In another moment steps were heard on the verandah. The growling dogs, still deeply distrustful, remained in the yard. A hand tried the back-door; it yielded, but this apparently excited no suspicion. It is not the custom to lock up houses in the bush of Australia. Burglars are unknown, and bushrangers prefer to transact their business chiefly in broad daylight—about the hour of 11A.M.This was held to be an exceptional case.
'The storekeeper sleeps off the big room,' said some one cautiously. 'I saw him there when I was buying tobacco.'
'That's Billy's voice,' whispered Gray. 'I'd know it amongst a thousand.'
'Let's go in anyhow,' a rougher voice answered. 'There's not a dashed soul awake. Light a match and we'll have him out.'
A match flashed, lighting up the dim room, but with a result wholly unexpected by the chief actors in the melodrama. As they looked carelessly round the silent room they could hardly restrain a start of surprise as their roving eyes fell upon the sergeant in full uniform, the armed men, the levelled weapons. At the same moment Mr. Gateward arose from behind his bale, and lighting a tallow lamp, retired discreetly.
But in far less time than is occupied in tracing these ephemeral lines, thought had matured and action followed. Outmanœuvred, outnumbered as they were, the cool courage of the race was as manifest in these unhappy outlaws as in the best men of Britain's warlike forces.
'Surrender in the Queen's name!' roared the sergeant. 'It's no use, Billy; better give in quietly.'
'Not alive you don't get us,' answered the younger man, with the soft, deliberate intonation of the native-born Australian, while he raised his revolver.
The other, a grizzled, broad-shouldered ruffian, shorter than his companion by several inches, forbore reply, but firing at the sergeant's first word, shot Bertram Devereux through the body, sending also a second bullet into Harold Atherstone's right arm without loss of time. As he did so, Atherstone shifted his revolver to his left hand and fired deliberately. The robber sprang and fell on his face.
At that moment it seemed as if every firearm in the room was discharged simultaneously—the sergeant's rifle, Gray's and Mossthorne's revolvers. When the smoke cleared, Mossthorne lay dead with a rifle bullet through his heart and with a smaller bullet through his shoulder. Bertram Devereux, bleeding profusely, was lying insensible.
Mr. Gateward had come forward from behind his entrenchment. 'Seems there was enough of you without me,' he said, 'but I felt cowardly like, stowed away behind the sheepskins. Butsurelythe Doctor ain't finished this young gentleman now, as well as the poor Captain long ago?'
'By—! that rally's over quick!' exclaimed the sergeant, as he drew a full breath and gazed around, while Mr. Gateward looked on the prostrate forms with a curious mixture of relief and regret. 'Short and sharp while it lasted, wasn't it, Mr. Atherstone?' the sergeant continued, addressing himself to that gentleman, who had raised Devereux's head with his left arm, and was trying to discover the nature of the wound. 'I'd rather have taken the Doctor alive, but he gave us no time; shooting's too good for him! As for poor Billy, he's better where he is than locked up in gaol for his natural life. Now about Mr. Devereux. We must look to him first thing. He's hard hit, but it mayn't be serious. Where's Dr. Ryan? Oh! at Wannonbah. That's just right. We'll want him for the inquest besides. Constable Gray!'
The young man, who had been examining the wound in Mossthorne's breast, stood at attention. 'Take my roan horse and ride like h—l to Wannonbah. Tell Dr. Ryan to come here straight. Then go to the barracks and tell the senior constable to telegraph to the coroner straight off. Come back with him yourself.'
With a sign of assent the young man passed out into the night. A rush of flying hoofs told in marvellously short space that he was speeding on his errand on the best three-miler in the district.
'Now let's have a look at Mr. Devereux,' said Herne. 'Hold his head a little higher. How do you feel, sir? Bleeding stopped, but you've lost a lot of blood. Faintish, I daresay. Gateward, bring the brandy out of your room; a taste will do him good—and Mr. Atherstone too, for the matter of that. Seems the ball turned outward. Breathe a little, sir. That's all right,' as the wounded man took a deep inspiration. 'Take a sip of this, and we'll carry you to bed.'
'I feel better, I think,' said the wounded man, speaking with difficulty. 'I must have fainted, I suppose. That scoundrel was too quick for me. I thought he might surrender. What! areyouwinged, Atherstone?'
'Yes, worse luck,' said Harold, suppressing a groan as the broken bone grated. 'The fellow did not shoot badly, either. Billy just missed the sergeant, I see. There's his bullet mark in the door.'
'He fired first; but I didn't misshim,' replied that officer, with a grim smile. 'Gray's revolver bullet went through his shoulder. You dropped the Doctor in good time, Mr. Atherstone, just before he got to his third barrel. We'd better put a cloth over them now.'
As he spoke a tall white female figure appeared in the doorway. It was Pollie Devereux herself, wrapped in a dressing-gown. In her eyes, wide and shining in the half-light, was horror unspeakable, with nameless dread, as she gazed upon the forms that lay prone and so motionless.
'Icouldnot wait longer after the shots ceased,' she said pleadingly. 'I was growing mad with anxiety. Mother is praying still. Are the men both dead? This one is Billy Mossthorne, I know. Poor fellow! I can't help being sorry for him. I remember his being at Maroobil.'
Her gaze, which had been for the moment riveted to the still forms which
Lay as dead men only lie,
Lay as dead men only lie,
strayed towards the darker corner of the room, where Atherstone was supporting Bertram Devereux. The expression of her features changed instantaneously to that of agonising terror. She raised her arms with a gesture of despair, and for the moment seemed as if about to abandon herself to a transport of grief. But recovering with a strong effort of will, she sprang to the side of the wounded man, and kneeling, threw her arms around his neck, while she implored Harold to tell her if the wound was mortal.
'Oh, how his blood has been flowing!' she said. 'How pale he is! His eyes are shut. And you too, Harold? Your arm is hurt; and I was wicked enough to joke about him last night. If he dies I shall never forgive myself. Oh, my dear, dear Bertram!'
Whether this impassioned adjuration had any special effect upon the patient is uncertain, but as he opened his eyes, he smiled faintly in acknowledgment of the sympathetic words.
'Much better, dearest Pollie,' he said. 'No cause—for—alarm—much better. Flesh wound—only.' With this he turned pale and closed his eyes.
'Oh!whyhas not some one gone for the doctor?' demanded the girl passionately. 'He may die yet for want of assistance, and we are so helpless. I will go myself to Wannonbah if there is no one else.'
'Constable Gray is half-way there by this time,' said Harold calmly. 'No time has been lost. If I might suggest, you will help us best by asking Mrs. Devereux to be kind enough to have your cousin's bedroom prepared, so that we may carry him in.'
'You are quite right. Mother and I will watch by him till Dr. Ryan comes. I know I am unreasonable and foolish, but you must bear with me a little. Is your wound painful?'
'My wound is a scratch,' he answered roughly. 'Don't trouble yourself about it. Ask your mother to do what I say.' Upon this Pollie retired; and with but little loss of time Mr. Bertram Devereux was placed upon his own bed in the spacious apartment which he occupied, and with all the necessary arrangements promptly made for his benefit.
Mrs. Devereux at once devoted herself to his relief and solace as if she had been his mother. Her heart was stirred with additional tenderness as she recalled her husband's death from a similar wound at the hands of the same man. For the truth had leaked out through Mr. Gateward. The widow of Brian Devereux now knew that the hand stained with her husband's life-blood had been imbrued with that of the younger scion of the house, now wan and helpless before her; that the robber in his turn had fallen by Harold Atherstone's bullet and lay dead beneath her roof.
'Thank God! Harold is but slightly hurt,' she exclaimed. 'I regard him with a feeling I should extend to no other man as the avenger of my husband's blood. But oh! if the boy be likewise sacrificed! What a fate seems to pursue the race. May God in His infinite mercy avert it!'
Pollie had been sent to bed with peremptory commands to go to sleep instantly, and on no account to rise till she was called. The mother watched, hour after hour, with the unwearied patience of women under the excitation of grief or duty. Ere daylight broke, a trampling of horses was heard, and the man of skill, the arbiter of life and death, appeared in the chamber.
