Emily did not want to talk about the horrors she had been through: but
considered it far better that she should be made to talk than that
she should brood over them in secret. So when the days passed and no
confidences came, she set herself to draw the child out. She had, as
everybody has, a pretty clear idea in her own head of what life is
like in a pirate vessel. That these little innocents should have come
through it alive was miraculous, like the three Hebrews in the fiery
furnace.
‘Where used you to live when you were on the schooner?’ she asked Emily
one day suddenly.
‘Oh, in the hold,’ said Emily nonchalantly. ‘Is that your Great-uncle
_Vaughan_, did you say?’
In the hold. She might have known it. Chained, probably, down there in
the darkness like blacks, with rats running over them, fed on bread
and water.
‘Were you very frightened when there was a battle going on? Did you
hear them fighting over your head?’
Emily looked at her with her gentle stare: but kept silence.
Louisa Dawson was very wise in thus trying to ease the load on the
child’s mind. But also she was consumed with curiosity. It exasperated
her that Emily would not talk.
There were two questions which she particularly wanted to ask. One,
however, seemed insuperably difficult of approach. The other she could
not contain.
‘Listen, darling,’ she said, wrapping her arms round Emily. ‘Did you
ever actually see any one killed?’
Emily stiffened palpably. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Why should we?’
‘Didn’t you ever even see a body?’ she went on: ‘A dead one?’
‘No,’ said Emily, ‘there weren’t any.’ She seemed to meditate a while.
‘There weren’t many,’ she corrected.
‘You poor, poor little thing,’ said Miss Dawson, stroking her forehead.
But though Emily was slow to talk, Edward was not. Suggestion was
hardly necessary. He soon saw what he was expected to say. It was
also what he wanted to say. All these rehearsals with Harry, these
springings into the main rigging, these stormings of the galley ...
they had seemed real enough at the time. Now, he had soon no doubt
about them at all. And Harry backed him up.
It was wonderful for Edward that every one seemed ready to believe what
he said. Those who came to him for tales of bloodshed were not sent
empty away.
Nor did Rachel contradict him. The pirates were wicked--deadly wicked,
as she had good reason to know. So they had probably done all Edward
said: probably when she was not looking.
Miss Dawson did not always press Emily like this: she had too much
sense. She spent a good deal of her time simply in tying more firmly
the knots of the child’s passion for her.
She was ready enough to tell her about England. But how strange it
seemed that these humdrum narrations should interest any one who had
seen such romantic, terrible things as Emily had!
She told her all about London, where the traffic was so thick things
could hardly pass, where things drove by all day, as if the supply of
them would never come to an end. She tried also to describe trains,
but Emily could not see them, somehow: all she could envisage was a
steamer like this one, only going on land--but she knew that was not
right.
What a wonderful person her Miss Dawson was! What marvels she had seen!
Emily had again the feeling she had in the schooner’s cabin: how time
had slipped by, been wasted. Now she would be eleven in a few months:
a great age: and in all that long life, how little of interest or
significance had happened to her! There was her Earthquake, of course,
and she had slept with an alligator: but what were these compared with
the experiences of Miss Dawson, who knew London so well it hardly
seemed any longer wonderful to her, who could not even count the number
of times she had travelled in a train?
Her Earthquake ... it was a great possession. Dared she tell Miss
Dawson about it? Was it possible that it would raise her a little
in Miss Dawson’s esteem, show that even she, little Emily, had
had experiences? But she never dared. Suppose that to Miss Dawson
earthquakes were as familiar as railway trains: the fiasco would be
unbearable. As for the alligator, Miss Dawson had told Harold to take
it away as if it was a worm.
Sometimes Miss Dawson sat silently fondling Emily, looking now at her,
now at the other children at play. How difficult it was to imagine
that these happy-looking creatures had been, for months together, in
hourly danger of their lives! Why had they not died of fright? She was
sure that she would have. Or at least gone stark, staring, raving mad?
She had always wondered how people survived even a moment of danger
without dropping dead with fear: but months and months ... and
children.... Her head could not swallow it.
As for that other question, how dearly she would have liked to ask it,
if only she could have devised a formula delicate enough.
Meanwhile Emily’s passion for her was nearing its crisis; and one day
this was provoked. Miss Dawson kissed Emily three times, and told her
in future to call her Lulu.
Emily jumped as if shot. Call this goddess by her Christian name? She
burnt a glowing vermilion at the very thought. The Christian names of
all grown-ups were sacred: something never to be uttered by childish
lips: to do so, the most blasphemous disrespect.
