The Voyage of the Aurora.
by Harry Collingwood.
CHAPTER ONE.
INTRODUCES LUCY WALFORD.
Those who have ever had occasion to reside for any length of time in Gosport are sure to be more or less acquainted with the little village of Alverstoke; because it lies near at hand, and the road leading thereto forms one of the most pleasant walks in the neighbourhood.
But it may be that there are those, into whose hands this book will fall, who have never so much as heard the name of the place. For their benefit, then, it may be worth while to state that Alverstoke is pleasantly situated at a distance of about one mile from the above-mentioned town of Gosport, and within half a mile of the waters of the Solent.
It is a very unimportant little place at the present day: it was even more so in the year 17--, the year in which this veracious history opens. It was unimportant, that is to say, in a _general_ sense; the public knew very little about it, and cared still less; but in a _particular_ sense, and to the officers of His Majesty"s Customs, it was a very important place indeed, inasmuch as the inhabitants, animated by a spirit of enterprise and a love of adventure not to be satisfied by such very ordinary and humdrum pursuits as those of fishing and market-gardening, had, almost to a man--to say nothing of the women and children--added thereto the illegal but lucrative and exciting occupation of smuggling; to the great loss and damage of the king"s revenues.
The village consisted, at that time, of a single short, narrow street with a bend in the middle of it. Nearly one half of the north side of this street was occupied by the churchyard and church; the remaining portion, as well as the opposite side of the way, being composed of small low, two-story cottages with thatched roofs (and most of them having little projecting dormer-windows), a couple of public-houses, and a small grocery establishment.
This const.i.tuted the village proper; but a little aloof from it--being in it but not of it, as it were--there were in all perhaps half a dozen residences of a somewhat more pretentious kind. There was the rectory, for instance, on the opposite side of the road, eastward of the church, built in the very centre of its extensive garden, and snugly surrounded on all sides by high stone walls. Then there was Stoke House, near the rectory, standing well back from the road, embowered in trees, and with a carriage-drive running straight up through its beautiful rose-garden to the front door. Nearer the beach, and on the opposite side of the valley, was "Verbena Cottage," the abode of Lieutenant Bobus, in command of the coast-guard; and still nearer the beach, some ten or a dozen yards back from the road, enclosed within a neat paling, sheltered by lofty trees, with a lovely flower-garden in front and an extensive fruit and kitchen-garden in the rear, stood "Sea View," a small but well-built house, in which resided the relict and daughter of the late "Cap"n"
Walford.
The late "Cap"n" Walford had been a wonderfully popular man in his day; and his memory was greatly esteemed and revered by the villagers.
Manifesting, at an early age, a love of enterprise and excitement quite extraordinary even in an Alverstoke man, he had seized the first opportunity which offered to become the owner of a very fine fast-sailing lugger, in which, during his thirty years of devotion to maritime pursuits, he, by a rare combination of prudence and audacity, gradually acquired the reputation of being a most successful smuggler-- and the snug little fortune of some ten thousand pounds. The latter and more desirable portion of his acquirements he carefully invested, as it dribbled in bit by bit, in house-property in the neighbourhood; so that, when this estimable man"s career was cut short at the comparatively early age of sixty years, by an unlucky cannon-shot fired from a revenue cutter, his disconsolate relict found herself the possessor of a comfortable income amounting to some five hundred pounds per annum, together with "Sea View" and--last, but by no means least--a daughter, fourteen years of age. This melancholy event occurred four years before the date at which this history opens; Lucy Walford was therefore about eighteen years old when the first of that train of events happened which it is herein proposed to record.
Mrs Walford was wont to a.s.sert, just about this time, that Lucy was the very living picture of what she herself used to be when a girl. If this was indeed true, it was at once an evidence of that remarkable good taste which the late "cap"n" was said to have possessed, and of the extraordinary changes effected by the hand of Time, for no one could ever have suspected such a resemblance without Mrs Walford"s a.s.surance.
The old lady was a sad and subdued personage, thin and angular of figure and face, with prominent cheek-bones, eye-brows, and chin, dark eyes, deeply sunk in their sockets, a broad forehead, ploughed with innumerable wrinkles, a long sharp aquiline nose, a large thin-lipped mouth, and a querulous temper.
Lucy, on the other hand, was of medium height, slight, graceful figure, abounding in delicate curves, with small hands and feet, an exquisite complexion, a face, the sweet piquant loveliness of which set all the youth of Alverstoke--and Gosport too, for that matter--by the ears, a wealth of long silky golden hair, which persisted in twisting itself into a most distracting conglomeration of wavy curls, and a temper which nothing--not even her mother"s querulousness--could ruffle.
