HELEN thought the prospect of England slipping away from her in the rain as the ship throbbed down the river, too desolate for endurance, so she descended to her cabin with the unavowed intention of casting herself upon her berth to weep. Miss Stitch was there, however, and Mrs. Forsyth-Jones, who occupied the berth above Miss Stitch’s, and the steward, which seemed to Helen a good many, and she retreated.

“Oh, come in!” both the ladies cried; but Helen thought it was obviously impossible. She wandered into the long dining-saloon and sat down in one of the revolving chairs; she watched a fat ayah patting a baby to sleep on the floor, looked into the ladies’ cabin and went hastily out again, for already the dejected had begun to gather there, prone on the sofas and commiserated by the stewardesses. Finally she made her way upon deck again, meeting Mrs. Macdonald in the companion-way. “Are you all right?” asked Mrs. Macdonald cheerfully; but, before Helen had time to say that she was or was not, the lady had disappeared.

The deck was full of irresolute people like herself, who sat about on the damp benches or walked up and down under the awning, still with the look of being fresh from town, still in gloves and stiff hats, and land-faring garments. They put their hands in their pockets and shivered, and looked askance at each other, or made vain attempts to extract their own from the steamer chairs that were heaped up astern, waiting the offices of a quartermaster. An occasional hurrying steward was stopped a dozen times by passengers thirsting for information. Barefooted Lascars climbed about their monkey-like business among the ropes, or polished the brasses on the smoking-cabin, or holystoned a deck which seemed to Helen immaculately clean before. She found a dry corner and sat down in it to consider how much more familiar with the ship many of the people seemed to be than she was, and to envy all the accustomed ones. It seemed to Helen that she had better not analyse her other emotions. She wasn’t comfortable, but no doubt she soon would be; she wasn’t cheerful; but how could anybody expect that? She was restless and damp and unhappy, and it finally became necessary for her to draw young Browne’s photograph out of her hand-bag and peruse it in shelter of the Daily Graphic for a very long time. After which her spirits rose appreciably. “He is a dear!” she smiled to herself, “and he’s got a lovely forehead—and in just five weeks I shall see him again—just five weeks!”

Quite an ordinary reflection you see, without a shade of subtlety, a reflection probably common to engaged young ladies the world over; but I have already warned you under no circumstances to expect anything extraordinary from Helen. It will be my fault if you find her dull, I shall be in that case no faithful historian, but a traducer. I have not known the present Mrs. Browne to be dull, even at the close of a protracted round of Indian social gaieties; but you must not expect her to be original.

The voyage to Calcutta began in this way, and I happen to know that its chief feature of consolation—young Browne’s forehead—remained in Helen’s pocket, and was constantly bespoken. Especially perhaps in the Bay of Biscay, which fulfilled all its traditions for her benefit. I fear that there were moments, tempestuous moments, in the Bay of Biscay, heightened by the impassioned comments of Miss Stitch and Mrs. Forsyth-Jones, when Helen did not dare to dwell upon the comparative advantages of desiccated spinsterhood in Canbury, and matrimony in foreign parts attainable only by sea. She felt that it would be indiscreet, that she could not trust her conclusions to do credit to her fealty. If it were not for Miss Stitch and Mrs. Forsyth-Jones, Helen reflected, the horrors of the situation would have been less keen; but I have no doubt that each of these ladies entertained the same sentiments towards her two fellow-voyagers. They united, however, in extolling the steward. The stewardess was a necessarily perfunctory person, with the quaverings of forty ladies in her ears at once. The stewardess was always sure she “didn’t know, ma’am,” and seemed to think it was a duty one owed the ship to go up on deck, no matter how one felt. She was also occasionally guilty of bringing one cold vegetables, if one occurred about thirty-ninth upon her list of non-diners in public. But the steward was a man, and always respectfully cheerful. He could tell exactly why it was the ship rolled in that peculiar manner—owing to the disposition of iron in the hold. He knew just how long they would be in “the Bay,” and what sort of weather “she” would be likely to experience during the night; also could predict within a quarter of an hour, the time at which they would land at Gibraltar. He was generally incorrect in every particular, but that made no difference to the value of his sanguine prophecies, while it mitigated the distressful effects of his gloomy ones. And it was always he who brought the first advice that the ports might be opened, who calmed all fear of a possible rat or cockroach “coming up from the hold,” and who heralded the ladies’ appearance on deck with armfuls of rugs, in the days of early convalescence. They chanted to one another continually how “nice” he was, and how hard he was obliged to work, poor fellow, each mentally determining a higher figure for her farewell tip than she had thought of the day before. This is the custom of ladies the world over who sail upon the seas.

