BREAKING THE NEWS.
Before the boy had recovered sufficiently to make a sound, Bob said
in a low, distinct voice,--
"Don't make a row, old man. It's all right; I'm not a ghost. I want
you to get hold of your father for me without a soul knowing that
you have seen me. Tell him I am waiting by the first drive gate,
and want to speak to him at once. Mind no one else hears what you
say. Seeing you is better luck than I expected."
He turned and was walking rapidly away across the centre grass plot
before Eustace quite realized this was no dream, but a solid truth,
and that something was required of him.
"Bob, Bob, how have you come here?" he called in a trembling voice.
But the figure only half turned with a warning gesture, and passed
resolutely on.
For a moment the boy was rooted to the spot. Was this thing real?
Could Bob possibly be there? The idea was incredible; yet his eyes,
his ears, both bore witness to the fact. But how had it happened?
what did it mean?
With thoughts in a turmoil and heart beating to suffocation, he
made his way to his father's dressing-room.
"I say, father," he said breathlessly, putting his head round the
door at the answer to his knock, "are you nearly dressed?"
"All but my coat," said Mr. Orban, without turning from the glass
where he was carefully arranging his evening tie. "Come in if you
want to."
There was an open door into the bedroom, where Eustace knew his
mother was certain still to be.
"I--I would rather speak to you out here," said the boy, "if you
could be quick."
Mr. Orban turned a surprised face.
"Oh, if it is a secret I am sure mother will excuse our shutting
the door," he said, and suited the action to the word. "Now come,
out with it. Have you been getting into some scrape, old man?"
The boy looked so extraordinarily white that Mr. Orban began to be
afraid something serious had happened.
"You are quite certain mother can't hear?" Eustace said in a low
tone.
"Perfectly," said Mr. Orban, looking more deeply perplexed, for
hitherto Mrs. Orban had shared all secrets; in fact, the children
had gone more readily to her with their troubles than to him,
because he had so little time for such things. "There hasn't been
any accident to one of the others?" he added sharply, struck by a
new idea.
"Oh no, no," Eustace said; "nothing like that. But, father," he
went on, drawing very close, "I'm not to tell another soul--only
you. Bob Cochrane is here. He is waiting for you down by the first
drive gate, and wants to speak to you at once."
"Bob Cochrane!" repeated Mr. Orban, blankly staring at the boy.
"What are you talking about, child? You've been dreaming, or you've
got a touch of fever."
He passed his hand over Eustace's brow, and found it cool enough.
"But it's the truth, father," Eustace said. "I thought I was
dreaming myself, and it feels awfully strange still. I was kneeling
at the window with my head in my hands, thinking--thinking about
home"--his voice faltered a good deal over the words--"when some
one hit me on the shoulder with a stone, and I looked down and saw
Bob."
"Impossible!" said Mr. Orban. "You've had a delusion because you
were thinking about home. You were thinking so hard about Bob you
fancied you saw him. Things like that do happen sometimes, you
know. Bob is thousands of miles away, looking after the plantation;
he couldn't by any earthly possibility be here."
Mr. Orban spoke so certainly that Eustace's faith in his own reason
almost wavered; but if vision it were, it had impressed him
strongly.
"I don't think I could have seen it so clearly if it had only been
my own thought," he argued aloud. "Besides, he spoke; he said quite
clearly, 'Don't make a row, old man; I'm not a ghost. I want you to
get hold of your father for me without a soul knowing that you have
seen me. Tell him I am waiting by the first drive gate, and want to
speak to him at once. Mind no one else hears what you say. Seeing
you is better luck than I expected.'"
The words were branded on his memory by the shock he had received,
and now it was Mr. Orban's turn to become white.
"If it is so really," he said in an odd, unsteady voice, "he brings
bad news. Something so bad has happened that he could not break it
to me in a letter."
It flashed into Eustace's mind that Bob had looked awfully grave
and queer--if Bob it really were, and no delusion! Suppose his
father should go to the gate and find no one awaiting him--what
then?
"You--you will go and see if he is there?" faltered the boy
nervously.
"I am going at once," said Mr. Orban. "When you are dressed
yourself, go down into the drawing-room as usual, as if nothing had
happened." He opened the door into Mrs. Orban's room and said
lightly, "There's a man just called to see me, dear. If I happen to
be detained, make my apologies to the old people, and ask them not
to wait dinner for me."
Mrs. Orban made a cheery, unsuspecting response, and he and Eustace
left the room.