That Lucy should be fairly beset by suitors was only natural. There was not a single bold young smuggler of marriageable age in all the country round about who did not cherish in a greater or lesser degree the fond hope of one day making her his own, albeit most of them were--it is only just to say--dimly cognisant of the fact that she was much too good for the best of them. It was probably in consequence of this feeling that only one or two--the boldest of the bold of this dashing fraternity-- had, so far, mustered up the courage to approach the young lady with a distinct proposal of marriage; and these, it is hardly necessary to say, had been firmly, but as pleasantly as possible, sent to the right-about.
This cla.s.s of lovers gave Lucy no trouble whatever; bold as they might be in the pursuit of their lawless avocation, they were diffident to the verge of absurdity in the presence of beauty, if a.s.sociated with dignity and refinement; they were painfully conscious of their uncouth bearing and manners; and Lucy had little difficulty in keeping them at a proper distance.
But if these admirers gave her no trouble, there were others--notably two--who did; quite enough, in fact, to fully compensate for the ease with which she was able to manage all the rest. One of these was a certain Lieutenant Walford, a cousin of Lucy"s; the other being Captain George Leicester, of the merchant schooner _Industry_.
Edward Walford was the only son of a half-brother of the late Captain Walford. He was an orphan, twenty-three years of age, and held a commission in his Majesty"s--foot, then quartered in Gosport. He was fairly well educated, tall, pa.s.sably good-looking, of engaging manners, but--those who knew him best said--treacherous, unscrupulous, and a gamester.
George Leicester, on the other hand, whilst perhaps quite as handsome as his rival, was simply a frank, honest, st.u.r.dy seaman, carrying his heart upon his sleeve; thoroughly master of his profession, but diffident and doubtful of himself in all other matters.
The trouble with these two was, that Walford could not be made to see that his presence was distasteful to Lucy; whilst Leicester was provokingly blind to the fact that the fair girl loved him with all her pure, simple little heart. She had not given her love to him unsought, it must be understood--far from it; George Leicester had been one of the earliest, as he was one of her most constant and devoted, admirers; he was unremitting in his attentions to her whenever he was in port; but the simple fellow was so doubtful as to his prospects of success that he had never given Lucy the chance, which she would so gladly have welcomed, to say "Yes" to the momentous question which was ever hovering upon his lips, but had never yet been able to get beyond them.
It was on a certain brilliant June afternoon that Lucy, as was her frequent custom, took a book in her hand and strolled down to the beach, where, making a little nest for herself in the shingle, she sat down to read or think, as the whim might take her.
The ardent rays of the sun, streaming down out of a cloudless sky, gleamed and flashed and sparkled upon the waters of the Solent, which, ruffled by a gentle westerly breeze, shone like a sheet of liquid gold.
On the further side of the strait, the Isle of Wight upreared its green and wooded slopes in fair perspective; its northern sh.o.r.e, from Nettlestone Point to Egypt, bounding the view. On Lucy"s right lay the entrance to Southampton Water, with the further sh.o.r.e, about Stone Point and the mouth of the Beaulieu River, indistinctly seen through the quivering golden haze; whilst on the left, across the water, Southsea Castle stood boldly forward upon its low projecting point, a watchful sentinel over the magnificent anchorage of Spithead. Inland from the castle lay the little straggling town of Southsea; and beyond it again, still higher up the estuary, appeared the spires and roofs of Portsmouth, its harbour crowded with a perfect forest of masts. Some half a dozen men-o"-war lay at anchor at Spithead; and the waters of the Solent were dotted with the sails of craft of all sizes, from the stately frigate to the humble but enterprising b.u.mboat.
As Lucy sat there on the beach, basking in the sun, and far too idle to read, her listless gaze became fastened upon a trim, smart-looking little schooner which, under all the canvas she could possibly spread, was creeping slowly up from the westward before the light summer breeze.
The glance of indifference with which the fair girl at first regarded the little craft, gradually changed to one of the greatest interest.