It must be mentioned that Mrs. Macdonald visited Helen’s cabin several times in the Bay of Biscay. For her part Mrs. Macdonald was never ill, she simply made up her mind not to be, and in her opinion if Helen would only commit herself to a similar effort she would be all right immediately. The expression of this opinion rather lessened the value of Mrs. Macdonald’s sympathy; and the announcement that there was really lovely weather going on above and the ship was beginning to be so jolly, failed to make Helen any more comfortable. “Well, you are funny!” Mrs. Macdonald would say cheerfully in departing, and she said it every day.

Mr. Macdonald remarked that Gibraltar looked much as usual the morning they steamed under its hostile shadow, and Mrs. Macdonald said that if she wasn’t in absolute need of some darning cotton and letter-paper she wouldn’t think of going ashore—the place was such an old story. The consideration of darning cotton prevailed, however, and the Macdonalds went ashore, Helen with them. Helen’s acquaintance with the Macdonalds had progressed meanwhile. She had learned what not to expect of them, which excluded all but the gayest and airiest and most indifferent companionship, and this facilitated matters between them considerably. It was a little difficult at first. It seemed to this young lady from Wiltshire, brought up among serious traditions of matrimony, that her case, if not herself, ought to be taken a little more importantly; that some impression of the fateful crisis in her life, toward which they were helping to hurry her, ought to be evident occasionally in the Macdonald conduct or conversation. It was only gradually that she came to see how lightly such projects as hers and young Browne’s were regarded by these people who were still in the initial stages of their own; how little space she or her affairs occupied in their good-natured thoughts; how invariably she must expect any reference to it to be jocular. During the process Helen had now and then a novel sense of making one of the various parcels which Mrs. Macdonald had undertaken to bring out to friends in Calcutta—a feeling, that she ought properly to be in an air-tight box in the hold, corded and labelled and expected to give no further trouble. She realized, at moments, that she was being “shipped” to young Browne.

They did exactly what everybody does in Gibraltar. There was no time to get permission from the authorities and go through the galleries, there never is. Barring which, the people of the ships find themselves without resource except to drive in the rattle-trap conveyances of the place through its narrow twisting, high-walled over-topping white streets and out past the Spanish market, where everybody buys figs and pomegranates to throw overboard afterwards, and so emerging from the town trot through the sand and the short grass round the mighty gray foot of the Rock, to look up and marvel at the terror of those irregular holes upon its face, and the majesty that it had long before it became conscious with cannon. Helen and the Macdonalds did all this and said just what P. and O. voyagers have said for the last quarter of a century about it. Coming back Mrs. Macdonald bought her darning cotton and her letter-paper at a little shop, whose black-browed proprietor sold photographs and wicked knives, and long pipes as well. Afterwards they all strolled through the Alameda gardens, that cling for life among their verbenas and rose bushes to the sides of the Rock, and finally fell into that fatal corner shop which entraps the unwary with curios. All roads seem to lead to it in Gibraltar, and one knows it by the crowd of speculative passengers that encumber the doorway considering and contrasting desirable purchases. The Spaniards inside are haughty and indifferent, they will abate a shilling or two of their exorbitance perhaps, not more. That is what the Macdonalds said to everybody in an undertone—“You needn’t try, they won’t come down—it doesn’t seem to be worth their while. We used to think they would, but now we don’t ask them!” and in the face of this advice of experience the passengers hesitated still more over their ill-shaped Moorish vases, black and red and blue and gilt, their brass and coloured glass hanging lamps from Cairo, their Persian china superficially gilt but beautifully blue. The things that fascinated Helen were curious plaques in relief, all marshy greens, in which the most realistic lizards and toads were creeping about in imitated moss. Miss Peachey would have liked at least four of these, they struck her as so original and clever, until Mrs. Macdonald at her elbow said, in an impressive whisper “Don’t! You see them in boarding-houses in Calcutta!” when she put them reluctantly down, and bought a big bedecked Spanish hat to make a work-basket of, and a large fan, upon which sundry ladies of depraved appearance and very Irish features were dancing a fandango instead. I have seen that fan in the present Mrs. Browne’s Calcutta drawing-room frequently since. She has it fastened on the wall immediately under a photogravure of The Angelus, and she will not take it down.

