Читать книгу Fugitive Anne, A Romance of the Unexplored Bush - Rosa Praed - Страница 5

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THE cabin was fairly large, considering the size of the steamer. It had two berths--the top one having been occupied by Mrs Bedo for the sake of coolness--and a cushioned bunk with drawers beneath, set under the square porthole. In these smooth seas the heavy dead-lights had been fastened back, leaving an aperture through which might be seen the glassy sea, the Australian shore, and maybe a coral island, with clumps of feathery palms, uprising from the blue. This window was, as Mr Bedo had said, wide enough for a thin man, and certainly a slim woman, to slip through into the sea.

Could it be possible that a girl of scarcely twenty--a bride of four months--had been driven to so desperate a strait as to choose death, or take the chance of life among sharks and cannibals, in order to escape from a loathed bondage? He--Eric Hansen--knew what the Captain and passengers only suspected, that Anne Bedo detested the man she had married. And was it wonderful? The greater marvel seemed that she had married him at all.

Eric Hansen gave a shudder as he watched the exbullock driver turn over certain dainty properties his wife had left in the locker and on the shelves and hooks; pretty garments and feminine odds and ends, and finally a soft leather desk with folding cover, that lay at one end of the bunk. An involuntary exclamation escaped Hansen's lips. Mr Bedo turned and confronted the Dane, but he was too agitated to speak.

"Can I be of any service?" asked Hansen, commanding himself with an effort. Bedo took no notice of the offer. His eye had been caught by a large square sheet of paper written upon and half folded, that lay upon the open blotting-pad of the desk, from which the leather cover had fallen back. It seemed as though the pen had dropped upon the paper, for there was a blot of ink after the last word. The pen, Hansen noticed, stuck up endways between the red cushion of the bunk and the vessel's side. No doubt, in shaking the garments, which hung on a row of pegs above the bunk, Mr Bedo had displaced the writing-case and caused it to close.

He took up the sheet of paper and held it before him, staring in a stupefied manner at the words traced upon it in a decided and legible hand. He stood with his face to the window, and Hansen, moved by some strange impulse, stepped across the doorway, and read Anne Bedo's unfinished letter over her husband's shoulder.

It was dated in the ordinary way from the S.S. Leichardt, near Cooktown, on the previous day, but had evidently been written during the night. The letter began:--

"My own Mother.

"The moon is shining through my cabin window, a full moon nearly, with just a little kink in the round, that makes me think of your dear, thin cheeks. I seem to see your loving eyes looking out of the moon and asking me things; sad things, dearie, that we mustn't think about. But oh! I long to lay my poor head on your breast and to feel your arms round me, and to look up into your sweet eyes which I saved. Ah! thank God for that!

"Mother, I know the sort of things you'd want me to tell you, and what your first question would be. Well, I'll answer it. Yes, I'm happy, dear, and I'm not sorry about anything. It's `altogether bujeri' with me, as the Blacks used to say when they had got their flour and tobacco, and were quite contented with things. I've got my flour and tobacco, having earned it by a job that's just a little more complicated than grubbing out stumps on a clearing; and I'm quite content, so you needn't fret about little Missa Anne any more. I'd do the same job over again if I was put to it, for the same end. So never let that thought trouble you, dearie. Besides, you won't miss me so dreadfully now that Etta is grown up, for she is so much more sensible and practical than ever I could be. I couldn't do anything but sing, and not well enough to make any money by it. But never mind, I was able to buy you back your eyes, and for that to the last day of my life, I shall praise God, and thank Him with all my heart.

"Yes, I'm happy, dearest. Don't worry about your little Anne.

"Oh! It's good to be back in the old country; and the whiff of the gum--trees makes a woman of me once more. No, not all the musical academies of London and Paris could change me from what I am, a Bush girl to the bones of me. No, not even if that wonderful fairy story were to come true, and I were really Anne, Baroness Marley, in the peerage of England, as said that funny old burrower in Church registers. Have you ever seen him again, and has he found the missing link in the pedigree? But, of course, it's all nonsense. Mr Bedo told me he had seen into the matter himself. He said that the man confessed his evidence had broken down, and that he only wanted to get money out of poor you and me, who hadn't any to give him.

"Dear, in a few days now, we shall be off the old bay--do you remember? The shining moon reminds me of those hot nights when we used to get up and bathe--Etta and I--with the waves rolling in over us, silver-tipped. And how angry you used to be in the morning, and how frightened because of the sharks! You always said, you know, that I had a charmed life. The moon seems to be beckoning to me now. It's streaming over a little bay so like our own old bay, and I can fancy that I hear the roll of surf on the sand. No, I'm silly; it's the water against the steamer's side. We're not so far off from land, however. Since rounding Cape Flattery, we've kept close in shore. Now, I've been standing up and looking out of my window. I can hardly bear to stay in the cabin; it's like a prison--so hot, and there seem to come living fumes into it, Chinese and Lascar smells, you know! from all parts of the steamer. They poison what little air there is. Out there, where the moon shines, all looks cool and pure and free, and there's just a ripple on the water; and the moonbeams shake and stretch out arms as if they were calling me. Why shouldn't I take a dip?..."

