All the Days of My Life: An Autobiography. Amelia E. Barr
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to guard your English citizenship. I have none to guard. It makes no difference to me where I live.”
“My citizenship is yours.”
“Oh, no! I do not exercise any of your citizenship rights, and they do not protect me.”
“I exercise them for you.”
“Well and good, but I am glad you do not eat, and drink, and sleep for me, and I would not like you to dream for me. You would not likely tell me the whole dream.”
“Now you are cross, Milly, and I will go to sleep.”
But I lay long awake, and felt anew, all through the silent hours, the horror and terror of that prophetic dream. For I need hardly remind my readers, that it was awfully verified in the unspeakable atrocities of the Sepoy rebellion, barely two years afterwards. And I do not believe Robert slept, but he could not endure allusions to the wrongs of women—a subject then beginning to find a voice here and there, among English women “who dared.”
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CHAPTER X
PASSENGERS FOR NEW YORK
“The bud comes back to summer,
And the blossom to the bee,
But I’ll win back—O never,
To my ain countree!
“But I am leal to heaven,
Where soon I hope to be,
And there I’ll meet the loved,
From my ain countree!”
Events that are predestined require but little management. They manage themselves. They slip into place while we sleep, and suddenly we are aware that the thing we fear to attempt, is already accomplished. It was somewhat in this way, all our preparations for America were finished. We did not speak of our intentions to any one, neither did we try to conceal them, excepting in the case already mentioned. But somehow they went forward, and that with all the certainty of appointed things.
A month after Mother left us, Robert brought home one day the tickets for our passage from Liverpool to New York, in the steamship Atlantic, then the finest boat sailing between the two ports. “You have now, Milly,” he said, “nearly four weeks to prepare for our new life. We shall sail on the twentieth of August”; and his face was glad, and his voice full of pleasure.
“And what of your preparations, Robert?” I asked.
“They go well with me. I have today made an arrangement for the closing up of my business on the twenty-second of August. And that day Forbes takes possession. He will sell my stock, and pay all I owe, which, thank God, is not much! Mother and Jessy will be in Arran; we shall be on the Atlantic. 127 I shall have all I love and all I possess with me, and I will cast these last miserable two years out of my memory forever.”
“But, Robert,” I asked timidly, “have you money enough for such a change?”
“Quite sufficient. Donald’s legacy has turned out much better than I dared to hope. A syndicate has bought the land for building purposes. I expected three thousand pounds for it; they have paid me five thousand, and I have already transmitted it to the Bank of New York. Next,” he continued, “I will sell this furniture, and we will take the proceeds with us.”
“But we must get rid of Kitty first,” I answered. “If Kitty saw an article leave the house, she would write to your mother, and she, with David and Jessy, would be here by the next boat.”
“Listen!” he replied, with a confident smile. “On Monday, the fifteenth, you will tell Kitty that you and the children are going to Kendal. Let her help you pack your trunk, give her a sovereign, and bid her take a month’s holiday. She will be glad enough to get away. On Tuesday morning let her go to the Kendal train with you, bid her good-bye there, and advise her to take the next train for Greenock, from which place she can easily get passage to Campbeltown. She will not hurry out of Greenock, if she has money, and it may be two weeks before she sees Mother.”
“I shall reach Kendal on Tuesday afternoon, and you, Robert, when?”
“I will come for you on Thursday. On Friday we will go to Manchester, stay all night there, as you wish to see your sister, and early on Saturday morning take the train for Liverpool. The Atlantic sails about four in the afternoon; do you understand?”
“Yes, I understand what I am to do. What are your own plans?”
“As soon as you have left on Tuesday morning, I will bring home the large packing cases already ordered. These I will fill with our personal belongings, which you must quietly place in your own wardrobe, and the drawers and presses in the spare room. The boxes are very large, and you need not deny yourself anything that is comfortable, or dear to you.”
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“I know the boxes; I have seen them.”
“Impossible! They are not yet made.”
“I saw them last night. They were of rough, unpainted wood, and very large, and, as I looked, a man came in and soldered thin iron bands around them.”
“Upon my soul, Amelia, what do you mean!”
“What I say. They were standing in this room.”
“You dreamed this?”
“Yes. Then I saw you, and the children, and we were on a ship sailing up a wide river, and we passed an island with many drooping willow trees close by the water side, and southward there were the outlines of a great city before me, and I knew the city was New York.”
“It is no wonder you dream of New York. You think and read and talk of it so much. But the packing cases, and the man soldering on the thin iron bands! That puzzles me. I never told you anything about them.”
“No, you never told me, but Some One who knew all about them, showed them to me. After you have packed the boxes on Tuesday, what then?”
“I shall go with them to Liverpool. A steamer leaving here on Tuesday night is in Liverpool Wednesday morning. A dray will take them to the Atlantic’s pier, and put them with her freight, after which duty done, I will start at once for Kendal. I may be there on Wednesday night, but allow something for detentions, and say some time Thursday.”
Robert’s plans appeared to be well considered and not difficult to carry out, and I began that day to go through my girlhood’s treasures, choosing some and leaving others. And, when Kitty was out marketing or walking with Mary I placed them ready for the big packing cases, that I knew were coming for them. Was I happy while thus busy? No. I knew that I was on the road appointed me to travel, but it was a new road, and a far distant one from the father and mother and sisters I loved so sincerely. Nor was I a woman who liked change and adventure. My strongest instincts were for home, and home pleasures, and the tearing to pieces of the beautiful home given me with so much love was a great trial. But to have shown this 129 feeling might have saddened and discouraged Robert. In those days I was learning some of the hardest lessons wives have to become acquainted with, notably, to affect pleasure and satisfaction, when they are not pleased and satisfied; to hold up another’s heart, while their own heart faints within them; to give so lavishly of their vitality, hope, and confidence that they themselves are left prostrate; and yet, to smilingly say, “It is only a little headache,” and to make no complaint of their individual loves and losses, lest they should dash the courage or cool the enthusiasm of the one who, at all costs, must be encouraged and supported.
For I did not forget that all Robert’s energies at this time were required for one end and object, and that the smaller asides of individual feelings must not be allowed to interfere with that purpose. So I made no remark about the sale of