see her settled with some one to look after her before my life-lines
are unrove. She has no mother. Then, again, I don’t mind owning she’s
a bit uneasy, and she makes me so too; hankers a trifle too much after
pleasure; wants to go to the theatre when there’s nobody to take her;
pines for a few friends when I don’t feel well. She’s young, and her
animal spirits run high, and custom, I dare say, is beginning to sicken
the sympathy in her,” said he, looking at his left hand, which was rugged
with gout, every finger with a “list to port.” “Parting with her will be
like parting with half my heart; but it’s for her good, and the man she’s
going to is as worthy, sober, straight-headed and pious a person as the
most anxious parent could wish to see his daughter in charge of.”
“You want to send her out by the _Hecla_?”
“I want to send her out with you.”
“I suppose you know I’m a bachelor?” said I.
“Pah!” he exclaimed, grinning. “An old ape hath an old eye. You are to
windward now, Cleaver. Keep so, my lad, keep so.”
“I was never commissioned in this way before,” said I; “but I shall be
happy to oblige you in anything. If your daughter goes as passenger in
my ship, she shan’t lack care and kindness. No man better than you knows
a skipper’s duties. A captain’s eyes aren’t like a cod’s. He can’t see
round corners without a shift of nose—scarcely more than straight ahead,
mostly. But I’ll do my best, and that best shall be a pleasure to me.”
We shook hands. Soon after this Miss Minnie Mills came into the room. I
stood up and bowed to as handsome a young creature as ever flashed an eye
at a man. Indeed, the instant impression of her beauty was disheartening;
it flung a sudden weight into my obligation, and I bowed a little
nervously over the hand I held. At seventeen she had been pretty merely,
slight in form, reserved in manner; now she was a woman, very handsomely
clothed with her sex’s charms. Her face was full of life; vivacity and
spirit were in every turn and move of her. She had dark brown eyes, deep,
bland, and eloquent with light; her hair was a dark red, like bronze, and
she had plenty of it; her complexion was of a charming soft whiteness,
tinged with colour, as though either cheek reflected the shadow of a
rose; and my bachelor eyes found a particular beauty in a very delicate
spangling of golden freckles—they gave a summer sunny look to her beauty,
ripening it till somehow you thought of orchards, and a prospect of
cornfields reddened with poppies.
At dinner our talk was mainly of India and the voyage to it, of
Junglepore and the duties of the Reverend Joseph Moxon. Miss Minnie did
not flush, nor did her eyes sparkle, nor did she manifest any particular
emotion of any sort when we talked of India and Mr. Moxon. I thought she
tried to divert the conversation from those topics: she asked me what
theatres I had been to since my arrival in England; if I did not love
dancing; for her part she adored it, she said—dancing and music. Old
Captain Mills stuck stoutly in his talk to India and Moxon. When I asked
Miss Minnie how she liked the notion of a residence in India, she pouted
her lips kissingly, and glanced at her father, but not wistfully.
“You’ll get plenty of dancing out in India,” said I. “At most of the
stations a man, I understand, has little more to do than cut capers.”
“Moxon won’t have it,” said Captain Mills.
“He shan’t prevent me from enjoying myself!” exclaimed the girl, with a
note of mutiny.
Captain Mills, with one eye closed, viewed me steadfastly with the other
over the top of the wine-glass he poised.
It was arranged that he should bring his daughter to the ship on the
following Tuesday, to look at the vessel and choose a cabin. I turned the
fancy of her marriage over in my head from time to time till she came to
the ship with her father, wondering that the old skipper did not see what
would be plain to everybody: I mean that he was sending the girl out to
be married to a man she had no liking for, who did not dance and would
not allow his wife to dance; who did not sing, and possibly objected to
profane music; who, as my imagination figured, and as, indeed, I had
gathered from what Mills had let fall, was just a plain, homely clergyman
of decided views, without title to a bride of beauty and gaiety. His
choice would have been well enough in a captain of Dragoons; in a parson
it was highly improper. I suppose Mills counted upon association doing
the work of sentiment. It might end in the girl making a devoted wife,
and in the clergyman looking coldly upon her. I had sailed with some
romantic commodities in my time, and had lived to see more than one
surprising, unexpected issue.
