HE 
 
 I F NTciF 
 
 / '}.'■: <"'\
 
 W. H. SMITH & SON'S 
 SUBSCRI^ION LIBRARY 
 
 ""^ ^^ ND, LONDON, 
 
 ILWAY B QQKSTATTQ 
 EIVED FROM SUBSCRrBERS IN SETS ONLY 
 
 186 
 
 AND AT T 
 NOVELS ARE ISSUED T 
 
 FOR SUBSCRIBERS 
 Fcr ONE Volume 
 
 (Novelt tn more than , 
 
 For TWO Volumei 
 
 (Novels in more than 7 
 
 For THREE Volu 
 P.r FOUR 
 i?cr SIX 
 
 Fcr TWELVE 
 
 ^- 
 
 ERMS. 
 
 lEIR BOOKS FROM A COUNTRY BOOKSTALL— 
 
 areno^availal.le/:r\h:s das. o.Subs'crilion.J ^ 
 are 'not avaUabU ^o'r tHis^^ls A« W.Jii./ 
 
 13 ..220 
 
 1 8 .. 2 10 
 
 1 15 .. 3 3 
 
 The clerks in charge of Messrs \v H Qr^'fl « o". ^ " ^OO.. 550 
 books wuh Ii.ustra!io^s^{d"^%;^-aVe fs^uS fo L"!! re'c°e&&-h?''r '^■^'' -« »^-» 
 . Library perfect in number and condtion ' ^^bscnbe.s to the
 
 ^ :iPSSfe
 
 L I E> RARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 Of ILLINOIS 
 
 v.l
 
 THE SILENT SEA.
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2009 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/silentsea01mart
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 MRS. ALICK MACLEOD 
 
 AUTHOR OP ' AN AUSTRALIAN GIRL ' 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON 
 
 ISublisltcrs in ODibinari} to ^)cr <itt.ijfsti) the (|Juecn 
 1892 
 
 [All rh/lUs reserved]
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 3 
 
 
 As Miss Paget left the library after seeing 
 that her father's armchair was in the right 
 position and the Venetian blinds adjusted 
 according to the morning light, she glanced 
 at the huge bronze clock that stood on a 
 huge bronze stand in the hall, and saw that 
 it was only half- past nine. At ten she 
 expected a visitor, and ever since she awoke 
 at half-past five slie had been so preoccupied 
 with the thouH'ht of his arrival that more 
 than once before this she had made quite 
 sure the hour was at last about to strike. 
 
 Seeing that she was in error, the lady 
 went back to the library. It was a hand- 
 
 VOL. I. 1
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 some large room, lined with dark oaken book- 
 cases from ceiling to floor, relieved at in- 
 tervals with arched recesses lined with 
 mirrors, before which stood vases contain- 
 ing small palms and other evergreen shrubs. 
 This was an arrangement that, like many 
 others which characterized the house, had 
 been carried out according to Miss Paget's 
 own design after she became an heiress and 
 bought Lancaster House. All the people 
 who visited this mansion thought it was a 
 happy contrivance to relieve the severity of 
 so learned-looking a room with the com- 
 parative frivolity of mirrors and foliage. 
 Miss Paget shared the opinion, and often had 
 the shrubs changed, so that the effect did not 
 sink into one of those foregone conclusions 
 that after a time make no further claim on 
 the eye. But neither the aesthetic nor the 
 intellectual aspects of the chamber drew a 
 glance or a thought from her at this moment. 
 She had merely returned to see whether 
 there was anything more she might do to 
 anticipate her father's wants. She did not, 
 wish to be called away at a critical moment 
 from an interview to which she looked
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 forward with more anxiety than she was 
 wiUing' to admit even to herself. For some 
 time back her father had got into the habit 
 of depending on her to guard his notes from 
 straying and his authorities from being mis- 
 placed, in addition to exercising a sedulous 
 care as to his physical well-being. 
 
 Mr. Paget was an ex-professor of the dead 
 languages, and a man whose mental hcaizon 
 was bounded by illusions. Thus, he tirmly 
 believed that he was of a painfully sensitive 
 teinperament, and that he was devoting the 
 leisure which now embraced his whole life to 
 the cause of unendowed research. In reality 
 his sensitiveness went no deeper than an 
 excessive antipathy to everything he found 
 disagreeable. As for his studies, they were 
 very versatile ; and resulted now and then 
 in one of those compilations that are widely 
 reviewed, sometimes bought, and occasionally 
 read. It is well known that in Australia an 
 M.A. of Cambridge can always pass for a 
 man of great erudition, as long as he re- 
 frains from explaining wherein his learning 
 consists. As most of the j^eople with whom 
 he comes in contact are profoundly indif-
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 fereiit on the point, there is not much 
 temptation for him to take society into 
 liis confidence in the matter. And thus it 
 was that Mr. Paget was invariably spoken 
 of as a man of colossal parts, of profound re- 
 search, of wide and disinterested learning. 
 As a matter of fact, he was a man of Avide 
 reading and some culture, with the smallest 
 modicum of original capacity and a constitu- 
 tional disinclination to real effort. 
 
 But the reality of things has often no 
 jjerceptible influence on the masquerade 
 they cut in the tragi-comedy of life. And 
 so it behoved Miss Packet to take her father 
 and his beliefs as seriously as her own iden- 
 tity and the vagaries of the climate to which 
 she had returned after travellino- with him 
 for nearly two years in the Old World. 
 
 ' It is Egyptology that papa is so much 
 interested in just now. . . . He will like to 
 liave these big German books neai' him,' she 
 thouglit, placing certain volumes on the 
 })edestal table. Then she consulted the ther- 
 mometer that stood upon it, and seeing this 
 registered only 69 degrees, she thought it 
 prudent to ring for the housemaid and ask
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 her to put a little more coal on the tire. 
 After that she went into the drawing-room 
 and took a strip of crewel-work out of a 
 little Eastern basket full of soft bright skeins 
 of filoselle and balls of pale yellow floss silk. 
 She sat on a low rocking-chair, threaded her 
 needle, and put a tiny silver thimble on her 
 white tapered finger. As soon as she Avas 
 equipped in this way for serious and sus- 
 tained industry, she dropped the strip of 
 crewel- work in her lap and leant back in an 
 engrossing reverie. It is not easy to render 
 a reverie into speech. The best and most 
 that can be done is to give a free translation 
 of the thoughts that follow one another in 
 swift or slow succession. 
 
 ' A girl — no, a woman of twenty-nine and 
 a bit — and a young man six months short of 
 twenty-one. It is a story ready made for 
 old gossips and old friends — one of the situa- 
 tions for which the comedians lie in wait — 
 and yet how little I would care if I Avere 
 only sure. . . . But don't I know well how it 
 was from beginning to end {' 
 
 Arrived at this point in her musings, a 
 slow smile broke over Miss Paget's face. It
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 all came up before her like a picture, the first 
 time she and her fellow-passenger of less 
 than twenty-one summers had spoken to 
 each other. It was the third day after 
 leaving Plymouth, and she was half reclining 
 on a couch in the big saloon full of gilding 
 and mirrors and velvet-covered impossible 
 chairs. Enter a tall young man with coal- 
 black hair and dark blue Irish eyes, searching 
 for some missing object. 
 
 ' Is it this book you are looking for ?' she 
 asked, holding up a volume of poems. 
 
 It was, but he begged her to keep it if she 
 had been reading it. 
 
 ' I never read poetry,' she answered, and 
 the next moment she was sorry for h*aving 
 told the truth. He looked so undisguisedly 
 amazed. She remembered having glanced lan- 
 guidly at the title-page, and seeing ' Y. Fitz- 
 Gibbon, from his mother,' written in an elegant 
 hand. ' A boy of this age always thinks a 
 woman who is quite different from his mother 
 must be a monster,' she thought. 
 
 ' Not on board ship, I suppose you mean,' 
 he said, drawing near her. Then he added, 
 not waiting for an answer : ' I hope this
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 rough weather has not made you ill, like most 
 of the other ladies.' 
 
 ' No, I should be quite well,' she answered, 
 ' if it were not for the magnificent mummies of 
 Dehr-el-Bahari. ' 
 
 He opened his eyes wide, and then laughed 
 the ready, ringing laugh of a light-hearted boy. 
 He had half an hour before overheard an 
 impressive description from her father of 
 this subject for the third time since coming 
 on board. Miss Paget hardly expected 
 that he would understand the allusion or 
 take it all in so quickly. She spoke, as 
 she rarely did, on the spur of the moment, 
 finding some relief in a spontaneous confes- 
 sion from the strained feeling of irritation 
 the subject had begun to produce. 
 
 ' You see, it is really a very important 
 discovery, and papa is so much interested in 
 tliese things,' she said apologetically. 
 
 ' Yes ; and these being in family groups of 
 from six or seven, each mummy with a 
 valuable MS. inside him,' said the young 
 man, his eyes dancing with merriment. 
 
 ' Oh, for Heaven's sake ! don't you begin, 
 too !' she said, raising her hands imploringly.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 They were good friends from that moment. 
 He declared she was mahngering by stoppmg 
 in the saloon, when there was such a fresh 
 breeze blowing and the sea one mass of 
 immense green waves fringed with foam. 
 They found a sheltered corner in which they 
 established their deck-chairs, and when they 
 were tired of talking they watched the 
 waves. The weather was very rough till 
 they got into the Mediterranean. During 
 this time Mr. Paget was mostly in his own 
 cabin. With the exception of his daughter, 
 hardly a lady was to be seen on deck. All 
 conspired to make the new acquaintances 
 into intimate friends. Miss Paget was 
 slightly acquainted with the young man's 
 mother, though oblivious of his existence till 
 they met on board the Mogul, 
 
 And then an unparalleled event in Miss 
 Paget's history took j)lace. She fell in love, 
 absolutely and heartily, with the young man 
 whom she had from the first treated as a 
 boy, to whom a w^oman of her age could 
 talk with the frank kindliness of an elder 
 sister. For a time she resisted the conviction 
 with wondering incredulity. Even now she
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 tried to make herself believe that her affec- 
 tions were not so very deeply pledged. 
 
 ' I always liked nice boys,' she mused. 
 ' Their faces are not spoiled by cynical airs of 
 knowingness, or of being .used up, or any of 
 the disagreeable tell-tale lines that make the 
 faces of male creatures disagreeable to look 
 on as they advance in life. . . . And what fun 
 and good talks we had in those long charmed 
 nights, flooded with Mdiite moonlight, as we 
 glided through the Mediterranean and up the 
 
 Red Sea And then the delicious excursions 
 
 together at the ports of call, among the crowds 
 of Arabs, Mahommedans, and Parsees, and 
 rascally traders. Shall I ever forget the 
 kinp' cocoanut Ave drank in the fruit-market 
 at Colombo, and the furious rush back to the 
 quay, in a double 'ricksha, laden with white 
 ivory elephants? White elephants — were 
 these a good omen '{ Then came the last 
 evening, when we sighted Kangaroo Island. I 
 felt the tears rising fist to my eyes. ... I 
 suppose they got into my voice as 1 said : "I 
 am so sorry the voyage has come to an end 1" 
 
 ' " Are you really sony ?" lie said, bending 
 so as to see my face better.
 
 JO THE SILENT SEA 
 
 ' " But, of course, we need not give up 
 being friends," I added. I should not have 
 said it. 
 
 ' " Are we to be only friends, then ?" he 
 said; and hardly waiting to think what I 
 said, I answered : 
 
 ' " Why, what more could we be ?" 
 
 ' Still less should I have said that. . . . 
 And yet it was an exquisite moment, come 
 what may, when he told me that he loved 
 me . . . that he wanted a deeper and a firmer 
 bond than friendship. I can always recall him 
 as he looked then . . . the sort of lover that 
 girls dream and rave of in their teens. . . . 
 Yes, he looks young, even for his age — not a 
 line in his face, not a blurred contour ; the 
 perfect mouth, and white sculptural lids. 
 
 ' It isn't, of course, such a very unheard-of 
 thing for a woman to marry a man nine or 
 ten years younger than herself Only, when 
 men are insignificant or commonplace, when 
 they have plebeian noses and small pale eyes 
 and sandy whiskers, what does it matter how 
 young they are ? . . . But Victor, with 
 superb good looks and boyish youthfulness ! 
 It isn't that I fuel old.'
 
 THE SILENT SEA 1 1 
 
 Miss Paget rose and looked at herself with 
 a keen scrutiny in one of several square panels 
 of mirror that were let into an ebony cabinet 
 near her. Notwithstanding her twenty-nine 
 years and a ' bit,' her appearance was exceed- 
 ingly attractive. She was over the middle 
 height, with a slender upright svelte figure. 
 She had dark eyes and hair, and well-formed 
 features. Her forehead was rather low ; the 
 mouth a trifle wide. But she had such 
 exquisite teeth, that this was hardly a defect, 
 more especially when she smiled. In talking 
 she often did so, the predominant expression 
 ( )f her face being humorous. She had beauti- 
 ful hands and feet, and was always extremely 
 well dressed. 
 
 There was a knock at the door, and a 
 servant announced 'Mr. Victor Fitz-Gibbon.' 
 If Miss Paget had seen her own face as she 
 turned to meet the young gentleman an- 
 nounced, she would have perceived that after 
 all one's face in a tete-a-tete with one's self is 
 never seen at its best. We may love our- 
 selves sincerely — -some of us are happy enough 
 to do so — yet the sight of our own cheeks and 
 eyes never makes tliem fiusli or l)i'lghten as
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 they spontaneously do at the sight of even a 
 foe. 
 
 Needless to say, this was no foe who stood 
 holding Miss Paget's hands and looking at 
 her with a bright smile. 
 
 ' It is good of you to let me come so early, 
 Helen !' 
 
 ' And it is good of you to want to come.' 
 
 ' Oh, as for that, my visit is not so very 
 disinterested. You have not forgotten why 
 I asked leave, when we parted, to come this 
 morning ?' 
 
 ' But then, you know, it is two days since 
 we parted on the Mogul! 
 
 ' Well, what of that V 
 
 ' And two days on land, away from 
 the shoreless waves and moonlight on the 
 waters ' 
 
 ' You are going to say something horrid — 
 I see it in your eyes. Don't, Helen !' 
 
 * Well, I will not. But I have been sitting 
 here for ages, going over it all. . . . Oh, 
 Victor, it is better not. Don't tempt me.' 
 
 ' But that's just Avhat I will — all I know. 
 Helen, can you say honestly you don't care 
 for me ?'
 
 THE SILENT SEA 13 
 
 ' No, I cannot. I care for you a great deal 
 --but ' 
 
 Suddenly, in spite of her apparent efforts 
 to keep them back, the tears rose in Miss 
 Paget's eyes — rose and overflowed, so that 
 she was forced to wipe them away re- 
 peatedly. 
 
 ' I am an ungrateful cat to cry at you in 
 this way,' she said, smiling through her 
 tears. 
 
 ' You are not crying at me, Helen. . . . 
 You are crying because something troubles 
 you. Won't you tell me what it is ?' 
 
 ' I would in a moment — only it is too 
 ridiculous.' 
 
 ' But, you know, we agreed many times on 
 the Mogul that we liked ridiculous things 
 better than gold, or wisdom, or fine society, 
 or good books.' 
 
 ' Yes, wheii they are ridiculous things about 
 otlier peoj)le. . . . But . . . well, we were 
 always good comrades — 1 iviU tell you : I 
 cried because 1 am so old.' 
 
 'So old? How absurd! Just look at 
 yourself 
 
 They were still standing where they met.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 in front of that ebony cabinet whose mirrors 
 afforded so many opportmiities for seeing the 
 reflection of one's face and form. But Miss 
 Paget shrank from the ordeal. She resumed 
 her seat on the rocking-chair, and motioned 
 Victor to an armchair near her. 
 
 ' Is it that you think I'm too young to 
 know my own mind, Helen ?' asked the young 
 man. 
 
 ' You may know it just now. . . . But in 
 a year — even in a few months — — Oh, 
 Victor, I am afraid !' 
 
 There was real emotion in the lady's voice, 
 yet her looks and words were not free from 
 calculation. She knew that her upward, 
 appealing glance, her bright dark eyes 
 dimmed with tears, her doubts and hesita- 
 tion, would not really rebuff her young suitor. 
 And her consciousness of having purposely 
 led him on to make a declaration of love 
 rendered her all the more anxious to make 
 him feel that she was not too lightly won. 
 
 * Then I'll have courage for both of us,' 
 said Victor. 
 
 * Yes, reckless courage belongs to early 
 youth.'
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 * I promise you on my honour to grow 
 older every day,' returned the young man 
 buoyantly. 
 
 A wistful little smile on the lady's face 
 warned him this argument was a two-edged 
 weapon, and he hastened to add : 
 
 ' And, faith, I'll grow wise faster even than 
 I put on years.' 
 
 ' Let us talk of something else for a little, 
 Victor. How does it feel, g:ettin5J" back to 
 enter on a kinodom ?' 
 
 ' It feels as if Uncle Stuart and 1 would 
 fight like the Kilkenny cats if we have much 
 to do with each other. . . . But, Helen, do you 
 remember my telling you of an old house in 
 North Terrace with a beautiful garden round 
 it that my mother used to be so fond of?' 
 
 ' Oh yes — Lindaraxa. Mrs. Seclley, my old 
 friend Mrs. Tillotson's youngest daughter, 
 lived in it at one time.' 
 
 ' Well, it is to be sold : I want to buy it 
 for my mother, and tell her nothing about 
 it till she returns. I wish you woukl come 
 and have a look at it with me ' 
 
 There was a sound of voices at the door. 
 The handle was turned, and a lai-ge matronly-
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 looking lady, something more than middle- 
 aged, bustled in. 
 
 ' My dear, I felt sm^e that if I came early 
 enough I should find you at home,' she said, 
 kissing Miss Paget in an emphatic way. 
 Then she made a rapid descent on Victor, 
 seizing both his hands. 
 
 ' My dear boy, how delighted I am to see 
 you ! I have a thousand questions to ask 
 you, and to congratulate you on your good 
 fortune — though, of course, it was a dreadful 
 pity you were not in time to see your poor 
 dear uncle Shaw. Where did you get the 
 sad news ?' 
 
 ' Not till I reached Albany.' 
 
 ' And your dear mother, how long is she 
 to stay in England ?' 
 
 ' Probably for six months.' 
 
 ' Well, and she'll find you with quite a. 
 fortune of your own. My dear, I'm afraid 
 you'll turn all the young ladies' heads, and, 
 really, don't you think it's time you sto23ped 
 growing?' 
 
 * I haven't grown any for two years, Mi'S. 
 Tillotson,' said Victor, colouring, half vexed 
 and half amused at the imputation.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 17 
 
 Miss Paget, though as a rule very self-pos- 
 sessed, also showed slight signs of confusion. 
 Mrs. Tillotson, however, was one of those who 
 go through life much too immersed in affairs 
 to see what is going on under their eyes. 
 
 ' Not for two years, my dear boy ?' she 
 cried, looking at Victor with beaming eyes, 
 while she drew off her tight-fitting pale blue 
 kid gloves, pulling them off like the skin of 
 a banana, and disclosing very white plump 
 hands, each finger loaded with costly rings 
 up to the first joint. 
 
 ' You see, my dear Helen, I mean to stay 
 for a good long chat this time ; we had only 
 a few seconds together yesterday afternoon, 
 and there is something I want to consult you 
 about.' This was in a sort of half-aside to 
 Miss Paget ; then, as if there had been no 
 interruption in her discourse with him, Mrs. 
 Tillotson turned to Victor, saying : 
 
 ' You surely don't mean that you were 
 over six feet hio-h at seventeen ?' 
 
 ' You are figuring me out nearly two years 
 younger than I am,' returned Victor, twirling 
 the points of his young moustache. 
 
 * Oh dear ! with what alarming speed boys 
 
 VOL. I. 2
 
 1 8 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 and girls grow up ! Haven't you noticed 
 that, Helen ?' 
 
 ' But they are much more interesting- 
 grown up ; don't you think so ?' answered 
 Miss Paget, smiling and trying to look un- 
 concerned. 
 
 ' Well, I don't know. They are safe over 
 measles and chicken-pox; but then they 
 begin to fall in love, and that's just as bad — 
 often more dangerous.' 
 
 ' But don't you think it's rather pleasanter C 
 asked Victor, smiling, though mentally he 
 decided that Mrs. Tillotson had the most 
 infatuated tongue of any old woman iji the 
 universe. 
 
 ' Now% Victor, tell me the truth,' said 
 Mrs. Tillotson solemnly. ' Did you leave 
 the Mogul, in your motherless condition, 
 without getting into some sort of entangle- 
 ment ? Helen, do look how the boy blushes !' 
 
 Miss Paget, instead of looking, stooped to 
 pick up her crewel-work and restore it to the 
 basket. 
 
 ' You know,' continued Mrs. Tillotson, ' the 
 Mogul is noted even among the P. and O. 
 boats for the number of en^aiyements that
 
 THE SILENT SEA 19 
 
 get made on her. To be sure, very few of 
 them come to anythmg.' 
 
 Victor glanced at his watch and rose to 
 go. 
 
 ' Must you leave us ?' cried Mrs. Tillotson ; 
 ^ and I've heard so little of your dear mother. 
 I kept thinking of her as I walked across the 
 square, and then, when I came in, here were 
 you ! Isn't that what they call theosophy, or 
 something occult ?' 
 
 ' Oh, I should call it friendship !' returned 
 Victor good-humouredly. 
 
 At last he extricated himself from the 
 embarrassing coils of Mrs. Tillot son's random 
 talk. As he was leaving, he said to Miss 
 Paget with unblushing gravity : 
 
 ' By the way, may I look at that picture in 
 the dining-room we were talking about ?' 
 
 Miss Paget looked at him inquiringly. As 
 her eyes met his a charming blush OA^erspread 
 her face. Then she asked Mrs. Tillotson to 
 excuse her absence for a few mi mites. When 
 they were fairly in the dining - room she 
 turned on Victor with laughing eyes. 
 
 ' Now, you brazen boy, what picture do you 
 mean ?'
 
 20 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 'You,' he- answered boldly. 'Did you 
 think I was going to be cheated out of even 
 asking when I might see you again ? Look 
 here, Helen, can you come and look over 
 Lindaraxa with me to-morrow ?' 
 . ' Yes, I can.' 
 
 ' At what hour ?' 
 
 ' Oh, morning will be the best time. It is 
 my day at home to-morrow. Say from 
 eleven to twelve.' 
 
 ' Thank you so much ; and in the mean- 
 time you will ]Tiake up your mind to give me 
 a definite answer to-morrow ?' 
 
 ' What sort of answer do you think I am 
 going to give ?' said Miss Paget, smiling 
 somewhat nervously. 
 
 ' Why, a nice Christian little answer, that 
 it takes only three letters to spell.' 
 
 • But you know very often the one that is 
 made up of two letters is far wiser.' 
 
 ' Then please remember that on this occa- 
 sion you are on no account to be wise.' 
 
 ' I wonder whether you would be very 
 broken-hearted if I said " No " ?' 
 
 As Miss Paget spoke, she watched the 
 young man's face curiously. Before he could
 
 THE SILENT SEA 21 
 
 reply, there was a low knock at the door. It 
 was one of the servants, who came to tell 
 Miss Paget that her father wished to see 
 her in the library. 
 
 ' Yes, I promise — I will give you an answer 
 to-morrow,' she said, as she bade Victor 
 good-bye. 
 
 ' And, Helen, will you promise, too, that no 
 dreadful old woman will turn up ?' 
 
 * Oh, poor Mrs. Tillotson ! you must not be 
 cross at her ; she is my habitual Providence 
 when I want an unexacting companion.'
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Mr. Paget did not long' detain his dauo^hter 
 in the library. But when she was disen- 
 gaged, instead of hastening to join her old 
 friend, Miss Paget went back into the 
 dining-room, and stood looking out on the 
 lawn in front, with wide-open, unseeing eyes. 
 Outwardly she was cahn ; but, in reality, she 
 felt more deeply moved than she had ever 
 been in the whole previous course of her life. 
 Often it had seemed to her that, in leaving 
 the most impressionable years behind her, 
 without evei- having experienced any absorb- 
 ing affection, a premature atrophy of the 
 heart had fallen on her. But now ? 
 
 Her girlhood had not been a happy one. 
 She was Mr. Paget's only daughter by a 
 second wife. When he married the second
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 time he Avas a Professor in the Sydney 
 University, with three daughters of a party- 
 u'oing: acre bv his first wife. The three 
 young ladies bitterly resented the intrusion 
 of a step-mother. They were eager for 
 amusements, for elegant dresses, and for all 
 the forms of social distinction which cannot 
 be enjoyed without money. And the new 
 wife had very little of her own, beyond 
 expectations from a wealthy grandfatlier. 
 But he belonged to the hardy old stock of 
 pioneers who live for ever. The young step- 
 mother did not, however, live long to be an 
 encumbrance on the family resources. She 
 died a few months after Helen's birth, en- 
 trusting the bright-eyed little baby to the 
 special charge of her eldest step-daughter. 
 Perhaps none of the step-sisters were pur- 
 j)osely unkind. Yet Helen's first conscious 
 reflections regarding herself were that she 
 was somehow one of the failures of life, and 
 that she had entered it without any reasonable 
 j^retext. And as she reached the dividing- 
 line between girlhood and womanhood exist- 
 ence for a time became harder. The family 
 for the first time fell into monev .straits.
 
 24 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 Mr. Paget quarrelled with the Senate of the 
 University of Sydney, and in a sudden access 
 of wounded vanity he resigned his post. 
 For four years he maintained his family as 
 best he could, by private tuition. 
 
 The change from an assured position worth 
 over a thousand a year, to that of an un- 
 successful coach, earning a few precarious 
 hundreds per annum, was a sufficiently bitter 
 one. To make matters worse, the ex-Pro- 
 fessor's elder daughters were still all un- 
 married. Without money and without pros- 
 pects, without minds to cultivate or amiability 
 to fall back on, with thwarted ambitions and 
 with a well-developed taste for the good 
 things of the world, this stagnant period of 
 straitened means was marked by sordid dis- 
 comfort, discontent, and bickerings. And this 
 crisis embraced Helen's life from seventeen to 
 twenty-one — the most keenly susceptible ancj 
 leceptive years of a girl's experience. To be 
 shabbily dressed ; to go to parties and sit 
 often without a partner, watching other girls 
 dancing ; to see happiness only in the eyes 
 of others, when Nature's blossoming time has 
 come, and the physique is most exquisitely
 
 THE SILENT SEA 25 
 
 alive to enjoyment — this was Helen's lot as a 
 young girl. 
 
 Then the fortunes of the family changed 
 with a rush. Mr. Paget was successful in his 
 application for a professorship in the Adelaide 
 University. A few months after settling 
 there, the eldest Miss Paget rapturously 
 accepted an offer of marriage from a wealthy 
 man well advanced in years. His hair was 
 white, and his pedigree unknown. He had 
 acquired the art of writing late in life, but 
 had never learned to spell. There were 
 many who gladly testified that he had been 
 coachman to one of the few people who kept 
 a carriage thirty years before, that he had 
 established a small secondhand shop in one of 
 the streets before it was made. Be these 
 matters as they might, one thing quite certain 
 now was that he had seven thousand a year, 
 and a handsome residence near" town, adorned 
 with pictures which never failed to excite in 
 him a certain respect for art. He could not 
 get over the fact that some of the smallest of 
 them were the costliest. 
 
 The other two sisters married in less than 
 a year afterwards — one a broker, the other a
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 lawyer : both rather elderly, and both in 
 prosperous circumstances. 
 
 Two years and a half after these marriages, 
 Helen's great-grandfather died, at the ripe age 
 of ninety-seven, and her share of his wealth 
 was £3,000 a year. Oh, if it had only come 
 to her earlier ! This was the first and most 
 vivid feeling which the news of her fortune 
 awoke. How it would have redeemed her 
 youth from those haunting, miserable memo- 
 ries, which no later gifts of fortune could 
 ever efface ! 
 
 It is to be feared that neither a course of 
 poverty nor a sudden access of riches is a 
 phase of experience likely to raise an observant 
 human being's opinion of mankind. Miss 
 Paget had been subjected to both ordeals, 
 and it cannot be denied that her nature 
 had suffered from each extreme. Perhaps, 
 if her training had been more delicate and 
 lovmg, or if her disposition had been less 
 egoistic, her estimate of the meanness and 
 vanity and unscrupulous self-seeking that 
 underlie society would have been less un- 
 sparing — her mistrust of her felloW-creatures 
 less profound. And even as it was, her first
 
 THE SILENT SEA 27 
 
 impulses, after coming into her inheritance, 
 were unselfishly generous. She resolved 
 always to be kind and helpful to others — 
 to abjure self-seeking, to be readily touched 
 to action and sympathy by the tragic element 
 in other lives. It needed but little per- 
 suasion to make her father give up his pro- 
 fessional work and devote himself to those 
 leisurely pursuits which figured in his imagi- 
 nation as laborious study and research. 
 Thus, at twenty-five years of age Miss 
 Paget found herself with a great deal of 
 money to spend, servants to rule, patronage 
 of various kinds to bestow, and with a father, 
 a pseudo-sensitive bookish man, to shield from 
 too promiscuous contact with a society whose 
 less unselected contingencies had, in his esti- 
 mation, a vulgar trick of being either weari- 
 some or futile — often both. 
 
 Miss Paget took u]) the role of mistress of a 
 household maintained on an opulent scale of 
 expenditure, with vague longings for remote- 
 ness from the conmioner aims of life. Her 
 position increased her sense of individual 
 responsibility, but lessened her opportunities 
 for cleaving to ideal values. How can one
 
 28 THE SJLENT SEA 
 
 reconcile theories of self-sacrifice with the 
 careful supervision of dinner - parties em- 
 bracing a score of courses and costly deli- 
 cacies out of season ? As mistress of a 
 household of which her father was the head, 
 her most intimate relations were chiefly with 
 elderly friends rather than young people of 
 her own choosing. Of course, elderly people 
 really govern the world ; its surface be- 
 longs to them ; they make its laws and preach 
 its sermons ; endow its charities and order 
 its dinners. No doubt this is as it should 
 be, seeing that calm days, the processes of 
 digestion, and the question of a future life are 
 naturally of more moment to them than to 
 the young. It is the instinct of man as he 
 loses the ardour of youth to guard himself 
 against enthusiasms and surprises, to become 
 more acquiescent and prudent ; and yet some- 
 how it may be questioned whether to live much 
 with old people is a good moral tonic for 
 the young. At any rate, in Miss Paget's case 
 the plan did not on the whole turn out a 
 success. She became too wise for her years, 
 too consciously superior. 
 
 She had not been long at the head of a
 
 THE SJLENT SEA 29 
 
 large establishment when she was preter- 
 naturally alive to all the small deceits 
 and compromises, deepening into cant and 
 duplicity, that enter so largely into the 
 intercourse of average society. She was 
 shocked when she saw women, who had 
 not a good word for each other apart, 
 rush on meeting into one another's arms ; 
 indignant when she realized how largely 
 in her circle hospitality was based on the 
 give and receive principle. She became a 
 little Timonesque, and recorded her impres- 
 sions somewhat too incisively. 
 
 But she was early taken to task and ad- 
 monished as to her duties and oblie^ations. 
 
 ' You know, Helen, a girl at the head of a 
 house like yours and papa's has to be as 
 careful as if she were a married woman,' her 
 elder sister said to her solemnly, after some 
 too vivacious speech regarding the perfidy of 
 mankind in general. 
 
 * But she need not tell quite so many fibs 
 — having the future of no baby -girls to think 
 of — and surely she need not be as credulous 
 as a married woman,' returned the youngei' 
 sister, with a little temper.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 None of her brothers-in-law seemed to her 
 very admirable apart from their faculty for 
 making money. Indeed, most of the hus- 
 bands she observed with her relentlessly keen 
 eyes, at this period, were to her as figures in 
 a melodrama, devoid of the more delicate 
 and interesting nuances of human beings. 
 
 Nor did the unattached men of her ac- 
 quaintance appear much more attractive. 
 She was perhaps too much engrossed with 
 her own individuality to be able to get at 
 the best side of others. She was certainly 
 too apt to give expression to her scornful 
 estimate of people in general to become 
 very popular. Yet she enjoyed balls and 
 pretty dresses and expensive forms of 
 amusement. But the contrast between 
 the homage she now received and the 
 neglect that had been her portion when 
 she was much younger and more eager 
 for pleasure poisoned her enjoyment. Only 
 she attributed her dissatisfaction to more 
 impersonal grounds. In the midst of costly 
 entertainments she liked to fancy herself 
 haunted with a sense of anxiety for the 
 greater happiness and morality of the race,
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 to believe that it was the negation of 
 living selfishly in luxurious ease, in a world 
 crowded with lives jDaralyzed by poverty, 
 which cast a shadow on her enjoyment. 
 Gradually the more abstract motives really 
 moved her. There were days in which 
 her thoughts were permeated with a strong 
 feeling of responsibility for the welfare of 
 others ; especially after reading some tale of 
 everyday suffering in the newspapers, or a 
 vehement Socialistic pamphlet, her whole 
 mind would be possessed with the spoiled 
 conditions of society. 
 
 At such times, everything around her 
 furnished examples of the reckless waste of 
 those who enjoyed without working ; of the 
 cramped, colourless lives of those who worked 
 without enjoying. But how to take away 
 power from despots, and gold from capital- 
 ists, and sorrow from the lives of women and 
 children ? Or, without aspiring to anything 
 great or vague or general, how to rob even 
 one social form of enjoyment of the mortifica- 
 tions of neglect, the stings of disappointment, 
 and the barbs of social inequality ? 
 
 When overtaken with these moods of re-
 
 32 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 bellion against the existing order of things, 
 it seemed to Miss Paget as if there was no 
 form of recreation or pleasure known to her 
 in society which had not some subtle elements 
 of inequality that poisoned for many all the 
 springs of enjoyment. 
 
 At balls and dances she hated to see the 
 way in which girls who had finer dresses or 
 danced better than others, or who were 
 prettier, or wealthier, or enjoyed more social 
 consideration, took full advantage of their 
 good fortune without considering the resi- 
 duum, who looked on with mingled feelings 
 of humiliation and anger and scorn. Ah, 
 how well she knew the situation ! 
 
 ' If men ask each other to dinner, they are 
 careful to provide the very best fare. But 
 girls ask one another to parties often only to 
 be humiliated,' she would sometimes say on 
 the very scene of action. At other times she 
 would point her moral afterwards. 
 
 ' Did you notice the Ryerston girls the 
 other evening at their fashionable cousin's 
 birthday ball '{ They sat in a row like 
 plucked pullets nearly the whole evening 
 without dancing or conversation. They came
 
 THE SILENT SEA 33 
 
 in from the country, and were introduced to 
 no one. ... I do believe girls are often 
 meaner than men, if that is possible.' 
 
 Such speeches as these — and Miss Paget 
 made many of them during the first year or 
 so that she most frequented Adelaide society 
 — do not endear a girl to either sex ; they 
 seldom make her popular with those she 
 attacks, never with those whose side she 
 takes. 
 
 At first she had a certain pride in saying 
 that she did not get on well with young 
 people. She would often sit out half an 
 evening without accepting any of the 
 partners that came round her for dances. 
 ' There are always some wallflowers. I want 
 to take my proper share of the system,' she 
 would say ; and from that she gradually 
 passed on to the neglect of dancing, and 
 devoted a large share of her time and 
 thoughts to works of charity and self- 
 improvement. 
 
 She threw herself into movements for 
 social regeneration with the ardour of a 
 neophyte Avho regards every effort for the 
 moral improvement of society as a sort of 
 
 VOL. I. 3
 
 34 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 root that infallibly promotes the growth of 
 wings. But gradually she found that the 
 ' mutable rank-scented many,' who are chosen 
 with such pathetic belief as the most fitting 
 svibjects for the adventures of philanthropists, 
 were for the most part impervious to ideas, 
 and caj)able of being converted many times 
 with little improvement in their social con- 
 dition, and no change of morals. Gradually 
 she was overtaken by something of that 
 lassitude of mind, that indifference to wide 
 questions, which often falls on women whose 
 ambition and capacity of thought are in 
 advance of their power of action. The 
 pathos and struggles of other lives touched 
 her less keenly. She lost her faculty of 
 quick, generous anger against injustice and 
 wrong-doing. It was all very funny and 
 mixed up, she said ; but what was one to 
 do? . 
 
 In the meantime she developed into the 
 most charming of hostesses. In other 
 matters she still retained the strain of an 
 ambiguous nature. She was moved by the 
 same influences to conflicting issues, according 
 to the mood of the moment ; but in social
 
 THE SILENT SEA 35 
 
 matters she became impeccably consistent. 
 She had unbounded toleration for all the 
 little wiles and hypocrisies and acted false- 
 hoods that used at first to fire her with 
 scorn. From toleration she insensibly passed 
 on to the same 23ractices. Agreeable little 
 falsehoods and polite impositions, simulated 
 enthusiasms and make-believe friendships, 
 entered into the daily current of her life, 
 till at times she could hardly tell whether 
 her sentiments were real or imaginary. 
 
 ' Ah, but this is real — this is my life !' 
 she cried in a low voice passionately, and 
 the unbidden tears rose in her eyes. ' But 
 will it come to anything ?' she asked her- 
 self with that mistrust of happiness which 
 seems to come so readilv to those who 
 have known little joy in early life. ' And, 
 after all,' she said, ' what right have I to 
 look for a happy ending ? Other people lie 
 to me, and T lie to them ; but at any rate 
 I can be honest to myself. I know Victoi* 
 would never liave proposed a word of love if 
 I had not led him on with all the arts at 
 my command. And yet I know that in time 
 he mav love me well — and who is there
 
 36 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 on the whole earth that would be a more 
 devoted wife to him than I ? But, oh, the 
 endless cackle of foolish women, who have 
 nothing better to do than talking of their 
 neighbours' affairs !' 
 
 Here Miss Paget recalled all Mrs. Tillot- 
 son's speeches ; and at the recollection her 
 heart hardened against her old friend, and 
 she purposely delayed rejoining her for some 
 minutes longer. When she at last returned 
 to the drawing-room, Mrs. Tillotson wore a 
 half -resentful, half- resigned air, something- 
 like a parrot in a cage, who does not like it. 
 but has got used to it in the course of time. 
 She was a lady of large means but uneasy 
 investments. Since her w^idowhood her life 
 had been one long panic as to the safety of 
 good mines, modified by high dividends from 
 risky ones. When she was alone there was 
 generally a mine in the unknow^n regions of 
 Australia round which her thoughts played 
 with varying emotions. And failing this, 
 there were her two sons-in-law — one of them 
 unsound in finance, the other in his lungs. 
 But on this occasion her usual subjects 
 seemed to have failed her.
 
 THE SILENT SEA ^7 
 
 ' It has just come into my head, Helen, 
 that I interrupted you and Victor in some 
 important business. You are both people of 
 considerable means. You have learned to 
 know each other well on the passage. You 
 were, perhaps, buying or selling shares.' 
 Mrs. Tillotson spoke with a long pause be- 
 tween each sentence. 
 
 Miss Paget laughed, in spite of herself 
 
 ' My dear Mrs. Tillotson, I have not been 
 talking to Mr. Fitz-Gibbon all this time. I 
 have been in to my father, and -' 
 
 ' Oh, is that it, dear ?' said Mrs. Tillotson, 
 her manner thawing at once. ' Well, I should 
 hke to have talked a little more with Victor. 
 It is odd, the sort of manner boys get when 
 they come to be nineteen or so. They seem 
 just as smiling and friendly as ever, but, 
 somehow, they don't tell you things as they 
 used to. Now, I did want to know exactly 
 how much a year he'll have when he comes 
 of age. The Masons say he'll have about 
 £2,000 a year. The Sedleys said, No — about 
 £ 1 ,500. Well, what a pity it seems that 
 liis uncle should have kept it from them 
 all this time ! Poor dear Mrs. Fitz-Gibbon !
 