After careful examination, Dr. Ryan gave it as his decided opinion that the bullet had taken an outward course; had therefore injured no vital organ; that the faintness had been caused by loss of blood, which symptom was natural, but not necessarily dangerous. He commanded Mrs. Devereux to seek the rest she required, saying that he would take her place at the bedside of his patient. He would see what Mr. Atherstone's injury was like, and would make a search for the missing bullet in the morning.
'You will have me here for a day or two, Mrs. Devereux, so you must make me useful. It will all come to the same in the bill. I shall be wanted when the coroner comes. Fortunate escape you have all had, to be sure.'
With the morn came good tidings, and relief from the doubts and fears which had so cruelly tortured the dwellers at Corindah. Dr. Ryan, by his exercise of professional skill or the aid of exceptional good fortune, verified his favourable diagnosis by extracting the bullet, which had lodged in the outer muscle. The bleeding having ceased and the wound been dressed, there was no reason, he averred, why the patient, with such careful and intelligent nursing as he was certain to enjoy at Corindah, should not be well and hearty within the month.
The coroner too, a high and dignified official, arrived with the jury, more police, and, it appeared, likewise with a large proportion of the population of Wannonbah. The inquest was held duly and formally, a jury of twelve being impanelled, by whom a verdict of justifiable homicide was returned, the slain men being declared to have been killed in righteous defence. A rider was added to the effect that 'the conduct of Sergeant Herne and Constable Gray was deserving of high commendation, their coolness and courage rendering them, in the opinion of the jury, worthy of speedy promotion. In token of which, as well the Coroner as we the said jurors have attached our seals,' etc.
The bodies were buried in the little graveyard of Wannonbah, situated upon a yarran-shaded sandhill about a mile from that infant city. The denominational divisions, owing to the climate or other influences perhaps, were not so strictly defined as is the case in some rural Australian cemeteries, where a closely paled fence divides Protestant from Catholic, and Jew from Dissenter. At Wannonbah the dead slept much as they pleased, or rather, as their relatives desired. So Billy Mossthorne, having kinsfolk and sympathisers in the district, was buried near a maternal aunt who had nursed him in his childhood; and the Doctor, coming in for his share of indulgent forgiveness, was interred by the side of a horse-breaker of reasonably unblemished character.
Corindah was again tranquil. The inevitable sequences, great and small, of the night attack had been disposed of. The police troopers, the doctor, the coroner, the jurors had come and gone. The accountin extensoof the 'battle, murder, and sudden death,' had been first published in theWannonbah Watchman, and then had gone the round of the metropolitan and provincial papers. Sergeant Miles Herne was promoted to be sub-inspector, Constable Gray to be senior constable. Then the excitement ended, and the midnight affray at Corindah slipped into the limbo of partly forgotten facts.
One or two results, however, were not so speedily disposed of. Harold Atherstone's good right arm was of very little use to him during the ensuing half-year, the broken bones being somewhat tardy in uniting; and Bertram Devereux, through carelessness on his own part, had a relapse, and after hovering between life and death for several weeks, lay deathlike and slowly recovering in his room, needing the most careful and constant attendance to 'bring him through,' as Dr. Ryan expressed it himself. In this labour of love both mother and daughter were closely engaged for many a day after the event. It was the first time that Pollie's feminine instincts had been called into play by the necessity for personal service which a wounded soldier generally imposes upon the nearest available maiden. No situation, as persons of experience will admit, is more favourable to the development of the tender passion. The touching helplessness of the sufferer, the sense of possession and ownership, so to speak—albeit temporary—the allowable exaggeration of gratitude, the implied devotion: all these circumstances in combination render the relative positions of maiden fair and helpless knight so extremely suitable for mutual attachment, that the blind archer rarely fails to score an inner gold.
So, during the patient hours when the heavy eyes were closed, when the pale brow required bathing witheau de Cologne, when the spasm of pain contracted the features, when the restless fever-tossed frame lay helpless, the heart of the maiden, unfolding flower-like, grew tender and loving. She persuaded herself that a fate mightier than themselves had decreed their union. She awaited but the avowal which his eyes had long made, but which his lips had not yet confirmed, to acknowledge herself his own for ever, in life or death, here in her native land or in the unknown regions beyond the sea.
After much consideration Miss Devereux had sagely concluded that Bertram was the only man she had ever met who inspired her with feelings of sufficiently romantic intensity, who aroused in her as yet untouched heart the longing and the dread, the joy and the mystery, the strange, inexplicable, subtly compounded essence which the poets in all ages have termed love.
Why it should be so she was unable to comprehend. She told herself that he was not so strong and true as this adorer, so clever as that, or so amusing as the other; but still, why was it? Who can tell? who explain the birth of fancy, the apparition of love? But she chose to make him her hero. And if she so willed it, who was there to gainsay her?
Among the other privileges which her nursing sisterhood permitted was that of receiving and bringing in the letters of her patient. About these he had always been reticent, never encouraging conversation thereon, or admitting that any patently feminine superscriptions were not those of his mother, sisters, or cousins.
Among those which arrived by the monthly mail-steamer was one, the peculiar handwriting of which Pollie remembered having noticed at an earlier period of his sojourn. The characters were delicately formed, but the abrupt terminal strokes indicated, as she thought, no ordinary degree of determination, even obstinacy of purpose.
'Ah! my cousin Eleanor,' he said with a faint smile, as she held up the letter; 'she is my most regular, most useful correspondent. Poor little Nellie, how she would stare to see me lying here! She was my best friend when I was a graceless schoolboy, and takes an interest in the poor exile now.' He opened the other letters one by one, but did not seem to avail himself of this one. 'It will keep,' he said carelessly. 'Country news, for which I am losing my relish, poachers and pheasants, hunting and coursing, quite a journal of village historiettes.'
'A good correspondent, evidently,' said Pollie. 'Judging from the thickness of the letters, she deserves some gratitude. But when we women harness ourselves to a man's chariot, that is the treatment we chiefly receive.'
'That we are always over-indulged,' he answered, with a faint smile and a meaning look, 'I am the last man living to deny. But what must we do? It is cruel to refuse kind offices, the mere acceptance of which so gratifies the donor.'
'It may be so,' assented the girl thoughtfully, 'but the bare suspicion that my offering wastoleratedwould madden me. "All or nothing" is the Devereux motto, and it seems to embody the family temperament.'
Poor Pollie! could her eyes have pierced the inclosure!
This was the missive she unconsciously bore to the interesting sufferer:—
Wynton Hall,27th May188-My own darling Bertie—You seem carelessly to have missed the last mail, at which I was woefully disappointed, and besides, I was not by any means satisfied with the tone of your last letter, sir! I read it, yes, fool that I am, over and over again, to see if I could not cheat myself into the belief that your feelings towards me were unchanged and, as mine are, unchangeable.But I could not do it. Something, too, seems to exhale from the very lines of your writing, every letter of which I know so well, breathing coldness and change, the decay of love, the death of constancy.Yes, Bertram Devereux, I distrust you. You are beginning to play a double game. Another woman has taken your fancy—most likely the lovely cousin of whom you wrote in your first letter, but about whom you have been suspiciously silent or guarded of late. You can deceive, have deceived many people, but you never deceivedme. So beware! If for money, or what you men call love, you elect to play the traitor with me, to prove false to the vows which you called heaven and earth to witness, to break the compact which I have rigidly observed—gardez-vous bien, mon ami!If you do not already know me sufficiently, believe this, that you will do so. I will never be deserted and scorned with impunity. I hold you bound to me by the most sacred oaths, by what I have forfeited on earth irrevocably, by what in heaven or hell I may yet have to expiate. And remember, I am capable ofanythingin the way of revenge to punish your falsehood.If you dare to betray me, to doom me to a life of loneliness and remorse, to the torture of neglect, to the endless regret of desertion and contempt—but no, youcannotdream of perpetrating such fiendish cruelty. I am mad to make the accusation. My brain seems on fire. I can write no more. Believe me for ever and for ever yours only,Sybil de Wynton.
