The Pride of the Peacock

  He was getting too excited. I felt alarmed for him, so I said soothingly: “Thank you, Ben. Now you must please rest. Everything is settled now.”

  He nodded. Joss pressed his hand and for a moment or two they looked steadily at each other. Then I bent over and kissed him.

  “Bless you both,” he said; and we went out.

  The bridal suite had been prepared for us. Apparently Oakland brides had used it through the ages.

  I was apprehensive when I entered it. Joss shut the door behind him. He stood leaning against it looking at me mockingly.

  “They tell me that all the future mistresses of Oakland Hall spend their first night of marriage in this room,” he said.

  I glanced quickly at the four-poster bed. He followed my gaze, and I knew he was amused.

  “This is a rather different case,” I said.

  “One’s own case always is,” he replied. He walked across the room. “Here’s the dressing room. Shall I occupy it or will you?”

  “Since you say it is a tradition of Oakland brides to occupy this bed I will do so. The dressing room can be yours. It will be quite comfortable, I dare say.”

  “A nice wifely concern for her husband’s comfort is always to be admired,” he said.

  “So…good night.”

  He took my hand and kissed it, and when he did not immediately relinquish it I felt afraid.

  “I trust you are a man of your word,” I said.

  He shook his head slightly. “It would be unwise to trust me too far.”

  I snatched my hand away.

  “But,” he went on, “have no fear. I would never force myself where I am so clearly not wanted.”

  “Then I will repeat Good night.”

  “Good night,” he said.

  He walked to the communicating door.

  When it shut behind him I ran to it and to my dismay saw that there was no key. As I stood there the door opened. He was there with the key in his hand. He gave it to me with a bow.

  “You will want to feel safe,” he said.

  I took the key and locked the door. I was safe.

  ***

  Two weeks after the wedding Ben took a decided turn for the worse. It was as though he had made up his mind that as his mission was accomplished he was ready to go.

  We were with him constantly. He talked a good deal about Peacocks and how he would be there with us in spirit.

  “Remember me, Jessie,” he said, “and particularly remember that everything I wanted was for your happiness…yours and Joss’s. You’re going to see that one day. I always knew it. You don’t like plans being made for you. Sometimes though you can’t see the woods for the trees and that’s how it is with you two just now. It’ll change. I’d like to see you together; I’d like to hear you sparring. You were meant for each other. And now you’re man and wife. God bless you both.”

  Joss and I rode together each day. I both dreaded and enjoyed the lessons. I knew I had improved and Joker would not now dare refuse to come when I ordered him to.

  They were long days of waiting, and with the passing of each one it became clear that Ben could not be long with us.

  He died in his sleep. Hannah called me, and I went to his bed and was struck by the utter peace of his face. It was almost as though he were smiling at me. I kissed his cold brow and went away.

  We buried him in the churchyard not far from the Clavering section. It was what he would have wanted. Joss and I stood side by side at the graveside, and as I listened to the clods of earth falling on his coffin I knew that was the end of a phase.

  My new life was about to begin.

  ***

  There were solicitors to be seen. I had begun to wonder whether Ben had played a trick on us and had not changed his will at all with the new conditions. I was wrong. It was precisely what he had done.

  Joss and I were joint owners of Oakland and the house in Australia known as Peacocks. I was given a good share of Ben’s holding in the Opal Mining Company, and Joss was given another to match mine. There were other legacies to people including the Laud family, his housekeeper and her children, and the opal known as the Green Flash at Sunset was left to Joss and me jointly.

  It seemed as though Ben was determined that we should be together. This bequest depended on our marriage, and if it had not taken place at the time of his death it must do so immediately afterwards, and on its taking place the properties would be ours. We were to be given a year, and if we had not married at the end of that time the shares and the houses and the Green Flash opal would be in trust for the Laud family.

  “There is no need for us to consider this,” said Mr. Venning, “for the marriage has already taken place before his death, so I may congratulate you both.”

  During the next weeks preparations were made for our departure. Miriam was frankly delighted that it had all gone so smoothly. Ernest thought I was doing the right thing and therefore she did. She was an expert at tatting and gave me some exquisite mats for a wedding present.

  Xavier wished me happiness. “Weddings are infectious,” he said; and I wondered whether that meant he and Lady Clara might at last come to an understanding.

  My grandmother tried to hide her gratification by faintly amused skepticism right until the wedding was over; now and then she would shoot the occasional barb and refer to life in the wilds and comment that some people had strange tastes and like fools rushed in where angels feared to tread. When people had perfectly good homes in civilized surroundings she could not understand why they must go dashing off to the other side of the globe. How much more satisfactory it would have been if I had stayed at Oakland and entertained in a manner to which the old house was accustomed. I knew that she sometimes mentioned me at prayers, commanding God to look after me and not to punish me too severely for my thoughtlessness in leaving Oakland, when it would have been so much more pleasant for the family if I stayed, in a manner which in fact admonished Him not to be too slow in bringing me to my senses.