For Miss Dawson to tell her to do so was as embarrassing as if she had
seen written up in church,
PLEASE SPIT.
Of course, if Miss Dawson told her to call her Lulu, at least she must
not call her Miss Dawson any more. But say ... the Other Word aloud,
her lips refused.
And so for some time, by elaborate subterfuges, she managed to avoid
calling her anything at all. But the difficulty of this increased
in geometrical progression: it began to render all intercourse an
intolerable strain. Before long she was avoiding Miss Dawson.
Miss Dawson was terribly wounded: what could she have done to offend
this strange child? (‘Little Fairy-girl,’ she used to call her.) The
darling had seemed so fond of her, but now....
So Miss Dawson used to follow her about the ship with hurt eyes, and
Emily used to escape from her with scarlet cheeks. They had never had
a real talk, heart to heart, again, by the time the steamer reached
England.
ii
When the steamer took in her pilot, you may imagine that her news
travelled ashore; and also, that it quickly reached the _Times_
newspaper.
Mr. and Mrs. Bas-Thornton, after the disaster, unable to bear Jamaica
any longer, had sold Ferndale for a song and travelled straight back
to England, where Mr. Thornton soon got posts as London dramatic
critic to various Colonial newspapers, and manipulated rather remote
influences at the Admiralty in the hope of getting a punitive
expedition sent against the whole island of Cuba. It was thus the
_Times_ which, in its quiet way, broke the news to them, the very
morning that the steamer docked at Tilbury. She was a long time doing
it, owing to the fog, out of which the gigantic noises of dockland
reverberated unintelligibly. Voices shouted things from the quays.
Bells ting-a-linged. The children welded themselves into a compact
mass facing outwards, an improvised Argus determined to miss nothing
whatever. But they could not gather really what anything was about,
much less everything.
Miss Dawson had taken charge of them all, meaning to convey them to her
Aunt’s London house till their relations could be found. So now she
took them ashore, and up to the train, into which they climbed.
‘What are we getting into this box for?’ asked Harry: ‘Is it going to
rain?’
It took Rachel several journeys up and down the steep steps to get all
her babies inside.
The fog, which had met them at the mouth of the river, was growing
thicker than ever. So they sat there in semi-darkness at first, till a
man came and lit the light. It was not very comfortable, and horribly
cold: but presently another man came, and put in a big flat thing which
was hot: it was full of hot water, Miss Dawson said, and for you to put
your feet on.
Even now that she was in a train, Emily could hardly believe it would
ever start. She had become quite sure it was not going to when at last
it did, jerking along like a cannon-ball would on a leash.
Then their powers of observation broke down. For the time they were
full. So they played Up-Jenkins riotously all the way to London: and
when they arrived hardly noticed it. They were quite loath to get out,
and finally did so into as thick a pea-soup fog as London could produce
at the tail end of the season. At this they began to wake up again, and
jog themselves to remember that this really was _England_, so as not to
miss things.
They had just realised that the train had run right inside a sort
of enormous house, lit by haloed yellow lights and full of this
extraordinary orange-coloured air, when Mrs. Thornton found them.
‘Mother!’ cried Emily. She had not known she could be so glad to see
her. As for Mrs. Thornton, she was far beyond the bounds of hysteria.
The little ones held back at first, but soon followed Emily’s example,
leaping on her and shouting: indeed it looked more like Actæon with his
hounds than a mother with her children: their monkey-like little hands
tore her clothes in pieces, but she didn’t care a hoot. As for their
father, he had totally forgotten how much he disliked emotional scenes.
‘I slept with an alligator!’ Emily was shouting at intervals. ‘Mother!
I’ve slept with an alligator!’
Margaret stood in the background holding all their parcels. None of her
relations had appeared at the station. Mrs. Thornton’s eye at last took
her in.
‘Why, Margaret ...’ she began vaguely.
Margaret smiled and came forward to kiss her.
‘Get out!’ cried Emily fiercely, punching her in the chest. ‘She’s _my_
mother!’
‘Get out!’ shouted all the others. ‘She’s _our_ mother!’
Margaret fell back again into the shadows: and Mrs. Thornton was too
distracted to be as shocked as she would normally have been.
Mr. Thornton, however, was just sane enough to take in the situation.
‘Come on, Margaret!’ he said. ‘Margaret’s _my_ pal! Let’s go and look
for a cab!’
He took the girl’s arm, bowing his fine shoulders, and walked off with
her up the platform.
They found a cab, and brought it to the scene, and they all got in,
Mrs. Thornton just remembering to say ‘How-d’you-do-good-bye’ to Miss
Dawson.
