The Drowned Sailor Page 6

little ruffled. ‘If you must know, I didn’t think anything at all. I never form first impressions.’ She brushed her pink nose with a handkerchief.

  ‘You liar! You must have thought something, and a good deal too, I’ll bet.’

  Ravella laughed and confessed that she did, but would not stoop to reveal her thoughts. ‘Because if my opinion was bad,’ she said, ‘we must fall to blows, and if my opinion was good, we’d fall to worse.’

  ‘Worse?’ asked Clare.

  ‘Oh, yes— romance. In no time we’d be in competition to laud him to the skies, and nobody deserves too much praise.’

  ‘He deserves some, though, doesn’t he? He is worth it, isn’t he?’ Clare pressed her arm.

  ‘I refuse to compliment him for the sake of it. And besides, your feelings about him are much more important than mine. If you’re so desperately fond of him, why do you need me to be too?’

  Here Clare chewed her lip and frowned. ‘You know I value your opinion, Ravella. I couldn’t do without it.’

  She sighed wistfully, and her friend led her to a nearby bench, where they rested awhile, watching the pigeons, ruffed up against the sharp air.

  Ravella suggested that there might be something the matter, but Clare mumbled a denial in a rather unconvincing way.

  ‘Doubts!’ thought Ravella. ‘She has doubts. She’s not so in love with him as she thought, and wants to know how to proceed. This is all for the best. I shall build on her apprehensions and tease out all her misgivings about him, until she’s convinced that he’s wrong for her in every way. I’m a friend who knows how to do her duty.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said aloud, ‘I’m afraid there’s much more to it than you’re letting on. Perhaps I should tell you what’s the matter? Would that help?’

  Clare smiled, and she continued.

  ‘I’ve considered the facts of the case very carefully, and the height of the gentleman in particular, and my diagnosis is this. One: you are desperately fond of him (well, this we know already). Two: you can’t tell whether he is desperately fond of you. After all, it’s always nice to know. Three: perhaps you begin to wonder whether he’s all you expected him to be? You’ve known him such a short time, and it’s so easy to be swept along at first. But now you begin to see him rather differently— indeed, you may even question, once in a while, whether your fondness was desperately well placed?’ Ravella took her hand and smiled complacently. ‘Now, Clare, have I hit it?’

  Clare gazed at her in wonder, without speaking for a moment, before laughing heartily. ‘No, that isn’t it at all!’

  Ravella frowned. ‘Oh? Well, perhaps I’ve put it too bluntly—’

  ‘No, Ravella, you’ve got it all wrong! I’m still as attached to him as I ever was.’

  ‘But,’ suggested Ravella, ‘you aren’t certain of his feelings for you?’

  She laughed again, and took both her friend’s hands together in her own. ‘Ravella, he wants to get engaged!’

  ‘Engaged!’ cried her companion, appalled, and thought to herself: ‘This Trevick is a darker horse than I anticipated.’

  Clare set off into a lengthy series of explanations about her hopes and his, while Ravella’s brain was working furiously. Engagement or not, she could not be persuaded that they were a good match, or half as suited as Clare believed.

  ‘What happy news!’ she replied at last. ‘I’m so glad for you both. But really now, be honest. Are you getting engaged just to declare yourselves a couple to the world, with only a vague idea of a wedding, or are you actually going to get married?’

  ‘We’re not engaged yet, Ravella,’ she rejoined. ‘He hasn’t given me a ring or anything, but he wants to —we’ve talked about it. Do you think I should let him go ahead with it?’

  ‘Do you?’

  Clare sighed. ‘I love him— but as you said, it has been a short time. Is it too quick?’

  ‘There’s still room to manoeuvre,’ thought Ravella. ‘Well, if you love him,’ she said carefully, ‘why not go right ahead with it?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ was Clare’s answer, as she stood up and began pacing about. ‘I’m too excited to think. What should I do?’

  ‘Would he make you happy?’

  ‘Yes! Of course.’

  ‘And are you certain he loves you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he does— and I love him!’

  ‘But what makes you sure?’

  Clare laughed. ‘I just am! He’s always so sweet to me, and he’s a gentleman— not just out for what he can get. And when we row we always make up by the next time we meet. And he bought me this pendant,’ —which trinket she showed eagerly.

  Ravella smiled at it, and thought: ‘I’ve heard nothing that would make me sure.’

