In Strange Company Part 13

PART II.

CHAPTER I.

JOHN RAMSAY TAKES UP THE TALE.

It seems that when I induced my cousin by marriage, Luke Sanctuary, to write the first part of this history, I pledged myself to continue the work at the point where I became personally interested in it. That time, he tells me, has now arrived, and so it comes to pa.s.s that I find myself sitting before a blank sheet of paper, holding a brand-new pen in my hand, and wondering how on earth I'm going to set down all the extraordinary things I have to tell.

One a.s.sertion I can safely make, and that is that this is the first time I have ever undertaken such a contract. For writing was always a trouble to me; and now I come to think of it, it was that very hatred of penmanship which resulted in my being concerned in what I shall always call that "Chilian Mystery." For, had I proved an apt writer, I should in all probability have made a good clerk; and had I turned out a good clerk, I should never have become a sailor; and to continue the argument _ad infinitum_, had I not become a sailor, I should certainly never have known anything of the story my cousin has begun, and which I am now called upon to continue.

As I am perhaps the chief actor in the latter part of this history, and as in matters of this sort it is always best, according to my way of thinking, to begin at the very beginning, I may perhaps be excused if I briefly narrate the princ.i.p.al events of my life which led up to my connection with it.

To begin with, let me remark that I was born in the village of Coombe, near Salisbury, in the county of Wiltshire, where my father was a country doctor. He, poor man, had the misfortune to be peculiarly devoted to his profession, so much so, that it was neither more nor less than sheer overwork which occasioned his untimely end.

That sad event occurred within a week of my seventh birthday. And with the remembrance of his funeral, a peculiarly sombre picture rises before my mind's eye. I see a dreary autumnal day; thick mists upon the hill-tops, dripping trees, and a still more dismal procession, winding its way along the high-road, unrelieved by any touch of colour. And, incongruously enough, the whole recollection is heightened by the remembrance of a pair of black cloth breeches worn by me on that melancholy occasion for the first time. By such small and seemingly unimportant things are great events impressed upon our memories.

Perhaps after my father's death I proved myself a handful to manage; perhaps my mother really thought it the best thing for me. At any rate, a boarding-school was chosen for me at Plymouth, to which she herself reluctantly conducted me. Being her only child, and having hitherto been accustomed to get my own way at all times and seasons, this maternal abandonment was a proceeding I could not appreciate. I evinced, I believe, a decided objection to saying farewell to her, and I know I found only inadequate consolation in either the ancient dame who kept the school (who promised my parent to be a mother to me, and for that reason perhaps caned me soundly before I had been twenty-four hours under her charge), the house, or my school-fellows, who figure in my memory as the most objectionable set of young ruffians with whom I had ever come into contact.

For three years I continued a pupil of this "Seminary for the Sons of Gentlemen," and should perhaps have remained longer had I not experienced the misfortune of being expelled, for laying a fellow-scholar's head open with a drawing-board; a precocity at ten years which was plainly held to foreshadow my certain ultimate arrival at the condemned cell and the gallows. After that, from the age of ten until fifteen, I drifted from school to school, deriving but small benefit from any one of them, and every term bringing my dear mother's grey hairs (as she would persist in putting it) nearer and nearer to the grave, by reason of the unsatisfactory nature of my reports.

At fifteen, being a well-set-up stripling for my years, and like to fall into all sorts of errors as to my proper importance in life, if allowed to remain any longer with boys younger than myself, I was taken away and carried to London, in order that my mother might consult with an old friend as to my future. How well I remember that journey, and the novelty of seeing London for the first time!

Arriving at Waterloo, we drove to Notting Hill, and next morning went by omnibus into the city to discover Sir Benjamin Plowden in the East India Avenue.

Never, if I live to be a hundred, shall I forget my first impression of that office, and the unaccustomed and humiliating feeling which stole over me as I crossed the threshold behind my mother, to await an audience with this mysterious Sir Benjamin. It was one thing, I discovered, to be the c.o.c.k of a small country school, and quite another to be an applicant for a junior clerkship, at a salary of five shillings a week, in a London merchant's office.

At the end of five minutes a liveried servant entered the waiting-room, and informed us that "Sir Benjamin would see us now, if we'd be good enough to step this way." Thereupon my mother gathered up her _impedimenta_, including a reticule, a small black handbag, an umbrella, a shawl, a paper bag of sponge-cakes, and her spectacle-case, and toddled down the pa.s.sage after him, leaving me to follow in her wake, my heart the while thumping like a flail against my ribs.

Ever since that morning, when I desire to realize a man in every way embodying my idea of what a merchant prince should be, I recall my first impression of Sir Benjamin. At the date of our visit he was on the hither side of fifty, of medium height, stout and bald, with curly white whiskers, a shaven chin and upper lip, very rosy as to his complexion, dignified in his bearing, and given to saying "Hum, ha!" on all possible occasions.

