"Yes," said Eleanor somewhat mechanically. "You will let me know—"
"Certainly—as soon as I know anything myself; and I will continue to make enquiry for those letters. Mr. Armitage is away in the country—he might know something about them, but nobody else does; and he ought to have left them with somebody else if he had them. But there can be nothing wrong about it; there is only some mistake, or mischance; the letters from Vuliva where brother Rhys is, are quite recent and everything is going on most prosperously; himself included. And we are to proceed to the same station. I am very glad for ourselves and for you."
"Thank you—" Eleanor said; but she was not equal to saying much. She listened quietly, and with her usual air, and Mr. Amos never discovered the work his tidings wrought; he told his wife, sister Powle looked a little blank, he thought, at missing her expected despatches, and no wonder. It was an awkward thing.
Eleanor slowly made her way up to her room and sat down, feeling as if the foundations of the earth, to her standing, had given way. She was more overwhelmed with dismay than she would have herself anticipated in England, if she could have looked forward to such a catastrophe. Reason said there was not sufficient cause; but poor Eleanor was to feel the truth of Mrs. Caxton's prediction, that she would find out again that certain feelings might be natural that were not reasonable. Nay, reason said on this occasion that the failure of letters proved too much to justify the distress she felt; it proved a combination of things, that no carelessness nor indifference nor unwillingness to write, on the part of Mr. Rhys, could possibly have produced. Let him feel how he would, he would have written, he must have written to meet her there; all his own delicacy and his knowledge of hers affirmed and reaffirmed that letters were in existence somewhere, though it might be at the bottom of the ocean. Reason fought well; to what use, when nature trembled, and shivered, and shrank. Poor Eleanor! she felt alone now, without a mother and without shelter; and the fair shores of Port Jackson looked very strange and desolate to her; a very foreign land, far from home. What if Mr. Rhys, with his fastidious notions of delicacy, did not fancy so bold a proceeding as her coming out to him? what if he disapproved? What if, on further knowledge of the place and the work, he had judged both unfit for her; and did not, for his own sake only in a selfish point of view, choose to encourage her coming? in that case her being come would make no difference; he would not shelter himself from a judgment displeasing to him, because the escape from its decisions was rendered easy. What if for his own sake his feeling had changed, and he wanted her no longer? years had gone by since he had seen her; it must have been a wayward fancy that could ever have made him think of her at first; and now, about his grave work in a distant land, and with leisure to correct blunders of fancy, perhaps he had settled into the opinion that it was just as well that his coming away had separated them; and did not feel able to welcome her appearance in Australia, and was too sincere to write what he did not feel; so wrote nothing? Not very like Mr. Rhys, reason whispered; but reason's whisper, though heard, could not quiet the sensitive delicacy which trembled at doubt. So miserable, so chilled, so forlorn, Eleanor had never felt in her life; not when the 'Diana' first carried her away from the shores of her native land.
What was she to do? that question throbbed at her heart; but it answered itself soon. Stay in Australia she could not; go home to England she could not; no, not upon this mere deficiency of testimony. There was only one alternative left; she must go on whenever Mr. and Mrs. Amos should move. Nature might tremble and quiver, and all Eleanor's nerves did; but there was no other course to pursue. "I can tell," she thought,—"I shall know—the first word, the first look, will tell me the whole; I cannot be deceived. I must go on and meet that word and look, whatever it costs me—I must; and then, if it is—if it is not satisfying to me, then aunt Caxton shall have me! I can go back, as well as I have come. Shame and misery would not hinder me—they would not be so bad as my staying here then."
So the question of action was settled; but the question of feeling not so soon. Eleanor's enjoyment was gone, of all the things she had enjoyed those first twenty-four hours, and of all others which her entertainers brought forward for her pleasure. Yet Eleanor kept her own counsel, and as they did not know the cause she had for trouble, so neither did they discover any tokens of it. She did not withdraw herself from their kind efforts to please her, and they spared no pains. They took her in boat excursions round the beautiful harbour. They shewed her the pretty environs of the Parramatta river. Nay, though it was not very easy for him to leave his business, Mr. Esthwaite went with her and his wife to the beautiful Illawarra district; put the whole party on horses, and shewed Eleanor a land of tropical beauty under the clear, bracing, delicious warm weather of Australia. Fern trees springing up to the dimensions of trees indeed, with the very fern foliage she was accustomed to in low herbaceous growth at home; only magnified superbly. There were elegant palms, too, with other evergreens, and magnificent creepers; and floating out and in among them in great numbers were gay red-crested cockatoos and other tropical birds. The character of the scenery was exquisite. Eleanor saw one or two of the fair lake-like lagoons of that district, eat of the fish from them; for they made a kind of gypsey expedition, camping out and providing for themselves fascinatingly; and finally returned in the steamer from Wollongong to Sydney. Her friends would have taken her to see the gold diggings if it had been possible. But Eleanor saw it all, all they could shew her, with half a heart. She had learned long ago to conceal what she felt.
"I think she wants to get away," said Mrs. Esthwaite one night, half vexed, wholly sorry.
"That's what it is to be in love!" said her husband. "You won't keep her in Sydney. Do you notice she has given up smiling?"
"No!" said his wife indignantly; "I notice no such thing. She is as ready to smile as anybody I ever saw."—And I wish I had as good reason! was the mental conclusion; for Eleanor and she had had many an evening talk by that time, and many a hymn had been listened to.
"All very well," said Mr. Esthwaite; "but she don't smile as she did at first. Don't you remember?—that full smile she used to give once in a while, with a little world of mischief in the corners? I would like to see it the next time!—"