IN VIEWS.
"Know well, my soul, God's hand controls
Whate'er thou fearest;
Round Him in calmest music rolls
Whate'er thou hearest."
"That girl is the most lovely creature!" said Mrs. Esthwaite when she
rejoined her husband.
"What have you been talking to her about? Now she will not be up in
time to take a drive in the Domain."
"Yes, she will. She has got plenty of spirit. But oh, Egbert! to think
of that girl going to put herself in those savage islands, where she
won't see anybody!"
"It is absurd?" said her husband, but somewhat faintly.
"I couldn't but think to-night as I looked at her--you should have seen
her.--Something upset her and set her to crying; then she wouldn't cry;
and the little white hand she brushed across her eyes and then rested
on the chair-back to keep herself steady--I looked at it, and I
couldn't bear to think of her going to teach those barbarians. And her
eyes were all such a glitter with tears and her feelings--I've fallen
in love with her, Egbert."
"She's a magnificent creature," said Mr. Esthwaite. "Wouldn't she set
Sydney a fire, if she was to be here a little while! But somebody has
been beforehand with Sydney--so it's no use talking."
Eleanor was ready in good time for the drive, and with spirits entirely
refreshed by the night's sleep and the morning's renewing power. Things
looked like new things, unlike those which yesterday saw. All feeling
of strangeness and loneliness was gone; her spirits were primed for
enjoyment. Mr. and Mrs. Esthwaite both watched eagerly to see the
effect of the drive and the scene upon her; one was satisfied, the
other was not. The intent delight in Eleanor's eyes escaped Mrs.
Esthwaite; she looked for more expression in words; her husband was
content that Eleanor's mind was full of what he gave it to act upon.
The Domain was an exquisite place for a morning drive; and the more
stylish inhabitants of Sydney found it so; there was a good display of
equipages, varying in shew and pretension. To Mrs. Esthwaite's
disappointment neither these nor their owners drew Eleanor's attention;
she did not even seem to see them; while the flowers in the woods
through which part of the drive was cut, the innumerable, gorgeous,
novel and sweet flowers of a new land, were a very great delight to
her. All of them were new, or nearly so; how Eleanor contrasted them
with the wild things of Plassy which she knew so well. And instead of
the blackbird and green wren, there were birds of brilliant hues,
almost as gay as the flowers over which their bright wings went, and
yet stranger than they. It was a sort of drive of enchantment to
Eleanor; the air was delightful, though warm; with no feeling of
lassitude or oppression resulting from the heat.
There were other pleasures. From point to point, as they drove through
the "bush," views opened upon them of the harbour and its islands,
glittering in the morning sun. Changes of beauty; for every view was a
little unlike the others and revealed the loveliness with a difference.
Eleanor felt herself in a new world. She was quite ready for the
gardens, when they got through the "bush."
The gardens were fine. Here she had a feast which neither of her
companions could enjoy with her in anything like fellowship. Eleanor
had not lived so long with Mrs. Caxton, entering into all her pursuits,
without becoming somewhat well acquainted with plants; and now she was
almost equally charmed at seeing her dear old home friends, and at
making acquaintance with the glorious beauties that outshone them but
could never look so kindly. Slowly Eleanor went through the gardens,
followed by her host and hostess who took their enjoyment in observing
her. In the Botanical Gardens Mr. Esthwaite came up alongside again, to
tell her names and discuss specimens; he found Eleanor knew more about
them than he did.
"All this was a wild 'bush'--nothing but rocks and trees, a few years
ago," he remarked.
"_This?_ this garden?"
"Yes, only so long ago as 1825."
"Somebody has deserved well of the community, then," said Eleanor. "It
is a delicious place."
"General Sir Ralph Darling had that good desert. It is a fine thing to
be in high place and able to execute great plans; isn't it?"
Eleanor rose up from a flower and gave Mr. Esthwaite one of her
thoughtful glances.
"I don't know," she said. "His gardeners did the work, after all."
"They don't get the thanks."
"_That_ is not what one works for," said Eleanor smiling. "So the thing
is done--what matter?"