The twins and the Dixon pair always assembled in the drawing-room
with every one before dinner was served, and there they awaited the
summons to dessert, as a rule with books, in dreary silence.
When Eustace came down he found every one waiting for dinner. Mr.
Orban was not yet in, and Mr. Chase would not hear of beginning the
meal without him.
"His friend can't in conscience keep him late at such an hour," he
said. "Of course we will wait."
No one was very talkative. It seemed to Eustace as if something of
the coming shadow were creeping over the community before the bad
news could even be dreamed of by any one except himself. There was
just the sort of deadly calm and stillness over everything that
comes before a thunderstorm.
Nesta had curled herself up in a deep window-seat, well out of
sight. Eustace guessed she had made such a fright of herself with
crying she was afraid to show her face. He sat near the door into
the great conservatory with a book, pretending to read. Really he
could do nothing but wonder what terrible thing could be going to
happen next.
Presently, just when Mr. Chase was getting a little restless, and
Mrs. Orban began anxiously watching the door, Mr. Orban came
hurriedly into the room.
"Forgive my being so late," he said in a voice that vibrated
strangely; "but I am afraid I must detain you still for a few
minutes. The fact is, a Queensland friend of mine has just turned
up with--with some rather curious details about the wreck of the
_Cora_. He thought it would pain us less to hear them by word of
mouth than by letter, so he came himself."
"Very good of him, I'm sure," said Mr. Chase, looking surprised.
"Won't he stay and dine with us, and then afterwards--"
"Oh, of course he must stay the night!" cried Mrs. Chase
hospitably; "and this evening we can talk things over quietly when
the children have gone to bed."
"I think," said Mr. Orban, with a gravity that impressed every one
deeply, "my friend would rather have his interview at once. He is
anxious to get it over as soon as possible. I have asked him into
the boudoir, Mrs. Chase. I thought we would talk there more quietly
than here."
"Certainly," said Mrs. Chase, rising and leading the way to the
boudoir, which opened off the drawing-room.
Every one looked utterly bewildered, and Mr. Chase just a little
annoyed. It was most unprecedented that dinner should be so
delayed. Eustace noticed his father whisper something to his
mother; she started, flushed painfully, and he guessed Mr. Orban
had told her who the visitor was.
The boudoir door closed after the elders, and there was silence in
the drawing-room. Herbert became restless, and wandered about the
room opening books or fingering the ornaments in an aimless way;
Nesta stared gloomily out of the window, and Brenda tried to read.
Eustace could stand the inaction and the unsympathetic company no
longer, so, getting up, he strolled into the sweet-smelling
conservatory to be alone.
There were scents there that always wafted him in memory back
home--he loved the warmth and the plants. There was a large oval
stage covered with flowers in the centre, and round this he
strolled towards the outer door.
So it was about the wreck Bob had come to speak. What more painful
news could he have to bring than they already knew? The boy's
common sense told him that the details must have to do with the
death of Aunt Dorothy; nothing of less importance could have
brought Bob over. Perhaps he had met an eye-witness of the tragedy!
Perhaps there were last messages from the drowned girl!
Eustace turned a corner and came to an abrupt standstill. It seemed
to him in that instant as if his very heart stopped beating and his
hair stood straight on end.
It was absurd, of course. Bob had turned out to be no mere creation
of his own brain, but this could be nothing else. Here was proof
positive of Mr. Orban's words that one has but to think hard enough
about a person to imagine one sees him.
With her back to the outer door--a white figure with a face as
colourless as her dress--stood Dorothy Chase; nothing about her was
lifelike except the familiar deep-brown eyes that gazed steadfastly
on the startled boy.
It was an extraordinarily vivid hallucination, and not a little
terrifying. Was it no fancy? Could it possibly be Aunt Dorothy's
spirit come to visit her old home again? The thought leapt into the
boy's mind.
Eustace was no coward, but the notion fairly paralyzed him; he
could not have moved to save his life. One supreme effort he made.
"Aunt Dorothy," he whispered hoarsely, and could say no more, for
his lips were parched, his throat was dry.
The vision raised a warning hand.
"Hush!" she said; "don't be frightened. I see Bob has not told you
yet; but it is all right, darling. I am a real live human being,
and no spirit. Just Aunt Dorothy come back to you safe and sound."
