 
Transcriber's Notes:
COLLECTION | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
CONTENTSOF VOLUME II. | ||
| CHAP. | ||
| I. | At School in London. | |
| II. | Captain Copp. | |
| III. | Isaac Thornycroft's Stratagem. | |
| IV. | In Love. | |
| V. | Wilful Disobedience. | |
| VI. | The Half-moon Beach. | |
| VII. | My Lady at the Red Court. | |
| VIII. | A Last Interview. | |
| IX. | The Crowd in the Early Morning. | |
| X. | Shot down from the Heights. | |
| XI. | The Coroner's Inquest. | |
| XII. | Robert Hunter's Funeral. | |
| XIII. | Curious Rumours. | |
| XIV. | Robert Hunter's Ghost. | |
| XV. | In the Churchyard Porch. | |
| XVI. | In the Dog-cart to Jutpoint. | |
| XVII. | Ladies disputing. | |
| XVIII. | Disclosing it to Justice Thornycroft. | |
THE RED COURT FARM.
PART THE THIRD.
CHAPTER I.
At School in London.
Two years have gone by, and it is June again.
A good, substantial house in one of the western suburbs of the metropolis--Kensington. By the well-rubbed brass plate on the iron gate of the garden, and the lady's name on it--"Miss Jupp"--it may be taken for a boarding-school. In fact, it is one: a small select school (as so many schools proclaim themselves now; but this really is such); and, kept by Miss Jupp, once of Katterley. That is, by Miss Jupp and two of her sisters, but she wisely calls it by her own name singly, avoiding the ugly style of the plural "Miss Jupp's establishment."
Fortune changes with a great many of us; every day, every hour of our lives, some are going up, others down. When death removed old Mr. Jupp (an event that occurred almost close upon poor Mrs. Lake's), then his daughters found that they had not enough to get along in the world. Wisely taking time and circumstances by the forelock, the three elder ones, Mary, Margaret, and Emma, removed to London, took a good house at Kensington, and by the help of influential friends very soon had pupils in it. Dorothy and Rose were married; Louisa remained at Katterley with her widowed mother. They professed to take ten pupils only: once or twice the number had been increased to twelve; the terms were high, but the teaching was good, and the arrangements were really first-class. It was with the Miss Jupps that Mary Anne Thornycroft had been placed. And she did not run away from them.
Quite the contrary. The summer holidays have just set in, and she is to go home for them; as she did the previous midsummer; but she is expressing a half wish, now as she stands before Miss Margaret Jupp, that she could spend them where she is, in London. Long and long ago has she grown reconciled to the regularity of a school life, and to regard Miss Jupp's as a second and happy home. She spent the first Christmas holidays with them; the second Christmas (last) at Cheltenham with her stepmother; she and her brother Cyril.
Lady Ellis (retaining still the name) is in very ill health now. Almost simultaneously with quitting the Red Court after her marriage, a grave inward disorder manifested itself. Symptoms of it indeed had been upon her for some time, even before leaving India; but--as is the case with many other symptoms--they had been entirely disregarded, their grave nature unsuspected. Instead of leading a gay life at the gay inland watering-place, flaunting her charms and her fashion in the eyes of other sojourners, Lady Ellis found herself compelled to live a very quiet one. She has a small villa, an establishment of two servants only; and she does not wish for more. In heart, in nature, she is growing altered, and the refining, holy influence that very often--God be praised!--changes the whole heart and spirit with a change which is not of this world, is coming over her. Two visits only has she paid to the Red Court Farm, staying about six weeks each time, and Mr. Thornycroft goes to Cheltenham two or three times a year. Miss Thornycroft and her stepmother are civil to each other now, not to say friendly; and when she invited the young lady and her brother Cyril for the holidays last Christmas, they went. The previous midsummer they had spent together at Coastdown, it having been one of the periods of my lady's two visits. Fortune had contrived well for Lady Ellis, and her marriage with the wealthy master of the Red Court Farm enabled her to enjoy every substantial comfort in her hour of need.
Two other young ladies connected in a degree with this history are at Miss Jupp's this evening; the rest of the pupils have left. One of the two we have met before, one not. They are in the room now, and you may look at them. All three, including Miss Thornycroft, are about the same age--between eighteen and nineteen. She, Mary Anne, is the same tall, stately, fair, handsome, and (it must be owned) haughty girl that you knew before; the fine face is resolute as ever, the cold blue eyes as honest and uncompromising. She had been allowed to dress as expensively at Miss Jupp's as her inclination leads: to-day she wears a rich pale-blue silk; blue ribbons are falling from her fair hair. She is standing doing nothing: but sitting in a chair by her side, toying with a bit of fancy-work, is a plain, dark, merry-looking girl in a good useful nut-brown silk, Susan Hunter. She is the sister of Robert Hunter, several years his junior, and has been sent up from Yorkshire by her aunt, with whom she lives, to have two years of "finish" at a London school. Accident--not their having once known something of her brother--led to the school fixed on being Miss Jupp's. And now for the last.
In a grey alpaca dress, trimmed with a little ribbon velvet of the same hue, her head bent patiently over a pile of drawings that she is touching up, sits the third. A very different footing in the school, hers, from that of the other two; they pay the high, full terms; she pays nothing, but works out her board with industry. Have you forgotten that pale, gentle face, one of the sweetest both in feature and expression ever looked upon, with the fine silky chestnut hair modestly braided round it, and the soft brown eyes that take all the best feelings of a genuine heart by storm? The weary look telling of incessant industry, the pile of work that she does not look up from, the cheap holiday-dress (her best) costing little, all proclaim sufficiently her dependent position in the house--a slight, graceful girl of middle height, with a sort of drooping look in her figure, as if she were, and had been all her life, in the habit of being pushed into the background?
It is Anna Chester. Her life since we saw her has been like that of a dray horse. Mrs. Chester placed her at an inferior school as pupil-teacher, where she had many kinds of things to do, and the mistress's own children to take care of in the holidays. For a year and a half she stayed at it, doing her best patiently, and then the Miss Jupps took her. She has to work very much still, and her health is failing. Captain and Mrs. Copp have invited her to Coastdown for a change, and she goes down to-morrow with Miss Thornycroft. Miss Hunter spends the holidays at school.
Mrs. Chester? Mrs. Chester quitted Guild, to set up a fashionable boarding-house in London. It did not answer; the mass of people remained cruelly indifferent to its advertisements; and the few who tried it ran away and never paid her. She then removed to Paris, where (as some friends assured her) a good English boarding-house was much wanted; and, if her own reports are to be trusted, she is likely to do pretty well at it.
