Though there was nothing overt in the manner of Harold Atherstone upon which she could fasten as showing resentment or offence, yet did Miss Devereux acknowledge in her secret heart a coolness in the demeanour of her old friend which troubled her. He was always so kind, so honest, so considerate. 'Tender and true' expressed her thoughts. She could not think of his disapproval without regret, even pain. He had a way of always being in the right, too. On many occasions had they differed in opinion. She recalled how invariably it had been forced upon her cooler, juster self that his opinion had been correct from the beginning. Suppose, she thought to herself, as she leaned out of the window and watched the stars with strange undefined yearnings, that Harold should be right this time! He had said nothing, only showed by his manner, by his countenance, every inflexion of which she knew so well, that he disliked this increasing intimacy with her cousin. Was it increasing? A mere half-friendship, founded on curiosity, admiration of the unknown, upon her own ideal, enveloping him like a costume at a masquerade.
It is possible that this highly important retrospective process might have proceeded to much greater length and depth of research, that curiously constructed organ the female heart being full of all manner of strange corridors, galleries, and shafts, of utterly unknown measure and limit. But circumstances arose—circumstances which altered the aspect of affairs—which turned temporarily the maiden's thoughts into far other channels.
The season being so exceptionally good, the stock and station being nearly 'able to manage themselves,' as Mr. Gateward expressed it, the highly original idea of a summer trip, for the benefit of her own and her daughter's health, suggested itself to the mind of Mrs. Devereux.
'Poor dear! she has been shut up here quite long enough,' said the loving mother. 'I can't say that she doesn't look well, but a voyage must benefit her. It will give a change of ideas. It may take away that restless, discontented feeling which comes to her now so often.'
Thereupon it was decided that they were to go to Sydney, and spend a fortnight among their friends. Then by steamer to Melbourne. From that city they would take one of the New Zealand boats, so as to pass a portion of the summer at the fairy lakes of Rotomahana and the hot springs of Waiwera—that modern imitation of Paradise.
For this unprecedented step Mrs. Devereux had more than one reason. She certainly thought it would tend to her darling's mental and bodily improvement. But that was not all. With womanly quickness sharpened by a mother's instinct, she had divined that the intimacy between Pollie and her cousin was slowly but surely coming closer, nearer, perhaps dearer.
Of the probabledénouementshe had an instinctive dread. 'I don't know what it is,' she said to herself, 'but I can't altogether put faith in Bertram. It isn't that I can say anything against him. He is clever, manly, good-looking in his way. I didn't think so at first. But somehow I don't seem to be able to know him. He is as great a stranger as the first day I set eyes upon him. Oh! why can't she take Harold Atherstone, who is worth half a dozen of him—of any other man I ever saw, except poor Brian?'
If there was any regret at parting with any one at Corindah, Pollie availed herself of one of the sex's weapons, and reticently made no sign. She appeared to be wild with delight at the
sea-changeInto something rich and strange,
sea-changeInto something rich and strange,
which her daily life was presently to undergo. It may be that she herself was conscious of the slowly increasing power of a fascination which she was powerless to resist. In its present stage—such is the curious, contradictory nature of the maiden's heart—she regarded it with fear and unwillingness.
Thus she caught eagerly at the chance afforded her of a totally new experience, of the strange environments of a delicious foreign existence, such as in the future she might never have the chance of realising under similar conditions. Joyous anticipation seemed to have taken possession of her mind with a sudden rush, forcibly expelling all previous sensations.
Bertram Devereux was chagrined at the change of programme. Coldly self-possessed as usual, however, he betrayed not, by word or manner, his real feeling on the subject.
'Why don't you go home to England while you are about it, Mrs. Devereux?' he asked. 'The time would not be so much longer. You have friends and relations there, and I should be delighted to give you introductions to some of mine.'
'You are indeed most kind,' said the unsuspecting matron, cordially grateful; 'but a voyage to England is too serious a matter to be undertaken lightly. We are doing great things in going to New Zealand and Melbourne. Nothing would induce me to go a step farther, or to stay away more than three or four months at the outside.'
'I feel certain that your daughter would enjoy the European travel. It would be new life to her, and would even benefit you, after your many anxieties,' continued the tempter suavely. 'There'll be nothing to do here or to see to for a couple of years, so Gateward says. You could spare the time well.'
'You seem very anxious to get rid of us,' said the younger lady, with a pout. 'Some people will think six months a long time to miss us from Corindah.'
'Can you thinkIshall not miss you?' returned he, with a sudden change of tone and expression which thrilled her in a manner for which she could not account, as he bent his searching, steadfast gaze upon her. 'But you ought to see the "kingdoms of the world and the glory of them" now that you have the opportunity. I should follow you, mentally, all the way.'
Here one of his rare smiles lit up his face, as he gazed at her with the tenderness one bestows on a child; and again her eyes sank under his, while a faint flush tinged her snow-fair cheek.
'Mother and I cannot make up our minds to such an expedition as going to England all at once,' she replied slowly. 'We require to be educated up to it. Wait until we return from New Zealand, then we will fold our wings, and perhaps make ready for a longer flight.'
'"Would I were, sweet bird, like thee!"' hummed Mr. Devereux, as he gracefully declined further controversy. 'Some of these days you will awake to your privileges, I suppose. We all develop by unmarked changes, none the less surely, however, as fate decrees.'
Mrs. Devereux grew, indeed, half afraid of the momentous enterprise on which she was about to enter. Supported, however, by her daughter, she kept up to the task of packing and providing for departure. This eventually took the form of being driven to the nearest railway terminus, a short day's journey, and being deposited in a first-class carriage, with all their effects in the brake-van, carefully labelled. The next morning saw them in Sydney, the Sea-Queen of the South, somewhat nervously excited at being so far from Corindah, so immeasurably removed from their ordinary life.
'After all,' cried Pollie, as they sat in the balcony of their hotel after breakfast, and gazed over the matchless sea-lake, gay with boats of every size and shape, and the argosies of all lands, while beyond lay the grand eternal mystery of ocean, guarded only by the grim sandstone portals, against which so many ages of tidal force have foamed and raged—'after all we make too much of leaving home for a few months' travel. What wonders and miracles stay-at-home people miss! What human limpets they are; and how narrow are their paths to enjoyment! "I feel as if I were in Paradise, in Paradise,"' she warbled. 'Oh, what a change from our dear old monotonous Corindah!'
'Home is very sweet after all,' said the elder woman, 'though I enjoy this lovely sea-view. But, my darling, you frighten me by these expressions of wild delight. It cannot be good for any one to revel in pleasure, the mere luxurious sensation of change of scene, so intensely, so passionately as you do. Such feelings are unsafe for women. You should moderate them, or evil may come to you from these very unchecked emotions.'
'My darling old mother, I am positively shivering with delight; but why should this or any other natural impulse be wrong? Surely we are given these feelings, like the rest of our nature, for wise reasons? Like speech, laughter, thought, they are unutterable mercies, to be reasonably used and economised. But I see your meaning, and I will guard my emotions a little. I must do so when I get to the hot springs Eden, or I shall be plunging into hot water in mistake for tepid. Fancy a heroine of romance boiled alive!'
'Don't talk of it, my darling,' said Mrs. Devereux, with a shudder. 'Really, don't you think Melbourne will be quite far enough, and very pleasant at this time of year? We might leave New Zealand till another time.'
