Читать книгу The Mate of the Good Ship York; Or, The Ship's Adventure - William Clark Russell - Страница 3

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A house with a wall, which would be blank but for a door and two steps, stands in a very pretty lane. The habitable aspect of the house is on the other side, and commands a wide prospect of sloping fields and river and green sweeps soaring into eminences thickly clothed with trees. A brass plate upon this lonely door bears the simple inscription, "Dr. Hardy."

The lane runs down to a bridge, and the flowing river carries the eye along a scene of English beauty: the bending trees sip the water's surface; the bright meadow stretches from the bank, and is tender and gay with the tints and movement of cattle; lofty trees sentinel the lane, and in the early summer the notes of the thrush and the blackbird are clear and sweet.

One autumn evening, at about seven o'clock, the door bearing Doctor Hardy's plate was pulled open, and a young fellow, with something nautical in his lurch and dress, stepped into the road, and began to fill his pipe. Immediately behind him appeared another figure—he was a thin, pale, gentlemanly-looking man, and his white hair was parted down the middle. He gazed with a great deal of kindness, not unmingled with the shadow of sorrow, at the young fellow who was filling his pipe, and said:

"You have a pleasant evening for your walk."

"I am sorry to leave this place," said the young man. "There is nothing like this to be met on the open ocean." And whilst he pulled out a matchbox his eyes went away to the green, evening-clad hills, which showed between the trees in a sweep of sky-line pure as the rim of a coloured lens; and now two or three of the stars which shine upon our country, and which we all know and love, were trembling in the dark blue of the coming shadow.

The young man lighted his pipe with several hard sucks not wanting in emotion.

"God bless you, father," said he. "I shall be turning up and finding all well within twelve months, I hope."

"God bless you, my dear son, and I pray that he may continue to watch over you," said the white-haired old gentleman in a shaking voice.

The young man started to walk with his face set toward the hill. Doctor Hardy stood in the doorway watching him until he had disappeared round the bend. He then stepped back and closed the door upon himself.

It would not be dark for a little while, and even when the dusk came up over the hills a piece of moon would float up with it. The water flowing in the valley lay in short lines and sweet curves in a moist dim rose. A clock was striking; a wagon was rumbling in a weak note of thunder past some low-lying hedge that skirted a road. The young fellow stepped out leisurely with his pipe hanging at his teeth; he was going away to London and was walking to the station, and was without even a stick. He was square, robust, a nautical type of young man, clean shaven, of a cheerful cast of face, but with something singular in the expression of his eyes owing to the upper lids being mere streaks and scarcely visible, and the coloured matter black and brilliant, so that when he stared at you his look would have been fierce but for the qualifying expression of the rest of his face. He walked with a slight roll of the sea in his gait, and if you had noticed him at all you might have supposed him a sailor. Yet a man need not be a sailor to look like one. I have met nautical-looking men who would not be sailors for the value of the cargoes of twenty voyages. On the other hand, I have met sailors who, had they called themselves greengrocers' assistants or tailors' cutters, would have been believed.

This young fellow, smoking his pipe and walking along through the fine autumn-gathering evening, was the only son of the white-haired gentleman who had just withdrawn into his house. He had been to sea since he was fourteen years of age, and his name was George Hardy, and he was now chief mate of the York, an Australian clipper, twelve hundred and fifty tons burthen, then lying in the East India Docks. He was going to join her, and why he was without baggage was because he had sent his chest aboard in advance.

Formerly the railway station stood not very far distant from Doctor Hardy's house; but all about here was unimportant—it was more a district than a place. Hardy's patients, for instance, were scattered over miles, and, like the plums in a sailor's pudding, the houses were scarcely within hail of one another. The railway company, two years before this date, removed the station seven miles higher up the line, to the great consternation of the unfortunate man who had purchased the "Fox Railway Inn," then conveniently seated within a short walk of the station. Figure his horror when one morning he saw men with pickaxes uprooting the platform. The "Fox Inn" was left as desolate as Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat, and it needed three men to go through the bankruptcy court before matters began to look a little brighter for this unfortunate tavern.

There was plenty of time, and Hardy did not walk very fast. He enjoyed the sweets of the country, all the aromas of the darkling land which came along in the faint, cold, evening air. When a sailor arrives from a long voyage he makes up his mind to button the flaps of his ears to his head, and to steer a straight course for the deepest inshore recess. He does not do so because he usually brings up at the nearest grog-shop on his arrival, or makes his way to the boarding-house where he was robbed and stripped when he was last in the place, and in a short time he is away at sea again with no clothes but what he stands up in, and no bed but the bundle of hay or straw which he flings, with curses deep as the sea and dark as the ship's hold, down the hatch under which he sleeps. But it is an illustration of his hatred of salt water that he should resolve to bury himself deep inshore when he lands.

