Chapter XX: The Firefly

The red sun of a clear winter day was shining on the two chalky eminences at the embouchure of the Arques, or Bethune, and on the low tongue of land between them, whereon is situated the seaport of Dieppe in Normandy, from the church of which the coast of England can be distinctly seen, when the _Firefly_, which really was a beautiful yacht, crept slowly along on a wind under the lee of the shore, from which she was rather more than a mile distant.

She was a taut-rigged craft of about two hundred tons, and whether one regarded the crew, the fitting of the rigging, or the cut of the sails, it was evident that in skilful hands she could do anything. For a Cowes yacht she was curiously rigged, being a hermaphrodite--brig forward and schooner aft. Her foremast, like her bowsprit, was strong and heavy, her mainmast long and tapering. Her upper spars were slender and light, with topmast, topgallant mast, and royal mast, all like slender wands, yet capable of carrying a great amount of canvas. Her flush deck was white as the driven snow, and she had eight six pounders, all brass, and polished like gold--bright as the copper with which she was sheathed to the bends.

Such was the craft on board of which Alison Cheyne found herself a species of prisoner, and compelled to take a part in an erratic and apparently a purposeless cruise. To sail for Madeira had been the first intention of Lord Cadbury, when Slagg, by his direction, inserted in the newspapers a paragraph to the effect that he had gone to the Mediterranean--a paragraph expressly designed to mislead Bevil Goring; but heavy head-winds had prevailed, and after hanging about in 'the Chops of the Channel' for a week and more, the _Firefly_ was standing northward along the coast of France.

Tom Llanyard, Cadbury's captain, a bluff-looking, curly-haired man, about forty years of age, had been for a brief space a warrant officer in the Royal Navy. He was a good-hearted fellow--not very polished, but a thorough seaman. He had a secret contempt for the character of his employer, who did not care much for yachting, but thought it sounded well to have such an appendage as the _Firefly_ at Cowes. Tom found the pay good; the lodging ditto; and the duty was easy. Tom was a sailor or nothing; and thus being compelled to work, 'the yacht service,' as he used to say, 'suited him to a hair.'

He certainly thought the season a strange one for a cruise; and as for Mr. Gaskins, Cadbury's groom and chief valet, he utterly loathed the whole expedition, and, connecting it shrewdly in some way with Miss Cheyne, he hated her with a most unholy hatred.

To Tom Llanyard she was a new experience; she was so totally unlike any other of her sex he had seen on board the _Firefly_; and he had--we are sorry to say--seen many that were rather remarkable.

The weather had been rough, and the poor girl, who had suffered much from sea sickness, of a necessity remained below; while her luckless attendant, Daisy Prune, was utterly prostrated by the same ailment, and the order of things was now reversed, for Alison had to attend upon her. The presence of Daisy, however, was a source of protection to the former, as it saved her from much of the attention of Cadbury, who had hoped that great events might be developed or achieved by the sea voyage.

Alison's freshness was delightful to the coarse, jaded man of the world, who, tired at last of extravagant and congenial dissipation (that would have horrified his worthy father the Alderman of Threadneedle Street), thought now of trying domestic felicity, _pour se désennuyer_; and truly Alison was so unlike most of the other women he had known, or whose acquaintance he had chosen to cultivate, that the present opportunity gave him great expectations of the future.

He actually reckoned upon a safe conquest, now that he had her all to himself; and so far as Sir Ranald was concerned, while piling kindnesses upon him, and pressing upon him also the best wines that the cellar of Cadbury Court offered, he would not have been sorry had a gale of wind blown the pompous old baronet overboard, and left Alison alone in the world--alone, and at his mercy!

Leaving Sir Ranald busy with a telescope on deck scanning the churches of St. Jacques and St. Remy, with Le Follet and the fisher town of Dieppe, Cadbury descended to the luxurious and beautiful little cabin of the yacht, the gilded and mahogany fittings of which were exquisite, and there found Alison--alone, as he expected.

How sad and fair, young and pure, she looked in all the brightness of her beauty, as her head rested against the crimson back of the cushioned locker or sofa on which she was seated in an attitude expressive of utter weariness of heart.

'Alison,' said he, attempting to take her hand.

Her eyes flashed now, and her proud little lip curled, as she said, 'Lord Cadbury, when did I give you permission to call me--as papa does--by my Christian name?'

'Why do you _Lord_ me?' he asked; 'I would you called me--Timothy,' he added, rather faintly; and at this absurd name a little smile flickered on Alison's pale face, and a gesture of impatience escaped her, as she knew that she was about to be subjected to some more of his odious and weary love-making.

'My passion for you made me so modest and diffident,' said he (though in reality it was his years), 'that I addressed myself first to your father, though you were well aware of the sweet hopes I fostered in my heart, Alison.'

'It is impossible for me to listen to more of this sort of thing, Lord Cadbury.'

'I can scarcely believe that your decision is final--that you are in earnest with me.'

'Earnest! Do you imagine, sir, that I would jest in this matter, and--and with you?' she exclaimed, becoming--with all her native gentleness--tremulous with suppressed passion.

'When once I ventured to hint of a deeper interest in you than mere friendship, you did not discourage me,' urged Cadbury, who by use and wont could make love in his own way pretty fluently now.

