Works of Ellen Wood, page 257
“How you have surprised me!” began Maria. “Have you seen papa?”
“Not yet,” he gravely answered. “White thought Sir Arthur was in the picture-gallery, and I came on here. But I do not see him, Maria.”
“I saw Sir Arthur walk across the grounds in the rain an hour ago,” interposed Mr. Janson in a clear, ringing tone. “He has not come in, probably.”
A haughty bow in return for the information, and Mr. Yorke fairly turned his back upon the speaker. Mr. Janson walked away to the end window, with the good-natured intention of looking out for Sir Arthur.
“Who is that man, Maria?”
“I told you — Mr. Janson,” she answered; resentment against his haughty air, his assumption of authority, seating itself within her there and then, and peeping out in her tone. “He is a medical student, and a friend of papa’s. He was the deathbed friend of poor Raby Raby,” she added in her spirit of bravado. “He has been here since Christmas, and papa likes him very much. We all do.”
Mr. Yorke’s lip curled. A medical student! Taking the hand of Maria, he placed it within his arm to lead her away. “Let me conduct you to Lady Saxonbury, Maria. I suppose she is visible.”
What rebellion she might have offered, whether any or none, it is impossible to know, for at that moment Sir Arthur entered. The little girls, too, becoming aware of Mr. Yorke’s presence for the first time, came running from the upper end of the gallery. Maria seized the opportunity to escape.
Changes came to Saxonbury ere the week was over.
Mr. Janson took a cordial farewell of all, and departed, as he had planned to do. Mr. Yorke also departed; but not until he had had a serious quarrel with Maria. Without their tacit engagement having been mentioned or alluded to, it was understood between them that it was at an end, that they had parted; and though the name of Mr. Janson was not breathed, each knew that but for his having come to Saxonbury that parting had not taken place.
CHAPTER VI.
The Voyage of the “Rushing Water.”
IT is eminently suggestive of our uncertain life here, to mark how time works its changes. Sometimes, in an incredibly short period, changes of the most unexpected and startling nature will take place. Thus it was with the family at Saxonbury. But three years have elapsed since you last saw them; and yet the changes which that time has wrought seem to have been sufficient for the marking of half a century.
Lady Saxonbury died of her malady. A twelvemonth afterwards Sir Arthur married the widow of Colonel Yorke, an uncle of Mr. Yorke’s. Mrs. Yorke was notable for little, save a somewhat fractious spirit, and for her overweening indulgence of her boy, the son and heir of the late Colonel Yorke. Six months subsequent to his second marriage, Sir Arthur died, and Mr. Yorke succeeded to Saxonbury. The second Lady Saxonbury — often called Mrs. Yorke still by the friends of her old days — removed to London with her establishment and her step-daughter Maria. With intervals of travelling, they had chiefly resided in London since. One year they had gone to pass the autumn at a comparatively little known French watering-place on the north coast — the very town which Mr. Janson had spoken of as being the residence of his mother. Some friends of Lady Saxonbury’s were there for a sojourn, and that induced her to go. Once there, she became impressed with the idea that a little French schooling would prove of incalculable benefit to her son in regard to the acquiring of the language, and she placed him at the college as an externe, and prolonged her stay through the winter. But the young gentleman appeared to be more apt at picking up the Flemish patois he heard in the streets, than at the good French drilled into him in the school.
Maria stayed on, nothing loath, for — Mr. Janson was there. They had met once or twice temporarily since that visit of his to Saxonbury, and now they were in the habit of meeting daily — at least they had met daily until within the last few days. But the crisis had come and gone, and they had parted.
It was Mr. Janson himself who invoked it. Led on to believe (and there was every excuse for him that Maria’s manner could afford) that she would regard his suit favourably, he at length spoke out, telling her how deeply he loved her; how, if she could but reconcile herself to become a surgeon’s wife, there was a good practice waiting for him in England. The terms of purchase were arranged, and his mother was ready to supply the funds. It startled Maria beyond everything. It brought her to her senses. She, Maria Saxonbury, sink down into an obscure surgeon’s wife, one who had yet his way to make! Her brow grew red at the thought, and she told him quietly that it could never be.