There remains only one more person to mention of those we formerly knew; and that is Robert Hunter. Putting his shoulder to the wheel in earnest, as only a resolute and capable man can put it; I had almost said as one only who has some expiation to work out; his days are spent in hard industry. He is the practical energetic man of business; never spending a moment in waste, never willingly allowing himself recreation. The past folly, the past idleness of that time, not so very long gone by, recurs to his memory less frequently than it used, but ever with the feeling of a nightmare. He is still with the same firm, earning a liberal salary. Since a day or two only has he been in London, but there's some talk of his remaining in it now. Nothing seems to be further from his thoughts than any sort of pleasure: it would seem that he has one vocation alone in life--work.
These three young ladies were going out this afternoon. To a grand house, too: Mrs. Macpherson's. The professor, good simple man, had been content, socially speaking, with a shed on the top of Aldgate pump: not so madam. As the professor rose more and more into distinction, she rose; and the residence in Bloomsbury was exchanged for a place at Kensington. Possibly the calling occasionally on the Miss Jupps, had put it into her head. A house as grand as its name in the matter of decoration; but not of undue size: Mrs. Macpherson had good common sense, and generally exercised it. A dazzling white front with a pillared portico and much ornamentation outside and in--"Majestic Villa." The professor had wanted to change the name, but madam preferred to retain it. It was not very far from Miss Jupp's, and these young ladies were going there to spend the evening.
In all the glory of her large room, with its decorations of white and gold, its mirrors, its glittering cabinets, its soft luxurious carpet, its chairs of delicate green velvet, sat Mrs. Macpherson, waiting for these young guests. In all her own glory of dress, it may be said, for that was not less conspicuous than of yore, and that of to-day looked just as if it were chosen to accord with the hangings--a green satin robe with gold leaves for trimmings, and a cap that could not be seen for sprays and spangles. In her sense of politeness--and she possessed an old-fashioned stock of it--Mrs. Macpherson had dressed herself betimes, not to leave the young ladies alone after they came. Thus, when they arrived, under the convoy of Miss Emma Jupp, who left them at the door, Mrs. Macpherson was ready to receive them.
It was the first time they had been there for many weeks; for the professor had been abroad on a tour in connexion with some of the ologies, as his wife expressed it, in which she had accompanied him. The result of this was, that Mrs. Macpherson had no end of Parisian novelties, in the shape of dress, to display to them in her chamber.
"I know what girls like," she said, in her hearty manner, "and that is, to look at new bonnets and mantles, and try 'em on."
But Mary Anne Thornycroft--perhaps because she could indulge in such articles at will--cared not a jot for these attractions, and said she should go down to see the professor.
He had some rooms at the back of the house, where his collection of scientific curiosities--to call things by a polite name--had been stowed. And here the professor, when not out, spent his time. Mary Anne quite loved the man, so simple-minded and yet great-minded at one and the same time, and never failed to penetrate to his rooms when occasion offered. Quickly wending her way through the passages, she opened the door softly.
It was not very easy to distinguish clearly at first, what with the crowd of things darkening the windows, and the mass of objects generally. At a few yards' distance, slightly bending over a sort of upright desk, as if writing something, stood a gentleman; but certainly not the professor. His back was towards her; he had evidently not heard her enter, and a faint flush of surprise dawned on Mary Anne's face, for in that first moment she thought it was her brother Cyril. It was the same youthful, supple, slender figure; the same waving hair, of a dark auburn, clustering round the head above the collar of the coat. Altogether, seen in this way, there was a certain resemblance; and that was the first primary link in the chain that attracted Mary Anne to him. The door, which she had left open, closed with a slight bang, and the gentleman spoke, without lifting his head.
"I have worked it out at last. You were right about its being less than the other."
"Is Dr. Macpherson not here?"
He turned sharply at the words, a pencil in his hand, surprise on his face. A good face; for its old gay careless look had departed for ever, and the dark blue eyes--darker even than of yore--wore a serious gravity that never left them, a gravity born of remorse. The face was older than the figure, and not in the least like Cyril Thornycroft's; it looked fully its seven-and-twenty years--nay, looked nearer thirty; but all its expression was merged in surprise. No wonder; to see a beautiful girl in blue silk, with blue ribbons in her fair hair, standing there; when he had only expected the professor, in his old threadbare coat and spectacles. It was Robert Hunter.
"I beg your pardon," he said, coming forward. "Can I do anything for you?"
"I thought Dr. Macpherson was here. I came to see him."
Never losing her calm self-possession on any occasion, as so many young ladies do on no occasion at all, Miss Thornycroft stepped up to the side glass cases to examine the curiosities, talking as easily to him as though she had known him all her life. Without being in the least free, there was an openness of manner about her, an utter absence of tricks and affectation, a straightforward independence, rather remarkable in a young lady. For Robert Hunter it possessed a singular charm.
Before the professor came in, who had forgotten himself down in his cellar, where he had gone after a cherished specimen in the frog line; before Mr. Hunter had pointed out to her a quarter of the new acquisitions in the glass cases--animal, vegetable, and mineral--they knew all about each other: that he was Susan Hunter's brother, and that she was Miss Thornycroft of Coastdown. At mention of her name, a brief vision connected with the past floated across Robert Hunter's brain--of a certain summer evening when he was returning to Guild with his poor young wife, and saw the back of a high open carriage bowling away from his sister's gate, which he was told contained Mr. and Miss Thornycroft. Never since that had he heard the name or thought of the people.
"Do you know, when I came into the room just now, and you were standing with your back to me, I nearly took you for one of my brothers. At the back you are just like him."
Robert Hunter smiled slightly. "And not in the face?"
"Not at all--except, perhaps, a little in the forehead. Cyril has hazel eyes and small features. The hair is exactly like his, the same colour, and grows just as his does in front, leaving the forehead square. If you were to hide your face, showing only the top of the forehead and the hair, I should say you were Cyril."
The professor appeared, and they went into the more habitable part of the house. Robert had not seen his sister since she was a little girl; he had not seen Anna since they parted at Guild. It was altogether an acceptable meeting; but he looked at Anna's face somewhat anxiously.
"Have you been working very much, Anna?" he took occasion to ask, drawing her for a moment aside.
"I am always working very hard," she answered, with her sweet smile of patient endurance. "There is a great deal to be done in schools, you know; but I am well off at Miss Jupp's compared to what I was at the other place. They are very kind to me."
"You have a look upon you as if you felt tired always. It is a curious impression to draw though, perhaps, considering I have seen you but for ten minutes."
"I do feel tired nearly always," acknowledged Anna. "The Miss Jupps think London does not agree with me. I am going to Coastdown for a change for the holidays; I shall get better there."
