In the centre of the town whose name we have declined to communicate, there stood a house—a small house—so small that it might have been more appropriately, perhaps, styled a cottage. This house had a yellow-painted face, with a green door in the middle, which might have been regarded as its nose, and a window on each side thereof, which might have been considered its eyes. Its nose was, as we have said, painted green, and its eyes had green Venetian eyelids, which were half shut at the moment Captain Dunning walked up to it as if it were calmly contemplating that seaman’s general appearance.
There was a small garden in front of the house, surrounded on three sides by a low fence. Captain Dunning pushed open the little gate, walked up to the nose of the house, and hit it several severe blows with his knuckles. The result was that the nose opened, and a servant-girl appeared in the gap.
“Is your mistress at home?” inquired the captain.
“Guess she is—both of ’em!” replied the girl.
“Tell both of ’em I’m here, then,” said the captain, stepping into the little parlour without further ceremony; “and is my little girl in?”
“Yes, she’s in.”
“Then send her here too, an’ look alive, lass.” So saying, Captain Dunning sat down on the sofa, and began to beat the floor with his right foot somewhat impatiently.
In another second a merry little voice was heard in the passage, the door burst open, a fair-haired girl of about ten years of age sprang into the room, and immediately commenced to strangle her father in a series of violent embraces.
“Why, Ailie, my darling, one would think you had not seen me for fifty years at least,” said the captain, holding his daughter at arm’s-length, in order the more satisfactorily to see her.
“It’s a whole week, papa, since you last came to see me,” replied the little one, striving to get at her father’s neck again, “and I’m sure it seems to me like a hundred years at least.”
As the child said this she threw her little arms round her father, and kissed his large, weather-beaten visage all over—eyes, mouth, nose, chin, whiskers, and, in fact, every attainable spot. She did it so vigorously, too, that an observer would have been justified in expecting that her soft, delicate cheeks would be lacerated by the rough contact; but they were not. The result was a heightening of the colour, nothing more. Having concluded this operation, she laid her cheek on the captain’s and endeavoured to clasp her hands at the back of his neck, but this was no easy matter. The captain’s neck was a remarkably thick one, and the garments about that region were voluminous; however, by dint of determination, she got the small fingers intertwined, and then gave him a squeeze that ought to have choked him, but it didn’t: many a strong man had tried that in his day, and had failed signally.
“You’ll stay a long time with me before you go away to sea again, won’t you, dear papa?” asked the child earnestly, after she had given up the futile effort to strangle him.
“How like!” murmured the captain, as if to himself, and totally unmindful of the question, while he parted the fair curls and kissed Ailie’s forehead.
“Like what, papa?”
“Like your mother—your beloved mother,” replied the captain, in a low, sad voice.
The child became instantly grave, and she looked up in her father’s face with an expression of awe, while he dropped his eyes on the floor.
Poor Alice had never known a mother’s love. Her mother died when she was a few weeks old, and she had been confided to the care of two maiden aunts—excellent ladies, both of them; good beyond expression; correct almost to a fault; but prim, starched, and extremely self-possessed and judicious, so much so that they were injudicious enough to repress some of the best impulses of their natures, under the impression that a certain amount of dignified formality was essential to good breeding and good morals in every relation of life.
Dear, good, starched Misses Dunning! if they had had their way, boys would have played cricket and football with polite urbanity, and girls would have kissed their playmates with gentle solemnity. They did their best to subdue little Alice, but that was impossible. The child would rush about the house at all unexpected and often inopportune seasons, like a furiously insane kitten and she would disarrange their collars too violently every evening when she bade them good-night.
Alice was intensely sympathetic. It was quite enough for her to see any one in tears, to cause her to open up the flood-gates of her eyes and weep—she knew not and she cared not why. She threw her arms round her father’s neck again, and hugged him, while bright tears trickled like diamonds from her eyes. No diamonds are half so precious or so difficult to obtain as tears of genuine sympathy!
“How would you like to go with me to the whale-fishery?” inquired Captain Dunning, somewhat abruptly as he disengaged the child’s arms and set her on his knee.
The tears stopped in an instant, as Alice leaped, with the happy facility of childhood, totally out of one idea and thoroughly into another.
“Oh, I should like it so much!”
“And how much is ‘so’ much, Ailie?” inquired the captain.
Ailie pursed her mouth, and looked at her father earnestly, while she seemed to struggle to give utterance to some fleeting idea.
“Think,” she said quickly, “think something good as much as ever you can. Have you thought?”
“Yes,” answered the captain, smiling.
“Then,” continued Ailie, “its twenty thousand million times as much as that, and a great deal more!”
The laugh with which Captain Dunning received this curious explanation of how much his little daughter wished to go with him to the whale-fishery, was interrupted by the entrance of his sisters, whose sense of propriety induced them to keep all visitors waiting at least a quarter of an hour before they appeared, lest they should be charged with unbecoming precipitancy.
“Here you are, lassies; how are ye?” cried the captain as he rose and kissed each lady on the cheek heartily.
The sisters did not remonstrate. They knew that their brother was past hope in this respect, and they loved him, so they suffered it meekly.
Having admitted that they were well—as well, at least, as could be expected, considering the cataract of “trials” that perpetually descended upon their devoted heads—they sat down as primly as if their visitor were a perfect stranger, and entered into a somewhat lengthened conversation as to the intended voyage, commencing, of course, with the weather.
“And now,” said the captain, rubbing the crown of his straw hat in a circular manner, as if it were a beaver, “I’m coming to the point.”
