The Island of Love (Camfield Series No. 15) (7 page)

“I am sure that is unfair,” Lydia said quickly. “Perhaps when you are talking to them they think they should just listen and not try to force their ideas and opinions on you.”

The Earl’s eyes twinkled.

“It is certainly unusual for a woman to be anxious to defend her own sex, but then, Miss Westbury, you are very unusual.”

“Now I think you are being unkind,” Lydia said. “You know as well as I do that I am a very ordinary person.”

She nearly added: “In comparison with Heloise!” then thought that was obvious without her emphasising the fact.

As if once again he read her thoughts the Earl said quietly:

“That is the only unintelligent thing you have said since we first met!”

“It is true,” Lydia insisted because she felt she had to.

“Then we must disagree.”

As he spoke Sir Robert came into the Drawing Room and sat down beside them.

“I have had an excellent night!” he exclaimed. “If there is one thing the Americans know how to make better than anybody else it is a comfortable bed!”

Lydia knew now that her father was there it would be impossible to go on talking to the Earl.

It had been a sheer delight when they had duelled in words and she had known that she stimulated his mind as he stimulated hers.

But now it was her duty to go to see if Heloise was awake.

She had finished her breakfast which the stewards had brought to them together with the morning newspapers which had been picked up at the first station at which they stopped.

She knew there would be many things for her to do for her sister and that for the rest of the morning she would be kept busy helping her to dress.

chapter four

Owing
to the bad weather there were frequent delays on the journey by train which actually Lydia enjoyed.

Instead of stopping for only a short time at the wayside stations they would be held up for perhaps two or even three hours.

When this happened the Earl and Sir Robert said they must have some exercise, and they would walk off into the countryside having instructed the guard to signal them by bursts on the engine’s whistle when it was time for them to return.

Whenever it was possible and Heloise would allow it, Lydia went with them.

She had been sensible enough knowing where they were going, to pack the thick boots she wore at home, and since it was so cold her father had bought her, at one of the stations, a fur coat made from white goatskins.

He had given Heloise a sable coat at Christmas when Lydia’s present had been just two books.

The goat-skin was the warmest coat she had ever owned and when she wore it she looked part of the snow scene as she tramped beside the two men, finding it hard at times to keep up with the pace set by the Earl.

It was wildly exciting not only because she had stepped into a world she had never known before, but also because she was with him.

As her father walked with them she did not join much in the conversation but listened, knowing that every day she was falling more and more in love.

While she admitted to herself that it was hopeless to love a man who belonged to her sister, she knew that the Earl had captured her heart and she would never love anybody else.

She found it difficult not to be angry with Heloise because she wasted so many opportunities of being with the man to whom she was engaged.

“Come with us, Heloise,” Lydia pleaded. “You will feel much better in the fresh air, and it is so enchanting to see everything white with snow. The beauty of the mountains in the distance will make you feel as if you had stepped onto another Planet.”

“I am quite content with this one,” Heloise replied sharply, “and if you think I am going to trudge about in the snow ruining my skin with the wind, you are very much mistaken!”

She would therefore either lie in bed or else sit in the Drawing-Room, looking when they returned exquisitely lovely in one of her expensive and elaborate gowns.

The Earl and Sir Robert on their walks would have been talking animatedly on all sorts of different subjects—Politics, horses, international finance, or the ever-expanding British Empire.

Yet when they entered the Rail Road Car to find Heloise waiting for them, Lydia knew that the Earl suddenly fell silent and she thought it must be because he was overwhelmed by her beauty and words were superfluous.

She then hurried to her own room, forcing herself not to feel jealous because she had known from the very beginning that it was impossible for her to compete in any way with Heloise.

“I will just have to be thankful to God that I have met anybody so wonderful,” she whispered to herself, “and have come on this exciting journey where I can be near him. How could I possibly be greedy enough to ask for more?”

Her body told her there was a great deal more she wanted, but her mind which she had disciplined for so many years made her think what she called ‘sensibly.’

