Works of Ellen Wood, page 330
From this she was aroused by hearing the gate hastily opened. Quick footsteps came up the path, and a manly voice said something to David Jekyl in a free, joking tone. She bounded up, her cheek flushing to hectic, her heart beating. Could it be George?
No; it was her brother, Reginald Hastings. He came in with a great deal of unnecessary noise and clatter. He had arrived from London only that morning, he proceeded to tell Maria, and was going up again by the night train.
“I say, Maria, how ill you look!”
Very ill indeed just then. The excitement of sudden expectation had faded, leaving her whiter than before. Dark circles were round her eyes, and her delicate hands, more feeble, more slender than of yore, moved restlessly on her lap.
“I have been very feverish the last few weeks,” she said. “I think I am stronger. But I have been out for a walk and am tired.”
“What did the little shaver die of?” asked Reginald.
“Of convulsions,” she answered, her bodily weariness too great to speak in anything but tones of apathy. “Why are you going up again so soon? Have you a ship?”
Reginald nodded. “We have orders to join to-morrow at twelve. The Mary, bound for China, six hundred tons. I know the mother would never forgive me if I didn’t come to say good-bye, so I thought I would have two nights of it in the train.”
“Are you going as second officer, Reginald?”
“Second officer! — no. I have not passed.”
“Regy!”
“They are a confounded lot, that board!” broke out Mr. Reginald, explosively. “I don’t believe they know their own business. And as to passing any one without once turning him, they won’t do it. I should like to know who has the money! You pay your guinea, and you don’t pass. Come up again next Monday, they say. Well, you do go up again, as you want to pass; and you pay another half-guinea. I did so; and they turned me again; said I didn’t know seamanship. The owls! not know seamanship! I! They took me, I expect, for one of those dainty middies in Green’s service who walk the deck in kid gloves all day. If there’s one thing I have at my fingers’ ends it is seamanship. I could navigate a vessel all over the world — and be hanged to the idiots! You can come again next Monday, they said to me. I wish the Times would show them up!”
“Did you go again?”
“Did I! — no,” fumed Reginald. “Just to add to their pockets by another half-guinea! I hadn’t it to give, Maria. I just flung the whole lot over, and went down to the first ship in the docks and engaged myself.”
“As what?” she asked.
“As A. B.”
“A. B.?” repeated Maria, puzzled. “You don’t mean — surely you don’t mean before the mast?”
“Yes I do.”
“Oh, Reginald!”
“It doesn’t make much difference,” cried Reginald in slighting tones. “The second mates in some of those ships are not much better off than the seamen. You must work, and the food’s pretty much the same, except at the skipper’s table. Let a fellow rise to be first mate, and he is in tolerably smooth water; but until then he must rough it. After this voyage I’ll go up again.”
“But you might have shipped as third mate.”
“I might — if I had taken my time to find a berth. But who was to keep me the while? It takes fifteen shillings a week at the Sailors’ Home, besides odds and ends for yourself that you can’t do without — smoke and things. I couldn’t bear to ask them for more at home. Only think how long I’ve been on shore this time, Maria. I was knocking about London for weeks over my navigation, preparing to pass. — And for the mummies to turn me at last!”
Maria sighed. Poor Reginald’s gloomy prospects were bringing her pain.
“There’s another thing, Maria,” he resumed. “If I had passed for second mate, I don’t see how I could go out as such. Where was my outfit to come from? An officer — if he is on anything of a ship — must look spruce, and have proper toggery. I am quite certain that to go out as second mate on a good ship would have cost me twenty pounds, for additional things that I couldn’t do without. You can’t get a sextant under three pounds, second-hand, if it’s worth having. You know I never could have come upon them for twenty pounds at home, under their altered circumstances.”
Maria made no reply. Every word was going to her heart.
“Whereas, in shipping as a common seaman, I don’t want to take much more than you might tie up in a handkerchief. A fo’castle fellow can shift any way aboard. And there’s one advantage,” ingenuously added Reginald; “if I take no traps out with me, I can’t lose them.”
