Miss or Mrs

by Wilkie Collins

  “Well?” said Richard Turlington, turning sharply on Sir Joseph. “Get on with your story. What next?”

  Thus far he had not troubled himself to show even a decent pretense of interest in his old friend’s perpetually-interrupted narrative. It was only when Sir Joseph had reached his last sentence—intimating that the man overboard might turn out in course of time not to be a man of the pilot-boat’s crew—it was only then that Turlington sat up in his chair, and showed signs of suddenly feeling a strong interest in the progress of the story.

  Sir Joseph went on:

  “As soon as we got on deck, we saw the man in the water, astern. Our vessel was hove up in the wind, and the boat was lowered. The master and one of the men took the oars. All told, our crew were seven in number. Two away in the boat, a third at the helm, and, to my amazement, when I looked round, the other four behind me making our number complete. At the same moment Mahogany Dobbs, who was looking through a telescope, called out, ‘Who the devil can he be? The man is floating on a hen-coop, and we have got nothing of the sort on board this pilot-boat.’”

  The one person present who happened to notice Richard Turlington’s face when those words were pronounced was Launcelot Linzie. He—and he alone—saw the Levant trader’s swarthy complexion fade slowly to a livid ashen gray; his eyes the while fixing themselves on Sir Joseph Graybrooke with a furtive glare in them like the glare in the eyes of a wild beast. Apparently conscious that Launce was looking at him—though he never turned his head Launce’s way—he laid his elbow on the table, lifted his arm, and so rested his face on his hand, while the story went on, as to screen it effectually from the young surgeon’s view.

  “The man was brought on board,” proceeded Sir Joseph, “sure enough, with a hen-coop—on which he had been found floating. The poor wretch was blue with terror and exposure in the water; he fainted when we lifted him on deck. When he came to himself he told us a horrible story. He was a sick and destitute foreign seaman, and he had hidden himself in the hold of an English vessel (bound to a port in his native country) which had sailed from Liverpool that morning. He had been discovered, and brought before the captain. The captain, a monster in human form, if ever there was one yet—”

  Before the next word of the sentence could pass Sir Joseph’s lips, Turlington startled the little party in the cabin by springing suddenly to his feet.

  “The breeze!” he cried; “the breeze at last!”

  As he spoke, he wheeled round to the cabin door so as to turn his back on his guests, and hailed the deck.

  “Which way is the wind?”

  “There is not a breath of wind, sir.”

  Not the slightest movement in the vessel had been perceptible in the cabin; not a sound had been audible indicating the rising of the breeze. The owner of the yacht—accustomed to the sea, capable, if necessary, of sailing his own vessel—had surely committed a strange mistake! He turned again to his friends, and made his apologies with an excess of polite regret far from characteristic of him at other times and under other circumstances.

  “Go on,” he said to Sir Joseph, when he had got to the end of his excuses; “I never heard such an interesting story in my life. Pray go on!”

  The request was not an easy one to comply with. Sir Joseph’s ideas had been thrown into confusion. Miss Lavinia’s contradictions (held in reserve) had been scattered beyond recall. Both brother and sister were, moreover, additionally hindered in recovering the control of their own resources by the look and manner of their host. He alarmed, instead of encouraging the two harmless old people, by fronting them almost fiercely, with his elbows squared on the table, and his face expressive of a dogged resolution to sit there and listen, if need be, for the rest of his life. Launce was the person who set Sir Joseph going again. After first looking attentively at Richard, he took his uncle straight back to the story by means of a question, thus:

  “You don’t mean to say that the captain of the ship threw the man overboard?”

  “That is just what he did, Launce. The poor wretch was too ill to work his passage. The captain declared he would have no idle foreign vagabond in his ship to eat up the provisions of Englishmen who worked. With his own hands he cast the hen-coop into the water, and (assisted by one of his sailors) he threw the man after it, and told him to float back to Liverpool with the evening tide.”

  “A lie!” cried Turlington, addressing himself, not to Sir Joseph, but to Launce.

