"My dear child, I told you I would go if you liked, you know."
"Ah, that was too late; you'd spoilt it then. It won't come back."
"Do you mean that I have broken some spell? If that's the case I am very sorry."
"That won't mend it—you can't mend spells," said Tiny, laughing ruefully. "Perhaps it's as well you can't; and perhaps it's a good thing you came," she added more briskly. "I had humbugged myself into thinking I was on my way back to Australia. That was all."
"But if I were to go mightn't you humbug yourself again?"
"I don't think I want to," the girl answered thoughtfully; "at any rate I don't want you to go. Don't you think it's jolly up here? To me it's as good as a gallop up the bush—andI think we're taking our fences splendidly! But it was jollier still thinking that England was over there," nodding her head at the wake, "and that every five minutes or so it was a mile further away—instead of the other thing."
"Poor old England!"
"No, Erskine, I meant a mile nearer Australia—that was the jolly feeling," Tiny made haste to explain. "You know I didn't mean anything else—you know how I have enjoyed being with you and Ruth. Only I can't help wishing I was on my way back to Melbourne instead of to Plymouth. I'd give so much to see Australia again."
"Well, so you will see it again."
Her eyes sped seaward as she shook her head.
"Why on earth shouldn't you?" said Erskine, laughing.
"You know why."
Now he saw her meaning, and held his tongue. This was the subject on which he understood it to be her desire that they should not speak. To himself, moreover, it was a highly unattractive topic, and he was thoroughly glad to have it ignored as it had been; but if she alluded to the matter herself thatwas another thing, and he must say something. So he said:
"Is it really so certain, Tiny?"
"On my part absolutely. I'm only climbing down!"
Erskine was reminded of the pleasant things he had thought of saying to her at Cintra; they had been by him so long that he found himself saying them now as though he meant every word.
"My congratulations must keep till the proper time; but when that comes they may surprise you. My dear girl, I should like you to understand that you're not the only person whose opinion has changed since we were at Essingham. If I may say so at this stage of the proceedings, and if it is any satisfaction to you to hear it, I for one am going to be very glad about this thing, I think him such a first-rate fellow, Tiny!"
For a moment Christina gazed acutely at her brother-in-law. "I wonder if that's sincere?" she said reflectively. Then her eyes hurried back to the sea.
"I think he's a very good fellow indeed," said Erskine with emphasis.
The girl gave a little laugh. "Oh, he'sall that; the question is whether that's enough."
"It is, if he really loves you—as I think he must."
"Oh, if it's enough for him to be in love!"
There followed a great pause, during which the thought of pleasant things to say was thrown overboard and left far astern.
"I only hope," Erskine said at last, with an earnest ring in his voice which was new to Christina, "that you are not going to make the greatest mistake of your life!"
"I hope not also."
"Ah, don't make light of it!" he cried impetuously. "If you marry without love you'll ruin your life, I don't care who it is you marry! To marry for affection, or for esteem, or for money—they're all equally bad; there is no distinction. Take affection—for a time you might be as happy as if it were something more; but remember that any day you might see somebody that you could really love. Then you would know the difference, and it would embitter your whole existence with a quiet, private, unsuspected bitterness, of which you can have no conception. And so much the worse if you have married somebody whois honestly and sufficiently fond of you. His love would cut you to the heart—because you could only pretend to return it—because your whole existence would be a living lie!"
He was extremely unlike himself. His voice trembled, and in the dying light his face was gray. These things made his words impressive, but the girl did not seem particularly impressed. Had she remembered the one previous occasion when a similar conversation had taken place between them, the strangeness of his manner must have been driven home to her by contrast; but the contrast was a double one, and her own share in it kept her from thinking of the time when she had been serious and he had not, and now, when he was more serious than she had ever known him, she met him with a frivolous laugh.
"Well, really, Erskine, I've never heard you so terribly in earnest before! I think I had better not tell Ruth what you have said; my dear man, you speak as though you'd been there!"
It was some time before he laughed.
"If only you yourself would be more in earnest, Tiny! You may say this comes badly from me. I know there has been morejest than earnest between me and you. But if I was never serious in my life before I am now, and I want you, too, to take yourself seriously for once. You see, Tiny, I am not only an old married man by this time, but I am your European parent as well. I am entitled to play the heavy father, and to give you a lecture when I think you need one. My dear child, I have been in the world about twice as long as you have, and I know men and have heard of women who have poisoned their whole lives by marrying with love on the other side only; and the greater their worldly goods, the greater has been their misery! And rather than see you do as they have done——" The sentence snapped. "You shan't do it!" he exclaimed sharply. "You're far too good to spoil yourself as others have done and are doing every day."
"Who told you I was good?" inquired Christina, with a touch of the coquetry which even with him she could not entirely repress. "You never had it from me, most certainly. Let me tell you, Erskine, that I'm bad—bad—bad! And if I haven't shocked you sufficiently already it is evidently time that I did; so you'll please to understand that if I marryLord Manister it is partly because I think I owe it to him; otherwise it's for the main chance purely. And I think it's very unkind of you to make me confess all this," she added fretfully. "I never meant to speak to you about it at all. Only I can't bear you to think me better than I am."
Erskine shook his head sadly.
"At least you have a better side than this, Tiny—this is not you at all! You love and admire all that is honest and noble, and fresh and free; you should give that love and admiration a chance. But I'm not going to say any more to worry you. If you really, with your eyes open, are going to marry a man whom you do not love, I can only tell you that you will be doing at best a very cynical thing. And yet—I can understand it." This he added more to himself than to the girl.
