THE FIREFLY.
The red sun of a clear winter day was shining on the two chalky
eminences at the embouchure of the Arques, or Bethune, and on the low
tongue of land between them, whereon is situated the seaport of
Dieppe in Normandy, from the church of which the coast of England can
be distinctly seen, when the _Firefly_, which really was a beautiful
yacht, crept slowly along on a wind under the lee of the shore, from
which she was rather more than a mile distant.
She was a taut-rigged craft of about two hundred tons, and whether
one regarded the crew, the fitting of the rigging, or the cut of the
sails, it was evident that in skilful hands she could do anything.
For a Cowes yacht she was curiously rigged, being a
hermaphrodite--brig forward and schooner aft. Her foremast, like her
bowsprit, was strong and heavy, her mainmast long and tapering. Her
upper spars were slender and light, with topmast, topgallant mast,
and royal mast, all like slender wands, yet capable of carrying a
great amount of canvas. Her flush deck was white as the driven snow,
and she had eight six pounders, all brass, and polished like
gold--bright as the copper with which she was sheathed to the bends.
Such was the craft on board of which Alison Cheyne found herself a
species of prisoner, and compelled to take a part in an erratic and
apparently a purposeless cruise. To sail for Madeira had been the
first intention of Lord Cadbury, when Slagg, by his direction,
inserted in the newspapers a paragraph to the effect that he had gone
to the Mediterranean--a paragraph expressly designed to mislead Bevil
Goring; but heavy head-winds had prevailed, and after hanging about
in 'the Chops of the Channel' for a week and more, the _Firefly_ was
standing northward along the coast of France.
Tom Llanyard, Cadbury's captain, a bluff-looking, curly-haired man,
about forty years of age, had been for a brief space a warrant
officer in the Royal Navy. He was a good-hearted fellow--not very
polished, but a thorough seaman. He had a secret contempt for the
character of his employer, who did not care much for yachting, but
thought it sounded well to have such an appendage as the _Firefly_ at
Cowes. Tom found the pay good; the lodging ditto; and the duty was
easy. Tom was a sailor or nothing; and thus being compelled to work,
'the yacht service,' as he used to say, 'suited him to a hair.'
He certainly thought the season a strange one for a cruise; and as
for Mr. Gaskins, Cadbury's groom and chief valet, he utterly loathed
the whole expedition, and, connecting it shrewdly in some way with
Miss Cheyne, he hated her with a most unholy hatred.
To Tom Llanyard she was a new experience; she was so totally unlike
any other of her sex he had seen on board the _Firefly_; and he
had--we are sorry to say--seen many that were rather remarkable.
The weather had been rough, and the poor girl, who had suffered much
from sea sickness, of a necessity remained below; while her luckless
attendant, Daisy Prune, was utterly prostrated by the same ailment,
and the order of things was now reversed, for Alison had to attend
upon her. The presence of Daisy, however, was a source of protection
to the former, as it saved her from much of the attention of Cadbury,
who had hoped that great events might be developed or achieved by the
sea voyage.
Alison's freshness was delightful to the coarse, jaded man of the
world, who, tired at last of extravagant and congenial dissipation
(that would have horrified his worthy father the Alderman of
Threadneedle Street), thought now of trying domestic felicity, _pour
se désennuyer_; and truly Alison was so unlike most of the other
women he had known, or whose acquaintance he had chosen to cultivate,
that the present opportunity gave him great expectations of the
future.
He actually reckoned upon a safe conquest, now that he had her all to
himself; and so far as Sir Ranald was concerned, while piling
kindnesses upon him, and pressing upon him also the best wines that
the cellar of Cadbury Court offered, he would not have been sorry had
a gale of wind blown the pompous old baronet overboard, and left
Alison alone in the world--alone, and at his mercy!
Leaving Sir Ranald busy with a telescope on deck scanning the
churches of St. Jacques and St. Remy, with Le Follet and the fisher
town of Dieppe, Cadbury descended to the luxurious and beautiful
little cabin of the yacht, the gilded and mahogany fittings of which
were exquisite, and there found Alison--alone, as he expected.
How sad and fair, young and pure, she looked in all the brightness of
her beauty, as her head rested against the crimson back of the
cushioned locker or sofa on which she was seated in an attitude
expressive of utter weariness of heart.
'Alison,' said he, attempting to take her hand.
Her eyes flashed now, and her proud little lip curled, as she said,
'Lord Cadbury, when did I give you permission to call me--as papa
does--by my Christian name?'
'Why do you _Lord_ me?' he asked; 'I would you called me--Timothy,'
he added, rather faintly; and at this absurd name a little smile
flickered on Alison's pale face, and a gesture of impatience escaped
her, as she knew that she was about to be subjected to some more of
his odious and weary love-making.
'My passion for you made me so modest and diffident,' said he (though
in reality it was his years), 'that I addressed myself first to your
father, though you were well aware of the sweet hopes I fostered in
my heart, Alison.'
'It is impossible for me to listen to more of this sort of thing,
Lord Cadbury.'
'I can scarcely believe that your decision is final--that you are in
earnest with me.'
'Earnest! Do you imagine, sir, that I would jest in this matter,
and--and with you?' she exclaimed, becoming--with all her native
gentleness--tremulous with suppressed passion.
'When once I ventured to hint of a deeper interest in you than mere
friendship, you did not discourage me,' urged Cadbury, who by use and
wont could make love in his own way pretty fluently now.
