STEPHEN CHARKE
A year before this momentous day when Arabella Waldron was to set sail
for India in her uncle's full-rigged ship, the Emperor of the Moon,
there had come to her that supreme joy which is the most sweet
experience of a young girl's life. The man she was madly in love with
had asked her to be his wife, and, so far as it was possible to
forecast the future, it seemed that before them both there stretched a
long vista of happy years to be spent together, or as many years
together as a sailor and his wife can pass during the greater part of
their lives. Yet, who can foretell the future--even so much as what
to-morrow may bring forth? To-day we are here, to-morrow we are gone.
A bicycle accident has done for us, or we have caught a fever or
pneumonia, and we are no more. How, then, was Bella to know that
events would so shape themselves that, ere she had been a year engaged
to her future husband, she would be on board the _Emperor of the
Moon_, bound for the other side of the world, and that during her
passage in the good old ship, named after an ancient play--a
representation of which one of the late owners had witnessed in his
boyhood--she would encounter such calamities and perils? But let us
not anticipate. Rather, instead, let us describe who Bella was, and
how she came to love and to be loved, to be wooed and won.
Our English girl! The girl fairly tall, and full to the brim with
health; full, too, of a liking for all exercise which befits the
dawning woman--for boating, riding, walking, cycling: not ashamed to
acknowledge that she likes a good dance and that she has a good
appetite for a ball supper; one who is, withal, not a fool! Where in
all the world can you find anything better than that--better than the
honest girls who have been our mothers, are our wives, and, please
God, are what our daughters will be?
Such a one was Bella Waldron. She could take a scull--and pull it,
too--as well as any of her sisters whom you shall meet 'twixt Richmond
and Windsor; she could cycle thirty miles a day, eat a good dinner
afterwards, and then go to a dance in the evening; and she thought
nothing of walking from West Kensington to Piccadilly or Regent
Street, with a glance at the Kensington High Street shops on
her way!--especially when the winter remnant sales were on and
advertised daily in glowing terms. Of riding she knew little, because
horse-exercise is a more or less expensive luxury, and also because an
income of £600 a year does not allow much in the way of luxuries, even
when there are only two people in the family and two servants (with an
odd boy) kept. And that sum represented Mrs. Waldron's income.
Bella's mother had been a Miss Pooley, who had married the late
Commander Waldron (retired with the brevet rank of captain), and to
this lady there remained only one near relative, besides Bella, at the
time this veracious narrative opens. Now, this gentleman merits a
slight description, not only because he plays a considerable part in
those adventures and tribulations which, later on, befell the girl,
but also because he occupied a position almost unique and,
consequently, conspicuous in these modern days. Fifty--nay, thirty
years ago, there would not have been anything peculiar in the career
he followed; but now, with the twentieth century close upon us, that
career was almost a singular one.
Captain Pooley was a sea captain--a mercantile sea captain--owning two
ships of his own, and always in command of one of them. That which he
now commanded was the very _Emperor of the Moon_ of which you have
already heard, and of which, if you follow this narrative, you will
hear a great deal more; the other was a brig called _Sophy_, which
will not figure at all in these pages. Now Captain Pooley, as he was
called by everybody, though, of course, he had no right whatever to
that distinctive appellation, had as a young man possessed an
extraordinary love for the sea, so intense a love, indeed, that he,
not being able to obtain a nomination for the Royal Navy, had induced
his father to apprentice him to the merchant service. Later in
life--one must be brief in these preliminary descriptions!--he had,
after obtaining all his certificates, purchased one after the other,
with some little money he had inherited, shares in first the one ship
and then the second, and eventually, by aid of savings and successful
trading, had become the entire owner of both. For the rest--to be
again brief--he was a gentleman in manner and in feelings, while in
his person he was a handsome, burly man, with the brightest of blue
eyes, a vast shock of remarkably white hair above a good-looking,
ruddy, tan-brown face; and was also the possessor of a smile which
appeared more often than not upon his good-humoured countenance, and
helped to make him welcome wherever he went, both at home and abroad.
He was, it should be added, a married man, but childless, and it was
not unusual for him to occasionally take his wife on the voyages he
made for the purpose of transporting the goods which he sold in
distant parts of the world, as well as for the purpose of purchasing
other goods for sale in England. Otherwise, Mrs. Pooley remained at
home in a pretty little villa at Blackheath, of which he owned a long
lease.
It was a year before the great joy of Bella's life came to her that
the 'captain,' returned from a voyage to Calcutta, and, as was always
the case with him, he went to West Kensington to visit his sister and
niece, accompanied by his wife. These visits were invariably paid, and
also invariably returned by Mrs. and Miss Waldron, and were generally
productive of a great deal of pleasure on either side. Captain
Pooley--as we will continue to term him--was a kind-hearted,
open-handed man, who loved his own kith and kin and cherished an
old-fashioned notion--still in existence, Heaven be praised, amongst
many members of various classes of society--that people should do as
much as lay in their power to make their relatives happy. Wherefore,
on this night, he said, as he took the head of Mrs. Waldron's
table--which she always insisted on his doing whenever he stayed with
her--and while he carved a pair of most excellent fowls:
'So I think we shall have a good time of it all round, Mary,'--Mary
being Mrs. Waldron's name. 'To-night we will go to the Lyceum, and
to-morrow--well, to-morrow--we'll see. Then, next week, Southsea.
