The evening passed on. Mrs. Duff-Scott settled herself in the particular one of the series of boudoirs under the gallery that struck her as having a commanding prospect. The Governor came, the band played, the guests danced, and promenaded, and danced again; and Mr. Westmoreland was nowhere to be seen. Eleanor was beset with other partners, and thought it well to punish him by letting them forestall him as they would; and, provisionally, she captivated a couple of naval officers by her proficiency in foreign languages, and made various men happy by her graceful and gay demeanour. By-and-bye, however, she came across her recreant admirer—as she was bound to do some time. He was leaning against a pillar, his dull eyes roving over the crowd before him, evidently looking for some one. She thought he was looking for her.
"Well?" she said, archly, pausing before him, on the arm of an Exhibition commissioner with whom she was about to plunge into the intricacies of the lancers. Mr. Westmoreland looked at her with a start and in momentary confusion.
"Oh—er," he stammered, hurriedly, "hereyou are! Where have you been hiding yourself all the evening?" Then, after a pause, "Got any dances saved for me?"
"Saved, indeed!" she retorted. "What next? When you don't take the trouble to come and ask for them!"
"I am so engaged to-night, Miss Eleanor——"
"I see you are. Never mind—I can get on without you." She walked on a step, and turned back. "Did you send me a pretty bouquet just now?" she whispered, touching his arm. "I think you did, and it was so good of you, but there was some mistake about it—" She checked herself, seeing a blank look in his face, and blushed violently. "Oh, it wasnotyou!" she exclaimed, in a shocked voice, wishing the ball-room floor would open and swallow her up.
"Really," he said, "I—I was very remiss—I'm awfully sorry." And he gave her to understand, to her profound consternation, that he had fully intended to send her a bouquet, but had forgotten it in the rush of his many important engagements.
She passed on to her lancers with a wan smile, and presently saw him, under those seductive fern trees upstairs, with the person whom he had been looking for when she accosted him. "There's Westmoreland and his old flame," remarked her then partner, a club-frequenting youth who knew all about everybody. "Hecalls her the handsomest woman out—because she's got a lot of money, I suppose. All the Westmorelands are worshippers of the golden calf, father and son—a regular set of screws the old fellows were, and he's got the family eye to the main chance. Trust him!Ican't see anything in her; can you? She's as round as a tub, and as swarthy as a gipsy. I like women"—looking at his partner—"to be tall, and slender, and fair. That'smystyle."
This was how poor Eleanor's pleasure in her first ball was spoiled. I am aware that it looks a very poor and shabby little episode, not worthy of a chapter to itself; but then things are not always what they seem, and, as a matter of fact, the life histories of a large majority of us are made up of just such unheroic passages.
When Elizabeth went into the room, watchfully attended by the major, who was deeply interested in her proceedings, she was perhaps the happiest woman of all that gala company. She was in love, and she was going to meet her lover—which things meant to her something different from what they mean to girls brought up in conventional habits of thought. Eve in the Garden of Eden could not have been more pure and unsophisticated, more absolutely natural, more warmly human, more blindly confiding and incautious than she; therefore she had obeyed her strongest instinct without hesitation or reserve, and had given herself up to the delight of loving without thought of cost or consequences. Where her affections were concerned she was incapable of compromise or calculation; it was only the noble and simple rectitude that was the foundation of her character and education which could "save her from herself," as we call it, and that only in the last extremity. Just now she was in the full flood-tide, and she let herself go with it without an effort. Adam's "graceful consort" could not have had a more primitive notion of what was appropriate and expected of her under the circumstances. She stood in the brilliant ball-room, without a particle of self-consciousness, in an attitude of unaffected dignity, and with a radiance of gentle happiness all over her, that made her beautiful to look at, though she was not technically beautiful. The major watched her with profound interest, reading her like an open book; he knew what was happening, and what was going to happen (he mostly did), though he had a habit of keeping his own counsel about his own discoveries. He noted her pose, which, besides being so admirably graceful, so evidently implied expectancy; the way she held her flowers to her breast, her chin just touched by the fringes of maiden-hair, while she gently turned her head from side to side. And he saw her lift her eyes to the gallery, saw at the same moment a light spread over her face that had a superficial resemblance to a smile, though her sensitive mouth never changed its expression of firm repose; and, chuckling silently to himself, he walked away to find a sofa for his wife.
Presently Mrs. Duff-Scott, suitably enthroned, and with her younger girls already carried off by her husband from her side, saw Mr. Yelverton approaching her, and rejoiced at the prospect of securing his society for herself and having the tedium of the chaperon's inactivity relieved by sensible conversation. "Ah, so you are here!" she exclaimed cordially; "I thought balls were things quite out of your line."
"So they are," he said, shaking hands with her and Elizabeth impartially, without a glance at the latter. "But I consider it a duty to investigate the customs of the country. I like to look all round when I am about it."
"Quite right. This is distinctly one of our institutions, and I am very glad you are not above taking notice of it."
"I am not above taking notice of anything, I hope."
"No, of course not. You are a true philosopher. There is no dilettantism about you. That is what I like in you," she added frankly. "Come and sit down here between Miss King and me, and talk to us. I want to know how the emigration business is getting on."
He sat down between the two ladies, Elizabeth drawing back her white skirts.
"I have been doing no business, emigration or other," he said; "I have been spending my time in pleasure."
"Is it possible? Well, I am glad to hear it. I should very much like to know what stands for pleasure with you, only it would be too rude a question."
"I have been in the country," he said, smiling.
"H—m—that's not saying much. You don't mean to tell me, I see. Talking of the country—look at Elizabeth's bouquet. Did you think we could raise lilies of the valley like those?"
He bent his head slightly to smell them. "I heard that they did grow hereabouts," he said; and his eyes and Elizabeth's met for a moment over the fragrant flowers that she held between them, while Mrs. Duff-Scott detailed the negligent circumstances of their presentation, which left it a matter of doubt where they came from and for whom they were intended.
"I want to find Mr. Smith," said she; "I fancy he can give us information."
"I don't think so," said Mr. Yelverton; "he was showing me a lily of the valley in his button-hole just now as a great rarity in these parts."
Then it flashed across Mrs. Duff-Scott that Paul Brion might have been the donor, and she said no more.
For some time the trio sat upon the sofa, and the matron and the philanthropist discussed political economy in its modern developments. They talked about emigration; they talked about protection—and wherein a promising, but inexperienced, young country was doing its best to retard the wheels of progress—as if they were at a committee meeting rather than disporting themselves at a ball. The major found partners for the younger girls, but he left Elizabeth to her devices; at least he did so for a long time—until it seemed to him that she was being neglected by her companions. Then he started across the room to rescue her from her obscurity. At the moment that he came in sight, Mr. Yelverton turned to her. "What about dancing, Miss King?" he said, quickly. "May I be allowed to do my best?"
"I cannot dance," said Elizabeth. "I began too late—I can't take to it, somehow."
"My dear," said Mrs. Duff-Scott, "that is nonsense. All you want is practice. And I am not going to allow you to become a wall-flower." She turned her head to greet some newly-arrived friends, and Mr. Yelverton rose and offered his arm to Elizabeth.
"Let us go and practise," he said, and straightway they passed down the room, threading a crowd once more, and went upstairs to the gallery, which was a primeval forest in its solitude at this comparatively early hour. "There is no reason why you should dance if you don't like it," he remarked; "we can sit here and look on." Then, when she was comfortably settled in her cushions under the fern trees, he leaned forward and touched her bouquet with a gesture that was significant of the unacknowledged but well-understood intimacy between them. "I am so glad I was able to get them for you," he said; "I wanted you to know what they were really like—when you told me how much your mother had loved them."
