The Queen's Cup, G. A. Henty [best fantasy books to read .TXT] 📗

course, that was over; but his story showed me still more what a fool I had been, what a heart I had thrown away, and I said, 'I will at least make an effort to undo the past. I will not let my chance of happiness go away from me merely from false pride. If he loves me still he will forgive me. If not, at least I shall not, all through my life, feel that I might have made it different could I have brought myself to speak a word.'"

"I love you as much as ever," Frank said, taking her hand. "I love you more for speaking as you have. I can hardly believe my happiness. Can it be that you really love me, Bertha?"

"I think I have proved it, Frank. I do love you. I have known it for some time, but it seemed all too late. It was a grief rather than a pleasure. Every time you came it was a pain to me, for I felt that I had lost you; and it was only when I learned, two days ago, how you could forgive, and that at the same time I could free myself from the chain I had allowed to be wound round me, and which I don't think I could otherwise have broken, that I made up my mind that it should not be my fault if things were not put right between us.

"Now let us tell mother."

Her hand was still in his, and they went across the deck together.

"Mamma," she said, "please put down that book. I have a piece of news for you. Frank and I are going to be married."

Lady Greendale sat for a moment, speechless in astonishment. She knew that Bertha had wished to tell him that she had refused Carthew's offer, but that this would come of it she had never dreamt. A year before she had approved of Bertha's rejection of Frank, but since then much had happened. Bertha had shown that she would not marry for position only, and that she would be likely to take her own way entirely in the matter; and, although this was a downfall to the hopes that she had once entertained, Lady Greendale was herself very fond of Frank, and it was at any rate better than having Bertha marry a man of whose real means she was ignorant, and who, as everyone knew, bet heavily on the turf. These ideas flashed rapidly through her mind, and holding out one hand to each, she said:

"There is no one to whom I could more confidently entrust her happiness, Frank. God bless you both."

Then she betook herself to her pocket handkerchief, for her tears came easily, and on this occasion she herself could hardly have said whether they were the result of pleasure in Bertha's happiness, or regret at the downfall of the air castles she had once built.

"I think, Bertha, our best plan will be to go below now," Frank suggested, quietly.

"What for?" Bertha asked, shyly.

The thing had been done. She felt radiantly happy, but more shocked at her own boldness than she had been when she perpetrated it.

"Well, my dear, I thought that perhaps you would rather not kiss me in sight of the whole crew, and certainly I shan't be able to restrain myself much longer."

"Then, in that case," she said, demurely, "perhaps we had better go below."

It was half an hour before they came on deck again.

"Well, my dears," Lady Greendale said, "the more I think of it the better I am pleased. As far as I am concerned, nothing could be nicer. I shall have Bertha within a short drive of me, and it won't be like losing her.

"Do you know, Bertha, your father said to me once, 'I would give anything if some day Frank Mallett and our Bertha were to take a fancy to each other. There is nothing I should like more than to have her settled near us, and there is no one I know more likely to make her happy than he would be.' I am sure, dear, that you will be glad to know that your engagement would have had his approval, as it has mine."

Bertha bent down and kissed her mother, with tears standing in her eyes.

"It will be a great pleasure to us both to have you so near us," Frank said, earnestly. "You know that, having lost my own mother so long ago, I have always looked upon you as more of a mother than anyone else, and have always felt almost as much at home in your house as in my own.

"Now, let us sit down and talk it over quietly. In the first place, I propose that on Monday, when you leave Lord Haverley's, you shall both come here for a time. The Solent will be very pleasant for the next fortnight, and we can then take a fortnight's cruise west, and, if you like, land at Plymouth, and go straight home."

"I should be very glad," Lady Greendale said at once, rejoiced at the thought that she would thus avoid the necessity of answering any questions about Bertha; "and there will be no occasion at all to speak of this at my cousin's. There might be all sorts of questions asked, and expressions of surprise, and so on. It will be quite time enough to write to our friends after we have been comfortably settled at home for a time. We can talk over all that afterwards."

"Yes, and I should think, Lady Greendale, that it would save the trouble of two letters if, while mentioning that Bertha is engaged to your neighbour, Major Mallett, you could add that the marriage will come off in the course of a few weeks.

"Don't you think so, Bertha?"

"Certainly not," she said, saucily. "It will be quite time to talk about that a long time hence."

"Well, I will put off talking about it for a short time, but, you see, I have had a year's waiting already."

Very pleasant was the three hours' cruise. No one gave a thought of the missing topmast and bowsprit. There was a nice sailing breeze, and, clipped as her wings were, the Osprey was still faster than the majority of the yachts.

