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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 50832
   :PG.Title: An Australian Girl
   :PG.Released: 2016-01-02
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Mrs. Alick Macleod
   :DC.Title: An Australian Girl
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1894
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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AN AUSTRALIAN GIRL
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      AN

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      AUSTRALIAN GIRL

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      BY

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      MRS. ALICK MACLEOD

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      AUTHOR OF 'THE SILENT SEA', ETC.

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      AUSTRALIAN EDITION

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      LONDON
      RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON
      Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen
      1894

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      [*All rights reserved*]

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      *NOTE.*

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      *This edition is especially issued for circulation in the
      Australian Colonies only.*

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.. _`CHAPTER I.`:

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   AN AUSTRALIAN GIRL

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   CHAPTER I.

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It was one Sunday afternoon in the middle of December
and in the province of South Australia.  The grass was
withered almost to the roots, fast turning gray and brown.
Indeed, along the barer ridges of the beautiful hills that
rise in serried ranks to the east of Adelaide, the herbage
was already as dry and bleached as carded flax.  In the
gullies, thickly timbered and lying in perpetual shade, the
ground still retained the faint graying green distinctive of
Australian herbage in a state of transition from spring
verdure to summer drought.

But soon even the shadiest recesses would bear witness
to the scorching dryness of the season.  For even before
the middle of this first month of summer, two or three of
those phenomenal days had come which furnish anecdotes
for many successive months alike to the weather statist and
the numerous class who cultivate community of soul by
comparing experiences of those dreadful days on which 'the
hall thermometer stood at 104° before noon.'  This Sunday
had not quite been one of the days that make the oldest
residents turn over heat averages extending to the early
dawn of the country's history.  But, nevertheless, it was a
very hot, still day, without a breath of wind stirring, and
in the distance that faint shimmering bluish haze which,
to the experienced eye, tells its own tale of days to come.

The masses of white, silver and messmate gum-trees that
clothe these same Adelaide hills so thickly, formed a
grateful resting-place for the eye, wearied with the steadfast
glare of sunshine.  So did the vineyards that dot their
declining slopes, and the gardens and orchards that are
scattered broadcast to the east of the town.  But even
Adelaide itself is interwoven with the foliage of trees, which
do so much to mitigate, both for eye and body, the severities
of a semi-tropical climate.  This fascinating embroidery
of trees is more especially observable in glancing over North
Adelaide.  This extensive and important suburb, which is
divided from Adelaide proper by the Torrens Lake and Park
Lands, lies considerably above the city and adjacent
suburbs.  So large a proportion of the houses are
surrounded by gardens, that from some points of view North
Adelaide looks like a well-trimmed wood, thickly studded
with houses.

And these gardens are, as a rule, neither suburban slips,
with precocious trees selected for their speedy power of
growth, nor the painfully pretentious enclosures which
auctioneers delight to term 'grounds.'  No, they are genuine
gardens—roomy, shadowy, well planted, well watered; rich
in flowers and many fruit-trees, bending in due season under
their fertile loads; haunted with the hum of rifling bees,
fragrant with the perfume of old-world blossoms.  In such
a garden on this Sunday afternoon a young man and woman
were slowly pacing up and down a broad central walk,
thickly trellised with vines.  The gadding tendrils, the
wealth of wide emerald leaves, the countless oval clusters
of ripening grapes—Crystal, Black Prince, and delicate
Ladies' Fingers—which clothed the trellis on the sides and
overhead, made a delightful picture.  So did the great
rose-trees hard by, garlanded after their kind with pale pink,
yellow, white and blood-red roses.  Parallel with this vine
arcade there were loquat trees loaded with thick clusters of
clear-skinned creamy fruit, and orange-trees, with dark-green
globes nestling among glossy boughs, sheeted in waxen
blossoms, whose penetrating odour loaded the atmosphere.
But as so often happens when a young man and woman are
engaged in a *tête-à-tête*, neither the objects round them nor
any topic of wide social importance engrossed their attention.

'Do you know why I asked you to come out into the
garden, Stella?' said the young man, breaking a pause that
had followed some previous talk.

'Oh, to admire the roses, and flick the poor vine-leaves
with your riding-whip now and then.'

'I wouldn't mind betting a thousand to one you know as
well as I do; but that's the way with you.  You'll never
help a fellow out of a hole.  Why didn't you come to
Melbourne last month?'

'Ted, that reminds me.  Shouldn't I congratulate you
on your horse winning the Melbourne Cup?  Or is it an old
stupid story by this time?'

'It's the things that don't come off which make the stupid
stories.'

'Well, I congratulate you, then.  How long have you
been on the turf?'

'I haven't been on the turf at all, in one way.  I've bred
racehorses, and bought and sold them, ever since my uncle
died, leaving me Strathhaye; that's now six years ago, come
Easter.'

'Well, for six years you have been more deeply interested
in young horses than in anything else in the world——'

'You know a jolly sight better than that.'

'You have talked of them, dreamt of them, been with
them; several times you have nearly died for them; always
you have lived for them, and now at last you have won the
blue ribbon of the Australian racing world.  How did you
feel when you saw your horse pass the winning-post?'

'I didn't see him at all.  He was a dark horse, and sold
the bookmakers right and left.  There was a packed mob of
them yelling like devils, calling out this horse and the other.
When the number was put up, and people kept shouting
"Konrad!" I saw blue stars for a bit.'

'It must be delightful for something to happen that
makes you see blue stars.  I almost wish I had been
there.'

'I wish you had.  I would have had a new drag in your
honour, and a team that would have made most of those
there look silly.  Why didn't you come when Laurette wrote
to ask you?'

'Oh, let me see!  I know there were very good reasons,
but I forget them.'

'Now, Stella, don't sham.  You wouldn't forget them if
they were very good reasons.'

'What nonsense! the better they are the more completely
they go under sometimes.  Think what good reasons there
are for being good, and things of that sort.'

'Now, I'm not going to be put off.  You've often served
me that trick.  I ask you a question and you start a new
quarry, and the night after I wake up thinking, "Stella
never told me whether she still writes to Billy Stein," or
whatever it may be.  Why didn't you come?'

'Must you know?'

'Yes, certainly.'

'Well, as I was walking by the Torrens, I found a little
palm-basket sewn up in the most cunning manner with a
red worsted thread.  I unpicked it, and out flew a little
milk-white dove, crying: "Don't go to the Melbourne Cup,
don't go to the Melbourne Cup!"'

'Well; I'll be hanged if ever I saw a girl that can make
up a fib patter than you can when you like!'

'Now I know why you wanted to come into the garden—so
that my mother shouldn't overhear you talking like a
jockey.'

'Oh, that's all you know about the way jockeys talk!
You never heard them.  Besides, you know, you shouldn't
tell a crammer.'

'It's not a crammer—it's a parable.'

'That's blasphemy, isn't it, calling yarns you make up as
you go along after things in the Bible?'

'Do you think there are no parables except those in the
New Testament?'

'I know a parable is when a fellow asks for a long drink
in everlasting fire, and the other chap in Isaac's bosom won't
even wet his lips.  By Jove, I've often thought there wasn't
much to choose between them for goodness!  One had his
good time here and turned his back on the beggar; but the
beggar was more spiteful—he had all eternity to behave
better, but didn't.'

'Oh, Ted! you are too delightfully literal.'

'I wish to the Lord you really believed I was too delightfully
anything.  Surely you might have dropped a fellow a
line when Konrad won, seeing you had the naming of him.'

'Did I?  When?'

'Why, a month after he was foaled.  Don't you remember
that frightfully stupid ball at Government House, where a
fellow couldn't put a hoof down without treading on some
old tabby's train?  There was Mrs. Bartholomew Gay with
one from here to the Polar regions—white satin embroidered
with Chinese dragons, or something.  I had to stand with
one foot in the air, like a circus-tumbler, so often, for fear
of stamping on her tail; at last I firmly planted my foot
on it, and tore it out of the gathers.  By Jove, didn't she
look daggers at me!  But she trundled it off the floor after
that.'

'What a memory you have!' said the girl, laughing.  'I
remember now—we sat out a dance, and you told me about
some signally talented yearlings, and this foal, who had such
a brilliant pedigree—I am proud of him; I shall kiss the
star on his forehead when I see him.'

'You remember he has a star?  You had much better
let me take it to him—not that I would give it to him,
though.'

'Now, Ted, if you are too bold I shall return to my
book.'

'No, no, you wouldn't have the heart to do that.  You
can always go to your books while I am mostly three
hundred and fifty miles away.  How many months is it
since I saw you last?'

'Oh, two or three, I suppose.'

'It was in July, nearly six months ago; and you then
said you would most likely come to Laurette's in November.
But you didn't.  You wouldn't come to the Cup, and you
wouldn't drop me a line to say you were glad about Konrad—all
to avoid giving me a chance.  Now, don't make your
eyes big, as if you didn't take in what I say.  Why don't
you ask me what chance?'

'Well, then, what chance?' returned the young lady,
laughing, but with a heightened colour.

'To once more ask you to marry me.'

'Only once more?  Then after that we may be fast
friends.'

'Not at all—we shall be man and wife.'

'Oh, Ted!  Well, I suppose we could hardly be both.'

They smiled in each other's faces, but the young man
soon became grave.

'Stella, how often have I asked you to marry me?'

'Do you mean counting from the very beginning, or since
we have grown up?'

'I don't think it's fair for you always to poke borax at
me.  Why don't you be serious?'

'I don't like being serious.  I have been to church once
already.  The proper way to spend a hot Sunday is to be
like chaff that the storm carrieth away——'

'What do you mean by that?  Is it another parable?'

'I mean to lie in a hammock in the west veranda, and
think whatever idle thoughts choose to come into your
head, or read your favourite poets, or listen to a bird on a
branch hard by.  Do you hear that white-breasted swallow
in the top of the Moreton Bay fig-tree?'

They were silent for a few minutes, and the liquid,
melodious carols of the little minstrel filled the air.

'But I would much sooner listen to you than to that
little rubbish,' said the young man in an emphatic tone.

'Oh, what bad taste!  Wouldn't you like to know what
it really feels like to float in the air like a sunbeam?' asked
the girl mischievously.

'He only flies and sings for his tucker—I can get mine
without that.  Besides, I would sooner be on the earth
near you than anywhere you could mention.  Stella, it was
close to this very spot I first asked you to be my wife, when
we were both of an age to marry.  Do you remember
it?'

The girl looked at her companion with undisguised
amusement.

'I should think I did!  You were barely nineteen.'

'And you were nearly eighteen—a very good age for
both, considering I had been left my own master twelve
months before, with twelve thousand a year.  What more
did we want?'

'A little wisdom, a little love, a little sympathy, and
power of companionship—everything that we ought to have
mutually.'

'Do you mean that I didn't love you enough, or didn't
know my own mind?'

'But surely marriage is the sort of bargain which needs
two to make it?'

'Well, at any rate you refused me out and out then, and
you were as solemn as if you were going into a convent.
Larry always declares you were thinking of doing it then.
I know you had a picture of the Virgin, and said she was
our advocate, and talked about the soul and all sorts of
Papist things—enough to make a Protestant's hair creep.'

'Did your hair creep?  And how did you know you were
a Protestant?  Because you never go to church, I suppose?'

'That's neither here nor there.  But now, do you
remember the second time I asked you?'

A quick wave of colour swept over the girl's face.

'Ted, what is the use of going over all this?'

'Well, I'll go over it—and you check me if I make a
mistake.  It was eighteen months later.  We hadn't seen
each other for nearly a year.  You were in the garden when
I came.  Is that right?'

'Yes.'

'I saw your mother and told her I was going to try my
luck again, and she said I had her consent and good wishes.
The moment you saw me you asked if any gifted year-old
colt had hit his leg, I looked so serious; and then you said:
"Oh, you are going to be foolish again"——'

'And you were, and I was still more foolish—for you
knew your own mind, and I didn't know mine.'

'Foolish!  By George! when I think about you, and
feel rather savage, I remember that once in your life,
anyhow, you were good and sensible; and that's the day you
promised to be my wife, and sat beside me in the arbour
of Spanish reeds, with the scarlet japonica hanging on it in
bundles.'

'You certainly have rather a dreadful memory.'

'Yes—you wore a cream-coloured dress like the one you
have on now.  I could tell you every word you said—and,
by heaven!  I could tell you, too, how I felt a week
afterwards when I got your letter at Strathhaye breaking it all
off, and saying it was a frightful mistake on your part.'

'Well, Ted, do you want me to say again how sorry I
am?  Do you want me to grovel in the dust all my life
because of that blunder?  After all, you brought it on
yourself by being so persistent when I was in rather a
weak-minded mood.'

'Weak-minded?  You never were half so good before or
since.  And you had quite got rid of all that stuff about
convents and Papists.'

'You must not speak so disrespectfully of these things.'

'Well, you know very well you may have any notions
you like—as long as you have me.'

'That is rather a strong bribe.'

'I'll make it much stronger if you'll tell me how.  You
don't suppose it does a fellow any good to come a cropper
like that, do you?'

'Why, three months afterwards I heard you were going
to be married to Miss Julia Morton.  Why weren't
you?'

'I did try to like Julia—if it were only to vex you; but,
by Jove! when she began to be in earnest, I found the shoe
was on the wrong foot.  You might be vexed for a day, but
I should be vexed for all the rest of my life.'

'What makes you think I would be vexed for a day?'

'Oh, just because I've come to belong to you—in a sort
of way—like that goggle-eyed owl and the little gold pistol
hanging at your watch-chain.'

'I use the little gold pistol to wind up my watch with,
and the owl has sparkling ruby eyes into which I look in
church when I am very tired.  The one is useful and the
other beautiful, you see, Ted.'

'And I am both,' said the young man imperturbably.
'Besides, I can give you whatever money will buy—take
you anywhere.'

'But then, you see, you would be always there.'

'Yes; and when I wouldn't be about you would nearly
cry your eyes out.  You may laugh, but women always get
fonder of their husbands.  Look here, Stella, you said
"yes" once before; you'll have to say it again and stick
to it.  The last time I spoke to you you said you would
think over it.  You've had plenty of time.  You're close
on twenty-three.  A girl should be married by that time.'

'Or not at all.  You seem to forget that many women
never marry.'

'But you're not one of them.  Now, Stella, look me in
the face and tell me, do you intend to be an old maid?'

'Oh, one doesn't intend it; but sometimes circumstances
are more merciful than one's intentions.'

'Has any fellow come along that you care for more than
me?'

'N—no.'

'Thank the Lord for that!  All you know have been in
love with you already—Willy Stein, Wigram, Lindsay,
Andrew——'

'Ted, you really are too absurd!  Don't you think it is
wrong to trifle away the precious moments that never come
back again?'

'Ah, yes, they do.  When I've been with you the time
comes back over and over again.  Besides, Stella, how can
you call it trifling when I ask you to marry me?  Will you?'

'No, thank you.'

'You speak just as if I offered you a mouldy bit of bread.'

'No; as if you offered me some rich cake for which I
have no appetite.'

'What if you did not get another chance of refusal?'

'Do you suppose I expect you to turn up periodically all
my life, asking me if I am "game" to come out with you
into the garden?'

'Well, it's what I'll do, unless you get married to
someone else.'

'Or unless you get married yourself.'

'I shall never marry any woman but Stella Courtland,
and that's as sure as my name is Edward Ritchie.'

The two had paused in their pacings to and fro, and
stood facing each other at the end of the vine arcade
furthest from the house, close to a great white Fortuniana
rose-tree, thickly covered over with roses and buds in all
stages of unclosing.

The girl was tall and very finely formed.  Her face in
repose was apt to be rather cold and pale.  The eyes were
extremely beautiful—starry, large, deep and liquid.  When
we try to describe eyes or flowers, we find that language
is extremely destitute in precise colour terms.  They were
dark gray-blue—sea-blue is, perhaps, the term that most
nearly approximates to the hue of this girl's eyes, and as
that tint in the waves is subject to rapid changes, to
deepening intensity and gleaming flashes of paler light, so did
those bewitching orbs reflect each passing emotion.  They
were as sensitive to her moods as the surface of water is
to the sky's influence.  Thus it will be seen that their range
of expression was infinite.  The same might be said of the
whole countenance.  When moved or animated, it glowed
and sparkled as if a light shone through it.  The brow was
singularly noble, and gave promise of unusual mental power.
The complexion was very fair and clear, and when she
talked it was often tinged with swift delicate rose-pink,
that died away very slowly, leaving a soft warm glow in
the cheeks like that often seen in a moist sea-shell.  It was
a face whose every line and feature indicated that Stella
was endowed with rare qualities of intellect and imagination,
quick to feel, to see, to think.  And yet a very
woman, far from indifferent to admiration and the sense
of power that the homage of men gives a girl.  Yet, withal,
liable to that quick disdain of the more frivolous aspects
of life, which to those who understood but one side of her
complex nature appeared in the light of wilful caprice.
She made a captivating picture as she stood under the
thick woof of clustering grapes and vine-leaves that threw
flickering shadows over her well-poised head, with its
abundant coils of silky hair, which had a slight wave and
was of that deep golden-brown colour that is seldom
retained after childhood.

The young man was good-looking in a not uncommon
and distinctly unintellectual way.  He was close on six
feet in height, with a well-knit, athletic figure, a
sun-bronzed face, inclining to be florid.  The forehead was low
and square; the eyes dark-brown; the hair lighter in tone,
cut close, but crisply curling to the roots.  The nose was
thick, but straight and well defined.  The jaws were too
heavy, and the lips, partly concealed under a heavy drooping
moustache, were over-full.  Altogether, it was the face
of a man who could be firm and determined in action, yet
morally lacking in force of will.

The contrast between the two faces in form, development,
and expression was so striking that a casual onlooker might
conclude there was that essential difference of nature and
temperament which might somehow form a basis for marriage.
This impression would be strengthened by a lurking
air of indecision in the young woman's face as her companion
delivered his resolve in a voice that well carried out
the robust air of knowing what he wanted, and a determination
to compass it, which was conveyed by his general
demeanour.

'I don't know whether I should say that I am sorry or
glad you are going to be a bachelor,' she said reflectively.
'Will you grow very thin and cross, or stout and
good-natured?  The worst of it is, if you get stout you will
hobble and have a bad toe.  It will be really gout, you
know, but you'll call it a sprain or something.  And then,
when you come to see me, you will tread on dear Dustiefoot's
paws.  I suppose I may be a little deaf by that time.
Ah, I can never bear to think of growing old or dying!' and
Stella stopped abruptly with a little shrug of the shoulders.

'Why didn't you finish your fancy sketch?  If you were
a little deaf I would bawl at you: "Do you remember that
Sunday in December when the garden was full of roses,
and that little beggar of a bird was singing?"  And then
you'd say: "Ah, Ted, why didn't we get married when we
were young?" ... You know, Stella, you'll have to give
way in the end.  Twice you've named a horse for me, and
twice it's turned out most lucky.  Now, tell me—suppose
we had been married this morning at church, what would
you think the very worst part of the concern?'

'That you wouldn't drive to the railway-station and set
off for Strathhaye—alone.'

'Well, that's flat.  I often wonder what makes me so
ridiculously soft about you, Stella.  You say such horrid
things to me, while every other girl I come across——'

'Now, Ted, if you boast, your very last fragment of a
chance is gone.'

'Oh, I have got a fragment of a chance, then?  Come,
that's the best thing you've said yet.  Look here, Stella,
have you ever been in love?  Now, honour bright?'

'Well, hardly—except with people in books.'

'But how the deuce could you be in love with people in
books?'

'Oh, I assure you they are far the nicest people to fall in
love with.'

'Because you can put them on a shelf and leave them
there.'

'Yes, that is one great charm.  It is partly what ruins
life, the way people see so much of each other, till they
know each other by heart, up and down—all their stories
that once were funny, their pet theories, their stupid
idiosyncrasies——'

'What are idiosyncrasies?

'Let me see.  It is your idiosyncrasy to wish to marry;
it is mine to think it too dangerous an experiment.'

'Fancy calling it an idiosyncrasy when a fellow is spoony.
But I expect that is not the dictionary meaning.  Well, you
are all but twenty-three, and you have not been in love.
You may depend, if you are not heels over head before you
are twenty, you never will be.  So you may as well save
waiting any longer.'

The girl laughed out loud.

'Well, Ted, you are the first I have heard use inability to
love as an argument for getting married.  You are really
very humble.'

'Oh! a fellow is always very humble when he's up to
the hilt in love.'

'It is afterwards, when the fair is over, that he isn't
quite so meek and beseeching.'

'Well, you wouldn't have him be a humble jackass at a
distance all through?  It's too much like making your
dinner off peaches.  Besides, a girl like you always has her
own way, hand over fist, single or married; and when to
that you add ever so many thousands a year——'

'Always when you have been to Melbourne you harp
more and more on your money.'

'Maybe.  You see, the more you see of the world the
more you find how much people think of money, and how
much it gets for you.'

'And yet to be poor in the midst of riches is the worst
kind of poverty.'

'But you see,' said the young man eagerly, misinterpreting
the drift of this remark, 'Strathhaye is none of your
big leasehold affairs.  It's nearly all freehold—a good deal
of it fit to carry three or four sheep to the acre—where
never a cockatoo nor a free selector dare show his nose.'

'Oh, I feel as if I knew every inch of Strathhaye!'

'Well, a good tale is none the worse for being twice told.
Besides, I am coming to the point.  You might marry for
love to-morrow, and in a few months find you were quite
insolvent in the article—have to pay a bob in the pound, or
even less.'

'True—become an utter bankrupt; such things happen.'

'Yes; there was your friend Cicely Mowbray——'

'Oh, please don't!' said Stella, in a tone of quick pain.

'Well, not speaking of things doesn't make them
different.  You know how completely gone she was on the
man she married; and in less than three years she ran off
with another fellow!'

'And that was less immoral than staying with the man she
married,' said Stella, a hard expression coming into her face.

'Still, it isn't what people mean to do when they marry
for love.  You see, the point is that you may fall as
completely out of love as you may fall into it.  But you can't
wake up one morning to find eighty thousand acres first-class
arable land, freehold, all gone to kingdom come like a
rainbow.  May I smoke a cigarette?'

'Yes.  What a pretty case, and what elegant little
cigarettes!'

'They ought to be.  Do you know what they cost each?'

'Oh heavens! You are going to be just like Cr[oe]sus
Henway, always telling the price of things.'

'Or you might say like my father.  He likes to mention
the figure that things cost.  Still, I might easily take after
a worse old boy than the governor.  Though, mind you, I
don't mean to go into Parliament ever, and give ninety
Affghanistan camels for an exploring expedition, and get a
handle tacked to my name because they came on a desert a
hundred miles by ninety.'

'You're like a good many more Australians.  You'll never
do as much for your native land as your fathers did for
their adopted one.'

'Oh, I don't know!   I've half a dozen gold medals for
my wool; and my horses are far-away the best in the
district.  But there—I'll put my foot in it again if I say
much more.  Would you like me to be Sir Edward Ritchie,
Stella, like the old man?'

'Surely that is a very foolish question to ask me, of all
people.'

'I am not so sure about that—Sir Edward and Lady
Ritchie.  If you really have any fancy for the title, I might
give another big dose of camels to the Government.  There's
plenty more desert to be opened up for selectors to perish
in.'

'Your speaking of the desert reminds me that I am getting
parched with thirst.  There must be some afternoon tea
going on by this time.  Haven't we been here a good while?'

'About five minutes.  I don't care for tea.  But I'll go
and get a split soda for myself and bring you a cup.  Oh, if
we go inside you won't come out again—and we haven't
settled anything yet.  But here comes Kirsty with a tray.'

Kirsty was a tall spare woman, who was getting to be
more than middle-aged, but whose active, vigorous ways
forbade the imputation of old age.  She was invariably
attired in black, a snowy cap, apron, collars and cuffs, and
a face in which all the cardinal virtues ran riot.  But it
was withal tempered by a certain severity of expression that
would seem to be seldom absent from the bearing of trusted
Scotch servants who have lived nearly all their lives in one
family.

'I hae brought your pet Chiny teapot, Miss Stella,' said
Kirsty, putting the tray down on a little wicker table that
was fixed beside a rustic bench in the arcade.  'And
Mr. Tom bade me ask ye, sir, whether ye wadna rather hae a
glass o' soda water?'

'Yes, if you please, Kirsty; but tell Mr. Tom to draw it
mild.'

'Where is Maisie, or Sarah, Kirsty?' asked Stella, as she
poured herself out a cup of tea.  'You shouldn't be
attending on us here, when we really ought to go inside.'

'Weel, Miss Stella, ye see there's whiles when people
disna want ither folk aboot,' answered Kirsty, with a
demure smile; 'Sarah's gone to Mile End to see her aunt;
as for Maisie, I've set her to learn a page o' the Shorter
Catechism.  She used to ken every question in it; but ye
suld hear her when I pit a few till her to-day.  It's just
awfu' hoo this climate seems to be against proper grounding
in the fundamentals.'

'Poor Maisie!' said Stella with a smile; 'fancy learning
a page of the Shorter Catechism on a day like this!'  She
fanned herself softly with a wide pink satin fan, tipped with
marabout feathers, and slowly sipped her tea.

'What is the Shorter Catechism when it is at home?'
asked the young man, who was sitting near the girl and
watching her every movement.

'Oh, it's just a little Scotch book, full of questions and
answers about things people are supposed to believe—but
don't.'

'What sort of questions?'

'The first is, What is the chief end of man?  Now what
answer would you give to that?'

'Being in a garden with the girl who won't have
you—but will some day——'

'No; but in a general way, what do you think is the
chief end of man? what he should most live for?'

Ritchie knitted his brows for a moment.  'Well, I should
say it is to sell on the rise and have a good time.'

'Sell on the rise?'

'Yes, if you sell on the rise you make a pot of money.  If
you don't, the other fellow collars the tin.  Now, what is
the answer in the Catechism?'

'The answer is that the chief end of man is to glorify
God, and to enjoy Him for ever.'

'But, of course, that means when people get to heaven.'

'But why should they get to heaven if they do nothing to
deserve it?'

'Well, there you ask me a question!  Ah! here comes
Kirsty with my seltzer.  Here's to you, Stella—and many
of them,' said Ritchie, clinking Stella's cup with his tall
tumbler, and tossing off half its contents at a draught.

'What a pretty pale amber colour!  Is that ordinary
soda water?' asked Stella.

'Yes, ordinary soda water—but not ordinary old Irish
whisky.  I'd back your brother Tom's judgment in that
article against any man's.  Have a little nip.  It's ever
so much better than tea.  I say, Stella, why does the
old woman—Kirsty, I mean—set her daughter to learn such
stuff?'

'Ted, I am afraid you are almost a heathen.  Do you
ever read the Bible?'

'Well, I sometimes begin to read it on Sunday evening
after a game or two at billiards.  But I generally drop off to
sleep.  I seem as if I always knew what was coming.'

'I wonder how much you really know of it?'

'Oh, lots!  You try.  Ask me about Noah or any of
those old buffers.'

'Then what can you tell me about Noah?'

'Ah, Noah!  Well, he was the one that put all the insects
into an ark and drank too much wine, and was going to put
a knife into his son Esau, till the ram called out, "Here
am I."  If he had been a proper prize animal he'd never
have given himself away like that.  Well, what are you
laughing at?'

'Oh, Ted, Ted!  Then what about Abraham?'

'Abraham was one of those fellows that was always
getting into a fix because he didn't leave his wife at
home.  It shows how wrong it is for a man to take his
wife everywhere.'

'And Isaac, what about him?'

'Well, he was about as sly as a Jew pawnbroker.  He
put on a kangaroo skin, or something, so as to get a mess
of porridge.  But he didn't make much out of it, for he
got put into a fiery furnace afterwards—but no, it was
a pit.'

'And how many sons had he?'

'Well, there was Jacob and a thundering lot more; but
ten of them got lost, you know—the ten tribes—so you
can't expect me to know *their* names.  One of
them—Joseph—had an awful swell coat.  He went down into
Egypt.  But I never could swallow all the yarn about him.
Do you think you ought to laugh so much at things out of
the Bible?'

'Ted, do you really think all that is in the Scriptures?'

'I bet you it is; and a lot far more unlikely.  Yes; I'd
lay you all I hope to make when next I sell on the rise you
couldn't ask me much in the Old Testament I wouldn't
give you an answer to,' said Ritchie, with the elation of a
man who has passed a creditable examination.

'But what things do you sell?  I thought you sent your
wool to London and sold your surplus stock to station-brokers,
as my brothers do at Lullaboolagana.'

'Oh, I don't mean station stuff.  I mean shares of all
kinds.  Gold in Victoria; silver in New South Wales;
rubies, copper, and tin in South Australia; opals in
Queensland; pearls in Western Australia.  I have had a share in
a pearling boat at Shark's Bay for two seasons.  I mean to
show you a specimen of the pearls before long.  But, after
all, no speculation comes up to betting on thoroughbreds
that go flashing by with a feather-weight on them.  But,
you know, it strikes me that no one with a lot of money gets
such a curly half-hour out of betting or plunging as those
that put their last copper on something they know nothing
about, and then hold their breath till they see whether they
go to gaol or make a haul.'

'Well, this is very edifying.  It seems the great thing in
selling on the rise is to rob your neighbour and have some
excitement.  I had no idea you were such a financier.'

'Oh, a fellow must do something.  As for wool and sheep,
you shear your flocks and ship the wool off.  The sheep are
turned into the paddocks and begin to grow their next clip,
and the London market goes up or down a few farthings in
the pound.  It's all as slow as a christening.'

'Were you ever at a christening?'

'Yes, I was, worse luck! and stood godfather, too!'

'You a godfather?  Oh, Ted, this is too ridiculous!'

'Well, I thought it meant just to give the little beggar a
silver pot and a five-pound-note now and then.  But it
appears you tell the most barefaced crammers about
renouncing the devil and all his work.  It seems to me the
moment you have anything to do with the Church you have
to tell lies till you're black in the face.'

'And who is the happy babe that may be left to your
spiritual guidance?'

'Why, Henrietta's last baby.  She's John Morton's wife,
you know.  Aren't we somehow related through the Mortons?
You see, my sister is married to John Morton, and your
brother Claude is married to Helen Morton, John's sister.
Now, what relation am I to you?'

'Oh, the relation that should sit a little further away.
We always come back to talking of ourselves.'

'Well, there's nothing else half so interesting.  By the
way, I was coming part of the way from Melbourne with
Dick Emberly, and he said your brother Cuthbert was going
to take charge of a congregation in one of the Melbourne
suburbs.  I didn't know he was a full-fledged parson.'

'Yes, he was ordained three months ago.  He is going to
take a congregation at Hawthorne for some months for a
clergyman who has fallen ill.'

'Oh, now you'll come to Melbourne.  Larry said she
would make you come for part of the season.  Have you
seen her yet since she came to my father's?'

'No; she called the other day, but I was out.  She left
word that she wanted to see me particularly, and I meant
to call one day this week.  How does her husband go on
now?'

'Oh, much as usual.  It's always head you lose, tail I
win, with a man like the Hon. Talbot Tareling.  No member
of the "British nobility," as Larry was so fond of calling
it, that I've known in the Colonies has much idea about
money, but to grab as much as possible without doing a
stroke of work.'

'Well, I cannot help liking Mr. Tareling.  He has such
very good manners, and he is very amusing.'

'You see, it's all he's got to show for himself and for
being descended from goodness knows how many lords, and
for having an uncle a K.G. and his elder brother married
to the daughter of a duke.  Lord, how Larry used to cram
them all down our throats, till we found out to our cost
what an expensive trick it is to have a sister marry into the
"British nobility."  Look here, Stella, shall you be in
to-morrow afternoon?  Because, if so, Larry will drive across
and settle when you'll come, then.  You see, you can't get
out of it now that Cuthbert is to be in Melbourne.'

'Oh, let me see.  I'll have to consult my mother and
decide about all sorts of things.  You see, I've promised to
go to Lullaboolagana in May or June.'

'Very well; take Melbourne on the way.  I am going to
see the old people this evening, and I shall tell Larry.'

'Didn't you come from Godolphin House?'

'No; you see, when I got in by the inter-colonial last
night, I went with one or two other fellows straight to the
club.  Then I didn't get up very early, and so I came direct
here to see you.'

'When did you see your parents last?'

'Oh! about six months ago—the same time as I saw
you before.'

'Well! and the way your poor mother dotes on you—her
only boy!  Why do people think it is a blessing to have
children?  Very often it seems one of the bitter pleasures
of life.'

'Well, you see, if people didn't think things were a little
better than they are, the world wouldn't gee up at all.  And
doesn't it say even in the Bible that a man shall leave his
father and mother and cleave to his wife?  Then how
much more will he do it for the girl who doesn't want to
be his wife!'

'Ted, your logic is irresistible.'

'You may call it logic if you like—but it's true.'

'Which logic seldom is; but then it's correct, and you
can so seldom combine the two,' said Stella in the light,
mocking tone which came to her so readily; 'I declare I've nearly
emptied my teapot!  It is fatal to begin to drink on a day
like this.'

'Yes; the more you drink, the more you want to—that's
the mischief of it,' said the young man, with a gloomier
expression than the occasion seemed to call for.

'By Jove!  I nearly forgot I had this for you, Stella,' he
said presently, taking a small parcel out of his breast
coat-pocket, sealed and addressed as it had come by post.  'You're
always interested about the niggers.  Myers, my book-keeper,
is a great dab at finding things out about them.  By the
way, he corresponds with your old friend, Dr. Stein.  Well,
some time ago Myers fossicked out about a very rum sort
of shoe that the blacks use on particular occasions.  I told
him to get me one if he could, and when I got to the club
last night I found this waiting for me.  Oh, it's over three
weeks since I left Strathhaye; I've been in Melbourne and
other places.'

'Let me open it!' cried Stella.  'I love unfastening an
unknown parcel; it is one of the simple pleasures of life that
never palls.  Oh, Ted, what a cunning, gruesome-looking
sort of thing!' she said, as the shoe was revealed to view.

It was light, and compressible into a very small compass.
The sole was composed of emu feathers, matted together
with a dull red coagulated substance.  The upper part was
a sort of network of small plaited strands crossed and
recrossed.  This curious shoe was extremely crude in shape,
being exactly alike at both ends.

'Why, Ted, this is hair!' cried Stella, after examining
the net closely, and touching the plaited strands, which had
still a dull gloss.

'Yes—a woman's hair.'

'Ah! only a woman's hair.  How strangely wicked this
shoe begins to look!  Not a scrap of difference between the
heel and the toes—and yet one could tell it is meant for a
shoe; and it looks as if it would keep well on the foot.
Let me see how it would look.'

Stella quickly slipped off her own shoe and put on the
aboriginal one.

'Put it off! put it off!  I can't bear to see it on you,'
cried the young man vehemently.

But the girl merely laughed, and walked a few steps, and
found that this curious covering for the foot, though much
too large, yet clung to it with strange tenacity.

'Do you know that it is the most unlucky thing you could
do?' said the young man quite gravely.

'Really!' said Stella, smiling at the sombre tone of
conviction in which he spoke.  'Well, give me my own shoe,
Ted.  No—I can put it on.'

Ritchie half reluctantly returned the pretty little bronze
shoe with its silver buckle and dainty bow, and then took
up the aboriginal one.

'Now, do you know what this is called, and what it is
used for?' he said, holding it at full length on his outspread
palm.

'No; but I am dying to know, for I never before heard
that any of our blacks made any attempt at shoeing
themselves.  Could they walk far in a thing of that kind?'

'Far enough for their purposes, I dare say,' returned
Ritchie grimly.  'That is a Kooditcha shoe, and a black
fellow never puts a pair of them on except when he steals
at night upon an enemy to kill him.'

'Oh, Ted, are you making that up to give me what you
call a "curly half-hour"?'

'Oh, but you've not heard all yet.  Do you see that
reddish stuff holding the feathers together?  Well, that is
human blood.'

'How horrible!  I wish I had not put it on,' said the
girl, with a little shiver.  'It really has an assassin-like
look, and such strange sombre tints.'

'You see, it would make no more track than a butterfly,
and nothing to show it was on a foot.  The blacks say they
can track anything that walks or crawls, from a horse to
a young snake; but not a ghost or an enemy in Kooditcha
shoes.'

'Well, of all the myths I have gathered about the blacks,
none are so dramatic as this relic.  Thank you so much for
getting it for me.'

'Well, I'm glad you like it.  I wouldn't touch the thing
with a pair of tongs, for my own part.'

'Human blood and a woman's hair!  I wonder if anyone
ever wore this to creep up to a tribal foe at midnight?
But why did you say it was unlucky to put it on?'

'Well, the blacks say if you put one on and don't kill
anybody, you'll live to wish someone had killed you.'

'Clearly the only thing for me to do is to kill someone.
Who shall it be?' asked Stella, with mock gravity.

'Well, I'd offer myself, but you did for me long ago.'

'Why, Ted, you are getting quite epigrammatic.'

'Oh, I can't make a stew of my heart and put it into a
letter, like some fellows.  But look here, Stella.  Ah, here
comes Cuthbert.  By Jove! he looks almost like a Bishop
already.'

The newcomer, Cuthbert Lionel Courtland, was three
years older than his sister.  He was a young clergyman,
with perhaps something of the ultra-gravity of demeanour
that may sometimes be observable in those that have
recently entered on the sacred calling.  He had the
finely-developed brow that was a characteristic of the Courtland
family, dark gray eyes, something like Stella's in expression,
and a beautifully-chiselled mouth, that helped largely to
convey the calm, sunny expression which marked his face.

The two young men greeted each other as old acquaintances.

'You're a full-blown parson, Courtland, since I last saw
you; I suppose I ought to congratulate you, but——'

'But you're not quite sure, Ritchie?  Well, I'll take the
half-will for the deed.'

'The fact is, I never know what to say before a parson;
and though we've been kiddies together, I don't believe I
can forget after this you belong to the cloth.  The white
choker and that makes you look, somehow, as if you had
belonged to the clergy all your life.'

'Well, shall I put a spotted necktie on, Ted—for old
acquaintance' sake?' laughed the young clergyman.

'Oh, I'm just going, thank you.  Stella has been blowing
me up for not being with my parents.  There's a little filly
I've had sent to my father's for you to ride, Stella.  May I
come and take you out on Tuesday morning?'

Stella hesitated, and then consented to the arrangement.
The brother and sister accompanied their guest to the
house, where he made his adieus to the rest of the family.
He then mounted his horse and rode away.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER II.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER II.

.. vspace:: 2

The brother and sister returned to the arcade.  Cuthbert
was the first to speak.

'Stella, there is a question I want to ask, and I'm almost
afraid to put it.'

The girl looked up quickly, and then a smile slowly crept
over her face.

'Dear darling boy, don't be afraid to ask me questions—as
if they were lighted matches that might fall into
gunpowder.'

'Has anything special passed between you and Ritchie?'

'Yes.'

'Have you accepted him?'

'No.'

'Then why do you go out riding with him on Tuesday?'

'Because I haven't accepted him.'

'Stella dear, don't trifle about this.  Is it fair to him?'

'I think it's not only fair, but generous.  He asks me to
marry him.  I cannot make up my mind to do so at present.
In the meantime, I bind up his wounded spirit with the
balm of friendship.'

'Yes, that's it.  You refuse him time after time——'

'Not invariably.  Do not blame me too severely.  You
see, I have tried all the recognised modes of treating a
lover.  I have refused him and accepted him, and
sometimes done neither.  When he has asked me for a stone
I give him bread—the nourishment of occasional social
intercourse instead of the terrible disillusion of marriage.'

'All this may be very well from a comedy point of view.
But remember, it is not for the amusement of a passing
hour that a man persists in asking a woman to be his wife
year after year.'

'No.  But still, dear, remember how much more amusing
it is than if she had married him the first time of asking.'

'But now let me ask you seriously, what is to be the end
of it all?  I cannot understand you in the least, Stella, in
this matter.  To begin with, it is a mystery to me that
you should find pleasure in Ted's society, and yet I believe
you do.'

'Ah, Cuth, you haven't heard Ted give an account of the
Bible Patriarchs'—and the girl burst into a peal of laughter
so infectiously merry that her brother was forced to smile.
'As for asking what is to be the end of it all, why, that is
a question we keep on asking as long as people live, and,
most of all, when they die.'

'Yet people must decide something in a rough and ready
fashion.  You have allowed yourself to drift into a very
undesirable position.  You refuse to marry Ritchie—and
there I, at least, feel you are right.  But I think you are
wrong to go out riding with him, for it gives him hope that
in the end you may change your mind.'

'And so I may.  If I could only be sure that he would
be always as amusing as he was to-day——'

'Well, I suppose sex must count for something when a
certain friendship has subsisted since childhood between a
young man and woman.  I must say that to me the chief
quality of Ritchie's conversation is a careless—well, perhaps
graphic—commonness of speech.'

'There is more than that.  There is a direct appeal to
life as it presents itself to him; and when we have all
tacitly agreed to blink so much, the trait has a certain
fascination—at least to me.'

'I could understand that so much better if Ted's point
of view were not essentially that of the average sensual
man.  Pardon me, dear, if I say anything that vexes you.'

'You must not forget that I have never been in love with
Ted.'

'Well, that troubles me sometimes more than if you were.'

'Isn't that just slightly contradictory?'

'Perhaps it may be; but what I mean is, that if you
could really be in love with him, and married him, you
might transform him.  But if you marry him without being
in love—well, I fear that one or both may fall over a
precipice.'

'Why, Cuthbert, you must have been reading tragedy
lately.'

'What makes you think so?'

'Because it is only tragedy which is so merciful in
finishing us up in a speedy, impressive manner when things go
wrong, till at last the ghosts have to come on the stage to
explain how people fell over a precipice.'

'Every word you say there makes me feel afresh how
disastrous it would be for you to risk a *mariage de
convenance*, or marriage with anyone to whom you could not
look up in some measure, with whom you would not have
that deeper mental bond without which marriage, in some
cases, is not justifiable.'

'Well, it seems to me that marriage of all subjects is the
one that most eludes dogmatizing about to any successful
issue.'

'I admit that; but the more difficult a position is, the
more one must avoid an obvious danger.'

'"To save the soul," says one of the old Spanish saints,
"it is necessary to have as little intercourse with people as
possible."'

'Please don't say that in order to be happy in marriage
the same axiom applies; for you are quite capable of proving
it,' said the young man laughingly.

'Did you ever notice a funny old book in tarnished gold
that was given to Grandmother Loudon on her wedding-day,
called "Letters to a Granddaughter"?'

'Yes; I never read it, but I always understood it was
published for private circulation only by an ancestress of
our own.'

'Oh, very likely.  It is full of the acute platitudes I find
crowding to my pen when I try to write, so I suppose it is
an hereditary strain.  Well, the thinglet is divided into
"School Life," "Coming Out," "Betrothal," "Marriage,"
"Maternity."  Each section except marriage has about a
hundred pages devoted to it.  But under marriage there
are only five or six pages, beginning: "It must be evident
to my dear intelligent young female friends that this is a
subject on which every woman who enters the holy estate
must be left to make her own special reflections.  They
cannot be anticipated."'

'Really, Stella,' said her brother, laughing, 'you never
seem to look into an old, unknown book without finding a
joke in it.'

'Do you call that a joke?  You wouldn't if you had
turned the grandmother's letters over as I did, when I was
seriously trying to make up my mind about entering the
holy estate.  But the old woman was right to a certain
extent; for there you have to do with all the uncertainty
of untried depths in two natures, brought into a previously
unknown relationship.  Who can tell how the venture is to
turn out?'

'Therefore, I say, let there be the sympathy of two
responsive natures or the differences that arise from two
minds consciously alive.'

'Yes; and after building on all these hopeful auguries,
you find the result a failure more elaborate than the
ordinary type.'

'I cannot quite make out why you are so radically
sceptical on the subject of marriage.  I am sure a great
many of those we know most intimately have made
harmonious unions.  Ah!  I can see by your face you are
thinking of poor dear Esther.  Certainly, that marriage
turned out a failure, though at first it promised to be an
exceptionally happy one.  But, at any rate, the more
mistrustful you are the more careful you should be not to run
risks.  Even when people start with a good stock of affection,
what terrible ruin often overtakes them!  There was
your poor friend Cicely——'

'It is curious to have the poor woman quoted from two
such opposite points of view in one afternoon.  Well, at
this moment she is living in a four-roomed weather-board
cottage in a township in New South Wales, where her
husband plays the harmonium in a little Baptist Chapel
on Sundays.  I do not say that there is not an element of
terrible ruin in this, but not in the sense you mean.'

'Her husband?'

'Yes; as soon as she was divorced they were married.  I
found out where they are living, and sent some help at a
time when she badly needed it.  We have corresponded
from time to time since then.'

'Does mother know this, Stella?'

'Well, no.  There are some things one's mother should
be spared.  The first letter I had was too pitiful.'

'Of course, I know you used to be very fond of each
other, but——'

'The friendships of women should always have a limit.
I admit it is very dangerous to find out how things have
really happened.  You then find there are cases in which, if
you knew all, you would connive at "terrible ruin" rather
than avert it.'

'But, Stella, we must not let our sympathy with people
blind us.  There are some actions that cut away the roots
of friendship.  I would rather you had found a way of
helping the poor woman without corresponding.'

'I wrote to her regularly after I knew she was living
with a horrible man, who used to lock himself up and
drink till he was in delirium tremens—one who was a
dipsomaniac before she married him, and yet managed to
conceal it from her till after they were married.  I know
she is living a purer life now than she could then.  The only
child that was born to her was paralytic and imbecile.
Fortunately it died.  What sort of a crime would it have
been against herself, and still more against society, if she
had gone on adding to the probable criminals of the
world—to its certain weaklings?'

'I know how frightfully hard life may become; but at
the worst, no matter how we may be sinned against, we
may at least refrain from joining the ranks of those who
have wronged us.'

'Meaning the criminals?'

'Yes.'

'Do you consider suicide a crime?'

'Need you ask, dear?'

'Because there were two courses open to Cicely—to
kill herself, or go away with the man who had for over two
years protected her at intervals from the maniacal conduct
of her husband.'

'Who was this man?'

'An overseer on their station—a gentleman by birth.  I
suppose every country evolves its own special tragedies.
You see, Mowbray's run is four hundred miles north.
When he came to town now and then before he was married,
he managed to keep sober.  At any rate, Cicely, during the
five months' engagement, never heard a breath or had the
least suspicion; and if her aunt did, she took good care not
to mention it.'

'Surely she would never be guilty of such atrocity!'

'Oh, but she would.  After the death of the child Cicely
told her all, and implored her to let her stay in town.  No;
a woman's proper place was with her husband.  That's the
sort of venomous old lynx she is—always comfortable and
decorous, and going about with a bottomless pouch of
gossip.  If ever she comes to a steep place she throws
herself upon tradition and conventional morality to save herself
from the least collision with virtue.'

'Stella, dear, that is very severe,' said Cuthbert, fondly
stroking his sister's glowing cheek.  There was summer
lightning in her eyes.  Her voice, when she was moved, had
a resistant silvery tone, whereas when she was indifferent or
merely amused, she drawled a little.

'You wouldn't say so, Cuth, if you knew the old dame.
But she was the only relative Cicely has in Australia; so
there was nothing for her but to go back.  Two months
after she did so I heard she ran away with Stoneleigh.'

'I remember how dreadfully cut up you were.'

'Yes, we are often sorriest for people when the worst
is over.  Now, Cuth, don't sermonise; I see it is in your
eyes.  Just look how the hills are catching the sunset
glow.'

'Is it so late?  Let me help you up on your beloved
gum-tree stump to see the sun set.'

The ivy-covered gum-tree stump, thirty-five feet in
circumference, relic of an old monarch of the primæval
woods, was close to the northern boundary wall of the
garden.  This point of vantage commanded varied and
lovely views.  Beyond North Adelaide and its sub-adjacent
villaships, looking to the east and south-east, one saw
St. Peter's, College Town, Norwood, and Kensington lying in
graduated perspective, and beyond these pretty prosperous
suburbs full of charming houses and rose-filled gardens,
stretched the Adelaide hills.  Their bases and quiet darkling
gullies were now in clear blue and pale purple shadows,
their summits beautifully flushed with the gold and crimson
splendour of a brilliant sunset.  Northward the wide fertile
Gawler Plain stretched beyond sight, thickly sprinkled with
tree-encompassed homesteads, and great corn-fields, now
ripely yellowing for the harvest.  Westward lay Hindmarsh
and Bowden, the manufacturing suburbs of the city, Torrenside
in the foreground, with some delightfully old-fashioned,
many-windowed houses, their cream-coloured walls gleaming
through fig-trees and vine-trellised verandas.  Beyond
these might be discerned Port Adelaide, with its forests of
ship-masts lying along the wharves, and beyond all, the
ocean flushed to the verge of the wide horizon with the
setting sun.  For a moment it rested like a quivering ball of
flame on the level waters, and then dropped out of sight,
leaving a fiery glow wide and high in the sky, passing
towards the zenith into the most delicate tones of pink.
The same tints were reflected on the hilltops for some time,
as vividly as though they were mirrors throwing back a not
distant picture.

The two gazed on these lovely scenes with crowding
associations that stretched back to the first twilight of
childish memories, and lingered in the garden till the sound
of the dinner-bell summoned them into the house.

Fairacre both within and without bore the traces of easy
affluence.  The house was a large one-story building,
substantially built of stone, with a deep veranda, furnished
with Venetian shutters, running all round it.  The principal
rooms were large and lofty, and opened by wide doors, half
glass, upon the garden, which from one season to another
was never seen without the radiance of many flowers.  The
sparkling old silver, and the delicately fine table-linen, were
family heirlooms, as were also several rare works of art, and
a large proportion of the rosewood furniture.  Mrs. Courtland
was now close on sixty-five years of age, invariably
attired in widow's weeds since her husband's death years
previously.  She was descended from an old Highland
family, and in face and bearing she bore the unmistakable
stamp of high-bred refinement.  Her features had never
been strictly beautiful, but her countenance must always
have been marked by the calm gentleness, the sweet, kindly
serenity which imparted to it so much charm and
distinction.  It must even in youth have been distinguished by
that guileless sincerity which formed an index to a mind
curiously free from any taint of worldliness or self-seeking.

The Courtland family numbered eight in all, though there
were at this period but four of them under the paternal roof.
The eldest daughter, Barbara, was married to the
Rev. Joseph Wallerton, an Episcopalian clergyman settled in
Sydney; the second daughter, Esther, Mrs. Raymond, was
a widow of over two years' standing.  Her husband had
been a wealthy squatter in the south-eastern district of the
colony, where Mrs. Raymond and her four children chiefly
resided.  There were two unmarried daughters still at
home—Stella and Alice, eighteen months her senior, but looking
incredibly young for her age, being *petite* and rosy-cheeked,
with overflowing spirits—circumstances which were,
perhaps, providential, as she had recently entered on an
engagement that threatened to be rather indefinite.  Tom,
the other son who was at home, was a lawyer in good
practice, and three years older than the young clergyman.
The other two brothers, Hector and Claude, the eldest and
second eldest respectively, had been for over twenty-one
years engaged in squatting pursuits with almost unbroken
success in the adjacent colony of Victoria.  Ten years
previously a wealthy cousin of Mrs. Courtland's in the
Indian Civil Service had left her a legacy of thirteen
thousand pounds.  This had been invested in Lullaboolagana,
the Victorian station, which not only ensured the increasing
prosperity of the two squatters, but added handsomely to
the general income of the old home.

The visitors at Fairacre on this Sunday afternoon were
Mrs. Harrison, a daughter and two sons.  It was to Felix,
the younger of these, and an architect by calling, that Alice
was engaged.  The elder brother, Andrew, was a journalist.
The support of the rest of the family depended largely on
the two young men, as the father, a clergyman and an old
college friend of the late Mr. Courtland's, had died a few
years previously, leaving his widow with but a small
annuity and younger children to be educated.  The elder
daughter, Fanny, was now eighteen, and there were growing
symptoms of an attachment between herself and Tom—a
circumstance which drew the remark from Stella that it
seemed as though some families had hereditary tendency to
catch infantile maladies from each other.  It was when she
made observations of this kind that Tom used to wonder
why the youngest of an otherwise well-conducted family
should be hopelessly spoiled.





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.. _`CHAPTER III.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III.

.. vspace:: 2

On the following Monday afternoon Laurette Tareling, or,
to give her the designation which was dear to her as a title,
the Hon. Mrs. Talbot Tareling, paid the call of which her
brother had spoken on Sunday.

She was of the medium height, though something in her
face and figure gave the impression that she was small,
being slight and fair with a faint colour deepened with a
little rouge so skilfully that it was unsuspected by all save
the most practised eyes.  She had fair fluffy hair, lightened
by gold dust, descending in a fringe of infantile curliness to
within a short distance of her eyes, which were dark brown,
rather small, but very bright and keen, and altogether
somewhat like those of a parrot that is bent on finding out a
great deal.  An expression that was further carried out by
the nose, which took the liberty of turning up a little, and
a mouth which, though it smiled very often, had something
rather hard and beakish in its formation.  Yet, on the
whole, Mrs. Tareling was considered pretty.  She dressed
extremely well, and was never seen beyond the domestic
circle without an air of determined vivacity.  She had the
reputation of being one of the 'smartest' talkers in
Melbourne society, and had a knack of telling a story against
those to whom she owed any grudge, which at once made
her popular, and created many enemies.

Mrs. Courtland and her two daughters were in the
drawing-room when the visitor was shown in.  Mrs. Tareling
bestowed sharp little explosive kisses on each, ending with
Stella, at whom she looked inquiringly, her head a little to
one side.

'Why, Stella, you have grown thinner,' she said, half
pensively.  'My dear Mrs. Courtland, has Stella been ill?'

'Oh no; Stella is never ill!' answered the mother with a
fond smile.

'Well, just look at the two—who, to see them, would
think Allie was older?'

'Ah, Laurette, you are letting me down gently,' said
Stella, trying to keep back the mischievous smile that
lurked round her lips.  'What you mean is that I am
"going off"—that my first youth is over.'

'Oh, well! in a climate like ours we must make up our
mind that we shed our first youth when we leave our
teens—except fortunate people like Allie, who discover some
elixir——'

'Which they don't give even their sisters,' laughed
Stella.  'Well, Larry, I promise you if ever I get the
chance I shall have a sip—if only to save you pain.'

'Oh, as for that, who is such a wreck as I am myself for
my age?  I assure you the day before I left Melbourne I
nearly wept at finding that I was suddenly an old hag.  Oh,
positively!  In the morning I found two gray hairs in my
comb.  I always heard people speak of the first gray
hair, but there were two, showing that somewhere my head
was getting powdered with the frost of age.  And that
wasn't all.  In the afternoon I stood in a cross light,
opposite a mirror.  I turned round with a start; who is
that creature, thought I, with her cheeks so hollow and a
faded colour, and lines deepening round her mouth?  And
then, to crown it all, Talbot came in that moment leading
Gwendolen by the hand, looking atrociously tall for her
four years——'

'Is that your little daughter, Laurette?' asked
Mrs. Courtland, who was getting a little hard of hearing, and
did not quite catch the drift of these remarks, which were
delivered in a rapid, semi-staccato tone levelled especially
at Stella.

'Yes, dear Mrs. Courtland; and growing such a big girl,
and so precocious.  She wanted to know, the other day,
whether her little brother Howard would not be Lord
Lillimore when he grew up.  And then she was sure, she
said, that Uncle Ted would be Sir Edward Ritchie.'

'My dear, you must not let her be too much with the
servants.  You should get a nice young lady as nursery-governess
for her,' said Mrs. Courtland, in a motherly way,
never dreaming that this precocious tattle had been invented
by Laurette on the spur of the moment.

'Well, life is full of accidents; who knows but both
these events may come off one day,' said Alice solemnly,
though there was a merry gleam in her eyes.

And then Mrs. Tareling went off on another tack.

'You are always so beautifully quiet and sedate in
Adelaide, it is really like coming to another world from
Melbourne.  And the season was so late with us this year.
What with the Russian and German men-of-war and the
visit of the Sultan of Morocco, it was a perfect whirlpool.
I felt at last I would like to retire to the Grande Chartreuse.'

'But I suppose you find the dear little farinaceous village
almost as quiet.  Hardly anything happens with us,' said
Alice.  'People die occasionally, but only once and very
seldom.  Yes, and holes come occasionally in the carpets—of
the poorer classes, you know;' and Alice glanced half
ruefully at the Brussels pile which had been in the drawing-room
for twenty years and began to show signs of wear in
places.

'Yes; and even your Governors last longer than they do
elsewhere,' answered Mrs. Tareling.  'Now, with us in seven
years we have had two; and next month Sir Marmaduke
leaves; and who do you think is his successor?  Why,
Lord Weavelow, whose wife is Talbot's first cousin, and
Lord Weavelow a connection of his sister-in-law, Lady
Gertrude.  It is rather trying to be so closely related to the
new Governor in our circumstances.'

'Oh, my dear, it is very likely they will be quite nice
people.  I dare say you will like them very well,' said
Mrs. Courtland soothingly, which amused her daughters not a
little.

'Mother never did, and never will, comprehend the little
subtleties of a snob,' as Alice said afterwards half
despairingly.

'Oh, I dare say we shall like them very much.  But then
we are so poverty-stricken; and the people who entertain
most in Melbourne get more ostentatious every year—private
theatres, and enormous ball-rooms, and French
cooks who keep a tandem and a Cremona violin.'

'Fancy all these complexities off the back of the idyllic
sheep!' said Stella, laughing.  'Well, Laurette, if I were
you, I would go in for a sweet and severe simplicity.  It
would really be more *distingué*.'

'That is true.  But nothing is so costly as the only form
of simplicity open to you if you have the right of tambour
at Government House,' returned Mrs. Tareling, with the
air of one who is laying down axioms for the guidance of
society from Olympian social heights.

At this moment a little diversion was caused by the
entrance of two elderly Quaker ladies, maiden sisters, in
soft dove-coloured dresses and bonnets, and white fichus of
Indian muslin.  They were followed by afternoon tea, over
which the older ladies fell into a group to themselves, talking
softly over sick and afflicted people, and new candidates
for admission to the Asylum for Incurables.

'Still, I suppose you will hardly retire to the wilds of
Kannawijera when your relatives begin to reign at Government
House?' said Alice, taking up the thread of conversation
as she presided at the tea-tray.

'No; not this coming season, at any rate.  We had to
give up our house at Yarra Yarra; they raised the rent so
atrociously.  But we have secured a smaller one at Toorak,
with the principal rooms *en suite*; almost all the partitions
in folding-doors, that can be pushed back in the most
wonderful way.  Just like one of those knives—at least,
they look like knives, but when you open the handle it
turns into corkscrews, and toothpicks, and glove-buttoners,
besides several blades.  Everyone says Melbourne will
be awfully full by May; so we caught time by the forelock,
and took this house from November.  But we don't pay a
penny more than if we waited later.  It is to be a most
brilliant season, everyone says.  And now, Stella, I want
to arrange about your long-promised visit.'

'Oh, you are very kind,' said Stella.

'Don't say that: it's a bad omen.  Always before when
I asked you to come, you said, "You are very kind," and
didn't turn up.  It's no use coming for a couple of weeks,
like the girls who come from the wilds of the Bush for a
birthday ball, and don't know a soul but a few lanky men in
split gloves, who don't waltz, and huddle up together behind
the doors.'

'Ah, Laurette, you had better think twice before you are
burdened through part of a brilliant season with a country
cousin like me,' said Stella, laughing merrily at the picture
called up by Laurette.

'I suppose it would be no use asking you to come as
well, Allie, just for a couple of weeks?' said Mrs. Tareling
graciously.

Allie raised her hands in mock despair.

'How can you ask?  I am in training to keep a house
on nine or ten pounds a week, and save out of that for a
rainy day.'

'Oh, how very romantic!  But surely no rainier day can
come than nine or ten pounds a week?' said Mrs. Tareling,
with well-simulated wonder.

'You see, Larry, you who are poverty-stricken on over
three thousand a year can hardly plumb the depths of real
destitution,' said Alice.  'There is the poverty of hot joints
and "frugal days of interlinear hash——"'

'Allie, whatever you do when you and Felix marry, do
not have large joints,' said Stella gravely.  'I am confident
that the happiness of the Australian household is more
frequently wrecked by hash than any ethical point.'

'Well, I am studying the question.  Perhaps I may one
day publish a shilling cookery-book for young couples who
ought not to have married.'

'Surely Felix's income must be considerable now.  They
say he is the best architect in the place,' said Laurette
somewhat abruptly.

This laughing raillery about poverty did not commend
itself to her in the least.  It is mortifying, when one wants
to make a girl feel how comparatively humble her prospects
are, to find her treating the subject in a serio-comic vein.

'But then there are the younger children to provide
for—quite dependent on Felix and Andrew,' returned Alice.

'Well, it's a pity you girls couldn't go in for a little
division of poverty,' replied Laurette.  'Here is Stella's
*fiancé* rolling in money.'

'As it happens, that young woman hasn't got a *fiancé*,'
returned Stella quickly.

'No?  You and Ted keep on such good terms, I always
forget the affair was broken off,' said Laurette rather
maliciously.  'But now for your visit, Stella.'

'I must talk it over with mother before making ultimate
arrangements.'

'But we all know beforehand what that means.  Your
mother says, "Yes, darling," to all you propose.  Pray, my
dear, don't forget that I've known you from childhood.  It
was never a secret you were rather spoiled.'

Thus pressed, Stella said half hesitatingly:

'Well, if you let me come to you on my way to Lullaboolagana,
without pledging myself to the length of the
visit.  But do you know that Dustiefoot insists on coming
wherever I go?'

'Oh yes; and you always take Maisie when you pay a
long visit—at least, someone said so the other day——'

'Yes,' put in Alice; 'we spare Maisie to Stella because
she could never bear to brush her dresses or sew on bits of
braid.  It is a case of atavism.  She has reverted to the
only duchess that was in our family—more than three
centuries ago.'

'That is curious,' said Stella, maintaining the mock gravity
with which her sister spoke; 'for after twelve generations
the proportion of blood of any one ancestor in only 1 in
2,048.'

'At any rate, it is settled you are to come—Dustiefoot,
Maisie, and all,' said Laurette.  'By the way, how did you
enjoy the Emberly ball?'

'Oh, immensely,' answered Stella; and then a quick wave
of colour suffused her face, mounting even to her forehead.

'We enjoyed it "not wisely, but too well."  We fancy
there has been no nice weather since that ball was over,'
said Alice, who sympathetically noted this uncompromising
blush, and tried to attract Laurette's gleaming eyes from
her sister's face.

But Laurette had in an eminent degree what Talleyrand
considered the whole art of politics—that is, the art of
seeing—at any rate, what was on the surface.

'Oh, very much, did you?  And you used to be so
disdainful of dancing.  But, to be sure, that was when you
were much younger.  And those alcoves one heard so much
about—were they a great success?  I declare, Stella, there
must be something behind this.  Do you know you are
blushing most furiously?'

'Oh, I always blush when I ask Alice for a second cup of
tea,' replied Stella, recovering her self-possession.  'As for
the alcoves—the half was not told you.  There are eight
windows in the ball-room, and round each window an alcove
much larger than an ordinary bay-window, all lined with
salmon-coloured satin with a seat running round each; up
the front, on both sides, brackets with great vases full of
ferns and roses, and lotos blooms and asphodel; overhead
an electric light in an opal globe, exactly like a great piece
of the full moon put into a crystal prison, only more
lambent.'

'And don't forget the cream lace curtains in front lined
with salmon satin, Stella,' said Alice, looking at her sister
with a dancing light in her eyes.  And then turning to
Laurette: 'The thing was to meet Prince Charming at the
ball—dance and chat with him, and then sit out the rest of the
evening in an alcove, behind the curtains and two chaperons,
just fashioned by Providence so as to completely screen you
from the other men to whom you might have promised
dances.'

'Indeed, and who—who was your chaperon?' said Laurette,
looking from one to the other of the sisters.

Stella had grown suddenly grave, though the remnants of
her 'furious' blushing still lingered in her cheeks.

'Oh, Mrs. Marwood and Tom and Felix and Andrew,'
answered Alice lightly.

'And which of you retired into the alcove with the
imprisoned moonlight and asphodel—and Prince Charming?'

'How literal you are, my dear!' said Alice, laughing.
'But you see, after one's ideals of life have been exalted by
such alcoves you must not expect Stella to fall quite prostrate
before the grandeurs of Melbourne society.'

Laurette seemed only half satisfied with this explanation,
but feeling that further investigation would be useless just
then, she allowed the subject to drop.

'I wonder what has given Laurette this ardent attack
of friendship just now,' said Stella, when the sisters were
alone.

'About insisting on your visit?  Oh, she means to show
you the kingdoms of the world and the glory thereof.  And
I expect it's not so much Laurette as Ted.  It's a change
of venue so as to get a different verdict.  You have got into
the habit of saying "no" at Fairacre, but in that "smaller
house" at Toorak, surrounded by magnates who have
private theatres and French cooks—after all, Laurette is
very amusing.'

'Oh yes; for a day or two.  But get a little below the
surface, and she always has the hard, crude touch of the
social amateur.  And Allie—how could you be such a little
jackdaw as to say that to her—about Prince Charming?'

'Well, it was partly my instincts as an artist.  I could
not bear to hear you give the light, graphic touches of the
setting and leave out the very core.  Besides, even Laurette
cannot unravel that little mystery.  Do you know, Stella,
it's the nearest thing to a romance that has happened for—twice
one year.  A great brilliant ball—a wonderful Austrian
band—electric lights, flowers—an introduction without
surnames—one dance—intellectual kinship—mysterious
sympathy between two souls—a long talk behind ferns and
chaperons in an alcove—duty thrown to the winds—till the
fugitives are discovered by an irate ci-devant lover who is
down for two waltzes—separation without even a lingering
farewell—disappearance of the Prince before midnight—no
name—no trace.  Even the people who got him the invitation
depart next day by the P. and O. steamer.  Ah me! he
was on his way to the Princess of China—or to awaken the
sleeping beauty with a kiss.  Would I were the sleeping
beauty!  He really had a distinguished air.'

'I wish Felix would overhear you,' said Stella, who
listened to this little rhapsody with a half-tender smile.

'Ah, my dear, when people are so desperately fond of
each other as Felix and I, the shadow of romance never
eclipses their gaiety.  But the more I have thought over the
episode, the more does it appear to me in the light of an
allegory.  You were from childhood the victim of the ideal.
You always forsook your dolls when you perceived they were
stuffed with sawdust.  When you found the kitten of
commerce mewed by means of a spring, you would have no
more of it.  And so in the central fact of a woman's life, as
someone has called marriage.  You ask for better bread
than is made from wheat.  Well, just for one evening you
saw one cast in that higher mould, and then you were for
ever secured from disillusion.'

'Allie, you have got into one of your random fits.
Remember, it is you who have been spending yourself on
theories and imaginings concerning the unknown.'

'Ah, my dear, it is what you do not say that I try to
interpret.  But take it, I say, as an allegory—not a real
event; and then turn your mind to the sober realities of
life.  Now confess, if at the end of October you had not
gone to a certain assembly, in November you would have
fulfilled your engagement and gone to Laurette—seen the
Melbourne Cup and made certain promises—renewed them,
rather.  Remember our conversation two days before the
ball, when our dresses came home.'

'I like your way of measuring life, Allie.'

'By the dressmaker's thread?  Well, it's much more
cheerful than that of the Paræ.  But you do remember
that conversation?

'Yes, I think we came to the conclusion that some people
married because they were in love; others because they
thought they were; but the majority because they couldn't be.'

'And that you belonged to the last named; but would
very likely find the unholy estate of matrimony as brilliant
an affair as most others.'

'Well, for goodness' sake don't let us go on quoting ourselves
as if we were classics in Russia backs.  I still hold
to that.  I begin to see that Ted is my fate.  I shall have
to succumb.  On the whole, it will be less tiresome.  And
then I want to go to Rome and places.'

'You might have gone with Claude and Helen.'

'Well, it was heroic of them to offer to take me; but I
think it would have been still more heroic of me to have
gone.  Oh, every reason—Can there be anything in life
more unendurable than the confident air of prosperity
which envelops your newly-married couple?  The melting
stolen glances, the becoming humility, the timid anxiety
to please that in pre-nuptial days marked their demeanour,
disappear as if some witch had exorcised them with black
magic.'

'Oh, let it be white magic, Stella, if only for my sake!'

'Till at last we have that placid semi-unconsciousness of
each other's presence which decks your full-blown married
pair as a cankerworm adorns the rose.'

'Oh, Stella, Stella!  I believe you really were born with
a mistrust of marriage,' laughed the elder sister.

'Yes; ever since I have been able to think or observe I
have been convinced that marriage is the most foolish, faulty
old institution going.'

Alice at this laughed louder than before; and then, still
smiling, with the joyous, confident smile of a woman
triumphantly in love, she said:

'I wish, dear, you would throw out a few hints for the
improvement of this heaven-forsaken arrangement.'

'Well, you see, really to improve it would be to destroy
it.  To begin with, people see too much of each other,
which seems to be destructive alike to passion and good
manners.  Oh yes; you are ready to *mourir à rire* at all
this.  Nevertheless, fate and the comedians are lying in
wait for you.'

'As for the comedians, I care nothing for them.  Most
of them were men who married dreadful creatures—as even
Molière did.  And fate—well, the most terrible sting it can
have is that after living all our lives together, Felix and I
may not die together.'

'Like the babes in the wood, or Philemon and Baucis.'

'Yes; or those dear old people one so often sees in
common life, who survive each other only a few quiet
uncomplaining weeks or months.  But as for you, Stella—well,
I suppose you would have your husband come with
his hat in his hand, asking in an agitated voice when he
might pay you a morning call?'

'Yes; and then I would look at my ivory memory—the
pretty one you gave me a year ago, with a tablet for each
day in the week—and I would say, "To-morrow is Goethe's
birthday, and I see only people who write sonnets in honour
of that occasion.  Ah, but yours, my friend, do not scan!
No; nothing in prose, however felicitous, will pass
muster."'

'Well, the next day—wouldn't you let him come on the
next day?' pleaded Alice, a wicked light gleaming in her
eyes.

'No; the next day, "I have an appointment with a white
fairy rose-bush.  It has four hundred and fifty buds, and
some of them have promised to open on that day.  Well,
yes; perhaps Wednesday.  But, mind, you must be very
amusing, and whatever you do, don't tell me old stories."'

And so, grave and gay by turns, they talked of love and
marriage, as girls are wont to do in the sheltered sanctuary
of the parental home, while life is a sort of isthmus
between early youth and the deeper responsibilities of
womanhood.  Behind them lies childhood, full of sunshine
and laughter, of bird calls and opening roses and passionate
little griefs that passed into oblivion in the sleep that came
with the glimmering twilight.  Yes; looking backward there
lie the fairest meadows, sunny nooks made cosier with the
blue haze of smoke rising from familiar hearths; and
always in the air the refrain of cradle songs, the sound
of bells calling to prayer, the faces and voices that they
first loved, that they must love to the end.  They are still
merely onlookers, seeing but selected replicas of the play
of life, jealously guarded from the vulgar collisions of the
crowd.  But what is there on the farther side of the
isthmus?  It is far off, and the land is veiled in mist.

But there are arenas there in which terrible things
happen.  There is reckless trampling as of wild beasts,
and there are dark stains of bloodshed quickly sanded over.
Often there come rumours of those overtaken with worse
than the throes of dissolution.  The shadow of the valley
of life is much more intolerable oftentimes than that of
death.  There are whirlpools that suck in more than life.

And those who have been so delicately guarded: will
their path trend towards sinister pitfalls? will they be
overtaken by those catastrophes that mutilate human lives,
smitten with those fiery darts that with a touch work moral
paralysis?  How will it be with them in the unborn years,
far from the old sacred shelter of their early home?  Will
they moan for help in the darkness, with no ear to listen to
their cry?

Ah, dear God! how strange and pitiful it all is—this
incredible saga of human life, whose beginning we have
lost, whose end we cannot tell; in which we lose one by
one those who are our companions, and in the end lose
ourselves; in which we are first robbed of all we love, and
then of all we know.

The sisters had wandered from lighter topics, and were
talking in hushed tones of their father's death, when
Mr. Edward Ritchie was announced, and the young man
entered with that air so characteristic of him, of being in
and belonging wholly to a world without visions or anxious
forecasts.  His mere presence threw discredit on the
sophistry of speculation.  He was, to use an old figure
of speech, for ever planting cabbages, and when one foot
was on the ground the other was not far off.  Nothing in
books, or the destiny of the race, or the life of the soul,
had ever moved him.  But, then, he was never without a
horse or two that had achieved something wonderful, or
were just going to do so, or might do it if they chose.
Without being exactly excited over this, he was so deeply
interested, and so sure people wanted to know all about
it, that he often, even in the breasts of those who cared little
for equine performances, created a glow of enthusiasm,
which banished every subject of a less abstract nature than
an animal of good lineage, with four legs and a mane.

There was Spindrift, now, who could do anything he
liked at home, and yet, put him on a race-course, you would
swear he was dickey on every leg he had got, and had
sprung a hock into the bargain.  It was enough to make
a fellow eat his hat, and the horse, too.  And such a
beautiful creature—almost perfect in all his points—perhaps
the shoulders were not quite oblique enough.  But the only
thing by which you could guess there was a bad 'nick' in
him was his eye.  Never trust a horse unless his eye is bold
and full, etc., etc.

Ted's ostensible mission, on this occasion, was to invite
the Courtlands to a dinner-party at his father's house before
Cuthbert left for Melbourne.

'My mother and I put our heads together, and planned
it after Larry came to see you to-day,' he explained.
'When Larry comes on a visit to the old house now, she
wants to drive everyone tandem, full swing.  But we just
gave her the slip, and settled how many and all, and I
wouldn't even wait till to-morrow morning—I shall be here
at ten sharp to take you out riding, you know, Stella.  I
thought perhaps Cuth might have some parsonic concern
on, if he didn't get early notice.'

'But a dinner-party on the 26th December!' said Stella,
in a voice of consternation.  'Everyone will be so frightfully
used up with the tradespeople's Christmas cards, and
the heat, and the Athanasian Creed the day before!'

But Ted overruled every objection.  He had to return to
Strathhaye soon after Christmas, and the 26th was the only
day, and come they must.

Then the three went out into the garden to see the sun
set across the sea, which was one of the traditions at
Fairacre.  All over the west the heavens seemed on fire, and
underneath lay the sea, wide and silvery, and calm as a
great inland lake.  A white-sailed craft going southward
stood out with startling distinctness.

'Where lies the land to which yon ship must go?' said
Stella, watching its course with a far look in her eyes.

'To Normanton, I expect, for potatoes,' said Ted promptly.

And then when his companions laughed involuntarily at
this explanation, he asked very placidly where the joke
came in.

'Well, Ted, you must know that a man called Wordsworth
wrote sonnets, and that is a line out of one of them,'
said Alice.

'I'm blessed if ever I could make out why these old
buffers of poets want to jaw so much about things.  If he
didn't know where the boat was going, why didn't he ask
at a shipping office, instead of writing a sonnet?'

This reflection, delivered in a wondering, half-aggrieved
tone, made Stella laugh more than before.  Though Ted
could not always very well divine the cause of her clear
rippling laughter, no sound was pleasanter to his ears.
The elder sister watched the two with an amused interest
that was always renewed.  It was apparent that the blunt,
shrewd way in which the young man so forcibly used his
limited outlook on life, formed a kind of attraction to the
girl, who had that wide sympathetic range of view which
a many-sided culture imparts; who was infected, too, by
that dreamy, sceptical attitude of mind born of a nature
innately introspective, and early inured to flights in mental
dialectics.

'I suppose I ought to go now,' said Ted lingeringly.

'No; stay to dinner and spend the evening with us,'
said Alice.  'Oh, it doesn't matter about your clothes.
Tom and Cuth seldom dress when we dine *en famille* in the
summer-time.'

'Will you play two-handed *euchre* with me for sixpenny
points if I stay, Stella?'

'Oh, I must play for love.'

Ted coloured with pleasure to the roots of his hair, and
Stella hastened to explain.

'You see, it is near the end of the quarter, and I have
nothing in my purse but a doubtful threepenny-bit and a
damaged stamp.'





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.. _`CHAPTER IV.`:

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   CHAPTER IV.

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Godolphin House, the town residence of Sir Edward
Ritchie, was a large pile of buildings near the foot of the
hills, a few miles to the south-west of Adelaide.  Everything
was on a large scale—the house, the grounds, the conservatories,
the trees, and even the views.  The place had
been well planned and built, from the neat little semi-Swiss
lodge at the chief entrance, to the handsome gable-ended
stables, with their luxurious appointments, at some distance
to the rear of the house; and the house itself lacked no
comfort or convenience of modern days, and, to a certain
extent, had been even pleasant to the eye, till, in an evil
hour, the emissary of a great 'decorative' firm had
prevailed on Sir Edward to have the 'mansion' 'done up'
from top to toe.  This took the form of a carnival of
unlimited expenditure, and that unhappy outburst of British
Philistinism known as the æsthetic craze.  There was one
apartment, known as the peacock-room, which upset an old
Bush comrade of Sir Edward's in a surprising way.  The
man was one to whom money had no value apart from the
excitement of earning and losing it.  His life was
impartially spent in tents in the wilderness and costly hotels.
He and Sir Edward had worked together as wood sawyers
in a great gum-forest for over seven years.  This long period
of hard lucrative work had laid the foundation of the worthy
knight's large fortune, while for the other man it started the
habit of alternately drinking bad champagne, etc., at a
guinea a bottle, out of a quart jug, and humping his swag
to the last new rush.  For it was always gold that attracted
him, and that, with astonishing frequency, retrieved his
fallen fortunes.  But through all the reverses of the one, and
the climbing grandeurs of the other, the friendship between
the two men was unbroken.

It was when Godolphin House was at its most appalling
stage of unmodified æstheticism—from sage-green portières
to nymphs with exaggerated chins holding bronze lamps
aloft—that the Bushman paid one of his periodical visits.
Sir Edward took him all over the house, and finally the two
sat down in the peacock-room.  Here they dug their saw-pits
and felled mighty giants of the forest over again.  But the
more adventurous spirit had recently 'knocked down'
a large nugget, and his nerves were not what they ought
to be.

'Ned, my boy, I can't stand these blazing eyes any
longer.  They get upon my liver somehow.  I'll take a
turn in the fresh air.'  With that he stepped on the
terrace, but the next moment he rushed back white and
breathless.

'Look here, old man, I must hook it out of this.  Why,
you've hung the very birds with these damned staring
eyes!'  He had come upon a row of peacocks sunning
their gorgeous tails on the terrace on which he had taken
refuge.

Even Ted used to grumble that it was all very well to
lick the place into a cocked hat with screens, and fans, and
dados, and soup-plates, but it was a jolly shame not to
leave a den or two in which a fellow could live.  Laurette
adored all the transformations as long as they were 'quite
the thing'; but when the tide turned she wrought various
changes from time to time during her visits to her parents,
and in several rooms had quite wiped away the disgrace of
conventional æstheticism.  But the air of 'no expenses
spared,' and of being *en rapport* with a rampant
art-decorator, who has forsworn the old honest British
hideousness for a sickly unreality, was apt to weigh heavy
on the spirits.  It was a house in which above all others
to taste the wormwood of ennui to its last dregs; in which
to be overcome by that lassitude of body, and bitter languor
of mind, in which these symptoms may be successively
noted.

You have a growing conviction that you can draw your
breath but an hour longer without a change of environment.

You find yourself yawning irretrievably when you essay to
add your mite to feeble anecdotes of the weather.

You find your face turning to stone when you strive with
all the anguish of despair to call up a smile in response to a
faded joke.

You reply with withering platitudes to every observation,
and you find the kindliest attempt at pleasantry an
unpardonable offence.

You sit on and on with the uncommunicating muteness of
a fish, till you are overpowered by the thought that if you
do not creep into the solitude of your own room you will be
driven to commit some desperate deed, so that you may be
imprisoned or sent to an asylum for the insane, or some
equally genial retreat that will mercifully shield you from
the joys of social intercourse.

But the culmination of all was the library.  It was a
marvel in its way.  Horace Walpole somewhere speaks of
one that contained only a broken chair, a chart, and a lame
telescope.  But this was an enchanting bower for the muses
compared to a room full of lame and impotent compilations
in 'books' clothing.'  Thinglets fit only to wrap candles in,
or make winding-sheets in Lent for pilchards, or keep butter
in the market-place from melting.  There were rows upon
rows of such stuff as the Rev. Ebenezer Slipslop on
Corinthians; awful Encyclopedias and Treasuries of Knowledge,
and biographies of self-made men who, to the prime sin of
having existed at all, added the no less unpardonable one of
swelling the dreariest form of fiction.  So many and so
many and such woe.  In proportion to the keen pleasure we
associate with real books is the gloom which the bare sight
of such biblia-a-biblia can induce.  The tradition ran that
Sir Edward had ordered 'a ton of books' from a third-rate
bookseller in distress, and that this enterprising tradesman
had bought up and bound for the Godolphin House library
an astounding collection of the young men's mutual
improvement type of rubbish.  There was probably not a fact
in the known world of the callow sort one hears only to
forget which did not repose on these shelves.

Even in venturing out in the grounds at Godolphin House,
everything still breathed of money recklessly lavished by
hirelings.  One was constantly taken to gaze at some
double or triple monstrosity, perpetrated by gardeners who
were so highly paid that it would compromise them to let
Nature have much of her own way.

When Ted returned to his father's house that night, he
found Mrs. Tareling—Larry as he usually called her—in a
bitterly discontented frame of mind.

'Who do you think has come to stay for two weeks, Ted?'
she cried, the moment she caught sight of him.

'Tareling?' questioned Ted carelessly, taking possession
of one armchair and resting his feet on another.

'Oh, you know very well he wouldn't come to stay so long,
especially at Christmas-time.  It is Uncle John!'

'Well, I'm glad the old chap came while I'm here.  It's
ages since I saw him.  Did he bring aunt along with him?'

'Upon my word, Ted, you are horribly provoking sometimes.
You take it as coolly as if he were the most agreeable
company in the world.'

'Well, one's relations aren't often that; but still, there
they are, you know, and there they were, before we showed
our noses in the world.  Has the old man gone to bed?'

'Yes, long ago.  That's his way.  He'll go to bed when
the hens do, that he may rise at daybreak, to go creaking all
over the house and burst into guffaws of laughter at the
decorations and things, and tell abominable stories before
the servants.'

'Now draw it mild, Larry.  The old fellow can tell a
shady yarn as well as most men of his age, especially if he's
a bit sprung, but he doesn't before the servants, and I'm
sure he wouldn't before you.'

'Oh, I don't mean what you call "shady yarns."  It's
much worse when he tells how he left London as a
stowaway, with two and threepence in his pockets, and not a
second shirt to his back.'

'Yes he had.  Don't you remember the little bundle done
up in a red cotton handkerchief—a pair of go-ashore breeches
and a Crimea shirt?'

'Goodness knows, I ought to remember it all; I've heard
it often enough.'

'Well, it's natural when a man comes to be sixty-eight
he should like to tell how he kicked up his heels at seventeen.
If a horse has got much gumption, he doesn't care to race
after he's two years old.  But a man goes it as long as he
can, and afterwards he likes to speak of the old days.  And,
by Jove! it's only what you might expect,' added Ted
reflectively.  'I'd sooner be a stowaway, without even a
bundle, to-morrow, than be close on seventy with a million
of money.'

'Ah, yes; but if you became a stowaway to-morrow, it
would be a very different tale.  You've been brought up
with the command of money and servants, and never took
your hat off to anyone save on equal terms.  But when
Uncle John tells his stories, you know, he used to stand in
his smock frock, staring at the "gentry" as they drove by.
And the way he eats his soup, and chuckles when the
servants say "your ladyship" to mother!'

'You see, Larry, he didn't have four daughters to sit upon
his manners, and train him up the way he should go, like
the governor,' said Ted, smiling broadly, as certain
reminiscences rose in his mind.

'The worst of it is that Colonel and Mrs. Aldersley are
coming here from Friday till Monday.  Yes, they came
over here from Melbourne three weeks ago.  They've been
at Government House for two weeks.  Look here, Ted,
couldn't you take the old man away somewhere during that
time?'

'Well I'm blowed!  You have got a cheek, Larry,' said
Ted, sitting straight up at this proposition.  'Smuggle the
old bird away as if he were a convict, and all for what?
An elderly frump of a woman, who says "Yes, to be sure,"
eighty times a day, and a man who would rook a young cub
that had hardly shed his milk teeth.  Oh, I happen to know
a good deal about Aldersley.  I tell you what, in the matter
of straightforward, fair play, the man isn't fit to brush
Uncle John's shoes!'

'He never wears shoes—it's always great creaking
Wellington boots.  And can't you see, Ted, that to have
embezzled money years and years ago would be pardonable
compared to taking an orange in your fist, and sucking it at
dessert, as Uncle John does?  But nothing is so bad as his
stories; and it's no use interrupting him: he only gets red
in the face and talks louder.'

'Yes; as he did when he was telling once how he and
father borrowed an old donkey to go and see the young
squire's first meet; and there were you and Henrietta,
pitching away about the Queen's drawing-room, at which
our Lotty was presented.  By Jove, it was as good as a
play,' and Ted laughed.

'As good as a play!' echoed Laurette, her face reddening
with vexation.  'Yes, I dare say it will be as good as a play
for the Aldersleys.  You may call Mrs. A. a frump and
think she's slow, but let me tell you she is as sharp as a
needle.  She agrees with everything, so that people may
give themselves away more completely.  She keeps a diary,
and writes pages upon pages in it every night.  Two people
that know her well have told me she means to publish a
book on "Life at the Antipodes" when she gets back to
England, and, of course, Uncle John would be regular nuts
for her.'

'But who the deuce cares what these tourist people say?
They either put down stuff that everybody knows from the
beginning of creation, or they tell crammers that suck in
nobody but their own friends,' said Ted, lighting a cigar,
and resuming his semi-recumbent attitude.

'And it isn't even as if one could make him out to be
eccentric or an oddity,' went on Laurette in a bitter tone.
'He won't change his boots in the house, but he'll put on a
dress-suit and a white tie that goes slipping round his neck
like a third-rate hotel waiter's.  And it's ten to one if he
doesn't blurt out how long his wife was in service with him
before he married her.'

'Well, you may put your money on it that all the world
over people have got to be in service, or have enough money
of their own to live on, or live on someone else,' returned
Ted, with philosophic calm.  'You're always kotooing at
Government House here and in Melbourne—and aren't they
all in service?  Living on money they get out of the country,
for looking on while other people manage affairs.  It's a
perfect chouse.  When Aunt Sally was in service at
Kataloonga she worked for all the money she earned, I bet.'

'You talk as if you hadn't a scrap of proper pride about
you.  You take good care only to ask a lady to be your own
wife,' retorted Laurette rather vindictively.

'It's not because she's a lady; it's just because she's
Stella, and I've known her all my life, and every other girl
seems common and flat beside her,' answered Ted, holding
his cigar in his hand as he spoke.

A half-resentful expression came into Laurette's keen
dark eyes at this speech.  But before she could make any
rejoinder Ted laughed softly in that gratified way which is
significant of pleasant recollections.

'By Jove!  I had a jolly evening!  I never knew any girl
that can make as much out of a little thing as Stella does
sometimes.  We played euchre together,' he went on, in
answer to Laurette's interrogative 'Oh?'  'Stella at first
wouldn't play for money, because she hasn't a sou, being
near the end of the quarter.  Think of that, you know;
and me with over a hundred and fifty thousand pounds in
spanking investments, not to mention the yearly income of
Strathhaye.  I'd like to fill all her pockets with gold and
diamonds, and I can't offer her even a shabby tenner.  She
had a great run of luck with the cards at the beginning—right
bower and joker and a couple of high trump cards—time
after time.  At last she consented to play for money,
and then—confound it!—the luck changed.  I tried to pack
the cards so that she might win.  But she's got eyes like
an eagle-hawk, and bowled me out at once.  You should
hear all the penances she set me.  She lost five shillings
and gave me an I.O.U.'  Ted took a note out of his pocket-book
and gazed at it fondly.  'I'll keep this till all I've got
belongs to her.'

'Well, I sometimes fancy that will never be the case,
after all,' returned Laurette, who, for various reasons, was
in that 'put out' frame of mind in which one finds a gloomy
satisfaction in dashing the hopes of another.

'What do you mean by that?' asked the young man
quickly.  'Hasn't she promised to come to see you in
Melbourne?'

'Yes; in a sort of a way.  Instead of being grateful and
pleased at the idea of seeing some good society, she said,
"Well, if you let me come on my way to Lullaboolagana,
without pledging myself beforehand as to the length of the
visit,"' and Laurette mimicked Stella's tone as well as she
could, grossly exaggerating her little drawl.

'Excuse me for saying so, Larry, but if the Lord meant
you to talk like Stella He'd have given you a prettier mouth,'
said Ted, with slow deliberation.  'And as for good
society—what have you better than she has been in all her life?'

'Oh, yes; a narrow, Churchy little clique, mixed up with
all sorts of outsiders.  People here always rave about
Mrs. Courtland being so sweet and unworldly.  It's my belief
she's full of old Highland pride at heart.  They're on a sort
of little suburban pinnacle, without the least idea of
anything like real style or *chic*.  And that Alice speaking of
themselves as "the poorer classes."  If that's not the pride
that apes humility I should like to know what is...  I
don't know why you've set your heart so on wooing that
girl.  Why, with your fortune you might easily marry a
lord's daughter.'

'But what the devil do I want with a lord's daughter?'
cried Ted, in an amazed voice.  'The only one I ever knew
had a scrag of a neck, and was as yellow as a buttercup.'

'Oh, it's just like a man only to think of looks.  I'd like
to know who all Stella's partners were at the Emberly ball.
I fancy there was something in the background.  The
moment I spoke of the affair she blushed up to the whites
of her eyes——'

'But Stella always does that.  I never see her but she
colours, off and on, twenty times an hour.'

'Yes; she's one of those girls that always look more
charming when an admirer is by, whether they care for
him or not.  She has that slow kind of half-smile and a
droop in her eyes, as if to show her long lashes, and she
sometimes says the most biting things with that gentle sort of
drawl, and then she laughs right out when you least expect
it.  I never did like girls that find things so amusing which
are serious to other people.  They're always coquettes, more
or less.  Oh, you don't half understand Stella Courtland!'

'Well, perhaps a fellow sees rather more than is good for
him of the sort of women who are too easily understood....
At any rate, I understand this much about Stella.  I'd
sooner hear her laugh without quite understanding why
she's amused than have any other woman in the world at
my feet.  And, by George! if she throws me over at the
last—well, it's all U P with me.  I know that....  They're
coming to dinner on the 26th,' he added, relighting his
cigar, 'and we're going out riding together most mornings
till then.'

'Well, Ted, you've always been very good to me when
we've been in a financial fix,' said Laurette, 'and I'll do
what I can for you.  As I said before, I think part of a
season in Melbourne among people who are really in the
swim may open Stella's eyes a little.  She'll find what it is
to have a fashionable connection and good horses, and
dresses from Worth, and the last touch in a Parisian bonnet.
She'll see the crowds of girls nearly as well born as she is,
and more fashionably dressed, and handsomer, whose mouths
would water at the chance of an offer from you.'

'Now, Larry, there you're out of it completely.  The girls
you call handsomer would have their numbers taken down
the instant they stood in the same room with Stella.  As
for being more fashionably dressed—why, whatever she puts
on is the best and most fashionable.  And it's just the same
with what she says.  She may mock at me, or say things I
don't quite catch, or laugh when I don't know the reason
why; but whatever she does is just right—except refusing
me—and, by the Lord, I sometimes think that just a proof
she's really long-headed.  And yet I believe I could make
her as happy as any other fellow would.'

Ted had ceased smoking, and now stared before him with
a look of care on his face which was very unusual.

'Now, Ted, whatever you do, don't let your spirits go
down,' said Laurette.  'Of course the life of a man is as
different from that of a girl as chalk is from cheese.  After
all, the more high-falutin' a girl is, the more she has to
knuckle under to the inevitable....  I remember when I
used to stay at Fairacre in the old days Stella was always
reading some rubbishy old fathers, or tragedies, or wild
German stories.  Her father used to call her his little
"improvisatrice," and she would sometimes start off and
tell stories that would make your backbone quiver.  She
always had too much imagination; and that's the one thing
a woman can best do without.  It makes her draw pictures
of life each one more unlike reality than the other.  But in
the end she'll have to put up with things as they are, just
like the rest of us.  Women have dreams, only to give them
up when they marry.'

When Laurette took to moralizing it was in the robust
strain of one to whom delicacy of mind was not a lost, but
an unknown attribute.

'Well, Larry, if nothing comes of this visit to Melbourne—if
before this time next year Stella is not my wife—why,
I think I must give the affair up for good and all.'

'Quite right, Ted.  The end of everything ought to come
before it's too late.  Whatever lies in my power shall be
done.  I think Melbourne will open her eyes a little.'

'And if you're in a fix for some tin, Larry, before the end
of the season—why, just let me know,' said Ted, who knew
by experience that a season in Melbourne seldom passed in
which a hundred pounds or two was not a welcome, if not
an indispensable gift to Laurette, notwithstanding the station
in the Mallee country, worth over three thousand a year,
which her father settled on her when she married the
Hon. Talbot Tareling five years previously.

A look of vivid interest suddenly came into Laurette's
face.  It was the being 'in a fix' for some time which had
mainly inspired her present visit to her father.

'Well, Ted——' Laurette began, and suddenly paused.
Various thoughts swept through her mind, and then what
she had intended to say ended in the bald statement: 'It
is really very late.'  But at that moment certain seed had
dropped into fertile ground—seed that was destined to bear
fruit in the not distant future, which, to their bitter ruing,
must be eaten by others rather than by herself.





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.. _`CHAPTER V.`:

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   CHAPTER V.

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Cuthbert Courtland left for Melbourne on the 28th of
December.  On the afternoon of the same day Edward
Ritchie called at Fairacre to say good-bye.

He looked dejected and very much out of sorts; weary,
with an unusual pallor on his face.

'You really were ill, then, on the 26th?' said Stella,
noticing the change in his appearance.

'Yes, of course.  Did you think I would stay away for a
trifle when you went to my father's?  It was a horrid sell
altogether.  Two of the best horses behaved like
shoe-trunks.'

'Why, I thought you were at Mr. Edwin Emberly's
place near Reynella?'

'Yes, and we had a private steeplechase—gentlemen
riders—and the day was most abominable.  Everything
went wrong.  If I had only stayed at home——'

'You see, Ted, you cannot have your cake and eat it.'

'Cake? it was a cake.  You seem to have an idea I stayed
away on pleasure.'

'Well, you know, it was an atrocious day, with a fierce
east gully wind.  It's always a little cooler at Reynella.'

'Not on the 26th, with an amateur steeplechase and only
a mob of young bachelors together.'

'But then, in the evening, instead of dressing for dinner,
no doubt you lounged in pyjamas and smoked, and had
"long drinks" out on the verandas.  Whereas we fanned
ourselves languidly through thirteen courses, and listened
to the good old Bishop speaking on surpliced choirs and the
ultimate cost of the cathedral.  I certainly thought you had
the best of it.  But now I see you really were ill.  Did
you have a sunstroke, or did your horse roll over you—or
what?'

'Oh, it was just what!' answered Ritchie grimly.  'The
fact is, I'—he was staring hard at the girl as he spoke, but
something in her gay smiling unconsciousness arrested the
words on his lips—'I believe my heart has gone back on
me rather badly.  It keeps thumping about in the most
confounded manner.'

'Your heart, Ted?  Now do you know what side it is
on?' she asked laughingly.

'Oh yes, Stella, it's all very well for you.  You're on the
right side of the hedge.  You never had a day's illness in
your life since you were a baby.  I've had many an attack.
And to have old Mac and his wife bringing you in beef-tea
you can't drink, and lie awake half the night, and no one
to talk to, or ride out with in the morning and have some
fun——  You can't wonder I run off to Melbourne pretty
often.  What is there to keep me at home?  Now, if you
were there—but I'm not going to say any more just now.
I am going on to Strathhaye, to see to a few things there;
and then I'm going to have a complete change for some
months.  I've been feeling rather dicky off and on for some
time.  Oh yes, I look well enough generally; but you can't
always go by that.  I think I shall give up horse-racing—it
keeps a fellow racketing about so.'

'What! sell Konrad and Circe, and all the rest, and have
no more "sweet little fillies" and year-old colts, that are so
knowing and thoroughbred they take to racing almost without
being told?  What in the world would you talk about, Ted?'

'Oh, I wouldn't sell them all.  I'll always keep good
horses.  I can't stand any other kind; but not to go flying
about from one race-meeting to the other.  It begins to tell
on a fellow after a few years.  I think I'll try and read a
little more.  You remember the list of books I got you to
give me once?  Well, there's a big boxful at Strathhaye
never opened.  I'll take it with me.  But I don't think I
can ever make much out of sonnets, Stella.'

'Why, have you actually been reading sonnets?  Ah,
poor Ted! you must have been feeling bad.'

'Yes, I felt very low last night, after I got home; and I
thought I would try to improve my mind, as Edwin Emberly
calls it.  I thought I would try to understand more
about the things you care for.  I have a Wordsworth that
was given me for a prize at St. Peter's.  Oh, it was for
regular attendance.  When a fellow was there for a couple
of years, and they couldn't give him a prize for anything
else, they gave him one for not playing the tally.  As I was
a boarder, I couldn't do that very well.'

'And did you really get out your prize Wordsworth and
read it?'

'Yes, I read some of the sonnets; but it was for all the
world like a bullock trying to jump in hobbles.  He makes
a great clanking with the chains, and he heaves up his
horns, but he doesn't get any further.  And there's no story
in the thing.  At least, if there is, it's so thin I can never
catch it.  Now, when I was about ten, I remember, you
read me "The Lady of the Lake" once, and, by Jove! it
made my heart beat.  It was one Saturday.  I came from
St. Peter's to stay till Monday.  Cuth was always very kind
to me, though he was at the head of his class and I was
always at the bottom, and one below my age.  You sat up
in the branches of the Moreton Bay fig-tree, and I sat beside
you and turned the leaves.  Good Lord! I wish I was ten
to-day, and you nine!'

'Why?—that we might go and sit in the branches of the
fig-tree?  Perhaps it isn't too late even now——'

'I hate those words "too late!"' said Ritchie, with
unusual irritability.

He rose and strode about the room, and stared out
through one of the windows overlooking the garden.

'Really, Ted shows himself in quite a new aspect to-day.
It is as though he had the first faint beginnings of a soul,'
thought Stella, looking at him with a new interest.  'Why
do you hate the words "too late," Ted?  Have you any
association with them?' she said, going up to him where he
stood at the window.

'Yes; we had a knock-about hand at Strathhaye once,
and I can't forget the way he said the words over and over
at the last.  Well, he was hardly middle-aged, really; but
the life he led made him seem so.  He belonged to one of
the old swell families in England, and got engaged, but had
no money to marry on.  So he sold out of a crack regiment
and came to try his luck at the diggings.  He was among
the lucky ones—he and his mate, who had been a gamekeeper
on his uncle's estate.  They got one nugget worth
four thousand pounds, and there was more to follow; and
there, in the very middle of his luck, came a letter telling
him his sweetheart was married to an old baboon with ever
so many thousands a year.  It put him off his chump
entirely.  He went completely to the bad.  He was two
years at Strathhaye.  He would go off every now and then
with a cheque, and come back blue with the horrors—even
his coat and his blanket sold for a last nobbler or two.  At
last he stayed away for over a month, and came back one
night more dead than alive.  Why he didn't do away with
himself, I can't make out.  Sometimes, I believe, people
get too miserable even to hang themselves.  We had the
doctor for him; but there was nothing he could do except
give him some stuff that made it easier to die.'

'Was there no one to look after him?' asked Stella, her
eyes large and dim with pity.

'Oh yes; he was in the men's hut, and Mrs. Mackenzie
used to go to him for a couple of hours every day.  I used
to go in, too, most days; but, by Jingo!  I can't think of
anything more awkward than to sit by a fellow like that
when you know he's dying, and he knows that you know.
You can't even say you hope he'll soon be better.  You
know nothing of where he's going; and it would hardly be
decent to talk of horses and classifying wool to a man with
the death-rattle in his throat, so to speak.  I offered to read
the Bible to him, but I was always coming across some
queer yarn that made one feel anyhow.  At last he gave me
a little purple Book of Common Prayer to read; but there,
what was the good of reading "The Publick Baptism of
Infants," or "The Churching of Women," or "The
Solemnization of Matrimony"——'

'Oh, Ted! why didn't you read "The Psalms," or "The
Visitation of the Sick," or a collect?' said Stella, unable to
refrain from a smile, though the picture called up by the
young man's unstudied narrative touched her deeply.

'Well, you see, you know the run of the Prayer-Book,
but I don't; and I just used to start off where I opened it.
Once I began with "The Burial of the Dead;" but I wasn't
sorry, for it made poor old Travers laugh so.  "Not yet, my
boy—not yet!" he said.  That was a few evenings before
he died.  And just two days before, a lawyer's letter came,
telling him he was heir to his uncle's estate.  The old man
was dead, the eldest son had come to grief hunting buffaloes
somewhere in North America, and the second had got killed
in the Zulu War years before.  So there was this estate,
with thirteen or fourteen thousand a year, for Travers to
step into, just as he got his last marching-orders—barely
two days before he turned up his toes.  I was sorry the
letter came before he died.  He was rather gone in his
mind, what with sleeping-draughts and one thing and
another.  And after he read the letter everything about
him passed out of his mind, and he thought he was a young
fellow with the ball at his feet, and he and his Nellie were
to be married.  I sat by his bedside in the dusk, and he
kept on saying, "I am so glad this has come before it was
too late, Nell!  It is sometimes awful.  I knew of a fellow
that went to the dogs away in Australia; but then the girl
he loved threw him over.  You would never do that, Nellie
darling!  Thank God, it's not too late—it's not too late!"
By Jove! you know, it gave me a lump in the throat as big
as a potato.  Somehow it was worse than if he said it *was*
too late; and he kept on hammering at the same thing, and
thanking God she was so true to him, and marking down
on a map where they were going for their wedding-trip.
And then he would say, "Now, Nell, don't keep me waiting
long at the church.  I have been waiting such a long time;
and sometimes I had the most awful dreams.  But it's not
too late!" he would begin again.  I was glad when it was
all over.'

'Ah, what pitiful broken episodes many lives are!' said
Stella softly.  'All that might have saved them is
defeated—every touch leads to the catastrophe, and then silence
and darkness—and the great play goes on just the same.
And yet how good it is to be alive and see the sky and look
at the roses!'

'Will you give me a rose before I go, Stella?'

'Yes—what kind would you like?'

'One of those you're fondest of.'

'Well, those I love the very best are the white fairy roses,
and the cruel east wind on the 26th scorched the last of
them, buds and all.  But I can give you a Gloire de
Dijon.'

'And, Stella, would you mind giving me that book with
the "Lady of the Lake" in, and——'

'Oh, with great pleasure!'

'And just write my name in it, Stella—and the date—and
here's a little parcel.  Don't open it till I'm gone.  You
know you said you liked opening parcels.'

'But, Ted, I should see what it is before I take it.'

'No, you can settle about that when I see you in
Melbourne.'

Stella took the little square parcel, and looked at it
doubtfully.  'It's not another Kooditcha shoe?'

They passed into the library, where Stella got the book,
and wrote 'E. Ritchie, 28th Dec.,' on the fly-leaf.  Then
they stepped out into the garden, and got an unopened rose,
fragrant and smiling red at the lips.

'I am sorry your mother and Alice are out—say good-bye
to them for me, Stella—next time I meet them I hope—well,
we shall see.....  Now, Stella, give me your two
hands, and say, "God bless you, Ted!"'

She gave him her hands, and he looked into her face so
long and steadfastly that she suddenly crimsoned under his
gaze, and said with a little pout:

'Ted, you mustn't be so solemn.  One would think you
were going to Central Australia, or whale-fishing to
Greenland in very bad company.'

'Say it, Stella.'

'God bless you, Ted!'

He bent and kissed her hands, and then hurried away
without once looking behind.

Stella stood where he left her, till she heard the sound of
his horse's hoofs ringing on the roadway as he passed up
Barton Terrace.  And then traces of contending emotions
swept over her face.

'Poor old Ted!  I believe he is in some trouble.  What
if his health is really affected?  But I can't believe it.
That is a way men have if the least thing is wrong—they
take themselves as seriously as if they were stuffed llamas.
Well, I'm almost sorry I wasn't more sympathetic .... only
it is so dangerous.'  And the thought of Ted trying to
read sonnets for her sake overcame her with amusement.
Yet this was soon followed by a feeling akin to self-reproach.
In the old days she had read to him—talked to him of what
interested her most—but for the last two or three years,
when they met, her chief feeling was a wondering
amusement that one who had learned to read at all should so
completely escape all tincture of books.  She had got into
the habit of listening to him—of apprehending his point of
view—almost avoiding any direct personal talk that might
influence him or modify his mental habits.  But was he so
entirely beyond any intellectual sympathy—so far removed
from kinship with matters that lay beyond the common
grooves of common life?  Why had she relinquished those
ardent dreams of being a power for good in the lives of those
to whom she was dear?

Her face grew hot as she recalled the frivolous way in
which she had met his half-expressed resolution of giving up
horse-racing.  And yet was there any other pursuit that
seemed so completely to arrest the better development of a
man's nature—to paralyze the worthier interests of life?
The perpetual contact with the ignoble rabble, whose
keenest interest was the excitement of betting, and winning
money for which they had not worked—must not this
render the mind more and more callous to all that was
worth living for?  And yet she had almost mocked his
recoil from his past devotion to the racecourse.

Her action suddenly appeared to her in so odious a light
that she longed to see Ted again for a few moments, to ask
his pardon for her mocking indifference—to encourage him
in his new-born resolve—to tell him that their native
country was full of work which needed honest men and
honest money.  How many fields were white for the harvest—how
many labourers were needed to dedicate their whole
powers to the world's service!

'Oh, I shall have to come back to being as much in
earnest as ever,' she thought, half smiling at her rising zeal;
and then the thought of Ted blundering through 'The
Publick Baptism of Infants' beside the poor dying man
made her feel inclined to laugh and cry at the same moment.

The strange, bitter pathos of that human wreckage which
drifts into so many currents of our Australian life fastened
on her mind—men delicately nurtured in the old homes of
the Old World, as well as the luxurious ones of the New,
and in the end going completely under, in the rough, wild
manner of the veriest waifs.  This is misery of the kind
which weaves the most tragic thread in the web of existence.
The slow but inexorable deterioration of character makes
oftentimes a strong seizure on the startled spirit.

'Oh, it is all too cruel!' said the girl to herself.  And
then a curious sense of undefined peril came over her—one
of those quick unreasoning apprehensions, often strong
enough to give a sense of physical pain, to which minds of
over-reflective fibre are sometimes subject.  It is as though
chains of consciousness, apart from the centre of thought,
were at work storing up half-understood impressions, piecing
together disconnected events, casual words and signs that
have floated through the brain without leaving traces strong
enough for waking memory, till the total is summed up in
an expression of imminent or latent danger which is
suddenly flashed on the mind with bewildering vividness.
And yet the process by which this is conveyed is sealed
from knowledge.  There is no orthodox channel of
intercourse between these swift intuitions and the workaday
brain immersed in the details of daily life.

'Do you think it does a fellow any good to come a
cropper in that way?' was one of the reminiscences Stella
found rising in her mind after the vague little shock of
dread had left her.

She went back into the drawing-room, and there was the
little square parcel still unopened.  It was a brown morocco
case which opened on pressing a spring and disclosed a
magnificent pearl brooch in the form of a horse-shoe—row
upon row of graduated pearls, with a very large one in the
centre, and large ones round it; the next a little smaller,
and so on to the last row, which were small exquisite
pear-shaped pearls.  There was a little note in Ted's round,
schoolboyish hand:

.. vspace:: 2

'DEAR STELLA,

.. vspace:: 1

'This is for your birthday in April.  They are Shark
Bay pearls, got by the boat I have an interest in.  You
used to take little presents from me before on your birthday.
Once I brought you a little beggar of a sparrow, with only
a few feathers, and tried to get a kiss for it, but you didn't
see it.  By Jove! you owe me an awful lot, you know.  I
hope you will like the pearls.  I got the jeweller—should
there be two *l*'s or three in that word?—to make them up
in a horse-shoe for good luck.  Mind you, I know very well
I'm not half good enough for you; but then neither would
any other fellow be.  I wish to-morrow was the day I was
to see you in Melbourne.  You must be a bit of a flirt,
Stella.  The governor is always quite gone on you afresh
after he sees you.  He likes a girl with plenty of go in her;
and you always tell him some funny story over which he
keeps on chuckling.  If you're not in when I call to-morrow,
I may tell you that I was awfully cut up I couldn't leave
Heronshaw on the 26th, so as to dine at home.  I'm
getting full-up of races.  I shan't go to one till I see you
again.  I am going quite into the Bush for a thorough
change.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

   'Good-bye, Stella,
       'Always yours,
           'ED. RITCHIE.'

.. vspace:: 2

Stella looked long at the pearls.  They were so soft and
lustrous, with that glowing moist look as if damp with the
sea under whose myriad waves they took shape and grew
within a creature that had the breath of life.  Is it this that
gives them the wistful tenderness which marks them from
all other jewels?  That, and perhaps the melancholy
moanings of the sea in which they were cradled.

'It is much too costly a gift—unless, indeed, this endless
wooing is to have an unfortunate close,' thought Stella
with a smile.  'Well, it should rob matrimony of some of
its terror to marry the youth who at nine or ten tried to
bribe one to kiss him with a half-fledged sparrowlet.'

From that day till she met him again she consciously
from time to time faced the possibility of this 'unfortunate
close.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER VI.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI.

