I rose early next morning, sent for the cook, and gave her certain instructions. The servants in our strangely ordered home were as much mine as my stepfather’s; I paid half their wages. But my own maid was at my own cost, and she waited upon me only.
Captain Butler and my cousin arrived shortly after half-past twelve, and at one o’clock we sat down to as dainty and elegant a meal as I and the cook and my maid could contrive among us. We drank champagne; my father’s silver was upon the table; in the middle was a rich hothouse nosegay, which had cost me a guinea and a half. My maid, a discreet, good-looking girl, waited admirably. My cousin stared, and asked me, boy-like, if I dined thus every day. I laughed and answered: ‘Off as good dishes, Will, but never so well, because I often dine alone when I dine at home at all.’
‘I should like to dine with you every day,’ said Will.
I had dressed myself with extraordinary care, but my eyes wanted the sparkle of the previous evening, my cheeks the rose of those merry hours. I wondered as I glanced at Captain Butler whether the thought of me had kept him awake all night. Somehow I could not look at him with the confidence of the previous evening. I felt shy; my eyes stole to his face and dropped on detection; my appetite was poor, and my laugh unnaturally loud with nerve. His own manner was a little constrained, and I saw, and my heart throbbed and leaped when I saw, admiration strong in his looks whenever he regarded, or addressed, or listened to me. Oh, thought I, what would I give now for sauciness enough to ask you downright: ‘Have you a sweetheart?’
During the course of the dinner I said to him: ‘Don’t you think my way of living strange?’
‘You need a stepfather to understand my unhappy state.’
‘No very unhappy state, surely,’ said he, looking at the table, and then round the well-furnished room.
‘I think I shall go a voyage some of these days, Will,’ said I.
‘Sail with me, Marian,’ he answered.
‘Where’s your ship bound to?’
‘Sydney, New South Wales—a splendid trip. Three months there, three months back, three months to see the country in.’
‘And you give me a fortnight to make up my mind!’ said I, laughing. ‘Don’t they send the convicts to Sydney? I can’t fancy that country. ’Tis seeing nothing to meet one’s transported fellow-countrymen. There are plenty of such folks walking past this house at this minute. Who would leave Stepney for Sydney?’
My cousin asked what trade the Arab Chief would be in. Captain Butler answered that he believed she was to trade to the West Indies and eastern South American ports.
‘There’s a big world for you that way, Marian,’ said Will. ‘Down there the wind’s full of bright parrots, every tree writhes with monkeys. Robinson Crusoe lived all alone somewhere in those parts, that’s if the great river of Oroonoque’s where it was in Friday’s time. The home of the great sea serpent is in the Caribbean Sea, and if you kick up an old stone by chance you stand to unearth a mine of precious metal.’
I ended this by rising, and we soon afterwards left the house. It was a clear, cold afternoon, with a bright blue sky for London. We took a coach to Limehouse and then a boat. There is no change in the East India Docks in all these years. I went down to them for memory’s sake not very long ago, and all was the same, it seemed to me, saving the steamers. The basins were full of ships of many sizes and of all rigs; the air was radiant with the flicker and tremble of scores of flags; strange smells of distant countries loaded the atmosphere—sweet oils and spices, wool and scarlet oranges and scented timber. When I was a child my father had sometimes brought me to these docks when he came to them on business; I thought of him as I looked, and felt a little girl again with the odd wonderment and delight of a child in me as I stared at the shipping and the complicated heights of spar and rigging, at the grinding cranes heavily lifting cargo in and out, as I breathed the odours of the littered quays, as I hearkened to the shouts, to the songs of the seamen at the winch or capstan, to the voices of the wind in the gear, soft in the fabric of the taller ships as the gay whistlings of silver pipes heard afar.
We walked leisurely along the quays. Will’s ship lay in a corner at a distance, and he was for enthusiastically pressing forward to arrive at her. His ardent pace kept him ahead, and he often turned to invite us to come on. But I was listening to Captain Butler and was in no great hurry. At last we came to Will’s ship, the Childe Harold. Oh, my great God, when I think of it! When I think of standing beside Captain Butler and looking at that ship with my cousin at my elbow calling my attention to points of her with a young sailor’s pride!
She was a very handsome vessel of her kind, and a big ship according to the burden of those days. Though she was receiving cargo fast, her sides towered high above the wall; she had been newly coppered, and her metal glanced sunnily upon the soup-like water she floated on. Captain Butler took my hand, and we followed Will up the gangway plank and gained the ship’s deck. A man with a beard stood at the yawn of the great main hatch; Will touched his cap and whispered that he was the mate of the ship. Captain Butler went up and shook hands with him and rejoined us, saying that he had made the man’s acquaintance at Callao. A quantity of cases were being swung over the rail, and as they were lowered down the hatch I heard a noise of voices below—calls and yells, and the kind of language you expect to hear arising from the hold of a ship that is populous with lumpers. Will took us into the cuddy, which you will now call the saloon; a fine cabin under the poop-deck, with some sleeping berths on either hand. He then walked us forward to show us the apprentices’ quarters.
The ship had what is known as a topgallant forecastle, on either hand of which was a wing of cabin, a sort of deck-house, entered by a door that slid in grooves. The apprentices lived in the wing on the left, or port, or larboard side, as the expression then was.
‘How many of you are there?’ asked Captain Butler.
‘Three,’ answered my cousin.
The place was empty, and I entered it and looked about me to gather whether there was anything I could purchase to render the coarse, rude abode a little more hospitable to the sight.
‘This won’t be like being at home, Will?’ said I.
‘It will be seeing life, though, and starting on a career,’ he answered.
‘These are very snug quarters,’ said Captain Butler. ‘What sort of a forecastle have you, Johnstone?’