Father and daughter came to the ship, and I was on board when they
arrived. The _Hecla_ was a comfortable, handsomely equipped vessel. She
carried a cuddy, or saloon, with sleeping-berths on either hand; the
furniture and fittings were of the old-world sort; strips of mirror
panelled the bulkheads; the shaft of mizzen-mast was hand-painted; a
pianoforte was secured to the back of it; the skylights were large and
handsome.
I had supposed that the girl would take some interest in, or show some
pleasure at, the sights about her. She glanced languidly, and exhibited a
spiritlessness of manner, as though the thought of leaving her father was
beginning to sit very heavily upon her heart.
I observed, however, that, whilst she barely had eyes for the ship,
she did not neglect to look at the chief mate, Mr. Aiken, who stood
at the main-hatch superintending some work that was going on. He was
a good-looking man, and it was therefore intelligible that the girl
should notice him. He was a smart officer, and understood his duty, and
continued to shout orders and sing down instructions to the fellows in
the hold, insensible of our presence. Aiken was about thirty years of
age; his face was coloured by weather into the manly hue of the ocean
calling; he had white teeth, a finely chiselled profile, an arch,
intelligent, dark grey eye. Captain Mills looked at him whilst we stood
on the quarter-deck after coming out of the cuddy, but seemed more struck
by the smartness of his demeanour and general air than by the beauty of
his face. The old salt was full of the ship, and could think of little
else. All sorts of memories crowded upon him now that he was in the docks.
“I wouldn’t go to it again,” he exclaimed in a broken voice; “yet I love
the life—I love the life!”
Miss Minnie chose a berth on the port side. I asked if she meant to bring
a maid with her.
“No,” says Captain Mills. “She can do without a maid. What scope of
purse, Cleaver, do you suppose I ride to?”
“If I can do without a maid on shore,” said Miss Minnie, “I can do
without one at sea.”
A note of complaint ran through her sentences, as though she had a mind
to make a trouble of things.
“A maid,” said Captain Mills, “will be sea-sick till you’re up with the
Cape, and idle and useless and carrying on with the steward for the rest
of the time till you go ashore, and then she’ll leave you to get married.”
As we went to the gangway the mate made a step to let us pass. Miss
Minnie looked at him again, and went over the side holding her father’s
arm with a sudden life in her movements, as though the sight of a
handsome man had worked up the whole spirit of the coquette in her.
I felt rather sorry for the Reverend Joseph Moxon as I followed the
couple on to the quay, hugely admiring the fine floating grace of the
girl’s figure, the sparkle of her dark eye as she turned her head to
look at the ship, the rich tinge her hair took from the sun. In fact,
I seemed to find an image of the Reverend Joseph Moxon in old Mills’
square, lurching figure alongside the sweet shape of his daughter; and
_that_ set me thinking of well-bred, jingling, handsome young officers at
Moxon’s station, where life would provide plenty of leisure for looking
and for sighing.
We towed down to Gravesend on a wet morning. Nature is incapable of a
gloomier exhibition of wretchedness than the scene she will paint you
of the Isle of Dogs and Bugsby’s Beach and the yellow stretch of water
past Woolwich on a wet day. We had convict hulks moored in the river in
those times, and they fitted the dark weeping weather as though they
were creations of the spirit of the stream in its sulkiest and most
depraved temper of invention. Their influence, too, as a spectacle was a
sickness to the soul of the outward-bound, whilst the decks streamed and
the scuppers gushed and the rigging howled to the whipping of the wet
blast, and the greasy water washed into the wake in a sort of oily ironic
chuckling, as though the filthy god of the flood was in tow, and laughing
under the ship’s counter at the general misery aboard.
We moored to a buoy off Gravesend in the afternoon, and next morning,
whilst it was still raining, the passengers arrived. Amongst the first
to mount the gangway ladder were Captain Mills and his daughter. I
received them and took them into the cuddy, and did my best to cheer up
the old man; but to no purpose. He broke down when the three of us were
by ourselves, and sobbed in a strange, dry-eyed, most affecting manner,
often turning to his daughter and bringing her to his heart and blessing
her in tones which I confess made my own vision dim. She was pale with
weeping.
She cried out once when he turned to fondle her—
“Father, I don’t want to go! I don’t love him enough to leave you. Let
me remain with you; we will return home together. It is not too late.
Captain Cleaver will send my baggage ashore.”