'Not for worlds,' said the steadfast damsel. 'I want to get a little nearer to the pole. I shall feel like an Arctic explorer.'
The pleasures of the metropolis, doubly sweet after a lengthened absence, had been sipped for a fortnight, when a breezy morn saw the ladies of Corindah steaming out of the harbour on board theCathay, a magnificent sea-monster of the P. and O. persuasion, containing all kinds of delicious foreign novelties, social and material.
'Mother, I don't think I can have been really alive before,' exclaimed Pollie, as they walked down the splendid flush deck. 'I suppose I was living, but I must have been in a state of torpor, with a few mechanical senses feebly revolving, as it were. Isn't this unutterably lovely—quite an eastern fairy-tale in action? Look at those splendidly ugly Seedees in the engine-room, ghouls and afreets every one; besides, even the lascars—what classic profiles and lithe, graceful shapes they have! I feel in love with everybody and everything, down to the Chinese waiters in spotless white.'
When the heads were cleared, and the strong north-easter sent theCathayflying south at the rate of fifteen knots per hour, the motion was increased and perhaps complicated, whereupon an entirely new class of sensations succeeded those of rapturous delight in Pollie's case, in consequence of which a hasty descent into the cabin was rendered necessary.
The morning, however, brought smoother seas and a less urgent breath from Æolus. The naturally strong constitution of the girl triumphed over temporarymalaise, and soon she was enabled to sit upon deck and enjoy the brilliant and wondrous succession of sea and shore and sky pageants unrolled before her.
A full complement of passengers, bound to and from all parts of the world, had been received on board, so that Pollie's observant eye and sympathetic mind had full employment as the long rows of chairs became gradually filled. People for India,viâCeylon; home-returning officers and civilians having exhausted their furlough; globe-trotters who had traversed the Australian world from Dan to Beersheba and found all barren, or 'not half a bad place,' according to the state of their living or their reception in clubs and coteries; home-returning Australians, visiting Europe for the first time in their lives, or after many years; mere intercolonial voyagers like themselves; a successful gold-digger or two, treating themselves to first-class passages, plain of aspect, but reserved and correct of manner, as such men generally are, whatever may be said to the contrary by superficial scribes. After Pollie had got over her astonished delight at theArabian Nightsportion of the ship, she found a new world of interest and romance opening before her eyes in the Anglo-Saxon section comprising the first-class passengers. This was not lessened in any way when, lunch being announced, she found her mother and herself placed in seats of honour on the right hand of His Majesty the Captain—such being his royal command—while the wife of an eminent Indian civilian looked indignantly and incredulously at them from the opposite side of the table.
It had leaked out through a Sydney friend of Captain Belmont's that this wastheMrs. Devereux of Corindah and her daughter, who had taken their passages in theCathay en routeto New Zealand, persons of fabulous wealth, girl sole heiress, could not be worth less than a hundred thousand, besides freehold property, and so on. Now Pollie was unquestionably the belle of the ship, and persons of prepossessing appearance were not scarce either; but the slight paleness and languor produced by her unwonted sensations had given her haughty beauty a tinge of softness which, when she issued from her cabin, made her positively irresistible. So the captain, an experienced but susceptible bachelor, had avowed with many nautical asseverations, and thereupon directed the purser, a most distinguished individual in uniform, whom Pollie took to be an admiral at least, to induct them into the place of honour.
When a glass of claret and Selters-water, insisted upon by the captain as a medical necessity, and some slight refection from the luxuriously appointed table had revived the spirits of both ladies, Pollie was enabled to realise her position. Here was she, seated almost upon the dais in point of social elevation, above the wives and daughters of the military, civil, and mercantile swells, palpably receiving the most assiduous attention from the acknowledged autocrat of theirmonde—of that loftiest, most resistless of despots, that uncrowned king, the captain of a crack ocean steamer on board his own ship.
Besides his dazzling and unquestioned superiority, Captain Belmont was a handsome, striking-looking man. Courteous, polished even in manner, he had the eagle eye, the air of resolute command, with which years of unquestioned authority invest the sea-king. Prompt, watchful, fearless, scorning sleep or fatigue when danger menaced, the arbiter of freedom or imprisonment within his own realm, the guardian of every life so confidently entrusted to his care—where is the man who to the maiden's heart, during the long reveries of a sea voyage, so amply fills the character of a hero of romance as the captain? Who has not marked his influence in danger's darkest hour, when the moaning wind, rising fast to the shriek of the tempest, the lurid sky, the labouring bark, and 'the remorseless dash of billows,' all speak to the fear-stricken crowd of dread endings, of wreck in mid-ocean? In such an hour how does every eye turn to the calm, resolute seaman, who directs every act, who foresees the need of every rope that is drawn, of every turn of the helm! How does every listener hang upon his words and dwell upon his lightest syllable of hope!
Has no one seen the grateful company of passengers when land was reached, and, as they deemed, through his skill and vigilance those lives were saved which, in the hour of deadly peril, he held in the hollow of his hand—gather around the captain to express such words of grateful confidence as are seldom yielded to man, the women tearful, the men pressing to shake his hand with honest friendliness? Such a meeting took place, after a dangerous voyage, in honour of one who for twenty years had worthily borne the name of being one of Britain's best and boldest seamen. And the impression on the mind of one eye-witness was never effaced.
It was, therefore, a new and intoxicating position in which Miss Pollie Devereux found herself. The acknowledged object of respectful admiration to this resplendently heroic character, and on equal terms with all the other potentates, from the first officer—a magnificent personage, and second only to the captain in importance—while the rank and file of passengers stood aloof in timid or cynical survey of the damsel whom the Ahasuerus of the hour delighted to honour.
Though partially awed by the eminence of their position, Mrs. Devereux, who had been accustomed in her time to much of respect and consideration, saw nothing very unusual in their promotion. Pollie herself was charmed to find herself on equal conversational terms with such an autocrat. With girlish eagerness she pressed him to tell her of the dangers he had braved and the wonders he had seen. He, nothing loath, produced from time to time, in temptingly small quantities, precious reminiscences of cyclones in the China seas, pirate schooners in the Spanish Main, slavers in Sierra Leone—for he had been in the navy—opium clippers, Chinese mail-boats taken by mutineers and never heard of after, wreck and fire, even all kinds of peril by sea and land in which he had borne a part; so that Pollie or any other damsel might be pardoned for feeling a temporary conviction that such a man had gone through adventures transcending in interest those of the lives of a hundred mere landsmen—that, were the hero of her choice a sailor, she would gladly wear out her life in accompanying him in his voyages.
The next day was Sunday. According to custom, the lascar crew turned out gorgeous in crimson-and-gold scarfs, spotless white robes, and embroidered turbans, very different from their dingy working garb. After breakfast, when the captain in full uniform passed close between the double rank, with the air of Caliph Haroun Al-Raschid, the men lowly salaaming as if thankful not to be doomed to death on that occasion, it was a reproduction in the romantic girl's brain of yet another chapter in the rich traditional glory of the past. Even the Seedees gambolled uncouthly in strange gaudy raiment, looking like slaves who had found an opulent and indulgent master. The while Pollie sat in great state on a cane lounge of honour, with a cushion under her feet and a parasol like the Queen of Sheba's.
