Foul Play - Dion Boucicault (the best books to read txt) 📗

quivering with misery from head to foot, because her own lips had just told him she was going to England in the Shannon.

 

Heartbroken, but still loving nobly, Seaton dragged himself down to the harbor, and went slowly on board the Shannon to secure Miss Rolleston every comfort.

Then, sick at heart as he was, he made inquiries into the condition of the vessel which was to be trusted with so precious a freight; and the old boatman who was rowing him, hearing him make these inquiries, told him he himself was always about, and had noticed the Shannon’s pumps were going every blessed night.

Seaton carried this intelligence directly to Lloyds’ agent; he overhauled the ship, and ordered her into the graving dock for repairs.

Then Seaton, for White & Co., wrote to Miss Rolleston that the Shannon was not seaworthy and could not sail for a month at the least.

The lady simply acknowledged Messrs. White’s communication, and Seaton breathed again.

Wardlaw had made Miss Rolleston promise him faithfully to sail that month in his ship, the Shannon. Now she was a slave to her word and constant of purpose; so when she found she could not sail in the Shannon, she called again on Messrs. White, and took her passage in the Proserpine. The essential thing to her mind was to sail when she had promised, and to go in a ship that belonged to her lover.

The Proserpine was to sail in ten days.

Seaton inquired into the state of the Proserpine. She was a good, sound vessel, and there was no excuse for detaining her.

Then he wrestled long and hard with the selfish part of his great love. Instead of turning sullen, he set himself to carry out Helen Rolleston’s will. He went on board the Proserpine and chose her the best stern cabin.

General Rolleston had ordered Helen’s cabin to be furnished, and the agent had put in the usual things, such as a standing bedstead with drawers beneath, chest of drawers, small table, two chairs, washstand, looking-glass, and swinging lamp.

But Seaton made several visits to the ship, and effected the following arrangements at his own cost. He provided a neat cocoa-mat for her cabin deck, for comfort and foot-hold. He unshipped the regular six-paned stern windows, and put in single-pane plate glass; he fitted venetian blinds, and hung two little rose-colored curtains to each of the windows; all so arranged as to be easily removed in case it should be necessary to ship dead-lights in heavy weather. He glazed the door leading to her bath-room and quarter gallery with plate glass; he provided a light easy-chair, slung and fitted with grommets, to be hung on hooks screwed into the beams in the midship of the cabin. On this Helen could sit and read, and so become insensible to the motion of the ship. He fitted a small bookcase, with a button, which could be raised when a book might be wanted; he fixed a strike-bell in her maid’s cabin communicating with two strikers in Helen’s cabin; he selected books, taking care that the voyages and travels were prosperous ones. No “Seaman’s Recorder,” “Life-boat Journal,” or “Shipwrecks and Disasters in the British Navy.”

Her cabin was the after-cabin on the starboard side, was entered through the cuddy, had a door communicating with the quarter gallery, two stern windows and a dead-eye on deck. The maid’s cabin was the port after-cabin; doors opened into cuddy and quarter-gallery. And a fine trouble Miss Rolleston had to get a maid to accompany her; but at last a young woman offered to go with her for high wages, demurely suppressing the fact that she had just married one of the sailors, and would have gladly gone for nothing. Her name was Jane Holt, and her husband’s Michael Donovan.

In one of Seaton’s visits to the Proserpine he detected the mate and the captain talking together and looking at him with unfriendly eyes—scowling at him would hardly be too strong a word.

However, he was in no state of mind to care much how two animals in blue jackets received his acts of self-martyrdom. He was there to do the last kind offices of despairing love for the angel that had crossed his dark path and illumined it for a moment, to leave it now forever.

At last the fatal evening came; her last in Sydney.

Then Seaton’s fortitude, sustained no longer by the feverish stimulus of doing kindly acts for her, began to give way, and he desponded deeply.

At nine in the evening he crept upon General Rolleston’s lawn, where he had first seen her. He sat down in sullen despair upon the very spot.

Then he came nearer the house. There was a lamp in the dining-room; he looked in and saw her.

She was seated at her father’s knee, looking up at him fondly; her hand was in his; the tears were in their eyes; she had no mother; he no son; they loved one another devotedly. This, their tender gesture, and their sad silence, spoke volumes to any one that had known sorrow. Poor Seaton sat down on the dewy grass outside and wept because she was weeping.

Her father sent her to bed early. Seaton watched, as he had often done before, till her light went out; and then he flung himself on the wet grass and stared at the sky in utter misery.

The mind is often clearest in the middle of the night; and all of a sudden he saw, as if written on the sky, that she was going to England expressly to marry Arthur Wardlaw.

At this revelation he started up, stung with hate as well as love, and his tortured mind rebelled furiously. He repeated his vow that this should never be; and soon a scheme came into his head to prevent it; but it was a project so wild and dangerous that, even as his heated brain hatched it, his cooler judgment said, “Fly, madman, fly! or this love will destroy you!”

