CHAPTER XIII

AT THE LIVERPOOL END

Now, Godfrey O'Neill, deceased, was a man who at various times in his life had extracted from West Africa very considerable sums of money. He was shrewd, he was popular, he had the knack of resisting sickly climates, and he knew the possibilities of the Oil Rivers seaboard down to the last bag of kernels.

According to his own account he had started life as a ship's purser. People who were more fond of accuracy mentioned that as a matter of history he had first gone as cabin-boy in a palm oil brig. But be that as it may, he had been associated with the Coast from his earliest days, and at the age of five-and-twenty was trading there on his own account.

At first he stuck to an old trading hulk with moorings in the muddy Monk River and battled with its swarms of cockroaches and got together a business; but by degrees he gained the confidence of the native riparian magnates, and by the time he was thirty he had built on piles a fine set of factory buildings on the bank, had bought a treaty with the then King of Okky, and had built another factory at Malla-Nulla in spite of the fact that the beach there was one of the most surf-smitten on the Coast. After that he felt that his Liverpool correspondents were getting more than their due share of his hard-wrung profits, and so he put the Coast factories under managers and came back to the Mersey. And thereafter, with occasional visits to the Coast and the Islands, he made Liverpool his headquarters.

He had an office in Water Street, a warehouse near Huskisson Dock, and a house furnished with mid-Victorian solidity and ugliness out at Princes' Park. A sister, Mrs. Craven, whose unsatisfactory husband had conveniently died on the Coast, kept house for him, and as she voted marriage a failure, Godfrey professed himself as quite ready to take her verdict and was not anxious to dabble in dangerous experiments.

Finally, as Godfrey O'Neill discovered, after a two years' trial of the style of living that suited him at Princes' Park, that it cost him just £900 a year, he saw very little use in bestirring himself to earn more. He quite admitted that there were other luxuries in the world that he did not indulge in. He might have kept horses, for instance; but he happened to dislike them. He might have had a French chef; only plain roast beef and plain roast mutton appealed more to his appetite, and a plain British cook at £20 a year produced these exactly to his taste. He might have had a larger house, but frankly he did not want one.

So he went down to the office in Water Street every other day, and ceased to stir the business there when it showed any signs of averaging a more than £1,500 profit for any one year, not because he objected to additional wealth, but because he far preferred to play whist to pursuing money. One may here own freely that Godfrey O'Neill was an active member of no less than five whist quartettes which met at clubs and houses, and there was the amusement which after long search he had discovered pleased him best.

In the comfortable ugly house in Princes' Park, besides Godfrey and Mrs. Craven, and the two servants, there was a child who afterwards developed into the Kate O'Neill of these memoirs. Godfrey O'Neill brought her home on the last visit he made to West Africa. She was then aged, at a theoretical reckoning, three years, and she was more fluent in the Okky tongue than in English. She had never worn shoes till Godfrey bought her a pair in Las Palmas on the voyage home.

"Is she white?" Mrs. Craven had asked.

"White, clean through," Godfrey had assured her.

"Then who are her people?"

"That I shall not tell even you. Her mother is dead. Her father has gone under. He was a very clever man once, though I must say he used to be more high and mighty than I cared about on the rare occasions that I met him. But, as I say, he's gone under, hopelessly."

"And presently," said Mrs. Craven, "when we get this little wild thing tamed, and clothed, and teach her to speak English and go to church, up will come some drunken reprobate to take her away again."

"No, he won't. I've fixed that. He'll never claim her again. To start with he doesn't know if she's in England, or Canada, or Grand Canary. I even changed the name he called her by. I called her Kate from the day I left him, and had her christened by that name in Sierra Leone on the off chance she hadn't been christened before. And to go on with, he gave me his word of honor that if I took her away, he'd never embarrass me by inquiring for her again. You see, he was living as a native, and the child was running about with the other pickaninnies in the village, and I guess I made him pretty well ashamed of himself by what I said. The mother's dead, you know."

