Part 4

Edward bade his wife wrap up the baby while he found out what had happened, and with only an overcoat over his nightshirt he forced his way on deck. From the darkness on the port side a shape seemed to carve itself to the fleeting likeness of another vessel, but it vanished so quickly that Edward fancied the vision to be a chimera of the night.

"All hands to lower the boats," a voice cried from forward in the murk of the night. Figures in dripping oilskins, like monsters risen from the sea, pushed Edward aside to get at their business; but he managed to make his way back aft to where from the orange mist above the saloon-companion a stream of disheveled passengers belched forth like smoke waving in the blast. As he fought his way down to find Elizabeth and the old man, he heard another shout for'ard.

"The port lifeboat was smashed in the collision."

The saloon was empty when Edward reached it, and he was on the point of turning back to begin a distracted search on deck when Elizabeth came out of her cabin carrying the baby, her hair all about her shoulders, her aspect serene. She looked fragile, ethereal indeed, but amid all that confusion of human terror into which she must shortly be plunged she moved forward with the resolution of an angel. Behind her came the old man wrapped in a plaid shawl above his nightshirt, his face ruddy as ever, but his old legs appearing thin as twigs beneath, so that it seemed as if he must be blown away into the night when he should face the storm.

The crew was lowering the jolly-boat full of passengers when they reached the deck. Notwithstanding the peril, for the ship would not float another ten minutes it was being shouted, two of the sailors were arguing angrily about the rig of the craft that struck the _Wizard Queen_. One declared with an oath that it was a schooner; the other affirmed with equal vigor that it had been a barquantine. A ship's officer hurrying by fell to cursing them for rascals that they should stand there arguing when the starboard lifeboat must be launched.

"Women and children first," the captain thundered.

A fiercer squall drummed overhead, and the emigrants that still remained in the ship huddled together in fear of that dreadful brew of waters upon which they were soon to float away. Somebody urged Elizabeth toward the lifeboat; but she drew back.

"Let somebody go instead of me. I'll wait for my husband," she said.

But it happened that she was the last woman left and that there was still room for Edward and old James, so that presently all three climbed into the lifeboat.

"Lower away!"

The lifeboat rocked for a moment in the davits; and then just as she reached the sea, being full in the weather, she was driven with great force against the ship's side and stove in. She seemed to be brimming over, but nevertheless the crew managed to shove her off, although by this time she was so deep in the water that the wretched passengers sitting on the thwarts were submerged from the waist downwards. It was only the cork in her compartments that kept her barely afloat. There were many faces still looking down from the steamer, and all on board probably went down with her, or if the cutter was launched she must have been swamped immediately, for a minute or two later the _Wizard Queen_ rose forward in the air and sank stern first. Now one by one, as the icy waves broke over them, the women and men in the lifeboat dropped from exhaustion into the sea. Old James Taylor was among the first to go, falling backward without a cry, without a word of reproach, as silently as one of his own red apples might fall at home in the first October gale.

"Did the Captain say where we was?" asked the man at the tiller.

"Abreast of Beachy Head," one shouted in reply, and as he spoke a wave swept him and a woman and a child into the darkness.

"O God! he's dead. He's lying dead in my arms!" cried a miserable father who was holding in his arms a little boy of five or six.

"Drop the body overboard," the man at the tiller shouted. "Every pound tells. Lighten the boat," he roared angrily. "Lighten the boat!"

The wretched father, clasping his dead child more closely, turned away in indignation at the brutal order; but as he turned a wave swept him and the body overboard, and the boat was lightened a little more.

All this time Elizabeth said nothing; but she clung to her place with one hand and with the other held the baby to her breast beneath her cloak. All this time Edward said nothing; but he had somehow managed to wedge his legs round a support, so that whenever Elizabeth trembled in her seat he could put out two arms to save her from peril. Two women died of exhaustion from the wash of the sea and the freezing wind, and their bodies were at once flung overboard. On the other side of Elizabeth, Mrs. Fawcus, who alone of the women appeared to be completely dressed, was trying to get off her cloak to throw it round the mother, and simultaneously making an effort to listen to the plans of Mr. Fawcus for the future, should the lifeboat ever reach a harbor.