Unfortunately for the permanent enjoyment of these dreamy delights, theCathaydrove through 'The Rip,' at the entrance to the vast haven at the farther end of which Melbourne commences, on the morning of the third day. A short railway transit saw them deposited at the Esplanade Hotel, where an extended, though not, critically speaking, picturesque sea-view was afforded to them.
Captain Belmont had, with the dash and rapidity which characterise the nautical admirer, obtained Mrs. Devereux' consent to join 'a theatre party' which he had organised. As it happened, an actor of world-wide reputation was performing a favourite melodrama of his own composition. This was a chance, he speciously urged, which Miss Devereux should not be suffered to miss. The promise was made. The captain arrived in due time and escorted them to the Theatre Royal, where one more process of art-magic was added to Pollie's collection.
As their open carriage rolled through the wide, straight streets, in which long rows of lamps glittered on either side, or faded star-like in the far distance, they were impressed with the utterly different expression of Melbourne from that of their own fair city by the sea.
'What a wonderful place!' said Pollie, gazing up the great street which contains all the pleasures and palaces, and is nightly crowded with their votaries. 'How the lamps glow and shimmer! What a vast size and almost sombre uniformity in the buildings which line the streets! There is something weird, too, in the electric lights which create a pale daylight around those endless colonnades. I feel as if I had been transported to some city raised by the wand of an enchanter.'
'Not unlike a little sorcery,' said one of the party, 'when you come to think. There were gum-trees and blacks here "in full blast" half a century ago. Here we are at the Royal.'
It was a command night. The representative of Her Majesty had signified his intention of being present. One of the best boxes in the dress-circle—but two distant from the vice-regal compartment—had been secured by the forecasting captain. The house was crammed. As the popular governor and his party entered, the great assemblage rose like one man to the air of the National Anthem, which aroused Pollie to a burst of loyal enthusiasm.
'It always brings the tears into my eyes,' she said; 'it looks foolish, but I cannot help it. Something in the old tune and the reverence with which our people always greet it stirs my very heart's core. I suppose these feelings are hereditary.'
'The colonies are wonderfully loyal,' said the captain. 'I never saw anything like it. You are more English than the English themselves.'
'I hope we shall always remain so,' said Mrs. Devereux, 'though I believe at home they think we must be essentially different. But the curtain rises. Now, Pollie!'
It follows, as a thing of course, that the whole party, and more particularly Pollie, with her sensitive nature, appreciative as well of the lightest touches of humour as the deeper tones of pathos, were charmed with the play, which had enthralled London nightly for a whole year.
When, after the finale, the party adjourned to the carefully appointed supper which the gallant captain had insisted upon providing—when, amid the popping of champagne corks, a flow of pleasant criticism and enjoyable badinage went round—Pollie realised that she was tasting one of those highly flavoured, almost forbidden pleasures of life which she had read of, but hardly dared to think of sharing.
'This sort of thing is too good to be true,' she replied to Captain Belmont, who was expressing his general and particular satisfaction with 'the way things had gone off.' 'There is so much enjoyment that it must be a little sinful. Don't you think so? I shall wake to-morrow to find it all a dream; or mother will decide that I am never to go to a theatre party again.'
The captain murmured that all manner of delights—the joys that embellish existence—were in her power. She had but to speak the word, doubtless, and slaves in scores would be at her command, himself among the number, only too happy to administer to her slightest wish now and for his whole life after. Here the captain's deep voice faltered, and his expressive eyes, which had done only too much execution in their day, were fixed on hers with an ardent, well-nigh magnetic gaze. The girl trembled involuntarily for a moment, and then laughed lightly, as she replied, 'Is that out of a play, Captain Belmont? I think I have heard it somewhere before. But I feel as if we all belonged to the opera, and that even compliments of that sort chime in with our condition in life.'
The captain's expression changed to one almost gravely paternal as he bowed and trusted she might never meet in after life with friends less sincere than those who would so deeply regret her departure from theCathay. Then, as Mrs. Devereux made the slightly perceptible movement which defined the limit of the symposium, they joined the retreat, and the captain surrendered whatever illusion he may have cherished concerning his too charming passenger.
After the splendour and distinction of theCathay, the voyage to New Zealand was a tame affair, voted so even by Mrs. Devereux. Both ladies were heartily glad when the wooded heights of the Britain of the South rose from the underworld, and they addressed themselves to the great question of disembarkation with earnestness.
Of their stay in the land of the Maori and of their enjoyment of the daily supply of delights and wonders, it were superfluous to tell; of Pollie's reverential admiration for the first Rangatira whom she encountered—a grizzled, war-worn chief who had fought stubbornly against us at the Gate Pah, and had in his day killed (and eaten) many a tribal foe. Upon the brilliant verdure of the pasture refreshed by the perennial moisture of a sea-girdled isle, the hawthorn hedges, the roadside ditches, the old-world English look of so many things and people, she was never tired of expatiating. The people, the scenery, the climate, and the soil were new. The forests of strange glossy-leaved trees, of noble pines, of clinging parasites with crimson blossoms, held neither bird, nor beast, nor leaf, nor flower akin to those of the Australian continent.
'What a wonderful region! So near to us—a few days' voyage only—and yet so unlike. And what a sheep country! No dingoes, no eagles, no snakes, no crows! This last is simply incredible. Fancy a country without crows! There must be something wrong about it. What would Mr. Gateward say? And such grass! If we only could have "travelled" over here in the drought! It seems hard that Providence devoted all the intervening distance to water. Had it been dry land, it would have been worth all the rest of our continent.'
'"The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof," my darling,' said the mother. 'I don't like to hear you talk lightly about such things. Seas and lands were doubtless arranged as they are for some wise purpose.'
'I never meant to be irreverent, my dearest. I was only thinking what a pity this fine south latitude region should be useless. Only fancy, except this little New Zealand dot, there is no habitable land between us and the South Pole. Oh! I forgot the Crozets—those islands where the ship was wrecked, and the passengers were cast away nearly twelve months. All their hair turned white as fleeces. So complexion is only a matter of latitude after all.'
Their time was all too short when the route was again given, and the party with which they had amalgamated proceeded by tourist stages to the dream-region of Rotomahana.
Of the glories and triumphs of that wonderland who shall tell adequately, who depict with a tithe of the fresh brilliant colouring that Nature—earliest of Royal Academicians—has invented?
'I will never go back,' quoth Pollie; 'here I will live and die. I will become a guide, like Maori Kate here—magnificent creature that she is! I will never be proud of civilisation again. What do we get by it forsooth? Headaches, neuralgia, nervous systems, toothaches, and shortened lives. These noble Maoris never have headaches, except from too much rum—which is only a transient, not a chronic ailment—but unfailing appetite, health, strength and activity; hair that doesn't come out or turn bald and grey; teeth that serve to reduce food and not to enrich dentists. I say we are manifestly inferior to this noble people. Why do we want to conquer them or convert them?'
'My darling,' said Mrs. Devereux, 'this air is too stimulating; I am afraid you are going out of your mind. It will never do for you to go on in England like this. Fancy what your father's family would think!'
