THE LONDON PACKET
Mary laughed with him, but she was not comfortable. What she had seen
of the stranger, a man plain in feature and ordinary in figure, one
whom the eye would not have remarked in a crowd, did not especially
commend him. And certainly he had not shown himself equal to a
difficult situation. But the effort he had made to come to her help
appealed to her generosity, and she was not sure how far she formed a
part of the comedy. So her laughter was from the lips only, and brief.
Then, “My uncle’s nephew?” she asked thoughtfully.
“His wife’s nephew. Your uncle married a Basset.”
“But why did he send him to meet me?”
“For a simple reason—I should say that he had no one else to send. Your
uncle is not a man of many friends.”
“I understood that some one would meet the boat in London,” she said.
“But I expected a woman.”
“I fancy the woman would be to seek,” he replied. “And Basset is a kind
of tame cat at the Gatehouse. He lives there a part of the year, though
he has an old place of his own up the country. He’s a Staffordshire man
born and bred, and I dare say a good fellow in his way, but a dull dog!
a dull dog! Are you sure that the wind does not catch you?”
She said that she was very comfortable, and they were silent awhile,
listening to the monotonous slapping of a rope against the mast and the
wash of the waves as they surged past the beam. A single light at the
end of the breakwater shone in the darkness behind them. She marked the
light grow smaller and more distant, and her thoughts went back to the
convent school, to her father, to the third-floor where for a time they
had been together, to his care for her—feeble and inefficient, to his
illness. And a lump rose in her throat, her hands gripped one another
as she strove to hide her feelings. In her heart she whispered a
farewell. She was turning her back on her father’s grave. The last
tendril which bound her to the old life was breaking.
The light vanished, and gradually the girl’s reflections sought a new
channel. They turned from the past to the present, and dwelt on the man
beside her, who had not only thought of her comfort, who had not only
saved her from some hours of loneliness, but had probably wrought this
change in her life. This was the third time only that she had seen him.
Once, some days after that memorable evening, he had called at the
Hôtel Lambert, and her employer had sent for her. He had greeted her
courteously in the Princess’s presence, had asked her kindly if she had
heard from England, and had led her to believe that she would hear. And
she remembered with a blush that the Princess had looked from one to
the other with a smile, and afterwards had had another manner for her.
Meanwhile the man wondered what she was thinking, and waited for her to
give him the clue. But she was so long silent that his patience wore
thin. It was not for this, it was not to sit silent beside her, that he
had taken a night journey and secured these cosey seats.
“Well?” he said at last.
She turned to him, her eyes wet with tears. “It seems so strange,” she
murmured, “to be leaving all and going into a world in which I know no
one.”
“Except the head of your family.”
“Except you! I suppose that I owe it to you that I am here?”
“I should be happy if I thought so,” he replied, with careful
reticence. “But we set a stone rolling, we do not know where it falls.
You will soon learn—Basset will tell you, if I don’t—that your uncle
and I are not on good terms. Therefore it is unlikely that he was moved
by what I said.”
“But you said something?”
“If I did,” he answered, smiling, “it was against the grain—who likes
to put his finger between the door and the jamb? And let me caution
you. Your uncle will not suffer meddling on my part, still less a
reminder of it. Therefore, as you are going to owe all to him, you will
do well to be silent about me.”
She was sure that she owed all to him, and she might have said so, but
at that moment the boat changed its course and the full force of the
wind struck them. The salt spray whipped and stung their faces. Her
cloak flew out like a balloon, her scarf pennon-wise, the tarpaulin
flapped like some huge bird. He had to spring to the screen, to adjust
it to the new course, to secure and tuck in her cloak—and all in haste,
with exclamations and laughter, while Mary, sharing the joy of the
struggle, and braced by the sting of the salt wind, felt her heart
rise. How kind he was, and how strong. How he towered above ordinary
men. How safe she felt in his care.
When they were settled anew, she asked him to tell her something about
the Gatehouse.
“It’s a lonely place,” he said. “It is quite out of the world. I don’t
know, indeed, how you will exist after the life you have led.”
“The life I have led!” she protested. “But that is absurd! Though you
saw me in the Princess’s salon, you know that my life had nothing in
common with hers. I was downstairs no more than three or four times,
and then merely to interpret. My life was spent between whitewashed
walls, on bare floors. I slept in a room with twenty children, ate with
forty—onion soup and thick tartines. The evening I saw you I wore shoes
which the maid lent me. And with all that I was thankful, most
thankful, to have such a refuge. The great people who met at the
Princess’s——”
“And who thought that they were making history!” he laughed. “Did you
know that? Did you know that the Princess was looking to them to save
the last morsel of Poland?”
“No,” she said. “I did not know. I am very ignorant. But if I were a
man, I should love to do things like that.”
“I believe you would!” he replied. “Well, there are crusades in
England. Only I fear that you will not be in the way of them.”
“And I am not a princess! But tell me, please, what are they?”
“You will not be long before you come upon one,” he replied, a hint of
derision in his tone. “You will see a placard in the streets, ‘_Shall
the people’s bread be taxed?_’ Not quite so romantic as the
independence of Poland? But I can tell you that heads are quite as
likely to be broken over it.”
