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HER SAILOR
A Love Story
BY
MARSHALL SAUNDERS
AUTHOR OF
“BEAUTIFUL JOE,” “ROSE À CHARLITTE,”
“DEFICIENT SAINTS,” ETC.
“Now if you love the southern sea
And pleasant summer weather;
Come, let us mount this gallant ship,
And sail away together.”
[Illustration]
New York
International Association of Newspapers and Authors
1901
_Copyright, 1899_
BY L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
George M. Hill Company
Printers and Binders
Chicago, Ill.
I DEDICATE
THIS MY FIRST STORY
TO MY MOST INDULGENT CRITIC,
THE ONE WHO WILL HAVE MOST PATIENCE WITH ITS
IMPERFECTIONS,--MY BELOVED MOTHER,
Maria Kisborough Freeman Saunders
OF HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA.
PUBLISHERS’ NOTE.
Miss Marshall Saunders’s first published work was issued in England
in 1889, under the title, “My Spanish Sailor.” In the present volume,
while not materially altering the plot or action, Miss Saunders has
added a number of new incidents, and, as indicated by the change
in title, has made some minor changes in the time and scene of the
original story.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. ’TIS THE UNEXPECTED THAT OCCURS 11
II. SCHOOLMA’AM AND WIFE, BUT NEVER A MOTHER 27
III. SHE WHO FIGHTS AND RUNS AWAY 45
IV. RUBICON MEADOWS ARE LEFT BEHIND 55
V. FELLOW SHIPS ON THE SEA OF LIFE 70
VI. LET US MAKE A NEW BEGINNING 86
VII. WE ARE PROGRESSING 101
VIII. BEWARE THE FURY OF A PATIENT MAID 117
IX. SINCE YOU REFUSE, I THREATEN 127
X. A GIRL’S WILL IS THE WIND’S WILL 135
XI. A REBUFF FOR ADONIS 147
XII. AN UNSATISFACTORY INTERVIEW 163
XIII. A LITTLE IDLE WORD 179
XIV. WHAT ARE YOUR WISHES? 194
XV. WHAT IS LOVE? 203
XVI. PERNICIOUS WORDS IMPREGNED WITH REASON 225
XVII. “MUCH HAVE I BORNE, SINCE DAWN OF MORN” 239
XVIII. DISTRESS AND SWEET SUBMISSION 257
XIX. IN PLEASANT SUMMER WEATHER 263
XX. THE SECRET OF HER LIFE 285
XXI. “ALONE ON A WIDE, WIDE SEA” 304
XXII. I LOVE YOU 313
HER SAILOR.
CHAPTER I.
’TIS THE UNEXPECTED THAT OCCURS.
“I must wear a willow garland,
For my love is on the sea;
He’s a gay and gallant rover,
And I ’spect he’s false to me.”
The particular weeping willow from which this garland was to be
gathered was one of the most pliant and flexible in Rubicon Meadows,
and it needed to be so; for many years it had been used as a
rocking-horse by the slender, graceful girl swinging on one of its
drooping branches.
Up and down she went, seated comfortably on one of the lower limbs.
The time was seven o’clock in the morning, the season early July,--the
period of greatest greenness, freshness, and delicacy in the New
England summer.
The girl was putting in the hour that must elapse before her parents
should see fit to descend from their chamber and partake of breakfast;
and while she swung, her gaze wandered far out over the meadows toward
the distant village twinkling and sparkling in the early morning sun.
It was one of the loveliest spots in New Hampshire, but the river and
the meadows and the village were an old story to the swinging girl.
At present her thoughts were far from her home and her immediate
surroundings; and, closing her eyes, she sang more vivaciously than
ever:
“‘He’s a gay and gallant rover,
And I ’spect he’s false to me.’”
“No, he isn’t,” said a voice, so deep and so sudden that she almost
lost her balance, and her hazel eyes flew open with unwonted rapidity.
“Ah!” she said, drawing a long breath, and clinging closer to her
shaggy green steed.
While she had been singing the man had come down the dusty road to the
old-fashioned house on the meadows,--a man of medium size, possessing a
strongly built, powerful frame, a dark face burnt almost black from the
sun, and a peculiar gravity of manner that proclaimed even more loudly
than his swarthy complexion some foreign admixture of blood.
