Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
Gussie threw her shells to the floor and reached out for his watch chain. He took out his large gold watch and allowed her to listen to its tick, which enraptured her so that she bounced on his knee.
The weather grew stormier. There was no forgetting it. Day and night the struggle between it and the ship went on. Wind, waves, and teeming rain hammered, tossed, and drenched the ship. Sailors scrambled to the most precarious and dizzy heights up the masts as she struggled on, hour by hour making the way a little shorter. Oh, that the land would appear! Adeline had never felt so ill in her life. She could scarcely stand, yet she had to drag herself to the ayah’s cabin and do what she could for her, which was little enough. She had to tend her child who still cried a great deal and, when the child was quiet and Adeline might have slept a little, Boney would take it into his head to shout of his pleasure which seemed unbounded.
Suddenly the condition of the ayah became alarming. Her small form grew shrunken, her face almost green. Only her great burning eyes, with the dark shadows under them, looked alive. Her fevered mouth babbled of far-off days in India. Adeline was distraught to see her so. She gathered together all her strength to care for her. She supported her in her arms and every few moments wiped the sweat from the sunken face with a handkerchief.
The silver bangles on the small brown wrists tinkled ceaselessly as the restless hands moved upon her breast. Then suddenly her eyes opened wide. It was on the third day of her terrible illness. She looked up mournfully into Adeline’s face as though in question.
“What do you want, Huneefa?” Adeline asked.
She seemed not to hear but began to arrange her heavy dark hair on her forehead. She took it lock by lock in her thin fingers and arranged it as though for a festival.
Adeline laid her back on the pillow. She tottered out into the passage and called hoarsely for Philip. He was not near but James Wilmott heard her and came, his face full of anxiety.
“Come quick,” she said. “Huneefa is dying!”
He came into the dark, sour-smelling cabin.
“I must fetch the doctor,” he said.
As though to add to their miseries the doctor had, two days before, slipped on the deck and injured his hip. He could scarcely move for the pain but he came supported on Wilmott’s shoulder. He was a young man of little experience but one glance at the ayah told him that her hour had come. He told Wilmott to take Adeline back to her cabin but she refused to leave. In a short while Huneefa died.
Her death came as a shock to Adeline and, in a lesser degree, to Philip. All their married life she had been an intimate shadow, first as a maid to Adeline, later as ayah to Augusta. They had taken her devotion for granted. As she was never really well, her illnesses caused them no alarm. Even the jaundice which had complicated her seasickness had not brought real apprehension. Now it seemed that she had willfully deserted them — Huneefa who had been so unquestioningly faithful! They discovered what a strong prop her frail body had been in the edifice of their life.
Even the ayah’s death did not cause Mrs. Cameron to relent. She remained remote in her cabin, her new friend at her side.
Adeline herself prepared Huneefa for burial, arranging her best robe about her, crossing her hands on her breast. For the last time the silver bangles tinkled on the thin wrists. Then Adeline carried Augusta to her side, for a last look. Augusta was pleased and leant down from Adeline’s arms with a little laugh.
“Kiss her then,” said Adeline. “Kiss her good-bye.”
Gussie planted a moist kiss on the bronze cheek and held the shell she carried to Huneefa’s ear.
“Oh, dear — oh, dear — why did she go!” groaned Adeline. She would have given anything she owned to have brought back life to Huneefa. She drew the yashmak over the still face and turned away.
Gussie did not give another glance at the one who had been her slave. She held the shell to her mother’s ear and, clutching her neck, leant down to peer into her face. She was surprised to find that Adeline was not laughing but that tears were on her cheeks.
It was a cold grey day when they gathered on deck to commit the ayah’s body to the sea. The sea was not so rough as it had been but the waves still surged in sullen aimlessness about the ship. The deck had been cleaned. The sailors were drawn up in order, looking neat and clean, their bare feet planted on the moist deck. The steerage passengers were also collected, their children grouped about them. The women wore shawls over their heads. Those among them who were Irish, and they were by far the greater part, had the keening ready on their lips but held it back.