"I can't thank you," she replied.
"Do not," he said. "It is for me to thank you for accepting them. I wish you could see them in my garden at Yelverton. There is a dark corner between two gables of the house where they make a perfect carpet in April."
She lifted those she held to her face, and sniffed luxuriously.
"There is a room in that recess," he went on, "a lady's sitting-room. Not a very healthy spot, by the way, it is too dank and dark. It was fitted up for poor Elizabeth Leigh when my two uncles, Patrick and Kingscote, expected her to come and live there, each wanting her for his wife—so my grandmother used to say. It has never been altered, though nearly all the rest of the house has been turned inside out. I think the lilies of the valley were planted there for her. I wish you could see that room. You would like sitting by the open window—it is one of those old diamond-paned casements, and has got some interesting stained glass in it—and seeing the sun shine on the grey walls outside, and smelling the lilies in that green well that the sun cannot reach down below. It is just one of those things that would suit you."
She listened silently, gazing at the great organ opposite, towering out of the groves of flowers at its base, without seeing what it was she looked at. After a pause he went on, still leaning forward, with his arms resting on his knees. "I can think of nothing now but how much I want you to see and know everything that makes my life at home," he said.
"Tell me about it," she said, with the woman's instinctive desire for delay at this juncture, not because she didn't want to hear the rest, but to prolong the sweetness of anticipation; "tell me what your life at Yelverton is like."
"I have not had much of it at present," he replied, after a brief pause. "The place was let for a long while. Then, when I took it over again, I made it into a sort of convalescent home, and training-place, and general starting-point for girls and children—protégéesof my friend who does slumming in the orthodox way. Though he disapproves of me he makes use of me, and, of course, I don't disapprove of him, and am very glad to help him. The house is too big for me alone, and it seems the best use I can put it to. Of course I keep control of it; I take the poor things in on the condition that they are to be disciplined after my system and not his—his may be the best, but they don't enjoy it as they do mine—and when I am at home I run down once a week or so to see how they are getting on."
"And how is it now?"
"Now the house is just packed, I believe, from top to bottom. I got a letter a few days ago from my faithful lieutenant, who looks after things for me, to say that it couldn't hold many more, and that the funds of the institution are stretched to their utmost capacity to provide supplies."
"The funds? Oh, you must certainly use that other money now!"
"Yes, I shall use it now. I have, indeed, already appropriated a small instalment. I told Le Breton to draw on it, rather than let one child go that we could take—rather than let one opportunity be lost."
"You have other people working with you, then?"
"A good many—yes, and a very miscellaneous lot you would think them. Le Breton is the one I trust as I do myself. I could not have been here now if it had not been for him. He is my right hand."
"Who is he?" she asked, fascinated, in spite of her preoccupations, by this sketch of a life that had really found its mission in the world, and one so beneficent and so satisfying.
"He is a very interesting man," said Mr. Yelverton, who still leaned towards her, touching her flowers occasionally with a tender audacity; "a man to respect and admire—a brave man who would have been burnt at the stake had he lived a few centuries ago. He was once a clergyman, but he gave that up."
"He gave it up!" repeated Elizabeth, who had read "Thomas à Kempis" and theChristian Yeardaily since she was a child, as her mother had done before her.
"He couldn't stand it," said Mr. Yelverton, simply. "You see he was a man with a very literal, and straight-going, and independent mind—a mind that could nohow bend itself to the necessities of the case. I don't suppose he ever really gave himself up out of his own control, but, at any rate, when he got to know the world and the kind of time that we had come to, he couldn't pretend to shut his eyes. He couldn't make-believe that he was all the same as he had been when a mere lad of three-and-twenty, and that nothing had happened to change things while he had been learning and growing. And once he fell out with his conscience there was no patching up the breach with compromises forhim. He tried it, poor fellow—he had a tough tussle before he gave in. It was a great step to take, you know—a martyrdom with all the pain and none of the glory—that nobody could sympathise with or understand."
Elizabeth was sitting very still, watching with unseeing eyes the glitter of a conspicuous diamond tiara in the moving crowd below. She, at any rate, could neither sympathise nor understand.
"He was in the thick of his troubles when I first met him," Mr. Yelverton went on. "He was working hard in one of the East End parishes, doing his level best, as the Yankees say, and tormented all the time, not only by his own scruples and self-accusations, but by a perfect hornet's nest of ecclesiastical persecutors. I said to him. 'Be an honest man, and give up being a parson—'"
"Isn't it possible to beboth?" Elizabeth broke in.
"No doubt it is. But it was not possible for him. Seeing that, I advised him to let go, and leave those that could to hold on—as I am glad they do hold on, for we want the brake down at the rate we are going. He was in agonies of dread about the future, because he had a wife and children, so I offered him a salary equal to the emoluments of his living to come and work with me. 'You and I will do what good we can together,' I said, 'without pretending to be anything more than what weknowwe are.' And so he cast in his lot with me, and we have worked together ever since. They call him all sorts of bad names, but he doesn't care—at least not much. It is such a relief to him to be able to hold his head up as a free man—and he does work with such a zest compared to what he did!"
"And you," said Elizabeth, drawing short breaths, "what are you?—are you a Dissenter, too?"
"Very much so, I think," he said, smiling at a term that to him, an Englishman, was obsolete, while to her, an Australian born, it had still its ancient British significance (for she had been born and reared in her hermit home, the devoutest of English-churchwomen).
"And yet, in one sense, no one could be less so."
"Butwhatare you?" she urged, suddenly revealing to him that she was frightened by this ambiguity.
"Really, I don't know," he replied, looking at her gravely. "I think if I had to label my religious faith in the usual way, with a motto, I should say I was a Humanitarian. The word has been a good deal battered about and spoiled, but it expresses my creed better than any other."
"A Humanitarian!" she ejaculated with a cold and sinking heart. "Is that all?" To her, in such a connection, it was but another word for an infidel.
A little group of their male attendants stood in the lobby, while Mrs. Duff-Scott and the girls put on their wraps in the cloak-room. When the ladies reappeared, they fell into the order in which Paul, unseen in the shadows of the street, saw them descend the steps to the pavement.
"May I come and see you to-morrow morning?" asked Mr. Yelverton of Elizabeth, whom he especially escorted.
"Not—not to-morrow," she replied. "We shall be at Myrtle Street, and we never receive any visitors there."
"At Myrtle Street!" exclaimed the major, who also walked beside her. "Surely you are not going to run off to Myrtle Street to-morrow?"
"We are going there now," said she, "if we can get in. Mrs. Duff-Scott knows."
"Let them alone," said the chaperon, looking back over her shoulder. "If they have a fancy to go home they shall go. I won't have them persuaded." She was as reluctant to leave them at Myrtle Street as the major could be, but she carefully abstained, as she always did, from interfering with their wishes when nothing of importance was involved. She was wise enough to know that she would have the stronger hold on them by seeming to leave them their liberty.
They were put into the carriage by their attentive cavaliers, the major taking his now frequent box seat in order to accompany them; and Mr. Smith and Mr. Yelverton were left standing on the pavement. Arrived at Myrtle Street, it was found that the house was still open, and the girls bade the elder couple an effusively affectionate and compunctious good-night.
