The Red Rover & Other Sea Adventures – 3 Novels in One Volume. Джеймс Фенимор Купер

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СКАЧАТЬ calm, dignified countenance of Wyllys, on which it would seem as if long cherished and painful recollections had left a settled, but mild expression of sorrow, that rather tempered than destroyed the traces of character which were still remarkable in her firm collected eye, became clouded, for a moment, with a deeper shade of melancholy. After hesitating, as if willing to change the subject, she replied,—

      “I have not been altogether a stranger to the sea. It has been my lot to have made many long, and some perilous voyages.”

      “As a mere passenger. But we wives of sailors only, among our sex, can lay claim to any real knowledge of the noble profession! What natural object is there, or can there be,” exclaimed the nautical dowager, in a burst of professional enthusiasm, “finer than a stately ship breasting the billows, as I have heard the Admiral say a thousand times, its taffrail ploughing the main, and its cut-water gliding after, like a sinuous serpent pursuing its shining wake, as a living creature choosing its path on the land, and leaving the bone under its fore-foot, a beacon for those that follow? I know not, my dear Wyllys, if I make myself intelligible to you, but, to my instructed eye, this charming description conveys a picture of all that is grand and beautiful!”

      The latent smile, on the countenance of the governess might have betrayed that she was imagining the deceased Admiral had not been altogether devoid of the waggery of his vocation, had not a slight noise, which sounded like the rustling of the wind, but which in truth was suppressed laughter, proceeded from the upper room of the tower. The words, “It is lovely!” were still on the lips of the youthful Gertrude, who saw all the beauty of the picture her aunt had essayed to describe, without descending to the humble employment of verbal criticism. But her voice became hushed, and her attitude that of startled attention:—

      “Did you hear nothing?” she said.

      “The rats have not yet altogether deserted the mill,” was the calm reply of Wyllys.

      “Mill! my dear Mrs Wyllys, will you persist in calling this picturesque ruin a mill?”

      “However fatal it may be to its charms, in the eyes of eighteen, I must call it a mill.”

      “Ruins are not so plenty in this country, my dear governess,” returned her pupil, laughing, while the ardour of her eye denoted how serious she was in defending her favourite opinion, “as to justify us in robbing them of any little claims to interest they may happen to possess.”

      “Then, happier is the country! Ruins in a land are, like most of the signs of decay in the human form, sad evidences of abuses and passions, which have hastened the inroads of time. These provinces are like yourself, my Gertrude, in their freshness and their youth, and, comparatively, in their innocence also. Let us hope for both a long, an useful, and a happy existence.”

      “Thank you for myself, and for my country; but still I can never admit this picturesque ruin has been a mill.”

      “Whatever it may have been, it has long occupied its present place, and has the appearance of continuing where it is much longer, which is more than can be said of our prison, as you call yonder stately ship, in which we are so soon to embark. Unless my eyes deceive me, Madam, those masts are moving slowly past the chimnies of the town.”

      “You are very right, Wyllys. The seamen are towing the vessel into the outer harbour, where they will warp her fast to the anchors, and thus secure her, until they shall be ready to unmake their sails, in order to put to sea in the morning. This is a manoeuvre often performed, and one which the Admiral has so clearly explained, that I should find little difficulty in superintending it in my own person, were it suitable to my sex and station.”

      “This is, then, a hint that all our own preparations are not completed. However lovely this spot may seem, Gertrude, we must now leave it, for some months at least.”

      “Yes,” continued Mrs de Lacey, slowly following the footsteps of the governess, who had already moved from beneath the ruin; “whole fleets have often been towed to their anchors, and there warped, waiting for wind and tide to serve. None of our sex know the dangers of the Ocean, but we who have been bound in the closest of all ties to officers of rank and great service; and none others can ever truly enjoy the real grandeur of the ennobling profession. A charming object is a vessel cutting the waves with her taffrail, and chasing her wake on the trackless waters, like a courser that ever keeps in his path, though dashing madly on at the very top of his speed!—”

      The reply of Mrs Wyllys was not audible to the covert listeners. Gertrude had followed her companions; but, when at some little distance from the tower, she paused, to take a parting look at its mouldering walls. A profound stillness succeeded for more than a minute.

      “There is something in that pile of stones, Cassandra,” she said to the jet-black maiden at her elbow, “that could make me wish it had been something more than a mill.”

      “There rat in ‘em,” returned the literal and simple-minded black; “you hear what Misse Wyllys say?”

      Gertrude turned, laughed, patted the dark cheek of her attendant with fingers that looked like snow by the contrast, as if to chide her for wishing to destroy the pleasing illusion she would so gladly harbour and then bounded down the hill after her aunt and governess, like a joyous and youthful Atalanta.

      The two singularly consorted listeners in the tower stood gazing, at their respective look-outs, so long as the smallest glimpse of the flowing robe of her light form was to be seen and then they turned to each other, and stood confronted, the eyes of each endeavouring to read the expression of his neighbour’s countenance.

      “I am ready to make an affidavit before my Lord High Chancellor,” suddenly exclaimed the barrister, “that this has never been a mill!”

      “Your opinion has undergone a sudden change!”

      “I am open to conviction, as I hope to be a judge. The case has been argued by a powerful advocate, and I have lived to see my error.”

      “And yet there are rats in the place.”

      “Land rats, or water rats?” quickly demanded the other, giving his companion one of those startling and searching glances, which his keen eye had so freely at command.

      “Both, I believe,” was the dry and caustic reply; “certainly the former, or the gentlemen of the long robe are much injured by report.”

      The barrister laughed; nor did his temper appear in the slightest degree ruffled at so free an allusion at his learned and honourable profession.

      “You gentlemen of the Ocean have such an honest and amusing frankness about you,” he said, “that I vow to God you are overwhelming. I am a downright admirer of your noble calling, and something skilled in its terms. What spectacle, for instance, can be finer than a noble ship ‘stemming the waves with her taffrail,’ and chasing her wake, like a racer on the course!”

      “Leaving the ‘bone in her mouth’ under her stern, as a light-house for all that come after!”

      Then, as if they found singular satisfaction in dwelling on these images of the worthy relict of the gallant Admiral, they broke out simultaneously into a fit of clamorous merriment, that caused the old ruin to ring, as in its best days of windy power. The barrister was the first to regain his self-command, for the mirth of the young mariner was joyous, and without the least restraint.

      “But this is dangerous ground for any but a seaman’s widow to touch,” the former observed, as suddenly СКАЧАТЬ