Читать книгу The Building of Jalna - Mazo de la Roche - Страница 7

THE BARK ALANNA had formerly been an East Indiaman. She was bound for Quebec and would return laden with white pine. The Captain was a thick-set Yorkshireman, named Bradley; the first officer a tall lean Scot, with an enormous mouth, named Grigg. There were few cabin passengers and the Whiteoaks held themselves a little aloof, for the voyage would be long and there was the possibility of being thrown to intimately into uncongenial company. Indeed Philip and Adeline had been so surrounded by relatives since their arrival from India that they longed to be alone together. They made themselves as comfortable as possible in the cramped space of their cabin. Philip arranged their possessions in the most shipshape order. Adeline, wrapped in rugs, settled herself in a sheltered corner to read The History of Pendennis. Augusta and her ayah were established near by, the tiny girl clasping her first doll, an elegantly dressed wax creature, extremely corseted and wearing a dress and bonnet of plaid taffeta. Conway and Sholto were exploring the ship and Patsy and the goat making themselves as comfortable as they could in their far-from-comfortable quarters. Ireland lay, a hazy blue hump, on the pale horizon. There was a head wind and the ship made but slow progress, though her great sails strained at the masts and a living soul seemed demonstrating its will to move westward. The gulls followed the ship a long way out from Ireland. They lingered with her, as though waiting for messages to carry home.

Besides the Whiteoaks’ party there were fewer than a dozen passengers in the Cabin Class. Of these they became friendly with only five. There were two Irish gentlemen, educated well but with a rich brogue, named D’Arcy and Brent. They were travelling for pleasure and were to make an extensive tour of the United States. There was a Mrs. Cameron from Montreal who had with her a delicate daughter of fifteen. The two had journeyed all the way to China to join the child’s father who had previously been sent there to take an important post concerned with the trade between the two countries. But, when they had arrived, they had found that a plague of cholera had carried him off. Now they were retracing the long weary way to Montreal. Mrs. Cameron and little Mary would sit huddled together wrapped in one shawl, gazing into the distant horizon, as though in their hearts they held no hope that their journeyings would ever end but felt that they would go on from ship to ship, from sea to sea, till the Day of Judgment. The young girl had indeed acquired a strange seaborn look, as Adeline described it. Her cloak and hat were faded to the greyness of winter waves; her hair hung like lank yellowish seaweed about her shoulders; her wide-open light eyes had an unseeing look; her face and hands were deeply tanned. Only her mouth had colour and between her lips, which were always parted, her small pearl-like teeth showed. Her mother had degenerated, by sorrow and exhaustion, into little more than an element for the protection of Mary.

“Why doesn’t she do something to make the child happy, instead of brooding over her like a distracted hen!” exclaimed Adeline, on the second day out. “Really, Philip, I am excessively annoyed at that woman! I shall tell my brothers to make friends with Mary. It’s unnatural for a young girl to look like that!”

She did so. However days passed before the boys were able to persuade Mary to leave her mother’s side. Mrs. Cameron indeed was unwilling to let her child out of her sight. She looked worried rather than pleased when finally Mary went for a promenade along the sloping deck, supported on either side by Conway and Sholto. They made an extraordinary trio, the boys in their elegant new clothes, the girl travel-stained; the boys bright-eyed, alert to everything that passed about them, the girl seeming in a kind of dream; the boys continually chaffing each other, she looked from one face to the other, scarcely seeming to take in what they said.

The remaining passenger with whom the Whiteoaks became friendly was an Englishman, a Mr. Wilmott who, like themselves, was going out to settle in Canada. He was a tall thin man with sharp but well-cut features and short brown whiskers. He was reserved concerning himself but a fluent talker when politics were under discussion. He and the two Irishmen soon provided entertainment for the rest, for they argued without open rancor. Mr. Wilmott was ironic, with flashes of wit, the Irishmen humourous and ever ready with the most violent exaggerations. Philip had been so long out of England that he felt unequal to political discussion. Also, in any such argument concerning their two countries, he would have had Adeline as his opponent, and the thought of this was distasteful to him.

