ELLINOR.
Sir Redmond Sleath had no pity for the suspense and agony of mind now
endured by Mary; and as for Dewsnap and Ringbolt, they knew nothing
about her.
During the days just mentioned the clanging of the ship's bell from
time to time, and the din of fog horns from vessels passing with less
than half-steam up, informed Ellinor that the fog still rested on the
river; yet every morning she heard the rasping of the holystones as
the deck was cleaned, and the mysterious cry of 'soak and send'--the
order to pass the wet swabs along.
The terror she had undergone, the subsequent affronts, unblushing and
terrible--for such she deemed Sleath's love-making--and the uncertain
future, all throbbed in hot and wretched thought wildly through her
heart, till at last, when the yacht was fairly under way,
fainting-fits and the torment of sea-sickness made reflection, fear,
and regret alike impossible, for a kind of delirium came upon her,
and she grew oblivious of her surroundings; but we are anticipating.
'The girl may die on our hands, if this sort of thing goes on,' said
Dewsnap, 'and that might prove deuced awkward for us all.'
'I have thought of that, sir,' said Ringbolt; 'but one may as well
whistle psalms to the taff-rail----'
'As attempt to move me--you are right, Mr. Ringbolt,' interrupted
Sleath; 'but there is no dying in the case.'
'Why not send her ashore----?' began Dewsnap.
'And relinquish her? Not if I know it.'
'I mean to the boarding-house of the old Frau Wyburg, near the
Bleichen Canal--you know the place.'
'Few rascals in Hamburg don't. She would keep her safe enough for
me--it is not a bad idea; but I shall try my luck with her again
before resorting to _that_.'
At the cruelty Dewsnap's suggestion involved, even Ringbolt shook his
head dissentingly, and said,
'Whatever you do, steer clear of her husband--the Herr Wyburg, as he
calls himself--he is a dangerous and a shady party--worse than the
devil himself.'
'You know Hamburg, then, Mr. Ringbolt?'
'Rather!' replied the other, with a wink that inferred a great deal.
If this affair of Ellinor's abduction found its way into any of the
social weeklies, it might form a very awkward thing for her; but
neither for Sir Redmond or his friend, Mr. Adolphus Dewsnap, as both
were now rather out of the social 'scratch race.'
'A pleasant story for the fair Blanche to hear,' surmised Sleath, as
he laughingly made up a cigarette.
'Who is she?' asked Dewsnap.
'The daughter of Lord Dunkeld.'
'He is, of course, a topsawyer,' said Dewsnap, superciliously, as,
notwithstanding his wealth, he had been rather ignored in society,
'and speaks in the House, I suppose?'
'Yes.'
'But I have never heard of a word he said.'
'Likely enough--he never gets beyond "Hear, hear!" He is a Scots'
representative peer.'
'With a family tree, of course. D--n'm, I would rather have a good
gooseberry-bush!'
The little state-room or cabin occupied by Ellinor she saw had
evidently and recently been used by ladies before. In the drawers of
the dressing-glass were hair-pins, an old kid glove, a broken jet
bracelet, and other etcetera.
The door had a bolt on the inside.
One night she found, to her terror, that this had been removed!
Her heart grew sick within her; but, with the assistance of her
attendant, she contrived to barricade the door most efficiently by
placing a chair between it and her bed, on which, without undressing,
she lay down with her temples throbbing like every other pulse with
terror.
All grew still in the cutter, and not a sound was heard but the
ripples that ran alongside as she strained at her anchor--so very
still that Ellinor was about to sleep, when a sound startled her, and
she sprang up in dismay.
Some one without was attempting to force her door. Who that some one
was she doubted not; but, after a time, finding himself completely
baffled, with a half-suppressed malediction, he went away.
Ellinor lay awake in an agony of mind till morning dawned, when she
opened the eyelet port of her cabin, and looked out. The fog was
less thick, and a gasp of joy escaped her on seeing a boat with
several men in it approaching. She shrieked to them for succour, and
waved her handkerchief. On this they paused on their oars, and
seemed to confer with each other, but, instead of drawing nearer,
they laughed, kissed their hands to her in mockery, resumed their
pulling, and vanished into the mist.
Had any boat's crew actually boarded the yacht to make inquiries,
Sleath was quite prepared to assert that the lady on board was his
demented wife.
With the fog resting on the Elbe, she could see nothing of the land,
and as the cutter might--she thought--have shifted her position in
the night--she knew not where she was. Altona, she thought, might be
miles away, yet it was only a rifle-shot distant. But for its
extreme protraction, she might, at times, have thought she was in a
dream, and that all her mental misery was but a provoking and ghastly
phantasmagoria.
Days had elapsed now since her separation from Mary and Mrs.
Deroubigne. They must, she knew, deem her dead--drowned--and might
have gone away, she knew not where.
Torn in this outrageous fashion from the society of the only persons
she loved on earth! Exiled from happiness, doomed to probable
disgrace and misconstruction of conduct.
Her whole soul was wrapped up in one idea--escape! But how was she
to achieve it, out of that accursed vessel, unless she cast herself
headlong into the river? She certainly shrank from self-destruction,
and hoped that something--'that vague something, the forlorn hope of
the desperate'--might intervene to save and set her free.
Sir Redmond's persistent love-making could draw no response from her.