"And when shall I see you again?" Mrs. Duff-Scott inquired, with a carefully composed smile and cheerful air.
"To-morrow," said Elizabeth, eagerly; "to-morrow, of course, some of us will come." All three girls had a painful feeling that they were ungrateful, while under obligations to be grateful, in spite of their friend's effort to prevent it, as they stood a moment in the warm night at their street door, and watched the carriage roll away. And yet they were so glad to be on their own "tauri" to-night—even Eleanor, who had grown more out of tune with the old frugal life than any of them.
They were let in by the ground-floor landlady, with whom they chatted for a few minutes, arranging about the materials for their breakfast; then they went upstairs to their lonely little bedrooms, where they lit their candles and began at once to prepare for bed. They were dead tired, they said, and wanted to sleep and not to talk.
But a full hour after their separation for the night, each one was as wide awake as she had been all day. Elizabeth was kneeling on the floor by her bedside, still half-dressed—she had not changed her attitude for a long time, though the undulations of her body showed how far from passive rest she was—when Patty, clothed only in her night-gown, crept in, making no noise with her bare feet.
"Elizabeth," she whispered, laying her hand on her sister's shoulder, "are you asleep?—or are you saying your prayers?"
Elizabeth, startled, lifted up her head, and disclosed to Patty's gaze in the candle-light a pale, and strained, and careworn face, "I was saying my prayers," she replied, with a dazed look. "Why are you out of bed, my darling? What is the matter?"
"That is what I want to know," said Patty, sitting down on the bed. "What is the matter with us all? What has come to us? Nelly has been crying ever since I put the light out—she thought I couldn't hear her, but she was mistaken—sobbing and sniffing under the bedclothes, and blowing her nose in that elaborately cautious way—"
"Oh, poor, dear child!" interrupted the maternal elder sister, making a start towards the door.
"No, don't go to her," said Patty, putting out her hand; "leave her alone—she is quiet now. Besides, you couldn't do her any good. Do you know what she is fretting about? Because Mr. Westmoreland has been neglecting her. Would you believe it? She is caring about it, after all—and we thought it was only fun. She doesn't care abouthim, she couldn't do that—"
"We can't tell," interrupted Elizabeth. "It is not for us to say. Perhaps she does, poor child!"
"Oh, shecouldn't," Patty scornfully insisted. "That is quite impossible. No, she has got fond of this life that we are living now with Mrs. Duff-Scott—I have seen it, how it has laid hold of her—and she would like to marry him so that she could have it always. That is whatshehas come to. Oh, Elizabeth, don't you wish we had gone to Europe at the very first, and never come to Melbourne at all!" Here Patty herself broke down, and uttered a little shaking, hysterical sob. "Everything seems to be going wrong with us here! It does not look so, I know, but at the bottom of my heart I feel it. Why did we turn aside to waste and spoil ourselves like this, instead of going on to the life that we had laid out—a real life, that we should never have had to be ashamed of?"
Elizabeth was silent for a few minutes, soothing her sister's excitement with maternal caresses, and at the same time thinking with all her might. "We must try not to get confused," she said presently. "Life is life, you know, Patty, wherever you are—all the other things are incidental. And we need not try to struggle with everything at once. I think we have done our best, when we have had anything to do—any serious step to take—since we came to Melbourne; and in Europe we could have done no more. It seemed right to please Mrs. Duff-Scott, and to accept such a treasure as her friendship when it came to us in what seemed such a providential way—did it not? It seemed so to me. It would have been ungenerous to have held out against her—and we were always a little given to be too proud of standing alone. It makes her happy to have us. I don't know what work we could have done that would have been more profitable than that. Patty"—after another thoughtful pause—"I don't think it is thatthingsare going wrong, dear. It is only that we have to manage them, and to steer our way, and to take care of ourselves, and that is so trying and perplexing. God knowsIfind it difficult! So, I suppose, does everyone."
"You, Elizabeth?Youalways seem to know what is right. And you are so good that you never ought to have troubles."
"If Nelly is susceptible to such a temptation as Mr. Westmoreland—Mr. Westmoreland, because he is rich—she would not have gone far with us, in any case," Elizabeth went on, putting aside the allusion to herself. "Europe would not have strengthened her. It would have been all the same. While, as for you, my darling—"
"I—I!" broke in Patty excitedly. "I should have been happy now, and not as I am! I should have been saved from making a fool of myself if I had gone to Europe! I should have been worth something, and able to do something, there!"
"How can you tell, dear child? And why do you suppose you have been foolish?Idon't think so. On the contrary, it has often seemed to me that you have been the sensible one of us all."
"O, Elizabeth, don't laugh at me!" wailed Patty, reproachfully.
"I laugh at you, my darling! What an idea! I mean it, every word. You see everything in a distorted and exaggerated way just now, because you are tired and your nerves are over-wrought. You are not yourself to-night, Patty. You will cheer up—we shall all cheer up—when we have had a good sleep and a little quiet time to think things over."
"No, I am not myself, indeed," assented Patty, with moody passion. "I am not myself at all—to be made to feel so weak and miserable!" She put her face down in her hands and began to cry with more abandonment at the thought of how weak she had become.
"But Patty, dearest, there must be something the matter with you," her motherly elder sister cried, much distressed by this abnormal symptom. "Are you feeling ill? Don't frighten me like this."
The girl laid her head upon her sister's shoulder, and there let herself loose from all restraint. "Youknowwhat is the matter," she sobbed; "you know as well as I do what is the matter—that it is Paul Brion who worries me so and makes me so utterly wretched."
"Paul Brion!Heworry you, Patty—hemake you wretched?"
"You have always been delicate and considerate, Elizabeth—you have never said anything—but I know you know all about it, and how spoiled I am, and how spoiled everything is because of him. I hate to talk of it—I can't bear even you to see that I am fretting about him—but I can't help it! and I know you understand. When I have had just one good cry," she concluded, with a fresh and violent burst of tears, "perhaps I shall get on better."
Elizabeth stared at the wall over her sister's head in dumb amazement, evidently not deserving the credit for perspicacity accorded to her. "Do you mean," she said slowly, "do you really mean—"
"Yes," sobbed Patty, desperate, for the moment dead to shame.
"Oh, how blind—how wickedly blind—how stupid—how selfish I have been!" Elizabeth exclaimed, after another pause in which to collect her shocked and bewildered faculties. "I never dreamt about it, my darling—never, for a single moment. I thought—I always had the settled impression that you did not like him."
"I don't like him," said Patty, fiercely, lifting herself up. "I love him—Ilovehim! I must say it right out once, if I never speak another word," and she bent her head back a little, and stretched out her arms with an indescribable gesture as if she saw him standing before her. "He is a man—a real, true, strong man—who works, and thinks, and lives—lives! It is all serious with him, as I wanted it to be with me—and Imighthave been worthy of him! A little while ago we were so near to each other—so near that we almosttouched—and now no two people could be farther apart. I have done him wrong—I have been a wicked fool, but I am punished for it out of all proportion.Heflirt with a married woman! What could I have been dreaming of? Oh, howdisgustingI must be to have allowed such an idea to come into my head! And yet it was only a little thing, Elizabeth, when you come to think of it relatively—the only time I ever really did him injustice, and it was only for a moment. No one can always do what is right and fair without making a mistake sometimes—it was just a mistake for want of thinking. But it has taken him from me as completely as if I had committed suicide, and was dead and buried and done with. It has made himhateme. No wonder! If he cared about me, I wouldn't be too proud to beg his pardon, but he doesn't—he doesn't! And so I must face it out, or else he will think I am running after him, and he will despise me more than he does already."