“But the discomfort?” breathed Maria.
“There’s enough of that in any way, at sea. A little more or less is not of much account in the long-run. It’s all in the voyage. I wish I had never been such a fool as to choose the sea. But I did choose it; so it’s of no use kicking against it now.”
“I wish you were not going as you are!” said Maria earnestly. “I wish you had shipped as third mate!”
“When a sailor can’t afford the time to ship as he would, he must ship as he can. Many a hundred has done the same before me. To one third mate wanted in the port of London, there are scores and scores of able seamen.”
“What does mamma say to it?”
“Well, you know she can’t afford to be fastidious now. She cried a bit, but I told her I should be all right. Hard work and fo’castle living won’t break bones. The parson told me — —”
“Don’t, Reginald!”
“Papa, then. He told me it was a move in the right direction, and if I would only go on so, I might make up for past shortcomings. I say, Isaac told me to give you his love.”
“Did you see much of him?”
“No. On a Sunday now and then. He doesn’t much like his new post. They are dreadfully over-worked, he says. It’s quite a different thing from what the Bank was down here.”
“Will he stop in it?”
“Oh, he’ll stop in it. Glad, too. It won’t answer for him to be doing nothing, when they can hardly keep themselves at home with the little money screwed out from what’s put aside for the Chisholms.”
Reginald never meant to hurt her. He only spoke so in his thoughtlessness. He rattled on.
“I saw George Godolphin last week. It was on the Monday, the day that swindling board first turned me back. I flung the books anywhere, and went out miles, to walk my passion off. I got into the Park, to Rotten Row. It’s precious empty at this season, not more than a dozen horses in it; but who should be coming along but George Godolphin and Mrs. Pain with a groom behind them. She was riding that beautiful horse of hers that she used to cut a dash with here in the summer; the one that folks said George gave — —” Incautious Reginald coughed down the conclusion of his sentence, whistled a bar or two of a sea-song, and then resumed:
“George was well mounted, too.”
“Did you speak to them?” asked Maria.
“Of course I did,” replied Reginald, with some surprise. “And Mrs. Pain began scolding me for not having been to see her and the Verralls. She made me promise to go the next evening. They live at a pretty place on the banks of the Thames. You take the rail at Waterloo Station.”
“Did you go?”
“Well, I did, as I had promised. But I didn’t care much about it. I had been at my books all day again, and in the evening, quite late, I started. When I got there I found it was a tea-fight.”
“A tea-fight!” echoed Maria, rather uncertain what the expression might mean.
“A regular tea-fight,” repeated Reginald. “A dozen folks, mostly ladies, dressed up to the nines: and there was I in my worn-out sailor’s jacket. Charlotte began blowing me up for not coming to dinner, and she made me go into the dining-room and had it brought up for me. Lots of good things! I haven’t tasted such a dinner since I’ve been on shore. Verrall gave me some champagne.”
“Was George there?” inquired Maria, putting the question with apparent indifference.
“No, George wasn’t there. Charlotte said if she had thought of it she’d have invited Isaac to meet me: but Isaac was shy of them, she added, and had never been down once, though she asked him several times. She’s a good-natured one, Maria, is that Charlotte Pain.”
“Yes,” quietly responded Maria.
“She told me she knew how young sailors get out of money in London, and she shouldn’t think of my standing the cost of responding to her invitation; and she gave me a sovereign.”
Maria’s cheeks burnt. “You did not take it, Reginald?”
“Didn’t I! it was quite a godsend. You don’t know how scarce money has been with me. Things have altered, you know, Maria. And Mrs. Pain knows it too, and she has no stuck-up nonsense about her. She made me promise to go and see them when I had passed. — But I have not passed,” added Reginald, by way of parenthesis. “And she said if I was at fault for a home the next time I was looking out for a ship, she’d give me one, and be happy to see me. And I thought it was very kind of her; for I am sure she meant it. Oh — by the way — she said she thought you’d let her have Meta up for a few weeks.”