“Surely,” she said, “there can be only one answer to that.”
“Just so,” he replied dryly. “But what is the answer? The land claims
high prices that it may thrive; the towns claim cheap bread that they
may live. Each says that the country depends upon it. ‘England
self-supporting!’ says one. ‘England the workshop of the world!’ says
the other.”
“I begin to see.”
“‘The land is the strength of the country,’ argues the squire. ‘Down
with monopoly,’ cries the cotton lord. Then each arms himself with a
sword lately forged and called ‘Philanthropy,’ and with that he
searches for chinks in the other’s armor. ‘See how factories work the
babes, drive the women underground, ruin the race,’ shout the squires.
‘Vote for the land and starvation wages,’ shout the mill-owners.”
“But does no one try to find the answer?” she asked timidly. “Try to
find out what is best for the people?”
“Ah!” he rejoined, “if by the people you mean the lower classes, they
cry, ‘Give us not bread, but votes!’ And the squires say that that is
what the traders who have just got votes don’t mean to give them; and
so, to divert their attention, dangle cheap bread before their noses!”
Mary sighed. “I am afraid that I must give it up,” she said. “I am so
ignorant.”
“Well,” he replied thoughtfully. “Many are puzzled which side to take,
and are waiting to see how the cat jumps. In the meantime every fence
is placarded with ‘Speed the Plough!’ on one side, and ‘The Big Loaf!’
on the other. The first man you meet thinks the landlord a devourer of
widows’ houses; to the next the mill-owner is an ogre grinding men’s
bones to make his bread. Even at the Gatehouse I doubt if you will
escape the excitement, though there is not a field of wheat within a
mile of it!”
“To me it is like a new world,” she said.
“Then, when you are in the new world,” he replied, smiling as he rose,
“do not forget Columbus! But here is the lad to tell you that your tea
is ready.”
He repented when Mary had left him that he had not made better use of
his time. It had been his purpose to make such an impression on the
girl as might be of use in the future, and he wondered why he had not
devoted himself more singly to this; why he had allowed minutes which
might have been given to intimate subjects to be wasted in a dry
discussion. But there was a quality in Mary that did not lightly invite
to gallantry—a gravity and a balance that, had he looked closely into
the matter, might have explained his laches.
And in fact he had builded better than he knew, for while he reproached
himself, Mary, safe within the tiny bathing machine which the packet
company called a cabin, was giving much thought to him. The dip-candle,
set within a horn lantern, threw its light on the one comfortable
object, the tea-tray, seated beside which she reviewed what had
happened, and found it all interesting; his meeting with her, his
thought for her, the glimpses he had given her of things beyond the
horizon of the convent school, even his diversion into politics. He was
not on good terms with her uncle, and it was unlikely that she would
see more of him. But she was sure that she would always remember his
appearance on the threshold of her new life, that she would always
recall with gratitude this crossing and the kindness which had lapped
her about and saved her from loneliness.
In her eyes he figured as one of the brilliant circle of the Hôtel
Lambert. For her he played a part in great movements and high
enterprises such as those which he had revealed to her. His light
treatment of them, his air of detachment, had, indeed, chilled her at
times; but these were perhaps natural in one who viewed from above and
from a distance the ills which it was his task to treat. How ignorant
he must think her! How remote from the plane on which he lived, the
standards by which he judged, the objects at which he aimed! Yet he had
stooped to explain things to her and to make them clear.
She spent an hour deep in thought, and, strange as the life of the ship
was to her, she was deaf to the creaking of the timbers, and the surge
of the waves as they swept past the beam. At intervals hoarse orders, a
rush of feet across the deck, the more regular tramp of rare
passengers, caught her attention, only to lose it as quickly. It was
late when she roused herself. She saw that the candle was burning low,
and she began to make her arrangements for the night.
Midway in them she paused, and colored, aware that she knew his tread
from the many that had passed. The footstep ceased. A hand tapped at
her door. “Yes?” she said.
“We shall be in the river by daybreak,” Audley announced. “I thought
that you might like to come on deck early. You ought not to miss the
river from the Nore to the Pool.”
“Thank you,” she answered.
“You shouldn’t miss it,” he persisted. “Greenwich especially!”
“I shall be there,” she replied. “It is very good of you. Good-night.”
He went away. After all, he was the only man on board shod like a
gentleman; it had been odd if she had not known his step! And for going
on deck early, why should she not? Was she to miss Greenwich because
Lord Audley went to a good bootmaker?
So when Peter Basset, still pale and qualmish, came on deck in the
early morning, a little below the Pool, the first person he saw was the
girl whom he had come to escort. She was standing high above him on the
captain’s bridge, her hands clasping the rail, her hair blown about and
shining golden in the sunshine. Lord Audley’s stately form towered
above her. He was pointing out this and that, and they were talking
gaily; and now and again the captain spoke to them, and many were
looking at them. She did not see Basset; he was on the deck below,
standing amid the common crowd, and so he was free to look at her as he
pleased. He might be said not to have seen her before, and what he saw
now bewildered, nay, staggered him. Unwillingly, and to please his
uncle, he had come to meet a girl of whom they knew no more than this,
that, rescued from some backwater of Paris life, into which a weak and
shiftless father had plunged her, she had earned her living, if she had
earned it at all, in a dependent capacity. He had looked to find her
one of two things; either flashy and underbred, with every fault an
Englishman might consider French, or a nice mixture of craft and
servility. He had not been able to decide which he would prefer.
