The Weeping Ash (59 page)

He replied, irrelevantly and, as it seemed, reluctantly, “Your brother may go and sample the cultural and intellectual life of London if he chooses. I think it would be by far the best thing, Miss Paget, if you remained here and married me. You would be nothing but a lamb among lions there;
he
will not take much harm, I daresay, but you would fall prey to the first raptor that comes your way.”

“Colonel Cameron, I am greatly obliged far your charitable impulse, but please understand that such a piece of self-sacrifice is not required of you. Fortunately! I daresay you mean very kindly, but I would wish you to understand that my brother and I will go on perfectly well without your finding it necessary to enter into what must be a most repugnant alliance to you.”

A flush of red appeared on his cheekbones.

“It would not be repugnant. You mistake! If my sometimes hasty temper has ever given you the impression—”

“It
would
be repugnant to
me
!” declared Scylla impetuously. “I must always consider myself under a heavy obligation to you, Colonel Cameron, for having come so far out of your way—having done so much, but—but—but”—she was stammering with indignation and the difficulty of expressing herself with proper dignity—“but I am
not
prepared to be united with somebody whose only motive is a k-kind of reluctant philanthropic—philanthropy! You need not marry me to save me from abduction by amirs, Colonel Cameron, or from any
other
kind of alliance either—I can manage my own affairs very well, I thank you! In fact—if you were the last man on earth I would not marry you for such a reason—”

Her voice trembled dangerously.

“Say no more, ma'am!” He was pale with mortification. “I only regret having embarrassed you with an offer that—that you find so wholly repugnant. I assure you, however, that it was made with the best of intentions.”

Scylla could not speak; her throat had closed up.

He said, “Since nothing but embarrassment can attend upon any future meetings between us, I will arrange to take my departure from here without delay, for I have various arrangements to make with my friends in Baghdad.”

“Pray feel free to take your departure whenever you wish, Colonel,” she achieved. “I am sure that you must have been impatient to set out for many days past.”

“I will bid you good-bye, then. I have already portioned out our financial resources between your brother, Miss Musson, and myself,” he added as an afterthought. “I think you will find the funds adequate to get you to England. The rent of the house is paid up to the end of the week.”

“We—we are obliged for your generosity, Colonel. When—when we reach England we shall be wishful to repay you. Can you give me some direction—”

“Oh,” he said hastily, “in care of Baba Mustapha at the Street of the Sandal Makers in Baghdad will always find me sooner or later. But no repayment is necessary, I assure you. The funds were intended for us all and have been so shared out. Farewell, Miss Paget.”

Slowly, she put her hand into the one he extended. Her arm, which had been so swollen with the inflammation, was now thin, weak, and blue-veined; the camel-hair ring Khalzada had given her continually slipped down her finger in spite of its woolen wrappings. She thought he was looking at the ring, but his eyes were on the two little crisscross wounds, still sore and angry-looking, that he had made with the point of his knife on her wrist and hand.

“I trust that the scars will not remain for too long a period,” he said shortly, gave her hand a brief, firm pressure, turned on his heel, and strode into the house. A moment later she heard a door slam inside; then there was silence.

Thank heaven
that
is over, Scylla said to herself.

In token of her relief, she leaned against the terrace wall, laid her head on her arms, and cried as if her heart were broken.

Captain Capel of the sloop
Mutine
was a friendly little man, round and brown as a nut; he readily agreed to carry a letter from the Paget twins to England, and also the parcel of Cal's poems addressed to John Murray's, the publishers in Albemarle Street, London.

“Bless you, that will not be the least trouble in the world,” he said.

Cal asked, with diffident politeness, glancing over the busy decks of the
Mutine
, which was within an hour of putting to sea, whether Captain Capel could suggest any ship in the port of Alexandria on which the brother and sister might take passage to England.

