, if not the shortest, way to
the Rue de Maquetra where my sweetheart, Grace Bellassys, was at
school, lay through the Haute Ville or Upper Town as the English called
it. The streets were utterly deserted; not so much as a cat stirred.
One motionless figure we passed, hard by the Cathedral--a policeman or
gendarme--he might have been a statue; it was like pacing the streets
of a town that had been sacked, in which nothing lived to deliver so
much as a groan; and the fancy was not a little improved by our
emergence into what resembled a tract of country through a gateway
similar to that by which we had entered, over which there faintly
glimmered out to the sheen of a near lamp the figure of Our Lady of
Boulogne erect in some carving of a boat.
"Foreigners is a queer lot," exclaimed Caudel. "I dunno as I should
much relish living between them walls. How much farther off is it,
sir?"
"About ten minutes," said I.
"A blooming walk, Mr. Barclay, sir, begging your pardon. Wouldn't it
have been as well if you'd had ordered a fee-hacre to stand by ready to
jump aboard of?"
"A fee what?" said I.
"What's the French for a cab, sir?"
"Oh, I see what you mean. No. It's all down-hill for the lady. A
carriage makes a noise; then there is the cabman to be left behind to
tell all that he knows."
Caudel grunted an assent, and we strode onwards in silence. It was an
autumn night, but the air was very soft, and the largest of the
luminaries shone with the mellow glory of a summer that was yet rich
and beautiful in its decay. From afar, in the direction of the Calais
Road, came the dim rumbling noise of a heavy vehicle, like the sound of
a diligence in full trot; otherwise the dark and breezeless atmosphere
was of an exquisite serenity--too placid indeed to please me; for
though the yacht was to be easily towed out of Boulogne harbour, I had
no fancy for finding myself becalmed close off the pier-heads when the
dawn broke.
The Rue de Maquetra was--is, I may say; I presume it still exists--a
long, narrow lane leading to a pretty valley. Something more than
half-way up it, on the left-hand side, stands a tall convent wall, the
shadow of which, dominated as the heights were by trees on such a
motionless midnight as this, plunged the roadway into deepest gloom.
The whole length of the lane, to the best of my remembrance, was
illuminated by two, at the outside by three, lamps which revealed
nothing but their own flames, and so bewildered instead of assisting
the eye.
Directly opposite the convent wall stood the old chateau, darkened and
thickened in front by a profusion of shrubbery, with a short length of
wall, as I have already said, at both extremities of it. The grounds
belonging to the house, as they rose with the hill, were divided from
the lane by a thick hedge which terminated at a distance of some two
hundred feet.
We came to a stand and listened, staring our hardest with all our eyes.
The house was in blackness; the line of the roof ran in a clear sweep
of ink against the stars, and not the faintest sound came from it or
its grounds, save the delicate tinkling murmur of a fountain playing
somewhere amongst the shrubbery in front.
"Where'll be the dawg?" exclaimed Caudel in a hoarse whisper.
"Behind the wall there," I answered, "yonder, where the great square
door is. Hark! Did not that sound like the rattle of a chain?"
We listened; then said I:
"Let us make for the hole in the hedge. I have its bearings. It
directly fronts the third angle of that convent wall."
We crept soundlessly past the house, treading the verdure that lay in
dark streaks upon the glimmering ground of this little-frequented lane.
The clock of the convent opposite struck half-past twelve.
"One bell, sir," said Caudel; "it's about time we tarned to, and no
mistake. Lord, how I'm a-perspiring! Yet it ben't so hot neither.
Which side of the house do the lady descend from?"
"From this side," I answered.
"Well clear of the dawg anyhow," said he, "and _that's_ a good job."
"Here's the hole," I cried, with my voice shrill beyond recognition of
my own hearing through the nervous excitement I laboured under.
The hole was a neglected gap in the hedge, a rent originally made
probably by donkey-boys, several of whose cattle I had remarked that
afternoon browsing along the ditch and bank-side. We squeezed through,
and found ourselves in a sort of kitchen garden, as I might imagine
from the aspect of the shadowy vegetation; it seemed to run clear to
the very wall of the house on this side in dwarf bushes and low-ridged
growths.
"There'll be a path I hope," growled Caudel. "What am I atreading on?
Cabbages? They crackle worse nor gravel, Mr. Barclay."
"Clear yourself of the rope-ladder, and then I'll smother you in your
big pea-coat whilst you light the lamp," said I. "Let us keep well in
the shadow of the hedge. Who knows what eyes may be star-gazing
yonder?"
The hedge flung a useful dye upon the blackness of the night; and our
figures against it, even though they should have been viewed close to,
must have been indistinguishable. With a seaman's alacrity Caudel
slipped off his immense coat, and in a few moments had unwound the
length of ladder from his body. He wore a coloured flannel shirt--I
had dreaded to find him figuring in white calico! He dropped the
ladder to the ground, and the iron hooks clanked as they fell together.
I hissed a sea blessing at him through my teeth.
"Have you no wick in those tallow-candle fingers of yours? Hush!
Stand motionless."
As I spoke the dog began to bark. That it was the dog belonging to the
house I could not swear. The sound, nevertheless, proceeded from the
direction of the yard in which my sweetheart had told me the dog was
chained. The deep and melancholy note was like that of a bloodhound
giving tongue. It was reverberated by the convent wall and seemed to
penetrate to the farthest distance, awaking the very echoes of the
sleeping river Liane, and it filled the breathless pause that had
fallen upon us with a torment of inquietude and expectation. After a
few minutes the creature ceased.
"He'll be a whopper, sir. Big as a pony, sir, if his voice don't belie
him," said Caudel, fetching a deep breath. "I was once bit by a
dawg----" he was about to spin a yarn.
"For heaven's sake! now bear a hand and get your bull's eye alight," I
angrily whispered, at the same moment snatching up his coat and so
holding it as to effectually screen his figure from the house.
Feeling over the coat he pulled out the little bull's-eye lamp and a
box of matches, and catching with oceanic dexterity the flame of the
lucifer in the hollow of his hands, he kindled the wick, and I
immediately closed the lantern with its glass eclipsed. This done, I
directed my eyes at the black smears of growths--for thus they
showed--lying round about us, in search of a path; but apparently we
were on the margin of some wide tract of vegetables, through which we
should have to thrust to reach the stretch of sward that, according to
the description in my pocket, lay immediately under the balcony from
which my sweetheart was to descend.
"Pick up that ladder--by the hooks--see they don't clank--crouch low;
make a bush of yourself as I do, and come along," said I.
Foot by foot we groped our way towards the tall, thin shadow of the
house through the cabbages--to give the vegetation a name--and
presently arrived at the edge of the sward; and now we had to wait
until the clock struck one. Fortunately there were some bushes here,
but none that rose higher than our girth, and this obliged us to
maintain a posture of stooping which in a short time began to tell upon
Caudel's rheumatic knees, as I knew by his snuffling and uneasy
movements, though the heart of oak suffered in silence.