Adeline’s mind was occupied by her desire to bring Mr. Wilmott and Mrs. Cameron together. Here they were, two lonely people (Mr. Wilmott certainly wore a sombre look at times) who would do well to link their lives together. And what a protector, what a father he would make for little Mary! She felt that Mrs. Cameron was melancholy, rather than heartbroken, over the loss of her husband. She was wrapped up in her child. How could a woman be mother before mate, Adeline wondered, as her eyes drank in Philip’s strength and beauty. Not she — not she! Her man would always come first. She despised the too maternal woman.

So a new world was created on board the Alanna, very different from the world on board the ship that had brought them from India. This was a much smaller, closer world, more cut off from the old life. The last voyage had been a voyage homeward. This was one into what was new and unknown. The last had been a linking up; this was a cutting off. Adeline was conscious of an odd detachment, an exhilaration, as though she were adventuring into a spiritual as well as a material distance.

For a week they pressed forward in fair weather. Then the head wind increased in strength and the ship struggled on against it and against the rising green waves that crashed on her bow, enveloping her in spray. It was no longer possible to stay on deck. They must spend the long hours below where there was not only the close air but the smells and noises from the steerage to be endured. The ayah became seasick and Adeline had the care of the baby on her hands. Mrs. Cameron and Mary adored little Augusta and took a large share of her care. But at night she was restless and Adeline and Philip did not get their proper sleep.

They were going to their berths early one stormy night when there was at thumping on the door and Conway’s voice called out: —

“Philip! There’s a leak sprung!”

“What?” shouted Philip, staying the unbuttoning of his waistcoat.

“She has sprung a plank! She’s leaking!”

Then there came the heavy tramping of feet overhead and the shouts of officers.

Adeline turned pale. She had the quietly whimpering baby in her arms.

“Will the ship sink?” she asked.

“Certainly not. Don’t be alarmed,” said Philip. He threw open the door.

Conway stood there supporting himself by the brass railing which ran along the passage. He wore a bright-coloured dressing gown and, even in the excitement of the moment, Philip noticed how it heightened his resemblance to the Knave of Diamonds. With the door open, the noise of tramping feet and vehement shoutings, the roar of the steadily rising squall, the thunder and rattle of canvas and tackle, were increased. The sails were being lowered.

“They’re lowering the sails!” shouted Conway, but his voice came as no more than a whisper. “It’s blowing a terrible gale.”

His brother stood close behind him, clinging to the railing. He looked green with seasickness. Adeline said to him: —

“Come in and lie down in my berth, Sholto. You must keep the baby while we go to see the Captain.”

The boy obediently stumbled into the cabin and threw himself on to the berth.

“Oh, I’m so ill!” he moaned.

Adeline placed the baby beside him.

“You are not to come, Adeline,” Philip shouted.

Her eyes flashed rebellion. She gripped his arm in her hands. “I will come!” she shouted back.

The vessel gave a heave that sent them all staggering into one corner of the cabin. Mrs. Cameron now appeared in the doorway. She had a shawl wrapped about her head and she was holding Mary closely to her, as though determined not to be parted from her at the moment of sinking. But she spoke calmly.

“What is wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing but a leak, ma’am. We are going to see the Captain.” Philip’s tone, his very presence, were reassuring.

“We will go too.” They saw the words on her lips though they could not hear them.

Clinging to the rail and to each other Philip and Adeline gained the companionway. They found the Captain and the first officer supervising the lowering of the sails. The great canvas thundered deckward as in terrifying capitulation. The stark masts looked suddenly fragile and the ship vulnerable. The wind blew with terrific force and green walls of water reared themselves, then came crashing against the side of the rolling ship. The heaving wash of the waters was palely illuminated by a cloud-bound moon, that only now and again really showed herself. Adeline had seen storms at sea before this and they were tropic storms, but the ship had been larger, the company more numerous. There was a loneliness about this storm. The little group of people seemed helpless, the wind was piercingly cold. However, the Captain spoke with equanimity.

“It’s nothing but a squall,” he said in his hearty, Yorkshire accent. “I’ve been round the Cape many times myself and this is naught but a puff of wind. So you’d best go back to your berths, ladies, and not worry.”

