And had she made any fresh acquaintances? Were any other newly-arrived colonists kindly greeted and put upon terms of familiar hospitality like himself? That sort of thing might be carried too far. Extremely entertaining young fellows emigrated, and a few that he could name were unmistakably ‘bad eggs.’
However, he would very soon see if anything of the kind, any shadow of the falcon, was imminent. He had heard from time to time from old Paul, who occasionally furnished a message from Antonia of a new book she had been reading, a visit she had paid, a sailing excursion that she and her father had enjoyed together; and lastly, something had been said about an Austrian nobleman—Count or Baron, or of some such objectionable rank—who was the acknowledged lion of Sydney just then, and who had been several times at Morahmee.
This piece of information did not cause any of the pleasure almost visible on the letter relating it to be conveyed to Ernest Neuchamp. ‘Count be hanged!’ he was English enough to say. ’I hate these foreign fellows. Ten to one there’s something not quite correct about a foreigner on his travels. Not that there’s any logical necessity for it. I trust I am not sufficiently insular to deny a foreign nobility all the graces and virtues that add lustre to our own. But we can always find out and trace our “heavy gunners.” But in the countless (I mean no harm) multitude of Counts and Barons, Grafs and Vons, who can possibly tell whether the bowing, broken-Englished, insinuating beggar that you introduce to your wife and daughters is Von Adelberg himself, or his valet or courier levanted with the cash and purloining the title as well as the clothes of his master?’
Osmund and Ben Bolt were safely bestowed in a snug but unpretending stable not a hundred miles from Bent Street, and Mr. Windsor, as a man who ’knew his way about,’ even in a strange city, was left temporarily to his own guidance, merely being requested to report himself at Morahmee.
Every Englishman knows what important step Ernest took next. His hair reduced to the smallest visible quantity, and the luxuriance of his beard, which he had lately permitted full liberty of growth, rationally restricted, he betook himself to the well-known counting-house.
The grave head clerk, who had acquired such solemn doubts as to Mr. Hartley Selmore’s final destination, smiled, under protest, when he announced ‘a gentleman on business,’ by Ernest’s request. Old Paul looked up with his usual good-natured expression, then stared in unrecognising blankness at the bronzed and bearded figure before him, finally to burst into a perfect tempest of laughter and chuckling, shaking Ernest’s hands violently with both of his, and making as if he could throw himself on the neck of his safe returning protégé.
‘Ha! ha! ha! so you’re back again, are you, Ernest, my boy? By Jove, I’m glad to see you; burnt brown enough too—shows you’ve been working; like to see it—none the worse looking for it, either, I know the girls will say. But, I say—ha! ha! ha! known by the police, eh? Captain Jinks, alias Gentleman Jack, and the other prisoner, eh, my boy? How I roared at that till Antonia was quite savage—for her you know. Didn’t take your photo, did they? generally do, you know. Got an album, for reference, at all the chief police stations. You’re coming out, of course, to-night. Antonia will be awfully glad; don’t tell her I said so.
‘Look here, my dear boy, I was just bothering this old head of mine about some business matters—hang them. You run away out to Morahmee, and tell Antonia to have dinner ready to the minute, or I’ll murder the whole household. Now off with you!’
Ernest departed, nothing loath, and as he whirled out, hansom-borne, along the well-remembered road, and gazed once more upon the blue waters, the frowning headland, the green villa-dotted shores of the unequalled harbour, he mentally contrasted these with the gray monotonous plains of Garrandilla, or the equally monotonous waterless woodlands.
‘By Jove!’ he said, ‘I feel like a schoolboy home for the holidays, or a sailor back from a cruise; and all for the pleasure of returning to Sydney, a place I had scarcely heard of a couple of years since. Am I the same Ernest Neuchamp that knew Paris pretty well before he was of age, and Vienna to boot?