As July drew near its latter days, the change in her looks passed the perceptible stage to the noticeable. Her colouring had been called her best point by some, her only good one by others (possibly according to the sex of the critic); yet now her face was wholly void of colour. The flower-like complexion was, if possible, more delicate than before, but now it resembled the waxen lily instead of the glowing wild rose. Even the full, firm lips were pale and pinched. Her eyes were either dull or restless, and their dark setting seemed more prominent: shadows lay below them where no shadows should have been. For the rest, any real activity of mind or body seemed as impossible to her as any real repose; she appeared to have gained only in thoughtfulness — as indicated by silence. On fine days, though the river could not charm her, she would dress for walking, and come back tired out in twenty minutes. On wet ones she divided her time between the first few pages of a book, and the first few bars of a waltz; between the two she never got any farther in either. Perhaps experience had taught her that all the tune of a waltz is at the beginning; and I suppose she failed to “get into” her novels. Her ear was sensitive, attuned to her temper; common sounds startled her painfully; the unexpected opening or shutting of a door went far to unhinge both nerves and temper. The latter, indeed, was less sweet at this period than ever in her life before, and none knew it so well as she herself, who bore the brunt of it in her own heart.
None of these signs escaped the watchful eyes about her. But while, on the one hand, Mrs. Parish noted them with incomplete sympathy and impartial confidence in the justice of consequences (believing that Alice’s indecision had brought this on her own head, and that a little uncertainty would do her no harm), the father’s heart became more and more distressed as each new symptom was made plain to him. He was both worried and perplexed. He called in a local doctor. That move made her ill-health no better, and her ill-temper worse. What, then, could the father do? Always loving and indulgent — never intimate — with his child, it had been his practice, when serious matters arose, to employ the ambassador always at hand; thus there had never, during all the years, been a word of contention between father and daughter; and to this practice the father resorted now.
Late one afternoon they were all three sitting in the garden, when Alice rose, without breaking her long silence, and slowly walked towards the house. The Colonel followed her with his eyes; he held a glowing cigarette between his fingers; the distance was short enough, but before Alice reached the house the cigarette was out.
“Look at her now! Is that the step of a healthy girl? See her climb those six steps — they might be the top flight of St. Paul’s! Mrs. Parish” — with sudden decision— “Mrs. Parish, you must see to the root of this matter before it gets any worse. I must know exactly what is at the bottom of it. I desire you to speak to Alice, for I cannot. You understand me, I think? Very well, then, pray watch your opportunity.”
The very next morning the housekeeper came to the study. She had spoken to Alice. She did not require much questioning.
“Oh, as to young Mr. Richard. I could elicit nothing — nothing at all. He seemed quite outside her thoughts.”
Mrs. Parish made this statement with a smack of satisfaction. Colonel Bristo, however, must have given it a construction of his own, for he did not look displeased. He simply said:
“Well?”
“Well, she was almost as reticent about Mr. Miles; though we know what that signifies!” (But here the Colonel shook his head.) “What she did say, however, is not worth repeating.”
“Still, I should like to hear it.”
“It does not affect matters in the least.”
“Pray go on, Mrs. Parish.”
“Of course, if you insist, Colonel Bristo! Well, then, Alice tells me that, two days after Mr. Miles went, a shabby kind of woman had the impudence to walk into the garden, accost her, and ask if Mr. Miles (how she had got his name, one cannot tell) was still here. Alice said ‘No,’ and was weak enough to give her money, because she seemed wretched, she says, and so got rid of her.”
“One of the beggars he helped,” said the Colonel. “He used to have long conversations with them, and tell them to emigrate.”
“Why, to be sure!” cried Mrs. Parish, at once enlightened and relieved. And now she was as eager to tell the rest as before she had been slow to speak. “The very next day after that, Alice saw a man watching the house from the tow-path. He seemed to be there all day; so at last she rowed across and asked him if he wanted anyone. He said, ‘Yes, the gentleman who’s been staying there; where is he?’ She told him he was on his way back to Australia. The man did not seem to believe it. In the end she gave money to him too, and soon she saw him go.”
“Another of his beggars!” laughed Colonel Bristo. “Their name is legion, no doubt, and we shall see more of them yet. For the credit of the Mother Country, we can’t shut the door in their faces after a Colonial has given them a taste of real downright generosity. Poor Miles!”
“Well, Alice, for her part, seems ready enough to carry on his works of charity,” said Mrs. Parish, adroitly, with an emphasis ever so slight on the possessive pronoun.
The Colonel smiled. Then he thanked her graciously for the service.
“I am extremely obliged to you, Mrs. Parish, for the hundredth time. You have saved me yet another interview. That is, I should have made it awkward, but you, with your usual tact, have got at precisely what I wanted. I am perfectly satisfied.”
Mrs. Parish bowed. She was not a little pleased with the compliment to her tact, on which she plumed herself above everything; but her pleasure was less than her surprise — that the Colonel should be so easily satisfied! She moved with dignity to the door. As she was shutting it, the Colonel rubbed his hands and exclaimed aloud:
“It is Dick!”
The door, which was at that moment swinging to, stopped, trembled, then shut with a vicious little bang. The Colonel could make a near enough guess at the expression of the face on the other side of it. He smiled benevolently.
“Silly lady! She thinks I have turned against my friend Miles — whom, by the way, she worships on her own account. Far from it, I miss him abominably. But when it comes to a choice between him and Dick — and where my girl is concerned — why, then, I confess, I’m all for the younger man and the older suitor.”
