AT THE LIVERPOOL END
Now, Godfrey O'Neill, deceased, was a man who at various times in his
life had extracted from West Africa very considerable sums of money.
He was shrewd, he was popular, he had the knack of resisting sickly
climates, and he knew the possibilities of the Oil Rivers seaboard down
to the last bag of kernels.
According to his own account he had started life as a ship's purser.
People who were more fond of accuracy mentioned that as a matter of
history he had first gone as cabin-boy in a palm oil brig. But be that
as it may, he had been associated with the Coast from his earliest
days, and at the age of five-and-twenty was trading there on his own
account.
At first he stuck to an old trading hulk with moorings in the muddy
Monk River and battled with its swarms of cockroaches and got together
a business; but by degrees he gained the confidence of the native
riparian magnates, and by the time he was thirty he had built on piles
a fine set of factory buildings on the bank, had bought a treaty with
the then King of Okky, and had built another factory at Malla-Nulla in
spite of the fact that the beach there was one of the most surf-smitten
on the Coast. After that he felt that his Liverpool correspondents
were getting more than their due share of his hard-wrung profits, and
so he put the Coast factories under managers and came back to the
Mersey. And thereafter, with occasional visits to the Coast and the
Islands, he made Liverpool his headquarters.
He had an office in Water Street, a warehouse near Huskisson Dock, and
a house furnished with mid-Victorian solidity and ugliness out at
Princes' Park. A sister, Mrs. Craven, whose unsatisfactory husband had
conveniently died on the Coast, kept house for him, and as she voted
marriage a failure, Godfrey professed himself as quite ready to take
her verdict and was not anxious to dabble in dangerous experiments.
Finally, as Godfrey O'Neill discovered, after a two years' trial of the
style of living that suited him at Princes' Park, that it cost him just
£900 a year, he saw very little use in bestirring himself to earn more.
He quite admitted that there were other luxuries in the world that he
did not indulge in. He might have kept horses, for instance; but he
happened to dislike them. He might have had a French chef; only plain
roast beef and plain roast mutton appealed more to his appetite, and a
plain British cook at £20 a year produced these exactly to his taste.
He might have had a larger house, but frankly he did not want one.
So he went down to the office in Water Street every other day, and
ceased to stir the business there when it showed any signs of averaging
a more than £1,500 profit for any one year, not because he objected to
additional wealth, but because he far preferred to play whist to
pursuing money. One may here own freely that Godfrey O'Neill was an
active member of no less than five whist quartettes which met at clubs
and houses, and there was the amusement which after long search he had
discovered pleased him best.
In the comfortable ugly house in Princes' Park, besides Godfrey and
Mrs. Craven, and the two servants, there was a child who afterwards
developed into the Kate O'Neill of these memoirs. Godfrey O'Neill
brought her home on the last visit he made to West Africa. She was
then aged, at a theoretical reckoning, three years, and she was more
fluent in the Okky tongue than in English. She had never worn shoes
till Godfrey bought her a pair in Las Palmas on the voyage home.
"Is she white?" Mrs. Craven had asked.
"White, clean through," Godfrey had assured her.
"Then who are her people?"
"That I shall not tell even you. Her mother is dead. Her father has
gone under. He was a very clever man once, though I must say he used
to be more high and mighty than I cared about on the rare occasions
that I met him. But, as I say, he's gone under, hopelessly."
"And presently," said Mrs. Craven, "when we get this little wild thing
tamed, and clothed, and teach her to speak English and go to church, up
will come some drunken reprobate to take her away again."
"No, he won't. I've fixed that. He'll never claim her again. To
start with he doesn't know if she's in England, or Canada, or Grand
Canary. I even changed the name he called her by. I called her Kate
from the day I left him, and had her christened by that name in Sierra
Leone on the off chance she hadn't been christened before. And to go
on with, he gave me his word of honor that if I took her away, he'd
never embarrass me by inquiring for her again. You see, he was living
as a native, and the child was running about with the other
pickaninnies in the village, and I guess I made him pretty well ashamed
of himself by what I said. The mother's dead, you know."