Because she felt guilty at being in love with her sister’s
fiancé
she waited on Heloise, if it was possible, even more arduously and tried every morning to find a way of making her look even more lovely than she was already, by arranging her hair in different styles.

Not that she got any thanks for it.

Heloise, bored with the journey, took it out on Lydia because there was nobody else.

“I am sick of this train!” she said a thousand times when they were alone together. “I want to go to Balls. I cannot think why we did not stay in New York for the one which Mrs. Vanderbilt was giving, and I am sure when we do arrive at this dead-and-alive place on the other side of the world, it will be as boring as this is, if not more so!”

“How can you know that until you reach Honolulu?” Lydia asked. “And think how lovely it will be to see the sun and feel really warm!”

“I hope you remembered to pack all my sunshades,” Heloise said. “You know how delicate my skin is and must not get sunburnt.”

“Yes, of course I remembered and put in all the ones that match your gowns,” Lydia replied, “and you also have some big shady hats.”

When they reached the Rocky Mountains Lydia was so excited that she tried to imbue Heloise with some of her own delight at everything she saw.

It was not only the beauty of the mountains themselves, but the glaciers, the half-frozen rivers, and the incredible engineering feat which had been achieved in building a railroad through to California!

There were also the people they saw at every stop. Here at last, Lydia had a sight of the strange and different types of people who she knew had come to California in the Gold Rush and whose descendants were still struggling to find gold.

Forty thousand immigrants had, she learned, arrived from Europe, South America and Mexico, and Australia sent its ‘Sydney Ducks’ who were frequently ex-convicts.

There were also the Chinese who helped to build the railways and there seemed to be a mixed collection of nationalities at every station.

Lydia looked at them with wide eyes, but Heloise would not even go to the window of the Rail Road Car to look.

“Why should I concern myself with a lot of common, rough people like that?” she asked.

Lydia knew she was thinking of the aristocrats she had met in London and was resenting travelling further and further away from what she called ‘civilisation,’ even though the Earl was with her.

When they stopped at a station at the foot of one of the highest mountains and were told they could explore the tiny hamlet outside for an hour before the train moved off again, Lydia set out with the Earl and her father.

But they had only gone a little way before Sir Robert stopped and said he had a blister on his heel and intended to return to the train.

“Go on without me,” he said. “It is nothing serious and I will tell my valet not to give me these boots again.”

He walked away and Lydia looked a little apprehensively at the Earl.

“Do you mind if I come with you?” she asked.

“I should be very disappointed if I have to go alone,” the Earl replied. “I want you to tell me your impressions of what you have seen so far.”

“It is fascinating beyond words!”

“I saw you looking intently at the different types of people who were on the station just now,” he said. “It was almost as if you were looking for something.”

She smiled because she thought that was what he was always doing, and replied:

“I was thinking that the Gold Rush symbolised something which all men—and women for that matter—want.”

“Gold?” the Earl asked cynically.

“No, hope!” Lydia answered. “I am convinced that it was not only greed that brought so many people here in 1849 from every part of the world. It was hope which turned them into explorers, hope which sustained them through the incredible hardships they endured, which of course resulted in many of them dying.”

“I have never heard it explained like that before,” the Earl remarked.

“I think it is the same feeling that made the heroes of legend go out in search of the Golden Reece and the Holy Grail, and it was hope that stimulated Captain Cook to go further and further on his voyage of discovery until of course he finally found Hawaii.”

“And what do you hope to find?” the Earl enquired. As if she was surprised at his suddenly becoming personal Lydia thought before she replied:

“I have always hoped for many things which I never imagined for one moment would ever really materialise, and yet, incredibly and unbelievably, through you I have been able to find my ‘crock of gold at the end of the rainbow.’”

“And you think that will suffice you for the rest of your life?”

Lydia laughed.

