The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands, R. M. Ballantyne [polar express read aloud .txt] 📗

We therefore propose to leave the Gull-stream light, and the Goodwin sands, and the sloop Nora, far behind us, and, skipping a little in advance of Time itself proceed at once to Yarmouth.

Here, in a snug parlour, in an easy chair, before a cheerful fire, with a newspaper in his hand, sat a bluff little elderly gentleman, with a bald head and a fat little countenance, in which benignity appeared to hold perpetual though amicable rivalry with fun.

That the fat little elderly gentleman was eccentric could scarcely be doubted, because he not only looked over his spectacles instead of through them, but also, apparently, read his newspaper upside down. A closer inspection, however, would have shown that he was not reading the paper at all, but looking over the top of it at an object which accounted for much of the benignity, and some of the fun of his expression.

At the opposite side of the table sat a very beautiful girl, stooping over a book, and so earnestly intent thereon as to be evidently quite oblivious of all else around her. She was at that interesting age when romance and reality are supposed to be pretty equally balanced in a well-regulated female mind—about seventeen. Although not classically beautiful—her nose being slightly turned upward—she was, nevertheless, uncommonly pretty, and, as one of her hopeless admirers expressed it, “desperately love-able.” Jet black ringlets—then in vogue—clustered round an exceedingly fair face, on which there dwelt the hue of robust health. Poor Bob Queeker, the hopeless admirer above referred to, would have preferred that she had been somewhat paler and thinner, if that had been possible; but this is not to be wondered at, because Queeker was about sixteen years of age at that time, and wrote sonnets to the moon and other celestial bodies, and also indulged in “lines” to various terrestrial bodies, such as the lily or the snowdrop, or something equally drooping or pale. Queeker never by any chance addressed the sun, or the red-rose, or anything else suggestive of health and vigour. Yet his melancholy soul could not resist Katie,—which was this angel’s name,—because, although she was energetic, and vigorous, and matter-of-fact, not to say slightly mischievous, she was intensely sympathetic and tender in her feelings, and romantic too. But her romance puzzled him. There was something too intense about it for his taste. If he had only once come upon her unawares, and caught her sitting with her hands clasped, gazing in speechless adoration at the moon, or even at a street-lamp, in the event of its being thick weather at the time, his love for her would have been without alloy.

As it was, Queeker thought her “desperately love-able,” and in his perplexity continued to write sonnets without number to the moon, in which efforts, however, he was singularly unsuccessful, owing to the fact that, after he had gazed at it for a considerable length of time, the orb of night invariably adopted black ringlets and a bright sunny complexion.

George Durant—which was the name of the bald fat little elderly gentleman—was Katie’s father. Looking at them, no one would have thought so, for Katie was tall and graceful in form; and her countenance, except when lighted up with varying emotion, was grave and serene.

As Mr Durant looked at it just then, the gravity had deepened into severity; the pretty eyebrows frowned darkly at the book over which they bent, and the rosy lips represented a compound of pursing and pouting as they moved and muttered something inaudibly.

“What is it that puzzles you, Katie?” asked her father, laying down the paper.

“’Sh!” whispered Katie, without lifting her head; “seventeen, twenty-two, twenty-nine, thirty-six,—one pound sixteen;—no, I can’t get it to balance. Did you ever know such a provoking thing?”

She flung down her pencil, and looked full in her father’s face, where fun had, for the time, so thoroughly conquered and overthrown benignity, that the frown vanished from her brow, and the rosy lips expanded to join her sire in a hearty fit of laughter.

“If you could only see your own face, Katie, when you are puzzling over these accounts, you would devote yourself ever after to drawing it, instead of those chalk-heads of which you are so fond.”

“No, I wouldn’t, papa,” said Katie, whose gravity quickly returned. “It’s all very well for you to joke about it, and laugh at me, but I can tell you that this account won’t balance; there is a two-and-sixpence wrong somewhere, and you know it has to be all copied out and sent off by the evening post to-morrow. I really can’t understand why we are called upon to make so many copies of all the accounts and papers for that ridiculous Board of Trade; I’m sure they have plenty of idle clerks of their own, without requiring us to slave as we do—for such a wretched salary, too!”

Katie shook her curls indignantly, as she thought of the unjust demands and inadequate remuneration of Government, and resumed her work, the frowning brows and pursed coral lips giving evidence of her immediate and total absorption in the accounts.

Old Mr Durant, still holding the newspaper upside down, and looking over the top of it and of his spectacles at the fair accountant, thought in his heart that if the assembled Board, of which his daughter spoke in such contemptuous terms, could only behold her labouring at their books, in order to relieve her father of part of the toil, they would incontinently give orders that he should be thenceforth allowed a salary for a competent clerk, and that all the accounts sent up from Yarmouth should be bound in cloth of gold!

“Here it is, papa, I’ve got it!” exclaimed Katie, looking up with enthusiasm similar to that which might be expected in a youthful sportsman on the occasion of hooking his first salmon. “It was the two-and-sixpence which you told me to give to—”

At that moment the outer door bell rang.

