Chapter IV.

“They fool me to the top of my bent.”

Hamlet.

The party below consisted of four individuals all of whom were females. One was a lady in the decline of her years; another was past the middle age the third was on the very threshold of what is called “life,” as it is applied to intercourse with the world; and the fourth was a negress, who might have seen some five-and-twenty revolutions of the seasons. The latter, at that time, and in that country, of course appeared only in the character of a humble, though perhaps favoured domestic.

“And now, my child, that I have given you all the advice which circumstances and your own excellent heart need,” said the elderly lady, among the first words that were distinctly intelligible to the listeners, “I will change the ungracious office to one more agreeable. You will tell your father of my continued affection, and of the promise he has given, that you are to return once again, before we separate for the last time.”

This speech was addressed to the younger female, and was apparently received with as much tenderness and sincerity as it was uttered. The one who was addressed raised her eyes, which were glittering with tears she evidently struggled to conceal, and answered in a voice that sounded in the ears of the two youthful listeners like the notes of the Syren, so very sweet and musical were its tones.

“It is useless to remind me of a promise, my beloved aunt, which I have so much interest in remembering,” she said. “I hope for even more than you have perhaps dared to wish; if my father does not return with me in the spring, it shall not be for want of urging on my part.”

“Our good Wyllys will lend her aid,” returned the aunt, smiling and bowing to the third female, with that mixture of suavity and form which was peculiar to the stately manners of the time, and which was rarely neglected, when a superior addressed an inferior. “She is entitled to command some interest with General Grayson, from her fidelity and services.”

“She is entitled to everything that love and heart can give!” exclaimed the niece, with a haste and earnestness that proclaimed how willingly she would temper the formal politeness of the other by the warmth of her own affectionate manner; “my father will scarcely refuse her any thing.”

“And have we the assurance of Miss Wyllys that she will be in our interests?” demanded the aunt, without permitting her own sense of propriety to be overcome by the stronger feelings of her niece; “with so powerful an ally, our league will be invincible.”

“I am so entirely of opinion, that the salubrious air of this healthful island is of great importance to my young charge, Madam, that, were all other considerations wanting, the little I can do to aid your wishes shall be sure to be done.”

Wyllys spoke with dignity, and perhaps with some portion of that reserve which distinguished all the communications between the wealthy and high-born aunt and the salaried and dependent governess of her brother’s heiress. Still her manner was gentle, and the voice, like that of her pupil, soft and strikingly feminine.

“We may then consider the victory as achieved, as my late husband the Rear-Admiral was accustomed to say. Admiral de Lacey, my dear Mrs Wyllys, adopted it in early life as a maxim, by which all his future conduct was governed, and by adhering to which he acquired no small share of his professional reputation, that, in order to be successful, it was only necessary to be determined one would be so;—a noble and inspiriting rule, and one that could not fail to lead to those signal results which, as we all know them, I need not mention.”

Wyllys bowed her head, in acknowledgment of the truth of the opinion, and in testimony of the renown of the deceased Admiral; but did not think it necessary to make any reply. Instead of allowing the subject to occupy her mind any longer, she turned to her young pupil, and observed, speaking in a voice and with a manner from which every appearance of restraint was banished,—

“Gertrude, my love, you will have pleasure in returning to this charming island, and to these cheering sea breezes.”

“And to my aunt!” exclaimed Gertrude. “I wish my father could be persuaded to dispose of his estates in Carolina, and come northward, to reside the whole year.”

“It is not quite as easy for an affluent proprietor to remove as you may imagine, my child,” returned Mrs de Lacey. “Much as I wish that some such plan could be adopted, I never press my brother on the subject. Besides, I am not certain, that, if we were ever to make another change in the family, it would not be to return home altogether. It is now more than a century, Mrs Wyllys, since the Graysons came into the colonies, in a moment of dissatisfaction with the government in England. My great-grandfather sir Everard, was displeased with his second son, and the dissension led my grandfather to the province of Carolina. But, as the breach has long since been healed, I often think my brother and myself may yet return to the halls of our ancestors. Much will, however, depend on the manner in which we dispose of our treasure on this side of the Atlantic.”

