The House of Hardie

by Anne Melville

  Staying where he had first been set, Gordon told himself that to stare across at Lucy was the greatest privilege – but could not restrain a feeling of envy as he saw how earnestly Lucy discussed the problems of India with Mr Elliott and how lightly she accepted Captain Hunter’s flirtatious compliments. Mr Crichton leaned across to solicit her participation in the deck sports to be arranged that day, now that the sea was calm enough, and she made her selection from the events with laughing good humour. When Miss Fawcett arrived, the last of them all, to take her place at breakfast, Lucy was full of sympathy for her seasickness. Only to Gordon did she seem to have nothing to say – and that must be because he could think of no subject on which to open a conversation. It was a disquieting thought that she had first been excited by his stories because he was a traveller whilst she was obliged to stay at home. Now that she too was travelling, seeking her experiences at first hand, perhaps she found him less interesting.

  After a brief stop at Gibraltar, it was not long before the Parramatta came within sight of Marseilles. Lucy retired to her cabin with a diplomatic headache, whilst Gordon, whose presence on the ship could not be concealed from anyone who studied the passenger list, leaned on the rail to watch the activity below. The boat train had already arrived from London, and the new passengers were waiting in a group. Neither the Marquess of Ross nor Archie was amongst them. Would Lucy, wondered Gordon, feel any regret that her family had, in the end, let her go? If that were the case, she threw it off as rapidly as her pretended headache when the engines once more began to throb and the screw to turn. It was more likely, he supposed, that she was triumphant at the success of her escape.

  Certainly there was a new gaiety in her manner, as though any uneasiness which she might have felt about her position had been thrown off. There could no longer be any danger in Gordon seeking her company, and this he did – but without great success. She was always, it seemed, engaged in one of the many activities organized by the entertainments committee – running egg-and-spoon races, playing deck quoits or softball cricket, singing and applauding in a concert, or chattering excitedly amongst the cluster of passengers who waited to discover the distance covered the previous day, and the winner of the sweep on it. In bad weather she joined in the tournaments of whist, euchre or cribbage – and when she declined to enter the chess competition, because she did not know the game, she immediately received half a dozen offers to teach her.

  It was not surprising that Gordon found it so difficult to catch her alone. There were more than twice as many male passengers aboard the Parramatta as female – and, in addition, the ship’s officers had time free for a good deal of socializing. Although Lucy was not the only unmarried woman aboard, she was undoubtedly the most beautiful. By the time the ship reached Suez, Captain Hunter, while continuing to flirt with her as though in fun, had become genuinely lovesick. Mr Elliott, whose character was more serious, affected to seek her out for the pleasure of her conversation; but his expression – when he was not in her immediate company but watching from a distance – revealed to Gordon that he too was enamoured of her.

  These two gentlemen had enjoyed a start on the rest by virtue of sharing Lucy’s table, but they were by no means alone in paying court to her. As well as her beauty, she had a touch of mystery to recommend her. Her story of relations to be visited in China could not be challenged, but was unconvincing. It was now taken for granted that she was travelling under an assumed name. Only a member of the aristocracy, rumour suggested, would make such a journey unescorted, and her clothes – well made of expensive materials – supported the theory that she was an heiress, the daughter of some noble line. Gordon alone knew the truth of her situation, and he remained as silent on the subject as Lucy herself.

  As the ship approached Port Said, it was met by the coaling barges and a flotilla of tiny boats from which goods of all kinds were held up for sale, whilst small boys dived for coins thrown into the water. Larger boats appeared, to carry any passengers who wished to go ashore, and with some anxiety Gordon noticed that Lucy appeared to be dressed for such an expedition. He hurried to her side, but was annoyed to find that Mr Elliott had reached her first and was instructing her in the principles of barter.