George Hardy did not belong to the class who live in boarding-houses and wear knives on their hips. He was the son of a gentleman, he was a man of taste and feeling which his seafaring life had heightened and enlarged; he had the eye of an artist and the spirit of a poet, and was too good for a calling that does not require these qualities.

The road for about four miles was very lonely. One little cottage on the right stood in an orchard and grounds which sloped to a hedge almost three-quarters of a mile down. He met nobody; once or twice a squirrel ran across the pale dust; the birds had gone to bed, there was no song; the sun had sunk, and the evening had deepened into the first of the night.

Suddenly, some distance ahead of him on the left, Hardy spied what was undoubtedly a human figure. It lay in a dry, shallow ditch with the upper part of its body a little raised, resting upon the bank under the hedge. As he approached he saw that it was a woman, and then that it was a girl in a straw hat with nothing near her in the shape of bag, bundle, or dog. She must be some wearied wayfarer who had seated herself and fallen asleep. But he did not believe this, either; on the contrary, when he was close to the figure he imagined it to be a corpse.

He put his pipe in his pocket, and stood looking at her. There was light enough to see by, but not very distinctly. He stooped and peered, and then started and exclaimed:

"By Jove, it's Julia Armstrong! What's come to her?"

He looked up and down the road; not a soul was in sight. He felt her ungloved hands—they were cold. Her straw hat was tilted on her head, which rested not on the brim of her hat but on her hair, that was dressed in a mass behind and pillowed her. Her eyes were not closed, and if she was not dead she was in a swoon. He got beside her and lifted her head, all the while wondering what she was doing—dead or in a faint—in this ditch. He then pulled out a small flask of brandy diluted with water, and as her pure white teeth lay a little apart he managed to pour a dram into her mouth. He chafed her hands, and in a sort of way caressed her by holding her to him. He also put her hat straight, and wetting his handkerchief with a little brandy and water he damped her brow, now taking notice that she was not dead by sundry tokens of life of a most elusive and subtle character, whereof her breathing was not one, for he could not detect a stir of air on the back of his hand betwixt her lips, nor the faintest heave of her pretty breast.

She was Julia Armstrong, and, strange to say, an old love of his—I mean, he had lost his heart to her a little time before he went to sea, when he was scarcely more than a schoolboy. Then he went to sea, and when he came home she had gone somewhere on a visit, and so of the next voyage; but when he returned from his fourth trip round the world he met her, and found the old beautiful charm again in her; but in a week she left to occupy some post as a governess thirty miles away, and when they met again it was here by this roadside.

What had captivated the young fellow with this girl who lay unconscious in the fold of his arm? She had a pleasant, interesting face, beheld even through the death pallor that lay upon it; but she was not beautiful or even pretty. Her hair was abundant and fair, inclining, as you might even judge by that light, to auburn. But it was not her face nor hair, it was her figure that had excited admiration into passion in the young sailor. Her shape and involuntary poses were saucy and perfect beyond expression. She always carried her hat on one side of her head—"cock-billed," as the sailors call it; she had a trick of planting her hands on her hips; her limbs were beautifully shaped, and her short skirts exposed as much or little of them as her figure required. No dancer of exquisite art could have played her legs as this girl did, yet all her movements were involuntary and unconscious, and therein lay the sweetness, for had a hint of study been visible in her motions the whole maidenly and fairy-like illusion would have hardened into acting.

Young Hardy had thought of the Vivandière, of the Fille-du-Regiment, when he looked at her. He could not have told you why. Was it the sauciness, that was not wanton, of the repose of her hands upon her hips? the unconsciously crossed leg when standing? the cock-billed hat, or tam-o'-shanter, that made you feel the need of music? the fixed gaze that was not staring but pensive? the sudden change of attitude that was like the cloud shadow upon a rose on which the sun had rested? What had all this to do with the Vivandière? But Hardy had got the word and the idea into his head, and when he thought of her at sea 'twas as though she was walking with a regiment with a little barrel of cordial waters upon her back.

