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Chapter XXXIV. Afloat.

There is something to be said for those people who discourage farewell visits and dislike saying good-bye. For so much is expected from these set farewells; they are such a depth of silent pain, if people care for each other, such a string of speeches if they do not. And then afterwards so many things are found to have been left unsaid; the time is sure to have been wasted—the more precious it is, the more certain that is. Even Mabel, with these friends of a’ few months, found it hard to say good-bye, and wished she could have been carried quietly off without the effort of parting.

The most trying thing was the hour she spent with General Hawke on her last afternoon. The old man was unhappy, and there were tears in his eyes as ho told her he had been a bad guardian to her; he was afraid her father would think so. Mabel contradicted all he said with a gentle affectionateness which made it still harder for him to part with her. He held her hand, and would not let it go; he asked her over and over again if she had had a miserable summer. Mabel was afraid that some of this unhappiness arose from the thought of being left alone with Randal; and when at last she had left him, and Randal, who had come into the room, was following her down-stairs, she turned and looked at him gravely.

‘Do be kind to him,’ she said. ‘He is so old, and I’m afraid he feels lonely.’

‘Very likely he does; so do I,’ said Randal. ‘Don’t page 318 think about him. But you won’t after you have left the house.’

‘Indeed I shall,’ said Mabel a little indignantly. ‘I shall think of him a great deal, and I am going to write to him.’

‘He will like that, and I shall have the pleasure of answering your letters,’ said Randal.

‘But do tell me you mean to be good to him,’ Mabel persisted.’

‘He and I understand each other,’ said Randal. ‘My care can never be like a woman’s. That is what he really wants now.’

‘What a pity—’ began Mabel quickly, in a low voice.

‘Yes, it is a pity,’ said Randal.

She coloured, and said no more, being quite sure that he did not follow her thoughts. But in many a happy hour afterwards the poor old General came back to her mind, sitting there alone and, helpless by his fire, with a worn disappointed look in his face, as he dreamed sadly through the days in the great silent house.

Mabel’s other farewells were not so sad as this one, being all to active happy people, who had plenty to live for after she was gone. She drove straight from Pensand Castle to Carweston, where she was to sleep that night, and to be married in Anthony’s church the next morning. The storms had lulled themselves for the present, and it was a beautiful sunny afternoon. Till dusk, and long after, Mabel was wandering about in the garden with Anthony, having her last talk with this friend of hers, who in her heart I believe she loved next to Dick, and perhaps honoured more. Anthony was telling her all that he imagined of her new life, the voyage, the arrival, the station life, describing in his odd way the people she would meet, and her talks with them—even page 319 telling her what she would think of the new sights she saw. Mabel listened half in a dream, but she was very well aware of the strain of gentle wisdom underlying all that Anthony said. In alter days she found, not much to her surprise, that the remembrance of this talk guided her in many ways. She caught herself imagining what Anthony would have said about the real people that she met, what he would have advised in any little difficulty, and his thoughts became a sort of tune to which her life could set itself. It was remarkable, though perhaps most natural, that his words always harmonised perfectly with a small Book of Psalms, bound in soft leather, which he gave her in the garden that afternoon.

Presently Dick’s voice called them into the house; he had arrived to dinner with his Yorkshire cousin, Harry Northcote, who was come down to the wedding. Mabel left the garden with a smile and a sigh. Dick’s voice of course always brought happiness; but she thought his cousin a bore, and every little change in the day’s events seemed to cut off some old association, to bring the time nearer when all would be left behind, and the great ship would steam out of the bay.

Mrs. Strange had put a few autumn flowers in the chancel of the low old church, where Anthony preached on Sundays to his little flock of country people. The church was always too large for them; they safe in a cluster amidst the solid granite pillars, which looked like rocks beaten by the sea. Anthony had some satisfaction in knowing that their ancestors for many generations had sat there before them, and that his own influence over them was hereditary too; his father and grandfather and great-grandfather had been squires and rectors of Carweston before him. In their ease the succession had not answered badly. But it did not seem likely that the present squire would ever marry and have a son to carry on the worthy chain.

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Anthony rather liked weddings generally. This one seemed to please him very much, if his friends could judge by the joyful peace with which his face was shining, and the content in his voice as he read the service that gave Dick and Mabel to each other once for all. The church was full of villagers, who watched the little wedding-party with curious eyes. It was very small, very quiet; there was no show about it, not enough to please Harry Northcote, who thought that when he married an heiress she should at least wear a white satin gown. Mabel was married in the dress in which she was to go on board. She came in on Sandal’s arm, and had no bridesmaids, unless Miss Northcote might be considered as one, Harry Northcote thought this also a barbarism, and attacked Kate about it afterwards. But Kate told him that Mabel had no girl friends, and that though plenty of girls might of course have been collected among their acquaintances, she liked better, under the circumstances, to have no one there she did not know well. The simpler the better, she thought, and Dick entirely agreed with her. Harry, however,’ who was very sociable, disapproved of the whole tiling. He remarked that a girl had one chance in her life of being the chief interest to every one who saw her, and that it was quite unfair to marry her off in a comer like this, and then bundle her on board ship as if they were ashamed of the transaction.