"But if he was doing no harm," said Elizabeth, soothingly, "he could not suppose that you thought he was."
"No," said Patty, "he will never think I was so disgusting as to thinkthatof him. But it is as bad as if he did. That at least was a great, outrageous, downright wrong, worth fighting about, and not the pitiful shabby thing that it appears to him. For, of course, he thinks I did it because I was too grand to notice him while I was wearing a fine dress and swelling about with great people. It never occurred to me that it would be possible for him or anybody to suspect me ofthat," said Patty, proudly, drawing herself up; "but afterwards I saw that he could not help doing it. And ever since then it has been getting worse and worse—everything has seemed to point to its being so. Haven't you noticed? I never see him except I am with people whoareabove noticing him; and Mr. Smith—oh, what I have suffered from Mr. Smith to-night, Elizabeth!—has all this time been thinking I was going to marry him, and I can see now how it must have looked to other people as if I was. Just think of it!"—with a gesture of intense disgust. "As if any girl could stoop to that, after having had such a contrast before her eyes! No wonder he hates me and despises me—no wonder he looks at me as if I were the dirt beneath his feet. I wish I were," she added, with reckless passion; "oh, my dear love, I only wish I were!"
When she was about it, Patty cleansed her stuffed bosom thoroughly. It was not her way to do things by halves. She rhapsodised about her love and her lover with a wild extravagance that was proportionate to the strained reserve and restraint that she had so long put upon her emotions. After which came the inevitable reaction. The fit being over, she braced herself up again, and was twice as strong-minded and self-sufficient as before. When the morning came, and she and Elizabeth busied themselves with housework—Eleanor being relegated to the sofa with a sick headache—the girl who had dissolved herself in tears and given way to temporary insanity, as she chose herself to call it, so recently, was bright, and brusque, and cheerful, in spite of sultry weather; and not only did she pretend, even to her confidante, that the young man on the other side of the wall had no place in her thoughts, but she hardened her heart to adamant againsthim, for having been the cause of her humiliating lapse from dignity. It was quite a lucky chance, indeed, that she did not straightway go and accept the hand and fortune of Mr. Smith, by way of making reparation for the outrage committed vicariously by Paul Brion on her self-respect.
The weather was scorchingly hot and a thunderstorm brewing when the girls sat down to their frugal lunch at mid-day. It was composed of bread and butter and pickled fish, for which, under the circumstances, they had not appetite enough. They trifled with the homely viands for awhile, in a manner quite unusual with them, in whatever state of the atmosphere; and then they said they would "make up" at tea time, if weather permitted, and cleared the table. Eleanor was sent to lie down in her room, Patty volunteered to read a pleasant novel to the invalid, and Elizabeth put on her bonnet to pay her promised visit to Mrs. Duff-Scott.
She found her friend in the cool music-room, standing by the piano, on which some loose white sheets were scattered. The major sat on a sofa, surveying the energetic woman with a sad and pensive smile.
"Are you looking over new music?" asked Elizabeth, as she walked in.
"O my dear, is that you? How good of you to venture out in this heat!—but I knew you would," exclaimed the lady of the house, coming forward with outstretched arms of welcome. "Music, did you say?—Odearno!" as if music were the last thing likely to interest her. "It is something of far more importance."
"Yelverton has been here," said the major, sadly; "and he has been sketching some plans for Whitechapel cottages. My wife thinks they are most artistic."
"So they are," she insisted, hardly, "though I don't believe I used the word; for things are artistic when they are suitable for the purpose they are meant for, and only pretend to be what they are. Look at this, Elizabeth. You see it is of no use to build Peabody houses in these frightfully low neighbourhoods, where half-starved creatures are packed together like herrings in a barrel—Mr. Yelverton has explained that quite clearly. The better class of poor come to live in them, and the poorest of all are worse off instead of better, because they have less room than they had before. Youmusttake into consideration that there is only a certain amount of space, and if you build model lodgings here, and a school there, and a new street somewhere else, you do good, of course, but you herd the poor street-hawkers and people of that class more and more thickly into their wretched dens, where they haven't enough room to breathe as it is—"
"I think I'll go, my dear, if you'll excuse me," interrupted the major, humbly, in tones of deep dejection.
"And therefore," proceeded Mrs. Duff-Scott, taking no notice of her husband, "the proper and reasonable thing to do—if you want to help those who are most in need of help—is to let fine schemes alone. Mr. Yelverton expects to come into a large property soon, and he means to buy into those wretched neighbourhoods, where he can, and to build for one-room tenants—for cheapness and low rents. He will get about four per cent. on his money, but that he will use to improve with—I mean for putting them in the way of sanitary habits, poor creatures. He makes a great point of teaching them sanitation. He seems to think more of that than about teaching them the Bible, and really one can hardly wonder at it when one sees the frightful depravity and general demoralisation that come of ignorance and stupidity in those matters—and he sees so much of it. He seems to be always rooting about in those sewers and dunghills, as he calls them—he is rather addicted to strong expressions, if you notice—and turning things out from the very bottom. He is queer in some of his notions, but he is a good man, Elizabeth. One can forgive him his little crotchets, for the sake of all the good he does—it must be incalculable! He shrinks from nothing, and spends himself trying to better the things that are so bad that most people feel there is nothing for it but to shut their eyes to them—without making any fuss about it either, or setting himself up for a saint. Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Duff-Scott, throwing a contemptuous glance around her museum of precious curiosities, "how inconceivably petty and selfish it seems to care for rubbish like this, when there are such miseries in the world that we might lighten, as he does, if we would only set ourselves to it in the same spirit."
Rubbish!—those priceless pots and plates, those brasses and ivories and enamels, those oriental carpets and tapestries, those unique miscellaneous relics of the mediæval prime! Truly the Cause of Humanity had taken hold of Mrs. Duff-Scott at last.
She sat down in an arm-chair, having invited Elizabeth to take off her hat and make herself as comfortable as the state of the weather permitted, and began to wave a large fan to and fro while she looked into vacant space with shining eyes.
"He is a strange man," she said musingly. "A most interesting, admirable man, but full of queer ideas—not at all like any man I ever met before. He has been lunching with us, Elizabeth—he came quite early—and we have had an immense deal of talk. I wish you had been here to listen to him—though I don't know that it would have been very good for you, either. He is extremely free, and what you might call revolutionary, in his opinions; he treats the most sacred subjects as if they were to be judged and criticised like common subjects. He talks of the religions of the world, for instance, as if they were all on the same foundation, and calls the Bible our Veda or Koran—says they are all alike inspired writings because they respectively express the religious spirit, craving for knowledge of the mystery of life and the unseen, that is an integral part of man's nature, and universal in all races, though developed according to circumstances. He says all mankind are children of God, and brothers, and that he declines to make invidious distinctions. And personal religion to him seems nothing more than the most rudimentary morality—simply to speak the truth and to be unselfish—just as to be selfish or untrue are the only sins he will acknowledge that we are responsible for out of the long catalogue of sins that stain this unhappy world. He won't call it an unhappy world, by the way, in spite of the cruel things he sees; he is the most optimistic of unbelievers. It will all come right some day—and our time will be called the dark ages by our remote descendants. Ever since men and women came first, they have been getting better and higher—the world increases in human goodness steadily, and will go on doing so as long as it is a world—and that because of the natural instincts and aspirations of human nature, and not from what we have always supposed all our improvement came from—rather in spite of that, indeed."