Both ladies exclaimed, “What point, George?” simultaneously, and regarded the captain with a look of anxious surprise.
“The point,” replied the captain, “about which I’ve come here to-day. It ain’t a point o’ the compass; nevertheless, I’ve been steerin’ it in my mind’s eye for a considerable time past. The fact is” (here the captain hesitated), “I—I’ve made up my mind to take my little Alice along with me this voyage.”
The Misses Dunning wore unusually tall caps, and their countenances were by nature uncommonly long, but the length to which they grew on hearing this announcement was something preternaturally awful.
“Take Ailie to sea!” exclaimed Miss Martha Dunning, in horror.
“To fish for whales!” added Miss Jane Dunning, in consternation.
“Brother, you’re mad!” they exclaimed together, after a breathless pause; “and you’ll do nothing of the kind,” they added firmly.
Now, the manner in which the Misses Dunning received this intelligence greatly relieved their eccentric brother. He had fully anticipated, and very much dreaded, that they would at once burst into tears, and being a tender-hearted man he knew that he could not resist that without a hard struggle. A flood of woman’s tears, he was wont to say, was the only sort of salt water storm he hadn’t the heart to face. But abrupt opposition was a species of challenge which the captain always accepted at once—off-hand. No human power could force him to any course of action.
In this latter quality Captain Dunning was neither eccentric nor singular.
“I’m sorry you don’t like my proposal, my dear sisters,” said he; “but I’m resolved.”
“You won’t!” said Martha.
“You shan’t!” cried Jane.
“I will!” replied the captain.
There was a pause here of considerable length, during which the captain observed that Martha’s nostrils began to twitch nervously. Jane, observing the fact, became similarly affected. To the captain’s practised eye these symptoms were as good as a barometer. He knew that the storm was coming, and took in all sail at once (mentally) to be ready for it.
It came! Martha and Jane Dunning were for once driven from the shelter of their wonted propriety—they burst simultaneously into tears, and buried their respective faces in their respective pocket-handkerchiefs, which were immaculately clean and had to be hastily unfolded for the purpose.
“Now, now, my dear girls,” cried the captain, starting up and patting their shoulders, while poor little Ailie clasped her hands, sat down on a footstool, looked up in their faces—or, rather, at the backs of the hands which covered their faces—and wept quietly.
“It’s very cruel, George—indeed it is,” sobbed Martha; “you know how we love her.”
“Very true,” remarked the obdurate captain; “but you don’t know how I love her, and how sad it makes me to see so little of her, and to think that she may be learning to forget me—or, at least,” added the captain, correcting himself as Ailie looked at him reproachfully through her tears—“at least to do without me. I can’t bear the thought. She’s all I have left to me, and—”
“Brother,” interrupted Martha, looking hastily up, “did you ever before hear of such a thing as taking a little girl on a voyage to the whale-fishing?”
“No, never,” replied the captain; “what has that got to do with it?”
Both ladies held up their hands and looked aghast. The idea of any man venturing to do what no one ever thought of doing before was so utterly subversive of all their ideas of propriety—such a desperate piece of profane originality—that they remained speechless.
“George,” said Martha, drying her eyes, and speaking in tones of deep solemnity, “did you ever read Robinson Crusoe?”
“Yes, I did, when I was a boy; an’ that wasn’t yesterday.”
“And did you,” continued the lady in the same sepulchral tone, “did you note how that man—that beacon, if I may use the expression, set up as a warning to deter all wilful boys and men from reckless, and wicked, and wandering, and obstreperous courses—did you note, I say, how that man, that beacon, was shipwrecked, and spent a dreary existence on an uninhabited and dreadful island, in company with a low, dissolute, black, unclothed companion called Friday?”
“Yes,” answered the captain, seeing that she paused for a reply.
“And all,” continued Martha, “in consequence of his resolutely and obstinately, and wilfully and wickedly going to sea?”
“Well, it couldn’t have happened if he hadn’t gone to sea, no doubt.”
“Then,” argued Martha, “will you, can you, George, contemplate the possibility of your only daughter coming to the same dreadful end?”
George, not exactly seeing the connection, rubbed his nose with his forefinger, and replied—“Certainly not.”
“Then you are bound,” continued Martha, in triumph, “by all that is upright and honourable, by all the laws of humanity and propriety, to give up this wild intention—and you must!”
“There!” cried Miss Jane emphatically, as if the argument were unanswerable—as indeed it was, being incomprehensible.
The last words were unfortunate. They merely riveted the captain’s determination.
“You talk a great deal of nonsense, Martha,” he said, rising to depart. “I’ve fixed to take her, so the sooner you make up your minds to it the better.”
The sisters knew their brother’s character too well to waste more time in vain efforts; but Martha took him by the arm, and said earnestly—“Will you promise me, my dear George, that when she comes back from this voyage, you will never take her on another?”
“Yes, dear sister,” replied the captain, somewhat melted, “I promise that.”
Without another word Martha sat down and held out her arms to Ailie, who incontinently rushed into them. Propriety fled for the nonce, discomfited. Miss Martha’s curls were disarranged beyond repair, and Miss Martha’s collar was crushed to such an extent that the very laundress who had washed and starched and ironed it would have utterly failed to recognise it. Miss Jane looked on at these improprieties in perfect indifference—nay, when, after her sister had had enough, the child was handed over to her, she submitted to the same violent treatment without a murmur. For once Nature was allowed to have her way, and all three had a good hearty satisfactory cry; in the midst of which Captain Dunning left them, and, proceeding on board his ship, hastened the preparations for his voyage to the Southern Seas.
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