Wynton Hall,27th May188-
My own darling Bertie—You seem carelessly to have missed the last mail, at which I was woefully disappointed, and besides, I was not by any means satisfied with the tone of your last letter, sir! I read it, yes, fool that I am, over and over again, to see if I could not cheat myself into the belief that your feelings towards me were unchanged and, as mine are, unchangeable.
But I could not do it. Something, too, seems to exhale from the very lines of your writing, every letter of which I know so well, breathing coldness and change, the decay of love, the death of constancy.
Yes, Bertram Devereux, I distrust you. You are beginning to play a double game. Another woman has taken your fancy—most likely the lovely cousin of whom you wrote in your first letter, but about whom you have been suspiciously silent or guarded of late. You can deceive, have deceived many people, but you never deceivedme. So beware! If for money, or what you men call love, you elect to play the traitor with me, to prove false to the vows which you called heaven and earth to witness, to break the compact which I have rigidly observed—gardez-vous bien, mon ami!
If you do not already know me sufficiently, believe this, that you will do so. I will never be deserted and scorned with impunity. I hold you bound to me by the most sacred oaths, by what I have forfeited on earth irrevocably, by what in heaven or hell I may yet have to expiate. And remember, I am capable ofanythingin the way of revenge to punish your falsehood.
If you dare to betray me, to doom me to a life of loneliness and remorse, to the torture of neglect, to the endless regret of desertion and contempt—but no, youcannotdream of perpetrating such fiendish cruelty. I am mad to make the accusation. My brain seems on fire. I can write no more. Believe me for ever and for ever yours only,
Sybil de Wynton.
That night the sleep of the convalescent was troubled. His head moved restlessly on the pillow. His brain was feverishly active. His soothing draught failed of its effect. When Pollie came to his bedside with his breakfast she was shocked at the drawn look of his face, its pallor, and the dark rings under his eyes.
'We must keep back your home letters until you are quite strong,' she said, with an archly innocent smile, and a child's mischievous gleam in her eye, 'if they affect you like this. Your cousin's country chronicle must be strong meat for babes. But perhaps you have really had bad news, and I am talking foolishness?'
'My news is of a mixed complexion,' he said, trying to assume a cheerful expression. 'Partly good, but I have been disappointed in an important matter upon which I had set my heart. But I am so weak that the least thing tells upon me.' Here he lifted his eyes to the sympathetic, tender face, which to him now seemed as that of an angel, and a wistful appeal for pity appeared to be written on every line of his countenance.
It was the fateful moment in which heart answers to heart, and the destinies of two beings are for ever determined. It was the electric spark which fires the mine, which shatters the feeble defence raised by reason against that most ancient strategist and arch-conqueror, Love. A change passed over the girl's countenance, so swift, so subtle, so profound, that a less experienced student of woman's ways might have read the sign. To Bertram Devereux it was the plainest of print—with love's surrender in every line. He saw that pity, measureless and tender, as is woman's sympathy for man's strength laid low, had completed the spell which had been working on her sensitive, imaginative nature since his arrival. But for his wound, his near escape from death, the long hours of tendance, he doubted whether the capture of this shy, sweet wild-bird of the waste would have been effected. But now he doubted no longer. She would nestle in his bosom, would trill her song and curb her flight at his desire. The victory was won, and in the blaze of his triumph all doubts vanished as clouds at dawn. For the moment he scorned the dread which had tortured him in the dreary night-watches. He forgot that he was a coward and a traitor. He banished the thought of the sad, reproachful gaze of a forsaken woman. A new life in a new land, a new world of love and splendour lay before him.
Their eyes had met, their hands, their lips, long before this glowing, passionate thought-procession passed through his excited brain. As the girl sat by the bedside of her pale, death-stricken lover, with his wasted hand in hers, she felt as if the surrender of her every thought and feeling to his future welfare would be a price all too small to pay for the boundless happiness which had been granted to her. She was the most favoured of earth's daughters. All other thoughts and sensations showed wan and lifeless before this wondrous magic rose of love.
'But I must leave you, Bertram dear,' she said. 'You are too weak to be troubled with me. No! not another minute. Mother will bring you your medicine. You must then have a good sleep, and wake up quite a new man.' So, with one long look of tenderest denial, the fairy of his dreams vanished from the gazer's sight.
The days of Bertram Devereux's lingering in hospital were nearly ended. Over those which he still had to undergo was shed the radiance, the sweet love-light of woman's first love. He seemed to gain strength from that hour. He was soon able to lie at length and dream in the cane lounge in the shaded verandah; later on, to wander amid the orange trees by the lagoon edge, supported indeed by Pollie's fair round arm, and closely pressed to that true and tender heart. At the termination of his illness, when but for a slightly added pallor, a languor, that but accentuated his ordinary indifferent manner, no trace remained of the effects of the wound that had well-nigh proved fatal, it was then officially made known to the friends of the family that the heiress of Corindah was engaged to be married to her cousin Mr. Devereux, late of Her Majesty's Sixth Dragoon Guards.
Even in the first flush and transport of her love-dream Pollie could not wholly divest herself of the dread that Bertram Devereux might in England have loved with all the depth of his nature some one who even now had claims upon him. In vain she asked herself why such a thought should have passed through her mind. She could not tell. But, to her deep unrest, it remained to arise and torment her at intervals, like an unquiet spirit. On the subject of his feminine correspondence she had noticed, as she thought, a departure from his usual calmness, a studied air of carelessness. What if her surmises should be true, that he was either engaged or had been the victim of one of those absorbing, soul-engrossing attachments which leave the heart of man a burnt-out volcano—barren, lifeless, dead to all succeeding influences? She would ask him. The torment of doubt on such a subject was too acute for endurance. Yet so far had she softened towards him, so far was her whole nature in a malleable state, that if he had but made frank confession she could have forgiven him.
And one day accident led up to the subject of previous attachment. Having disclaimed, on her part, the slightest tenderness in the past to living man, she looked her lover full in the face, as was her wont when aroused, and said—
'You have had my disclaimer, but tell me now, Bertram, if there lives any woman in the land you have left who is able to say, "That is my lover. This is the man whose vows, if kept, would bind him to me till death. He has broken faith and betrayed love in deserting me now." Answer me truly, on your soul's peril, and the subject shall be buried for evermore.'
As she realised in her own mind the slow torture, the melancholy days, the 'dead unhappy nights' to which a woman is doomed who waits in vain for him whom she loves, hoping against hope, refusing the sad truth, until all limit of credence be passed, so vehement an indignation fired her every feeling against the imaginary recreant that she looked like an inspired vestal denouncing the sins of a nation. 'Tell me truly, Bertram,' she said, 'that there is no hateful ghost of a dead love between you and my soul's devotion.'
A thrill passed through his inmost heart as he thought how nearly her random shaft had touched the dark secret of his life. Yet his eyes met hers fully and fairly. With men he had ever been exact and truthful, even to bluntness, but in the school of ethics in which he had been reared it was held no dishonour to lie frankly where a woman was concerned. So he bore himself accordingly.
'I scarcely think,' he said slowly, 'that a man is bound to lay bare the whole of his former life to the woman he is about to marry, nor is she wise to ask it. But,' and here he looked steadily into her innocent, trustful eyes, 'if it comforts you to think that you are the sole possessor of this invaluable heart of mine, I give you my word that no other woman has the shadow of a claim upon it.'
'I believe you,' she said; 'it removes my last lingering doubt as to our perfect happiness. In sickness, in health, in poverty or riches, by land or sea, never had man a truer mate than you will find in me.'
He drew her to his side in silence, even then repenting of his falsehood to this trusting, easily deceived creature. Still, what good would it do her to know? Why pain her sensitive heart? And was there any—the remotest—chance of his deceit being exposed? An ocean rolled between him and that passionate, headstrong woman whom he had loved with the unreflecting ardour of youth. Circumstances had certainly tended of late years to favour the idea that she would be free. In that event he had sworn a thousand times to make her his wife. But it was a contingency which might never arise. In the meantime was he to give up a career such as was now opening before him? A lovely, loving bride, who would be an envied possession wherever they went? A fortune which would enable him to satisfy all desires and tastes hitherto ungratified? Was all this to be sacrificed—for what? For a passion of which he had overrated the force and permanence in the days of inexperience? The price was too great to pay.