He was turning away, but she laid a restraining hand upon his arm.
"Don't go," she exclaimed impulsively. "I can't let you go when—when you understand me better than anyone else ever did—and when I am never, never going to speak to you like this again."
"If only I could help you!"
"You cannot!" Tiny cried out. "I'm too far gone to be helped. I feel hopelessly bad and hard, and nobody can mend that. But if there's one grain of goodness in my composition that wasn't there when I came over to England, you may know, Erskine, if you care to know it, that it's you, and you alone, who have put it there!"
"Nonsense," he said; "what good have I done you?"
"You have talked sense to me, as only one other man ever did—and he wasn't as clever as you are. You've given me books to read, and they're the first good books I ever read in my life; you have dug a sort of oyster knife into my miserable ignorance! You have been a real good pal to me, Erskine, and you must never turn your back on me, whatever I do. I know you never will. I believe in you as I believe in very few people on this footstool; but there's one thing you can do for me now that will be even kinder than anything that you have ever done yet."
"There's nothing that I wouldn't do for you, Tiny," said Erskine tenderly. "What is it?"
The corners of her mouth twitched—her eyes twinkled.
"It's not to say another serious word to me this month! I know I began it this time; I won't do so again. I'm trying to be happy in my own way, if you'll only let me. I'm trying to make the most of my time. When I'm really engaged I shall need all the help and advice you can give me; for I mean to be very good to him, Erskine; I do indeed! Then of course I shall need to cultivate the finest manners; but until it actually comes off I'm trying to forget about it—don't you see? I'm doing my level best to forget!"
What Erskine saw was the tears in her eyes, but he saw them only for an instant; instead of his leaving Christina on the deck it was she who left him; and there he stood, between the high seas and the gathering shades of night, until both were black.
It was their last conversation of the kind.
One more night was spent at sea; the next they were all back in Kensington. Here they were greeted with a pleasant surprise: Herbert was in the house to meet them. Cambridge seemed already to have done him good; he was singularly polite and subdued, though a little uncommunicative. They, however, had much to tell him, so this was not noticedimmediately. His sisters supposed that he was in London for the night only, as he said he had come down from Cambridge that day. It was not until later that they knew that he had been sent down. Erskine broke the news to them.
"I'm afraid," he added, "that they've sent him down for good and all. The fact is, Ruth, your fears have been realized. He has done his best to fill another eye; and this time the proctor's! He says he shall go back to Melbourne immediately."
"Never!" cried Ruth; and she went straight to her brother, who was smoking viciously in another room.
"Yes, by ghost!" drawled Herbert through his hooked nose. "I'm going to clear out. I'm full up of England, Ruth, and I guess England's full up of me. The best thing I can do is to go back, and turn boundary rider or whim driver. That's about all I'm fit for, and it's what I'm going to do. TheBallaaratsails on the 2d—I've been to the office and taken my berth already. My oath, I drove there straight from Liverpool Street this afternoon!"
Nor was there any moving him from hispurpose, though Ruth tried for half an hour there and then. Twice that time Herbert spent afterward in Tiny's room; but it was not known whether Tiny also had attempted to dissuade him. When he left her the girl stood for five minutes with a foot on the fender and an elbow on the mantelpiece. Then she sought Ruth in haste.
Ruth had just gone upstairs. Erskine was surprised to see her back in his study almost immediately, and startled by her mode of entrance, which suggested sudden illness in the house.
"What in the world has happened?" he said, sitting upright in his chair.
"Happened?" cried Ruth bitterly. "It is the last straw! I give her up. I wash my hands of her. I wish she had never come over!"
"Tiny? Why, what has she been doing now?"
"It isn't what she has been doing—it is what she says she's going to do. You may be able to bring her to reason, but I never shall. I won't try—I wash my hands of her. I will say no more to her. But it is simply disgraceful! She is far worse than Herbert!"
"Has she unmade her mind," Holland asked eagerly.
"No, no, no! But worse, I call it. O Erskine, if you knew what she says——"
"I am waiting to hear."
"You'll never guess!"
"No, I give it up."
"So must Tiny—I never heard a madder idea in my life!"
"Thanwhat, my dear?"
"Her going out with Herbert in theBallaarat!"
December was at hand soon enough, and with the month came Lord Manister for his answer. Though more than slightly nervous he entered the modest house in Kensington with his head very high; and certain inappropriate sensations visited him during the few minutes he was kept waiting in the drawing room. He did not sit down. Then it was Tiny Luttrell who opened the door, and those sensations made good their escape from a bosom in which they had no business. In the living presence of the person one proposes to marry there are some misgivings that had need be impossible—Christina little suspected her privilege of shutting the door on Manister's with her own hand. He sat down at her example.
But if he was nervous so was she, and as he came bravely to the point she found it more and more difficult to meet his hungry eyes.It was rather rare for Christina to experience any difficulty of the kind. She rose, and stood in front of the fire, with her back to the room and Lord Manister. There, with her forehead resting on the rim of the mantelpiece (for Tiny that was not far to bend), and while the hot fire scorched her plain gray skirt and gave a needed color to the downcast face, she heard what Manister had to say. Soon she knew that he was saying it with his elbow on one end of the mantelpiece; and liked him for facing her so, and compelling her to face him. But when she found him waiting for his answer, she gave him it without lifting her eyes from the fire.
"No!"
He had asked her whether she had been able to make up her mind. The answer she had given was, indeed, the truth; but it had been prepared for a more conclusive question. She was vexed with him for the question he had chosen to put first; and the more so because it had snatched from her an admission which she had not intended to make. But she had not made up her mind—that was the simple truth; and now she trusted that he would make up his.
