CHAPTER IV. THE PROPOSAL.
One afternoon, a week after Captain Jackman had lunched at Battle Lodge, as the commander had tremendously named his trifling villa, Miss Conway was pacing her bedroom with impatient feet, slanting an eye, eloquent of purpose that had waxed almost into temper, over the old-fashioned, puckered blinds which concealed the interior of the room from the roadway leading to the town.
At this same hour, the commander, who was red in the face from having sat beside the fire, was musing over a letter in his hand.
'What can he want?' he thought, as he strutted from the table to the window to and fro. 'Does he hope to borrow money? I have not a farthing to lend him, and should at once insist upon returning his bracelet. Is he seeking some situation here? There is nothing vacant down at the wharf, or upon the coast, anyway, that I have heard of, though I should be glad to oblige a man who acted as he did towards my daughter in a delicate and difficult situation. I would oblige him, certainly, I have thanked him merely. He, on the other hand, has given us a noble bracelet and a magnificent dinner.'
The letter sank in his hand. The bigoted old fool stared hard into the fire. These wonderful old people, who believe in nothing but the dead thing in the ships they've sailed in, in the pap-bottle they sucked at, do not seem able to see round the corner, where the live thing absolute, and no nonsense about it, is always coming.
The hall bell clanked, and presently the servant admitted Captain Jackman. There were the usual salutations.
'So you are still amusing yourself in these parts,' said the commander. 'Pray be seated, captain.'
'It answers my purpose to linger,' answered Captain Jackman coolly.
And the commander had to own that the fellow looked uncommonly handsome, with a gentleman-like character about his beauty, which was promise of a good record.
'I thought,' said the commander, with a harsh, uneasy laugh, 'that you were here only to inspect the Devil's Walk.'
'Surely, sir, my reasons for remaining here need be known to myself only, I hope.'
'Quite so,' said the commander largely.
'But I intend,' continued Captain Jackman, 'to make you a sharer in the business of my detention, by telling you that the letter you hold is to ask you for the hand of your daughter Ada.'
'No, sir, never!' shouted the commander.
'Softly, commander. You do not seem to consider that we are truly in love, that she is over age, and——'
'And what, sir?' bawled Commander Conway.
The captain smiled.
'Keep seated,' said the commander.
He seated himself by the fire, and now the talk flowed.
'This is my only daughter, do you see,' said the silver-headed old man. 'I hope you do not mean to take her from me.'
'Every girl needs a father at the start, and a husband afterwards,' said Captain Jackman. 'This girl is too beautiful and noble in spirit to be allowed to languish on top of a cliff within sight of a single scene of the sea. Young women like pleasures—music, the dance, the theatre, the opera—they do not care for nothing but windmills and fishing-boats——' He was proceeding.
'Hold, sir!' shouted the commander. 'What portion of all this glory could you display to my daughter?'
'I will take her off a cliff to start with, commander, and anchor her close to the sights which are worth seeing.'
'What are your means? Can you support my daughter without obliging me to put my hand in my pocket?'
'I shall not call upon you for a bad sixpence,' answered Captain Jackman, with a lofty toss of his head.
The commander stared hard at him, and breathed short, then burst forth—
'But how do I know who you are? You get locked up in a cave with my daughter, fall in love with her inside of a fortnight, and propose for her hand. I am thunderstruck. Marriage is a slow and solemn thing—a contract that is not to be thundered through as though a hurricane of need blew astern of it. You have told us your parents are dead, and I have no doubt, sir, from the sample they have left in their offspring, that they were in the highest degree respectable; but they were strangers. I never contemplated a marriage of this sort. You may have relations my daughter may find extremely degrading to her.'
'You should not talk thus without knowing,' said Captain Jackman, starting on his chair, and looking very fiery and disdainful. 'It is not customary, I think, to sweep the circle of the relations of a lady whose hand we propose for, otherwise——' He coughed.
'What does that cough signify, sir?'
'Mr. Fortt!'
