Gardens of the Caribbees. Ida May Hill Starr
Table of Contents
I.
“THANK you, Rudolph, I believe I will take some lemonade and one or two of the sweet biscuit; that will do;” and I settled back in my ship chair, feeling as serene and happy as a woman in a white linen frock can feel. Every one must have gone down into every one’s trunk this morning; was there ever such a change? Why, the count and his brother are fairly blinding to the eyes, in their smart white flannels. They actually look a bit interesting. Here they come now; the count has evidently had his lemonade, I see he is still nibbling a biscuit.
This is the first time I have realised where we are going. This arraying of one’s self in cool things and white things makes one really believe that, after all, the voyage is not a delusion.
“Rudolph, you’re a dear,” this to myself, but aloud, as the faithful steward comes with my lemonade, I thank him and take the glass while he goes on in search of the youngsters. What a comfort that old soul has been to us! He began by being willing to speak German, and certainly that was an indication of a great deal of character. I think he was the first German I had ever met, who, knowing enough English to carry on an ordinary conversation, would, at times, express himself in his native tongue. That was good of Rudolph; of course we had to tell him not to speak English at first, but he never forgot. And such care as he gave us those horrible days, when we didn’t drink lemonade or sit on the deck; when the ship wouldn’t go anywhere but up and down; when it fairly ached to turn itself inside out, I know it did. It was then that Rudolph was neither man nor woman, but the incarnation of goodness and patience. Dear old Rudolph!
Let me see—how many meals is this so far? Breakfast at eight o’clock makes one; bouillon and wafers at half-past ten, two; lunch at twelve-thirty makes three, and here I am hungry as ever, simply revelling in number four. I wish I had another biscuit. This is delicious! I mean the sky and the sea and the ship and all the people dressed so airily and looking so unconscious of what has gone before. If no one else will testify, Rudolph certainly can, that much has gone before. But this sea, this straightaway plowing into Southern waters is beginning to make me forget, and for fear that I may do so I must tell you how it happens that I am feeling so blissfully relieved at this moment. Of course I am not perfectly at ease, for I don’t think a woman in a white linen frock can be until it has passed the stage where she has to be thinking of spots.
Six days ago I was not sitting here in a white frock. I was bundled in furs, and even then cringed and shivered with the cold. Ough! it was raw and bleak that sad day of our sailing. The January wind, chilling us to the marrow, swept in from the desolate ocean like the cruel thrusts of so many icy knives. Even the prospect of a voyage to the Islands of the Blest left us indifferent and shivering and blue. I vaguely thought that when we were once on shipboard we could get warm, but the doors were all open and the passages so blocked with visitors that even had it occurred to any one to shut the doors I don’t think it could have been done.
My handsome cousin from New York came with a big bunch of lovely violets, and I thought, as I touched their cold faces to mine, that they, too, must certainly be suffering and homesick.
This voyage had been one of our dreams. We two—Daddy and I—had sat many a night by the crackling wood fire in our dear library talking it over. We planned how we should take the little girls and leave the four boys; how we should for once really go off for a glorious lark; but now, alas! every vestige of romance faded from our firelight dreams as we pulled ourselves away on such a bleak day, with not a gleam of sunshine to cheer us.
Had there been at that last moment any sane reason for turning back, I should have done so. I do not see why I had expected anything else but a bleak wind on the North River in January, but certainly I did have a sort of a fancy that, once on shipboard bound for Southern seas, the glamour of our voyage would warm me to the very heart, but it didn’t. I grew colder every minute, and after the cousin had said “Good-bye” and his tall silk hat was lost in the crowd at the gangway, it seemed to me that we were all bereft of our senses to think of leaving the library fireplace; but Daddy was beckoning me, and the little girls were making off in his direction; there was no escape. All I could do was to shiver and follow them. They were in tow of a red-nosed, white-coated steward; that was Rudolph. We didn’t know it then, and even if we had I hardly think we would have cared. Rudolph had our luggage, loads of it, our bags, our rug rolls, our numerous duffle; he had it all well in hand and he forged ahead through the crowd with good-natured indifference to the wrath of those going the other way, loaded down in similar fashion. We were trying to find Numbers 41 and 44. Everybody else was trying in like haste to find some other number. There were more crooks and turns and funny little corridors running off in different directions than you would imagine could be built into a self-respecting ship, with here and there a constricted spot where a narrow steel door led through some “water-tight bulkhead.” Now and then I lost sight of the little girls’ bobbing ribbons and found myself peering down the wrong corridor, following some other person’s luggage; then I would turn and elbow through the crowd, and bolt down the wide passage again to catch a glimpse of Little Blue Ribbons and Sister, both fairly dancing at the prospect of a real voyage in a real ship. And then came the appalling thought, “If I don’t hurry and push through these swarms of people, those youngsters may disappear for ever in a sort of Pied-Piper-of-Hamelin Fashion.”
In a dazed way I stumbled and hurried on, and finally, to my great relief, I heard the children’s voices issuing from Number 41, which proved to be well aft on the upper deck. It was a beautiful, large room, with big lower berths on opposite sides, and convenient mahogany wardrobes for the clothing—quarters quite befitting the dainty little maids who were to call it home for many weeks. My traps were left in the other room with Daddy’s, and as it was but a few moments of sailing time, we left things as they were, ran up the stairway near our door just as the stiff German bugler was sounding the warning for visitors to leave the ship. Then the last preparations for departure began. The gangplank was taken in, and we began to move, ever and ever so slowly, and, shuddering, I turned around to see how the deluded people looked who were going to death and destruction with me. “It is all the fault of that wretched sun,” I thought. “Why doesn’t it know enough to shine on sailing day? If the clouds don’t shift, we’ll all go to Davy Jones’s, and only think of the trouble I have had getting ready!” Much as I commiserated as a whole my fellow sufferers, outside of our own little group there was only one couple of which I have now any distinct remembrance, and I noticed them because I was quite sure they were bride and groom. “It is just too bad of her to wear that lovely gown to a watery grave! She ought to have left it at home for a relative. Anything would have done to swim in if it was only warm,” I thought; but the bride leaned over the rail and waved her handkerchief at some one and laughed, and then wiped her eyes and laughed once more, but she kept the gown on.
A horribly blatant German band, on board an Atlantic liner which lay alongside, bellowed forth national airs, and I wished I could choke it. The dwindling crowd on shore waved and shouted, and I went off alone and directly rubbed against some fresh white paint. That was too much! I just sat down and cried, and wondered why I hadn’t brought some turpentine and why I had ever left the babies, why I had ever forsaken the comfortable library in midwinter; but alas, I wondered a great deal more a few days later!
II.
Contrary to all precedent, instead of watching the fast-fading shores of New York Harbour, I simply went to the stateroom and began to find myself, and certainly I did not regret it afterward. I unpacked our most necessary clothing, got out the brushes and combs, unstrapped the roll of rugs, stowed away in a handy corner my smelling-salts, and small convenient bottles of various kinds—all the time accusing myself that I had not been satisfied with the calmer view I had had of “The Islands of the Blest”