Packing themselves inside was difficult. It was in the middle of it all
that Mrs. Thornton suddenly exclaimed:
‘But where’s John?’
The children fell immediately silent.
‘Where is he?--Wasn’t he on the train with you?’
‘No,’ said Emily, and went as dumb as the rest.
Mrs. Thornton looked from one of them to another.
‘John! Where is John?’ she asked the world at large, a faint hint of
uneasiness beginning to tinge her voice.
It was then that Miss Dawson showed a puzzled face at the window.
‘_John?_’ she asked. ‘Why, who is John?’
iii
The children passed the spring at the house their father had taken in
Hammersmith Terrace, on the borders of Chiswick: but Captain Jonsen,
Otto, and the crew passed it in Newgate.
They were taken there as soon as the gunboat which apprehended them
reached the Thames.
The children’s bewilderment lasted. London was not what they had
expected, but it was even more astounding. From time to time, however,
they would realise how this or that did chime in with something they
had been told, though not at all with the idea that the telling had
conjured up. On these occasions they felt something as Saint Matthew
must have felt when, after recounting some trivial incident, he adds:
‘That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Prophet So-and-So.’
‘Why look!’ exclaimed Edward. ‘There’s only toys in this store!’
‘Why, don’t you remember ...’ began Emily.
Yes, their mother had told them, on a visit to their father’s general
store in St. Anne’s, that in London there were stores which not only
sold toys but which sold toys only. At that time they hardly knew what
toys were. A cousin in England had once sent them out some expensive
wax dolls, but even before the box was opened the wax had melted:
consequently the only dolls they had were empty bottles, which they
clothed with bits of rag. These had another advantage over the wax
kind: you could feed them, poking it into the neck. If you put in
some water too, in a day or so the food began to digest, visibly. The
bottles with square shoulders they called He-beasties, and the bottles
with round shoulders they called She-beasties.
Their other toys were mostly freakish sticks, and different kinds of
seeds and berries. No wonder it seemed strange to them to imagine
these things in a shop. But the idea engaged them, nevertheless. Down
by the bathing-hole there were several enormous cotton-trees, which
lift themselves on their roots right out of the earth, as on stilts,
making a big cage. One of these they dubbed their toy-shop: decorated
it up with lace-bark, and strings of bright-coloured seeds, and their
other toys: then they would go inside and take turns to sell them to
each other. So now this was the picture the phrase ‘toy-shop’ evoked in
them. No wonder the London kind was a surprise to them, seemed a very
far-fetched fulfilment of the prophecy.
The houses in Hammersmith are tall, roomy, comfortable houses, though
not big or aristocratic, with gardens running right down to the river.
It was a shock to them to find how dirty the river was. The
litter-strewn mud when the tide was out somehow offended them much less
than the sewery water when it was up. At low tide they would often
climb down the wall and scrounge about in the mud for things of value
to them happily enough. They stank like polecats when they came up
again. Their father was sensible about dirt. He ordered a tub of water
to be kept permanently outside the basement door, in which they must
wash before entering the house: but none of the other children in the
terrace were allowed to play in the mud at all.
Emily did not play in the mud either: it was only the little ones.
Mr. Thornton was generally at a theatre till the small hours; and when
he came home used to sit and write, and then he would go out, about
dawn, to the post. The children were often awake in time to hear him
going to bed. He drank whisky while he worked, and that helped him to
sleep all the morning (they had to be quiet too). But he got up for
luncheon, and then he often had battles with their mother about the
food. She would try to make him eat it.
All that spring they were an object of wonder to their acquaintances,
as they had been on the steamer; and also an object of pity. In
the wide world they had become almost national figures: but it was
easier to hide this from them then than it would be nowadays. But
people--friends--would often come and tell them about the pirates:
what wicked men they were, and how cruelly they had maltreated them.
Children would generally ask to see Emily’s scar. They were especially
sorry for Rachel and Laura, who, as being the youngest, must have
suffered most. These people used also to tell them about John’s
heroism, and that he had died for his country just the same as if he
had grown up and become a real soldier: that he had shown himself a
true English gentleman, like the knights of old were and the martyrs.
They were to grow up to be very proud of John, who though still a child
had dared to defy these villains and die rather than allow anything to
happen to his sisters.
The glorious deeds which Edward would occasionally confess to were
still received with an admiration hardly at all tempered with
incredulity. He had the intuition, by now, to make them always done in
defiance of Jonsen and his crew, not, as formerly, in alliance with or
superseding them.