‘I should have had the wedding in the big church at Morebay,’ said Harry, ‘and the band of the regiment to play them down to the pier. Then you and I would have been host and hostess at a grand ball in the town-hall in the evening, while they, poor things, were tossing in the Channel.’

Kate thought the actual arrangements very much to be preferred, and Mabel certainly wished for nothing better. The late October sun shone kindly on her as page 321 she walked out of the church, and down the paved pathway to the gate, without any school-children to throw nosegays before her; but with clanging joy-bells almost rocking the old tower, and telling the fishers on the Mora, and the shepherds on the purple-shaded hills beyond, that another chapter had begun in the lives of two human beings at Carweston. General Hawke had his window open, too, at Pensand, and heard the bells, and said, ‘God bless her, poor little woman!’ Flora Lancaster had walked out from St. Denys on the north road, and when the peal broke suddenly upon her ears, she was standing by that wall where Dick found her one summer afternoon looking across the valley She smiled and breathed a good wish for them, and then turned back towards home; for she meant to go down to Morebay and say good-bye to them on the pier, where she might be easily hidden in the crowd. She had asked Mabel to let her do this, for she could not bring herself to go to the wedding after that meeting with Randal on board the boat.

The wedding-party drove from Carweston to More-bay early in the afternoon. There were the bride and bridegroom, Mrs. Strange and Anthony, Kate North-cote, Harry, and Randal Hawke. He had behaved so well that day in the character of Mabel’s guardian, that Anthony and Dick had found it possible to endure his presence, to which they had both looked forward with extreme disgust. The sun shone over the autumn landscape, the brown and red and orange woods, the Mora and the Penyr glittering like sheets of silver. The green water in the harbour danced and splashed and sparkled in the sun, rocking the passing boats, and leaping up the black sides of the men-of-war. Out in deep water rode the great steamer Empress, her masts and funnels standing up against the background of bright heaving sea. The baggage was all on board long ago. These page 322 passengers had to go out to her in a boat: their friends meant to see the last of them, even Mrs. Strange, who was more active and venturous than many a young woman.

As the little group stood on the pier, waiting till the boat was ready, Dick Northcote suddenly drew his wife aside.

‘Here’s a friend who wants to say good-bye to you,’ he said.

He had been looking out for Mrs. Lancaster, and had suddenly discovered her among the idle people who flocked upon the pier. Flora was strangely shy that day. She hardly even responded in words to Mabel’s affectionate greeting; her eyes strayed nervously towards Mrs. Strange and the people standing beside her. But then she collected herself, and shook hands cordially with Dick, and kissed Mabel, wishing them a good voyage and every happiness.

‘I should like to think that you are happy too,’ said Mabel, in a low voice, looking at her.

Flora seemed confused and uncomfortable, and would not meet her eyes.

‘O yes, thank you,’ she said. ‘I should be most ungrateful if I was not. By the bye, my father and mother told me to give you their best wishes.’

‘You must thank them for us,’ said Dick. ‘Captain Cardew prophesied a good passage when I saw him yesterday. You are coming on board with us? You haven’t seen Mabel’s cabin.’

‘No, thank you; I must go home at once.’

‘Now, how unkind of you !’ said Dick. ‘All our real friends are coming, and I thought you were one of them. Don’t look satirical.’

‘I didn’t,’ said Flora, smiling, though her eyes were filled with tears. ‘You’ll excuse me, won’t you?’ she said, looking imploringly at Mabel.

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‘Yes, of course,’ said Mabel, pressing her hand. ‘Good-bye. And, O, remember that you promised to write to me. Write very soon. I shall be so dreadfully lonely when I first get there, shall not I, Dick? And mind you send me plenty of news—good news—nice cheerful news about yourself.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ said Flora.

The next minute they were gone, and she drew back among the spectators. But when the boat had put off, she went forward to the edge of the pier, and watched them speeding away to the steamer. They were talking among themselves; no one looked back or noticed her, except her old friend Dick, who waved his hat and smiled.

‘Who was that for?’ said Randal.

‘Mrs. Lancaster,’ answered Dick shortly.

Randal was silent for a moment or two, and then resumed his talk with Harry Northcote.

Flora stood there till the boat reached the ship, and watched them go on board one by one. Then she turned away, and long before the boat returned to the pier she was on her way home to St. Denys.

As the autumn afternoon was closing in, the great steamer passed out to sea with her trail of smoke behind her. Mabel stood on deck with her husband, and looked back at the fast-fading shore of England; Morebay terraces blending themselves into a dim white line, varied woods into a dark mass on the hills. This was the evening of her wedding-day, and the beginning of the journey to her new home on the other side of the world. Mabel’s thoughts, however, were not altogether full of herself and Dick.

‘Do you know, Dick,’ she said confidentially, ‘I believe poor Flora is in love with him still.’

‘You don’t mean it! Can she be such a fool?’ said Dick, with a long whistle.