“That I can, my boy! I know for a fact that Captain Phillimore, of the
Tintagel
, is desperate for hands; she was a French ship of the line, the
Timoléon
, you know, captured two weeks ago at Aboukir; ran aground on a sandbank, ha-ha! and her cowardly rogues of Frogs all jumped overboard and left her, now she is being patched up to return and form one of the Channel fleet off the Downs. But Phillimore is sadly short of men, he has only a prize crew added to what he can scrape together of riffraff from the port of Alexandria; I am sure he will be happy to give your sister a berth if you, sir, would be prepared to enlist as one of his junior officers for the voyage and work your passage.”

Cal was rather startled. “I know nothing of seamanship, sir! I fear Captain Phillimore would find me more of an encumbrance than a help.”

“Oh, psha, my boy! Anybody can see that you are a fine, well-set-up young fellow, accustomed to a life in the open air, used to encountering difficulties and perils—as indeed my friend Cameron says in this letter; he gives an excellent account of you. You will soon learn to distinguish the bow from the stern, ha-ha! Ability to handle men is the important thing—if you have
that
, you will be welcome, even if you have no more notion of navigation in you than this sea chest. Wait but two minutes—I'll scribble a note to Phillimore.”

“This is very good in you, sir.”

Scylla glanced at her brother in slight surprise as Captain Capel, without more ado, sat down on the sea chest and dashed off a note on a tablet. It was true, she thought wonderingly, that Cal, whom she had been used to regard as a dreamy, rather inactive creature, fonder of playing pachisi with Prince Mihal than engaging in any outdoor pursuit, now presented a very different impression to the casual eye. Sun-browned, wiry, and self-possessed, he stood coolly on the deck, looking about him; his quick, dark glance, under the soft, winged brows, took in all the movements of the men who were busily engaged in making the sloop ready for sail. His brows were drawn together in a frown of concentration as he watched the sailors; he was evidently doing his best, already, to make some sense of their activities.

“There!” said Captain Capel, handing Cal the folded paper. “And I wish you godspeed! Now I must bid you farewell—your servant; ma'am! You will excuse me, but I have a hundred and one things to attend to before we set sail.”

And he bustled away over his cluttered deck but turned to call a warning:

“Mind now! Captain Phillimore is a queer, cross-grained fellow—disappointed many times over promotion, you know! It soured him a trifle—soured him; ay, he's something of a tartar. But now that he has the promotion—he was first lieutenant of the
Leander
, you know, before the battle at Aboukir—now he has his captaincy, perhaps he will be in better skin. For your sakes, I hope so.
Mr. Smiley!
Handsomely with those tubs, if you please.”

* * *

The
Tintagel
was a very different ship from the trim little
Mutine
, as they discovered when they had succeeded in locating it amid the tangle of shipping in the port of Alexandria. And Captain Phillimore was a very different person from the smiling, round-faced little Captain Capel. Indeed, at first sight of Captain Phillimore, Scylla's heart sank; she had half a mind to urge Cal not to approach him; surely in all this huge port, crammed with craft, there must be some other vessel proposing to set sail for England in the near future? But then, she thought, we might have to wait here for a week, ten days, two weeks, kicking our heels; in her present miserable state of mind, the prospect of such inaction was not to be borne; so she stood quietly by the rail while Cal, having presented his note to the midshipman of the watch, was conducted to the captain on the quarterdeck.

Captain Phillimore was much older than Scylla had expected after learning that he had only just received his promotion from first lieutenant. No wonder he had been soured and disappointed! He must be in his midfifties at least. He was a large, stout man with a face that was red, weather-beaten, pockmarked, and almost perfectly spherical; a fringe of reddish beard adorned it, like the tuft of a coconut, a bulbous, somewhat flattened nose occupied a great deal of the center, to make up, it seemed, for the fact that his eyes, set remarkably far apart, were unusually small and slitted. The general effect of this countenance was far from prepossessing.

