‘And I am never to see you at my house because I am alone!’
‘Dearest, I will fetch you to-morrow at eleven, and then we can have a talk on the subject of men’s visits to their sweethearts who live alone.’
He pressed my hand and left me.
Next day he talked to me as he had promised. I listened with love and interest, though I secretly thought it no more than a sort of hair-splitting on the part of society to insist that a girl should not receive her sweetheart alone in her own house. I was alone with Tom now. I had been alone with him at the Brunswick Hotel. What was the difference between my being alone in the streets with him and my being with him at my rooms at home? Yet he said there was a difference, and, of course, he was right. I listened to him deferentially, with my head hung. Had it been my aunt who uttered the opinions he delivered, I should have argued with her, flashed my most spirited looks upon her, flung from her, and, had it been possible, proved myself right by doing the very thing which she declared the world thought improper.
Friends who had known me earlier would have believed that love had taken the spirit out of me; but the truth was in Tom I had found my master. We were constantly together. Scarcely a day passed whilst he was in London without our meeting. I made him sit to a painter of miniature portraits in Regent Street, and the same artist took my likeness for my sweetheart to carry away to sea with him. They were both beautiful little pictures. My eyes seemed to glow out of the ivory, and Tom’s face was to the life, happy, careless, loving.
It was settled by this time that we were to be married on his return. He hoped that he might not have to go to sea again after next voyage. If he went, he would take me with him. The scheme provided for my being at his side, as his wife, in any case. But he owned that, though he had recommended a sea voyage to me, and though he had said he would take me as his wife to sea with him, he had far rather that I kept on dry ground. The sea was no place for woman. It was hurdled with perils. It was a ceaseless jump of risks from one port to another. Here, then, was one reason for our not being married until he returned.
But another and more controlling one, though he never betrayed it in words, was his desire that I should have plenty of leisure to reflect upon the step I had consented to take. I could not now but see things as he did, and, indeed, I hope I could never have been so unmaidenly as to give the smallest expression to my secret wishes; but in my heart of hearts I was more vexed than I can express by this delay, which I attributed largely to my uncle’s influence with Tom. When two people are in love, and are to be married, there will be impatience. Whether the man or the woman is or should be the more impatient, I don’t know. I own that deep in my heart I was bitterly impatient. Tom would not sail till August; we had plenty of time to get married in; several months must pass before he could return, and, like a child, I wanted my toy at once. I wanted to feel that he belonged to me; that, though he was absent, an invisible bond united us. I was jealous of him. I said to myself: At the place he is sailing to he may meet with some woman whom he will think fairer and discover to be richer than I. Are not sailors faithless? All the songs and stories about them represent them so. Then I thought of my father, and abhorred myself for being visited with such thoughts, and cried like a fool to think how mean was my heart, that loving, nay, I may say adoring my Tom as I did, I could yet suppose when out of sight he would forget me.
Well, the time came round when the Arab Chief was nearly ready, and when my sweetheart must go to Sunderland to carry her to the Mersey, there to load for Rio Janeiro. I never could understand business, least of all the business of the sea, and would listen to him whilst he talked about his venture, vainly endeavouring to grasp his meaning in the full. But I gathered from his conversations with my uncle that he was very sanguine, and that, in any case, there could be no risks, as he had taken care to insure considerably in excess of his stake. I recollect, on one occasion, when we were dining at my aunt’s, my uncle, in talking with Tom about his venture, suggested that he erred by insuring so high above the value of the risk.
‘But why?’ said Tom. ‘At all events, I pay handsomely for the privilege of protecting myself up to the hilt.’
‘True,’ said the lawyer, ‘but always in case of loss there is something in over-insurance that vitiates—perhaps to one’s prejudice only, mind—the well-seeming of this act of self-protection.’