Instead he saw a girl tall, slender, and slow of movement, with eyes
set under a fine width of brow and grave when they smiled, a chin
fuller than perfect beauty required, a mouth a little large, a perfect
nose. Auburn hair, thick and waving, drooped over each temple, and
framed a face as calm as it was fair. “Surely a pearl found on a
midden!” he thought. And as the thought passed through his mind, Mary
looked down. Her eyes roved for a moment over the crowded deck, where
some, like Basset, returned her gaze with interest, while others sought
their baggage or bawled for missing companions. He was not a man, it
has been said, to stand out in a crowd, and her eyes travelled over him
without seeing him. Audley spoke to her, she lifted her eyes, she
looked ashore again. But the unheeding glance which had not deigned to
know him stung Basset! He dubbed her, with all her beauty, proud and
hard. Still—to be such and to have sprung from such a life! It was
marvellous.
He knew nothing of the convent school with its hourly discipline
lasting through years. He did not guess that the obstinacy which had
been weakness in the father was strength in the child. Much less could
he divine that the improvidence of that father had become a beacon,
warning the daughter off the rocks which had been fatal to him! Mary
was no miracle, but neither was she proud or hard.
They had passed Erith, and Greenwich with its stately pile and formal
gardens glittering in the sunshine of an April morning. The ripple of a
westerly wind, meeting the flood, silvered the turbid surface. A
hundred wherries skimmed like water-flies hither and thither, long
lines of colliers fringed the wharves, tall China clippers forged
slowly up under a scrap of foresail, dumb barges deep laden with hay or
Barclay’s Entire, moved mysteriously with the tide. On all sides hoarse
voices bawled orders or objurgations. Charmed with the gayety, the
movement, the color, Mary could not take her eyes from the scene. The
sunshine, the leap of life, the pulse of spring, moved in her blood and
put to flight the fears that had weighed on her at nightfall. She told
herself with elation that this was England, this was her native land,
this was her home.
Meanwhile Audley’s mind took another direction. He reflected that in a
few minutes he must part from the girl, and must trust henceforth to
the impression he had made. For some hours he had scarcely given a
thought to Basset, but he recalled him now, and he searched for him in
the throng below. He found him at last, pressed against the rail
between a fat woman with a basket and a crying child. Their eyes met.
My lord glanced away, but he could not refrain from a smile as he
pictured the poor affair the other had made of his errand. And Basset
saw the smile and read its meaning, and though he was not
self—assertive, though he was, indeed, backward to a fault, anger ran
through his veins. To have travelled three hundred miles in order to
meet this girl, to have found her happy in another’s company, and to
have accepted the second place—the position had vexed him even under
the qualms of illness. This morning, and since he had seen her, it
stirred in him an unwonted resentment. He d—d Audley under his breath,
disengaged himself from the basket which the fat woman was thrusting
into his ribs, lifted the child aside. He escaped below to collect his
effects.
But in a short time he recovered his temper. When the boat began to go
about in the crowded Pool and Mary reluctantly withdrew her eyes from
the White Tower, darkened by the smoke and the tragedies of twenty
generations, she found him awaiting them at the foot of the ladder. He
was still pale, and the girl’s conscience smote her. For many hours she
had not given him a thought. “I hope you are better,” she said gently.
“Horrid thing, _mal de mer!_” remarked my lord, with a gleam of humor
in his eye.
“Thank you, I am quite right this morning,” Basset answered.
“You go from Euston Grove, I suppose?”
“Yes. The morning train starts in a little over an hour.”
No more was said, and they went ashore together. Audley, an old
traveller, and one whose height and presence gave weight to his orders,
saw to Mary’s safety in the crowd, shielded her from touts and
tide-waiters, took the upper hand. He watched the aproned porters
disappearing with the baggage in the direction of the Custom House, and
a thought struck him. “I am sorry that my servant is not here,” he
said. “He would see our things through without troubling us.” His eyes
met Basset’s.
Basset disdained to refuse. “I will do it,” he said. He received the
keys and followed the baggage.
Audley looked at Mary and laughed. “I think you’ll find him useful,” he
said. “Takes a hint and is not too forward.”
“For shame!” she cried. “It is very good of him to go.” But she could
not refrain from a smile.
“Well trained,” Audley continued in a whimsical tone, “fetches and
carries, barks at the name of Peel and growls at the name of Cobden,
gives up a stick when required, could be taught to beg—by the right
person.”
She laughed—she could not resist his manner. “But you are not very
kind,” she said. “Please to call a—whatever we need. He shall not do
everything.”
“Everything?” Lord Audley echoed. “He should do nothing,” in a lower
tone, “if I had my way.”
Mary blushed.