LOUISE TEMPLE
But there came a change at last. Ushant was then many long leagues
astern, and the night had been dark but quiet, with a long Biscayan
swell brimming to our starboard quarter, and a play of sheet-lightning
off the lee bow, and wind enough to send the Indiaman through it at
some six knots with her royals and cross-jack furled and the weather
clew of her mainsail up. This was as the picture showed when I went
to bed at five bells--half-past ten--and on opening my eyes next
morning I found the berth brilliant with sunshine, bulkhead and ceiling
trembling to the glory rippling off the sea through the large round
scuttle or porthole, and the action of the ship a stately gliding, with
a slow long floating heave that raised no sound whatever of creak or
straining, and that, after the long spell of tumblefication, was as
grateful to every sense and to all wearied bones as the firm unrocking
surface of dry land.
Mr. Colledge was shaving himself. I lay eyeing him for a few minutes,
admiring the handsome high-born looks of the youth, and thinking it was
a pity that such manly beauty as his should lack the consecrating touch
of an intellectual expression to parallel his physical graces. He saw
me in the glass in which he was scraping himself.
‘Good-morning, Dugdale. I feel all right again, d’ye know. I am going
to eat my breakfast in the cuddy and then go on deck.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ said I, putting my legs over the side of the bunk.
‘I suppose there’ll be some girls about this morning,’ said he. ‘Who
the dooce are the passengers, I wonder? Anybody very nice aboard, not
counting that ripping young lady with the black eyes?’
‘Nearly everybody’s been as sea-sick as you,’ said I; ‘and the few
who have put in an appearance are males--your friend Emmett, the fat
Dutchman, and two or three others.’
‘Oh, you mean Mynheer Hemskirk, the corpulent chap, whose voice sounds
like that of a man inside a rum puncheon talking through the bunghole.’
I asked him if he could tell me anything about Miss Temple, the
black-eyed lady.
‘Some one told me at Gravesend,’ he answered--‘but I don’t know who it
was--that she’s a daughter of Sir Conyers Temple. I think I’ve heard
my father speak of him as a man he has hunted with. If he’s that Sir
Conyers, he broke his neck four years ago in a steeplechase.’
‘Who accompanies the young lady to India, I wonder?’ said I.
‘Her aunt, I believe; but I don’t know her name. But I say, though,
what makes you so inquisitive?’
‘Oh, my dear Colledge,’ said I, ‘one is always inquisitive about one’s
fellow-passengers on board ship. The girl came up to me on deck the
other night when the row of the collision was in full swing. I see her
big eyes now--black as ebony, yet luminous too, with the flame of a
flare-tin at the side reflected in each magnificent orb in a spot of
crimson which made her pale hooded face as mystical as a vision of the
night.’
He turned to stare at me, and broke into a laugh. ‘So! _you_ are the
poet amongst the passengers, eh? as Emmett’s the painter? What’s to be
_my_ walk? Oh, there goes the first breakfast bell! Heaven bless us,
what a delightful thing it is not to feel sea-sick!’
We continued to gabble a bit in this fashion; he then left the berth,
and a little later I followed him.
The large cuddy wore an aspect it had not before exhibited. The
sunshine sparkled upon the skylights, and the interior was full of
the blue and silver radiance of the rich and welcome autumn morning
outside. The long table was all aglow with the silver and crystal
furniture of the white damask, and through the glazed domes in the
upper deck you could see the canvas on the mizzen swelling in a milky
softness from yard to yard as the sails mounted to the height of the
tender little royal.
The passengers came from the deck or up from below one after another;
the change in the weather had acted as a charm, and here now was the
whole mob of us, one old lady excepted, with a glimpse to be had of
the two ayahs sunning themselves on the quarter-deck. The skipper,
looking a bit stale, as with too much of all-night work, but smart
enough in the gingerbread trickery of his uniform, made a little speech
of compliments to the ladies and gentlemen from the head of the table.
There was a courtliness about the old fellow that gained not a little
in relish from a sort of deep-sea flavour in his manner and varying
expressions of face. I liked the quality of the bow with which he
accompanied his answer to any lady who addressed him.