The children listened to all they were told: and according to their
ages believed it. Having as yet little sense of contradiction, they
blended it quite easily in their minds with their own memories; or
sometimes it even cast their memories out. Who were they, children, to
know better what had happened to them than grown-ups?
Mrs. Thornton was a feeling, but an essentially Christian woman. The
death of John was a blow to her from which she would never recover,
as indeed the death of all of them had once been. But she taught the
children in saying their prayers to thank God for John’s noble end and
let it always be an example to them: and then she taught them to ask
God to forgive the pirates for all their cruelty to them. She explained
to them that God could only do this when they had been properly
punished on earth. The only one who could not understand this at all
was Laura--she was, after all, rather young. She used the same form
of words as the others, yet contrived to imagine that she was praying
to the pirates, not for them; so that it gradually came about that
whenever God was mentioned in her hearing the face she imagined for Him
was Captain Jonsen’s.
Once more a phase of their lives was receding into the past, and
crystallising into myth.
Emily was too old to say her prayers aloud, so no one could know
whether she put in the same phrase as the others about the pirates or
not. No one, in point of fact, knew much what Emily was thinking about
anything, at that time.
iv
One day a cab came for the whole family, and they drove together right
into London. The cab took them into the Temple: and then they had to
walk through twisting passages and up some stairs.
It was a day of full spring, and the large room into which they were
ushered faced south. The windows were tall and heavily draped with
curtains. After the gloomy stairs it seemed all sunshine and warmth.
There was a big fire blazing, and the furniture was massive and
comfortable, the dark carpet so thick it clung to their shoes.
A young man was standing in front of the fire when they came in. He was
very correctly, indeed beautifully dressed: and he was very handsome as
well, like a prince. He smiled at them all pleasantly, and came forward
and talked like an old friend. The suspicious eyes of the Liddlies soon
accepted him as such. He gave their parents cake and wine: and then
he insisted on the children being allowed a sip too, with some cake,
which was very kind of him. The taste of the wine recalled to all of
them that blowy night in Jamaica: they had had none since.
Soon some more people arrived. They were Margaret and Harry, with a
small, yellow, fanatical-looking aunt. The two lots of children had not
seen each other for a long time: so they only said Hallo to each other
very perfunctorily. Mr. Mathias, their host, was just as kind to the
new arrivals.
Every one was at great pains to make the visit appear a casual one; but
the children all knew more or less that it was nothing of the sort,
that something was presently going to happen. However, they could
play-act too. Rachel climbed onto Mr. Mathias’s knee. They all gathered
round the fire, Emily sitting bolt upright on a foot-stool, Edward and
Laura side by side in a capacious arm-chair.
In the middle of every one talking there was a pause, and Mr. Thornton,
turning to Emily, said, ‘Why don’t you tell Mr. Mathias about your
adventures?’
‘Oh yes!’ said Mr. Mathias, ‘do tell me all about it. Let me see,
you’re ...’
‘Emily,’ whispered Mr. Thornton.
‘Age?’
‘Ten.’
Mr. Mathias reached for a piece of clean paper and a pen.
‘What adventures?’ asked Emily clearly.
‘Well,’ said Mr. Mathias, ‘you started for England on a sailing-ship,
didn’t you? The _Clorinda_?’
‘Yes. She was a barque.’
‘And then what happened?’
She paused before answering.
‘There was a monkey,’ she said judicially.
‘A monkey?’
‘And a lot of turtles,’ put in Rachel.
‘Tell him about the pirates,’ prompted Mrs. Thornton. Mr. Mathias
frowned at her slightly: ‘Let her tell it in her own words, please.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Emily dully, ‘we were captured by pirates, of course.’
Both Edward and Laura had sat up at the word, stiff as spokes.
‘Weren’t you with them too, Miss Fernandez?’ Mr. Mathias asked.
Miss Fernandez! Every one turned to see who he could mean. He was
looking at Margaret.
‘Me?’ she said suddenly, as if waking up.
‘Yes, you! Go on!’ said her aunt.
‘Say yes,’ prompted Edward. ‘You were with us, weren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Margaret, smiling.
‘Then why couldn’t you say so?’ hectored Edward.
Mr. Mathias silently noted this curious treatment of the eldest: and
Mrs. Thornton told Edward he mustn’t speak like that.
‘Tell us what you remember about the capture, will you?’ he asked,
still of Margaret.
‘The what?’
‘Of how the pirates captured the _Clorinda_.’
She looked round nervously and laughed, but said nothing.