“Why have you led me on, then?” he inquired, his tone one of strangely acute anguish.
Why, indeed! Maria could not answer. She could not tell him that she had loved as passionately as he did, or that the anguish at her own heart was great as his.
And so they parted. Nothing more could be said or done. The dream of romance was over, and each must make the best of the future.
About a week went on after this final interview, and the last day of March came in. The harbour of this fine old fishing town was alive with bustle. On the following day, the first of April, the Iceland fishing-boats were to go out with the morning’s tide. A whole fleet of vessels, some large, some small; some with their complement of ten or twelve men and boys on board, some with but four or five, who were making ready to depart on their annual voyage to the North fishery, praying for success.
Yes, praying. The streets were crowded with promenaders, going to or returning from the beautiful little chapel of the port, a chapel especially consecrated to fishermen. For three days had that small chapel been besieged, so that it was difficult to push a way in or out. It was a small building, little larger than a fair-sized room; models of ships were suspended in it, and it was tastefully decorated with landscape pictures, with gilding, and flowers, and ornaments, after the manner of the favourite chapels of the Roman Catholics. Some marine views in particular were attractively painted. They lined the walls of the porch, five or six of them, in glittering frames, and represented the vicissitudes of a sea-life. One portrayed a calm sea, on which glided a large ship with her white sails set, a scene of peace; another view shewed her rocking and tossing in all the perils of a storm, apparently about to succumb to its fury. Here was a small picture, representing a fishing-boat sinking, sinking hopelessly, beyond possibility of hope or succour, its mariners’ hands and their beseeching countenances outstretched to heaven. The frame above it contained a view of another fishing-vessel approaching its harbour in safety. The chances and dangers of its past voyage were surmounted, and home faces were collected on the beach to welcome it in.
The chapel was dark; dark even in the daytime. The windows were sombre with their stained glass; and the ornaments, cases of relics, images, and pictures, raised against them, further obstructed the light. It never was wholly dark, for the high candles on the altar were kept continually burning, and numberless collections of miniature tapers were lighted up by the kneeling women. From sunrise till late at night the chapel was receiving and pouring forth its crowds. The sailor men and boys would come in, sink on their knees before one or other of the images, St. Andrew, or St. Peter, or the Virgin, and remain there, still as death, for a couple of minutes, praying to the saint. Then they crossed themselves and passed out, and the short prayer would last most of them until their return, when they would go into the same chapel and offer as brief thanks. The women remained kneeling longer: their prayers were chiefly for a bon voyage and safe return; the men’s, for a good haul of cod. Not half the people who crowded there on the few evenings preceding the boats’ departure could get an entrance into the chapel; therefore many were content to kneel outside, on the enclosed space of waste ground around it, and there pray. They all managed to steal a look through the open door at whichever image they patronised, bowed to it, made the sign of the cross, and so departed in peace.
There glided a lady into the chapel this evening at the dusk hour. She looked of superior class, and was handsomely but quietly dressed. She drew aside to the remotest obscurity of the chapel entrance, and leaned against the bar that was placed there to guard the paintings, waiting till her turn should come to push in with the stream. She was a middle-aged woman, and must once have been beautiful, but her features looked clouded with care. A young woman followed her in the neat dress of a French domestic servant, wearing the universal dark cloth cloak, and close snow-white cap. The lady was anxious to pray, and soon passed on; the maid was more anxious to look about her and to gossip, so she stopped at the entrance. Presently an acquaintance came up, another woman-servant, who accosted her: —
“Hey, Thérése, is it you? Who have you come to pray for? I thought your brother was not going this year.”
“I am attending madame.”
“Madame Janson! What does she do here? She has nothing to do with the cod-fishery.”
“I can tell you that she has, though,” was the reply of Thérése, “and a fine way the house has been in, through it. You know her son?”
“Who does not? A rackety blade.”