I sat at the bottom of the table on the right hand of the
chief-officer, and was able to command a pretty good view of the
people that I was to be associated with, as I might suppose, for the
next three or four, and perhaps five months. There were several girls
amongst us--two Miss Joliffes, three Miss Brookes’s, Miss Hudson, and
four or five more. Miss Hudson was exceedingly pretty--hair of dark
gold, and a skin delicate as a lily, upon which lay a kind of golden
tinge--oh, call it not freckles! though I daresay the charming effect
was produced by something of that sort. Her eyes were large, moist,
violet in hue, with slightly lifted eyebrows, which gave them an arch
look. Mr. Sylvanus Johnson, who sat next me, after staring at her
a little, muttered in my ear in a dramatic undertone: ‘Perdita has
expressed that girl, sir:
Violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes
Or Cytherea’s breath.’
‘If that be her mother next to her,’ said I, ‘fix your attention upon
her, Mr. Johnson, and Perdita’s fancy will exhale!’
And indeed Mrs. Hudson was a very extraordinary, and I may say violent
contrast to her daughter: a pursy lady of about fifty, with a heavy
underlip, puffed-out cheeks of a bluish tint, and a wig, the youthful
hue of which defined every trace of age in her countenance, till one
thought of her as being some score years older than she really was.
But the interior was wonderfully humanised by these ladies. Their
dress, the sparkle of jewels in their ears, on their fingers and
throats, here and there a turban seated high on some motherly head--it
was the age of turbans and feathers--the soft notes of the girls
running an undertone of music through the deeper voices of the matrons
and the growling of us males grumbling conversation across and up the
table, whipped the fancy ashore, and made one think of drawing-rooms
and guitars and Books of Beauty.
There was one lady, however, who held my eye from the start. She was
Miss Louise Temple, and I cannot express how deep was the admiration
her charms excited in me. I told you that I had caught a glimpse of her
at Gravesend; but, down to this moment, I had been unable to obtain
a fair view of her. Her hair that, to judge by the coils of it, when
let down would have reached to below her knees, was of a wonderful
blackness without either gloss or deadness. She wore it in a manner
that was perfectly new in those days: in twinings which heaped it up
to the aspect of a crown; whilst behind it was brushed up in a way to
exhibit the lovely form of the head from the curve of the neck to where
the beautiful tresses lay piled. Her face was perfectly colourless,
the complexion clear, and the skin exquisitely delicate. Her mouth was
small, the upper lip slightly curved, and there was the hint of a pout
in the faint, scarce perceptible protrusion of the under lip. Her nose
was perfectly straight, like a Greek woman’s; but it had the English
indent under the brow, and therefore had the beauty, which to my fancy,
no Greek profile ever yet possessed.
But her eyes! How am I to describe them? What impression can I hope to
convey by such terms as large, black, soft, and fluid? The lids were
delicately veined, the eyelashes long, and between these fringes the
eyes shone of a dark liquid loveliness, full of the light, as it seemed
to me, of a high intelligence, with spirit and haughtiness in every
glance. They were the most dramatic, by which I do not mean theatric,
pair of twinklers that ever sparkled star-like under the beauty of a
woman’s brow; created, you might have thought, for the interpretation
of the Shakespearean imaginations, with all capacity in them of
surprise, scorn, resentment, melting tenderness, and of every fine and
noble passion. She was attired in a dress of black cloth, simple as a
riding habit of to-day, and so fitting her figure as to express without
exaggeration every point of grace in the curves and fulness of her tall
but still maidenly form.
I caught her glance for a moment: I am sure she remembered me as the
passenger she had addressed on the poop; yet there was not the faintest
expression of recognition in the full, firm, swift stare she honoured
me with. She looked away from me as haughtily as a queen, with flashing
inspection of the others of the row of us that confronted her, though
it seemed to me that her gaze lingered a little on the Honourable Mr.
Colledge, who was seated immediately opposite.