“I think it will probably have to do so. But when I go home I shall keep praying and hoping there will be a chance for me to see other parts of the world and discover treasures which before I could only read about in my books.”

They walked on in silence, the only sound being the crispness of the hard crisp snow breaking under their feet.

Then there was the hoot of the engine in the distance and the Earl turned round.

“We must go back.”

Lydia looked ahead at the untouched whiteness of the ground and gave a deep sigh.

“I wonder how many explorers have felt frustrated when, having got so far, they have had to turn back.” She was speaking more to herself than to the Earl, but he replied:

“There is always tomorrow.”

“That is what we all hope,” Lydia said. “At the same time one always feels if one could just go a little further, just reach the next horizon to see if it is within our grasp.”

There was silence for a moment, then the Earl said: “Supposing when you find it there are reasons why you cannot make it yours?”

“Then of course,” Lydia answered, “you can only go on hoping that perhaps by a miracle, by fighting, will-power, or prayer you will be successful.”

She was thinking as she spoke that the Earl would be successful in anything he wanted, and because of the force of his personality he was inevitably the victor, the conqueror, and it would be impossible for anybody to gainsay him.

Then as she looked at him, wondering what he would reply, she saw he was looking serious and she had the feeling their conversation had changed from being just light-hearted and stimulating.

Then as they walked on he said:

“You have given me a great deal to think about, although there are some things to which there appears to be no solution.”

“I do not believe that,” Lydia said. “Not for you, at any rate. And if we fail because we are small and ineffectual, I believe there is always a Power to help us if we call upon it.”

As she spoke she thought perhaps it was a very strange thing to say to the Earl of Royston, and might almost sound as if she was preaching at him.

It seemed to her as if it was a long time before he answered:

“I hope you are right, Lydia.”

It was the first time he had called her by her Christian name, and she felt her heart turn a somersault because she had never known it to sound so attractive until she heard him say it.

Only yesterday when they had taken a short walk from another station he had called her ‘Miss Westbury,’ and her father had said:

“For goodness sake, Royston, call her Lydia! After all, she is going to be your sister-in-law. When you say ‘Miss Westbury’ it reminds me of one of my sisters who was an ugly and tiresome woman, who never found a man who was fool enough to marry her!”

The Earl had laughed, but he had not called her ‘Lydia’ until now.

Because it made her so happy she was smiling and her face must have been radiant as they climbed back into the train.

She went at once to Heloise to see if there was anything she could do for her.

Her sister looked at her and said disagreeably: “What have you got to smile about, I would like to know? And you had no right to stay with Hunter after Papa came back with a bad foot! You should have returned too!”

The way she spoke and the expression in her eyes wiped the smile from Lydia’s lips.

“I am sorry, Heloise,” she said, “I did not think of it, and I was enjoying the exercise.”

“Well, in future,” Heloise ordered, “you will keep away from Hunter, if I am not with him. I want him to be alone and miss me, and I am sure your stupid chatter only irritates him.”

Lydia said nothing. She merely went to take off her fur coat and her thick boots.

As she did so she wondered humbly if, in fact, the Earl found their talks together boring and stupid.

Then she told herself that although it might seem conceited she was certain he was as stimulated by the subjects they discussed as she was.

Although with her father he talked of ordinary matters the moment they were alone it seemed as if he was as eager as she was to discuss more fundamental subjects, which she knew Heloise would not understand.

“He is so different from what I expected,” she told herself.

As the train began to move out of the station Lydia began counting the days when she would still be on the train with the Earl, and however disagreeable her sister might be, she knew she could not be prevented from talking to him, if she had the chance.

Once they were through the Rocky Mountains and in California, it was only a short journey before they arrived in San Francisco.

Lydia had been hoping that they would see something of the City which she felt would be fascinating, and which her books had told her had grown up from a dusty, remote village called
Yerba Buena
which meant ‘the place of the good herb.’

The story of how it had begun with the Missions which came from Spain, then grown with the Russian-American Fur Company, and finally with the American occupation, was fascinating.

