Fortune's My Foe. John Bloundelle-Burton
While, even as she spoke of her children, that other child, the newly-born babe present in the cabin, set up a piteous infantine wail. Little, unconscious creature as it was, bearing a brain but an hour old, it seemed to recognise, to have some glimmering of the terrors that enveloped it. And while it did so the ship listed to starboard, causing Mrs. Thorne's body to move somewhat, and, at the same moment, the white, delicate hands seemed to strain the infant closer to her; the liquor can, too, was upset, whereby the drink went slopping over the cabin carpet. But the other two matrons were not to be stopped, even at that moment, from doing their duty. Mrs. Tickle sprang up and held the ailing woman tightly in her berth, as she muttered--
"The ship has listed four degrees. Yet she goes no further. They have stopped the water from pouring in. Go, Pottle, and find the surgeon. He must come here, even though he quits the wounded for an instant."
Whereon Mrs. Pottle went forth, a heroine still, though a white, pale-faced one. A heroine, not thinking of her own life--now in deadly peril!--but only of the little children at home in Portsmouth town. Above all, she thought of the half-blind one who could never do aught for itself when it grew up. She thought of it, and wondered who would protect it when she and her husband were gone.
"My husband, my husband!" wailed Mrs. Thorne, as she and the other woman were left alone. "My husband! Will he not come to me? To me. To his wife and new-born babe. Oh! my husband. Why comes he not?"
"Dear heart," exclaimed Mrs. Tickle, "he cannot come. His duty is on deck. Duty before all." Then she bent her head a little nearer to the other's, and said, "We are sailors' wives. Our duty first. Duty before all," she repeated.
As she did so the cabin door was slid back, and Mrs. Pottle returned, bringing with her the surgeon's mate from the sick bay--a young, callow Irishman, who was now making his first cruise. The surgeon, an old man, who had an army of children of his own at home in Rotherhithe, had attended Mrs. Thorne through her trouble, but now he was busy with those who were wounded and in the cock-pit. He could not come.
The mate was very pale--too pale, thought Mrs. Tickle, for a sailor-doctor to be, even though he were smelling powder for the first time. Then, to that good lady's astonishment, as she cast her eyes on her nursing comrade, she saw that she too was very pale--was white--ghastly. And in a moment she imagined, guessed, that the ship's corporal was dead! By that freemasonry, by some telegraphic method of the eyes, which women alone know how to use, she signalled to the other to ask if such were the case, yet only to discover that she had not divined aright. Mrs. Pottle shook her head; then, seeing that the eyes of the captain's wife were wide open, she stepped behind the surgeon's mate, and from the screen of his broad back put her finger to her lip. Thereby not knowing what else she meant, Mrs. Tickle understood at least that silence was to be observed.
"My husband," moaned Mrs. Thorne again now, gazing up into the dark eyes of the handsome young fellow who looked so white, "my husband--I want him."
"Nay, madam," he said, even as he felt her pulse and arranged her more comfortably in the berth, "nay, not yet; the bombardment is not over." While, turning his head round, he whispered to Mrs. Pottle behind him, "You have left the cabin door open; shut it."
It was well she obeyed him at once. Well that, amidst fresh discharges of the twenty-four pounders, another crash on deck and a noise which was the fall of the foremast, added to the piercing cries of the child, Mrs. Thorne could not hear nor see beyond that door. Well that it was shut immediately on the order of the surgeon's mate.
For now six sailors were carrying down the after-ladder a helpless, limp body at that moment--one that was to be laid in the very next cabin to that which Mrs. Thorne was occupying. The body of Henry Thorne, with a bullet in it that had pierced the heart.
And behind them came the chaplain, shaking his head sadly, yet muttering somewhat thankfully, too--
"But he made that will. He made that will. And the child is safe. Although it seems, no will was needed, yet it is as well that he should have made it."
* * * * * * *
For many years after her father's death Ariadne's home was with her mother at Gosport, and here she grew from childhood to womanhood, and became a sweet, pure girl, whom to see was at once to admire. A girl so fair and pretty, that, whenever she walked abroad, the eyes of men were turned towards her approvingly; a girl, tall, and with a figure that full womanhood would develop into one of extreme grace and beauty; one who possessed also such charms as deep hazel eyes, which looked out at you from between thick eyelashes that were many shades darker than the fair hair crowning her head as though with a golden diadem; a pretty girl whose masses of curls reminded one of the cornfields in July.
For years she lived with her mother here in Gosport, having done so from the time when Vernon sent them both home to England in the first ship of war that went back after Mrs. Thorne was able to travel. And of all the neighbourhood around she was the pet; she was, too, the darling of old sea captains who had had arms and legs lopped off in many a fierce fight against those whom we called our old "hereditary foes"; the darling of every old blue who had drawn cutlass for His Majesty King George II., or King George I., or even, amongst the very old and decrepit, for Great Anne; the beloved of those sea-dogs who had first spat their quids out on the enemy's decks and had then hewn that enemy down before them. For these old salts, no matter what their rank was, regarded her as their own child and property. Had she not been born amidst the roar and smoke of England's cannon as they vomited forth fire and fury? Was she not a sailor's child, and he one who had fallen as a sailor should fall, dying on his own deck, while doing his duty? That was enough to make them love the little thing who grew beneath their eyes towards beauteous womanhood; enough to make old lieutenants who had served sufficiently long to be admirals, and admirals--fortunate dogs!--who had not seen half the service of those old lieutenants, worship her; to make them wander up to her mother's house and smoke their pipes there, and talk to her about the father who had died the glorious death. It was sufficient, too, to set old tars carving out ornaments and knick-knacks from ancient ships of war which had been towed as prisoners into the harbour and there broken up, all of which they presented to her with grins of pleasure, and almost with blushes--if such could be!--upon their wind-tanned, scarred faces. It was amply sufficient also to cause others to bring her in baskets of strawberries and raspberries from their little gardens on the outskirts of the town, and bouquets of the sweet old-time flowers that grew in such profusion in those gardens. And some there were--and many--who called her the "Sailor's Pet," and others who named her the "Mariner's Joy."
Yet 'twas not only the old who loved Ariadne Thorne. Be very sure of that. For you cannot but suppose that the young men loved her too--those lieutenants and second lieutenants who, although still beardless, had fought in many of the numerous sea-fights of the period. Young fellows with boyish faces who had, all the same, been with Hawke at the Isle of Aix, and Howe at St. Malo, or had assisted in the destruction of the Oriflamme by the Monarque and the Monmouth. They all loved her, and she loved one, and one alone. Happy, happy man!
Two years before this narrative begins, however, and when Ariadne was sixteen, there fell upon her a great blow, that of her mother's death--a blow which, when it strikes a young girl in her swift blossoming from maidenhood to womanhood, is doubly cruel. Mrs. Thorne died of an internal disorder with which she had been for some time afflicted, and the girl was left alone, or almost alone, in the world. She had a relative, it was true, an uncle of her late father's, one General Thorne; but he was a very old man--so old, indeed, that he could talk of Eugene's campaign against the Turks, and speak of that great soldier as one whom he had seen in boyhood; while he was also able to boast that he had formed one of the guard of honour which had accompanied the present King, George II., now grown old, to his coronation. He dwelt at, and owned, an estate spoken of generally as "Fawnshawe Manor," which lay five miles or so on the London side of Portsmouth; one that would at his death come, with a very considerable fortune, to Ariadne herself. A fortune and an estate which would have come to her eventually through her father had he not been slain at Cartagena, even without his making that will which his chaplain, the Reverend Mr. Glew, had so impressed on him to do, although it was unnecessary; that must have come to her, since no heir male