CHAPTER IV. THE "GLAMIS CASTLE"
It was nearly half-past four when Hardy and the others rose from the dinner-table. Not that they had been eating all this time. They had prolonged their sitting over coffee and in talk, and there was no obligation to go so as to make way for others, because the hour was neither lunch nor dinner time, and scarce more than two or three tables were occupied.
Nothing had been settled when they stood up and the ladies began to put on their gloves. It was dark: the dining-rooms were lighted up, and in the street the fog, though not dense, was wet as rain; the lamplighters were running along the curbstones, and in a chemist's shop a little way down the green and red waters in the big glass vases dully glimmered like the side-lights of a ship, heading a straight course for the dining-rooms.
"This is just the sort of evening," said Smedley, "in which to visit a friend's grave at some churchyard hereabouts. On evenings of this sort drunken men fall into holes full of water near the docks. The spirit of the Isle of Dogs stalks abroad this evening; you can see him in the sky and taste him in the wind. What shall we do?"
"I told Mrs. Brierley to get some tea ready by six," said Hardy. "This is not an evening to walk about in, and now I vote, Miss Armstrong, that we do not go to a music-hall to-night. I am for lying snug in harbour; are you?"
"I did not care about the idea of the music-hall when you suggested it," she said.
"They are vulgar places, unfit for ladies, particularly in these parts," exclaimed Mrs. Smedley.
"The cleverest performances I've ever seen I've witnessed in music-halls," remarked the captain, "and I never want to hear better singing than I've heard at them. Sometimes a cad, who has no respect for his own sex, who has no respect for himself as a man, and not the faintest sense in the world of what is due to women, comes on in evening dress, a white shirt blazing with studs, and a tall hat, which he is perpetually shifting upon his head: and this fiend sings a song full of double entendres, and he sings in greasy notes with a lickerish eye; and, strangely enough, I have never yet seen any man rise from amongst the audience, climb over the orchestra, and kick the animal round and round the stage into the development of a fresh sort of music and another kind of words. Otherwise, if you want talent, go to the music-halls."
"Shall we go to our lodgings and spend the evening there?" said Mrs. Smedley.
"Yes, and drink tea with us," exclaimed Hardy; "and before bedtime, Smedley, we shall have settled the business of Miss Julia Armstrong."
Captain Smedley gave his arm to his wife, and Hardy gave his arm to Miss Armstrong, and out they went, walking briskly so as not to get damp, and in a short time they arrived at Mrs. Brierley's lodging-house.
The widow had not expected them home so soon, but she speedily lighted the gas in the romantically equipped parlour, which she had placed at the disposal of Hardy and Julia. The ladies went to their rooms to remove their outdoor clothes, and presently they were all seated in the widow's parlour of curiosities.
"Where did old Brierley get all these things from?" said Captain Smedley, looking round him. "Did he reckon to start a museum before the notion of a lodging-house entered his head? Man and boy, I've followed the sea thirty years, and the only curiosity I've got in all that time was my wife."
"I feel the compliment," exclaimed Mrs. Smedley.
"A curiosity," continued the captain, "because she is all goodness, loyalty, and affection."
And he got up and kissed her, and sitting again continued his eulogy, which was a sign that he had dined well and felt comfortable. The ladies did not object to tobacco, and the two sailors filled their pipes, Smedley observing that he smoked so many cigars at sea that he didn't give a curse even for a prime Havana, though at the high cost of seven for sixpence, when he was ashore.
"Don't you think, Miss Armstrong," said he, "that I've put the case for the East Indies strongly enough to justify you in listening to my advice not to go out to the colonies as an emigrant?"
"I am sure," observed Mrs. Smedley, "you stand a better chance of marrying in your own sphere. There are plenty of officers in India in want of wives, and I need not say—" She interrupted herself, but acted the compliment she intended by glancing significantly at the girl's charming figure, and letting her eye repose for a moment or two on her face and fine hair. "It will be quickly known that you are the daughter of a naval officer."
"I do not think of marriage," said Julia, clasping her hands.
"I like your idea, Smedley, of a letter to the Bishop of Calcutta," exclaimed Hardy. "But how is Miss Armstrong to get out? Could you find her a berth aboard of you or in one of your ships?"