Instead of which he said sadly, after a pause:
"I wanted to give you six months!"
"It was very wrong of you to give me one," she answered with startling ingratitude.
"Why wrong?"
"You might have seen that I was unworthy of you."
"I might have given up loving you, I suppose, in a second!"
"I wish you would——"
"I never shall!"
"If you ever began," Christina added to her own sentence. At last her face was raised, and now it was his eyes that fell before the cool acumen of her smile.
"You don't believe in me yet!" he groaned. "Not yet, though I wait, wait, wait."
"No one asked you to wait," Lord Manister was reminded.
"But you see that I can't help it! You see that I am miserable about you!"
This indeed was sufficiently plain; and the sight of his misery was softening Christina by degrees. She said more kindly:
"Listen to me, Lord Manister. It is a month since you saw me. At this momentyou may feel what you are saying. Very well, then, youdofeel it; but have you felt it throughout the last month? Have you felt so patient—you are far too patient—all the time? Has it never seemed to you that my keeping you in doubt, even for one month, was a piece of impertinence you ought never to have stood? Wouldn't your friends simply think you mad if they knew how you were allowing me to use you? Haven't you yourself occasionally remembered who you are, and who I am, and burst out laughing? I must say I have; it sometimes seems to me so utterly absurd—— And you see you can't answer my questions!"
He could not; one after another they had penetrated to the quick.
"They are not fair questions," Manister said doggedly. "What may have crossed my mind when I have felt worried and wretched has nothing to do with it. Isn't it enough that I tell you I can wait your own good time—that I feel a pride in waiting, now we are together and I am looking in your eyes?"
"No, I don't think that's quite enough," replied Christina softly. "It would hardly be enough, you know, if you only felt me worthwaiting for while you were with me. That would mean that for some reason I fascinated you. And fascination isn't love, Lord Manister. I don't want to be rude—much less unkind—but I can't believe that you have ever been really in love with me; I simply can't!"
Yet she had never felt so near to that belief before. Her words, however, helped Lord Manister back to his dignity.
"Of course you must believe only what you choose," said he loftily. "One cannot force you to believe in one's sincerity. I suppose I spoilt you for believing in mine some time since. At all events you were fond of me once! Only a month ago you liked me all but well enough to marry me. Yet now you do not know!"
"Therefore the decision is left to you, Lord Manister; you must give me up."
"Never! while you are free."
His teeth were clenched.
"But do consider. Most probably I shall never care enough for you to marry you. And oh! I wonder how you can look at me when no other girl in the world would refuse you!"
"Can't you see that this is part of your charm?" cried the young man impulsively. "You are the one girl I know who is not worldly. You are the one girl I want!"
Christina shook her head.
"If I have any charm at all, you oughtn't to know what it is—you ought to love me you can't say why—there's no sizing up real love!" she informed him rapidly, but with a smile. "There's another thing, too. You cannot be used to being treated as I have treated you in many ways. I have often been intensely rude to you. I can't help thinking there must be a good deal of pique in your feeling toward me."
"There is more real love," returned Manister, "if I know it!"
"I wonder if you do know it?" said the girl, with a laugh; but she was wondering very seriously in her heart. He protested no more; she liked him for that, too, as also for the briskness in his tone and manner when he spoke next.
"You say you don't care for me enough, and you say I don't care for you properly, and we won't argue any more about either matter for the moment." He had flung back his headfrom the hand that had shaded his eyes; his elbow remained on the chimney-piece, but now he was standing erect. "There is something else," said Lord Manister, "that has prevented you from coming to a decision."
"There is certainly one thing that has had something to do with it."
"May I ask what it is?"
"Certainly, Lord Manister. I am going back to Australia."
"Soon?" This was after a pause, during which their eyes had not met.
"Sooner than was intended."
"Is it—is it for any special reason that—that you have kept from me?"
He was agitated by a sudden thought, which she read. She shook her head reassuringly.
"No, it is not to get married, nor yet engaged."
"Then there is no one out there?"
"There is no one anywhere that I could marry for love. That's the simple truth. I am going back to Australia because Herbert is going. Cambridge doesn't suit him, and I'm sorry to say he doesn't suit Cambridge. We came over together, so we are going back together. That, I promise you, is the wholeand only explanation. I myself did not want to go so soon."
"But surely you are not going this year?"
"We are—before Christmas."
As Tiny spoke her glance went to the window: she was very anxious to see the snow before she sailed, but none had fallen yet, though December had come in dull and raw.
"But your people here must be very much against that?"
"They were, but now it is settled."
"You must have promised to come back!"
Christina seemed surprised.
"Yes, I said I would come back some day."
"And you shall!" cried Manister passionately. "You shall come back as my wife! Do you suppose I am going to stop short at this, when but for your brother you would have been mine to-day? I don't mean to say he has influenced you, except by going back so soon; you love Australia, and you must needs go back with him. Then go! I told you to take six months; you have taken one of them. When the other five are up I am coming to you again wherever you may be. Till then I will take no answer; and whatever it may be in the end I bow to it—I bow to it!"
His passion surprised and even moved Christina; but his humility stirred up in her soul a contempt which mingled strangely with her pity. Women of spirit cannot admire the man who will submit to anything at their hands. Christina would willingly have given admiration in exchange for the love in which she was beginning to believe; it would have pleased her sense of justice, it would have promoted her self-respect to make some such small payment on account. With Manister's patience she had none at all. She was disappointed in him. Her foot tapped angrily on the fender.
"But I don't want you to wait!" exclaimed Christina ungraciously. "I have told you so already."
