Moon over Eden

Chapter One ~ 1888-2

He rolled up his sleeves and planted tea.

Meanwhile his friend, Taylor, was busy on a new project, a fully equipped teahouse fitted with a rolling-machine, the first ever made in Ceylon.

Following the financial instability caused by the catastrophic crash of coffee, hopes rose when it became known that on Taylor’s estate and the one adjoining his, tea was proving profitable.

Disillusioned coffee-planters went along to learn how to cultivate the new crop and all over Ceylon tea bushes began to thrive between the stumps of dead coffee trees.

Chilton Hawk, working twenty-four hours a day, began to build up once again the fortune he had lost.

He had never in his wildest moments thought that there was any chance of his inheriting the family estates in England.

There were six lives between him and the chance of being his uncle’s heir when he had left England, but through death in battle, accident and the inescapability of old age, gradually those who preceded him were eliminated one by one.

Nevertheless in 1886 it came as an incredible shock to learn that his uncle was dead and that he was the new Lord Hawkston.

There was nothing he could do but go home, but it had been like amputating an arm or a leg to leave behind him his plantation, which had now expanded to one thousand two hundred acres, and his friends like James Taylor.

At the same time he had grown very self-sufficient. He had to be!

Sometimes three or four weeks would pass without his seeing anybody except for his coolies.

He would sit alone in the big house he had now built for himself on the top of a hill so that it caught all the breezes during the hot weather.

It could also be cold in winter and in English fashion it had large open fireplaces where logs could be burnt.

Chilton Hawk grew used to being by himself. He liked reading but more often than not, after he had enjoyed a well-cooked and well-served meal, he went to bed, so as to rise with the dawn and return to the work that absorbed him.

He had forgotten when he returned to England what an elegant leisurely life a gentleman could live without pressures, without haste and without any ambition except to fill the leisure hours with enjoyment.

He had, however, found a great deal to do on the family estate.

His uncle had been ill for the last years of his life and many things had been neglected. There were new farming methods to be introduced, machinery to be bought, buildings to be repaired and above all relations to meet.

While in Ceylon, Chilton Hawk had been a leader and organiser of a labour force, but in England as Lord Hawkston he was now expected to be the Head of a large Family of relations, most of them impecunious and all of them, he reflected dryly, grasping and avaricious.

His first task on returning home was to find someone who could take his place on the plantation in Ceylon.

This, he determined, would be a family possession in the future and be looked on as part of the inheritance of future owners of the title.

He thought that he had found the ideal person in his nephew, Gerald Warren, the only son of his elder sister, an intelligent young man of twenty-four.

Because he was so worried about the plantation being left with only his Ceylonese Head man in charge, Lord Hawkston had sent Gerald Warren out in a precipitate manner that he would not have considered had the matter not been so urgent.

He felt that Gerald, at twenty-four, should be quite capable of coping with an estate that was running smoothly and making a profit and where there was no longer the heavy manual fundamental work to do that had been his task sixteen years earlier.

Gerald had been only too willing to acquiesce to everything his uncle suggested.

Lord Hawkston was to learn later that he was not particularly happy at home and had in fact fallen out with most of his other relatives.

He had, however, just before he sailed, declared himself engaged to the daughter of a neighbouring Nobleman, the Honourable Emily Ludgrove, but her family had dissuaded them from getting married before Gerald left.

They had for some time discouraged any talk of a betrothal for the simple reason that Gerald had few prospects and showed no inclination to obtain any more money than the small allowance that his widowed mother was prepared to give him.

His uncle’s interest in him opened up new vistas and, although the engagement was not announced, it was agreed that Gerald and Emily should marry in a year’s time.

“I will bring her out to Ceylon myself,” Lord Hawkston had promised.

“Must we wait a year for you to do so?” Gerald asked.

“I am afraid so,” his uncle replied. “There is so much for me to do here that I think it unlikely I will get away in under twelve months.”

As a matter of fact it was eighteen months before there was a chance of his leaving England and Emily seemed quite content to wait until an opportune moment presented itself.

Her family was adamant that there was no need for a hurried marriage and, even after Lord Hawkston was ready to leave, small details of Emily’s trousseau held them up for a further two months.

Finally they set sail from Southampton and Lord Hawkston cabled his nephew to meet them in Colombo.

He had noticed that Gerald’s letters had been falling off during the past nine months.

At first he had written regularly and every fortnight a letter would arrive full of details about the plantation.

It was only lately that Lord Hawkston had begun to wonder if Gerald wrote what he thought his uncle would like to hear rather than what was actually occurring.

Then his letters arrived once a month and finally had tailed off into quick scribbles at intervals of two or even three months.

‘The boy is busy,’ Lord Hawkston told himself. ‘I expect Emily hears from him regularly.’

