A pair of blue eyes
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 lustrous 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 passed 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
passage, 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.
“Bravery is only obtuseness to the perception of contingencies,” Mr.
Swancourt severely answered.
Mrs. Swancourt laughed, and Elfride laughed, and Knight laughed, in the
midst of which pleasantness a man shouted to them from some position
between their heads and the sky, and they found they were close to the
Juliet, into which they quiveringly ascended.
It having been found that the lowness of the tide would prevent their
getting off for an hour, the Swancourts, having nothing else to do,
allowed their eyes to idle upon men in blue jerseys performing
mysterious mending operations with tar-twine; they turned to look at
the dashes of lurid sunlight, like burnished copper stars afloat on the
ripples, which danced into and tantalized their vision; or listened to
the loud music of a steam-crane at work close by; or to sighing sounds
from the funnels of passing steamers, getting dead as they grew more
distant; or to shouts from the decks of different craft in their
vicinity, all of them assuming the form of “Ah-he-hay!”
Half-past ten: not yet off. Mr. Swancourt breathed a breath of
weariness, and looked at his fellow-travellers in general. Their faces
were certainly not worth looking at. The expression “Waiting” was
written upon them so absolutely that nothing more could be discerned
there. All animation was suspended till Providence should raise the
water and let them go.
“I have been thinking,” said Knight, “that we have come amongst the
rarest class of people in the kingdom. Of all human characteristics, a
low opinion of the value of his own time by an individual must be among
the strangest to find. Here we see numbers of that patient and happy
species. Rovers, as distinct from travellers.”
“But they are pleasure-seekers, to whom time is of no importance.”
“Oh no. The pleasure-seekers we meet on the grand routes are more
anxious than commercial travellers to rush on. And added to the loss of
time in getting to their journey’s end, these exceptional people take
their chance of sea-sickness by coming this way.”
“Can it be?” inquired the vicar with apprehension. “Surely not, Mr.
Knight, just here in our English Channel—close at our doors, as I may
say.”
“Entrance passages are very draughty places, and the Channel is like
the rest. It ruins the temper of sailors. It has been calculated by
philosophers that more damns go up to heaven from the Channel, in the
course of a year, than from all the five oceans put together.”
They really start now, and the dead looks of all the throng come to
life immediately. The man who has been frantically hauling in a rope
that bade fair to have no end ceases his labours, and they glide down
the serpentine bends of the Thames.
Anything anywhere was a mine of interest to Elfride, and so was this.
“It is well enough now,” said Mrs. Swancourt, after they had passed the
Nore, “but I can’t say I have cared for my voyage hitherto.” For being
now in the open sea a slight breeze had sprung up, which cheered her as
well as her two younger companions. But unfortunately it had a reverse
effect upon the vicar, who, after turning a sort of apricot jam colour,
interspersed with dashes of raspberry, pleaded indisposition, and
vanished from their sight.
The afternoon wore on. Mrs. Swancourt kindly sat apart by herself
reading, and the betrothed pair were left to themselves. Elfride clung
trustingly to Knight’s arm, and proud was she to walk with him up and
down the deck, or to go forward, and leaning with him against the
forecastle rails, watch the setting sun gradually withdrawing itself
over their stern into a huge bank of livid cloud with golden edges that
rose to meet it.
She was childishly full of life and spirits, though in walking up and
down with him before the other passengers, and getting noticed by them,
she was at starting rather confused, it being the first time she had
shown herself so openly under that kind of protection. “I expect they
are envious and saying things about us, don’t you?” she would whisper
to Knight with a stealthy smile.
“Oh no,” he would answer unconcernedly. “Why should they envy us, and
what can they say?”
“Not any harm, of course,” Elfride replied, “except such as this: ‘How
happy those two are! she is proud enough now.’ What makes it worse,”
she continued in the extremity of confidence, “I heard those two
cricketing men say just now, ‘She’s the nobbiest girl on the boat.’ But
I don’t mind it, you know, Harry.”
“I should hardly have supposed you did, even if you had not told me,”