When Mr. Charteris had concluded his ablutions, and sauntered into the verandah after a careful toilette, he there encountered Miss Devereux, who, having arrayed herself in a light Indian muslin dress, gracefully reclined upon one of the Cingalese couches. His lonely life of late may have had something to do with it, but his ordinary well-maintained equilibrium nearly failed him before the resistless force of her charms.
Her eyes involuntarily brightened as she partly raised herself from the couch and held out her hand with unaffected welcome. He took in at one rapturous glance her slender yet wondrously moulded form, her delicate hand, her rounded arm seen through the diaphanous fabric, her massed and shining hair, her eloquent face.
'Oh, Lord!' he inwardly ejaculated, as he afterwards confessed. 'I used to wonder at fellows shooting themselves about a girl, and all that, and laugh at the idea. But I don't now. When I saw Pollie Devereux that evening I could have done the maddest thing in the world for the ghost of a chance of winning her. And to win, and wear, and lose her again, as happens to a man here and there. Good heavens' why, it would make a fellow—make—me—run amuck like a Malay, and kill a town full of people before I was half satisfied.'
But Mr. Charteris controlled those too impetuous feelings, and forced himself to remark, as he clasped her cool, soft hand despairingly while she expressed her frank pleasure at seeing him, 'Always delighted to come to Corindah, Miss Devereux, you know that. Didn't I see you near the gate as I drove up? Thought you might have come to meet me.'
'Well, so I would,' the young lady answered, with an air of provoking candour, 'only I had been out to see the coach and find out if they'd brought our package from England—presents that came by last mail,—I was so hot and dusty, and thought it was time to go and dress.'
'And I wanted to see how Wanderer looked, too,' quoth he reproachfully; 'you know I always think he could win the steeplechase at Bourke if you'd let me ride him and wear your colours.'
'I couldn't think of that for two reasons,' replied the girl with decision. 'First of all Wanderer might get hurt. Didn't you see that poor Welcome, at Wannonbah races, broke his leg and had to be shot? I should die, or go into a decline, if anything happened to Wanderer. And then there's another reason.'
'What's that?' inquired Mr. Charteris, with less than his usual intrepidity.
'Why—a—youmight get hurt, Mr. Charteris, you see, and I can't afford to lose an old friend that way.'
'Oh, is that all?' retorted Master Jack, recovering his audacity; 'well, you could have me shot like Wanderer if I broke my back or anything. 'Pon my soul! it would come to just the same thing if you ordered me out to execution before the race.'
'Now, Mr. Charteris!' said Pollie, in a steady, warning voice, 'you are disobeying orders, you know. I shall hand you over to mother, who has just come to say tea is ready. Mother, he is talking most childish nonsense about shooting himself.'
'But I never talk anything else, do I Mrs. Devereux?' said the young gentleman, running up to the kindly matron with a look of sincere affection. 'Your mother's known me all my life, Miss Devereux, and she won't believe any harm of me. Will you, my dear madam?'
'I never hear of youdoingany foolish thing, my dear Jack,' said Mrs. Devereux maternally; 'and as long as that is the case I shall not be very angry at anything you can say. We all know you mean no harm. Don't we, Pollie? And now take me into tea, and you may amuse us as much as ever you like. I'm rather low myself on account of the season.'
'No use thinking about it,' quoth Charteris, dashing gallantly into the position assigned to him. 'That's why I'm going to Sydney to have a regular carnival, also to be in time to get the wires to work directly the drought breaks up. I can't make it rain, now can I? And I've a regular tough, steady overseer, a sort of first cousin to your Joe Gateward, with twice as much sense and work in him as I have. I mean to take it easy at the Club till he wires me: "Drought over. Six inches rain." Left the telegram all ready written and pinned up over his desk. He's nothing to do but fill in the number of inches and sign it, and I shall know what to do. That shows faith, doesn't it?'
'But isn't it rather mad to go to Sydney with a four-in-hand and spend money, when you might be ruined, and all of us?' said Pollie.
'You are too prudent but don't look ahead—like most women, my dear young lady,' replied Jack, in the tone of experienced wisdom. 'Nothing like having a logical mind, which, I flatter myself, I possess. I always think the situation out, as thus:—If we are all going to be ruined—the odds are against it, but still it's on the cards—why not have a real first-class time of enjoyment before the grand smash? The trifling expenditure of a good spree won't make any appreciable difference in the universal bankruptcy. You grant me that, don't you?—Yes, thanks, I will take some more wild turkey. Strange that one should have any appetite this weather, isn't it?'
'Not if one rides or drives all day and half the night, as you do, Mr. Charteris,' said Pollie. 'Even talking makes you thirsty, doesn't it? But go on with the logic.'
'Did you ever see me scowl, Miss Pollie? Beware of my ferocious mood. Now we're agreed about this, that five hundred pounds, more or less, makes no difference if you're going to be ruined and lose fifty thousand.'
'I suppose not,' reluctantly assented Mrs. Devereux. 'Still it's money wasted.'
'Money wasted!' exclaimed Mr. Charteris. 'I'm surprised at you, Mrs. Devereux. Think of the delights of yachting in the harbour, of the ocean breeze after this vapour from the pit of—of—Avernus. Knew I should find it in time. Then the evening parties, the dinners at the Club, the races, the lawn-tennis, the cricket matches! The English eleven are to be there. Why, I haven't been down for six whole months. Don't you think rational amusement worth all the money you can pay for it? Would you think a couple of years' ramble on the Continent too dearly bought if we were all able to afford to go together?'
The girl's eyes began to glow at this. 'Oh mother!' she said, 'surely we shall be able to go some day. Do you think this horrid drought will stop the possibility of it altogether? If I was sure of that I believe I should drown myself—no, I couldn't do that; but I would burn myself in a bush fire. That's a proper Australian notion of suicide. Water's too scarce and expensive. Think of the consequences if I spoiled a tank. I should like to see Mr. Gateward's face.'
And here the wilful damsel, having at first smiled at the alarmed expression of her mother's countenance, abandoned herself to childish merriment at the ludicrous idea of a drowned maiden in a bad season intensifying the bitterness in the minds of economical pastoralists with the reflection that a flock of sheep would probably be deprived thereby of that high-priced luxury in a dry country—a sufficiency of water.
Mr. Charteris laughed heartily for a few minutes, and then, with sudden solemnity, turned upon the young lady. 'You never will be serious, you know. Why can't you take pattern by me? Let us pursue our argument. Pleasure being worth its price, let us pay it cheerfully. I was reading about the Three Hundred, those Greek fellows you know, dressing their hair before Thermopylæ; it gave me the idea, I think. Mine's too short'—here he rubbed his glossy brown pate, canonically cropped. 'But the principle's the same, Miss Pollie, eh?'
'What principle?' echoed Pollie, 'or want of it, do you mean?'
'The principle of dying game, Miss Devereux,' returned Charteris, with a steady eye and heroic pose. 'Surely you can respect that? It all resolves itself into this. I'm going to put down my ace. If the cards go wrong I have played a dashing game. If the season turns up trumps I'll make the odd trick. You'll see who has the cream of the store sheep-market when the drought breaks!'
'I admire bold play, and you have my best wishes, Mr. Charteris. You've explained everything so clearly. Don't you think if you read history a little more it might lead you to still more brilliant combinations?'
'If you'd only encourage me a little,' answered the young man, with a touch of unusual humility.
'Isn't that Jack Charteris?' said a man's voice in the passage. 'I'll swear I heard him talking about his ace. May I come in, or is there a family council or anything?'
'Come in, Harold, and don't be a goose,' said Mrs. Devereux; 'you are not going to stand on ceremony here at this or any other time.'
'I've had a longish ride,' said the voice, 'nothing to eat, half a sunstroke, I believe, and my journey for my pains. I'm late for tea besides, though I rode hard—takes one so long to dress. If I was any one else I believe I should be cross. I think you'd better all leave me, and I'll join you in the verandah when I've fed and found my temper.'
'Nothing of the sort, mother; you take out Mr. Charteris and give him good advice, while I see after Mr. Atherstone, and recommend him to begin with the wild turkey while I get him some Bukkulla. What's the reason you've not been near us lately, sir?'