.. vspace:: 2

Some of the letters which Stella wrote to her brother will
best convey the tenor of her life during the months that
intervened before she left for Melbourne and Lullaboolagana.
They were the last she wrote from the home of her infancy
and girlhood—that serene and happy resting-place in the
chequered journey of life.  They show her on one side gay,
playful, open to every impression, in love with life and
beauty as ardently as a Greek, finding food for mirth at the
core of much which outwardly wears a mask of solemn
gravity.  On the other side she exhibits a cold logical
faculty for drawing pitiless inferences from the laws of
nature, from those lives which had touched her own and
had become bankrupt in all life's promises of joy.  Prone
also to that severe disenchanted estimate of human affairs,
springing from the austere strand inevitably woven into
minds that have at one time been nourished on the sustained
enthusiasm of supernatural ideals—on the writings of saints
and fathers whose keynote is the lofty renunciation of those
who look on the world and its most coveted distinctions as
the empty pageant of a passing show:

.. vspace:: 2

'Fairacre, N. Adelaide, 15th January.

.. vspace:: 1

'You ask me to be sure and write when the thought
arises: "How I should like to tell Cuthbert about this!"
"If I could only have a good long talk with him now!"
But consider, my friend, what a cold little viper a pen is
when you want really to talk face to face!  When a word,
a look, suggests thoughts that had else hardly struggled
into existence!  And then, apart from the chill which the
frosty tip of a pen engenders in one's most communicative
moods, has not ink an immemorial right to be dull?  Still,
I perceive a certain advantage in saying whatever I like,
feeling sure that in a day and a half you will gravely read
it all.  Whereas in a *tête-à-tête* one is open to contradiction—to
interruption—to be skipped like an elderly newspaper,
yawned at like a tedious play.  One is afraid to skip a
letter too cavalierly.  There might be something in it.  For
after all life has many surprises.

'As women generally sit by the hearth all their lives, like
a cat that has given up hunting, they should early learn
how to purr and write letters.  Do you know the tradition
among some of our aboriginal tribes, that their Creator
taught men how to spear kangaroos and women how to dig
roots?  Now that you are on the pacific war-path of a
spearer of souls—what a vile simile!  I am sorry, but that
is the worst of primitive races—they seldom afford good
metaphors.  I imagine that I meant to say I must learn to
dig with my pen—grow intimate with it, make it loyal to
me, so as to keep at bay that estrangement which often
creeps between people when they are apart.  What a fierce
jealousy stirs me at the thought that time and absence
might dare to nip with lean fingers at our lifelong
friendship!

'Shall I divide my letters between daily events and the
natural sprouts of my own understanding?  Someone has
said that matter of fact is the comfortable resource of dull
people.  But when you come to fold it up in pages, stamp
it and send it five hundred miles or so, matter of fact should
have its whiskers trimmed, and its obesity buttoned up in a
slim jacket, like an organ-grinder's monkey.  But if you do
this when you are so good and calm that you have no
history, what remains?

'All this day the north-east wind has abused the privilege
it has of being intolerable.  How I envy people who, unless
they go out on foot, hardly perceive that this *bise* of
Australia is running riot!  You know the habits of our
climate at such times.  The air dry and parching, with
ever-recurring puffs and gusts, warm as if they had escaped from
caldrons of red-hot sand, and that unceasing undertone,
whether the wind blows high or low, as of things being
swirled along the earth.  It is the motion of countless
little twigs, of skeleton leaves, of bits of bark, of old frayed
nonentities, of desert grit borne along in a whirl of dead
resurrection by a wind that surely has not its compeer on
earth for dragging things from near and far that have been
long spent and buried into the unmerciful light of day.
You were spared another page or two regarding the hot
wind by Kirsty, who came half an hour ago to the
library-door, saying that poor old Honora wanted to see me.

'"She's the warse o' drink, and as hoarse as a corbie.
There's nae use in helping her at a'.  It's mony a day
sinsyne that she began thae evil ways," said Kirsty, with
those severe lines round her mouth growing still severer.
"Sall I say you're too busy, Miss Stella?"  Needless to say
I was not.  Poor Honora!  She was more sunburnt and
draggled than ever, her clothes more weather-beaten, her
hat more desperately broken.  Altogether she looked one of
the most forlorn targets of the darts of misfortune that could
well be seen on the world's turbulent stage.  Still, with it
all she maintained that inflexible air of being only one more
victim of the stratagems of fate.

'Oh, she was well, all things considered!  Many a poor
thing with a bad husband and undutiful children would even
now like to change places with her.  But things had gone
against her again.  Work was not easy to get, and since
she had set up housekeeping she had more worries.  "Yis,
Miss Stella, wid the foive shillins' ye gave me whin I met
ye three weeks ago, and I had neither bed nor sup, nor
anny other av the luxuries av loife for two or three days.
May the Blissid Virgin reward ye, and pray for ye, now and
at the hour av your death.  Ye see, it was loike this, me
darlint."—Honora always grows more affectionate when she
is going to tell you a bit of her life.

'"I luked at the two half-crowns, and thought to meself,
'There's a dale may be done wid so much capital.  If
'twere one mane shillin' it wouldn't help anybody to turn
over a new leaf, so to speak.'  So I spint two an' a penny
on a supply of groceries, and I bought a taypot and cup,
and an old tayspoon in a second-hand shop, kep' by an
honest, hardworking, straightforward, onfortinate woman
as ever the sun shone on, Widdy Ryan, in Brown Street.
I tould her how I was resolved, wid the help of God and a
little capital, to be no longer a sthray vagabond, loike a cat
left in an impty house.  And she, poor crather, knowing
what the hardships and mocks av this world are, let me
have the few crockeries as chape as dirt.  Thin I hired one
room from an old comrade, Johanna O'Connor, a cook, who
has come down from the north to take a spell for a few
months.  Indade, Miss Stella, I was as proud as an Impiror
when I heard the chip crackling under the saucepan I got
the loan av from Johanna, for 'twould have made too big a
hole in me funds to buy a taykittle.  And nixt day I just
tuk it aisy, and wint for a walk in Loight Square, and who
should I meet but two av the Sisthers av Saint Joseph, that
used to give me a bed now and thin, but av late have been
moighty cool.  'Well, Honora,' sez Sisther Lucy, 'we
haven't seen ye at chapel at all av late.  Where do ye go?'
'Indade, sisthers,' sez I, 'I must go to thim as will help
me.  I've been thinking of giving up religion altogether and
turning Proteshtant.'"  Do you not find this interview
worth all the "capital"?

'Kirsty is quite scandalized at my liking for the poor old
soul I suppose it is a sad vulgar taste, but I love to listen
to these details.  I want to go and see them all: Widdy
Ryan, with her secondhand shop, who knows what the
mocks of this world are; Johanna, who is taking her ease
in her own rinted cottage; and Honora boiling water for
tea in a saucepan.

'Dustiefoot is well, but, can you believe it? not quite so
young as he was.  It seems that as soon as he is a year old
a collie dog begins to fall into sombre reveries on the flight
of Time, on free will, and the yoke of necessity.  Or are
there infinitely more important themes that occupy the
thoughts of a creature who has the felicity to be born with
four legs and an oblique tan spot above each eye?  I
whispered your name to him this moment, and he wagged
his tail thirteen times.  Have angels a more eloquent mode
of expressing goodwill?  Certainly man has not.  Still, I
am not sorry that in our arduous ascent in the scale of
nature we lost our tails.  Do you not know by instinct the
people who would jocularly catch us by them, as a token of
good fellowship?  Notably those who pride themselves on
being too sincere to take kindly to the conventionalities of
life, and on being the artificers of their own manners.
Now think over it, and see if Blank, and Dash, and Snap
do not appear to you in a more lurid light than ever.  Do
you not find a fresh glow of dislike welling up as you
reflect: "Yes, that is the stamp of man who would infallibly
pull one's tail"?'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER VII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VII.

.. vspace:: 2

'Fairacre, 13th January.

.. vspace:: 1

When a benevolent fairy bestows on me a cast-off island,
or some old-fashioned kingdom upon the mainland, I shall
have a carriage as capacious as a state barge, drawn by two
iron-gray horses, tall and high stepping, likewise a slim
footman, and a fat elderly coachman.  This is the state
with which I was encircled yesterday, when I drove out
with Mrs. Marwood in her brand-new equipage.  And let
me tell you, my dear, that I found the change from our
lowly pony carriage, and Leo's diminutive trot, to these
exalted prosperities very soothing.  How deferential
shop-people and all that ilk are, when one goes about with such
a halo of wealth!  But never suppose that I am going to
revile human nature on these grounds.  No; when I reflected
on the matter, I was unmoved and dispassionate to an edifying
degree.  "After all," I said, "money is a great power."  Pray,
are you dazzled with the brilliant originality of this?
But don't interrupt reflections, for though doing so may add
much to your joy, it is death to the homilist.  "Money is
at the root of all civilization and art."

'At this point an aboriginal family bore in sight, who
pointed the moral in a striking way—father, mother, and
two picaninnies were all barefooted.  In a word, a tattered
Government blanket, a couple of waddies, and the rakings
of a dust-bin, by way of clothing, comprised all their worldly
possessions.  Thrilled with the justice of my remarks, I
went on: "Society is held together by mutual wants.  The
unfortunate devils who have not wherewithal to satisfy these
must go to the wall.  How unavoidable, then, that money
should confer distinction!  It is true that wealth draws out
the flunkeyism of the average week-day mortal in a pitiful
way.  But may not flunkeyism itself be termed the exaggerated
respect of poor natures for an absolute power?" etc.
I do not know any place in which one may make reflections
so fairly and comfortably as in a deep-seated, plush-lined
carriage.

'Do you know how profoundly benevolent and incoherent
Mrs. Marwood is in her charities?  She really is a perfect
*point de raillement* of incongruities.  You find her telling
you how atrociously Worth charges for a simple gray silk,
and before she has finished marshalling her figures she
ejaculates, "But why should we worms of the earth take so
much thought wherewithal shall we be clothed?  The sheep
and caterpillar wore that very clothing long before."  My
imagination is not nimble enough to take in so varied an
assortment of metaphors without bruising its shins.  First
as to the phrase "a worm of the earth."  I no sooner hear
it than I picture myself as a creeping thing, without hands
or feet or face, living in a carcase underground, without
light or sun or air.  Before this gruesome picture is
complete, enter a sheep with a waist, in a fine homespun, and a
caterpillar trailing a trained silk.  You see, they wore "that
very clothing long before."  'Tis to no purpose for a sober
man to knock at the door of poesy, says Plato.  So it is with
me.  The flights that people take to read a lesson to man's
pride confuse rather than edify me.

'One of the visits Mrs. Marwood paid as we were on our
way to her house was to a family whose head she described
as a "brand plucked from the burning."  Judge whether
one who lounges about his house in the afternoon with
unlaced boots, a stubbly beard of a week's growth, and
smoking a short black pipe, seems a fit subject for such a
description.  But then perhaps the appositeness of a "plucked
brand" rests with the eye that sees it.  Certainly he might
have been engaged in drowning his youngest child in the
tank, or dancing on the prostrate form of his wife.

'You hope that I am going on with my collection of
aboriginal myths and customs?  I hope the same.  So it is
evident that life is partly given us that we may keep on
hoping, and nothing come of it.  "Why do I not set to more
seriously?"  In the first place, I hate to "set to"; in the
second, I abhor "more."  And if I could hang myself for
aught, it would be because there is such a word as
"seriously," not only in the dictionary, where one may endure
anything, but also in people's mouths.  Have I expressed
myself too strongly?  Then I repent—but without any
thought of amendment.  This, I believe, is the only thing
that makes repentance tolerable.'





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.. _`CHAPTER VIII.`:

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   CHAPTER VIII.

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'Fairacre, 3rd February.

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'Thank you for your kind inquiries after my chickens.
They thrive apace.  Ten out of twelve of them seem to
have gained a firm footing in the world.  One especially, a
buffy white, nimble creature, is so trenchant a warrior in
the battle of life that we have named it Hector, not after
the family, but the classical hero.  He picks crumbs out of
his brothers' mouths as if he were a Christian merchant;
he hops on his mother's back, and, stretching his neck,
spoils twenty muscatel grapes in half a minute.  He snatches
happy insects out of the sunshine, and, with one slight arch
of his neck, hurls them into an unshrived eternity.  The
place where his tail ought to be is fast developing; a tiny
yellow comb is faintly visible.  Alas!  I see plainly that
Time, who scatters his poppy-seeds with a ruthless hand,
is bent on his destruction.  For the day on which he becomes
what Kirsty terms "a cockerel," his fate is sealed.  But,
then, our own special doom awaits each of us; and Hector
has this advantage in being shelled a fowl: he never sinks
into sallow meditations as to his coming fate.  The present
hour, with its worms and sunshine and sweet opportunities of
theft, is enough for him.  He listens to all the speculations
that can be addressed to him with unmoved composure.
Only this morning one held him in her hand, and said:
"Ah, little feathered atom, so lately shelled from one eternity
into another; fleeting pilgrim in a passing show; confined
to a few roods of earth, yet linked by subtle chains to the
remotest star—nay, perchance, to spirit itself!  To know
thee wholly, how largely must the boundaries of human
knowledge be widened.  Time and space, and the solar
system—all are necessary to thy existence——"

'Hector listened with round rolling eyes, but at this point
he made a sudden dart at the speaker's mouth, as if it
suddenly struck him that it was alive, and possibly as good
to eat as a beetle.

'Yesterday I made several visits to sick people.  Two of
them—Mrs. Rupert and Mrs. Morland—have been slowly
dying for nearly two years.  Do you remember hearing
mother speak of them?  One of consumption, the other of
some internal malady.  Can one witness such long unavailing
struggles without pondering why human beings should
endure so much, all to no purpose? .... People speak
about waiting for the end.  But has not the end of the
body come when it is smitten with an incurable agonizing
malady?

'It would seem that when I enter on moralities, my dear,
you and I are undone, like salt in water.  At any rate, you
will not feel disposed to grumble that, just at the moment
I was dipping the inquisitive beak of my pen in ink, to
come without further phrase or disguise on the yolk at the
heart of euthanasia, who should call but Mr. Willie Stein.
You know how he makes these sudden appearances from
the far north.  The thermometer is very high; the wind is
from the east, and threatens to veer to the north; there are
crowds of undelightful things that ought to be done the
day before to-morrow; Duty, like an old hag that ought to
be burnt at the stake for sedition, peers in at you from time
to time; and then, to fill up the measure, in comes
Mr. Willie!  Here is an aboriginal myth he told me: Once upon
a time the pelicans went to fish and found a great deal of
barracoota, which they left in a gully while they went for
more.  Up came some greedy thieving magpies and stole
the booty.  The pelicans, in revenge, rolled them in the
ashes, and that is the reason why they are partly black.
This belongs to the same class of legend as that of the
venomous snake who made the moon angry by killing so
many blacks, till at last she burnt its head as it slept in
the grass at night.  So that is the reason why its head is
black and its bite harmless.  You see, Australian myths
have this in common with those of classic Greece, that
they also endeavour to give an account of the origin of
things.

'You ask about my translation of "Faust."  I have not
done so many lines per day since you left.  You see the
second part is to our speech, with its many one-syllable
words, a perfect trap for the translator.  I am glad,
however, you encouraged me to undertake this task, for in no
other way can one draw so near to the heart of a work in a
foreign tongue.  But as for any literary value, of course the
thing is naught.  I could make you die of laughing at
subtilties, screwed words, and rhymes hacked and raked all
to no purpose.  The performance is like nothing so much
as a barb-horse that hath his eyes blinded trying to race a
soaring eagle.  But then I feel that I have climbed a little
nearer to Goethe—and is there anything in life more
delightful than the tranquil friendship that grows out of long
and frequent intercourse with a great writer?  One who is
not only among the most majestic sons of light, but a
frontier savant of life—who penetrated to the outposts of
human nature, and unflinchingly noted the vantage-ground
of good and evil.

'Early next week I am going on one of my periodical
visits to Dr. and Mrs. Stein.  They have staying with them,
just now, an old friend, who arrived from Germany a few
days ago—a man who is as steeped in research as a seaweed
is in ozone.  But is it?  Well, if not, it ought to be.

'It is cruel of you to vaunt the praises of the Melbourne
climate over ours, when we are having such atrocious hot
winds.  Yesterday, some of us did nothing but lie on the
floor in Apostolic raiment, swallow ice, and feebly murmur
the old aboriginal incantation: "Sun, sun, burn your
wood—burn your internal substance and go down!"'


'Fairacre, 15th February.

'If I were a South Sea Islander, this is the day on which
I would beat my idol black and blue.  I have completely
fallen out with myself.  Dearest dear, do not put up your
eyebrows in that unbelieving way.  You should have heard
me speaking to myself a little while ago.  "What sort of a
creature do you call yourself?" I said.  "If the wind is from
the north-east, if a dress is a misfit, if people say the same
things to you, if they say nothing at all, you are like a
bundle of stinging-nettles—cross and disagreeable all over.
What have you done to your soul that it does not raise you
above the petty malice of the passing hour?  Go away—go
to someone who does not know you so well as I do—no, I
won't have you at any price.

'And, lo! my friend, here I am, with a pen and a scrubby
little ink-bottle, and a sheet of paper, and a shivering,
homeless ego, thrust from its accustomed throne.  May I come
to you?  Do not ask me inside if you are busy writing
sermons.  No, it wouldn't be safe.  Just give me a mat at the
door and one of the old poets till you have finished.  It
would be no use making a confidant of me.  You could not
feel for me.  If I said my pretty pink *crêpe de chine* has
been spoilt in the sleeves, you might try to look sympathetic,
but you would really be smiling inside.  And yet greater
failures have much greater consolations.  If you construct
a wrong system of ethics you make your claim surer to be
ranked a philosopher; if you make it clear that the majority
of mankind must be damned, you may possibly be reckoned
severe, but are sure to be considered a sound Christian.
But what comfort can be drawn from having the wrong sort
of sleeve?  I defy you to find any; or if you do, 'tis because
you are not a woman.

'You.  Is that the only reason why you have become "a
house divided against itself"?  Well, some of your sex have
ere now pretended to be racked with toothache, when they
were really suffering from heartache.

'But I deny the imputation; besides, what so reasonable
as to be quite out of humour with one's self from time to
time?  And yet an invincible self-approbation is one of the
boons I envy your full-blown Philistine, man or woman.
Take Mrs. Towers, for instance, who chants eternal pæans
to everything she possesses, from her eleven children to her
apricots; from her husband to her Ligurian bees.  You
know how one seldom meets her, without hearing of some
visitor who has travelled far and wide, and yet regards his
visit to Hawthorn Vale as the happiest event in a life not
barren in joy.  How it must save the tissues of the brain to
be in such a state of mind as that perennially! ...

'This afternoon Esther and the three children arrived.
Poor dear! it is so sad to see her in mourning still.
Unless husbands have been very angelic, it seems rather
a mistake to wear mourning so long.  But I think this is
one of the subjects I should skip.  I have some thoughts in
future of trying to imitate Providence in letting events fall
heavily or lightly as they may, but without remark or
expostulation.  This will be all the easier, because the children
have taken entire possession of me.  To-morrow we are
going for an endless ramble by the Torrens away towards
the hills, beyond Windsor, and all the other pretty little
townships, crowded with gardens and orchards and orangeries
and fields of vegetables.  Perhaps we shall see some
mountain ducks on the river, and hear the loud ringing calls of
ash-coloured cuckoos away in the gum-tree tops.  Here is a
*bon mot* from your nephew Clement:

'*I:* "Why, Clem, you are growing frightfully tall!  And
yet it is not so very long since you were in petticoats!"

'*Clem:* "No; but you, Aunt Stella, are in them still;
Will you never grow out of them?"

'I felt too crushed to attempt a reply.  I think I shall
send this to Mr. *Punch*, as a specimen of an Australian boy's
idea of repartee at nine.'





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.. _`CHAPTER IX.`:

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   CHAPTER IX.

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'Fairacre, 1st March.

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'I have just returned from Mrs. Stein's, laden with roses
and early white China asters and double balsams of the
most celestial pink.  You know of old what a delightful
event a visit to Rosenthal is.  But you do not know what
it is to listen for hours to Professor Kellwitz, the Primitive
Dwelling man, talking for hours on the præ-Deuteronomic
Pentateuch and "Die assyrisch-babylonisch Keilinschriften,"
and the early twilight of man's history on the earth.
Nay, he one day went back still further, even to the time
when our world was without form and void—when what is
above was not called heaven, and that which is the earth
beneath had not a name—ere a sprout had yet sprung forth
and "the generative processes at work were all hidden in
chaotic vapour."  The two old friends spoke, of course, to
each other in German, and sometimes I lost the thread of
what they were saying, and I would not ask a question for
the world.  I love too well to listen to men talking when
they are oblivious of a woman's presence.  The second day
I was there is especially memorable to me.  Mrs. Stein was
busy preserving Duke cherries in brandy.  The sparrows
are so bad this year that the cherries have been gathered off
some trees before ripening.  Don't you think the sparrow
in Australia is an awful example of a bird with a conscience
seared as with a hot iron?  In his native countries he is, it
seems, undainty to a discreditable degree, seldom tasting
fruit and never red nectar.  But with us he not only
becomes an epicure beyond the wildest dreams of the pagan
world, but a reckless destroyer—a small Attila with a pair
of brown wings.  Not merely does he disdain to eat the
skin of a freestone peach and the transparent rind of
sweetwater grapes, but for each one he eats he spoils twenty by
pecking at them.  Here at Rosenthal, where he lives meal-free
and at ease, the ungrateful little varlet nibbles two score
of cherries to each one he eats.

'Ah, true!  I have not told you about the second day of
my visit.  There was rather a horrid gully wind blowing.
So early in the afternoon the Doctor and the Professor
established themselves in the western veranda with the
curtains drawn, with their pipes lit, and between them a
table that groaned under its array of Lager-bier bottles.  I
was sitting, with a book and a small Rupert garment half
made, by the French window of the drawing-room, when the
two took up their quarters close beside me, with only the
window-curtains between us.  There were peals of Homeric
laughter as they recalled incidents of their student days;
and there was talk of a Lischen, who seems to have been
celebrated for the length of her golden hair, "long since
turned to dust."  Then they talked of their work.  The
Doctor told tales of the early days of the colony, and how,
twenty-four years ago, he and Courtland became intimate
friends.  When he spoke of father's learning and rare
goodness of nature, it was all I could do to keep myself from
stepping out and kissing him on the mouth.  Then the
Professor spoke of his early struggles.  For many years he
held a subordinate post in a small university, where he had
three-quarters of the day to himself.  He seems from the first
to have been devoted to that kind of literature which no
reference library should be without.  One of the incidents
he told was of a far journey he made during one vacation to
a little town, to which some Grand-Duke had bequeathed a
singular collection of books.  It was a long journey, and
cost more than he anticipated; so that before he returned
he was forced to leave his watch in pawn, though he trudged
the greater part of the way.  And the object of all this was
to authenticate *one date*.  On hearing this, I shifted my
chair, so that I could see the Professor's face better.  A
spare keen face it is, with many lines and furrows, and yet
distinctly human, as though in all his researches and
wanderings he had never lost sight of the fact that man
himself is a more insoluble interesting problem than any
facts to be gleaned regarding him.

'There was a sound of cork-drawing, and discovering that
I was thirsty, I went into the dining-room for a glass of
seltzer.  When I returned the talk had veered to Australia—its
inhabitants and resources, and future prospects.  The
Professor found a grave drawback in the thought that as
most colonists originally came to the country for material
reasons, true patriotism must be of tardy growth: "Your
young people do not love it as their native land in the same
way that ours do."

'"Yes, Herr Professor, they do!" I cried, obeying an
irresistible impulse to bear witness to the love I have for
my own country.  And then a long animated talk followed,
during which I was obliged to turn to my own tongue—for
the Professor talks English much better than I talk German.
I drew up the veranda curtain, and bade the good Pundit
mark the loveliness of my birthplace—the city with its
white buildings and scores of spires encircled by shady
parks, the sea beyond stretching to the western horizon,
the fertile plain to the north sprinkled with wide fields that
yield bountiful harvests from year to year; the hills close
at hand, with their tree-crowned heights, and graceful
curves, and shadowy gullies—all thickly studded with
prosperous homes, with orchards, and vineyards, and flowery
gardens, and olivets—and over all the overflowing sunshine,
which encompasses the land year in, year out.  Who could
be born in such a place and not love it for its beauty and
fertility?  If our fathers were crowded out of the old
world—or left it because they feared their children might sink
into poverty—was not that an added reason to love the new
one, which had offered them comfort and prosperity, and a
fair field for the energies of their sons?  We have great
wastes and atrocious hot winds—but shall we receive good
and not evil also?

'"Yes, after all, each one must remain in his own skin,"
said Dr. Stein, taking up the parable.  "If I were in bitter
poverty in the Fatherland, as many men are who are more
gifted than I am, I might be a dangerous Socialist hatching
plots against the safety of the State.  There is a point
beyond which history and the traditions of the past touch
the heart but little.  The great kings and nobles who figure
so largely in our history were mostly men who commanded
the lives and wages of others, while they themselves were
hedged round with privileges and wanton luxury.  I want
my own share of the pleasant things of life, and the country
which gives me this, and in which my children were born,
has as strong a claim on their love and gratitude as the
oldest country of them all.  Practically you owe your life
to the country in which you were born.  Stella, here, who
is the granddaughter of a man that fell fighting for Old
England, do you think she would not make as much
sacrifice for her native land as any German maiden of
old times?"  "Hear, hear," said I, clapping my hands in
honour of myself in true democratic fashion.

'Enter Mrs. Stein, followed by Hetty with a trayful of
slender pink glasses, and a flagon of Rosenthal cup.  The
pure juice of the Australian grape mellowed by ten years'
repose in the Doctor's cellar.  It was a lovely amber colour,
with an excellent bouquet, and though I always like wine
best when I do not drink it, I felt bound to honour the
Professor's toast, which was "The Old Fatherland and the
New."  We became great friends, and, in fact, I have
promised that when you and I go on our travels we shall pay
him a visit in Berlin.'





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.. _`CHAPTER X.`:

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   CHAPTER X.

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'Fairacre, 14th March.

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'MY DEAR CUTHBERT,

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'A very disconcerting thought hopped into my head
after reading over your last letter.  You seem to go to see
the Rev. S. Carter very often.  Tell me true—is it the
quality of the good man's theology, or his daughters, that
attract you?  Perhaps you have not yet arrived at the
conscious stage.  Oh yes, I am quite an authority on the tender
passion.  I have read and re-read Mr. Harrison's play, and
made endless suggestions.  There are two young people
who are madly in love with each other, but do not know it
till a certain crisis.  I object to this rather, but A. says that
it is for the stage, and not for posterity.  You would have
laughed if you had heard us deciding such knotty points as
to whether a certain young man would have the presence
of mind to improvise a story when he was interrupted in
making a declaration of love; whether the heroine was not
disloyal in believing her lover guilty of a crime because
appearances were strongly against him, etc., etc.  There
is an unusual and interesting plot, and the dialogue is crisp.
A. calls it "Macaroni" for the present, because he says
I have been sticking feathers in it.  I found him out using
up some things I said, and he declares it is because Evelina
resembles me, and would naturally speak a little like me.

'I have now a very nice riding-horse, from Zembra's,
named Ivan.  Our favourite ride is to the seaside, which
we reach in half an hour when we make for the Grange or
Henley Beach.  The latter is my favourite ride.  We pass
such old-looking gardens, and hedges still full of Macartney
roses—altogether a flat, shadowy tract in which there are
always sea-birds wheeling slowly above the trees—sea-gulls,
white terns, and occasionally those lovely little gulls,
snow-white and pale gray, with blood-red feet and bills.  When
disturbed by the trampling of our horses they utter mournful
cries, and fly before us seaward.  They remind me of
something in an old author somewhere on the shelves: "About
thee gathered the daughters of old ocean, uttering cries of grief.
They spread over thee vestments perfumed with ambrosia."

'But I have been strangely neglectful in not introducing
you before this to Major Foster and Mr. Paul Ferrier.
Though we have known them only since you left, they are
now habitual visitors—in fact, they may be called our *amis
de la maison* in the antique line.

'The cause of the Major's visit to Adelaide is a great
joke.  He came to administer consolation to an old friend
who had lost his wife, and was inconsolable—for nine
months.  Do you not find this very funny?  But when I
tell you that this friend is Mr. Inglis Taylor!  During the
first six months of his widowhood Mr. I. T. wrote repeatedly
to his old friend, urging him to come on a long-promised
visit; he was so broken-hearted, but could not leave his
clients to go for a change.  But the Major being long a
widower, with his only daughter settled, and having retired
from the army, why should he not come?  So, moved by
the sacred ties of old friendship, and the duty of administering
consolation, the Major came, and found his friend
enjoying the sober ecstasies of his third honeymoon.  You
know already something of Mrs. I. Taylor and her many
matrimonial adventures.  I have not the slightest doubt
that on the voyage the Major read standard works of
philosophy and religion, so that he might be better able to
bind up a prostrate and bleeding spirit.  I have tried to
glean information on this point, but the Major is reticent.
In fact, I think he mistrusts my motives.  He does not
know that my curiosity arises from my wish to be a
beautiful soul,  Don't you remember that Montaigne says
the beautiful souls are they that are universal, open,
and ready for all things; if not instructed, at least capable
of being so?  Now, I do want to be instructed how a man
feels when he has come fifteen thousand miles to weep on
the neck of a widower, and finds him married for the third
time to a woman who has been thrice married before.  Well,
perhaps this is only her third husband, but I cannot make
any other reduction in the number.  I never see her without
recalling the woman of Samaria.  But I suppose it makes a
difference if there is only one of them living at a time—I
mean of the husbands.

Mr. Ferrier is an ex-missionary.  He lived among the
blacks for twenty years; but he has been so much
concerned for their souls that he does not know any myths,
and their customs, I suppose, are not to be spoken of.  He
called shortly after you left, to ask if mother would
subscribe to the mission in which he was so long engaged till
severe and repeated ophthalmia threatened him with
blindness.  Indeed, he had almost lost his sight when he came
to be treated in the hospital here six months ago.  Even
now, when he is outside, he always wears a green shade
over his eyes.  He has about sixty pounds a year to live on,
and out of this he subscribes ten pounds a year to the
Mandura Mission.  He is nearly seventy, but looks older, being
very weather-beaten and brown, and his eyes so dim.
There is something heroic and ardent about the old man;
and imagine being so enthusiastic about the conversion of
the aborigines!  You know mother's angelic kindness to
poor and lonely people.  He is quite alone in the world,
and no doubt his leisure engrosses most of his time.  It is
an understood thing that he comes to Fairacre twice or
thrice a week, and we all subscribe to his beloved mission.
I think he has more of Don Quixote in him than any other
I have ever known.

'You say that you never think of me now as doing anything
but making snares for the stubble-loving grasshoppers
or watching birds on the wing.  Well, we do pass a great
deal of our time outside.  The worst ardours of the summer
are over; the woods are so shady, and the children and the
dogs tempt me out constantly, when I have serious thoughts
of confusedly tumbling over divers authors.  After breakfast
we go out to feed the pigeons and the chickens.  There are
so many pigeons now, they darken the air, flying down to
be fed.  They alight on our shoulders and make such pretty
cooing sounds.  It is not to be credited though, how
long-legged and everyday Hector grows in common with his
family.  Time, who is the most impertinent busybody in
the world, so soon spoils chickens—and alas!  I suppose I
ought to say, young women.  Ivan begins to distinguish
my voice, and makes me very happy sometimes by whinnying
when I speak to him....  Often we follow a string of
ants to their home, and watch them descend with the booty
they have gathered.  We drop crystals of sugar and grains
of wheat and rice so as to watch them carrying off their
loads in triumph.  This afternoon we discovered a hive of
bees in Hercules.  Is it necessary to explain that this is
the gigantic gum-tree opposite us in the Park Lands?  Their
hum is never absent there; but near that great old tree it is
as though one were inside a hive.  We watched numbers
passing in and out of the hollow stump of a broken limb,
high up, and, looking closely, we saw the ends of their
waxen cells.  How many jars of honey are hived away
there is now an all-absorbing thought—second in interest
only to the chrysanthemums, which are swelling visibly and
promise to open early this season.  After discovering the
wild hive, we wandered homeward; and when we got back,
we ate grapes in the vine arcade.  It is quite a show,
literally bending beneath its loads of grapes; so are all the
fruit-trees, each after its kind.  The jargonelle pears are
as yellow and soft as cream, and the large purple Turkish
figs melt on the trees.  The peaches and apricots blush at
each other, like lovers in a play.  (Mem.: Offer this
comparison to Mr. Harrison for "Macaroni")  There are some
pomegranate-trees, whose fruit looks like fiery blossoms.
They are not quite ripe yet, but we got one each, and sat
down picking seeds from the crimson rinds, like sparrows.

'"Now, Dustiefoot, it is extremely wrong of you to thrust
your cold black nose in my face——"  My dear, don't you
think it is time I stopped?  That is the way with us in our
dear, quiet Adelaide!  We have so little to distract us,
that when we begin to do anything the difficulty is to leave
off.'





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.. _`CHAPTER XI.`:

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   CHAPTER XI.

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'Blumenthal, Easter Sunday.

.. vspace:: 1

'I must write to you while I am at Pastor Fielder's.  I
came on Saturday, so as to be at the Dankfest to-day.

'You know what an old-world charming little German-looking
township Blumenthal is, with the Coolie Hills in
the distance, to the south-east, and the quiet, shadowy
woods all round, broken up by farms and vineyards and
numberless homesteads, nestling among fruit-trees.
St. Stephan's, the new little Lutheran church, is nearly a mile
from the pastor's house, with a delicious untilled valley full
of tan wattles lying between.  There is a good-sized garden
and a glebe attached to the pastorage—a glebe with two
milch-cows, likewise two calves, that come up and let you
kiss them on the forehead, and rub their charming little
chestnut noses against your hand.  There is also a fat gray
cob, lazier even than Leo.  You may doubt this; but that
is because you do not know Hans as intimately as I do.
But I want you to come to the little church.  The pastor
went at ten; Mrs. Fiedler and I half an hour later, and we
brought immense posies of chrysanthemums.  They are out
in wide bushes; at this moment there is a great bowl of
them close beside me.  They are in the little hall in the
sitting-room, on the tiny lawn, in the garden—everywhere.
We also brought some of our best roses and crocuses.  How
I love the yellow crocuses that come up in wide golden
bubbles, so close to the ground!  Sunday was an entirely
perfect day.  I believe it was really the first day of autumn.
The sun was at times half veiled with fleecy gray clouds.
The sky was not so staringly blue; a tender tint of gray
had stolen into it.  And there were such gentle pastoral
sounds: the distant tinkling of bullock-bells; the bleating
of sheep not far away; the lowing of a cow whose calf had
been weaned; the high, sweet carol of a white-shafted
fantail.  Autumn leaves fluttered in the wind down from
the willows and fruit-trees; but they did not speak of decay,
only of rest.  Everything rested—from the great foliage
masses that bounded the horizon on every side, to the bees
whose buzzing was faint, as if they were half drugged with
the ambrosia of deep flower-bells.  No rumble of dray or
waggon, laden with wool or wheat or grapes or hay, invaded
the Sabbath quiet.

'My old friends the Schulzes, Grossvater and Grossmutter,
greeted me with all their old cordiality.  Their seat
was crammed with sturdy young Schulzes of the third
generation.  I should be afraid to say how many of the
sept there were in all.  It was good I was in the church
before the service began, for I could not have kept my eyes
from wandering.  Such lavish heaps of flowers, fruit, and
vegetables!  No wonder the good Germans of Blumenthal
hold a harvest festival.  There are ten windows in
St. Stephan's, with wide, deep sills to them.  On each side of
these an overflowing horn of plenty had been emptied.

'It was a triumphant exhibition of what Nature can do in
our land when her lap is shaken out.  The apples alone
were a feast to the eyes—so large and smooth and beautifully
tinted.  As for the pears, they were so ripely yellow one
dared not look at them too fixedly lest they should melt at
a glance.  There were mounds of great purple figs gaping
with mellowness.  Citrons large as pumpkins, quinces not
much smaller, plums of all kinds, from the little piquant
damson to the generous Orleans; blood-red mulberries,
fragrant peaches with their crimsoned cheeks, nectarines,
and oranges of a lordly size, though still, of course, unripe.
On the altar—a plain table with a white cloth and
crucifix—were grapes, heaped up in splendid profusion.  The
robust Black Prince, the small berries of the Cabernet
Sauvignon—no, I must not put you out of patience by
naming all; besides, if I did, half would still be forgotten,
if you will pardon the bull.  I noticed one bunch of
Doradillas which must have weighed five pounds.  You are in
deadly terror of hearing about the spies and Eshcol—but I
spare you.  I also let you off in the matter of vegetables.
They were all there, from the asparagus to the virtuous
potato.  The ends of the seats were wreathed with hop and
vine leaves, and round the chandeliers were hung sheaves
of fine wheat, of oats, of barley, and maize.  The pastor
preached a divine little sermon—sincere, simple, and to the
point.  It was the discourse of a man who knows that there
are two sorts of ignorance, and two sorts of lying, in the
world.  The ignorance that knows and cares for little
beyond the daily round; the ignorance that cares for so
much, yet apprehends that so little can be really known.
The lying—that of statements known to be untrue; the
other, which takes the form of treating as certainties matters
that can never be subjectively proved true.  And yet,
because he knew all this, it seemed to me that he was all
the better fitted to speak with authority on what we do
know to be true.  We know that if we put aside the baser
temptations of life we can bear our share of fruit to nourish
man's spiritual nature, even as the fields around us, year in,
year out, bear harvests that sustain material life.

'As we came home the wattlewood valley rang with the
peculiar mournful pipe of some birds.  "They are quite
new here," said the pastor and pastorin as we stood to
listen.  I felt I ought to know whose notes they were, yet
could not tell without seeing the birds that uttered them.
I left Dustiefoot in the pastor's charge and stole away as
noiselessly as an aboriginal in Kooditcha shoes.  Dear, how
you will begin to hate this comparison—to me it still has
something of the freshness of primeval woods.  They were
white-winged choughs.  I saw three of them perched in the
very top of a tree.  One knows them from afar by their
scarlet irides and the glossy green reflections of their
plumage.

'In the afternoon we drove to the Schulzes.  Grossmutter,
as usual, kissed me repeatedly, as if I were a little child—and
very good.  But it is true, if ever I am good at all, it is
among these kindly, sincere German people.  Not even the
sort of impertinent pen you wot of would tempt me to cast
reflections now on a world that produces such fine grapes
and wholesome-natured people.

'Grossvater was in one of his blithest and serenest hours.
Their golden wedding-day is next month—on his eighty-first
birthday.  After that he will give up all active part in
the management of his vineyards.  His son Karl is a good
and skilful vigneron.  "I counsel him to be true to his
Australian Fatherland—to make nothing but good wine
from good grapes," said the old man, with the genial smile
that makes his face so young.  "Wine fit to drink at the
table of the Lord's Supper, at the marriage feast, at the
christening of the eldest son, on the death-bed, when the
dear God calls us to another world."

'One sees how much better it is for the pastor to be in
the country with a congregation that grows grapes and tills
the soil.  Life passes with such leisurely tranquillity, and
the baser denominations of our kind seem more unreal.  I
feel sure, too, that no one here tempts him to read the
"Kritik of Pure Reason."'

.. vspace:: 2

'Fairacre.

.. vspace:: 1

'I left Blumenthal yesterday, vowing to make a longer
visit in the spring.  I carried away with me from the pastor
an old ballad in early German, called "Two King's Children,"
which I am translating into English for your special benefit.
This is the anniversary of Esther's wedding-day.  No one
had the courage to say a word about it.  After what you
said so admirably as to the necessity of sometimes showing
a little of the sympathy that one feels, I made an effort.
But, heavens, how I blundered!  It was after sunset.  I
sat in the drawing-room bow-window sewing, when Esther
came and sat in a far corner already dusky with the
gathering twilight.  She sat with folded hands, her face
pale and set.  At last I crept up to her and touched her
cheek with my hand; and presently we were both crying.
To make one weep bitterly who had before been calm, is
that shedding any of the balm of consolation?  Don't you
think you had better dissuade rather than encourage me in
such painful bungling?  It is better to recognise one's
limitations.  If people are badly hurt, I can make them cry
worse, but can never tell them it is all for the best.  I could
tell them that no one understands the refinements of
hangmanship like Nature, and that life is a finished artist in
defeating the heart's insatiable yearning for happiness; but
on the whole I think I had better hold my tongue—likewise
my pen.  But not till I tell you a little *conte à rire* related
to me by the pastor when he drove me into Gawler for the
two o'clock train.  Two Sundays ago he visited the little
Lutheran Sunday-school at Detmold, and found the teacher—a
very stout, placid-natured man, who likes to arrange
things in a tranquil, unexciting way—with a class around
him repeating the Creed.  The plan was that each child
should say a clause, thus: "I believe in ... the Holy
Catholic Church;" next child, "the communion of saints;"
next, "the forgiveness of sins."  Then there was a long
pause, till a small boy at the tail-end of the class piped out:
"Please, teacher, the girl who believes in the resurrection
of the body has got the mumps!"'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII.

.. vspace:: 2

'Fairacre, 10th April.

.. vspace:: 1

'Alas! the young gentle autumn was a treacherous
make-believe.  For the last week we have had an inordinate fit
of hot weather—frequently the sky overcast and lowering:
it promises to rain, but the clouds turn to vapour; the wind
changes, but it is not cool.  To-night, again, the barometer
has fallen; the moon and the stars are all hidden, the air is
intolerably sultry, and there is that further sign of
change—unending swarms of insect life.  I write by my open
window, and they come floating in, hovering round the
lamp, creeping on the table, getting in the way of my
pen—creatures on foot and on wing—thinglets that fly one moment
and fall down helplessly the next—morsels that crawl with
half-spread wings, and things that fly as if with legs.  They
terrify me—these purposeless hordes that struggle into
existence one moment and the next are crushed by a footfall,
the accidental turning of a leaf, the scratch of an idle
pen.  Do they not throw some light on the cataclysms of
human history?  Are they not linked closely to our race
and lot—part of an incomprehensible world in which,
stronger than righteousness or justice, or any figment of
morality, reigns the impulse of every single organic being to
increase in numbers?  Is it true that some form of thought
underlies the lowliest manifestations of life?  What instinct
or purpose is subserved by those pretty little pearl-gray
moths, with silver dust on their wings, who dash into the
flame of lamp or candle, as if it were the source of life?
Here is one of them which I have twice saved from consuming
itself.  One wing is scorched and it is very limp, as
if rescuing it from burning were defeating its only purpose,
snatching it from the one possible joy of existence.  The
thought possesses me that some higher intelligences than
we know may thus regard our lives.  But have we more
power to fashion and to mould them than this helpless
thinglet that was called into being by forces over which it
wields no control, and seeks nothingness by an impulse
equally beyond its influence?

.. vspace:: 2

'Last night the rain came down in torrents; towards
morning there was a thunderstorm, of which I heard nothing.
But to-day the air and the sky are clear and fresh, the
Torrens is babbling, and the birds are singing the blithest
legends imaginable all over the Park Lands.  The Major
and Mr. Ferrier are spending the day with us.  Poor
Mr. Ferrier is forever telling us about the conversion of some
aborigine.  I often wish we could keep an old black fellow
on hand at Fairacre for him to convert from time to time,
and then perhaps he would spare us these endless recitals.
But my heart smites me for speaking like this of the zealous
ex-missionary, and I am sure mother likes to listen to him.
Then he is so entirely in earnest.  Perhaps you would like
to know his story of to-day?  It was about a half-caste boy
who, after being at the Mandurang Mission Station for a
year, began to show signs of repentance and grace.  One
day he stole some sugar.  "Was that after he showed these
signs?" asked the Major.  From some people the inquiry
would sound ironical, but not from the dear guileless Major,
who is evidently quite unused to theological phrases, and
was merely trying hard to comprehend all he heard.

'"Yes, sir," answered Mr. Ferrier; "it was some weeks
after we had great hopes of him.  The old Adam is strong
in all of us, but perhaps especially so in our poor half-caste
natives.  Do you know, my dear sir, that there was a canon
law of the Church in the early ages which rendered converts
from heathenism ineligible for the priesthood to the second
and third generation?  Well, I knew Thomas—we always
gave our people Christian names at their baptism—had
taken the sugar; but I said nothing to him.  I felt the
time had come when he must be allowed to stand or fall.
The boy was dear to my wife, and she wished me to take
him aside and remonstrate with him.  But I said, 'He
knows good from evil now; we must see whether the root
of the matter is in him.'  We read the Word of God, and
had prayers in the evening as usual.  My dear wife offered
the prayer; she wrestled with God mightily for the soul of
the half-caste boy.  Ah, my dear friends, I wish you had
known her—not a thought for self.  Her only thought was
to win souls for the Saviour, and many of these poor people
were verily brought through her means to the foot of the
Cross.  It was only nine months after this it pleased God
to take her from me."

'There was such pathos in the old man's voice, it gave
one a lump in the throat.  The Major hastily drew out his
handkerchief and pretended to cough.  But Dorothy at four
and a half can make-believe much better than the Major at
fifty-seven.

'Mr. Ferrier went on to tell how, after the natives retired
for the night, he sat in the sitting-room writing out his
monthly report, leaving a blank where he was to write of
Thomas, till he found whether he would repent him of his
theft.  His wife sat with a book in her hand, but he knew
that she was crying, not reading.  At last a tap came at the
open window, and a timid voice saying: "Missie, missie,
me want to gabber!"  It was Thomas.  The wife at once
went out, and the boy talked to her for some time.
Presently she came in with "a light on her face," as
Mr. Ferrier expressed it, and she said: "Paul, you need not
leave a blank for Thomas now.  The Lord has given him
to us as a prey snatched from the snarer."  "And though
he had a passionate temper, and sometimes gave way to it,
yet from that day till the hour of his death I never had
reason to doubt that he was a chosen vessel of grace," said
Mr. Ferrier solemnly.

'No one could doubt the good man's sincerity.  But I
confess I never hear him talk in this fashion without
a great longing to know what conception an Australian
aborigine could really form of the profoundly metaphysical
dogmas of Christianity.  They are so kneaded into our
literature, so imbedded in the marrow of our minds by
inheritance and instruction, we could not if we would really
cast them from us at least as phases of thought.  But a
savage who cannot count beyond three, and goes out to
murder some tribal foe because a kinsman has been killed
by the fall of a tree—what idea looms up in the twilight of
his mind when he is kept at a mission and taught the
Creed and the Ten Commandments?  Here is an anecdote
I fished from Mr. Ferrier, when I was trying to glean
aboriginal myths from him.  An old man, badly wounded,
came to the mission one day.  They nursed him and fed
him, and he seemed so docile and to accept all he was
taught so readily, that they thought he was in a short time
ready for baptism.  One thing puzzled them, however.
Though he bathed often, and had clean clothing on, a
peculiar odour always hung about him.  A few days before
he was to be baptized, it suddenly struck Mr. Ferrier that
this was caused by something with which he smeared
his hair.  But this was not the case.  It was the kidney-fat
of an enemy rolled up, and secured among his locks.
He would allow no one to touch or remove it, for it
was a point of honour with him to keep this ghastly
memento until he had also murdered the brother of his
victim.  In the meantime he was very anxious to be
baptized.

'The rain has rather battered some of our chrysanthemum
bushes.  But then there are such angelic multitudes—in
all shades—white and pale-cream, pink and rose; red
are our special favourites among the Japanese.  This last
shade has for me as irresistible a charm as the pink ear of
the maiden which in Tom's Turkish song robbed her lover
of his reason.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XIII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIII.

.. vspace:: 2

'Fairacre, 20th April.

.. vspace:: 1

'After listening to innumerable tales of conversion, after
hearing of aborigines who talked on their deathbeds like
leaflet tracts, ever since we first knew Mr. Ferrier, he has
at last told me a charming little myth.  It bears no traces
at all of being the production of natives that, to use
Dr. Stein's expression, had been "tampered with by the
missionaries."  You might put everyone of them that ever
laboured in Australia in rows, and bribe them with the
promise of a whole continent of blacks, all ready to talk
broken English and wear second-hand store clothes on
Sunday—and yet between them the worthy missionaries
would never produce anything with the peculiar cachet of
an aboriginal myth.  But if I say much more you will vow
that I am enamoured of the subject—it is as a master
passion on which people must notoriously be mistrusted.
It is such a short myth, dear, after all, that I am obliged to
add to it with a preface.  Do you notice how Tom is training
me to dabble in bulls?

'The sun is a woman who courses over the sky all day,
keeping up enormous fires.  But at last she uses up all the
wood she has for that day, and she goes down at night
among the dead.  They stand up in double lines to let her
pass, and do her reverence.  She has a lover among them,
who gave her a great red kangaroo skin.  Each morning,
when she rises, she throws this over her shoulders.

'Another thing I learned yesterday is that the good little
man's special blacks noticed the stars, and had names for
some.  The evening star they called Kyirrie; the Milky Way
Kockadooroo; and there is a cluster of stars visible in the
western sky, during the winter months, that they knew by
the name of Amathooroocooroo, which signifies "claw of
eagle-hawk."  Please to reckon it henceforth among the
classic constellations.

'Then, floating in the Milky Way, is still to be seen the
bottom of the ark of Neppelle, who transported himself in
it to heaven to escape the waters with which another god
flooded the earth to drown his unfaithful wives.  And did
you ever hear that three of the stars in the Southern Cross
are two aboriginal Helens and their lover, who escaped with
them to that far retreat from the fury of the deserted
husband?  The astronomical lore of our natives may not
have been very scientific—but at any rate they knew which
sex was always causing mischief.  But there, dear—it is a
sore subject—and I know many of you are now sincerely
repentant.

.. vspace:: 2

'Fairacre, 30th April.

.. vspace:: 1

'You would be very much shocked to hear of Mr. Stanhope's
sudden death.  It took us all dreadfully by surprise.
It is only seven days ago that Allie and I met him and his
mother at Sir Edward Ritchie's; and then, as always, he
looked the picture of health and strength, and overflowing
with merriment.  We had great fun about Leo, who really
is getting quite past any whipping I can give him.  In his
wildest days he would sit at the kitchen-table and eat sugar,
but now he almost gets into the pony-carriage instead of
drawing it.  Mr. Stanhope was particularly diverted at the
trick I told him Leo has acquired of stopping short when
he sees any very poor or disreputable-looking persons,
making sure mother is in the trap and wants to speak to
them.

'"When you drive those glossy thoroughbreds that are
being trained for you, you will wonder how you could ever
bear to sit behind Leo," he said, and laughed when I
pretended not to understand.  Then he took out a little
pocket-calendar and said: "My mother and I are going to Cape
Town in November.  Mind, the event must come off before
then, for it is a pact between Ritchie and myself that we
should see each other go off the hooks."  The next day he
was attacked with violent congestion of the lungs.  He was
ill barely five days.  He was buried this morning.  I write
the words, but they seem to convey no meaning.  I see him
strong and young, his eyes full of laughter, turning over the
calendar filled with engagements and appointments; but not
a word of this one inevitable assignation.  Nothing left of
all that eager, vivid personality save a poor clod of earth
hurriedly hidden out of sight!  Good God! is not this
the bitterest insult that could be devised for the last scene
of the last act?

'There is a wonderful fund of unbelief in the heart regarding
death.  Yes, we must all die; but individually it is as
though immortality were a birthright we are to inherit
without tasting the bitterness of dissolution.  Is it very
bitter? and in the hereafter, does it indeed matter very
much if we pass away with empty lamps?  In that supreme
moment when the soul is sundered from the body, do we
perceive that the life which was all in all to us was but a
dream grafted upon a dream—a passing vision crowded with
phantoms? ... And now the curtain is drawn.  We see
no more.  All beyond is so shadowy and faltering.

'How is it the thought of death does not haunt us more?
The event is so tremendous.  I have often had the feeling
after the death of one I knew, that never again could I be
lulled into such entire forgetfulness of this one absolute
certainty.  But gradually the impression vanishes.  We
are planted so deeply in the life that now is—we may be
shaken and horrified and apprehensive—but the world is
like one of those hydra-animals which may be turned inside
out, and the exterior surface will then digest and the stomach
respire.'

.. vspace:: 2

'Fairacre, 7th May.

.. vspace:: 1

'Fanny Harrison has returned from her Melbourne visit,
and has been telling us tales about your overworking
yourself—visiting sick people day and night—reading to
incurables and blind people by the hour—making superhuman
efforts to save larrikins from themselves.  Don't, dear
darling; at any rate not so much.  It gave me a shiver all
down the vertebræ when I thought, "What if Cuthbert
should turn out one of those clergymen who take life so
seriously that they die of it like a dose of arsenic?"  Do not
forget that it was a neglected cold when he was so much
engrossed with the sick and poor one hard winter that
brought on the lung complaint of which father died.

'I cannot get over a certain awkwardness of not knowing
exactly what to say when I first visit people who are very
poor, and hopelessly ill.  So I mostly listen to them, and
read a little only if they wish it.  Poor Thomson seems to
like this, for the last time I visited him he aired his
grievances.  People are very kind, he said, and lots of ladies
always visit him; but they do read so much to him.  "No
doubt 'tis very good of them, but when a chap lies in bed
month after month, never expectin' to get up again in
health, and often cussing himself for having been a fool and
partly to blame for his misfortune—why, then, a lump out
o' the Bible don't seem to hearten him up much.  Now,
there's Mrs. Cannister and Mrs. Meadows, and her dorters—'tis
my belief as they uses Bibles not properly divided into
chapters.  In course there's a good deal of it taken up with
Jew names, and stories not meant for gineral use.  But I
don't see why them ladies should pick out the melanchorliest
psalmses for me.  Well, I mean them as is all
about the horrors of death bein' on me, and the waters goin'
over me, and my eyes bein' consumed from weeping, and
bein' a worm and no man, and the arrers sticking fast in
me, and bein' in a pit, and in a dry thirsty land, and arskin'
the Lord why He cast me off for iver, and that I forgit to
eat my bread, bein' like a howl in the desert and a perlican
in the wilderness, and a sparrer atop o' the house without a
mate, which is what niver happens, as far as I know the
varmin; and coals of juniper, and scattered at the grave's
mouth and lying in wait for my soul.  Yes, Miss Stella, ye
may laugh, but it's true—the creepingest things.  Yes, I
remember what's read to me pretty well, but then I've
heerd it all over and over agin—some days twicet over.

'"And then Mrs. Cannister—she sits there as you may
be now, only more frontin' me, so that she can fix her eyes
onto me—and she reg'lar ivery week says to me: 'Now,
my good man'—if there's anything I hates it's them words;
if she said 'my wastin' away toad,' I'd like it better—'now,
my good man, do you not begin to feel that it's all well, and
all for the best in the hands of the Lord?'  And if I'm tired
I just mostly gives a nod, so as she may stop jawing.  But
other times I says: 'I donno as to things being so very
well.  If my family was pervided for, an' I didn't lie awake
half the night coughin' and spittin', I might be more sartin
on the point.  As to things bein' in the hands of the Lord,
I know well, if I'd have been stiddier and different-like in
many ways, I wouldn't be in the fix I'm in now.'

'"When I says anythin' like that, the old dame looks
for a more dismaller psalm the next time.  It licks me,
though, how people can go on saying it's all in the hands
of the Almighty, and He does everything for the best.
Now, Miss Stella, if you take it that me—and a good many
of the chaps I've knowed—was the handiwork of the Lord,
I'd like to know who has spiled more horns nor He before
making a good spoon!"

'You may not think very highly of this man's theology,
but I like him for his honesty in admitting that he is to
blame for what he calls the "fix" he is in, and a straighter
way of looking at things than people generally allow
themselves.'

.. vspace:: 2

Fairacre, 10th May.

.. vspace:: 1

'The Fortuniana and tea-roses, and the heliotrope and
various other sweet-smelling flowers, still flourish in our
garden in golden abundance.  I brought a great posy to
Frau Kettig this afternoon, with various other things of a
more material kind, but the flowers delighted her most.

'Yes; I have just returned from seeing her.  How
angelically good and uncomplaining she is all through her
illness!  She is more grateful for being destitute than I
am for all I possess.  I assure you, dear, I threw stones
at myself nearly all the way home.  I talked with the dear
old woman for a long time, and read her favourite hymn
to her, "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott."  Then she chanted
the two first verses—her thin, old, toil-marked hands
devoutly clasped, her eyes half closed....  Through the little
window at the foot of her bed I could see the sky, clear
blue and serene like a great heavenly web woven throughout
of hope and love.

'"Surely it must be so," I thought, looking at the frail
old woman with her load of eighty winters—with all her
cruel bereavements and losses, and now in her diseased old
age, after moiling like a slave for sixty-eight years,
dependent on charity for her bread, yet lifting up her trembling
aged voice and hands in tearful love and gratitude to God—the
great Father in whose hands are a thousand worlds full
of treasures—who yet has bereft this sincere loving soul of
all.  If there were not some tremendous force of love behind
the "mocks of this world," could spirit achieve so signal a
triumph over matter?

'"It is a fair summer day of the Lord, full of His
sunshine, and yet cool; and the flowers thou hast brought me,
beloved child, take me back to the sweet Thuringian woods,"
she said, with the simple directness which makes the grand
old German sound like one's mother-tongue.  I could not
trust myself to speak.  After a little she said, as if
suspecting that I was too sorry for her: "When one no longer
hopes to rise again, how good and dear it is to think on the
day when all waiting and weariness are forgotten in beholding
the face of the beloved Redeemer!"

'Here is Fatima at my elbow, rubbing herself against
me and purring benevolently, looking a little askance at
Dustiefoot, who has indeed too often tried to make a
plaything of her tail.  But he is fast asleep just now, with his
nose against my shoe.  Fatima likes those lucid intervals
in which Dustiefoot slumbers and she can purr of "auld
langsyne" without interruption.  Dear old tabby! tell me
quick and tell me true, is your ardent liking for fish a proof
that in another world you will sail a boat and cast a net
into the sea?  Certainly, though you love fish even to
felony, you cannot go a-fishing in the life that now
is—which things are a parable.  I begin to see that this
infatuated pen of mine will get me into trouble if I do not
stop.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XIV.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIV.

.. vspace:: 2

'Fairacre, 17th May.

.. vspace:: 1

'We do not think mother is as strong as usual.  But as
neither the seaside nor the hills suit her as well as Fairacre,
we do not like to venture on a change to either.  She will,
however, most probably accompany Esther to Coonjooree
for some months.  Allie has gone for a couple of weeks to
the Emberlys; and I do most of mother's sick-visiting for
her.  She consents to this more readily because I think she
believes it is good for me.  But personally I cannot help
feeling how much better it would be to send Kirsty instead
of me.  She thoroughly believes that under all circumstances
people are better off than they deserve.  If a man
has broken his leg, she is ready to say, "What a blessing
it is not his neck!"  If a poor woman is confined of her
tenth baby, Kirsty reflects, "How much better than to
have typhoid fever!"  And when people have typhoid fever,
she says, "What a mercy it is from the Lord to have
medical attendance!"  I confided to mother the other day
how, in average sick-visiting, I am haunted by the feeling
that I can do no good, and sit with a long face thinking
how horrid it is to be in bed, and wondering awkwardly
what I am to say next.  Then the flies put me out of
countenance.  With the poorer people among us they are
a veritable plague—in their bedchambers, and upon their
beds, and in their ovens, and in their kneading-troughs.
Mother answered very gently: "Charity, my dear, is a
kind of Bezer in the wilderness, a city of refuge, which
we must always keep open, because of the many accidents
and misfortunes of life.  Our visitings and readings and
half-hours spent by lonely sick-beds, they may perhaps be
compared to the 'Refuge, refuge,' written in every double
way on the parting of the ways, to aid those who, without
help or sympathy, might be in danger of perishing in the
great desert.  Think, my dear, what it is to lie, for month
after month, in a poor little room, without ever hoping to
be well again.  Even to make hours a little pleasanter, that
would otherwise be dark and lonely, is something.  In such
matters we must be content to live from hand to mouth,
without looking for great results."

'You know how mother's words, "delicate as honey born
in air," at once soothe and convince the heart.

'Yesterday the Major told us about one of his funny
episodes with Adolphe.  That is his man—an Austrian by
birth, but with a cosmopolitan command of tongues.  The
Major and he bid each other an eternal farewell every three
months, if not oftener.  Adolphe went yesterday morning
to send a telegram for his master, and did not return till
late in the afternoon, very much the worse for liquor, which
he often takes beyond the bounds of moderation, as he
candidly explains, "pour la guérison de doleur." He
always knows when he has taken too much, and his
custom is to come to the Major with a virtuously determined
air and say, "Sir, it is wrong that I should longer
anguish the heart of a true and loving woman.  I must
return to my Julie—and yet to leave you——" then he
breaks down.  Often as this little farce has been acted,
with variations, it always seems to rouse the Major's ire,
and then make him relent all in one scene.

'"If only his conscience could be touched!" murmured
Mr. Ferrier.  Would the Major allow him to give Adolphe
some little books on the evils of alcohol?  Certainly; but
the Major thought it was only fair to tell Mr. Ferrier that
Adolphe was always ready to sign a pledge against
intoxicants.  But when he is tipsy, next day he explains
with great fluency how the necessity for nervine aliment is
insurmountable in a climate like this.

'No; I am not going to Laurette at as early a date as
was fixed, because it is now quite evident that mother is
out of health.  I cannot go until she is better.  Dr. Stein
is in attendance, and I am head nurse, Allie bottle-washer,
Kirsty major-domo.  Dr. Stein tells me that our friend
Professor Kellwitz contemplates matrimony—at sixty-three,
and for the first time!—and to a lady who has
been his intimate friend for over twenty years.  Is it not
dreadful to spoil so tried a friendship in this ruthless way?'





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.. _`CHAPTER XV.`:

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   CHAPTER XV.

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'Fairacre, 1st June.

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'Poor, dear Mr. Ferrier has had a severe disappointment
with Adolphe, who, under the ex-missionary's unwearied
efforts, became not only a total abstainer, but to some
extent a lecturer.  He devoutly read Mr. Ferrier's good
little temperance booklets—nay, learnt much of them by
heart; so that when it occurred to some zealous teetotalers
to put him on the platform, Adolphe became at once very
popular, and was always greeted with cheers.  No doubt,
like M. Jourdain's dancing-master, who hungered after *un
peu de gloire*, Adolphe found that *applaudissements me
touchent*.  Last Tuesday he went with Mr. Ferrier to
address an evening temperance assemblage at a little
township four miles away.  It seems that on these occasions it
is customary sometimes to make certain experiments with
alcohol to show its evil effects.  When it came to Adolphe's
turn to address the meeting, he gave what Mr. Ferrier
called "an able and earnest address."  At a certain point
he broke an egg into a glass and then poured some brandy
on it to show what a deleterious effect it had on the
albumen.  The audience cheered lustily, and were much
impressed.  But when the next speaker rose, Adolphe was
seen to slip behind him and swallow the experiment in a
few gulps.  Loud expressions of disapproval arose, and
Adolphe instantly came forward to defend himself from
the "calumny."  It was then apparent that he must have
been previously imbibing, and, in fact, he had taken a
quarter of a bottle of the Major's best brandy to make
experiments which should revolt the popular mind against
"nervine aliment."  When he returned home that night
he went weeping into the Major's room, imploring him not
to take any more stimulant of any kind, and holding
himself up as an example of its evil effects—and all through
swallowing a small experiment by an unaccountable error!

'Two days ago I was on a visit at Mrs. Marwood's, and
went from there to what the profane called a "disorganized
charity meeting," along with Mabel Towers.  We, too,
went as Mrs. Marwood's deputies.  But what singular
instructions we received: "Here, you see, girls, is my list,"
said Mrs. Marwood, producing two octavo sheets with
various names and figures, etc.; "you see, there's a large
committee of us, and we have to be very business-like.
Here are the numbers of things to be given opposite each
applicant's name.  We decided that at a meeting some
days ago.  Sometimes we run short, and are obliged to
give a pair of trousers instead of a dress; but if any
complaints are made, give them a form to fill up and send in,
for we have to be very strict and accurate.  And if you
happen to give too many things to one person, mind you
give nothing to the next.  Mrs. Benjamin Ezra is to be
there to-day; and you must keep an eye on her that she
does not give away my share.  Her plan is to give heaps
away till everything is gone.  She either loses her list, or
else never looks at it.  This is very awkward in a society
on such strict business principles as the organized relief."

'Yes; so determined are we to imitate all the charities
of the mother-country, that before this "great fertile young
Hercules" is yet fifty years old, we not only provide relief
works and soup-kitchens and free breakfasts, as we did last
winter, but this season we have also an organized relief
society, which, among other nefarious tricks, distributes
cast-off clothing.  But, my dear, I warn you, do not send
any money to the philanthropic novelties of our Metropolis.
They are frightfully mischievous, and the really deserving
poor do not go near them.  There is quite enough
discriminating benevolence everywhere in the country to cope
with all honest poverty.  It is when we begin to tease
charity-mongers with salaries that impostors and the
cunningly vicious have their innings, and that the unabashed
professional pauper appears in the land.  We have now
not only the weaklings, that have been industriously sent
us by emigration agents, but the greasy loafers of other
provinces who are attracted to ours by our notoriously
indiscriminate distribution of alms.  Let me tell you of
the two first cases on our list, which may, I believe, be
taken as average specimens of what the rest were.

'No. 1 applicant: Mrs. O'Mulligan, with two girls.—Causes
of destitution: Husband, an ex-publican, long out
of employment, large family, furniture seized for rent.
Mrs. O'Mulligan soon set us to work, I can assure you.
We were the first to arrive, and were ushered into a room
lined with wide shelves, full of clothing of all kinds, a
great deal of it as good as new.  It was like a clothes
pawn-shop without the pathos, fortunately also without
the dirt.  Mrs. O'M. was down for one woman's dress, two
ditto for girls; one man's coat, one ditto trousers, one ditto
boots.  She and the girls followed us into the clothes-room.
We soon found dresses for them.  Then came the mother's
turn; but as she weighed over fourteen stone, it was no
light task to fit her.  "Shure, now, and you see for
yourselves, young ladies, that wouldn't kape on me little finger.
Yes, that's a foine thick stuff; but where 'ud I be in
it?—outside the most av it."  At last she selected a pale blue
cashmere, not nearly as large as some useful dresses she
had rejected.  Mrs. Marwood said this choice must have
been made with a view to selling or pawning, and no doubt
that was the explanation.  Then came the husband's turn.
He must have been phenomenal in his proportions, judging
by the yards of tape with which Mrs. O'M.  measured the
upper parts of trousers we turned over for her.  At last
came a pair that looked as though it must be the gift of a
benevolent elephant; so this she put aside.  Then she pulled
an endless sort of string from her pocket, which turned out
to be the measure for a pair of boots.  Of course there
were none of such an impossible length.

'"It's not, thin, that Mr. O'Mulligan has such a large
fut at all at all, but he gets the swelled rheumatzises so
bad.  Indade, he had an ilegant fut in his young days.
But what with the throubles and the sorrow, they seems
to git larger ivery year."  As the string was twenty inches
long, it was evident some mistake was made.  It was, in
fact, "the lingth av little Paddy's throusers."  After all the
articles for which this woman was put down had been
produced, we politely asked her to take them away.  "Is it
that this is all I'm to git?" she asked, with a tragic air.
We asked her what else she wanted, and she said: "I
have six helpless childer, and I want a complate shuit for
each.  Ye see thim two girrls wid me?  Wan av thim has
a good ulster on, an' that's a lind; the other, she has a
good pair av boots, an' thim is a lind; so is the hat wid a
feather on top av my head, an' the gloves on me hands, an'
the mantle on me back wid a bead collar."  She raised her
voice and she flourished her arms as she spoke.  Finally
she took up three pairs of boys' trousers that were near
her and went away, saying she would put us in the papers
for cruelty to an "onfortinate rispictable woman wid a
husband that had seen better days, and a large family and
no support." She turned back at the door and said: "Ye
have a great roomful av things sint by the charitable, an'
ye sind me away wid a few miserable rags for reasons best
beknowns to yerselves!"

'Our next case was a small thin woman with an extraordinary
facility for tears.  She wept copiously the moment
we spoke to her.  She never had accepted charity before in
all her life, and it was very hard to begin now.  With this
she made a dart at a heap of boys' shirts that were near
her quite new, Mr. Marwood and other wholesale drapers
having sent various parcels of clothing from their
warehouses.  She wiped her eyes, and folded up three shirts.
She was down on the list as a widow with one boy; name,
Eliza Trimton; and the written oracle restricted her to two
articles for herself and three for the boy.  I explained this
to her, and added that we were bound to keep to our list.
Yes, of course—she knew that; and she began to shed
tears afresh, and pounced on an elaborate tea-gown that
had been sent by someone who had more money than wit.
Next she fixed her gaze on a very good ulster, and she
instantly began to cry afresh.  No one, she said, but those
that had seen better days knew how bitter it was to accept
alms.  With that she folded up the ulster, and put it with
the other spoils.  "It comes very hard to accept charity
for the first time," she murmured, seizing on a blue cloud,
a boy's vest, and a pair of merino stockings all at one
swoop.  For the second time I read over to her the articles
to which she was entitled, and thought she had taken the
hint, for she began to tie up her bundle.  But presently
her tears flowed, and she picked up a woman's hat, a boy's
greatcoat, and a pair of boots in rapid succession.  "But
really, you know, this is a great deal more than your
share," said Mabel.  "More than my share!" retorted
Mrs. Trimton, wiping her eyes vigorously.  "Who took it
on theirselves to know all I want?  I never breathed it
to anyone I needed so much.  Never having accepted
charity before, my feelings was too delicate-like."  With
that she dried her eyes and went away.

'By this time most of the committee-ladies had arrived,
and one of them said, as so many applicants were coming
to-day, they had better not be admitted into the room where
the clothing was.  "Of course that is the proper plan," said
another lady; "but there will be a heap of letters in the
papers saying the public gave so generously to the clothing
fund, and that the poor people were not allowed to fit
themselves." However, the applicants were finally made to wait
outside, and served in their turn alphabetically, an arrangement
that gave great umbrage to some.  I heard one woman
say it was a real shame she should have to wait so long
because her name began with Ho.  Another woman was in
tears because a baby's hood given to her had no pink lining.
A neighbour of hers, she said, had one from the Belief
Society last week lined with beautiful pink silk, fit for a
little princess!  "Look at this," said another recipient of
aid, holding up a child's handsome scarlet mantle.  "There's
where the tassel should be, and I won't go away till it's
found."  Still another woman spoke in broken accents of
despair of a pair of shoes that were given to her with one
buckle missing.  It would be unfair, however, not to mention
one old woman who seemed to be quite grateful.  We came
upon her in the lobby rearranging a man's greatcoat and
some other articles of male attire.  Someone near her asked
if any mistake had been made.  "Yes, my dear," she said,
in a semi-confidential whisper.  Her face was very red, and
she carried with her a strong odour of some liquor.  "There's
been some blessed mistake, and I'm just hurrying away
before it's found out.  I can get far more for these than for
any flimsy perticoats they'd give an old woman like me."

'I am this instant going into the Park Lands with
Dorothy to see if a magpie does not give us an act out of a
bird comedy.  By the way, talking of birds, the last time
Mr. Lindsay was here he told me a very Haroun al Raschid
anecdote of a man who lost a very peculiar sleeve-link on
the Murray Flats, and found it a year afterwards in the
playhouse of a silky bower-bird, dangling beside the capsule
of a brandy-bottle and the scarlet flowers of the pretty
native wistaria.  Mem. for my note-book—Would this
make a peg on which to hang an alibi?  I asked Mr. Lindsay
the question, and he promptly said: "Oh, if it
was to save a fellow from swinging, of course it would never
be found."  Now, you know how little speculative or
"morbid" he is.  Is it possible that life itself is often more
morbid than any reflections regarding it?'





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.. _`CHAPTER XVI`:

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   CHAPTER XVI

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'Fairacre, 9th June.

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'I cannot report that mother is better; but she insists on
thinking of other people as much as if she were quite well.
Poor Thomson is failing rapidly.  Yesterday at her wish I
spent part of the day in taking care of him.  I must tell
you what happened.  After I had chatted with him for a
little he said: "There is a chapter, Miss Stella, as I liked
when I was a boy—somewhere in the Old Bible part—'tis
about being took up by the hair, and looking in at places,
and seeing the women-folk weep for Thomas.  I'd like you
to read it to me."

'Would you be able to find a chapter in the Bible by
this?  I doubt whether I would, only that lately I have
been rather fascinated by Ezekiel.  It was the eighth
chapter he meant—where the likeness as the appearance of
fire put forth the form of a hand, and lifted the prophet up
by a lock of his hair.  "Then he brought me to the door of
the gate of the Lord's house which was toward the north;
and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz."  "I
like them parts o' the Bible, so strange, and yet they seems
quite real like."  You may be sure that I did not attempt
to foist any interpretation upon the text.  There is a point
at which those who have read much of the best, and those
who have read very little, seem to meet—enjoyment of
vague mystery and wonder, leading to a subtle sense of the
marvels that lurk under the masking raiment of common-place.
Just as I rose to go, the storm, which had been
gathering all the morning, began to come down in torrents.
The rain beat sharply against the window-panes, and the
room suddenly darkened.  I noticed the sick man gazing at
the window with a very sombre look, an expression that
had in it something—how shall I say it?—more tragic than
poverty or disease.  "Miss Stella," he said in a low voice,
"do you believe as them that is gone could ever come back
from the other world?"  "I don't know.  I have often
wondered whether they do or can," I answered, awed by a
sudden conviction that the man, to use our nurses' phrase,
had at some time "seen something."  He moved restlessly,
as though his head were uneasy.  I smoothed and shifted
his pillow, and then to my dismay I saw that great tears
were rolling down his cheeks.  No doubt he had moved so
that I should not see them, and I had done the very thing
I ought not to have done.  Some strong wave of emotion
swept over him, his bosom heaved convulsively, and he
sobbed half aloud.

'I felt horribly distressed, and not knowing what else to
do, I tidied up the fireplace and put some wood on the fire.
"I saw his face as plain as daylight at that very window, a
week ago," he said, when he recovered himself.  And then
he told me this little story.  He came to South Australia
twenty years ago, a lad of eighteen.  He was for some
weeks a knock-about hand on a sheep-station near Jarranda
Bay.  One of the shepherds suddenly left, and he was sent
to take his place.  A few days after he went to the Stone
Hut, as it was called, he found an old black woman, who
was dying, and had with her only her daughter, a half-caste,
a slip of a girl of fourteen.  They were beside a little creek,
and had had nothing to eat for three days except a big
snake the girl had killed near the water.  They were on
their way with other blacks to a great corroborree that was
to be held eighty miles further on, when the mother was
taken ill and left behind with her only daughter Caloona.
Thomson fed them, and gave them all the comforts he
could.  In a week the old black woman died, and then the
girl lived with him.  He engaged himself as shepherd for
two years, and stayed altogether for eight.  Caloona, he
said, turned out mighty handy, and she was always so
wonderfully thankful.  "When you told me about that
little dog of yourn, Miss Stella—Fly you call him—I
thought he was for all the world like my poor Caloona.
She would follow me about, and wanted to wait on me
hand and foot, and thought so much on me.  I tuk to
reading the New Testament, and minding all the good
things my grandmother used to tell me.  Caloona soon
learnt to cook and do things much handier nor many a
white woman, and she kept the hut as neat and clean as a
new pin.  I bought clothes and things for her from a
hawker, and, if you believe me, Miss Stella, she looked
much prettier in them than many an altogether white girl.
She would be up and working before it was light, so as to
have breakfast and dinner cooked and come out with me
after the sheep.  Even when the little boy was born she
stopped in the hut but a few days.  She was that proud of
the little chap—he was fairer than you could believe—and
he grew very fast.  He was out all day long in the woods
with his mother and me, and when it rained we just made
a nia-mia of boughs for him and put a 'possum skin over it.
He was sharper nor a needle; and many's the time he
made us lie down on the grass roaring with laughing at his
old-fashioned ways.

'"But onfortinately as he grew older he showed signs of
a very bad temper, and he would turn and strike his mother
for the least thing.  I could not stand that, but Caloona
only laughed, and that encouraged him.  That was what
come between us.  I allays heard as mixed bloods was
worse nor full blacks or full whites, and I was afraid how
the youngster might turn out.  When we was out shepherdin',
and in the evenings, Caloona used to tell me tales
o' her mother's tribe, how they quarrelled and fought, and
in the end murdered each other, sometimes, perhaps, for the
sake of an emu-skin.  As the boy got older I couldn't bear
to hear her laugh over them things.  Then I thought, 'It's
no use beginning to teach the boy if the mother knows no
better.'  So I began to learn her to read and write.  She
was not long in learning to read out of a big Testament my
mother give to me when I was leaving the old country.  But
she didn't seem able to take in as Jesus Christ was man and
God, and she gave Him a native name as vexed me—meaning
'him as makes believe.'  And I suppose I couldn't
explain proper, for when I tried most hard she would go off
in a fit of laughing, and the youngster would wake up and
laugh too, fit to crack his sides, and somehow, when the
two laughed in that way, it used to rile me oncommon.
The boy was very sharp—everyone as saw him said
that—but somehow he was sharpest in doing things he oughter
not to do; and when I was trying to teach him like he
allays seemed duller, and given to cryin', and his mother
used to watch me, her hands all of a tremble at whatever
she was doing.

'"Well, Miss Stella, to make a long story short, when
the boy was a few weeks over seven I found him setting a
puppy on to some sheep with young lambs.  I took him by
the hand to the hut, and before punishing him I asked why
he did such a thing.  His mother stood there shiverin',
looking at us, and the boy burst out cryin' and denied it
hard an' fast.  He said he was callin' the dog off.  This
riled me so much that on the instant I give him a bad
thrashin'—worse, I know, nor I should have—so that the
mother turned on me very fierce like.  I got into a bad
Scot, an' told her if she didn't let me bring up the boy
proper she had better clear.  In course, I never meaned a
word of it, and never thought as Caloona would take it to
heart.  But the boy sulked and would eat no food, an'
made believe he was very badly hurt.  God knows, perhaps
he was, though I didn't believe a word of it, an' I felt very
hard agin him for telling such barefaced lies.  Next day his
mother stayed in the hut with him, and wouldn't even look
at me when I was going out.  When I came home that
night they were both gone, an' from that day to this I never
set eyes on them.  'What became of them, an' where are
they now?' that's what I says to myself over an' over agin.
An', then, a week ago, before the lamp was lighted, I saw
the boy out there at the window in the rain as plain as I see
you now, Miss Stella.

'"This morning the Canon said as I ought to take the
Sacryment, and I was thinking over things.  The moment
I heered your voice I says to myself, 'I'll tell Miss Stella;
she'll understand as 'twasn't through my being such a bad
lot.'  I haven't got very much longer to live, and I've many
times heard that at the last people felt quieter like if they
told all that was on their minds.  I couldn't tell the Canon,
Miss Stella; for in course he'd tell his wife, an' then Lord
only knows how many melanchorly psalmses she'd read to
me next day!  An' yet 'twas through trying to do my best
that it all come out wrong, as it were.  I never told a word
of this to my wife; what 'd be the good?  'Twould only
fret her."

'The more simply anything is told, the more is lost in
re-telling it with the cold little snout of a pen.  The very
*mise-en-scène*—the homely little room—the door leading
into the kitchen behind, where the worn-out wife
rested—everything so quiet and common-place—the rain dashing
against the small window, through which the sick man
fancied he saw his half-savage boy out in the gloom—all
helped to make a quiet but forceful seizure on the heart.
Thomson had hardly ceased speaking when Mr. Ferrier
entered.  The moment I saw him it flashed across my mind
that the half-caste boy he told us of some time before might
be Thomson's child.  The poor man was so exhausted that
in a few minutes he fell fast asleep.  I motioned Mr. Ferrier
to the window, and asked him if he knew anything of that
lad's mother.  Yes; she had been at the Mandurang Mission
six months before she died.  Her native name was Caloona.
I told him Thomson's story as briefly as possible.  "Oh, how
wonderful are the ways of the Lord!" he ejaculated at the
close—not very relevantly, I thought.

'The sick man was soon wakened by a fit of coughing.
When this was over, Mr. Ferrier took his hand and said:
"My friend, instead of reading to-day, will you let me tell
you a little incident that happened at the Mandurang
Mission Station?"  Thomson nodded a weary assent, as if
he knew beforehand that this could have no interest for
him.  I was about to slip away, but Thomson asked me to
stay a little longer.  The ex-missionary's little incident was
soon told: How, late at night, a young half-caste woman,
with a boy of nine, came to the mission spent with illness
and weary wandering.  She had lived for years with white
people, and then gone back to her tribe.  But the savage life
was too much for her, and when her strength began to fail
she found her way to the mission, anxious to have her boy
properly cared for after her death.

'When he learned the names of the mother and son,
Thomson's strength seemed to return to him in a strange
way.  He half sat up, his face all alight, asking a torrent of
questions.

'With the tenderness of a gentle-hearted woman Mr. Ferrier
gave full details.  He divined that this strong,
rugged nature, wearied with mortal illness, stricken with
remorse for the past, craved hungrily for all that could be
told him of the poor fugitive mother and her boy.

'"A few days before her death she seemed to wander,"
said Mr. Ferrier, "and she kept on saying: 'We got back
to the Stone Hut one evening—big one tired and hungry;
but strange man there, and we went away.  Me want to tell
masser boy very good now; but masser gone.'"  There was
the sound of deep sobs in the room, and Mr. Ferrier's voice
failed him.  I went to the little window and looked out.
The sky was overcast, and on the horizon sheet-lightning
played in wide flames.  There was thunder in the air, and
the atmosphere was heavy, and made me feel that the
world is full of desolate women and fugitive children.  The
murmur of voices went on after a pause—question and
answer—and then the one grave voice, with its fervent
accents:

'"They are buried in one grave in the mission churchyard
at Mandurang.  Not far from them my own wife and
only daughter lie buried.  Ah, my dear friend, their dust
reposes there in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection
of the just.  In the words of a holy man of old, 'Every
body, whether it is dried up into dust or dissolved into
moisture, or is compressed into ashes, or is attenuated into
smoke, is withdrawn from us, but is reserved for God
in the custody of the elements.'"  I do not know that
poor Thomson took in much of this.  "She went back
again—she went back again," he said several times, in a
low voice.

"'I knew well the youngster was dead ever since I seen
him at the window," he whispered to me as I went away.
I spare you my reflections, as I walked home in the gathering
dusk, on the strangely pathetic threads mingled in the
yarn of all lives when we know something of their inward
history.  What passionate affections to end in a little mound
of earth!  What fears and agitation and anguish that avail
nothing!  What vivid hopes held close in the heart, only to
vanish fruitlessly as morning mist!  What glowing plans,
stretching out into the coming years, to end in bitter
disillusion and disenchantment with life!





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.. _`CHAPTER XVII.`:

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   CHAPTER XVII.

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It was the first week in July before Stella left home for her
visit to Melbourne and Lullaboolagana.  This delay was
occasioned by her mother's illness, which at first seemed
trifling, but eventually developed into slow fever.  At its
worst—and the worst lasted four or five days—the gravest
fears were entertained as to the issue.  During this time
Stella could not be prevailed upon to leave her mother day
or night, except at very short intervals.  She could sleep
only by snatches, and affirmed that she was more rested in
the sick-room than she could be elsewhere.  Periodical
sleeplessness was the only ailment from which she had
suffered since her childhood, and at this anxious period her
incapacity for sleep took a very pronounced form.

As soon as the invalid was fit to travel, it was arranged
that she should accompany Mrs. Raymond, the widowed
daughter, to her Coonjooree property—a small sheep-station
in the Tatiara district, distant from Adelaide by rail half a
day's journey and a quarter of a day's drive.

'You look as much in want of rest as I do, my child,' the
mother said fondly, when the preliminary arrangements
were made, and Stella sat, pencil in hand, jotting down
memoranda of the things Maisie, who was to accompany
her in the capacity of maid, should pack up for two or three
months' absence from home?

'Do I look like an invalid, mother, really?' she said with
a bright smile.  'Esther, why don't you ask me to your
sanatorium for the sake of my health?  It will sound so
dignified.'

'My dear, you know I would be only too happy; but
Mrs. Tareling is in despair at your already missing the most
brilliant part of the season.'

'Yes; and to make up for missing more, I shall come to
Coonjooree for a week.  You were afraid to tempt me?
Have you not yet learned that to be tempted and fall is our
one form of wisdom in some things?'

'Well, that is a delightful item added to our programme,'
said Mrs. Raymond.  'The old place will be almost forsaken
for two months.'

'Yes, July and August.  The memoirs of the Courtland
family during this time, in the year of grace 188-, were
strewn with events.  Fairacre, the paternal home, inhabited
only by Tom and Alice, in the guardianship of the Misses
Kendall.  Esther, I should like to be an invisible onlooker
during this regime.  Oh, can't you imagine how the two
dear Quaker doves will spend their time in chivying after
Allie with wraps when she goes out into the garden with
Felix?  And then there will be Tom and Fanny—of course
they will be engaged before we come back.'

'And you, my dear—what will have happened in your
case?' said the elder sister wistfully.

'Oh, I shall be two or three months older!' laughed
Stella.

There was a difference between her and Mrs. Raymond
of thirteen years, but there was a bond of sympathy between
the two which was independent of all differences of age and
experience.

Stella's week at Coonjooree lengthened into ten days.

'Laurette will understand the fascination that the Mallee
Scrub has for one,' said Stella, laughing, as she recalled
Mrs. Tareling's undisguised horror of Cannawijera, the
station settled on her by her father, and distant from
Coonjooree about fifteen miles.

And yet to many the Mallee Scrub, like all deserts, comes
to have an inexplicable charm.  To realize the change that
may gradually be wrought on the mind in this respect, one
should, perhaps, enter the Mallee country when the mask
of night is falling on the land, and travel for hours under
a moon struggling ineffectually for supremacy with driving
clouds.  In the uncertain light all that can then be seen is
an endless succession of densely-scrubbed, low, undulating
rises, or plains that stretch indefinitely on every side with
clumps of scrub cypress rising here and there above the
Mallee bushes.  The traveller should further be a guest at
one of those home-stations in which a stranger asks himself
incredulously what he has ever done to deserve the
unbounded hospitality and kindness showered on him.  It
should be winter-time—or what stands for winter in this
dry waterless region.  He should waken at sunrise, and gaze
for the first time at the Mallee Scrub in the light of day
through an eastern window.  And there the scene that meets
his eye, far and wide as he may have wandered, will be
stored in the cells of memory for all time to come.  The
sight has in it something which compels him to dwell on it
long and fixedly, and turn to it again and again, while a
strange weight falls on the heart, and the mind for some time
vainly seeks a clue to the mingled and contradictory feelings
that are awakened.

There, as far as the eye can reach, lies tier beyond tier in
endless succession, low chains of ranges, with dense gray-green
bushes, tall brown clumps of grass-trees, with patches
of white and yellow sand showing between.  During winter
in the early mornings the sky is often one unbroken mass
of gray clouds.  As the sullen red in the east that
proclaims sunrise dies away, there is no tint or suggestion of
colour anywhere visible in heaven or earth.  All around,
without break or alloy, are the uniform monotonous tones
of sand and gray-green bushes; above is the more sombre
gray of clouds, in which the eye vainly loses itself, seeking
for a lighter tinge.  They are so austere and thickly
piled—those clouds that promise rain, but pass away oftentimes
week after week without a shower.  They hide the blue of
heaven, and the sunshine, and rigidly shroud the horizons,
as if to make the picture more ineffaceable—an arid,
formless mass above a sombre, colourless desolation.  It is as
though one came upon the rigid skeleton of a spent world,
or upon a living presentment of primeval chaos, when the
earth was without form and void.

A bitter loneliness falls upon the spirit.  All the well-loved
sunny nooks of the earth seem so far away.  Life seems
so fleeting—happiness so unreal.  The mind is thrown in on
itself, and an immense ennui takes possession of the
heart—clutches it, oppresses it, as though it were suddenly touched
by a heavy hand.  It is as though all that men most cling
to in life passed away like mist before the sun, till nothing
remained but this arid wilderness, without the song of bird,
or sound of water, or gleam of flower, or even the
over-arching foliage of a tree.  In these regions, severe and
desolate as the Dead Sea wilderness, in which the Son of
Man was assailed by the great enemy of souls, the petty
distinctions for which men and women scramble and cheat
and lie in everyday life shrink into trivial toys.  These vast
parched domains, lying in all their nakedness under a
sunless sky, have nothing to befool the soul.  They have a
terrible sincerity in whose cold light not the picture which
we so fondly weave of life, but life itself in all its pale
disenchantment, makes a sudden seizure on the questioning
spirit.  In such an hour the multitudinous trifles that choke
the soul like the white ashes of a burnt-out wood-fire are
blown away as with the breath of a strong west wind
winnowing the chaff from the grain.  In face of so stern a
solitude we cease to deceive ourselves.

The country is not wild.  It is in appearance sterile to a
degree; it is tame; it is dull; it is oftentimes solitary as a
tomb.  Few see it for the first time without experiencing
a causeless melancholy—nay, often dark forebodings, as of
some dread disaster slowly drawing nearer; and yet this
wears away, and the country (how is one to account for it?)
comes to have a fascination of its own.  It is so silent, so
severe, so implacable in its veracity.  It has no arts with
which to allure, no winning surprises, no breaks in its
uniformity through the greater part of the year.  And though
at first this scenery agitates and weighs on those who lie
open to the charms that usually draw us to nature, yet after
the first shock is over this strange landscape bends the mind
to itself, and gains a subtle hold on it—a hold based not so
much on tenderness as confidence.  It fulfils far more than
it promises.  Notwithstanding its parched and barren
appearance, a little irrigation makes it blossom into
wonderful fertility: and though no water is ever seen on its
surface, it is believed by those who know the region best
that great reservoirs extend far below these infinite leagues
of sandy ground.  The theory is so far borne out by the
fact that, where artesian wells have been sunk in this
district, water has been struck in overflowing abundance.
Fruit-trees planted where water is available are in four and
five years loaded with luscious fruit.  Here, as in so many
other directions, Nature waits to be governed by obedience
to her conditions.  Dig, and ye shall find; water, and ye
shall reap.  If the principle that anyone who makes wasteland
productive became its owner were enforced, the Mallee
Scrub, instead of being a barren waste, even in appearance,
might soon become a great granary of fruit and corn.  But
even in its present state it has a brief hour of beauty.  In
the zenith of the Australian spring this scrub is in places
sheeted in blossoms: brilliant little orchids; scarlet and
yellow pea-like flowers; the pale lemon blossom of the
native clematis; the small purple geraniums, with their
poignant fragrance when crushed under foot—these, and
many other wild blossoms as yet, alas! nameless to the
laity, invest the country with a charm all the more deeply
felt because of the contrast between these fleeting weeks
and the sombre monotony which prevails during the rest of
the year.

In July the country was at its dreariest, for the rains
which fall, oftentimes with tropical fury, are instantly
absorbed by the sand, whose thirst is never satiated; and
though there is then more herbage than through the drought
of the summer, the uniformity of tints is seldom varied.
The sombre olive of the Mallee shrubs; the sterner green of
the dwarf honeysuckle, whose pointed leaves when ruffled
by the wind show their silver under-lining, like pale buds
that never blossom; the solemn deep-sea hue of the scrub
cypress; the pallid sage-green of the salt-bush—all are
minor tones in the same sad, monotonous, lacklustre hues;
yet day by day, as Stella became more intimate with the
Mallee Scrub, its nameless attractions grew on her.  And
one day, as she rambled miles away with the two elder
children, she discovered a whole range-side of early epacris.
The brief blossoming season of the region was yet two
months off, yet here were acres of this radiant native heath,
white, and scarlet, and tender pink.  The feast this made
for the eyes in the midst of the harsh setting all round made
Stella feel as if for the first time she knew what the joy of
colour meant.  And then they were constantly coming upon
stores of white immortelles—those snowy blossoms of the
desert, so lightly rooted in the sand, it seems as though a
passing breath would bear them afar.  But no; though the
sand-laden wind blows shrill and high, the everlasting-flowers
of the wilderness remain in myriads of loosely-rooted
clumps.  The snowy coronals of silky petals round
their deep-gold hearts, on brownish dry stalks, with a few
slender leaflets sadly gray-green as the salt-bush itself, all
give a tender charm to the flowers.  They are scentless, and
have none of the dewy bloom of ordinary blossoms; but,
seeing that their faces are seldom wet with rain, and that
the tips of their roots never touch water, the marvel is that
their pensive radiance ever illuminates this parched-up land.
Of all the flowers that grow, they are those that one may
pluck with least compunction.  Weave them into
photograph-wreaths or thimble-baskets, and at the end of two
years they are as white and silken as on the day they left
their native scrub.





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   CHAPTER XVIII.

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It was to these placid pursuits that Stella devoted herself
on the afternoon preceding her departure for Melbourne.
During the past few days she had experienced a curious
shrinking from the visit.  To read and sew and meditate,
to listen to her mother's gentle voice, to wage mimic
warfares with her sister over their best beloved authors, to
ramble with the children, looking for new flowers and
strange birds, seemed just then the plan of life best worth
having.

These tranquil days succeeding hours of acute anxiety
soothed her into a mood in which the prospect of change
and the clamour of strange voices repelled her.  She knew
so well how she would weary of herself in the society of
women whose highest ideal of life was to stifle it with futile
details.  And then the inevitable meeting with Ted
disturbed her in anticipation.  In the solitude of the Mallee
Scrub those vagrant glimpses of a future wholly pledged to
him came to wear the air of a grotesque dream.  But she
told herself that the strong temptation which assailed her
to break faith with Laurette was only another example of
her instability.  And now Maisie was engaged in labelling
the luggage for their early departure in the morning, and
Stella sat with her sister in the western veranda busily
weaving the immortelles she had gathered with the children
that morning.

'I solemnly entrust these four photograph-wreaths to
your charge, Esther,' she said, as she gave the finishing
touches to one.  'All my life I have seen these little
wreaths round pictures, but never have I had any for
myself till now.'

'And whose will your pretty wreaths honour?' asked the
elder sister.

'One for father and mother—that last one taken of
them together—one for you, one for Cuthbert, and one left
over.'

'Ah I perhaps for a "nearer one still, and a dearer"?'

'Yes; if he has to sail the salt dividing seas, and go to
strange countries, and kill lions like enclosed birds, etc.'

'But why these hard conditions?'

'Oh, just the power of association.  Don't you know the
way girls have of hanging a man in a cosy nook in their
own rooms—a bearded, sun-burnt being, who is away
exploring, or in the Northern Territory, or pearling, or
gold-digging, or taking stock across an unknown tract of
the Continent?  There the pictures are so safe and snug,
with white everlasting flowers round them, while the men
themselves—goodness only knows what they are doing, or
what is happening to them in the wilds.'

Stella wreathed a few more immortelles into places less
thickly covered, and then held the wreath at a little distance
to judge it more critically.

'Yes, that will do; it is worthy to surround the picture
even of the unknown one,' she said, with a dawning smile.

'Stella, will you think me inquisitive?  Tell me all there
is to tell about your unknown partner at the Emberly ball.
I have heard broken hints and laughing allusions from
Alice,' said Esther, regarding her sister narrowly.

'It is only Alice's idea of a joke,' said Stella, but she
coloured slowly.  'There is not much to tell, but I will tell
you.  Shortly after the ball began Mrs. Leslie came up
to me just after a dance, saying, "There is a friend of
my husband's, a stranger here, who wishes to be
introduced."  Some woman seized upon her at the moment to
ask a score of questions about the Leslies' departure for
Europe.  They were going, you know, the very next day.
Then Mrs. Leslie tore herself away and led the stranger to
me, and all I heard was, "Miss Stella," and I think,
perhaps, "Doctor——"; but I am not sure, and I rather hoped
I did not hear aright.'

'But why?'

'Well, it is very stupid; but this stranger had what you
might call a distinguished air, with a noble brow, and a
look as of one dissociated from the vulgar tide of life.'

'But surely a doctor may be and look every inch a
gentleman?'

'He may; but then, as a rule, he is not—with us, at any
rate.  He is the highly-respectable bourgeois, who has taken
to expensive habits of living before he can quite afford it.
And so he must have a great deal of "tact," and cultivate
a trick of looking wise, and of listening reverently to the
twaddle of a rich hypochondriac; and, in short, of all the
professions, the medical is the one that most easily
degenerates into a trade.'

'I think, my dear, you are prejudiced.  What about your
beloved Dr. Stein?'

'But then, you see, he is a German.  Oh, you may
laugh; but culture lies at the root of all the professions in
Germany far more than in England.  As I know neither
country, except from an Australian standpoint, I feel
qualified to pronounce judgment.  But seriously, now—isn't
your average doctor exactly like your average pianiste,
profoundly out of touch with most of the wider issues of
thought or research?'

'But, you see, the profession is a very arduous one.  To
be a successful doctor a man must be a specialist to a great
extent.'

'To be a successful doctor a man, as a rule, gets into
the narrowest of grooves; and the more money he makes
the more furniture and gew-gaws he heaps about him,
instead of limiting his practice and dusting his mind a little
more.  I don't know whether it is matrimony that destroys
the profession, as it ruins the influence of the Protestant
clergy.'

'Stella—Stella! you are incorrigible about marriage,'
said Esther, laughing.  'The worst of it is you partly
mean all you say.  But we are not getting on very
fast.  Let us conclude that the stranger was not a
doctor, though, after all, if he resembled his friend
Dr. Leslie——'

'Yes; he also is one of the exceptions.  But, then, the
stranger had the look of one so much—how shall I say
it?—devoted to ideas, and not jostled up with the meannesses
of ordinary life.  And then his mind had an alert literary
kind of side to it.  You might very well retort on me by
asking how I should judge of all this; but, you know,
one gets so awfully and wonderfully weary of the commercial
stamp of mind and face, one quickly recognises the
difference.'

'You must have had a good deal of talk with him.'

'Yes; we wasted no time, not even in dancing.  He
danced only square dances, and after going through a
quadrille we sat out a waltz, which stretched into nearly
two more dances.  Yes; it sounds rather serious, but so
much depends on the way things happen—and you must
know we were not on a staircase, nor the recesses of a
conservatory, nor on a veranda lit only by moonlight—we were
in one of those alcoves that Allie and I have raved about
ever since; and in front there was dear, amiable
Mrs. Marwood and a large elderly lady from the country, who
seemed to have daughters married in every known quarter
of the globe.  There the two good old dames sat chatting
away like two fountains, and there were we two others
getting more and more charmed with each other in the
irresponsible way of people who meet once—at least, I hope
he was charmed with me; I can answer for myself.'

'Oh no!  I dare say he was dreadfully bored,' said
Esther, smiling.  'And, then, was there not a wonderful
Tasmanian fern that partly screened you from the partners
you cheated?'

'Yes; a tall, graceful creature, with hundreds of yellowish-green
and dusky-brown fronds drooping one over the other,
and baby ones curled up tight, fold within fold, looking
as though they had taken a vow never to emerge from their
infant dreams of the woodland dell where they first saw
the light.'

'I should very much like to know what you two others
talked of, but perhaps it was too much *à coeur ouvert et à
langue délice* to be confided to a mere elder sister?'

'Oh, nonsense!  But what remains of the talk that has
delighted us most?  One may as well try to recall a walk
on the seashore on a summer night.  There was the moonlight
and the "sparkle of the glancing stars," and there were
the waves breaking on the beach, and others coming after
them endlessly; but how much can we convey of the scene
to another?'

'A good deal,' smiled Esther.  'Do I not remember how
your first exercises in composition were writing conversations
down verbatim?  The pieces of moonlight globed in crystal,
as I have heard Allie call the electric light in the alcoves,
the flowers, and the crush of people, and the wonderful
Austrian band—all that would make talk after a first dance,
but not for so very long.'

'Well, after our quadrille my partner said he was only in
Adelaide two days.  He had just landed, and was on his
way to some of the other colonies, though he had fallen into
such a piece of luck.  I thought it was a very fleeting form
of fortune, and said:

   |  'Das Glück ist eine leichte Dirne
   |  Und bleibt nicht lang am selber Ort.'

A pleased look came into his face.  His mother was a
German, though brought up in England, and the language
was his second mother-tongue.  I read Heine, then?  Oh
yes; and nearly all the German writers; and I had
translated Goethe.  His face fell comically.  I know he was
astounded at such conceit, and—you know what a delightful
sensation it is to see a little downright fun looming on
the horizon—so I said with unmoved seriousness, "I know
Kant, too, very well; and it is a great consolation, for when
the hairdresser comes to dress my hair for a ball I pass
the time by remembering bits out of the 'Kritik of Pure
Reason.'"'

'Oh, Stella! what put such a comical thought into your
head?  Of course, he found you out then?'

'Yes; and we both laughed heartily; and that, you
know, is like eating salt together—it is a sort of mental
latchkey.  When Tom came to claim his dance after my
partner and I had sat out a waltz we were both in Rome.
I told Tom I would let him off his duty dance, and so we
still talked on.  An unfortunate man slipped and fell with
his partner in front of our alcove.  "Surely that is one of
the thirty-six tragic situations of life," said my partner.  I
said there must be a great many more then thirty-six, and
we began to count; but we fell out at once.  He declared
existence would be honeycombed with tragedy if my
contentions as to tragic situations were allowed.  We grew
serious and laughed the next moment, and flouted each
other's arguments.  "But I will tell you one of the
thirty-six," he said: "to dance and talk, and then to part."  I
was just on the point of saying, "Especially if you do not
know your partner's name," when, to my horror, there was
Mr. Andrew Harrison, and the polka-mazurka, for which he
was down on my programme, almost over.'

'I suppose you did not say you would let him off his duty
dance?  And did you and your unknown partner meet no
more?'

'No; we smiled and bowed and parted, and I saw him
no more.  And the Leslies sailed next morning; and, of
course, the Emberlys could tell nothing of any special
stranger, there were so many whose names and faces were
equally unknown to them.  Now are you satisfied?'

'It is like the beginning of a story—an overture that
should be followed by a concert.  I wonder——'

Esther paused abruptly, scanning her sister's face with an
inquiring look.

'You must not get on the wrong track, Esther,' said
Stella, who was now weaving a little thimble-basket out of
some everlastings that were left.  'Tom and Allie could not
get over my sitting out nearly three dances with anyone.
I never did such a thing before; but the attraction was
unexpectedly meeting someone who seemed to have all the
makings of a friend in him.'

'A friend, my dear?  Like Willie Stein and Mr. Harrison,
I suppose?'

'How horrid you can be, Esther!  It is the very fact that
most men have so few strings to their nature that makes
one so soon understand the sort of people that are different.
I have for a long time thought that one of the greatest
pleasures of life would be a real, great, lasting friendship.
It takes so much to form a true one.  There is, as a wise
man says, in human nature generally more of the fool than
of the wise.  Yet the part of us which is not a fool responds
so gladly to the sane, enlightened strain of another mind.
But it must be different from one's own.  That is why the
best friendships require the difference of sex.'

'How very sage and calm that sounds,' said Esther, with
an amused expression.  'But, after all, what shoals there
are!  Most men and women are either married or expect
to be.'

'And yet my pair of friends must be single or widowed.
They must have an interest—and a deep one—in books, but
still deeper in life itself, so that they are like the spectators
of a play in which nothing can happen that has not some
significance.  Only life being so much greater, so much
wider, and more complex than any picture of it can possibly
be, it always strikes people—men and women especially—from
opposite points of view.'

'You are quite convinced that your ideal friendship must
be based not only on difference of sex, but dissimilarity of
view?  Well, you may be right, but how long would it last
between two disengaged people?  How many weeks would
pass before that strong interest in books, and in the general
play of human affairs, would be centralized?'

'Oh, Esther, you are too tiresome.  Of course, that is the
rock on which the ordinary friendship of an ordinary man
and woman strikes—and it is odious—it is worse than
disillusionment.'

'My dear, you have gone through the process more than
once,' said Esther, a smile hovering round her lips.

'Yes; and the soft, silly look that comes into a man's
eyes—the way in which he is perpetually on the look-out
for some point of personal vantage—for the opportunity of
paying some inane compliment—of course all that is the
very antipodes of true unbiassed intercourse.  Flattery is
the lethal spot of friendship.  It is the cryptogram for
betrayal.'

'And yet I suppose friendship, like love, must be nourished
by admiration to some extent.'

'Yes; but then love, or at all events, the thinglet that
usually goes by that name, is always seeking its own ends,
whereas friendship—well, it is a root of that divine severe
force which constantly calls upon us to be true to our best
capabilities.  "No receipt openeth the heart, but a true
friend to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes,
suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart
to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession."  And
again, "The best preservative to keep the mind in health is
the faithful admonition of a friend."  You know who says
this?'

'Yes; but how rare such intercourse is between man and
woman.'

'So it is, and that makes it all the more precious.'

'Well, if ever you form such a friendship, Stella, you
must tell me; and do not conceal the end,' said Esther
with a smile.

By this time the sun had set, and a light mist hung over
the sombre ranges that stretched westward, giving them a
mysteriously limitless aspect, as though they extended
beyond the confines of the world.  This impression was
deepened by low masses of clouds driven before a rising
wind.  The outlines were so uncertain and broken, and the
prospect so wide and lonesome and silent, that the whole
formed a picture which for weird austerity could hardly be
surpassed.

'I'll tell you what, you must live at Coonjooree, and ask
me to stay with you, Esther,' said Stella.  'I am only just
beginning to find out all the allurements of the place.  Last
night I watched the moon setting, and the look of the
desert in the pale lessening light was indescribably solemn.
The place seems to have been created to make up striking
pictures that somehow make one in love with desolation.'

'And to carry a sheep to three acres—don't forget the
sheep, Stella.  Would you really come and stay here with
me?  But I confess I would be afraid of so much solitude.
One must be either older or younger than I am for that.  I
think we had better set off on our travels, you and I and
the children, and their governess——'

'Do you not find it chilly out there, my dears?  There is
such a charming fire of Mallee roots here,' said Mrs. Courtland,
opening the window under which her daughters were
sitting in the veranda.

The twilight was deepening, and the clouds were gathering
more impenetrably.  But within the quiet, warm little
drawing-room, fragrant with the breath of violets, it was
that charmed hour when the hearth 'smiles to itself and
gilds the roof with mirth,' and it would be 'a sin to light
the lamps as yet.'  Some old writers speak of a substance
called Babylonian naphtha, which is so inflammable that it
kindles into flame if it is placed near fire without touching
it.  Old dry Mallee roots when split up have something of
that quality.  They are strangely twisted and gnarled, as if
the waterless wastes in which they grew had thwarted and
stunted them till they are fit emblems of a defeated
existence.  But when they break into flame, it is as though
they pass into a brief life of ecstatic joy.  No other wood
makes so vivid and pure a fire.  The flames are a delicate
clear jonquil.  The roots on the least touch flash into ardent,
lustrous arrows of light, whose glow seems to warm the
mind as well as the body.

The mother and her daughters sat round this glancing,
softly brilliant fire, and talked of the past and future, of
things that had been and that were to be, in the calm
unapprehensive way which gradually returns even to those
who have sustained many of the storms and shocks of life.





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.. _`CHAPTER XIX.`:

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   CHAPTER XIX.

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Her brother was absent in Tasmania when Stella arrived
in Melbourne.  For the first two days nothing more
noteworthy than drives and calls and invitations to coming
festivities marked the hours.  The 'smaller house' which
the Tarelings had taken was in Toorak, 'one of our most
fashionable suburbs, as I dare say even you may see,'
Laurette said, as they drove by spacious mansions and
large, well-kept grounds.  Monico Lodge was not
distinguished by these advantages.  It had that irritating
pretentiousness about it which takes the form of several large
reception-rooms and diminutive sleeping apartments.  When
Stella entered her room she looked round it with a feeling
of comical dismay.  It seemed as though the walls were
not far enough apart to enable her to breathe freely.  As
for the dressing-room, in which Maisie slept, the wardrobe
filled it up so completely that the poor maid seemed to have
been smuggled into the closet for some nefarious purpose.
There was a conservatory devoted entirely to exotics and
gardeners' plants, but there was no garden; and the
'grounds,' a most conventionally formed snippit of land,
were chiefly adorned with trees which refused to grow,
rooted in tubs that refused to be concealed.

But even more uncongenial than these surroundings was
Laurette's constant society, with her unconcealed triumph
at being in the thick of all that was most distinguished and
fashionable in Melbourne, as she herself expressed it.  When
this triumph seemed on the point of being a little dimmed,
she fell into transports of delight at the prospect of an
indefinite stay in town.

'If Talbot had not made this lucky hit in mining shares,
I could only have been here for a couple of weeks,' she
said, 'what with the low price of wool and papa's fearful
losses with the rabbits.  He has given us a great deal
of money from time to time, but he has turned very rusty
of late.  As for Ted, you might as well ask a doornail for
money.  I hope he will marry some nice girl soon who will
teach him to despise filthy lucre a little.'  This with a
sidelong look at Stella, who laughed at this pious aspiration, but
made no comment.

Everything jarred upon her so much that at first she
could not even write a letter.  The day after her arrival
she sent a telegram to Coonjooree, proposing to write the
next day.  On the morrow she wrote a post-card.  On the
third day she scolded herself seriously, and sat down at her
desk.  She had only written the words, 'My darling
Mother,' when she leant her head on her hand and went
into a long reverie, during which a curiously wistful, softened
expression came into her eyes.  She was roused by a tap at
the door.

'Are you here, Stella?'  It was Laurette, and she wore
an impromptu air of surprise.  'Guess who has come?' she
said, with an arch smile.

'Oh, Cuthbert!' exclaimed Stella, her face radiant, as she
hastened to join him.

'No; your brother cannot be here till the evening.  It is Ted.'

Stella's face flushed, but it did not escape Laurette's keen
gaze that with this deepening colour the sudden radiance of
gladness died away.

'He is so delighted to find that you are here.  I hadn't
time to say three words when he sent me off for you.  I
must interview the cook about luncheon.  You will find Ted
in the breakfast-room.'

There was something in Laurette's tone and manner
which Stella greatly resented; but it was, on the whole,
easier to ignore this than call it in question.