"Still I mean to do so, and it serves me right."
This touched her generosity.
"Ah, don't say that!" she cried earnestly. "Oh, Lord Manister, I have forgotten all old scores—I never think of them now! The balance has been the other way so long; and I do not deserve another chance."
"Ah, but Tiny—darling—it is I who am asking for that!"
His tone compelled her to meet his gaze—its intensity made her wince.
"You believe in me!" he cried joyously. "Say only that you believe in me, and I will go away now. I will go away happy and proud—to wait—for you."
Then Tiny laid her little hand on his arm, and her eyes that had filled with tears answered him to his present satisfaction. He held her hand for just a few seconds before he went, and in kindness she returned his pressure. Then the shutting of the front door down below made her realize that he was gone. And she had time to dry her eyes and to gather herself together before Ruth, whose hopes had been dead some days, came into the room with a dejected mien and pointedly abstained from asking questions.
"If it interests you to hear it," Tiny said lightly, "I am converted to your creed at last; I believe in Lord Manister!"
"But you are not engaged to him," Ruth said wearily; "I see you are not."
"I am not; but he insists on waiting. If only he wasn't so tame! But I can't help believing in him now; and that settles it."
"Nothing is settled until you are engaged," said the matter-of-fact sister, with a sigh.
"Nevertheless I'm going to try with all my might to care for him, now that I see that he must really care for me. And let me tell you that I shall consider myself all the more bound to him because I haven'tsaidyes, and because we'renotactually engaged!"
"Yes?" said the other incredulously. "That is so like you, Tiny!"
And Ruth almost sneered.
The worst of it all was this: that the young man himself had not invariably that confidence in his own affections which displayed itself so bravely and so convincingly at a psychological moment. Not that Manister was insincere, exactly. If you come to think of it, you may deceive others with perfect innocence, having once deceived yourself. And this was exactly what had happened.
There was one distinctive feature of the case: away from Christina Luttrell the poor fellow had already had his doubts of himself; in her presence those doubts were as certain to evaporate as snowflakes in the warmth of the sun.
Even as he went down Mrs. Holland's stairs Manister was joined by certain invisible companions—the misgivings that had made their escape as Christina entered the room. They had waited for him on the landing outside thedoor. They led and followed him downstairs. They linked arms with him in the street. They stifled him in his hansom, which they boarded ruthlessly. In one of the silent rooms of the club to which he drove they talked to him silently, sitting on the arms of his saddle-back chair and arguing all at once. Powerless to shake them off he was forced to bear with them, to hear what they had to say, to answer them where he could.
Mingling with the importunate voices of his inner consciousness were the remembered words of the girl. She had asked him whether he had never burst out laughing as the affair presented itself in certain lights; he did so now, silently, it is true, but with exceeding bitterness. She had told him that it was not enough that he should feel willing to wait for her when they were together; and now that he had left her, though so lately, he was certainly less inclined to be patient. She had suggested that he was more fascinated than in love; and already he knew that her suggestion had given shape and utterance to a vague suspicion of his own soul. She had gone so far as to hint at the possible secret of his infatuation, and there again she had hit the mark; thoughapart from her talent of torture her sweet looks and charming ways had been strong wine to Manister from the first. Still her snubs had piqued his passion in the beginning of things out in Melbourne; and here in Europe she had virtually refused him three times. Modest he might be, and yet know that this were a rare experience for such as himself at the hands of such as Tiny Luttrell. On the whole, the experience was sufficiently complete as it stood; yet he could not help wishing to win; indeed, he had gone too far to draw back, and for that reason alone the idea of defeat in the end was intolerable to him. And this was the one spring of his actions which seemed to have escaped Christina's notice; the others she had detected with an acuteness which made him wonder, for the first time, whether on her very merits she would be a comfortable person to live with, after all.
Gradually, however, these echoes of the late interview grew fainter in his ears, and its upshot came home to Manister with sensations of chagrin sharper than any he had endured in all his life before. His feelings when refused by this girl in the previous August, and under peculiarly humiliating circumstances, were enviable compared with his feelings now. Then he had deserved his humiliation—at least he was generous enough to say so—and he had taken what he called his punishment in a very manly spirit. But the desire to win had sent him on a secret mission to Cintra, on the chance of seeing her there, and his present feelings reminded him of those with which he had beaten his retreat from Portugal. For he had gone there for a final answer, and had come back without one; and to-day he had suffered afresh that selfsame humiliation, only in an aggravated form, and more voluntarily than ever. She had never asked him to wait; he had offered on both occasions to wait six months—nay, he had insisted on waiting. Even now, within a couple of hours after the event, he could scarcely credit his own weakness and stultification. He was by no means so weak in affairs wherein the affections played no part. He firmly believed that no other woman could have twisted him round her finger as this one had done. But here, perhaps, we have merely the everyday spectacle of a young man discerning exceptional excuses for a realized infirmity; and the point is that Manisterrealized his weakness this evening as he had never done before. The girl herself had made him look inward. She had suggested fascination, not love. That suggestion stuck painfully. Yet he was not sure.
Never had he felt so horribly unsure of himself; in the midst of his self-distrust there came to him, suddenly, the recollection that she distrusted him no longer, and there was actually some comfort in this thought, which is strange when you note its fellows, but due less to the contradictoriness of human nature than to the supremacy of a young man's vanity. He stood well with her now. She believed in him at last. Propped up by these reflections, he began almost to believe in himself. At least a momentary complacency was the result.