He thought she would require a longer change than a few holiday weeks. Never in the old days had it struck him that Anna looked fragile; but she certainly did now.
"And now, Robert Hunter, you'll stay with us, as these young ladies are here?" said hospitable Mrs. Macpherson.
He hesitated before replying. Very much indeed would he have liked to remain, but he had made an appointment with a gentleman.
"Put it off," said Mrs. Macpherson.
"There's no time for that. Certainly--if I am not at the office when he comes, one of the partners would see him. But--"
"But what?" asked the professor. "Would not that be a solution of the difficulty?"
"A way out of the mess," put in the professor's wife.
Mr. Hunter laughed. "I was going to say that I have never put away any business for my own convenience since--since I took to it again."
The attraction, or whatever it might be, however, proved too strong for business this afternoon, and Robert Hunter remained at the professor's. When he and Miss Thornycroft parted at night, it seemed that they had known each other for years.
It was very singular; a thing of rare occurrence. We have heard of this sudden mutual liking, the nameless affinity that draws one soul to another; but believe me it is not of very frequent experience. The thought that crossed Robert Hunter's mind that evening more than once was--"I wish that girl was my sister." Any idea of another sort of attachment would be a very long while yet before it penetrated to him as even a possibility.
In the evening, when they got home, at an early hour--Miss Jupp had only given them until eight o'clock, for there was packing to do--Mary Anne Thornycroft went into a fever of indignation to think that no message had been left by or from any of her brothers.
"It is so fearfully careless of them! That is just like my brothers. Do they expect we are to travel alone?"
"My dear, do not put yourself out," said Miss Jupp. "Two young ladies can travel alone very well. You will get there quite safely."
"So far as that goes, ma'am, I could travel alone fearlessly to the end of the world," spoke Mary Anne. "But that is not the question; neither does it excuse their negligence. For all they know, I might have spent all my money, and have none to take me down."
Miss Emma Jupp laughed. "They would suppose that we should supply you."
"Yes, Miss Emma, no doubt. But they had no business to send me word that one of them would be in London to-day to take charge of me home, unless--"
The words were brought to a sudden standstill by the opening of the door. One of the maids appeared at it to announce a guest.
"Mr. Isaac Thornycroft."
There entered the same noble-looking young man, noble in his towering height and strength, that we knew two years ago at Coastdown; he came in with a smile on his bright face--on its fair features, in its blue eyes. Miss Emma Jupp's first thought was, what a likeness he bore to his sister; her second that she had never in her whole life seen any one half so good-looking. It happened that she had never seen him before. Mary Anne began to reproach him for carelessness. He received it all with the most ineffable good humour, the smile brightening on his sunny face.
"I know it is too late, quite wrong of me, but I missed the train at Jutpoint, and had to come by a later one. Which of these two young ladies is Miss Chester?" he added, turning to the two girls who stood together. "I have a--a trifle for her from Captain Copp."
"You shall guess," interposed Mary Anne. "One of them is Anna Chester. Now guess."
It was not difficult. Miss Hunter met his glance fearlessly in a merry spirit; Anna blushed and let fall her eyes. Isaac Thornycroft smiled.
"This is Miss Chester."
"It is all through your stupid shyness, Anna," said Mary Anne in a cross tone. Which of course only increased her confusion. Isaac crossed the room, his eyes bent on the sweet blushing face, as he held out the "trifle" forwarded by Captain Copp.
"Will you accept it, Miss Chester? Captain Copp charged me to take particular care of it, and not to touch it myself."
It was a travelling wickered bottle, holding about a pint. Anna looked at it with curiosity, and Emma Jupp took it out of her hand.
"What can it be?"
"Take out the cork and smell it," suggested Mr. Isaac Thornycroft.
Miss Emma did so; giving a strong sniff. "Dear me! I think it is rum."
"Rum-and-water," corrected Isaac. "Captain Copp begged me to assure Miss Chester that it was only half-and-half, she being a young lady. It is for her refreshment as she goes down to-morrow."
"If that's not exactly like Sam Copp!" exclaimed Miss Jupp with some asperity, while the laugh against Anna went round. "He will never acquire an idea beyond his old sea notions; never. I remember what he was before his leg came off."
"He came all the way to Jutpoint in the omnibus after me when I had driven over, to make sure, I believe, that Mrs. Copp should not be privy to the transaction. It was through his injunctions as to the wicker bottle that I missed my train," concluded Isaac--his eyes, that were bent on Anna Chester, dancing with mirth. At which hers fell again.
If all of us estimated people alike, especially in regard to that subtle matter of "liking" or "disliking" on first impression, what a curious world it would be! Miss Emma Jupp considered Isaac Thornycroft the best-looking, the most attractive man she had ever seen. Mary Anne Thornycroft, on the contrary, was thinking the same of somebody else.
"I never saw anybody I liked half so much at first sight as Robert Hunter," she softly said to herself, as she laid her head on her pillow.
CHAPTER II.
Captain Copp.
Captain Copp was a true sailor, gifted with more good nature than common sense. On the rare occasion of receiving a young lady visitor under his roof, his hospitality and his heart alike ran riot. Anna Chester, the pretty, friendless girl whom he had heard of but never seen, was coming to him and his wife to be nursed into strength and health, and the captain anticipated the arrival as something to be made a fÊte of.
A feast too, by appearances. It was a bright summer morning, with a fresh breeze blowing from the sea; and the captain was abroad betimes with some flowing purple ribbons fastened round his glazed hat. Greatly to the grievance of Mrs. Copp: who had ventured to say that Anna was not a captured prize-ship, or a battle won, or even a wedding, that she should be rejoiced over to the extent of streamers. All of which Captain Copp was deaf to. He started by the ten o'clock omnibus for Jutpoint, having undertaken first of all to send home provisions for dinner. A pair of soles and two pounds of veal cutlet had been meekly suggested by Mrs. Copp.
The morning wore on. Sarah, the middle-aged, hard-featured, sensible-looking, thoroughly capable woman-servant, who was bold enough to dispute with her master, and not in the least to care at being likened to pirates and other disrespectful things, stood in the kitchen making a gooseberry pudding, when the butcher-boy came in without the ceremony of announcing himself; unless a knocking and pushing of his tray against the back-door posts, through awkwardness, could be called such.
"Some dishes, please," said he.
"Dishes!" retorted Sarah, who had one of the strongest tongues in Coastdown. "Dishes for what?"
"For this here meat. The captain have just been in and bought it, and master have sent it up."
He displayed some twelve or fifteen pounds of meat--beef, veal, lamb. Sarah's green eyes--good, honest, pleasant eyes in the main--glistened.