Lucy, it must be remembered, was a sailor"s daughter; nearly all her neighbours were interested almost solely in seafaring matters; the daily conversation of those by whom she was surrounded abounded in nautical technicalities; she had even made a trip upon one occasion in her father"s lugger (the only occasion, by the bye, on which the hold of the said lugger was absolutely guiltless of contraband freight); and lastly, were not the walls of her home adorned with portraits of craft of various rigs pa.s.sing Flushing or the Needles? All of which circ.u.mstances had combined to give Lucy a very fair knowledge of nautical matters and "a sailor"s eye." She had not only learned the distinguishing characteristics of different rigs, but had also acquired the subtle power of recognising the individuality of different craft of the same rig whenever there happened to be anything to excite her interest in such craft. So now she first recognised the fact that the approaching vessel was a schooner, and, a little later on, when the schooner had drawn somewhat nearer, she became conscious that the schooner was well known to her. Drawing a small telescope from her pocket, she focussed it and pointed it at the vessel. Yes; there could be no doubt about it, it was the _Industry_; every little detail of canvas and rigging proclaimed the schooner"s ident.i.ty; and then, as though in order that there should be no possible room for doubt, and as though George Leicester had seen and recognised the charming girlish figure standing there on the beach (as possibly he had through his powerful marine gla.s.s), a white fluttering object gleamed out over the rail and, soaring aloft, streamed from the main-truck, a burgee with the name _Industry_ worked upon it in red letters. At the sight of this Lucy rapidly closed her little telescope and returned it to her pocket with a bright flush and a conscious, happy little laugh.
"Dear George," she murmured; "how glad I am that he is back all safe; and how fervently I hope that he did not see me watching the schooner.
I wonder whether he will walk over this evening."
She then, uncomfortably conscious of the possibility that "dear George"
might at that very moment have her accurately focussed in the field of his gla.s.s, sauntered along the beach with as much of an air of total abstraction as she could conveniently a.s.sume on the spur of the moment, and finally, after watching the schooner pa.s.s safely into Portsmouth Harbour and there come to an anchor, returned home.
She found her mother suffering from a more than ordinarily severe attack of "the miserables," as that lady was wont to term her low spirits. It was one of Mrs Walford"s peculiarities to be depressed in spirits in exact proportion to the brightness and exhilarating character of the weather--but Lucy was completely proof against it all just now; the sight she had so lately looked upon had sent a soft, dainty flush into her cheeks, a light into her eyes, and a song to her lips, which her mother"s "miserables" were wholly powerless to drive away, and she went about the house filling it with the melody of her low, sweet voice.
Tea was over; Mrs Walford was made comfortable in her wide arm-chair, with a huge volume of sermons in her lap; and Lucy was trying to settle down with composure to the execution of some trifle in the way of needle-work, when the sharp click of the gate-latch was heard; there was a crunching of feet upon the gravel walk, the front door was unceremoniously opened, and Lieutenant Edward Walford walked in.
"How _do_, aunt? Lucy, fair coz, I hope I see you in a state of perfect salubrity?" was his nonchalant greeting.
Mrs Walford replied that "she was as well as could be expected,"--she did not say under what adverse circ.u.mstances--and Lucy requested him not to make himself ridiculous. It was too bad, she decided; here she had been looking forward to a delightful visit from George Leicester, probably a whole evening spent in his society, and now this pestilent cousin of hers must needs take it into his perverse head to walk over from Gosport--to be found later on by "dear George" making fierce love to her, the unfortunate Lucy;--which would be quite sufficient, she felt sure, to choke the said George off for at least another voyage. But that should never be, she was quite resolved; she could not prevent her cousin coming to the house, since her mother not only tolerated, but rather encouraged his visits; but she could, and she _would_, prevent his making love to her.
With this determination she sat down, and, resorting to the best means she could think of for keeping her cousin at arm"s length, produced her writing-materials and proceeded to discharge a few of her epistolary debts.
Being thus unmistakably shown that his presence was unwelcome to the younger lady, he turned his attention to the elder one, talking to her about the war--the then all-important and most interesting topic of the moment--and giving her such sc.r.a.ps of news as had come to hand during the day, but it was perfectly evident from the uneasy glances he shot at his cousin and the nervous way in which he tugged at his long auburn moustache, that his occupation was not to his liking. At last, abandoning all further effort to accomplish the almost impossible task of amusing the old lady, he stepped to Lucy"s side, and said in a low whisper--
"Will you come into the garden with me for a few minutes, Lucy? I have something of the utmost importance to say to you, something which will brook no delay, for my regiment is ordered off to the West Indies, and I may not have another opportunity to see you."
Lucy knew as well as possible what the "something" was which her cousin so anxiously desired to say to her; she was convinced that it was nothing less than a proposal of marriage; and her first impulse was to excuse herself. But that, she decided, would hardly be kind on the eve of his departure for foreign service; moreover, it might leave him in possession of a feeling that there was some hope for him, or possibly, after the many love-speeches he had made her, he might feel himself in some sort bound not to marry any one else until he had had a distinct refusal from her, and that must certainly be avoided; so she decided that she would grant him the desired interview, give him his dismissal as speedily and withal as kindly as possible, and get him out of the house without delay--it was still early in the evening, and who knew but that she might succeed in getting rid of her unwelcome suitor before the welcome one put in an appearance?
So, laying aside her pen, she motioned him to follow her into the large garden at the back of the house, where they would be perfectly secure from observation, and herself led the way.
