“But they are pleasure-seekers, to whom time is of no importance.”
“Oh no. The pleasure-seekers we meet on the grand routes are more anxious than commercial travellers to rush on. And added to the loss of time in getting to their journey’s end, these exceptional people take their chance of sea-sickness by coming this way.”
“Can it be?” inquired the vicar with apprehension. “Surely not, Mr. Knight, just here in our English Channel—close at our doors, as I may say.”
“Entrance passages are very draughty places, and the Channel is like the rest. It ruins the temper of sailors. It has been calculated by philosophers that more damns go up to heaven from the Channel, in the course of a year, than from all the five oceans put together.”
They really start now, and the dead looks of all the throng come to life immediately. The man who has been frantically hauling in a rope that bade fair to have no end ceases his labours, and they glide down the serpentine bends of the Thames.
Anything anywhere was a mine of interest to Elfride, and so was this.
“It is well enough now,” said Mrs. Swancourt, after they had passed the Nore, “but I can’t say I have cared for my voyage hitherto.” For being now in the open sea a slight breeze had sprung up, which cheered her as well as her two younger companions. But unfortunately it had a reverse effect upon the vicar, who, after turning a sort of apricot jam colour, interspersed with dashes of raspberry, pleaded indisposition, and vanished from their sight.
The afternoon wore on. Mrs. Swancourt kindly sat apart by herself reading, and the betrothed pair were left to themselves. Elfride clung trustingly to Knight’s arm, and proud was she to walk with him up and down the deck, or to go forward, and leaning with him against the forecastle rails, watch the setting sun gradually withdrawing itself over their stern into a huge bank of livid cloud with golden edges that rose to meet it.
She was childishly full of life and spirits, though in walking up and down with him before the other passengers, and getting noticed by them, she was at starting rather confused, it being the first time she had shown herself so openly under that kind of protection. “I expect they are envious and saying things about us, don’t you?” she would whisper to Knight with a stealthy smile.
“Oh no,” he would answer unconcernedly. “Why should they envy us, and what can they say?”