Afloat at Last Part 1

Afloat at Last.

by John Conroy Hutcheson.

CHAPTER ONE.

IN THE RECTORY GARDEN.

"And so, Allan, you wish to go to sea?"

"Yes, father," I replied.

"But, is there no other profession you would prefer--the law, for instance? It seems a prosperous trade enough, judging from the fact that solicitors generally appear well to do, with plenty of money-- possibly that of other people--in their possession; so, considering the matter from a worldly point of view, you might do worse, Allan, than join their ranks."

I shook my head, however, as a sign of dissent to this proposition.

"Well then, my boy," went on father in his logical way, anxious that I should clearly understand all the bearings of the case, and have the advantages and disadvantages of each calling succinctly set before me, "there is medicine now, if you dislike the study of Themis, as your gesture would imply. It is a n.o.ble profession, that of healing the sick and soothing those bodily ills which this feeble flesh of ours is heir to, both the young and old alike--an easier task, by the way, than that of ministering to 'the mind diseased,' as Shakespeare has it; although, mind you, I must confess that a country physician, such as you could only hope to be, for I have not the means of buying you a London practice, has generally a hard life of it, and worse pay. However, this is beside the question; and I want to avoid bia.s.sing your decision in any way. Tell me, would you like to be a doctor--eh?"

But to this second proposal of my father as to my future career, I again signified my disapproval by shaking my head; for I did not wish to interrupt his argument by speaking until he had finished all he had to say on the subject, and I could see he had not yet quite done.

"H'm, the wise man's dictum as to speech being silvern and silence gold evidently holdeth good with the boy, albeit such discretion in youth is somewhat rare," he murmured softly to himself, as if unconsciously putting his thoughts in words, adding as he addressed me more directly: "You ought to get on in life, Allan; for 'a still tongue,' says the proverb, 'shows a wise head.' But now, my son, I've nearly come to the end of the trio of learned professions, without, I see, prepossessing you in favour of the two I have mentioned. You are averse to the law, and do not care about doctoring; well then, there's the church, last though by no means least--what say you to following my footsteps in that sacred calling, as your brother Tom purposes doing when he leaves Oxford after taking his degree?"

I did not say anything, but father appeared to guess my thoughts.

"Too many of the family in orders already--eh? True; still, recollect there is room enough and work enough, G.o.d knows, amid all the sin and suffering there is in the world, for you also to devote your life to the same good cause in which, my son, I, your father, and your brother have already enlisted, and you may, I trust, yet prove yourself a doughtier soldier of the cross than either of us. What say you, Allan, I repeat, to being a clergyman--the n.o.blest profession under the sun?"

"No, father dear," I at length answered on his pausing for my reply, looking up into his kind thoughtful gray eyes, that were fixed on my face with a sort of wistful expression in them; and which always seemed to read my inmost mind, and rebuke me with their consciousness, if at any time I hesitated to tell the truth for a moment, in fear of punishment, when, as frequently happened, I chanced to be brought before him for judgment, charged with some boyish escapade or youthful folly.

"I don't think I should ever be good enough to be a clergyman like you, father, however hard I might try; while, though I know I am a bad boy very often, and do lots of things that I'm sorry for afterwards, I don't believe I could ever be bad enough to make a good lawyer, if all the stories are true that they tell in the village about Mr Sharpe, the attorney at Westham."

The corners of father's mouth twitched as if he wanted to smile, but did not think it right to do so.

"You are shrewd in your opinions, Allan," he said; "but dogmatic and paradoxical in one breath, besides being too censorious in your sweeping a.n.a.lysis of character. I should like you to show more charity in your estimate of others. Your diffidence in respect of entering the church I can fully sympathise with, having felt the same scruples myself, and being conscious even now, after many years, of falling short of the high ideal I had originally, and have still, of one who would follow the Master; but, in your wholesale condemnation of the law and lawyers, judging on the _ex uno disce omnes_ principle and hastily, you should remember that all solicitors need not necessarily be rogues because one of their number has a somewhat evil reputation. Sharpe is rather a black sheep according to all report; still, my son, in connection with such rumours we ought to bear in mind the comforting fact that there is a stratum of good even in the worst dispositions, which can be found by those who seek diligently for it, and do not merely try to pick out the bad. Who knows but that Sharpe may have his good points like others?

