Though there was nothing overt in the manner of Harold Atherstone upon
which she could fasten as showing resentment or offence, yet did Miss
Devereux acknowledge in her secret heart a coolness in the demeanour of
her old friend which troubled her. He was always so kind, so honest, so
considerate. 'Tender and true' expressed her thoughts. She could not
think of his disapproval without regret, even pain. He had a way of
always being in the right, too. On many occasions had they differed in
opinion. She recalled how invariably it had been forced upon her cooler,
juster self that his opinion had been correct from the beginning.
Suppose, she thought to herself, as she leaned out of the window and
watched the stars with strange undefined yearnings, that Harold should
be right this time! He had said nothing, only showed by his manner, by
his countenance, every inflexion of which she knew so well, that he
disliked this increasing intimacy with her cousin. Was it increasing? A
mere half-friendship, founded on curiosity, admiration of the unknown,
upon her own ideal, enveloping him like a costume at a masquerade.
It is possible that this highly important retrospective process might
have proceeded to much greater length and depth of research, that
curiously constructed organ the female heart being full of all manner of
strange corridors, galleries, and shafts, of utterly unknown measure and
limit. But circumstances arose--circumstances which altered the aspect
of affairs--which turned temporarily the maiden's thoughts into far
other channels.
The season being so exceptionally good, the stock and station being
nearly 'able to manage themselves,' as Mr. Gateward expressed it, the
highly original idea of a summer trip, for the benefit of her own and
her daughter's health, suggested itself to the mind of Mrs. Devereux.
'Poor dear! she has been shut up here quite long enough,' said the
loving mother. 'I can't say that she doesn't look well, but a voyage
must benefit her. It will give a change of ideas. It may take away that
restless, discontented feeling which comes to her now so often.'
Thereupon it was decided that they were to go to Sydney, and spend a
fortnight among their friends. Then by steamer to Melbourne. From that
city they would take one of the New Zealand boats, so as to pass a
portion of the summer at the fairy lakes of Rotomahana and the hot
springs of Waiwera--that modern imitation of Paradise.
For this unprecedented step Mrs. Devereux had more than one reason. She
certainly thought it would tend to her darling's mental and bodily
improvement. But that was not all. With womanly quickness sharpened by a
mother's instinct, she had divined that the intimacy between Pollie and
her cousin was slowly but surely coming closer, nearer, perhaps dearer.
Of the probable _denouement_ she had an instinctive dread. 'I don't know
what it is,' she said to herself, 'but I can't altogether put faith in
Bertram. It isn't that I can say anything against him. He is clever,
manly, good-looking in his way. I didn't think so at first. But somehow
I don't seem to be able to know him. He is as great a stranger as the
first day I set eyes upon him. Oh! why can't she take Harold Atherstone,
who is worth half a dozen of him--of any other man I ever saw, except
poor Brian?'
If there was any regret at parting with any one at Corindah, Pollie
availed herself of one of the sex's weapons, and reticently made no
sign. She appeared to be wild with delight at the
sea-change
Into something rich and strange,
which her daily life was presently to undergo. It may be that she
herself was conscious of the slowly increasing power of a fascination
which she was powerless to resist. In its present stage--such is the
curious, contradictory nature of the maiden's heart--she regarded it
with fear and unwillingness.
Thus she caught eagerly at the chance afforded her of a totally new
experience, of the strange environments of a delicious foreign
existence, such as in the future she might never have the chance of
realising under similar conditions. Joyous anticipation seemed to have
taken possession of her mind with a sudden rush, forcibly expelling all
previous sensations.
Bertram Devereux was chagrined at the change of programme. Coldly
self-possessed as usual, however, he betrayed not, by word or manner,
his real feeling on the subject.
'Why don't you go home to England while you are about it, Mrs.
Devereux?' he asked. 'The time would not be so much longer. You have
friends and relations there, and I should be delighted to give you
introductions to some of mine.'