"Poof," said Mrs. Craven, "he promised you, did he? And what do you suppose the word of a man like that is worth?" (The late Craven had, it will be remembered, his strong failings.)

"Ninety-nine beach combers out of a hundred will lie as soon as look at you," Godfrey owned. "This one is the exception. He will keep his word, at any rate on this matter. He's just as proud as a king."

"Between drinks," suggested the widow.

"He's more objectionably proud drunk than sober. He always quotes Latin at one when he's full, and then says, 'Ah, but you've not been to school anywhere, so you'll not understand that.' You needn't be frightened he'll call here, Jane. Just remember I'm a man with a taste for ease myself. If I'd thought there was the smallest chance of being bothered with him, I shouldn't have saddled myself with the kid."

"Well," said Mrs. Craven, "as you have brought her, I suppose we must do the best we can for her. The average orphanage doesn't take them till they are six, but I suppose if we hunt round we can find some sort of institution which will accept three-year-olds."

"Orphanage, h'm. You see, Jane, I was thinking we might keep her ourselves. I am sure we could look after her."

"I object to the word 'we,'" said Mrs. Craven dryly.

"Oh, I suppose most of the work would fall on your shoulders."

"I am sure of it."

"Come along, old lady, don't you think you can manage it? Kitty isn't a bad sort of kid. Y'know, I saw a goodish deal of her on the steamer coming home."

"I thought you gave her in charge of a steward?"

"I never told you that."

Mrs. Craven laughed. "You see, I know your little ways--'Steward, here's a girl for you. If you nursery-maid the kid nicely till we get to Liverpool, and don't let me see more of her than I want, and don't let her come in and prattle when I'm playing whist with Captain Image, there'll be another quid for you when we land. After that my sister will take her over, and she won't want a tip at all.'"

"H'm," said Godfrey, "now, diamonds aren't in your line."

"I wouldn't be seen with one. I'll take a brown cloth gown, please."

"Shall I order it?"

"No, you can pay the bill."

"Right-o. Then you will take Kitty and bring her up here?"

"You stupid goose," said Mrs. Craven, "I intended that from the moment I saw her. Cook's out buying her a cot this minute."

* * * * *

Here then was the way that Kate first came into the house at Princes' Park. She arrived without a surname, and Godfrey, in spite of hints and plain questions, kept back any further pedigree. The child arranged a name for herself. When she had been a year in England she went out to a small folks' party:

"Let me see, what's your name?" asked the hostess, who had got tangled up among her many small guests.

The child had answered "Kate O'Neill," as a matter of course. She had called Mrs. Craven, Aunt Jane, and her brother Uncle Godfrey from the first, and after that juvenile party she was introduced as "my niece, Kate O'Neill."

As she grew, anything to do with West Africa and with business fascinated her, and curiously enough her principal instructor in these matters was Mrs. Craven. Godfrey, honest man, was not going to be bothered. His repartee when Kate asked him anything about the Coast was, "Go and invite some one to come in and let's make up a rubber of whist." When one day he died, and left Kate the O'Neill and Craven business, both she and her aunt supposed he had done it as an effort of humor.

Mrs. Craven had the house and furniture at Princes' Park, and a comfortable annuity to keep it up on. Kate came into a business that had been thoroughly neglected, and allowed to run down till it was in a very shaky position, indeed, financially.

"Sell it," said Mrs. Craven, "for what it will fetch."

"I'd rather run it myself," said Kate.

"Rubbish," said her aunt; "you're twenty, and the world's before you to enjoy. Besides, my dear, you're sure to marry. Sell the business."

"If you want plain facts, aunt, I don't see why anyone should give sixpence for it, and if we tried to wind it up, it would mean bankruptcy. Some of the money's a very long way out."

"Your poor Uncle Godfrey intended to leave you comfortably off, I know."

"And I'm pleased to think he died believing he had done so. They had the quaintest way of keeping books down at Water Street. Cutting notches on a tally-stick was nothing to some of their dodges. They hadn't struck a proper balance sheet for years, and both Uncle Godfrey and Mr. Crewdson really and honestly imagined that the firm was flourishing."

