CHAPTER I MISS OTWAY OPENS THE STORY
I date the opening of this narrative, February 24, 1860.
I was in the drawing-room of my father's house on the afternoon of that day, awaiting the arrival of Captain Burke, of the ship 'Lady Emma,' and his wife, Mary Burke, who had nursed me and brought me up, and indeed been as a mother to me after my own mother's death in 1854; but she had left us to marry Captain Edward Burke, and had already made two voyages round the world with him, and was presently going a third.
My father sat beside the fire reading a newspaper. His name was Sir Mortimer Otway; he was fourth baronet and a colonel; had seen service in India, though he had long left the army to settle down upon his little seaside estate. He was a man of small fortune. Having said this, I need not trouble you with more of his family history.
I was his only surviving child, and my name is Marie; I have no other Christian name than that; it was my mother's. My age was twenty and my health delicate, so much so that Captain and Mrs. Burke were coming from London expressly to talk over a scheme of my going round the world in their ship for the benefit of my appetite and spirits and voice, and perhaps for my lungs, though to be sure they were still sound at that date.
Ours was a fine house, about a hundred years old; it stood within a stone's throw of the brink of the cliff; walls and hedges encompassed some seventy or eighty acres of land, pleasantly wooded in places, and there was a charming scene of garden on either hand the carriage drive. I stood at the window with my eyes fastened upon the sea, which went in a slope of grey steel to the dark sky of the horizon, where here and there some roaming mass of vapour was hoary with snow. It was blowing a fresh breeze, and the throb of the ocean was cold with the ice-like glances of the whipped foam. Presently it thickened overhead, and snow fell in a squall of wind that darkened the early afternoon into evening with smoking lines of flying flakes. The sea faded as the reflection of a star in troubled water. My father put down his newspaper and came to the window. He was a tall man, bald, high-coloured; his eyes were large and black, soft in expression, and steady in gaze; his beard and moustache were of an iron grey, he was sixty years old, yet still preserved the soldier's trick of carrying his figure to the full height of his stature.
'At what hour do you say they're to be here?'
'At three.'
He glanced at his watch, then out of the window.
'That doesn't look like a scene where a delicate girl's going to get strong!'
'No,' I answered with a shiver.
'But a crown piece on a chart will often cover the area of worse weather than this, and for leagues beyond all shall be glorious sunshine and blue water.'
'It's hard to realise,' said I, straining my eyes through the snow for a sight of the sea.
'Well,' he exclaimed, turning his back upon the window, 'Bradshaw is an able man; his instances of people whom a sea voyage has cured are remarkable, and weigh with me. Living by the seaside is not like going a voyage. It's the hundred climates which make the medicine. Then the sights and sounds of the ocean are tonical. Are sailors ever ill at sea? Yes, because they carry their sickness on board with them, or they decay by bad usage, or perish by poisonous cargoes. The sea kills no man—save by drowning.'
He took a turn about the room, and I stared through the window at the flying blankness.
'Steam is more certain,' he went on, thinking aloud. 'You can time yourself by steam. But then for health it doesn't give you all you want. At least we can't make it fit in your case. It would be otherwise if I had the means or was able to accompany you, or if I could put you in charge of some sober, trustworthy old hand. Steam must signify several changes to give you the time at sea that Bradshaw prescribes. It's out of the question. No; Mrs. Burke's scheme is the practicable one, and I shall feel easy when I think of you as watched over by your old nurse. But I have several questions to ask. When are they coming? Have they missed their train?'
About five minutes after this they were shown in.
Mrs. Burke, my old nurse, was a homely, plain, soft-hearted woman, a little less than forty years of age at this time. She was stout, and pale, though she was now a traveller, with large, short-sighted blue eyes, a flat face, and a number of chins. She was dressed as you would wish a homely skipper's wife to be: in a neat bonnet with a heavy Shetland veil wrapped around it; a stout mantle, and a gown of thick warm stuff. She sank a little curtsey to my father, who eagerly stepped forward and cordially greeted his old servant; in an instant I had my arms round her neck. You will believe I loved her when I tell you she had come to my mother's service when I was a month old, and had been my nurse and maid, and looked after me as a second mother down to the time when she left us to be married.
Her husband stood smiling behind her. He was short, an Irishman: he looked the completest sailor you can imagine—that is, a merchant sailor. He was richly coloured by the sun, and his small, sharp, merry, liquid blue eyes gleamed and trembled and sparkled in their sockets like a pair of stars in some reflected hectic of sunset in the eastern sky. Everything about him told of heartiness and good humour: there was something arch in the very curl of his little slip of whiskers. A set of fine white teeth lighted up his face like a smile of kindness whenever he parted his lips. He was dressed in the blue cloth coat and velvet collar, the figured waist-coat and bell-shaped trousers, of the merchant service in those days, and over all he wore a great pilot-cloth coat, whose tails fell nearly to his heels; inside of which, as inside a sentry box, he stood up on slightly curved, easily yielding legs, a model of a clean, wholesome, hearty British skipper.
Of course I had met him before. I had attended his marriage, and was never so dull but that the recollection of his face on that occasion would make me smile, and often laugh aloud. He had also with his wife spent a day with us after the return of his ship from the first voyage they had made together. My father shook him cordially by the hand. He then led him into the library, whilst I took Mrs. Burke upstairs.
