CHAPTER XII

THE _IGNACIA_

"These are thy wonders, Lord of power, Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell And up to heaven in an hour; Making a chiming of a passing bell."

My long separation from my father was at length drawing to a close. He spoke hopefully of his return to England, and even named the vessel in which he intended to take his passage. "Shall I find my girl much altered, I wonder?" he wrote. "Taller, no doubt, and I hope wiser, but in heart just the same as when she left me, and with as tender a corner as ever for her poor old dad." I made so many plans for Father's return. All my best sketches and collections were put by to show to him, and I toiled hard at music, so that he might not be disappointed with my playing. I thought how I would introduce Cathy to him, and how much he would admire her, and how perhaps we could go and stay somewhere near Marshlands in the holidays, so that he could see all the Winstanleys together. I imagined him coming to our Mid-summer breaking-up party, and how proud and happy I should be to have him there. It was an annual occasion to which the parents and friends of the girls were invited, and I had often felt, with a little pang, when I saw the warm greetings between others, that it seemed hard to have no one there to love me specially above everyone else. At last I was to have my own dear one all to myself, and I counted the days till his return, crossing each off on the calendar when I went to bed at night, and thinking that I was one day nearer to our meeting. Now that his arrival seemed so close, I was full of impatience, and felt that the time would scarcely pass, and I wondered sometimes how I had managed to live through those five long years without him.

He was to sail in the _Ignacia_, a Spanish vessel bound for London, and the steamer was cabled to have started on her voyage. Each night I thought of Father tossing on the ocean, and each morning when I awoke, I pictured him a little nearer to me than when I had fallen asleep. I was so excited I could scarcely attend to my lessons, and the teachers, knowing my story, did not press me too hard. And so the weeks passed by, and the great day of my happiness drew near.

I was sitting one afternoon at my drawing class. It was early June, and the windows were wide open, letting in the fragrant scent of the lilac and hawthorn from the garden below, and the imperative song of a chaffinch to his mate in the elm-tree close by. Sometimes, in memory of greater events, little incidents make a great impression upon one's mind. I can recall every line of the Italian boy's head which I was copying, and the sound of the scratch of Janet's pencil, as she laboriously shaded a chalk study. I felt unusually restless and disinclined to apply myself to my work. The air was heavy and still, there was a grumble of thunder in the distance, and the silence of the room broken only by an occasional criticism from the master, as he corrected our drawings, grew almost unbearable. Gathering clouds were already darkening the sky, and threatened a storm, and a vague foreboding of evil seemed to come over my mind, dulling the keen edge of my happiness. Does some subtle instinct, as yet neither known nor understood, warn us when those we hold dear are in peril? Does our love set in motion unseen waves of sympathy, so that the heart feels the message which has not yet been told in words? I think so; for when the door opened and Miss Wilton entered, I knew before she spoke that she had come for me. There was an unwonted pity and kindness in her voice as she quietly ordered me to leave my drawing, and come to Mrs. Marshall. With trembling fingers I put away my pencils and obeyed. She took my hand, and led me silently downstairs. There was a sound of voices in the drawing-room, and Aunt Agatha was there, seated on the sofa. She had been crying, and she rose quickly when I entered. Mrs. Marshall put her arm round my neck and kissed me, but said nothing.

"Philippa dear," said my aunt, with more tenderness than I had ever given her credit for, "can you bear me to tell you some very bad news?"

I could not speak. A great fear rose in my heart, and almost choked me. My speechless lips framed the one question: "Father?"

"He is not come yet. He will be a long time coming. Oh! my poor child, he will _never_ come! The _Ignacia_ has gone down with all hands on board."

I would pass over the first outbreak of my grief, for it is so black a remembrance, such a thickness of utter darkness and despair, that the very memory of it hurts. I begged to be allowed to remain at school. Many kind friends wished me to visit them, but I felt that to plunge myself more than ever into my lessons and the coming examinations was the only way to dull the keen edge of the sorrow that was wounding me so sorely. Mrs. Marshall agreed with me, and by keeping my time most fully occupied did me the truest kindness that in the circumstances she was able to perform. A kind of dull passiveness came over me, which they mistook for resignation. They thought I was beginning to forget, but there are some sorrows which never really die, however deeply we may seek to bury them, and every now and then my grief would awaken with renewed force. The summer term dragged on towards its close. How I dreaded the breaking-up party, with all its festivities! I wished I could go away before it, though I did not like to ask to do so. The examinations were over, and I stood high in my class, but my success gave me no pleasure. What was the use of doing well, I thought bitterly, when my father was not there to rejoice over it! I felt so unutterably solitary and alone in the world, and even Cathy's love and the many thoughtful kindnesses of my friends could not make up to me for that greatest of all losses.

The day of the party at last arrived. How different from anything I had planned! I set out my white dress and black sash with a sigh. Cathy, who was watching me with anxious eyes, tried to talk about home, for I was returning to Marshlands with her for part of the holidays, and Janet, too, did her best to give the conversation a hopeful turn.

"This visitor's arriving early," said Millicent, who was leaning out of my window, looking down the drive, as a cab drew up at the front-door. "It's a gentleman," she announced, standing back a little behind the curtain, so as not to be seen, "I don't know who he is. One of Mrs. Marshall's friends, I suppose. Do you want to peep, Phil?"

I felt no interest in the guests of the evening, however, and I had not even the curiosity to look out. We heard a slight bustle of arrival downstairs, and I did not give the matter another thought. But a short time afterwards Lucy came running into our bedroom with a look of peculiar excitement on her face.