Between Gibraltar and Naples, Helen observed the peculiarities of the species P. and O. passenger, the person who spends so large a portion of a lifetime shorter than the average, in wondering how much more of this delightful or this abominable weather “we’ll have,” in the Indian Ocean or the Red Sea. She observed that Miss Stitch arose betimes every morning, and attended the service held by the little pale ritualistic clergyman in the saloon before the tables were laid for breakfast, which struck her as eminently proper, Miss Stitch being a missionary. She also noticed that Mrs. Forsyth-Jones, returning to her husband in Burmah, with three photographs of him in uniform variously arranged in the cabin, had as many small flirtations well in hand, one in the morning, of the promenade sort, with a middle-aged Under-Secretary, one in the afternoon, conducted in long chairs, enhanced by sunset, with a Royal Engineer, whose wife was similarly occupied at the other end of the ship, and one in the evening in a secluded corner of the hurricane deck, charitably witnessed by the moon and stars, with a callow indigo planter about the age of her eldest son. Helen thought that the missionary or somebody, some older person, ought to speak to this lady in terms of guarded reproof, and tell her that her conduct was more conspicuous than perhaps she knew; and our young lady from Wiltshire was surprised to observe not only that nobody did, but that Mrs. Forsyth-Jones seemed to be a person of some popularity on board. The Macdonalds, for instance, hung about her chair with solicitude, in the temporary absence of any of the attachÉs. Mrs. Macdonald herself had plenty of “men-friends” as she called them. They buzzed about her, whenever she sat or stood long enough to permit their approach, all day—they were always bringing her rugs, or old numbers of Punch, or an orange. But Mrs. Macdonald did not particularize, she was content with a general empire, though she prized that, as anybody could see. Among the throng Mr. Macdonald remained supreme; she expected most attention from him too, and she called him “Mac.”

Miss Stitch confided to Miss Peachey her opinion that “the people on board this ship” were more than usually cliquey; but this was not a conclusion that Helen would have arrived at unassisted. She saw about her day after day, lining the long tables and afterwards scattered about easefully on deck, a great many people, some of whom she thought agreeable-looking, and others distinctly the reverse. Miss Stitch seemed to think one ought to know everybody. Helen was sure that a few—a very few—of the agreeable-looking people would do quite well. She did not see at all how Miss Stitch could bring herself to talk to the person who sat next her at table, and wore a large diamond ring on his third finger, and drank champagne every day at tiffin, and said he was travelling for his “’ealth,” and pointed most of his remarks with a tooth-pick. Helen thought that even missionary zeal would not carry her so far as that. On the other hand, she found it difficult to understand why everybody, including Miss Stitch, seemed agreed not to make acquaintance with a soft-eyed, sad-faced lady of rather dark complexion, who talked in a gentle voice with a slightly foreign accent, Helen thought, and was accompanied by three daughters, who much resembled her. They looked very quiet and lady-like to Helen, and she thought the manners of certain boisterous young ladies who polkaed with the ship’s officers on a heaving deck after dinner, and whom everybody accepted, suffered by comparison with them. When she was told that their name was De Cruz, Helen privately criticised her fellow countrywomen’s attitude. “It must be,” she said to herself, “because they are foreign.” And so it was—because they were foreign. “About four annas in the rupee,” said Miss Stitch about them one day, and told Helen that she would find out what that meant before she had been long in India. But Miss Stitch, M. D., was interested in the welfare, temporal and eternal, only of ladies who were “pure native.”