The improvement in his spirits allowed Lord Manister to give heed to another portion of his organism which had for some time been inviting him to go into another room and dine. Now he did so, with a sharp eye for acquaintances, whom he had no desire to meet. For this reason he had driven to the club which he had joined most recently; it was not a young man's club, so he felt fairly safe fromhis friends. Yet he had hardly ordered his soup, and was searching the wine list for the choice brand which the circumstances seemed to demand, when a heavy hand dropped upon his shoulder, and his glance leapt from the wine list to the last face he expected or wished to see—that of his kinsman Captain Dromard.
Captain Dromard was a cousin of the present earl, and notoriously the rolling stone of his house. Manister had seen him last in Melbourne, and ever since had borne him a grudge which he was not likely to forget. Had he dreamt that the captain (who had been last heard of in Borneo) was in London, Manister would have shunned this club in order to avoid the risk of meeting him; but it seemed that Captain Dromard had landed in England only that morning: and they dined together, of course; and Manister made the best of it. His kinsman was a big, grizzled, florid man, with an imperial, and with a comic wicked cut about him which made one laugh. But he retained an unpleasant trick of treating Manister as a mere boy: for instance, he was in time to choose the brand, and, as he said before the waiter, to prevent Manister frompoisoning himself. He was, however, an entertaining person, and at his best to-night, being wont to delight in London for a day or two before realizing the infernal qualities of the climate and arranging fresh travels. But Manister was not entertained; he tried to appear so, but the captain saw through the pretense, and immediately scented a woman. There were reasons why the rolling stone was particularly good at detecting this element—which always interested him. His interest was unusual in the present instance, owing to certain reminiscences of Manister in Melbourne during his own flying visit to that port. It was during a subsequent week-end in England that Captain Dromard had alarmed the countess, with a result of which he was as yet unaware; but he did not hesitate to make inquiries now, and he began by asking Manister how he had managed to get out of the scrape in which he had left him.
"I remember no scrape," said Manister stiffly.
"You don't? Well, perhaps I put it too strongly," conceded the captain. "We'll say no more about it, my boy. Devilish prettylittle thing, though; remember her well, but could never recall her name. By the bye, I'm afraid I terrified your mother over that; feared she was going to cable you home next day; was sorry I spoke."
"So was I," Manister said dryly, but, by an effort, not forbiddingly, so that the captain saw no harm in raising his glass.
"Well, here's to the lady's health, my boy, whoever she was, and wherever she may be!"
Manister smiled across his glass and drained it in silence. There was a glitter in his young eyes which made it difficult for the captain to drop the subject finally. Manister had been drinking freely, without becoming flushed, which is another sign of trouble. The captain could not help saying confidentially:
"You know, Harry, your mother was so keen for you to marry one of old Acklam's daughters. That's what frightened her. But it is to come off some day, isn't it?"
"Can't say," said Lord Manister.
"It ought to, Harry. I like to see a young fellow with your position marry properly, and settle down. I don't know which of the Garths it is, but I've always heard one of 'em was the girl you liked."
"Suppose the girl you like won't marry you?" Manister exclaimed, with a sudden change of manner, and in the tone of one consulting an authority.
"Well, there's an end on't."
"Ah, but suppose she can't make up her mind?"
"You might give her a month—though I wouldn't."
"Suppose a month is not enough for her?"
The captain stared; his bronzed forehead became barred with furrows; his eyes turned stony with indignation.
"A month not enough for her to make up her mind—about you?" he said at length incredulously. "Good God, sir, see her to the devil!"
Then Lord Manister showed his teeth. Though he had consulted the captain, he took his advice badly. He said you could not be much in love to be choked off so easily; he hinted that his kinsman had never been much in love. Captain Dromard intimated in reply that whether that was the case or not he was not without experience of a sort, and he could tell Harry that no woman under heaven was worth kneeling in the mud to, which Harrysaid hotly was unnecessary information. So they went elsewhere to smoke, and later on to a music hall, the subject having been left for good in the club coffee room. The following afternoon, however, Lord Manister drove through the snow with a very resolute front to show to Tiny Luttrell, who was just then passing Deal in theBallaarat, without having given him the faintest notion yesterday that she was to sail to-day.
Aboard theBallaaratChristina committed a new eccentricity, but it may be well to state at once, a perfectly harmless one. She confided in another girl—a practice which Tiny had avoided all her life. And this very girl had offended her at first sight by looking aggressively happy when the boat sailed and all nice women were in tears.
There had been a time when Christina seldom cried, but in England she had grown very soft in some ways, and she looked her last at it, and at the snow that had fallen in the night as if to please her, through blinding tears. She had never in her life felt more acutely wretched than when saying good-by to Ruth and Erskine, and her sorrow was heightened by the feeling that she had been both unkind and ungrateful to Ruth, to whom she clung for forgiveness at the last moment. The reason why her parting words were jocular, thoughbroken, was because the sight of an honest, smiling face, which might have blushed for smiling then, sent a fleam of irritation through her heart that awoke the latent mischief in her wet eyes.
"I do wish you would ask Erskine to throw a snowball at that depressing person," she whispered to Ruth, "who does nothing but laugh and look really happy! If it was only put on for the sake of her friends I could forgive her; but it isn't. Tell him I mean it—there's no fun in me to-day; and you may also tell him that it would have been only brotherly of him to kiss me on this occasion, when we may all be going to the bottom!"
