One month from the time I arrived in London, I was on my way to Portsmouth to meet Giles Vernon, who had been brought over with a batch of exchanged officers from France.
In that month, during which I had lived continuously in Berkeley Square, things were so little changed, except in one respect, which I shall mention presently, that I could scarcely persuade myself five years had passed. Peter and Polly, as Giles disrespectfully called them, had not grown a day older, and quarreled as vigorously as ever. Lady Arabella was then her own mistress, although still living under Sir Peter’s roof; but, as far as I could see, this spoiled child of nature and fortune had always been her own mistress. I found that Overton had been away for some years on foreign service, and, after distinguishing himself greatly, had lately returned suffering from severe wounds and injuries to his constitution. He was, however, in London, and able to ride and walk out, and visit his friends; but it was doubted by many whether, on the expiration of his leave, he would ever be fit for duty again.
I heard and saw enough to convince me that Lady Arabella had been wild with grief and despair when she heard of his wounds; and, although since his return to London he avoided company generally, she managed to see him occasionally, and spent much of her time driving in the parks upon the mere chance of seeing him taking his daily ride or walk. Lady Arabella Stormont had everything in life that heart could wish, except one. She had chosen to give her wilful and wayward heart to Philip Overton, and it must be acknowledged that he was a man well fitted to enchain a woman’s imagination. Overton had disdained the spontaneous gift of Arabella’s love; but I believe her haughty and arrogant mind could never be brought to believe that any man could be really insensible to her beauty, her rank, and her fortune. Overton could not in any way be considered a great match for her. His fortune was modest, and his chance of succeeding to the Vernon estates remote; but, with the desperate perversity of her nature, him she would have and no other. It always seemed to me as if Overton were the one thing denied her, but that she had determined to do battle with fate until she conquered her soul’s desire.
For myself, she treated me exactly as she had done five years before,—called me Dicky in her good humors, and a variety of sneering names in her bad humors,—and, little as it may be believed, I, Richard Glyn, lieutenant in his Majesty’s sea-service, with three thousand pounds to my name, would have gone to the gibbet rather than marry Lady Arabella, with her thirty thousand pounds.
Perhaps Daphne Carmichael had something to do with it. She was the same gentle, winning creature at nineteen as at twelve. She was still Sir Peter’s pet, and Lady Hawkshaw’s comfort; but I had not been in the house a week before the change I alluded to came about, and the change was in me concerning Daphne. I began to find it very hard to keep away from her. She treated me with great kindness before others, but when we were alone together, she was capricious. I began to despair of ever finding a woman who could be kind to a man three times running. And I was very much surprised at the end of a fortnight to find myself experiencing the identical symptoms I had felt five years before, with Arabella—only much aggravated. There was this difference, too. I had admired Arabella as a star, afar off, and I think I should have been very much frightened, if, at the time, she had chosen formally to accept my devotion. Not so with Daphne. I felt I should never be really at ease until I had the prospect of having her by my side the rest of my life. I reached this phase at the end of the third week. At the end of the fourth, I was in a desperate case, but it was then time to go to Portsmouth to meet Giles, according to my promise, and I felt, when I parted from Daphne, as if I were starting on a three years’ cruise, and I was only to be gone a day and a half. She, dear girl, showed some feeling, too, and I left, bearing with me the pack which every lover carries,—pains and hopes.
I left London at night, and next morning on reaching Portsmouth, as I jumped from the coach, I ran into Giles’ arms; he had reached Portsmouth some hours in advance of the time.
He showed marks of his imprisonment in his appearance, but his soul had ever been free, and he was the same brave and joyous spirit I had ever known. Not being minded to waste our time in Portsmouth, we took coach for London town at noon. As we were mounting, a countryman standing by held up a wooden cage full of larks, and asked us to buy, expatiating on their beautiful song.
“I will take them all, my lad,” cried Giles, throwing him a guinea. The fellow gaped for a moment, and then made off as fast as his legs could carry him. I wondered what Giles meant to do with the birds. He held the cage in his hand until we had started and were well into the country; then, opening the little slide, he took out one poor, fluttering bird, and, poising on his finger for a moment, the lark flew upward with a rush of joyous wings.
Each bird he liberated in the same way, all of us on the coach-top watching him in silence. As the last captive disappeared in the blue heavens, Giles, crushing the cage in his strong hands, threw it away.
