The Beautiful Wretch, William Black [digital ebook reader .TXT] 📗

she threw in her lot with them, and she was warmly welcomed. For Nan was popular in a way. All that acerbity of her younger years had now ripened into a sort of sweet and tolerant good-humour. Tom Beresford called her a Papist, and angrily told her to give up 'that incense-dodge;' but he was very fond of her all the same, and honoured her alone with his confidence, and would have no one say any ill of her. Nay, for her sake he consented to be civil to the Rev. Mr. Jacomb.

Of Charles Jacomb it needs only be said at present that he had recently been transferred to an extremely High Church at Brighton from an equally High Church in a large, populous, and poor parish in the south-east of London, where the semi-Catholic services had succeeded in attracting a considerable number of people, who otherwise would probably have gone to no church at all. It was his description of his work in this neighbourhood that had won for him the respect and warm esteem of Nan Beresford. The work was hard. The services were almost continuous; there was a great deal of visitation to be got through; in these labours he naturally ran against cases of distress that no human being could withstand; and he had 60 pounds a year. Moreover, there were no delicate compensations such as attend the labours of curates in some more favoured places. There was not--Mr. Jacomb emphatically remarked--there was not a gentleman in the parish. When he went to Brighton he had considerably less work, and a great deal more of dinners and society, and pleasant attentions. And Mr. Jacomb, while he was a devoted, earnest, and hard-working priest, was also an Englishman, and liked his dinner, and that was how he became acquainted with the Beresfords, and gradually grew to be an intimate friend of the family. His attentions to Nan were marked, and she knew it. She knew, although he had said nothing to her about it, that he wished her to be his wife; and though she would rather have been enabled to devote her life to some good end in some other way, was not this the only way open to her? By herself, she was so helpless to do anything. So many of her friends seemed to cultivate religion as a higher species of emotion--a sort of luxurious satisfaction that ended with themselves. Nan wanted to do something. If Mr. Jacomb had still been in the south-east of London, working on his 60 pounds a year, Nan would have had no doubt as to what she ought to do.

But Nan had very serious doubt; more than that, she sometimes broke down, and delivered herself over to the devil. At such times a strange yearning would take possession of her; the atmosphere of exalted religious emotion in which she lived would begin to feel stifling; at all costs, she would have to get out of this hot-house, and gain a breath of brisk sea air. And then she would steal away like a guilty thing on one of her long land cruises along the coast; and she would patiently talk to the old shepherds on the downs, and wait for their laconic answers; and she would make observations to the coastguardsmen about the weather; and always her eyes, which were very clear and long-sighted, were on the outlook for Singing Sal. Then if by some rare and happy chance she did run across that free-and-easy vagrant, they always had a long chat together--Sal very respectful, the young lady very matter-of-fact; and generally the talk came round to be about sailors. Nan Beresford had got to know the rig of every vessel that sailed the sea. Further than that, she herself was unaware that every morning as she opened the newspaper she inadvertently turned first of all to the 'Naval and Military Intelligence,' until

she had acquired an extraordinary knowledge of the goings and comings and foreign stations of Her Majesty's ships. And if she sometimes reflected that most officers were transferred to home stations for a time, or took their leave in the ordinary way, and also that she had never heard of Captain King--for she saw he had been made Commander on account of some special service--being in England, was it not natural that she might have a secret consciousness that she was perhaps responsible for his long banishment?

But these solitary prowls along the coast, and these conferences with Singing Sal, were wrong; and she knew they were wrong; and she went back to the calmer atmosphere of those beautiful services in which the commonplace, vulgar world outside was forgotten. She grew, indeed, to have a mysterious feeling that to her the Rev. Charles Jacomb personified religion, and that Singing Sal, in like manner, was a sort of high priestess of Nature; and that they were in deadly antagonism. They were Ormuzd and Ahriman. She was a strangely fanciful young woman, and she dwelt much on this thing, until, half fearing certain untoward doubts and promptings of her heart, she began to think that if now and at once Mr. Jacomb would only ask her to be his wife, she would avoid all perils and confusions by directly accepting him, and so decide her future for ever.

But that morning that brought her Madge's letter saying that Captain Frank King was in Brighton, Nan was singularly disturbed. She was staying with the Rev. Mr. Clark and his wife--an old couple who liked to have their house brightened occasionally by the presence of some one of younger years. They were good people--very, very good; and a little tedious. Nan, however, was allowed considerable liberty, and was sometimes away the whole day from breakfast-time till dinner.