"You're wanted, Philippa, in the drawing-room," she said. Then, putting her hand over her mouth, as though to stop herself from saying more, she darted suddenly away. It was so unusual, and so utterly unlike Lucy's ordinary behaviour, that I was completely puzzled. I went down to the drawing-room with a beating heart. It somehow made me think of that other time when I had been summoned there. Mrs. Marshall was standing near the window with a newspaper in her hand. She looked strangely moved.

"Philippa," she said slowly, "the newspapers are not always correct, after all. We should be very careful before we believe everything they tell us." I looked full into her eyes, to learn the sequel. "Sometimes," she continued, "they give us good news which is never fulfilled, and sometimes they tell us of bad news which has not really occurred. It occasionally happens that when a ship goes down, all do not perish. A few manage to escape in boats, and are picked up by chance steamers, and then they come home again to those who love them. There was a vessel called the _Ignacia_----"

But here my patience broke down, and I gasped out: "Oh, Mrs. Marshall, tell me quick! quick! Is he----?" I did not dare to ask the question outright. My very life seemed to depend upon the reply.

The door of the conservatory suddenly opened, a tall bronzed figure rushed into the room, and the next moment I was clasped close in my father's arms. Mrs. Marshall went out very softly, and left us together.

Father told me his story afterwards. How a terrible storm had driven the _Ignacia_ many hundreds of miles north of her course; how the ship had sprung a leak, and how he and a few others had escaped in one of the boats. What a fearful time they had had tossing for days and days on a rough sea, without food and water; and how, just when they were giving up hope, they had been rescued by a whaling vessel, bound for the north of Greenland, which had been obliged to continue its voyage, and had not touched at any port where he could telegraph until it finally arrived at Glasgow! Then he had come straight to The Hollies, to bring me the good news himself.

Oh, what a breaking-up party it was for me! With what a different heart I put on the white dress (with a pink sash instead of a black one), and stood by Father's side in the reception-room! He kissed Lucy and Mary and my dear Cathy, who was nearly crying for joy, and had a hearty hand-shake for each of my companions.

"I know them all from your letters," he said. "And I should like to thank them for being so good to my little girl. We're very happy and grateful to-night, and not the least part of it is to see so many friends ready to share in our rejoicing."

The visitors soon learned the story, and nearly every one had a kind word for me, even Miss Percy, who had come as a guest, kissed me warmly on the cheek, and wished me joy.

"You won't go back to San Carlos, Father?" I cried, when at last I had him all to myself.

"Never again, my darling. We sha'n't be parted any more. I've resigned the consulate, and sold the plantations, and mean to settle down in Old England now, with you for my little housekeeper in course of time. After all, there's no country like one's own, and whatever attractions one finds abroad, one is always longing for a whiff of one's native air."

As I write these last lines I look out through the mullioned window over the quaint old-world garden to a line of golden sand and a distant streak of silver sea, for my wildest dreams are realized: Father has taken Wyngates, and the deserted house, where Cathy and I wandered on that spring morning, is now my home. The large fireplaces blaze with the most hospitable of log fires; the clipped yew hedges are neatly trimmed; the beds are gay with flowers, and I have planted a border of white lilies round the sun-dial in the ladies' pleasaunce. Philippa Lovell's room is my special sanctum, where I keep my books and my work, and her laughing face smiles down upon me as if she were glad that young life has returned to the old place once more. The Winstanleys are our dearest friends, and very few days pass without a meeting between us. Cathy and I have just left school, and I am settling down in dead earnest to master the mysteries of housekeeping, and to supply to my father that dear place which my mother left empty long ago. We do not want to fritter away our lives in that aimless fashion which girls sometimes do when school-days are over, and we have many plans for our own and the village improvement. Strange to say, Edward, just through college, is here at one with us. He has forgotten his dandy ways, and his drawl, and is the foremost in organizing a Boys' Brigade, or running a reading-room, qualifying, as Dick irreverently puts it, for a "thorough-going out-and-out kind of a parson chap". George is at sea, and, from the accounts of his adventures, the ringleader of a lively crew of harum-scarum middies, whose escapades outrival even the pranks which he and Dick played long ago. His great desire seems to be that a war should break out to give him an opportunity of displaying his courage.

I love Wyngates with my whole heart; no spot on earth seems more beautiful to me, and I would not change its hills and its fresh breezes for all the brightness of southern skies. Our old home and all its associations are not forgotten, however, for Juanita, now married to Pedro, sends us kindly messages from her orange-farm on the sierras, and Tasso, whose devotion to my father led him to follow him over the seas, is with us now, the most faithful of servants and the staunchest of friends.

With those I hold dearest near me, my cup of happiness seems full, and my father says that the little foreign plant which he sent over so long ago to harden in our gray northern clime has taken root, and changed from a tropical blossom into an English rose.

Transcriber's Notes:

Punctuation has been standardised. Hyphenation and spelling has been retained as in the original publication except the following:

Page 48 but the loudest and noisest _changed to_ but the loudest and noisiest

Page 107 familar figure of Britannia _changed to_ familiar figure of Britannia

Page 111 addresed the envelope on _changed to_ addressed the envelope on

Page 143 seeing their little signorita _changed to_ seeing their little signorina

Page 206 Possibly some letters, maybe 'd after soon, have not been included in "visitors soon learned the story"