Collected Stories Page 5

  It was now certainly my turn to fold my arms.

  ‘And now,’ added my companion, as I did so, ‘be so good as to excuse me.’

  ‘This was certainly worth waiting for,’ said I. ‘I don’t know what answer to make. My head swims. Sugar, did you say? I don’t know whether you have been giving me sugar or vitriol. So you advise me to open a corner-grocery, do you?’

  ‘I advise you to do something that will make you a little less satirical. You had better marry, for instance.’

  ‘Je ne demande pas mieux. Will you have me? I can’t afford it.’

  ‘Marry a rich woman.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Miss Quarterman. ‘Because people would accuse you of being mercenary? What of that? I mean to marry the first rich man who offers. Do you know that I am tired of living alone in this weary old way, teaching little girls their scales, and turning and patching my dresses? I mean to marry the first man who offers.’

  ‘Even if he is poor?’

  ‘Even if he is poor and has a hump.’

  ‘I am your man, then. Would you take me if I were to offer?’

  ‘Try and see.’

  ‘Must I get upon my knees?’

  ‘No, you needn’t even do that. Am I not on mine? It would be too fine an irony. Remain as you are, lounging back in your chair, with your thumbs in your waistcoat.’

  If I were writing a romance now, instead of transcribing facts, I would say that I knew not what might have happened at this juncture had not the door opened and admitted the Captain and Mr Prendergast. The latter was in the highest spirits.

  ‘How are you, Miss Miriam? So you have been breaking your leg, eh? How are you, Mr Locksley? I wish I were a doctor now. Which is it, right or left?’

  In this simple fashion he made himself agreeable to Miss Miriam. He stopped to dinner and talked without ceasing. Whether our hostess had talked herself out in her very animated address to myself an hour before, or whether she preferred to oppose no obstacle to Mr Prendergast’s fluency, or whether she was indifferent to him, I know not; but she held her tongue with that easy grace, that charming tacit intimation of ‘We could if we would’, of which she is so perfect a mistress. This very interesting woman has a number of pretty traits in common with her town-bred sisters; only, whereas in these they are laboriously acquired, in her they are richly natural. I am sure that, if I were to plant her in Madison Square to-morrow, she would, after one quick, all-compassing glance, assume the nil admirari in a manner to drive the finest lady of them all to despair. Prendergast is a man of excellent intentions but no taste. Two or three times I looked at Miss Quarterman to see what impression his sallies were making upon her. They seemed to produce none whatever. But I know better, moi. Not one of them escaped her. But I suppose she said to herself that her impressions on this point were no business of mine. Perhaps she was right. It is a disagreeable word to use of a woman you admire; but I can’t help fancying that she has been a little soured. By what? Who shall say? By some old love-affair, perhaps.

  July 24th. – This evening the Captain and I took a half-hour’s turn about the port. I asked him frankly, as a friend, whether Prendergast wants to marry his daughter.

  ‘I guess he does,’ said the old man, ‘and yet I hope he don’t. You know what he is: he’s smart, promising, and already sufficiently well-off. But somehow he isn’t for a man what my Miriam is for a female.’

  ‘That he isn’t!’ said I; ‘and honestly, Captain Quarterman, I don’t know who is—’

  ‘Unless it be yourself,’ said the Captain.

  ‘Thank you. I know a great many ways in which Mr Prendergast is more worthy of her than I.’

  ‘And I know one in which you are more worthy of her than he – that is in being what we used to call one of the old sort.’

  ‘Miss Quarterman made him sufficiently welcome in her quiet way on Sunday,’ I rejoined.

  ‘Oh, she respects him,’ said Quarterman. ‘As she’s situated, she might marry him on that. You see, she’s weary of hearing little girls drum on the piano. With her ear for music,’ added the Captain, ‘I wonder she has borne it so long.’

  ‘She is certainly meant for better things,’ said I.

  ‘Well,’ answered the Captain, who has an honest habit of deprecating your agreement when it occurs to him that he has obtained it for sentiments which fall somewhat short of the stoical – ‘well,’ said he, with a very dry, edifying expression, ‘she’s born to do her duty. We are all of us born for that.’

  ‘Sometimes our duty is rather dismal,’ said I.

  ‘So it be; but what’s the help for it? I don’t want to die without seeing my daughter provided for. What she makes by teaching is a pretty slim subsistence. There was a time when I thought she was going to be fixed for life, but it all blew over. There was a young fellow here, from down Boston way, who came about as near to it as you can come when you actually don’t. He and Miriam were excellent friends. One day Miriam came up to me, and looked me in the face, and told me she had passed her word.

  ‘ “Who to?” says I, though of course I knew, and Miriam told me as much. “When do you expect to marry?” I asked.

  ‘ “When Alfred” – his name was Alfred – “grows rich enough,” says she.

  ‘ “When will that be?”

  ‘ “It may not be for years,” said poor Miriam.