The new-comer was a very tall man, though he did not at first sight give you the idea of being much above the middle size, but Mr. Charteris, who was by no means short, looked so when they stood together. Then you saw that he was much above the ordinary stature of mankind. His frame was broad and muscular, and there was an air of latent power about his bearing such as gave the impression of perfect confidence, of physical or mental equality to whatever emergency might befall.
Mr. Charteris lingered, and seemed to question the soundness of the arrangement which divided him from the enchantress and reduced him to the placid enjoyment of Mrs. Devereux's always sensible but not exciting conversation.
'Look here, Jack, I can't have you here while I'm dining, you know,' persisted Mr. Atherstone, with a calm decision. 'You've such an energetic, highly organised nature, you know, that calm people like me can't sustain your electric currents. I perceive by the appearance of that turkey that I'm about to dine in comfort. Pollie has gone to bring in a bottle of Bukkulla. "Put it to yourself carefully," as Mr. Jaggers says, that I have had no lunch. She will be quite as much as I can bear during such a delicate period. So out you go. Order him off, Mrs. Devereux, if you've any pity for me.'
'Well, you are the coolest ruffian, I must say,' quoth Mr. Charteris, as Pollie reappeared bearing a dusty bottle of the cool and fragrant Bukkulla. 'Mrs. Devereux, you spoil him. It's very weak of you. You'll have people talking.'
'We don't mind what people say, do we, Harold?' said the widow, as she watched him carefully draw the cork of the bottle, while Pollie sat near and placed a large hock glass before him. 'Leave them alone for half an hour. I'm sure, poor fellow, he's awfully tired and hungry. I know where he's been; it was on an errand of mine; Mr. Gateward couldn't go. Surely you can put up with my company for a little while.'
'Poor Harold!' grumbled Jack, 'he is to be pitied indeed! Mrs. Devereux, you know I always say there's no one talks so charmingly as you do, and I always say what I mean. Now isn't there something I can do for you in Sydney?'
The symposium thus ostentatiously heralded did not take quite so long as might have been expected, and Pollie, making her appearance in the drawing-room apparently before its termination, went to the piano at Mr. Charteris's instigation, and sang two or three of his favourite songs in a fashion which brought any lingering remnants of his passion once more to the surface. Mr. Atherstone was also good enough to express his approval from the dining-room, the door of which was open, and to request that she would reserve her importation from the metropolis until he came in. This exhortation was followed by his personal apparition, when the latest composition of Stephen Adams was selected by him and duly executed.
Among the natural endowments lavished upon this young creature was such a voice as few women possess, few others adequately develop or worthily employ. Rich, flexible, with unusual compass, depth, and power, it combined strangely mingled tones, which carried with them smiles or tears, hate, defiance, love and despair, the child's glee, the woman's passion; all were enwrapped in this wondrous organ, prompt to appear when the magician touched her spirit with his wand. Harold once said that in her ordinary mood all the glories of vocal power seemed imprisoned in her soul, like the tunes that were frozen in the magic horn.
Men were used to sit with heads bent low, lest the faintest note might escape their highly wrought senses. Grizzled war-worn veterans had wept unrestrainedly as she sang the simple ballads that recalled their youth. Women even were deeply affected, and could not find one word of delicatest depreciation that would sound otherwise than sacrilegious. This was one of her good nights, her amiable, well-behaved nights, Harold said. So the men sat and smoked in the verandah, with Mrs. Devereux near them; all in silence or low, murmuring converse, while the stars burnt brightly in the blue eternity of the summer night—the season itself in its unchanging brightness an emblem of the endless procession of creation—while the girl's melodious voice, now low and soft, now wildly appealing, tender or strong, rose and fell, or swelled and died away—'like an angel's harp,' said Harold to her mother, as she arose and came towards them; 'and it is specially fortunate for us here,' he continued, 'as the season is turning us all into something like the other thing.'
'Hush, Harold, my boy; have faith in God's providence!' replied Mrs. Devereux, placing her hand on his. 'We have been sorely tried at times, but that hope and faith have never failed me.'
'What a lovely, glorious, heavenly night!' said the girl, stepping out on the broad walk which wound amid the odorous orange-trees, still kept in leaf and flower by profuse watering. 'What a shame that one should have to go to bed! I feel too excited to sleep. That is why you fortunate men smoke, I suppose? It calms the excitable nervous system, if you ever suffer in that way.'
'Ask Jack,' said Mr. Atherstone; 'he is more delicately organised. I suppose I like smoking, because I do it a good deal. It is a contemplative, reflective practice, possessing at the same time a sedative effect. It prevents intemperate cerebration. It arrests the wheels of thought, which are otherwise apt to go round and round when there's nothing for them to do—mills with no corn to grind.'
'I never heard so many good reasons before for what many people call a bad habit,' said Pollie. 'However, I must say, considering the hard work you poor fellows have to do at times, I think a man enjoying his pipe after his day's work a dignified and ennobling spectacle.'
'Quite my idea, Miss Pollie,' said Jack. 'I really thought my brain was giving way once in a dry season. If I hadn't smoked, should have had to fall back upon drinking. Dreadful to think of, isn't it? A mixture of Latakia and Virginia I got from a fellow down from India on leave saved my life.'
'I think we are all sufficiently soothed and edified now to go to bed,' said Mrs. Devereux, with mild, suggestive authority. 'Dear me! nearly twelve o'clock too. The days are so long now that it is ever so late before dinner is finished and the evening fairly begun.'
The parcel from England to which reference had been made on the occasion of Pollie's excursion to Mogil Mogil clump had arrived safely, and its contents been duly admired, when a letter received by the next mail-steamer contained such exceptional tidings that all other incidents became tame and uninteresting.
This English letter proved to be from Captain Devereux's elder brother, with whom, since the former's death, Mrs. Devereux had kept up a formal but regular correspondence. The members of her husband's family had proved sympathetic in her hour of sorrow. They had possibly been touched by the passionate grief of a relative whose letters after a while commenced to exhibit so much sound sense and proper feeling. From that time the elders of the house of Devereux never omitted befitting attention and friendly recognition of the far-off, unknown kinswoman.
And now, it seems, they had despatched Mr. Bertram Devereux, late lieutenant in Her Majesty's 6th Dragoon Guards, who, from force of circumstances, reckless extravagance and imprudence no doubt, but from no improper conduct, had been compelled to quit that crack corps and the brilliant society he adorned. He had a small capital, however, several thousand pounds fortunately, the bequest of an aunt. Having decided upon a colonial career, he was anxious to gain the requisite experience on the estate of his cousin, Mrs. Brian Devereux. If she had no objection, would she lay them all under a deep obligation by receiving the young man into her family, and by acting a mother's part to one who was forced to quit home and native land, perhaps for ever?'
This last enclosure was from Lady Anne Devereux, a lady in her own right, who, much to the distaste of her friends and family, had been fascinated by the handsome Colonel Dominick Daly Devereux, one of the military celebrities of the day. In the main the tone of the letter was proud and cold; but there were a few expressions which so plainly showed the mother's bruised heart, that Mrs. Devereux could not resist the appeal.
'I fear he will be a troublesome inmate in one sense or another,' she reflected. 'He is hardly young enough to take kindly to station life. Then again, how will my darling girl be affected by his companionship? But I can enter into a mother's feelings. I cannot refuse hospitality to my dear husband's nephew. We must make the best of it. He will not be worse, I suppose, than other newly arrived young men. They are an awful bother during the first year. After that they become like other people. I hope Mr. Gateward will take to him.'
And now the stated time had been over-passed. TheIndus(P. and O. Service) had arrived; a telegram had been received; and Mr. Bertram Devereux was hourly expected by the mail-coach. This fateful vehicle did actually arrive rather late on the evening specified, it is true, but without having, according to Pollie's prophecies and reiterated assertions, either broken down, upset, or lost its way owing to the new driver taking a back track which led into the wilderness and ended at a lately finished tank, far from the habitations of civilised man.
As the coach swung round the corner of the stock-yard and drew up underneath a wide-branched white acacia which shaded a large proportion of an inner enclosure, the driver received adouceurwhich confirmed him in the opinion which he had previously entertained of his passenger being 'a perfect gentleman.' He therefore busied himself actively in unloading his portmanteau and other effects, deposited the station mail-bag, and without further loss of time took the well-trodden road to the township. As the eyes of his late fare rested mechanically upon the fast-departing coach, he saw little but a cloud of dust outlining every turn of the road, amid which gleamed the five great lamps, which finally diminished apparently into star-fragments, as they traversed the unending plain which stretched northward and northward ever.