'I shall sober down before we take our European tour,' answered the young lady. 'I shall have something to talk about, though, shan't I? And we must go through Paris; I don't want to be "bonneted" metaphorically (that's rather neat, dear, between ourselves) because my headgear is not up to the fashionable cousins' standard. But I think I could hold my own. I shall begin by beingverysimple, and having things explained to me that I have known all my life; then dawn on them by degrees.'
'My darling, you only need to be your own dear, sweet self, and be assured you will be able to hold your own with any people you are likely to meet at home or abroad. I don't wish my pet to affect anything, either below or above her. You have great natural gifts, a fairly good education, and what experience you are deficient in will always be made up by your unusual quickness of comprehension. That is your old mother's honest opinion, and she would not deceive you for the world.'
'And I care not two straws for anybody else in comparison, you dear old darling. You are ever so clever too—if you were not so unreasonably diffident about yourself. However, I will educate you when we reach England. You'll see the firm of "Pollie and Mother" will achieve distinction.'
The summer joys passed all too quickly. Why cannot one remain in fairy-land? Perhaps as the years rolled on we should hear one morning a dismal summons. The faces of our gay companions would undergo a terrible alteration. The dread messenger had arrived who was to exact 'the teind for hell.' Thus it ran in the old ballad. So True Thomas found it. The fairy flowers withered, the fay faces changed. All was pale, awesome. The day of payment for pleasure unstinted and unhallowed joys had arrived.
There is always a day of reckoning, a reactionary change from pleasant sojourns. True Thomas lies beneath the 'knowe' at Ercildoune. Our modern fairies are clad in tulle and tarlatan; are seen beneath electric lights. Old faiths are crumbling. They lie—like 'ancient thrones'—in the workrooms of scientists and positivists. Yet still is there a flavour of the old-world belief which clings about us. Remorse and regret, passion and despair, survive. And even as we return from the land of pleasure along paths of duty, the refrain sounds sadly in our ears that all earth's joys are fleeting; that the ocean of eternity must be the end of life's bark; that its tideless waves may ever be heard, deeply dirgeful, in the intervals of vanity and madness.
So, when the first Australian winter month—that of May—found the travellers againen routefor Corindah, where everything bade fair to be as quiet and peaceful as on the day they left, Pollie's first feeling was one of indefinable regret. 'I could almost wish we had never left home, mother,' she said; 'everything will look so quiet and dull till we regain our eyesight. It looks mean and ungrateful to the dear old place and our friends to go back to them as a kind ofpis allerafter having exhausted the pleasures of vagabondising. I suppose we shall drop into our old sleepy ways again by degrees. We are such creatures of habit.'
'For my part, I am thankful to get back,' said Mrs. Devereux. 'My dear garden will be looking so well, as I see that they have had rain. I quite pine for a little needlework, too. I miss my steady pursuits, I must say.'
'Garden!' said Pollie disdainfully; 'a pretty garden it will look after the bright rata and laurel thickets, the ancient groves of totara and kauri, the ferny dells of Waitaki! It seems like growing mustard and cress upon a yard of damp flannel, as I used to do in my childhood. However, as I said before, our tastes will recover themselves I hope.'
Corindah once more. Again the endless grey-green plains—the sandhills—the myall—the mogil—the familiar, not ungraceful, but sparse and monotonous woodland—the wire fences stretching for scores of miles on every side—the gates all of the same pattern—the hundreds of thousands of merino sheep, each unit undistinguishable from another save by the eye of experience—the blue heaven—the mirage—the boundary riders—the men—the horses—the collie dogs—all moving in unvarying grooves, as if they had never done anything else since the travellers departed, and were incapable of change, emotion, or alteration.
However, as the buggy from the station drove through the well-remembered gate, Harold Atherstone, with Bertram and Mr. Gateward, were there to meet the home-returning travellers. The evident pleasure in each face touched the girl's heart, and she pressed the gnarled hand of the overseer with considerably more cordiality than she was in the habit of putting into her greetings, as she replied to the general expression of welcome.
'Thought you'd followed my advice and taken the New Zealand mail-steamer for England,' said Mr. Devereux, with his usual calmness of intonation, though a flush on his ordinarily pale cheek betrayed suppressed emotion. 'I should have done so in your case I know.'
'I daresay they have only come home to pack now,' said Harold. 'A taste for travel, once acquired, is never shaken off—by women at any rate. The West Logan must look like the Soudan after your late experiences.'
'You are all very unkind,' said Pollie; 'that is, except Mr. Gateward, who is too glad to see us to make rude speeches. Don't we enjoy coming home like other people with hearts? We are not going away for years, are we, mother?'
'Not if my wishes are consulted, my dearest,' said Mrs. Devereux, stretching her neck to look over the garden paling. 'I want rest, and time to think my own thoughts and enjoy a little quiet life again.'
'You have come to the right "shop" for that, as I heard one of the boundary riders say to-day, my dear Mrs. Devereux,' said Bertram. 'Anything more uniform, not to say monotonous, than our lives here in your absence cannot be imagined. Nothing ever happens here, now that the excitement of the drought is over.'
'I heard some news by telegram before I came over,' said Harold, 'which is likely to cause a stir in the district. It's rather bad of its sort, and may lead to worse results even.'
'Thank God for it, anyhow!' said Bertram; 'anything is better than the dead level of dulness we have lately been reduced to. What is it?'
The other man looked grave. 'It's not a matter to be lightly treated. Two bushrangers are "out." They shot dead one of the escort troopers from Denman Gaol to Berrima, overpowered the others, and are now at large at no great distance from Wannonbah.'
'Oh!' said Mrs. Devereux, turning pale, 'I am so sorry. Not that I feel frightened; but now that they have shed blood, and must suffer if taken, they are desperate men, and will scarcely be taken alive. Do you know their names?'
'The younger man is Billy Mossthorne; as for the other, I don't know. He is an old offender. The police are, of course, all over the district. Sergeant Herne passed Maroobil in an old slouched hat and plain clothes, but one of the men knew him and told me. He will run them down if any one can. Every trooper in the North-West is out.'
'But what chance in a country like this will he have?' said Bertram. 'The outlaws are miles away by this time, and can easily cross the border into Queensland. I'd take short odds they are never seen again.'
Mr. Atherstone smiled. 'He has the chance of the sleuth-hound on the trail of the deer. The police force of this colony is well organised. Mossthorne is a horseman, a bushman, and a dare-devil not easily matched; but there are as good men as he on his track.'
'If the brutes would only come into the open,' said Bertram, with his quiet sneer, 'one would be saved the bother of thinking about them. They haven't pluck enough for that, I expect.'
'To do them justice,' replied Atherstone, 'they don't lack the old English virtue of bulldog courage, as any one will find that meets them under fire. Personally, I should not be grieved if they got away to the "Never Never country," and were not heard of again. Mossthorne worked for me once. He was a fine manly young fellow, and I have always regretted deeply that he got into bad company and worse ways. In the front of a line regiment or on a quarter-deck, Billy would have shown what stuff he was made of, and his country might have been proud of him.'
'I have no sympathy with such ruffians, old or young,' said Devereux. 'The sooner they are hanged or shot the better, and I should like to have the chance of putting a bullet into either of them.'
'I daresay I shall shoot as straight as any one else if it comes to a scrimmage,' said the other; 'but I can't help mourning over a good man spoiled. That they will not be taken alive, we may make tolerably sure.'
