CHAPTER XXV
THE CANDLE GUTTERS
WITH tropic abruptness the storm had ceased. In a few minutes the night had changed from drear ugliness to sparkling beauty. The growing moon was riding like a toy lantern half way up in the heavens, lost amid the dazzling glitter of star-land. The splendour of the Southern Cross shone down on the island, and countless millions of other distant planets gleamed their brightest as though to make up for lost time. It was night in a faerie world. Even devastated Tao Tao was transformed once more into a thing of beauty. A cool, gentle breeze swayed the rain-laden leaves so that they resembled a mass of burnished silver set in a magic background. Stretching into the horizon, against the illimitable maze of stars, lay the restless sea, unruly now, and flaked with white foam which danced and cavorted in the gay glare of the starlight as the mighty swell rolled on, flicking the island gem as it passed. Nestling in a sheltered cove, at her usual anchorage, rode the Kestrel, pulling lightly at her cable like a restive horse eager to be off.
But it was not merely the wizardry of the night that held Keith in a spell as he stood on the veranda with Joan beside him and looked over the scene. The shackles had fallen from him. A millstone, that had weighed him down both sleeping and waking, however he strove to forget it, was there no longer. He was free—free to come or go, free to sail on the face of the sea in ships, free to stay where he was and say whatever his heart dictated to the woman of his choice.
Yet Keith, who had never known what nervousness was, had suddenly become acutely conscious of what the word could mean. For many weeks he had held himself in check when he was longing to declare his love. Then had come the moment when, after he had endured nameless horrors of apprehension, his resolution had failed him and the shadow had been forgotten for one long glorious moment. Afterward he had got himself in hand again, had drawn back when too late and, drawing back, had known that he was hurting Joan just as he was hurting himself.
"Joan, dear," he said soberly, imprisoning the hand that hung beside him, "can you forgive me?"
"Forgive you?" she asked gently.
"I had fought so hard—before—not to let you see," he went on, "and then—afterwards—I thought I could hide it again. And I did, but—it hurt!"
"Do you really think you did, Keith?" she asked dreamily.
"Why, yes! Didn't I, Joan? You don't mean that you knew all the time—"
Joan smiled, dared a glance at him and nodded.
"Not quite all the time: not just at first: but after a little, yes. You—" she laughed faintly—"you were rather clumsy—dear!"
Swiftly his arms went about her then, and he kissed her lips, her smooth cheeks and the starlit eyes, and murmured her name.
"Joan! My Joan!" he said tenderly. "I've loved you so long, dear, and have wanted you so much. When—when will you marry me, Joan? Need we wait very long, dear?"
For answer she placed a slender hand behind his head and drew it down until his lips rested again on hers. After a moment:
"Do you know, dear," she whispered, "what makes me almost as happy as anything is that your secret has gone. I have always believed you would tell me some day. Of course I did not know what it was; I have always known that the cloud was there though. It is hard for a man to hide sorrow from the girl who loves him. At first I thought sometimes that it was—was somebody else in your life, and then—then I didn't think so. For your sake I was often very unhappy. Sooner or later you would have told me everything."
"Yesterday and to-day," the man said musingly, "I have actually been thinking that perhaps I ought to go right out of your life and try to forget."
"Without saying why?"
"Yes."
"But you wouldn't have done it, dear man," the girl said smilingly. "No, Keith, you don't understand yourself half as well as I do."
"Your brother is not asleep yet," he said a minute or two later. "Let's go in and stagger him with the news."
With his arm round Joan's shoulder, Keith led her to Chester's room, where the planter was reading in bed.
"We—" they began in chorus, and then stopped, looking at one another and laughing.
Chester put down his book and smiled.
"By a process of logical reasoning," he said, glancing at the location of Keith's arm and seeing the happiness in their faces, "I should assume—"
"Go ahead and assume, old man," said Keith. "Joan and I have just been fixing up a kind of a new partnership."
"Old as the hills," said Chester. "I once did the same thing myself, but the lady changed her mind next morning, for which I was later devoutly thankful. But seriously, I'm awfully glad, Keith. I shall miss her frightfully, but these little things will happen, y'know."
"Miss nothing," rejoined Keith. "I thought we were all going off on a trading stunt."
"No, don't bid me a fond farewell yet, Chester. I'm not even married," Joan protested.
"With your permission, dear," said Keith, "that interesting event will take place as soon as we skip ashore at Australia. That is the star number on the programme. There are other things to think about, such as earning a living, but they'll take care of themselves."
Keith had no misgivings as to the future that night when he lay awake trying to realize his good fortune. He was still young, and could kick the world ahead of him. Never was buoyant lover more bereft of worldly possessions to lay at his lady's feet than he, but his brain was already alive with plans for the future.