As the really well-meaning, though, perhaps, a little too much self-satisfied lady concluded her remark, she glanced her eye at the perfectly unconscious subject of the close of her speech. Gertrude had, as usual, when her aunt chose to favour her governess with any of her family reminiscences, turned her head aside, and was now offering her cheek, burning with health, and perhaps a little with shame, to the cooling influence of the evening breeze. The instant the voice of Mrs de Lacey had ceased, she turned hastily to her companions; and, pointing to a noble-looking ship, whose masts, as it lay in the inner harbour, were seen rising above the roofs of the town, she exclaimed, as if glad to change the subject in any manner,—

“And yonder gloomy prison is to be our home, dear Mrs Wyllys, for the next month!”

“I hope your dislike to the sea has magnified the time,” mildly returned her governess; “the passage between this place and Carolina has been often made in a shorter period.”

“That it has been so done, I can testify,” resumed the Admiral’s widow, adhering a little pertinaciously to a train of thoughts, which, once thoroughly awakened in her bosom, was not easily diverted into another channel, “since my late estimable and (I feel certain all who hear me will acquiesce when I add) gallant husband once conducted a squadron of his Royal Master, from one extremity of his Majesty’s American dominions to the other, in a time less than that named by my niece: It may have made some difference in his speed that he was in pursuit of the enemies of his King and country, but still the fact proves that the voyage can be made within the month.”

“There is that dreadful Henlopen, with its sandy shoals and shipwrecks on one hand, and that stream they call the Gulf on the other!” exclaimed Gertrude, with a shudder, and a burst of natural female terror, which makes timidity sometimes attractive, when exhibited in the person of youth and beauty. “If it were not for Henlopen, and its gales, and its shoals, and its gulfs, I could think only of the pleasure of meeting my father.”

Mrs Wyllys, who never encouraged her pupil in those, natural weaknesses, however pretty and be coming they might appear to other eyes, turned with a steady mien to the young lady, as she remarked, with a brevity and decision that were intended to put the question of fear at rest for ever,—

“If all the dangers you appear to apprehend existed in reality, the passage would not be made daily or even hourly, in safety. You have often, Madam, come from the Carolinas by sea, in company with Admiral de Lacey?”

“Never,” the widow promptly and a little drily remarked. “The water has not agreed with my constitution, and I have never neglected to journey by land. But then you know, Wyllys, as the consort and relict of a flag-officer, it was not seemly that I should be ignorant of naval science. I believe there are few ladies in the British empire who are more familiar with ships, either singly or in squadron particularly the latter, than myself. This in formation I have naturally acquired, as the companion of an officer, whose fortune it was to lead fleets. I presume these are matters of which you are profoundly ignorant.”

The calm, dignified countenance of Wyllys, on which it would seem as if long cherished and painful recollections had left a settled, but mild expression of sorrow, that rather tempered than destroyed the traces of character which were still remarkable in her firm collected eye, became clouded, for a moment, with a deeper shade of melancholy. After hesitating, as if willing to change the subject, she replied,—

“I have not been altogether a stranger to the sea. It has been my lot to have made many long, and some perilous voyages.”

“As a mere passenger. But we wives of sailors only, among our sex, can lay claim to any real knowledge of the noble profession! What natural object is there, or can there be,” exclaimed the nautical dowager, in a burst of professional enthusiasm, “finer than a stately ship breasting the billows, as I have heard the Admiral say a thousand times, its taffrail ploughing the main, and its cut-water gliding after, like a sinuous serpent pursuing its shining wake, as a living creature choosing its path on the land, and leaving the bone under its fore-foot, a beacon for those that follow? I know not, my dear Wyllys, if I make myself intelligible to you, but, to my instructed eye, this charming description conveys a picture of all that is grand and beautiful!”

