Читать книгу The Three Miss Kings - Ada Cambridge - Страница 8

Late in the evening when the sea was lit up with a young moon, Mr. Brion, having given them a great deal of serious advice concerning their money and other business affairs, escorted our three girls to the little jetty where the steamer that called in once a week lay at her moorings, ready to start for Melbourne and intermediate ports at five o'clock next morning. The old lawyer was a spare, grave, gentlemanly-looking old man, and as much a gentleman as he looked, with the kindest heart in the world when you could get at it: a man who was esteemed and respected, to use the language of the local paper, by all his fellow-townsmen, whether friends or foes. They Anglicised his name in speaking it, and they wrote it "Bryan" far more often than not, though nothing enraged him more than to have his precious vowels tampered with; but they liked him so much that they never cast it up to him that he was a Frenchman.

This good old man, chivalrous as any paladin, in his shy and secret way, always anxious to hide his generous emotions, as the traditional Frenchman is anxious to display them, had done a father's part by our young orphans since their own father had left them so strangely desolate. Sam Dunn had compassed them with sweet observances, as we have seen; but Sam was powerless to unravel the web of difficulties, legal and otherwise, in which Mr. King's death had plunged them. Mr. Brion had done all this, and a great deal more that nobody knew of, to protect the girls and their interests at a critical juncture, and to give them a fair and clear start on their own account. And in the process of thus serving them he had become very much attached to them in his old-fashioned, reticent way; and he did not at all like having to let them go away alone in this lonely-looking night.

"But Paul will be there to meet you," he said, for the twentieth time, laying his hand over Elizabeth's, which rested on his arm. "You may trust to Paul—as soon as the boat is telegraphed he will come to meet you—he will see to everything that is necessary—you will have no bother at all. And, my dear, remember what I say—let the boy advise you for a little while. Let him take care of you, and imagine it is I. You may trust him as absolutely as you trust me, and he will not presume upon your confidence, believe me. He is not like the young men of the country," added Paul's father, putting a little extra stiffness into his upright figure. "No, no—he is quite different."

"I think you have instructed us so fully, dear Mr. Brion, that we shall get along very well without having to trouble Mr. Paul," interposed Patty, in her clear, quick way, speaking from a little distance.

The steamer, with her lamps lit, was all in a clatter and bustle, taking in passengers and cargo. Sam Dunn was on board, having seen the boxes stowed away safely; and he came forward to say good-bye to his young ladies before driving his cart home.

"I'll miss ye," said the brawny fisherman, with savage tenderness; "and the missus'll miss ye. Darned if we shall know the place with you gone out of it. Many's the dark night the light o' your winders has been better'n the lighthouse to show me the way home."

He pointed to the great headland lying, it seemed now, so far, far off, ghostly as a cloud. And presently he went away; and they could hear him, as he drove back along the jetty, cursing his old horse—to which he was as much attached as if it had been a human friend—with blood-curdling ferocity.

Mr. Brion stayed with them until it seemed improper to stay any longer—until all the passengers that were to come on board had housed themselves for the night, and all the baggage had been snugly stowed away—and then bade them good-bye, with less outward emotion than Sam had displayed, but with almost as keen a pang.

"God bless you, my dears," said he, with paternal solemnity. "Take care of yourselves, and let Paul do what he can for you. I will send you your money every quarter, and you must keep accounts—keep accounts strictly. And ask Paul what you want to know. Then you will get along all right, please God."

"O yes, we shall get along all right," repeated Patty, whose sturdy optimism never failed her in the most trying moments.

But when the old man was gone, and they stood on the tiny slip of deck that was available to stand on, feeling no necessity to cling to the railings as the little vessel heaved up and down in the wash of the tide that swirled amongst the piers of the jetty—when they looked at the lights of the town sprinkled round the shore and up the hillsides, at their own distant headland, unlighted, except by the white haze of the moon, at the now deserted jetty, and the apparently illimitable sea—when they realised for the first time that they were alone in this great and unknown world—even Patty's bold heart was inclined to sink a little.

"Elizabeth," she said, "we must not cry—it is absurd. What is there to cry for? Now, all the things we have been dreaming and longing for are going to happen—the story is beginning. Let us go to bed and get a good sleep before the steamer starts so that we are fresh in the morning—so that we don't lose anything. Come, Nelly, let us see if poor Dan is comfortable, and have some supper and go to bed."

They cheered themselves with the sandwiches and the gooseberry wine that Mr. Brion's housekeeper had put up for them, paid a visit to Dan, who was in charge of an amiable cook (whom the old lawyer had tipped handsomely), and then faced the dangers and difficulties of getting to bed. Descending the brass-bound staircase to the lower regions, they paused, their faces flushed up, and they looked at each other as if the scene before them was something unfit for the eyes of modest girls. They were shocked, as by some specific impropriety, at the noise and confusion, the rough jostling and the impure atmosphere, in the morsel of a ladies' cabin, from which the tiny slips of bunks prepared for them were divided only by a scanty curtain. This was their first contact with the world, so to speak, and they fled from it. To spend a night in that suffocating hole, with those loud women their fellow passengers, was a too appalling prospect. So Elizabeth went to the captain, who knew their story, and admired their faces, and was inclined to be very kind to them, and asked his permission to occupy a retired corner of the deck. On his seeming to hesitate—they being desperately anxious not to give anybody any trouble—they assured him that the place above all others where they would like to make their bed was on the wedge-shaped platform in the bows, where they would be out of everybody's way.

"But, my dear young lady, there is no railing there," said the captain, laughing at the proposal as a joke.

"A good eight inches—ten inches," said Elizabeth. "Quite enough for anybody in the roughest sea."

"For a sailor perhaps, but not for young ladies who get giddy and frightened and seasick. Supposing you tumbled off in the dark, and I found you gone when I came to look for you in the morning."

"We tumble off!" cried Eleanor. "We never tumbled off anything in our lives. We have lived on the cliffs like the goats and the gulls—nothing makes us giddy. And I don't think anything will make us seasick—or frightened either."

"Certainly not frightened," said Patty.

He let them have their way—taking a great many (as they thought) perfectly unnecessary precautions in fixing up their quarters in case of a rough sea—and himself carried out their old opossum rug and an armful of pillows to make their nest comfortable. So, in this quiet and breezy bedchamber, roofed over by the moonlit sky, they lay down with much satisfaction in each other's arms, unwatched and unmolested, as they loved to be, save by the faithful Dan Tucker, who found his way to their feet in the course of the night. And the steamer left her moorings and worked out of the bay into the open ocean, puffing and clattering, and danced up and down over the long waves, and they knew nothing about it. In the fresh air, with the familiar voice of the sea around them, they slept soundly under the opossum rug until the sun was high.