Mrs. Duff-Scott poured out this information, which had been seething in her active mind, volubly and with a desire to relieve herself to some one; but here she checked herself, feeling that she had better have left it all unsaid, not less for Elizabeth's sake than for her own. She got up out of her seat and began to pace about the room with a restless air. She was genuinely troubled. It was as if a window in a closed chamber had been opened, letting in a too strong wind that was blowing the delicate furniture all about; now, with the woman's instinctive timidity and fear (that may be less a weakness than a safeguard), she was eager to shut it to again, though suspecting that it might be too late to repair the damage done. Now that she took time to think about it, she felt particularly guilty on Elizabeth's account, who had not had her experience, and was not furnished with her ripe judgment and powers of discrimination as a preservative against the danger of contact with heterodox ideas.
"I ought not to repeat such things," she exclaimed, vexedly, beginning to gather up the plans of the Whitechapel cottages, but observing only her companion's strained and wistful face. "The mere independent hypotheses and speculations of one man, when no two seem ever to think alike! I suppose those who study ancient history and literatures, and the sciences generally, get into the habit of pulling things to pieces—"
"Those who learn mostoughtto know most," suggested Elizabeth.
"They ought, my dear; but it doesn't follow."
"Not when they are so earnest in trying to find out?"
"No; that very earnestness is against them—they over-reach themselves. They get confused, too, with learning so much, and mixing so many things up together." Mrs. Duff-Scott was a little reckless as to means so long as she could compass the desired end—which was the shutting of that metaphorical window which she had incautiously set (or left) open.
"Well, he believes in God—that all men are God's children," the girl continued, clinging where she could. "That seems like religion to me—it is a good and loving way to think of God, that He gave His spirit to all alike from the beginning—that He is so just and kind to all, and not only to a few."
"Yes, he believes in God. He believes in the Bible, too, in a sort of a way. He says he would have the lessons of the New Testament and the life of Christ disseminated far and wide, but not as they are now, with the moral left out, and not as if those who wrote them were wise enough for all time. But, whatever his beliefs may be," said Mrs. Duff-Scott, "they are not what will satisfy us, Elizabeth. You and I must hold fast to our faith in Christ, dear child, or I don't know what would become of us. We will let 'whys' alone—we will not trouble ourselves to try and find out mysteries that no doubt are wisely withheld from us, and that anyhow we should never be able to understand."
Here the servant entered with a gliding step, opened a little Sutherland table before his mistress's chair, spread the æsthetic cloth, and set out the dainty tea service. Outside the storm had burst, and was now spending itself and cooling the hot air in a steady shower that made a rushing sound on the gravel. Mrs. Duff-Scott, who had reseated herself, leant back silently with an air of reaction after her strong emotion in the expression of her handsome face and form, and Elizabeth mechanically got up to pour out the tea. Presently, as still in silence they began to sip and munch their afternoon repast, the girl saw on the piano near which she stood a photograph that arrested her attention. "What is this?" she asked. "Did he bring this too?" It was a copy of Luke Fildes' picture of "The Casuals." Mrs. Duff-Scott took it from her hand.
"No, it is mine," she said. "I have had it here for some time, in a portfolio amongst others, and never took any particular notice of it. I just had an idea that it was an unpleasant and disagreeable subject. I never gave it a thought—what it really meant—until this morning, when he was talking to me, and happened to mention it. I remembered that I had it, and I got it out to look at it. Oh!" setting down her teacup and holding it fairly in both hands before her—"isn't it a terrible sermon? Isn't it heartbreaking to think that it istrue?And he says the truth is understated."
Like the great Buddha, when he returned from his first excursion beyond his palace gates, Elizabeth's mind was temporarily darkened by the new knowledge of the world that she was acquiring, and she looked at the picture with a fast-beating heart. "Sphinxes set up against that dead wall," she quoted from a little printed foot-note, "and none likely to be at the pains of solving them until the general overthrow." She was leaning over her friend's shoulder, and the tears were dropping from her eyes.
"They are Dickens's words," said Mrs. Duff-Scott.
"Why is it like this, I wonder?" the girl murmured, after a long, impressive pause. "We must not think it is God's fault—that can't be. It must be somebody else's fault. It cannot have beenintendedthat a great part of the human race should be forced, from no fault of their own, to accept such a cruel lot—to be made to starve, when so many roll in riches—to be driven to crime because they cannot help it—to be driven tohellwhen theyneed nothave gone there—if there is such a place—if there is any truth in what we have been taught. But"—with a kind of sad indignation—"if religion has been doing its best for ever so many centuries, and this is all that there is to show for it—doesn't that seem to say thathemay be right, and that religion has been altogether misinterpreted—that we have all along been making mistakes—" She checked herself, with a feeling of dismay at her own words; and Mrs. Duff-Scott made haste to put away the picture, evidently much disturbed. Both women had taken the "short views" of life so often advocated, not from philosophical choice, but from disinclination, and perhaps inability, to take long ones; and they had the ordinary woman's conception of religion as exclusively an ecclesiastical matter. This rough disturbance of old habits of thought and sentiments of reverence and duty was very alarming; but while Elizabeth was rashly confident, because she was inexperienced, and because she longed to put faith in her beloved, Mrs. Duff-Scott was seized with a sort of panic of remorseful misgiving. To shut that window had become an absolute necessity, no matter by what means.
"My dear," she said, in desperation, "whatever you do, you must not begin to ask questions of that sort. We can never find out the answers, and it leads to endless trouble. God's ways are not as our ways—we are not in the secrets of His providence. It is for us to trust Him to know what is best. If you admit one doubt, Elizabeth, you will see that everything will go. Thousands are finding that out now-a-days, to their bitter cost. Indeed, I don't know what we are coming to—the 'general overthrow,' I suppose. I hope I, at any rate, shall not live to see it. What would life be worth to us—anyof us, even the best off—if we lost our faith in God and our hope of immortality? Just try to imagine it for a moment."
Elizabeth looked at her mentor, who had again risen and was walking about the room. The girl's eyes were full of solemn thought. "Not much," she replied, gravely. "But I was never afraid of losing faith in God."
"It is best to be afraid," replied Mrs. Duff-Scott, with decision. "It is best not to run into temptation. Don't think about these difficulties, Elizabeth—leave them, leave them. You would only unsettle yourself and become wretched and discontented, and you would never be any the wiser."
Elizabeth thought over this for a few minutes, while Mrs. Duff-Scott mechanically took up a brass lota and dusted it with her handkerchief.
"Then you think one ought not to read books, or to talk to people—to try to find out the ground one stands on——"
"No, no, no—let it alone altogether. You know the ground you ought to stand on quite well. You don't want to see where you are if you can feel that God is with you. Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed!" she ended in a voice broken with strong feeling, clasping her hands with a little fervent, prayerful gesture.
Elizabeth drew a long breath, and in her turn began to walk restlessly up and down the room. She had one more question to ask, but the asking of it almost choked her. "Then you would say—I suppose you think it would be wrong—for one who was a believer to marry one who was not?—however good, and noble, and useful he or she might be—however religiouspractically—however blameless in character?"