We could have found a thousand things to say to each other; there were memories of sixteen years of my life common to us both. I could have told her of my engagement and shown her my sweetheart's picture; but I was anxious to hear Captain Burke on the subject of my proposed voyage, and so after ten minutes we went downstairs, where we found my father and the captain seated before a glowing fire, already deep in talk.
The captain jumped up when I entered, my father placed a chair for Mrs. Burke, who curtseyed her thanks, and the four of us sat.
'Well, now, Mrs. Burke,' said my father, addressing her very earnestly, 'your husband's ship is your suggestion, you know. You've sailed round the world in her and you can tell me more about the sea than your husband knows'—the captain gave a loud, nervous laugh—'as to the suitability of such a ship and such a voyage as you recommend to Miss Otway.'
'I am sure, Sir Mortimer,' answered Mrs. Burke, 'that it'll do her all the good, and more than all the good, that the doctors promise. I should love to have her with me.' She turned to look at me affectionately. 'Since you can't accompany her, sir, I'd not like to think of her at sea, and me without the power of caring for her. No steamer could be safer than the "Lady Emma."' The captain uttered a nervous laugh of good-humoured derision of steamers. 'If you will trust my dear young lady to me, I'll warrant you, Sir Mortimer, there's not the most splendid steamship afloat that shall make her a comfortabler home than my husband's vessel.'
'I have some knowledge of the sea, Captain Burke,' said my father. 'I have made the voyage to India. What is the tonnage of the "Lady Emma"?'
'Six hundred, sir.'
'That's a small ship. The "Hindostan" was fourteen hundred tons.'
'You don't want stilts aboard of six hundred tons to look over the head of the biggest sea that can run,' answered the captain.
'She sails beautifully and is a sweet-looking ship,' said my old nurse.
'When do you start?' asked my father.
'I hope to get away by the end of next month, sir.'
'Your little ships, I understand, which are not passenger vessels, often sail very deeply loaded and are unsafe in that way,' said my father.
'There can be nothing wrong with a man's freeboard, sir, when his cargo is what mine's going to be next trip: stout, brandy, whisky, samples of tinned goods, a lot of theatre scenery, builder's stuff like as doors and window frames, patent fuel and oil-cake.'
'Gracious, what a mixture!' cried his wife.
'What I suppose is termed a general cargo?' said my father; 'not the best of cargoes in case of fire.'
'What cargo is good when it comes to that, sir?' asked Captain Burke, smiling. 'We must never think of risks at sea any more than we do ashore. To my fancy there's more peril in a railway journey from here to London than in a voyage from the Thames round the world.'
'Miss Otway must be under somebody's care, Sir Mortimer,' said Mrs. Burke.
'How do you think she looks?'
'Not as she'll look when I bring her back to you, sir.'
'It's astonishing what a lot of colouring matter there is for the blood in sea air,' said Captain Burke. 'When I was first going to sea I was as pale as a baker; or, as my old father used to say, as a nun's lips with kissing of beads; afterwards——' he paused with an arch look at his wife. 'And the colour isn't always that of rum either,' he added.
'Where does the ship first sail to, nurse?' said I.
'Tell my young lady, Edward,' she answered.
'We're bound to Valparaiso, and that's by way of Cape Horn,' said the captain. 'We there discharge, fill afresh, and thence to Sydney, New South Wales, thence to Algoa Bay, and so home—a beautiful round voyage.'
'Right round the world, and so many lovely lands to view besides!' exclaimed Mrs. Burke, looking at me; 'always in one ship, too, in one home, Sir Mortimer, with me to see to her. Oh, I shall love to have her!'
My father looked out of the window at the wild whirl of snow that had thickened till it was all flying whiteness through the glass, with the coming and going of the thunder of a squall in the chimney, and a subdued note of the snarling of surf, and said, 'Cape Horn will be a cold passage for Miss Otway.'
'It's more bracing than cold,' said Captain Burke. 'People that talk of Cape Horn and the ice there don't know, I reckon, that parrots and humming birds are to be met with in Strait le Maire. I was shipmate with a man who's been picking fuchsias in such another snowfall as this down on the coast of Patagonia.'
'Miss Marie, you should see an iceberg; it's a beautiful sight when lighted up by the sun,' said my nurse.
'Beautifuller when under the moon and lying becalmed like a floating city of marble, and nothing breaking the quiet save the breathing of grampuses,' exclaimed the captain.
In this strain we continued to talk for some time. My father better understood than I did that my very life might depend upon my going a voyage, and spending many months among the climates of the ocean. All the doctors he had consulted about me were agreed in this, and the last and the most eminent, whose opinion we had taken, had advised it with such gravity and emphasis as determined him upon making at once the best arrangements practicable, seeing that he was unable to accompany me for several reasons; one, and a sufficient, being his dislike of the sea when on it. Our long talk ended in his proposing to return with Captain Burke to London to view the 'Lady Emma,' which was lying in the East India Docks, and my old nurse consented to stop with me until he returned, so that we could chat about the voyage and think over the many little things which might be necessary to render my trip as happy and comfortable as foresight could contrive. The one drawback that kept my father hesitating throughout this meeting with Captain Burke and his wife was this: the 'Lady Emma' would not carry a surgeon. But that question, they decided, would be left until he had seen the ship, and satisfied himself that she would make me such a sea-home as he could with an easy heart send me away in.