 38 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 she was one of those women that like ele- 
 gance, flowers, and china and old lace, and 
 silver things with old monograms. But 
 what a fight she has had with the world I 
 And her brothers never forgave her marry- 
 ing that wild, handsome young Irishman — 
 though, indeed, others thought he was rather 
 a catch for Mary Drummond, being a captain 
 of the Life Guards, and the Governor's nephew 
 and aide-de-camp, and all.' 
 
 Mrs. Tillotson fairly talked herself out of 
 breath. But Helen, instead of allowing her 
 thoughts to play round far different subjects, 
 which was her usual plan when her old 
 friend took up one of her wordy monographs, 
 drank in all she said with eager interest. 
 She knew that Victor, after taking his B.Sc. 
 degree at the Adelaide University, had gone 
 abroad to study metallurgy at Freyberg, with 
 a view to becoming an assayer, and acquiring 
 a good knowledge of general mining. His 
 uncle, he told her, had been an enthusiast 
 about gold-mining, which lie regarded as the 
 most important industry of Australia. It 
 was the old gentleman's wish he should make 
 a special study of this subject, but not until
 
 THE SILENT SEA 39 
 
 the week he started back to Australia, on 
 receiving his uncle's hasty summons, having 
 been away only five months in all, did Victor 
 know he meant to make him his heir. 
 Miss Paget feared that he had, perhaps, a 
 large fortune left to him. It Avas with a 
 thrill of pleasure she learned that his income 
 was a good deal less than her own. ' At 
 least, people cannot say that it was his 
 fortune that allured me,' she thought. And 
 then she began, for the hundredth time 
 within the hour, to plan what her answer 
 should be on the morrow. ' A mail-boat 
 engagement !' How well she knew the 
 shrugs and sneers and endless grimaces — • 
 each one an insinuation — with which the 
 words would be spoken ; carried from house 
 to house — from one coterie to the other ! 
 No, she would not allow the engagement to 
 be made known for some time to come. 
 
 • There is such a discrepancy in our years. 
 . . . Let there be a time of probation,' she 
 would say to him; ' say, four or six months — 
 a probation of which no one but our two selves 
 will know anything.' 
 
 ' My dear, I have been forgetting what
 
 40 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 made me come so early, so that I would be 
 sure of seeing you,' cried Mrs. Tillotson. 'Do 
 you remember anything of the Mrs. Lindsay 
 who stayed at the Seatons' place three years 
 ago V 
 
 ' I remember seeing her with a lovely 
 young girl— her daughter, I think,' answered 
 Miss Papfet slowly. 
 
 ' You don't remember the name of her 
 station, or her postal address V 
 
 ' No, I haven't the least idea. There is 
 nothing wrong, I hope.' 
 
 ' No, but you know the Seatons went 
 away in a great hurry, and I promised Mrs. 
 Seaton faithfully to write to Mrs. Lindsay 
 and explain to her — and now I've lost the 
 address. Of course Mrs. Seaton will write as 
 soon as she gets to England ; but that will 
 take so long.' 
 
 ' Does Mrs. Lindsay always live in the 
 Bush V asked Miss Paget, more for the sake 
 of making conversation than because of any 
 strong interest in the subject. 
 
 ' Yes, my dear, and she must have plenty 
 of money, too. But her husband had the 
 oddest notions. He quite turned the cold
 
 THE SILENT SEA 41 
 
 shoulder to my poor Willy, because he 
 helped to float a mine that had no gold. 
 As if Willy had anything to do with it 
 beyond putting it on the market, and leaving 
 it to Providence and the other brokers ! 
 Perhaps he wished his widow to bury herself 
 in the Bush ; but her daughter must be grow- 
 ing up now. Why, she is sixteen past !' 
 
 ' Sixteen past !' echoed Miss Paget with a 
 curiously wistful intonation in her voice. 
 She had not hitherto found girls of that age 
 very interesting. She thought them for the 
 most part vain, self-centred, and exacting. 
 But just now she felt that she would give all 
 she possessed for the power of putting back 
 the dial-hand of time. . . . Oh, to be quite in 
 the morning of life, and to walk in that 
 enchanted garden of love's young dream, 
 which comes then or not at all ! For with 
 the clasp of her lover's liand warm on hers, 
 and with the strong tunnilt of emotion whicli 
 had suddenly made her pulses throb, bad 
 come the knowledge that love had come to 
 her too late for that unreasoning, credulous, 
 absorbed happiness which it brings to the 
 young. Rather it brought to her anxieties,
 
 42 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 and doubts, and a horde of restless questions 
 that she could neither answer nor gainsay. 
 She had entered on a oame in which the first 
 stake she played was serenity of mind — nay, of 
 conscience itself Could any game be worth 
 playing at such a cost ? Alas ! she had no 
 longer any power to abide by the cold 
 dictates of reason. She realized with a 
 sudden sense of suffocation that she had 
 been caught in one of those currents which 
 sweep lives on to full consummation or to 
 disaster. . . . And yet — and yet — to disen- 
 tangle herself from these hopes and fears, 
 these swift, importunate emotions of a hither- 
 to unknown passion. ... At the thought a 
 strange famine of the soul seized her, in 
 which for the first time she recognised the 
 pallid negation of her previous life. Its 
 monotonous round of small formal duties, 
 the dull interchange of visits with dull 
 women, the surfeit of tiresome details with- 
 out aim or compensation — all lay before her 
 in the cold light of remorseless disenchant- 
 ment. . . . Better the tumult of emotion, 
 better suffering, better even irretrievable 
 disaster, than to reach the limit of life with-
 
 THE SILENT SEA 43 
 
 out having really lived through all the 
 years. . . . And, after all, why should she 
 give way to fear '. Was it not possible that 
 Victor's affection would strengthen rather 
 than wane as the days went on ? From this 
 out she must strive to cast fear from her. . . . 
 Above all- — above all — she must never let 
 Victor guess the tempestuous unrest into 
 which the bare thought of his defection threw 
 her. . . . 
 
 ' Now that I think of it, I do believe the 
 Max - Gores would know Mrs. Lindsay's 
 address. I think, my dear, I'll walk across 
 there and see. . . .' 
 
 If Mrs. Tillotson had said anything else 
 before she rose to go, it was to unheeding- 
 ears. How curious, when one comes to think 
 of it, is this double drama which goes on 
 wherever two human beings are together ! 
 The one so carefully selected — usually 
 commonplace, spoken and acted with robust 
 obviousness. The other silent, inward, 
 searching into the depths of life, seldom 
 communicated even in part, never wholly 
 revealed to any living soul.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Though it was still early in August, many 
 of the rose-bushes round the house known 
 as Lindaraxa were covered with blooms. 
 The tremulous shadow of white-stemmed 
 young bii'ches over the roses and countless 
 marguerite bushes made a fascinating picture. 
 
 ' But the house looks rather old,' said Miss 
 Paget as the two surveyed it from the front. 
 
 ' Yes, but the garden, Helen, and the name,' 
 replied Victor. ' Lindaraxa — doesn't it call 
 up pictures of dark-eyed donnas stepping out 
 on balconies in the moonlight ?' 
 
 ' But your mother would not live in the 
 ofarden V 
 
 ' She would in the spring and sunnner, all 
 the autumn, and most part of the winter,' 
 said the young man recklessly.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 45 
 
 He was in very high spirits, and broke out 
 every now and then into snatches of song. 
 
 ' And just here/ he said, pausing at the 
 end of the house where there was a large 
 window half buried in foliage, starred with 
 the white convolvulus, ' what a perfect nook 
 of loveliness !' 
 
 He paused abruptly, looking round with 
 an air of startled wonder. 
 
 ' What have you discovered ?' said Miss 
 Paget, half amused at the sudden change in 
 his face. 
 
 ' Why, Helen, I have seen this spot in 
 my dreams over and over again. Not the 
 window itself, but what you can see from it.' 
 
 He was now standing with his back to the 
 window, looking at the little orange grove 
 opposite to it, and all the shrubs around, with 
 minute scrutiny. 
 
 ' What did you dream about it, Victor C 
 asked Miss Paget with growing interest. 
 
 They had met at the gate but a few 
 minutes before, and the momentous question 
 of their engagement had not yet been ap- 
 proached. It suddenly occurred to Miss 
 Pasret that if Victor- had seen in visions of
 
 46 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 the night the spot in which perhaps her 
 reply would be given, it might be a sign 
 that this, after all, was the turning-point in 
 his life. That it w^ould be the central epoch 
 of her own she could not for a moment doubt. 
 
 ' Well, you know, it was one of those 
 foolish, aimless dreams that stick to the 
 mind, and yet seem to have no meaning,' 
 answered Victor. ' I just used to see these 
 trees in a sort of semicircle, with a lot of 
 blossoms on them ; there isn't much now, 
 you see.' 
 
 ' No, they're not fruit-bearing ; they are a 
 late kind just coming into bud. Well, and 
 then ?' 
 
 ' Well, I just used to see them and a heap 
 of shrubs in flower, some lying across the 
 path ; and that and the room I stood in was 
 all the dream. By the way, I wonder if the 
 I'oom is like ' 
 
 He turned to look, but the blind was 
 drawn down. 
 
 * Tell me what the room was like, and then 
 we'll compare your dream with the reality 
 when we go into the house,' said Miss Paget 
 eagerly.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 47 
 
 ' It was a long, narrowish room and rather 
 low, with a wide fireplace and deep recesses 
 on each side of it. There was another 
 window beside the one I looked out of, and 
 that's about all I remember. You see, I 
 didn't go into upholstery in my dream, per- 
 haps because I never notice it when awake.' 
 
 ' Let us go in and look at it now,' said 
 Miss Paget, adding mentally, ' If the room is 
 like the one In his dream, I shall take it as a 
 good omen.' 
 
 Thev rang' at the front door, and in a few 
 minutes the caretaker, a small hump-backed 
 woman with large, pathetic eyes, let them in. 
 She seemed a little surprised as she looked 
 from one to the other. 
 
 ' Have you come for Mrs. North, ma'am V 
 she said hesitatingl}^ to Miss Paget, the 
 three standing in the hall. 
 
 ' For Mrs. North ? No,' answered Miss 
 Paget wonderingly. 
 
 ' There is a notice that the place is to be 
 let or sold. We Avant to have a look at the 
 house, if you please,' said Victor. 
 
 ' Oh, hasn't the board been taken down '{ 
 It's let, sir, on a two years' lease to Mrs.
 
 48 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 North and her daughter, the lady doctor. I 
 thought as perhaps you was Miss North, 
 ma'am,' she said to Miss Paget. 
 
 ' No ; but she is a friend of mine. When 
 did she return from India ?' 
 
 ' Two months ago, ma'am. The cHmate 
 tried her terribly, but she's getting on nicely 
 now, I hear. I've only seen the mother ; 
 Miss North has been to the place twice, but 
 I was away, and it was John that showed 
 her over the house.' 
 
 ' Excuse us for having troubled you,' said 
 Victor, slipping half a crown into the care- 
 taker's hand. 
 
 Now that Lindaraxa was out of the market, 
 he felt surer than ever that it was the place 
 which, of all others, would have best pleased 
 his mother. 
 
 ' Would you mind letting us look at the 
 sitting-room w4th the large window on the 
 western side ?' he said, as the caretaker 
 curtseyed her thanks. 
 
 She instantly showed them in, and when 
 they entered, the room corresponded in each 
 particular with the details of Victor's dream. 
 The shape of the chamber, the fireplace with
 
 THE SILENT SEA 49 
 
 the wide recesses on each side, the second 
 window, which opened into a small con- 
 servatory — all were there. Miss Paget was 
 agreeably excited ; but Victor thought his 
 dream more foolish than ever. 
 
 ' If I had been able to buy the place for 
 my mother, there would have been some 
 sense in it ; but just to dream of orange 
 blossom, which I cannot stand, and a room 
 in a house taken by people I don't even know !' 
 he said, drawing up the blind and looking 
 out discontentedly. 
 
 ' You think if you see a room in a dream 
 something should happen in it ?' said Miss 
 Paget, smiling. ' Well, who knows ? perhaps 
 you'll be one of Miss North's patients.' 
 
 ' And have an arm taken off when the 
 orange-trees are in blossom. That would be 
 charming !' said Victor with a smile. Then 
 he thrust his hand into his breast-pocket. 
 
 ' Helen, I have brought you a little souvenir 
 of the East. Do you remember tlie gem- 
 store where we bought tlie moonstones in 
 Colombo ? Here are some of them in a 
 bracelet — not so nicely set as I should like, 
 but I didn't give the jeweller much time.' 
 
 VOL. I. 4
 
 50 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 ' Oh, how lovely !' cried Miss Paget, her 
 eyes sparkling with pleasure as she looked at 
 the large lustrously gleaming stones, whose 
 soft, dreamy light was enhanced by the keen, 
 incisive sparkle of Brazilian diamonds. She 
 clasped the bracelet on her wrist, and then 
 with a sudden impetuous motion bent her 
 head and kissed the stones. 
 
 ' Helen, tell me,' said Victor, drawing 
 closer to her, ' is it because you are so fond 
 of these moonstones that you kiss them V 
 
 ' Yes ; and because -' 
 
 ' Well, because ?' 
 
 ' You gave them to me.' A quick wave of 
 colour rose in her smooth, soft, olive- tinted 
 cheeks as she spoke. 
 
 ' Ah, now you are going to give me an 
 answer, Helen.' 
 
 ' Would you, perhaps, like to see the rest 
 of the house, ma'am V said the caretaker, 
 appearing at the half-open door. The two 
 started guiltily apart. They declined the 
 offer, saying that this room was all the}' 
 wished to see. 
 
 ' Come home with me, and I'll tell you 
 there,' said Miss Paget in a low voice as they
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 went out at the gate. On the way to 
 Lancaster House, which stood in the midst of 
 its own grounds on a rise beyond the Torrens, 
 about a mile to the north-west of the city, 
 Victor spoke of the probabihty of his joining 
 a prospecting party that was spoken of as 
 Kkely to start for the Macdonnel ranges in a 
 few weeks. 
 
 ' It would bridge over the time till I come 
 of age,' he said. 'If I remain in town I shall of 
 course be in the warehouse ; and if there's one 
 thing in the world I hate, it's being stuck on 
 a stool all day like a sick ape.' 
 
 ' Then I suppose, when you are your own 
 master, you won't remain in partnership with 
 your uncle Stuart ?' 
 
 ' No ; I think not. For one thing, I don't 
 believe we should ever agree.' 
 
 ' I dare say Mr. Drummond is rather 
 wroth that you are your uncle Shaw's sole 
 heir.' 
 
 ' Oh, I think not ; in fact, I don't suppose 
 he even thought of it in that way,' returned 
 Victor. 
 
 Miss Paget half smiled, and repeated the 
 words to herself, ' Oh, youth, youth ! more 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UINIVERSJTV OF ILIINOI;
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 beautiful than truth.' His boyish, whole- 
 hearted belief in almost every human being 
 with whom he came in contact was one of the 
 most marked features of Victor's tempera- 
 ment. ' That sort of confidence in mankind 
 departs with one's early years, and never, 
 never comes back again,' was a thought that 
 had often occiuTed to her during their in- 
 tercourse on board the Mogul. The same 
 thought came to her now, for she knew Mr. 
 Stuart Drummond to be a hard, avaricious 
 man with two spendthrift sons and several 
 grown-up daughters. 
 
 ' You see, Helen,' continued Victor, ' it's 
 partly a question of race, I expect. An 
 Irishman, in Uncle Stuart's eyes, is always 
 a disagreeable blunder.' 
 
 ' But you are partly Scotch.' 
 
 ' Ah, but you don't know how Irish I 
 become when I'm with Uncle Stuart,' said 
 Victor, in a half-penitent tone which made 
 Helen laugh. 
 
 ' It's the truth I'm speaking,' said Victor 
 seriously. ' Only last night, I know, I drove 
 liim half wild with rage.' 
 ' ' How was that ?'
 
 THE SILENT SEA 53 
 
 ' Well, it began about my advancing two 
 hundred pounds to O'Connor.' 
 
 ' The viohnist ?' 
 
 ' Yes — and my old music-master, who plays 
 Irish melodies in a way that would make a 
 millstone sob.' 
 
 ' But was it wise to advance him so 
 much ?' 
 
 ' As a business investment, perhaps it was 
 a trifle weak,' replied Victor, with a twinkle 
 in his eyes. ' But you know the sort of 
 chap poor dear old O'Connor is about money. 
 As long as he has any, the very crows ai'e 
 welcome to it. This time he had put his name 
 to a bill for over £150, not dreaming any- 
 thing would go wrong. So, for the luxury of 
 signing his name to a dishonest bit of paper, 
 he was going to be sold up, Cremona violin 
 and all, with his wife ill in bed, and seven 
 youngsters wailing on his bosom.' 
 
 ' Poor old man !' 
 
 ' Yes, what could a fellow do but come 
 between him and his signature '\ But you 
 should have heard Uncle Stuart. By Jove ! 
 the old man can slang when he gives his mind 
 to it. Anyone would think that to give
 
 54 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 money away was the blackest crime on earth. 
 Whereas, when you come to think of it, 
 what is the good of money until it is spent, 
 somehow or other ?' 
 
 * Perhaps you asked your uncle that ques- 
 tion ?' 
 
 ' No. I didn't cheek him in the least when 
 he was talking of the O'Connor affair. I was 
 as meek as the Prodigal Son. I listened till he 
 was quite at an end about hereditary extra- 
 vagance — that was me ; and an idle, good-for- 
 nothing fiddler — that was O'Connor, etc., etc. 
 And then I said, " Look here, sir ! it would 
 be downright ingratitude on my part not to 
 help a fellow-creature in distress. Here am 
 I, without doing an ounce of work for it, 
 coming into a lump sum of £10,000, and 
 over £1,500 a year, as soon as the clock 
 strikes nine on the morning of the 31st of 
 next December." ' 
 
 ' That would annoy him !' said Miss Paget 
 involuntarily. 
 
 ' How do you know it would?' asked Victor, 
 with some astonishment. 
 
 ' Well, you know, an old man doesn't 
 always like to see a young one step into so
 
 THE SILENT SEA 55 
 
 much unearned wealth at one bound,' an- 
 swered Miss Paget, ahiiost vexed to find 
 herself returning to that theme again. 
 
 Victor was silent for a little. 
 
 ' I wonder if that can be the reason,' lie 
 said thoughtfully. ' I thought it was uncle's 
 liver. I know he has suffered from it badly 
 sometimes. He got into an unaccountable 
 scot when I said that. He said the 31st of 
 December had not come yet, which was too 
 obvious to call for remark, and that there's 
 many a slip between the cup and the lip, 
 which is often true. But when he went on 
 to say that I had better not make a pauper 
 of myself before I knew whereabouts I 
 was, I couldn't figure out his meaning any- 
 how.' 
 
 They were by this time walking up thi'ough 
 the wide plane-tree avenue that led to the 
 border of the lawn which fronted Miss Pa^et's 
 home. 
 
 ' Was all your uncle Shaw's money in the 
 partnership ?' asked Miss Paget. 
 
 ' Nearly all of it— except some in mines. 
 I think he owns the twentieth part of tlie 
 Colmar Mine, which is paying grand dividends
 
 56 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 at present. But, of course, Uncle Stuart has 
 always been the managing partner of the 
 warehouse, and much the wealthier of the 
 two.' 
 
 ' It may be ' 
 
 ' Well — why do you stop, Helen ?' 
 
 ' Perhaps I shouldn't say it.' 
 
 ' You should say anything you have a 
 mind to.' 
 
 ' There may be a crash coming 
 
 ' And me left a penniless spalpeen, after 
 all !' 
 
 ' You would not be penniless as long — ' 
 
 Miss Paget checked herself 
 
 ' Look here, Miss Paget,' said Victor, turn- 
 ing to her with laughing eyes ; ' 111 have to 
 take you to sea again. You never mutilated 
 your sentences in this way when we paced the 
 deck of the good ship Mogul. You've lost 
 all confidence in me. . . .' 
 
 'No. I have not . . . but — well, you 
 wouldn't be penniless as long as I had any 
 money.' 
 
 ' Helen, that is your answer !' 
 They paused in the shelter of the trees, 
 and he possessed himself of her right hand.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 57 
 
 ' But if I thought there was any danger of 
 my becoming penniless, you know, Helen ' 
 
 ' We won't consider that just now, Victor. 
 . . . And after thinking it over, I am sure it 
 is better there should be no hard and fast 
 engagement for a time.' 
 
 ' Not till I am twenty-one ; that is nearly 
 five months. Surely that is long enough for 
 anything V 
 
 He held her hands in his, looking into her 
 face with frank, affectionate eyes. It was 
 with a strong effort that Miss Paget kept her 
 emotion under control as she replied : 
 
 ' Until after December no one must know 
 anything of this. . . . After that, Victor, 
 there may be nothing to know. Only if so, 
 our own two selves will always remember that 
 one of us was young enough, and the other 
 foolish enough, to di'eani an impossible dream.' 
 
 Though she struggled hard for composui'e, 
 her voice vibrated with intense emotion, and 
 tears forced themselves into her eyes. 
 Victor was suddenly and deeply moved. 
 It is true that he was entering on this 
 weighty compact with a heart too little 
 under the influence of the deeper feelings
 
 58 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 of which his nature was capable. His youth 
 and inexperience and impulsive friendliness 
 had led him too far. But his generosity and 
 good feeling stood him at this crisis in the 
 stead of a more profound affection. He 
 could not realize all that affected Miss Paget, 
 but when he saw her so deeply moved he be- 
 came conscious of an uneasy apprehension 
 lest he should fail her in some way. A 
 heavier sense of responsibility fell on him. 
 For a little time they were both silent, and 
 then Victor found relief from a vague mis- 
 trust and discontent with himself by making 
 a resolution which he knew would entail 
 some sacrifice. 
 
 ' Dear Helen, I am not half good enough 
 for you,' he said ; ' you are ever so much wiser 
 than I am. Now, don't begin to speak of the 
 disparity in our years. It isn't that so much 
 as that you were born wiser.' 
 
 ' But I've suddenly come to the end of my 
 wisdom ; it's a case of arrested development,' 
 said Miss Paget, smiling. ' While you are 
 going to get sager every day — wasn't that 
 what you said yesterday ?' 
 
 ' I'm afraid you have a dreadfully retentive
 
 THE SILENT SEA 59 
 
 memory,' he said gaily ; and then, suddenly 
 relapsing- into seriousness : ' But I'll tell you 
 what, Helen — I won't go away prospecting ; 
 I'll go into the warehouse for the next 
 five or six months, and try to understand 
 the business, and be a door-mat to uncle 
 rather than have I'ows with him. I think 
 that will be more appropriate for an engaged 
 man.' 
 
 ' Yes ; the liveliest door-mat on record, I 
 should think,' said Miss Paget, laughing. 
 The announcement made her very happy. 
 
 They were strolling across the lawn, when 
 one or two little decorous shouts and calls 
 behind attracted their attention. It was 
 Mrs. Tillotson, hurrying up the avenue as fast 
 as she could. She was of such an intensely 
 social disposition that she could not bear the 
 sight of two talking in full view of her, 
 without straining every effort to join in the 
 conversation. People who have this vivid par- 
 tiality for their fellow-creatures seldom pause 
 to inquire whether the feeling is reciprocal. 
 
 ' I'll say good-bye now, Helen,' said Victor, 
 before the new-comer could reach them. 
 * This will be a good time to find uncle in his
 
 6o THE SILENT SEA 
 
 office to talk over my new plan with him. . . . 
 I don't think I could stand another dose of 
 your " habitual providence " just now, but 
 may I come soon again ?' 
 
 As he lit a cigar and walked into the city, 
 one of the impressions which Victor drew 
 from the history of that morning was that, 
 after all, dreams were an awful fraud. Why 
 had the special view from that special window 
 at Lindaraxa come to him again and again In 
 his dreams, and why, before he had ever seen 
 it, was the form of that special room im- 
 printed on his memory ? 
 
 ' When the mater talks solemnly about 
 " presageful " dreams after this,' he thought 
 with a smile, ' I'll bombard her with this 
 sham one of mine.' 
 
 And yet, though life, like an unskilful 
 drama, is crowded with details that explain 
 nothing, and full of seemingly significant be- 
 ginnings that lead nowhere, this foolish dream 
 came to have strangely significant associations. 
 ***** 
 
 ' Oh, my dear,' panted Mrs. Tillotson after 
 she had warmly embraced Helen, 'it is so good 
 of you to take such an interest in Mrs. Fitz-
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 Gibbon's boy! But he is nice — now, isn't he ? 
 Something so boyish and genuine about him ! 
 I am afraid the girls will run after him dread- 
 fully — though it would be like infant-stealing, 
 till he is a few years older. I expect some of 
 them did their best to set their caps at him 
 on the Mogul ? But you would be a sort of 
 protection for him. He seems to have quite 
 taken to you. But, my dear, I hope he 
 doesn't bore you by giving you a little too 
 much of his company.' 
 
 There was something so cold and strained 
 in Miss Paget's tones, as she replied, that 
 e\'en Mrs. Tillotson noticed the difference. 
 She paused on the lawn, saying : 
 
 ' Perhaps I had better not come in. I just 
 ran up, in passing, to tell you that I have found 
 Mrs. Lindsay's address. I was afraid you 
 might be giving yourself anxiety in making 
 inquiries. You always take so much trouble 
 for your friends.' 
 
 Miss Paget, who had not given the matter 
 a thought, felt a little conscience-smitten, and 
 Insisted on Mrs. Tillotson's staying for lunch, 
 and she responded by saying : 
 
 ' Well, my dear, though T liad to put
 
 62 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 everything on a more economical footing since 
 the last fall in silver, I'll never stint my 
 friendships. Thank goodness ! I need not 
 give up my friends, though I put down my 
 carriage ; and I know you always enjoy 
 having me — we have such delightful chats !'
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The lady whose address both when lost and 
 when found had led Mrs. Tillotson to make 
 an early call at Lancaster House was at 
 eleven o'clock on this sunny August morning 
 deep in the perusal of a letter which had that 
 day reached her from an old friend and relative 
 who, like herself, was a widow, and was then 
 living with two young daughters in Mentone . 
 ' I am well, dear friend, only that oftener 
 than before I am overtaken by hours of cold, 
 insurmountable languor and indolence in 
 which I can do nothinof but remember. 
 Memory, like an implacable little inquisitoi', 
 forces me to go down to those soundless 
 deeps of life in which happiness is lost and 
 the soul jeopardized, and the faith with which 
 we consoled ourselves is resolved into beaut I-
 
 64 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 ful cradle-songs that have lost the power of 
 lulling us to sleep. Do you know those days 
 in which the rain beats perpetually on the roof, 
 and the wind rises in hollow moans, and we 
 are crushed between two infinities— the days 
 that are dead and those that are to come ? 
 
 ' But no — you are one of those who, in the 
 face of the bitterest assaults of fate, find a 
 sure standing-ground, a peace which the 
 world can neither give nor take away. . . . 
 All this morning I was rummaging among 
 old papers and letters. Yours I read in their 
 order one year after the other, and suddenly 
 the story of your life lay before me as if for 
 the first time. We are so blind, mostly 
 going through life half asleep, waking up 
 now and then when there is a noise or a 
 great flash of light, and the reality of things 
 comes home to us only like half-remembered 
 dreams. As I thought 'of your history, dear 
 Margaret, left almost alone in the world, 
 with the terrible memories of the Indian 
 Mutiny shadowing your. youth like a night- 
 mare — of the long years of nervous pros- 
 tration that followed, those in which our 
 friendship began and the great happiness of
 
 THE SILENT SEA 65 
 
 your life came to you — and then pondered 
 over your sudden cruel bereavement, my 
 heart was very wae. I came on the first 
 letter you wrote after Doris was born. ' 
 
 Here Mrs. Lindsay put down the letter 
 and looked fondly at her daughter, a lovely 
 girl past sixteen, who sat near her engrossed 
 in copying the border of an illuminated 
 missal. After a few moments the mother 
 resumed her reading : 
 
 ' Ah, what a tender rapture breathes" 
 through this little letter ! Baby was 
 four weeks old ; already she began to notice. 
 '' When we put a finger within hers she closes 
 them over it quite fast. . . . Oh what tiny 
 morsels of rose-leaf fingers 1 Richard looks 
 at them for twenty minutes at a time. 
 ' Think of that third little left finger with 
 a wedding-ring on it one day 1' I say to liim 
 gravely, and he looks at me reproachfully, 
 as if I were already intriguing for a son- 
 in-law. It is all so exquisitely absurd we 
 laugh till the tears come.'" 
 • ' Mother, dearie !' 
 
 . Mrs. Lindsay gave a little start. It was 
 now her turn to be looked at. Her 
 
 VOL. I. 5
 
 66 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 dauo[-hter's eves were fixed on her with 
 
 & 
 
 eyes 
 
 puzzled inquhy. 
 
 ' I have been watching you, and you 
 are ahnost laughing and crying at the same 
 time. I wish you would laugh only. Is 
 it something sad or merry in that letter, 
 mammy ?' 
 
 ' Perhaps a little of both, dear : not 
 merry exactly, but something that was so 
 long ago.' 
 
 ' And why isn't it now, mother ?' 
 
 ' Oh, my dear — — ' the delicate sensitive 
 lips quivered and the voice fell. 
 
 The girl came and knelt by her mother's 
 side and stroked her cheeks. 
 
 ' Mother, I would like to know the sort of 
 things that make you merry one time and 
 sad another.' 
 
 ' When you are older you will understand, 
 Dorrie.' 
 
 ' Oh, is everything to happen when I am 
 older V said the girl with a slight accent of 
 weariness. 
 
 ' No, my child,' said the mother with a 
 little smile ; ' you are my own good Doris 
 without waiting for more years.'
 
 THE SILENT SEA 67 
 
 ' You cunning little mother 1 Do you 
 know, that is a way of petting and scolding 
 one at the same time ! Is it because you 
 are as wise as Nan Ko that you do two 
 things at once so often V 
 
 ' Nan Ko ? My dear, has Shung - Loo 
 been telling you about a fresh Mongolian 
 hero V 
 
 ' Yes, mamma — one who wrote the story 
 of the '' Purple Hair Pin " in forty volumes !' 
 
 ' Oh, Doris r 
 
 ' Yes, truly ; he used to take it about 
 with him on two white elephants, and when 
 the black barbarians saw him coming they 
 used to Hy.' 
 
 ' For fear of having it read to them ?' 
 
 ' Not at all, you almost naughty little 
 mother I It was because after hearing it 
 read they had to be good or die, and mostly 
 they had to die. He killed the Red Kalono 
 — a terrible dragon. Where his shadow came 
 the birds stopped singing, and no more 
 e:arlands could be made. I think it was 
 Nan Ko who taught the people that a grain 
 of sand has a voice as well as a })oet.' 
 
 ' Doris, do you know, I knew a giil
 
 68 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 once ' began the mother with smiling 
 
 seriousness. 
 
 ' Mamma, is that quite fair ?' asked the 
 girl, holding up a rosy forefinger in an 
 admonitory way. ' I have told you quite a 
 new story out of a wise book stopped with 
 red.' 
 
 ' And I am going to tell you an old one 
 about a girl who could remember Chinese 
 fables out of forty volumes, but couldn't 
 learn the French verbs out of one.' 
 
 ' I believe I know that girl by heart. 
 Don't let us talk of her any more, mamma.' 
 
 They smiled fondly in each other's faces, 
 and then the girl went back to her painting 
 of the wide intricate border full of curlinu- 
 tendrils, of stiif, even leaves, of birds with 
 strange beaks and plumages, and in the 
 midst angels now and then, with long lazuline 
 blue robes, with wide gold halos round their 
 heads, and folded pointed wings snow-white, 
 all looking upward and making sweet 
 melody, soine on long reed trumpets, 
 others on viols, on cithers, on fantastically 
 curled and many-tubed instruments, whose 
 names are unknown to the laity.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 69 
 
 The mother resumed her reading. 
 
 ' And now Doris has passed her sixteenth 
 birthday. Don't you think, dear Margaret, 
 the time has come when she should see a 
 httle more of the human species in her own 
 rank of Hfe ? Do not wait till she is seven- 
 teen to leave the charmed solitude of 
 Ouranie. Not that it is really a solitude ; 
 what with your station people, your little 
 township six miles off, and the settlement 
 of splitters in the Peppermint Ranges, and 
 that wonderful major-domo of yours, Shung- 
 Loo, who is so learned in the old lore of his 
 country and the art of making delicate 
 cakes. Your Doris, with her direct, trans- 
 parent nature, her charm of quick imagina- 
 tion, her love of woods and birds and flowers, 
 her inheritance of your gift of music and 
 love of art, seems to have found in your 
 surroundings all the nourishment needed 
 liitherto for the harmonious development of 
 early years. But now, has not the time 
 come when you should leave Ouranie ? Is 
 it not because of Richard's austere denuncia- 
 tions of the habitual frivolity of our sex that 
 you have lingered there so long ?
 
 70 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 ' I have been looking over some of his old 
 letters to me. Dear, noble-hearted Richard ! 
 I am glad that though so many of the im- 
 perfections of our kind and sex always hung 
 about me, the bond of kinship between us 
 was never ruptured. I think the fact that 
 he first came to know you through me 
 strengthened the bond of relationship into 
 real friendship. But though I revere your 
 dear husband's memory, Margaret, to - day 
 it has been borne in on me that your idolatry 
 of him has led you to remain over-long in the 
 seclusion of the Bush. 
 
 ' " After all," he writes in one of his letters 
 now before me, ' it is no wonder that women 
 exercise so little influence for good in the 
 world. From childhood they live largely in 
 an atmosphere of small intrigues and decep- 
 tions and concealed jealousies ; first in school, 
 then in society. In school they are subjected 
 to the persistent push of teachers, ambitious 
 for academic degrees and examination passes. 
 Their most precious gifts of spontaneous in- 
 tuition and direct observation are hopelessly 
 impaired or destroyed, in the worry and drive 
 of acquiring multifarious scraps of knowledge,
 
 THE SILENT SEA 7i 
 
 which give them neither more balanced capa- 
 cities nor a wider outlook on life. They are 
 the victims of ideas they cannot digest, of 
 ideals that add nothing to the well-being of 
 the world. . . . When they enter the im- 
 mense fraud we call society, they are plunged 
 into a frankly cynical scramble as to who 
 shall get the best nuts." 
 
 ' Well, well, granted that the old seductive, 
 invincibly pagan world in which we live is 
 largely swayed by passions that we do not 
 name in our children's hearing, still it is the 
 only one in which our poor bodies are at 
 home, the one in which we find our happiness 
 or not at all ; the world in which your Doris 
 must take her place as a woman among other 
 women. She has been sheltered and reared as 
 within convent walls ; and up to a certam age 
 this may be right for girls ; but slie is now over 
 sixteen. . . . You have told me that if you were 
 taken from her it is to my care, conjointly 
 with her guardian in London, she would be 
 entrusted. You do not say nmch of your 
 health, but through your later letters there 
 seems to me an increasing detachment from 
 all the things of earth. And do I not know
 
 27 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 how frail and shaken you were for so many 
 years ? Would it not be wiser to lose no 
 time in bringing Doris to what would be her 
 new home, while you are with her to make 
 it familiar and home-like ? . . . Pardon me, 
 Margaret, if I seem to jDlead over-much ; but 
 to-day, after a separation of seventeen years, 
 reading your letters, so many scores of them, 
 while the wind blows in shrill gusts, and the 
 rain is dashing furiously against the windows, 
 I seem to have renewed our intimacy, to see 
 more clearly into the tenor of your ideas, 
 to perceive that you shrink more and more 
 from the thought of increased communion with 
 your kind. Is it that in these later years 
 you have become more and more of a mystic V 
 Mrs. Lindsay, on reading this question, half 
 folded the closely-written pages and looked 
 out through the open French window into 
 the garden, which on this side of the house 
 came to within a few paces of the veranda. 
 Beyond the garden, forming its eastern 
 boundary, lay a large lake fringed with 
 gum-trees and ti-trees. The surface of the 
 water, faintly rippled and sparkling in the 
 sunlight, was one of the sights w^liicb
 
 THE SILENT SEA 75 
 
 familiarity never rendered less beautiful. 
 This lake was called Gauwari, a native name 
 that signifies great depth — a title justified 
 by the fact that the lake had never within 
 living memory been greatly diminished. 
 Mrs. Lindsay's eyes rested for a long time 
 on Gauwari ; then she looked round the room 
 that they were in, trying to imagine the day 
 on which she should leave Ouranie, the home 
 that she had come to as a bride nearly seven- 
 teen years ago. She was conscious of an im- 
 mobility of disposition which made her shrink 
 from the thought of change and movement 
 as from experiences she lacked strength and 
 will-power to assimilate. And there was yet 
 another link that bound her to Ouranie. She 
 felt that the bond which had been the 
 strongest, deepest influence of her life was 
 here still unbroken, that in the spot which 
 was consecrated to her by so many sacred 
 memories her husband's companionship had 
 not ended with death. 
 
 This was a development of feeling that 
 owed nothing to extraneous excitement or 
 to any of the grotesque manifestations 
 usually associated with experiences that
 
 74 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 seem in any way to make a gap in the 
 barrier that guards the unseen from the 
 material world. Orthodox forms of belief 
 had never a23pealed to her keenly. Perhaps 
 the shipwreck of all her closest ties in the 
 horrors of the Indian Mutiny disposed her 
 little to find consolation in professions that 
 dwell over-much on the benefits and comforts 
 of the Christian faith, while the renunciation 
 that lies at its core is in practice profoundly 
 denied. It was her misfortune to know 
 Christians solely of the type of those who 
 turn the cross they profess to carry into a 
 sectarian triangle, with which to anathema- 
 tize the rest of the world, and to secure pews 
 for themselves in this world and that which 
 is to come. Her husband's influence had all 
 been on the side of severance from creeds and 
 formulas. 
 
 When she was left alone the crisis of her 
 spiritual life came. The conviction that 
 death ends^all, that all we are or have the 
 faculty of becoming is annihilated with the 
 last pulsation of the heart, fastened on her 
 like a virulent disease. There are those who 
 can accept the belief calmly, but to Mi's.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 75 
 
 Lindsay it brought that sense of absolute 
 ruin which we name despair. Then one 
 radiant morning in mid-winter, when the air 
 was full of the breath of violets and jessa- 
 mine, and the delicate safPron of the dawn 
 still lingered in the east, she kiit'W that her 
 despair was a dark, wild atheism, and that 
 the fuller life into which her husband had 
 passed had quickened her own inner nature 
 as with a breath of healing inspiration. 
 
 We are so brow-beaten by the thrones and 
 dominations of the material world that, when 
 we hear of people to whom a message of 
 salvation has come apart from creeds and 
 rituals consecrated by the roll of many 
 centuries, our habitual attitude is one of mis- 
 trust, if not hostility. And yet there may 
 be powers which touch human intuitions to 
 the quick, in a mode hidden from the world 
 as completely as the messages that came to 
 Isaiah were hidden from his idolatrous fellow- 
 countrymen. 
 
