"DEEPER THAN E'EN PLUMMET SOUNDED."
Derval was back to his old work on the sea, but now it had lost all
zest, and even the love for and hope of adventure had gone out of
him. His whole soul and existence seemed to centre in the image of
Clara, and his mind was never weary of dwelling upon it, and all the
minutiæ of his late sojourn at Finglecombe, and all that had come of
it.
She loved him; he had the dearest and sweetest assurance of that, and
they were engaged--solemnly engaged; but how, and when was the end to
be? Their future was painfully vague! He could scarcely hope for
her father's consent, and without it he feared that he would never
win Clara for his wife, as he knew, but too well, that though the
name and blood were the same, their relative positions in life--in
that "society" in which she moved--were different, far apart, and
that--as yet--he had no place therein.
His imagination was fertile in the art of self-torment; and still
more did it become so, as time and distance increased between him and
their parting hour and parting place; and, after skirting the Bay of
Biscay, that turbulent corner of the seas where, at times, all their
storms seem gathered together, the _Amethyst_ shaped her course
towards Madeira.
On the lone sea by day and in the silent watches of the starry night
of what could he think but _her_, and the new and hitherto unknown
emotion she had kindled in his heart!
He hailed with joy and anxiety the Pico Ruivo as it rose from the
sea, and the _Amethyst_ ran into the roads of Funchal, where she
lay-to while Joe Grummet went ashore for any ship letters that might
have come ahead of them by the steam-packet.
Letters there were for the Captain, Harry Bowline, and others on
board, but not one for him, and his spirit began to fall. He strove
hard to console himself with the doctrine of chances and mischance,
and hoped letters might await him at Ascension or the Cape of Good
Hope.
Rough old Joe Grummet, a shrewd observer, especially of those for
whom he had a regard, saw how his countenance changed when the
letters were distributed and none appeared for him.
"I was sorry to see you so disappointed, sir," said Joe, as they
walked the deck together that night, after the Pico Ruivo had sunk
into the sea, "but I think it is often better not to get letters when
in blue water, for we can't amend evil things then, as we might when
ashore; and I had a shipmate, who lost his life through getting
one--and out of the smallest post-office in the whole world."
"Where is that, Joe?"
"It is a barrel that swings from the outermost rock of the sheer
mountains that overhang the Straits of Magellan, right opposite to La
Tierra del Fuego. Every ship passing opens it to place in letters or
take them out, and undertakes their transit, if possible. It hangs
there at an iron chain, washed, beaten, and battered by wind and
storm; but no post-office, even in London, is more secure from
robbers. Well, this poor fellow laid well out on the foretopsail
yard, while the ship was thrown in the wind, to see what letters were
in the barrel. There was but one, and it was for himself. It was
from his wife, but was sealed with black. Sitting outside the yard
he read it; then a cry escaped him, and falling into the sea between
the ship and the rocks he was seen no more. The letter fluttered aft
to where I stood near the taffrail. It told poor Bill of his
mother's death, months and months before, and the shock had been too
much for him. But you have come back to the _Amethyst_ sorely
changed, surely Mr. Hampton?"
"How, Joe?"
"Why--all the fun and cheeriness are quite gone out of you."
"They should not, Joe, as there is no reason therefor. But were you
ever in love, Joe?"
"Bless my heart, many and many times, as long as my pay lasted, and I
had to come aboard again."
"Ah! Joe," said Derval, laughing, "I fear you don't know what love
is."
"Don't I, though!" exclaimed old Grummet, as he bit a quid off the
twist of pigtail that was always in his right-hand pocket. "I often
boast myself as one of the not-to-be-done squadron of the Royal Naval
Reserve, Mr. Hampton; yet I am always done brown when I am on shore,
which is the reason I generally stick close to the ship, as one can't
fall in love when in blue water and the anchor's catted."
"Joe, the love I mean is the merging of your whole existence in that
of another; placing every hope and wish on the will of another;
living a glad, wild, feverish dream, with the strange sense that
without that other all life is worthless."
"Well, I'm blessed! On that other, as you call her, I have too often
spent every 'tarnal penny, and come to grief in the end, and found
myself toeing a line before the beak. No, no! love ain't for me now;
and for you, perhaps, it as well you didn't get any letters, for
perhaps your girl may have slipped from her moorings and gone foreign
with some other fellow."
Derval laughed at Joe's phraseology, but said, "This is perhaps my
last trip, Joe, and if I leave the ship I hope to see you a mate of
her."