Mrs. Duff-Scott, forgetting for the moment that there was such a person as Mr. Yelverton in the world, sat down once more in an arm-chair, and addressed herself to the proposition on its abstract merits. She had worked herself up, by this time, into a state of highly fervid orthodoxy. Her hour of weakness was past, and she was fain to put forth and test her reserves of strength. Wherefore she had very clear views as to the iniquity of an unequal yoking together with unbelievers, and the peril of touching the unclean thing; and she stated them plainly and with all her wonted incisive vigour.
When it was all over, Elizabeth put on her hat and walked back through the pattering rain to Myrtle Street, heavy-hearted and heavy-footed, as if a weight of twenty years had been laid on her since the morning.
"Patty," she said, when her sister, warmly welcoming her return, exclaimed at her pale face and weary air, and made her take the sofa that Eleanor had vacated, "Patty, let us go away for a few weeks, shall we? I want a breath of fresh air, and to be in peace and quiet for a little, to think things over."
"So do I," said Patty. "So does Nelly. Let us write to Sam Dunn to find us lodgings."
"Is it possible that we have only been away for nine months?" murmured Elizabeth, as the little steamer worked its way up to the well-remembered jetty, and she looked once more on surf and headland, island rock and scattered township, lying under the desolate moorlands along the shore. "Doesn't it seemat leastnine years?"
"Or ninety," replied Patty. "I feel like a new generation. How exactly the same everything is! Here they have all been going on as they always did. There is Mrs. Dunn, dear old woman!—in the identical gown that she had on the day we went away."
Everything was the same, but they were incredibly changed. There was no sleeping on the nose of the vessel now; no shrinking from association with their fellow-passengers. The skipper touched his cap to them, which he never used to do in the old times; and the idlers on the pier, when the vessel came in, stared at them as if they had indeed been away for ninety years. Mrs. Dunn took in at a glance the details of their travelling costumes, which were of a cut and quality not often seen in those parts; and, woman-like, straightway readjusted her smiles and manners, unconsciously becoming at once more effusive and more respectful than (with the ancient waterproofs in her mind's eye) she had prepared herself to be. But Sam saw only the three fair faces, that were to him as unchanged as his own heart; and he launched himself fearlessly into the boat as soon as it came alongside, with horny hand outstretched, and boisterous welcomes.
"So y'are come back again?" he cried, "and darn glad I am to see yer, and no mistake." He added a great deal more in the way of greeting and congratulation before he got them up the landing stage and into the capacious arms of Mrs. Dunn—who was quite agreeably surprised to be hugged and kissed by three such fashionable young ladies. Then he proceeded to business with a triumphant air. "Now, Miss 'Lisbeth, yer see here's the cart—that's for the luggage. Me and the old hoss is going to take it straight up. And there is a buggy awaiting for you. And Mr. Brion told me to say as he was sorry he couldn't come down to the boat, but it's court day, yer see, and he's got a case on, and he's obliged to stop till he's done wi' that."
"Oh," exclaimed Elizabeth, hastily, "did you tell Mr. Brion that we were coming?"
"Why, of course, miss. I went and told him the very first thing—'twas only right, him being such a friend—your only friend here, as one may say."
"Oh, no, Sam, we have you."
"Me!"—with scornful humility—"I'm nothing. Yes, of course I went and told him. And he wouldn't let us get no lodgings; he said you was just to go and stay wi' Mrs. Harris and him. He would ha' wrote to tell yer, but there worn't time."
"And much more comfortable you'll be than at them lodging places," put in Mrs. Dunn. "There's nothing empty now that's at all fit for you. The season is just a-coming on, you see, and we're like to be pretty full this year."
"But we wanted to be away from the town, Mrs. Dunn."
"And so you will be away from the town. Why, bless me, you can't be much farther away—to be anywhere at all—than up there," pointing to the headland where their old home was dimly visible in the November sunshine. "There's only Mrs. Harris and the gal, andtheywon't interfere with you."
"Upthere!" exclaimed the sisters in a breath. And Mr. and Mrs. Dunn looked with broad grins at one another.
"Well, I'm blowed!" exclaimed the fisherman. "You don't mean as Master Paul never let on about his pa and him buying the old place, do you? Why, they've had it, and the old man has been living there—he comes down every morning and goes up every night—walks both ways, he do, like a young chap—this two or three months past. Mrs. Hawkins she couldn't bear the lonesomeness of it when the winter come on, and was right down glad to get out of it. They gave Hawkins nearly double whatyougot for it. I told yer at the time that yer was a-throwing of it away."
The girls tried to look as if they had known all about it, while they digested their surprise. It was a very great surprise, almost amounting to a shock.
"And howisMr. Paul?" asked Mrs. Dunn of Patty. "Dear young man, it's a long time since we've seen anything of him! I hope he's keeping his health well!"
"I think so—I hope so," said Patty gently. "He works very hard, you know, writing things for the papers. He is wanted too much to be able to take holidays like ordinary people. They couldn't get on without him."
Elizabeth turned round in astonishment: she had expected to see her sister in a blaze of wrath over Sam's unexpected communications. "I'm afraid you won't like this arrangement, dearie," she whispered. "What had we better do?"
"Oh, go—go," replied Patty, with a tremulous eagerness that she vainly tried to hide. "I don't mind it. I—I am glad to see Mr. Brion. It will be very nice to stay with him—and in our own dear old house too. Oh, I wouldn't refuse to go for anything! Besides wecan't."
"No, I don't see how we can," acquiesced Elizabeth, cheerfully. Patty having no objection, she was delighted with the prospect.
They walked up the little pier in a group, the "hoss" following them with the reins upon his neck; and, while Elizabeth and Patty mounted the buggy provided by Mr. Brion, Eleanor gratified the old fisherman and his wife by choosing to stay with them and ride up in the cart. It was a lovely morning, just approaching noon, the sky as blue as—no,notas a turquoise or a sapphire—but as nothing save itself can be in a climate like ours, saturated with light and lucent colour, and giving to the sea its own but an intenser hue. I can see it all in my mind's eye—as my bodily eyes have seen it often—that dome above, that plain below, the white clouds throwing violet shadows on the water, the white gulls dipping their red legs in the shining surf and reflecting the sunlight on their white wings; but I cannot describe it. It is beyond the range of pen and ink, as of brush and pigments. As the buggy lightly climbed the steep cliff, opening the view wider at every step, the sisters sat hand in hand, leaning forward to take it all in; but they, too, said nothing—only inhaled long draughts of the delicious salt air, and felt in every invigorated fibre of them that they had done well to come. Reaching the crest of the bluff, and descending into the broken basin—or saucer, rather—in which Seaview Villa nestled, they uttered simultaneously an indignant moan at the spectacle of Mrs. Hawkins's devastations. There was the bright paint, and the whitewash, and the iron roof, and the fantastic trellis; and there wasnotthe ivy that had mantled the eaves and the chimney stacks, nor the creepers that had fought so hard for existence, nor the squat verandah posts which they had bountifully embraced—nor any of the features that had made the old house distinct and characteristic.
"Never mind," said Patty, who was the first to recover herself. "It looks very smart and tidy. I daresay it wanted doing up badly. After all, I'd sooner see it look as unlike home as possible, now that it isn't home."
