Forget-Me-Not Bride

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘Later, Lottie,’ Lilli said, not wanting to think about the whys and wherefores, her entire concentration focussed on one thing and one thing only. Being aboard the S.S. Senator when she sailed.

  Lottie fell silent, wondering if she had been fatally rash in mentioning to Lilli that their father had had dreams of trekking to Alaska and striking gold. The trouble with Lilli was that, like their father, she was totally unrealistic. A dream seized hold of them and in their enthusiasm to pursue it, everyday commonsense deserted them.

  ‘Which is why your Pa needs me, and your big sister will need you, my pet,’ their mother had once confided to her when she was little more than a toddler. ‘But never forget that it is our secret for it would hurt their feelings terribly if they knew it was us who looked after them, not the other way around.’

  As the cable car eased its way down into the harbour area Lottie couldn’t help wondering if Lilli had decided on Alaska as an answer to their problems merely because their father, too, had thought Alaska would be lucky for them. The frown puckering her eyebrows deepened. What on earth would they do there? They couldn’t mine for gold themselves. The work would be too hard. And, even if it were not, surely all the prime stakes would have been taken? It was three years now since gold nuggets had been found in the Klondike and the initial great stampede north was largely over. She chewed the corner of her lip, wishing to goodness she knew what it was Lilli had in mind, wishing she were a little older so that Lilli would confide in her a little more.

  ‘We’re going to have to hire a hackney now,’ Lilli said as they trooped off the cable car into the hurly-burly of a part of the city they were totally unfamiliar with. ‘A hackney driver will know where Wharf 18 is and get us there much faster than we’d get there on foot.’

  Lottie stumbled, nearly falling over the heavy bag she was carrying. ‘You mean we’re sailing to Alaska tonight?’

  Lilli stared at her in astonishment. ‘Well of course we are. How else did you think we were going to get there?’

  Lottie’s long braids had fallen over her shoulders and with her free hand she flicked them back, saying with remarkable restraint, ‘All you’ve told us so far, Lilli, is that we’re going to Alaska and that you haven’t time for questions and explanations. You never said exactly when we were going. Or how.’

  ‘Then I’ll tell you now.’ Lilli looked around for a hackney. ‘We’re going by boat and the boat sails in less than an hour. Hackney! Hackney!’

  The accosted hackney driver nudged his horse in their direction.

  ‘Wharf 18 please,’ Lilli said, bundling Leo up into the carriage. ‘And take us there as fast as you can!’

  The driver, well used to such requests, urged his horse into a brisk trot.

  ‘Is this the Barbary Coast?’ Leo asked in awe, staring out into the gathering darkness at cobbled streets crammed with roistering sailors.

  A group of heavily rouged women burst out of a noisy saloon, a drunken posse of men at their heels. None of the men was elegantly dressed. None looked as if they had ever, in their lives, worn a Homburg.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lilli answered, relieved that her Greek God of the afternoon was not among their midst and yet disappointed at not catching a second glimpse of him. ‘Whichever part of the water-front it is, it’s certainly exotic.’

  She wasn’t exaggerating. Turbanned Hindus jostled on the narrow sidewalks with brown-skinned Samoans. Africans loitered in groups on the street corners. Chinese scurried hither and thither. It was a part of San Francisco they had all heard about but never imagined they would see; a part of San Francisco worlds removed from the claustrophobic grandeur of the Mosely mansion on Nob Hill.

  ‘Are you intendin’sailin’on the Senator, ma’am?’ the hackney driver asked as he left the narrow streets behind and the carriage began to clatter over the even rougher cobbles of the docks.

  ‘Yes. Do you know her?’ There was a dizzying array of masts and funnels on their left-hand side. ‘Is she a sailing ship or a steamship?’

  The driver hooted with laughter. ‘You’re sailin’on her and you don’t known whether she’s sail or steam?’ He turned his head, looking at her curiously, his amusement fading. ‘You do know where the Senator’s bound, ma’am, don’t you?’ he asked, an edge of concern entering his eyes.

  ‘Alaska,’ Lilli said, Leo’s hand tightening on hers.

  The driver shrugged. If she knew where she was going then he could be of no further assistance to her. He could, however, give her the benefit of his opinion. ‘The gold-fields are no place for youngsters,’ he said as he reined his horse in at the foot of the S. S. Senator’s gangplank. ‘And no place for women either, unless they’re bar-room floosies.’

