The Child Wife

“You wrong me, Count. I assure you I have none – ”

“Well, well,” interrupted the revolutionist, “even if you have, banish the remembrance, and be a man! Let your sword now be your sweetheart. Think of the splendid prospect before you. The moment your foot touches European soil, you are to take command of the whole student army. The Directory have so decided. Fine fellows, I assure you, these German students: true sons of Liberty —à la Schiller, if you like. You may do what you please with them, so long as you lead them against despotism. I only wish I had your opportunity.”

As he listened to these stirring words, Maynard’s eyes were gradually turned away from Newport – his thoughts from Julia Girdwood.

“It may be all for the best,” reflected he, as he gazed down upon the phosphoric track. “Even could I have won her, which is doubtful, she’s not the sort for a wife; and that’s what I’m now wanting. Certain, I shall never see her again. Perhaps the old adage will still prove true,” he continued, as if the situation had suggested it: “‘Good fish in the sea as ever were caught.’ Scintillations ahead, yet unseen, brilliant as those we are leaving behind us!”

Chapter Seventeen.

“The Coward!”

The steamer that carried Captain Maynard and his fortunes out of the Narraganset Bay, had not rounded Point Judith before his name in the mouths of many became a scorned word. The gross insult he had put upon the English stranger had been witnessed by a score of gentlemen, and extensively canvassed by all who had heard of it. Of course there would be a “call out,” and some shooting. Nothing less could be expected after such an affront.

It was a surprise, when the discovery came, that the insulter had stolen off; for this was the interpretation put upon it.

To many it was a chagrin. Not much was known of Captain Maynard, beyond that public repute the newspapers had given to his name, in connection with the Mexican war.

This, however, proved him to have carried a commission in the American army; and as it soon became understood that his adversary was an officer in that of England, it was but natural there should be some national feeling called forth by the affair. “After all,” said they, “Maynard is not an American!” It was some palliation of his supposed poltroonery that he had stayed all day at the hotel, and that his adversary had not sent the challenge till after he was gone.

But the explanation of this appeared satisfactory enough; and Swinton had not been slow in making it known. Notwithstanding some shame to himself, he had taken pains to give it a thorough circulation; supposing that no one knew aught of the communication he had received from Roseveldt.

And as no one did appear to know of it, the universal verdict was, that the hero of C – , as some of the newspapers pronounced him, had fled from a field where fighting honours might be less ostentatiously obtained.

There were many, however, who did not attribute his departure to cowardice, and who believed or suspected that there must have been some other motive – though they could not conceive what.

It was altogether an inexplicable affair; and had he left Newport in the morning, instead of the evening, he would have been called by much harder names than those that were being bestowed upon him. His stay at the hotel for what might be considered a reasonable time, in part protected him from vituperation.

Still had he left the field to Mr Swinton, who was elevated into a sort of half-hero by his adversary’s disgraceful retreat.

The lord incognito carried his honours meekly as might be. He was not without apprehension that Maynard might return, or be met again in some other corner of the world – in either case to call him to account for any triumphant swaggering. Of this he made only a modest display, answering when questioned:

“Confound the fellaw! He’s given me the slip, and I don’t knaw where to find him! It’s a demmed baw!”

The story, as thus told, soon circulated through the hotel, and of course reached that part of it occupied by the Girdwood family. Julia had been among the first who knew of Maynard’s departure – having herself been an astonished eye-witness of it.

Mrs Girdwood, only too glad to hear he had gone, cared but little about the cause. Enough to know that her daughter was safe from his solicitations.

Far different were the reflections of this daughter. It was only now that she began to feel that secret longing to possess the thing that is not to be obtained. An eagle had stooped at her feet – as she thought, submitting itself to be caressed by her. It was only for a moment. She had withheld her hand; and now the proud bird had soared resentfully away, never more to return to her taming!

She listened to the talk of Maynard’s cowardice without giving credence to it. She knew there must be some other cause for that abrupt departure; and she treated the slander with disdainful silence.

For all this, she could not help feeling something like anger toward him, mingled with her own chagrin.

Gone without speaking to her – without any response to that humiliating confession she had made to him before leaving the ball-room! On her knees to him, and not one word of acknowledgment!

Clearly he cared not for her.