"Well, it's like this with us," answered Smedley; "we have six ships, and every ship carries a stewardess. Three are away, and the others, I know, are provided with stewardesses. The practice is for a person who wants the position to call at the offices, and if her qualifications are all right her name is put down, and she awaits her chance. Miss Armstrong might have to wait a long time, and she doesn't want to do so."
Julia shook her head slowly, and Mrs. Smedley said:
"How can she wait, Jim? She has no money, and no friend when Mr. Hardy sails."
"Are you anything of a nurse?" inquired the captain.
"I have nursed old ladies, but not children," answered Julia. "But I have had some experience in the sick-room."
There was a pause. Smedley filled his pipe thoughtfully.
"Have you a stewardess?" asked Hardy.
"Yes," replied Smedley, "she has been in the ship four voyages."
"What's the pay?" asked Hardy.
"Four pounds a month."
"Does she sign the ship's articles?"
"All the same as if she were an A.B.," replied Smedley.
There was another pause, during which the captain lighted his pipe.
"I can promise nothing," said he, looking at his wife as though he was trying to gratify her instead of helping the girl; "but I'll see to-morrow if some berth as second or assistant stewardess can be contrived. I shall see Mrs. Lambert—that is the stewardess's name, and I don't doubt that I can get the office to recognise the need of assistance, as I understand we shall be a full ship with a good many children."
"You are a real friend," exclaimed Hardy. "It is more than I dared expect from you," and he turned to witness the effect of the kindly captain's words upon the girl; but her expression was as one who gazes at a cheerless prospect. Observing that Hardy watched her, she exclaimed, in a low voice, "I can but thank you, Captain Smedley," and she bowed her head, leaving it bowed.
There was not much more to be said upon the subject after this; indeed it was easily seen that the girl's heart was with Hardy, and as he was sailing for Australia she wanted to go there too, which perhaps was not idle in her, because it was impossible for her to realise that he could not marry her, even if he loved her, which she had no right to imagine, as he could not support her ashore, nor as a mate, nor even perhaps as a captain, take her to sea with him. But things are felt and understood which may not be expressed, and a little before Mrs. Brierley and the maid came in with the tea-tray and the cakes it was arranged that Hardy should accompany Miss Armstrong on board the Glamis Castle, which lay not far from the York, when Captain Smedley hoped to be able to tell her that he had managed to find a berth for her aboard his ship.
"It will save a vast deal of anxiety and of time, and it will rescue you from the horrors of the emigrant ship," said Hardy to Julia, who smiled faintly and looked as though the least expression of sympathy would compel her into a passion of tears.
Mrs. Brierley spread a liberal tea upon the table, but not much appetite attended it. The subject of the assistant stewardess was dropped, and Mrs. Smedley listened with attention, and Julia with fictitious interest, to the conversation that was almost entirely carried on by Hardy and his friend. They had been shipmates, as we have heard—Hardy as midshipman, Smedley as third mate, both occupying the midshipmen's quarters in days when Blackwall Liners used to sail with twelve or fourteen reefers in buttons and badges, who had sole charge of the mizzen-mast, the poop or quarter-deck, the quarter-boats and the gig. John Company's flag was then flying, but they had not served in that employ. They afterward came together, Smedley as chief mate and Hardy as third, in a vessel called the Asia, a ship with long skysail poles, a stem nearly as up and down as a cutter's, black as night, half the length of her aft sparkling with round ports. They talked of this ship and of her wonderful passages; how her captain would carry fore, main, and topgallant stu'nsails, and pass by ships which thought they were cracking on with a topgallantsail set over a single reefed topsail.
Sailors who have been shipmates love this sort of memories, and it is like watching the coil of the sea—one blue ridge dissolving in the base of another, with the laughter and the thunder of heaving and racing brine—to hear them.
Thus they passed the evening, with the help of a little whisky and plenty of tobacco, and Julia, sitting beside Mrs. Smedley, told her story over again, but fully, and Mrs. Smedley talked of her son, who was a young curate of whom she was very proud, not only because of his social importance, but because of his eloquence: she declared that he preached a better sermon, young as he was, than any minister of the gospel in the whole diocese, and the interest Julia took in this matter, though the poor girl was thinking all the time of Hardy and the East Indiaman, charmed Mrs. Smedley.