'You are indeed most kind,' said the unsuspecting matron, cordially
grateful; 'but a voyage to England is too serious a matter to be
undertaken lightly. We are doing great things in going to New Zealand
and Melbourne. Nothing would induce me to go a step farther, or to stay
away more than three or four months at the outside.'
'I feel certain that your daughter would enjoy the European travel. It
would be new life to her, and would even benefit you, after your many
anxieties,' continued the tempter suavely. 'There'll be nothing to do
here or to see to for a couple of years, so Gateward says. You could
spare the time well.'
'You seem very anxious to get rid of us,' said the younger lady, with a
pout. 'Some people will think six months a long time to miss us from
Corindah.'
'Can you think _I_ shall not miss you?' returned he, with a sudden
change of tone and expression which thrilled her in a manner for which
she could not account, as he bent his searching, steadfast gaze upon
her. 'But you ought to see the "kingdoms of the world and the glory of
them" now that you have the opportunity. I should follow you, mentally,
all the way.'
Here one of his rare smiles lit up his face, as he gazed at her with the
tenderness one bestows on a child; and again her eyes sank under his,
while a faint flush tinged her snow-fair cheek.
'Mother and I cannot make up our minds to such an expedition as going to
England all at once,' she replied slowly. 'We require to be educated up
to it. Wait until we return from New Zealand, then we will fold our
wings, and perhaps make ready for a longer flight.'
'"Would I were, sweet bird, like thee!"' hummed Mr. Devereux, as he
gracefully declined further controversy. 'Some of these days you will
awake to your privileges, I suppose. We all develop by unmarked changes,
none the less surely, however, as fate decrees.'
Mrs. Devereux grew, indeed, half afraid of the momentous enterprise on
which she was about to enter. Supported, however, by her daughter, she
kept up to the task of packing and providing for departure. This
eventually took the form of being driven to the nearest railway
terminus, a short day's journey, and being deposited in a first-class
carriage, with all their effects in the brake-van, carefully labelled.
The next morning saw them in Sydney, the Sea-Queen of the South,
somewhat nervously excited at being so far from Corindah, so
immeasurably removed from their ordinary life.
'After all,' cried Pollie, as they sat in the balcony of their hotel
after breakfast, and gazed over the matchless sea-lake, gay with boats
of every size and shape, and the argosies of all lands, while beyond lay
the grand eternal mystery of ocean, guarded only by the grim sandstone
portals, against which so many ages of tidal force have foamed and
raged--'after all we make too much of leaving home for a few months'
travel. What wonders and miracles stay-at-home people miss! What human
limpets they are; and how narrow are their paths to enjoyment! "I feel
as if I were in Paradise, in Paradise,"' she warbled. 'Oh, what a change
from our dear old monotonous Corindah!'
'Home is very sweet after all,' said the elder woman, 'though I enjoy
this lovely sea-view. But, my darling, you frighten me by these
expressions of wild delight. It cannot be good for any one to revel in
pleasure, the mere luxurious sensation of change of scene, so intensely,
so passionately as you do. Such feelings are unsafe for women. You
should moderate them, or evil may come to you from these very unchecked
emotions.'
'My darling old mother, I am positively shivering with delight; but why
should this or any other natural impulse be wrong? Surely we are given
these feelings, like the rest of our nature, for wise reasons? Like
speech, laughter, thought, they are unutterable mercies, to be
reasonably used and economised. But I see your meaning, and I will guard
my emotions a little. I must do so when I get to the hot springs Eden,
or I shall be plunging into hot water in mistake for tepid. Fancy a
heroine of romance boiled alive!'
'Don't talk of it, my darling,' said Mrs. Devereux, with a shudder.
'Really, don't you think Melbourne will be quite far enough, and very
pleasant at this time of year? We might leave New Zealand till another
time.'
'Not for worlds,' said the steadfast damsel. 'I want to get a little
nearer to the pole. I shall feel like an Arctic explorer.'