The commander coloured, and looked viciously at the captain, but made no reply; in fact, he had no reply to make; for Captain Jackman, in probing and prowling about and asking questions, had got to hear that Fortt, who was a retired dairyman and a good-looking man with strong whiskers, had married Conway's sister, and was living with her in a handsome villa. The commander was not, by this marriage, to be driven from his guns. He stuck to his home, but he never approached the Fortts' house, nor had a word or a look for his sister and her man if he met them. On the other hand, Miss Conway regularly visited her uncle and aunt, and occasionally made excursions with them to a considerable distance, such as Canterbury and London.
At this instant she entered. She leapt in a graceful bound from the bottom step of the short flight into the room, giving her body as many swings, though always of a stately sort, as you would expect to see in some lively princess on her entrance.
'Why, Captain Jackman!' she cried with well-assumed amazement at his presence, as if she had not watched him coming, as if she had not seen him turn the corner to ring the hall bell, as if she had not heard, at the head of the short staircase, the loud conversation that had followed on his admission. 'This, our sailors here would say, is a sight for sore eyes. We are bears in a cage to you; and you do not love bears.'
'I have come, madam,' said Captain Jackman, 'to speak to the commander on a subject which must needs be of deep interest to us both.'
'What is it?' she cried, beginning to heave her breast, and looking at her father.
'Captain Jackman's called to ask for your hand in marriage,' said the commander.
'Well?' said the girl.
'I cannot give my consent.'
'Why not? Captain Jackman is a man of as good degree as you. He is a gentleman to the very heels of him, don't you know. I love him; and you must consent!'
'There is a mystery,' said Commander Conway, clasping his gouty hands upon his portly waistcoat, 'that troubles me, and excites dislike. What was he doing in the Devil's Walk?'
'Curiosity, sir. I have answered that. Curiosity took me there.'
'It is not satisfactory to me that the captain should have been dismissed his ship for having been innocently robbed of fifteen hundred pounds.'
'I would advise you to say no more in respect of that,' said the captain, stepping so as to confront Commander Conway. 'I am a man to force you to apologise for your infamous insinuation by carrying you to London, and compelling you to face the owners themselves.'
'I wish you to say nothing more about it,' exclaimed the commander, with an angry motion of his arm, the fist of which looked to be locked. 'What I want you both to understand is, I cannot approve of, and therefore cannot sanction, the marriage of my daughter to a stranger who had no existence to us a few days ago; who has not explained how he is to support his wife when he marries her—whether he intends to go to sea and carry his wife with him, or leave her ashore. If ashore, what sort of home can his means afford her? For, sir,' he said, looking up at the captain, who still stood in front of him, 'we know that a master in the merchant service is not paid wages which a wise sailor would dream of getting married on. And at present you have no ship, no employ, no more probabilities of work than other people walking about the docks—all excepting a brig, upon which heirloom I make you my compliments.' And he bowed with a sarcastic air.
'There is not the slightest use,' Captain Jackman replied, 'in answering your questions, unless you intend to give us your sanction.'
Ada, fast breathing, eyes glittering, nostrils swelling, stepped round and stood beside her man—a handsome pair.
'You may depend upon it,' continued the captain, 'that if I marry this lady, I shall not trouble you; on the contrary, I think it more likely that you will trouble me.'
'What do you mean, sir?' shouted the commander.
'I have a golden scheme, and it will come off,' said Captain Jackman, with a singular smile lighting up his face.
The commander was silent for at least a minute. A minute is a long time of silence on an occasion of this sort. During the pause he eyed Jackman with a gaze of corkscrews and screwdrivers.
'I see how it is, father,' said Miss Conway, in a voice of bitter contempt, and with a manner daringly defiant. 'You mean to keep me at home all my life—or your life, which may be long, for you take good care of yourself. You mean that I should become a wrinkled old maid, without hopes of a husband, without a chance of getting away from this sickeningly dull hole, merely because it suits you, and it is convenient to you to keep me at home as a companion. You do not love to be alone. I would bear you company willingly,' she cried, with enlarged nostril, 'to your grave, though it should make me sixty years of age, if it were not for your selfishness.'
'Sir,' said the commander, 'you perceive what sort of a young lady you wish to clasp to your heart as a life partner.'
'Have I your consent to our marriage,' answered the tall, handsome Jackman, looking down at Commander Conway with a barely visible curve of contempt at either corner of his mouth.