This, I think, served to rally the old chap somewhat. He pulled his
faculties together, and in a trembling voice bade his daughter remember
that the man she was going to loved her, and was worthy to be loved
in return. He himself was getting old, he said, and his closing days
would be miserable if he believed he should die and leave her without a
protector. A year is quickly lived through: she would soon be coming on a
visit to England; or perhaps—who could tell?—he might himself go out the
next voyage in this very identical ship, with his friend Cleaver, if he
then commanded her.
When he was gone I called to the stewardess and bade her see to Miss
Mills’ comfort in every direction of the cabin life. The rest of the
cuddy passengers arrived quickly from Gravesend. I forget how many they
were in all. I believe that every cabin was occupied. The people were of
the usual sort in those days of the voyage to India by way of the Cape: a
colonel and his wife, the colonel a black-faced man, with gleaming eyes
that followed you to the extremities of their sockets; the wife a vast,
shapeless bulk of a woman, her head covered by a wig of scarlet curls
and her fingers with flashing rings, sheathing them to the first joints;
several military officers of various ages; a parson; two merchants of
Bombay; five or six ladies, and as many children.
We met with heavy weather down Channel. In this time I saw nothing of
Miss Mills, though I was constant in my inquiries after her. She was not
very ill, the stewardess told me. She ate and drank, but she chose to
keep her cabin. One morning, when the ship was flapping sluggishly over
a wide heave of swell, clothed to the trucks in misty sunshine, which
poured like pale steam into the recesses of the ocean, the girl came on
deck. She was charmingly attired (I thought); her dark red hair glowed
like bronze under the proudly feathered hat. Her complexion was raised;
her eyes shone; the Channel dusting had done her good, and I told her so,
looking with helpless admiration into her beautiful face as I gave her my
arm for a turn.
After this she was punctual at table and constantly on deck. I then
considered it fortunate for the Rev. Joseph Moxon that our military
passengers should be, without exception, married men; the two or three
who were going out alone were either leaving or joining their wives:
hence the attention the girl received was without significance. They
hung about her; they ran on errands; they were full of business when
she hove in sight, so as to plant a chair for her and the like: but it
never could come to more than that. The wives looked on, and were civil
and kind in a ladylike way to the girl; but I guess she was too pretty
to please them; her looks and coquettish vivacity were too conquering;
whenever she spoke at table there was an eager sweep of moustache, a
universal rounding of Roman and other noses in the direction of her
chair. I don’t think the wives liked it; but, as I have said, they were
all very kind in a genteel way.
I had made up my mind, judging from the glances the girl had directed at
the handsome mate Aiken in dock, that she would, though perhaps without
losing her heart, yield to the influence of his manly beauty, and be
very willing to carry on an aimless flirtation when I was out of sight
and the man in charge of the ship. I had also made up my mind, if I
caught the mate attempting to fool with the girl, to bring him up with a
“round turn.” In fact, I chose to be a taut hand in those matters, quite
irrespective of private feelings. Apparently, however, I was to be spared
the trouble of bidding my handsome mate keep himself to himself and his
weather-eye lifting for the ship and his duties only. Day after day
passed, and I never caught him speaking to her.
Once only, and this was at some early date, when she and I were pacing
the deck together, and Aiken was standing at the head of the weather-poop
ladder, she asked me to tell her about him. Was he married? I said
I believed not—I happened to _know_ he was not. Who and what was his
father? How long had he been at sea? When was he likely to get command?
The subject was then changed, and afterwards, though I watched them
somewhat jealously, I never detected so much as a glance pass between
them.
The long and short of it was—I am bound to confess it—before we had
struck the Canary parallels, I—myself—I—Captain Cleaver, commander of the
ship _Hecla_—was seriously in love with the girl, and making my days and
nights uneasy by contemplation of a proposal of marriage based on these
considerations: first, that I was in love with her; next, that she was
not in love with the Rev. Joseph Moxon; third, that I could give her a
home in England; and then, again, her father was my friend, one of my own
cloth, and I had no doubt he would be delighted if I brought her home
with me as my wife.
