Moon over Eden

Chapter One ~ 1888-1

Chapter One ~ 1888Lord Hawkston drew in a deep breath of the warm moist air.

He looked up at the starlit sky and knew how much he had missed in the cold of England and this warmth that seemed to percolate his whole body, made him feel as if every muscle had become loose and supple.

He walked slowly across the grass, conscious of the fragrance of the magnolias, the lovely moonflower of the jasmines and the oleanders, their branches in the daytime providing a welcome shelter from the heat of the sun.

During the twenty-six days of the voyage from England he had looked forward to seeing Ceylon again almost like a small boy going home for the holidays.

It was not surprising, seeing that he had spent sixteen years of his life in what was called an ‘Island Paradise’ where, according to the Mohammedans, Adam and Eve had sought refuge after they were driven away from the Garden of Eden.

In England it had been easy to laugh at such descriptions as that of the Brahmins, ‘Lanka, the resplendent’ or the Buddhists, ‘the pearl drop on the brow of India’ or the Greeks, ‘the land of lotus flowers’.

But back in Ceylon the mystique of the climate and the beauty of the country made Lord Hawkston feel that they did not exaggerate.

Not that he was a romantic person. He was known for being ultra-reserved, a hard taskmaster and ruthless when it suited him.

He had had to be because his life had not been easy. In fact he had succeeded only by fighting every inch of the way for what he wanted and by being absolutely certain of what he did want.

As he strolled further into the magnificent garden of the Queen’s House, as the Governor-General's residence in Colombo was known, he thought that, when he went North to his tea plantation, it would be like a Royal progress to see his friends again, his coolies and the fine house he had built himself on the site of the small cottage that had originally been his home when he had first bought the plantation.

Deep in his thoughts it was with a sense of irritation that Lord Hawkston suddenly realised that he was no longer alone in the garden.

He had waited until the Governor and his other guests had retired to their rooms before he walked out into the moonlit night, having an irresistible urge to be alone with his memories and his emotions at coming back.

Now someone else was coming across the lawn.

Instinctively, because he had no wish for conversation, Lord Hawkston stood still in the shadow of a large bamboo knowing that he was half-concealed by its feathery branches and that unless someone was deliberately seeking him out he was unlikely to be aware of his presence.

The man came nearer and now because the moonlight was full on his face Lord Hawkston was aware that it was a young soldier who had travelled out to Ceylon with him on the same ship.

Captain Patrick O’Neill had been one of several Officers returning from furlough to their military duties.

Lord Hawkston had conversed with them at meals because they were seated, as he was, at the Captain’s table, but otherwise he had associated as little as possible with the younger passengers who, he felt, would think him too old to take part in their spirited chatter and incessant teasing of one another.

At the same time Patrick O'Neill, Lord Hawkston remembered, had seemed a trifle more responsible than the rest and he imagined that he would become an able Officer in his Regiment.

Still the Captain advanced and Lord Hawkston, waiting in the shadows, thought that perhaps he was in charge of the sentries guarding the Governor and was intent at this hour of the night on seeing that they were doing their duty.

Then to his surprise, just before he reached the tree where Lord Hawkston was concealed, Captain O’Neill turned and walked across the grass directly towards the house.

Like most Colonial houses the Queen’s House was extremely impressive in the front but the back rambled away into long verandahs on two floors where, in the heat of the summer months, the inhabitants slept, but which in February were unscreened and open to the night air.

It was with a sense of relief that Lord Hawkston realised that he was not in danger of being discovered.

Then, as he watched Captain O’Neill reach the back of the house, he saw him look up at the verandah above him and heard him give a soft low whistle.

Surprised, Lord Hawkston waited and saw someone in white come from the bedroom and on to the verandah where Captain O’Neill was standing.

It was a woman! Her hair was loose and it fell forward in a fair cloud as she reached the rail of the verandah and bent over it.

If she spoke Lord Hawkston could not hear what she said, but to his astonishment. Captain O’Neill, who had been standing looking up at her, started to climb up from the ground to the verandah above him.

It was not a difficult task for the supporting pillars were made of open wrought-ironwork, affording an excellent foothold for even the clumsiest of mountaineers.

It was only a matter of seconds before the Captain flung his leg over the railing and stepped on to the verandah.

Then, as Lord Hawkston watched, he saw him take the woman in his arms and they clung together in a passionate embrace.

For a moment they stood in the moonlight, embodying the eternal figure of love, their arms around each other, their lips joined and the woman’s hair pale against the Captain’s broad shoulder.

Then they moved away and disappeared into the darkness of the bedroom behind them.

Lord Hawkston drew in his breath.

He was well aware who it was Captain O’Neill was visiting in this clandestine way and for a moment he felt not anger but sheer astonishment at the audacity of it.