He saw very little of Gerald’s future wife. He found her father an extremely dull man who he had little in common with and in any case there was too much for him to do on the estate for him to have much time for social engagements.

In any case he found them irksome.

He had grown so used to being alone that social chitchat and petty gossip bored him.

He was well aware that his relations not only found him difficult but were in awe of him. He did not mind that being their attitude and on the whole he preferred it.

“He is a difficult man,” he had heard one of his cousins say just as he was entering the drawing room. “I never have any idea what he is thinking and quite frankly I am not really interested to find out.”

There had been the sound of laughter as the lady finished speaking but Lord Hawkston, waiting to make his entrance, had merely been amused.

On the ship he had gone out of his way to be as uncommunicative as possible.

He knew only too well that the gushing friendships of shipboard acquaintances seldom lasted once the passengers had reached dry land.

He was aware that Emily, who was chaperoned by a Colonel and his wife returning to duty in Colombo, was receiving plenty of attention from the young Army Officers on board.

She was obviously amused by the dancing and charades, the fancy dress parties and the ship’s concerts that were arranged in the evenings.

He had not noticed, Lord Hawkston thought, that Captain Patrick O’Neill was more attentive to Emily than anyone else.

Now, standing in the garden of Queen’s House, he blamed himself for not being more perceptive, for not having realised that the girl had lost her heart and certainly her head on the journey to Ceylon,

Lord Hawkston came from the shadow of the bamboo and walked across the lawn.

This was a situation he had not anticipated and he wondered what the devil he should do about it.

Of one thing he was certain. He had no intention of allowing Emily to marry his nephew.

Perhaps, he told himself, it was a good thing that Gerald had not been able to meet them in Colombo as he had expected.

The letter that had been waiting for him at Queen’s House when they arrived told him that Gerald was too ill to travel, but hoped to be well enough to receive his uncle and Emily when they arrived in Kandy.

When he had first read the letter, Lord Hawkston had been annoyed.

He had already planned that Emily and Gerald should be married in Colombo immediately on his arrival.

He had thought that he would send them off on honeymoon and go up to the plantation alone.

He had looked forward to seeing what had been done, to discussing innovations with his Head man and greeting the coolies, some of whom had been with him since the very first day he had started to clear the jungle.

But his arrangements had been upset and he supposed that the Ceremony would have to take place in Kandy.

At this moment it was almost like a blow to realise that there would now be no Wedding and he would have to break the news to Gerald that he must look elsewhere for a wife.

‘Damn the girl!’ Lord Hawkston said to himself. ‘Why the hell could she not behave herself?’

Even as he swore he realised that he himself was in part to blame for not having gone out to Ceylon sooner.

Eighteen months was a long time in two young people’s lives. And years ago it had seemed a long time to him.

Equally if Emily was flighty enough to be beguiled away from Gerald by the first handsome young man who sought her favours, it was better for it to happen before marriage than after.

‘I will send her home on the next ship,’ Lord Hawkston decided.

The beauty of the night was spoilt for him and he turned and walked back to the front of the house, trying not to think of those two young people clasped in each other’s arms in an upstairs bedroom.

*

The next morning Lord Hawkston breakfasted early. As he finished and was about to rise from the table he was told that there was someone to see him.

Surprised at so early a visitor he followed the servant, resplendent in his red and white uniform, down the wide corridors to a sitting room where to his delight he found James Taylor waiting for him.

At fifty Taylor was a very big man with a long beard. He weighed two hundred and fifty pounds and one of his fingers was as thick as three of an ordinary man’s fingers put together.

When he smiled, it gave his face with its deep-set eyes and long nose a strange charm.

“I heard that you arrived yesterday, Chilton,” he said, holding out his hand.

“James! By all that’s Holy! I was hoping to see you but not so soon. How are you? It seems a century since we last met.”

“I have missed you, Chilton,” James Taylor said. “I began to be afraid that you had become too grand to come back to us.”

“If only you knew how much I have longed to return before now!” Lord Hawkston replied. “But I have been working almost as hard at home as I did here, only in a different way. It has not been easy.”

James Taylor smiled.

“Nothing you and I have done has ever been easy, Chilton, but I expect you have managed to win through.”

“I hope so,” Lord Hawkston answered.

Then he thought of Emily and his expression darkened.

“Tell me about my nephew.”

“That is one of the reasons why I came here to see you.”

There was something in the way he spoke that made Lord Hawkston look at him sharply.

“Has the boy settled down and done a good job?” he asked. “I want the truth.”

“The whole truth?” James Taylor enquired.

“You know I would not be satisfied with anything less.”

“Very well. We are old friends, Chilton, and because you and I have always been frank with each other I had to come to tell you that you will have to do something about that young man.”