“Rackety! Well, he may be a little. Everybody likes him, though.”
“Well, what of him?”
“He is going out with the cod-boats to Iceland.”
“With the cod-boats! That young Englishman!
Why, what on earth — it can’t be.”
Thérése nodded her head several times in succession. “Some whim of his. He goes for pleasure, he says.”
“Stuff, Thérése! Such a thing was never heard of as going out with the cod-boats for pleasure. It’s a precious hard voyage and hard life. Besides, the crew don’t want a fine gentleman on board.”
“Oh, what do they care? He has made it all right with Messrs. Vandersphinks, the owners.”
“Vandersphinks! Which is he going out in, then?”
“The Rushing Water.”
“Well, he has got a taste! To go out in a dirty cod-boat to that cold barren Iceland, a handsome young fellow like that! Will he share the sailors’ fare?”
“Not he: any more than he’ll share their labour. There’s some tins of preserved meat gone on board for him, and a big hamper of prime Bordeaux wine.”
“And that brings his mother here — to pray for his safe return! Thérése, it’s a lucky thing she is not a heretic, though she is one of them English, or she couldn’t have come here to pray for it — at least, with any chance of St. Peter listening to her. But, I say, he is a heretic, isn’t he?”
Thérése nudged her companion for silence. And the woman, looking round, saw close to her a party of “heretics;” two English ladies and a child, who had come, full of British curiosity, to witness the praying in the chapel.
“You shouldst call ’em so to their faces,” whispered the tolerant Thérése. “They are as good as we are, for all I see, and” —
Thérése broke off suddenly, and dropped upon her knees. Her mistress was coming out again, after her short prayer.
“Thérése, have you not been in?” demanded Mrs. Janson, in very good French, her tone betraying reproach and surprise.
“Couldn’t get in, madame,” answered Thérése, without thinking it necessary to add that she had not tried.
It took some time to get out. Several were pushing out, as well as themselves, but they were obstructed by the numbers pushing in. Immediately following Mrs. Janson, were the two English ladies mentioned, the younger one, who was an elegant girl of remarkable beauty, remonstrating at their leaving so soon.
“Henry is so troublesome,” replied her companion. “I could scarcely hold him still, do all I would. He wanted to run inside, amidst the mass kneeling there.”
“I told you it would be so, mamma. You should have left him at home.”
“Oh, of course,” observed the elder lady, in a sharp accent “I know he is an eyesore to you, Elizabeth.”
“Mamma, you know that he is nothing of the sort. But he is the most troublesome boy that ever existed, especially to take anywhere.”
Miss Saxonbury was right; for it was no other. Never was there so troublesome a child as Henry Yorke. He was a slender boy of ten, fair and delicate, with well-formed features and long wavy hair, the combing out of which every morning by his mother, and the coaxing into curls, kept the house in an uproar for an hour. He was one of those precocious, clever children, who, to use a familiar phrase, are “awake to everything,” restless, mischievous, and wilful. Yet the boy had admirable qualities, had they been allowed fair play, but his mother pursued a system of ruinous indulgence. He was the pride and delight of her life, and the torment of every one else’s. A whim had taken him lately to call his half-sister (if she might be termed such) by her second name, Elizabeth. He detected that she did not like it, and therefore he did it, for mischiefs sake. Lady Saxonbury fell sometimes into the same name. Maria felt convinced that it was done to please Henry and vex herself.
No sooner were they outside than Henry managed to emancipate himself from his mother’s grasp, and she had the satisfaction of seeing him rush back again, twist himself amidst the blockade at the entrance, and disappear.
“There!” uttered Lady Saxonbury, “he is gone — just like an eel! What am I to do to get at him? Wait here, Maria.”
“Thérése,” said Mrs. Janson, who had seen and heard this bit of byplay, “go home fast and get supper ready. If Mr, Edward should be at home, tell him I shall soon be in.”
Thérése went off, picking her way through the lines of kneelers on the earth, and turning her head and her drooping gold earrings from side to side, in search of a gossip to walk with. Miss Saxonbury, who had drawn aside to be out of the way of passers-by, found herself suddenly addressed.
