Dodd then begged her to go to sleep, like a good child, for her health's sake; all would be well; and with this was about to return to her own room; but a white hand and arm darted out of the bed and caught her. “What! Hope has come to me by night in the form of an angel, and shall I let her go back to her own room? Never! never! never! never! never!” And she patted the bed expressively, and with the prettiest impatience.
“Well, let Hope take off her earrings first,” suggested Mrs. Dodd.
“No, no, come here directly, earrings and all.”
“No, thank you; or I shall have them wounding you next.”
Mrs. Hope quietly removed her earrings, and the tender pair passed the rest of the night in one another's arms. The young girl's tears were dried; and hope revived, and life bloomed again: only, henceforth her longing eyes looked out to sea for her father, homeward bound.
Next day, as they were seated together in the drawing-room, Julia came from the window with a rush, and kneeled at Mrs. Dodd's knees, with bright imploring face upturned.
“He is there; and—I am to speak to him? Is that it?”
“Dear, dear, dear mamma!” was the somewhat oblique reply.
“Well, then, bring me my things.”
She was ten minutes putting them on: Julia tried to expedite her and retarded her. She had her pace, and could not go beyond it.
Now by this time Alfred Hardie was thoroughly miserable. Unable to move his father, shunned by Julia, sickened by what he had heard, and indeed seen, of her gaiety and indifference to their separation, stung by jealousy and fretted by impatience, he was drinking nearly all the bitters of that sweet passion, Love. But as you are aware, he ascribed Julia's inconstancy, lightness, and cruelty all to Mrs. Dodd. He hated her cordially, and dreaded her into the bargain; he played the sentinel about her door all the more because she had asked him not to do it “Always do what your enemy particularly objects to,” said he, applying to his own case the wisdom of a Greek philosopher, one of his teachers.
So, when the gate suddenly opened, and instead of Julia, this very Mrs. Dodd walked towards him, his feelings were anything but enviable. He wished himself away, heartily, but was too proud to retreat. He stood his ground. She came up to him; a charming smile broke out over her features. “Ah! Mr. Hardie,” said she, “if you have nothing better to do, will you give me a minute?” He assented with surprise and an ill grace.
“May I take your arm?”
He offered it with a worse.
She laid her hand lightly on it, and it shuddered at her touch. He felt like walking with a velvet tigress.
By some instinct she divined his sentiment, and found her task more difficult than she had thought; she took some steps in silence. At last, as he was no dissembler, he burst out passionately, “Why are you my enemy?”
“I am not your enemy,” said she quietly.
“Not openly, but all the more dangerous. You keep us apart, you bid her be gay and forget me; you are a cruel, hard-hearted lady.”
“No, I am not, sir,” said Mrs. Dodd simply.
“Oh! I believe you are good and kind to all the rest of the world; but you know you have a heart of iron for me.”
“I am my daughter's friend, but not your enemy; it is you who are too inexperienced to know how delicate, how difficult, my duties are. It is only since last night I see my way clear; and, look, I come at once to you with friendly intentions. Suppose I were as impetuous as you are? I should, perhaps, be calling you ungrateful.”
He retorted bitterly. “Give me something to be grateful for, and you shall see whether that baseness is in my nature.”
“I have a great mind to put you to the proof,” said she archly. “Let us walk down this lane; then you can be as unjust to me as you think proper, without attracting public attention.”
In the lane she told him quietly she knew the nature of his father's objections to the alliance he had so much at heart, and they were objections which her husband, on his return, would remove. On this he changed his tone a little, and implored her piteously not to deceive him.
“I will not,” said she, “upon my honour. If you are as constant as my daughter is in her esteem for you—notwithstanding her threadbare gaiety worn over loyal regret, and to check a parcel of idle ladies' tongues—you have nothing to fear from me, and everything to expect. Come, Alfred—may I take that liberty with you?—let us understand one another. We only want that to be friends.”
This was hard to resist and at his age. His lip trembled, he hesitated, but at last gave her his hand. She walked two hours with him, and laid herself out to enlighten, soothe, and comfort his sore heart His hopes and happiness revived under her magic, as Julia's had. In the midst of it all, the wise woman quietly made terms. He was not to come to the house but on her invitation, unless indeed he had news of the Agra to communicate; but he might write once a week to her, and enclose a few lines to Julia. On this concession he proceeded to mumble her white wrist, and call her his best, dearest, loveliest friend; his mother. “Oh, remember,” said he, with a relic of distrust, “you are the only mother I can ever hope to have.”
That touched her. Hitherto, he had been to her but a thing her daughter loved.
Her eyes filled. “My poor, warm-hearted, motherless boy,” she said, “pray for my husband's safe return. For on that your happiness depends, and hers, and mine.”
So now two more bright eyes looked longingly seaward for the Agra homeward bound.
CHAPTER VII
NORTH latitude 23.5, longitude east 113; the time March of this same year; the wind southerly; the port Whampoa, in the Canton river. Ships at anchor reared their tall masts here and there, and the broad stream was enlivened and coloured by junks and boats of all sizes and vivid hues, propelled on the screw principle by a great scull at the stern, with projecting handles, for the crew to work; and at times a gorgeous mandarin boat, with two great glaring eyes set in the bows, came flying, rowed with forty paddles by an armed crew, whose shields hung on the gunwale and flashed fire in the sunbeams: the mandarin, in conical and buttoned hat, sitting on the top of his cabin calmly smoking Paradise, alias opium, while his gong boomed and his boat flew fourteen miles an hour, and all things scuttled out of his celestial way. And there, looking majestically down on all these water-ants, the huge Agra, cynosure of so many loving eyes and loving hearts in England, lay at her moorings; homeward bound.
Her tea not being yet on board, the ship's hull floated high as a castle, and to the subtle, intellectual, doll-faced, bolus-eyed people that sculled to and fro busy as bees, though looking forked mushrooms, she sounded like a vast musical shell: for a lusty harmony of many mellow voices vibrated in her great cavities, and made the air ring cheerily around her. The vocalists were the Cyclops, to judge by the tremendous thumps that kept clean time to their sturdy tune. Yet it was but human labour, so heavy and so knowing, that it had called in music to help. It was the third mate and his gang completing his floor to
