CHAPTER X

AT SEA

In the British army, notwithstanding the phases and vicissitudes to which it is subjected, discipline still remains a paramount consideration--the keystone of its whole fabric. Come what may, the duty must be done. This is the great principle of action; and, in obedience to its law, young officers, who combine pleasure with military avocations, are continually on the move to and from head-quarters, by road, railway, or steam-boat--here to-day, gone to-morrow; proposing for themselves, indeed, many schemes of sport and pastime, but disposed of, morally and physically, by the regimental orders and the colonel's will.

Daisy, buried in Kildare, rising at day-break, going to bed at nine, looking sharply after the preparation of Satanella, could not avoid crossing the Channel for "muster," to re-cross it within twenty-four hours, that he might take part in the great race on which his fortunes now depended--to use his own expression, which was to "make him a man or a mouse."

Thus it fell out that he found himself embarking at Holyhead amongst a stream of passengers in the mid-day boat for Dublin, having caught the mail-train at Chester by a series of intricate combinations, and an implicit reliance on the veracity of Bradshaw. It rained a little, of course--it always does rain at Holyhead--and was blowing fresh from the south-west. The sea "danced," as the French say; ladies expressed a fear "it would be very rough;" their maids prepared for the worst; and a nautical-looking personage in a pea-coat with anchor buttons, who disappeared at once, to be seen no more till he landed, pale and dishevelled, in Kingstown harbour, opined first that "there was a capful of wind," secondly, that "it was a ten-knot breeze, and would hold till they made the land."

With loud throbs and pantings of her mighty heart, with a plunge, a hiss, a shower of heavy spray-drops, the magnificent steamer got under way, lurching and rolling but little, considering the weather, yet enough to render landsmen somewhat unsteady on their legs, and to exhibit the skill with which a curly-haired steward balanced himself, basin in hand, on his errands of benevolence and consolation.

Two ladies, who had travelled together in a through carriage from Euston Square, might have been seen to part company the moment they set foot on board. One of these established herself on deck, with a multiplicity of cushions, cloaks, and wrappings, to the manifest admiration of a raw youth in drab trowsers and highlows, smoking a damp cigar against the wind; while the other vanished into the ladies'-cabin, there to lay her head on a horse-hair pillow, to sigh, and moan, and shut her eyes, and long for land, perhaps to gulp, with watering mouth, short sips of brandy and water, perhaps to find the hateful mixture only made her worse.

What a situation for Blanche Douglas! How she loathed and despised the lassitude she could not fight against, the sufferings she could not keep down! How she envied Mrs. Lushington the open air, the sea-breeze, the leaping, following waves, her brightened eyes, her freshened cheeks, her keen enjoyment of a trip that according to different organisations, seems either a purgatory or a paradise! Could she have known how her livelier friend was engaged, she would have envied her even more.

That lady, like many other delicate, fragile women of fair complexion, was unassailable by sea-sickness, and never looked nor felt so well as when on board ship in a stiff breeze.

Thoroughly mistress of the position, she yet thought it worth while, as she was the only other passenger on deck, to favour the raw youth before-mentioned with an occasional beam from her charms, and accorded him a very gracious bow in acknowledgment of the awkwardness with which he re-arranged a cushion that slid to leeward from under her feet. She was even disappointed when the roll of a cross-sea, combined with the effect of bad tobacco, necessitated his withdrawal from her presence, to return no more, and was beginning to wonder if the captain would never descend from his bridge between the paddle-boxes, when a fresh, smiling face peeped up from the cabin-door, and Daisy, as little affected by sea-sickness as herself, looking the picture of health and spirits, staggered across the deck to take his place by her side.

"_You_ here, Mr. Walters!" said she. "Well, this is a surprise! Where have you been? where are you going? and how did you get on board without our seeing you?"

"I've been back for 'muster,'" answered Daisy; "I'm going to Punchestown; and I didn't know you were here, because I stayed below to have some luncheon in the cabin. How's Lushington? Have you brought him with you, or are you quite alone, on your own hook?"

