It looks at times, it must be confessed, as if, the individual once
embarked upon a course involving the happiness of a lifetime, an unseen
influence hurries on events as though the fabled Fates were weaving the
web of doom. Hardly had Lance thrown himself upon a horse and galloped
over to Truro, directing, in a hasty note left in his room, that his
personal effects should be forwarded to an address, than the first paper
he took up contained an announcement which fitted exactly with his
humour. It ran as follows--
'Steam to Australia.--For Melbourne and the Goldfields. The clipper
ship, _Red Jacket_, three thousand tons register, Forbes, Commander,
will have quick dispatch. Apply to Messrs. Gibbs, Bright, and Co.'
The die was cast. He saw himself speeding over the ocean on his way to
the wild and wondrous land of gold, absolutely uncontrolled henceforth
and free as air to follow his inclinations. There was intoxication in
the very thought. For years to come he would not be subject to the
trammels of civilisation. The trackless wilds, the rude, even savage
society of a new, half-discovered country had no terrors for him. The
wilder elements in the blood of the Trevanions seemed to have
precipitated themselves in the person of this their descendant; to have
rendered imperative a departure in some direction, no matter what, from
the conventional region with its galling limitations and absurd edicts.
Such are the problems of heredity. Despite of some natural regret that
so serious a quarrel with his father, and the head of the family, should
have been the proximate cause of his exile, the mere anticipation of a
wholly free and unfettered life in a new land filled him with joy. Then
arose visions such as course through the brain of ardent, inexperienced
youth; of wondrous wealth acquired by lucky speculation or the discovery
of a cavern filled with gold, after the manner of the _Arabian Nights_.
With what feelings of triumph would he _then_ return to his native land,
having in all respects given the lie to the predictions of his foes and
calumniators, receiving with complacent pride the congratulations of his
father, in that hour softened and converted by the reputation of his
distinguished son. His name, once spoken with bated breath, now a
by-word for success, would be in all men's mouths.
'Then! yes! then, darling Estelle!' had he said to his cousin in their
last conversation, when she had vainly tried to shake his determination
to leave England--'then I shall pay off the mortgage on the old estate;
not that it matters much for one generation, I suppose, but I should
like to be able to give a cheque for it to old Centall. Then I would buy
the St. Austel lands, which will be pretty sure to be in the market by
that time. Every one knows the estate is eaten up with interest as it
is, and at the rate the Tredegars are living there must be an end in a
few years. After that it will be about time to look out for a wife. Now
whom would you like to recommend? Why, how grave you look!'
'Dreams and visions, Lance. Vain hopes, false and unreal,' said the
girl. 'I see no prospect of success, much less of fairytale treasures.
Think of all the adventurers who have left this very Duchy of Cornwall
in old days or later. How few have ever returned!--fewer still who were
not poorer than they left! It seems to me madness that you should go at
all.'
'You are no true Englishwoman, Estelle, if you have not a spice of
adventure in you,' he replied. 'Lovers and kinsfolk have always been
sped on the path of glory before now. How else would the Indies have
been gained or the new world discovered, if all hearts had been as faint
as yours?'
'It is not that,' said the girl sadly, and laying her head wearily upon
his broad breast, as she threw her arms around his neck. 'It is not
that! I could send you away, almost rejoicing, in a good cause, were it
to fight the Queen's battles, for the glory of our native land. But my
heart sinks within me when I think of your going away with a father's
curse upon your head, with a deep quarrel about a light matter on your
mind, and for object and pursuit, only to seek for gold among an ignoble
crowd of rude adventurers.'
'Gold!' said the young man, laughing lightly; 'and what else is every
one striving for in these latter days? Gold means perfect independence.
The realisation of dreams of fairyland--the respect of the herd--the
friendship of the powerful--the love of the lovely! Why decry gold,
cousin mine? But, except for the adventure--the wild freedom--the
strangeness and danger of a new world, few care so little for it as
Lance Trevanion. And that you well know.'