The words seemed to come from far away, and Eustace felt so queer
he swayed to try and keep his balance. He was so giddy he must have
fallen had the vision not swept forward and caught him. The feeling
of those strong arms about him, the warm touch of Aunt Dorothy's
face bent down to his, brought him with a jerk to himself again,
and he did not faint. But even then he could not believe his
senses.
"I don't understand," he gasped, shaking from head to foot in her
arms; and he pressed his face tight against her shoulder to try and
recover himself.
"Poor old chap!" said Aunt Dorothy, "how I have upset you! I never
meant any of you to see me till you knew. Bob is breaking the news
to father and mother gently. We were afraid the shock of joy would
be too much for them, so we did not even cable, but came at once. A
letter would have got here very little sooner than ourselves."
She talked on in a soft, soothing voice to give the boy time to
pull himself together, and all the time she held him close.
"You--you weren't drowned," Eustace managed to blurt out.
"Very nearly, but not quite," was the reply; "my escape was like a
miracle. Ah, here comes Bob at last."
"Have I seemed an awful time?" said Bob gently. "It was a difficult
thing to do. Come--they are waiting for you."
The pair passed swiftly up the conservatory into the drawing-room.
Herbert was standing by the mantelpiece examining a piece of
valuable Sevres china. As the stranger, accompanied by that white
figure, crossed the room to the boudoir, the ornament fell with a
crash, to be splintered into twenty pieces on the fender.
"Oh, what was that?" cried Brenda, starting to her feet and gazing
after the apparition.
"It's Aunt Dorothy," said Eustace from the conservatory. "She was
never drowned at all."
"What!" said Herbert sharply. "You are dreaming."
"Then we are all dreaming," said Eustace gravely. "You saw her for
yourself."
It would be impossible to describe the scene that followed. When
the boudoir door opened and the grown-ups all trooped out, headed
by Aunt Dorothy, the commotion was beyond words. From the midst of
it Mr. Chase slipped away, to return with Peter in his arms. Peter
was in pyjamas and dressing-gown, rosy, and fresh roused from
sleep.
"We can't let him be out of it all," said Mr. Chase. "I have told
him of our joyful surprise, and he takes it quite calmly."
"Peter would," said Miss Chase, taking the wee fellow in her arms.
"I'm very glad I didn't drown you," Peter said serenely.
"Herbert--"
But he finished the sentence in an incoherent yell, kicking out
right and left.
"What is the matter?" asked Dorothy in surprise.
"Eustace pinched my bare leg," Peter said irately, wriggling to the
ground in order to avenge himself.
Eustace caught his wrists, and bending low, whispered,--
"You are not to tell tales. I told you that the other day. You
don't want to be a low-down black-fellow, do you?"
Peter's face was crumpled with anger, and there is no saying what
he would have done if Bob had not exclaimed,--
"Hulloa, Peter! haven't you a word for me?"
The shock was complete. Mr. Chase had not mentioned Bob's arrival,
and Peter was wholly unprepared for seeing him.
"Bob!" he shouted, "good old Bob!" and sprang like a young cat at
the big fellow, who caught him skilfully.
"When you have quite done throttling me I shall be glad," said Bob,
after enduring the embrace of the merciless little arms a moment.
"But how did you get here?" demanded Peter of the long memory.
"Were you bewitched over to England?"
"Come, come," said Mr. Chase; "dinner first and stories afterwards.
We shall have to eat cinders as it is, I expect, and cook will give
notice to-morrow."
"Every one must come into the dining-room, father," laughed Aunt
Dorothy; "I can't part with one of you yet. We will talk while we
eat."
In a moment everything seemed changed. All the severity had faded
from the old people's faces; they could not have looked more
delightfully "grannyish" if they had tried. The dreadful barriers
of formality were broken down; no noisier, freer family party had
ever gathered in the Queensland home than the one that peopled the
stately old dining-room that night.
"This," whispered Brenda to Nesta, "is how we always were before
Aunt Dorothy went away. Now you can see why we missed her."
The change was something like a fairy tale to the Bush children;
every one seemed suddenly "magicked" into different beings. This,
then, was home as mother had known it.
The story of Aunt Dorothy's rescue held the table spellbound; the
very butler and footman forgot their duties as they listened.
It appeared that, having jumped into the water with Peter, Dorothy
struck out as fast as possible to swim away from the ship, keeping
a grip of the little fellow as best she could. But in the terrible
commotion that occurred on the going down of the _Cora_ she lost
her grasp, and Peter was swept away from her into the inky
blackness of the night.