At the commencement of the conversation Mrs. Devereux had turned pale. The sad memories of the past were awakened. She took the first opportunity of retiring with her daughter, leaving the young men to their argument.
'And what have you done with yourself all the time?' said Pollie to her cousin, as they sat at breakfast next morning. 'It does seem so hard to have been shut up here while we were in Fairy-land—were we not, mother?' she said, appealing to Mrs. Devereux, who sat in her place with rather an abstracted air.
'What were you saying, my dear? Oh! yes, delightful, was it not? I was just thinking that we need not have hurried back. Did you go anywhere, Bertram, or see any society in our absence?'
'I went to Bourke for a fortnight?' he answered, with a smile in which there was more sarcasm than merriment. 'I was afraid to trust myself within the fascination of real civilisation, so I declined Melbourne or Sydney.'
'And what did you think of that desert city?' inquired Pollie, with mock humility. 'Did Your Royal Highness find anybody fit to talk to?'
'It struck me as a queer place,' he said. 'You could not expect me to have seen anything like it before. But it wasn't bad in its way. The weather was glorious. The men were better than I expected. Rather fast, perhaps. Their manners lacked repose. They took care no one else should have any, as they kept it up all night most of the time I was there. One young fellow jumped his horse over the hotel bar—a thing I had previously taken to be pure fiction, on the American pattern.'
'That's rather old-fashioned bush pleasantry,' said Pollie; 'he must have been very young. How did the horse like it?'
'I don't know, but he did it cleverly. I expected to see both their necks broken and the smash general; but all came right by a miracle, and the fellow won his bet—twenty pounds. I heard him make it.'
'And was that the only style of society you encountered?' queried Pollie, with a disdainful and disapproving air. 'You could have enjoyed that at Wannonbah.'
'Permit me. I did not enjoy it; I only observed it. But there were really some nice fellows, who had just come over from Queensland—Lord Harrowsby's younger brother, and Thoresby, a Suffolk man, whose cousin I was quartered with once. They had just been investing in a sugar plantation, and were going to make a fortune in three years. One of the local men asked us all out to his place. Drove four-in-hand, too. We had a famous week of it. I never expected to enjoy it so much. Lived in a really good style.'
'Wonderful, when you come to think of it,' said the girl saucily, 'that any one should have a decent establishment in Australia! But you'll make discoveries by degrees.'
'I'm afraid you're laughing at me,' he said gravely. 'I am not of a sanguine disposition, I own. I didn't expectanythingwhen I came here. But perhaps I shall have fewer mistakes to retract than if I had been imaginative.'
'I am not laughing at you; indeed, I think you wonderfully wise and prudent for the time you have been out. By and by you will know everything that we do ourselves. But what always entertains me about you recent importations is the mild air of surprise with which you regard the smallest evidence that the men that preceded you, and built up these great cities, this wonderful country, were of much the same birth, breeding, and social status as ourselves.'
'But many were not, surely? That must be admitted.'
'The majority were; the leaders, certainly, in every branch of civilisation: how else would the miraculous progress have been effected? The rank and file were much like other people—good, bad, and indifferent.'
Once more the old life was resumed at Corindah. Once more the succession of easy tasks and simple pleasures obtained. The walks by the river-side—the rides and drives—the history readings—the French and Italian lessons—the peaceful mornings when tranquil Nature seemed assured against change, disturbance, or decay—the dreamy afternoons—the long, quiet evenings divided between books, music, and an occasional game of whist for Mrs. Devereux's entertainment when Harold Atherstone came over. As the weeks glided on, Pollie could not believe that she had ever left Corindah, that the voyages, the travel, the strange people and incidents were unrealities, fashioned of 'such stuff as dreams are made on.'
She had resumed her quasi-friendly relations with Bertram Devereux, who apparently had not noticed the alteration of her feelings towards him. With his accustomed patience he had accepted the position, and merely set himself to overcome her doubts and maidenly scruples. In this attempt his knowledge of the subject assured him that he would ultimately succeed.
Harold Atherstone certainly came pretty frequently. He was not a man to be lightly regarded as a rival. 'What a stir he would have made in some places that I have known!' thought Devereux to himself. 'Thatgrand seigneurair of his, the height, the stalwart frame, his Indian-chief sort of immobility, joined to his consummate skill in all accomplishments of an athletic nature. Here,' he said to himself, with a sardonic smile, 'he is thrown away. The type is more common than with us, and he has the fatal drawback, in the eyes of ourprima donna, of too early, too familiar, too brotherly an intimacy. She knows him like a book. With the perverse instinct of her sex, she despises the well-read, dog's-eared volume, full of high thought and purpose, and longs for a newer work—inferior, possibly, as it may be, but with uncut pages. I shall win this game, I foresee, as I win the odd trick at our little whist tournaments—by superior science, even against better cards. Well, what then? As the husband of the handsomest woman of her year, with Corindah for her ultimate dowry, and a handsome allowance, I suppose one could live in London. Ah! would it not be life again? Not this vegetable existence, which one can stand for a year or two, but dull, dismal,à faire peur, after a while.'
Had the intensity of the feeling which Bertram Devereux had reached reacted upon the girl's sensitive organisation? No alteration of manner, or one so trifling that it could hardly be perceived, had taken place. Still, like the swimmer on the smoothly gliding tide which leads to the whirlpool or the rapids, she felt conscious of a hidden force, which became daily more difficult to analyse or resist.
Had any one told her, upon the arrival of Bertram Devereux at Corindah, that her heart would eventually be forced to surrender at his summons, the proud beauty would have laughed the prophecy to scorn. But now, when with pensive brow and thoughtful air she searched its recesses, and examined the feelings which held possession of her waking thoughts, she could not deny that the image of the stranger had no rival to fear, no refusal to dread, in the fateful hour which would decide two destinies.
But in the intervals of distrust which disturbed her mind—and there were many—one question invariably asserted prominence, one dark spirit of doubt refused to be laid. She knew that Bertram Devereux had lived much in society in early life; had been of thehaute voléeof the great world both in England and abroad. Was it possible that he should have been a recognised figure in those luxurious, exclusive circles without having given his heart to some one of the fascinating personages which there abounded?
Were it so, would it be possible that he had pledged himself, unalterably, irrevocably, to return from Australia and fulfil his promise within a certain time? Englishmen often did this, and when time had altered their ideas, or loosened the bonds which in good faith should have remained inflexible, married some girl that took their fancy in the colonies, and quietly settled down for life in the land of their adoption. But such a lover should not be hers, she told herself. He who for gold or light love forfeited his pledged word was a forsworn coward. She could not for an instant brook the idea of being mentally compared with the former occupant of a heart every pulse of which should beat for her and her alone. She knew that every thought, every aspiration, every fibre of her being would be blended in the existence of her lover. Proud, sensitive, unconsciously exacting, even jealous, the fierce blood she inherited from Brian Devereux boiled up as she thought of the indignity, the degradation of sharing in such a sense the affections of any living man. She did not rise from her long musing fit on that still, dreamy, silent eve without telling herself, that in the probable case of Bertram Devereux declaring himself, he should satisfy her fully upon this point, or hand of hers should never clasp his before the altar.