Mrs. Harris came out and warmly welcomed them in Mr. Brion's name. She took them into the old sitting-room, now utterly transformed, but cosy and inviting, notwithstanding, with the lawyer's substantial old leather chairs and sofas about it, and a round table in the middle set out for lunch, and the sea and sky shining in through the open verandah doors. She pressed them to have wine and cake to "stay" them till Eleanor and lunch time arrived; and she bustled about with them in their rooms—their own old bedrooms, in one of which was a collection of Paul's schoolboy books and treasures, while they took off their hats and washed their hands and faces; and was very motherly and hospitable, and made them feel still more pleased that they had come. They feasted, with fine appetites, on fish and gooseberry-fool at one o'clock, while Sam and Mrs. Dunn were entertained by the housekeeper in the kitchen; and in the afternoon, the cart and "hoss" having departed, they sat on the verandah in basket chairs, and drank tea, and idled, and enjoyed the situation thoroughly. Patty got a dog's-eared novel of Mayne Reid's from the book-case in her bedroom, and turned over the pages without reading them to look at the pencil marks and thumb stains; and Eleanor dozed and fanned herself; and Elizabeth sewed and thought. And then their host came home, riding up from the township on a fast and panting steed, quite thrown off his balance by emotion. He was abject in his apologies for having been deterred by cruel fate and business from meeting them at the steamer and conducting them in person to his house, and superfluous in expressions of delight at the honour they had conferred on him.
"And how did you leave my boy?" he asked presently, when due inquiries after their own health and welfare had been satisfied. He spoke as if they and Paul had all been living under one roof. "And when is he coming to see his old father again?"
Patty, who was sitting beside her host—"in his pocket," Nelly declared—and was simply servile in her affectionate demonstrations, undertook to describe Paul's condition and circumstances, and she implied a familiar knowledge of them which considerably astonished her sisters. She also gave the father a full history of all the son's good deeds in relation to themselves—described how he had befriended them in this and that emergency, and asserted warmly, and with a grave face, that she didn't know what theyshouldhave done without him.
"That's right—that's right!" said the old man, laying her hand on his knee and patting it fondly. "I was sure he would—I knew you'd find out his worth when you came to know him. We must write to him to-morrow, and tell him you have arrived safely. He doesn't know I have got you, eh? We must tell him. Perhaps we can induce him to take a little holiday himself—I am sure it is high time he had one—and join us for a few days. What do you think?"
"Oh, I amsurehe can't come away just now," protested Patty, pale with eagerness and horror. "In the middle of the Exhibition—and a parliamentary crisis coming on—it would be quite impossible!"
"I don't know—I don't know. I fancy 'impossible' is not a word you will find in his dictionary," said the old gentleman encouragingly. "When he hears of our little arrangement, he'll want to take a hand, as the Yankees say. He won't like to be left out—no, no."
"But, dear Mr. Brion," Patty strenuously implored—for this was really a matter of life and death, "do think what a critical time it is! They nevercanspare him now."
"Then they ought to spare him. Because he is the best man they have, that is no reason why they should work him to death. They don't consider him sufficiently. He gives in to them too much. He is not a machine."
"Perhaps he would come," said Patty, "but it would be against his judgment—it would be at a heavy cost to his country—it would be just to please us—oh, don't let us tempt him to desert his post, whichnoone could fill in his absence! Don't let us unsettle and disturb him at such a time, when he is doing so much good, and when he wants his mind kept calm. Wait for a little while; he might get away for Christmas perhaps."
"But by Christmas, I am afraid, you would be gone."
"Never mind. We see him in Melbourne. And we came here to get away from all Melbourne associations."
"Well, well, we'll see. But I am afraid you will be very dull with only an old fellow like me to entertain you."
"Dull!" they all exclaimed in a breath. It was just what they wanted, to be so peaceful and quiet—and, above all things, to have him (Mr. Brion, senior) entirely to themselves.
The polite old man looked as if he were scarcely equal to the weight of the honour and pleasure they conferred upon him. He was excessively happy. As the hours and days went on, his happiness increased. His punctilious courtesy merged more and more into a familiar and paternal devotion that took all kinds of touching shapes; and he felt more and more at a loss to express adequately the tender solicitude and profound satisfaction inspired in his good old heart by the sojourn of such charming guests within his gates. To Patty he became especially attached; which was not to be wondered at, seeing how susceptible he was and how lavishly she exercised her fascinations upon him. She walked to his office with him in the morning; she walked to meet him when he came hastening back in the afternoon; she read the newspaper (containing Paul's peerless articles) to him in the evening, and mixed his modest glass of grog for him before he went to bed. In short, she made him understand what it was to have a charming and devoted daughter, though she had no design in doing so—no motive but to gratify her affection for Paul in the only way open to her. So the old gentleman was very happy—and so were they. But still it seemed to him that he must be happier than they were, and that, being a total reversal of the proper order of things, troubled him. He had a pang every morning when he wrenched himself away from them—leaving them, as he called it, alone—though loneliness was the very last sensation likely to afflict them. It seemed so inhospitable, so improper, that they should be thrown upon their own resources, and the company of a housekeeper of humble status, for the greater part of the day—that they should be without a male attendant and devotee, while a man existed who was privileged to wait on them. If only Paul had been at home! Paul would have taken them for walks, for drives, for boating excursions, for pic-nics; he would have done the honours of Seaview Villa as the best of hosts and gentlemen. However, Paul, alas! was tied to his newspaper in Melbourne, and the old man had a business that he was cruelly bound to attend to—at any rate, sometimes. But at other times he contrived to shirk his business and then he racked his brains for projects whereby he might give them pleasure.
"Let's see," he said one evening, a few days after their arrival; "I suppose you have been to the caves too often to care to go again?"
"No," said Elizabeth; "we have never been to the caves at all."
"What—living within half-a-dozen miles of them all your lives! Well, I believe there are many more like you. If they had been fifty miles away, you would have gone about once a twelvemonth."
"No, Mr. Brion; we were never in the habit of going sight-seeing. My father seldom left the house, and my mother only when necessary; and we had no one else to take us."
"Then I'll take you, and we will go to-morrow. Mrs. Harris shall pack us a basket for lunch, and we'll make a day of it. Dear, dear, what a pity Paul couldn't be here, to go with us!"
The next morning, which was brilliantly fine, brought the girls an anxiously-expected letter from Mrs. Duff-Scott. Sam Dunn, who was an occasional postman for the solitary house, delivered it, along with a present of fresh fish, while Mr. Brion was absent in the township, negotiating for a buggy and horses for his expedition. The fairy godmother had given but a grudging permission for thisvilleggiaturaof theirs, and they were all relieved to have her assurance that she was not seriously vexed with them. Her envelope was inscribed to "Miss King," but the long letter enclosed was addressed to her "dearest children" collectively, tenderly inquiring how they were getting on and when they were coming back, pathetically describing her own solitude—so unlike what it was before she knew the comfort of their companionship—and detailing various items of society news. Folded in this, however, was the traditional lady's postscript, scribbled on a small half-sheet and marked "private," which Elizabeth took away to read by herself. She wondered, with a little alarm, what serious matter it was that required a confidential postscript, and this was what she read:—
"I have been thinking over our talk the other day, dear. Perhaps I spoke too strongly. One is apt to make arbitrary generalisations on the spur of the moment, and to forget how circumstances may alter cases. There is another side to the question that should not be overlooked. The believing wife or husband may be the salvation ofthe other, and when the other ishonestandearnest, thoughmistaken, there is the strongest hope of this. It requires thinking of onallsides, my darling, and I fear I spoke without thinking enough. Consult your own heart—I am sure it will advise you well."
Elizabeth folded up the note, and put it into her pocket. Then—for she was alone in her own little bedroom—she sat down to think of it; to wonder what had reminded Mrs. Duff-Scott of their conversation the "other day"—what had induced her to temporise with the convictions which then appeared so sincere and absolute. But she could make nothing of it. It was a riddle without the key.
