"I a.s.sure you, Miss Brentwood, that I have only aided and abetted: the idea was his own."
"Well, well, I see how it is;--we were too happy I suppose."
"But, Alice," said Jim, "won"t you be proud to see your brother a good soldier?"
"Proud! I was always proud of you. But I wish the idea had never come into your head. If it was in war time I would say nothing, but now it is very different. Well, gentlemen, I shall leave you to your wine. Mr.
Halbert, I like you very much, but I wish you hadn"t turned Jim"s head."
She left them, and walked down the garden; through the twilight among the vines, which were dropping their yellow leaves lightly on the turf before the breath of the autumn evening. So Jim was going,--going to be killed probably, or only coming back after ten years" absence, "full of strange oaths and bearded like a pard!" She knew well how her father would jump at his first hint of being a soldier, and would move heaven and earth to get him a commission,--yes, he would go--her own darling, funny, handsome Jim, and she would be left all alone.
No, not quite! There is a step on the path behind her that she knows; there is an arm round her waist which was never there before, and yet she starts not as a low voice in her ear says,--
"Alice, my love, my darling, I have come after you to tell you that you are dearer to me than my life, and all the world besides. Can you love me half as well as I love you? Alice, will you be my wife?"
What answer? Her hands pressed to her face, with
flood of happy tears, she only says,--
"Oh! I"m so happy, Sam! So glad, so glad!"
Pipe up there, golden-voiced magpie; give us one song more before you go to roost. Laugh out, old jacka.s.s; till you fetch an echo back from the foggy hollow. Up on your bare boughs, it is dripping, dreary autumn: but down here in the vineyard, are bursting the first green buds of an immortal spring.
There are some scenes which should only be undertaken by the hand of a master, and which, attempted by an apprentice like myself, would only end in disastrous failure, calling down the wrath of all honest men and true critics upon my devoted head,--not undeservedly. Three men in a century, or thereabouts, could write with sufficient delicacy, and purity to tell you what two such young lovers as Sam Buckley and Alice Brentwood said to one another in the garden that evening, walking up and down between the yellow vines. I am not one of those three. Where Charles d.i.c.kens has failed, I may be excused from being diffident. I am an old bachelor, too--a further excuse. But no one can prevent my guessing, and I guess accordingly,--that they talked in a very low tone, and when, after an hour, Alice said it was time to come in, that Sam was quite astonished to find how little had been said, and what very long pauses there had been.
They came in through the window into the sittingroom, and there was Dr.
Mulhaus, Captain Brentwood, and also, of all people, Major Buckley, whom the other two had picked up in their ride and brought home. My information about this period of my history is very full and complete.
It has come to my knowledge on the best authority, that when Sam came forward to the light, Halbert kicked Jim"s shins under the table, and whispered, "You have lost your money, old fellow!" and that Jim answered, "I wish it was ten pounds instead of five."
But old folks are astonishingly obtuse. Neither of the three seniors saw what had happened; but entered CON AMORE into the proposed expedition to Cape Chatham, and when bedtime came, Captain Brentwood, honest gentleman, went off to rest, and having said his prayers and wound up his watch, prepared for a comfortable night"s rest, as if nothing was the matter.
He soon found his mistake. He had got his boots off, and was sitting pensively at his bedside, meditating further disrobements, when Jim entered mysteriously, and quietly announced that his whole life in future would be a weary burden if he didn"t get a commission in the army, or at least a cadetship in the East India Company"s service. Him the Captain settled by telling, that if he didn"t change his mind in a month he"d see about it, and so packed him off to bed. Secondly, as he was taking off his coat, wondering exceedingly at Jim"s communication, Sam appeared, and humbly and respectfully informed him that he had that day proposed to his daughter and been accepted,--provisionally; hoping that the Captain would not disapprove of him as a sonin-law. He was also rapidly packed off to bed, by the a.s.surance that he (Brentwood) had never felt so happy in his life, and had been sincerely hoping that the young folks would fall in love with one another for a year past.
