ROCKED IN THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP.
Late in the evening when the sea was lit up with a young moon, Mr.
Brion, having given them a great deal of serious advice concerning
their money and other business affairs, escorted our three girls to
the little jetty where the steamer that called in once a week lay at
her moorings, ready to start for Melbourne and intermediate ports
at five o'clock next morning. The old lawyer was a spare, grave,
gentlemanly-looking old man, and as much a gentleman as he looked, with
the kindest heart in the world when you could get at it: a man who
was esteemed and respected, to use the language of the local paper,
by all his fellow-townsmen, whether friends or foes. They Anglicised
his name in speaking it, and they wrote it "Bryan" far more often than
not, though nothing enraged him more than to have his precious vowels
tampered with; but they liked him so much that they never cast it up to
him that he was a Frenchman.
This good old man, chivalrous as any paladin, in his shy and secret
way, always anxious to hide his generous emotions, as the traditional
Frenchman is anxious to display them, had done a father's part by
our young orphans since their own father had left them so strangely
desolate. Sam Dunn had compassed them with sweet observances, as we
have seen; but Sam was powerless to unravel the web of difficulties,
legal and otherwise, in which Mr. King's death had plunged them. Mr.
Brion had done all this, and a great deal more that nobody knew of,
to protect the girls and their interests at a critical juncture, and
to give them a fair and clear start on their own account. And in the
process of thus serving them he had become very much attached to them
in his old-fashioned, reticent way; and he did not at all like having
to let them go away alone in this lonely-looking night.
"But Paul will be there to meet you," he said, for the twentieth time,
laying his hand over Elizabeth's, which rested on his arm. "You may
trust to Paul--as soon as the boat is telegraphed he will come to meet
you--he will see to everything that is necessary--you will have no
bother at all. And, my dear, remember what I say--let the boy advise
you for a little while. Let him take care of you, and imagine it is
I. You may trust him as absolutely as you trust me, and he will not
presume upon your confidence, believe me. He is not like the young men
of the country," added Paul's father, putting a little extra stiffness
into his upright figure. "No, no--he is quite different."
"I think you have instructed us so fully, dear Mr. Brion, that we shall
get along very well without having to trouble Mr. Paul," interposed
Patty, in her clear, quick way, speaking from a little distance.
The steamer, with her lamps lit, was all in a clatter and bustle,
taking in passengers and cargo. Sam Dunn was on board, having seen the
boxes stowed away safely; and he came forward to say good-bye to his
young ladies before driving his cart home.
"I'll miss ye," said the brawny fisherman, with savage tenderness; "and
the missus'll miss ye. Darned if we shall know the place with you gone
out of it. Many's the dark night the light o' your winders has been
better'n the lighthouse to show me the way home."
He pointed to the great headland lying, it seemed now, so far, far
off, ghostly as a cloud. And presently he went away; and they could
hear him, as he drove back along the jetty, cursing his old horse--to
which he was as much attached as if it had been a human friend--with
blood-curdling ferocity.
Mr. Brion stayed with them until it seemed improper to stay any
longer--until all the passengers that were to come on board had housed
themselves for the night, and all the baggage had been snugly stowed
away--and then bade them good-bye, with less outward emotion than Sam
had displayed, but with almost as keen a pang.
"God bless you, my dears," said he, with paternal solemnity. "Take care
of yourselves, and let Paul do what he can for you. I will send you
your money every quarter, and you must keep accounts--keep accounts
strictly. And ask Paul what you want to know. Then you will get along
all right, please God."
"O yes, we shall get along all right," repeated Patty, whose sturdy
optimism never failed her in the most trying moments.
But when the old man was gone, and they stood on the tiny slip of deck
that was available to stand on, feeling no necessity to cling to the
railings as the little vessel heaved up and down in the wash of the
tide that swirled amongst the piers of the jetty--when they looked at
the lights of the town sprinkled round the shore and up the hillsides,
at their own distant headland, unlighted, except by the white haze of
the moon, at the now deserted jetty, and the apparently illimitable
sea--when they realised for the first time that they were alone in this
great and unknown world--even Patty's bold heart was inclined to sink a
little.
"Elizabeth," she said, "we _must_ not cry--it is absurd. What is there
to cry for? Now, all the things we have been dreaming and longing for
are going to happen--the story is beginning. Let us go to bed and get
a good sleep before the steamer starts so that we are fresh in the
morning--so that we don't lose anything. Come, Nelly, let us see if
poor Dan is comfortable, and have some supper and go to bed."
They cheered themselves with the sandwiches and the gooseberry wine
that Mr. Brion's housekeeper had put up for them, paid a visit to Dan,
who was in charge of an amiable cook (whom the old lawyer had tipped
handsomely), and then faced the dangers and difficulties of getting
to bed. Descending the brass-bound staircase to the lower regions,
they paused, their faces flushed up, and they looked at each other as
if the scene before them was something unfit for the eyes of modest
girls. They were shocked, as by some specific impropriety, at the
noise and confusion, the rough jostling and the impure atmosphere,
in the morsel of a ladies' cabin, from which the tiny slips of bunks
prepared for them were divided only by a scanty curtain. This was their
first contact with the world, so to speak, and they fled from it. To
spend a night in that suffocating hole, with those loud women their
fellow passengers, was a too appalling prospect. So Elizabeth went to
the captain, who knew their story, and admired their faces, and was
inclined to be very kind to them, and asked his permission to occupy
a retired corner of the deck. On his seeming to hesitate--they being
desperately anxious not to give anybody any trouble--they assured him
that the place above all others where they would like to make their bed
was on the wedge-shaped platform in the bows, where they would be out
of everybody's way.
"But, my dear young lady, there is no railing there," said the captain,
laughing at the proposal as a joke.
"A good eight inches--ten inches," said Elizabeth. "Quite enough for
anybody in the roughest sea."
"For a sailor perhaps, but not for young ladies who get giddy and
frightened and seasick. Supposing you tumbled off in the dark, and I
found you gone when I came to look for you in the morning."
"_We_ tumble off!" cried Eleanor. "We never tumbled off anything
in our lives. We have lived on the cliffs like the goats and the
gulls--nothing makes us giddy. And I don't think anything will make us
seasick--or frightened either."
"Certainly not frightened," said Patty.
He let them have their way--taking a great many (as they thought)
perfectly unnecessary precautions in fixing up their quarters in case
of a rough sea--and himself carried out their old opossum rug and an
armful of pillows to make their nest comfortable. So, in this quiet
and breezy bedchamber, roofed over by the moonlit sky, they lay down
with much satisfaction in each other's arms, unwatched and unmolested,
as they loved to be, save by the faithful Dan Tucker, who found his
way to their feet in the course of the night. And the steamer left her
moorings and worked out of the bay into the open ocean, puffing and
clattering, and danced up and down over the long waves, and they knew
nothing about it. In the fresh air, with the familiar voice of the sea
around them, they slept soundly under the opossum rug until the sun was
high.