A young man, whose Crimean shirt and absence of necktie denoted to the traveller the presumed abandon of bush life, advanced from the door of a species of shop for general merchandise, as it seemed to the stranger, and dragging in the mail-bag, saluted him courteously. 'Mr. Devereux, I think? Please to come in.'
Meekly following his interlocutor through the 'shop,' as he termed it, he found himself in a smaller and more comfortable room. Looking around at the somewhat 'cabin'd, cribb'd, and confin'd' section, he answered, 'My name is Devereux. I have come to remain. May I ask which of these rooms is to be allotted to me?'
The storekeeper smiled. 'You didn't think this was the house, sir? This is the overseer's place, the barracks, as we call it in the bush. If you come after me I'll show you the way. Your luggage will be brought to you if you will leave it here.'
The new-comer had not, in truth, troubled himself to consider what Australian dwellings might resemble. He expected nothing. He had made up his mind to the worst. Therefore he would not have been in the least surprised if his aunt or cousin had issued from one of the small apartments which opened out from the larger room; had directed him to occupy another; had then and there placed a kettle on the smouldering wood fire for the purpose of providing him with refreshment after his journey.
He therefore mechanically followed his guide through a passage and along a verandah until they reached a white gate in a garden paling, when the young man in the light raiment quitted him with this farewell precept—
'The front entrance is between those two large rose-bushes, and the first room to the right of the hall. Mrs. Devereux or Miss Pollie sure to be there.'
Proceeding along the path as he had been directed, Bertram Devereux commenced to experience a slight degree of surprise, even curiosity. He was evidently in an æsthetic region, short as had been the distance from the sternest commonplace. The borders had been carefully kept. Flowers were blooming profusely. Oranges and limes shed a subtle and powerful odour around. The stars gleamed on a sheet of water which had evidently helped to create this oasis in the desert. The whispering leaves of the banana brought back memories of tropic glories of foliage. Turning between two vast cloth-of-gold standards, the blooms of which met and clustered about his head, he ascended a flight of steps and found himself in a broad verandah furnished with cane lounges and hammocks.
The hanging lamp, which illumined a wide and lofty hall, showed ferns of various size and foliage, the delicate colouring of which struck gratefully upon his aching and dust-enfeebled eyes. A book, a few gathered flowers, lay upon a small table with some half-executed ornamental needlework. All told of recent feminine presence and occupation.
As he lingered in observation of these novelties, a lady passed into the hall from a side-door and advanced with a look of kindly welcome.
'You are Bertram Devereux, I know, and oh! though your hair and eyes are dark'—here she looked wistfully in his face—'I can see the family likeness to my darling husband. You are the only one of his relations I have seen. You may think how welcome you are at Corindah. But it is a lonely life. I am afraid you will miss the society you have been accustomed to. My husband could never have endured it but that he hoped to make a fortune.'
'And so do I, Aunt Mary,' said the young man, with a quiet smile. 'Had I not expected great things I should never have come so far from civilisation. But I should not talk so,' he added, looking round. 'You seem to have everything one has been used to, conservatories and all.'
'We have always tried to live in reasonable comfort,' replied Mrs. Devereux. 'As to the fortune, it is sometimes a long time in coming. And a dry year like this delays it still more. Now, having told you how glad we are to see you, you will be anxious to be shown your bedroom. In half an hour the bell will ring for tea. We do not dine late, but I can promise you something substantial after your journey.'
After a bath and a leisurely change of toilette in the very well appointed bedroom where he was installed—the flowers upon the dressing and writing tables betokening the expected guest—the pilgrim commenced to take a more tolerant view of Australian prospects than up to this period he had deemed possible.
'Quiet, yet dignified and refined woman, my new aunt,' he soliloquised. 'Very far from the bustling farmer's wife I had expected. Handsome in her youth—very—must have been. My erratic cousin was by no means such a fool as we all thought him. And her fair daughter, too—how about her? A beauty and an heiress, they all say. I never bargained for that. Seems as if there were women wherever one goes—wherever I go, at least. Just my luck.'
Mr. Devereux had scarcely enunciated this disheartening truism, with a mildly resigned, not to say desponding expression of countenance, when the bell of which he had been warned rang out a peal. Placing a rosebud of Gloire de Dijon in his button-hole, he sought the drawing-room, of which he found himself the sole occupant.
He had observed that it was handsomely furnished, in a style not noticeably different from the fashion of the day, being not wholly devoid of china, having a few rare plaques and Moorish brass-ware—there was even a dado, also a magnificent grand piano by Erard—when two young people came through one of the French windows which 'gave' into the verandah.
'I shall never agree with you, Harold,' the girl was saying to her companion; 'not even if we lived here for the next twenty years—and I shall drown or otherwise make away with myself in that case.'
'There are worse places than Corindah,' replied a young man who followed her in. 'You may live to be convinced of the fact.'
'I should hate any place,' retorted the girl, in playful defiance, 'if I had to live there all my life. I quite envy my cousin Mr. Devereux, who has only just come. Everything will be so nice and new to him. Cousin Bertram,' she said, advancing and holding out her hand, 'I am charmed to welcome you. Mother and I have been talking of no one else for the last week. Let me introduce Mr. Harold Atherstone, a near neighbour and a great friend of ours. He will be able to give you advice and information beyond all price.'
The two men bowed gravely, as is the manner of freshly acquainted Britons, and looked steadily, if not searchingly, into each other's eyes. The new-comer spoke first.
'I can't tell you how pleased I am with everything—and everybody,' he said, after a slight pause; 'so different from what I had expected. I feel as if I had found a home and relations instead of leaving them for ever. Most happy to meet Mr. Atherstone, and hope to profit by his experience and other people's.'
For the few seconds that passed while the new friend and the old one confronted one another the young lady regarded them keenly. Nor was her mind idle. 'As far as appearance goes,' she thought, 'Harold has certainly the best of it. Tall, well-proportioned, with nice brown hair and beard, and those honest grey eyes—what most girls would call a splendid fellow, and so he is. Why am I not fonder of him? Bertram is certainly distinguished looking, but he is only middle-sized and almost plain—dark hair and eyes, rather good these last. I feel disappointed; I don't know why. He smiles nicely—that is, hecouldif he took the trouble. We must wait, I suppose, till his character develops. I hate waiting. I see mother coming. We had better go in to tea.'
This last observation was the only one audible. The other results of lightning-like apprehension had only been flashed by electric agencies from eye and heart to brain—there registered, doubtless, for future verification or erasure, as circumstances might determine. Mrs. Devereux had entered. Pollie offered her arm to her cousin, whom she piloted to the dining-room, leaving Mr. Atherstone to follow with her mother.
If the youngémigréhad been previously astonished at the tone of the household arrangements, he was even more surprised as he surveyed the well-lighted room and marked with much inward satisfaction the well-served repast, the complete and elegant table appointments. The tea equipage at the head of the table, over which Mrs. Devereux presided, determined the character of the repast; but the general effect was that of a sufficiently good dinner, with adjuncts of light wine and the pale ale of Britain, which neither of the young men declined. Both ladies were becomingly dressed in evening costume—Mrs. Devereux plainly and unobtrusively, while her daughter had donned for the occasion a sea-green mermaiden triumph of millinery, which subtly suited the delicate tints of her complexion, as also the silken masses of her abundant hair.
In the trial of first introductions, unless the key-note be swiftly struck and more than one of the talkers be enthusiastic, the conversation is apt to languish, being chiefly tentative and fragmentary. Now Pollie was eagerly enthusiastic, but her burning impatience on a score of subjects awoke no responsive note in the incurious, undemonstrative kinsman. He was apparently ready to receive information about the customs of a country and people to him so novel, but did not press for it.
He studiously avoided committing himself to opinions, and made but few assertions. On the other hand, Harold Atherstone declined to pose as a didactic or locally well-informed personage, contenting himself with remarking that those intending pastoralists who possessed common sense acquired information for themselves; to the other division advice was useless and experience vain. This cynical summing up of the Great Australian Question merely caused the stranger to raise his eyebrows, and Pollie to pout and declare that Mr. Atherstone was very disobliging and quite unlike himself that evening.