‘I reckon now,’ whispered Mr. Prance, leaning to me in his chair from
his athwart-ship post at the foot of the table, ‘that yonder Miss
Temple will be about the handsomest woman that was ever afloat.’
‘There have been many thousands of women afloat,’ said I, ‘since Noah
got under way with the ladies of his family aboard.’
‘I have been sailing in passenger-ships,’ said he,‘for nineteen years
come next month, and have never before seen such a figure-head as Miss
Temple’s. What teeth she has! Little teeth, sir, as all women’s should
be; and where’s the whiteness that’s to be compared to them?’
‘Who is that homely, pleasant-faced woman sitting by her side?’
‘Her aunt, Mrs. Radcliffe,’ he answered.
‘What errand carries that stately creature to India, do you know, Mr.
Prance?’
‘I do not, sir.’
‘Not very likely,’ I continued, ‘that she’s bound out in search of a
husband.’
‘No, no,’ he muttered. ‘The like of her have a big enough market
at home to command. No need for _her_ to cross the ocean to find a
sweetheart. She’s the daughter of a dead baronet, a tenth title, so
the captain was saying; and her mother has a large estate to live on.
Captain Keeling knows all about them. Her ladyship was seized with
paralysis when her husband was brought home with his neck broken, and
has been a sheer hulk ever since, I believe, poor thing. We brought
Mrs. Radcliffe to England last voyage. Her husband’s a big planter up
country, and worth a lac or two. I expect Miss Temple is going out on a
visit--nothing more. Her health may need a voyage. Those choice bits of
mechanism often go wrong in their works. She wants a stroke of colour
in her cheeks. ’Tis the scent of the milkmaid that she lacks, sir.’
He gave a pleasant nod, quietly rose, and went on deck by way of the
cuddy front, to relieve the second officer, who was watching the ship
for him whilst he breakfasted.
At such a first meal as this, so to speak, when, barring one, we had
all come together for the first time, there was no want of British
reserve and shyness. We chiefly contented ourselves with staring.
Colonel Bannister alone talked freely; he was loud on the subject of
army grievances, and was rendered indeed, intolerably fluent and noisy
by the respectful attention he received from a gentleman who sat over
against him, one Mr. Hodder, a tall, thin, nervous, yellow-faced man,
with a paralytic catching up of his breath in his speech, who was
going to India to fill some post of responsibility in a college. Mrs.
Bannister with her hawks-bill nose, grey hair, and full figure, sat
bolt upright, eating with avidity, and sweeping the faces round about
her with a small severe eye.
I watched little Mrs. Radcliffe with attention. It was not hard to
guess that she was an amiable, fidgety, anxious body, of elastic
properties of mind, easily, but only temporarily, to be repressed. She
talked in a quick way to her niece, darting what she had to say into
the girl’s ear, with an abrupt withdrawal of her head, and an earnest
look at Miss Temple’s face. The other would sometimes faintly smile,
but for the most part her air was one of haughty abstraction. Indeed,
it was easy to see that, so far as her opinion of her fellow-passengers
went, it was not quite flattering to the bulk of us.
It was a noble morning, indeed, on deck. There was a long blue heave
of swell from the northward, quiet as the rise and fall of a sleeper’s
breast, and the white buttons of the ship’s trucks, glancing like
silver against the moist blue of the sky, swung so slowly and tenderly
to and fro that one could almost watch them without perception of any
movement. The ocean was of a deep sea blue, all to eastward flashing
under the sun, and the small waves chased us with a voice of summer in
the caressing seething of the snow of their heads against the sides
of the Indiaman. The ship had studdingsails set, and under these far
overhanging wings the water trembled back the radiance that fell from
the swelling cloths, as though there were a floating thinness of
quicksilver there prismatic as a soap-bubble.
Very soon after breakfast the poop was filled, and I marked the Jacks
forward staring aft at the sight of us all. It was not hot enough for
an awning, and there was still too much edge in the breeze, warmly
as the sun looked down, to suffer the ladies to sit for any length
of time. The picture was a cheerful one, full of movement and life
and colour. The white-headed skipper, skewered up in his bebuttoned
and belaced frock-coat, patrolled the weather side of the deck with
Mrs. Radcliffe on his arm. Mr. Emmett paced the planks with Mrs.