 Be this as it may, Mrs. Lindsay's ex])eri- 
 ence not only rescued her from despair and 
 the gradual decline of all her functions, gave 
 her not only courage to live for her child, but
 
 76 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 to cherish her Hfe as a personal gift and 
 become serenely happy. Nothing henceforth 
 shook her faith that our present existence, 
 with all its confusion and cruel enigmas, was 
 but a passing phase of experience, and that, 
 if we do not love the world over-much, we 
 may often pass beyond its power, and 
 habitually live above its influence. For some 
 time of late she had been conscious of de- 
 clining strength. This was brought home 
 to her very forcibly now by the tremulous 
 agitation that seized her at the thought of 
 leaving Ouranie. She had always looked 
 forward to doing so when Doris grew up, 
 and she felt the full force of the argument 
 used by her friend Mme. de Serziac ; but it 
 was the later portion of the letter that 
 finally decided her. This was dated a few 
 days after the earlier 2:>ortion, and ran : 
 
 ' Kaoul has given us a pleasant surprise. 
 He has obtained a fortnight's leave of 
 absence from his regiment two months 
 earlier than we expected. Yesterday he was 
 prowling round my room, turning over my 
 books and photographs. Presently he came 
 on the last photograph you sent me of your-
 
 THE SILENT SEA 77 
 
 self and Doris. It was the first time he saw 
 it, and— well, he fell in love with her. . . . 
 Over and over again he comes to gaze at the 
 beautiful young face, and says : "Did you ever 
 •see such wonderful eyes ! and what an ex- 
 quisite mouth ! . . . And I believe I owe her 
 a letter. I don't believe I answered the last 
 note she sent me on my birthday." And then 
 he asks me impatiently when you and Doris 
 are coming on that visit which we have 
 talked about indefinitely for so many years. 
 Well, dear Margaret, I have no after-thought 
 in telling you this, only if our children on 
 meeting. . . . Oh, you will be able to follow 
 the trend of my thoughts. And you will not 
 be surprised if, in the course of a week or 
 two, Doris gets a cousinly little letter from 
 Kaoul, congratulating her on her sixteenth 
 birthday. I send you his photo, taken a 
 few days before he left Paris, also some of 
 the girls.' 
 
 Mrs. Lindsay opened a small packet that 
 had come with the letter. She looked a long- 
 time at the young man's j)hotograph. He 
 :wlas not yet twenty-three, but already tliere 
 was something in his face of that precocious
 
 78 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 discontent which one sees in the eyes of 
 those who early plunge into the glittering, 
 vibrant life of great cities. As Mrs. Lindsay 
 examined the picture with a jealous scrutiny, 
 the recollection came to her of the overture 
 in ' Tannhaiiser,' in which the theme of the 
 Pilgrims' march, austere, lofty, and devout, 
 ends in the throbbing, reckless Bacchanalian 
 strain of the Yenusberg. 
 
 And then her eyes rested on her daughter. 
 It was a face to make an old man young. 
 Its deep, untroubled serenity, the amber- 
 coloured wavy hair parted on the forehead, 
 and the classic poise of the neck, perfectly 
 upright on the shoulders, gave it something 
 of a Greek expression. The eyes were 
 extremely beautiful, large, dark and radiant. 
 The eyelashes were, if anything, a little too 
 thick and long. They made a shadow under 
 the eyes which in repose imparted a pathetic 
 gravity to the face, alien to its real expression. 
 The eyebrows, dark and pencilled, were 
 exquisitely pure in arch. The slender 
 creamy throat, and the flower-like bloom of 
 the face, were thrown into strong relief by 
 the close-fitting crimson silk dress she wore.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 79 
 
 The fond mother took in all these details 
 with inexhaustible pleasure. That sweet, fair 
 young face, with its unmistakable seal of 
 candour and purity, was a feast for her eyes 
 of which she never tired. But as she now 
 regarded her after the lines she had read, a 
 sudden pang shot through her heart. Could 
 she in the nature of things ho23e to keep 
 Doris long to herself if they entered the busy 
 self-seeking world, so keenly alive to all the 
 gifts of life — gifts in which youth and beauty 
 and money have taken from time immemorial 
 the foremost place ? 
 
 ' But I should be with her to guide and 
 counsel her, to take care that no undue 
 pressure was brought to bear on her,' thought 
 the mother, re-reading the last page of her 
 friend's letter, and then her resolution was 
 taken. 
 
 ' Mamma, do you know, you look so very 
 serious!' said Doris, who had put away her 
 painting, and now sat on her mother's foot- 
 stool. ' Your eyes are as big as Red Riding- 
 hood's when the wolf was going to gobble 
 her up.' 
 
 ' You disrespectful child!' said the mother,
 
 8o THE SILENT SEA 
 
 smiling, and then smothering a httle sigh, 
 * Do you know, a great deal of this long letter 
 is about you.' 
 
 ' From Mme. de Serziac V 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 ' But what could she find to say about 
 me V said Doris, opening her eyes wide. 
 
 ' Ah, one may write a long letter about 
 anything almost — a little puss, a sunflower, a 
 spider catching a fly, a girl sixteen years old.' 
 
 ' Or the wattle-trees, and the Banksia 
 bushes just coming into flower.' 
 
 ' Perhaps you think you are like the little 
 Banksia rosebuds ?' 
 
 ' No, mother, I have no thorns,' said Doris, 
 rubbing her satin soft cheek against lier 
 mother's hand. 
 
 ' What would you say, Doris, to going away 
 from Ouranie, from Australia altogether — far 
 across the seas V 
 
 ' On a carpet like Prince Kumar-al-Zaman's, 
 mother V 
 
 ' I am quite in earnest, dear.' 
 
 Doris looked out through the window, and 
 did not at once reply. 
 
 'I thought you would be pleased, Doris.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 8i 
 
 . . . We should go to see Mme. de Serziac, 
 and May, and Estella, and RaouL' 
 
 ' Yes, mother, I would be glad : only it seems 
 as if the time would never come. So many, 
 many years we have spoken of it ! If you 
 said, " Doris, put on your hat with the white 
 ostrich-feathers, and your long Suede gloves 
 and come away to Bagdad — tell Shung 
 he need not bring in afternoon tea," then 
 you would see how high I would skip for 
 
 joy ^' 
 
 ' But, dear, I mean that we should go quite 
 soon now,' said Mrs. Lindsay, a little startled 
 at the sudden vehemence in Doris's voice. 
 ' She has thoughts and longings and im- 
 patiences, then, which she keeps to herself, 
 just as I have my long memories, my solitarv 
 hours of communion and introspection,' 
 thought Mrs. Lindsay. It was a sudden 
 curious glimpse into that unknown incom- 
 municable depth of inner personality which 
 encompasses each human soul, dividing it in 
 some measure from every other — friend from 
 friend, husband from wife ; yes, even mother 
 from child. 
 
 ' How soon, mother ^' said Doris, with 
 VOL. I. 6
 
 82 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 sudden interest, awaiting her mother's reply 
 with flushing cheeks and hps sUghtly parted. 
 
 ' This is the 9th of August,' answered Mrs. 
 Lindsay slowly, and then she consulted a 
 small diary. ' There is a Messageries mail- 
 boat going on the 10th of next month. 
 Suppose we fix that date for our departure, 
 darling V 
 
 ' Oh, mamma, next month ! And leave 
 everything behind us, except our clothes and 
 Shung-Loo ?' 
 
 ' And our memories, dear,' said Mrs. 
 Lindsay, who was bravely struggling to keep 
 a smiling face. ' We should have to leave a 
 few days before the vessel sailed — say four 
 days — so we have less than four more weeks 
 at Ouranie.' 
 
 ' And Gauwari and the Silent Sea, 
 mother. But how strange it will be to leave 
 it all, and all the people we know !' 
 
 The girl's face had grown suddenly graver. 
 
 As for Mrs. Lindsay, she went into her 
 own room, feeling that the emotion with 
 which she was struggling must soon over- 
 come her composure.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The succeeding days went by very rapidly. 
 Hardly one passed without a visit to Buda, 
 the township six miles off, or the Peppermint 
 Ranges, only three miles in an opposite direc- 
 tion from the home station. 
 
 At the latter, Mrs. Lindsay had formed a 
 little school for the rather wild and neglected 
 children of the splitters who worked there. 
 Her unvarying love and goodness had exer- 
 cised a strong influence on the children and 
 parents. She had had a little weatherboard 
 building erected — an edifice bought in town 
 from a builder all ready to be put together — - 
 and here on most days of the week she had 
 assembled the seven or nine children who 
 were old enough to be tauglit. When unable 
 to go herself, Mrs. Lindsay used to send Doris
 
 84 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 and the wife of her manager, who hved in a 
 cottage at the opposite side of the garden. 
 
 In the township, too, Mrs. Lindsay was a 
 constant and eagerly-looked-for visitor. Few 
 sights were more welcome to the residents 
 than that of the Ouranie buggy, with the two 
 gray ponies that Doris Hked best to drive. 
 
 No township could cover a wider area in 
 proportion to its inhabitants than Buda did. 
 The forty nondescript dwellings which com- 
 posed it were scattered over an incredible 
 number of acres. Perhaps the immense plain 
 on whose borders Buda was pitched had 
 exercised some influence on the imagination 
 of the first selectors. It would seem a tame 
 and creeping arrangement to be closely 
 packed in view of that measureless expanse 
 of country. But the oldest resident had a 
 different theory. The oldest resident kept a 
 general store and the post-office ; thus it will 
 be seen that he had unrivalled opportunities 
 for impressing his own views on the public. 
 Begarding the distance that separated the 
 inhabitants, his view was, that when the 
 township was laid out the belief was current 
 that the Government intended to bring the
 
 THE SILENT SEA 85 
 
 Great Northern line of railway bang through 
 Buda. Thus every man who pitched liis 
 tent, or bark hut, or wattle and daub lean-to, 
 or weatherboard cottage, used his own judg- 
 ment as to the spot that would be fixed on 
 for the railway- station. 
 
 ' Every man Jack of us expected to make 
 his fortune, if only he got his nose against 
 the railway-station, and everyone thought 
 his own opinion sounder than his neighbour's. 
 So here we are, dispersed as far as the bound- 
 aries of the township would let us — some far 
 beyond them — and yet not one of us was on tlie 
 job,' the storekeeper would say, with a sigh. 
 
 The Great Northern Railway passed within 
 four miles of the township, with only a siding 
 at the nearest point thereto. Henceforth 
 Buda was a blighted community, its sole 
 compensation being that it had a large and 
 life -long grievance. 
 
 ' To think, ma'am, as you should have to 
 go four miles fui'ther on to a melancholy and 
 miserable siding when you expect a friend 
 from town !' the storekeeper was saying to 
 Mrs. Lindsay one afternoon within ten days 
 of the date she had fixed for her departure.
 
 86 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 * It is from the North my friend is coming, 
 and, you know, half a loaf is better than 
 none,' answered Mrs. Lindsay, smiling. 
 
 She could not look upon the siding as an 
 insult, a trait which some of the Buda people 
 regarded as the one weakness of her character. 
 
 It would only have cost the colony an 
 additional twenty thousand pounds to bring 
 the railway to their door. And what was that 
 out of the millions that were being borrowed? 
 
 ' It is all very well for them that has horses 
 and buggies,' the storekeeper said to a 
 customer an hour later, as he saw Mrs. 
 Lindsay's trap returning, Doris driving, while 
 her mother and the friend they had gone to 
 meet were deep in conversation. 
 
 ' I believe it's Mrs. Challoner, the manager's 
 sister, and Miss Doris's old governess,' said 
 the customer, going to the door of the store 
 to get a nearer view. 
 
 She had been a servant at Ouranie for 
 some years before she married and settled at 
 Buda, and still took the strongest interest in 
 all that concerned Mrs. Lindsay. 
 
 As the buggy drew near the store, Doris 
 stopped the horses, so that they might speak
 
 THE SILENT SEA 87 
 
 to their old servant, and have some pur- 
 chases put into the buggy that they made 
 on their way to the siding. They heard 
 how Jemima's second baby had cut his first 
 double-tooth, and how the first was growing- 
 out of all his clothes. 
 
 'I suppose you don't remember me, ma'am ?' 
 said Jemima, glancing at the visitor, a pale 
 little lady with bright, kindly eyes. ' You 
 came to my place with Mrs. Lindsay when 
 you were up nearly two years ago. The 
 moment I saw you I said to the storekeeper, 
 " That is Mrs. Challoner." I was so very 
 sorry to hear of your house being burnt 
 down.' 
 
 As they drove away, Mrs. Lindsay promised 
 to come to see Jemima once more before her 
 departure. She stood looking after the buggy 
 with a wistful expression. 
 
 ' Bless their hearts, it will be an awful miss 
 when they're gone !' she said to the store- 
 keeper. ' I don't never expect to see Mrs. 
 Lindsay back. She is looking dreadful white 
 and thin, to my mind.' 
 
 Nor was Jemima alone in this opinion. 
 Mrs. Challoner was much struck with the
 
 88 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 alteration in her friend's appearance since 
 last seeing her. Mrs. Challoner had married 
 from Ouranie, six years previously, a squatter 
 in the Salt-bush country, who was then in 
 affluent circumstances ; but four years ago a 
 terrible drought, followed by the increasing 
 ravages of the rabbits, had almost ruined him. 
 To crown all, a fire had broken out nine 
 months ago which levelled the head station 
 to the ground. Mrs. Challoner had visited 
 Ouranie once a year since she left it, and this 
 accident had happened since her last visit. 
 Mrs. Lindsay had insisted on replacing the 
 furniture, and the Challoners had been able 
 to secure a good dwelling-house near Colmar, 
 which was within four miles of the home 
 station. This was naturally one of the first 
 topics of conversation between the two friends. 
 ' It was most fortunate the house was 
 empty — in fact, it has not been occupied for 
 years, and now we shall be able to leave the 
 district, when the lease of our run expires at 
 Christmas — the date to which we took the 
 house. Oh, my dear, I have had to tell you 
 of so many misfortunes, and now I have to 
 tell you a piece of good news.'
 
 THE SILENT SEA 89 
 
 ' Mrs. Lucy, has your ship really come in V 
 said Doris, turning to her former governess 
 with a beaming smile. 
 
 ' My dear, it has really and truly,' answered 
 Mrs. Challoner, with an answering smile on 
 her face. 
 
 In the old days, Doris, from constantly 
 hearing her mother address Miss Murray 
 as Lucy, had called her Miss Lucy, and the 
 sound of her name on the girl's lips had 
 grown so dear to the ex-governess that she 
 would not allow her to relinquish its use. 
 
 The story of the ship which had reached 
 port was soon told. Some years before Mrs. 
 Challoner had entrusted all her savings to 
 her brother-in-law, a broker in Sydney, to 
 invest as he thought most prudent. He had 
 put the money — £500 in all — in Broken Hill 
 shares, while the prospects of the mine were 
 still uncertain ; now the investment was worth 
 £G,000 and bringing in an annual income of 
 £G00. 
 
 ' So Robert and his brother will be able to 
 see their mother, after all. We are going 
 to London directly after Christmas,' said Mrs. 
 ('hallonei'.
 
 90 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 Doris, on hearing this, said they had better 
 come on the 10th of September. 
 
 ' The same thought has occurred to me/ 
 said Mrs. Lindsay. ' We are going by a 
 French boat, as I told you, Lucy, because 
 we can so quickly get from Marseilles to 
 Mentone ; and the route would be very little 
 longer for you : I feel that the sea will do me 
 good, but I dread a long land journey.' 
 
 ' And I would teach Euphemia French on 
 the voyage, when there would be no sea- 
 serpents to look at,' put in Doris, with a 
 saucy smile at her mother, who had within 
 the last few weeks been urging her to greater 
 diligence in that language. (Euphemia, aged 
 eighteen, was Mrs. Challoner's step-daughter.) 
 But there were insuperable obstacles to this 
 arrangement. 
 
 ' Robert has to sell off the stock, and he 
 wants his son to come with us. He is now 
 pearling in Western Australia,' answered 
 Mrs. Challoner. ' I would ask you to delay 
 your departure, so that we might travel 
 together, dear Mrs. Lindsay, only you need 
 the change, I am sure.' 
 
 * And you know, Lucy, when you make up
 
 THE ST LENT SEA 9 1 
 
 your mind to have your teeth out, it is 
 dreadful to have to wait too long/ answered 
 Mrs. Lindsay in a low voice ; and though 
 she tried to maintain a cheerful manner, it 
 became evident to Mrs. Challoner that the 
 prospect of leaving Ouranie was a serious 
 trial to her friend. 
 
 ' I do not wonder you are loath to leave it, 
 dear Mrs. Lindsay, it is such a lovely, peace- 
 ful spot ! Oh, the relief of seeing such a 
 place after living at Colmar !' 
 
 They were now in sight of the home 
 station, which, with its detached groups of 
 houses, looked like a little village. The 
 dwelling-house, with a kitchen and servants' 
 quarters semi-detached behind it, was on a 
 slight rise. On the western side of the large 
 shadowy garden was the manager's house, 
 coach-house, stable and store - rooms. A 
 quarter of a mile to the south-west lay the 
 woolshed, with its pens and yards ; near it a 
 long, low dwelling for the shearers, known as 
 the ' men's hut,' and close to this two small 
 cottages for the knock-about hands and their 
 wives. Mrs. Lindsay made a point of having 
 only married men engaged 011 the station.
 
 92 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 In a place so remote from general society, she 
 was of opinion that it was not good for man 
 to be alone. 
 
 ' Oh, the garden is as full of flowers as 
 ever !' cried Mrs. Challoner, as they drove 
 through part of it to the front of the house. 
 The garden at Ouranie was watered from the 
 lake by a windmill, and this fact speaks 
 volumes to those who know something of the 
 fertility of Australian ground under copious 
 irrigation. To Doris it had always been a 
 charmed region, in which she had spent 
 many hours daily. Early in the winter the 
 first sweet violets began to make their 
 presence known with . their penetrating- 
 fragrance. A little later the almond-trees 
 were crowned in an unbroken wreath of faint 
 pink or moonlight-coloured cups, and the 
 bowls of the white and purple anemones 
 quivered on their slender stalks in a way 
 that made Doris say winter was the dearest 
 season of all. 
 
 But as the spring advanced and the 
 great snowy clusters of the guelder - 
 rose tossed themselves in the air, like a 
 juggler throwing a hundred balls aloft in
 
 THE SILENT SEA 93 
 
 one moment, and the deep Bruckmansia bells, 
 with the delicate tracery of their softly 
 curved rims, were perpetually haunted with 
 the hum of bees, while the vivid tones of 
 crimson and purple passion - flowers made 
 deep snatches of colour on every side, and 
 the stems of the narcissi and jonquils bent 
 under their fragrant loads — these surely 
 were the dearest days of all. Leaves and 
 flowers everywhere, and the whole air rifted 
 with the songs of birds. . . . And yet, as 
 the heat of summer advanced and on every 
 side tall rose - bushes were bent under 
 glowing cataracts of roses, and the ground 
 was strewn with fruits, which were so thickly 
 clustered on each branch that the idlest 
 wind which blew carried some away ; when 
 through the crimsoned air of evening, palpi- 
 tating with intense heat, a long array of 
 water-fowl might be seen winging their 
 flight to the unperishing waters of Gau- 
 wari, this season, too, had its own unique 
 charms. 
 
 And autumn with its shorter days and 
 cooler nights, with its gray tints stealing 
 softly into the hard blue of the sky, while
 
 94 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 trees from the old country broke into strange 
 hectic flushes that gradually paled, till the 
 leaves fell to the ground in noiseless showers, 
 this, too, had its own subtle fascination. 
 Myriads of roses still remained, countless 
 asters, delicately vivid verbenas, Gaillardias, 
 many-coloured asters, and geraniums beyond 
 number — all these were feverishly aflame. 
 
 Day and night ; twilight and dawn ; the 
 soft gradations of the Australian year, as 
 the seasons came and departed ; the sonorous 
 voices of the wind when it rose to a great 
 gale on a winter night, the whispering- 
 cadences of the breezes through the needle 
 leaved she -oaks on a summer evening ; 
 the return and departure of migratoiy^ 
 birds : all these were entrancing pages in 
 a book of which Doris never wearied. . . . 
 When the old vines, arid -looking as the 
 stems of ancient grass-sticks, began to kindle 
 into gadding tendrils and woolly buds, the 
 girl would watch them, day by day, till in 
 the still warm evenings of September flocks 
 of them would be found transformed into 
 golden green — more like the tips of flames 
 than growing leaves. Later the roof of
 
 THE SILENT SEA 95 
 
 the wide arcade, that ran through the 
 length of the garden, would be a network 
 of leaves so densely woven that the fiercest 
 sunbeams, beating on its roof, could find 
 no admission, except in a warm jonquil light, 
 flushing myriads of clusters into perfect 
 ripeness. Where did they all get their 
 wonderful colours — the crimson rose and 
 the ivory-coloured lily, the purple grape and 
 the carmine-flushed peach, all swelling out 
 of tiny oblong buds, at first hardly thicker 
 than a thread ? These miracles of nature, 
 yearly renewed, were for Doris never masked 
 by the indiflerence which so often comes of 
 familiarity. Her early intimacy with nature 
 developed a talent for observation and a 
 faculty for taking pains which became 
 the strongest discipline of her life. 
 
 There was so much to learn, and the 
 lore she ^fathered was more enthralling- 
 than any tales of fiiiry adventures, for 
 underlying all tliere was a magic which 
 could never be exliausted nor explained. 
 
 The vast melancholy waste of illimitable 
 plain, that stretched into the gray distance 
 to the east and north, would make the
 
 96 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 casual traveller, on reaching Ouranie, keenly 
 realize how beautiful it was, with its softly 
 swelling rises, its park-like woods, and wide 
 permanent lake. But no casual observer 
 could know how every tree and nook round 
 the head station throbbed with life and 
 interest for the solitary child, who from 
 her infancy had learned to keep long vigils 
 on all things that grew and lived around. 
 
 She knew when the first broods of the 
 shell parrots would flit through the pale 
 honey-coloured blossoms of the gum-trees, 
 and when the young laughing -jackasses 
 were fledged, and learned to take their first 
 grotesque flights with solemn awkwardness. 
 She had learned when to look for the wild 
 swans and ducks, hatching their young in 
 the coverts of Gauwari, and where the snipe 
 and teal oftenest sought their food. She 
 knew what honeybirds came in pairs when 
 the wattle-trees first blossomed, and went 
 away in flocks when the blossoms wei'e over. 
 The full clear notes of the singing honey- 
 bird, which her mother likened to the missel- 
 thrush ; the rapid chirps of the long-billed 
 kind ; the single note long drawn out, with
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 97 
 
 its short note quickly repeated, of the 
 fulvous-fronted ones ; the grating cry of 
 the black-throated, and the harsh quarrel- 
 some notes of the wattle-bird — she recognised 
 them all, and watched them clincrins: head 
 downwards like little acrobats among the 
 honeyed blooms they rifled with greedv 
 haste from day to day. 
 
 ' There must be a mother snipe somewhere 
 in the ti-tree ; the father-bird keeps on piping 
 and flying all alone/ she would say, and 
 spend most of a long afternoon down by 
 the lake till she discovered the whereabouts 
 of the mother-bird. She loved to see the 
 eyes of birds in their nests when they caught 
 sight of a human face. No moccasined 
 Indian or Australian black in Kooditcha 
 shoes could tread more softlv than she did, 
 when, from day to day, she stole to look 
 at the waterfowls that hatched their young 
 on the borders of the lake. Here she would 
 sit so quietly under the great horizontal 
 arms of an old gum-tree, that oftentimes 
 little birds hopped as near her as if slie were 
 a shrub. Here she loved to watcli the little 
 blue wrens taking their feeble flight from 
 
 VOL. I. 7
 
 98 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 one tussock of grass to another. They 
 were such poor fliers, but they filled the 
 whole air with their ecstatic roundelays, 
 often ending with clear silvery tinklings 
 like the chime of fairy bells. Mrs. Lindsay 
 had never allowed a shot to be fired in the 
 vicinity since she had come to the station, 
 and this, coupled with its abundant waters 
 and the blossoming gum-trees and wattles, 
 made Gauwari a famous resort for birds. 
 
 She could hardly have said which she liked 
 best to watch : birds building their nests or 
 buds swelling on the trees and the spear-like 
 tips of annuals thrusting their way through 
 the mould. Perhaps the end of August more 
 than anv other time of the year saw Doris 
 linger longest in the garden. It was here that 
 Mrs. Challoner found her on the afternoon of 
 the third day after she had come to Ouranie. 
 Doris was half concealed by the shrubs that 
 grew rather densely on the borders of Gau- 
 wari where it formed the garden boundary. 
 Here the ground was perfectly carpeted with 
 violets. Mrs. Lindsay had an old recipe by 
 which she made violet scent, so that very 
 few of these flowers were allowed to wither
 
 THE SILENT SEA 99 
 
 unseen in the Ouranie ti'arden. Doris was 
 occupied in filling a basket with them when 
 Mrs. Challoner found her, directed to the spot 
 by the movements of the young sheep-dog 
 who was the girl's constant companion. 
 
 ' I have been looking for you, dear, all over 
 the garden,' said Mrs. Challoner in a very 
 grave voice. 
 
 She had come on a grave errand ; no less 
 than to warn Doris that her mother's health 
 was very precarious. An hour before she 
 had suddenly fainted, and had lain for nearly 
 twenty minutes in a half-unconscious state. 
 Mrs. Challoner, greatly alarmed, had sent 
 one of the servants to the manager's house 
 to summon her sister-in-law, Mrs. Murray. 
 The two had administered the restoratives 
 usual in fainting-fits, and gradually Mis. 
 Lindsay had recovered. Her first words ex- 
 pressed a wish that Doris should not know. 
 
 ' I am glad she was not in, she would be 
 so much alarmed, poor darling,' she said 
 tremulously. 
 
 The sisters exchanged glances, and then 
 Mrs. Challoner said gently : 
 
 ' But is it wise to keep her in ignorance,
 
 loo THE SILENT SEA 
 
 dear ? Do you think this is the old heart 
 trouble V 
 
 ' Oh yes ; but there is a long interval 
 usually between these attacks ; I think this 
 was merely brought on by my inability to 
 sleep well during the last few nights, and a 
 sort of nervous agitation.' 
 
 If Mrs. Challoner had given expression to 
 her thought just then she would have urged 
 her friend to prevent her mind from being 
 too much concentrated on the invisible world. 
 It seemed to her that the habit of abstract- 
 ing herself from outward things had greatly 
 grown on Mrs. Lindsay since she had last 
 seen her. But she shrank from approaching 
 the subject. After a little silence Mrs. Lind- 
 say spoke again : 
 
 ' Perhaps it would, on the whole, be wiser, 
 Lucy, if you were to open this subject to 
 Doris. I have never taught her to think of 
 death with horror.' 
 
 ' Of death ! But, dear friend, I hope that 
 is still far off,' said Mrs. Challoner with some 
 agitation. 
 
 A faint smile hovered over Mrs. Lindsay's 
 worn face.
 
 THE SILEN7 SEA 
 
 ' The mysterious pass where two cannot 
 walk side by side, and where for an instant 
 souls lose sight of each other/ she murmured 
 softly. ' It is only for the child's sake 1 
 could wish this pass were still a little 
 distance off. . . . But within the last few 
 days it seems as if the power of keeping 
 alive were slowly leaving me. And then I 
 have thought the sea air would be a tonic. 
 I think I wrote too long last night ; I 
 was anxious to post a second letter to my 
 friend, Mme. de Serziac, which she will get 
 ten days or so before we land. But I'll be 
 more careful after this. Perhaps, Lucy, it 
 will be better, on the whole, that you should 
 speak to Doris. . . Mrs. Murray will stay 
 with me.' 
 
 It was not until she stood face to face with 
 Doris that Mrs. Challoner quite realized the 
 difficulty of her mission. The girl looked so 
 serenely happy, so unconscious of any cloud 
 hirking on the horizon of her young life. 
 
 ' Have you been looking for me long, dear :" 
 she said blithely ; ' well, I'm glad you have 
 come to the violet bank, for you look pale, 
 and if you just sit down on this little seat
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 under the wattle-^now lean back and hold 
 this posy of violets.' 
 
 Doris made Mrs. Challoner lean against 
 the back of the little rustic bench, and put a 
 great handful of violets on her lap, and then 
 went on plucking some more. 
 
 ' Doris, I came to speak to you about 
 something,' said Mrs. Challoner, a little 
 faintly. 
 
 ' Ah, you do put me in mind of the old 
 days, when I used to write such shabby little 
 compositions,' said Doris, laughing merrily. 
 
 Mrs. Challoner was by nature of a timid, 
 shrinking disposition, extremely faithful and 
 affectionate, yet without much force of char- 
 acter. During the seven years she had lived 
 at Ouranie, she had been more of a com- 
 panion to Mrs. Lindsay than a governess to 
 Doris, who had been chiefly taught by her 
 mother. Mrs. Challoner was apt to talk at 
 gxeat length and with much animation of 
 things that Doris thought very trifling. 
 Constant intercourse with a mind as un- 
 worldly and disinterested as her mother's 
 had unconsciouslv made the mrl a little 
 scornful of themes that take a prominent
 
 THE SILENT SEA 103 
 
 place in the estimation of the generaUty 
 of women. She was very fond of Mrs. 
 Challoner, and had got into the habit of 
 petting her a good deal, without attaching 
 much importance to what she said oi^ 
 thought. 
 
 Mrs. Challoner, on her part, had always 
 been of opinion that Mrs. Lindsay made 
 Doris's life too happy and beautiful to be a 
 wise preparation for the world in which she 
 must one day live ; that she was too 
 sedulously guarded from the commoner 
 influences of human intercourse, untouched 
 by its vanities and frivolities, knowing 
 nothing of its temptations, its passions, its 
 incurable miseries ; yet, as the girl's happy 
 laugh rang in her ears, she felt a growing dis- 
 inclination to fulfil her purpose. She looked 
 at her with dimmed eyes as she sat with lier 
 large straw hat on her lap, the basket of 
 violets at her feet, holding up a peremptory 
 finger at her young collie. 
 
 'Now, Spot, if you put your cold, incpiisitive 
 little nose into that basket, do you know 
 what will happen ?' 
 
 Spot dashed about, kee])iiig his nose t()
 
 I04 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 the oTouiid, and circling round the basket 
 in a somewhat suspicious manner. 
 
 * You rogue ! I'll leave you on the station, 
 with the other dogfe, instead of coming 
 abi'oad to see the world — Samarcand, and 
 the Yalley of Diamonds, and the palaces of 
 Pekin. But, Mrs. Lucy dear, you haven't 
 told me what you wanted to speak to me 
 about. Ah, I can guess !' she said, a 
 mischievous glance coming into her eyes. 
 
 * What is your guess, dear ?' asked Mrs. 
 Challoner, trying to lead up to what slie 
 wished to say without being too abrupt. 
 
 ' You want to tell me that fairy-tales are 
 nut really true. That Shung-Loo's stories 
 are made up by mandarins, who are foolish 
 and have no religion.' 
 
 ' No, dear, that is not what I want to say,' 
 answered Mrs. Challoner with a somewhat 
 discouraged -looking smile. 
 
 'Now, Spot, put your nose to the ground 
 and lie down quite still,' cried Doris to the 
 dog, who was in fact gambolling perilously 
 near to the basketful of violets. Spot 
 obeyed, and then Doris turned to Mrs. 
 Clialloner. ' I'll give only one more guess^
 
 THE SILENT SEA 105 
 
 You want to make me quite understand that 
 the Silent Sea is not a sea, but a great 
 barren plain stretching from Buda to your 
 station and the mine, and past that for 
 hundreds of miles, all the way to the Never- 
 never Land ?' 
 
 Mrs. Challoner slowly shook her head, and 
 then Doris saw that her eyes were dim with 
 tears. In truth, Doris's every look and 
 gesture made her old friend's heart ache. 
 The girl was so heart-whole, her radiant 
 young beauty so untouched by care or 
 apprehension, that the thought of revealing 
 to lier what might be the great sorrow which 
 would overcast her opening life seemed 
 barbarous and unwise. But Mrs. Challoner's 
 uncommunicative sadness suddenly struck a 
 chord of fear in the Doris's heart. 
 
 ' Ah, you are afraid to tell me ! Is it 
 anything about mamma ?' 
 
 ' Yes, dearie.' 
 
 " What is it — is she ill ? But no, you 
 would have told me at once.' 
 
 ' She has been ill, Doris, but she is better ; 
 what I want to say to you is — oh, my dear, 
 don't look so frightened, I cannot bear it !'
 
 io6 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 ' Tell me, tell me !' cried Doris breath- 
 lessly. 
 
 ' Your mother, darling, has not been strong 
 for years. I don't think you know — indeed, 
 I am sure she has concealed from you how 
 ill she often is. About an hour ago she 
 fainted away. It is her heart that is affected. 
 I said to her I thought you ought to know 
 how serious it is.' 
 
 ' How serious ! you mean that perhaps ' 
 
 Doris could not put into words the terrible 
 thought that blanched her face. But she 
 maintained her self-possession in a way that 
 surprised Mrs. Challoner. As a matter of 
 fact, Doris possessed a great fund of firmness 
 and self-reliance. She broke into no tears 
 nor lamentations. During the next few 
 days she kept more constantly with her 
 mother, and insisted on taking her place in 
 the little school for the splitters' children in 
 the Peppermint Ranges, to which Mrs. 
 C'halloner accompanied her each forenoon. 
 And so day bv day passed until the one 
 before that on which they were to leave 
 Ouranie.
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 During the night that preceded this day 
 Mrs. Lindsay lay many hours awake. When 
 she at last fell asleep, her slunibei' was fitful 
 and broken. Towards morning she suddenly 
 woke up in extreme agitation. She thought 
 she had heard Doris calling out, ' Mother ! 
 mother ! mother !' in piercing tones. Wlien 
 she opened her eyes, with this sound in lier 
 ears, her heart was throbbing so painfully 
 that for a little time she could not move. 
 
 ' It was a dream ; it must have been a 
 dream,' she said, holding her hand against 
 her left side, as if to still the stormy 
 beatings of her heart. Yet she had no recol- 
 lection of any event, oi* any other word that 
 led up to this wailing cry. As soon ^s she 
 could move, she went tremblingly to the door
 
 io8 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 that led from her own room into her 
 daughter's, but all was perfectly still. Then 
 she opened the window and looked out. The 
 east was faintly touched with the pallor of 
 the coming dawn. The first half-drowsy 
 notes of awakening birds began to break the 
 silence of the woods. It was the strangely 
 beautiful hour in which nature, as if emerging 
 from profound repose, seems to swim gradually 
 back from the oblivion of nio-ht — all forms 
 and colours spiritualized by the trembling 
 approach of a new day. The dark masses of 
 trees motionless as in a picture, the pale, un- 
 rufiled lake, the deep clear vault of heaven, 
 with a luminous reach of light slowly spread- 
 ing in the orient — all were solemnly tranquil. 
 And when the mother once more turned to 
 the dim, sweet chamber of her child, it was 
 })ervaded by an equal peacefulness. Near the 
 window a bowlful of white roses o'limmered in 
 the uncertain light ; on a little old-fashioned 
 spindle table lay an open missal, beside a box 
 of water-colours ; on a chair, daintily folded, 
 were the exquisitely -wrought under garments; 
 in th^ depths of a half-opened wardrobe 
 gleamed some of the crimson silk robes that
 
 THE SILENT SEA 109 
 
 Doris most habitually wore ; and in the little 
 bed, with its canopy of soft white Indian silk, 
 the girl lay in a placid sleep, her face, with its 
 unruffled serenity, curiously resembling in 
 expression the angel children she was so fond 
 of painting. Over the foot of the bed a 
 crimson scarf lay in careless folds. 
 
 This caught the mother's eyes, and she 
 shivered slightly. In the yet dusky light 
 this vivid streak of crimson somehow sug- 
 gested to her morbidly- sensitive eyes the 
 stain of a wounded creature's blood. She 
 stole in softly and removed the scarf 
 
 Doris moved, and lay with her face towards 
 the window. Her lips parted in a soft smile. 
 She murmured a few words in a low, glad 
 voice, showing that some happy dream had 
 come to her in sleep. At this the agitation 
 and disquiet which had taken so sti'ong a hold 
 on the mother was allayed. She went back 
 into her own room, and though she did not 
 sleep, she rested until after six. 
 
 Then Shung-Loo, with his invincible punc- 
 tuality, with which no shadow of past or 
 coming events was ever allowed to interfere, 
 tapped at her door, and on a little table close
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 to it in the hall left a tray, with two cups of 
 creamed chocolate and a little plateful of 
 freshly-baked biscuits. 
 
 Mrs. Lindsay slipped on her dressing-gown 
 and slippers, and took the tray into Doris's 
 room. She had just awakened, and, on seeing 
 her mother, started up to return her morning 
 kiss. 
 
 ' Is it really true, mother { Are we going 
 away this very next day, into the strange 
 countries where all the strange stories hap- 
 pened ?' 
 
 ' Yes, darling, going to-morrow. But, see, 
 I have brought you your chocolate.' 
 
 ' But, mother, how naughty of you ! 
 Promise me you will let me wait more on you 
 after this. You know, I am a great thing — 
 half a head taller than you.' 
 
 She sat up in bed, holding herself erect, so 
 that even under a silken coverlet and in the 
 weakly feminine folds of snowy lace that fell 
 round her throat and slender white hands her 
 heroic proportions should become evident. 
 
 ' I promise you, Doris,' said the mother, 
 smiling fondly. ' I dare say I shall soon grow 
 stout and lazy, and let you come after me
 
 THE SILENT SEA 1 1 1 
 
 with my footstool and wrap ; the voyage 
 will be a fine opportunity. I wonder if the 
 sea will make my little girl ill V 
 
 ' Oh no — not a bit. Mother, I remember 
 being on the sea quite well, and I dreamt of 
 it a little before I woke. Do you remember 
 how blue it used to look from the Adelaide 
 hills ? And father sometimes took us sailing 
 in a boat, you know, when we went to the 
 seaside in the summer.' 
 
 As always in mentioning her father, Doris's 
 voice sank tenderly ; and, as was her habit on 
 such occasions, the mother pressed her child's 
 hand. 
 
 * I remember, Dorrie ; and vou were quite 
 a brave little sailor. Papa used to hold you 
 up when the seagulls flew by, and you clapped 
 your little hands with joy.' 
 
 ' Mother, I hope there will be great white 
 seagulls, and albatrosses with wide, wide 
 wings, and enormous sea-serpents, with green 
 and gold eyes, sailing along with our ship,' 
 said Doris, her cheeks beginning to flush at 
 the thought of all the great vague wonders 
 that might open out before hei* on leaving the 
 calm monotony of Ouranie.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 Her mother smiled, shaking her head. 
 
 ' Now, mammy, don't tell me that there 
 are no sea-serpents,' said Doris gaily. ' I shall 
 tell the captain to go to Sinbad's island, and 
 to Ispahan. Oh, you don't know half the 
 places we are to see !' 
 
 Doris sipped a little chocolate, but she 
 could not eat even one biscuit. Now that 
 the hour of departure drew so near, the 
 glad excitement of it all fairly carried her 
 aAvay. 
 
 ' And the sea you saw in your sleep, Doris, 
 was it blue and calm as we used to see it on 
 summer days long ago V asked her mother 
 wistfully. 
 
 ' No, I think it was stormy ; and I was 
 looking for you, mother, but I could not find 
 you. Naughty little mother, where did you 
 go ? And why are you looking so pale again 
 this morning, and dark under the eyes ? 
 Don't you hope the sea will be rough some- 
 times, mother, so that the waves will rise 
 high with a white fringe to them, as they 
 look in that picture in your bedroom V 
 
 But the mother's heart, so sorelv shaken 
 by the tempests of life, was less adventurous.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 113 
 
 An old petition she had somewhere read long 
 ago rose in her memory : 
 
 ' Grant, God, that this sea may he to us 
 and to all who sail upon it tranquil and 
 quiet. To this end we pray. Hear us, good 
 Lord !' 
 
 Doris could no longer linger over her 
 chocolate. 
 
 ' It is right down to my little toes, mother 
 — the gladness of going !' she said, springing 
 out of bed, and disappearing behind the pink 
 chintz curtains that were drawn round her 
 plunge bath. 
 
 Her mother had been so much better these 
 last two days that Doris, with the buoyant 
 disbelief of youth in sorrow, had come to 
 believe that the insidious weakness which for 
 some days had prostrated her was quite 
 passing away. Mrs. Murray was still veiy 
 anxious, and Mrs. Challoner hopeful and 
 uneasy by turns. Shung-Loo, the faithful 
 (Jhinese servant, said nothing, but was in 
 these days always hovering near his mistress. 
 Shung was a marked personality in the 
 Ouranie household. His connection with the 
 family began in a curious way. At seventeen 
 
 VOL. I. 8
 
 14 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 years of age he had been on the point of 
 committing suicide at Canton, on account of 
 faiHng to pass a hterary examination. He 
 had been rescued by Mr. Lindsay, the son of 
 the British Consul in that city. Shung 
 became the young man's personal servant, 
 and devoted himself heart and soul to his 
 interest. He was equally devoted to his late 
 master's widow and daughter. He was now 
 over forty years of age, and his savings 
 amounted to a sum that would keep him in 
 competence in his native land, to which he 
 hoped ultimately to return. 
 