"I have given up my plan of educating the aborigines of Australia," he bellowed above the gale, making a megaphone with his hands.

"Yes, dear, I'm sure I agree with you. Drat this hook! It's so bent I can't get it out of the eye. And don't put up your hands and shout at me, Mr. Fawcus. You'll be swept over if you do."

"What has occurred once," Mr. Fawcus bellowed, "may easily occur again. I shall inquire for a suitable post in London. I always did execrate the sea, as you know, my dear."

Mrs. Fawcus nodded.

"And I was right," he shouted. "I usually am." But his wife could not applaud his wisdom, for at that moment Elizabeth, reeling, cried:

"Take my baby. Edward! My darling, my darling, I ought not to have married you. It's all my fault."

As Mrs. Fawcus took the baby, Elizabeth fell, and Edward, throwing himself backward in a last effort to save his wife, fell with her into the sea.

At dawn a small steamer sighted the wreck of the lifeboat and launched a boat to rescue the four who had survived that night. One was the man at the tiller; the other three were Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus with Mary Flower.

_Chapter Two_

THE GIRL

_Chapter Two: The Girl_

Mary Flower passed the first ten years of her life in the basement of a publisher's office in Paternoster Row, where every floor as high as the roof was loaded with the stock of years, so that the earliest defined fear of her childhood was lest the old house should collapse one night and bury herself and her uncle and aunt beneath a mountain of books. This was the result of reading the story of an earthquake in Jamaica; and the habit thus engendered of brooding upon seismic catastrophes led Mary soon afterward to prefigure the vaster ruin of St. Paul's Cathedral, the bulk of which obscured so much of the sky from her childish vision.

"You've no right to fill her head with such notions, Uncle William," said Mrs. Fawcus sharply. "Why, there was no more than a tiny little crack in the ceiling over her bed, and I'm sure the child regular worried the life out of me about that blessed crack."

"That's where you're wrong, Aunt Lucy," replied Mr. Fawcus. "When a child's interest is aroused in any natural phenomenon it is the duty of the parent or of the guardian who stands _in loco parentis_ to cultivate that interest by every means in his power. It is one of the rudimentary principles of education. Fate directed her to the narrative of an earthquake in the West Indies, rousing in her breast an ambition to know more about terrestrial convulsions, to learn about such facts as their comparative frequency and their geographical distribution. What has our little Mary learned? She has learned that nothing more than slight shocks may be expected in the heart of London and that ..."

"Oh, how you do carry on, Uncle William! The poor child's learned nothing of the kind. She goes to bed shaking in her shoes every night."

However, Mary soon forgot all about earthquakes, because a dancing bear broke loose in St. Paul's Churchyard and created such a panic that for several weeks she saw bears at the back of every cupboard, and Mrs. Fawcus had to hide her favorite copy of _Red Riding Hood_ on account of the tremors set up by the vivid illustrations. It must not be supposed that she was a very nervous child or that her existence was unusually spoilt by the incidental alarms of childhood. On the contrary, the world beheld in the basement of that tall Georgian warehouse was a placid and cozy world, her place in which she owed to the couple whom she knew as Uncle William and Aunt Lucy.

When Mr. Fawcus walked down the gangway of the steamer that rescued him from the wreck of that lifeboat and felt the terra-firma, as he called it, of Dover Quay beneath his feet, he knelt down just outside the Lord Warden Hotel and vowed that he would never attempt to leave his native land again.

"I've been teaching all my life," he told Mrs. Fawcus. "But I can still learn a lesson myself."

The problem of the future was a difficult one, and it was not simplified by the responsibility of the baby.

"Though, mark you," said Mr. Fawcus gravely, "I consider that the education of one English girl is of more importance than the education of a thousand Australian aborigines. Unfortunately I have come to the end of my capital, and in order to educate her it will be necessary for me to find some kind of moderately remunerative employment."

"I'm glad to hear you speak so sensible, Mr. Fawcus," said his wife.