Patsy O’Flynn was there, wearing his greatcoat and a strange woolly cap that came down to his shaggy eyebrows. He had brought with him a bundle containing his most cherished possessions, from which he would not be parted for an instant, and this lay on the deck beside him. He had asked to be allowed to hold Augusta in his arms during the ceremony. She had on her white coat and little lace bonnet. Patsy was so proud of her, and of the importance of his position in carrying her, that he could not keep his mind on the ceremony but cast self-conscious looks at his fellow passengers to make sure they were noticing him.
It was strange to see D’Arcy, who not many days before had been the object of these men’s fury, standing face to face with them with apparent forgetfulness, on both sides, of what had passed.
Adeline stood between Philip and Wilmott. The nervous tension seemed to have given her strength for the occasion but the flush on her cheeks looked fevered to Philip and he frequently turned his anxious eyes on her. Wilmott stood austere and motionless as a statue.
At the Captain’s feet lay the body of Huneefa, sewn securely in canvas. He read the Burial Service in a clear, resonant voice. It was odd to see him on deck not wearing his gold-braided cap. He was getting a little bald and the lock of fair brown hair on the top
of his head continually rose and fell in the gusty wind. Adeline noticed the uncovered heads of all the men and that Patsy alone wore his cap. She motioned him to take it off but it was some time before he could understand what she meant. He made a number of comical attempts at obeying the message he did not grasp, shifting the baby from one arm to another, hiding his bundle under his feet, assuming a more funereal expression. Then suddenly he discovered what she wanted him to do and, with a happy smile, pulled off his cap and stood with his unkempt thatch uncovered.
Deliberately Captain Bradley read the service for the dead, ending with the appropriate words: “We therefore commit her body to the deep, to be returned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body (when the Sea shall give up her dead) and the life of the world to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who at his coming shall change our vile body, that it may be like his glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself.”
There was a movement among the sailors. The ropes that controlled the body tautened. It was raised above the deck over the railing, then slowly, gently, with a kind of meek majesty, lowered into the sea. It seemed to Adeline, looking over the side, that the waves parted to receive it, then without a sound slid across it, enfolded it, and so it was lost to view. A fresh gust of wind caught the sails. A lively thunder passed through them and the ship moved forward as though eager to be at her journey’s end and have done with these delays.
Gussie, from the security of Patsy’s arm, watched the body of Huneefa sink out of sight. She turned to look into Patsy’s eyes.
“Gone,” she said.
“God bless the child!” he exclaimed to those about him. “She understands everything. Och, the cliver brain she has and a way of talkin’ to beat all!”
A hymn now rose from the throats of those assembled. “Eternal Father! Strong to save, Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,” they sang, and the sound of their own voices, the act of singing
which expanded their breasts, the confidence in the words they uttered, made them happier. The meek figure that had been lowered into the waves became less dominating, was at last left far behind. The steerage passengers returned to the accustomed evil smells of their quarters; Gussie was once more in her mother’s arms.
Adeline, feeling suddenly exhausted, carried her to a sheltered corner on the deck and gave her the bag containing her sea shells, and a biscuit to eat. Wilmott sat down with his pipe and a copy of the
Quarterly Review
, beside Augusta. They were strange companions but there was a kind of understanding between them. Adeline then went to lie down in her berth.
The days that followed were afterward looked back on by Philip as a kind of nightmare. Adeline developed a fever which, before many hours, threw her into delirium. She talked wildly and incoherently, now fancying herself back in India, now a young girl in County Meath, now in terror of red Indians in Canada. Sometimes it took all Philip’s strength to keep her from springing out of the berth. The young doctor, still suffering cruelly from his injured hip, scarcely left her side. Boney perched at the head of the berth and it was a curious thing that, when her delirium was at its height, his cries had a soothing effect on her. He would listen to her babblings, his head on one side, then as her voice rose louder and louder he would raise his own in shrill shouts, as though to show her he could outdo her.