  “Are you acquainted with the circumstances?” asked Launce, quietly.

  “I know nothing about the circumstances. I say, from my own experience, that foreign sailors are even greater blackguards than English sailors. The man had met with an accident, no doubt. The rest of his story was a lie, and the object of it was to open Sir Joseph’s purse.”

  Sir Joseph mildly shook his head.

  “No lie, Richard. Witnesses proved that the man had spoken the truth.”

  “Witnesses? Pooh! More liars, you mean.”

  “I went to the owners of the vessel,” pursued Sir Joseph.” I got from them the names of the officers and the crew, and I waited, leaving the case in the hands of the Liverpool police. The ship was wrecked at the mouth of the Amazon, but the crew and the cargo were saved. The men belonging to Liverpool came back. They were a bad set, I grant you. But they were examined separately about the treatment of the foreign sailor, and they all told the same story. They could give no account of their captain, nor of the sailor who had been his accomplice in the crime, except that they had not embarked in the ship which brought the rest of the crew to England. Whatever may have become of the captain since, he certainly never returned to Liverpool.”

  “Did you find out his name?”

  The question was asked by Turlington. Even Sir Joseph, the least observant of men, noticed that it was put with a perfectly unaccountable irritability of manner.

  “Don’t be angry, Richard.” said the old gentleman. “What is there to be angry about?”

  “I don’t know what you mean. I’m not angry—I’m only curious. Did you find out who he was?”

  “I did. His name was Goward. He was well known at Liverpool as a very clever and a very dangerous man. Quite young at the time I am speaking of, and a first-rate sailor; famous for taking command of unseaworthy ships and vagabond crews. Report described him to me as having made considerable sums of money in that way, for a man in his position; serving firms, you know, with a bad name, and running all sorts of desperate risks. A sad ruffian, Richard! More than once in trouble, on both sides of the Atlantic, for acts of violence and cruelty. Dead, I dare say, long since.”

  “Or possibly,” said Launce, “alive, under another name, and thriving in a new way of life, with more desperate risks in it, of some other sort.”

  “Are you acquainted with the circumstances?” asked Turlington, retorting Launce’s question on him, with a harsh ring of defiance in his brassy voice.

  “What became of the poor foreign sailor, papa?” said Natalie, purposely interrupting Launce before he could meet the question angrily asked of him, by an angry reply.

  “We made a subscription, and spoke to his consul, my dear. He went back to his country, poor fellow, comfortably enough.”

  “And there is an end of Sir Joseph’s story,” said Turlington, rising noisily from his chair. “It’s a pity we haven’t got a literary man on board—he would make a novel of it.” He looked up at the skylight as he got on his feet. “Here is the breeze, this time,” he exclaimed, “and no mistake!”

  It was true. At last the breeze had come. The sails flapped, the main boom swung over with a thump, and the stagnant water, stirred at last, bubbled merrily past the vessel’s sides.

  “Come on deck, Natalie, and get some fresh air,” said Miss Lavinia, leading the way to the cabin door.

  Natalie held up the skirt of her nankeen dress, and exhibited the purple trimming torn away over an extent of some yards.

  “Give me half an hour first, aunt, in my c
abin,” she said, “to mend this.”

  Miss Lavinia elevated her venerable eyebrows in amazement.

  “You have done nothing but tear your dresses, my dear, since you have been in Mr. Turlington’s yacht. Most extraordinary! I have torn none of mine during the whole cruise.”

  Natalie’s dark color deepened a shade. She laughed, a little uneasily. “I am so awkward on board ship,” she replied, and turned away and shut herself up in her cabin.

  Richard Turlington produced his case of cigars.

  “Now is the time,” he said to Sir Joseph, “for the best cigar of the day—the cigar after breakfast. Come on deck.”

  “You will join us, Launce?” said Sir Joseph.

  “Give me half an hour first over my books,” Launce replied.” I mustn’t let my medical knowledge get musty at sea, and I might not feel inclined to study later in the day.”

