“Why, you are going our way,” said Mrs. Jellicoe. “We can walk together.”
“Delighted! I am going to call on Major Vickers.”
“And I live within a stone’s throw,” returned Mrs. Protherick.
“What a charming little creature she is, isn’t she?”
“Who?” asked Mr. Meekin, as they walked.
“Sylvia. You don’t know her! Oh, a dear little thing.”
“I have only met Major Vickers at Government House,” said Meekin.
“I haven’t yet had the pleasure of seeing his daughter.”
“A sad thing,” said Mrs. Jellicoe. “Quite a romance, if it was not so sad, you know. His wife, poor Mrs. Vickers.”
“Indeed! What of her?” asked Meekin, bestowing a condescending bow on a passer-by. “Is she an invalid?”
“She is dead, poor soul,” returned jolly Mrs. Jellicoe, with a fat sigh. “You don’t mean to say you haven’t heard the story, Mr. Meekin?”
“My dear leddies, I have only been in Hobart Town a week, and I have not heard the story.”
“It’s about the mutiny, you know, the mutiny at Macquarie Harbour. The prisoners took the ship, and put Mrs. Vickers and Sylvia ashore somewhere. Captain Frere was with them, too. The poor things had a dreadful time, and nearly died. Captain Frere made a boat at last, and they were picked up by a ship. Poor Mrs. Vickers only lived a few hours, and little Sylvia– she was only twelve years old then–was quite light-headed. They thought she wouldn’t recover.”
“How dreadful! And has she recovered?”
“Oh, yes, she’s quite strong now, but her memory’s gone.”
“Her memory?”
“Yes,” struck in Mrs. Protherick, eager to have a share in the storytelling. “She doesn’t remember anything about the three or four weeks they were ashore–at least, not distinctly.”
“It’s a great mercy!” interrupted Mrs. Jellicoe, determined to keep the post of honour. “Who wants her to remember these horrors? From Captain Frere’s account, it was positively awful!”
“You don’t say so!” said Mr. Meekin, dabbing his nose with a dainty handkerchief.
“A ‘bolter’–that’s what we call an escaped prisoner, Mr. Meekin– happened to be left behind, and he found them out, and insisted on sharing the provisions–the wretch! Captain Frere was obliged to watch him constantly for fear he should murder them. Even in the boat he tried to run them out to sea and escape. He was one of the worst men in the Harbour, they say; but you should hear Captain Frere tell the story.”
“And where is he now?” asked Mr. Meekin, with interest.
“Captain Frere?”
“No, the prisoner.”
“Oh, goodness, I don’t know–at Port Arthur, I think. I know that he was tried for bolting, and would have been hanged but for Captain Frere’s exertions.”
“Dear, dear! a strange story, indeed,” said Mr. Meekin. “And so the young lady doesn’t know anything about it?” “Only what she has been told, of course, poor dear. She’s engaged to Captain Frere.”
“Really! To the man who saved her. How charming–quite a romance!”
“Isn’t it? Everybody says so. And Captain Frere’s so much older than she is.”
“But her girlish love clings to her heroic protector,” said Meekin, mildly poetical. “Remarkable and beautiful. Quite the–hem!– the ivy and the oak, dear leddies. Ah, in our fallen nature, what sweet spots–I think this is the gate.”
A smart convict servant–he had been a pickpocket of note in days gone by– left the clergyman to repose in a handsomely furnished drawing-room, whose sun blinds revealed a wealth of bright garden flecked with shadows, while he went in search of Miss Vickers. The Major was out, it seemed, his duties as Superintendent of Convicts rendering such absences necessary; but Miss Vickers was in the garden, and could be called in at once. The Reverend Meekin, wiping his heated brow, and pulling down his spotless wristbands, laid himself back on the soft sofa, soothed by the elegant surroundings no less than by the coolness of the atmosphere. Having no better comparison at hand, he compared this luxurious room, with its soft couches, brilliant flowers, and opened piano, to the chamber in the house of a West India planter, where all was glare and heat and barbarism without, and all soft and cool and luxurious within. He was so charmed with this comparison–he had a knack of being easily pleased with his own thoughts–that he commenced to turn a fresh sentence for the Bishop, and to sketch out an elegant description of the oasis in his desert of a vineyard. While at this occupation, he was disturbed by the sound of voices in the garden, and it appeared to him that someone near at hand was sobbing and crying. Softly stepping on the broad verandah, he saw, on the grass-plot, two persons, an old man and a young girl. The sobbing proceeded from the old man.