The marriage was fixed for the ensuing November, the first summer month. They would leave the hot plains of the North-West for New Zealand, after visiting the Australian capitals. Side by side they would revel in the glories of Rotomahana, sail on the magic lake, and marvel over the fairy terraces, returning only with the last month of autumn, when the peerless winter of the interior would be before them. A year's peaceful enjoyment of the quiet Corindah life would prepare them for the momentous, unutterably delicious expedition to the Old World, when the dream of Pollie's life would be realised and an elysium of bliss, a paradise, intellectual, social and material, would open before her.
'You romantic child!' Bertram said, looking almost pityingly at her, as in one of her imaginative flights she was, like an improvisatrice, picturing vividly a long list of pleasures to come. 'And so you believe in happiness! I only trust you will not be disillusioned when we reach this wonderful dream England of yours. And yet it may be so,' he said, smoothing her bright hair as one placates a child. 'In your company, O my sweet, I shall renew the youth I have been in danger of losing.'
Whatever might have been Mr. Bertram Devereux's secret thoughts on the subject of his prospects, he appeared to have improved outwardly, as all the neighbours and employees agreed. The alteration extended to his general demeanour. He threw off in great part the reserve which had marked his earlier tone, and assumed a genialrôlewhich no one could, when he liked, sustain better than himself. He took occasion to visit Wannonbah more frequently. He identified himself with the local interests and occupations of the district. He utilised his exceptional gifts and attainments to such purpose that all envy at his good fortune disappeared. He was finally voted by the younger squatters and the Wannonbah society generally to be a 'deuced good fellow' (when you came to know him), who would take his position among them, and be an acquisition to the district.
Harold Atherstone had gone away for change of air about the time when his arm was recovering its strength, and did not return until the engagement between Pollie and her cousin was matter of general comment. He heard of it, indeed, before he left town, at his club. What his sensations were at the announcement none ever knew. A man who bore his griefs and failures in secret, he disclosed none of his deeper feelings. When he met Pollie Devereux in her own home, it was with an untroubled brow. The kind, brave face, the wise, steadfast eyes, which she had known from childhood, were unaltered.
Pollie herself had vague misgivings that her all-important step would not meet with his approbation. Knowing that she needed not to hold herself responsible to him or any other, she yet feared lest a kind of indefinable injustice had been done by forsaking so loyal a friend. She would have felt unspeakably relieved by his full approbation and consent.
'You have heard of my engagement,' she said, as he held her hand at their first meeting after his return. 'Are you not going to give me joy and congratulate me on my happiness?'
'I may congratulatehim' he said, a little sadly. 'My wishes for your happiness need no renewal. They do not date from to-day, as you well know. Whatever renders you happy and preserves you so will always be a part of my joy in life. May God bless you, dear, and keep you from sorrow evermore!'
In a half-unconscious way he drew the girl towards him, and kissed her as might a brother—tenderly, but without passion. Then he turned and left her, while she walked slowly and pensively towards the house. She felt that he had forgiven her; that he was too noble to harbour envy or resentment. But with woman's quickness she divined that he was grieved to the heart, and that all his self-command was needed to enable him to appear unmoved. Again and again she asked herself whether she had done wisely in following the passion-cries of her heart rather than the dictates of reason. A vain wish that she could have combined both agitated her. Of how many women and men might the same tale be told!
Mrs. Devereux was rather resigned to the arrangement as inevitable and impossible to amend than wholly approving. More acute and experienced, she had noticed the smaller defects of character in Bertram Devereux which had escaped the eye of her daughter. Not that Pollie would have suffered them to influence her. But the unconscious selfishness, the irritability, the ignoring of the tastes of others, which she had observed in her future son-in-law, did not, in her estimation, augur well for her child's happiness. When she thought of Harold Atherstone's long, unrewarded devotion, she could scarcely repress her vexation. 'What fools we women are!' she said bitterly to herself. 'We trample on pearls and gems of manhood, only to prize some glittering pebble without intrinsic value or beauty. When, as in my case, one is blessed with a husband who unites all the qualities which women love and men respect, Fate steps in and deprives her of him. How little real happiness there seems to be in this world of ours!'
While poor Mrs. Devereux thus bemoaned herself over the anomalies of life, the weeks of the short spring and early summer passed quickly along the flowery track, which, even in the Waste, is fair with wealth of leaf and blossom, with joyous birds and tempered sunshine, with high hope and joy and expectation of the coming year. The season had again been favourable. Wealth was flowing into Corindah and the neighbouring stations after the abundant fashion which, during a succession of good years, obtains in Australia Deserta. After her child was gone, Mrs. Devereux thought she would sell out and take up her abode in Europe for good. After tasting the glories and social splendours of the Old World, which she would fully appreciate, Pollie would not choose to return to Australia. Men sometimes came back to the land of spur and snaffle and wide-acred freedom, weary of cities and the artificial European life; but women, in her experience, never. They had reached across the ocean a fairy realm, where the supreme social luxuries were purchasable and abundant; servants and equipages, households and surroundings, music and the drama, art and literature, society at once congenial and aristocratic, travel and excitement—all these things were to be had for money. This they possessed. Why should they return to a land where much of this enticing catalogue did not exist, where a tithe of civilisation was difficult, the rest impossible to obtain?
So Mrs. Devereux sadly looked forward to passing the close of her days in England—a foreign land, as far as she was concerned—far from the home, the friends, the associations of her youth, her whole life indeed, up to this stage. To her the prospect was simply one of exile and endurance.
It had been arranged that the marriage was to take place in Sydney early in November. Mrs. Devereux would go thither with her daughter immediately after that important annual ceremony, the shearing at Corindah, was concluded. The good lady preferred in a general way to manage her own affairs. She signed her own cheques, which during September and October were like the sands of the sea for multitude. Mr. Gateward was economical and loyal. Still, it was always worth while to attend to one's own business, she thought. So that, although Bertram had pleaded for an earlier day, the month of November was fixed for the wedding, principally on account of the said shearing and its responsibilities—which he had come to loathe in consequence as a comparatively trifling, but none the less vexatious, obstacle.
So when the October mail-steamer arrived he was still at Corindah, and thither his letters came. He happened to be away on the day of arrival, and Pollie, emptying on the hall table the well-filled Corindah mail-bag, sorted out the different addresses to 'Bertram Devereux, Esq., Corindah, Wannonbah, New South Wales, Australia,' as was the general superscription of his European letters. Among them Pollie descried two letters in the feminine handwriting which she had before remarked. One was addressed to her lover, one to herself.
Yes, there could be no mistake. 'Miss Devereux, Corindah, Wannonbah, New South Wales, Australia.' It was doubtless from her good, motherly cousin Eleanor, in congratulation. It was very kind of her. She had had only just time to write, too. Had the marriage been in the month of October as Bertram wished, she would have been too late.
So, with smiling eyes and unsuspicious eagerness to behold the kindly, unfamiliar lines from the probable kinswoman, Pollie opened the letter. A painter would have seized the moment for a priceless portrait, had he been at hand to mark the instantaneous changes of expression—first wild surprise, then horror; the slow, expressive alteration from trusting confidence and loving hope to disappointment unspeakable, dismay, despair.
