CHAPTER XVI.
Follows the Fortunes of Madge and Ned.
But Madge could know nothing yet of that night's occurrence. She was then many miles out to sea, her thoughts perhaps still lingering behind with her old life, but bound soon to overtake her, and to pass far ahead to the world she was sailing for, the world of her long-cherished desires.
I shall briefly relate a part of what she afterward recounted to me. The voyage from New York to Bristol lasted six weeks. She suffered much from her cramped quarters, from the cold weather, from seasickness; but she bore up against her present afflictions, in the hope of future compensations. She put away from her, with the facility of an ambitious beauty, alike her regrets for the past, and her misgivings of the future.
Not to risk any increase of those misgivings, she refrained from questioning Ned as to his resources, nor did she require of him a minute exposition of his plans. She preferred to leave all to him and to circumstance, considering that, once launched upon the sea of London, and perfectly unrestricted as to her proceedings, she could make shift to keep afloat. She had an earnest of the power of her beauty, in its effect upon the ship's captain, who, in the absence of passengers, was the only person aboard whose admiration was worth playing for. She had the place of honour at his table, and in her presence he was nothing but eyes and dumb confusion, while the extraordinary measures he took for her comfort proclaimed him her willing slave.
She listened without objection or comment when Ned, in confidential moods, forced his purposes upon her attention.
"We'll make 'em stare, my dear," said he. "We'll make 'em open their eyes a bit; just you wait! We'll find lodgings somewhere in the thick of the town, and I'll take you to the theatres, and to walk in St. James Park, and to the public assemblies, and wherever you're sure to be seen. I wish 'twere Summer; then there'd be Vauxhall and Ranelagh, and all that. 'Tis a bad time of year in London now; but we'll do our best. There'll be young sparks of quality enough, to ask each other who that goddess is, and that Venus, and that angel, and all that kind of thing; and they'll be mad to make your acquaintance. They'll take note of me, and when they see me at the coffee-houses and faro-tables, they'll fall over one another in the rush to know me, and to be my friends. And I'll pick out the best, and honour 'em with invitations to call at our lodgings, and there'll be my pretty sister to mix a punch for us, or pour out tea for us; and once we let 'em see we're as good quality as any of 'em, and won't stand any damn' nonsense,' why, you leave it to brother Ned to land a fat fish, that's all!"
She had a fear that his operations might at length become offensive to her taste, might stray from the line of her own ambitions; but she saw good reason to await developments in silence; and to postpone deviating from Ned's wishes, until they should cease to forward hers.
Upon her landing at Bristol, and looking around with interest at the shipping which reminded her of New York but to emphasise her feeling of exile therefrom, her thrilling sense of being at last in the Old World, abated her heaviness at leaving the ship which seemed the one remaining tie with her former life. If ever a woman felt herself to be entering upon life anew, and realised a necessity of blotting the past from memory, it was she; and well it was that the novelty of her surroundings, the sense of treading the soil whereon she had so long pined to set foot, aided her resolution to banish from her mind all that lay behind her.