As soon as the two ladies had been put ashore, Frank sailed for Cowes. It was too late when they got there for anything to be done that evening, but Frank went ashore with the captain, and found that the spars were all ready to receive the iron work and sheaves from the old ones; and as these had been towed up to the yard to be in readiness, Messieurs White promised that they would arrange for a few hands to come to work early, and that the spars should be brought off by half-past eight on Monday morning.

As soon as he had returned in the gig, after putting the ladies ashore at Ryde, Frank had called George Lechmere to him.

"It is all right, George, thanks to your interview with Miss Greendale. It was a bold step to take, but it was the best possible thing, and succeeded splendidly, and everything is to be as I wish it."

"I am glad, indeed, to hear it, Major, and I hoped that you would have something of the sort to tell me. There was a look about you both that I took to mean that things were going on well."

"Yes, George. At first, when she told me that you had told her about that affair at Delhi, I felt that there was really no occasion for you to have said anything about it; but it did me a great deal of good. She made much more of it than there was any occasion for; but, you know, when women are inclined to take a pleasant view of a thing, they will magnify molehills into mountains."

"I thought that it would do good, Major. I don't mean that it would do you any good, but that it would do good generally. I had to tell the other story, and that came naturally with it; and, at any rate, she could not but see that there was a deal of difference between the nature of the man who had been so good to me, and that of that scoundrel."

"That is just the effect it did have. Well, don't say anything about it forward, at present. The men shall be told later on."

By one o'clock on Monday the Osprey was back at Ryde, and at two o'clock the dinghy went ashore with the mate and two of the hands, who waited a quarter of an hour till a vehicle brought down the ladies' luggage. Soon afterwards Frank went ashore in the gig, and brought Lady Greendale and Bertha off.

As they went down to their cabin, Bertha, looking into the saloon, saw George Lechmere preparing the tea tray to bring it up on deck. She at once went to him.

"I did not thank you before," she said, holding out her hand; "but I thank you now, and shall thank you all my life. You did me the greatest service."

"I am glad, indeed, Miss Greendale, that it was so; for I know that the Major would never have been a happy man if this had not come about."

For the next fortnight the Osprey was cruising along the coast, getting as far as Torquay, and returning to Cowes. Frank did not enter her for any of the races. Lady Greendale, although a fair sailor, grew nervous when the yacht heeled over far, and even Bertha did not care for racing, the memory of the last race being too fresh in her mind for her to wish to take part in another for the present.

Chapter 11.

"That is an uncommonly pretty trading schooner, Bertha," Frank Mallett said, as he rose from his chair to get a better look at a craft that was passing along to the eastward. "I suppose she must be in the fruit trade, and must just have arrived from the Levant. I should not be surprised if she had been a yacht at one time. She is not carrying much sail, but she is going along fast. I think they would have done better if they had rigged her as a fore-and-aft schooner instead of putting those heavy yards on the foremast. That broad band of white round her spoils her appearance; her jib boom is unusually long, and she must carry a tremendous spread of canvas in light winds. I should think that she must be full up to the hatches, for she is very low in the water for a trader."

The Osprey was lying in the outside tier of yachts off Cowes. The party that had been on board her for the regatta had broken up a week before, and only Lady Greendale and Bertha remained on board. The former had not been well for some days, and had had her maid down from town as soon as the cabins were empty. It had been proposed, indeed, that she and Bertha should return to town, but, being unwilling to cut short the girl's pleasure, she said that she should do better on board than in London; and, moreover, she did not feel equal to travelling. She was attended by a doctor in Cowes, and the Osprey only took short sails each day, generally down to the Needles and back, or out to the Nab.

"Yes, she is a nice-looking boat," Bertha agreed, "and if her sails were white and her ropes neat and trim, she would look like a yacht, except for those big yards."

"Her skipper must be a lubber to have the ropes hanging about like that. Of course, he may have had bad weather in crossing the bay, but if he had any pride in the craft, he might at least have got her into a good deal better trim while coming in from the Needles. Still, all that could be remedied in an hour's work, and certainly she is as pretty a trader as ever I saw. How did your mother seem this afternoon, Bertha?"

"About the same, I think. I don't feel at all anxious about her, because I have often seen her like this before. I think really, Frank, that she is quite well enough to go up to town; but she knows that I am enjoying myself so much that she does not like to take me away. I have no doubt that she will find herself better by Saturday, when, you know, we arranged some time back that we would go up. You won't be long before you come, will you?"

"Certainly not. Directly you have landed I shall take the Osprey to Gosport, and lay her up there. I need not stop to see that done. I can trust Hawkins to see her stripped and everything taken on shore; and,