'I know, my darling; I know. If it be so, why not stay at home? My
uncle, I am sure, is sorry for having been so hasty. He will be glad of
any chance to tell you so. A few years and your position as heir and
eldest son must be acknowledged. Why leave these proved and settled
privileges, and tempt dangers of sea, and storm, and an unknown land?'
'Too late! it is too late!' he said gloomily. 'I am a changed man. I can
neither forget nor forgive his insults, my father though he be; and I
feel as if I was irresistibly driven to take the voyage--to see this new
country--to share in this great gold adventure. I could not draw back
now.'
'And I feel, day by day, more strongly and vividly,' said the girl,
'that it will be your doom to go forth from us and return no more. It
seems like a prophetic instinct in me. I feel it in every fibre of my
being. But I will come to you, if you do not come to us. Whatever may
happen, I will never rest satisfied till I have seen you in your new
home. So, if you do not return in five years, you know what you have to
expect But you will return, will you not?' And again she clasped her
arms around him, sobbing as if her heart would break.
Estelle Chaloner was a proud girl, one of those reserved yet passionate
natures which habitually conceal their deeper feelings, as if jealous of
exhibiting the sacred recesses of their hearts to the careless or
irreverent. Ice on the surface, they resemble those regions which in
springtime need but the touch of that great enchanter's wand to cause
the living streams to flow, to produce the magically sudden apparition
of verdure and fragrant flowerets.
'Darling Estelle! in five years I will come back,' he said, 'if I am
alive. The time will soon pass. Think how much I shall have to talk
about, and what wonders I shall have seen. You will hardly know me
again.'
The girl sighed deeply, then raised her head, and gazing steadfastly at
her lover, as the tears streamed unheededly adown her face, continued
her pleading appeal without noticing his jesting speech--
'You will promise me then, will you not, solemnly and faithfully, you
will swear by King Arthur's sword--our family vow--that on next
Christmas five years, whatever betide, you will return?'
'Well,' he answered, slowly and heedfully, 'if nothing less will do, I
suppose I shall have done something in that time or failed utterly and
hopelessly. So I will promise. It wants nearly three months to
Christmas, and if I do not turn up in December 1857, you may make sure
that I am either dead or a captive among the Indians. I suppose there
are Indians there. "By Arthur's sword!"' and here he crossed his hands,
after the old Cornish fashion.
'I don't believe there are Indians,' she said. 'If you would read a
little more, you naughty boy, you would know. Of course, there are
savages of some sort, the worst being white. But we must exchange
tokens, like lovers--and we are true lovers, are we not?' Here she
seemed as if her tears would flow afresh, but controlled herself with a
strong effort. Then she loosened a slender gold chain from her neck, to
which was attached a coin of foreign appearance, traced with strange
characters, and having upon it a wondrous woman's face, beauteous, but
of an antique cast.
'Here,' she said, 'is my precious Egyptian princess. The man who gave it
to me said it was possessed of talismanic virtues, that it secured
safety and success to the wearer as long as he never permitted it to be
taken from him by force or fraud. If he did, the charm was broken. You
are the only person in the whole world to whom I would give it.'
'I thought you were too wise,' he said, taking the chain in his hand
gently, nevertheless, 'to confess such superstition. But I will take it
if it cheers you, darling Estelle, and here I swear that it shall be my
companion night and day until we meet again. Here is a companion token,
you have often asked for it before.'
'You are not going to give me the Chaloner ring, are you, Lance? How
happy it would have made me one little month ago,' she cried. 'I must
have it altered to fit my finger, I suppose? It can be altered back when
you return.'
'It is yours from this moment, and for ever,' said he. 'May it bring you
the good fortune it has failed to give me, so far. On a woman's hand the
charm may be broken. It has my mother's name inside, and, see,' here he
touched a spring, disclosing a tiny recess under the principal stone,
which was a diamond of great value, 'take your scissors and cut off a
lock of my hair, and here is a place to put it. I may be gray when we
meet again. Isn't it a queer ring?'