Again he looked up the road and then down the road; he could hear a cart in a lane that ran parallel, but nobody was visible. He was beginning to wonder what he was to do—whether he had the physical strength to carry this fine girl in his arms four miles, that is, to his father's house—when she sighed, stirred like an awakening sleeper, sighed again, and opened a pair of gray eyes full upon his face.

"Do you know me?" he asked.

"Where am I?" she answered, and with a sudden effort she raised her form out of his arm, but in a moment fell back again in sheer weakness.

"Don't you remember your old friend George Hardy?" he said.

She looked at him with that sort of intentness which you will sometimes see in a baby's eyes, and her lips drooped into a scarcely perceptible smile.

"What am I doing here?" she asked, and she gazed round her, deeply puzzled.

He gave her a little more brandy, which she certainly stood in need of, and looking at her without speaking, he waited until more mind came into her face; and now she made an effort to rise.

"Keep still until you have come right to," said he. "I wish some old cart would come along to give us a lift to my father's."

"Your father's?"

"Doctor Hardy," he answered. "About an hour's walk away."

"Yes, I know," she exclaimed. "If a cart came I would not go."

"My dear Miss Armstrong, what are you doing here?" exclaimed young Hardy. "All alone in a dead faint in a ditch! Were you returning home?" And again he looked a little way up and down, thinking to see a handbag or a parcel, but her hands were as empty as his.

"I'm going to London," she said. "What time is it?"

"I'm going to London, too," said he; "but neither of us will catch the train we want. Do you mean to walk to London?"

She shook her head, and put her hand in her pocket as though seeking her purse. What she sought was evidently there.

Now her faculties had come together, but it was clear she must sit a little longer before attempting to rise; so they sat side by side with their feet in the dry ditch, and their backs against the hedge.

"Why are you going to London?" he asked.

"I'm leaving home for good," she answered.

"Where's your luggage?"

"I have none," she replied.

"Are you running away from home?" he inquired, beginning to see a little into this matter.

"I have no home, and I am leaving my father's house of my own accord," she replied, animated by a little faint passion. "I could endure the life no longer—I am the wretchedest girl in the world. Oh, how his wife has treated me! You once met her."

She struggled with her heart, and some tears ran down her face.

It is true that Hardy had met this stepmother—this second Mrs. Armstrong—and he had then gathered that the lady and Miss Julia did not lead the lives of angels in each other's company. In short, he had heard that Mrs. Armstrong, by her drink, by her language, and conduct in general, had made a very hell of Captain, or Commander, Armstrong's home for his daughter. The captain was retired, was poor, and Mrs. Armstrong had brought him a hundred a year, which was a godsend. He took life very easily, drank his whisky, smoked his pipe, and was welcome at several houses in the neighbourhood, where at one he would get billiards, at another a rubber, at a third a gossip in which he related his China experiences; and the whisky bottle always kept him company, though his kindest friend could never say that in all his time he had seen him drunk once. Doctor Hardy was on good terms with him, but spoke with strong dislike of Mrs. Armstrong, and of her treatment of her daughter, that was driving her into seeking and taking situations, some of a menial sort, and that threatened before long to break her heart or to send her to the bad, as 'tis called. But with domestic troubles of this sort people do not choose to concern themselves, except in exaggerating them in talk by scandalous hints and opinions.

"I must wait for something to pass that will help me to carry you to my father's house," said Hardy, looking anxiously at the girl whom he could not fail to see was weak and exhausted.

"I have already declined," she answered. "I will not return a single yard in that hateful direction. I shall feel stronger presently. Is there not another train later on?"

"Not to London."

"I must not miss this," she exclaimed, struggling to rise.

"Look here," said he, keeping her down by gentle pressure of the hand, "I am going to London and we will go together, but we shall have to wait until to-morrow. Will not that suit? If you are in a desperate hurry you can leave early to-morrow. Do you know Bax's farm?"

"Of course I do," she answered, turning her face up the road.

"Bax shall give you a bedroom," said he, "since you refuse to return with me to my father. A good supper and a good night's rest are the doctoring you stand in need of. I find you in a dead faint in a ditch, and so you come under my care, and I am answerable for you. We are old friends."

She faintly smiled and looked at him.

"You will do exactly what I ask, and at Bax's farm we shall have leisure for a little talk."

She bowed her head, and he saw that she cried again.

They spied a man at the bottom of the hill coming up. The girl started, and said, "I am quite strong enough to stand and walk," and she stood up, one of the most beautiful figures amongst women, with a sweet ingenuous sauciness which was the flavouring grace of her happy hours, distinguishable still, even in this time of misery and illness. The man coming along was a common labourer, but she did not choose that any one should see her sitting in a ditch.

