The Dover boat, midday service, was on the point of starting from the
quay at Calais, and luggage was being swung on to it in square trucks,
the passengers having already embarked. The day before a midsummer storm
had vexed the soul of the silver streak, which had turned to a grey
pewter streak of a peculiarly streaky nature, with white tops to the
waves that slung themselves over the head of the pier. Cabin-boys and
stewards were making horrible dispositions of tinware, and the head
steward was on the verge of distraction, since the whole world seemed to
have chosen this particular day to return to England, and the whole
world, with an eye on the Channel, desired private cabins, which were
numerically less than the demand. At the moment he was trying to keep
calm before the infuriated questions of a Frenchwoman who believed
herself to be speaking English.
"Mais que faire?" she said. "I have ordered, and where is it? It is not,
you tell me. I cannot be seeck with the canaille on the deck. I wish
reservee. If not, I shall not go, and charge the company."
"Yes'm," said the steward. "Cabin-ticket, ma'am? Cabin No. 9. Show the
lady to cabin No. 9."
Cabin No. 9 had heard these volubilities with sympathy, and a little
secret amusement impossible to avoid if one were ever so little
humorous, and lingered a moment while her maid went on to the cabin
followed by a porter carrying small luggage.
"But I demand a cabin," continued this deeply-wronged lady. "C'est mon
droit, si je la demande. Where is the capitan? Fetch him to me. Bring
him. Oh, mon Dieu, the deck--to be seeck on the deck!"
Mrs. Halton, who was No. 9, called to her maid, and then spoke to the
Frenchwoman.
"But I will gladly let you have my cabin," she said. "I do not mind the
sea. I shall be quite happy on deck. Indeed it is no kindness. Very
likely I should not have gone into my cabin at all."
The poor lady nearly wept with joy, and would willingly have paid Mrs.
Halton ten times the amount the private cabin had cost; but that lady
refused to make a start in trading at this time in her life, and having
secured a sheltered corner watched for a little the inboarding of the
passengers, but soon lost herself in her own reflections.
Ah, but how pleasant they were! She was coming home after a year abroad
which had begun in widowhood and loneliness and misery and shattered
health, and was now returning, restored and comforted, to her friends
and all that made life so engrossingly pleasant a business. No one
deserved friends more thoroughly than she, and she was rich in that
priceless capital of human affection. Sorrows and trials she had had in
plenty in her life, but these the sweetness of her nature had
transformed, so that from being things difficult to bear, she had built
up with them her own character. Sorrow had increased her own power of
sympathy; out of trials she had learnt patience; and failure and the
gradual sinking of one she had loved into the bottomless slough of evil
habit had but left her with an added dower of pity and tolerance.
So the past had no sting left, and if iron had ever entered into her
soul it now but served to make it strong. She was still young, too; it
was not near sunset with her yet, nor even midday, and the future that,
humanly speaking, she counted to be hers was almost dazzling in its
brightness. For love had dawned for her again, and no uncertain love,
wrapped in the mists of memory, but one that had ripened through liking
and friendship and intimacy into the authentic glory. He was in
England, too; she was going back to him. And before very long she would
never go away from him again.
Her place on deck had been wisely chosen, and, defended by the row of
cabins at her back, she could watch in a dry windlessness the jovial
riot of the seas. Now the steamer would stagger to some cross-blow of
the waves; now, making a friend of them, swerved into a trough of
opalescent green, and emerged again to take, like some fine-spirited
horse, the liquid fence, flecked with bubbles, that lay in its course.
The wind that had raised this gale still blew from the westward, and on
the undefended deck great parcels of water, cut off from their seas,
fell in solid lumps that resolved themselves into hissing streams.
And Daisy--Daisy occupied no small portion of her thoughts. A year ago
she was on the threshold of womanhood, and at such critical periods Aunt
Jeannie knew well that a year may confirm existing tendencies or
completely alter them, bringing to light strands of character that had
been woven below the surface. For many reasons she had a peculiar
tenderness towards this dear niece. For seven rather dreadful years
Daisy had lived with her, and during these Jeannie had never remitted
her efforts to conceal from her that which had darkened her own life.
She believed (quietly, under her breath) that those efforts had been
successful; she hoped anyhow that Daisy did not know of, did not even
guess at, the underlying tragedy. For Daisy, all these years, had been
in the seedtime of her life, and Mrs. Halton, rightly or wrongly, quite
firmly believed that the young years of those who are to become men and
women are best spent if during them they can be brought to learn the joy
of life, while its possible tragedies are kept as far from them as may
be. For, in general, the habit of joy is the best weapon with which to
fight sorrow when sorrow comes. To expect the best of everything and
everybody, and to go on doing so, is the best antidote for
disappointments. To expect the worst, to think that disappointment is
the usual outcome, is to be already unnerved for it. Life is best
encountered with a sanguine heart.