Edward Ritchie met her in the hall, and took both her
hands in his with so eager and impassioned an air that
Stella instinctively stepped back and drew her hands quickly
away, saying lightly, to hide her confusion:

'At last I shall know whether you have been in Egypt or
Central Australia.'

'You look thinner than you used to, Stella,' said the
young man, so absorbed in gazing at her that it seemed
as though he heard nothing.

'And you—you have grown stouter.  Yes, really, Ted,
you remind one of the beauties in the Arabian tales.'

'Like the beauties!  Oh, come now, Stella, draw it mild.
What kind of beauties were they?'

'Oh, they used to have adventures.  Sometimes they were
put in a box, the box in a chest with seven locks on it, and
placed at the bottom of the sea, beneath the roaring waves.
Sometimes they were put in baskets sewn up with red
thread.  But whatever happened to them, they always
turned up all right again, with faces like the moon in the
fourteenth night.'

'So that's why you compared me to those beauties, Stella.
Well, I couldn't believe you were paying me a compliment.
But tell me now, are you glad to see me?'

'Oh yes, of course.  But why do you always alight like a
bomb?  Is the wind from the east?'

'Oh, bother the wind!  Tell me all about yourself.  Have
you been well all the time?  I don't believe you have.  You
used not to have circles under your eyes; and they look
bigger.'

'The better to see you with,' answered Stella, smiling.

The most obvious quotation, however, was always thrown
away on Ted.

'But why are you not looking well?' he persisted.

'Well, you know, mother had a fever.  But dancing is
good for me; so I have come to stay with Laurette, that I
may dance for weeks before going into the Bush.'

'How often will you dance with me, Stella?'

'Well, that depends; you used to waltz out of time.
Have you had any practice during your travels?'

'What travels?  You seem to think I have been gallivanting
about amusing myself, whereas—oh, Stella, I barely
know how to hold myself with joy for seeing you again.
And, do you know, you hardly shook hands with me!'

'But if someone held your ten fingers in a vice, could you
shake hands?'

'Well, give me your hand again; I will not hold it hard.
Or, I'll tell you what, you just hold my hand about as tight
as you wish me to hold yours.  You see, I'm perfectly
reasonable.'

'Thank you, Ted.  The way I want you to hold my hand
is not to touch it at present.  We have a little Irishman who
comes to work at Laracor, and I have learned to talk Irish,
you see.'

Stella was sitting on a low chair near the fire.  Ritchie
stood over her, leaning against the mantelpiece.  Carried
away by a sudden impulse, he knelt down and held her
hands to his lips.  They were so hot that they seemed
to scorch her fingers.

'Oh, but really, Ted, it appears to me that you are too
absurd!' she said, the feeling of amusement with which this
faithful squire usually inspired her struggling with a sense
of growing discomfort.

'Do you remember the last time I saw you?' he asked,
drawing a chair close beside her.

'I cannot speak to you, Ted, without twisting my neck.
Do, please, go a little further off.'

'Oh, hang it all!  Haven't I been far away long enough?'

He tried to hold her hands in his.  She slipped away
and took a chair opposite to him.

'Now we can talk comfortably,' she said.  'Tell me, have
the rabbits eaten all your father's sheep, as Laurette says?'

'Do you remember how long it is since we parted?'

'We are just like two people in a burlesque,' said Stella,
smiling.  'We fire off question after question without once
answering each other.'

'Well, why don't you answer me, and sit down nearer to
me, and be a little jollier?'

'But that is the point.  I would not be at all jolly if I
twisted my neck.  Oh, I assure you it is much worse than
spraining one's ankle.'

'Do you remember the day we parted so many months
ago?' persisted Ritchie.

He was a man to whom rapid thought was impossible.
But it was equally impossible to divert his mind from the
point of view which was uppermost with him.

'Oh, heavens! yes.  I remember everything,' cried Stella,
with her low merry laugh—a laugh that always had a
magical charm for her companion.

'You remember everything,' he repeated slowly.  'I am
glad of that, for you know very well——'

He stopped abruptly.  His eyes had been fixed on Stella's
face intently, and he noticed that it grew cold and a trifle
hard.  The change made his heart heavy with apprehension.

'Yes; what do I know very well?' she answered, taking
up the ravelled thread with an impatient weariness.

She felt that this long serio-comic wooing must end once
for all.  Then, as she noticed the agitated, breathless way in
which Ritchie looked at her, an acute apprehension of all
that this long courtship meant to him suddenly smote her,
and therewith a pang of remorse as she realized how far
she had somehow travelled from the old tolerant
half-responsive standpoint, when she had decided that if she
married anyone without being in love it must be Ted.

He looked at her for some minutes without speaking, and
Stella knew it was because he feared to put the old question
into words.  She was always ready to see how faulty she
was—ready to blame herself where blame was due.  She
was all the more conscious of any blame that might attach
to her in this long intermittent wooing, because by some
process which she herself could not have explained, the
moment they met it became clearer to her that those fugitive
resolves that she harboured from time to time after they
last parted, of accepting Ritchie as her lover—her future
husband—were, in truth, impossible—or, at least, possible
only at some indefinite period—not now.

'Ted, I am very sorry,' she said humbly, after a pause.

'Sorry!' he echoed.  'Why are you sorry?  I don't
expect you to love me as I love you.  It's not the way of
girls—like you.'  Ted would sometimes make running
comments on herself and things in general that amused Stella.
Speculations, theories and musings on things in general
were quite foreign to his nature, while they were part of her
daily atmosphere.  And yet she was vaguely conscious that,
one-sided as his point of view might be, it rested on contact
with more sides of life than were open to her ken.  'If
you'll—you'll only just put up with me at first, Stella, I'm
willing to run the risk.'

'Oh, it isn't your risk I think of so much,' she answered,
looking up into his face smilingly.

He was standing nearer to her again, leaning on the
mantelpiece, pulling a large red rose asunder and letting
the petals fall on her one by one.

'By the way, I heard Konrad jarred his knee—how is
he?' she said, with rather a barefaced attempt at getting
away from the subject.

'All right again.  But I haven't been thinking much of
horses lately.  I've had other fish to fry.'

'What fish, Ted?'

'You—mostly.'

'Oh, Ted!  To call me a fish, and speak of frying me,
and pull that beautiful burning-red rose to pieces at the
same time!  Why, it had hardly opened, and roses just now
are scarce.'

'What would you like me to do?'

'Why, let me see.  I think, in this crisis of Australian
history, every squatter should study how to exterminate
rabbits and conserve water.'

'Confound the rabbits and conserving water!  Look
here, Stella, you always twist me round your fingers in
this way.'

Stella held up her hands deprecatingly.

'What makes you say such dreadful things about my
poor fingers?'

'Oh, you know very well what I mean.  Time after time
I've asked you to marry me, and said to myself, "Now I'll
decide it one way or the other."  But you turn it into a
sort of joke.  "What has put this funny notion of marrying
into your head, Ted?" you say; or you hold up your
fingers before I've said a word, and laugh, saying: "Now,
Ted, when you knit your brow in that way it always means
something spoony."'

'Oh, Ted!  I never used that word—never!' cried Stella,
laughing despite her efforts to keep serious.

'Well, it doesn't matter about one word.  You know
what I mean, don't you?'

'Yes, I know what you mean—and I feel I have been
very much to blame.'

'No, you haven't,' retorted Ritchie almost roughly.
'You haven't been to blame; it's me who used to feel
that I'd sooner be made a fool of by you than have any
other girl throw herself at my head.  I've drawn back as
frightened as a wombat when you began to be serious.  I
wanted things to be the same, for fear I mightn't even come
to see you from time to time.  But everything must have
an end.  I'd like you to marry me on any terms—unless—you're
not fond of anyone else?'

She did not reply at once, and the young man recalled
the hints that his sister had thrown out at Godolphin
House.

'Why don't you tell me?' he cried in a husky voice.

'No!  But then I can imagine that I could love; and I
think, before a woman risks marrying, she should.  We
have been friends so long, I will be quite frank with you.
I have sometimes thought I could marry you since we last
parted——'

'Oh, Stella, Stella!  God in heaven bless you for saying
that,' cried Ted breathlessly.

'But then, Ted, I have oftener thought I could not.  I
think that we should be a little more alike.  It is such a
frightful long time——'

'Not always.  Some people die off before they're
anytime married.'

'But it would be unwise to count on that form of
happiness,' answered Stella; and then she gave way to an
uncontrollable burst of laughter.

'And as for not being alike,' said Ted, who always
enjoyed the girl's merriment even when not a muscle of his
own face moved, 'why, there's not many fellows that would
care to have their wives like themselves.  And I would,
perhaps, get a little bit like you after we married, Stella.
We would have so much time together at Strathhaye—or
we could travel, or whatever you liked.'

The door-handle was turned in an ostentatiously
preliminary way, and then Laurette came in.

'Would you mind keeping away for a little longer,
Larry?' said her brother; on which Laurette laughed in a
knowing way, bowed, and disappeared.

'Oh! how could you, Ted?  Laurette will imagine all
sorts of absurdities.'

'She will imagine that we are getting engaged; and that's
what's going to happen, Stella.  You never could throw me
off after all these years.  You know that I love you with
my whole heart and soul, don't you?'

'I believe that you love me a great deal more than I
deserve.  But try and put yourself in my place; think how
different the thought of marrying me would be if you did
not love me.'

'It's no use my trying to think that; I've loved you ever
since I was that high,' said Ted, holding his hand four feet
from the ground.

'Well, it goes to my heart to think of grieving you;
but——'

'Don't, Stella—don't say it.  You can't know what a
God-forsaken good-for-nothing I'd be if you took away all
hope from me.  Let's stay as we are and think over it—get
used to the thought that you are to be my wife.'

'Don't plead with me so much—it worries me.  I feel as
if I must give way; and that would be fatal.  Do not
interrupt me.  You don't understand what a hatefully
cold-hearted creature I feel when I get indifferent to people.'

'But you are not indifferent to me—not quite?'

'No, not now; but then I see so little of you!'

'Well, I wouldn't be always at home; don't think it.
I'm away from Strathhaye sometimes for weeks; and when
I'm there, I'm out most of the day.  Well, you can laugh
as much as you like, though I'll be shot if I can make out
often what amuses you so much!'

'Well, you really are too original in some ways.  You
tell me that sometimes people die off early in married life,
and that we would not see much of each other—all by way
of encouragement.'

'Yes, because I'm trying hard to follow your lead;
though, by Jove! it would go very much against the grain
with me either to die or be away from you after we are
married.'

'Heavens, you make my flesh creep when you talk as if
it were an accomplished fact!  There is one thing I want
to say to you, Ted.'

'One thing?—say a thousand!  Say so many that you
will never be done till we are both old and gray-headed.'

'I must go away and write my letters if you are to
be so foolish.'

'No, no—no, Stella; I'll be dumb as a sonnet.  Tell me
the one thing.'

'Those pearls that you left the day before you went
away——'

'What about them?  Don't you care for them?'

'They are very lovely; but wait a moment.'

Stella went to her room, and presently returned with the
morocco case in her hand.  On seeing this, Ritchie's face
became very sombre.

'It was very kind of you to think of my birthday; only
mind you must forget so tiresome an anniversary after I'm
twenty-five.  But you know I cannot take such a costly
gift from you.'

'All I have is yours.  Why shouldn't you take this?
It's a horse-shoe, isn't it?  You know that is for luck.'

He pressed the spring, and looked at the pearls.

'No; they are too superb to be given or accepted in a
careless way.  You must take them back, please: I did
not even show them to anyone.'

'Take them back!' repeated Ritchie, his face flushing
with vexation.  'What should I do with the damned thing?'

'Is it right for you to say that before me?'

'No; and I beg your pardon.  But you should not
vex me so much.  You must keep them.  Now, I've got to
see my trainer at one o'clock, and after that to take a spin
down to St. Kilda.  But I want you to promise to come
out for a ride with me to-morrow morning.  I have the
neatest, best-bred little colt for you that ever you saw.
Now I can see you are trying to think of an excuse.'

'Indeed I am not.  I shall be delighted to ride.  The air
here stifles one.  I am only thinking how I shall be dragged
to give an account of all these friendly rides and talks the
next time the spirit moves you to have a "square understanding."'

'Well, you needn't think anything of the kind.  You
*have* sometimes thought you could marry me.  Why, Stella,
I could live on that for a year.  The last thing I do at
night is to look at your picture.  When I look at it to-night,
I shall hardly be able to believe you said that.  Now put
both your hands in mine—I won't hurt them—and say,
"God bless you, Ted," the same as you did in the Fairacre
garden.'

She gave him her hands, and repeated the words with a
little tremor in her voice, which thrilled him through and
through with happiness.  He held her hands very gently,
and lifted them one after the other to his lips, and then
he hurried away.

Stella threw herself into an arm-chair.  For some
moments she was buried in one of those profound meditations
in which every faculty of her mind became absorbed
in a tyrannous, compulsory looking-on at her own special
span of the past as part of an unfathomable enigma.  She
was presently roused by Laurette's shrill voice.

So Ted had not even stayed to lunch?  Oh, she made no
complaint.  She knew too well thai at certain times in a
man's life sisters, in common with all the rest of the world,
must take a back seat—look on like people in the pit of a
theatre, who see as through a glass darkly, and see little.

Laurette's eyes fell on the pearls, and she uttered a little
cry of delight.

'What a splendid jewel!  Why, this looks like business,
Stella!  It's better to be born lucky than rich, after all.'

Laurette surveyed herself in the mirror of the
over-mantel, and held the brooch under her chin admiringly.
Then she fastened it in the lisse ruffling of Stella's dress.
But Stella quickly unfastened it, put it into the case, and
closed it with what Laurette mentally called 'a vicious
snap.'

'It does not belong to me,' she said coldly, in answer to
Laurette's look of amazed inquiry.  'It is meant for the
young woman who has been born more lucky than rich,' she
added, with a mischievous smile.





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.. _`CHAPTER XX.`:

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   CHAPTER XX.

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The Hon. Talbot Tareling was at this time absent at
Banjoleena, a new gold-mine which had recently excited much
attention.  No form of work had ever attracted
Mr. Tareling unless it was of a light, irregular nature, with a
strong element of gambling.  Hence, dabbling in mining
shares was the one Australian industry he found tolerable.
He made erratic excursions to mines from time to time,
ostensibly for the purpose of getting the straight tip.  This,
as a rule, proved very disastrous; but lately Fortune had
smiled on him.  He long held shares in a mine which
neither development nor sensational rumours could
galvanize into popularity.  By-and-by, however, there was an
assay which yielded an enchanting result.  Instantly a
boom set in in favour of the Celestial Hill Mine.  Its
dingy branch office in a dingy back street in Melbourne was
besieged by eager applicants for shares.  Middle-aged
women in rusty black; unsuccessful business men, who had
long eschewed mining ventures, but had got tired of seeing
idle, brainless clerks turning ten-pound notes into fifties;
spinsters who had saved one or two hundred pounds by
toilsome years of penurious saving; clergymen with families
far in excess of their incomes; artisans who were weary
of the faded simplicity of investments at seven and six per
cent.—in a word, that numerous class with whom the
longing to widen or enrich life takes the form of narrowing
it—who are always preparing to live, but never begin—were
especially to the fore in buying Celestial Hills.

It was so safe.  It was no bogus concern.  It had been
worked for a long time, and now they had 'struck oil.'  And
here was the average: four and a half ounces to the
ton; and everyone knew that half an ounce paid.  Then
scraps of paper would be produced, and rapid memoranda
made, and eager faces flushed with excitement at the
splendid percentage.  It was while the results were at their
best on paper that Mr. Tareling sold out nearly all the
shares he held.  A week afterwards they were not worth a
withered fig.

Then ugly rumours began to circulate.  When people are
aching with the loss of money, slander seems to be a balm
to the wounded spirit.  The mine had been salted; a false
balance-sheet had been drawn up; a clandestine lump
of gold had been dropped into the smelting-pot.  How
was it, too, that the *intimes* of the directors had sold
out rump and stump?  Mr. Tareling was one of these; but,
like Pilate, he washed his hands in public.  He still had all
the shares that he originally held; the fact being that the
bulk had been bought with his wife's money and in her
name.  He was supported in his innocence by Ozias, the
son of Lazarus, popularly surnamed Judas.  This man wrote
to the press bearing testimony to the childlike faith which
the Hon. Talbot Tareling still put in the Celestial Hill
gold-mine.  On which some people arched their eyebrows,
and prophesied that if this scion of an ancient family had
recourse to many more testimonials of this kind, his
business career in Melbourne would soon be blocked.  Naturally
all this duplicity rendered Mr. Tareling still more wary.
He upheld the practice of finding out whether a mine really
existed before investing in it.  Such a plan, as some of the
brokers remarked, would upset any system of mining that
had yet been in vogue.

Laurette, in the meantime, found the present in many
respects the most beatific season she had ever passed in
Melbourne.  Her growing intimacy with the viceregal family
more than realized her most ardent expectations.  She was
fast rising to that social eminence in which her dresses,
opinions, and parties would form topics of eager interest
among women who a short time previously had barely
acknowledged her as an equal.  If it were not for increasing
money difficulties, her enjoyment would have been almost
without alloy.  But Ted's presence gave her a feeling of
security.  She vaguely felt that in some way she would turn
it to account.

She went with him to the theatre on the evening that
followed his arrival, and Stella anticipated the pleasure of
a long *tête-à-tête* with Cuthbert, who arrived that afternoon
from Tasmania.  Alas! it was not an unmixed happiness.
What her soul feared had come to pass.

After the first greetings and inquiries were over, Stella
fixed her eyes on her brother's face in an inquiring way.

'Cuthbert, you look very radiant.  Has anything happened?
But no—you came to me the first evening.  I am
still——  Oh, heavens! you are colouring up to the roots
of your hair!'

'But, Stella dear, you misrepresent yourself.  You know
that you would be the first to congratulate me—to be glad
with my gladness.'

'Now you are breaking it to me gently—Nebuchadnezzar,
King of the Jews!  Yes, I can bear it all.  Is it the
Rev. S. Carter's daughter?'

'You are a little witch!  You pretended to tremble about
these daughters before I ever thought anything about Dora,
except what a charming girl she is.'

'As if that were not the Alpha and Omega of the infatuation
that precedes marriage.'

'You little heretic!  Oh, there is not much of a story,
except that we are both perfectly happy.  Dora went with
her mother to Launceston a week before I did.  We met
frequently.  The day before we left we went mountaineering
with a few others.  It was all settled before we returned.
Mrs. Carter charged me with her kind love, and wishes you
to come and spend a day, or as long as Mrs. Tareling will
spare you.  Can you come to-morrow?  Well, the day
after.  Dora and I will call before twelve, so that you may
see a little of her before you meet the whole family.'

Stella fell in with this arrangement with rather a
disconsolate little look.

'And so you are "perfectly happy"?  But don't smile
too often, Cuth, or you will spoil the serious lines in your
face I like so much.  Let me look at you sideways.  So
that's the way one looks when one is first engaged.  Ted is
stouter than you are; I am afraid the joy of being accepted
would quite ruin his profile.'

'You will love Dora, Stella.  You cannot imagine what a
darling she is—already quite fond of you.  I have often
shown her your letters, and she is quite charmed with them,
except——'

'Ah, I was waiting for the cloven hoof "except."'

'Well, dear, she is very devout, and has the beautiful
untroubled faith of childhood.  She is vexed to think that
you should be so uncertain, so——'

'So infidel—that's the ecclesiastical word.'

A look of pain came into the brother's face, and then, of
course, Stella repented.

'I am horribly jealous, I know that,' she said.  'Lay a
charm over me, Cuthbert; sprinkle me with holy water;
beat a brass pan to drive the evil spirits away—but don't be
cross with me.'

'Cross with you, Stella?  Have I ever been that?  Have
I not loved you fondly ever since you were a dear, funny
little baby, who would not let people lead you when you
were a year old, but preferred all the bumps you got to
being held by the hand?'

'Yes, my ownest boy, you have always been to me like a
guardian angel.  Oh, far better.  Yes, let me be unorthodox
while Dora isn't here.  After all, a guardian angel keeps at
a discreet distance, but you——'

To the girl's own astonishment she burst into tears.  Her
brother, it must be confessed, was rather pleased.  He
always a little dreaded the vein of hardness—of *diablerie*—of
which the 'Satan letter' was so signal an example, that
would at times become apparent in Stella.  It clung to his
mind at times like a superstition that, in a mood of angry
defiance, or disgust, or impatience of the sweet inevitable
humdrum of life, she might take some course which would
lead to bitter misery, or, at the least, cloud and hamper the
better possibilities of her nature.  She was human through
and through, but a mocking, ironical tone came to her
over-readily.  She wept very rarely, and when tears did come
they became her wonderfully, and made her for a time
adorably gentle.  But it seemed this was not one of these
occasions.

'Can you believe, my dear Stella, that my love for you
will ever be less because of other ties?  It seems to me
rather that this new sweet love makes all other affection
deeper and fuller.'

'Yes, dear, I know,' said Stella, smiling through her tears.
'It makes you feel like our Torrens after the winter
rains.'

'No, I won't accept that comparison.  You must think
of a prettier one.  Do I not know how the Torrens gets in
the drought of summer?  Do you believe that the leanness
of dry December will ever overtake my love for you?'

'I know you will never be anything but what is dear and
good.  Still, it is quite evident to me that I must either get
converted or married; and I fear of the two the latter is the
more practicable.  You see, dear,' she said in answer to a
half-reproving smile, 'it is not to be endured that I should
write or say anything which would vex Dora.  So you and I
can no longer be intimate friends.  Oh, I know the
atmosphere in which an *average* clergyman's daughter is brought
up.  There is a standard for everything—there are so many
clauses of a creed, so many articles to be believed.  Then
all the evil and misery and astounding chaos of life is made
out to be a jumble between God and the devil and man's
free-will.  Sometimes it is one, sometimes the other—but
the reputed Creator of all must never be blamed.  And in
the face of everything there must be an amazing kind of
optimism—a thing that leads a precarious kind of existence
by brigandage on the understanding, by injecting minute
doses of morphia into the pores of reason.  Judge how many
letters of mine could be anything but a snare and a grief
to one who has been saturated with that way of thinking.'

'My dear, you must not talk like that,' he said, taking her
slim, fair hands between his brown, vigorous ones.  'If I
did not know you so well I should be afraid you and Dora
would not get on.  But you rail against most people
theoretically, and end by charming all—as you certainly will
charm this dear new sister who is to be.'

'You speak as though a sister were a kind of rare exotic
to me, Cuthbert.  Don't forget that I already have six.
Yes, certainly I must always count myself, and this, with
Hector and Claude's wives, makes up the unromantic
half-dozen—then Dora seven.  Did you know that the sacredness
of the number seven was fast rooted in the pre-Semitic
civilization of Babylon?'

'I know that you are sometimes the most whimsical
monkey under the sun, and that to this day I don't always
know when you are in fun or in earnest.'

'I am in earnest now, Cuth.  I wish you every joy and
blessing.  Yes; now I have got over the first shock.
To-morrow I shall be glad that you are happier; the day after
that I shall begin to love Dora.  God bless you, Cuthbert!'

She kissed her brother on the forehead, on each cheek,
and on the lips—an old form of embrace which she had
instituted in token of reconciliation after their rare quarrels
in the old childish days.

'I wonder,' said her brother, after a pause, 'when I shall
have to congratulate you under the same happy circumstances?'

'Now, if you like, dear, leaving out the happy,' she said
solemnly.

'Is Ritchie in town?'

'Yes; he came to-day, and to-morrow morning I go
a-riding with him on the trimmest little colt in the world.'

This ride took the form of going to Brighton and a
delightful gallop by the seaside, during which the colour
leapt into Stella's cheeks with charming vividness, while her
eyes seemed to imprison rays from the glancing sparkles of
light on the softly-moving waves.  Ted could scarcely take
his eyes off her face.  He longed to say a hundred things,
but seeing that she was disinclined to talk, he also kept
silent.

It was almost pathetic to notice how implicitly he
responded to her moods as far as lay in his power.  He did
not understand her veiled irony, her bookish allusions, her
sudden sparkling merriment at those 'trifles light as air'
which touch the keen edges of a mind fully alive to the
incongruities of life.  But he understood when she wished
to be silent or talk, when she wanted to hear about his
horses, and when the wonderful bay colt, who promised to
surpass all previous records, became intolerable to her.

Before turning homeward they paused at a little headland.
The waves, crested with foam, broke against this in rollicking
tumbled masses.  There was a breeze fresh enough to
ruffle the sea surface, so that the waves stretching out to the
vast horizon curled here and there into foam, and broke on
the shore with a long-drawn shuddering cadence, which was
momentarily lost, and yet rose again, making itself distinct
from the deeper symphony of the multitudinous waters far
off.  There were voices in the sea that morning which made
Stella's heart beat as if she were listening to passionate
music.  Singly and near at hand the waves lisped and
prattled; but altogether and far off, what solemn and
terrible strength, what possibilities of sudden irretrievable
shipwreck!  Did they symbolize the Mount Tabors and
Gehennas that darkly lurk within the human soul—its
inappeasable longing for happiness—its certainty of storms
and sorrows?

'A few moments here are worth a month of stupid
Melbourne drawing-rooms, incessantly mimicking other
mimicries,' said Stella, taking off her hat, so that the
ozone-laden breeze might sweep away the tags and knots of
tiresome thoughts that would thrust themselves between her
and the sunshine.

'How long are you going to stay with Laurette?'

'Oh, I hardly know.  You see, I must be several weeks
at Lullaboolagana, and I want to get back to Adelaide before
the spring is over.'

'I hope to be in Adelaide, too, before the spring is over.
Shall I come first to Fairacre?'

'Oh yes!  I am sure mother and all will be very glad to
see you.'

'Won't you?'

'Yes—certainly; but as a friend, mind.'

'Do you know I was quite cut up when I heard there was
some talk last year of your leaving the old place.'

'Were you really, Ted?  Why?'

'Well, you know, I spent many a happy holiday there.
Cuth and I don't chum much now, somehow, but we were
very good friends at St. Peter's, though he was always miles
ahead of me....  Do you remember the day we walked up
to the weir, and you crouched for half an hour behind a rock
watching two mountain ducks or some other comical little
brutes that paddled about in the water? ... Do you
remember showing me the head of a bull-dog ant through
a microscope?  By Jove!  I can't imagine how they make
a few glasses tell such thundering lies! ... I believe I
remember the first time I saw you—when you were four.
Then you came with your mother to stay for a week when
you were eight years old.  You climbed up to the top of a
she-oak tree with me, and told me you liked me ever so
much better than Laurette.'

'Now then, Ted!'

'Honour bright you did!  You were the jolliest little
trump of a girl I ever saw.  You played leapfrog with me,
and tore the lace of your pinafore.  You didn't want anyone
to see it, so I got a needle and thread and helped you to
sew it.  I ran the needle into my finger to the bone.  I
remember it well, because I went to St. Peter's the next
Monday, and my thumb was swollen.  I wrote so badly
they put me into pothooks and hangers.  We used to have
Latin every day, and spelling once a week.  I never took to
Latin, and I hated spelling, and even if I liked it, five lines
of dictation once in seven days wouldn't make a literary
character of a chap.  I'm rather weak in spelling to this
day, as I dare say you notice when I propose to you from
time to time.  I always get my book-keeper to write my
business letters.'

'Yes.  I suppose that's easier than to learn to spell?'

'Oh, much!  You see, it's in this with me like everything
else.  Once I make up my mind to a thing I can't alter it.
And it seems I generally make up my mind wrong in the
spelling line.  But I say, Stella, do you remember that
birthday I got a little sparrow without many feathers on it
in your Moreton fig-tree?  Oh, I can see you do.  I asked
you to give me a kiss for it, but you wouldn't.  When will
you?'

'Have you bribed many girls since then to kiss you, Ted?'

A dull red mounted into Ritchie's face.

'That isn't the question—stick to the point in hand,
Stella, and tell me.'

'Well, perhaps never.  Indeed, most likely never.'

'I don't believe that.  Count it on your left hand as we
used to do with the cherry-stones.  Begin with the thumb,
saying, "Shall I ever give Ted a kiss?—yes—no": go on.'

'Shall—I—ever—give—Ted—a—kiss?  Yes—no—yes—no!'

'No, no, no; that's not fair, Stella.  You must stop with
the little finger, and the dear little finger says yes.  I shall
get a diamond hoop for that little finger.  Now, then, ask
it when this is to come off: say spring—summer—autumn—winter.
Spring, hurrah! exactly when I thought.'

'This is a charming horse of yours, Ted.'

'Yes, I've had him trained on purpose for you.  I thought
he was about the style of horse you would like.'

'Now I think of it, you always get into this sort of
carnival when we come out riding.  I don't think I shall
come with you again.'

'Don't say that, Stella.  You must come for rides in the
morning as long as you are in town; and when I go back to
Strathhaye I shall almost believe you are coming.  When
shall I see you there, Stella?'

'Ted, you are far from amusing when you keep on harping
on the same string in this way.  It is about time we
turned back.  We are going to lunch with some of Laurette's
prize hens to-day.  It would be rather nice to play the
truant.'

'Lord!  Stella, don't tempt me in that way, or I shall really
carry you off.  Yes—no—yes.  Don't you hear it in the
horses' hoofs?  Spring—summer—autumn—winter.  Spring:
it's as plain as a pike staff.  You never look half so jolly
anywhere else as you do on horseback.  We shall spend our
honeymoon on horseback—part of it, at least.  Oh, I can't
help it, Stella!  You get into my head when we come out
riding.  Say a sonnet to me, and it will take my spirits
down.  "Where is the ship to which yon land must go?"'

Of course Stella laughed at this unconscious travesty, and
the absurd memories it revived; and Ritchie, seeing her
laugh, was wise enough to say nothing more that would
recall the dreadful threat that she would not ride out with
him again.  Before they parted she had promised him three
dances at a ball to which they were going that night.





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.. _`CHAPTER XXI.`:

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   CHAPTER XXI.

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'You and Ted must have had a very pleasant ride,' said
Laurette, a little maliciously, as they drove to the
Anstey-Hobbs mansion.

'Yes, the sea and the air were delightful,' answered
Stella calmly.

'If you keep that charming colour, Mrs. A.-H. will fall in
love with you on the spot.  Since reading some book or
other she is quite enthusiastic about healthy, well-developed
girls—especially if they combine what she calls a rare
organization with dabbling in the fine arts.  You don't model in
clay, or paint, or sing, do you?'

'No; I'm like the cat with one trick; my one accomplishment
is reading.'

'Still, I fancy you'll take with my Melbourne friends.
Why do you laugh?'

'You made me think I must be cow-lymph or a new shade
of ribbon.  What do people have to do when they take?'

'Oh, sit in a corner and try to be as good as little Jack
Horner.  Do you know, Stella, it strikes me that you are
more spoilt than ever.  I suppose it comes from your being
the youngest, as Tom says.'

'It is awfully good of you to make excuses for me,' said
Stella, with a heightened colour.

Mr. Anstey-Hobbs was popularly credited with being a
millionaire.  Certainly the surroundings and appointments
of his town house gave colour to the belief, not to mention
the number of idle servants who hung about the place.
'Just like an English nobleman's house,' as a governor from
one of the adjacent colonies had said—a saying which some
of Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs' friends treasured up and repeated to
select circles of their friends' friends, basking in the reflected
glory of a viceregal compliment respecting an abode in which
they were so much at home.  As for Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs
herself, she never repeated anything that savoured of
vain-glory.  Indeed, one would imagine at times that wealth was
quite a mortification to her.  She would take precautions
to have scores upon scores of callers on her reception-days,
and then take a bosom friend aside, who entirely believed
in her and had an incontinent tongue, and say, 'Ah, my
dear, how are we to cultivate our minds as we should, when
we are swallowed up in social maelstroms like this?'  And
so, when she donned a specially magnificent visiting dress—one
of Worth's highest flights—indicating yet chastening
the possession of wealth, she would sit in a remote corner
of her carriage, with a melancholy air, as if she were bowed
down with the thought that all is vanity and vexation of
spirit.  And then, in talking to her friends at such times,
the words 'our terrible climate' and the 'severe limitations
of colonial life' were often on her lips.

'It is sordid wealth without culture or the traditions of
refinement that stifles our artists and poets,' she would
murmur, as if shoals of such gifted beings were annually
offered up on the altar of Mammon—the fact being that
Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs had a talent for assimilating ideas from
the books and magazines she read in such numbers monthly,
but had not an equal felicity in their application.  The
thought that wealth was detrimental to mental expansion
was one which had from various sources become dear to
her—so much so, that about this time Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs
had made a determined effort to put down, as far as
possible, the overwhelming power of money in Melbourne
society.  She had struggled to establish a salon—a weekly
gathering to be open only to people of culture and esprit.
Those who had neither, asserted that the line must certainly
be drawn at Mr. Anstey-Hobbs, but habitués of the salon
said it was drawn at those who were neither amusing nor
had made any contribution to art or literature.  But then
a liberal interpretation had been put upon the latter term,
for among the gifted beings at the first reunion was a wealthy
young squatter, a neighbour of Ritchie's, who was by no
means amusing, and had never been suspected of wandering
on the slopes of Parnassus.  On inquiry, however, it
turned out that a year previously he had written a letter to
the Melbourne *Argus* on 'Fluke in the Liver of Sheep.'

The luncheon-party at which Stella made her début in
Melbourne society, as Laurette grandiloquently phrased it,
was made up of ten women in all, supplemented by two
young men, who stole furtive glances at each other, and at
first spoke chiefly in monosyllables.  According to the
hostess, one was a poet, the other a painter.  Stella sat at
Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs' right hand, the painter at her left.
Some funny talk went on about allegory.

'Well, Mr. Vincent, I still think that your first idea of
representing Australia as a wood-nymph, with an opossum-skin
thrown carelessly over her shoulders, was exquisite,'
said Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs.

'That may be, dear madame'—Stella found that this was
the title by which young souls, touched with the sacred
fire of genius, and therefore admitted to the salon, addressed
the hostess—'that may be; but are our public educated up
to the point of reading this allegory?  I lay it down as one
of the canons of art that a picture must tell its own tale.
Now, the tale that would be conveyed by the figure in its
first inception would be that it was not Australia, but a
young black woman.'

'But suppose you introduce a kangaroo on one side and
an emu on the other?'

'There would be two objections.  The introduction of
these typical animals would strengthen the aboriginal theory
with one class, and afford an element of mockery to another.'

'Of mockery? surely not!  Abandoned as our so-called
newspaper critics may be—and, alas! we have no higher
standard for leading the masses to sweetness and light—they
would never dare to sully with their profligate satire so
pure and original a conception!'

'You have hit the very point.  That is exactly what they
would do, madame.  The figure of a young female
inadequately clad, with a bewildered-looking kangaroo on one
side and a nerveless emu on the other, suggests nothing so
much as an exhibition trophy of colonial wine and olives.
You know the *banal* and *borné* tone of newspaper judgment.'

'Ah, you have so much penetration, such marvellous
insight into the envious writhings of inferior natures!'
murmured Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs, gazing at her 'painter' with
pensive admiration.  'Indeed, I doubt whether the very
strength of your analytical judgment does not stand in your
way as a great creative artist.'

Mr. Vincent blushed with pleasure, but still maintained a
gloomy frown, as became an artist who had to bear the
burden of genius in a world beset with inappreciative masses
and unilluminated critics.

'And what form, then, have you decided on finally?' said
Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs after a pause.  She had always a lady
on the premises who took the more prosaic duties of a
hostess, and so left her full scope in her efforts for
developing the less material forces of colonial society.

'Well, a figure more after the classical school, with silken
drapery, gauzy and flowing.  You wished to say something?'

'Does it not strike you that it would be better—always,
of course, with an eye to the untrained masses; and as I
wish to make a gift of this allegorical figure to our
picture-gallery, we must think of them—would it not be better to
array the—the young woman in a product of colonial
growth, or, rather, manufacture?'

'There you display the subtlety of the born critic as
distinguished from those who exist merely because they get
so much per column for squirting muddy water.  But
unfortunately our manufactures are still too crude—too
entirely limited to the more fustian uses of life.  Tweed and
flannel could hardly be used to drape a lithe young female
whose contour must show through.'

'But we grow cotton in Queensland and the northern
territory.'

'Yes, and we can also grow silk; at least, silkworms and
mulberries thrive with us.'

'I am vanquished, Mr. Vincent.  I have not another
word to say.  The silken drapery is perfectly legitimate.'

'But still, as silk is not yet one of our established
industries, we must enhance its effect by something
characteristically colonial,' said Mr. Vincent, with the
dispassionate fairness of a mind too broad to be puffed
up with a sense of its own critical acumen.

'Quite true—quite true.  The salt-bush is very typical.
How would it do to have salt-bush for the background, with
a couple of sheep nibbling at it?  They might be rather
lean, to typify that this bush has often kept our flocks from
starving.'

'If I were painting for such as you are, madame, my task
would be an easy one—my labour of love, I should say;
for on the day on which I cannot feel it is such, I never
touch a brush.  But to the ignorant on the one hand, and
the malicious on the other—and in the colonies these are
the two great classes for whom artists work—I say to these
the sheep would be a stumbling-block.  The one would
think, and the other would say, without thinking, that the
young woman was a shepherdess—"a reminiscence of the
worst rococo period of unreal landscapes!"  That's what
the critic with a little wit and no conscience would say.
No—my own idea, after long, and I may say painful
thought, is to paint the figure with a garland of colonial
flowers, holding a basket of colonial fruit, with a colonial
bird on her shoulder pecking at it.'

'Oh, charming—charming!  Really too exquisite,
Mr. Vincent!  *Do* tell me what flowers and what bird.  The
fruit—would you have grapes and oranges and peaches, and
so on, or one kind?'

'I do not know about grapes.  The colonial wine is really so
very——  Well, I fear I am fastidious with wine.'  It may
be mentioned, *en parenthèse*, that Mr. Vincent usually
smoked a strong cigar over his wine, and smacked his lips
ecstatically when he gulped British champagne made of
unripe gooseberries.

'Yes, and then one likes to encourage teetotal principles
among the masses,' answered Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs.  'Perhaps
we had better discard the grapes?  And the flowers?'

'Well, I don't know the names of any colonial flowers;
but I must ruralize a little in the Botanical Gardens.  I
suppose they have native ones there?'

'No doubt—no doubt!  Oh, how very charming and
natural it will all be—quite a bush idyll!  Now about the
bird—you see I am all impatience!'

'Well, I thought, a native companion——'

Here, to save herself from absolute disgrace, Stella
dropped her napkin, so as to have an excuse for stooping
and hiding her face for a moment.  The movement drew
Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs' attention to her right-hand neighbour.
It may be imagined that Stella had listened with both ears
to all that had passed.  Her eyes were literally dancing
with suppressed merriment, her cheeks glowing like a
well-sunned peach.  She was flanked on her left by an
elderly woman, who was rather deaf, and who ate her way
stolidly through every dish on the *menu*, so that the girl's
attention had been undistracted.

Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs put up her pince-nez and looked at
her admiringly.  The lady had very good eyesight, without
any defect of over long or short sight; but an English
countess, who had visited Melbourne and stayed some days
at Toorak House, had always put up her pince-nez when
she wished to look attentively at anything, being so short-sighted
that objects at a little distance were all blurred and
indistinct to her unaided eyes.  So, with the curious
humility of a parvenu, Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs had ever since
zealously imitated one afflicted with impaired vision.

'My dear young lady, I fear you are not eating,' she said.

On which Stella answered with wreathed smiles that she
had been so very much interested in the conversation on
painting, etc.  Indeed, her face was so radiant with what
her hostess mentally called naïve delight, that she instantly
took a liking to the girl.

'You are, perhaps, colonial-born?'

'I am an Australian,' answered Stella, who had to keep
on smiling in what she felt was an imbecile way.  The
image of the allegorical figure of Australia, with a native
companion perched on her shoulder, was really too killing.

'You make a distinction, then, between colonial and
Australian?'

Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs was the daughter of an English country
attorney, and having in her provincial youth been familiarized
with the term 'colonial' as somehow expressive of a
state of things far below the status of the great British
under-middle classes, she still clung to the term in her days
of grandeur, fondly deeming that it somehow marked her
as one whose bringing-up was more aristocratic than could
fall to the lot of those who were born and bred in
Australia.

'Surely,' answered Stella, 'when there is so much difference.'

'Now do tell me how.  You see, I came to the colonies
only when I married.  I believe I was the first of our family
to leave England.'  There was a vague flourishing emphasis
on 'our family,' as though it represented great territorial
magnates.

'Well, a colony—does it not suggest a handful of men
ploughing scraps of land in an insignificant little state or
island, or, at any rate, the first scattered handful of pioneers
who have an uncertain footing in an alien land?  Australia
is not a colony; it is a continent, a great country where
generations have already lived and died—the birthplace of
thousands upon thousands who love it more dearly than
any other spot in the whole world.'  The light of patriotic
love and pride shone in the girl's eyes, and her voice was
musical with deep feeling.

'Really, you know, I am very glad to have this explained
to me,' said Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs, with the indefinite
awkwardness of one who has unawares awakened a chord in an
unknown instrument.

'I grant you, though,' Stella went on in a lighter tone,
half piqued at herself for betraying any emotion, 'that we
cannot dispense with the word "colonial."'  She was
deeply tempted to add, 'as long as we have people who
hang idly about Australian cities, painting foolish pictures
for money that should be better spent.'

'Well, you heard what my friend Mr. Vincent said.  Tell
me, do you think a native companion——'

There was no help for it.  Stella had to laugh.

'Dear Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs, a native companion is much
larger than the domestic goose, and is mounted on legs over
two feet high, with a neck almost as long as its legs.'

'Ah, I fear it would not do, then, to perch on the shoulder
of an allegorical figure of Australia,' said Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs,
dropping her pince-nez, and turning to the artist,
who was staring at Stella sombrely, as if he suspected her
of inventing the dimensions of the unfortunate fowl.

'Now tell me, Miss Courtland, are there any pretty
bush-flowers that would do for a garland—any that may be
considered nationally Australian, like the lily for France and
the rose for England?' continued this enthusiastic art-patron.

'Oh yes; it is an embarrassment of choice.  To go no
further than the exquisite blossom of our tan wattles, the
white scrub immortelles, the epacris, and the lovely
myrtle-blossoms of the eucalyptus, cream and pink.  Have you
ever seen the curve of a low hillside in the depths of our
woods all one mass of epacris—white, and pale-pink, and
scarlet?'

Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs murmured an apologetic negative,
with an involuntary glance at the gorgeous orchids that
adorned her table.  It struck her, perhaps, as being a little
out of place to speak with so much enthusiasm of things
that grew in masses in the bush to one who could command
such rare exotics.

'The tan wattle is of rather a crude and violent tint,' said
Mr. Vincent in a tone of authority.

'I can imagine that it would very easily become so on
canvas,' answered Stella with a sweet smile, which quite
confirmed Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs in her first estimate of the
young lady as being 'delightfully naïve, you know.'  It is to
be feared she would have changed her opinion if she had
overheard Stella that night describe to Ted the accessories
of an allegorical Australia, that had been evolved in her
hearing by a 'colonial' painter and his patroness.





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.. _`CHAPTER XXII.`:

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   CHAPTER XXII.

.. vspace:: 2

Stella was still sitting over a late breakfast with Laurette
when her brother called with his *fiancée*, having driven Dora
from her father's house in the family pony-chaise.  He
watched the first greetings between the girls with keen
pleasure.  Dora was very pretty; fair and mignonne, with
pale-gold hair in crisp wavelets, a pure English complexion,
and large blue eyes that had something of the expression
of a child's who has suddenly been told a pleasant piece of
news.

'Oh! you are a sweet little darling.  No wonder Cuthbert
has thrown me over for you,' said Stella, looking at her
critically.

'But Cuthbert has not thrown you over, dear Stella; he
has given you one more sister to love.'

'Do they teach each other what to say already?' thought
Stella.  They babbled away pleasantly for some little time,
going over those reminiscences and simple personalities in
which old ladies and newly-engaged lovers so readily indulge.
Presently Laurette joined them, and the talk became more
general.  The plan was that Stella should spend the day
and stay the night at the Carters'.  Cuthbert was preparing
to go, having parochial work, when Ted rode up to Monico
Lodge, followed by a groom leading Shah, for Stella to ride.

The discovery seemed to have something of the nature of
a sensation to Dora when, after she and Ted were introduced,
he said: 'Why, Stella, I thought I would find you
ready.  Shah is in fine form for you to-day.'

'You have appointed to go out riding?' Cuthbert said a
little coldly to his sister.

'You see I had no idea that you children would be so
good and kind as to come so early.  I am sorry, Ted, but I
am afraid I cannot ride this morning.'

Ted's brow darkened visibly.  'But that's nonsense, Stella,'
he said impatiently.  'If you haven't finished your jabber,
I can wait.'

Cuthbert's face became more and more impassive.  Dora
looked from Cuthbert to Stella in a mystified way, and then
Laurette came to the rescue, proposing that she should
drive back with Dora.  She wanted to see dear Mrs. Carter
so much.  They could take Stella's dress-basket and maid,
and then Ted would take Stella direct to the parsonage.

'That's the very ticket,' said Ted.  'Go on, Stella; see if
you can't get ready in five minutes,' and he pulled his
watch out, and Stella, without further ado, hastened to
obey.

Incredible as it was to Cuthbert, this rather illiterate and
overbearing young man seemed destined to triumph in his
suit.  His heart sank strangely at the thought.  He left for
town before Stella reappeared, and when they met again at
the parsonage in the evening, he knew by the wistful droop
of his sister's mouth that she had somehow felt bored to
death.  Bored in this exquisitely refined Christian home,
and yet tolerant of Ritchie as a lover!

Poor Stella!  She had indeed passed through some evil
hours that day.  In the first place, the seaside and Shah,
the blue serenity of the day, the great, measureless crescendo
of the waves, and Ted's touching goodness in entirely
keeping off forbidden ground, had beguiled her into prolonging
her ride beyond what she intended.  The moment she
entered the house, she became aware that lunch had been kept
back on her account.  There are some households in which
unpunctuality is made into one of the seven deadly sins, and
it seemed this was one of them.  There were three daughters
older than Dora, and it transpired that the day was
pigeon-holed for all, with set duties for each hour, so that when
thirty minutes were lost in waiting for a guest who was
inexcusably late, the rest of the day threatened to resolve
itself into a scramble to make up for lost time and wasted
opportunities.  The Rev. S. Carter and the two eldest
daughters had to excuse themselves and hurry away before
the meal was over, in order to catch a certain train to one
of the suburbs, where a sale of gifts in aid of a church school
had to be opened.  Directly after their departure, a friend
called by appointment to accompany the third daughter on
a periodical visit to an orphanage.  And thus silence prevailed
for a little, which Stella endeavoured to break by
saying: 'I feel most awfully guilty, you know; but the sea
was too divine.  And the sky—have you noticed, Dora, how
widely vaulted it is to-day?'

'Oh yes; very pretty!' answered Dora, with a faint
smile, and Stella resolved, for the hundredth time since she
left home, that she would not try to drag the things that
captivated her so insanely into conversation.  It was like
offering people coin for which they had no change.

'Cuthbert did not mention you were engaged,' said Mrs. Carter,
when they had settled themselves in the drawing-room,
each with some form of needlework.

'Oh, but I am not!' answered Stella.  And then mother
and daughter exchanged a quick look, and Dora, colouring
very prettily, said:

'I thought, dear, by—by Mr. Ritchie calling you Stella,
and your going out riding——'

It certainly behoved Stella to explain the long-dated
friendship, or at any rate acquaintanceship, which had
established both customs.  But she was little in the habit
of apologizing for herself, and, partly through indifference,
partly out of perversity, she allowed the subject to drop.
Not so Mrs. Carter, however, who found a roundabout way
of approaching the subject again.  Mrs. Tareling was
Mr. Ritchie's sister then.  What a very brilliant marriage she
had made.  Stella opened her eyes wide in surprise.  Of
course, the younger son of a British peer was considered so
in the colonies, Mrs. Carter presumed.  'No doubt you
knew her before she married?'  Ah, yes; they knew each
other since they were children.  And Mr. Ritchie, the young
man, was one of those who had so many sheep and cattle
and things.  Stella believed he had over fifteen thousand a
year.  On hearing this, Mrs. Carter sat more upright, and
regarded Stella with new and respectful interest.  And then
the lady slid into a long and tedious account of her own
family.  It was rather involved, or else Stella's attention
wandered, for at the close she was not certain whether it
was Mrs. Carter herself or her mother or her grandmother
who had been governess to an English princess of the Royal
family.  It was clear, however, that they belonged to a
good family; that they had been much reduced; that those
who had married had espoused rising clergymen.  One
sister was married to a bishop.  'Poor woman!' thought
Stella.  Mrs. Carter seemed to pause as if for some
expression of awe or admiration.  When she found this was not
forthcoming, she went on to explain how wide was the gulf
fixed between a colonial and an English bishop.  The
Carters were only temporarily in Melbourne, and proposed
to return to England at no distant date.  There was money
in Mr. Carter's family: one of his nieces was married to the
first cousin of a great duke.  Stella lost herself in calculating
what share of lustre this connection with the British
aristocracy shed on her brother.  When she emerged from this
depth, Mrs. Carter was dilating on the pang it would cost
them to part with dear Dora.  But Cuthbert was all they
could have wished: they had every confidence in him, etc.
It seemed to Stella that the good lady was applying the
phrases of a governess's testimonial to her brother.  Yes,
decidedly it must have been Mrs. Carter herself who had
held brevet rank as a governess.  She placed so tiresome
and so didactic an emphasis on the less alluring aspects of
life, coupled with an implication of having been, since early
childhood, engaged in laying the moral groundwork of
society.  Then, in the midst of this gentle, consequential,
self-complacent purring, she suddenly asked Stella whether
young ladies in the colonies—those who had been born in
them, and had never lived elsewhere—took more after the
American stamp than the English?

The question somewhat revived Stella's drooping spirits.
It opened the door for a frankly mischievous sketch of her
own existence at Fairacre.  The sick-visiting, the calls, the
church-going, the walks with the children, the rides with her
brother, etc., but not the remotest allusion to what she
knew had been chiefly in Mrs. Carter's mind: not a whisper
of Platonic friendship or suitors.  One might imagine, from
Stella's easy rapid sketch, that a 'colonial'-born girl was
like the angels in heaven, and never even remotely glanced
at the question of marrying.

By-and-by there were visitors and afternoon tea-parties,
but both of a very mild, not to say tepid, character.  Dull
people do not understand the grateful fillip that the
beverage, when quite fresh and fragrant, gives to the spirits and
imagination.  Nor did matters improve much when the rest
of the family returned.  When they were all together, the
atmosphere was pervaded with snatches of ruined lives—parlour
extracts from the careers of reprobates of both sexes.
Something had always happened which was too 'shocking'
to be gone into.  Either a mangle or a daughter seemed to
have disappeared clandestinely from most of the poor houses
they had recently visited.

Stella listened in vain for some touch of fun or genuine
pathos—something that these poor people had said which
would throw an illuminating ray on what they really
thought or endured.  But no; if anything was repeated
that had been said by the fatherless, or the widow, or the
backslider, it had a chilling echo to her of conventional
make-believe—of the kind of pulpit-slang the needy catch
up so readily, with alms given on condition that they
repent.  Or it was still more like what one of the middle
classes might have said after being led astray and made
decorously repentant by the pangs of hunger.

There are multitudes who all their lives visit the poor
without ever catching a true lineament of their minds.
Such people are often suffused with an hysterical kind of
earnestness which makes them utterly impervious to any
true apprehension of what is going on in the minds of
others.  Or they are swaddled in a complacent egoism
which makes them quite invulnerable to any true appreciation
of the bearings of life.  They are capable only of one
standpoint, and this one is all distorted and awry.

'You do not look very much entertained, Stella,' said her
brother when he found an opportunity, shortly before he
left, of speaking to her alone.

'No?  It must be the ravages of a troubled conscience
you notice.  Shah was too dear this morning.  I kept the
whole household waiting for me, and then—you must notice
that the eldest Miss Carter sings methodically out of tune?
Or don't people mind such trifles when they are in love?'

Cuthbert flushed hotly.  He was indeed very much 'in
love,' and this, coupled with the conviction that his sister
had decided to accept Ritchie's devotion, made him
impatient—for a moment angry even.  Like other angry
people, he took up the first weapon that came to hand.

'Perhaps the charms of Ritchie's society make you
impatient of ordinary intercourse,' he said almost sternly.

Stella looked at him with startled, dilating eyes.  It was
almost the first time in her life that Cuthbert had spoken
and looked at her unkindly.  She felt it like a stab, but she
strove to conceal all appearance of being hurt.

'I dare say,' she answered, smiling.  'You see, we
Australians understand one another.  We have a wicked love
of enjoyment, of horses, and sunshine, and the seashore.
Did you hear that Ted has a new bay colt, which has twice
covered a mile in an incredibly short time?'

'No; I have never been much interested in the
performances of horses, as you know.'

'Well, it has an amusing side.  Ted is always pursued
by a trainer, or a jockey, or a man in a funny necktie, who
is dying to buy the little brown filly out of Lady Glendora,
by Victor, you know.'

'I never believed till now that you would end by accepting
him.  Stella, it seems to me little short of an infatuation.'

'But do you know, my dear, that there are women who
marry even bishops?'

Was it perversity, or the outcome of some nascent feeling
of a deeper nature than even she herself was aware of,
which led the young woman to answer her brother's
remonstrances with so much reserve that a sudden change in her
real attitude towards Ted would not have seemed
inconsistent?  Perhaps there was something of both motives.
Nevertheless, the chief one which made these long morning
rides so precious to her was a passionate love of being in the
open air, of riding, of getting away from people who were,
more or less, tiresome—she herself, at times, most of all.
On horseback, more completely than anywhere else, she
threw every haunting shape of troubled thought to the
winds.  Life then became a glorious ecstasy—a glad,
bounding motion in which simply to be was enough, without
any foolish looking before and after.

That night, before she fell asleep, Stella recalled her
brother's face and words in the brief conversation that had
passed, and she felt her heart failing her in a curious way.
'It is true,' she thought; 'the chief attachment of my life is
crumbling away.  As long as I was first with Cuthbert, he
did not see what a faulty, foolish, inconsistent creature I
am.  Dora's placid little perfections show me up in a lurid
light.  After this he cannot see me without criticising
me—without wondering how, at one time, I seemed to him so
dear and lovable.  And I—I shall always be conscious of
it, and always say horrid things.  Oh, it is no use my
drawing out a little set of rules, resolving to be more gentle,
and sweet, and patient.  The things I say, for which I
afterwards hate myself, come to me with handles.  "Is this a
dagger that I see before me?"  No, it is a stupid little
bodkin, that generally contrives to scratch me.  I seem to
have got to that stage of life in which I must take myself
for better or worse, as people do in marriage—meaning
mostly for worse.  Perhaps, when the glow of courtship and
the honeymoon are over, Cuthbert may cease to criticise
me—but that is too far away to be consoling.  I have the
unfortunate Australian temperament.  I want the share that
falleth to my lot now.  And then there will be not only
Dora, whose eyes get rounder at everything I say, but there
will be an elder sister eternally singing out of tune—practising
a little song with a moral in its tail, to sing at a
servantmaids' friendly association.  Poor things! it is no
wonder they disappear like the mangles that are bought
with subscriptions.  After all, Shah and Ted are less
objectionable than many things in life.'

She mocked herself, as she habitually did when she was
bent on keeping sterner, more serious thoughts at a distance.
Yet before she fell asleep her pillow was wet with tears.  In
the days that followed the brother and sister gradually
drifted apart.  He was constantly with the Carters and
their friends during his hours of relaxation from parochial
work.  Stella, swayed by a variety of motives, conceived
almost a horror of the Carter household.  She even repented
of having called Dora 'a little darling' at their first
interview.  She described her to Ted as opening her eyes
wide like an automatic doll.

'You don't like having your nose put out of joint, I can
see that,' answered Ted, with an amused chuckle.

Stella made a slight grimace at him, and gave Shah his
head.  As they were trotting up the Toorak road, Ted
spoke again:

'You see, Stella, that's one strong point about me.  I'll
never throw you over for anybody.'

'Oh, for the matter of that, Cuth hasn't; only he's got
engaged to the wrong sort of family.  When you get
engaged, Ted, please see that the lady you love has not
three unmarried sisters—the eldest desperately unmusical,
but bent on singing.'

'Well, you see, the lady I love has only one unmarried
sister.  But, of course, you had that in your mind when you
spoke,' said Ted, smiling to himself under his moustache.

Stella laughed merrily at the imputation.

'Now confess,' said Ted, as they slackened their horses'
pace and dropped into a walk, 'you would be horribly cross
if I came to-morrow morning and said I had got engaged,
and instead of begging you to ride Shah, took out the other
young woman.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXIII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIII.

.. vspace:: 2

Next morning the rain came down in torrents.  It was out
of the question to go out riding.  Nor could Ted make an
appointment for the afternoon, in case it cleared.
Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs had formed one of those sudden attachments
for Miss Courtland which characterized the Melbourne
lady's social career.  Already, in writing to Stella, she
addressed her as an 'ever dear,' and this was the day on
which the new 'ever dear' was to be at Toorak House
at twelve o'clock, and spend a quiet evening with a few
special friends.

'That means the people who have souls and pens, Stella,'
said Laurette.  'Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs always reads people's
characters at a glance.  She quite took you in the first day.
You are so sweet and fresh and naïve—so open to new
ideas.  Fancy my listening to all this without betraying
you!'

'By Jove! you women are a rum lot,' broke in Ted, who
stood staring out through the window, beating a tattoo on
his boot with a riding-whip.

'Thank you, dear,' said Laurette, with a pert little bow.

'Yes; here's that Hobbs woman flying at Stella with
both arms when they meet, and Stella going for all the day
and most of the night with her; and then I'll swear she'll
have some comic story when she comes back, like that one
about the lean sheep and the Mallee and the native companion.'

Laurette looked thoroughly mystified.  Though Stella
dearly loved to tell a funny story, she was very careful not
to make a confidante of one with so slippery a tongue as
Laurette's.  Ted perceived the situation, and his heart beat
with joy.  Stella was sitting on a low arm-chair near the
fire, cutting the leaves of a magazine.  Ted sat down on
the fender-stool at her feet, and said in an undertone:
'After all, what you told me in the top of the she-oak so
many years ago is quite true.'

'Oh, as for Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs, she gives herself away to
everyone,' said Laurette viciously.  There had been an
ardent friendship at one time between the two, which had
long since been offered up as alms to oblivion, and Laurette
suspected that Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs had confided some story
to Stella under the bond of secrecy.  'There was that
absurd story about herself and the Russian commander last
season.  Oh, I mean when the Russian man-of-war was
here.  Of course, Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs gave a grand ball,
and Joseph—that's her husband—rather forgot himself.
She was so mortified, she began to speak to the commander
in a bow-window, and a broken voice, of the withering
bonds of the conjugal life, just merely to show off how
sensitive and refined she was.  She didn't mean a word of
it, you know.  The commander thought she was proposing to
elope with him, and explained in fragmentary English that
his official position would not permit any irregularity, but
that he hoped to return before long.'

'Really, Laurette, I don't think you should tell a story
like that before me,' said Ted, who was engaged in trying to
purloin a bow of ribbon off Stella's shoe.

'And then the way she dresses,' said Laurette, who, like
many others, found it difficult to curb her enthusiasm as
soon as she had begun discussing an absent friend.  'You
noticed her the other evening at Government House, arrayed
in an extraordinary pea-green, with yellow marabout
feathers on the train?  She reads the "Court Circular,"
you know, and makes a point of dressing like a young
princess—quite forgetting she is getting on in life, and
never had a complexion.'

'If you say much more, I shall stay to see you hugging
and kissing her when she comes in,' said Ted, slipping a
knot of crimson satin ribbon into his vest pocket.

'That reminds me; I must write a note or two before I
go,' said Stella.

One of these was to Louise, her brother Hector's wife, at
Lullaboolagana.

'You say you are not very well, and are longing to see
me,' she wrote.  'Well, if you write in your answer "I
want you at once," you will see me twenty-four hours
after I get it.  I feel an ungrateful wretch—for Laurette is
all kindness in her way—but the Mallee Scrub spoils one
for the kind of society in which money is the one great
distinction, and where women have no time for anything
but to be insignificant victims of those sinister successes of
life which end in choking it with superfluities.  As for
Cuth—ah me!—one little dimple of Dora's pretty face is worth
all I am or can be.  Yes, this is partly jealousy—a mean
sort of reptile which I used to think I was quite above.  I
suppose we are above most failings as long as there is no
temptation.'

'Well, Ted,' said his sister, when the two were alone, 'it
seems to me that you and Stella are getting on.'

Laurette did not really think so; but money affairs were
day by day assuming a sterner aspect, and she was anxious
to make belief in the success of Ted's suit a ground for
making 'sacrifices' on his behalf.  Laurette's ideal of a
sacrifice was making someone pay very heavily for an
action that had cost her nothing.

'Oh, do you think so?' answered Ritchie.  Then he
walked up and down the room for a little.  'Look here,
Larry,' he said suddenly, 'do you think Stella has heard
anything?'

Laurette was just then like a *chiffonnier*, who discards
nothing that comes to hand till it is examined at leisure.

'I do not know,' she answered slowly; 'what makes you ask?'

'Well, at times she is so merry and full of fun; then
she gets a silent fit; and though we are friendly, we never
seem to get any further.  The more I see of her the less
I know what is going to happen.'

'She doesn't know herself.  Stella Courtland is one of
those girls who seem to be wise and even strong-minded—but
all the time she is torn in twenty directions.  It runs all
through her.  At seventeen she wouldn't be confirmed, because
she wanted to be a Catholic.  She has never been confirmed
to this day, and never turned Catholic.  She stays away
from Church far more than I do, and yet she'll read her
Bible by the hour, as if it were a French novel.  She scoffs
at people thinking they can do any good to the poor, and still
she has a trick of going to see them and listening to
everything they choose to say far more patiently than she would
to you or me.  She has been absurdly fond of her brother
Cuthbert all her life; and instead of being glad he has got
engaged to a pretty well-connected girl, she mopes over it.
I have no doubt she thinks in her heart that I am a very
poor shallow creature; but at any rate I know what I
want, and I generally succeed in getting it; and for once
I change my mind, she changes hers fifty times.  Let her
go on a little longer, and if the whim should take her in the
end that she doesn't care to marry you, I think I can bring
her to her bearings.  It used to be a great weakness with
her, even as a girl, to believe she could do good.  It's a sort
of family superstition.  She may not have it very strong
now; but still enough to get at her through her conscience.'

'Through her conscience!' repeated Ritchie; as though in
the case of a woman this were a theological abstraction, not
to be lightly brought up in secular conversation.

'Yes, precisely,' returned Laurette, with a firm voice.
Conscience was, on the whole, the mental faculty of which
she knew least, and she felt therefore all the better qualified
to reckon on its mystic influence with a character so
unstable.  'But after giving you so much encouragement,
she'll never finally reject you.'

'Well, as to the encouragement, Larry, it's more that I
won't give in, you see—and take "no" for an answer.'

'Then don't be impatient.  The longer you are thrown
together in this sort of way the better for you.'

When Stella came back from Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs' that
evening, she found Laurette looking very much discomposed
over a telegram that awaited her return from a musical
evening at Sir Thomas and Lady Danby's, who were next-door
neighbours at Monico Lodge.  She said nothing, however,
as to the cause of her evident vexation, but chatted
about the events of the day until Ted came in.  He
launched into details of a dinner that had been given at the
Melbourne Club to Colonel Aldersley, prior to his departure
for England.

'There was little Jingo of Wyoming,' he said, 'laying it
on as usual with a trowel: "The presence of men like
Colonel Aldersley amongst us," says he, "has more than
social significance.  It is the influence of such high-toned
people that rivets the bonds that bind us to the
mother-country," and a lot more I can't remember.  And there was
the colonel trying to look as if he believed it, and the other
fellows jogging each other, and little Eardley Everson—a
brat of a boy of eighteen, who has lost over £20,000 to the
colonel—pinching himself to see if he was awake.'

Stella was much diverted by this, but Laurette re-read her
telegram with a care-laden face.  Then she left the room,
saying she would be back in a few minutes.

On this, Ted entered into more personal talk.

'I say, Stella, what do you call that dress you have
on—I mean, what stuff is it?'

'Crêpe de Chine—pale pink, as you see!'

'And that stuff peeping out round your shoulders?'

'Cream-coloured crêpe lisse.'

'Would you mind being married just in a dress like that?'

'Why, Ted, that's like fishing for an invitation!'

'Nothing of the sort.  Who ever heard of a bridegroom
asking to be invited to——  Now, Stella, don't move; sit
just as you are.  And what are these roses in your hair and
bosom?'

'Scarlet fairy roses.  Aren't they too dear and sweet?
Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs still has heaps of them, though they were
nearly over with us when I left home.'

'Tell me about Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs before Larry comes
back.  I won't let the cat out of the bag on you this time!'

Stella was sitting on her favourite chair, near the fire.
The flames leaped rosily, and cast rosy reflections on her
face—stealing to it on each side of the Japanese screen, with
its flock of wide-winged storks hovering above their slender
bamboos.  Ritchie had planted himself straight in front of
her, sitting horseback fashion on a chair, his hands, which
were crossed on the back of it, supporting his chin.

At this request Stella began to laugh, and her eyes
sparkled with amusement.  It was the expression that her
companion best loved to see her wear.  When she looked
like that he always understood what she said.

'Oh, the salon, Ted; it was really too funny.  You must
know that after dinner we assembled in what Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs
calls her boudoir, but it is as large as any ordinary
drawing-room.  It is hung with panels of peach-coloured
satin, very beautifully embroidered—some with Graces and
Cupids tumbling over wreaths of roses.  But the design I
liked best was a great spray of double white cherry-blossoms,
with a pair of sweet little gray love-birds billing in the
midst——'

'Yes, they're jolly little animals.  I wish some people
would take a little more after them.'

'Now, if you interrupt I must remember bow late it is.
Perhaps I ought to tell you that this work was done by a
Russian countess that Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs met abroad.  She
got into trouble with her husband, or the Government, or
something.  So one night, instead of returning home from a
ball, she ran away to the Riviera, where she designed and
worked lovely things for people who have two hundred
thousand sheep in the woods of Australia.  When you come
to think of it, there is something that fascinates the mind
in the idea of eloping with a crewel-needle from the reach of
the police, or an objectionable husband.'

'Nonsense, Stella; no woman worth her salt runs away
from her husband like that,' answered Ted promptly.  He
may have had reasons of his own for entertaining strict
views on this point.  'Besides, if you knew all, you may
depend it was not with a crewel-needle she eloped.'

'Well, at any rate it was with a crewel-needle she lived.
And she was known as the Countess Olga.  But where was
I?  Oh, the salon—well, you must figure to yourself that
Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs was draped *artistement* in a wonderful
Indian fabric, and that she lived in an enormous armchair
covered with citron-coloured velvet.  Beside her was a little
octagon table carved out of Angola ivory; on it the daintiest
little notebook in the world with jewelled clasps—a
notebook in which to enter the *bons mots* of the evening.'

'What are *bons mots*?  Have I ever heard any?'

'Oh, Ted, Ted—to think that I climbed trees with you in
my infancy, and have seen you at intervals ever since, and
that you should ask such a question!  How shall I explain—it
must be in the concrete.  You remember the last time
you were out riding you told me of an Oxford man who was
a knock-about-hand at Strathhaye for some time, and how,
speaking of the old Greeks once, he said their only idea of
trade was piracy, and I answered it remained for modern
times to combine the two?  Well, that was something in
the nature of a *bon mot*.'

'Oh, you are always saying things of that kind.  But why
the dickens should the old frump want to put them in a
notebook?'

'Why, indeed,' answered Stella, laughing heartily.  'Well,
you see, Ted, the prosperity of a salon depends on its *bons
mots*—but I am obliged to confess I did not hear any.
There were twenty of us, and the first part of the evening
was monopolized by a Yankee newspaper-man, who sends
columns of lies every week to a daily paper in New York.
He stood with his back to the fire, and held forth through
his nose for nearly an hour on the merits of cremation.  He
proved conclusively that a casket ten inches by eight would
contain the calcined ashes of an adult.  And then he asked
the host in an audible aside for a "nip of dog's nose."  What
in the world is that?'

It was now Ted's turn to laugh.  'Why, it's a horrid mess
made of gin and beer mixed.'

'Then that accounts for Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs' confusion.
She told me beforehand that in striving to establish a *salon
d'esprit* she was determined to keep the grosser pleasures of
the palate in the background—to have nothing more material
than macaroons and lemonade.  I think Mr. Hobbs himself
went to brew the unholy mixture.  I am sure he would not
dare to ask it from the butler, who is a magnificent creature,
whose former life has been passed in the bosom of the
British nobility.  What can be keeping Laurette so long?'

'Oh, I dare say the kiddies have got measles or something,'
answered Ted.  'Go on, Stella, tell me some more.
Were there many to dinner?'

'Yes, about a dozen.  These endless costly dinners are
my horror.  I like my food plain and unmixed, like a bird or
a peasant.  On one side of me there was a parched-up-looking
woman, who seemed to be in a state of nervous
tension about her spoons and forks.  On the other a man
hardly middle-aged, who gobbled away till the veins on his
forehead stood out.  Pastor Fiedler's nine little pigs used to
dine much more peacefully, and then their grunts were so
much more eloquent than anything he said.'

'I've been to Toorak House a few times,' said Ted,
laughing.  'It always seemed crammed up with things
from everywhere.'

'Oh yes; I should think that temples in the far East
must have been rifled for screens, and rugs, and
mantel-drapes.  There are some things I have quite fallen in love
with.  One is a very old Egyptian drinking-cup—greenish-gray,
in the shape of a lotus-leaf.  Another is a slender
Etrurian vase in jade....  But how late it is!' she cried
suddenly.  'Laurette must be seeing the children through
all the phases of a lingering malady.  Good-night, Ted.'

'Good-night.'  But he did not release her hand.  'Oh,
Stella, if you would let me take one kiss—just one.  You
did once before, you know, when we were engaged—that
afternoon in the garden at Fairacre.'

She drew back, but he had taken both her hands, and
held them firmly in his.

'Let me go at once, Ted,' she cried in quick anger and
something of dismay.

'Stella, when is this to come to an end?  How long am
I to wait and beg, and play the fool?  Have pity on me.
You do like me a little.  That's all I want to begin with.
You have thought that you might marry me; you must
have thought that you would let me kiss you.  There,
don't look as if I frightened you.  Try and make up your
mind——'

'I have made up my mind,' she cried, sweeping past him,
an indignant flush on her face.

It was nearly one o'clock in the morning, and she found
Maisie fast asleep in the dressing-room, where she had been
waiting her mistress's return.  Stella made her go to bed
at once, but she herself sat in a dressing-gown by her
bedroom fire.  She was angry; first at Ted and then
herself.  It was ridiculous of her to sit and talk with him so
long.  Laurette was a sneak, who had no doubt purposely
stayed away.  Even chaperons had not been invented
without a cause.  Probably the most jaded institutions of
society were founded upon some battered relic of reason.
But was it necessary to run full tilt against them before
acknowledging this?

How absurd it was getting, this determined, endless
wooing!  What would be the end of it?  Her anger died
away as she tried to answer the question.  She could not
pretend to dislike Ted.  She reflected on the endless variation
of dulness that entered so largely into the lives of the
bulk of women.  After all, money was one of the greatest
safeguards against that mildew of unexpectant monotony
with which the years were so largely infected when once
one began to find things out.  She was really beginning to
feel as if Ted had a right to her.  Finally, she resolved that
she would hasten her departure for Lullaboolagana, and
there make a final, an irrevocable decision.  Then she
pictured herself writing to Ted; no, she would see him, it
would be kinder; she would ask him to meet her in
Melbourne on her way back.  'Ted, this must come to an end.
You must take my final answer; I cannot marry you.'  Would
he call it 'coming a cropper,' and rend her with
reproaches?  And then a little panic seized her, that no
reason she could urge would stand the tide of Ted's
remonstrances.  She did not acknowledge it to herself, and yet a
vague consciousness underlay her musings, that the masterful
way in which he had held her hands, and looked at her with
ardent eyes, made some hitherto unknown chord of her
nature vibrate in unison with his will.  Perhaps it was a
faint reminiscence in her blood of the remote ancestresses
of pre-civilization, who were knocked on the head if they
did not fall in with the marital arrangements made for
them.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXIV.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIV.

.. vspace:: 2

Stella had not been unfair in conjecturing that Laurette's
absence from the drawing-room, after her brother came in,
was not accidental.  It had not, however, been her design
to stay away so long, a circumstance which was in point of
fact due to her having a bitter fit of crying.  This was with
her an extremely unusual circumstance, and was caused by
no sentimental weakness.  The laconic telegram she had
received would not of itself have thrown much light on her
emotion.  It was dated from Sydney, and merely contained
the words:

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

'Cannot be back for some days to come.
       'TALBOT TARELING.'

.. vspace:: 2

That was all; but its bitterness, like that of many other
events, lay in the context.  There was no legitimate excuse
for his sojourn in Sydney.  Even business, elastic as it is
in the hands of a wary and unfaithful husband, could not
in any possible guise be held accountable for this move.
In order to go to Sydney from Banjoleena, Tareling must
have passed through Melbourne.  Laurette had no need to
waste time in asking herself why he had done so, like a
fugitive.  It was owing to the recent departure for Sydney
of a wretched little opera singer who was Tareling's last
infatuation.  Laurette reviewed the situation in the light of
past events.

Cheered by his success in Celestial Hills, she had, without
a murmur, allowed him to retain possession of the nine
hundred pounds that had been netted by the timely sale of
her shares in that mine.  Tareling had gone to Banjoleena
with this money to his credit, confident of doubling or
trebling the amount in a few days.  Perhaps he had.  But
she knew that he would return from Sydney penniless, yet
imperturbably unrepentant.  It was one of Tareling's
aristocratic characteristics, that he never attempted the
*rôle* of the Prodigal Son.  He was obliged to come home
when the fun was over; but there any simulacrum of
repentance began and ended.  So it had been before, so it
would be no doubt to the end.  But just now, owing to a
conjunction of untoward events, this spell of riotous living
meant for Laurette—unless she could by some means or
other raise the wind—the almost immediate giving up of
the costly furnished house at Toorak, and retirement to the
intolerable solitude of Cannawijera.  And this to Laurette
presented all the concentrated bitterness of a hopeless
defeat in the hour of greatest triumph.  She had married
Talbot Tareling not for love, for even if she had been capable
of it, he was the last one qualified to evoke any such passion
when the two met; not for his good looks, for he had none;
not for his morals, for if he ever possessed any, the world,
the flesh, and the devil had wholly despoiled him long
before he left his native shores.  She had married him
simply because he was the younger son of an English peer;
relying on this circumstance, and her own tact and heiress-ship,
to become one of the elect of Melbourne society.  Yet,
with all these advantages, the struggle had been very uphill.
Her income, when the marriage took place, was over three
thousand a year.  The Hon. Talbot was supposed to have
five hundred a year, but it was invariably in the hands of
disreputable Hebrews twelve months in advance.  The
sinews of war were wholly inadequate to the sort of
campaign that Laurette undertook.  And then, even in a frankly
democratic country, the cadet of a noble house, bankrupt in
money and reputation, does not meet with unqualified social
success.  But Laurette was indefatigable, and year by year
she made a little headway.  Only year by year there was
an accumulation of debt, and tradespeople made their terms
harder, and her father and brother were more reluctant to
supplement her income from Cannawijera by random cheques
for a couple of hundred pounds.

But then came the brilliant windfall of the new Governor
and his wife—high in rank, and nearly connected with her
husband's family.  This gave her at one stroke that right
of tambour at Government House which had been her
cherished dream from early girlhood.  She planted her feet
on the neck of recalcitrant tradesmen and spiteful foes of
her own sex, in the inner cliques of that curiously disintegrated
mass which calls itself 'good society' in the capitals
of Australian colonies.  Her hour of victory had come.  The
Governor's wife was not only closely related to Tareling's
family, but an intimate friend of his mother's.  Before
leaving London she had pledged herself to do all she could
for Talbot, vaguely imagining that, in a wealthy young
country like Victoria, it would be easy to smuggle a relative
into some cosy sinecure worth, well, say seven or eight
hundred a year.

But a very brief sojourn in Australia reveals the fact that
to appoint a man to a post worth even one hundred a year,
apart from fitness for the work or claims on the country,
would at once arouse a ferment of Parliamentary inquiry.
Now the Hon. Talbot Tareling's fitness for any appointment
was limited to a well-cultivated and hereditary incapacity
for any form of steady employment.  His claims on the
country consisted in having spent all his own and a great
deal of his wife's money in very equivocal ways.  The
profound etiquette and the glamour of monarchical institutions
are needed to elevate such traits into an irresistible claim on
the public finances.

But at least it was in Lady Weavelow's power to shower
those delicate attentions on her cousin and his wife which,
from a viceregal personage, are objects of keener ambition
in Melbourne than money or appointments.  In Laurette,
Lady Weavelow was agreeably surprised to find a lady
whose demeanour, dress, and general *savoir faire* would
bring no discredit on her husband, even among the order to
which he belonged.  Stella had once spoken of the hard,
crude touch of the social amateur in Laurette.  But like all
who do not possess the ultimate distinction of manners
moulded by hereditary culture, or the spontaneous courtesy
of an essentially kind heart, Laurette's behaviour was
largely dependent on circumstances.  With people like the
Courtlands, whose unostentatious family pride made them
indifferent to those forms of social distinctions which had
the keenest fascination for Laurette, she was probably at
her worst.  Their simple mode of living, their ardour for
books and ideas, their absence of chic measured by local
standards; the humble nondescript sort of people, marked
only by unselfish aims of life, that one constantly met at
Fairacre—all gave her a certain sense of superiority to them,
and yet a baffling sense that they would regard such an
assumption as very amusing, and not to be taken seriously.
She was at her best with those whose rank and position
towered above her own.  She was then on her guard against
the robust vulgarity that formed the real substratum of her
nature.  She was quick and clever in her own way, and
prided herself on knowledge of the world.  In her case, as
in that of all intrinsically shallow natures, such knowledge
is largely, though unconsciously, founded on the dictum of
the Scotchman: 'There is no an honest man in the world;
I ken it by mysel'.'

But probably the very narrowness of Laurette's aims
made her feel all the more acutely the prospect of speedy
social extinction.  After she reached her own room, she
reread the telegram with a sickening heart.  She recalled her
father's obstinate refusal at Christmas-time to advance a
few hundred pounds till after shearing-time.  Of course he
knew that to 'advance' was merely a euphemism for giving.
He told her that till the rabbits were exterminated on his
runs he would neither give nor advance a single copper, and
advised herself and her husband to live quietly on their
Cannawijera property, instead of running head over ears
into debt in Melbourne.  To go to these desolate wilds from
the very apex of her triumph—from the haunts and
assemblies whose open-sesame had cost her so many toilsome
years of guerilla warfare with millionaire women, whose
dull resentment she had aroused with the unguarded malice
of a sharp and vindictive tongue!  In a week after her
departure her place in society would know her no more.
The world abounds with those who are terrified at nothing
so much as being forgotten.  If people are buried in the
Mallee Scrub, society has no alternative but to forget them.
The thought suffocated Laurette in advance.  And then
Talbot—she knew—he would not stay at Cannawijera more
than a week at the outside.

To make life endurable to him in such a *cul-de-sac*, it
would be necessary to erase twelve hours out of the
twenty-four.  Even in Melbourne he was often dull.  Against
dulness he had not one honest resource.  Still less would
this be the case when his wife was permanently at
Cannawijera, and he was permanently a man about town.  He
had an incredible knack of obtaining credit.  It must have
been inherited with his blue blood.  A man habituated to
the brutal habit of paying for what he got could never
attain such perfect mastery of the art.  He was skilful too,
or lucky rather, at games of chance.  Yes, he would keep
afloat for a few months.  But after that?  He would join
some theatrical company, and leave the colonies.  Laurette
was sure of it.  He was a good amateur actor: he had
been trained by experts.  There were *rôles* in many popular
plays in which he could give well-salaried actors points, and
yet come off winner, from the fact that in such *rôles* he had
only to present his own character in the less habitual parts
that were fitted for stage representation—that of a
well-bred, cool, unscrupulous man of the world.  It was his one
chance of getting a livelihood.  He had more than once
spoken of taking it up, when the dark desolation of
Cannawijera loomed in the foreground as the only refuge open to
him apart from gaining an independent livelihood.  'He will
attach himself to Mademoiselle de Melier's company, and go
to San Francisco,' thought Laurette; and she turned cold
and faint with the conviction the thought carried—all that
she had lived for seemed to be crumbling around her.

She covered her face with her hands, and felt better after
she was able to cry.  She heard Stella leave the drawing-room,
and she debated with herself whether she would go
to her brother and throw herself at his feet and implore him
to save her from the ignominious series of defeats, of social
annihilation, which she saw in store for her.  But the next
moment she rejected the thought.  If a couple of hundred
pounds would do her any good Ted would give a cheque at
once.  But he was far more obdurate about larger sums
than ever her father had been.  He knew too well what
Tareling's mode of life was.  He himself had worked hard
from the age of sixteen till his uncle's death left him
sole master of Strathhaye, and he had an invincible
objection to placing an unlimited supply of cash at the disposal
of 'an image of a man who never did a stroke of work in
his life, for himself or anyone else.'

Laurette buried her face in her hands, and one design
after another flashed hastily across her mind.  To write
and tell her father that some dire catastrophe impended,
unless he could send her, say, a thousand pounds?  No,
she had done that more than once before.  It was the
story of the shepherd-boy and the wolf over again.  Then
slowly something like a feasible plan suggested itself.  But
she determined to ponder over it for a day or two.  At the
end of that time, however, events ranged themselves precisely
in the direction she wished.  Stella announced to her that
Louise was not well, and asked her to hasten her visit as
much as possible.  'If you will let me leave by the early
train to-morrow, Laurette, I shall write and let Mrs. Coram,
and the others whose invitations I accepted, know that
I have been called away, and then I can see you again
on my way home if you wish.'

Stella spoke in an apologetic tone, feeling half guilty for
beating so hasty a retreat.  But the enforced companionship
with Laurette began to be intolerable.  Her sustained
enthusiasm about trifles, the glow of inextinguishable interest
with which she retailed Lady Weavelow's opinions and
sayings and doings, the solemn reverence with which she
went over the connections of Lord Harry, the aide-de-camp,
and entered into endless details regarding those she held to
be the great people of Melbourne, bored Stella to the last
point of ennui.  It was like being in the society of servants,
but without the interest of the servants' point of view at
first hand.  Then the whole atmosphere of Monico Lodge
oppressed her so that she could not even read any book she
cared for.  The very walls and chairs seemed to whisper
endless anecdotes full of foolish self-importance, and count
over the provincial notabilities who paid them visits.  'We
never know,' says Goethe somewhere, 'how anthropomorphic
we are.'  Probably those who do have a glimmering of
it conceal the fact, because the habit of endowing lifeless
objects with a personality of their own has, in the eyes
of most practical people, something in it dangerously silly.

'Well,' said Laurette, a sudden light coming into her
face, 'I will let you off on condition you promise to stay
two weeks with me when you return.  There is an English
man-of-war to be here early in September, and a French
royalty incog.; so we shall have the place *en fête*
again.'  But as Laurette spoke her heart sank as she thought: 'I
may then, perhaps, be entombed in the Mallee Scrub.'

Stella had spent the previous day with her brother by
the seaside.  Had she made any irrevocable decision?
Perhaps she meant to write to Ted.  Laurette had noticed
the pearl horseshoe wrapped up on Stella's toilet-table, in
an isolated fashion, as if she did not mean to include it
in her belongings.  Ted had gone to St. Kilda, and would
not be back till the next afternoon.  Stella's departure in
his absence was so far fortunate—if no communication
passed between them.  Laurette was just then in a
curiously strained and watchful mood.  She was all eyes
and ears.

She determined on a little conversation that might help
to fetter Stella's action till they met again—a conversation
that might also aid in the development of her little coup.
It was not that facts were at all necessary to her when she
found a little impromptu history helpful.  But facts, even
when twisted entirely from their true drift and context, are
valuable as imparting a certain *vraisemblance* to supposed
events.  There are people who will report an entirely
imaginary conversation, and find a kind of moral support
in adding: 'Yes; he sat in an armchair all the time, with
his slippered feet on the fender.'  The 'he' in question
may not have uttered a word of the many ascribed to
him—but then he did sit in an armchair, and his feet were
really on the fender.  After all, human veracity has severe
limitations.  We cannot have everything limning the severe
countenance of truth.  Let us remember this when, in
contemporary history, we have the conversation all askew, but
the armchair, the slippered feet, and the fender true to the
life.

'Stella, may I speak to you a little about Ted?' said
Laurette, with an engaging air of timidity.

She was really very quick at times in diagnosing the
frame of mind in which people happened to be, and she
had a prevision that her subject just then must be cautiously
broached.  Stella had not gone out riding with Ted since
the evening he had offended her, and he had admitted to
Laurette before he went to Flemington that he had been a
deuced jackass, but when she questioned him he had relapsed
into dogged silence.

'Why, Laurette, you speak as though Ted were at the
other end of the world.  What do you wish to say?'

'Well, no doubt I am rather foolish to be so much
concerned.  You see, Stella, you have so many brothers, you
do not know how a woman feels when she has only one.
Poor dear Ted is so unhappy just now.  He offended you.
Well, I undertook to make his peace with you.  He did not
go into particulars; perhaps he begged for one of the many
kisses you owe him.  Dear me, what a freezing air!  I
wonder how many kisses your brother Tom snatched from
me; and yet he never proposed to me even once.  Certainly
I never set up for a monument of icy hauteur.  Still, I
never forgot that I was Sir Edward Ritchie's daughter, any
more than I am likely to forget that I am the wife of the
Hon. Talbot Tareling.'

Laurette drew herself up to her full height, and Stella
was too much amused to retain an air of offended majesty.

'At the same time,' said Laurette, astutely taking
advantage of this to show a sudden change of front, 'I don't
think you need be afraid of Ted pestering you again.  Now,
my dear, let us have a proper talk over this.  Sit down
here; we may as well be comfortable, and not stand staring
at each other like two strange cats on the roof.  I believe
there were tears in Ted's eyes when he took me into his
confidence.  "What do you think I'd better do, Larry?"
said he.  "Do?" said I.  "Why, nothing."  "But I am
afraid she's very angry," said he.  "She hasn't even ridden
out with me since, and now she's away for the whole day.
It feels as long as a month of Sundays.  I shouldn't wonder
if she sent me back that dashed horseshoe"—indeed, I am
afraid he used a stronger word.  Poor old Ted! you know
he is a little rough sometimes.  But how good and generous
he is!—though I sometimes call him stingy in fun.  There
he was yesterday, trying to make me take a cheque for I
don't know how much.  But, of course, when a woman is
married, there is a limit to what she can accept, even from
a brother.  Besides, I had a sort of feeling that it was more
for your sake than my own—a sort of testimonial because I
am nice enough for you to visit me.'

Laurette, when it suited her purpose, was a finished
mistress of that adroit flattery which seema inseparable
from radical insincerity of nature.

'I must say that was very humble of you,' said Stella,
laughing outright.

It is foolish to flatter people with a strong sense of humour;
even if they like it, they must see through it.

'Well, but to return to this storm in a teacup.  I couldn't
help laughing about the horseshoe; and I said, "If Stella
wants to get rid of that in a huff, why, I'll take charge of it."'

'I wish you would, Laurette.  I'll leave it in your hands,'
said Stella.

'Oh, certainly,' returned Laurette, with an indulgent
smile; and she mentally ticked this off as one point gained.
But she had not finished yet.  'Then Ted said to me, "Now,
Larry, tell me—do you think I'm any nearer the end of this
long courtship, one way or the other?  Is it more likely or
unlikely that Stella will have me?"  "Ted," said I, "don't
ask me what Stella will do or will not do.  I've long ago
felt about this affair as if I were looking at a play—one of
the sort that nearly makes you fall in pieces with yawning,
don't you know.  It's so long, and people come on and off,
and you sit through one act after another, thinking that
surely something will happen soon; but it doesn't, and
there you gape till the curtain is rung down, and you feel
like a perfect fool."  At that Ted got rather angry, as if I
were prophesying evil.  Of course, I didn't mean to do that;
so I simply said, "When a girl lets a man dangle after her
for years——"'

'You had no right to say——' said Stella, colouring hotly.

'Well, please remember this was a confidential chat with
my only brother.  "When a girl lets a man dangle after
her for years, and prevents him from thinking of anyone
else, and in the end doesn't know whether she'll have him
or leave him—why, then I think it is time for him to take
his fortune into his own hands."'

'Well, that, at least, was good advice,' said Stella, 'and
I hope Ted will act on it.'

'Will you believe it?' said Laurette, laughing—'he has
solemnly made up his mind that unless you write to him
about something, or give him some direct encouragement,
he will from this time forth try to think of you only as a
friend.  I believe that is partly why he has gone to Flemington.'

'I am glad that he is reasonable at fast,' answered Stella;
but, notwithstanding the words, Laurette felt sure there
was some pique in the flush that settled in the girl's cheeks.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXV.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXV.

.. vspace:: 2

When Ritchie returned, and found that during his absence
Stella had taken her departure for Lullaboolagana, his
chagrin was extreme.

'She asked me to say good-bye to you for herself and
Dustiefoot, and gave her kind regards to Shah,' said
Laurette, as she sat skimming a budget of letters and notes
that had just been delivered.

Ted felt like one who has suddenly been dragged out of
the sunlight, and has had the key turned on him in a
cheerless dungeon.

'She is to finish her visit in September,' said Laurette,
when she found that Ted made no response.

He stared at the *Age* for some time in gloomy silence,
glancing from one column to another as if he were reading,
but not seeing a line.

'Well, I don't suppose it's to make much difference
to me whether she comes here or anywhere else,' he
answered.

Laurette made no reply.

'Was that all Stella said?' asked Ritchie after a pause;
'just to say good-bye?  Was she at all put out that Louise
wanted her at once, or was the thing a plant, do you
think—just an excuse to be off?'

'Ted, don't ask so many questions, or I shall betray
confidence,' said Laurette.

'Betray confidence?  Bosh!' retorted Ritchie in a
disdainful tone.  'You can't run with the hare and hunt with
the hounds.  At Christmas-time you thought you were going
to do great shakes by getting Stella here, and showing her
what a dash you cut; and now she's gone off in less than
two weeks without even saying good-bye to me.  And then
there's something that you know in confidence.  I should
think I am the proper person to be taken into confidence, if
there's anything to confide.'

'You asked if Stella only said good-bye,' said Laurette,
in an impressive tone.  'Well, we had a long, private talk.'

Ted leant forward, no longer pretending to read the newspaper.

'Yes; and what was the talk about?'

'Before telling you that, I must get your promise that you
will not let Stella know I told you.'

'I'm not such a confounded blab as to carry yarns between
people.'

'Then tell me, has Stella, since she came here, said
anything that led you to think she had been debating in her
own mind whether or not she would accept you?'

'Yes; she told me that since I last saw her she had
sometimes thought she would come to the scratch.'

'Ah!  Well, after all, you understood her better than I
do.  They say that women have so much penetration; but
I think some men have.  You asked me one day if I thought
Stella had heard anything.'

'Well?'

'She has.'

'Ah, I suppose Cuth, the parson, has fossicked?'

'I don't think so.  I believe it is a slight rumour, but
enough to disquiet her—to make her uncertain.'

'I shall write and make a clean breast of it; tell her all.'

'Not for your life.  At least, not if you don't mean to
lose her.'

'Lose her?  I haven't got her, and not likely to now!'

'Ah, there you are mistaken.  Stella loves you, Ted,' and
Laurette, without a quiver of her eyelid, gazed into the
young man's face.  He flushed deeply, and walked about
the room with signs of evident emotion.

'If I could believe that——' he said, and stopped.

'You may believe it,' she said, in a tone of quiet confidence
which thrilled him with joy.

'And in spite of—what she has heard?'

'Yes; and when she returns here in September—well, I
can only judge by what she said, and by what she did not
say, which is often quite as important, and by what I
observed—I believe you will get a speedy answer.  But,
whatever you do, don't write to her till you do see her, for
she would instantly think I told you all that passed between
us, and I have not done that, and don't mean to.'

'Well, Larry, this is very good news you have given
me,' said Ted, and he was so much moved that his voice
trembled.

Some visitors were announced, and Ted took himself off,
and went for a long spin on Shah, trying to realize that his
tedious years of waiting were after all to be crowned with
the one great joy that had so long seemed a vision beyond
his reach.

The next little scene in Laurette's coup took place three
days later, in the evening.  Ted was to return to Strathhaye
on the following day.  A servant brought in some letters on
a salver.  Among them was one which Laurette had posted
to herself, containing a long letter that Tareling had written
to her a year or two previously.  Latterly he never wrote
long letters, even on business.  Laurette crushed the
envelope into her pocket, and began to read this letter with
an air of absorbed attention.  Presently she gave a little
sharp cry.

'What's the row?' said Ted, looking up.  'A letter from
Tareling?' he said, glancing at the sheet, which Laurette
re-perused with a most dejected countenance.  But she said
nothing.  She read one or two more notes; one of them a
delightfully intimate one from the Hon. Miss Brendover,
Lady Weavelow's sister, asking Laurette and Miss Courtland
to spend an afternoon at Government House in an
informal way two days hence.

'Tell me, Ted,' said Laurette suddenly, 'how much is
father really affected by the rabbits?'

'How much?  Well, there, you ask a question that
neither he nor I can answer at present.  Within the last
twelve months he has spent £9,000 on sending the bunnies
to kingdom-come; and how much he'll spend during the
current twelve months, the Lord only knows!'

'But I thought this rabbit extermination was partly at
the expense of Government?'

'Exactly; and that's why the vermin have been increasing
head over heels.  Why, the governor himself has had
forty-three rabbits trapped, with the scalp taken off, and let
run again that they may go on breeding.  You see, these
scoundrels in Government pay mean to make a permanent
job of it.  They get so much for every scalp, so, instead of
killing the little brutes, they sometimes carefully take the
skin off the top of the head, and in the course of a few
months there are thousands more bred by the animals they
have been paid for killing.  When the governor saw what
was going on he jacked up at once—gave the Government
notice he would see to doing away with the rabbits on his
own account.  So there he is paying at the rate of £30 a
day, and putting up a rabbit-proof fence between his land and
the land in Government possession.'

'But, then, of course, father has been saving a lot of
money all these years.  It doesn't take more than eight or
nine thousand a year to keep Godolphin House going.'

'Yes, he has unfortunately put four or five hundred
thousand pounds into good investments in South Australia,'
said Ted grimly.  'He had £150,000 in Commercial Bank
Shares, which at the present moment may be had wall-high
for an old song; he has £100,000 in the Town and Country
Bank, which is more shaky than a poplar leaf; he has a pot
of money in tram lines that will yet be sold for old iron;
and he has heaps of tin in houses that cost him a handsome
sum every quarter for broken windows, and advertisements
for tenants that don't turn up.  Perhaps you thought the
governor cut up rather rough when he had to shell-out a
thousand pounds over that shady concern of Tareling's six
months ago; but, by Jove! if you knew how much money
the old man has dropped lately in one way or another——'

'Well, I suppose we'll have to take up our abode
permanently at Cannawijera,' said Laurette in a resigned tone.

'Yes.  It licks me why you don't make more of a home
of that place,' said the unsuspecting Ted—'make a garden—you've
only got to irrigate, you know: it's ridiculous to
pay a manager on a little station like that—and make the
place trim and comfortable.  In fact, Stella told me she
liked Coonjooree so much the last time she was there, she
means to go again before long.  Jove, I hope I may be there
if she does!'

'Well, you see, I am not one of the gifted souls that love
a worm-eaten old poet so much better than my fellow-creatures,'
said Laurette a little viciously, and the next
moment regretted giving any indication of the loathing that
the place excited in her mind; but she had the faculty of
saying sharp things, and found it hard to resist the
temptation.  'But now that nothing else is left to us,' she said
with a pensive resignation—'well, I dare say we shall make
the best of it.  Perhaps, if you come to see us next month,
Ted, you will find Talbot planting a grass-tree against the
wash-house wall.'

'You must bet him it won't grow, Larry, or he'll never
finish the job,' said Ted, laughing.  'You mean next year,
though; not next month?'

By way of answer Laurette unfolded her husband's letter,
and read aloud:

'"It is only fair to let you know at as early a date as
possible that I have lost every stiver of the money I brought
with me, and am probably liable for as much more.  This
comes of trying to earn money by downright honest
work——"'

'Baccarat!' interjected Ted; but Laurette did not heed
this.

'"If I had been content, as so many are, to take the
words of thieving brokers, instead of coming here to see for
myself, we would probably have trebled our little haul from
the Celestial Hills.  But it's no use crying over spilt milk.
And I am determined that neither you nor I will ask a loan
or an advance from your father or——"'

Laurette stopped short.

'That close-fisted hunks of a brother of yours, that's
about it, isn't it?' said Ted, without a *soupçon* of malice.
'Don't mind me, Larry; Tareling and I understand each
other.  Well, what then?'

'"But we must at once leave Melbourne.  So please put
the house immediately in Sibworth's hands, and make all
your preparations for leaving on or before the 24th of this
month."'

Ted gave a low whistle, and Laurette folded up the letter
with an inimitable air of resignation.

'But if you go, then, what of Stella's visit?' said Ted,
with folds in his brow.

'Stella's visit?' repeated Laurette absently.  'Oh, to be
sure!  To tell you the truth, my dear Ted, I am too much
taken aback by the position to think much of anything
beyond the domestic horizon.  It is so sudden—yes, and
unexpected—for if Talbot had had a little luck we should
have paid off nearly all our little arrears; and then, of
course, there would be the shearing in October.'

Laurette avoided allusion to the fact that this had been
long ago discounted and the advance used up, and creditors
appeased only with fictitious promises of payment after the
shearing already disposed of.

'Of course you will see Stella at her own home, though I
think there is something in the wind about her going abroad
with Mrs. Raymond.  It is to her I trace the rumour that
has set Stella——  But there, I must not mix up things
and other people's secrets!'

'Larry, you mustn't leave—you mustn't give up Monico
Lodge till after September.'

'Ah, my dear boy, I would be only too happy, but it's
beyond my power.  It did flash across my mind that I
would write and ask father; but now that you've explained
about the rabbits and things——'

'But there are no rabbits at Strathhaye!'

Laurette looked wonderingly at her brother, and then a
sudden light seemed to dawn on her.

'Oh, Ted, don't tempt me.  I'll be honest.  It isn't what
would keep Monico Lodge going; but being so nearly
connected with the Weavelows, we are in the swim of
everything.  I wouldn't undertake to stay for the rest of the
season—not unless Talbot's aunt was kind enough to die,
and he got the few thousand pounds for which he is down
in her will.  But she was always a cantankerous old cat.
I dare say she'll live for fifteen years to come.  And lately
she has taken quite a passion for the Burmese.  She helped
to scud two missionaries among the Chins there, but they
were eaten or something.  I don't know whether they do
eat them in Burmah; but at any rate she's going to send
more.  How old ladies of the aristocracy of England should
send missionaries anywhere while the young men of their
own class are what they are—and the old ones, too, for
the matter of that!—but I dare say they know how
hopeless it would be; whereas people that you never see, you
can believe all sorts of romantic things about them, their
conversions and things; and then, I suppose, wild creatures,
who haven't got a stick of furniture or a shirt to their backs,
can afford to be really Christianized.'

Laurette had taken up a seam from a work-basket near,
and was sewing away most industriously, while she rambled
on in this artless fashion.  Ted rose abruptly, and, without
saying a word, went to his own room.  He returned
presently, and Laurette noticed, with a beating heart, that
he had a cheque-book in his hand.

He sat down at a davenport in the corner of the room,
and wrote for a few minutes rapidly, blotted the cheque,
and stood near his sister.

'Don't talk in that cold-blooded way about the old woman,
Larry.  I think you may always reckon that the Australian
side of your clan will do more for you than the
"English-nobility" side.  Keep this as much as you can in your own
hands; and, if you want it, you can have as much again at
the end of September.'

With that, Ted put down the cheque before Laurette, and
hastened to leave the room.  It was for fifteen hundred
pounds.  It seemed to Ted that Larry didn't look at the
amount at all, when she rose with a little exclamation of
joy, intercepted him, and threw her arms round him.

'There, Larry, don't slobber!  I think you ought to say
your prayers for that old woman.  It sticks in my gizzard
entirely to hear people talk in that way of old people—grudging
them their bit of tucker and their own fireside.
Why, even the niggers never knocked the old ones on the
head unless there was a big famine.'

With this little homily, Ted went out; and Laurette,
hardly able to believe her senses, stared at the cheque with
beaming eyes.  She had hardly dared to hope for such
complete success.

'As much again at the end of September!'  But of course
that was spoken in the elation of believing his suit was to
prosper.  Like a wary general, Laurette began to sum up
the situation.  She was secure against detection as to those
excursions of the imagination she had dealt in till her
brother and Stella met; and as far as Ted was concerned,
probably altogether secure; for if that idiotic girl finally
rejected him, that was the ultimate misfortune to him, and
everything else would sink into insignificance.  Stella
would be the first to let the cat out of the bag; for if she
were still obdurate, the first thing she would say, no doubt,
would be: 'Now, Ted, I thought you had made up your
mind that we were just to be friends.  That is not the sort
of thing friends say.'  She mimicked her half aloud, and
for the first time felt her smouldering dislike to the girl
warm up to something like hatred.  She was almost sure
Stella would cheat her out of the other fifteen hundred
pounds.  Well, but it was good of Ted—at least good,
considering he had never given her more than three or four
hundred pounds at a time before.  But, after all, a young
man with about fifteen thousand a year: 'If we only had
a run like Strathhaye instead of that desolate hole!  Oh,
thank God, we can stay in Melbourne after all!'

It may seem curious that one should thank God for the
result of so much devious by-play and deception.  But
when we consider how a strong nation will attack a weaker
one for no better motive than greed or ambition or the lust
of tyranny, and then go to church *en masse* to chant the
praises of the Almighty because tens of thousands of human
beings have been slaughtered and tens of thousands of
homes have been desolated and impoverished, the wonder
of the solitary case diminishes.  It is not safe to assume
that the individual conscience is invariably less frayed than
that of the collective nation.





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.. _`CHAPTER XXVI.`:

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   CHAPTER XXVI.

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The home-station of Lullaboolagana was one of those
delightful places which at once convey an assurance of
welcome, comfort and repose.  It was partly of wood, partly
stone, with additions that formed an irregular chronology of
the past.  The snug-looking detached cottage, with a
billiard-room and two or three bedrooms, marked the season in
which the number of sheep shorn touched fifty thousand.
The addition with the gable end dated the year in which the
little Courtlands first had a governess, etc., etc.  The house
had deep verandas round three sides.  The roof, washed
snow-white, so as to lessen the force of the summer sun,
gleamed with a seductive cheerfulness and air of salutation
among the encircling foliage.  Several outbuildings at varying
distances made the home-station look at a little distance
like a miniature village.  The wool-shed and shearers'
house, with two or three huts, formed a second group of
houses westward, beyond the confines of what was known
as the Home Field.  This consisted of over forty acres of
land, which had been subjected to an artless form of
landscape gardening by a relative of the Courtlands, who had
left England under sentence of death from consumption, and
had lived at Lullaboolagana for eighteen years, though it
had been authoritatively predicted he could not survive the
long sea-voyage.  Here, then, he had employed his lease of
semi-invalid life in testing the capabilities of Australian soil
in growing trees and plants from widely-separated countries.
Here, like Shenstone, though on a smaller scale, he planted
groves and avenues and alleys, diversified his woods, pointed
his walks, and entangled his shrubberies.  The result was a
charming semi-English *milieu* of the kind that the British
race are so skilful in creating in the far regions of the earth,
giving their dwelling-places under alien skies a touching
resemblance to the old quiet homes in which their forefathers
may have lived for many generations.

There were avenues on every side of the Home Field,
composed chiefly of Italian pines, which in twenty years had
attained a size almost incredible for that period.  The
Home Field was not closely planted.  All over it there were
wide open spaces between the groves and woodlets and
groups of trees that embraced endless species, from the firs
and pines of the north to the palms of the torrid zone, with
a liberal proportion of Australian trees.  Simplicity was
certainly the governing taste, but combined with a blending
of effects which, when perceived, added a new attraction.
All round the house there were blossoming shrubs, rose-trees,
and a great variety of flowers that kept up a procession
of blooms year in, year out.  The secret of perpetual
spring in flowers is well-nigh solved by gardeners in the
more favoured portions of Australia.  There were several
gentle hillocks in the Home Field, which lent themselves to
landscape effects in a very agreeable manner.  But the most
charming natural feature of all was the creek known by its
native name, the Oolloolloo.  It meandered through the
whole length of the Home Field.  The orchard, which was
half hidden in a deep little valley, lay in two unequal
portions, one on each side of the creek.  Its course was still
marked by the tall eucalyptus-trees, seldom absent from the
banks of creeks.  Indeed, these trees never attain their
finest development except by running water; and yet they
have to live through centuries in waterless wastes.  Is there
not here something of the same curious contradiction that
we find between the complex social etiquette of the aborigines
and their very primitive stage of savagedom?  It is often
forced upon the observer of nature in Australia that in the
past she has been playing strange pranks; among other
trifles, brewing pepper for her children instead of nourishing
them with milk.

But the eucalypti were far from being the only trees that
grew by the Oolloolloo.  Side by side with these natives of
the primeval woods were copses of alders, overgrown bushes
of sweetbriar, bamboos springing up tall and slender, and
falling wide apart, making pictures against denser foliage
like Japanese screens; here and there a hazel with its
'artless bower'; wide clumps of pampas grass, with their
silky, flax-like blooms softly stirred by every breath of wind.
Then one would come on a dense little grove of elms and
native cherry-trees, mingled with scrub cypress—a combination
which, of all others, makes the most alluring secular
cloisters; a place in which to dream with open eyes; to
catch phantasies by the wing; to read Shakespeare to one's
self aloud; to muse, to brood, to meditate.  Over all there
was an enchanting air of leisure, of tranquil repose, which
was heightened by the woods that lay on every side except
to the south, where Minjah-Millowie, a township of seven or
eight hundred inhabitants, extended in an irregular fashion
within two miles of the Lullaboolagana home-station.

This was the direction the house fronted, and opposite to
it there was a bridge across the Oolloolloo of solid masonry.
It was the third that spanned the creek in the Home Field,
but the only one that could be depended on when the winter
rains were heavy, and the sluggish little creek, with its
silent pools connected by a slender trickling thread of
running water, was transformed into a rushing, turbid fury
of a rivulet that filled the adjacent groves with its
enchanting sound.  The second bridge was an enormous gum-tree,
which from time immemorial had lain across the creek as it
fell, its great old withered branches extending over a
hundred feet beyond the creek on the Home Field side of it.
There were marks all along the upper side of this tree made
by the stone axe of the aborigine, who had climbed it in quest
of opossums, or to place his bark-enclosed dead among the
boughs, or perhaps to scan the surrounding country for the
little column of pale blue smoke that might proclaim the
presence of a tribal foe not far off.

The third bridge, so called, was beneath a tall, slim white
gum-tree, close to the orchard, and was a little rustic
erection perched high up, completely covered on both sides with
trailing creepers, conspicuous among them the wide-leaved
passion-flower plant, now loaded with blossoms, scarlet and
pale purple and white.

'What a graceful creature it is, garlanded with leaves and
flowers,' said Stella, as she approached it with her
sister-in-law the morning after her arrival.  'It looks like the
beginning of a poem, or some place that should come into a
story.  Has nothing ever happened there?'

'Let me see.  Hector and I often walk to and fro on it
in the moonlight, when the nights are very warm.'

'Ah, if you were only lovers—that had to part, you
know, Louise——'

'Thank goodness we are not!' laughed Louise.

'Not lovers?  Oh, of course not—you are married people.'

'Well, Baby, you are as wicked as ever.  I do like to
hear Hector call you Baby.  You see, though you may be
very grown-up, and serious at times, Hector best remembers
you as the baby of the household, when he left home
twenty-one years ago.  What ancient folk we are getting,
to be sure!'

They had by this time reached the passion-flower bridge,
which was provided with seats on each side, and was,
indeed, much resorted to as a sort of outside sitting-room.
It was a point of vantage, and commanded a good view of
the country round.  Eastward there were low ranges.
Between those and Lullaboolagana lay one of the tracts of
dead trees that in Australian scenery make up so weird a
picture of desolation.  It was known as the Wicked Wood,
from some unknown aboriginal tradition.  Looking steadily
northward, one became sensible of a break in the distant
woods that betokened the beginning of a great plain, which
stretched many scores of miles in that direction.

'The Messmate Ranges, where I first saw a lyre-bird;
the Wicked Wood, where only grass-trees and scorpions
live; the Weeloo Plain, where a buggy seems to glide along
like a boat—everything is just as it was over three years
ago,' said Stella, looking around with glad recognition.

Here the sisters-in-law indulged in one of those long
wandering and delightful chats possible only to people who
have had interests in common for many years.  This lasted
till a servant came to announce that Mrs. and Miss Morton
had called.

'My dear, how you have grown since I saw you!' were
Mrs. Morton's first words as she kissed Stella.  'This is
Julia; you did not see her when you were here—how many
years since?'

'Oh, a dreadful long time ago,' said Stella; 'but not
long enough for me to have grown, Mrs. Morton.'

'Oh, but positively you have, love,' said Mrs. Morton,
surveying the new arrival with fond eyes.

She was a fair, stout woman, long past middle life, but
endowed with one of those exuberantly kind natures which
seem to defy the worst inroads of age.  She certainly never
wore a face of joy merely because she had been glad of
yore.  The annals of daily life almost invariably supplied
her with food for wreathed smiles.  Not that she was
callous to the accidents that marred other people's
pleasures, though mishaps of all sorts had hitherto been
unfamiliar to her personally.  Only, though she knew well
how to mourn with the unfortunate, she made an offering to
oblivion of all that bordered on sorrow in an incredibly short
time.  Still, no one unconnected with a local catastrophe
took it to heart so thoroughly for a day and a half as
Mrs. Morton did.  And on this very occasion she gave proof of
this.