"If it _isn't_ done,--what matter? No, no! I want to get the good of
what I do,--in praise or in something else."
"What is Sir Ralph Darling the better of my thanks now?"
"Well, he's dead!" said Mr. Esthwaite.
"So I was thinking."
"Well, what do you mean? Do you mean that you would do nothing while
you are alive, for fear you would not hear of it after you have left
the world?"
"Not exactly."
"What then? I don't know what you are after."
"You say this was all a wilderness a few years ago--why should you
despair of what you call the 'black islands?'"
"O ho!" said Mr. Esthwaite,--"we are there, are we? By a hop, skip, and
jump--leaving the argument. That's like a woman."
"Are you sure?" said Eleanor.
"Like all the women I ever saw. Not one of them can stick to the point."
"Then I will return to mine," said Eleanor laughing--"or rather bring
you up to it. I referred--and meant to refer you--to another sort of
gardening, in which the labourer receives wages and gathers fruit; but
the beauty of it is, that his wages go with him--he does not leave them
behind--and the fruit is unto life eternal."
"That's fair," said Mr. Esthwaite. "See here--you don't preach, do you?"
"I will not, to you," said Eleanor. "Mr. Esthwaite, I will look at no
more flowers I believe, this morning, since you leave the time of our
stay to me."
Mr. Esthwaite behaved himself, and though a speech was on his tongue he
was silent, and attended Eleanor home in an unexceptionable manner.
Mrs. Esthwaite was in a dissatisfied mood of mind.
"I hope it will be a great while before you find a good chance to go to
Fiji!" she said.
"Do not wish that," said Eleanor: "for in that case I may have to take
a chance that is not good."
"Ah but, you are not the sort of person to go there."
"I should be very sorry to think that," said Eleanor smiling.
"Well it is clear you are not. Just to look at you! I am sure you are
exactly a person to look always as nice as you do now."
"I hope never to look less nice than I do now," said Eleanor, rather
opening her eyes.
"What, in that place?"
"Why yes, certainly. Why not?"
"But you will not wear that flat there?"
Eleanor and Mr. Esthwaite here both gave way in a fit of laughter.
"Why yes I will; if I find it, as I suppose I shall, the most
comfortable thing."
"But you cannot wear white dresses there?"
"If I cannot, I will submit to it, but, my dear cousin, I have brought
little else but white dresses with me. For such a climate, what else is
so good?"
"Not like that you wore yesterday?"
"They are all very much alike, I believe. What was the matter with
that?"
"Why, it was so--" Mrs. Esthwaite paused. "But how can you get them
washed? do you expect to have servants there?"
"There are plenty of servants, I believe; not very well trained,
indeed, or it would not be necessary to have so many. At any rate, they
can wash, whatever else they can do."
"I don't believe they would know how to wash your dresses."
"Then I can teach them," said Eleanor merrily.
"_You!_ To wash a cambrick dress!"
"That, or any other."
"Eleanor, do not talk so!"
"Certainly not, if you do not wish it. I was only putting you to rest
on the score of my laundry work."
"With those hands!" said Mrs. Esthwaite expressively.
Eleanor looked down at her hands, for a moment a higher and graver
expression flitted over her face, then she smiled again.
"I should be ashamed of my hands if they were good for nothing."
"Capital!" said Mr. Esthwaite. "That's what I like. That is what I call
having spirit. I like to see a woman have some character of her own;
something besides hands, in fact."
"But Eleanor, I do not understand. I am serious. You never washed; how
can you know how?"
"That was precisely my reasoning; so I learned."
"Learned to _wash?_ _You?"_
"Yes."
"You did it with your own hands?"
"The dress you were so good as to approve," said Eleanor smiling, "it
was washed and done up by myself."
"Do you expect to have to do it for yourself?" said Mrs. Esthwaite
looking intensely horrified.
"No, not generally; but to teach somebody, or upon occasion, you know.
You see," she said smiling again her full rich smile, "I am bent upon
having my white dresses."
Mrs. Esthwaite was too full for speech, and her husband looked at his
new cousin with an eye of more absolute admiration than he had yet
bestowed on her. Eleanor's thoughts were already on something else;
springing forward to meet Mr. Amos and his letters.