Joliffe and her daughters, and I could hear him bidding them admire
the contrast between the violet shadowing in the hollows of the sails
and the delicate sheen of the edges against the blue, as though at
those extremities they dissolved into pure lustre. Little Mr. Saunders
trotted alongside the orbicular form of Mynheer Hemskirk, who showed
as a giant as he looked down into the earnest upstaring face of the
big-headed little chap. Three Civil Service youths lounged upon a
hencoop, looking askant at the young ladies, and laughing under their
breaths at what one or another of them said. Near the foremost
skylight stood Mr. Johnson and Colonel Bannister. One did not need to
listen attentively to understand that the colonel was falling foul of
the calling of journalism, and that Mr. Johnson was endeavouring to
defend it by repeating over and over again: ‘Granted--I admit it--I’m
not going to say no; but give me leave to ask, where on earth would
your profession be, sir, if its actions were not chronicled?’ These
remarks he continued to reiterate till the colonel was in a white heat,
and I had to walk away to conceal my laughter.
As I passed the companion hatchway, which you will please to understand
is the hooded entrance to the cuddy by way of the poop, Miss Temple
came up out of it, closely followed by Mr. Colledge. There was
something like a smile on her pale face, and he was talking with
animation. She wore a black hat, wide at the brim, with a large black
feather encircling it, and a sort of jacket with some rich trimming of
dark fur upon it. I was close enough to overhear them as they emerged.
‘I quite remember my dear father speaking of Lord Sandown,’ she said,
coming to a stand at the head of the companion steps, and sending
a sparkling sweeping look along the decks. ‘Is not Lady Isabella
FitzJames an aunt of yours, Mr. Colledge?’
‘Oh yes. I hope you don’t know her,’ he answered. ‘She writes books,
you know, and fancies herself a wit; and her conversation is as
parching as the seedcake she used to give me when I was a boy.’
‘I have met her,’ said Miss Temple. ‘I rather liked her. Perhaps she
neglects to be clever in the company of her own sex.’
‘Ever been to India before?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she answered in a voice whose note of affability somehow by no
means softened her haughty regard of the passengers as they walked
past. ‘I am entirely obliging my aunt by undertaking the trip. My
uncle is very old, and too infirm to make the passage to England, and
he was extremely anxious for my mother and me to spend some months with
him. Of course it was a ridiculous invitation as far as poor mamma is
concerned. You know she is a helpless cripple, Mr. Colledge.’
‘Oh, indeed. I didn’t know. I am very sorry, I’m sure,’ said he.
‘I shall not remain long,’ she continued; ‘most probably I shall return
in this ship.’
‘By George, though, I hope you will!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m booked to come
home in her too. There’ll be more shooting in three months than I shall
want, you know. I mean to pot a few tigers, and try my hand on a wild
elephant or two. By Jove, Miss Temple, if you’ll allow me, you shall
have the skin of the first tiger I shoot!’
‘Oh, you are too good, Mr. Colledge,’ said she, with a smile trembling
on her parted lips, lifting her hand as she spoke to smooth a streak
of hair off her forehead with fingers that sparkled with rings; but
her eyes were brighter than any of her gems; they turned at that
instant full upon me as I stood looking at her a little way past the
mizzen-mast, and there seemed something of positive insolence in the
brief stare she fixed upon me; the faint smile vanished to the curl of
her upper lip as she turned her head.
_That_, my fine madam, thought I, may be your manner of regarding
everything which is not to be found in the Peerage.
Colledge, who had followed her glance, saw me.
‘Oh, Dugdale,’ he cried, ‘can you tell me anything about tigers’
skins--how long it takes to doctor them into rugs and all that sort of
thing, don’t you know?’
‘I can tell you nothing about tigers’ skins,’ said I curtly. ‘I have
never seen a tiger.’