It was indeed an uncommon jewel. It had been his mother's, and by her
had been inherited from the uncle who had first made his own and the
family's fortunes by a long residence in India. He had received it from
a Rajah in those old days when jewels and gifts passed freely between
the servants of the Great East India Company and the native princes. A
large ruby and an emerald of equal size flanked the centre jewel. The
setting was peculiar, massive, but artfully disguised by the exquisite
delicacy of the workmanship. The great beauty and value of the jewel
would have made it noticeable and prized in any society in which the
wearer might have moved.
'You have comforted me,' she said, smiling through her tears, and again
taking his head in her hands and pressing her lips again and again to
his brow and face. 'I feel now as if I had some guarantee that I should
look on your dear face again. And mind, if you do not return in five
years and three months I shall come to Australia to search for you.'
Thus they parted. He to face the new world of the strange and the
unfamiliar--light of heart and ready of hand, as is the wont of untried
youth; she to mourn his absence in secret, and to brood over her sorrow,
as is ever the part of the steadfast heart of loving woman. The
separation from his cousin Estelle was his sole cause of regret on
leaving England. Yet that transient grief soon passed away amidst the
turmoil and excitement of which he found himself a part in his capacity
of six-hundredth-and-odd passenger on board the crowded ocean-going
clipper. A strange enough experience to the home-bred youth, who, save
on yachting cruises, had never dared the deep. Heterogeneous and
strangely assorted was the crowd of the passengers--adventurers of every
grade, feverishly anxious to reach the land of gold, chiefly
inexperienced, but all sanguine of acquiring the facile fortunes which
they had persuaded themselves the new world of the South had in store
for them. Young men were there--mere boys, like himself--for whom the
trials of toil, danger, and privation were all to come. Hitherto
unrealised abstractions.
Others, again, whose grizzled beards showed them as men who had fronted
foes in the battle of life, and were ready for another campaign. Many
had never left England, and, in despite of occasional boasting, were
heavy-hearted at the thought of the homes which they had left and might
never see more. Nor was the emigration entirely masculine--
'There was woman's fearless eye
Lit by her deep love's truth,
There was manhood's brow serenely high--
And the fiery heart of youth.'
A half-expressed hope that the company in the second cabin would be less
conventional and more amusing than in the first, joined to the necessity
for economising his slender funds, had decided Lance Trevanion upon
shipping as a second-class passenger. Certain to be compelled to lead a
rough life upon his arrival in Australia, surely, he argued, the sooner
he commenced to learn the way to do so the better. Nor would his
association with refined women and well-bred men in the first cabin aid
him in his search for gold--necessarily with rough, half-brigand
comrades. Thus, partly as the outcome of the defiant spirit in which he
was leaving home and native land, he booked himself as a second-class
passenger.
Doubtless, in the curiously mingled crowd of passengers who thronged the
first saloon of the _Red Jacket_ in that fateful year of 1851, there
were many remarkable persons, whose lives had included a far greater
number of strange adventures than most modern novels. But for a wild and
fanciful commingling of all sorts and conditions of men--from every
clime, of every grade, degree, and shade of character, the second-class
passengers bore off the palm. Since the untimely collapse of the
architects of the Tower of Babel, there could seldom have been so
diverse and bizarre a collection of humanity.
The _Red Jacket_, under the stern rule of Malcolm Forbes, from whose
fiat there was no appeal, the most daring and successful maker of quick
passages that the records of the Company knew, had steamed off at the
hour appointed. Started when far from ready, however, if the masses of
deck lumber which needed storage were to be taken into account. The
weather, bad from the commencement, became worse in the Bay of Biscay,
where raged a perfect hurricane--a storm, or rather a succession of
storms, under the fierce breath of which the _Red Jacket_ lay-to for
forty-eight hours at a stretch, afflicting the inexperienced voyagers
with the strongly impressed notion that their voyage would not be quite
so long as they expected. But the good ship held her own gallantly;
finally ploughed her way through the mountainous billows of the Bay of
Storms into lower latitudes. Milder airs and smoother seas cheered the
depressed and pallid passengers. An increasing number walked the deck or
sat in seats provided for them day by day. Cheerful conversation,
merriment, and even such games as the conditions of 'board-ship' life
permit were indulged in from time to time. Then Lance Trevanion had
leisure to look around and examine his fellow-passengers. He would have
been difficult to satisfy who could not among his compulsory comrades
have selected one or more congenial acquaintance. In that year the _Red
Jacket_ was 'the great Club of the unsuccessful': authors and
dramatists, University graduates, lawyers, and physicians, clergymen and
artists, soldiers and sailors, tinkers and tailors, plough-boy,
apothecary, thief--to quote the nursery classic. All were there.