“‘Deed, miss, it’s the truth, on my soul. I’ve but jest come back to yez this morning. O my! but it’s a cruel trick to play an ould man.”
He was a white-haired old fellow, in a grey suit of convict frieze, and stood leaning with one veiny hand upon the pedestal of a vase of roses.
“But it is your own fault, Danny; we all warned you against her,” said the young girl softly. “Sure ye did. But oh! how did I think it, miss? ‘Tis the second time she served me so.”
“How long was it this time, Danny?”
“Six months, miss. She said I was a drunkard, and beat her. Beat her, God help me!” stretching forth two trembling hands. “And they believed her, o’ course. Now, when I kem back, there’s me little place all thrampled by the boys, and she’s away wid a ship’s captain, saving your presence, miss, dhrinking in the ‘George the Fourth’. O my, but it’s hard on an old man!” and he fell to sobbing again.
The girl sighed. “I can do nothing for you, Danny. I dare say you can work about the garden as you did before. I’ll speak to the Major when he comes home.”
Danny, lifting his bleared eyes to thank her, caught sight of Mr. Meekin, and saluted abruptly. Miss Vickers turned, and Mr. Meekin, bowing his apologies, became conscious that the young lady was about seventeen years of age, that her eyes were large and soft, her hair plentiful and bright, and that the hand which held the little book she had been reading was white and small.
“Miss Vickers, I think. My name is Meekin–the Reverend Arthur Meekin.”
“How do you do, Mr. Meekin?” said Sylvia, putting out one of her small hands, and looking straight at him. “Papa will be in directly.”
“His daughter more than compensates for his absence, my dear Miss Vickers.”
“I don’t like flattery, Mr. Meekin, so don’t use it. At least,” she added, with a delicious frankness, that seemed born of her very brightness and beauty, “not that sort of flattery. Young girls do like flattery, of course. Don’t you think so?”
This rapid attack quite disconcerted Mr. Meekin, and he could only bow and smile at the self-possessed young lady. “Go into the kitchen, Danny, and tell them to give you some tobacco. Say I sent you. Mr. Meekin, won’t you come in?”
“A strange old gentleman, that, Miss Vickers. A faithful retainer, I presume?”
“An old convict servant of ours,” said Sylvia. “He was with papa many years ago. He has got into trouble lately, though, poor old man.”
“Into trouble?” asked Mr. Meekin, as Sylvia took off her hat.
“On the roads, you know. That’s what they call it here. He married a free woman much younger than himself, and she makes him drink, and then gives him in charge for insubordination.”
“For insubordination! Pardon me, my dear young lady, did I understand you rightly?”
“Yes, insubordination. He is her assigned servant, you know,” said Sylvia, as if such a condition of things was the most ordinary in the world, “and if he misbehaves himself, she sends him back to the road-gang.”
The Reverend Mr. Meekin opened his mild eyes very wide indeed. “What an extraordinary anomaly! I am beginning, my dear Miss Vickers, to find myself indeed at the antipodes.”
“Society here is different from society in England, I believe. Most new arrivals say so,” returned Sylvia quietly.
“But for a wife to imprison her husband, my dear young lady!”
“She can have him flogged if she likes. Danny has been flogged. But then his wife is a bad woman. He was very silly to marry her; but you can’t reason with an old man in love, Mr. Meekin.”
Mr. Meekin’s Christian brow had grown crimson, and his decorous blood tingled to his finger-tips. To hear a young lady talk in such an open way was terrible. Why, in reading the Decalogue from the altar, Mr. Meekin was accustomed to soften one indecent prohibition, lest its uncompromising plainness of speech might offend the delicate sensibilities of his female souls! He turned from the dangerous theme without an instant’s pause, for wonder at the strange power accorded to Hobart Town “free” wives. “You have been reading?”