'Perhaps I misunderstood you,--or deemed it--deemed it----'
'What, Alison?'
'A fatherly interest.'
Cadbury winced a little at this remark.
'In anything beyond that,' continued Alison, 'you perhaps do me
honour, but in any instance I can never love where I do not respect
and esteem.'
'And have I forfeited your esteem?'
'Yes.'
'In what way?'
'By trepanning me on board this yacht--away from home and my friends!'
'Friends at Aldershot,' thought Cadbury, as he laughed to himself and
said,
'But why so severe a term as trepanning?'
'You led me to believe when we quitted Chilcote in such hot haste
that instant flight alone in this vessel would save papa from arrest
through certain bills which he says he saw you destroy. So you and
he--_he_,' she added, with a heavy sob--'have both deceived me, and
now I believe neither of you. It was a vile trick on the part of you
both to separate me from Captain Goring.'
Cadbury had reckoned at least upon her gratitude for taking up the
bills of Slagg, as he had to some extent won that of her father; but
even this plan failed to serve him, and so far as Alison was
concerned he might as well have thrown his money into the sea. The
name of his rival on her lips infuriated him, and he tugged at his
long, white horse-shoe moustache viciously, as he thought that he had
played what he deemed his trump card, and yet lost after all!
He gave her a glance of a rather mingled nature and retreated to the
deck, where his discomposure of face and manner was so apparent to
Sir Ranald that, after a few words of explanation, the latter sought
the cabin to remonstrate with the unfortunate and weary Alison.
As was before hinted, Sir Ranald's emotions were of a curiously
mingled nature. He felt that he certainly owed a debt of gratitude
to Lord Cadbury for relieving him of terrible monetary pressure, and
he was anxious, for various reasons, that Alison should accept him.
He had no romance in his nature--never had any, and did not believe
that disparity of years and tastes--still less a secret or previous
fancy--were to be valued or consulted at all!
He felt that he acted wisely to his daughter in leaguing with the
wealthy peer against her; yet, over and above all, he loved her
dearly and tenderly; and amid all this was an undying hostility to
Bevil Goring, whom he deemed the real cause of all this opposition to
their wishes, and consequently the present trouble, turmoil, and
unnecessary voyaging in rough and wintry weather.
Though it was a relief, without doubt, to be away now beyond the
reach or ken of the hook-nosed or vulture-eyed money-lenders, who,
like Slagg, had long possessed, among their ofttimes
hopelessly-regarded assets, his bills and acceptances.
He saw she looked pale, very pale indeed; but that, of course, he
attributed to the _mal de mer_; but as for love, no one, he believed,
ever sickened or died of that. A long separation was the surest and
best cure.
'Foolish girl!' he began at once; 'still mooning, and actually
talking, as Cadbury told me, of that utterly ineligible and most
detrimental fellow at Aldershot; I am certain you could forget him if
you tried, Alison. In these days of ours, ninety-nine girls out of a
hundred would leap with exultation at such offers as those of Lord
Cadbury.'
'Then, I suppose, I must be the hundredth girl, papa,' said Alison,
steadily and gravely; for a consciousness that her father, whom she
had deemed the mirror of honour, had leagued with this _parvenu_ to
deceive her, had caused a change in her manner towards him.
'And I repeat that in these days of ours,' he continued, 'it is, or
ought to be, the object of both men and women to marry well.'
'That is, to marry for money,' said Alison.
'Yes; if a girl has beauty and birth, but not money, she should look
for some one who has that more than necessary element towards our
very existence. If she has money with both these attributes, she
should look for something more.'
'More, papa?'
'Yes, she should look for that which a poor girl seldom or never has
offered her.'
'And what is that?'
'A title.'
'In fact, in any way or every way to sell herself to the highest
bidder. Oh, what a selfish code!' exclaimed the girl, with great
bitterness of heart. 'Did the Cheynes of Essilmont always do this?'
'They of old were not as we are now.'
'What?'
'Beggars!' replied her father, with equal bitterness of heart, for
his was naturally a proud one; 'but, as Lever says, "the world makes
us many things we never meant to be."'
'Do you forget, papa, that marriage is a sacrament, and that without
a full and perfect consent it is in reality no marriage at all, and
should not be binding, even though the blessing were given by the
Archbishop of Canterbury.'
'What do you mean, Alison?' asked her father, surprised alike by her
tone and this theory.
'Simply what I say.'
'How dare you, a mere girl, talk thus?'
'Take care, papa. If driven desperate, there is no knowing what I
may--not say--but do!'
Sir Ranald became silent. He had never seen her in this mood before;
and he, of course, ascribed it to 'the fatal influence that fellow
Goring had obtained over her mind.'
So this conversation ended; but the interview with her father and
that with Cadbury are but examples of many with which she was
tormented daily _ad nauseam_.
Alison ere long had fresh food for sorrow given to her, when a pilot
boat brought off to the _Firefly_ some London papers, and in these
she was informed--as if by chance--there were rumours of the fast
approaching war in Africa, and she saw the glances, most meaning
glances, of satisfaction that were exchanged by her father and Lord
Cadbury, on its being announced that among the troops detailed for
service in the field under Sir Garnet Wolseley was the regiment of
Bevil Goring; and so a double and more terrible separation--perhaps a
final and fatal one--was before them, and the heart of the poor girl
seemed to fill with tears as she read and re-read the startling
paragraph.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
LONDON: PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD, BLENHEIM HOUSE.