He did not hear her sigh.
“It’s all very well for you to talk, Tiny! You haven’t to make your peace with anybody — you haven’t to confess that you’ve made a ghastly fool of yourself!”
“Have I not?” exclaimed the girl bitterly.
“I thought you weren’t going to mention his name?” Herbert said in surprise.
“No more I am,” replied Tiny, recovering herself. “So, as you say, it is all very well for me to talk.” And as she turned a ball of fire was balanced on the distant rim of the plain, and the arc above was now a semicircle of crimson, which blended even yet with the lingering shades of night.
Even Herbert was not in all Tiny’s secrets. He never dreamt that she had before her an ordeal far worse than his own. When they sighted the little township where the station buggy always met the coach, he thought her excitement due to obvious and natural causes. The township roofs gleamed in the afternoon sun for half an hour before one could distinguish even a looked-for object, such as a buggy drawn up in the shade at the hotel veranda. Herbert had time to become excited himself, in spite of the ignoble circumstances of his return.
“I see it!” he exclaimed with confidence, at five hundred yards. “And good old Bushman and Brownlock are the pair. I’d spot ‘em a mile off.”
“Can you see who it is in the buggy?” asked Tiny, at two hundred. She was sitting like a mouse between Herbert and the driver.
“I shall in a shake; I think it’s Jack Swift.”
He did not know how her heart was beating. At fifty yards he said, “It isn’t Swift; it’s one of the hands. I’ve never seen this joker before.”
“Ah!” said Tiny, and that was all. Herbert had no ear for a tone.
CHAPTER XXI. A DEAF EAR.
The manager of Wallandoon was harder at work that afternoon than any man on the run. This was generally the case when there was hard work to be done; when there was not, however, Swift had a way of making work for himself. He had made his work to-day. Nothing need have prevented his meeting the coach himself; but it had occurred to Swift that he would be somewhat in the way at the meeting between Mr. Luttrell and his children, while with regard to his own meeting with Christina he felt much nervousness, which night, perhaps, would partly cloak. This, however, was an instinct rather than a motive. Instinctively also he sought by violent labor to expel the fever from his mind. He was absurdly excited, and his energy during the heat of the day was little less than insane. So at any rate it seemed to the youth who was helping him by looking on, while Swift covered in half a tank with brushwood. The tank had been almost dry, but was newly filled by the rains, and the partial covering was designed to delay evaporation. But Swift himself would execute his own design, and thought nothing of standing up to his chest in the water, clothed only in his wide-awake, though he was the manager of the station. The young storekeeper did not admire him for it, though he could not help envying the manager his thick arms, which were also bronzed, like the manager’s face and neck, and in striking contrast to the whiteness of his deep chest and broad shoulders. There had been a change in storekeepers during recent months, a change not by any means for the better.
Near the tank were some brushwood yards, which were certainly in need of repairs, but the need was far from immediate. Swift, however, chose to mend up the fences that night, while he happened to be on the spot, and his young assistant had no choice but to watch him. It was dark when at last they rode back together to the station, silent, hungry, and not pleased with one another; for Swift was one of those energetic people whom it is difficult to help unless you are energetic yourself; and the new storekeeper was not. This youth did little for his rations that day until the homestead was reached. Then the manager left him to unsaddle and feed both horses, and himself walked over to the veranda, whence came the sound of voices.
Mr. Luttrell was lying in the long deck chair which had been procured from a neighboring station, and Herbert was smoking demurely at his side. Christina was not there at all.
“You will find her in the dining room,” Mr. Luttrell said, as his son and the manager shook hands. “She has gone to make tea for you; she means to look after us all for the next few weeks.”
The dining room was at the back of the house, and as Swift walked round to it he stepped from the veranda into the heavy sand in which the homestead was planted. He could not help it. His love had grown upon him since that short week with her, nine months before. He felt that if his eyes rested upon her first he could take her hand more steadily. So he stood and watched her a moment as she bent over the tea table with lowered head and busy fingers, and there was something so like his dreams in the sight of her there that he almost cried out aloud. Next instant his spurs jingled in the veranda. She raised her head with a jerk; he saw the fear of himself in her eyes — and knew.
It did not blind him to her haggard looks.
When they had shaken hands he could not help saying, “It is evident that the old country doesn’t agree with you, as you feared.” And when it was too late he would have altered the remark.
“Seeing that it’s six weeks since I left it, and that I have been traveling night and day since I landed, you are rather hard on the old country.”
So she answered him, her fingers in the tea caddy, and her eyes with them. The lamplight shone upon her freckles as Swift studied her anxiously. Perhaps, as she hinted, she was only tired.
“I say, I can’t have you making tea for me!” Swift exclaimed nervously. “You are worn out, and I am accustomed to doing all this sort of thing for myself.”
“Then you will have the kindness to unaccustom yourself! I am mistress here until papa is fit to be moved.”
And not a day longer. He knew it by the way she avoided his eyes. Yet he was forced to make conversation.
“Why do you warm the teapot?”
“It is the proper thing to do.”