She conducted her cousin to a little summer-house at the lower end of the garden, and, motioning him to a seat said--
"Now, Cousin Edward, what is this important communication which you have to make? Be as brief as possible, if you please, for I really cannot spare you much time."
"I will," he said. Then, pausing for a moment, and making an unsuccessful attempt to gain possession of her hand, he remarked--
"I think you must have already guessed what it is that I have to say to you, Lucy. You cannot be ignorant of the feeling with which I regard you; you must have discovered long ago that I love you, Lucy, deeply, pa.s.sionately, tenderly, as a man loves only once in his lifetime. We have not known each other _very_ long, it is true," he continued after a slight pause, during which he had vainly looked into her downcast face for some sign of encouragement, "but the time has been long enough for me to learn that all my hopes of future happiness depend on you; and I think it has also been long enough to enable you to judge whether you can entrust your happiness to me or not. I know I am by no means what I ought to be,"--here he made another pause, hoping for some word or sign of disclaimer, which, however, never came--"but I hope you will not judge me too harshly. I am an orphan, remember. Robbed at an early age of a mother"s tender care and gentle training, I have been left pretty much to the mercy of strangers, who allowed me to grow up to manhood without an effort to check the development of those evil propensities which we all alike inherit from our first parents; and then, too, I have had the misfortune to be thrown--against my will, I honestly a.s.sure you--into evil companionship. But, in spite of all these disadvantages, I flatter myself that I am by no means a bad sort of fellow; and if you will only take me in hand, Lucy, I feel sure you could make a reformed character of me. And then, too, consider the society into which I could introduce you. Wearing his Majesty"s uniform, as I do, I could--"
"Pray say no more, Edward, I beg," interrupted Lucy. "I am grieved to be obliged to disappoint you--though I do not think the disappointment will be very great--but what you ask is quite impossible. In the first place I must frankly say that I do not love you; and in the second I must with equal frankness say that, though I might love ever so much, I would _never_ marry a man who needed that I should "take him in hand" to make a reformed character of him. You are my cousin, and, as such, I shall always regard you with friendly interest; but I shall never be able to entertain for you any warmer feeling."
Walford, pale to the lips with surprise and chagrin, looked incredulously in the face of the fair girl by whose side he was seated.
He was completely staggered. The idea of his being indifferent to his cousin had never for a single instant occurred to him. He had won for himself the reputation of being quite a "lady-killer;" and now this little country-bred girl had the impertinence to tell him coolly that she did not love him; nay, more--to hint pretty strongly that she regarded him with feelings not very far removed from contempt, because, forsooth, he had lived a somewhat fast life. Why, many of the girls he had met had positively _admired_ him for his rakishness--he did not pause to consider what manner of girls these were, though, by the bye.
It was monstrous, it was positively insulting. Then, in addition to the severe wound to his _amour-propre_, there was the disappointment of his hopes of pecuniary aggrandis.e.m.e.nt; Lucy"s fortune, modest though it was, would have been of the utmost service to him. It was true, he knew, that she would not have a penny of her own until her mother died, but that, he was firmly convinced, would not be a very long-postponed event; the "old fool"--as he called Mrs Walford in his heart--would doubtless be in her grave long enough before he returned from foreign service-- and, at all events, he was willing to risk that. But then Lucy had said she would not have him. Surely she could not mean it; she was only saying it to try him, or--stay--was it possible that she loved that sailor-fellow Leicester? He would find out.
"Are you _quite sure_, Lucy, that you will never be able to love me?" he asked, infusing a very successful affectation of pa.s.sionate entreaty into the tones of his voice. "Perhaps I have spoken too quickly; I have taken you by surprise, I have allowed my impatience to outrun my judgment; perhaps if I had waited a little longer--"
"It would have been just the same; I could never have loved you,"
interrupted Lucy. "And now let us return to the house; this interview has lasted quite long enough. I am sincerely sorry if you are disappointed, Edward, but I could never give you any other answer, so please say no more about it."
"One word more," exclaimed Walford. "Tell me--I have a right to know-- do you love any one else?"
"I really do not see that you _have_ a right to know anything about my private affairs," answered Lucy with some hauteur, "but in order that you may fully understand the hopelessness of your own case, I will confess that--that there _is_--some one else."
"Ah!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Walford between his set teeth, "I suspected as much.
And I can form a pretty shrewd guess as to who it is, too. It is that sneaking rascal Leicester, is it not?"
"How dare you, sir, speak to me of my friends in that manner!" exclaimed Lucy, rising to her feet and stamping upon the ground in the excess of her indignation. "Go, sir, and never come near me again; I will never speak another word to you!"