The girl in the tree knew who he was. This was the lover of whom
she had been singing. He was the offspring of an adventurous
Spanish maiden, of Valencia, who had run away from home to marry a
love-stricken British sailor; and the girl was American, or considered
herself so, and her lover was considerably older than herself. When
he removed his hat her eyes went unerringly to his one defect, the
unmistakable bald spot in the centre of his thick crop of black hair.
He delighted in startling her. He had crept softly through the gate and
under the tree where she was singing; and gazing demurely down at him
as he stood with his head a few inches from her face, she remarked,
mischievously, “Mr. Owl, do you see the sun? Why did you not wait for
the moon?”
He reached up one hand and seized the trembling branch, then with the
other gently attempted to draw the light head from its nest of green
leaves. It would not come. What an exquisite, waggish, obstinate and
altogether adorable little head it was. Yet it would not lie on his
shoulder.
“Come down, chickadee,” he said, longingly.
“Come up, Mr. Owl,” she replied, teasingly.
She was daring him. Both his powerful arms went up to her perch; and,
lifting her down, he seated himself on the rustic bench underneath, and
smoothed back the fluffy auburn hair from her white forehead.
She sat on his knee with her red lips firmly pressed together. She
would not open them. She was obdurate to his appeals for a word, a
smile, a caress.
“Go back, then, you obstinate parrot,” he said; and, irritably
restoring her to her former position, he stretched himself against the
back of the seat, and propped his head on his hand.
She drew aside one of the willow’s pendant arms. “This--at seven
o’clock in the morning! I am shocked.”
“I have been up all night,” he replied, sleepily.
“All night,--then you were after no good.”
“No, no good,” he said, uncovering an eye to look at her. “I was
drawing out a new will, arranging papers, etc., preparatory to--”
“Suicide?” she asked, in an interested way.
“No, not suicide, matrimony. To-morrow morning at six of the clock I
shall cease to be a free man.”
The girl looked him all over; she observed curiously the effect of
the little flecks of light playing from his dusty walking shoes up to
his dark, smooth face with its heavy black moustache. Then she said,
hastily, “I shall not marry you to-morrow, Mr. Owl.”
“I did not ask you to, Miss Parrot,” he said, disagreeably.
The girl resumed her swinging, her eyes this time fixed on the green
meadows and the pretty village. For a long time she ignored the
presence of her lover as completely as she did that of the huge black
watch-dog loitering about the trunk of the tree in expectation of her
descent and preparation of his breakfast.
However, she was singing of him, although she did not address him, and
as she sang the man’s gloomy expression changed to one of complacence,
for he was again her theme.
“‘I remember the black wharves and the slips,
And the sea-tides tossing free,
And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
And the beauty and mystery of the ships,
And the magic of the sea.’”
He knew what she was thinking of. Her busy young brain was occupied
with its favourite problem, namely, himself. Ever since childhood
she had been told that some mysterious link bound her to him; that
every particle of food she ate, every scrap of clothing she wore,
came from him; that, in short, she belonged to him, and, according to
some secret and to her unknown arrangement, her marriage to him was a
predetermined, foreordained thing; that if she refused to submit, she
might fall victim to some threatening evil, some shadowy calamity. And
now he knew that he had puzzled her, for in the face of all this past
instruction he had just made her think he was about to marry some other
woman.
“What are you crying about, birdie?” he asked, suddenly.
Big tear-drops were quietly rolling down her cheeks and over her white
dress; but, without making any effort to wipe them away, she was
singing more unconcernedly than ever. This time, however, a different
tune and different words.
“‘He sighed her to death with his sighs so deep,
He drugged her asleep with his bad black eyes,
He tangled her up in his stories steep,
And made her think of him marriagewise.’”
“The dickens! What are you reciting, you little recluse?” he inquired,
with pardonable brusqueness.
“Something I made up after reading in a book about a deceitful man
who inveigled a poor woman into marriage with him,” she replied, not
meeting his eyes, and keeping her own fixed on a distant church steeple.
“What are you crying about, birdie?” he repeated again, this time in
the softest and gentlest of tones.
“Am I crying?” she asked, innocently brushing a hand over her cheek.
“It must be for that poor creature who has to be your wife.”
“Has to be,--she has promised me fifty times over;” and, forgetting his
fatigue, he sprang up, and once more laid a hand on the swinging limb.
The girl tried to start it. It would not move, and she exclaimed,
imperiously, “Please take your hand off my horse’s bridle.”
