I grasped the ladder with one hand, and pa.s.sed my arm round her waist; my stature made the feat an easy one; thus holding her to me I sprang back, then for an instant strained her to my heart with a whisper of joy, grat.i.tude, and encouragement.
"You are as brave as you are true and sweet, Grace."
"Oh, Herbert!" she panted, "I can think of nothing. I am very wicked and feel horribly frightened."
"Mr. Barclay," softly called Caudel from the balcony, "what"s to be done with this here ladder?"
"Let it be, let it be," I answered. "Bear a hand, Caudel, and come down."
He was alongside of us in a trice, pulling on his boots. I held my darling"s hand, and the three of us made for the hole in the hedge with all possible speed. But the cabbages were very much in the way of Grace"s dress, and so urgent was the need to make haste that, I believe, in my fashion of helping her, I carried her one way or another more than half the distance across that wide tract of kitchen-garden stuff.
The dog continued to bark. I asked Grace if the brute belonged to the house, and she answered yes. There seemed little doubt, from the persistency of the creature"s deep delivery, that it scented some sort of mischief going forward, despite its kennel standing some considerable distance away on the other side of the house. I glanced back as Caudel was squeezing through the hole--I had told him to go first to make sure that all was right with the aperture, and to receive and help my sweetheart across the ditch--I glanced back, I say, in this brief pause; but the building showed as an impenetrable shadow against the winking brilliance of the sky hovering over and past it rich with the radiance in places of meteoric dust; no light gleamed; the night-hush, deep as death, was upon the chateau.
In a few moments my captain and I had carefully handed Grace through the hole and got her safe in the lane, and off we started, keeping well in the deep gloom cast by the convent wall, walking swiftly, yet noiselessly, and scarcely fetching our breath till we were clear of the lane, with the broad, glimmering St. Omer Road running in a rise upon our left.
By the aid of the three or four lamps we had pa.s.sed I managed very early to get a view of my sweetheart, and found that she had warmly robed herself in a fur-trimmed jacket, and that her hat was a sort of turban as though chosen from her wardrobe with a view to her pa.s.sage through the hole in the hedge. I had her hand under my arm; and pressed and caressed it as we walked. Caudel taking the earth with sailorly strides bowled and rolled along at her right, keeping her between us. I spoke to her in hasty sentences, forever praising her for her courage and thanking her for her love, and trying to hearten her; for now that the first desperate step had been taken, now that the wild risks of escape were ended, the spirit that had supported her failed; she could scarcely answer me; at moments she would direct looks over her shoulder; the mere figure of a tree would cause her to tighten her hold of my arm, and press against me as though starting.
"I feel so wicked--I feel that I ought to return--oh! how frightened I am;--how late it is!--what will mam"selle think?--How the girls will talk in the morning!"
I could coax no more than this sort of exclamations from her.
As we pa.s.sed through the gate in the rampart wall and entered the Haute Ville, my captain broke the silence he had kept since we quitted the lane.
"How little do the folks who"s sleeping in them houses know, Mr.
Barclay, of what"s a-pa.s.sing under their noses. There ain"t no sort of innocence like sleep."
He said this and yawned with a noise that resembled a shout.
"This is Captain Caudel, Grace," said I, "the master of the _Spitfire_.
His services to-night I shall never forget."
"I am too frightened to thank you, Captain Caudel," she exclaimed. "I will thank you when I am calm. But shall I ever be calm? And ought I to thank you then?"
"Have no fear, miss. This here oneasiness "ll soon pa.s.s. I know the yarn--his honour spun it to me. What"s been done, and what"s yet to do is right and proper, and if it worn"t--" his pause was more significant than had he proceeded.
Until we reached the harbour we did not encounter a living creature. I could never have imagined of the old town of Boulogne that its streets, late even as the hour was, would be so utterly deserted as we found them. I was satisfied with my judgment in not having ordered a carriage. The rattling of the wheels of a vehicle amid the vault-like stillness of those thoroughfares would have been heart-subduing to my mood of pa.s.sionately nervous anxiety to get on board and away. I should have figured windows flung open and night-capped heads projected, and heard in imagination the clanking sabre of a gendarme trotting in our wake.
I did not breathe freely till the harbour lay before us. Caudel said as we crossed to where the flight of steps fell to the water"s edge:
"I believe there"s a little air of wind amoving."
"I feel it," I answered; "what"s its quarter?"
"Seems to be off the land," said he.
"There is a man!" cried Grace, arresting me by a drag at my arm.
A figure stood at the head of the steps, and I believed it one of our men until a few strides brought us near enough to witness the gleam of uniform b.u.t.tons, showing by the pale light of a lamp at a short distance from him.
"A _douanier_," said I. "Nothing to be afraid of, my pet."
"But if he should stop us, Herbert?" cried she, halting.
"Sooner than that should happen," rumbled Caudel, "I"d chuck him overboard. But why should he stop us, miss? We ain"t smugglers."
"I would rather throw myself into the water than be taken back,"
exclaimed my sweetheart. I gently induced her to walk, whilst my captain advancing to the edge of the quay and looking down, sang out:
"Below there! Are ye awake?"
"Ay, wide awake," was the answer, floating up in hearty English accents from the cold, dark surface on which the boat lay.
The _douanier_ drew back a few steps; it was impossible to see his face, but his steadfast suspicious regard was to be imagined. I have no doubt he understood exactly what was happening. He asked us the name of our vessel. I answered in French. "The small yacht _Spitfire_ lying astern of the Folkestone steamer." Nothing more pa.s.sed and we descended the steps.
