Captain Copp.
Captain Copp was a true sailor, gifted with more good nature than
common sense. On the rare occasion of receiving a young lady visitor
under his roof, his hospitality and his heart alike ran riot. Anna
Chester, the pretty, friendless girl whom he had heard of but never
seen, was coming to him and his wife to be nursed into strength and
health, and the captain anticipated the arrival as something to be
made a fête of.
A feast too, by appearances. It was a bright summer morning, with a
fresh breeze blowing from the sea; and the captain was abroad betimes
with some flowing purple ribbons fastened round his glazed hat.
Greatly to the grievance of Mrs. Copp: who had ventured to say that
Anna was not a captured prize-ship, or a battle won, or even a
wedding, that she should be rejoiced over to the extent of streamers.
All of which Captain Copp was deaf to. He started by the ten o'clock
omnibus for Jutpoint, having undertaken first of all to send home
provisions for dinner. A pair of soles and two pounds of veal cutlet
had been meekly suggested by Mrs. Copp.
The morning wore on. Sarah, the middle-aged, hard-featured,
sensible-looking, thoroughly capable woman-servant, who was bold
enough to dispute with her master, and not in the least to care at
being likened to pirates and other disrespectful things, stood in the
kitchen making a gooseberry pudding, when the butcher-boy came in
without the ceremony of announcing himself; unless a knocking and
pushing of his tray against the back-door posts, through awkwardness,
could be called such.
"Some dishes, please," said he.
"Dishes!" retorted Sarah, who had one of the strongest tongues in
Coastdown. "Dishes for what?"
"For this here meat. The captain have just been in and bought it, and
master have sent it up."
He displayed some twelve or fifteen pounds of meat--beef, veal,
lamb. Sarah's green eyes--good, honest, pleasant eyes in the
main--glistened.
"Then your master's a fool. Didn't I tell him not to pay attention to
the captain when he took these freaks in his head?" she demanded.
"When he goes and buys up the whole shop--as he did one day last
winter because he was expecting a old mate of his down--your master's
not to notice him no more nor if he was a child. An uncommon soft
_you_ must be, to bring up all them joints! Did you think you was
supplying the Red Court? Just you march back with 'em."
There was an interruption. While the boy stood staring at the meat,
hardly knowing what to do, and rubbing his fingers amidst his shining
black hair, Mrs. Copp entered the kitchen, and became acquainted with
the state of affairs. She wore a pale muslin gown, as faded as her
gentle self, with pale green ribbons.
"Dear me," she meekly cried, "all that meat! We could not get through
the half of it while it was good? Do you think, James, your master
would have any objection to take it back?"
"Objection! He'll take it back, ma'am, whether he has any objection or
not," cried the positive Sarah. "Now then! who's this?"
Somebody seemed to be clattering up in clogs. A woman with the fish:
three pairs of large soles and a score or two of herrings, which the
captain had bought and paid for. Mrs. Copp, fearing what else might be
coming, looked inclined to cry. The exasperated Sarah, more practical,
took her hands out of the paste, wiped the flour off them on her check
apron, and went darting across the heath without bonnet to the
butcher's shop, the boy and his tray of rejected meat slowly following
her. There she commenced a wordy war with the butcher, accusing him of
being an idiot, with other disparaging epithets, and went marching
home in triumph carrying two pounds of veal cutlet.
"And that's too much for us," she cried to her mistress, "with all
that stock of fish and the pudding. What on earth is to be done with
the fish, I don't know. If I fry a pair for dinner, and pickle the
herrings, there'll be two pair left. _They_ won't pickle. One had need
to have poor folk coming here as they do at the Red Court. Master's
gone off with purple streamers flying from his hat; I think he'd more
need to put on bells."
Scarcely had she got her hands into the flour again, when another
person arrived. A girl with a goose. It was in its feathers, just
killed.
"If you please, ma'am," said she to Sarah, with a curtsey, "mother
says she'll stick the other as soon as ever she can catch him; but
he's runned away over the common. Mother sent me up with this for
'fraid you should be waiting to pluck him. The captain said they was
to come up sharp."
Sarah could almost have found in her heart to "stick" her master. She
was a faithful servant, and the waste of money vexed her. Mrs. Copp,
quite unable to battle with the petty ills of life, left the
strong-minded woman to fight against these, and ran away to her
parlour.
The respected cause of all this, meanwhile, had reached Jutpoint, he
and his streamers. There he had to wait a considerable time, but the
train came in at last, and brought the travellers.