Men of good family, like himself, chiefly younger sons, however, who had
quitted Britain in order to enlarge the proverbial slenderness of a
cadet's purse--
'One was a peer of ancient blood,
In name and fame undone--
And one could speak in ancient Greek,
And one was a bishop's son.'
The _soigné_ ex-guardsman, for whom the last Derby had been the knell of
fate, _he_ was there, plainly dressed and unpretentious of manner, yet
bearing the unmistakable stamp of the class whom King Fashion delighted
to honour. The middle-aged club lounger, who thought the new game of
Golden Hazard, at which the stakes were reported to be so heavy and the
players so inexperienced, worth a voyage and a deal or two--he was
there. The farmer's son, who had hunted too much; the farm labourer, who
was a bit of a poacher; the gamekeeper, who had kept an eye on him; the
shopman, whose soft hands had never done a day's hard work; the groom,
the coachman, the gardener, each and every one of the members of the
staff of rural and city life--were there. With some exceptions, they
were chiefly young, and now, as the fear and discomfort of the early
part of the voyage wore off, the natural characters of the individuals
commenced to exhibit themselves.
It was pathetic to see the trustful confidence with which
delicately-nurtured women, following their improvident or heedless
mates, clung to the idea that, once safely landed in the wondrous land
of gold, all would be well. They had left in the old land all that had
made the solace of their lives, their tenderest memories and inherited
affection. After unutterable wretchedness and discomfort, they were now
voyaging towards a land the characteristics of which were practically an
unknown to them as those of the interior of Africa, and yet, 'O woman,
great in thy faith!' those victims of ironic fate were cheerful, even
gay. As they looked in the eyes of their husbands or the faces of their
children and saw them happy and sanguine, they dreaded no cloud in the
tropic sky, neither storm nor disaster, poverty nor danger, to come in
the far south land.
With many young men on board, and others who, though no longer young,
were not disinclined for games of chance, it was only to be expected
that a little card-playing should go on. Lance was naturally fond of all
games of hazard--bad, indeed, born and bred in him--derived from
whatever ancestor--the true gambler's passion. He had enjoyed no great
opportunity of developing it yet. All games of chance had been strictly
interdicted at Wychwood. Now that he had come into freer
atmosphere--into another world, socially considered--he felt a
newly-arisen desire for play, so strong and unconquerable that it
astonished himself. He had, of course, £200 or £300 with him, not
intending to land in Australia quite penniless. This was more than many
of his shipmates could boast of possessing, and he passed among them, in
consequence, as quite a capitalist; in his way. Though he played
regularly, almost daily in fact, he was more than moderately successful.
The evil genius of chance, who lures men to their destruction by
ensuring their success in their early hazards, was not absent on this
occasion. Lance won repeatedly, so much so that his good fortune began
to be as much a matter of general observation as his apparent easiness
as regarded money.
It may be imagined that Trevanion's circle of acquaintances became
enlarged. Inexperienced youngsters like himself mingled every day, when
the weather permitted, with men who had played for high stakes in good
London clubs. Success, of course, varied. Many of the callow gamblers
lost all they had, and had, perforce, to look forward to landing in
Melbourne without a penny in the world.