The latent smile, on the countenance of the governess might have betrayed that she was imagining the deceased Admiral had not been altogether devoid of the waggery of his vocation, had not a slight noise, which sounded like the rustling of the wind, but which in truth was suppressed laughter, proceeded from the upper room of the tower. The words, “It is lovely!” were still on the lips of the youthful Gertrude, who saw all the beauty of the picture her aunt had essayed to describe, without descending to the humble employment of verbal criticism. But her voice became hushed, and her attitude that of startled attention:—

“Did you hear nothing?” she said.

“The rats have not yet altogether deserted the mill,” was the calm reply of Wyllys.

“Mill! my dear Mrs Wyllys, will you persist in calling this picturesque ruin a mill?”

“However fatal it may be to its charms, in the eyes of eighteen, I must call it a mill.”

“Ruins are not so plenty in this country, my dear governess,” returned her pupil, laughing, while the ardour of her eye denoted how serious she was in defending her favourite opinion, “as to justify us in robbing them of any little claims to interest they may happen to possess.”

“Then, happier is the country! Ruins in a land are, like most of the signs of decay in the human form, sad evidences of abuses and passions, which have hastened the inroads of time. These provinces are like yourself, my Gertrude, in their freshness and their youth, and, comparatively, in their innocence also. Let us hope for both a long, an useful, and a happy existence.”

“Thank you for myself, and for my country; but still I can never admit this picturesque ruin has been a mill.”

“Whatever it may have been, it has long occupied its present place, and has the appearance of continuing where it is much longer, which is more than can be said of our prison, as you call yonder stately ship, in which we are so soon to embark. Unless my eyes deceive me, Madam, those masts are moving slowly past the chimnies of the town.”

“You are very right, Wyllys. The seamen are towing the vessel into the outer harbour, where they will warp her fast to the anchors, and thus secure her, until they shall be ready to unmake their sails, in order to put to sea in the morning. This is a manoeuvre often performed, and one which the Admiral has so clearly explained, that I should find little difficulty in superintending it in my own person, were it suitable to my sex and station.”

“This is, then, a hint that all our own preparations are not completed. However lovely this spot may seem, Gertrude, we must now leave it, for some months at least.”

“Yes,” continued Mrs de Lacey, slowly following the footsteps of the governess, who had already moved from beneath the ruin; “whole fleets have often been towed to their anchors, and there warped, waiting for wind and tide to serve. None of our sex know the dangers of the Ocean, but we who have been bound in the closest of all ties to officers of rank and great service; and none others can ever truly enjoy the real grandeur of the ennobling profession. A charming object is a vessel cutting the waves with her taffrail, and chasing her wake on the trackless waters, like a courser that ever keeps in his path, though dashing madly on at the very top of his speed!—”

The reply of Mrs Wyllys was not audible to the covert listeners. Gertrude had followed her companions; but, when at some little distance from the tower, she paused, to take a parting look at its mouldering walls. A profound stillness succeeded for more than a minute.

“There is something in that pile of stones, Cassandra,” she said to the jet-black maiden at her elbow, “that could make me wish it had been something more than a mill.”

“There rat in ’em,” returned the literal and simple-minded black; “you hear what Misse Wyllys say?”

Gertrude turned, laughed, patted the dark cheek of her attendant with fingers that looked like snow by the contrast, as if to chide her for wishing to destroy the pleasing illusion she would so gladly harbour and then bounded down the hill after her aunt and governess, like a joyous and youthful Atalanta.

The two singularly consorted listeners in the tower stood gazing, at their respective look-outs, so long as the smallest glimpse of the flowing robe of her light form was to be seen and then they turned to each other, and stood confronted, the eyes of each endeavouring to read the expression of his neighbour’s countenance.