The horse was still detained, and, refusing to meet the steady glance
of his eyes, she gazed away out over the meadows, and sang, waggishly:
“‘I’ll not marry you, kind sir, she said, sir, she said, sir, she
said,
I’ll not marry you, kind sir, she said,
Because you are too lordly.’”
“Lordly,” he muttered, “I am your slave. Look here,” and he cautiously
lifted a damp curl from her forehead. “You are bathed in perspiration.
So much for being a woman, for jumping at conclusions, and landing in a
paroxysm of jealousy.”
The girl was forced to call in her wandering gaze. He would stand there
until doomsday if she did not; and, with a provoking uplift of her
light brows, she looked down into the two black penetrating eyes that
pierced her face like lances.
“It was jealousy,” he said, with satisfaction. “You thought for an
instant that I was speaking of some other woman.”
“I was not jealous. I was glad.”
“Yes, you were,” he said, doggedly, “and I am glad you were--and
listen. Circumstances have arisen that make it necessary for me to give
you the protection of my name. You trust me fully--”
“Not that far!” she exclaimed, measuring off an inch on one of her pink
fingers.
He laughed, seized the finger, and carried it to his lips. “I cannot
explain, but we must be married at once. It will only be an empty
ceremony. You are not ready yet to bow your wilful young neck under the
yoke of matrimony.”
“I shall not have a phantom marriage,” she said, indignantly. “Go away,
you bad sea-dog.”
“Then let it be a real one,” he said, eagerly. “Give up your will to
me. Stop being a wilful spoiled child of a _fiancée_, and become a
loving, sensible little wife. You can if you want to. There is nothing
but the frail barrier of your will between us. Sometimes I think I
would like to break it, but--” suddenly pausing. “What a fool I am! One
might as well rhapsodise to a marble statue as to you, icy, passionless
child that you are. Perhaps when you get away from your present
dead-and-alive surroundings--”
“Perhaps what?” she inquired, and her beautiful eyebrows again went
into the air.
“You will live with me, make a home for me, act sane instead of
insane,” he said, shortly.
“What do you mean by getting away from my dead-and-alive surroundings?”
she inquired.
“It means that after that ceremony to-morrow, which will make you feel
neither maid, wife, nor widow, I want to take you away from here. You
would like to travel?”
“To travel,--to see new places, new people? I, who have not even been
allowed to go to Boston?” and she stretched out the flowing white
sleeves of her gown, like wings. “What a question to ask me!”
“You could not travel,” he said, gloomily. “There were reasons.”
“I won’t believe there were reasons till I know them,” she said,
obstinately. “You have kept me shut up here. You,--not poor papa and
mamma,--until I am so tired of everything, so sick of the same old
roads, the same old people, the same girls and boys, even the same
sticks and stones. I began to think I was never to leave it. I was to
stay here till I died, died, died.”
“Well, now is your chance.”
“I don’t wish any chance this way. I wish to go alone.”
He released the branch and threw himself down again on the seat. “You
are going with me.”
“Am I going to England?”
“Yes.”
“Am I going on the _Merrimac_? Am I really to have a voyage?”
“Yes and yes. Do you think I would let you sail under any other man’s
orders?”
She made no reply for a time, and seemed to be fully occupied in
following the windings of the serpent-like Rubicon.
“You need not pose as my wife,--that is, you need not occupy yourself
with me. Every man in command of a ship is accustomed to have solitary
young persons travelling in his charge. I shall not impose my society
upon you--not unless you request it,” he added, slowly.
She had traced the Rubicon until it blended with the horizon, and now
she looked into his resolved face. “What do you propose to do with me
when we reach England?”
“I propose to follow your wishes to the last degree,” he said, with
weary gallantry. “If you wish to stay in England I will find some
suitable place for you; if you wish to come back with me--” a short
satisfied laugh finished the sentence.
“You think I will come back with you,” she said, uneasily.
“I know you will,” he replied, with a conceit so marked that her quick
temper was aroused in a flash. “I shall not go one step with you,” she
cried, petulantly.
“Why not?” he asked, coolly.
“Because you will make me--make me--” She choked and stammered, and
could not proceed.
“Make you what?” he said, gravely. “I shall not force you to be my
wife, if that is what you mean. I hope--I want you to consent to live
with me sometime; but I give you my word that, if you do not come
willingly, you come not at all.”
“It isn’t that,” she cried, trying to stamp her foot, but only
agitating it violently in the unresisting air. “I know I will give in,
I know I will go, I know you will make me mind you--you will make me
glad to do it. Oh, I am so angry!”