'Oh, my dear, have you heard of the dreadful accident?'
she said to Louise after a few casual remarks had been
interchanged.

'No—what accident?' said Louise, a little startled by the
concern depicted on Mrs. Morton's face as she spoke.  It is
curious how the people who feel the most acutely connect
any show of deep concern with personal misadventure.

'Well, it was at Dr. Morrison's yesterday evening.  We
called at one of the Minjah shops on our way, and heard all
about it.  A man came in from the Bush with a fearful
gumboil.  Dr. Morrison found the tooth would have to
come out.  He put the man under chloroform, and
extracted the tooth most successfully—but the man never got
over it.  The chloroform killed him.  Oh, my dear, wasn't
it dreadful?' and Mrs. Morton took out her handkerchief—not
unnecessarily, for the tears were trickling down her
cheeks.

'Oh, I am sorry—and poor dear Mrs. Morrison so easily
upset, it would give her a dreadful shock,' said Louise.

'That is the best of using ether,' returned Mrs. Morton
tearfully.  'If it hurts the patient it does not show till
afterwards.  But for a man to die under your hands—without
getting away from you!  Oh, it is so very shocking!'

'But, after all, mamma,' said her daughter, 'he was quite
a common man, and very fond of drink.'

'Well, Julia, my dear, if you were his wife, or his
mother, or his sister, that isn't the way you would speak,'
said Mrs. Morton, wiping her eyes.  'It's of them I think.'

'But he didn't have any, mamma.  He was just a knock-about
hand on the Tarra-tarra Station.'

'Oh, my dear, not have a mother? how thoughtless you
are.  If Dr. Langdale had been there, I cannot help thinking
he would have seen the man couldn't stand chloroform.'

'But isn't Dr. Langdale there?  He was here the day
before yesterday, and didn't say a word of leaving for any
length of time.'

'He is at Nareen, staying with the Kenleighs.  You
know, they worship the ground he walks on since he
performed that wonderfully successful operation on Mark.'

'Do you think he'll really stay in Australia, Mrs. Courtland?'
said Miss Morton.

'I do not know,' answered that lady; 'I am afraid not.
You see, it was not to stay he came, but for a year's change
and rest.'

'But then he's always writing—he must be writing a
book,' said the young lady.  'I asked Mrs. Morrison the
other week whether he wasn't, but she only shook her head
and smiled.  I don't know why some people are so fond of
making secrets of things.  Either he is or he is not.  Why
shouldn't she say "Yes" or "No"?'

'Perhaps she doesn't really know,' answered Louise,
smiling.  She knew that anything in the nature of a secret
was abhorrent to Miss Morton, who loved nothing so well
as talking of other people's affairs, except talking of her
own.  She was a tall, good-looking young woman of twenty-five,
with large brown eyes, a brilliant complexion, and that
stamp of figure which milliners call 'stylish.'

The visitors stayed for many hours in the friendly leisurely
fashion of neighbours in the Bush, who are separated by
fifteen miles of unpeopled woods.  Miss Morton had three
weeks previously returned from a visit to her brother,
Mr. John Morton, coming back by way of Melbourne, where she
had stayed a couple of days with Mrs. Tareling.

'I would have seen you there,' she said to Stella, 'only
you were so long in coming.  Laurette thought you were
going to give her up altogether.  What a dear Laurette is,
to be sure!'

To this Stella assented, in the facile way in which we all
help to swell social fictions.

'I do not feel as if I remembered much of my new sister-in-law.
Is Helen like Julia at all?' Stella asked a little
hesitatingly, after the Mortons had gone.

'Not much.  Helen takes more after her father.  Not
but what Mrs. Morton is the dearest and kindest of women.
You will like Helen, dear,' said Louise, who was essentially
one of the peacemakers of life, who not only prophesy smooth
things, but help materially to bring them to pass.

'And who is this Dr. Langdale you all conspire to——'

'Now, Stella, I warn you to say nothing disparaging,' said
Louise, laughing.  'Dr. Langdale is an immense favourite
with us here.  You are sure to see him as soon as he returns
from Nareen.  He strolls across from Dr. Morrison's house
in Minjah Millowie most days in the afternoon, when his
writing for the day is over.  He does write, for Hector told
me.  You know how slowly Hector makes friends.'

'Does he?  You see, I really know very little of Hector
and Claude.'

'I always forget that.  Of course, you see them only at
long intervals, and for a short time.  Well, it's about five
or six months since Dr. Langdale came.  He had been in
the other colonies some little time.  He and Hector became
great cronies almost at once.  He is related to the
Morrisons.  We heard a good deal about him before he arrived.
He has inherited a pretty good income, and does not need
to work for his living.  But he always had a great liking
for the medical profession.  He is much interested, too, in
all sorts of social questions.  He had an appointment in a
large London hospital; in fact, he has never practised
anywhere else.  He previously held a merely honorary post
there for two or three years.  Then an uncle—a great
physician in the West End—died, and his son wished
Dr. Langdale to enter on a partnership with him.  Before
deciding on this, he came away for a year's rest and change.'

'How old is he?'

'About thirty-one, only, like most Englishmen, he looks
younger, at least as compared with Australians.  But he
isn't all English; he is German on the mother's side.'

'Indeed!  What is he like?'

'Now, Stella, you are interested.  You do so love the
Germans.  I know you will like Dr. Langdale, if only for
that reason.'

'Yes; and because you are giving me such a vivid description
of him,' said Stella, laughing.  The soft flush in
her cheeks would have shown one who knew her that she
was more interested than she chose to appear.

'Well, I'll do my best, only the moment you see him
you'll say——'

'Oh, here you are, both gossiping away nineteen to the
dozen!  Well, Baby, are you tired from your journey
yesterday?  After all, you are really quite grown up.'

It was Hector Courtland who made this little speech,
standing in the doorway of the drawing-room, where his
wife and sister were seated, with Lionel, the eldest boy,
just then an invalid, on a couch, buried in the enchanted
pages of the 'Arabian Nights.'  Courtland was a tall spare
man, with that slight stoop which tall men, who are in the
saddle often ten hours out of the twenty-four, are apt to
acquire.  He was bronzed with the sun and constant
exposure to all sorts of weather.  He was barely forty, but
his dark-brown hair, beard, and moustache were plentifully
sprinkled with gray.  His face, when in repose, was grave
almost to sadness, and he would often pass hours without
uttering a word.  These are some of the characteristics of
a life passed in the Bush from early manhood.  Courtland
had been at Eton three years, when sudden and disastrous
reverses, coupled with failing health, led his father to decide
on leaving England for Australia.  No one who knew Hector
Courtland when he left Eton—a lad of seventeen—would
have prognosticated that he would become grave, silent,
and uumirthful long before he reached the uplands of middle
age.  But there are probably few natures which are not
profoundly modified by a semi-Carthusian existence during
the most susceptible years of life.

'You look tired, Hector.  Wouldn't you like a cup of
tea?' said his wife.

'Yes, a quart potful.  Some sheep got boxed up at the
seven-mile hut, and we had a high old time of it drafting
them.  Well, Liny, what are you doing, young man?'

'Reading about Sindbad the Sailor, father.  Do you know
that Aunt Stella can tell stories just like a book?'

'No; I never heard her.  What sort of stories?'

'The one she told me this morning was about strange
people who live always in the woods.'

'What kind of people, my boy?'

'Well, when they are in the sunshine they are all light.
When they are in the moonshine, it goes through them, so
you must step very gently, and follow them till they get
into the shadow; and when they are in shadow, you cannot
tell them from the darkness.'

'Then it seems you do not see them at all?'

'No, father, never; and all the time they are there doing
the strangest things.  They catch falling stones and toss
them back into the sky, and there they give more light than
fever, and don't fall down any more.  They take old bits of
dead bark and make them into butterfly wings, with gold
and purple spots on them.  When an old log is burnt up
they make the little geraniums, that smell so sweet, out of
the ashes.  They never go to sleep, and they never stop
working, and they are never tired and never seen, and they
never let the tiniest scrap of anything go to waste.'

The father listened with smiling seriousness to these
wonders of the wood.  Later on he pleaded to be among
the audience when Stella told twilight stories to the children,
and he would listen with profound interest to the mystical
events and subtle fancies that rose to 'Baby's' lips with
tireless vivacity.  She certainly had something of the
improvisatrice in her, for never, except when she threw the
reins on fancy's neck in speaking, did such winged words,
luminous reaches of imagination, and quick touches of pathos
come to her.  Sometimes, when the grave elder brother
listened, he would almost question whether this could be
the merry little child with wide open eyes who had been the
baby among them all when he left home.  She had in a
manner remained 'Baby' to him ever since.

There is something pathetic in the way that those who
are most closely related may come to be entire strangers.
When we are in daily communion we inevitably weave
fancies one concerning the other, which stand to us in place
of knowledge.  But all the time—between not only dumb
natures, but those most subtly gifted with utterance—there
is that baffling, inexorable wall of division, that unfathomed
abyss in which each human soul is shrouded from the cradle
to the grave.





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.. _`CHAPTER XXVII.`:

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   CHAPTER XXVII.

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It might seem at first sight that station life in Australia
must be a very slow and dull kind of existence.  As a rule,
the centres of civilization are far off, the nearest neighbours
many miles away; and the ordinary modes of amusement,
balls, parties, opera, and theatre-going, etc., are unknown.
To many, no doubt, a life so cut off from external
excitement would seem a very maimed and incomplete affair.
But, on the other hand, it must be remembered that all the
most healthful forms of recreation, as opposed to pleasure-seeking,
are opened to squatting life.  There are books and
magazines to read, buggies to drive in, horses to ride, visits
to be received and paid, and all the engrossing interests of
family life for the women-folk.  For the men there is the
ceaseless round of duties, which are on the whole not more
monotonous than the calling of average professional men,
and less arduous, after the early struggles are over, than
most other forms of work.  And, then, who has lived for
years encircled by great woods without finding that these
unpeopled spaces exercise a fascination, all their own, over
the mind?  The tranquil gullies, in which the slender,
stringy bark-trees grow so thick that every sun-ray is
intercepted; the scrubby ranges, which the radiant epacris
sometimes turn into a mass of colour; the swamps, with their
wide, gray-green fringe of reeds and rushes and flocks of
water-fowl, that come to them in straggling lines from far
districts that have become waterless; the treeless plains,
that stretch like a mimic ocean to the verge of the far
horizon; the swelling hills, that break the monotony of
well-timbered, undulating country; the sombre vegetation, the
gleam of brilliant desert flowers, the calls and songs of
birds, all have a charm of their own, and rise up in the
memory of the Australian exile with an allurement which
he never finds in the crowded cities—nay, not even in the
scenery of the Old World.

Stella took very kindly to station life.  She found it
delightful to be so closely neighboured by the great
unmeasured woods of her native land.  She even regretted
that the township of Minjah Millowie was so near.  The
views she liked best were those that swept the woods to the
north and west, where one might travel on and on for days
without striking any signs of human habitation.  Next day
she was on the passion-flower bridge, alternately absorbed
in Keats and in looking across the Home Field and the
stirless masses of foliage beyond, when she heard approaching
footsteps.  She turned, to find herself face to face with
her unknown partner at the Emberly ball.

'Miss Stella!  Is it possible?' he said in a delighted tone.

They shook hands cordially.

'I believe I know your name now,' said Stella laughingly.

'Oh! it is Langdale.  Did you not know that night?'

'No; but since I came here things I have heard of
you made me believe that Dr. Langdale and you were one
and the same.'

He laughed with beaming eyes at this division of his
individuality.

'Well, I knew you were Miss Stella; and now, I suppose,
I may add to that, Courtland?  This is another stroke of
good luck—not so fleeting, I hope, as the first.  By the
way, should I not ask whether you have got over the
fatigues of the ball?'

'Oh yes!  This is the day after.'

'Only, I suppose, you would say it was one of the
thirty-six tragic situations of life that one can never really
make believe?'

'You still remember our little debate?'

'Surely.  Tell me, do you still think of the "Kritik of
Pure Reason" when the hair-dresser comes before you are
going to a ball?'

She laughed merrily, and then said seriously:

'Do you know, I haven't been to any ball half so
nice since.'

'And I haven't been to any at all.  But they are not
much in my line.  I wonder if that exquisite Tasmanian
tree-fern is still flourishing?'

'No; it died next morning of pure chagrin.'

'I am sorry to hear that.  But why?'

'Because someone near it began an anecdote about
Heine, and then went away without telling it.  If there is
anything in the world a Tasmanian tree-fern cannot brook
it is an interrupted anecdote.'

'Well, I felt it a great misfortune that your partners
discovered you; but I didn't know the tree-fern
sympathized with me.  Shall I tell you that little story?'

'Please.  I have often since tried to imagine what it was.'

'It was told to my mother by an old lady who
knew Heine.  She visited him one dull day in November,
a little over two years before his death.  She found him
spent with pain, that had defied his sleeping potion all
through the night.  But he was propped up on his
mattress-grave, writing on a tablet.  He said it was a
poem, which, like life, had turned into a bad joke on his
hands—too long for wit, and too pathetic for the publishers.
It was the story of a peasant-boy from the Thuringian woods,
who had climbed mountain-peaks for edelweiss, gathered
violets before sunrise, who, with tears in their eyes, told
him why their petals were the same in number as the eggs
of the swallows, and other weighty secrets; a boy who
made love to the stars at night, and watched a maiden
spinning till he believed that he was a poet.  He came to
Paris—the beautiful heathen Circe, who slays her lovers
by thousands with the simples she culls with a brazen
sickle by moonlight.  But her simples had no power over
the peasant-boy.  He played woodland melodies on his
oaten pipe early and late, but no one heeded him.  Then
he fell ill, and longed even to death for a sight of his
native woods, but most of all for one of the white violets
that Gretchen used to wear at her throat.  Then the
evil spirit came to him one midnight, and offered him a
white violet for one of two trifles—a song or his soul.
The boy had no longer the power to make a song in the
cruel city that had broken his heart, so he gave his soul.
He held the flower against his lips, but when the dawn
crept into his garret he saw that the violet was a purple
one, bleached with brimstone.  Then without a word
he turned his face to the wall and died.  They say
he looked so young and beautiful that Beelzebub himself
shed tears.  "I do not believe this part of the story,
however," said Heine, "for in that case he would give up
pinching my nerves with red-hot pincers in the night when
Mathilde is asleep, and there is no one to drive him away."  Of
course, much is always lost when a thing of that kind
is repeated from one to the other; but that is the little
anecdote as my mother told it me, as nearly as I can
recollect.'

'Well, I think it has Heine's cachet on it.  Poor Heine,
it seems like a peep into his room where he lay so cruelly
long!'

'Yes, it was a bitter period—those lingering years—when,
as he said in one of his letters, he was no life-enjoying,
somewhat comely Greek any more, who would laugh merrily at
morose Nazarenes; but only a poor Jew, sick to death; a
wasted picture of sorrow; an unhappy man.'

'What a crown of thorns life has for the most part
offered to the goldenest-mouthed singers.'

'That is true; but we must not forget that they
themselves plaited the thorns too often, just as we other
ordinary mortals do.'

'Ah, but they suffer more; they have less "certainty of
waking bliss."  Genius has never been truly acclimatized in
the world.  The Philistines always long to put out the eyes
of poets, and make them grind corn at Gaza.'

There was a touch of scorn in Stella's voice and a light in
her eyes which were not lost on her companion, who,
indeed, found an evident pleasure in looking at her, as
well as hearing her speak.

'But you must not forget that poets are by nature very
vocal, and able to record their joys and woes with cunning
effect.  Now take the dumb, patient way in which the
poor—women among them, especially—suffer.  It is nothing
uncommon to find a woman has been enduring acute pain
at intervals for years, and all the time going about her work
as if nothing were the matter, and saying very little about
it.  That, to my mind, is true heroism.  If a poet could
ever suffer in the same way, for a month, say—ye gods! what
despairing odes—what declamatory appeals to an
unrighteous Heaven!'

'You talk almost like a heretic.'

'Perhaps I say what appears to me true; that is often
the worst sort of heresy.'

'But surely not if your truth is really true,' said Stella,
with an arch smile.

'Ah, that is a burning question,' returned Langdale, with
an answering smile.  'But without going into the more
serious aspect of affairs—though we should not choose to be
in error—yet are there not many things in which illusions
help people more than the truth?  Isn't that perhaps one
reason why things, as they are, remain for the most part so
carefully masked?'

'I must think over that before I commit myself.  But
about the poets; isn't it their vocation to see the
"passionate expression" not only in the face of all science,
but to put into words what others dumbly endure?  When
Shelley says:

   |  '"I could lie down like a tired child
   |  And weep away this life of care,
   |  Which I have borne and still must bear,"

he was speaking not only for himself, but for multitudes who
have had the same feeling, but lacked all gift of expression.'

'That just points what I wanted to say.  A feeling of
that kind is, after all, fleeting; it takes up but a small part
of a working day, and a working day is, on the whole, a
hopeful one.  Only the things that make it so would not
produce a lyrical cry.'

'That sounds so reasonable; it is more provoking than a
downright attack.'

'No; but really it is so.  Think what it takes of
endeavour, of effort, to make up one day of this world's life.
Most of this may be called downright drudgery.  Things
that have to be done over and over again, in almost exactly
the same way, simply because people need three meals a
day.  And yet the work done has its own interest to each
healthy individual.'

'What, to the women who make buttonholes all their lives,
and make dolls' arms for a shilling the hundred dozen; to
the men who break stones for the road, and work in gangs
in factories and mines underground?'

'Do not forget,' said Langdale with a smile, 'that you are
thinking of these monotonous employments with a highly
sensitized imagination.  And even when the work is in far
more imaginative grooves—when it brings the mind into
touch with things that do not pass away with the using—how
much more effective for poetry is the reaction, the mistrust,
the vague disappointment, than the moderate satisfaction
at moderate success—the feeling of expectation and
looking on, and waiting for what is to follow, which, after
all, give their zest to the average days of existence?'

'Well, are we to come back to the old idea of banishing
poesy because it is misleading?'

'By no means.  Only I think we do not enough realize
its tendency to heighten what is sad in life—often, I think,
to exaggerate it.  It isn't the people who have most to do
with life that write criticisms on it.  And in all criticisms
there is a heightening and a deepening.  It is the craft of
the ready writer.'

'You make me think of an expression people often use
when anything dreadful happens—"It is like a dream."  And
yet the worst things always happen when we are wide
awake.  Still, I feel the force of what you say about the
poor.  I have often been struck with the uncomplaining,
almost stoical, way in which they take misfortune.'

'Yes, one cannot help being struck with it.  "It does
feel rather bad," they will say, when "intolerable agony"
would be our only adequate expression for what they are
enduring.  And how simply often they face death.  "I
wouldn't mind going, if it weren't for the children," I have
heard poor, long-suffering women say over and over again.
What a sinewy, insinuating expression for passing away
from all that we know.  There is no art of the rhetorician
here—of the shoemaker who can make a great shoe for a
little foot.'

The two had left the passion-flower bridge by this time,
and were slowly sauntering through the Home Field
towards the house.  It was the afternoon of one of those
perfect Australian days in which the sky is widely vaulted
in a dome of crystalline clearness; the horizons so
indefinitely enlarged that the limiting-lines are beyond sight;
the world overflowing with sunshine, as though day had
been added to day; while a cool westerly breeze was blowing,
that stirred the boughs into jocund sprightliness, and
revealed in the searching light how large the buds were
growing on the limes and birches, and all the old-world trees
that lose their foliage in winter.

'You almost tempt me to think that it is more poetical to
be "to dumb forgetfulness a prey" than to interpret nature
and our own hearts to us,' said Stella.  'But still, I suppose
you do love the poets a little?'

'Fortunately I have got a voucher with me,' he returned
laughingly, and pulled a small brown volume of Molière out
of his pocket.

'Ah! that is one of the beloved among the classics.  One
reads him each time as if afresh—for the first time.'

'Yes.  As I walked from Minjah Millowie I laughed over
Harpagon's instructions to his servants to conceal the
defects of their liveries as if I had never read them before.
Is there anyone else who has the secret of touching the
springs of laughter so irresistibly?  And it isn't so much
with broad effects, or even the finer point of wit, but the
perpetual play of the human comedy—the ironical surprises
life has in store for us.'

'You make me long to steal the volume from you.  I
don't think I have read "L'Avare" for years.'

'Suppose we exchange?  I know Keats very imperfectly.
This is just the atmosphere in which to read him.  Now,
that is a sort of pledge of friendship,' he said, as they
exchanged books.

'Yes, so it is,' answered Stella heartily.

'Do you know, I often wondered if we should meet
again,' he went on.  'I quite made up my mind that we
might be friends if we did, if you will forgive such
boldness.'

'So did I,' returned Stella frankly; and she recalled her
conversation with her sister at Coonjooree.

'Thank you very much,' he returned, with a simple
cordiality which was a marked trait in his manner.  'I
foresee that we shall quarrel occasionally,' he continued
gaily, a little afterwards.

'Yes; there is an exasperating reasonableness about you,'
she said, with a soberness only belied by the dancing light
in her eyes, 'and that must breed mischief sometimes.  I
suppose it comes of your belonging to two old civilizations
firmly rooted in the past.'

He maintained his gravity till her eyes betrayed her, and
then they laughed together.

'You have a way of taking temporary rises out of me
which you must expect to hear of again,' he said; and this
threat made food for more laughter.

And then at that moment Louise, accompanied by two or
three little ones, came in sight among the trees.

'What will my sister-in-law think?' said Stella, with an
amused smile.  'She does not know we are old friends.'

What Louise thought as she approached the two was that
they looked extremely companionable.  Stella was attired
in a close-fitting cream-coloured cashmere, with a cluster of
passion-flowers at her throat, and a broad straw hat looped
up at one side with the same flowers.  A smile hovered
about her lips, and as she talked her long thick lashes and
dark slender eyebrows heightened the radiance of her eyes
and cheeks.

Her companion was little over a head taller, with a
muscular, well-formed figure.  His eyes were dark gray,
his head and brow strikingly noble—an air well maintained
by the rest of the face, more especially the finely-moulded
chin and mouth, whose short upper lip was defined rather
than hidden by a silky black moustache.  His hair was of
the same colour; his skin a clear olive tint.

'I do not think I need offer to introduce you to one
another,' said Louise, smiling.

'Well, no.  We have just been finishing a talk we began
the day after I landed in Australia,' said Langdale.  And
then Louise was speedily told all there was to tell.

'You were sitting on the passion-flower bridge, then,
when you met Dr. Langdale?' said Louise afterwards, when
the two were alone.  'Well, something has happened there
at last.  For don't you think, under the circumstances, it
was almost an event?'

'Oh yes, it *was* an event; for we are going to be friends.'

Louise might smile covertly, and feel as sceptical as
people usually are regarding friendship pure and simple
between an attractive young woman and a man barely
eight years her senior.  But Stella, who was weary of
being made love to, found this prospect of friendship very
alluring; and from the first moment she met him something
which she could feel, though not define, made her
feel sure that Langdale was a man capable of being an
intimate friend without degenerating into a lover.





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.. _`CHAPTER XXVIII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVIII.

.. vspace:: 2

There come epochs in some lives to which the thoughts in
all after-years return with infinite tenderness, and a vague
wonder that, in an existence so beset with common pleasures
and turmoils and disillusions, there should be this tranquil
sanctuary by which always there seem to glide the sweet
waters of Siloe that go with silence.  Such a period for
Stella were the weeks that followed.  The spring was an
unusually lovely one—calm, overflowing with sunshine, and
yet cool.  Our Australian woods do not greatly brighten or
darken at the approach of any season.  And the monotony
of form and colour must often deepen the tendency of all
well-known objects to fail in making us apprehend our
surroundings with eyes quickened by imaginative insight.  But
here at Lullaboolagana there were groves and little woods
of European trees, whose bare branches were starred with
leaf-buds that swelled from day to day in the liberal
sunlight and the kindly air, making the heart beat with
involuntary gladness at their revelation of the dawn of
returning youth.  This miracle, perpetually renewed, of
vegetable life so largely drawn from unseen material, has
a subtle power to draw the mind into wondering conjecture
as to presences, unknown as well as unseen, which may be
all around and near us.

It seemed to Stella as if she fully felt for the first time
the mystical significance of this ceaseless throb of returning
vigour.  And then the growing intimacy with a mind
equipped by training and natural endowments, with a keen
apprehension of the more novel forces that are moulding
thought and life in the present day—equipped, too, with a
calmer, more assured outlook on life than had yet dawned
on her introspective, more apprehensive nature, seemed in a
delightful way to realize that ideal of friendship she found
so attractive.  They had so much in common, and yet they
were so wide apart.  And this led them often far afield
in talk which, though at first chiefly impersonal, yet led to
a growing sympathy.  This may be better realized by
recording, though imperfectly, some of the talk that passed
between them on successive occasions.

The second time they met at Lullaboolagana was on the
wide western veranda closed with a thick screen of creepers,
where Stella sat sewing beside her little invalid nephew.

'I wish you had come in time to hear Aunt Stella's story
of the little lost angel,' said the boy.

'Well, hadn't you better tell it to me, Liny?' said
Langdale coaxingly.

Lionel, nothing loath—he was one of the children who
like to tell a story almost as much as to hear one—told
in his own way the strange adventures of a little angel who,
viewing the earth a long way off, fell in love with it and
came to see it closer.  He could fly down easily, but his
wings were not strong enough to bear him back.  There
was a little cottage in the woods, in which a girl and her
mother lived.  The girl found the little angel, wet with
the dew and blue with the cold, and brought him home.
When his wings had dried, the mother plucked most of the
feathers out to stuff a pillow with them.  This grieved the
angel so much that he wandered off to the woods, and sat
in a very lonely place waiting for his wings to grow again.
But the dragon-flies deafened him with their buzzing, the
crows tried to peck his eyes out, and at last an emu put
sand over him, so that he might be hatched like one of her
own chicks.

'That is all,' said the boy.  'Aunt Stella won't say
whether the angel grew its wings or was choked.  I think
myself the sand would smother it—or make it blind.  Poor
dear little angel!'

'I wonder why your aunt told you such a dofeful story as
that?' said Langdale, speaking to the boy, but looking at
the culprit, who showed no signs of repentance.

'Are you of the same persuasion as my sister Louise?'
said Stella.  'When she tells the children stories they are
lightened of all disasters—even "The Babes in the Wood"
have a happy time in the end.'

'Well, don't you think the chief justification of stories is
that they are pleasanter than the worst that may happen?'

'Do you really think so?' said Stella, looking very sceptical.

'Yes, I do.  I have a grievance on this point.  I am fond
of novels—English and French—and always have been.
Now, if you begin to read stories at eight, by the time you
get to be thirty-one you are at the mercy of contemporaries
for fiction.  Oh, I assure you, some of my contemporaries
who write novels would fare very badly if they fell into my
hands.  What doleful evenings they have given me, when
the day's work was over, and I have sat down in solitude,
proposing to forget problems and maladies and the imbecile
people who so constantly beset us in life!  But, no! the
modern novelist, instead of taking the good the gods provide
us in wholesome cheerful lives, shows invention in nothing
but incredible disasters.  If they give us anything new,
it is in the way of fools and diseases and villains, and every
conceivable shade of human meanness.'

'While all the time you want a glorified Arcadia, where
all the good people are happy and the wicked ones either
overthrown or turned from the evil of their ways?'

'Or why don't you say ignored?  Think how intolerable
human society would be if people were not agreed to ignore
a great deal, and rightly so.'

'I do wish you would give me some idea of what your
favourite novels should be.  At present—what between
hiding away the misery of life and ignoring the evil of it—I
can only think of fairy tales with the fairies left out.'

'Well, you amuse me.  Here are you, quite evidently
blessed with a physique without flaw—with all your time to
spend in the way that seems best to you—with money,
position and friends, and a healthy capacity of enjoyment—and
yet you affect to believe that books cannot be real
unless they are waking nightmares of misadventure.'

'But how could a tale be made that anyone would read
out of good health and immunity from destitution?  Not
that I am one of those happy beings; for I am awfully
poor,' said Stella.

'Are you really?' said Langdale, looking curiously at the
pale pink *crêpe de chine* which was one of Stella's favourite
materials of wear.

'Yes; I have only thirteen pounds a quarter for everything.'

'What, for rent and food and the incidence of taxation?
You must manage very well.'

'Oh, you are laughing at me!  Of course I mean for my
clothing.'

'And do you mean to say you are poor upon that?'

'Yes; the worst of all poverty, debt.  My note-book is
full of entries, in my brother Tom's handwriting: "Lent
this day to Stella, five pounds; to be paid again to me
when she can.  I say five pounds!"'

'That has a very business-like sound,' said Langdale,
smiling.

'Oh yes; and after these notes I also write: "I owe
unto Tom five pounds, lawful money of Australia, which I
did borrow of him.  Heaven grant he may get it back."  But
this is a digression.'

'Not at all, as far as I am concerned,' answered Langdale,
speaking quite gravely, but with a lurking smile in his
eyes.  'A young lady who has fifty-two pounds a year and
sundry pound-notes for mere dresses and ribbons, and yet
is desperately poor, is just fit to be a member of that
growing fraternity of malcontents who are so ready to rail
at Nature and Providence.'

'Now you are quite mistaken,' said Stella, with equal
gravity.  'It was only yesterday afternoon I saw a
laughing-jackass swoop down and swallow a great,
blind-worm that Dunstan, our gardener, turned over, and yet I
asked neither Providence nor Nature a single question.  It
was an ugly creature, and I was quite content it should be
gobbled up out of sight.'

This delicate insinuation that, when we find little to
complain of in life, it is because we ourselves are protected
from the worst barbs of misfortune, was not lost on Langdale.

'But then an angel is higher up in the scale—nearer to
our own sacred caste of humanity,' he said with a quiet
smile; 'and so you protest against accident to one of these
by making a poignant little tale out of its disasters.  How
characteristic that is of so much of our modern literature,
which piles up often the outward accidents of existence and
all the time leaves out its very kernel.'

'Tell me what you think is left out.'

'Life itself.  The strong warm instinct of clinging to the
earth even when its harvests do not whiten fully to allay
our hunger—the instinct that makes the man who has
writhed in pain through the night carry food in trembling
spoonfuls to his lips in the morning, while a glow of thankfulness
rises in his heart because he yet lives to see the light
of day—ah! it is a subtle ensnaring game, this life of ours.
And to most—I am sure of it—the very fact of being alive
is a good that outweighs the bitterest evils.'

'And yet you have been so often in the presence of the
terrors of life.  In London there must be swarms of people
about whom everyone must feel it would be better if they
never saw the light.  It seems to me that in hospitals and
poor-houses a doctor must often feel that death rather than
life would be the great boon.'

'I am afraid you will think I am very callous,' said
Langdale with a smile; 'but such a thought has very
seldom forced itself on me; and when it has, I have
rejected it as treasonable.  I dare say you are right.  Habit
may engender a bias on the side of life apart from its
conditions.  Fortunately for us, we have only to take one part
at a time in the stage of life.'

'Yes, you are concerned with pulling a man through, not
with the question whether it is worth while.  Now, I am
one of the lookers-on at the play.  I do not hold a retaining
fee on one side or the other, and so I perceive how unmoral
this ardour for prolonging this existence really is.'

Stella spoke with extreme gravity; but seeing that
Langdale really thought she was in earnest, she could not
refrain from laughter.

'It is very charitable of you to assume that this ardour
for keeping people in life counts for so much,' he said,
smiling.  'But, joking aside,' he added after a pause,
'there is an absorbing interest often in watching how
incredibly near a human being may draw to the unknown
bourne, and yet struggle back to health once more.  What
is the subtlety of man compared to the subtlety of
Nature? someone has said.  And Nature is in nothing so subtle as
the extraordinary rallies she makes on the side of life.  And
thus, in a great crisis, when one pang of remorse or a dark
foreboding as to the future might turn the scales against
recovery, the senses are wrapped in unconsciousness as
impenetrable as that of early childhood.'

'You make me feel that a struggle against death might
be more entertaining to watch than the life that followed.'

'But when you are a little older you will find that the
great thing is the game itself,' returned Langdale, with the
frank, catching smile characteristic of him; 'the endless
interaction of motive and expectation, of work and play, of
the wider outlook on human affairs, which is so distinctive
of modern days, lend the world an interest that outbalances
its dreariness.'

'Yes; as long as we do not try to peer below the
surface,' returned Stella half smilingly.

'And then,' went on Langdale, 'there is a strong element
of *opéra bouffe* in the world, apart from moral or deeply
serious considerations; so much interplay that lightens work.'

'Even in the wards of a hospital?'

'Yes.  I had to laugh as I rode out yesterday, recalling
a case that was admitted into our casual ward a week or
two before I left hospital.  It was a man who had been run
over, and whose head was badly hurt.  It appears he had
been drinking for some time.  He explained to me, as he
was getting better, that he was a poet, whose ideas would
flow only under alcoholic stimulant.  This unfortunate
accident made him lose the thread of a great epic, which
would have made his fame.  "Oh! what was it—what was
it?" he would say, and then he would implore me to help
to recover his epic.  It was a theme colossal in its
grandeur, and yet full of pathos and interest.  I suggested
heaven and hell.  "Ah! don't you see, that when people
have ceased to hope for one or fear the other, such a theme
is impossible.  Besides," he said, "the critics would at
once say I was imitating Dante and Milton."  Then I said,
"A great monarch—one dethroned," etc.  "A monarch!"
he said, in a tone of disdain, "a creature that nowadays
has either to ape the manners of the common herd, or keep
himself locked up like a criminal!"  "Woman?" then I
said in despair.  "Oh, woman—woman, who broke my head,
and has storied the prophets in every age——" he replied,
beginning to sob.'

They both laughed at this reminiscence.  Then Mrs. Courtland
and the governess joined them, and the conversation
became general.





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.. _`CHAPTER XXIX.`:

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   CHAPTER XXIX.

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Three weeks of Stella's visit at Lullaboolagana had passed,
when her brother Claude and his young wife returned from
their travels.  It had been arranged that they were to
live at the head station a year or two before starting an
establishment on their own account.  Mrs. Claude was a
good-looking, vivacious young woman, who, as is the wont
of travellers, had brought back many tales of the countries
she had seen.  They had spent February and March in
England among relations on both sides, and this, on the
whole, was the part of their foreign experience which
oftenest afforded themes of reminiscence.

'Some days would begin bright,' she would say, 'and
then all at once a fog would come on.  After peering into
the sky for some time you would find the sun in the most
awkward position, looking for all the world like an old
worn-out rose-coloured platter.  But even when there was
no fog you would think the sky was coming down on top
of you.  It was so awfully low and dark, and all the trees
shivering—I used to long to put a petticoat on the poor
things.  And at Uncle Courtland's rectory in Devonshire I
found a little blue gum trying to live.  Oh dear, I nearly
cried over it.'

'Why? well, you must have been homesick!' said Louise.

'Well, I don't know—but at any rate I was very dull.
They went to church so often, and I felt I ought to go too.
One of the girls had been to Girton, and she is a little like
Stella in some things—but the rest seem to look on her as
a pagan....  I couldn't believe you had more sunshine
here than you liked.  You begin to understand why English
people laugh so little.'

'But do they?' questioned Stella, who was listening and
sewing by a French window that opened on the veranda.
'I think all the English people I have known laughed as
much as we do; and what other nation has produced such
humorists?'

'Oh yes, long ago.  Now they laugh most when they are
here—like Dr. Langdale.  I should think there must be
millions of women in England who never laughed out in all
their lives.  I suppose that's why they take everything so
seriously.  If you're five minutes late for breakfast they
look at you as if you had stabbed the cook—or worse; for
they would say a cook can be replaced, but if you waste
the time you can never get it back.'

'You see, dear, we get rather lax ideas of punctuality in
the long hot summers,' said Louise apologetically.

'Oh, my goodness! how I should like to see some of our
relations there—panting on their bedroom floors instead of
seeing that everyone is at the table to the minute!  Such
a fuss over wasting the time!  Claude says it's part of
"*le cant Anglais*."  What better can you do when the sun
never shows himself?'

'You speak as though you had been rather in a wet
blanket there,' said Stella, smiling, 'and found the people
rather *agaçant*.  Now, I think nice English people are the
nicest of all.'

'Yea, in Australia, away from the rest,' said Nell, with a
sparkle in her eyes; 'but a houseful gets upon the nerves—and
as for a whole country full of them, nothing but the
thought of leaving it for Australia, say, keeps you up.  I
can see you don't take that in quite; but wait till you go
there, Stella.  I don't believe you would stay two days at
your uncle's.  They are for ever talking of church and the
anti-Unionists.'

No doubt Mrs. Claude could have enlarged eloquently on
the subject had it not been cut short by the entrance of her
mother and sister Julia, who were speedily followed by
Dr. Langdale.  He stayed only a few minutes, however,
being on his way to Nareen, and having merely called with
a book for Stella.  Mrs. Morton could never see Dr. Langdale
without entering on conjectures as to whether he might
not settle in Victoria, instead of returning to London when
his year was up.

'We do so need good doctors in this country,' she said;
'and really the young men who take their degrees in
Melbourne and Sydney seem anxious to cut people up just out
of curiosity to see what's inside them.'

There was a general laugh at this, but Mrs. Morton did
not speak in a joking spirit.

'Indeed, girls, it is true.  There was that young
Dr. Jones at Warracootie.  Not a fowl could they keep.  He
was trying to invent a liver pill, and used to try its effects
on hens and ducks.  They all died in convulsions.  He
said it was in the sacred cause of science and humanity—but
surely it's better to have your own eggs fresh laid.
And then, if he knew as much about the liver as he should,
would his pills act in that way?'

'But, for all we know, Dr. Langdale may be engaged to
be married, and obliged to return,' said Miss Morton, and
she managed to watch Stella's face as she spoke.  But she
did not glean anything from the survey.  Then Mrs. Claude,
who knew the rather callous way in which her sister was
prone to investigate and thresh out any subject that
interested her, changed the conversation.  But the subject
was one on which Miss Morton was conscious of an aching
void for information, and next Sunday, when Claude and
his wife were spending the day at Broadmead, the
Morton station, Miss Julia returned to the subject again.

She was a young woman who took her prospect of
settling in life, as she would have called it, very seriously.
It was now nearly three years and a half since she and
Mr. Ritchie had been, as she thought, on the verge of
becoming engaged.  She had had frequent opportunities of
meeting him during her visits to her brother and his wife,
Ted's elder sister.  She believed that Ted still admired her
a good deal—that she formed, in fact, a sort of second string
to his bow, which he would soon fall back on, if only he
were finally convinced that Stella was not to be won, or,
better still, if Stella married.  This was a calculating, not
to say mercenary, way of looking upon marriage for a
good-looking young woman of twenty-five.  But we sometimes
forget that the freedom of choice in marriage, which it
permitted to women of the Anglo-Saxon race, has the effect
of making some of them regard the institution on cool
business principles.  It is an 'arrangement' made by
themselves, instead of by the mothers, as in France.  Indeed, no
French mother could go to work in a more disenchanted way
in this respect than a certain type of Australian girl.  'I am
getting on in life,' she will say, examining the corners of
her eyes and the parting of her hair critically.  And then
she counts over the number of eligible men in her circle,
and makes a mental tick against the name of the one who
combines most money with good looks.  If he dies, or
marries the wrong woman, the process of ticking has to be
gone over again.

But to do Miss Morton justice, affection, though not of
an absorbing nature, had something to do with her designs
on Ted Ritchie.  She could readily have loved him, and
would much sooner have married him than, say, the dissipated
younger son of an English peer, as her friend Laurette
had done.  She had, indeed, during the period when Ted
seemed seriously bent on coming to the point, discarded a
local suitor, who was quite as wealthy as the recreant knight,
but twenty years older, and with a fringe of crimson hair
scantily surrounding a singularly flat crown.  His eyes,
too, were of the protruding order, and his chin fell away a
good deal.  Altogether, he had very much the look of a frog
that has lived through many winters.  Still, he had fifteen
thousand a year, and such an income always placed a
marriage above the odious category of scratch matches.
But he was a shy sort of creature, and seemed to have
taken a woman's 'No' as being final.  He would doubtless
require unmistakable tokens of goodwill to bring him to
the point once more.  Now, though Miss Morton was not
romantic in her disposition, though she had started in life
with few ideals, while those that she had were of a tough,
serviceable kind, yet she hesitated, and delayed showing
those tokens while Ted was still in the land of the living—in
other words, unmarried.  If she could only write to tell
Laurette that Stella was engaged!  Before she left
Melbourne the two had canvassed the whole affair in that
exhaustive, unreserved fashion habitual to many women in
talking over their own and other people's affairs.

'I consider Stella as good as engaged to Ted after all that
has passed,' Laurette had said.  And when Julia came
home, it was with a fixed resolve to regard Ted as no longer
among the quick; and she had even planned those overtures
which would convince Mr. Timothy Haydon that, though
a girl might decline to leave the parental roof over three
years ago, it did not follow that she would always be in that
negative mood.  He would come home with them from
church one Sunday, as he sometimes did, and a little
accidental stroll in the garden together and a judicious leading
would surely be enough.  But, then, before this visit or
stroll came off, she found that Stella Courtland and
Dr. Langdale were 'as thick as two thieves,' as she expressed
it in writing to Laurette.  On getting this letter, Laurette
had instantly written back asking Julia to be sure
to let her know if anything happened.  It was rather
early days for anything to have 'happened' in Laurette's
sense of the term; but, then, speedy wooings are
not rare in Australia, especially when there is a separation
in near prospect.  Stella's visit was not to extend
beyond the middle of September, while Dr. Langdale's
original intention was to return to England in October.
And then they saw so much of each other: they had so
much to say, and looked grave, and laughed, and interested,
and animated all in turn.  What could such proceedings
mean, but that they were fascinated by each other and
falling in love?

And then, in the midst of her dubitations on the point,
Mr. Timothy Haydon suddenly announced his intention of
visiting England after shearing.  It was well known to his
friends that he had a tribe of unmarried elderly female
relations in England—cousins of all degrees of nearness and
remoteness.  He would never return 'alive,' Julia was
certain of that.  If she was not prepared to resign him, to let
him become the victim of a foreign brave of the female
'sect,' she must take speedy action.  But what if, after
the day on which that stroll should come off in the garden
with a successful issue, she heard that the knell of Ted's
hopes as far as Stella was concerned had been rung!  It
was a cruel position for a young woman whose fate lay in
her own hands, as far, at any rate, as the second best match
possible to her was concerned.  It was like the story of the
old woman who was driving her pigs to market.  In her
perplexity Julia resolved to play the part of the rope in that
legend of the nursery.  According to the light that was in
her, she resolved on a little experiment of her own to bring
matters to a crisis.

Two days before Mrs. Claude returned there had been a
lawn-tennis party at Dr. Morrison's.  Dr. Langdale was
one of the players, and during an interval in which Miss
Morton and he were looking on, the lady took the opportunity
of speaking of Stella's play as a prelude to playing
the part of the rope.

'Miss Courtland never strikes the ball except on the run.
Now, which do you think is the better way to play a stroke,
Dr. Langdale?'

'The way in which you are most successful, I should
say,' answered Langdale, smiling.

'I would like awfully to learn how to put on twist when
I give a service as Miss Courtland does.  I wish she were
to settle here when she marries; but her future home will
be a long way off.'

'Yes?' said Dr. Langdale.  But Julia could not detect
any show of surprise.  There was, perhaps, a slight, slow
alteration of colour, and in a little while he added: 'I did
not know that Miss Stella was to be married.'

'Oh, it is a very old story!  She was engaged for a short
time years ago to the gentleman and broke it off, and now
it is on, or as good as on, again—at least, so her
sister-in-law that is to be told me.  Perhaps I should not have
spoken.  But'—with an arch smile—'I thought, as you are
such good friends, that you knew.'

'Well, I hope the happy man deserves his good luck,'
returned Langdale; and there the matter dropped.

In thinking over it afterwards, a panic seized Julia that
she might have put a rachet in the wheels instead of giving
them a spin.  But no; she felt certain people could not be
so intimate without 'talking over' things that concerned
them.  If Langdale was at all affected, he would not rest
till he found out whether this was true.  Such rumours
often advanced affairs in a marvellous way; but since then
eight days had come and gone, and there was no sign.  Miss
Morton used to lie awake at night thinking that after all
she might fall between two stools.  And now shearing would
soon begin, and she was as undecided as ever about that
stroll in the garden with Mr. Timothy Haydon.

So on this Sunday she resolved to glean all that she
could, hoping for some light that would help her to come
to a decision.  After dinner she and Mrs. Claude went into
the banksia-covered arbour at the far end of the garden, the
very spot in which Julia had pictured herself gently leading
her Adonis of fifty into the primrose path of dalliance.  She
recalled him as she had seen him that morning (his pew
was not far from theirs in church), and her heart fell.  His
fiery fringe of hair was getting scantier, his eyes paler and
more blinking, his wrinkles more obtrusive.  And then she
thought of Ted.  The contrast between the two gave her a
sense of faltering dismay.  Then she thought of Stella as an
interloper, whose unpardonable wilfulness overshadowed her
own (Julia's) plans like a nightshade.

'Well, Nell, and how do you get on with Stella Courtland,
on the whole?' she said, suddenly rousing herself out
of the reverie in which the probable and possible husband
formed a disconcerting foreground.

'Oh, charmingly!  Who could help liking her?—so full
of fun, and all kinds of unexpected fancies.'

'You seem to have rather a trick of standing round her
at Lull, when she talks; but, for my own part, I like a girl
with a more open disposition.  Now, who would see her
with Dr. Langdale without thinking they were lovers, or
going to be?' said Julia, with much animation.

'Well, and supposing they were?' said Mrs. Claude, a
little surprised at her sister's tone.

'Supposing they were!  And she as good as engaged to
Ted Ritchie!' retorted Julia.

She was determined to put her case bluntly, so as to
extort her sister's opinion all the more quickly.

But instead of evoking any sharp denial, as she hoped to
do, a sudden light seemed to fall on Mrs. Claude.

'Well, now, that explains what has begun to puzzle me,'
she said slowly; and at these words poor Julia's heart fell.

'What has been puzzling you, Nell?'

'The sort of fast friendship there is between Stella and
Dr. Langdale, without any approach to love-making.'

'Without any approach to love-making!' echoed Julia
bitterly.  'Well, Nell, you must be a greenhorn to be taken
in by such stuff.  Why, you cannot see the two together
without knowing at once they are playing at being friends;
but it's about the shabbiest disguise I ever saw.'

'Oh, I know how you look at it, Julia,' said Mrs. Claude,
with a quiet smile.  'You only see part of the play, and the
other part you put together all endways.'

'Well, I see only part, but enough is as good as a feast,
they say.  Why, last Thursday when I was over there I
saw them meeting at the passion-flower bridge, and it took
them a solid hour to get from there to the house!  And yet
till Stella appeared you know the sort of deadly calm the
Doctor always maintained to young ladies.  Indeed, Mrs. Waring
felt certain there was something behind it all—that
he was privately married, or a woman-hater, or something.'

'Oh, we all know Mrs. Waring's talent for working out
patterns for other people's lives,' said Mrs. Claude, with a
superior little smile which Julia found very trying.  'You
see,' she went on, with the combined experience of one
recently married and travelled, 'people in the Bush think,
as a rule, that if two people like Stella and Dr. Langdale
have long interesting talks, it must somehow mean love-making.
So it does in ninety-eight cases, but they are the
ninety-ninth, and with them it doesn't.  And when you see
a little more of the world you'll find there are plenty more
like them.  Why, when we were at Geneva we met an
American lady and her mother.  I suppose I ought to name
the mother first, but she was really as much in the
background as an extra dress-basket.  Well, the daughter was
not young, and there was a countryman of hers, the Consul
there, who had been her intimate friend for fourteen years.
During all that time when they are apart they write long
letters to each other every other week.'

'Good gracious! what a waste of time!  Why in the
world don't they marry?' cried Julia energetically.

'Well, you see, they only want just to be friends,'
answered Mrs. Claude, with unconscious irony; 'and they
had all sorts of things to talk about, only they were always
very serious.  But Stella and the Doctor have great fun
very often.'

'Why, do they chaff each other much?  Because, you
know, that's a great sign sometimes.  That's the way Dan
Wylie and Milly Waring used to go on.'

'Mercy on us! do you suppose that Stella and Dr. Langdale
go in for that sort of horse-play?' said Mrs. Claude,
with a comic look of horror.

'Well, I wish to goodness you would give me some idea
of what they *do* go in for.  I might then get an opinion of
my own.  You mustn't think it's just idle curiosity,' said
Julia, with a solemn expression.  'Any time I overhear
them they laugh and smile at things that don't seem to me
in the least funny.  And Hector, too, who is the slowest
coach I ever saw in my life, he seems quite lively and
talkative with these two.'

'Well, you know, Hector and Dr. Langdale were great
friends before ever Stella came.'

'What was that talk going on about novel-writing on
Thursday evening?'

'Oh, there is a theory that each is writing a novel.  Stella
declares the Doctor is bent on making his book so agreeable
that there are crowds of obliging fairies in attendance on
his characters, picking crumpled rose-leaves out of their
way, and so on.  And he imagines that her people in the
end resolve to sit still all their lives, as the only way in
which they can avoid doing evil; and then when things go
wrong they call Nature, and Life, and Providence to the
bar of judgment, and decree that they ought to be hanged,
so as to give the world a fresh start.  The Doctor declares
that reaping as we sow makes up two-thirds of the misfortunes
of life.  Then Stella asserts that life is so arranged
that you sow tares when you mean to sow wheat, and that
when you do sow honest grain an enemy comes in the
night, who spoils the harvest.'

'Well, it's rather silly, don't you think, to go on so about
far-off things?  And then they seem to turn even people's
misfortunes into a joke.  They were actually smiling over
Mr. Dene's compound fracture.

'Oh, Julia, how can you take up things in such a crooked
way!' said Mrs. Claude warmly.  'They did nothing of the
sort.  Hector had been to see Mr. Dene, and said he was
getting low-spirited through being confined to the house
so long.  And then Stella said, quite gravely at first—she
often makes one believe she is in earnest when she is
not—"I suppose in writing a novel fit to be read when one
smoked a pipe after the labours of the day are over, an
accident of this kind should be termed one of the agreeable
amusements of old age—or would you ignore a compound
fracture altogether?"'

'Well, I am sure that is chaffing, if not more so,' said
Julia sturdily.  'And then, what did Dr. Langdale say?'

'"Not if it pointed one's pet moral so completely," he
said.  "You must perceive that if an old gentleman at
seventy-three persists in riding a fiery horse imperfectly
broken in, he lays himself open to accident; in fact, he was
so likely to get his neck broken, that a compound fracture
may be, in comparison, called a gentle warning."'

'And then Hector and Dr. Langdale have taken to calling
Stella "St. Charity."  What is that for?'

'Oh, because she has the most extraordinary way of
finding out creatures that are hurt.  Before we came, she
found a little calf with a broken leg when she was out
riding.  One of the boundary riders set the leg for her, and
she has nursed it in a fashion.  It is now nearly well.  Then
early last week she came upon an old crow badly wounded,
and she brought that right home, and tied up its broken
wing and treated it with vaseline.  Hector and Dr. Langdale
call it Satan; but Stella won't have that name.  She
says the only time Satan was hurt it only made him cleverer
than ever.  But it's a dreadfully cross old crow, and we all
think it is the queerest pet.  But it really begins to hop
after Stella.'

'Oh, she's a spoilt thing; she always does just whatever
comes into her head, however queer it may be,' said Julia
impatiently.  She really seemed as far as ever from any
guiding light as to that walk with Timothy.

'Well, what comes into her head in that way is very
kind and sweet,' returned Mrs. Claude.  'There is poor old
Mick——'

'Mick?  Is that a crow, or a calf, or what?' said Julia
pettishly.

'Not nearly so interesting—to most people, at any rate,'
laughed Mrs. Claude.  'He is a dreadful little old ragged,
drunken Irishman, who has eight young children.  He used
to come to Lull sometimes asking for a job; but Dunstan
and some of the other men thought so badly of him, Louise
dared not give him any work.  But one day when he came,
Stella met him by the creek, and had a long chat with him,
and coaxed Dunstan to give him work; and now he is in
constant employment in the Home Field, and hardly a day
passes but he says something ridiculously droll to Stella.
She declares that naturally he is one of the best little men
she ever knew.'

'What, that awful little Mick Doolan, that has been so
often in gaol for drunkenness?'

'Yes; but Stella has found out it is his wife who drives
him to the public-house.  She is a perfect virago, and every
now and then Mick comes with a black eye and a funny
shade over it.  He says he was breaking wood, and a stick
flew up and hit him.  Stella goes to see her regularly now
when she goes into Minjah, and we fancy things are a little
better.  But Stella does not like to talk of her charities.
She says they nearly always turn out addled eggs.'

'I don't wonder at it if she takes up people like Mick.
Mrs. Wylie met her near the cemetery the other day, and
she watched her go into it with a basket of flowers.  What
does she do that for?'

'She weeded Rupert Courtland's grave, and puts flowers
on it once or twice a week.  The cousin, you know, who
planted the Home Field, and lived there with the Courtland
brothers so many years.  He was so fond of trees and
flowers, and planted so many rose-trees that are now in
full bloom.'

'Well, you may say what you like, but I think she is
rather queer,' said Julia.  'Then, do you really think, Nell,
that neither Stella nor Dr. Langdale care for each other,
except as friends?  Mind, as I said before, I have good
reason for wishing to know.'

'But what good reason can anyone else have to know
what chiefly concerns themselves?  I should be very sorry
to answer decidedly for either, especially for—well, I don't
think I should say it.'

'For whom?  What a close sort of thing you are getting,
Nell!'

'Well, for Dr. Langdale, if you must know.  When he
walks across in the afternoon, if Stella is not in the room,
or in the veranda where we sit so often, and he catches
sight of her coming, or hears her voice, his whole face
lights up.  You see, his is a face that must show what he
feels more than most men's.  There is no part of it hidden.
The eyes and mouth sometimes look as tender as a woman's,
and yet there is something a little hard about him.  And
suddenly, when he is talking, something makes him look
almost stern.'

'Well, Nell, you always were one to notice a great deal
and find things out long before other people did!' said
Julia with sisterly admiration.  She herself seldom noticed
things unless they had a distinctly personal bearing; and
then she invariably interpreted them according to her own
wishes.

'It seems to me you have been taking Dr. Langdale out
of winding pretty completely,' she said after a pause.

'Well, you see, one must do something when one has to
keep in-doors so much, and do a lot of sewing,' said
Mrs. Claude with a pensive little sigh, unconsciously hitting
upon one of the keys to that passion for psychological
observations which, with some women, develops into a sort of
sixth sense; 'but for all that, you know, I shouldn't be a
bit surprised if they parted friends and nothing more.
Certainly Dr. Langdale doesn't talk of returning to England
much, lately; and Stella too, sometimes, when she speaks
of returning to Fairacre, suddenly turns very silent.  But
that may be because she thinks of Ted.  She is to stay at
Laurette's on her way back.

'But what do Louise and Claude say?  As for Hector,
he's such a stick-in-the-mud, he wouldn't see anything
unless several people told him plump.'

'Claude and Louise?  We none of us exchanged a
syllable on the matter.  Oh, you mustn't imagine we sit
and talk things over, and try to ferret things out, as—as
we girls used to.'

'Well, I call that a very cold, reserved sort of way for a
family,' said Julia, with a touch of scorn.  'And that's one
of the things that the tourist people who come here for a
few weeks, and write books, praise us for.  They say we
have such an open, unreserved, easy way.

'But then you see those tourists mostly see the people
who have made money in business in the towns, and they
are nearly always garrulous everywhere.  It's their life,'
said Mrs. Claude, with a touch of her husband's manner
that was not lost upon Julia.

'Yes, and no doubt the Courtlands are extra reserved
because of their ancestry,' she said, tossing her head.  'It's
good of you to keep so friendly with us, Nell, after marrying
into such a set.'

'Don't be so absurd, Julia; and whatever you do, don't
mention a word of what I've said to anyone.'

'What have you said, then?' cried Julia, in high
dudgeon.  'I could imagine ten times as much in half a
minute.  I believe you know more than you say.  I think
Stella Courtland is a perfect flirt, and you don't like to—to
tell on her.  But, after all, I don't believe she'll ever give
up a man with fifteen thousand a year for one that has to
look at people's tongues for a living.'

Mrs. Claude could not refrain from laughter at this
incisive summing-up.

'Dr. Langdale needn't if he does not like.  You know he
has seven hundred a year private income.'

'Yes; his father was in business, at any rate—a London
fruit-broker.  I don't think that was so very aristocratic,'
said Julia, who really was in the mood in which certain
women love to fling their tongue abroad like a javelin.

'Yes, his father was a London fruit-broker and the
grandson of a baronet,' answered Mrs. Claude calmly.
'Oh, Mrs. Morrison only mentioned it in the course of
conversation, just when I told her that my pretty
moss-green bonnet was bought in London, in a shop kept by a
lord's daughter.'

'Well, if Stella didn't feel it was wrong to make such
fast friends with one man when she's engaged to another,
surely she would have said something to you or Louise
about Ted,' said Julia, making a last despairing effort to
'fossick' out some more highly coloured hint than she had
yet obtained.

'Oh, as to that, Stella got so much blamed on all sides
for getting engaged to Ted for a week and then breaking it
off: we none of us expect to hear of her being engaged till
she's on the eve of marrying.  You know it was after that
affair she came to see Louise, over three years ago; and
she said then she never would be engaged for more than a
few days.  The temptation of throwing it all up again
might be too great.'

'Oh, she's a conceited thing!  I always think there's
something almost impertinent in the cool way she treats
everything,' said Julia viciously.

'Look here, Julia, if you don't like Stella, we'll stop
talking about her,' said Mrs. Claude; and with that she
returned to the house.  Julia lingered for a few moments in
the arbour, trying to decide whether it would not be safer
to have Mr. Haydon to dinner next Sunday, and renounce
all chance of Ted for good and all—'that Stella is too risky
a creature to let anything hang on her ways,' she thought,
and she slowly followed Mrs. Claude into the house.

'Oh, my dears,' her mother was saying, 'did you hear
that Sally Richardson died on Saturday night at twenty
minutes past twelve?  She ate a little sago, with a
tablespoonful of port wine in it, only half an hour before; and
she said the whole of "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild," a
little afterwards.  Her poor dear mother——' and
Mrs. Morton wiped her eyes.

'Well, mamma, you know what a fearfully tiresome
creature Sally always was,' said Julia tartly.

Sally had been a housemaid in the Morton family for
some time, but indeed it needed not this tie in the past to
make Mrs. Morton dwell with effusion on every small
particular she could glean of a death, or on the blank that
it caused.  It is sometimes curious to observe the
modifications which parental traits undergo in a second
generation.  Julia had inherited all her mother's ardour for the
details of other people's lives, but utterly divested of her
mother's quick sympathy.  There was really no personal
gratification which Mrs. Morton would have purchased
during any period of her life, had it been in her power, at
the cost of a finger-ache to a Mandarin in China.  Whereas
there was no kind of ache Julia would have saved any
young woman she knew, if such pain could advance her own
scheme of life.  Perhaps when the laws of heredity are
better understood, the danger of saddling a daughter with
callous indifference to the claims of others will serve to curb
the too expansive altruism of mothers like Mrs. Morton.

'The idea of mamma going to sit up with that Richardson
woman all Friday night!' said Julia in a discontented
voice.

'Well, my dear, you ought to be used to your mother
being a real Christian by this time,' said her father, not
without intentional sarcasm.

He was a hale old man of seventy-five, who enjoyed the
distinction of being the only squatter in the Warracootie
District who had lived fifty years of his life in Australia.
He was one of three brothers—descendants of an old
English squire who had lost his land—who had come to
Victoria with a little capital, which had all been lost in
unprofitable speculations, so that they were for some time
knock-about hands, till a fortunate gold claim formed the
foundation of the wealth which they now enjoyed.





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.. _`CHAPTER XXX.`:

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   CHAPTER XXX.

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There are many days of an Australian spring on which to
remain within doors is an impossible heresy.  This Sunday
was one of them.  The two who afforded Miss Julia Morton
so irritating a theme for conjecture and comment were
wandering in the Home Field in common with the rest of
the Lullaboolagana household.  Dr. Langdale had a little
old-fashioned-looking book in his hand, and was engaged in
the congenial task of supporting a theory Stella had started
some days previously.  She had found Virgil's 'Eclogues'
full of notes in her deceased kinsman's handwriting, and it
suddenly occurred to her that the Home Field was full of
hints from those stately pastoral poems.

'Suppose we trace the resemblances one day?' said Langdale.

'May I say it?' asked Stella, smiling.

'You will say it, whether you may or not, when you look
so mischievous, St. Charity.'

'Well, don't you think it is the German in you who suggests
that heartless form of crushing my poor little fancy?'

'Now, as a penalty for that speech, I shall pelt you with
proofs,' said Langdale, laughing.

And now he was going to make good the threat, armed
with the little book in tarnished gold that bore traces of
having been a treasured companion.

'I am waiting to be pelted,' said Stella.

'Well, there is Amaryllis, to begin with; swift as a fawn,
lithe as a young pine, flitting by, pretending she does not
hear the lay that Tityrus pipes on his lute——'

'But where is she?'

'Oh, a commentator is always allowed to see a little more
than his readers or hearers.  I see her.  And then there is
the spreading beech under which the swain reclines.  Look,
there are three beeches hard by—all spreading as far as
their age permits.  Could the beech-tree under which
Tityrus reclines do more?'

'Oh, I see that in the matter of proving a theory you
were born to destroy Afreets,' said Stella, her face sparkling
with fun at the extreme gravity which her companion had
assumed.

'But there is much more to follow.  A little further on
Melib[oe]us says——  May one read a little Latin to you
without scandal?'

'Surely that is an anachronism!  What else would he
read?' said Stella, pretending to misunderstand.

They both laughed at this; and then Stella said: 'Yes,
one may.'

'Then, "Hic inter densas corylos."  The Oolloolloo is
haunted with dense hazel-bushes.  Tityrus, in his reply,
says that Rome lifts up her head among other cities as high
as cypress among bending osiers.  I am not sure about
more than one patch of osiers, but cypresses you have in
abundance.'

'Yes, and of all the trees that grow, none look lovelier in
the rose twilight of sunset.  See those clumps of them
between the house and the orchard, mingled with
tamarisk-trees.  At mid-day the cypress looks dark and stern
compared with the silky tamarisk locks.  But when the
sunlight is dying, the cypress seems to disentangle its
feathery foliage, till it looks like an airy vision of a tree
rather than one that has roots underground.'

When Stella spoke of trees, or animals, or flowers, one
could see that they were like living humanized creatures to
her.

'Now, I have often wondered why I like cypress-trees
better at sunset.  Tell me some more about trees.'

'Oh, you haven't finished your proofs yet.'

'Well, Melib[oe]us speaks further of pine-trees, fountains,
and vineyards.  Pines you have in hundreds; you have two
fountains, and over an acre of vines.'

'Really, the resemblance becomes quite startling!'
laughed Stella.

'Yes; and then there is mention of willow-bloom on
which the bees feast.  Then you have flocks of pigeons,
and elms and turtle-doves without number.  In view of
this, you must perceive that the lines concerning the hoarse
note of the wood-pigeon, the turtle-dove's complaint, and
the towering elm serve—first, either as a prophecy regarding
Lull, or second, that the place has been moulded upon these
lines.  I incline to the *latter* view.  The emphasis is my own.'

'But seriously, it is an interesting coincidence that all
the natural objects named in the "Eclogues" seem to
abound in the Home Field.'

'As you are convinced, even beforehand, my labours are
at an end,' said Langdale, closing the book.  'Now tell me,
have you any funny little stories of Mick or Dunstan?'

'Oh, Mick was better than a comedy yesterday.  He
hardly opened his mouth without making a bull.  He told
me about one of his girls who is at service and very much
overworked.  The mistress, it seems, gives music-lessons.
"But she's no great hand at the music," said Mick, lowering
his voice mysteriously; "indade, Miss Stella, they say
she niver saw a pianny till she came to Minjah four years
ago, and thin 'twas an harmonium."'

'Well done, Mick!' said Langdale, laughing.

'Then I asked after the eldest boy, who has got a situation
lately in a little store.  He doesn't get on with the
mother—no one can long—so last week he went to board at
an aunt's.  Poor Mick was much scandalized.  "'Why,
Patrick,' says I to him, 'what do people's children do who
have no parents but lodge wid their father's sister?  And
thin the house is near the swampy end of the town, and
people die there that niver died anywhere else.'"  Well,
you may laugh, but there is sound sense under it all.  I
shall miss Mick's little anecdotes sadly when I go away.'

'When you go!' repeated Langdale, and his face fell
visibly.  On meeting his eyes a deeper tinge stole into the
girl's cheeks.  Then he added in a lighter tone: 'There are
days in August when people who speak of going away
should be fined, or at any rate set to counting the vine-buds
and gadding tendrils.'

'And yet how very human it is to go away, even as
human as it is to come.  You see, I am catching a little of
your reasonableness,' said Stella.

'That may be; but on a day like this, when the veriest
little locust chirps in the sun as "though he never should
be old," I maintain it is little short of felony to speak of the
accidents that mar life....  You see, I am catching a little
of your unreason,' he added.

They had crossed the stone bridge, and stood on a hillock
clothed with elms, she-oaks, and scrub cypresses, where the
breath of hidden violets came and went on the air like
tremulous music.  From this slight eminence they had a
far-reaching view of the country round—the Messmate
Ranges, with their dim gullies; the Wicked Wood, spectral
in its bareness; the break in the far distance, where one
became sensible of the Peeloo Plain; the flat, well-wooded
country, and the contour of ridgy hills that stretched beyond
Minjah Millowie.  On every side lay the still wide woods,
motionless as a great picture framed between heaven and
earth, all clothed with the overflowing sunshine as with a
garment.

And yet these two, as they stood there and looked afar
and listened to the songs of birds and all the woodland
sounds which filled the air—what influence was it that
stirred both so deeply in the midst of this peaceful idyllic
scene?  Who can tell what vague outward gropings of the
spirit make the heart turn on itself in some rare soft-footed
hour as with a quickened sense of the sweet calm of the
present, a shrinking fear of the uncertain days to come
which may be clouded with futile agony, drenched with the
storm-spray of life's keenest sorrows?  For some moments
neither spoke.

'You will never know how good it is of me not to talk
like your friend Ivan Michalowicz just now,' said Stella,
breaking the silence.  'I could believe the air is full of
unseen presences——'

'That is a plagiarism from Mick.  Go on—and unheard
wails,' Langdale said, laughing.

'Yes; and souls that can find no home.  But I forbear.'

'Well, I must admit that on a perfect day like this—and
the only fault it has is that it keeps time to a clock—a kind
of sadness creeps over me.  It is the penalty for looking
before and after.'

'Yes; neither a cat nor a marigold uses the sunlight as
an invocation to call ghosts into a circle.'

'Ghosts?  You know nothing of them!'

'At this very moment the air is drenched with ghosts.
Ghosts of days to come—lean and gray, when youth is left
far behind—when those that look out at the window are
darkened, and the daughters of music are laid low.'

'It is good of you not to speak like Ivan,' said Langdale
gravely.  'He said once that the great melancholy steppes
of his native land had got into his disposition.  I think the
vast solitudes of your Australia have got into yours.'

'But do you never think how dreadful it is to grow old?
And it goes on all the time.  Why, since we have been here,
if your eyes were keen enough, you would see wrinkles
deepening on my face.'

'Thank Heaven my eyes are not so precocious!'

'Ah, now you have betrayed yourself.  You are not so
hopelessly reasonable after all.  I may yet hear you rail at
life in good set terms.'

'But don't you think it is time enough to speak of wrinkles
when they come?'

'Ah, but they have come.  I discovered a little sly
wretch of a crow's-foot at the corner of my eye the other
day.  Look there when I stand sideways in the light,' and
Stella stood so that her crow's-foot might be more clearly
seen.

Langdale could not resist laughing.  'My eyesight is not
sharp enough, or else your crow's-foot does not exist,' he
said.

'Spoken like a courtier.  But it would be more friendly
to see it, and then to say something out of Seneca to
comfort me.  When will your profession make some real advance?'

'And invent an elixir for renewing youth—or perhaps you
are thinking more of the happy despatch of superfluous
beings?'

'But as it is, you are chiefly concerned with screening
fools from their folly——'

'And thwarting the beneficent severity of Nature?  Yes,
it is painfully humdrum.  Have you ever thought what
calling in life might put one in the way of doing least
mischief?'

'Well, good dressmaking, for my own sex.  Do you
remember what Frenchman said that women take the outward
polish of civilization more quickly than men, but that
inwardly they remain more truly savage?'

'Ah, that is the sort of paradox which even a luminous-minded
Frenchman cannot resist.  It is so glaringly untrue—there
must be something in it—so it is wrapped up in a
neat little epigram.  But about the dressmaking?'

'Well, I think a woman who makes dresses that fit
perfectly, adds more to the practical Christianity of the
world than most people are aware of.  If you could peep
into the mind of a woman when a costly dress comes home
that makes her waist what it shouldn't be, you would believe
the Frenchman a little more.  She may have sat at the feet
of sages and be in touch with much of the wisest and the
best, but in that moment she has taken a great leap back to
the anthropoidal era.'

'But when her waist is what—no, I am afraid—but when
the dressmaker has done her work nobly?'

'Why, then a sort of flow of philanthropy suffuses one's
whole being.  Yes, to make a dress well—without a pinch
or a wrinkle in it—that is one of the least mischievous
things a woman can do.  As for your sex——  Well, what do
you say to a shoemaker—one who does not cripple the foot,
and makes good shoes with honest workmanship?  With
such shoes, one feels impelled to walk more; and to walk
more is to be in the open air; and to be in the open air is
to be—dare I say happy?'

'Oh, why not!  "On the whole, stick close to words."'

'Where is that?'

'"On the whole, stick close to words, then shall you go
through the sure portal into the temple of certainty."  That
is Mephistopheles speaking to the student.  Don't you
think it is time you spoke German to me?'

'Yes, I have two anecdotes to tell you in German.  But
for the summit of well-being in the open air, don't you think
we are more indebted to the horse than the shoemaker?
You see where the Messmate Ranges fall off into flat
country?  That is the beginning of one of our unoccupied
spaces; and the scenery—-but perhaps you know it?'

'No, I don't think I do.'

'Claude and I rode there the other morning early.  I had
Duke, a delightful horse who skims the ground like a bird.'

'How far did you go then?'

'Thirteen miles.  We reached No Man's Land, which
stretches away close up to the New South Wales boundary.
Nothing but sand and slender stringy bark trees, that grow
so thick the sun can hardly pass between them.  It was
a most glorious ride, in the keen morning air loaded with
the fragrance of gum-leaves.'

'I wonder if you would let me come with you some morning?'

'Oh, we shall be delighted; but then it is in the mornings
you write your novel.  Tell me how are your people going
on?  Do the wrong ones still make love to each other?'

Stella went on to sketch imaginary plots, ending in the
most fabulous forms of happiness and good-luck, and
introducing such extraordinary dialogues that, by the time the
sound of a gong summoned them to afternoon tea on the
western veranda, the two were laughing continuously, like a
pair of school-children.





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.. _`CHAPTER XXXI.`:

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   CHAPTER XXXI.

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Two days later, Stella had again ridden in the direction of
No Man's Land; but this time she was alone, except for
Dustiefoot and her horse, and she had an 'adventure.'  Shearing
was soon to begin, and all hands were busily
occupied on the station.  Under these circumstances, Stella
insisted on her birthright, as an Australian born, to ride
through her native woods without any companionship beyond
a swift well-bred horse and her beloved dog.  There was
some talk of getting Maisie to practise riding on a not very
young pony, whose wildest pace had long been a gentle
canter, so that during the time there was a premium on all
male workers she might accompany her mistress.  But
Stella rejected the proposal with comic horror.  Maisie by
herself, or Andy by himself, might be borne; but the united
caution of the two would mar the most delectable ride that
could be offered by spring and Duke.  If they really objected
to her riding alone—'Look at the hypocritical Baby pretending
to give in!' cried Claude, 'as if she ever failed to get
her own way in anything!'  'I wish I could go,' said Mrs. Claude,
making a rueful little face; but her husband did not
echo the wish.  'I shall ask Dr. Langdale to come with
me,' thought Stella; but somehow she did not, which could
hardly be deemed the action of unbiased friendship.

It was her second ride alone, one breezy sunshiny
forenoon, when four miles from the head-station on the road
that led to No Man's Land, Stella came upon the strangest
spectacle she had ever seen.  It was a very old-looking
waggon, with a tilt-cover, drawn by two horses, followed by
another, tied to the vehicle behind, and all three lean to the
last degree of emaciation, while the pace at which they went
was that of animals worn out with famine and fatigue; and
everything else was in keeping with the worn, famished look
of the horses.  At each slow revolution of the wheels, the
waggon creaked and groaned as though it would fall to
pieces.  The woodwork was warped and splintered, with
here and there dim greenish streaks—faint reminiscences of
having, at some remote period, been painted.  The canvas
cover was draggled and patched, saturated with reddish sand
and long-accumulated dust, frayed into tatters at one side
and flapping dismally in the wind.  The harness was entirely
composed of untanned lengths of kangaroo skin; the horses
had no bits in their mouths, but there was a ragged remnant
of a bridle on each, to which knotted ropes were attached,
that hung loosely on the poor lean necks.  Every rib might
be counted at a distance.  They crawled on with drooping
heads, the sound of their worn unshod hoofs completely
drowned by the perpetual rumbling and groaning of the
disjointed waggon.  No hand guided them; no voice urged
them on.

It was all so unspeakably forlorn and dreary, that the
sight filled Stella with dismay.  Dustiefoot, who was trotting
on gaily in front, paused as he drew near this battered
vehicle, drawn by horses that looked only fit to be the food
of carrion crows, and he, too, was plainly smitten with
something akin to fear.  Whether this was occasioned by the
strange rumbling and groaning or the weird appearance of
the whole, it would be hard to say.  But he suddenly
stopped short, and, with the hair round his neck bristling
angrily, began to bark in a loud defiant way.  'Quiet, good
dog; quiet,' said Stella coaxingly.  She had reined in her
horse, and it suddenly flashed across her mind that this
extreme misery must be rooted in some catastrophe.  At
the sound of the dog's barking the horses came to a
standstill.  It seemed as though they were glad of an excuse to
give up even the snail's pace at which they crawled.  Still
no sign of life in the waggon.  Women of well-descended
natures, who have been protected from every form of harm
all their lives, are usually not lacking in courage.  Stella
was certainly no coward.  But she had a powerful imagination
of an essentially picture-forming kind.

Was there anyone in this spectral-looking conveyance
alive?—or was its occupant worn with fatigue and asleep?
She had heard strange stories of people who had been
overtaken by drought or illness, and had been imprisoned
sometimes for months, sometimes for a year, in a far-away
corner beside a permanent water-hole, unvisited by any
human being.  She advanced slowly to the side of the
waggon, and using the well-known Bush salutation, she
said 'Good-day,' in a loud, clear voice.  But there was no
reply.  Her own words came back to her with mocking
emphasis.  She shrank from dismounting to look into the
waggon, shrank still more from the sight that might meet
her there.  Should she return home and get Hector or
Claude or one of the station-hands to come to the rescue?
Whether there was a human being in distress or beyond it,
the famished horses needed help sorely.  To Stella, an
animal in want or pain was very little, if at all, less
important than a human being.  The sight of these three poor
creatures, with their bones almost projecting through the
skin, with drooping heads and dim eyes, standing in their
patient dumbness, went straight to her heart.  No; she
could not bear the thought of leaving them.  She would
start them on and take them home, where they would be
fed and rested; and if there was anyone in there——'Oh,
I must not be such a coward,' she said to herself
impatiently; and then, with a fast-beating heart, she rode
close to the side of the waggon, on which the cover was
tattered and fluttering in the soft spring wind that blew
from the west.  She reined in Duke, the proud, graceful
young horse she rode, who had come off victor in many
well-contested local races, and who was gentle and tractable
as only a well-bred horse can be when ridden by an
affectionate well-trained rider.

She bent down and looked in.  The first thing she saw was
a woman's long, fair hair—unkempt and matted.  The next
was a dingy white cockatoo that had been fast asleep, and
now woke up and began to mumble, 'Confound your eyes,
confound your eyes,' in a faint, rapid way that was
infinitely eerie.  The woman's face was partly hidden by one
hand, which covered her eyes and the upper part of her
face—a brown, sunburnt, grimy hand, very lean and unwashed,
and unwomanly-looking.  No, she was not dead, as Stella
at first feared.  She moved and moaned, and as the bird
went on mumbling, descending to a still lower depth of
imprecation, the sound, and then Stella's sympathetic voice
saying, 'I am afraid you are very ill,' seemed partly to rouse her.
She half sat up, but her eyes remained glazed and
unresponsive.  'Gee up, Jerry; Jill, Jill!'  Her tones were
shrill, though quavering, and at the words the horses pulled
and strained, and once more resumed their weary,
incredibly slow walk.  They kept in the middle of the road,
and Stella could but try to make Duke fall into the same
pace.  But this was impossible.  He could stand stock still,
or he could walk his slowest.  But being neither lame on
four legs, nor starved, nor born to drudgery, he could not
absolutely crawl.  It took this strange little procession the
best part of two hours to get within sight of Lullaboolagana
home-station.  No words can express the air of mingled
pride and responsibility with which Dustiefoot marshalled
them all.  He made circles round them, he trotted on in
front, he walked behind, he panted; his scarlet young
tongue hung out with joy and anxiety, his handsome bushy
tail was arched upwards more airily than ever.  He had the
same insuperable difficulty that beset Duke of being unable
to regulate his pace by that of animals so famished, so
overborne and jaded, that even their hides would have been
worthless.  As Stella examined them more closely she saw
that they had sores all over them—under the jagged collars
that were held together with half-untwisted strands of rope,
on their shoulders, sides, and thighs.  So utterly maimed
and defeated did they look as they dragged one quivering,
shrunken leg after another, the only wonder was that they
had not long since lain down to die.

When Dustiefoot found himself getting too far ahead—and
if a young dog walked at all, that was inevitable—he
turned round and waited, gazing at his mistress, and then at
the horses and their load, till he was forced to give
expression to his feelings in one or two barks, which might be
classified as of the glad-excitement order.  Those who have
the privilege of being intimate with dogs are aware that no
living creature is so pleased all over at an unusual event as a
collie in the second year of his age.

Before the strange little cavalcade had reached the house,
it was seen and met first by some of the children, then the
maids, and finally by Mrs. Courtland and Mrs. Claude.
Dunstan was at once despatched for Dr. Morrison.  But
before he came the poor woman was refreshed with wine,
washed, arrayed in fine linen, and comfortably in bed.  It
was a case of collapse through long privation and exposure.
There was nothing to eat or drink in the waggon beyond the
stony remains of a damper, and a little muddy water in a
brown earthen jar.  She partly recovered consciousness
after she had been in bed for a couple of hours.
Dr. Morrison, on seeing her, came to the conclusion that careful
nursing and dieting would bring her round in a few days.
There was some dispute as to who should be chief nurse,
but finally Stella convinced her sisters-in-law that, as she
had discovered the patient, she must be primarily held
responsible.

'You have a name for finding many ailing sorts of
creatures, Miss Stella; but I think this is the biggest cargo
of any,' said the doctor, with an amused twinkle in his eyes.
And then he gave his instructions with due emphasis.  'I
shall be away to-morrow, and perhaps the next day, but
Dr. Langdale will look after her.  By-the-way, how is your
last patient, the crow?  Langdale had grave fears as to his
recovery at one time.'

Soon after the doctor left the patient fell into a deep
sleep, and leaving Maisie in charge of the sick-room, Stella
went to see after the horses.  She found Dunstan giving
them small measures of bran and oats, and looking at them
with a mingled pity, amazement, and scorn that was
irresistibly funny.

'You have unharnessed them, Dunstan?  That is right.
Oh, you poor, poor, dear things!'—and Stella stroked each
in turn.

'Unharnessed them, Miss Stelly?  Well, yes, if you calls
them bits o' broken rope and rawr hide harness.  I'm
jiggered, but it's the very rummiest turn-out ever I seed.
And what can have come to her husband?'

'Oh, she may not have one, Dunstan.'

But Dunstan shook his head.  'Ah, Miss Stelly, you
don't never find a female get into such a hole without she's
a married 'oman.  That's the way along o' some women.
If they want to enjy themselves at all, and are proper-like,
they gets married, and then mostly they has a very bad
time.  They're like these yaller little birds; you sticks 'em
in a cage, and they buzz agin the wires; and yet, if you let
them go out into the wilds, they get knocked about, and
can't get proper tucker.'

Dunstan spoke in a leisurely, high-pitched voice, which
had a very odd effect.  He was given to moralizing, and
had those quaint reaches of fancy that are often found with
men whose lives are passed out-of-doors in gardening, or
shepherding, or other undrudging avocations.

Stella with difficulty refrained from laughter at this
summing-up of the disabilities of her sex.

'I don't think you would like to be a woman, Dunstan?'

'Well, no, Miss Stelly.  If so be that such a thing could
happen, and God A'mighty give me the pick to be a female
or a worm, I'd say a worm, if you please; meaning no
disrespect to the A'mighty or to you, Miss Stelly.  A worm, to
be sure, has a lowly life, and unless it's cut in two or
swallered alive, not much happens in the span of its days.
But what's that to having things allays happening, and each
one worse than t'other?  I ought to know.  I'm married to
my third wife, and not one of the three ever had six months
proper health on end.'

Dunstan was portioning out further doles of oats and
giving them to the horses as he spoke, so that Stella could
enjoy these reflections without checking the flow of his
thoughts.  Dunstan himself seldom laughed, and when
others did so at his serio-comic sayings, it disconcerted
and, in the end, silenced him.

'I b'lieve they have had enough; but the poor old
karkisses look so starved,' he said, as the horses set to once
more.

'And they are so galled.  Dunstan, don't you think if I
bathed their sores with a little warm water—oh yes, I am
sure of it.'  Stella hastened away, and soon returned with
a china bowl of tepid water and a soft sponge, with which
she deftly bathed one sore after another.

'They seem to enjoy it just as if they was Christians,'
said Dunstan, and then he went to the kitchen and brought
out a pailful of warm water, as that in the basin soon got
discoloured with the dust and sand.  Then he stood by as
Stella went from one poor skinny creature to another,
caressing and speaking to them in a low, fond voice.

Both were so much absorbed that they did not notice the
approach of Hector Courtland and Dr. Langdale, who stood
at a little distance looking on at the scene with faces full of
an amused interest, and some deeper feeling withal, as they
watched the girl's tender ministration on the poor galled
scarecrow horses.

'Why, here's Dr. Langdale with the master,' said
Dunstan, suddenly perceiving them.  'It must be serious for
the poor female if she must have two doctors.'  Though
Langdale was so frequent a visitor, Dunstan somehow
connected his appearance at that juncture with the event of
the day.

'Well, Stella, this little performance of yours caps all
your previous finds,' said Hector, looking at the three horses
with beaming eyes.

'St. Charity, I would give much to have your picture
painted as you stood here bathing the sores of these horses,'
said Langdale, and as she returned his greeting there was
an expression in his face which made her look quickly away.

'And this is only part of the caravan, sir,' said Dunstan,
addressing his master.  'Besides these horses that the crows
would hardly get a mouthful on, there's the waggon, fit only
for firewood, a cockatoo that would set your hair on end
with blasphemy, and a onfortinate female as can't say a
word, good or bad.'

'We cannot permit you to keep the cockatoo, St. Charity,'
said Langdale.  'I understand he is worse than any of the
orthodoxies, consigning people to eternal and entire perdition
irrespective of their opinions.'

'Well, he does swear very badly,' said Stella, smiling.
'We fed him and put him in exile.  He is on a perch in
the stable.'

'But who ever heard of a backslider being reformed in a
stable?  Look here, Courtland, cannot you suggest a better
asylum for a foundling whose moral nature has been
perverted?'

'His native woods, I should think; unless you take him
in hand yourself, Langdale, as well as the "onfortinate
female" as Dunstan calls her.'

'Are you going to look after my patient, Dr. Langdale?'
asked Stella, who stood sponging the roan horse's neck for
the second time.

'Yes—free, gratis, for nothing, unless you are a refractory
nurse; in which case I shall charge you a guinea a visit.
Now, if you let me put a little vaseline on these sore places,
your new pets will recover all the sooner.'

Stella went immediately to beg a pot of vaseline from Louise.

'There must be a semi-tragic story behind this curious
little adventure,' said Langdale, examining the waggon.
And then Courtland recalled some curious stories that had
come to his knowledge in past years of people who had
attempted to make long journeys with horses or teams of
bullocks through unknown country and came to signal grief.
'But this is the first time I ever heard of a woman and a
blaspheming cockatoo journeying through the Bush, evidently
for months.'





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.. _`CHAPTER XXXII`:

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   CHAPTER XXXII

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There are probably few who have passed their first youth
without indulging now and then in conjectures as to how
many would really befriend them if they were completely
stranded in life—say, without money or position, and under
the shadow of some imputed crime.  We begin the world as
a rule with pathetic confidence in ourselves and others.
Heaven is full of beneficence, earth crowded with friends.
There is so much that we can do; there are so many whose
eyes will brighten at the prizes we are to pluck by the way.
And then our contests are to be won without stooping to
the stratagems of canvassing; we are to head our polls
without the indignity of hedging.  Later on, there is still
much to be done; but little quite so well worth dying for as
our own hearts and the poets whispered in the early days.
We begin to suspect, too, that Providence sends biscuits
chiefly to those who have no teeth.  Our dearest aims have
a trick of eluding us, and leaving the tedious hours full of
the memories of spent bubbles.  The rude breath of
experience—that *figmentum malum* in the life of man—has
shrivelled so many tender illusions.  Life is not so amusing.
Some of its most comical jokes are elaborated at our own
expense.  This kind of payment impairs one's sense of
humour.  And those myriad orbs that were to sparkle at
our feats?  Alas! most of the eyes we now know are keen
only to detect that the plumage of our prize-bird is gray
rather than white.  And so in our more egotistical moments—and
these come to all—the question may arise, 'If I were
entirely defeated in this tiresome drama, which begins in
youth, like the rising of a curtain on a fairy scene, and goes
on like a scene in which there is nothing fairy-like, save
gold, how many would really stand by me?'  If one were
thus defeated, in fact as well as imagination, probably the
very best thing that could befall one would be to find one's
self in the Australian Bush not very far from a head-station.

So at least it proved in the case of the poor woman Stella
Courtland had come upon.  She was dangerously ill for
several days.

During this time, Stella and Langdale saw each other
daily, and drew very near to each other.  The woman's first
coherent inquiry was for 'Jack,' which turned out to be the
cockatoo.  Stella brought him into the bedroom the woman
occupied.  He erected his crest, and fluttered about,
muttering imprecations of various kinds.

'He knows me, sure enough,' said his mistress in a
gratified tone.  'You can't think, ma'am, what a comfort
it was to hear him when I was alone.  He do swear badly,
but it was like having a Christian body near one to hear
him....  He never come back.  I didn't expect he would,
after hearing the shots; but, if I live long enough, Bill
Taylor will swing for it....  The saddle—oh, the saddle,
Miss Stella!—was it took care of?'  (She started up in bed
in great excitement.  Stella assured her it was all right in
the harness-room.)  'Oh, but I must get it—I must see it.
I'll put somethin' round me, and go out to look at it.'

Stella thought this was but a freak of the fever that still
lingered in her brain; and to keep the woman quiet, she
sent Maisie for the saddle, which was old and worn and
externally destitute of any points that would justify one in
setting such high value on it.  But appearances are
proverbially deceitful.

The woman clutched it eagerly.  She had never acquired
any of those amenities that, even among the lower orders of
women, help as a rule to keep social intercourse on a higher
plane than the primeval scramble in which egotism was the
sole standard of conduct.  And yet she had many distinctly
human qualities.

Maisie went out of the room, and resumed her sewing in
the nursery, where the upper nurse sat with the six-months-old
baby in her arms.

'Is your young lady going out riding this morning?' she
asked.

'Indeed, Jane, I cannot tell ye,' answered Maisie with a
toss of her head.  'What Miss Stella's ma would say to her
nursing an ill-mannered person like yon I don't know.
Miss Stella should leave her till us, and then she'd be cured
a little of whims and whams.  There, she has that awfu'
swearin' cockie in the room, and now a dirty old saddle,
and there comes the doctor.  I wish he would cure her
soon, and let her be packing with her duds and screws of
horses.'

Servants who are accustomed to the refined courtesy of
gentlewomen resent nothing more strongly than being spoken
to roughly.  This, indeed, is one of the causes which often
creates a disastrous barrier between them and men in their
own rank.

The sight which met Dr. Langdale on entering the
sick-room that morning was a curious one.  The large, dingy
cockatoo stood on the toilet-table, close to the bed,
muttering, 'Hang him—hang him!' in a rough, deep voice.  The
patient was sitting up in bed, an old saddle turned upside
down before her, the lining ripped open, disclosing underneath
one side a deep layer of extremely soiled bank-notes,
on the other nuggets of gold, ranging from the size of peas
to pigeon-eggs, some embedded in quartz, others with the
earth still clinging to them.  Stella stood at the foot of the
bed, looking on in silent wonder.  Neither had heard the
doctor's tap, and even when he opened the door, saying,
'May I come in?' the patient went on with a calculation
which absorbed all her faculties.

'Ten—twenty—forty—fifty—fifty-five; yes, that's the
one-pounders—that is right.  Then, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine, ten——tenners; and five twenties,
and two fifties.  And the gold——'

'I fear you do not approve of this proceeding, Dr. Langdale?'
said Stella as they shook hands.

'If anyone is to be blamed it's me, sir,' said the woman,
who seemed to be thoroughly roused by the process of
reckoning up the hoard before her.

The doctor tested her temperature, and found it rather
high.  'If you throw yourself back, you know——' he began,
in a grave voice.

'Well, sir, I know it makes my head beat; but it would
have been worse to keep on thinking p'r'aps it was lost.  I
don't rightly remember things for days before I got here.
That's my marriage lines, ma'am,' she said, holding out a
very soiled slip of paper to Stella.  'I don't know what
makes you so good to me, such an object as I must have
been when you saw me.  You couldn't tell what sort I
might be.  And I'd like you to know I'm an honest woman.
And if things go wrong——'

'Oh, things will go all right, if you keep quiet,' said
Langdale.  'You have an iron constitution.'

'Thank you, sir; but I'd sooner tell the young lady and
you how it was, in case; and then I know I'll feel more
restful like.  I've laid here many an hour turning things
over when I wasn't able to wag my tongue.  I don't know
whether you've heard of Poor Man's Diggings ever.  They
don't make no flare, but from seventy to eighty men have
been working there quietly for two years.  Jack and me was
there eighteen months—that's my husband.  The men
called the cockie after him, because he was a great swearer,
and the bird was the dead spit of him in that way.  Jack
was a digger, and we had a little general store and a
sly-grog shanty.  But he was fined so often, at last I said to
him it would be cheaper to take out a license, and so he did.
But he took to hard drinking and gambling, and six months
ago we left, for we had enough money to go back to our
friends in Sydney.  We was both born there.  There was
no one to take the license off our hands, so Jack carried
away all the grog that was left, and that was the ruin of
him.  When we came across any teamsters, he used to
gamble for a couple of days at a time.  I've seen him play
at poker and lose two bottles of rum and a five-pound note
and one of the horses all within an hour.  And then he'd
have to buy his horse back.

'At last I took and planted the money and the gold you
see here.  It was once when he was drinking very bad, and
gambling with a little man called One-leg Bill.  He had
followed us from the diggings—'t any rate, so I believe,
though he pretended to come upon us quite by accident.
But none is so surprised as them that gives their mind to
it, and that was the way with One-leg, I'm pretty sure.
Jack was that given to the gamble, when there was no one
else he'd play with me.  But then there wasn't enough
"go" in it, for if he lost to me, he could take it from me.
Well, One-leg had his horse and swag and kep us company
for near a month, winning a good deal more money nor he
lost.  At last, when Jack wasn't by, I told him to clear, and
I'd give him twenty pounds without no playing nor cheating.
He was a unhonest vermin, if ever there lived any!

'Well, he tuk the twenty pounds, but still he hung round,
till one day we camped at a water-hole, and he said he was
going to take a cut off for the nearest railway line to
Melbourne in the morning.  I dunno why, but I didn't
b'lieve him.  Certainly, he never told the truth, unless he
had an accident in speaking like.  But it wasn't that only.
In the middle of the night I heard a noise, and I put my
head out quiet-like, and there was One-leg sitting by the
camp fire, polishing up his revolver.  That gave me a turn,
and I didn't sleep another wink.  Of course, people has to
keep their firearms in order travelling in the Bush, but
still——

'Well, in the morning Jack was very drowsy-like, and
when he woke up he didn't seem inclined to make an early
start.  No more did One-leg.  I gathered up the things and
put-to the horses in the afternoon, and One-leg saddled
hisen.  Then, just as I thought we was going to start, they
both set off for a little stroll.  I knowed well that what Jack
wanted was to gamble.  He had took a Bible oath to me
two days afore not to touch a card with One-leg again, and
he was 'shamed to do it before me.  Many's the time since
I wished I'd let him alone; but I meaned it for good,
though it come out very crooked.  I made signs to Jack to
come to me and ast him to take his rifle.  But when a man
has been drinking off and on so long, he don't have his wits
about him much to speak of.

'I watched 'em go out of sight in the woods, and all to
once I began to cooey after Jack as loud as I could.  But
he never turned his head.  One-leg turned round and waved
his hand with a grin, and then hobbled on.  He had a
wooden leg and used a stick, and there was his lather bag
with the revolver on his back.  I waited and waited, but
they didn't come back; and then about sunset I heard two
shots—one after She uther.  I went cold all over, and, if
you b'lieve me, I felt is if the blood was running out of my
side, and a horrid, burning pain.  I sot where I was in the
waggon, not able to move; and then it went through me
like sparks of fire: "One-leg ull come and put a bullet
through me next, and then he'll have everything, and never
a soul to peach on him."

'With that I tuk the reins and made a start, and then I
thought, "If I leave his horse Sambo, he'll overtake me in
no time."  So I put a piece of rope round his neck, and tied
him to the waggon.  He had got used to following like that
when Jack and One-leg sot playing cards, and I druv.  They
was all pretty fresh, for there was good grass round the
water-hole, and we had spelled for nearly two days.
Everything was swimming before me, and somehow I tuk the
wrong turn—came back istid of going towards New South
Wales boundary.  I thought of turning round, but there
was One-leg coming out of the wood—alone, and yelling
after me like mad.  I just whipped up the horses as fast
as they would go, and Sambo come on after the waggon
fine.  But the way that One-leg run and roared no one
would b'lieve.  It made me go cold all over to think Sambo
might break the rope and fall into his hands.  But he
didn't, and he was soon out of sight.  I travelled all night,
and kep the horses up to it as fast as they would go, and
took cross roads.  Next day they was so knocked up I had
to spell them.

'But my sleep went off altogether.  I was waiting always
for One-leg to come and shoot me.  I dunno how long it
was—I dunno what country.  I met people now and
then—teamsters and hawkers mostly, and I passed the time of
day, but I never ast one a question.  I'd got to be
suspicious of men—they seemed, all of 'em I knew, such a poor
mean lot.  Sometimes when I passed people I kept up a
talk as if poor Jack was sitting inside.  But at night that
made me feel creepy.  Jill began to be very raw and
knocked up, so one day I put Sambo in, but 'twas as if the
very mischief was in him.  He broke the bridle all to
pieces, and ran away with all of us till he couldn't move.
Everything got worn out.  When I put the other bridle on
him that was broke too; till I had never a bit—leastways,
I had the bits, but nothing rightly to fasten them to.  Not
that it mattered much, for they was now that tame—what
with no grass, and very little water, and going on and on,
not knowing where, but hoping always to come to a little
township, but never one.  I used to take a track this way
and that—and I think many a time I turned my back
straight on what would have took me to a township with
womenfolk and children and police.

'At last, when I was getting to know I'd got some sort of
fever on me, I met a hawker, and I asked him the nearest
way to a township, and he said to keep on and I'd come to
Narryhoouta, or some such name.  And I kep on, but I lost
count of days, and I hadn't strength to take the horses out
of the waggon, and I could see they wouldn't go much
farther.  I dozed away like, seeing all sorts of things, just
like poor Jack when he had the horrors.  Then it came like
a dream that a young lady looked in at me, and spoke to me
so gentle I couldn't hear what she said.  And then I saw
more ladies, but everyone was so kind it seemed all dreams.
And then I woke up at nights, and I thought maybe 'tis
true about heaven—but 'twas a deal more cheerfuller than
I've ever heard tell about heaven; what with one soft light
burning, and no crowd, and one kind woman to attend on
me, and nothing to do, not even to sing, but just lie still in
white soft things, and no awful creaking going on and on.
And then in the daytime you come to me—often in white,
ma'am.  I just used to shut my eyes and keep still for fear
it would all go different.  And then there was you, sir, as
kind as anyone, though a man.'

'Yes; but I'll not be kind if you say any more to-day,'
said Dr. Langdale very gently.

'Very well, sir—I'm quite content to lie still now.  The
money is all safe, and the young lady and you knows all.
Yes, the saddle of course must go, but if the young lady
would put the notes and gold away till I get about; and if
I don't there's the address of my father and mother on the
back of my marriage-lines.'

'That was a curious little story—so characteristically
Australian,' said Langdale, after they had left the sick-room,
leaving Mrs. Claude with the patient, and were strolling
toward the orchard, close to which Stella had discovered a
hymenosperum in bloom a few days previously.

'Yes,' she answered slowly, 'it seems as if there were
more heart-beats in situations that belong essentially to new
countries.  That reminds me of a little story I heard from a
sick man before I left home.'

'May I hear it, St. Charity?'

'Yes—that is, if you are good, as the children say.'

'How can I be otherwise when I am with you?'

'A fine for saying that.  Friends do not pay each other
compliments.'

'No; nor yet fine each other for telling the truth.'

'Another fine.  But seriously, you do not know how bad
it is for me to be made vain.'

'If you wish to malign yourself, St. Charity, you must get
a more sympathetic audience.'

'What has put you into this mood to-day?' she said,
laughing in his face.

'To-day?' he echoed, his eyes kindling.  'Do you think
a man can be privileged to be near you so often, to watch
your gracious kindliness, your perfect courtesy, your
varying moods, each one more charming than the last,
without——'

He stopped abruptly—and then Stella, who had grown
suddenly pale, replied in a voice that was a little tremulous:

'Werthester Freund, I remit all those fines; for when
you speak like that I feel as lowly as Dunstan's worm.'  At
this they both laughed, for Stella had in due course related
the worthy gardener's reflections and reminiscences on the
day she had first dressed the wounds of the 'caravan'
horses, as they were called.  Their sores were now quite
healed, and the poor animals were rapidly putting on flesh
in the adjacent stock-paddock.  Indeed, Sambo had been
observed to kick up his heels on more than one occasion.

'Hush,' said Stella suddenly; 'there are strange
bird-notes,' and sure enough there were plaintive long-drawn
calls heard on the banks of the swallow-pool, in the
Oolloolloo, near which the two were then standing.  Stella
stole on tiptoe nearer the bank, and Langdale followed her
as noiselessly as he could.  'Oo-da-warra, oo-da-warra,' the
groves resounded with these cries.  They came from two
bronze-winged pigeons on the brink of the pool.  It would
be difficult to name any other birds whose plumage forms
a more perfect model of harmonious tints.  The wings
gleamed more lustrously than precious stones—dark, and
pale-brown feathers, with iridescent gleams as of
mother-of-pearl on the coverts; a deep, gleaming purplish tint on
the breast, and the legs a perfect carmine.  They drank
repeatedly of the water, rested for a little, and flew on their
way westward.

'Charming woodland visitors—they drank of our swallow-pool,
rested in the shade of our trees, and then flew away!'
said Stella wistfully.  'Did you notice,' she added, 'what
soft appealing eyes they had?'

The truth was that Langdale had watched her face rather
than the bronze-winged pigeons.

'Yes, they were lovely!' he answered, Jesuitical
fashion—speaking of those he had seen, while his words conveyed
another meaning.

'So are all pigeons' eyes!' Stella went on, encouraged by
her friend's evident enthusiasm; 'very different from parrots,
who have hard beady eyes—even the sweet little shell
parrots, perfect sonnets as they are in emerald and pale
jonquil.'

'And parrots scream rather badly, too; don't they?'

'Yes; but there are times when they warble most musically;
not only the smaller kinds, like the shells, the
porphyry-headed, and the little ones with deep-red faces,
but also larger ones, like the rock-pebblers.  We watched
some of them in the orchard the other day, wandering on
the ground, picking up seeds and things and making the
gentlest cooing sounds imaginable.  The male bird was a
magnificent creature, in scarlet and dark green and yellow
and lazuline blue.'

And while chatting after this fashion, they reached the
hymenosperum, a beautiful tree of Eastern Australia, with
glossy eucalyptus-like leaves and drooping clusters of long
slender bell-blossoms, from eight to twelve in a bunch,
ranging in colour from delicate cream to saffron, and
fragrant as orange-flowers.  Stella uttered an exclamation
of surprise when she saw the tree arrayed in opening
blooms.

'There were so few out two or three days ago,' she cried,
'and now they are out in hundreds!  But that is always
the way in our spring.  It is like what Pliny says of the
oak-galls, that they break out altogether in one night about
the beginning of June.'

'But don't forget,' said Langdale, smiling, 'that Pliny
the Elder gave good reason for being styled *mendaciorum
patrem*.  But this tree of yours is perfectly lovely.  When
your Australian trees do blossom, they do it in a wonderfully
generous fashion—and how exquisitely scented!'

Then Stella drew his attention to a bee that was struggling
hard to penetrate into the depths of one of the deep
flower-bells.  It was too slender for the industrious creature's
body, or its thighs were too heavily laden with wax; for
after writhing for some time, with a muffled half-angry hum,
the bee drew out its head and shoulders.  Instead, however,
of going to any of the myriad flowers around, it still clung
to the coveted blossom, and began to bite a hole at the base
of the delicate waxen tube, so as to get at its honeyed
treasures from the outside.

'I must put that into my country journal,' said Stella.

'Do you put everything into your journal?' asked Langdale.

He noticed a soft flush mantling in her cheeks as she
answered:

'Yes; spiders and bees, when I catch them "writing
deep morals upon Nature's pages."  As a special favour you
may come and see our pet spider web; it is in a hawthorn-bush,
whose first spray budded yesterday, that is, on the
third of September.'

On their way to this treasure, Stella pointed out wide
groups of her favourite spring-flowers, now in full beauty—here
a clump of the Santa Maria narcissus, blue Apennine
windflowers, and other wide white ones of the Japanese
variety; everywhere golden daffodils and settlements of the
velvet-soft many-coloured polyanthus.

'How little notice you take of these brilliant bushes of
flowers, St. Charity!'

'Oh, the petunias and rhodanthes!  Well, most of them
are so hard and scentless.  With a cunning pair of scissors,
wire, and a few sheets of French-coloured paper, one might
turn out basketfuls of these you would hardly know from
the originals.'

'Now, how can you urge that as an objection when you
love the native "immortelle" so dearly?'

'But don't you see the difference between flowers so
much cared for and cultivated, and those that spring up in
sandy deserts?  Flowers in gardens are the Hebrews, with
prophets and leaders and angelic visitations.  But when
Marcus Aurelius says, "If there are no gods it is ill to live;
if there are gods, it is well to die"—that is an everlasting
in the desert.'

'I humbly crave pardon for my foolish objection.  Yet I
am glad I made it, for the sake of your answer.'

'This is our spider-web!' said Stella, pausing by the
hawthorn-bush.  'See what a delicate tracery of silk and
light it is, with a cloud-like little woof in the centre.  Now,
is that to turn into the spiders of the future?'

'Yes, I imagine so, when the time is fulfilled,' said
Langdale, looking at the web with grave attention.  'Who
bent this spray, and fastened it so as to protect the web?'

'I did.  You see, this tiny hammock—the most exquisite
baby-cradle of nature—looked so forlornly exposed to all
the caprices of fate: the wind, and insects, and fowls of the
air.'

'Yes; we all live at each other's cost, whether we dwell
in palaces or the crevices of a tree's bark; but the spider
has a sterner struggle than most: he hangs perpetually in
suspense, unless St. Charity devises schemes to protect him.
But why does she watch this little cocoon with so much
interest?'

'I have an incredible curiosity to see one or more infant
spiders of unblemished life, "ere sin could blight or sorrow
fade"—even before they have tasted the blood of a fly.  It
is a sorrowful thought that though I have seen so many
thousand spiders, I have never seen an innocent one!'

He laughed, but all the time one who observed him closely
might see that he was becoming more constrained and
preoccupied, as if there were some struggle going on in his
mind.

'You have not told me that other little story yet.  Suppose
you tell it to me by the hymenosperum tree; and, by the
way, you must say something distinctive about that graceful
creature—something that will go with the image of it when
it rises in my memory: tall and slender, arrayed in pale
saffron, like an Eastern bride.'

'I am sure I cannot think of anything more distinctive
than that,' laughed Stella.  'I shall borrow a metaphor and
give it to you.  "As a saint is to ordinary good people, so
is a hymenosperum to other flowering trees."'

'Here is our tree,' said Langdale, 'with a little rural seat
near.  Now, please tell me your story.'

She told him Thomson's little narrative, not forgetting to
give a rapid, brilliant little sketch of her old friend
Mr. Ferrier—'the best little man in the world; but he is like
cheese o'er renneted; so much in earnest that he can enjoy
hardly any of the play of life.'

'I think we may put that down as a thirty-seventh tragic
situation,' said Langdale; 'the poor man trying in his
simple fashion to Christianize the savage mother of his
child; and the two breaking into loud laughter at him in
the night.'

He took out a little pocket diary as he spoke, and with it
an unopened letter.

'Oh, I had forgotten this,' he said.  'The English mail
was delivered as I left the house this morning.'

'Do you put aside letters without reading them?' said
Stella in surprise.

'Well, not as a rule,' he answered, smiling; 'but there
were family letters that kept me occupied till I got here;
and then, you know, at Lull there are things so much more
interesting than letters from one's lawyer.'

'You may read it now—I will excuse you,' said Stella,
and she went to gather clusters of the fragrant
hymenosperum blossoms, picking out those that had just opened,
which were pale cream, and mixing with them a few of
those that had been opened a few days, which had assumed
a delicate saffron tint.  Then the clear musical song of a
superb warbler rose near, and she saw one on a laurustinus
bush not far off—a little male bird, gorgeous in its spring
attire of shining pale azure and dark blue, its little tail
erect as that of a fan tail pigeon.

Stella was away long enough to permit the perusal of
many pages.  But when she returned Langdale still stood
engrossed with his letter.  He looked hard at the girl as
she drew near to him, and his face, usually so calm, betrayed
curious signs of agitation.

'You have had no ill news, I hope?' said Stella softly.

'Ill news?—no.  St. Charity, is it true——  But I have
no right to force your confidence.  Only there are affairs
that hasten my departure for England—and there is
something I want to know.  Will you think my curiosity an
abuse of our friendship?'

'Oh no, I am sure I shall not,' she answered promptly.

'Then—are you engaged to be married?'

'Certainly not.  I was once, for a short time,' she added,
colouring deeply; 'but it was a mistake.'

She saw his eyes suddenly grow radiant.

'Then, sweet St. Charity, I am going to ask a great
favour.  May I write to you after I get to England?'

His face was very pale, and his voice shaken.  No one
who heard and saw him could deem that the permission he
asked was concerned with the interchange of merely friendly
sentiments.  Least of all Stella, whose quick insight played
round even indifferent matters with the fellowship of wide
sympathy.

She struggled with some rising emotion.  But her voice
was clear and firm as she answered:

'Yes—you may; and here is a little bouquet I have
gathered for you.'

He took it and held it to his lips.  And then for a little
time, as they turned homeward, neither spoke.  There are
moments in life when speech is an impertinence—when
words the most winged and penetrating are too leaden-soled
for the thoughts that rise in endless succession—swift and
golden as sun-rays glancing upon waves.

'I shall write to your mother and Hector, you know, at
the same time,' he said, as they drew near the house.

'But the longest letter must be to me,' she answered,
trying to speak lightly; 'and it must be very wise, and
partly in German.'

'When do you leave, St. Charity?'

'On the fifteenth—eleven days from this.  And you?'

'I should like to leave the same day you do, only I must
stay till Morrison gets his assistant.  He is overdone and
overworked.  But he is advertising in the Melbourne and
Adelaide papers.  I shall be back in four months, I suppose,
from the time I sail.  Will you——'

He stopped abruptly.  He was evidently struggling with
conflicting currents of thought.  Stella, who, in the tumult
of her own emotion, was keenly conscious of the agitation
that betrayed itself in Langdale's voice and manner, tried in
vain to speak of some indifferent subject.  But seeing Louise
near at hand among the shrubs, her courage returned.





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.. _`CHAPTER XXXIII.`:

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   CHAPTER XXXIII.

.. vspace:: 2

Stella sat that night writing till late, and then for hours,
by her open window, looking into the starry skies, an
expression of peaceful happiness on her face, which for a
time was unclouded by even a passing shadow.  She had
been sure for many days past that her ideal friendship was
in peril.  She knew that, time after time, words and
questions had risen to Langdale's lips which he had kept back.
She had seen that he strove with contending emotions, and
once or twice she had lightly parried one of those leading
questions which, if not turned aside, would have been as
the letting in of waters.  She found it so entirely exquisite,
the bliss of loving and being loved, without the gadgrind of
outside opinion, without the desperate seriousness of having
to think of the future as a fixed, imponderable, menacing
responsibility; nay, without any avowal spoken by the lips.
And now the precious secret would be hers for four long
months to come.  There would be no interchange of vows,
no assurances.  They had met as friends, and as friends
they would part.  She laughed a low, glad laugh to herself,
as she pictured Esther's face when she would tell her this.
It would be quite true—till he returned.

