Kitabı oku: «The Old Helmet. Volume II», sayfa 17

"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."

CHAPTER XVII
IN SMOOTH WATER

 
"But soon I heard the dash of oars,
I heard the pilot's cheer;
My head was turned perforce away,
And I saw a boat appear."
 

The morning came for the "Queen Esther" to sail. Mr. and Mrs. Amos were on board first, and watched with eyes both kind and anxious to see Eleanor when she should come. The little bonnet with chocolate ribbands did not keep them waiting and the first smile and kiss to Mrs. Amos made her sure that all was right. She had been able to see scarce anything of Eleanor during the weeks on shore; it was a refreshment to have her near again. But Eleanor had turned immediately to attend to Mr. Esthwaite.

"This is the meanest, most abominable thing of a vessel," he said, "that ever Christians travelled in! It is an absurd proceeding altogether. Why if the boards don't part company and go to pieces before you get to Tonga – which I think they will – they don't give room for all three of you to sit down in the cabin at once."

"The deck is of better capacity," Eleanor told him briskly.

"Such a deck! I wonder you, cousin Eleanor, can make up your mind to endure it. There is not a man living who is worth such a sacrifice. Horrid!"

"We hope it won't last a great while," Mr. Amos told him.

"It won't! That's what I say. You will all be deposited in the bottom of the ocean, to pay you for not having been contented on shore. I would not send a dog to sea in such a ship!"

"Cousin Esthwaite, you had better not stay in a situation so disagreeable to you. You harass yourself for nothing. Shake hands. You see the skipper is going to make sail directly."

Eleanor with a little play in the manner of this dismissal, was enough in earnest to secure her point. Mr. Esthwaite felt in a manner constrained to take his departure. He presumed however in the circumstances to make interest for a cousinly kiss for good bye; which was refused him with a cooler demonstration of dignity than he had yet met with. It nettled him.

"There was the princess," whispered Mr. Amos to his wife.

"Good!" said Mrs. Amos.

"Good bye!" cried Mr. Esthwaite, disappearing over the schooner's side. "You are not fit for a missionary! I told you so before."

Eleanor turned to Mrs. Amos, ignoring entirely this little transaction, and smiled at her. "I hope he has not made you nervous," she said.

"No," said Mrs. Amos; "I am not nervous. If I did not get sick I should enjoy it; but I suppose I shall be sick as soon as we get out of the harbour."

"Let us take the good of it then, until we are out of the harbour," said Eleanor. "If the real 'Queen Esther' was at all like her namesake, Ahasuerus must have had a disorderly household."

They sat down together on the little vessel's deck, and watched the beautiful shores from which they were gliding away. Eleanor was glad to be off. The stay at Sydney had become oppressive to her; she wanted to be at the end of her journey and know her fate; and hope and reason whispered that she had reason to be glad. For all that, the poor child had a great many shrinkings of heart. A vision of Mr. Rhys never came up in one of its aspects, – that of stern and fastidious delicacy, – without her heart seeming to die away within her. She could not talk now. She watched the sunny islands and promontories of the bay, changing and passing as the vessel slowly moved on; watched the white houses of Sydney, grateful for the home she had found there, longing exceedingly for a home once again that should be hers by right; hope and tremulousness holding her heart together. This was a conflict that prayer and faith did not quell; she could only come to a state of humble submissiveness; and she never thought of reaching Vuliva without a painful thrill that almost took away her breath. But she was glad to be on the way.