Upon this it appeared to Mrs. Devereux to interpose an apologetic observation concerning the state of the country, including the roads, live-stock, and pasturage; to which their guest made answer that he had always believed Australia to be a dry and parched region, and had supposed this to be a normal state of matters.
'Oh! we're not quite so bad always as you see us now,' exclaimed Pollie, suppressing a laugh. 'Are we, Harold? You would hardly believe that these dusty plains are covered with grass as high as a horse's head in a good season, would you now?'
Mr. Devereux didnotbelieve it. But he inclined his head politely and said that it must present a very pleasing appearance.
'Yes, indeed,' continued the girl. 'In the old days the shepherds were provided with horses, because the grass was so tall that the sheep used to get lost. Men on foot could not see them in it.'
The listener began to feel convinced that the facts related were approaching the border of strange travel and adventure so circumstantially described by one Lemuel Gulliver, but he manfully withheld utterance of the heresy, merely remarking that they would think that very strange in England.
'I'm afraid you're cautious,' quoth his fair teacher, trying to frown. 'If there's anything I despise, it's caution. It's your duty as a newly arrived person to be wildly astonished at anything, to make quantities of mistakes, and so gradually to learn the noble and aristocratic profession of a squatter. If you're going to be unnaturally rational, I shall have no pleasure in teaching you.'
'Ifyouwill undertake the task,' replied the neophyte, with a sudden gleam in his dark eyes which for an instant lighted up the somewhat sombre countenance, 'I will promise to commit all the errors you may think necessary.'
'As to that, we'll see,' answered the damsel, with a fine affectation of carelessness. 'I make no promises. We shall have plenty of time—Oh, dear! what quantities of it we do waste here—to find out all one another's bad qualities. Shall we not, Harold?'
'I have never made any discoveries of the sort, Miss Devereux,' said the young man; 'I can't answer, of course, for the result of your explorations.'
'I couldn't find anything bad in you,' said the girl eagerly, 'if I tried for a century. That's the worst of it. You always put me in the wrong. Doesn't he, mother? There's no satisfaction in quarrelling with him.'
'Why should you quarrel if it comes to that?' queried the matron, with a wistful glance at her child. 'You only differ in opinion occasionally, I observe.'
'Why, because quarrelling is one of the necessities—I should almost say luxuries—of existence,' retorted the young lady. 'What would life be without it? Think of the pleasure of making it up. I should die if I didn't quarrel with somebody now and then.'
'Or talk nonsense occasionally, as your cousin has doubtless by this time observed,' answered her mother. 'I think we may adjourn to the drawing-room.'
The drawing-room in this case meant the verandah, in which luxurious retreat the little party soon ensconced themselves.
'Really,' remarked Devereux, as he lit a cigar and abandoned himself to the inner depths of a Cingalese chair, 'if there was a little motion, I could fancy we were in the Red Sea. Same sky, same stars, same mild temperature, and tobacco. This is very different from the stern realities of colonial life I had pictured to myself.'
'We don't give ourselves out as industrial martyrs,' remarked Atherstone placidly, 'but you will probably find out that bush life is not all beer and skittles.'
'Hope not,' replied Devereux. 'That would be too good to last, obviously. Still I can gather that you have extenuating circumstances. I certainly never expected to spend my first evening like this.'
Atherstone made no answer, but apparently permitted his pipe reverie to prevail. The other man reclined as if somewhat fatigued, and smoked his cigar, listening indolently to the running conversational comment which his cousin kept up, sometimes with him, sometimes with Atherstone, whose answers were chiefly monosyllabic. The girl's fresh voice falling pleasantly upon his ear, with the lulling effect of rhythmic melody or murmuring stream, Mr. Bertram Devereux was led to the conclusion, by his novel and interesting experience, that an evening might be spent pleasantly, even luxuriously, at this incredible 'distance from town,' as he himself would have expressed it.
With this conviction, however, and the termination of his cigar came a distinctly soporific proclivity, so that, pleading fatigue and declining further refreshment, the new-comer was fain to betake himself to bed, in which blessed refuge from care and pain, labour and sorrow, he shortly ceased to revolve the very comprehensive subject of colonial experience.
On the morning after his arrival the visitor, making his appearance at an early hour, had a short conversation with Mr. Gateward, whom he found at the horse-yard sending out his men for the day. 'Of course I know nothing of this sort of thing,' he said; 'but I have come here to learn, with a view to investing a few thousands I have in a property, or station, as I think you call it. Now understand clearly that I shall be glad to help in the work of the place, in any way that I am fitted for. I can ride and drive decently, shoot, walk, keep accounts; in a general way do most things that other people can. Of course I can't pick up the whole drill at once, but I don't want you to spare me. I came to Australia to work, and the sooner I learn the better.'
'All right, sir,' replied the bronzed veteran, 'I'll see what I can do. If you ride about with me every day, and keep your eyes open, you'll pick up as much in six months as most of the people know that own stations. It's a bad year now, and we're all in the doldrums, as the sailors say. But it's not going to be that way always. The wind'll change or the rain'll come, and then we'll be able to show you what Corindah looks like in a good season.'
'Then we understand each other. I'll take my orders from you, but, of course, from no one else—('Not likely,' interjected Mr. Gateward, looking at the steady eye and short, proud upper lip of the speaker)—'and early or late, wet or dry (if it everiswet here), hot or cold, you'll find me ready and willing. Give me a couple of good hacks, and I'll soon have an idea of how you carry on the war.'
'I'm dashed sure you will, sir, and I shall be proud to help a gentleman like you to a knowledge of things, that's willing to learn, and not too proud to take a hint.'
'Quite so. I suppose you remember my cousin Brian? I was very young when he left home, but I always heard that he was a hard man to beat at anything he chose to go in for.'
'He was as fine a man as ever wore shoe-leather,' said the overseer. 'Everybody respected him in these parts, and he was that jolly and kind in his ways, nobody could help liking him. If he hadn't been cut off in his prime by that infernal Doctor—the cattle-duffing, horse-stealing hound—he'd have been one of the richest men in the district this very minute.'
'He was shot by a highway robber?' inquired Devereux; 'what you call a bushranger in Australia, don't you?'
'Well, there are bushrangers and bushrangers,' said the overseer. 'This chap, the Doctor, hadn't regularly took to the bush, as one might say, though he was worse than many as did. He belonged to a mob of cattle-stealers that used to duff cattle in the back country, and pass them over to Queensland. Well, Mr. Tracknell, one of the squatters in the back blocks, began to run 'em pretty close, and put the police on 'em. They heard he was to be in the coach from Orange on a certain day, and made it right to stick it up and give him a lesson.'
'What's sticking up?'
'Well, sir, by what one hears and reads, it is what used to be called "stopping" on the Queen's highway in England.'
'Then they had no grudge against Brian Devereux?'
'Not a bit in the world. He was known far and wide as a free-handed gentleman. Any one was welcome to stop at Corindah in his time, and no poor man ever went away hungry. The man the Doctor and Bill Bond wanted wasn't in the coach as it happened. He'd got wind of it and cleared. But they heard there was a gentleman with a big beard going down the country, and made sure it was him. When they came up and saw their mistake, they'd have rode off again, only the Captain was that hot-tempered and angry at their stopping him, that he fired on them, and nearly collared the lot. They returned it, and rode off as well as they could, and never knew till days after that they had hit him. Them as told me said the Doctor was devilish sorry for it, and that he was the last man in the district they'd have hurt.'
'What became of the Doctor, as you call him?'
'Well, sir, he's in the back country somewhere in Queensland yet, I believe. He served a sentence for horse-stealing of seven years; but he's wanted again, and there's a warrant out for him. He's a desperate man now, and I wouldn't be sure he won't do something that'll be talked about yet before his end comes.'
'It's to be hoped there'll be a rope round his neck on that day,' said Bertram; 'scoundrels of that kind should be trapped or poisoned like vermin.'
'Well, sir, the Doctor's no chop, but there's worse than Bill Bond, if you'll believe me. The only thing is, now he's hunted from pillar to post so, and he ain't got half a chance to repent if he wanted ever so much, I'm afraid he'll do something out of the way bad yet.'
