“What a nuisance he must have been to you two,” I said feelingly.
Her eyes flashed at me a sort of frightened merriment, and suddenly she exploded into a clear burst of laughter. “Ha, ha, ha!”
I echoed it heartily, but not with the game charming tone: “Ha, ha, ha! … Isn’t he grotesque? Ha, ha, ha!” And the ludicrousness of old Nelson’s inanely fierce round eyes in association with his conciliatory manner to the lieutenant presenting itself to my mind brought on another fit.
“He looks,” I spluttered, “he looks—Ha, ha, ha!—amongst you three … like an unhappy blackbeetle. Ha, ha, ha!”
She gave out another ringing peal, ran off into her own room, and slammed the door behind her, leaving me profoundly astounded. I stopped laughing at once.
“What’s the joke?” asked old Nelson’s voice, halfway down the steps.
He came up, sat down, and blew out his cheeks, looking inexpressibly fatuous. But I didn’t want to laugh any more. And what on earth, I asked myself, have we been laughing at in this uncontrollable fashion. I felt suddenly depressed.
Oh, yes. Freya had started it. The girl’s overwrought, I thought. And really one couldn’t wonder at it.
I had no answer to old Nelson’s question, but he was too aggrieved at Jasper’s visit to think of anything else. He as good as asked me whether I wouldn’t undertake to hint to Jasper that he was not wanted at the Seven Isles group. I declared that it was not necessary. From certain circumstances which had come to my knowledge lately, I had reason to think that he would not be much troubled by Jasper Allen in the future.
He emitted an earnest “Thank God!” which nearly set me laughing again, but he did not brighten up proportionately. It seemed Heemskirk had taken special pains to make himself disagreeable. The lieutenant had frightened old Nelson very much by expressing a sinister wonder at the Government permitting a white man to settle down in that part at all. “It is against our declared policy,” he had remarked. He had also charged him with being in reality no better than an Englishman. He had even tried to pick a quarrel with him for not learning to speak Dutch.
“I told him I was too old to learn now,” sighed out old Nelson (or Nielsen) dismally. “He said I ought to have learned Dutch long before. I had been making my living in Dutch dependencies. It was disgraceful of me not to speak Dutch, he said. He was as savage with me as if I had been a Chinaman.”
It was plain he had been viciously badgered. He did not mention how many bottles of his best claret he had offered up on the altar of conciliation. It must have been a generous libation. But old Nelson (or Nielsen) was really hospitable. He didn’t mind that; and I only regretted that this virtue should be lavished on the lieutenant-commander of the Neptun. I longed to tell him that in all probability he would be relieved from Heemskirk’s visitations also. I did not do so only from the fear (absurd, I admit) of arousing some sort of suspicion in his mind. As if with this guileless comedy father such a thing were possible!
Strangely enough, the last words on the subject of Heemskirk were spoken by Freya, and in that very sense. The lieutenant was turning up persistently in old Nelson’s conversation at dinner. At last I muttered a half audible “Damn the lieutenant.” I could see that the girl was getting exasperated, too.
“And he wasn’t well at all—was he, Freya?” old Nelson went on moaning. “Perhaps it was that which made him so snappish, hey, Freya? He looked very bad when he left us so suddenly. His liver must be in a bad state, too.”
“Oh, he will end by getting over it,” said Freya impatiently. “And do leave off worrying about him, papa. Very likely you won’t see much of him for a long time to come.”
The look she gave me in exchange for my discreet smile had no hidden mirth in it. Her eyes seemed hollowed, her face gone wan in a couple of hours. We had been laughing too much. Overwrought! Overwrought by the approach of the decisive moment. After all, sincere, courageous, and self-reliant as she was, she must have felt both the passion and the compunction of her resolve. The very strength of love which had carried her up to that point must have put her under a great moral strain, in which there might have been a little simple remorse, too. For she was honest—and there, across the table, sat poor old Nelson (or Nielsen) staring at her, round-eyed and so pathetically comic in his fierce aspect as to touch the most lightsome heart.
He retired early to his room to soothe himself for a night’s rest by perusing his account-books. We two remained on the verandah for another hour or so, but we exchanged only languid phrases on things without importance, as though we had been emotionally jaded by our long day’s talk on the only momentous subject. And yet there was something she might have told a friend. But she didn’t. We parted silently. She distrusted my masculine lack of common sense, perhaps. … O! Freya!
Going down the precipitous path to the landing-stage, I was confronted in the shadows of boulders and bushes by a draped feminine figure whose appearance startled me at first. It glided into my way suddenly from behind a piece of rock. But in a moment it occurred to me that it could be no one else but Freya’s maid, a half-caste Malacca Portuguese. One caught fleeting glimpses of her olive face and dazzling white teeth about the house. I had observed her at times from a distance, as she sat within call under the shade of some fruit trees, brushing and plaiting her long raven locks. It seemed to be the principal occupation of her leisure hours. We had often exchanged nods and smiles—and a