So, Sam dismissed, the Captain got into bed; but as soon as the light was blown out two native cats began grunting under the washing-stand, and he had to get out, and expel them in his shirt; and finally he lost his temper and began swearing. "Is a man never to get to sleep?" said he. "The devil must be abroad tonight, if ever he was in his life."
No sleep that night for Captain Brentwood. His son, asking for a commission in the army, and his daughter going to be married! Both desirable enough in their way, but not the sort of facts to go to sleep over, particularly when fired off in his ear just as he was lying down.
So he lay tossing about, more or less uncomfortable all night, but dozed off just as the daylight began to show more decidedly in the window. He appeared to have slept from thirty to thirty-five seconds, when Jim awoke him with,--
"It"s time to get up, father, if you are going to Cape Chatham to-day."
"D--n Cape Chatham," was his irreverent reply when Jim was gone, which sentiment has been often re-echoed by various coasting skippers in later times. "Why, I haven"t been to sleep ten minutes,--and a frosty morning, too. I wish it would rain. I am not vindictive, but I do indeed. Can"t the young fools go alone, I wonder? No; hang it, I"ll make myself agreeable to-day, at all events!"
Chapter x.x.xIV
HOW THEY ALL WENT HUNTING FOR SEA ANEMONES AT CAPE CHATHAM--AND HOW THE DOCTOR GOT A TERRIBLE FRIGHT--AND HOW CAPTAIN BLOCKSTROP SHOWED THAT THERE WAS GOOD REASON FOR IT.
And presently, the Captain, half dressed, working away at his hair with two very stiff brushes, betook himself to Major Buckley"s room, whom he found shaving. "I"ll wait till you"re done," said he; "I don"t want you to cut yourself."
And then he resumed: "Buckley, your son wants to marry my daughter."
"Shows his good taste," said the Major. "What do you think of it?"
"I am very much delighted," said the Captain.
"And what does she say to it?"
"She is very much delighted."
"And I am very much delighted, and I suppose Sam is too. So there you are, you see: all agreed."
And that was the way the marriage negotiations proceeded; indeed, it was nearly all that was ever said on the subject. But one day the Major brought two papers over to the Captain (who signed them), which were supposed to refer to settlements, and after that all the arrangements were left to Alice and Mrs. Buckley.
They started for Cape Chatham about nine o"clock in the day; Halbert and Jim first, then Sam and Alice, and lastly the three elders. This arrangement did not last long, however; for very soon Sam and Alice called aloud to Halbert and Jim to come and ride with them, for that they were boring one another to death. This they did, and now the discreet and sober conversation of the oldsters was much disturbed by loud laughter of the younger folks, in which, however, they could not help joining. It was a glorious crystal clear day in autumn; all nature, aroused from her summer"s rest, had put off her suit of hodden grey, and was flaunting in gaudiest green. The atmosphere was so amazingly pure that miles away across the plains the travellers could distinguish the herds of turkeys (bustards) stalking to and fro, while before them, that n.o.ble maritime mountain Cape Chatham towered up, sharply defined above the gleaming haze which marked the distant sea.
For a time their way lay straight across the broad well-gra.s.sed plains, marked with ripples as though the retiring sea had but just left it.
Then a green swamp; through the tall reeds the native companion, king of cranes, waded majestic; the brilliant porphyry water hen, with scarlet bill and legs, flashed like a sapphire among the emerald green water-sedge. A shallow lake, dotted with wild ducks; here and there a group of wild swan, black with red bills, floating calmly on its bosom.
A long stretch of gra.s.s as smooth as a bowling-green. A sudden rocky rise, clothed with native cypress (Exocarpus--Oh my botanical readers!), honeysuckle (Banksia), she-oak (Casuarina), and here and there a stunted gum. Cape Chatham began to show grander and nearer, topping all; and soon they saw the broad belt of brown sandy heath that lay along the sh.o.r.e.
