To Mr and Mrs. O’Donagough, indeed, all this produced no good effect, but rather the contrary; for Jack grew tired of ship-billiards, and greatly preferred standing by his little friend Martha, as she sat perched upon the taffrail, and with her strong clear voice sang love-ditties to the fishes by the hour together. And poor Mrs. O’Donagough fared not at all the better for this additional leisure of her husband’s; for he was getting exceedingly restless, rather bilious, and now and then very cross; so that, considerably before they arrived at the port of London, they both became aware that they had been shut up together quite long enough.
Two trifling circumstances only, both occurring within the last week, caused a short intermission of poor Mrs. O’Donagough’s yawns, by giving her something puzzling to think of. The first of these was seeing her husband, Mr. Allen O’Donagough, mount the cabin stairs one fine morning, with his face as cleanly shaved from top to bottom, and from side to side, as it was possible for a razor to do it. Not a trace, not a vestige of either mustache or favoris remained, to show what the military glory of that expansive face had once been. The change produced upon his countenance by this operation was very great — and to say the truth, by no means favourable; for little as we may some of us admire the flashy look which every chevalier d’industrie can obtain by only restricting the office of his razor, it is nevertheless certain that a great, high-boned, vulgar face, like that of my heroine’s present husband, is in no degree improved by being rendered more broadly visible.
At the first glace his wife did not know him; nor was it, indeed, till he had displayed the whole extent of his large white teeth, in a smile produced by her unconscious stare at him, that she did.
The time when she had almost worshipped the military insignia of his upper lip, and doted on the copious manliness which veiled his ample jaws, was certainly passed, probably never to return, yet could she not look with indifference upon what appeared to her so terrible a falling-off in the striking comeliness of his appearance. She had hitherto never ceased to consider him as a remarkably dashing and fashionable looking man, but now her eyes, as well as her heart, told her that he was not so at all.
“Good Heaven, Major Allen!” was her first involuntary exclamation, “what on earth can have induced you to make such a figure of yourself?”
The gentleman suddenly ceased to smile as she spoke, and answered in a low growling voice, which showed that he had not, like Samson, lost his spirit with his hair, “And what, madam, can make you call me by a name which I have commanded you never to utter again?”
Poor Mrs. O’Donagough was really frightened, and notwithstanding the high spirit on which she prided herself, condescended to say, “Oh, dear me! Mr. O’Donagough, don’t be angry! I will never say it again, upon my word and honour. And nobody heard me, you know — that’s a comfort. But what did you cut off your beautiful whiskers for?”
“You are a fool, Mrs. Allen O’Donagough,” was the short reply; and never again was the circumstance alluded to between them. But it cannot be supposed that Mrs. O’Donagough forgot it; or that she could avoid feeling rather uncomfortably anxious as to what motive could have induced so very handsome a man to disfigure himself so dreadfully.
“If it had been only his mustaches,” thought she, “I should not have cared; and, indeed, I know that it would have been perfectly necessary — how else could he possibly pass himself off for the Reverend Mr. O’Donagough? No reverends ever do wear mustaches, that’s quite true; but those beautiful whiskers, that gave him so completely the air of a man of fashion — there could have been no occasion to shave them! I know the irregular clergy, like my last poor O’Donagough, wear whiskers quite as often as not — not little shabby whiskers either, such as a bishop might wear, and no harm done — but just such full noble-looking whiskers as the Ma — as this foolish man wore; however, it’s no good to fret. If anything was to happen to him, and I was to marry again, I’d take good care to know, if ’twas in the old world or the new, whether there was any likelihood of the man’s wanting to scrape his skin, for all the world like a pig prepared for roasting. This one only wants singeing a little, to make him perfect.”
