'It is so vain, so useless,' she thought; 'and can only lead to discomfort. We shall both feel embarrassed all the way. Oh, I wish he were not coming!' Then, although she pitied him, and although she had always liked him, she resolved that, through the whole of the time they were together in the ship, she would see as little of Stephen Charke as possible.
'You do not object to my presence, I hope?' he said a moment later, as they both stood by the capstan alone--Pooley and his wife and sister having moved off forward. 'I should be sorry to think that my being here was disagreeable to you. I have to earn my living, you know.'
'What right could I have to object, Mr. Charke?'
'Perhaps you think I have behaved indiscreetly?'
For a moment she let her eyes fall on him and rest upon his own; then she said: 'I will not give any opinion. You have to earn your living, as you say; while as for me--well, you know what I am going to India for.'
'Yes,' he answered. 'I do know.' After which he added: 'Do not be under any wrong impression. I shall not annoy you. I am the chief officer of this ship and you are a passenger. That is, I understand, how the voyage is to be made?'
'If you please,' Bella replied very softly, and the tones of her voice might well have brought some comfort to him, if anything short of the possession of her love could have done so.
A fortnight or three weeks later the pilot had left the Emperor of the Moon, the lee main braces were manned, the ship was lying over under her canvas, the wind was well astern. Bella was on her way to India and her lover!
Let us pass over this parting between mother and child, the fond embraces, the tears and sobs which accompanied that parting following after the dawn when we first made the girl's acquaintance, and following, too, that night of unrest and disturbing dreams. No description of such partings is necessary; many of us, young and old, men and women, have had to make them; to part from the loved, gray-haired mother who has sobbed on our breast ere we went forth to find our livelihood, if not our fortune, in a strange world; many of us have had to let the child of our longings and our hopes and prayers go forth from us who have sheltered and nurtured it--from us who have perhaps prayed God night and day that, in His mercy, it might never leave our side. We go away ourselves because we must; also they go from us because they must; and there is nothing but the same hope left in all our hearts--the hope that we shall not be forgotten--that, as the years roll by, those we have left behind will keep a warm spot for us in their memory, or that those who have left us behind will sometimes turn their thoughts back longingly to us in our desolation. It has to be, and it has to be borne; alas, that parting is the penalty we all have to pay for having ever been permitted to be together.
And, so, across the seas, the stout old Emperor of the Moon went; buffeting with the Channel, throwing aside the rough waves with her forefoot as though she despised them, sinking England and home behind her with every plunge she made.