"What a question!" she laughed. "I suppose you think I'm old enough and ugly enough to take care of myself! No, I'm _not_ absolutely 'on my own hook,' as you call it. I've given Frank a holiday--goodness knows what mischief he won't get into!--but I've got a companion, and a very nice one, though perhaps not quite so nice as usual just at this moment."

"Then it's a lady," said Daisy, apparently but little interested in the intelligence.

"A lady," she repeated, with a searching look in his face; "and a very charming lady, too, though a bad sailor. Do you mean to say you can't guess who it is?"

"Miss Douglas, for a pony!" was his answer; and the loud, frank tones, the joyous smile, the utter absence of self-consciousness or after-thought, seemed to afford Mrs. Lushington no slight gratification.

"You would win your pony," she replied gently. "Yes, Blanche and I are going over to Ireland, partly to stay with some very pleasant people near Dublin, partly--now, I don't want to make you conceited--partly because she has set her heart on seeing you ride; and so have I."

Practice, no doubt, makes perfect. With this flattering acknowledgment, she put just the right amount of interest into her glance, let it dwell on him the right time, and averted it at the right moment.

"She's a deuced pretty woman!" thought Daisy. "How well she looks with her hair blown all about her face, and her cloak gathered up under her dear little chin!" He felt quite sorry that the Wicklow range was already looming through its rain-charged atmosphere as they neared the Irish coast.

"I should like to win," said he, after a pause, "particularly if _you're_ looking on!"

"Don't say _me_," she murmured, adding in a louder and merrier voice, "You cannot deny you're devoted to Blanche, and I dare say, if the truth were known, she has made you a jacket and cap of her own colours, worked with her own hands."

"I like her very much," he answered frankly. "It's partly on her account I want to land this race. She's so fond of the mare, you know. Not but what I've gone a cracker on it myself; and if it don't come off, there'll be a general break-up! But I beg your pardon, I don't see why that should interest _you_."

"_Don't_ you?" said she earnestly. "Then you're as blind as a bat. Everything interests me that concerns people I like."

"Does that mean you like _me_?" asked Daisy with a saucy smile, enhanced by a prolonged lurch of the steamer, and the blow of a wave on her quarter, that drenched them both in a shower of spray.

She was silent while he wrung the wet from her cloak and hood, but when he had wrapped her up once more, and readjusted her cushions, she looked gravely in his face.

"It's an odd question, Mr. Walters," said she, "but I'm not afraid to answer it, and I always speak the truth. Yes, I _do_ like you--on Blanche's account. I think you've a pretty good head, and a very good heart, with many other qualities I admire, all of which seem rather thrown away."

Daisy was the least conceited of men, but who could resist such subtle flattery as this? For a moment he wished the Emerald Isle sunk in the sea, and no nearer termination to their voyage than the coast of Anticosti, or Newfoundland. Alas! the Hill of Howth stood high on the starboard quarter, the Wicklow mountains had risen in all their beauty of colour and majesty of outline, grand, soft, seductive, robed in russet and purple, here veiled in mist, there golden in sunshine, and streaked at intervals with faint white lines of smoke.

"I'm glad you like me," said he simply. "But how do you mean you think I'm thrown away?"

"By your leave!" growled a hoarse voice at his elbow, for at this interesting juncture the conversation was interrupted by three or four able seamen coiling a gigantic cable about the lady's feet. She was forced to abandon her position, and leave to her companion's fancy the nature of her reply. No doubt it would have been guarded, appropriate, and to the point. Daisy had nothing for it, however, but to collect her different effects, and strap them together in proper order for landing, before he ran down to fetch certain articles of his own personal property out of the cabin.

They were in smooth water now. Pale faces appeared from the different recesses opening on the saloon. People who had been sick tried to look as if they had been sleeping and the sleepers as if they had been wide-awake all the way from Holyhead. A child who cried incessantly during the passage, now ran laughing in and out of the steward's pantry; and two sporting gentlemen from the West--one with a bright blue coat, the other with a bright red face--finished their punch at a gulp, without concluding a deal that had lasted through six tumblers, for a certain "bay brown harse by Elvas--an illigant lepped wan," to use the red-faced gentleman's own words, "an' the bouldest ever ye see. Wait till I tell ye now. He's fit to carry the Lord-Liftinint himself. Show him his fence, and howld him if ye can!" As the possible purchaser for whom blue-coat acted, was a timid rider hunting in a blind country, it seemed doubtful whether so resolute an animal was likely to convey him as temperately as he might wish.

