The seafarers; a modern romance

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Copyright N° r,4'/'?,

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Contents

CHAPTER

I. — “ Sweeter than blue-eyed violets, or

THE DAMASK ROSE ” . .

Chapter I. “ Sweeter Than Blue-eyed Violets

OR THE DAMASK ROSE.”

That Bella Waldron should have felt sad and her night’s rest have been disturbed in consequence, was, in the circumstances, most natural. For one can not suppose that any young girl leaves her home, her mother, and her country without much grief and perturbation, without tears and sorrow and heavy sighs, as well as tremulous fears that she may never return to or see them again. And that is what Bella was about to do when this particular night should have come to an end. She was about to traverse not one ocean, but two; to pass from a life that, if not luxurious, was at least comfortable to another which, if more brilliant, would un-

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doubtedly be strange, and consequently not easily to be adopted at first — in fact, to go from one side of the world to the other.

Yet, all the same, it was singular that, between her intervals of weeping and sobbing, and when she had at last cried herself to sleep, she should have been tormented with such frightful dreams as those which came to her — dreams of horror that, in their weirdness, became almost ludicrous, or would have been ludicrous to those who, knowing of them, did not happen to be experiencing them. Thus — the idea of a crocodile regarding one with a glittering eye from its ambush in the sand seems, for some reasons, in our waking moments to conjure up a comical sense of terror; perhaps because of the “ glittering eye,” yet there was nothing ludicrous about such a dream to the mind of Bella as she awoke with a shriek from her sleep after the vision of the creature’s eye had had momentary existence in the cells of her brain. And even when she was thoroughly awakened and knew that she had only been suffering from a bad dream, she still shuddered at the recollection and muttered: “ It seemed as if

SWEETER THAN BLUE-EYED VIOLETS.’

it was creeping towards me to seize me with its horrid jaws. Oh! it was dreadful.”

Then she slept again — only, however, to dream of other things. Of a desolate shore at first, with upon it a misty creature waving its hands mournfully above its head, those hands being enveloped in some gauzy material so that the figure appeared more like a skirt dancer than aught else: then of two lions fighting savagely — and then of a vast black cave with an opening as high as St. Paul’s, and as wide as a railway terminus is long, against which, armed with a spear and protected with a buckler, she seemed to stand trembling. Trembling, too, because she could not see one yard into the deep and penetrating darkness before her and in which, as she peered furtively and with horror, she seemed to see things — forms half animal and half human, crawling, revolving — creeping about! And, again, she awoke with a start.

But by now the room was light with the gray mournful glimmer of the approaching dawn, so light that she could see her wicker basket trunks in their American cloth wrap-

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pers standing by the wall, with the lids open against it: soon, too, she heard the sparrows twittering outside, as well as the congenial suburban sounds, such as the newspaper boys shrieking hideously to one another and the milkman uttering piercing yells, and — though it was her last day in England — she was glad to spring out of bed and know herself to be once more a unit in the actual world instead of a wanderer in a world of dreams.

“ I wish,” the girl muttered to herself, standing by the window and drawing up the blind half way, whereby she was enabled to see that the gray dawn of a May morning gave promise of a warm day later on, “ that, if I were to have such bad dreams at all, I might have been spared them on the very day of my departure for the other side of the globe. I am not superstitious — yet — yet — well! I shall think of this dream, I know, for many a day to come.”

Then she slipped on her dressing-gown, thrust her pretty little white feet into some warm felt bath slippers, and opening her door quietly because it was still early and she did not wish to awaken those in the house

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who might be asleep, she went across the passage to her mother’s room.

Yet ere she does so, let us regard this young girl whose story and adventure we are now to follow, this girl whose dreams of leering crocodiles and dark mystic caves with hideous creatures gyrating in them, will, as we shall see, be far outnumbered and outshone by the actual realities that she will experience in her passage across the world. For it had been resolved on by Fate, or Providence, or Destiny, or whatever one should term that wizard power which controls our worldly existence, that to Bella Waldron were to come experiences, strange, horrible, and fantastic, such as the last decade of our expiring century rarely assaults men with, and women hardly ever.

Standing there, in the now clear light of the morning, her long dressing-gown enshrouding her tall, shapely and svelte figure, while her masses of hair — a warm brown with golden gleams in it, such as has the ripening corn — fell below her shoulders, one would have declared at once that she was beautiful. Beautiful, also, by the gift of clear hazel-blue

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eyes — eyes, too, that were pure and innocent in their glance; beautiful as well, with her softly rounded face, her rich red lips — the upper one divinely short — and also by her colouring. If, too, one applies to her the lines of that old poet, dead and gone two hundred years ago, the words describing Gloriana:

“ More fair than the red morning’s dawn,

Sweeter than pearly dews that scent the lawn, Than blue-eyed violets, or the damask rose Where in her hottest fragrance she glows,

And the cool West her wafted odours blows.”