This was the fatal sheet upon which her eyes, first flashing indignant surprise, then fell:—
Wynton Hall,9th August 188-.I should owe you an apology, Miss Devereux, for thus addressing you, would the occasion admit of unnecessary courtesy or delay. If the lifelong happiness or misery of two women—of yourself or me—be sufficient reason for disregarding ceremony, you will hold me excused, nay, bless me in the future, whatever may be the shock to your present feelings. I have accidentally discovered, what before I only surmised, that Bertram and yourself are about to be married.Hewas careful not to give me a hint of his plot—for such I must consider it to be. An Australian gentleman, a Mr. Charteris, however, happened to be staying in the house where I was visiting, and mentioned that his friend Bertram Devereux was about to be married to the beautiful heiress of Corindah. He had just heard the news from a correspondent. From what I have heard of your character, I assume that you would prefer to know the truth at all hazards. You would not be willing, as are some weak women, to pardon in the man of your choice shameless falsehood, base betrayal, and broken vows.I swear to you now, as God shall judge me at the Great Day, that Bertram Devereux ismine—mine by every vow, by every tie, which can bind man to woman. Whoso accepts him, virtually takes another woman's husband with her eyes open. As events are shaping themselves I shall be shortly free. No legal obstacle to his fulfilment of the promise which he has a hundred times made, will exist. You will wonder that I choose to hold him to his bond after his proved faithlessness. May you long be free from the forbidden knowledge which would enlighten you! That I love him still is one proof more, were it needed, of the wild inconsistency of a woman's heart. I have told him of the letter to you. I fear him not; nothing earthly has power to daunt me now.You are free to take your own course, but you are now warned against the sacrifice of your own happiness and that of the wretched and desperate woman who calls herself—Sybil de Wynton.
Wynton Hall,9th August 188-.
I should owe you an apology, Miss Devereux, for thus addressing you, would the occasion admit of unnecessary courtesy or delay. If the lifelong happiness or misery of two women—of yourself or me—be sufficient reason for disregarding ceremony, you will hold me excused, nay, bless me in the future, whatever may be the shock to your present feelings. I have accidentally discovered, what before I only surmised, that Bertram and yourself are about to be married.Hewas careful not to give me a hint of his plot—for such I must consider it to be. An Australian gentleman, a Mr. Charteris, however, happened to be staying in the house where I was visiting, and mentioned that his friend Bertram Devereux was about to be married to the beautiful heiress of Corindah. He had just heard the news from a correspondent. From what I have heard of your character, I assume that you would prefer to know the truth at all hazards. You would not be willing, as are some weak women, to pardon in the man of your choice shameless falsehood, base betrayal, and broken vows.
I swear to you now, as God shall judge me at the Great Day, that Bertram Devereux ismine—mine by every vow, by every tie, which can bind man to woman. Whoso accepts him, virtually takes another woman's husband with her eyes open. As events are shaping themselves I shall be shortly free. No legal obstacle to his fulfilment of the promise which he has a hundred times made, will exist. You will wonder that I choose to hold him to his bond after his proved faithlessness. May you long be free from the forbidden knowledge which would enlighten you! That I love him still is one proof more, were it needed, of the wild inconsistency of a woman's heart. I have told him of the letter to you. I fear him not; nothing earthly has power to daunt me now.
You are free to take your own course, but you are now warned against the sacrifice of your own happiness and that of the wretched and desperate woman who calls herself—
Sybil de Wynton.
Holding the letter in her hand, the girl walked feebly and uncertainly, like one in a dream, to her own room. She saw through the open window a horseman riding across the plain towards the entrance gate. A few short moments since she would have flown to meet him. Now all was changed. It was the loveliest afternoon. The air was warm, yet free from the least excess of heat. A sighing breeze swept along the course of the now full-fed stream, and over the vast breadth of prairie, waving with profuse vegetation. But 'cloudless skies had lost their power to cheer.' A wintry blight had fallen upon the summer scene, banished its gladness, and turned the bright-hued landscape into a scene of desolation and despair.
Sweet love was dead. In the heart of the maiden was fixed an immovable sense of disaster—life-wreck, woe unutterable. So, when the word of doom is pronounced by the couch of those near and dear, all know that no hope or amendment, no recovery or reparation is possible for evermore.
Such was the fatal effect in the girl's mind. She had no further thought or speculation in the matter. Nothing was possible. All was at an end between them. Her life-dream was over. He had deceived her. He had betrayed and had planned to desert this other woman. In her innocent eyes it was guilt of a blackness and criminality inconceivable. All that had gone before was like an evil dream of hairbreadth escape amid avalanche and precipice, from which the sleeper starts, breathing gratitude for life and safe awakening.
She locked the door of her room, and casting herself upon the bed, 'all her o'er-laden heart gave way, and she wept and lamented.' The evening brought a partial calmness. The half-instinctive sorrow abated its poignant agony; but a dull, hopeless heartache, almost physical, remained. When the bell rang for the evening meal a maid-servant came to inquire if she had heard the summons. Her she despatched to her mother, who soon appeared with alarm and surprise in every line of her face.
'My darling, what has happened?' she exclaimed. 'Bertram and I were wondering what kept you. He has had such a pleasant day.'
'Has he read his letters?' demanded the girl, with an air of half-veiled bitterness.
'Oh, no! he said he should devote the morning to them. Most of them were family epistles, he expected, of no great consequence.'
'Oh, mother, my heart is broken! I shall die!' cried the girl, with sudden abandonment, as she threw her arms round the elder woman's neck. 'Read this, oh, mother, mother!' Here she produced the fatal letter.
As Mrs. Devereux commenced to cast her eyes over the sheet they seemed to dilate like those of one who sees suddenly an object of horror and loathing. When the end was reached she threw down the letter, as if it had been a clinging serpent, and made as though she would trample upon it.
'Let it lie there!' she said, her ordinarily serene countenance changed as the girl had seldom seen it. 'Not that I have any bitter feeling towards the miserable woman that has wrought this woe to us. No! my heart is filled with indignation against the man who has acted so deceitful, so treacherous a part, who so nearly succeeded in ruining your happiness, my darling. That you would have been unhappy, who can doubt?'
'Unhappy!' cried the girl. 'If I had come to the knowledge of his deceit, his wickedness, his cruelty in abandoning one to whom he had sworn faith, I think I should have died; all belief in truth and honour would have deserted me. I should have hated my own existence.'
'Let us thank God, my darling, that our eyes have been opened in time, ere it was too late. I never heartily approved of the affair. But Heaven knows, though I had a kind of intuitive distrust of him, I never dreamt of anything like this. And now I must give Mary her orders.'
'Oh, mother, don't leave me.'
'I will only tell her to say that neither of us will be down, that you are not well, and that I have retired for the night. She can bring up a cup of tea, which is all that either of us is likely to need.'
When Bertram Devereux, who had waited patiently for the chatelaine's appearance, received the intimation that she would not appear again that night, that Miss Pollie being indisposed, he was requested to order in dinner, he was considerably astonished. He addressed himself mechanically to his solitary meal, but after an absent, desultory fashion and with less than his ordinary appetite. He failed to understand or account for the sudden seizure. She had walked with him to the outer gate in the morning, had patted his horse's neck, apparently as well and handsome as ever she was in her life. Why then this astonishing change for the worse? The whole thing was vexatious and disappointing in the last degree. He would go over to the barracks, smoke his cigar, and read his letters. A chat with old Gateward would be better than a solitary evening in the drawing-room.
Carrying over his mails, the young man lit a cigar and wended his way to the barrack-room. Mr. Gateward was out; the storekeeper was in the store writing up his accounts; so he threw his letters upon the large dining-room table and commenced to sort them with a strong sense of ill-treatment.
The first that attracted his notice was like the one which he had described as a cousin's to his unsuspectingfiancée. He opened it hastily; his brow clouded and his face grew dark as he commenced to devour rather than read the contents. 'Confound the woman!' he said with a fierce oath, before he had read half a dozen lines; 'she was born to be my ruin, I believe, and by—! she has managed it this time.'
This was her letter.