"Mate--no, no, Mr. Hampton; I ain't used to the luxuriance of a
cabin, where knives and forks and tea-cups is used; and where the
grog-tot, the bread-barge, and the mess-kid ain't known."
The wind was fair, the weather delightful, and the _Amethyst_ in due
time crossed the equator.
"Let me be patient, let me be patient!" sighed Derval, when the
volcanic peaks of Ascension, the rendezvous of our African squadron,
came in sight; and the _Amethyst_, having sprung one of her topmasts,
ran in to refit. Letters for her came off in a Government boat.
There were some for nearly every man on board save Derval, whose
anxiety was fast becoming painful.
As at Madeira, he wrote and left a passionate and appealing letter to
Clara, under cover to his brother, and sailed in hope for the Cape.
Hope; he could not abandon that! Was Clara ill? had Rookleigh
mismanaged their correspondence? or had Lord Oakhampton discovered
and intercepted all their letters? Clara could address letters to
the ship--letters which would follow him all over the world; but he
remembered that his movements were somewhat unknown to her, and
gathered a little mental relief from the idea. But from what did the
silence of Rookleigh arise? He might at least write and state that
he had no letters to enclose!
Why did she never write to him? he was incessantly asking himself.
Where were the fondly promised letters that Rookleigh was to transmit
to him, in exchange for those transmitted to him for her--passionate
letters, expressing all the complete and wild abandonment of his
heart and soul to an earthly love, to which he had given up all that
God had given him.
Times there were when already he began to have strange and terrible
doubts of her. Yet, why had she been so sweet, so kind, so loving in
her manner to him, if she was but luring him into misery and
disappointment? She could not be so cruel--his very life was in
those little white hands of hers--hands that he had so often covered
with kisses. Then he thrust these aching thoughts aside, and hoped
and trusted that time would unravel and explain all; but as yet a
black cloud, a pall, seemed to have come between him, his past
existence, and Clara!
In the life he knew she must lead in the gay world, where she
participated in all that fashion, wealth, and rank could surround her
with, was she forgetting him? would be his tormenting thought anon;
and had what he deemed a mutual love been to her but a sea-side
romance, a summer flirtation? Oh! what was _he_, he would mutter,
that she, a peer's daughter, in her beauty and her bloom, should
remember him?
If true to him, at all risks and hazards, even of her father's anger,
she should have written to him; and passing over Rookleigh, at the
same risks and hazards, he should have written direct to her, and
ended his cruel anxiety if possible; but he knew not her address, or
whether she had returned from Paris to England.
"I thought that I had too many reasons for being happy," said he, "a
sure sign of grief to come--of sorrow close at hand."
At last, after a voyage (including her delay at Ascension) of more
than two months, the _Amethyst_ hauled up for Table Bay, came to
anchor, and the boats came off from Cape Town.
"At last, at last--surely now!" exclaimed Derval as a letter was
given him, and he opened it with trembling hands. It was from
Rookleigh, in answer to one he had written from Madeira, saying that
"Miss Hampton had never sent a single letter for transmission," and
nothing more.
What had happened? What did this cruel mystery mean?
He wrote her one cold and brief letter, almost a farewell, under
cover to Rookleigh, and then an illness and fever came upon him while
the ship lay at Cape Town, and through the long days and nights
there, he lay in his little cabin, almost mad with his mental
misery--a misery athwart which there came no gleam of light or hope;
and when next he came on deck, after many weeks of illness, he found
that the _Amethyst_, instead of returning to England, had been
freighted for Batavia under Captain Talbot, and was working out of
Table Bay, and heading eastward for the Indian Ocean!
Thus it would be long before he should see or hear of Clara again,
and learn the worst that fate had in store for him.
How little could he imagine, that all _he_ was suffering--the keenest
pangs of doubt, anxiety, sorrow, and disappointment--were suffered by
Clara. Ignorant of his precise address and whereabouts, the poor
girl wrote to him in secrecy again and again--wrote to him lovingly,
then despondently, and anon with surprise and upbraiding, under cover
to Rookleigh, posting her epistles with her own hand, and trusting
none other--posting them with a prayer on her lips; and to the
recipient--the supposed medium of their love affair--the mutual
correspondence proved a source of supreme merriment, and even to his
mother too; and in the end the fire received it all.
At last Clara knew not what to think; she could but wait and hope,
but ceased to use her pen. The conviction that she had
stooped--actually condescended--in the acceptance of his love, added
to the poignancy of what felt, and filled her, at times, with
indignation at conduct so singular and unwarrantable.
