CHAPTER III THE 'LADY EMMA'
On the morning of a day for ever memorable to me as the date of my departure from my home—namely, March 31, 1860—my father and I went to London, there to stay till April 2, when it was arranged that I should go on board the ship at Gravesend. My grief worked like a passion in me; yet I was quiet; my resolution to be calm whitened my cheeks, but again and again my eyes brimmed in spite of my efforts.
Oh, I so feared this going away alone! Even though I was to be in the company of my faithful, dear Mrs. Burke, my very heart so shrank up in me at the idea of saying farewell to my lover, with the chance of never seeing him more, that sometimes when I said my prayers I would ask God to make me too ill to leave home.
It was a melancholy grey day when I drove with my father to the station; the east wind sang like the surf in the naked, iron-hard boughs, and the sea streamed in lines of snow into the black desolate distance, unbroken by a gleam of sail, save, as we turned the corner which gave me a view of the ocean, I caught sight of a lonely black and red carcass of a steamer staggering along, tall and naked as though plucked, with a hill of foam under her counter; the melancholy and desolation of the day was in her, and no picture of shipwreck could have made that scene of waters sadder.
I had bidden good-bye to all I knew during the week: there were no more farewells to be said. We entered the train, and when we ran out of the station I felt that my long voyage had truly commenced. I'll not linger over my brief stay in London. Mr. Moore was constantly with me: indeed we were seldom apart during those two days of my waiting to join the ship at Gravesend. His father and sister called to say good-bye; I was too poorly and low-spirited to visit them. In truth I never once left the hotel until I drove with my father and Mr. Moore to the station to take the train to Gravesend.
Before embarking, however, I made the acquaintance of Mr. Owen, the surgeon of the ship. He had occasion to be in the West End of London, and Mrs. Burke asked him to call. I viewed him with considerable curiosity, for it was not only he was to be my medical adviser—I could not but reflect that I was to be locked up in a small ship with this man for very many months, with no other change of society than Captain and Mrs. Burke. I was pleasantly disappointed in him. I had figured a yellow, long-faced, melancholy man, with a countenance ploughed by frequent secret weeping, and furrowed by pitiful memories and night thoughts black as Dr. Young's. Instead there entered the room briskly, with a sideways bow cleverly executed whilst in motion, the right arm advanced, a short, plump figure of a man in a coat cut in something of a clerical style, short legs, and a face that would have been reasonably full but for its long aquiline nose, and contraction of lineaments due to a big bush of hair standing out stiff in minute curls over either ear. Otherwise he was bald.
My father was extremely polite to him. He stayed an hour and partook of some slight refreshment. He stared at me very earnestly, felt my pulse, considered me generally with polite professional attention, and, after he had put certain questions, said to my father with significant gravity:
'You may console yourself, sir, for the temporary loss of your daughter; I do not scruple to say that in sending her on this voyage you will be saving her life. I believe I can recognise her case, and strongly share the opinion of those who prescribe a long residence on board ship upon the ocean.'
My father's face lighted up: nothing I believe could have heartened him more at the moment than this assurance. Mr. Moore took Mr. Owen by the hand and said:
'We shall be trusting her to you, sir; she is very dear to me. We should be man and wife but for her health.'
'All that my anxious attention can give her she shall have,' said Mr. Owen, bowing over my lover's hand.
Yet he did not stay his hour without letting us see, poor fellow, that in the depths of his heart he was a grieving man. He said nothing; no reference was made to his affliction: but in certain pauses the pain of memory would enter his face like a shadow, and sometimes he would sigh tremulously as one in sorrow sighs in sleep, scarcely knowing you saw, that he did so.
When he was gone, my father said to Mr. Moore that his spirits felt as light again now that he had seen what sort of man it was who would have charge of my health.