Wynton Hall,9th August 188-.Bertram Devereux—When you learn that I have written by this mail to Miss Devereux explaining all, and that she has received my letter, your wrath will be bitter against me.N'importe.I know you as well, aye, better than you know yourself. The wound to your vanity will be sore, your spirit will chafe, nay, agonise for a time, but your ultimate good will result directly from thiséclaircissement.Now look me in the face, mentally, and say, what is this thing that you have been proposing to do? To marry an innocent, unsophisticated girl, partly for her beauty, partly for her money; to desert and betray me, who have loved you long, truly, wildly well; and to pretend to yourself that you were going to be happy—yes, happy! ha! ha!No, Bertram Devereux, it is not in you. You have deceived yourself as well as her. You would have cheated me, but the attempt has failed. Youknowin your heart, or rather in your inmost consciousness, that you are incapable of love, pure, unsullied, constant—such as the poets sing of; such as this young girl, doubtless, has brought to you. In the maelstrom of London life, under the spell of old associations, you would have fallen as you have fallen before, and dragged others with you. In that hour I am the only one who has power over you. Is it not so? And my hand withdrawn from the helm, your bark and its inmates would have gone down into depths unfathomable. Angel or demon, I, and I alone, am qualified to act as your guardian. Elude my power, and you are lost, irrevocably and eternally.I see from the papers that old Walter Devereux is dead, and has left you an income, which, though not large, ought to suffice for your reasonable needs. So take my advice once more;soyez bon enfant; quit the wild country of your banishment; make your adieux with the best grace you may to these Arcadian relatives; and return to a society where you have been missed—strange to say—and to a civilised life amid people that understand you. Among those who are ready to welcome the returned wanderer will most likely be your true friend as of yore,Sybil de Wynton.
Wynton Hall,9th August 188-.
Bertram Devereux—When you learn that I have written by this mail to Miss Devereux explaining all, and that she has received my letter, your wrath will be bitter against me.N'importe.I know you as well, aye, better than you know yourself. The wound to your vanity will be sore, your spirit will chafe, nay, agonise for a time, but your ultimate good will result directly from thiséclaircissement.
Now look me in the face, mentally, and say, what is this thing that you have been proposing to do? To marry an innocent, unsophisticated girl, partly for her beauty, partly for her money; to desert and betray me, who have loved you long, truly, wildly well; and to pretend to yourself that you were going to be happy—yes, happy! ha! ha!
No, Bertram Devereux, it is not in you. You have deceived yourself as well as her. You would have cheated me, but the attempt has failed. Youknowin your heart, or rather in your inmost consciousness, that you are incapable of love, pure, unsullied, constant—such as the poets sing of; such as this young girl, doubtless, has brought to you. In the maelstrom of London life, under the spell of old associations, you would have fallen as you have fallen before, and dragged others with you. In that hour I am the only one who has power over you. Is it not so? And my hand withdrawn from the helm, your bark and its inmates would have gone down into depths unfathomable. Angel or demon, I, and I alone, am qualified to act as your guardian. Elude my power, and you are lost, irrevocably and eternally.
I see from the papers that old Walter Devereux is dead, and has left you an income, which, though not large, ought to suffice for your reasonable needs. So take my advice once more;soyez bon enfant; quit the wild country of your banishment; make your adieux with the best grace you may to these Arcadian relatives; and return to a society where you have been missed—strange to say—and to a civilised life amid people that understand you. Among those who are ready to welcome the returned wanderer will most likely be your true friend as of yore,
Sybil de Wynton.
He went patiently through his letters after reading this one, with a countenance which gave but little clue to the nature of the communications. One business-appearing epistle in round, legal handwriting he put aside and re-read. He then lighted a fresh cigar, and for nearly an hour remained in deep meditation before he sought his room. There he employed a portion of the night in arranging his effects, so as to be ready for that departure on the morrow upon which he had determined.
Mrs. Devereux did not appear at the breakfast table, but as he walked to and fro along the lagoon path, smoking the matutinal cigar, he saw her come into the garden. He threw down his cigar, and at once went to meet her.
She stopped a few paces ere she came to him, and looking at him with a sad, reproachful gaze, said, 'Oh, Bertram, what is this you have done to us? Did we deserve this at your hands?'
'My dearest Aunt Mary,' he said, advancing and taking her hand with a show of natural feeling which she could not resent, 'I cannot justify myself wholly, but it is due to me that I should be permitted to explain. All is over, I know, between your daughter and myself; still I do not wish her to think worse of me than is needful. When I won her love I pledged my word to her in good faith and sincerity to do all that a man might to promote her happiness. Whether I should have kept that resolution God knows, but I should have given my whole being to the task.
'By a fatal mischance she has been made acquainted with a dark chapter in my life. I do not excuse it, but it is such as many men who show fairly before the world keep locked away in secret cabinets. No doubt I deceived Pollie in denying the existence of former passages of so compromising a nature; but I thought myself justified in keeping the whole thing from her pure mind. I think so still. And now,' he said, with a return to his old charm of manner, 'I fear that nothing remains but to thank you fervently for the kindness with which you have always treated me, in sickness and in health. I owe my life to your tender nursing. Corindah will be amongst my purest, happiest memories to my life's end.'
By this time they had reached the house. Entering the old dining-room, Bertram threw himself into a chair, and Mrs. Devereux took her seat near him.
'No words can describe, Bertram,' said Mrs. Devereux, with softened air, 'how grieved I feel that we should part in this manner. I have always looked upon you as a near relative; latterly I have regarded you as a son. It is unspeakably sad to me to think that all is over—that henceforth we must be as complete strangers, as if we had never met.'
'And how little I thought yesterday that this would be my last day at Corindah!' he said half musingly. 'And yet it is best so. As if in mockery of my position, I have just been left an income by an old grand-uncle which will enable me to return to England and more or less take my former place in society.'
'I am sincerely glad for your sake,' she said warmly, 'and I know Pollie will be so also. We could not have borne that you should leave Corindah to go we knew not where. Now we shall have no fear on that score.'
'I should like to see her once before we part for ever, if you would consent,' he said pleadingly—'if it were but to hear her say that she forgives me.'
'No, Bertram!' said the matron firmly, if sorrowfully. 'Such a meeting would answer no good end. You have had forgiveness. She will never harbour a bitter thought, believe me. She has overcome her first natural feeling of resentment, such as any woman would feel who had been deceived by the man she loved. But she will grieve over the circumstances which led to your estrangement; she will pity and forgive one so near her heart as you have been.'
'If I may not see her, will you let her read a farewell letter which I will leave with you? Surely it is not necessary to debar me from the humblest felon's privilege—that of defence before condemnation.'
'She shall have your letter. I have no intention of being in the least degree harsh, Bertram, but it is by her own wish that I decline an interview. Our paths will henceforth lie separate. We shall pray for your welfare. You have a powerful will. Oh, may God guide you to use it aright! Your welfare will always concern us; but in this world we shall meet no more. And now farewell! May God bless and keep you, and forgive you even as you are forgiven by me and my poor child!'
He wrung the kindly, high-souled matron's hand in silence. An unwonted glistening in his dark eyes showed the depth to which his feelings were stirred, and if there ever was a moment in which Bertram Devereux truly repented of the sins of the past and vowed amendment of life in the future, that was the hour and the minute.
It was shortly after this interview that he held a colloquy with Mr. Gateward, and rode over to Wannonbah, with a black boy behind him, who duly led back Guardsman. He had apparently arranged for the transmission of his luggage, inasmuch as the portmanteaux, three in number, were taken on by the coach when that indispensable vehicle arrived in due course. Next morning it was announced by Mr. Gateward to the storekeeper and other employees of the station generally that Mr. Devereux had been left a fortune, which he had to go 'home' to claim, owing to law matters and other details not comprehensible by ordinary intelligence.
'He'll be back afore next shearing,' quoth one of the boundary riders. 'Leastways I know I should if I was in his place.'
'He'll be back,' replied Mr. Gateward oracularly, with an expression of countenance at once severe and impenetrable, 'when hedoescome back. If he shouldn't turn up at all, I don't know as it's any business of ours. There's as good men left behind, and would be if there were a dozen like him off by the next mail-steamer.'
Those who are of opinion that provincial gossip, along with all other British traditionary institutions, is not faithfully reproduced in British colonies, underrate the vivacious ardour of bush society when presented with a brand-new topic. No sooner was it definitely announced that Mr. Devereux had been seen on his way to the metropolis,en routeto England, with all his portmanteaux—the same with which he had arrived—than a perfect flood of conjecture and assertion arose.
'He had come into a title and a fortune. Of course he was not going to marry in the colonies now, so he broke off his engagement at once.'
'It was Pollie's temper—nothing else—that did it; everybody knew how ungovernable that was. He couldn't stand it any longer, though Mrs. Devereux went down on her knees to him.'
'He wanted Mrs. D. to settle twenty thousand on Polly on her wedding-day, which she refused to do. He declared off at once.'