While the great hope which arises in every human breast was perfecting itself—that flower which blooms so fair, or pales and fades untimely, was daily ripening, tending towards fragrance and fruition—the little world of West Logan was apparently stationary. The vast green prairies were commencing to grow yellow before the warm breezes of the early summer; the days were lengthening; the dark-blue gold-fretted nights were shorter; the dawn followed midnight with lesser interval. All things appeared calm and changeless as a summer sea. The stormy ways of evil deeds, crime, and death seemed as improbable as messages from another planet.
Strangers came and went, but they were principally camp-followers of the great armies of sheep which from time to time, being mobilised for various reasons, marched from one end of the territory to the other, or to the borders of other colonies. But one evening a shabbily-dressed man, on a rough-looking horse, rode into the stable-yard, where he encountered Mr. Gateward, whom he engaged in serious conversation.
'Who in the world can that be?' asked Bertram irritably, from his seat in the verandah. A book of Rossetti's poems was before him. He had been reading aloud to his cousin. Her work lay unheeded on the Pembroke table. 'Another of those confounded sheep "reporters"! I wish they would stay at home for a time. I am sure Gateward and I are sick of the very sight of travelling sheep.'
'Wait till I take a peep at him,' said the girl. 'He does not look altogether like a sheep man.'
Pollie walked to the end of the verandah, and peeping over the lemon hedge which bounded the garden, examined the stranger with a searching and practised eye.
'His bit and stirrups are rusty. He has an old slouched felt hat, and only one spur. He stoops as he sits in his saddle. Mr. Gateward is looking very serious. What do you make of all that?' she said archly, as she came back to her companion.
'Working overseer—thirty or forty thousand sheep—to be at our boundary gate to-night. Wants to go the inner track, where Gateward is saving the grass. No wonder he looks serious.'
'It would not be a bad guess if matters ran in their ordinary groove; but I see signs of a change, with danger signals ahead. That quiet-looking man is Miles Herne, one of the smartest sergeants in the police force. He has been on the track of the two bushrangers. I saw him two or three years ago, and I don't forget people that interest me. He is here to get information, or to give some that may be important.'
'That man a sergeant of police!' exclaimed Bertram, surprised out of his usual equanimity. 'You must surely be mistaken, or he is a consummate artist in disguise.'
'It is the man himself,' persisted she. 'We Australians have sharp eyes—savage attributes, you know. He has captured many a cattle-stealer, they say, in that unassuming bush attire. There is a good deal of talent among our New South Wales troopers. There was Senior-Constable Ross, who used to be told off to catch sly grog-sellers. His get-up was wonderful. Once, Harold told me, he went as one of a pair of blackfellows, and quite outdid the real aboriginal, securing a conviction too. Go down and see the sergeant. I am uneasy about his errand.'
Before the young man made his way into the stable-yard, Pollie meanwhile retreating to her mother's room, the strange horseman had hung up his steed to a post and followed Mr. Gateward to the barracks, in the sitting-room of which unpretending but useful adjunct to the mansion proper Mr. Devereux found them in earnest conclave. They stopped speaking when he entered. The stranger looked searchingly at the young Englishman, who decided, after encountering the keen grey eye and marking the resolute face and wiry, athletic frame, that no ordinary man was before him.
Gateward, after looking round carefully, began in a tone of solemnity and mysterious import. 'Mr. Devereux, this is Sergeant Herne, stationed at Warban, but now on duty out of uniform, for reasons as you'll understand. He's on the track of the men we've heard on.' The stranger saluted in military style, and Bertram instinctively returned the courtesy in like form. 'And bad news he've heard, I'm afraid,' continued Mr. Gateward.
'The sergeant will tell us himself,' interposed Bertram. 'These bushrangers are in the neighbourhood? We heard that before.'
'It's a trifle worse than that, sir,' said the disguised man-at-arms, unbuckling a leather belt and placing a navy revolver, previously concealed by his coat, upon the table. 'Unless my information is false—and I have every reason to think otherwise—the pair of them, the Doctor and Billy Mossthorne, will be here to-night.'
'Here! good God!' said Bertram. 'Why the deuce should they come here? Fancy having to fight the scoundrels with ladies in the house! Can't we meet them and have it out on the road?'
'It's impossible to say which way they'll come in,' said the sergeant thoughtfully. 'Fellows like them don't travel on roads. They know every inch of the bush from here to the Lachlan, and can go as straight as a blackfellow by night as well as by day. They're hid in the Warrambong scrubs now, it's a good way off, and my men have run them close. But by hard riding they'll get here by midnight, expecting every one in the place to be sound asleep.'
'But what do they want here?'
'It's hard to know what the Doctor wants. He's one of the biggest scoundrels unhanged. But what Bill Mossthorne is after is a couple of your best horses, and as much clothes and grub as'll see them across the Queensland border. He was hurt in the scuffle, and walking in his leg-irons for forty-eight hours gave him a terrible shaking. The Doctor had to carry him on his back part of the last day, I was told.'
'Then we shan't see them until they turn up here?'
'Not if I'm laid on properly,' said the hunter of men. 'Between twelve and one o'clock to-night, if we've luck, they'll drop into as pretty a trap as ever they were in in their lives.'
'The Doctor, as they call that scoundrel—haven't I heard something about him before?' said Bertram musingly. 'It must have been long ago, but I seem to have an indistinct memory concerning him.'
The two others looked meaningly at each other. Then Mr. Gateward spoke.
'Perhaps it will be as well to keep it from the missis, sir. It might shake her a deal, thinkin' on it. But the Doctor's the man that shot her husband thirteen years ago this very month. The Captain hit him hard the same time, and he's been heard to say he'll leave his mark on Corindah yet.'
Bertram Devereux set his teeth, and a smile, such as men wear in the moment of hard and bitter resolve, passed slowly over his face, while his eyes lightened and gleamed, as if he saw his dearest hope realised.
'By God! you don't tell me so?' he said, in so changed a voice that both of the men shifted position and gazed upon him as he spoke. 'What an astonishing coincidence! I wouldn't have missed this night for a fortune. To think, too, that I was so nearly off to that back station this morning, Gateward, wasn't I? And now, sergeant, you are our commanding officer. You have thecarte du pays. What is the order of the day, or rather of the night?'
The sergeant sat himself composedly down on the substantial table which took up the centre of the apartment, and in a businesslike tone of calculation and arrangement unfolded his plan of action.
'You see, I had only one trooper with me,' he said. 'The rest are round Warrambong Mountains. I sent him with a note to Maroobil. Mr. Atherstone will be here to-night. That will be plenty. We don't want a mob round the place. Some one might show out too soon, and then they wouldn't come. If they're let alone, and come in as I say, we'll get them "to rights." There'll be some close shooting, but they can't get away if we've a rag of luck.'
'Which way will they attempt to enter?' said Bertram, lighting a cigarette. 'Here or at the house?'
'From what I was told,' said the sergeant, with an air of satisfaction, 'they will come to the barracks, to this very room, and a better line—for us—they couldn't have taken. They know this place and all the ins and outs of the premises well. Their dart is to knock up the storekeeper, Mr. Newman, and make him hand over whatever they want—or will—or the cash-box. They know the back entrance from here to the house.'
'Which they'll never set foot in,' said Bertram. 'If we don't give a good account of them here, prepared as we shall be when they turn up, we deserve never to pull trigger again.'