Till he returned?  How her heart beat at the thought.
If he left in October, he might be back in March at the
latest.  The late roses would be still in bloom, and the
chrysanthemums would be coming in.  He loved her to
wear great clusters of roses at the throat.  What time of
day would it be when he came to the dear old Fairacre
home?  She hoped it would be twilight—just before the
lamps were lit.  There would be great china bowlfuls of
roses in the hall, and delicate pink and pale cream-coloured
Japanese chrysanthemums.  'I love the Japanese for
making a festival in honour of this flower,' she thought.
And then she mused over far-away, strange countries.
Would they see them all together?  Oh! what leaps to
make! and they had not yet been betrothed.  Yes, in the
twilight.  There would be a golden glow lingering in the
west, and far above that the inimitable rose-lilac colour
which steals so often into the evening sky, when the
wearying languor of the long summer is over.  Rose-lilac? no,
that was a burlesque of the real tint.  There was in it the
pink of wet sea-shells, and a faint tinge of a very pale lilac
pansy, and over all a divine haze, as if a great white star
had been melted in the air.  What name was there for
such a colour as that?  None.  What name was there for
the flood of happiness that thrilled her through when their
eyes and hands met at parting?  Love!  But all the dreadful,
commonplace, earthly creatures who ever got engaged
took that word in vain.  Come back, ye wandering little
imps of thoughts, and finish this twilight scene.  Would
she be in the garden when he came?  Of course she would
know about what time the vessel would reach Glenelg.  It
would be telegraphed first from King George's Sound, and
in less than four days afterwards it would be sighted off
Cape Borda.  When Tom went to his office that morning,
she would take him aside, and say: 'Can you keep a
secret?  I don't suppose you can.  You mustn't laugh, you
mustn't cry; you must do the best you can.'

'What is it, Baby?  Have you given away your last
half-crown to Honora, or some other old vagabond, and
haven't got a pair of gloves to put on?'

'No, Tom, it isn't that.  But the——'  What would be
the name of the ship?  The *Nepaul* or the *Lusitania*?
Some such name very likely.  But she would give it one of
her own—the *Pâquerette*.  Where did that come from?
Oh, from some lines her old French master had taught her,
telling of a custom the village maidens had in France for
testing how much they were beloved:

   |  "'La blanche et simple Paquerette,
   |  Que ton coeur consult surtout
   |  Dit: ton amant, tendre filette
   |  J'aime, un peu, beaucoup, point du tout."'

Yes.  'But the *Pâquerette* is coming in to-day, and I want
to know the exact time she reaches Glenelg.  Send me a
telegram.  Oh! put it in your official note-book, and,
whatever you do, don't forget.  Ah, you are very good; I know
you never forget.  But this is more important than the
creation of the world, or the Christian era, or anything.'  She
wouldn't go anywhere that day, and if any visitors
came, she would retreat into the study—the dear old little
library with the pale, sea-green cretonne curtains, with
brown sedges and water-lilies all over them.  She had
bought them herself when the green damask ones had
grown so very faded, and she had climbed up on the ladder
to fasten them, and caught sight of a little row of books
behind the old Divinity ones that were never disturbed, and
the first one she took up was *Candide*.  She read twenty
pages of it standing on the ladder.  Was there any domain
of life so pungently vulgar as those twenty pages?  Or were
books like *Candide* hidden away behind tomes of Divinity
because these last were so fanciful—women and children
might read them—while the others were too true to be left
within reach?  Would she ever tell Anselm?  Well, perhaps;
if he persisted in calling her St. Charity.  What
beautiful intonations there were in his voice when he was
talking very gravely, and how deep and steadfast his eyes
were!  Would he ever look angrily at her?  Sometimes
she had tried to provoke him, but the more she tried the
more he was amused.  But then, after years of married
life, would not some taint of marital coldness creep into his
manner?  Heavens! what a bound to make—and they had
not yet met!

She would retreat into the library if visitors came that
day.  But she would be unable to read.  Nothing that ever
was written could interest a girl who was waiting for the
beloved of her heart—the only man she ever loved or ever
could love.  Oh, what a dreadful creature she had been to
think of marrying when her heart had been as unmoved as
the nether millstone.  What could have possessed her on
that steel gray day in June, when Ted pressed his suit so
ardently, and laid his thirteen thousands a year at her feet,
and told her he could never care for anyone but herself;
and at last she gave a shuddering half-reluctant consent,
and he trembled with happiness, and she allowed him to
kiss her?  Great heavens! how could she?  She rose up,
and laved her face in cold water as she thought of it.

She wished that no one had ever loved her; and yet how
could she tell that she could not have loved anyone but
Anselm if no one else had wooed her?  But then she should
not have found it so amusing.  Yes, she knew well she had
a thread of the coquette in her.  She liked to know that
people thought her charming and admired her.  How
unworldly she had been at one time!  How incredible it
seemed that her keenest ideal of joy had been to give
herself wholly to God—to the lowliest services of life.  What
voices were these that came wandering back, austere with
renunciations and sleepless vigils?  Poor earthworm, yearning
for security in the contentments of this fleeting show—a
perpetual day-drudge to the delusion of perfect earthly
happiness—consider how slight a breeze may scatter thy
bliss—even as a gust of wind levels a small dust-heap!  Hast
thou forgotten what a thankless runaway slave is joy?  She
had read so many of the Saints and Fathers, she could have
run on in homilies for hours.  But, after all, there was
something unreal in their depreciation of life—they spoke
in the hieratic style, as Anselm had said.....  Would she
get into the trick of quoting him eternally, as so many wives
did?  Wives!  Do people ever know how bold girls can be
in their imagination?

No, she could not read while she waited.  She would sit
in the chair in which her father always sat when he taught
the three of them—Cuthbert, Alice, and herself.  How kind
and gentle he always was—how he taught them to love the
best books, and make fast friends of them, and as far as in
them lay to do good to all men.  How brave and pure and
just his life had been—how full of kindly deeds and thoughts;
and yet to the last his mind retained that lambent play of
humorous irony—that quick perception of what was droll
or incongruous.  She could see the quiet half-smile that
played so habitually round his lips.  Only two days before
his death, she had read to him some scenes out of *Cymbeline*.....
That was a strange awakening before dawn, when, at
the last, the end came so unexpectedly.  The cocks were
crowing when Kirsty called herself and Alice, and there was
a strange grayness on his face when they entered the room.

How often since, when she woke at cock-crow, she had
gone over the story of her father's life—thinking even of
the day on which he first saw light—and then his brilliant
student days, when he had won scholarly distinctions; and
the long vacation, one summer, when he met his future bride
in the old Surrey deanery where she was spending the
summer.  She was nearly twenty-one and he was twenty-four,
and a year later they were married.  And now it was all
over; but surely—surely somewhere that spirit, so keen to
feel and love up to the last, was enshrined in a fuller, larger
life than that can ever be where the soul is clogged by a
material companion.....  Could Anselm be now content
to believe that we became a thread in the living garment of
the Infinite only by being transmuted into lowlier
forms? .... How quickly they had crept into each other's modes
of thought and opinions and most cherished fancies!  They
never spoke to others of the things they discussed together.
Would they ever listen to each other with a yawn, and even
forget in time the anniversary of their wedding-day?  What,
married again—and they were not yet plighted lovers....

Well, when the visitors were gone, she would go back
into the drawing-room and watch the clock.  The sun was
setting, and the *Pâquerette* had come in at five.  Would
she stay in the garden till some one came and told her
he had come?  Yes, of course, Alice would know, and her
mother; for Anselm was going to write to her from England.
What would she wear?  Pink *crêpe de chine* and
cream-coloured chrysanthemums—no; cream-coloured cashmere
and scarlet fairy roses.  She would pluck them at sunset,
so that they would be fresh and fragrant; and at that
moment Alice would skim down the vine-arcade: 'He is
here, Stella; your friend has come!'  Her heart beat so
loud and hard, that she placed her hand over it.  She went
up through the vine-arcade, that bent under its great
clusters of grapes—a white-breasted fantail carolling overhead,
mad with mirth, as though it had sipped some frantic
liquor; and now she was in the hall, her hand was on
the door.  Stella!—Anselm!—and then she shrank from
his encircling arms with the thought, 'I am glad it will
be yet four months before we meet as lovers!'  And then
a quick, sudden fear awoke in her heart.  'Oh, my love—my
love, you have come back, all the way across the salt
dividing sea!' and with that she burst into low sobs: 'Oh,
the way is so far—so far; and sometimes there are dreadful
storms!' she moaned.  The adder that lies ever at the
heart of passion had awakened, and stung her.

What light was this stealing into the room?  She looked
at the stars and found them pale and shrunken; there was
no need to turn to the east for tidings of the dawn.  Already
the birds had learned the secret.  A Boobook owl gave
a loud sad koor-koo, as if the light had suddenly smitten it
blind.  A curlew called in the distance by the Oolloolloo,
and near at hand some magpies began their finished trills
and flutings, but stopped short as they seemed on the point
of breaking into the mellow ripeness of summer song.

There are some dawns that enfold the earth as with
the unspeakable beauty of Holiness.  This was one of
them.  There was none of the fiery splendour that so
often heralds day in Australia—especially in the summer,
when the whole east is often kindled into a throbbing
ocean of almost intolerable beauty.  But this divine
hue was the selfsame '*dolce color d'oriental zaffiro*' that
blessed Dante's sight when he escaped from the murky
atmosphere of hell.  Morn, treading proudly on golden
sandals, spread from horizon to horizon, till it seemed as if
day were added to day, and the whole world overflowed
with light.  It was so keenly luminous that the trees on the
Messmate ranges stood sharply outlined instead of being
merged in a continuous mass of foliage.  Then, gradually,
a deep rose-tint stole into the east, as if halls were disclosed
heaped up and running over with rose-leaves.  Never does
heaven draw so near earth, and the earth lie so open to
heaven, as in those moments when we can first say it is
morning.

Stella could not remain within doors.  She threw a soft
woollen shawl over her shoulders and went out among the
shrubs and trees.  There was a great bush of Rosamond's
glory near the front of the house, and the heavy clusters of
burning red roses that open their hearts so lavishly to the
wind, keeping back no folded petal, drew her to them as
with silken cords.  The roses quivered fitfully in the breeze,
scattering their petals on the ground, where they glowed
like delicate leaflets of vivid flame.  'Oh, what passionate
prodigals you are to shed yourselves on the relentless earth
in this fashion!  Why do you not tarry a little longer, you
generous spendthrifts?' said Stella softly, looking at them
with dimmed eyes.  Why did the tears rise so quickly,
when beforetime they came to her so tardily?  Had the
weak destiny of a woman at last overtaken her?  The dawn
had always before been so full of joy and promise—like a
great exulting *Te Deum*, the triumph of light over darkness,
the glad beginning of a new day.  But now it was strangely
solemn, charged with thoughts of those who had been and
were no more, of quiet chambers in which women had
watched their dying children, their husbands, their lovers.
Oh, the sadness and the strange mystery of those never-ending
changes that strike a chill to the heart in its gladdest
hours of fruition!  How many there were to whom the
pale splendour of this dawn brought only the awakening
consciousness of a life emptied of joy!  How many idylls
of youth and love would come to a tragic close before night
fell once more upon land and sea!  There were husbandmen
sowing grain which they would never reap, young
mothers making garments for babes that would never see
the light of day, men working and waiting for brides that
would never be theirs, gallant ships sailing the main which
would never reach their haven.  Oh, why did these dismal
thoughts rise in that hour full of the budding promise of
the crowning happiness of life?  And all the time every
bird that had a note was pouring out melody ceaselessly,
vehemently, as if it would sing its little heart into shreds.
The sparrows were deafening each other with their breathless
chatter—but high above this rose the clear sweet
treble of the fantails.  One might suppose that the swallows
saw glancing water for the first time, so buoyantly did they
skim its surface, singing snatches of madrigals the while
that were composed long before the first cave-man scratched
rude figures on stones.  Among the bamboos the
reed-warblers poured out with pauseless haste those melodious
but capricious lays in which many stolen goods are brought
to light.  Now a stave from a warbling grass-parrot, then a
careless parody of the swallow's tittering; anon the cadence
of a shell-parrot's love-song—and in between liquid blithe
little legends all their own.

'They are perfect little rogues, these brown water songsters,'
thought Stella, with a smile.  'They have as wide a
range of musical sounds as Sir Thomas More's wife, who
took lessons on the lute, the cithara, the viol, the
monochord, and the flute, which she daily practised to her
husband—poor man: and I cannot play a single instrument,
though I love music so insanely.  If Anselm is fond
of musical evenings we must get a "merlodeon."'

At this thought she laughed outright.  And then she
went inside lest she might be seen in evening attire like a
strayed reveller—for it was now close on sunrise, and smoke
was ascending from the kitchen chimney, from the men's
hut near the wool-shed, and Dunstan's cottage.  She knew
that sleep was impossible; but after bathing and putting on
a crisp morning dress she felt quite refreshed.

But how endless the day seemed!  At ten o'clock it was
difficult to realize that so much of the day still lay before
her.  At that hour a note came from Langdale to
Mrs. Courtland explaining that he would be unable to visit
Mrs. Parr, the caravan woman, as the servants called her,
on that day, as he was going to see some sick people at
a distance for Dr. Morrison.  There was a message to
St. Charity, directing her to take the patient's temperature, and
permit her to sit up for some hours if it was not over one
hundred and one.  Stella carried out these instructions, and
wrote a note for the patient to a brother in Melbourne.
Then Mrs. Morton and Julia came to ask all the Lull household
to spend the day after the next at Broadmead, it being
the fortieth anniversary of Mr. and Mrs. Morton's wedding-day.
'I don't suppose Hector and Claude will come till the
evening, but you three, and the older children, can come
early in the day.  It does seem like a tale that John and I
should be married for forty years, and never a cross word in
all that time, my dear,' she said, turning to Stella.

'Not one cross word, mamma?  And Claude and I have
not been married a year, and we have had lots of little
rows.  But then I think it's more interesting, for we are
always better friends afterwards,' said Mrs. Claude reflectively.

'Well, my dear, people must have their own way, but I
prefer always to give in,' said Mrs. Morton.  'And when I
don't really give in, your papa has so got into the habit, he
thinks I do.  And now, my dear, tell me about your woman.'

On being thus appealed to, Stella told the curious little
story she had heard the previous day.

'Oh, my dear, if Miss Kibwell only heard that story, she
would make something quite beautiful out of it,' said
Mrs. Morton enthusiastically.  And then she went on to tell who
Miss Kibwell was—a young English lady who wrote such
beautiful stories for pious English magazines.  'We met
her at Basle, dear, where papa and I stayed for a month;
and there was a French curé staying at the same hotel.  He
spoke English nicely, and when I pointed out to him the
evils of idolatry, he listened to me most attentively.  I gave
him two tracts on Mariolatry, and he thanked me quite
nicely and put them into his pocket.  I prayed for him at
sunset regularly, as I noticed that about that time he
always read his poor Popish Breviary.  And do you know,
my dear, this young English lady made such a pretty story
of this for *Sunday in the Parlour*.  She showed how, when
the curé was at his Popish prayers, some influence—occult,
I think she called it—was at work with him, till at last the
"Hail Mary!" stuck in his throat, and he could not get it
out.  She showed how my few words and the tracts worked
on him so that at last he had to renounce his errors.  And
then, at the end, she made what she called a word-picture
of him—married, and with three or four children—the
whole family saying the Lord's Prayer at sunset on the very
spot where the lady from Australia—that was me, my
dear!—first met him.  But the editor of *Sunday in the Parlour*
changed this into the family going to church on Sunday
morning, for he feared some of his readers might find a
Popish taint in prayers at sunset.  Oh, they are wonderfully
careful in these pious magazines.  Not a word of the worse
things that really happen will they allow into their stories.'

Stella, to whom this little tale was chiefly related,
listened with both ears.  Nor did her interest relax when
the good lady took up her parable about Dr. Langdale,
whose speedy departure was a subject of thrilling interest.
And to return again so soon.  It must be some very
important piece of business.

'Had anyone died, or what had happened?' said Julia, in
the sharp way in which she invariably hankered after the
concrete facts that underlay events.

'He said it was some private family matter,' returned
Mrs. Courtland, 'and that he expected to be back in
Australia again in four months.'

'Well, that was just what we heard from Mrs. Morrison
as we came through Minjah Millowie,' said Julia.  'It seems
funny, doesn't it, for one to go for such a short time?'

Very recently Miss Morton had written to Mrs. Tareling
a letter, in which the words occurred: 'You may depend
the next news you hear will be that of the engagement of
Stella and Dr. Langdale.  Stella picked up a dying woman—at
least, she turned out not to be dying—and Dr. L. is
attending her; so they see more of each other than ever.'

Indeed, so great an impression had this made on Miss
Morton's mind that, though Mr. Haydon had been the
previous Sunday at Broadmead, she had not stirred beyond
the veranda.  Still, it was comforting to know that he had
made one or two artless plans to lure her away beyond the
family circle.

The afternoon turned out very cloudy and sultry.  Tantaro,
the native boy, had had an accident with Duke a few
days previously in riding to one of the out-stations.  In
jumping a fence the horse had struck his near fore-leg and
cut it so badly that he could not be ridden for some days.
Louise had not ridden for many years, so there was not a
great choice of ladies' horses.  There was Andy, voted an
impossible little animal by Stella; and there was Norman,
just then in a distant part of the run; and Orlando, who
was in the stock-paddock close to the house, but had an evil
name.

'He has splendid paces, and a head like an Arab,'
pleaded Stella.

'Yes; but he has a concealed vice which is now an open
secret,' returned her brother Hector.  'He shies at the
most unexpected moments.  Yes, you'll be on your guard
if you see a lumbering bullock-dray, or a white log lying
close to the road, or anything else that a nervous horse
objects to.  But how if he gives a sudden swerve when you
are cantering along a tract as smooth and level as a
bowling-green?'

'In that case I should either stick in my saddle or have
a fall; and that reminds me, I've never had as many falls
as people say go to the making of a good rider.  Hadn't I
better improve the shining hour?'

'You had—in keeping out of mischief.  No, Baby, you
must have no experimental bursters when you ride alone.
You can have Andy to go anywhere with, and you can ride
Orlando in the stock-paddock, then on Thursday you may
have Norman.'

Stella rode Orlando once or twice round the stock-paddock,
and highly approved of him.  It is true he shied
once or twice, but nothing to signify to anyone who knew
how to sit in a saddle.  On this dark, sultry afternoon she
felt an uncontrollable longing to ride for miles in the open
air.  She was weary, but she could not sleep; restless and
unable to work.  She would ride to the Wicked Wood.  It
was only between seven and eight miles away, with a well-made
road leading through it, little frequented by any save
riders or the light vehicles of surrounding squatters, or people
journeying between Minjah Millowie and Nareen.  This
wood had made a strange impression on Stella.  It was
only a few days previously that she had written of it to her
sister Esther:

'Are there such tracts of utter desolation in any other
country?  Acres upon acres, nay, in one direction, mile
after mile, with each tree bleached and bare as the planks
of a wrecked ship that has lain for centuries on the coast of
an uninhabited island.  They are tall, and gaunt, and white,
standing close to each other, so that their limbs—their poor
skeleton-intertwisted branches—touch each other overhead.
They look as though they had been convulsed with throes of
mortal agony, and were then suddenly petrified.  They are
like the numberless trunks and bones of dead things reared
in air instead of being kindly hidden in the bosom of the
great mother.  Are the limbs of living trees twisted and
twirled and twined and twinged in this way?  Is it possible
that bark and leaves and the breath of life have such magic
that they do not let us catch one glimpse of the real
anatomy of a tree until their masking raiment is entirely
gone?  Some of the great old trees in the Wicked Wood
have, through all these years, kept their tiniest twigs in
extraordinary completeness.  Standing under them and
looking upward, they look more like delicate carving in ivory,
like marvellous etching in silky-gray and pure white against
a deep blue background, rather than the corpse of what was
once dense foliage.  It seems as if no great storm could ever
have swept through the wood since it became a burial-ground
of trees, whose hold of life was so strong that even
in death they stand upright.  Else how is it that those
delicate cobwebs of interlacing twigs, those fine slender
branches, dry and brittle-looking as an old grass-tree, have
not been strewn in crumbling fragments—in dust, I had
almost said?  Underfoot there is a little vegetation—a sad
gray-green, with wide patches of yellow sand showing
between.  I thought the Mallee country round Goonjooree
might be taken as a type of the most weird aspect of our
scenery, but the Mallee sinks into tameness compared to
the Wicked Wood.  It seems to stretch out unseen arms
and compel you to stand and look from tree to tree, and try
to draw in the secret of its strange fascination.  It is too
terrible, one says; and then, because of this, one visits the
place again and again.  It nourishes the imagination.  There
are some spots in it of which I dream by night.  In the
daytime I try to think of stories into which they could
come.  But then their barrenness—their lean detachment
from all the glad life of the world around, freezes the
impish fancies that seek to give them a local habitation and
a name.  The Wicked Wood is a sort of belt half a mile
wide as one passes through it from here to Nareen, but
miles away on each side, to the right hand and to the left.
A mile further on, within sight of Nareen, there is a wide
stringy bark valley, in which a bush fire raged not very long
ago.  It must have leapt from tree to tree and up the
trunks to the very tips of the branches, for all are blackened
and charred, and many are dead.  But most of them have
put forth young twigs and leaves.  Some among them are,
indeed, a perfect idyll of spring—all a mass of tender young
leaves, clad in pale green, the youngest and smallest of
them tinged with a pure bronzy shade, fluttering above the
charred branches and along the coal-black trunks as if
planted by some fantastic gardener in hidden vases.'

Now that the thought, 'The way is so long and the sea
so treacherous,' kept rising in her mind like the refrain of a
ballad heard long ago, and chiming perpetually beyond her
power to still it, these gaunt writhing trees seemed to draw
her to them as by a spell.  It lay in her nature to seek
serenity in a scene that had not one of the charms which
ordinarily woo the heart.  The cultured beauty of the Home
Field, with its wealth of leafing trees and budding roses
and spring flowers, disquieted her.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXIV.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXIV.

.. vspace:: 2

Stella resolved that she would merely reach the Wicked
Wood and then return—keeping unsleeping guard on
Orlando all the time.  Not even the sight of two yellow-rumped
geobasileus birds, twittering on a dwarf honeysuckle
near the road, made her forget to be cautious, though
their notes were symptomatic of housekeeping, and one of
their curious double nests was a thing she much longed to
see.  Orlando seemed to enjoy the spin as much as his
rider—and that was saying much.  Those who love riding
find a fascination in the exercise it would be difficult to
define.  Care, or the shadow of trouble, has in it something
unreal, while the free-bounding motion of a horse seems to
add a new strength and buoyancy to one's flagging vitality.
The air is lighter, the horizon widens, heaven is nearer, and
the songs of birds come in ecstatic rain while mile after
mile of forest, or wood, or plain is rapidly passed.

Within a mile of the Wicked Wood Dustiefoot lagged
behind and barked in a way that told his mistress he was
out of breath.  She slackened speed, and then for the first
time noticed the strange change that had come over the
sky.  Up from the north a long wide column of clouds, low
and black, was rushing with incredible velocity.  The wind,
too, had shifted, and suddenly lost its warmth, and seemed
to be gathering strange voices from the wilderness.  It was
evident that a storm was brewing.  It was in this moment
of surprised inattention that her brother's mistrust of
Orlando's open vice was justified.  Without any ostensible
reason he suddenly bounded from one side of the road to
the other, and Stella, who sat at ease, her eyes fixed on the
quickly gathering clouds, found herself in the twinkling of
an eye low in the dust, with one shoulder feeling very
numbed, and a general sense of dislocation weighing heavily
upon her.  'I have had an experimental burster after all,'
was the first thought; and then she attempted to rise, but
she could only limp very slowly and painfully.  Orlando
cantered out of sight, the loose reins and flying stirrup, and
all that marks the demoralizing contrast between a horse
ridden and guided and one who is a lawless runaway,
prompting him to flee from the scene of his escapade.
Dustiefoot looked after the defaulter lost in amazement,
which presently gave place to an indignant bark.  Then he
came and fawned on his mistress, and held her riding-whip
in his mouth till she took it from him.

There are few occasions in which the pangs of conscience
make themselves felt more acutely than after being rolled
in the dust by a horse that one has been warned not to
take beyond the stock-paddock.  As far as she could ascertain,
Stella had no limbs broken, but both the right shoulder
and arm felt extremely stiff and sore, and there was some
twist in her right foot which made it impossible for her to
walk even a mile, much less seven or eight.  The only
alternative was to sit by the roadside till some one passed
who could take her home.  And then arose the very
unwelcome and disturbing thought that tramps and vagabond
sundowners were just as likely to pass as friendly squatters
in buggies, or a resident from Nareen or Warracootie eager
to show a kindness to anyone belonging to Lull.  There was
a large fallen gum tree on one side of the road at about
thirty or forty yards away from it.  With considerable pain
Stella dragged herself to this, and sat so as to be as much
as possible protected from the storm, which would evidently
soon break in its wrath.

Even as she reached this place of refuge, there was that
curious lull which foretold a fierce outbreak.  All heaven
was now clothed with a shroud of storm-black clouds.  The
wind, which had quickly risen and broken into keen shrill
voices, seemed for a moment suspended.  The birds had
betaken themselves to the covert of the trees, and were as
silent as though night had fallen.  Then, with a sudden
obscurity of darkness, there was a great sound as of many
rushing waters—a far-off gathering murmur, that had at
first something plaintive, almost musical, as of many
harpers harping on their harps.  But this was soon drowned
in a hoarse, ever-rising roar.  Gust after gust of terrific
violence, each one higher than the other, swept over the
woods, till all the air was darkened and thick with dust,
with branches torn from the trees, with fragments of
blackened grass trees, with withered boughs that had been
long dead of old.  The spirits of the tempest were all abroad—a
thousand jarring voices seemed let loose at once, rising
in wails, and shrieks, and fiery confused sounds, as of battle
and lamentation.  Then a great flame of lightning swept
the horizon, and peal after peal of thunder broke and
resounded as though the earth were undermined with Cyclopean
chambers, through which the deafening crashes hurtled
and reverberated endlessly.  Quivering, wide-drawn flames
swept constantly across the face of the sky, as if the
darkened heavens were being searched with flaring
torches.

Dustiefoot cowered close to his mistress, and both were
fortunately sheltered from the brunt of the storm by the
closely interwoven branches under which they had taken
shelter.  Every now and then sticks and broken limbs, and
all the débris that floats at large when the wind is blowing
with hurricane violence over great tracts of thickly wooded
country, fell around them.  Now and then a branch was
broken off overhead, and lifted high up as though it were a
feather-weight.  At each peal of thunder the dog gave a
low growl, the hair round his neck bristling on end.  Stella
called him by name from time to time, but a trumpet-blast
would have been lost in that terrific din as completely as a
whisper.  The touch of her hand on his head, however,
seemed to reassure him.  It was certain that the almost
human intelligence of the dog's eyes, as he alternately fixed
them wistfully on her face and looked abroad wrathfully
when he gave a low growl, as if warning the elements not
to go too far, gave Stella a sense of companionship, even of
amusement.  But the air seemed loaded with sulphureous
vapours that gradually made her head feel at once giddy
and very heavy.  Once or twice she caught herself opening
her eyes with the sudden start of one who has dozed.  At
such times Dustiefoot seemed more than ever on the alert
with a brisk, protecting air.  It was when the fury of the
storm was spent that the thick end of a bough, which had
been denuded in its flittings of all the lighter branches,
crashed through the thinned-out boughs overhead, grazing
Stella on the temple and falling heavily end-ways on poor
Dustiefoot's left paw.  He gave one low, yelping bark, but
did not whine or moan once, though the jagged end of the
storm's missile had cut and bruised him badly.  The sight
of the blood dripping from the wounded paw made Stella
turn faint and cold.  She could not spare her handkerchief
in all that blinding dust, but she had a fine white silk one
round her throat, and tearing this in two, she bound one
half of it round the maimed limb.  Dustiefoot lay close by
her, his head in her lap, and more than ever, as the storm
subsided, Stella felt that she could not keep her eyes open.
She felt sure, however, that Dustiefoot would not let any
vehicle or horseman pass by without giving timely notice.
Already he had started up barking clamorously, but the
passer-by each time was a stray bullock, which hurried into
a thicker part of the woods as if fearful that the worst was
yet to come.

Once or twice Stella aroused herself with thinking of the
consternation her absence, through such a storm and on
a horse of Orlando's character, would cause at Lullaboolagana.
Well, at the worst they would send out in search
of her when the evening drew near.  And Dunstan had
seen her take the road that led to Nareen.  The atmosphere
and the shock of the fall, and perhaps, too, the little
blow on her temple and the previous night's vigils, all
combined to bring on a queer feeling of stupor.  She was not
asleep nor insensible, and yet she felt as if even to move
were a trouble.  She felt a slow trickling on her temple,
and thought it must be rain.  A few large heat-drops had
fallen as the storm abated, but nothing more.  It was a
little rivulet of blood which trickled from the left temple,
where it was grazed by the tree-branch.  She rested her
head against a large, smooth bough behind her, and sat with
closed eyes, deathly pale.

It seemed to her that hours passed as she sat in this
way—never wholly unconscious, yet overcome with an
irresistible languor.  In reality only half an hour had passed, till
one drove up rapidly in a buggy, with Orlando led captive
behind it.  It was Dr. Langdale on his way from Nareen.
He had been caught in the storm, but was fortunately in
the stringy bark wood where the trees were covered with
vigorous young foliage.  In the Wicked Wood the ground
was simply littered with dead wood, which the violence of
the storm had strewn broadcast like chaff.  Half-way he
saw Orlando, which he failed to recognise as one of the
Lullaboolagana horses, but he knew the side-saddle daintily
embroidered with scarlet.  A horrible fear shot through his
heart, but he strove to believe that it was misplaced.  He
could never quite recall how he got through the Wicked
Wood.  He kept glancing from side to side at the great
withered trunks and limbs that the storm had felled, his
mind filled with a sickening apprehension of what the next
turning might have in store.

He breathed more freely when the Wicked Wood was
left behind.  A few minutes afterwards he recognised
Dustiefoot's barking.  Then, in one awful moment, he saw
his worst forebodings beggared by the ghastly reality—Stella
white and death-like, her face stained with blood.  'My
God! my God!' he cried, with the intolerable agony of
a strong man suddenly smitten beyond endurance.  Stella
heard the words distinctly, and recognised the voice.  She
had a struggling consciousness that if she willed it she
could open her eyes and speak, but a kind of hunger
fastened on her to hear what further he would say on
perceiving her thus apparently insensible.  She did not
know how cruelly like death she looked—her face ghastly
white, stained with dust and blood.  In a moment he was
by her side, kneeling by her, his breath coming in quick
gasps.  'Oh! my darling, my darling—my darling!' he
cried, his voice failing him with mortal fear.  And then
quick compunction seized on Stella, and she sighed softly.
So extreme was his agitation, that for a moment he could
hardly believe she was not mortally hurt.  But he found
that her heart beat with energy, he saw her eyelids quivering,
and a faint tinge of colour stealing into her cheeks.
She recovered consciousness slowly, so that he might not
know she had heard those impassioned words which held
the sweetest music that had ever fallen on her ears, also
that he might not know the perfidy of which she had been
guilty.

'You are badly hurt, I fear,' he said, as she at last looked
up.  His voice still thrilled with the sharp emotions which
had rent him, but he had regained his self-possession.

'Dustiefoot is worse than I am,' she answered.  She felt
so absurdly happy that it was a surprise to her to find her
voice so thin and faint.

Langdale went to his trap and produced one of those
cases which are sometimes called the 'Bushman's Christian
Companion.'

When it is remembered that such a case should contain a
flask of the best brandy, with a neat silver top that can be
used as a cup, also a flask of water and a pound or so of
biscuits, the term will not seem out of place, especially if it
is further remembered that those who make journeys in the
Bush may often go scores of miles without seeing a human
habitation of any kind.  But perhaps the term is never so
beautifully appropriate as when, as in the present instance,
it is incumbent on the possessor of such a case, in the
interests alike of science and humanity, to play the Good
Samaritan.

'Now, one, two, three—and you are to drink this, every sup.'

'Do you really carry medicine about with you?' said
Stella, with a little pout, as she sniffed the mixture.

'No questions, if you please.  Remember, people who
are picked up wounded and insensible are "cases."'

'Ah, that isn't so very inhuman!' she said, after gulping
down the dose.  'It takes the breath away, but then it
seems to bring back one's soul.'

'I am sorry to say that the noble art of healing does not
invent such remedies.  We cannot say, like the Bishop of
Noyou, that this recipe came out of our own heads.'

'And who was the Bishop of Noyou?'

'A worthy ecclesiastic who used to say at the close of his
sermons, "My brethren, I took none of these truths which
I have just uttered from the Scriptures or from the
Fathers—all came out of the head of your bishop."  That was not
a pharmacop[oe]ian drug you swallowed; it was brandy and
water.'

'Dr. Johnson's beverage for heroes!  Well, I felt heroic
impulses the moment I drank it—no less than a resolve to
mount Orlando.  'Oh, you unfaithful creature!' she said,
looking reproachfully at the horse.

'Nonsense, you must submit to be driven home in my
buggy, and I really must wash that wound on your temple.'

'A wound!' cried Stella, with incredulous amazement.

'Yes; was it the blow of a stray branch that threw you
off the horse, or was it the fall that made you insensible?'

'Oh, I was not——' she stopped abruptly.

'Oh no, you were not insensible, I suppose, and you have
not been hurt, and Orlando did not run away.  In the
meantime, this looks very much like blood.'  He had wetted
a handkerchief, and with the delicate touch of a trained
hand washed away the clotted blood.  Then he perceived
that the wound was very slight, being, in fact, a mere scratch.

He assisted her to rise, and as she was determined to ride
home, she repressed all sighs of pain.  But he noticed her
sudden paleness and the contraction of her lips.

'You *are* hurt.  Pray let me drive you home.'

'Oh no, please.  Claude will never let me forget it if I
am ignominiously wheeled home.'  And then it all came
out—how she had persisted in leaving the stock-paddock on a
horse notoriously unsafe, except, perhaps, for a buck-jumper.

'Well, do you know, Miss Stella Courtland, I begin to
think you are rather a handful.'

'Yes, and I begin to see that you are rather tyrannical.
Will you send Dr. Morrison to see how many of my bones
are broken?'

'Yes, I shall send him; but I think it is a duty to warn
him of the sort of patient he is likely to have.  Poor old
boy! your paw is really rather badly hurt.  Would you like
a biscuit, old fellow?'

Dustiefoot ate several.  Then the 'Christian Companion'
was put back in the buggy, Orlando's reins were mended
with a piece of twine, and Stella rode him back, while
Dustiefoot sat by Langdale's side in the buggy looking quite
like an invalid.  How incredibly happy they were as they
went back through the woods, exchanging a few words now
and then, laughing at the veriest trifles, watching Orlando's
ears to see if he meant to shy once more, counting the notes
of the birds that had found their voices now that the storm
was over!

They parted at the avenue gate of the Home Field.
'I shall send Dr. Morrison at once.  I know he is at home,
because I took his distant patients for him to-day.
Tomorrow I shall probably call in to see how Mrs. Parr
and—Dustiefoot are going on.'

'Happy dog!' said Stella, with a mischievous laugh.

'Is it only a day since we sat by the hymenosperum tree?'
she thought as she rode up the avenue.  All her incipient
fears and forebodings had vanished.  The four months
would speed away almost too swiftly—before she could fully
realize this vast happiness which had come to her.  There
was some duty he had to fulfil before he asked her to be his
wife.  She accepted the fact without even speculating over
it, so complete and whole-hearted was her confidence.

   |  'I could not love thee, dear, so much,
   |    Loved I not honour more,'

were the words that rose to her lips as she thought of the
firm self-repression which had so speedily succeeded his
agitation.  Not for worlds would she have missed hearing
those passionate words of endearment, and yet she resolved
to be very guarded during the days that lay between their
separation—to help him in every way to keep to a
purpose which would not have been formed without good
reason.

It was near sunset next day when he called.  Mrs. Parr
was making rapid strides towards recovery.  Dustiefoot
was as well as could be expected.  Stella was with her
sister-in-law, Louise, in the drawing-room, her injured arm
in a sling, the youngest Courtland on a big white bearskin
at her feet, the 'Arabian Nights' on a little table near her.

'Behold how tragedies are made when common chances
happen to wilful girls!' said Langdale, laughing, as he sat
near her.  'What have you been doing in Arabia?'

'Oh, I drank coffee with the three ladies of Bagdad, and
then I met Aladdin, the son of Shamseddin, on his way to
that city.  You know he left Cairo with fifty mules laden
with merchandise?'

'Was he overtaken with a storm, and——'

'"Did he have an experimental burster?"  Pray do not
spare me, or let me for a moment forget that I was thrown
in the dust like a foolish sack of potatoes.'

'Indeed, Baby dear, it might have been very serious,'
said Louise, laughing.

'I assure you it looked serious enough when I saw her,'
said Langdale gravely.  'And as it is, your arm is a good
deal hurt,' he added in a lighter tone, turning to Stella.

'Yes; and I swallowed some dust.'

'And a tree hit you on the head and wounded your dog.'

'And before I entered the house yesterday the whole
family met me in a procession—like one of those sculptures
they dig up in Nineveh, you know—all asking what could
possibly have induced me to ride Orlando.'

'Yes; and to-day I have come with my pockets full of
mulberry-twigs to whip you till you repent or die.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXV.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXV.

.. vspace:: 2

It was easy to keep on neutral ground when someone else
was by, but next day, when Langdale called, all the rest of
the family were at Broadmead, and Stella was alone on the
western veranda with a large basket of flowers she was
arranging in glasses and opal dishes containing clear fresh
water from the creek.

'Are you allowed to sit up in this defiant attitude and do
things?' Langdale asked, as he sat facing her.

'Oh yes.  Dr. Morrison says I am going on famously;
and that if no one scolds me I may ride Norman—say next
Monday.'

She held up a great cluster of half-opened white fairy-roses
as she spoke, looking at them sideways in the clear
emerald light that came in through the thick woof of
greenery that enclosed the veranda.

'I wonder if anyone ever really scolded you?' he said,
drawing nearer, so as to hand her the flowers she was
arranging in the glasses with such cunning effect.

'Yes, everybody in turn—except Dustiefoot.  Do you
know, he runs about as if nothing had happened to him,
with merely the prettiest limp in the world.'

'Are these white roses off the bush close to the myall
acacia by the Oolloolloo?' he asked, bending over to count
the number clustered on one slender spray.

'Yes; it is only rose-trees close to flowing water that
bear such roses.  How I should like to paint them or
embalm them in fitting verse!'

'But they come back again next spring in all their old
witchery.  It is only human lives that can never be
repeated—never be acted over but once.'

'Unless they are like the tags of old rhymes and the
rain-clouds that fall and are evaporated and come back in a
dragon-fly's wings, or a plant struggling for life on the
edge of a desert.'

'Wicked child! you are laughing at me to my face.  But
whether or not we come back like the roses, or the creatures
you so much object to that have more legs than four, every
day is as fresh and keenly interesting now as if it were
created for us individually.'

She felt that they were getting on dangerous ground, and
sought safety by retreating to a more impersonal region in
the persiflage that came to her so readily.

'And yet to superior beings on a better ordered planet, I
suppose our lives would seem little better than blobs in a
world heaped up with tumbled cobwebs.'

'What is a blob?'

'Do you go out into the woods in the early mornings?'

'Often, since I have learned from you what an exquisite
hour the dawn is in Australia.'

'Then, have you not noticed transparent little webs
pearled with dew hanging on bushes and tree-trunks?'

'I have occasionally.  Why don't you look at me to-day,
St. Charity, when you speak to me?'

She attempted to do so in a laughing, careless way; but
her glance fell under his, and her fingers trembled as she
wreathed a long spray of native clematis with pale-green
tendrils and delicate citron-coloured blossoms round the
slender stem of a cloisonné vase.

'Well, have you not noticed,' she went on, making her
work an excuse for not looking at him, 'how, when something
has brushed against these webs, the side touched has
curled up in a little blister?  That is a blob.'

'Thank you.  And do you really feel like one when you
are arranging flowers like these?'

'Oh, let us speak in a broad general sense,' she said, laughing.

But, curious to say, he disregarded the suggestion.

'What do you call these white single roses?'

'They are the Macartney.  Are they not lovely, with their
golden centres and wide cups with "leves well foure paire"?'

'I shall always think of it as the Stella rose.  It is so
starry, and seems to look abroad with such fearless inquiry,'
he said slowly.

At the words a deep damask flush mounted into her
cheeks and remained there.  Her deep lustrous eyes were,
in truth, shining like twin stars.  The pale-blue tea-gown
she wore, with a cluster of white fairy-roses at the throat,
threw the pure tints of her face and the soft brilliancy of
her eyes into clear relief.

'You think they have an inquiring look?  Yes, perhaps,
something like the wide-opened eyes of calves, or the beaks
of hungry sparrows.'

How angry she was at herself to find her face flushing
more hotly, her fingers getting more tremulous, her heart
beating more wildly!

'Give me one of them, Stella.'

She held out one to him, and their hands met.  He took
the rose, but did not release her hand.

'Were you quite unconscious when I reached you yesterday?'
he said in a low voice.

But she could not speak; her reply was a long, shuddering
sigh.

'You know my secret; and you are not angry, Stella?'

His voice was very agitated; and, as for her, she seemed
to be enveloped in a throbbing haze through which she
could not clearly see nor hear.

'Tell me, my own, that you are not offended,' he said,
drawing nearer to her.

'No, I am not offended,' she said at last, her voice lower
than a whisper.

'And do you know—oh, you cannot know—how I love
you, with my whole heart and soul, as a man can love but
once in his life!'

A fantail began suddenly to sing near them as if its heart
would break with joy—the selfsame bird that trilled its
golden carol above the vine-arcade when he came back
in the *Pâquerette* four months later on!  What strange
confusion of time!

'You must not say more till you return,' she said, looking
up at him, vainly trying to smile.  The full knowledge that
he loved her filled her with joy so keen that it bordered on
pain.

'But, Stella, I must say more.  I must hear you tell me
that you love me just a little; say it, Stella—say "Anselm,
I love you a little!"'

'But—Anselm—that would not be true.'

'Stella—my own sweet love—do not trifle with me.'

'Yes, it would be untrue, for I love you'—there was
a pause in which he could not breathe, till the words
came with a great thrill of gladness—'more than I can
say.'

He knelt down by her side and folded her in his arms.
Their lips met in a long, long kiss.

What a strange, memorable hour followed!  It was
almost unreal in its tumultuous happiness.  It was to
both the great sacrament of life—consecrating it; giving it
fulness and meaning; seeming to lift it for evermore above
the meanness of chance, and accident, and disaster; giving
them a heavenly anchorage from all peril and storm.

'And now you must say no more,' said Stella at last,
smiling through her happy tears; 'and there is to be no
solemn revelation to anyone.  It is our secret till you
write from England, as you purposed at first.'

'Ah, but that was when I thought I was Stoic enough to
keep to my purpose—now——!'

'Now it must be the same, Anselm,' she said quickly.
'Oh, do you not understand how frightfully tiresome it
would be to have anyone else talking over this precious
secret before we have realized it ourselves?  In four little
months I shall have got used to the thought.  The same
reason exists now that existed yesterday—does it not?'

'Yes, my own,' he replied, a shadow falling on his face.
'But now I think you ought to know all.'

'No, Anselm, let it be as though you had said no more.
We need make no promises.  Let what was your wish in
this be my law till you return.  Let us be friends a little
longer.  Oh, it has been so dear and good a bond!  Can
any other be better?'

'You little sceptic!  You have sat too long in the
scorner's chair.  People have often told you their little
stories, Stella.  I also have one to tell you.  But as you
wish it, let it be when I return.'

'Yes, sir—some evening when we begin to yawn at each
other.'

'Very well, madam—when we have worn every subject
threadbare.'

'And we have learned to say "Not at all, my dear," with
tightening lips.'

'When the honeymoon is quite over.'

'And the first quarrel an old, well-known story.'

'And poor little Cupid has been sent to weed poppies.'

'And you wonder why you used to call me St. Charity.'

'And life has turned into a blob.'

'Now we must lay down rules.  You must not take my
words without leave.  You did not know that was in the
English language till I used it.  Say, "Dear Stella."'

'Dearest beloved Stella!'

'"Please may I say 'blob'?"'

'Oh, you artful, captivating rogue!  Tell me, Stella, how
do you manage to be such a wonderful darling?

'Just because I want you to be in love with me—oh! so
much that you don't know whether you are on your heels
or your head.'

'And then?'

'Oh, then you must keep an eye on Cupid at his weeding.'

'Stella, my belovedest, don't encourage yourself to be
cruel.  It is a taste that grows on people, like eating opium
and stealing umbrellas.'

'That reminds me.  Shouldn't I ask you how many of
the commandments you have kept, if any?'

'Certainly not.  It is the most dangerous habit a woman
can contract, that of asking questions, more especially when
she is going to be married.'

'Oh, how boldly and brazenly you pronounce the word!
How glad I am that it cannot be for some time!'

'Not so very long, thank God!  Let me count on your fingers.'

'Oh no—no, please,' she said, suddenly drawing her hand
away.

'But why?'

'Superstition!'

'Ah!  Have those beloved fingers of mine—yes, you are
mine; you know you are!—have they been counted before?'

'It is the most dangerous habit a man can contract, that
of asking questions, more especially when he is going to be
married.'

'You have said it.  Oh, you bold child, how brazenly
you repeated the word!  But, Stella——'

'Well, once upon a time, as you know already, I did
think of marrying; but I never loved before.'

'And I, Stella, my darling——'

'Ah, that is part of your story!—ah, of course I know!
I have read so many plays, and then there is Tom and
people.  How many sonnets did you write to eyebrows
before you were eighteen, let us say?'

'Would you like me to count?'

'No.  After all, you couldn't tell what a darling I am if
you had not found how foolish it was to love anyone else.'

'Stella, will you be a good, loving child?  Kiss me once
of your own free will.'

'Oh, Anselm—next time, perhaps——'

'Will you really?—and after that?'

'And after that—and on and on till——  Can it ever
be a tale too often told?'

'Never, never!  But what has become of my rose?  Give
me another one.  Let it be a "Stella" rose.  What stupid
people have the naming of flowers!'

'Oh, yes! and of most things.  If only lovers were among
the convocations that decide saintship, how easily the
ultimate distinction of the Church would be obtained!'

'But the truest saints never get canonized, St. Stella—"ora
pro nobis."  Why that stifled sigh, my little heretic?'

'May I not sigh any more when I wish?'

'Yes, while I am away.  Oh, I think I must set off
to-morrow!'

'So that I may sigh?'

'So that I may return quickly.  Ah, Stella darling, I
have been waiting for you so long; and now I have found
you—I have found you, in spite of everything!'

They fell into the sweet, endless repetitions of lovers'
talk—grave and gay by turns.  The sun was setting before
Langdale could tear himself away.  And then, before he
rode off, Stella walked with him to the passion-flower
bridge; and there they lingered till a great white star
glowed in the rose twilight of the west, which spread far
up, almost to the zenith of the sky.  This great roseate
wave of colour was a beautiful phenomenon of the season,
and increased in brilliancy as the summer drew near.

'Perhaps it is star-mist, out of which new worlds are to
be fashioned,' said Stella.

'Are you sorry for them, Liebe?'

'No; perhaps after long ages there will be people in
them who love each other as we do—and that will make up
for all.'

A proud smile stole over his face as he listened.

'Are you mocking or in earnest, Herzblättchen?'

'In deadly earnest.  I foresee I shall be fearfully serious,
Anselm.'

'No, no; you must not be a whit different—that would
be a schism I could not bear.  Stella, may I give you an
old keepsake?'

'Do you love it very much?'

'Yes; and I have worn it for twelve years.'

'Then you may.'

He detached a small, old-fashioned gold ring from his
watch-chain.

'It is a motto ring that was left by an old relative to my
favourite sister Margaret, who gave it to me before her
death.'

'Ah! she died?'

'Yes, at eighteen.  "A pard-like spirit, beautiful and
swift."  Do you know, Liebe, you reminded me of her the
first night we met—and oftentimes since.'

Stella took the ring and kissed it gently.

'I shall wear it next my heart,' she said.  'There is a
motto on the inside—"Amore."'

'Yes.  "Amore e 'l cor gentil sono una cosa"—"Love
and a noble heart are one and the same."  It is out of the
"Vita Nuova."'

'Ah, the great master.  From first to last he speaks more
nobly of love than any other of the sons of light.'

'Shall we read him together next spring, Liebe?  You
know we shall be old married people by that time.  Are
you cold, Stella?  You seem to shiver.'

'No; not cold.  When you spoke of next spring,
someone must have walked over the earth in which my grave
is to be.'

'Oh, Blättchen, what a weird idea!  You should not
speak of such a thing.'

'Yes; we shall read Dante together.  But won't that be
reversing the usual order of married people—to be first in
the Inferno, and then go on to Paradise?'

They laughed softly.  They were so far removed from the
sagging prose, the dulness, the satiety of the 'usual order of
things.'  The hour was one of the charmed soft-footed fairies
which come once or twice in the years of man's earthly
pilgrimage—bearing in both hands a cup filled to the brim
with life's costliest wine.  The soft rose-glow in the western
heaven thrilled through the transparent atmosphere; the
Oolloolloo babbled merrily on its way, its course as yet
unstayed by the fiery ardours of the approaching summer.
A solitary curlew called in the distance, but near at hand
the liquid songs of the little reed-warblers fell thick and
fast, like swift melodious raindrops.  They turned at last
towards the house with lingering footsteps.

'How can we meet after this like mere friends, Liebe?'
said Langdale, as they paused at the end of the little
passion-flower bridge.  'It is very good and generous of you
only to think of what I could have wished, but——'

'I would like to see the sort of being that represents me
in your imagination, Anselm.  Oh, please don't make a
Dalai-lama of me, for you will be most dreadfully
disappointed by-and-bye.  Remember that we propose to face
the ordeal of matrimony——'

'I wish to heaven the ordeal were to begin——'

'You must not interrupt—I am going to make a confession.'

'Well, your father confessor is waiting to hear it, and, if
possible, to grant absolution.'

'"Father confessor!"  Oh, Anselm, if you could see your
own eyes just now you wouldn't call yourself such names.
But don't try to look different.  You are one of the few
people who can be happy without looking foolish.  I am
quite in earnest.  When people have the wrong sort of
profile, they pay a very heavy penalty for being glad.  You
know when you cried out on first seeing me—I heard
you.  I was not insensible.  I could have moved and opened
my eyes—at least, I am sure I could—but I didn't even
try.'

'You cruel child! why didn't you?'

'Because—because—I wanted to hear you say "My
darling."  I was at once bold and hypocritical.'

'This is too sweet a crime to be lightly forgiven,' said
Langdale gravely.

'Oh, what infatuation!  Well, don't you see it was like
waylaying you—surprising you out of your declaration?  I
ought to be sorry, but I cannot, for we would have lost this
day, and no other could be quite so perfect.  Only let your
reason hold good.  After all, it concerns only us two really.
And do you not know how I love to fold this secret in my
heart from everyone in the world but you for a little time?
I could not bear to have it profaned all at once.  So many
women chatter about such things in a common, callous way.
There is Helen's elder sister—a perfect image of earth—who
gossips away perpetually.  Her favourite subject is
engagements.  You may smile, but I am quite serious.  She asks
questions until you feel that you are lying about in
fragments; then she puts you together and begins afresh.'

'Very well, sweet St. Charity, let it be your penance to
have your own way in this.'

'And now, while we walk back to the house, you can
practise talking and looking like a mere friend.'

'In that case, when I speak to you, you must look away.'

'Look away! that is what people in love do in a comedy.
Why, the very magpies would point us out as lovers.'

'But what am I to do when you look at me with those eyes?'

'That is not the way to practise.  Devise anecdotes about
the weather, and try to be reasonable once more, for you
have suddenly forsworn the art.'

'There is not the same call for it.  You seem to have left
off railing against nature and Providence, and the treacheries
of life; remember what you said about the new world!'

Stella watched him ride away, turning at intervals to
look at her till he was out of sight, and her eyes became
suddenly dim with the thought—'Only eight more days
before we must part!'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXVI.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXVI.

.. vspace:: 2

Yes, these eight lengthening golden spring days swept on
with cruel swiftness.  And yet they held so much.  The
hours in which the heart is most deeply touched have
something of the quality of eternity.  They stretch backward and
forward, allying themselves with all that is deepest and
most enduring in human experience.  Stella's was one of
those complex, yet essentially feminine, natures which can
only be gradually kindled with love.  But when it comes to
full being it is a passion which transforms all life.  In place
of discord there is harmony that before lay mute and
unsuspected, like Hassan's gold covered over by common wood.
The friendship which had ripened into the perfect blossom
of love had been a very real one.  Social intercourse is for
the most part a pitifully shabby concern, in which the ashes
of mere existence smother aspiration, the quick play of
fancy, and the sympathetic flow of thoughts that range
beyond merely egotistical aims; an affair in which men and
women largely bear themselves as though they were
automata moved only by the wheels of custom, taking thought
mainly for the things that perish with the using.  But
fellowship with the kind of vitality which wakens deeper
chords of thought and feeling is as the salt of life.  There
were moments at first in which Stella could have found it in
her heart to be sorry that her friend had 'degenerated into
a lover.'  But if he had not, how unhappy she would have
been!  And how much she would have lost!  Even the old
faith she had given up seemed in some way gradually
flowing back.  When she prayed she no longer lost herself in
weary conjectures as to its futility, doubting that her weak
pitiful words could reach the great Omniscience, whose
thought of order was the fixed law of all the starry hosts,
doubting and wondering, till she seemed to be obliterated in
a chaotic universe where nothing seemed certain but uncertainty.

And these long beautiful days passed without any of the
jar and fuss and congratulation that would have robbed
them of their serenity if the sweet notion of mere friendship
had been abandoned.  'Please tell us about one of your
hospital people,' Stella would say, as she often said before
in the presence of her brothers, or their wives.  And she
would sit sewing and listening, hardly raising her eyes.
There were so many people she had learned to know in this
way—the old Scotch charwoman who never read fiction
because, she said, it was mostly taken up by things that did
not signify for this life or that which is to come; the little
lame boy who told the sister of charity he did not believe
God heard people about legs; the costermonger who had
been run over, and whose wife candidly explained that the
Lord had made him 'naterally so silly,' one could not tell
oftentimes whether he was drunk or sober.  And when they
were alone after one of these episodes had been talked over,
Stella would say with unaltered demureness, 'Dr. Langdale,
do not go into partnership with your cousin in the West-End.'

'Why not, Miss Stella?' he would say with responding
gravity.

'Because you like the poor so much, and'—dropping
her voice with a quick change of manner—'we shall have
enough money.  And medicine has the trick of turning into
a trade when it makes a big income.'

The 'we' had a magical sound to Langdale.  Then sometimes
they would talk of the work on which he had been
engaged.  At first he persisted he would tell her nothing
about it till his return.

'You have woven so many brilliant fancies about it,
St. Charity, and the reality is such homespun stuff.'

Then she found he had been engaged on a dual task—one
a treatise on some aspects of hypnotism, the other on the
conditions of factory labour.  On this she expounded a
brilliant plan by which they might be unified, and so
produce a novel with a solid realistic background, relieved by
incidents of ideal romance, in which 'suggestion' should play
the part of the genii.

'Never were so many plots thrown away on a material,
semi-Teutonic mind before,' laughed Langdale.

Before these charmed days were over he could not forbear
confiding to Hector Courtland that his purpose in returning
so speedily to Australia was to visit Fairacre, on which
Courtland heartily wished him good luck, and prophesied
that he had a good show, but said not a word to Stella.

He told his wife, however, and she was delighted, but a
little provoked at what she thought was some sort of caprice
on Stella's part.  She assumed that Langdale had put his
fortune to the touch, and that the girl was too wayward or
too proud—too much in love with her dearly cherished
liberty—to be at once entirely guided by her heart.

'She will be sorry when he is gone, and it serves her
right,' she said, a little vindictively.

'Oh, Stella may as well have a good long think over it;
she is just the sort of girl that might be happier single all
her life,' returned her brother meditatively.  He fully
adopted his wife's opinion, without, however, ascribing his
sister's supposed action to caprice.

'Oh, you think Stella means all those wicked little
speeches she makes about marriage?' said the wife.

'Well, she means some of them, or they would not occur
to her,' returned Hector, with a touch of that fine
discrimination which often characterizes reticent natures.

Mrs. Courtland's resentment was not of a serious nature,
and, indeed, chiefly took the form of contriving to give the
friends that solitude *à deux* which so often leads to a change
of programme, and even of life.  Thus, on the afternoon of
the day preceding Stella's departure, the two, after strolling
for some little time with Mrs. Courtland and Mrs. Claude
among the rose-trees by the Oolloolloo, found themselves
left alone, heartlessly deserted by their companions.  It was
the fourteenth of September.  The season was dry and
warm, and already the time of roses had begun at
Lullaboolagana.  Some were out very early, some were half
open, some just in bud, but all of them were very lovely.
The white and pale cream Banksias were out in clustering
festoons against walls and espaliers; there were tall
standard rose-trees of Fortune's yellow, cloth of gold, white
and pink moss, the Safrano and the generous old cabbage—all
were loaded with opening roses.  The Ophiric, with its
shining, unserrated leaves and roses of pale flame, the
delicate yellow of the Narcisse, the camellia-like pure
pink of the Princesse de Hazel, were among those that
were opening earlier.  The Solfataro, too, with its large,
greenish-white buds, pale, wax-yellow when they first
unclose, but later white as the breast of a sea-gull; La
Brillante, with its fiery, coal-like buds; the Gloire de Dijon,
dark-red in early infancy—all were slipping their sheaths
and coyly uncurling their outer petals.  Dry as the season
might be, the roses never lacked for water in the
Lullaboolagana Home Field.  They were its great glory—the joy of
its mistress and the pride of Dunstan's heart.  There were
stations not twenty miles away in which roses paled and
dwindled like rare exotics under an inclement sky.  But
here on the banks of the little Oolloolloo, and all within the
spacious field, they bloomed early and late.

'How do you manage it, Dunstan?' visitors used to say
in wondering admiration; and the old man, who was careful
always to conceal his pride, would reply:

'Oh, it's the sile as does it—the sile and the creek and
the underground tank and the tubing.  You see, if I say to
the mistress, "I wants this or that—or the t'other must be
done," why, there 'tis, you know.  'Course, I don't say that
I'm a born jackass, and don't know that one rose wants to
be treated one way and another quite contrairy.'

Gardening was a topic on which Dunstan was never
unwilling to enlarge when Stella spoke to him as he worked
in the Home Field.  He did so on this afternoon, when she
stood lost in admiration of a young Murray wattle, whose
great golden racemes, drooping one over the other, all the
folds of the wide woolly tufts fully open, formed a sight of
exceeding joy.

'Yes, 'tis purty fair,' he said, giving it a sidelong look;
'and yet, if I hadn't a-pruned it a bit last season and given
it more water, 'twould have give up the ghost.  A man
may put as much work inter ground as would make trees
and flowers spring up like shiverin' grass, and he may get
naught but barrenness, if so be his work isn't what it should
be.  'Tis for all the world like a man going out shootin',
Miss Stelly.  He may fire away till he's black in the face,
and yet not bring home a crow's feather—like Bill Wilton,
who's so fond of carryin' a gun—why, the Lord only knows,
if it's not to show how much powder and shot may be
wasted, and no harm to any creature with a wing, though
I've known him to graze the tail-end of a bullock pretty bad.
'Twas after that I was out with him once at Swamp
Desolation, and he kep' on blazing away in such a
permiscous way, I said to him at larst, sez I, "Look here,
Bill, if you're to go on firing like that, I must go into the
swamp and sit down among the wild ducks; 'tis the only
spot where I'll be sure of a whole skin."'

Stella, who had stayed behind her companions to talk to
Dunstan, was laughing merrily over this incisive illustration,
when Langdale came back alone; and then the two
wandered by the Oolloolloo, whose silvery whispering was
growing fainter day by day.

'Teach me before we part, ever belovedest, how I am to
live so long without seeing you or hearing you laugh!' said
Langdale, as they stood to watch the ripple of the wind among
the tender leaflets of a beech-tree.  'Don't sigh, Stella.
See what a perfect love-day has been sent us to-day by——'

'Heaven—say Heaven, not Nature, Anselm.  A little
while ago I kept wondering what they could grow in heaven
lovelier than a Murray wattle and rose-buds.  And now
look up there, where tiny flakes of cloud leaflets seem to be
floating.  They are really young angels, who are waiting for
an excuse to come down.'

'Do they despair of seeing people as happy up there as
here?  But tell them, Liebe—for they will hear your
slightest whisper—if they want to see perfect happiness,
to come all the way down next spring.  Do you remember
what brave old Homer puts in the mouth of Ulysses when
he wishes that Nausicaa may be happily married?—"Nothing
is better or more beautiful than when a man and
a woman inhabit a house being one in heart."'

'We must not have too many possessions, Anselm.
People get so fearfully stupid—so swallowed up in furniture.
It would be adorable to start life like Hassan the
camel-driver, with a cruse of water and a plume of curled
feathers.'

'You often gibe, Liebstes Herz, at the commonplace, as
though it were a penal settlement; but I confess I have
often seen a day-labourer return to his home at night with
feelings akin to envy.'

'Dear darling, you have often been lonely, and I wasn't
there to comfort you.  But after this——'

'Tell me, Stella, when I return home will you hasten to
meet me, walking buoyantly on the fore-part of your feet
like a figure in antique sculpture, as you walked among the
rose-trees just now?  Come and sit in this charming little
summer-house—all one mass of jasmine and passion-flowers!
Why, Stella, my darling—good God, you are crying!'

'Anselm, how foolish of you to be alarmed because I shed
a few tears!  Did you think I never, never cried?  I
believe Cuthbert is quite pleased when he sees me reduced to
tears.  Not that he has witnessed me often in that plight.
You see, we were so much together, and, as boys do not cry,
I got quite out of the habit.'

'But, my child, all this does not explain why you weep
now.  Herzblättchen, I cannot bear to see you anything
but gay—or smilingly serious.'

'It is because we are too happy, Anselm.  All day it
comes over me afresh every now and then like a great wave
of incredible gladness.  Sometimes I cannot sleep, thinking
it is all too like a fairy-tale.  The first thing in the morning,
before I open my eyes, my heart begins to beat wildly for
joy—every bird that sings has a lilt in its song to which I
could dance; and then in the middle of it all comes a
sudden shiver of fear.  Ah, there are such frightful
accidents—such catastrophes in life!  I think of my old friend
Stanhope cut off in a few days!  It all came up so vividly
last night.'

'And the tears are in your eyes still, you fearless,
fun-loving little Australian, with strong roots of the Keltic
melancholy and superstition lying deep under all.  Get a
"pâquerette," and pluck the leaves to see how I worship
you.  Daisy petals are truer than dreams.'

He drew her close within his arms.  Here she was safe.
Here the billows of life's bitter waters could not reach or
affright her.  The jasmine summer-house was over-arched
by a tall white poplar, whose young leaves with fair silver
lining quivered on the slender stalks with as swift a motion
as on the day that the old Greek poet compared the maidens
to them who spun late and early in the household of King
Alcinous.  Through the roof of leaves and blossoms overhead,
and the poplar limbs with their mist of tender leaves,
the blue crystalline dome of the sky could be seen, stretching
above all like a great benign smile.  How peaceful it all
was!  How much more reasonable to believe the waking
assurances of earth and sky than the vague presentiments of
a sleeping girl!

   |  'O gentle wind, that bloweth south,
   |    From where my love repaireth,
   |  Convey a kiss from his dear mouth,
   |    And tell me how he fareth.'

.. vspace:: 2

She chanted the words with the old glad light in her eyes,
and laid solemn charges on him to turn towards Australia
night and morning and waft her greetings.

They did not say farewell that evening.  Hector Courtland
was to accompany his sister part of the way to Melbourne,
and was to take her by way of the Peeloo Plain, on
the borders of which his friend Mr. Dene lived, and Langdale
proposed to pay a long-promised visit at the same time.
But many farewells had to be spoken, nevertheless, and do
what she would, the feeling lay heavy at Stella's heart that
in leaving Lullaboolagana, the dearest, tenderest chapter in
the book of her history was over.  Here life's dearest mount
of vision had been scaled, its sweetest idyll had been told.

Poor old Mick wept effusively when she bade him good-bye;
Dunstan made it very clear that it was her duty to
come back to Lullaboolagana early next spring, if not sooner.

'Why, Miss Stelly, the place was made for you, I may
say; and what will become of the vagabonds that get their
legs broke, I dunno: The crow has took to no one but
yourself, and that poor female as went away with her
brother last week whole and well, and the three horses a
kickin' up their legs as if they never knew what it was to
be skelingtons; and even that blasphemin' cockie had
forgotten some of his worst curseses——'

Dunstan lost himself in enumerating the caravan procession
that had so deeply impressed him.

The next afternoon Stella and her brother reached Peeloo
Station, where they were to stay the night.  Langdale came
near sundown, after paying some professional visits for
Dr. Morrison by the way.  There was but a meagre garden at
this station, though it was a wealthy one, like most in the
district.  The house, too, had a curiously makeshift
appearance.  The fact was that the family from year to year
proposed residing in the vicinity of Melbourne.  Near
sunset the host proposed an evening ride to all who cared
to go over the great Peeloo Plain, which stretched for over
sixty miles westward.  There was an artesian well ten
miles off, on the plain of weeping myalls, he wished to
show Courtland.

'Whom the gods love ride across a great Australian plain
in the evening,' said Stella; and Langdale, of course, was
instantly converted to the same opinion.  So the four set
off westward, when the sun was low on the horizon.  There
were heat clouds piled up in an unmoving bank, through
which the sun burned, as it sank, like a smouldering fire
that the wind has fanned till the coals kindle into red heat
and the flames break out, eating their way through the
fuel.  For a moment before setting the sun stood all
undimmed on the level horizon like a great fiery ball, and
then dropped suddenly out of sight, leaving a deep soft
glow which reached high up in the heavens, and so remained
for hours.  This beautiful, unusual appearance was more
vivid that evening than it had ever been before.

The riders followed no road, but took their way across
the plain, still clothed with the luxuriant winter grass,
which here and there was beginning to be touched with the
heat languor that a few weeks later would turn the verdure
into sapless flax.  But as yet the herbage was so close and
rich that the hoof-beats of the horses scarcely awoke an
echo.  The few sounds that were borne with startling
distinctness through the sonorous air died away.  The
shrill scream of a black cockatoo in the depths of a weeping
myall, the twitter of a little emu wren bounding through
the grass, the loud calls of the white-fronted honey-birds in
a flowering acacia, the hysterical chorus of laughing
jackasses in the wooded bend of a watercourse densely lined
with ti-tree, the sudden caw of a solitary crow in a
box-gum, all became silent, one by one.  Now and then a red
kangaroo, with his beautiful ruddy tints and faint flush of
dawn-rose on the under-neck, or a doe, clad in delicate
steely blue, bounded near them as they passed.

They flew over the great smooth plain, while the spring
wind, vivifying as a sea-breeze, blew in their faces.  At
times they came to a stretch of kangaroo grass, tall and
rustling, swayed by the wind that came now and then
running up in little fitful gusts, till the faint billows formed
an exact image of the half-formed waves seen in mid-ocean
in placid summer weather.  The earth and sky equally had
an unfamiliar boundlessness that at first lay like a weight
on the spirit, and yet gradually soothed it as the imagination
gathered impulse and repose from the sad magnificent
horizons, unbroken by wood or hill, or the gleam of water.
At rare intervals the marvellous uniformity was heightened
rather than interrupted by the course of a creek whose
abrupt banks were marked by a wavering line of box-wood
or weeping myall, and sometimes dense undergrowth.  The
light of day and the brilliant blue of the sky were replaced
by the dreamy paleness which falls on the world when the
heavens are cloudless, yet hold the stars for some time out
of sight, and the earth lies stretched below without limit
and without shadow.

There was no cold look in the sky, no bleakness on the
earth.  It was noble in its vast breadth, its virgin promise
of fertility—fit to be the dwelling-place of a race strong,
free and generous; careful not only for the things that
advance man's material prosperity, but caring infinitely as
well for all that touches the human spirit with quick
recognition of its immortal kinships.

'It is like no other scene I have ever looked at,' said
Langdale, at length breaking the silence.

'Don't you feel you will remember it all to your dying
day?' asked Stella softly.

'Yes; perhaps when we die we shall remember it better
than ever.  It is like a picture of the old classic underworld,
with its pale light and its wide, homeless pastures.'

'Oh, if it would only last for ever—the world flooded in
mysterious light, the horses never tired, the horizon never
visible!  Why are you smiling?'

'I would not wish it to go on for ever.  I have an
earth-creeping imagination that would soon pine for a local
habitation—and Blättchen waiting for me inside.  But
how often we shall recall this ride till we meet again!'

There were cadenced cries far overhead, as if among the
stars, which began to swim into sight all over the firmament,
and looking upward, a long line of great birds, with dusky
wings wide spread, became visible.

'They are swans going to their nesting-places by some
swamp,' said Stella.  'How plaintive and musical their
notes are!  Don't they make you understand what someone
meant when he said that virtuous melodies teach virtue?'

'And what virtue could they teach Herzblättchen that
she does not possess?'

'Handfuls!  Try to believe this in time: gentleness,
resignation, hope.  Did you not tell me yourself, some time
ago, that I was curiously lacking in hope?  I always knew
that a friend was more faithful than a lover!'

'But, Liebe, I am both; only the more I know you, the
less I could bear to have you different.'

'That is what I am always promising when my happiness
makes me afraid to be different.  I take refuge in the
thought that I am going to be so useful and helpful—to
make some lives happier that without us might be intolerably
hard; to make our future home a little radiant centre.
Anselm, I had rather be a cat and mew at the moon than
be self-complacent and wrapped up in my own prosperity
like a cocoon.'

Langdale laughed softly at this quick vehemence of
speech.

'But, Stella, how little danger there is of that!  Do you
want to make me believe that you have not always been
helpful and loving—full of sympathy and tenderness and
quick insight, ready always?'

'Ah, but you don't know how indifferent in between—how
ready at any moment to believe that after all it does
not much matter.  You do not know this vagrancy of
temperament.  You are protected by your nationalities and
your love of work.  That gives you an ideal of duty apart
from whim and sudden changes of mood.'

'I always knew that a friend was more faithful than a
"Little-heart-leaflet."'

'Don't laugh at me, Anselm.  We shall recall this ride so
often, as you have said: when the days are too long—when
people are wearisome: and that is one of the great qualities
of our race everywhere.'

Langdale laughed again, and took off his hat in
acknowledgment of this wide compliment.

'Forgive me, Liebe,' he said, recovering his gravity; 'but
this air seems to get into one's head like champagne.  But
I promise not to interrupt again.'

'Well, always while you are away—when I am bored,
when I am overcome with the feeling,

   |  '"Only my love's away,
   |  I'd as lief the blue were gray'—

I shall think of this ride, and remember that I made
resolutions to be better—above all, to be more patient.  I
can so well understand how it was with the Foolish Virgins.
It is never amusing to wait long.  I should have gone to
sleep, I am sure.  I should have been caught with my lamp
extinguished.  Do you know that seeing you so unwearied—so
lost to every thought but the welfare of that poor
woman during the days when she was so near death—has
given me, I think, a more abiding sense of duty.'

'Sweet St. Charity! how divinely serious your face is just
now—heroic in its earnestness!'

'My heroic moods are exotics; the wings of my soul are
not full-grown, and it takes but very short flights; it
comes nestling back to earth so quickly; it will follow in
the wake of your vessel all the way; you may not see it,
but it will be there—especially at dawn.  Leave your cabin
window open; for it is only the spirit of a dead soul that
can go through cracks and bars of iron and glass.'

'And will your beloved little soul come and lay a kiss on
my face?'

'No.  It is not the vocation of a soul to kiss.'

'Nor even to whisper those delicious little *niaiseries* that
make me so happy?  Cruel little soul!  Why, then, will it
come all that long way?'

'To get into your waistcoat pocket with your watch, and
count how fast time flies.'

It was past nine o'clock when they returned to the Peeloo
station.  The host and Courtland lingered at the stable after
they dismounted.

Langdale and Stella bade each other farewell on the wide
veranda covered in with passion-flowers and a luxuriant
Queensland bignonia.

Langdale had to leave by daybreak, as he was anxious
about one of the patients he visited that day—a splitter
living among the great tiers of peppermint eucalyptus that
lay behind the Messmate Ranges—a man who had been
injured by a falling tree.  Stella was very brave, and kept a
smiling face to the last.  Then she went in and chatted for
awhile with the lady of the house, while the men smoked
on the veranda.  She had gone to her own room before they
came in.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXVII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXVII.

.. vspace:: 2

Laurette had never been more airily cheerful and full of
gossip than she was on the day after Stella's arrival.

'We have all the morning to gossip in.  I asked Mrs. Carter
and Dora to afternoon tea, so there is no chance of
their dropping in at some unearthly hour.  To-morrow
evening we are going to rehearsals of private theatricals at
the Jorans'.  By the way, they have returned from England
since you were here.  They are among our *créme de la créme*
in Melbourne.  What confers the distinction?  Well, at
present, the very inner circle is rather High-Church, and of
course has the right of tambour at Government House, and
one must be very wealthy or'—Laurette made a slight
pause, so as to make the point with emphasis—'one must
be connected with the British aristocracy, or with the
viceregal family.'

'When the two are combined, one must hold every
blessing that this life affords in the hollow of one's hand,'
said Stella with a becoming gravity.

'Yes, my dear, unless one has to retreat to the depths of
the Mallee Scrub, as I must shortly do.  But I shall devote
myself to the education of the children.  But about the
Jorans.  Thomas Joran has had what you might call a
romantic career.  The very earliest glimpse of him in
colonial history: he hawked elderly cabbages in the streets
of Melbourne—at least, they would have been streets if they
had been made.  Well, I don't mean that any decaying
vegetable is romantic; but then compare the status of a
man employed in that way and one who entertains a Duke
and goes to Court.  But it was rather a sell about the
Duke.  You see, the Jorans entertained him sumptuously.
Some people say that, in all, they spent four thousand
pounds on him in less than a week.  What it must have
cost them in special trains alone!  I myself have sometimes
seen Joran haggard with anxiety, hunting up railway
officials, while Mrs. Joran stood sentinel lest a common
populace should even peep in at the blue satin lining, or the
butler, who was in a separate compartment, in charge of
the ice and champagne.  Naturally a man could not have
all this gold and incense lavished on him without making
some return.  So when the Duke left our shores, he
cordially invited the Jorans to visit Rookcourt when they
were next in England, thinking he was safe because they
had only just returned.

'But "the dear Duke" had scarcely sailed, when weighty
reasons compelled the Jorans to do likewise.  In fact,
Mrs. Joran, in a burst of confidence, confided to me that it would
be unpardonable not to respond to the Duke's pressing invitation.
But sad to say, the only recognition his Grace accorded
them was that a younger son asked Mr. Joran to lunch with
him at a Radical Club.  You may talk of the aboriginal
myths, but I think they are very paltry compared to spending
five or six thousand pounds, and getting in return a
five-shilling lunch!  It could not have cost more, for out of
compliment to his guest, Lord Augustus had colonial claret,
the kind we can buy in Melbourne at fifteen shillings a
gallon.  Oh, I assure you, it was quite five or six thousand
pounds the Jorans spent, between the voyages and a
mansion in Park Lane for three months, and servants that
made them believe the nobility never ate beefsteak that
cost less than two-and-sixpence a pound.  Still this last
visit to England was not altogether without consolation.
The British Government was about that time bent on what
is called "knitting the bands of the empire closer."  So
people from the remotest isles and colonies were patronized
and invited in troops, like tenants on rent-day, to various
very funny entertainments.  The Jorans went with a crowd
of others, to lunch or breakfast or something at Windsor
Castle.  The greatest mar-joy in the arrangement was that
an over-worried Court official was heard to exclaim in
despair, "Good Lord!  I thought this was the day for the
negroes!"  Mrs. Joran never mentions the Windsor visit to
me now; she did so once or twice to begin with, but I
invariably said, "Well, it must have been comical to see all
those darkies from Benares and Ceylon and the Malay
Peninsula.  And, by the way, were there any of the Chins
from Burmah who hang missionaries to make the rice grow?
I take an interest in them, because the Dowager Countess of
Essington—Talbot's aunt, you know—spends a small fortune
on the dreadful creatures——  But no, I am mixing things up
like the poor gold-rod-in-waiting, or whoever it was....
Haven't you heard the story, dear Mrs. Joran?"  Naturally
she doesn't give one the chance to trot this out too often.'

'Well, I suppose Mrs. Joran does not sheathe her claws
when she gets a chance to tell you amusing anecdotes,' said
Stella, who sat listening to this sprightly malice with a
good deal of amusement.  'I have always heard that kindness
and a wish to please are at the root of true breeding—so
you seem to have the article here to perfection.'

'Oh, that's all very well, when one is in the country,'
returned Laurette.  'Why, when I am at Cannawijera, and
the squatters' wives around ask me my opinion of their
bonnets, I assure them they are perfectly *chic*—awful things,
you know, with black cotton lace, and the wings of those
demi-monde African parrots, that tear your eyes out with
their staring yellow and green.  Oh, Talbot is well, thanks.
He has gone into some sort of partnership with a man who
buys land at a shilling a yard, and sells it at £10 a foot.
Mining is so frightfully risky—perhaps land is, too; but you
can cut up land, it seems, into minute globules, and yet
build houses on it.  I don't understand exactly how it is
done, and yet I have seen it in a way, just as I have seen
conjurers' tricks.  You give one of these men your
handkerchief and he gets eggs out of it—though you know there
were none when you gave it to him.

'Driving about in the suburbs, I have often seen vacant
pieces of land for awhile.  By-and-by there are great
placards as big as a house put up on lofty poles: "This
valuable piece of land, situated in the very best suburb of
the metropolis of the Southern Hemisphere, is to be sold at
a ridiculously low price," and so on.  That is what they
write on these enormous placards.  And though there is
nothing to be seen near them, except, perhaps, a few dirty
children and rusty kerosene tins, when you see such an
announcement in big letters for a few weeks you somehow
begin to believe it.

'Then there are columns in the newspapers about the
rising suburb—the suburb which is coveted by the *élite* of
Australia; the suburb where the irritating hum of the
sanguinary mosquito is never heard.  Then you get a fat
letter containing an elegant circular, with daisies and
butterflies round the border, and a map of the place—all
showing that in some way every blessing this earth affords
is grouped round the rising suburb.  If you read the
advertisement and the circular, and have a five-pound note to
spare, and never go near the land, you're sure in the end to
buy an allotment.  You see, you need pay only a few pounds
to begin with.  But then you pay a few shillings a week as
well, for the rest of your life, or till you throw it up—I
mean the land, not your life, though some unfortunate people
have done both.  But if you do that you lose all you have
paid.  So altogether it comes to a lot of money—only I am
afraid the "boom," as they call it, is going off, for at a sale
last week, only the auctioneer, and the boy that rang the
bell, and Talbot, turned up.  But now tell me about Lull
and Minjah-Millowie, and all your people there; and the
Mortons, don't they live not far off?  And who is this
Dr. Langdale all the good people rave about?'

Only once before had Laurette seen the colour flash into
Stella's face in such endless wavelets.  To hide her confusion
she broke into a laughing account of some of Mrs. Morton's
funny little stories.  But without this Laurette had
concluded that all Julia's surmises were well founded.  The
girl looked so radiantly, so insultingly happy.  She fell into
such dreamy little reveries—her lips softly parted, her eyes
shining with a gentler irradiation than of old.  And then
she studiously avoided Langdale's name.  Heartless coquette
that she was, after encouraging Ted's addresses for years,
she was now prepared to throw him over at a moment's
notice to satisfy an absurd whim of being in love.  As if
there were no such thing as duty in the world!  Nothing
was more characteristic of Laurette than the way in which
she always fell back on the moral foundations of life as the
true mainspring of her actions when she found herself in
what she called a 'fix.'  She ignored everything that it
suited her to forget, and when meditating some paltry little
scheme that had every element of meanness and treachery
on a small scale, a virtuous glow stole over her as if she
were reinforced by the law and the prophets, and
obedience to the Ten Commandments was what she lived for.
But here she seemed to have entered a *cul-de-sac* in which
there was no move in her power that could further her
purposes.

'There is nothing so easy to make as a tradition,' one of
our best-loved novelists once wrote; and many lesser people
find it also very easy upon occasion.  There was no tradition,
oral or written, that Laurette was not prepared to invent.
But to what avail?  Ted would come, and the first few
words between him and Stella might serve to explode all
Laurette's painstaking efforts to keep the girl in the strait
and narrow path of duty.  A point had come in which
invention without deeds was valueless—but what could she
do?  Nothing except wait the course of events with a heart
prepared for any little justifiable artifice that would keep her
brother's life from being wrecked by the selfish perversity of
a heedless girl—one bent only on her own scheme of happiness,
regardless of the sacred claims of the past!  She was
undoubtedly in love with this man—was she engaged to
him?  A hundred times the question rose to Laurette's
lips.  A feverish sort of hopelessness grew on her as she
marked those little signs that in themselves are so slight,
and which yet, linked together, furnish so strong a chain of
evidence.

Many things had conspired to tax Laurette's nerves lately,
and she found this additional suspense intolerable.  But the
instinct of secrecy, of concealment, which comes to be a
second nature with those in whom a life of small intrigue
has grown and waxed strong, restrained her.  Nothing
could, after all, be gained by asking this question.  She
would wait and watch.

Stella escaped early into her own room that night, and
wrote for a long time, a happy light on her face, and warm
blushes often mantling in her cheeks, which would have
told their own tale to an onlooker.  This was what she
wrote:

.. vspace:: 2

'DEAREST FRIEND,

.. vspace:: 1

'I was half glad and half sorry that we did not meet
in the morning.  Our homeward ride was so altogether
precious—so far removed from the ordinary grooves of life—it
was better to part in the starlight and see each other
no more.  I almost wish we should not meet again till you
return from England.  And yet, of course, it is only my pen
that says this.  Yes, I soon went to my room; I sat without
a lamp looking out into the beautiful night, with its soft,
deep glow and ethereal starlight, and I made a picture of it
all in my mind, which I will keep forever and forever.  Oh,
I am so very sure that nothing we can see in any other
world in any other life can be dearer or more alluring than
that ride together over the great plain, stretching indefinitely
on every side as if it passed beyond the confines of the
world.  The shadowy clumps of trees, the dark lines that
marked the watercourses, the tall kangaroo grass undulating
gently like stormless billows, the cries of water-fowl far
overhead, the muffled hoof-beats of our horses, the boundless
expanse, the solitude, above all, the pale, wistful light,
making visible the faint lilac of the sky, the uncertain
gray-green of the earth—I held them all, making a picture
of them that should not pass away.  I looked at them long
and steadfastly till the secret of their changeless uniformity,
their unbroken peace, their sweet serenity, penetrated my
heart.  Do you remember the fragrance of the wild
geraniums that our horses crushed under their hoofs in
one place?  It comes floating in with the moonbeams at
this moment.  But to be the elixir of life it must be
accompanied with the sound of a voice—*the* voice which in all
God's wide universe——  But is this what one writes to a
"friend"?  And what is the use of trying to make a pen say
all that rises in the heart?

'Oh, you little cold, good creature!  I say to it; you are
sometimes wonderfully cunning.  You have a tongue of
your own that often dives down after thoughts, and brings
them out triumphantly, after a fashion that sets stammering
speech at defiance.  But where are your eyes, that brighten
with happy smiles, and grow dim with excess of joy?  And
where are your cheeks to glow and turn cold in a breath?
And, above all, where are your hands that with a touch, a
little timid good-night clasp, make the tongue feel like a clown
who has nothing to say but the worn-out tags of songs long
known by heart?  All these gifts come to you only in the
hands of a master from whom you learn the strange magic
of playing on the hearts of men from generation to
generation, like a clarion heard at dawn....

'But I have no power to teach you how to tell the
thoughts that rise in my hearts in these days—the
wonderful long, swift days in which so many thousand strange,
sweet, shuddering thoughts storm and foam, and then flow
in strong deep tranquillity, like an impetuous mountain
brook that grows ever wider, till it becomes a river and
loses itself in the sea.  But help me, little pen, to tell a few
of these myriad fleeting thoughts that will not let sleep come
beyond the threshold.  Is it true, then, that this dear friend
and I belong to each other for time and eternity?  That
neither life nor death, nor principalities nor powers, can
ever mar the perfectness of our love?  Is this true?
Yes—yes—yes.  Yesterday is irrevocably ours, and to-day belongs
to us, and to-morrow dawns that we may still know how
perfect life may be.  Henceforth our lives are double—one
within the other, in heart and spirit—never to live apart,
even though seas may roll between and continents divide us.

'And can it be that from year to year the heavens will be
so high and golden, the earth so wide and loving, that the
heart will thrill with a power of loving which lifts the soul
as on eagle pinions, till life and death are but twin brothers,
equally welcome so that we are undivided?

'Ah! what a strange thought, almost to wish for death
now!  Yes, would it not be good to escape a possibility of
the cruel ironies that Nature keeps so often in store for the
children of men?  Can any mortal measure the power which
time has to bring in its train change and weariness?  What
if the day should come when this love, so strong and ardent
now, should become one more of the beautiful illusions of
life, a deserted pavilion flecked through and through with
the mildew of indifference?  Has my heart been too readily
given?  Is it not written in song and story that men prize
most what is won with difficulty?  But as for me, the first
time we spoke to each other, did not my heart stir
tumultuously?  Could I not have opened my eyes if I had willed
that day when the storm had raged so fiercely—was it not
because I hungered to hear him speak his love? ... Well,
be it so.  I am glad that I know the truth—that it
will be with me through these long months of separation,
like a nest of singing birds whose wings grow strong for
flight, and who yet, like doves that fly afar in the day-time,
always return to their dove-cotes before night falls....
Tell me of the gentle, tender thoughts which cast out every
lurking shadow of fear; of the new ties that may arise to
knit us ever closer, heart to heart, in the higher duties of
life, till we

   |  "'Learn by a mortal yearning to ascend.
   |    Seeking a higher object,'

till in imagination I draw near to the dim bourne without
any heart-quaking.  Yes, even Death must doff his terrors
when we know that the infinitely beloved of our soul must
pass through the shadow of the dark valley.  Ah! gentle,
kindly Death, grant us that last favour of life—not to be
long apart after the last farewells are spoken.  After all, it
is the might of love that takes the victory from Death and
robs the grave of its terror.  We learn to know too well
that not a clod can ever touch the outer bark of the spirit's
life.  Abide with me, thoughts of pensive gentleness, that
fill the mind with calm till all forecasting doubts and fears
are swallowed in the azure of peace, like clouds that wander
on the wide horizon till they are spun into the flawless dome
of heaven....

'After all, little pen, there is a touch of the laity about
you, so that the heart cannot take you into its full confidence.
But do not stand in the outer court of the Gentiles—the
dear friend for whom you are writing loves our
babbling.  What other small broods of fancies do you hear
chirping out their slender roundelays?  No, let us not
speak of our happiness.  It is foolish to cut snippets out of
so endless a theme.  What was that little whisper of fear
or regret?—no, nothing so resolute as these feelings, but a
vagrant little misgiving, that trips so swiftly before one
looks it in the face.  One cannot say whether it is a scout,
or a forerunner, or an idle little gad-about, who has nothing
to do but snatch an ear of corn, melting melodious airs to
the most wayward woodland fancies.  Are you not afraid
to marry when you are so desperately in love?  Ah, wicked
little rover!  I have caught you merrily whistling your
treasons.  Now I have put the tip of my pen through your
errant fancy, and transfixed it for my friend.  I should not
wonder if he would beat you as blue as a violet when he
catches you.  But what treacherous little arrow have you
let fly?  Let me get at the core of this half-jocund lay
which leaves a sting behind.  Youth, love and marriage,
are these the three fearful felicities of a woman's life, and
is the most fearful of these marriage?  And love, the most
exquisite vision which life holds, is it in imminent peril
when it is imprisoned in the service of every-day life? ...

'Lovely as one of the muses, and crowned with the first
violets of spring, this vision loved to wander solitary on
mountain peaks, when they were first lightly touched with
the vermilion of brightening day.  It came and went at
will—this radiant dream, casting a glamour over the world,
like the reflection of a damask rose falling athwart the
half-opened chalice of a white magnolia.  Dreams shun the
glare of day; but one morning the voice of him to whom
this vision of right belonged called to it to come from its
lonely haunts, and abide by the altar which he had dedicated
to it in a secure dwelling-place—alas! is it too secure, too
untroubled?  Who could believe that a little air of revelry,
whistled on an oaten pipe by the most *insouciant* of
wandering minstrels, should awaken such qualms?  Go on, little
pen—an altar fitted to guard the fairest dreams.  Even
Love's purple wings and golden arrows are touched to finer
issues when they are consecrated with life-long vows.  Yes,
like other monarchs, he comes to his kingdom by making
covenants; and yet, and yet, we cannot give up the dream
for the reality without heart-quaking and doubt, and
something of poignant regret.  Flashes of thought come like
cloven tongues of fire, in whose light the soul waxes faint
and timorous and cries in anguish.  Is it, then, true that
love's inmost life is rooted in the senses, are its keenest
aspirations to be tamed like caged birds, to be merged in
the commonness of every day content?  Yet, for all possible
fears and doubts and questions there is an answer: Perfect
love casteth out fear.  Love, the crowning felicity of life,
that light of the world which shines more unquenchably
than the stars of heaven.  It is strong, not only to bear
sorrow and anguish, but also to meet the common needs
and common joys of daily life, buoyant enough to sustain
the secure happiness of wedded as well as the despair of
parted lovers.

'Dear friend, does this appear to you as the cloven foot of
those heretical images of marriage which haunt me so often?
But who can go through life with open eyes and not perceive
that the average run of married people seem to have but
entered on business contracts, in which anything like the
ardour of love is absent as conspicuously as in any huckster's
bargain?  Do you remember my telling you one day that I
could not be so very sorry for Romeo and Juliet?  You asked
me why, and a coach-whip bird flew snapping by, and I
followed it to make sure whether it had a white spot above
each eye.  And then, though you may not think it, ever
belovedest friend, I often hesitated to say things because of
your calm, clear reasonableness.  But now there is no
coach-whip bird, and you are three hundred miles away.
Therefore do I thank the gods that here and there we have
the immortal story of lovers who died before their hearts
and lives were touched with the corrosion of life's invading
commonness.  Why should we regret those who knew how
to die so well for dear love's sake?  So many and so many
live to bear false witness to it—to sit under a ragged banner
and eat garlic, nor ask to be stayed with flagons and
comforted with wine.  But then, again, there are the fortunate
few.  I must stop.  I should have written to my mother
this evening, but I wrote to you instead, though I parted
from you only the day before yesterday.  Oh, Anselm Langdale,
do you not call this the utmost peak to which ingratitude
can climb?  A mother's love; whose is like it?—giving
so much, asking so little!  Do not pretend that you
ask little.  History, poetry, the drama, your eyes, all betray
you.  But this first tender love that enfolded us from the
dawn of life, that bore with all our waywardness, that
watched over us in illness, that was with us like the
benediction of God when we first folded our hands in prayer.
And then, like long-legged, every-day chickens, we leave the
loving mother to scratch up the dust for ourselves, without
the shadow of an excuse that she pecks us away in favour of
a younger brood.  Don't I know?  Have I not watched my
old hen, Augusta, rearing brood after brood?  And now I
watch myself looking forward to the return of the *Pâquerette*
with hardly a pang.  Hardly a pang?  You hypocrite—with
a heart that keeps time to dance-music all day long;
yes, and beats wide awake at night to keep up the revel.
Think of it—coldly to leave the sweet mother when the
night is drawing on apace, when all the vivid personal
gladness of being alive is over, to wander to the far ends of
the earth, perhaps to meet never again.  Oh, infinite pathos
and mystery of our being!  Life, hast thou never a draught
of joy to offer that is sparkling throughout?  I am ashamed
I did not write to my mother instead of writing to you; and
yet, no, because to-morrow is Friday, and I would not write
my first letter to you on that day for the world, it would be
a bad omen.  Why do you smile so?  I could prove to you
that from the first dawn of history until now, omens have
played a strange part in the life of man.  Think how
ominous of their future career it was that all the Ten
Commandments were broken even before they were given to
mankind!  I spare you the rest.  This in itself is an army
set in array.

'Tell me if that poor splitter, who was so badly hurt, is
better?  Has he anyone to look after him?  Did you stay
long?  Did you see a lyre bird standing on a little hillock
showing off its tail-feathers like a peacock?  Did you set
someone peeping from behind a window-blind after you at
daybreak yesterday morning when you rode away?  And
now not another word.  I am going to get you that
keepsake I promised you on the veranda of Peeloo station.
Always your friend—likewise your sweet St. Charity,
and,

.. vspace:: 1

'THE INNERMOST-LITTLE-LEAFLET-OF-YOUR-HEART.'

.. vspace:: 2

When Stella finished, she rose and unfastened the coils
of her hair, which fell below her waist like a mantle of
dead-leaf gold.  She cut a thick full-length lock, soft and silky,
with a ripple in it as if it had fallen out of curl.  She folded
it up in silver tissue-paper, which had been wrapped round
a small vial of attar of roses.  Then she enclosed it in the
closely-written sheets, sealed and addressed the letter, and
put it on the hall-table in the receptacle for letters to be
posted at ten.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXVIII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXVIII.

.. vspace:: 2

A little afterwards, Laurette came out into the hall with
some notes, saw this letter, and regarded it as the answer
to all her conjectures.  She took it up and looked at it with
a strange expression on her face.  It was bulky, with
double postage on it, and that Eastern fragrance clung to it
of a thousand rose-leaves crushed into a pin-point of liquid,
which had been dear to Stella from childhood.  Laurette
remembered as a girl seeing some of the hermetically-sealed
little vials full of this essence, which some connection of
the Courtlands sent to the girls from Persia, where he was
in the diplomatic service of his country.  Laurette could
hardly have explained why the reminiscence heightened
that half-vindictive spite never very distant from the feeling
with which she regarded Stella.  It was merely one of the
insignificant little events that is part of the life of a family
whose cadets have for generations pushed their way into
every quarter of the globe in the civil and military service
of Britain.  But such circumstances had, to Laurette's
sharp envious mind, marked the gulf which, in the old
country, had separated her own people from those to whom
the Courtlands belonged, though in Australia the position
was in some degree reversed.  She held the letter a moment
in her hand, then put it back with the rest.

If any object could be gained by destroying or opening it,
she would not have hesitated to take either course.  There
would have been no balancing of sentiments—no struggle
between good and evil—but simply a swift calculation as to
the chances of detection, and if that could be evaded, prompt
action, as it would serve her interests.  When men or
women have passed many years in an atmosphere of small
habitual duplicities, shifty meannesses, and unscrupulous
self-seeking, all the time tempered by a cunning caution, the
nature becomes ingrained with a moral imbecility that seems
absolutely proof against any stirring of conscience.

Laurette returned to the drawing-room, and shortly
afterwards her husband came home.  His appearance at that
early hour was a little shock to her.  Nor was it misplaced.
He at once broached the subject which led to his
phenomenal movements.

'That Riverina fellow has seen me to-night again.  He is
willing to give an advance of two hundred pounds for this
place, on the rent we pay.  I have told him he may most
likely have it at the end of this month.'

'Well, that was kind of you,' said Laurette, trying to
laugh; but it was an unsuccessful attempt, and her face
had blanched.  To this Tareling made no reply.

'I am going to sleep at the club to-night, and make an
early start to Beechfield to-morrow about some land there.
I thought I'd better tell you as early as possible about
giving up this place.'

'And going to Cannawijera with the children and the maids?'

'Precisely; unless your father wishes to have you at
Godolphin House.  What the devil made them give the
place such a name as that?  It seems like a bad joke.'

'Most things do in the Colonies, don't they?'

'Ah!  I don't know that we need go into these details.
You understand about the house?  I have not given an
absolute promise.'

'No; and you must not!' said Laurette, suddenly rising
with quivering lips.  'If you suppose that I am going to
bury myself in the heart of the Mallee Scrub——'

Tareling shrugged his shoulders with such an
imperturbable air that Laurette at once checked herself.

'You have a good deal of temperament at times,' he said
smoothly, after a little pause; 'but if you think over it
you will see that here it is really worse than useless.  I
must have six or seven hundred pounds early in October,
and two hundred pounds clear is more than I can afford to
lose.  Besides, you are only getting into debt every week.'

'And you? what will you do?'

'Oh, I shall manage, thanks,' answered Tareling,
examining his watch-chain critically.

'Yes; you will manage to get into debt.'

'Probably; but there will be compensations.'

'And then my father will have to pay another thou——'

'You are developing a remarkable turn for figures, and I
notice you do not mix up amounts like some women.  I
wish you had been as accurate when we first met, and you
dropped those artless hints about being heiress to the tune
of five or six thousand a year.'

'Oh, good heavens! if I had only known; if I could
have foreseen!'

'Ah, exactly.  If we could both have foreseen; but as
that was a gift denied to us, we married.  But if you will
excuse me——'  Tareling stood up, taking his watch out.

'Well, Talbot, I'll excuse you if you excuse me,' said
Laurette, with a sudden change of tone and manner.  'I
should have told you before that Ted is going to give me
another fifteen hundred pounds at the end of this month—only
I must not leave Melbourne at the latest till the season
is quite over.'

'Why didn't you tell me this before—when I first spoke
of re-letting the house?'

'Well, you see, I thought I would keep all this second
cheque for current expenses and the most pressing bills—as
you had nearly half of the first lot; but you can have
what you need early in October.'

'Oh, well, I suppose I had better tell this fellow
circumstances have turned up that prevent our letting the Lodge.'

And with a nod the Honourable Talbot Tareling left the
domestic hearth.

For some time after he was gone Laurette sat sunk in
reflections.  Early in October.  Yes, that was about the
time that the company to which Mademoiselle de Melier
belonged was to leave for San Francisco.  Laurette had
known for some time that her husband contemplated a
change of scene.  People who had known him intimately
before his marriage were amazed that he had remained in
the Colonies so long.  Countries in which work is the
paramount social factor are always more or less crude in their
resources of amusement.  And then the Ritchie family was
cutting up so confoundedly rough about money matters.
Laurette had long recognised that there was nothing in her
husband's nature to which any appeal could successfully be
made that clashed with his own ideas of enjoyment.  His
intrigue with this wretched little singing actress affected
Mrs. Tareling little, if at all, from an ethical point of view.
As she had once said in a burst of confidence to an old
school friend: 'When a girl marries into the British nobility
she must give up bourgeoise notions of morality.'  Neither
could she be deeply wounded through the affections.  But
there is always a vulnerable spot—and that with Laurette
was her social success.  If Talbot worked out his present
plans, Laurette's prospects centred not only in social
extinction in the Mallee Scrub, but something also of social
disgrace.  Laurette rose up almost gasping at the prospect.

She did not in the least expect the second munificent
cheque from Ted, knowing too well the tissue of deceit by
which she had secured the first.  But then, this Riverina
family was choked off, and every week made it less likely
that anyone else would make as good an offer for Monico
Lodge—and she gained time.  To leave Melbourne at this
juncture would be to give up all.  She regretted not having
opened Stella's letter.  Was it not possible she was
dallying with a new admirer—yet unable to commit the
extravagant folly of resigning a man with fifteen thousand a year
for love of one who had not half as many hundreds?  She
had written to Julia urging her to find out by all means in
her power what this sudden departure of Langdale's
portended.  She must somehow find out the truth of affairs
before telegraphing for Ted, as she had promised to do on
Stella's arrival.  In fact, it might be necessary to prevent
their meeting at all under her roof.  She reflected that if
one is called to account for conflicting statements it is
always easier to explain by letter.  'My anxiety for your
success, dear Ted, may have led me to exaggerate in your
favour,' etc.  As for Stella, she would be too happy and
self-absorbed to care about such trifles.  'But "there's
many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip,"' thought Laurette
vindictively.

Next morning's first post brought letters to Stella from
Lullaboolagana, and one in a hand strange to Laurette,
bearing the Minjah-Millowie post-mark.  But there was
not much room left to her for speculation as to the writer.
The moment Stella saw this letter her face was suffused
with happy blushes, and she presently made some excuse to
escape with it to her own room—actually leaving the rest
behind.  Laurette herself had a note from Julia.  'I have
fished it out of Nell,' she wrote, 'that Louise *knows*
Dr. L. has not yet been accepted, but hopes to be on his return.
He is to be back in three or four months.  What can be
taking him away?  Perhaps you will see him in a day or
two.  Mrs. Morrison told me yesterday that a Dr. Grey, a
friend of her husband's, has come out by the last P. and
O. steamer, and is most likely coming to practise here in
partnership with Morrison.'

On Monday Stella went to stay for a day and a half with
the Carters.  An hour after she had driven away with her
brother a servant brought a card to Laurette.  It was
Dr. Langdale's, and he was waiting to see her.  Was he going
by the French steamer which sailed in the afternoon?
Could she prevent him from seeing Stella, or would this do
any good?  He would have had her letter on Friday night,
while his must have been written on Thursday.  A hundred
thoughts flew through Laurette's mind, but she felt the
impossibility of seeing her way far ahead before she knew
what Langdale's plans were.  Only she decided if he were
really leaving by the *Salagie* she would say Stella had
gone—where?  Some place not to be reached in a few hours.
But lovers were such awful fools—they would attempt the
most imbecile feats.  Well, to avoid all rash venturing she
would state Stella was on her way to Mount Macedon by
an uncertain route.

Who that saw this pretty, fair woman in her fresh
blue morning dress greeting her visitor with an amiable
smile could have dreamt what her resolves had been a
moment before?  Langdale apologized for his early call.
He had arrived by the morning train, and was to sail by
the *Salagie* that afternoon, and being anxious to see Miss
Courtland before leaving——

'Oh, had she any idea you were coming?' broke in Laurette.

'No,' Dr. Langdale answered, smiling; 'he himself had
not known till six hours before he left Minjah-Millowie.'

'Oh, a thousand pities,' said Laurette, in a sympathetic
voice.  'Miss Courtland is now on her way to Mount
Macedon.  I cannot even say by what route, or whether
she will reach her destination this evening.  She may stay
with friends on the way.  Your woods seem to have spoiled
Stella for town life.'

This was said with an arch smile, and Laurette was
quick to note the awakened look, the swift flash, with which
Langdale heard this.

'Miss Courtland is well, I hope,' he said a little anxiously.

'Oh yes, radiantly well; but more addicted to silence
than formerly,' returned Laurette meaningly.  She thought
if she were sufficiently cordial and encouraging, if she
comported herself as if she were quite behind the scenes, she
might glean a little more intelligence.  At any rate, such a
manner would be likely to inspire confidence.  And nothing
was more valuable than confidence when you were bent on
thwarting the confidee's little plans.  'But, after all,
perhaps you need not go to-day?' added Laurette.

'I must,' he answered—and he went on to say that his
passage had been booked in the *Salagie* by telegram, that
she sailed at seven in the evening.  And then he asked
leave to call later with a letter for Miss Courtland.

'Well,' thought Laurette, as the door closed behind him,
'this looks like the finger of Providence.'  She seemed to
hold possibilities in her grasp that would be valuable, and
yet Stella was so unmalleable in some respects, and
Laurette divined, even from her brief interview with
Langdale, that one who knew him, much less one who loved
him, would not be easily duped into doubting the man.
But Laurette was content to take short views.  He was
going to the other end of the world, and to entrust a letter
to her care.  Yes, people often wrote on the way, but on a
French boat one could not write earlier than from Mauritius—five
or six weeks ahead at the least; while what Laurette
was scheming for was to get that other fifteen hundred
pounds at the end of September on the plea of serving Ted's
cause so well.

She did not stir out of the house till Langdale came and
left the letter.  She took it at once to her own room and
locked the door.  She opened the letter carefully, and it
yielded under her supple fingers without a tear.  Of course,
if nothing could be gained by destroying it, she would close
it up again and deliver it.  But a glance served to show her
that it placed undreamt-of opportunities in her hand, if only
she could devise means of putting them to use.  There was
a long letter with a separate enclosure.  It was this that
first caught her eye, and brought the blood into her face,
while her heart beat tumultuously.  Then she read the letter:

.. vspace:: 2

'SWEET ST. CHARITY,

.. vspace:: 1

'Your first letter reached me an hour ago.  Will you
ever know the extreme joy it gave me?  And the great
lovely lock of hair it contained!  I drew it to its full length,
and laid it against my cheek.  But Blättchen knows the
fatuity of pens in speaking of things so far beyond their
reach.  How shabby my letter was compared to yours!
But, if I do not take care, I shall not remember to answer
one of your questions.

'As I rode away, in the dawn, from Peeloo, I looked back
and thought I saw a face I knew at one of the windows.
It came with me all the way, and showed me the profound
loveliness of the early morning light falling upon the still
woods.  The splitter is better.  I stayed with him two
hours, and he told me a little story that would have
delighted St. Charity's heart.  I may, perhaps, tell it to
her when I see her in Melbourne; and there is something
else I must tell her also—the full reason for my visit to
England.  Yes, darling, it may pain you, but your letter
makes me feel that it is unworthy of us both to hold it
back.  But this is my first reply to a letter of Liebe's, and
therefore there must be nothing in it to pain her.  And I
may be with her for a little in a day or two.  How I long
to set out, so that I may hasten back!  My first reply to
you, dearest.  What have I to say?  Oh, I have a great
and solemn secret to whisper in your ear.  Don't let
Dustiefoot hear it; and be sure you do not tell it to the pert
Fairacre birds, who do nothing but chatter from morning
to night.  The secret is this.  Oh, little-leaf-of-my-heart,
I love you—I love you—I love you!  Did I ever tell you
before what a darling you are, and how entirely I worship
you?  But that I could not tell you adequately—no one
could!  Oh, my own, do you know what your love means
to me—how it has gladdened my life as I never expected
it to be gladdened?  I told you once that I had suffered;
but some sorrows have power to make strong and build up,
while others seem to eat up what should go to the woof of
calm daily happiness.  That was the sort of sorrow I have
had; yet I felt and acknowledged that I myself was to
blame, as most of us are in the misfortunes that fall on us
apart from bereavement.  But the darkness is over.  Already
I see the gold of dawn which is to broaden into the perfect
day of our happiness.

'Darling, does it not seem in some ways as if we could
not be really separated any more?  Now and henceforth
you are part of my inmost life.  Each sight and sound of
Nature is more vivid—more beautiful since I knew you.
Here are some lines that I keep crooning very often when
I am alone:

   |  '"She gave me eyes, she gave me ears,
   |  And humble cares and delicate fears,
   |  A heart the fountain of sweet tears,
   |    And love and thought and joy."

.. vspace:: 2

'Yes, love and thought and joy.  How grateful I am
that the unspeakable gift of your love was given to me
before time and bitter memories robbed me of the capacity of
joy!  It does happen in life that people are sometimes so
crushed and made desolate that, when the possibility of
happiness is restored to them, it comes too late.  It is not
only that Joy is so prone to put his hand to his lips bidding
adieu, but that often, when he approaches, his sovereignty
is over.  If necessary, we can endure our lives and do our
work in the world without the possession of vivid personal
joy.  But, ah! when it comes, and our hearts are still fresh
and young enough to bound at its approach, what is there
that we would barter for its possession?

'Belovedest, did I not see tears glisten in your sweet eyes
when we parted?  Do not allow too many sad thoughts to
nestle in your heart when I am not near to chase them
afar.  There is but a step between being dejected for
individual reasons and harbouring melancholy forebodings
relative to wider issues.  It is good to remember that the
problems of life do not crowd pell-mell into our daily path
in the way that they do into our minds, and that in the
end we have not to solve inextricable riddles in order to do
our best in the world.  There is one maxim you quoted out
of "Wilhelm Meister" I would have you, Liebe, keep in
mind all the time I am away—"Remember to live."  Do
not let spectres come between you and the sunshine you
love so well.  By this I do not mean try to drive solemn
thoughts from you.  Ever-belovedest, I love to think of you
too well as you are—to recall how in the most mirth-provoking
mood a sudden seriousness would often fall upon
your face.  No, I would not have Liebe different from her
dear self by the twentieth part of the petal of a milk-white
fairy rose.  Her quick moods and rippling fancies are all too
precious to me.  All I plead for is that she should drive
sombre dreams to the far ends of the earth; that she should
let no reflection of the shadow that has burdened part of
my life throw any darkness on hers.  Keep all your buoyant
fancies, darling, and your tender sparkling gaiety, for my
sake.

'I have often felt that the exacting routine of labour to
which men must school themselves, brings in its train
something wooden and inflexible, even when their work makes
constant demands on their sympathies.  I suppose it is
because of this that a woman's more inward and leisured
habit of thought exercises so deep a fascination.  She has
time to keep all these things and ponder them in her heart,
so that she comes to have a kind of second sight, a sensitive
delicacy of perception, which, with most men, is either
undeveloped or swallowed in the grind of daily life.  A
woman sees a thousand things that from their duller, or, let
us say, more preoccupied eyes, are almost wholly obscured.
To achieve anything in the world, a man has to learn to be
hard on himself, and that often produces a certain hardness
in other respects.  It would seem that to work long and
constantly, even though the work is what interests us most,
begets a certain strain of insensibility.  Thus I often smile
when I think that though I could draw separately, and in
skeleton form, all the bones of a swallow's wing, I learned
the full poetry of its flight through your bright eyes.  But
what is the use of my talking, or rather writing, in this
way, when Liebe persists in making the most adorably
comic little faces at me, and making up a wicked little story
about what happened to someone who had an evil habit of
writing in a didactic, reasonable strain?  After all, your
chrysanthemums will not be out before I return.  But there
will be roses, and mind you wear great clusters of them on
the day the *Pâquerette* steams into Glenelg.  Dear day,
filled with soft-footed hours!  Is that one of Liebe's phrases,
and will she inflict penalties on me for using it without
leave?  So she may; only I must draw up a list of the
penalties.'