He received my mother with cordiality, and even went so far as to recognize my presence with an expressive speech,--"So this is your boy,--a big fellow,--like his father about the mouth,--too old to be idling about country towns, getting into mischief, and deriving a false idea of his own importance. Hum, ha!" After which I was left to my own thoughts, while they entered upon an animated discussion for perhaps the s.p.a.ce of half-an-hour.

At the end of this time he rose--I think, as a hint to my mother--and rang the bell. It was answered by the same dignified man-servant who had ushered us into his presence; whereupon Sir Benjamin bade us farewell, promising to communicate with my mother on the subject they had been discussing at an early date; and we were escorted out. I, for one, was not sorry that the interview was over.

Leaving the Avenue, we visited the British Museum, by way of counteracting the two serious impressions forced upon my mind by the ordeal we had just undergone, I suppose; and here my mother, in the middle of the Egyptian Department, surrounded by evidences of an extinct civilization, gravely prophesied the eminence to which I should some day attain, if only Sir Benjamin could be induced to take an interest in me.

As if in answer to her words, two days later I was the recipient of a letter signed by Sir Benjamin himself, in which it was stated that a position had been found for me in his own office, at a salary of ten shillings a week. I must leave you to picture my sensations. Surely no possessor of an autograph letter from the throne itself could have been prouder than I that day. As for my mother, she argued confidently that my Future (with a capital F) had undoubtedly commenced. And, between ourselves, I certainly think it had.

It is not necessary, for the understanding of the story I have to tell, that I should enter upon a recital of my life in the East India Avenue; let it suffice, that it did not come up to the expectations I had formed regarding it. The hours were long, the supervision was constant and irksome, the superiority of the other clerks humiliating, while the personal attention and affability which my dear mother had led me to expect from Sir Benjamin was not only not forthcoming, but showed no signs of making its appearance at any time within the next half-century.

However, there were many compensations to balance these petty annoyances, and chief among them I reckoned that of carrying letters and papers to the docks, where the ships which brought Sir Benjamin's merchandise from far countries discharged their cargoes.

Nothing gave me greater happiness than these little excursions, and when I had fulfilled my errand, it was my invariable custom to enter upon an investigation on my own account, wandering all over the mysterious vessels, asking questions innumerable about the strange places they visited, and, I have no doubt now, making myself a complete and insufferable nuisance generally. Perhaps that was why, throughout my sailoring career, I had always a sneaking sympathy with boys who boarded us, and asked permission to look round. At any rate, I am convinced that those journeys were what made me believe I had at last hit upon my vocation in life; for I know that every time I pa.s.sed outwards through the dock-gates, I renewed my vow that before many years were over I would become a sailor, and the commander of just such another ship as that I had lately overhauled.

This sort of life continued with but slight variation until I was on the verge of seventeen, when I made a firm resolve to a.s.sert myself, and embark upon the calling I had marked out for my own. My mother was prepared in some manner for the blow, for she certainly could not have failed to notice the way my inclinations tended; so when I broached the subject she offered no objections, only sighed somewhat sadly, and said "she was afraid a time would come when I should repent it." Little did the poor soul know to what a fatal prophecy she was giving utterance.

A day later, for the second and last time in her life, she visited Sir Benjamin, and the following morning I was summoned to his presence.

"Your mother tells me you wish to leave my employ to become a sailor,"

he began, when I had closed the door behind me and approached his table.

"Now you know your own business best, but remember it's a hard life, more kicks than halfpence; and what is worse, I can a.s.sure you that when you have once taken to it, you'll never be fit for anything else again.

You have thought it over, I suppose?"

I modestly replied that I had devoted a good deal of consideration to the matter, and would have gone on to say that I wished for nothing better had he not interrupted me.

"Very good; I've promised your mother to do the best I can for you, so you'll be apprenticed to the Yellow Diamond Line as soon as I can see about it. You'll probably be surprised to hear that I think you're a fool, but I suppose in this world there must be a proportion of fools to balance the wise men, or we'd all come to grief. Hum, ha!"

He was true to his promise, for the following week I received a notification to attend at the head office of the Yellow Diamond Line of clipper ships. Here I complied with the formalities, signed the necessary papers, and had the satisfaction of leaving the Company's office to all intents and purposes a member of the nautical profession.

It was arranged that I should desert Sir Benjamin's employment at the end of the month, and after that I was confident my real career would commence. It is, I think, one of the most wonderful things in our poor human nature, that we should always look forward to the future with so much confidence, PROportionately the more when we have perhaps the least justification for it. For my own part, when I left the Company's office I would not have changed places with the Prime Minister himself; yet such is the perversity of fate that, not six hours from the time of my signing the papers, I would have given anything I possessed to have been allowed to forfeit my premium and to remain ash.o.r.e. This is how it came about.