"Bly, my dear, bly. Sensi-bly. Don't let a shipwreck destroy in one moment what I have spent years in teaching you: the distinction between an adjective and an adverb."

During their short intercourse with the Flowers Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus, or to be accurate Mrs. Fawcus, had elicited an account of the circumstances which had led up to their emigrating; when it began to look as if Mr. Fawcus was never going to find a suitable job, his wife argued that they ought to communicate with the baby's grandfather.

"If we were going to say anything at all," Mr. Fawcus objected, "we ought to have written the moment we found ourselves safe on shore. Having left it so long, we may appear to the eyes of Sir Richard Flower like kidnappers. She is such a good baby that I hate to give her up, and besides I did want to try my hand at an education completely independent of those obstinate and conservative creatures which we know generically as 'parents.'"

Nevertheless, Mr. Fawcus, in dread of the uncertain future, was at last driven by his wife's entreaties into communication with the grandfather of the baby whose guardianship he had assumed in the presence of death.

101 Floral Street, Near Covent Garden, _March 3rd, 1860_.

_Honored Sir_,

_You have no doubt read with a father's grief, in which I beg leave most respectfully to share, the melancholy news of the loss of the emigrant ship, Wizard Queen, by collision off Beachy Head at 3 a.m. on the morning of the 18th ult., and by this time you have no doubt abandoned all hope of hearing that your son, Mr. Edward Flower, was saved. I do not write to raise false hopes in your breast. Alas! I had the melancholy satisfaction of seeing him in the lifeboat to which we both clung (rather than in which we both sat) swept overboard in a vain attempt to save his wife from a similar fate. It may, however, be some mitigation of your sorrow to learn that he left behind him in the care of myself and wife a baby girl, who is at present sharing our humble room at the above address. We should deeply feel parting with the engaging infant; but we respectfully recognize the superior claims of her grandparents. I have the honor to await your instructions with regard to her disposal. Will you send a suitable nurse to convey the infant to your Seat? Or shall my good wife take upon herself the responsibility of personally delivering the infant at Barton Hall?_

_I must apologize for the delay in notifying you of your granddaughter's fortunate survival; but I have recently been much occupied in trying to recover for myself the small niche in England which I so rashly abandoned in my ambition to put the glories of education within reach of the aborigines of Australia. In expectation of shortly hearing from you, I have the honor, Sir, to subscribe myself_

_Your most obedient humble servant, William Axworthy Fawcus._

_P. S.--I should add that I was formerly a schoolmaster, having been the proud possessor of several private schools in turn. Now for various reasons I find myself unable to devote myself any longer to the education of the young idea, and I have this morning entered into a contract with Messrs. Holland and Brown, the publishers of Paternoster Row, to invigilate their stock._

_W.A. F._

To this the baronet replied as follows:

Barton Hall, Barton Flowers, Hants, _March 8, '60_.

_Sir_,

_I have no interest in my son's daughter. At the same time, I am not anxious to be under an obligation to strangers for her maintenance. If you insist on giving up your care of the baby, I must find some other worthy couple to look after her. If, on the other hand, you are willing to accept that responsibility and will let me hear that you are prepared to do so, I will instruct my lawyers, Messrs. Hepper and Philcox, to remit you the sum of £100 a year in quarterly instalments payable in advance until she reaches the age of ten years, when I shall communicate fresh proposals._

_Yours truly, Richard Flower._

Thus it befell that Mary continued to live with Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus, calling them Uncle William and Aunt Lucy, and indirectly being the cause of Mrs. Fawcus's getting nearer to an intimate mode of addressing her husband than she had ever reached before. The contract into which Mr. Fawcus had entered with Messrs. Holland and Brown might have been less grandly described as an engagement to be caretaker of their premises, for which he was paid the sum of eighteen shillings a week and allotted the basement of kitchen, scullery, two rooms, a cellar, and a backyard.

