‘How amiable you are! You give me my way in everything.’
‘What shall we do?’
‘Stop here for a little while, if you don’t mind. We have this room to ourselves for the present.’
He took me by the hand. I trembled and sat down, and he seated himself beside me. Am I to repeat what he said—in what words he told me how great his love was for me—in what terms he asked me to be his wife? All this I could unfold, ancient as it is in my memory. I could give it to you as though it were of yesterday’s happening. But the black curtain still remains down on the memorable, the horrible, the tragical scene it is to rise upon soon, and I must not linger over such recollections as I am now dictating to my friend.
It was quite in keeping that I, a sailor’s daughter, should be wooed and asked in marriage by a sailor in scenes full of shipping, within hearing of the cries and choruses of seamen and the hundred noises of the busy docks. A red mist lay upon the river, and the sun hung pale and rayless, like a great lemon, in the west. We were occupying a room that might have been the coffee-room. Several tables were draped and ready for guests, but we had been alone when my uncle and aunt left us, and we remained alone. He held me to him and kissed me; he looked proudly and gratefully at me and said that he loved me from the moment he had set eyes on me; that he thought me the handsomest woman he had ever seen in his life; that he adored me for my spirit—much more to this effect he said. But he told me he never would have had the heart to offer for my hand if he had not found some encouragement in my looks. Then he went over the long talk he’d had about me with Mr. and Mrs. Johnstone.
‘They begged,’ said he, ‘if you accepted me that we should not be married until my return from my next voyage.’
‘They are dear to me,’ said I, looking at him, ‘but they are not my guardians, and have no control over me.’
‘But they may be right, Marian, and they have a claim upon you too. I hope to do well next trip. I believe I shall do well enough,’ said he, smiling and smoothing the back of my hand, ‘to enable me to put something to your own fortune. I wish to be independent of you. You are not a woman to respect a man that is dependent upon you.’
‘My aunt was right,’ said I. ‘We don’t understand each other yet. Certainly you don’t understand me.’
He kissed me and said he knew what was in my mind, but all the same when he was my husband he wished to be independent of my fortune.