A High Wind in Jamaica - Richard Hughes [18]
"I think they will be happy here, Frederic," said Mrs. Thornton. "I wish we could have afforded to send them by the steam-boat: but children find amusement even in discomfort."
Mr. Thornton grunted.
"I wish schools had never been invented!" he suddenly burst out: "they wouldn't then be so indispensable!"
There was a short pause for the logic of this to cross the footlights: then he went on:
"I know what will happen; they'll come away. . . mugs! Just ordinary little mugs, like any one else's brats! I'm dashed if I don't think a hundred hurricanes would be better than that."
Mrs. Thornton shuddered: but she continued bravely:
"You know, I think they were getting almost _too_ devoted to us? We have been such an unrivaled center of their lives and thoughts. It doesn't do for minds developing to be completely dependent on one person."
Captain Marpole's grizzled head emerged from the scuttle. A sea-dog: clear blue eyes of a translucent trustworthiness: a merry, wrinkled, morocco-colored face: a rumbling voice.
"He's too good to be true," whispered Mrs. Thornton.
"Not at all! It's a sophism to imagine people don't conform to type!" barked Mr. Thornton. He felt at sixes and sevens.
Captain Marpole certainly looked the ideal Children's Captain. He would, Mrs. Thornton decided, be careful without being fussy--for she was all in favor of courageous gymnastics, though glad she would not have to witness them herself. Captain Marpole cast his eyes benignantly over the swarming imps.
"They'll worship him," she whispered to her husband. (She meant, of course, that he would worship them.) It was an important point, this, of the captain: important as the personality of a headmaster.
"So that's the nursery, eh?" said the captain, crushing Mrs. Thornton's hand. She strove to answer, but found her throat undoubtedly paralyzed. Even Mr. Thornton's ready tongue was at a loss. He looked hard at the captain, jerked his thumb towards the children, wrestled in his mind with an elaborate speech, and finally enunciated in a small, unlikely voice:
"Smack 'em."
Then the captain had to go about his duties: and for an hour the father and mother sat disconsolately on the main hatch, quite deserted. Even when all was ready for departure it was impossible to muster the flock for a collective good-bye.
Already the tug was fulminating in its gorge: and ashore they must go. Emily and John had been captured, and stood talking uneasily to their parents, as if to strangers, using only a quarter of their minds. With a rope to be climbed dangling before his very nose, John simply did not know how this delay was to be supported, and lapsed into complete silence.
"Time to go ashore, Ma'am," said the captain: "we must be off now."
Very formally the two generations kissed each other, and said farewell. Indeed the elders were already at the gangway before the meaning of it all dawned in Emily's head. She rushed after her mother, gripped her ample flesh in two strong fists, and sobbed and wept, "Come too, Mother, oh, do come too!"
Honestly, it had only occurred to her that very moment that this was a _parting_.
"But think what an adventure it will be," said Mrs. Thornton bravely: "much more than if I came too!-- You'll have to look after the Liddlies just as if you were a real grown-up!"
"But I don't want any more adventures!" sobbed Emily: "I've _got_ an _Earthquake!_"
Passions were running far too high for any one to be aware how the final separation took place. The next thing Mrs. Thornton could remember was how tired her arm had been, after waving and waving at that dwindling speck which bore away on the land breeze, hung a while stationary in the intervening calm, then won the Trade and climbed up into the blue.
Meanwhile, at the rail stood Margaret Fernandez, who, with her little brother Harry, was going to England by the same boat. No one had come to see them off: and the brown nurse who was accompanying them had gone below the moment she came on board, so as to be ill as quickly as possible. How handsome Mr.