  ‘Look,’ said the enthusiastic lover then, sitting down again and pulling a paper out of her glove. ‘I wanted to show you this as well. It’s his, a poem he wrote— he’s given it to me!’

  ‘A poem!’ said Ravella. ‘How lovely.’

  ‘Shall I read it? He gave it to me to keep, I love it.’

  ‘Please do,’ she replied, inwardly sinking.

  Clare continued as follows:

  The waves crushed the shore in their embrace

  North winds blew ’gainst the stark cliff-face

  The wanton sea was a rabid dog

  A seething morass amid clinging fog;

  But that a thousand waves could hide

  The gruesome thing that did arise—

  From the bosom of the sea it came a-stalking

  Onto the shore, its tatters flapping:

  A man —his face all bloated and white,

  Eyes staring and sightless, fists cold and tight;

  His dark, dripping locks show up his pallor

  Like a cold stone, or death, and showing no colour;

  His lungs, filled with water, give spray as he breathes

  As he makes for the church, for the one he seeks.

  She concluded, breathlessly, and declared: ‘Isn’t it wonderful? You know, he was actually ashamed of it, and laughed at it, but I made him give it to me.’

  Ravella smiled winningly. ‘Ashamed? No! But Clare, did he write this for you? It’s hardly comparing you to a summer’s day, is it?’

  ‘Oh no, it isn’t a love poem! He wrote it when he was a teenager, after a strange dream. Don’t you love it? Isn’t he clever? “By James Trevick” —I’m sure it will be famous one day.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ said Ravella doubtfully. ‘But you know, everybody fancies themselves a poet when they’re a teenager. I remember churning out a good deal of drivel myself.’

  Clare looked crestfallen. ‘Don’t you like it, Ravella?’

  ‘Well, it’s all a little grim, don’t you think? I would have thought he’d write you something warmer—’

  ‘Sentimental and empty, you mean!’ she scoffed. ‘I much prefer it to anything like that!’

  ‘But what does it mean, Clare?’

  ‘It’s a mystery,’ she enthused. ‘It’s just like him— dark, and stormy. Who is the drowned stranger? Why has he come out of his sea-grave? Who does he seek?’

  ‘I can’t guess.’

  Her friend laughed. ‘His lost love? His old enemy? James has such a romantic soul!’

  Now Ravella laughed too and shook her head. ‘Only you could be delighted with a poem like that, Clare, and call it romantic! You’re far too caught up in him to notice any of his faults.’

  ‘Faults?’

  ‘Yes, Clare, faults! After all, he is human. Look at this poem, for example. The rhymes are trite, the words commonplace, and altogether it’s so morbid— I can’t say I like it. Drowned sailors wandering back onto shore —it gives me a chill. I hardly know how you’re so pleased with it.’

  Clare pouted a little. ‘It was only a token. I suppose I shouldn’t have shown it to you at all.’ She folded up the paper and put it safely away. ‘But you would tell me if you had some real apprehension about James, wouldn’t you?’ />
  ‘I am apprehensive, Clare, that you’re feeling without thinking.’

  ‘So you do have misgivings about him?’

  ‘Not really,’ lied her friend, ‘but it’s an important step you’re considering here. I mean, for example, he lives down the line, doesn’t he? If you left London to marry this fellow, what would you do for money? You can’t live on love alone, can you?’

  ‘I haven’t taken any step yet,’ she replied. ‘In any case, you can put your snobbery about money away, Ravella. James is very wealthy in his own right.’

  ‘What?’ Ravella turned, surprised. ‘But he said he was a poet— he can’t be earning much from that.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘you’re right, he doesn’t publish his poems. In fact I don’t know exactly how he does make his millions.’

  ‘Millions!’ cried Ravella.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Clare confirmed serenely. ‘He’s a great landowner in the Westcountry,’ —and she went on to mention his house in Hurlevor, his boats, and his interests in the stock market. However, she spoke of these things as entirely incidental, and rather unimportant. Clare Belmont was much too interested in matters of emotion to hold wealth in high regard. Having always had it, she took it for granted.

  But Ravella was quite different. She was indeed a snob about money— and the attainment of it by cunning was her favourite game. So this revelation of James Trevick’s wealth suddenly put an entirely different complexion on him. Now he was eminently desirable— in fact, so very eminently desirable that she resolved then and there to cease her inefficient meddling in his romance with Clare, and break them up, at once and for all, so that she might have his wonderful fortune for herself.

  The two friends continued their stroll, to the very different satisfaction of