Maria involuntarily stretched out her hand — as if Meta were there, and she would clasp her and withhold her from some threatened danger. Reginald rose.
“You are not going yet, Regy?”
“I must. I only ran in for a few minutes. There’s Grace to see and fifty more folks, and they’ll expect me home to dinner. I’ll say good-bye to Meta as I go through the garden. I saw she was there; but she did not see me.”
He bent to kiss her. Maria held his hand in hers. “I shall be thinking of you always, Reginald. If you were only going under happier circumstances!”
“Never mind me, Maria. It will be uphill work with most of us, I suppose, for a time. I thought it the best thing I could do. I couldn’t bear to come upon them for more money at home.”
“Yours will be a hard life.”
“A sailor’s is that, at best. Don’t worry about me. I shall make it out somehow. You make haste, Maria, and get strong. I’m sure you look ill enough to frighten people.”
She pressed his hands between hers, and the tears were filling her eyes as she raised them — their expression one wild yearning. “Reginald, try and do your duty,” she whispered in an imploring tone. “Think always of heaven, and try and work for it. It may be very near. I have learned to think of it a great deal now.”
“It’s all right, Maria,” was the careless and characteristic answer. “It’s a religious ship I’m going in this time. We have had to sign articles for divine service on board at half-past ten every Sunday morning.”
He kissed her several times, and the door closed upon him. As Maria lay back in her chair, she heard his voice outside for some time afterwards laughing and talking with Meta, largely promising her a ship-load of monkeys, parrots, and various other live wonders.
In this way or that, she was continually being reminded of the unhappy past and their share in it; she was perpetually having brought before her its disastrous effects upon others. Poor Reginald! entering upon his hard life! This need not have been, had means not grown scarce at home. Maria loved him best of all her brothers, and her very soul seemed to ache with its remorse. And by some means or other, she was, as you see, frequently learning that Mr. George was not breaking his heart with remorse. The suffering in all ways fell upon her.
And the time went on, and Maria Godolphin grew no stronger. It went on, and instead of growing stronger she grew weaker. Mr. Snow could do nothing more than he had done; he sent her tonic medicines still, and called upon her now and then, as a friend more than as a doctor. The strain was on the mind, he concluded, and time alone would heal it.
But Maria was worse than Mr. Snow or any one else thought. She had been always so delicate-looking, so gentle, that her wan face, her sunken spirits, attracted less attention than they would have done in one of a more robust nature. No one glanced at the possibility of danger. Margery’s expressed opinion, “My mistress only wants rousing,” was the one universally adopted: and there may have been truth in it.
All question of Maria’s going out of doors was over now. She was really not equal to it. She would lie for hours together on her sofa, the little child Meta gathered in her arms. Meta appeared to have changed her very nature. Instead of dancing about incessantly, running into every mischief, she was content to nestle to her mother’s bosom and listen to her whispered words, as if some foreshadowing were on her spirit that she might not long have a mother to nestle to.
You must not think that Maria conformed to the usages of an invalid. She was up before breakfast in the morning, she did not go to bed until the usual hour at night, and she sat down to the customary meals with Meta. She has risen from the breakfast-table now, on this fine morning, not at all cold for late autumn, and Margery has carried away the breakfast-things, and has told Miss Meta that if she will come out as soon as her mamma has read to her, and have her things put on, she may go and play in the garden.
But when the little Bible story was over, her mamma lay down on the sofa, and Meta appeared inclined to do the same. She nestled on to it, and lay down too, and kissed her mamma’s face, so pretty still, and began to chatter. It was a charming day, the sun shining on the few late flowers, the sky blue and bright.
“Did you hear Margery say you might go out and play, darling? See how fine it is.”
“There’s nothing to play with,” said Meta.