'He would deny me a sight of life,' shrieked the girl almost hysterically. 'I am to gaze, by his command, on nothing but the ocean. We go nowhere. I take lonely walks. You saw me on one of those lonely walks, Captain Jackman, and I am thankful to remember that I saved your life. My father is selfish, and does not enter into the feelings of the young. He has lived, and we too must live and see life. This gentleman loves me,' she said, laying her hand with fine grace upon the captain's shoulder, and looking at her father with an expression of desperation in her beauty, 'and I love him, and we shall be married.'
The commander, not perhaps relishing the being seated whilst these two continued to tower over him, sprang up and stepped across to the other side of the table.
'You'll not marry with my consent,' he exclaimed, 'until I learn more of this gentleman's antecedents, connections, career. I don't want certificates of conduct,' he added with an arch sneer. 'I want to know is this man who has made a bid for my family a gentleman? Next let me be satisfied as to the ways and means of this business. He is flinging his money generously about down here; he should have plenty. Will you not tell me how much you have?'
'I have told you that I'm a poor man; but that I have an occupation, and meanwhile a brilliant scheme.'
'Submit it,' shouted the commander.
Captain Jackman shook his head slowly.
'And you think I'm going to sanction your marrying my daughter—to such a man as you? What is your mystery? You shall hire the Devil's Walk, and spend a little money on decorating it, and support my daughter on the sixpences you take.' The commander laughed harshly. 'There is no room in this house, I beg to assure you, for two families; and that being so, and as you decline to give me any satisfaction as to your antecedents, and your capability of supporting a wife, I absolutely decline to sanction your marriage.'
Saying which he gave Captain Jackman a stiff bow, left the room, and marched very creakily upstairs. The lovers looked at each other in silence, and then the captain kissed the girl's forehead. Tears were in her eyes.
'There is the other way,' said he, in a soft voice. 'Unnatural thoughts should be opposed by unnatural deeds. I am a gentleman—as much so as he. He knows it. He is prejudiced. He does not like my being fallen in with in that cave. He does not like the idea of having a master in the merchant service for a son-in-law. Ada,' he whispered, 'he will never consent, but there is the other way.' He made a movement so as to leave the house.
'You have said nothing about our future arrangements,' she cried.
'Everything now depends upon you,' he answered, very softly. 'There is the other way, my dearest, 'he again whispered with great significance, and a look that beamed with love.
'Stay, I will put on my hat and walk into the town with you. We can arrange at our hearts' will as we go.'
Commander Conway stood at his window overlooking the road, and witnessed this couple's departure. He was deeply incensed. But, like all fathers thus placed with an active, determined daughter who would marry a bagman sooner than remain unwedded, all that he could do was to gesticulate, and all that he could say was, no, with the emphasis of the rolling sea, and then sit down upon that 'no' and await the consequences of his heart-breaking command.
He saw old Mr. Leaddropper, a retired pilot of the Trinity House, a man with very arched legs, and a full August moon of face, and long shoes with buckles. This man pulled off his round hat to Miss Conway as they passed, and called out—
'Is father at home, missie?'
'Ay, you'll find him at home,' answered the girl.
Old Leaddropper made several turns with his head after he had got the couple astern, in order to view Captain Jackman. He had heard of this gentleman from his great friend Captain Burgoyne, an old East Indiaman, but had not seen him. Meanwhile Commander Conway at his bedroom window saw Leaddropper coming, and watched with mingled emotions the frequent looks the bow-legged pilot cast behind him.
'How do you do, Conway?' said Leaddropper, entering the house, as the commander descended the stairs. 'Fine gal that of yours!'
He walked into the dining-room. The commander followed him.
'Oh, that I was the man I looked, and felt, when the last century was eighty!' He seated himself.
'You were not just hatched even at that,' said the commander, walking up and down the little room. 'What's the news?'
'For my part I've got not a stroke,' said the old pilot, blandly following with motions of his blood-stained eyes the movements of the commander, as he placed a decanter of rum upon the table, together with a jug of water and tumblers taken from the sideboard.
'Help yourself,' said the commander.
The pilot did so. The commander took a drop, lighted his pipe, and the pilot drank his health.
'Not a stroke of news,' continued old Leaddropper. 'But stay! Blamed if there isn't a talk of some one going about working up a crew out of our little town.'
