Ellen Roxburgh then, was pinning her husband against the wall, grinding her cheek into his as she would never have dared. ‘Tell me — this once,’ she commanded, ‘I have not made you unhappy?’
He fought back with a strength he had never thought he possessed. ‘Ah, Ellen, it is no occasion for foolish questions!’ His voice issued from its deepest source to expire at the surface amongst what sounded like dry reeds.
In the obscurity at the foot of the ladder he knew her eyes were staring at him, and he stared back: for the moment they were both contained in the same luminous bubble which circumstances threatened to explode.
It was she who broke. Her tears were streaming.
He would have started dragging her up the ladder, to protect her from that mortal danger, herself. ‘You mustn’t be afraid,’ he ordered, ‘or not till we know there’s cause for it.’
‘I’m not afraid for myself,’ she cried. ‘It’s for you. And my child.’
‘Child?’
‘Oh, yes. I would not have added this to your cares, but it isn’t possible — any longer — to avoid it.’
‘My dearest dearest Ellen!’ He fumbled for her face, to unite her tributary distress with the love he felt flowing out of him. ‘Our child is our best reason for surviving.’
Only obtuseness and self-absorption could have prevented him seeking a reason for the frequent torpor, the growing softness and whiteness of the form which had supported him in sickness, and for the presence of which he found he craved increasingly. Now his contrition was the more intense and searing for the drought from which it sprang.
Again it was she who came to her senses, who began to protest, and assume her normal role of protector. ‘We are wasting time! You go first, Mr Roxburgh, and I will follow with the bag. You must take care — more than ever — now that we have an ordeal to face — not to over-tax yourself.’
As they struggled upward, he issued a reprisal of warnings in lowest key. ‘Ellen! Keep calm! As I told you. And especially since you have other responsibilities. Besides, they’ll see that you’ve been crying if your manner is — noticeably—agitated.’
So they came out upon the sloping deck. Between them, though by no specific agreement, they were carrying the leather dressing-case. They stood bracing themselves against the list of the marooned vessel, which had brought upon them every distortion of grace, not to say abandon of propriety.
Never since boarding Bristol Maid had Mr and Mrs Roxburgh looked so awkward, foolish, and superfluous. It was not surprising that those who might be competent to deal with the present situation paid no attention to them as they stamped or slithered about their business. The passengers were made to feel they must pay for their ignorance. Humbly smiling, they prepared to accept their just deserts.
Mr Courtney, although very much the first officer coping with a crisis, took pity at one stage. His jacket unbuttoned, his mouth loose from shouting, he demonstrated with his large hands how their ship had brought up suddenly on a semi-circle of coral.
There it was, if they cared to look, a pale, greenish glimmer, on which the lovely lace of foam was being torn to further tatters.
Mr Courtney was of the opinion that nobody was to blame but the fog; they had been doing a bare five knots. He was so convinced he repeated himself several times over.
The fog was lifting, as though to expose the full irony of its work. The stranded ship had swung round and was lying broadside on to the sea.
‘Close-hauling’, Mr Courtney bellowed at the passengers, ‘could bring her off.’
The Roxburghs were appreciative if dazed. They intended to maintain hope, but in the face of the mate’s practical knowledge they dared not contribute even the token of an amateur suggestion.
For his part, Mr Courtney, although a genial, kindly man, felt he had done his duty by the passengers, and was determined to dismiss them from sight at least. ‘I advise you to take shelter, Mrs Roxburgh, in the charthouse or the galley.’
Presumably included in the invitation, the lady’s husband was left to accompany her down the deck to whichever asylum she happened to choose. Mr Courtney, who had already limped away, might have stamped in level circumstances. Unusually sensitive to moral criticism from others, Austin Roxburgh wondered whether the mate had been concealing from the beginning a streak of that contempt which members of the lower classes often harbour against their betters, but shelved the theory for further examination at a more appropriate time. At the moment there was nothing for it but to follow his wife.
They proceeded, tittuping on their land legs, clinging to whatever was offered them by way of support. Over the side, the variable sea, now a milky, liquid jade, poured itself on the snoozing coral, the latter not so passive that it would not rise at times, to snap with a mouthful of teeth, or lash from under with swathed limbs.
Mrs Roxburgh came to the decision not to look seaward as she made her way forward. If asked to consider why she was choosing the galley in preference to the charthouse, her only reason could have been that she had visited the galley during their progress through a sea which had not yet grown hostile, in a gently breathing ship, which now lay stiff and stubborn beneath them, or grumbled, or shuddered. Aloft, a man was swinging, all sinews, tendons, muscular contortions, grinning at the wind as he fought the canvas. Herself straining along the deck beneath, Mrs Roxburgh felt relieved when this battered Punch was removed from sight, if not from thought; indeed, he might return in her dreams.
Remembering her husband, she glanced back once or twice to call and encourage. ‘We are practically there,’ she told him, whether her voice would carry or not.
She caught herself smiling, from habit, and was glad she could not see herself; at this point the only significance her smile could have had was that of an arbitrary, not to say perverse, decoration.
They reached the galley. Never much more than one of those protuberances with which the deck was capriciously furnished, it now resembled a tilted hutch. They blundered their way inside, into a consoling stuffiness, clean-swept of the utensils one would have expected. In a depression formed between the opposite wall and the steep floor, dented pots were lying, together with the shards of crocks, and the white shambles of what must have been the saloon dinner service. Over all hung the smell of cold ash and fat.
‘Here I am going to stay,’ Ellen Roxburgh announced, as though it might still be granted to her to exercise her will.
There was a fixed table behind which, on a similarly immovable bench, she succeeded in wedging herself, along with the leather dressing-case. (If she had sole control of this during the latter stages of their journey, it was what she considered natural, and would have wished.)
After perching uneasily beside her on the bench, Austin Roxburgh wondered aloud, ‘… whether I might give them some kind of assistance.’
Mrs Roxburgh did not answer, for the simple reason that she had withdrawn even out of reach of the husband whose protection was her chosen vocation. She would have liked to pray, but found the vocabulary and the necessary frame of mind for prayer, wrecked inside her. Mentally she was still too exhausted to sort out the wreckage, and recoiled moreover, from a possibility that she might never restore order to a spiritual cupboard which had not been kept as neat as it looked.