She saw the little slit eyes slew around in her direction and felt an unaccountable surge of self-consciousness. Hitherto it had not troubled her that she had been unable, partly through lassitude and weakness, partly from the shortness of the time available, to purchase European garments suitable for a young lady about to set sail for England. She still wore a pleated dress and tunic procured in Afghanistan, over embroidered perjamas and curly-toed leather slippers. She noticed Captain Phillimore's eye resting disapprovingly on her sunburned skin and the hair which, during her sickness, Miss Musson had been obliged to cut close to her scalp; now, starting to grow again, it covered her head in short silvery curls like the fleece of a lamb; she had done her best to conceal its immodest shortness by draping a Kashmir shawl over her head, but she was carrying little Chet, who, in his eagerness to see everything around him, was wriggling from side to side, and the shawl had become dislodged and slipped to her shoulders.

Little Chet himself came in for an equally condemning glance; indeed Captain Phillimore seemed to regard him with a kind of incredulous loathing. Since Cal had nodded to Scylla to approach, she moved across the deck and did her best to curtsy politely without loosening her grip of the baby.

Phillimore was saying, “Damned if I ever thought I'd be reduced to carrying a half-caste
blackamoor
brat between my decks—however, what can't be cured must be endured!”

“That baby is no half-caste, sir,” Cal said politely. “He is the son of the Maharajah Bhupindra Mansur-i-Zaman Amirul-Umra Mohinder Singh, of Ziatur, and we are taking him to the Maharajah's cousin Prince Gobind Tegh Bahadur, in London, so that when the little prince is old enough he may be sent to Eton.”

“Hm; I see,” remarked Captain Phillimore, his tone conveying that he did not believe a word of it. “Eton! Ha! Lucky if they take him in there! And you two are
brother and sister
,” he went on, in a tone of equal disbelief, glancing from the black-headed Cal to his sister's silvery nimbus.

“Twins, sir,” said Cal rather stiffly. “We have our papers of identification—”

“Oh, papers, papers,” exclaimed Phillimore harshly—he had an extraordinary voice, both fruity and croaking, as if it had acquired a crust on it through countless years of brandy-bibbing. “Such papers may be purchased in any bazaar, I daresay. Still, Capel was right—I'm damnably shorthanded. If you travel on my ship, sir, you must be prepared to work for your passage.”

“I shall be glad to do anything that is required of me, sir—”

“Very well! Very well! It will be work, mind you, not just standing about with your hands in your pockets giving orders. I'll ship you as junior lieutenant, fifth, under Gough, there—he'll take you to your quarters and show you how to go on, and I'll have your papers drawn up by and by.”

“And my sister, sir?”

“Your
sister
.” Again Phillimore gave the word that disbelieving emphasis. “Understand me now, young man, this is a decent ship! The hands may keep their sluts below decks; such animals must have their doxies on board (besides, women are needed for passing up powder from the magazine) but I require my
officers
to conduct their amours ashore, there is to be no indulging your lusts while shipping under my command, is that
quite clear
?”

“Sir,” began Cal, stiff with outrage, but Scylla hastily interrupted him.

“Since Captain Phillimore evidently finds it difficult to believe that we are brother and sister,” she said, trying to make her voice as tart and cold as iced lime juice, “it will be best, and will also further the interests of propriety, if I and my charge travel on some other vessel—which I myself would greatly prefer! I do not choose to have my credentials in doubt.”

Captain Phillimore's rusty gray brows shot up at the sound of Scylla's voice; and he became a trifle more conciliating.