“I never knew that!”
“I dare say it isn’t the only thing you never knew. I shouldn’t wonder if you swallowed your coffee with cold milk?”
“Of course we do — when we have coffee.”
“Ah, it is good for you to have a housekeeper for a time,” said Christina cruelly, she did not know why.
“It’s my firm belief,” remarked Swift, “that you have learnt these dodges in England, and that you did not detest the whole thing!”
The words had a far-away familiar sound to Christina, and they were spoken in the pointed accents with which one quotes.
“Did I say I should detest the whole thing?” asked Christina, marking the tablecloth with a fork.
“You did; they were your very words.”
“Come, I don’t believe that.”
“I can’t help it; those were your words. They were your very last words to me.”
“And you actually remember them?”
She looked at him, smiling; but his face put out her smile, and the wave of compassion which now swept over hers confirmed the knowledge that had come to him with her first frightened glance.
The storekeeper, who came in before more was said, was the unconscious witness of a well-acted interlude of which he was also the cause. He approved of Miss Luttrell at the tea tray, and was to some extent recompensed for the hard day’s work he had not done. He left her with Swift on the back veranda, and they might have been grateful to him, for not only had his advent been a boon to them both at a very awkward moment, but, in going, he supplied them with a topic.
“What has happened to my little Englishman?” Christina asked at once. “I hoped to find him here still.”
“I wish you had. He was a fine fellow, and this one is not.”
“Then you didn’t mean to get rid of my little friend?”
“No. It’s a very pretty story,” Swift said slowly, as he watched her in the starlight. “His father died, and he went home and came in for something; and now that little chap is actually married to the girl he used to talk about!”
Tiny was silent for some moments. Then she laughed.
“So much for my advice! His case is the exception that proves my rule.”
“I happen to remember your advice. So you still think the same?”
“Most certainly I do.”
He laughed sardonically. “You might just as well tell me outright that you are engaged to be married.”
The girl recoiled.
“How do you know?” she cried. “Who has told you?”
“You have — now. Your eyes told me twenty minutes ago.”
“But it isn’t true! Nobody knows anything about it! It isn’t a real engagement yet!”
“I have no doubt it will be real enough for me,” answered Swift very bitterly; and he moved away from her, though her little hands were stretched out to keep him.
“Don’t leave me!” she cried piteously. “I want to tell you. I will tell you now, if you will only let me.”
He faced about, with one foot on the veranda and the other in the sand.
“Tell me,” he said, “if it is that old affair come right; that is all I care to know.”
“It is; but it hasn’t come right yet — perhaps it never will. If only you would let me tell you everything!”
“Thank you; I dare say I can imagine how matters stand. I think I told you it would all come right. I am very glad it has.”
“Jack!”
But Jack was gone. In the starlight she watched him disappear among the pines. He walked so slowly that she fancied him whistling, and would have given very much for some such sign of outward indifference to show that he cared; but no sound came to her save the chirrup of the crickets, which never ceased in the night time at Wallandoon. And that made her listen for the champing of the solitary animal in the horse yard, until she heard it, too, and stood still to listen to both noises of the night. She remembered how once or twice in England she had seemed to hear these two sounds, and how she had longed to be back again in the old veranda. Now she was back. This was the old, old veranda. And those two old sounds were beating into her brain in very reality — without pause or pity.
“Why, Tiny,” said Herbert later, “this is the second time to-day! I believe you can sleep on end like a blooming native-companion. You’re to come and talk to the governor; he would like you to sit with him before we carry him into his room.”
“Would he?” Tiny cried out, and a moment later she was kneeling by the deck chair and sobbing wildly on her father’s breast.
“Just because I told her she’d dish herself,” remarked Herbert, looking on with irritation, “she’s been and gone and done it. That’s still her line!”
CHAPTER XXII. SUMMUM BONUM.
For a month Christina declined to leave her father’s side, much against his will, but the girl’s will was stronger. She was as though tethered to the long deck chair until the lame man became able to leave it on two sticks. Then she flew to the other extreme.
North of the Lachlan the recent rains had been less heavy than in Lower Riverina. On Wallandoon less than two inches had fallen, and by February it was found necessary to resume work at the eight-mile whim. But the whim driver had gone off with his check when the rain gave him a holiday, and he had never returned. There was a momentary difficulty in finding a man to replace him, and it was then that Miss Tiny startled the station by herself volunteering for the post. At first Mr. Luttrell would not hear of the plan, but the manager’s opinion was not asked, and he carefully refrained from giving it, while Herbert (who was about to be intrusted with a mob of wethers for the Melbourne market) took his sister’s side. He pointed out with truth that any fool could drive a whim under ordinary circumstances, and that, as Tiny would hardly petition to sleep at the whim, the long ride morning and evening would do her no harm. Mr. Luttrell gave in then. He had tried in vain to drive the young girl from his side. She had watched over him with increasing solicitude, with an almost unnatural tenderness. She had shown him a warmer heart than heretofore he had known her to possess, and an amount of love and affection which he felt to be more than a father’s share. He did not know what was the matter, but he made guesses. It had been his lifelong practice not to “interfere” with his children; hence the earliest misdeeds of his daughter Tiny; hence, also, the academic career of his son Herbert. Mr. Luttrell put no questions to the girl, and none concerning her to her brother, which was nice of him, seeing that her ways had made him privately inquisitive; but he took Herbert’s advice and let Christina drive the eight-mile whim.