  ‘A whole year passed, and, so far as I could see, the young man hadn’t accumulated very much. He was for ever running to and fro between this place and Boston. I asked no questions, because I knew that my poor girl wished it so. But at last, one day, I began to think it was time to take an observation, and see whereabouts we stood.

  ‘ “Has Alfred made his little pile yet?” I asked.

  ‘ “I don’t know, father,” said Miriam.

  ‘ “When are you to be married?”

  ‘ “Never!” said my poor little girl, and burst into tears. “Please ask me no questions,” said she. “Our engagement is over. Ask me no questions.”

  ‘ “Tell me one thing,” said I: “Where is that d—d scoundrel who has broken my daughter’s heart?”

  ‘You should have seen the look she gave me.

  ‘ “Broken my heart, sir? You are very much mistaken. I don’t know who you mean.”

  ‘ “I mean Alfred Bannister,” said I. That was his name.

  ‘ “I believe Mr Bannister is in China,” says Miriam, as grand as the Queen of Sheba. And there was an end of it. I never learnt the ins and outs of it. I have been told that Bannister is amassing considerable wealth in the China-trade.’

  August 7th. – I have made no entry for more than a fortnight. They tell me I have been very ill; and I find no difficulty in believing them. I suppose I took cold, sitting out so late, sketching. At all events, I have had a mild intermittent fever. I have slept so much, however, that the time has seemed rather short. I have been tenderly nursed by this kind old mariner, his daughter, and his black domestic. God bless them, one and all! I say his daughter, because old Cynthia informs me that for half-an-hour one morning, at dawn, after a night during which I had been very feeble, Miss Quarterman relieved guard at my bedside, while I lay sleeping like a log. It is very jolly to see sky and ocean once again. I have got myself into my easy-chair, by the best window, with my shutters closed and the lattice open; and here I sit with my book on my knee, scratching away feebly enough. Now and then I peep from my cool, dark sick-chamber out into the world of light. High noon at midsummer – what a spectacle! There are no clouds in the sky, no waves on the ocean, the sun has it all to himself. To look long at the garden makes the eyes water. And we – ‘Hobbs, Nobbs, Stokes and Nokes’ – propose to paint that luminosity. Allons donc!

  The handsomest of women has just tapped, and come in with a plate of early peaches. The peaches are of a gorgeous colour and plumpness; but Miss Quarterman looks pale and thin. The hot weather doesn’t agree with her, and besides she is over-worked. Damn her
drudgery! Of course I thanked her warmly for her attentions during my illness. She disclaims all gratitude, and refers me to her father and the dusky Cynthia.

  ‘I allude more especially,’ I said, ‘to that little hour at the end of a weary night when you stole in, like a kind of moral Aurora, and drove away the shadows from my brain. That morning, you know, I began to get better.’

  ‘It was indeed a very little hour,’ said Miss Quarterman, colouring. ‘It was about ten minutes.’ And then she began to scold me for presuming to touch a pen during my convalescence. She laughs at me, indeed, for keeping a diary at all. ‘Of all things, a sentimental man is the most despicable!’ she exclaimed.

  I confess I was somewhat nettled – the thrust seemed gratuitous.

  ‘Of all things a woman without sentiment is the most wanting in sweetness.’

  ‘Sentiment and sweetness are all very well when you have time for them,’ said Miss Quarterman. ‘I haven’t. I am not rich enough. Good morning!’

  Speaking of another woman, I would say that she flounced out of the room. But such was the gait of Juno when she moved stiffly over the grass from where Paris stood with Venus holding the apple, gathering up her divine vestment and leaving the others to guess at her face.

  Juno has just come back to say that she forgot what she came for half-an-hour ago. What will I be pleased to like for dinner?

  ‘I have just been writing in my diary that you flounced out of the room,’ said I.

  ‘Have you, indeed? Now you can write that I have bounced in. There’s a nice cold chicken downstairs,’ etc. etc.

  August 14th. – This afternoon I sent for a light vehicle, and treated Miss Quarterman to a drive. We went successively over the three beaches. What a spin we had coming home! I shall never forget that breezy trot over Weston’s Beach. The tide was very low, and we had the whole glittering, weltering strand to ourselves. There was a heavy blow last night, which has not yet subsided, and the waves have been lashed into a magnificent fury. Trot, trot, trot, trot, we trundled over the hard sand. The sound of the horse’s hoofs rang out sharp against the monotone of the thunderous surf, as we drew nearer and nearer to the long line of the cliffs. At our left, almost from the zenith of the pale evening-sky to the high western horizon of the tumultuous dark-green sea, was suspended, so to speak, one of those gorgeous vertical sunsets that Turner sometimes painted. It was a splendid confusion of purple and green and gold – the clouds flying and floating in the wind like the folds of a mighty banner borne by some triumphal fleet which had rounded the curve of the globe. As we reached the point where the cliffs begin I pulled up, and we remained for some time looking at their long, diminishing, crooked perspective, blue and dun as it receded, with the white surge playing at their feet.