The East India docks are among the oldest on the Thames. They embody many chapters of the maritime history of this country. They are of extraordinary interest to any one who knows the story of the ocean, and of the might and majesty of England as the Queen of the Sea. Their soup-coloured waters have reflected many different forms and types of ships, from the emblazoned, glazed, and castellated stern of the East Indiaman to the long, black, yellow-funnelled, three-masted steamer whose straight stem shears through it from Gravesend to New York in less time than it took the Indiaman to beat down Channel. The produce of many lands litters the quays and fills the sheds. The steam winch rattles, the giant arm of crane swings its tons, the stevedore shouts in the depths, and the mate yells at the hatchway. The tall masts rise into the air, lifting their topmost yards into the yellow obscurity up there; figures dangle on the foot ropes, or jockey the yard-arms. The house bunting of a score of firms makes a festival to the eye, and alongside is the barge, whose slender company do not pay the dues, and whose language is beyond the dreams of Houndsditch.
It was Wednesday afternoon, about three o'clock, and the docks were full of the animation of the coming and going, and the loading and the discharging ships. The air trembled with hoarse voices, with the passage of locomotives and wagons, with the rattle of steam machinery, with the hissing of escaping vapour. It was the Isle of Dogs, and the afternoon was somewhat foggy. In one basin lay a number of fine ships, nearly all sailing ships, for there were very few funnels to be seen in those days, and along the edge of the wall of this basin two people were walking—Hardy and Julia Armstrong. They were two of a great many other persons, who were labourers, sailors, and so forth; and as they walked slowly, for the road was obstructed by goods and machinery as well as by toilers, lumpers, and loafers, Hardy, pointing to a ship lying on the other side of the basin, exclaimed:
"That's the York."
Julia stopped to look at her. She was not in trim to be seen to advantage; her sails were not bent, her running gear was not rove, but all saving her royal yards were aloft, and her model, though light and showing the green sheathing, was visible in such perfection of run, in such elegance of elliptic stern, in such swelling beauty and fining grace of schooner cut-water and flaring bow, as could be matched only by those lovely creations of the ship-builders' art, the Aberdeen clippers.
"She is a beautiful vessel," exclaimed Julia. "I wish you commanded her."
"So do I," answered Hardy, running a critical eye over the ship.
"Do you like the captain?"
"I know his name," answered Hardy, "but I've not yet met him. He replaced a gray-haired man who was a philanthropist, and held notions and opinions which are not appreciated by ship-owners. He was kind to his men, and owners cannot die worth millions if kindness to crews is tolerated. A sailor to his mind was a man and not a dog, which astonished the ship-owners, whose views are otherwise. If the food was bad he went on broaching till he came to something sweet, and this was an enormity. He would go into the fok'sle and attend upon a sick man, and help him so far as kindness and the medicine-chest could. His crew would have gone on sailing round the world with him for ever. Such men are not fit to command merchant sailors," he added, sarcastically, "and so he is discharged, and probably will not find another ship, and God knows what he will do, for at his age what can he do?"
They continued their walk until they arrived at the corner of the dock. A large full-rigged ship lay there. Her house flag was cream-white with a black cross in it; a delicate space of bunting that trembled under the golden ball of truck, for this vessel had short royal-mastheads, and when the yards were hoisted they sat like a frigate's under the eyes of the rigging.
Hardy caused Julia to stop, whilst they yet commanded a view of the ship's stern and the whole length of the decks from the poop to the topgallant forecastle. She was undoubtedly a very beautiful ship, probably the handsomest at that time of them all in the London Docks. Her stern's embellishment would have done justice to the imagination of the Dutch shipwrights of the seventeenth century. Dull as the day was, this Glamis Castle, without sunlight to reflect, without the sparkle of water to kindle stars and to flash prisms, was lustrous as though self-luminous with window and gilt and gorgeous quarter-galleries, and upon the sloping ebony of her counter, before it glowed into the yellow metal of her brand-new sheathing, were the long white letters of her name and her port, and these letters you could read in the water that floated stagnant about her rudder and run. Her main-deck and waist were full of business; her quarter-deck winch rattled its pawls with the noise of a hearse trotted by tipsy men from the graveyard gate; the crane was sinking costly burdens into the wide, black yawn of the main-hatch; riggers were aloft; preparations for the long voyage round the Cape to Calcutta were being pushed forward, as the newspapers would say; but, saving the mate, with one foot upon the coaming of the main-hatch, watching the slow descent of cargo into the depths, and saving the figure of Captain Smedley, sitting on the fore-skylight of the poop with an end of cigar in his month, there was then no man upon that ship who would have a hand in the navigation of her, from the wide breast of river flowing beyond, to that other distant breast of river revolting with black corpses and their ships' companies of plumed scavengers.
