_Polonius_. What treasure had he, my lord?
_Hamlet_. Why,
“One fair daughter and no more,
The which he loved passing well.”
O my old friend, thy face is valanced since I saw thee last.... What,
my young lady and mistress! By'r lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven
than when I saw you last.... You are all welcome.--_Hamlet._
|HOWEVER varying, indefinite, and objectless the thoughts of Daireen
Gerald may have been--and they certainly were--during the earlier days
of the voyage, they were undoubtedly fixed and steadfast during the last
week. She knew that she could not hear anything of her father until she
would arrive at the Cape, and so she had allowed herself to be buoyed up
by the hopeful conversation of the major and Mrs. Crawford, who seemed
to think of her meeting with her father as a matter of certainty, and by
the various little excitements of every day. But now when she knew that
upon what the next few days would bring forth all the happiness of her
future life depended, what thought--what prayer but one, could she have?
She was certainly not good company during these final days. Mr. Harwood
never got a word from her. Mr. Glaston did not make the attempt, though
he attributed her silence to remorse at having neglected his artistic
instructions. Major Crawford's gallantries received no smiling
recognition from her; and Mrs. Crawford's most motherly pieces of pathos
went by unheeded so far as Daireen was concerned.
What on earth was the matter, Mrs. Crawford thought; could it be
possible that her worst fears were realised? she asked herself; and
she made a vow that even if Mr. Harwood had spoken a single word on the
subject of affection to Daireen, he should forfeit her own friendship
for ever.
“My dear Daireen,” she said, two days after leaving St. Helena, “you
know I love you as a daughter, and I have come to feel for you as
a mother might. I know something is the matter--what is it? you may
confide in me; indeed you may.”
“How good you are!” said the child of this adoption; “how very good! You
know all that is the matter, though you have in your kindness prevented
me from feeling it hitherto.”
“Good gracious, Daireen, you frighten me! No one can have been speaking
to you surely, while I am your guardian----”
“You know what a wretched doubt there is in my mind now that I know
a few days will tell me all that can be told--you know the terrible
question that comes to me every day--every hour--shall I see him?--shall
he be--alive?”
Even the young men, with no touches of motherly pathos about them, had
appreciated the girl's feelings in those days more readily than Mrs.
Crawford.
“My poor dear little thing,” she now said, fondling her in a way whose
soothing effect the combined efforts of all the young men could never
have approached. “Don't let the doubt enter your mind for an instant--it
positively must not. Your father is as well as I am to-day, I can assure
you. Can you disbelieve me? I know him a great deal better than you do;
and I know the Cape climate better than you do. Nonsense, my dear, no
one ever dies at the Cape--at least not when they go there to recover.
Now make your mind easy for the next three days.”
But for just this interval poor Daireen's mind was in a state of
anything but repose.
During the last night the steamer would be on the voyage she found it
utterly impossible to go to sleep. She heard all of the bells struck
from watch to watch. Her cabin became stifling to her though a cool
breeze was passing through the opened port. She rose, dressed herself,
and went on deck though it was about two o'clock in the morning. It
was a terrible thing for a girl to do, but nothing could have prevented
Daireen's taking that step. She stood just outside the door of the
companion, and in the moonlight and soft air of the sea more ease of
mind came to her than she had yet felt on this voyage.
While she stood there in the moonlight listening to the even whisperings
of the water as it parted away before the ship, and to the fitful
flights of the winged fish, she seemed to hear some order as she
thought, given from the forward part of the vessel. In another minute
the officer on watch hastened past her. She heard him knock at the
captain's cabin which was just aft of the deck-house, and make the
report.
“Fixed light right ahead, sir.”
She knew then that the first glimpse of the land which they were
approaching had been obtained, and her anxiety gave place to peace. That
message of the light seemed to be ominous of good to her. She returned
to her cabin, and found it cool and tranquil, so that she fell asleep at
once; and when she next opened her eyes she saw a tall man standing with
folded arms beside her, gazing at her. She gave but one little cry, and
then that long drooping moustache of his was down upon her face and her
bare arms were about his neck.
“Thank you, thank you, Dolly; that is a sufficiently close escape from
strangulation to make me respect your powers,” said the man; and at the
sound of his voice Daireen turned her face to her pillow, while the man
shook out with spasmodic fingers his handkerchief from its folds and
endeavoured to repair the injury done to his moustache by the girl's
embrace.