"Then your master's a fool. Didn't I tell him not to pay attention to the captain when he took these freaks in his head?" she demanded. "When he goes and buys up the whole shop--as he did one day last winter because he was expecting a old mate of his down--your master's not to notice him no more nor if he was a child. An uncommon soft you must be, to bring up all them joints! Did you think you was supplying the Red Court? Just you march back with 'em."
There was an interruption. While the boy stood staring at the meat, hardly knowing what to do, and rubbing his fingers amidst his shining black hair, Mrs. Copp entered the kitchen, and became acquainted with the state of affairs. She wore a pale muslin gown, as faded as her gentle self, with pale green ribbons.
"Dear me," she meekly cried, "all that meat! We could not get through the half of it while it was good? Do you think, James, your master would have any objection to take it back?"
"Objection! He'll take it back, ma'am, whether he has any objection or not," cried the positive Sarah. "Now then! who's this?"
Somebody seemed to be clattering up in clogs. A woman with the fish: three pairs of large soles and a score or two of herrings, which the captain had bought and paid for. Mrs. Copp, fearing what else might be coming, looked inclined to cry. The exasperated Sarah, more practical, took her hands out of the paste, wiped the flour off them on her check apron, and went darting across the heath without bonnet to the butcher's shop, the boy and his tray of rejected meat slowly following her. There she commenced a wordy war with the butcher, accusing him of being an idiot, with other disparaging epithets, and went marching home in triumph carrying two pounds of veal cutlet.
"And that's too much for us," she cried to her mistress, "with all that stock of fish and the pudding. What on earth is to be done with the fish, I don't know. If I fry a pair for dinner, and pickle the herrings, there'll be two pair left. They won't pickle. One had need to have poor folk coming here as they do at the Red Court. Master's gone off with purple streamers flying from his hat; I think he'd more need to put on bells."
Scarcely had she got her hands into the flour again, when another person arrived. A girl with a goose. It was in its feathers, just killed.
"If you please, ma'am," said she to Sarah, with a curtsey, "mother says she'll stick the other as soon as ever she can catch him; but he's runned away over the common. Mother sent me up with this for 'fraid you should be waiting to pluck him. The captain said they was to come up sharp."
Sarah could almost have found in her heart to "stick" her master. She was a faithful servant, and the waste of money vexed her. Mrs. Copp, quite unable to battle with the petty ills of life, left the strong-minded woman to fight against these, and ran away to her parlour.
The respected cause of all this, meanwhile, had reached Jutpoint, he and his streamers. There he had to wait a considerable time, but the train came in at last, and brought the travellers.
They occupied a first-class compartment in the middle of the train. There had been a little matter about the tickets at starting. Isaac Thornycroft procured them, and when they were seated, Anna took out her purse to repay him, and found she had not enough money in it. A little more that she possessed was in her box. Accustomed to travel second-class, even third, the cost of the ticket was more than she had thought for. Eighteenpence short!
"If you will please to take this, I will repay you the rest as soon as I can get to my box," she said, with painful embarrassment--an embarrassment that Isaac could not fail to notice and to wonder at. Reared as she had been, money wore to her an undue value; to want it in a time of need seemed little short of a crime. She turned the silver about in her hands, blushing painfully. Miss Thornycroft discerned somewhat of the case.
"Never mind, Anna. I dare say you thought to travel second-class. You can repay my brother later."
Isaac's quick brain took in the whole. This poor friendless girl, kept at the Miss Jupps' almost out of charity, had less money in a year for necessities than he would sometimes spend in an hour in frivolity. Anna held out the silver still, with the rose-coloured flush deepening on her delicate cheeks.
"What is it, Miss Chester?" he suddenly said. "Why do you offer me your money?"
"You took my ticket, did you not?"
"Certainly," he answered, showing the three little pieces of card in his waistcoat. "But I held the money for yours beforehand. Put up your purse."
"Did you," she answered, in great relief, but embarrassed still. "Did Mrs. Copp give it you?--or--Miss Jupp?--or--or the captain?" Isaac laughed.
"You had better not inquire into secrets, Miss Chester. All I can tell you is, I had the money for your ticket in my pocket. Where is that important article--the wicker bottle? Captain Copp will expect it returned to him--empty."
"It is empty now; Miss Jupp poured out the rum-and-water," she answered, laughing. "I have it all safe."
She put up her purse as she spoke, inquiring no further as to the donor in her spirit of implicit obedience, but concluded it must have been Miss Jupp. And she never knew the truth until--until it was too late to repay Isaac.
At the terminus, side by side with the captain and his streamers, stood Justice Thornycroft. Anna remembered him well; the tall, fine, genial-natured man whom she had seen three years before in the day's visit to Mrs. Chester. All thought of her had long ago passed from his memory, but he recognised the face--the pale, patient, gentle face, which, even then, had struck Mr. Thornycroft as being the sweetest he had ever looked upon. It so struck him now.
"Where have I seen you?" he asked. And Anna told him.
The carriage, very much to the displeasure of Mary Anne, had not come over for her. Mr. Thornycroft explained that one of the horses he generally drove in it was found to be lame that morning. They got into the omnibus, the captain preferring to place himself with his ribbons and his wooden leg flat on the roof amidst the luggage. On the outskirts of Jutpoint, in obedience to his signal, the driver came to a standstill before the door of the "White Cliff" public-house, and the captain's head appeared at the back window, in a hanging position, inquiring whether brandy or rum would be preferred; adding, with a somewhat fierce look at Mr. Thornycroft and Isaac, that he should stand glasses round this time. Very much to the captain's discomfiture, the young ladies and the gentlemen declined both; so the only order the crestfallen captain could give the White Cliff was for two glasses of rum, cold without; that were disposed of by himself and the driver.
"Mind, Anna! I feel three-parts of a stranger in this place, and have really not a friend of my own age and condition in it, so you must supply the place of one to me during these holidays," said Miss Thornycroft, as the omnibus reached its destination--the Mermaid. "Part of every day I shall expect you to spend at the Red Court."
"I beg to second that," whispered Isaac, taking Anna's hand to help her out. And she blushed again that day for about the fiftieth time without knowing why or wherefore.
Not upon these summer holidays can we linger, because so much time must be spent on those of the next winter. On those of the next winter! If the inmates of the Red Court Farm could but have foreseen what those holidays were to bring forth for them! or Mary Anne Thornycroft dreamt of the consequences of indulging her own self-will! Just a few words more of the present, and then we go on.
