A still evening in October. The red light in the west, following on a glorious sunset, threw its last rays athwart the sea; the evening star came out in its brightness; the fishing boats were bearing steadily for home.
Captain Copp\'s parlour was alight with a ruddy glow; not of the sun but of the fire. It shone brightly on the captain\'s face, at rest now. He had put down his pipe on the hearth, after carefully knocking the smouldering ashes out, and gone quietly to sleep, his wooden leg laid fiat on an opposite chair, his other leg stretched over it. Mrs. Copp sat knitting a stocking by fire-light, her gentle face rather thoughtful; and, half-kneeling, half-sitting on the hearth-rug, reading, was Anna Chester.
She was here still. When Mary Anne Thornycroft returned to school after the summer holidays, Captain Copp had resolutely avowed Anna should stay with him. What was six weeks, he fiercely demanded, to get up a lady\'s health: let her stop six months, and then he\'d see about it. Mrs. Copp hardly knew what to say, between her wish to keep Anna and her fear of putting the Miss Jupps to an inconvenience. "Inconvenience be shot!" politely rejoined the captain; and Mary Anne Thornycroft went back without her, bearing an explanatory and deprecatory letter.
It almost seemed to the girl that the delighted beating of her heart--at the consciousness of staying longer in the place that contained him--must be a guilty joy,--guilty because it was concealed. Certainly not from herself might come the first news of her engagement to Isaac Thornycroft: she was far too humble, too timid, to make the announcement. Truth to say, she only half believed in it: it seemed too blissful to be true. While Isaac did not proclaim it, she was quite content to let it rest a secret from the whole world. And so the months had gone on; Anna living in her paradise of happiness; Isaac making love to her privately in very fervent tenderness.
In saying to Anna Chester that his family would be only too glad to see him married, Isaac Thornycroft (and a doubt that it might prove so lay dimly in his mind when he said it) found that he had reckoned without his host. At the first intimation of his possible intention, Mr. Thornycroft and Richard rose up in arms against it. What they said was breathed in his ear alone, earnestly, forcibly; and Isaac, who saw how fruitless would be all pleading on his part, burst out laughing, and let them think the whole a joke. A hasty word spoken by Richard in his temper as he came striding out of the inner passage, caught the ear of Mary Anne.
"Isaac, what did he mean? Surely you are not going to be married?"
"They thought I was," answered Isaac, laughing. "I married! Would anybody have me, do you suppose, Mary Anne?"
"I think Miss Tindal would. There would be heaps of money and a good connexion, you know, Isaac."
Miss Tindal was a strong-minded lady in spectacles, who owned to thirty years and thirty thousand pounds. She quoted Latin, rode straight across country after the hounds, and was moreover a baronet\'s niece. A broad smile played over Isaac\'s lips.
"Miss Tindal\'s big enough to shake me. I think she would, too, on provocation. She can take her fences better than I can. That\'s not the kind of woman I\'d marry. I should like a meek one."
"A meek one!" echoed Mary Anne, wondering whether he was speaking in derision. "What do you call a meek one?"
"A modest, gentle girl who would not shake me. Such a one as--let me see, where is there one?--as Anna Chester, say, for example."
All the scorn the words deserved seemed concentrated in Miss Thornycroft\'s haughty face.
"As good marry a beggar as her. Why, Isaac, she is only a working teacher--a half-boarder at school! She is not one of us."
He laughed off the alarm as he had done his father\'s and brother\'s a few minutes before, the line of conduct completely disarming all parties. She would not tolerate Miss Chester, they would not tolerate his marriage at all: that was plain. Isaac Thornycroft did not care openly to oppose his family, or be opposed by them: he let the subject drop out of remembrance, and left the future to the future. But he said not a word of this to Anna; she suspected nothing of it, and was just as contented as he to let things take their course in silence. To her there seemed but one possible calamity in the world; and that lay in being separated from him.
Sitting there on the hearth-rug, in the October evening, her eyes on the small print by the firelight, getting dim now, Anna\'s heart was a-glow within her, for that evening was to be spent with Isaac Thornycroft. A gentleman with his daughter was staying for a couple of days at the Red Court, and Anna had been asked to go there for the evening, and bear the young lady company.
"My dear," whispered Mrs. Copp, in the midst of her knitting, "is it not getting late? You will have the daylight quite gone."
Anna glanced up. It was getting late; but Isaac Thornycroft had said to her, "I shall fetch you." Still the habit of implicit obedience was, as ever, strong upon her, and she would fain have started there and then, in compliance with the suggestion.
"What a noise Sarah\'s making!"