The other circumstance which tended in some degree to relieve the wearisome tedium of Mrs. O’Donagough’s last few days at sea, was something like a discovery which she at last made, respecting the young sailor-lad, called Jack. By special agreement, Mr and Mrs. O’Donagough and their daughter dined in the cabin, and at the table of the captain, though like all other passengers on board, they furnished their own provender; but a few pounds additional to their passage money had secured to them the dignity of this privilege, which was the more precious, because shared by no other passenger. From some suspicious reason or other, which Captain Wilkins had never explained, his dinner hour, and consequently that of the O’Donagoughs, had been changed after they came on board, and fixed considerably earlier than before. Dining, however, is so welcome an amusement on board ship, that nobody complains of its coming too soon, and the alteration was never objected to.
The weather during the whole passage having been, with few exceptions, remarkably fine, it was the custom of the O’Donagough family to repair to the quarter-deck as soon as the dinner was over and there indulge in nibbling biscuits and sipping toddy. Miss Patty, during this hour of systematic gossiping, fared not so well as her parents: for to do her justice, she was not at all fond of toddy; and Jack, of whom she certainly was very fond, for some reason or other was never visible on the deck at these times. That he was indeed not on deck, little Patty was perfectly competent to declare, for more than once had she vainly traversed its entire length from stem to stern in search of him. She could not unfortunately penetrate to any of the mysterious recesses below, — that she had with some little difficulty been made to understand was impossible; but she would willingly have ransacked the cabin and all its dependencies in search of her friend, only she found, upon once attempting the experiment, that the door was locked.
These efforts to find her playfellow, however, and the disappointment which attended them, were alike confined to her own bosom; and as her father was, as we have seen, very comfortably engaged, and her mother, if possible, still more so — for she took her biscuits and toddy from the luxurious couch of coats and cloaks heretofore described — the absence of the lad at this hour, constant and regular as it was, had never been noticed by either.
It so happened, however, the very day on which the Atalanta entered the British Channel, the weather being beautifully calm, and the sea as yet in no degree affected by the narrow and troublesome path it had got into, that Mrs. O’Donagough feeling herself particularly well and lively, scorned the repose offered by her cloaks and coats, and trotted down the cabin stairs in search of a basket in which many hourly requirements were stowed, and among others, the last letter of her niece, Mrs. General Hubert. To this letter, it must he confessed, she had made very frequent allusion during the passage, whenever she could get anybody to listen to her; but, nevertheless, she wished to consult it again now, because it contained something about her darling great-niece, Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of her beloved Agnes, and often as she had read the letter, she could not, as she assured Mr. O’Donagough, exactly recollect whether the dear girl was thirteen, or only twelve and a half.
As it was Mrs. O’Donagough’s luxurious custom to wear list shoes on hoard, she went down the companion-way with very little noise, and applying her hand to the lock of the cabin-door, it turned and admitted her.
Great, indeed, was her astonishment at what she saw before her. The usual cabin dinner-table was covered with a marvellously clean cloth, on which was spread, with great attention to neatness, and even some display, all the requisites for a substantial repast. A single glance, it was to be sure a long and steady one, sufficed to show Mrs. O’Donagough that not only great pains had been bestowed upon the dressing it, but that the articles of which it was composed were of the most delicate quality that a long voyage can per
mit. Two bottles of wine flanked the single plate, to supply which, the various dainties were prepared — and before that plate sat — JACK! Yes, it was Jack, Jack in solitary state, in his usual nautical, and not overclean, exterior garments, but with the air of being most perfectly at his ease, and of feeling himself anything but an intruder in the place he occupied.
At sight of Mrs. O’Donagough, however, his colour certainly mounted considerably, and he rose so suddenly, and with an air so vexed and confused, that had she not known the captain’s dinner to have been long over, she might have been tempted to believe that the lad was caught in the act of pilfering what had been prepared for his betters. But as it was, she stood perfectly amazed, astounded, petrified, and puzzled. Many weeks had passed since she had ceased to trouble herself about Jack and his unsailor-like ways; for, finding it impossible to discover the secret, she gradually became convinced that there was none, and all interest in him had died away accordingly. An additional reason for which might probably be, that the lad never by any chance came near enough to speak to her, if it could by possibility be avoided.
But now all this reasonable and dignified tranquillity of spirit was again destroyed! That there was something very particular indeed in the situation of Jack, it was impossible to doubt, but to discover what was beyond her power.