"The task is in some respects a menial task," he told his wife. "But it is redeemed by the fact that I am a warden of books. Had I been invited to guard bales of dry goods, I should have declined the offer. I am ready in the cause of literature and learning to sacrifice what remains to me of scholastic dignity by exposing myself in the _toga virilis_ of service, in other words, a green baize apron, punctually at 6.30 a.m. to the public eye, and if the public eye chooses to regard my daily renovation of the brass, my _quotidian lustration_ of the steps, as menial, I merely say with what's his _nomen_ '_per aspera ad astra_.'"

"Well, all I beg is, Mr. Fawcus"--he had not become Uncle William yet--"all I beg is," said his wife, "you won't go preaching about St. Paul's Churchyard of a Sunday morning."

"In, my love, not about. On, my dear, not of. Your allusion was to the locality and date, not the subject of my discourse."

"Don't be so pernickety, Mr. Fawcus. You know quite well what I meant to say."

"The Queen's English, my dear, should share with the Queen's Person the privilege of inviolability. But set your mind at rest. Preserve the _mens sana in corpore sano_. Now that we have been intrusted with the nonage of that cherub," he pointed to Mary asleep in her cot, "I do not intend to jeopardize the material comforts of this basement. _Tu Marcellus eris!_ In other words, I intend to devote all my persuasive energy to Mary."

Mr. Fawcus kept his word. To be sure, he might say to his wife:

"Holland and Brown are going too far. They are impinging upon my pride. I felt very much inclined last night to utter a stern _noli me tangere_. But I thought of Mary, and I refrained. Yes, I thought of our Mary and I agreed to give the disposal of the day's waste-paper, the _disjecta membra_ of their correspondence, my personal supervision."

Mr. Fawcus might complain of the advantage his employers took of his reduced circumstances; but he never did fail to remember what was owed to Mary. She was indeed the pivot of that basement in Paternoster Row, a little household goddess to whom the two old people accorded divine honors and through whom, brought close together by their common worship, they grew closer and closer to each other as the years went by. She was not a spoilt child, or at least she was not spoilt by anything except such humble treats and toys as her guardians could afford. Mrs. Fawcus was not a woman to give way out of laziness or weakness or fond affection to the exactions of childhood. She treated Mary in the same fashion as she had always treated her husband, that is to say, she loved and admired her as a superior being to herself, but she never allowed her to suppose that her behavior could not be criticized and corrected.

Mary herself at ten years old was a beautiful child, so beautiful that the degraded clothes of the period were incapable of concealing her beauty. From her mother she had inherited that auburn hair with all its texture of silk and all its abundance, but instead of brown eyes hers were deep blue, pellucid and round as speedwells. Sir Richard had such eyes once; and the painter who came to Barton Hall in the summer of 1810, without being afraid of the comparison, had painted him with a posy of cornflowers, his eyes following the flight of blue butterflies. Old James Taylor had such eyes to the end; but he was never painted in tight pantaloons and a frilled collar. If a little girl has auburn hair, and big deep blue eyes, and a complexion like a malmaison, she has no need to bother about her features. Actually Mary showed promise of fine features emerging one day from her dimples, and her hands were as fine and delicate as her grandmother's.

From being without the companionship of other children, Mary had acquired what were called old-fashioned ways, which meant that she would always join in the conversation of her uncle and aunt, pay much attention to the deportment of her dolls, and spend a great deal of time reading fairy tales by the kitchen fire. The basement of a city warehouse may seem a dreary place for a little girl to spend most of her time; but Mary found it as full of romance as one of her own picture books, and apart from such fleeting alarms as the threat of earthquakes or the dread of sudden and violent robbery, echoes of which occasionally reached her when Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus discussed events that near bedtime little girls ought not to overhear, Mary found her home safe and cosy. The small yard at the back was not so much overshadowed by the tall houses round as to keep the sun from shining down upon it in summer; here Mary had several green boxes in which she grew pansies and creeping jenny, mignonette and red and white double daisies. Here too in a wicker cage outside the kitchen door lived Mary's thrush, who sang his country song while Mary sat gazing up at the golden cross on the dome of St. Paul's and wondering if the thrush would like to be sitting there and if it would be kinder to set him free. It was a very small yard; yet it seemed illimitable to Mary, and every brick in the wall was to her as large and interesting as a field.