“You are Maria Elizabeth Saxonbury?”
“Yes,” she replied, wondering at the stranger’s familiarity.
“I knew you by intuition. I heard Miss Saxonbury was of rare beauty, and I have not often witnessed beauty to match what I now see in you. If it shall prove the blight to others that it has to me, better for you that you had been a model of deformity.”
“I do not understand you,” haughtily spoke Miss Saxonbury. “I do not know you.”
“I have given you no opportunity to know me. I am Edward Janson’s mother. I have lived in this place many years, holding myself aloof from my countrymen, who flock here to make it their few years’ residence, or their few weeks’ sojourn. I am too poor to compete with some of their ostentatious purses. I am saving for my son; and I am too proud to risk familiarity with doubtful characters — as many of them are. Therefore your family and I have never met. I wish I could say that you had never met my son. You have played your beauty off upon him, flirted with him, courted him — yes, you have, Miss Saxonbury! — and drawn him on to love you. When that love had reached a height that it could no longer be suppressed within the bounds of prudence, and he told it to you, you rejected him. It may be, with scorn, because he was poor and you were rich: I know not: from him I have learnt nothing. He has kept his own counsel and your secret; but I have watched closely, and know the day that brought to him this despair. In blighting his happiness you have blighted mine.”
Maria Saxonbury’s glowing features had turned to paleness, and now they were glowing again. The words told home. She appeared too confused to answer, and Mrs. Janson continued —
“He came over here to pass a few weeks with me before he should settle in his profession, in his own country. Those weeks have been passed with you, rather than with me, and now he is going out with these wretched cod-fishers, and may never return.”
“Going out with the cod-fishers!” mechanically interrupted Maria.
“Yes, he is,” replied Mrs. Janson. “When he came home, two days ago, and told me his intention, I thought my heart would have broken; and in my haste I wished that you had been dead — dead, young lady — before you had lured my boy on to love you, and then treated him so, that he must go this hard voyage to forget you and strive for peace. I have pity for misfortune,” added Mrs. Janson, “but I have none for wilful fault, for the sinful indulgence of vanity. I do not wish you ill, Maria Saxonbury; I trust I have too much Christian charity deliberately to wish it to any one; but I cannot help feeling that, should your existence become as bitter to you as you have made mine, it will only be a just retribution.”
Without another word, she turned away, leaving Miss Saxonbury rooted to the spot, and miserably conscious. All that Mrs. Janson had reproached her with was, in the main, only too just. In the old days at Saxonbury she had first flirted with Edward Janson for love of admiration’s sake. Now that the love which supervened had been spoken, she meant to bury hers within her own breast, to stifle it, to extinguish it; and she had turned him adrift to do the same.
“I was obliged to hold up a five-franc piece to bribe him to come out,” said Lady Saxonbury, emerging from the chapel, hot and red, the truant a fast prisoner in her grasp. “And glad enough to get him out on terms so easy: he had got close up to that lighted altar at the other end.”
Miss Saxonbury took hold of the boy’s other hand, and away they went; Harry delighted at his five-franc piece, and kicking up clouds of dust as he walked between them.—’
The morning rose bright and clear. The tide served at eight o’clock, but long before that hour the port was taken possession of. Half the town was there to witness the departure, thronging the piers and the heights. It was a stirring sight. Vessel after vessel, hoisting its sails, came smoothly down the harbour, each receiving an animated, hearty cheer of hope from hundreds of voices. Wives, mothers, sisters, and little children, leaned over the nearly unprotected sides of the piers, to wish good luck to the several crews, and utter the last farewell in their familiar patois.
One vessel in particular came gaily down, a trim-built craft of middling size. A sunburnt boy, in a fishing-cap, and red flannel shirt, was in the bows, grinning. “Here comes the Rushing Water” cried a spectator. “So, she is taking out young Paul!” he added, as he caught sight of the boy’s face. “The crew of the Fleur de Marie would not take him.”