“I am ready to make an affidavit before my Lord High Chancellor,” suddenly exclaimed the barrister, “that this has never been a mill!”

“Your opinion has undergone a sudden change!”

“I am open to conviction, as I hope to be a judge. The case has been argued by a powerful advocate, and I have lived to see my error.”

“And yet there are rats in the place.”

“Land rats, or water rats?” quickly demanded the other, giving his companion one of those startling and searching glances, which his keen eye had so freely at command.

“Both, I believe,” was the dry and caustic reply; “certainly the former, or the gentlemen of the long robe are much injured by report.”

The barrister laughed; nor did his temper appear in the slightest degree ruffled at so free an allusion at his learned and honourable profession.

“You gentlemen of the Ocean have such an honest and amusing frankness about you,” he said, “that I vow to God you are overwhelming. I am a downright admirer of your noble calling, and something skilled in its terms. What spectacle, for instance, can be finer than a noble ship ‘stemming the waves with her taffrail,’ and chasing her wake, like a racer on the course!”

“Leaving the ‘bone in her mouth’ under her stern, as a light-house for all that come after!”

Then, as if they found singular satisfaction in dwelling on these images of the worthy relict of the gallant Admiral, they broke out simultaneously into a fit of clamorous merriment, that caused the old ruin to ring, as in its best days of windy power. The barrister was the first to regain his self-command, for the mirth of the young mariner was joyous, and without the least restraint.

“But this is dangerous ground for any but a seaman’s widow to touch,” the former observed, as suddenly causing his laughter to cease as he had admitted of its indulgence. “The younger, she who is no lover of a mill, is a rare and lovely creature! it would seem that she is the niece of the nautical critic.”

The young manner ceased laughing in his turn, as though he were suddenly convinced of the glaring impropriety of making so near a relative of the fair vision he had seen the subject of his merriment. Whatever might have been his secret thoughts, he was content with replying,—

“She so declared herself.”

“Tell me,” said the barrister, walking close to the other, like one who communicated an important secret in the question, “was there not something remarkable searching, extraordinary, heart-touching, in the voice of her they called Wyllys?”

“Did you note it?”

“It sounded to me like the tones of an oracle—the whisperings of fancy—the very words of truth! It was a strange and persuasive voice!”

“I confess I felt its influence, and in a way for which I cannot account!”

“It amounts to infatuation!” returned the barrister pacing up and down the little apartment, every trace of humour and irony having disappeared in a look of settled and abstracted care. His companion appeared little disposed to interrupt his meditations, but stood leaning against the naked walls, himself the subject of deep and sorrowful reflection. At length the former shook off his air of thought, with that startling quickness which seemed common to his manner; he approached a window, and, directing the attention of Wilder to the ship in the outer harbour, abruptly demanded,—

“Has all your interest in yon vessel ceased?”

“Far from it; it is just such a boat as a seaman’s eye most loves to study!”

“Will you venture to board her?”

“At this hour? alone? I know not her commander, or her people.”

“There are other hours beside this, and a sailor is certain of a frank reception from his messmates.”

“These slavers are not always willing to be boarded; they carry arms, and know how to keep strangers at a distance.”

“Are there no watch-words, in the masonry of your trade, by which a brother is known? Such terms as ‘stemming the waves with the taffrail,’ for instance, or some of those knowing phrases we have lately heard?”

Wilder kept his own keen look on the countenance of the other, as he thus questioned him, and seemed to ponder long before he ventured on a reply.

“Why do you demand all this of me?” he coldly asked.

“Because, as I believe that ‘faint heart never won fair lady,’ so do I believe that indecision never won a ship. You wish a situation, you say; and, if I were an Admiral, I would make you my flag-captain. At the assizes, when we wish a brief, we have our manner of letting the thing be known. But perhaps I am talking too much at random for an utter stranger. You will however remember, that, though it is the advice of a lawyer, it is given gratuitously.”

“And is it the more to be relied on for such extraordinary liberality?”