The youth having mumbled something about “having a joke with the captain,” passed by her and mounted the stairs, leaving her to all the torments of unassisted conjecture, from which the most accurate examination of the relics of Jack’s banquet could not relieve her. In fact, the only thing she could find worthy of arresting her attention was a silver fork — this she discovered, on examination, was made to receive the blade of a knife into its handle, and a little further search enabled her to discover the said knife also, and to ascertain that it not only fitted nicely, but that the style and workmanship of this bit of travelling luxury was of a costly kind.
For mere curiosity’s sake she would have liked well enough to put the united articles into her pocket; but as the lively thought arose, the recollection that she was on board a ship coming from Botany Bay, came with it, and she discreetly laid the pretty things where she found them, retaining only the interesting fact that they were both marked with the letter “S.”
From that hour to the end of the voyage, which was just five days, including the passage up the river, poor Mrs. O’Donagough was never able to obtain from any one the slightest glimmer of light on this mysterious subject. As the vessel passed Sheerness, a boat was sent on shore, in which she perceived through the cabin-windows as the little craft passed astern, that a great quantity of luggage had been stowed. Unluckily for poor Mrs. O’Donagough, she was at the moment busily employed in some necessary packing operations, which the approach to land rendered indispensable, and her view, therefore, of this parting boat was so indistinct, that she did not recognise the brown curls and blue eyes of Jack, under the foraging cap, that was seated at the stem. Neither did she, from the same unlucky accident, witness the very affectionate farewell exchanged between this provoking boy and the whole of the ship’s crew. There was another farewell, rather more affectionate still, which also she did not see; but it was not only her being in the cabin which prevented this, for it was behind a heap of canvas which concealed them from all eyes that Jack gave a parting kiss to Patty.
CHAPTER VIII.
AT length the boat was alongside, which was to convey my heroine, her husband and daughter, to those dear dirty steps, beside the Custom-house of London, the stumbling up of which has occasioned joy and gladness to so many hearts. Our party had, of course, a considerable quantity of luggage to remove, and to this Mr. O’Donagough gave pretty nearly his whole attention; but somehow or other, his wife and daughter got safely into the boat in the midst of it, and the whole freight, after the usual quantity of noise and bustle, was securely rowed to the landing-place and disembarked.
“At last, Patty!” exclaimed Mrs. O’Donagough, on reaching the highest step, “here we are. Oh! how glad I am that we have done with that beastly ship! If the sight of every rope in her did not make me as sick as a cat, I’ll be hanged! Come, dear, get on; you must not begin staring yet. Bless you, child, this is nothing but the very nastiest outskirts of London. There is nothing here worth opening your handsome eyes upon, Patty. Come along, come along! There goes your father into the Custom-house, as I take it, and we had best stop outside and watch the men bring up the rest of the goods. Lord! what a quantity they do carry to be sure! There goes my bandbox. If your father had not been a fool he might have contrived to smuggle that. But I never will forgive him if he does not bring it out again this minute. Passed or not passed, as he calls it, have it I must and will.” To all this, Patty made no answer whatever. She was too much occupied and pre-occupied to care for anything her mamma could say. In fact, her thoughts were revolving with the regularity of a shuttlecock between two battledoors, from the kiss Jack had given her off Sheerness, to the busy throng moving in all directions round her.
After an interval, so short as to prove that Mr. O’Donagough was a practised and a skilful traveller, he was seen to emerge again from the portal of the Custom-house, when his wife, who was stationed close to it, pounced upon his arm with genuine conjugal approbation — a manœuvre, by-the-by, well described by Shakespeare, when he says, She arms her with the boldness of a wife — and exclaimed, “What a time you have been O’Donagough! where is the bandbox? Why surely you have not come away without it? You know as well as I do, that I must have it; and I’ll bet a thousand pounds that is exactly the reason you have left it!”
“No, my dear, it was not, I assure you,” he replied, with very business-like composure; “it was because the Customhouse officers would not let me bring it on account of the sweetmeats.”
