Part 21 (1/2)
I can't say I felt sorry for Freya. She was not the sort of girl to take anything tragically. One could feel for her and sympathise with her difficulty, but she seemed equal to any situation. It was rather admiration she extorted by her competent serenity. It was only when Jasper and Heemskirk were together at the bungalow, as it happened now and then, that she felt the strain, and even then it was not for everybody to see. My eyes alone could detect a faint shadow on the radiance of her personality. Once I could not help saying to her appreciatively:
”Upon my word you are wonderful.”
She let it pa.s.s with a faint smile.
”The great thing is to prevent Jasper becoming unreasonable,” she said; and I could see real concern lurking in the quiet depths of her frank eyes gazing straight at me. ”You will help to keep him quiet, won't you?”
”Of course, we must keep him quiet,” I declared, understanding very well the nature of her anxiety. ”He's such a lunatic, too, when he's roused.”
”He is!” she a.s.sented, in a soft tone; for it was our joke to speak of Jasper abusively. ”But I have tamed him a bit. He's quite a good boy now.”
”He would squash Heemskirk like a blackbeetle all the same,” I remarked.
”Rather!” she murmured. ”And that wouldn't do,” she added quickly.
”Imagine the state poor papa would get into. Besides, I mean to be mistress of the dear brig and sail about these seas, not go off wandering ten thousand miles away from here.”
”The sooner you are on board to look after the man and the brig the better,” I said seriously. ”They need you to steady them both a bit. I don't think Jasper will ever get sobered down till he has carried you off from this island. You don't see him when he is away from you, as I do.
He's in a state of perpetual elation which almost frightens me.”
At this she smiled again, and then looked serious. For it could not be unpleasant to her to be told of her power, and she had some sense of her responsibility. She slipped away from me suddenly, because Heemskirk, with old Nelson in attendance at his elbow, was coming up the steps of the verandah. Directly his head came above the level of the floor his ill-natured black eyes shot glances here and there.
”Where's your girl, Nelson?” he asked, in a tone as if every soul in the world belonged to him. And then to me: ”The G.o.ddess has flown, eh?”
Nelson's Cove-as we used to call it-was crowded with s.h.i.+pping that day.
There was first my steamer, then the _Neptun_ gunboat further out, and the _Bonito_, brig, anch.o.r.ed as usual so close insh.o.r.e that it looked as if, with a little skill and judgment, one could shy a hat from the verandah on to her scrupulously holystoned quarter-deck. Her bra.s.ses flashed like gold, her white body-paint had a sheen like a satin robe.
The rake of her varnished spars and the big yards, squared to a hair, gave her a sort of martial elegance. She was a beauty. No wonder that in possession of a craft like that and the promise of a girl like Freya, Jasper lived in a state of perpetual elation fit, perhaps, for the seventh heaven, but not exactly safe in a world like ours.
I remarked politely to Heemskirk that, with three guests in the house, Miss Freya had no doubt domestic matters to attend to. I knew, of course, that she had gone to meet Jasper at a certain cleared spot on the banks of the only stream on Nelson's little island. The commander of the _Neptun_ gave me a dubious black look, and began to make himself at home, flinging his thick, cylindrical carca.s.s into a rocking-chair, and unb.u.t.toning his coat. Old Nelson sat down opposite him in a most una.s.suming manner, staring anxiously with his round eyes and fanning himself with his hat. I tried to make conversation to while the time away; not an easy task with a morose, enamoured Dutchman constantly looking from one door to another and answering one's advances either with a jeer or a grunt.
However, the evening pa.s.sed off all right. Luckily, there is a degree of bliss too intense for elation. Jasper was quiet and concentrated silently in watching Freya. As we went on board our respective s.h.i.+ps I offered to give his brig a tow out next morning. I did it on purpose to get him away at the earliest possible moment. So in the first cold light of the dawn we pa.s.sed by the gunboat lying black and still without a sound in her at the mouth of the gla.s.sy cove. But with tropical swiftness the sun had climbed twice its diameter above the horizon before we had rounded the reef and got abreast of the point. On the biggest boulder there stood Freya, all in white and, in her helmet, like a feminine and martial statue with a rosy face, as I could see very well with my gla.s.ses. She fluttered an expressive handkerchief, and Jasper, running up the main rigging of the white and warlike brig, waved his hat in response. Shortly afterwards we parted, I to the northward and Jasper heading east with a light wind on the quarter, for Banjerma.s.sin and two other ports, I believe it was, that trip.
This peaceful occasion was the last on which I saw all these people a.s.sembled together; the charmingly fresh and resolute Freya, the innocently round-eyed old Nelson, Jasper, keen, long limbed, lean faced, admirably self-contained, in his manner, because inconceivably happy under the eyes of his Freya; all three tall, fair, and blue-eyed in varied shades, and amongst them the swarthy, arrogant, black-haired Dutchman, shorter nearly by a head, and so much thicker than any of them that he seemed to be a creature capable of inflating itself, a grotesque specimen of mankind from some other planet.
The contrast struck me all at once as we stood in the lighted verandah, after rising from the dinner-table. I was fascinated by it for the rest of the evening, and I remember the impression of something funny and ill-omened at the same time in it to this day.
CHAPTER III
A FEW weeks later, coming early one morning into Singapore, from a journey to the southward, I saw the brig lying at anchor in all her usual symmetry and splendour of aspect as though she had been taken out of a gla.s.s case and put delicately into the water that very moment.
She was well out in the roadstead, but I steamed in and took up my habitual berth close in front of the town. Before we had finished breakfast a quarter-master came to tell me that Captain Allen's boat was coming our way.
His smart gig dashed alongside, and in two bounds he was up our accommodation-ladder and shaking me by the hand with his nervous grip, his eyes snapping inquisitively, for he supposed I had called at the Seven Isles group on my way. I reached into my pocket for a nicely folded little note, which he grabbed out of my hand without ceremony and carried off on the bridge to read by himself. After a decent interval I followed him up there, and found him pacing to and fro; for the nature of his emotions made him restless even in his most thoughtful moments.
He shook his head at me triumphantly.
”Well, my dear boy,” he said, ”I shall be counting the days now.”
I understood what he meant. I knew that those young people had settled already on a runaway match without official preliminaries. This was really a logical decision. Old Nelson (or Nielsen) would never have agreed to give up Freya peaceably to this compromising Jasper. Heavens!