  Lilli disregarded him. The S. S. Senator was a steamer and from the smoke belching from her funnels she was about to set sail at any moment. There was no time to be lost if they were to be aboard when she eased her way out into the Bay. Not a second. With the blood drumming in her ears she jumped down from the carriage. ‘Pass me the bags, Lottie! Quickly!’ she said, lifting Leo down to the ground after her, not waiting for the driver to come to her assistance.

  With difficulty Lottie heaved the heavy carpet-bags down over the side of the carriage. ‘There are sailors doing things with ropes at the top of the gangplank,’ she panted as she did so.

  ‘What are floosies?’ Leo asked, tugging on Lilli’s skirt.

  ‘If you intend sailing on that boat you’d better look sharp,’ the hackney driver said, taking the last of the bags from Lottie and swinging it to the ground.

  ‘Run to the gangplank, Lottie!’ Lilli ordered feverishly, scrambling in her purse for money to pay him. ‘They can’t pull it up if there’s someone on it!’

  ‘What are floosies, Lilli?’ Leo asked again as, braids flying, Lottie hurtled over the cobbles and launched herself onto the foot of the gangplank.

  ‘Later, darling. Later.’ Lilli hoisted one bag beneath her arm and picked up the other two.

  ‘Good luck, ma’am!’ the driver called out as she turned hastily away from him and then, beneath his breath as he urged his horse into movement again, ‘You sure as hell are going to need it!’

  With her heart beating as if it was going to burst Lilli hurried after Lottie. This was it. This was the moment of truth. Either their names had been added to the passenger list or they hadn’t. And if they hadn’t … She daren’t think about what would happen if they hadn’t.

  ‘Miss Stullen?’ a young seaman asked as he strode down the gangplank to meet her. ‘You’ve left it a little late ma’am, if I may say so.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Relief was flooding over her in such great, glorious waves she had to fight the temptation to drop the bags and throw her arms around him. They’d done it! They were on the passenger list! In another few minutes they would be en route to Alaska and Leo would be out of the clutches of their Uncle Herbert forever.

  ‘You’re in a cabin with another Peabody lady,’ the seaman said, taking two of her bags from her.

  Lilli’s elation soared even higher. She was going to be travelling with young women of her own age; she would be able to make friends; friends who would remain her friends when they had reached their destination.

  As Leo and Lottie took hold of her now freed hands and they followed the young man up onto the deck, Lilli became aware of how many passengers were crowding the rails. There wasn’t a woman among them and she assumed they were either prospectors journeying to the gold fields for the first time or prospectors returning to the Klondike after sitting out the winter in California.

  The ship’s hawsers had begun to be creakingly hauled in and then, as Lilli stepped on to the deck, a sailor shouted, ‘Hold the gangplank! We’ve another late arrival!’

  Lilli was too intent on following their luggage to take any interest in what was happening at the dock-side. Until now all her thoughts had been directed towards one end and one end only: being aboard the S.S. Senator when she sailed. Now t
hat she was aboard, other thoughts crowded her brain. How was she going to tell Lottie and Leo that they were only travelling to Alaska on the understanding that when they arrived there she would marry a woman-starved gold-prospector? Until now she hadn’t given that part of the arrangement a thought. Now, for the first time, it occurred to her that perhaps she should have done so.

  It was a realisation too drastic to allow for people-watching over the deck rail. While other passengers watched with interest as a tall, lithe, elegantly suited figure strode up the gangplank, a Homburg on his dark-gold hair, an ermine-caped lady companion clinging to his arm, Lilli was following the seaman down a narrow companionway, earnestly wishing she had troubled to look at the Peabody Marriage Bureau’s photographic album.

  ‘I’m not sharing with kids,’ a rough-edged female voice said categorically as the officer deposited Lilli’s bags in the cramped doorway.

  ‘This cabin has four berths.’ The seaman lifted Leo over the bags, depositing him in the minuscule space between two sets of bunks. ‘And three of them are allocated to Miss Stullen.’ He turned to Lilli, taking the bag she was carrying and heaving it on to one of the top bunks. ‘If you have any problems ma’am, just seek me out.’

