Capricornia. Xavier Herbert

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ of Public Works, and hence would be able to get him a job as a labourer.

      One day, about a fortnight after the meeting, Mark called on Oscar. On this occasion he was dressed in whites he had borrowed from a friend. He was first of all abashed by being met at the door by the Philippino girl on whose account he had been struck with the bottle. She was Oscar’s maid. He was on the point of flight when Oscar came out and greeted him. He was next abashed by the gentility of his relatives, whom he found taking afternoon-tea in a style quite foreign to him. At first he thought that they were drinking beer, because their beverage was brown and was served with ice in glasses. It was tea. And he found to his discomfort that a strange combination knife-fork was given him with which to eat cakes so small that he could have put six in his mouth at once. Such an instrument should have been welcomed by one crippled as he was; but it did anything but please him, because in using it he had to expose his grubby-nailed hand more often and for far longer periods than he wished. He sweated and fumbled and blushed.

      He was further abashed by the treatment he received. Since Oscar and Jasmine had become engaged and it had become evident that he was a waster, their attitude towards him while together in his company had always been one of strained politeness. Now Oscar received him heartily; and Jasmine was gushing. He was pleased till it dawned on him that they were treating him just as they would an ordinary visitor. Then he turned bitter and tried to strike back by calling Jasmine sometimes Miss Poundamore and sometimes Mrs Shillingsworth. His intent was lost on Oscar and Jasmine, who seemed to regard his stiffness as a joke. But evidently it was not lost on Heather. When Mark persisted in calling her Miss Poundamore in spite of her calling him by his first name, she came to blushing and avoiding his eyes.

      Heather was about nineteen, and rather too good-looking and self-possessed for the liking of vain, sensitive Mark. He went out of his way to slight her. When she attempted to question him about his ship and the life he led, he told her that such things could not be of interest to such a person as she. After that the talking was mostly done by Oscar and Jasmine, and mostly concerned the City of Singapore, paradise of affected people. Their sojourn there had had a marked effect on them. Their house was furnished, their food was cooked, their speech was spoken, according to the fashionable style of Singapore.

      It occurred to Mark at length that Oscar had changed greatly since his marriage, and that the indifference in his attitude towards him was the result of that change, and that the cause of the change was that Oscar was no longer the fellow he had been but the husband of Jasmine. He observed how thoroughly Oscar had become Jasmine’s husband when he learnt that he intended to resign from the Government after another year of service and take up a cattle-station called Red Ochre in the Caroline River Country. Jasmine’s family, the Poundamores of Poundamore Downs, in the Barkalinda Country, State of Cooksland, were graziers born and bred. Oscar’s interest in bovine beasts had never before gone beyond the beef he ate. Joe Poundamore, one of Jasmine’s many brothers, and Archie Poundamore, one of her multitudinous cousins, would be coming up to Capricornia with Jasmine and Oscar when they returned from the trip to the South that they intended to take when Oscar left the Service. Joe was coming to act as manager of Red Ochre and to teach Oscar the grazing business. Archie would go on to Manila to make arrangements for shipping Oscar’s cattle to the Philippines. Oscar and Jasmine had already had dealings with influential people in Manila while they were there on their honeymoon. Knowing that Oscar had never met these young men, Mark was amazed to hear him speak of them with affection. This evidence of his having become absorbed into the Poundamore family made him feel that Oscar must now regard him as a stranger and put him off the object of his visit. He went away without asking for the loan.

      But the loan must be raised if the Spirit of the Land were not to fall into the hands of Chinamen. Mark plucked up courage a few days later and went to Oscar’s house again.

      The consequences of the second visit were such as to put him off the subject again, indeed to put him in a position in which he came to regard the saving of the lugger as of secondary importance, since they even threatened to make him a Poundamore of Poundamore Downs as well. For he called at the house to find young Heather in sole occupation, to be befriended by her, and to be charmed as he had never been by a woman before. Heather impressed him first with her frankness. Without much delay she asked him why he had sneered at her and the others. He told her. Then she impressed him with her astuteness by telling him something of what she understood of his character. Before long he produced his hand from hiding and explained why it was not clean. She called him a silly boy for behaving so shyly before one who was virtually his sister, and got hot water and soap and a manicure-set and put the matter right. The intimacy of the operation caused both of them feelings that were certainly not fraternal. Then she impressed him with her desire to learn about ships and the sea and the wilderness. Over a manly sort of afternoon-tea he told her a good deal about his life, some of which was true and none discreditable. She told him that she had come to love Capricornia already and would give much to be able to see the wild parts of it as he had. He had it in his heart to say that he would like to show it to her. Instead of waiting for Oscar, he took her down to the beach and showed her the lugger and stayed with her till sundown. That night he was haunted by thoughts of his half-caste son.

      Later on, after she had made several short trips in the lugger and heard many tales about the Silver Sea, Heather told Mark that she would love to live all her life in Capricornia and that she hated the thought of having soon to return to dull Poundamore Downs. She said it with a sigh. Mark looked at her as though he understood her thoughts, but suggested nothing to help her, although he had the suggestion in his heart together with the horrible knowledge that he was the father of a half-caste.

      Thus a match was made by fate. Mark tried to keep it secret, because, while taking it seriously himself, he realised that his cronies would take it as a joke. But such a thing could not be kept secret for long in a community as small and curious as Port Zodiac. The news of it spread rapidly. Oscar and Jasmine smiled over it and said that it was the best thing that ever could have happened to these two restless youngsters. The nurses at the hospital, moved by feminine love of romance, on account of it gave Mark as much furlough as he wished and for once treated him as a fellow creature. Other women chattered about it, some in Heather’s presence and not without dropping a hint or two about the little they knew of Mark’s character. His cronies roared over it, all except Chook, who fretted over it as news of an impending bereavement.

      Talk of Mark’s bad character was by no means new to Heather. She had heard much about him from Jasmine. But she was not concerned about his reputation then, not realising how bad it really was. She gave all her attention to studying the effect her presence had on him and to enjoying the profound effect that his had on herself. Although Mark was unaware of it, he had overwhelmed her.

      In this innocent stage the affair lasted for a fortnight. It almost reached the kissing-stage, which, indeed, it might have reached before but for Mark’s mixed feelings of reluctance to commit himself and fear of giving offence and terror that later she might discover his monstrous disgrace. Heather had been ready to be kissed all along.

      Fate was jesting for the time. One afternoon while the couple were leaving the jetty in the lugger, setting out on a short fishing-cruise that in the minds of both of them seemed likely to end with kissing, Harold Howell, who, with Skinn and another of Mark’s cronies, had followed Mark down to the house from the town and had been running about and chuckling ever since, came rushing down the jetty, shouting and waving a small brown-paper parcel. Mark sent the blackboy, who was the third person on the ship, to attend to the engine, and took the wheel himself and turned the vessel back. “What’s up?” he shouted at Howell.

      “Something you forgot,” answered Howell.

      “Me? I didn’t forget anything.”

      “Oh yes you did!”

      “What is it?”

      “Dunno. Feller up town gave it to СКАЧАТЬ