The vessel was very small, not of so much as eighty tons burthen; its accommodations were of course a good deal as Mr. Esthwaite had said; and more than that, the condition of the vessel and of its appointments was such that Mrs. Amos felt as if she could hardly endure to shut herself up in the cabin. Eleanor resolved immediately that she would not; the deck was a better plate; and she prevailed to have a mattress brought there for Mrs. Amos, where the good lady, though miserably ill as soon as they were upon the ocean roll, yet could be spared the close air and other horrors of the place below deck. Eleanor wrapped herself in her sea cloak, and lived as she could on deck with her; having a fine opportunity to read the stars at night, and using it. The weather was very fine; the wind favouring and steady; and in the Southern Ocean, under such conditions, there were some good things to be had, even on board the "Queen Esther." There were glorious hymn-singings in the early night-time; and Eleanor had never sung with more power on the "Diana." There were beautiful Bible discussions between her and Mr. Amos – Bible contemplations, rather; in which they brought Scripture to Scripture to illustrate their point; until Mr. Amos declared he thought it would be a grand way of holding a Bible-class; and poor Mrs. Amos listened, delighted, though too sick to put in more than a word now and then. And Eleanor's heart gave a throb every time she recollected that another day had gone, – so many more miles were travelled over, – they were so much nearer the journey's end. Her companions found no fault in her. There was nothing of the princess now, but a gentle, thoughtful, excellent nurse, and capital cook. On board the "Diana" there had been little need of her services for Mrs. Amos; little indeed that could be done. Now, in the fresh air on the open deck of the little schooner, Mrs. Amos suffered less in one way; but all the party were sharers in the discomforts of close accommodations and utter want of nicety in anything done or furnished on board. The condition of everything was such that it was scarcely possible to eat at all for well people. Poor Mrs. Amos would have had no chance except for Eleanor's helpfulness and clever management. As on board the "Diana," there was nobody in the schooner that would refuse her anything; and Mr. Amos smiled to himself to see where she would go and what she would do to secure some little comfort for her sick friend, and how placidly she herself munched sea biscuit and bad bread, after their little stock of fruit from Sydney had given out. She would bring a cup of tea and a bit of toast to Mrs. Amos, and herself take a crust with the equanimity of a philosopher. Eleanor did not care much what she eat, those days. Her own good times were when everybody else was asleep except the man at the wheel; and she would kneel by the guards and watch the strange constellations, and pray, and sometimes weep a flood of tears. Julia, her mother and Alfred, Mrs. Caxton, her own intense loneliness and shrinking delicacy in the uncertainty of her position, they were all well watered in tears at some of those watching hours when nobody saw.

The "Queen Esther" made the Friendly Islands in something less than a month, notwithstanding Mr. Esthwaite's unfavourable predictions. At Tonga she was detained a week and more; unlading and taking in stores. The party improved the time in a survey of the island and mission premises and in pleasant intercourse with their friends stationed there. Or what would have been pleasant intercourse; it was impossible for Eleanor to enjoy it. So near her destination now, she was impatient to be off; and drew short breaths until the days of delay were ended, and the little schooner once more made sail and turned her head towards Vuliva. She had seen Tonga with but half an eye.

Two or three days would finish their journey now. The weather and wind continued fair; they dipped Tonga in the salt wave, and stood on and on towards the unseen haven of their hopes and duties. A new change came over Eleanor. It could not be reason, for reason had striven in vain. Perhaps it was nature, which turning a corner took a new view of the subject. But from the time of their leaving Tonga, she was unable to entertain such troublesome apprehensions of what the end of the voyage might have in store for her. Something whispered it could be nothing very bad; and that point that she had so dreaded began to gather a glow of widely different promise. A little nervousness and trepidation remained about the thought of it; the determination abode fast to see the very first word and look and know what they portended; but in place of the rest of Eleanor's downhearted fear, there came now an overwhelming sense of shamefacedness. This was something quite new and unexpected; she had never known in her life more than a slight touch of it before; and now it consumed her. Even before Mr. and Mrs. Amos she felt it; and her eyes shunned theirs the last day or two as if she had been a shy child. Why was it? She could not help it. This seemed to be as natural and as unreasonable as the other; and in her lonely night watches, instead of trembling and sinking of heart, Eleanor was conscious that her cheeks dyed themselves with that unconquerable feeling of shame. Very inconsistent indeed with her former state of feeling; and that was according to Mrs. Caxton's words; not being reasonable, reason could not be expected from them in anything. Her friends had not penetrated her former mood; this they saw and smiled at; and indeed it made Eleanor very lovely. There was a shy, blushing grace about her the last day or two of the voyage which touched all she did; indeed Mrs. Amos declared she could see it through the little close straw bonnet, and it made her want to take Eleanor in her arms and keep her there. Mr. Amos responded in his way of subdued fun, that it was lucky she could not; as it would be likely to be a disputed possession, and he did not want to get into a quarrel with his brethren the first minute of his getting to land.

