Louis Becke - Tessa

“Can’t we, Harvey?” she asked wonderingly.

He shook his head, and then mused.

“Tessa, I wish you could meet my sisters.”

She clasped her hands together. “Ah, so do I, Harvey. I should love to meet them. Do you think they would like me?”

“I am sure they would.”

They were silent for a while, the girl with her head bent and her long lashes hiding her eyes from him as she sat in the deck-chair, and he thinking of what his sisters would really say if he wrote and told them that he thought he had at last found a woman he would wish to make his wife.

“Tessa.”

“Yes, Harvey.”

She did not look at him, only bent her head still lower.

“ Tessa! ”

“Yes, Harvey.”

Her hands were trembling, and her courage was gone, for there was something in his voice that filled her with delight.

“Tessa,” he said, speaking softly, as he drew nearer to her, and tried to make her look at him; “do you know that you are a very beautiful woman?”

“I am glad you think so, Harvey,” she whispered. “You used to tell father that Carmela and Librada were the most beautiful women you had ever seen.”

“So they were. But you are quite as beautiful. And, Tessa–”

“Yes, Harvey”—this in the faintest whisper.

“Could you care for me at all, Tessa? I do not mean as a friend. I am only a poor trader, but if I thought you could love-me, I–”

She took a quick glance around the deck, and bent towards him. “I have always loved you, Harvey; always, always.” Then she pressed her lips to his, and in another moment was gone.

Harvey, with a sense of elation in his heart, walked for’ard to where Morrison was standing in the waist.

“Why, man, ye look as if ye could take the best man aboard on for four rounds,” said the engineer, with a smile.

“I do feel pretty fit, Morrison,” laughed the trader; “have you anything to drink in your cabin?”

“Some real Loch Dhu, not made in Sydney. Man, your eye is as bright as a boy’s.”

Just before eight bells were struck Chard came on deck. He was carefully dressed in shining, well-starched white duck, and his dark, coarsely-handsome face was aglow with satisfaction; he meant to “rub it in” to Carr, and was only awaiting till Tessa Remington and Captain Hendry were present to hear him do it. He knew she would be on deck in a minute or so, and Hendry he could see was sitting at his cabin table with his chart before him. Harvey was strolling about on the main deck, smoking his first pipe for many weeks.

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