We walked together to the companion hatch, but even there we lingered a little with our eyes dwelling upon that distant azure film which seemed now to be fainting out as though it were a wreath of sea-mist that was being fast devoured by the sun.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
CONCLUSION.
Our passage home was extraordinarily long. It took us seventy-five days to arrive at the English Channel from the latitude of the volcanic island. The captain thought himself under a spell, and swore that he believed his barque was to be made a ‘Flying Dutchman’ of. Yet she was a clipper keel, moulded in exquisite conformity with all theories of swiftness in sailing, and when a fresh and favourable wind blew she ate through it as though with the iron bite of a powerful steamer. But had she spread the canvas of a ‘Royal George’ over the hull of a racing yacht she could have done nothing in the face of the dead calms and light baffling breezes which held us motionless or sent us sliding southwards for days and days. Scarce had we struck soundings indeed—that is to say, hardly had we entered the mouth of the English Channel—when a whole gale of wind blew down upon us from the eastward, and grove us a third of the distance across to the shores of the United States.
How bitterly sick I grew of this time I cannot express. I had lost everything that I had brought with me in the wreck of the ‘Bride,’ and was entirely dependent upon the kindness of the captain and the mates for a supply of the few wants I absolutely required. One lent me a shirt, another a pair of socks, a third a razor, and so on, but it was a miserable existence. A few weeks of it I should have found supportable by comparing the life with the horrors we had been delivered from; but as time went on gratitude languished, the sense of contrast lost something of its edge; I abhorred the recollection of the galleon, yet it really seemed as though we had merely exchanged one form of imprisonment for another; as if old ocean indeed were suffering us to amuse ourselves with a dream of escape, as a cat humours a mouse in that way, to drop with a spring upon us ultimately when she had sickened the patience out of our souls.
I need not say that Lady Monson made the worst of everything. She had to share a cabin with her sister, and to that extent, therefore, was associated with her, but her behaviour to Laura, as to me, was cold, haughty, disdainful. She froze herself from head to foot, gave us a wide berth when on deck, would break away abruptly if one or the other of us endeavoured to engage her in conversation, and was as much alone as she could possibly contrive to be. It is hard to say whether she disliked me more than her sister. Yet I could not but feel sorry for her, heartily as I hated her. What was her future to be? What had life in store for one whose memory was charged as hers was? Laura tried hard to find out what her intentions were, what plans she had formed, but to no purpose. But then it was likely that the woman had not made out any programme for herself.
Both she and my darling were desperately put to it for the want of apparel. Each had but the dress she stood in, for Laura’s box had contained little more than under-linen. They had arrived on board the barque without covering for their heads; but this was remedied by the second mate presenting Laura with a new straw hat, and later on we heard through Finn that one of the crew had a new grass hat in his chest which he desired to present to Lady Monson. I see her ladyship now in that sailor’s hat, over which she tied a long brown veil that had come ashore upon the island in Laura’s box. I witness again the fiery gleam of her black eyes penetrating the thin covering. I behold the captain, with his slow Scotch gaze following her majestic figure as she glides lonely to and fro the deck, seldom daring to address her, and rapidly averting his glance when she chanced to round her face towards him on a sudden. And I see Laura, too, sweet as a poet’s fancy I would sometimes think, in the mate’s straw hat, perched on top of her golden hair, a sailor’s half-fathom of ribbon floating from it down her back, her violet eyes lovely once more with their old tender glow, and with the smiles which sparkled in them and with the love which deepened their hue as she let me look into them.
She had soon regained her health and spirits. I never would have believed that two women born of the same parents could be so absolutely dissimilar as these sisters. Laura made no trouble of anything. She ate the plain cabin food as though she heartily enjoyed it; cooled me down when I was slowly growing mad over some loathsome pause of calm; made light of the embarrassing slenderness of her wardrobe. She had always one answer: ‘This is not the galleon, Charles. We’re bound to England. You must be patient, my dear.’
I remember once saying to her, ‘Your dress is very shabby, my pet. It no longer sits to your figure as it did. It shows like shipwrecked raiment. Salt-water stains are very abundant; and your elbow cannot be long before it peeps out. How, then, is it that I find you more engaging, more lovely, more adorable in this castaway attire than ever I thought you aboard the “Bride,” where probably you had a dozen dresses to wear?’
‘Mere prejudice,’ she answered, laughing and blushing. ‘You will outgrow many opinions of this kind.’