The experiment proved a complete success, but then plain whim driving is not difficult. Christina spent an hour or so two or three times a day in driving the whim horse round and round until the tank was full, after which it was no trouble to keep the troughs properly supplied. The rest of her time she occupied in reading or musing in the shadow of the tank; but each day she boiled her “billy” in the hut, eating very heartily in her seclusion, and delighting more and more in the temporary freedom of her existence, as a boy in holidays that are drawing to an end. The whim stood high on a plain, the wind whistled through its timbers, and each evening the girl brought back to the homestead a higher color and a lighter step. In these days, however, very little was seen of her. She would come in tired, and soon secrete herself within four newspapered walls; and she went out of her way to discourage visitors at the whim. Of this she made such a point that the manager, on coming in earlier than usual one afternoon, was surprised when Herbert, whom he met riding out from the station, informed him that he was on his way to the eight-mile to look up the whim driver. Herbert seemed to have something on his mind, and presently he told Swift what it was. He had awkward news for Tiny, which he had decided to tell her at once and be done with it. But he did not like the job. He liked it so little that he went the length of confiding in Swift as to the nature of the news. The manager annoyed him — he had not a remark to make.
Herbert rode moodily on his way. He was sorry that he had spoken to Swift (whose stolid demeanor was a surprise to him, as well as an irritation); he had undoubtedly spoken too freely. With Swift still in his thoughts, Luttrell was within a mile of the whim, and cantering gently, before he became aware that another rider was overtaking him at a gallop; and as he turned in his saddle, the manager himself bore down upon him with a strange look in his good eyes.
“I want you to let me — tell Tiny!” Jack Swift said hoarsely, as Herbert stared. Jack’s was a look of pure appeal.
“You?”
“Yes —— You understand?”
“That’s all right! I thought I couldn’t have been mistaken,” said Herbert, still looking him in the eyes. “By ghost, Jack, you’re a sportsman!”
He held out his hand, and Swift gripped it. In another minute they were a quarter of a mile apart; but it was Swift who was riding on to the whim, very slowly now, and with his eyes on the black timbers rising clear of the sand against the sky. He could never look at them without hearing words and tones that it was still bitter to remember; and now he was going — to break bad news to Tiny? That was his undertaking.
He found the whim driver with her book in the shadow of the tank.
“Good-afternoon,” Christina said very civilly, though her eyebrows had arched at the sight of him. “Have you come to see whether the troughs are full, or am I wanted at the homestead?”
“Neither,” said Swift, smiling; “only the mail is in, and there are letters from England.”
“How good of you!” exclaimed the girl, holding out her hand.
Swift was embarrassed.
“Now you will pitch into me! I haven’t seen the letters, and I don’t know whether there is one for you: but I met Herbert, and he told me he had heard from your sister; and — and I thought you might like to hear that, as I was coming this way.”
“It is still good of you,” said Christina kindly; and that made him honest.
“It isn’t a bit good, because I came this way to speak to you about something else.”
“Really?”
“Yes, because one sees so little of you now, and soon you will be going. The truth is something has been rankling with me ever since the night you arrived — nothing you said to me; it was my own behavior to you — —”
“Which wasn’t pretty,” interrupted Tiny.
“I know it wasn’t; I have been very sorry for it. When you offered to tell me about your engagement I wouldn’t listen. I would listen now!”
“And now I shouldn’t dream of telling you a word,” Tiny said, staring coolly in his face; “not even if I were engaged.”
“Well, it amounts to that,” Swift told her steadfastly, for he knew what he meant to say, and was not to be deterred by the snubs and worse to which he was knowingly laying himself open.
“Pray how do you know what it amounts to?”
“On your side, at any rate, it amounts to an engagement; for you consider yourself bound.”
“Upon my word!” cried Tiny hastily. “Do you mind telling me how you come to know so much about my affairs?”
“I am naturally interested in them after all these years.”
“How very kind of you! How interested you were when I foolishly offered to tell you myself! So you have been talking me over with Herbert, have you?”
“We have spoken about you to-day for the first time; that is why I’m here.”
Christina was white with anger.
“And I suppose,” she sneered, “that you have told him things which I have forgotten, and which you might have forgotten as well!”
“I don’t think you do suppose that,” Swift said gently. “No, he merely told me about your engagement.”
“Then why do you want me to tell you?”
“Because you alone can tell me what I most want to know.”
“Oh, indeed!”
“Yes — whether you are happy!”
She had found her temper, which enabled her to put a keener edge on the words, “That, I should say, is not your business”; and she stared at Swift coldly where he stood, with his hands behind him, looking down upon her without wincing.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 34
