4.
The Voyage
OF the first part of the full month’s voyage that ensued, Miss Bianca afterwards, and fortunately, remembered almost nothing. Most of the time she was seasick. Nils with the greatest kindness and practicality found her a snug berth behind the galley lockers — warm, dry, and, as you might say, next door to a restaurant; but though thankful to be dry and warm, Miss Bianca turned in loathing from even the excellent local cheese. A few drops of water, a few crumbs of dry bread, were all she could face. She lay curled on a bed of potato peelings — how different from her pink silk sheets! — and merely suffered. If the North Sea was terrible, the English Channel was worse — while as for the Bay of Biscay, Miss Bianca could never subsequently endure even to hear it named.
The spirits of Nils, on the other hand, as soon as they were fairly out to sea, rose and rose. He sang sea chanteys almost continually, often breaking out as well into snatches of a long saga about someone called Harald Fair-hair. He ran in and out of scuppers, up and down the rigging; there wasn’t a cat or dog on board, reported Nils joyfully — it might have been his own command! “Come up and see!” he urged Miss Bianca. “Come up and see the great billows, and how our vessel breasts them! Come up and see the lights of the ports, how they sparkle on the water! Come up and see the rays of the great lighthouses — each and all specially designed for the protection of us Norwegians!”
“I’m sorry, I have a headache,” said Miss Bianca.
“A headache at sea? But the sea cures everything!” cried Nils incredulously.
“I’m writing poetry,” said Miss Bianca.
So indeed she was. She hoped that in the event of shipwreck (which she fully expected), the following lines, sealed up in an iodine bottle, might be washed ashore and bring some comfort to the Boy.
POEM BY MISS BIANCA, WRITTEN AT SEA
Dear Boy! I would not have thee weep!
Sooner forget thy Miss Bianca quite!
Yet know, ’twas only Duty’s higher call
Could e’er have torn her from thy loving side!
M. B.
The rhyme wasn’t quite perfect, owing to seasickness, but it was the best she could do, and Nils kindly saw to heaving the bottle overboard.
He was as kind as possible — whenever he remembered her. It was a new experience to Miss Bianca not to be the center of attention, and led her to reflect a good deal on several points which she had hitherto taken for granted. Life in a Porcelain Pagoda had always seemed so natural to her! As cream cheese from a silver bonbon dish, and golden swings to swing on, and a silver chain to wear, seemed mere necessities! As she had told Bernard, Miss Bianca firmly believed that her devotion to the Boy made an ample return, and she believed so still; but it did not enter her mind that such an existence was unusual, and not the only possible one. Could one not find equal happiness, mused Miss Bianca, if not equal luxury, in devotion to another mouse? “Of course we should be very poor!” thought Miss Bianca. “I wonder how the poor live?”
She asked Nils. — She put it very delicately, in a roundabout way, so as not to hurt his feelings.
“What does your father do?” asked Miss Bianca.
Nils pulled his whiskers. — They were sitting together in the lee of a stanchion; it was a fine, calm night, very starry, and Miss Bianca had for once ventured up on deck.
“At a guess, he’ll be voyaging — same as us,” said Nils.
“But don’t you know?” exclaimed Miss Bianca, astonished.
“Haven’t seen the old buffer in years,” said Nils casually.
“But who looks after your mother, and the family?” asked Miss Bianca. “How many brothers and sisters have you?”
Nils pulled his whiskers again. All mice have large families, and Nils was no better than any other man at keeping track of relations.
“A couple of dozen?” he suggested. “Soon as they’re able, they go voyaging too — at least us boys do. The girls, until they marry, mostly stay home helping Ma. Ma takes in washing.”
Miss Bianca shuddered. She had never imagined anything quite as dreadful as that! But she concealed her horror.
“No doubt it’s because you’re a race of seafarers,” she said, “that your wives are left so much alone. Marrying a mouse in a good shore situation, such as a Pantry, for instance, would no doubt be very different. At least he would remain at one’s side, in however modest a dwelling.”