"You sell," said Mrs. Craven.

"Not I, aunt. Uncle Godfrey left me the concern believing it to be a small fortune for me, and a fortune I'm going to make out of it, and not a small one, either."

"I don't believe in business women," said Mrs. Craven severely. "I'd rather see a womanly woman."

"My dear," said Kate, "you shall see the two combined in me presently. I'm going to make a ve-ry large and extensive fortune; but the moment you see anything unfeminine about me, I want you to tell me, and I'll sell out forthwith."

Thereafter from eight o'clock A.M. to six-thirty P.M. for five days a week Kate sat in an inner room of the Water Street office, with the ancient Crewdson as a buffer between her and the world. She came into the place with a talent for figures, and a good general idea of the business, and she set herself first to the conversion of Mr. Crewdson.

That worthy old person was entirely of opinion that what was good enough for poor Mr. Godfrey was quite good enough for anybody else, and (when pressed) said so with unfriendly plainness. A man, in Kate's shoes, would have dismissed him, and brought in younger blood. Kate preferred conversion. She knew that there was a great quarry of information on matters West African stowed beneath Mr. Crewdson's dull exterior, and she intended to dig at it. So she reduced his wages, which he quite agreed with her the firm could not afford, and then, unasked, offered him a fine commission on the next year's profits. It was curious to see how soon she galvanized him into an opinion that these profits must certainly be forthcoming.

She laid in a typewriter, burned the office quills, wrote the firm's letters, signed them _For O'Neill and Craven, K. O'Neill_, and before she knew it had created a personality. Ten callers a day--captains, pursers, traders, merchants--wanted to shake hands with "your new head, Mr. K.," and went away with the idea that old Crewdson had suddenly developed capacity, and on the strength of it had stood himself a new signature.

On Saturdays, during the summer, Miss O'Neill caught butterflies, and in the winter played golf. On Sunday morning she went to church. On Sunday afternoons and evenings she had something very nearly approaching a salon. On these latter occasions Mrs. Craven flattered herself that she brought success by her artistic attention to the commissariat.

Now, the girl was attractive to men, and although she was emphatically a girl's girl, still she had as many friends of one sex as the other. She was good-looking, she was amusing, she was always well turned out, and she carried about with her that indescribable charm (above and beyond these other matters) which always makes people desirous of warming up a first acquaintance into intimacy.

To one man only had she shown any special degree of preference, and he was enough encouraged thereby to propose marriage to her.

She accepted him--provisionally.

"I am not absolutely certain that I wish to be married just yet," she told him, "but I am going abroad now, and I will let you know definitely when I return. Those are not nice terms, but they are the best I can offer. I have always been able to give a 'yes' or 'no' decision on every other matter in life so far. But here I can't. It is weak of me. Perhaps it is merely womanly."

"You are exquisite in your womanliness, as you are exquisite in everything else," he had replied. "I am grateful for any bone of comfort you throw me, Kitty dear."

She was going away then to West Africa, as has been related above, and the man saw her off from the landing stage. She returned the waving of his handkerchief. "Now, if you had abused me for my indecision, and said you would either be engaged or not engaged, I believe I'd have married you out of hand if you'd wanted me. But you didn't seem able to clinch things, and so anyhow you're pigeon-holed for the present. I'm glad I made you keep our little matter secret."

The man's name was Austin. Many times during the voyage south through the Bay, and down the Trades from the Islands, Kate told herself she ought to announce the fact that she was engaged. But on every occasion her femininity got up in arms. "Certainly not," said this intangible force. "Mr. Austin is a man, and if he cares to be a man and gossip, why let him. But a woman by reason of her sex is not called upon to say more than she needs." So Kate held her tongue, and regretted more and more every day that--well--that she should have cause for regrets.

When she got back to England, a day ahead of time, Aunt Jane happened to be in London, but Austin had a wire from Point Lynas and was there on the landing stage to meet her. He wanted to kiss her there before the world, but she had the advantage of height, and avoided him skilfully and without advertisement. Their subsequent handshake was somewhat of a failure.