‘Know anything about lions’ skins, then?’ he sung out with a
half-smile, meant, as my temper fancied, for Miss Temple.
‘The ass in the fable clothed himself in one, I believe,’ said I, ‘but
his roar betrayed him.’
‘Now I come to think of it,’ said he, ‘I believe there are no lions in
India;’ and he looked from me to the girl with a face of interrogation
so full of good temper as to satisfy me that at heart he was a
kindly-natured young fellow.
‘I think I shall walk, Mr. Colledge,’ said Miss Temple.
They joined the folks promenading the weather-deck, and I went to the
recess under the poop to smoke a pipe.
I leaned in a sulky mood against the bulkhead. There was a sense upon
me as of having been snubbed. I was a young man in those days, of an
uncomfortably sensitive disposition. Yet there should have been virtue
enough in that glorious morning to soothe in one’s soul a keener sting
than was to be inflicted by a handsome woman’s scornful glance. The
slight leaning away of the ship from the soft breeze showed a space
over the bulwark rails of the sparkling azure under the sun steeping to
the delicate silver blue of the sky, with a small star-like point of
white in the far-off airy dazzle, marking the topmost cloths of a ship
out there. The white planks under my feet had the glistening look of
sand, now that the decks had been washed down, and had dried out into
a frosting of themselves, as it were, with tiny crystals of brine. The
shadows of the rigging in ink-black lines swung sleepily to the motion
of the fabric. The Chinaman nurse, in a gown of blue, and wide blue
trousers, and primrose-coloured face, and a gleaming tail like a dead
black serpent lying down his back, leaned against a carronade, tossing
the little baby he had charge of till the plump little sweet crowed
again with delight. On the warm tarpaulin over the main-hatch sat the
two ayahs, crooning over the infants they held, often lifting their
eyes, like beads of unpolished indigo stuck into slips of mottled soap,
to the poop, where the mothers of their youngsters were. There was a
taste as of a hubble-bubble in the air, with the faint relish of bamboo
chafing-gear and cocoa-nut ropes. The hubble-bubble, I daresay, was a
fancy wrought by the spectacle of those black faces, and helped by a
noise of parrots somewhere aft.
A length of sail was stretched along the waist, and upon it were seated
several sailors, flourishing palms and needles as they stitched. They
talked together in a low voice that the mate of the watch should not
hear them. At one of the fellows who sat with his face towards me,
I found myself looking as at a curiosity that slowly compels the
attention, spite of any heedless mood you may be in. Many ugly mariners
had I met in my time, but never the like of that man. His right eye
had a lamentable cast; his back was so round that I imagined he had
a hunch. He had enormously long strong arms, with immense fists at
the ends of them, and the sleeves of his shirt being rolled to above
his elbow exposed a score of extraordinary devices in Indian ink
writhing amongst the hair that lay in places like fur upon the flesh.
The bridge of his nose had been crushed to his face, and a mere knob
with two holes in it stood out about an inch above his hare-lip.
Though manifestly an old sailor, salted down for ship’s use by years
of seafaring, his complexion was dingy and dough-like as the skin of
a London baker, with nothing distinctive upon it saving a number of
warts, and a huge mole over a ridge of scarlet eyebrow dashed with a
few grey hairs. His hair, that was of coarse brick-red, hung down upon
his back, as though, forsooth, the ship’s cook had made a wig for him
out of the parings of carrots. Indeed, he was as much a monster as
anything that was ever shut up in a cage and carried about as a show.
I was watching him with growing interest, wondering to myself what sort
of a life such a creature as that had led, what kind of ships he had
sailed in chiefly, and how so grotesque an object had been suffered to
‘sign on’ for an Indiaman, in which one might expect to find something
of a man-of-war uniformity and smartness of crew, when Mr. Sylvanus
Johnson came out from the cuddy, rolling an unlighted cheroot betwixt
his lips.
‘See that chap sitting upon the sail yonder?’ said I--‘a good subject
for a leading article, Mr. Johnson.’