“As to that I couldn’t say,” replied Nils. “In Ma’s opinion, the laundry runs a great deal better when she runs it herself.”
“Poor soul!” thought Miss Bianca. Twenty-four children to support! — what deprivations they must have suffered! Perhaps not even new hats for Easter, and cream cheese only the rarest treat!
“How the poor live!” cried Miss Bianca uncontrollably. “It’s quite dreadful to think of!”
“Is it? Myself, I don’t know any poor,” said Nils. He paused, and looked at her kindly. “Except, maybe,” he added, “for one poor little female that hadn’t any galoshes . . .”
Miss Bianca returned to her berth a thoughtful mouse indeed. She lay awake most of next day. To do her justice, Nils’s silly misapprehension didn’t occupy her long: Looked at in one way it was almost amusing — to own a Porcelain Pagoda, and yet be taken for poverty-stricken because one happened to borrow a pair of galoshes! (If only Nils knew, thought Miss Bianca, actually smiling.) No, what really engaged her attention was the fact that Nils didn’t consider himself or his family poor. However small their income, he seemed to find it perfectly sufficient. Life outside a Porcelain Pagoda was certainly possible, then, reflected Miss Bianca . . .
“But I could never, never take in washing!” she told herself.
With the best will in the world — and though she was rapidly shedding many of her prejudices — she couldn’t believe Nils’s mother to be happy. Alone all day at the mangle (except for say half a dozen daughters), and quite unsupported by a husband’s company, how indeed could she be anything but wretched? — The picture would be very different, of course, with a loving husband in it as well . . .
“But I wonder if I could give drawing lessons?” mused Miss Bianca.
She was in a very distracted, uneasy state of mind; and to make matters worse, as the days passed and they began to near their destination, Nils started bothering her about the chart — a subject on which she was particularly sensitive.
Nils had taken charge of it at once, and kept it stowed in his left-leg sea boot, where it naturally rubbed against all the other things he kept there until it was quite smudged. Also the folding corkscrew must have come un, for there was a great round hole through one of the duckponds, or roses.
“Really!” exclaimed Miss Bianca, as he pulled it out. Secretly she was rather pleased; if she hadn’t known how to draw a chart, Nils certainly didn’t know how to take care of one. “After all my trouble — !” exclaimed Miss Bianca. Women can be dreadfully unfair, when prestige is at stake.
“It looks all right to me,” said Nils. “Why, Skipper’s chart up aloft you can’t hardly read for cocoa! I can find my way all right. All I was going to ask was, be they duckponds linked by navigable streams?”
With growing horror, Miss Bianca realized that what she’d intended for a map of the Capital, Nils took to be a map of the route to the Capital from the port. In honesty, she should have answered that she had simply no idea — or have gone even further, and confessed that the duckponds were in fact artificial roses. But what then would become of Nils’s confidence in her? It was dreadful to her to tell a lie; her only consolation was that she’d practically told this one already, when she let Nils believe the roses to be duckponds in the first place, so it wouldn’t count twice.
“By navigable streams,” said Miss Bianca.
“Simplifies things,” said Nils happily.
“I’m sure I hope so,” said Miss Bianca.
Nils took out the chart and studied it every day. He liked studying charts. But poor
Miss Bianca never watched him without feelings of guilt and apprehension.
2.
The days grew warmer and sunnier, the seas calmer. They were in the Mediterranean. Miss Bianca, who had done Greek and Latin with the Boy, spent more and more time on deck, gazing with a classical expression towards the fabled shores of Italy, Greece, and the Peloponnese. “Hector and the windy plains of Troy!” murmured Miss Bianca to herself. “The March of the Ten Thousand, the Spartans by the sea-wet strand, also foam-white Venus rising from the waves!” Never were the advantages of education better exemplified; she really forgot, for hours together, every distressing circumstance.