The autumnal season, with calm sun-gilded days, cool starlight, unclouded nights, and mornings fresh and exhilarating, as if newly ordered from Paradise, came gradually to an end. Lovely, passing fair, as weather in the abstract; but dry, dry, always dry, and as such lamentable and injurious. Then winter made believe to arrive with the first week in June. But how could it be winter, Bertram thought, when the skies were still cloudless and untroubled, the mid-day warm, the plains dusty, the air soft, the river low; when the flowers in the garden bloomed and budded as usual; when no leaf fell from the forest; when, save the great acacias in the backyard and the white cedars in the garden, all the trees at Corindah were green and full-foliaged? The chief difference was that the nights were longer, cooler. There were sharp frosts from time to time; and when Bertram arose early in the morning, according to his wont, all things were covered with an icy mantle. On one occasion, when he met Mr. Gateward coming in from a long night ride, his abundant beard was frozen stiff as a stalactite.
The sheep died faster than ever, at which Bertram wondered much, but did not ask questions. 'Everything comes to him who waits,' was one of his favourite proverbs.
'If it had been always thus,' he told himself, 'so many evidences of capital and prosperity would not be here. A change will come sometime, but I cannot hasten it by ignorant questions. I shall learn all about this extraordinary country in the course of time.'
His theory was sound. But Mrs. Devereux was neither so self-contained nor philosophical. She complained and bemoaned herself from time to time, as is the way of women. At the evening meal, when after the day's duties the two young people and herself met with an affectation of social enjoyment, she made many things plain to the inquiring mind of Bertram Devereux, silent and incurious as he seemed to be.
'It had not always been thus. In the old, happy days droughts had certainly occurred, but with intervals of years between. Now the seasons seemed to have changed. The year before last was a drought, and now—this was the most sore and terrible grass famine she had ever remembered. Their losses would be frightful, disastrous, ruinous.'
'Was it on the cards that she would be actually ruined—lose all her property, that is—if the season remained unchanged?'
'Well, not absolutely. She could not truthfully say that. Even if all the sheep on Corindah died, the whole fifty thousand, the land and fences would remain. But twenty or thirty thousand pounds would be an immense sum to make up. The very thought made her shudder. To think of the years it had taken to make and save it! No doubt she could get more sheep. Her credit, she was thankful to say, was good enough for that.'
'I believe it's all Mr. Gateward's fault, said Pollie impetuously. 'Why did he persuade you not to buy a station in the mountains last year, where there's beautiful green grass and running water in the driest summer. That's what is needed for the poor sheep now. And all for a thousand pounds.'
'A thousand pounds is a great deal of money,' said Mrs. Devereux. 'He thought he could get some country cheaper, and in the meantime it was snapped up. I have been sorry for it ever since. But he meant well, as he always does.'
'I know that. He's as good an old creature as ever lived, and devoted to you and me, mother. I wouldn't say a word against him for the world. But he's too slow and cautious in matters like this, which need decision. Think of all the poor weak sheep, with their imploring eyes, that would have been kept alive if we had sent twenty or thirty thousand up to those lovely mountains.'
'I suppose it's too late now,' said Bertram. 'Of course I know nothing as yet, but could not some of them—ten thousand or so—be taken away now?'
'That's where the misery is,' said Pollie. 'The snow has fallen on the mountains. Indeed, nearly all the sheep have come away. Those thirty thousand of Mr. Haller's that passed here last week, and gave you so much trouble, had just come from there. And how nice and strong they were, do you remember? Our poor things are so weak that they couldn't travel if we had ever so much green grass to send them to.'
'It's Napoleon's Russian campaign over again—only, that our country's too dry to hold us, and his was too cold. And is there no return from Elba?'
'When the rain comes, not before. It may come soon, in a few months, this year, next year, not at all. So we're in a pleasing state of uncertainty, don't you think?'
'And you are not all sitting in sackcloth and ashes, or fasting, or making vows to the saints, and what not! This is a wonderful country, and you are wonderful people, I must say, to take matters so calmly.'
'We know our country and the general course of the seasons,' said Mrs. Devereux. 'In the long-run they prove favourable, though the exceptional years are hard. And we strive to have faith in God's providence, believing that whoso trusts in Him will not be left desolate.'
Letter from Miss M. A. Devereux to Miss Clara Thornton, Fairoaks, Edgecliffe, Sydney:—
My darling Clara—I hope you think of me daily, nightly, at breakfast and lunch time; also at midnight, when you can look out of your bedroom window, and see that lovely South Head beacon-light and the star-showers gleaming on the wavelets of the bay; when you can inhale the strong sweet ocean breath, and dream of far-away tropic isles and palm groves, coral reefs, pirates too, and all the delightful denizens of the world of romance. How you ought to pity me, shut up in poor, dry, dusty Corindah!—the weather going from bad to worse; Mother and Mr. Gateward looking more woebegone every day; and the poor sheep dying at such a rate that even as we sit in the house odours are wafted towards us not exactly of Araby the Blest. Bertie calls it 'bouquet de merino.'Who is Bertie? Did I not tell you before? He is the English cousin that has come to live with us and learn how to make a fortune by keeping sheep in Australia. 'What is he like?' of course you ask. Well, he isnota great many things. So he is not a hero of romance, ready made for the consolation of your poor friend in this famine year. He is not handsome, nor tall, nor clever—that is, brilliantly so. Not a particular admirer of his poor Australian cousin either. He is very cool and undemonstrative; lets you find out his talents and strong points by degrees, accidentally, as it were. If I were to describe him more accurately than in any other way that occurs to me, I should say he is different from everybody else I have ever seen in this colony—extremely well able to take care of himself under all circumstances, and quite careless as to the effect he produces.He is very well educated—cultured, I might say; reads and speaks French and German. So, as we have absolutely nothing to do in the evenings, he reads with me, and I get on a great deal faster than any of us did at Miss Watchtower's. You know I have always had a passion for what is called 'seeing the world'; it seems to be born in me, and I can recollect when I was quite a little thing being far more interested in books of travel than any other reading. I really believe that if anything led to the station being sold, and we have any money left after these frightful droughts, that I should persuade mother to take me 'home,' as we Australians always say, and then have a good, satisfactory, leisurely prowl over Europe. Now, do you see what I am coming to? What is the use of seeing everything in dumb show? I intend to work hard, very hard, at languages now I have the chance. Then I shall be able to enjoy life and instruct my mind fully when I do go abroad. Abroad! Rome, Paris, Florence! The idea is too ecstatic altogether. I shall die if it is not realised. I feel as if I should die of joy if it is.I am writing at my little table in my bedroom. As I look out the moonlight makes everything as clear as day. There is a slight breeze, and I can actually see the dust as it rises on the plain, midwinter though it is supposed to be. I couldn't live here all my life, now could I? Not for all the cattle and sheep in Australia! I don't feel inclined to go to bed. But I suppose I must say good-night to my dearest Clara, and remain your too lonely friend,Pollie.
My darling Clara—I hope you think of me daily, nightly, at breakfast and lunch time; also at midnight, when you can look out of your bedroom window, and see that lovely South Head beacon-light and the star-showers gleaming on the wavelets of the bay; when you can inhale the strong sweet ocean breath, and dream of far-away tropic isles and palm groves, coral reefs, pirates too, and all the delightful denizens of the world of romance. How you ought to pity me, shut up in poor, dry, dusty Corindah!—the weather going from bad to worse; Mother and Mr. Gateward looking more woebegone every day; and the poor sheep dying at such a rate that even as we sit in the house odours are wafted towards us not exactly of Araby the Blest. Bertie calls it 'bouquet de merino.'
Who is Bertie? Did I not tell you before? He is the English cousin that has come to live with us and learn how to make a fortune by keeping sheep in Australia. 'What is he like?' of course you ask. Well, he isnota great many things. So he is not a hero of romance, ready made for the consolation of your poor friend in this famine year. He is not handsome, nor tall, nor clever—that is, brilliantly so. Not a particular admirer of his poor Australian cousin either. He is very cool and undemonstrative; lets you find out his talents and strong points by degrees, accidentally, as it were. If I were to describe him more accurately than in any other way that occurs to me, I should say he is different from everybody else I have ever seen in this colony—extremely well able to take care of himself under all circumstances, and quite careless as to the effect he produces.
