‘Since you are so well informed about what goes on in the Company’s ships, I’ll not argue that point with you. But you seem to have overlooked the situation in which you would find yourself when we reached Calcutta. ‘Tis not like London, where a man can carry on a clandestine affair with an unmarried girl, or even keep her in an apartment of her own without anyone who matters being the wiser. You have yourself pointed out that in the East attractive white women are few and far between; that fact alone would render concealment impossible.’
‘It would not be necessary. The very scarcity you speak of has led to entirely different conditions. Society there has become far more tolerant than it is in England. Julia told me that in India white mistresses live openly with their lovers and by custom take their names. Providing that they know how to conduct themselves decently they are received on equal terms with married women; so that in all but the blessing of the Church, I’d be Mrs. Brook.’
‘And what when we returned to England? Do you suppose that no tales ever drift back from those distant shores? You suggest that on our arrival in Calcutta I should produce you, apparently from nowhere, as Mrs. Brook. But a change to female garments will not prevent the officers, every passenger, and all the crew in this ship recognising you as the youth who played the part of my servant on the voyage out; so there’ll be no disguising the fact that we’re not married. Then, within a week or two, someone will appear on the scene who knew you either in England or Martinique, and your true identity will become common property. What with your looks and the fact that you are of good family, the next ship will carry back to London the news of our liaison. Your name will be dragged in the mud and your chances of making a good marriage for ever ruined.’
‘I care not!’ she declared stubbornly. ‘I’ve no close relatives who would be ashamed by me, and I’ve a right to dispose of myself as I wish.’
‘But I do care,’ he rapped back, ‘and I’ll not have you ruining your whole life. I am honoured and touched by your love for me, but on those terms I would feel disgraced did I accept it.’
Suddenly she stood up. Her voice was low and she leaned towards him, as she said, ‘Roger; kiss me. Kiss me as you did the other night.’
‘No!’ he exclaimed, pushing her off. ‘No! I’ll be damned if I will.’
‘You daren’t,’ she taunted him. ‘You dare not, because you know that if you did you would give in. You’d rather keep your stupid pride and let me break my heart.’
‘I’m not the keeper of your heart, but I am of my own conscience,’ he cried angrily. ‘I’ll have naught to do with you. Get out of here! Get out!’
In an instant her shoulders sagged pathetically, and her hands shook as she held them out to him. ‘You cannot mean this, Roger. Think what you are sending me to. It was bad enough down in the servants’ cubby-hole waiting to come to you until the ship was well out at sea. The men have brought aboard great flasks of gin and are drinking to a fortunate voyage. I had great difficulty in avoiding having to drink with them. It will be worse by now, and soon they’ll all be roaring drunk. Anything might happen to me.’
‘It would serve you right if I did send you there; but I see it to be impossible.’
For a moment he was silent and her heart leapt with hope again; but he crushed it by adding curtly, ‘Very well, then. It is I who must pass a night in discomfort.’
Quickly putting on again the things he had taken off, he got into his heavy many-collared top-coat, picked up his hat, and said, ‘You are to remain here until I come to you in the morning. And make up your mind to it, I am not changing mine. I mean to have you put ashore before we pass the Needles.’
Slamming the door behind him, he made his way on deck and up to the poop. There was hardly room to move on it as it was piled high with hundreds of barred crates and coops. Each was crammed to capacity with live sheep, pigs, turkeys, geese, chickens or ducks, which would be slaughtered as required to provide fresh meat at the Captain’s table throughout the voyage. The stench was indescribable.
Still seething with rage, he thrust his way down one of the narrow alleys that had been left between the crates, until he reached the Chart House. On this first night of the voyage he expected that Captain Finch would be up there until at least midnight, observing the behaviour of his ship under her new rigging; but the Second Mate, whose watch it was, promptly disabused him of any hope of seeing the Captain before morning.
He learned that the Captains, or Commanders as they were called, of East Indiamen regarded themselves as considerable personages. On landing in India they were greeted with a salute of thirteen guns, and on entering or leaving a fort guards turned out for them. While at sea they had six mates and several midshipmen; so it was beneath their dignity to take any active part in the navigation of the ship, except in such exceptional circumstances as tempest or attack by an enemy.
Roger felt it to be out of the question to confide the delicate matter of Clarissa’s presence aboard to anyone other than the Commander, although this meant that, instead of quietly being put into a spare cabin for the night, he must shift for himself as well as he could.
Gloomily he began to pace the deck, but gradually his anger evaporated. He had left Clarissa in tears and he began to wonder if he had not behaved unduly harshly towards her. Grievous as was the embarrassment which her folly must cause them both when steps had to be taken to put her ashore, he was forced to recognise that only love for him had impelled her to her act. From that he passed to wondering if he was not behaving like a priggish fool.
In those days, girls were frequently married at the age of fourteen, and Clarissa was no little chit just out of the schoolroom whose head might be turned by a handsome fellow asking her to dance three times in one evening. She had had a dozen offers of marriage and men of all sorts and conditions had tried to make love to her; so hers was no case of a girl who did not know what she was doing, or even of one swept off her feet by a sudden passion.