“Not yet,” he gravely answered. “White thought Sir Arthur was in the picture-gallery, and I came on here. But I do not see him, Maria.”
“I saw Sir Arthur walk across the grounds in the rain an hour ago,” interposed Mr. Janson in a clear, ringing tone. “He has not come in, probably.”
A haughty bow in return for the information, and Mr. Yorke fairly turned his back upon the speaker. Mr. Janson walked away to the end window, with the good-natured intention of looking out for Sir Arthur.
“Who is that man, Maria?”
“I told you — Mr. Janson,” she answered; resentment against his haughty air, his assumption of authority, seating itself within her there and then, and peeping out in her tone. “He is a medical student, and a friend of papa’s. He was the deathbed friend of poor Raby Raby,” she added in her spirit of bravado. “He has been here since Christmas, and papa likes him very much. We all do.”
Mr. Yorke’s lip curled. A medical student! Taking the hand of Maria, he placed it within his arm to lead her away. “Let me conduct you to Lady Saxonbury, Maria. I suppose she is visible.”
What rebellion she might have offered, whether any or none, it is impossible to know, for at that moment Sir Arthur entered. The little girls, too, becoming aware of Mr. Yorke’s presence for the first time, came running from the upper end of the gallery. Maria seized the opportunity to escape.
Changes came to Saxonbury ere the week was over.
Mr. Janson took a cordial farewell of all, and departed, as he had planned to do. Mr. Yorke also departed; but not until he had had a serious quarrel with Maria. Without their tacit engagement having been mentioned or alluded to, it was understood between them that it was at an end, that they had parted; and though the name of Mr. Janson was not breathed, each knew that but for his having come to Saxonbury that parting had not taken place.
CHAPTER VI.
The Voyage of the “Rushing Water.”
IT is eminently suggestive of our uncertain life here, to mark how time works its changes. Sometimes, in an incredibly short period, changes of the most unexpected and startling nature will take place. Thus it was with the family at Saxonbury. But three years have elapsed since you last saw them; and yet the changes which that time has wrought seem to have been sufficient for the marking of half a century.
Lady Saxonbury died of her malady. A twelvemonth afterwards Sir Arthur married the widow of Colonel Yorke, an uncle of Mr. Yorke’s. Mrs. Yorke was notable for little, save a somewhat fractious spirit, and for her overweening indulgence of her boy, the son and heir of the late Colonel Yorke. Six months subsequent to his second marriage, Sir Arthur died, and Mr. Yorke succeeded to Saxonbury. The second Lady Saxonbury — often called Mrs. Yorke still by the friends of her old days — removed to London with her establishment and her step-daughter Maria. With intervals of travelling, they had chiefly resided in London since. One year they had gone to pass the autumn at a comparatively little known French watering-place on the north coast — the very town which Mr. Janson had spoken of as being the residence of his mother. Some friends of Lady Saxonbury’s were there for a sojourn, and that induced her to go. Once there, she became impressed with the idea that a little French schooling would prove of incalculable benefit to her son in regard to the acquiring of the language, and she placed him at the college as an externe, and prolonged her stay through the winter. But the young gentleman appeared to be more apt at picking up the Flemish patois he heard in the streets, than at the good French drilled into him in the school.
Maria stayed on, nothing loath, for — Mr. Janson was there. They had met once or twice temporarily since that visit of his to Saxonbury, and now they were in the habit of meeting daily — at least they had met daily until within the last few days. But the crisis had come and gone, and they had parted.
It was Mr. Janson himself who invoked it. Led on to believe (and there was every excuse for him that Maria’s manner could afford) that she would regard his suit favourably, he at length spoke out, telling her how deeply he loved her; how, if she could but reconcile herself to become a surgeon’s wife, there was a good practice waiting for him in England. The terms of purchase were arranged, and his mother was ready to supply the funds. It startled Maria beyond everything. It brought her to her senses. She, Maria Saxonbury, sink down into an obscure surgeon’s wife, one who had yet his way to make! Her brow grew red at the thought, and she told him quietly that it could never be.