Breakfast was over however before he arrived. Much to her chagrin, she
was obliged to receive him in the company of Mr. and Mrs. Esthwaite; no
private talk was possible. Mr. Esthwaite engaged him immediately in an
earnest but desultory conversation, about Sydney, Eleanor, and the
mission, and the prospect of their getting to their destination; which
Mr. Esthwaite prophesied would not be within any moderate limits of
time. Mr. Amos owned that he had heard of no opportunity, near or far.
The talk lasted a good while and it was not till he was taking leave
that Eleanor contrived to follow him out and gain a word to herself.
"There are no letters for you," said Mr. Amos, speaking under his
breath, and turning a cheerful but concerned face towards Eleanor. "I
have made every enquiry--at the post-office, and of everybody likely to
know about such things. There are none, and they know of none."
Eleanor said nothing; her face grew perceptibly white.
"There is nothing the matter with brother Rhys," said Mr. Amos hastily;
"we have plenty of news from him--all right--he is quite well, and for
a year past has been on another station; different from the one he was
on when you last heard from him. There is nothing the matter--only
there are no letters for you; and there must be some explanation of
that."
He paused, but Eleanor was silent, only her colour returned a little.
"We want to get away from here as soon as possible, I suppose," Mr.
Amos went on half under breath; "but as yet I see no opening. It will
come."
"Yes," said Eleanor somewhat mechanically. "You will let me know--"
"Certainly--as soon as I know anything myself; and I will continue to
make enquiry for those letters. Mr. Armitage is away in the country--he
might know something about them, but nobody else does; and he ought to
have left them with somebody else if he had them. But there can be
nothing wrong about it; there is only some mistake, or mischance; the
letters from Vuliva where brother Rhys is, are quite recent and
everything is going on most prosperously; himself included. And we are
to proceed to the same station. I am very glad for ourselves and for
you."
"Thank you--" Eleanor said; but she was not equal to saying much. She
listened quietly, and with her usual air, and Mr. Amos never discovered
the work his tidings wrought; he told his wife, sister Powle looked a
little blank, he thought, at missing her expected despatches, and no
wonder. It was an awkward thing.
Eleanor slowly made her way up to her room and sat down, feeling as if
the foundations of the earth, to _her_ standing, had given way. She was
more overwhelmed with dismay than she would have herself anticipated in
England, if she could have looked forward to such a catastrophe. Reason
said there was not sufficient cause; but poor Eleanor was to feel the
truth of Mrs. Caxton's prediction, that she would find out again that
certain feelings might be natural that were not reasonable. Nay, reason
said on this occasion that the failure of letters proved too much to
justify the distress she felt; it proved a combination of things, that
no carelessness nor indifference nor unwillingness to write, on the
part of Mr. Rhys, could possibly have produced. Let him feel how he
would, he would have written, he _must_ have written to meet her there;
all his own delicacy and his knowledge of hers affirmed and reaffirmed
that letters were in existence somewhere, though it might be at the
bottom of the ocean. Reason fought well; to what use, when nature
trembled, and shivered, and shrank. Poor Eleanor! she felt alone now,
without a mother and without shelter; and the fair shores of Port
Jackson looked very strange and desolate to her; a very foreign land,
far from home. What if Mr. Rhys, with his fastidious notions of
delicacy, did not fancy so bold a proceeding as her coming out to him?
what if he disapproved? What if, on further knowledge of the place and
the work, he had judged both unfit for her; and did not, for his own
sake only in a selfish point of view, choose to encourage her coming?
in that case her being _come_ would make no difference; he would not
shelter himself from a judgment displeasing to him, because the escape
from its decisions was rendered easy. What if _for his own sake_ his
feeling had changed, and he wanted her no longer? years had gone by
since he had seen her; it must have been a wayward fancy that could
ever have made him think of her at first; and now, about his grave work
in a distant land, and with leisure to correct blunders of fancy,
perhaps he had settled into the opinion that it was just as well that
his coming away had separated them; and did not feel able to welcome
her appearance in Australia, and was too sincere to write what he did
not feel; so wrote nothing? Not very like Mr. Rhys, reason whispered;
but reason's whisper, though heard, could not quiet the sensitive
delicacy which trembled at doubt. So miserable, so chilled, so forlorn,
Eleanor had never felt in her life; not when the 'Diana' first carried
her away from the shores of her native land.