  “Quite right, my dear boy, quite right.”

  Sir Joseph patted his nephew approvingly on the shoulder. Launce turned away on his side, and shut himself up in his cabin.

  The other three ascended together to the deck.

  SECOND SCENE.

  The Store-Room.

  Persons possessed of sluggish livers and tender hearts find two serious drawbacks to the enjoyment of a cruise at sea. It is exceedingly difficult to get enough walking exercise; and it is next to impossible (where secrecy is an object) to make love without being found out. Reverting for the moment to the latter difficulty only, life within the narrow and populous limits of a vessel may be defined as essentially life in public. From morning to night you are in your neighbor’s way, or your neighbor is in your way. As a necessary result of these conditions, the rarest of existing men may be defined as the man who is capable of stealing a kiss at sea without discovery. An inbred capacity for stratagem of the finest sort; inexhaustible inventive resources; patience which can flourish under superhuman trials; presence of mind which can keep its balance victoriously under every possible stress of emergency—these are some of the qualifications which must accompany Love on a cruise, when Love embarks in the character of a contraband commodity not duly entered on the papers of the ship.

  Having established a Code of Signals which enabled them to communicate privately, while the eyes and ears of others were wide open on every side of them, Natalie and Launce were next confronted by the more serious difficulty of finding a means of meeting together at stolen interviews on board the yacht. Possessing none of those precious moral qualifications already enumerated as the qualifications of an accomplished lover at sea, Launce had proved unequal to grapple with the obstacles in his way. Left to her own inventive resources, Natalie had first suggested the young surgeon’s medical studies as Launce’s unanswerable excuse for shutting himself up at intervals in the lower regions, and had then hit on the happy idea of tearing her trimmings, and condemning herself to repair her own carelessness, as the all-sufficient reason for similar acts of self-seclusion on her side. In this way the lovers contrived, while the innocent ruling authorities were on deck, to meet privately below them, on the neutral ground of the main cabin; and there, by previous arrangement at the breakfast-table, they were about to meet privately now.

  Natalie’s door was, as usual on these occasions, the first that opened; for this sound reason, that Natalie’s quickness was the quickness to be depended on in case of accident.

  She looked up at the skylight. There were the legs of the two gentlemen and the skirts of her aunt visible (and stationary) on the lee side of the deck. She advanced a few steps and listened. There was a pause in the murmur of the voices above. She looked up again. One pair of legs (not her father’s) had disappeared. Without an instant’s hesitation, Natalie darted back to her own door, just in time to escape Richard Turlington descending the cabin stairs. All he did was to go to one of the drawers under the main-cabin book-case and to take out a map, ascending again immediately to the deck. Natalie’s guilty conscience rushed instantly, nevertheless, to the conclusion that Richard suspected her. When she showed herself for the second time, instead of venturing into the cabin, she called across it in a whisper,

  “Launce!”

  Launce appeared at his door. He was peremptorily checked before he could cross the threshold.

  “Don’t stir a step! Richard has been down in the cabin! Richard suspects us!”

  “Nonsense! Come out.”

  “Nothing will induce me, unless you can find some other place than the cabin.”

  Some other place? How easy to find it on land! How apparently impossible at sea! There was the forecastle (full of men) at one end of the vessel. There was the sail room (full of sails) at the other. There was the ladies’ cabin (used as the ladies’ dressing-room; inaccessible, in that capacity, to every male human being on board). Was there any disposable inclosed space to be found amidships? On one side there were the sleeping berths of the sailing-master and his mate (impossible to borrow them). On the other side was the steward’s store-room. Launce considered for a moment. The steward’s store-room was just the thing!

  “Where are you going?” asked Natalie, as her lover made straight for a closed door at the lower extremity of the main cabin.

  “To speak to the steward, darling. Wait one moment, and you will see me again.”