.. vspace:: 2

Here followed a page or two of the ardent nothings that
come so readily to a lover's pen.  Then there was a break,
and the rest was dated that day, 'Scott's Hotel, Melbourne,'
deeply regretting Stella's absence from town, explaining
how the prompt acceptance by a friend of Morrison's of a
medical partnership at Minjah-Millowie had occurred in
time to permit Langdale taking his passage by the
out-going French boat, which enabled him to set out at once,
and he was incredibly anxious to get away, so that he might
be back in February.

'And now,' he wrote, 'I am going to tell you, Stella,
what that business is, because ever since I got your precious
letter I felt it was impossible I should conceal it from you;
my only reason for doing so was that your keenly sensitive,
apprehensive nature might dwell on the bare possibility that
there may still be a barrier to our marriage; but with the
exquisite trust and love you have shown, no consideration
has force enough to make me keep this back from you, only
it must not be included in this, my reply to Liebe's first
letter.  Are you satisfied that I am not so calmly reasonable
after all, and that I may even be infected with a little
superstition?  No, not superstition, but "delicate
fears."  I shall not say farewell, but merely what we said that
night after our most memorable ride—"Auf baldige Wiedersehen."'

After reading this, with beating temples, Laurette turned
once more to the enclosure.  There were four thin sheets of
foreign paper, the last being but half written.  As Langdale
wrote a firm, rather heavy hand, he had written on one side
only.  It was a trifling circumstance, and yet it was of
material service to Laurette in carrying out the plan that
eventually took shape in her unscrupulous little brain.

.. vspace:: 2

'At the age of twenty-two, while still a medical student
in London, just a year after my father's death, I met a
lady a good many years older than myself, who fascinated
me greatly.  She was an Italian, and very beautiful.  Still,
infatuated as I was, I shrank from the idea of marrying
her.  But, under circumstances which I need not now
detail, I married her four months after we first met.  The
marriage turned out a disastrous failure.  After three years
we agreed to live apart.  A year later I knew that she had
proved unfaithful to me.  I had sufficient evidence to secure
a divorce, but partly because I shrank from the exposure—only
a few of my most intimate friends knew of the union—partly
because she had fallen into very bad health, and
besought me to spare her, as she had not long to live, I
desisted.  She gave my lawyer a written acknowledgment
of her guilt, duly attested, resigned my name, and left
England for Brussels, where some of her friends lived.  On
these conditions I settled an income on her, which she
named as being adequate, and was to be paid by my lawyer
half-yearly.

'The letter I opened in the Home Field that day was
from my lawyer.  He wrote to say that the last receipt he
had received for this half-yearly payment was evidently a
forgery, that he had caused inquiries to be made through a
trusted agent, and found that the lady to whom the money
was payable had died, but that the fact was concealed by a
relative who endeavoured to make capital out of the
imposition.  He found that the lady who died was buried under
the name of the one with whom she lived, and an application
was for a second time made for the annuity, with a
statement that the difference of writing was caused by
illness.  But a request that an interview should be granted
to one who knew both ladies was denied.  No doubt could
exist in my lawyer's mind, nor in my own, as to the facts of
the matter.  But you will understand, Stella, that it is one
of the points on which one is satisfied with nothing less
than legal indisputable proof.  It was my intention to
possess this before doing more than asking leave to write to
you.  I cannot but be glad that the course of events led
to my departing from this resolution.  The assurance of
your love is too precious.  But you have been so loyally
trustful, you have shown such entire confidence in me, it
seems to me now I should have frankly told you the
position.  But I shrank horribly from marring the first
glow of our happiness with this sordid story.  And then
there are some misfortunes in life that men are more
sensitive about than many forms of evil-doing.  And yet,
my own, now that I have won the treasure of your love, I
feel more than ever thankful that in this early, ill-judged,
ill-fated bond I was the betrayed, and not the betrayer.  It
hurts me horribly that the bloom of your gladness must be
touched with the thought of a life which closed so darkly
stained.  And yet, Stella, it is best you should know all
now—that our happy reunion on my return should not be
spoilt by going back to this.  It will then be the past for
both of us.  From the moment I resolved to tell you I felt
a relief, for the conviction haunted me that I should not
have yielded to your generous wish in the matter, saying
that I had been surprised out of my secret.  Do not be too
sorry, Herzblättchen.  Think chiefly of what carries so
much joy for both.  Think of the day on which the
*Pâquerette* will gaily sail into port.'

.. vspace:: 2

After this came some lines that had been blotted out, but
so quickly dried that the words were readable:

.. vspace:: 2

'Will you forgive me if I say that one of the memories
which gives me the most unalloyed happiness is your
timorous confession that you felt you could have moved or
spoken after your accident when I reached you, only you
wished to know how it would really "affect me"?

'Yours, Stella, with the profoundest respect and love,

.. vspace:: 1

'ANSELM LANGDALE.'

.. vspace:: 2

Laurette's head throbbed with swiftly succeeding and
conflicting thoughts as she reached the close.  It was
apparent at once that the first letter must be kept back, if
only on account of its allusion to Stella's imagined absence
from Melbourne.  And the other, the enclosure, which,
taken by itself, would begin with such strange abruptness?

'Chance—chance,' says Ste. Beuve in one of his critical
essays, 'if we wish to be truthful, we shall never allow
enough room for you, nor shall we ever make deep enough
incisions in any philosophy of history.'  Probably Laurette
herself could hardly say how far the form of this statement,
the way in which it was written on one side only of the
paper, and the suggestive air of the effaced lines, helped her
to work the scheme which she put into execution with
unshrinking completeness.

She sat for an hour or two reading and re-reading the
words, regarding the statement from all sides with
concentrated intentness.  Her eyes glittered strangely, and a
brilliant flush reinforced the *soupçon* of rouge which lent
point to her complexion.  It was characteristic that though,
on first reading Langdale's little narrative, no doubt entered
her mind as to the death of the unfortunate woman whose
life had made his run with so dark a current for some years,
yet the moment she decided on her plan of campaign, she
convinced herself that the news was illusory.

'People never die when it adds to their friends' happiness,'
she said to herself, with the decision of one who
argues from the knowledge of experience.  'Well, Stella
won't run such a fearful risk if I can help it.'

She destroyed the letter there and then, setting fire to it
in the grate, and watching it till the last scrap was reduced
to a thin black cinder.  Her next step was to ring for
Sarah, the parlour-maid who had admitted Dr. Langdale
and brought her his card.

'Sarah, I want you to get ready to go to Wandalong,
Mrs. Morton's place, you know, by the early train
to-morrow.  She needs a little extra help, and I must spare
you for a few weeks at any cost.  Your wages will be fifteen
shillings a week as long as you are there.'  Then she sent a
telegram to her sister:

.. vspace:: 2

'Feel sure you need more help.  Sarah goes to you
to-morrow for a month.'

.. vspace:: 2

'I must run no risk of servants' tattle,' she thought, with
forced calm.  Then she sat down and wrote two notes—both
brief.  The first was addressed to a Mrs. Anson, and
ran:

.. vspace:: 2

'DEAR ROSE,

.. vspace:: 1

'What an age it is since we met!  Can you
imagine that your grief and undeserved misfortune have
changed your friends?  As it seems useless to expect you
to come to me, unless some pressure is brought to bear, I
shall send the carriage for you at ten to-morrow morning,
and you must spend the day with me.  I shall take care we
have no visitors and no interruptions.  You see I am
determined to take no excuse.'

.. vspace:: 2

The next note ran:

.. vspace:: 2

'DEAR STELLA,

.. vspace:: 1

'As I know the Carters are dying to have you a
little longer, I write to say that I shall not grudge your
remaining till we call for you to-morrow evening on our
way to the theatre.  Just demi-toilette and a few flowers.
They say the comedy company is in splendid form.'

.. vspace:: 2

After that Laurette set about her task of manipulating
the enclosure.

Sarah left by the early train, and at half-past ten
Mrs. Anson came.  She was the wife of a man who had been
high up in the Civil Service, but who had, six months
previously, been convicted of defalcating the public funds, and
sentenced to six years' imprisonment.  Mrs. Anson was a
gentle, sensitive woman, who since her misfortune shrank
into retirement as much as possible, yet felt a melancholy
pleasure in being so warmly remembered by an old friend.
Laurette, on her part, was all chastened sympathy and
delicate attention, kissing her sweet Rose on each cheek,
and holding her hands in a gentle, detaining clasp.

'You have hurt your hand, dear?' said Mrs. Anson in a
tone of concern, noticing that the forefinger of Laurette's
right hand was tied up.

'Oh, a mere bagatelle—a little cut with the bread-knife.
I gave my nursery governess a holiday yesterday, and saw
to the little one's dinner myself.'

'You are always doing someone a kindness,' murmured
Mrs. Anson, suddenly struck with the thought that hitherto
she had hardly given Laurette credit for all her good
qualities.

'Well, my dear, it would be a poor world if we did not
help each other with little deeds of kindness,' replied
Laurette, not only without a blush, but with a little glow
of virtuous self-complacency.  Then she sat and chatted
about all the people her friend had known intimately in
days not long gone by.  Some who had married, and some
who expected to marry, but did not, and all equally
repentant.  No little tale of social disaster lost its piquancy
on Laurette's lips.  Indeed, at her best, she had a gift for
heightening effects, and shading, which many an artist in
journalism might envy.  The hours passed very agreeably.
There were callers, but Laurette was denied to them.  She
had promised herself a treat for the day, and she was not
going to be cheated out of it.  There was so much
insincerity and hollowness in the world.  'As I grow older, I
sometimes long to turn my back on it all,' she said, with a
gentle little sigh.  Poor Mrs. Anson, though far from being
a bitter or envious woman, yet could not wholly escape a
slight tinge of the gratification sometimes experienced by
the unfortunate when the reflection is forced on them that
the disparities of life are, after all, not so great as they
appear on the surface.

As they sat over afternoon tea, several letters were
brought in to Laurette.  One of them seemed to distress
her.

'Oh, how very thoughtless of me not to have written that
note as I promised!' she cried, with a little gesture of
despair.  'Rose, dear, will you excuse me while I pen a
note that I should have sent away last night?  Thanks, so
much.'

She opened a little morocco writing-case that was on a
small table near her.  Presently she uttered a sharp
ejaculation of pain.

'Who would have thought that such a slight cut would
be so painful?' she cried.

'But the cut appears to be on the front of the finger,'
said Mrs. Anson.  'You see the moment you attempt to
write the pen presses against the wound.'

'Oh, how very provoking!' cried Laurette, knitting her
brows prettily.

'Is it anything I can do for you, Laurette?  Pray let me,
if it is!'

'Oh, thank you, dear,' said Laurette, her face brightening.
'It is only an old friend like you I could have as an
amanuensis in the matter.  It is something to be enclosed
in a friend's letter in corroboration.  A matrimonial
quarrel—only more serious than the average run.  A wretched
affair—jealousy, estrangement, broken hearts.  I must not
burden you with a knowledge of names; secrets are so
often a nuisance.  One is so afraid of betraying them, and
of course, if it comes to being questioned downright, one
tries to tell a fib and fails.  I shall be able to put the
beginning and sign my name.'

Mrs. Anson was more and more convinced that Laurette
was one of those people who must be well known before
they get credit for all the minor deeds of charity, and little
merciful acts of an unstrained quality, they scatter on their
way through life.  She sat down and wrote, to Laurette's
dictation, in her elegant, careful handwriting, with a sincere
wish that what she wrote would effect its kindly purpose.

After her visitor was gone, Laurette looked over the
shipping news in the *Age*, and found that the *Salagie* had
not left Williamstown till eleven o'clock on the previous
night.  Dr. Langdale's name was safe in the passenger list;
but what if the delay had led to a chance encounter between
himself and Stella?  If she and Dora had gone shopping in
Collins Street, as not infrequently happens with young
ladies, late in the afternoon!  Laurette put the conjecture
from her.  She was somehow upheld by the thought that
her efforts at putting crooked things straight would not be
so ruthlessly crushed by an overruling Providence.  Laurette
thoroughly believed that this power was always on the side
of the strongest battalions, and as matched against Stella,
Laurette felt that at this juncture she was as one armed
and lying in ambush to trap an unsuspecting foe.  As some
of the lowest organisms in which nerves cannot exist are
yet somehow sensitive to light, so even the least noble
natures, when contriving a great baseness against a
fellow-creature, are often dimly conscious of remorse.  But few
have ever practised treacherous artifices with less
compunction than visited Laurette at this crisis.

She had never known anything of those delicate instincts
of morality which are motive powers in many minds that
have received far less moral culture.  She had many
impulses of generosity and kindness, but they were
rudimentary florets that never blossomed into habit.  Of
principles she knew nothing beyond a determination to make
the best of her opportunities—to get all she could out of
life.  She would never transgress the rules of outward
decorum, nor know anything of the better aspirations of
human nature.  She was now threatened with social extinction,
and her insatiable thirst for pleasure and ease, and the
footing she had gained in society, urged her to make a
desperate struggle, using such means as lay within her
grasp, as little checked by any feeble glimmering of
conscience as a street urchin when he sucks an orange and
throws the rind away.

And yet, with all this, she had an inimitable trick of
assigning, even to herself, virtuous motives to the shadiest of
her shady little intrigues.  'It is not only Stella who must
be protected from an entanglement with a married man,'
she reflected, 'but then there is Ted, and there is Talbot,
whose movements I must watch.  A husband and father
must not be left to the wiles of a wretched little actress at
a crisis.  I shall have that fifteen hundred pounds after all,
for, if I know anything of Stella Courtland, the letter she
is to get to-morrow morning will set fire to her pride in a
way that will put things in a new light.  And her jealousy—I
had no idea she had so much of it till her brother got
engaged—to find he hurried away without even seeing her—and
to a living wife!  It must succeed!' she said half aloud,
as she went over the main features of the affair.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XXXIX.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXIX.

.. vspace:: 2

'Then you did not care very much for the play last night,
Miss Stella?' said Mr. Tareling at breakfast on the following
morning.  'Tell me what you objected to most.'

'I had no choice of dislike,' answered Stella.  'I thought
the whole of it was overgrown with the scurf of commonness—the
sort of thing that gets acted because of the permanent
stupidity of our kind.'

'Goodness!  I feel quite annoyed that I enjoyed it so
much,' said Laurette, with mock humility.

'I wouldn't if I were you,' answered her husband with a
laugh.  'In a democratic country you are always right if
you are on the side of the majority.  But come now, Miss
Stella, weren't you a little touched by the despair of the
lovers?  There was a big woman in a purple satin dress
near me who mopped her eyes till her handkerchief dripped.
You *must* have found their despair pathetic.'

'Despair!' echoed Stella.  'Why, a marionette wouldn't
be imposed upon by such a paltry device!  They were
engaged in the first act.  It would never do to let them be
married in the second—in fact, the play would not come into
being—and what would then become of the worthy fathers
of families who are supported by the drama?  So of course
there must be a misunderstanding through six or seven
scenes.  Oh yes, it might melt a heart of stone, to see a
middle-aged female, rouged up to the eyes, weeping bitterly
without shedding any tears!  Did you see how she held her
handkerchief so as not to brush the powder off her nose?'

'I am sorry I didn't show you my big woman in the
purple satin.  She wept for herself and both the lovers,'
said Tareling, looking very much amused.

'But I suppose you will admit that misunderstandings do
come between people—and—why, even your Shakespeare
makes a man smother his wife because of groundless
jealousy,' said Laurette, who had taken up a morning paper
and glanced over it.

'Yes, and with such a fiend incarnate as Iago to poison
his mind he could not have been Othello without being
driven into madness.'

Laurette was glancing over the paper, but there was
something restless and nervous in her manner.

'Then what would you consider a sufficient reason for an
estrangement in a modern play?'

'Oh, I cannot say!  I imagine if people really love each
other, nothing that another could say or do would estrange
them, unless there is an Iago in the case, and such a man is
much rarer than——'

'Than a grand passion?' put in Tareling.  'Ah, Miss
Stella, it seems to me you have a very charming colour this
morning.'

She turned on him, and parried the insinuation, with a
laughing, radiant face.

'I don't think I can quite forgive you for not showing me
the woman who wept so copiously when the despairing
lovers could not even move a muscle.  How the sight would
have consoled me!'

Letters were brought in; several for Stella.  Among
them she discerned one addressed in a handwriting the
sight of which made her heart throb stormily.

Laurette was trembling with excitement.  She had opened
a letter, but instead of reading it she looked over it
furtively at Stella, whose face at that moment was irradiated
as if a rosy flame shone through it—her lips slightly parted
in a happy smile, her eyes lustrous as stars.  The Honourable
Talbot Tareling's home correspondence was chiefly of
the kind that takes the disgustingly prosaic form of requesting
payment—applications which, as a rule, rouse neither
enthusiasm nor curiosity in the recipient's breast.  Tareling
turned over his with an air of profound indifference; then
he glanced from his wife's face to Stella's with an expression
of curious inquiry.  Laurette caught the look, and coloured
violently, instantly taking refuge in her open letter.

'It is evident that I shall have to spend part of the
morning at my desk,' said Stella, rising and gathering up
her letters.

'Please remember we are due at Mrs. Joran's in the
afternoon,' said Laurette.

'Who is he?' asked her husband, as the door closed after
Stella.

Laurette pretended not to understand.

'Oh, aren't you behind the scenes, then?  A young lady
does not colour like Aurora because a handful of letters
come from the family circle.  And such a dewy smile!  Ye
gods, what it must be to be a girl and in love!  The girl has
a lovely face!'

'Oh, probably there was a letter from Ted,' returned
Laurette, trying to speak carelessly.

Tareling looked at her narrowly, and then gave a short
laugh.

'Fancy a girl like Stella colouring up to the whites of
her eyes, and smiling timidly, because she got one of
Ritchie's croppy, jockey-like epistles!  You are sometimes
too funny, Laurette.  What is your little game now?'

A sickening fear shot across Laurette's mind.  She knew
that, in the decorums of life in which she herself was
founded as on a rock, her husband scarcely knew the
draping of virtue's garment.  But it was also equally clear
to her that, if he knew a third part of her 'little game,' in
this instance, he would overwhelm her with anger and
scorn and unsparing exposure.  It seemed to her as if
Stella might appear at any moment, denouncing the palpable
treachery that had been practised on her.  But there was
no tremor of fear in her voice as she answered:

'Ted is a dreadful cub, isn't he, except when he signs
cheques that may be treated as blank ones?'

'It appears to me you are acquiring a habit of repeating
yourself.  Of course a man doesn't expect to be amused in
a *tête-à-tête* with his wife.  But—ah—don't you think you
might hit on a variation?'

Laurette did not permit herself to attempt a reply.
Indeed, to do her justice, it was only at periods of unusual
strain or irritation that she so far tested how bitter and
unalloyed are the dregs of a contract entered upon for life, with
out love or mutual respect, when the advantages which were
the governing motive seem to be gradually becoming less.

When Stella entered her own room, she stood for a
moment by the open window, that soft rapture still
kindling her face with which a woman receives the first
love-letters that are precious to her.  She opened it, and after
the first strange, unreal moments, sank in a chair, covering
her eyes as if to shut out a sight too terrible to be looked
upon.  Again and again she forced herself to read over the
words mechanically:

'At the age of twenty-two, while still a medical student
in London, just a year after my father's death, I met a
lady, a good many years older than myself, who fascinated
me greatly.  She was an Italian, and very beautiful.  Still,
infatuated as I was, I shrank from the idea of marrying
her.  But, under circumstances which I need not now
detail, I married her four months after we first met.  The
marriage turned out a disastrous failure.'  Here there were
several lines completely effaced, and then: 'On these
conditions I settled an income on her, which she named as
being adequate, and was to be paid through my lawyer
half-yearly.  The letter I opened in the Home Field that day
was from my lawyer.  He wrote to say that'—here three
more lines were effaced—'the lady to whom the money
was payable had died.'  After this, two half-sheets had
been bodily left out by Laurette; and the half-sheet which
concluded bore only the signature, all the writing that
preceded it having been obliterated, and yet not wholly.
Looking closely, three lines at the close could be made out:
'Your timorous confession that you felt you could have
moved or spoken after your accident when I reached you,
only you wished to know how it would really "affect me"?'  Then
the concluding terms were obliterated also, but the
name 'ANSELM LANGDALE' was clear and distinct.

Then there was a sheet of paper, which was evidently
part of a letter.

'You are entirely in error in every particular regarding
your wife.  Return as quickly as possible, and all these
miserable misunderstandings will be explained and set
right.  You need not hesitate nor imagine that you will be
asked to believe this merely on bare assertion.  Proofs are
forthcoming.  As to the rumour of death, it is as ill-founded
as the first mistakes.  But your long-continued absence has
reduced my poor friend to such a state of despair that she
is too indifferent to take even the slightest trouble.  Pray—pray
do not lose any time after getting this.  Return to her,
and all will yet be well.'

.. vspace:: 2

When a great blow suddenly falls on one, it can hardly
be said that at first coherent thought is possible.  The
throbbing temples, the parched throat and flickering vision,
the slow, dull, cold beating of the heart, make the physical
anguish as pressing as the mental suffering.  Then the
creeping stupor that succeeds the swift exhaustion of all the
faculties paralyzes coherent thought.  It is as though all
the powers of the mind and body were concentrated in
sullenly keeping hold on life—dreary and hopeless as it has
been made in a few wild incredible moments.  Cold and
trembling in every limb, Stella cowered by the window over
these fragmentary sentences.  Every feature that under
other circumstances would have thrown discredit on these
strange communications was even, at the first glance, a
strong link in a chain of crushing evidence.  Here there
was no hearsay—no perhaps.  It was a bald, commonplace
little story.  An unhappy early marriage—a separation
years ago.  Then the news of his wife's death.  That was
the letter he read out in the Home Field that happy spring
day—O God! how long, how long ago!  She seemed to see
herself through the lapse of gray years out in the sunshine
with the birds singing all round, and her heart leaping with
a sudden passion of joy as Anselm asked leave in a broken
voice to write to her from the other side of the world.  She
went over all that followed—moaning faintly now and again
as her breath failed her.  Already all the rapture and
bounding hope and insane gladness were part of an unreal
fable.  She turned to his letter written the day after they
parted.  She knew it by heart.  She had read it the last
thing at night, and had wakened up with the first, faint
approach of day to read it again.  Then this letter had
come to him.  No wonder he wrote in a disjointed, halting
fashion, blotting out almost as much as remained
legible—beginning and closing abruptly.  Where was he now?  Oh,
she must see him.  She opened a letter from Louise, and
near the beginning of the letter she read: 'You will, of
course, have seen Dr. Langdale before he sailed on the
22nd'—that was two days back.  Why had not the letter
reached her before?  Ah, he had taken precautions.  Would
it not have been kinder to see her when this torturing
revelation was to be made—or did he understand her too well?
Did he know that she would have thrown herself at his feet
and implored him not to leave her—not to believe this
woman who urged his return?  Merciful Heaven! what
frantic thoughts were these?  Would she indeed have been
so lost to pride and maidenly reticence?  She went and
confronted herself in the looking-glass.  But the face she
met there—the eyes like those of a creature trapped and
wounded to death—made her turn away shuddering.  He
was gone.  He had found it possible to leave without one
more look or word, though they were never to meet again.
There was something in this that wounded her beyond
endurance.  And he had not made one allusion to her long
letter.  Perhaps it was wiser.  Wiser?  Yes, wiser—she
repeated the word as if trying to understand it.  She felt
dimly that to her wisdom, prudence or caution were but
empty word-echoes in face of this overwhelming calamity.
How could she have looked at him and borne the thought—'It
is for the last time'?  Yes, he had been wise and
reasonable.  As for her, she could not have left him thus if
ten thousand obstacles had stood between them.  Ah, yes,
he understood the wild passion of which her nature was
capable.  Sometimes she walked up and down the room;
at other times she stood staring out of the window, trying
to recall what she had been thinking of.  And so the hours
wore on to noon....  Then there was a tap at her door,
and Maisie came in asking something about a dress.

'Oh, Miss Stella!' she suddenly cried out in dismay,
as she looked full in her mistress's face, waiting for an
answer which did not come.  'There's ill news—there's ill
news!  Is it from Fairacre, dear Miss Stella?' cried the
maid, overcome with terror at the white impassive face.

'No—no—it is only—a little faintness,' murmured Stella.
It was all over, and the world swept on as usual, and she
had somehow to face the lie that life still went on with her.
Maisie bathed her face and hands, and stood fanning her by
the open window.  She was still half fearful that the news
of some catastrophe had wrought this sudden change—but
when she saw that her mistress shed no tears she was
reassured.  Maisie, fortunately, had no knowledge of those stabs
which are so deadly that they bleed but little outwardly.

'You were to go out in the afternoon, Miss Stella—but I
doubt you suldna,' said Maisie, who in moments of
agitation returned on her mother's accent and phrases with
curious fidelity.

'Oh yes—yes; don't speak so loud, Maisie,' and then
Stella forced herself to open the Fairacre letters, and read
bits of them to Maisie, who at once became certain as she
listened that all was well.  There were honeybirds in
swarms in the Park-lands, especially the Botanic Park,
all during the spring.  The Torrens was determined, so
Alice wrote, not to give up running and singing as it went
till Stella returned.  The roses were extraordinarily fine
this season, especially Stella's favourite white fairy and
Macartney roses——

The girl dropped the letter with a little miserable moan.
Then she compelled herself to read on.  Weighty changes
were imminent in the old home.  Felix Harrison had won
so many distinctions of late, and his income showed so
liberal a margin over former years, that he and Allie were
to be married at Christmas.  Then Tom was also an accepted
lover, and there was not a single reason forthcoming
why their wedding should be delayed.  'Can you fancy
only you and mother in the old home?' wrote Allie.  'You
would have to see all the visitors that came, instead of
retreating to the library, you spoilt child!  But no; Esther
and the children will share the old home with you.  It is
time Clem went to college—and, after all, no one expects
you to linger long in the paternal nest.  Oh, you monkey,
what secrets have you not kept from me!'  She crushed the
letter into the envelope—and there was the maid still
waiting an answer.

'Thank you, Maisie.  I must write some letters.  The
dress—the navy-blue velvet?  Oh, any way you like.'

She was left alone—but she tried to read no more of her
letters just then.  She was stunned, insensible, though not
unconscious.  There is a kind of moral syncope which falls
on the heart and brain after the first shock of a great
calamity.  A sort of lethargy crept over Stella, in which no
thought, no feeling, was acutely present.  She read the
words over repeatedly, till she could have said them by
heart.  She could so well understand those erasures—that
stern avoidance of all empty words of regret.  And then the
lines at the close, which had been so hurriedly blotted that
the forms of the letters were still traceable, caught her
attention: 'Your timorous confession that you felt you
could have moved or spoken after your accident when I
reached you, only you wished to know how it would "affect
me"?'  Her heart gave a strange leap, and the blood came
back to her face in an overflowing wave.

As if the anguish and despair that held her did not fill
the cup of her supreme agony to the brim, she saw in the
words, coupled with the cold, bald statement that preceded
them, a record of Langdale's consciousness that her love
for him had caused the avowal of his when he had meant
to keep silent.  It had been his intention to sail for England
without making a sign—merely asking leave to write to her
from there.  She had been quite happy in her confidence
that he loved her, even before his avowal.  Oh, what
madness, when the mere thought that he cared at all for
her, and kept silence, should have at once suggested some
insuperable obstacle!  She, who had ever been so ready to
question, to doubt things that were beyond the scope of
human knowledge, while here, in a simple every-day
matter, in which silence was in itself suspicion ready
forged, she had found no cause for inquiry, for a moment's
uneasiness!  He loved her; he did not wish to say so for
a time—that had been quite enough.  Oh, fool and blind
that she had been!—ready to give her love before it was
asked—ready to see no peril in anything so long as she
knew that he held her dear.

He had loved this woman once, then, that he had made
his wife?  His wife!—she shuddered and cowered down on
her bed as if seeking to hide herself; and then she rose up
and read over again and again the words written in a
woman's hand—in fair, even, well-formed characters, on
the face of them the writing of a lady: 'All will yet be
well!'  Was this possible?  Would he, perhaps, learn that he had
been in error—that the wretchedness of the marriage had
been caused by misunderstandings on which light would be
now thrown?  Would he be thankful that the rumour of
her death was untrue?  Would he, perhaps, learn to love
her?  Oh, God in heaven forbid!

The next moment she was thrilled with horror at the
prayer—the imprecation, rather.  But no quick involuntary
horror, no reasoning, could hide the truth which forced
itself on her—that the thought that he should love this
woman was even more torturing than the knowledge that
she was his wife.  Should not this in itself serve to loosen
the dominion of this love—this passion that had insidiously
rooted itself in every fibre of her nature?

She satisfied herself that he had really sailed.  Every
hour that passed widened the distance between them—brought
him nearer to her who might win his love.  The
thought worked like poison in her veins.  She threw her
unread letters aside, she put away out of sight these
miserable fragmentary ones that had brought her the tidings
which seemed more to wreck her soul than her life—even
the envelope, with its firm, clear writing, her name written
in full, as if he had lingered over it in the old lover-like
way, hurt her intolerably.  And his ring which she wore
next her heart like a charm, with its noble motto, now the
bitterest irony.  All that was best and highest to her
seemed touched with this mildew of mockery.  Yet she
would keep this to the day of her death.  When the world
was mercifully shrouded in oblivion, this golden amulet
would lie against her heart, while all its stormy throbbings
were overpast.  But oh, merciful Heaven, what a long and
weary eternity lay between!  She had come to one of those
epochs that arise in the lives of women who have souls,
when nothing is left but death and the love of God—both
seemed equally remote.

Dustiefoot, who had patiently waited for his mistress,
finding that she did not come as usual to caress and talk to
him, jumped lightly through the open window.  When she
spoke to him he instantly noticed the change in her voice,
and looked at her with that keen, almost human intelligence
in his eyes which Langdale had once compared to
those of a dog painted by Piero di Cosimo in his picture of
the death of Procris.  Ah! those endless memories!  Each
thought, and emotion, and association, all were steeped in
the dye of those days which seemed to hem her in on every
side.

Laurette waited in almost trembling impatience for
Stella's appearance.  She did not leave her room at
luncheon-time; she had letters to write, and could not
eat.  Maisie brought her some tea, and biscuits for Dustiefoot,
who lay at his mistress's feet, looking up in her face
from time to time with watchful solicitude.

Laurette longed to go into her room—to know in what
way the letter that had been so subtly changed had wrought.
'If she takes it fighting,' thought Laurette, 'I shall send
for Ted this very afternoon.'

Four o'clock was the hour at which they were to leave
for Mrs. Joran's.  A few minutes before that time Stella
joined her hostess in the drawing-room, faultlessly dressed,
a damask flush on her cheeks.  Her eyes glistened like
those of a creature that has been dangerously wounded, and
there was a livid aureole round them; but beyond this, and
a curiously toneless timbre of voice, there was no outward
sign of the fierce storm which had swept over her.

If she could have been thankful for anything at that time,
it would have been that no one knew, as she believed, of
the disaster which had overtaken her.  A weight seemed to
press on her head, and voices that were near sounded at
times as if they came from a great distance.  Her lips were
hot and parched; occasionally a shuddering sigh, that
threatened to become a low moan, roused her to greater
vigilance.  She had not shed a tear, but at times a film
came over her eyes as if a mist fell on all around.  The
strain of bearing such torture, without the relief of solitude
or rest, or any touch of gentle resignation as to an
inevitable grief, was cruel in the extreme.  But it seemed to
induce an apathy and a deadly fatigue, so that sleep came
to her almost at once when, late that night, she went to
bed.  She slept for two or three hours, and then she woke
up sobbing uncontrollably, with tearless eyes.  She rose up
and lit her lamp, trembling in every limb.  There was an
unbearable burning weight on her head.  She opened her
desk, hardly knowing why.  She searched for those
fragmentary letters, and sat down, going over every word afresh.
The thought had suddenly lodged in her mind that she was
the victim of some strange delusion.  But as she read, all
the thoughts and events of the past day came crowding
back.  The contrast between the overflowing happiness of
the woman who had opened this miserable letter, and the
stony misery which had fallen on her, fortunately touched
the source of tears.  'Oh, my lost love! my lost love!' she
moaned, and the tears rained down and blistered the paper
through and through.  The light of day surprised her still
crouching over that strangely-pathetic record of the days
that had been illuminated with a light now quenched in the
darkness of despair.  She knew that the new-born loveliness
of the day flooded the sky with its accustomed tenderness
and splendour, but she shrank from the sight as though
it had the poison of asps in it for eyes outworn with weeping.

Turn where she would, she saw no gleam of consolation.
And in these first hours of intolerable suffering, pain and
anguish were more hateful to her than they had ever been
before.  She was scorched under the agony that had fallen
on her, as a flower exposed in its opening freshness is
shrivelled by a furious hot wind.  All those tendrils of hope,
of dawning love to God—those moments of exalted
consciousness in which she seemed to draw closer to the vivid
faith that had once kindled her heart—were put to flight,
withered, and entirely slain.  It was as though the air
around her, which had before been fanned by the
dove-wings of ethereal hours, was suddenly darkened by the
sweep of vulture wings.  Even that last resource of an
unhappy love—the remembrance of happier days—was
impossible to her.  She knew that for her these days had been
the flowering point of her life; but as for him, was it more
than a brief episode—one soon to be forgotten, perhaps, in a
happy and unlooked-for reconciliation with *his wife*?  The
words had in them something that crushed all the finer
tissues of thought and sensation.  She lay hiding her face
from the light, quivering at times from head to foot.  She
was thankful to feel that apathy creeping over her that
comes to the overstrained mind like the insensibility of
muscles which have been severely bruised or scalded.

She rose at the usual hour, and Maisie was again startled
at the sight of her mistress's face.  It was one in which
expression played so large a part that the absence of
vivacity and light, of a quickly mantling colour, as well as
the dark rings round the heavily-lashed eyes, made a
startling change.

'Indeed, Miss Stella, I doubt but we should get away
home sooner than you spoke of.  This place doesna agree
with you.  The room is too small, and ye miss the woods,
and the birds, and your rides.  Wouldn't you be glad,
ma'am, to leave for Fairacre soon?'

Stella, at the words, swiftly realized what a terror the
thought of returning to her peaceful home had for her.
Those calm existences—her mother and sister, who had
lived their lives, who had passed their keenest joys and
sorrows; the children whose lives were to come, whose life
was made up of sunshine, and flowers, and gentle schooling,
and all the healthful, untroubled influences that for the more
fortunate bridge the isthmus from infancy to maturity—how
could she take up the ravelled threads amongst them?
Nature and books, and the sweet serenity of home, all had
become equally impossible.  All the force of her strong,
complex organization rose in revolt against the perspective of
a faded, insipid existence which the prospect called up.
How could she endure that faint replica of life with those
agonizing memories in the background?  Birds, and flowers,
and trees, and running water, the dawn of day, and the
music of childish voices—they had not only lost their
enchantment: their very memories were barbed with fiery
darts—part of a past which had worn a faint simulacrum of
happiness before the keen flame of love had breathed on her
and transformed her being.  What were they all now to
her—the persons and scenes and events that had made up
existence?  Links in an inexorable chain that bound her,
like a galley-slave, to her ineffectual, inept post in the
world, when life itself had really passed from her grasp!
Oh no; she had not lost all affection for those dear, but
they could do without her, and she could do without them
for a time.  She must throw the past from her like a stained
chalice emptied of all the wine of life.  She must be
somewhere in the stir and tumult of the world, where things
would hold her and draw her away from herself—where she
could live without happiness, and those foolish dreams that
had been the dearest possession of her soul.

'But maybe ye would like to stay for the ball?'

'Oh, of course, Maisie.  Use the hard brushes for my hair
this morning.' She spoke in an impatient, imperative tone,
which surprised the maid so much that she offered no further
suggestions.

At sight of her pallid face in the glass, Stella sponged her
cheeks with pungent aromatic vinegar.  The delicate skin
responded at once to the touch, and her determination to
keep at bay the rising sorrow that at times threatened
like a great flood to sweep all embankments into its whirling
eddies, kept the colour in her cheeks and the fire in her
eyes.

'Only four more days till our ball,' said Laurette, who in
her heart had ejaculated a fervent little thanksgiving to
Providence at sight of Stella entering the breakfast-room.
She had looked so deadly weary and done on the previous
night, fear, like a chilly snake, had lodged in Laurette's
bosom that the girl would certainly fall ill.

'I think, Miss Stella, you had better come with me for a
riding expedition till the evening of the ball,' said the
master of the house, who, with the wisdom of the serpent,
generally cleared out on the days immediately preceding
such festivities.

'But I thought you were to be the villain in Mrs. Joran's
comedietta to-morrow night,' answered Stella, with a faint
smile.

'Ah, true—the man who drugs people and steals letters.'

'Surely that is not the *rôle* of a real villain—to drug and
steal letters merely.  You are going to be a philanthropist
in disguise.'

'Thank Heaven! she believes it all,' thought Laurette.

'Do you know, Miss Stella, that sounds a little
misanthropical for one who gets letters in handfuls.'

'But how should I know it would be a boon from the gods
to have them stolen if I did not get a few?'

'Still, you would not like them all stolen?'  He could not
help watching her a little curiously.  There was some
inexplicable change in her whole face and bearing since she
had sat in the same place twenty-four hours ago.  He saw
that, notwithstanding her effort to keep an indifferent,
smiling look, her face hardened, and he hastened to change
the conversation.  'Are you going to fall into Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs'
plan of getting you for the heroine of her little
adaptation from the French?'

'No, I think not.  One's own little part in life gives me
so many *jours insipides*, without dabbling in other people's.'

'Thank God! she is in a fighting mood,' thought Laurette.

'I am sorry.  Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs consulted me, and I
told her I thought her idea was an inspiration, as you
constantly remind me of a cousin of my own, of whom a French
diplomat once said that she had a Parisian edge to her mind.
She had, too, as he said, that vivacity *dans ses moindres
mouvements* which Englishwomen so rarely possessed.  She
had, in fact, an infusion of Irish blood, as you have of
Highland.'

'Wasn't Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs shocked at the mention of
anything Parisian in connection with Stella?  You never
told *me* the funny story Ted was laughing about once.  I
shouldn't wonder if he turned up to-morrow.'

This remark seemed to be addressed to the teapot more
than to anyone in particular.

'But shearing is in full swing at Strathhaye,' said
Tareling, who instantly connected this announcement with
Stella's presence, and began vaguely to speculate whether,
after all, there was anything in it.  Women were such
queer conundrums—one could never tell.  How many
impossible marriages he, Tareling, had seen in his day!
But Australian girls were not as a rule so keenly alive to
the fascinations of wealth as those inoculated with the aims
and standard of London society, where to lack money was
to be out of the swim of everything that held life together.
That same Lady Mary, his cousin, who in Tareling's memory
held the shadowy place of what might have been; who had
at times scolded him, and somehow got him out of his first
serious scrape at Eton, and written him letters, and
promised to marry him if a Chinese mandarin left him a mine
in Golconda; whose radiant gray eyes and brilliant sallies
had often been recalled by Stella Courtland—what a strange
hash she had made of her life, first marrying the wrong man,
then running away with the wrong one, and finally taking
the wrong dose of chloral!

Would she have fared so very much worse if she had
married him, though they were both as poor as church mice,
with something less than nine hundred a year between
them, and no one likely to leave them a mine in Golconda?
She in her dishonoured grave—and he in his dishonoured
life, gambling, and drinking deep at times, and playing the
*roué* generally in third-rate society at the far ends of the
earth, 'sponging on his wife's relations,' as old Ritchie had
once said in a fury, after he had been called on to shell out
a thousand pounds or so to keep a very shady story from
the light of day?  Probably they would have quarrelled;
and to quarrel in one of those tiny establishments in which
people lived on nine hundred a year was the very deuce—one
had to get down so completely to hard pan—or be a
plumb idiot the next moment, and kiss and be friends.  He
rather thought they would have done the latter.  But at any
rate would they quite have come to this; she in a nameless
grave at Monte Carlo—he married to a colonial heiress,
intriguing to keep a firm hold among the mixed lot that
formed the *crême demi-double* in a pushing, vulgar colonial
city?  Yet even Lady Mary's marriage lacked some of the
utter incongruity that would attend one between Ritchie
and this young woman.  A mammoth scratched on a bone
by a prehistoric man, and a statuette by one of the old
Grecian sculptors, that was what would represent the
comparative quality of their minds.

Tareling was not a man who had retained much of the
faculty of being even touched by the higher possibilities of
human life.  He would have had to purge and live cleanly
before he could be the moral equal of many among those he
contemptuously classed as a 'mixed lot.'  Whatever
semblance of the hero had once lived in his heart had long since
atrophied.  His aims and ideals were to the full as ignoble
as those of that lower division of the common herd who
value money chiefly for the physical excesses and mental
excitements that it commands.  Yet it may be taken for
granted that one has not generations of well-born and
cultured people behind him, without retaining some keenness
of perception that belongs to a well-descended creature,
whether he be man, horse, or dog.  Stella interested him
not only because of the resemblance he fancied in her to the
unhappy girl who, in her brilliant youth, had been so much
his friend, but also because of that element of personal
fascination which is inseparable from some women.  Why
had the glow and the sparkle of her face been suddenly
quenched?  Why those livid circles round the eyes that did
not in the least respond to the smile she called up?

'You will be glad to have some riding, Stella.  No doubt
Ted will bring a hack or two a lady can ride,' said Laurette,
emboldened by the inferences she drew from observing the
girl to handle her subject 'like a lad of mettle.'  She began
to think that Stella, after all, was not such a very bad sort
of nettle to manage.

'Would you like to ride to-day?' said Tareling suddenly.
But it seemed there were too many engagements of one sort
or another.  Indeed, if there had not been such, Laurette
would have invented them.  No one allowed himself to be
more easily hoodwinked than Talbot when it suited him;
but, on the other hand, no one had a more unerring vision
in piecing broken hints into a whole, once his suspicion or
interest was thoroughly roused.  He had, too, curious tact
with people whom Laurette herself might deceive or mislead,
but whose confidence she could never win.  She could see
by the way he glanced under his heavy, deeply-lined eyelids
from herself to Stella, that something had presented itself
to him as a problem.

'Oh, it will be delightful to ride!' Stella said, looking up,
with a faint flush rising on her face.

The word 'delightful' had a sardonic ring in her ears.
But language cannot serve its purpose, as legal tender
between beings whose first care often is that nothing of
what surges most vividly in the mind should pass into
speech, without at times sounding in the ears like a mocking
echo.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XL.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XL.

.. vspace:: 2

Ritchie arrived at Monico Lodge on the forenoon of the
next day.  Laurette met him in the hall, and drew him
into the breakfast-room.

'Yes, Stella is in; she is in the drawing-room,' she said
in answer to her brother's eager inquiries.  'But, Ted, I
am in despair.  I absolutely do not know what to think.
Heaven knows if ever a woman tried to serve a brother
as I have.'

'Well, what's in the wind now—anything fresh?'

'Oh, goodness only knows!  When she came, she was
in almost wild spirits; one would say she counted the
moments till you came.  Now——'

'Now she ain't so jolly!  Well, that is Stella all over.
What is there to wonder at in that?  Hurry up, Larry, if
you've got anything to say; I am famishing to see her.'

'Only this, Ted.  Feel your way cautiously; and whatever
you do, don't breathe a word of anything I said to you
before you went to Strathhaye.'

'Of course not—I told you before I wouldn't,' answered
Ted impatiently; 'but look here, Larry, you're a trump to
take so much trouble on my account.'

'Oh, if one could only be sure of her; but one day to be
full of hope and all smooth sailing, and the next——'  Laurette
gave a deep sigh, as if she were in the depths of
perplexity.  Then Ted made his escape into the drawing-room.

'Well, Stella, are you still cross with me?' he said gently,
holding her hand.

'No, I think not,' she said with a wan smile, endeavouring
to recollect the reason why she should cherish offence.
Everything was so incredibly misty at times, so far away
and indifferent.  The days seemed to stretch on and on,
like eternity.  Three had not yet passed since the morning
on which she opened that letter with its pitiless tidings.
Yet the most remote epoch of her life seemed to be the
days in which supreme happiness was neither a threat nor
a vague possibility, but a secure possession.  And now it
was all over—all over, with nothing left but those recurring
periods in which she was alive in every nerve to the horrible
misery that had overtaken her—periods in which she seemed
to see nothing but a ship that sailed on, night and day,
bearing the only man she had ever loved, or could love, to his
*wife*.  The thought stung her so intolerably that she often
rose up, seeking for relief in motion, as if a heavy physical
load crushed her which she must endeavour to throw off.

Ritchie looked into her face with startled inquiry.  What
ailed her?  Was it possible that the knowledge which
Laurette said had partly come to the girl should give her
so much pain?  The thought touched him strongly.  But
he remembered Laurette's warning.  He might interrupt
her counsels and little incipient homilies roughly; but yet
no one else could help him so much, nor tell so well what
motives swayed Stella.

'I don't believe Melbourne agrees with you one bit,' he
said, still holding her hand, which she left passively in his.

'No, perhaps not; and yet I don't want to go back to
Fairacre.'  They stood side by side in the bay-window, she
looking out with heavy, tired eyes at the scrubby little trees
and scantily-flowering rose-bushes that decorated the
'grounds' of Monico Lodge, but seeing nought of all that
was around her.

'Where would you like to go, Stella?' said Ritchie slowly.
His breath came fast, but some instinct warned him to keep
down his rising joy.

'Oh, I don't know I where I would not see these woods
and skies eternally—away to the far ends of the world.'

'Stella, let me take you wherever you would like to go.
It's all I've got to live or care for.'  He was looking eagerly
into her face, and suddenly saw a gray paleness creeping
over it.  All became dim around her.  She put her hands
out like one groping in the dark.  He passed his arm round
her, and for a moment her head fell on his shoulder.  Her
face was like that of one dead, and its pallor terrified him.
But she did not entirely lose consciousness.

'How dark it has grown!' she said in a faint whisper.

'It will soon be light again, Stella,' answered Ted, hardly
knowing what he said.  The profound sadness of her face,
and her sudden, unaccountable weakness, smote him to
the heart.  'Stella, has anything happened that hurts you?
Is there anything in the world I can do for you?'

His voice trembled, and he tried to draw her nearer to
him.  This roused her, and sighing heavily once or twice,
she disengaged herself, and sat on the seat that ran round
the window.  Ritchie's presence had recalled, with a
paroxysm of acute agony, all that lay between now and
their last parting.  Such moments of overpowering pain
were succeeded by hours that were passed rather than felt.
The intolerable edge of suffering was gradually dulled—became
for the time blunted.  Apathy put a foil on grief,
and robbed memory of its piercing barbs.  In the reaction,
Ted's familiar voice and unswerving devotion soothed, nay,
even reassured her.  Her stern, proud self-control had not
broken down before anyone till now.  And with her
self-possession came the thought that he had claims on her.
She had once consented to be his wife.  But her heart had
rebelled against a marriage without the quickening pulse
of love and tender mutual sympathy.  Now she knew that
these were forever sealed against her.  The glow and
romance of youth were over.  She had loved and lost.
But the years could not be thrown aside like a stupid story.
She had dreamed a dream of life, and it was over, but
existence still remained to be got through.

'Stella, we have been friends since we were little children.
You do care a little for me.  Be my wife!'

She heard the voice so long familiar pleading with her
brokenly, and it touched her in that strange hour as it had
never touched her before.  The thought welled up strongly
in her heart: 'This love is to him what mine was to
me—the one great affection of his life....  In this was centred
the keenest possibilities of his happiness.'  The very depth
of her own suffering and infinite loneliness moved her to
compassionate sympathy.  She had almost forgotten him in
the brief triumphant days of her joy.  But no one had ever
usurped her place with him.  Could she now confer on him
the boon that was so priceless in his estimation—for which
he had so long pleaded?  And for herself? ... Would this
not, after all, be the best solution of the cruel enigma into
which existence had resolved itself?  The old home life, full
of leisure and calm and well-loved books—how could she
take that up when her one fierce longing was to forget?  It
would be an endless stifling life in death, in which the
weary days would stretch before her, to be filled only with
bleeding recollections, with famished imaginings of what
might have been.  Her pursuits and meditations there
would touch those treacherous springs which woke all the
cells of memory, and flooded her being with unbearable
agony, with the wild, baleful pangs of jealousy.  Yes,
jealousy unreasonable, uncontrollable.

It was the bitter humiliation of this that stung her
beyond endurance.  Sorrow in any other form she might have
borne—but this scorched her, degraded her, bit into her like
some virulent, immaterial poison which nourishes the blood
in order that it may consume the soul.  Jealous of a man's
wife!  These were the words that came to her perpetually,
more venomous than the hiss of a serpent.  A marriage in
which some kind of friendship was possible—in which
travel, movement, variety, were open to her—this was the
least objectionable scheme that remained to her.  Ted's
allegiance was so unshaken—he exacted so little.  He
watched her face with keen emotion.

'Stella, you are going to consent,' he said, drawing near
to her.  But she drew back.

'Don't, Ted.  You must not be affectionate if you want
me to marry you.'

Ted smiled under his moustache.  Then a servant came
to announce the arrival of his groom with the horses.

The day was perfect in its warm, serene loveliness.  The
sky was like a vast bed of blue hyacinths, bending above
the earth with angelic benedictions.  Already the sun-rays
had something of the ardour of summer heat, but there was
a cool southerly breeze, and a recent fall of rain had laid
the dust.

The sight of the sea lying as calm as a great lake, its
bosom glancing in silvery sheaves rather than waves,
brought back to Stella, with irresistible vividness, the
memorable ride over the wide Peeloo plain.  A great wave
of anguish swept over her afresh, in which it seemed as if
she must call aloud to find some relief from the fierce
torment.  So great was the agony, that for a little time she
could neither hear nor see.  'Oh, my love, my love, have I
indeed lost you?' were the words that rose to her lips.  For
a moment a wild revolt rose within her against all the
obstacles that could part them.  On the wide horizon she
seemed to see the faint film of smoke which a great steamer
leaves as it speeds on its way to the old world.  'All will
yet be well.'  Did this hope animate his heart?  Did he,
perchance, count the hours till he saw her again—till those
proofs were given him of faults imputed that were
groundless—of years made dark with undeserved blame?  Would
a fresher, stronger bond rise up in place of the old
unhappiness?  Would he learn to love her—his *wife*?  Ah, what a
pitiful, humiliated creature had she become to harbour such
thoughts!  Hell seemed to yawn at her feet when she
found her heart torn with savage jealousy as these thoughts
rose in quick succession.

The riders had ridden fast, and Dustiefoot, who could not
bear to lag far behind his mistress, panted and showed such
signs of being overdone that they rode back slowly.

'Will you take him with you on your travels, Stella?'
asked Ted, who watched with a feeling akin to envy the
tenderness with which Stella regarded her dog.

'On my travels?  Oh yes, wherever I go.  One should
always have a dog to keep one in countenance.'

'In countenance?'

'Yes.  Most human creatures remind one of the characters
in an old morality.  As—enter God's Visitation;
enter Time, who maketh people weary and melancholy with
a similitude of rust and dust.'

'And what is an "old morality," Stella?'

'Well, Ted, you really must go to school.'  She laughed,
and the sound was music in his ears, though it was a
strange, mirthless little laugh.

'Yes, I should like that very much—if you keep school,
and take just one scholar.  Where would you begin with
me, Stella?  How many books have you read?'

'Heaven only knows!  Quite enough to convince me
that I do not know anything.'

'O Jupiter! is it worth while learning so much to know
that?  What is the good of reading so many dry old fogies
of books?'

'Well, sometimes it makes people better companions for
themselves; but other times it makes them the worst of all
company, I believe.'

'I read very slowly.  If it is a dull book like the Bible
and poetry, I forget what one page is about before I get to
the next.  It would take me a thundering long time to read
books, and if they don't teach me much in the end, and
make me worse company for myself, why, we'll give books
the go-by.  What's the next on your list, Stella?'

'I haven't got a list—and there isn't a next.  Ted, you
mustn't ask me questions.  I do that to myself endlessly,
and I hate them; there are no answers to most, and those
that have answers are scorpions.'

'What questions do you ask yourself?  There, I've put
my foot in it again!  Well, look here, Stella, your school
will be the jolliest affair going.  You only teach reading,
and that game isn't worth the candle.  So there I'll be,
bright and early, and nothing to learn but to stay with you.
But I'll pick up a lot in that way.  Why, some time ago I
put the stuns on a fellow with just only remembering that
the line, "Where is the land to which yon ship must go?"
is in one of Wordsworth's sonnets.  Oh, he's just a racing
fellow! he comes from one of the old swell families in
England, but nothing like such a bad lot as Tareling.  He's
as straight as a die, and never borrows money, and he's
quite gone on books, though he took his degree at Oxford.
He and another fellow were talking about poetry in the
smoking-room after dinner at the club the last time I was in
town, and the other fellow asked Dacre, that's his name,
where that line came from.  I was reading the sporting part
of the *Australasian*, but the words came on me like seeing
you unexpectedly, and I looked up and said: "Why, that's
from one of Wordsworth's sonnets."  By George! they were
more astonished than if I had stood on my head.  Yes,
upon my soul, they both stared as if they had paid a bob
to see me!  "Why, Ritchie, do you actually read sonnets?"
said Dacre.  He has written a bookful himself.  He is one
of those fellows who think that all men write poetry when
they are spoony.  I could tell him better than that.  Do
you remember, Stella, one Sunday evening when I was
staying from Saturday till Monday at Fairacre?  Billy Stein
and Herby Lindsay were there, too.  Billy knew a fearful
lot of German stuff that you were always fond of, and as
for poetry, he could spout it by the hour.  It was shortly
before I left for Strathhaye—I suppose you were fifteen at
the time—you used sometimes to get perfectly wild with
making fun of one thing or another, and your eyes, and
cheeks, and lips all used to make flashes.  Oh, you may
laugh! but I know what I mean.  Your eyes are awfully
heavy just now, Stella.  Well, you put the four of us in a
row—Cuthbert, and me, and the other two—and you
wouldn't let us move till we each made some sort of verses.
'Pon my soul, I nearly squirmed my eyes out trying to
think of words that sounded alike.  When I did get any,
the spelling was out, and there was that little beggar Billy
making up something as long as my arm about a rose, and
a maiden, and a nightingale.  But I put the kybosh on him
there, for I said there were no nightingales in Australia,
and how did we know whether they sang as he said?  And
you took my side, but I think it was out of pure wickedness.
Everyone got finished long before I did, and at the end I
could only make up four lines.  Oh, I remember them well
enough:

   |  '"A lamb's tail
   |  Caught on a rail;
   |  The mother humming,
   |  The crow a-coming."'

.. vspace:: 2

Stella laughed again.

'Why, Ted, you are one of the dumb poets?  What in
the world put that into your head?'

'Oh, don't suppose I made up the adventure.  I took it
from life.  I saw a little lunatic of a lamb caught by his
hind end before he was tailed, and if I hadn't taken him to
his mother, the old crow would have scooped his optics out
in no time.  You all objected to "humming."  I didn't
want the darned sheep to hum; it was you that would
have rhyme, and how could you make "bleating" into
poetry there?  I very nearly got into a scot with Stein, he
kept on laughing so much.  But then you walked with me
up to the Spanish reeds, and showed me the nest of a
superb warbler there—domed, I think you called it—and
told me how you watched the old mater teaching the young
'uns to fly.  And then I made up my mind to ask you if I
might write to you.  My heart beat so hard I thought it
would crack, and you said quite carelessly: "Oh yes, Ted,
why shouldn't you?"  I couldn't have told why it gave
me a lump in the throat the way you spoke.  Then I
thought, That little wretch Billy will want to write, too,
and spin away about nightingales, and the Lord knows
what!  I never feel such a duffer as I do when I take a
pen.  I say, Stella, did you ever keep any of my letters?'

'Oh yes, I think so.'

'I expect you've got a nice pile of love-letters by this
time?  Now, tell me true—are there any of them you like
better than mine?'

'No; not one.'

The thought welled up bitterly of the letter she had
opened with such insane joy three short days ago.  And
with this came recollections of the long faithful wooing of
her companion—of the devotion she had taken as carelessly
as an unset pebble; and yet, was there anything in the
world more rare, more precious?  These reminiscences of
her untroubled girlhood touched a tender chord.  She
realized that a love which had its roots so far back in the
past had a claim on her loyalty.  At the worst, it was less
humiliating to marry a man without loving him than to
love one already married.  Ted, watching her face closely,
noted its wistful, softening expression.

'Lookee here, Stella,' he burst out suddenly.  'I am
going to run away with you.  You will be cross at first, but
you will get over it.  You know you looked as if you could
not speak with passion when I held you that night and
asked that I might kiss you.  But when we met, you
never once thought of bringing it up against me; now did
you?'

'No.'

'Oh, good Lord!  Stella, why do you keep me on and on
hoping, and nothing come of it?  Put an end to it.  You
want to get away; you need a complete change; anyone
can see that.  You said in July you sometimes thought of
marrying me.  Yes—no—yes.  There it is in the horses'
hoofs.  Summer, autumn, winter, spring—spring.  It is
spring now.  We won't have the smallest morsel of fuss.  If
we were married to-morrow, everyone would say: "Well,
goodness knows, they've been long enough thinking over
it."  Let's put an end to it, Stella.  Hear the horses' hoofs,
every one of them saying "Yes, yes—yes!"  Stella, will you
marry me?'

There was a long pause.  The sound of a railway whistle
in the distance, of snowy-breasted sea-gulls calling as they
skimmed the waves, the deep, solemn crescendo of the wide
sea as it broke on the shining sand, the merry cries of
children on the shore—these came borne to them on the
balmy spring air.  Memories that had a pang beyond the
bitterness of death surged up in Stella's mind.  To the
smallest detail, the hour in which she had listened in
speechless happiness to Anselm Langdale's avowal of love
rose up before her.  An hour so near in time—but in the
sensations that turn hours into years remote as the first
dawn of consciousness.

'Answer me, Stella,' said Ritchie, his voice now low and
husky with contending emotion.  'Don't you know what to
say?  It's very simple—say "Yes."'

Again there was a long pause.

'Yes,' she answered at last, and Ritchie turned quite pale
through the ruddy bronze of his cheeks.  For a moment he
almost reeled in his saddle and doubted his senses.

'Stella, do you mean it?  You will be my wife?'

'Yes,' she said, again looking into his face.  He was
agitated almost to tears, while she was perfectly calm.

They rode on for a little time in silence.  Something like
rest stole over Stella.  She felt that her course was now
fixed, her decision unalterable—and there was relief in the
thought.  As for Ritchie, he almost feared to give complete
credence to the belief that after all these years of unavailing
hope—of waiting and rejection—he was in truth an accepted
lover.  And even he, 'elementary human being' though he
might be in one of Stella's old phrases, yet experienced that
quick revulsion which so often sets in, of dread because of
other possibilities, now that this ardently longed-for
happiness seemed within reach.  But as the first tumult of
thought subsided, his joy rose high.

'Stella, you have said "No" so long; you must keep on
telling me it's all right now,' he said in unusually timid
tones; 'I can hardly believe in such luck for myself.'

'Don't be too glad, Ted; if you are, you're sure to be
disappointed.'

'But if you were me, Stella, you couldn't help being too
glad,' returned Ted, with unconscious pathos.

Something in the words struck a chord in Stella's heart.
She felt softened and remorseful.  She determined that, as
far as in her lay, she would quench the rising tide of hard,
cold indifference, of scorn for her own life and action, which
was the first result of her momentous decision.  But when
people feel one way and make resolutions in another direction,
it is a toss-up with circumstance which will be victor
in the first or subsequent encounters.





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.. _`CHAPTER XLI.`:

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   CHAPTER XLI.

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When they reached Monico Lodge there was Cuthbert at
the door, going away after having waited for some little
time.  He helped Stella to dismount, and the three went in
together.

'Congratulate me, my dear fellow,' said Ted, the moment
they went into the drawing-room.  'Stella has promised
this very afternoon to be my wife—and this time there is to
be no drawing back.'

The brother stared at Ritchie in an incredulous way, and
then at his sister.

She suddenly coloured deeply and said:

'Yes, Cuthbert, you may congratulate us; but we are
going away almost directly, so as to escape all that—and
the wedding-gifts——'  She felt compelled to talk in a
half-mocking tone, so as to save herself from the imbecility of
tears.  'Oh yes, the day after to-morrow, if you please.
By the way, I must go and tell Larry—I believe she's in.'

'Stella, darling, may God grant you every happiness!'
said her brother, kissing her first on one cheek and then on
the other.  He felt a pang of misgiving which he could not
conquer, and his face and voice were exceedingly grave.

'Now, Cuthbert, don't be so solemn—at any rate, until
the ultimate disaster.'

'But you do—you are attached to Ted—or you would
never have given your consent?'

'Oh, my dear, it is unsafe to generalize about our
delightful sex.  Don't you remember what St. Teresa said
in one of her letters to a Carmelite Father: "Your
Reverence made me smile by saying that you could tell her
character so well.  But we women are not so easily known."'

'But there are some things, Stella, it would be safe to
prognosticate of all good women.'

'Oh yes; as, for example, they all have ten fingers, and
have learned the Catechism and the Creed.  But if it comes
to asserting that they believe the one and remember all the
rest——'

'But what motive could or would be strong enough with
you, darling, except love in some degree?'

'Ah, of course—love.  But a woman must not give her
love till it is asked.  Isn't that one of the demure, unwritten
statutes?  Well, I am so very proper that I am not going
to give it even when asked—not until I am married.  It is
the process of evolution.  In the meantime, Ted vows he
has enough for two.'

'Oh, Stella, you pain me!  I cannot believe you would
look and speak like this if your heart were really touched.'

'Now, Cuth, you know very well if my heart were
touched I would be dead.  You see, it is a very hard-worked
organ as it is.  If it went through all the impossible gymnastics
ascribed to it by lovers, the human race would have come to
an end long ago.  When one comes to think of it, perhaps
that is the best thing that could happen.'

'You are not well, dear.  You flush up feverishly, and
then you are pale, with dark rings about the eyes.  You
looked very different when you came from Lull.  Dora and
I both noticed it—and you were so dear and tender.  We
were so delighted.  I came to tell you, Stella, that our
wedding-day is fixed.'

'Oh! is it to-morrow?  Because, if so, Ted and I will
be married to-day.  Yes, I'm determined not to be like
Cinderella, left with the cinders, when you go straight to
heaven like Elijah in a fiery chariot.  But then Elijah,
poor man! had no Dora.'

'Well, Stella, I should be very unhappy if the girl who
promised to marry me could talk like you the day she was
engaged.  That reckless, mocking tone—no girl who was
happy could use it.'

'Unless it were an artifice to conceal her joy,' said Stella,
laughing.  Then, in a graver tone: 'You see, dear, it does
not do to generalize too largely.  On looking round among
our married friends, does it not strike you that the majority
never committed the indiscretion of falling in love at all, or
if they did, that they have all they asked for, and nothing
of what they hoped, poor wretches?  I, for my part——'

Here Laurette entered, followed by Ted.  She threw her
arms round Stella with a little cry.

'Don't, Laurette; this is what I am determined to avoid,'
said Stella, holding her at arms' length.  But Laurette was
half intoxicated with joy.  Not till that moment had she
really believed that her schemes would be crowned with
such complete success.  She pecked once or twice at Stella's
cheeks with her hard little lips, and then turned to
Courtland, her face wreathed with smiles.

'Isn't it too delightful, after all these years of waiting?'
she said to him, pressing his hand with a congratulatory
fervour.  Courtland, pale and erect, bowed, and murmured
something in reply.  Then he turned to Ritchie, and took
his hand.

'I congratulate you, Ted; you are a very lucky man!  I
pray God——'  There was a sharp break in his voice, and
at the sound a cord seemed to tighten round Stella's heart.
The old bond between them had been a very strong and
tender one.  Now that the half-petulant irritation of finding
herself, as she thought, displaced in his affection, was
lost in the storm that had swept away so many of the old
landmarks, her heart went out to him more fully.  Only
she had to guard against any treacherous yearning for full
sympathy and intimate communion.  She must be
inexorable against her weakness on every side.  She was
struggling against her whole nature as a strong athlete
struggles for victory.  That was what made Ritchie's society
safer for her in this crisis than that of the old home circle.
He was imperturbably good-natured; he had a strong fund
of animal spirits, and his hand could never touch any of
those inner cords which, if they vibrated at all, brought her
in one swift moment face to face with black despair and
gnawing jealousy.  She conquered the climbing sorrow
which her brother's emotion awakened; then going up to
him, and putting her hands in his, she said softly:

'Ah, you dear old boy, you have always been so good to
me; Ted and I will pull all straight, do not fear.  As for
you, never forget, though, that you threw me over first.'

She raised the tips of her brother's fingers to her lips as
she spoke, and he was instantly melted by her caressing
tenderness.  She was always confident of winning entire
forgiveness for any outbreak of caprice or wilfulness the
moment she made up her mind to be quite good.  This
confidence, modified by an air of imploring entreaty, had
always been one of her irresistible moods.

'Pull all straight?—I should think we would!' said Ted
proudly, possessing himself of Stella's left hand, while her
brother held the right.

'How long do you mean to keep up that wicked little
story about my throwing you over?' said Cuthbert, smiling
fondly at her as he stroked her hair.  'There never lived
the human being who could make me do that.  And, Stella,
whatever comes or goes, if ever you are in trouble or
perplexity, never forget that if need were I would lay down
my life for you.'  He did not mean to say so much, but
there was some undercurrent of feeling at work which he
could hardly analyze.  He only knew that from the first a
strong misgiving beset him as to this marriage.

At Courtland's words a vague alarm rose in Laurette's
breast.  'How very absurd!' she thought to herself angrily.
'Women don't want their brothers after they are
married—not in that way.'

She herself had only wanted her brother's money, and
the means by which she had obtained some of it, and hoped
for still more, rose before her, for the first time, in an
almost lurid light.  A sudden panic fastened on her lest
there should be some loophole by which her machinations
should be detected.  But she had gone too thoroughly to
work to be caught in the toils which wreck the half-hearted
dissembler.  It is not cunning, but simplicity, that must
patch and tell a tale which often carries no conviction in a
world where it is a common trade to make the thing which
is seem as though it were not.  Simplicity, poor unthrift,
who makes no use of all the kingdoms of the world, and the
glory thereof, but to tell the truth, is all too often shamed
into hiding her pensive, virginal, unaffected brow before the
bold, rouged, menacing front of her successful rival—Mendacity.

But Laurette betrayed none of the uneasiness which shot
athwart her mind.  Indeed, her anxieties at this time were
so multiform that they might be said to swallow each other,
so that, on the whole, she kept up as gay an appearance as
though no cares oppressed her.  Chief among them was her
husband's intrigue with this 'wretched little divorced
actress.'  This had blossomed apace into a well-concocted
scheme of indefinite migration on his part with her
theatrical company.  Laurette knew this definitely by means of
examining the Honourable Talbot's pocket-book, when he
slept not wisely but too well.  And yet she felt that her
only course was to make no sign; to feign complete ignorance,
and take such action at the last moment, that is, the
eleventh of October, as might be of vital service to her.
Then that letter which she had got Mrs. Anson to write.  It
was only after fully convincing herself that Langdale's
half-erased, mutilated narrative might not of itself serve her
purpose, that Laurette had hit on the scheme of boldly
supplementing it by a communication which would at once
throw light on his supposed story, and his action in hastening
away without seeing Stella.  She judged unerringly, too,
that the thought of his hastening back to a loving wife
anxious for reconciliation would stab the girl's pride into
more active resistance against grief than any other theory.

'Stella has it in her to be jealous—one can see that by
the way she took her brother's engagement,' reasoned
Laurette.  'And if there is any occasion on which jealousy
may grow into a monster, surely it is when the man who
called you "sweet St. Charity," and the innermost leaf of
his heart, is supposed to be steaming away at the rate of
seventeen knots an hour to the beautiful woman he married
before he left school, so to speak.  Not that I believe she is
really dead—at any rate, if so, her conduct is very unlike
that of other people, who could do nothing to oblige one in
life so much as to leave it....'

Yes, all her calculations had been singularly favoured by
Providence; but this speedy engagement was of that order
of good luck which all but frightens one.  It was almost
sinister—like the appearance of a sociable vulture in the
desert when drawing near a well that may prove empty.
All that evening at Mrs. Joran's private theatricals the
thought rose at intervals, What if Stella and Langdale met
abroad?  And yet, once the marriage had taken place, what
would it avail?  There was a dance after the acting was
over.  Everyone was enraptured with Talbot's masterly
performance, and she replied to congratulations on this
abominable accomplishment as cheerfully as though it were
not drawing a husband and a father, as she styled him, even
to herself, in her more melodramatic moments, into the
Bohemian depths of a strolling-player's career.  But she
would save him despite himself—which was usually the way
people were saved when once they gave themselves up to
the enjoyment of being lost.  And to secure that end what
means were not legitimate?  Yet she could not resist the
inclination to reassure herself, by laughing inquiry of a
distinguished judge, as to whether deception practised to bring
marriage about could in any way invalidate it.

'My dear Mrs. Tareling, what could have put such an
uncanny idea into your head?  What marriage would be
safe if once the plea of deception were allowed to batter
against the foundations of the holy institution of
matrimony?' said the judge, laughing.  'Take the deceptions
which Nature puts upon us, to begin with——'

'Now, Sir Henry, you are laughing at me!  No one ever
knows where Nature begins or ends.  I do not mean only
with the complexions of my own dear sex.'  The judge
laughed with real amusement at this sally: Laurette fully
knew the value of talking in an amusing way when she had
an aim to serve.  'I mean real deception: abstracting
letters, and having others written, and things like that, for
which I have no doubt you could find awful names in some
of your awful books.'

The judge fixed his gray, penetrating eyes on the softly
pretty, exquisitely dressed young woman before him,
vaguely wondering whose interest she had at heart in this
inquiry.  'These bright, pretty young women have often a
wonderfully altruistic vein in their natures,' he reflected.
Then, in a very lucid unpedantic way, he pointed out that
if people did things that had awful names in law-books,
they might be brought to account; but people were not
supposed to marry because other people abstracted letters or
wrote sham ones.  Marriage was a contract between this
man and this woman for certain ends, clearly set forth in
the Prayer-book and elsewhere and under certain conditions.
If these conditions were observed, no alleged deception on
the part of anyone else could, in the slightest, affect the
contract.

'Well, after all, how beautifully simple and reasonable
that is!' said Laurette, with a glow of enthusiasm.

Even the term 'alleged deception' carried with it a kind
of balm.  It made her reflect that not one scratch of her
pen had been contained in the letters that had suddenly
changed the whole complexion of Stella's life.  She had
erased, but she had not formed a single letter; and the
little note Mrs. Anson had written at her dictation was like
eternity, without beginning or end, without date or local
habitation.  After all, what a bulwark to society the law
was!  Her spirits rose, and she felt like an Eastern hero,
as if she were destined to destroy Afrits.

A little afterwards, when in conversation with the
Honourable Miss Brendover, this lady said something of having
spent the last winter in Berlin, where the musical season
had been very brilliant, it flashed through Laurette's
mind like an inspiration that Berlin was the very city to
which it would be safest for Ted and Stella to go in the
first instance.  England would not be safe for awhile.
Langdale would most likely go on to Brussels before going
there.  Then he would get the newspaper announcing the
marriage, which she would send him the very day after the
event came off.  Laurette had taken down the address he
had inclosed for Stella, which was that of his lawyer in
London.  Well, after getting that newspaper, he would at
once perceive there was nothing to be done but bear his
fate.  He would not be likely to return to Australia.  He
would, perhaps, drift about, travelling for awhile.  Now,
France and Italy were the happy hunting-grounds of all
travellers; but Berlin—'My dear Milly, I wish you would
tell my sister-in-law-elect about the music in Berlin,' said
Laurette.  'I fancy she thought of going to Germany.'

'Oh, and then they will meet Talbot's cousins there—the
Avenells!  So it will be quite nice and friendly for
Mr. Ritchie in a foreign land.  He does not know German, I
think?'

Before the evening was over, Stella had a long chat with
Miss Brendover, chiefly about the charms of winter in
Berlin.  At the same time Laurette duly impressed Ted
with the wisdom of going there direct if Stella expressed
any wish of the kind.

'I don't care a copper where Stella wants to go,' returned
Ted.  'Whatever she wants to do, she shall.'

The subject somehow came up again as they drove home.

'I lost a waltz with you, Stella!' said Ted ruefully.
'What a lot you and that old cousin of Talbot's had to say
to each other!'

'Old?—she is charmingly young!' returned Stella.  'I
know, because that waltz of Strauss's—by the way, never
ask me to dance to it—is one I heard two hundred and fifty
years ago.  Oh, it was a strange, enchanted sort of
country—full of fairy stories, and I believed them all.'

Her cheeks were deeply flushed, and her eyes were shining
with a feverish light.  Ted was always pleased when Stella
was inspired with something of her old gaiety, and yet there
was something in the sound of her voice that disturbed him.

'Did you tell Miss Brendover about this country, then? and
was that what kept you chatting so long?'

'Oh no—bits of it came trilling back in the music; but
between I listened to glowing accounts of wonderful Berlin
concerts—eighty trained musicians playing an accompaniment
like one man, etc.'

'Shall we go to Berlin, Stella, and take Egypt and the
other places on the way back?'

'Happy thought!' cried Stella lightly.  'Charter a vessel
direct, before ten to-morrow morning.'

'No, but I am serious, Stella.  The *Hindoo Fawn* sails
on the sixteenth October.'

'Cannot we get away before then?' said Stella.

Ted's heart thumped wildly at the question.

'There is a French vessel——' he began slowly.  But she
held up her hands.

'A French vessel—not for your life!  There is some very
good reason somewhere—in the Book of Proverbs.'

'There is an Orient steamer on the ninth of October;
but—but will your mother consent to such haste?'

'Ah, that is your concern, Ted.  You must explain
everything when you write.  Mind, I take no responsibility
beyond the usual fibs of the marriage ceremony.'

Laurette was leaning back in a corner of the carriage,
with closed eyes, as if she heard nothing.  No one could be
more discreet and wary, and less observant, where observation
would have been an element of danger.  She roused up
when they got home, and she sat rattling away to Stella
and Ted about all sorts of indifferent things.

'Did you see Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs' new poet, Stella—the
young man with the sombre expression and the long hair?'

'Is that one of the signs of a poet—not to go to the
barber?' asked Ted.

'Oh, besides that, you must write things—

   |  '"What is life but a spectre of bale?
   |  What is joy but a curse that is stale!"

That is one of the couplets Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs quotes in
dusky corners with a tremolo in her voice.  I wonder why
that little Mrs. Lee-Towers makes a point of fastening on me
on every available occasion of late?'

'Don't you approve of her, Laurette?' asked Stella, with
a lurking smile.

'Well, no.  I think the way she flirts in public, using the
last pattern of young man she approves of like a fan, to
keep her husband out of sight, is a little too bare-faced.
And then she seems to have them to suit her style of dress.
When she is in pale heliotrope velvet, it is that large young
idiot with a lisp and flaxen hair.  But he seems to be
playing truant lately.  It must really be a trying moment, when
the young man who seemed to have been sent by Heaven
into the world to hold your bouquet sympathetically begins
to get out of your way.'

'What the deuce does her husband allow it for?—what is
he like?' said Ted, who was picking up leaves that had
fallen from Stella's nosegay of blush roses, and wondering
why Larry did not find it necessary to go to the nursery or
somewhere.  He had not been a moment alone with Stella
since their engagement.

'Oh, don't you know him by sight?  He is rather a
cadaverous-looking man, with six or seven mouse-coloured
hairs on his chin.  He looks as if he could ride in the air if
he had the proper sort of broomstick.  He never opens his
lips, unless you make a mistake about figures.  No, he isn't
amusing; but nothing of that kind excuses a woman in
such conduct.  You may congratulate yourself, my dear
Ted——'

Stella rose with a bored expression.  'Good-night, *mes
amis*,' she said, kissing the tips of her gloved hand to both,
and gliding out of the room before Ted could reach the
door—a proceeding which need hardly be characterized as
unsatisfactory to Ritchie.

'By Jove!  I shall never be sure of Stella till we're safely
and substantially married,' he said, looking after her with
knitted brows.

'True; therefore let it be on the sixth of October, and
sail on the sixteenth,' said Laurette decisively.  'You will
reach Berlin before the end of November.  To be done in
that time?  Certainly—after a courtship of five years.'

'It's more like ten,' broke in Ted; 'and we were engaged
once before.'

'Yes, allude to that.  No one can be surprised at your
determination to make sure of the young lady now.'

'Allude to it?  I don't know how to allude to things.  I
shall simply put it down in black and white.  By the way,
Larry, where is Tareling?'

Laurette murmured something in reply which was not
audible; but as she offered no explanation, this did not
much signify.

'He did his part very well,' said Ted, taking out his
cigar-case preparatory to retiring.  'But do you suppose anyone
would ever carry on in that way in real life—hocussing
people and stealing letters?'

'Oh, people must put something into plays,' said Laurette
contemptuously.  As a matter of fact, her own little
performance in that line had been infinitely superior, and she
may have felt something of the scorn of a finished artist for
a pretentious amateur.  What did not occur to her was the
irony which underlay her discussion of such a theme.

She was preoccupied with thoughts of checkmating
Talbot's secret plans, and withal profoundly grateful that
she was freed from the haunting fear of being forced to
retire to the wilds of the Australian Bush, instead of shining
in her proper orbit.  She remembered the learned judge's
words with a fresh glow of gratitude, and recalled with
solemn approval a maxim she had somewhere heard or read,
that we can benefit others in no surer way than by making the
best of our own lives.  How true this was as applied to
herself!  The best use she could make of her life was
certainly to maintain her position in Melbourne society
until she might perhaps be called on to take her place
among the titled aristocracy of England.  And in her efforts
to keep this position she was securing Ted's happiness,
protecting Stella from the danger of entanglement with a
married man, and, most important of all, in a way to thwart
the wild folly of her husband and the father of her children.
Being in a very wakeful, active-minded mood, she wrote
several letters to members of the Courtland family.  She
begged pardon in a pretty, winning way for siding wholly
with Stella and Ted in the arrangement of being married in
time to leave by the sixteenth of October.  This was partly
because of business arrangements which compelled Ted to
leave by that date, partly because, after all that had passed,
prompt action was best.  She was taking the liberty of
seeing to Stella's trousseau so as to save time: not that it
would be a very extensive affair; why should it?  She had
so many pretty dresses, and she was going to the great
centres of fashion, etc., etc.





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.. _`CHAPTER XLII.`:

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   CHAPTER XLII.

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Breakfast was late next morning at Monico Lodge, and
the master of the house did not make his appearance.
There were times when he simply haunted the place—being
quite the closest approximation to a ghost the neighbourhood
could produce.  It might, however, be urged by the
charitably inclined that his notions of day and night had
been seriously upset by having spent most of his life at the
antipodes—being thirty-one years of age when he left
England six years previously.

'I wrote my letter to your mother this morning,
Stella—I want you just to look over it,' said Ted, as they rose from
the table.

Laurette was deep in arrangements for her ball, and left
the young people to themselves in a little morning
apartment off the breakfast-room.

'And mind, Stella, directly after lunch we must go to see
about your dresses,' she said—an announcement which
Stella received with incredulous amazement.

'Stella, have you got a conscience?' asked Ted, as she
ensconced herself in an armchair behind a davenport by the
window.

'Yes, occasionally; but it's good to let sleeping dogs lie,'
said Stella; and then, seeing Ted's aggrieved face, she held
out her hand to him.  'You may kiss the little finger, Ted,
who was a traitor on your side when there wasn't a cloud
in the sky.'

'But sooner or later, you know, Stella——'

'Ah, later then!  Now, what have you written?'

.. vspace:: 2

'"MY DEAR MRS. COURTLAND,

.. vspace:: 1

'"You will be glad to hear that Stella and I are fast
engaged once more, and with your kind consent we must be
married on the fifth of next month, so as to set sail for
Europe on the sixteenth."'

.. vspace:: 2

'You see, Stella, I cannot make it any sooner,' said Ted,
with a twinkle in his eyes—his line being to keep Stella
literally to her mood of last night—'that is, as you object
to the French line.  There is an extra boat to sail on the
eighth.'

She sat staring at him as if she did not hear him.  She
was following in the wake of a ship that went on its remorseless
way day and night, speeding every hour nearer to its
goal.  Did it bear hearts that beat joyfully at the thought?

'I do not believe you hear what I say, Stella?'

'Oh yes, I do.  What makes you think my mother will
be glad for me to leave her?'

'I don't; a fellow must say something.  But about the
French boat?'

'Do not speak of that line.  There was only one little
Christian boat among them all, and it went down in a
frightful storm in mid-ocean—a long way off.  But still at
times I hear the cries of the drowning; and there is a
woman's face.  She does not sink, but she has lost everything!'

'Stella, if you want to spin a yarn as you used to, do tell
a jollier one than that thing.  Anyone would think you saw
it, and your eyes are getting larger than ever.'

She got up and looked at herself in a little plush-framed
mirror near her.

He followed her, and put his arms round her.

'For God's sake, don't!' she cried, starting back as if she
were stabbed.  And then the next moment she turned on
herself with fierce disdain.

She, whose whole frame had thrilled with rapture at the
touch of lips whose kisses were forsworn, what right had
she to repulse the honest love of a man who had been
faithful to her from boyhood, to whom she had promised all
her future life?

'Forgive me, Ted,' she said humbly; 'but I am nervous
lately, and you took me by surprise.'  She stroked his hand,
and he flushed hotly under the touch.

'All right, Stella.  Now let's go on with this letter:
"This hurry is partly because of business arrangements,
and also because, being engaged before, and nothing came
of it, it's better to avoid accidents.  As for me, I have
waited so long, and felt often so frightfully down on my
luck, I would much sooner the wedding were to-morrow
than any other day.  You have always been so kind to me,
I'm sure you won't say a word against this plan, for I know
Stella couldn't bear to do anything against your wishes.  It
would be only foolish sort of jawing for me to say how much
I love Stella.  Long before I should be thinking of such
things I made up my mind she should be my wife.  Many
a day since I thought this would never be.  But it has
come all right now.  So hoping you will concur in the above,

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

   "I am, dear Mrs. Courtland,
       "Yours most respectfully,
           "EDWARD RITCHIE.

.. vspace:: 1

"P.S.—As Stella can have everything she wants in Paris
or elsewhere, it would be foolish for her to lay in a big stock of
clothes.  The dress she has on now would be the nicest of
all for her to be married in.  She will have a thousand a
year for frills and things, and as much more as she likes.
So it would be foolery for her to have an army of trunks
full of things she can get where we are going."—How will
that do, Stella?'

'Oh, very well, Ted; but are you sure that we are both
awake?  On the fifth of next month?'

'Yes, fourteen long days.  It's rather a shame, but I
suppose we can't fix it earlier?  You won't go back on the
date, Stella?  After all, you know, your mother has had
you far longer than she should, if you hadn't gone back on
the first racket.  Now you write and back me up.  You see,
Cuth and Dora will be going back with you, and Tom
engaged, and Allie soon to be married: they won't miss you,
Stella.  It's not as though your mother were a duck with
one gosling.'

'Oh, Ted, what names!' and then Stella smiled.

'Go on, Stella; write your letter.  I want to post it, and
then take you for a ride.  Look at that young calf of a
Dustiefoot, with his snout against the window looking at
you.  It floors me how he finds out so soon the room you
are in.'

'I need not write a separate letter.  There is room on
this half-sheet of yours.'

Stella took up a pen and wrote hastily.

.. vspace:: 2

'DEAREST MOTHER, AND ALL OF YOU,

.. vspace:: 1

'Do not be too much taken by surprise.  We had
better keep to the time named by Ted, as we must get away
on the sixteenth.  We shall escape all the Apostle spoons
and things every household should be without.  I shall be
married in a travelling-dress; and I really don't see what I
want with any more things, I have been so extravagant this
last year; and Tom has given me so many loans.  I suppose
he will throw an old shoe for good luck, but will it be
necessary, when one has a thousand a year for frills?  I kiss you
all three times on the mouth.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

   'Your loving
       'STELLA.'

.. vspace:: 2

'Don't you ever stop to think what you are going to say,
Stella?'

'Not when I write to say that we are to be married in
fourteen days.'

Ted read the lines Stella had written, and his face gleamed
with joy.

'Oh, that is splendid!' he cried; 'but should you
put that in about the thousand a year?  Shouldn't it
be—"Will it be necessary, when we love each other so
much?"'

'It is indifferent.  One of the advantages of so much
social superstition is that a good many things are taken for
granted.'

Ted, notwithstanding, made the correction in his uncial,
squarely legible writing.  Then he dwelt on the last sentence,
and looked reproachfully into the girl's face.

'You kiss everyone at Fairacre three times on the mouth,
but you don't kiss me once—and in two weeks you leave
every man jack of them for my sake.  Stella, do you call it
decent, or according to God's holy ordinance, as it says in
the Prayer-book?'

He bent over her, and she turned her cheek to him.  But
he took her in his arms and covered her face with burning
kisses.  She turned deadly pale and trembled, but remained
as passive as if she had been drugged.  Then after a little
she fought down the crowding thoughts that made the
present give place to what had been.  Memory, like a rebel,
betrayed her to a surging host of recollections that seemed
to stamp this moment with a seal of infamy.  But the keen
pangs of wounded pride, of hopeless love, and jealousy,
came to her aid.  She conquered her shrinking shame, her
instinctive revolt—reminding herself that it was less
humiliating to be kissed by unloved lips than by those that were
so dear to her.

'Tell me, Stella, you are not sorry you gave me back your
promise again yesterday,' said Ted in a low voice.

'Sorry?  Oh no—I am glad,' she replied, feeling for the
time her words were true—so fiercely did she seek to
trample out that smouldering jealousy which was ever ready
to leap into consuming flame.  He was more than content
with the answer.  Yet, after she disengaged herself from
his arms, he tested her tardy, passionately longed-for
submission a little farther.

'Stella, come and kiss me on the mouth three times,' he
said, in a tremulous voice.

Almost to her own astonishment she obeyed.  Yes, it was
part of the bargain.  It made this incredible transaction all
the more irrevocable.  It made those days she would give
her right hand to sink in utter oblivion more remote—more
impossible.  From that day she did not even in thought go
back from her approaching marriage.  It was as though she
had drunk of some opiate that deadened her moral nature.
She seemed to escape all fears, all responsibility, and the
envenomed darts of memory.  She was so much occupied
during the day, she danced so much at night, she was so
bent on being amused all the time, that none but the closest
observer would have doubted the real source of this
abandonment to gaiety.

Once or twice Ted, in a clumsy but honest way, tried to
speak seriously of his own felt unworthiness, being misled
by the statement Laurette had once made as to Stella's
suspicion of his failure in conduct.  But Stella treated these
attempts like jugglers' plates—things to spin in the air, but
not to let them down with a crash.

'Have you any wives hidden away, Ted?' she asked;
arching her brows at him.

'Oh, come, Stella, you know very well you shouldn't talk
in that way.'  It was a fact that at this time her
irresponsible levity sometimes wounded Ted's moral
sense—chiefly because she was so unlike her former self.

'Shouldn't I?  Let me assure you people's wives do turn
up when they ought to be dead.  But you haven't got one
at all, it seems.  No doubt there was a time when you
should have married some, but you didn't—so it is all right.
Isn't it beautifully simple?'

It was unpardonable, and Ted, who felt in a dumb way
that she was his higher conscience, began to think that after
all he had no need to be so remorseful when he thought
over the curious difference presented by the spotless record
of Stella's life and his own.  He supposed women of sense
always understood that things were so, though, of course, a
line must be drawn somewhere.

Stella was, in truth, passing through that phase of
deterioration in which some men gamble and drink deep so as to
escape from themselves.  She succeeded by ignoring all her
better aspirations, all the higher capacities of her mind, in
drowning thought, and numbing her sense of what was
right to a strange degree.  She had a strong will, and the
unusual mental discipline through which she had passed
early in life had given her a rare power of controlling her
thoughts.  She exercised both faculties to the utmost degree
in casting from her memory the immediate past.  But this
was so woven into the deepest fibres of her being that to
accomplish this object was to become, to a certain degree,
morally callous.  It was one of those remedies infinitely
more injurious to the soul than the original disease.

Laurette was amazed at the change which had come over
Stella.  She was, at the same time, a little afraid of the
element of inconsequence bound up with this alteration.  It
was all very well as long as nothing in particular happened,
but everyone knows that life is full of accidents.  It is not
easy for women to deceive one another.  This is one reason
why their strictures on each other often strike men as being
malicious.  Laurette had a very definite idea that her future
sister-in-law was changed—not because she had grown
indifferent to Langdale, but because she cared too much.  The
last night of Stella's stay in Melbourne they had been at a
Government House ball, and on their return they sat
chatting for some little time.

'I suppose you will really live very little at Strathhaye,
Stella, when you return,' said Laurette, who was an adept
at leading up to what she wanted to say by beginning a
long way off.

'I have hardly considered the matter,' replied Stella,
playing with the brilliant diamond hoop which was her
engagement-ring.

'You take so kindly to Melbourne life now; and I must
say you are likely to be rather spoiled.  You will be very
popular.  What story of yours sent the old Marchioness
Lismore into such roars of laughter?'

'Oh, a rather hideous anecdote about an old aboriginal,
who wanted to be baptized while he carried the remains of
an enemy in his hair till he should kill the next-of-kin as
well.  The old dame was talking quite seriously about the
possibility of Christianizing our natives, and I felt bound to
support her views.'

'Well, she laughed like a regiment—and what a wig she
wears, to be sure!  The more one reads the society papers
and sees of the English aristocracy, the less one is
impressed by them.  Considering all it takes to keep them
going, they should be a little more different from the
common herd.  I suppose the Marchioness invited you to
visit them when you go to England?'

'Yes; but I remembered the fate of your friends the
Jorans, and I did not commit myself.  Besides, I don't
want to go to England much now.'

'But of course you will go with Ted to see Uncle
Matthew—and then there are your own friends and relations.'

'I don't know.  Claude's wife declares that family circles
there get upon one's nerves dreadfully.  That, at any rate,
is one striking advantage of an aristocracy.  They are not
formal, and squeezy, and peering timorously at other people
to see how they behave.'

'How long do you think you'll be away?'

'Laurette, don't turn into a catechism without the
answers.  As long as it is quite amusing.'

'You have decided upon Berlin for the winter?'

'Oh yes; we go direct there from Brindisi.'

'Well, Stella, you are certainly a very fortunate
girl—nearly as fortunate as Ted.'

'Call no man fortunate till he is dead, and no woman till
she is buried.'

'Oh, of course, I don't at all mean to say that, like
everyone else, you won't have your own trials.  Men are pretty
much alike in many ways.  A girl may marry the greatest
milksop alive, but after all she is bound to find herself
hopelessly behind the scenes.'

'Don't you think, Larry, you might be a little more
entertaining?  You remind one a little of a vivisector, who
for certain experiments makes a lesion in the neck of a
guinea-pig, and then pinches its nose to throw it into
convulsions.  I don't mind so much about my neck, but I am
rather sensitive about my nose.'

'Well, Stella dear, you must forgive something to the
weakness of a loving sister.  I can't help seeing that lately
you are more brilliant and somehow harder.  In the midst
of my joy on Ted's account, I sometimes ask myself, "Does
Stella really love him enough?  Will she be able to
overlook his faults, and help him, and lead him?"'

'Oh, Laurette, what have you been reading?' cried Stella,
and she laughed outright, looking on with an animated
face, as though she were witnessing a comedy.

But not a muscle of Laurette's face moved, either in
mirth or anger.

'Ah, my dear, when you have my maturity of experience as
a wife and mother, you will better understand my anxieties.
If I thought that you did not really love Ted, I would
say to you, even now, "Pause before it is too late!"'

It was inexpressibly comic.  Only the play of daily life
is often marred by the fact that we generally see—not the
whole gem, but merely one or two facets.  Yet, on the
other hand, to see comedy in its more intimate bearings,
as it affects ourselves, might frequently mean that all sense
of fun would be merged in that of tragic irony.

Stella sat with such undisguised amusement on her face,
waiting for this to go on, that Laurette instantly took up a
fresh cue.

'But of course it is only my fears.  And what makes it
so very safe for you, is having been friends ever since you
were babies, I may say.  But it's just one of the things we
women have to face—to take the world as we find it.  To
do that in married life, one must start with a good stock of
affection.  Where should I have been without it?  We
soon discover that our fairy tales and imaginations have
been raised far enough away from reality.  Many people
were of opinion that if your sister Esther, for instance, had
not been so horrified and scornful when she found Raymond
went a little into queer society—my dear, why do you stare
so?  I mean among the *pêches à quinze sous*; now that you
are to be married, one may mention speckled fruit before
you—affairs between them might have turned out differently.
I dare say she forgave him at intervals; but if a man must
forgive his brother seventy times seven, how often must a
woman forgive her husband?  It's not put in the Bible,
partly, I think, because there is not enough arithmetic
going to make it up.  And it's not only forgiving, but making
light of it in a way.  To do that, one must really enjoy
one's self—and that's what you have the power of doing.
You have to come down a cropper or two in your ideals,
but you will soon find that a young married woman in a
good position, with plenty of money and some brains, has
more advantages, is more perfectly independent, than any
other creature in the world.  You will get on with all sorts
of people.  You can have a *salon* if you try, and succeed
better than poor Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs.  If no one else says
smart things, you will yourself.  And then, of course, you
will be sure to have enemies, and they are often far more
useful in amusing one than any friends....  What could
be more diverting than to watch people come to you, their
faces covered with smiles, their hearts on their lips, so to
speak, as they stretch out their hands to you? ... And
yet you know all the time they never say a true word of
you behind your back, unless you are ugly or stupid....
I expect you will bring back heaps of lovely things; and of
course you will go to Worth as you are coming home.  Of
course, too, you will go to visit the Lillimore family.  Talbot
said the other day his mother would be perfectly charmed
to know you.  There are three unmarried sisters—unfortunately
none of them under thirty-three, and none of them
very sweet-tempered; but how can you wonder?  They are
very poor, and their letters are always like Jeremiah's
scroll—tenantless lands and mortgages.

'If ever Talbot succeeds to the title, I shall be at my
wits' ends; for what would be the use of being swallowed
up in London society, and passing your time scheming how
to make ends meet, etc.?  They do not even give me any
of those little details one longs for so.  They write
sometimes about the "sausage people," and the "screw-makers,"
and the "Jew money-lenders," meaning those who have
made their money by these articles.  But, after all, what is
the good of trying to throw names at people about the way
their money has been made?  Land is going down and
down in England.  They can't grow wool much, nor wine,
nor cotton, and the farmers are going to places where they
can make more money, and become gentry on their own
account.  And there's no class in all the world that need
money so constantly in large sums as an aristocracy.  They
want to be always well amused, and well fed, and well
dressed—the dearest things in all the world—and, on top
of it all, to do no work, which is dearer than all the rest
put together—to be, in fact, almond tumblers, whose beaks
are so soft they must be fed out of a spoon, which is no
doubt very genteel, as long as you can get people to feed
you.  But the Middle Ages are long over.  Why, even here,
in a properly democratic country, how soon everyone
conspires to make you feel your poverty!  I have often thought
if one continued hopelessly poor all one's life, one would have
to take to the love of God—there would be nothing else left.'

'Surely you are not threatened with such destitution,
Larry?' said Stella, smiling.  'Why, Ted has more money
than he knows what to do with; he must give you some.'

'My dear, that is very sweet and good of you! but you
know how absurdly awkward one feels about taking money;
and, of course, our poverty, after all, is comparative.  It
consists largely in having to fall back on second-rate
tradespeople—not but what that is a bitter cross in itself: they
are more flattered by your patronage, but they charge nearly
as much; indeed, they leave out nothing but the style—like
Surah, Muslin, and Company, who descend to the paltriest
details if you have a dress made at their establishment—even
putting the eyelet-holes down as an extra—and then
put in sundries one pound fifteen shillings.  And there is
hardly anything in life more tiresome than a dressmaker
who is not quite *chic*.  Her fingers are always cold, and she
*will* touch your skin, and stick pins in you, and hold things
in her mouth, and say in a gushing way, "Yes, madam,
it will be a most be-au-ti-ful fit," and then take a cheerful
snip out of your arms with her scissors.  Stella, you will
never know anything of these small miseries....  Well, I
wish it were possible for me to come to your wedding; but
Talbot cannot leave town, as I said, and I must not go
without him.  But you are to stay with us the few days
you are in Melbourne before leaving.  What a charming
idea that is of Ted's, to drive you in his new drag
four-in-hand from Adelaide to Strathhaye!'

Laurette found everything in Stella's lot all the more
charming just then by reason of Ted's action in presenting
her only that morning with a cheque for two thousand
pounds.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XLIII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XLIII.

.. vspace:: 2

It was the evening before Stella's wedding-day.  She had
returned, in company with her brother Cuthbert and his
*fiancée*, and their presence and the interest of their new
relationship shielded her from undivided attention.  A few
days afterwards came Mrs. Wallerton, with her children.
Everyone knows how a family reunion serves to minimize
the concentration of attention on any one grown-up individual
of the circle.  It is a small republic, in which, after
the manner of limited monarchies, those who reign do not
rule.  Claude Hector, aged eight months, being the youngest
member, and till then a complete stranger to his older
relatives, was a great centre of attraction.

Then Dora, with her pretty, affectionate little ways,
drew great attention.  If anyone sang or played, Dora
always begged for one more song or a little more music.
If one spoke a little hoarsely, she never forgot to inquire
next morning, with the deepest concern, after the afflicted
throat.  She was always gliding about, to put a footstool
under someone's feet or to recover a straying newspaper or
a dropped needle.  Then, when anyone spoke, she always
listened with the most reverential attention.  When
Cuthbert spoke, she would often murmur one of his sentences
over to herself, as if better to impress it on her memory.
She was, in fact, what is known in England as a very sweet
girl.  In Australia, unfortunately, the species is so rare that
no specific name has had to be invented.  Dora was to stay
at Fairacre for a month after the wedding, and Felix
Harrison could not refrain from saying to Allie that the change
from Stella to Dora was rather soothing.

'But, indeed, her approaching marriage seems already to
have improved her,' the young man said meditatively.  He
had many good qualities, and withal a liberal estimate of his
own abilities.  This had long been a subject of serio-comic
treatment with Stella.

'I hope Stella won't alter much,' returned Alice, who
was embroidering a chair-back for her own future home.
'I began to think she never would accept Ted——'

'I think she is a very lucky girl, if you ask me.  Ritchie
simply worships the ground she treads on.  And she must
be fond of him, though she so long kept up that indifferent
way.  Why, these last few days at home she spends most
of the time with him on horseback.'

Now the last few days had passed, and to-morrow was
the wedding-day.  Stella sat in the little library on a
footstool at her mother's feet.  Both windows were open;
through one Banksia roses were drooping in heavy
cream-coloured clusters; through the other a microphylla rosebush
peeped, with its thick foliage of small green leaves,
long-spiked buds unclosing, and roses fully blown with deep-pink
hearts, and outer petals deadly pale.  The sun was setting
in golden splendour, and all the atmosphere was warm
and rosy; the lovely Adelaide Hills had caught the glow
all along their crests with magical effect.  The pigeons
were flying to their cotes in scores, and the soft beating
of their wings in the garden clove the air like silken
banners.

'There is one thing that troubles me a little, darling,' the
mother said, in her tender voice, with its soft Celtic
intonations; 'I thought on your wedding-day you would
communicate.  It would be possible to do that with our old friend
the Archdeacon, though you have not been confirmed.  I
should like you to enter on your new life by drawing near
the visible Church.'

'Mother, I cannot,' answered the girl, with averted face,
as she held her mother's hand in both hers.

'Well, my child, you are in God's hands.  I do not fear
but you will yet find Him who is the soul's most precious
possession.  In our span of life the rose is ever
neighbour with the thorn—the web woven with threads not all
of our choosing.  And yet God grants us to reap our
hundredfold even in this life.  In marriage itself, when
two hearts and souls cleave together, what deep and sacred
happiness has He not granted to us!'

A burning flame of colour rose and spread over the girl's
face.  How unjustifiable did her marriage appear to her in
the white light of her mother's life—one consecrated
throughout with fidelity to the higher ideals that sway
human conduct.

But she sternly kept the feeling in check.  She reflected
that for the majority of human beings the best possibilities
of life never blossom into fruit.  Her marriage had no
element of ideal perfection; it belonged merely to the
common ruck of such arrangements.  And, on the whole,
it was the best scheme of existence open to both.  'Ted
loves me,' she thought; 'and if I can never love him in the
same way, I can at least tolerate him, and be faithful to
him even in thought.  It was never possible for the women
of our race to be otherwise....  And then I am safe from
the slow canker of disillusionment.  Perhaps, in the years
to come, I may find it possible to think of—of the spring
days at Lullaboolagana as a beautiful dream happily secured
from the corrosion of actual life.'

There was a burning flush on her cheeks and a hard
brilliancy in her eyes, as she raised her head and put her
arms round her mother's neck.

'My darling, wherever you may be, morning and night join
your thoughts with mine in prayer,' said her mother.  'And
when moments of perplexity come to you, never forget the
words, "In your patience ye shall win your souls."'

'In your patience'—the words haunted her strangely in
the silent watches of the night.  Patience, the great
keynote of Nature: of God, so far as we can apprehend
Him; of man, so far as he can rise to accomplish aught
that is to nourish or deliver his kind.  That old Gospel of
the discipline of sorrow and pain, how fiercely she had
come to spurn it, to turn from it as the rock on which
human lives were ineffectually offered up!  A very Moloch
that demanded all, and gave in return a grave and pale
glimmering of a future life so far removed from earth and
sense that its possession was a very doubtful gain.  And
yet—and yet—patience and sorrow, what nobility has man
attained without these? what steadfast purpose has he
achieved?  Would the years here have been in truth so
unbearable as she had pictured, surrounded with all the
precious charities of serene home-life?  At last, in utter
impatience, she turned from all these doubts and questions
as mere rags of rhetoric that hid from her the true bearings
of what her life would become.

'It is because I am going to leave it all that there seems
to be healing in the thought of resignation, and leisured
quiet, and daily communion with Nature and great thoughts.
There would be no end to these eventless days, and the
prospect stretching out before me would have frozen me
into one of those whimlings to whom nothing is so real as
the wan promises of joy that fade into nothing.  It has
always made me incredibly dreary when I have seen people
stranded in some little inlet of existence; growing gray and
faded in trying to persuade themselves that life is not
without savour because once on a time they were going to
be happy—they were going to hear music, but the harmony
never began.  With Ted I shall at least keep hold on some
of the realities of life.'

She even laughed a little as she recalled the way in
which Ted had attempted to reconcile her to the prospect
of being so much in his society—reasoning on the subject in
his eminently practical, direct way as they rode that morning
beyond Coromandel Valley.  She had lingered, looking at
the views so familiar and well-loved from childhood.  Wide
fertile valleys irradiated with running water, dotted with
prosperous homesteads, folded in by vines, and olives, and
fig-trees, surrounded by fertile fields and orchards; sloping
hillsides clothed with slender white-stemmed gum-trees;
gullies masked with the unbroken shadow of tall, slim
stringy bark trees, growing so thick together that one could
scarcely walk between them.  And then those first glimpses
of the silver line of the sea on their return, sparkling in the
distance through the quiet shadowy woods like the beginning
of a fresh mysterious world.  How often had the sight
thrilled her with thoughts of the great old classic countries,
famous in song and story, which lay far beyond those
countless leagues of dividing water—countries whose
history and stores of man's highest achievements make so
strong a claim on spirits touched to sympathy with the
wider issues of human life.  All was now within her reach;
but as she looked her farewells at these primeval woods, at
the calm, beautiful, uncommemorated scenes of her native
land, a great pain had fastened upon her heart—a pain,
dull, deep, and insatiable, that made her pulses beat slowly,
mechanically, as if it were sapping her life-blood.

'Don't look like that, Stella,' Ted had said, after a long
silence.  'You will see these places all again as often as
you like.  We can spend part of each summer among the
hills.  Did you know my father is going to settle Wattle
Cottage on you—that pretty little house on one of the
spurs of Mount Lofty?'

'Oh, mercy, Ted! is there no end to the possessions that
are to be heaped on me?  And then I must not even take
the liberty of looking a little sad, because I am a glorified
edition of Curly-locks!'

'Who was Curly-locks?  But don't tell me if it's one of
those wretched little yarns you make up, with some sort of
a ghost in them.'

'No—there is never a ghost, or a banshee, or a lost soul
in Curly-locks.  It is quite after your own heart:

   |  '"Curly-locks, Curly-locks, wilt thou be mine?
   |  Thou shalt not wash dishes, nor yet feed the swine;
   |  But sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam,
   |  And feed upon strawberries, sugar and cream."'

.. vspace:: 2

'But the girl after my heart is fonder of a saddle than a
cushion.  I was reading a novel the other night, Stella, and
there was something in it about a strong bond of sympathy
between the young man and woman who did most of the
spooning.  I'm not sure I know exactly what the fellow
meant, but don't you think it's a bond of sympathy between
us two that we are both so fond of horses?'

Stella recalled all this, and some more seriously personal
talk that followed.  After all, she reflected, there could be
no one else in the whole world she would marry without
being in love with him, except Ted.  In the midst of these
thoughts she fell fast asleep.  Alas! the mysterious
phantasies of dreamland were not so reasonable and reassuring
as her last waking thoughts.  She dreamt one of those
life-like, vivid, consecutive dreams with which she had become
increasingly familiar of late.  She was at Lullaboolagana,
out in the Home Field, walking with Anselm Langdale.
'My beloved, there is no one between us—no one,' he was
saying.  'To-morrow is our wedding-day.  Come and get a
wreath of the hymenosperum.  That is what I want you to
wear instead of orange-blossom.'

They went down beyond the Oolloolloo close to the
orchard, and, lo! there was the hymenosperum sheeted
with blossoms, and all around the air was rent with songs
of birds, and the whole world was glad and surpassingly
lovely—even like the holy city, the new Jerusalem, which
John saw coming down from God out of heaven, prepared
as a bride adorned for her husband.  How wide and full
was the tide of joy that welled up in her heart!  How
starry and fragrant were the flowers they plucked together
for her bridal wreath!  The sun was warm in their faces,
but they could not have too much of these slender, pale
cream blossoms.  She heard herself laughing happily; and
then Anselm held her face to his, and kissed her repeatedly.

'My darling, I am so glad to hear you laugh so on your
wedding morning.'

It was her mother who was kissing her softly.

'Oh, it is quite true, then; it is my wedding-day!' said
the girl, starting up, her face dyed with happy blushes.

And then her mother kissed her once again, and gently
left her, thanking God that her fears had been misplaced.
For on the previous evening some curious misgiving had
crept into her mind.  But now she knew that all was well.

Ritchie had called a little after sunrise with a magnificent
bridal bouquet, composed entirely of white fairy rosebuds
shaded with maidenhair fern.  The mother had taken it
softly into her daughter's room.  The windows looking
eastward were wide open, and the blinds up, according to
Stella's invariable custom.  The sunrays were falling on
her face, which was flushed and radiant like a child's.  The
mother's heart leaped with grateful joy; and when she
heard Stella, still slumbering, break into a ripple of silvery
laughter, she could not resist stooping to kiss her awake.

'Thank God my child is so happy!' she murmured gently,
as she closed the door behind her.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XLIV.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XLIV.

.. vspace:: 2

Summer threatened to set in early this season.  On the
fourteenth of October, two days before the Ritchies were to
sail, a high easterly hot wind was blowing, and there was
something of tropical ardour in the sun.  It was exhaustingly
unseasonable weather.  At Monico Lodge the Venetian
blinds of the veranda were closely drawn, and there was
that hushed, darkened aspect throughout the house which
almost cheats us into believing that without the sky is gray
and cool.

'I do envy you, Stella—going straight into the middle of
a northern winter,' said Laurette, fanning herself slowly
with a wide fan of gray curled ostrich-feathers.  She sat
opposite to her sister-in-law in the drawing-room, and as
she noticed the sharpened outline of her face, and the hectic
flush that burned steadily in her cheeks, she was devoutly
thankful that the newly-married pair would soon be afloat.

'She is quite capable of having a downright fever,' thought
Laurette, 'but the sea-breezes will prevent all that.'

It was indeed curious to notice how the few weeks that
had elapsed since Stella left Lullaboolagana had subtly
changed the character and expression of her face.  The cold
look which sometimes marked it before when in repose had
hardened into an air of listless hauteur.  When she smiled,
her eyes, instead of sparkling and gleaming with soft
radiance, remained brilliantly hard and unmoved.  We are
at times almost appalled by the scornful disdain imprinted
on women's countenances.  Do not let us judge them
harshly.  Tolerance is not the prerogative of the weaker
sex, but often their most savage bigotry of blame is directed
against the *rôle* into which they have been cheated by
circumstance and their own fatal impatience of suffering.
It is not shallow and wilful disesteem of others that makes
the hardest lines in their faces, when the tie which is the
fount of all human tenderness proves to them an intolerable
bond.

'If the summer is to go on from now till March, we
certainly must take a little cottage at St. Kilda or
Brighton,' Laurette went on, raising her voice a little,
doubting whether Stella heard the first remark.  Before
she could make any response to this the door was hastily
opened and Ted came in.

'Isn't Stella here?' he cried—not seeing her at first in the
shadowy corner in which she sat with an open book, whose
leaves she did not turn.  'Oh, there you are, Curly-locks!
Why the deuce do you make the house like a cave, Larry?'
he cried, turning to his sister.