Anna Chester's sojourn at Coastdown was passing swiftly, and she seemed as in a very Elysium. The days of toil, of servitude, of incessant care for others were over, temporarily at any rate, and she enjoyed comfort and rest. The hospitable, good-hearted sailor-captain, with his tales of the sea-serpent, the mermaid he had seen, and other marvels; the meek, gentle, ever-thoughtful Mrs. Copp, who caused Anna to address her as "aunt," and behaved more kindly to her than any aunt did yet; the most charming visits day by day to the Red Court Farm, and the constant society of Isaac Thornycroft. Ah, there it lay--the strange fascination that all things were beginning to possess around her--in the companionship of him. To say that Isaac Thornycroft, hitherto so mockingly heart-whole, had fallen in love with Anna the first evening he saw her at Miss Jupp's, would be going too far, but he was certainly three-parts in love before they reached Coastdown the following day. To watch her gentle face became like the sweetest music to Isaac Thornycroft. To see her ever-wakeful attentions to her entertainers, her gratitude for their kindness, her prompt help of Sarah when extra work was to be done, her loving care for the friendless and poor, was something new to Isaac, altogether out of his experience. Come weal, come woe, he resolved that this girl should be his wife. People, in their thoughtless gossip, had been wont to predict a high-born and wealthy bride for the attractive second son of Justice Thornycroft; this humble orphan, the poor daughter of the many years poor and humble curate, was the one he fixed upon, with all the world before him to choose from. How Fate changes plans! "L'homme propose, mais Dieu dispose," was one of the most solemn truisms ever penned. Long ere the six weeks of holidays had passed, Isaac Thornycroft and Anna Chester had become all in all to each other: and he, a man accustomed to act upon impulse, spoke out.
It was during an evening walk to the Red Court Farm. Anna was going to tea there; Isaac met her on the heath--no unusual thing--and turned to walk by her side. Both were silent after the first greeting: true love is rarely eloquent. With her soft cheeks blushing, her pale eyelids drooping, her heart wildly beating, Anna sought--at first in vain--to find some topic of conversation, and chose but a lame one.
"Has Mary Anne finished her screen?"
Isaac smiled. "As if I knew!"
"She has the other one to do; and we shall be going back in a week."
"Not in a week!"
"The holidays will be up a week to-morrow."
A vista of the miserable time after her departure, when all things would be dark and dreary, wanting her who had come to make his heart's sunshine, cast its foreshadowing across the brain of Isaac. He turned to her in his impulse, speaking passionately.
"Anna, I cannot lose you. Rather than that, I must--I must--"
"Must what?" she asked, innocently.
"Keep you here on a visit to myself--a visit that can never terminate."
Insensibly, she drew a little from him. Not that the words would have been unwelcome had circumstances justified them; how welcome, the sudden rush of inward joy, the wild coursing on of all her pulses, told her. But--loving him though she did; conscious or half-conscious of his love for her--it never occurred to the mind of Anna Chester that a union would be within the range of possibility. She--the poor humble slave--be wedded by a great and wealthy gentleman like Isaac Thornycroft!
"Would you object to the visit, Anna--though it were to be for life?"
"It could not be," she answered, in a low tone, not affecting to misunderstand him.
"Oh, couldn't it!" said Isaac, amused, and taking up rather the wrong view of the words. "But if you and I say it shall?"
"Halloa! Is it you, Isaac? How d'ye do, Miss Chester?"
Richard Thornycroft, coming suddenly into the path from a side crossing, halted as he spoke. Isaac, put out for once in his life, bit his lips.
"I want you, Isaac. I was looking for you. Here's some bother up."
"What bother?" testily rejoined Isaac.
"You had better come down and hear it. Tomlett--Come along."
Seeing plainly that his walk with Anna was over for the time, Isaac Thornycroft turned off with his brother, leaving Anna to go on alone to the gate, which was in sight.
"Good-day for the present, Anna," he said, with apparent carelessness. "Tell Mary Anne not to wait tea for me. I may not be in."
More forcibly than ever on this evening, when she sat in the spacious drawing-room surrounded by its many elegancies, did the contrast between the Red Court and her own poor home of the past strike on the senses of Anna Chester. Nothing that moderate wealth could purchase was here wanting. Several servants, spacious and handsome rooms, luxuries to please the eye and please the palate. Look at the tea-table laid out there! The delicately-made Worcester china, rich in hues of purple and gold; the chased silver tea and coffee service on their chased silver stands; small fringed damask napkins on the purple and gold plates. Shrimps large as prawns, potted meats, rolled bread-and-butter, muffins, rich cake, and marmalade, are there; for it is Justice Thornycroft's will that all meals, if laid, shall be laid well. Sometimes a cup of tea only came in for Miss Thornycroft, as it used to do for my lady when she was there. It almost seemed to Anna Chester as if she were enacting a deceit, a lie, in sitting at it, its honoured guest, for whom these things were spread, when she thought of the scrambling meals in her former home with Mrs. Chester's children. The odd teacups--for as one got broken it would be-replaced by another of any shape or pattern, provided it were cheap; saucers notched; cracked cups without handles; the stale loaf on the table; the scanty, untidy plate of salt butter, of which she had to cut perpetual slices, like Werther's Charlotte; the stained table without a cover, crumbs strewing it. Look on this picture and on that. Anna did, in deep dejection; and the thought which had faintly presented itself to her mind when Isaac Thornycroft spoke his momentous words, grew into grim and defined shape, and would not be scared away--that she could be no fit wife for Isaac. She resolved to tell him of these things, and of her own unfitness; how very poor she was, always had been, always (according to present prospects) would be; and beg him to think no more of her; and she did not doubt he would unsay his words of his own accord when he came to know of it. It is true she winced at the task: but her conscience told her it must be done, though her heart should faint at it. She could imagine no fate so bright in the wide world as that of becoming the wife of Isaac Thornycroft.
"What makes you so silent this evening?"
Anna started at Miss Thornycroft's words. That young lady was eyeing her with curiosity.
"I was only thinking," she answered, with a vivid blush. "Oh, and I forgot: your brother wished me to ask you not to wait tea for him."
"My brother! Which of them?"
"Mr. Isaac."
"Very considerate, I'm sure! seeing that I never do wait, and that if I did he would probably not come in."
There was a mocking tone in her voice that Anna rather winced at as applied to Isaac. She went on explaining where she saw him; that he and Richard had walked away together--she fancied to Tomlett's.
"They are a great deal too intimate with Tomlett," spoke Miss Thornycroft, curling her lip. "He is no better than a boatman. My belief is, they go and drink gin-and-water with him. They ought to have more pride."
"Mr. Richard said there was some 'bother.'"
"Oh! of course; any excuse before you. I tell you, Anna, they are just a couple of loose young men."