“I have been a prisoner for fourteen months,” he said, “and I shall never see any harmless living thing again imprisoned without trying to set it free.”
We reached London that night, and Giles went to his old lodgings, where his landlady was delighted to see him, as all women were who knew Giles Vernon. She gave us supper, and then we sat up all night talking. I had thought from the guinea he had thrown the vender of larks, that he had money. I found he had none, or next to none.
“And how I am to live until I get another ship, I am at a loss, my boy,” he cried, quite cheerfully. “Two courses are open to me—play and running away with an heiress. Do you know of a charming girl, Dicky, with something under a hundred thousand pounds, who could be reconciled to a penniless lieutenant in his Majesty’s navy? And remember, she must be as beautiful as the dawn besides, and of good family, and keen of wit—no lunkhead of a woman for me.” To this, fate impelled me to reply that Lady Arabella Stormont was still single.
“Faith!” cried Giles, slapping his knee, “she is the girl for me. I always intended to marry her, if only to spite her.”
I was sorry I had raked up the embers of his passion of five years before, and attempted to cover my step by saying,—
“She is still infatuated with Overton, whom, however, she sees rarely, and that only at the houses of others; but he has ever looked coldly upon her.”
“She’ll not be coldly looked on by me. And let me see; there is her cousin you used to tell me about,—the Carmichael girl,—suppose you, Dicky, run away with her; then no two lieutenants in the service will have more of the rhino than we!”
I declare this was the very first time I had remembered Daphne’s thirty thousand pounds. She had the same fortune as Lady Arabella. The reflection damped my spirits dreadfully.
Giles saw it directly, and in a moment he had my secret from me. He shouted with delight, and immediately began a grotesque planning for us to run away with the two heiresses. He recalled that the abduction of an heiress was a capital crime, and drew a fantastic picture of us two standing in the prisoners’ dock, on trial for our lives, with Lady Arabella and Daphne swearing our lives away, and then relenting and marrying us at the gallows’ foot. And this tale, told with the greatest glee, amid laughter and bumpers of hot brandy and water, had a singular effect upon me. It sobered me at once, and suddenly I seemed to see a vision, as Macbeth saw Banquo’s ghost, passing before my very eyes,—just such a scene as Giles described. Only I got no farther than the spectacle of Giles a prisoner in the dock, on trial for his life. My own part seemed misty and confused, but I saw, instead of the lodging-house parlor, a great hall of justice dimly lighted with lamps, the judges in their robes on the bench, one with a black cap on his head, and Giles standing up to receive sentence. I passed into a kind of nightmare, from which I was aroused by Giles whacking me on the back and saying in a surprised voice,—
“What ails you, Dicky boy? You look as if you had seen a ghost. Rouse up here and open your lantern jaws for a glass of brandy and rid yourself of that long face.”
I came out of this singular state as quickly as I had gone into it, and, ashamed to show my weakness to Giles, grew merry, carried on the joke about the abduction, and shortly felt like myself, a light-hearted lieutenant of twenty-one. I proposed that we should go to the play the next night,—or rather that night, for it was now about four in the morning,—and shortly after we tumbled into bed together and slept until late the next day.
Giles and I went to Berkeley Square in the afternoon, professing just to have arrived from Portsmouth. Giles expressed his thanks in the handsomest manner to Sir Peter for his kindness, and made himself, as usual, highly agreeable to Lady Hawkshaw. Neither Lady Arabella nor Daphne was at home, but came in shortly after Giles had left. Lady Arabella made some slighting remark about Giles, as she always did whenever opportunity offered. Daphne was very kind to me, and I gave her to understand privately that I was ready to haul down my flag at the first summons to surrender.
The family from Berkeley Square were going to the play that night, and I mentioned that Giles and I would be there together. And so, just as the playhouse was lighting up, we walked in. After the curtain was up, and when Mrs. Trenchard was making her great speech in Percy, I motioned Giles to look toward Lady Hawkshaw’s box. Her ladyship entered on Sir Peter’s arm; his face was very red, and he was growling under his breath, to which Lady Hawkshaw contributed an obligato accompaniment in a sepulchral voice; and behind them, in all the splendor of her beauty, walked Lady Arabella, and last, came sweet, sweet Daphne.
The first glimpse Giles caught of Lady Arabella seemed to renew in an instant the spell she had cast on him five years before. He seemed almost like a madman. He could do nothing but gaze at her with eyes that seemed starting out of his head. He grew pale and then red, and was like a man in a frenzy. It was all I could do to moderate his voice and his looks in that public place. Luckily, Mrs. Trenchard being on the stage, all eyes were, for the time, bent on her.
