However, I found out that night when I paced the deck alone, pipe in mouth, that I had mistaken—that, in short, I was not in love with her. This was proved to my satisfaction by my quarter-deck meditations on the subject. First, she was a Catholic; would she have married me, who was a Protestant? No. Would I have surrendered my faith for her hand? Not if that hand had grasped and proffered me the title-deeds of every gold mine in this world. She sung, it is true, in a very heavenly style, but was she not a devil at heart? Did not she offer to stick Yan Bol and the others in the back? Did not she secrete a very ugly, murderous weapon about her fine person? Not for the first time did it occur to me now that she was a very likely lady to poniard her husband. One little fit of jealousy, and the rest would briefly work out as a funeral, a handsome young mourning widow, very regular indeed at confession, visited once a week by a man in a cloak, who presently so raises the price of secrecy that by and by she’ll have to do for him, too.
Another reflection consoled me; in a few years a very great change must happen in the lady Aurora’s appearance. The Spanish woman is like the Jewess; she does not improve by keeping. The delicate olive complexion turns into a disagreeable wrinkled yellow; the pretty shading of down on the upper lip thickens into a mustache considerable enough to raise the jealousy of a captain of dragoons; the lofty and elegant carriage decays into a tipsy waddle; the light of the eye is speedily quenched; the white teeth show like the keys of a pianoforte; the rich singing voice may linger, but it will irritate the ear of the husband by its association with noisy quarrels.
These, I say, were reflections which vastly supported my spirits and taught me to understand myself; they proved that my love for the lady went no deeper than an eyelash of hers measured, and before my pipe was out I was heartily congratulating myself on Mr. Gerald Maxwell having come first.
CHAPTER XXXII.
MYNHEER TULP.
I brought the brig to an anchor in the Small Downs off Sandown Castle toward the close of the month of August, 1815. The weather in the Channel had been thick; I had shipped a couple of fishermen off Plymouth to assist in the navigation of the brig, and from abreast of that port I had groped the whole distance to the Downs with the hand-lead.
It was thick weather when I arrived off Deal; the breeze was a “soldier’s wind” for the Channel; I counted five vessels only, and no man-of-war was in sight when I brought up. The Dutch flag flew at our trysail gaff-end, and our decks were bare of artillery from stem to stern; for on entering the Channel I had caused all the guns to be struck into the hold that the little ship, should we be boarded, might present the appearance of a peaceful trader.
On letting go the anchor I sent two letters ashore by a Deal boat; one was for my uncle Captain Round, who I had learnt from the boatmen was well and hearty; the other was in the handwriting of the Señorita Aurora, and addressed to Mr. Gerald Maxwell at Madrid. It was soon after nine in the morning when we brought up; and while the church clocks of Deal were striking eleven my uncle came alongside. He was alone; I had asked him in a mysteriously phrased passage of my letter to come alone; the fellow that rowed him alongside was the decayed waterman who had opened the door to me that night when I visited my uncle after leaving the Royal Brunswicker.
My uncle held me by both hands for at least five minutes. The whole expression of his face was a very gape of astonishment. He looked me all over, he looked the brig all over; he panted for words; when he was able to articulate he said, “Bill, I thought you was drowned?”
“You got my letter?”
“Yes, and came off at once.”