“There’s cousin Fanny, oh, I’m so glad!” exclaimed Katie, shutting up her books and clearing away a multitude of papers with which the table was lumbered; “she has promised to stay a week, and has come in time to go with me to the singing class this afternoon. She’s a darling girl, as fond of painting and drawing almost as I am, and hates cats. Oh, I do so love a girl that doesn’t like cats. Eh, pussy, shall I tread on your tail?”

This question was put to a recumbent cat which lay coiled up in earthly bliss in front of the fire, and which Katie had to pass in carrying her armful of books and papers to the sideboard drawer in which they were wont to repose. She put out her foot as if to carry her threat into execution.

“Dare!” exclaimed Mr Durant, with whom the cat was a favourite.

“Well, then, promise that if Mr Queeker comes to-night you won’t let him stay to spoil our fun,” said Katie, still holding her foot over the cat’s unconscious tail.

As she spoke, one of the rather heavy account-books (which ought to have been bound in cloth of gold) slipped off the pile, and, as ill luck would have it, fell on the identical tail in question, the cat belonging to which sprang up with a fierce caterwaul in rampant indignation.

“Oh, papa, you know I didn’t mean it.”

Mr Durant’s eyes twinkled with amusement as he beheld the sudden change of poor Katie’s expression to intense earnestness, but before he could reply the door was thrown open; “cousin Fanny” rushed in, the cat rushed out, the two young ladies rushed into each other’s arms, and went in a species of ecstatic waltz up-stairs to enjoy the delights of a private interview, leaving Mr Durant to sink into the arms of his easy chair and resume his paper—this time with the right side up!

Let it be understood that the old gentleman was employed in Yarmouth under one of the departments of the Board of Trade. We refrain from entering into particulars as to which department, lest the vindictive spirit which was accredited to that branch of the Government by Miss Katie—who being a lady, must of course have been right—should induce it to lay hold of our estimable friend and make an example of him for permitting his independent daughter to expose its true character. In addition to his office in this connection Mr Durant also held the position of a retired merchant and ship-owner, and was a man of considerable wealth, although he lived in a quiet unostentatious way. In fact, his post under Government was retained chiefly for the purpose of extending his influence in his native town—for he counted himself a “bloater”—and enabling him to carry out more vigorously his schemes of Christian philanthropy.

Cousin Fanny Hennings was a “darling girl” in Katie’s estimation, probably because she was her opposite in many respects, though not in all. In good-humour and affection they were similar, but Fanny had none of Katie’s fire, or enthusiasm, or intellect, or mischief; she had, however, a great appreciation of fun, and was an inordinate giggler. Fat, fair, and fifteen, with flaxen curls, pink cheeks, and blue eyes, she was the beau-idéal of a wax-doll, and possessed about as much self-assertion as may be supposed to belong to that class of the doll-community which is constructed so as to squeak when squeezed. As Katie Durant squeezed her friend pretty often, both mentally and physically, cousin Fanny squeaked a good deal more than usual during her occasional visits to Yarmouth, and even after her return home to Margate, where she and her widowed mother dwelt—as Queeker poetically said—“in a cottage by the sea.” It was usually acknowledged by all her friends that Fanny had increased her powers amazingly while absent, in so much that she learned at last to squeak on her own account without being squeezed at all.

After the cousins had talked in private until they had made themselves almost too late for the singing-class, they issued from the house and betook themselves to the temple of music, where some amazing pieces were performed by some thirty young vocalists of both sexes to their own entire satisfaction, and to the entire dissatisfaction, apparently, of their teacher, whose chief delight seemed to be to check the flow of gushing melody at a critical point, and exclaim, “Try it again!” Being ignorant of classical music we do not venture to give an opinion on these points, but it is important to state, as bearing on the subject in a sanitary point of view, that all the pupils usually left the class in high spirits, with the exception of Queeker, who had a voice like a cracked tea-kettle, knew no more about music than Katie’s cat—which he adored because it was Katie’s—and who went to the class, which was indebted for its discord chiefly to him, wholly and solely because Katie Durant went to it, and thus afforded him an opportunity of occasionally shaking hands with her.

On the present evening, however, being of a shy disposition, he could not bring himself to face cousin Fanny. He therefore left the hall miserable, and went home with desperate intentions as to the moon. Unfortunately that luminary was not visible, the sun having just set, but from his bedroom window, which commanded a view of the roadstead, he beheld the lantern of the Saint Nicolas Gatt floating-light, and addressed the following lines to it with all the fervour incident to a hopeless affection:—

“Why blaze, ye bright benignant beaming star,

Guiding the homebound seaman from afar,

Lighting the outbound wand’rer on his way,

With all the lightsome perspicuity of day?

Why not go out at once! and let be hurl’d

Dark, dread, unmitigated darkness o’er the world?

Why should the heavenly constellations shine?

Why should the weather evermore be fine?

Why should this rolling ball go whirling round?

Why should the noise of mirth and music sound?

Why should the sparrow chirp, the blackbird sing,

The mountains echo, and the valleys ring,

With all that’s