John Bloundelle-Burton - The Seafarers

'Heaven forbid!' Mrs. Waldron replied, as she sat up in her bed and smoothed her hair. 'Heaven forbid! Yet,' she murmured, perhaps a little weakly for a lady who had just delivered herself of such admirable sentiments, 'yet I do honestly think, darling, that the love you bear each other-yes! above all, the love-and the position-I must think of the position, Bella! – and the certainty of a brilliant future for you, reconcile me a little to parting with you. Some day, when you are a mother, you will understand me.'

'I understand you now, darling. Yet, yet-ah!' and now she sobbed on her mother's shoulder-'yet, to think of our being parted for so long-for three years! Gilbert must remain on the station for that length of time.' Now it is certain that Mrs. Waldron was sobbing too, yet, because there was something of the Spartan mother, something, too, of Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, about her, she calmed her sobs. For she, too, had been ruthlessly torn by an all-conquering lover, who would take no denial, from her parents, arms. Yet that lover had had no such proud future to offer her as the Gilbert of whom they spoke had to offer his beloved Arabella; for her there had been nothing to flavour her existence except the glorious spice tasted by us all-of loving and being loved. And now-now that she was what she called old-which was not the case, since she was still short of her forty-fifth year-now she knew-and, knowing, said-that love accompanied by brilliant prospects and an assured future was the most satisfactory of all loves.

'Your father,' Mrs. Waldron said, 'remained on his station, the Pacific, for seven years, and we were separated all that time. He there, I here, in London. And in lodgings, Bella-oh those lodgings and that cooking! – you remember, darling? You must remember the lodgings and the cooking, child though you were. And he was not a future peer, though he did once think he might become an admiral.'

'Forgive me, mother,' Bella said, kissing her mother again and again. 'I will not repine any more. I ought not to do so, I know. For is not my Gilbert the handsomest, bravest sailor that ever wore the Queen's uniform? And it won't be so long after all. Only-only-I do wish there wasn't that awful journey. Oh if there were only a bridge!' and for the first time she smiled. 'Or a railway,' she added.

'I am sure, Bella,' her mother said, forgetting how she would feel that evening when her child was gone, and neither the bright voice nor brisk footsteps would be heard any more in the house, 'I am sure you cannot complain of the manner in which you are going out. The vessel may not be as comfortable as they say the great liners are, but at least your uncle is the captain, and it is his own ship. And that cabin he showed us yesterday, when we went down to Gravesend, is far better than anything you could get in any liner, even the best. I had one once, when I went out to join your father at Halifax, in which there was nowhere but the pockets of my clothes to keep things in, while the other lady above me could open the scuttle as she lay in her berth. And your cabin is as big as a dining-room, with a sofa-'

'You dear, darling mother!' Bella exclaimed. 'You are an angel to comfort me thus, when I know all the time that your heart is as sad as mine. Oh if we had not to part!' And again the two women hugged and kissed each other.

A year before this momentous day when Arabella Waldron was to set sail for India in her uncle's full-rigged ship, the Emperor of the Moon, there had come to her that supreme joy which is the most sweet experience of a young girl's life. The man she was madly in love with had asked her to be his wife, and, so far as it was possible to forecast the future, it seemed that before them both there stretched a long vista of happy years to be spent together, or as many years together as a sailor and his wife can pass during the greater part of their lives. Yet, who can foretell the future-even so much as what to-morrow may bring forth? To-day we are here, to-morrow we are gone. A bicycle accident has done for us, or we have caught a fever or pneumonia, and we are no more. How, then, was Bella to know that events would so shape themselves that, ere she had been a year engaged to her future husband, she would be on board the Emperor of the Moon , bound for the other side of the world, and that during her passage in the good old ship, named after an ancient play-a representation of which one of the late owners had witnessed in his boyhood-she would encounter such calamities and perils? But let us not anticipate. Rather, instead, let us describe who Bella was, and how she came to love and to be loved, to be wooed and won.

Our English girl! The girl fairly tall, and full to the brim with health; full, too, of a liking for all exercise which befits the dawning woman-for boating, riding, walking, cycling: not ashamed to acknowledge that she likes a good dance and that she has a good appetite for a ball supper; one who is, withal, not a fool! Where in all the world can you find anything better than that-better than the honest girls who have been our mothers, are our wives, and, please God, are what our daughters will be?

Such a one was Bella Waldron. She could take a scull-and pull it, too-as well as any of her sisters whom you shall meet 'twixt Richmond and Windsor; she could cycle thirty miles a day, eat a good dinner afterwards, and then go to a dance in the evening; and she thought nothing of walking from West Kensington to Piccadilly or Regent Street, with a glance at the Kensington High Street shops on her way! – especially when the winter remnant sales were on and advertised daily in glowing terms. Of riding she knew little, because horse-exercise is a more or less expensive luxury, and also because an income of £600 a year does not allow much in the way of luxuries, even when there are only two people in the family and two servants (with an odd boy) kept. And that sum represented Mrs. Waldron's income.

Bella's mother had been a Miss Pooley, who had married the late Commander Waldron (retired with the brevet rank of captain), and to this lady there remained only one near relative, besides Bella, at the time this veracious narrative opens. Now, this gentleman merits a slight description, not only because he plays a considerable part in those adventures and tribulations which, later on, befell the girl, but also because he occupied a position almost unique and, consequently, conspicuous in these modern days. Fifty-nay, thirty years ago, there would not have been anything peculiar in the career he followed; but now, with the twentieth century close upon us, that career was almost a singular one.

Captain Pooley was a sea captain-a mercantile sea captain-owning two ships of his own, and always in command of one of them. That which he now commanded was the very Emperor of the Moon of which you have already heard, and of which, if you follow this narrative, you will hear a great deal more; the other was a brig called Sophy , which will not figure at all in these pages. Now Captain Pooley, as he was called by everybody, though, of course, he had no right whatever to that distinctive appellation, had as a young man possessed an extraordinary love for the sea, so intense a love, indeed, that he, not being able to obtain a nomination for the Royal Navy, had induced his father to apprentice him to the merchant service. Later in life-one must be brief in these preliminary descriptions! – he had, after obtaining all his certificates, purchased one after the other, with some little money he had inherited, shares in first the one ship and then the second, and eventually, by aid of savings and successful trading, had become the entire owner of both. For the rest-to be again brief-he was a gentleman in manner and in feelings, while in his person he was a handsome, burly man, with the brightest of blue eyes, a vast shock of remarkably white hair above a good-looking, ruddy, tan-brown face; and was also the possessor of a smile which appeared more often than not upon his good-humoured countenance, and helped to make him welcome wherever he went, both at home and abroad. He was, it should be added, a married man, but childless, and it was not unusual for him to occasionally take his wife on the voyages he made for the purpose of transporting the goods which he sold in distant parts of the world, as well as for the purpose of purchasing other goods for sale in England. Otherwise, Mrs. Pooley remained at home in a pretty little villa at Blackheath, of which he owned a long lease.