“Now, now, my Dolly,” he said, after some convulsive mutterings which
Daireen could, of course, not hear; “now, now, don't you think it might
be as well to think of making some apology for your laziness instead of
trying to go asleep again?”
Then she looked up with wondering eyes.
“I don't understand anything at all,” she cried. “How could I go asleep
when we were within four hours of the Cape? How could any one be so
cruel as to let me sleep so dreadfully? It was wicked of me: it was
quite wicked.”
“There's not the least question about the enormity of the crime,
I'm afraid,” he answered; “only I think that Mrs. Crawford may be
responsible for a good deal of it, if her confession to me is to be
depended upon. She told me how you were--but never mind, I am the
ill-treated one in the matter, and I forgive you all.”
“And we have actually been brought into the dock?”
“For the past half-hour, my love; and I have been waiting for much
longer. I got the telegram you sent to me, by the last mail from
Madeira, so that I have been on the lookout for the _Cardwell Castle_
for a week. Now don't be too hard on an old boy, Dolly, with all of
those questions I see on your lips. Here, I'll take them in the lump,
and think over them as I get through a glass of brandy-and-water with
Jack Crawford and the Sylph--by George, to think of your meeting with
the poor old hearty Sylph--ah, I forgot you never heard that we used to
call Mrs. Crawford the Sylph at our station before you were born. There,
now I have got all your questions, my darling--my own darling little
Dolly.”
She only gave him a little hug this time, and he hastened up to the
deck, where Mrs. Crawford and her husband were waiting for him.
“Now, did I say anything more of her than was the truth, George?” cried
Mrs. Crawford, so soon as Colonel Gerald got on deck.
But Colonel Gerald smiled at her abstractedly and pulled fiercely at the
ends of his moustache. Then seeing Mr. Harwood at the other side of
the skylight, he ran and shook hands with him warmly; and Harwood,
who fancied he understood something of the theory of the expression of
emotion in mankind, refrained from hinting to the colonel that they had
already had a chat together since the steamer had come into dock.
Mrs. Crawford, however, was not particularly well pleased to find that
her old friend George Gerald had only answered her with that vague
smile, which implied nothing; she knew that he had been speaking for
half an hour before with Harwood, from whom he had heard the first
intelligence of his appointment to the Castaway group. When Colonel
Gerald, however, went the length of rushing up to Doctor Campion
and violently shaking hands with him also, though they had been in
conversation together before, the lady began to fear that the attack of
fever from which it was reported Daireen's father had been suffering had
left its traces upon him still.
“Rather rum, by gad,” said the major, when his attention was called
to his old comrade's behaviour. “Just like the way a boy would behave
visiting his grandmother, isn't it? Looks as if he were working off his
feelings, doesn't it? By gad, he's going back to Harwood!”
“I thought he would,” said Mrs. Crawford. “Harwood can tell him all
about his appointment. That's what George, like all the rest of them
nowadays, is anxious about. He forgets his child--he has no interest in
her, I see.”
“That's devilish bad, Kate, devilish bad! by Jingo! But upon my soul,
I was under the impression that his wildness just now was the effect of
having been below with the kid.”
“If he had the least concern about her, would he not come to me, when he
knows very well that I could tell him all about the voyage? But no, he
prefers to remain by the side of the special correspondent.”
“No, he doesn't; here he comes, and hang me if he isn't going to shake
hands with both of us!” cried the major, as Colonel Gerald, recognising
him, apparently for the first time, left Harwood's side and hastened
across the deck with extended hand.
“George, dear old George,” said Mrs. Crawford, reflecting upon the
advantages usually attributed to the conciliatory method of
treatment. “Isn't it like the old time come back again? Here we stand
together--Jack, Campion, yourself and myself, just as we used to be
in--ah, it cannot have been '58!--yes, it was, good gracious, '58! It
seems like a dream.”
“Exactly like a dream, by Jingo, my dear,” said the major pensively, for
he was thinking what an auxiliary to the realistic effect of the scene a
glass of brandy-and-water, or some other Indian cooling drink, would be.
“Just like a vision, you know, George, isn't it? So if you'll come
to the smoking-room, we'll have that light breakfast we were talking
about.”
“He won't go, major,” said the lady severely.
“He wishes to have a talk with me about the dear child. Don't you,
George?”
“And about your dear self, Kate,” replied Colonel Gerald, in the
Irish way that brought back to the lady still more vividly all the old
memories of the happy station on the Himalayas.