They walked slowly up the road. She leaned upon his arm and occasionally stopped to rest, and their talk until they arrived at the farm was not much; indeed she said little more than that she had been making up her mind for some weeks to leave her father's house for ever and to sail to a colony, where she would be willing to accept the lowest menial office so long as she was independent, and received the respect that was due to her as a lady. She had left her home that day in the afternoon, meaning to walk to the station and take the train to London, whence she intended to write to her father to forward her clothes in the box which stood ready corded in her bedroom. When she had walked some distance—it might be five miles—a sudden faintness seized her, and she sat down under a hedge to rest. She then must have fainted, and knew no more until she returned to consciousness, and found herself resting against Hardy.

This talk brought them to Bax's farm.

It was not a farm, though it was called so. Bax sold milk and garden produce and eggs, and the countryside called his house a farm. It had two gables and a thatched roof, small latticed windows, and a door that opened direct into the sitting-room. In the summer the house was enchanting with its flowers and shrubbery and the climbing green stuff about it, and then the concert of the woods thrilled in the trees beyond, and the air was full of sweet smells.

Bax was a man of about sixty, immensely stout behind and in front, with a face that seemed powdered with pale, scissors-shorn whisker, and small eyes which had drowned their lustre in beer. He stood in the doorway in his shirt-sleeves smoking a pipe, and was not at all surprised when the couple passed through the gate and approached the porch. He merely pulled out his pipe, and said:

"Good evening, Mr. Hardy; good evening, Miss Armstrong. Come for a bit of a sit down? Will y' 'ave chairs here? or the sitting-room's at your sarvice."

"How d'ye do, Mr. Bax?" said Hardy.

"Good evening, Mr. Bax," said Miss Armstrong, in a faint voice.

"Take us into your sitting-room," said Hardy; and they entered the door and were in the sitting-room at once—a cosy little room, hung with portraits of Bax and his dead wife and daughter, decorated with a small mantel-glass in fly-gauze, and hospitable with a round table on one leg and three claws, the top beautified by a knitted cover.

Julia sank into a little armchair. Bax was beginning to gaze at her earnestly; he knew her perfectly well, knew her father also, who frequently looked in for a drink; also he knew Hardy perfectly well, likewise his father, who attended him when he was attacked by gout.

"Mr. Bax," said Hardy, putting his cap down upon the table, "we have come to occupy your house this night."

"Joost been married, have yer?" asked Bax, slipping his pipe into his waistcoat pocket.

"No," answered Hardy, gravely; "Miss Armstrong is leaving her home for good. If you don't guess why, I'll tell you presently."

Bax looked knowing; he looked more knowing an instant later when a fine Persian kitten ran up his back and curled its tail upon his shoulder, for then two pairs of eyes were fastened upon Hardy, the kitten, being no beer drinker, gazing more steadfastly than the other.

"Have you a bedroom that you can place at Miss Armstrong's disposal?"

"Is there no later train?" asked Julia.

"We would not take it if there were," replied Hardy.

Of course Bax, having lost his wife, must consult his daughter, and when he had opened a door and shouted a little for Mary Ann there arrived a woman who looked old enough to be Bax's mother. Her face seemed to be dredged by time; the arcus senilis was more defined in her than in Bax; she looked seventy years old, and was but thirty-eight.

She curtseyed to the visitors, and then, after pursing her lips and knitting her brow, she replied to her father that Miss Armstrong could have the spare room over the sitting-room.

"Can I have a bedroom?" said Hardy.

Bax mused, looking at his daughter, and then said, "Not unless you sleeps along with me."

"With you?" laughed Hardy, looking at his stomach. "How much of you lies in bed all at once? That'll do for me," said he, and he jerked his head at a wide hair-sofa.

The father, the kitten, and the daughter looked a little strangely at Hardy and Julia Armstrong, as though before proceeding they wanted to see things in a clearer light. Hardy understanding this, spoke out with the bluntness of a sailor.

"Look here, Bax," said he, "I'm going to London to join my ship. I was bound away to-night, but on the road I fell in with this young lady, who lay in a swoon."

"Oh, dear, poor thing!" groaned Miss Bax.

"She came to, and I brought her here after learning that she was leaving her home for good on account of the barbarous behaviour of her stepmother—"

"Oh, I know, I know," interrupted Miss Bax.

