CHAPTER IV

Early on the Saturday morning when her father was expected to return, Theresa awoke and, quickly flinging off the bedclothes, sat up with a jerk. The busy fingers of the wind were tapping at the pane, calling her to come out and play, and from the bottom of the hill there rose a more imperative summons, the hooting of a steamer making her way out of the docks. It was high tide, and she smiled her pleasure, hugging her knees. Every day that sound was borne up to her on the hill, like a trumpet call to life. From the window of the bedroom which she shared with Grace she could see the ships, and she believed that cry of theirs was to give her greeting or farewell. The steamers spoke for themselves, but the sailing ships borrowed the voices of the tugs that took them down the river and even in the quiet and mystery of night they did not forget her. Lying awake, she would wave her hand to them, and as she stared at the square of dark sky framed in the window, she would fancy she looked upward from the deck of some sea-going ship, saw the sky streaked and crossed by the masts and yards above, or mistily, behind a waving flag of smoke. But that voice of the ships was more than the salute of friends; there were times when she heard it as a call, a command, or a sweet persuasion. It called her into the darkness of the night and the crash of storm, and then, for all she lay snug and safe in bed, she felt the wind buffeting her, tasted the salt on her lips; or, if the night were very still and warm, she thought she sailed under a sky of immeasurable blackness, pricked with stars. She heard the ship swishing through the water, black, too, as though mirroring the sky, heard the creaking sounds among the cordage and the spars, and the orders coming clear and loud into the darkness.

What a morning for going out to sea, with the wind fresh, the air smelling of all clean things, the sunlight gilding the world! Her eyes danced as she watched the clouds sailing past her window, driven by the lusty breeze; these were the boats of the sky--great galleons, little yachts, riding majestically or bobbing gaily across the blue.

She turned her head sharply to look at the sleeper by her side. "Grace!" she said, and shook her. "Grace! Wake up, you lazy thing! It's a fine day."

For answer, Grace's head was rolled from side to side, and her nose buried more deeply in the pillow.

"You're fat!" said Theresa, pricking a soft cheek with her forefinger; "fat, fat, fat!"

She flung herself on her back and looked at the ceiling. Across its rather dirty surface many cracks had spread themselves, and these furnished Theresa with the scene for an epic in which the adventures of a courageous family were described. The cracks represented roads, rushing rivers, and precipitous mountains, according to their shape and size, and all the weary way from the crack that began near the window to the safety of the damp stain by the door, that family had to travel. Each morning she led them a few miles across the waste and there was never a mile without excitement. There were storms at night when tents were blown down on their unhappy heads, and must be put up again with no light for guidance but the reason of a child of ten who alone remained unafraid; there were combined attacks on their camp by wolves and tigers, who seemed quite impervious to climate, when fires were lighted and each member of the party sat with a rifle across her knees; there were dust storms in the desert, and, not less swift and overwhelming, onslaughts by brigands clothed as Arabs and riding horses winged like Pegasus. Precipices must be scaled and swollen rivers crossed, but no life or battle was ever lost by this gallant company. They would reach their destination with little scathe, but so great was Theresa's interest that she could always preserve the necessary illusion and grow hot and cold with fear for them.

This morning she found she could not lose herself in these perils, for the boats were calling her too persistently; moreover, she must husband these adventures if they were to last until the dark mornings came, when the cracks would be invisible and she must rise by candlelight, so she gave Grace a parting thump and sprang out of bed.

As she stood at the window, she felt the delicious cold of the bare boards to her feet and the wind fluttering the frills of her nightgown. Holding her hands to her throat, she looked out on the untidy sloping garden with the old apple-tree at its foot. So close to the garden that, in the autumn, apples were found in its grass, the disused cemetery continued the descent, studded with grey, mossy stones and spreading willows--a place of ghosts--and, as if drawn thither by its eerie neighbourhood, a monumental stone-mason had his yard on the other side of the road at Theresa's right hand, a road running steeply to the busy street that edged the river and the docks. But if Theresa looked from her window, letting her eyes take flight over the river and the shipping and the level fields that lay on the further side, she saw a great stretch of meadow land which sought the clouds. It spread from left to right, for the whole width of her vision, and at night it seemed to stand up like a wall. The land behind that rampart seemed very far away, but not beyond her reach, and she meant to get there--not this morning, for the boats were calling to her, but on some day when spring flowers were appearing in the hedges.

She lowered her eyes to the shining intricacies of the waterways, the wide dock basins, the locks, the river and its arms, all spanned by bridges. She saw the masts of sailing ships rising from the midst of houses, like slender chimneys for these roofs of many colours and varying heights. There was dirty smoke issuing from tugs to throw a mourning veil over the water, there were shouts and whistlings and hootings, low-voiced warnings from the steamers, shrill shrieks of joy. "We're going! Look out!" they grunted, and then, on a cry, "We're free! We're free!" She could stay indoors no longer, and she pulled on her clothes.

