Читать книгу The Seafarers - John Bloundelle-Burton - Страница 6

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 fell out 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 in her time a few novels dealing with the sea, and, in these, the mates of ships of whom she had read had more or less served to confirm her opinion, already slightly 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 those seafarers. Certainly he, she thought, could not be one of the creatures who cursed and abused the men if they objected to their food, and threatened next to put them in irons; nor did she remember that such individuals had ever been depicted in sea stories as knowing much about the Revolution in France and the vulgar amusements 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 since 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 Bella almost wished 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 induced her to acknowledge so soon to any one 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 goodbye 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?'

Charke mentioned the name of a West End caravanserai, at which he had a room, as his abode for the next day or so, and by doing so he administered one more shock of surprise to the girl standing hooded and muffled by his side. For, again, in her ignorance, or perhaps owing to her reading of nautical novels, she had always thought of the officers of merchant vessels as living somewhere in the purlieus of Ratcliffe Highway when ashore, and rarely penetrating farther west than the city itself. It seemed, however, that either she had formed a totally erroneous impression of such people, or that the above sources of information must be wrong if all were really like Mr. Charke. But then, suddenly, there occurred to her mind the fact that her uncle had said this young officer was in possession of some few thousand pounds of his own--and this, probably, would explain why he was living in a comfortable manner when he was ashore.

'I am at home to my friends every other Friday,' Mrs. Waldron said, as now the cab had got to the portico, and a man was bawling out 'Mrs. Pooley's carriage' at the top of his voice--which announcement, nevertheless, served the purpose required--'and the day after to-morrow happens to be one of those Fridays. If you care to call--though I know gentlemen despise such things--we shall be glad to see you.'

'I do not despise them,' Charke answered, 'and I shall be delighted to come.'

Then he bade them all good-night, saw the cab off, and strolled down to his hotel. In his innermost heart Charke did despise such things as 'at homes,' or 'tea fights,' as he termed them contemptuously to himself, yet, in common with a great many other men, he was willing enough to go to them when there was any attraction strong enough to draw him.

And he told himself that there was an attraction at Mrs. Waldron's such as he had never been subjected to before.

'What a lovely girl,' he thought to himself; 'what eyes and hair--and a nice girl, too! Now I begin to understand why other men curse the sea, and say they would rather earn their living on shore driving busses than following our calling. And, also, why they nail up photographs in their cabins and watch every chance of getting mails off from the shore. I suppose I should have understood it earlier if I had ever met a girl like this.'

He did call on the following Friday, after having passed the intervening two days in wandering about London; in going to a race meeting one day and a cricket match at the Oval the next; in trying a dinner at one foreign restaurant on the Wednesday, and another at a second foreign restaurant on Thursday; but all the time he felt restless and unsettled, and wished that four o'clock on Friday was at hand.

'This won't do,' he said to himself, before the cricket match on Thursday was half over, and while he sat baking in the sun that streamed down on to the Oval--which disturbed him not at all, and had no power to make him any browner--'this won't do. I must go to sea at once. By the time I have seen that girl again I shall be head over ears in love with her. And the interest on £4000 in India Stock--by Jove! it isn't quite £4000 since I've been loafing about on shore!--and a chief officer's pay won't keep a wife. Not such a wife as she would be, anyway.'

He did not know it--or, perhaps, he did know it and would not acknowledge it to himself--but he was very nearly head over ears in love with Bella Waldron already. And he had only seen her once--been by her side at a theatre for three hours--with three intervals of ten minutes in which to talk to her! Yet the girl's beauty, her gentle innocence, and above all, that trusting confidence with which she seemed to look out upon all that was passing before her, and to regard the world as what it appeared to be and to take it at its own valuation, had captured him. Still, he should have known--he must have known--that when a man who has never thought much of the women he has met heretofore, and has generally forgotten what their features were like by the next day, takes to lying awake for hours dreaming at last of one woman with whom he has by chance come into contact, he is as nearly in love with her as it is possible for him to be.

So, at least, those report who have been in love, and so it has been told to the writer of this narrative!