'I'll go and amend my ways this instant,' said Laurette,
gliding out of the room.

'You mustn't make the room any lighter,' said Stella in a
languid voice.

'Why, I thought you were so fond of light and heat.
I've often found you in blazing December weather out in the
Fairacre garden sitting in the shade without even a hat on.
But I'm only too glad, Curly-locks, to hear you wish for
anything; besides, I'm going away for the rest of the day,
if you can spare me.'

'Oh yes.  Where are you going?'

'To Randwick with two or three other fellows.  And do
you know, Stella, I'm going to sell Konrad and four or five
more colts.  I expect John Morton will be here before I get
back.  Now, before I go would you mind telling me your
new name?  No larks, Stella.  Say your proper go-ashore,
newspaper name.'

'Ted, don't be tiresome; and try not to look so
complacently, abominably glad.  It makes my eyes ache.  Most
people never look so silly as when they are pleased.'

Ted laughed in an exultant way.

'By George!  I hope I'll always look silly in that way.
Do you know, Stella, you haven't asked me to do a single
thing for you since we were married yesterday.'

'Yesterday!  Three hundred and fifty-six years ago!
What frightful lies people tell about life being so short!'

'Well, now that I think of it, it is a week and a day.
But in sober earnest, Stella, do tell me one little morsel
I can do for you.  I'm aching all over to do something
you would like.  Now, didn't I tell you that was for
good-luck?' he said, touching the pearl-brooch at her
throat.

'Send me back, with Dustiefoot and Maisie, to Strathhaye
till you return.'

'And me go to foreign countries without you?  I meant
something that I could do, Stella.  But of course you are
joking—you sly little Curly-locks!  Do you know what you
said in your sleep last night?'

Ted's face was wreathed with smiles; but though the
flush on her cheeks did not die away, a certain pallor
deepened about Stella's mouth and eyes.

'Did I speak in my sleep?  I don't think I used to.  What
a dangerous accomplishment to evolve!'

'Dangerous?  I think it is very jolly, when you are so
proud, turning your cheek to me when I want to kiss you.
But, you see, I don't mind when you give yourself away in
your dreams, calling me by such fond names!'

'You are making that up as you go along, Ted,' she said,
with lowered eyes.

'Upon my soul, I am not.  You moaned a little.  I
thought you were having a bad dream, and I stroked your
cheek; and then you sighed and said—I heard it quite
distinctly—"Dear little leaf of my heart!"  Now, you
know, you never said anything half as pretty as that to me
awake.  There, don't go so scarlet!  I won't bring it up
against you, if you put your two arms around me and say,
"I want you not to stay too long away, Ted," and open that
little parcel when you are tired of reading.'

Reading!  What book has ever been written that can
enchain the mind when the heart is throbbing with feverish
despair—when the face is blistered with a sense of scorching
shame?  Yes, she had put up her hands and whispered the
words after him in the quiet darkened room; and even in
the act it rose up before her like one of the scenes in the
'Inferno' which stamp themselves on the mind of those
who are intimate with Dante's 'Divine' poem, like lurid
pictures that have been absolutely witnessed.  She seemed
to see herself among those who smote their hands
despairingly above their heads, borne along in ceaseless tumult
in the atmosphere eternally darkened as with sand driven
by the whirlwind.  A sudden catch came in her breath.
She unfastened a slender ribbon that was fastened low on
her neck, and drew out the ring that she had daily worn
against her heart since the evening she had parted from
Langdale.  She kissed it as a mother kisses the face of her
dead child!  'No, no, no!—I must not wear it,' she
moaned; 'I must drive all this away from me.  Sleeping
and waking I become more enslaved with these memories.
I thought to drive them from me by brute strength—to put
a barrier between them and my heart; and in place of that
they overwhelm me in my sleep—they come back as to a
chamber swept and garnished.  And now I learn to juggle
and deceive.  O God, God!—save me from the leprosy of
falsehood to which I have been betrayed!'

Yes, it was true.  She had fought down soul and instinct
find memory with ruthless violence; but Nature is not to be
lightly trifled with.  She has strange Nemesis powers which
find their own modes of reprisal.  What the girl in her
ignorance had dreamt would turn her love and fierce
jealousy into a forsworn, perjured and impossible passion
had but opened its floodgates.  The moment sleep came to
her the uncontrolled visions of unconsciousness, the
mysterious play of the brain which lies awake and remembers,
and keeps time to the beating of the heart, and calls up all
the masking simulacrum of life apart from our volition,
practised the cruellest treacheries upon her.  Forces which
had hitherto lain dormant in her nature pulsed into being
only to reinforce her forbidden love.

The thought of Ted's untroubled confidence smote on her
conscience with intolerable pain.  She saw, as with a
lightning-flash of insight, all the falsity and degradation of her
position.  She would tell him all—she must; he was good
and generous to her, he would have patience with her, he
would give her time to live down the past....  This double,
treacherous existence was impossible.  It would be terrible
to speak to him of Langdale—but she would make him
understand.  He had implored her to let him do something
for her, and he would not go back from this wish when he
knew all.  She would make her confession, and appeal to
him....  Something of relief came gradually with the
thought.  The adamant reserve with which she had guarded
this terrible crisis of her life had been part of her crushing
burden.  Yes, Ted would forgive her; and when the
keenness of anguish and memory had passed away, she would
be a true and loyal wife to him.  She might still prove in a
faltering, imperfect way, that love and a noble life are one....
There was a white gauze scarf looped and interwoven
in front of the pale cashmere morning dress she wore.  She
detached this scarf, and taking the ring with the narrow
white ribbon to which it was fastened, she enveloped it,
fold upon fold.  'I will not look at it again for long
years.'  A sudden thought came to her that she would think of
Langdale as dead—dead and taken from her for evermore.
'Oh, my love! my love! my love!' she cried, putting down
her head, and suddenly her tears fell like summer rain.

She was weeping for the dead.  Yes, he was really dead
to her—the lover from whom she had parted on that serene
night when heaven was flooded as with the twilight of dawn,
and the soft mystic glow crept in through the interlaced
foliage which hung round the veranda of that quiet house
near the borders of the Peeloo Plain.  Never again would
they stand hand-in-hand looking with radiant faces to the
years that were to be all their own.  It was a crime to love
him; but she might weep for him.  She would tame this
wild passion which came stealthily back in the visions of
the night, when reason was drugged with the poppies of
sleep, and conscience had relaxed its vigilance.  Day by day
she would think of silent graves, and of departed ones who
return no more.  Her whole frame was convulsed with a
storm of sobs.  She gave herself up to her long pent-up
grief, till its very intensity brought some ray of consolation.
She had been so hard, and bitter, and scornful—but she
must weep for her dead; she must try and creep back to
God, whom she had disbelieved and forgotten.  He had
wounded her so incurably; it must be that He knew of her
poor, maimed, anguish-stricken existence....  Let the bells
toll, and dust be given back to dust, and let her bow her
head and her heart in submissive prayer.  Even if God does
not care for us, we must still stumble back to Him when the
billows of dark despair dash against the frail skiff in which
we are launched on the wild, uncertain sea of life.  She had
joined the sorrow-smitten throng—the great army of earth's
bereaved ones.  The inextinguishable craving of the heart
for communion in prayer overcame her.  Crouching low,
with folded hands and tear-stained face, the words rose to
her lips, joining her petitions with those others, beaten and
chastised as she was:

'Our Father who art in heaven, forgive the days of utter
rebellion and agony and despair.  Forgive the storms of
unlighted darkness that toss our souls; those for whom we
poor stricken ones mourn are in Thy keeping—safe from the
world's slow stain, from the infirmities of old age, from the
bitterness of disillusion, from the subtle decay of enthusiasm
for all that is good and great.  They have reached a
continuing city; they are bathed in the light of everlasting
life.  The currents of time and change, the distraction and
vainglory and delusion of the world—these touch them no
more forever.

'Our Father, we would that Thy will were ours....  We
would fain lift up our eyes to Thee, but they are blinded with
tears.  Yet let us come to Thee, Infinite Source of all good,
though our only offering is that of a bruised and broken and
sinful heart.  The pangs of loneliness and isolation; the
rapturous dream of happiness changed into a sword within
the bosom; the desolation of days emptied of joy—these
are the poor oblations that we bring.  Yet may they become
to us an inspiration and a stay.  When the cruel waves of
anguish overcome us; when despair, like an angry sea,
threatens to engulf us; when the heavens are dark and
starless; when the earth seems empty of all that makes it
endurable; when it seems given over to the hopeless
mediocrity of natures mildewed with commonness in aim,
intention, and achievement; when our days stretch before
us blank and purposeless, spent and disconnected, unmeaning
and futile as grains of quicksand that a great storm has
borne far inland; when hope is dead and faith far off, and
fears troop round us like a horde of plotting rebels, saying:
There is no God—no soul—no immortality; when the mind
is flooded with unbearable recollections of lost joy; when
we are listless and indifferent, and overcome with fruitless
grief—then, O Kindly Light! let thoughts of Thee and of
the great souls whom Thou hast vivified enlarge our natures
and illuminate our minds.'

Her sobs died into silence, the bitterness of her grief was
spent.  The door was opened, but she could only half raise
her head, and Tareling, who caught one swift glimpse of
her—her face pallid, grief-stricken, and tear-stained—as she
crouched in silence like some dumb creature mortally
wounded, retreated noiselessly with a startled, almost
horrified look.  He was in search of Laurette, to make
some arrangements for the evening, before he went to his
office.  He met her in the hall.

'What is the matter with Stella?' he asked quickly,
looking at his wife with an indefinable suspicion in his
eyes.

'The matter with Stella?' she echoed, with a little, quick
throb of terror, which she kept well in hand, however.
'Nothing that I know of—except that she has too many
diamond sprays and necklaces and precious stones, and a
husband who adores her.'

'Well, I don't know, but I wouldn't mind laying a
thousand to one that there was some sort of deception at
the root of this marriage.  It's not a month since she came
here from Lullaboolagana looking like a rose in June.'

'In December you mean, dear.  Our roses are very
shabby in June; and I am sure Stella will never be in that
condition.  Oh, about the theatre.  You had better book
three seats in the dress-circle for us two and John Morton.
Stella won't come, and of course Ted will not either.  Have
you been speaking to her—just now, I mean?'

'No; I should say she is hardly fit to speak to anyone—excess
of joy in the possession of Ted and so many diamonds,
I suppose.'

Laurette felt anxious, but she avoided the drawing-room
for another hour.  When she went in she found Stella
looking very pale and exhausted, but composed.  She had
raised one of the blinds, and sat embroidering near the
bay-window.  There was something in the expression of her
face that touched Laurette with a sudden, sharp thrill of
compassion.  It was no longer hard and listless; all the
cold scorn had gone out of it; and in place of these there
was an indescribable wistful sadness—her eyelids were dark
and slightly swollen, and when she looked up one saw that
her beautiful radiant eyes had grown heavy and dim.  But
the only moral and politic course when a bride looks like
this is to say nothing.

'Oh, what have we here?' said Laurette, in a half-playful
way, holding up the little parcel Ted had left.  'Now, if
you are not dying to see this, I am; and may I, therefore,
open it for you?' she continued.  Stella at once assented.
It was a case containing an exquisitely-wrought bracelet,
set with extraordinarily large opals—one that Stella
happened to notice in a jeweller's window when she accompanied
Ted into Collins Street after reaching Melbourne on
the previous afternoon.

'They are really too lovely,' said Laurette, holding them
up so that they caught the light and threw it back in a
sheaf of quivering rainbow-rays, but with an eerie flame not
to be found in a rainbow.

'I shall be afraid to admire anything after this, except
the sun and trees,' said Stella, with a tremulous little smile.
'It is so kind of Ted!'—there was a little quiver in her
voice, and Laurette suddenly rose and kissed her sister-in-law.

'You are not well, Stella; the weather is so atrocious;
do lie down and let me bathe your head.'

But Stella, thanking her, declared there was not much
amiss.  She would have been glad to lie down, but she felt
a stupor of moral and physical exhaustion creeping over
her, and feared to give way to it—feared that the purpose
she had formed of making a full confession to her husband
might slip from her when he returned if she did not resist
this benumbing lassitude.

In the afternoon there were callers, and Stella went to
her own room to write letters home.  The effort seemed to
use up all her energies.  But she dressed and sat at dinner
with the rest, though eating was a mere farce with her.
She talked for some little time with Mr. Morton—a tall,
burly man, with dark curly hair and a sun-bronzed face, but
with a voice and manners as gentle as a woman's.  She
wondered a little that Ted did not come; but when Laurette
wished to stay at home with her, and forego the theatre,
Stella insisted on being left alone.

'It will not be long before Ted comes,' she said.  'I will
rest till then.'

Laurette made her lie down on the sofa in the drawing-room
before she went away.  But soon after being left alone
Stella went into the breakfast-room, which was beyond
the dining-room, and communicated with it by folding doors.

Here she was in darkness, except for the light that came
in from the dining-room.  The gas seemed to beat upon her
tired eyes with such wearying brilliance she found the
change to the unlighted room very grateful.  She opened
the window of this little room, and lay opposite to it on the
couch, looking out at the starlit sky.  At every sound she
heard her heart seemed to beat in her ears.  The moment
Ted came in she must tell him—she must not give herself
time to reflect and draw back.  She knew it would hurt
him, as well as herself, horribly; and yet she had confidence
in him that he would not be harsh or ungenerous.  He
would help her—he would understand.  Already, with all
her agitation, she felt something of the relief of being freed
from the concealment which his own loyalty made all the
more intolerable.

Gradually her thoughts became confused—the light of
the stars was dimmed with the pale glory of a young moon;
the wind, which had been high all day, still rose into fitful
gusts, swaying the scanty branches of a Judas-tree that
grew near the window hither and thither.  She was out in
the Fairacre garden—and yet she was looking into Laurette's
house, and she saw a form she knew well approaching it.
She heard him asking for her, and then gradually all floated
from her view.  Then there came a troubled dream in which
she heard heavy, uncertain footsteps—they sounded near
her, and yet they were not mixed up with any story.  She
was conscious of the thought that these stumbling sounds
were real, not part of a dream—and yet she did not wake up.

She had no conception how long she had slept when she
became conscious of a low murmur of voices.  No, it was
not a dream.  The moonlight had faded, for the moon was
setting.  She rose slowly—her temples were throbbing.
One leaf of the double folding-doors between the little
apartment and the dining-room was half ajar.  The murmur
of voices resolved itself into words.  It was Laurette who
spoke.

'Stella is in her own room; she must not know.'

'What has happened?' cried Stella, gliding quickly into
the dining-room.

Laurette, in a dark-crimson low-necked silk, as she had
returned from the theatre, was standing by the table in the
centre of the room.  Tareling and Morton were near her,
but Ted was not there.  The quick look of consternation
on all three faces as she entered gave Stella a sickening
sensation of fear.

Then, before any could speak, she saw why they looked
so strangely.  One lay on the couch at the further end of
the room breathing heavily, but pale and still.  It was Ted;
and with a low cry Stella knelt down by him.

'Oh, Ted, Ted, you are hurt!—you do not hear me!'  She
held his hands—they were cold, and his eyes were
not quite closed; but there was no sign of awakening.  'My
God, what has happened?  He is unconscious!' she cried.

The men looked at her in a strange way, but did not
answer.

'No, dear, he is not badly hurt,' said Laurette.  She
was very white, and her hands trembled as she tried to
raise Stella.

'How has he been hurt?  You must tell me!' she cried,
turning to Tareling and Morton.

Laurette made despairing gestures to them as she stood
behind Stella that they should leave the room.  But they
were so confused that they did not perceive this, or, if
they did, failed to understand the drift of Laurette's
motions.

'It is not dangerous, Stella,' said Tareling in a low voice,
taking her hand in both his.

'Did the doctor say so?' cried Stella.  'Has he gone
away?  I must see him for myself.  Has he been long
unconscious?'

'No—not very,' said Laurette.

'But what did the doctor say?  What caused this?'

'Stella, it is not dangerous.  You may believe Talbot—he
knows,' said Laurette desperately.  If only these stupid
men were out of the way, she felt sure she could invent an
illness, or at any rate make up a fictitious account of the
doctor's opinion.

'Not dangerous!—to lie like this!'  She knelt down
again, and held Ted's hands, and whispered his name
softly two or three times; but there was not a tremor of
consciousness.

The perspiration stood on John Morton's forehead in
great drops.

'My dear young lady——' he said, placing his hand
kindly on Stella's shoulder.  But then utterance failed
him.

'Ah, you are deceiving me, you are—I can see it—you
look at each other so strangely!  Talbot,' she said, going
up to her brother-in-law, 'you must tell me the whole truth.
It is no use keeping it from me.  Tell me what the doctor
said?'

'The doctor——' began Tareling.  'The fact is, Stella,
we—there is—in an attack like this—well, medical
attendance is not usual; we—most men know what ought to be
done; it is—er—a form of exhaustion.'

A conviction had seized Stella that Ted must have been
dangerously hurt, and that all these blundering equivocations
were well-merited efforts to break the news gently
to her.

'Do you mean that you have not called in a doctor at all?'
she said, looking from Morton to Tareling, and back again
at Morton.

He, poor man! could do nothing but wipe his face, and
crush his handkerchief into a minute compass.

'Stella dear, you may believe Talbot,' said Laurette once
more.  'Everything has been done that is necessary.  Ted
will be all right when he wakes up a few hours later.'

'Wakes up?' repeated Stella, looking at the group around
her with a sharp thrill of ill-defined terror.  She saw that
Morton was somehow the one most keenly affected.  Laurette
tried to cajole her.  Talbot was infinitely gentle in his
manner, yet confused as she had never seen him before;
but John Morton's face was a picture of distress and
yearning pity.

Going up to him, Stella laid her hand on his arm, and
said in a firm voice:

'Mr. Morton, I insist upon knowing the truth.  There is
something you keep back from me.  Tell me in one word,
is Ted badly hurt?  if not, what ails him?  You know; I
am sure you do.'

'He is not badly hurt; in one way, this is not serious.'

'In one way,' sha gasped, with parching lips—'in what
way is such protracted unconsciousness not serious?'

Morton had for some years worked a pearling boat off the
unknown northern coasts of Western Australia, and had
been a spectator and an actor in many wild scenes; but
never had he known so acutely miserable a quarter of an
hour as the present.

'Well,' he said slowly, thus driven to bay, 'perhaps it is
serious in every way, only not as you think.  You know
the day has been very warm.'

'And the sun,' put in Laurette, 'often affects people
without a regular sunstroke.'

But Stella did not even notice her.  A glimmering
suspicion had dawned on her.  Talbot glided out of the room.

'Tell me the truth,' said Stella in a husky voice, still
keeping her hand on Morton's arm.

'I thought you knew something of this weakness of
Ted's; that he sometimes—not often—forgets himself;
takes a little more stimulant than is good for him.'

A low moaning cry escaped from Stella; and she trembled
convulsively as if in an ague-fit.  They tried to draw her
away, but she would not go.  She stood as if spell-bound,
white and horror-stricken, looking at Ted's insensible form
and ghastly unmeaning face.





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.. _`CHAPTER XLV.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XLV.

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Stella could never recall how the rest of the night passed.
She had vague recollections of sitting as if turned to stone,
of hearing voices, of speaking herself now and then, of
pacing at intervals up and down the room like some
creature of the woods that had been suddenly trapped.  But
look what way she would, Ted's vacant face met her eyes.
She could hardly be said to suffer acutely.  She was rather
in a waking trance, in which the events of the past month
rose up before her like a curious panorama, of which she
was merely a spectator.  Once or twice she found herself
planning a secret journey—supping away into unknown
haunts of the desert where she might escape from these
endless stratagems that fate was practising upon her.  But
no coherent plan underlay these vague flights.  They
belonged rather to those imaginative variations which we
sometimes make in a story that is distasteful.

At daybreak Ritchie showed signs of returning consciousness.
Not till then could Stella be prevailed on to leave
the room.  Laurette pleaded with her to lie down and rest,
but in vain.

'No one knows of this but ourselves,' she said.  'When
we got home from the theatre we found Ted rather
confused.  He had taken a little raw brandy to steady his
nerves, and that, of course, was a fatal mistake.  It was an
unseasonably hot day, and no doubt he had taken some
"long drinks" previously.'

Stella looked at her strangely, but said not a word in
reply.  She bathed and changed her dress, and went out
into the little garden at Monico Lodge and looked at the
sun rising with eyes that saw nothing.  Her emotion and
resolutions of the previous day rose up before her in so
mocking and sardonic a light.

After a little time she was joined by John Morton.  He,
too, had slept but little.

'Stella, will you let me speak to you as if you were a
sister?' he said, taking her hand in his.  'You must not
think that this is habitual with Ted.  It is only a couple of
years since he began to forget himself now and then—when
he is mixed up with these fast turf people.  I asked him a
few weeks before he was married whether you knew of
this—tendency.  He said Laurette told him you had heard
something.  This is the first time such a thing has happened
since he was in the Retreat.'

'The Retreat?  What Retreat?

'You remember, when Ted was at home about Christmas-time,
you went to a dinner-party at his father's house?'

'Ah, I remember!' cried Stella, and all the details of that
event, and Ted's altered demeanour when he came to bid
her farewell, rushed back on her mind.

'Yes; he told me all about it.  There is a private Retreat
in the western district of Victoria, and Ted, in his disgust
at finding that even the prospect of meeting you did not
serve to keep him straight, went there for nearly six months.
It is only when he is with others—never when he is
alone—and a little tells on him.  I am certain he will keep
straight after this.  I know it must vex you terribly; but,
Stella, you must not be too angry.  Ted sent me to ask you
to see him.  He is more unhappy than words can tell.'

Stella went slowly into the house.  Laurette met her in
the hall, and led her into the breakfast-room, where Ted
stood pallid and miserable, leaning against the mantelpiece.
Laurette would have left them, but Stella called her back.
There was something so cold and unmoved in her face and
voice that Ted's heart sank, if possible, more than before;
but his range of expression was limited.

'I know I have been a thundering jackass, Stella,' he
said in a husky voice.  'I don't know how to ask you to
forgive me.'

'Do you suppose I do not?' she said in a level voice.

'Don't say you forgive me when you look like that,
Stella,' said Ted.  'I know you have a right to be angry.'

'But I am not, any more than if you had small-pox or
typhoid—only if it were a merely physical malady you
would soon recover.  But what hope is there for a vice that
wrecks the will so completely—a vice that overcomes a man
till he lies sunk below the level of the brutes?'

The words were harsh, yet what added curiously to their
force was the quiet, passionless tone in which they were
uttered, and the involuntary shudder which shook Stella
from head to foot as she spoke.

Ritchie flushed crimson, and for a little he did not
speak.

'Do you mean,' he said at last very slowly, 'that I am
not to be blamed for this?  Because, if you do, you are very
much mistaken.  I am to blame most damnably, and I
have been worse than an idiot; and I say this—if it ever
happens again——'

'Why did you say I knew something of this?' said Stella,
suddenly turning to Laurette without making any reply to
her husband's affirmations.

'Well, I made sure you did by your manner, and that
long talk we had before you went to Lull,' said Laurette
composedly, meeting her brother's doubting scrutiny
without flinching.

Stella put up her hands to her temples, struggling to
recollect what the long talk was.  And then Laurette,
marshalling her forces, went on with calm incisiveness:

'You have seen very little of the world yet, Stella.  You
have been dreaming over romances, and poetry, and foolish
scientific books, and they make you feel as if you knew a
great deal.  You have several brothers, and are intimate
with a good many of their friends.  You never saw any of
them the worse for drink, so you conclude they never in
their lives fell fast asleep with their riding-boots on.  That
is a little discovery which is generally reserved for the
sacred privacy of married life.  Take my word for it, there
are very few families without one or more in the same boat
with Ted.  Only, unfortunately, many have no power of
pulling themselves up as he has.  Now, Stella, let me
advise you to rest for some hours.  You know this is your
last day before sailing——'

Stella, who stood gazing out of the window most of the
time while Laurette spoke, upon this turned, and looking at
Ted without any trace of emotion in her voice, said slowly:

'It is impossible that I should live with you as your wife.
Nothing can alter my determination in that;' and before
Ted could say anything in reply she left the room.

He stood for a minute or two as if stunned, and then
walked in an aimless way to the window, without
saying a word.  But after a little he was seized with a fit
of dizziness, and sank half fainting on a chair that stood
near.  Laurette insisted upon his going to bed, and installed
herself as his nurse.

This proved to be an eventful day in Laurette's life.  The
English mail, which arrived that morning by the express
train from Adelaide, brought, among other letters, one from
his father to Tareling, with the announcement that his
eldest brother Cecil had suddenly been stricken down with a
stroke of paralysis, and that the physicians held out no
hope of his ultimate recovery, though there was no
immediate prospect of death.  Lord Harewood had been ten
years married, and his family consisted of two daughters,
the youngest seven years of age.  The Earl of Lillimore
was seventy-six, and frail for his years, and Talbot was the
second son.

In the first moments after receiving this intelligence,
Laurette was conscious only of a great and solemn thankfulness.
Only for her undaunted efforts, Talbot, who might
after this at any moment be called in the kind ordinance of
Providence to take his place among the peers of Great
Britain, would now be ploughing the main in the society of
a disreputable actress!  The next moment she was more
than ever alive to the necessity of taking instant action,
lest Stella should, in her unreasonable caprice, decide not
to go abroad.  In another fortnight at the most there would
be a letter from Langdale, posted at Mauritius.  If Stella
remained in Australia, Laurette could do nothing to prevent
her receiving this or any subsequent letter.  Whereas, in
her absence, she—Laurette—would speedily write a note to
Mrs. Courtland, asking that any letters which came from
abroad might be forwarded to her—Laurette—in obedience
to Stella's wish.  She knew the scrupulous way in which
the Courtlands would fall in with an arrangement of this
kind, without comment or inquiry.

Something would no doubt turn up some day which
would make Stella think that there had been some
'extraordinary misunderstandings'—but then at that time Laurette
might be safely established among the hereditary aristocracy
of Europe! her husband an earl—her little son a lord!  At
the thought Laurette could not forbear going into the
nursery and clasping the future Lord Harewood fondly to
her bosom....  Yes, there were occasions in life on which
one must act for the present, and not for eternity, or even
the remote future.  Who was it that advised people to take
short views in life?  The counsel was sagacious enough for
Solomon himself; for, after all, no people were more
egregiously sacrificed at times than those who trusted
nothing to the chapter of accidents.

Laurette stole softly into the darkened room in which
Ted lay.  He looked up eagerly, thinking it might be
Stella.  At sight of Laurette he closed his eyes in dejected
weariness.

'Ted, you must arrange that your voyage is not
postponed,' she said, sitting by his bedside.

'I don't see the good of arranging anything, if Stella
sticks to what she says, and I believe she will.'

'Fiddlesticks!  No doubt she will for a time, but she has
a strong sense of humour, and she will soon perceive what
a ridiculous attitude she takes up.  But, at the same time,
it becomes you to make concessions, and I will be your
envoy.'

'What do you mean by concessions?'

'Give in to her whim till you can get her to relent.  She
cannot cease to be Mrs. Edward Ritchie because sometimes
you are not as steady as you should be; but if she is
wilful, there may be no end of scandal and annoyance and
trouble that will only widen the breach.  Ask her to start
to-morrow with you as arranged, on her own conditions;
or I will speak for you, and then bring her in here to clinch
the arrangement.'

Laurette found Stella in her own room.  She was still
curiously unmoved.  Laurette told a melting tale of Ted's
utter unhappiness and remorse.  No, Stella was not angry
nor unforgiving; but she could not alter her decision.  Did
she, then, propose to separate from Ted?  She did not
know, it was all so dark and horrible.  She could not see
her way.  She must send for Cuthbert; perhaps he would
help her to think what was right.  She knew there was one
crime she must not commit.  The story of her friend Cicely's
life rose up before her, and she, for the first time since this
disastrous revelation burst on her, shed a few scalding,
humiliated tears.

'What crime do you mean?' said Laurette in a whisper.

'The crime of adding to the morally-paralyzed lives in
the world,' said Stella, in a dry, stern voice.

'What a dreadful idea to take up!' said Laurette
indignantly.  'Why, Talbot drinks three times as hard as Ted
ever did, and I am sure neither Gwendolen nor Howard is
ever likely to be paralyzed.  And there's my father—he has
drunk pretty heavily at times for the last twenty-six years,
and who is more respected than he is—Speaker of the
House for so long, and knighted, and all the rest of it?'

Though Laurette was oblivious of that elementary canon
of heredity that the further back a quality has been fixed
the more likely it is to reappear, her sharp eyes saw that
her illustration conveyed no comfort.

'Of course,' she said, going on in an altered tone, 'if you
want to send Ted completely to the dogs, you will turn
your back on him now.  You ought, by rights, to have,
married him four years ago——'

'I ought to have been told of Ted's vice—and you seem
to have prevented his telling me the truth,' said Stella, in a
low, hard voice.

'Well, I may have been to blame.  You do not know
what it is to have an only brother.  You may be thankful
you were never tempted in the same way.  Not many of us
fall into temptations that do not beset us.  If there were a
sort of Greek chorus going on always to warn women off
all the possible shoals of matrimony, the world would soon
come to a nice pass.  You all blame me.  It is quite plain
that in this matter I am the earthenware pot going down
the stream with copper kettles.  But if it was all to come
over again I couldn't act differently.  Here was Ted hanging
after you ever since he was a little shrimp in his first
knickerbockers; never thought of any other girl in his
life—at least, not to marry her.  Uncle was a pig-headed old
man, who insisted on Ted leaving college when he was
sixteen, because he said a squatter would never want more
than to write and see that a book-keeper could add up
properly.  And then, before he was twenty, Ted is left his
own master, with thirteen thousand a year; and since that
he has raised the annual income of the station to fifteen
thousand.  It's ridiculous to speak as if he were a slave to
drink, or anything like it.  It's only when he goes with that
Eversley and Wilmot lot—and now he's got you he'll see
precious little of them.'

Laurette spoke in a clear, emphatic voice, and she could
see that some of her arguments went home, though Stella
made no response.  The thought of her sending for
Cuthbert had terror in it, if only for the reason that such a
course would prevent the pair from leaving by the *Hindoo
Fawn*; and if any delay arose, with so many awkward
contingencies in the background, no one could tell what might
happen.

'Come, Stella, you must forgive Ted.  Oh, I know—but
what's the good of that sort of forgiveness: "I don't want
you to be hanged or quartered—but good-bye"?  That
won't do, my dear.  I am a wife and mother, and my
experience of life is much more matured than yours.  Take
my word for it, forgiveness is the quality that best suits
us women—even when we are most sinned against.  It does
not become us to be too logical, or look too far ahead.  It
was not for nothing that God made our brains smaller than
those of men.  Where would I be to-day, and my two little
ones, if I had not swallowed a great deal more than ever
you will have to overlook?'

'Laurette, I have no doubt you mean very well,' said
Stella wearily.  'I do not want to make a public scandal,
but——'

'Sail to-morrow as was arranged, Stella, and make your
own conditions, till you are satisfied that the episode of
yesterday was an accident which won't happen again.  Now,
be reasonable, and tell me what other plan could Cuthbert,
or even an angel from heaven, suggest better than this?
What sacredness would the marriage service have if men
and women tried to throw the contract over at the first
shock?  Come on, Stella, and speak to Ted.'

When Stella went into her husband's room, the sight of
his haggard face, with its broken, appealing look, smote on
her heart.

'Stella, forgive me,' he said, speaking very low, lest he
should betray emotion.

'I do,' she said, with bent head.  'I do forgive you, Ted.'

'And, Stella, don't say you don't blame me any more
than if I had small-pox.  I would sooner, somehow, you
thought I was as black as the devil himself, than believe I
couldn't help being such an infernal idiot.'

'But, Ted, you know how, less than a year ago, when
you were to meet me at your father's, the same thing
happened, and now—do I not know that you would not
willingly give me pain, that——'

'Thank you for saying that, Stella.  May I hold your
hand?  I know all that—and yet this time it's partly, I
know, because I got into my head you knew, and didn't
mind so very much.  Larry made some mistake, and she
thought you knew.  And then, you know, I wanted to tell
you when I said I wasn't what I ought to be—and you said
rather queer things.  Of course it was because you didn't
really know.  I never was so ashamed of myself in my life
before, and I'll do whatever you want me to.'

'Oh, Ted, it is all too miserable; it seems as if the things
that are worst in life pursued us and hounded us down so
that we cannot escape them—so that we cannot help ourselves.'

A scalding tear rolled down Stella's cheek and fell on
Ted's hand.  Then, so extreme was his misery and remorse,
for the first time in his life he moaned aloud.

The thought crossed Stella's mind that she would tell him
all she meant to say on the previous night.  But the sight
of his motionless form and ghastly vacant face, as he lay
submerged far below the unconsciousness of brute life, rose
before her with cruel vividness.  And then she knew that
she dared not breathe a word to him of her irremediable
bereavement.  It would be sacrilege—stealing the oil for
common purposes from the lamp that burned in commemoration
of her dead.

But a hard unsympathetic antagonism was impossible to
her.  She was too keenly alive to the tragic element in
human affairs—to the multiform aspects in which circumstance,
destiny, chance, heredity—call it what we may—so
often wove the pattern of our lives with cynical disregard of
the designs that make for their salvation and happiness.

As Ted looked at her with dim, appealing eyes, she was
sorry for him beyond the reach of words.  Yet she was
inflexible in the resolve that till the memory of the past had
grown more dim, and till the ascendancy of his fatal
weakness was disproved, their lives must virtually be lived
apart.

'But we can help ourselves—we can yet make it all right,
Stella,' he said in answer to her words.  'Only let me be
near you—let me be with you—let me look at you day by
day—let me do things for you! ... It was on the twenty-sixth
of last December that I forgot myself before.  If on
this day twelve months I can tell you honestly that during
all that time I have not made such a horrible blunder, will
you believe that I can help making a fool of myself, and
live with me as my wife?  Will you, Stella?'

She made answer that she would, and then he clasped
both her hands in a fervent grasp.

'We will travel during that year, Stella,' he went on;
and Laurette re-entered the room as he spoke.  'We will
sail to-morrow, as we meant to.'

Laurette's face was a little flushed.  Her heart rose with
a bound.

'You have given your promise, Ted, and I am sure you
will keep to it.  I will read a verse or two to make you
remember it better.'

Laurette, who had the dramatic faculty in some respects
to a remarkable degree, caught up a New Testament that
lay on the toilet-table, knelt down by the bedside, and,
opening the book at random, read the first verses on which
her eyes fell:

'"And the lord commended the unjust steward, forasmuch
as he had done wisely; for the children of this world
are wiser in their generation than the children of light.
And I say to you, Make unto you friends of the mammon
of iniquity, that when you shall fail they may receive you
into everlasting dwellings."'

Laurette rose from her knees and put away the Testament,
feeling for her own part deeply encouraged and
reassured.  She had heard something of the practice of
reading a verse or verses where the Bible happened to open,
and her present experience gave her the belief that there
was something in it.  As far as she had known anything
of the sect of the children of light, they were often, in
practical matters, conies of the rocks; and she was well
content to be of those who made friends of the mammon of
iniquity, which seemed to be a sort of Biblical nickname for
worldly prudence.

As for Stella, the feeling overcame her more strongly than
ever that she was looking on at dioramic views in a troubled
dream, or that she was a supernumerary in a serio-comic
opera in which people spoke prose instead of intoning
doggerel rhymes.  Moral and physical exhaustion was creeping
over her, for the time sealing up the sources of emotion.
Yet she found herself half smiling as Laurette rose from
her knees.

'Stella, promise me that you will rest,' whispered Ted,
looking at her worn white face with keen self-reproach.
Then he raised her hand to his lips, murmuring his promises
anew before Stella left the room.  'What the devil made
you read the Scriptures in broad daylight on a Thursday,
Larry?' he said when they were alone.

'That's just like you, Ted; you have no imagination,'
retorted Laurette.  'You know how they read the Bible at
Fairacre night and day; Stella would feel your promise was
more solemn—though, of course, in a case of this kind, all
is fair in love and war.'

'Don't you believe I am going to funk my promise to
Stella,' returned Ted doggedly.

Then Laurette sat by his bedside, and told the wonderful
news, which had by this time mounted to her head.  A
great success is never so intoxicating as when it fairly dawns
on the horizon while consummation is yet delayed; for even
to the earthliest nature fruition seldom fails to bring its
leaden-faced twin-brother satiety.

'Well, Larry, you've kept Tareling in hand better than
people expected,' said Ted.  'Those who knew him best
said he would never stay in Australia more than a couple of
years.'

This little speech opened Laurette's heart.

'My dear boy, no one knows what a struggle I've had to
keep Talbot in the narrow path of duty,' she said solemnly.
'Quite recently he was on the point of going off with a
wretched little divorced actress who danced and sang, as
people used to say, like an angel—as if angels ever made
such wicked eyes at the fathers of families!—when she
sang,

   |  '"Viene, ben mio, fra questi piante ascose,
   |  Ti vo' la fronte incoronar di rose,"

with such brazen archness.  I have often thought, and I
am sure of it, that in decent theatres, which, after all, owe
much of their support to families, effrontery of that kind
should be put down with a strong hand.  But, however,
there Talbot used to sit beside me, gloating on the little
Jezebel—his jewel-gifts shining in her impudent little
head—at the very time I shouldn't have known where to turn
for a crust, if it hadn't been for the generosity of my
good dear old Ted here.  You needn't turn rusty, Ted.
You have too much of the John Bull in you in that respect,
always trying to hide your generosity under a rough
outside.  But I must finish about the actress.  Yes, I knew
everything was arranged; and the precious pair were to
be off to California in a few days.  Of course I would not
enter upon such particulars to anyone but my own brother;
not but what it was one of the stories probably that men
grinned over in the Club.  Well, what did I do?  Flew
into a rage, and prepared to run away home on my own
account, or melted perpetually into tears?  Nothing of the
kind.  If I had packed up and gone off to Godolphin House,
who would have been relieved and delighted?  Why, Talbot,
of course.  And if, on the other hand, I had wept and
implored, he wouldn't have come near the place at all.  As it
was, I never lost his confidence.  I was gay and smiling,
though my heart might have been in ruins.  Suspecting
nothing, never dreaming I had an inkling of what was
going on, Talbot was so much off his guard that I gleaned
all necessary information.  I knew the boat, and the hour
it was to sail.  That morning I had a private interview
with our largest creditor, a man to whom we owed five
hundred pounds; and I said to him, "If you want to make
sure of twenty shillings in the pound of this debt, just see
that the Honourable Talbot Tareling doesn't leave by the
*Don Carlos* at noon to-day, under the name 'Signor Foscari'"—and
he didn't,' said Laurette, nodding triumphantly
at her brother, who by this time was listening with a look
of interest.

'You are more of a nut than I ever thought you were,
Laurette!' he said with a grim smile.

'Nut or not, I know what I am about.  And I would like
to know where Talbot would be this day, when there is but
a step or two between his being a peer of England and an
hereditary legislator of Great Britain, if I didn't possess the
necessary tact?  Talk of the Prodigal Son!  Talbot looked
like one that evening, when he came home—only, I
suppose, much older.  I think a man must have very little
idea of fun when he has such an escapade after he has lost
all the hair off the top of his head, and his moustache is
grizzled.  I had got a special friend to get Talbot out of
the hands of the creditor at once, and pay the five hundred
pounds down.  I had the amount by me, you know, out of
the money you gave me.  Talbot thought I knew nothing
of the affair, for he intercepted the letter he had left at the
Club to be posted to me the day after he sailed—telling me
he would probably be away a couple of years, as he really
could not stand Melbourne society any longer.  He kindly
advised me to economize in his absence at Cannawijera.
Oh, I knew what was in it; I saw a draft of the letter in
his pocket-book a few days before then.  Yes, and he paid
this friend three hundred pounds of the debt, which was of
course promptly handed to me.  I had no scruple in
keeping it, for it was part of six hundred pounds I lent him
early in October.  Yes; all this happened two days before
you were married.  And there was I, that evening, prattling
away about the babies as innocently as Howard boy himself,
and the next Government House dinner-party, a specially
cosy little affair, for which an invitation had come two or
three days before.  How a man could give himself up to a
Bohemian career with such an invitation staring him in the
face I cannot tell.  I don't mention myself or the dear
children, because it would seem that these are the items
which some men part from most easily at times; more
especially when they have been importuned for many weeks
to hasten away to have their brows coroneted with roses,
such as they were.  Of course this news will, in a manner,
help to steady Talbot.  You see his father is seventy-six,
and very tottery.'

'But don't reckon upon the old chap giving up the
ghost immediately, Laurette,' said her brother, half smiling.

'God forbid!' answered Laurette devoutly.

It was one of the edifying features of her character, in an
emergency, that piety of the kind which preachers call 'a
bulwark of the State' was always at her command.  Then,
emboldened by Ted's remorseful mood, and by the thought
that at any moment the summons might come which would
call Talbot and herself to take their place among the English
nobility, Laurette made a full confession to Ted of all their
financial difficulties.  It would take an additional two
thousand pounds to quite clear their liabilities.  In any
case they would be leaving for England in about nine
months.  They ought to have a thousand or two in hand
for emergencies.  The Lillimore estates were in such a
state of impoverishment, with so many charges on them,
etc.  The upshot of these confidences was, that Ted
arranged to leave four thousand pounds to Laurette's
credit—'for, after all, you've proved yourself a true friend
to me, Larry; and though I've put my foot in it so
confoundedly, to begin with——'

'Oh, my dear boy, as for that, it will soon blow over.  A
woman may have principles and theories, but life is so
arranged that she soon sees how ridiculous it is to try and
act on them.  And nothing in this world, nor that which is
to come, will, as a rule, enable her to face a ridiculous
position for a whole year.'

Thus Laurette, like an artist who knows how and when
to strike the desired key-note, went on her way conquering
and to conquer.  Stella's involved passionate nature, her
lack of patience and fidelity to her better self, Ted's fall and
remorse, Tareling's chronic servitude to common vice, all
under Laurette's cunning fingers were touched into fairy
music, which led her to that career of assured triumph she
had long felt herself born to achieve.  Nor did she fail to
acknowledge her obligations to a higher power.  An
unwavering determination to make the best of life might
compass much, but when dealings with such capricious and
obstinate material as a girl like Stella are brought to a
successful issue, one is bound to recognise the aid of that
strain of divinity in mundane matters which 'shapes our
ends, rough-hew them as we will.'  This strain of divinity
was at times rather obscured in the arrangements of a
world in which ready money was an extremely precarious
possession with many who might be termed born leaders of
society.  But who could fail to recognise the finger of an
overruling Providence in the series of events that had
brought Laurette to her present position?





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.. _`CHAPTER XLVI`:

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   CHAPTER XLVI

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The *Hindoo Fawn* steamed away at the appointed hour with
a large number of passengers, among them rather more than
the average mixture of classes who make up the miscellaneous
crowds that are constantly to be found going to and
fro on the mail-boats between Australia and the old world.
They were all there, from the publican who had made a
large fortune in a shanty at a new gold-mine, to the
Governor whose term of office had expired, and who discussed
European politics with an air of lofty reserve, as if
sources of information lay in the hollow of his hand denied
to such everyday avenues as newspapers.  'Ah, yes, yes;
that is the popular rumour,' he would murmur, with an
indulgent smile, as though he had a special Asmodeus in his
pay in each European Court.  His 'lady,' too, was usually
surrounded by a small coterie, who hung on her words
with that pathetic docility which oftentimes marks the
Australienne who has much money and little culture, and
who in provincial simplicity regards a Governor's wife as
being necessarily an oracle of fashion and the higher social
ethics.  But there were many on board the *Hindoo Fawn*
who did not join in this form of fetich-worship.
Conspicuous among these was Mrs. Anstey Hobbs, who formed
what might be termed a counter-circle, and numbered
among her adherents many of the 'Melbourne people,' and
a young man who was supposed to be engaged on a weighty
work on Australia.  As he had passed four months in the
island-continent, had lived only in the cities and among the
wealthy grocer order, his qualifications for the task may be
imagined.  But, then, what he lacked in experience he
made up in theories.  Even if he had been deficient in
these, his friend, Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs, would have jogged
his imagination.

'The omnipotence of money in our young Republics, that
is the bane of our social life, Mr. FitzAlan,' she would say
sententiously; on which Mr. FitzAlan would whip out his
note-book and enter the observation with a glow of
thankfulness at being able to gather knowledge at so sure and
trustworthy a source.  'Look at those exuberant young
women sweeping the deck in cream-coloured plush and lace
tea-gowns.  Their mother laid the foundation of the family's
immense wealth by washing in the early days of the Ballarat
diggings, and then the father kept a sly grog-shop.  Now
their lives are as much divorced from labour as Solomon's
lilies.'

In her desire to be epigrammatic, Mrs. Anstey Hobbs
occasionally perpetrated a derangement of associations, of
which this may be taken as a favourable specimen.

'They keep betting-books, they talk slang, they wear
pearls and diamonds at breakfast, and their reading is
confined to a few trashy novels and sporting news; their
sole idea of conversation is horsy chaff, and their favourite
avocation is a pronounced flirtation.  Ah, Mr. FitzAlan, it
is a cruel fate to find one's self bracketed with such people.
Yes, people like you may discriminate.'

'Well, you have helped me to a much clearer
understanding of these young ladies.  I fear when my work
come out you will find it enriched with many of your
observations, Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs.  They are so true to the
life, so apt, so full of individuality.  And that young lady
who keeps so much aloof, who has constantly a book in her
hands, and seldom speaks except to her husband or dog, or
her maid, and has formed no friendship except with a sick ape?'

'Oh, Mrs. Ted Ritchie!  Well, now, there is a study for
you.  A few months ago that languid, supercilious,
indifferent young person, who preserves such a haughty silence
most of the day, was introduced for the first time to what
might be termed society.  She was delightfully naïve and
fresh, interested in everyone and everything—really, one
might also say intelligent—her whole face constantly
sparkling with enjoyment.  She had, too, a very fair idea of
talking, perhaps a little too *ingénue* in her delight in entering
fashionable society, too ready with a smile when there was
no call for it, but on the whole so vivacious and ingenuous
that it was quite a pleasure to meet her.'

'You amaze me!  What can have wrought so marvellous
a change?'

'Money.  Fifteen thousand a year is the secret of it all.
Mark her cold listlessness, the droop in her mouth, the
disengaged air.  She is practising the *rôle* of the woman of
society to perfection.  Oh yes, her sister-in-law may be
Countess of Lillimore any day.  The two influences
combined—wealth and an aristocratic connection—have been
too much for her.  Just notice, the maid brings her a couple
of books, her husband shifts the sunshade, his valet, or
groom rather, leads up her dog, and then, for the first time,
our fine lady permits herself a feeble smile.  One might
imagine it was a marriage *à la mode*, instead of which the
young man was the only one she ever cared for, and she
had set her heart for years on marrying him.  She has
accomplished her object—she is wealthy—behold the result!

Now, judge whether I over-estimate the exaggerated part
that money plays with us.'

Mr. FitzAlan was deeply impressed by all this, and more
than ever conscious of his great good-fortune in securing so
skilful a coadjutor as Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs in imparting a
lively local colour to his Australian impressions.  He made
what he would have called a 'study' of Mrs. Ritchie.
After sketching the exuberant young women whose toilettes
on board ship were of so telling a nature, whose fortunes
were laid in so dramatic a form, he took up his parable
regarding another phase of Australian womanhood—the
young lady who belongs socially to a higher grade, but who
has lived in straitened circumstances till a lucky marriage
has landed her in affluence and wealth.  Here the young
man warmed to his work, and with those side-lights and
cumulative details, which are so much more effective in the
tourist's hands than any shred of the truth would be, beset
as it is with thorny points which do not adapt themselves
harmoniously to neatly packed little theories, he went on to
probe and 'accentuate,' as he would term it, the difference
of types.

The young persons whose wealth made them so frankly
jubilant in its enjoyment had, after all, been born in the
lap of luxury.  With all their loud, costly, inappropriate
costumes, their silken trains dusting the decks of
mail-steamers, yet their faith in the almighty dollar as the
governing factor of life was not so sublimely immovable
as that of the more cultured young lady who had been poor
and was suddenly rich—suddenly in touch, through her
husband's family, with the proud exclusive aristocracy of
England!  Then came a fetching picture of the *milieu* of
this young lady in her father's house, where she had
unwillingly drudged with the maid-of-all-work, and spent a
large portion of her leisure in making up cheap dresses that
were as faithful a reproduction of the last fashion-plates as
circumstances would permit.  There was even a light and
rapid inventory of the furniture—the varnished side-board,
with its plated ware, the imitation Brussels carpet, the
oleographs, the large supply of the novel of a second-rate
order which formed the chief reading of the young lady,
whose heart would beat with yearning envy at the facile
victories of heiresses—those fortunate beings who command
the last triumphs of the milliner's confections, and the
man-dressmaker's knowing art—whose coiffure is built up by the
cunning fingers of a trained maid.  For, under an artless
and vivacious appearance, an inflexible purpose lodged itself
in this young woman's breast.  She would, if possible, be
rich!  She would cast aside the sordid trappings that bound
her, and soar into the empyrean of those whose lives were
beautified with wealth!  She would become one of the elect
who neither toil nor spin.  And all at once this was
accomplished.  Now mark the outcome.  So possessed is this
young person with her incredible change of fortune, that
her whole nature is transformed.  She is penetrated to her
finger-tips with a keen appreciation of her good-fortune,
and yet she hides her glowing satisfaction under an air of
profound indifference, etc., etc.

So enamoured did the young man become of the sketch
thus done from life—piping hot, as it were, from the inner
reality of things—that he was never weary of adding new
touches.  Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs was delighted.  The artist in
her, as she would have termed it, expanded in considering
this masterly exposition of character.  He discovered that
his 'study' absented herself from the Sunday services held
on deck, sitting apart in the society of her dog and the sick
ape.  It was then he wrote: 'Nor is this assumption of
haughty coldness, of languid scorn, confined to the ordinary
intercourse of life.  In her determination to be quite above
the average herd—to be abreast with the latest development
of advanced thought so called—she despises even
those outward observances of religion that have consoled
humanity through countless æons of time.'  After admiring
this phrase hugely for some days, the thought occurred to
him that the Church of England Prayer-book was after all
dated, and he accordingly made an alteration.  This
Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs called being rigorously critical.

'Each shade, every *nuance* in her nature is subtly
touched,' she murmured, adjusting her pince-nez to take a
better look at the subject who afforded these masterly
discoveries.

'And you tell me that in the weeks immediately preceding
her marriage the future Lord Lillimore was struck with
the Parisian frivolity she displayed?' said the budding
author, cogitating how he might turn the circumstance into
a phrase that would swell the general effect.  But enough
of this young man.  He was by no means the funniest
example of those Australian tourists whose modes of
authorship mark them as chosen morsels for the comic muse.

Needless to say that Stella was throughout entirely
oblivious of the speculations to which her altered
demeanour gave rise.  The change, indeed, was sufficiently
startling to attract the attention of one who had known
her in the recent past.  And we must all have perceived
from time to time how a theory protects the average mind
from any perception of the truth—the very sun-motes
arrange themselves to make the illusion more credible.

It often happens that the sins into which people are
betrayed against themselves take long, long years to find
out.  The seeds have surely been sown, but may it not be
that they have died?  The sheaves of so many autumns
have been garnered, and yet the tares have not destroyed
the harvest.  May it not be a part of the old superstition
of sibyl and prophet that our deeds still travel with us—their
noiseless footfalls ever keeping pace with ours till the
moment comes when their shadowy hands hold us faster
than adamantine chains?  Do not believe it.  The root of
bitterness is there, and unless we are so forgotten of God
that others, rather than ourselves, must suffer for our
wrong-doing, the pulse of life beats in the long-buried germ
when we least look for its resurrection.  But there are
retributions which are as the shadow of offences, and follow
hard on them like hounds that nothing diverts from their
quarry.  Of this kind was the bitter humiliation which fell
on Stella so swiftly after her unhappy marriage.  Yet the
depths of listless impassiveness that closed round her at
this time were not more the result of that dismal experience
than the reaction after those days of strange self-abandonment
when the whole forces of her mind had been directed
to the effacing all memory of what had been the crowning
joy of her life.  The inward fever that had preyed on her
during the previous weeks now had unrestrained course.
One of those dark periods of despair and misanthropical
weariness to which the speculative, brooding order of mind
is peculiarly liable when fretted and overworn enfolded her
for a time like a palpable darkness.  That eager unwearied
curiosity as to the play and meaning of life which had given
her nature so delicately sensitive a texture, so responsive a
chord of sympathy, had completely deserted her.

She had been betrayed, and the throes of awakening,
of cold, hard disenchantment and disillusion, stifled all
spiritual life.  At times an intolerable yearning came over
her for the sound of a voice, the sight of a face, which
could not now be recalled by her without a haunting sense
of guilt.  And, then, how often it rose up before her: that
picture cruelly limned on her brain of Ritchie's face—vacant,
senseless, dead!

By the end of the voyage, which lasted nearly five weeks,
Stella had recovered something of her old elasticity.
Probably the wilful misanthropy which led her to avoid, as far
as possible, all intimacy with her fellow-passengers, had
co-operated with the health-giving breezes of the sea in
restoring her exhausted forces, and expelling the fever that
burned in her veins.  A recurring weight on her temples, a
heavy throbbing that would come back at intervals with no
assignable cause, remained.  But otherwise her bodily
health was restored.  The old trick of laughter came back
to her with something of the old interest in the endless
combinations of the great human comedy.  But, unfortunately,
the healing process had affected her mind much less
than her body.  She was harder, less unselfish, less inclined
to scan her own action in the misfortune of her marriage
with self-accusing justice.

She had been betrayed into marrying a sot.  She put it
into merciless words with a dull, smouldering resentment,
which was directed more against the infinite treachery that
life, as a whole, so often practises, than against any
individual.  Laurette, she knew, had played the traitor.  But
without any clue to the baseness of her motive, the action,
as that of a sister who believed the meanness might work
out her brother's redemption, appealed to Stella as one of
those vicarious transgressions which, rightly or wrongly,
mankind has consented to regard with more leniency than
the falseness prompted by purely egoistic aims.

Ted, paradoxical as it may seem, she scarcely blamed at
all.  He himself had resented her acceptance of his conduct
as being beyond his control more keenly than any reproaches.
Yet this was the point of view which came back to her with
irresistible conviction.  Needless to say, it rendered any
vivid feeling of indignation impossible.  Heredity and
circumstance, the two arch-conspirators of necessity—who
could resist their action when the moral nature is unfortified
by any culture of the soul?  And even making allowance
for all the complex influences that can be brought to bear
on conduct, could any human being's action be shaped by
himself apart from external forces?

One disastrous result of the knowledge that had so
abruptly broken on Stella in Ritchie's fatal weakness was
that she no longer tried to banish Anselm Langdale from
her thoughts.  He now appeared to her as the mainstay of
her better life; she clung to his image as a devotee turns to
a relic in the hour of need.  As the lassitude of melancholy
and fever lessened, the passion which for a time had been
kept in abeyance returned, and took possession of her as
before.  His face and the tones of his voice haunted her
night and day; she lived all the hours of their intercourse
over again, till at times the longing only to look at him,
even from afar, burned in her heart like a slow consuming
flame.  Alas! this is not the way one thinks of the dead.

It was her dream to sit looking across the sea at dawn,
in the starlight and the white moonlight, till the
softly-moving waves were transformed into the great inland plain
of her native country.  The tall kangaroo grass as it bent
in soft ripples, the gray-green earth, the distant lines of
weeping myall fringing a watercourse, the vague, wide
horizons, the moaning sough of the wind as it rose in sighing
gusts, sweeping over unpeopled wastes, the muffled beat of
the horses' hoofs on the dense herbage, Langdale riding
close beside her, his head bent to catch her words—each
sight and sound came back to her one by one.  In some
strange way such visions consoled her.  They became the
kernel of her inward life.  'I shall never see him again;
but he is my friend—my companion.  Nothing can take
that from me'—so she reasoned.

Outwardly the old footing between herself and Ritchie
had been resumed.  Stella's whole nature and training
made it impossible for her to forego the *bienséances* of life
in her intercourse with anyone.  Unfailing courtesy and
kindliness had been the prevailing notes in her old home.
She could repel with signal success attempts at intimacies
which did not recommend themselves to her as tolerable.
But she could not come in daily contact with one without
exercising something of that charm and urbanity of manner
which are the birthright of a cultivated, well-descended
nature.

As for poor Ted, who, in his dumb way, clung to the
pathetic theory that he was responsible for his actions, he
endured agonies of contrition when he thought over his
unpardonable offence.  For some time he did so constantly,
cursing himself vehemently the while, to have conquered
his deadly enemy for so long, and at the last to fall
egregiously when it most behoved him to be a man.  Of all
the ways that had ever been invented of being a complete
idiot——  But it is impossible in these pages to follow the
terms that the young man applied to himself.  Still,
mentally, one gets used to everything, even to having behaved
worse than the most pitiable jackass of the most varied
adjectival quality; and remorse *per se* was wholly foreign to
him.  An immovable belief grew on him that never again
would he permit himself to be delivered over to the wiles
of the devil in such a fashion.  He had a small calendar
note-book full of racing memoranda, but none of these were
of moment to him compared to the little crosses in red
pencil with which he marked the flights of the days and
weeks.  And already Stella belonged to him after a fashion.
He watched over her during the weeks of her lethargic
prostration with touching devotion.  It was only when he
found that his constant presence worried her that he
absented himself.

There were several other young Australian squatters on
board, and though most of them drank a good deal—while
the mere sight and smell of stimulants at this time made
him shudder—yet he was a good deal in their society.  He
smoked with them, and lost and won money at various
games of chance, and they daily discussed horses and wool
and pastoral leases, and all the topics that were of mutual
interest.  Horses especially never seemed to pall on these
young men.  The annals of the Melbourne Cup, of the
Derby and the Grand Prix, of jockey clubs and the careers
of jockeys, were at their finger-ends in an astounding way.
The blind devotion of a certain order of minds of the
English race to the achievements of young horses is surely,
in its way, one of the most curious phenomena of the day.
Nowhere, probably, does the craze reach a fuller development
than in Australia, where the climate, the universal
love for outdoor amusement, the wide-spread tendency to
gamble, and the paramount importance of the horse as a
mode of locomotion, are all factors that intensify the interest
taken in racing.

One of these young men, Aubrey Holland, was a
Melbourne acquaintance of Ted's, and he introduced him to
Stella.  Finding he had travelled a good deal in early youth,
she one day endeavoured to glean what aspect of the great
centres of art and civilization had most impressed him.
Venice?  Oh, that was a rum place—a fellow hired a boat
to go about instead of a cab.  Had he been in Rome?
No—o, he didn't think so; but stop—wasn't that the place
where they raced a mob of horses bare-backed through one
of the streets?  Oh yes, he and his father had been there for
three weeks.

Ted's artistic education was a trifle more advanced; for
after a pause he asked if that wasn't the old village where
they dug up little images with the arms chipped off.

Later, when the two were alone, Ted, seeing Stella smile,
asked what the joke was.

'How did you know they dug up little images in Rome?'
she said by way of answer.

'Oh, don't you remember that little Cupid you told me
about that was in Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs' place?  You don't
seem to cotton much to her now, Stella.  I believe you like
this little beggar of an ape and Dustiefoot better than anyone
on board.'

'Yes; we understand each other.'

'Because none of you talk?'

'That is one reason.  Then Dustiefoot has a soul, but
does not quite know it.  Jacob hasn't got to a soul yet, and
I had one, but lost it, so that makes a sort of a bond between
us.'

'Then it seems I am the only one of the four of us that
has a soul?  I can't think how Jacob will live after he parts
from you.  Shall I try to buy him?'

'Oh, we cannot set up a menagerie.'

'No; as it is, there's you and me——'

Stella began to laugh, but though Ted was delighted at
the sound, he had not a notion what amused her, so he went
on with his calculation: 'And Dustiefoot, and Maisie, and
Ben, and all the luggage.'

The stars were coming out one by one in the ashy-blue
sky.  The Southern Cross had now disappeared, for they
were sailing through the Mediterranean, within a day's
journey of Brindisi.  But there were new constellations to
look for as they began to gleam softly in the depths of the
sky.  The glow of the electric light suddenly encircled them.
Ritchie took out his calendar and counted up his red crosses.
Stella was gazing through drooping lashes over the calm
gray-blue sea.  But instead of the soft swell of the waves
against the ship, she heard the muffled hoof-beats of horses
falling on the thick sward of the wide Peeloo Plain.





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.. _`CHAPTER XLVII.`:

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   CHAPTER XLVII.

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They reached Berlin early one November morning, three
days after they landed in Italy.  It was a cold bright day,
with a thin insubstantial sort of sunshine and keen gusts of
wind laden with the sallow spoils of autumn.  Wherever
there was a tree with leaves to shed, this wind searched
them out, and wrenched them off the stalks, and swirled
them away.  The rusty red and pale amber of the oak
leaves, the delicate wistful green and yellow of the birches,
the deep orange of the mountain-ashes, the citron of the
common kind, the crimson tufts of the sycamore trees, and
the lemon-tinted leaves of the lindens—all were to be seen
in the Thiergarten falling in soft perpetual showers.  They
fluttered in the air for a moment, and then swelled the
banks of autumn foliage piled up against tree-trunks and
benches and those quiet nooks in the depths of the wood
which even the wind did not readily penetrate.

The pension of the Baroness von Eisengau, which had
been recommended to the Ritchies by Miss Brendover, was
close to the Thiergarten; and the large double windows of
the suite of rooms which Ted engaged on the second *étage*
overlooked the park.  The novel sight of a whole wood
being shorn of its leaves and left shivering nakedly under a
pale cold sky caught Stella's eye at once.  Here she took
her first long walk since they had left Australian shores.
It seemed as though her recovery had been largely dependent
on the sea and its invigorating breezes.  The day after
leaving the *Hindoo Fawn* she felt the old listless languor
and mental miasma stealthily creeping over her.  Only
those who have for a time been victimized by that fell
*tædium vitæ* which, like a victorious army, beleaguers the
very citadel of life, can realize the feeling of helpless
subjection that fetters the mind under such assaults.  But
Stella had so far gained strength that she struggled against
the feeling, and simulated an interest she did not feel in the
variety and movement of travel.

On returning to the pension, Ritchie, who had been out
with his groom to see about hiring horses from the
Guldenstern Mews, awaited her with a telegram that had come
from his uncle in London.  Directly on landing at Brindisi,
Ted, instead of writing a letter announcing his arrival
and future address, had telegraphed the news—'wiring,'
when practicable, being his favourite mode of correspondence.
Now a message had come from the old man, saying he had
not long to live, and requesting his nephew's presence as
soon as possible.

'I suppose I had better start soon.  What do you think,
Stella?'

'Oh, go, by all means!  The poor old man wants to see
you.  Has he any children?'

'Two daughters—oldish, I think.  I wonder if Hetty and
Jemima are like Larry.  They say cousins are often more
alike than sisters, and, you see, my aunt is my mother's
sister.  She's a good deal older than my mother, and rather
gone in the upper story.  When she writes she always asks
the same questions.  The last letter I saw of hers, she
asked if I was still in college.  You see, the governor told
her he had sent me there; and it wasn't the habit in the
families in England to send the boys to college; so it stuck
in the old lady's memory—"Is dear Ted in college still?"
says she, with a heavy stroke under "college."  Why do
some women always put strokes in their letters?  I used to
get letters once——'  Ted suddenly paused, as if struck
with the thought that there are some pre-nuptial
reminiscences better left in oblivion.

'Well, go on, Ted,' said Stella, with something of the old
sense of fun struggling to the surface.  'Was it the adjectives
that were always underlined?'

'What are adjectives?'

'Oh, the words that were put before your name, in the
letters you used to get once!'

'"My dearly beloved Edward"—are they adjectives?
Oh, the "beloved."  A serious affair?  Well, I don't believe
you care a snuff.  Did you never feel a bit jealous of
anyone, Stella, except that time when Cuth got engaged?
Well, I don't half like going without you.  The old aunt
will believe I've left college at last, but she'll never believe
I'm married when she doesn't see you.  "And are you
really married, dear?" she'll say every time I see her.  And
the cousins—I expect they're like Laurette.'

'In what way?'

'Well, like this—always harking back on any point you
don't fully explain.  "But why didn't Stella come?"  That's
the way Larry would keep nagging away, till you either
made a clean breast of it, or, if that wasn't to be done,
cleared out of her way.  I'll tell them straight out from the
beginning you cried your eyes out to come, but I wouldn't
let you because of the fogs.  Of course Laurette could well
fancy a man and his wife might part soon after the honeymoon
without tears—but elderly maiden ladies will find it
hard to believe.  By the way, Stella, how long is the
honeymoon supposed to last?  You're not an authority?
Lord, I wish I were!  Well, if they don't suck in the first
yarn, I'll let them believe I wanted to have a bit of a shine
all by myself.  That'll make the old tabbies sit up—but, of
course, being an Australian, they'll take in anything about
me.  So they may, when all is told.  But isn't it rather
queer, Stella, how a fellow would sooner any hanged yarn
be taken in about him than the truth?  It's not only with
myself, but I've noticed it over and over again.  I had a
fellow book-keeping once who had been in quod for some
months.  It got to be known, and he pretended it was for
putting a knife in a chap—whereas it was for prigging one.'

'Yes; but the truth is generally even more damaging
than the "hanged yarn," you see.  I suppose the bookkeeper
was one of the thirty-three per cent. of the educated
who go under, and he would be sooner supposed to stab a
man than steal from him.'

'Yes, Stella, you're right.  As long as people feel they
could be different they're ashamed of themselves.  But if
they got to think they couldn't help it a little bit, and it
was all because it was to be, somehow, why——  Look
here, Stella, you've been awfully good, I know, over this
confounded business; but I wish to God you had given me
a rowing, or would speak to me now and then about it—as
if you were afraid, don't you know, that I wouldn't keep
straight.  You are frightfully cut up in one way, and yet in
another ... sometimes it comes over me that you fret
because you married me—not because I—I was such an
awful idiot.'

Love, even when it has failed to be the saving influence
of a man's life, has a curious power of purging the heavy
eye.  The aspect of the matter, put into such plain terms
by Ritchie, was so near the truth that Stella was for a
moment conscience-smitten.

'What is the use of talking about it?' she said, lying back
in the wide, padded armchair with half-closed eyes.

'I am a twenty-four-carat muff to bring it up, I know.
But, Stella, when I look at you sometimes I feel as if I
could not bear it.  Always before this you walked as if you
were treading on air—your eyes dancing.  It didn't matter
whether the sun were shining or not, it came in with you.
And now you sit by the hour as if you saw nothing.  You
do not even read.  I sometimes think if you would lie up
properly till your illness is over it would be better—for you
must have some sort of fever hanging about you.  You eat
next to nothing, and in the morning you look more tired
than when you went to bed.'

'Leave it to time, Ted,' she said, gently stroking his
brown, strong hand lightly with her slender fingers, which
had now a transparent aspect.  She wore no rings except
her wedding-ring, and it hung so loose that once or twice it
had dropped off.





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   CHAPTER XLVIII.

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Ritchie left for England on the following day, and almost
to her own surprise Stella found that his absence made a
blank.  She had not realized till he was gone how his
unfailing thoughtfulness led him to anticipate every wish, how
his unceasing attentions folded her round on every side.
At any time he disliked fuss or demonstration, so much that
he would sooner do deeds of kindness or generosity like a
thief in the night, so as to avoid being thanked.  But much
more was this the case when Stella's large, melancholy eyes
and long impassive reveries touched him daily with a fresh
apprehension of the heinousness of his past conduct.  She
had been learning to love him, he thought to himself, when
suddenly on that fatal night she saw him 'sunk below the
level of the brutes.'  The phrase had remained in his mind,
and he pondered over it till its full meaning lay revealed.

The dog that sleeps at your door may be stabbed or
poisoned, but no form of indulgence will steal his senses
from him so that his master may be robbed or murdered
without a bark to warn him of his danger.  The horse in
your stable does not over-drink himself so that he cannot
serve you with his docility and speed.  He understood what
Stella meant when on the journey from Italy she said, in
connection with some altercation that had taken place with
officials regarding Dustiefoot: 'It is a superstition with me
not to say the lower animals.  I never hear the phrase
without thinking of myriads of human lives compared to
which the existence of a toad is a high and holy thing.'  He
thought over the matter till a curious impetus was given
to his imagination.  He imagined Stella in some extremity
crying aloud to him for help on that night at Monico
Lodge—calling him to her aid.  No, he could not hear her, he
could not be roused ... he was beyond the reach of all
human appeal....  Always when he came to that point
he indulged in very strong language against himself, but
his emotion did not end there.  He became skilful in
devising ways of serving Stella; and, withal, she knew of old
how he hated to be thanked, and that was an added relief.
The good people who do so much for us, and then wait hat
in hand for a speech of grateful recognition, get hardly used
in the end.  We learn to avoid them in the day of calamity
far more rigorously than those who wilfully throw half-bricks
at us.

Ted would even have gone to all Wagner's operas with
Stella, though 'Lohengrin,' to which he accompanied her
on the first night they were in Berlin, seemed to him
devised to keep people beyond hearing.

'Of course,' he admitted, 'you are glad when the soft
parts come, but I would feel so much jollier not to hear
any.  And then, Stella, to tie a string to the leg of a pigeon
and pretend it is the Holy Ghost....  Do you think your
mother would like it?'

Stella smiled repeatedly at the inquiry.  Ted's direct
habit of putting things as they appeared to him into plain
phrase never forsook him.

'After all, I think I should enjoy these operas more with
you, Ted,' she said, as they were together the half-hour
preceding his departure.

Ted flushed deeply, but did not trust himself to reply.

'Whatever you do, Stella,' he said, after a pause, 'don't
you go too much into the houses of sick people, to catch
fever and things.  That Mrs. Schulz you went to see
to-day—is it anything catching?'

'No, Ted; it is just poverty, and having her husband
imprisoned for posting up announcements of a Socialistic
meeting.  Besides, I am not a favourite of the gods.  I am
one of the workaday masses who gather up all the arrows
on their targets, and still live on.  And then, you know, one
can die only once.'

'But, Moses, what a jolly difference it makes whether
one dies before twenty-four or after eighty!  Don't you
go and slip me up with any sell of that kind, whatever you
do.  We are going to keep our golden wedding-day one of
these years "across the blue Alsatian mountains."  Do you
remember how Billy Stein used to sing that, making his
voice shiver like a jelly?'

Yes, she missed him hourly, and in his absence she made
faint efforts to look towards the future without quailing.  It
was true that even under happier circumstances there could
be none of that delicate mental companionship which
springs from the mutual insight of affinity, none of that
spontaneous interchange of thought, of tender imaginative
fancies which are the aerial rootlets of the mind, and make
the perennial charm of close intimacy....  But life is, on
the whole, a rough and ready arrangement, essentially
founded on and reinforced by exterior realities, which make
a wider claim on our nature than we are always willing to
allow.

And after all the young human heart does not doat on
being a 'bleeding pageant.'  It is given, rather, to that
homely habit known as 'making the best of things,' of
finding warmth in the drift-wood fire after the great storms of
life have wrecked the gallant barks that set out laden with
the fond dreams of youth.  With Stella it is certain that
her profound capacity of suffering, and her deep tinge of
constitutional melancholy, were closely related to that large
generosity of nature which is rooted in the love of life.  Her
wide sympathies, vivid insight, and keen interest in the
manifold aspects of the human comedy, could not long lie
dormant, when the bitter languor which had for a time
overwhelmed her began slowly to be dissipated.  She made no
rapid strides in recovery.  Both sleep and appetite were
errant and fitful.  In the week that followed Ritchie's
departure, it often occurred to her that there was wisdom in
his advice that she should for a little time keep to her bed,
in the hope of getting rid of that haunting, nameless
malaise, which at her best seemed never far off.

Yet the worst seemed to be over.  Those haunting,
life-like visions of the night, in which she saw Langdale as
vividly as in life, in which the sound of his voice and the
touch of his hand thrilled her with overmastering reality,
became gradually less frequent, less absorbing.  And this on
the whole reassured her.  It enabled her to begin to look
on the past as inevitable and irrevocable—something that
had gone for ever from her—as far as that can be the case
with any epoch which for good or evil has left the deepest
imprint on the heart.  But one vision, sleeping and waking,
eluded all effort at dislodgment.  Solemn, silent, unpeopled,
in the delicate rose twilight—the boundary of earth and sky
lost in limitless distance—overhead a few great white stars
swimming into the tender amethyst of the sky.  Two riding
side by side, without a single circumscribing line to meet
their eyes in the vast immensity that lay around them.  It
was a picture that night and day would rise up before her
with incredible intensity of presence—blotting out for the
moment all other sights.  Gradually she came to regard it
as one of those consecrated, ideal passages of life which, like
the rapture evoked by high imaginative poetry, mercifully
steeps the mind in forgetfulness of the bald, dreary stretches
of existence that threaten at times to paralyze action and
even thought itself.

That happy girl, with low, fond laughter bubbling to her
lips as lightly as carols float from the throat of a bird, was
she not as remote from Stella's actual self as a scene in an
old romance?  Let them ride on in the wistful light that
clothes the great Australian plain—those two whose
happiness seemed so inviolable a possession.  Let their hearts
beat at the sound of each other's voice as to the cadence of
subtle music.  They have passed beyond the inexorable law
of change.  They belong to a realm invulnerable to the
tooth of Time, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt.
Here, in the common life with which we have to do, love
and sorrow alike are blunted by the deadening march of
successive days.  In place of vivid emotion there falls a
coldness as on the altar of a buried temple.  Oh, life, life! is
this the kernel of thy happiness for so many souls—the
anguished memories of hopes that fell like grass before the
scythe of the mower?

Thus would the sorrowful girl commune with herself.
And yet day by day the discipline of pain began to direct
her thoughts into other channels.  The interest which the
first spectacle of life in Berlin had awakened grew deeper as
she saw more of the struggle for existence around her, more
especially among the very poor.  She formed new acquaintances
daily.  Market-people, poor children, old men dragging
burdens beyond their strength, old women sweeping up
leaves on the paths of the Thiergarten, the halt and the
maimed at street stalls with pitiful little objects of
merchandise—they were all ready in their intervals of rest to
respond with quick cordiality to her first timid overtures of
acquaintanceship.  The grief that nestled close at her own
heart quickened her observation into an interpretative
faculty.  Her mind became sensitive to the myriad forms of
unhappiness around her, as waters are to the movement of
clouds.

She was, during these first days in Berlin, continually on
the alert to observe, to sympathize and to help.  And with
this came something of that renovation of spirit which comes
with work and interests that lead the mind away from its
own sorrows and ailments.

Ted wrote frequently.  His uncle had rallied a little, but
the end could not be far off.  It seemed he had various
reasons for wishing his nephew's presence.  'He is a great
deal richer than we any of us knew, and he fancies he owes
a good deal to the six thousand pounds I sent when my
Uncle Christopher died and left me Strathhaye.  You know
the two quarrelled so out-and-out when they were young
men that they never spoke or wrote to each other for
thirty-two years.  I did hear something about the reason, that
both were in love with Aunt Polly.  Lord, how stupid men
would feel for quarrelling about a woman if they could see
her thirty-two years afterwards!

'The Avenells are here just now.  I go a good deal with
them to the theatres, etc....  I have been twice to see the
Lillimores.  They came to town lately, and are as kind as
they can be.  Lady Lillimore is very anxious to know you.
Talbot, she says, has told her about you.  She is one of the
kindest old ladies—something like your mother.  I suppose
it's the old man Talbot took after.  Not that a fellow need
take after anyone but himself to turn out pretty crooked.
But Tareling seems, at one time or other, to have got into
every possible sort of scrape—except work.  I suppose he'd
think that the biggest misfortune of all.  Certainly Larry
got a pig in a poke when she married him.  But I expect
when she's ladyshipped all day long, and has a string of
flunkeys to look on when she eats her dinner, she'll be quite
pleased with herself.  Why don't you write longer letters?
I would like to get one every day.  You make them just
like talking.  Hetty and Jemima send their love.  They
swallowed the yarn about your crying to come with me, and
they think if I have to stay much longer you'll come after me.
Will you ever want to, Stella?  The thought of it makes me
go queer all over.  It's a week yesterday since I left—but it
seems more like a month.  The Agent-General is very kind.
I met several Americans at his house the other evening.  I
tell you what, Stella—I feel quite green with jealousy when
I meet Americans.  We must have a country of our own,
governed by ourselves, and not have the name of being ruled
by fellows sent out of the heart of London, to do no good
but set people by the ears with their twopenny-ha'penny
Government House cliques.  In England, unless people
know something of racing, they have a notion that Australia
is a poky island full of mosquitoes and a few niggers.  "*Our*
colonies," they say, as if we were bad figs they bought at
fourpence a box.  I hope that shell-parrot gave me the
straight-tip about living to be seventy-six, if only to live to
see Australia a properly independent country....  I went
to Westminster Abbey the other day, but it's so full of
graven images I couldn't see a mortal thing.'

This letter reached Stella as she was about to set out to
pay two visits.  The first was to Mrs. Schulz, the next to
Professor Kellwitz, the Berlin savant she had seen at
Dr. Stein's early in the year.  They met in the Thiergarten two
days previously, much to the Professor's delight.  He had
just received a letter from his Adelaide friends in which
mention was made of Stella's marriage.  He had to admit a
similar indiscretion on his own part.  But his wife was just
then in Dresden, having been summoned there on account
of the dangerous illness of a married daughter.  'Do not
wait till she returns before coming in a neighbourly way to
look over my books, and carry away any you want to read,'
urged the Professor.  'Come on Wednesday, and I shall
then be able to show you the last volume published on
"Comparative Ethnology," by an old University comrade of
Dr. Stein's.  This is the number of our house.  Your
pension is within ten minutes' walk of it.'

This was Wednesday, and Stella accordingly made the
visit.  The Professor had been unexpectedly called out that
afternoon, but left a message to say he hoped to be back
before Mrs. Ritchie left.  She was shown into the library
and study, where, on the centre of the pedestal table, in its
paper binding and uncut leaves, fresh from the printer's, lay
the last profound contribution to ethnological science.  The
library was a large apartment overlooking the Thiergarten,
and lined with books from floor to ceiling on all sides except
one, which was covered with engravings and photographs,
a large proportion being reproductions of the most ancient
and primitive human dwellings of which any record or
traces have been discovered.  On top of the bookshelves
were ranged busts of the immortals.  There were tables
piled high with books, others with magazines and pamphlets.
And even the chairs were not in all cases kept free.  But
close to the centre pedestal table there was a deep,
hospitable-looking couch, to which a long placid career had given
a specially alluring aspect.  Stella took possession of it, and
looked round the room with that quick response to the mere
presence of books instinctive to those who love them.

'No doubt there are countless theories and systems
reposing in some of these tomes to which time has brought
utter ruin,' she thought.  'But all the great brain-nourishers
are here—the men whose thoughts "wander through
eternity," and pierce windows in the souls of successive
generations.  How even to think of them seems to woo one
into a sanctuary where the vehement emotions and storms
of life are left behind like a conquered fortress invested with
a force which keeps the old rebels in subjection!'

The air of the room, so suggestive of detachment from
the ebb and flow of obdurate tides of passionate regret, of
revolt and grief, of apathetic indifference, appealed to her,
and seemed to carry a message of consolation, of peace.
She tried to believe that the vulture-grip of passion
had loosened its hold on her.  After all, life was not a tale
to be cast aside when it does not fulfil its early promises of
enchantment—not a harp that is worthless because one
string is silenced.  The work of the world is carried on
mostly by disillusioned men and women.  Yes, and by those
who throw the whole strength of their lives into action for
the common weal.  She took up the ethnological work and
turned over its pages curiously.  But when she tried to
read the words swam before her, and her temples throbbed
heavily.  This was not a new experience, for so much of
the invalid still clung to her that any prolonged exertion
induced a creeping exhaustion which made thought and
action alike difficult.  She leant back on the wide yielding
couch, saying to herself she would rest a little and then
read.  In a few moments she was fast asleep.





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   CHAPTER XLIX.

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She seemed to have slept but a few moments, when a
dream of extraordinary vividness took entire possession
of her.  Langdale was quito near her; he had suddenly
entered the room....  'Stella, Stella, my beloved!' he
murmured in a hushed voice, looking at her.  She would
not move, lest she would waken.  It was long since she
had seen Anselm so clearly; and now, when she saw him,
she knew that she had been famishing for a sight of his face.
And how close and real his voice sounded with its deep,
tender intonations!

He trod gently so as not to waken her.  He stood over
her, his hand resting on the back of the couch.  Her heart
began to beat wildly.  Ah, would that she might never
waken from this vision!  It was so palpable—so much part
of herself.  It throbbed in every vein of her body.  Why
had she struggled against this communion as if it were an
evil infatuation?  It was the saving element left, to steady
reason in the wreck that had overtaken her.  She knew his
face was near hers; she heard herself repeating his name
once and again.  And then his arms were round her—his
breath came in quick pants as he held her to him.  She
would not open her eyes lest this dream should dissolve.

Dream!  Could this be a dream?  Could imagination,
aided by all the ingenuity of sleep, feign the life-like ecstasy
of the kisses softly imprinted on her face?

'Darling, you called me.  Are you still asleep?'

In this bewildering dream, which copied life with
invincible fidelity, she seemed to open her eyes—and,
lo! there he was, close beside her, his face irradiated with joy.
'Oh, Anselm, let me sleep on!' she said faintly.  And the
dream went on; for he sat beside her, and drew her close
to him, so that her weary head lay upon his breast.  And
so she remained for a little with closed eyes; but at last
she began to gather up proofs of being awake.  She heard
the ticking of a timepiece, the sound of a military band, the
muffled roll of carriages.  Then timidly she touched the
hands that clasped her in so strong and unrelaxing a way.

'Dear little Australian dormouse, does this heavy
atmosphere make you so drowsy?' he said with a happy laugh....
It was no dream.  She gave a low cry of joy, and
threw her arms around him.  For a few bewildered
moments a merciful oblivion overtook her.  All the misery and
humiliation and endless moral conflict of the past weeks
were swept from her.  How is one to account for the
convictions that suddenly lodge in the heart without a spoken
word?  The first collected thought which came to Stella
was that the dream she dreamt on the morning of her
wedding-day was true.  No woman stood between her and
Langdale—no shadow on his past life divided them; she
knew it well, as he drew her close against his heart,
murmuring incoherent endearments, and feasting his eyes
on her face.

It was much paler than formerly; and surely it was worn,
sorrow-stricken, with dark circles round the large eyes, more
wistful and *spirituelle* than ever.  And those drawn lines
round the mouth?  She must have suffered much since
they parted.  The thought sobered the transports of his joy.

'Has my sweet Herzblättchen been ill?'

'Oh, Anselm, Anselm!' was all she could say.  And then
she screened her face from his sight, hiding it against his
breast.  All that had happened since they parted in the
light of the mystical rose twilight that stole in through the
tangled clusters of leaves and purple and scarlet
passion-flowers, enclosing the wide veranda of the peaceful home
on the borders of the great Australian plain, had for a few
tumultuous moments been whirled from her consciousness.
And now that the reality, like a hideous nightmare, began
once more to reassert itself, she struggled to keep it at bay.

'So you came after all, as you threatened you would;
and we have found each other once more—once more!' he
said, stroking her hair fondly.  She did not look up, but
drew a long, low, shuddering sigh, like a child which has
been wearied with wandering, but is once more safe in its
mother's arms.

'Yes, Stella, we have found each other; this time never
to lose one another again—never, till death us do part!'

Oh, merciful Heaven! how the phantom of her wrecked
life began to rise and float before her, vivid and pitiful as the
wave-washed form of a broken ship that comes with shattered
masts and dragging anchors to a wild waste island, in which
never a creature of God has lodged and found shelter.

'You got my letter all safe, Liebe.  Was it a great shock
to you, that enclosure, telling the cause of my visit to
England?'

A shudder passed over her, and she moaned a little, but
made no reply.  Then the reflection dawned on him that,
in truth, the news had wounded her cruelly, coming so
unexpectedly in the midst of her great happiness.  Her face
as he had last seen it—the large, radiant eyes, now thrilling
him with their steady gaze, then softly veiled with their
long dark lashes; the warm, tender damask in her
cheeks—her voice, like a hidden bird that sang, had been with
him through the weary weeks of separation like a vision of
gladness, untroubled by one pang of doubt.  Only in the
past week or two, when no letters reached him, he had been
tormented with fears lest she had fallen ill.

Had this, after all, been the case?  She was so wan and
silent—so unlike the picture that had been with him day
and night.  The smiles that rose in her eyes and lingered
in them while her face was grave, her low, glad peals of
laughter, her quick, imperious gestures, her troops of fancies,
blithe and suggestive as the carols of birds in spring, what
had become of all these?  But he reminded himself that
under all the gaiety and quick ardour of her nature there
had ever been a strong under-current of almost sombre
melancholy.  In their separation this had evidently gained
the upper hand.  Her face would soon resume its old
fascinating changefulness—cold, almost hard, one would
say, at times, then soft and bright—luminously tender like
a wind-flower pearled with dew and softly stirred by the
morning air.

In the rush of his sudden joy on seeing her fast asleep in
his stepfather's house, Langdale had scarcely wondered at
Stella's unexpected presence in the Old World.  Those
who have been in Australia know that people of means
there may at any moment embark on a voyage to the Old
World—Australia, that vast island-continent, so remote
from all the great international centres of activity, is yet in
such curiously close touch with all the far ends of the earth.
One of the last things Stella had said to him at parting
was, 'You know, Anselm, if you are detained in England,
just say "Hey presto!" one morning, and there I shall be
at your door with a wreath of eucalyptus-blossoms in my
hair all ready to go to church.  Oh, there are scores of
people with whom I could go—Esther to begin with——'  Had
she perhaps fallen ill and set out with her sister or
some friend directly after getting his Mauritius letter, in
which he told her of his mother's second marriage, and
asked her to address his letters after the beginning of
November to No. —, Thiergarten Strasse?  Or was she one
of the Adelaide friends of whom the Professor spoke so
warmly?  But it mattered not how she had come: here
she was, and soon she would be her old joyous self again.
She had somehow suffered keenly, but the reaction would
soon set in.  He would not worry her with questions or
exclamations over her altered looks.  She had looked so
much more like her old self when she had been asleep, with
a soft flush mantling in her cheeks.

'The moment I got your precious letter I felt I must tell
you all before I went away, darling,' he said, in a low,
soothing voice.  'Your beloved letter, which I have read
till it is almost worn out, and this great lovely lock of your
hair—I have kissed it night and morning.'

He had taken the letter out of his pocket-book, and when
she caught sight of the closely-written pages and the
warm-tinted coiled lock of her hair, the thought of all that lay
between them and that happy night, on which she had
written with gleeful rapture her first love-letter, made her
suddenly turn faint and chill.  He saw this, and drawing
her nearer to him once more he said:

'Now we need only speak of our joy—of our happiness,
without one cloud lingering from the past.  It was, as the
lawyer said, a false signature....  She died a few months
after I left England.'

He felt her trembling, and he stroked her face, calling
her by all the old fond names.

'Let me take off your bonnet, Blättchen, and your gloves.
I want to see and feel your hands in mine.'

She hurriedly removed her gloves, intentionally slipping
off the fatal wedding-ring and leaving it in the glove finger.
She dared not let the truth come upon him so abruptly.
She must somehow tell him—but in what words?  After
all, Dante showed some inflexibility of imagination in
depicting the tortures of the damned.  Life furnishes many
more terrible situations than those depicted in the circles of
the Inferno.

'I will tell you all there is to tell, Stella, and then we
need not return to this.  I went from London direct to
Brussels, and found the woman who had forged the signature.
She admitted the imposition, and I have the needful vouchers
in my possession.  She was poor, and I knew what *einziges
Herz* would wish—I have provided for her.  Oh yes, you
came and bade me do so.  Did you know that you were
with me all the time?  Your precious little soul came
fluttering with me all the way.'

Every word he spoke fell on her now like knotted thongs.
But she still clung to him, half hiding her face from his,
while the deep, regular beating of his heart seemed to her
to measure the moments that lay between her and eternal
death.

'Now speak to me a little, my darling.  Do you know, I
feel as if you would vanish out of my sight!  Your presence
is so wonderful—so incredible!  And I was almost frantic
because no letter came.'

'I cannot speak just now, Anselm.'

'My beloved! you have suffered cruelly.  Then I will
speak till the dear old gaiety and laughter come back.  Let
me look into your face.  Geliebte, you have been ill.  I
dreamt you were—over and over again the same dream.
Always I wanted to come to you, and always there was
some terrible obstacle in the way.  I used to set out, and
suddenly find myself wandering in unknown places with
thick darkness falling, and then there would be great
cataracts tumbling over in my path.  When I woke up I
used to try and laugh at myself.  But I was like Macbeth,
who couldn't say "Amen!" when he most sorely needed a
word of prayer.  I used to think, "After all, that gay,
laughing, yet melancholy little witch Blättchen has
cunningly infected me with a strain of her Keltic superstition.
She is rooted in two nationalities, both a little eerie."  Do
you remember that tragic dream you had of joining the
throng who were in sorrow?  Now, confess, beloved, that
foolish vision made you a little afraid?  But after this you
cannot believe in evil dreams.  I give you notice that from
this day out you must get back all your old mockeries and
mischief, and quips and cranks and wreathed smiles.  As
for me, I foresee that I shall be a dreadful Philistine—as
happy as the day is long!  "To be happy at home is the
ultimate result of all ambition—the end to which every
enterprise and labour tends."  Dr. Johnson must have
known people like me when he said that.  Of course, I
don't mean only ourselves, Liebe.  I have planned every
room in the house, and trained creeping laburnum over the
front of it, and as for roses, they grow round it like weeds.'

O God! how his words beat upon her heart!  Her lips
and throat were so parched that she could not speak.

'Ach Himmel,' he went on, 'what a wretched, downcast
creature I was yesterday, when I arrived here and found
not a word from you awaiting me!'

'Did you expect me to write?' she asked slowly and with
an effort, as she recalled word by word of that abrupt, short
letter in which there had been no hint of any future
communications.

Surely he forgot how cruelly he had for the time been
deceived by that fatal letter, a portion of which he had
enclosed to her.

'Expect you to write, Stella?' he echoed, looking at her
in amazement.  'You might as well ask if I expected the
sun to rise!  But then, of course, I did not know you were
coming to this side of the world in less than a month after
I set sail.  How closely, after all, we are enfolded by the
tabernacle of clay!  Yesterday you were within reach of
me, and yet, when I found no letters here, and telegraphed
to London and found none had been delayed there nor sent
on to Brussels too late to reach me, why, a conviction
strong as life fastened on me that something was horribly
wrong.  I was about to send a cablegram, but found an
Australian mail would reach London to-morrow, so I waited
to give time to my lawyer to send any on that might have
come.  But I was as miserable last night as—well, as I am
happy now.  And my good stepfather would talk of nothing
but some funeral scrap that has been unearthed of a hut
supposed to date back to the glacial period or some equally
impossible time.  Yet all the while you were in the city of
Berlin!  Of course, you did not come alone, Liebe?  Is it
with Esther you came?'

'No.'

'Tell me, did Hector and Madonna really come?  No?
Do you want to give me another joyful surprise?  Ah, my
poor darling! you have been very ill.'

She was indeed paler than ever, and trembling at
intervals all over—striving to frame words in which to tell
him all, yet shrinking from the task—not as one shrinks
from death, but as one shrinks from stabbing the human
being who is the dearest loved in all God's wide universe.
A species of physical and moral syncope had fallen on her,
in which for the time nothing was possible except to half
hide her face and hang on every word that Langdale
uttered as a miser might gloat over the treasure that is soon
to be swept for ever from his possession.  A dull wonder
had forced itself upon her when he spoke of his disappointment
at getting no letter.  But she could not think nor
reason—she could only, in the feebleness of her great
misery, postpone the moment in which the truth must be
revealed.

'Did you have a good passage, Liebe?  Tell me the very
day on which you left.  Why, that was just twenty-four
days after I did!  And our voyage was longer than usual.
We had no storms, but shortly after leaving Mauritius our
engine got seriously out of gear, and that made us ten days
later.  Fortunately the sea most of the time was as calm as
a great swamp.  I used to pace up and down the deck for
hours, and fancy we were riding side by side over the
Peeloo Plain.  Did you not find that a quiet sea under a
dim light is wonderfully like a grayish horizonless stretch of
Australian scenery.  Tell me, Liebe, shall you want to
return soon to your beloved native land?  But there is a
still more important question—one that must be settled this
moment—when shall we be married?  To-morrow?  What! crying,
my own?  Tell me, Stella, is there some trouble I
do not know?  Your mother and all—are they well?  Did
they approve of your coming?  Only a brave, intrepid
Australian girl could have done such a thing.'

'Oh, Anselm! do not—do not praise me!' she cried in a
choked voice.

A wild scheme fashioned itself in her mind to get away
before he would learn the truth—to bid him farewell, and
then write and tell all and never look upon his face again.
But all nerve-power seemed to have deserted her.  There
was a dull, deep noise in her head, which rose at times and
drowned all sound, like waves moaning against a rocky shore.

'Tell me about the Fairacre people,' he said, haunted
with the thought that some family trouble weighed on her.

'They were all well.  Maisie I brought with me,' she
forced herself to say.

'And the friends with whom you came—do I know
anything of them?  By the way, Liebe, do you know that I
hurried here at my stepfather's request?  I met him going
to his beloved museum—one full of miniature specimens of
man's primitive dwellings—with some young Royal Highness
athirst for knowledge.  You must come with me to see
them.  If you go with the Professor, you will never get
away before the dawn of the next century—and that
wouldn't suit my plans in the least.  You only belovedest—do
you remember the butterfly kisses you used to give
Lionel?  Give me just two of them, in memory of our
first delightful squabble over the orphaned little angel.'  He
held his cheek against hers to feel the flutter of her
eyelashes.

But, instead, his face was wet with her tears.  Then, for
the first time, a sudden pang of fear shot into his heart.

'Your stepfather may soon be here,' she said, raising her
pallid, tear-stained face.

'Yes, that reminds me of what I was about to tell you,
Stella,' he said, watching her face with a growing
apprehension of some unknown disaster dully creeping over him.
'He asked me to hurry here to do the honours of the house
for him to an Australian friend—you know he visited South
Australia in the beginning of this year—a Mrs. Ritchie, he
said; do you know her?  I fancy I have some association
with the name.  Perhaps you came with her—and I suppose
also you know the Professor?'

'Yes, I know him,' she whispered, looking up into his
face in miserable helplessness, her lips dry and quivering,
unable to articulate another word.  Then he knew that
there was some trouble she had to tell him—trouble that
she found it difficult to speak of.  She had several brothers:
perhaps the family had been visited by one of those trials
which wound people even more bitterly than death itself.
He resolved that she must tell it in the way easiest to her.

'I am teasing you about trifles that do not signify, love.
There is some trouble that weighs on you.  But do not
speak of it to-day if you would rather not.  Only remember
that any grief which comes to us now must be lighter,
because shared between us.  Ah, beloved, it seems incredible
almost that our great happiness is now assured—within our
grasp....  Tell me, was there time for you to get the
diary-letter I sent from Mauritius?'

'I got only the one terrible letter,' she said faintly.

'Terrible, Stella?  Did you, then, blame me so hardly
for not telling you all from the first?  Perhaps that would
have been best; yet it was to save you unnecessary anxiety.
But did you not like the long letter, Blättchen?'

'The long letter, Anselm?  There was only the one
short, dreadful, blotted one, and the part of that letter—the
one some woman sent you—saying the rumour of death
was untrue.'

She spoke slowly, hesitatingly, as if not certain that the
words she used would convey her meaning.

'Stella—my sweet St. Charity—tell me what you mean!
I have not the least clue.  I wrote briefly in a separate note
the cause of my visit to England.  I knew that virtually I
was free to ask you to be my wife, but I wanted the legal
vouchers.  And, as I said, the moment I got your letter I
felt that to keep silence was impossible—might appear to
you as a lack of confidence.  And I knew—I knew, my
darling, I could trust you through life and death.  Then,
with that brief statement, there was a much longer letter—my
second love-letter to you, Blättchen—in which I tried to
say a little of the thousand things that were in my heart.  I
enclosed them together, and gave the letter safely into your
friend's possession when I found that you had gone out of
town, and that there was no possibility of my seeing
you.  But what other letter do you speak of?  My dear
one, have you had a fever?  Are you mixing this up with
some grief?'

'Betrayed! betrayed! betrayed!' she moaned with ashy
lips.  She had drawn away from him, and leant against the
back of the couch, white as death, slowly grasping the
treachery that had been put on them.

'Stella, dearest, speak to me; tell me all that causes your
anguish.  Do you repent coming?  Do you love me less
than you did?'

'Oh no, no—my only love!  God help us!'  At the
sound of the agony in her voice, something of panic seized
him.

'Is it that you did not get my letter—that a false one was
given to you?'

'I got a letter addressed in your hand, posted in Melbourne.'

'Posted?  But I delivered it by hand when I found that
you were away on the twenty-second of September—the
day I called.'

'I was not away.  I did not go out of Melbourne for half
a day during the whole of my visit.'

'Great heavens! what made that woman lie so infamously?
Tell me, my darling, what was in the letter you
got?  You spoke of an unfinished one from some woman.
Do you remember the words?'

Stella, roused by the shock of discovering this undreamt-of
treachery, repeated, word for word, first, the unfinished
letter in some woman's handwriting—then Anselm's, telling
of its abrupt beginning and close, with its many erasures,
one of them—that at the close—blotted, but not illegible.

'Oh, Stella, could you believe that I would write like
that, and enclose such a letter, even if it had come?  I
would at least have seen you—but, then, you could not
imagine that such a diabolical imposition was possible.
But why did this woman, whom you visited as an equal,
behave worse than a common thief?' he asked with
gathering wrath as he thought of the misery Stella must have
endured.

'She had her reasons, and she succeeded—she succeeded,'
murmured Stella; and then she slowly rose up.  The
moment had come when he must know all.

Her gloves fell to the ground, and as he lifted them up a
ring fell out of one and rolled under the table.

'Ah, careless little Liebchen, is this the way you let our
ring slip off, with its tender old Italian motto? ... But
this is not the ring I gave you, darling child?'

He smiled, but there was a growing fear in his face.

'No, Anselm—I wear that ring next my heart.'

The biting tragedy of their story—fooled and betrayed as
they had been on every side—made her marriage appear to
her each successive moment more and more in the light of a
mocking farce.

'Why, Stella—this is a wedding-ring!'

He looked at her, but she neither spoke nor met his

'Whose wedding-ring is it?'

He waited for her answer in sickening suspense.  To
their dying hour they must both remember the awful
stillness—broken only by the sullen ticking of a clock, and then
the strains of a military band that suddenly broke out into
'Die Wacht am Rhein.'

'For God's sake, Stella, tell me how this ring came to be
in your glove?  Whose is it?'

The agony in his voice made the words beat upon her
heart with unendurable pain.

'It is mine,' came the answer at last, with a low, wailing
sound.

When he heard that, he stood looking at her, his lips
parted in breathless, incredulous horror.

Again there was a deep silence.  This time it was broken
by the miserable sobbing of a woman whose head was bent
in bitter shame.

And yet so strong and deep was the man's faith, he had
not yet grasped the worst.  The wedding-ring was hers.
She was, then, on the eve of marrying some man in whose
interest, or through whom, all these foul treacheries had
been practised.  She had carried the ring with her.  She
was on the eve of marrying, misled by the unscrupulous
plotting of this abandoned woman.  It must have been with
her she had come.  Ah, now matters grew clearer.  He
recalled Miss Morton's story of Stella's supposed
engagement—her own admission of having been engaged for a
week.  It was to the brother of this woman with whom
Stella stayed.  It was to renew that engagement, then, that
this incredible fraud had been practised.  And it had almost
succeeded.  Thank God it was not too late to defeat this
wicked, cruel scheme!

These thoughts flashed through his brain like wild-fire.
No wonder she was wan with misery.  What had she
not endured during the nine weeks that had passed since
they parted!  Oh, to think that through their devilish
stratagem she should be made to believe he could have
written such words after giving him her entire love and
confidence!

'Stella—Stella darling, do not be so broken-hearted.
It kills me to see you like this.  All will yet be well.  We
have found each other once more.  That makes up for all.'

She struggled for composure, seeking to frame words that
would extinguish the last spark of his hope.  But she could
not—she could not utter them.  The exhausting struggle,
the determination not to be overborne by grief, the
constantly recurring effort to treat the part that Langdale had
played in her life as obliterated, had been but a feeble
subterfuge.  Like a torrent long pent up, the passion of her
love rose and took possession of her.  What law of God or
man could justify the semblance of a marriage compassed by
the vilest imposition?  She saw that in some way Langdale
had not yet comprehended the full extent of the intolerable
falsehood.  Yes, that was the history of her marriage from
beginning to end—an impossible lie.

'Anselm, take me away,' she said, going up to him and
placing her hands in his.

'My dear one, do not be afraid.  No contract entered
upon through such gross imposition can bind you.'

'No—but let us go away.'

'Where would you like to go, beloved?'

'Oh, away to the East—far away from everyone.  I do
not want anyone in the whole world but you.  You do not
love me any less?  You are my own only love, are you not?
Oh, Anselm, do not leave me, whatever happens.'

'Never again, Stella.  We shall be married this very day.
I shall see these people and return this ring.'

She tried to smile, but broke instead into wild, hysterical
laughter.  The blood had surged to her head.  Her lips and
cheeks were crimson—glowing like coals; and there was a
glittering light in her eyes.

'Take me away, Anselm.  Do not believe them if they
say I do not belong to you.  It was all a horrible fraud,
Anselm.  Do you understand me?'

'Yes, my beloved, I understand.  I understand how this
misery has worked on your mind,' he answered in a low,
soothing voice, his lips quivering as he looked at her.  His
practised eyes read too well the symptoms of the fever that
possessed her.  It had lain latent in her blood for many
days, and had been fanned by this hour of strange, wild
misery into fierce life.

'Ah, but I must tell before we go.  There must be perfect
truth between us.  They wove such a frightful mesh of
deceit round me.  The air is full of it—it chokes me.  You
and I, Anselm, must be free people under an open sky.  No
concealment, no duplicity, no seeming.  Do you not see
how that little rift at the beginning has wrecked us?  You
wished me to tell Hector and Madonna—but I would
not.  Ah, dear Madonna, she would not have let their poison
fasten on me.—Anselm, for God's sake do not look away!
There are tears in your eyes.  I may cry, because I am a
weak, foolish, faulty woman.  But you must not; you must
be strong for us both.'

'Yes, my darling, I will be strong,' he replied, in a broken
voice.  'And you, my dear one—will you not make me happy
by sitting beside me and resting?'

'No, oh no, I must not rest.  I must tell you.  You must
understand how it is.  Do you know, Anselm, that treachery
is the worst poison of all?  I will confess to you that since
we have stood face to face to-day I have formed two plans
of deceiving you.  The first was I would kiss you good-bye
as though I would see you again to-morrow, and then write
you a letter, and never look into your face again.  Was not
that a wild infidelity to enter into my heart?  Oh, what a
wicked, wicked thought—not to see you again, belovedest!
And all that has grown out of their duping me.  And the
other plan—I forget the other plan——'

'Your head pains you terribly, my darling—I know it does.'

'Yes, it beats all over it; and sometimes when your lips
move I can hardly hear what you are saying.  But I must
tell you before you take me away.  Do you know, beloved,
how I now loathe the smallest speck of concealment?  It
grows and grows till it makes a horrible stifling atmosphere
all round, heavy and thick with poison.  It must be like
clear, fine crystal all round us.  Oh, how they smothered
my whole life with lies...

'They destroyed your long letter—your beautiful letter,
that I would have kissed and put close against my heart,
and thanked God for on my knees day and night—that
I would have stolen away to read over and over to myself
till I knew every word of it by heart.  It would have flooded
my life with fresh love and hope.  But instead of it they
gave me one that was turned into a tissue of awful
lies—short, and hard and cruel, but with your name at the end,
clear as the sun at noon-day....  And with your letter
they put a woman's lying message....  I saw you day and
night—night and day sailing away to another woman—to
your *wife*, to the one who had been misrepresented, who
still loved you.  I followed you on and on, till you reached
her—till I saw you in her arms, and my blood was on fire.
I dared not go back to the old, quiet, harmonious days, to
my mother's peaceful home, where fierce jealousy and the
stain of unlawful love were only things hidden away within
the covers of old tragedies....  Don't you understand,
Anselm, how I loathed myself—madly, furiously jealous,
because a husband was hastening back to the wife he had
unwittingly wronged!  I tried to take comfort in the belief
she would win you back to happiness; but there was
insanity in the thought, and I flung it from me.  I seemed
to look into black depths yawning in my soul.  I could not
deceive myself.  I told myself if you had come trampling on
the bond that held you, I would have left all and followed
you to the ends of the earth.  You were my highest good—my
conscience.  What you asked me to do I would have
done, glorying in the thought of making some real sacrifice
for your sake——'

'Oh, my darling, I know all the depth of your great love.
Your eyes are dim with pain.  Let me soothe you into
calmness!'

He came to her where she stood, leaning against the back
of the pedestal-table; but when he put his arms round her
she drew back.

'No, Anselm; let me tell you all, then I will be calm,
and you shall decide.  All these things have been feeding
on me, shrivelling all that was good in me till I began
to reconcile myself—to look forward to a mere blunted,
soulless existence as something to live for.'

'Ah, my dear one, you wrong yourself; that you never
could do!'

'Anselm, you do not know all.  For twenty-three years
I have been slumbering through existence, looking on
amused at the play, untouched by passion, till I knew you.
And when the forces that had thrilled me through and
through were turned aside—when all the better purpose of
life was defeated—I consciously made choice of the lower
part, because I knew myself too well to fancy that anything
of the old magic could return.  It was so in religion.
When the old vivid faith left me, it never returned; and
now do I not know what fond delusions we put upon
ourselves when we speak of the goodness and fatherhood
of God?'

'Hush, my darling; do not speak like that!  You know
what beautiful holy thoughts came to you.'

'Yes, when you once more woke the deeper, more spiritual,
side of my nature.  But what became of me when I lost
you?  The only purpose that made bare existence tolerable
was to get away from all that reminded me of the past.
No family affection, no love of books, no thought of God,
could give me the smallest consolation; all—all was
submerged in the fever of passion.  Only to forget; and do you
not understand, Anselm, that marriage without love was no
more forbidding than the whole of existence without love?
And then I had known him from childhood——'

'But all that is changed now, Stella.  Do not dwell on
it, I implore you,' he said.  But the fear that had lodged so
icily in his breast had deepened, though not an inkling of
the dreadful truth had yet come to him.

'And he was rich.  Yes, that counts, if you are thrown
back on the lees of life.  And yet at the last, when it was
too late, as I listened to my mother that evening, a
conviction came over me, if I had only waited—if I had not
been so insanely impatient, bent on drowning my sorrow
and humiliation.  "In your patience ye shall win your
souls."  That was one of the things my mother said to me
the day before my unhappy marriage.'

'Your "unhappy marriage," Stella!  What are you
saying?' he cried, drawing close to her, his lips parted in
stony horror.

'Yes; is not that what it is called when lifelong vows
are made in blind ignorance, though they are found to be
impossible lies? though——'

She stopped abruptly.  No, not even in that hour, when
she was borne by the flood of misery which burst upon her
far from the calm reserves of ordinary life, could she reveal
the double duplicity of her miserable marriage.  Langdale
at once interpreted her words and sudden silence to mean
that the man to whom she was married was accessory to
the criminal imposition practised on her.

'Great God, Stella!—what are you saying?' he cried in
a faint voice, his face deadly white.

Strong man though he was, with a training which inures
the mind to sudden catastrophes in life, he was forced to
lean heavily against an armchair, by which he stood, as the
full force of the ruin that had overtaken her life dawned on
him.

'Yes, Anselm.  Now you know why, after the first joy of
seeing you, I was silent and afraid....  You know how
that ring is part of the mockery....  Ah, Anselm, how
strangely you look at me! ... You despise me!  Oh, I
cannot bear that!'

She gave a low cry, and covered her face with her hands.
It was an old, half-childish habit.  Often had he seen her
indulge in it when telling tales to the Lullaboolagana
children in the twilight, or expressing mock contrition for
letting fly some shaft of raillery that had too keen an edge.
The action, with its old mirthful associations, stung him in
that hour of almost unreal misery with intolerable pain.
And yet there was a shadow of anger on his face.  The
revulsion of bitter disappointment, the cruel thought that a
little patience, a little waiting would have saved their lives
from this dark shipwreck, rendered him for the moment
almost blind to her anguish.

'How could you dare to marry any man when you loved
another?' he said, looking at her sternly.

'Ah, you are going to leave me,' she said, in a low,
broken voice.  'Forgive me before we part, Anselm—forgive
me, beloved, for old love's sake!  It is getting dark—tell
me what to do.  I have been piecing my life together,
somehow believing those letters; but now—where shall I
go?  What is to become of me?'  She looked into his face
in helpless misery, and a sudden desperate resolve formed
itself in his mind.

'Stella, we have been criminally, treacherously duped and
deceived.  But you are mine, and I am yours; and this
miserable mockery of a marriage—are our whole lives to
be sacrificed to this duplicity?'

'What do you want me to do, Anselm?' she said, drawing
nearer to him.  'You must decide quickly.  I cannot think,
my head swims so strangely.  Do not take me away to-day;
I must wait.'

He took her hands in his, and they almost scorched him.
The delirium of fever was in her face and voice.  He fought
with the whirl of feelings that threatened to reduce him to
the weakness of a woman, and then answered in a low,
emotionless voice:

'No, Stella, I will not take you away till you have calmly
faced the question in all its bearings.  You have been ill for
some time.  You are in a high fever now.  You must rest,
Stella; you must regain composure for my sake and your
own.'

Even as he looked at her, he saw that a certain vacancy
had come into her face.