The pleasures of the metropolis, doubly sweet after a lengthened
absence, had been sipped for a fortnight, when a breezy morn saw the
ladies of Corindah steaming out of the harbour on board the _Cathay_, a
magnificent sea-monster of the P. and O. persuasion, containing all
kinds of delicious foreign novelties, social and material.
'Mother, I don't think I can have been really alive before,' exclaimed
Pollie, as they walked down the splendid flush deck. 'I suppose I was
living, but I must have been in a state of torpor, with a few mechanical
senses feebly revolving, as it were. Isn't this unutterably
lovely--quite an eastern fairy-tale in action? Look at those splendidly
ugly Seedees in the engine-room, ghouls and afreets every one; besides,
even the lascars--what classic profiles and lithe, graceful shapes they
have! I feel in love with everybody and everything, down to the Chinese
waiters in spotless white.'
When the heads were cleared, and the strong north-easter sent the
_Cathay_ flying south at the rate of fifteen knots per hour, the motion
was increased and perhaps complicated, whereupon an entirely new class
of sensations succeeded those of rapturous delight in Pollie's case, in
consequence of which a hasty descent into the cabin was rendered
necessary.
The morning, however, brought smoother seas and a less urgent breath
from AEolus. The naturally strong constitution of the girl triumphed over
temporary _malaise_, and soon she was enabled to sit upon deck and enjoy
the brilliant and wondrous succession of sea and shore and sky pageants
unrolled before her.
A full complement of passengers, bound to and from all parts of the
world, had been received on board, so that Pollie's observant eye and
sympathetic mind had full employment as the long rows of chairs became
gradually filled. People for India, _via_ Ceylon; home-returning
officers and civilians having exhausted their furlough; globe-trotters
who had traversed the Australian world from Dan to Beersheba and found
all barren, or 'not half a bad place,' according to the state of their
living or their reception in clubs and coteries; home-returning
Australians, visiting Europe for the first time in their lives, or after
many years; mere intercolonial voyagers like themselves; a successful
gold-digger or two, treating themselves to first-class passages, plain
of aspect, but reserved and correct of manner, as such men generally
are, whatever may be said to the contrary by superficial scribes. After
Pollie had got over her astonished delight at the _Arabian Nights_
portion of the ship, she found a new world of interest and romance
opening before her eyes in the Anglo-Saxon section comprising the
first-class passengers. This was not lessened in any way when, lunch
being announced, she found her mother and herself placed in seats of
honour on the right hand of His Majesty the Captain--such being his
royal command--while the wife of an eminent Indian civilian looked
indignantly and incredulously at them from the opposite side of the
table.
It had leaked out through a Sydney friend of Captain Belmont's that this
was _the_ Mrs. Devereux of Corindah and her daughter, who had taken
their passages in the _Cathay en route_ to New Zealand, persons of
fabulous wealth, girl sole heiress, could not be worth less than a
hundred thousand, besides freehold property, and so on. Now Pollie was
unquestionably the belle of the ship, and persons of prepossessing
appearance were not scarce either; but the slight paleness and languor
produced by her unwonted sensations had given her haughty beauty a tinge
of softness which, when she issued from her cabin, made her positively
irresistible. So the captain, an experienced but susceptible bachelor,
had avowed with many nautical asseverations, and thereupon directed the
purser, a most distinguished individual in uniform, whom Pollie took to
be an admiral at least, to induct them into the place of honour.
When a glass of claret and Selters-water, insisted upon by the captain
as a medical necessity, and some slight refection from the luxuriously
appointed table had revived the spirits of both ladies, Pollie was
enabled to realise her position. Here was she, seated almost upon the
dais in point of social elevation, above the wives and daughters of the
military, civil, and mercantile swells, palpably receiving the most
assiduous attention from the acknowledged autocrat of their _monde_--of
that loftiest, most resistless of despots, that uncrowned king, the
captain of a crack ocean steamer on board his own ship.