The twilight had deepened down as she returned into the balcony, and took her stand there, with eyes bent upon the bay. Silent and alone, she saw the signal-light of the steamer moving like an ignis fatuus along the empurpled bosom of the water – at length suddenly disappearing behind the battlements of the Fort.

“He is gone?” she murmured to herself, heaving a deep sigh. “Perhaps never more to be met by me. Oh, I must try to forget him!”

Chapter Eighteen.

Down with the Despots!

Time was – and that not “long, long ago” – when the arrival of a European steamer at New York was an event, as was also the departure. There were only “Cunarders” that came and went once a fortnight; at a later period making the trip hebdomadally.

Any one who has crossed the Atlantic by the Cunard steamers need not be told that, in New York, their point of landing and leaving is upon the Jersey shore.

In the days when such things were “sensations,” a crowd used to collect at the Cunard wharf, attracted thither by the presence of the vast leviathan.

Now and then were occasions when the motive was different or rather the attraction – when, instead of the steamer, it was some distinguished individual aboard of her: prince, patriot, singer, or courtesan. Gay, unreflecting Gotham stays not to make distinction, honouring all kinds of notoriety alike; or at all events giving them an equal distribution of its curiosity.

One of these occasions was peculiar. It was a departure; the boat being the Cambria, one of the slowest, at the same time most comfortable, steamers on the “line.”

She has been long since withdrawn from it; her keel, if I mistake not, now ploughing the more tranquil waters of the Indian Ocean.

And her captain, the brave, amiable Shannon! He, too, has been transferred to another service, where the cares of steam navigation and the storms of the Atlantic shall vex him no more.

He is not forgotten. Reading these words, many hearts will be stirred up to remember him – true hearts – still beating in New York, still holding in record that crowd on the Jersey shore alongside the departing steamer.

Though assembled upon American soil, but few of the individuals composing it were American. The physiognomy was European, chiefly of the Teutonic type, though with an intermingling of the Latinic. Alongside the North German, with light-coloured skin and huge tawny moustache, stood his darker cousin of the Danube; and beside both the still swarthier son of Italy, with gleaming dark eyes, and thick chevelure of shining black. Here could be noted, too, a large admixture of Frenchmen, some of them still wearing the blouse brought over from their native land; most of them of that brave ouvrier class, who but the year before, and two years after, might have been seen resolutely defending the barricades of Paris.

Only here and there could be distinguished an American face, or a word spoken in the English language – the speaker being only a spectator who had chanced upon the spot.

The main body of the assemblage was composed of other elements – men who had come there out of motives quite apart from mere curiosity. There were women, too – young girls with flaxen hair and deep blue eyes, recalling their native Rhineland, with others of darker skin, but equally pretty faces, from the country of Corinne.

Most of the cabin-passengers – there are no others in a Cunarder – had ascended to the upper deck, as is usual at the departure of a steamer. It was but a natural desire of all to witness the withdrawal of the stage-plank – the severance of that last link binding them to a land they were leaving with varied emotions.

Despite their private thoughts, whether of joy or sorrow, they could not help scanning with curiosity that sea of faces spread out before them upon the wharf.

Standing in family parties over the deck, or in rows leaning against the rail, they interrogated one another as to the cause of the grand gathering, as also the people who composed it.

It was evident to all that the crowd was not American; and equally so, that not any of them were about to embark upon the steamer. There was no appearance of baggage, though that might have been aboard. But most of them were of a class not likely to be carried by a Cunarder. Besides, there were no signs of leave-taking – no embracing or hand-shaking, such as may be seen when friends are about to be separated by the sea. For this they were on the wrong side of the Atlantic.

They stood in groups, close touching; the men smoking cigars, many of them grand meerschaum pipes, talking gravely to one another, or more jocosely to the girls – a crowd earnest, yet cheerful.

It was plain, too, the steamer was not their attraction. Most of them faced from her, casting interrogative glances along the wharf, as if looking for something expected to appear to them in this direction.

“Who are they?” was the question passed round among the passengers.

A gentleman who appeared specially informed – there is always one such in an assemblage – vouchsafed the desired information.

“They’re the refugees,” he said. “French, Germans, Poles, and what not, driven over here by the late revolutions in Europe.”

“Are they going back again?” inquired one who wanted further information.

“Some of them are, I believe,” answered the first speaker. “Though not by the steamer,” he added. “The poor devils can’t afford that.”