[CHAPTER XXVIII]
“THE SAD SEA WAVE”
THE HONEYMOON—OUTWARD-BOUND—A FULL REPORT—THE HOPES OF SPRING—THE BLIGHT OF AUTUMN—ALL ALONE
And of all places in the world, where did they choose to spend their honeymoon? Why, at St. Swithin’s; there they had first met—there the girl had first seen her young ideal of manly perfection—there Frank had first surrendered the self-control he held so dear. When at the end of a twenty-seventh chapter the gentleman saves from drowning the lady after whom he has been hankering through the previous twenty-six, it is needless to specify how “bride-cake must be the issue.” “Hot water” after cold is a fair conclusion; so the dressmaker in Old Bond Street was written to—and the man-of-business came down from Lincoln’s Inn—and there was a gathering of friends and relatives—a breakfast to the grandees—a dinner to the tenants—a ball to the labourers—and the bells of Newton ringing almost without cessation for eight-and-forty hours—the bridesmaids smiled and sparkled—the bride wept and trembled—the bridegroom looked like a fool—everything was strictly orthodox, save the interference of the General, who wanted to set the clergyman right during the sacred ceremony, and very properly received a rap over the knuckles from that dignitary, which was no less than he deserved—the county paper devoted a column and a half to its description of the ceremony—the Morning Post dismissed it in three lines under the head of “Fashionable Intelligence”; and so the knot was tied, and Frank Hardingstone, M., took Blanche Kettering, N., and they became man and wife.
We must now shift the scene to where we first introduced the characters of our somewhat lengthened narrative; nor will we, after the fashion of sundry eminent divines, prolong our “in conclusion” to an indefinite abusing of the listener’s patience and the Queen’s English. The honeymoon is over—they never last more than a week now-a-days—and the relatives of the principal performers have broken up the tête-à-tête, and joined the happy pair at St. Swithin’s. It is a mild sunny afternoon about the middle of February. At the sea-side, where there are no bare trees and leafless hedges to destroy the illusion, it might be midsummer, so soft and balmy is the air, so bright the beams glinting on the Channel, so hushed and peaceful the ripple of the ebbing tide; the fishing-boats seem asleep upon the waters; a large square-rigged vessel looms almost motionless in the offing; and a group of five persons are congregated about an invalid’s couch on the beach. As Mary Delaval moves round it to place a cushion more comfortably at his back, we recognise the delicate features and waving moustaches of our young lancer. It is indeed the wasted face of Cousin Charlie, attenuated to an unearthly beauty, and wearing the calm, gentle expression of those who are ere long to be summoned home.
“Outward-bound,” says a stout seaman-like man, shutting up the glass with which he has been diligently conning the distant ship. “Outward-bound, and an Indiaman, as I make her, Miss Blanche; I beg your pardon.” Hairblower never can call her by her matronly title.
“If that’s an Indiaman, I’ll eat her,” exclaims the General; “don’t tell me—I should know something of that class of ship at any rate. Look at her spars! She’s bound for the Baltic; I can take my oath. Indiaman!—if she’s not a Dutchman, I am.”
The General’s appearance indeed gave weight to this assertion. His stout, short frame enveloped in a jacket and trousers—for, out of compliment to the locality, he thought it necessary to appear in nautical costume—possessed that well-filled appearance which custom has chosen to consider indigenous to the Hollander. The General’s love-making did not progress very rapidly, but he had still a hankering to stand well in the opinion of Mrs. Delaval; and when he considered the care and attention with which she tended poor Charlie, administering to all his wants and fancies as only a woman can, he thought that such a wife would indeed be a treasure for an elderly gentleman who was beginning to experience sundry twinges at the extremities, reminding him most unpleasantly of good things long since consumed, and claret bottles emptied in life’s thirsty noon.
“What do you think, darling?” says Blanche, sidling up to her husband, and placing her arm confidingly within his. Like all newly-married women she is a little gauche, and wears her happiness with too demonstrative an air, appealing on all occasions to her lord, and hanging on his every word and look as if there were no one else in the universe. To do the sex justice, however, this is a fault of which they are invariably cured in less than a twelvemonth, and radically too—we cannot call to mind a single instance of a relapse.
“How should I know, my dear?” replies Frank, awaking from deep thought; “yet stay, may it not be the very ship in which your old friend D’Orville was to sail?” with a malicious glance at Blanche, who looked up at him with such an open smile as showed how little impression the handsome Major’s attentions had ever made on her young heart. “Let me see, what day was he to start? I’ve got his letter in my pocket.”
“Pocket!—letter!—what? read it!” exclaimed the General—“that will prove the thing at once—you’ll see she’s a Dutchman.”