The two days passed, and the Thursday, and the Friday's parting,
harder for Bessie, as it seemed, than she had thought for. It was hard
to raise her dear little head from my shoulder when the last moment
came, and to rush down stairs to the cab, whose shivering horse and
implacable driver seemed no bad emblem of destiny on that raw October
morning.
I was glad of the lowering sky as I stepped up the gangway to the
ship's deck. "What might have been" went down the cabin stairs with
me; and as I threw my wraps and knapsack into the double state-room I
had chosen I felt like a widower.
It was wonderful to me then, as I sat down on the side of the berth
and looked around me, how the last two weeks had filled all the future
with dreams. "I must have a genius for castle-building," I laughed.
"Well, the reality is cold and empty enough. I'll go up on deck."
On deck, among the piles of luggage, were various metal-covered trunks
marked M----. I remember now watching them as they were stowed away.
But it was with a curious shock, an hour after we had left the dock,
that a turn in my solitary walk on deck brought me face to face with
Fanny Meyrick.
"You here?" she said. "I thought you had sailed in the Russia! Bessie
told me you were to go then."
"Did she know," I asked, "that _you_ were going by this steamer?"
On my life, never was gallantry farther from my thoughts: my question
concerned Bessie alone, but Fanny apparently took it as a compliment,
and looked up gayly: "Oh yes: that was fixed months ago. I told her
about it at Lenox."
"And did she tell you something else?" I asked sharply.
"Oh yes. I was very glad to hear of your good prospect. Do be
congratulated, won't you?"
Rather an odd way to put it, thought I, but it is Fanny Meyrick's way.
"Good prospect!" Heavens! was that the term to apply to my engagement
with Bessie?
I should have insisted on a distincter utterance and a more flattering
expression of the situation had it been any other woman. But a
lingering suspicion that perhaps the subject was a distasteful one to
Fanny Meyrick made me pause, and a few moments after, as some one else
joined her, I left her and went to the smokestack for my cigar.
It was impossible, in the daily monotony of ship-life, to avoid
altogether the young lady whom Fate had thrown in my way. She was a
most provokingly good sailor, too. Other women stayed below or were
carried in limp bundles to the deck at noon; but Fanny, perfectly
poised, with the steady glow in her cheek, was always ready to amuse
or be amused.
I tried, at first, keeping out of her way, with the _Trois
Mousquetaires_ for company. But it seemed to me, as she knew of my
engagement, such avoidance was anything but complimentary to her.
Loyalty to her sex would forbid me to show that I had read her secret.
Why not meet her on the frank, breezy ground of friendship?
Perhaps, after all, there was no secret. Perhaps her feeling was only
one of girlish gratitude, however needless, for pulling her out of the
Hudson River. I did not know.
Nor was I particularly pleased with the companion to whom she
introduced me on our third day out--Father Shamrock, an Irish priest,
long resident in America, and bound now for Maynooth. How he had
obtained an introduction to her I do not know, except in the easy,
fatherly way he seemed to have with every one on board.
"Pshaw!" thought I, "what a nuisance!" for I shared the common
antipathy to his country and his creed. Nor was his appearance
prepossessing--one of Froude's "tonsured peasants," as I looked down
at the square shoulders, the stout, short figure and the broad
beardlessness of the face of the padre. But his voice, rich and
mellow, attracted me in spite of myself. His eyes were sparkling with
kindly humor, and his laugh was irresistible.
A perfect man of the world, with no priestly austerity about him, he
seemed a perpetual anxiety to the two young priests at his heels. They
were on their dignity always, and, though bound to hold him in
reverence as their superior in age and rank, his songs and his gay
jests were evidently as thorns in their new cassocks.
Father Shamrock was soon the star of the ship's company. Perfectly
suave, his gayety had rather the French sparkle about it than the
distinguishing Italian trait, and his easy manner had a dash of
manliness which I had not thought to find. Accomplished in various
tongues, rattling off a gay little _chanson_ or an Irish song, it was
a sight to see the young priests looking in from time to time at the
cabin door in despair as the clock pointed to nine, and Father
Shamrock still sat the centre of a gay and laughing circle.
He had rare tact, too, in talking to women. Of all the ladies on the
Algeria, I question if there were any but the staunchest Protestants.
Some few held themselves aloof at first and declined an introduction.
"Father Shamrock! An Irish priest! How _can_ Miss Meyrick walk with
him and present him as she does?" But the party of recalcitrants grew
less and less, and Fanny Meyrick was very frank in her admiration.
"Convert you?" she laughed over her shoulder to me. "He wouldn't take
the trouble to try."
And I believe, indeed, he would not. His strong social nature was
evidently superior to any ambition of his cloth. He would have made a
famous diplomat but for the one quality of devotion that was lacking.
I use the word in its essential, not in its religious sense--devotion
to an idea, the faith in a high purpose.