Such, at any rate, was the creed of her who sat now on the deck of this
labouring steamer as it ploughed its passage home, where were her
friends and her lover. The tarpaulin had proved unnecessary, for she was
sheltered by the deck-buildings from spray. Her book was also
unnecessary, for she was more congenially occupied in this pleasant web
of thought, and she sat there in her big fur cloak--for the wind of
their motion made the air feel cold--with eyes that looked outwards, yet
brooded inwardly, April-eyes, that were turned towards the summer that
was coming. And all the past was poured into that, even as the squalls
and tempests of winter are transmuted into and feed the luxuriance of
June-time. The sorrow and the pain that were past had become herself;
they were over, but their passage had left her more patient, more
tolerant, more loving.
The deck was nearly empty, and but few of the more valiant walked up and
down the sheltered swaying boards; but these, as often as they passed,
looked again at her. Her mouth and chin were half lost and buried in the
furry collar of her cloak, but above them was that fine, straight nose,
just a little tip-tilted, the great brown eyes, and black hair growing
low on the brow. Had her mouth been visible, a man would have said,
"This is a woman," but without that he would very likely have said,
"This is a girl," so young and so full of expectancy was her face. Yet
had he looked twice at eyes and smooth, flushed cheeks alone, he would
have said, "This is a woman," for though the joy of life beamed so
freshly in her eyes, behind that there lurked something of its
transmuted sorrows. Her expectancy was not that of ignorance; she knew,
and still looked forward.
Under the lee of the English shore the sea abated, and she came on to
the top deck from which they would disembark, and looked eagerly along
the pier, telling herself that her expectations that she would see a
certain figure there were preposterous, and yet cherishing them with a
secret conviction. And then she knew that they were not preposterous at
all; that it could not have been otherwise. Of course he had come down
to Dover to meet her, and as she left the boat she was taken into his
charge at once.
"Oh, Victor, how nice of you," she said. "I didn't expect you would come
all the way down here a bit."
He held her hand, "but as long as all may, or so very little longer."
But there was much that passed between them in that "very little
longer."
"Nor did I expect to come," he said. "I only came."
She smiled at him.
"Ah, that's so like you," she said.
They waited with talk of commonplaces as to her journey and the crossing
till Jeannie's maid came off the boat with her attendant baggage-bearer,
and then went towards the train. They were the sort of people to whom a
railway guard always touches his cap, and this duly occurred. Victor
Braithwaite, however, had on this occasion already been in consultation
with him, and they were taken to a compartment he had caused to be
reserved. On principle Jeannie felt bound to remonstrate.
"You are so extravagant," she said. "I know exactly what that means: you
have paid for four places."
"Three," he said. "You have paid for your own. And if you say a word
more I shall get another compartment for your maid."
Jeannie laughed.
"My lips are dumb," she said. "Ah! it is good to see you."
She was for the moment deprived of that particular blessing, for he went
out again to get a tea-basket, and Jeannie leant back in her seat,
feeling, in spite of her remonstrance, that exquisite pleasure that
comes from being looked after, from having everything done for you, not
from a man's mere politeness, but from his right (he, the one man) to
serve the one woman. In all he did he was so intensely efficient and
reliable; the most casual trivial detail, if entrusted to him, took
place as by some immutable natural law. He would return in the shortest
possible time, yet without hurry, with the tea-basket, while half that
crowd of jostling, distracted passengers outside would have to go
without. And it was not otherwise in things that were far from trivial.
When he told her he loved her she knew that she stood on an unshakable
rock, against which nothing could prevail. There was not a woman in the
world, she felt, as safe as she. Well she knew what lay beneath his
quietness and undemonstrativeness, a trust how complete, a love how
strong.
The train started, then he leant forward to her from his seat opposite
and took both her hands.
"My dearest," he said, and kissed her.
And then there was silence for a little.
"And your plans," he said at last--"your immediate plans, I mean? You go
to Lady Nottingham's in town now, don't you?"
"Yes; and you? Will you be in town?"
A smile just smouldered in his eyes.
"Well, just possibly," he said. "I hope we may meet now and then. She
has asked me down to Bray the day after to-morrow for Whitsuntide. Shall
I go?"
Jeannie laughed.
"I won't pretend not to know what that means," she said. "It means to
ask whether I am going. What shall we do? I suppose the house will be
full, whereas we might have a sort of dear little desert island all to
ourselves if we stopped in town, as everybody will be away. I should not
object to that in the least. But, Victor, if Alice wants me, I think I
had better go down with her. There aren't really any people in the world
except you and me, but they think there are." Her brown eyes softened
again. "I think that is an ungrateful and selfish speech of mine," she
said. "I am sorry; I don't deserve my friends."
"I like the ungrateful and selfish speech," said he.
"Then I present you with it. Yes, I think we had better go down
there. I long to see Alice again, and Daisy. Dear Daisy, have you
seen her lately?"
"As one may say that one has seen a meteor. She has flashed by."
"Ah, Daisy shall not flash by me. She must flash to me, and stop there,
burning. Oh, look, it is the month of the briar-rose. See how the
hedges foam with pink blossom. And the fields, look, knee-deep in long
grasses and daisies and buttercups. I am home again, thank Heaven. I am
home. Home met me on the pier, my darling--the heart of home met me
there."
"And you did not expect it in the least?" he asked. "You said so, at
any rate."
"Did I really? What very odd things one says! It is lucky that nobody
believes them."