'Taking all sides of it,' he said, 'I don't think we could have done better. Marie goes with an old nurse who loves her as her own child; Mr. Owen seems a kind-hearted, experienced, practical man. I hope he understands that our appreciation of his kindness will not be restricted to bare thanks on the return of the vessel. The more I see of Burke, the better I like him. He is an honest, experienced seaman from crown to heel, and in saying that I am allowing him all the virtues. No; the arrangements are wholly to my satisfaction and my mind is at rest. It will be like a long yachting trip for Marie: she will have a fine ship under her, and all the seclusion and comfort of a yacht combined with the safety of ample tonnage. I am satisfied. It was a cruel difficulty; we have had to meet it; it is well met, and now, Marie, there is nothing to do but wait. Have patience. The months will swiftly roll by—then you will return to us, a healthy, fine young woman, full of life and colour and vigour, instead of——' His voice broke off in a sob and he turned his head away. I ran to him and he held me.
On April 2 we went down to Gravesend. Mr. Moore accompanied us. Captain Burke had telegraphed that the 'Lady Emma' was lying off that town and would tow to sea in the afternoon of the 2nd. We arrived at Gravesend at about twelve o'clock and drove to a hotel. All my luggage had been sent on board the ship in the docks. Mrs. Burke waited for us in a room overlooking the river; here she had ordered luncheon to be served. She seemed hearty and happy: kissed me, and curtseyed to my father and Mr. Moore, and taking me to the window said:
'There she is, Miss Marie. There's your ocean home. What do you think of her as a picture?'
She pointed to a vessel that was straining at a buoy almost immediately opposite. A tug was lying near her. It was a young April day; the sunshine thin and pale, the blue of the heavens soft and dim, with a number of swelling bodies of clouds, humped and bronzed, sailing with the majesty of line-of-battle ships into the south-west. A brisk wind blew and the river was full of life. The grey water twinkled and was flashed in places into a clearness and beauty of bluish crystal by the brushing of the breeze. The eye was filled and puzzled for some moments by the abounding tints and motion. A large steamer with her line of bulwarks palpitating with heads of emigrants was slowly passing down; another with frosted funnel and drainings of red rust on her side, as though she still bled from the scratches of a recent vicious fight outside, was warily passing up: beside her was a large, full-rigged ship towing to London, and the sluggish passage of the masts, yards, and rigging of the two vessels, the steamer sliding past the other, combined with the sudden turning of a little schooner close by, all her canvas shaking, and with the heeling figure of a brig, her dark breasts of patched canvas swelling for the flat shores opposite, a spout of white water at her forefoot, and a short-lived vein of river-froth at her rudder; then, close in, two barges heaped with cargo, blowing along stiff as flag-poles under brown wings of sail; these with vessels at both extremities of the Reach, coming and going, interlacing the perspective of their rigging into a complication of colours and wirelike outlines, for ever shifting: all this wonderful changing life, I say, adding to it the trembling of the stream of river, the pouring of smoke, the pulling and shivering of flags, put a giddiness into the scene, and for some moments I stared idly, with Mrs. Burke beside me pointing to the 'Lady Emma.'
My eye then went to the ship, and rested upon as pretty a little fabric as probably ever floated upon the water of the Thames. I may venture upon a description of her and speak critically: indeed I must presuppose some knowledge of the sea in you, otherwise I shall be at a loss; for as you shall presently discover I was long enough upon the ocean, under circumstances of distress scarcely paralleled in the records, to learn by heart the language of the deep, how to speak of ships and tell of sailors' doings, and I cannot but name the things of the sea in the language in which the mariner talks of them.
The 'Lady Emma' was a full-rigged ship, between six hundred and seven hundred tons in burthen; she was a wooden ship—iron sailing vessels were few in those days; she was painted black; but though loaded for the voyage she sat lightly upon the water, and a hand's-breadth of new metal sheathing burned along her water-line like a gilding of sunlight the length of her. Her lower masts were white, her upper masts a bright yellow; her yards were very square, or as a landsman would call them wide: the most inexperienced eye might guess that when clothed in sail she would spread wings as of an albatross in power, breadth, and beauty for a meteoric flight over the long blue heave.