‘The monkey was in the rigging, so they just came on the ship,’ Rachel
volunteered.
‘Did they--er--fight with the sailors? Did you see them hit anybody? Or
threaten anybody?’
‘Yes!’ cried Edward, and jumped up from his chair, his eyes wide and
inspired. ‘_Bing! Bang! Bong!_’ he declared, thumping the seat at each
word; then sat down again.
‘They didn’t,’ said Emily. ‘Don’t be silly, Edward.’
‘Bing, bang, bong,’ he repeated, with less conviction.
‘_Bung!_’ contributed Harry to his support, from under the arm of the
fanatical aunt.
‘Bim-bam, bim-bam,’ sing-songed Laura, suddenly waking up and starting
a tattoo of her own.
‘Shut up!’ cried Mr. Thornton. ‘Did you, or did you not, any of you,
see them hit anybody?’
‘Cut off their heads!’ cried Edward. ‘And throw them in the sea!--Far,
far ...’ his eyes became dreamy and sad.
‘They didn’t hit anybody,’ said Emily. ‘There wasn’t any one to hit.’
‘Then where were all the sailors?’ asked Mr. Mathias.
‘They were all up the rigging,’ said Emily.
‘I see,’ said Mr. Mathias. ‘Er--didn’t you say the monkey was in the
rigging?’
‘He broke his neck,’ said Rachel. She wrinkled up her nose disgustedly:
‘He was drunk.’
‘His tail was rotted,’ explained Harry.
‘Well,’ said Mr. Mathias, ‘when they came on board, what did they do?’
There was a general silence.
‘Come, come! What did they do?--What did they do, Miss Fernandez?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Emily?’
‘_I_ don’t know.’
He sat back in despair: ‘But you saw them!’
‘No we didn’t,’ said Emily, ‘we went in the deck-house.’
‘And stayed there?’
‘We couldn’t open the door.’
‘_Bang-bang-bang!_’ Laura suddenly rapped out.
‘Shut up!’
‘And then, when they let you out?’
‘We went on the schooner.’
‘Were you frightened?’
‘What of?’
‘Well: them.’
‘Who?’
‘The pirates.’
‘Why should we?’
‘They didn’t do anything to frighten you?’
‘To _frighten_ us?’
‘Coo! José did belch!’ Edward interjected merrily, and began giving an
imitation. Mrs. Thornton chid him.
‘Now,’ said Mr. Mathias gravely, ‘there’s something I want you to tell
me, Emily. When you were with the pirates, did they ever do anything
you didn’t like? You know what I mean, something _nasty_?’
‘Yes!’ cried Rachel, and every one turned to her. ‘He talked about
drawers,’ she said in a shocked voice.
‘What did he say?’
‘He told us once not to toboggan down the deck on them,’ put in Emily
uncomfortably.
‘Was that all?’
‘He shouldn’t have talked about drawers,’ said Rachel.
‘Don’t _you_ talk about them, then,’ cried Edward: ‘Smarty!’
‘Miss Fernandez,’ said the lawyer diffidently, ‘have you anything to
add to that?’
‘What?’
‘Well ... what we are talking about.’
She looked from one person to another, but said nothing.
‘I don’t want to press you for details,’ he said gently, ‘but did they
ever--well, make suggestions to you?’
Emily fixed her glowing eyes on Margaret, catching hers.
‘It’s no good questioning Margaret,’ said the Aunt morosely; ‘but it
ought to be perfectly clear to you what has happened.’
‘Then I am afraid I must,’ said Mr. Mathias. ‘Another time, perhaps.’
Mrs. Thornton had for some while been frowning and pursing her lips, to
stop him.
‘Another time would be much better,’ she said: and Mr. Mathias turned
the examination back to the capture of the _Clorinda_.
But they seemed to have been strangely unobservant of what went on
around them, he found.
v
When the others had all gone, Mathias offered Thornton, whom he liked,
a cigar: and the two sat together for a while over the fire.
‘Well,’ said Thornton, ‘did the interview go as you had expected?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘I noticed you questioned them chiefly about the _Clorinda_. But you
have got all the information you need on that score, surely?’
‘Naturally I did. Anything they affirmed I could check exactly by
Marpole’s detailed affidavit. I wanted to test their reliability.’
‘And you found?’
‘What I have always known. That I would rather have to extract
information from the devil himself than from a child.’
‘But what information, exactly, do you want?’
‘Everything. The whole story.’
‘You know it.’
Mathias spoke with a dash of exasperation:
‘Do you realise, Thornton, that without considerable help from them we
may even fail to get a conviction?’