 Shung's wages were paid to him half-yearly 
 — thirty pounds in six five-pound notes. He 
 did not like cheques, and Mrs. Lindsay 
 indulged his prejudice. On receiving this 
 money, Shung would count it over carefully, 
 fingering each note with respectful affection. 
 He would put the amount into a well-worn 
 pocket-book, carry it about with him, and 
 put it under his pillow at night for a week ; 
 then he would bring it back to Mrs. Lindsay, 
 and ask her to keep it for him with the rest 
 at six per cent. The amount would be entered 
 in his pass-book, and Shung would cover a
 
 THE SILENT SEA 1 1 5 
 
 sheet of rice-paper with strange characters, 
 making elaborate calculations as to the 
 increase which this new deposit made to his 
 capital and income. Shung was, as a rule, 
 up to his eyes in work, cheerful, capable, 
 and immovably calm. But at times a great 
 melancholy would steal over him. At such 
 seasons, Mrs. Lindsay, always a little appre- 
 hensive of that side of his character which 
 had so early led him to the thought of self- 
 destruction, would urge him to return to his 
 own country. 
 
 ' You have enough money now, Shung, and 
 some of your relations are still living. You 
 will be able to keep a wife, and have a pretty 
 garden and a rice-field of your own,' she 
 would say to him, and Shung would listen 
 with a half-pleased, half-wistful smile. 
 
 Who knows what visions of the Flo^^'erY 
 Land, and of the almond-eyed little Mongolian 
 babies who might be born to him, visited his 
 imagination ? Yet, though exile had for him 
 something of that ' consumption of the soul ' 
 which takes the savour out of life, his attach- 
 ment to his mistress and his old home, and, 
 <loubtless, too, the fascination of rapidly accu-
 
 1 6 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 Ululating capital, had always hitherto won 
 the day. 
 
 ' When you and Miss Dolis go, then me go 
 too,' he would say. 
 
 It was his intention to accompany them to 
 France as their trusted and indefatigable 
 servant, and then to take shij) from there to 
 Canton. 
 
 He was pasting on labels and cording up 
 boxes in the hall, when, at four o'clock on 
 that afternoon, Doris came to ask if there 
 was not something she could do. 
 
 ' Maman is sleeping now,' she said, ' and 
 Mrs. Muri'ay is near her, tacking a ruffle 
 round the neck of my travelling - cloak. 
 Everything I begin to do someone else comes 
 and finishes it. Now, Shung, there must be 
 something I can do ?' 
 
 ' Yes, Miss Dolis. You go out and take 
 you walk lound Gauwali. Missee Challonel,' 
 said Shung, turning to the latter as she came 
 into the hall out of the room she occupied, 
 ' you vely good, vely kind. Take oul young 
 lady out to see big sky and bilds. She not 
 out all day ; too muchee visitols.' 
 
 Mrs. Challoner promptly responded to this
 
 THE SILENT SEA 117 
 
 appeal. It was true that on this last day 
 many callers had come from neai- and far. 
 As Mrs. Lindsay could not be allowed to 
 over-exert herself, Doris had been much to 
 the fore, and had not been out of the house 
 all day. 
 
 ' I suppose that has hardly ever happened 
 in your life before, except when you had the 
 fever,' said Mrs. Challoner as the two walked 
 slowlv round the lake. 
 
 ' And once, two years ago, when mother 
 was a little ill,' answered Doris. She stood 
 and drew in full breaths of the fresh air, which 
 had in it poignant wafts of scent fi'om tlie 
 wattle-trees that were now in full blossom 
 on the border of the lake, where they had 
 been planted at intervals the year she was 
 born. ' How strange it will be at first,' she 
 said, ' to be so far from our own birds and trees 
 and sky, and the great Silent Sea !' she added, 
 looking towards the north-east, where, beyond 
 tlie wooded rises that surrounded Ouranie on 
 all sides, the great rolling plain was visible, 
 which sixty miles beyond Buda turned into 
 the arid Salt-bush country. 
 
 ' Oh, my dear, the great sounding ocean
 
 Ji8 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 will be much more entertaining than the 
 Silent Sea,' returned Mrs. Challoner ; * when 
 you are fairly in that country, the gray look 
 of it, the thirst that never seems satisfied, 
 and the awful quiet, seem to take the heart 
 out of you.' 
 
 Thev were approaching a slight rise which 
 was crowned with a group of shea-oak trees 
 known as the Brotherhood. Spot coaxed his 
 mistress to take a run with him. When she 
 reached the Brotherhood and looked east- 
 ward for a minute or two, she gave a little 
 cry of joy and danced halfway back to Mrs. 
 Challoner, crying : 
 
 ' Guess who is coming — guess before you 
 look !' 
 
 ' What a picture the child makes !' thought 
 Mrs. Challoner, looking at her with fond 
 admiration. Hers was one of those rare 
 faces never seen to such advantage as under 
 the searching light of day. The fresh air 
 brought a warmer tinge of colour into her 
 cheeks, her great radiant eyes were spark- 
 ling ; her eyelashes no longer cast a shadow 
 under them, the amber tint of her hair was 
 intensified by the sunlight. As she ran down
 
 THE SILENT SEA 119 
 
 from the Brotherhood on tip-toe, and stood 
 on the margin of the lake with its reeds and 
 tall grasses, bending and murmuring in the 
 fitful breezes with its wide, calm surface, ab- 
 sorbing the opulent afternoon sunshine, it 
 would seem as thouofh there were some subtle 
 affinity between her and these wooing sights 
 and sounds of nature. 
 
 ' Who can it be ?' said Mrs. Challoner with 
 an answering smile, but regarding Doris so 
 intently that she gave little thought to her 
 question. 
 
 ' It is Kenneth Campbell, and he has a 
 gray horse this time with Jerry. What can 
 have become of Rozinante V 
 
 It was the first question she put to the old 
 man when they met. 
 
 ' Rozinante fell lame at the Mulga Ranges, 
 Miss Dorrie, and I had to leave her. How do 
 you find yourself to-day, ma'am V he said, 
 standing with uncovered head as Mrs. 
 Challoner shook hands with him with the 
 cordiality of an old friend. 
 
 Kenneth Campbell had been for fourteen 
 years a shepherd on the Ouranie run, living 
 most of the time entirely alone. Four years
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 previously he had given up shepherding, and 
 bought a snug Httle farm in partnership with 
 a younger brother, but in a short time he 
 wearied of farming. He bought a hawker's 
 waggon, and stocked it with rehgious books 
 and pubhcations, and returned to the district 
 with which he had been so long: famihar, 
 travelhng in a very leisurely fashion from 
 station to station, and from one small town- 
 ship to the other. 
 
 There was something in his appearance 
 that contrasted oddly with his nominal 
 avocation. He was tall and lean, with a 
 narrow face and narrow, stooping shoulders, 
 on which a long gray alpaca coat hung 
 loosely. He had a high furrowed brow, a 
 thin aquiline nose, long gray moustachios 
 and whiskers, while his hair fell in silvery 
 locks on his shoulders. His whole face and 
 hearing conveyed an impression of refine- 
 ment, even benevolence, though he had the 
 indescribable air of one who holds little com- 
 munion with his kind ; sometimes for days 
 he would be silent as a dumb man. At such 
 times there would be a brooding, semi-pro- 
 phetic look in his large brown eyes, and in his
 
 THE SILENT SEA 121 
 
 face an air of abstraction as complete as if 
 the world and all that it contained were as 
 remote from his thoughts as one of the fixed 
 stars. At other times he would be possessed 
 by an irresistible impulse to give expression 
 to the thoughts which rose in his mind, and 
 he would do so with forcible nervous elo- 
 quence in a soft, flexible voice, with that 
 half - plaintive cadence which sometimes 
 marks the utterance of Scottish Highlanders. 
 People said that his long solitude, and the 
 mystical sort of books he read day and night, 
 had unhinged his mind ; and there may have 
 been some truth in the supposition. It is 
 certain that his most rooted and ardent 
 ambition was to do good to his fellow- 
 creatures, ' to save souls from perdition,' as 
 he himself would say, though perdition and 
 damnation with him meant moral evil rather 
 than material torments. With his booksell- 
 ing he combined voluntary and unpaid mis- 
 sionary work, holding impromptu services for 
 station hands, splitters, miners and carters, 
 or even for a solitary shepherd oi* hut-keeper 
 who was willing to give him a hearing. He 
 would on occasion take incredible trouble
 
 122 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 over some poor belated man who had fallen 
 a victim to evil habits in the isolated life of 
 the remote Bush. 
 
 Mrs. Lindsay had from the first recognised 
 the rare qualities of mind and nature which 
 distinguished Kenneth, and through her Mrs. 
 Challoner had learned to esteem him. He 
 had been shepherding at Ouranie when she 
 lived there, and since her marriage she had 
 seen him from time to time at her own home, 
 and lately at Colmar — always with an in- 
 creased longing that he would settle down 
 comfortably on his little farm. 
 
 ' You are just in time to see Mrs. Lindsay 
 and her daughter before they leave, Kenneth,' 
 said Mrs. Challoner, after the first greetings 
 were over. 
 
 ' Yes, yes, but it little matters in our span- 
 length of time whether we say farewells. 
 The great thing is that our spirits should 
 meet at the throne of grace,' he murmured 
 absently. 
 
 Mrs. Challoner thought he looked thinner 
 than evei*, and as if more rapt in those 
 musings in which mundane events were but 
 as straws in the balance : when thus absorbed
 
 THE SILENT SEA 123 
 
 he would often lose all thought of creature 
 comforts. It was many years since he had 
 given up animal food, and he seldom ate 
 more than twice in the twenty-four hours, 
 his food consisting for the most part of a 
 quart-pot full of tea and a slice or two of 
 damper — ' unleavened bread,' as he used to 
 call it. 
 
 ' I don't believe you have been well, 
 Kenneth. Oh, I wish you would live on 
 the farm once more ! We should all be 
 more comfortable to think of you under 
 shelter with your brother than living this 
 lonely life,' said Mrs. Challoner, her anxiety 
 for him increasing as she noticed the deep 
 hollow circles round his eyes and the nervous, 
 fleshless look of his hands. 
 
 He was watching Doris as she skimmed 
 beside the water's edge, looking at some 
 water-birds that had newly arrived ; but as 
 Mrs. Challoner spoke he turned to her witli 
 a kindling look. 
 
 ' But why should not all friends be com- 
 fortable about me, dear Mrs. Challoner ?' 
 Death is the thing that the children of men 
 dread most : and how manv more die safe
 
 [24 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 and sheltered in their beds than elsewhere ! 
 Wherever we may be on this piece of be- 
 guiling, well-lustred clay we call the earth, 
 our lives must pass like snow-water ; and 
 often it is better passed in the wilds than 
 otherwhere.' 
 
 The old man's eyes glowed ; his face lit up 
 with a pale spiritual light. Mrs. Challoner 
 recognised that he was in one of those moods 
 of exaltation in which the presence of a 
 fellow-creature roused him to utter some of 
 the thoughts that had else passed in smother. 
 
 ' A writer of the East says,' he went on, 
 after a little pause, ' that there are none 
 happy in the world but beings who enjoy 
 freely a vast horizon. And where in all the 
 world shall you find it so wide and clear 
 as on the great Salt-bush plains ? Thei-e 
 " like a man beloved of God " have I often 
 stood at the dawn, and the earth lay view 
 beyond view, with no a tree, no a mole -hill 
 to break the sight, and the air as pure as 
 if man was never created. Even in a region 
 where there is no water, no grass, where the 
 Salt-bush itself has withered, where the very 
 scorpion perishes, man, if so minded, can draw
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 125 
 
 nearer to the Eternal than among throngs 
 of his fellow-creatures, eager to barter their 
 immortal souls for the loan of a piece of dead 
 clay, for the painted image of a worm-eaten 
 happiness — Esau's mess of pottage. No, no ; 
 do not fear for me, dear friend. Lonely we 
 come into the world, recognising no soul, able 
 only to greet ; alone must we pass through the 
 Dark Valley. It is but fitting that between 
 two such strange journeys, so mysterious a 
 coming, so solemn a departure, we should 
 oftentimes be solitary.' 
 
 ' Cowdie — Cowdie ! come away and have 
 a run with Spot, and tell him if you know 
 these waterfowls !' cried Doris, her clear, glad 
 tones ringing across the sombre utterances of 
 tlie old shepherd like the trill of a bird heard 
 in the darkness. 
 
 Cowdie was Kenneth's collie doo-, whose 
 grandparents he had brought with him from 
 the rugged mountains of Argyllshire sixteen 
 years previously. He was lying at his mastei''s 
 feet with his head flat on the ground, showing 
 the whites of his eyes, as he glanced up now 
 and then, waiting for his master's word of 
 command.
 
 126 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 * Go, Cowdie ! go to Miss Doris,' said 
 Kenneth ; and the dog instantly responded to 
 the girl's call with the fleetness of a grey- 
 hound. 
 
 ' Where were you last night, Kenneth C 
 asked Mrs. Challoner, anxious to divert 
 Kenneth's thoughts from what she felt to he 
 a very melancholy, if not morbid, groove. 
 
 ' At the boundary hut — the one five miles 
 from here, between Ouranie and Mr. White's 
 run — where I shepherded in my time for nearly 
 ten years. But all that time nothing happened 
 so strange as what took place last night. It 
 was after ten. I was reading in my waggon 
 when all at once I heard a loud, sharp scream 
 — the scream of a woman.' 
 
 Kenneth paused, looking into the distance 
 as if awaiting some approaching sight oi* 
 sound. 
 
 ' And who was it, Kenneth T asked Mrs. 
 Challoner, with agitated interest. 
 
 ' I am not quite sure, ma'am ; but I will 
 tell you all I know. As soon as I heard that 
 cry I ran to the spot it seemed to come from. 
 Perhaps you know the stringy-bark grows 
 very thick round the boundary hut ? I could
 
 THE SILENT SEA 127 
 
 see or hear nothing. Then I stood and gave 
 a long, loud cooey. As the sound was dying 
 away, I thought 1 heard a curious cry, as if 
 one called and it was suddenly stopped. On 
 that I began to search again. I went round 
 and round for more than two hours. Then I 
 thought of stories 1 had heard of strange 
 creatures with strange cries in the Bush that 
 white people have never seen, and I tried to 
 believe it was not a human being. Yet I 
 felt I was trying to put a lie on myself I 
 went back to my waggon, but I could not 
 sleep ; so I lit my little lamp, and read for 
 some time longer. Then I got sleepy, and 
 I was just going to put out my lamp, when I 
 heard the sound of running — of someone 
 passing quickly with naked feet. I jumped 
 up and ran out ; I saw something like shadows 
 disappearing among the trees, one after 
 the other. I did not know what I ought to 
 do. My lamp was burning, and I thought if 
 it was one in danger or lost he would surely 
 make for the light. 1 turned up the lamp 
 higher, and fastened back the flap of my 
 tarpaulin, so that tlie light would shine out 
 through the trees, and any creature lost or
 
 128 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 distressed could see it. I looked at my 
 watch ; it was one o'clock in the morning. 
 About half an hour later I heard voices ; I 
 went out, and two men, spent with running, 
 came up to me ' 
 
 ' Two men V said Mrs. Challoner, who was 
 listening with painful intentness. 
 
 ' Yes, two black fellows. One of them an 
 old man, half naked, and bleeding from a 
 wound in his side ; the other a younger man, 
 one that I knew by sight — he worked for 
 some time on the Noomoolloo Station — Mr. 
 White's, you'll remember. The old man yelled 
 out something in the native language. I only 
 understood " nape," which means wife. Then 
 the younger man asked me if. I had seen any 
 women. I told him I had not, and asked him 
 if it was black women he was looking for. 
 He said one was half-caste, the younger 
 almost white, and both dressed like white 
 women. Then thev said thev must look in 
 my waggon ; I held the lamp, and let them 
 search all through it. The old man's wound 
 kept on bleeding ; now and then he wiped 
 the blood away with his hand, and he got it 
 over his face. He was awful enough without
 
 THE SILENT SEA 129 
 
 that. I have never seen anyone in the 
 shape of a human creature so Hke what we 
 might suppose the father of darkness to be.' 
 
 ' Kenneth, these poor creatures — do you 
 think they were from Noomoolloo V said Mrs. 
 Challoner hesitatingly. 
 
 ' Ay, ma'am, they were the mother and 
 daughter. Two miles from here I met a 
 boundary rider of White's, and he told me 
 the poor half-caste woman and White's 
 daughter had run away two days ago for fear 
 of being separated.' 
 
 Here Doris came tripping back, followed 
 by the dogs, and the subject was dropped. 
 She and Mrs. Challoner returned by the path 
 bordering the lake. 
 
 When Kenneth visited Ouranie, he always 
 stopped at the house of Mr. Murray, the 
 manager. To get there he had to turn more 
 to the west. 
 
 * Come in soon after you take the horses 
 out, Kenneth,' said Mrs. Challoner in parting. 
 ' Mrs. Lindsay will want to talk to you for a 
 little time, and she keeps early hours just 
 now. We want her to be strong and fresh 
 for the journey.' 
 
 VOL. I. 9
 
 130 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 Kenneth promised to come early, and then 
 slowly led his horses on their way. The evil 
 til at is in the world, active and implacable, 
 laying waste so many lives, oftentimes 
 weighed heavily on his mind, making his face 
 sombrely earnest, with something of a fiery 
 eagerness, like one crying in the wilderness, 
 and ready to denounce a world ripe for judg- 
 ment.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A LITTLE time after the conversation between 
 Mrs. Challoner and Kenneth Campbell had 
 come to an end, another encounter took place 
 at Ouranie that afternoon near the wool- 
 shed. Mr. Murray, the manager, was inspect- 
 ing some repairs that had been made to the 
 pens, behind this building, when he saw a 
 man riding up who turned out to be Mr. White, 
 of Noomoolloo. ' He has either lost a lot of 
 money in town, or one of his best horses,' 
 thought Murray as he greeted his neighbour. 
 It turned out, however, that it was neither of 
 these losses which gave so lowering an ex 
 pression to White's face. 
 
 ' Have you seen anyone belonging to 
 me about here V he asked in a ofruff voice 
 after dismounting.
 
 132 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 * Do you mean man or cattle ? I saw 
 
 Crosbie ' 
 
 ' No, Koroona and her mother.' 
 
 ' You — you don't mean ' 
 
 ' Yes, damn it, I do ! They've cleared 
 — run away — I believe they're somewhere 
 about here. They haven't gone to Buda 
 nor to the siding.' 
 
 ' Koroona out in the woods ?' repeated 
 Murray, with a sort of stupid unbelief. 
 
 ' Yes, perhaps among the wild niggers that 
 were on their way to the corroborree near 
 Wilkietown. Isn't that a proper sort of 
 place for a girl with four silk dresses to her 
 back, who cost me nearly £100 a year at 
 school for three years ? And now she's 
 skedaddled with that half-caste old mother 
 
 of hers ! By the Lord ' 
 
 White was a man celebrated for the large 
 and varied stock of sulphurous language at 
 his command. Murray waited with an uncom- 
 mitted sort of expression till his neighbour 
 had finished cursing, and then asked : 
 ' But why did the mother run away ?' 
 ' Because I told her she must clear next 
 day.'
 
 THE SILENT SEA 133 
 
 ' Next day ?' 
 
 ' Yes, next day, yesterday, before I began 
 shearing. Not to clear into the woods, mind 
 you — nothing of the sort. I was going 
 to allow her thirty shillings a week as long 
 as she lived — and that's not for very long, 
 if I'm not mistaken. She had a cough, as I 
 dare say you've noticed, that you could hear 
 half a mile ofil In fact, I made sure she 
 would have turned up her toes months ago.' 
 
 ' And why in God's name did you think 
 of turning her off just now ?' said Murray 
 with a sombre light in his eyes. He was 
 a big strong man with a weather-tanned 
 face, his hair and long brown beai'd grizzled 
 with gray. He was undemonstrative in 
 manner, reticent, and rather taciturn as a 
 rule. But he had strong sympathies and 
 an active imagination, and was as easily 
 moved to pity as a woman, with the differ- 
 ence that the feeling was intolerable to 
 him if it could be translated into action. He 
 was well acquainted with the poor half-caste 
 who had faced the perils of the woods rather 
 than submit to separation from her only 
 child. As he recalled her, with her timid
 
 134 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 eyes and shy, kindly ways, cut off from 
 her own people, avoided by others, her 
 health ruined, meek and submissive always 
 to this tyrant, who talked of her more heart- 
 lessly than he would of one of his sheep or 
 cattle, he felt half choked with disgusted 
 anger. 
 
 ' Why ? Just because 1 couldn't wait any 
 longer — I've been on the loose too long. 
 I'm going to turn a respectable. God-fearing, 
 top -hat man on the 15 th of this month, 
 at eleven o'clock in the morning, at St. 
 Jude's in Wilkietown ' 
 
 ' You are going to be married ?' 
 
 ' I am.' 
 
 ' And not to Koroona's mother ?' 
 
 White broke into a furious volley of 
 execration. 
 
 ' What do you take me for ? Do you 
 tliink I'd disgrace myself by marrying a 
 woman who is one- third ,a black lubra ?' 
 
 ' She's a jolly sight too good for you. She 
 hasn't a vice more than any honest white 
 woman, except humility.' 
 
 ' That's neither here nor there. I've got 
 an income of £5,000 a year.'
 
 THE SILENT SEA 135 
 
 ' Let me tell you, White, that to have 
 £5,000 a year isn't the whole art of heing a 
 decent human being.' 
 
 ' Now, gently, old man— gently ; Fd put 
 up with more from you than anyone else in 
 the district, for you've done me many a 
 good turn. But I'm going to mai'ry a lady 
 — you needn't screw up youi* nose like a 
 colt in a halter for the first time — a devilish 
 good-looking woman, too, and a sensible one 
 at that. She's been married twice — the 
 first time to a Church of England ])ars(^n, 
 the last time to a doctor.' 
 
 ' Do you mean Mrs. Minkerton at Wilkie- 
 town ?' said Murray in an amazed voice. 
 
 'I do ; and though she's been married 
 twice, I'm the only love of her life : think 
 of that, old chappie ! — the only love of 
 her life,' repeated White with a gratified 
 chuckle. 
 
 ' Does she know^ ' 
 
 ' Yes, I knew everyone in the district 
 knows, and so 1 confessed to her. It was 
 just like a bit , out of the yelloAv-backs. 
 "Lizzie," said I, " I ain't good enough for you. 
 I haven't been quite as bad as most old
 
 136 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 bachelors ; I've acted too much on the square." 
 By Jove ! she forgave me before I half finished. 
 I tell you what, Murray, a good expression 
 in the eyes, and £5,000 a year, go a good 
 way with a woman of sense.' 
 
 Murray gave a disdainful grunt, and made 
 a movement as if to turn away. White, as 
 if not seeing this, went on : 
 
 ' But of course she was jealous ; she told 
 me so plainly — ha, ha ! We'd be ashamed to 
 confess that, you and I, Murray ; but it's a 
 quality in a woman — by Jove it is ! However, 
 she consented that I should keep Koroona. 
 Well, two nights ago I told Jeanie. She 
 stared at me a bit, but she took it very 
 quiet.' 
 
 ' Yes, she's had a good training in the way 
 of taking things quiet,' observed Murray. 
 
 ^ Well, yes,' responded White, who seemed 
 to take the remark as a compliment ; ' what- 
 ever sort of woman I have in the house, 
 whether black or half-caste or white, I mean 
 always to be the master. I gave Jeanie 
 £40 in an envelope and told her to be 
 ready to start early in the morning, and that 
 she had better say nothing to Koroona. She
 
 THE SILENT SEA 137 
 
 seemed to be a bit dazed, you know. Still, 
 I thought she understood. But next morn- 
 ing they had both cleared.' 
 
 ' And I suppose you think, if they had 
 come here, I would give them both up to 
 you ?' said Murray slowly. 
 
 ' And wouldn't you ?' 
 
 ' No, by the Lord I would not, as long as 
 I had the use of my fists or a stock-whip !' 
 cried Murray, with sudden savageness. 
 
 ' You'd find yourself in the wrong box, 
 though, if you tried to keej^ another man's 
 property,' retorted White, in rising tones. 
 
 ' Property ? Allow me, as a justice of the 
 peace, to tell you that you dare not take that 
 ofirl from her mother.' 
 
 Before White could make any reply to 
 this, he caught sight of Kenneth Campbell 
 coming round the woolshed. 
 
 ' I can't stand that lunatic at any price,' 
 he said hastily, and, mounting his horse, he 
 rode off at a gallop. He was not the only 
 man of irregular life in the district who was 
 apt to give Kenneth a wide berth. Probably 
 this is as near as most preachers of right- 
 eousness get to changing the lives of their
 
 138 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 erring fellow-creatures. But it was not a mode 
 that met Campbell's aspirations to do good. 
 
 ' Ah ! I wish you had detained yon poor, 
 poor creature, Mr. Murray, till I delivered 
 the message laid upon me to speak to him,' 
 he said, looking after the flying horseman. 
 
 ' He isn't worth your powder and shot, 
 Kenneth,' answered Murray. 
 
 The two men, who had become fast friends 
 during the years that Campbell had been a 
 shepherd on the run, talked together for 
 some time. Then Kenneth went to see Mrs. 
 Lindsay, as the sun was setting. He found 
 her in the drawing-room on a couch near one 
 of the French windows which opened into 
 the garden. A massive jewel-case was open 
 on a table near her, at which Doris was 
 seated, turning over the contents with Mrs. 
 Challoner. 
 
 ' Maman, why didn't you tell me before 
 this you had a valley of diamonds in the 
 bottom drawer of your wardrobe ?' said Doris, 
 holding up a diamond bracelet to the light — 
 one of a set of very costly jewels. 
 
 ' I had almost forgotten, dearie, I had 
 these things ; most of them belonged to
 
 THE SILENT SEA 139 
 
 your grandmothers,' answered Mrs. Lindsay. 
 Then she turned to speak to Kenneth, asking 
 him about his journeys, and what he had 
 been doing since she saw him last. There 
 was a great sympathy between the two, and 
 often when his voluntary labours seemed to 
 him a vain and profitless thing, Kenneth 
 found consolation and fresh encouragement 
 in Mrs. Lindsay's words. 
 
 ' Kenneth, you look very sad and worn,' 
 she said, after talking to him for a little 
 time. 
 
 ' Oh, it is well with me, dear lady — it is 
 well with me,' answered Kenneth. ' I do not 
 expect my earthly pilgrimage to be a long- 
 one.' He avoided all mention of the special 
 matter which was just then weighing on his 
 mind. 
 
 'Oh, what a perfectly beautiful ruby ! Look, 
 when I hold it up, maman, how it seems to 
 have a little crimson lamp in its heart !' said 
 Doris, turning to her mother. Then seeing 
 she was absorbed with her old friend, she did 
 not again interrupt theii' talk. But Mrs. 
 Challoner was ready with nun-murs of ad- 
 miration for every kind of gem and fashion
 
 140 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 of setting. And so for some time the two 
 currents of talk went on near each other 
 — the one full of artless enjoyment in the 
 beauty and lawlessness of precious stones ; 
 the other grave and solemn, yet penetrated 
 with serene hopefulness. 
 
 As the twilight deepened, Shung stole 
 in noiselessly to light the candles. But 
 the light that came in through the open 
 doors and windows was so soft and peaceful 
 that Mrs. Lindsay would not have it changed. 
 A few minutes after Shung went out, Doris, 
 whose sight and hearing were preternaturally 
 quick, looked out into the garden with a 
 startled aii'. 
 
 ' No, it isn't Spot. I see he is lying on 
 the veranda. But don't you hear a rustling 
 sound ? See, Spot has noticed it now.' 
 
 Doris rose as she spoke to look out ; but 
 before she reached the open window, one 
 came rushing in from the darkening garden 
 — -a young girl with torn clothes, with blood 
 on her hands and face, bareheaded, with her 
 dusky hair blown about her shoulders. On 
 seeing Doris she gave a shrill cry. 
 
 ' Oh, save me, save me ! do not let
 
 THE SILENT SEA 141 
 
 them catch me 1' she cried ; and with that 
 she rushed in through the window — rushed in 
 and sank down, half kneehng, half crouching, 
 at Mrs. Lindsay's feet. ' You will not let 
 them come after me — oh, you will not, I know ! 
 1 know — everyone says you are an angel of 
 goodness ! And my mother is dead out there 
 where we were hiding in the woods.' 
 
 Mrs. Lindsay, white to the lips, and 
 trembling violently, attempted to rise, 
 holding out her hands protectingly, while 
 her lips moved as if in speech, but no sound 
 came from them. The next moment she had 
 fallen back on the couch, blood pouring from 
 her lips. Doris was the first to see this, and 
 her sudden cry of anguish, 'Mother! mother! 
 mother !' drew the eyes of the rest from the 
 strange apparition of the girl — young and 
 slender, with scarcely a trace of the mixture 
 of races in her veins, who had thus suddenly 
 flown out of the woods, crying for protection 
 in her forlorn state. Mrs. Lindsay became 
 unconscious, and was inanimate so long, that 
 they almost gave up all hope she could ever 
 revive. During this time of terrible suspense 
 when all the remedies they tried proved
 
 142 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 unavailing, and they awaited the arrival of 
 the doctor from Buda, expecting only that 
 he would confirm their worst fears, Doris 
 did not stir from her mother's side. Mrs. 
 Murray took away the poor fugitive girl, 
 whose frantic grief at sight of the mischief, 
 which she thought was entirely due to her 
 action, added to the distress of all. It was 
 Mr. Murray who went for the doctor, 
 driving a buggy and pair, so that no time 
 should be lost if he were at home. As Dr. 
 Haining depended chiefly on his practice 
 among the squatters of the district, he was 
 often absent from Buda, or, if after a long 
 journey, his horses were so jaded that to 
 undertake another with them was frequentlv 
 attended with undue delay. Nor, if the 
 truth must be told, was Dr. Haining's skill of 
 the kind which is of the first consequence in 
 any intricate or subtle malady. But it was 
 a relief to Murray to find him at home, and 
 he almost laid violent hands on the worthy 
 old man to hasten his journey to Ouranie. 
 
 They reached it at nine o'clock at night, to 
 find that half an hour previously Mrs. 
 Lindsay had shown symptoms of returning
 
 THE SILENT SEA 143 
 
 life. There was a faint sigh, a flutter of the 
 eyehds, and a Httle afterwards she looked 
 at Doris with a smile so faint as to be 
 almost imperceptible. But Doris saw it, and 
 for the first time two or three hot little tears 
 came to her relief The girl's moral courage 
 and presence of mind were a revelation to all. 
 The doctor did everything that was in his 
 power, but he knew at once that there was 
 little hope of recovery. He stayed at 
 Ouranie for three days. Late in the after- 
 noon of the third an urgent summons came 
 for him to Noomoolloo. White, who had 
 come to see Koroona at Murray's house, 
 vainly trying to induce her to return home, 
 and assuring her that her mother had been 
 buried as expensively as any white woman, 
 had gone away in a state of considerable 
 excitement. After getting home he was very 
 badly bitten by a large mastiff he was beat- 
 ing in a savage manner, for some real or 
 imaginary act of disobedience. 
 
 As Dr. Haining was going away, he stood 
 for a little time talking to Mrs. Challoner in 
 the hall. Mrs. Lindsay had not been removed 
 from the drawing-room, and Doris was just
 
 144 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 then sitting by the bed, which had, under her 
 directions, been placed opposite the window 
 that commanded her mother's favourite out- 
 look — across the shadowy flower-filled garden 
 and the glancing expanse of Gauwari. 
 
 ' Put it round at this side, so that mother 
 can look out when she is getting better,' 
 she had said, in a low whisper, when they 
 were arranging the bed. Mrs. Challoner and 
 the doctor exchanged glances, but they said 
 nothing ; and Shung, who was engaged in 
 arranging the bed, carried out this direction, 
 and clung to the reason with pathetic in- 
 sistence. ' When Missie Lindsay bettel ' was 
 a phrase poor Shung was never tired of using 
 in the days that followed. And, as a matter of 
 fact, during these three days Mrs. Lindsay had 
 recovered speech and full consciousness. It 
 was true, she was extremely weak. Yet though 
 the blood-vessel she had broken was but a 
 small one, the action of the heart, which had 
 been seriously affected for many years, was 
 so defective that from time to time she had 
 great difficulty in breathing ; but when these 
 paroxysms were over, her face was stamped 
 with an expression of rapt and absolute peace,
 
 THE SILENT SEA 145 
 
 and often, when she murmured a few words of 
 meditative prayer, a smile that spoke of joyous 
 expectation would flit over her face. 
 
 When Dr. Haining was leaving her, he said 
 something about returning soon again. 
 
 ' Do not fatigue yourself for me, doctor,' 
 she answered softly. ' I have everything that 
 I can want, and so many anxious to wait on 
 me, especially this dear child of mine.' As 
 she spoke she stroked Doris's hand lightly. 
 
 As the doctor was going out, Shung glided 
 in with his young mistress's hat and gloves. 
 
 ' Missy Dolis in all day,' he said, shaking 
 his head gravely. 
 
 ' Go, darling, out into the fresh air for a 
 short time,' said Mrs. Lindsay. ' I feel a little 
 stronger just now, and I want to speak to you 
 when you return. Tell Kenneth I should 
 like to see him for a few moments.' 
 
 Doris felt a strange oppression falling on 
 her at these words. Her beautiful eyes, so 
 full of love and softness, expanded with a 
 startled expression ; but there was also a look 
 of intrepid courage on her face — the courage 
 and devotion of a great love, capable of rising 
 above all thoughts of self Only during the 
 
 VOL. I. 10
 
 146 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 time in which her mother had lain like one 
 dead had Doris believed that her attack was 
 fatal ; and after the first overwhelming sensa- 
 tion of entire loneliness, of helpless, despairing- 
 isolation, as of a creature suddenly taken from 
 under the measureless vault of heaven filled 
 with warm blue air, and thrust in a dark 
 corner, between cruel bars, an inexplicable 
 composure came to her — a strong, unreasoning 
 conviction that she would not long survive 
 her mother. Was it some undeveloped 
 malady that lurked in her system, or some 
 strong obscure link between her own life and 
 her mother's, which lent such force to the 
 thought, devoid of all fear and without a 
 touch of morbid self-pity ? 
 
 But these thoughts and emotions vanished 
 as quickly as they had come when her mothei* 
 recovered consciousness. From that moment 
 Doris's mind was centred on one object^ — to be 
 well and strong, so as to be with her mother 
 during the day when she was most awake. 
 Each night she had gone to sleep quite 
 early, sleej)ing the jjrofound sleep of a child 
 and rising early in the morning, radiant and 
 refreshed, coming into her mother's room
 
 THE SILENT SEA 147 
 
 with the first sun-rays with a great bowl 
 of freshly -gathered roses. Oh, how the 
 gentle happiness of her mothers smile as 
 their eyes met sutfused the girl's whole 
 nature with an ecstasy of gratitude, with 
 an indefinable supreme sense of union, which 
 nothing could rupture ! That look of con- 
 scious deep serenity on her mother's face 
 was to Doris a covenant and an assurance 
 that all was well, and must continue so. 
 
 But on the previous day, after recovering 
 from a swooning feebleness which had lasted 
 longer than usual, Doris had noticed hei* 
 mother's eyes resting on her from time to 
 time with something of solicitude — of anxiety. 
 She had remained for a long time motionless, 
 her hands clasped, her lips moving from time 
 to time, till she fell asleep. After an hour she 
 had awoke, a new radiance on her brow and 
 in her eyes. Something of the same look was 
 on her face now, and yet her words woke a 
 vague apprehension in Doris's mind. She 
 lingered wistfully over her mother, with those 
 tender and skilful little touches which impart 
 to pillows a new quality of being at once 
 softer and more supporting.
 
 J 48 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 ' Bring me a fresh story, Doris, about a 
 new honey-bird or a fresh flower bursting 
 into blossom,' she whispered, as Doris kissed 
 her hands. 
 
 The girl's eyes were suddenly dimmed as 
 she went out. She opened the door noise- 
 lessly that led into the hall. The doctor, 
 with his back towards her, was talking to 
 Mrs. Challoner. 
 
 ' You see, it isn't one thing ; it is a compli- 
 cation. She cannot recover. I don't expect 
 that she can live more than a few days at the 
 utmost ' 
 
 Warned by a sudden j^ressure on his arm, 
 and a low ' Sh ! sh !' from Mrs. Challoner, Dr. 
 Haining stopj)ed abruptly. He would like to 
 have retracted his words, or to have offered 
 some modifying explanation, when he saw 
 that Doris had overheard him ; but her 
 steadfast gaze disconcerted him. 
 
 ' Were you talking of mother, doctor V she 
 said, in a very low voice. 
 
 ' Oh, my poor dear child !' said Mrs. 
 Challoner, putting her arms round her as if 
 to ward off this great sorrow. 
 
 Doris slipped away without further speech.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 149 
 
 * That child has wonderful pluck,' said the 
 doctor, looking after her. 
 
 But Mrs. Challoner shook her head. 
 
 * I would sooner see her cry, and show 
 more distress,' she said. ' She hasn't been a 
 single day or night away from her mother in 
 her life. I don't know how she is to live 
 without her.'
 
 CHAPTEK VIII. 
 
 On going out, Doris saw Kenneth Campbell 
 reading in the garden, and went to give him 
 her mother's message. Then she went on 
 to the rustic bench, near the violet-banks, 
 and for some time the thought of that 
 incredible separation which seemed to be 
 drawing near bewildered and overwhelmed 
 her. When she left the garden the sun 
 had already set ; bub the air was so clear 
 and transparent that for some time the 
 light, instead of fading, mellowed and 
 deepened, with reddish glows from the 
 western horizon falling upon the trunks of 
 the trees, and then gradually stealing up- 
 ward to the topmost branches. Doris 
 mechanically followed her mother's favourite 
 walk round the margin of the lake.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 1 5 1 
 
 ' She cannot recover.' The words kept 
 weaving themselves into every bird-note she 
 heard, till gradually, as the twilight fell, the 
 birds became silent. The honey-eaters were 
 the first to go to sleep ; after that the 
 tremulous calls of the shell - parrots died 
 away ; later the chirping of the sparrows 
 ceased, then the swallows' last twittering. 
 As the reflections of the trees in the water 
 were merged in a confused mass, the fairy 
 carillons of the blue wrens were hushed ; 
 but the trills of the reed-warblers among 
 the tall sedges still went on, while the 
 slender brown reeds, and the dense clumps 
 of ti-tree at the far end of Gauwari, began to 
 be haunted by the long-drawn, plaintive calls 
 of the curlews — one in the far distance 
 answerinof the others with a measured 
 cadence that seemed to embody the very 
 spirit of the waning conflict of two lights. 
 In that calm, brooding hour, when the 
 dimness of night is still in suspense, 
 while the light of day is neutralized by 
 the tranquil twilight shadows — when even 
 the steadfast trees that we know most in- 
 timately assume a half-mysterious air as of
 
 152 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 beings from another sphere — in such an 
 atmosphere the heart is often Hghtened of 
 its most importunate fears. It is as though 
 the mind became involuntarily conscious of 
 the eternities to come, immutably sealed 
 with a peace which the darts of fate we 
 now so much dread are powerless to assail. 
 Doris's companionship with nature had 
 been too penetrating to leave her in this 
 hour of deepest apprehension. She had 
 been too long and too deeply moved by the 
 sacred silent influences around her to stand 
 in their presence coldly wrapped in her own 
 sorrow. Her tears ceased as she looked 
 around, suddenly pierced with the thought 
 that earth and sky breathed the selfsame 
 peace which was imprinted on her mother's 
 face. . . . Was that beloved mother indeed 
 to pass into the unknown realms which our 
 Father keeps for His children infinitely 
 beyond the reach of earth's light and dark- 
 ness ? Looking up into the far silent spaces 
 of the sky, which was so immensely vaulted 
 that it was as though the immeasurable 
 heavens had broken asunder to the highest, 
 a great strength of love nerved her afresh.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 153 
 
 She would not mar the beautiful serenity of 
 her darling's home-going by futile tears and 
 repinings. Sorrow she must have, but she 
 would endure it bravely and alone. 
 
