The Yarn of Old Harbour Town

by William Clark Russell

She made no sign. He repeated her name as though startled by her immobility in which an element of tragedy might have been found in the singular, unwinking fixity of her stare upon her hands. He stepped to her side, and peered closely into her face and listened to hear if she breathed. Oh yes: she breathed, she was alive. But though he put his face so close to her's that she might have felt his breath upon her cheek, her form did not move by so much as might indicate the passage of a thrill, her eyes remained as steadfast in their gaze as though they were painted.

He withdrew a step, and exclaimed: "Lucy, why will you not speak to me? Why will you not look at me? You know that all this is done in the holy name of love, and God who knows me knows that I would not cause you a pang, that your beautiful eyes should not be shadowed by a tear drawn by any action of mine if I could have believed that loving me as I know you do, that loving you as you know I do, you would have come to me at the summons of my passion, and hand in hand with me as my wife, taken your chance of all that might have followed."

The emotion of an impassioned heart, the melody of a rich and manly voice were in his words, and no man, though he should hate the fellow for his wrong-doing, could have doubted his sincerity whilst listening to his speech. Add to this his superb figure, his handsome face glowing with feeling, the hereditary dignity of his demeanour; but these were expressions of his meaning which she would not raise her eyes to witness.

All on a sudden and when the silence that followed had not lasted ten seconds, she sprang to her feet with a shriek; she dashed her hands to her face, she rushed as though pursued to the other end of the cabin, and there crouched with her face to the bulkhead, hidden in her hands; and thus she stood rocking herself sideways, moaning: "Why am I not sent home? Why am I here a prisoner? What will my father think has become of me? Home, home, home! In the hands of a man that dare rob his employer! At the mercy of one who of all Captain Acton's friends and acquaintances should feel the most deeply obliged to him." She wheeled round and out of her incommunicable attitude and language of distress, and said, looking at him vacantly with a cold, pale smile: "Are you Mr Lawrence, the son of Sir William Lawrence, Captain Acton's friend?"

"You know, madam, that I am," he answered, bowing with graceful suavity, and with a light smile that was like saying, "I understand the import of your tactics, and am willing to wait and watch you."

"I know, sir," she exclaimed with the vehement indignation and contempt conveyed by that perfection of art which conceals art and which is a gift of intuition beyond the reach of those not born with it, "that Sir William Lawrence has a son, and that he was dismissed from the Navy for a brutal, drunken outrage of which he alone, of all the gentlemen and officers in the Service, was capable."

He coloured brightly at this, and his frown was as though a shadow had come between him and the light that revealed his face.

"I know," she continued, still preserving her accent of scorn and viewing him with eyes that did not seem to be her's, so did she contrive to diminish the breadth of the beauty of the lids, so did she manage to look passions and feelings which the memory of her oldest friend could never have recalled as vitalising her brooding half-hooded gaze: "I know that this man came ashore and lived upon his father who was poor, and drank and gambled until his name provoked nothing but a shrug, and that one day in a fit of pity, for which doubtless he has asked God's pardon, Captain Acton, who loves Admiral Lawrence, gave his poor creature of a son command of a ship. This I know," she said, letting her eyes fall suddenly from his face down upon her fingers, which she seemed to count as she proceeded. "But I had always supposed that there was some spirit of goodness left in Mr Walter Lawrence. I believed that though he might gamble and drink and live in idleness upon the bounty of his father, he with all his imperfections was a man incapable of outraging the feelings of a young girl, incapable of betraying the generous confidence of one who stood to him as a warm-hearted friend. Can you be that Mr Lawrence?" she said, peering at him in such a peculiar fashion, with such archness of contempt that a spectator, short-sighted and at a little distance, would have supposed she was looking at the handsome fellow through an eye-glass. "Oh, I am going mad to suppose it—mad to think it possible!"

She flashed her hands to her forehead, sobs seemed to shake her, she turned on her heel and went to the big stern window, and looked out upon the sea.