They occupied a first-class compartment in the middle of the train.
There had been a little matter about the tickets at starting. Isaac
Thornycroft procured them, and when they were seated, Anna took out
her purse to repay him, and found she had not enough money in it. A
little more that she possessed was in her box. Accustomed to travel
second-class, even third, the cost of the ticket was more than she had
thought for. Eighteenpence short!
"If you will please to take this, I will repay you the rest as soon as
I can get to my box," she said, with painful embarrassment--an
embarrassment that Isaac could not fail to notice and to wonder at.
Reared as she had been, money wore to her an undue value; to want it
in a time of need seemed little short of a crime. She turned the
silver about in her hands, blushing painfully. Miss Thornycroft
discerned somewhat of the case.
"Never mind, Anna. I dare say you thought to travel second-class. You
can repay my brother later."
Isaac's quick brain took in the whole. This poor friendless girl, kept
at the Miss Jupps' almost out of charity, had less money in a year for
necessities than he would sometimes spend in an hour in frivolity.
Anna held out the silver still, with the rose-coloured flush deepening
on her delicate cheeks.
"What is it, Miss Chester?" he suddenly said. "Why do you offer me
your money?"
"You took my ticket, did you not?"
"Certainly," he answered, showing the three little pieces of card in
his waistcoat. "But I held the money for yours beforehand. Put up your
purse."
"Did you," she answered, in great relief, but embarrassed still. "Did
Mrs. Copp give it you?--or--Miss Jupp?--or--or the captain?" Isaac
laughed.
"You had better not inquire into secrets, Miss Chester. All I can tell
you is, I had the money for your ticket in my pocket. Where is that
important article--the wicker bottle? Captain Copp will expect it
returned to him--empty."
"It is empty now; Miss Jupp poured out the rum-and-water," she
answered, laughing. "I have it all safe."
She put up her purse as she spoke, inquiring no further as to the
donor in her spirit of implicit obedience, but concluded it must have
been Miss Jupp. And she never knew the truth until--until it was too
late to repay Isaac.
At the terminus, side by side with the captain and his streamers,
stood Justice Thornycroft. Anna remembered him well; the tall, fine,
genial-natured man whom she had seen three years before in the day's
visit to Mrs. Chester. All thought of her had long ago passed from his
memory, but he recognised the face--the pale, patient, gentle face,
which, even then, had struck Mr. Thornycroft as being the sweetest he
had ever looked upon. It so struck him now.
"Where have I seen you?" he asked. And Anna told him.
The carriage, very much to the displeasure of Mary Anne, had not come
over for her. Mr. Thornycroft explained that one of the horses he
generally drove in it was found to be lame that morning. They got into
the omnibus, the captain preferring to place himself with his ribbons
and his wooden leg flat on the roof amidst the luggage. On the
outskirts of Jutpoint, in obedience to his signal, the driver came to
a standstill before the door of the "White Cliff" public-house, and
the captain's head appeared at the back window, in a hanging position,
inquiring whether brandy or rum would be preferred; adding, with a
somewhat fierce look at Mr. Thornycroft and Isaac, that _he_ should
stand glasses round this time. Very much to the captain's
discomfiture, the young ladies and the gentlemen declined both; so the
only order the crestfallen captain could give the White Cliff was for
two glasses of rum, cold without; that were disposed of by himself and
the driver.
"Mind, Anna! I feel three-parts of a stranger in this place, and have
really not a friend of my own age and condition in it, so you must
supply the place of one to me during these holidays," said Miss
Thornycroft, as the omnibus reached its destination--the Mermaid.
"Part of every day I shall expect you to spend at the Red Court."
"I beg to second that," whispered Isaac, taking Anna's hand to help
her out. And she blushed again that day for about the fiftieth time
without knowing why or wherefore.
Not upon these summer holidays can we linger, because so much time
must be spent on those of the next winter. _On those of the next
winter!_ If the inmates of the Red Court Farm could but have foreseen
what those holidays were to bring forth for them! or Mary Anne
Thornycroft dreamt of the consequences of indulging her own self-will!
Just a few words more of the present, and then we go on.