The more he thought of the matter, the more he was tempted to go below, kiss away her tears, and hold her for the rest of the night in the warm embrace to which he knew she would be so willing to yield herself. And there was much more to it than that. Fascinating as he believed India would prove, with its rich sights and sounds, dusky potentates and fabulous palaces the voyage to it was long and must prove incredibly tedious. Instead, with Clarissa for company, it could be turned into a honeymoon holding a thousand secret delights. Pausing at the head of the companionway, he decided that it would be flying in the faces of the gods to reject this wonderful gift they were offering him.
Yet, with his hand upon the rail, he still hesitated. If he once took the plunge, there could be no escaping what would follow. She might be right about society in India tolerating such liaisons. If so, they could continue their honeymoon for a few more months in glamorous surroundings. But he had no intention of remaining away from Europe for longer than the inside of a year, and when they returned to England she would have to pay the price for having thrown her shift over the moon. Georgina in her ‘teens had been an heiress, so could afford to ignore rumours that her morals were no better than they should be, but Clarissa had neither family nor fortune—and in her case it would not be merely rumours. She would be ostracised by women who had young daughters, as unfitted to be seen in her company, the baser type of men would snigger behind their hands to one another as she passed, and she would be considered fair game for every sort of indecent proposal. As these thoughts raced through Roger’s mind, he reverted to his former feeling, that it would be unutterably mean to bring such shame upon her.
For another hour he remained on deck, now and then going to the ship’s side to watch the white foam racing along under her counter, or looking up at the ghostly sails with their intricate crisscross of groaning rigging. At length he decided that he must try to find somewhere to sleep, so he went down to the saloon, stumbled about in the darkness there, and fumbled his way to a long settee. Wrapping his big coat mo
re closely about him he lay down and, his mind still tormented by the allurement of Clarissa, eventually dropped into an uneasy doze.
Soon after five in the morning he was roused by the rhythmic swish and thud of scrubbers on the deck above him. As he sat up, the previous night’s events became again clear in his mind and added to the wretchedness he felt owing to his almost sleepless night. Hoping that the fresh air would clear his head, he went up on deck.
During the night the weather had worsened. The sea was choppy and there was no sight of land. Roger began to wonder uneasily if sea-sickness was soon to be added to his other miseries, but the deck was fairly steady as, with all sail set and a stiff breeze, the great ship sped at a fine pace through the dark green water.
For a while he watched the line of seamen gradually moving backwards as they scrubbed, their long-handled brushes moving in time to the beat of a Petty Officer’s turk’s-headed leather wanger. Then, knowing that the best precaution against seasickness was to keep the stomach busy, he went down to the ‘cuddy’, as the dining cabin was called. The stewards were cleaning it and he asked one of them how soon he could have breakfast.
The man replied that tea and biscuits were served for such passengers who cared to come in for them at eight o’clock, but obligingly brought Roger a plate of biscuits and a steaming hot mug of strong tea from the crew’s galley. After them he felt distinctly better; so he wandered up on deck again, wondering how he could best kill the two hours which it seemed there were still to go before a chance would come for him to speak to the Commander; but one occurred much sooner than he expected.
At a quarter past six Captain Finch emerged from under the poop. For a moment Roger failed to recognise him, as his short, broad figure was swathed in Turkish towelling. Stepping forward onto the quarter deck, he threw off this robe and a nearby seaman, without waiting for an order, so evidently by custom, turned a salt-water hose on the now naked Commander. After a thorough sousing from head to foot, he resumed his robe and, puffing and blowing, began vigorously to rub himself down with it. Then, catching sight of Roger, he wished him a cheery good morning.
Several seamen being within earshot, this was no place in which to raise the matter of Clarissa, but Roger was anxious to know by when he might hope to be done with the business; so, having returned the Commander’s greeting, he asked:
‘At what hour do you anticipate we’ll come opposite the Isle of Wight, Sir?’
Captain Finch cast a knowledgeable eye aloft, then replied: ‘Any time now. With this fine breeze behind us we should be well past the Needles by mid-morning. Why did you wish to know?’
‘I’d be grateful, Sir, if when we sight St. Catherine’s Point a signal could be made for a boat to come off. My old home is at Lymington, and I particularly want to send off a … a packet to be delivered there.’
‘St. Catherine’s Point!’ repeated the Commander. ‘Good gracious man, we’ll not pass within twenty miles of it. What is more, sorry as I am to disoblige you, Mr. Brook, with such fine sailing weather to carry us down Channel I’d not lose an hour of it to turn inshore—no, not for a thousand pounds. I hope we’ll not see land again till we sight Madeira.’
With a murmur of apology, Roger turned away to hide his perturbation. Fate had taken matters out of his hands and, whether he would or no, he must now remain responsible for his lovely stowaway for some two weeks. During then he could not possibly spend every night prowling about the deck or napping fully dressed in the saloon, and, if he shared his cabin with her for so long, the damage would be done; so he might as well take her on to India.