  Launce opened the store-room door, and discovered, not the steward, but his wife, who occupied the situation of stewardess on board the vessel. The accident was, in this case, a lucky one. Having stolen several kisses at sea, and having b een discovered (in every case) either by the steward or his wife, Launce felt no difficulty in prefacing his request to be allowed the use of the room by the plainest allusion to his relations with Natalie. He could count on the silence of the sympathizing authorities in this region of the vessel, having wisely secured them as accomplices by the usual persuasion of the pecuniary sort. Of the two, however, the stewardess, as a woman, was the more likely to lend a ready ear to Launce’s entreaties in his present emergency. After a faint show of resistance, she consented, not only to leave the room, but to keep her husband out of it, on the understanding that it was not to be occupied for more than ten minutes. Launce made the signal to Natalie at one door, while the stewardess went out by the other. In a moment more the lovers were united in a private room. Is it necessary to say in what language the proceedings were opened? Surely not! There is an inarticulate language of the lips in use on these occasions in which we are all proficient, though we sometimes forget it in later life. Natalie seated herself on a locker. The tea, sugar, and spices were at her back, a side of bacon swung over her head, and a net full of lemons dangled before her face. It might not be roomy, but it was snug and comfortable.

  “Suppose they call for the steward?” she suggested. (“Don’t, Launce!”)

  “Never mind. We shall be safe enough if they do. The steward has only to show himself on deck, and they will suspect nothing.”

  “Do be quiet, Launce! I have got dreadful news to tell you. And, besides, my aunt will expect to see me with my braid sewn on again.”

  She had brought her needle and thread with her. Whipping up the skirt of her dress on her knee, she bent forward over it, and set herself industriously to the repair of the torn trimming. In this position her lithe figure showed charmingly its firm yet easy line. The needle, in her dexterous brown fingers, flew through its work. The locker was a broad one; Launce was able to seat himself partially behind her. In this position who could have resisted the temptation to lift up her great knot of broadly-plaited black hair, and to let the warm, dusky nape of her neck disclose itself to view? Who, looking at it, could fail to revile the senseless modern fashion of dressing the hair, which hides the double beauty of form and color that nestles at the back of a woman’s neck? From time to time, as the interview proceeded, Launce’s lips emphasized the more important words occurring in his share of the conversation on the soft, fragrant skin which the lifted hair let him see at intervals. In Launce’s place, sir, you would
have done it too.

  “Now, Natalie, what is the news?”

  “He has spoken to papa, Launce.”

  “Richard Turlington?”

  “Yes.”

  “D—n him!”

  Natalie started. A curse addressed to the back of your neck, instantly followed by a blessing in the shape of a kiss, is a little trying when you are not prepared for it.

  “Don’t do that again, Launce! It was while you were on deck smoking, and when I was supposed to be fast asleep. I opened the ventilator in my cabin door, dear, and I heard every word they said. He waited till my aunt was out of the way, and he had got papa all to himself, and then he began it in that horrible, downright voice of his—‘Graybrooke! how much longer am I to wait?’”

  “Did he say that?”

  “No more swearing, Launce! Those were the words. Papa didn’t understand them. He only said (poor dear!)—‘Bless my soul, Richard, what do you want?’ Richard soon explained himself. ‘Who could he be waiting for—but Me?’ Papa said something about my being so young. Richard stopped his mouth directly. ‘Girls were like fruit; some ripened soon, and some ripened late. Some were women at twenty, and some were women at sixteen. It was impossible to look at me, and not see that I was like a new being after my two months at sea,’ and so on and so on. Papa behaved like an angel. He still tried to put it off. ‘Plenty of time, Richard, plenty of time.’ ‘Plenty of time for her‘ (was the wretch’s answer to that); ‘but not for me. Think of all I have to offer her’ (as if I cared for his money!); ‘think how long I have looked upon her as growing up to be my wife’ (growing up for him—monstrous!), ‘and don’t keep me in a state of uncertainty, which it gets harder and harder for a man in my position to endure!’ He was really quite eloquent. His voice trembled. There is no doubt, dear, that he is very, very fond of me.”