'I've had a few close brushes with men of their sort,' said Herne, with a grim smile of satisfaction, 'but I don't know that ever I saw a neater thing than what we're working now. We've got 'em on toast. You see, sir, what a beautiful room this is?'
Devereux looked round the unadorned apartment with a slight expression of inquiry.
'I mean to be "stuck up in" of course. Don't know that I ever saw the equal of it. They begin in the verandah. We're safe to hear their step or voices. It's all dark, of course. They light a match to rouse up Mr. Newman. They know that's his room on the right-hand side there. You and I stand just inside this bedroom, Constable Gray and Mr. Atherstone about there. The moment they light their match, we call on them to surrender in the Queen's name. Mr. Gateward, who's behind the bale of sheepskins, lights a lantern that stands all ready, so as we can see what we're about, and in a brace of shakes the thing's over.'
'It's quite certain there's no more than two of them, sergeant?' said Mr. Gateward. 'You're sure of that, I reckon. Not that we mind much, but it might make a difference.'
'There might be a third man. I heard that "Johnny the Pacer" was seen at Warrambong the other day. But he's more in the horse-duffing line than where there's shooting going on.'
'However, you never know when these fellows will turn out. There's been a warrant out for him these two years.'
'We shall be all the better matched,' said Bertram. 'The more the merrier, as long as we're only man to man. I wonder Atherstone isn't over yet. I suppose the ladies had better not know anything about the visitors we expect.'
'Begging your pardon, sir,' said Gateward, with a look of resolve upon his face. 'It will be best to put them on their guard. It would give them a shock if they woke up and heard the shooting. They're neither of them ladies as will scream and faint or act with any foolishness.'
'I think Gateward is right,' said the sergeant gravely. 'If they're prepared, depend upon it they'll be brave and steady; ladies mostly are in the real push of danger. And Mrs. Devereux hasn't lived here all these years without knowing about bushrangers, more's the pity.'
'Had reason to know 'em too well,' said the overseer, shaking his head. 'You won't frighten Miss Pollie, sir, and the missus, for, as quiet as she looks, she isn't to say timorsome.'
'I hear horses now,' said the young man. 'Atherstone and your trooper, I suppose. If you think it's best for the ladies to know, we will tell them.'
'And I'll go with Gateward and get something to eat,' said the sergeant. 'I've had a long ride, and nothing's passed my lips since sunrise. We shall all want something before the night's over.'
Harold Atherstone rode into the stable-yard, followed by a slight, wiry-looking young fellow in the uniform of the mounted police. He was mounted upon an upstanding, well-bred bay, and led a saddled roan, the points and condition of which denoted blood, good keep, and regular stabling.
'You'll find spare stalls or boxes there, constable,' said Bertram. 'Charley, the groom, is somewhere about. He'll give you a hand to bed down your horses.'
'This is a queer business, Atherstone,' said he, when the trooper had departed with the horses. 'We shall have sharp shooting if these fellows turn up, and I suppose there's no doubt about it.'
'It will be the first time I ever knew Miles Herne wrong,' said Atherstone, 'if they're not here at the hour he says. I wish to Heaven they had picked Maroobil for their next bit of devilry. However, it can't be helped. It's lucky we were both in the way, and doubly fortunate that we've had timely warning.'
'By Jove! yes,' said the other, 'and I was near as could be going away back this morning. How savage I should have been! Come into my room and dress. I can tell you all about Herne's arrangements. What a smart fellow he is, and as cool as a cucumber!'
'If you'd known all the close things I've seen him in, and the arrests he's made, you'd say so,' replied the other. 'He's the show trooper of the North-West. They always detail him when there's anything specially dangerous to be done. He'll be promoted this time if he bags these fellows, and I hope to Heaven he may.'
When the two young men made their appearance in the dining-room, there was but little need for them to speak.
'I know there is something dreadful the matter,' said Pollie, 'by Harold's grave face. I suspected Sergeant Herne didn't turn up here for nothing. That was a trooper and two police horses that came with you, Harold, was it not? Better tell us at once. Mother is growing pale with anxiety.'
'Do not be afraid for us,' said the widow, with a sad smile. 'I have borne too much sorrow to have room for fear.'
'The whole mighty matter,' said Harold, thinking that he could best describe the affair in the familiar terms which would perhaps divest the intelligence of sudden terror, 'is that Herne has got news of these bushranger fellows. Thinks they might possibly pay Corindah a visit to-night.'
'Is that all?' exclaimed Pollie, her head raised, her face aglow with excitement, while her large bright eyes sparkled with an expression much more akin to pleasurable expectation than fear. 'Why, I thought some one was dead—that some terrible, irrevocable accident had happened. And what time will they arrive? I suppose they won't send in their cards?'
'My darling, do not talk so lightly,' said her mother, whose set, grave expression showed in how different a light she regarded the news. 'These men have blood upon their hands. More will be shed yet, I fear, and whose it may be we know not.'
'We must not be too serious over it either, Mrs. Devereux,' said Atherstone. 'With the preparations we have been able to make and a superior force well armed, the only fear in Herne's mind, I suspect, is that one of their telegraphs may get wind of our plan, and warn them away. About midnight is the time they were likely to be about, if his scouts spoke truly.'
'Why, it will be something like the midnight attack inWild Sports of the West,' said Pollie, 'that I used to devour when I was a tiny girl. Don't you remember, Harold, when the daughter of the house comes in with an apron full of cartridges? Oh! I shall be so disappointed if they don't come after all.'
The young men felt much inclined to laugh at the genuine desire for fight, the keen enjoyment of a probablemêlée, which Pollie had evidently inherited with her Milesian blood. But one look at the white face and drawn lips of Mrs. Devereux checked them. 'The names,' she said, 'have you heard the names?'
'One of them is called——' said Bertram, anxious to exhibit his knowledge of the affair.
'Called Mossthorne—William Mossthorne,' interposed Harold, with a meaning look at Devereux. 'The other is a stranger. They are not sure whether he is the man they fancy or not. We shall know if he comes one way or the other.'
Mrs. Devereux looked relieved. Her face had a far-off, dreamy expression, as if she were recalling the old days of sudden misery, of woe unutterable, of hopeless agony, from which she had been so long recovering. But for the bright-eyed girl, that now with eager face and fearless brow brought back her father's very face to her, she told herself that she never would have cared to live. And now, after all these years, the old accursed work was to recommence, with, perhaps, loss of valuable life, with enmity and bloodshed certainly. At their very gates too; beneath their hitherto inviolate roof-tree. When was it all to end?
However, she felt it incumbent on her as the chatelaine to put a brave face upon the matter. There was not the slightest chance of victory on the part of the outlaws, outnumbered and outmatched as they would be. She therefore exerted herself during the remainder of the meal to appear resolute and steadfast. She even gave advice which her long experience of colonial manners and customs enabled her to offer.
'Bertram, above all things, you mustn't be rash,' she said. 'Remember that these are not men to hold cheaply. They are cunning and artful, besides being brave with the desperation of despair. Don't think because you have been a soldier, that these bush brigands are to be despised. My poor husband paid dearly for that mistake.'
The young man looked up cheerfully. 'My dear aunt,' he said, 'I don't despise our friends the bush robbers, or whatever they call them. I think them very ugly customers. Some of the shearers we had the row with last year would be truly formidable with arms in their hands. But I am a consistent fatalist in these matters. One man gets shot in such an affray; around another the bullets rain harmless. If I am fated to drop, I shall do so, and not otherwise.'