Fear of Derval's vengeance, if his duplicity ever came to light, the
malevolent Rookleigh had none; but he laughed curiously when he
thought of the folly of which his sailor brother had been guilty in
signing the unread document! And as for the loss of his lady-love,
"Derval," he thought with a chuckle, "will no doubt take to poetry,
and writing sonnets on female inconstancy."
A somewhat unexpected turn was given to the then state of the affair,
by Lord Oakhampton once more taking up his abode temporarily at
Bayview, in Finglecombe, the saline air of which he rightly or
wrongly--for our story it matters little which--conceived to be
beneficial to his health. This to Clara was most distasteful, as the
entire locality was--for her--full of associations of the past, that
the sooner she forgot the better for her own happiness.
It was about this time that Derval's last letter from Clara, written
before his illness at the Cape, came to the hands of Rookleigh, and
conceiving, from the animus of that in which it was enclosed, it
might seem to widen the breach between the lovers, he, by the
assistance of little hot water to moisten the envelope, made himself
master of the contents, and adding a bitter postscript in imitation
of Derval's writing, he reclosed it, and, aware that Lord Oakhampton
was absent in London, resolved to deliver it in person, and thus
achieve, perhaps, an introduction to Clara.
Inspired by a new and very remarkable scheme, he repaired to Bayview
Villa, and sending up his card, was ushered into the drawing-room.
The apartment was a double one, divided by an archway, in which hung
curtains of blue silk, edged with silver lace, and festooned partly
with white silk cord and tassels. There was a sound, the rustling of
a dress in the inner room; but at first Rookleigh saw only a white
hand and arm--an arm so taper round and marvellously beautiful that
he had never before seen anything like it. A diamond bracelet
clasped the wrist. The hand slightly parted the curtains--for Clara
was there, with his card in her hand, striving to still the painful
beating of her heart.
Then her whole figure appeared: a girl tall, slender, perfect in
grace and symmetry, her dark violet eyes full of earnest inquiry, the
sweet lips and mignonne face, all expressive of it too. Lovely,
dainty, and refined, Clara Hampton stood before him.
Would she offer him that lovely hand, permit him to touch it? was his
first thought; but in a second more it was placed confidingly within
his own; while Clara, who blushed deeply at first, now grew pale as
the new-fallen snow.
Never before had he stood in the presence of a girl so quietly
patrician in bearing and appearance.
"Mr. Rookleigh Hampton?" said she, glancing at the card, and with
enforced calmness of tone and manner.
"Derval's brother," replied the traitor, and no other introduction
was necessary, though at the mention of Derval's name, he could see
how anxiety mingled with _hauteur_ in her sensitive lips and eyes.
"You are, of course, aware of the arrangement my brother made
about--about your letters?" said Rookleigh.
"You sent him all mine?" asked Clara in a breathless voice.
"All--and I have one here for you--whether a reply, or not, I cannot
say."
"Only one!"
"The first and only one," replied Rookleigh, who, with all his
effrontery and duplicity, felt that he never before stood in such a
presence, and could scarcely remember how he answered her; for his
mind was filling fast with admiration, his heart beat fast, and his
brain seemed to burn.
"A letter from Derval at last! His first letter too--yet it would
explain!" were her first ideas. "Be seated, Sir, and for a moment or
two, pray do excuse me."
She retired back beyond the silk hangings, and rapidly made herself,
more than once, mistress of the contents of that letter, one of
coldness, brevity, and farewell--farewell without further
explanation--a letter the strange tenor of which startled and
bewildered her.
Clara's agitation and confusion were excessive; but sorrow succeeded
to surprise in her heart, and indignation to sorrow.
"All is over and ended between your brother and myself, Mr.
Rookleigh," said she, with a painful swelling in her slender white
throat.
"His letter displeases you?" asked Rookleigh, scarcely knowing what
to say, and feeling his heart for a moment fail him.
"Read it," said she, haughtily.
He scarcely required to do so, yet he affected to peruse it, and then
knit his narrow brows.
"How cold this letter is! but in it there lurks some mystery," said
he.
"What mystery, Sir?"
"I know not--I only know that above all things the human heart is
deceitful!"
After a pause, during which both remained silent, and Clara had
nervously, half unconsciously, crushed and crumpled up the odious and
disappointing note--for it was scarcely even a letter--in her small
and tremulous hand, Rookleigh proceeded to make apologies for the
strange conduct of his unworthy brother, and to express his own pain,
shame, sorrow, and so forth, in terms well chosen and uttered.