I hardly knew how we sat the play out. I had to promise Giles a dozen times that the next day I would take him to Berkeley Square. When the curtain went down, he fairly leaped his way out of the playhouse to see Lady Arabella get into the coach.
That was a fair sample of the way he raved for days afterward. He haunted Berkeley Square, where he was welcomed always by Sir Peter and Lady Hawkshaw, asked to dine frequently, and every mark of favor shown him.
Lady Arabella remained cold and indifferent to him. About that time Overton appeared a little in his old haunts, although much changed and sobered. Neither wounds nor illness had impaired his looks and charms, but rather he had become an object of interest and sympathy from his gallant behavior in the field. Sir Peter, who had always liked him, began to pester him to come to Berkeley Square, which he did a few times, because he could not well decline Sir Peter and Lady Hawkshaw’s pressing and friendly invitations. I believed, however, that in spite of his forced composure he felt cruelly abashed before Lady Arabella. She, however, showed an amazing coolness, and even began to be a little kind to Giles, from some obscure motive of her own. I believe every act of her life with regard to men had some reference to her passion for Overton.
She suddenly fell into my arms.
All this time, though, from the night of the play, Daphne and I had been secretly happy; for on the very next day, catching her alone, I told her, in plain and seamanlike language, that I loved her, and when she showed a disposition to cut and run, I said to her, very boldly,—
“Since you scorn my love, I have the resource that every one of my calling has in these days. I shall soon go to sea, and upon the deck of my ship I can find death, since life is nothing to me without my Daphne’s love.”
At which, without the least warning, she suddenly fell into my arms, crying,—
“You’ll break my heart, if you talk in that way!” and I perceived that she was only manœuvering for position.
I do not know exactly what happened next, except I was in that heaven, Daphne’s arms, when I looked up and caught the butler and two footmen grinning at me. But it mattered not.
Next morning Daphne and I met in the drawing-room, as usual, after breakfast; but what a meeting it was! We had barely time to scuttle back to our chairs when Sir Peter entered with the newspaper, and informed me that the Bellona frigate was being fitted for the West Indies, and he thought he could get me a berth in her, at which I felt myself grow weak in the knees, so great is the power of love.
Presently he went out. Then Daphne and I began to speculate upon Sir Peter’s personal equation in our affairs.
“He will never let me marry you,” she said. “He will say I am too young.”
This depressed me so that I could say nothing in reply. Daphne continued, quite in an offhand manner,—
“If we should elope, he would make a great hullabaloo.”
This admirable suggestion at once commended itself to me.
“His hullabaloo could not separate us, if we were married,” I replied.
“True,” said Daphne; “and after all, he and Lady Hawkshaw as good as eloped, and she was but eighteen—a year younger than I.”
Thus was I supplied with another argument.
I again swear that I had not a thought of Daphne’s fortune in all this. I would have taken the dear girl with nothing but the clothes upon her back.
True to his word, Sir Peter worked like a Trojan to get me a berth on the Bellona, and, meaning to do Giles the greatest service in the world, tried likewise for him; and mightily afraid we were that he would soon succeed.
This brought matters to a crisis with Daphne. I mentioned the word “elope” to her again, and she made a great outcry, after the manner of young women, and then began straightway to show me precisely how it might be done, protesting, meanwhile, that she would never, no, never, consent. We both agreed, though, that it was proper we should lay the matter of our marriage before Sir Peter and Lady Hawkshaw; but I saw that Daphne, who was of a romantic turn, had her imagination fired by the notion of an elopement.
“A pair of good horses and a light traveling chaise!” she exclaimed. “If only it were not wrong!”
“No, no! Four horses!” cried I, “and there is nothing wrong in either a two or a four horse chaise.”
Daphne clapped her hands.
“A trip to Scotland—I have always longed for Scotland. I know a dozen people who have married in Scotland, and happy marriages, every one of them. But I forbid you, Richard, to think of an elopement.”
“We shall set out at midnight; we shall not be missed until morning, and we shall have at least twelve hours’ start. Then, at every stage, we shall leave something behind, which will ensure a broken axle, or a linchpin gone, for our pursuers.”