  ‘I won’t have any problems.’ Lilli was appreciative of his attention but needed no-one to fight her battles for her.

  The seaman, with no further excuse to stay and pressing duties elsewhere, regretfully took his leave. His courtesy in showing her to her cabin and carrying her bags had not been standard practice. On board the Senator, passengers found their own way around and carried their own bags. He didn’t, however, regret for one moment the impulse that had prompted him to hurry down the gangplank to assist her. Girls who carried themselves with the grace of a princess were rare aboard the Senator and this particular princess had such a thick abundance of upswept, glossy, night-black hair it was a marvel her slender neck could bear the weight. He wanted to get to know Miss Stullen better. And he had a good four days in which to do so.

  ‘I meant what I said,’ the sulky-faced girl sitting on the edge of one of the bottom bunks said as Lilli stepped over the two bulging carpet-bags into the cabin, ‘I’m not sharing with kids.’

  Lilli took hold of one of the bags and swung it onto the opposite bunk, making way for Lottie to squeeze into the cabin beside her.

  ‘Then you’d better find yourself another cabin,’ she said pleasantly, ‘because we aren’t going to.’

  The girl’s eyes narrowed. Leo put his thumb in his mouth apprehensively. Lottie held her breath. Lilli remained unconcerned.

  The girl, taking Lilli’s measure, decided it might be wisest to back down a little. ‘Maybe I will, and maybe I won’t,’ she said truculently, her face half-hidden by dishwater-blonde hair; neither it or her dress too clean. ‘Who are the kids? They’re too old to be yours.’

  ‘They’re my brother and sister,’ Lilli said, swinging the second bag high on to a top bunk. ‘I’m Lilli Stullen. My sister’s name is Lottie and my brother is Leo.’

  The girl snorted, saying in a voice heavy with sarcasm. ‘Didn’t your ma and pa know there was any letter in the alphabet other than L?’

  Before Lilli could answer, Lottie flicked her braids back over her shoulders and said tartly, ‘Those aren’t our real names. They’re diminutives.’

  The girl’s mouth dropped open. ‘And what in the name of all that’s wonderful,’ she asked when she had recovered her power of speech, ‘is a diminu whatever-you-call-it?’

  Lilli, well aware that Lottie could fend for herself, stepped across to the port-hole. Indistinctly she could see the lights of San Francisco glimmering and glittering. Somewhere, high on Nob Hill, her uncle was still blissfully unaware that Leo and Lottie were no longer under his roof. He wouldn’t know they were gone until morning. And in the morning they would be somewhere off the coast of California, steaming northwards.

  ‘A diminutive is when you shorten a name,’ Lottie was saying, sitting down next to the girl. ‘Lilli’s name is really Elizabeth, only no-one ever calls her Elizabeth. My name is Charlotte and Leo’s is Leopold.’

  ‘“S’truth,” the girl said, impressed. ‘Is that a fact? And what about my name? What’s the diminu whatever-you-call-it of Lettie?’

  Lottie regarded her gravely. ‘Lettie already is a diminutive,’ she said, politely keeping any hint of superiority out of her voice. ‘It’s either the diminutive of Lettice or Letitia.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think much of Lettice,’ the girl said flatly. ‘Letitia’s nice though. It sounds like an actress’s name.’

  ‘It’s Latin,’ Lilli said, turning away from the porthole as the Senator began to ease out into the Bay. ‘And it means gladness.’ It was singularly inapt and a smile quirked the corners of her mouth.

  Lettie’s sulky face registered astonishment. ‘Do you two read books for breakfast?’ she asked, her voice no longer unpleasant but genuinely curious.

  ‘Sometimes.’ Lilli was rarely put out of good temper for long and she said now, her amusement deepening, ‘And you do realize, don’t you, that your name begins with an L, just like ours?’

  Something fought on Lettie’s face. It was as if she were frightened of abandoning unpleasantness. As if she were unfamiliar with any emotion that might replace it.

  ‘It’s rather nice, isn’t it?’ Lottie said ingenuously, still sitting companionably next to her. ‘It’s as if we were all meant to share a cabin and be friends.’

  ‘If we’re all friends,’ Leo said, speaking up for the first time, ‘Can we all go on deck together and watch San Francisco disappear?’ He turned his attention towards Lettie. ‘And as Lilli can’t tell me what a floosie is, can you?’