Above the noise of the storm came confused shoutings and tramping from the companionway. The steerage passengers were pouring up from below. They looked wild-eyed, rough and terrified.

Captain Bradley strode over to them.

“What does this mean?” he demanded.

The second mate shouted back — “I couldn’t keep them down there, sir! The water’s pouring in below.”

The Captain looked grim. He pressed his way through the crowd, ordering them to descend with him, which they did in great confusion.

Adeline heard him shout — “All hands to the pumps!”

Philip was patting her on the back. He was smiling at her. She smiled bravely back. He raised his voice and said — “The squall is passing. Everything will be all right.”

“Take Mrs. Cameron’s arm,” she said. “She looks ready to drop.”

Mary Cameron had left her mother’s side. Conway Court had his arm about her. Neither of them looked frightened but they both wore expressions of pale hilarity. Philip helped Mrs. Cameron back to her cabin. The wind was falling. Yet the sea was still heavy with great thundering waves and the wind still fierce enough to fill the storm sails, to which the ship had been stripped, to bursting point. In the welter of the waves the Alanna lay almost on her beam ends. Now a rainstorm advanced like a wall, seeming to join with the waves in the effort to drown those aboard.

But Captain Bradley was not downcast. He went about, ruddy-faced and cheerfully shouting his orders. The swinging lanterns illumined but little the wild scene. Sailors were thrumming sails together and drawing them under the ship’s bow in what seemed a hopeless effort to stop the leak. Adeline felt that, if she went below, she would be desperate with fear. Here in the midst of the activity she felt herself equal to Philip in courage. She drew Mary Cameron and Conway to her side and the three of them linked themselves, waiting Philip’s return.

“I gave her some brandy,” he said as he came up. “She needed it, poor lady, for she is half-dead with cold.” He turned to the girl. “Shall I take you down to your mother, Mary?”

“Did she ask for me?” Mary’s voice was slightly sulky.

“No. I think she’ll sleep. Perhaps you are better with us.”

Conway Court gave a shout of laughter. “Mary, Mary, quite contrary — ” he sang. “Sailed away to the Port of Canary.”

Philip frowned at him but Adeline laughed too and Mary gave him an adoring look. He was a wild figure in his bright-hued dressing gown with his tawny hair blowing in the wind.

Mr. Wilmott came up to them.

“The officers are not alarmed,” he said, “but the leak appears to be a bad one. The four pumps are working like the devil. Mr. D’Arcy and Mr. Brent are helping to man them and I’m ready to give a hand when I’m needed.”

When morning came there were five feet of water in the hold. The pumps were working hard and the Captain said he had the situation under control. A stewardess brought breakfast to Adeline in her cabin. She had changed into dry things but had not slept. The tiny room was in a state of disorder, her wet clothing, the belongings of Philip and the baby, scatter promiscuously and depressingly. She felt herself being sucked down into a vortex of confusion, rather than of fear. But the hot tea, the bread and bacon, put life into her. She sat on the edge of the berth and combed out her hair. A pale sunlight filtered in at the porthole. She noticed the lively beauty of her hair. “It would look like this, even if I were drowning,” she thought, half resentfully.

In the silver mirror of her dressing case, she saw how pale her face was. She bit her lips to bring some colour into them.

“When do you think we shall get to Newfoundland?” she asked the Scotch stewardess.

“Oh, we’ll get there right enough.”

“How far are we from Ireland?”

“Perhaps six hundred miles.”

“How is Mrs. Cameron this morning?”

“Ah, she’s fell waur o’ the wear.”

“And her daughter?”

“Fast asleep. Like your own bairn, poor we lamb!” She cast an accusing look at Adeline.

“My brother looked after my baby very well last night,” said Adeline haughtily, for little Augusta had not been in her thoughts all night. “You say she is fast asleep? Is she with her ayay?”

“Aye. She’s with what’s left of the ayah — for the woman is more dead than alive.” The stewardess stood balancing the tray against the reeling of the ship.

“Merciful heaven,” cried Adeline, “what a miserable company we are!”