Erskine, who had crossed the gangway before his wife, so that she need not feel that he overheard her final words to her own kin, shook his head at Tiny when Ruth joined him on the quay. But his smile was lifeless; there was no fun in him either to-day. He drew his wife's arm through his own, and Tiny saw the last of them standing together thus. They stood in snow and mud, but the railway shed behind them was a great sheet of unsullied whiteness, softly edging the bright December sky, and Christina never forgot her firstglimpse of the snow and her last of Ruth and Erskine. When their figures were gone and only the snow was left for Christina's eyes, they filled afresh, and she broke hastily from Herbert, who was himself uncommonly dejected. She hurried unsteadily to her cabin, to find her cabin companion singing softly to herself as she unstrapped her rugs; for her cabin companion was, of course, the odiously cheerful person who already on deck had done violence to Christina's feelings.
Thus the acquaintance began in a particularly unpromising manner; but the cheerful person turned out to be as bad a sailor as Christina was a good one, and she met with much practical kindness at Christina's hands, which had a clever, tender way with them, though in other respects the good sailor was not from the first so sympathetic. It is harder than it ought to be to sympathize with the seasick when one is quite well one's self; still Christina found it impossible not to admire her extraordinary companion, who kept up her spirits during a whole week spent in her berth, and was more cheerful than ever at the end of it, when she could scarcely stand. Then Christina expressed her admiration, likewise her curiosity, and received a simple explanation. The cheerful person was on her way to Colombo and the altar-rails. Hertrousseauwas in the hold.
The two became exceeding fast friends, and their friendship was founded on mutual envy. Tiny was envied for the various qualities which made her greatly admired on board, for that admiration itself, and for the marked manner in which she paid no heed to it; and she envied her friend a very ordinary love story, now approaching a very ordinary end. The cheerful girl was plain, unaccomplished, and not at all young. But there was one whom she loved better than herself; she was properly engaged; she was happy in her engagement; her soul was settled and at peace. Also she was good, and Christina envied her far more than she envied Christina, who would listen wistfully to the commonplace expression of a commonplace happiness, but was herself much more reserved. It was only when the other girl guessed it that she admitted that she also was "as good as engaged." The other girl clamored to know all about it; and ultimately, in the Indian Ocean, she discovered that Christina was not the least in love with the man towhom she was as good as engaged. Then this honest person spoke her mind with extreme freedom, and Christina, instead of being offended, opened her own heart as freely, merely keeping to herself the man's name and never hinting at his high degree. She declared that she was morally bound to him, adding that she had treated him badly enough already; her friend ridiculed the bond, and told her how she would be treating him worse than ever. Christina argued—it was curious how fond she was of arguing the matter, and how she allowed herself to be lectured by a stranger. But these two were not strangers now; the cheerful girl was the best friend Tiny had ever made among women. They parted with a wrench at Colombo, where Tiny saw the other safely into the arms of a gentleman of a suitably happy and ordinary appearance; and so one more friend passed in and out of the young girl's life, leaving a deeper mark in the three weeks than either of them suspected.
The rest of the voyage dragged terribly with Christina, which is an unusual experience for the prettiest girl aboard an Australian liner; only on this voyage the prettiest girl was alsothe most unsociable. Beyond her late companion (whose berth remained empty to depress Christina whenever she entered the cabin) Miss Luttrell had formed few acquaintances and no friendships between London and Colombo; between Colombo and Melbourne she simply preyed upon herself. Herbert remonstrated with her, and the third officer—who had been fourth on the boat in which they had come over—was excessively interested, remembering the difference six months earlier. Then, indeed, Christina had found a good deal to say to all the officers, including the captain, whom she had chaffed notoriously; but now she would stay out late and alone on the starlit deck without ever breaking the rules by conversing with the officer of the watch (her pet trick formerly), and only the third, who knew her of old, had the right to bid her good-day. Tiny's cheerful friend had left her wretched and apprehensive. She saw the Southern Cross rise out of the Southern Sea without a thrill of welcome, but rather with a vague dismay; from the after-rail she said good-by to the Great Bear with a shudder at the thought of seeing it again. Neither end of the earth presented a very peaceful prospectto Christina as she hovered between the two on the steamer's deck. She had quite made up her mind to return to England, however, and to reward Lord Manister's long-suffering docility by marrying him at the end of the six months. Meanwhile she would enjoy Australia and tell only one of her friends there. One she must tell, and with her own lips, in case she should be misjudged. And thinking not a little of her own justification, she invented a small sophistry with which to defend herself as occasion might arise. She argued that two men were in love with her, that she herself was in love with neither, but that she liked one of them too well to marry him without love. Therefore, she said, the easiest way out of it was to marry the other, who not only had less in him to satisfy, but who had more to give in place of real happiness. She was proud of this argument. She was sorry it had not occurred to her before stopping at Colombo—forgetting that she had told her friend of only one man who was in love with her. But the heart starves on sophistry with nothing to it; and with Christina the voyage dragged cruelly to its end.
But the moment she landed in Melbournea good thing happened to her—she was snatched out of herself. A common shock and anxiety awaited both Christina and Herbert Luttrell: they found their mother in tears over a piece of very bad news from Wallandoon. It seemed that Mr. Luttrell had gone up to the station the week before to choose the site for a well which he was about to sink at considerable expense, and that he was now lying at the old homestead with a broken leg, the result of a buggy accident with a pair of young horses. He was able to write with his own hand in pencil, and he mentioned that Swift had fetched a surgeon from the river in the quickest time ever known; that the surgeon had set the leg quite successfully, so that there was no occasion for anxiety, though naturally he should be unable to leave Wallandoon for some weeks. He expressed forcibly the hope that his wife would not think of joining him there; she was not strong enough, and he needed no attention. Nevertheless, had theBallaaratarrived one day later, Mrs. Luttrell would have gone. Her two children were in time to restrain her, but only by undertaking to go instead. Before they could realize that they had spent an afternoon anda night in Melbourne they had left the city and had embarked on an inland voyage of five hundred miles up country.
