Stand Fast, Craig-Royston! (Volume III). William Black

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СКАЧАТЬ was leaning idly with his elbows on the rail, and looking towards the distant line of the Irish coast that was slowly becoming more definite in form, when Mr. Purser Collins came up to him.

      "There's a very charming lady would like to make your acquaintance," said the officer. "Will you come with me, and I will introduce you?"

      "Oh, very well," Vincent said, but with no great eagerness. "Tell me her name now that I may make sure of it."

      "You are favoured – Mrs. de Lara."

      "Oh, really," he said, indifferently. "She seems to me to have had half the men on the ship fetching and carrying for her all the morning."

      And indeed, when he followed the Purser in order to be introduced to this lady, he found her pretty well surrounded by assiduous gentlemen; and 'if you please – if you please,' Mr. Collins had to keep repeating, before he could bring the new comer into the august presence. Mrs. de Lara – who, on closer inspection, turned out to be quite a young woman, with a pale, clear, olive complexion, softly-lustrous dark eyes that could say a good deal, a pretty smile and dimple, and magnificent hair – received him very graciously; and at once, and completely, and without the slightest compunction, proceeded to ignore the bystanders who had been so officiously kind to her. Of course their conversation was at first the usual nothings. Wonderful weather. Might be midsummer, but for the cold wind. Captain been on the bridge ever since Liverpool, poor man; get some rest after leaving Queenstown. Was she a good sailor? – Some ladies remained in their berths all the way over. Dry champagne, and plenty of it, the only safe-guard? Crossed many times? And so forth. But at length she said —

      "Couldn't you find a chair, and bring it along?"

      Now the assiduous gentlemen had managed to find a very snug corner for Mrs. de Lara, where there was just room for two deck chairs – her own and that of her companion and friend, Miss Martinez; and Vincent, being rather shy, had no intention of jamming himself into this nook. He made some little excuse – and remained standing with the others: whereupon Mrs. de Lara said to her companion —

      "Isabel, will you go and see that the letters I left in my cabin are all properly stamped and put in the post-bag for Queenstown. Thank you, dear!"

      Then, the moment her faithful friend was gone, she said, with something of a French manner —

      "Here is a seat for you: come, tell me what the news of the ship is!"

      Vincent could not very well refuse; though the result of her open preference and selection was that her other obsequious admirers fell away one by one, under some pretence of playing rope-quoits or shovel-board: so that, eventually, he and she were left alone together, for Miss Martinez did not return.

      "Now," said the young grass-widow, whose very pretty chin was cushioned on abundant furs, "I am going to make you happy. But first of all I must tell you – you are in love."

      "Oh, really?" said Vincent.

      "Ah, yes, yes, yes," she said, with a charming insistence. "I have watched you. I know. You keep apart; you look far away; you speak to no one. And then I said to myself that I would make you happy. How? By asking you to tell me all about her."

      Whereupon Vincent said to himself, 'You're a very impertinent woman – although you've got pretty eyes.' And again he said, 'But after all you are a woman; and perhaps from you I may learn something more about Maisrie.' So he said aloud —

      "The deck of a steamer is hardly the place for secrets."

      "Why not?" she protested. "Besides, it is no secret – to anyone with eyes. Come, tell me all about her – and be happy! I wish to interest you; I wish you to interest me; and so let us talk about the only thing that is worth talking about – that is, love. No, there are two things, perhaps – love, and money; but love is so full of surprises; it is the perpetual miracle that no one can understand; it is such a wonderful, unexpected, desperate kind of thing, that it will always be the most interesting. Now!"

      "Well," said he – for there was something catching in the mad audacity of this young matron – "it must be secret for secret. My story for yours!"

      She laughed long and heartily – until her merriment brought tears to her eyes.

      "Why, I'm an old married woman!" she exclaimed. "Ah, I see what your bargain means. You only want to put me off. You think the time and place are not romantic enough; some night – out in mid-Atlantic – with perhaps a moon – and you'll be more communicative, when you forsake the smoking-room for half-an-hour, and send me a little message to meet you. Very well. Perhaps there are too many people tramping up and down. Shall we have a tramp too? Sitting still so stiffens one. There – can you pull off the rugs, do you think? They've swathed me up like a mummy. Now give me your arm; and mind you don't let me go flying – I'm never steady on my feet for the first day or two."

      Well, he found the grass-widow a most charming companion – bright, loquacious, and happy, until, indeed, they steamed into the entrance to Cork Harbour. Here, as most of the passengers were going on board the tender, for a scamper ashore, while the ship waited for the mails to arrive, Mrs. de Lara began to look a little wistful. All of a sudden it occurred to him that he ought, if only in common gratitude for her marked condescension, to ask her if she would care to go also.

      "Oh – Mrs. de Lara," said he, "wouldn't you like to go ashore, and have a look round Queenstown?"

      Her face lighted up in an instant; but there was a curious, amused expression in her eyes.

      "I couldn't go alone with you, you know," said she.

      "Why not?" said he.

      She did not answer that question.

      "If you like to ask Miss Martinez as well as myself," she continued, "I'm sure we should be delighted – and it would be very kind of you."

      "Of course I will!" he said – and at once he went off in search of the needful companion. A few minutes thereafter the three of them were on board the tender, along with the rest of this crowd of eager, chattering passengers.

      And a very pleasant visit it was they paid to the picturesque watering-place and its wide-stretching bay. First of all he took his two guests to a hotel, and gave them an excellent lunch, at which Mrs. de Lara made merry like an enfranchised schoolgirl; then he got an open carriage, and they were driven all about the place; and he bought them such fruit and flowers as he could find, until they were quite laden by the time they got back to the tender. They were in plenty of time; the mails were late. When they eventually returned on board the steamer, Vincent was on the whole very well pleased with that little excursion; only he hoped that the new acquaintanceship that had been formed had not been too conspicuously displayed, for people are given to talking during the longueursof an Atlantic voyage.

      And indeed it very soon appeared that after this little adventure ashore Mrs. de Lara meant to claim him as her own. When she came on deck for the usual promenade before dinner, she sent for him (though there were plenty of gentlemen only too anxious to wait on her), and she took his arm during that perfunctory march up and down. Then she said to him —

      "Would you think me very rude if I asked you to come and sit at our table? The fact is, I want somebody to be good to me, and to look after me; and the Captain, although he is a most delightful man when he happens to be there, is nearly always away, on duty, no doubt. I hate sitting next an empty chair – that throws me on to Miss Martinez and she and I have exhausted all our subjects long ago. You've no particular friend, have you? Come to our table!"

      "But I couldn't think of turning anybody out!" he СКАЧАТЬ