"One recantation is enough for to-day."
"No, no."
"Very well, blue eyes." And Knight laughed, and drew her close and kissed her the second time, which operations he performed with the carefulness of a fruiterer touching a bunch of grapes so as not to disturb their bloom.
Elfride objected to a second, and flung away her face, the movement causing a slight disarrangement of hat and hair. Hardly thinking what she said in the trepidation of the moment, she exclaimed, clapping her hand to her ear--
"Ah, we must be careful! I lost the other earring doing like this."
No sooner did she realise the significant words than a troubled look pa.s.sed across her face, and she shut her lips as if to keep them back.
"Doing like what?" said Knight, perplexed.
"Oh, sitting down out of doors," she replied hastily.
Chapter XXIX
"Care, thou canker."
It is an evening at the beginning of October, and the mellowest of autumn sunsets irradiates London, even to its uttermost eastern end.
Between the eye and the flaming West, columns of smoke stand up in the still air like tall trees. Everything in the shade is rich and misty blue.
Mr. and Mrs. Swancourt and Elfride are looking at these l.u.s.trous and lurid contrasts from the window of a large hotel near London Bridge. The visit to their friends at St. Leonards is over, and they are staying a day or two in the metropolis on their way home.
Knight spent the same interval of time in crossing over to Brittany by way of Jersey and St. Malo. He then pa.s.sed through Normandy, and returned to London also, his arrival there having been two days later than that of Elfride and her parents.
So the evening of this October day saw them all meeting at the above-mentioned hotel, where they had previously engaged apartments.
During the afternoon Knight had been to his lodgings at Richmond to make a little change in the nature of his baggage; and on coming up again there was never ushered by a bland waiter into a comfortable room a happier man than Knight when shown to where Elfride and her step-mother were sitting after a fatiguing day of shopping.
Elfride looked none the better for her change: Knight was as brown as a nut. They were soon engaged by themselves in a corner of the room. Now that the precious words of promise had been spoken, the young girl had no idea of keeping up her price by the system of reserve which other more accomplished maidens use. Her lover was with her again, and it was enough: she made her heart over to him entirely.
Dinner was soon despatched. And when a preliminary round of conversation concerning their doings since the last parting had been concluded, they reverted to the subject of to-morrow"s journey home.
"That enervating ride through the myrtle climate of South Devon--how I dread it to-morrow!" Mrs. Swancourt was saying. "I had hoped the weather would have been cooler by this time."
"Did you ever go by water?" said Knight.
"Never--by never, I mean not since the time of railways."
"Then if you can afford an additional day, I propose that we do it,"
said Knight. "The Channel is like a lake just now. We should reach Plymouth in about forty hours, I think, and the boats start from just below the bridge here" (pointing over his shoulder eastward).
"Hear, hear!" said the vicar.
"It"s an idea, certainly," said his wife.
"Of course these coasters are rather tubby," said Knight. "But you wouldn"t mind that?"
"No: we wouldn"t mind."
"And the saloon is a place like the fishmarket of a ninth-rate country town, but that wouldn"t matter?"
"Oh dear, no. If we had only thought of it soon enough, we might have had the use of Lord Luxellian"s yacht. But never mind, we"ll go. We shall escape the worrying rattle through the whole length of London to-morrow morning--not to mention the risk of being killed by excursion trains, which is not a little one at this time of the year, if the papers are true."
Elfride, too, thought the arrangement delightful; and accordingly, ten o"clock the following morning saw two cabs crawling round by the Mint, and between the preternaturally high walls of Nightingale Lane towards the river side.
The first vehicle was occupied by the travellers in person, and the second brought up the luggage, under the supervision of Mrs. Snewson, Mrs. Swancourt"s maid--and for the last fortnight Elfride"s also; for although the younger lady had never been accustomed to any such attendant at robing times, her stepmother forced her into a semblance of familiarity with one when they were away from home.
Presently waggons, bales, and smells of all descriptions increased to such an extent that the advance of the cabs was at the slowest possible rate. At intervals it was necessary to halt entirely, that the heavy vehicles unloading in front might be moved aside, a feat which was not accomplished without a deal of swearing and noise. The vicar put his head out of the window.
"Surely there must be some mistake in the way," he said with great concern, drawing in his head again. "There"s not a respectable conveyance to be seen here except ours. I"ve heard that there are strange dens in this part of London, into which people have been entrapped and murdered--surely there is no conspiracy on the part of the cabman?"
"Oh no, no. It is all right," said Mr. Knight, who was as placid as dewy eve by the side of Elfride.
"But what I argue from," said the vicar, with a greater emphasis of uneasiness, "are plain appearances. This can"t be the highway from London to Plymouth by water, because it is no way at all to any place.
We shall miss our steamer and our train too--that"s what I think."
"Depend upon it we are right. In fact, here we are."
"Trimmer"s Wharf," said the cabman, opening the door.
No sooner had they alighted than they perceived a tussle going on between the hindmost cabman and a crowd of light porters who had charged him in column, to obtain possession of the bags and boxes, Mrs.
Snewson"s hands being seen stretched towards heaven in the midst of the melee. Knight advanced gallantly, and after a hard struggle reduced the crowd to two, upon whose shoulders and trucks the goods vanished away in the direction of the water"s edge with startling rapidity.
Then more of the same tribe, who had run on ahead, were heard shouting to boatmen, three of whom pulled alongside, and two being vanquished, the luggage went tumbling into the remaining one.
"Never saw such a dreadful scene in my life--never!" said Mr. Swancourt, floundering into the boat. "Worse than Famine and Sword upon one. I thought such customs were confined to continental ports. Aren"t you astonished, Elfride?"
"Oh no," said Elfride, appearing amid the dingy scene like a rainbow in a murky sky. "It is a pleasant novelty, I think."
"Where in the wide ocean is our steamer?" the vicar inquired. "I can see nothing but old hulks, for the life of me."
"Just behind that one," said Knight; "we shall soon be round under her."
The object of their search was soon after disclosed to view--a great lumbering form of inky blackness, which looked as if it had never known the touch of a paint-brush for fifty years. It was lying beside just such another, and the way on board was down a narrow lane of water between the two, about a yard and a half wide at one end, and gradually converging to a point. At the moment of their entry into this narrow pa.s.sage, a brilliantly painted rival paddled down the river like a trotting steed, creating such a series of waves and splashes that their frail wherry was tossed like a teacup, and the vicar and his wife slanted this way and that, inclining their heads into contact with a Punch-and-Judy air and countenance, the wavelets striking the sides of the two hulls, and flapping back into their laps.
"Dreadful! horrible!" Mr. Swancourt murmured privately; and said aloud, I thought we walked on board. I don"t think really I should have come, if I had known this trouble was attached to it."
"If they must splash, I wish they would splash us with clean water,"
said the old lady, wiping her dress with her handkerchief.
"I hope it is perfectly safe," continued the vicar.
"O papa! you are not very brave," cried Elfride merrily.