  ‘You’re crazy! The whole lot of you are crazy?’ Lettie rose to her feet, staring round at them as if they were escaped lunatics.

  Lilli grinned. ‘You could just be right,’ she said, thinking of the confession she still had to make to Leo and Lottie, ‘but we’d hardly be going to Alaska if we weren’t, would we? And I don’t suppose you would, either.’

  Lettie blinked, clearly disconcerted by such blatant friendliness in the face of her own hostility. Then, slowly, a hint of a smile touched the corners of her mouth. ‘No,’ she said wryly. ‘No, I don’t suppose I would.’

  Lilli had at first judged their cabin companion to be in her early twenties. Now she revised her estimate. Without a sulky mouth and a heavy scowl Lettie looked to be no older than she was herself and was possibly even a little younger.

  ‘Come on then,’ she said to her, more than happy to see an end to all hostilities. ‘Let’s do as Leo suggests and go up on deck.’

  It was just as thronged as it had been earlier. Men of every age, size and shape massed the rails, leaning over them to watch as, against the dark hills, San Francisco’s myriad gaslights flickered and shimmered and grew ever smaller.

  ‘You didn’t say, but I presume you’re a Peabody girl as well,’ Lilli said to Lettie as, with Leo and Lottie in front of them they tried to squeeze a way through to the rails.

  ‘For my sins,’ Lettie said with unexpected humour. ‘There’s another five somewhere. Miss Salway, Miss Bumby, Miss Hobson, Miss Rivere and Miss Nettlesham. The first four are sharing the cabin next to ours. Miss Nettlesham,’ she added, placing heavy sarcastic emphasis on the name, ‘should have been sharing with us but she said she would die if she had to share a cabin, and she must have come to a private financial agreement with the captain because she now has a cabin to herself. She’s already had a postal introduction to the fella she’s to marry and thinks she’s a cut above the rest of us.’

  ‘What are Peabody girls?’ Lottie asked Lettie curiously as two bear-like figures at the rails obligingly shifted apart a little in order to let Leo squeeze in front of them. ‘And what do you mean by saying one of them has already had a postal introduction to the man she’s going to marry?’

  The gap at the rails widened and Lettie pushed Lottie forward. ‘Peab
ody girls are gold-rush brides,’ she said as she squeezed into the gap after her. ‘But when we get to Dawson, Miss Nettlesham isn’t going to have to marry whatever fella picks her out, like me and your sister will have to do. She already knows who she’s going to marry and what he looks like.’

  Lottie stared up at her, goggle-eyed. ‘You mean Lilli’s going to Alaska to marry?’ she asked in stupefied disbelief.

  ‘’Course she is.’ Lettie shivered as the night sea breeze seared through her threadbare coat. ‘Why else would she be going there?’

  Lottie didn’t know. She’d thought it had been because Lilli was trying to vicariously fulfil one of their father’s many day-dreams. Now she realised that, even for Lilli, such a romantic notion would not be reason enough.

  As the Senator began to roll in the Pacific swell and as the lights on shore became ever more indistinct, many of the men at the rails turned away from them, heading below deck.

  Lottie turned away also, stumbling towards Lilli, her face ashen. ‘Is it true?’ she demanded hoarsely, grabbing hold of her hand. ‘Are we really going to Alaska so that you can marry a man you’ve never met?’

  Lilli didn’t answer her. Incredibly, she didn’t even seem to hear her. She was staring across the deck to where, several yards away, a gentleman was standing looking shorewards, an astrakhan-collared greatcoat around his shoulders, a Homburg pulled low over his brow.

  Chapter Three

  ‘It was the only solution,’ Lilli said half an hour later. Lettie had taken Leo into the next cabin to meet their travelling companions and she had no excuse not to answer Lottie’s urgent questions.

  Lottie stared at her aghast. ‘Marriage?’ she said, wondering why Lilli so fondly thought she took after their mother when, in reality, she so spectacularly took after their father, acting first and thinking later. ‘But you can’t marry someone you don’t know, Lilli!’

  ‘Why not?’ Lilli said with a lightness she was far from feeling. ‘Lettie is. And so are Miss Bumby and Miss Nettlesham and Miss Rivere and Miss Hobson and Miss Salway.’