So their first full day ashore was spent in a railway carriage; but all that night the stars were in their eyes, and the gum trees racing by on either hand, and the warm wind fanning their faces, because Tiny would never travel inside the coach. They were back in Riverina. The Murray coiled behind them; the Murrumbidgee lay before. And the night after that they were creeping across the desert of the One Tree Plain, with the Lachlan lying ahead and the Murrumbidgee left behind. Here the leather-hung coach labored in the mud, for the Lachlan district was suffering before it could profit from a rather heavy rainfall three days old; and the driver flogged seven horses all night long instead of mildly chastening five, and the girl at his side could not have slept if she had tried, but she did not try. To her the night seemed too good to miss. The stars shone brilliantly from rim to rim of the unbroken plain, and upward from the overflowing crab-holes, and even in the flooded ruts, where the coach wheels split and scattered them like quicksilver beneath thethumb. There was no conversation on the coach. On the eve of facing his father Herbert was rehearsing his defense, while Tiny was just reveling in the night, and feeling very happy, so she said.
For a couple of hours before dawn they rested at Booligal. But Booligal is notorious for its mosquitoes, and there had been three inches of rain there, so the rest was a mockery. Tiny had a bed to lie down on, but she did not lie long. She was found by Herbert (who smoked six pipes in those two hours), leaning against one of the veranda posts as if asleep on her feet, but with eyes fixed intently upon a dull, reddening arc on the very edge of the darkling plain.
"By the time we get there," said Herbert severely, "you'll be just about dished! What on earth are you doing out here instead of taking a spell when you can get it?"
"I'm watching for the sun," murmured Christina, without moving. "It's a regular Australian dawn; you never saw one like it in England. Here the sun gets up in the middle of the night, and there he very often doesn't get up at all. Oh, but it's glorious to be back—don'tyouthink so, old Herbs?"
"I might—if it wasn't for the governor."
Tiny flushed with shame. She had forgotten the accident. Being reminded of it she turned her back on the sunrise in deep contrition, but she had not taken Herbert's meaning.
"I funk facing him," said he gloomily. "I have nothing to say for myself, and if I had a fellow couldn't say it with the poor governor lying on his back."
"Poor old Herbs!" said Tiny kindly. "I don't think you have much to fear, however. It was our mistake in wanting you to go to Cambridge when you'd been your own boss always. You were born for the bush—I'm not sure that we both weren't!"
He did not hear her sigh.
"It's all very well for you to talk, Tiny! You haven't to make your peace with anybody—you haven't to confess that you've made a ghastly fool of yourself!"
"Have I not?" exclaimed the girl bitterly.
"I thought you weren't going to mention his name?" Herbert said in surprise.
"No more I am," replied Tiny, recovering herself. "So, as you say, it is all very well for me to talk." And as she turned a ball of fire was balanced on the distant rim of the plain,and the arc above was now a semicircle of crimson, which blended even yet with the lingering shades of night.
Even Herbert was not in all Tiny's secrets. He never dreamt that she had before her an ordeal far worse than his own. When they sighted the little township where the station buggy always met the coach, he thought her excitement due to obvious and natural causes. The township roofs gleamed in the afternoon sun for half an hour before one could distinguish even a looked-for object, such as a buggy drawn up in the shade at the hotel veranda. Herbert had time to become excited himself, in spite of the ignoble circumstances of his return.
"I see it!" he exclaimed with confidence, at five hundred yards. "And good old Bushman and Brownlock are the pair. I'd spot 'em a mile off."
"Can you see who it is in the buggy?" asked Tiny, at two hundred. She was sitting like a mouse between Herbert and the driver.
"I shall in a shake; I think it's Jack Swift."
He did not know how her heart was beating. At fifty yards he said, "It isn't Swift; it's one of the hands. I've never seen this joker before."
"Ah!" said Tiny, and that was all. Herbert had no ear for a tone.
The manager of Wallandoon was harder at work that afternoon than any man on the run. This was generally the case when there was hard work to be done; when there was not, however, Swift had a way of making work for himself. He had made his work to-day. Nothing need have prevented his meeting the coach himself; but it had occurred to Swift that he would be somewhat in the way at the meeting between Mr. Luttrell and his children, while with regard to his own meeting with Christina he felt much nervousness, which night, perhaps, would partly cloak. This, however, was an instinct rather than a motive. Instinctively also he sought by violent labor to expel the fever from his mind. He was absurdly excited, and his energy during the heat of the day was little less than insane. So at any rate it seemed to the youth who was helping him by looking on, while Swift coveredin half a tank with brushwood. The tank had been almost dry, but was newly filled by the rains, and the partial covering was designed to delay evaporation. But Swift himself would execute his own design, and thought nothing of standing up to his chest in the water, clothed only in his wide-awake, though he was the manager of the station. The young storekeeper did not admire him for it, though he could not help envying the manager his thick arms, which were also bronzed, like the manager's face and neck, and in striking contrast to the whiteness of his deep chest and broad shoulders. There had been a change in storekeepers during recent months, a change not by any means for the better.
Near the tank were some brushwood yards, which were certainly in need of repairs, but the need was far from immediate. Swift, however, chose to mend up the fences that night, while he happened to be on the spot, and his young assistant had no choice but to watch him. It was dark when at last they rode back together to the station, silent, hungry, and not pleased with one another; for Swift was one of those energetic people whom it is difficult to help unless you are energetic yourself; andthe new storekeeper was not. This youth did little for his rations that day until the homestead was reached. Then the manager left him to unsaddle and feed both horses, and himself walked over to the veranda, whence came the sound of voices.