'Pollie flirted so with that Mr. Atherstone; no man could stand it. He found them walking by moonlight or something, and gave her notice at once.' 'Mr. Atherstone was in Queensland.' 'Oh, was he? Then it was some one else. It came to the same thing.'
Finally the torrent of popular criticism subsided, to settle down into a trickling rill of authentic information. It ran to the effect that Bertram Devereux had been bequeathed money by a relative, and had for some reason or other left suddenly for England.
It was neither the next day nor the next week after Bertram's departure that Pollie reappeared in her accustomed place, to lead her old life at Corindah. A weary time of illness supervened, and when the girl crept down to the drawing-room sofa to be shawled, and nursed, and petted for being graciously pleased to be better, she was but the shadow of her former self. As marked a mental change had apparently taken place, for she was mild and patient, piteously subdued in tone and bearing. How different from the wilful spoilt beauty who had turned so many heads, and who paid so little heed to good advice!
'You will have a better daughter in the time to come, mother,' she said, as she clasped the matron's neck with arms that were sadly shrunken from their former lovely roundness. 'I have had time to think over my past folly, to know who are my truest friends;' and then both wept and embraced each other, as is the way of women—the mother thankful to Heaven for the recovery of her child, the child softened by suffering and chastened by the near approach of the Death Angel.
Harold Atherstone had been far away in Northern Queensland during this eventful time. He had apparently needed stronger excitement than the everyday life of a prosperous, long-settled station; so he had elected to report upon an immense tract of country west of the 'Red Barcoo,' which, taken up by a pioneer squatter some years back, had passed into the hands of a syndicate, of which he was a shareholder.
So, from one cause or another, it fell out that Corindah seemed to be more solitary, not to say monotoned, than it had ever been before. The visitors who came were of the occasional, transitory sort; all their old friends seemed to have mysteriously vanished. The Rev. Cyril Courtenay was the only one of theirhabituéswho did not fail them. He made his monthly visitation, when, indeed, Mrs. Devereux was more than usually glad to see him.
He was sympathetic in his manner, as divining that something unusual had affected his friends. With tact, as well as sincerity, he drew forth an admission of grief. This done, he essayed to lead their thoughts to the Healer of all mortal sorrow, the Bearer of burdens, the Consoler in time of trouble. He dwelt upon the unsatisfactory nature of all earthly pleasures, the disappointment inseparably connected with mere worldly aspirations, the only sure hope of forgiveness of sins, the need of repentance, the certainty of peace.
As at the time of pain and anguish, of fear and danger, the physician attains a status which in the heedless hours of health is withheld, so, in the hour of the mind's sickness, the physician of souls is welcomed and revered. Urged to lengthen his stay, the Rev. Cyril gladly consented to remain over the ensuing Sunday. His ministrations, he thought, had never been so appreciated before at Corindah. And when he quitted the locality his heart beat high with the consciousness that he had aided the consolation of the dearest friends and best supporters of the Churchin sicco, while a yet more daring thought caused his colourless cheek to burn and his pulses to throb with unwonted speed.
The summer days grew longer and longer. The fever heat of the season waxed more and more intense. The still air grew tremulous with the quivering, ardent sun-rays. Yet no suggestion was made by Pollie to go to the sea-side or to call the ocean breezes to aid her recovered health. Her mother would have rushed off directly the great event of the year was over, but the girl would not hear of it.
'No, mother dear,' she said, 'I have sinned and suffered. I have been wilful and headstrong. Let me remain and mortify the flesh for a season. You do not mind the heat, I know, and I am strong enough now to bear it in the dear old place where I was born. We may have many a year to live here together yet, and I may as well commence to accustom myself to it.'
So the two women laid their account to remain patiently at home till the following summer, and Pollie set resolutely to work to utilise all her resources, natural and acquired. She commenced to be more methodical in the appointment of her time. She rose early and took exercise in the fresh morning air, before the sun had gained power—the truest hygienic rule in the torrid zone. She read and did needlework at appointed hours, and resolutely set herself to perfect her knowledge of French and German. She 'kept up' her music, vocal and instrumental, though it was long ere her voice recovered from a certain tremulous tendency, far different from the rich, full tones soaring upwards like the skylark to perilous altitudes unharmed. She rode regularly, or drove her mother out in the light American carriages which no station is now without. She visited the wives and children of the employees, showing a more considerate and intelligent interest in their welfare than had been before observable.
'Mother,' said the girl, as they sat together on the verandah in the waning summer-time, when a south wind speeding from the coast had unexpectedly cooled the air, 'I won't say that I was never so happy before; but I don't think I ever was so fully occupied. There is, no doubt, a sense of relief and satisfaction to be gained when one does what one can; I never thought I should feel like this again.'
'Let us have faith and patience, my darling,' said the mother, looking into her child's eyes with the measureless fondness of earlier days, 'and happiness will still come to us. Only persevere in the duties that lie nearest to you. In His own good time God will reward and bless you. After all, there are many good things in this life yet remaining.'
It was the late autumn when Harold Atherstone returned from his far, wild journeyings. A long-practised and trained bushman 'to the manner born,' he was familiar with all the exigencies of the wildest woodcraft. But from his appearance this expedition had been no child's play. Tanned and swart, almost to Indian darkness, both mother and daughter gazed at him in astonishment. He had been down with fever and ague, and was haggard and worn of aspect. He had even had a brush with the blacks, he said, on one of the far out-stations, and had managed to drop in for a spear wound. He was becoming quite a scarred veteran, he averred. However, save for a cicatrix to mark the trifling occurrence, he was unharmed. Altogether, though he had enjoyed the chances and adventures of his pioneer life, he was very glad to find himself within hail of Corindah again.
'And we are so glad to have our old Harold back, I can tell you,' said Mrs. Devereux. 'We missed him dreadfully all the summer, didn't we, Pollie? To be ill, and weak, and lonely at the same time, is hard to bear.'
Pollie made an inaudible reply to her mother's query, but as her eyes rested upon the bronzed, athletic frame, and met the frank gaze of the Australian, it may be that a comparison, not wholly to his disadvantage, passed through her mind.
'It is the first time when there was trouble at Corindah that I have been absent, I think,' he said gently. 'You must manage to have me more available in future.'
'What reason is there for your risking your life in that terrible Never Never country?' said Mrs. Devereux. 'It is not as if you needed to make any more money, or had no one to care for you.'
'One must do something with one's life,' he said simply. 'I don't know that it greatly mattered if that Myall's spearhadgone through me, as it did through poor Williamson. I had got very tired of an easy life at Maroobil. I needed a strong change, and I got it, I must say.'
'It's positively wicked to talk in that way,' said his hostess. 'However, now you have come back, your friends must take care of you and keep you among them. You look dreadfully thin; but I suppose you're not ill, are you?' And then the kind creature looked at him with the same anxiety in her face that he remembered so well when he was a boy, over whose accidents and offences she had always mourned maternally.
'If it comes to that, it seems to me that no one looks very pink,' he returned playfully. 'Pollie's not what she used to be. You look as if you had gone through another night attack. And Bertram Devereux has gone home? What has happened? I feel abroad.'
'You are going to stay to-night, and your old room is ready for you, of course,' Mrs. Devereux answered. 'Do not allude to it when Pollie comes down. (This young lady had retired temporarily to her room.) I will tell you all about it after tea.'
Harold Atherstone looked searchingly at her, but held his peace. In a minute afterwards Pollie appeared, looking, in spite of her illness, so delicately lovely and overpowering, after his long sojourn in the desert, that all doubts and conjectures were put to flight or lost in the regained pleasure of seeing her smile of welcome and hearing the well-remembered tones of her voice.
It was a happy evening. Apart from 'love and love's sharp woe' thereissuch a thing as friendship, pure and unalloyed, between people of differing sexes. The sentiment of these friends was deep and sincere—founded upon sympathy, congenial tasks, and the long experience of mutual truth, loyalty, and affection. They were honestly glad to see each other again. Love temporarily divides friends, and, as it were, elbows out all other claimants. But as its fervour declines, the purer flame burns with a deeper glow. As the years advance, the fires of passion wax dim; the altar reared to friendship regains its votaries; while the more ornate and ephemeral edifice is too often deserted, empty, and ungarnished.