No good, in a short yarn like this, to enter into the question of what
was due from me to Joseph Moxon. Enough that I was in love with the girl,
and that I had quite clearly discovered she had no affection for—she did
not even like or respect—Joseph. I was eight-and-thirty years of age, and
a young man at that, as I chose to think; yet somehow Miss Minnie, by
no means unintentionally, as I _now_ know, contrived to keep sentiment
at bay by making me feel that in taking the place of her father whilst
we were at sea I had become her father. Never by word of lip did I give
her to know that I was in love with her; but I saw she was perfectly
sensible that I was her devoted admirer, and that something was bound to
happen before we should climb very far north into the Indian Ocean.
One night at about eleven o’clock—six bells—I stepped on deck from my
cabin to take a look round. The ship’s latitude was then about 25° south.
It was a cool, very quiet, dark night, with a piece of dusky-red moon
dying out bulbous and distorted in the liquid blackness north-west; a few
stars shone sparely; the canvas rose pale and silent; saving the lift of
the fabric on the long-drawn heave of the swell, all the life in her was
in a little music of ripples, breaking from her stem and tinkling aft in
the noise of a summer shower upon water.
I looked into the binnacle, and not immediately seeing the officer of the
watch, went a little way forward, and perceived two figures to leeward
standing against the poop rail. I walked straight to them quickly. One
was Mr. Aiken and the other Miss Minnie Mills. She laughed when I stepped
up to her, and exclaimed, “No scolding, I beg. I was disturbed by a
nightmare, and came on deck to see if I was really upon the ocean instead
of at Junglepore. Mr. Aiken has reassured me. I shall be able to sleep
now, I think. So good night to you both,” and with that she left us and
disappeared.
I was angry, excited, exceedingly jealous. I guessed I had been tricked,
and that a deal had passed between these two, for many a long day gone,
utterly unobserved by me. I gave Mr. Aiken a piece of my mind.
Never had I “hazed” any man as I did that fellow as he stood before me.
He said it was not his fault; the girl had come on deck and accosted
him: he was no ship’s constable to order the passengers about; if he was
spoken to, he answered; I expected he would be civil to the passengers,
he supposed.
I bestowed several sea blessings on his eyes and limbs, and bade him
understand that Miss Minnie Mills was under my protection; if I caught
him speaking to her I would break him for insubordination. He was mate of
the ship, and his business lay in doing his duty. If he went beyond it,
he should sling his hammock in the forecastle for the rest of the voyage.
I was horribly in earnest and angry; and when I returned to my cabin, I
paced the floor of it as sick at heart as a jilted woman with jealousy
and spleen. However, after a while I contrived to console myself with
believing that their being together was an accident, and that it might
have been as Aiken had put it. At all events, it made me somewhat easy
to reflect that I had never observed them in company before, never even
caught them looking at each other—that is, significantly.
She was in a sullen and pouting temper all next day.
“Why mayn’t I go on deck at night if I choose?” said she.
“Your father would object,” said I. “You are under my care. I am
responsible for you,” I added, with a tender look.
“Would you prohibit the other lady passengers from going on deck at
night?”
“You shall have your way in anything that is good for you,” said I.
She flashed an arch, saucy glance at me, then sighed, and seemed
intensely miserable on a sudden. I believe but for having caught her in
Aiken’s company I should then and there have offered her my hand.
For a week following she was so completely in the dumps it was hard to
get a word from her. Sometimes she looked as if she had been secretly
crying, yet I never could persuade myself that the appearance her eyes
would at such times present was due to weeping. She moped apart. Some of
the passengers noticed her behaviour and spoke to me about it, thinking
she was ill. The ship’s surgeon talked with her, and assured me privately
he could find nothing wrong save that she complained of poorness of
spirits.
“She seems to hate the idea of India,” said he, “and wants to go home.”
And so she shall (thought I), but she must arrive in India first, where
she may leave it to me to square the yards for her with the Reverend
Joseph Moxon.
We blew westwards round the Cape before a strong gale of wind. One
morning, at the grey of dawn, I was aroused by a knocking on my
cabin door. The second mate entered. He was a man named Wickham, a
bullet-headed, immensely strong, active seaman, the younger son of a
baronet: he would have held command at that time but for “the drink.” He
grasped a woman’s hat and handkerchief, and exclaimed—
“I’ve just found these in the port mizzen chains, sir. I can’t tell how
they happen to have come there. It looks like mischief.”