  ‘They would be astounded if you were to pay the price they first ask,’ the magistrate explained. ‘They’ll demand at least twice what the article is worth, and will be highly delighted if they are paid in the end a little more than half that sum. So you should counter by offering to pay a quarter of the first price. They won’t think you mean – it’s the way the game is played. They’ll start to come down a little, and you can increase your offer a little.’

  ‘I shall watch you give a practical demonstration of your lecture,’ said Lucy, laughing. ‘But I shan’t attempt the procedure myself. Although I want to walk through the streets, I shall take no money with me.’

  ‘I’ve never met any young lady who, when it comes to the point, can resist the lure of shopping,’ said Mr Elliott.

  ‘You’ve met one now. On the return voyage it may be a different matter, but for the moment I hardly feel the need of a rug or an Arab headdress.’

  ‘May I also accompany you ashore, Miss Young?’ asked Gordon. Until now he had refrained from intruding on her conversations with other passengers, but he was worried by the possibility that she might become lost and confused in this first experience of a foreign country.

  ‘A pleasure, Mr Hardie.’ Lucy smiled, although Mr Elliott did not look so pleased. Within an hour the three of them were making their way through a maze of bazaar streets, preceded by a crowd of small boys who demanded baksheesh for showing them the way, and importuned by others who sat on the ground displaying amputated limbs.

  ‘I should after all have brought a few coins with me,’ said Lucy; but the magistrate waved the beggars away.

  ‘Their parents maim them in the cradle, so that they may make a living in this way,’ he said. ‘It’s the same in India. I don’t think it right to encourage the practice by giving to them.’ He placed himself between Lucy and the beggars, and offered her his arm. There was only just room in the narrow streets for two together to pass the donkeys, laden with wide panniers on each side, which trotted up and down delivering goods. Gordon was forced to fall behind.

  He watched the backs of his two companions with a growing feeling of irritation which he knew to be unreasonable. How elegant Lucy was! With her free hand she had lifted her skirts a little to keep them above the filth of the road; he could see her neat shoes, her slim ankles. She ought to have allowed Gordon himself to give her a first glimpse of a foreign country. Why was she walking with a stranger like this? She must have known that he regarded himself as responsible for her and was certain to offer himself as an escort. Why had she not waited?

  Chapter Six

  It had never been Lucy’s intention to make Gordon jealous. Her feeling for him was straightforward. She was in love with him. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, to be wherever he was. If there were any complications, they were all on his side.

  When, at Castlemere, he asked her to marry him, she took it for granted that he equally was in love with her, and continued to believe so even after the arrival of the letter which freed her from her engagement. But their first conversation aboard the Parramatta had sown such doubts in her mind that it was for Gordon now, she felt, to convince her of his love if in fact he still felt it.

  A mere renewal of his offer of marriage would not be good enough. Whatever Archie might think, Lucy was sure that Gordon was indeed a gentleman, who would recognize his obligations towards her even though the difficulties of her situation were wholly of her own making. But just as she was not prepared to enter into a marriage intended only as a spiteful gesture towards her brother, no more was she going to let herself be married out of pity for a maiden in distress.

  If, then, she took advantage of the free and easy atmosphere of shipboard life to encourage the advances of some of her fell
ow-passengers, it was not because she was a flirt and not because she wished to stir Gordon into jealous action. She was showing him that he could honourably withdraw without needing to feel that she was left unprotected. If, having understood that, he proposed marriage to her again, she would accept with joy. It was part of the game she was playing that he must not be allowed to guess at this in advance.

  So, as the ship steamed cautiously through the Suez Canal and out into the stifling heat of the Red Sea, Lucy laughed and chattered and danced and played games as though she had not a care in the world. She was hardly prepared to admit even to herself the humiliation of her position. She could make herself independent of Gordon, if she chose, and so free him to continue his travels alone. But it could only be done by making herself dependent on someone else – someone whom she would not even love. It was the last thing she wanted to do.