Besides his dazzling and unquestioned superiority, Captain Belmont was a
handsome, striking-looking man. Courteous, polished even in manner, he
had the eagle eye, the air of resolute command, with which years of
unquestioned authority invest the sea-king. Prompt, watchful, fearless,
scorning sleep or fatigue when danger menaced, the arbiter of freedom or
imprisonment within his own realm, the guardian of every life so
confidently entrusted to his care--where is the man who to the maiden's
heart, during the long reveries of a sea voyage, so amply fills the
character of a hero of romance as the captain? Who has not marked his
influence in danger's darkest hour, when the moaning wind, rising fast
to the shriek of the tempest, the lurid sky, the labouring bark, and
'the remorseless dash of billows,' all speak to the fear-stricken crowd
of dread endings, of wreck in mid-ocean? In such an hour how does every
eye turn to the calm, resolute seaman, who directs every act, who
foresees the need of every rope that is drawn, of every turn of the
helm! How does every listener hang upon his words and dwell upon his
lightest syllable of hope!
Has no one seen the grateful company of passengers when land was
reached, and, as they deemed, through his skill and vigilance those
lives were saved which, in the hour of deadly peril, he held in the
hollow of his hand--gather around the captain to express such words of
grateful confidence as are seldom yielded to man, the women tearful, the
men pressing to shake his hand with honest friendliness? Such a meeting
took place, after a dangerous voyage, in honour of one who for twenty
years had worthily borne the name of being one of Britain's best and
boldest seamen. And the impression on the mind of one eye-witness was
never effaced.
It was, therefore, a new and intoxicating position in which Miss Pollie
Devereux found herself. The acknowledged object of respectful admiration
to this resplendently heroic character, and on equal terms with all the
other potentates, from the first officer--a magnificent personage, and
second only to the captain in importance--while the rank and file of
passengers stood aloof in timid or cynical survey of the damsel whom the
Ahasuerus of the hour delighted to honour.
Though partially awed by the eminence of their position, Mrs. Devereux,
who had been accustomed in her time to much of respect and
consideration, saw nothing very unusual in their promotion. Pollie
herself was charmed to find herself on equal conversational terms with
such an autocrat. With girlish eagerness she pressed him to tell her of
the dangers he had braved and the wonders he had seen. He, nothing
loath, produced from time to time, in temptingly small quantities,
precious reminiscences of cyclones in the China seas, pirate schooners
in the Spanish Main, slavers in Sierra Leone--for he had been in the
navy--opium clippers, Chinese mail-boats taken by mutineers and never
heard of after, wreck and fire, even all kinds of peril by sea and land
in which he had borne a part; so that Pollie or any other damsel might
be pardoned for feeling a temporary conviction that such a man had gone
through adventures transcending in interest those of the lives of a
hundred mere landsmen--that, were the hero of her choice a sailor, she
would gladly wear out her life in accompanying him in his voyages.
The next day was Sunday. According to custom, the lascar crew turned out
gorgeous in crimson-and-gold scarfs, spotless white robes, and
embroidered turbans, very different from their dingy working garb. After
breakfast, when the captain in full uniform passed close between the
double rank, with the air of Caliph Haroun Al-Raschid, the men lowly
salaaming as if thankful not to be doomed to death on that occasion, it
was a reproduction in the romantic girl's brain of yet another chapter
in the rich traditional glory of the past. Even the Seedees gambolled
uncouthly in strange gaudy raiment, looking like slaves who had found an
opulent and indulgent master. The while Pollie sat in great state on a
cane lounge of honour, with a cushion under her feet and a parasol like
the Queen of Sheba's.
Unfortunately for the permanent enjoyment of these dreamy delights, the
_Cathay_ drove through 'The Rip,' at the entrance to the vast haven at
the farther end of which Melbourne commences, on the morning of the
third day. A short railway transit saw them deposited at the Esplanade
Hotel, where an extended, though not, critically speaking, picturesque
sea-view was afforded to them.