This enraged him; he ground his teeth, while longing to take her in
his arms, and kiss her whether she would or not; yet he dared not
attempt to molest her when he was sober and in daylight; something in
the girl's purity and disgust of him repressed him. He dissembled,
and said, submissively,
'With your love, Ellinor--in offering mine--I would be a very
different man from what I have been.'
'Your love!' she muttered, in a low voice of scorn.
'Yes.'
'Dare you offer it again to me after all I know?'
'What a little tragedy spit-fire it is! Well, it is perhaps too much
to ask you to love me, so I will only crave permission to love you.'
'Insult on insult! Oh, this is intolerable!' exclaimed Ellinor,
covering her face with her hands. 'It is useless to remind a man
like you of his marriage.'
Sleath's eyes gleamed dangerously. He and Ellinor were alone in the
saloon, as Dewsnap and the sailing-master were smoking on deck, and
the companion-way was kept bolted to prevent any attempt at escape.
'What did I know of life, of the world, or of human nature when I met
that artful woman with the absurd name, Fubsby, and took vows--if
vows they were--for a life-time. Married! Well, even if I were so
legally--which I don't quite admit--what then? In the society in
which we move--'
'We?'
'Dewsnap and I--flirtation forms the great occupation--even
accomplishment--of married life on the part of those who are bound by
it. You have much to learn yet, my simple little Ellinor.'
'Do you call this conduct of yours flirtation--this illegal and
punishable abduction of me--and insulting, loathly love-making?'
'Loathly--an unpleasant phrase to use. Instead of the wretched life
you lead at Paddington, I can give you one well worth living,' said
he, as if he addressed a girl at a bar or a buffet, and in ignorance
of all that had passed since he had discovered their residence in St.
Mary's Terrace; 'and in turn, Ellinor, you will learn that a faithful
old lover is not to be despised.'
'I have already learned that,' said Ellinor, her tears beginning to
fall hotly as she thought of Robert Wodrow.
'I am glad to hear you say so,' said Sleath, thinking of himself,
'and to find that after all you cannot forget a man who has once
loved you--and loves you so fondly still, in spite of the coldness
you manifest and the obliquy you heap upon him. How grand it is to
forgive!' he continued, attempting to take her hand. 'The literary
bear Samuel Johnson never seemed so wretched as a man and a moralist,
than when he gloried in loving a _good hater_.'
Ellinor prevented him from capturing her hand by shudderingly
retreating to the other end of the saloon. The contrast between the
two men--the one who had sought, and still sought, to ensnare, and he
whom she had wronged--who loved her so well, and had found, as she
thought, a grave in that far away land, burned itself into her heart
and brain with growing intensity, and wringing her hands, his name
escaped her in a low voice.
'Robert--oh, Robert!'
Would time ever heal--ever conquer her reproachful heart-wound?
Fury gathered in the heart of Sleath.
'So,' said he, 'our mutual friend, Mr. Robert Wodrow, was not born to
be hanged, if the newspaper accounts were true, by Jove; ha! ha!'
'Sir?' said Ellinor, scarcely understanding his brutal jest.
'Cheated the gallows--that is all.'
In that speech he revealed the underlying brutality of his nature--of
the parvenu--the son of the foundling; and, in his wrath, he followed
it up by another home-thrust.
'What will be said of you--what thought, when it becomes known that
you have been alone, cruising on board this yacht with us--with _me_?'
He saw without pity the start, the pained flush and pallor that
crossed her face by turns, as he coarsely put into words the fear
that had been hovering in her own mind.
She tried to reply to his cruel mockery; her white lips unclosed, and
then shut again, for her voice died away upon them.
With all his love-making, never once did Sleath's heart--or what
passed for that organ--really soften towards the helpless girl, and
times there were when he regarded her as a wolf might have done. He
still made a mockery of the 'cousin story,' as he called it, and,
though Ellinor on one occasion condescended to partially explain it,
he did not, and could not, believe it to be anything else than some
cunning scheme of Colville; and as that individual, whom he hated,
was now in India, he had nothing to fear from him, and only hoped he
might soon get 'knocked on the head.'
At times there was something--what shall we call it?--almost savage
in the admiration and exultation with which this man regarded the
creature who was so entirely at his mercy, and who had been brought
to him as flotsam from the sea!
He keenly relished, too, in one sense, all _blasé_ as he was, the air
of resistance with which she repulsed him; her bearing was so
different and apart from that of most of the conventional girls he
had generally met--not that he much affected the society of ladies
generally.
But he regarded them chiefly as a means of excitement--like
champagne, an unruly horse, or a close run at _écarté_, and, so far
as Ellinor was concerned, he had a firm desire to prove that his will
was the stronger of the two.
At last he left her and went on deck. She stretched out her arms on
the saloon table, and bowed her head on them in a kind of dumb
despair, as she thought over all the degrading speeches to which she
had been subjected.
'Oh,' thought she, 'that I could bury my hot face among the cool,
dewy roses that bloom at Birkwoodbrae! There I think I should get
well--get well--get strong and be myself again perhaps.'
But instead, she was fated to get worse, for the moment the fog
lifted, sail was made on the yacht, and--as stated in the beginning
of this chapter--the horrors of sea-sickness assailed her, and she
lay prostrate in the little cabin.
She had often been afraid to eat or drink, lest what she partook of
might be drugged; she had read or heard of such things; but she was
past all such reflections or considerations now.
There was something daring and lawless in the conduct of Sir Redmond
with reference to the whole affair; but of that, too, she was--for
the present time--oblivious.