'Perhaps I misunderstood you,--or deemed it--deemed it----'

'What, Alison?'

'A fatherly interest.'

Cadbury winced a little at this remark.

'In anything beyond that,' continued Alison, 'you perhaps do me honour, but in any instance I can never love where I do not respect and esteem.'

'And have I forfeited your esteem?'

'Yes.'

'In what way?'

'By trepanning me on board this yacht--away from home and my friends!'

'Friends at Aldershot,' thought Cadbury, as he laughed to himself and said,

'But why so severe a term as trepanning?'

'You led me to believe when we quitted Chilcote in such hot haste that instant flight alone in this vessel would save papa from arrest through certain bills which he says he saw you destroy. So you and he--_he_,' she added, with a heavy sob--'have both deceived me, and now I believe neither of you. It was a vile trick on the part of you both to separate me from Captain Goring.'

Cadbury had reckoned at least upon her gratitude for taking up the bills of Slagg, as he had to some extent won that of her father; but even this plan failed to serve him, and so far as Alison was concerned he might as well have thrown his money into the sea. The name of his rival on her lips infuriated him, and he tugged at his long, white horse-shoe moustache viciously, as he thought that he had played what he deemed his trump card, and yet lost after all!

He gave her a glance of a rather mingled nature and retreated to the deck, where his discomposure of face and manner was so apparent to Sir Ranald that, after a few words of explanation, the latter sought the cabin to remonstrate with the unfortunate and weary Alison.

As was before hinted, Sir Ranald's emotions were of a curiously mingled nature. He felt that he certainly owed a debt of gratitude to Lord Cadbury for relieving him of terrible monetary pressure, and he was anxious, for various reasons, that Alison should accept him. He had no romance in his nature--never had any, and did not believe that disparity of years and tastes--still less a secret or previous fancy--were to be valued or consulted at all!

He felt that he acted wisely to his daughter in leaguing with the wealthy peer against her; yet, over and above all, he loved her dearly and tenderly; and amid all this was an undying hostility to Bevil Goring, whom he deemed the real cause of all this opposition to their wishes, and consequently the present trouble, turmoil, and unnecessary voyaging in rough and wintry weather.

Though it was a relief, without doubt, to be away now beyond the reach or ken of the hook-nosed or vulture-eyed money-lenders, who, like Slagg, had long possessed, among their ofttimes hopelessly-regarded assets, his bills and acceptances.

He saw she looked pale, very pale indeed; but that, of course, he attributed to the _mal de mer_; but as for love, no one, he believed, ever sickened or died of that. A long separation was the surest and best cure.

'Foolish girl!' he began at once; 'still mooning, and actually talking, as Cadbury told me, of that utterly ineligible and most detrimental fellow at Aldershot; I am certain you could forget him if you tried, Alison. In these days of ours, ninety-nine girls out of a hundred would leap with exultation at such offers as those of Lord Cadbury.'

'Then, I suppose, I must be the hundredth girl, papa,' said Alison, steadily and gravely; for a consciousness that her father, whom she had deemed the mirror of honour, had leagued with this _parvenu_ to deceive her, had caused a change in her manner towards him.

'And I repeat that in these days of ours,' he continued, 'it is, or ought to be, the object of both men and women to marry well.'

'That is, to marry for money,' said Alison.

'Yes; if a girl has beauty and birth, but not money, she should look for some one who has that more than necessary element towards our very existence. If she has money with both these attributes, she should look for something more.'

'More, papa?'

'Yes, she should look for that which a poor girl seldom or never has offered her.'

'And what is that?'

'A title.'

'In fact, in any way or every way to sell herself to the highest bidder. Oh, what a selfish code!' exclaimed the girl, with great bitterness of heart. 'Did the Cheynes of Essilmont always do this?'

'They of old were not as we are now.'

'What?'

'Beggars!' replied her father, with equal bitterness of heart, for his was naturally a proud one; 'but, as Lever says, "the world makes us many things we never meant to be."'

'Do you forget, papa, that marriage is a sacrament, and that without a full and perfect consent it is in reality no marriage at all, and should not be binding, even though the blessing were given by the Archbishop of Canterbury.'

'What do you mean, Alison?' asked her father, surprised alike by her tone and this theory.

'Simply what I say.'

'How dare you, a mere girl, talk thus?'

'Take care, papa. If driven desperate, there is no knowing what I may--not say--but do!'

Sir Ranald became silent. He had never seen her in this mood before; and he, of course, ascribed it to 'the fatal influence that fellow Goring had obtained over her mind.'

So this conversation ended; but the interview with her father and that with Cadbury are but examples of many with which she was tormented daily _ad nauseam_.

Alison ere long had fresh food for sorrow given to her, when a pilot boat brought off to the _Firefly_ some London papers, and in these she was informed--as if by chance--there were rumours of the fast approaching war in Africa, and she saw the glances, most meaning glances, of satisfaction that were exchanged by her father and Lord Cadbury, on its being announced that among the troops detailed for service in the field under Sir Garnet Wolseley was the regiment of Bevil Goring; and so a double and more terrible separation--perhaps a final and fatal one--was before them, and the heart of the poor girl seemed to fill with tears as she read and re-read the startling paragraph.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

LONDON: PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD, BLENHEIM HOUSE.