Part 32 (1/2)
Then returned the strange and wayward memories of Hayston and his lawless a.s.sociates--the reckless traders, the fierce half-castes, the savage islanders! Again I heard the soft voices of Lalia, Nellie, Kitty of Ebon, and smiled as I recalled their pleading, infantine ways, their flas.h.i.+ng eyes, so eloquent in love or hate. All were gone; all had become phantoms of the past. With that stage and season of my life they had pa.s.sed away--irrevocably, eternally--and now I possessed an incentive to labour, ambition, and self-denial such as I had never before known. With such a companion as Miranda, where was the man who would not have displayed the higher qualities of his nature, who would not have risen to the supremest effort of labour, valour, or self-abnegation? Before Heaven I vowed that night, that neither toil nor trouble, difficulty nor danger, should deter me from the pursuit of fortune and distinction. So pa.s.sed our first day at sea.
With the one that followed the gale abated, and as the _Florentia_ swept southward under easy sail, comfort was restored. The pa.s.sengers settled themselves down to the enjoyment of that absolute rest and pa.s.sive luxuriousness which characterise board-s.h.i.+p life in fine weather. Miss Vavasour and Miranda were soon deep in earnest conversation, both for the time disregarding the books with which they had furnished themselves. Mrs. Craven had devoted herself to an endless task of knitting, which apparently supplied a subst.i.tute for thought, reading, recreation, and conversation.
I was talking to the captain when a lady came up the companion, followed by the colonel, who half lifted, half led a fine little boy of four or five years of age.
”Oh,” said the captain, with a sudden movement towards the new arrivals, ”I see Mrs. Percival has come on deck. Come over and be introduced.” We walked over, and I received a formal bow from a handsome, pale woman, who had evidently been sojourning in the East. There is a certain similarity in all ”Indian women,” as they are generally called, which extends even to manner and expression. Long residence in a hot climate robs them of their roses, while the habit of command, resulting from a.s.sociation with an inferior race, gives them a tinge of hauteur--not to say unconscious insolence of manner--which is scarcely agreeable to those who, from circ.u.mstances, they may deem to be socially inferior.
So it was that Miranda, in spite of Miss Vavasour's nods and signals, received but the faintest recognition, and retreated to her chair somewhat chilled by her reception. She, however, took no apparent notice of the slight, and was soon absorbed in conversation with Miss Vavasour, her brother, and Mrs. Craven, who had moved up her chair to join the party. The colonel deserted his former friends to devote himself to his family duties, while the captain and I walked forward and commenced a discussion which had, at any rate, a strong personal interest for me.
”Now look here, Hilary,” said he, as he lighted a fresh cigar. He had been smoking on the quarter-deck under protest, as it were, and thus commenced: ”Listen to me, my boy! I've been thinking seriously about you and Miranda. Your start in life when you get to Sydney is important. I think I can give you a bit of advice worth following. You understand all the dialects between here and the Line Islands, don't you?”
”More than eight,” I answered; ”I can talk with nearly every islander from here to the Gilberts. I have learned so much, at any rate, in my wanderings.”
”And a very good thing, too, for it's not a thing that can be picked up in a year, no matter how a man may work, and he's useless or nearly so without it; you can keep accounts, write well, and all that?”
I replied that I had a number of peculiar accounts to keep as supercargo to the _Leonora_, as well as all Hayston's business letters to write; that my office books were always considered neat, complete, and well kept. Then he suddenly said, ”You are the very man we want!”
”Who are we, and what is the man wanted for?” I asked.
”For the South Sea Island trade, and no other,” said Captain Carryall, putting his hand on my shoulder. ”Old Paul Frankston (you've heard of him) and I have laid it out to establish a regular mercantile house in Sydney for the development of the island trade. The old man will back us, and the name of Paul Frankston is good from New Zealand to the North Pole and back again. I will do the whaling, cruising, and cargo business--cocoa-nut oil, copra, and curios--while you will live in one of those nice white houses at North Sh.o.r.e, somewhere about Neutral Bay, where you can see the s.h.i.+ps come through the Heads; Miranda can have a skiff, and you a ten-tonner, so as not to forget your boating and your sea-legs. What do you think of that, eh?”