  August 17th. – This evening, as I lighted my bedroom-candle, I saw that the Captain had something to say to me. So I waited below until my host and his daughter had performed their usual osculation, and the latter had given me that confiding hand-shake which I never fail to extract.

  ‘Prendergast has got his discharge,’ said the old man, when he heard his daughter’s door close.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He pointed with his thumb to the room above, where we heard, through the thin partition, the movement of Miss Quarterman’s light step.

  ‘You mean that he has proposed to Miss Miriam?’

  The Captain nodded.

  ‘And has been refused?’

  ‘Flat.’

  ‘Poor fellow!’ said I, very honestly. ‘Did he tell you himself?’

  ‘Yes, with tears in his eyes. He wanted me to speak for him. I told him it was no use. Then he began to say hard things of my poor girl.’

  ‘What kind of things?’

  ‘A pack of falsehoods. He says she has no heart. She has promised always to regard him as a friend; it’s more than I will, hang him!’

  ‘Poor fellow!’ said I; and now, as I write, I can only repeat, considering what a hope was here disappointed, Poor fellow!

  August 23rd. – I have been lounging about all day, thinking of it, dreaming of it, spooning over it, as they say. This is a decided waste of time. I think, accordingly, the best thing for me to do is to sit down and lay the ghost by writing out my little story.

  On Thursday evening, Miss Quarterman happened to intimate that she had a holiday on the morrow, it being the birthday of the lady in whose establishment she teaches.

  ‘There is to be a tea-party at four o’clock in the afternoon for the resident pupils and teachers,’ Miriam said. ‘Tea at four! what do you think of that? And then there is to be a speechmaking by the smartest young lady. As my services are not required I propose to be absent. Suppose, father, you take us out in your boat. Will you come, Mr Locksley? We shall have a neat little picnic. Let us go over to old Fort Plunkett, across the bay. We will take our dinner with us, and send Cynthia to spend the day with her sister, and put the house-key in our pocket, and not come home till we please.’

  I entered into the project with passion, and it was accordingly carried into execution the next morning, when – about ten o’clock – we pushed off from our little wharf at the garden-foot. It was a perfect summer’s day; I can say no more for it; and we made a quiet run over to the point of our destination. I shall never forget the wondrous stillness which brooded over earth and water as we weighed anchor in the lee of my old friend – or old enemy – the ruined fort. The deep, translucent water reposed at the base of the warm sunlit cliff like a great basin of glass, which I half expected to hear shiver and crack as our keel ploughed through it. And how colour and sound stood out in the transparent air! How audibly the little ripples on the beach whispered to the open sky. How our irreverent voices seemed to jar upon the privacy of the little cove! The delicate rocks doubled themselves without a flaw in the clear, dark water. The gleaming white beach lay fringed with its deep deposits of odorous sea-weed, which looked like masses of black lace. The steep, straggling sides of the cliffs lifted their rugged angles against the burning blue of the sky. I remember, when Miss Quarterman stepped ashore and stood upon the beach, relieved against the cool darkness of a recess in the cliff, while her father and I busied ourselves with gathering up our baskets and fastening the anchor – I remember, I say, what a picture she made. There is a certain purity in the air of this place which I have never seen surpassed – a lightness, a brilliancy, a crudity, which allows perfect liberty of self-assertion to each individual object in the landscape. The prospect is ever more or less like a picture which lacks its final process, its reduction to unity. Miss Quarterman’s figure, as she stood there on the beach, was almost criarde; but how it animated the whole scene! Her light muslin dress, gathered up over her white petticoat, her little black mantilla, the blue veil which she had knotted about her neck, the little silken dome which she poised over her head in one gloved hand, while the other retained her crisp draperies, and which cast down upon her face a sharp circle of shade, where her cheerful eyes shone darkly and her parted lips said things I lost – these are some of the points I hastily noted.

  ‘Young woman,’ I cried out, over the water, ‘I do wish you might know how pretty you look!’

  ‘How do you know I don’t?’ she answered. ‘I should think I might. You don’t look so badly yourself. But it’s not I; it’s the aerial perspective.’

  ‘Hang it – I am going to become profane!’ I called out again.

  ‘Swear ahead,’ said the Captain.

  ‘I am going to say you are infernally handsome.’

  ‘Dear me! is that all?’ cried Miss Quarterman, with a little light laugh which must have made the tutelar sirens of the cove ready to die with jealousy down in their submarine bowers.

  By the time the Captain and I had landed our effects our companion had tripped lightly up the forehead of the cliff – in one place it is very retreating – and disappeared over its crown. She soon returned, with an intensely white pocket-handkerchief added to her other provoc
ations, which she waved to us, as we trudged upward, carrying our baskets. When we stopped to take breath on the summit and wipe our foreheads, we of course rebuked her for roaming about idly with her parasol and gloves.