The "loose young men" came in shortly; Richard to go away again, Isaac to remain. He had told Mrs. Copp he would see her home safely. "Let it be by daylight, if you please," answered that discreet lady.
Not by daylight, but under the stars of the sweet summer's night, they went out. There was no one to see; the way was lonely; and Isaac drew Anna's hand within his arm for the first time, and kept it a prisoner.
"I must take care of you, Anna, as you are to become my own property."
"But I--I am not to become that; I wish I could, but it is impossible," she stammered, setting about her task in hesitating perplexity.
"Anna, do you understand me? I am asking you to be my wife."
"Yes, I--I believe I understood; and I feel very grateful to you, all the same."
"All the same!" Isaac Thornycroft released her hand and turned to face her.
"Just tell me what you mean. Don't you care for me?"
Agitated, embarrassed, she burst into tears. Isaac took both her hands now, holding them before him. They had reached the churchyard, and its graves were distinct in the twilight; the stars looked down on them from the blue sky above; the sound of the surging sea came over with a faint murmur.
"I thought you loved me, Anna. Surely I cannot have been steering on a wrong tack?"
As the soft eyes glanced at him through their tears, he saw enough to know that she did love him. Reassured on that score, he turned and walked on again, her arm kept within his.
"Now, tell me what you mean," he said, quietly. "There can be no other bar."
"I do not know how to tell you," she answered. "I do not like to tell you."
"Nonsense, Anna. I shall keep you out here pacing the heath until you do tell, though it be until morning, which would certainly send Mrs. Copp into a fit."
Not very awkwardly when she had fairly entered upon it, Anna told her tale--her sense of the unfitness, nay, the impossibility of the union--of the wide social gulf that lay between them. Isaac met the communication with a laugh.
"Is that all! It is my turn now not to understand. You have been reared a gentlewoman, Anna."
"Papa was a clergyman. I have been reared, I think, to nothing but work. We were so very poor. My home--ah! if you could see, if you could imagine the contrast it presented to this of yours! As I sat in your drawing-room to-night I could not help feeling the difference forcibly."
If Isaac Thornycroft had not seen what she spoke of, he had seen something else--that never in his whole life had he met any one who gave him so entirely the idea of a gentlewoman--a refined, well-bred gentlewoman--as this girl now speaking with him, Anna Chester. He continued in evident amusement.
"Let us see how your objections can be refuted. You play and sing?"
"A little."
"You draw?"
"A little."
"You can dance?"
"Yes; I can dance."
"Why, then--not to enter on other desirable qualities--you are an accomplished young lady. What do you mean about unfitness?"
"I see you are laughing at me," she said, the tears struggling to her eyes again. "I am so very poor; I teach for the merest trifle: it barely finds me in the cheapest clothes. I only looked forward to a life of work. And you are rich--at least Mr. Thornycroft is."
"If we have a superfluity of riches, there's all the more cause for me to dispense with them in a wife. Besides, when I set up my tent, it will not be on the scale of my father's house. Anna, my darling!" he added, with a strange gravity in his eye and tone, "we are more on an equality than you may deem."
She made no reply, having enough to do to keep her tears from falling.
"I have sufficient for comfort--a sort of love-in-a-cottage establishment," went on Isaac; "and I am heartily sick of my bachelor's life. It leads me into all sorts of extravagances, and is unsatisfactory at the best. You must promise to be my wife, Anna."
"There are the lights in Captain Copp's parlour," said she, with singular irrelevance.
"Just so. But you do not go in until I have your promise."
"They were saying one day, some of them--I think it was Mrs. Connaught--that you would be sure to marry into one of the good county families," murmured Anna.
"Did they? I hope the disappointment won't be too much for them. I shall marry you, Anna, and none other."
"But what would your family say? Your father--your sister?"
"Just what they pleased. Anna, pardon me, I am only teasing you. Believe me, they will only be too glad to hear of it; glad that the wild, unsteady (as Mary Anne is pleased to call me on occasion) Isaac Thornycroft should make himself into a respectable man. Anna! can you not trust me?"
She had trusted all her life, yielded implicitly to the sway of those who held influence over her; little chance was there, then, that she could hold out now. Isaac Thornycroft received the promise his heart hungered for, and sealed it.
Her face gathered against his breast; her slight form shrinking in his strong arms; he kept her there a prisoner; his voice breathing soft love-vows; his blue eyes bent greedily on her blushing face; his kisses, the only honest kisses his life had known, pressed again and again upon her lips.
"Who on earth is that? Avast, thieves! Bea serpents! pirates!"
The gallant Captain Copp, his night-glass pushed out at the open window to an acute angle, had been contemplating these puzzling proceedings for some time. Fortunately he did not distinguish very clearly, and remained ignorant of the real matter. Ill-conditioned people, tipsy fishermen and else, their brains muddled with drink, found their way to the heath on occasion, and the captain considered it a duty to society to order them off. Sweeping the horizon and the nearer plain to-night, his glass had shown him some object not easy to make out. The longer Captain Copp waited for it to move, the longer it stayed stationary; the more he turned his glass, the less chance did it appear to give of revealing itself. Naturally, two people in close proximity, the head of the taller one bent over the other so as to leave no indication of the human form, would present a puzzling paradox when viewed through a night-glass: the captain came to the conclusion that it was the most extraordinary spectacle ever presented to his eyes since they had looked on that sea serpent in the Pacific; and he raised his voice to hail it when suspense was becoming quite unbearable.
Isaac Thornycroft, adroitly sheltering his companion, glided up the little opening by Mrs. Connaught's. In a few minutes, when the captain had drawn his head and glass in for a respite, he walked boldly up to the door by the side of Anna.
"Good evening, captain."
"Good evening," blithely responded the captain. "Sorry you should have the trouble of bringing her home. Come in, Anna. I say, did you meet any queer thing on the heath?"
"Queer thing?" responded Isaac.
"A man without a head, or anything of that light sort?"
"No. There's a strange horse browsing a bit lower down," added Isaac. "Some stray animal."
The captain considered, and came to the conclusion that it could not well have been the horse. What it really was he did not conjecture.
Meanwhile Anna Chester had gone upstairs to the pleasant little room she occupied, and took off her bonnet in a maze of rapture. The world had changed into a heavenly Elysium.
CHAPTER III.
Isaac Thornycroft's Stratagem.
A still evening in October. The red light in the west, following on a glorious sunset, threw its last rays athwart the sea; the evening star came out in its brightness; the fishing boats were bearing steadily for home.