”It is a splendid idea!” I cried, ”and poor Miranda will be within sound of the sea. If she were not, she would pine away like her own araucarias which will not live outside of the wave music. But how about the cash part of it? I haven't much. Most of my savings went down in the _Leonora_.”
”Oh, we'll manage that somehow! Old Paul will work that part of the arrangement. I daresay your father will advance what will make your share equal, or nearly so, to ours.”
”It sounds well,” I said. ”With partners like Mr. Frankston and yourself a man ought to be able to do something. I know almost every island where trade can be got, and the price to a cowrie that should be paid. There ought to be a fortune in it in five years. What a pity Hayston couldn't have had such a chance.”
”He'd have had the cash, and the other partners the experience, in less than that time,” said the captain, smiling sardonically. ”He was a first-rate organiser if he had not been such a d--d scoundrel. He had some fine qualities, I allow; as a seaman he had no equal. In the good old fighting days he would have been a splendid robber baron. But in these modern times, where there is a trifle of law and order in most countries, even in the South Seas he was out of place.”
”He was far from a model mariner,” I said, ”but it hurts me to hear him condemned. He had splendid points in his character, and no one but myself will ever know how much good there was mixed up with his recklessness and despair. I left him, but I couldn't help being fond of him to the last.”
”It was a good thing for you that you did--a very good thing. You will live to be thankful for it. He was a dangerous beggar, and neither man nor woman could escape his fascination. However, that's all past and gone now. You're married and settled, remember, and you're to be Hilary Telfer, Esq., J.P., and all the rest of it directly, and the only sea-going business you can have for the future is to be Commodore of the Neutral Bay Yacht Club, or some such t.i.tle and distinction. And now I've done for the present. You go and see what Miranda thinks of it. I won't agree to anything unless she consents.”
Miranda was charmed with the idea of a mercantile marine enterprise, so much in accordance with her previous habits and experiences. The added inducement of living on the sea-sh.o.r.e, with a boat, a jetty, and a bathing-house, decided her. She implicitly believed in Captain Carryall's power and ability to make our fortune; was also certain that, with Mr. Frankston's commercial aid, we should soon be as rich as the Guldensterns, the Rothschilds of the Pacific. She surrendered herself thereupon to a dream of bliss, alloyed only at intervals by a tinge of apprehension that the great undiscovered country of Sydney society might prove hostile or indifferent.
So much she communicated to Miss Vavasour as she and Mrs. Craven were reclining side by side on their deck chairs, while the _Florentia_ was gliding along on another day all suns.h.i.+ne, azure, and favouring breeze.
”Don't you be afraid, my dear,” said the kind-hearted Mrs. Craven, ”you and your husband are quite able to hold your own in Sydney society or any other; indeed, I shall be inclined to bet that you'd be the rage rather than otherwise. I wish I had you in Northamptons.h.i.+re, I'd undertake to 'knock out' (as Charlie says) the local belles in a fortnight.”
Miranda laughed the childishly happy laugh of unspoiled girlhood. ”Dear Mrs. Craven, how good of you to say so; but, of course, I know I'm a sort of savage, who will improve in a year or two if every one is as kind as you and Miss Vavasour here; but suppose they should be like her,” and she motioned towards Mrs. Percival.
This lady had never relaxed the coldness and hauteur towards Miranda and myself. She had been unable to modify her ”Indian manner,” as Captain Carryall and Mr. Vavasour called it, and about which they made daily jokes.
As she pa.s.sed the little group, she bowed slightly and without relaxation of feature, going forward to the waist of the s.h.i.+p, where she sat down and was soon absorbed in a book. The three friends smiled at each other, and continued their conversation.
”I should like to dress you for a garden-party, Miranda,” said Miss Vavasour; ”let me see now, a real summer day, such as we sometimes get in dear old England--not like this one perhaps, but very nice. A lovely old manor house like Gravenhurst or Hunsdon--such a lawn, such old trees, such a river, a marquee under an elm a hundred years old, and the county magnates marching in from their carriages.”
”Oh, how delicious!” cried Miranda. ”I have read such descriptions in books, but you--oh, how happy you must be to have lived it all!”
”It's very nice, but as to the happiness, that doesn't always follow,”