But, to return to our theme--the vexed question as to which should be your occupation in life. As you have decided against the church and the law, giving me your reasons for coming to an adverse conclusion in each instance, pray, young gentleman, tell me what are your objections to the medical profession?"

"Oh, father!" I replied laughing, he spoke in so comical a way and with such a queer twinkle in his eye, "I shouldn't care at all to be only a poor country surgeon like Doctor Jollop, tramping about day and night through dirty lanes and sawing off people's sore legs, or else feeling their pulses and giving them physic; although, I think it would be good fun, father, wouldn't it, just when some of those stupid folk, who are always imagining themselves ill wanted to speak about their fancied ailments, to shut them up by saying, 'Show me your tongue,' as Doctor Jollop bawls out to deaf old Molly the moment she begins to tell him of her aches and pains? I think he does it on purpose."

Father chuckled.

"Not a bad idea that," said he; "and our friend the doctor must have the credit of being the first man who ever succeeded in making a woman hold her tongue, a consummation most devoutly to be wished-for sometimes-- though I don't know what your dear mother would say if she heard me give utterance to so heretical and ungallant a doctrine in reference to the s.e.x."

"Why, here is mother now!" I exclaimed, interrupting him in my surprise at seeing her; it being most unusual for her to leave the house at that hour in the afternoon, which was generally devoted to Nellie's music lesson, a task she always superintended. "She's coming up the garden with a letter in her hand."

"I think I know what that letter contains," said father, not a bit excited like me; "for, unless I'm much mistaken, it refers to the very subject about which we've been talking, Allan,--your going to sea."

"Does it?" I cried, pitching my cap up in the air in my enthusiasm and catching it again dexterously, shouting out the while the refrain of the old song-- "The sea, the sea, a sailor's life for me! Hurrah! Hurrah!"

Father sighed, and resumed his "quarter-deck walk," as mother termed it, backwards and forwards along the little path under the old elm-tree in front of the summer-house, with its bare branches stretched out like a giant's fingers clutching at the sky, always turning when he got up to the lilac bush and retracing his steps slowly and deliberately, as if anxious to tread in his former footprints in the very centre of the box- edged walk.

I think I can see him now: his face, which always had such a bright genial look when he smiled, and seemed to light up suddenly from within when he turned to speak to you, wearing a somewhat sad and troubled air, and a far-away thoughtful expression in his eyes that was generally there when he was having a mental wrestle with some difficulty, or trying to solve one of those intricate social problems that were being continually submitted for his consideration. And yet, at first glance, a stranger would hardly have taken him to be a clergyman; for he had on an old brown shooting-jacket very much the worse for wear, and was smoking one of those long clay pipes that are called "churchwardens,"

discoloured by age and the oil of tobacco, and which he had lit and let out and relit again half a dozen times at least during our talk.

"Very unorthodox," some critical people will say.

Aye, possibly so; but if these censors only knew father personally, and saw how he fulfilled his mission of visiting the fatherless and widow in their affliction, in addition to preaching the gospel and so winning souls to heaven, and how he was liked and loved by every one in the parish; perhaps they could condone his "sin of omission" in the matter of not wearing a proper clerical black coat with a stand-up collar of Oxford cut and the regulation white tie, and that of "commission" in smoking such a vulgar thing as a common clay pipe!

Presently, after his second turn as far as the lilac bush and back, father's face cleared, as if he had worked out the question that had been puzzling him; for, its anxious expression vanished and his eyes seemed to smile again.

"I suppose it's a family trait, and runs in the blood," he said. "Your grandfather,--my father, that is, Allan,--was a sailor; and I know I wanted to go to sea too, just like you, before I was sent to college.

So, that accounts for your liking for it--eh?"

