MARIE'S SWEETHEART
My father went to London next day with Captain Burke. I denied myself
to callers, and until my father came back remained alone with my old
nurse, once or twice taking a ramble along the seashore when the sun
shone; but my health was bad, and I had as little taste for walking as
for company.
I suffered from a sort of spiritlessness and a dull indifference to
things. My health was the cause of my low-heartedness: but there were
many reasons now why I should feel wretched. It was not the merely
leaving my father and my home for a twelvemonth and longer, to wander
about the ocean in a ship in search of colour for my cheeks and light
for my eyes and strength for my voice; but for my health I should have
been married in the previous October; and now my marriage must be put
off till the sea had made me strong, and I was to be sundered from the
man I loved for months and months.
My betrothal had happened whilst my old nurse Burke was away; it was
therefore news to her, and she listened to all about it with eager,
affectionate attention. I told her that my sweetheart was Mr. Archibald
Moore, the son of a private banker in the City of London. I had met
him at a ball in the neighbourhood, and within a month of that we were
engaged. He was the sweetest, dearest, handsomest--I found I did not
want words when it came to my praising him and speaking of my love.
She said: 'Does he often come to see you, Miss Marie?'
'Often. Every week. He is occupied with his father in the bank, and can
only spare from Saturday to Monday.'
'Will he be here next Saturday?'
'I hope so.'
'Dear heart! Oh, Miss Marie, I have a thought: will not his father
spare him to sail with us, so that you can be together?'
I shook my head.
'But why not?'
'Father would not hear of it.'
She reflected and exclaimed, 'And Sir Mortimer would be quite right.
To be sure it would not do. Is it not a pity that we have to live for
our neighbours? Neighbours have broken folks' hearts, as well as their
fortunes. Why shouldn't you two be together on board my husband's ship?
But the neighbour says No, and people have to live for him. Drat the
prying, squinting starer into one's windows! he forces us to dress out
a better table than our purses can afford, and to give balls when we
ought to be cutting down the weekly bills. But he don't like the sea,
my dear. There are no neighbours at sea. Unfortunately the wretch
stops ashore; people have to come back, and so he has 'em again!'
Mrs. Burke made much of Mr. Moore's portrait. She had never seen a
handsomer gentleman. What was his age? I answered 'Thirty.' 'All the
sense,' said she, 'that a man's likely to have he'll have got between
thirty and forty. It'll comfort you, Miss Marie, to remember that Mr.
Moore's thirty when you're away. He's old enough to know what he's
about: he's made up his mind; there'll be no swerving.'
This was a sort of gabble to please me. She knew my nature, and when
and how to say just the sort of thing to set my spirits dancing. In
truth the part of my proposed banishment hardest to bear was the fear
that a long absence would cool the heart of the man I loved.
On Friday Mrs. Burke left us to rejoin her husband, whose home was in
Stepney, and on that day my father returned. He was in good spirits.
He had seen the 'Lady Emma' and thought her a fine ship. She was
classed high, and was yacht-like as a model. Mr. Moore had accompanied
him and Captain Burke to the docks, and was wonderfully pleased with
the vessel and her accommodation.
'We've got over the difficulty of a doctor,' said my father.
'How?' I answered.
'Burke has consented to engage one. I told him if he would carry a
surgeon, by which I mean feed and accommodate him in the ship, I would
bear the other charges. He has a month before him, and may find a man
who wants a change of air and who'll give his services for a cabin
and food. Or, which is more likely, he'll meet with some intelligent
young gentleman who wants to try his 'prentice hand on sailors before
starting in practice ashore. Doctors find sailors useful as subjects;
they can experiment on them without professional anxiety as to the
result.'
Now that it was as good as settled I was to sail in the 'Lady Emma,'
I looked forward to meeting Mr. Moore next day with dread and misery.
I was going away alone. All the risks of the sea lay before me. I was
low and poor in health. Who could be sure that the ocean would do for
me all that the doctors had promised? Who was to say it would let me
return alive? I might never meet my love again. When I said good-bye to
the man who by this time should have been my husband, it might be for
ever, and the thought made the prospect of meeting him next day almost
insupportable.
He found me alone in the drawing-room. The servant admitted him and
closed the door. I stood up very white and crying; he took me in his
arms and kissed me, led me to a chair and sat beside me, holding my
hand and nursing it, and looking into my face for a little while,
scarcely able to speak. How shall I describe him, whose love for me,
as you shall presently read, was such as to make my love for him,
when I think of him as he sat beside me that day, as I follow him in
memory afterwards, too deep for human expression? He was tall, fair,
eyes of a dark blue, deep but gentle, and easily impassioned. He wore
a large yellow moustache, and was as perfectly the model of an English
gentleman in appearance as Captain Burke was a merchant skipper.
He began immediately on the subject of my voyage.
'It's hard we should be parted; but I like your little ship, Marie.
I've not met your old nurse, but I judge from what your father tells me
you could not be in better and safer hands. Captain Burke seems a fine
fellow--a thorough, practical seaman. I wish I could accompany you.'