He is very well educated—cultured, I might say; reads and speaks French and German. So, as we have absolutely nothing to do in the evenings, he reads with me, and I get on a great deal faster than any of us did at Miss Watchtower's. You know I have always had a passion for what is called 'seeing the world'; it seems to be born in me, and I can recollect when I was quite a little thing being far more interested in books of travel than any other reading. I really believe that if anything led to the station being sold, and we have any money left after these frightful droughts, that I should persuade mother to take me 'home,' as we Australians always say, and then have a good, satisfactory, leisurely prowl over Europe. Now, do you see what I am coming to? What is the use of seeing everything in dumb show? I intend to work hard, very hard, at languages now I have the chance. Then I shall be able to enjoy life and instruct my mind fully when I do go abroad. Abroad! Rome, Paris, Florence! The idea is too ecstatic altogether. I shall die if it is not realised. I feel as if I should die of joy if it is.
I am writing at my little table in my bedroom. As I look out the moonlight makes everything as clear as day. There is a slight breeze, and I can actually see the dust as it rises on the plain, midwinter though it is supposed to be. I couldn't live here all my life, now could I? Not for all the cattle and sheep in Australia! I don't feel inclined to go to bed. But I suppose I must say good-night to my dearest Clara, and remain your too lonely friend,
Pollie.
After the first month or two of the excitement caused by the arrival of a 'new chum' at Corindah on the experience ticket, as the vernacular of the West Logan had it, much of the mingled curiosity, doubt, or disapproval with which the emigrant gentleman is usually regarded in a distant provincial circle died away. Of this last attribute of the neophyte Mr. Devereux had incurred but little. Studiously careful of speech, habitually courteous in bearing, and wholly indifferent to general opinion, but few men of those with whom he was brought into contact could find anything upon which to found depreciatory opinion. The utmost that professional carpers and cynics could aver amounted merely to an inability to 'make him out,' as they phrased it, coupled with a lurking suspicion that he 'thought himself a deuced deal too good for the district of West Logan and the people that belonged to it.'
'Confound him!' said Bob Barker, who posed as a leading society man andarbiter elegantiarum, 'what right has he to come here and look down on the lot of us as if we were small farmers or country bumpkins? Suppose hewasin the Guards, there's nothing so wonderful about that. I know his mother was a lady in her own right, but a gentleman is only a gentleman, and other people have relatives in the aristocracy as well as him.'
Here Bob twisted his moustache and looked proudly around the company—squatters, magistrates, and others, a select party of whom, this being Court-day at Wannonbah, had assembled in the parlour of the principal hotel.
'Are you quite sure that he does look down, as you call it, upon all of us fellows, Barker, or did you only think it was ten to one he would?' said one of the assembled magistrates, a native-born Australian, with a slow, monotonous intonation which did injustice to a shrewd intellect and keen sense of humour. 'You know wearerather rusty, some of us. We've been so long away from England.' Here the speaker bestowed a wink of preternatural subtlety upon a good-humoured looking, middle-aged man who occupied the chair at the head of the table.
'Rusty be hanged!' said Mr. Barker. 'I could go home and take my position in society to-morrow as if I had never left. I don't want any young military puppy to teachmemanners.'
'But what—did—he—do, Barker?' inquired the other squatter; 'or—what—did—he—say—that—put—your—monkey—up?'
'Well, of course he didn't do anything, and as for saying, he was infernally polite; but somehow I knew by the quiet, simple way he spoke what he was thinking of. And then, when we were playing whist, Atherstone and I with Miss Devereux and the old lady, he looked on until I asked if he was approved of our play. He smiled faintly, and then begged to know whether "out here" we were always in the habit of leading from our longest suits? I could have kicked him on the spot.'
'But—perhaps—he—only—wanted—to—know,' pursued his tormentor, who now appeared honestly desirous of extracting information. 'You're—so—very—smart—Barker, yourself—you—know.'
'Oh, I dropped down to him,' said Barker. 'They've got some confounded new-fangled way of calling for trumps in these London clubs, and of course, like all English people, he thinks we never hear anything or read anything, and have never seen any society men for a century but himself. Why, wasn't General Burstall here the other day on leave from India? Saw my brother at Simla just the week he left. However, wait till this season's over. That'll take some of the starch out of him.'
'It'll—take—the—starch—out—of—some—of—us—too,' replied the first speaker, 'if—it—doesn't—break—up—soon. I've—lost—six—thousand—pounds—worth—of—cattle—already. Everybody—says—your—frontage—looks—frightful—Bar—ker—eh?'
The intense gravity and slow solemnity with which this sudden assault was performed upon Mr. Barker, impugning the character of his run, and by implication his probable solvency, appeared so overpoweringly ludicrous to the company, that a diversion was effected in favour of Mr. Barker's pasturage, who therefore permitted the personal questions to lapse.
Letter from Bertram Devereux to Captain Goodwood, 6th Dragoon Guards:—
Corindah, New South Wales, Australia,June 1877.My dear Charlie—Partly on account of a weak promise to let you and one or two more of the old set into the secrets of my other-world life when I said good-bye after that fatal Derby that proved such a smasher, partly because one has such enormous quantities of spare time in the desert here, I am going to produce a respectable despatch—may even go the length of becoming a regular correspondent—while quartered here.My jottings down, apart from any personal interest which may yet survive the writer's departure, ought to possess a certain value as tidings from a far country—descriptions of a mode of life and state of society of which no one I ever met in England had the faintest idea. It is odd, too, for how many youngsters from good families that we know have emigrated within the last ten years! And with one or two exceptions there was no gleaning any information from their friends. Either the fellows didn't write or had done indifferently, and so the less said the better, or else the friends hardly could tell whether they lived in Victoria, Western Australia, New South Wales, or Tasmania, which is much as if the whereabouts of a continental traveller should be described as indifferently as in Belgium, Berlin, Switzerland, or Sicily. There is a want of exactitude about our countrymen, I must say, in all matters that do not concern their own immediate interests, most painful to persons gifted with a love of method—like you and me, for instance. No wonder we English are always caught unprepared when we go to war, and get laughed at all over Europe—till we begin to fight, that is. The reaction sets in then.However,revenons à nos moutons—a strictly appropriate tag, inasmuch as this lodge in the wilderness is surrounded by enormous estates, leasehold, not freehold, by the way, all devoted to the production of the merino variety of the ovine family. Millions of them are bred in these great solitudes. In favourable years I gather that one is enabled to export about one-half to a fourth of their value, in the shape of wool. This brings a good price, is as negotiable as gold, and the fortunes of the returned colonists that we used to see in London society are thus compiled. Of course there are details, the which I am setting my mind to master. But they would hardly interest you. One trifling fact I may mention, lest you may imagine the progress of fortune-constructing too ridiculously easy. It is, that there has been next to no rain for more than a year, strange, almost incredible, as it may seem to you of the rainy isles. In consequence, the country looks like a desert, and tens of thousands of sheep are dying here, and for hundreds of miles in every direction. Occurrences of this kind, you will understand, delay indefinitely and perhaps wholly frustrate one's too obvious purpose of gathering a competency and hurrying out of the strange country as fast as may be.'All this is very well,' I hear you say; 'but what about the social system? Why doesn't he tell me abouther?—for of course there is a woman somewhere within the orbit of his existence. Wonder what they're like out there. Must be some, I suppose.'With your usual acuteness, which I have rarely known at fault, unless confronted by a plain unvarnished robbery like the doing to death of the favourite (and very nearly the backers) in our fatal year, you have hit the gold.Well, somehow or other, thereisa she. How strange it seems that one's life, whether'Pone me pigris ubi nulla campisArbor æstiva recreatur aura,' etc.,or in the midst of cities, or even in the comparatively assured and fortified privacy of a messroom, should never be wholly free from the invasion of womankind. A book, a photograph, a souvenir of the slightest kind, is sufficient to arouse the tempestuous motives of those who are doomed to be 'the prey of the gods' in this peculiar fashion. How much more so the perfect human form, 'ripe and real,' when it comes before your eyes in all the unconscious temptation of virgin youth and beauty scarce unfolded morning, noon, and night. Add to this that I'm at presenthabitans in sicco, and you will conclude, with the swift logical subtlety so proverbially yours, that as a latter-day hermit I may compare favourably with St. Anthony.Heaven knows I did not rush into danger. Languid and prostrated as I was after the overthrow of all my worldly hopes; worn and despairing when the one devouring, passionate love of my life had disappeared, and it was like the last scene of a tragedy, when nothing is left for the spectators but to wrap their cloaks around them and go home—I deemed that I was coming to a land where there were no women, except black ones or those required for culinary purposes.How little we know of these new lands and their inhabitants, all English as they are, as if in the Midland Counties, yet of manner strangely fresh! All is high development and new material. How I am shut up with a magnificent young creature, with a face like Egeria, and a figure like the huntress maid, burning with enthusiasm, talented, cultured, full of all noble feminine attributes; dangerous with the fascinations of fresh, innocent womanhood, yet ignorant of the ways of the world, and childlike in her unsuspicious confidence!How I wish I was young again! I do really, Charlie. Could I but blot out the years that have intervened—not so many—but what Dead-Sea fruits have I not tasted during their stormy course? What a burnt-out volcano is this heart of mine! Could I but recall the past and be like one of our schoolboy heroes!'The happy page who was the lordOf one soft heart and his own sword.'What empires and kingdoms would I give—supposing them to be mine—to revert to that position, and so prove myself worthy of the fresh heart, the petals of which are about to open before my graduated advance, like a rose in June! That I shall be the favoured suitor, despite of the opposition of a good-looking, stalwart, provincial rival, my experience assures me. With womenl'inconnuis always the interesting, the romantic, the irresistible. In despite of myself, I can see clearly my future position ofjeune premierin this opera of the wilderness. It might be worse, you will say. That I grant. But you know that Helen of Troy would never control this restless, wayward heart of mine in perpetuity.For the rest, the life is bearable enough, free, untrammelled, novel, with a tinge of adventure. My days are spent in the saddle. There's just a hint of shooting, no hunting, no fishing. We dress for dinner, and live much as at a shooting-lodge in the Highlands, with stock-riders for gillies. So we are not altogether barbarous, as you others imagine. This letter is far too long, and imprudently confiding, so I hasten to subscribe myself yours, as of old,Bertram Devereux.
