Chapter I
Love
on the OceanNothing
is so easy as falling in love on a long sea voyage, except falling
out of love. Especially was this the case in the days when the wooden
clippers did finely to land you in Sydney or in Melbourne under the
four full months. We all saw far too much of each other, unless,
indeed, we were to see still more. Our superficial attractions
mutually exhausted, we lost heart and patience in the disappointing
strata which lie between the surface and the bed–rock of most
natures. My own experience was confined to the round voyage of the
Lady Jermyn, in the year 1853. It was no common experience, as was
only too well known at the time. And I may add that I for my part had
not the faintest intention of falling in love on board; nay, after
all these years, let me confess that I had good cause to hold myself
proof against such weakness. Yet we carried a young lady, coming
home, who, God knows, might have made short work of many a better
man!Eva
Denison was her name, and she cannot have been more than nineteen
years of age. I remember her telling me that she had not yet come
out, the very first time I assisted her to promenade the poop. My own
name was still unknown to her, and yet I recollect being quite
fascinated by her frankness and self–possession. She was
exquisitely young, and yet ludicrously old for her years; had been
admirably educated, chiefly abroad, and, as we were soon to discover,
possessed accomplishments which would have made the plainest old maid
a popular personage on board ship. Miss Denison, however, was as
beautiful as she was young, with the bloom of ideal health upon her
perfect skin. She had a wealth of lovely hair, with strange elusive
strands of gold among the brown, that drowned her ears (I thought we
were to have that mode again?) in sunny ripples; and a soul greater
than the mind, and a heart greater than either, lay sleeping
somewhere in the depths of her grave, gray eyes.We
were at sea together so many weeks. I cannot think what I was made of
then!It
was in the brave old days of Ballarat and Bendigo, when ship after
ship went out black with passengers and deep with stores, to bounce
home with a bale or two of wool, and hardly hands enough to reef
topsails in a gale. Nor was this the worst; for not the crew only,
but, in many cases, captain and officers as well, would join in the
stampede to the diggings; and we found Hobson's Bay the congested
asylum of all manner of masterless and deserted vessels. I have a
lively recollection of our skipper's indignation when the pilot
informed him of this disgraceful fact. Within a fortnight, however, I
met the good man face to face upon the diggings. It is but fair to
add that the Lady Jermyn lost every officer and man in the same way,
and that the captain did obey tradition to the extent of being the
last to quit his ship. Nevertheless, of all who sailed by her in
January, I alone was ready to return at the beginning of the
following July.I
had been to Ballarat. I had given the thing a trial. For the most
odious weeks I had been a licensed digger on Black Hill Flats; and I
had actually failed to make running expenses. That, however, will
surprise you the less when I pause to declare that I have paid as
much as four shillings and sixpence for half a loaf of execrable
bread; that my mate and I, between us, seldom took more than a few
pennyweights of gold–dust in any one day; and never once struck
pick into nugget, big or little, though we had the mortification of
inspecting the "mammoth masses" of which we found the
papers full on landing, and which had brought the gold–fever to its
height during our very voyage. With me, however, as with many a young
fellow who had turned his back on better things, the malady was
short–lived. We expected to make our fortunes out of hand, and we
had reckoned without the vermin and the villainy which rendered us
more than ever impatient of delay. In my fly–blown blankets I
dreamt of London until I hankered after my chambers and my club more
than after much fine gold. Never shall I forget my first hot bath on
getting back to Melbourne; it cost five shillings, but it was worth
five pounds, and is altogether my pleasantest reminiscence of
Australia.There
was, however, one slice of luck in store for me. I found the dear old
Lady Jermyn on the very eve of sailing, with a new captain, a new
crew, a handful of passengers (chiefly steerage), and nominally no
cargo at all. I felt none the less at home when I stepped over her
familiar side.In
the cuddy we were only five, but a more uneven quintette I defy you
to convene. There was a young fellow named Ready, packed out for his
health, and hurrying home to die among friends. There was an
outrageously lucky digger, another invalid, for he would drink
nothing but champagne with every meal and at any minute of the day,
and I have seen him pitch raw gold at the sea–birds by the hour
together. Miss Denison was our only lady, and her step–father, with
whom she was travelling, was the one man of distinction on board. He
was a Portuguese of sixty or thereabouts, Senhor Joaquin Santos by
name; at first it was incredible to me that he had no title, so noble
was his bearing; but very soon I realized that he was one of those to