"Poof," said Mrs. Craven, "he promised you, did he? And what do you
suppose the word of a man like that is worth?" (The late Craven had,
it will be remembered, his strong failings.)
"Ninety-nine beach combers out of a hundred will lie as soon as look at
you," Godfrey owned. "This one is the exception. He will keep his
word, at any rate on this matter. He's just as proud as a king."
"Between drinks," suggested the widow.
"He's more objectionably proud drunk than sober. He always quotes
Latin at one when he's full, and then says, 'Ah, but you've not been to
school anywhere, so you'll not understand that.' You needn't be
frightened he'll call here, Jane. Just remember I'm a man with a taste
for ease myself. If I'd thought there was the smallest chance of being
bothered with him, I shouldn't have saddled myself with the kid."
"Well," said Mrs. Craven, "as you have brought her, I suppose we must
do the best we can for her. The average orphanage doesn't take them
till they are six, but I suppose if we hunt round we can find some sort
of institution which will accept three-year-olds."
"Orphanage, h'm. You see, Jane, I was thinking we might keep her
ourselves. I am sure we could look after her."
"I object to the word 'we,'" said Mrs. Craven dryly.
"Oh, I suppose most of the work would fall on your shoulders."
"I am sure of it."
"Come along, old lady, don't you think you can manage it? Kitty isn't
a bad sort of kid. Y'know, I saw a goodish deal of her on the steamer
coming home."
"I thought you gave her in charge of a steward?"
"I never told you that."
Mrs. Craven laughed. "You see, I know your little ways--'Steward,
here's a girl for you. If you nursery-maid the kid nicely till we get
to Liverpool, and don't let me see more of her than I want, and don't
let her come in and prattle when I'm playing whist with Captain Image,
there'll be another quid for you when we land. After that my sister
will take her over, and she won't want a tip at all.'"
"H'm," said Godfrey, "now, diamonds aren't in your line."
"I wouldn't be seen with one. I'll take a brown cloth gown, please."
"Shall I order it?"
"No, you can pay the bill."
"Right-o. Then you will take Kitty and bring her up here?"
"You stupid goose," said Mrs. Craven, "I intended that from the moment
I saw her. Cook's out buying her a cot this minute."
* * * * *
Here then was the way that Kate first came into the house at Princes'
Park. She arrived without a surname, and Godfrey, in spite of hints
and plain questions, kept back any further pedigree. The child
arranged a name for herself. When she had been a year in England she
went out to a small folks' party:
"Let me see, what's your name?" asked the hostess, who had got tangled
up among her many small guests.
The child had answered "Kate O'Neill," as a matter of course. She had
called Mrs. Craven, Aunt Jane, and her brother Uncle Godfrey from the
first, and after that juvenile party she was introduced as "my niece,
Kate O'Neill."
As she grew, anything to do with West Africa and with business
fascinated her, and curiously enough her principal instructor in these
matters was Mrs. Craven. Godfrey, honest man, was not going to be
bothered. His repartee when Kate asked him anything about the Coast
was, "Go and invite some one to come in and let's make up a rubber of
whist." When one day he died, and left Kate the O'Neill and Craven
business, both she and her aunt supposed he had done it as an effort of
humor.
Mrs. Craven had the house and furniture at Princes' Park, and a
comfortable annuity to keep it up on. Kate came into a business that
had been thoroughly neglected, and allowed to run down till it was in a
very shaky position, indeed, financially.
"Sell it," said Mrs. Craven, "for what it will fetch."
"I'd rather run it myself," said Kate.
"Rubbish," said her aunt; "you're twenty, and the world's before you to
enjoy. Besides, my dear, you're sure to marry. Sell the business."
"If you want plain facts, aunt, I don't see why anyone should give
sixpence for it, and if we tried to wind it up, it would mean
bankruptcy. Some of the money's a very long way out."
"Your poor Uncle Godfrey intended to leave you comfortably off, I know."
"And I'm pleased to think he died believing he had done so. They had
the quaintest way of keeping books down at Water Street. Cutting
notches on a tally-stick was nothing to some of their dodges. They
hadn't struck a proper balance sheet for years, and both Uncle Godfrey
and Mr. Crewdson really and honestly imagined that the firm was
flourishing."