 She returned to the house to find her 
 mother half sitting up and talking to Mrs. 
 Challoner, without any distress of breathing. 
 
 ^ Mother, you are a little better,' she said, 
 her heart almost ceasing to beat with the 
 sudden shock of joy. 
 
 ' Yes, dear ; I am well enough to talk to 
 you for a little. We won't have the lights 
 in ; let us sit in the twilight . . . like old 
 times.' 
 
 Mrs. Challoner left the two alone. 
 
 There was silence for a little time, broken 
 only by the notes of a fantail in the garden, 
 who sang as if his small heart was too full 
 of joy to go to sleep at his accustomed 
 hour. 
 
 ' I thought they had all gone to sleep 
 but the little reed-warblers and the curlews, 
 mother,' said Doris softly ; and the sound 
 of her voice speaking steadily gave the 
 mother courage for her task. 
 
 ' We have been very happy together,
 
 154 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 my child, . . . and now I fear you will 
 grieve. . . .' 
 
 ' Do not be afraid for me, mother,' said 
 the girl steadily. 
 
 ' My dear one . . . you are going to be 
 brave for me and for yourself It is strange 
 how much we forget that it is only what we 
 do not see which is eternal — that all around 
 us is a passing dream from which our Father 
 one day in His love awakes us.' 
 
 ' You are going away from me, maman — 
 away to the other home,' said Doris, with a 
 little catch in her throat. 
 
 ' Yes, dearest . . . after you went out I 
 grew heavy with care at the thought of 
 leaving you. ... I feared for you in yoiu* 
 grief and loneliness. . . . But as I looked 
 after you I saw how our Father had put 
 His own seal on the whole world around 
 you, and I felt somehow sure that He 
 would touch your heart also with the peace 
 which passeth understanding. . . .' 
 
 '■ Oh, mother, was that why I could not 
 cry any longer ?' said Doris, in a low, awe- 
 stricken voice. 
 
 The mother's face was radiant. Her
 
 THE SILENT SEA 155 
 
 heart was full as she pondered over those 
 mysteries of the soul and miracles of nature 
 for which our most ardent words of explana- 
 tion are clouds of enshrouding darkness. 
 ' It will be well with the child.' 
 She repeated the words over more than 
 once with a rapt look in her face. Her 
 strength kept up wonderfully for some time 
 longer. For nearly an hour she went over 
 many matters in detail with Doris regarding 
 her future life — Mme. de Serziac and her 
 guardian, and the disposal of certain sums 
 of money, and her wish that, if Doris and 
 Mr. Graham should at any time decide to 
 sell Ouranie, Mr. Murray should have the 
 first offer on as easy terms as possible. 
 
 ' I think that is almost all the business 
 we need talk, Doris,' she said at the close ; 
 ' but there is one thing I should like you to 
 decide for yourself, whether, after we must 
 part, you prefer to stay here till the 
 Challoners are ready to take you to Mme. 
 de Serziac, or go on with Mrs. Challoner to 
 Colmar? You would have your own rooms, 
 of course, with Shung to attend on you and 
 your horses to drive and ride.'
 
 156 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 Mrs. Lindsay spoke a little hurriedly, 
 fearing that this ruthless necessity for 
 realizing so closely the last strange farewell 
 might press too heavily on Doris. 
 
 * I don't think I could bear to be here 
 without you, mother,' answered Doris in a 
 very low voice, as she stroked her mother's 
 hand in the old loving fashion. Then she 
 stooped down and kissed it repeatedly and 
 passionately. 
 
 ' Oh, mother, do you remember long ago, 
 when I had fever and used to dream so 
 often you had gone away to the East — to 
 the Silent Sea V she said, her tears now 
 falling in the dusk as fast as summer 
 rain. 
 
 ' Yes, Doris, I remember. And then 
 you thought you had gone after me, and 
 found me ; and for days, till the fever left 
 you, you thought that was Avhere we were. 
 I am going on a longer journey ; but by-and- 
 by, my child, when your work is done, you 
 will come too.' 
 
 ' Oh, maman ! maman ! if I could only 
 come with you now !' 
 
 Then the mother spoke without tears or
 
 THE SILENT SEA 157 
 
 faltering of all she could do, of all the duties 
 that awaited her. 
 
 ' When your loneliness presses hard on 
 you, Doris, remember that I wished you to 
 work for others — that I wished you to have 
 your share of all the duties and sweetness of 
 iife.' 
 
 ' But, mother, if I am lonely all the time 
 and want to come to you with all my heart, 
 promise me you will not be vexed if I 
 pray to our Father to take me to you.' 
 
 ' No, darling, I shall not be vexed,' 
 answered the mother softly. She had faith 
 in the power of time to heal sorrow. 
 
 Then for a little space in the gathering 
 darkness Doris did not try to check her 
 tears. So much she yielded to the cravings 
 of the love that filled her heart and had 
 ever been the centre of her life. But after 
 that evening she regained composure, and 
 even cheerfulness. Henceforward to the 
 last hour of her mother's life these did not 
 desert her. 
 
 Early in the morning four days after this, 
 as Doris stood drawing back the window- 
 curtains, she caught her mother's eyes fixed
 
 58 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 on her in a long loving, untroubled look. 
 An unusual pallor in the dear face made her 
 hasten to the bedside. Half an hour latei* 
 Shung-Loo glided in, bearing a tray with 
 some little delicacy to tempt an invalid's 
 appetite. Mrs. Challoner was then in the 
 room, her face bathed in tears. But Doris 
 met him and put the tray down, looking at 
 him strangely, saying : 
 
 ' Oh, Shung, Shung, we cannot do any- 
 thing for maman any more !' 
 
 She was dry-eyed, but the dee]) thrill of 
 anguish in her voice made Shung's pale-hued 
 almond eyes very dim. Hitherto no crisis 
 had arisen in the girl's life in which Shung 
 was unable to suggest some consolation, but 
 he had too much of the philosophy of life to 
 attempt any now. 
 
 Nothing in the room spoke of death or 
 sorrow. Through the wide-open windows 
 the clambering roses hung in dewy clusters, 
 white and mauve butterflies hovering over 
 them in the clear early sunlight. There 
 were bowls of roses on the mantelpiece ; 
 even on the little table close to the bedside 
 lay a great heap of blush-roses, heliotrope.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 159 
 
 white lilac and a bunch of violets. 
 ' Bring me some of our favourite flowers 
 out of the garden, Doris/ the mother had 
 whispered less than an hour ago. After 
 bringing these in Doris had drawn the 
 curtains back from the open windows. And 
 liere now were the dewy flowers giving out 
 their penetrating fragrance, the hum of bees 
 with their tireless industry in the garden, 
 and over all the warm, liberal sunshine. 
 And in the midst, after days of absorbed 
 watching, of wakeful nights, of serene 
 dawns, in which the loving spirit seemed 
 endued with fresh vitality, had come the 
 moment of bitter severance. 
 
 For the first strange days, loneliness and 
 sorrow, all thoughts of herself, were partially 
 lost for Doris in an overwhelming wonder, 
 and a yearning stronger than the instinct of 
 life, to penetrate the inexorable veil which, 
 in one supreme moment, had been drawn 
 between her mother's life and her own. 
 That beloved mother, that gentle, self-for- 
 getting, heroic soul, to the last full of 
 thought and memory, and tender responsive- 
 ness to the lightest whisper of love ! And
 
 i6o THE SILENT SEA 
 
 then in one moment she had passed beyond 
 all intercourse and all knowledge ! 
 
 ' Oh, maman ! maman ! can I never know 
 anything more of you as long as I live ?' 
 Doris would say over and over again, regard- 
 less of everything, around her in that one 
 engrossing thought. The waves were break- 
 ing upon the rocks afar, where she could 
 neither hear nor see them ; ships were sail- 
 ing across the seas to strange lands ; pictures 
 that had been painted hundreds of years 
 before were hanging in closed chambers ; 
 choirs of singers separated by the whole 
 length of the world sang the same hymns in 
 churches and cathedrals. All these, and 
 innumerable sights and sounds, though 
 hidden and unheard, could be verified ; but 
 was there no possibility of reaching the lives 
 that had passed beyond our ken ? How 
 far beyond the light of the moon and the 
 wealth of the mid-day's sunshine and the 
 orbit of the planets was that unknown 
 universe of the spirit-world ? Or was it 
 near, though unseen and unknown ? These 
 and kindred thoughts filled Doris's mind in 
 place of the sunbright fancies of her un-
 
 THE SILENT SEA i6i 
 
 troubled girlhood. Her loss was one of 
 those events which effect a sudden change 
 in one's conception of things and events. 
 
 The first sight of the sea, to a boy who 
 has Viking blood in his veins, brings hitherto 
 unknown emotions into play. There are 
 vibrations in the waves which awaken 
 memories that have no part in his personal 
 recollections. And so all through our 
 strange pathetic dramas, dim reminiscent 
 pictures transmitted by generations who 
 have threaded their way through the short 
 joys and the long tragedies of life, seem sud- 
 denly incorporated in individual experience, 
 maturing the heart and mind when one of 
 the great touchstones of experience is 
 reached. Then the innumerable sources 
 from which knowledge of life is consciously 
 and unconsciously drawn seem in one short 
 day to give up their messages. The events 
 that were at the time hardly noticed, the 
 news that was heard with wonder and 
 straightway forgotten, the broken scraps of 
 conversation that awoke a vague mistrust, 
 the slow accumulations of perception and 
 dawnino: instincts — all are suddenlv ilium i- 
 
 VOL. I. 11
 
 l62 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 nated with this vital event that lays its seal 
 on the world and redeems it henceforth from 
 the haziness of a dream and the misty dis- 
 proportion of an uncomprehended mass of 
 details. 
 
 In the first days of loneliness, of separa- 
 tion that seemed too strange to be real, 
 Doris would take up one of her mother's 
 best-loved books, and in turning over the 
 leaves with tender reverence, she would see 
 a passage marked that seemed to hold the 
 whole history of her own loss in lines that 
 long years before had told the story of her 
 mother's bereavement : 
 
 ' Yet in these ears, till hearing dies. 
 One set slow bell will seem to toll 
 The passing of the sweetest soul 
 That ever looked with human eyes.' 
 
 The strange story of human life, be- 
 ginning in the mists of childhood, passing 
 beyond an inscrutable veil, repeated over 
 and over from age to age, would at times 
 hold her spell -bound ; and in the face of the 
 universal history of humanity, her own 
 sorrow seemed to fall into a sober and 
 ordered proportion. The restraint that
 
 THE SILENT SEA 163 
 
 thought and a wider range of vision put 
 upon all passions saved her from any morbid 
 feeling of revolt. 
 
 ' If I cry, it is for myself, not for you, 
 darling maman,' she would say softly under 
 her breath ; and the mist of tears would be 
 stayed by a presentment of her mother's 
 face. The large serene eyes, the delicately- 
 moulded features, the sweet quiet mouth, 
 with its wistful little smile, would rise up so 
 vividly before her, that grief would suddenly 
 be checked by a feeling of incongruity. 
 
 ' What is our life but a little span — even 
 the longest V Kenneth would say, lingering, 
 during these first days, to give such stay 
 and consolation as were in his power. ' A 
 little fever in the town, or thirst in the 
 desert, or a storm in mid -ocean — what are 
 they but the messengers that are sent to 
 summon us from this vale of tears V 
 
 ' Ah, but, Kenneth, it is a very beautiful 
 world . . . and now, although maman is gone, 
 all these long years we were together — oh, 
 how beautiful they were !' answered Doris, 
 shrinking instinctively from that austere 
 contempt of the earth and all its belongings
 
 i64 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 which so often marked the old shepherd's 
 utterances. ^ Listen to this that maman 
 taught me to sing when I was quite httle, 
 Kenneth,' she said, opening the piano, and 
 striking a few chords ; and then she sang, in 
 a sweet, low voice that gathered gladness as 
 she sang : 
 
 ' Plantons le mai, chantons le mai, 
 Le mai du joli mois de mai ; 
 Et puis chantons quand on plante, 
 Et puis plantons quand on chante. 
 Le mai, le mai, 
 Qui nous rend le ccBur gai !' 
 
 ' Ah yes. Miss Doris ; yes, that is true. 
 There is joy even in this life for the hearts 
 that are possessed by perfect peace.' Then 
 in a lower voice he said, as he looked at the 
 girl's rapt face : * Out of the mouths of babes 
 and sucklings Thou hast perfected praise.' 
 
 ' I know that for some the world must be 
 a terrible place,' said Doris, turning from 
 the open piano, and looking into her old 
 friend's face with serious, wide-opened eyes. 
 ' Often I think of poor Koroona, who had to 
 run away with her dying mother, even out 
 of her father's house.'
 
 THE SILENT SEA 165 
 
 In the midst of her sorrow this story had 
 fastened on Doris with a new power of in- 
 terpretation. The thought of so much fear 
 and misery, of famiharity with trouble bitterer 
 than the pangs of death, made her look back 
 on her own secure and happy childhood with 
 a new power of observation. Her memory 
 was stored with wide, spacious chambers full 
 of light and grace and protecting love. 
 What an endless store of days steeped in 
 tangible beauty rose before her as she went 
 from one familiar spot to the other, trying to 
 say farewell, yet vaguely feeling that they 
 would be with her when she went away as 
 much as when she was in their midst ! She 
 could not have put the feeling into words, 
 but it was in her heart, that the deepest 
 reality of life had somehow gone from her, 
 and that now the world and all it contained 
 was a little uncertain and unfamiliar, as if seen 
 through some softening medium like that of 
 sleep, in which we see and hear and touch, 
 and yet are all the time remote from the 
 objects of sense. 
 
 Yet hour by hour she was attending with 
 scrupulous care to details that devolved on
 
 i66 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 her before leaving Ouranie with Mrs. Chal- 
 loner. An old friend of her mother's in 
 town, one with whom she had become ac- 
 quainted on her first voyage to Australia, 
 and to whom Mrs. Lindsay had left a small 
 annuity for life, wrote to Doris pressing her 
 to come and stay in Adelaide till her friends, 
 the Challoners, were able to take her to 
 Mme. de Serziac. 
 
 ' Perhaps you would like it better, dear. 
 I am afraid the Salt-bush country will seem 
 terribly bare and dry to you,' said Mrs. 
 Challoner wistfully, after this letter had 
 come. 
 
 ' No, dear Mrs. Lucy, don't send me away. 
 I know you better than anyone else now. 
 It does not matter so much about the 
 country. . . . You know it is the Silent 
 Sea that maman and I talked about so 
 often,' answered Doris. 
 
 The next day the drawing-room was to 
 be dismantled, but Doris begged to have it 
 left just one day more as it used to be, and 
 for one day more it was undisturbed, filled 
 with a dreamy wealth of flowers as in the 
 old days ; the windows wide open, overlook-
 
 THE SILENT SEA 167 
 
 ing the garden filled with all September's 
 overflowing abundance of bloom and per- 
 fume ; the lake beyond, reflecting in its clear 
 depths a few filmy clouds faintly white and 
 vaporous, as foam tossed from the crest of 
 waves. Everywhere there were the cries 
 and calls of birds who had come back to 
 their old nests or were building new ones. 
 
 The twilight deepened, warm and fragrant, 
 like a beautiful reverie between day and 
 night, and Doris stood for the last time in 
 the old familiar room, going from one spot 
 to the other, looking at the books and pic- 
 tures in the fading light ; at the cabinet, 
 with its relics of the aboriginal race — shell- 
 spoons, a chisel of volcanic glass, neck- 
 laces made of small reeds and the stems of 
 coarse grass cut into lengths and threaded, 
 a netted bag made from the stems of cotton- 
 bush and rushes, a message-stick, with close 
 and involved carving — a summons that had 
 once passed from one tribe to the other as a 
 signal of ])eace or war. From these memorials 
 of a vanished race Doris went, and stood look- 
 ing for some moments at a water-colour paint- 
 ing, in the foreground of which stood a dwell-
 
 1 68 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 ing, that had been for many generations in 
 her mother's family. It was a calm English 
 landscape, with wide, shadowy trees ; a little 
 white village in the distance, with a slender 
 church-spire rising from the midst ; a blue- 
 gray sky overhead, with a few red clouds 
 trooping into the west, while under foot 
 emerald-green meadows starred with butter- 
 cups and daisies completed a picture full of 
 Old-World repose and soft, cool tones. Often 
 after days of intense heat, in which the very 
 atmosphere at Ouranie seemed to be on fire 
 and burn with viewless flame, Doris had 
 watched her mother turn to this picture 
 with a weary longing. 
 
 ' Ah, darling mother,' she said in a wist- 
 ful whisper, ' you were often very tired ; but 
 now all that is over, and, if I grow very 
 tired, I will come to vou.' 
 
 Three days later Doris was in the heart of 
 the barren landscape of the Salt-bush country, 
 where low desert ridges with rocky outcrops, 
 and vast flat spaces of sad, gray, creeping 
 bushes, were outlined against a boundless sky 
 of deep shadowless blue. It was a land so 
 harsh and forbidding, so devoid of all charm,
 
 THE SILENT SEA 169 
 
 that it seemed as if no tradition of human in- 
 terest could chng around its vague formless 
 regions. But as the light of the first day 
 faded, and stars began to glinuiier in the 
 clear topaz of the upper sky, Doris, looking 
 westward, saw the long aerial line of the 
 Euckalowie Ranges in the far, far distance, 
 like a silvery silhouette in the midst of the 
 faint vapour that at times creeps over these 
 immense plains after sunset. The prospect 
 restored to her the old picture of the Silent 
 Sea, and, like a home melody heard far from 
 home, it brought her nearer to the days 
 whose memory now formed the core of her 
 life.
 
 CHAPTEK IX. 
 
 As might be expected in an arrangement 
 that had so many elements of inequahty and 
 uncertainty, Miss Paget gradually found 
 that the understanding which existed be- 
 tween herself and Victor Fitz-Gibbon was 
 beset with uneasiness. Her father had a 
 sort of constitutional aversion to young men, 
 due, doubtless, to the long years in which 
 he considered his talents had been wasted in 
 abortive efforts to sharpen wits that, in most 
 cases, it had pleased Providence to make 
 very dull. 
 
 ' My dear, don't you think that young 
 man is rather more frivolous even than the 
 average V he said one evening after Victor 
 had gone away, having ' dropped in ' for an 
 hour's chat by prearrangement with Helen.
 
 THE SIL ENT SEA 1 7 1 
 
 Miss Paget flushed, and a hasty answer 
 rose to her tongue, for even a dispassionate 
 critic might consider the judgment unfair. 
 Though it was true that Victor was not 
 deeply learned in any sciences, yet he had 
 a quick and active intelligence, was well-read 
 for his years, and had an easy fluency of 
 expression, which sometimes bordered on 
 eloquence when his imagination was touched. 
 On second thoughts Miss Paget smothered 
 her resentment, and answered lightly : • 
 
 ' No, papa ; I don't think so. I cannot 
 even guess why you come to that con- 
 clusion.' 
 
 ^ He smiles far too readily. What was 
 there in the latest method of disintegrating 
 nebulae to amuse one ?' 
 
 ' I assure you, papa, he was not dis- 
 respectful to the nebulce,' answered Miss 
 Paget, smiling as she recalled the little joke 
 that had passed in an undertone between 
 herself and Victor while her father read one 
 of his ' notes ' on those glowing masses of 
 incandescent hydrogen which look like mere 
 stains of light in the sky. They ought not, 
 perhaps, to have exchanged an}^ words ; but
 
 [72 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 it is hard to be kept among the stupendous 
 mysteries of the solar system while so many 
 little earthly trifles have an enchanting 
 interest of their own. 
 
 The next time Victor paid an evening call 
 he found Mrs. Tillotson in possession of 
 Helen. The lady lived near enough to 
 Lancaster House to indulge in those pro- 
 miscuous and unceremonious calls which are 
 the growth of a long-standing intimacy. If 
 Mrs. Tillotson's favourite shares went up 
 with a bound or had an alarming downwai'd 
 tendency, if she had an invitation to Govern- 
 ment House and felt uncertain which would be 
 the most appropriate dress, if a mutual friend 
 was very ill, if her dressmaker had made 
 an unconscionable overcharge — in a word, if 
 there was any news or no news at all to talk 
 over, Mrs. Tillotson, when she was disengaged 
 for the evening and knew that Miss Paget was 
 at home, w^ould drop in with her favourite 
 maid, who had a long-standing friendship 
 with the Paget servants ; and mistress and 
 maid would both have a cosy chat that often 
 lengthened into an hour or two. 
 
 On this occasion Mrs. Tillotson had come
 
 THE SILENT SEA 173 
 
 to consult her friend on an important point. 
 Her only sister, married to a delicate clergy- 
 man, had thoughts of accompanying her 
 husband on a trip to Italy. The congre- 
 gation were going to pay his expenses ; but 
 as to his wife and two daughters, if they 
 went, it could only be by the help of some 
 of their wealthier relations. 
 
 ^ Now, my dear, do you think that my 
 means would justify me in presenting them 
 with a cheque for £500 ?' said Mrs. Tillot- 
 son solemnly. 
 
 As a matter of fact, her means would have 
 enabled her to do so twice over without any 
 sensible diminution of her daily comforts. 
 But though Mrs. Tillotson was a woman of 
 innumerable verbal enthusiasms, life was 
 destitute of motives to make her part with 
 money readily. 
 
 * I should like to do it for the sake of 
 Blanche, my eldest niece. She has a real 
 talent for drawing. My dear, you would be 
 surprised to see some of her later work, so 
 full of soul, and very little touched up by 
 Mr. Trim. He is a most capable young- 
 man, and has a wonderful eye for genius.
 
 174 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 and such a sense of humour. Every pupil 
 taught by anyone else amuses him so much. 
 He puts them back invariably, but then he 
 brings them on most rapidly again. He is 
 delighted with Blanche's last design for a 
 pair of bellows ; and, of course, the Old 
 Masters and so on would be of immense 
 advantage to her. And, do you know, my 
 dear, there's another thing ' 
 
 Mrs. Tillotson dropped her voice mys- 
 teriously, and drew her chair a little nearer 
 to Miss Paget, who was listening with a 
 small portion of her mind, while the rest 
 was occupied with conjectures as to whether 
 Victor would come soon, and, if so, whether 
 Mrs. Tillotson would express her delight at 
 his having a friend like Miss Paget, who 
 was like a second mother to him ! 
 
 ' Of course, one doesn't like to be a 
 matchmaker ; but still, the other eveninp* at 
 Maria's, when they were having a musical 
 evening, I thought Victor Fitz-Gibbon was 
 a good deal impressed by Blanche's singing. 
 Of course, it is early yet to begin to think 
 of his marrying.' 
 
 * Oh, not at all, Mrs. Tillotson,' answered
 
 THE SILENT SEA 175 
 
 Miss Paget, with a bright smile. The 
 tliought of the numerous young ladies with 
 whom Victor would come into friendly con- 
 tact did not invariably amuse her, but in 
 this case she felt that she could afford to be 
 generous. * You see, it is simply a question 
 of means. Nearly all the Crown Princes of 
 Europe marry at twenty-one or twenty- 
 two.' 
 
 ' Well, my dear, he would be just twenty- 
 two when they returned ; for, if they all go, 
 they won't leave till after Christmas. And, 
 you know, a girl coming back after a year's 
 absence ' 
 
 Mrs. Tillotson's confidences were inter- 
 rupted by Victor's entrance. She gave a 
 flurried, conscious glance at Helen, and then, 
 with the tact that was her prerogative, she 
 exclaimed : 
 
 ' Talk of an angel, and you'll hear the 
 rustling of his wings ! Do you know, my 
 dear Victor, Miss Paget was just saying 
 that, as you have ample means, you would 
 most likely marry, like the Crown Princes 
 of Europe, at twenty-one or twenty-two.' 
 
 ' Keally ? Then I hope Miss Paget will
 
 176 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 be at my wedding if I am to be ranked 
 with such fortunate individuals,' said Victor 
 Kghtly. 
 
 But Miss Paget, who was learning every 
 nuance of his tones and expressions by heart, 
 felt that there was an inflection of annoy- 
 ance in his voice — felt sure, too, that Mrs. 
 Tillotson's half- embarrassed, half-conscious 
 manner would lead him to suppose that she 
 had been taken into confidence as to their 
 semi-engagement, though only on the pre- 
 vious day she had positively forbidden him 
 to write to his mother on the matter. Some 
 further speeches of Mrs. Tillotson's, marked 
 by the same good sense, must have deepened 
 this impression ; for when Miss Paget next 
 met Victor, his first words were : 
 
 'Well, Helen, after finding your ''habi- 
 tual Providence " knew all about our affairs, 
 I thought I might tell the dear old mater, 
 and I did.' 
 
 ' Oh, the dreadful old woman ! And she 
 would stay till after you had gone, so that I 
 had no opportunity of explaining to you,' 
 said Miss Paget, choking a little as she 
 spoke. She knew enough of Mrs. Fitz-
 
 THE SILENT SEA 177 
 
 Gibbon to feel very sure that her first and 
 last impulse, on learning that her handsome 
 boy, with his newly -acquired fortune, pro- 
 posed to marry a woman so much older than 
 himself, would be to throw cold water on 
 the project as much as lay in her power. 
 ' Well, never mind, what must be must 
 be,' she added sombrely, finding some relief 
 in that strain of fatalism which sooner or 
 later invades the consciousness of all who 
 try to plot and plan over-much, for them- 
 selves or others. 
 
 Victor had followed his first impulse in 
 writing to his mother of the understanding 
 between himself and Miss Paget. If Mrs. 
 Tillotson had not, in a manner, driven him 
 to this action, someone else no doubt would 
 have done so. 
 
 In the meantime Mrs. Tillotson began to 
 appear in so drearily objectionable a light to 
 Miss Pasret, that she beofan to ask herself 
 on what grounds their friendship was really 
 founded. ' An old friend of your dear 
 mother's !' These were the words with 
 which Mrs. Tillotson had embraced Miss 
 Paget, but not until after she had come into 
 
 VOL. I. 12
 
 178 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 her fortune of three thousand a year ! An 
 old friend of her mother ? Yes ; so was 
 that Mrs. Selway, who had on Helen's 
 eighteenth birthda}^ volunteered to bring 
 her out at a Government House ball in 
 Sydney ! 
 
 Oh, how well Miss Paget remembered 
 every detail of that squalid ' coming out,' 
 which was burnt into her memory as with 
 branding-irons ! They were in the depths 
 of their poverty when the invitations came 
 for this special ball to Professor and the 
 Misses Paget. It was a more than ordina- 
 rily brilliant affair, because of the presence 
 of some French royalties, and all Sydney 
 was agog, as only a strictly democratic city 
 seems to have the secret of being when such 
 an affair is in the wind. Everyone was 
 talking of it — those who had invitations and 
 those who had none ; the tradesmen who 
 were busier because the great ball was coming 
 off, and the tradesmen who had nothing to 
 do with it. 
 
 * It is a pity we could not sell our invita- 
 tions to some of the people who would give 
 their eyes to go,' said one of the elder Miss
 
 THE SILENT SEA 179 
 
 Pagets ; ' the price they would give would 
 pay the servant's wages and buy us new 
 dresses all round.' 
 
 Then Mrs. Selway had dropped in — an 
 old ancestral friend who somehow managed 
 to live luxuriously on a narrow income. She 
 also had an invitation, but no excuse for 
 going, having just then no young relatives 
 to chaperon. 
 
 ' Couldn't Helen go ?' she said. ' It is 
 her eighteenth birthday too. It would be like 
 her coming out. Oh, poor dear ! she ought 
 to have a chance. I'll go with her myself 
 rather than that she shouldn't have the plea- 
 sure.' 
 
 After a little discussion it was decided 
 that Helen should go. There was a gown 
 belonging to her eldest step-sister which, 
 with a little alteration, was found fit and 
 proper for the occasion. It was a white 
 Liberty silk, which, after being carefully 
 ironed, took to itself a lustre mendacious 
 enough to deceive all but the eyes of other 
 women. At the last moment the fit was 
 found a little defective, and pins were used 
 in a great hurry. One of them jagged
 
 i8o THE SILENT SEA 
 
 Helen's shoulder cruelly, but she endured it 
 without wincing. The other part of the 
 performance was so infinitely harder to bear. 
 She had lain awake at nights sleepless with 
 pleasurable excitement in anticipation of this 
 joy. And it resolved itself into sitting out 
 nearly the whole evening without partners — 
 a pin lacerating her flesh ! She longed to go 
 away somewhere in to the darkness, but not 
 until she had been twice in to supper would 
 Mrs. Selway leave the brilliant scene. The 
 new Governor spent more than his income 
 in the discharge of his Viceregal duties, and 
 the suppers at Government House were then 
 very good. 
 
 * Just the sort of thing Mrs. Tillotson 
 would do,' reflected Miss Paget, as hazy 
 plans floated into her mind for relaxing the 
 intimacy between them, and her heart 
 hardened with the half - vindictive feelings 
 which reminiscences of the days of her 
 penury always brought to her. But it is 
 difficult to devise a working scheme for 
 cutting an old friend who lives within sight 
 of your chimneys. And, after all. Miss 
 Paget could not long keep a sense of
 
 THE ST LENT SEA t8i 
 
 grievance at an acute pitch. Only of late 
 it seemed as if one cause of uneasiness had 
 hardly passed away before another arose. 
 
 It was in the nature of things that 
 Victor's inheritance of a handsome compe- 
 tence should greatly enhance his social value, 
 and that he should be much sought after for 
 those amusements in which the distinctively 
 youthful of both sexes play the most promi- 
 nent part. Thus at balls and amateur 
 theatricals, in which he so often took a lead- 
 ing role, Miss Paget, when present, was for 
 the most part a mere spectator. When 
 ladies at a comparatively early age begin to 
 speak slightingly of the commoner forms of 
 amusement, they are apt to be credited with 
 a more enduring contempt of such pleasures 
 than they really feel. Hostesses are usually 
 mothers, and readily resign themselves to 
 the belief that a young woman who is l)y 
 way of being an heiress, and is still pretty 
 and attractive, habitually despises dancing. 
 An eligible bachelor, on the other hand, 
 can never hope to escape their invitations 
 unless he marries, or begins to attend week- 
 night meetings of the Salvation Army.
 
 1 82 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 Victor began by being very much dis- 
 appointed when he went to balls and parties 
 and found Miss Paget so often missing. 
 
 ' You ought to come, if only for my sake, 
 you know, Helen,' he said two weeks after 
 they had landed from the Mogul. The 
 words were sweet in her ears, and yet she 
 tortured herself with the question, ' How 
 much does he really mind V Victor had 
 been at a large party at the house of a 
 mutual friend on the previous evening, and 
 had given a lively account of the affair. 
 
 * And were your partners very pretty and 
 amiable, and nicely dressed, Victor?' said 
 Miss Paget, not making any direct reply to 
 this assertion. 
 
 ' Oh, they were very jolly, most of them,' 
 he answered. ' But in the midst of it all I 
 would think now and then, " If only Helen 
 were here ! She is most likely alone 
 
 ^ Or asleep. Didn't you think that I 
 might be asleep, and dreaming I was with 
 you at Mrs. Purdie's ball V 
 
 ' Not at eleven o'clock.' 
 
 * Which was the only time j^ou remembered 
 me ?' said Miss Paget, laughing.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 183 
 
 ' No ; the time I thought of you most. 
 What were you doing then, Helen V 
 
 'Let me see. Papa stayed a httle later 
 than usual in the library, so I had the tray 
 taken in there with his whisky and ApolU- 
 naris, and I heard how the great dehdcles of 
 the glacial epoch swept down the enormous 
 debris of the moraines into the valleys, 
 whose banks had been already eroded. 
 What could be more fascinating V 
 
 ' But, Helen, you must find it dull. I 
 know it is awfully good of you to devote 
 yourself to your father as you do, but, you 
 see, you can't do it always ; and couldn't one 
 of the maids see to the tray if you were 
 away ?' 
 
 * But she wouldn't care to hear about the 
 debacles' replied Miss Paget, smiling. 
 
 Then she asked Victor how he was 
 getting on with his uncle in the warehouse. 
 The young man's face clouded a little, but 
 he answered lightly : 
 
 ' Oh, like a house on fire — that is, I'm 
 the house, and uncle puts me out at least 
 twenty times a day. Perhaps it's mostly 
 my fault, but if it is, I had no idea T was
 
 1 84 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 such a cross-grained brute. I was copying 
 out an indent the other day — but there, I 
 won't inflict such stuff on you.' 
 
 ' But I'm interested, Victor.' 
 
 ' And, faith, I'll keep up your interest by 
 not going too much into detail,' he answered. 
 ' There is nothing more tiresome than rela- 
 tions who quarrel, except relations who 
 admire each other. Uncle Stuart and I 
 will never be tedious in the last way. 
 Helen, I think I'll be off to the Bush 
 for a few months, if any decent excuse 
 offers itself After all, we see very little of 
 each other. What between your '^ habitual 
 Providence " and — by Jove, that's her ring 
 now !' 
 
 It was shortly after this conversation 
 that Miss Paget, in the half-careless way 
 in which a well-bred woman can put a 
 request without making it, said to one and 
 another of her party-giving friends : 
 
 '• Do you know, I am suflfering under a re- 
 vival of folly. I got quite fond of dancing 
 once more on the Mogul, but my friends 
 keep on giving me credit for being quite 
 beyond caring for the sound of dance-music'
 
 THE SILENT SEA 185 
 
 Very soon Miss Paget had as many 
 invitations to balls, dances, and even 
 informal hops, as the youngest debutante 
 could desire. But in a short time she 
 felt convinced that it would be very 
 doubtful policy for her to resume such 
 gaieties seriously. She was constantly 
 comparing herself with the youngest and 
 liohtest-hearted of the sfirls around her — 
 constantly thinking how the record of her 
 twentj^-nine years, of her buried embittered 
 youth, was thrown into clearer relief in 
 her face when she stood near Victor, wdth 
 his laughing eyes, and unlined face flushed 
 with the bloom of earlv manhood. 
 
 ' A dear old thing, isn't she ? And fancy 
 taking to balls and dances now, after 
 despising them so long !' she overheard 
 a girl say to Victor one evening, and she 
 did not doubt that the words were meant 
 for her ear, for Victor had been teasing 
 her for more dances than she could give 
 him ; and the speaker was one of those 
 young ladies who do not scruple at times 
 to show a marked preference for the men 
 they consider most eligible. ' A dear old
 
 i86 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 thing r The words stung her, while she 
 despised herself for heeding them. She 
 noticed that for the rest of the evening 
 Victor carefully avoided the girl guilty of 
 the impertinence, and her heart throbbed 
 with gratitude for his unflinching loyalty to 
 her. But she knew well the more he 
 exhibited any feeling beyond the courtesy 
 of casual acquaintances, the more tongues 
 there would be to wag in a chorus of wonder 
 and scorn and incredulity. 
 
 They met next day at a garden-party, 
 and Victor taxed her with keeping too 
 much out of his way. Her father stood 
 near, speaking of some new astronomical 
 discovery. Miss Paget and Victor moved 
 a little away. 
 
 ' For my part, I shall never believe in 
 astronomers,' she said, ' till one of them 
 demonstrates how the earth came to be the 
 parody of a forgotten planet.' 
 
 ' A parody ?' 
 
 ' Yes, where the connecting-link between 
 people and their proper destiny is left out.' 
 
 * Helen, how dare you be inventing 
 melancholy on such a day as this ? Look
 
 THE SILENT SEA 187 
 
 at those roses, and the sea beyond the trees, 
 and the chickens of the Madonna singing 
 Httle hymns all the time, and me by the 
 side of you. What do you want that you 
 have not got ?' said Victor, turning on her 
 with laughing reproach. 
 
 ' Youth — youth — youth !' were the words 
 that rose to her lips with a passionate longing 
 to utter them ; but instead she said, with a 
 careless smile : ' Oh, just a guarantee from 
 fate that I shall always walk the stage 
 bombarded with bouquets.' 
 
 ' To the sound of melodious orchestral 
 music ?' 
 
 'Yes, kept out of sight so that I may 
 not be oiFended by the scraj)ing of the fiddle- 
 bows. Joking aside though, I do often 
 think that life is more like the skeleton of 
 a pantomime than a play, though your poets 
 are so fond of comparing the world to a 
 stage.' 
 
 ' My poets ! aren't you falling in love 
 with any of them on your own account, 
 Helen V 
 
 Miss Paget shook her head with a slight 
 smile. Books had never been much to her.
 
 1 88 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 As for the poets, they seemed to her to be 
 always attitudinizing — inventing words for 
 imaginary raptures and for emotions that 
 entered Httle into real hfe. They wrote 
 endlessly about constancy, and yet they 
 generally ended by making love to other 
 men's wives, though they seldom indulged 
 in the practice to their own. Nature, too, 
 was little to her beyond a setting which, 
 apart from cultivation, had either too many 
 trees or too few — always some quality in 
 excess that a little repelled her.
 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 A PEW days after the garden-party Miss 
 Paget wrote a note to Victor telling him 
 that she had finally decided not to go out in 
 the evenings henceforth except when her 
 father went also. ' I have just sent an 
 excuse to the Masons,' she wrote, ' and it 
 has occurred to me that you might wonder 
 I did not turn up. I have, however, made 
 an arrangement by which I think we can 
 always be sure of seeing each other, at least, 
 on Saturday evenings. I have engaged 
 Mrs. Tillotson to lunch and spend the whole 
 afternoon of that day with me each week.' 
 
 For a short time Miss Paget felt sure she 
 had done wisely in returning to her normal 
 mode of life. 
 
 ' It is very good of you to give up so
 
 I90 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 much, Helen, without even a murmur,' 
 Victor said admiring! 3^ 
 
 * Poor papa, it is too bad to make a cat's- 
 paw of him hke this 1 He hardly knows 
 whether I am in the house or out of it after 
 dinner when we are alone, unless he has mis- 
 laid a dictionary,' thought Miss Paget. But 
 though she did not enjoy the deceit, her eyes 
 brightened with pleasure at Victor's quick 
 appreciation of her supposed unselfishness. 
 
 ' Fortunately, papa is fond of the theatre, 
 and we are to have some good opera comique 
 soon,' she said. ' Oh, the joy of looking at 
 pink-silk bodices instead of watching old 
 gentlemen dining ; of seeing prettily-painted 
 creatures giving joyful hops instead of retail- 
 ing washed-out moralities !' 
 
 Victor came much oftener than the ap- 
 pointed Saturday evenings. Miss Paget's 
 vivacious talk, her enthusiasm as to all he 
 did or said, proved a centre for his thoughts. 
 Events acquired an added interest for him 
 from the charm of reviewing them with her. 
 She was never difficult or exacting with 
 him. She was so much above the average 
 run of girls he met, in intelligence, tact, and
 
 THE SILENT SEA 191 
 
 insight ; there was a subtle flattery in the 
 thought that she so highly prized his com- 
 panionship. Her influence over him was so 
 largely of the moral kind, that it was in 
 reality increased by the thought of her re- 
 nouncing the more seductive dissipations of 
 society, so that her duties might be more 
 loyally fulfilled in the quiet seclusion of home. 
 
 But gradually the underlying strain of 
 falseness in their relationship w^eighed on 
 Miss Paget's mind. She was conscious that 
 she measured her words, modified her judg- 
 ments, exaggerated her likes and dislikes — 
 in a word, that she assiduously toned her 
 mind to suit his. She knew that a part of 
 her character was entirely shielded from his 
 observation, that his estimate of her was in 
 many respects falsely favourable, and that 
 she could not trust his love to let him see 
 her as she really was. 
 