She crossed the passage to the ayah’s cabin and looked in. In the pale sunlight nurse and infant looked equally fragile and remote. But they were sleeping peacefully. Adeline summoned the stewardess.

“Take that basin away,” she said in a low but furious tone. “Make the place decent with as little noise as you can.”

Adeline went to Mrs. Cameron’s cabin. All was neat there but the poor woman lay on her berth exhausted after her last bout of seasickness. The air was heavy with the scent of Eau de Cologne. It was as though someone had emptied a bottle in there. Mary was seated in front of the tiny dressing table gazing at herself in the glass with a fascinated look. She was unaware of the opening of the door but continued to give her large-eyed reflection stare for stare, while the ship heaved and a cupboard door flew open, then banged shut, with each roll. Adeline laughed.

“Well, what do you think of yourself?” she asked.

“Oh, Mrs. Whiteoak,” answered Mary. “I’m pretty — pretty! I have travelled right round the world and never found it out till now.”

“Well,” said Adeline, “it is a queer time to have discovered it. But if it’s a comfort to you, I’m glad you think so.” Still gazing at her reflection the girl answered: —

“Don’t you?”

Adeline laughed again. “I’m in no state to judge but I shall take a good look at you later on. Can I do anything for your mother?”

“She feels a little better, she says. She just wants to be quiet.”

“Have you had any sleep?”

“A little. I’m not tired.”

“You’re a better traveller than I am. Have they brought you breakfast.”

“Oh, yes. The stewardess is very kind. So is your brother. He’s so brave too.”

“Well, I’m glad of that. I’m going now to see how the boys are getting on.”

“May I come with you?”

“No. Stay with your mother.”

Adeline found Sholto recovering from his seasickness. He was sipping coffee and eating a hard biscuit but he was very pale. Conway was changing into dry clothes. Adeline noticed the milky whiteness of his skin and how his chest and neck were fuller than one would judge from his face.

“Oh, Adeline,” exclaimed Sholto, “I wish I’d never come on this voyage! We shall quite likely go down. Oh, I do wish I were back in Ireland with Mamma and Papa and Timothy and all!”

“Nonsense,” said Adeline, sitting down on the side of the berth. “In a few days you’ll be laughing at this. Here, eat your biscuit.”

She took it from his hand and broke off a morsel of it and put it in his mouth. He relaxed and she fed him the rest of the biscuit in this way as though her were a baby.

She turned to Conway. “Go and find Philip and tell him I want him. Just say I must see him and that it is important.”

“What do you want him for?”

She flashed a look of command at him. “Do as I say, Con.”

“Very well. But he probably won’t come.” He tied his cravat with as much care as though he were about to make a call.

“Oh, what a little fop you are!” she cried. “To think of you fiddling with your tie and soon we may all be at the bottom!”

Sholto hurled himself back on the pillow.

“You said everything was all right. You said we’d be laughing about this!” he sobbed.

“Now you’ve done it!” exclaimed Conway. He opened the door and went into the passage but it was a struggle to close the door after him against the rolling of the ship. Adeline had to go and put her weight against it.

She returned to Sholto. “You know I was only joking, “ she comforted him. “If I thought we were going to the bottom should I be looking so pleasant?”

“You’re not looking pleasant! You’re looking queer and wild.”

She laid her head beside his on the pillow.

“I am looking queer,” she said, “because I suspect Con of making up to that little Cameron girl. That’s why I sent him away — so I could ask you. Sholto, tell me, has he been telling her she’s pretty? Has he been making up to her?”

Sholto’s green eyes were bright. “Indeed he has! We are never alone but he is up to his tricks. ‘Oh, but you’re the pretty thing’ he says. ‘Oh, the lovely little neck on you!’ he says. ‘Oh, the long fair eyelashes! Come close and touch my cheek with them!’”

“And did she?”

“She did. And he laid his hand on her breast.”

“And did she mind?”

“Not she. She arched her neck like a filly you are stroking. And she made her eyes large at him like a filly. But she’s innocent and Conway is not. He could tell those boys at the English school a thing or two.”

Adeline bent her brows in a sombre line. “I shall tell Mary’s mother,” she said, “to keep her away from that rascal.”