Among those who were proverbially unsuccessful was a young man, who,
from that and other reasons, commenced to attract an unusual share of
attention from the other passengers. He and Lance Trevanion were
decidedly unsympathetic. They were always pitted against one another in
play. They appeared to be rivals in all things. More than once they had
been on the verge of a quarrel, which the bystanders had prevented from
being fought out. What was perhaps really curious was the fact, which
all were quick to remark, that the two men resembled each other in
personal appearance to a most uncommon degree. Lawrence Trevenna, for
such was his name, was probably a year older, but otherwise had much the
same figure, features, and complexion. The eyes, too, strange to say,
were of the same shape and colour; and, as the two men faced each other
in the quarrel before mentioned, more than one looker-on remarked the
curious peculiarity--the strange unearthly glitter, the lurid light,
which shone forth in the hour of wrath and defiance. No one had noticed
it before in either face. 'They were as much alike,' said the second
mate, who was standing by, somewhat disappointed that the fight did not
come off, 'as if they were brothers. There couldn't have been a closer
match.'
As it turned out, they had never seen one another before,--in fact, came
from different parts of England. The other man, when looked at closely,
was decidedly coarser in feature and less refined in type. His
conversation, too, disclosed the fact that his early education had been
indifferent. Handsome and stalwart as he was, under no circumstances
could he be considered to rank as a gentleman. That his temper was
violent was put beyond a doubt by the savage outbreak which led to the
quarrel. It was not certain that he would have got the best of it in a
hand-to-hand encounter, but his expression on reluctantly retiring was
of unequivocal malevolence, as was indeed exhibited by his parting
speech.
'I'll meet with you another day,' he said. 'Australia is not such a big
place, after all. You may not have so many backers next time.'
'It's perfectly indifferent to me,' answered Trevanion, 'when or how we
meet. I dare say my hands will save my head there, as they can do here.
People shouldn't play for money who can't keep their tempers when they
lose.'
The passengers of the _Red Jacket_ had in a general way too much to
think about to bother their heads about the accidental likeness existing
between two young fellows in the second class, still the story leaked
out. It was said 'that one of them was an eldest son and heir to an old
historic name and a fine estate. The other was a very fine young man,
but evidently a nobody, inasmuch as he dropped his aitches and so on.
_But_ they were so wonderfully alike that you could hardly tell them
apart. It would be worth while to get up amateur theatricals and play
the _Corsican Brothers_. Effect tremendous, you know! Queerest thing of
all, too, they'd never met before and didn't like each other now they
had met.'
'Strange things, doubles,' said Captain Westerfield, late of H.M. 80th
Regiment. 'Not so very uncommon though. Most men in society have one. My
fellow turned up at Baden, most extraordinary resemblance, wasn't an
Englishman either. Raffish party too, spy and conspirator persuasion,
that sort of thing. Did me good service once, though. Story too long to
tell now.'
'Oh, Captain Westerfield, _do_ tell it to us,' said the fascinating Mrs.
Grey, as they walked back to the first-class region, after inspecting
the two Dromios.
'Some day, perhaps,' murmured the Captain.
The _Red Jacket_ held on her way with unslackened speed. Night and day,
fair weather and foul, with winds ahead or astern, it was all the same
to Captain Forbes. Never was an inch of canvas taken in before the
'sticks' began to give token of ill-usage. 'What she couldn't carry she
might drag,' was his usual reply to remonstrating passengers. And he had
his accustomed luck. In the murkiest midnight, or when fogs made the
best lights invisible a ship's length in advance, the _Red Jacket_ ran
into no homeward-speeding bark. Nor did any other reckless-driving
vessel, with a captain vowed to make the passage of the season,
encounter him. The long, low coast-line of Australia and the Otway light
were sighted at as nearly as possible the hour when they were expected
to be visible, and through the Rip and up the vast land-locked haven of
Port Phillip Bay went the Racer of the Ocean one afternoon, fully two
days in advance of the shortest passage which had ever been known in
those days between the old old world and that new one which so long lay
unknown and unpeopled beneath the Southern Cross.