'That'll be Jackman,' said the commander. 'Certain. What can he want a crew for, and why is he found in the Devil's Walk?'
'Was that the man that I saw your daughter walking with just now?' inquired the pilot.
The commander let fall a surly nod.
'If so, he's a precious good-looking young man, with that sort of eye which tells of a right heart, so I think. His behaviour to your daughter in them vaults that night was that of a gentleman.'
'Have you come up at anybody's urgent request to do a bit of special pleading with me, Leaddropper?' exclaimed the commander, looking a little darkly upon his friend.
'What do you mean?'
'I suppose you know,' said the commander, 'that that gentleman, who styles himself Captain Jackman, wants to obtain my sanction to his marriage to my daughter?'
'How should I know?' said the pilot, draining his glass, and looking at the decanter. 'But if it be as you say, where's the harm? What's the objection? If your gal were mine I should reckon her lucky to get into tow with one of the handsomest gentlemen I ever clapped my eyes on.'
'Blast the handsomest gentleman! How can a man support a wife on his looks? This handsome gentleman has nothing saving apparently some loose gold'—and here he spoke with a curious intonation—'which he is glad to sling about him in this quiet spot, at the rate of forty-five pounds a go. Stay!' he added, confused by his own meanness. 'He has a brig, but without capital, without a crew, without evidently any disposition to make use of the brig. How shall she count in his list of effects?'
'Young people must have a chance,' said the pilot. 'Parents are always for opposing as they were opposed; but the fakes come out of the coil all the same, and there's no singing out of "avast!" to the sculler whose boat has got the end of the rope. How's your gal, your very fine gal, going to get married down here? Who's to admire her? Who's to see her? Naturally, when one comes along who has eyes, he desires her, Conway; and so should I, my friend, if I could slide my life back thirty year.'
'What have you heard about this collecting of men for a crew?' asked the commander. 'Is there some reference to his brig in this job? But why should he come down all these leagues from London for men? What's being said about my daughter?'
'Nothing that's reached my ears. Nothing that could annoy ye, anyway,' said the old pilot. 'I did hear that they were likely to be engaged because of their being locked up all night under the earth alone. Some fathers would feel a little sensitive on this matter. You don't seem to have taken it to heart, commander;' and the pilot flourished his glass at his mouth, and put it down with a gesture eloquent of 'no more.'
'Am I to be told,' cried the commander, whisking round upon the pilot, and taking aim at him with the stem of his pipe, 'that every one who saves the life of another must marry 'em? Why, the penalty might be regarded as so violent there'd be no life-saving at all. A young man on the sea-shore would say, "I see a girl drowning; never do to save her; most indelicate for her to be seen lying in my arms in her bathing-gown!" Nothing but marriage could rescue the lady from the very compromising situation the gentleman, by saving her life, had placed her in.'
Leaddropper sniggered.
Whilst these two old sailors were conversing in the little square cottage on the top of the tall cliffs, Captain Jackman and Ada Conway were slowly making their way towards the town. The flash of the sea far down, the guns of the sea low down, the white lightning of the gulls' flight went with them; and with them rode a pleasant panorama of shipping; a line-of-battle ship was making her way up Channel; she hung sullen, and tossed with massive plunge, heaving about her the foam of a dozen breaking seas; a smart little schooner, with masts like fishing-rods, sitting low and almost level, save where her bow struck for domination in an abrupt leap of sheer, was cutting through her own yeast; others were glorious with the light and the life, and all that the ocean has of beauty to confer upon the fabrics which sail upon it and trust it; but none of these things did the lovers take heed of.
Probably Jackman had had enough of the sea and its pictures, and nothing short of a whirlpool or a lightning-clothed disaster, full of foam and rolling peals, was likely to court Miss Conway's eye to that wide blue flashing breast.
'Ada,' said Jackman, 'your father will not give his consent. That's as certain to me as that it is I that am talking to you.'
'Why will not he give me my way?' she cried. 'It's hard to have to take it—to leave an old father. Yet he binds me to him by nothing; we see little or nothing of each other. I am a convenience as mistress of his house. But I am not mistress, and every day makes me feel the want of independence.'