When she reached the docks a sailing ship was in the river, following a little tug with a reproving grace, under which she hid her limitations from herself. There were men looking over her side and waving farewell with such attractive foreign gestures that Theresa stood close to the water's edge and gazed, with her hands tightly clasped behind her. The wind acted like a great fan on her hair, stirring it at its roots and flinging its long red fingers all about her head, thrumming, too, on her short skirts, lifting them with a twist, and whipping her tight-stockinged legs. She blinked the hair from her eyes or tossed it back with a movement of the head, and sometimes she held down her dress with strangely modest little hands, but she did all impatiently, worried by the necessity of remembering such things among the sights of these ocean-going ships, foreigners, and authoritative dockmen issuing orders.

The swing-bridge had swung back to allow some workmen to cross the water, and another yoked pair waited until it should open again to let them out. At a whistled signal the way was cleared, the tug snorted forward and passed close under Theresa's eyes. In one deep draught of sight she saw it all--the flat broad deck, the dirty men who had so little likeness to her idea of sailors, the friendly grin one man sent up to her, the marvellous rope of steel binding the little steamer to the towering ship which was too wonderful and bewildering in form to be remembered rightly after her quick passage. But Theresa looked greedily, and for days there stayed in her memory the vision of the long grey ship, her great masts growing upwards, swaying a little, too, the multitude of ropes and other things of which she did not know the names, of which it was astonishing that anyone could remember the names, and the whole thing following so meekly, with such submission, in the wake of the grimy tug. It went to Theresa's heart that anything so lovely should be dependent, and with sad eyes she watched the passage of that procession. She peered up at the ship as it passed; the last detaining rope was flung from it and fell heavily into the water, to be drawn up, dripping, by a jerseyed dockman, who looked at Theresa quizzically.

"Like to go to sea?" he asked genially. "'Ave to be a little boy 'fore you can do that," he added cheerfully, pulling at the rope and walking away as the wet end of it came over the side. "Don't 'ee slip into the water, little miss."

She tightened her mouth when he had gone, for she was shy of strangers, and this one had hurt her with the truth. She felt that the man had read her thoughts, her brave desires to sail the sea, and she could have wept that he should know her secrets. She had been so happy looking at the boats, picturing them cargoed with cutlasses, monkeys, tarry ropes, and strange stuffs of foreign make and brilliance, all the garner of her reading and her quick eyes, fancying herself free to sail away if she would, and forgetting she was a girl. She so easily forgot her disabilities. Never mind! She made queer little gestures with her hands, and steadied her lips. She had not really wanted to be a sailor; she was, indeed, in some confusion as to a profession. At one time the career of a circus lady laid siege to her mind, and assaulted it with such fierceness and effect that only the thought of her parents' sorrow held her back from imploring them to let her go and learn to jump through hoops from the back of a cream-coloured steed, to stand on tiptoe on its moving haunches, and kiss pretty fingers to a cheering crowd. There was a life! How the ring-master cracked his whip, and the horse sprang forward, and the lady stood on those little feet and never slipped! Theresa liked the clothes that lady wore: sometimes a costume of scanty pink, neck and arms bare and beautiful, and little flat shoes secured with cross-gartering to the slim legs, or, in the more stately parts of the performance, a rich riding-habit of green velvet and a hat with a sweeping plume; gauntlets, too, and shining boots with yellow tops. There was something very dashing about that profession, but what of nursing? How would it feel to be a Florence Nightingale, with a grave sweet face, and men turning in their cots to bless one's shadow? But no, she could not fit herself into the part.

But while she turned continually from one tempting vision to another, her father had already found a future for her, and one which would fill up the gaps in his own existence, and atone for his own failures.

"I would rather be Keats," he had told her one day as they walked together in the country, "than all the conquerors in the world."

"Would you?" she said, and held his hand fast. She liked conquerors. "What's Keats?"

He had told her the poet's tale, and that evening he had found her with the book open on her knee.

"I like it," she said, and sat silent, moving her lips. She had no wish to understand it; the sound and the mystery were enough for her, and that discovery set him dreaming. Cunningly, he dropped little fragments of knowledge that tempted her to stoop and pick them up, fit them together like a puzzle, and search for more. As if by accident the names of women of the craft slipped from his lips and, when she would know more about them, he showed her where their books stood on his shelves. She was born to a natural love of books--the feel and smell and sight of them--and the thought that men and women made them so that for centuries they should outlive their own poor human bodies was full of poetry for her. It came to her this morning like a balm, healing the wound made by that genial sailor. He did not know what she was going to be some day, in a future so remote, though shining, that effort to reach it was at present gloriously needless. She would get there; she was already soaring to the heights. She lifted her head, her hair flew free, her hands fluttered like fallen leaves before a wind, and as they are driven, so, elfishly and gaily, she danced along, restored to her belief in herself; so skilfully could Theresa in these days fit herself into the pictures she loved best. Now she was hardly concerned with the details of the life she had chosen; she knew she was to be a person; the rest was no more than the garments which were to clothe her, and fill the sailor and his kind with awe.

Wind-blown, happy, hungry, she mounted homewards, climbed the garden wall, and entered the house, as she had left it, by the garden door.