He made his way to Montmorency Road, West Kensington, exactly at four o'clock, and while he sat in the pretty drawing-room talking to Mrs. Waldron, who was alone at present--the appearance of Bella being promised by her mother in a few moments--he found himself wondering what the girl did with her life here. He had seen a bicycle in the passage as he was shown upstairs, so he supposed she rode that; while there were some photographs of rather good-looking men standing about on the semi-grand and on the plush-covered mantelshelf--which made him feel horribly annoyed, until Mrs. Waldron, seeing his glance fixed on them, informed him that they were mostly cousins who were out of the country, and that one or two of them happened to have succumbed to various climatic disorders abroad, for which catastrophes he did not seem to feel as sorry as he supposed he ought to do. Then Bella came in, looking radiantly beautiful in a summer dress (a description of which masculine ignorance renders impossible), and Stephen Charke was happy for ten minutes. For they all talked of the impending fêtes at Portsmouth in honour of the foreign fleet, and Charke found himself in an Elysium when Bella promised him--without the slightest self-consciousness or false shame--that she would undoubtedly have some dances reserved for him.

Yet, soon, other callers came in, and Stephen Charke found himself deprived of the pleasure of further conversation with Bella. An elderly dowager claimed her attention, and a middle-aged lady--of, as he considered, menacing aspect--regaled him with the evil doings of her domestic servants, a subject of about as much interest to this wanderer of the seas as that of embroidery or tatting would have been. An Irish Doctor of Divinity also disturbed his meditations on Bella's beauty by telling funny stories, the point of which the divine had forgotten until he refreshed his memory by reference to a little note-book in which he had them all written down, while a young militia subaltern who had failed for the Army--and seemed rather proud of it!--irritated him beyond endurance. Yet, even through this fatuous individual, there came something that was welcome to him, since he saw Bella regarding the youth with a look of scarcely veiled contempt, and he longed to tell the idiot that the only failure for which women have no pity in this world is that of the intellect.

'Goodbye,' he said to Bella, who accompanied him to the head of the stairs, after he had made his adieux to her mother. 'Goodbye. Next week--Portsmouth--and--my dances.'

'I shall not forget,' she said.

After which he wandered off by devious and intricate ways (which reminded him of some of the narrow passages he knew of between the islands in the China seas) and so arrived at the District Railway.

And all the time he was telling himself that he was a fool--an absolute fool. 'I have fallen in love with a girl I have only seen twice,' he meditated, as the train ran through the sulphurous regions underground, and he endeavoured to protect his lungs by smoking cigarette after cigarette; 'a girl who is not, and never can be, anything to me. She will make a good match some day; she must make a good match--girls of her position and looks always do; and, a year or two hence, I shall luff into some unearthly harbour abroad, and run against Pooley, who will tell me that she has done so.'

Yet, all the same, he took comfort from remembering that he had not seen anybody at Mrs. Waldron's 'afternoon' who was likely to be the individual to carry her off.

But, in spite of this soothing reflection, he braced himself to a stern resolution: he determined that, as already in his life he had triumphed over other things, so he would triumph now. He would triumph over this swift-flowering and still growing love; conquer it by absence from the object which inspired it; trample it down till there was nothing left of life in it.

'I have no money to keep a wife,' he thought, as he walked up from Charing Cross Station to his hotel; 'certainly no money to keep such a wife as she would be. And, even if I had, it is not likely that she would marry me; "a common mate," as I have heard ourselves called. Portsmouth shall end it,' he concluded. 'I'll have one good week there, and then to sea again on a long cruise. That ought to do it! I'll go down to the docks to-morrow and see what's open.'

Wherefore, full of this determinate resolution to drive from out of him the frenzy which had taken possession of his heart and mind, he went to the hotel and read in his bedroom for an hour or so, during all of which time Bella Waldron's face was looking out at him from the pages of the Navy and Army Illustrated, and was always before him until he went forth to try still another foreign restaurant. Yet she was there too, and her pure, innocent eyes were gazing at him across the imitation flowers and the red candle-shades in the middle of the table; and so, also, they were in the stalls of the Empire, until he fell asleep in his seat. Nor was she absent from his mind during the long hours of the night.