 ' You are always so cheerful, Helen,' he 
 would say. ' I think it must be the people 
 who are constantly going to parties who get 
 so awfully stale and dull.' 
 
 ' Ah, you think I don't depend on outside 
 things for amusement ; but I do.'
 
 192 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 ' As, for example V 
 
 ' The solemn old dinner-parties, two hours 
 long ; the musical assemblies, where the 
 youngest performer is a cracked piano that 
 came to South Australia with the first 
 pioneers ' 
 
 ' And don't forget the scientific converza- 
 siones, where the aboriginal skulls are handed 
 round,' said Victor, entering into the humour 
 of the thing. 
 
 ^ Yes ; and the skeletons of rare beetles, 
 which take away one's breath with love and 
 admiration.' 
 
 They both laughed, and then Victor said, 
 half ruefully : 
 
 ' Just the very things to which people 
 never think of asking me.' 
 
 '- No, my dear boy, you would be quite an 
 anachronism there. People would begin to 
 ask how you came to wander so far out of 
 your own century.' 
 
 When Helen spoke like this, Victor felt 
 how transparently sincere she was ; how 
 little she shrank from dwelling to him on 
 their disparity of years, which other girls 
 would have done their best to ignore.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 193 
 
 But while outwardly, and always in 
 Victor's society, Miss Paget had more rip- 
 pling spirits, and seemed younger than was 
 her wont of old, she secretly often fell into 
 a nervous, morbid, anxious habit of mind, in 
 which she seemed constantly to be waiting 
 for news of disaster. If she was longer than 
 usual in seeing Victor, if business or social 
 engagements obliged him to hurry away 
 after coming, if he appeared to be more 
 thoughtful or in higher spirits than usual — 
 all formed a subject for surmises, for doubts, 
 for sickening apprehensions. How could 
 she tell when the hour might come in which 
 the invincible fascination of youth — the dewy 
 April charm of a girl of sixteen or seven- 
 teen — might lead him to perceive that his 
 Mogul proposal was a boyish freak cun- 
 ningly encouraged ? She knew that to see 
 him, to be near him, to find his eye resting 
 on her, to feel the pressure of his hand, the 
 touch of his lips, made the blood in her 
 veins course with strange, sharp tremors as 
 if of imprisoned flame. It was like a revela- 
 tion of what life really meant. 
 
 Yet all the time she also knew that his feel- 
 VOL. 1. VS
 
 194 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 ing for her was essentially different. She 
 made no illusions for herself on this point. 
 Her great and only hope was that, as time 
 went on, his frank, affectionate nature would 
 gradually root itself in his attachment to 
 her till it became a bond strong enough to 
 weather all the storms and chances of life. 
 But to have time granted to one — is not 
 that the supreme gift invariably denied, the 
 supreme denial that turns a possible victory 
 into the most disastrous of failures ? 
 
 In the midst of Miss Paget's ceaseless tur- 
 moil of hopes and apprehensions, a day came on 
 which she seemed to find all her fears verified. 
 
 * By the way, have you heard, Helen, that 
 Freddy Mason and Victor Fitz-Gibbon are 
 evidently falling in love with each other ?' 
 said Mrs. Tillotson, looking up from a hideous 
 Afofhan blanket she was tricottinoc for some 
 bazaar. 
 
 Miss Paget could never recollect what 
 reply she made, but doubtless it was found 
 satisfactory by her good old ancestral friend, 
 who never went about without a packet of 
 leaflet tracts and a large pouch of gossip, 
 more or less inchoate.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 195 
 
 She rambled on with divers other mor- 
 sels of intelligence till her carriage — which 
 had been resumed once more owing to a 
 brilliant rise in silver shares — called to take 
 her to some charity meeting in the city. 
 
 Miss Paget sat for some time overcome 
 with a confused agitation, hardly knowing 
 what thoughts passed through her mind, 
 the first coherent one of which she was con- 
 scious being : ' It is only what I have been 
 expecting ... and after a little I shall feel, 
 perhaps, that it is a relief 
 
 In the meantime she was stricken with a 
 sensation of dull, physical prostration. She 
 went to the window and involuntarily pushed 
 it open, feeling that the atmosphere had 
 suddenly grown very heavy. There were 
 swallows wheeling over the fountain opposite, 
 darting down to the water's surface, and 
 then taking short flights into the air, their 
 clear twittering notes filling the whole at- 
 mosphere. An Ophir rosebush near at hand 
 drooped under a cataract of burning buds 
 and early opening petals. In the near dis- 
 tance the city lay fringed all round with the 
 wide shadowy park-lands. To the east the
 
 196 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 hills, in softly curved folds, rose in the blue 
 air, their slopes sprinkled with houses gleam- 
 ing whitely in the midst of wide vineyards, 
 orchards, and gardens, all bathed in the warm, 
 still sunshine of a cloudless September day. 
 
 ' It is all very peaceful and beautiful. 
 How much there is in the world one might 
 care for !' Miss Paget said to herself, as she 
 looked at the scene. Then she sighed, a 
 short, half-sobbing sigh. ' Am I going to 
 cry ?' she said half aloud, as if there were 
 someone near whose presence would save 
 her from such imbecility. 
 
 At that moment a messenger came from 
 her father, and she hastened into the 
 library. 
 
 ' Helen, do you know anything of the 
 second volume of my new Greek Anthology ? 
 Then where can it be ? I want to look it 
 u]j. I am not sure, but I strongly suspect 
 that my old friend Codrington has treated 
 an amphimacer as a dactyl. It is hard not 
 to be able to consult anyone on a point like 
 this. Can anyone tell me why a man like 
 Asterisk is called a professor of dead lan- 
 guages ?'
 
 THE SILENT SEA 197 
 
 ^ Unless it is, papa, that he sometimes 
 wears a hood, and has, perhaps, cut open a 
 toad,' answered Miss Paget, a suggestion 
 which pleased her father. 
 
 After sundry tomes and magazines had 
 been turned over, the missing volume was 
 discovered. While searching for it. Miss 
 Paget suddenly thought that, of all the 
 people she knew, no one retailed more base- 
 less tales than Mrs. Tillotson. She would 
 not believe this. And yet again, as she 
 mused over the past two weeks, a hundred 
 confirmatory proofs rose up. How very 
 often of late had Victor been at the Masons' 
 house — how often had he spoken of the 
 family ! Miss Paget, hardly knowing what 
 she did, seized a pen, and for the first time 
 in her life gave expression to the tremulous, 
 all-absorbing emotion with which this love 
 had flooded her life. Swift as the swiftest sea- 
 swallows thoughts came to her. . . . Never, 
 never before had the flower of vivid, adequate 
 expression come so fully within her range. 
 When she finished, she resolved to deny 
 herself to Victor till he wrote to say this 
 letter had reached liim. She sealed aiid
 
 198 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 addressed it, then stared at it for a few 
 moments and tore it into tiny fragments. 
 No, never would she so humihate herself for 
 the sake of any human being, or any possible 
 happiness ! 
 
 At half-past eight there was a ring at the 
 hall-door. Miss Paget felt as if her heart 
 were beating in her ears when she saw Victor 
 entering. Had he come to tell her ? 
 
 ' Helen, you are not well,' he said, holding 
 her hand as he looked into her face. He 
 was in evening dress, and looked so young 
 and light-hearted, and radiantly strong and 
 well, it seemed as though his mere presence 
 should give the lie to fear and gnawing 
 care. 
 
 ' Oh, it is only my throat that is a little 
 queer,' answered Miss Paget. 
 
 At the moment it was true, for she felt a 
 dry, convulsive motion in it, and her voice 
 sounded a little hoarse. Victor was all con- 
 
 cern. 
 
 ' Very likely you have been reading aloud 
 to your father half the day ?' he said a little 
 reproachfully. 
 
 It darted through her mind like a sting
 
 THE SILENT SEA 199 
 
 that the picture Hnmed of her in the young 
 man's mind was much more beautiful than 
 the reahty. For a moment she felt as if 
 she must tell him all — her corroding fears, 
 her miserable little subterfuges. But she 
 managed to keep herself in hand. 
 
 ' I have read very little to-day,' she 
 answered; 'nothing, I believe, but an awfully 
 stupid little story in a book I happened to 
 pick up.' 
 
 ' May I hear what it was ?' 
 
 ' A mere nothing about an old French 
 duke who had been very much in love, and 
 then got very much out of it, and told the 
 lady so, giving her at the same time very 
 good advice.' 
 
 * He must have been a magnanimous child 
 of nature,' said Victor, laughing. ' What 
 could he find to say ?' 
 
 ' Oh, he said, '' We loved each other once, 
 but now it is quite over. Believe me, con- 
 stancy is a very tiresome and a veiy doubtful 
 virtue. It is much better to foroet thing's 
 when they are once done witli. This is a 
 very pretty little dog of yours. Who gave 
 it to you ?" '
 
 200 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 * Oh, he was jealous of her ! Mind, you 
 are never to take a Httle dog from any- 
 body but me, Helen,' said Victor. 
 
 How buoyantly he laughed ! After all, 
 there could not be a shadow of truth in 
 the Tillotson story. He would not meet 
 her eyes with such frank good-will if there 
 were. He was on his way to a musical 
 evening at a house not far off. He meant 
 to come earlier, so as to be able to stay 
 longer ; but he had been kept at the office, 
 going over miles of figures with his uncle. 
 When leaving, he expressed a hope that he 
 should see her at a private dramatic enter- 
 tainment at the house of the Masons. She 
 had accepted tentatively for herself and her 
 father. But she did not know till the 
 curtain rose who the dramatis personce were. 
 
 It is well established that no drama can 
 liave the distinction of being performed by 
 amateurs unless it has a rejected and 
 successful lover. It seemed equally estab- 
 lished just then with some of the people 
 who went in for such entertainments in 
 Adelaide that their success hung on securing 
 Victor for the rdle of the triumphant lover.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 201 
 
 ' Nature moulded him for that part,' was 
 the verdict of a young married lady, who 
 seemed to cherish a conviction that nature 
 had, with equal benevolence, designed her- 
 self for the part of the young woman who 
 is agreeably harassed by rival suitors. But 
 on the present occasion this vole was sus- 
 tained by Miss Freddy Mason, whose name 
 had been coupled with Victor's by Mrs. 
 Tillotson on the previous day. . . . Yes, 
 she was very young, and often very pretty, 
 with that sparkling, irregular kind of pretti- 
 iiess that is far more dangerous than beauty 
 of a more refined and classic type. 
 
 The play began with an amusing scene of 
 a misunderstanding and a gradual reconcilia- 
 tion between the young lady and Victor. 
 They both acted with great verve and an 
 absence of the stiffness that so often renders 
 amateur actors so pathetic a failure. 
 
 ' What a charming pair of lovers they 
 make !' was whispered on all sides. 
 
 Mrs. Tillotson, nodding and smiling, made 
 her way to Miss Paget between the acts. 
 
 ' You see, my dear, it is as I told you,' 
 she whispered.
 
 202 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 In the enthusiasm of watching a love 
 affair in its nascent stages, the good lady had 
 quite forgotten her vague hopes regarding 
 the niece whose designs for bellows were to 
 be so much elevated by a stud}^ of the Old 
 Masters. 
 
 Miss Paget gave an answering smile, and 
 said they were just the right age to play at 
 being lovers without seeming ridiculous. To 
 others who hinted and speculated in the same 
 vein she made replies equally nimble and 
 indifferent. 
 
 She found it an interminable evening. 
 Now and then she had a little sensation of 
 giddiness, as if she were clambering over 
 places with insufficient foothold. But she 
 chatted and smiled, and looked grave and 
 arch, amused and sympathetic, quite at the 
 right moments till the close. . . . She re- 
 called posters she had seen on an old carved 
 gateway at Cairo, announcing the arrival of 
 some jugglers in big scarlet words that were 
 specially eloquent as to the ' excentricites 
 aeriennes par la jolie et I'inenarrable equili- 
 briste Mile. Cardinale.' She felt as if she 
 were a second Mile. Cardinale, but, fortu-
 
 THE SILENT SEA 203 
 
 nately, without any audience beyond her- 
 self. 
 
 She told her father he looked fatigued. 
 He admitted feeling so, and their carriage 
 was ordered early. Victor overtook them 
 in the halL 
 
 ' You are going, Helen, and I have not 
 even spoken to you,' he said in an under- 
 tone after he had shaken hands with her 
 father. 
 
 ' Oh yes,' she answered, smiling, but there 
 was no mirth in her eyes. ' All those 
 pretty speeches you made as the Romeo of 
 the play — I took them all to myself. Was 
 I very silly ?' 
 
 Despite her smile and the studied care- 
 lessness of her words, there was a strained, 
 hard ring in her voice, and Victor regarded 
 her with a half-puzzled, half-inquiring look. 
 
 ' Will you be at home to-morrow even- 
 ing ?' he said, as he followed her to the 
 carriage. ' Then may I come for an hour or 
 so ? Thank you so very much !' 
 
 When he came, the first thing he spoke 
 of was a letter which had reached the office 
 that morning — the unexpected resignation
 
 204 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 of the purser at the mine in which he was 
 now largely interested. Mr. Stuart Druni- 
 mond was chairman of directors, and one of 
 his clerks acted as town secretary. 
 
 ' So here's a chance for me to go into the 
 Bush, Helen. Shall I go to the Colmar 
 Mine?' he said, half jestingly. 
 
 Her heart leapt with a quick sense of 
 deliverance at the thought. . . . Oh, if 
 Victor were only safe in the social isolation 
 of such a place for the next two or three 
 months ! 
 
 ' The Cclmar Mine ! Where is that V 
 she asked, to gain time while she debated 
 with herself what would be the best grounds 
 on which to urge his departure. 
 
 They looked U23 a map of South Australia, 
 and he showed her whereabouts in the midst 
 of the Salt-bush country the Colmar reef 
 stretched for miles from east to west. They 
 both looked at it, neither of them speaking 
 for a little. 
 
 The evening was warm, and the doors and 
 windows were wide open. In the distance 
 rose the shrill whistle of a railway train ; 
 nearer at hand the rumble of tram-cars and
 
 THE SILENT SEA 20; 
 
 the roll of carriages. And in between 
 these common sounds of a city stole at 
 intervals the long-drawn, plaintive calls of a 
 curlew from the midst of a bosky dell of 
 weeping - willows on the banks of the 
 Torrens. 
 
 ' Wouldn't it be dreadfully dull for you 
 if you went there ?' asked Miss Paget 
 slowly. 
 
 ' If I were it would be a new sensation ; 
 and you know you told me once on the 
 Mogul that was one of the elements of 
 happiness,' he answered, smiling. 
 
 ' Did I ? I knew nothing about it then,' 
 replied Miss Paget half bitterly, as she 
 realized how the new sensations of the past 
 few weeks had robbed her of all peace of 
 mind. ^ And you would have to rough 
 it a good deal,' she added, after a pause. 
 
 ' Not very much. It would be a half- 
 and-half sort of arrangement, without the 
 joys of society or the bliss of lawlessness. 
 That's one reason why I didn't take so very 
 kindly to the thought of going — that and 
 Uncle Stuart's anxiety that I should take 
 the billet for a couple of months. Now
 
 2o6 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 you see, Helen, what a cantankerous Irish- 
 man I am.' 
 
 ' And the parties and amateur theatricals, 
 don't they count, too ?' 
 
 ' Ah, yes. By Jove, if I go, Miss 
 Mason will have me drawn and quartered ! 
 We were to give three representations of 
 the " Old Story " in the next two weeks in 
 aid of some charities.' 
 
 Miss Paget would not trust herself to 
 discuss Miss Mason's view of the case. 
 
 * You would sooner go in the prospecting 
 party, then ?' she said slowly. 
 
 * Oh yes. The travelling and camping out 
 and cooking are so jolly ! Did you ever eat 
 potatoes roasted in their jackets in hot ashes?' 
 
 ' No, never.' 
 
 ' Then, Helen, you don't know how really 
 heavenly-minded a potato can be. And the 
 teals cooked between red-hot stones in a 
 hole in the ground, and the waking up at 
 night with the stars shining through the 
 gum-tree overhead, making their nightly 
 procession across the sky, and all sorts of 
 mysterious sounds in the woods ! That 
 curlew — do you hear her ? — brings it all
 
 THE SILENT SEA 207 
 
 back to me — the vacations we used to spend 
 hunting on the Murray.' 
 
 As Victor hstened to the soft waiHno- 
 notes a strange and sudden sense of disap- 
 pointment fell on him. Fortune had smiled 
 on him far beyond his expectations in those 
 bo^nsh school-days not long gone by, and he 
 was an affianced lover, for so in honour he 
 considered himself But what was it that 
 had escaped him ? what inexplicable charm 
 had eluded him ? A lover ! — and accepted ! 
 The bare thought used to agitate him with 
 shudders of vague delicious expectations, 
 and now it was all so calm, so matter-of-fact. 
 Was it the sobering influence of property 
 and of being nearly come of age ? 
 
 Unconsciously he was overtaken by one 
 of those brief, wistful reveries that come 
 alike to age and early youth. Age, with 
 its fatigue and ennui, its weariness of dis- 
 illusion and wasted effbrt, its growing indi- 
 gence of feeling and of the springs of action, 
 takes refuge in memories of that vanished 
 springtide when none of the daughters of 
 music were laid low. Youth, with its keen, 
 unworn senses, with its capacities of sensa-
 
 2o8 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 tion deeper than the source of tears and 
 laughter, vibrating to the verge of pain to 
 all the mysterious calls of life, finds in such 
 reveries a foretaste of the thrilling adven- 
 tures, prophesied by the fulness of life that 
 throbs in its veins and fancies. 
 
 Miss Paget saw the look of dreamy ab- 
 sorption in Victor's face, and the words 
 ' evidently falling in love ' came back to her 
 like a ghostly warning. 
 
 ' One sees that you have made sonnets of 
 it all before now, Victor,' said Miss Paget, 
 uneasy at this lapse of sequence in their 
 talk. 
 
 He did not repel the insinuation. In- 
 deed, it was over some of his boyish verses 
 that their comradeship on the Mocjul had first 
 taken a tenderer and more confidential tinge. 
 
 ' I think one gets rather sick of so much 
 town,' he said, with a short, half-checked 
 sigh. 
 
 ' Well, if my wishes have weight with 
 you, I say go to the Colmar Mine.' 
 
 Victor looked a little taken aback at the 
 calm seriousness of Miss Paget's manner. 
 She went on in the same earnest tone :
 
 THE SILENT SEA 209 
 
 * I have been thinking for the last week or 
 two that our months of waitinof would be a 
 more real probation if you went quite away.' 
 
 * You would really like me to go, Helen ? 
 Then that decides the matter.' 
 
 Victor closed the atlas, and stood up ; 
 strode to the open window, and then back 
 to Miss Paget's side. The prospect of 
 plunging into a new mode of existence had 
 in it some undefined element of relief 
 
 ' I'll take a hammer or two and go pros- 
 pecting till I discover a new gold-mine. I'll 
 load you with barbaric crowns of unalloyed 
 metal when I return, Helen,' he said, with 
 boyish glee. * The greatest drawback is 
 th it Uncle Stuart will be pleased at my 
 going. I wonder what the mater will say ?' 
 
 As for Miss Paget, she was so deeply 
 moved that she could not at first trust her- 
 self to speak. She was overcome with a 
 feeling of relief and thankfulness at this 
 unlooked-for solution of the miserable and 
 humiliating state of anxiety and unrest into 
 which she had fallen. She despised herself 
 for it, and fought against it all the time, 
 but unavailingly. She had told herself that 
 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 2IO THE SILENT SEA 
 
 she should in reahty covet every opportunity 
 of putting Victor to the test of changing. 
 But though she still retained the power of 
 seeing things as they were, she had lost 
 that of being dispassionate, or acting sin- 
 cerely. She had gone on her way so 
 placidly — with so cool and conscious a self- 
 possession — all these years. The nearest 
 approach to love-making in her life hitherto 
 had been a few sober proposals of marriage 
 from middle-aged men. They made her 
 smile — the idea of people at their time of 
 life risking their peaceful solitude by 
 imitating the squires of troubadour songs. 
 But no, they had no thought of emotion ; 
 it was rather the prudent union of two 
 sufficient incomes that had fired the imagina- 
 tion of her elderly swains. . . . And now 
 in the midst of her assured tranquillity she 
 had been suddenly snared. It seemed as if 
 her limits in the range of other emotions, 
 and those biting memories of an unhappy, 
 loveless girlhood, all combined to make her 
 cling to this one passionate affection with a 
 vehemence which held her will and judg- 
 ment in subjection.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 211 
 
 Her voice was a little shaken, but she 
 smiled as she said : - 
 
 ' But though your uncle may be pleased, 
 some others will be sorry. Remember, Miss 
 Mason ' 
 
 ^ Oh yes ! Can you keep a secret, Helen ? 
 That young lady is to be my sister-in-law. 
 Lance has proposed, and is accepted. They 
 are waiting for her father's consent. Lance 
 doesn't expect the paternal blessing till he 
 ofets a rise.' 
 
 ' Oh, really !' 
 
 This was all Miss Paget's response to the 
 news which scattered her worst fears to the 
 wind. But she did not regret having 
 helped Victor to decide on going to the 
 mine. Still less so, when, a few days before 
 he left town, her father suddenly resolved to 
 go to Colombo to meet an old friend there, 
 who had been ordered by his doctor to leave 
 England for a warmer climate. 
 
 ' Perhaps we may bring Professor Cod- 
 rington back with us, Helen,' said her father. 
 
 And when Miss Paget made some rather 
 irrelevant reply, he said, in a somewhat severe 
 tone :
 
 212 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 ' My dear, I presume you are aware that 
 he is the greatest living authority on classic 
 metres ?' 
 
 This information Miss Paget duly com- 
 municated to Victor when he came to sav 
 good-bye. 
 
 ' Well, don't you let him present you 
 with a little dog, else I'll be making 
 speeches to you on the wisdom of for- 
 getting things,' said Victor gaily. 
 
 Then he kissed her and went away. 
 When she was alone Miss Paget crouched 
 down as if strength had suddenly departed 
 from her. 
 
 * But I will retain the command of 
 myself,' she murmured brokenly. 
 
 And she registered a great vow that, come 
 what might, she would not, till the period 
 of probation was over, betray the strength 
 of the passion that had mastered her 
 nature.
 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 The Colmar Mine is three hundred miles to 
 the north-east of Adelaide, in the Hundred 
 of Colmar, in the heart of the Salt-bush 
 country — a far - reaching district, known 
 variously according to local variations as 
 the Salt - bush Wilderness, the Dwarf 
 Desert, and the Waterless Country. But 
 by whatever name it may be familiar before 
 it is seen, the region transcends in uncom- 
 promising bareness any mental vision that 
 may be evoked by its names. 
 
 A wilderness calls up a sombre un- 
 inhabited country ; a desert, land that has 
 never been tilled ; while waterless country 
 is in itself a description of parched- up 
 barrenness. But a wilderness may have 
 luxuriant herbage. A desert may consist
 
 214 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 of leafy scrub or shady forest. And a land 
 in which rain is seldom seen, and rivers 
 never, yet sometimes has great rocks whose 
 shadow, falling on the thirsty ground, may 
 serve as a symbol of man's salvation. But 
 in this eerie waste there is no grass, no 
 trees, no water — hardly the semblance of a 
 hill. In many parts the sole vegetation 
 consists of the salt-bush, a sad-coloured, low- 
 creeping bush, more gray than green, which 
 breaks when trodden on, with a brittle snap 
 like dry stubble. 
 
 In some places the salt-bush grows in 
 sparse clumps, in others the shrub is dense, 
 and spreads more continuously. And yet 
 aofain there are wide stretches in which the 
 earth lies almost naked, baked into reddish 
 gaping fissures. When rain falls, it is with 
 a tempestuous rush — in a fury that lashes 
 the earth instead of nourishing it into fruit- 
 fulness. The stony water -courses are at 
 such times filled with water ; but high as 
 it may rise, in a few days all traces of it 
 disappear. The slender gray -green filaments 
 of nameless plants die away. The earth, 
 lying in flat monotonous uniformity ; the
 
 THE SILENT SEA 215 
 
 cloudless sky, j^^llid with continual heat ; 
 the wide majestic sweep of the horizon, 
 where the silent earth seems to pass into 
 the quiet sky ; the austere desolation and 
 sterility — these are the things that remain. 
 The air is seldom cloven with the beating 
 of a bird's wings. Still more rarely does 
 the presence of man break the solitude. 
 Sheep-runs are few and far between. Many 
 that were once fairly prosperous are now 
 forsaken. The squatter might struggle with 
 the chronic drought, for the salt-bush is an 
 ascetic that has learned the secret of living 
 without water in very barren soil, and sheep 
 that are to the manner born can live on salt- 
 bush. But a more implacable foe than 
 drought came in the rabbit, who is fruitful, 
 and multiplies in these arid regions, till ever} 
 other creature that has the breath of life is 
 exterminated. The rabbits swarm in the 
 Hundred of Colmar, but they cannot affect 
 its chief industry, which is mining. The 
 country is here intersected with low, sullen- 
 looking reefs, running chiefly from east to 
 west, marked at varying intervals by iron- 
 stone outcrops. It is on the southern side,
 
 2 1 6 THE SJLEA T SEA 
 
 near the western end of one of these reefs, 
 that the Colmar Mine is situated, within 
 eighteen miles of Nilpeena, a small town- 
 ship on the Great Northern Railway line. 
 Half a mile to the south-west of the mine 
 there is a township, also called Colmar, that 
 sprang into existence when the mine was 
 started. An inn, two stores, a blacksmith's 
 forge, a schoolroom, a post and telegraph- 
 office, a boarding-house or two for the miners, 
 comprise the bulk of the houses, all, with 
 the exception of the front part of the inn, 
 made of iron. 
 
 The country between Nilpeena and Col- 
 mar is partly wooded, partly dotted with 
 reefs, and the reefs are dotted witli the re- 
 mains of many attempts at reaping an 
 underground harvest out of the earth, whose 
 surface looks as barren as that of the barren 
 sea. It is apparent to the least instructed 
 eye that the country is rich in minerals. 
 Gold, silver and copper have been found there, 
 but the land is mostly waterless, and opera- 
 tions for the most part have been fitful, erratic, 
 and unskilful. Thus out of thirty so-called 
 mines and diggings that have been started
 
 THE SILENT SEA 217 
 
 within a radius of forty miles in the Colmar 
 district, all except half a dozen remain inef- 
 fectual beginnings. 
 
 Their sites are marked by the squalid 
 debris of heaps of dirt and stones that look 
 as if burrowed up by larger rabbits than 
 those that have come to be the normal pro- 
 prietors of the country. Around these 
 heaps lie smaller ones — crude chimney- 
 stacks of unmortared stones ; rotting sacks, 
 full of native grasses, that have served as 
 mattresses ; broken tent-poles, with flutter- 
 ing strips of tattered calico or duck ; 
 smashed bottles ; empty rusting tins ; shreds 
 of slop-store clothing ; battered ' billy '-cans ; 
 old hats, whose slovenly greasy brims speak 
 eloquently of the loafers that make up 
 a large proportion of the nomads, ever on 
 the move to these shifting El Dorados, 
 where in a few days some 'lucky beggar' 
 has picked up enough gold to keep him in 
 grog and idleness for a couple of months or 
 years, as the case may be. The Salt-bush 
 country, as has been said, is, for the most part, 
 a desert waste, with but few traces of man's 
 presence. But those that are found in the
 
 21 8 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 form of deserted shafts and the sites of small 
 alluvial diggings, degrade and vulgarize the 
 landscape. 
 
 Even the Colmar Mine, which, since 
 it first came into existence twenty years 
 ago, has never been quite deserted, and is, 
 as gold-mines go in South Austraha, on a 
 large and prosperous scale, forms an un- 
 sightly excrescence in the wide, austere and 
 melancholy plain that stretches around it 
 to unimaginable distances. The enormous 
 stack vomiting out smoke night and day, 
 the long irregular engine-house of galvanized 
 iron, with its perpetual roar of machinery, 
 the great heaps of bluish mullock, the 
 equally massive mounds of red and chocolate- 
 coloured tailings, the groups of squalid iron 
 huts and motley patched tents in which the 
 miners live, each feature speaks of a form of 
 existence radically divorced from all that con- 
 stitutes civilized life ; an existence, for the most 
 part, unlovely as that of a tribe of savages, 
 but without the savage tribe's picturesque 
 wanderings ; also, it may be added, without 
 its occasional famines. But though the daily 
 routine and surroundings of the Colmar mine
 
 THE SILENT SEA 219 
 
 are dull and prosaic to a degree, its history 
 is not without some spice of adventure and 
 variety. Gold was first found there by a 
 solitary bushman, who had gone prospecting, 
 and came upon a rich gutter of gold near 
 the surface, from which he extracted over 
 £5 00 worth of gold in a few weeks. He 
 was robbed and murdered by two tramps, 
 who surprised him as he was about to carry 
 away his treasure. The murderers were con- 
 victed and hanged. The notoriety thus 
 gained by the Col mar, as a place in which a 
 man with a pick and shovel and a digger's 
 dish might pick up a couple of hundred 
 pounds a week, caused a great rush to the 
 neighbourhood. But once the gravelly drifts 
 of an old water-course had been exhausted, 
 the place proved to have little alluvial gold. 
 A long low reef close to the old creek was 
 found, however, to have a very rich lode. 
 In a short time a company was floated, 
 chiefly with English capital. 
 
 Expensive machinery was bought; a large 
 substantial house for the mining manager 
 and numerous offices were erected. In short, 
 everything was done on that handsome and
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 lavish scale in which business is so often 
 conducted when it consists in paying away 
 other people's money. After a few years, 
 during which the directors drew handsome 
 fees, and the shareholders' experience largely 
 consisted in paying unexpected calls, the 
 English company was wound up, and the 
 Colmar Mine was bought by a Melbourne 
 syndicate. The new company had a shaft 
 sunk a quarter of a mile away from the old 
 one at what proved to be a junction of 
 lodes in 'kindly country.' The results were for 
 a time sensationally good. The sweet sim- 
 plicity of high monthly dividends was main- 
 tained for nearly two years. During that 
 time the Melbourne syndicate placed the 
 shares on the Adelaide market and sold them 
 all at an astonishingly profitable rate. It 
 was then that Mr. Shaw Drummond became 
 so large a shareholder. Three years after- 
 wards the dividends waned, and then finally 
 stopped for more than two years. People 
 said the lode had pinched out, and shares 
 were very low indeed. 
 
 Then came a succession of sensational 
 crushings. New shares were issued, and the
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 capital thus called up was devoted to fresh 
 development. Dividends were once more 
 lesumed in an intermittent way. So the 
 Colmar Mine went on for years after it was 
 owned by an Adelaide company — sometimes 
 almost coming to a standstill, at others gal- 
 vanized into feverish popularity by extraor- 
 dinarily good crushings -; sometimes paying 
 ])henomenal dividends, at other times none. 
 One year it would be well managed ; another 
 well robbed. One month yielding forty per 
 cent, on the capital invested ; the next, per- 
 haps not enough to cover working expenses. 
 At last, after the history of the Colmar had 
 been for two years more erratic than ever, 
 an American manager of great skill and ex- 
 ]}erience was secured. For more than a 
 year Mr. Joseph S. Dunning worked the 
 Colmar Mine at a wonderfully reduced cost 
 and a rapidly increasing profit. But once 
 more, what people began to call the bad luck 
 of the mine re-asserted itself One after- 
 noon Dunning went down into the mine 
 hale and well, and half an hour later was 
 taken out a corpse through the carelessness, 
 or ignorance, of a new ' shift-boss,' who had
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 at the wrong time set a fuse to a charge of 
 dynamite. The directors despaired of find- 
 ing anyone worthy of coming after the 
 lamented American manager. But in the 
 course of a week they succeeded in inducing 
 an exceptionally good all-round man to take 
 the position of manager at least tentatively 
 — one whose mining experience was wide 
 and thorough, and whose character stood 
 high for probity. This was William Trevas- 
 kis, a justice of the peace and late M.P. for 
 a town constituency. He had made a for- 
 tune chiefly by mining, but through two 
 financial disasters, which occurred almost 
 simultaneously — the roguery of a man with 
 whom he had been in partnership as a land- 
 agent, and the failure of a local bank in which 
 he had been largely interested — Trevaskis 
 had in a short time been rendered almost 
 penniless. 
 
 He reached the mine one morning in 
 September, nine days before Victor Fitz- 
 Gibbon came there as purser. One of the 
 periodic droughts of the district was raging 
 that season, and a high north wind was 
 blowing, which blurred the light of the sun
 
 THE SILENT SEA 223 
 
 and made the air thick with grit and Wind- 
 ing dust. This was more especially the case 
 in the vicinity of the mine, where the vast 
 heaps of mullock and tailings dispersed them- 
 selves in the atmosphere on the slightest 
 provocation. 
 
 ' Thick enough to cut with a shovel, isn't 
 it, captain ?' said Searle, the then purser of 
 the mine, who was showing the new manager 
 over the offices. 
 
 ' Is it often like this V asked Trevaskis in 
 a Qfruff voice, rubbing- the dust out of his 
 eyes. 
 
 ^ Oh, not more than three days a week, till 
 Noveriiber. But from November till ' 
 
 ' What in thunder is the use of that long 
 iron passage V said Trevaskis in a tone of 
 amazement. 
 
 The two had come round out of the assay- 
 room and the purser's office, which were at 
 the southern end of the row^ of buildinofs 
 generically termed ' the offices.' At the 
 northern end was the manager's office, with 
 a bedroom opening out of it at the back. 
 There were six rooms in all, one opening 
 into the other. The three between the
 
 224 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 manager's office and the purser's were used 
 as store-rooms. 
 
 ^ I was waiting for you to exclaim about 
 that passage, captain,' said Searle, with a 
 dehghted chuckle. He was a plump, red- 
 faced little man, in a continual effusion of 
 garrulity, without the power of discriminat- 
 ing between a contemptuous and a deeply 
 interested listener. He had been four years 
 in the mine off and on, and was never so 
 happy as when he was showing a new-comer 
 round the place for the first time, telling 
 endless stories about it, dwelling with im- 
 mense complacency on all that made it, 
 * taken all in all, the most remarkable mine 
 in the whole of South Australia, perhaps, 
 indeed, on this side of the Southern 
 Cross.' 
 
 As Trevaskis stood staring at the long 
 narrow passage of corrugated iron, six feet 
 high, with a flat roof of the same material, 
 lit at intervals by small single panes of glass 
 let into the sides, Searle felt that the moment 
 had come for him to fire off this sentence 
 on the ' captain.' But he had hardly made 
 a beginning when Trevaskis turned away
 
 THE SILENT SEA 225 
 
 from him with an impatient and scornful 
 grunt. 
 
 ' Is this the key of my office V he said 
 shortly, fumbhng among the bunch Searle 
 had given him. The purser stood open- 
 mouthed, hardly crediting his senses. He 
 had impatiently awaited the proud and happy 
 moment when this strange passage, which 
 started from the manaofer's office and ter- 
 minated at the other end in an irregular 
 circular iron building on the side of the reef, 
 should strike the stranger with unbounded 
 astonishment and curiosity. And now the 
 new manager gave an ill-mannered grunt, and 
 turned his back on one of the most distinc- 
 tive and mysterious features of the Colinar 
 Mine ! 
 
 ' Mlow me, captain,' said Searle, recover- 
 ing his scattered senses, and unlocking the 
 door. When he turned round he caught 
 Trevaskis' eyes fixed on the passage with 
 a puzzled look. This was balm to Searle's 
 wounded feelings, and he instantly attacked 
 the subject once more. ' Did you ever see 
 the like of that at a mine before, captain V 
 he asked briskly. 
 
 VOL. I. 15
 
 226 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 ^ I can't say that I have. What is it 
 for V 
 
 ' You see the length of it — or at least 
 you would if the wind was not so thick 
 with dust. It is three hundred and twenty 
 feet in length — three hundred and twenty 
 feet — six feet high and six feet wide — 
 and ' 
 
 ' But what the devil is it for V 
 
 But Searle, who never stopped talking 
 as long as he could get a listener, was too 
 often forced to tell a thrice-told tale. He 
 was consequently not inclined to waste a 
 subject so criminally as to come so soon to 
 the point. 
 
 ' You see this key, captain ?' he said, 
 holding up one of the door-keys on the 
 manager s bunch that was smaller than the 
 rest. ' Well, that key opens this door at 
 the end of your office, and when you open 
 that door you're in the passage. You go 
 along that passage for three hundred and 
 twenty feet, and then you come to a cave — 
 a regular cave made into a large-sized room — 
 scooped out of the side of the reef, and ven- 
 tilated with a stope. The room is full of old
 
 THE SILENT SEA 227 
 
 machinery that belonged to the English 
 company — a couple of furnaces, retorts, 
 blanket tables, a bunk near the entrance, a 
 table, a chair ' 
 
 Searle paused to take breath. He fully 
 expected that before he had reached so far 
 in his description, Trevaskis would have set 
 off down the passage to examine the place 
 for himself. But instead of this his face 
 wore a look of stony indifference. 
 
 ' It's simply marvellous !' he gasped, 
 making a despairing effort to infect his 
 listener with a little becoming enthusiasm. 
 
 ' What is marvellous V 
 
 ' Why, that big underground place tun- 
 nelled into the reef, and connected with the 
 manager's office by a passage three hundred 
 and twenty ' 
 
 ' Damn the three hundred and twenty 
 feet !' cried Trevaskis, in a tone of intense 
 irritation. ' What is the thing used for ?' 
 
 ' First there was some sort of natural 
 cave, they say, and this was much enlarged. 
 This enlargement was first undertaken by 
 one Doolan,' returned Searle, in a grave, un- 
 moved, historical kind of voice. * That was
 
 228 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 before my time. They say he felt the heat 
 dreadfully, and used to stay down there 
 cool and quiet, without noise or dust, when 
 the thermometer went above 115° in the 
 shade. The next manager took it into his 
 head that he got on the track of a good 
 lode there, and set , some men to work it. 
 This made the place still larger, but I don't 
 know about the gold. There were a lot of 
 queer yarns floating round, I believe.' 
 
 ' Did you ever know a mine that hadn't 
 a bagful of lies told about it every week ?' 
 said Trevaskis, who was longing for an 
 opportunity to have done with these reminis- 
 cences of his predecessors. 
 
 ' Well, every manager that comes seems 
 to think the one before him was a fool or a 
 rogue.' 
 
 ' I think some of the managers you've 
 had here were both,' said Trevaskis. * I'm 
 sure the man who made this passage ' 
 
 * Ah, I'm coming to that. This passage 
 was made by Webster ' 
 
 ' What ! the man who turned miser here, 
 and then went mad ?' 
 
 ' The same, captain. I don't want to
 
 THE SILENT SEA 229 
 
 make anyone out blacker than he is, but 
 I'd just Kke to tell you what I know myself 
 personally ' 
 
 ' Thank you, I'm afraid I haven't got 
 time to-day,' answered Trevaskis, pulling 
 out his watch. ^ We must confine ourselves 
 for the rest of the time to business. It 
 isn't a very cheerful subject. Webster 
 became a raving lunatic ; Dunning was 
 killed in the twinkling of an eye. It only 
 remains for me to cut my throat to finish 
 up the record. Well, I only came for a 
 month to try it. I don't fancy I shall stay 
 lonofer than that.' 
 
 Never had Searle been more bitterly 
 disappointed in his anticipations of acting as 
 showman to the Colmar Mine. It was bad 
 enough to treat the cave room and the 
 passage three hundred and twenty feet long 
 with surly contempt, but to have the histor}^ 
 of Webster — of whom Searle could never 
 think without a certain shiver in the marrow 
 of his backbone — put by and j)assed over 
 like an old woman's ghost story ! The little 
 man's heart swelled within him, and he 
 went throusfli the rest of his duties with
 
 230 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 Trevaskis observing the most dignified 
 reserve. 
 