"Ah! it's the Captain," exclaimed both these sitters in a breath, as Daisy slid behind them in search of his dressing-case and his tall hat. "See now, Captain, will the mare win? Faith, she's clean-bred, I know well, for I trained her dam meself, whan she cleaned out the whole south of Ireland at Limerick for the Ladies' Plate!" exclaimed one.

"_You_ ride her, Captain," added the other. "It's herself that can do't! They've a taste of temper, have all that breed; but you sit still, an' ride aisy, Captain. Keep her back till they come to race and loose her off then like shot from a gun. Whew! She'll come out in wan blaze, and lave thim all behind, as I'd lave that tumbler there, more by token it's been empty this ten minutes. Ye'll take a taste of punch now, Captain, for good luck, and to drink to the black mare's chance?"

But Daisy excused himself, shaking hands repeatedly with his cordial well-wishers ere he hurried on deck to disembark.

Moving listlessly and languidly into upper air, the figure of a lady preceded him by a few steps. All he saw was the corner of a shawl, the skirt of a dress, and a foot and ankle; but that foot and ankle could only belong to Blanche Douglas, and in three bounds he was at her side. A moment before, she had been pale, languid, dejected. Now, she brightened up into all the flush and brilliancy of her usual beauty, like a fair landscape when the sun shines out from behind a cloud. Mrs. Lushington, standing opposite the companion-way, noted the change. Daisy, in happy ignorance, expressed the pleasure, which no doubt he felt, at a meeting with his handsome friend on the Irish shore.

No woman, probably, likes anything she _does_ like one whit the worse because deprived of it by force of circumstances. The fox in the fable that protested the grapes were sour, depend upon it, was not a vixen. Satanella thoroughly appreciated her friend's kindness and consideration, when Mrs. Lushington condoled with her on her past sufferings, and rejoiced in her recovery, informing her at the same time that Daisy was a capital travelling companion.

"He takes such care of one, my dear." (She spoke in a very audible _aside_.) "So gentle and thoughtful; it's like having one's own maid. I enjoyed the crossing thoroughly. Poor dear! I wish you could have been on deck to enjoy it too!"

Done into plain English, the above really meant--"I have been having great fun flirting with your admirer. He's very nice, and perhaps I shall take him away from you some day when I have a chance."

By certain twinges that shot through every nerve and fibre, Blanche Douglas knew she had let her foolish heart go out of her own keeping. If she doubted previously whether or not she had fallen in love with Daisy, she was sure of it now, while wrung by these pangs of an unreasoning jealousy, that grudged his society for an hour, even to her dearest friend.

There was but little time, however, for indulgence of the emotions. Mrs. Lushington's footman, imposing, broad-breasted, and buttoned to the chin, touched his hat as a signal that he had all _his_ paraphernalia ready for departure. Two ladies'-maids, limp and draggled, trotted helplessly in his footsteps. The steward, who knew everybody, had taken a respectful farewell of his most distinguished passengers, the captain had done shouting from his perch behind the funnel, and the raw youth in highlows, casting one despairing look at Mrs. Lushington, had disappeared in the embrace of a voluminous matron the moment he set foot on shore. There was nothing left but to say good-bye.

Satanella's voice faltered, and her hand shook. How she had wasted the preceding three hours that she might have spent on deck with Daisy! and how _mean_ of Clara to take advantage of her friend's indisposition by making up to him, as she did to every man she came near!

"I hadn't an idea you were going to cross with us," said she, in mournful accents, while he took his leave. "Why didn't you tell me? And when shall I see you again?"

"At Punchestown," replied Daisy cheerfully. "Wish me good luck!"

"Not till _then_!" said Miss Douglas. And having so said in Mrs. Lushington's hearing, wished she had held her tongue.