Captain Belmont had, with the dash and rapidity which characterise the
nautical admirer, obtained Mrs. Devereux' consent to join 'a theatre
party' which he had organised. As it happened, an actor of world-wide
reputation was performing a favourite melodrama of his own composition.
This was a chance, he speciously urged, which Miss Devereux should not
be suffered to miss. The promise was made. The captain arrived in due
time and escorted them to the Theatre Royal, where one more process of
art-magic was added to Pollie's collection.
As their open carriage rolled through the wide, straight streets, in
which long rows of lamps glittered on either side, or faded star-like in
the far distance, they were impressed with the utterly different
expression of Melbourne from that of their own fair city by the sea.
'What a wonderful place!' said Pollie, gazing up the great street which
contains all the pleasures and palaces, and is nightly crowded with
their votaries. 'How the lamps glow and shimmer! What a vast size and
almost sombre uniformity in the buildings which line the streets! There
is something weird, too, in the electric lights which create a pale
daylight around those endless colonnades. I feel as if I had been
transported to some city raised by the wand of an enchanter.'
'Not unlike a little sorcery,' said one of the party, 'when you come to
think. There were gum-trees and blacks here "in full blast" half a
century ago. Here we are at the Royal.'
It was a command night. The representative of Her Majesty had signified
his intention of being present. One of the best boxes in the
dress-circle--but two distant from the vice-regal compartment--had been
secured by the forecasting captain. The house was crammed. As the
popular governor and his party entered, the great assemblage rose like
one man to the air of the National Anthem, which aroused Pollie to a
burst of loyal enthusiasm.
'It always brings the tears into my eyes,' she said; 'it looks foolish,
but I cannot help it. Something in the old tune and the reverence with
which our people always greet it stirs my very heart's core. I suppose
these feelings are hereditary.'
'The colonies are wonderfully loyal,' said the captain. 'I never saw
anything like it. You are more English than the English themselves.'
'I hope we shall always remain so,' said Mrs. Devereux, 'though I
believe at home they think we must be essentially different. But the
curtain rises. Now, Pollie!'
It follows, as a thing of course, that the whole party, and more
particularly Pollie, with her sensitive nature, appreciative as well of
the lightest touches of humour as the deeper tones of pathos, were
charmed with the play, which had enthralled London nightly for a whole
year.
When, after the finale, the party adjourned to the carefully appointed
supper which the gallant captain had insisted upon providing--when, amid
the popping of champagne corks, a flow of pleasant criticism and
enjoyable badinage went round--Pollie realised that she was tasting one
of those highly flavoured, almost forbidden pleasures of life which she
had read of, but hardly dared to think of sharing.
'This sort of thing is too good to be true,' she replied to Captain
Belmont, who was expressing his general and particular satisfaction with
'the way things had gone off.' 'There is so much enjoyment that it must
be a little sinful. Don't you think so? I shall wake to-morrow to find
it all a dream; or mother will decide that I am never to go to a theatre
party again.'
The captain murmured that all manner of delights--the joys that
embellish existence--were in her power. She had but to speak the word,
doubtless, and slaves in scores would be at her command, himself among
the number, only too happy to administer to her slightest wish now and
for his whole life after. Here the captain's deep voice faltered, and
his expressive eyes, which had done only too much execution in their
day, were fixed on hers with an ardent, well-nigh magnetic gaze. The
girl trembled involuntarily for a moment, and then laughed lightly, as
she replied, 'Is that out of a play, Captain Belmont? I think I have
heard it somewhere before. But I feel as if we all belonged to the
opera, and that even compliments of that sort chime in with our
condition in life.'
The captain's expression changed to one almost gravely paternal as he
bowed and trusted she might never meet in after life with friends less
sincere than those who would so deeply regret her departure from the
_Cathay_. Then, as Mrs. Devereux made the slightly perceptible movement
which defined the limit of the symposium, they joined the retreat, and
the captain surrendered whatever illusion he may have cherished
concerning his too charming passenger.