Anna Chester's sojourn at Coastdown was passing swiftly, and she
seemed as in a very Elysium. The days of toil, of servitude, of
incessant care for others were over, temporarily at any rate, and she
enjoyed comfort and rest. The hospitable, good-hearted sailor-captain,
with his tales of the sea-serpent, the mermaid he had seen, and other
marvels; the meek, gentle, ever-thoughtful Mrs. Copp, who caused Anna
to address her as "aunt," and behaved more kindly to her than any aunt
did yet; the most charming visits day by day to the Red Court Farm,
and the constant society of Isaac Thornycroft. Ah, there it lay--the
strange fascination that all things were beginning to possess around
her--in the companionship of _him_. To say that Isaac Thornycroft,
hitherto so mockingly heart-whole, had fallen in love with Anna the
first evening he saw her at Miss Jupp's, would be going too far, but
he was certainly three-parts in love before they reached Coastdown the
following day. To watch her gentle face became like the sweetest music
to Isaac Thornycroft. To see her ever-wakeful attentions to her
entertainers, her gratitude for their kindness, her prompt help of
Sarah when extra work was to be done, her loving care for the
friendless and poor, was something new to Isaac, altogether out of his
experience. Come weal, come woe, he resolved that this girl should be
his wife. People, in their thoughtless gossip, had been wont to
predict a high-born and wealthy bride for the attractive second son of
Justice Thornycroft; this humble orphan, the poor daughter of the many
years poor and humble curate, was the one he fixed upon, with all the
world before him to choose from. How Fate changes plans! "L'homme
propose, mais Dieu dispose," was one of the most solemn truisms ever
penned. Long ere the six weeks of holidays had passed, Isaac
Thornycroft and Anna Chester had become all in all to each other: and
he, a man accustomed to act upon impulse, spoke out.
It was during an evening walk to the Red Court Farm. Anna was going to
tea there; Isaac met her on the heath--no unusual thing--and turned to
walk by her side. Both were silent after the first greeting: true love
is rarely eloquent. With her soft cheeks blushing, her pale eyelids
drooping, her heart wildly beating, Anna sought--at first in vain--to
find some topic of conversation, and chose but a lame one.
"Has Mary Anne finished her screen?"
Isaac smiled. "As if I knew!"
"She has the other one to do; and we shall be going back in a week."
"Not in a week!"
"The holidays will be up a week to-morrow."
A vista of the miserable time after her departure, when all things
would be dark and dreary, wanting her who had come to make his heart's
sunshine, cast its foreshadowing across the brain of Isaac. He turned
to her in his impulse, speaking passionately.
"Anna, I cannot lose you. Rather than that, I must--I must--"
"Must what?" she asked, innocently.
"Keep you here on a visit to myself--a visit that can never
terminate."
Insensibly, she drew a little from him. Not that the words would have
been unwelcome had circumstances justified them; how welcome, the
sudden rush of inward joy, the wild coursing on of all her pulses,
told her. But--loving him though she did; conscious or half-conscious
of his love for her--it never occurred to the mind of Anna Chester
that a union would be within the range of possibility. She--the poor
humble slave--be wedded by a great and wealthy gentleman like Isaac
Thornycroft!
"Would you object to the visit, Anna--though it were to be for life?"
"It could not be," she answered, in a low tone, not affecting to
misunderstand him.
"Oh, couldn't it!" said Isaac, amused, and taking up rather the wrong
view of the words. "But if you and I say it shall?"
"Halloa! Is it you, Isaac? How d'ye do, Miss Chester?"
Richard Thornycroft, coming suddenly into the path from a side
crossing, halted as he spoke. Isaac, put out for once in his life, bit
his lips.
"I want you, Isaac. I was looking for you. Here's some bother up."
"What bother?" testily rejoined Isaac.
"You had better come down and hear it. Tomlett--Come along."
Seeing plainly that his walk with Anna was over for the time, Isaac
Thornycroft turned off with his brother, leaving Anna to go on alone
to the gate, which was in sight.
"Good-day for the present, Anna," he said, with apparent carelessness.
"Tell Mary Anne not to wait tea for me. I may not be in."
More forcibly than ever on this evening, when she sat in the spacious
drawing-room surrounded by its many elegancies, did the contrast
between the Red Court and her own poor home of the past strike on the
senses of Anna Chester. Nothing that moderate wealth could purchase
was _here_ wanting. Several servants, spacious and handsome rooms,
luxuries to please the eye and please the palate. Look at the
tea-table laid out there! The delicately-made Worcester china, rich
in hues of purple and gold; the chased silver tea and coffee service
on their chased silver stands; small fringed damask napkins on the
purple and gold plates. Shrimps large as prawns, potted meats, rolled
bread-and-butter, muffins, rich cake, and marmalade, are there; for it
is Justice Thornycroft's will that all meals, if laid, shall be laid
well. Sometimes a cup of tea only came in for Miss Thornycroft, as it
used to do for my lady when she was there. It almost seemed to Anna
Chester as if she were enacting a deceit, a lie, in sitting at it, its
honoured guest, for whom these things were spread, when she thought of
the scrambling meals in her former home with Mrs. Chester's children.