Corindah, New South Wales, Australia,June 1877.
My dear Charlie—Partly on account of a weak promise to let you and one or two more of the old set into the secrets of my other-world life when I said good-bye after that fatal Derby that proved such a smasher, partly because one has such enormous quantities of spare time in the desert here, I am going to produce a respectable despatch—may even go the length of becoming a regular correspondent—while quartered here.
My jottings down, apart from any personal interest which may yet survive the writer's departure, ought to possess a certain value as tidings from a far country—descriptions of a mode of life and state of society of which no one I ever met in England had the faintest idea. It is odd, too, for how many youngsters from good families that we know have emigrated within the last ten years! And with one or two exceptions there was no gleaning any information from their friends. Either the fellows didn't write or had done indifferently, and so the less said the better, or else the friends hardly could tell whether they lived in Victoria, Western Australia, New South Wales, or Tasmania, which is much as if the whereabouts of a continental traveller should be described as indifferently as in Belgium, Berlin, Switzerland, or Sicily. There is a want of exactitude about our countrymen, I must say, in all matters that do not concern their own immediate interests, most painful to persons gifted with a love of method—like you and me, for instance. No wonder we English are always caught unprepared when we go to war, and get laughed at all over Europe—till we begin to fight, that is. The reaction sets in then.
However,revenons à nos moutons—a strictly appropriate tag, inasmuch as this lodge in the wilderness is surrounded by enormous estates, leasehold, not freehold, by the way, all devoted to the production of the merino variety of the ovine family. Millions of them are bred in these great solitudes. In favourable years I gather that one is enabled to export about one-half to a fourth of their value, in the shape of wool. This brings a good price, is as negotiable as gold, and the fortunes of the returned colonists that we used to see in London society are thus compiled. Of course there are details, the which I am setting my mind to master. But they would hardly interest you. One trifling fact I may mention, lest you may imagine the progress of fortune-constructing too ridiculously easy. It is, that there has been next to no rain for more than a year, strange, almost incredible, as it may seem to you of the rainy isles. In consequence, the country looks like a desert, and tens of thousands of sheep are dying here, and for hundreds of miles in every direction. Occurrences of this kind, you will understand, delay indefinitely and perhaps wholly frustrate one's too obvious purpose of gathering a competency and hurrying out of the strange country as fast as may be.
'All this is very well,' I hear you say; 'but what about the social system? Why doesn't he tell me abouther?—for of course there is a woman somewhere within the orbit of his existence. Wonder what they're like out there. Must be some, I suppose.'
With your usual acuteness, which I have rarely known at fault, unless confronted by a plain unvarnished robbery like the doing to death of the favourite (and very nearly the backers) in our fatal year, you have hit the gold.
Well, somehow or other, thereisa she. How strange it seems that one's life, whether
'Pone me pigris ubi nulla campisArbor æstiva recreatur aura,' etc.,
'Pone me pigris ubi nulla campisArbor æstiva recreatur aura,' etc.,
or in the midst of cities, or even in the comparatively assured and fortified privacy of a messroom, should never be wholly free from the invasion of womankind. A book, a photograph, a souvenir of the slightest kind, is sufficient to arouse the tempestuous motives of those who are doomed to be 'the prey of the gods' in this peculiar fashion. How much more so the perfect human form, 'ripe and real,' when it comes before your eyes in all the unconscious temptation of virgin youth and beauty scarce unfolded morning, noon, and night. Add to this that I'm at presenthabitans in sicco, and you will conclude, with the swift logical subtlety so proverbially yours, that as a latter-day hermit I may compare favourably with St. Anthony.
Heaven knows I did not rush into danger. Languid and prostrated as I was after the overthrow of all my worldly hopes; worn and despairing when the one devouring, passionate love of my life had disappeared, and it was like the last scene of a tragedy, when nothing is left for the spectators but to wrap their cloaks around them and go home—I deemed that I was coming to a land where there were no women, except black ones or those required for culinary purposes.
How little we know of these new lands and their inhabitants, all English as they are, as if in the Midland Counties, yet of manner strangely fresh! All is high development and new material. How I am shut up with a magnificent young creature, with a face like Egeria, and a figure like the huntress maid, burning with enthusiasm, talented, cultured, full of all noble feminine attributes; dangerous with the fascinations of fresh, innocent womanhood, yet ignorant of the ways of the world, and childlike in her unsuspicious confidence!
How I wish I was young again! I do really, Charlie. Could I but blot out the years that have intervened—not so many—but what Dead-Sea fruits have I not tasted during their stormy course? What a burnt-out volcano is this heart of mine! Could I but recall the past and be like one of our schoolboy heroes!
'The happy page who was the lordOf one soft heart and his own sword.'
'The happy page who was the lordOf one soft heart and his own sword.'
What empires and kingdoms would I give—supposing them to be mine—to revert to that position, and so prove myself worthy of the fresh heart, the petals of which are about to open before my graduated advance, like a rose in June! That I shall be the favoured suitor, despite of the opposition of a good-looking, stalwart, provincial rival, my experience assures me. With womenl'inconnuis always the interesting, the romantic, the irresistible. In despite of myself, I can see clearly my future position ofjeune premierin this opera of the wilderness. It might be worse, you will say. That I grant. But you know that Helen of Troy would never control this restless, wayward heart of mine in perpetuity.
For the rest, the life is bearable enough, free, untrammelled, novel, with a tinge of adventure. My days are spent in the saddle. There's just a hint of shooting, no hunting, no fishing. We dress for dinner, and live much as at a shooting-lodge in the Highlands, with stock-riders for gillies. So we are not altogether barbarous, as you others imagine. This letter is far too long, and imprudently confiding, so I hasten to subscribe myself yours, as of old,
Bertram Devereux.
So much for the impression Pollie was capable of producing on a worn, world-weary heart.
It was a strange fate which had thus imprisoned this beautiful creature, so richly endowed with all the attributes which combine to form the restless, tameless, unsatisfied man, amid surroundings so uninteresting and changeless. Eager for adventure, even for danger, she was curious with a child's hungering, insatiable appetite for the knowledge of wondrous lands, cities, peoples; hating the daily monotone to which the woman's household duties are necessarily attuned. Capable of the strongest, the most passionate attachments, yet all-ignorant as yet of the subtle, sweet, o'ermastering tone of the world-conquering harmony of love. In the position to which she appeared immovably attached by circumstance, she seemed like a strayed bright-plumaged bird, a foreign captive, taken in infancy and reared in an alien land.