Thus, at their pleasant evening meal, all was mirthful interchange of news and adventures since last the little party had met. Harold's favourite wine of the remembered brand was brought out as of old; then Pollie was persuaded to sing some of her oldest songs, while Mrs. Devereux and their guest talked confidentially in the verandah. It seemed as if the happy old Corindah days had come again, when no malign influence intervened; when, in Mrs. Devereux's eyes, all things were peacefully tending towards the cherished aspiration of her life. Finally, when the parting hour—later than usual—arrived, each secretly confessed to a sensation so nearly akin to the joy long since departed from their lives, that not only wonder but even asoupçonof hope was commingled with its formation.
Harold Atherstone had been placed fully in possession of facts by Mrs. Devereux, as they sat on the verandah in the hushed southern night, while Pollie's sweet voice trilled nightingale-like through the odorous breath of the rose and the orange bloom. He heard how she had been deceived, wounded in her tenderest feelings, and was now deserted and left desolate. When he thought of her lying wearily on a bed of sickness, wan and wasted, heart-sore and despairing, he could not repress a malediction upon the head of the man who had received such unstinted kindness at the hands of the speaker, and had thus repaid it.
When the tale was finished he took her hand and pressed it silently. 'The poor child has suffered deeply,' he said; 'but matters are best as they are. Who knows but that deeper, more irrevocable misery might have been her lot had she not been warned in time? I mourn over the change in her, but she is returning to her old ways, and the memory of her sorrow will become yet more faint. Her youth and pride, with the resources at her command, will enable her to divest herself of all trace of what was one of the inevitable mistakes of youth.'
'You think then that she acted rightly in refusing to see him again?'
'Unquestionably; no other course was possible. I never thought him worthy of her. But he was her choice, and as a man of honour I could not disparage him, even had I any other grounds than those of mere taste and prejudice, which I had not. The event has proved that my instinctive distrust was correct. I need not tell you how I rejoice that she is again free and unfettered.'
He said no more. The summer had passed. The nights became longer, colder. The calm, peaceful, autumnal season, which in this south land brings no fall of the leaf, commenced to herald the mild but well-marked winter of the plains. It was the Indian summer of their old, peaceful Corindah life. They rode, and walked, and drove together, the three friends, much as in the old days before the advent of the disturbing stranger from beyond the sea. Then Harold Atherstone had been the favourite companion of the girl, the trusted friend and counsellor of the elder woman. Thebon vieux tempshad returned. Once more the heavens were bright, and the storm-cloud had disappeared with the tempest which had so nearly wrecked the frail bark of a woman's happiness.
And yet both were changed. The girl, mild and pensive, was almost humble in mien. All her wilfulness and obstinacy had departed. A deeper, more reasoning spirit of advance and inquiry seemed to possess her, to mould her every action and thought. He, on the other hand, had acquired broader views of life, and had seriously modified many of his earlier opinions.
But their parting was near. Harold received a telegram, without warning or notice, which necessitated instant action. His presence was again required at the far North, where everything was going on as badly as could be imagined. The chief manager lay dying of fever, the blacks were troublesome, and becoming emboldened, had commenced to scatter off the cattle. To mend matters, a drought of unprecedented severity had set in. 'If Mr. Atherstone did not go out,' the telegram stated, 'the whole enterprise might be wrecked, and ruinous loss accrue to shareholders.'
At first he rebelled, swore stoutly, indeed, that he would not go. He would let things take their course. He was happy where he was, and there was no reason why he should risk his life and tempt again the dangers of the Waste. However, cooler reflection decided him to take the field as a duty to his comrades in the enterprise, as well as to the shareholders, who had risked their money perhaps on the guarantee of his known judgment and reputation for management.
He made his preparations quickly, as was his wont, bade farewell to Corindah and its inmates, and set off on the long, hazardous journey.
Somehow Corindah seemed more lonely than ever. He had been very kind and thoughtful as a brother, but no word of warmer admiration had passed his lips. Pollie pursued her tasks and occupations with accustomed regularity, but was more unequal in her spirits than ever. One day her mother surprised her in tears. A letter had been received from Harold, and the tone of it had aroused her from habitual indifferentism.
'Why is he always so studiously cool and brotherly?' she said, with something of her old impetuosity. 'Does he think that I am likely to misconstrue his feelings? That he requires to keep a guard over his expressions? But I know how it is. He has met some one else in that far country. He spoke of some English families settled there. I have lost his love, which once was so truly mine. I despised it then. Now I am rightly punished by contempt and desertion.'
Mrs. Devereux gained from this little speech a fresh and accurate insight into the state of her daughter's heart. It went to confirm the suspicion which she had lately entertained that the recent companionship of Harold Atherstone, the daily experience of his strong, true character, had not been without its effect. He had come most opportunely to cheer their loneliness. His manner had somewhat altered, too, of late, they had remarked; had become more gay and carelessly mirthful, more easy and conventional. His travels and adventures had supplied him with a larger field of observation, had added to his conversational powers, or else he had exerted himself exceptionally for their entertainment.
His sense of humour seemed to have developed, and withal there were occasional touches of tenderness and deep feeling which, always latent, had been rarely exhibited. Both women confessed that they had never done justice to the versatile force of his character; never had they dreamed he could exert fascination in addition to his power of compelling respect.
And now he was gone thousands of miles away—the true friend, the gallant gentleman, the loyal lover—to brave the risks of the Waste, perhaps die there, as had done many a brave man before him; perhaps to be attracted by some newer, fresher face, never to return to his old allegiance. The thought was bitter. No wonder that Pollie's tears flowed fast.
Harold Atherstone had exhibited his habitual self-control in quitting Corindah for a long absence without making sign or giving expression to his feelings. He had carefully considered the situation, had come to certain conclusions, had decided upon his course of action. His feelings were unchanged with respect to Pollie. It had been hard to bear, almost unendurably torturing, to know that she preferred another; to witness her bright glances and hear her tender tones directed towards one whom in his heart he deemed unworthy of her. In his chivalric generosity he felt this to be the crowning bitterness of the whole. Unable to bear it longer, he elected to join this dangerous enterprise, reckless of life and health, hoping only for 'surcease of sorrow' in peril and privation.
But on his return he found that the enchanted portal had been opened, the captive princess liberated. The glamour had fallen from her eyes. The magic fetters had been unloosed. He could picture the scorn and indignation with which she had renounced Bertram Devereux for ever. From his lifelong knowledge of her character he believed that she had freed herself from the memory of his treason as from something foul and revolting; that it had fallen from her pure soul as earth from a golden robe; that she had returned instinctively to the simple loyalty and freedom of her youth. From his experience of life and woman's nature he foresaw that she would turn to him as to one of the lost ideals of her girlhood, if only he were not precipitate and premature. These were not the faults with which men charged Harold Atherstone. So he returned silent and self-contained to the far North.
His unswerving courage and iron will stood him in good stead in this supreme hazard.
When Harold returned from the far country, his friends at Corindah were unaffectedly glad to see him. Pollie especially was so radiant in renewed health and beauty that he felt irresistibly impelled to ask the momentous question.
He chose an appropriate time and place—one of the star-bright, cloudless nights which in the southern hemisphere so glorify the majestic solitude of nature. Low-toned and musical was the whispering breeze which, stealing over the 'lone Chorasmian waste,' stirred the slumbering lemon sprays and murmured to the love-fraught roses as they walked by the margin of the lakelet, all silver-bright in the wondrous transparent atmosphere. It seemed as though, after the rude experiences of his desert life, he had re-entered paradise. He was so delighted to return, so charmed with the warm welcome accorded to him, that he would never more return to the wilderness. He would indeed promise and guarantee to do so, but on one condition only. Need we say what that was, or that the concession was made?
'Are you sure that you think me worthy of your love, after all my folly?' murmured she. 'But I have suffered—you will know how much. I have repented, and, dearest Harold, I will try to be the woman you would have me to be.'