“Well, if the ship is going down, Adeline, they might as well be enjoying themselves.”

“The ship is not going down!”

The door opened and Conway, clinging to it, looked in. He said: —

“Philip has gone to your cabin. He’s as wet as a rat.”

“Con — come in and shut tht door!” He did and stood pale and smiling before her.

“Now,” she said, “no more hanky-panky with Mary Cameron! If I hear of it I shall tell Philip and he’ll give you a shaking to make your teeth rattle. Oh, you ought to be ashamed of yourself — making love to a child!”

“What has that little twister been telling you?” he demanded, his cold eyes on his brother.

Sholto began to shiver as fear produced a fresh wave of seasickness.

“I did not need to hear it from him,” said Adeline. “She told me herself that she’d just discovered she was pretty and I’ve been watching you. Now, I say no more of it!”

He tried to open the door and bow her out with a grand supercilious air but a sudden roll of the ship flung them staggering together. They clung so a moment and then she said, holding him close: —

“You will be good, won’t you, Con, dear?”

“Yes — I promise you.”

He saw her out, then, bending over his brother, he gave him half a dozen thumps, each one harder than the one before. Miraculously those, instead of bringing his sickness back, seemed to do him good for in half an hour they were on deck together, watching the sailors raising what canvas they dared, and feeling new hope as the sun came out brightly and the foam-crowned waves harassed the ship less cruelly. When they saw Mary they looked the other way. She, on her part, seemed occupied by her own thoughts. Her mother kept her at her side. Mrs. Cameron’s intense spirit went out in a fierce strengthening of the ship so that, made inviolate by her spiritual aid, it might reach land and set Mary’s feet in safety there.

Adeline found Philip standing in the middle of their cabin waiting for her. His clothes were wet and crumpled, his fair hair plastered in a fringe on his forehead. He looked so ridiculous that she would have laughed but she saw the frown on his face. He asked curtly: —

“Why did you send for me?”

“I was anxious about you.”

“I’ve been standing here waiting for you.”

“Only a few moments! I have been with Sholto. He’s sick.”

“So is everyone. I brought up my own breakfast. What do you want of me?”

“I want you to change into dry things.”

He turned toward the door. “If that is all —”

She caught his arm. “Philip, you are not to go! You’ll get your death!”

“I should make a poor soldier if this would kill me.”

“But what can you do?”

“For one thing, I can put some courage and order into the steerage passengers. They are on the verge of panic. As for you, you might tidy up this cabin. It’s vile.”

“What do you expect!” she cried. “I have a sick baby! I have an ayah who is half-dead! I have Mrs. Cameron to visit! I have my young brother to look after! I worry myself ill about you. The stewardess is useless except to gossip. The ship is leaking! And you ask me to tidy up the cabin!”

In a fury she began to snatch up garments and to thrust them into boxes or on pegs.

“I didn’t ask you to get in a temper,” he said.

“Oh, no, I’m not to get in a temper! I’m to keep perfectly calm! And as neat as a pin!”

“Then why don’t you?”

Before she could answer, the parrot, which had been sitting muffled on the top of his swaying cage, uttered a scream of the purest excitement as he became conscious of Adeline’s agitation, and flew violently about the cabin. The disturbance caused by his wings was startling to nerves already tense. He came to rest on a brass bracket, turned himself over so that he hung head down and, in that posture, sent out a torrent of curses in Hindu: —

“Haramzada!” he screamed. “Haramazada! Chore! Iflatoon! Iflatoon!”

“I sometimes wish,” said Philip, “that we had never brought that bird.”

“I dare say you do,” retorted Adeline. “I dare say you wish you had never brought me. Then you might have had your old shipwreck in the most perfect order! You might — ”

Philip’s face relaxed, “Adeline,” he said, “you make any situation ridiculous. Come, my pet, don’t let us quarrel.” He put his arms about her and his lips to her hair. “Do find me a pair of gloves for I’ve blistered my palms at the pump.”