Madge had written her letter in a hurry; but did not post it, in her inconsequential fashion, until the afternoon of the next day, so that Nan got it on the morning of the following day. She read and re-read it; and then, somehow, she wanted to think about it in the open--under the wide skies, near the wide sea. She wanted to go out--and think. And she was a little bit terrified to find that her heart was beating fast.

She made some excuse or other after breakfast, and departed. It was a clear, beautiful December morning, the sun shining brilliantly on the evergreens and on the red houses of the bright, clean, picturesque, English-looking old town. She went down to the station, and waited for the first train going to Newhaven. When it came in, she took her place, and away the train went, at no breakneck speed, down the wide valley of the Ouse, which, even on this cold December morning, looked pleasant and cheerful enough. For here and there the river caught a steely-blue light from the sky overhead; and the sunshine shone along the round chalk hills; and there were little patches of villages far away among the dusk of the leafless trees, where the church spire rising into the blue seemed to attract the wheeling of pigeons. To Nan it was all a familiar scene; she frequently spent the day in this fashion.

Nan was now three years older than when we last saw her at Bellagio. Perhaps she had not grown much prettier--and she never had great pretensions that way; but along with the angularity, so to speak, of her ways of thinking, she had also lost the boniness of her figure. She was now more fully formed, though her figure was still slender and graceful; and she had acquired a grave and sweet expression, that spoke of a very kindly, humorous, tolerant nature within. Children came to her readily; and she let them pull her hair. She was incapable of a harsh judgment. The world seemed beautiful to her; and she enjoyed living--especially when she was on the high downs overlooking the sea.

This getting out into the open was on this occasion a great relief to her. She argued with herself. What did it matter to her whether Frank King were in Brighton, or even that he had been at the house in Brunswick Terrace, dining, and playing billiards? He had probably forgotten that ever he had been at Bellagio. She was glad the weather was fine. No doubt her sisters would soon be setting out for their morning stroll down the pier.

Nan had taken her ticket for Newhaven Wharf, with a vague intention of walking from thence by the short cut to Seaford, and from Seaford to Alfriston, and so back to Lewes. However, when the train stopped she thought she would have a look at the harbour, and very pretty and bright and busy it appeared on this clear morning; the brass and copper of the steamers all polished up, flags flying, the sun brilliant on the green water of the estuary and on the blue water of the ponds beyond that were ruffled with the wind. Then, just below her, came in the ferry-boat. She thought she would cross (though that was not the way to Seaford). When she got to the other side, the slopes leading up to the fort seemed temptingly high; she knew that from the summit of the downs this morning one would have a splendid view. And so, perhaps from mere habit, she took the old familiar road--past the coastguard station, past the pools of ruffled water, up the valley by the farmstead, and so on to the high and solitary downs overlooking the wide moving, shining sea.

Brighton ought to be fair and beautiful on such a morning as this; perhaps by-and-by she might come to have a glimpse of the pale yellow terraces of the distant town. No doubt by this time Edith and Madge were on the pier--Madge with her red skirt and black sealskin coat. Madge always dressed smartly--perhaps even a trifle boldly. The band would be playing now. In the sheltered places it would be almost warm; there you could sit down and talk and watch the ships go by. She supposed that in course of time they would go back for luncheon. That was always a merry meal at home. They generally had visitors whom they had met casually--on the pier, or in the King's Road.

So Nan was thinking and dreaming as she walked idly along, when her attention was suddenly arrested by a sound as of music. She looked round; there was no human being in sight; and the telegraph wires, which sometimes deceived the ear, were far too far away. Then as she went on again, she discovered whence the sound proceeded--from a little wooden hut facing the sea, which had probably been erected there as a shelter for the coastguardsmen. As she drew nearer, she recognised the staccato twanging of a guitar; so she made sure this was Singing Sal. She drew nearer still--her footsteps unheard on the smooth turf--and then she discovered that Sal was singing away to herself, not for amusement, as was her wont, but for practice. There were continual repetitions. Nan got quite close to the hut, and listened.

Singing Sal was doing her very best. She was singing with very great effect; and she had a hard, clear voice that could make itself heard, if it was not of very fine quality. But what struck Nan was the clever fashion in which this woman was imitating the Newcastle burr. It was a pitman's