"He is peculiar," he added, "always was so; thus his oddity of
disposition caused him to be sent to sea. I can assure you, my dear
Miss Hampton, that he never got on well with the mother or me, or
with anyone else, in fact. Then, sailors will be sailors, Miss
Hampton, and are said to have loves in every port."
He continued to linger and utter his regrets, till the silence of
Clara indicated that she was weary of his presence and desired to be
left alone--alone to her own reflections and misery--and the young
squire of Finglecombe bowed himself out, well pleased with his
morning's work, and resolved that this should not be his last visit
to Bayview Villa.
He was well aware that Clara Hampton, though just turned eighteen,
had been the queen of the last season in London, and that though
other queens were there as proud and pure and marvellously fair, yet
there was none who apparently had remained so unspoiled by the homage
offered. Flattery left her untouched; and beautiful and nobly born
though she was, no weekly journal yet dared to make her portrait an
inducement to purchasers, and no photo of her appeared in any London
shop-window to court the comments, admiration, or ribaldry of every
passing "cad" or ruffian.
It has been said--with what truth we know not--that no idle man can
resist the temptation of seeking to fascinate a handsome girl, while
at the same time eclipsing another man. Thus, could Rookleigh have
any compunction about eclipsing that half-brother of whose proper
position in the family he was so jealous, and whom he had been so
studiously reared by his mother to view with a rancorous and most
unholy hate?
Certainly not, and to this amiable end, Rookleigh resolved to leave
no means untried to introduce himself to Lord Oakhampton.
Chance meetings--chance apparently--in the railway train, and
elaborate civilities proffered by Rookleigh, the offers of cigars,
periodicals, and so forth, led to an exchange of words; and though
the peer was unpleasantly struck by the young man's name, and then
knew precisely who he was, for certain cogent legal reasons he deemed
it wise and well to be civil to him, and an invitation to Bayview
followed--an invitation which Rookleigh was not slow to accept; and
soon, by making himself useful in fifty different ways, he became
then a regular sea-side visitor; though, as the brother of Derval,
his welcome was of a somewhat mingled kind by both father and
daughter.
Mrs. Hampton was intensely gratified by this unexpected intimacy, of
which, however, by failing health, she was, perhaps luckily, unable
to avail herself.
To Rookleigh the idea did occur at times, as to how he was to account
to Derval for the non-transmission of Clara's letters for him to the
ship, the owners, or their agents abroad?
Well--that was a matter for future consideration; meantime he had the
signed bond, and that laid Derval at his mercy!
The lovers were meanwhile beginning to think--nay, to be
assured--that their worst fears were becoming realised; Clara deeming
that Derval, as his brother had alleged, was "a very sailor"; and he,
that Clara was only true to the instincts of her cold-blooded class,
and had already forgotten him, or cast him off, for some new, richer,
and titled object; and Rookleigh rubbed his long lean hands, and
puckered up his green eyes with quaint delight, as the plot seemed to
thicken.
Clara had never striven even to like him, though the brother of that
Derval she had loved so well--nay, loved in secret still. She saw
the base metal in his composition, and always detected a something in
the tone of his voice, and in the expression of his face, that roused
an undefinable emotion of distrust, as belying in some way the ease
and nonchalance of manner he affected.
"We are a kind of cousins, you know, Miss Hampton," said he one day,
as he hung over her at the piano.
"I do not know that we are," she replied coldly.
"Permit me to explain to you the degree," and he proceeded to do so
with extreme accuracy, as he had just been studying the matter with
Mr. De Murrer, affecting to act in the interest of his absent
brother, but in reality for his own selfish purposes. But she only
laughed aloud, and said:
"It is rather remote."
"It would not be thought so, in Scotland."
She remembered her father's reply on a similar occasion, and merely
shrugged her shoulders. Had Derval claimed the kindred blood, her
view of it might have been different.
The poor girl's heart was ever beating with "a vague unrest" she
could well understand, but had a difficulty in concealing and acting
a part to those around her, to the watchful eyes of her father
especially, and he began to wonder whether he had acted wisely in
opening his house to Rookleigh Hampton.
The latter now learned that the _Amethyst_ had sailed for Batavia,
which would ensure, even if she returned direct to England, an
absence of at least eight months on the part of Derval--eight months,
of which Rookleigh made, as we shall show, a terrible use.
"Sailed for Batavia--sailed for Batavia!" he repeated. Fate was
playing into his hands indeed, for long ere Derval could return, the
game would be his own!
So "deeper than ever plummet sounded," was the deep villany of
Rookleigh Hampton.