The odd teacups--for as one got broken it would be-replaced by another
of any shape or pattern, provided it were cheap; saucers notched;
cracked cups without handles; the stale loaf on the table; the scanty,
untidy plate of salt butter, of which she had to cut perpetual slices,
like Werther's Charlotte; the stained table without a cover, crumbs
strewing it. Look on this picture and on that. Anna did, in deep
dejection; and the thought which had faintly presented itself to her
mind when Isaac Thornycroft spoke his momentous words, grew into grim
and defined shape, and would not be scared away--that she could be no
fit wife for Isaac. She resolved to tell him of these things, and of
her own unfitness; how very poor she was, always had been, always
(according to present prospects) would be; and beg him to think no
more of her; and she did not doubt he would unsay his words of his own
accord when he came to know of it. It is true she winced at the task:
but her conscience told her it must be done, though her heart should
faint at it. She could imagine no fate so bright in the wide world as
that of becoming the wife of Isaac Thornycroft.
"What makes you so silent this evening?"
Anna started at Miss Thornycroft's words. That young lady was eyeing
her with curiosity.
"I was only thinking," she answered, with a vivid blush. "Oh, and I
forgot: your brother wished me to ask you not to wait tea for him."
"My brother! Which of them?"
"Mr. Isaac."
"Very considerate, I'm sure! seeing that I never do wait, and that if
I did he would probably not come in."
There was a mocking tone in her voice that Anna rather winced at as
applied to Isaac. She went on explaining where she saw him; that he
and Richard had walked away together--she fancied to Tomlett's.
"They are a great deal too intimate with Tomlett," spoke Miss
Thornycroft, curling her lip. "He is no better than a boatman. My
belief is, they go and drink gin-and-water with him. They ought to
have more pride."
"Mr. Richard said there was some 'bother.'"
"Oh! of course; any excuse before you. I tell you, Anna, they are just
a couple of loose young men."
The "loose young men" came in shortly; Richard to go away again, Isaac
to remain. He had told Mrs. Copp he would see her home safely. "Let it
be by daylight, if you please," answered that discreet lady.
Not by daylight, but under the stars of the sweet summer's night, they
went out. There was no one to see; the way was lonely; and Isaac drew
Anna's hand within his arm for the first time, and kept it a prisoner.
"I must take care of you, Anna, as you are to become my own property."
"But I--I am not to become that; I wish I could, but it is
impossible," she stammered, setting about her task in hesitating
perplexity.
"Anna, do you understand me? I am asking you to be my wife."
"Yes, I--I believe I understood; and I feel very grateful to you, all
the same."
"All the same!" Isaac Thornycroft released her hand and turned to face
her.
"Just tell me what you mean. Don't you care for me?"
Agitated, embarrassed, she burst into tears. Isaac took both her hands
now, holding them before him. They had reached the churchyard, and its
graves were distinct in the twilight; the stars looked down on them
from the blue sky above; the sound of the surging sea came over with a
faint murmur.
"I thought you loved me, Anna. Surely I cannot have been steering on a
wrong tack?"
As the soft eyes glanced at him through their tears, he saw enough to
know that she _did_ love him. Reassured on that score, he turned and
walked on again, her arm kept within his.
"Now, tell me what you mean," he said, quietly. "There can be no other
bar."
"I do not know how to tell you," she answered. "I do not like to tell
you."
"Nonsense, Anna. I shall keep you out here pacing the heath until you
do tell, though it be until morning, which would certainly send Mrs.
Copp into a fit."
Not very awkwardly when she had fairly entered upon it, Anna told
her tale--her sense of the unfitness, nay, the impossibility of the
union--of the wide social gulf that lay between them. Isaac met the
communication with a laugh.
"Is that all! It is my turn now not to understand. You have been
reared a gentlewoman, Anna."
"Papa was a clergyman. I have been reared, I think, to nothing but
work. We were so very poor. My home--ah! if you could see, if you
could imagine the contrast it presented to this of yours! As I sat in
your drawing-room to-night I could not help feeling the difference
forcibly."