“Sweetmeats, Mr. O’Donagough! Then why did you not let them take out the sweetmeats? You know perfectly well, though now you pretend to look exactly as if you had never heard of it, you know that it is not the sweetmeats that I want, but my dressing box. I declare to Heaven I would as soon have an owl look after my things!”
“Nonsense!” said Mr. O’Donagough, composedly; “I am going to call a coach for you. I shall tell the man to drive to the Saracen’s Head, and there you must order dinner and beds. No; upon second thoughts, my dear, you had better order tea. It makes, as I well remember, a monstrous difference in the bill, and we may eat, you know, exactly as much cold meat as we like.”
Here Mr. O’Donagough held up his finger to a hackney-coachman, as readily as if he had not been beyond reach of any such luxury for nearly fifteen years. But when, with a hand applied to his young daughter’s elbow, he was in the very act of assisting her to mount the uncertain steps, he was startled by the voice of his lady, exclaiming within an inch of his ear, “How can you, O’Donagough, be such a fool as to make believe that you think I shall go off without my bandbox? I shall not stir a step without it, and that you know. What a thing it is to have a man belonging to one that can’t look after such a trifle as that! But it is no matter. I can do it myself!” And with these words, Mrs. O’Donagough rushed into the Custom-house, with the aspect of a tigress seeking her young. There was the same thrusting forward of the lengthened neck — the same eager starting of the protruding eye. And who shall say that there was not the same throbbing emotion at her heart?
Mr. O’Donagough very improperly gave his daughter a look that seemed to say, “Did you ever?” and having desired her to sit quietly in the hackney-coach till they returned, he followed the wife of his bosom with long but deliberate strides, as she won her way to what appeared the most busy part of the vast edifice. He overtook her just in time to hear her say, with astonishing dignity, though panting for breath, “Pray, sir, will you be pleased to inform me if it is here that the passengers’ luggage from the Atalanta has been deposited?”
“The man who is now passing down the room, ma’am, can tell you,” was the reply.
Away flew Mrs
. O’Donagough after the individual thus indicated; but the man moved quickly, and it became speedily evident that she must raise her voice to overtake him.
“Will you tell me where the luggage from the Atalanta is stowed?” screamed the flying lady, at the very highest pitch of her voice. But this effort also was in vain, for a multitude of other sounds blended themselves with the voice of Mrs. O’Donagough, and the official hurried on. Vexed, heated, weary, but more determined than ever to perform what she had undertaken, if only to prove how wretchedly inefficient in all such matters her husband must be, she continued to run on with all the velocity that a heavy cloak, and the ample volume of her own person would permit, till at length the man she was pursuing stopped, and at the same instant her eye caught sight of the bandbox, the abduction of which from the boatman who brought them on shore, had caused her so much inquietude.
“This is it, this is the box I want, sir!” she exclaimed, extending her arm to seize her recovered treasure.
“By your leave, ma’am,” said another official, taking hold of it with professional firmness, but perfect civility, “it is going this way.”
“It can’t go that way, sir — I must have it. I do assure you it is perfectly impossible for me to get into the coach without it, and I am quite confident, that, as a gentleman, you can’t refuse to let me take away such a trifle as this one bandbox.”
“It has been looked into,” said another officer, “and is crammed full of sweetmeats. It must pay duty.”
“Dear me! — pay duty, sir, for a dressing-box? I don’t care a straw for the sweetmeats, comparatively speaking, and Mr. O’Donagough must of course pay the duty, if he chooses to have them — all I ask is for my dressing-box, and I shall think it a most disgraceful thing to the English nation, if a lady is to have her very dressing-box taken from her the moment she puts her feet on English ground. I am sure the very savages themselves would know better! And what’s more, I don’t believe it is legal to seize it, for I have used the same and no other for years and years, and you may depend upon it that if there is anything illegal in the matter, the thing won’t pass without notice. My connections are not in a rank of life to permit anything of that kind. It may be all very well for common people to have their property snatched out of their hands this way, but it won’t do for the aunt of General Hubert!”
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