Up came Eleanor with some trifle for Mrs. Amos which she had been preparing.

"We are almost in, sister Eleanor!" said Mr. Amos. "The captain says he sees the land."

Eleanor's start was somewhat prompt, to look in the direction of 'Queen

Esther's' figure-head.

"The light is failing – I don't believe you can see it," said Mr. Amos; "not to know it from the clouds. The captain says he shall stand off and on through the night, so as to have daylight to go in. The entrance is narrow. I suppose, if all is well, we shall have a wedding to-morrow?"

Eleanor asked Mrs. Amos somewhat hastily, if what she had brought her was good?

"Delicious!" Mrs. Amos said; and pulling Eleanor's face down to her she gave it a kiss which spoke more things than her mere thanks. She was rewarded with the sight of that crimson veil which spread itself over Eleanor's cheeks, which most people thought it was a pleasure to see.

Eleanor thought she should get little sleep that night; but she was disappointed. She slept long and sweetly on her mattress; and awoke to find it quite day, with fair wind, and the schooner setting her head full on the land which rose up before her fresh and green, yes, and exceeding lovely. Eleanor got up and shook herself out; her companions were still sleeping. She rolled her mattress together and sat down upon it, to watch the approaches to the land. Fresher and fairer and greener every moment it lifted itself to her view; she could hardly bear to look steadily; her head went down for a minute often under the pressure of the thoughts that crowded together. And when she raised it up, the lovely hills of the island, with their novel outline and green luxuriance, were nearer and clearer and higher than they had been a minute before. Now she could discern here and there, she thought, something that must be a dwelling-house; then trees began to detach themselves from the universal mass; she saw smoke rising; and she became aware too, that along the face of the island, fronting the approach of the schooner, was a wall of surf; and a line of breakers that seemed to stretch right and left and to be without an interval in their white continuity. Eleanor did not see how the schooner was going to get in; for the surf did not break evidently on the shore of the island, but on a reef extending around the shore and at some little distance from it. Yet the vessel stood straight on; and the sweet smell of the land began to come with the freshness of the morning air.

"Is this Vuliva before us?" she asked of the skipper whom she found standing near.

"Ay, ay!"

"Where are you going to get in? I see no opening."

"Ay, ay! There is an opening, though."

And soon, looking keenly, Eleanor thought she could discern it. Not until they were almost upon it however; and then it was a place of rough water enough, though the regular fall of the surf was interrupted and there was only a general upheaving and commotion of the waves among themselves. It was nothing very terrific; the tide was in a good state; and presently Eleanor saw that they had passed the barrier, they were in smooth water, and making for an opening in the land immediately opposite which might be either the mouth of a river or an inlet of the sea. They neared it fast, sailed up into it; and there to Eleanor's mortification the skipper dropped anchor and swung to. She saw no settlement. Some few scattered houses were plain enough now to be seen; but nothing even like a village. Tufts of trees waved gracefully; rock and hill and rich-coloured lowland spread out a variety of beauty; where was Vuliva, the station? This might be the island. Where were the people? Could they come no nearer than this?

Mr. Amos made enquiry. The village, the skipper said, was "round the pint;" in other words, behind a woody headland which just before them bent the course of the river into a sharp angle. The schooner would go no further; passengers and effects were to be transported the rest of the way in boats. People they would see soon enough; so the master of the "Queen Esther" advised them.

"I suppose the natives will carry the news of the schooner being here, and our friends will come and look after us," Mr. Amos said.

Eleanor changed colour, and sat with a beating heart looking at the fair fresh landscape which was to be – perhaps – the scene of her future home. The scene was peace itself. Still water after the upheavings of the ocean; the smell and almost the fluttering sound of the green leaves in the delicious wind; the ripple on the surface of the little river; the soft stillness of land sounds, with the heavy beat of the surf left behind on the reef outside. Eleanor drew a long breath. People would find them out soon, the skipper had said. She was exceedingly disposed to get rid of her sea dress and put on something that looked like the summer morning; for without recollecting what the seasons were in the Southern Ocean, that was what the time seemed like to her. She looked round at Mrs. Amos, who was sitting up and beginning to realize that she had done with the sea for the present.