Mr. Luttrell was lying in the long deck chair which had been procured from a neighboring station, and Herbert was smoking demurely at his side. Christina was not there at all.
"You will find her in the dining room," Mr. Luttrell said, as his son and the manager shook hands. "She has gone to make tea for you; she means to look after us all for the next few weeks."
The dining room was at the back of the house, and as Swift walked round to it he stepped from the veranda into the heavy sand in which the homestead was planted. He could not help it. His love had grown upon him since that short week with her, nine months before. He felt that if his eyes rested upon her first he could take her hand more steadily. So he stood and watched her a moment as she bent over the tea table with lowered head and busy fingers, and there wassomething so like his dreams in the sight of her there that he almost cried out aloud. Next instant his spurs jingled in the veranda. She raised her head with a jerk; he saw the fear of himself in her eyes—and knew.
It did not blind him to her haggard looks.
When they had shaken hands he could not help saying, "It is evident that the old country doesn't agree with you, as you feared." And when it was too late he would have altered the remark.
"Seeing that it's six weeks since I left it, and that I have been traveling night and day since I landed, you are rather hard on the old country."
So she answered him, her fingers in the tea caddy, and her eyes with them. The lamplight shone upon her freckles as Swift studied her anxiously. Perhaps, as she hinted, she was only tired.
"I say, I can't have you making tea for me!" Swift exclaimed nervously. "You are worn out, and I am accustomed to doing all this sort of thing for myself."
"Then you will have the kindness to unaccustom yourself! I am mistress here until papa is fit to be moved."
And not a day longer. He knew it by the way she avoided his eyes. Yet he was forced to make conversation.
"Why do you warm the teapot?"
"It is the proper thing to do."
"I never knew that!"
"I dare say it isn't the only thing you never knew. I shouldn't wonder if you swallowed your coffee with cold milk?"
"Of course we do—when we have coffee."
"Ah, it is good for you to have a housekeeper for a time," said Christina cruelly, she did not know why.
"It's my firm belief," remarked Swift, "that you have learnt these dodges in England, and that you didnotdetest the whole thing!"
The words had a far-away familiar sound to Christina, and they were spoken in the pointed accents with which one quotes.
"Did I say I should detest the whole thing?" asked Christina, marking the tablecloth with a fork.
"You did; they were your very words."
"Come, I don't believe that."
"I can't help it; those were your words. They were your very last words to me."
"And you actually remember them?"
She looked at him, smiling; but his face put out her smile, and the wave of compassion which now swept over hers confirmed the knowledge that had come to him with her first frightened glance.
The storekeeper, who came in before more was said, was the unconscious witness of a well-acted interlude of which he was also the cause. He approved of Miss Luttrell at the tea tray, and was to some extent recompensed for the hard day's work he had not done. He left her with Swift on the back veranda, and they might have been grateful to him, for not only had his advent been a boon to them both at a very awkward moment, but, in going, he supplied them with a topic.
"What has happened to my little Englishman?" Christina asked at once. "I hoped to find him here still."
"I wish you had. He was a fine fellow, and this one is not."
"Then you didn't mean to get rid of my little friend?"
"No. It's a very pretty story," Swift said slowly, as he watched her in the starlight. "His father died, and he went home and came in for something; and now that little chap isactually married to the girl he used to talk about!"
Tiny was silent for some moments. Then she laughed.
"So much for my advice! His case is the exception that proves my rule."
"I happen to remember your advice. So you still think the same?"
"Most certainly I do."
He laughed sardonically. "You might just as well tell me outright that you are engaged to be married."
The girl recoiled.
"How do you know?" she cried. "Who has told you?"
"You have—now. Your eyes told me twenty minutes ago."
"But it isn't true! Nobody knows anything about it! It isn't a real engagement yet!"
"I have no doubt it will be real enough for me," answered Swift very bitterly; and he moved away from her, though her little hands were stretched out to keep him.
"Don't leave me!" she cried piteously. "I want to tell you. I will tell you now, if you will only let me."
He faced about, with one foot on the veranda and the other in the sand.
"Tell me," he said, "if it is that old affair come right; that is all I care to know."
"It is; but it hasn't come right yet—perhaps it never will. If only you would let me tell you everything!"
"Thank you; I dare say I can imagine how matters stand. I think I told you it would all come right. I am very glad it has."
"Jack!"
But Jack was gone. In the starlight she watched him disappear among the pines. He walked so slowly that she fancied him whistling, and would have given very much for some such sign of outward indifference to show that he cared; but no sound came to her save the chirrup of the crickets, which never ceased in the night time at Wallandoon. And that made her listen for the champing of the solitary animal in the horse yard, until she heard it, too, and stood still to listen to both noises of the night. She remembered how once or twice in England she had seemed to hear these two sounds, and how she had longed to be back again in the old veranda. Now she was back. This was the old, oldveranda. And those two old sounds were beating into her brain in very reality—without pause or pity.
"Why, Tiny," said Herbert later, "this is the second time to-day! I believe youcansleep on end like a blooming native-companion. You're to come and talk to the governor; he would like you to sit with him before we carry him into his room."
"Would he?" Tiny cried out, and a moment later she was kneeling by the deck chair and sobbing wildly on her father's breast.
"Just because I told her she'd dish herself," remarked Herbert, looking on with irritation, "she's been and gone and done it. That's still her line!"