Bella Waldron may be considered as depicted.

“ Mother,” she said, going in now to the room where that poor lady had herself passed a sad and tearful night bemoaning the fact that soon — in a few hours, indeed, now, because the fateful day had come — her child was to be torn from her.

“ Oh! mother. It is to-day. To-day! Oh! my darling, how can I part from you? ” And then folding the other in her arms as she sat on the bedside, the two women wept together.

f< Yet,” said Mrs. Waldron, to whom advancing years had brought the power of philo-

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sophic resignation, if not the thorough strength to overcome that which rendered her unhappy, “ yet, Bella, my dearest, it is so much for you. Such a position, such a future. Oh! think of it. A position you could scarcely ever have hoped to obtain. And the love, my child. The love. Think how Gilbert loves you and you love him. For you do love him, Bella. Of all men he is the one for you.”

“ With my whole heart and soul I love him,” her daughter answered. “ Mother, if I had never met him I do not believe I could have ever loved any other man. Ah! I am glad Juliet called Romeo the god of her idolatry! It has taught me how to think of Gilbert.”

“ And the position, Bella. The position, think of that. In our circumstances, even though you come of a good stock, are descended from ladies and gentlemen on both sides from far-off years, you could never have hoped to make such a match.”

“ The position is nothing to me, mother. I love Gilbert, madly. I long to be his wife. Why should I think of the position? ”

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“ Every woman must think of it, child. When you are as old — and worn — as I am, you — you will teach your own children to think of it. It is everything to be the wife of a gentleman, better still the wife of a man of rank. Everything! Short of being the wife of a distinguished man, one whose name is on everybody’s tongue, there is no other position so good. And, even then, that distinguished man may not be a gentleman as well. That would be dreadful. Yet, as it is, your husband will be both. Think, Bella! He is sure to become a nobleman, and he may become the most renowned admiral in the Navy.”

“ You dear old mother! But I love Gilbert because he is Gilbert. Otherwise neither the nobility which is certain, nor the renown which is prospective, would take me across the world to him. Do you think I would go to Bombay to marry the heir to a title or a possible admiral if I did not love him? ”

“ Heaven forbid! ” Mrs. Waldron replied, as she sat up in her bed and smoothed her hair. “ Heaven forbid! Yet,” she murmured, perhaps a little weakly for a lady who had just

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delivered herself of such admirable sentiments, “ yet, I do honestly think, darling, that the love you bear each other — yes! above all, the love — and the position — I must think of the position, Bella — and the certainty of a brilliant future for you, reconcile me a little to parting with you. Some day, when you are a mother, you will understand me.”

“ I understand you now, darling. Yet — yet — oh! ” and now she sobbed on her mother’s shoulder; “ yet to think of our being parted for so long, for three years! Gilbert must remain on the station for that length of time.”

Now it is certain that Mrs. Waldron was sobbing too, but, because there was something of the Spartan mother, something, too, of Sempronia, mother of the Gracchi, about her, she calmed her sobs. For she, also, had once been ruthlessly torn by an all-conquering lover, who would take no denial, from her parents’ arms. Yet that lover had no such proud future to offer her as the Gilbert of whom they spoke had to offer his beloved Arabella; for her there had been nothing to flavour her existence except the glorious spice tasted by almost all of us, of loving and of be-

IO

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ing loved. And now — now that she was what she called old — which was not the case, since she was still short of her forty-fifth year — now she knew, and knowing, said so, that love when accompanied by brilliant prospects and an assured future was the sweetest of all loves.

“Your father,” said Mrs. Waldron, “remained on his station, the Pacific, for seven years, and we were separated all that time. He there, I here in London. And in lodgings, Bella — oh I those lodgings and that cooking! — you remember, darling? You must remember the lodgings and the cooking, child as you were. And he was not a future peer, though he did once think he might become an admiral.”

“ Forgive me, darling,” Bella said, kissing her mother again and again. “ I will not repine any more. I ought not to, I know. For is not my Gilbert the handsomest, bravest sailor that ever wore the Queen’s uniform? And it won’t be so long after all. Only — only — I do wish there wasn’t that awful journey. Oh! if there were only a bridge,” and for the first time she smiled, “ or a railway,” she added. ^

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“ I am sure, Bella,” her mother said, forgetting how she would feel that evening when her child was gone, and neither the bright voice nor brisk footsteps would be heard any more in the house, “ I am sure you cannot complain of the manner in which you are going out. The vessel may not be as comfortable as they say the great liners are, but at least your uncle is the captain, and it is his own ship. And that cabin he showed us yesterday when we went down to Gravesend is far better than anything you could get in any line, even in the best. I had one once, when I went out to join your father at Halifax, in which there was nowhere but the pockets of my clothes to keep things in, while the other lady above me could open the scuttle as she lay in her berth. And your cabin is as big as a dining-room, with a sofa.”

