The Silvershell was to be in port some time, and the captain told us to look about as much as we liked.
“There’s an organ up at the mission,” he says. “It’s got asthma or something. If you can cure it, I’ll gladly foot the bill. I’m a church-going man when I’m ashore,” says the captain, who liked his joke, “but that organ puts me clean off religion.”
Well, I made a good job of the organ, and very grateful the ladies were for it, too. Then I went up to the British commissioner’s, where I was told there was a piano needing attention. Davidson, the commissioner, was an uncommonly decent chap, and he put me in the way of two or three more odd bits of tuning and repairing, besides having his own instrument put into shape. The missionary ladies had suggested that Molly and I stay with them while the Silvershell was in port, so I could put in a tidy bit of work in a day. But there were only twenty white families in the place, and I’d about gone through the work when one afternoon Davidson stopped me as I was going back to the mission, and asked me to step up to the house with him, as a friend of his wanted to talk with me about rather a large job of repairing he wished done.
The friend was Cartwright. I shall never forget that first sight of him, not to my dying day. He was standing in the big music room where I’d been working for Davidson two or three days before, and as we came in he turned and gave us such a look!
“Oh, it’s you!” he said, as if he’d expected something terrible to come in the door. And then, as Davidson introduced us, he nodded in an offhand sort of way. He was the only man I’ve ever called beautiful. Beautiful was the only word to describe him. “Golden lads,”—I once heard an actor spout about them at a play, and now, when I remember that expression, I think of Cartwright. He was a golden lad, for all his haunted, unhappy face.
“I’ve a piano at home that wants looking after,” he says to me after a moment. “Rather a large job, but if you are willing to go back with me in the morning I’ll make it worth your while.”
“If it isn’t too far away,” I said. “I’m only stopping here while the Silvershell is in port.”
“Not so far,” says Cartwright. “I could have you back here in three or four days. And I’ll make it worth your while.” In spite of his off-handedness, it was plain he was keen on having me come.
Of course I said I’d go, and then Cartwright nodded and said something about my being at the wharf about five, and left us, just like that.
“But he never told me what was needed for the piano,” I said to Davidson.