"You sell," said Mrs. Craven.
"Not I, aunt. Uncle Godfrey left me the concern believing it to be a
small fortune for me, and a fortune I'm going to make out of it, and
not a small one, either."
"I don't believe in business women," said Mrs. Craven severely. "I'd
rather see a womanly woman."
"My dear," said Kate, "you shall see the two combined in me presently.
I'm going to make a ve-ry large and extensive fortune; but the moment
you see anything unfeminine about me, I want you to tell me, and I'll
sell out forthwith."
Thereafter from eight o'clock A.M. to six-thirty P.M. for five days a
week Kate sat in an inner room of the Water Street office, with the
ancient Crewdson as a buffer between her and the world. She came into
the place with a talent for figures, and a good general idea of the
business, and she set herself first to the conversion of Mr. Crewdson.
That worthy old person was entirely of opinion that what was good
enough for poor Mr. Godfrey was quite good enough for anybody else, and
(when pressed) said so with unfriendly plainness. A man, in Kate's
shoes, would have dismissed him, and brought in younger blood. Kate
preferred conversion. She knew that there was a great quarry of
information on matters West African stowed beneath Mr. Crewdson's dull
exterior, and she intended to dig at it. So she reduced his wages,
which he quite agreed with her the firm could not afford, and then,
unasked, offered him a fine commission on the next year's profits. It
was curious to see how soon she galvanized him into an opinion that
these profits must certainly be forthcoming.
She laid in a typewriter, burned the office quills, wrote the firm's
letters, signed them _For O'Neill and Craven, K. O'Neill_, and before
she knew it had created a personality. Ten callers a day--captains,
pursers, traders, merchants--wanted to shake hands with "your new head,
Mr. K.," and went away with the idea that old Crewdson had suddenly
developed capacity, and on the strength of it had stood himself a new
signature.
On Saturdays, during the summer, Miss O'Neill caught butterflies, and
in the winter played golf. On Sunday morning she went to church. On
Sunday afternoons and evenings she had something very nearly
approaching a salon. On these latter occasions Mrs. Craven flattered
herself that she brought success by her artistic attention to the
commissariat.
Now, the girl was attractive to men, and although she was emphatically
a girl's girl, still she had as many friends of one sex as the other.
She was good-looking, she was amusing, she was always well turned out,
and she carried about with her that indescribable charm (above and
beyond these other matters) which always makes people desirous of
warming up a first acquaintance into intimacy.
To one man only had she shown any special degree of preference, and he
was enough encouraged thereby to propose marriage to her.
She accepted him--provisionally.
"I am not absolutely certain that I wish to be married just yet," she
told him, "but I am going abroad now, and I will let you know
definitely when I return. Those are not nice terms, but they are the
best I can offer. I have always been able to give a 'yes' or 'no'
decision on every other matter in life so far. But here I can't. It
is weak of me. Perhaps it is merely womanly."
"You are exquisite in your womanliness, as you are exquisite in
everything else," he had replied. "I am grateful for any bone of
comfort you throw me, Kitty dear."
She was going away then to West Africa, as has been related above, and
the man saw her off from the landing stage. She returned the waving of
his handkerchief. "Now, if you had abused me for my indecision, and
said you would either be engaged or not engaged, I believe I'd have
married you out of hand if you'd wanted me. But you didn't seem able
to clinch things, and so anyhow you're pigeon-holed for the present.
I'm glad I made you keep our little matter secret."
The man's name was Austin. Many times during the voyage south through
the Bay, and down the Trades from the Islands, Kate told herself she
ought to announce the fact that she was engaged. But on every occasion
her femininity got up in arms. "Certainly not," said this intangible
force. "Mr. Austin is a man, and if he cares to be a man and gossip,
why let him. But a woman by reason of her sex is not called upon to
say more than she needs." So Kate held her tongue, and regretted more
and more every day that--well--that she should have cause for regrets.
When she got back to England, a day ahead of time, Aunt Jane happened
to be in London, but Austin had a wire from Point Lynas and was there
on the landing stage to meet her. He wanted to kiss her there before
the world, but she had the advantage of height, and avoided him
skilfully and without advertisement. Their subsequent handshake was
somewhat of a failure.