As he paced the deck once more, he could not help feeling elated that the gods had now made it practically impossible for him to reject the prize they offered him, and two possibilities crossed his mind, both of which tended to quiet his scruples at accepting it. One was that, when he decided to leave India, Clarissa, who would by then have made many friends there, might stay on; and with her youth and beauty it was certain that she would receive in such a lax society offers of honourable marriage from a variety of rich suitors. The other was that by then he might feel like marrying her himself.
He quickly dismissed the second. In the main, his marriage to Amanda had been a happy one; but there had been periods when they had made one another desperately unhappy, partly because of her hopeless extravagance and even more so through his failure to remain faithful to her during his long absences abroad.
He was now much better off than he had been during the first years of their marriage, and another woman might prove a better manager; but he now knew himself too well to believe that he would either be content to settle down in England, or remain faithful to any woman if separated from her for a considerable period; so the major rock remained. Had Amanda lived, now that they would have had little Susan as an additional tie, he felt that he could have been to her, even despite occasional lapses, a better husband than would have most men of his class; but since she was dead it seemed downright folly to give some other woman the right to harrow him with jealous scenes when he might lead a carefree life.
The other possibility seemed much more promising. That way he could have his cake and eat it too; and, quite apart from any selfish motive, there was much to recommend it. He was rich enough to take a good house in Calcutta, to entertain fairly lavishly, and to give Clarissa everything that a woman of fashion needed. She would become the reigning beauty of the place and her salon would soon be thronged with the most eligible bachelors and widowers in India. In six months’ time the edge of their first fine hectic passion would have become sufficiently blunted for her to look at other men with more appreciative eyes. Instead of returning to England as a penniless girl with a ruined reputation, she could make her choice and, in a few years’ time, come home as the respectable wife of some wealthy Nabob.
To see her becoming interested in someone else and secretly encourage her to safeguard her future would, he knew, prove a severe strain on himself; but that was the price he must pay, and pay it ungrudgingly, for her having given herself to him.
Greatly cheered by this solution, he again turned towards the companionway, but once more he paused at the top step, considering what he should say to her. To disclose his plan was out of the question as, in her present state of mind, she would certainly be horrified at the idea that in due course he meant to pass her on to someone else. He could only say that as it proved impossible to put her ashore in England his scruples had been overcome and that he would joyfully take her as his mistress.
At that, the practical implications of the step began, for the first time, to drift through his mind. She could spend the nights in his cabin, but what of the days? There could be no question of her eating with the passengers or joining in their amusements. It would be difficult for him even to smuggle her tidbits now and then; so she would have to rely for food mainly on the salt-pork and weevily biscuits that were the hard tack of servants and the crew. For weeks on end she would have to take her meals in the ‘noisome hole’ she had described to him, with rough, uncultured men. As a ‘boy’ she would almost certainly be made to drudge for the others and, quite probably, be bullied unmercifully. And there would be little that he could do to ameliorate her lot.
Probably she had not realised the full horror of what the months ahead would hold for her; but she must to some extent have visualised what she was letting himself in for—and that was the measure of her love for him.
That thought gave him pause again. Women, he knew, were by nature much more faithful than men. It was two years all but three months since they had sailed together for Martinique, and she had later told him that she had fallen in love with him from the beginning of the voyage. That he had been married, and that numerous handsome suitors had since done their utmost to win her, had failed to make her turn her thoughts elsewhere. Was it, then, really to be supposed that after living with him for six months she would become interested in some other man? No, the odds were that to take her would only
add fuel to the fire. To abandon her in Calcutta was unthinkable, and to bring her home would mean for her disgrace.
Once more a prey to terrible indecision, Roger again began to pace the deck. The more he thought about it now the more convinced he became that to make Clarissa his mistress must prove her ultimate ruin and that, even if he were wrong in that and fate proved more kind to her than there was any reason to expect, he could not allow her to endure the hardships and brutalities which were certain to be her portion if she continued to pose as his servant.
By eight o’clock he had made up his mind on a course of action. Going down to the ‘cuddy’, he found that the portly merchant, and two of the older Army officers, were the only passengers to have so far made their appearance. He wished them a curt ‘good morning’, helped himself to a mug of tea from the samovar and drank it. Then he poured another, picked up a handful of biscuits and, without explanation, carried them out of the cabin.
Down in his own he found Clarissa lying in the lower bunk, but wide awake. She had scragged her pale gold hair back over her head, cut six inches off it and done the rest up in a tight seaman’s pigtail; so, covered to her chin as she was, she looked very boyish. But directly they had exchanged greetings she sat up and, as she held out her hands for the tea and biscuits, he caught a momentary glimpse of one of her breasts. Small and firm though it was, it proclaimed more certainly than wearing a petticoat would have, that she was a woman. She had on one of his shirts, which were open at the neck, and he thought it highly probable that she had made the brief revelation on purpose; but it might have been through carelessness, and he shuddered to think what could happen to her if she gave her sex away while among the men servants. The thought strengthened him in his resolution.
As he sat down on the sea-chest opposite to her, the light fell on the dark shadows beneath his eyes and his unshaven chin. With a contrite smile, she said, ‘My poor Roger. ‘Tis clear that you have passed a horrid night. And I’m to blame; so I fear you must be more than ever angry with me.’
The Rape of Venice Page 12