My cousin led us into a large, wooden cave. It was very gloomy here. We had to lift our feet high to enter the door. The huge windlass stood, a great mass of reddened timber and grinning ironwork, in front of the entrance to this forecastle; abaft it rose the trunk of the foremast, and behind, again, the solid square of the galley, or kitchen; the thick shrouds descended on both sides; and, though it was a bright day, the shadows of these things lay in a twilight upon the forecastle entrance, and I needed to stand awhile and accustom my eyes to the gloom before I could see.
‘This is a fine forecastle,’ said Captain Butler. ‘Few crews get better parlours.’
The interior was empty. Rows of bunks on both sides ran ghostly in the obscurity of the bows.
‘What hatch is this?’ said I, pointing to a small, covered square in the deck close to where I stood.
‘That’ll be the way to the fore-peak,’ said Captain Butler.
‘What sort of a place is that?’ said I.
‘The rats’ nursery,’ he answered, laughing.
‘Have you been into it, Will?’ said I.
‘No. They keep coal and broom-handles there; odds and ends of stores, cans of oil, and everything that’s unpleasant. I find things out by asking.’
‘Right, Johnstone,’ said Captain Butler. ‘Keep on asking on board ship. That’s the way to learn. How would you like to be an able seaman, Miss Johnstone, and sail before the mast and sleep in a place like this?’
‘This would not be my end of the ship if I were a man,’ said I.
We wandered aft on to the poop, whence we could command a view of the whole ship; and here we stood looking at the clamorous, gallant scene round about us, till the sun sank low across the river beyond Rotherhithe, and the shadow of the evening deepened the colours of the streaming flags, and hung a rusty mist out upon the farther reaches of the river, making the ships there loom dusky and swollen.
Captain Butler asked us if we would drink tea with him at the Brunswick Hotel. I was now liking nothing better in the world than his company, and gladly accepted, and the three of us walked to the hotel and took a seat at a table in a window, where we had a view of the shipping; and here we drank tea and ate some small, sweet white-fish and passed a happy hour.
Captain Butler must have been less than a man, and without eyes in his head, if he had not by this time guessed that I was very much in love with him. I was sure he admired me; indeed, his admiration was unfeigned. I had never been loved by a man, and could not guess what was in the mind of this handsome sailor by merely observing the admiration that softened and sweetened the naturally gay and careless expression of his eyes, but it filled me with sweet delight to know that he admired me. This was a full, rich cup for my lips for a first draught. I liked to feel that he watched me. I’d turn my head a little way and talk to Will, and continue talking that Captain Butler might go on looking at me.
‘I wish you were not sailing so soon, cousin,’ said I. ‘I’d plan more of these excursions. They make me forget I have a stepfather.’
‘I hope your stepfather does not ill-treat you!’ exclaimed Captain Butler, and some glow came into his face.
‘No, no!’ cried I, and I guessed that my eyes sparkled with a sudden heat of my spirits. ‘Ill-treat me, indeed! The fact is the house isn’t big enough for him and me. But I won’t turn him out. He’s the father of my mother’s child, and my home was my mother’s. But oh, I feel the gloom of it! I am alone. I can’t take to the little one. And must it be year after year the same?’ I cast my eyes down and breathed quickly; then, rounding upon Will, I cried with a loud silly laugh, ‘You shall take me on a voyage with you when you come home!’
‘I like these excursions,’ said Will. ‘Don’t you, Captain Butler?’
‘I’d like them better if they didn’t end so soon,’ he answered.
‘I have a fortnight!’ exclaimed Will. ‘Let’s go on a trip every day!’
Captain Butler’s eyes met mine.
‘You, of course, have something better to do?’ said I to him.
‘I have nothing to do.’
‘Where’s your ship?’
‘I have no ship,’ said he. ‘A barque, called the Arab Chief, is in course of completion at Sunderland. I may command her if I invest in her. I wish to consider. I am not rich, and I must see my way clearly before I venture all that I have.’
‘So you must. And I suppose you’ll go and live at Sunderland?’
‘No. I can do no good at Sunderland. Time enough to go to Sunderland when the ship is ready. She’s not building under my superintendence.’
‘You’ll visit your relatives in the country?’
‘I have relatives, but they don’t live in the country, and I shan’t visit them.’
‘Can’t we arrange for some more trips?’ said Will. ‘Let’s go sight-seeing every day.’
‘Give us a sketch of your fancies, Johnstone,’ said Captain Butler.
‘Well,’ he began, counting upon his fingers, ‘there’s a dinner at the Star and Garter; that’s good sight-seeing number one. Then there’s Greenwich yonder, and another dinner, number two. Then, what say you to Woolwich and a peep at the hulks? Call that job a day on the river, taking a boat at Billingsgate or the Tower. Number three.’
‘Keep in shore, my lad,’ said Captain Butler, laughing. ‘You’ll be having enough of the water soon.’
‘What do ye say to Hampstead and tea? Then a dinner at the King’s Arms at Hampton Court? And is Windsor too far off?’ So he rattled.
Yet the jolly young fellow’s proposals were very well to our liking, and before we rose to depart from the Brunswick Hotel we had schemed out a long holiday week. They saw me to my house, as on the previous night. Neither would come in. When they had left me, I felt very dull and lonely. I found a note on my table from a friend at Bow. She asked me to a card-party next night, but I was in no humour to accept any invitations to houses where I was not likely to meet Captain Butler. Indeed, I had come home from this jaunt to the docks as deeply in love as ever woman was with a man in this world. I slept, it is true, but I dreamed of nothing but my handsome sailor, as my heart was already secretly calling him. I went to sea with him in a number of visions that night, quelled a mutiny among the sailors, saved Captain Butler’s life at the risk of my own; and when he took me in his arms to thank and caress me, I looked in his face, and heavens!—it was my stepfather!