“You dear, darling mother,” Bella exclaimed. “ You are an angel to comfort me thus, when I know all the time that your heart is as sad as mine. Oh ! if we had not to part!” And again the two women hugged and kissed each other.

Chapter II. 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 nearly together as a sailor and his wife can pass the greater part of their life. 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 12

STEPHEN CHARKE.

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 which one of the late owners had witnessed a representation of in his boyhood, she would encounter such calamities and perils. But let us not anticipate. Rather, instead, describe who Bella was and how she came to love and to be loved; to be wooed and won.

The English girl! The girl fairly tall, full of, brimming over 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 English 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

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any of her sisters whom you shall meet ’twixt Richmond and Windsor, 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 the 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.

Her 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

STEPHEN CHARKE.

also because he occupied a position almost unique, and consequently conspicuous, in these modern days. Fifty years ago, nay, thirty, 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.

He was a sea captain — a mercantile sea captain — possessing two ships of his own and always in command of one of them. That which he now commanded was this 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 the distinctive appellation — had as a young man possessed an extraordinary love for the sea, so intense a love, indeed, that he, not being enabled 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 obtaini6

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in g 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, sun-browned face; while he was also the possessor of a smile which appeared more often than not upon his goodhumoured 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 at home. 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

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life came to her that the “ Captain ” returned from a voyage to Calcutta and, as was always the case with him, he went to 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 each side. For Captain Pooley — as we will continue to call 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 one should do as much as lay in their power to make their relations 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 go to the Lyceum, and to-morrow — well! to-morrow we’ll see. Then next week, Southsea. Southsea’s the place for us. Grand doings there i8

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next week, Bell. The visit of the foreign fleet 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 in Southsea 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 great’ 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

STEPHEN CHARKE.

*9

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 very good time of it.

They were playing “ Madame Sans-Gene ” 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.”

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“ Who 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 the 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 ex-

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periences 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 battle-ship.”

“ 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 passengers, 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 passengers at the various other theatres and, at last — after receiving a gracious permission to pass from those autocratic masters of the

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public, the police stationed at the foot of Wellington Street — wrenched itself round and pulled up in its turn before the portico of the theatre.

“ Here’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-boat, when her mother and she had occasionally visited those 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 battle-ship 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

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their deep, ocean-acquired strength, that subtle inflection which makes 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 addressed her, 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.

Chapter III. Let Those Love Now Who Never Loved Before.”

The Captain led the way into the five stalls he had booked, followed, of course, by the elder ladies and, as Stephen Charke naturally went last, it followed that Bella and he sat by each other. And between the acts, the intervals of which were quite long enough for sustained conversation to take place, the girl had time to find her interest in him, as well as her surprise, considerably increased. She had perused a few novels dealing with the sea in her time, and in these the mates of the ships of whom she had read had more or less served to confirm her opinion already formed from real life. But when Charke began to talk to her about the actual source from which the play they were witnessing was drawn, she acknowledged to herself that, somehow, she

must have conceived a wrong impression of 24 those seafarers. Certainly he, she thought, could not be one of those creatures who cursed and abused the men if they objected to their food and threatened next to put them in irons, nor did she believe such individuals would have been depicted as knowing much about the Revolution in France and the vulgar triumphs of Napoleon.

Then, during the next interval, he approached the subject of the forthcoming festivities at Portsmouth, to which Bella’s uncle had told him he was going to take his relatives, and, from that, he glided off into the statement that he himself would be there.

“ I am going down next Monday,” he said, “ to see one or two of my old mess-mates of the Bacchus — in which I served for a year in the Channel Squadron, and I fancy I shall be in at most of the functions. Have you ever been to a Naval Ball? ”

Bella told him she never had been to one, her mother’s intimacy with the service having entirely ceased with Captain Waldron’s death, and he then proceeded to give her an account of what these delightful functions were like. Indeed, so vividly did he portray them that

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Bella almost wished that they were going on that very night to take part in one.

When the play was over, she — who acknowledged to herself that which probably no power on earth would have ever induced her to acknowledge to anyone else, namely, that Stephen Charke was an agreeable, if not a fascinating companion — in company with the others prepared to return to West Kensington, bidding good-bye to him in the vestibule of the theatre.

“ Where are you staying? ” Mrs. Waldron asked him, as they stood on the steps waiting for their cab to make its appearance in turn. “ And are you in London for any time? ”