"We can get away at this time to-morrow," said Chester at breakfast the following day. "There's a pile of work to do, so we must make things hum. There's no doubt we can hand our niggers over to the planters on Tamba. They'll be jolly glad of the chance to get them. I'll run over there in the ketch now and fix that up."
Joan and Keith spent the morning gathering together and packing such articles as were worth taking along, though most of the simple furniture they decided to leave behind because it had suffered at the hands of the blacks in the raid. While handling their household goods both Keith and the girl kept a wary eye open for the possibility of running across the missing pearls, but without success.
"How quickly a home can become impersonal!" exclaimed Joan, as she surveyed the interior of the bungalow after it had been practically dismantled. "I wonder whether any one will ever live here again?"
"Shipwrecked sailors, perhaps," said Keith. "Good luck to them if they do come, but somehow I hope they won't take any notion into their heads to alter the old place, or add to it or anything."
"If it's any comfort to them they're welcome to do as they please, surely," commented the girl.
"As a matter of fact it's ten thousand to one that nobody will ever sleep under the roof again after to-night, and in the next few years it will crumble down, but I should like to think always of it as still there, so that if ever I were passing this part of the world I could just pop ashore and have a peep at the place where I met you."
Joan blushed prettily, and for a brief interval the operation of packing was definitely interrupted. Although the island had memories for her that were better forgotten, it was to remain in her memory always that her first meeting with Keith had been there.
Chester returned from Tamba late in the afternoon, reporting that he had made arrangements for all the blacks employed by him, except his crew of Kanakas, to be taken over by the planters there, and he had promised to run them across the next day, before the Kestrel started on her trip for Sydney.
Everything except the barest necessities had been got ready for removal to the ketch. There was nothing very jovial about the trio as they ate their evening meal. Chester's spirits were a trifle artificial: for him the occasion was the end of all his hopes so far as Tao Tao was concerned, and the morrow, with a good many morrows to follow, was somewhat problematical. Joan, too, felt something of this, only the ordeal, for her, was softened by the knowledge that she and Keith loved one another. Whatever the problems of the morrows might be, she was content to leave them in his hands. Of the three, Keith had the least occasion for regrets.
After supper, the men discussed their plans and prospects, until it was growing dusk and Joan burst into a peal of merriment.
"I meant to leave out some candles," she said. "That crate you are sitting on, Keith, contains them all."
"Never mind. We'll go to bed early," he replied. "Meanwhile there's a bit of candle somewhere in my room. We can manage with that."
It was the piece of candle that Joan had picked up in the compound on the morning following the raid by the blacks. Keith now stuck it on one of the crates, and for half an hour the trio weighed up the possibilities of the future. The question of ways and means was a serious one, and there were many questions with which Chester bombarded Keith.
"Well, beggars can't be choosers," the planter mused, "and we're in no position to dictate terms. We should have been stuck entirely but for your idea of getting someone in Sydney to give us a start. It's like working on borrowed capital, though, and that's always a great handicap. But needs must when the devil drives."
The candle was burning low. Another inch of it only remained, and the breeze through the open door and windows was causing it to gutter.
Suddenly, while thoughtfully poking the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe with his finger, Chester uttered an exclamation of amazement and thrust his head forward as he stared at the dwindling candle.
Gradually detaching itself from the half melted wax was a small round object. Chester put out his hand, but before he could reach the thing it had dropped on to the box and lay there.
"One of the missing pearls!" said Chester in a queer voice.
Picking up the stump of candle, he prodded into it with a match, and extracted another pearl from the soft substance.
"Well, I'm—well, I'm jiggered!" exclaimed Keith.
"Do you remember putting them there?" Chester asked.
"Not the ghost of a recollection," replied the sailor. "As I told you, though, I had a vague idea I'd put 'em somewhere safe."
"They were nearly too safe," the planter chuckled, taking the pearls in his fingers and polishing them lovingly with a handkerchief. "Now, who in the name of thunder would have thought of—I say, Keith, what sort of a place is Sydney for marketing pearls?"
"Pretty fair. I doubt whether there's a better outside the big cities in Europe or America."
"The saints be praised! These little things will make a rare difference in our position, because we can sell 'em and buy our goods for trading just where we please. We're going to do well, Keith. I'm not a superstitious blighter in the ordinary way, but I am in some things, and I'm willing to bet this is where my luck swings round again. God knows I've had a thin time lately, one way and another,—a regular landslide, as I was telling that chap Steel, off the gunboat. But even a landslide must come to an end sometime, and—"
"There goes the last of the candle," said Joan.
"By the way," said Chester, "it's a jolly good thing you did hide those pearls, as it turns out, because, as sure as the Lord made little apples, if I'd been able to put my fingers on 'em the day the Petrel called here I should have sold them to Steel, and I shall get a far better price for the things in Sydney."
"On the other hand," said Keith, "you'd have been able to take on a partner in your pearling. Heaven only knows how that might have turned out."
"I wonder," mused Chester.