"Hullo, Henry," said Miss O'Neill, "fancy seeing you here. I suppose
you will try and make out you came down here to the landing stage on
purpose to meet me? How abominably hot Liverpool is, and how
atrociously the Mersey smells after that nice clean Smooth River. Have
you caught me any butterflies? I've brought four cases full home from
the Coast, and I honestly believe I've got two unnamed specimens. If
they turn out new, I shall christen one after myself--something
O'Neillii. There's vanity for you! And now for the Customs House."
"Is that all you have to say to me, Kitty? I've been just hungry all
the time to see you again. I don't think a single hour of a single day
has passed but what I have thought of you, and where you were, and what
you were doing."
"Well, Henry, that's more than I could say. Here, wait till I catch
that porter's eye. He's taking my cabin trunk to the wrong heap.
About what was in my head between here and the Coast, I'll not say, but
once out there, I'll tell you frankly I gave little enough thought to
anything except Coast interests. The first place I went ashore at
after Sierra Leone was our own factory at Smooth, and they'd had a
fight there which only ended up when our whistle blew. The clearing
between the factory buildings and the forest was full of dead men. I
found out that no fewer than 800 Okky savages had attacked the place,
and they were all held off by one of our clerks with a couple of
Winchesters, and a half-caste girl who loaded for him. It sounds like
a tale out of a book, and you needn't believe it unless you like; I
don't think I should believe it unless I had seen things for myself,
but I did see the men who had been actually shot when they tried to
rush the place, and I can guarantee the truth of the story."
"Don't tell me there's a romance between you and your clerk."
"There wasn't room for one. He was engaged to the heroine already, and
was as consistently rude to me as he knew how. But I don't mind
telling you he was a magnificent fellow. He was a gentleman, too,
which is rather a rare thing to find on the Coast. But you're letting
me do all the talk. You haven't told me about yourself. What have you
been doing?"
"The usual work of a busy solicitor; getting new clients, and sticking
to the old ones. I can report good, steady success, Kitty. We can
start pretty comfortably."
A Customs searcher put his usual questions, and Kate smiled on him and
said she had nothing to declare. He scrawled a chalk hieroglyphic on
all her property without opening a single piece. "There, look, Henry,
stop that porter. He's taking a case of mine to the wrong cab.
Thanks, I wouldn't have lost that case for a king's ransom."
"Butterflies?"
"No, a native war horn in ivory."
"Oh, they're fairly common."
"Yes, but a friend gave me this, and I want to keep it. There, I think
that's the lot. Good-by, Henry. You'll come and see me at Princes'
Park when I'm settled down again?"
"But, Kitty, can't I drive out with you now? I'd so looked forward to
driving back with you. There's plenty of room in the cab."
"No," said Kate, "I'd rather you went home now, and thought over again
what I'm like now that I've come back to England with a West Coast
flavor. I know you'll disapprove of me as a possible wife, but I do
hope you'll see your way of keeping me on the list of your friends.
Nobody knows you ever suggested anything more, unless you have told
them, and I don't see why they should know. But I'm more than ever
convinced that I'm not the girl to make you the wife you deserve.
Don't answer me now, there's a nice boy. Just go to the club and have
a good dinner, and ring me up some time this evening and say you
thoroughly agree with me."
Mrs. Craven came back that evening from London and Kate told her of
West Africa happenings with a fine wealth of detail.
The old lady looked at her very narrowly and when she had finished,
"Yes, my dear," said she, "and now are you going to tell me something
that will interest me far more than all that?"
"No, Aunt, I think you have got the pith of it."
"If you won't tell, you won't. But you must remember, Kitty dear, I
have known you and nursed you ever since you were a tiny child, and you
can't change--as you have done--without my noticing it. Now, this Mr.
Carter----"
"Yes, I did forget to tell you that he's got frightfully red hair."
"You say he's engaged to Laura Slade?"
"Oppressively so."
"But is he going to marry her?"
"How can I tell, Aunt?"
"Who is he going to marry, Kitty dear?"