I felt Grace shiver as I handed her into the boat. The harbour water washed black and cold to the dark line of pier and wharf opposite; there was an edge of chill, too, in the distant sound of surf crawling upon the sand, and the wide spread of stars carried the fancy to the broad, black breast of ocean over which they were trembling. The oars dipped, striking a dim cloud of phosphor into the eddies they made; and a few strokes of the blades carried us to the side of the little _Spitfire_. I sprang on to the deck, and lifting my darling through the gangway, called to Caudel to make haste to get the boat in and start, for the breeze, that had before been little more than a fancy to me, I could now hear as it brushed the surface of the harbour wall, making the reflection of the large stars in the water alongside twinkle and widen out, and putting a perfume of fresh seaweed into the atmosphere, though the draught, such as it was, came from a malodorous quarter.
I led Grace to the little companion hatch, and together we entered the cabin. The lamp burnt brightly; the skylight lay open, and the interior was cool and sweet with several pots of flowers which I had sent aboard in the afternoon. It was a little box of a place, as you will suppose, of a dandy craft of twenty-six tons; but I had not spared my purse in decorating it, and I believe no prettier interior of the kind in a vessel of the size of the _Spitfire_ was in those times afloat. There were two sleeping-rooms, one forward and one aft. The after cabin was little better than a hole, and this I occupied. The berth forward, on the other hand, was as roomy as the dimensions of the little ship would allow, and I had taken care that it lacked nothing to render it a pleasant, I may say an elegant, sea bedroom. It was to be Grace"s until I got her ash.o.r.e, and this I counted upon managing by the following Friday, that is to say in about four days from the date of this night about which I am writing.
She stood at the table looking about her, breathing fast, her eyes large with alarm, excitement, I know not what other sensations and emotions. I wish I knew how to praise her, how to describe her.
"Sweet" is the best word to express her girlish beauty. Though she was three months short of eighteen years of age, she might readily have pa.s.sed for twenty-one, so womanly was her figure, as though, indeed, she was of tropic breeding and had been reared under suns which quickly ripen a maiden"s beauty. But to say more would be to say what? The liquid brown of her large and glowing eyes--the dark and delicate bronze of her rich abundant hair--the suggestion of a pout in the turn of her lip, that gave an incomparable air of archness to her expression when her countenance was in repose--to enumerate these things--to deliver a catalogue of her graces in the most felicitous language that love and the memory of love could dictate, is yet to leave all that I could wish to say unsaid.
"At last, Grace!" I exclaimed, lifting her hand to my lips. "How is it with you now, my pet?"
She seated herself, and hid her face in her hands upon the table, saying, "I don"t know how I feel, Herbert. But I know how I ought to feel."
"Wait a little. You will regain your courage. You will find nothing wrong in all this presently. It was bound to happen. There was not the least occasion for this business of rope ladders and midnight sailings. It is Lady Amelia who forces this elopement upon us."
"What will she say?" she breathed through her fingers, still keeping her face hidden to conceal the crimson that had flushed her on a sudden and that was showing to the rim of her collar.
"Do you care? Do _I_ care? We have forced her hand, and what can she do? If you were but twenty-one, Grace!--and yet I don"t know. You would be three years older--three years of sweetness gone for ever!
But the old lady will have to give her consent now, and the rest will be for my cousin Frank to manage. Pray look at me, my sweet one."
"I can"t. I am ashamed. It is a most desperate act. What will mam"selle say--and your sailors?" she murmured from behind her hands.
"My sailors! Grace, shall I take you back whilst there is yet time?"
She flashed a look at me over her finger tips.
"Certainly not!" she exclaimed with emphasis, then hid her face again.
I seated myself by her side, but it took me five minutes to get her to look at me, and another five minutes to coax a smile from her. In this while the men were busy about the decks. I heard Caudel"s growling lungs of leather delivering orders in a half-stifled hurricane note, but I did not know that we were under way until I put my head through the companion hatch, and saw the dusky fabrics of the piers on either side stealing almost insensibly past us. Now that the wide expanse of sky had opened over the land, I could witness a dimness, as of the shadowing of clouds, in the quarter of the sky against which stood the unfinished block of the cathedral. This caused me to reckon upon the wind freshening presently. As it now blew it was a very light air indeed, scarce with weight enough to steady the light cloths of the yacht. There was an unwieldy lump of a French smack slowly grinding her way up the harbour close in against the pier on the port side, and astern of us were the triangular lights of a paddle-wheeled steamer, bound to London, timed for the tide that was now high, and filling the quietude of the night with the noise of the swift beats of revolving wheels.
"Mind that steamer!" I called out to Caudel, who was at the helm.
She pa.s.sed us close, noisily shearing through it, with the white water at her stem throbbing like clouds of steam to the paddles, whence the race aft spread far into the gloom astern in a wide wake of yeast; a body of fire broke from her tall chimney and illuminated the long, thick line of smoke like the play of lightning upon the face of a thunder-cloud; her saloon was aglow, and the illuminated portholes went winking past upon the vision as though there lay a coil of flame along the length of the ebony black sides. She swept past and was away, leaving behind her a swell upon which the _Spitfire_ tumbled about so violently that I came very near to being thrown out of the hatch in which I was standing. The commotion presently ceased, and by this time we were abreast of the longer of the two pier-heads, clear of the harbour, but I waited still a moment or so to take another view of the night and to send a glance round. Undoubtedly the stars shining low down over the old town of Boulogne had dimmed greatly within the hour, though they still flashed with brilliance in the direction of the English coast. The surf rolling upon the sand on either side the piers broke with a hollow note that even to my inexperienced ears seemed prophetic of wind.
"What is the weather to be, Caudel?" I called to him.