He laughed and replied: “I came with a purpose. You remember Miss ———, to whom I was engaged in Sydney?”
Chester nodded, expecting from the sparkle in S———'s dark brown eye that he was going to hear a little gush about her many wifely qualities.
“Well, I was in Sydney three times after I saw you. We were to be married as soon as I got a command. Two years ago I was there last. She had got married. Wrote me a letter saying she knew my calmer judgment would finally triumph over my anger—she had accepted a good offer, and although I might be nettled, perhaps, at first, yet she was sure my good sense would applaud her decision in marrying a man who, although she could never love him as she loved me, was very rich. But she would always look forward to meeting me again. That was all.”
“Hard lines,” said Chester.
“My dear boy, I thought that at first, when her letter knocked me flat aback. But I got over it, and I swore I would pay her out. And I came to this den of convicts to do it, and I did it—yesterday. She is here.”
“Here?” said Chester.
And then he learnt the rest of Captain S———'s story. A year after his lady-love had jilted him he received a letter from her in England. She was in sad trouble, she said. Her husband, a Victorian official, was serving five years for embezzlement. Her letter was suggestive of a desire to hasten to the “protection” of her sailor lover. She wished, she said, that her husband were dead. But dead or alive she would always hate him.
S——— merely acknowledged her letter and sent her £25. In another six months he got a letter from Fiji. She was a governess there, she said, at £75 a year. Much contrition and love, also, in this letter.
S——— sent another £25, and remarked that he would see her soon. Fate one day sent him to take command of a steamer in Calcutta bound to Fiji with coolies, thence to Nouméa to load nickel ore. And all the way out across the tropics S———'s heart was leaping at the thought of seeing his lost love—and telling her that he hated her for her black frozen treachery.
As soon as he had landed his coolies he cautiously set about discovering the family with whom she lived. No one could help him, but a planter explained matters: “I know the lady for whom you inquire, but she doesn't go by that name. Ask any one about Miss ———, the barmaid. She has gone to New Caledonia.”