We had one anxious day of it, and only one. A gale had driven most of
the passengers to the seclusion of their state-rooms, and left the
dinner-table a desert. Alone in the cabin, Father Shamrock, Fanny
Meyrick, a young Russian and myself: I forget a vigilant duenna, the
only woman on board unreconciled to Father Shamrock. She lay prone on
one of the seats, her face rigid and hands clasped in an agony of
terror. She was afraid, she afterward confessed to me, to go to her
state-room: nearness and voices seemed a necessity to her.
When I joined the party, Father Shamrock, as usual, was the narrator.
But he had dropped out of his voice all the gay humor, and was talking
very soberly. Some story he was telling, of which I gathered, as he
went on, that it was of a young lady, a rich and brilliant society
woman. "Shot right through the heart at Chancellorsville, and he the
only brother. They two, orphans, were all that were left of the
family. He was her darling, just two years younger than she.
"I went to see her, and found her in an agony. She had not kissed him
when he left her: some little laughing tiff between them, and she had
expected to see him again before his regiment marched. She threw
herself on her knees and made confession; and then she took a holy
vow: if the saints would grant her once more to behold his body, she
would devote herself hereafter to God's holy Church.
"She gathered all her jewels together in a heap and cast them at my
feet. 'Take them, Father, for the Church: if I find him I shall not
wear them again--or if I do not find him.'
"I went with her to the front of battle, and we found him after a
time. It was a search, but we found his grave, and we brought him home
with us. Poor boy! beyond recognition, except for the ring he wore;
but she gave him the last kiss, and then she was ready to leave the
world. She took the vows as Sister Clara, the holy vows of poverty and
charity."
"But, Father," said Fanny, with a new depth in her eyes, "did she not
die behind the bars? To be shut up in a convent with that grief at her
heart!"
"Bars there were none," said the Father gently. "She left her vocation
to me, and I decided for her to become a Sister of Mercy. I have
little sympathy," with a shrug half argumentative, half
deprecatory--"but little sympathy with the conventual system for
spirits like hers. She would have wasted and worn away in the offices
of prayer. She needed _action_. And she had the full of it in her
calling. She went from bedside to bedside of the sick and dying--here
a child in a fever; there a widow-woman in the last stages of
consumption--night after night, and day after day, with no rest, no
thought of herself."
"Oh, I have seen her," I could not help interposing, "in a city car. A
shrouded figure that was conspicuous even in her serge dress. She read
a book of _Hours_ all the time, but I caught one glimpse of her eyes:
they were very brilliant."
"Yes," sighed the Father, "it was an unnatural brightness. I was
called away to Montreal, or I should never have permitted the
sacrifice. She went where-ever the worst cases were of contagion and
poverty, and she would have none to relieve her at her post. So, when
I returned after three months' absence, I was shocked at the change:
she was dying of their family disease. 'It is better, so,' she said,
'dear Father. It was only the bullet that saved Harry from it, and it
would have been sure to come to me at last, after some opera or ball.'
She died last winter--so patient and pure, and such a saintly
sufferer!"
The Father wiped his eyes. Why should I think of Bessie? Why should
the Sister's veiled figure and pale ardent face rise before me as if
in warning?
Of just such overwhelming sacrifice was my darling capable were her
life's purpose wrecked. Something there was in the portrait of the
sweet singleness, the noble scorn of self, the devotion unthinking,
uncalculating, which I knew lay hidden in her soul.
The Father warmed into other themes, all in the same key of mother
Church. I listened dreamily, and to my own thoughts as well.
He pictured the priest's life of poverty, renunciation, leaving the
world of men, the polish and refinement of scholars, to take the
confidences and bear the burdens of grimy poverty and ignorance.
Surely, I thought, we do wrong to shut such men out of our sympathies,
to label them "Dangerous." Why should we turn the cold shoulder? are
we so true to our ideals? But one glance at the young priests as they
sat crouching in the outer cabin, telling their beads and crossing
themselves with the vehemence of a frightened faith, was enough.
Father Shamrock was no type. Very possibly his own life would show but
coarse and poor against the chaste, heroic portraits he had drawn. He
had the dramatic faculty: for the moment he was what he related--that
was all.
Our vigilant duenna had gradually risen to a sitting posture, and
drawn nearer and nearer, and as the narrator's voice sank into silence
she said with effusion, "Well, _you_ are a good man, I guess."
But Fanny Meyrick sat as if entranced. The gale had died away, and, to
break the spell, I asked her if she wanted to take one peep on deck,
to see if there was a star in the heavens.
There was no star, but a light rising and falling with the ship's
motion, which was pronounced by a sailor to be Queenstown light, shone
in the distance.
The Father was to leave us there. "We shall not make it to-night,"
said the sailor. "It is too rough. Early in the morning the passengers
will land."
"I wish," said Fanny with a deep sigh, as if wakening from a dream,
"that the Church of Rome was at the bottom of the sea!"