What she remembered was the Boy’s schoolroom, in all its comfort and quietude; and the kindness of the Boy’s tutor in allowing her to sit on the page; and the pleasure of shared intellectual achievement, as she and the Boy both got a verb right at the same moment, or memorized together some verse of splendid poetry. (Miss Bianca had had the best models.) In happy dreams, she saw Nils safe at the Moot-house while she herself ran back to the Embassy . . . She was quite confident that the new Ambassador would recognize her — if only by her silver chain — and take the promptest steps to return her to the Boy.
How she would enjoy traveling by Bag again!
It will be seen that Miss Bianca had once more changed her mind. Upon thinking it over she found she would prefer not to give drawing lessons. She was determined to bid Bernard but a last, fond farewell.
Two days later, they docked.
3.
It is always agreeable to set foot on one’s native shore again — and indeed Miss Bianca would have been glad to set foot on any shore; on the other hand, all seaports were equally foreign to her, and as she stood beside Nils on the quay (they had been among the first to disembark), she felt just as bewildered as upon the quayside in Norway. To make matters worse, it was now that her responsibility really began, and when Nils immediately suggested picking up a dinghy — obviously quite confident that she knew where one picked up dinghies — Miss Bianca could only pretend not to hear, for never was confidence more misplaced. She looked hopelessly about — up at the great hulls of the seafaring ships — up, even higher, at the great cranes unloading them — back towards the rows of customs sheds and warehouses — and really felt the situation quite beyond her. Then, fortunately, she looked down.
Bobbing against the foot of a flight of landing steps lay a model speedboat.
Miss Bianca could hardly believe her eyes. She recognized it at once. It was the Boy’s, a gift to him from the American Naval Attaché — about fifteen inches long, and so wonderfully high-powered that the bathtub was scarred all round by its steely prow before some highhanded Someone indignantly fished it out. Then it had been lost. (Both the Boy and Miss Bianca suspected that Someone of throwing it away.) And now there it lay, after what inconceivable journeyings by gutter, stream and canal, just as though dispatched by the Prisoners’ Aid Society!
Miss Bianca instantly ran down, stepped on board and entered the cabin. What a relief it was to sit on proper cushions again! What a pleasure to see the elegant silver plating, the polished woodwork, the little bunch of artificial violets attached to a bulkhead! Even Nils, following, was impressed, as Miss Bianca welcomed him with the happy smile of the unexpectedly triumphant hostess.
“This is what I call organization,” said Nils. “My word, she’s a neat craft!”
“Custom-built,” murmured Miss Bianca, “for a friend of mine. But do you know how to work it?” she added in some anxiety. “I believe it’s what they call atomic.”
“I was never yet aboard a craft I couldn’t master,” said Nils hardily. — Actually he pulled several wrong levers before he got the hang of things, and nearly swamped Miss Bianca in the process; but at last they were fairly under way.
What happened subsequently will be forever famous in naval annals. With a hundred miles to go, and navigating solely by Miss Bianca’s sketch of a garden-party hat, Nils actually succeeded in reaching the Capital. If a duckpond, when he came to it, was bigger than he expected — actually a lake — Nils drove his vessel on regardless. There were navigable streams indeed, only they happened to be rivers: Nils scorched up them like a motorist entered for the Grand Prix. Now and then he yelled back to Miss Bianca, over his shoulder, such exclamations as “Norway forever!”, also his inevitable references to Harald Fairhair — but ever and always keeping an eye on the chart. (Miss Bianca, who naturally didn’t recognize their course, could only hope for the best — but they were evidently getting somewhere, and far, far more comfortably than she had anticipated.) From time to time she fed Nils with coffee sugar out of one of the lockers. — Coffee sugar! How well she remembered the Boy stocking it, that locker, with his mother’s specially imported coffee sugar! “How could I ever abandon him?” thought Miss Bianca, nibbling a pink bit herself. “Dear Boy, how could I ever think of abandoning you — ingrate that I am? As soon as I have dispatched Nils to the Moot-house, back, back to the Embassy will I run!”