“Why have you led me on, then?” he inquired, his tone one of strangely acute anguish.
Why, indeed! Maria could not answer. She could not tell him that she had loved as passionately as he did, or that the anguish at her own heart was great as his.
And so they parted. Nothing more could be said or done. The dream of romance was over, and each must make the best of the future.
About a week went on after this final interview, and the last day of March came in. The harbour of this fine old fishing town was alive with bustle. On the following day, the first of April, the Iceland fishing-boats were to go out with the morning’s tide. A whole fleet of vessels, some large, some small; some with their complement of ten or twelve men and boys on board, some with but four or five, who were making ready to depart on their annual voyage to the North fishery, praying for success.
Yes, praying. The streets were crowded with promenaders, going to or returning from the beautiful little chapel of the port, a chapel especially consecrated to fishermen. For three days had that small chapel been besieged, so that it was difficult to push a way in or out. It was a small building, little larger than a fair-sized room; models of ships were suspended in it, and it was tastefully decorated with landscape pictures, with gilding, and flowers, and ornaments, after the manner of the favourite chapels of the Roman Catholics. Some marine views in particular were attractively painted. They lined the walls of the porch, five or six of them, in glittering frames, and represented the vicissitudes of a sea-life. One portrayed a calm sea, on which glided a large ship with her white sails set, a scene of peace; another view shewed her rocking and tossing in all the perils of a storm, apparently about to succumb to its fury. Here was a small picture, representing a fishing-boat sinking, sinking hopelessly, beyond possibility of hope or succour, its mariners’ hands and their beseeching countenances outstretched to heaven. The frame above it contained a view of another fishing-vessel approaching its harbour in safety. The chances and dangers of its past voyage were surmounted, and home faces were collected on the beach to welcome it in.
The chapel was dark; dark even in the daytime. The windows were sombre with their stained glass; and the ornaments, cases of relics, images, and pictures, raised against them, further obstructed the light. It never was wholly dark, for the high candles on the altar were kept continually burning, and numberless collections of miniature tapers were lighted up by the kneeling women. From sunrise till late at night the chapel was receiving and pouring forth its crowds. The sailor men and boys would come in, sink on their knees before one or other of the images, St. Andrew, or St. Peter, or the Virgin, and remain there, still as death, for a couple of minutes, praying to the saint. Then they crossed themselves and passed out, and the short prayer would last most of them until their return, when they would go into the same chapel and offer as brief thanks. The women remained kneeling longer: their prayers were chiefly for a bon voyage and safe return; the men’s, for a good haul of cod. Not half the people who crowded there on the few evenings preceding the boats’ departure could get an entrance into the chapel; therefore many were content to kneel outside, on the enclosed space of waste ground around it, and there pray. They all managed to steal a look through the open door at whichever image they patronised, bowed to it, made the sign of the cross, and so departed in peace.
There glided a lady into the chapel this evening at the dusk hour. She looked of superior class, and was handsomely but quietly dressed. She drew aside to the remotest obscurity of the chapel entrance, and leaned against the bar that was placed there to guard the paintings, waiting till her turn should come to push in with the stream. She was a middle-aged woman, and must once have been beautiful, but her features looked clouded with care. A young woman followed her in the neat dress of a French domestic servant, wearing the universal dark cloth cloak, and close snow-white cap. The lady was anxious to pray, and soon passed on; the maid was more anxious to look about her and to gossip, so she stopped at the entrance. Presently an acquaintance came up, another woman-servant, who accosted her: —
“Hey, Thérése, is it you? Who have you come to pray for? I thought your brother was not going this year.”
“I am attending madame.”
“Madame Janson! What does she do here? She has nothing to do with the cod-fishery.”
“I can tell you that she has, though,” was the reply of Thérése, “and a fine way the house has been in, through it. You know her son?”
“Who does not? A rackety blade.”
“Rackety! Well, he may be a little. Everybody likes him, though.”