She was instantly solicitous for him. First she kissed the blistered palms, then she bathed them, applied a soothing ointment, a bandage, and found a pair of loose gloves for him. So administered to he became quite meek and changed into his dry clothes and brushed his hair. All this while Boney regarded them quizzically, hanging for the greater part of the time head down.

“Philip,” she asked as she coiled her hair, “is everything as simple as the Captain says? Are we in danger? Will the ship carry us safely to Newfoundland? He says he will stop there for repairs, doesn’t he?”

“We can cope with the leak,” he answered gravely. “And if only this damned head wind would fall and a favourable wind spring up we should do very well.”

They did keep the leak under control, the sun came out fitfully; a kind of order was created on the ship, the wind promised to fall. Regular shifts at the pumps were arranged and, when the time of changing came, the cry of “Spell ho!” rang out from Grigg’s enormous mouth. The Captain looked determinedly cheerful. The Alanna pushed on through the buffeting of the waves. She seemed running straight into the ruddy sunset. A sailor came bounding up to the Captain who was talking with Philip and Mr. Wilmott.

“The cargo has shifted!” he said, out of breath.

Philip went to where Adeline and her brothers had found shelter on the corner of the deck. The boys were tired and had stretched themselves in complete abandon on either side of her. Conway’s head lay against her shoulder, Sholto’s on her lap. Upon my word, thought Philip, they look no better than the emigrants. Adeline raised her eyes from the pages of Pendennis.

His stern expression startled her.

She sat upright. “What is it now?” she demanded.

Conway woke and sprang to his feet. He looked dazed. He stammered: —

“Why — Philip — why? Adeline — the deck! Look at the deck!”

“Yes,” said Philip. “The ballast has shifted. She’s listing badly. The Captain says there’s nothing for it but to go back to Galway for repairs.”

“Back to Galway for repairs!” repeated Adeline and Conway in one voice. Then he laughed. “What a joke on us!” He shook his brother by the shoulder. “Wake up, Sholto! You’re going to dear old Ireland again!”

“How long will it take?” asked Adeline.

“With this wind behind us we’ll do it in a few days.”

“We must not let my mother know we are there. It would upset her so. She’d bound to come all the way to Galway to see us, and the good-byes to say all over again!”

“I quite agree,” said Philip. He felt he could very well do without seeing his parents-in-law again.

Sholto wore a strange look of joy.

The next morning the wind had fallen enough to allow the first officer to be lowered over the side in the Captain’s cutter to examine the leak. The sea was a bright hard blue and the waves were crinkling under the wild west wind. His movements were watched with fascination by those on deck. He opened his mouth and shouted cryptic remarks to the Captain leaning over the side. He put out his hand and felt the injured part like a surgeon concentrating on an operation. Then he was hauled up again. Everyone crowded round him. He was loath to relieve their anxiety and only the presence of the cheerful Captain made him say: —

“Ah, I dare say she’ll do. That is if there are no squalls. The leak will be four feet out of the water if the sea gets no worse. She may do — but we’ll hae to keep at the pumps.”

The Alanna had turned back with the sound of thunder in her sails as she veered. Now, to the wind she had struggled against for so many days, she surrendered herself, let it drive her back toward Ireland and strained every inch of canvas to be there with the least loss of time. But the shifting of the ballast made her awkward. No one could forget the way she listed. It was as though all on board had suddenly become lame, leaning to one side when they walked.

And there were the pumps always to be kept going, forcing out the briny water that stretched in monstrous fathoms waiting to force its way in again. Aching backs, hands blistered, then callused, monotonous hours that wove the day and night into one chain of weariness and boredom. Every now and again the boredom changing to apprehension at the sight of a ragged cloud that looked the possible mother of a squall. Of all those on board, Adeline was the most buoyant. In her handsome clothes, that were so unsuitable to the situation, she carried assurance and gaiety wherever she went. She would, for all Philip’s remonstrances, take her turn at the pumps. She learned sea chanteys from the sailors, though she never could keep on the tune.

A strange intimacy sprang up among the passengers. They seemed to have known each other for years. Their faces, their gestures, their peculiarities, were etched on each other’s minds. Then, on the eighth day, the dim shape of Ireland became visible on the horizon.