'And what areweto do all the time?' inquired Pollie, with an air of disapproval. 'Go to bed and sleep? Just as if any one could, with a battle coming off next door. I suppose we must stay quiet till it is all over? What a dreadful thing it is to be a woman!'
'Very likely there won't be any engagement at all; it may not come off,' said Harold. 'So I would not advise you to lie awake on the chance of it. You may lose your rest for nothing. In fact, the chances are six to four—firstly, that they'll surrender directly they see us prepared to receive them; secondly, that they won't come into the barracks at all. They may turn back, like dingoes suspecting a trap.'
'Pray Heaven it may be so!' said Mrs. Devereux. 'I am not unwilling to take my share of the risk and loss for the country's good. But oh! if it should turn out to be a false alarm, how thankful I should be!'
The evening passed off without much to distinguish it from other evenings, momentous as was the contingent finale. Mrs. Devereux was absent and preoccupied. Pollie was alternately in high spirits or depressed and silent. Atherstone and Bertram talked in a matter-of-fact sort of way about things in general, but made no further allusion to the subject which engrossed their thoughts.
At ten o'clock the ladies retired, rather to the relief of the young men. Mrs. Devereux did not omit, however, to again urge upon Bertram the necessity of caution and prudence.
'I shall not risk my precious person unwisely,' he said, a little impatiently; 'but why do you not warn Atherstone here in the same maternal manner? I know you regard him as an old and valued friend. Is he so much more experienced than I—who have done a little soldiering, you will recollect—or is my life more precious than his in your eyes?'
'Harold knows very well,' said the widow simply, 'how I feel towards him. But he can take care of himself among these people, whereas you, my dear Bertram, are at a disadvantage. I do you no injustice when I compare you with my darling husband, who lost his life, as you may do to-night, from contempt of his adversary and want of proper caution.'
'Harold, you are to take care of yourself, and Bertram too. Do you hear?' called out Pollie, who was in the passage. 'You are to tell him what to do, for of course, being newly arrived, he will know nothing. You mustn't be angry, Bertram. All you Jackaroos (as the Queenslanders call you) are the same; you leave cover and get shot down like an owl in the daylight, for want of the commonest woodcraft. So don't be obstinate, or I shall be obliged to come down and stand alongside of you. Good-night! Good-night! That is one apiece.'
When the young men entered the room at the barracks, they found the sergeant and Mr. Gateward sitting over the fire smoking. The young constable was on guard outside, in case the attack might come off earlier than was anticipated.
The sergeant, though in an attitude of luxurious contentment, was in full uniform, and fully prepared for sudden action. By his side stood a Winchester rifle in excellent order, while within reach of his arm was a large-sized navy revolver. Mr. Gateward had girded on one of the same pattern.
'You're all ready, gentlemen, I suppose?' said the officer. 'Both with revolvers, I see. They're pretty tools, but I prefer my rifle for close range. In an hour more we must put out the lights; so you'd better light up, and make the most of our smoking time.'
They did so, and for another hour the four men sat round the fire smoking placidly, occasionally exchanging remarks, while moment by moment the hour of mystery and doom grew closer. In spite of the high degree of courage and coolness which characterised every individual who sat in that room, a certain amount of anxious expectation could not be avoided.
There was no doubt that there would be shooting. One or two men would 'lose the number of their mess'—the phrase by which among Englishmen the loss of life is generally indicated—andwhowould it be? That was the question. It was not in human nature to avoid the speculation as to whether the evil-doers would be laid low, or whether, on the contrary, one of themselves, now so instinct with life and vitality, would not be stretched lifeless upon the unpitying earth.
'Half-past eleven, gentlemen,' said the sergeant, looking at his watch. 'We must take our places, and neither move nor speak until the time comes. Mr. Newman, you had better go to bed; we will take care to have a word with them before they rouse you up. Mr. Atherstone, will you please to take that corner? Mr. Devereux, you'll stand here by me. That will give us the chance of first shot, if you care for it. Mr. Gateward, you'll plant behind that bale in the corner—out of harm's way. All you've got to think of is to light the fat-lamp we leave on the top of the wool-pack, and duck down again. They can't hurt you. Constable Gray will stop outside. As soon as he hears horses coming across the plain, he's to come in here and let us know. He's a smart young native, isn't he, Mr. Atherstone? He can track like a blackfellow, he's a pretty shot, and at riding and bush work he's a match for Billy Mossthorne or any other moonlighter that ever shook a clear skin.'
'A quiet, manly young fellow, sergeant,' said Atherstone; 'I had a talk with him coming over. You want more natives in the police to be on equal terms with these down-the-river fellows. They are pretty smart, to do them justice, and it's no use having a man who can't ride to follow them. It's like setting a collie dog after a flying forester buck.'
'We are getting some fine young men in the police now,' said the sergeant. 'There's three brothers out of one family I know, born and bred Australians; two out of the three promoted already and the other safe for it. But the time's getting close; I hope nothing's happened to the beggars.'
The sergeant's voice expressed such a pathetic tone of anxiety that the young men could not help laughing. However, all relapsed into silence shortly. The hands of the clock in the room pointed towards midnight. Would they never come? or, in a few moments more, would the deep hush of the autumn night be broken by shots and strange sounds, groans and curses?
'How the moments crawl!' said Bertram, lighting a match and looking at the brass clock on the mantel, the ticking of which sounded loud and sonorous out of all proportions to its size. 'Only a quarter-past now—it seems half an hour since I looked last.'
'It reminds me of the scene inOld Mortality,' said Atherstone, 'when the fanatics are waiting for the clock to strike to put Harry Merton to death. You remember one of them hears a sound in the distance which he says is "the wind among the brackens"? Another declares it to be "the rippling of the brook over the pebbles." Then a third says, "It is the galloping of horse."'
'Harry who?' asked Bertram, rather impatiently. 'I don't remember Walter Scott's characters very clearly. They all seem so devilish like one another to me.'
'Hush!' said the sergeant, in a low voice. 'By—! here they are. They'll come up fast because they know that the dogs will give the alarm. Their dart is to be in the house before any one has time to think about it.'
As the four men listened intently, a faint, dull noise in the distance gradually resolved itself into the familiar sound of hoof-beats, the measured strokes of horses ridden at speed, which came nearer and still nearer. In the stillness of the night each sound could be heard as plainly as though within the home paddock.
At this moment Constable Gray entered, his eyes glistening with excitement. 'They're near a mile off yet,' he said. 'I went to the paddock gate and listened. There's three of 'em. Three horses, any road—that's Johnny the Pacer has joined 'em; though I don't expecthemeans fighting. The dogs'll challenge when they come a bit closer.'
'You stay outside till they dismount,' said the sergeant. 'See what door they make for, and then fall back on us. They don't know what's before them.'
The young trooper went quietly out, moving with cautious and wary tread. The roll of hoofs sounded yet closer. Suddenly there arose a chorus of furious barking and fierce growling from the pack of dogs of various breed which a head station always supports. It told that strangers—presumably hostile—had at that late hour invaded the premises.
Just then Gray re-entered. 'One man left with the horses. Two coming this way, making for the back-door.'
'It's unlatched,' said the sergeant. 'Let them come.'