A chamois in a sheepfold, a leopardess in a drawing-room, a red deer in a trim and close-paled enclosure, could not have been more hopelessly at war with surroundings, more incongruously provided with food and shelter. Day after day a growing discontent, a hopeless despair of life, seemed to weigh her down, to take the savour from existence, to restrain the instinctive sportiveness of youth, to hush the spirit-song of praise with which, like the awakening bird, she should have welcomed each dawning morn.
'Why must it be thus?' she often asked herself when, restless at midnight as at noon-day, she gazed from her window across the wide star-lit plain, in which groups of melancholy, swaying, pale-hued trees seemed to be whispering secrets of past famine years or sighing weirdly over sorrows to come.
'Will it always be thus?' thought she, 'and is my life to trickle slowly along like the course of our enfeebled stream, until after long assimilation to this desert dreariness I become like one of the house-mothers I see around me? Ignorant, incurious, narrow, with an intelligence gradually shrivelling up to the dimensions of a childhood with which they have nothing else in common! What a hateful prospect! What a death in life to look forward to! Were it not for my darling mother and the few friends I may call my own, I feel as if I could put an end to an existence which has so little to recommend it, so pitiably small an outlook.'
In all this outburst of capricious discontent the experienced reader of the world's page will perceive nothing more than the instinctive, unwarranted impatience of youth, which in man or woman is so utterly devoid of reason or gratitude.
What! does not the vast, calm universe wait and watch, weak railer at destiny, for the completion of 'Nature's wondrous plan,' counting not the years, the æons, as the sands of the sea, that intervene between promise and fulfilment? Hast thou not enjoyed ease, love unwearying, anxious tendance, from the dawn of thy helpless, as yet useless being; and while all creation suffers and travails, canst thou not endure the unfolding of thy fated lot?
Applying, possibly, some such remedies to her mental ailment, life appeared to go on at Corindah much as it had done, Pollie thought, since the earliest days she could remember as a tiny girl. She could almost have supposed that the same things had been said by the same people, or people very like them, since her babyhood. Wonderings whether it would rain soon, by the mildly expectant; doubts whether it would ever rain again, by the scoffers and unbelievers; assertions that the seasons had changed, by the prophets of evil; superficial, sanguine predictions that it would rain some day, by the light-minded; hope and trusting confidence in the Great Ruler, by the devout, that He would not suffer his people to be utterly cast down and forsaken, that the dumb creatures of His hand would have a bound set to their sufferings—all these things had she heard and experienced from time to time ever since she could recall herself as a conscious entity. Then after a less or greater interval the blessed rain of heaven would fall, plenteously, excessively, perhaps superfluously, without warning, without limit, and the long agony of the drought would be over.
Something of this sort had Pollie been saying to her cousin, as they sat at breakfast one gusty, unsettled, red-clouded morning. He had been inquiring satirically whether it ever rained at Corindah.
'He had been here six months and had never seen any. Would all the sheep die? Would all the watercourses dry up? Would they all be forced to abandon the station? And was this a sample of Australia and its vaunted bush life?'
'Things are not quite so bad generally,' laughed Pollie; 'though I cannot deny that in these months, unless the weather changes, it will be what you call a "blue look-out." Poor mother is more anxious every week, and Mr. Gateward's face is becoming fixed in one expression, like that of a bronze idol.'
'It hardly seems like a laughing matter,' said he gravely. 'The loss of the labour of years, of a fortune, and then "Que faire?"'
'I am laughing in faith,' retorted Pollie; 'so that really I am in a more religious frame of mind than all the solemn-faced people who despair of God's goodness. Of course, it will rain some time or other. It might even rain to-night, though it does not look the least like it. Again, it might not rain for a year.'
'What a terribly incomprehensible state of matters to exist in!' said Bertram. 'I little thought, when I grumbled at a rainy week in England, what blessings in disguise I was undervaluing. And what would be the case if a small deluge took place?'
'All the rivers would be in flood. A few shepherds and mail-men, poor fellows! would be drowned, and the whole North-West country, say a thousand miles square, would be one luxuriant prairie of grass nearly as high as your head. Mr. Gateward would sing for joy as far as his musical disabilities would permit him; and poor mother's bank account would be nearly twenty thousand pounds on the right side within a few weeks.'
'And the sheep?'
'A few hundreds would die—the wet and cold would kill them, being weak. All the rest would wax fat, and perhaps kick in a month.'
'Truly wonderful! I must take your word literally, but really I should hardly believe any one else.'
'You may always believe me,' the girl said proudly, as she stood up and faced him, with raised head and erect form, her bright blue eyes fixed steadfastly upon his, and almost emitting a flash, it seemed to him, from their steady glow. 'Promise me that every word I say shall be accepted by you as the absolute, unalterable truth, or I shall speak to you no more about my native land, or anything else.'
'I promise,' he said, taking her hand in his own and reverently bowing over it; 'and now I am going for a long ride, to the outer well; I must be off.'
'To Durbah, forty miles and more?' she said. 'Why did not you make an earlier start? What are you going to ride?'
'Wongamong,' he said. 'He is a wonderful goer, and seems quieter than he was.'
'He is a treacherous, bad-tempered brute,' she returned answer, rather quickly, 'and nothing will ever make him quiet. Besides, I think there's some break of weather coming on. The wind has changed for the third time since sunrise, and the clouds are banking up fast to the west. We might have a storm.'
'What fun!' said the Englishman; 'I should like it of all things. The climate here does not seem to have energy enough for a right down good storm.'
'You don't know what you are talking about,' she said; 'you haven't seen a storm, or a flood, or a bush-fire, or anything. Take my advice and ride a steady horse to-day. Something tells me you might want one. Promise me that you will.'
There was an unusual earnestness in the girl's voice as she spoke, as, placing her hand on his shoulder, she looked in his face. A low muttering roll of thunder seemed to accentuate her appeal. The young man smiled, as he answered, 'My dearest Pollie, I should be sorry to refuse the slightest request so flatteringly in my interest: I will seek me a charger practised in theménagein place of the erratic Wongamong.'
In a few minutes more, as she stood by the open window, she saw him ride through the outer gate on a dark bay horse, whose elastic stride and powerful frame showed him to be one of those rare combinations of strength, speed, and courage, of which the great Australian land holds no inconsiderable number.
'Dear old Guardsman! I'm so glad that he took him. I didn't know that he was in. I wonder what makes me so nervous to-day. It surely cannot be going torain, or is there an earthquake imminent? I believe in presentiments, and if the day is like the others we have had this year, I never shall do so again. There goes another clap of thunder!'
That morning was spent by Pollie Devereux, it must be confessed, in a manner so aimless, so inconsistent with her mother's fixed principles on the score of regular employment for young women, that it drew forth more than one mild reproach from that kindly matron.
'My dear, I can't bear to see you going about from one room to another without settling to anything. Can you not sit down to your work, or practise, or go on with some historical reading, or your French, in which Bertram says you are making such progress? You're wasting your time sadly.'
'Mother!' said her daughter, facing round upon her with mock defiance, 'could you sit down to your work if there was going to be a shipwreck, or a cyclone, or a great battle fought on the plain? Though, really, you good old mother, I think you would, and thread your needle till the Roundheads marched in at the outer gate, as they did in "The Lay of Britomart," or took down the slip-rails, as it would be in our case. But do you know, there is an electrical current in the air, I am sure, and so I, being of a more excitable nature, do really feel so aroused and excited, that I can't keep quiet. Something is going to happen.'
'Now, my dearest Pollie, are not you letting your imagination run away with you? What can happen? There may be a little wind and rain—what the shepherds call "a nice storm"—but nothing else, I fear.'
'"Something wicked this way comes,"' chanted Pollie, putting herself into a dramatic attitude. 'See how dark it is growing! Look at the lightning! Oh, dear, what a flash! And down comes the rain at last—in earnest, too.'
'The rain will have to be very earnest, my dear,' said Mrs. Devereux, 'before poor Corindah feels the benefit of it—though that certainly is a heavy shower. Early in the season too; this is only the 8th of February. There is the lunch-bell. Come along, my dear. A little lunch will do you good.'
'How wet poor Bertram will be!' said Pollie, pityingly. 'He said we couldn't have storms here.'