'How do you like her, Miss Marie?' said Mrs. Burke.
'She is a pretty ship, I think,' I answered.
'She is a beauty,' said the good woman; 'she outsails everything.'
'She has a fine commanding lift about the bows,' said Mr. Moore, passing his arm through mine. 'Captain Burke tells me she has done as much as three hundred and twelve miles in the twenty-four hours.'
'So she has, sir,' said Mrs. Burke.
'I wish she'd maintain that rate of sailing all the time Marie is aboard,' said my father.
'Oh, Sir Mortimer, this going will seem but as of yesterday's happening when yonder ship's out there again, returned, and your dear girl's in your arms, strong, fine, and hearty, rich in voice, and bright-eyed as she used to be when a baby. These voyages seem long to take, and when they're ended it's like counting how many fingers you have to remember them, so easy and quick it all went.'
Lunch was served and we seated ourselves, but my throat was dry and I could swallow nothing but a little wine. My father and Mr. Moore pretended to eat; suddenly looking up I met my sweetheart's gaze: a look of inexpressible tenderness and distress entered his face, and starting from his seat he went to the window, and kept his back to us for a few minutes. Mrs. Burke went to him and whispered in his ear; I perfectly understood that she begged him to bear up for my sake: indeed it needed but for my father and my lover to give way, for me to break down utterly, with a menace of consequent prostration that must put an end to this scheme of a voyage on the very threshold of it.
We left the hotel at two o'clock and walked slowly to the pier. I was closely veiled. I could not have borne the inquisitive stare of the people as we passed. Whilst we waited for a boat, I watched a mother saying good-bye to her son, a bright-haired boy of fourteen in the uniform of a merchant midshipman. She was in deep mourning, a widow, and I had but to look at her pale face to know that the boy was her child. The lad struggled with his feelings; his determination to be manly and not to be seen to cry by the people standing round about nor to go on board his ship with red eyes doubtless helped him. He broke away from her with a sort of sharp sobbing laugh, crying, 'Back again in a year, mother, back again in a year,' and left her. She stood as though turned to stone. When in the boat he flourished his cap to her; she watched him like a statue with the most dreadful expression of grief the imagination could paint. Never shall I forget the motionless figure of that widow mother and the grief in her face, and the look in her tearless eyes.
'There's plenty of sorrow in this world,' said Mrs. Burke, as the four of us seated ourselves in the boat, 'and there's no place where more grief's to be seen than here, owing to the leave-takings and the coming back of ships with news.'
'Master of a ship fell dead yesterday just as he was a-stepping ashore,' said the waterman who was rowing us. 'Bad job for his large family.'
'You'll take care to have a letter ready before the ship is out of the Channel, Marie,' said my father. 'Mrs. Burke, your husband will give Miss Otway every opportunity of sending letters home?'
'I'll see to it, Sir Mortimer.'
We drew alongside the ship. Captain Burke and Mr. Owen stood at the gangway to receive us. When I went up the ladder, supported by my father, Captain Burke with his hat off extended his hand, saying:
'Miss Otway, welcome on board the "Lady Emma." She has received my whisper. She knows her errand and what's expected of her. She'll keep time, Sir Mortimer; and the magic that'll happen betwixt the months whilst our jibboom is pointing to as many courses as the compass has marks is going to transform this delicate, pale young lady into the heartiest, rosiest lass that ever stepped over a ship's side.'
'I pray so, I pray so,' exclaimed my father.
'Captain Burke is not too sanguine,' exclaimed Mr. Owen with a smile.
'When do you start?' asked Mr. Moore.
'Soon after three, sir, I hope,' answered Captain Burke.