Captain Copp's parlour was alight with a ruddy glow; not of the sun but of the fire. It shone brightly on the captain's face, at rest now. He had put down his pipe on the hearth, after carefully knocking the smouldering ashes out, and gone quietly to sleep, his wooden leg laid fiat on an opposite chair, his other leg stretched over it. Mrs. Copp sat knitting a stocking by fire-light, her gentle face rather thoughtful; and, half-kneeling, half-sitting on the hearth-rug, reading, was Anna Chester.
She was here still. When Mary Anne Thornycroft returned to school after the summer holidays, Captain Copp had resolutely avowed Anna should stay with him. What was six weeks, he fiercely demanded, to get up a lady's health: let her stop six months, and then he'd see about it. Mrs. Copp hardly knew what to say, between her wish to keep Anna and her fear of putting the Miss Jupps to an inconvenience. "Inconvenience be shot!" politely rejoined the captain; and Mary Anne Thornycroft went back without her, bearing an explanatory and deprecatory letter.
It almost seemed to the girl that the delighted beating of her heart--at the consciousness of staying longer in the place that contained him--must be a guilty joy,--guilty because it was concealed. Certainly not from herself might come the first news of her engagement to Isaac Thornycroft: she was far too humble, too timid, to make the announcement. Truth to say, she only half believed in it: it seemed too blissful to be true. While Isaac did not proclaim it, she was quite content to let it rest a secret from the whole world. And so the months had gone on; Anna living in her paradise of happiness; Isaac making love to her privately in very fervent tenderness.
In saying to Anna Chester that his family would be only too glad to see him married, Isaac Thornycroft (and a doubt that it might prove so lay dimly in his mind when he said it) found that he had reckoned without his host. At the first intimation of his possible intention, Mr. Thornycroft and Richard rose up in arms against it. What they said was breathed in his ear alone, earnestly, forcibly; and Isaac, who saw how fruitless would be all pleading on his part, burst out laughing, and let them think the whole a joke. A hasty word spoken by Richard in his temper as he came striding out of the inner passage, caught the ear of Mary Anne.
"Isaac, what did he mean? Surely you are not going to be married?"
"They thought I was," answered Isaac, laughing. "I married! Would anybody have me, do you suppose, Mary Anne?"
"I think Miss Tindal would. There would be heaps of money and a good connexion, you know, Isaac."
Miss Tindal was a strong-minded lady in spectacles, who owned to thirty years and thirty thousand pounds. She quoted Latin, rode straight across country after the hounds, and was moreover a baronet's niece. A broad smile played over Isaac's lips.
"Miss Tindal's big enough to shake me. I think she would, too, on provocation. She can take her fences better than I can. That's not the kind of woman I'd marry. I should like a meek one."
"A meek one!" echoed Mary Anne, wondering whether he was speaking in derision. "What do you call a meek one?"
"A modest, gentle girl who would not shake me. Such a one as--let me see, where is there one?--as Anna Chester, say, for example."
All the scorn the words deserved seemed concentrated in Miss Thornycroft's haughty face.
"As good marry a beggar as her. Why, Isaac, she is only a working teacher--a half-boarder at school! She is not one of us."
He laughed off the alarm as he had done his father's and brother's a few minutes before, the line of conduct completely disarming all parties. She would not tolerate Miss Chester, they would not tolerate his marriage at all: that was plain. Isaac Thornycroft did not care openly to oppose his family, or be opposed by them: he let the subject drop out of remembrance, and left the future to the future. But he said not a word of this to Anna; she suspected nothing of it, and was just as contented as he to let things take their course in silence. To her there seemed but one possible calamity in the world; and that lay in being separated from him.
Sitting there on the hearth-rug, in the October evening, her eyes on the small print by the firelight, getting dim now, Anna's heart was a-glow within her, for that evening was to be spent with Isaac Thornycroft. A gentleman with his daughter was staying for a couple of days at the Red Court, and Anna had been asked to go there for the evening, and bear the young lady company.
"My dear," whispered Mrs. Copp, in the midst of her knitting, "is it not getting late? You will have the daylight quite gone."
Anna glanced up. It was getting late; but Isaac Thornycroft had said to her, "I shall fetch you." Still the habit of implicit obedience was, as ever, strong upon her, and she would fain have started there and then, in compliance with the suggestion.
"What a noise Sarah's making!"
"So she is," assented Mrs. Copp, as a noise like the bumping about of boxes, followed by talking, grew upon their ears. Another moment, and Sarah opened the door.
"A visitor," she announced, in an uncompromising voice, and the captain started up, prepared to explode a little at being aroused. Which fact Sarah was no doubt anticipating, and she spoke again.
"It is your mother, sir."
"Yes, it's me, Sam;" cried an upright wiry lady, very positive and abrupt in manner. Her face looked as if weather-beaten, and she wore large round tortoiseshell spectacles.
"Who's that?" she cried, sitting down on the large sofa, as Anna stood up in her pretty silk dress, with the pink ribbons in her hair. "Who? The daughter of the Reverend James Chester and his first wife! You are very like your father, child, but prettier. Where's my sea-chest to go, Sam?"
"I am truly glad to see you, dear mother," whispered Amy Copp, in her loving way. "The best bedroom is not in order, but----"
"And can't be put in order before to-morrow," interposed Sarah, who had no notion of being taken by storm in this way. "The luggage had better be put in the back kitchen for to-night."
"Is there much luggage?" asked the captain.
"Nothing to speak of," said Mrs. Copp; who, being used to the accommodation of a roomy ship, regarded quantity accordingly. Sarah coughed.
"My biggest sea-chest, four trunks, two bandboxes, and a few odd parcels," continued the traveller. "I am going to spend Christmas with some friends in London, but I thought I'd come to you first. As to the room not being in apple-pie order, that's nothing I'm an old sailor; I'm not particular."
"Put a pillow down here, if that's all," cried the captain, indicating the hearthrug. "Mother has slept in many a worse berth, haven't ye, mother?"
"Ay, lad, that I have. But now I shall want some of those boxes unpacked to-night. I have got a set of furs for you, Amy, somewhere; I don't know which box they were put in."
Amy was overpowered. "You are too good to me," she murmured, with tears in her eyes.
"And I have brought you a potato-steamer; that's in another," added Mrs. Copp. "I have taken to have mine steamed lately, Sam; you'd never eat them again boiled if you once tried it."
In the midst of this bustle Isaac Thornycroft walked in. Anna, in a flutter of heart-delight, but with a calm manner, went upstairs, and came down with her bonnet on, to find Isaac opening box after box in the back kitchen, under Mrs. Copp's direction, in search of the furs and the potato-steamer, the captain assisting, Amy standing by. The articles were found, and Isaac, laughing heartily in his gay good-humour, went off with Anna.
"What time am I to fetch you, Miss Anna?" inquired Sarah, as they went out.