California had been a land of unrest and conspiracy with a wide-spread mistrust of foreigners until the Gold Rush turned it into a modem Babel.

Lydia would not have known so much about San Francisco if, at one of the larger stations at which they stopped she had not given a cry of delight when she saw there were books for sale on a stall.

“Books!” she had exclaimed. “Oh, please, Papa, let me buy some!”

The Earl heard what she said and exclaimed: “Now I know what is missing in
The Duchess!
I had a feeling that the famous Commodore had forgotten something of importance, but I could not think what it could be.”

“I suppose he was so busy poring over his plans that he had not the time to think of anything else,” Lydia said with a smile.

“But of course when we were in New York, I should have thought we would need books.”

“Please,” Lydia said quickly, “I am not complaining!”

“Of course not, but I promise you when we return I will see there is a stack of books of every description to keep you interested.”

He then proceeded to buy every book, although there were not many, that was available, and did the same at every other station where there was any literature for sale apart from the local newspapers.

Lydia therefore found herself with a very miscellaneous collection.

There were cheap novelettes some of which she fancied had been collected from the train after their owners had left them behind, religious tracts and true adventure stories.

She, however, was most grateful for the primitive but very interesting guide-books that had been written about various parts of America.

Because San Francisco was now so important a city Lydia was disappointed when she heard the Earl say:

“The battleship which is to carry us to Hawaii will, I am certain, have been waiting impatiently for our arrival, and we must therefore go straight on board from the station.”

Lydia did not express her disappointment, but Heloise said:

“If the sea is rough I cannot bear it!”

“I think that is very unlikely,” the Earl smiled. “We will now be on the Pacific Ocean and it will be growing warmer every day until you will find it very hot by the time we reach Hawaii.”

“I hope you have packed all the right clothes, Lydia,” Heloise said when they were alone. “I shall be extremely angry if I am not the smartest and most outstanding person at the Coronation!”

“Excepting the Queen,” Lydia smiled. “You can hardly want to overshadow the leading lady of the day.”

“Why not?” Heloise asked.

“Because it would be unkind,” Lydia explained. “Actually she will be very resplendent because the King ordered two crowns when he was in Europe from an English Jewellers.”

“Crowns or no crowns,” Heloise said, “I want everybody to look at me! The moment we arrive in Honolulu you must press all my gowns, and make quite certain that my hats have not been crushed by all this tedious travelling.”

“Do not worry,” Lydia said. “You will look lovely! I am sure everybody will be overwhelmed by you.” She thought as Heloise was ready to leave the train that nobody could have looked lovelier.

Because it was quite warm in San Francisco she was wearing a silk gown in her favourite shade of blue with a small velvet coatee over it and an elegant hat trimmed with flowers of the same colour which seemed to accentuate the gold of her hair and the translucence of her skin.

There were officers of the ship’s company to meet them on the station, and Lydia quickly realised that from now on the Earl was being treated as the Queen’s Representative and would be accorded every possible honour by the British.

They drove in an open carriage down to the dock and she had her first glimpse of San Francisco’s fantastic roads which went straight up and down the hills on which the town was built so that the horses had great difficulty in not slipping, and on some slopes had to zig-zag to reach the top.

All too soon they reached the harbour and amongst the hundreds of ships which made up the fishing fleet with their high masts and their white sails was waiting for them, the British Battleship,
HMS Victorious.

It was, although Lydia was not aware of it, a very old ship which had been sent to the Pacific for the last years of her life before she was taken to the scrapyard.

However she looked extremely smart with her crew all wearing white covers on their caps, and their white summer uniforms with bell-bottom trousers.

The Earl and his party were piped aboard and were welcomed by the Captain who was wearing a large number of medals.

He made a brief speech of welcome to the Earl who replied and then they were taken below to their cabins.

These were very different from those they had enjoyed on the
Etruria.