  As a girl in her grandfather’s house, Lucy had taken it for granted that she would marry and have children one day. Until Gordon’s arrival she had not thought of herself as a rebel; there was an appointed way of life for women, and she expected to follow it. The gesture of independence which had brought her to her present predicament was the only one she had ever made.

  There was, moreover, no possible way in which she could continue to be independent. Mr Elliott had not believed her, and nobody else on the ship – except Gordon – would believe her either, but she was in truth penniless. All the most valuable jewellery which had belonged to her mother was still locked up in the marquess’s safe, waiting for Lucy’s twenty-first birthday. One necklace and a pair of ear-rings had been handed over in advance of that date so that she could dress the part of her grandfather’s hostess with proper dignity. But by the time she had paid her expenses and rewarded her maid out of the pawnbroker’s money, she was left with little more than the price of a single ticket to Shanghai. There would be an opportunity, when it was time to change ships at Bombay, to trade in her forward ticket for a return to England, but that was her solitary option. If she did return to England alone, she risked finding herself disowned by her family, and without doubt her reputation would be ruined. If, on the other hand, she continued on to Shanghai, landing without a penny to her name, what would become of her?

  In her mind she ran through the short list of possibilities without flinching. She loved Gordon and she needed Gordon, but that must not be admitted until he had decided, without being swayed by pity, that he still wanted her for his wife. If he made no such decision, she could leave the ship at Bombay as the fiancée of someone else. Or – this startling idea was one which had only recently occurred to her – she could continue to Shanghai and offer to help Miss Fawcett with her mission work in return for board and lodging.

  As the days grew hotter and hotter, Lucy began to spend more time in conversation with the missionary, fanning herself in her deck chair whilst her admirers, hoping to be noticed, loitered up and down the deck in front of her. It was embarrassing to hear Miss Fawcett talk about the ‘rice Christians’ – the Chinese converts who were motivated less by the love of Christ than by the offer of free rations. Uneasily Lucy wondered whether her own motives for the conversation might not be equally worldly.

  ‘Are you talking about China? May I join you?’ Most of the passengers on the Parramatta were travelling only as far as India, and had little interest in places further east. But Gordon, of course, was as anxious as Lucy herself to hear the missionary’s experiences.

  ‘Miss Fawcett has been telling me the most terrible things!’ exclaimed Lucy. ‘Did you know, Mr Hardie, that daughters are so little valued in China that when a girl baby is born she may be exposed at once on a bare hillside to die of cold?’

  ‘I’ve heard the story,’ said Gordon. ‘Is the Church able to do anything for these unfortunate children, Miss Fawcett?’

  ‘My own mission is on the edge of a small town. We’ve established some trust amongst the people. They’ll bring babies to us which once they would have exposed, knowing that we’ll take responsibility for them in our orphan compound. But in the countryside … Each month either my colleague or myself travels round the villages to preach the Gospel and offer whatever medical help is within our competence. It’s part of our daily routine to search the nearby hillsides before dawn, listening for a cry and looking for a movement. But in almost every case, of course, we come too late.’

  ‘Oh!’ Lucy buried her head in her hands, feeling faint with horror as her imagination pictured the tiny naked bodies, stiff with cold. She was only just aware of Gordon hastily moving away and returning.

  ‘Drink this water, Miss Young. You’re too hot. Perhaps you should lie down in your cabin for a while.’

  ‘My cabin is even hotter than the deck.’ She sipped the water gratefully. ‘Thank you, Mr Hardie.’ After another drink, she tried to explain. ‘I find the thought sickening. That a man should kill his own child, and the mother should allow it to be done.’

  ‘She’ll do it herself,’ said Miss Fawcett bluntly. ‘Within an hour of the birth she will leave her bed and go out into the night rather than burden the family with another mouth to feed – a girl who will never be of any use to her own parents, although when she marries she may act as a slave to her mother-in-law.’

  ‘I can’t understand it,’ said Lucy. ‘I can’t even understand how someone like Mrs Stewart, in my cabin, can have children and then send them away. To bring babies into the world and then not care for them … Why –?’