We were both so charmed with the picture we had conjured up, that when I said, “Suppose, after all, though, that Sir Peter consents?” Daphne’s face fell; but presently she smiled, when I said,—
“If he does consent, why, then, there is no harm in our marrying any way we like, and he will excuse us for running away. And if he does not consent, there is no help for it,—we must elope!”
I considered myself a casuist of the first order. I felt obliged to take the first opportunity of letting Sir Peter know the state of affairs, and, as usual, I determined to begin through Lady Hawkshaw.
“And,” as Daphne shrewdly remarked, “they will certainly differ, so we shall at least have one of them on our side.”
I sought Lady Hawkshaw, and found her in her usual place, in the Chinese room. I began, halting, stammering, and blushing, as if I were a charity school-boy, instead of a lieutenant in his Majesty’s service, who had been thanked by Lord Nelson.
“M-m-my lady,” I stuttered, “I have experienced so much k-k-kindness from you that I have come to you in the greatest emergency of my life.”
“You want to get married,” promptly replied Lady Hawkshaw.
I was so staggered by having the words taken out of my mouth, that I could only gape and stare at her. To render my confusion worse, she added,—
“And you want to marry Daphne.”
“I can not deny it, Madam,” I managed to say.
“Will you ring the bell?” she asked.
I rang the bell like a churchwarden, and the footman came, and Lady Hawkshaw immediately sent him for Sir Peter.
I think my courage would wholly have given out at that, except for a glimpse of Daphne, flitting up the stairs. The dear girl wished to give me heart, so she told me afterward.
Sir Peter appeared, and was greeted by Lady Hawkshaw as follows:—
“Sir Peter, here is Richard Glyn wanting to marry Daphne. He has but three thousand pounds; but she might go farther, and fare worse.”
Sir Peter literally glared at me. He gasped once or twice, then broke out in a torrent.
“He wants to marry my ward, does he—my ward, with thirty thousand pounds, in her own right! I wonder, damme, he didn’t propose to marry Arabella, too. Young gentleman, you are too modest. Heiresses in England go about hunting for poor lieutenants to marry. I suppose you think it would be a fine stroke for me to marry my ward to my nephew! Ha, ha! Ho, ho!”
His laughter was demoniac.
“Sir Peter,” said Lady Hawkshaw severely,—for I remained mute,—“I am astonished at your violence and unreason. Did you never hear of an heiress—and a fine, handsome girl, too, with many accomplishments, and of a great family—marrying a poor lieutenant without a penny, and without an ancestor?”
“By Jupiter, I never did!” roared Sir Peter.
“Then, Sir Peter,” cried Lady Hawkshaw, rising with awful dignity, “you forget all about Lieutenant Peter Hawkshaw and the Honorable Apollonia Jane Howard.”
At this, Sir Peter fairly wilted for a few moments; and I heard something strangely like a tittering in the next room.
But Sir Peter presently recovered himself in a measure.
“But—but—there are lieutenants and lieutenants, Madam, I was considered a man likely to rise. And besides, if I remember rightly, I was not an ill-looking fellow, Madam.”
“Sir Peter, you were no taller then than you are now—five feet four inches. Your hair was red, and you were far from handsome. Richard Glyn is as good-looking as you ever were in your life; and he has already made his mark. Richard Glyn,” turning to me, “you are at liberty to marry Daphne Carmichael.”
“Richard Glyn,” bawled Sir Peter, “if you dare to think you are going to marry Daphne Carmichael,—mind, I say, if the thought ever enters your damned head,—it will be as much as your life is worth! I am going, this moment, to the First Lord of the Admiralty, to see if I can’t have you sent to the West Indies, or the Gold Coast, with my best wishes and endeavors to keep you there for ten years at least.”
“And what will you do with me, dear Uncle Peter?” suddenly asked a soft voice; and Daphne, who had stolen into the room (she must have been very near), stood before him, and nestled her pretty head against his shoulder.
Sir Peter was too astonished, for a moment or two, to speak. The whole thing had fallen upon him like the shock of an earthquake. But in a little while he recovered his voice, and all of his voice, too; he shouted as if he were on the bridge of the Ajax, with a whole gale blowing, and the enemy in sight.
“Do!” he shrieked. “What shall I do? Bread and water, miss, for six months! Discipline, miss!” And much more of the same sort.
