Grace folded the letter slowly, an expression of pain seated in her eyes. “Would you like to read it, Herbert?” she asked.
“Not now,” groaned Herbert, shifting the band of flannel on his throat. “What does she say?”
“She says”—Grace hesitated a moment before proceeding—“she says she wishes Jack could leave the sea.”
“I dare say!” exclaimed Herbert. “Now, Grace, I’ll not have that absurd notion encouraged. It was Alice’s cry last time they were at home; and I told you then I would not.”
“I have not encouraged it, Herbert. Of course what Alice says has reason in it: one cannot help seeing that.”
“Jack chose the sea as his profession, and Jack must abide by it. A turncoat is never worth a rush. Jack likes the sea; and Jack has been successful at it.”
“Oh yes: he’s a first-rate sailor,” conceded Grace. “It is Alice’s wish, no doubt, rather than his. She says here”—opening the letter—“Oh, if Jack could but leave the sea! All my little ones coming on!—I shall not be able to go with him this next voyage. And I come home to find my little Mary and my mother both ill! If we could but leave the sea!”
“I may just as well say ‘If I could but leave the Church!’—I’m sure I’m never well in it,” retorted Herbert. “Jack had better not talk to me of this: I should put him down at once.”
Grace sighed as she took up the little frock again. She remembered, though it might suit her husband to forget it, that Jack had not, in one sense of the word, chosen the sea; he had been deluded into it by Aunt Dean, his wife’s mother. She had plotted and planned, that woman, for her daughter’s advancement, and found out too late that she had plotted wrongly; for Alice chose Jack, and Jack, through her machinations, had been deprived of the greater portion of his birthright. He made a smart sailor; he was steady, and stuck to his duty manfully; never a better merchant commander sailed out of port than John Tanerton. But, as his wife said, her little ones were beginning to grow about her; she had two already; and she could not be with them at New Brighton, and be skimming over the seas to Calcutta, or where not, in the Rose of Delhi. Interests clashed; and with her whole heart Alice wished Jack could quit the sea. Grace sighed as she thought of this; she saw how natural was the wish, though Herbert did not see it: neither could she forget that the chief portion of the fortune which ought to have been Jack’s was enjoyed by herself and her husband. She had always thought it unjust; it did not seem to bring them luck; it lay upon her heart like a weight of care. Their income from the living and the fortune, comprised together, was over a thousand pounds a-year. They lived very quietly, not spending, she was sure, anything like half of it; Herbert put by the rest. What good did all the money bring them? But little. Herbert was always ailing, fretful, and grumbling: the propensity to set the world to rights grew upon him: he had ever taken pleasure in that, from the time when a little lad he would muffle himself in his step-father’s surplice, and preach to Jack and Alice. Poor Jack had to work hard for what he earned at sea; he had only a hundred and fifty pounds a-year, besides, of the money that had been his mother’s; Herbert had the other six hundred and fifty of it. But Jack, sunny-natured, ever-ready Jack, was just as happy as the day was long.
Lost in these thoughts, her eyes bent on her work, Alice did not see a gentleman who was coming across the field towards the house. The click of the little gate, as it swung to after him, caused her to look up, but hardly in time. Herbert turned at the sound.