“Now, now, my dear—there's no occasion to fly up into the boughs! In point of fact I am already carrying a lady back to England—Mrs. Whiteforest, widow of Captain Whiteforest, who was killed on the
Majestic
; Mrs. Whiteforest has no maid, the black hussy ran off with an Egyptian; so if you, miss, ain't averse to sharing a cabin with the lady and performing a few services for her—she's somewhat down-pin at present, you see, having just lost her husband—”

“Certainly, I shall be very glad to take care of Mrs. Whiteforest,” Scylla said calmly, having intercepted Cal's anxious look; she smiled at him, gave a cool, dismissing glance at Captain Phillimore, and added, “Perhaps, sir, you would be good enough to allow Lieutenant Gough to direct me to this lady's cabin so that I may introduce myself to her? And I daresay you will permit my brother to have our baggage brought on board by and by?”

* * *

From the start, it was plain to Scylla that their passage on the
Tintagel
could offer no pleasure; the disposition of Captain Phillimore was a guarantee of that. And there was no friendship or distraction to be found, either, in Mrs. Whiteforest; the poor lady, already thin, pale, and weak with grief, was also a martyr to seasickness and during the seven-week passage hardly ventured on deck more than twice. She kept her bunk, and Scylla must look after her hand and foot. Wryly, Scylla consoled herself with the thought that at least she was too much occupied to have time for bewailing her own misfortunes.

She was, however, exceedingly unhappy.

Cal's grief, when he learned that Cameron had gone off without bidding him good-bye, had been intense but short-lived. He had questioned Scylla about the final interchange.

“You say he offered
marriage
to you? And you refused him? Well, that was levelheaded enough, you could hardly be expected to share his kind of a roving existence, and he must have had the sense to see
that
; I daresay he only offered because he felt responsible for you; he must have been greatly relieved when you said no. But what I fail to understand is why he felt it needful to sheer off so fast. There need have been no awkwardness; we have all been cheek by jowl forever, after all! It is too bad! I had a hundred things to say to him before he left. And it's odds but we'll never see him again.” To this Scylla had dismally agreed.

“I daresay you would not have suited,” Cal went on, pondering. (This had been aboard the coastal schooner sailing to Alexandria.) “You never seemed to have much to say to one another. But still, I am half sorry you did not accept him! There would have been something to be said for having Cameron as a brother-in-law. He is a capital kind of fellow—a rare hand in a tight place. You will be lucky if you find anyone like him in London.” Scylla said nothing to this. “However I daresay it is all for the best,” Cal decided in the end.

Once aboard the
Tintagel
, there was no time for such conversations. Cal, instructed in his duties by Gough and Howard, the two lieutenants immediately senior to him, seemed to be kept busy every minute. The
Tintagel
, a full ship of war, was still severely undermanned.

Moreover she was, apparently, in very bad condition. So Scylla learned from Mr. Fishbourne, the purser, a small friendly man who came to Mrs. Whiteforest's cabin to inquire if the ladies had all they needed. Mr. Fishbourne had been a barber in civil life, before being impressed into the navy, and he still kept all the garrulity of his former trade.

“Oh, a shocking state the ship was in!” he said earnestly to Scylla. “And still is, ma'am, if you'll believe me. Those bloodthirsty rebels of Frenchies may be all very fine when it comes to chopping of people's heads with their guillotine, miss, but keeping a ship in decent trim, that's quite another matter. Her bottom boards was all rotted, miss, no one had so much as scraped off a barnacle in years, and as for stores! There wasn't enough to keep a crew of mice in cheese crumbs. The only thing in plentiful supply was grog, for the Frogs won't so much as pull a sheet without they have their oh-de-vee, as they call it; that's the only thing Captain Phillimore found to approve, he being quite a one for the grog himself. But he's changing all the rest, toot sweet, as the Frenchies say.”

Scylla could see that Phillimore was a fierce disciplinarian; men in his crew were frequently flogged; they were ducked from the yardarm, half a dozen times over, until they were gasping and half drowned; hung up by their wrists in the shrouds with weights attached to their feet; obliged, for slowness in obeying an order, to drink gallons of salt water, for other faults, deprived of food, drink, or tobacco; and their tongues were scraped with hoop-iron if he overheard them swearing, though he could be foul-mouthed enough himself on occasion.