Southsea's the place for us. Great doings there next week, Bell. The
visit of the foreign fleet now there will beat everything that has
gone before.'
'But the expense, George!' exclaimed his sister. 'The expense will be
terrible. I saw in the paper that everything would be at famine
price.'
The captain pooh-poohed this remark, however, saying that an old
friend of his, who had retired from the Royal Navy and was now living
at that lively watering-place, knew of a little furnished house which
could be obtained reasonably if taken for the following week, as well
as for the principal one. And he clinched the remark by saying, 'And I
have told him to secure it.' There was therefore nothing further to be
said on that score, Bella alone remarking that she had the best old
uncle and aunt that ever lived.
'There will be,' he continued, putting a slice of the breast upon her
plate, probably as a reward for her observation, 'plenty to amuse
Bella. There is a garden-party at Whale Island; another given by the
General; and a ball given by the Navy at the Town Hall. That's the
place for you, Bella. If you don't find a husband there--and you a
sailor's daughter, too--well!----'
But these remarks were hushed by his wife, who told him not to tease
the child, and by the beautiful rose blush which promptly rushed to
his niece's cheeks. Yet, all the same, Bella thought it very likely
that she would have a good time of it.
They were playing _Madame Sans-Gêne_ at the Lyceum that
evening--though Pooley rather wished it had been something by
Shakespeare--and on the road to the theatre in the cab he told them
that he had taken another stall, to which he had invited a young
friend of his whom he had run against in town a day or two ago.
'And a very good fellow, too,' he said, 'besides being a first-rate
sailor. And he has had a pretty hard struggle of it, owing to his
being cursed with a cross-grained old father, who seemed to imagine
his son was only brought into the world that he might sit upon him in
every way. All the same, though, Stephen Charke got to windward of him
somehow.'
'Whoever is he, uncle?' Bella asked, interested in this story of the
unknown person who was to make a fifth of their party; while her
mother addressed a similar question to Mrs. Pooley.
'He is,' said the captain, 'a young man of about thirty, who once went
to sea with me in the _Sophy_; the son of an old retired officer, who
was years ago in a West Indian regiment. After petting and spoiling
the boy, and--as Stephen Charke himself told me--almost treating him
with deference because he happened to have been born his son, he
afterwards endeavoured to exert a good deal of authority over him,
which led to disagreeables. He wanted the lad to go in for the Army,
and Stephen wanted to go to sea.'
'And got his way, apparently,' said Bella.
'He did,' her uncle replied, 'by absolutely running away to sea--just
like a hero in a boy's book.'
'How lovely!' the girl exclaimed.
'Ha! humph!' said Pooley, rather doubtfully, he being a man who
entirely disapproved of disobedience in any shape or form from a
subordinate. 'Anyhow, his experiences weren't lovely at first.
They don't take runaways in the best ships, you know. However,
he stuck to it--he had burnt his boats as far as regards his
father--and--well!--he holds a master's certificate now, and he's both
a good sailor and a good fellow. He is in the Naval Reserve, too, and
has had a year in a battleship.'
'And his father?' Mrs. Waldron asked. 'Are they reconciled?'
'The old man is dead, and Charke has three or four thousand or so,
which makes him more or less independent. He's a queer fish in one
way, and picks and chooses a good deal as to what kind of ship he will
serve in. For instance, he won't go in a passenger steamer, because,
he says, the mates are either treated with good-natured tolerance or
snubbed by the travellers, and he aims at being an owner. However, as
I said before, he's a good fellow.'
By this time the cab had forced its way along the Strand amidst
hundreds of similar vehicles, many of which were disgorging
their fares at the various other theatres, and at last, after
receiving a gracious permission to pass from those autocratic
masters of the public--the police stationed at the foot of Wellington
Street--wrenched itself round and pulled up in its turn beneath the
portico of the theatre.
'There's Charke!' said Pooley, while, as he spoke, a rather tall,
good-looking man of dark complexion, who was irreproachably attired in
evening dress, came up to them and was duly introduced.
To Bella, whose knowledge of the world--outside the quiet, refined
circle in which she had moved--was small, this man came more as a
surprise than anything else. She knew nothing of the sea, although she
was the daughter of an officer who had been in the Royal Navy, and her
idea of what a 'mate' was like was probably derived from those she had
seen on the Jersey or Boulogne packet-boats, when her mother and she
had occasionally visited these and similar places in the out-of-town
season. Yet Stephen Charke (she supposed because he was a gentleman's
son, and also because of that year in a battleship as an officer of
the R.N.R.) was not at all what she had expected. His quiet, well-bred
tones as he addressed her--with, in their deep, ocean-acquired
strength, that subtle inflexion which marks the difference between the
gentleman and the man who is simply not bad-mannered--took her
entirely by surprise; while the courteous manner in which he spoke,
accompanied by something that proclaimed indubitably his acquaintance,
not only with the world, but its best customs, helped to contribute to
that surprise. So that, as they proceeded towards their stalls, she
found herself reflecting on what a small acquaintance she had with
things in general outside her rather limited circle of vision.