Although matters could not be expected to keep up to the degree of high pressure indicated, an unusual and highly satisfactory amount of recreation was transacted during the remainder of the reprieve allowed by fate and Mr. Stamford.
The dance on board the Eurydice came off, when Linda enjoyed the supreme and exquisite felicity of being taken off from the pier in a barge with twelve rowers and the Eurydice flag flying; the crew being dominated by an implacable midshipman of the sternest demeanour. They were received with all due formality and ceremony at the gangway, and being thereafter marshalled about by Lieutenant Fitzurse, before envious comrades, Linda’s joy was complete. The dance, as most naval entertainments are, was wonderfully organised, and truly successful. Epauletted heroes were plentiful, and even the Commodore himself graciously explained the rudiments of nautical science to Laura and her mother. The happy day ended with a romantic return sail, with a favouring breeze, under a silver moon, over the mystical, motionless deep.
It was fairyland once more possible in this world below. The happy girls could hardly realise that they were the same people who had been, but one little year ago, mourning the unkind season, sadly contending with the wrath of Heaven and the wrongs of earth.
The matinée musicale, honoured by Vice-regal patronage, was also transacted with all the society population of Sydney in full array and punctual attendance. Here Mr. Donald M’Intosh, a distinguished amateur, held pre-eminent sway. His “marked attentions” to Laura caused her to be the observed of all observers, a circumstance which, however, did not interfere with her frankly expressed enjoyment of the musical luxuries.
“Why, Laura!” said her cousin, “if you go on in this way you and Linda will have all the Sydney girls mobbing you, or petitioning for your rustication without delay. You have fascinated the sailors, and not contented with that, you seem only to have to hold up your hand to have that difficult, delightful Mr. M’Intosh, the least susceptible man in Sydney, at your feet. Then there is Mr. Hope, neglecting his business and driving four-in-hand, as I hear to this picnic, all for your sake! What is your charm, may I ask?”
“I don’t quite understand you, Josie,” she answered (which, perhaps, was pardonably insincere); “we are enjoying ourselves very much, and everybody is extremely kind.”
“I should think so, indeed,” replied Miss Josie, scornfully.
As for the great picnic, everybody was there. The day was lovely, the sea calm, the sky of the glowing azure which the south land only boasts, the road perfect. The rival four-in-hand drags, including Mr. Hope’s chestnuts, combined to produce a perfectly faithful presentment of the ideal life which Linda had previously concluded to be limited to society novels, and the, perhaps, mythical personages depicted therein.
There was even a Royal Duke among the guests, though when he was pointed out to her, Laura committed the error of mistaking for him a well-known officer of police in attendance, whose aristocratic figure and distinguished bearing at once decided her in her quest for royalty. However, the slight mistake was soon rectified, and the day burned itself into her maiden consciousness as one of those seasons of enjoyment which rarely fulfil anticipation, but if so, continue to illumine the halls of memory until life’s latest hour.
“This is our farewell to the sea for a while,” thought Laura. “I can’t help feeling melancholy. What a lovely haze spreads over the ocean in the distance! How strange to think that it is nearly a hundred years since Cook sailed into these silent headlands. What a new world he was preparing! It was more than a discovery. Almost a creation. Oh, day of days! Oh, whispering breeze! Oh, soft blue sky! Can the earth hold anything more lovely?”