'You must give me those letters, Stella, that you thought
I sent you.  They furnish proof of the wicked imposition
that misled you.  Ah, my darling, my darling, how you have
suffered night and day!  You must get well and strong.  Do
not despair; all is not lost.'

His quiet, deep voice penetrated her with an involuntary
sense of confidence—of being directed and absolved
from the necessity of action.  At this time the burning
sensation in her temples had increased to an overpowering
vehemence.

'I am not as ill as you imagine,' she said, her voice
sinking to a whisper.  But even as she spoke a dimness fell
on her eyes, and she swayed as though she would have
fallen.  He led her to the chair by which he stood, and
knelt at her feet, raising her hands reverently to his lips.

'Stella, you know that there is nothing in the whole
world I care for but to help you—to protect you from all
evil, do you not?'

'Yes—yes, I do; yes, I do,' she whispered, repeating the
words over and over as if they were the refrain of a song.
Her face had blanched somewhat, and a great exhaustion
was creeping over her.

He released her hands, and she raised them tremblingly,
kissing them one by one where his lips had touched them.
He saw the action, and he turned away quickly, gazing for
a few moments out through the window, but seeing naught.

She leant back with closed eyes as if asleep, but opened
them presently, looking round with a perplexed expression.

'I do not know this place, do I?  How quiet it is, with
the busts of people dead and all the grief hidden away in
books.  How very, very far away everything seems!  But
you are here, Anselm? ... You have not left me?'

'Yes, Stella, I am here.'

Then there was silence again.  Presently there was a
ring, and the hall-door was opened.  Langdale went out
and met his stepfather in the hall.

'Well, Anselm, have you seen my Australian friend,
Mrs. Ritchie?' he asked in a cheery voice, as he put down one or
two books and a bundle of proofs damp from the printer's,
end drew off his fur-lined gloves.  'Does she not speak
German with wonderful verve?  She is still here?  Ah,
that is good—that is good.  I thought she would find
Kleinsauber's "Comparative Ethnology" a fascinating
work.  You see, with all her vivacity, she has an unusual
love of knowledge.  In that she is like your sister Amalie—a
combination which is, above all others, calculated to make
a woman happy.'

'Very true,' answered Langdale gravely.  And then he
told the Professor that the Australian lady seemed suddenly
indisposed—that he feared she was far from well.

'Ah, now that you speak of it, I have thought each time
I saw her that she was greatly paler and thinner.  Oh, she
is staying only a few houses away.  Her husband is in
London.  She must come and stay with us as soon as your
mother returns.'

The good Professor hurried into the study.  'My dear
young lady, you are not well.  Perhaps you have been
reading Kleinsauber's book too closely.  You saw it the
moment you came in, of course—here on the table?  It is
wonderful! wonderful!' etc.

The kind, benevolent old face, bending over her with
anxious solicitude, helped Stella a little to recall her straying
faculties.

When she spoke of going, the Professor proposed to get a
hackney carriage, but Stella said the little walk through the
fresh air would revive her.  The Professor and Langdale
walked with her to the pension, and she bade them
good-bye at the door, saying that she would be better on the
morrow.  Early next day Langdale received the two fatal
letters, which Stella enclosed with the words: 'To-day I
cannot see very well, nor think.  Things are going away
from me.  I only know I will do whatever you wish.'

That night she was prostrated with acute fever.  She lay
for weeks hovering between life and death.  Time after
time the crisis seemed to have passed; but a disastrous
wave of recollection would sweep over her; and then the
fever re-asserted itself once more.  But in the end her
youth and hitherto unbroken physique triumphed.  She
struggled back to life shaken and wasted.  Day by day she
gained a little strength.  But mentally a strange change
had been wrought.  She remembered all that had passed,
but the sources of emotion seemed atrophied.  It was like
a moral aphasia.  She had forgotten how to feel; and she
shrank from the possibility of mental suffering with a
certain morbid horror.  All the passion and ardour and
power of vivid emotion had left her.  If she could be glad
for anything, she would have been glad that now at last
she knew what it was to have a sluggish nature—a heart
equally steeled against hope and memory.





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.. _`CHAPTER L.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER L.

.. vspace:: 2

It was mid-day in Berlin on the last day of February.
After a succession of stormy days of unusual severity a hard
frost set in, which had lasted now nearly a week.  The
Thiergarten, all save the footpaths, was deep in snow, crisp,
glittering, and frozen over.  The trees, to the tips of the
slenderest twigs, were thickly frosted, and gleaming in their
coating of unspotted purity.  But the keen, clear sky, which
had lent such brilliancy to the frost for some days, was now
completely overcast.  Another storm was evidently gathering.
The heavens wondrously low down were unbroken in
their heavy sombreness—a sullen background piled up with
heavy banks of purplish-black clouds and vapoury masses
of dun-coloured smoke.  There was not a break nor a rift—not
even a tone of paler gray or lead colour—to show where
behind all the sun must somewhere be shining.

The contrast between the lowering sky and the trees in
their gleaming delicate white splendour made up a wonderful
scene for eyes that had never before seen any of the moods
of a northern winter.  Stella, who had by this time passed
the first stage of convalescence, sat by one of the large
double windows of their sitting-room in the Eisengau
pension looking at the scene with an impassive gaze.  A
book lay open on a table near her—some needlework had
fallen to her feet, where Dustiefoot lay, alternately dozing
off into a light slumber, and looking up at his mistress as if
longing for some sign of recognition.

Ritchie sat near the open fireplace, the only one in the
house, and constructed for an English invalid who had
stayed there for a couple of years some time previously.
There was a glowing coal fire whose lambent flames were
joyously thrown back by blue-and-white tiles that lined the
fireplace, each with figures more or less classic or symbolical.
Ritchie looked up from the sporting newspaper he was
reading and stared into the fire for some time with knitted
brows.  Then his eyes rested on some of these figures with
a look of marked disapproval.

'I say, Stella.'

She turned round with a start.

'I wish you would come and tell me what some of these
old hags are doing, or what they mean.  Just look at this
one with a stick something like a stock-whip handle, and a
shock of wool on it.'

He placed a chair for Stella, and she looked at the figure
he pointed out with a slow smile breaking on her face.

'Why, that is Clotho, one of the Parcæ—the inexorable
sisters, the daughters of night and darkness——'

'Well, that is all Greek to me.  Why do people put three
sulky-looking females round a fireplace—one with a rum
sort of stick, the other with a ball of twine, and this
savage-looking old party with a pair of shears, as if she were going
to cut a fellow's jugular vein?'

'That is her *métier*—her trade.  You must know the old
Greeks had many tales and symbols of man's life.  These
are the three Fates—mysterious women who preside over
our destinies.  Clotho with her spindle spins the thread of
life, Lachesis measures its length, and Atropos with the
abhorred shears cuts it short.'

'Then, according to that, this is the old vixen who nearly
did for you, Stella.  Look at the squint of the old banshee....
Thank God she didn't have a snip at you with her
shears this time, Stella.'

'But it would have been so much easier to die than come
back bit by bit so weak and shaken.  I remember I had an
old doll once I was very fond of.  Its hair fell off, and the
blue came out of its eyes, and its complexion disappeared
altogether.  Last of all, a kangaroo pup of Tom's ran away
with it, and took its head off, and I never found it again.
But I got the head of another defunct doll, and I got Tom
to fasten it on to Sheba somehow.  I feel just as she must
have felt.  Ted, are you sure that Dr. Seemann did not
screw someone else's head on me?'

'When you talk to me a little I am quite sure he didn't.
But, by Jove!  Stella, it was an awful close shave.  I had
just got hack from the old man's funeral, and was going
into the dining-room to hear the will read when I got the
telegram Maisie' sent, and for a bit I thought to myself,
"It's all U P, old man." For though I didn't say much, I
could see you were awfully ill all the time.  Once on board
ship a fellow who was very ill—he hadn't come out of his
cabin the first two weeks—was with me on the deck the
first day he came up.  We had got pretty chummy, for his
cabin was next to mine, and I often did little things for
him—roused up the doctor once when poor old Lakemann
seemed to be choking.  Well, we were walking up and
down, and he spied you sitting back and looking away over
the sea—one of the Miss O'Briens near you.  "Who is that
lady?" says he, and I saw he was looking at you.  "That is
my wife," said I.  "No," said he, "I don't mean that
lively-looking young lady.  I could almost tell without
being told she is your wife.  I mean that one leaning back,
looking exactly like a sleep-walker.  She must have seen
a ghost some time."  He would hardly believe I wasn't
putting a hoax on him when I said you were my wife, and
not Miss Harry O'Brien.  Many a time after that I thought
you did just look as if you were awake in your sleep—no,
sleeping awake.  Oh bother, you know what I mean.'

'Yes; but you must think of something more lively to
tell me.  I am very tired of myself, Ted.'

'Oh, but I want to talk a little about yourself, Stella.
Always when I want to talk to you, since you got well
enough to speak, someone is in the way, or you are not up,
or you have gone to bed, or there is a silent fit on you—and
old Seemann said to me: "Don't make her talk when she
doesn't want to till she is built up"—as if you were a wall
or a chimney.'

'Has it been very dull for you in Berlin all these weeks,
Ted?'

'Well, it didn't matter to me a straw where I was while
you were so ill, Stella.  But since you've been out of danger
I've been toddling round.  You see, I know several fellows
now.  The Avenells came across in the same boat with me.
Dick, the eldest of them, is in the British embassy—an
attaché they call it.  He speaks of his duties, but as far as
I can make out, his work is to always wear a neat suit and
a flower in his buttonhole, and play scat and billiards.  Of
course he has to go to dinner-parties and balls, and the
worst of it is he often has to dance attendance on a fat old
frump half the night, instead of looking after some pretty
girl.  That's the very worst aspect of diplomacy, he says.
And then Farningham here is very good company—at any
rate, he's the sort I get on with.  And you like
Mrs. Farningham?'

'Yes, very much,' returned Stella, but her voice all the
time was perfectly level and emotionless.

'Is it Farningham or his wife that is related to the old
Professor you met at Dr. Stein's?'

'It is Mrs. Farningham.  Her mother is married to the
Professor.'

'And there was a Dr. Langdale—who came from the Professor's
every day, sometimes twice, to ask for you, till you
were out of danger—isn't he another relation of
Mrs. Farningham's?'

'Her brother.'  She shivered a little as if she were cold,
and Ted heaped more coal on the fire.

'Ah, now I begin to get things a little straight.  I've
sometimes been most awfully mixed up.  "My wife's
father-in-law," Farningham says, "my stepchildren," "my
wife's stepfather," "my mother-in-law," "my wife's
mother-in-law," "my brother-in-law," "my wife's brother-in-law,"
just like one of those affairs like a little telescope
you turn round, and see different snaps of things spluttering
at you every blessed shake.  You see Mrs. Farningham's
first husband's people are here from America in
shoals.  It's a jolly good thing there wasn't room for
many of them in this pension.'

'Why—don't you like them?'

'Oh, I'd like them well enough, if there weren't so many
women among them, with not a blessed turn to do but ask
a fellow questions—clatter-clatter all the time, like a bell
on a runaway steer.  There's one of them a tall, thin
woman, with eyes like knitting-pins.  She's got about
twenty hairs on her scalp, and twenty skewers to keep
them in a tiny bob on top of her head, leaving her long,
lean neck perfectly bare.  I'm not what you'd call a prude,
you know, but, by George, the nakedness of that neck gives
me a sort of a turn!  She writes for two newspapers, and
she has a red morocco sort of book, with an indelible pencil,
and sometimes she stops in the middle of eating her soup to
put something down in this.  "I dare not trust my memory,
it's so treacherous," she says.  "By the Lord," thinks I to
myself, "I wish it were so treacherous you'd forget to ask
me questions!"  Yes, I sit next to her at the table-d'hôte,
and there she goes at me hammer and tongs.  And the less
I know about the things she's interested in, the more I
catch her using the indelible pencil on the sly.  "Now,
Mr. Ritchie, you are laughing at me, when you say you *never*
heard of Raphael or Michael Angelo," she'll say, screwing
her long neck round above my head, like a native
companion in a fit.  Ah, she's yards taller than I am.  Wait
till you see her.  And there Farningham sits on the opposite
side of the table, grinning at me like a negro minstrel.
Let me see, she's his wife's first husband's first cousin's
aunt once removed.  Now what relation would you say she
is to Farningham?'

'I really haven't the faintest conception,' returned Stella,
with a little smile.

'No more has he.  But she calls him Charles, and speaks
to him solemnly about the privileged classes in England.
You know he is to be Sir Charles F. when his governor
dies.  And then she reminds him of things that happened
to his wife's first husband, as if he were the one, you know.
Now, I call that deuced awkward; at any rate, it might be
in many cases.  I dare say it would be more damaging to
the other fellow though, if Farningham had been the first
husband.  They say Mrs. Farningham's eldest boy by her
first husband will be a millionaire when he is twenty-one;
but he is a delicate little chap.  Am I talking too much,
Stella?'

'Oh no; it's rather amusing.  I thought by something
Mrs. Farningham let fall that some of her American
connections were a little trying.  But she did not say much;
she's very loyal to them.'

'She's a regular trump.  She says the right thing to
everybody; and she's like you, Stella, she never gets the
least ruffled—never sticks her back up, but takes
everything as if it were rather fun.  She had a bad illness in
Dresden, but she has got over it so well—she's better than
she was before.  I wish you were like that.  What does
old Seemann mean by some mischief before the fever came
on?  Was it—was it that shock, Stella?  You know what
I mean.'

She put up her hands to her head wearily.  'I know
what you mean, Ted.  But there was something besides
that: and the day I was taken ill it came all over again,
but worse; only nothing seems very bad now.  I do not
think I should talk about things that used to hurt me.  It
cannot be helped any more; nothing can that has gone
really wrong.'  She gave a long, low sigh, and lay back
with closed eyes.

'Don't say that, Stella, please,' said Ted gently.  'It
was awfully steep to think I was the cause of all when
your life hung on a thread.  I used to go to the opera and
places; but often I didn't know whether I was standing on
my head or my heels.'

'You are not to blame for my illness, Ted.  If anyone is
to blame, it is Laurette; but I myself most of all.  Oh, I
don't mean what she concealed about you.'

Ted looked perplexed, but he would ask no questions;
and, indeed, he attributed Stella's words to some confusion
left by the fever.  It may be noted in passing, that Stella
did not once suspect him of any complicity in the imposition
that had wrecked her life.  Only at this period she
would have rejected the word 'wrecked' as being too
strong.  Everything had shrunk so inconceivably.  It was
as though nothing mattered very much, if only one were
left in perfect quiet.

'Dr. Seemann is to come only every second day now, he
told me,' said Ted, in a cheerful voice.  'What a stunning old
chap he is!  The best fever doctor in Berlin, they say; and
you can't easily beat that.  It was the Professor who saw
to his attending you.'

There was silence for a few moments, and then Stella said
very slowly:

'Do you know when Dr. Langdale came to Berlin?'  She
named him without the least tremor.

'No; but I remember the first time I noticed him
particularly.  It was two weeks after I came back.  I was at
the opera-house, with Dick Avenell.  We went out into the
wide passage behind the boxes, and there Dick met a couple
of very lively little French ladies.  I don't think they were
any better than they ought to be, you know—nothing but a
couple of roses and a dagger with diamonds in the handle
by way of a bodice.  Dick swore I had just come from New
Caledonia, and had brought a message from some of their
friends there.  After a little time, he dodged round a pillar
all at once, and left me talking to them alone; at least, they
were jabbering away, half in French; and I put in a word
edgeways, now and then, in English, but I'm blessed if I
could tell what any of us were saying.  In the middle of it,
who should come round but this Dr. Langdale, with his
mother!  I had seen him once or twice when he came to
inquire after you for the Kellwitzes, and he stared hard at
me, I can tell you.  I didn't know his name till Farningham
told me.  It seems he's been in Australia for a little time;
and he has been a good deal off colour, too, in Berlin.  He
went to Vienna last week, to see a chum of his who is
making a great noise with some operations on eyes, so
Farningham told me.  It was lucky the Farninghams came here,
a few days after I got back from London.  I've gone about
with him a good deal, and with Dick and his brother
Minimus—comical name, isn't it?  Comes of three brothers
being at a public school together.  Now, why do you
suppose Dick left me in the lurch like that?  He told me
plump it was because he saw an old dowager-aunt of a girl
he's sweet on, coming our way, and he couldn't afford to be
seen with the little Frenchies.  A married man, said he,
with no end of tin, can stand any racket; but a penniless
attaché has to be deuced proper when on parade.  Wasn't
that a friendly trick to play a fellow?  But he and Minimus
are awful fun sometimes.  Minimus is supposed to be
studying Oriental languages for a "diplomatic career" in
India.  "People teach languages so much better in
Germany," he says; and he goes once a month, perhaps, to an
old chap, who swears at him because he is an idle young
dog, and makes an appointment with him to come next
week to learn some alphabet; but Min. doesn't, as a rule,
turn up.  He says I'd better give him a billet on my run;
he thinks it would be much jollier than spoiling his eyes
over rubbishy Eastern pot-hooks.  I've often been more
miserable than a tuckerless dingo; but still I went to
theatres and things.  I couldn't nurse you, Stella, you
see!'

'Of course not.  It was much better you should go about.'

'But now I can look after you a bit, Stella; and that
little Maisie—by George, she's worth her weight in gold!'

There was a knock at the door; and in response to
Ritchie's robust invitation to come in, a fair, youthful-looking
man entered, slight, and rather under the middle
height.

'Are you allowed to see people so early in the day,
Mrs. Ritchie?  Why, this is quite the Darby-and-Joan
business—and an open fireplace, I declare!'

'Yes; and the three inexorable sisters—daughters of
Night and Darkness—with the spindle-and-shears business,
Farningham!' said Ted, with a dignified wave of his hand
towards the tiles.

'Why, Ritchie, old fellow, you're coming it strong with
the classics.  Do tell that to Miss Caroline Sendler.  You
must know, Mrs. Ritchie, that your husband is carrying on
a barefaced flirtation with an elderly lady from
America—one related to me in some mystical way!'

'I remember.  She's your wife's first——'

'Don't—don't, my dear fellow.  Let it remain with the
dark riddles of a world not realized.  You are really making
progress now, Mrs. Ritchie?'

'Oh yes, thank you.  To-day, I quite know the people
from the trees.'

'And do you eat anything?  Because I have heard
dreadful tales on that score.'

'Now, Stella, tell the truth.  Yesterday, you looked at
the thigh of a pigeon, and said, "Oh, take it away—it looks
so dreadfully pathetic!"  And that was your dinner.  Yes,
upon my honour, Farningham, I had to take it away; and
a little while afterwards, when Fräulein—what's her name,
the nurse you know?—came in with a little soup, Signora
here said, without blinking, "But I've had dinner, you
know!"'

'Ah, but that sort of thing will never do.  My wife
declares she ate all day when she was getting well.  And
that reminds me why I came!'

'Now you really wound me.  I thought it was to find
out whether I ate anything,' said Stella, with a little of her
old sprightliness.

'So it was; but merely to knock at the door and inquire,
and then ask if my wife might come.  But this young man
was too lazy to open the door, as Fräulein Hennig does.
And you look so jolly and cosy, one can't tear one's self
away.  Now I know why Amalie and I have given up being
domesticated.  It's the absence of an open fireplace!'

At this juncture another knock was heard at the door,
which was speedily opened.

'May I come in?' said a flute-like woman's voice.

It was Mrs. Farningbam: a tall, graceful woman, with
dark eyes and hair, a clear pale skin, a delicately aquiline
nose, and an exquisitely chiselled mouth.  In feature there
was a strong resemblance between her and Langdale, and
also at times in expression.

'Ah, you are really better this morning!' she said, taking
Stella's hand, and giving Ted a friendly nod.

'I was on the eve of coming to tell you,' said her husband.
'But I suppose I'd better stay a little longer, and then
our family circle will be completed by the babies
and—collateral branches!  You'd better send me away,
Mrs. Ritchie; for I assure you there is absolutely no end to us!
And will you forgive me if I carry your husband off?  I am
always hiring or buying or exchanging horses; and I always
get "choused," he says, if I am alone!'

'Hadn't I better take Dustiefoot for a run, Stella? ... Lose
him?  That's more than my place is worth.  You
may be sure I won't come back without him.  Out, boy, out!'

But though Dustiefoot rose up with alacrity at the sound,
he got no farther than the door, till he ran back, and put his
head on his mistress's lap, looking up fondly into her face.

'Out, Dustiefoot—out!' said Stella; and on this the dog
trotted away.

When the two men were gone, Mrs. Farningham drew
her chair nearer Stella's, saying;

'How did you sleep last night, dear?'

'Tolerably well, thank you, for two or three hours.'

'And after that?'

'Oh, then it was the old stupid story.  Endless
processions of people filing by, as if I were a mummy holding
a levée.'

'And that chamber into which you dare not peep—does
it still remain?'

'Yes; and myriads of voices high and low telling me to
pass in—but they get fainter night by night.  Now, when
I waken up in the soft light and see Fräulein Hennig's
quiet face, I do not any longer feel like a terrified child
that covers its head and trembles because of ghost stories
it has heard.'

'Ah, that is a great stage.  This is your first serious
illness.  For the first time you know something of the
terror of demoralized nerves.  But now that you begin to
regain tranquillity the worst is over.'

'Do you think so?  I am glad to feel so unmoved; but
sometimes—I hardly know why—it frightens me a little
that all which used to be so much to me seems so incredibly
remote.'

'Oh, that is merely brain exhaustion.  As you get stronger—as
you are "built up," to use Dr. Seemann'a words—the
old interests will revive.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER LI.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER LI.

.. vspace:: 2

Mrs. Farningham's prediction was, unfortunately, not
verified.  Stella's strength slowly returned, but her mental
condition remained much the same.  As the weeks went
on she became, if anything, more silent, more apathetic.
The first event that roused her had also the effect of
bringing on a feverish attack.  It was a great concert given in
the Philharmonic Hall in Bernburger Strasse.  The
conductor and violin soloist were the first of Germany,
supported by the full strength of the Philharmonic orchestra.
But what made this concert especially interesting was that
a 'Sinfonische Dichtung,' the composition of an Italian
musician, was to be rendered for the first time—the music
being, in fact, still unpublished.

The theme is taken from the 'Divine Comedy.'  It is
the love-tragedy of Francesca Polenta, named da Rimini,
and of Paolo Malatesta.  It begins in the second circle of
hell, guarded by Minos, who, at the entrance, weighs each
transgression, and fixes the grade to which the ill-fated
spirit shall be thrust.  Deep, slow, mysterious waves of
music thrilled the mind with a sudden apprehension of the
gloom unpenetrated by the faintest ray of light.  Then very
slowly there rose, as if in the far distance, the howling of
that terrible storm of hell—growing fierce and wild and
discordant, as if the sea were riven into mountains and
abysmal depths by two opposing tempests, and high above
all the cries of lost souls.

After the storm of the elements and of tortured souls
falls shudderingly into silence, the compassionate voice of
the poet arises as he asks the two who clung together even
in hell itself, 'O anime affannate, venite a noi parlar, s'altri
vol niega'—'O ye tired souls, come speak to us, if no one
doth forbid it.'  Then came the low, anguished, wailing
sound of a woman's voice telling her sinful love-story in
eternal torment.  No sound in life or Nature can surely
ever reproduce the piercing pathos of a human voice in
hopeless misery like the violin under the touch of a great master.

'There is no deeper sorrow than to recall in misery a
happy time.'  There were many eyes dimmed among the
audience when the heart-broken confession was translated
into passionate, shuddering music.  The symphony from
beginning to end made a strange impression upon Stella.
And as in the leading theme the musician had cunningly
woven the story of Lancelot, whose love, too skilfully told
by the old romancer, had been such dangerous reading, so,
through all the storm of darkness and despair, through the
inexorable remembrance of an hour when overmastering
passion trampled duty under foot, Stella was conscious of
piercing recollections rising in her brain, which since her
illness had no more power to move her than if they were
idle spiders' strings.  But now they were aflame with vivid
terrible life.  That woman's voice, pleading, broken,
despairing, arose in fitful tones, making the blood start
vehemently in her veins—making her shrink and tremble
like a creature upon whom suddenly a great burden has
been laid.

'It has been too much for you,' whispered Mrs. Farningham.
'Let me take you home now....'

'Yes, I really want to leave before anything else drives
away the memory of this.'

That night Stella woke, weeping bitterly.  In her dreams
by night she had been listening over again to the hopeless
wailing story told by Francesca to Dante.  For days
afterwards the fever burned in her veins; and when this passed
away she began to avoid people—to shrink from meeting
them.  She began to walk out a little; but she preferred to
go alone to the Thiergarten, with only Dustiefoot as a
companion.  Even Maisie's presence seemed a trouble to her.
When she was with others she had the air of one trying
unsuccessfully to understand what was going on around her.
She sometimes fell asleep in the daytime, and seemed to
wander for years in a strange dark land beset with vague
shapes of dread, and then woke up with a start to find her
momentary slumbers had not been noticed.  She began
to confound events with visions of the night.  Things that
had been said or done in the morning would seem at nightfall
to be separated from her by vast tracts of time.  She
began to have a dread that she could not grasp what people
said to her.

One forenoon, as she was alone in the Thiergarten, near
the great monument of the nation's victory over France,
she suddenly met Professor and Mrs. Kellwitz.  She looked
so timid and startled—almost so confused—on seeing them,
that Mrs. Kellwitz's motherly heart was wrung with a
sudden dread.  She knew that Farningham, her son-in-law,
and Ritchie had gone to Homburg together for a week.
Yet no one who knew the position of affairs could charge
Ted with neglect.  He was simply like one who looked on
helpless and perplexed.  He was always ready at Stella's
command; but she had none to give.  He was anxious to
take her anywhere and everywhere; but she had no wishes
except to be left alone.  Even a man more gifted with
insight and with resources in himself than Ted had ever
been, might be excused for taking refuge in the companionship
and recreations that were open to him.  He was in a
foreign land with no occupation beyond amusing himself.
And though this is a position that tests the calibre of minds
more strongly fortified against the baser temptations of life,
yet to one who observed Ritchie closely at this time it
would become apparent that the excesses into which he had
earlier fallen were due less to inherent weakness than to
that Nemesis power which nature often puts forth when
but a small part of man's faculties are touched by his daily
life.

At this time, also, Mrs. Farningham was much engaged
among the poor.  She had endeavoured, but unsuccessfully,
to lead Stella to resume her interest in those she had
befriended.  But though she gave money lavishly, herself she
would not give.  She had become conscious of some
imminent danger that threatened to engulf her.  She avoided
contact with all that might arouse her.  The chief aim
that swayed her at this time was to spare herself morally—to
shirk those stormy depths in her nature which threatened
ever and anon to surge up and bear her she knew not
whither.  But on this day Mrs. Kellwitz, struck with a
sudden fear, would listen to no excuses.  'You must come
home with me,' she said decisively.  And then, when they
reached the house, she sent a messenger for Maisie, and to
tell the Baroness that Mrs. Ritchie was to be her guest for
a few days to come.

During the day she talked to Stella of many things—of
books and pictures and music.  Once only the girl showed
a dawning interest, a little tremor of emotion, and that
was when the Italian composer's 'Sinfonische Dichtung'
was named.  Towards evening Mrs. Kellwitz made her lie
down to rest in her own cosy sitting-room.  After a little
she fell fast asleep, and the wide dark circles round the
eyes, the noble sweep of the brow, the thin outlines of the
cheeks, and the lines round the mouth, all bore the stamp
of mental languor, of pain temporarily at bay, but not
vanquished.  Mrs. Kellwitz softly closed the door behind
her, and a few minutes afterwards her son Anselm came home.

He, also, was much changed.  His face had, in the last
few months, grown grave and sad—almost stern in repose.
Through his stepfather's intimacy with Dr. Seemann,
Anselm knew the various phases of Stella's dangerous
illness.  He knew that latterly the physician was puzzled
at the mental rigidity which had fallen on her.  He had
often seen her at a little distance when she walked in the
Thiergarten, and had kept aloof for fear of causing her pain
while she was still weak, and also because of the cruel
perplexity which entangled their further meeting.  Once,
indeed, Dustiefoot nearly betrayed him as he sat at a little
distance from the bench on which Stella rested—a book in
her hand, but not reading.  The dog recognised Anselm,
and rushed up to him with signs of delight which he would
never have bestowed on a stranger.  He even rushed
backwards and forwards between the two in a joyous way, as if
anxious to tell his mistress that an old Lullaboolagana
friend was near.  But she did not heed Dustiefoot's
movements.  She sat pale and motionless, with downcast eyes,
oblivious to all around her.  The sight was more than
Langdale could bear.  He would have laid down his life to
serve her, and yet he dared not speak to her, being in fear
lest his face and the sound of his voice would do her harm,
and not good.  He suffered horribly.  Yet he knew that
hers was the more intolerable burden.  For through all he
had work to do, and he was in constant intercourse with
people whose knowledge in some one direction exceeded his
own—circumstances which serve to make life coherent to the
lover of knowledge, even when it has lost its best savour.

To-day, when he came in, his mother observed with concern
that the fagged, strained look with which she had been
struck on first seeing him when she returned with her
daughter from Dresden had deepened rather than become
less.

'You are working too hard, Anselm,' she said, looking at
him keenly.  'You are as greedy as ever after knowledge.
Those lectures of Virchow at the University, and the
honorary work at the hospital, and your writing, and all
the rest of it, do not make much of a holiday.'

'You forget, mother, that I had a long one——'

'Oh, in Australia!  I hope you don't think of going
back there.  I think there must be something insidious in
the climate—something that undermines the constitution.
There is that young lady the Professor met there and found
so charming.  You met her here, did you not?—Mrs. Ritchie,
you know——'

'Yes—what of her?'

'Well, I should very much like to have your opinion of
her.  I have made her come here for a few days.  She is
sleeping just now.  I am exceedingly afraid that there is
something very much amiss.'

Langdale felt a terror of what fresh catastrophe might be
in store.  The fixed look in Stella's face the last time he
saw her at a little distance had haunted him night and day.

There is always a shock in hearing our worst fears put
into bald, uncompromising words.  This Langdale
experienced when his mother went on:

'It is not her body now, it is her mind.  I am sure of
that.  Perhaps she would have more confidence in an
English doctor.  If you would see her here in an informal
way—she and your stepfather were so friendly, and Amalie,
too, is very fond of her.  I hardly know what to think of
her husband.  Amalie says he is devoted to her—but, if
that is the case, she cannot be devoted to him.  There
must be something very much amiss when two young people
drift so far apart at a time like this.'

Poor Langdale!  Few situations could have been more
ironical in a quiet, unaggressive way than to sit listening to
his mother while she calmly discussed the situation which
was the very core of the keenest sorrows and interests in
his life.  So far nothing could have been gained by taking
his mother or sister into his confidence as to the relations
which had at one time existed between himself and Stella,
and the treachery that had come between them.  But he
was prepared at any moment to tell them all, and to seek
their help in somehow averting that darkest of all
misfortunes which seemed stealthily creeping nearer.  In the
meantime he kept silence.  He absented himself from home
that evening.  Next morning he saw Stella alone in the
library which had witnessed their first strange meeting in
the Old World.





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.. _`CHAPTER LII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER LII.

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She knew he had returned from Vienna some weeks previously,
and she was in a manner prepared to see him in his
mother's house.  Yet, when they stood face to face,
something akin to fear was visible in her manner.  Otherwise, he
was more agitated than she was.  They touched each other's
hands, and then they sat facing each other in a silence full
of ghost-like memories.  Stella was the first to speak.

'You have been away, I think,' she said, without looking
at him.

He told her something of his journey, of his old friend
Max, and his rising renown as an oculist.  He noticed that
her attention wandered, and that she kept nervously playing
with her wedding-ring, which hung looser than ever on her
finger.  There was a pause.

'Yes, it must have been very interesting,' she said,
looking up—a remark that had no direct relation to what
he had last said.

Something clutched at his throat and gave him a horrible,
choking sensation.

She looked into his face fixedly.

'Don't, Anselm—don't say anything.  I cannot bear it.
You do not know.  I can bear to speak to you now, because
everything is all over and done with.  But there are times:
you do not know——'

She spoke in a low, imploring voice, and then suddenly
broke off.

'What do I not know, Stella?' he said, mastering himself
with a violent effort, and speaking in a calm, unmoved tone.

'Oh, it would be stupid to tell you.  Let us talk of
something else—the weather, for instance.'

This little attempt at recovering something of her old
gaiety smote him to the heart.

'No, I cannot talk of anything else, Stella.  I want you
to speak to me of yourself.  You know, in the old days, we
agreed to be friends.  We can at least be friends.'

'Yes, yes; we can be friends,' she said, and then she
suddenly began to sob.

He kept perfectly silent.  When she had recovered
composure, he went on in the same calm voice as before.

'You know, Stella, friends should help one another.  I
think there is something you dread.  Tell me what it is.  I
may be able to help you.'

'Are you afraid, too?' she said quickly.  He did not reply
immediately.  He felt like one groping in the dark, afraid to
move too quickly lest harm should be done.  Then she
added hesitatingly: 'I have been afraid for some time.  The
voices and the faces have gone away.  But there is a
silence coming round me, and every day I am more alone—an
abyss between me and everyone that none can cross.'

'No, no, Stella; not so.  How many care for you!'

'But I cannot care for them—not in the old way.  There
is a strange vacancy, an apathy; it comes creeping, creeping.
It is like the tide rising round a ship that has been stranded.
O my God, it is horrible—it is horrible!'  She covered her
face with her hands, and as he looked at her in tearless
agony, he trembled as if in an ague fit.  'Do you know
what I keep thinking of sometimes?' she said, suddenly
looking up.  'Of some old story in Ovid, where one says:
"Give me your hand before I am a serpent all over."  Those
old stories where people were turned into birds, and
trees, and reptiles, they are not so terrible as—as some other
things.'

'No, they are not.  Only when we see a great danger,
the very fact that we see it shows we may try to avoid
it.'  His voice almost failed him once or twice, for there was
something in her tone and manner, even more than in her
words, which confirmed his worst fears.

'You still keep up your old habit of taking a book with
you when you go out,' he said presently, in a lighter tone.

'Yes, but I cannot read; is it not strange?' she said,
looking at him with wide-opened eyes.

'Ah, these times come to one,' he answered.  'Now I
am going to tell you something about myself—may I?'

'Oh, of course,' she said, with more animation than she
had yet shown.

'Well, I have finished that treatise I was writing at
Minjah—about the conditions of factory labour.  There is
some other work I want to do; and, besides, I have gone
quite blunt over the thing.  The facts, and I believe their
inferences, are correct; but the style I am sure is odious.
Now, will you go over the MS. for me?'

It was some little time before she spoke, and then it was
in a hesitating, broken way, which was quite foreign to her
old, quick, spontaneous manner.

'I would be so glad to do it, but I lose things so
dreadfully—things I have been thinking of.  It is as though—I
hardly know how to explain it—as if I came on blank spaces
in my mind.  Words and thoughts drop away out of reach
quite suddenly.  I am almost afraid to speak to people, lest
I might not know what they say.  I was afraid even of you.
And yet how kind you have always been—except that one
letter.  But it was because it was wickedly—hurt—and the
other one I never got.  No, I never got it—never.'

'But about this work I want you to do for me, Stella?' he
answered.  The clear, harmonious intonations of his voice
were lost in a constrained huskiness; but though his heart
was throbbing wildly with fierce and contending emotions,
his self-possession was outwardly unbroken.  'It is very
important I should get the help of some friend; and there
is no one whose aid I care to ask but yours.  It does not
in the least matter about your taking a long while over it.
Do only a page or two at a time.'

'I will try to do it: but I will not let anyone see it, for
fear it may be wrong.  I will try not to make mistakes;
but I do not know.  It is what you were writing at
Lullaboolagana?'

'Yes; and there is one thing more I am going to ask
you.  There is a convalescent home for little children on
the northern outskirts of the town.  My mother knows it.
Will you let her take you there?'

'Oh, Anselm—no!  They will be pale and miserable.
They will hurt me; and when things hurt me....  Ah,
you do not know how dreadful it is!' and a look of helpless
fear came into her face, which pierced him like a sword.

Before he could trust himself to answer this objection,
she went on, sometimes speaking in a low, hurried voice,
at others very slowly, with a curious hesitation, as if the
words she sought eluded her, while often she used terms
that but approximately expressed what she meant.

'Sometimes at night I keep thinking of a poor half-crazy
Welshwoman who used to wander about, some years ago.
She had a great dislike to staying in houses.  She always
said there were adders in them.  She was not so—so badly
hurt in her mind, you know, that she ought to be locked
up.  You know, Anselm, it is true, when people lose
everything—when they forget the meaning of all around
them—they are locked away like the dead; only they are not
quite like the dead.  Johanna, that was her name....
Sometimes she came to Fairacre, and mother and Kirsty
were very kind to her.'

She broke off abruptly, and gave a long shuddering sigh.

'Ah, after all, you have never been at Fairacre!' she said,
fixing her great mournful eyes on his face, after a pause.
'It was near the vine-arcade the scarlet fairy roses grew I
was to wear the day you came, when the *Pâquerette* reached
port.  You always liked me to wear roses; and when I
flew up to meet you, a bird began to sing as if it were wild
with joy....  Have I hurt you?' she said falteringly, as
he rose and turned away abruptly, his lips trembling and
ashy pale.  He could not speak.

She stole up to him with a frightened air, and, looking
into his face, she saw that his eyes were wet.  She gave a
little low moan, and put her hand on his arm.

'Anselm, what can I say to make you glad?  You were
always so serene end hopeful....  Do you remember what
I said when I sent you those dreadful letters that have
been burnt into my brain?—or did I dream it?  I shall do
what you think is right....  I am not dreaming now!'

He turned quickly, raising his hands to draw her to him;
but with a strong effort he resisted the impulse.  He noticed
that, since she began to speak to him, something of the
tension in her face had relaxed.

'Tell me about this poor woman, Stella, who used to
come to Fairacre,' he said, in as calm a voice as was
possible to him.

'About Johanna?  The last time she came, she was very
strange.  She said that when she stayed inside speckled
adders crawled round her at night, saying, "'Drown
yourself—drown yourself!'  There are three under the table
now!"  That was what she said, and then mother tried to
soothe her.  She said if they were there, we would see
them.  But Johanna laughed: it was such a sharp—no, a
shrill laugh.  I laughed like her the other night, and it
sounded horrible in the silence.  Poor Dustiefoot was
frightened; he began to growl at my door.  He lies on the
mat outside....  You are not angry with me, are you?'  She
looked in his face with confused timidity.

'Ah, no, Stella; why should I be?' he said in a choked
voice.

She passed her hand wearily over her eyes.

'Well, I have not finished.  There is some reason why I
began to tell you.  Ah, it was about poor Johanna.  Yes,
she laughed and said the adders wouldn't let anyone like
mother see them.  They were no fools.  "Does it not say
in the Word of God, 'Be ye wise as serpents'?"  That was
what she said.  "The way they all came staring at me!"
she said.  "You see, adders have a great advantage over
us in that way, ma'am, having no eyelashes.  If I prayed
at all, I think I would pray that these beasties might be
kept from me."  Then mother held her hand, and said,
"But you do still pray, I hope?"  "Well, no, ma'am," she
said, "not lately.  You see, there's some that the Lord
lets off His hands altogether.  If they pray, He turns a
deaf ear to them; if they are in want or sickness, He gives
them no wine or mead out of a crystal cup." ... She did
drown herself at last,' she ended, in an awe-stricken tone,
looking into Anselm's face with startled, wide-opened eyes.

'Yes, but about the convalescent children?' he said gently.

'Oh, I know now why I told you about this poor woman,'
she answered quickly.  'I am terrified of being hurt, because
when I am, as I was so badly with the music at the
Philharmonic Hall, I—I think it would be better—oh, so much
better—to be quite at rest.  Some days ago I walked by
the canal——'  She suddenly stopped, a half-guilty look in
her face.

'You have been awake very much of late, Stella,' he
said, betraying no sign of anguish, save in the constrained
accents of his voice.

'Yes; but that is better than to be made to sleep.  Often
when I am asleep, everything I touch falls in atoms—everything
crumbles away.  Then I dream something dreadful
has happened, and I am glad to wake.  But when I am
wide awake, it is worse—oh, much worse—than any dream!'

'But, Stella, these children are not miserable and
wretched.  It is not a great hospital; there are never
more than fourteen.  It is a private place, founded by seven
ladies—my mother is one of them—for children who have
all but recovered from illness.  The greatest joy you could
give them would be to tell them a little Australian story, or
take them out for a drive in the country two or three at a
time.  My mother and I took four of them up to Treptow
the other day.  It is on the river, and there is a large
coffee-room quite close to the Spree.  They sat by the
window eating cakes and seeing the boats and barges sail
by, and then we went out into the wood behind Treptow,
and every little weed they saw gave them joy.  You have
plenty of time.'

'Plenty of time,' she repeated vacantly, and then a little
afterwards, as if the meaning of the words had gradually
dawned on her, 'There is endless time—and it is all empty
and terrible, and full of crumbling things.  I like to go
outside because I feel as if I were then away from the
corridor—the dreadful corridor.  You do not know what I mean by
that.'

'No; but you can explain it to me, Stella.'

His calm, even voice seemed to allay her rising agitation.
She passed her hand slowly over her brow before answering.

'You know, for weeks back when I try to read, or write,
or even sew—whatever it is I try to do slips away from me;
even when people talk round me their voices go a long way
off.  And then I am in a wide, great, empty corridor, where
my footsteps make a strange sound.  But I do not mind
that.  It is the long, dark passages that wind out of it.  I
feel as if I were dragged along them against my will, and at
the end there are great cages with iron bars in front, strong
iron bars, for there are wild creatures behind them.'

She looked up into his face with a terror in her eyes that
made the perspiration stand out in cold drops on his
forehead.

'Dear Stella, do not think of them,' he said in a low,
imploring voice.

'Ah, but you do not know—they are not savage creatures
out of the woods.  They are human beings—they are
women, some of them; but they beat at the bars and
shriek to get out.  When I hear them I feel as if I must
shriek too.  They are mad—they must be kept there
because they are more dangerous than wild beasts.  Ah, my
God! how they terrify me!  I keep silent.  I say nothing
of all this, because people would be afraid of me as I am of
these cages, and—and those that are in them.'

'No, no, Stella.  That is only how people feel after they
have had a terrible illness like yours.  To-morrow you must
come to see these children——'

'Ah, the children.  They have been ill.  You are nursing
them back to life again—how cruel that is often!  They
might have died while the world seemed still beautiful,
and they could pray to God, "Our Father, who art in
heaven, hallowed be Thy name."  Think what it is, Anselm,
to outlive all that—to know that there is no Father in
heaven—that there are people who must be put into iron
cages—that you see it coming nearer every day—a terror
you cannot name!'

'Stella, Stella, think how wrong it would be to let
ourselves sink under one idea—one aspect of life in that way!
It is only because your illness still hangs about you that
you can have such strange thoughts.  If these children were
neglected now, when their parents are unable to care for
them properly, their constitutions might be injured—impaired
for life.  It is not that they would die—for most
creatures, having once gained a footing in the world, make
up their minds to stay if possible.  It is that the seeds
would be laid for lingering maladies—perhaps for madness
itself.  That is what you can do, Stella—help to save some
people from the wretchedness of lives hopelessly mutilated
by disease.  I know there are some forms of misery we can
do nothing to lessen.  It is all the more shame to us if we
do not help in things within our reach.'

There was a little touch of sternness in his voice.  It
hurt him to assume it, but the tone seemed to bring his
words home to her more directly.

'You wish me to go to see them?  Ah, you think I can
speak to them—that they will love me as the children used
to——'

'I do not think it—I know it.  Once you told me that
you were wilful.  I did not quite believe it then, but now
you are, a little—only you will not persist.  Now let me tell
you about some of these little ones.'

He made her sit in a large armchair, and placed a
cushion under her head, and then sat on a low chair
facing her, and told her one or two of those commonplace,
everyday incidents in the annals of the poor which come
within the ken of all who visit or work among them.

Only he did not let his narrations drop into monologues.
He put them in a way that made her ask questions, that
roused and interested her.  The last child he spoke of was
a little one named Gretchen.  She had been run over in the
streets, taken into one of the hospitals, and discharged
while still very weak.  At home she was inadequately fed,
and when his mother found out about her a tumour had
formed under one knee, which threatened to cripple her for
life.  This had been removed, and she was now in the
Home—a plump, merry little thing, who gave names of her
own to everyone.

'What do you suppose she calls me, Stella?' he asked.

She smiled.  'One who knows how to scold sometimes?'

'No; something with more unconscious irony than that.
"The doctor who has no medicine."  Of course a doctor of
that sort is all the more welcome to Greta; but, still, the
title has its own little stroke of malice when one knows
how applicable it often is.  And then my mother has a
distinctive name, too.  One of the other little ones said one
day enthusiastically: "Oh, she is an angel!"  "Yes, she
is," answered Greta; "an angel with a basket."  The
matron overheard them and told my mother, who is very
proud of the definition, for, after all, as she says, how
much better it is to have a basket in this world, if you are
an angel, than a pair of wings!  Yes, she is a child, take
her all in all, out of a thousand.  So tender, and bright,
and unselfish.  She has the gift of a sunny nature, and yet
she has so much imagination, and she can do so many
things—and, by this time, if no one had helped her, she
would be either dead or a cripple for life.'

'How old is the dear little thing?'

'Nine last month.  My mother has insisted on her
staying a few more weeks, so that she may be quite strong.
She is knitting a pair of long stockings for Karl, a younger
brother.  "He is so good and strong, and already he can
do many more things than a girl," she told me quite lately.
I asked her if she would like to be a boy, and after
meditating a little, she said: "No."  "Why?" I said.  "Because
the dear God made me a girl," she answered; and then she
added: "And I would wear out my boots so much faster."'

'I must go to see Greta,' said Stella, smiling.  'Yes, it
would have been dreadful if her health had been spoiled,'
she said reflectively, after a little pause.

Presently Mrs. Kellwitz came in, knitting; and when
Stella found that some of the convalescent children were
badly in need of clothing, she began to make some
garments which Mrs. Kellwitz cut out for her.  That evening,
when she bade Langdale good-night, she said softly:

'I am not going to be wilful.  I will do what you wish.'

He stood for some moments motionless, while the quick
flush that had risen in his face died away.  And then he
recalled her face and tones during their early interview that
day.  It was one of those terrible hours which all through
a lifetime remain in the memory as if stamped on it by a
process apart from ordinary recollection.

He took a letter out of his pocket-book that he had
received on the preceding day from Mrs. Tareling.  He had
written to her through a lawyer, stating that he had possession
of one of the letters he had left in her hands for Miss
Stella Courtland—naming the day and even the hour.  One
had been mutilated, the other stolen, and a fraudulent
document had been put with the falsified one she had delivered.
He awaited any explanation she might have to offer before
putting the matter into the hands of an eminent firm of
Melbourne lawyers for prosecution.  The reply was an
abject confession.  Of course, it was quite false—as abject
confessions extorted by fear are apt to be.  It was her
overwhelming love for her only brother—the adjective
'only' twice underlined.  He had loved Stella Courtland
passionately from boyhood.  She had at one time favoured
his suit.  (N.B.—It is curious to notice how naturally
people slip into this kind of English when they are telling
lies.)  Then she had at a moment's caprice rejected him.
The effect on the only brother was terrible.  But still he
had ample grounds for hope.  Then came Miss Courtland's
visit to Lullaboolagana, her return to Monico Lodge.  In
picturesque English came a graphic description of the
terrible temptation to remove a rival from her brother's
path.  Laurette rose to the occasion.  She spoke in such
exaggerated accents of remorse, one might imagine she
had used a poisoned bowl.  Yes, she had been weak—desperately
weak and erring, as only a poor foolish woman
can be when blinded by affection, etc., etc.  But, after all,
the past was irrevocable.  What but harm could come of
stirring up strife?

Langdale asked himself the same question with a sinking
heart.  Here were full and clear proofs of the treachery by
which they had been betrayed.  But what could any
exposure of this base crime avail?  It meant vengeance—nothing
more.  Publicity could not save them a single
pang, nor make the future more hopeful, nor help to divert
the doom, worse than death, with which he saw Stella
threatened.  He paced up and down the room, his sight
dimmed, a dull throbbing in his temples, as he recalled her
looks and tones in the earlier part of their interview.  'I
will do what you wish.'  His heart gave a leap as he
recalled the words.  What action should he take to save her
from the wild, dark morass into which her life had been
turned?

He had written, sending his letter through an eminent
English lawyer, on the morning that Stella forwarded him
those fatal documents—one unsigned, cunningly devised to
support the lies that were conveyed by the fragments,
diabolically falsified, of his own letter, with the purpose of
extorting an admission of guilt.  But since then all other
thoughts had been lost in agonizing anxiety as to the issue
of Stella's illness.  That had passed, but a worse calamity
threatened her.  Could he not save her?  Could he not
stem the bitter waters that had swept away all the joy and
pleasantness of her life, and now menaced reason itself?
He had resolved to urge no claim—to make no appeal to the
love which he knew was still the strongest emotion that
swayed her—while any weakness of shattered health
clouded or warped her judgment.  But now it seemed as if
every day, in which she was left at the mercy of the grief
and dark fear that had lodged in her mind, rendered
ultimate recovery more doubtful.  And what prospect did the
future hold for her?  Was not the slow, dull contagion of
this union, so fraudulently compassed, a greater evil than
any alternative that lay open to her?  And yet, to a proud,
sensitive man whose own experience of life had been early
dashed with a woman's infidelity, how unendurable was the
thought of any stigma cast on the girl whose honour was
more sacred to him than aught else in the world!  But,
then, there are passages in life of so vital a nature that they
must be judged wholly apart from the common ineffectual
criticism of common minds.  It was one of those subtle and
cruel complications in human lives in which no action
seems possible that is not charged with evil.  At last, in
despair, he told himself that he would do what he could,
and live from hand to mouth; for the present make no
plans beyond the passing day—only, as far as lay in his
power, he would watch over and shield Stella from harm—seek
to guard her from the stealthy foe that had already
sapped some of the outworks of the citadel of reason.

Next morning when he went into his mother's sitting-room
he found the two in cheerful converse.

'Stella is coming with me to our convalescent children
this afternoon,' his mother said briskly.  She was one of
those generous-minded, whole-hearted, actively kind women
whose mere presence throws discredit on the darker evils of
the world.  'See how rapidly the child sews!' she said,
holding up a small garment which Stella had already
completed.  'My dear, it is fatal when I find that people can
work like this.  I am always turning up with a little bundle
of second-hand flannel or calico to be made into small
petticoats and knickerbockers.'

'An angel with a basket, in fact, mother,' said her son.
And at this they all laughed a little.  Langdale noted, with
a thrill of gladness, that something of the old look of vivid
life had come back into Stella's face.

To do some work, and for his sake, because he wished it—this
was the chord that had been struck, and gave a quick
response.  The mere fact of giving expression to the dread
that had so long passed 'in smother,' and begun habitually
to haunt her, served to lessen her fears.  After this, Stella
went almost daily to the convalescent children.  And daily
she went over some of Langdale's MS., altering a word here
and there, now and then putting in a different phrase.  She
feared at first to trust her own judgment, when she felt
inclined to make changes, but she gained confidence as she
went on.  And then something of the fascination of
brain-work, of that preoccupation with ideas which takes the
mind out of itself, laid hold of her.

To think too exclusively of ourselves or our own concerns,
even under our best aspects, is, as a rule, to become sad,
weary, and discouraged.  But to be immured in such
thoughts, when the thrill and joy of life are gone, when its
best promises are mildewed with disillusion and disappointment,
is to poison the very source of sane existence and
healthy endeavour.  It had been so with Stella, and in the
lowest deep of her unhappiness there yet opened the lower
deep, that the misery which had overtaken her like a flood
was so largely her own doing.

Yes; gradually she crept back from the gulf that had
threatened to close over her.  The little ones that gathered
round her, their faces lighting up with pleasure, drew her to
them from day to day, and then they would shyly ask for
stories of Australia—that strange, far-away land with
strange birds and beasts, and unknown trees that never lost
their leaves.  Sometimes she would write out beforehand
one of the little twilight stories she had told at Lullaboolagana,
so that she might not hesitate and be at a loss for
words when her little audience clustered breathlessly around
her.  'The dear lady'—that was the name by which they
learned to call her.

And then it began to be spring once more—the spring of
a northern climate, when Nature gradually wakens from her
rigid sleep, when the first early blossoms and the first
returning birds—those timid evangels of quickening
life—thrill the air with messages, which the heart understands
but does not put into words.

It was one day early in April.  The air had lost its
barbarous keenness.  The sun shone as if it was getting
warm.  There were dun-coloured clouds over part of the
sky, but between them a wistful azure showed itself, and
on the tall, slender birch in the Thiergarten that was
opposite Stella's sitting-room a swallow and some linnets
were carolling as if they were bent on being marked as the
first choristers of the season.  Stella had returned from a
visit to one of the museums with Professor Kellwitz, and
sat by the window as she had entered, in her sealskin coat
and toque.  As they returned they met Langdale, and he
accompanied them as far as the Pension Eisengau.  The
incident had brought back the first day they met in Berlin
with startling distinctness.  They had exchanged few words
beyond the ordinary salutations.  Mrs. Kellwitz and Stella
were often together, but she and Langdale met seldomer,
and but for a few minutes.  Yet these accidental brief
meetings surrounded the day on which they took place with
an aureole.  Stella now sat with lips slightly parted, her
hands folded in her lap, looking fixedly before her with a
half-startled, dawning sort of expression.  Ritchie entered
at that moment, and was struck with the air of vividness
in her face.

'Why, Stella, you will soon be quite yourself again,' he
said, leaning against the mantelpiece near where she sat.

The colour slowly deepened in her cheeks, and she took
off her toque.

He suddenly stooped over her, and touched her forehead
with his lips.  She started as if she were stung.  'You
must not do that,' she said, in a peremptory tone.

He was deeply wounded, and drew back, looking at her
with a startled expression.  'Perhaps I had better not
come into the same sitting-room you are in,' he said, in a
rougher voice than he had ever used to her before.  A look
of cold displeasure settled on her face, but she said nothing.

'While you were so ill,' he went on in a gentler tone,
'and seemed more miserable if I were about, I kept out of
the way.  Then, as you got better you were kinder to me;
you sometimes drove out with me, and let me do things for
you.  But now again you hardly speak to me once in two
days; and as for laughing or joking——'  He noticed a
look almost akin to terror creeping into her face, and
stopped abruptly.  'Forgive me, Stella, if I have been
rough,' he said after a little.

Stella had rung the bell, and when Maisie came in she
gave her her toque and coat to put away, and asked for her
writing-desk.  Before she returned an answer to Ted's
apology there was a tap at the door, and Mrs. Farningham
came in.

'Now this is fortunate!  I wanted to find you both in,'
she said.  'You know, Stella, that my mother and
step-father are going to the East about the beginning of May.
Anselm tells me that Johnny's lungs need special care.
Well, I mean only to stay in England till the beginning of
June; I will then join my mother in Egypt.  Now, had
you not better come with me?  You know how these two
men will haunt the racecourses from Dan to Beersheba—from
May to October.'

It had been for some time arranged that the Farninghams
and Ritchies would leave Berlin together.  The two men
were anxious to be in England through the racing season;
and their wives, who were neither of them supremely
interested in the turf, would thus bear each other company.

Stella became very pale and grave.

'Well, I think that would be far the best arrangement,'
said Ritchie.

But Stella did not at once reply.

'You see, they could join us in Palestine or Egypt as
soon as the St. Leger or whatever the last races they wanted
to see were over,' went on Mrs. Farningham.  She watched
Stella a little curiously, and seeing the anxious, perplexed
look in her face, she added, lightly turning to Ted, 'You
see, Mr. Ritchie, your wife is not disposed to lose sight of
you for so long—but you think the matter over.'

And with that she left the two alone once more.

'You had better go, Stella,' said Ritchie after a pause.

'I do not know,' she answered slowly.  She was like one
roughly aroused out of a gentle morning dream.  A flood of
conjectures, of questions, poured in on her; and the old
tormenting habit of finding the train of thought suddenly
swamped reasserted itself.  But one conviction was clear
and steady: if she and Ritchie parted, she would never
come back to him again.

He, poor fellow! was touched, thinking her hesitation
was due to concern at the prospect of leaving him to his
own devices for so long a period.

'Don't be afraid about me, Stella,' he said.  'I made a
promise that I would never forget myself in drink again;
and I don't mean to put a knife in the contract.  I don't
take much credit to myself for that; for the more you see
of the world, the more there is to open your eyes.  We get
into a beastly habit of drinking spirits in Australia; but a
bottle of good Château Lafite beats such stuff hollow.  You
sip glass after glass, and, instead of getting stupider, you
are more alive....  And then, Stella, while matters are as
they are between us, it's easier for me to be out of your
sight.  You see, if Farningham and I are in England till
the end of September, why the year would be up by the
time I came to—Palestine, is it?  Isn't that the place
where the Jews used to play up so before they discovered
the Christians?  By Jove, you should hear Minimus
Avenell talk about the Hebrews!' and Ted laughed at
sundry reminiscences.

Somehow the sight of Stella so perplexed and silent at
the prospect of parting from him for four or five months
raised his spirits.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER LIII.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER LIII.

.. vspace:: 2

During the time that intervened between this and the week
before they left Berlin for London, Stella remained
undecided as to her future movements.  Letters came from
Adelaide and Lullaboolagana full of tender anxiety regarding
her health.  Ted had written faithfully, week by week,
while she was unable to do so.  He had always put the
best face on the matter; and when finally out of danger, he
had cabled the news.  Now letters came in answer to the
first short notes she had written, about the middle of
February.  There was so much rejoicing over her
recovery—such loving, thankful congratulations.  They were so
secure in their confidence that return to health meant love
and happiness and safety from all evil.  The entire ignorance
as to her real life of all who were dear to her in her home
and native land separated Stella from them far more than
the long weeks of sailing which lay between.  Is there
anything in human experience more strange, more piercing,
than the isolation that surrounds most of us during the
darker storms that rend the soul?

'How unaccountable, how incredible, how strange beyond
all reckoning!' we say, when some event wholly
unanticipated happens in the history of others.  We so often
forget that the inner lives of even those who are most
closely linked to ours are implacably veiled from our gaze.
It is with individual as with national life.  Outwardly,
things may be going on in the old smooth, apparently
prosperous fashion.  We do not see the inner cone, in
which a little speck has appeared that slowly spreads and
spreads.  We do not hear the tread on the loom where the
shuttle at every throw is weaving the inscrutable web of
circumstance.  At last the catastrophe falls heavily, brutally,
without comment or warning; and then, being powerless to
do any good, we draw a moral.  Its ineptitude, as a rule,
is equalled only by our ignorance of the real forces that have
been at work.

But lost, undecided, and unhappy as Stella had again
become, the old vacant apathy did not return.  She worked
daily; and those daily hours in which so much of her own
personality was lost in thoughts for others, and in matters
apart from the groove of her own life, saved her.  The day
on which she had corrected the last of Langdale's manuscript
she met him in Mrs. Farningham's sitting-room in the
pension.  They talked chiefly of Socialism, which was then
a prominent topic among those who were inimical or
favourable to the movement.  Mrs. Farningham was
gradually becoming a zealous convert.

'After all,' she said, at the close of a spirited, half-jesting
controversy between herself and Langdale, 'justice is never
done to the poor until those who are in power begin to be
terrified.  These bungling attempts at State Socialism are
valuable as a tribute to the power that lies behind our
kinsman Schiedlich and men like him.'

'Dear old Gottfried, I wish he had not joined the extreme
party,' returned Langdale.  'It seems to me he was doing
such good work when he was writing calmly and dispassionately.'

'Anselm, you are too provokingly amenable to reason,'
said his sister, interrupting him.  'Still, you can persuade
Gottfried when no one else can move him.  I wish you
would take him with you to the East when he is released.
You know mother is never so happy as when there is an
invalid to care for.  And he must be rather broken down,
by what you say of him.'

'That is a happy thought,' returned Langdale.  'I shall
see if I cannot get him away.  He will be at large in a few
days hence.'

This was the first time Stella heard of Langdale's intention
to go to the East; and as she listened, her face was suddenly
suffused with colour.

The rest of the afternoon passed as if enveloped in a mist.
Mrs. Farningham made Stella lie down, and placed a screen
round the couch, trusting she might fall asleep.  But she
could not rest.  She went into her bedroom.  Dustiefoot
followed her and tried to win her attention.  But she did
not notice him.  She stood before a wide, full-length mirror
that was in the room, and looked at her own face in it
steadily, till she caught a frightened, cowering look in the
eyes which made her shrink and draw back.  The unsteady,
fiery light in them made her turn deathly pale....  She
threw herself into an arm-chair and covered her face with
her hands.  Then the silence became intolerable to her,
and she said something aloud—she hardly knew what.  The
tone must have been strange, for the dog shrank away,
looking at her timidly.

'Oh, Dustiefoot, Dustiefoot!—do not be afraid! .... O
my God! why is he afraid of me? .... I must go to
Anselm—I must see him .... he will know what I should
do—he will speak to me....'

Then she broke into bitter weeping—leaning her head on
a table near her—with low long sobs like a child who is too
spent to weep aloud.

On this Dustiefoot came up and put his head on her lap;
then he licked her hands; and this somehow comforted her
a little.

'Good dog, good dog!' she said, patting him on the head.

The tears relieved her.  After a little she returned to her
friends.

'Have you two decided how long you are to be in
England?' asked Farningham, after some desultory
chit-chat.

'I fear Mrs. Ritchie has not yet made up her mind to
come with me,' answered Mrs. Farningham.

'You had better go, Stella,' said Ted.

'Yes; I shall go,' she answered, her face suddenly
flushing.

This decision was greeted by the rest with warm
approval.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER LIV.`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER LIV.

.. vspace:: 2

Two weeks after the friends went to London, Mrs. Farningham's
delicate boy had an attack of hemorrhage.  This kept
her indoors very much, and altered their plans.  It was
arranged that she and Stella should leave for Alexandria as
soon as the boy was well enough to travel.  They were
staying in the Westham Hotel, close to Grosvenor Square.
One morning, a week before they purposed leaving, Stella
went to make some purchases for herself and Mrs. Farningham.
Not once after the evening on which she announced
her intention of going to the East had Stella wavered in
her decision.  She had improved rapidly in health and
spirits.  The dark shadow that had for a time hovered over
her had disappeared.  At times something of feverish
restlessness took possession of her.  But there was no
relapse into moody melancholy or apathy.  The steady,
unimpaired health, which naturally belonged to her, was once
more re-established.

Though it was past the middle of May, the morning was
dark and lowering.  But Stella was oblivious of all external
influences.  Ritchie had been anxious to hire a brougham
for her daily use; but she prevented his doing so.  She
said she saw so much more when she was on foot, and all
her old love of walking had returned.  She had an abounding
sense of vigorous life that made physical exertion a
necessity.  A few paces away from the hotel she met
Langdale on his way there.

'Will you please take Dustiefoot back?' she said, her
face glowing, her eyes softly lustrous as in the old days.
'When I am looking at things he puts his paws on the
counter, and insists on looking too.'

'May I walk a little way with you?' he asked as she
gave him her hand.  'I am going into the country for a few
days this afternoon.'

'I think Amalie is waiting for you,' she answered.  'Her
boy has had rather a restless night again.'

Then he took Dustiefoot back as she wished.  No plans
nor designs had been formed between them.  They met
casually now and then, and talked a little of merely
impersonal matters; nothing more.  But each was conscious
that the one step which was to shape their future was taken
when Stella decided to go to the East.

In those days she struggled no longer against the rising
joy that used to well up in her heart at the prospect of
cutting herself finally adrift from the future that had been
woven for her by treachery and deceit.  The sweet fascination
of life had come back to her with redoubled force.  On
this morning, as she went on her way, she recalled the
existence she had led for the past few months with
horror—with something of wondering contempt.  She had been
terrified at the past, oblivious of the present, quailing at the
days to come, till she had been on the very brink of madness.
And all the time the world was full of interest and
movement and joy.

Was there no lurking consciousness of the possibility of
remorse swallowing up this intoxicating recaptured
happiness?  If so, she spurned the thought—cast it aside like
one of those malformed little insects that sometimes crawl
on the petals of blood-red roses.  She was glad that a kind
of pagan recklessness, of indifference to far-off consequences,
mingled with the tide of her courage and reviving happiness.
Once for all she had decided that the problem of her life
must be looked at as it was in itself—must be solved apart
from authority and tradition.  She had been too long
cowering like a slave, afraid of others—afraid of herself—afraid
most of all of Nature, which in its subtle way had all
the time cherished and nursed back into being the one love
of her life, compared to which all other bonds were but as
flax touched with flame.  The chalice of life's most precious
benediction was once more at her lips.

She recalled something that Langdale had once said of
the stimulating aura of London—the indefinable demand
on one's best powers to polish the rude rocks of capacity
into blocks fit for building.  But apart from any subtle
appeal to the mind, there was a kind of implied union, in
the silent fellowship of being successfully alive, which she
shared with the crowd around.  To be young and well clad,
and walk upright with well-moulded limbs, with eyes
undimmed with fears, with a capacity for happiness, was a
form of responsive loyalty to the life that surged around.
Everything appeared to her so unworn and fresh, she was
alive in every faculty, and stirred as with the tender novelty
in which objects present themselves to us in early childhood.
Fancy, imagination, and memory, all were buoyant as young
birds that had newly learned to cleave the air.

The feeling now and then was uppermost that she had in
some way gone back to an earlier stage of experience—that
some indefinable weight had slipped off her.  It was as
though Nature had taken her by the hand and led her back
smilingly from the sophistry of long-accumulated tradition—led
her back to the primal instincts of life, blotting out
the officious 'thou shalt' and 'shalt not' of defunct
generations as impertinent intermeddling with a joy all her own.
Perhaps there are forces slumbering in the mind which
waken into activity but for one brief hour of the years
which are given to us here.  It may be that on this morning,
if never again, Stella was subtly influenced by the bare,
untrammelled aspects of her native land—by the vast
unpeopled spaces which hold no claim from the past, and
lay no ghostly charges on human beings to postpone their
lives for the sake of those who have been and those who
are to come.  And yet it was vagrant recollections of one of
the wildernesses of her country that first quelled the glad
ardour of her mood.  In the midst of her content at being
among crowds of unknown men and women, she recalled
how often people spoke of the solitude of a strange city
being more absolute than that of a desert.  Instantaneously
she saw before her an austere stretch of Mallee Scrub.
What moody melancholy the reality would evoke—what
troops of questions! ... Questions of what?  A quick,
inexplicable pang shot through her mind—a dread like that
which comes in a dream of the night, when one who has
long ago passed beyond reach and recall stands in the
masking appearance of life, and the sleeper shrinks from
the blank of awakening.  But it was a momentary feeling.

She made her purchases, and then passed out of Oxford
Street by way of Audley Street, purposely taking a circuitous
route to the Westham Hotel.  She wanted to walk alone—to
give herself up to the full sway of this swift, strong
return of mental and physical well-being.  But like the
refrain of a song which once heard long ago comes back to
haunt us one day, we know not why, the thought of the
great Mallee desert kept rising up before her: the days she
had wandered there—the books she had read—the thoughts
that had come to her of the people who had fled from the
world and lived in desolate places for the salvation of their
soul.  What strange delusions men had put upon themselves
from age to age, sacrificing the only life they were sure of
to vague chimeras of unknown modes of existence!  Then
her mother's grave, sweet voice came to her, and she
suddenly found the tears rising in her eyes.  She wiped
them half angrily.

'I must write and tell mother all—all!' she thought.

But the resolve did not quiet the throng of thoughts
which began to rise.  'My beloved child, how I long to see
you once more!  Give me fuller details of your daily life.
Why do you say so little of Edward?  He wrote with such
faithful regularity when you were ill; but since your
recovery he writes no longer.'  These and other extracts
from the home letters, from her mother's especially, rose
before her.  Nay, it seemed as though one strode beside
her to read them to her whether she would or no.  She
went over the past few months again in self-vindication, as
if she were pleading her case before an unseen tribunal.

'See,' she seemed to say, as if addressing a judge, 'how
hopelessly all my future would have been wrecked if Anselm
had not saved me from myself.  It was not one misfortune
that overwhelmed me.  Had it been only that vile plot of
an unscrupulous woman—cheating me out of the one great
happiness of life—I would have somehow borne the misery,
perhaps overcome it.  At least the union would be binding.
That I am sure of.  But there was a worse betrayal—the
moral failure of the man who married me, concealing his
subjection to drink.  Yes, one may overcome this for a time,
but there is always the possibility of a relapse.  A year of
probation—of what value is that when in one hour all the
forces of habit may resume full sway?'

It seemed as though her invisible audience looked at her
with stern, searching eyes.  The very air became heavy with
doubt and suspicion.

'We have made no plans,' she went on, unconsciously
entering on the defence that implies accusation.  'We have
in common the power of sympathy with wide aims—with
impersonal endeavours.  We are capable of a great disinterested
friendship that time and intimacy can only render
more perfect....'

What a strange power of the mind this is—in the hour of
keenest elation to become conscious of a cloud of unseen
witnesses who are satisfied with no version of our motives
short of absolute veracity.  After all that she could urge,
Stella was in the end shaken, dissatisfied, restless.  'It is
part of the morbid phase through which I have been passing,'
she thought.  And she mechanically hurried on, as if
to escape her self-appointed tribunal, her explanations, the
doubts that were incipient fears.

She had followed Audley Street much further than she
intended, and now struck out of it eastward, going into
a narrow street where, in the distance, she saw one or two
cabs.  She had got tired, and wished to drive back to the
Westham.  Before she reached them she was startled by a
sudden downpour of rain.  At the same moment she found
herself opposite the open porch of a church, into which she
went for shelter.  There were some women who had
evidently come out.  Two of them were talking together.

'Which cardinal?' said one.

'Why, Cardinal Newman,' answered the other.

The name reached Stella, awakening many slumbering
memories—awakening, too, that deep chord of reverent
affection which the soul never loses for those who have
at one time illuminated and guided it, even though we may
have lost the light, though we may have strayed far from the
pastures in which still waters flow.

'Is the Cardinal here?' she asked eagerly.

'Yes—the service is almost over,' answered the woman
she addressed; 'but if you go in, and go up near the altar,
you can see him very well,' she added kindly.

Acting on the impulse of the moment, Stella went in.
But even as she entered some curious intuition crossed her
mind—a misgiving, rather, that this simple action might
break the purpose round which her happiness, her late
triumphant sense of restored well-being, had centred.  She
passed noiselessly up the left aisle and took a seat not
far from the high altar, where she was partly concealed
by a pillar.

Yes, the service was almost over; but she saw him
clearly—the man whose words so many years ago, in her
careless, untroubled girlhood, had so deeply stirred the
depths of her inner life; whose voice had been as a voice
from heaven to guide her into close communion with God.
But the voice had died into silence, and all the glow of
dawning intercourse with a kingdom not of this world—all
the glad fervour of faith—had left her.  And often it
had seemed good to her that she had been so early emancipated
from the dogmatic finalities, the uncertain certainties,
full of contradictions, that men are asked to receive as
revelations of the Divine Will.  But now that the first
spring of youth was barely over, how hard and cruel life had
become! and what was the bourne to which she had turned?

Alas! had she so soon again fallen into the clutches of
Care and Fear—those haggard visitants, never far off when
the conscience is not at peace, but soothed with anodynes?
From the moment that she knelt within the church, all that
had blinded her was swept ruthlessly away.  It was like
the letting in of waters, whose rising tide obliterates the
paltry landmarks hastily thrown up by invading scouts who
had no legal claim to the country.  She heard nothing—saw
nothing but that pale, spiritual presence; the high, noble
brow—the austere, ascetic countenance, furrowed with years
and sorrows—a face keenly symbolical of a life consecrated
to the service of God and man.

She saw his hands joined and held up in benediction—saw
him turn to the people and make the sign of the cross
on them; and she bent her head in bitter weeping, like a
reed shaken by a great storm.  As smoke vanisheth away
and is seen no more, so was she forsaken of the happiness—the
passionate elation—that had so lately thrilled her
through and through with an exalted sense of vitality.

Low and lower yet her head was bent, while she was
rent with piercing sorrow, and the tears drenched her face
like rain.  The last note of the organ died away, the last
footfalls of the congregation retreated, and she was alone in
the house of prayer—alone with the still, small voice at
whose sound our dearest travesties of righteousness shrivel
into filthy rags.  She had wandered so long and so far, and
near her was the image of the crucified One—whom she had
betrayed like Peter of old.  'And the Lord turned and
looked upon Peter....  And Peter went out and wept
bitterly.'

All the unsatisfied yearning for belief, which had so long
been stilled and left a waste place in her heart, rose into
new life.  And with this the anguish of a penitent
convicted of innumerable treasons pierced her like a sword.

There are experiences of the soul that cannot be fathomed.
They are beyond the reach of any plummet that is within
our grasp—being part of the inscrutable mystery of the
union of matter and spirit.  There are moments in which
the bruised, shaken, sorrowful human creature sees as by
lightning-flashes the wild devious ways by which the spirit
is lured away from the only possession that is everlasting!
In the revulsion of feeling that overwhelmed her, Stella
could for a time frame neither words nor purpose.  But
from the first she knew that she dared not follow the path
which so short a time before had been to her as the only one
that led into the citadel of life and hope.  Gradually the
first bitterness and tumult ebbed away.  Some lines that
&he had once read to her father came back to her:

   |  'But as I raved, and grew more fierce and wild,
   |        At every word,
   |  Methought I heard one calling, Child!
   |        And I replied, My Lord!'

Yes, out of the abysses of exceeding darkness which first
fell on her when she knew that the only purpose which
seemed to make life possible must be abandoned, there
gradually emerged a faint dawn of hope.  After all her
weary wanderings—after her blindness and hardness of
heart—after her long conviction that God could only be
darkly groped after, never securely hoped in—she knew
once more that the chastisement of our peace was upon Him.

   |  'And I replied, My Lord!'

She whispered the words through her blinding tears, and
even her great unhappiness was an earnest to her that,
notwithstanding her desertion and denial, and callous
forgetfulness and unbelief, she had not been cast off utterly.

More and more piercingly she realized how her own pride
and vanity and impatience of suffering had been at the root
of the evil that had overtaken her.  A scorching sense of
shame at her infidelity to the higher loyalties of justice,
self-sacrifice, and generosity overcame her.  Waves of
cutting remorse swept over her as she reviewed her
conduct in her relationship with her husband.  How indifferent
and hard she had been all these months—shirking all
companionship with him, never seeking to win him to any
interest or pursuit beyond the narrow groove in which his
life had always run!  She was, perhaps, a little unfair
to herself as she reviewed her conduct in this respect,
as we are apt to be in our self-condemnations as well
as in our self-enthusiasms—both in reality being often
grounded on ignorance.  There are periods in people's
lives when everything is against them—when the currents
that might have floated them into a quiet haven
conspire only to dash them against the rocks.  But yet the
truth was clear—that on the first evidence of the power of
evil habit over her husband she had stood coldly aloof, as if
wrong-doing on his part absolved her from all lot or
concern in his fate.  She recalled how, in speaking of him, she
had even inferred that he could not help himself—assuming
that the spirit of man, no more than his body, can have any
source of impulse or action apart from the inexorable links
of material causes.  Could the spirit of evil itself help to
wreck men with a darker atheism than this? ... 'He had
so keen an appreciation of what was good in people—quick
to perceive how men's failings and vices are often a forced
rather than a wilful product.  Always he expected them to
live down the evil—to hold to and cultivate the better side
of their nature.'

Where had she read or heard the words?  Was not this,
indeed, the very core of moral influence?  And then came
back to her the words of one of the Fathers to one who had
tried to take his life: 'Thy crime has made thee mine.  See
that henceforth thou walkest worthily of me and of God, to
whom thou belongest.'  The belief that evil may be
overcome—this spring of moral hopefulness—how basely she
had denied it by word and action!  What had become of
the early Church when so much of its endeavours lay among
those enslaved, and the descendants of those enslaved by the
darkest forms of sensuality, if the half-understood dicta of
pseudo-science regarding heredity, and the insignificance of
man's will, had prevailed rather than the Divine rule,
'Believe, and thou shalt be saved'?  Oh, how cruelly she had
failed in that care for the better nature of the man to whom
she had promised her whole life! how completely she had
fallen away from that lofty devotion to duty which is the
truest, clearest note of womanhood!

And looking steadily into the depths of her unacknowledged
thoughts, into the dark recesses of her mind, she
convicted herself of having relied on Ritchie's inability to
overcome his besetting sin—of having rested on this as a
justification of her own future actions.

When the soul is penetrated with a deep sense of guilt,
and is prostrated in utter humiliation, no thought
overcomes it with such bleeding penitence as this—that it has
failed another in the day of need....  She was consumed
with shame and sorrow, and yet she was quickened by the
thought that here her downward course had been arrested
by the presence of that priest of the Most High whose words
had so early fastened on her heart.  Once more she had
been drawn as with irresistible cords to the foot of the Cross.





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.. _`CHAPTER LV.`:

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   CHAPTER LV.

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After Stella had fought down the first amazed opposition
to her changed plans, a sort of wonder came over her that
she should thus throw aside all that seemed like the
substance of living for an impalpable shadow—nay, for dark
possibilities that began to lower more darkly at her the
more she strove to face the future with deliberate calmness.
But she did not falter in her purpose, and gradually the
powers which man in all ages has found in work and prayer
came to her aid.  After she had seen Langdale and bidden
him farewell, the worst was over.  He returned to London
three days before Mrs. Farningham sailed.  When Stella
saw him in his sister's sitting-room, he had already learned
of the change of plans.

'You must come with me, Anselm, now that Mrs. Ritchie
has decided to remain.  She seems to lose her interest in
things mysteriously.  She does nothing now but visit
rookeries at the East-End.  I mean, you must sail in the
same boat with me.'

Presently Stella came in.

'You are not so well again,' he said quickly, noticing at
once the entire change in her aspect since he had last seen
her.

'Oh, I am only a little tired,' she answered, but her face
had grown still paler.  An old friend of her mother's called,
and Mrs. Farningham went with her into the nursery.

'Amalie tells me you are not going with her to the East,'
Langdale said when they were alone.

'No—and I wanted to tell you personally, and to say
farewell.'

'Farewell?' he repeated.  He walked hastily to one of
the windows; then he came back, and stood by the mantel-piece
a little way from where she sat.  'Stella, do not be
afraid,' he said, in an agitated voice.  'I shall never say a
word, nor urge a claim to your attention, beyond what you
judge would be right.  You have been so much better; but
even in this short time you have lost ground.'

'In my weakness, my selfishness, my forgetfulness of
duty, you have been so good to me.  You must let me say
this before we part,' she said hurriedly, and as if she had
not heard what he said.

'So good to you?' he echoed, as if the words hurt him,
and then he checked himself.  'Stella, do not try your
nature beyond what it can bear.  Go with my sister as
you purposed doing.  I will not see you, nor even write to
you.  Gain complete strength of mind and body, and then
decide what you ought to do.  Stella, you may trust me.
And if you do not go to the East, let me write to Madonna.
It is not fit that you should be left so much alone; you are
not as strong as you think.  I have written a long letter to
Hector, which I delayed sending till you were well enough
to read it.'

'We must not send it.  We have so far overlived our
sorrow without paining others....  And now the worst is
over.'

There was a little break in her voice as she said the last
words.  She was outwardly calm, but the anguish at her
heart made the words seem unreal even to herself.  Langdale
looked at her fixedly, and was about to speak, but he
checked himself, and again leant against the mantelpiece,
shading his eyes with one hand.  There was a long pause,
and then Stella spoke again:

'Do not fear for me, Anselm.  Hitherto I have been
thinking chiefly of myself—blaming others for the unhappiness
that has overtaken us; brooding over mistakes instead
of seeking to set them right.  I will no longer think of
myself—it is a melancholy subject.'

Her smile was sad, but her face had in it more of the
old alertness, the being alive to the curiously unadjusted
qualities and defects of life, than she had shown since their
first painful meeting in the Old World.

Then she told him what had led to her sudden change of
plans.  As she did so, something of her old vigour and
ardour of expression came back.  But in all mental
conflicts there are so many forces at work which we but dimly
apprehend.  We can but say that we have been defeated, or
gained a victory, which leaves us more humiliated, more
mistrustful of our hearts than ever before.  The process we
cannot fully explain to ourselves, much less to others.

'You feel just now,' he said slowly, when she had ceased
speaking, 'that you should sacrifice all your individuality,
all your life, in reparation for a fancied wrong.  But can you
endure the punishment?  Do you realize the peril——'

'No; not punishment!' she said, eagerly interrupting
him.  'It is punishment when we are allowed to follow our
own devices; when we are dead to endeavour, to patience,
to hope—hope, the beautiful spirit that leads us on, white
and serene and gentle as the angel of the dew, and bids us
never despair of overcoming our own follies, of helping
others to better effort and aspiration.  I have been so long
the unresisting victim of despair; but once more God has
called me.  Do not pity me, Anselm!  Be sorry for me
only in the time when I was insensible to duty—deafened
with the noise of the chain of mortality so that I could hear
none of the voices by which God calls us.  Oh! it is true;
He does call us, and when we hear Him the poison is drawn
out of our darkest sorrows.  Dear friend, how can I explain
myself?  To-day all the sharpest pangs that I have suffered,
all that I must endure, seem to me a proof of the love of
God.  I see that if I had been happy in the way I had
chosen, it would mean that He had utterly forgotten me—left
me to myself; and when that happens, it is not only
ourselves we hurt; we spoil the lives of others.'

'Do not let us deceive ourselves,' he answered, in a voice
which, despite his self-control, vibrated with keen anguish.
'We have been robbed and cheated!  In our final separation
we lose the best possibilities that life can offer.  I can
only submit.  But I cannot pretend to see in this chaos of
duplicity any glimmering of Divine guidance.  At last it is
brought home to me that life may become so poor and
maimed a thing that it is not greatly worth having.'

'Oh, do not say that,' she cried, looking into his face
imploringly.  'I know that in all the years to come there
will be moments of anguished recollection.  Twilight or the
rose of dawn, a strain of music, a chance picture, the glow
of sunset, a bud opening in spring, the song of a bird, any
sight or sound that searches the depths of our nature—we
know not why—all the things that touch us most may be
charged with a burden of sadness—a sense of loss, a pain
whose edge can never be entirely blunted.  But the pain,
and the loss, and the unconquerable yearning, let us take
them by the hand, and make them the companions of our
wiser hours.  In seeking after the best that we can reach,
each cup of suffering, every pang of sorrow, may breathe
into our lives that finer spirit of all knowledge.'

'Ah, Stella, Stella! must I lose you? hear your voice no
more?  What can comfort me for this?' he said, looking
at her with dimmed eyes.  He turned away abruptly, and
paced up and down the room.  Then he came back to
where she stood and resumed in a calmer voice: 'And to
make the loss more intolerable there is the fact that our
happiness was wrecked by the miserable intrigue of that
wretched woman....  There are creatures so low down in
the scale of nature that the whole nervous system consists
of a slender cord, that has a little bulge by way of a brain
near the mouth.  That is about the type, morally, of a
being who could act as she did.  And yet she is to go
unpunished—screened even from any sense of shame!  But
no; I shall yet in some way expose her!' said Langdale,
with flashing eyes.  It was not only the irreparable mischief
to both their lives that made Mrs. Tareling's immunity
from all penalty so intolerable to him, but also the recoil
against injustice which, as a rule, moves a man more
keenly than a woman.  'Let us admit,' he said in a lower
tone, 'that we have been betrayed—but as for consolation——'

'Yes; betrayed by me!' answered Stella in a low voice.
Langdale made a gesture of denial; but Stella put her hand
on his arm, and, standing close beside him, repeated: 'Yes;
it is true.  In the end no one can betray us but ourselves.
If, instead of being governed by wounded pride and fierce
jealousy, I had resigned myself——'

'That is, if you had been some other human being instead
of yourself.  Stella, this is unreasonable!'

'And then,' she went on, speaking with some difficulty,
'it would be wrong for me not to tell you that in the first
bitterness of our meeting I now feel I spoke in a way that
reflected unduly on my husband.'

It was the first time she had spoken the word in his
hearing, and as he heard it, Langdale coloured deeply.

'You will, I think, believe,' he returned, after a pause,
'that I could not try to urge you to any line of action
merely in my own interests.  I have been content to drift
in this.  I have formed plans and given them up.  The
chief thing was that you should first recover.  You had in
a measure done so when this ardour for nullifying your life
seized you.  But beware of doing your own inner nature
and instincts a great violence....  You were imposed upon
and feloniously betrayed.  Granted that you should not
under any circumstances have been cheated into such a
marriage, still, there are certain forms of temptation to
which every nature will succumb under given circumstances.
But is it right to attempt fidelity to a bond that may
eventually wreck your life?  Anyone may be hurried into
wrong-doing—betrayed into an unmoral course of life—but
the fatal thing is the not repenting, or foisting ecclesiastical
perversions upon the conscience.  Morals have been evolved
to save, not to crush us—not to make it impossible for us
to work out the salvation of our better natures.  Of course,
I do not use the word in its priestly sense.'

'You are afraid for me,' she answered in a faltering voice;
'but believe me, weak and unstable as I have before been,
I know now that I am no longer blinded.  I am not afraid
of you, Anselm.  I am afraid of myself.  If I went now
with your sister....  Ah, you have understood what it
meant....  We both know the tyrannical limitations of
life.  And then, do what we would—nothing could give us
back the past—nothing.'

Her voice failed her, and there was silence for a little
time.

'I must abide by your decision,' he said in a low voice.

Many thoughts had crowded into her mind that threatened
to sweep away her composure.  But the necessity of saying
something of all she owed to him nerved her.

'Will it comfort you at all to know that you have been
in truth my best friend?  In the days of my utmost weakness
and despair you led me back from the brink of insanity....
You were entirely forgetful of self, kind with the
delicate kindness of a chivalrous nature—you must hear
me.  You helped me day by day, and yet kept out of my
way.  You knew you had only to speak in those dark days,
and I would have gone with you gladly to the ends of the
earth.  No tie, no consideration, would have held me; you
saved me from worse than death....  After all that had
happened, you might well have considered that my life was
yours....  It is so much the creed of the world that a
man's strength does not consist in forbearance—in tender
consideration of a woman's weakness....  Oh my friend,
my friend, can you ever know from what an abyss you
saved me?  A man's life is so much more twofold than a
woman's.  He has his work and his place to fill in the
world.  She has the large leisure of home; and if at her
side the phantom comes of broken vows and duties trampled
under foot, the spring of her life is poisoned at the source.
If our lives were given only for such happiness as we could
clutch——'

He was deeply touched by the pathetic intensity of her
voice—touched, too, by the truth of what she said.  He
knew how the world is strewn with the wrecks of anarchy
in conduct.  He was too close an observer of human affairs
not to know that the wider and deeper a woman's nature is,
the more surely does it suffer under the consciousness of
having, in any crisis of life, chosen what was pleasant rather
than what was right.  And though he held that it would be
as irrational to place all who repudiate the bond of marriage
on the same level as it would be to condemn the legal tie
because of its many and bitter failures, yet, in his calmer,
more detached thoughts, all his experience of things as they
are led him to shrink from the shadow of blame on the one
woman who had exalted and widened his ideal of her sex.
And yet, how well he knew that an open rupture, not only
with the conventional decorums of society, but with a great
law, is infinitely more healthful for a finely-tempered,
sensitive nature than the slow moral corrosion of enforced
companionship with a hopelessly inferior mind!  It was,
under the circumstances, inevitable that he should think
much worse of Ritchie than he deserved.  But he began to
perceive that in the awakening of the strong religious
instinct of her nature Stella might find an antidote against
the more subtle evils of her lot.  Only, all his training, as
well as his inherited instincts on the question, led him to
mistrust the variability of the devotional temperament.
Could this impetus last?—or would it turn into a broken
reed to wound her more incurably than ever before?  Even
in the midst of the dull, deep pain, the sense of an
all-embracing catastrophe, the utter vacuity that for the time
swallowed all which before had been of deep interest to
him, this question rose up—forced itself on him.

'This strong influence that has suddenly taken hold of
you, Stella—are you sure it is something more than a
phantasm that——'

'I am glad you have asked this,' she answered quickly.
'There are some things we cannot well speak of unless we
are sure of sympathy.  The day after I had been in the
church I went again, early in the morning.  I felt smitten
to the very soul—robbed of all the joy and pride of life.
But the moment I looked upon that pale figure nailed on
the cross, and knelt, not to pray, but simply to cry like a
broken-hearted child who has wandered far, far from its
father's house, and comes back too tired and frightened to
do more than creep into a corner—then I knew that though
I may never be an orthodox Catholic, yet the old faith had
so far revived as to be an inspiring rule of life, to give a
vivifying motive to every exertion.  You know, there are
some things, after all, that we can be quite sure of.  We
know, Anselm, you and I, that though our lives are to be
widely sundered——'

Langdale gave a great sigh, which was almost a groan.
At the sound Stella's face flushed faintly, and with an
evident effort at composure she went on:

'Yet the day can never come in which we shall be
indifferent to each other.  And in the same way we may
know, with a conviction beyond dispute, that behind all
the confusion and mystery of life there runs a great sane
purpose with which we may join our wills and lives.  In
the end the most we can hope to do must be limited to a
small patch of the world, and as far as our personal
influence can reach.  To spoil that for the sake of any
happiness——  You know the rough and ready classifications
of the world——'

'I apprehend your meaning, Stella....  Certainly, if
our lives were given us chiefly for happiness, our parting
to-day would be a crime.  Perhaps it is not so.'

'In very truth it is not so,' returned Stella, a glow lighting
up her whole face as she looked steadfastly at her friend.

'And then, when you come out of the church—when you
are in actual contact with the depths of human misery in
this vast city—do you find any clue that satisfies your
conscience and reason why a world, supposed to be under the
loving rule of an omnipotent Creator, should present so
strange a spectacle?'

'In the last three days,' she answered slowly, 'I have
been a good deal with some people who are working among
the poorest and some of the most depraved in the East-End.
Ah, my God, what pictures have burnt themselves into my
memory!—what ineffaceable ones of the faces of young girls
that still keep something of the dewy innocence of
childhood, and yet are engulfed in living death!  Women
unsexed, men without manhood, youth without purity,
childhood that has never known the sanctity of home—yes,
always where there are alleys reeking with bad air, are
courts full of filth, where there are men sodden with drink
and women in shameless rags, there, everywhere, are
children in swarms.  Two nights ago I could not sleep.
They passed before me in endless processions, those
maimed, ruined existences, fit only to be huddled out of
sight—to be imprisoned like lepers, so as to stamp out the
contagion.  At last I could bear it no longer.  I rose up in
the darkness, and fell on my knees.  But I could not pray.
"O God, dost Thou not care at all?"—that was all I could
say over and over, with a stupid, blank amazement.  And
then, all at once—how can I tell you?...'

The tears forced themselves into her eyes.  She was very
pale, and her lips were quivering.  Yet all the time her face
was lit with that grave spiritual light which irradiates the
countenance when the heart is quickened with impersonal
zeal and thought.

'Try and tell me—I want to know,' said Langdale in a
low voice.  His eyes were dim with feelings too poignant to
be borne with clear sight—too deep to be relieved by words.

'I *knew* that this, even this wild, cruel anarchy, was not
born of chaos.  It was the shadow side of the highest
possibilities of our nature.  Because we have power to
aspire to communion with God, so human beings have the
power to fall and be submerged in the black eddies of shame
and pollution.  This was the embodiment of that principle
of evil which everyone who turns away from the pitiful
egoism of self-seeking must strive against—must fight to
subdue.

'Then I saw that other great army of which you have
often spoken to me—the men and women sown broadcast
over the whole land, who, amid all the moral deformity of
life, neither flee from the world nor are sick of it, nor
despair of the capacity of our common nature for those
things which are good and true and of lovely report.  I saw
them: women of lonely lives—often undistinguished,
unknown—yet firm in the constancy of principle, touched with
the gentleness of unweariable love; men of all grades,
enfranchised from the corrupt propensities that make our
race the willing slaves of evil, steadily, constantly working
for the moral renovation of their country—each doing a
little, each helping to stem the tide of human misery.  Here,
a pure-hearted, delicate girl, giving time and thought to
hours of intercourse with rough factory lads and
girls—wakening in a heart here and there the better impulses that
lie dormant, often only because no care nor gentleness has
breathed on the timid seeds and wooed them into life....
Yes, even the little I have seen helped me to estimate how
true was what you once said, that almost all who have any
by-play of time and means take thought for some of those
less fortunately placed.  To touch one or two minds to finer
issues—to rescue one or two lives from the appalling depths
ready to swamp them—this is not a very bold or ambitious
object; and yet to set it before ourselves, we must be sure
that no siren voice has deluded us into making the life of
any fellow-creature more open to the temptations which
beset him, more callous to belief in the goodness of others.
Anselm, when these thoughts swept over me, my heart
throbbed with gratitude to you—with pride in your unselfish
goodness.  It was to you I owed it that the Nessus robe of
passion had not scorched and laid waste my life.'

He was too much moved to trust himself to speak for a
little time.  At last he said slowly:

'I do not think that I will now go to the East....  May
we not return to the old footing of friends? ... Let me see
you from time to time as long as you are in London....'

There was a pleading tone in his voice to which every
fibre of her nature responded.  But her victory over herself
was too hardly won, too insecure, too bitterly steeped in the
struggles that seem to exhaust the very founts of action and
resolve.  She felt too keenly how impossible the tranquillity
of friendship would be for them both for some time to come.

'I think you should go with Amalie—she is very anxious
about the boy.  I want you to go....  And then,' she
added, not meeting his eyes while she said it, 'perhaps in
the time to come we may both find that a new plan of life
opened to us after this parting.'

'If you wish it very much, I will go for your sake,' he
answered.

Then she stood up to bid him farewell.

'There is one question, Stella; will you let me ask it?
You are satisfied that Ritchie knew nothing of the perfidy
practised by his sister?'

'Quite—quite!  He is incapable of so mean an action—least
of all against me.'

She raised her head proudly, and the look on her face cut
him to the soul, and yet consoled him.  Let those who have
solved the contradictions of our inscrutably involved nature
explain the enigma.

There was silence between them for a few moments.
Then he took both her hands in his.  Each looked for a
little into the other's face, and they parted.  A few moments
after Langdale left the hotel he was hailed by an old
friend—a physician—who insisted on carrying him off to
St. James's Hospital, to see a man who mysteriously kept on
living, while every principle known to medical science
clearly proved that he should have died three days
previously.  Stella, in the meantime, was lying prone in a
darkened room, lost to all thought or sensation, except the
consciousness that her life had in very truth passed from
her.  But after a time she remembered that she had
promised Ted to accompany him that evening to see Irvine's
'Macbeth,' and she knew how infinitely disappointed he
would be if she failed to keep the appointment.  She
therefore rose and summoned Maisie to dress her.

We are aided by the limitations of life, as well as by its
rarer hours of illuminating insight.  Habit, Routine,
Custom—these three gray sisters, who in the liquid dew of
youth fill us with languor, with impatient scorn and
rebellion—how softly and securely they lead us by the hand
when the wine-red roses of passion are overblown and
trampled under foot!





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.. _`CHAPTER LVI.`:

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   CHAPTER LVI.

.. vspace:: 2

Three days later Langdale sailed for the East, in company
with his sister.

'It beats me hollow, Stella, to imagine why you didn't go
with them,' said Ritchie that evening, in a tone of wondering
expostulation.  Like all solidly practical people, he disliked
treating fixed arrangements as airy outlines of things not to
be done.  And the thought weighed on him still more, that
Stella would now be so much alone, while he and Farningham
were 'gallivanting about,' as he phrased it, from one
racecourse to another.  The thought of those endless, horsey,
excited crowds, began to weary him in advance.  And then
Stella's new plan of going so often to church, and so much
among the poor, gave Ted a melancholy conviction that she
must be 'feeling very low.'  He had of late noticed that
look again on Stella's face that his acquaintance on board
the *Hindoo Fawn* had, in ignorance of their relationship,
described as being that of a sleep-walker, or a person who
had seen a ghost.  Only along with this there was not that
shrinking avoidance of his society which had so deeply
wounded him for some time before her change of plans.
She did not reply to his observation, but took up a letter
that lay on a table near her, glanced over it, and then looked
up at him, as if about to speak.

Stella had fully decided that Ritchie must ultimately
know all.  The past would be too full of ghostly memories,
too deeply riddled with secret depths, to make their joint
lives tolerable, if he were kept in ignorance of the events
that had brought her to death's door, and had so much
widened the distance between them during the past dark
months.  In the last heart-searching, self-reproachful days,
she had seen how culpable she had been in the old days, in
the careless, irresponsible way in which she had accepted
Ted's homage for so many years.  She realized that if her
own happiness had been secured, as Langdale's wife, Ted's
life would have been wrecked.

'Even as it is——' she thought, with a sinking heart.

And yet the more she strove to see things clearly and
dispassionately, the more convinced she was that his
weakness in the past had nothing of that moral cretinism which
makes the hope of a permanently restored power of will a
fond delusion.

'Who shall find a valiant woman? ... The heart of
her husband trusteth in her....  She will render him good,
and not evil, all the days of her life.' ... Yes, this must
be her aim; and as the days went on, and the passionate
sorrow that had consumed her lost its poignancy, she would
learn to acknowledge—nay, to feel—that even if she could,
she would not have their marriage undone, at the cost of
Ted's misery and probable degradation.

'You married because Laurette behaved worse than a
thief and a liar; and now, Stella, you are broken-hearted.'

She knew so well the direct, uncompromising terms into
which Ted would put the situation.

'No, Ted, I am not broken-hearted, and I would not if I
could go back on our marriage.'  On the day that she could
say this with truth she would tell him all.  Such had been
her resolve.  But on the evening of this day, when life
seemed to be merged into a listless mechanical round, when
all the better possibilities of aspiration, and close sympathy,
and personal joy seemed to have swept by like a vessel in
mid-ocean, while she crouched like a forlorn castaway on a
desolate island, watching the last sunrays fall on the gallant
barque that would soon be lost to sight, she told herself that
such a purpose was idle.

'I can't flatter myself,' went on Ted after a pause, 'that
it is on my account you gave Mrs. Farningham the slip
almost at the last moment.'

He did not speak in an aggrieved tone, but rather with
an accent of wistful inquiry, curiously at variance with his
words.  Stella had almost finished the letter she had taken
up when Ted made this second observation.  It was one
that had reached her on the previous day, from Laurette.
in which she implored Stella that the 'mishap' about
Dr. Langdale's letter might be kept from her brother's
knowledge.

'I can see,' she went on, 'by the way Ted writes, that
as yet he knows nothing.  Dear, dear Stella, this is very
noble and generous of you.  I dare say your dangerous
illness made you see things differently.  I have little doubt
that you will prevent Dr. Langdale, with your usual clear
discrimination, from covering himself with ridicule by any
appeal to law....  After all, people do not marry because
others write or suppress letters.  Still, I candidly admit
that my zeal on Ted's behalf—my fear, too, lest you should
find yourself involved in one of those unhappy entanglements
which wreck all a girl's future prospects—warped
my judgment.  It seems as if there were a *vice de construction*
in our lives which makes affection, and not honour, the
great motive of our actions.

'We are soon to leave for England, and hope to meet you
there.  Dear Stella, let our reunion be that of those who
are not only closely linked by a tender relationship, but also
those who have been dear friends from childhood....
Might it not be possible for us to take a house together for
the rest of the London season?  We shall probably be
there by the middle of June.  Possibly the great mower
Death may render it unnecessary for us to hire a house.
The near prospect of rank and station in Britain—so
crammed with cold decorum for the weaker sex, with
unbounded opportunities of ruin for men, and with fog for
all, if Australian travellers speak truly—makes my heart
yearn more than ever for those I love.

'Your little nephew and niece are clamouring round me.
When I tell them I am writing to Aunt Stella, they clap
their little hands, thinking you are coming; but I tell them
you are far, far away, and that we must come to you and
Uncle Ted.  Dear Talbot is not very well of late—nothing
to be at all anxious about.  In fact, I think it is connected
with his dining so frequently at the Club, with men who,
now that he is on the eve of leaving Australia, are anxious
to show their cordiality.  However, his small ailments
make him only more domesticated, and, I may say,
affectionate.  Perhaps that is why we women are accused of
being so fond of nursing.  "When pain and anguish wring
the brow," etc.  No wonder we love dear Sir Walter.  He
understood us well, with all our foibles, which, in the end,
seem only to endear us all the more to the best sort of men.
By the way, Ted left his "Lady of the Lake" you gave
him at Monico Lodge.  Shall I bring it to you?  But I
forget, there will not be time for a reply.  When I was at
Cannawijera a month ago I thought of your enthusiasm for
the Mallee Scrub.  Seeing it for the last time seemed to
help me to understand your feeling.'

'I had better give Ted this letter to read, and then tell
him all.  What better opportunity can come?  And as for
waiting for an indefinite period——' thought Stella wearily.
She could speak now without tears or faltering.  That
strange feeling of unreality which often follows close on
prolonged emotion had seized her.  It seemed as though
she could speak of herself as calmly as if she were a Japanese
top-spinner, with whose performances she had nothing to
do beyond an amazed looking on.

She glanced up, and found Ted's gaze fixed searchingly
on her face.  When their eyes met he flushed, and said
hurriedly:

'Forgive me, Stella.  You look more dead than alive—and
here am I slanging you like a great muff as I am.'

His quick penitence, when betrayed into any natural
show of impatience at what must appear to him unreasonable
caprice, touched her.  And then that saving recognition
of what was generous and manly in his nature, of what was
faulty in her own, came to her aid.  She would not tell him
in this cold, abrupt fashion the story of a sister's sordid
fraud—of a wife's meditated irretrievable alienation.  The
day must yet come when in the telling she could rob the
tale of its keenest sting.

'You are not slanging me at all, Ted,' she said gently.
'I dare say my conduct appears very silly——'

'Not a bit of it,' answered Ted stoutly.  'And it isn't
Mrs. Farningham I am thinking of so much as you.  She
has her brother.  By Jove! that man has eyes like a hawk.
Did you know that Dustiefoot—you needn't begin to wave
your tail, you young Tory!  I'm not speaking to you—has a
scar on his left paw?  When I went on board with the
Farninghams the doctor came up to me much friendlier
than ever before.  I can't help thinking he had some sort
of a scunner against me.  I expect it was seeing me talking
with those little French rips when you were lying at death's
door, I may say, and his people so much interested in you
they used to send him to inquire sometimes twice a day.
I wonder, though, he didn't send a servant.  He must have
taken some interest on his own account.  But he always
seemed as if he would sooner keep out of my way.  I expect
he thought I was a regular up-and-down fast colonial.
Shows how careful a family man ought to be.  I'll give
Dick a good jawing about it yet.  The moment Langdale
came up this young sea-calf made a tremendous fuss over
him, and the doctor patted him and talked to him, and
then asked him for his scarred paw.  "He hasn't got a
scar," said I.  "My wife is awfully fond of that scallawag.
I believe he's always been more looked after than most
babies."  "Yes, but you know accidents will happen to the
best-beloved dogs," said the doctor.  "I believe Dustiefoot
had an accident once;" and he held up his paw, and sure
enough there is the mark of some hurt.  And then he
said——'

'Oh, Ted, please talk of something else,' said Stella, in a
low voice, touched to the quick with this careless reminiscence
which called up Langdale before her 'with portraiture
and colour so distinct' that his presence seemed to haunt
the room.

'All right,' answered Ted placidly.  'I wonder, though,
you didn't take a little more to Langdale.  He's a good
deal like some of those fellows in front of your poetry-books.
I don't believe he's well.  And I'm sure, Stella,
you're not well.  You make me think of a story about a
girl you told me long ago out of the "Arabian Nights."  I
don't remember her name—but as far as being jolly went,
she hadn't a leg to stand on.'

'Perhaps it was the orphan who was quite broken-hearted,
having no one to befriend her but God,' said Stella,
with a faint smile.

'Oh! but you've got far more to befriend you than that,'
returned Ted, with unconscious irreverence.  'But I'll tell
you what, Stella: I cannot allow you to be poking about so
much among these East-End paupers.  If you want to give
them money and things, why don't you engage some
competent person to do it?  There must be no end of people in
London who would be thankful to go up those filthy stairs
for ten shillings a day or so.'

'Do you think one can do everything by paying money, Ted?'

'Well, if you ask me point-blank, I never thought so
little of what money can do for you as at the present
moment.  Look here!'  As he spoke Ted drew a pocketbook
out of his breast coat-pocket, and extracted from it a
sheet of pale pink note-paper.  'There's your I O U for five
shillings you lost to me at euchre last December
twelve-months.  That night, after I got home, I said to Larry I
would keep this bit of paper till everything I had was
yours.  And now it is; and yet what can I do for you?
Instead of flying round with me on a drag with proper
thoroughbred horses when you go to places, you pick out a
hansom with the screwiest brute you can see, so that you
may go slow and give the animal a spell.  And as for jewels
or dresses, why, you don't spend nearly your own money,
and you've never touched any of your settlements.'

'Well, now I am going to ask you for something, Ted.
Is all you have really mine?'

'Well, you just try!'

'Give me two hundred acres of Strathhaye.'

'But the whole eighty thousand is yours.'

'Oh, that is too much.  Give me two hundred acres to
cut up into little farms——'

'Good Lord!' cried Ted, starting up with such a look of
horror that Stella fairly smiled.  'But you're only making
game of me, Stella!  You are not serious! and is it some of
the paupers you want to put there?' he cried, a new light
breaking in on him.

'Yes; some of the people who come up from the country
hoping to get work.'

'But to put them on Strathhaye, Stella?  You'd hate the
look of them in no time.  Oh, I know the sort of farmers
they make, with awful whales of horses it would turn a
fellow sick to look at, and machinery lying about without
even a shed to cover it!  No, no, Stella!  While you're
feeling rather low and going to church so much, you fancy
you would like to do this; but to fix them on your own
estate instead of well-bred merinoes!  You'd be disgusted
with them in no time.'

'Well, Ted, you are only judging me by my past character,
I know.'

'Now, Stella, don't begin to talk of yourself in such a
fashion.  Your character indeed!'

'Why, haven't I got any?' said Stella, smiling once
again.

'Not in that way.  You hear precious little about
people's characters till they want to make themselves out
better or worse than they are.  When you want to speak
against yourself you must find someone that knows a little
less about you.'

'Well, I did think that with such a large freehold
estate——' said Stella slowly.

'Now, I'll tell you what I'll do,' said Ted suddenly.
'There's two hundred and fifty acres of good agricultural
land to be in the market next January, at Caradoc, about
fifteen miles away from Strathhaye.  I'll buy it for you,
every acre, and you can put the paupers there.'

'Don't call them paupers, Ted.  The Schulz family in
Berlin, and others like them in London, self-respecting,
thrifty people, but with such heavy odds against them that
they must go to the wall in the Old World—these are the
kind of families we should help.'

It was a long time since Ritchie had heard Stella speak
with so much animation.

'Well, you know you have a lot of money of your own to
do what you like with,' he began.

'It will be an investment,' answered Stella.

'At first you'd better make up your mind to lose four per
cent.,' put in Ted.

'No, I won't lose,' she answered confidently.  'You see,
you don't know the people, Ted.'

'That just reminds me of what you said once when you
were telling me a yarn up in the Moreton Bay fig-tree at
Fairacre.  It's ages ago, when you were about thirteen——'

'Oh, Ted!—so long ago as that?'

'Well, it's eleven years ago.  You used to sit in the fork
of the tree with your back against the trunk, with a book;
and I would tease you till you told me a story; and
sometimes you would make it so creepy I was sorry I asked
for it.  This time—I remember it well, because it was a
week before your father died,' said Ted, lowering his
voice—'you looked down towards the sea, and you said there
was a ship sailing, sailing away, and at last it came to the
strangest country.  The people had such small souls that at
the Day of Judgment they couldn't be found.  The Lord
sent squads of angels to look for them, but not one could
they fossick out.  And there the skeletons had to sit each
on its own grave, and the moonlight playing through their
bones.  That was the only light, and not a blade of grass or
a drop of water!'

'Oh, Ted!—are you sure I told you all that?' said Stella
incredulously.

'Why, who else could ever think of such things?' returned
Ted with assured confidence.  'There was never a sound
to be heard but when a big willy-willy went rushing over the
valleys—it was all valleys, full of graves, with skeletons sitting
on them, waiting for the souls that couldn't be found.  When
the storms blew, the air was thick with bones, driven here
and there, and at last left in heaps, to get together as well
as they could.  They used to be so tired and bruised for a
long time, they could not move.  But at last they began to
put themselves together.  And that was the only time they
could speak.  "You have taken part of my backbone," one
would say to the other; "This rib doesn't belong to me;"
"I am all here but my left leg;" "Who has got my skull?"
That last was too much for me.  I said, if the skull was
missing, the skeleton couldn't speak.  But you said I knew
nothing about the country.  I had never been there.  And
not only so, but the bone of the little toe could speak far
better than a skull.  That put the "kybosh" on me completely.'

'You have got a curious memory, Ted,' said Stella, who
had listened with languid wonder to this recital.  'You
never seem to remember much of books you read.'

'No; but you tell me things out of them, and I'll
remember fast enough.  You'll have to come back to that,
Stella—keep a school with only me....  Is that a letter
from Larry?'

'Yes; but I do not think I can let you read it,' answered
Stella, taking it up.  She was thankful that she had resisted
the impulse which had come over her in connection with it.
'They will be in London next month—and, Ted, it may
seem selfish to take you away from England when the
racing season is at its height, but I want to get away
before Larry comes.'

'I'll take you to-morrow wherever you wish to go, Stella,'
answered Ted.  'All these months I've been perfectly sick
of being able to do nothing for you.  As for racing, I told
you more than a year ago I was getting full up of it.'

A fortnight later they left for Switzerland, and sailed for
Australia early in November.

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   THE END.

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   BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD
   *St. de Hy.*

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