The Earl was given the Captain’s cabin, which was the largest and had a Sitting-Room attached to it, while the rest of the party were accommodated in the cabins of the officers.

These Lydia learnt, had been moved down in order of seniority, and she was sorry for the midshipmen who had obviously been pushed out into any hole or corner they could find to accommodate them.

Her cabin was exactly the same as Heloise’s, small but well fitted and quite comfortable.

Heloise complained volubly.

“It is far too tiny,” she said scornfully. “I shall feel as if I am in my coffin!”

“Oh, Heloise, do not say such things!” Lydia begged. “It is unlucky!”

“At least there are Englishmen aboard,” Heloise went on, “and I have every intention of looking pretty tonight, so start unpacking my things!”

It was impossible for Heloise’s enormous amount of luggage to fit into her cabin, so some of her trunks had to be left outside in the passage.

Lydia had to find the one which contained the gown she wished to wear and all the accessories that went with it.

It took her so long to get Heloise ready in time for dinner that she only had a few minutes to change her own clothes. She realised as she did so, that the ship had already put to sea.

There was, she thought, hardly any swell as they left harbour and moved a little way along the coast before setting out into the Pacific Ocean.

At dinner when she was sitting next to a young and enthusiastic officer who was obviously delighted to talk to her he told her that it would take five days to reach Honolulu.

“We are all looking forward to the Coronation,” he said, “and if it is anything like the usual Hawaiian Festivities it will go on for days!”

He sounded so delighted at what lay ahead that Lydia was certain he was visualising how pretty the dancers would be and that he would make the very most of his time ashore.

She had learned from one of her books how much Hawaiians liked the English, and that in the early days the women had welcomed men from overseas offering themselves with a generosity that was unsurpassed by any other nationality.

As she expected, every officer on the ship was overwhelmed by Heloise.

They stared at her as if they did not believe she was real, and their admiration made her blossom like a rose turning its face to the sun.

She became animated and flirted charmingly with every man who spoke to her, and her laughter was spontaneous and very attractive.

Almost as if she had been touched by a magic wand, Lydia thought, she had changed from the petulant, bored young woman who had sulked on the train, unless she was with the Earl.

Even then she had continually complained about the rumble of the wheels and her feeling that she was being confined in what she described as a ‘cattle truck.’

‘I wish she was always like this,’ Lydia thought wistfully.

Because she assumed that the Earl was as entranced as everybody else, she did not look at him.

Instead she set out to make the elderly officer who sat on her other side tell her of the voyages he had made in
HMS Victorious
in other parts of the Pacific.

He did not make his experiences sound very interesting, and she had to force herself not to keep thinking of the Earl, or trying to listen to what he was saying.

The next day, to her surprise, Heloise rose quite early and went up on deck.

There were plenty of officers to find her a comfortable place to sit out of the sun and to talk and flirt with her whenever they got the opportunity.

The Earl on the other hand spent quite a lot of time on the bridge with the Captain, and Lydia knew that he was extremely interested in all aspects of the ship and was therefore escorted all over it.

Only once did she have the chance the next day to speak to him alone.

It was after luncheon and Heloise had been helped by one of the officers with whom they had eaten into a deck-chair making quite certain it was sheltered from the sun and the wind, and as far as possible from any movement of the sea.

She was looking particularly alluring in a white gown trimmed with green ribbons, her sunshade was green, and camelias with their dark green leaves decorated the wide brim of her hat.

She looked as if she had just stepped out of the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, and it was understandable that every man on the ship was ready to lay his heart at her feet.

Because she was not needed Lydia moved away to stand in the stem watching the churning water from their wake dwindle away into the distance.

She thought she could see a porpoise—or was it a sea-lion—and was straining her eyes to decide which it was when a voice beside her said:

“It is a dolphin. You will see a lot of them when we reach Hawaii, and they are very playful."

She gave a little start and turned her face towards the Earl.

“I was expecting porpoises, sea-lions, or perhaps a whale.”

“Given the chance you will see them all!”