“Of that you must judge for yourself,” said the stranger in green, very deliberately putting his foot on the ladder, and descending, until no part of his person but his head was seen. “Here I go, literally cutting the waves with my taffrail,” he added, as he descended backwards, and seeming to take great pleasure in laying particular emphasis on the words. “Adieu, my friend; if we do not meet again, I enjoin you never to forget the rats in the Newport ruin.”

He disappeared as he concluded, and in another instant his light form was on the ground. Turning with the most admirable coolness, he gave the bottom of the ladder a trip with one of his feet, and laid the only means of descent prostrate on the earth. Then, looking up at the wondering Wilder, he nodded his head familiarly, repeated his adieu, and passed with a swift step from beneath the arches.

“This is extraordinary conduct,” muttered Wilder who was by the process left a prisoner in the ruin. After ascertaining that a fall from the trap might endanger his legs, the young sailor ran to one of the windows of the place, in order to reproach his treacherous comrade, or indeed to assure himself that he was serious in thus deserting him. The barrister was already out of hailing distance, and, before Wilder had time to decide on what course to take, his active footsteps had led him into the skirts of the town, among the buildings of which his person became immediately lost to the eye.

During all the time occupied by the foregoing scenes and dialogue, Fid and the negro had been diligently discussing the contents of the bag, under the fence where they were last seen. As the appetite of the former became appeased, his didactic disposition returned, and, at the precise moment when Wilder was left alone in the tower, he was intently engaged in admonishing the black on the delicate subject, of behaviour in mixed society.

“And so you see, Guinea,” he concluded, “in or der to keep a weather-helm in company, you are never to throw all aback, and go stern foremost out of a dispute, as you have this day seen fit to do According to my l’arning, that Master Nightingale is better in a bar-room than in a squall; and if you had just luffed-up on his quarter, when you saw me laying myself athwart his hawse in the argument, you see we should have given him a regular jam in the discourse, and then the fellow would have been shamed in the eyes of all the by-standers. Who hails? what cook is sticking his neighbour’s pig now?”

“Lor’! Misser Fid,” cried the black, “here masser Harry, wid a head out of port-hole, up dereaway in a light-house, singing-out like a marine in a boat wid a plug out!”

“Ay, ay, let him alone for hailing a top-gallant yard, or a flying-jib-boom! The lad has a voice like a French horn, when he has a mind to tune it! And what the devil is he manning the guns of that weather-beaten wreck for? At all events, if he has to fight his craft alone, there is no one to blame but himself, since he has gone to quarters without beat of drum, or without, in any other manner, seeing fit to muster his people.”

As Dick and the negro had both been making the best of their way towards the ruin, from the moment they discovered the situation of their friend, by this time they were within speaking distance of the spot itself. Wilder, in those brief, pithy tones that distinguish the manner in which a sea officer issues his orders, directed them to raise the ladder. When he was liberated, he demanded, with a sufficiently significant air, if they had observed the direction in which the stranger in green had made his retreat?

“Do you mean the chap in boots, who was for shoving his oar into another man’s rullock, a bit ago, on the small matter of wharf, hereaway, in a range, over yonder house, bringing the north-east chimney to hear in a line, with the mizen-top-gallant-mast-head of that ship they are warping into the stream?”

“The very same.”

“He made a slant on the wind until he had weathered yonder bit of a barn, and then he tacked and stretched away off here to the east-and-by-south, going large, and with studding sails alow and aloft, as I think, for he made a devil of a head-way.”

“Follow,” cried Wilder, starting forward in the direction indicated by Fid, without waiting to hear any more of the other’s characteristic explanations.

The search, however, was vain. Although they continued their inquiries until long after the sun had set, no one could give them the smallest tidings of what had become of the stranger in green. Some had seen him, and marvelled at his singular costume, and bold and wandering look; but, by all accounts, he had disappeared from the town as strangely and mysteriously as he had entered it.