‘Oh confound it, Mr. Dugdale; no sneers, if you please. Let me light
this cigar at your pipe. That fellow is in Emmett’s way, not mine.
Quite a triumph of hideousness, I protest. But what’s the matter
with you, this lovely morning? You look a bit down in the mouth, Mr.
Dugdale. Not going to be sea-sick, I hope, now that all the rest of us
have recovered?’
‘Down in the mouth? Not I. But I’ll tell you what, Mr. Johnson--when
you take charge of your newspaper, will you be so good as to inform the
world that there is nothing under the broad sky more consumedly insipid
than the chattering of a young man and a young woman when they first
meet.’
‘Why, how now?’ said he.
‘Oh, my dear sir,’ cried I, ‘hear them. The unspeakable drivel of
it--the “reallys” and “oh dears” and “yes quites”’--
‘Yes,’ said Mr. Johnson looking at the ash of his cigar after
every puff; ‘I think I know what you mean. But it is the effect of
politeness, I believe. A young gentleman and a young lady who desire
to please will begin very low with each other, lest they should prove
disconcerting. But what d’ye say’--he lowered his voice--‘to the
drivel, as you call it, of a man of advanced years?’--here he looked
into the cuddy, then took a step forward to peer up at the poop--‘of a
person who has seen the world--of a colonel, in short? I wish to be on
good terms with my fellow-passengers; but if that man Bannister goes
on as he has begun, I’m afraid--I’m afraid it will end in my having to
pull his nose.’
He sent another nervous look into the cuddy and frowned upon his cigar
end.
‘Has he been offensive?’ said I.
‘Well, judge,’ he exclaimed, ‘when I tell you that he said there wasn’t
a respectable man connected with journalism; that the calling was
distinctly a tipsy one; that his idea of a journalist was that of a
man lying in bed till his only shirt came from the wash, and inventing
lies to publish to the world when the washerwoman enabled him to clothe
himself.--“And pray, sir,” said I, sneering at him, “what would the
country know of your military achievements if it were not for the
journalist? You army gentlemen profess to despise him; but you will get
up very early to buy his paper if you have a notion that there will be
any mention of your doings in it.”--That was pretty warm, I think?’
‘Rather,’ said I; ‘and what did he say?’
‘He answered that if any other man but myself had said as much, he
would have told him to go and be damned.’
‘Well,’ said I, ‘I hope the passengers may prove a companionable body,
I am sure. For my part, it is more likely than not that my place of
abode whilst the weather permits will be the foretop. Anything to
escape overhearing the insipidity of a chat between a young man and a
young woman when they first meet.’
‘I see,’ said he, ‘that your friend Colledge has hooked himself on to
Miss Temple. I should say he needs to be the son of a nobleman to make
headway with such a Cleopatra as her ladyship. Fine eyes, perhaps; but
a little pale, eh? Give me Miss Hudson. I don’t admire the sneering
part of the sex.’
‘Nor I,’ said I.
‘But every woman,’ said he, ‘has a way of her own of making love. Some
simper themselves into a man’s affection, and some triumph by scorn and
contempt. Do you remember how the Duchess of Cleveland made love to
Wycherley? She put her head out of the coach window and cried out to
him: “Sir, you’re a rascal, you’re a villain!” and Pope tells us that
Wycherley from that moment entertained hopes.’
But by this time my pipe was smoked out; and catching sight of Mynheer
Hemskirk and a passenger named Adams, a lawyer, coming down the ladder
with the notion as I might guess of joining us in the recess that was
the one smoking-room of the ship, I bolted forwards, got upon the
forecastle, and overhung the rail, where I lay for a long half-hour
lazily enjoying the sight of the massive cutwater of the Indiaman
rending the brilliant blue surface, with a clear lift of azure water
either hand of her, that broke into a little running stream of foam
abreast of the cat-heads, and swarmed quietly aft in foam-bells and
winking bubbles, that made one think of the froth at the foot of a
cascade gliding along the crystal-clear breast of a stream to the
murmur of summer leaves and the horn-like hum of insects.