whom adventitious honors can add no lustre. He treated Miss Denison
as no parent ever treated a child, with a gallantry and a courtliness
quite beautiful to watch, and not a little touching in the light of
the circumstances under which they were travelling together. The girl
had gone straight from school to her step–father's estate on the
Zambesi, where, a few months later, her mother had died of the
malaria. Unable to endure the place after his wife's death, Senhor
Santos had taken ship to Victoria, there to seek fresh fortune with
results as indifferent as my own. He was now taking Miss Denison back
to England, to make her home with other relatives, before he himself
returned to Africa (as he once told me) to lay his bones beside those
of his wife. I hardly know which of the pair I see more plainly as I
write—the young girl with her soft eyes and her sunny hair, or the
old gentleman with the erect though wasted figure, the noble
forehead, the steady eye, the parchment skin, the white imperial, and
the eternal cigarette between his shrivelled lips.No
need to say that I came more in contact with the young girl. She was
not less charming in my eyes because she provoked me greatly as I
came to know her intimately. She had many irritating faults. Like
most young persons of intellect and inexperience, she was hasty and
intolerant in nearly all her judgments, and rather given to being
critical in a crude way. She was very musical, playing the guitar and
singing in a style that made our shipboard concerts vastly superior
to the average of their order; but I have seen her shudder at the
efforts of less gifted folks who were also doing their best; and it
was the same in other directions where her superiority was less
specific. The faults which are most exasperating in another are, of
course, one's own faults; and I confess that I was very critical of
Eva Denison's criticisms. Then she had a little weakness for
exaggeration, for unconscious egotism in conversation, and I itched
to tell her so. I felt so certain that the girl had a fine character
underneath, which would rise to noble heights in stress or storm: all
the more would I long now to take her in hand and mould her in little
things, and anon to take her in my arms just as she was. The latter
feeling was resolutely crushed. To be plain, I had endured what is
euphemistically called "disappointment" already; and, not
being a complete coxcomb, I had no intention of courting a second.Yet,
when I write of Eva Denison, I am like to let my pen outrun my tale.
I lay the pen down, and a hundred of her sayings ring in my ears,
with my own contradictious comments, that I was doomed so soon to
repent; a hundred visions of her start to my eyes; and there is the
trade–wind singing in the rigging, and loosening a tress of my
darling's hair, till it flies like a tiny golden streamer in the
tropic sun. There, it is out! I have called her what she was to be in
my heart ever after. Yet at the time I must argue with her—with
her! When all my courage should have gone to love–making, I was
plucking it up to sail as near as I might to plain remonstrance! I
little dreamt how the ghost of every petty word was presently to
return and torture me.So
it is that I can see her and hear her now on a hundred separate
occasions beneath the awning beneath the stars on deck below at noon
or night but plainest of all in the evening of the day we signalled
the Island of Ascension, at the close of that last concert on the
quarter–deck. The watch are taking down the extra awning; they are
removing the bunting and the foot–lights. The lanterns are trailed
forward before they are put out; from the break of the poop we watch
the vivid shifting patch of deck that each lights up on its way. The
stars are very sharp in the vast violet dome above our masts; they
shimmer on the sea; and our trucks describe minute orbits among the
stars, for the trades have yet to fail us, and every inch of canvas
has its fill of the gentle steady wind. It is a heavenly night. The
peace of God broods upon His waters. No jarring note offends the ear.
In the forecastle a voice is humming a song of Eva Denison's that has
caught the fancy of the men; the young girl who sang it so sweetly
not twenty minutes since who sang it again and again to please the
crew she alone is at war with our little world she alone would head a
mutiny if she could."I
hate the captain!" she says again."My
dear Miss Denison!" I begin; for she has always been severe upon
our bluff old man, and it is not the spirit of contrariety alone
which makes me invariably take his part. Coarse he may be, and not
one whom the owners would have chosen to command the Lady Jermyn; a
good seaman none the less, who brought us round the Horn in foul
weather without losing stitch or stick. I think of the ruddy ruffian
in his dripping oilskins, on deck day and night for our sakes, and
once more I must needs take his part; but Miss Denison stops me
before I can get out another word."I
am not dear, and I'm not yours," she cries. "I'm only a
school–girl—you have all but told me so before to–day! If I
were a man—if I were you—I should tell Captain Harris what I
thought of him!""Why?
