Under the Waves: Diving in Deep Waters

“What if I shud want to scratch me head or blow me nose? Or what if an earwig shud chance to have got inside this iron pot, and take a fancy to go into my ear?”

His right ear became itchy at the bare idea. He made a desperate blow at it, and skinned his knuckles, while a hitherto unconceived intensity of desire to scratch his head and blow his nose took violent possession of him.

Just then a dead cat, that had been flung into the harbour the night before, and had not been immersed long enough to rise to the surface, floated past with the tide, and its sightless eyeballs and ghastly row of teeth glared and glistened on him, as it surged against his front-glass. A slight spirt of water came through the regulating cock at the same instant, as if the dead cat had spit in his face.

“Hooroo! Haul up!” shouted Rooney, following the order with a yell that sounded like the concentrated voice of infuriated Ireland. At the same time he seized the life-line and air-tube, and tugged at both, not four times, but nigh forty times four, and never ceased to tug until he found himself gasping on the deck of the barge with his helmet off and his comrades laughing round him.

“It’s not a bad beginning,” said Baldwin, as he assisted his pupil to unrobe; “you’ll make a good diver in course o’ time.”

Baldwin was right in this prophecy, for in a few months Rooney Machowl became one of the best and coolest divers on his staff.

We need not try the reader’s patience with an account of Edgar’s descent, which immediately followed that of the Irishman. Let it suffice to say that he too accomplished, with credit and with less demonstration, his first descent to the bottom of the sea.

Chapter Three.

Refers to a small Tea-Party, and touches very mildly on Love

Miss Pritty was a good soul, but weak. She was Edgar Berrington’s maiden aunt—of an uncertain age—on the mother’s side. Her chief characteristic was delicacy—delicacy of health, delicacy of sentiment, delicacy of intellect—general delicacy, in fact, all over. She was slight too—slightly made, slightly educated, slightly pretty, and slightly cracked. But there were a few things in regard to which Miss Laura Pritty was strong. She was strong in her affections, strong in her reverence for all good things (including a few bad things which in her innocence she thought good), strong in her prejudices and impulses, and strong—remarkably strong—in parentheses. Her speech was eminently parenthetical, insomuch that the range of her ideas was wholly untrammelled by the proprieties of subject or language. Given a point to be aimed at in conversation, Miss Pritty never aimed at it. She invariably began with it, and, parting finally from it at the outset, diverged to any or every other point in nature. Perplexity, as a matter of course, was the usual result both in speaker and hearer, but then that mattered little, for Miss Pritty was also strong in easy-going good-nature.

On the evening in which we introduce her, Miss Pritty was going to have her dear and intimate friend Aileen Hazlit to tea, and she laid out her little tea-table with as much care as an engineer might have taken in drawing a mathematical problem. The teapot was placed in the exact centre of the tray, with its spout and handle pointing so that a line drawn through them would have been parallel to the sides of her little “boudoir.” The urn stood exactly behind it. The sugar-basin formed, on one side of the tray, a pendant to the cream-jug on the other, and inasmuch as the cream-jug was small, a toast-rack was coupled with it to constitute the necessary balance. So, too, with the cups: they were placed equidistant from the teapot, the sides of the tray, and each other, while a salver of cake on one side of the table was scrupulously balanced by a plate of buns on the other side.

“There she is—the darling!” exclaimed Miss Pritty, with a little skip and (excuse the word) a giggle as the bell rang.

“Miss Aileen Hazlit,” announced Miss Pritty’s small and only domestic, who flung wide open the door of the boudoir, as its owner was fond of styling it.

Whereupon there entered “an angel in blue, with a straw hat and ostrich feather.”

We quote from the last, almost dying, speech of a hopeless youth in the town—a lawyer’s clerk—whose heart was stamped over so completely with the word “Aileen” that it was unrecognisable, and practically useless for any purpose except beating—which it did, hard, at all times.

Aileen was beautiful beyond compare, because, in her case, extreme beauty of face and feature was coupled with rare beauty of expression, indicating fine qualities of mind. She was quiet in demeanour, grave in speech, serious and very earnest in thought, enthusiastic in action, unconscious and unselfish.

“Pooh! Perfection!” I hear some lady reader ejaculate.

No, fair one, not quite that, but as near it as was compatible with humanity. Happily there are many such in the world—some with more and some with less of the external beauty—and man is blessed and the world upheld by them.

The chief bond that bound Aileen and Miss Pritty together was a text of Scripture, “Consider the poor.” The latter had strong sympathy with the poor, being herself one of the number. The former, being rich in faith as well as in means, “considered” them. The two laid their heads together and concerted plans for the “raising of the masses,” which might have been food for study to some statesmen. For instance, they fed the hungry and clothed the naked; they encouraged the well-disposed and reproved the evil; they “scattered seeds of kindness” wherever they went; they sowed the precious Word of God in all kinds of ground—good and bad; they comforted the sorrowing; they visited the sick and the prisoner; they refused to help, or, in any way to encourage, the idle; they handed the obstreperous and violent over to the police, with the hope—if not the recommendation—that the rod should not be spared; and in all cases they prayed for them. The results were considerable, but, not being ostentatiously trumpeted, were not always recognised or traced to their true cause.