 When at half-past one he watched 
 Trevaskis going to dinner at the Colmar 
 Arms with a lowering brow and a set look 
 on his face, the purser, though the least 
 vindictive of men, felt assured that if the 
 new captain took himself off at the end of a 
 month he would be no loss to good-fellow- 
 ship — an opinion he felt no scruple in 
 expressing to the engineer, with whom he 
 boarded at the three-roomed weather-board 
 hut of one of the shift bosses close to the 
 mine. 
 
 ' I believe you're right there, Tom,' said 
 the engineer. ' You see, he was at the top 
 of the tree a short time ago in town. I 
 think having to come here has put him off 
 his chump so much he'll never have a civil 
 word to throw at a dog. But as to chuck- 
 ing up £600 a year with times so bad- 
 why, that's another matter.' 
 
 This was exactly the aspect of the case 
 which was at that moment forcing itself on 
 Trevaskis. When he reached the Colmar 
 Arms, he was met at the front door by the
 
 THE SILENT SEA 231 
 
 landlady, a lean, untidy looking woman with 
 a very tired and discouraged face, who showed 
 him into the dining-room talking all the 
 time. 
 
 ' I thought you was the new captain. 
 Long Ben the driver told us as you 'ad 
 come, but I didn't think as you was coming 
 to dinner, not bein' 'ere at one. Poor Cap'en 
 Dunning always come at one to the minute. 
 Did you 'ear, sir, as he 'adn't gone half an 
 hour from the Colmar Arms, after a dinner 
 of young duck and cauliflower, when he was 
 called away into eternity, so to speak ?' 
 
 ' Ever since I came within a hundred 
 miles of the Colmar, every soul I see tells 
 me about Dunning's sudden death ! And 
 now, if you please, I want a little dinner,' 
 said Trevaskis. 
 
 The landlady, with subdued volubility, said 
 she would do the best she could, but she had 
 expected him at one. Poor Cap'en Dunning 
 always came so regular at one, and things 
 was very mixed with them then at the Arms. 
 They had just moved into the front part, 
 which the cap'en no doubt noticed was of 
 stone. The baby, who was a little over two
 
 232 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 year old, was cutting some back teeth ; the 
 cook had married at an hour's notice, just 
 because there was a man handy to have her, 
 and a Methody parson chanced to pass 
 through ; and the housemaid was down with 
 a bad cold. These details were imparted in 
 detachments, while the good woman placed 
 on the table half a dozen fried chops, a loaf 
 of bread, a two-pound tin of apricot jam, a 
 pound of oily butter, and a large Britannia 
 metal teajDot half full of coarse lukewarm 
 tea. 
 
 The new manager made a valiant effort to 
 make some sort of a meal off these viands. 
 But the attempt only sickened him and took 
 away all appetite. The chops were tough, 
 raw, cold, and greasy, the tea barky and 
 bitter, the milk slightly sour. Trevaskis 
 pushed away the meat, and drew the jam 
 towards him. There were two large flies 
 firmly embedded on the surface. . . . They 
 were everywhere, these flies, large and small, 
 buzzing in his ears and eyes — great flesh- 
 flies beating heavily against the window-panes. 
 The big bare room, with a long table covered 
 with a spotted cloth and an arra}^ of dim
 
 THE SILENT SEA 233 
 
 glasses ; the woman in the soiled print dress, 
 with her dull, jaded face and wearied eyes, 
 and the whining child dragging at her skirts ; 
 the smell of raw linseed-oil in the new paint, 
 of damp mortar in the newly built walls ; 
 the burst of loutish merriment that came 
 wafted from time to time through the open 
 doors from the bar-room ; the look of the 
 country as seen through the window — all 
 weighed on the man's mind like a hideous 
 nightmare. He had been deeply miserable 
 and irritated all day — indeed, for many days 
 back. But at this moment it was no longer 
 misery, it was despair that fell on him. 
 
 '■ Good God I what a hole to come to after 
 all these years !' muttered Trevaskis to him- 
 self He was a stalwart, powerfully-built 
 man, with a long and rather narrow face, 
 the lower part completely covered with a 
 thick grizzled beard and moustache. His 
 nose was long, and slightly curved a little to 
 one side at the end, through an accident in 
 early life. His eyes were })ale, with a 
 greenish light in them, keen in expression, 
 and very close together. In moments 
 of excitement the pupils would seem to
 
 234 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 elongate in a way that gave them rather 
 a sinister look. The head was well formed, 
 the forehead square. Ordinarily he had 
 the alert, determined air of one who does 
 not let his thoughts travel beyond the 
 matter in hand, with no superfluous words 
 or imagination to bestow on any subject 
 beyond his own especial routine. But just 
 now his face wore the strained and haggard 
 look of one who has been badly beaten in the 
 race of life. The landlady, seeing that he 
 had eaten nothing, brought in a plate of bis- 
 cuits and some cheese. But Trevaskis gruflly 
 declined these delicacies, and ordered her to 
 bring him some whisky and soda-water. 
 Then he lit a strong Havana cigar, and 
 as he smoked and sipped the whisky his 
 courage revived. He would face the risk of 
 being out of employment and out of pocket 
 in civilized life rather than stay on at the 
 Colmar. The directors, in their eagerness 
 to secure him, had employed him on his 
 own terms. It would be better to let them 
 know at once he would not stay beyond the 
 month. 
 
 He pulled a large flat pocket-book out of
 
 THE SILENT SEA 235 
 
 the breast-pocket of his coat, and turned 
 over some papers, looking for a blank half- 
 sheet on which to draw up a draft of the 
 communication he would send on the morrow. 
 The first letter that caught his eye was one 
 from his brother, expressing rather clumsily 
 the pleasure it gave him to hear Trevaskis 
 had got a good job with high wages. Dick, 
 he said, was getting on well in the bank, and 
 they were both grateful to him for the 
 billet. 
 
 It was a very illitei'ate, ill - spelt 
 scrawl, and curiously brought back to Tre- 
 vaskis the days of his early boyhood, when 
 he and his brother worked together in 
 a Cornish mine. It was a squalid, hard life 
 — both of them unkempt and un cared for, 
 their mother dead, their father rough and 
 intemperate. From eight years of age till 
 sixteen, thought Trevaskis, that was a long 
 spell to work twelve hours out of the 
 twenty-four — often hungry, most of the 
 time barefooted. Then he reviewed his 
 long fight for wealth in Australia. Poverty 
 and the squalor of his early life had so bitten 
 into him that he had sworn a great oath
 
 236 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 he would make himself independent — yes, 
 and rich, as many another had done in the 
 Southern Hemisphere. 
 
 And gradually through long years of 
 ascetic abstinence and the most rigid self- 
 denial he achieved his purpose. He stuck 
 to mining ; it was the work he understood 
 best — first on the tribute plan, then on 
 claims of his own ; and all his money as he 
 saved it he put into careful investments. 
 He had gone almost hungry, certainly very 
 dirty, and in very broken boots, once when 
 he was working in a poor patch of country, 
 which did not yield ' tucker ' money. And 
 yet at that time the savings on which he 
 would not encroach had swelled to £4,000. 
 After that crisis his gains had increased by 
 leaps and bounds. And at last, after seven- 
 teen years of toilsome lonely work and rigid 
 saving, he found himself the master of over 
 £60,000. He had determined he would 
 have enough to live on like a gentleman 
 before he left the Bush. 
 
 When he did so he lived in Adelaide, 
 rented a handsome house, kept his carriage, 
 went into Parliament, and married the
 
 THE SILENT SEA 2yj 
 
 daughter of a well-to-do doctor, ' a lady 
 born,' as he often proudly said to himself. 
 Even if he had known — and he did not — 
 that his father-in-law was the son of a 
 retired butcher, the knowledge would not 
 have modified this exultant feeling. His 
 long apprenticeship to work in its grimiest 
 form, moiling in the dirt w^ith soiled skin 
 and filthy clothing, made him keenly sensible 
 of all the graces and pleasantness of afiiuence. 
 He never quite lost his first vivid impression 
 of delight in the soft ease, the luxury, the 
 perfect cleanliness of well-to-do households. 
 The feel of soft carpets underfoot, the 
 gleam of pictures on the walls, the glitter 
 of silver on the table, the taste of dainty 
 food well cooked, the rustle of ladies' silken 
 gowns, the gleam of jewels on their arms 
 and necks : these things would always have 
 a higher worth for him than for those to 
 whom they were familiar from childhood. 
 To him the\^ represented the highest good, 
 the greatest enjoyment, of which man is 
 capable. They w^ere the symbol of that 
 privileged exalted life of which his fore- 
 fathers had caught passing glimpses behind
 
 238 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 barred gates and through the corridors 
 leading from servants' halls. 
 
 * And, after all, I've come back to it again 
 — this damned mucky life among dirty 
 labourers, and in a worse place than I've 
 ever set foot in before. I might as well be 
 a w^ombat in an earthed-up burrow,' he 
 said to himself, closing up his pocket-book. 
 He could not frame a draft of the letter he 
 thought of writing ; the fear of absolute 
 want stared him in the face. He could 
 do nothing but ponder in bitterness of heart 
 on the record of his life : his twenty-five 
 years of ignominious toil, his aspirations, 
 his determination to succeed, his eight years 
 of complete and assured success, and then 
 his complete and bitter failure. He took 
 up his hat, and, crushing it over his eyes, 
 strode away to the lonely, cheerless rooms 
 that now formed his only home.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 ' Are you busy, captain ? may I come in V 
 said Searle, knocking at the half-open door 
 of the manager's office three days later. 
 
 ' Yes, come in,' said Trevaskis, without 
 raising his eyes from the letter he was 
 reading. 
 
 Searle waited a few moments, and then, 
 with a rising choler that was new to him, he 
 said : 
 
 ' I had better see you when you're more at 
 liberty ; I have a very important ' 
 
 'Oh, go ahead ! Have you overpaid some 
 fellow by a couple of bob ?' 
 
 ' I want to give notice ; 1 must leave the 
 mine as soon as possible,' said the purser, 
 with a quiver in his voice. 
 
 And then he explained how a letter had
 
 240 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 come to him by that morning's post from his 
 brother, who was a storekeeper at Wilcannia, 
 and had broken his right arm rather badly. 
 
 ' I have an interest in the business ; in 
 fact, all my savings are in it, and now my 
 brother offers me a partnership, and wants 
 me to start at once if I can. I would like to 
 give a month's notice, but I'm afraid I can't.' 
 
 ' All right ; just put it in black and white, 
 and I'll send it on ; I don't suppose it matters 
 about a long notice. There are scores of poor 
 devils looking for a job in town just now 
 who'll be glad of the billet.' 
 
 ' They might be glad of it ; it doesn't 
 follow they would be fit for the position,' 
 answered Searle. 
 
 ' The position ! Do you call it a position, 
 then ?' said Trevaskis, with a harsh laugh. 
 
 Further acquaintance had not improved 
 the relations between the two. It seemed 
 to Searle that the manager had from the 
 first an unaccountable ' down ' on him. As 
 a matter of fact, a ' fellow with too much 
 of a gab,' as he would phrase it, was always 
 antagonistic to Trevaskis ; and in the bitter 
 mortification that possessed him — the sense
 
 THE SILENT SEA 241 
 
 of intense irritation, which grew greater 
 instead of diminishing, as hour hy liour 
 brought home to him more clearly the 
 complete social annihilation that had fallen 
 on him — it afforded him a certain gratifica- 
 tion to inflict annoyance on others. And 
 to make matters worse, Searle found out 
 that Trevaskis had spoken slightingly of 
 him. It was told to him with the kindest 
 intentions, but the result was not an increase 
 of harmony. 
 
 Robert Challoner had called on Trevaskis 
 the day after he came, and invited him to 
 Stonehouse, as the managerial dw^elling-house 
 had been called when erected nineteen years 
 before, and it enjoyed the distinction of being 
 the first stone house in the Colmar district. 
 It was at the foot of the reef on the northern 
 side, where the reef was at its steepest, com- 
 pletely closing in the view southward, so tliat 
 from Stonehouse nothing could be seen of tlie 
 mine or its surroundings. There was also an 
 avenue of blue gums and pepper-trees round 
 the house, which further helped to mitigate 
 the stern aridity of its surroundings. It 
 faced the west, where the fiat, illimitable 
 
 VOL. I. IG
 
 242 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 plain all round was faintly broken in the 
 far distance by pale-blue lines, one beyond 
 the other, known as the Euckalowie Ranges. 
 The house was surrounded by a deep veranda, 
 and there was a bay window on each side of 
 the front door. One of these was open, and 
 as Trevaskis went in with Challoner, who 
 had met him at the gate, he saw a young 
 girl looking out, whose face, with its rare 
 dream-like beauty and deep, sweet serious- 
 ness, held him for a moment spell-bound. 
 
 The exquisite orderliness and tokens of re- 
 finement in the place, the welcome accorded 
 to him by Mrs. Challoner, and the generous 
 nature of the bottle of wine he drank with 
 his host, all disposed Trevaskis to a more 
 genial mood than he had experienced since 
 setting foot on the mine. 
 
 ' You see, if you feel inclined to have your 
 family here after we leave at Christmas — 
 indeed, we may leave a few weeks before our 
 lease is up — you will have plenty . of room,' 
 said Challoner. 
 
 But Trevaskis shook his head. 
 
 ' Mrs. Trevaskis is rather delicate — always 
 accustomed to plenty of servants and society
 
 THE SILENT SEA 243 
 
 and all that ; and we have live young 
 children. She would never consent to come, 
 and I wouldn't ask her. Searle has a hed- 
 I'oom here ?' he added after a pause. 
 
 ' Yes ; he always slept in the house to take 
 care of it before Ave came ; now we take care 
 of him,' said Challoner, smiling. 
 
 Then, noticing a hard, irresponsive look in 
 Trevaskis' face, and knowing through Searle 
 that the two didn't hit it very well, he tried 
 to throw a little oil on the troubled waters 
 by saying : 
 
 ' He is really a very good fellow in his 
 way, so trustworthy and good-natured.' 
 
 ' But what a tongue ! I think it would 
 be a very good thing for him to be put in 
 solitary confinement for twelve months, so 
 as to get him out of jabbering eternally. I 
 never could stand a veiy talkative man,' said 
 Trevaskis, with so much irritation that 
 (Jhalloner was rather taken aback. 
 
 He could not deny Searle's garrulity, but 
 he felt that the new manager was unjust 
 to him in laying: so much stress on tlie 
 defect. Both men smoked for a little time In 
 silence.
 
 244 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 During the pause, the strains of a very 
 sweet, plaintive melody, played on a piano- 
 forte in the adjoining room, became audible. 
 Trevaskis listened with rapt attention. 
 
 ' That is Miss Lindsay playing — the young 
 lady you saw as we came in,' said Challoner. 
 
 ' I should like to hear her nearer,' replied 
 Trevaskis — ' if it is convenient,' he added, as 
 he noticed a certain hesitation in Challonei''s 
 manner. 
 
 ' I will ask my wife. If ' 
 
 ' No, no ! I see it is later than I thought,' 
 said Trevaskis, starting up, a deep hot flush 
 rising in his face. He stared at his watch 
 hard — not that the time was of any im- 
 portance to him, but because in the sudden 
 revulsion of feeling, the deep annoyance 
 and confusion, he hardly knew what he 
 did. He bade Challoner a hasty good-bye, 
 and without waiting to see Mrs. Challoner, 
 or leaving any message, he strode away, 
 deeply, irretrievably offended. 
 
 ' I ought to have put it more gracefully, 
 I suppose,' said Challoner, staring after 
 him. 
 
 Mrs. Challoner came into the room a
 
 THE SILENT SEA 245 
 
 few minutes later, and looked round in 
 amazement at finding her husband alone. 
 
 ' He is gone ; I am afraid he is a little 
 huffed/ Challoner said, in his slowly contem- 
 plative way, and then he told his wife what 
 had happened. ' I would have explained 
 to him that Miss Lindsay was not so much 
 our guest, as a young lady in our care with 
 her own rooms and servant, and that we 
 could not ask anyone into her room without 
 leave ; but he went off in sparks, as James 
 would say. And you know, wife, I can't take 
 people by the throat to put them into good 
 hTimour, and reel off a speech in half a 
 minute to make them see how thinofs stand.' 
 
 ' I am afraid he will be a bad successor 
 to poor Dunning if he has such a disagree- 
 able nature. And I am sorry for him, too, 
 j)oor man ! I thought he looked very low- 
 s])irited.' 
 
 ' It's conceit, my dear — it's conceit,' re- 
 turned Challoner. ' You may speak of the 
 pride of the people in the old country, 
 whose genealogy didn't stop this side of 
 Adam, but they're humble and companion- 
 able compared to men like Trevaskis,' said
 
 246 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 Challoner, who was a quietly observant 
 man, with an innate perception of character, 
 strengthened by that eye-to-eye intercourse 
 Avith his kind which prevails in these lonely 
 spaces of the earth, where human nature 
 plays a larger part than convention. He 
 returned to the subject that evening. 
 
 ' You can see Trevaskis is the sort of 
 man who can be uncommonly nasty if he 
 chooses, and I'm afraid he has taken a 
 dislike to poor old Searle.' Then he re- 
 peated to his wife what Trevaskis had 
 said, and she suggested that he should 
 give Searle a hint. 
 
 ' Just tell him, Robert, that you can see the 
 new manager is one of those people very reti- 
 cent and disliking unnecessary talk. He won't 
 take it amiss, you know, he's so good-natured.' 
 
 ' Yes, he has no more gall in him than a 
 
 pigeon ; I wish ' Before the wish found 
 
 expression there was a sound of footsteps on 
 the veranda. 
 
 ' Now, Robert, have a talk wdth him ; 
 just try and smooth matters,' said Mrs. 
 Challoner as she left the room, for they both 
 recognised Searle's footsteps. His bedroom
 
 THE SILENT SEA 247 
 
 was oil the reef-end of the house, with a 
 door opening on the veranda, so that he 
 could get into his room without going- 
 through any other part of the house. But 
 it was understood when there was a hiifht 
 in tlie treneral sitting' - room Searle should 
 come in and have a crack if he felt so dis- 
 posed. He did so on this occasion, and soon 
 gave Challoner the opening which he did 
 not desire, but which, as a dutiful husband, 
 he felt impelled to tuiii to advantage. 
 
 ' The new manager is, no doubt, a very 
 clever man,' said Searle, in a would-be dis- 
 passionate tone ; ' but if he doesn't learn 
 to keep a civiller tongue in his head, I'm 
 mistaken if he won't have the miners by 
 the ears before long.' 
 
 On this Challoner rushed in medias res. 
 He found himself, at the end of what he had 
 to say, with Searle aggrieved, disturbed, 
 and questioning. Challoner had little of the 
 diplomat in him. What he had to say must 
 come out square and unabashed, with no 
 gentle inferences, no half-tones. All these 
 might exist in his intentions, but lie had 
 not the po^^^er of turning words to exquisite
 
 248 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 purposes and curious niceties of speech. He 
 could not express the finer shades of senti- 
 ment, although he felt them. He was 
 astonished at the look of deep resentment 
 on Searle's face. Garrulous peoj)le are never 
 without a deep substratum of self-compla- 
 cency, and the j^urser was wounded to the 
 quick. If there was one thing on which 
 he prided himself it was on his ability to 
 talk well and fluently, to be by turns grave 
 and gay, instructive and amusing. 
 
 During the days that follow^ed he spoke 
 to the manager only in monosyllables. But 
 the joy of revenge was sobered by a suspicion 
 that the less he talked the more pleased 
 Trevaskis was. It is very likely Searle 
 would not have so promptly responded to 
 his brothers proposal to join him in store- 
 keeping if it were not for the craving to 
 startle Trevaskis with such a bomb-shell. 
 And after all, the bomb-shell had fallen 
 as flat as a damaged rocket. 
 
 But there was balm in Gilead for Seaile's 
 ruffled feeling when, a few days after his 
 resignation was sent in, the following note 
 came from ' the Honourable Stuart Dnun-
 
 THE SILENT SEA 249 
 
 mond, M.L.C., Chairman of the Directors 
 of the Cohiiar Mine Company,' as Searle, 
 swelHng with importance, styled him in 
 telUng the event to Challoner that evening ; 
 
 ' Dear Mr. Trevaskis, 
 
 ' My nephew, Mr. V. Fitz-Gibbon, has 
 
 decided that he would like the post of purser 
 
 and storekeeper at the Colmar Mine, at least 
 
 till Christmas. The directors and myself 
 
 are satisfied that Mr. Fitz-Gibbon — who, by 
 
 the way, is a B.Sc. of the Adelaide University 
 
 — is qualified for the position. You are 
 
 probably aware that, on coming of age, lie 
 
 succeeds to my late brother's property, and, 
 
 as his heir, Mr. Fitz-Gibbon will have a 
 
 direct stake in the Colmar. We hope you 
 
 will find it convenient to let him gain, under 
 
 your skilful supervision, a practical insight 
 
 into the working and prospects of the 
 
 mine. 
 
 ' I am, etc' 
 
 'So it seems my successor isn't to be one of 
 those poor devils who are walking the streets 
 for a job, after all,' said Searle, with ill-con- 
 cealed triumj)h.
 
 250 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 Trevaskis made no reply. 
 
 ' A Bachelor of Science. I expect he's well 
 up in geology,' said Searle. 
 
 ' Do you think so ? Generally, a colonial 
 degree means a young fellow's head has been 
 muddled with books he never understood/ 
 sneered Trevaskis as he walked away. 
 
 ' I'll give him a good dig, though, before I 
 leave ; I'll let him have it hot somehow,' 
 thought Searle, staring after him. ' A young 
 gentleman, with a fortune behind his back, 
 with a direct stake in the Colmar : he can't 
 bully him as he does everyone else. I believe 
 he dislikes the new purser more than the old 
 one,' said Searle, with a chuckle. 
 
 But if the surmise was correct there was 
 no sign of it in the manager's manner when 
 Victor reached the mine by the mail-coach 
 which ran daily between Colmar and 
 Nilpeena. 
 
 ' I'm afraid you won't find this a very 
 entertaining place,' said Trevaskis, as the 
 two were on their way to dinner at the 
 Colmar Arms. 
 
 ' Oh, I think I'll like it, for a few months, 
 at any rate ; the country is so unlike any-
 
 THE SILENT SEA 251 
 
 thing I've been in before,' answered Victor, 
 glancing around. 
 
 ' Oh yes, there's novelty in more than the 
 landscape here,' said Trevaskis, with a short 
 laugh. 
 
 He found a malicious satisfaction in antici- 
 pating the novelty of a hostelry like the 
 Colmar Arms for the young gentleman who 
 had come to such a hole from caprice. 
 
 Mrs. West, the landlady, was still waiting 
 for a cook. Her baby was still getting his 
 teeth, a process that seems to colour one's 
 views of life as darkly as losing them. 
 
 ' It's always like this ; that wretched kid 
 hardly ever shuts up,' said Trevaskis, as the 
 mother and child disappeared, the latter 
 keeping up an easy sing-song sort of wail, 
 that swelled threateningly if lie were too long 
 neglected. 
 
 ' Poor little beggar ! He wants a little 
 more nursing than he gets, I ex})ect,' answered 
 Victor ; and when the two returned, lie called 
 out cheerily to the culprit, holding out his 
 watch as a bait. 
 
 ' 1 say, little one, would you like to see a 
 tick-tick ?'
 
 252 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 The child looked hard at the watch and 
 then into the two men's faces. After 
 making this preliminary inquiry into their 
 character, he seemed rather to approve of 
 them. He gave a feeble smile, and then he 
 slowly and gravely walked up to the new- 
 comer, making a wide circuit round Trevaskis, 
 looking at him in the meanwhile with a 
 gloomy interrogative expression which greatly 
 tickled Victor. He piled some sofa-cushions 
 on a chair, and placed the child on them 
 beside him, and gave him his watch to wind 
 up. It was a robust, silver stem-winder, and 
 after listening to its creaking sound for some 
 minutes, as he turned the stem round, the 
 child began to watch what went on at the 
 table, and then stretched out his chubby 
 hands for a share. 
 
 When the mother next entered the room, 
 she found Dicky munching a slice of bread- 
 and-butter, and trying to keep up a conver- 
 sation with his new friend. 
 
 ' Your baby is a long way ahead of me in 
 language, Mrs. West,' said Victor. ' What 
 can be the meaning of a " bid dod in the bat 
 wad " ?'
 
 THE SILENT SEA 253 
 
 ' He is trying to tell you that there is 
 a big dog in the back yard,' answered the 
 mother. Seeing that Fitz-Gibbon Avas much 
 amused on hearing this translation, she 
 recalled a few more of Dicky's speeches 
 equally estranged from the common tongues 
 of humanity. Presently the landlady was 
 deep in a detailed account of her trials with 
 domestic servants. 
 
 'Why don't you get middle-aged women, 
 Avho wouldn't be likely to marry ?' said 
 Victor sympathetically, after listening to a 
 heart-breaking account of successive cooks 
 and housemaids who had been obtained 
 at high wages with passage -money paid, 
 but whose career at the Colmar Arms came 
 abruptly to an end with the catastrophe of 
 a brief wooing and a speedy wedding — even 
 of clandestine departures without a wedding 
 at all. 
 
 ' Oh, blesh you, sir, if they was that old as 
 they was likely to die of their years, they'd 
 marry at the Colmar. You see a hatter's 
 life Is a very lonesome one — I mean one as 
 lives to hisself. When you go among the 
 miners' huts and tents you see some closed
 
 254 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 up, with a padlock on the door — that's an 
 'atter's place. West, my 'usband, he was 
 comin' along with you from Nilpeena, and he 
 heard as you was the new purser. ^' But 
 Avhat a young swell like that is comin' 'ere 
 for," sez he ' 
 
 ' But I'm not in the least a swell ; I could 
 rough it far more than I'll have to do here,' 
 said Victor, a little chagrined that his rough 
 suit of navy-blue serge, his blue-striped shirt, 
 with an unstarched turn-down collar, and his 
 soft gray hat did not save him from the 
 imputation. 
 
 ' Indeed, sir, swell and all, you're a kind- 
 'earted young gentleman ! To see the way 
 as that crabby child took to you ! An' though 
 I'm 'is mother, I know he ain't sweet- 
 tempered ; but what can you expect, sir, with 
 three double-teeth— one above, and the others 
 in the lower jaw ?' 
 
 ' Lays himself out to be popular, that's 
 evidently his tack,' thought Trevaskis as he 
 listened. As for being depressed by the 
 crudeness of his social surroundings, they all 
 seemed to strike Fitz-Gibbon as so many 
 points of interest. He laughed more than
 
 THE SILENT SEA 255 
 
 once on the way back to the mine, recalhng 
 Mrs. West's despah' at the craze her domes- 
 tics took for matrimony as soon as thev 
 reached the Colmar. 
 
 ' That's the place of one of the hatters 
 who will be on the look-out for the new 
 cook,' he said, as they passed a little one- 
 roomed hut with a big padlock on the dooi*. 
 ' By the way, captain, shan't I be a hatter, 
 too ?' he added. 
 
 Trevaskis explained that there was a 
 manager's residence on the north side of 
 the reef, now let to some family, in which 
 the purser had a bedroom. As they drew 
 near the purser's office, Searle came to the 
 door. Trevaskis had taken Victor down 
 into the mine, etc., before dinner-time, so that 
 he and the ex -purser had as yet hardly 
 exchanged any words. The little man was 
 eager to assert himself 
 
 ' I should like to stay a few days, if 
 possible, to explain the books and that to 
 you, Mr. Fitz-Gibbon, but I am afraid my 
 time ' 
 
 ' Oh ! don't trouble yourself, Searle. After 
 all, it is a very simple matter. Just to keep
 
 256 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 the time-book, pay the men on Saturday, 
 and see that a proper account is kept of 
 the consumption of stores,' said Trevaskis 
 contemptuously. 
 
 Searle coloured dee^^ly, and Victor hastened 
 to say : 
 
 ' It may be very simple when it's done by 
 an expert like Mr. Searle, captain, but it's 
 different for me. I know I shall be a bit of a 
 duffer at keeping the books at first. If you 
 could stay a few days, I should be awfully 
 glad,' he said, addressing Searle, who 
 expanded under this speech like a bud in 
 the sunshine. He would try. He thought, 
 perhaps, he could manage to stay two or 
 three days longer, if Mr. Fitz- Gibbon thought 
 it would be a help to him. 
 
 ' The greatest in the world. I know how 
 very well you have done yoiu* work ; I heard 
 of you in my uncle's office,' said Victor, who 
 had, indeed, heard Searle's work highly 
 commended, and was glad to proclaim the 
 fact so as to atone for Trevaskis' brusquerie. 
 ' Soft sawder. An Irishman all over !' 
 thought the manager, as he strode away, 
 leaving the two together.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 257 
 
 Surely none of the duties of a mine 
 purser were forgotten that afternoon by 
 Mr. Searle. There was the day-book, in 
 which things bought and sold were kept ; 
 the cash-book, showing receipts and expen- 
 diture; the invoice-book, the cost-book, the 
 ledger and the time-book. It was over the 
 latter that Searle took his most spread- 
 eagle flights, impressing on Victor the 
 profound importance of entering each man's 
 time and avocation correctly from shift- 
 bosses' records. Underground there were 
 the able-bodied miners, the shovellers, the 
 truckers, the rock-drill foremen, the rock- 
 drill labourers, the air- winch boys ; above 
 ground, the engineer, the engine-drivers, 
 the stokers, the battery-feeders, the pan 
 men, the hands at the stone-crackers, etc., 
 nearly all at different wages. Sometimes a 
 man w^ould be engaged as a shoveller half 
 of his shift, and as a trucker the other half. 
 Care must be taken that he was entered at 
 the two rates of wages, etc., etc., etc. 
 
 At last Victor declared that his head was 
 ringing, and that he began to suspect it was 
 418 difficult to be a good purser as it was to be 
 
 VOL. I. 17
 
 258 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 a great poet. It made him low-spirited to 
 look at the immaculate figures and copper- 
 plate writing in that pile of books, of which 
 he greatly feared he would make a howling 
 mess. Searle was radiant, and administered 
 fitting consolation. Then the two went to 
 have a look round the mine, and Searle of 
 coiu\se made straight for the iron passage, and 
 detailed its marvellous history, sparing no 
 detail as to its length or cost, or the number 
 of sheets of galvanized iron in it. Then he 
 made such mysterious allusions to Webster's 
 history, that Victor begged him to relate the 
 story, which Searle promised to do before he 
 left. Finally, after the two had tea together 
 at the Colmar Arms, and a bottle of Bass's 
 ale, and a game or two at billiards, he insisted 
 on making up a bed for himself on the bunk 
 that was in the ofiice, and then went across to 
 Stonehouse, to introduce the new purser to 
 Mr. and Mrs. Challoner. And there, in the 
 room facing the reef, Victor wrote his first 
 letter to Miss Paget — one which would 
 reach her a few days after she landed in 
 Colombo. 
 
 ' You know,' he wrote, ' how I came pre-
 
 THE SILENT SEA 259 
 
 pared to " hump my bluey," metaphorically 
 speaking' ? Well, as far as that goes, my 
 coming to the mine is up to this an Al 
 swindle — a sham as complete as the little 
 Arabian birds you bought at Aden. Figure to 
 yourself that you are peeping into my bed- 
 room. Let me assure you that there is not 
 the slightest impropriety in the suggestion, 
 for it is a very pearl of bedrooms — in a stone 
 house ! with a Kurdistan rug* before the 
 bed ! ! another before the wash-hand stand ! ! ! 
 a third before the toilette-table, made up in 
 pink and white, like a young lady going to a 
 ball ! ! ! ! pillows with ruffles round them, on 
 the outside of a knitted counterpane ! ! ! ! ! T 
 had better not use up all my store of exclama- 
 tion points in this one letter, for I foresee I 
 may need a few more later on. I had some 
 thoughts of concealing some of these details 
 from you, for it is rather galling to come away 
 to the heart of the barren Salt-bush country 
 to the " diggings," and find one's self in a 
 room overflowing with voluptuous splendour. 
 I could put up with the rugs and the ruffles 
 and the lady in pink and white — now don't 
 be suspicious (^oide top of the page) — and even
 
 26o THE SILENT SEA 
 
 with the cake of almond soap I found in the 
 soap-dish when I went to put my great square 
 piece of plebeian yellow soap into it ; but what 
 do you say to long white muslin curtains to 
 the window !!!!!! But this is upholstery. 
 1 must come to actual people. And first, 
 one of my college chums, Maurice Gumming, 
 is Avithin fifteen miles of the mine. He and 
 a brother have a little sheep-run — at least it 
 used to be a sheep-run, but the rabbits are 
 eating them out. As to the manager — it is 
 etiquette to call him captain on the mine — 
 if you were not preternaturally English, 
 Helen, and me so fearfully Irish at times, 
 I should tell you that when I first saw him I 
 had a Presentiment — with a capital letter, as 
 you may notice. When he is not on guard, 
 there is a hard, angry look in his eyes. At 
 all times his manners resemble the snakes in 
 Ireland ; but he has lost all his money, and 
 has had to come away from his wife and chil- 
 dren. Wouldn't I be savage, too, if I had to 
 leave my wife V etc.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 It was not till the evening before he left that 
 Searle gave up the last insignia of his office. 
 
 ' What ! more keys, Searle,' cried Victor. 
 ' Good heavens ! how many am I to have in 
 all ? This makes seven, nine, thirteen — and 
 two more fifteen. What is this long bright 
 one for ? it has no label. ' 
 
 ' That is the second ke}^ of the strong safe 
 in which the gold is kept,' answered Searle 
 slowly. ' On the last cleaning-up day, just 
 three days before you came, we put two bars 
 of gold into it, each worth one thousand five 
 hundred pounds and a few shillings.' 
 
 ' Then there are three thousand pounds ' 
 worth of gold in that safe now?' said Victor, 
 regarding it with curious interest. 
 
 It was a massive fire-proof safe, standing
 
 262 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 in the north-east coiner of the purser's office, 
 opposite the door which opened into the assay- 
 room, containing several furnaces and a large 
 collection of chemicals in jars and bottles. 
 
 ' Yes, and when there's about another three 
 thousand pounds' worth in it, Wills, our 
 mounted trooper, will take the lot in an iron 
 box into Nilpeena by the mail coach, and 
 there he is met by a troo23er from town. 
 You keep this key, the manager has the 
 other, so you can neither of you open the 
 safe alone.' 
 
 ' Have you ever had any attempt at 
 robbery here ? 
 
 ' Well, not by any outsider,' said Searle 
 with a mysterious air. 
 
 ' Oh, come ! this begins to be like a chapter 
 in a shilling shocker,' said Victor, smiling. 
 But Searle maintained a very grave aspect. 
 
 ' It is part of Webster's story, the strangest 
 affair I ever was mixed up with. And do 
 you know, Mr. Fitz-Gibbon, it's come across 
 my mind once or twice that perhaps I had 
 better not tell you.' 
 
 ' Why V 
 
 ' Because it seemed to me that after I told
 
 THE SILENT SEA 263 
 
 it to Dunning", the late manager — a splendid 
 fellow, clever and well-educated, and such a 
 pleasant-mannered man — a greater contrast to 
 the present captain you could not see ' 
 
 ' You're not in love with Trevaskis V 
 
 ' Nor he with me ; but before I leave to- 
 morrow I'll give him a little punch in the 
 ribs.' Searle's cheeks grew red with anger 
 and wounded vanity. 
 
 ' But what were you going to sa}^ — that 
 after you told Dunning V 
 
 ' He never seemed the same man, somehow.' 
 
 Though Victor had during the last three 
 days been often amused at the solemn 
 importance with which Searle would dwell 
 on matters of small consequence, lie began 
 to perceive that there must be something- 
 tragical underlying this story. 
 
 ' You can't expect me to let you off telling 
 it after raising my curiosity to such a })itch,' 
 he said. 'There's just an hour before we go 
 to tea. You must come to the Colmar Arms 
 with me, as it is your last evening. CWi you 
 tell it in an hour V 
 
 As the story which Searle told is closely 
 bound up with succeeding events at the
 
 264 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 Colmar Mine, it is necessary to give the 
 substance of his narrative, leaving out the 
 devious wanderings in which he indulged, 
 especially in the earlier portion, when he gave 
 an elaborate account of the way in which 
 one of his eyes was affected with a cataract 
 that at last obliged him to go under an 
 operation in town, where he remained for 
 nearly six months before he could return to 
 his duties as purser. Webster had been 
 manager at the mine for five months before 
 Searle left. During his absence no regular 
 purser was appointed. 
 
 ' There was a man who went by the name 
 of Oxford Jim at the winding engine for a 
 few weeks before I left— I have heard that 
 he's somewhere prospecting about here now,' 
 said Searle; 'and Webster took him on to keep 
 the books and so on while I was away. 
 When I left, the mine was never more 
 prosperous, and Webster was giving immense 
 satisfaction all round. He was a great one 
 for experiments. Before I left he had heaps 
 of tools and machinery removed to the cave 
 room. He got on well with the men, and 
 everything was as cheerful as possible. When
 
 THE SILENT SEA 265 
 
 I got back and first saw Webster, I conld 
 hardly believe my eyes.' 
 
 ' Had he altered much, then V 
 
 ' That's hardly the word for it ; he was like 
 another man entirely. He used to be rather 
 plump and fresh-coloured ; now his face was 
 gray, with deep lines round his eyes, and a 
 sort of quick twitch about them sometimes, 
 and fearfully restless — always on the move, 
 especially at night. It was a very rainy 
 season when I got back, and Webstei' used 
 to wear a big black cloak, and a hat slouched 
 over his face. In these he was seen by 
 people at all hours of the night, hanging 
 round the mine, and some said as if he were 
 carrying things. He had loads of some old 
 tailings carted into the cave-ground room. 
 The yield from the mine had fallen almost 
 to nothing while I was away, and we 
 thought this was working on the manager's 
 mind, and that he was trying to get gold in 
 some way or another to make up the 
 deficiency. ' 
 
 ' But a solitary man couldn't extract gold 
 from tailings ?' 
 
 ' Not very well without special machinery.
 
 266 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 Some said he did it only for a blind. At any 
 rate, he used to be hours and hours in the 
 cave room at night ; and when I got back 
 the iron passage was half done. He bought 
 up second-hand iron from little mines and 
 companies that had come to grief in the 
 district ; and though he said the passage 
 would do to store things in, he had it put up 
 entirely at his own cost. He said it was a 
 little fad of his own, and he wouldn't put the 
 company to any expense. Well, after I 
 came back things began to look up again. 
 Oxford Jim went away. The morning he 
 left he said to me, " Be careful about what 
 you drink with the captain on cleaning-up 
 days." When I asked him what he meant, 
 he just laughed and went away. He was a 
 queer fellow, with a curious twist in his 
 mind that gave him a very bad opinion of 
 everything in this world, and I may say in 
 the next. He used to take opium and 
 things ; people did say he was hardly ever 
 quite straight the days he used to help the 
 captain in cleaning up the gold.' 
 
 ' Is cleaning up the gold a long job ?' 
 
 ' Here the whole process, down to smelting,
 
 THE SILENT SEA 267 
 
 takes about a day, sometimes a little longer. 
 Your first experience will come off in nine or 
 ten days. Webster and I always had some- 
 thing to drink together. Well, the second time 
 we cleaned up, after I got back I felt rather 
 stupefied. Next morning, when I saw the 
 quantity of amalgam, I was simply thunder- 
 struck ;v it was about half less than it ought 
 to have been. Time after time the same 
 thing happened, and Webster seemed to be 
 getting queerer. He was brother-in-law 
 to two of the directors, and had a good 
 deal of influence, else 1 think he could 
 not have carried on such a stran^^e oame so 
 long.' 
 
 ' 1 wonder vou didn't draw up a repoi't 
 or clear oi- something. It nnist liave been 
 deucedly uncomfortable.' 
 