  I could laugh more than ever. I was free of her.

  Joss went to London on business and I was alone for some time. It was strange sleeping in the big four-poster bed in Oakland Hall, the mistress of it all.

  Wilmot was delighted. So were the other servants.

  It was right and proper, Wilmot told her, according to Hannah. “Now Claverings would be back at Oakland Hall.”

  I rode every day, determined to improve; and when Joss returned he said we would be leaving England very soon.

  Banker went back soon after the funeral. He was going to settle in Melbourne, he said. It was October before Joss and I sailed for Sydney.

  Outward Bound

  It was a golden autumn day when we embarked on the Hermes, which was to take us to the other side of the world. I quickly realized that Joss was a person of some importance and was known, as Ben had been, to the captain and a number of the crew. He told me that when the ship docked in Sydney they were often entertained there by some members of the Company and this meant that innumerable little concessions were granted to us.

  “One of these,” said Joss, “is being provided with single cabins which they think is rather unorthodox in a newly married pair, but I am sure you will feel exceedingly grateful for that.”

  “I do.”

  It was quite adequate, that cabin; and Joss’s was next to it. I was thankful for the partition which divided us.

  The weather was rough at first, but I was delighted to find that I was a good sailor. He was, of course! I should have hated to have given him an advantage over me in that respect.

  There was little to do on board except sleep, eat, talk, and study our fellow passengers. Naturally Joss and I must spend a good deal of time together. He talked then about the Company and life in Australia and I had to admit that I found it enthralling.

  We breakf
asted at nine and dined at twelve. On one particular occasion the ship was rolling and pitching badly and as the atmosphere below was stuffy I decided it would be more pleasant on deck in spite of the high seas. I staggered up there to find it was almost impossible to stand upright. The waves were pounding the side of the ship, which was so much at the mercy of the sea that as the prow rose up towards the sky it seemed as though it would never come down again; then after a while it would plunge down so deep that I feared we were going to turn over. The wind tore at my cape and threw back my hood, and my hair streamed all over my face so that I could scarcely see. I found it exhilarating.

  I tried to walk the deck, but I had reckoned without the wind. It tore at me and lifted me off my feet. I was caught suddenly and held. It was Joss and he was laughing at me. There was spray on his eyebrows and his hair stuck up round his head. His ears looked more pointed than usual.

  “What are you trying to do?” he demanded. “Commit suicide? Don’t you know it’s dangerous to walk the decks in weather like this?”

  “What of you?”

  “I saw you come up and followed you, guessing you’d be foolhardy enough to defy the wind.”

  He was still holding me and I made an effort to free myself.

  “I’ll be all right now,” I said.

  “I beg to contradict.” The ship rolled and we fell against the rail.

  “You see?” he taunted, his face close to mine.

  “Yet another occasion when I have to admit you’re right, I suppose.”

  “There’ll be so many. I wouldn’t bother to count.”

  “Perhaps I might turn the tables one day.”

  “Who knows. Miracles have happened. Look. There’s a bench over there set against the bulkhead in the shelter of those hanging lifeboats. We’d get the freshness without the buffeting there.”

  He put his arm through mine and held it close against him. He gave the impression that he enjoyed such contacts not because they pleased him physically but because he knew they disturbed me.

  We sat down and he put an arm about me. “Safer,” he said with a grimace. “The only reason, I assure you.”

  “Had I in my folly been washed overboard everything you now share with me would have been yours, wouldn’t it?”

  “That’s true.”

  “A consummation devoutly to be wished surely?”

  “Perhaps there are other consummations which would be more devoutly so.” I drew away from him. “Be prepared, Jessica,” he went on. “One of these days you’re going to grow up.”

  “It seems that you never speak to me without attempting to denigrate me in some way. So of what interest will it be to you when I reach this adult stage?”

  “That’s what I can’t wait to discover.”

  “You seem to think you should instruct me in this art of growing up?”

  “A husbandly duty perhaps.”

  “And when I do…”

  “Ah, then we shall see. I am impatient to discover.”

  “Tell me about the Company and the life I’m going out to.”

  “It’s something you’ll have to experience for yourself. Ben has told you a great deal. You’ll be right in the midst of opal company. We’re all opal men in Fancy Town. You know the town got its name because Desmond Dereham had a hunch about it. Tell me how you felt about Ben. You were fond of him, I know. He fascinated you, didn’t he? He was a great man. But he sent your father away, branded him a thief and deceived us all about the Green Flash. You don’t brood on that, do you? One of the things you’ll have to learn is to accept our code of behavior out there. It’s something you’ll have to adjust to. Ben felt no compunction for having behaved as he did towards your father. He was going to steal the Green Flash and desert your mother. Ben was fond of your mother and when he got fond of people, he was really devoted to them. He was a gambler at heart. We all are. We wouldn’t be there if we weren’t. That’s how it is with men who go after gold…sapphires, diamonds, opals, whatever it is. Nature plays tricks and you compare it with playing a card game. You don’t know what card is given to you till you turn it up. It might be the ace of spades; it might be the ace of hearts; that’s death and love, they say. But it might be the deuce of clubs and that won’t mean much either way. There’s a lot of luck in life, and I’ve always thought you’ve got to believe in luck to get it.”