But if the yard seemed vast, how much vaster appeared the upper portions of the house! Sometimes when work was over Mr. Fawcus would let Mary accompany him on his tour of inspection round the deserted premises. She was allowed to climb up ladders and read the names of books stacked away on the highest shelves, dusty books with titles that sounded most uninteresting, although the recitation of them evidently gave great pleasure to Uncle William. And then one day in an attic she discovered hundreds of picture books, nearly all fairy stories. When she announced her discovery, Uncle William shook his head and muttered, "Old stock! Old stock!"

"But, Uncle William, they're not old. They're quite new. Really they are--quite bright and not a bit torn. I found _The Three Bears_ and a story about a mother pig who frightened away a wolf when he came to gobble up her little pigs. And how do you think she did it? You'll never guess, Uncle William. Why, she rolled down the hill in a churn. What is a churn, Uncle William?"

This was exactly the kind of question dear to the heart of Mr. Fawcus, and before Mary went to bed that night she had been given an exhaustive discourse on dairy-farming, so that if she had listened as attentively as her aunt kept bidding her listen, she would have learned the difference between curds and whey, and all about rennet, and all about Stilton cheeses and Devonshire cream, and why butter won't come sometimes ... but alas! Mary did not listen, because her mind was far away upstairs in that attic.

It happened that the very next day she was sent on a message to one of the offices and that the gentleman to whom she gave the message, a dried-up gentleman with bright shining spectacles, asked her if she would like a penny to buy some lollipops.

"No, thank you, sir," said Mary, curtseying. "I'd like to go upstairs and look at those picture books at the top of the house."

Whereupon the dried-up gentleman mysteriously muttered, "Old stock! Old stock!" just like Uncle William yesterday.

"Why, you may go there whenever you like, my little maid," he told her.

"Fancy that!" exclaimed Mrs. Fawcus when she was informed of this by Mary. "Well, did you ever? I'm sure I never did. I never did know such an old-fashioned child in my life, Uncle William. Never! Fancy her asking such a thing of Mr. Bristowe."

"It's old stock," said Mr. Fawcus.

And Mary when she had been given leave by her uncle and aunt to avail herself of Mr. Bristowe's kind offer whispered "old stock" when she opened the door of that dusty attic, for she felt that it was an enchanted phrase like Open Sesame. The attic window looked down into the backyard of the basement, and Mary could not resist opening the window, for although she felt sure that she ought not to lean out of a window, inasmuch as she lived in a basement she had never actually been forbidden to lean out of windows. Yes, there were her flowers, such tiny specks of color, down below, and there was the dustbin looking more than ever like a knight in armor, and there was her thrush's cage. Hark! he was singing. She could hear his song above the thunder of the London streets. The attic window had a window-seat where Mary spent long lovely mornings in April reading those dusty picture books one after another, face to face with the clouds while the golden cross upon the dome of St. Paul's glittered in the sun. On the sill were the remains of a battered window-box still half full of earth. In this Mary sowed nasturtium seeds which grew miraculously, so that soon when Mary was in the yard she could look up and see the orange and yellow flowers waving in the wind against the dingy bricks of the warehouse.

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel," she called. "Let down your golden hair."

"What are you talking about?" Mrs. Fawcus exclaimed.

"I'm being the witch," Mary told her.

"Which what?"

"The witch. The witch who climbed up to the tower by Rapunzel's golden hair."

"Did anybody ever hear anything like it?"

And when Mrs. Fawcus came out into the yard at Mary's invitation and looking up saw the nasturtiums, she was more exclamatory than ever.

"Well, it give me quite a turn," she vowed to Uncle William. "The like of that child was never known."

Nearly all the clerks in the office came up to look at Mary's nasturtiums; and Mr. Bristowe was so much delighted that he gave her a small red watering-can.

"It's a wonder the sparrows don't peck them to pieces," said Mr. Fawcus, when Mary's triumph was being discussed in the basement.

"If they did, they'd burn their tongues," said Mary.