This roused Lady Hawkshaw to take our part. She shouted back at Sir Peter; and I, not to be outdone, shouted that Daphne was mine, and I was hers, as long as life should last; and presently Sir Peter flung out, in a royal rage, and Lady Hawkshaw flung after him; and Daphne sank, in tears, on my shoulder, and I kissed her a hundred times, and comforted her. But I knew Sir Peter was a determined man, in some respects; and I felt assured he would shortly carry out his threat to send me to sea, and, once at sea, it might be years before I should again set foot in England. Scotland, then, sounded sweetly in our ears. I found, in truth, that when it came actually to going off, Daphne’s romantic willingness changed to a natural hesitation at so bold a step. But the near prospect of going to the Bellona turned the scale in my favor, and I won from her a sort of oblique consent. And another thing seemed to play directly into our hands. Sir Peter had business at Scarborough, which might detain him some time; and, although it was late in the autumn, he determined to take his family with him. I believe it was by way of separating Daphne and me that he came to the decision. Lady Hawkshaw was to go, and his two wards; and they were to remain a month. This was so obviously showing us the road across the border, that I told my sweet Daphne, plainly, I should carry her off; at which she wept more, and protested less, than I had yet seen her.
In the whole affair, I had counted upon the assistance of Giles Vernon; and on the very night the party left for Scarborough, after a tearful farewell between Daphne and me, I went to Giles’ lodgings, to make a clean breast of it.
Giles’ voice called me up stairs; and when I reached his room, there, spread out on the bed, I saw a beautiful suit of brown and silver.
“Do you see that?” cried Giles. “That is my wedding suit. For it I spent fifty of the last hundred pounds I had in the world, and it is to marry Lady Arabella Stormont that I bought it.”
I thought he was crazy, but I soon perceived there was method in his madness. He told me seriously enough that he meant to carry off Lady Arabella Stormont from Scarborough.
“But—but—she does not like you,” I said, hesitating and amazed.
“We shall see about that, my lad,” he said, and then began to tell me of what he thought a great change in his favor with Arabella. He put many trifling things which I had not noted in such a light that under his eloquent persuasion I began to believe Lady Arabella really might have a secret weakness for him, which pride prevented her from discovering. He had never failed to win any woman’s regard yet; and it had always seemed a miracle to me, Richard Glyn, who had fallen under his spell so many years ago, how anybody could resist him. He wound up his argument by saying, in his usual confident manner,—
“Trust me, there is something compelling in the love I feel for Arabella. Women are all alike, my boy. They want a master. Once put the bit in their mouths, and they adore you for it. Let me have the spirit to run away with that adorable creature, and see how quickly she will come to my call. You will shortly see her clinging to me like peaches to a southern wall.”
“And her fortune?”
“She is none the worse for that. But I swear to you, Dicky Glyn, that I would carry her off as the Romans did the Sabine maidens, if she had not a shilling,”—which I believed to be true; for his was an infatuation which takes account of nothing.
He then began to tell me of his plans, and in them he showed his usual shrewdness and boldness. The trip to Scarborough had put Scotland in his head. He was likely to be sent to sea any day, to be gone, perhaps, for years; just the arguments I had used to myself first and to Daphne afterward.
I remembered that scene five years before, with Overton and Lady Arabella in Sir Peter’s cubby-hole; and the memory of it made me think with dread of Giles Vernon’s marrying Arabella. But I could not speak openly; and, after all, she was so strange a creature that one could scarcely judge her by the standard of other women. And then the plan I had to confide to him very effectually withdrew the charges of any battery I might have brought to bear on him.
When he had finished his tale, and I had told mine, Giles was in an ecstasy. He laughed in his uproarious good humor.
“Oh, you sly dog!” he shouted. “So you are up to the same game!”
I explained that I had not much to fear. Daphne was undoubtedly fond of me, and Lady Hawkshaw being on our side, and other reasons in our favor,—all of which fitted Giles’ case exactly. And at last I gave up, in sheer despair, and agreed to Giles’ suggestion that we should together carry off the two damsels of our hearts; and then and there we made our plans, sitting up until the gray dawn came.
Oh, the madness of it! the wildness of it! But we were two dare-devil and happy-go-lucky lieutenants, without the prudence of landsmen. We loved, and we were liable at any moment to be torn away for many years from the idols of our hearts. Runaway marriages were common; and only the parents and guardians were offended in those cases, and forgiveness generally followed. We were about to commit a great folly; but we thought we were nobly sustaining the reputation of his Majesty’s sea-officers for our spirit and gallantry with the fair sex, and looked not to the dreadful consequences of our desperate adventure.