Then she heard the sound of buggy wheels, hurried steps on the verandah, and the voice of Mr. Brion calling her.
"My dear," said the old man when she went out to him, speaking in some haste and agitation, "I have just met at the hotel a friend of yours from Melbourne—Mr. Yelverton. He came by the coach last night. He says Mrs. Duff-Scott sent him up to see how you are getting on, and to report to her. He is going away again to-morrow, and I did not like to put off our trip, so I have asked him to join us. I hope I have not done wrong"—looking anxiously into her rapidly changing face—"I hope you won't think that I have taken a liberty, my dear."
He was talking to Patty and Eleanor in the garden when Elizabeth went out to him, looking cool and colonial in a silk coat and a solar topee. The girls were chatting gaily; the old lawyer was sketching a programme of the day's proceedings, and generally doing the honours of his neighbourhood with polite vivacity. Two buggies, one single and one double, in charge of a groom from the hotel, were drawn up by the gate, and Mrs. Harris and "the gal" were busily packing them with luncheon baskets and rugs. There was a cloudless summer sky overhead—a miracle of loveliness spread out before them in the shining plain of the sea; and the delicate, fresh, salt air, tremulous with the boom of subterranean breakers, was more potent than any wine to make glad the heart of man and to give him a cheerful countenance.
Very cheerfully did Mr. Yelverton come forward to greet his beloved, albeit a little moved with the sentiment of the occasion. He had parted from her in a ball-room, with a half-spoken confession of—something that she knew all about quite as well as he did—on his lips; and he had followed her now to say the rest, and to hear what she had to reply to it. This was perfectly understood by both of them, as they shook hands, with a little conventional air of unexpectedness, and he told her that he had come at Mrs. Duff-Scott's orders.
"She could not rest," he said, gravely, "until she was sure that you had found pleasant quarters, and were comfortable. She worried about you—and so she sent me up."
"It was troubling you too much," Elizabeth murmured, evading his direct eyes, but quite unable to hide her agitation from him.
"You say that from politeness, I suppose? No, it was not troubling me at all—quite the contrary. I am delighted with my trip. And I am glad," he concluded, dropping his voice, "to see the place where you were brought up. This was your home, was it not?" He looked all round him.
"It was not like this when we were here," she replied. "The house was old then—now it is new. They have done it up."
"I see. Have you a sketch of it as it used to be? You draw, I know. Mrs. Duff-Scott has been showing me your drawings."
"Yes, I have one. It hangs in the Melbourne sitting-room."
Mr. Brion broke in upon this dialogue. "Now, my dears, I think we are all ready," he said. "Elizabeth, you and I will go in the little buggy and lead the way. Perhaps Mr. Yelverton will be good enough to take charge of the two young ladies. Will you prefer to drive yourself, Mr. Yelverton?"
Mr. Yelverton said he preferred to be driven, as he was not acquainted with the road; and Elizabeth, throned in the seat of honour in the little buggy, looked back with envious eyes to watch his arrangements for her sisters' comfort. He put Patty beside the groom on the front seat, and carefully tucked her up from the dust; and then he placed Eleanor at the back, climbed to her side, and opened a large umbrella which he held so that it protected both of them. In this order the two vehicles set forth, and for the greater part of the way, owing to the superior lightness of the smaller one, they were not within sight of each other; during which time Elizabeth was a silent listener to her host's amiable prattle, and reproaching herself for not feeling interested in it. She kept looking through the pane of glass behind her, and round the side of the hood, and wondering where the others were, and whether they were keeping the road.
"Oh, they can't miss it," was Mr. Brion's invariable comment. "They will follow our tracks. If not, the man knows our destination."
For the old lawyer was making those short cuts which are so dear to all Jehus of the bush; preferring a straight mile of heavy sand to a devious mile and a quarter of metal, and ploughing through the stiff scrub that covered the waste moors of the district rather by the sun's than by the surveyor's direction. It made the drive more interesting, of course. The bushes that rustled through the wheels and scratched the horses' legs were wonderful with wild flowers of every hue, and the orchids that were trampled into the sand, and gathered by handfuls to die in the buggy, were remarkable for their fantastic variety. And then there were lizards and butterflies, and other common objects of the country, not so easily discerned on a beaten track. But Elizabeth could not bring herself to care much for these things to-day.
They reached high land after a while, whence, looking back, they saw the other buggy crawling towards them a mile or two away, and, looking forward, saw, beyond a green and wild foreground, the brilliant sea again, with a rocky cape jutting out into it, sprinkled with a few white houses on its landward shoulder—a scene that was too beautiful, on such a morning, to be disregarded. Here the girl sat at ease, while the horses took breath, thoroughly appreciating her opportunities; wondering, not what Mr. Yelverton was doing or was going to do, but how it was that she had never been this way before. Then Mr. Brion turned and drove down the other side of the hill, and exclaimed "Here we are!" in triumph.
It was a shallow basin of a dell, in the midst of romantic glens, sandy, and full of bushes and wild flowers, and bracken and tussocky grass, and shady with tall-stemmed gum trees. As the buggy bumped and bounced into the hollow, shaving the dead logs that lay about in a manner which reflected great credit upon the lawyer's navigation, Elizabeth, feeling the cool shadows close over her head, and aware that they had reached their destination, looked all round her for the yawning cavern that she had specially come to see.
"Where are the caves?" she inquired—to Mr. Brion's intense gratification.
"Ah, where are they?" he retorted, enjoying his little joke. "Well, we have just been driving over them."
"But the mouth, I mean?"
"Oh, the mouth—the mouth is here. We were very nearly driving over that too. But we'll have lunch first, my dear, before we investigate the caves—if it's agreeable to you. I will take the horses out, and we'll find a nice place to camp before they come."
Presently the other buggy climbed over the ridge and down into the hollow; and Mr. Yelverton beheld Elizabeth kneeling amongst the bracken fronds, with the dappled sun and shade on her bare head and her blue cotton gown, busily trying to spread a table-cloth on the least uneven piece of ground that she could find, where it lay like a miniature snow-clad landscape, all hills except where the dishes weighed it to the earth. He hastened to help her as soon as he had lifted Patty and Eleanor from their seats.
"You are making yourself hot," he said, with his quiet air of authority and proprietorship. "You sit down, and let me do it. I am quite used to commissariat business, and can set a table beautifully." He took some tumblers from her hand, and, looking into her agitated face, said suddenly, "I could not help coming, Elizabeth—I could not leave it broken off like that—I wanted to know why you ran away from me—and Mrs. Duff-Scott gave me leave. You will let me talk to you presently?"
"Oh, not now—not now!" she replied, in a hurried, low tone, turning her head from side to side. "I must have time to think—"
"Time to think!" he repeated, with just a touch of reproach in his grave surprise. And he put down the tumblers carefully, got up, and walked away. Upon which, Elizabeth, reacting violently from the mood in which she had received him, had an agonising fear that he would impute her indecision to want of love for him, or insensibility to his love for her—though, till now, that had seemed an impossibility. In a few minutes he returned with her sisters and Mr. Brion, all bearing dishes and bottles, and buggy cushions and rugs; and, when the luncheon was ready, and the groom had retired to feed and water his horses, she lifted her eyes to her tall lover's face with a look that he understood far better than she did. He quietly came round from the log on which he had been about to seat himself, and laid his long limbs on the sand and bracken at her side.