  He told me about some finds which had come to light in the Fancy. He explained to me how there were pieces attached to fossilized wood which itself was impregnated with opal, but only fragments of it—nothing that could be used.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “it’s like a sandwich. What a sandwich! There’s the precious bit in the middle and on top you get the sandstone and underneath the opal dirt. It’s in between that there’s the meat. But these are not the lumps I’ve been telling you about. They consist of a lot of fine grains of sand stuck together…and in the cracks there’ll be this hint of opal. There are times when you can gouge out enough to make a small stone, but the effort is hardly worth it. But I tell you this—when you find these, you can wager that not far off you’re going to come across the precious stuff. It might be opal matrix, opal dirt, or just plain potch, but where it is there’s always hope that somewhere, nearby, if you can only find the spot, is the precious stuff, and every miner believes that what he is going to find is going to be better than anything that ever came to light before.”

  It was fascinating listening to his talk. He seemed then as though he forgot the need to score over me which I believed had its roots in my repugnance to him and the terms I had insisted on before marrying him. When I saw him as the director of the Company, the man who understood opals and loved them—for this came out whenever he talked of them—I saw a different side to his nature from that of the conceited male whose dignity had been affronted because the woman he had been forced to marry for the sake of a fortune had insisted on the marriage’s being, as he called it mockingly, “in name only.”

  So we sat there while the storm raged around us, and as I listened to his talk of the life to which I was going, my feelings towards him changed a little. I had realized that there were many sides to his nature and I must not allow my dislike of one to blind me to the existence of the rest.

  ***

  Our first port of call was Teneriffe, and when we called there Joss took me on a tour around the island. We went to Santa Cruz in a gay little carriage drawn by two donkeys, and Joss, who was very knowledgeable about the place, enlightened me a good deal. The weather was gently warm, and I felt so exhilarated that I did not want the day to end. I admired the wonderfully colored flowering shrubs and the lushness of everything. Joss showed me banana plantations, and we lunched in a small restaurant overlooking the sea on potage de berros—a sort of watercress soup—and fish which we had been told had been caught that morning and was served with a delicious sauce with the name of mo-jo picon. It was very exotic and exciting. As we sat overlooking the sea, Joss told me that when the Romans had come there they had found this group of islands to have a larger population of dogs than any other country they knew, so they called them Canaria, the Islands of Dogs. The natives were the Guanches—a savage people—who were in due course subdued by the Spaniards.

  As we ate, young men and women came to dance the local dances, and there were singers too. We enjoyed the isa and the folia which, said Joss, were characteristically Spanish. He was clearly gratified by my wonder and delight in everything and even his pleasure in his superior knowledge failed to dampen my pleasure.

  I was sorry when we had to go back to the ship, and as we sailed off he and I leaned over the rail and watched the dominating peak of Pico de Tiede fade out of sight.

  ***

  When we reached Cape Town, Joss had some business to do, and he suggested that I go with him to the house of a man whom he had to see. It would be good for me, he said, now that I
was a shareholder in the Company, to learn everything I could about it.

  Cape Town must surely be one of the most beautifully situated cities in the world. I was overwhelmed by the magnificence of Table Bay, with the flat-topped Table Mountain clear in the sunshine and the Twelve Apostles Mountains looming up beside it.

  We had a horse-drawn carriage to take us up the slope to Joss’s business associate. The house was delightful in the Dutch Colonial style, and to step inside those beautifully cool rooms was like walking into a Dutch painting. There were stone steps leading to a terrace, and on this was a table with chairs ranged round it.

  As we went up the steps, Kurt van der Stel and his wife came to greet us. They were clearly very pleased to see Joss, who introduced me as the wife he had recently married in England.

  Grete van der Stel was a rosy, plump woman, rather severely dressed, and she bustled around, serving us with wine, which she explained came from a nearby vineyard, and with cakes which she had made herself.

  When Joss told them of Ben’s death, they were deeply distressed.

  “It’s sad to think we shall never see him again,” said Grete.

  “He had never been completely well since his accident,” replied Joss.

  “That is one of the hazards of mining,” Kurt reminded him.

  “And one of the reasons why people like you must pay high prices for that which the miners have risked their lives for,” answered Joss.

  The Van der Stels talked for a long time about Ben, his exuberance, his unpredictability. They agreed that the opal world would not be the same without him.

  Then Grete asked me if I would like to see the house and I told her that I should.