“Come away, darling,” exclaimed Miss Pritty, eagerly embracing and kissing her friend, who accepted, but did not return, the embrace, though she did the kiss. “I thought you were not coming at all, and I have not seen you for a whole week! What has kept you? There, put off your hat. I’m so glad to see you, dear Aileen. Isn’t it strange that I’m so fond of you? They say that people who are contrasts generally draw together—at least I’ve often heard Mrs Boxer, the wife of Captain Boxer, you know, of the navy, who used to swear so dreadfully before he was married, but, I am happy to say, has quite given it up now, which says a great deal for wedded life, though it’s a state that I don’t quite believe in myself, for if Adam had never married Eve he would not have been tempted to eat the forbidden fruit, and so there would have been no sin and no sorrow or poverty—no poor! Only think of that.”

“So that our chief occupation would have been gone,” said Aileen, with a slight twinkle of her lustrous blue eyes, “and perhaps you and I might never have met.”

Miss Pritty replied to this something very much to the effect that she would have preferred the entrance of sin and all its consequences—poverty included—into the world, rather than have missed making the friendship of Miss Hazlit. At least her words might have borne that interpretation—or any other!

“My father detained me,” said Aileen, seating herself at the table, while her volatile friend put lumps of sugar into the cups, with a tender yet sprightly motion of the hand, as if she were doing the cups a special kindness—as indeed she was, when preparing one of them to touch the lips of Aileen.

“Naughty man, why did he detain you?” said Miss Pritty.

“Only to write one or two notes, his right hand being disabled at present by rheumatism.”

“A gentleman, Miss, in the dinin’-room,” said the small domestic, suddenly opening a chink of the door for the admission of her somewhat dishevelled head. “He won’t send his name up—says he wants to see you.”

“How vexing!” exclaimed Miss Pritty, “but I’ll go down. I’m determined that he shan’t interrupt our tête-à-tête.”

Miss Pritty uttered a little scream of surprise on entering the dining-room.

“Well, aunt,” said Edgar Berrington, with a hearty smile, as he extended his hand, “you are surprised to see me?”

“Of course I am, dear Eddy,” cried Miss Pritty, holding up her cheek for a kiss. “Sit down. Why, you were in London when I last heard of you.”

“True, but I’m not in London now, as you see. I’ve been a week here.”

“A week, Eddy! And you did not come to see me till now?”

“Well, I ought to apologise,” replied the youth, with a slight look of confusion, “but—the fact is, I came down partly on business, and—and—so you see I’ve been very busy.”

“Of course,” laughed Miss Pritty; “people who have business to do are usually very busy! Well, I forgive you, and am glad to see you—but—”

“Well, aunt—but what?”

“In short, Eddy, I happen to be particularly engaged this evening—on business, too, like yourself; but, after all, why should I not introduce you to my friend? You might help us in our discussion—it is to be about the poor. Do you know much about the poor and their miseries?”

Edgar smiled sadly as he replied—

“Yes, I have had some experimental knowledge of the poor—being one of them myself, and my poverty too has made me inconceivably miserable.”

“Come, Eddy, don’t talk nonsense. You know I mean the very poor, the destitute. But let us go up-stairs and have a cup of tea.”

The idea of discussing the condition of the poor over a cup of tea with two ladies was not attractive to our hero in his then state of mind, and he was beginning to excuse himself when his aunt stopped him:—

“Now, don’t say you can’t, or won’t, for you must. And I shall introduce you to a very pretty girl—oh! such a pretty one—you’ve no idea—and so sweet!”

Miss Pritty spoke impressively and with enthusiasm, but as the youth knew himself to be already acquainted with and beloved by the prettiest girl in the town he was not so much impressed as he might have been. However, being a good-natured fellow, he was easily persuaded.

All the way up-stairs, and while they were entering the boudoir, little Miss Pritty’s tongue never ceased to vibrate, but when she observed her nephew gazing in surprise at her friend, whose usually calm and self-possessed face was covered with confusion, she stopped suddenly.

“Good-evening, Miss Hazlit,” said Edgar, recovering himself, and holding out his hand as he advanced towards her; “I did not anticipate the pleasure of meeting you here.”

“Then you are acquainted already!” exclaimed Miss Pritty, looking as much amazed as if the accident of two young people being acquainted without her knowledge were something tantamount to a miracle.

“Yes, I have met Mr Berrington at my father’s several times,” said Aileen, resuming her seat, and bestowing a minute examination on the corner of her handkerchief.

If Aileen had added that she had met Mr Berrington every evening for a week past at her father’s, had there renewed the acquaintance begun in London a year before, and had been wooed and won by him before his stern repulse by her father, she would have said nothing beyond the bare truth; but she thought, no doubt, that it was not necessary to add all that.

“Well, well, what strange things do happen!” said Miss Pritty, resuming her duties at the tea-table. “Sugar, Eddy? And cream?—Only to think that Aileen and I have known each other so well, and she did not know that you were my nephew; but after all it could not well be otherwise, for now I think of it, I never mentioned your name to her. Out of sight, out of mind, Eddy, you know, and indeed you don’t deserve to be remembered. If we all had our deserts, some people that I know of would be in a very different position from what they are, and some people wouldn’t be at all.”

“Why, aunt,” said Edgar, laughing. “Would you—”

“Some more cake, Eddy?”