She was indeed angry, and the pink fingers were now raging among the
willow leaves, and stripping them from their twigs. “And you don’t love
me,” she went on, furiously, “you only love having your own detestable
way.”
“So you think I don’t love you,” he said, meditatively.
“Of course you don’t. You never blush when you see me, you never
stammer when you talk. You take everything for granted. Other men don’t
act like that.”
“What do I want to blush for? I have done nothing to be ashamed of,” he
said, doggedly, “and why should I stammer? I have got a straight tongue
in my head, and how do you know what other men do?”
“Don’t I read books,--don’t I see them? There’s one boy in Rubicon
Meadows turns perfectly purple when he sees me. I don’t like having
known you ever since I was a baby. I wish you would go away and let me
alone,” and she sulkily executed a movement on the branch by which her
back was turned on him.
“All right; I have dangled about you long enough. Now I will give
place to the Rubicon Meadows boys. You have played fast and loose
with me about our engagement, and I don’t believe you ever intend to
marry me. If you don’t call me back before I get to that second row of
gooseberry-bushes you will never see me again.”
“You don’t mean ‘never,’” said the girl, hotly, over her shoulder;
“you’re tired and cross, and you’ve lost your last remnant of temper.
You’re in a pretty state of mind to come proposing to a girl.”
“Good-bye, Nina,” he continued, calmly. “Tell your next admirer that
I said you were a nice little girl, but you have a d-- a dragon of a
temper.”
“Good-bye, monster,” she called after him, as he took up his hat
and strode away. “You’re a nice man, but you’re getting stout and
middle-aged, and you’re a great deal older than I am, and the bald spot
in the middle of your head is increasing, and I just hate you--I hate
you.”
Wincing under the dainty brutality of her personal allusions, the man
clapped his hat on his head and quickened his steps. His gravity of
manner was all gone. No one in the world had power to stir him as this
slip of a girl had.
She watched him going, dashing the tears from her eyes as she watched.
He had passed the rose-bush, the ugly rose-bush that never bore
anything but worm-eaten roses. She wished that a tempest would come and
tear it from its roots. He had stumbled over the big mossy stone by
the well, the miserable stone on which every one tripped. She wished
he would fall down and break a limb. He had passed the first row of
gooseberry-bushes. Why did they not stretch out their thorny arms and
tear his clothes?
Now he had reached the second row of gooseberries. “Pirate!” she
shrieked, wrathfully, after him.
He would not reply to her. He was fumbling with the fastening of
the gate,--the old-fashioned fastening that her father was always
forgetting to have mended. She hoped that he might be detained there an
hour. No, a gate would not stop him. He had placed a hand on it, and
had vaulted over. Now he had disappeared.
She would run to the gate to see the last of him, and she slipped
down the tree-trunk like a lithe little cat. “That stupid fastening!”
and she furiously rattled the gate. Then she climbed over. She would
follow him just for fun--not with the idea of appeasing him.
For some seconds she trotted silently after him down the dusty road.
Then she called gently, “Esteban!”
He did not turn. He had said the second row of gooseberry-bushes, and
now he was crossing the Rubicon. And he always kept his word.
“Esteban,” she called, wildly, “come back! You have dropped your
pocketbook.”
Again he did not look around, but she saw his hand go up to his side.
He must have heard her.
She tried again. “Esteban, I wish to tell you something--something
important.”
He would not turn. He did not turn until he heard a heavy splash in the
river.
“That tiresome girl,”--and, choking an exclamation, he strode back
to the bridge. She had jumped into the river to annoy him. No, she
had not gone herself, she had sent the big black dog who was swimming
composedly about. The fool--he would do anything she told him. She was
in hiding herself,--he could see her brown head under one of the seats
of the bridge.
The tired man flung himself down on the opposite seat, and fixed his
eyes on the head. How brown, nay, how yellow it looked. He got up and
peered down at it. It was not his little sweetheart curled up there. He
was gazing at a bunch of yellow flowers.
He turned hastily to the river. There was her cap floating on the
water. He became sick and faint. There had been only one splash, yet
where was she? Every tender memory of his life, every ambition for the
future, clustered around that brown head. He would go and get her. He
would search in the grass of the river bank, he would--his head fell on
his arm, and a strange, delicious forgetfulness crept over him. He was
going to faint for the first time in his life. He struggled against it,
first violently, then feebly, then his head fell on his breast and he
knew no more.