"How do you do?" said Eleanor.

"I should feel better if I could get on something clean."

"Come, then!"

The two ladies disappeared down the companion way, into one of the most sorry tiring rooms, surely, that ever nicety used for that purpose. But it served two purposes with Eleanor just now; and the second was a hiding place. She did not want to be taken unawares, nor to be seen before she could see. So under the circumstances she made both Mrs. Amos and herself comfortable, and was as helpful as usual in a new line. Then she went to look out; but nobody was in sight yet, gentle or savage; all was safe; she went back to Mrs. Amos and fastened the door.

"Let us kneel down and pray together, will you?" she said. "I cannot get my breath freely till we have done that."

Mrs. Amos's lips trembled as she knelt. And Eleanor and she joined in many petitions there, while the very stillness of their little cabin floor reminded them they were come to their desired haven, and the long sea journey was over. They rose up and kissed each other.

"I am so glad I have known you!" said Mrs. Amos. "What a blessing you have been to us! I wish we might be stationed somewhere together."

"I suppose that would be too good to hope for," said Eleanor. "I am going to reconnoitre again."

Mrs. Amos half guessed why, and smiled to herself at Eleanor's blushing shyness. "Poor child, her hands were all trembling too," she said in her thoughts. They were broken off by a low summons to the cabin door, which Eleanor held slightly ajar. Through the crack of the door they had a vision.

On the deck of the "Queen Esther" stood a specimen of the native inhabitants of the land. A man of tall stature, nobly developed in limbs and muscles, he looked in his native undress almost of giant proportions. His clothing was only a long piece of figured native cloth wound about his loins, one end falling like a train to the very sloop's deck. A thorough black skin was the only covering of the rest of his person, and shewed his breadth of shoulder and strength of muscle to good advantage; as if carved in black marble; only there was sufficient graceful mobility and dignified ease of carriage and attitude; no marble rigidity. Black he was, this savage, but not negro. The features were well cut and good. What the hair might be naturally could only be guessed at; the work of a skilful hair-dresser had left it something for the uninitiated to marvel at. A band of three or four inches in breadth, completely white, bordered the face; the rest, a very luxuriant head, was jet black and dressed into a perfectly regular and smooth roundish form, projecting everywhere beyond the white inner border. He had an uncouth necklace, made of what it was impossible to say, except that part of it looked like shells and part like some animal's teeth; rings of one or two colours were on his fingers; he carried no weapon. But in his huge, powerful black frame, uncouth hair-dressing, and strange uncoveredness, he was a sufficiently terrible object to unused eyes. In Tonga the ladies had seen no such sight.

"Do shut the door!" said Mrs. Amos. "He may come this way, and there is nobody that knows how to speak to him."

Eleanor shut the door, and looked round at her friend with a smile.

"I am foolish!" said Mrs. Amos laughing; "but I don't want to see him just yet – till there is somebody to talk to him."

The door being fast, Eleanor applied herself to a somewhat large knot-hole she had long ago discovered in it; one which she strongly suspected the skipper had fostered, if not originated, for his own convenience of spying what was going on. Through this knot-hole Eleanor had a fair view of a good part of the deck, savage and all. He was gesticulating now and talking, evidently to the captain and Mr. Amos, the former of whom either did not understand or did not agree with him. Mr. Amos, of course, was in the former condition. Eleanor watched them with absorbed interest; when suddenly this vision was crossed by another, that looked to her eyes much as a white angel might, coming across a cloud of both moral and physical blackness. Mr. Rhys himself; his very self, and looking very much like it; only in a white dress literally, which in England she had never seen him wear. But the white dress alone did not make the impression to her eyes; there was that air of freshness and purity which some people always carry about with them, and which has to do with the clear look of temperance as well as with great particularity of personal care, and in part also grows out of the moral condition. In three breathless seconds Eleanor took note of it all, characteristics well known, but seen now with the novelty of long disuse and with the background of that huge black savage, to whom Mr. Rhys was addressing some words, of explanation or exhortation – Eleanor could not tell which. She noticed the quiet pleasant manner of his speech, which certainly looked not as if Mrs. Amos had any reason for her fears; but he was speaking earnestly, and she observed too the unbending look of the savage in answer and a certain pleasant deference with which he appeared to be listening. Mr. Rhys had taken off his hat for a moment – it hung in his hand while the other brushed the hair from his forehead. Eleanor's eye even in that moment fell to the hand which carried the hat; it was the same, – she recognized it with a curious sense of bringing great and little things together, – it was the same white and carefully looked-after hand that she remembered it in England. Mr. Rhys's own personal civilization went about with him.