And here the blot had fallen, and the writing ended.

Mr Bedo, absorbed in the letter, appeared quite unaware of the man standing behind him. He turned the sheet over, staring at the blank side for a moment or two; then going back, he read the writing again. When he had finished, he crushed the paper in his hand, and made a movement as though he were about to throw it out of the window, but Hansen put out his hand and stopped him.

"You mustn't do that," said the Dane, quietly. "This should be given into the Captain's charge, in case"--he hesitated, then said straightly,--"in case there should be need for an inquiry."

Bedo swore again. "What business is it of yours?" he cried.

"None," replied Hansen, "beyond the fact that if an inquiry became necessary, which I hope most earnestly may not be, I should be examined as a witness, and should have to give evidence as to the contents of that letter."

"The letter is a private one, written to her mother," said Bedo. "It had best be destroyed; there is nothing in it to throw any light upon the matter."

"I cannot agree with you," said Hansen, quietly; "nor do I think would Mrs Bedo's mother."

"You prying skunk!" exclaimed Bedo. "Do you dare to own that you have been so ungentlemanly as to read over my shoulder what my wife wrote in confidence to her mother?"

"Certainly, I own it," said Hansen. "I will admit also that it was an ungentlemanly action. Yet I'd maintain that it was justified by circumstances. But for my having committed it, you would have destroyed important evidence."

"Do you understand," said Bedo, trying to speak calmly, but shaking either with anger or fear, "that you are forcing me to make public a family scandal, which it is best for all parties should be concealed? My wife was mad, and her words here prove it. All that nonsense about the moon shows clearly that she must have thrown herself overboard in a fit of insanity. She required careful watching, and I ought not to have allowed her to be alone. That is the truth, though for her sake as well as for my own, I did not want all the world to know it."

"I think I heard you a few minutes ago hinting what you are pleased to call the truth, pretty broadly to the Captain," said Hansen, drily. "If there's any family secret, you yourself have already revealed it. But nothing would make me believe that Mrs Bedo is mad--unhappy, yes, but not mad."

"And who are you to judge whether my wife was unhappy or mad?"

Hansen shook himself impatiently.

"Good Heavens! Mr Bedo, why should we stand arguing here? Do you care so little about your wife's fate, that you don't even want to know whether they are searching the vessel?"

Hansen was leaning over the bunk, his face against the window. Now, giving a glance outward, he was attracted by something he saw, and uttered a violent exclamation. He put out his hand, and drew in from where it had been entangled in a rope used for the fixing of a wind-sail, a lock of brown hair, which it was easy to recognise as Mrs Bedo's. He held it up, carefully examining the ends. Mr Bedo, much agitated, seized it from him, dropping at the same time the paper that he had crunched in his hand. Hansen stooped and picked it up.

"That is my wife's hair," said Bedo. "Something must have caught it when she was jumping over, and dragged it out of her head."

"No," answered Hansen, "I see that it is a strand which has been cut; not dragged out. Mr Bedo, this convinces me that your wife did not throw herself into the sea upon an hysterical impulse, but that her escape was planned. No doubt she cut off her hair, thinking it would hinder her in swimming."

The Captain had come in while the Dane was speaking.

"The Lord pity her then," he said, solemnly. "There's been smoke of Blacks' fires along the coast, and yesterday, some of the devils were sighted on the rocks, hurling their spears. But it seems impossible that she could have got to shore; and to say truth, I'd far rather that sharks had eaten her than that she should be in the power of those fiends. Mr Bedo, I'm afraid we must make up our minds to the worst. The first officer is still with the men searching, but we've found no trace, and anyhow, it isn't likely we should. I came to tell you that I must fasten up this cabin. Have you found anything which could give us a clue?"

Eric Hansen told him of the letter; and Mr Bedo, who seemed too stupefied for argument, allowed it to be given into the Captain's hands. The hair, too, was again examined. Clearly, it had been cut off, but was not, Captain Cass said, in sufficient quantity to be any proof of intention, as regards the disappearance. Who could say that Mrs Bedo had not cut off one of her abundant locks for some purpose of her own, and then thrown it away. Perhaps she had done so by accident, some days back. For the wind--sail had been taken down at Thursday Island, and not fixed again.