The Convict Ship, Volume 1 (of 3)

by William Clark Russell

I felt that my face was lighted up; I saw the reflection of its delight in her own placid expression. My heart bounded; I could have danced and sung and waltzed about the room. I sat down, locking my hands tightly upon my lap, and listened with all the composure I could summon.

She informed me that Captain Butler had been exceedingly candid, had exactly named his savings and his patrimony, which scarcely amounted to three thousand pounds, and that he was deliberating whether or not to invest all that he had in a share of the new barque, Arab Chief. Mr. Johnstone had advised him, supposing he should be so fortunate as to gain my consent to marry him, not to make me his wife until he had gone his first voyage and seen how his venture fell out.

‘Your uncle,’ said my aunt, ‘is strongly of opinion that a man has no business to go and marry a fine handsome young woman like you, then leave her after a week or a month, and not set eyes on her again till he returns home from round the world.’

‘I wish my uncle would mind his own business,’ said I, pouting, and feeling my face very long.

But my aunt insisted that my uncle was right. She added that Captain Butler cordially agreed with him. Captain Butler’s own wish was to betroth himself to me, then to make his voyage; then return and marry me and carry me away with him to sea.

My eyes sparkled, and I jumped up and walked the room greatly excited. But after this my aunt grew tedious. Was it imaginable that any sort of love fit to base so solemn an affair as marriage upon could exist between two people who had known each other a fortnight only? Here was I joyously avowing my love for Captain Butler and expressing the utmost eagerness to marry him. Did I know what I was talking about? Had I given a moment’s reflection to what marrying a sailor signified? I was rich, young, and handsome; I had a fine house of my own; I had liberty and health; I was without children to tease me, to pale me with midnight watchings, to burden my spirits with anxiety for their future. Should I not be giving myself away very cheaply by marrying a sea-captain, a respectable, good-looking man certainly, but poor, following a calling in which no one can make any sort of figure, an underpaid, perilous, beggarly vocation? She did not deny that Captain Butler came from a highly respectable stock. He had mentioned two members of his family whom Mr. Johnstone perfectly well knew by name. His father had been in the Royal Navy and had served under Collingwood and Lord Exmouth and had died a poor lieutenant.

‘Oh, he’s a gentleman by birth,’ said my aunt, ‘and superior to his position. There’s his calling, out of which, to be sure, he can get a living, so as to be independent of his wife, which must always be the first consideration with every man of spirit. And, then, you have plenty of money for both, and for as many as may come, should ever he find himself out of employment. But what do you know of each other? How can you tell that you will be able to live happily together? What! In a fortnight? Ridiculous! Why, I have lived one-and-twenty years with your uncle, and we don’t even yet understand each other. You have by no means a sweet temper. But what time do you give the poor fellow to find you out in? And he may be quite a fiend himself, for all you know. It needs not much wig to hide a pair of horns. A tail will lie curled up out of sight under a fashionable coat, and your cloven hoof fits any shoe, my dear.’

So she chatted and teased and worried me with her advice and old-fashioned precepts. And then she angered me, and we quarrelled awhile, and afterwards cried and kissed. However, when her visit was ended, I had promised her, in answer to her earnest, almost tearful entreaty, that, though I should consent to engage myself to Captain Butler, I would not marry him until he had returned from his next voyage, which, if he went to the West Indies and South America, would not keep him very long away from me, so that I should have plenty of time to judge of his character whilst he was ashore and abundance of leisure afterward to reflect upon my observations and prepare myself for the very greatest change that can befall a woman.

I did not see Captain Butler again until Thursday. In the brief interval I had made up my mind to accept him at once if he proposed. Oh, my few days of holiday association with him had filled my heart with a passion of love! Not my happiness only—my very life was in his power.

I went to my uncle’s house on Thursday, early in the morning. We were to see poor Will off. We all tried to put on a cheerful air, and Will talked big of the presents he would bring home for his mother and me; but his mother’s eyes were red with a night of secret weeping; and whenever the lad’s sight went to her face his mouth twitched and, if he was speaking, his voice trembled and broke. His father looked often at him.