“There are many things, dear. Your skipping-rope and hoop, and — —”
“I’m tired of them,” interposed Meta. “Mamma, I wish you’d come out and play at something with me.”
“I couldn’t run, dear. I am not strong enough.”
“When shall you be strong enough? How long will it be before you get well?”
Maria did not answer. She lay with her eyes fixed upon the far-off sky, her arm clasped round the child. “Meta, darling, I — I — am not sure that I shall get well. I begin to think that I shall never go out with you again.”
Meta did not answer. She was looking out also, her eyes staring straight at the blue sky.
“Meta, darling,” resumed Maria in low tones, “you had two little sisters once, and I cried when they died, but I am glad now that they went. They are in heaven.”
Meta looked up more fixedly, and pointed with her finger. “Up in the blue sky?”
“Yes, up in heaven. Meta, I think I am going to them. It is a better world than this.”
“And me too,” quickly cried Meta.
Maria laid her hand upon her bosom to press down the rising emotion. “Meta, Meta, if I might only take you with me!” she breathed, straining the child to her in an agony. The prospect of parting, which Maria had begun to look at, was indeed hard to bear.
“You can’t go and leave me,” cried Meta in alarm. “Who’d take care of me, mamma? Mamma, do you mean that you are going to die?”
Meta burst into tears. Maria cried with her. Oh reader, reader! do you know what it is, this parting between mother and child? To lay a child in the grave is bitter grief; but to leave it to the mercy of the world! — there is nothing like unto it in human anguish.
Maria’s arms were entwined around the little girl, clasping her nervously, as if that might prevent the future parting; the soft rounded cheek was pressed to hers, the golden curls lay around.
“Only for a little while, Meta. If I go first, it will be only for a little while. You — —” Maria stopped; her emotion had to be choked down.
“It is a happier world than this, Meta,” she resumed, mastering it. “There will be no pain there; no sickness, no sorrow. This world seems made up of sorrow, Meta. Oh, child! but for God’s love in holding out to our view that other one, we could never bear this, when trouble comes. God took your little sisters and brothers from it: and — I think — He is taking me.”
Meta turned her face downwards, and held her mother with a frightened movement, her little fingers clasping the thin arms to pain.
“The winter is coming on here, my child, and the trees will soon be bare; the snow will cover the earth, and we must wrap ourselves up from it. But in that other world there will be no winter; no cold to chill us; no summer heat to exhaust us. It will be a pleasant world, Meta; and God will love us.”
Meta was crying silently. “Let me go too, mamma.”
“In a little while, darling. If God calls me first, it is His will,” she continued, the sobs breaking from her aching heart. “I shall ask Him to take care of you after I am gone, and to bring you to me in time; I am asking Him always.”
“Who’ll be my mamma then?” cried Meta, lifting her head in a bustle, as the thought occurred to her.
More pain. Maria choked it down, and stroked the golden curls.
“You will have no mamma, then, in this world. Only papa.”
Meta paused. “Will he take me to London, to Mrs. Pain?”
The startled shock that these simple words brought to Maria cannot well be pictured: her breath stood still, her heart beat wildly. “Why do you ask that?” she said, her tears suddenly dried.
Meta had to collect her childish thoughts to tell why. “When you were in bed ill, and Mrs. Pain wrote me that pretty letter, she said if papa would take me up to London she’d be my mamma for a little while, in place of you.”
The spell was broken. The happy visions of heaven, of love, had been displaced for Maria. She lay quite silent, and in the stillness the bells of All Souls’ Church were heard ringing out a joyous peal on the morning air. Meta clapped her hands and lifted her face, radiant now with glee. Moods require not time to change in childhood: now sunshine, now rain. Margery opened the door.
“Do you hear them, ma’am? The bells for Miss Cecil. They’re as joyous as the day. I said she’d have it fine, last night, when I found the wind had changed. I can’t bear to hear wedding-bells ring out on a wet day: the two don’t agree. Eh me! Why, here’s Miss Rose coming in!”