If Isaac Thornycroft had not seen what she spoke of, he had seen
something else--that never in his whole life had he met any one who
gave him so entirely the idea of a gentlewoman--a refined, well-bred
gentlewoman--as this girl now speaking with him, Anna Chester. He
continued in evident amusement.
"Let us see how your objections can be refuted. You play and sing?"
"A little."
"You draw?"
"A little."
"You can dance?"
"Yes; I can dance."
"Why, then--not to enter on other desirable qualities--you are an
accomplished young lady. What _do_ you mean about unfitness?"
"I see you are laughing at me," she said, the tears struggling to her
eyes again. "I am so very poor; I teach for the merest trifle: it
barely finds me in the cheapest clothes. I only looked forward to a
life of work. And you are rich--at least Mr. Thornycroft is."
"If we have a superfluity of riches, there's all the more cause for me
to dispense with them in a wife. Besides, when I set up my tent, it
will not be on the scale of my father's house. Anna, my darling!" he
added, with a strange gravity in his eye and tone, "we are more on an
equality than you may deem."
She made no reply, having enough to do to keep her tears from falling.
"I have sufficient for comfort--a sort of love-in-a-cottage
establishment," went on Isaac; "and I am heartily sick of my
bachelor's life. It leads me into all sorts of extravagances, and is
unsatisfactory at the best. You must promise to be my wife, Anna."
"There are the lights in Captain Copp's parlour," said she, with
singular irrelevance.
"Just so. But you do not go in until I have your promise."
"They were saying one day, some of them--I think it was Mrs.
Connaught--that you would be sure to marry into one of the good county
families," murmured Anna.
"Did they? I hope the disappointment won't be too much for them. I
shall marry you, Anna, and none other."
"But what would your family say? Your father--your sister?"
"Just what they pleased. Anna, pardon me, I am only teasing you.
Believe me, they will only be too glad to hear of it; glad that the
wild, unsteady (as Mary Anne is pleased to call me on occasion) Isaac
Thornycroft should make himself into a respectable man. Anna! can you
not trust me?"
She had trusted all her life, yielded implicitly to the sway of those
who held influence over her; little chance was there, then, that she
could hold out now. Isaac Thornycroft received the promise his heart
hungered for, and sealed it.
Her face gathered against his breast; her slight form shrinking in his
strong arms; he kept her there a prisoner; his voice breathing soft
love-vows; his blue eyes bent greedily on her blushing face; his
kisses, the only honest kisses his life had known, pressed again and
again upon her lips.
"Who on earth _is_ that? Avast, thieves! Bea serpents! pirates!"
The gallant Captain Copp, his night-glass pushed out at the open
window to an acute angle, had been contemplating these puzzling
proceedings for some time. Fortunately he did not distinguish very
clearly, and remained ignorant of the real matter. Ill-conditioned
people, tipsy fishermen and else, their brains muddled with drink,
found their way to the heath on occasion, and the captain considered
it a duty to society to order them off. Sweeping the horizon and the
nearer plain to-night, his glass had shown him some object not easy to
make out. The longer Captain Copp waited for it to move, the longer it
stayed stationary; the more he turned his glass, the less chance did
it appear to give of revealing itself. Naturally, two people in close
proximity, the head of the taller one bent over the other so as to
leave no indication of the human form, would present a puzzling
paradox when viewed through a night-glass: the captain came to the
conclusion that it was the most extraordinary spectacle ever presented
to his eyes since they had looked on that sea serpent in the Pacific;
and he raised his voice to hail it when suspense was becoming quite
unbearable.
Isaac Thornycroft, adroitly sheltering his companion, glided up the
little opening by Mrs. Connaught's. In a few minutes, when the captain
had drawn his head and glass in for a respite, he walked boldly up to
the door by the side of Anna.
"Good evening, captain."
"Good evening," blithely responded the captain. "Sorry you should have
the trouble of bringing her home. Come in, Anna. I say, did you meet
any queer thing on the heath?"
"Queer thing?" responded Isaac.
"A man without a head, or anything of that light sort?"
"No. There's a strange horse browsing a bit lower down," added Isaac.
"Some stray animal."
The captain considered, and came to the conclusion that it could not
well have been the horse. What it really was he did not conjecture.
Meanwhile Anna Chester had gone upstairs to the pleasant little room
she occupied, and took off her bonnet in a maze of rapture. The world
had changed into a heavenly Elysium.