He needed only a few moments to repair and set everything going again, while Mrs. Columbine murmured unhappily over her baby daughter, smoothing back the damp curls from her head.
“Now, Petey,” she said crossly to the little boy, “If you break my punkah again, I shall have you beaten, do you understand?”
She handed him the rope, and his eyes filled with tears.
“Oh no, Petey, don’t cry.” Mrs. Columbine turned away and sighed. “It is the heat, lieutenant, and having to stay in the cabin all day.”
“I know the captain very much wished you to avoid exposing yourself to the dangerous vapours in town, Mrs. Columbine.”
“Of course. And I know that his every word is law to you, Lieutenant!” She mustered a weak smile. “That is, I know you respect my husband very much, and he thinks well of you. But cannot you take my side, and help me persuade him to let me out of prison? Here I am, threatening a poor orphan child who has lost his parents and his home and doesn’t understand a word I say. How terrifying everything must be to him, the poor little savage! And I nearly struck him when he broke the punkah! I am not myself in this heat.”
Lieutenant Price crouched down and patted the little boy on the back, murmuring a few words of the local pidgin dialect in his ear. The child nodded, brushed his tears, and resumed his rhythmic pulling on the rope.
“Is there anything else, ma’am?”
“No. No. Thank you, Mr. Price. I am quite obliged to you.”
William returned to his cabin and his letter. What else to say?
You will be pleased to hear that I hold to my resolution of avoiding all games of chance, and I cannot resist calculating, almost daily, how many monies I shall have acquired in just a few years’ time—apart of course, from what I send to our mother.
Money, Julia, the future... everything and everyone seemed so impossibly far away in this alien country.
I received a long letter from our friend Mr. Gibson, and he sends me a good account of you and your sewing academy. I wish all of the members of the family were as faithful correspondents as you and Mr. Gibson. I don’t mean to say that Mr. Gibson is one of the family, but see there how I coupled your names together?
Delicacy and consideration prevented him from revealing his low spirits to Fanny, the sister who had always been his closest confidante. He could not share the secrets of his heart, but he imagined she must have some idea of the truth.
I’m sure Miss Julia’s garden is doing very well by now. I should greatly like to visit Northamptonshire when I return.
You are all always in my thoughts.
Yours most affectionately, your brother
William
The letter from William provided Fanny with an excellent excuse to call upon her younger brother John. Four years ago, their uncle Sir Thomas, through his influence in Parliament, had obtained a clerkship for John with the Thames River Police Office. This public office was unique in London, for it had the charge of patrolling the docks and wharves and surveying the busy port, and overlooking the loading and unloading of the cargoes that poured in from all over the world, to suppress theft and vice in that teeming and disreputable part of the city.
John was two years younger than Fanny, and he lived in Wapping, which also made him the closest relative in point of distance. These circumstances might suggest the two young Prices, making their own way in the busy metropolis, had only each other to supply that sympathy, interest, and affection which attaches those who have known each other since infancy. John retained a faint memory of the way Fanny tucked him into bed at night with a song or a story before she was sent away, but he was entirely unused to having anyone enquire after his well-being or his pursuits. Growing up in a large family led by a distracted mother, John was used to taking care of himself, and he valued solitude and silence above all, and the freedom to indulge in his own meditations. The construction of a new crane at the docks, or an article in a scientific journal would arouse more animation and interest in him, than any type of social intercourse. When Fanny visited him, he never enquired about the details of her life, nor expressed regret when she wound up her visit.
Fanny persisted however, and went to see him at least twice a month; she believed that a boy of barely nineteen years of age, living alone in the wicked metropolis, could only benefit from her affectionate attentions. She would take him out to dine on a roast chicken or beef pie, and take his shirts and stockings away to mend them, and kiss his cheek when she said goodbye.
John’s experience of life, Fanny reasoned, consisted of a constant exposure—ten to twelve hours, six days in the week—to thieves and vagrants; persons who would not hesitate to falsely accuse their sworn comrades or their nearest relations, to save themselves from prison or the gibbet.
Fanny feared such a prolonged, unremitting acquaintance with so much that was disgraceful to humanity, might put her brother in danger of becoming cynical about his fellow creatures, even to the point of corroding the most tender ties of filial affection.
“I think you might write to our mother more frequently, John,” Fanny remonstrated with him gently on this latest reunion of brother and sister. “It is true she is no regular correspondent, but she desires to hear from you more often.”
“If you had a pen in your hand sixty hours in the week, Fan,” was his reply,
