“No, I think not. I had a right to please my taste, and that was for untried lips. Other men than those of my sort acquire the taste as they get older—but don’t find an Elfride—”
“What horrid sound is that we hear when we pitch forward?”
“Only the screw—don’t find an Elfride as I did. To think that I should have discovered such an unseen flower down there in the West—to whom a man is as much as a multitude to some women, and a trip down the English Channel like a voyage round the world!”
“And would you,” she said, and her voice was tremulous, “have given up a lady—if you had become engaged to her—and then found she had had one kiss before yours—and would you have—gone away and left her?”
“One kiss—no, hardly for that.”
“Two?”
“Well—I could hardly say inventorially like that. Too much of that sort of thing certainly would make me dislike a woman. But let us confine our attention to ourselves, not go thinking of might have beens.”
So Elfride had allowed her thoughts to “dally with false surmise,” and every one of Knight’s words fell upon her like a weight. After this they were silent for a long time, gazing upon the black mysterious sea, and hearing the strange voice of the restless wind. A rocking to and fro on the waves, when the breeze is not too violent and cold, produces a soothing effect even upon the most highly-wrought mind. Elfride slowly sank against Knight, and looking down, he found by her soft regular breathing that she had fallen asleep. Not wishing to disturb her, he continued still, and took an intense pleasure in supporting her warm young form as it rose and fell with her every breath.
Knight fell to dreaming too, though he continued wide awake. It was pleasant to realize the implicit trust she placed in him, and to think of the charming innocence of one who could sink to sleep in so simple and unceremonious a manner. More than all, the musing unpractical student felt the immense responsibility he was taking upon himself by becoming the protector and guide of such a trusting creature. The quiet slumber of her soul lent a quietness to his own. Then she moaned, and turned herself restlessly. Presently her mutterings became distinct:
“Don’t tell him—he will not love me. … I did not mean any disgrace—indeed I did not, so don’t tell Harry. We were going to be married—that was why I ran away. … And he says he will not have a kissed woman. … And if you tell him he will go away, and I shall die. I pray have mercy—Oh!”
Elfride started up wildly.
The previous moment a musical ding-dong had spread into the air from their right hand, and awakened her.
“What is it?” she exclaimed in terror.
“Only ‘eight bells,’ ” said Knight soothingly. “Don’t be frightened, little bird, you are safe. What have you been dreaming about?”
“I can’t tell, I can’t tell!” she said with a shudder. “Oh, I don’t know what to do!”
“Stay quietly with me. We shall soon see the dawn now. Look, the morning star is lovely over there. The clouds have completely cleared off whilst you have been sleeping. What have you been dreaming of?”
“A woman in our parish.”
“Don’t you like her?”
“I don’t. She doesn’t like me. Where are we?”
“About south of the Exe.”
Knight said no more on the words of her dream. They watched the sky till Elfride grew calm, and the dawn appeared. It was mere wan lightness first. Then the wind blew in a changed spirit, and died away to a zephyr. The star dissolved into the day.
“That’s how I should like to die,” said Elfride, rising from her seat and leaning over the bulwark to watch the star’s last expiring gleam.
“As the lines say,” Knight replied—
“ ‘To set as sets the morning star, which goes
Not down behind the darken’d west, nor hides
Obscured among the tempests of the sky,
But melts away into the light of heaven.’ ”
“Oh, other people have thought the same thing, have they? That’s always the case with my originalities—they are original to nobody but myself.”
“Not only the case with yours. When I was a young hand at reviewing I used to find that a frightful pitfall—dilating upon subjects I met with, which were novelties to me, and finding afterwards they had been exhausted by the thinking world when I was in pinafores.”
“That is delightful. Whenever I find you have done a foolish thing I am glad, because it seems to bring you a little nearer to me, who have done many.” And Elfride thought again of her enemy asleep under the deck they trod.
All up the coast, prominences singled themselves out from recesses. Then a rosy sky spread over the eastern sea and behind the low line of land, flinging its livery in dashes upon the thin airy clouds in that direction. Every projection on the land seemed now so many fingers anxious to catch a little of the liquid light thrown so prodigally over the sky, and after a fantastic time of lustrous yellows in the east, the higher elevations along the shore were flooded with the same hues. The bluff and bare contours of Start Point caught the brightest, earliest glow of all, and so also did the sides of its white lighthouse, perched upon a shelf in its precipitous front like a medieval saint in a niche. Their lofty neighbour Bolt Head on the left remained as yet ungilded, and retained its gray.
Then up came the sun, as it were in jerks, just to seaward of the easternmost point of land, flinging out a Jacob’s-ladder path of light from itself to Elfride and Knight, and coating them with rays in a few minutes. The inferior dignitaries of the shore—Froward Point, Berry Head, and Prawle—all had acquired their share of the illumination ere this, and at length the very smallest protuberance of wave, cliff, or inlet, even to the innermost recesses of the lovely