She swam, floated, called, it seemed to her for ages, but all in
vain, and at last, in a state of utter exhaustion, she gave herself
up merely to the thought of keeping afloat. She must have been many
hours in the water, but, losing consciousness after a while, her
next experience was to find herself on board a vessel of some
sort--a schooner it turned out to be on her way out to the reefs
for beche-de-mer fishing.
"Why, we saw her!" exclaimed Eustace. "Mother, that must have been
the boat we saw far away out to sea. The captain of the station
told us it was theirs."
"They must have picked me up soon after dawn, before the turn of
the tide," said Aunt Dorothy. "I think when I came to my senses and
saw the kind of people I was among, I was more frightened than I
had been even by the wreck. Most of them were black-fellows--the
rest I have since discovered were Portuguese; but not a soul in all
that uncouth crowd could speak English or understand a word I
said."
"It was pretty terrifying," Bob agreed.
"They therefore did not know where I came from, where I wanted to
go, or anything about me. I kept imploring them to take me back to
land; but this, though they must have understood my signs, they
refused to do."
"What brutes!" exclaimed Herbert hotly.
"They are a low-grade lot," said Bob in his quaint Colonial way,
"but you know they can only get the beche-de-mer at certain tides.
It would have meant a dead loss to them to have put back, and
probably they were working under contract, bound to supply a
certain amount at a given time to their Chinkee employers."
"But it was horrid of them," said Nesta, who had recovered herself
entirely in the excitement, and was inclined to agree even with
Herbert for once.
"It was a real adventure, wasn't it?" Eustace said, appealing to
Bob.
"Rather more of one than I bargained for," said Aunt Dorothy. "But
in their own rough way the men tried to be kind to me. The food we
had was disgusting, the boat dreadfully fishy, oily, and dirty;
there was not a possibility of being comfortable day or night. But
I have nothing to grumble at. They took me back safe and sound to
the beche-de-mer station at last, and there I heard all about you,
even to the saving of Peter. All the discomforts and horrors put
together were nothing to my suspense about your fates till then."
The rest of the story was simple enough. Finding the Orbans had
left Cooktown, Miss Chase instantly communicated with Bob, and
together they arranged the plan for the home-coming. Their chief
aim was to convey the good news as gently as possible, and they
certainly achieved their end.
"I don't know how I could have borne the waiting had you cabled,"
Mrs. Chase said. "I should have suffered agonies imagining fresh
accidents that might happen to you all the time."
"Dorothy has become quite an experienced traveller one way and
another," said Mr. Chase. "You little thought, my dear, when you
set out so gaily from here, what a stormy life you were embarking
upon."
"I should think you would be terrified ever to go there again,"
said Brenda.
"On the contrary," said Bob Cochrane, "I hope your aunt will feel
encouraged to return before long. What was the compact, Peter? She
was to come back and be burnt as a witch, wasn't she?"
"Not yet awhile," said Mr. Chase gravely. "You can't expect us to
part with her for some little time to come."
"Of course not, sir," said Bob genially.
And then he and Dorothy just glanced at each other and laughed with
a strange kind of joyousness that mystified the Dixons; but Eustace
looked hard at Nesta and nodded meaningly.
Bob's face was no longer haggard and drawn; it wore its old,
habitual expression of steadfast happiness.
The party did not break up till "disgracefully late," as Mr. Chase
put it. Peter was carried by his mother asleep to bed. The twins
and the Dixons felt so wide awake they fancied they would not close
an eye all night.
Mr. Chase laughed when he heard the story of the Sevres ornament.
"I'm not surprised you were startled," he said kindly; "but please
try to have something a little less valuable in your hands next
ghost you meet."
"Nesta," said Eustace, following his twin to her door, "what are
you going to do now? Shall you tell mother?"
"Tell mother what?" asked Nesta, with well-feigned astonishment.
"Why, that you are miserable, and won't stay, and all that stuff,"
was the reply.
"Of course not, silly," Nesta retorted. "Any one can see everything
is going to be quite different now Aunt Dorothy has come."
"Of course, silly," said Eustace, in a mocking tone, and they both
laughed.
"Good-night, you two," said a voice along the passage, and Herbert
turned off into his own room.
"I'm coming to brush my hair in your room to-night," said Brenda,
bearing down upon them, brush and comb in hand.
Eustace passed on.
"It is all different already," he said softly. "I think Bob has
been right all along--Aunt Dorothy has bewitched us, every one."
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's Queensland Cousins, by Eleanor Luisa Haverfield