"There's Smedley!" exclaimed Hardy, and Julia looked at the captain sitting on the skylight. "If he ships you," he continued, "you will be sailing away in a noble craft," and he began to talk to himself: "What a hoist of maintopsail! How splendidly stayed her spars are! She'll show cloths enough to get knots from the waft of a sea-mew's wing!"
They walked on till they came abreast of Smedley, and then Hardy hailed him.
"Come aboard, I'm waiting for you," sang out Smedley, with a flourish of his fingers at the peak of his cap. Hardy took the girl's hand, and they crossed a short platform of planks stretched between the edge of the wall and the ship's bulwarks, and descending two or three steps gained the main-deck, whence they made their way to the poop by the port ladder. Before they ascended this ladder Hardy stopped Julia to look at and admire the cuddy front. It was a true Dutch picture of its kind. It resembled the front of a house with its door and three brass-protected, red-curtained windows of a side, and a projecting wing of cabin on either hand, so that the front was a pleasant recess with its roof of poop-deck over it. But the romance of this fancy of cuddy front—perished for ever to this and all future generations—lay in the carving that lavishly embellished it: a fantastic mixture of anchors and flags with masts in full sail peering between, and human figures with wings blowing horns. There was uniformity in all this variety, and the complicate picture in the dark colours of teak was fraught with meaning to the interpreting eye.
The sailor and the girl went on to the poop, a fine stretch of plank, but not quite so white as it would be presently, when it had been tickled by the holystone, and when the ivory spaces of it would take the sun-shed impression of the rigging like rulings in indigo, clear of the velvet-violet shadow of the awning.
"Well, here we are," exclaimed Captain Smedley, rising from the skylight and speaking with that bluntness which many admired in his speech, thinking it sailorly, just as people will inhale doubtful odours from an inner harbour and relish them as "ozone." "What do you think of the ship, Hardy?"
But though he spoke to Hardy, he kept his eye on Miss Armstrong, and was undoubtedly admiring her, particularly her figure, and the fascinating cock of her head with its tilted hat.
"She's the finest ship I ever saw," answered Hardy, with real enthusiasm. "What a marvellous stern! what a delightful cuddy front!"
"Meant to astonish the natives," said Smedley. "They have settled the choice of more than one coloured nob, and left the other passenger ships nowhere."
"Well, and what news, Smedley?" said Hardy.
"Oh, I think it may be managed," answered Captain Smedley, sending his fragment of cigar overboard with a jerk of his arm. "My wife is below: let's go down to her."
They descended into what was then called the cuddy by way of the companion steps, and this interior was worthy its wonderful front. Narrow slips of looking-glass upon the walls of it, and between each slip was a picture representing some Indian scene. The effect was brilliant and novel; determination to delight the Oriental eye was visible in the grotesque figuration of the three lamps hanging over the table. A Japanese artist, delirious with opium, might have imagined the extraordinary shapes which supported the globes. All was luxury and originality. Aft on either hand and athwart-ships were cabins, but the main accommodation was to be sought in the steerage, which was gained by a wide staircase, conducting through a hatchway in the fore end of the cuddy.
Whilst Julia and Hardy were gazing about them Mrs. Smedley came out of the starboard cabin under the wheel.
"I am trying to make my husband's cabin comfortable for him," said she, with her homely, motherly smile, after greetings had been exchanged. "I hope he will soon make his last voyage. Captain Franklin, a friend of ours, was seventeen years at sea in command, and in all that time he and his wife calculated that they had only spent one year and three months in each other's company. It is worse than being widowed."
"Much worse," said Captain Smedley, "because you can't get married again. The beggar's always coming home."
"Let us sit down," said Mrs. Smedley. "Miss Armstrong, come and sit beside me here. I am afraid we sha'n't be able to offer you any refreshments, but Jim when he came along said something about dining at the Brunswick Hotel."
"Captain Smedley's full of original ideas," exclaimed Hardy as they seated themselves at the table. "What a different scene, Mrs. Smedley, this interior will submit a few weeks hence," he continued. "I see the gallant captain yonder at the head there, a row of ladies and gentlemen ranged down the table from either hand of him. The table smokes with good cheer, elaborately served; through a window yonder you see an ayah cuddling a baby and swaying to the heave of the ship. How the sails swell to the heavens through that skylight!" and here he cast his eyes aloft, and then looking at Miss Julia, he said, "And where will you be?"