For the woman whom Captain O’Neill had kissed so passionately and with whom he had vanished was the Honourable Emily Ludgrove, whom Lord Hawkston had brought out with him to Ceylon to marry his nephew, Gerald Warren!

*

When, eighteen years earlier, Lord Hawkston, then Chilton Hawk, had decided to go to Ceylon he had been twenty-one and the younger son of a younger son.

There had been no prospect of his ever inheriting the family title and estates and his father, who had very little money, could offer no inducements for a comfortable life in England.

He had, however, inherited two thousand pounds when he attained his majority and, inspired by a report he had read of the success of the coffee plantations in Ceylon, he decided to visit the country and try to make his fortune.

Ceylon in those days seemed very far away and people spoke of it in England as if it was the other end of the world.

Ten years earlier in 1860 there had been a boom in coffee after the British planters had brought with them a spirit of enterprise as well as capital to invest in the plantations.

Chilton Hawk had been at Oxford with a Scot who had gone to Ceylon three years earlier and wrote him enthusiastic letters of the opportunities that existed there for young men with energy and ambition.

On making enquiries Chilton Hawk found that in 1870, the year he came of age, Ceylon had shipped over one million hundredweight of coffee.

His father was surprised at his decision to be a coffee planter, although he had expected him to travel on the legacy he had inherited from his grandmother.

“Don’t commit yourself, my boy,” he had said. “Have a good look round first. You might do better in Singapore or India.”

But the moment Chilton Hawk had reached Ceylon he realised this was where he wished to live and work.

And work he did!

He had not realised how hard it would be until he had bought five hundred and sixty acres of land at one pound an acre and found that he had to clear away the jungle from it.

This meant he had to employ eighty men and always there was the fear at the back of his mind that his money would run out.

He started the day with the click-clack of axes, the crash of falling trees and the noise of saws and hammers. Then everything had to be carted away and burnt.

It was not a question of merely felling the trees but of digging out every root before the land was ready for planting.

He had the luck almost as soon as he arrived of being introduced by his Oxford friend to an experienced thirty-five year old Scottish planter named James Taylor.

He was one of the planters who was to be part of the history of Ceylon and already he had an importance that made him respected by other planters.

At the age of eighteen, James Taylor, a vigorous young giant of a man, had signed a three year contract with the London agents of the Loolecondera Estate, which was situated some seventy miles South-East of Kandy.

The advantage of being near Kandy was that the railway to Colombo had been completed in 1867.

It afforded the planters a much more rapid form of transportation for their coffee than they could obtain with the plodding bullock carts, which took weeks to move slowly down the military road to the Port.

James Taylor took a fancy to the young man who had just come out from England and advised him to buy land near the Loolecondera Estate, which was in the central mountain region.

Like Taylor, Chilton Hawk had been enchanted by the scenic beauty of the hill country, and he soon adapted himself to his new strange environment.

James Taylor showed him how to obtain a labour force of Tamil coolies and advised him where to build his first small cottage.

He encouraged him and helped him through the first years of clearing and planting when Chilton Hawk worked as hard, if not harder, than any of the men he employed.

Yet, looking back, he had often thought that this was the happiest time in his life. He was achieving something. He was his own Master and, if he lost everything he possessed, he had no one to blame but himself.

And he would have lost everything if he had not been a friend of James Taylor.

For ten years the coffee boom had made Chilton Hawk believe that he was on the verge of becoming rich. Land rose to twenty-eight pounds an acre and cultivations extended along new roads that had been only the pilgrim paths to Adam’s Peak.

Suddenly the halcyon days of coffee were numbered.

A dreaded leaf disease peculiar to coffee, known as Hemileia Vastatrix or ‘coffee rust’ threatened the whole industry.

Even now Lord Hawkston could remember the feeling of sick horror that he had felt when he first saw the fungus on his own coffee plants.

The fungus was a microscopic one and its spore was carried by the wind to settle and germinate on the leaves of the plants.

It was totally catastrophic for every coffee planter. There was nothing they could do except clear an infected plantation, powder the remaining trees with a mixture of lime and sulphur and pray they would not be re-infected when the next batch of spore was brought in on the wind.

It was a hope that did not materialise.

The coffee disease wrecked the aspirations of most European planters and all the Ceylonese.

There was nothing they could salvage from their ruined plantations except that some diseased coffee stumps were shipped to England to serve as legs for tea tables.

But for Chilton Hawk his friendship with James Taylor proved a lifeline.

Taylor had in 1866 been given some tea seedlings by the Superintendent of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Peradeniya,

Nineteen acres at Loolecondera were planted with two hundred pounds of tea seedlings and James Taylor, when he helped Chilton Hawk with his neighbouring land, persuaded him to plant the same number of acres of his precious soil with tea.

Those nineteen acres saved the estate from utter ruin.

It meant that on the rest of the plantation Chilton Hawk had to start again from scratch.