"Hullo, Henry," said Miss O'Neill, "fancy seeing you here. I suppose you will try and make out you came down here to the landing stage on purpose to meet me? How abominably hot Liverpool is, and how atrociously the Mersey smells after that nice clean Smooth River. Have you caught me any butterflies? I've brought four cases full home from the Coast, and I honestly believe I've got two unnamed specimens. If they turn out new, I shall christen one after myself--something O'Neillii. There's vanity for you! And now for the Customs House."

"Is that all you have to say to me, Kitty? I've been just hungry all the time to see you again. I don't think a single hour of a single day has passed but what I have thought of you, and where you were, and what you were doing."

"Well, Henry, that's more than I could say. Here, wait till I catch that porter's eye. He's taking my cabin trunk to the wrong heap. About what was in my head between here and the Coast, I'll not say, but once out there, I'll tell you frankly I gave little enough thought to anything except Coast interests. The first place I went ashore at after Sierra Leone was our own factory at Smooth, and they'd had a fight there which only ended up when our whistle blew. The clearing between the factory buildings and the forest was full of dead men. I found out that no fewer than 800 Okky savages had attacked the place, and they were all held off by one of our clerks with a couple of Winchesters, and a half-caste girl who loaded for him. It sounds like a tale out of a book, and you needn't believe it unless you like; I don't think I should believe it unless I had seen things for myself, but I did see the men who had been actually shot when they tried to rush the place, and I can guarantee the truth of the story."

"Don't tell me there's a romance between you and your clerk."

"There wasn't room for one. He was engaged to the heroine already, and was as consistently rude to me as he knew how. But I don't mind telling you he was a magnificent fellow. He was a gentleman, too, which is rather a rare thing to find on the Coast. But you're letting me do all the talk. You haven't told me about yourself. What have you been doing?"

"The usual work of a busy solicitor; getting new clients, and sticking to the old ones. I can report good, steady success, Kitty. We can start pretty comfortably."

A Customs searcher put his usual questions, and Kate smiled on him and said she had nothing to declare. He scrawled a chalk hieroglyphic on all her property without opening a single piece. "There, look, Henry, stop that porter. He's taking a case of mine to the wrong cab. Thanks, I wouldn't have lost that case for a king's ransom."

"Butterflies?"

"No, a native war horn in ivory."

"Oh, they're fairly common."

"Yes, but a friend gave me this, and I want to keep it. There, I think that's the lot. Good-by, Henry. You'll come and see me at Princes' Park when I'm settled down again?"

"But, Kitty, can't I drive out with you now? I'd so looked forward to driving back with you. There's plenty of room in the cab."

"No," said Kate, "I'd rather you went home now, and thought over again what I'm like now that I've come back to England with a West Coast flavor. I know you'll disapprove of me as a possible wife, but I do hope you'll see your way of keeping me on the list of your friends. Nobody knows you ever suggested anything more, unless you have told them, and I don't see why they should know. But I'm more than ever convinced that I'm not the girl to make you the wife you deserve. Don't answer me now, there's a nice boy. Just go to the club and have a good dinner, and ring me up some time this evening and say you thoroughly agree with me."

Mrs. Craven came back that evening from London and Kate told her of West Africa happenings with a fine wealth of detail.

The old lady looked at her very narrowly and when she had finished, "Yes, my dear," said she, "and now are you going to tell me something that will interest me far more than all that?"

"No, Aunt, I think you have got the pith of it."

"If you won't tell, you won't. But you must remember, Kitty dear, I have known you and nursed you ever since you were a tiny child, and you can't change--as you have done--without my noticing it. Now, this Mr. Carter----"

"Yes, I did forget to tell you that he's got frightfully red hair."

"You say he's engaged to Laura Slade?"

"Oppressively so."

"But is he going to marry her?"

"How can I tell, Aunt?"

"Who is he going to marry, Kitty dear?"