With a final swish and swoop Nils rammed a familiar quay — one shallow marble step nudged by water lilies. The little lagoon in which they rocked was actually the Embassy’s boating water. Almost overcome by relief and thankfulness, Miss Bianca emerged from the cabin and removed her galoshes.
“Correct landfall?” said Nils, switching off the headlights. (They had arrived about midnight, blazing like a rocket.)
“Perfect!” Miss Bianca congratulated him.
“Thanks to the clearest chart I ever steered by,” said Nils. “Where to now?”
Miss Bianca swiftly reminded herself of Bernard’s directions. The tavern in whose cellar the Moot-house was situated backed onto the Embassy stables — no more than a mouse-run away, across shaven lawn; and once inside the stables, there were signposts (as there always are in the vicinity of any historic monument.) Nils could easily find the Moot-house by himself, while she ran straight back to dear familiar surroundings . . .
But for several reasons Miss Bianca rejected this sensible course. One reason, it must be admitted, was that she wanted to get full credit for her heroism and be publicly thanked. If it was conceited, it was also very natural!
“Now we must report at the Moot-house,” said Miss Bianca, “to which I will conduct you myself.”
She left the galoshes behind in the speedboat. She nearly popped them overboard, but remembered in time they belonged to Nils’s mother, who might want them back.
5.
Marching Orders
ONCE again the Moot-house saw a full meeting of the Prisoners’ Aid Society.
For the last week, indeed, members had been gathering there every night, in case the bravest mouse in Norway suddenly turned up. There were also some skeptics among them who believed he never would turn up, and who came simply to bait Madam Chairwoman. (The most mean-minded thing on earth is to rejoice in seeing a high endeavor fail; but it is not, alas, unknown.) The great majority, however, were decent, honest, well-intentioned folk, just eager to be in on any excitement going — and getting a little bored with waiting for it.
It can therefore be imagined what cheers burst forth when Nils and Miss Bianca, escorted by Madam Chairwoman and the Secretary, suddenly appeared on the platform!
“Cheer yourselves hoarse, my dear friends!” cried Madam Chairwoman triumphantly. “You have every reason to! Not only has this heroine —” she bowed towards Miss Bianca — “successfully accomplished her mission — as witness the presence of our gallant Norwegian comrade — but she has even returned herself to be his guide! Hip, hip —”
“Hooray!” cried all the mice. “Three cheers for Miss Bianca! Speech, speech!”
Miss Bianca shook her head modestly. She just advanced towards the edge of the platform and bowed. Even so, the graceful way she did it aroused a fresh burst of enthusiasm.
“As for you, sir,” continued Madam Chairwoman, turning to Nils, “your gallantry and devotion —”
“Think nothi
ng of it, ma’am,” said Nils stolidly.
“— will ever be illumined in the annals of our race! The Jean Fromage Medal —”
“That’s right!” cried the mice from the floor. “The Jean Fromage! Give him the Jean Fromage! Give ’em both the Jean Fromage!”
“I was going to say,” said Madam Chairwoman, “that the Jean Fromage, if this enterprise is brought to a successful conclusion, may well be eclipsed by the ‘Nils and Miss Bianca’! Hip, hip —”
“Hooray!” cried everyone again.
Where in all this joyful pandemonium was Bernard?
He was sitting in his usual humble place at the back. He wasn’t even cheering. He was too much overcome by seeing Miss Bianca again. Moreover, there was a thought he couldn’t keep from darting through his mind: Was it only to guide Nils that she’d returned? Could it be just possible that she had some other motive? As she advanced in all her loveliness to the edge of the platform, hadn’t she appeared, however discreetly, to be looking for someone? Obviously she couldn’t ask point-blank where that someone was — female delicacy forbade; but supposing, just supposing . . .
Bernard found himself tramping up on his big feet towards the platform. He didn’t care what other mice his progress overturned — by now they were all out in the gangways — he just needed to get as close to Miss Bianca as possible.
“Thus you see how earnestly we thank you —” Madam Chairwoman was saying to Nils.
“Miss Bianca!” whispered Bernard.
The Rescuers Page 3