 ' It was more than uncomfortable ; but 
 you know, Mr. Fitz-Gibbon, I'm not as 
 young as I was, and I like things quiet ; 
 I'm afraid, too, Webster buttered me over a 
 good deal. Still, in less than four months 
 after I came back, the woriy and fidget of 
 it all brought on a weakness of my eyes, and 
 I had to go aAvav for two months. Tlie mine
 
 268 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 had fallen off so much then that Webster 
 took no one on as purser ; and as it seemed 
 that the C^olmar would perhaps have to l)e 
 given up altogether, the directors made no 
 objection. 
 
 ' Well, when I came back the second time 
 there were the most curious rumours about 
 an extraordinarily rich lode, which had been 
 opened up and went six or seven ounces to 
 the ton. But there was hardly a soul in 
 the mine that I knew ; the engineer and 
 shift bosses, all except Hoby, were new. 
 As for the miners, of course they're always 
 shifting about, except a few old hands who 
 have their families here. The yield had 
 improved, and Webster spoke of resigning. 
 He had a claim at Hooper's Luck, nine miles 
 from here, at which he had a couple of men 
 working on tribute, and he said the prospects 
 were splendid.' 
 
 ' Surely it was rather irregular for a 
 manager to have a private job on hand 
 while he was working for the company ?' 
 
 ' Oh, as for that, nothing can be more 
 irregular than mining companies from begin- 
 ning to end,' answered Searle, who had been
 
 THE SILENT SEA 269 
 
 in some way or another interested in mining 
 for many years, and could speak with more 
 authority on this subject than on any other. 
 ' A man who can't earn his tucker in any 
 other hne calls himself a mining expert. He 
 goes into the heart of the Bush, and makes 
 assays and reports ; and a company gets 
 floated with directors that know no more of 
 mining than I do of Hebrew. And there's no 
 doubt that in some ways Webstei' was a very 
 good managei', and a captain who has know- 
 ledge, and is believed to be honest, can do 
 anything with any company.' 
 
 Someone at this moment came into the 
 assay-room, but neither Searle, who was 
 absorbed in talking, nor Victor, who im- 
 patiently awaited the denouement of the 
 narrative, took any notice. . The assay-room 
 w^as at the southern end of the offices, and 
 the outer door often stood open until the 
 offices were locked for the evening. It was 
 Trevaskis who had come in and stood behind 
 the half-open door leading into the purser's 
 office, looking for some chemical among the 
 rows of bottles that were rangfed on shelves 
 behind the door. While thus ensfa^'ed liis
 
 270 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 attention was riveted by what he over- 
 heard : 
 
 " At any rate, Webster had this claim at 
 Hooper's Luck, and he was always riding 
 across to it, and always got very much 
 excited when he began talking of it. He 
 had bought an American waggon and a 
 pair of horses, and he w^as buying up a lot 
 of the old machinery that was about the 
 mine — old furnaces and crucibles and so 
 on. 
 
 ' " I'll have a good many loads to cart to 
 Hooper's Luck when I go there," he would 
 say, chuckling and rubbing his hands, and 
 then he would walk about and his eyes would 
 begin to gleam. It used to come across me, 
 that his mind was getting affected. One 
 curious change that had come over him was 
 that he had become most awfully miserly. 
 An old friend of his that I met in town the 
 second time I was there about my eyes, told 
 me that Webster's father had become a 
 perfect miser in his old age. A real miser, 
 mind you, a monomaniac who lived alone and 
 grudged himself proper food while he had 
 great strong boxes full of gold and silver,
 
 THE SILENT SEA 271 
 
 and fifty-pound notes sewn into liis old coats. 
 One day when I was out shooting and had 
 left my key of the safe with Webster ' 
 
 ' Oh, it isn't imperative on the purser, then, 
 never to give up his key?' said Victor, who 
 had been gradually absorbing the thought 
 that it was part of a mine-purser's duty to 
 see that the manager did not commit theft. 
 
 ' Oh no ; we've often given each other 
 charge of our keys when we were going 
 away for a day or so. Once the gold is 
 smelted and stamped and weighed, there's 
 no chance of playing tricks with it. It's the 
 white gold as the Chinese call amalgam that 
 gets stolen by everyone in turn, from the 
 manager to the pan-man.' 
 
 ' Damn the fellow's impudence !' thought 
 Trevaskis, and he felt inclined to give Searle 
 a piece of his mind there and then for 
 making so free witii his superiors. But 
 certain vague hints which had reached him 
 regarding Webster of late, made him curious 
 to hear the upshot. He stood at the shelves 
 with his hand on the bottle he was in search 
 of, so that if anyone appeared at either of 
 the half-open doors, he might hurry away
 
 272 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 with the chemical without betraying that he 
 had played the part of an eavesdropper. 
 
 ' Well, I came back after dusk earlier than 
 I expected. I fouud the safe unlocked and 
 the gold gone. You might have knocked me 
 down with a feather, as the saying is, I 
 instantly went through to the manager's 
 office. The doors were kept open then, from 
 one room to another, so that you could go 
 through without going outside; and there are 
 duplicate keys for the manager and purser, 
 but the doors were hardly ever locked. 
 However, when I got to the room next the 
 manager's office the door was locked, but 
 when he heard my voice he opened at once. 
 "Ah!" he said, "you missed the gold; it is 
 here, it is quite safe ; but aren't they beauties, 
 aren't they real beauties, shining solid and 
 yellow ? The more there is of it in a heap the 
 lovelier it looks ! Sovereigns are pretty 
 to look at, but what are they compared 
 io ingots weighing three hundred ounces ?" 
 
 ' The bars of gold were lying on the table, 
 and he had scattered handfuls of sovereigns 
 over them, and he kept on bending over them 
 and handling them, his eyes glittering as if
 
 THE SILENT SEA 273 
 
 he were in high fever. " Think of getting 
 gold enough," he said, " to make fifteen 
 of these bars — fifteen ! think of it, piled 
 one upon the other in a splendid glitter- 
 ing mass ! Bah ! when I make my pile at 
 Hooper's Luck, I won't sell it— not till I have 
 a little mountain, not till I have enough to 
 make fifteen bars weighing each three hun- 
 dred ounces. Good God ! think of havino- 
 a whole ton of gold, clean and pure, before 
 you. 
 
 ' He must have gone out of his mind ; yes, 
 he must have l^een mad. That evening I 
 found it hard to calm him down. All of a 
 sudden he cried out the men at Hooper's 
 Luck were robbing him. He was sure of 
 it. But he would take them unawares, 
 and search their tents and find a heap, a 
 lieap, a heap of nugget gold ! He had put 
 them on the claim, and paid them wages 
 and given them tools, and now they were 
 cheating him. He knew it. But he would 
 steal a march on them, and I'm afraid he 
 did it, too,' said Searle, dropping his voice. 
 
 Trevaskis was surprised to find himself 
 breathing hard with rising excitement. His 
 
 VOL. I. 18
 
 274 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 imagination was strangely fired by thoughts 
 of those gleaming heaps of gold which had • 
 been conjured up by the distempered ravings 
 of his predecessor. 
 
 ' It was two nights after that,' said Searle, 
 with a certain tremor in his voice, ' that 
 I was coming very late, early I should say, 
 from the Colmar Arms. I kept a little more 
 to the left than I ought to have done, and 
 struck the stable instead of passing between 
 it and the offices on my way across the reef 
 to Stonehouse. The stable-door was open, 
 and there was Nick, the manager's black 
 horse, in a lather of sweat, and quivering 
 all over. Next day news reached the mine 
 that Hooper's Luck had been robbed and one 
 of the men killed. His mate had got a lift in 
 Mr. Challoner's buggy from Hooper's Luck to 
 Nilpeena, and it was good for the digger he 
 had such a trustworthy witness to answer for 
 him. For at the inquest he admitted that 
 he and the murdered man were concealing 
 the fact that they had got about two thousand 
 pounds' worth of nuggets, and that they had 
 planned to clear with the gold for Melbourne 
 in a day or two.'
 
 THE SILENT SEA 275 
 
 ' And the murderer, was he discovered V 
 asked Victor in a low voice. 
 
 ' No, but if my suspicions are right, the 
 hand of God was heavy on him,' answered 
 Searle. ' I kept on thinking of what the 
 manager had said of steahng a march on the 
 tributers, and of his horse in a lather of sweat 
 between one and two in the morning, and 
 the murdered man, and the stolen gold, and 
 one thing or another, so that when I saw him 
 I used to feel choked, and couldn't look him 
 in the face. But there wasn't a breath of 
 outside suspicion against him. I knew many 
 a man has been hung on circumstantial 
 evidence stronger than I possessed, and 
 yet was proved innocent when it was too 
 late. I would have resigned, but Webster 
 was going as soon as they could get one 
 in his place. And he was more than ever 
 In the cave room — always, I think, part 
 of the night. 
 
 ' Everyone began to notice something very 
 queer in his manner. At last one night, nine 
 <lays after the murder, I was sitting here at 
 this desk, making up the approximate cost, 
 the door of the assay office was on the
 
 276 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 latch, as it generally was till I left for the 
 night. It was thrown open as if by a whirl- 
 wind, and Webster rushed into the office 
 here, his face as white as a sheet, his eyes 
 starting out of his head, the sweat in big- 
 drops on his forehead. " I saw him," he 
 said, " I saw him, I saw him with his head 
 all battered in, as sure as God is in heaven !" 
 and with that he fell into a fit, foaming at 
 the mouth. When he came to, he was so 
 completely off his head that Wills, the 
 })olice trooper, had to handcuff him and 
 watch him till he got him down into the 
 asylum.' 
 
 ' And he is there now, isn't he ? I heard 
 something of his going insane, from the 
 mine secretary in town,' said Victor, ' but 
 not a whisper of anything else.' 
 
 Trevaskis, who had listened to the close 
 with breathless interest, was in the act of 
 turning away with the bottle of nitrate of 
 mercury, for which he had come, when again 
 Searle's speech arrested him. 
 
 ' That is the first act, and the second was 
 nearly as strange. No, you wouldn't be 
 likely to hear any whisper of the Hooper's
 
 THE SILENT SEA 277 
 
 Luck affair — for Dunning and I were the 
 only two who knew ; I tokl him in the greatest 
 confidence. I wouki have tokl it to the new 
 captain, too, for in a way I thought he ought 
 
 to know, but ' 
 
 Then came a few words which Trevaskis 
 did not hear. Searle was lighting his pipe 
 as he spoke. But he heard Victor laughing, 
 and a dull dark red mounted into Trevaskis' 
 face at the sound. 
 
 * I may teach you to laugh on the wrong 
 side of your mouth before I've done with 
 you, young man,' was the thought that rose 
 in his mind, but more as an expression of 
 quick anger than any serious resolution of 
 reventre. 
 
 * And you,' continued Searle, 'will be none 
 the worse for having your eyes and ears open. 
 For more than seven months after Dunninof 
 came, I didn't say a word about the Hooper's 
 Luck affair. I did go into the cave room with 
 liim one day, to have a search round. But 
 there wasn't a thing in tlie place exce})t old 
 machinery and all sorts of odds and ends, 
 down to an invalid-chair that one of the 
 early managers had after breaking his leg.
 
 278 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 Then one night I told him, and the whole 
 affair made the strongest impression on him. 
 I fancy he began to prowl round in the cave 
 room from that very night. He said to me 
 one day, half joking, " What would you say 
 if I discovered a great lode in that old cave 
 room ?" and I just told him, in the same 
 way, not to begin to fossick in that place at 
 any price. 
 
 ' It was about six weeks later, I think, that 
 Webster was discharged as being sane. We 
 heard nothinof of it till he came. He made 
 straight for the mine. He got into Nilpeena 
 by the train that reaches it at four o'clock in 
 the morning, and tramped it here on foot, 
 so that no one should know he was coming. 
 There was a tremendous dust-storm on. You 
 couldn't see from one end of the offices to the 
 other. I was coming across after the three 
 o'clock shift had gone to work. Near the 
 assay office here I met a man bareheaded, 
 his face as black as a pot, nothing white but 
 the white of his eyes, and they were glaring- 
 like a wild cat that has a dog's teeth in its 
 throat. 
 
 ' " He has turned me out !" he said ; " he
 
 THE SILENT SEA 279 
 
 won't let me into the passage or the old 
 cave room." 
 
 *At that moment Dunning came out of his 
 office and locked the door. Webster gave 
 a howl like a dingo, and rushed on him. If I 
 hadn't been there, I think it would have gone 
 hard with Dunnincif. It was as much as we 
 could do to hold him down till Wills got him 
 handcuffed. He was worse than the first 
 time, all the way down to Adelaide, so 
 Wills told me. ... It gave Dunning a nasty 
 turn.' 
 
 Trevaskis heard footsteps approaching the 
 outer door of the assay-room, and noiselessly 
 slipped out, carrying away with him the 
 nitrate of mercury. He had been in the 
 room for about a quarter of an hour, and 
 when he came out the wind had risen, and 
 the dust was thick in the air. Looking east- 
 ward from the front of the offices, the great 
 wide treeless plain, sweeping to the verge of 
 the vague horizon, was enclosed in a lurid, 
 reddish haze. The country in that direction 
 was in places entirely destitute even of salt- 
 bush, and the hard red earth lay gaping in 
 wide cracks, which in a dry season, when the
 
 28o THE SILENT SEA 
 
 wind blew high, infected all the atmosphere 
 with their own sombre stain. 
 
 ' I don't wonder Webster went mad- 
 living in a place like this for two years,' 
 thought Trevaskis, with a dull sinking of 
 the heart. The reddish sultrv air, thick with 
 dust, throbbing with the din of the battery 
 and air-compressors, the smoke from the tall 
 stack hanging in dense clouds overhead — all 
 combined to make the atmosphere dark, 
 heavy, and oppressive. To Trevaskis, who 
 from time to time found himself stricken 
 with attacks of acute depression that bor- 
 dered on physical prostration, the place just 
 then wore a menacinof and almost infernal 
 aspect. 
 
 He was still standing at his office door, 
 looking blankly round with a sort of dazed 
 impassiveness, Avhen Victor and Searle ap- 
 proached him in eager conversation. 
 
 ' I suppose, captain ' began Searle as 
 
 he drew near. But before he could get 
 any further, Trevaskis deliberately turned 
 away, walked into his office, and slammed 
 the door behind him. 
 
 Victor coloured to the roots of his hair.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 281 
 
 ' Never mind — I can have a look at it from 
 the outside,' he said hurriedly. He had been 
 so much interested by what he had heard 
 regarding the cave room that he wished to 
 see it there and then. It struck him that 
 there might be some indications which 
 would throw light on the strange fascina- 
 tion the place had possessed for successive 
 managers. 
 
 Searle had at once proposed that they 
 should ask the captain for the key that oj^ened 
 the door leadino: from his office into the 
 passage ; and this was the result. Searle 
 was voluble as to the captain's unprecedented 
 rudeness, but Victor, resenting it still more 
 deeply, would not discuss it. 
 
 ' After all, no man would indulge in such 
 an extraordinary freak without some strong- 
 motive,' he said, as they walked down by the 
 side of the passage till they reached the 
 irregular, half - circular iron structure that 
 enclosed the opening into the singular under- 
 ground retreat. 
 
 ' Or without being mad,' answered Searle. 
 ' That was the conclusion Dunning: came to 
 after the most careful exann'natioii. But he,
 
 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 too, got quite fond of it for a work-shop ; 
 there's a heap of his things down there. As 
 I was telhng you, the shock of Webster's 
 attack seemed to affect Dunning most 
 strongly. The first thing that did him 
 good was a visit from an old friend of his, 
 an actor who was out of a billet, and came 
 from Melbourne and stayed over a month 
 with him. Then just before he was killed 
 his health was out of sorts ; he was afraid 
 of some inward growth, and he had arranged 
 with the directors that he should go once a 
 month for a few days to Melbourne to be 
 treated by some specialist. He was going to 
 start the very day after he was killed — had 
 everything ready. The directors thought 
 themselves lucky to get hold of Trevaskis in 
 his place, but ' 
 
 A^ictor discouraged reversion to this sub- 
 ject. Searle, however, had his innings when 
 he bade the captain good-bye. 
 
 ' Well, I suppose you're not sorry to go,' 
 said Trevaskis in a nonchalant voice. 
 
 ' In some ways I am,' answered Searle. 
 ' The company have always treated me well ; 
 I'm not like the man who said :
 
 THE SILENT SEA 283 
 
 ' " First I was a master, 
 Then I was a grieve ; 
 At last I got the dogs to keep, 
 And then I got my leave." 
 
 But then, again, I'm glad that the company 
 have sent a young gentleman of good 
 position with an interest in the mine ; there 
 have been some curious tricks in connection 
 with it before, and— — ' 
 
 Searle's heart failed him a little as he met 
 the furious glare that came into the captain's 
 eyes, so he cut his sentence short, and it was 
 not till he was on the box-seat of the mail- 
 coach bowling along to Nilpeena at the rate 
 of ten miles an hour that he thoroughly 
 enjoyed the ' dig ' he had given the new 
 captain.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Victor did not find that the manager 
 developed more companionable qualities as 
 the days went on. There is, doubtless, often 
 a great satisfaction to the unregenerate man 
 in taking change out of an offender by what 
 Searle called giving a ' dig,' esj^ecially when 
 the one who gives it is going beyond the 
 reach of an inept pleasantry in return. The 
 amazement which Fitz-Gibbon's voluntary 
 sojourn at such a j^lace as the Colmar caused 
 Trevaskis was changed by Searle's jDarting 
 words into a fast susj^icion that he had, by 
 reason of his large interest in the mine, come 
 to play the spy on the new manager. Thus 
 to the moroseness which his misfortunes and 
 rankling sense of failure had induced was 
 added the animus of a private grudge.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 285 
 
 The result of this was not, however, at 
 first bad for Victor ; it had merely the result 
 of makinof him work rather hard. Durino- 
 the first week he made several clerical slips 
 which Trevaskis comuiented on with so much 
 severity and rudeness that it was with mucli 
 difficulty the young man kept his temper. 
 
 ' Good heavens ! how the animal sets my 
 teeth on edge !' he said, and then he resolved 
 that he would never give him the chance 
 acrain. 
 
 For the next two weeks he worked late 
 and early, mastering all the details of his 
 work, making out lists of the stores on hand, 
 so that he should not forget to order in time. 
 As for the variations in the men's wages, he 
 learned them off by heart, in order that he 
 should make no errors in writing out their 
 weekly cheques. After this spurt of work 
 was over, Trevaskis set him to take stock 
 of all the minincr materials in the various 
 storerooms. 
 
 In this he had tlie assistance of Michael 
 the water-carter. The mine was dependent 
 for drinking water, as indeed were all the 
 inhabitants of Oolmar as well, on the
 
 286 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 Government tank, half - way between the 
 mine and the township. 
 
 ' And very bad it do be getting, that same 
 tahnk, Mr. Fitz-Gibbon. The dhry season is 
 powerful bad for the tahnks ; you gets down 
 to ahl the mud and shlime and dead things.' 
 
 They were in the ironmongery store, 
 Michael calling over shovels, sieves, coils of 
 fuse, picks, leather belting, kegs of nails, etc., 
 Victor checking them off in his stock-book. 
 After an hour and a half of this, Victor cried 
 out, ' Smoke oh !' and the two were talking 
 as they spelled. Michael was a nervous- 
 looking little man, with a brick-red face, 
 keen little brown eyes, and very red hair. 
 As he talked, quick spasmodic twitches 
 would from time to time pass over his face, 
 especially round the mouth and eyes and 
 across the nose. 
 
 ' But, surely to goodness, Michael, you 
 have no dead things in the tank out of 
 which our drinking - water comes !' cried 
 Victor, with a touch of dismay in his voice. 
 
 ' Indade, sor, and there is, an' mahny's the 
 time I've had to hould me nose while I'm 
 takinof a drau2:ht of wather. It isn't so bad as
 
 THE SILENT SEA 287 
 
 that this saison yet, and the Government 
 they do be puttin' off cleaning the tahnk. 
 We'll have a spreadin' illness, the typhy 
 faver or some such, and then we'll be forced 
 to keep a docthor to our own cheek.' 
 
 ' By the way, Michael, what sort of a 
 doctor is the man you subscribe so much a 
 month for ?' 
 
 ' Well, sor, he's a big fat mahn, wid half 
 the alphabet at his heels, living on the other 
 side of Hooper's Luck. Iviry month there's 
 a shilling stopped out of our wages, as you 
 know, to give him, for living beyand the 
 reach of ahny rale disthress, I may say. We 
 did just as well when he wasn't there, and 
 we died quietly, widout the help of medicine, 
 if the hour had come. Mahny a time I do 
 be wondering, sor, how mankind will come 
 and shtay in a place like this, and from all 
 parts of the worrld. There's Runaway Hans 
 — a mahn that used to go on whan voyage 
 from Chiny to the Pyreamaids, where I am 
 tould the corps of holy cats — the blissid 
 saints forgive them ! — and of moighty mon- 
 archs is kept as on the day they died, maybe 
 shortly after the Flood ; and yet that mahn
 
 2 88 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 left his kit and his Sunday breeches and 
 three months' wag-e, to run awav to the 
 Golmar.' 
 
 ' Runaway Hans !' repeated Victor, who 
 was smihng broadly, and by this time de- 
 cided that Michael was one to be cultivated; 
 ' ah ! that's the yellow-haired young man with 
 a strong German accent ?' 
 
 ' Yes, the same ; he do thry to spake 
 English a little, but what he mostly talks 
 is, as you say, sor, the German ahccent. 
 Well, and he left all that behind him, and 
 ran away for what ? To scrape dirt under- 
 ground till his guernsey pours over wid sweat 
 like a rag soaked in the washtub, and live 
 undher a sthrip o' calico wid an oneasy 
 perished branch o' sandal-tree to keep the 
 hate out — which it don't.' 
 
 Victor laughed ; and at that moment 
 Trevaskis looked in at the open door. His 
 face darkened as he took in the frank, friendly 
 relations which the young man had so quickly 
 established between himself and Michael — 
 the veriest drudge at the mine. Trevaskis' 
 own manner to all who were under him was 
 marked by a certain peremptory roughness.
 
 THE SILENT SEA 289 
 
 which is, as a rule, the note of the proletariat 
 who has developed into the master. In his 
 most genial moments he would never dream 
 of entering into any talk with one like Michael 
 beyond giving him orders, and perhaps occa- 
 sionally blaspheming his eyes for not being 
 more prompt. 
 
 ' That's his lay — to worm himself into the 
 confidence of everyone, and that old fox 
 Drummond asking: me to let him have an 
 insight into the working of the mine. But 
 I'll put a spoke in his wheel there !' thought 
 Trevaskis, as he strode away after giving his 
 orders. 
 
 ' Barzilla Jenkins is going off by the after- 
 noon mail. I want you to make out his 
 cheque, Fitz-Gibbon.' 
 
 When Victor went into the office he found 
 Jenkins, a big, brawny Gornishman, standing 
 at the door as he had come up out of the 
 mine — his f:ice and hands black, his moleskin 
 trousers stiff with clay and earth stains. 
 
 ' You are at the rock drills, I think?' said 
 Victor, turning up the time-book. 
 
 The man gave a muffled sort of assent. 
 The men were paid each Saturday ; this was 
 
 VOL. I. 19
 
 29Q THE SILENT SEA 
 
 Friday, but Jenkins was entered only for 
 two shifts. 
 
 ' Why, you are only down for two shifts, 
 besides to-day's, since last pay-day, Jenkins !' 
 said Victor, as he began to write out the 
 cheque : ' three days, at nine shillings a 
 day.' 
 
 As he looked up, to hand this to Jenkins, 
 he was struck with the look of profound 
 gloom in his face. There were suspicious light 
 smears on his cheeks, too. 
 
 'It's. just the inikity o' the oud Adam 
 'isself,' he burst out passionately. ' I missed 
 two days' work, bein' on the drink, and now 
 I've not enough to take me hum ; and 
 when I coom up this afternoon, I found this 
 'ere.' 
 
 As he spoke, he handed Victor a telegram, 
 which ran : ' Your wife is much worse. Come 
 at once.' 
 
 ' I 'ad a letter last week, as she was on- 
 well,' he went on, ' and I knowed some'ow 
 last night she were weered. I oft a' gone 
 before. I might be sartin doctor's troode 
 would do 'er no good.' 
 
 By this time Victor had produced his
 
 THE SILENT SEA 291 
 
 private cheque-book, and was rapidly writing 
 out a cheque for five pounds. 
 
 ' Take this, 'Zilla,' he said, putting it folded 
 into his hand. ' You can pay me back when 
 it is convenient,' he added, anxious to cut 
 short the man's broken expressions of grati- 
 tude. 
 
 It was the personal relations into which he 
 came with the miners that gave the strongest 
 element of interest to the purser's work. 
 Victor had strongly the sympathetic fibre, 
 which is rarely absent from the Irish temper- 
 ament when it has fair play. He had also that 
 quick sense of humour which, under all cir- 
 cumstances, gives an enlivening strain to the 
 serio-comedy of life. And at the Colmar, as 
 in all other jDarts of the Australian Bush, 
 there was a great deal of human nature about. 
 It is true that most of it was quite in the 
 rough ; that there was little of those finely - 
 spun hypocrisies, those keen but veiled rival- 
 ries, those subtle and contradictory nuances 
 of character, which are developed among 
 superior people, under the high pressure of 
 civilization. Those politely ironical little 
 stories that invigorate the languors of con-
 
 292 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 versation, at the expense of mutual friends, 
 were as unknown as the faculties sharpened 
 only to invent means of killing time. But 
 though there were no polished raconteurs 
 ripely skilled in relating events which never 
 happened, in a sparkling way, there was no 
 lack of men who enjoyed hearing and telling 
 such stories as came in their way in a some- 
 what Rabelaisian fashion. 
 
 At the Colmar, as in politer walks of life, 
 those whose social instincts were most highly 
 developed were not, as a rule, among the 
 more admirable characters. They belonged 
 rather to the habitual procession of the 
 streets, with the chronic idlers left out, 
 greedy for enjoyment in some form, and reck- 
 less as to the future. They alternated hard 
 work with ' betting drinks to the crowd,' 
 and going twenty-four hours without sleep. 
 They preferred to give a fillip to one day at 
 the expense of another, rather than have all 
 days alike monotonous. Speed with an equi- 
 vocal result fascmated them more than the 
 undeviating pace of safety. Some of the 
 older miners were Cornish Wesleyans, who 
 combined to hold ' services' on Sunday, to get
 
 THE SILENT SEA 293 
 
 up teetotal entertainments, and generally 
 influence the laxer brethren to adopt a more 
 decorous mode of life. But early in his 
 experience as a purser, it occurred to Victor 
 that the miners would be a much duller lot 
 than they were if the more serious among 
 them had it all their own way. It is indeed 
 a melancholy reflection that the good quali- 
 ties of some people are sesthetically, often- 
 times more unsatisfactory, at least to the 
 mere looker - on, than the less virtuous 
 qualities of others. 
 
 'Zilla Jenkins was one who hovered 
 between the two camps — sometimes severely 
 virtuous in his conduct, and rigid in his 
 condemnation of all carnal indulgence. 
 During such periods he was a total abstainer, 
 and had even been known to give rousing 
 addresses on the evils of intemperance. But 
 these were adventures in the higher ethics, 
 which time after time ended in disaster. 
 * Brother 'Zilla hev backslid again ' was the 
 testimony that had often to be given 
 regarding him at the chapel and blue-ribbon 
 meetings. 
 
 Two of these more serious miners inter-
 
 294 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 viewed Victor on Saturday after Jenkins had 
 left by the mail-coach. 
 
 ' About 'Zilla, sir ; we does wish as you 
 'adn't a-beed so kind to 'e,' the elder said 
 in an expostulatory tone. 
 
 ' You see it's like this, sir/ struck in the 
 other man, before Victor, who was amused 
 and a little taken aback, could make any 
 response. ' Jenkins hev gone back agin an 
 agin to rowl like the SM^ne in the Scripther 
 in the slime o' evil-doin'. 'Zilla gets sorry, 
 but the repentance don't stick to 'e. Now, 
 we was a-watchin' for this 'ere oppertoonity. 
 'Zilla's been bad on the burst. News comes 
 as 'is missus is hill, she's gen'ally hill — that's 
 'ow she can't leave 'er mother to cleave onto 
 'er man, which is the rule o' Gord and o' 
 nature, but she's got weerd and weerd, and 
 'Zilla he wants awful to git away ; but he 
 spent 'is money at the public-'ouse an' so did 
 those as 'e goes wi' there. Why, sir, they're 
 on the tick and on the borrowr from one 
 month's end to the other. We w^as waitin' 
 to the larst moment, an' then to come forrard 
 and say : " 'Ere, 'Zilla Jenkins, your missus 
 is mayl)e i' the last gapse. 'Tis a gashly
 
 THE SILENT SEA 295 
 
 thing for a man to swaller 'is money an' 
 make a beast o' 'isself onto the bargain, and 
 then not 'ave enough to take 'im to his wife's 
 berrin' maybe 
 
 ' You were going to say all that to the 
 poor fellow, when he was in such a fix !' 
 said Victor, keeping a serious face with some 
 difficulty. ' Well, I'm glad I gave him what 
 he needed ' 
 
 ' Ay, sir, but 'ow much better to slang 'e 
 now than let 'e go straight to Berlzebub. 
 We was goin' to lend 'im the money at 's 
 awn 'count on a Hi Ho U, an' that 'ud 'ave 
 'elped to bring 'e back to the paths o' right- 
 eousness, so to speak, for 'e 'd a-been ashamed 
 to spend 'is substance at th' Colmar Harms 
 till 'e 'd a-paid us back, an' by that time we'd 
 'ave 'ad a sartin grip o' 'e ' 
 
 A teamster came into the office just then, 
 to tell Victor that four teams were waiting^ 
 at the weigh -bridge to have their loads 
 checked, so that he had to leave before 
 Rehoboam Hosking had quite finished. 
 
 Rehoboam, or Roby, as he was usually 
 called, was one of the three shift bosses of 
 the mine, and the one wlio most frequently
 
 296 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 conducted services in the little iron school- 
 room which stood mid-way between the 
 Colmar Arms and the post and telegraph 
 office. He had what some of the miners 
 called ' a great gift for spouting,' and was 
 fervid in organizing meetings of all sorts, in 
 which he took a leading j)art. On Sundays 
 he often preached morning and evening. 
 His sermons and exhortations were of a very 
 rousing, not to say overbold, description. 
 
 Thus, on one occasion w^hen he was carried 
 away by his zeal for conversions, he cried 
 out in stentorian tones : ' Descend upon us, O 
 Holy Ghost, descend : if there's any damage 
 done to the roof, there's not a shoveller on 
 the Colmar that won't give a bob for 
 repairs.' 
 
 One or two Episcopalians who were present 
 afterwards accused Roby of blasphemy. He 
 denied the charge with great vigour, and 
 affirmed that they and the Church they 
 belonged to were ' lukewarm Ladoshians, 
 that the Amen of the beginning of Creation 
 had long ago spued out of His mouth.' This 
 was a flight in metaphor which reduced one 
 of Roby's opponents to silence, while it con-
 
 THE SILENT SEA 2()7 
 
 firmed the other in his worst opinions of the 
 shift boss's divinity, and even of his moral 
 sincerity. Henceforth this Episcopalian 
 believed all that was said agrainst Robv, for 
 there were unfortunately stories abroad 
 about him that somewhat told against his 
 influence as a social reformer. In preaching, 
 he was fond of describing himself as a 
 brand snatched from the burning, and with 
 that complete deliverance from reserve 
 and modesty, which so curiously marks the 
 members of some religious sects, he would 
 give graphic details of the ways in which 
 aforetime he had distinguished himself in 
 evil doings. At teetotal meetings, also, he 
 would relate with gusto how at one period 
 of his history he had been such a slave to 
 drink that his first wife had died from the 
 effects of destitution and misery. 
 
 ' But at the same time 'e don't tell 'ow 
 when he was a local preacher and class-leader 
 at the Burrar, 'e prilled samples o' copper ore, 
 and 'elped to start a little bogus company,' 
 an old acquaintance of Boby's would say, 
 and another would recall an equally dis- 
 creditable story. Were they all true ?
 
 298 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 Whether or no, the man was a very 
 ' stirring ' pulpiteer and blue-ribbonner. No 
 new-comer was loner at the Colmar without 
 
 o 
 
 being importuned by Roby to give some 
 assistance at the Saturday night temperance 
 meetings, which were chiefly under his 
 direction. 
 
 ' The Lord did not make everybody smurt,' 
 he would explain with great unction, but I 
 blaiv iveryone as tries can do summat for a 
 blue mitting — sing a song or give a bit o' 
 recitation, or music on any sort o' machine 
 'e plays.' 
 
 And thus Victor found himself pledged 
 to Roby, to play a violin solo on the even- 
 ing of each Saturday from the first week 
 he came to the mine. Now it was four 
 o'clock in the afternoon. The last of the 
 men had been paid, and Victor had the ofiice 
 to himself He took out his violin, tuned it, 
 and began to play over the ' Last Rose of 
 Summer ' with variations. He had not 
 played more than a minute or two, however, 
 before he put the violin down with a little 
 exclamation. The last time he had played 
 this melody was at a concert on board the
 
 THE SILENT SEA '299 
 
 Mogul, accompanying Helen on the j)iano. 
 The first few bars recalled the place and 
 scene with the vividness which belongs to 
 the associations of music, and with these 
 Victor recalled that he had not finished read- 
 ing her letter which had come by that morn- 
 ing's mail, posted the day after she and her 
 father had reached Colombo. He had been 
 interrupted in reading it ; then he had gone 
 to dinner ; then he had paid the men ; then 
 he had gone to the weigh-bridge ; and then — 
 he had forgotten it. He admitted this to 
 himself with a j)ang of self-reproach. It was 
 not new to him, this discovery that his 
 thoughts and actions often fell below his own 
 ideal of what a lover should be. 
 
 x^nd it was such a bright, amusing letter, 
 the people on board so ca23itally hit off, and 
 the landing in Colombo ; the drive among 
 the swarming native quarters, where you see 
 the craftsmen in their tiny shops without 
 door or windows, the coarse screens of split 
 bamboos rolled up ; liere a blacksmith sitting 
 cross-legged beside his anvil, there an enamel- 
 worker, then a brazier's shop full of glowing 
 copper vessels, the richer shops with tinsel-
 
 300 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 covered skull-caps, with soft white silks and 
 muslins, j)etticoats and trousers for women, 
 with spangles and gold and embroidery ; the 
 soft-faced bronze babies, arrayed in tiny loin- 
 cloths and heavy bangles, toddling after the 
 Sahibs, to sell them a big scarlet flower ; the 
 traders, with a single basket of mangoes and 
 a small branch of bananas, under a cocoanut 
 palm by the roadside ; the Hindoos with their 
 caste-mark on forehead and chest sittino^ 
 sideways on bullocks ; the big funny vehicles 
 with a pagoda roof; the little bamboo carts 
 drawn by tiny humped oxen that run as fast 
 as ponies ; the yellow-robed Mollahs under 
 yellow umbrellas ; the people who run after 
 belated travellers with palm fans and screens 
 of coarse bamboos, and great pineapples for 
 threepence, and iced soda-water under the 
 scorching sun. All was just as it had been 
 on that day when they went through the 
 place together. 
 
 * But what I like best to see are the 
 natives of high caste in voluminous folds of 
 pure white and majestic turbans,' wrote 
 Miss Paget ; ' their unmoved calm, their 
 statuesque attitudes, their imperturbable
 
 THE SILENT SEA 301 
 
 mouths, make one feel that, as compared 
 with Orientals, Europeans have, on the 
 whole, degenerated into comis voyageurs.' 
 
 ' What would Helen think of our miners ?' 
 thought Victor with a smile. 
 
 Then he turned to the letter again, and 
 looked over it from beginning to end, while 
 some feeling of loneliness he could not have 
 defined overcame him. Was it because 
 existence at the Colmar, like a Chinese 
 picture without shading or perspective, had 
 begun to pall on him, or was it that the 
 discipline under which Miss Paget purposely 
 kej)t her feelings left a void that, with the 
 roofless sort of sensation which had begun to 
 creep over him, struck him with a feeling- 
 akin to physical chill ? Only just on the 
 last half-sheet, after the close of the long 
 letter, in a sort of unoflicial postscript, came 
 a few tender words : 
 
 ' I think I have told you almost every- 
 thing, except that I often felt sad at the 
 thought of sailing, sailing, sailing farther away 
 from you every day. I am at this moment 
 in a charming: room at the Mount Lavinia 
 Hotel, where father's friend is established.
 
 302 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 They are both on a balcony somewhere, talk- 
 ing about classic odes. When I look out on 
 the window, I see that lovely stretch of 
 bright yellow sand, and the sea of an un- 
 fathomable blueness dying away on the 
 beach. When I look through the doorway, 
 with its khus-khus screen half drawn up, 
 there is a vista of polished floor and white- 
 robed natives with bare feet gliding noise- 
 lessly about. Still I am rather sad, because 
 you are not here. D'des moi quelque chose 
 de tendre qui me fasse uiihlier ces trlstes 
 pensees.^ 
 
 ' Dear Helen ! I must write her quite an 
 epistle to-morrow,' said Victor to himself, 
 after reading these lines many times over. 
 
 Then he went outside and stood looking 
 westward across the mine, with its groups of 
 low iron buildings, the long engine-room in 
 the centre, with its reverberating throb of ma- 
 chinery, the heavy folds of smoke rising above 
 it and hanging low over the adjacent groups 
 of the miners' huts and tents, and beyond the 
 little township, with its small iron buildings 
 equally bare, without the sign of a tree, or even 
 a fence, to break the dull dead level. For the 
 first time the austere, inexpressible aridity of
 
 THE SILENT SEA 303 
 
 the country seemed to weigh on him. It was 
 now many months since a shower of rain had 
 fallen in the district. The gray-green salt- 
 bush was frayed and thickly coated with 
 dust, the bare earth showing between the 
 low bushes in baked gaps. Was there any 
 other spot of the earth more desolate than 
 this ? — flat, parched, and gray, without shade 
 or water, lying in measureless vistas, with an 
 atmosphere so pure and clear, and a sky so 
 cloudless and widely vaulted, that frequently 
 the mirage we call the horizon was entirely 
 absent ? For how many hundreds of years 
 had the sun beaten remorselessly upon the 
 thirsty waste ? As he looked at it, an im- 
 mense longing came over Victor to see once 
 more the deep dull green of hills densely 
 covered with stringy bark, or to see autumn 
 leaves whirling yellow and red before a high 
 wind, under a threatening sky. 
 
 ' Well, Mr. Fitz-Gibbon, are you admiring 
 the western view ?' said someone close behind 
 him. 
 
 ' Yes ; admiring it all so intensely that it 
 has given me a fit of the blue devils,' said 
 Victor, as he shook hands with Challoner, 
 whom he had not seen for some days.
 
 304 THE SILENT SEA 
 
 ' You've been working too hard since you 
 came here. My wife said only last night 
 you've never been at Stonehouse in the day- 
 time, though you have been sleeping there for 
 over four weeks. You come away at daylight.' 
 
 ' Not before six, my dear sir. Don't make 
 me out stupider than I am. I ride for an 
 hour or so, then breakfast at the Colmar 
 Arms at eight, and at half-past or nine I am 
 in the office. Up to this, it has taken me 
 eififht or nine hours to do what Searle used 
 to get through in five.' 
 
 ' Well, you know, Rome was not built in 
 a day. I came across to steal a little keg 
 of blasting-powder, but as you are about I 
 suppose I'd better borrow it ; and then just 
 lock your office and come back with me to 
 Stonehouse.' 
 
 * Thank you ; I'll come with pleasure,' re- 
 turned Victor ; and after he had got the keg 
 of powder for Challoner, the two went across 
 the reef to Stonehouse. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD. 
 
 /. D d: Co. 
 
 '7
 
 ''^fToW X'fciuy -i^^y^^uM'^-Vv *V