He listened to the voice of reason, and in another minute he was out of the premises. He fluttered to his lodgings.

When he got there he could not go in; he turned and fluttered about the streets, not knowing or caring whither; his mind was in a whirl; and, what with his bodily fever and his boiling heart, passion began to overpower reason, that had held out so gallantly till now. He found himself at the harbor, staring with wild and bloodshot eyes at the Proserpine, he who, an hour ago, had seen that he had but one thing to do—to try and forget young Wardlaw’s bride. He groaned aloud, and ran wildly back into the town. He hurried up and down one narrow street, raging inwardly, like some wild beast in its den.

By-and-by his mood changed, and he hung round a lamp-post and fell to moaning and lamenting his hard fate and hers.

A policeman came up, took him for a maudlin drunkard, and half-advised, half-admonished, him to go home.

At that he gave a sort of fierce, despairing snarl and ran into the next street to be alone.

In this street he found a shop open and lighted, though it was but five o’clock in the morning. It was a barber’s whose customers were working people. HAIRCUTTING, SIXPENCE. EASY SHAVING, THREEPENCE. HOT COFFEE, FOURPENCE THE CUP. Seaton’s eye fell upon this shop. He looked at it fixedly a moment from the opposite side of the way and then hurried on.

He turned suddenly and came back. He crossed the road and entered the shop. The barber was leaning over the stove, removing a can of boiling water from the fire to the hob. He turned at the sound of Seaton’s step and revealed an ugly countenance, rendered sinister by a squint.

Seaton dropped into a chair and said, “I want my beard taken off.”

The man looked at him, if it could be called looking at him, and said dryly, “Oh, do ye? How much am I to have for that job?”

“You know your own charge.”

“Of course I do. Threepence a chin.”

“Very well. Be quick then.”

“Stop a bit. That is my charge to working folk. I must have something more off you.”

“Very well, man, I’ll pay you double.”

“My price to you is ten shillings.”

“Why, what is that for?” asked Seaton in some alarm; he thought, in his confusion, the man must have read his heart.

“I’ll tell ye why,” said the squinting barber. “No, I won’t. I’ll show ye.” He brought a small mirror and suddenly clapped it before Seaton’s eyes. Seaton started at his own image; wild, ghastly, and the eyes so bloodshot. The barber chuckled. This start was an extorted compliment to his own sagacity. “Now wasn’t I right?” said he; “did I ought to take the beard off such a mug as that—for less than ten shillings?”

“I see,” groaned Seaton; “you think I have committed some crime. One man sees me weeping with misery; he calls me a drunkard; another sees me pale with the anguish of my breaking heart; he calls me a felon. May God’s curse light on him and you, and all mankind!”

“All right,” said the squinting barber, apathetically; “my price is ten bob, whether or no.”

Seaton felt in his pockets. “I have not got the money about me,” said he.

“Oh, I’m not particular; leave your watch.”

Seaton handed the squinting vampire his watch without another word and let his head fall upon his breast.

The barber cut his beard close with the scissors, and made trivial remarks from time to time, but received no reply.

At last, extortion having put him in a good humor, he said, “Don’t be so down-hearted, my lad. You are not the first that has got into trouble and had to change faces.”

Seaton vouchsafed no reply.

The barber shaved him clean, and was astonished at the change, and congratulated him. “Nobody will ever know you,” said he; “and I’ll tell you why; your mouth, it is inclined to turn up a little; now a mustache it bends down, and that alters such a mouth as yours entirely. But, I’ll tell you what, taking off this beard shows me something. You are a gentleman!! Make it a sovereign, sir.”

Seaton staggered out of the place without a word.

“Sulky, eh?” muttered the barber. He gathered up some of the long hair he had cut off Seaton’s chin with his scissors, admired it, and put it away in paper.

While thus employed, a regular customer looked in for his cup of coffee. It was the policeman who had taken Seaton for a convivial soul

 

CHAPTER VII.

 

GENERAL ROLLESTON’S servants made several trips to the Proserpine, carrying boxes, etc.

But Helen herself clung to the house till the last moment. “Oh, papa!” she cried, “I need all my resolution, all my good faith, to keep my word with Arthur, and leave you. Why, why did I promise? Why am I such a slave to my word?”

“Because,” said the old general, with a voice not so firm as usual, “I have always told you that a lady is not to be inferior to a gentleman in any virtue except courage. I’ve heard my mother say so often; and I’ve taught it to my Helen. And, my girl, where would be the merit of keeping our word, if we only kept it when it cost us nothing?”

He promised to come after, in three months at furthest, and the brave girl dried her tears as well as she could, not to add to the sadness he fought against as gallantly as he had often fought the enemies of his country.