What was she to do? that question throbbed at her heart; but it
answered itself soon. Stay in Australia she could not; go home to
England she could not; no, not upon this mere deficiency of testimony.
There was only one alternative left; she must go on whenever Mr. and
Mrs. Amos should move. Nature might tremble and quiver, and all
Eleanor's nerves did; but there was no other course to pursue. "I can
tell," she thought,--"I shall know--the first word, the first look,
will tell me the whole; I cannot be deceived. I must go on and meet
that word and look, whatever it costs me--I must; and then, if it
is--if it is not satisfying to me, then aunt Caxton shall have me! I
can go back, as well as I have come. Shame and misery would not hinder
me--they would not be so bad as my staying here then."
So the question of action was settled; but the question of feeling not
so soon. Eleanor's enjoyment was gone, of all the things she had
enjoyed those first twenty-four hours, and of all others which her
entertainers brought forward for her pleasure. Yet Eleanor kept her own
counsel, and as they did not know the cause she had for trouble, so
neither did they discover any tokens of it. She did not withdraw
herself from their kind efforts to please her, and they spared no
pains. They took her in boat excursions round the beautiful harbour.
They shewed her the pretty environs of the Parramatta river. Nay,
though it was not very easy for him to leave his business, Mr.
Esthwaite went with her and his wife to the beautiful Illawarra
district; put the whole party on horses, and shewed Eleanor a land of
tropical beauty under the clear, bracing, delicious warm weather of
Australia. Fern trees springing up to the dimensions of trees indeed,
with the very fern foliage she was accustomed to in low herbaceous
growth at home; only magnified superbly. There were elegant palms, too,
with other evergreens, and magnificent creepers; and floating out and
in among them in great numbers were gay red-crested cockatoos and other
tropical birds. The character of the scenery was exquisite. Eleanor saw
one or two of the fair lake-like lagoons of that district, eat of the
fish from them; for they made a kind of gypsey expedition, camping out
and providing for themselves fascinatingly; and finally returned in the
steamer from Wollongong to Sydney. Her friends would have taken her to
see the gold diggings if it had been possible. But Eleanor saw it all,
all they could shew her, with half a heart. She had learned long ago to
conceal what she felt.
"I think she wants to get away," said Mrs. Esthwaite one night, half
vexed, wholly sorry.
"That's what it is to be in love!" said her husband. "You won't keep
her in Sydney. Do you notice she has given up smiling?"
"No!" said his wife indignantly; "I notice no such thing. She is as
ready to smile as anybody I ever saw."--And I wish I had as good
reason! was the mental conclusion; for Eleanor and she had had many an
evening talk by that time, and many a hymn had been listened to.
"All very well," said Mr. Esthwaite; "but she don't smile as she did at
first. Don't you remember?--that full smile she used to give once in a
while, with a little world of mischief in the corners? I would like to
see it the next time!--"
"I declare," said Mrs. Esthwaite, "I think you take quite an
impertinent interest in people's concerns. She wouldn't let you see it,
besides."
At which Mr. Esthwaite laughed.
So near people came to it; and Eleanor covered up her troublesome
thoughts within her own heart, and gave Mr. Esthwaite the benefit of
that impenetrable coolness and sweetness of manner which a good while
ago had used to bewitch London circles. In the effort to hide her real
thoughts and feelings she did not quite accommodate it to the different
latitude of New South Wales; and Mr. Esthwaite was a good deal struck
and somewhat bewildered.
"You have mistaken your calling," he said one evening, standing before
Eleanor and considering her.
"Do you think so?"
"There! Yes, I do. I think you were born to govern."
"I am sadly out of my line then," said Eleanor laughing.
"Yes. You are. That is what I say. You ought to be this minute a
duchess--or a governor's lady--or something else in the imperial line."
"You mistake my tastes, if you think so."