“Well, what of him?”
“He is going out with the cod-boats to Iceland.”
“With the cod-boats! That young Englishman!
Why, what on earth — it can’t be.”
Thérése nodded her head several times in succession. “Some whim of his. He goes for pleasure, he says.”
“Stuff, Thérése! Such a thing was never heard of as going out with the cod-boats for pleasure. It’s a precious hard voyage and hard life. Besides, the crew don’t want a fine gentleman on board.”
“Oh, what do they care? He has made it all right with Messrs. Vandersphinks, the owners.”
“Vandersphinks! Which is he going out in, then?”
“The Rushing Water.”
“Well, he has got a taste! To go out in a dirty cod-boat to that cold barren Iceland, a handsome young fellow like that! Will he share the sailors’ fare?”
“Not he: any more than he’ll share their labour. There’s some tins of preserved meat gone on board for him, and a big hamper of prime Bordeaux wine.”
“And that brings his mother here — to pray for his safe return! Thérése, it’s a lucky thing she is not a heretic, though she is one of them English, or she couldn’t have come here to pray for it — at least, with any chance of St. Peter listening to her. But, I say, he is a heretic, isn’t he?”
Thérése nudged her companion for silence. And the woman, looking round, saw close to her a party of “heretics;” two English ladies and a child, who had come, full of British curiosity, to witness the praying in the chapel.
“You shouldst call ’em so to their faces,” whispered the tolerant Thérése. “They are as good as we are, for all I see, and” —
Thérése broke off suddenly, and dropped upon her knees. Her mistress was coming out again, after her short prayer.
“Thérése, have you not been in?” demanded Mrs. Janson, in very good French, her tone betraying reproach and surprise.
“Couldn’t get in, madame,” answered Thérése, without thinking it necessary to add that she had not tried.
It took some time to get out. Several were pushing out, as well as themselves, but they were obstructed by the numbers pushing in. Immediately following Mrs. Janson, were the two English ladies mentioned, the younger one, who was an elegant girl of remarkable beauty, remonstrating at their leaving so soon.
“Henry is so troublesome,” replied her companion. “I could scarcely hold him still, do all I would. He wanted to run inside, amidst the mass kneeling there.”
“I told you it would be so, mamma. You should have left him at home.”
“Oh, of course,” observed the elder lady, in a sharp accent “I know he is an eyesore to you, Elizabeth.”
“Mamma, you know that he is nothing of the sort. But he is the most troublesome boy that ever existed, especially to take anywhere.”
Miss Saxonbury was right; for it was no other. Never was there so troublesome a child as Henry Yorke. He was a slender boy of ten, fair and delicate, with well-formed features and long wavy hair, the combing out of which every morning by his mother, and the coaxing into curls, kept the house in an uproar for an hour. He was one of those precocious, clever children, who, to use a familiar phrase, are “awake to everything,” restless, mischievous, and wilful. Yet the boy had admirable qualities, had they been allowed fair play, but his mother pursued a system of ruinous indulgence. He was the pride and delight of her life, and the torment of every one else’s. A whim had taken him lately to call his half-sister (if she might be termed such) by her second name, Elizabeth. He detected that she did not like it, and therefore he did it, for mischiefs sake. Lady Saxonbury fell sometimes into the same name. Maria felt convinced that it was done to please Henry and vex herself.
No sooner were they outside than Henry managed to emancipate himself from his mother’s grasp, and she had the satisfaction of seeing him rush back again, twist himself amidst the blockade at the entrance, and disappear.
“There!” uttered Lady Saxonbury, “he is gone — just like an eel! What am I to do to get at him? Wait here, Maria.”
“Thérése,” said Mrs. Janson, who had seen and heard this bit of byplay, “go home fast and get supper ready. If Mr, Edward should be at home, tell him I shall soon be in.”
Thérése went off, picking her way through the lines of kneelers on the earth, and turning her head and her drooping gold earrings from side to side, in search of a gossip to walk with. Miss Saxonbury, who had drawn aside to be out of the way of passers-by, found herself suddenly addressed.