The dreadful lack of privacy was abhorrent to Philip. The partitions were so thin that all their miseries were audible. It was said that Mrs. Cameron was ill too. Certainly she made neither sign nor offer of help. She and the Newfoundlanders kept quite to themselves. The stewardess kept Augusta with her as much as she could but there was much sickness on board to claim her. Wilmott would carry Gussie up and down the deck by the hour, singing to her. But often she was on Philip’s hands and he was at his wit’s end to know how to cope with the intricacies of her diet and her toilet. She was left for a good deal of time alone in the cabin where the ayah had died. The stewardess provided her with a tin plate and a large spoon with
which she enlivened what might have been many dreary hours. She was pinned to the bedding of the berth with large safety pins so that the rolling ship might not hurl her to the floor. Her attitude toward Philip was one of curiosity mixed with suspicion. When he did things for her she looked on patronizingly as though she were thinking how much better Huneefa would have done them.
On the third day Adeline’s delirium left her. She had been babbling and Boney had startled, then silenced her, by his cries. She lay quite still, looking about her with large mournful eyes, then she spoke in a natural voice.
“I’m tired of listening to that bird,” she said.
Philip bent over her, his face solicitous.
“Shall I take him away?”
“No, no. But give him a fig. That will quiet him. They are in the tin box in the cupboard.” She stared at him as he obeyed her. Then she laughed weakly. “How funny you look! As though you hadn’t shaved for days!”
“Neither I have.”
“Have I been very ill?”
“Pretty bad.”
“I’m better now.”
“Thank God for that!”
The parrot sidled along the perch to meet the fig. He accepted it with a humourous expression, then began tearing small pieces from it and spitting them out. But it kept him quiet.
Philip sat down on the edge of the berth and Adeline took one of his strong brown hands in her thin white hands and stroked it. She pressed her teeth against her quivering underlip.
“I was just remembering Huneefa,” she said.
He kissed her. “You must not think of anything unhappy,” he said. “Just think of getting well.”
“We shouldn’t have brought her from India.”
“She wanted to come. She would have been brokenhearted if we’d left her.”
“I know.”
She was undoubtedly better. She drank some broth and would have slept but Augusta was beating on her tin. The noise excited Boney. He began to scream. Adeline tossed on her lumpy pillow and filled her hands with her long hair.
“Is there no peace on this ship!” she cried. “Whatever is that noise?”
Philip went to Gussie and took the plate and spoon from her and gave her the bag of shells in their stead, but she threw these to the floor one by one and then set up a lugubrious crying.
Philip decided he would take her to Wilmott and ask him to amuse her for an hour. He strode back to where she sat with streaming eyes tight shut, mouth square, and everything within reach hurled as far as her tiny strength would allow. He picked her up not very gently. He discovered by the dampness of her underthings that a change was imperative. He rang the bell furiously for the stewardess. There was no answer. From the confused heap that now constituted her wardrobe he extricated two garments. Laying her across his knees he managed to put the diaper on her but the white flannel petticoat which had been washed by the stewardess and extraordinarily shrunken baffled him. Tired of lying with her head hanging downward, Gussie had begun to squirm. She had ceased to cry on being taken up but now she began again. Sooner would he have set out to subdue a rebellious hill tribe than this squalling little creature. He saw that her legs were red and chafed and he swore.
At the next instant he pricked her with the safety pin — why the devil had it been named
safety
pin! — and at the sight of blood trickling from the tiny wound, sweat started on his forehead.
“I didn’t mean to! Upon my soul I didn’t mean to!” he stammered, but she didn’t believe him. As he set her upright on his knee she drew back her chin and looked at him with apprehension, wondering what he would next do to her. What he did was to carry her through the passages and down the companionway to where the emigrants were sitting in their common room. Here he almost threw her on to the lap of the respectable Scotswoman, mother of five, and commanded her to care for his daughter as best she could.
It turned out that she cared for Gussie very capably, neglecting her own hardy bairns to do it, and he paid her well for her trouble.