I ran my eye over the ship. The scene had that sort of morbid interest to me which the architecture and furniture of a prison cell takes for one who is to pass many months in it. I beheld a long white deck, extending from the taffrail into the bows, with several structures breaking the wide lustrous continuity: one forward was the galley, the ship's kitchen; this side of it was a large boat with sheep bleating inside her; whilst underneath was a sty-full of pigs, flanked by hen-coops whose bars throbbed with the ceaseless protrusion and withdrawal of the flapping combs of cocks and the heads of hens. Near us was a great square hatch, covered over with a tarpaulin, and farther aft, as the proper expression is, was a big glazed frame for the admission of light into the cabin; some distance past it a sort of box, curved to the aspect of a hood, called the companion-way, conducted you below. At the end of the ship was the wheel, like a circle of flame with the brasswork of it flashing to the sun, and immediately in front stood the compass box or binnacle, glittering like the wheel, and trembling to its height upon the white planks like a short pillar of fire.
A number of sailors hung about the forecastle, and a man leaned in the little door of the galley in a red shirt, bare to the elbows, eying us, with a pair of fat, dough-like, tattooed arms crossed upon his breast, a picture of stupid, sulky curiosity.
We stayed for a few minutes talking in the gangway; Mrs. Burke then asked me to step below and see my cabin, and I went down the steps followed by the rest, and entered the ship's little plain state-room.
I stopped at the foot of the ladder and drew my breath with difficulty. What was it? An extraordinary sensation of icy chill had passed through me. It was over in an instant, but it was as though the hand of death itself had clutched my heart. Was it a presentiment working so potently as to affect me physically? Was it some subtle motion of the nerves influenced by the sight of the interior, and by the strange shipboard smells in it which there was no virtue in the hanging pots of flowers to sweeten? I said nothing. My father halted to the arrest of my hand, supposing I wished to look about me, and yet, oh, merciful God! when I date myself back to that hour, and think of me as entering that cabin for the first time, and then of what happened afterwards, I cannot for an instant question—nay, with fear and awe I devoutly believe—that the heart-moving sensation of chill which came and went in the beat of a pulse was a breath off the pinion of my angel of fate or destiny, stirring in the thick-ribbed blackness of the future at sight of my first entrance into the scene of my distress. Do not think me fanciful nor high strained in expression or imagination. My meaning will be clear to you.
The Burkes had done their best to make this state cabin comfortable to the eye. Shelves full of books were secured to the ship's wall: a couple of globes of gold and silver fish hung under the skylight, where too were some rows of flowers hanging in pots. A couple of tall glasses were affixed to the cabin walls, and the lamp was handsome and of bright metal. A new carpet was stretched over the deck, and the table was covered with a cloth, so that the interior looked like a little parlour or living-room ashore. I also observed a stove in the fore end of the cabin; it looked new, as though fitted for this particular voyage.
'Dear Miss Marie, let me show you your bedroom,' said Mrs. Burke.
A narrow corridor went out of this living room in the direction of the stern; on either hand were cabins, four of a side. Mrs. Burke threw open a door on the port or left hand side, and we entered a large berth. Two had been knocked into one for my use.
'This is bigger than anything I could have secured for you on board a steamer,' said my father.
My old nurse's eyes were upon me whilst I gazed around. They had made as elegant a little bedroom of the place as could possibly be manufactured on board a plain, homely sailing ship. Every convenience was here, and the furniture was handsome. They had put pink silk curtains to my bunk which was single—that is, the upper shelf was removed so that I should have the upper deck clear above me when I pillowed my head. They had prettily decorated with drapery a large oval glass nailed to the bulkhead: this mirror caught the light trembling off the river, and brimming through the porthole and filled the interior with a radiance of its own as though it had been a lamp. The carpet was thick and rich; the armchair low and soft. A writing table stood in the corner, and on it was a lovely bouquet; the berth was rich with the smell of those delicious flowers; the atmosphere sweet as a breeze in a garden of roses. It was my lover's gift, sent on board the ship just before she left the docks, but I did not know this until after I had said good-bye to him.
'It is as comfortable as your bedroom at home, Marie,' said my father.
'I find your thoughtful heart everywhere here, nurse,' said I.
'We have all done our best, and our best shall go on being done,' she answered, smiling, and meeting my father's gaze she dropped him one of her little old-world curtseys.