“You are Maria Elizabeth Saxonbury?”
“Yes,” she replied, wondering at the stranger’s familiarity.
“I knew you by intuition. I heard Miss Saxonbury was of rare beauty, and I have not often witnessed beauty to match what I now see in you. If it shall prove the blight to others that it has to me, better for you that you had been a model of deformity.”
“I do not understand you,” haughtily spoke Miss Saxonbury. “I do not know you.”
“I have given you no opportunity to know me. I am Edward Janson’s mother. I have lived in this place many years, holding myself aloof from my countrymen, who flock here to make it their few years’ residence, or their few weeks’ sojourn. I am too poor to compete with some of their ostentatious purses. I am saving for my son; and I am too proud to risk familiarity with doubtful characters — as many of them are. Therefore your family and I have never met. I wish I could say that you had never met my son. You have played your beauty off upon him, flirted with him, courted him — yes, you have, Miss Saxonbury! — and drawn him on to love you. When that love had reached a height that it could no longer be suppressed within the bounds of prudence, and he told it to you, you rejected him. It may be, with scorn, because he was poor and you were rich: I know not: from him I have learnt nothing. He has kept his own counsel and your secret; but I have watched closely, and know the day that brought to him this despair. In blighting his happiness you have blighted mine.”
Maria Saxonbury’s glowing features had turned to paleness, and now they were glowing again. The words told home. She appeared too confused to answer, and Mrs. Janson continued —
“He came over here to pass a few weeks with me before he should settle in his profession, in his own country. Those weeks have been passed with you, rather than with me, and now he is going out with these wretched cod-fishers, and may never return.”
“Going out with the cod-fishers!” mechanically interrupted Maria.
“Yes, he is,” replied Mrs. Janson. “When he came home, two days ago, and told me his intention, I thought my heart would have broken; and in my haste I wished that you had been dead — dead, young lady — before you had lured my boy on to love you, and then treated him so, that he must go this hard voyage to forget you and strive for peace. I have pity for misfortune,” added Mrs. Janson, “but I have none for wilful fault, for the sinful indulgence of vanity. I do not wish you ill, Maria Saxonbury; I trust I have too much Christian charity deliberately to wish it to any one; but I cannot help feeling that, should your existence become as bitter to you as you have made mine, it will only be a just retribution.”
Without another word, she turned away, leaving Miss Saxonbury rooted to the spot, and miserably conscious. All that Mrs. Janson had reproached her with was, in the main, only too just. In the old days at Saxonbury she had first flirted with Edward Janson for love of admiration’s sake. Now that the love which supervened had been spoken, she meant to bury hers within her own breast, to stifle it, to extinguish it; and she had turned him adrift to do the same.
“I was obliged to hold up a five-franc piece to bribe him to come out,” said Lady Saxonbury, emerging from the chapel, hot and red, the truant a fast prisoner in her grasp. “And glad enough to get him out on terms so easy: he had got close up to that lighted altar at the other end.”
Miss Saxonbury took hold of the boy’s other hand, and away they went; Harry delighted at his five-franc piece, and kicking up clouds of dust as he walked between them.—’
The morning rose bright and clear. The tide served at eight o’clock, but long before that hour the port was taken possession of. Half the town was there to witness the departure, thronging the piers and the heights. It was a stirring sight. Vessel after vessel, hoisting its sails, came smoothly down the harbour, each receiving an animated, hearty cheer of hope from hundreds of voices. Wives, mothers, sisters, and little children, leaned over the nearly unprotected sides of the piers, to wish good luck to the several crews, and utter the last farewell in their familiar patois.
One vessel in particular came gaily down, a trim-built craft of middling size. A sunburnt boy, in a fishing-cap, and red flannel shirt, was in the bows, grinning. “Here comes the Rushing Water” cried a spectator. “So, she is taking out young Paul!” he added, as he caught sight of the boy’s face. “The crew of the Fleur de Marie would not take him.”