I sprang from my cot partially clothed, as I invariably was on turning
in, and taking the hat in my hand, and bringing it to the clearer light
of the large cabin window, I seemed to remember it as having been worn
by Minnie Mills. I snatched the handkerchief from the man, and saw the
initials M. M. marked upon it. This sufficed. I swiftly and completely
clothed myself and entered the saloon.
My first act was to send the second mate for the stewardess. The woman
arrived out of the steerage, where she slept. I said—speaking softly that
the people in the berths on either hand might not be disturbed—
“Go and look into Miss Mills’ cabin, and report to me if all is well
there.”
She went, vanished, was some little while out of sight; then reappeared
and approached me, pale in the ashen light that was filtering through the
skylights.
“Miss Mills’ cabin is empty, sir.”
I was prepared for this piece of news; yet my heart beat with a fast sick
pulse when, without speech, I went to the girl’s berth, followed by the
stewardess. The bunk had been occupied—the bed-clothes lay tossed in it.
My eye, travelling rapidly over the interior, was quickly taken by a note
lying upon a chest of drawers. It was addressed to me, and ran thus:—
“I am weary of life, and have resolved to end it. The thought of living
even for a short while with Mr. Moxon at Junglepore has broken my heart,
and you are as tyrannical and cruel to me as life itself. Farewell, and
thank you for such kindness as you have shown me, and when you see my
father tell him that I died loving him and blessing him.”
“Good God! She’s committed suicide!” cried I.
The stewardess shrieked.
I felt mad with amazement and grief. I read and re-read her letter,
and then looked round the berth again, wondering if this were not some
practical joke which she intended should be tragical by the fright it
excited. I then went to work to make inquiries. I roused up Mr. Aiken,
and, showing him the girl’s note, asked him if he had seen her on deck
during his watch—if he himself had at any time foreboded this dreadful
thing—if he could help me with any suggestions or information. He read
the letter and stared blankly; his handsome countenance was as pale as
milk whilst he eyed me. I seemed to find the ghastly mildness of a dead
man’s face in his looks. He had nothing to say. No lady had come on deck
in his watch. He had not exchanged a sentence with Miss Mills since that
night when I threatened to break him if I found him in her company.
The men who had steered the ship throughout the night were brought out
of the forecastle: no man had seen any lady jump overboard or slip into
the mizzen-chains—not likely! Wouldn’t the helmsman, seeing such a thing,
yell out?
The morning was now advanced. The passengers came from their berths, and
it was quickly known fore and aft that the beautiful young girl who had
been moping apart for three weeks past as though slowly going mad with
melancholy had committed suicide by jumping overboard. The doctor and I
and the two mates spent a long time whilst we overhung the mizzen-chains
in conjecturing how she had managed it. The cabin windows were small: she
had certainly never squeezed her fine ripe figure through the porthole of
her berth; therefore she had come on to the poop in some black hour of
the night by way of the quarter-deck, passing like a shadow to leeward
till she arrived at the mizzen-rigging, where the deep dye flung upon the
blackness by the mizzen—for it had been a quiet night, the ship under
all plain sail—completely shrouded her. The rest would be easy, and if
she dropped from the chains, which, through the angle of the deck, were
depressed to within a few feet of the water, her fall might have been
almost soundless.
The blow to me was terrible, and for some days I was prostrated. So
unnecessary, I kept on saying to myself. Good heavens! For weeks I had
been on the verge of proposing to her. The offer of my hand would
have saved her life. I could not reconcile so enormous an act with the
insignificance of the occasion for it. Old Mills was no tyrant. He had
not _driven_ her to India. She had consented—with an ill grace perhaps,
not caring for the man she was going to; but there had been acquiescence
on her part too, enough of it, at all events, to make one wonder that
she should have destroyed herself. How should I be able to meet the old
captain? Where was I to find the spirit to tell him the story?
The stewardess, to satisfy herself, thoroughly searched the after part
of the ship. It came to my ears that she did not believe that the girl
had committed suicide, having neither cause nor courage for such an
act. She fancied that one or another of the passengers had hidden her.
But for what purpose? The fool of a woman could not answer _that_ when
the question was put to her. What end would the girl’s hiding achieve?
She was bound to come to light on our arrival at Bombay. What motive,
then, could she have for concealing herself, for denying herself the
refreshment of the deck in the Indian Ocean, ultimately to be shamefully
revealed as an impostor capable of the most purposeless and idiotic of
deceits?