"I will see Miss Chester home," answered Isaac: "you are busy to-night."
Mrs. Copp, gazing through her tortoiseshell spectacles at the potato-steamer, as she pointed out its beauties, suddenly turned to another subject, and brought her glasses to bear on her son and his wife.
"Which of the young Thornycrofts is that? I forget."
"Isaac; the second son."
"To be sure; Isaac, the best and handsomest of the bunch. You must take care," added Mrs. Copp, shrewdly.
"Take care of what?"
"They might be falling in love with each other. I don't know whether he's much here. He is as fine a fellow as you'd see in a day's march; and she's just the pretty gentle thing that fine men fancy."
Had it been anybody but his mother, Captain Copp would have shown his sense of the caution in strong language. "Moonshine and rubbish," cried he. "Isaac Thornycroft's not the one to entangle himself with a sweetheart; the young Thornycrofts are not marrying men; and if he were, he would look a little higher than poor Anna Chester."
"That's just it, the reason why you should be cautious, Sam," rejoined Mrs. Copp. "Not being suitable, there'd be no doubt a bother over it at the Red Court."
Amy, saying something about looking to the state of the spare room, left them in the parlour. Truth to say, the hint had scared her. Down deep in her mind, for some short while past, had a suspicion lain that they were rather more attached to each other than need be. She had only hoped it was not so. She did not by any means see her way clear to hinder it, and was content to let the half fear rest; but these words had roused it in all its force. They had somehow brought a conviction of the fact, and she saw trouble looming. What else could come of it? Anna was no match for Isaac Thornycroft.
"Sam," began Mrs. Copp, when she was alone with her son, "how does Amy continue to go on? Makes a good wife still?"
Captain Copp nodded complacently. "Never a better wife going. No tantrums--no blowings off: knits all my stockings and woollen jerseys."
"You must have a quiet house."
"Should, if 'twere not for Sarah. She fires off for herself and Amy too. I'm obliged to keep her under."
"Ah," said Mrs. Copp, rubbing her chin. "Then I expect you get up some breezes together. But she's not a bad servant, Sam."
"She's a clipper, mother--A 1; couldn't steer along without her."
What with the boxes, and what with the exactions of the spare bed-room to render it habitable for the night, for Mrs. Copp generally chose to put herself into everybody's business, and especially into her own, the two ladies had to leave Captain Copp very much to his own society. Solitude is the time for reflection, we are told, and it may have been the cause of the captain's recurring again and again to the hint his mother had dropped in regard to Isaac Thornycroft. That there was nothing in it yet he fully assumed, and it might be as well to take precautions that nothing should be in it for the future. Prevention was better than cure. Being a straightforward man, one who could not have gone in a roundabout or cautious way to work, it occurred to the captain to say a word to Mr. Isaac on the very first opportunity.
It was the first evening Anna had spent at the Red Court since Miss Thornycroft left it. The walk there, the sojourn, the walk home again by moonlight, all seemed to partake of heaven's own happiness--perfect, pure, peaceful. There had been plenty and plenty of opportunities for lingering together in the twilight on the heath in coming home from the seashore, but this was the first long legitimate walk they had taken; and considering that they were sixty minutes over it, when they might have done it in sixteen, it cannot be said they hurried themselves.
The captain was at the window, not looking on the broad expanse of heath before him, but at the faint light seen now and again from some fishing vessel cruising in the distance. It was his favourite look-out; and, except on a boisterous or rainy night, the shutters were rarely closed until ten o'clock.
"Come in and have a glass of grog with me," was his salutation to Isaac Thornycroft as he and Anna came to the gate. "'Twill be a charity," added the captain. "I'm all alone. Mother's gone up to bed tired, and Amy's looking after her."
Isaac came in and sat down, but wanted to decline the grog. Captain Copp was offended, so to pacify him he mixed some. As Anna held out her hand to the captain to say good night he noticed that her soft eyes were full of loving light; her generally delicate cheeks were a hot crimson.
"Hope it hasn't come of kissing," thought the shrewd and somewhat discomfited sailor.
"How well your mother wears!" observed Isaac.
"She was always tough," replied Captain Copp, in a thankful accent. "Hope she will be for many a year to come. Look here, Mr. Isaac, I meant to say a word to you. Don't you begin any sweethearting with that girl of ours, or talking nonsense of that sort. It wouldn't do, you know."
"Wouldn't it?" returned Isaac, carelessly.
"Wouldn't it! Why, bless and save my wooden leg, would it? A pretty uproar there'd be at the Red Court. I'd not have such a thing happen for the best three-decker that was ever launched. I'd rather quarrel with the whole of Coastdown than with your folks."
"Rather quarrel with me, captain, than with them, I suppose," returned Isaac, stirring his grog.
Captain Copp looked hard at him. "I should think so."
By intuition, rather than by outward signs, Isaac Thornycroft saw that the obstinate old sailor would be true to the backbone to what he deemed right; that he might as well ask for Amy Copp as for Anna Chester, unless he could produce credentials from his father. And so he could only temporize and disarm suspicion. Honourable by nature though he was, he considered the suppression of affairs justifiable, on the score, we must suppose that "All stratagems are fair in love and war."
"Good health, captain," said he, with a merry laugh--a laugh that somehow reassured Captain Copp. "And now tell me what wonderful event put you up to say this."
"It was mother," answered the simple-minded captain. "The thought struck her somehow--you were both of you good-looking, she said. I knew there was no danger; 'the young Thornycrofts are not marrying men,' I said to her. But now, look here, you and Anna had not better go out together again, lest other people should take up the same notions."
With these words Captain Copp believed he had settled the matter, and done all that was necessary in the way of warning. He said as much to Amy, confidentially. Whether it might have proved so, he had not the opportunity of judging. On the following morning that lady received a pressing summons to repair to London. One of her sisters, staying there temporarily, was seized with illness, and begged the captain's wife to come and nurse her. By the next train she had started, taking Anna.
"To be out of harm's way," she said to herself. "To help me take care of Maria," she said to the captain.
Mrs. Wortley was a widow without children. So many events have to be crowded in, and the story thickens so greatly, that nothing more need be said of her. The lodgings she had been temporarily occupying were near to old St. Pancras Church, and there Mrs. Sam Copp and Anna found her--two brave, skilful, tender nurses, ever ready to do their best.
Never before had Anna found illness wearisome; never before thought London the most dreary spot on earth. Ah, it was not in the locality; it was not in the illness that the ennui lay; but in the absence of Isaac Thornycroft. He called to see them once, rather to the chagrin of the captain's wife, and he met Anna the same day when she went for her walk. Mrs. Sam Copp did not suspect it.