"Well, you may take it as good as settled," said Captain Smedley, "and let my wife get all the thanks," he added, not particularly referring to Julia in his speech.
"You are very good," said Hardy, glancing at Julia, who was certainly not smiling. "How shall we consider it as good as settled?"
"You've got to thank my wife, she's taken a great interest in the young lady," said Smedley.
Julia meeting Mrs. Smedley's eyes gave her a grave bow, full of the unconscious coquetry of her natural postures.
"It's settled in this way," continued Smedley. "I saw Mrs. Lambert this morning, and it is arranged that Miss Armstrong sails as her assistant. Old Perkins, one of the chiefs, who was at the office, said that he couldn't see the need; freights were low, and the ship was sailed without regard to expense." Here the captain winked at Hardy. "I told him the lady was a good nurse and accustomed to children, and that the stewardess needed help. So, Miss Armstrong, you will sign on, and you will have me for a captain. Do you like the idea?"
"I thank you a thousand times for your kindness," answered Julia. "This is a beautiful ship, and I am sure you will see that I am not unhappy. But—but shall I find employment in Calcutta? Am I not almost sure of finding employment in Australia?" and she looked with a wistfulness that was almost love at Hardy.
"You certainly will find employment in Australia, and most certainly a husband," said Smedley, who took the girl's hesitation very good-humouredly. "But I fear your employment will be menial, and the washing-tub, and the cooking range don't suit the likes of you."
"It is very true," said Mrs. Smedley.
Hardy listened with his eyes fixed on the deck. His heart had noted the girl's wistful look, and it was beating a little fast in some confusion of thought to his interpretation of her eyes.
"A husband," continued Smedley, "will certainly be forthcoming, but like the range and the tub, he won't suit the likes of you, though stress of circumstances make you his wife. Now it's all tip-top gentility in India, with a real chance of a first-class sort, aboard my ship, this side of Calcutta."
"Oh! it's marriage you are always thinking of, Captain Smedley," cried Julia, clasping her hands, and looking at him in her fascinating way.
The captain glanced at his wife as if the conversation was growing personal.
"Pray remember this, Miss Armstrong," said Mrs. Smedley, "if you are on the ship's articles you belong to the ship, and if you cannot obtain employment in the months during which the vessel will be lying in the Calcutta River, you can return in her, by which time Mr. Hardy may have arrived, and then you can try Australia."
"That's a new idea, and a splendid one," said Hardy.
Julia's face brightened. "Will you let me return in her, captain?" she asked.
"Certainly, if you don't run away, as is customary with many who sign the ship's articles," he answered. "But you don't go out to come back; a major-general may fall in love with you on your arrival, and then you'll be coming on board to ask for my blessing." He added with a little movement of impatience, "Is it settled?"
"Yes, and we thank you again and again," exclaimed Hardy.
"You'll sleep in the stewardess's cabin," said Captain Smedley. "Let's go below and have a look at it. By the way," he added, "I may as well say at once that your pay will be thirty shillings a month."
Miss Armstrong blushed, and bowed, and smiled.
"Not enough, when it's all taken up, for a new gown, Jim," said Mrs. Smedley. "Where's the cabin, lovey?"
They all went down the broad steps, conducting to what was then called the steerage, in which the first-class cabin passengers were berthed, though in these days the word steerage is wholly associated with third-class people and German Jews, who quarrel over packs of greasy cards. The ship had plenty of beam, and the steerage was spacious for a vessel of her burden. The cabins ran well forward, and there was plenty of them. The central deck would be carpeted when the ship was ready for sea. Handsome bunks, washstands, chest of drawers, and other furniture, made every cabin resemble a snug little bedroom, and the port-holes were large, with plenty of room for the passage of the thrilling and soothing gush of blue breeze, when the flying-fish should be starting from the metalled fore-foot in flights of pearly light, and when the sun should hang in a roasting eye over the foretopgallant yard-arm. The stewardess's berth was small but cosy: two fore-and-aft bunks, the same conveniences as in the other cabins—and this was to be Julia's bedroom.
She lingered a little looking around her, and the others paused to humour her.
Then said Captain Smedley, "I am hungry. Let us go and get something to eat at the Brunswick Hotel."