  ‘I think we should speak of a more cheerful subject,’ Gordon interrupted. ‘Miss Young, I understand that a dance has been arranged for tonight. May I be allowed to partner you for the first dance, and the last, and as many as possible in between?’

  ‘It’s not to be a formal dance, I think.’ Lucy spoke abstractedly, needing a moment to change to a mood of frivolity. ‘I shan’t have a programme.’

  ‘You mean that I must jostle in the crowd of all your other admirers and trust to catching your eye? Well, I’ll accept that as long as you give the same answer to everyone else, making no promises.’

  ‘I’m happy to promise you a dance, Mr Hardie.’ The happiness was sincere, and she allowed it to show in her eyes. ‘And now that you put the thought of dances into my mind, I ought perhaps to look out a dress. Everything becomes so crumpled when there’s no room to hang it up.’

  She left Gordon to continue talking to Miss Fawcett while she herself went down to her cabin. There had been a baggage day in the Canal, when passengers were allowed to bring up from the baggage room items which they had not packed in their cabin trunks but would need now that the weather was so hot. Lucy had taken the opportunity to extract the dress which had been made for her to wear at the Magdalen Eights Week Ball.

  ‘How lovely you look!’ exclaimed Mrs Stewart later that evening. She had undertaken the role of lady’s maid, claiming to be proud that the most sought-after passenger on the voyage was her cabin-mate. With her help Lucy had woven her long golden hair into an elaborate crown on top of her head and had been buttoned into the balldress which fitted tightly round her slender waist.

  There was no full-length glass in which Lucy could study her own appearance; but as she shook out the fullness of her gossamer-light skirts, she remembered how she had looked at herself when she put on the dress for the first time, in an Oxford hotel. How young she had been then – and how nervous, hoping that the unknown partner whom Archie had arranged for her would not find her dull. Within an hour, as Archie’s friends clustered round her, she had understood that she was beautiful, and had needed none of the champagne which flowed so freely to intoxicate her with the gaiety of the occasion.

  Tonight she hoped that she would look beautiful again. But although she could be sure that, as before, she would never be left without a partner, on this occasion she was interested in one man alone. She needed the prospect of general admiration, but only in order that Gordon Hardie would be spurred by it to realize that he did not want to let her go.


  Chapter Seven

  It did not at first seem that Lucy’s hope was to be realized. All through the dinner which preceded the dance, Gordon stared at her – with admiration to start with, but later with a troubled expression. He did not ask her for the first dance after all, nor the second, nor even the third. Instead, he stood alone in the gallery above the saloon, watching as she danced first with Captain Hunter and then with Mr Elliott and again with Mr Elliott. Lucy was conscious of his gaze, although she tried to restrain herself from looking up at him. The consciousness made her more vivacious, more determined to show by her smiles that she was not pining for him. But beneath the smile lay disappointment. When would he come down and ask her to be his partner?

  The fourth dance was a reel. Lucy did not know the steps, but the ship’s purser promised to teach them to her as they went along. She enjoyed the exercise and was flushed and laughing as the dance ended with a wild galop. And then – at last – Gordon was approaching her.

  ‘May I have the honour, Miss Young?’

  ‘I think I must have a rest. That was so vigorous! But if you’re willing to sit out…’

  ‘Of course. Let’s go out on deck, then.’

  Before climbing the steep and narrow steps Lucy gathered up her voluminous skirts with one hand, keeping the other ready to hold the rail in case there should be a sudden shudder even in the calm of the Red Sea. She shook them free again on reaching the deck. The sound of the music followed them up, becoming fainter with each step they took.

  Even so late, the evening was hot, with no breeze except that stirred by the ship’s movement. Lucy needed no shawl to cover her bare arms – and yet, compared with the fierce midday heat, there was refreshment in the air. She breathed it in deeply, leaning against the rail and looking down at the rippling silver path which led towards the moon.