'I don't think you'll find anything missing, sir,' said Captain Burke, 'from Mr. Owen's medicine chest down to the smallest case of goodies in the lazarette.'
'My daughter is in kind hands. I am satisfied,' said my father, and he came to me and put his arm round my neck.
Captain Burke, saying he was needed on deck, went out. Mrs. Burke and Mr. Owen followed; my father stepped into the state-room that I might be alone with my lover.
He caught me quickly to his heart and kissed me again and again with a passion of grief and love. We had exchanged our vows before, over and over. We could but kiss and whisper hopes of a sweet meeting, of a lasting reunion by-and-by. It was like a parting between a young bride and bridegroom, but with a dreadful significance going into it out of my health and out of the thought of the perils of the sea. Indeed, a sadness as of death itself was in that parting, and I know Archie felt that, as I did, when he released me and stood a moment looking into my white face.
When we went into the cabin I found my father earnestly conversing with Mrs. Burke. He was asking questions about my luggage and effects, and impressing certain things upon her memory. A few minutes later Captain Burke came down the companion-steps, and, halting before he reached the bottom, exclaimed:
'Sir Mortimer, I'm sorry to say the tug'll be laying hold of us now almost immediately.'
My father started, looked at me with something frantic in the expression of his face, then crying 'Well, if the time has come——' and took me in his arms. Then with tears standing in his eyes, and gazing upwards, he asked God to bless and to protect me, and to restore me, his only child, in safety and in health to him; and now speechless with grief, mutely looking a farewell to Mrs. Burke, who herself was weeping, he went on deck, followed by Mr. Moore, whose leave-taking here had been no more than a single kiss pressed upon my forehead as I stood beside the table after my father had released me.
When they were gone I sank into a chair; Mrs. Burke looked with wet eyes through a cabin window. She was right to let my grief have its way. After a little I heard the voices of men chorusing on deck; overhead people regularly tramped to and fro. Mr. Owen came into the cabin and said:
'Pray, Miss Otway, let me conduct you above. The air will refresh you, and the picture of the river is striking and full of life.'
'Come, dear Miss Marie, with me,' said Mrs. Burke, and I put my arm through hers and went on deck.
I stood still on discovering that our voyage was begun. Our ship had been moored to a buoy; there had been no anchor to weigh, no wild music of seamen nor hoarse quarter-deck commands to give the news of departure to those under deck; the little tug had quietly manœuvred for our tow-rope, and now the ship's bows were pointing down the river, her keen stem shearing through the froth of the paddle-wheels ahead, with some sailors heave-hoing as they dragged upon the ropes which hoisted certain staysails and jibs; the old town of Gravesend was sliding away upon the quarter. I strained my eyes in vain for a sight of the boat in which my father and Mr. Moore might have been making for the shore. Well perhaps that I could not distinguish her. I think it would have broken my heart then to have seen them, thus, for the last time, making their way ashore for that home I was leaving for months, and perhaps for ever!
'We have started, nurse!' I exclaimed.
'Yes, dear,' she answered. 'Do not make haste to cease crying. Let nature work by degrees in her own fashion. I shall soon see my dear girl looking proudly with health, and oh, the joy of your meeting with your father and Mr. Moore, and my happiness when I see them staring at you, scarce knowing you for your beauty and brightness!'
The water blazed with sunshine, the merry twinkling of it by the fresh April wind made the whole Reach a path of dazzling light. Twenty vessels of all sorts were about us: some leaned with rounded canvas soft as sifted snow, with yellow streaks of metal glancing wet to the light out of the brackish foam, that wanted the shrillness and spit of the froth of the brine; some lifted bare skeleton scaffolds of spars and yards as they towed past; some were no bigger than a Yarmouth smack, and some were great steamers and deep and lofty ships from or for the Antipodes. But whatever you looked at was beautiful with the hues of the afternoon, the backing of the green land, the inspiration of the sea, the spirit of ocean liberty wide as the horizon that is boundless, and high as the air through which the clouds blew.