Eleanor did not hear any of Mrs. Amos's words to her, which were several; and though Mrs. Amos, half alarmed by her deafness, did not know but she might be witnessing something dreadful on deck, and spoke with some importunity. Eleanor was thinking she had not a minute to lose. Beyond the time of Mr. Rhys's talking to the other visitor on the schooner's deck, there could be but small interval before he would learn all about her being on board; two words to the skipper or Mr. Amos would bring it out; and if she wished to gain that first minute's testimony of look and word, she must be beforehand with them. She thought of all that with a beating heart in one instant's flash of thought, hastily caught up her ship cloak without daring to stop to put it on, slipped back the bolt of the door, and noiselessly passed out upon the deck. She neither heard nor saw anybody else; she was conscious of an intense and pitiful shame at being there and at thus presenting herself; but everything else was second to that necessity, to know from Mr. Rhys's look, with an absolute certainty, where hestood. She was not at that moment much afraid; yet the look she must see. She went forward while he was yet speaking to his black neighbour, she stood still a little behind him, and waited. She longed to hide her eyes, yet she looked steadfastly. How she looked, neither she nor perhaps anybody else knew. There was short opportunity for observation.

Mr. Rhys had no sooner finished his business with his sable friend, when he turned the other way; and of course the motionless figure standing so near his elbow, the woman's bonnet and drapery, caught his first glance. Eleanor was watching, with eyes that were strained already with the effort; they got leave to go down now. The flash of joy in those she had been looking at, the deep tone of the low uttered, "Oh, Eleanor!" which burst from him, made her feel on the instant as if she were paid to the full, not only for all she had done, but for all that life might have of disagreeable in store for her. Her eyes fell; she stood still in a sudden trance of contentment which made her as blind and deaf as another feeling had made her just before. Those two words – there had been such a depth in them, of tenderness and gladness; and somehow she felt in them too an appreciation of all she had done and gone through. Eleanor was satisfied. She felt it as well in the hold of her hand, which was taken and kept in a clasp as who should say, 'This is mine.'

Perhaps it was out of consideration for her state, that without any further reference to her he turned to Mr. Amos and claimed acquaintance and brotherhood with him; and for a little while talked, informing himself of various particulars of their journey and welfare; never all the while loosing his hold of that hand, though not bringing her into the conversation, and indeed standing so as somewhat to shield her. The question of landing came up and was discussed. The skipper objected to send the schooner's boat, on the score that it would leave too few men on board to take care of the vessel. Mr. Rhys had only a small canoe with him, manned by a single native. So he decided forthwith to return to the village and despatch boats large enough to bring the missionaries and their effects to land; but about that there might be some delay. Then for the first time he bent down and spoke to Eleanor; again that subdued, tender tone.

"Are you ready to go ashore?"

"Yes."

"I will take you with me. Do you want anything out of this big ship? The canoes may not be immediately obtained, for anything but the live freight."

He took the grey ship cloak from Eleanor's arm and put it round her shoulders. She felt that she was alone and forlorn no more; she had got home. She was a different creature that went into the cabin to kiss Mrs. Amos, from the Eleanor that had come out.

"I've seen him!" whispered Mrs. Amos. "Eleanor! you will not be married till we come, will you?"

"I hope not – I don't know," said Eleanor hurriedly seizing her bag and passing out again. Another minute, and it and she were taken down the side of the schooner and lodged in the canoe; and their dark oarsman paddled off.