"Here," said the Doctor, riding up, "we leave the last limit of the lava streams from Mirngish and the Organ-hill. Now, immediately you shall see how we pa.s.s from the richly-gra.s.sed volcanic plains, into the barren sandstone heaths; from a productive pasture land into a useless flower-garden. Nature here is economical, as she always is: she makes her choicest ornamental efforts on spots otherwise useless. You will see a greater variety of vegetation on one acre of your sandy heath than on two square miles of the thickly-gra.s.sed country we have been pa.s.sing over."
It was as he said. They came soon on to the heath; a dark dreary expanse, dull to look upon after so long a journey upon the bright green gra.s.s. It stretched away right and left interminably, only broken here and there with islands of dull-coloured trees; as melancholy a piece of country as one could conceive: yet far more thickly peopled with animal as well as vegetable life, than the rich pastoral downs further inland. Now they began to see the little red brush kangaroo, and the grey forester, skipping away in all directions; and had it been summer they would have been startled more than once by the brown snake, and the copper snake, deadliest of their tribe. The painted quail, and the brush quail (the largest of Australian game birds I believe), whirred away from beneath their horses" feet; and the ground parrot, green with mottlings of gold and black, rose like a partridge from the heather, and flew low. Here, too, the Doctor flushed a "White"s thrush," close to an outlying belt of forest, and got into a great state of excitement about it. "The only known bird," he said, "which is found in Europe, America, and Australia alike." Then he pointed out the emu wren, a little tiny brown fellow, with long hairy tail-feathers, flitting from bush to bush; and then, leaving ornithology, called their attention to the wonderful variety of low vegetation that they were riding through; Hakeas, Acacias, Grevilleas, and what not. In spring this brown heath would have been a brilliant ma.s.s of flowers; but now, nothing was to be seen save a few tall crimson spikes of Epacris, and here and there a bunch of lemon-coloured Correas. Altogether, he kept them so well amused, that they were astonished to come so quickly upon the station, placed in a snug cove of the forest, where it bordered on the heath beside a sluggish creek. Then, seeing the mountain towering up close to them, and hearing, as they stayed at the door, a low continuous thunder behind a high roll in the heath which lay before them, they knew that the old ocean was close at hand, and their journey was done.
The people at the station were very glad to see them, of course.
Barker, the paterfamilias, was an old friend of both the Major and the Captain, and they found so much to talk about, that after a heavy midday-meal, excellent in kind, though that kind was coa.r.s.e, and certain libations of pale ale and cold claret and water, the older of the party, with the exception of Dr. Mulhaus, refused to go any farther; so the young people started forth to the Cape, under the guidance of George Barker, the fourth or fifth son, who happened to be at home.
"Doctor," said Alice as they were starting, "do you remark what beautiful smooth gra.s.s covers the cape itself, while here we have nothing but this scrubby heath? The mountain is, I suppose, some different formation?"
"Granite, my dear young lady," said the Doctor. "A cap of granite rising through and partly overlying this sandstone."
"You can always tell one exactly what one wants to know," said Alice; and, as they walked forwards, somehow got talking to Halbert, which I believe most firmly had been arranged beforehand with Sam. For he, falling back, ranged alongside of the Doctor, and, managing to draw him behind the others, turned to him and said suddenly,--
"My dear old friend! my good old tutor!"
The Doctor stopped short, pulled out a pair of spectacles, wiped them, put them on, and looked at Sam through them for nearly a minute, and then said:
"My dear boy, you don"t mean to say----"
"I do, Doctor.--Last night.--And, oh! if you could only tell, how happy I am at this moment! If you could guess at it!----"
"Pooh, pooh!" said the Doctor; "I am not so old as that, my dear boy.
Why, I am a marrying man myself. Sam, I am so very, very glad! You have won her, and now wear her, like a pearl beyond all price. I think that she is worthy of you: more than that she could not be."
They shook hands, and soon Sam was at her side again, toiling up the steep ascent. They soon distanced the others, and went forwards by themselves.
There was such a rise in the ground seawards, that the broad ocean was invisible till they were half way up the gra.s.sy down. Then right and left they began to see the nether firmament, stretching away infinitely. But the happy lovers paused not till they stood upon the loftiest breezy knoll, and seemed alone together between the blue cloudless heaven and another azure-sphere which lay beneath their feet.