'Will you trust yourself with me in the little parlour of the "Faithful Heart"?' said the captain, after a short pause. 'I have a project I want to talk to you about.'
'After the Devil's Walk!' she cried, with spirit. 'After that, Walter, I think I should be able to trust you anywhere.'
'Come to the little inn!'
They walked down the broad, steep street, speaking little. Those who knew Miss Conway bowed with arch looks. Not often was a marriage celebrated in that steep little town. A good-looking young man straying into the place was viewed rather with astonishment than with desire. And if ever the desire came it was promptly ended by the good-looking young man's disappearance.
Here now was undoubtedly a good-looking couple, unquestionably engaged to be married; and friends bowed archly, and others stared. They arrived at the 'Faithful Heart' and entered. Captain Jackman conducted the young lady upstairs to the little parlour in which she had played the spinet that night the three had dined together. The captain was advancing to grasp the bell-rope.
'What do you want?' said Ada.
'Some refreshments for you.'
'Nothing, absolutely. Leave that bell alone, be as swift as possible, come and sit here on this sofa beside me, and tell me your secret—the secret, I presume, on which we are to get married—that is to say, on which we are to run away, as I too certainly feel it must come to.'
She spoke in hard words, but in a love-sweetened voice, and extended her hand to bring him to her. He kissed her brow as though she was a saint and he adored her.
'To start with, Ada, I am going to tell you what I never intended to hint at until we were man and wife, when our lives and interests should be identical. But your father's stubbornness must determine us, we must elope. Now, before we do that, it is my duty to reveal myself in full. I have called myself a gentleman, Ada; to you I shall endeavour to prove myself one.'
'I need no further proofs,' she answered, looking at him with a smile. 'What is this scheme, dear, which is to prove so golden, and which is to win my father's congratulations?'
The captain laughed.
'I doubt,' he answered, 'if he is of the so sweet, so delighted, I am sure, type of men.'
'The scheme!' said the girl earnestly.
'Ada, I must tell you here now what I have sometimes told you before. I am poor—a poor sailor, a stone-broke seaman with a hatred of his calling. I have been dismissed from my ship for a theft, and I look upon myself as lost. No firms owning such vessels as my dignity would suffer me to command would employ me. I am utterly poor—and thirty, and must make my fortune by a coup or end my existence.'
'You need not talk like that.'
'The comfortable grave is better than destitution, better than the cold winter's night and the thrust of the night-watch.'
'Your scheme, dear!'
'You have heard me speak of the little vessel that is lying in the East India Docks. You also know that I have been engaged whilst here in adding to the crew I desire to collect for her.'
'You mean to go to sea in that ship?' she asked eagerly.
'Certainly, and shortly, and on what errand do you suppose, Ada? I mean to be a gentleman,' he continued, smiling with a rather hard expression, 'and I am determined to carry that calling handsomely. Now, listen, my love. Frequently from Lisbon and Cadiz the Spanish and Portuguese merchants are shipping heavy consignments in gold to the Spice and other Islands. I can ascertain the sailing of those ships, and gather their lading.'
The girl began to eye him with a crooked brow, yet with sparkling eyes.
'There is a fortune floating for a man in any one of those craft, and it is my idea, nay, it is my intention, to gut some stately galloon of her precious metal, and retire ashore upon it, living as a fine gentleman with you, Ada.'
'If they catch you, you'll be hanged,' said the girl, bending her dark brows at him. 'For what you propose to attempt is piracy, and the pirate is one of those dangling figures which revolve in irons, and strike horror into the wayfarer.'
'I am aware that they hang pirates. I am also aware,' said Captain Jackman, 'that I must either make my fortune or end my life. I choose the former. It can be done, and easily done, in spite, dearest, of your beautiful staring face of wonder. I intend to equip my brig with certain artillery, which shall lie hidden until we get to sea. We bend sail and reeve all gear in dock, and blow out quietly with a few of the hands. As we sail down the Channel, we touch and pick up portions of the crew which I have engaged or which remain to be engaged. I am now in possession of one of the smartest and fastest brigs afloat, newly coppered to the bends, liberally armed, with boats at her davits and the spare rig of a brigantine upon the booms, which I have contrived by an arrangement of the maintop.'
'And you mean to go to sea in this vessel to plunder ships?' said Ada.