Then one peaceful rainy morning, after a rolling night, Naples lay before them, gathered all about her harbour with Vesuvius gently smoking in the distance. The slippery hurricane deck was full of people looking for Vesuvius, grouped round the single male passenger, who, awakened by the first officer at four in the morning, had seen it spouting fire. Enviable male passenger! Invidious first officer! Out from shore came disreputable Neapolitan companies in small boats, with stringed instruments, who lay under the ship’s sides and sang, “Finiculi—Finicula!” in a lavish and abandoned manner, turning up their impudent faces for contributions from the truly musical souls on board. Helen listened, enraptured, to a number of these renditions, after which she concluded that she preferred “Finiculi—Finicula” as she had heard it sung by Mr. Browne, in Canbury, Wilts. After breakfast, the Macdonalds attached themselves to an exploring party for Pompeii, under the guidance of a black-browed Neapolitan, representing Messrs. Cook. Mrs. Macdonald went about in a pretty, new waterproof, with Bulwer’s Last Days in her hand, telling people she really must go this time, she had been lazy so often before, and it was so awfully cheap with these people—carriages, rail, tiffin and see everything for only thirty francs each! Helen and Miss Stitch stayed behind, the night had been too rough to let them venture on the absorption of so much ancient history, even at this advantageous rate. But later, when the sun came out, the young ladies recovered their spirits sufficiently to cruise adventurously to shore by themselves, to engage a ragged-pocketed “guide” of perhaps thirteen, and a rattling little victoria, pulled by a clinking little pony, with bells upon his collar, and drive about Naples for three delicious hours. I can’t say they added much to their stock of information. They had no idea where to go and what to see; but one can always absorb colour and life without a guide-book, happily; and I know, from what she told me afterward, that Helen Peachey did that. They found abundant happiness in the curio shops and much unpalatable fruit in the open market; they filled their rattle-trap of a carriage with great bunches of tiny pink roses at a few coppers apiece, and buried their faces in them. They were told, driving through a grand toppling main street, all draped and garlanded with little glass bells for candles, red, green, and blue, that the King was coming next day. The boy guide told them this. He showed them also the Royal Palace, with all the statues of former kings standing about outside, and the “Grand CafÉ de l’Europe,” much embellished by a painter whose art had evidently once found favour with the municipality. In the opinion of the guide, the “Grand CafÉ de l’Europe” was what reasonable people came to Naples to see; he pointed it out many times and with an increasing show of personal admiration. He was a very useful, clever boy the young ladies thought, especially when he took them to the post office and obtained for Miss Stitch a receipt for the registered letter she wanted to send away, in as business-like a manner as if he were in the habit of transmitting large sums abroad daily. “Don’ you lossit, for goodniz sake!” he exclaimed, as he gave her the slip. But I doubt whether he was quite worth the sum he claimed at the water’s edge when they departed—the pay of a full-grown, well-fed guide for a whole day, plus a pourboire, which they ungrudgingly gave between them.

But I cannot give any more of my valuable space to Mrs. Browne’s reminiscences of that voyage, which must, according to the volumes of them, have lasted a space of about seven months. I believe they were all very gay at Port Said, walking through the single wide China bazar street of the place, flaming with colour and resonant of musicians in the gambling houses, drinking black coffee on the boulevard, and realizing no whit of Port Said’s iniquity. The Suez Canal had no incident but several loathly odors, and then came the long smooth voyage to Colombo and a fantastic glimpse of first cocoanut trees fringing the shores of Ceylon. A great deal here about sapphires and rubies and cat’s eyes and little elephants made of ivory and small brown diving-boys, and first tropical impressions, but I must not linger in the chronicling. Then the sail up to Madras, and the brief tarrying there, and the days that came after, short days when everybody packed and rejoiced. At last, one night at ten o’clock, a light that was not a star, shining far through the soft still darkness beyond the bow of the ship, the light at the mouth of a wide brown river that slipped to the sea through the India, Helen would see in the morning, and past the city whither her simple heart had gone before her.

Mrs. Macdonald kept out of the way. It was the one considerate thing she did during the voyage. Young Browne, rather white and nervous-looking, came upon Mr. Macdonald first in the turbulent shore-going crowd. Mr. Macdonald was genial and reassuring. “You’ll find her over there, old man,” said he without circumlocution, “rather back. Better bring her up to Hungerford Street to breakfast yourself.” And Helen straightway was found by young Browne in the precise direction Mr. Macdonald had indicated, and “rather back.” She always remembers very distinctly that on that occasion she wore a blue Chambray frock and a sailor hat with a white ribbon round it. It is not a matter of consequence, still it might as well be mentioned.