“Ah, how like George that, isn't it?” she whispered to her husband.
“My dear girl, don't be a tool,” was the parting request of the major as
he strolled off to where the doctor was, he knew, waiting for some sign
that the brandy and water were amalgamating.
“I'm glad that we are alone, George,” said Mrs. Crawford, taking Colonel
Gerald's arm. “We can talk together freely about the child--about
Daireen.”
“And what have we to say about her, Kate? Can you give me any hints
about her temper, eh? How she needs to be managed, and that sort of
thing? You used to be capital at that long ago.”
“And I flatter myself that I can still tell all about a girl after a
single glance; but, my dear George, I never indeed knew what a truly
perfect nature was until I came to understand Daireen. She is an angel,
George.”
“No,” said the colonel gently; “not Daireen--she is not the angel; but
her face, when I saw it just now upon its pillow, sent back all my soul
in thought of one--one who is--who always was an angel--my good angel.”
“That was my first thought too,” said Mrs. Crawford. “And her nature is
the same. Only poor Daireen errs on the side of good nature. She is a
child in her simplicity of thought about every one she meets. She wants
some one near her who will be able to guide her tastes in--in--well,
in different matters. By the way, you remember Austin Glaston, who was
chaplain for a while on the _Telemachus_, and who got made Bishop of the
Salamanders; well, that is his son, that tall handsome youngman--I must
present you. He is one of the most distinguished men I ever met.”
“Ah, indeed? Does he write for a newspaper?”
“Oh, George, I am ashamed of you. No, Mr. Glaston is a--a--an artist and
a poet, and--well, he does nearly everything much better than any one
else, and if you take my advice you will give him an invitation to
dinner, and then you will find out all.”
Before Colonel Gerald could utter a word he was brought face to face
with Mr. Glaston, and felt his grasp responded to by a gentle pressure.
“I'm very glad to meet you, Mr. Glaston; your father and I were old
friends. If you are staying at Cape Town, I hope you will not neglect to
call upon my daughter and myself,” said the colonel.
“You are extremely kind,” returned the young man: “I shall be
delighted.”
Thus Daireen on coming on deck found her father in conversation with
Mr. Glaston, and already acquainted with every member of Mrs. Crawford's
circle.
“Mr. Glaston has just promised to pay you a visit on shore, my dear,”
said the major's wife, as she came up.
“How very kind,” said Daireen. “But can he tell me where I live ashore,
for no one has thought fit to let me know anything about myself. I will
never forgive you, Mrs. Crawford, for ordering that I was not to be
awakened this morning. It was too cruel.”
“Only to be kind, dear; I knew what a state of nervousness you were in.”
“And now of course,” continued the girl, “when I come on deck all the
news will have been told--even that secret about the Castaway Islands.”
“Heavens':” said the colonel, “what about the Castaway Islands? Have
they been submerged, or have they thrown off the British yoke already?”
“I see you know all,” she said mournfully, “and I had treasured up all
that Mr. Harwood said no one in the world but himself knew, to be the
first to tell you. And now, too, you know every one aboard except--ah,
I have my secret to tell at last. There he stands, and even you don't
remember him, papa. Come here, Standish, and let me present you.
This, papa, is Standish Macnamara, and he is coming out with us now to
wherever we are to live.”
“Good gracious, Daireen!” cried Mrs. Crawford.
“What, Standish, Prince of Innishdermot!” said the colonel. “My dear
boy, I am delighted to welcome you to this strange place. I remember you
when your curls were a good deal longer, my boy.”
Poor Standish, who was no longer in his sailor's jacket, but in the best
attire his Dublin tailor could provide, blushed most painfully as every
one gazed at him--every one with the exception of Daireen, who was
gazing anxiously around the deck as though she expected to see some one
still.
“This is certainly a secret,” murmured Mrs. Crawford.
“Now, Daireen, to the shore,” said Colonel Gerald. “You need not say
good-bye to any one here. Mrs. Crawford will be out to dine with us
to-morrow. She will bring the major and Doctor Campion, and Mr. Harwood
says he will ride one of my horses till he gets his own. So there need
be no tears. My man will look after the luggage while I drive you out.”
“I must get my bag from my cabin,” Daireen said, going slowly towards
the companion. In a few moments she reappeared with her dressing-bag,
and gave another searching glance around the deck.
“Now,” she said, “I am ready.”