'Yes. Are you shocked?' he exclaimed tenderly.
'Not even if you had resolved to become a smuggler—something surely lower than a pirate.'
'I shall be a pirate for a few days only,' said he, laughing. 'Gentlemen have taken to the road and lived very handsomely upon the purses they have collected. Why should not a gentleman take to the sea, gather together by a like sort of collection from various trading ships such a sum as he might suppose would suffice his wants, and sail away—either home or abroad, according to the needs of his safety?'
'It is quite true,' said the girl, whose surprise was fast fading out of her striking face, and who looked with the eyes of love at the captain as he talked, 'that gentlemen have taken to the road for a living. One got hanged. He had been a squire in Warwickshire. I have heard my father speak of a man who lived as a gentleman—who, indeed, was so; he was discovered to have supported his family of a wife and one or two children by going out upon the highway with a brace of pistols and a mask. He would have been taken; but whilst they were thundering at his door he fell dead of heart disease, through excitement, grief, and shame.'
She allowed her eyes to linger upon his whilst she pronounced these closing words.
'All the chances will be upon our side,' said he, speaking with boyish delight, since he seemed to find a sympathy kindling in the girl with his scheme. 'The only risks I run will be from my own men. I believe I shall be easily able to overcome that difficulty.'
'You will have to confess your business to them,' she said.
'Certainly,' he answered. 'But none yet suspect it. A tall merchant ship unarmed, well laden with goods of which I shall have received notice, sails very stately out of the port, say, of Lisbon. She has a barrel or two of money in her lazarette for the planters of the Portuguese settlements. She has forty men before the mast, and twenty in officers and idlers abaft it. Presently a white gleam is seen by the light of the moon. No notice is taken. Why should notice be taken? There are no pirates in those western seas so close aboard the coast. I wear, or tack ship, run my brig alongside, and board her, whilst half her people are asleep below.'
Ada smiled whilst she listened to her lover's repetition of the fantastic sketch she herself had drawn at her father's breakfast-table.
'We batten everybody down, leaving one to liberate the people after, then search for our needs, send the booty over the side into the brig, and sail away, Ada—and sail away, my love, a rich, unknown ship. What can they call us? How can the terrified dagos describe us? A British crew won't stop for an enemy to look. She is a brig. They will know that; but should she leave port again, she will be a brigantine. What could they report? And what do you think of my scheme?'
'It is bold, possible, and dishonourable,' she said, with a subtle note of triumph in her voice, and the same high, encouraging colour of sympathy in her face.
'It is not dishonourable,' said he calmly, 'for an Englishman to rob a foreigner upon the seas where the Englishman has himself been most atrociously looted by most of the nations you can name. I must live by a dishonourable income or die by my own hand.'
He made a step to her, and taking her cheeks, gently lifted her face to his, and said—
'My life is now in your hands. I have confessed all to the woman I love, have ever loved, shall ever love. Knowing my scheme, Ada, will you be my wife?'
There was no hesitation in her answer. 'Yes.'
How could she resist his pleading presence, his manly candour with her, the love that lighted his eyes, the love that was now the single impulse of her life? Worthier women for more worthless men have consented to go to the devil.
He kissed and released her face, and said, as he stepped from her—
'I shall be a proud man when I have you by my side. We ought to get married soon, Ada. Will you leave it to me to make all the arrangements, writing under cover to you at this little inn?'
'Yes,' she answered. 'Father will never consent. Only think if he should get to hear——' She stopped herself.
The captain laughed. 'I must be off to the west,' said he, 'in a day or two, in search of suitable vaults and a temporary home for you.'
The girl arched her black eyebrows, and her lips fixed themselves in an expression of determination.
'I must,' he continued, 'discover if there are any smugglers' vaults on the Cornwall coast. I want to get as near to the Land's End as possible. You, without suspicion, can make inquiries amongst the men on the wharf and elsewhere.'
'Will you return for the news I receive?'
'You must write——' And he wrote an address on the fly-leaf of a pocket-book which he gave to her. 'That till next Monday.'
Then, after making arrangements for his writing to her from London, whither he would have to repair for the further equipment of his little ship when he had done his business down west, he took her in his arms, kissed her, and conducted her from the inn.