“Gabby! Gabby! Come to me! I’m ill, so ill!”
Then he jumped, and looked quite startled and sober. He’d never hurried so much in his life as he put the bottle down and, with his eyes gleaming with half-fearful delight, stumped towards the front door. Someone had knocked.
So great was his hurry that he stumbled as he rushed from the room. “She’s come back, me dear gal, come to ’er old pa!”
He opened the door and stared at the form in the gloom for a moment, then swayed and fell down—fell in sheer misery and disappointment, for it wasn’t Gabrielle who stood there—it was Hillary.
Hillary did not gasp or say one word that would suit the pages of a novel; he simply brought out the unromantic words: “God, what luck! He’s drunk!”
The young apprentice swiftly leaned forward and picked up the old ex-sailor.
Hillary’s whole soul was bursting to know why Gabrielle hadn’t kept the appointment by the lagoon. He was delighted to see Everard drunk. It had flashed through his sanguine, hopeful soul that there had been a domestic rumpus and that was the cause of Gabrielle not turning up at the trysting-place, where he had waited all night.
He carried the old man as tenderly as possible into the parlour. The thought that he was really Gabrielle’s father made him feel quite tender towards the drunken man. He’d never been in that parlour before. He looked round. Where was she?
“Gabrielle, your poor father’s taken ill—it’s Hillary who calls!” And then he stood holding the old man up, his heart thumping with the mighty expectation of seeing the girl enter the room, with secret joy at her father’s blind, drunken eyes at such an opportune moment.
Hillary had come straight to Everard’s bungalow determined to risk all, to defy the old man outright and get one glimpse of the girl’s face and some kind of an explanation, even if he had to fight his way in. He called again: “Gabrielle! Gabrielle! Why don’t you come?” But the expected rustle of her dress, the glorious look of surprise in her eyes at seeing him as she rushed into the room, all that his imagination anticipated, was only mocked by the echo of his own voice.