What has he done now?""Now?
You know how rude he was to poor Mr. Ready this very afternoon!"It
was true. He had been very rude indeed. But Ready also had been at
fault. It may be that I was always inclined to take an opposite view,
but I felt bound to point this out, and at any cost."You
mean when Ready asked him if we were out of our course? I must say I
thought it was a silly question to put. It was the same the other
evening about the cargo. If the skipper says we're in ballast why not
believe him? Why repeat steerage gossip, about mysterious cargoes, at
the cuddy table? Captains are always touchy about that sort of thing.
I wasn't surprised at his letting out."My
poor love stares at me in the starlight. Her great eyes flash their
scorn. Then she gives a little smile—and then a little nod—more
scornful than all the rest."You
never are surprised, are you, Mr. Cole?" says she. "You
were not surprised when the wretch used horrible language in front of
me! You were not surprised when it was a—dying man—whom he
abused!"I
try to soothe her. I agree heartily with her disgust at the epithets
employed in her hearing, and towards an invalid, by the irate
skipper. But I ask her to make allowances for a rough, uneducated
man, rather clumsily touched upon his tender spot. I shall conciliate
her presently; the divine pout (so childish it was!) is fading from
her lips; the starlight is on the tulle and lace and roses of her
pretty evening dress, with its festooned skirts and obsolete
flounces; and I am watching her, ay, and worshipping her, though I do
not know it yet. And as we stand there comes another snatch from the
forecastle:—"What will you do,
love, when I am going.With white sail flowing,The seas beyond?What will you do, love—""They
may make the most of that song," says Miss Denison grimly; "it's
the last they'll have from me. Get up as many more concerts as you
like. I won't sing at another unless it's in the fo'c'sle. I'll sing
to the men, but not to Captain Harris. He didn't put in an appearance
tonight. He shall not have another chance of insulting me."Was
it her vanity that was wounded after all? "You forget,"
said I, "that you would not answer when he addressed you at
dinner.""I
should think I wouldn't, after the way he spoke to Mr. Ready; and he
too agitated to come to table, poor fellow!""Still,
the captain felt the open slight.""Then
he shouldn't have used such language in front of me.""Your
father felt it, too, Miss Denison."I
hear nothing plainer than her low but quick reply:"Mr.
Cole, my father has been dead many; many years; he died before I can
remember. That man only married my poor mother. He sympathizes with
Captain Harris—against me; no father would do that. Look at them
together now! And you take his side, too; oh! I have no patience with
any of you—except poor Mr. Ready in his berth.""But
you are not going.""Indeed
I am. I am tired of you all."And
she was gone with angry tears for which I blamed myself as I fell to
pacing the weather side of the poop—and so often afterwards! So
often, and with such unavailing bitterness!Senhor
Santos and the captain were in conversation by the weather rail. I
fancied poor old Harris eyed me with suspicion, and I wished he had
better cause. The Portuguese, however, saluted me with his customary
courtesy, and I thought there was a grave twinkle in his steady eye."Are
you in deesgrace also, friend Cole?" he inquired in his all but
perfect English."More
or less," said I ruefully.He
gave the shrug of his country—that delicate gesture which is done
almost entirely with the back—a subtlety beyond the power of
British shoulders."The
senhora is both weelful and pivish," said he, mixing the two
vowels which (with the aspirate) were his only trouble with our
tongue. "It is great grif to me to see her growing so unlike her
sainted mother!"He
sighed, and I saw his delicate fingers forsake the cigarette they
were rolling to make the sacred sign upon his breast. He was always
smoking one cigarette and making another; as he lit the new one the
glow fell upon a strange pin that he wore, a pin with a tiny crucifix
inlaid in mosaic. So the religious cast of Senhor Santos was brought
twice home to me in the same moment, though, to be sure, I had often
been struck by it before. And it depressed me to think that so sweet
a child as Eva Denison should have spoken harshly of so good a man as
her step–father, simply because he had breadth enough to sympathize
with a coarse old salt like Captain Harris.I
turned in, however, and I cannot say the matter kept me awake in the
separate state–room which was one luxury of our empty saloon. Alas?
I was a heavy sleeper then.