"I do not mistake something else," muttered Mr. Esthwaite; and then Mr.
Amos entered the room.
"Here, Amos," said he, "you have made an error in judging of this
lady--she is no more fit to go a missionary than I am. She--she goes
about with the air of a princess!"
Mrs. Esthwaite exclaimed, and Mr. Amos took a look at the supposed
princess's face, as if to reassure or inform his judgment. Apparently
he saw nothing to alarm him.
"I am come to prove the question," he said composedly; then turning to
Eleanor,--"I have heard at last of a schooner that is going to Fiji, or
will go, if we desire it."
This simple announcement shot through Eleanor's head and heart with the
force of a hundred pounder. An extreme and painful flush of colour
answered it; nobody guessed at the pain.
"What's that?" exclaimed Mr. Esthwaite getting up again and standing
before Mr. Amos,--"you have found a vessel, you say?"
"Yes. A small schooner, to sail in a day or two."
"What schooner? whom does she belong to? Lawsons, or Hildreth?"
"To nobody, I think, but her master. I believe he sails the vessel for
his own ends and profits."
"What schooner is it? what name?"
"The 'Queen Esther,' I think."
"You cannot go in that!" said Mr. Esthwaite turning off. "The 'Queen
Esther'!--I know her. She's not fit for you; she's a leaky old thing,
that that man Hawkins sails on all sorts of petty business; she'll go
to pieces some day. She ain't sea-worthy, I don't believe."
"It is not as good a chance as might be, but it is the first that has
offered, and the first that is likely to offer for an unknown time,"
Mr. Amos said, looking again to Eleanor.
"When does she sail?"
"In two days. She is small, and not in first-rate order; but the voyage
is not for very long. I think we had better go in her."
"Certainly. How long is the voyage, regularly?"
"A fortnight in a good ship, and a month in a bad one," struck in Mr.
Esthwaite. "You'll never get there, if you depend on the 'Queen Esther'
to bring you."
"We go to Tonga first," said Mr. Amos. "The 'Queen Esther' sails with
stores for the stations at Tonga and the neighbourhood; and will carry
us further only by special agreement; but the master is willing, and I
came to know your mind about it."
"I will go," said Eleanor. "Tell Mrs. Amos I will meet her on
board--when?"
"Day after to-morrow morning."
"Very well. I will be there. Will she take the additional lading of my
boxes?"
"O yes; no difficulty about that. It's all right."
"How can I do with the things you have stored for me?" Eleanor said to
Mr. Esthwaite. "Can the schooner take them too?"
"What things?"
"Excuse me--perhaps I misunderstood you. I thought you said you had
half your warehouse, one loft of it, taken up with things for me?"
"Those things are gone, long ago," said Mr. Esthwaite, in a dogged kind
of mood which did not approve of the proposed journey or conveyance.
"Gone?"
"Yes. According to order. Mrs. Caxton wrote, Forward as soon as
possible; so I did."
Again Eleanor's brow and cheeks and her very throat were covered with a
rush of crimson; but when Mr. Amos took her hand on going away its
touch made him ask involuntarily if she were well?
"Perfectly well," Eleanor answered, with something in her manner that
reminded Mr. Amos, though he could not tell why, of the charge Mr.
Esthwaite had brought. Another look into Eleanor's eyes quieted the
thought.
"Your hand is very cold!" he said.
"It's a sign of"--Mr. Esthwaite would have said "fever," but Eleanor
had composedly faced him and he was silent; only busied himself in
shewing Mr. Amos out, without a word that he ought not to have spoken.
Mr. Amos went home and told his wife.
"I think she is all right," he said; "but she does not look to me just
as she did before we landed. I dare say she has had a great deal of
admiration here--"
"I dare say she feels bad," said good Mrs. Amos.
"Why?"
"If you were not a man, you would know," Mrs. Amos said laughing. "She
is in a very trying situation."
"Is she? O, those letters! It is unfortunate, to be sure. But there
must be some explanation."
"The explanation will be good when she gets it," Mrs. Amos remarked. "I
hope somebody who is expecting her is worthy of her. Poor thing! I
couldn't have done it, I believe, even for you."