"So she is," assented Mrs. Copp, as a noise like the bumping about of boxes, followed by talking, grew upon their ears. Another moment, and Sarah opened the door.
"A visitor," she announced, in an uncompromising voice, and the captain started up, prepared to explode a little at being aroused. Which fact Sarah was no doubt anticipating, and she spoke again.
"It is your mother, sir."
"Yes, it\'s me, Sam;" cried an upright wiry lady, very positive and abrupt in manner. Her face looked as if weather-beaten, and she wore large round tortoiseshell spectacles.
"Who\'s that?" she cried, sitting down on the large sofa, as Anna stood up in her pretty silk dress, with the pink ribbons in her hair. "Who? The daughter of the Reverend James Chester and his first wife! You are very like your father, child, but prettier. Where\'s my sea-chest to go, Sam?"
"I am truly glad to see you, dear mother," whispered Amy Copp, in her loving way. "The best bedroom is not in order, but----"
"And can\'t be put in order before to-morrow," interposed Sarah, who had no notion of being taken by storm in this way. "The luggage had better be put in the back kitchen for to-night."
"Is there much luggage?" asked the captain.
"Nothing to speak of," said Mrs. Copp; who, being used to the accommodation of a roomy ship, regarded quantity accordingly. Sarah coughed.
"My biggest sea-chest, four trunks, two bandboxes, and a few odd parcels," continued the traveller. "I am going to spend Christmas with some friends in London, but I thought I\'d come to you first. As to the room not being in apple-pie order, that\'s nothing I\'m an old sailor; I\'m not particular."
"Put a pillow down here, if that\'s all," cried the captain, indicating the hearthrug. "Mother has slept in many a worse berth, haven\'t ye, mother?"
"Ay, lad, that I have. But now I shall want some of those boxes unpacked to-night. I have got a set of furs for you, Amy, somewhere; I don\'t know which box they were put in."
Amy was overpowered. "You are too good to me," she murmured, with tears in her eyes.
"And I have brought you a potato-steamer; that\'s in another," added Mrs. Copp. "I have taken to have mine steamed lately, Sam; you\'d never eat them again boiled if you once tried it."
In the midst of this bustle Isaac Thornycroft walked in. Anna, in a flutter of heart-delight, but with a calm manner, went upstairs, and came down with her bonnet on, to find Isaac opening box after box in the back kitchen, under Mrs. Copp\'s direction, in search of the furs and the potato-steamer, the captain assisting, Amy standing by. The articles were found, and Isaac, laughing heartily in his gay good-humour, went off with Anna.
"What time am I to fetch you, Miss Anna?" inquired Sarah, as they went out.
"I will see Miss Chester home," answered Isaac: "you are busy to-night."
Mrs. Copp, gazing through her tortoiseshell spectacles at the potato-steamer, as she pointed out its beauties, suddenly turned to another subject, and brought her glasses to bear on her son and his wife.
"Which of the young Thornycrofts is that? I forget."
"Isaac; the second son."
"To be sure; Isaac, the best and handsomest of the bunch. You must take care," added Mrs. Copp, shrewdly.
"Take care of what?"
"They might be falling in love with each other. I don\'t know whether he\'s much here. He is as fine a fellow as you\'d see in a day\'s march; and she\'s just the pretty gentle thing that fine men fancy."
Had it been anybody but his mother, Captain Copp would have shown his sense of the caution in strong language. "Moonshine and rubbish," cried he. "Isaac Thornycroft\'s not the one to entangle himself with a sweetheart; the young Thornycrofts are not marrying men; and if he were, he would look a little higher than poor Anna Chester."
"That\'s just it, the reason why you should be cautious, Sam," rejoined Mrs. Copp. "Not being suitable, there\'d be no doubt a bother over it at the Red Court."
Amy, saying something about looking to the state of the spare room, left them in the parlour. Truth to say, the hint had scared her. Down deep in her mind, for some short while past, had a suspicion lain that they were rather more attached to each other than need be. She had only hoped it was not so. She did not by any means see her way clear to hinder it, and was content to let the half fear rest; but these words had roused it in all its force. They had somehow brought a conviction of the fact, and she saw trouble looming. What else could come of it? Anna was no match for Isaac Thornycroft.
"Sam," began Mrs. Copp, when she was alone with her son, "how does Amy continue to go on? Makes a good wife still?"
Captain Copp nodded complacently. "Never a better wife going. No tantrums--no blowings off: knits all my stockings and woollen jerseys."
"You must have a quiet house."
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CHAPTER II. Captain Copp.
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