'Oh, Archie, I shall be so long alone!'
'Ay, but you're to get well, dearest. I've thought the scheme over
thoroughly. If there's nothing for it but a voyage as the doctors
insist, your father's plans, your old nurse's suggestion, could not
be bettered. Who would look after you on board a big steamer? There
is nobody to accompany you--no relative, nobody we know, no party of
people I can hear of to entrust you to--making, I mean, such a voyage
as the doctors advise. I should be distracted when you were gone in
thinking of you as alone on a steamship at sea, with not a soul to take
the least interest in you saving the captain; and captains, I believe,
do not very much love these obligations. Civility, of course, everybody
expects, but a big ship to look after is a big business to attend to.'
'It will be a terribly long voyage.'
'To Valparaiso, and then to Sydney and Algoa Bay, and home. About
fourteen months. So Burke calculates it. A long time, Marie; but if it
is to make you strong, it will not be too long.'
In this wise we talked; then, there being two hours of daylight left,
I put on my hat and jacket and, taking my lover's arm, went with
him slowly down the great gap in the cliffs to the seashore. It was
sheltered down here. The yellow sunshine lay upon the brown sand, and
flashed in the lifting lengths of seaweed writhing amidst the surf,
and had a sense of April warmth, though it was a keen wind that then
blew--a northerly wind, strong, with a hurry of white clouds like
endless flocks of sheep, scampering southwards. The sands made a noble
promenade, surf-furrowed and hard as wood; the breakers tumbled close
beside us with a loud roar of thunder, and exquisite was the picture of
the trending cliffs, snowclad, gleaming with a delicate moonlike light
in the pale airy blue distance. All sights and sounds of sky and sea
appealed to me now with a meaning I had never before found in them. I
would stop my lover as we walked, to observe the swift and beautiful
miracle of the moulding of a breaker as it arched out of the troubled
brine, soaring, into a snowstorm, arching headlong to the sands with
the foam flying from its rushing peak like white feathers streaming
from a dazzling line of helmets; and once or twice as we talked, I
would pause to mark the flight of the gulls stemming the wind aslant in
curves of beauty, or sailing seawards on level, tremorless wings, and
flinging a salt ocean song with their short raw cries through the harsh
bass and storming accompaniment of the surf.
'If the breeze does not make me strong here, why should the sea make me
strong elsewhere?' I said.
'It is the change. I have heard of desperate cases made well by travel.'
'It is hard! To think that my health should force me to that!' I
exclaimed, pointing to a little vessel that had rounded out of a point
two miles distant, and was lifting the white seas to the level of her
bows as she sank and soared before the fresh wind, every sail glowing
like a star, her rigging gleaming like golden wire, her decks sparkling
when she inclined them towards us, as though the glass and brass about
her were rubies and diamonds. 'I wonder if she will ever return,
Archie?'
'Why not? Cheer up, dearest.'
We watched her till she had shrunk into a little square of dim orange,
with the freckled green running in hardening ridges southwards, where
the shadow of the early February evening was deepening like smoke,
making the ocean distance past the sail look as wide again to the
imagination as the truth was. I shuddered and involuntarily pressed my
lover's arm.
'The wind is too cold for you,' he said, and we slowly returned home
up through the great split in the cliff amongst whose hollows and
shoulders the roar of the surf was echoed back in quick, sudden,
intermittent notes like the sound of guns at sea.
From this date until I sailed my time was wholly occupied in preparing
for the voyage. I went to London with my father to shop; Mrs. Burke
accompanied us, and half our purchases were owing to her advice.
Fortunately for her, as the wife of a sailor who was able to take
her to sea with him, she was childless, and could afford to give me
much of her time. They reckoned I was to be away fourteen months, but
Captain Burke advised us, having regard to the character of the voyage,
especially to the passage from Valparaiso to Sydney, to stock for a
round trip of eighteen months: this he thought would provide for a
good margin. Clothes for all the climates, from the roasting calms of
the line down to the frost-black gales of the Horn, were purchased;
many delicacies were laid in--a hundred elegant trifles of wine
and condiments, of sweetmeats and potted stuffs, to supplement the
captain's plain table or to find me a relish for some hungry howling
hour when the galley fire should be washed out. Mr. Moore wrote that he
frequently visited the ship, and that he and Mrs. Burke between them
were making my cabin as comfortable as my old nurse's foresight and
experience could manage.
So went by this wretched time of waiting and of preparation.
About a fortnight before the ship sailed my father received a letter
from Captain Burke, telling him that he had engaged a surgeon. His name
was Owen. His age he said was about forty-three; he was a widower.
The loss of his wife and two daughters three years before this period
had broken him down; he was unable to practise; had travelled in the
hopes of distracting his mind, but his means were slender and he was
unable to be long away or go far; yet when he endeavoured to resume
work he found himself unequal to his professional calls. He thereupon
sold his practice and had lived for some months in retirement upon a
trifling income. Having seen Captain Burke's advertisement he offered
his services in exchange for a free voyage. The captain described him
as a gentlemanly man, his credentials excellent, and his experience
considerable.