Sir Benjamin was laid up with an attack of gout, and it became necessary to obtain his signature to some important letters. About four o'clock in the afternoon, therefore, the chief clerk sent for me, and giving into my care a small despatch-bag, bade me take a cab, and drive with it to Sir Benjamin's residence in Holland Park. Nothing loth, off I set.

The East India merchant's home was a most imposing place, and it was with some little awe that I rang the great front-door bell, and requested the dignified butler to inform me if I could see his master.

Saying he would find out, he ushered me into a small room off the hall, to which he presently returned with the request that I would accompany him up-stairs.

I found my employer propped up in a chair near the fire, nursing his swaddled leg. Beside him was seated a young lady I had never seen before, but of whom I had often heard my mother speak,--his daughter Maud.

When I entered she was for leaving us, but this Sir Benjamin would not permit. Having received the papers from my hands, he turned to her and said (and I regarded it as a mark of unusual condescension)--

"My dear, let me introduce Mr. John Ramsay to you; a young gentleman who is forsaking the East India Avenue to distinguish himself by falling off the topsail-yard. Mr. Ramsay, my daughter!"

Then he settled himself down to the papers I had brought, and I was left free for conversation with his daughter.

As a rule I am considered bashful with strangers, but such was Maud Plowden's wonderful knack of setting people at their ease, that I would defy any man to remain shy very long in her company. I do not mean to infer by this that she was an extraordinarily beautiful girl, for though I have heard people go into ecstasies about that, her charm lay not so much in her face as in her voice and manner. Of one thing at least I am quite certain, had I a secret I was desirous of obtaining from a man, I would rather trust Maud to coax it from him than the most beautiful or dangerous woman in existence.

When ten minutes later I re-took my seat in the cab, I was in love for the first time in my life. And then it was that I began to regret not having been content to remain quietly in Sir Benjamin's office, where I might have found other opportunities of improving my acquaintance with his charming daughter. It was certainly the irony of fate, that when I wanted to embrace the nautical profession, no opportunity was vouchsafed me; but when I did not want to take to it, I had no option but to do so.

It is not my intention, even had I the s.p.a.ce, to narrate all that befell me before my departure on my first voyage, but will content myself by remarking that not only did my uniform almost satisfy me, but that on my first day of wearing it (and you may be sure, like most youths, I seized the opportunity as soon as it presented itself), who should drive up to our door but Maud Plowden herself. I had forgotten until then that my mother and she had developed a sudden but intimate acquaintanceship.

What she said to me or what I said to her during the s.p.a.ce that she remained under our roof I cannot recall, but I remember that when she went away, it seemed as if all the sunshine had gone out of the house.

What a strange and indeed weird experience that first falling in love is, and, as a rule, how signally we fail to estimate its true importance in the building up of a life's character! Is it not a time of high ambitions, of pure intentions, of great resolves,--when not to succeed is a thing impossible? A period of our lives when women are all pure and n.o.ble, and men all brave and honest! Oh, the pity, for humanity's sake, that there should ever come an awakening!

On the Thursday following that tea-drinking, I joined my ship, the _Beretania_, then lying in the East India Docks. My mother came to see me off, and her tears and parting blessing opened my eyes to my conduct towards herself, showing me my position in a new and exceedingly unpleasant light.

And now as my doings for the term of my apprenticeship would form but poor reading, let me skip a few years, and come to the time when I returned to England to a certain extent tired of Father Ocean, but very proud of my position as third mate. I was then, to all intents and purposes, a man, six feet in height, broad of shoulder, and, if my doting mother could be believed, not altogether deficient in good looks.

On that point, however, I must be mute.

As we had just hailed from China, it was only natural that I should have brought with me a whole cargo of curios. These I intended for family presents, and on the day following my arrival I sorted them out, retaining those I most admired for my mother herself, and setting apart those I did not care very much about for transmission to any relatives and acquaintances she might think worthy of the notice. Among the prettiest of the things was an exquisitely inlaid tortoisesh.e.l.l and ivory card-case, which, in my own mind, I had destined for Maud, if I could but find an opportunity of giving it to her.

This came sooner than I expected, for on the afternoon following my arrival she dropped in to five o'clock tea, and as she intended to walk back, I had the delight, not only of presenting her with my gift, but also of escorting her, at my mother's desire, a little way upon her homeward road. Now I'm not vain enough to think that she was already in love with me (the sin of conceit cannot at least be laid to my charge), but I'm certain, and even she herself admits it now, that after that night she was not altogether indifferent to me. However, be that as it may, I saw her no more during my leave ash.o.r.e, and it must have been two full years before I looked into her face again.

When I reached England the next time, I had not only been twice round the world, visiting China, Australia, and both North and South America in so doing, but had pa.s.sed my examination for chief officer, though I only held a second officer's position.