"She was walking to catch the train I was bound by; she is not in a fit state to travel, Bax. You can see that, ma'am; therefore she shall sup under this comfortable old roof, and take the rest she needs in the room you offer her. Her train leaves at ten in the morning, and we will take it."

The kitten purred as it fretted Bax's cheek. Bax said, "It's all right, Mr. Hardy, and you shall be made comfortable. What 'ull you 'ave for supper?"

What would be better than some cold ham and a dish of eggs and bacon, a dish of sausages in mashed potato, and the half of a beautiful apple tart, along with a jug of real cream? And for drink there was some first-class ale kept by Bax for Bax himself, for he held no license, and his dealings were secret, and if he took money it was a gift for a kindness.

"Will you come up-stairs and see your room, Miss Armstrong, before I goes about and gets your supper for you?" exclaimed Miss Bax.

"Have you got no baggage?" inquired old Bax, jerking the kitten on to the table.

"It will follow me to London," said Miss Armstrong, and she rose and went up-stairs with Miss Bax.

Hardy sat down upon the sofa, and Bax went to work to lay the cloth. There was plenty of room at that little table for two. Bax had been a gardener in a great family, and had often helped the coachman, the footman, and the butler to wait. He possessed some good old-fashioned table apparel, and before Miss Armstrong returned the room looked bright and hospitable with the light of an oil lamp reflected in cutlery, glass, and cruet-stand.

Julia entered, and Bax walked out. She went and sat beside Hardy, and the lovely Persian kitten sprang into her lap. Her hair was as beautiful as her figure, and her gray eyes were full of heart and meaning. You could not have called her pretty, yet you were sensible of a charm in her face that had nothing to do with the shape of her nose or the character of her mouth.

"Do you feel better?" said Hardy.

"Much; I never thought to find myself stopping a night here. Of course, I have been the means of your losing your train?"

"To-morrow will do just as well," he answered. "Where did you mean to sleep when you got to London to-night?"

"I should have found a room," she answered.

"Will they send on your luggage if you write for it?"

"Father will," she replied. "Yes, he will do that, but he will not write to ask me to return. He does not care what becomes of me. He never cared what I did when I left his house to fill a situation."

Her nostrils enlarged, her eyes looked angry. A little blood visited her pale cheek. Hardy's memory pictured her father: a middle-sized man with pale, weak eyes, a chuckling laugh like the gurgle of liquor, much reference to his ships and to naval things in general, a large Micawber-like indifference to his existing circumstances, and a quality of talkativeness about outside matters, such as the queen, the trouble at Pekin, the discovery of the North Pole, which would make you think that he did not know what home worries were.

"Bax," said Hardy, "may covertly send along to let them know you are here."

"What of that?" she exclaimed. "If they were to send twenty men they would have to drag me to move me. I would not set foot in that house again if my stepmother lay dead in the gutter opposite the door. It is my father's fault."

She bit her lip, stroked the kitten, and said, "Oh, it is hard upon a girl to have a bad father—a weak, selfish, foolish father."

Here Bax came again with a tumbler full of autumn flowers. He placed them in the middle of the table and went out, looking nowhere, as if he walked in his sleep; but whilst the door lay open they heard the spitting of the frying-pan.

"What are you going to do when you get to London?" said Hardy.

"I mean to find a situation on board a ship," she answered.

"What situation do you expect to find?"

"I shall try to get a post as stewardess, or as an attendant upon a sick person. I cannot pay my passage out even in the steerage, therefore I must work."

"Now, Miss Armstrong," said Hardy, stroking the kitten's head on her lap, "it is impossible for me to be rude to you because I want to be, and mean to be, your friend." She looked at him swiftly, and her eyes drooped. "Do not misjudge any questions I may put to you. How much money have you got?"

"Seven pounds, twelve shillings, and—" she drew out a little purse, opened it, counted some coppers, and added, "fourpence."

"What is that money going to do for you in London?" said Hardy, after a pause of pity.

"It will support me," she answered, "until I have obtained a situation on board a ship."

"Situations for girls on board ships are very few," said he. "What part of the world do you want to sail for?"

"Anywhere, anywhere," she replied. "But it must be to some place where I can get a living."

"It would not do to sail for China," he exclaimed. "India doesn't provide much for people whose wants are yours. It must be the Great Pacific colonies. Aren't there agents and institutions which help young girls to get away across the sea? This we will inquire into when we arrive in London."

She looked at him gratefully, and was about to speak, but was interrupted by Miss Bax, who staggered in with a tray load.