"I suppose so," I answered without thinking, just echoing his words like a parrot; although, now I come to consider the thing fully, I really can see no other reason than this hereditary instinct to account for the pa.s.sionate longing that possessed me at that period to be a sailor, as, beyond reading Robinson Crusoe like other boys, I was absolutely ignorant of the life and all concerning it. Indeed, up to then, although it may seem hardly credible, I had only once actually seen the sea, and a ship in the distance--far-away out in the offing of what appeared to me an immeasurable expanse of s.p.a.ce. This was when father took my sister Nellie and me for a day's visit to Brighton. It was a wonderful experience to us, from the contrast the busy town on the coast offered to the quiet country village where we lived and of which my father was the pastor, buried in the bosom of the shires away from the bustling world, and out of contact with seafaring folk and those that voyage the deep.

Yes, there's no doubt of it. That love for the sea, which made me wish to be a sailor as naturally as a cat loves cream, ran in my blood, and must have been bred in my bone, as father suggested.

Before, however, we could either of us pursue the psychological investigation of this theory any further, our argument was interrupted by my mother's coming to where we were standing under the elm-tree at the top of the garden.

Father at once put away his pipe on her approach, always respecting and honouring her beyond all women even as he loved her; and he greeted her with a smile of welcome.

"Well, dear?" said he sympathetically as she held out the letter she carried and then placed her hand on his arm confidingly, turning her anxious face up to his in the certainty of finding him ready to share her trouble whatever it might be. "Now tell me all about it."

"It has come, Robert!" she exclaimed, nestling nearer to him.

"Yes, I see, dear," he replied, glancing at the open sheet; for they had no secrets from each other, and she had opened the letter already, although it had been addressed to him. Then, looking at me, father added: "This is from Messrs. Splice and Mainbrace, the great ship- brokers of Leadenhall Street, to whom I wrote some time since, about taking you in one of their vessels, Allan, on your expressing such a desire to go to sea."

"Oh, father!" was all I could say.

"They inform me now," continued he, reading from the broker's communication, "that all the arrangements have been completed for your sailing in the Silver Queen on Sat.u.r.day next, which will be to-morrow week, your premium as a first-cla.s.s apprentice having been paid by my London agents, by whom also your outfit has been ordered; and your uniform, or 'sea toggery' as sailors call it, will be down here next Monday or Tuesday for you to try on."

"Oh, father!" I cried again, in wondering delight at his having settled everything so promptly without my knowing even that he had acceded to my wishes. "Why, you seem to have decided the question long ago, while you were asking me only just now if I would not prefer any other profession to the sea!"

"Because, my son," he replied affectionately, "I know that boys, like girls, frequently change their minds, and I was anxious that you should make no mistake in such a vital matter as that of your life's calling; for, even at the last hour, if you had told me you preferred being a clergyman or a doctor or a lawyer to going to sea, I would cheerfully have sacrificed the money I have paid to the brokers and for your outfit. Aye, and I would willingly do it now, for your mother and I would be only too glad of your remaining with our other chicks at home."

"And why won't you, Allan?" pleaded mother, throwing her arms round me and hugging me to her convulsively. "It is such a fearful life that of a sailor, amid all the storms and perils of the deep."

"Don't press the boy," interposed father before I could answer mother, whose fond embrace and tearful face almost made me feel inclined to reconsider my decision. "It is best for him to make a free choice, and that his heart should be in his future profession."

"But, Robert--" rejoined mother, but half convinced of this truth when the fact of her boy going to be a sailor was concerned.

"My dear," said father gently, interrupting her in his quiet way and drawing her arm within his again, "remember, that G.o.d is the G.o.d of the sea as well as of the land, and will watch over our boy, our youngest, our Benjamin, there, as he has done here!"

Father's voice trembled and almost broke as he said this; and it seemed to me at the moment that I was an awful brute to cause such pain to those whom I loved, and who loved me so well.

But, ere I could tell them this, father was himself again, and busy comforting mother in his cheery way.

"Now, don't fret, dear, any more," he said; "the thing is settled now.

Besides, you know, you agreed with me in the matter at Christmas-tide, when, seeing how Allan's fancy was set, I told you I thought of writing to London to get a ship for him, so that no time might be wasted when he finally made up his mind."

"I know, Robert, I know," she answered, trying to control her sobs, while I, glad in the new prospect, was as dry-eyed as you please; "but it is so hard to part with him, dear."