XVII
“MILES’S BEGGARS”
Iris Lodge, during the first half of August, became for once gay, not to say festive — in a small way, as befitted a first experiment. Maurice managed to wrest his hard-earned annual holiday from the bank, and, on the very first day of the fourteen allotted him, back came Dick from abroad, bringing with him his friend Flint. After a remarkable display of obstinacy on this gentleman’s part, Dick had at last prevailed upon him to leave his tenants to their own devices for one more week, and tarry by the Thames. But, though this was brought about by dint of hard persuading, in the end Mr. Flint somehow saw his way to doubling the week which at first he had grudgingly promised.
In his excuse it can only be urged that he enjoyed himself beyond expectation. The weather was very nearly faultless, the river at its best, formalities few, and the ladies — charming. The lawn-tennis court — though several inches short — was quite of the billiard-table order. The music in the evenings, though it did not run in a man’s head, possessed a certain odd, mysterious, soothing, saddening, pleasing quality, that silenced one at the time, and left an impression that Miss Edmonstone could make her piano speak, if she tried. Perhaps it was classical music; very likely Chopin. Lastly — and last thing — the spirituous nightcap, though approached in a spirit of moderation, had a way of imparting the proper Eucalyptian flavour to all reminiscences of life among the gum-trees. Could there be better conditions for a pleasant visit? Flint asked himself. And if the house was the smallest he had ever stayed in, would not Castle Flint seem cheerless, vast, sepulchral, by comparison?
But indeed they were wonderfully bright and happy day
s: the ones on the river, when, in the bushmen’s phrase, they all “camped,” and Flint made tea in true bush fashion, and Dick a “damper” which no one but bushmen could eat; the afternoons at tennis, spent in wonderfully keen, if not deeply scientific, struggles; the morning at Hampton Court, when Flint owned himself completely “bushed” in the Maze, and when they were all photographed on the Green, bringing away with them the atrocious result in a gilt frame; and the day when Dick hired the four-in-hand (it created some sensation in the little road) and drove them all through Chertsey and Ascot, to Windsor, and back by Staines and Shepperton.
Certainly any outsider must have voted them a jovial, light-hearted party, without a serious care to divide among them; and even Flint, who had some power of observation, and also knew his friend thoroughly — even Flint told himself that old Dick had got back his good spirits, and was, in fact, “getting over it.” But Flint did not know. Ever since their hurried interview on the 2nd of July, Dick had been as reticent as he had then been communicative of all that lay nearest his heart.
Yet never for one moment did Dick forget. He had no wish to forget. So long as he could keep his disappointment to himself, deep down within him, he would suffer and smile. For the sake of the others he could not rise in his place at the feast and declare himself the skeleton he felt. They must find it out sooner or later — then let it be later. Here his thoughts were all of his mother and Fanny; they would be heart-broken when he told them of his determination to go back to Australia. But a determination it was, growing more solid day by day, though as yet told only to Colonel Bristo, and that in the unguarded spontaneity of sudden emotion. But as for his people, better tell them just before he went — say the week before, or why not on the very day of sailing? Why make them unhappy before their time, when their happiness in having him back was still boundless?
After all, it would only be a temporary trouble; for Dick had evolved a great scheme for the future, which was this: He would go out and buy a small station in a first-rate district — at arm’s length, indeed, from towns and railroads, but still just in touch with civilisation. Then he would send home for them all. Yes, all. For Maurice would make an ideal book-keeper. Fanny would revel in the life, and Mrs. Edmonstone would certainly prefer it to the small house at Teddington. This plan was conceived, matured, calculated out, and found feasible, during the many long summer nights wherein Dick never closed his eyes, when perhaps it was well that there was this object of focus for his mind.
As for his attitude towards Flint, Dick was well aware that his access of reserve, after the way in which he had unburdened his soul at their first meeting, must appear strangely inconsistent. He had rushed to join his friend on the Continent, travelled with him for nearly a month, and not told him another word of his affairs. It could not be helped; it would be impossible to tell Flint anything of what had followed their first talk at Teddington without making a clean breast of his discovery that Miles the Australian was no other than Sundown the bushranger, and this Dick would not tell a soul unless Miles broke faith with him. Least of all would he confide in Flint, for Flint would be the very first to turn round and call him madman.
Nevertheless the days seemed to chase each other pleasantly enough for one and all, actually doing so for all but one; and, as always happens in such cases, the fortnight drew far too quickly to its close.
“To-day is Thursday — the Twelfth, by-the-bye — and here we are within sight of Sunbury Lock; and on Monday, and ever afterwards, the bank; the blessed bank!”
This cheerful reminder proceeded (one day up the river) from the lips and soul of the man in the stern, who was steering. There was a sympathetic groan from the man in the bows, who was smoking. The working half of the crew received the observation, which was thrown out gratuitously to all, in business-like silence, broken only by the flash of four sculls as one, and the swish of the feather blades through the air. The groan in the bows was followed by a reflection of kindred pathos, delivered in a high key:
“We will call next Monday Black Monday; for to me it means Holyhead, Dublin, Kerry, and tenants! blessed tenants! But not for always,” added Flint suddenly; “I don’t say ‘ever afterwards;’ why should you? Why should I be a slave to my Castle and you to your City? Why shouldn’t we emigrate together?”
No one in the boat could see the speaker’s face; it was impossible to tell whether he was jesting or serious.
“Oh, I’m game!” cried Maurice, very much in earnest at once.
“Well, then, just hold on till I give Castle Flint the sack.”
“Or until it is sacked about your ears,” suggested stroke jerkily. “But what nonsense you two are talking!”
“Not at all, Miss Edmonstone — if you will allow me. You can’t expect a man to live out his life in troubled Ireland when there’s a happy Australia to go to: there, you know, you may combine the blessings of liberty, equality, and Home Rule of the most advanced kind, with the peculiar satisfaction of calling yourself a staunch Tory, and believing it! But as for our friend here, station life would add a year to his life for every year the City is capable of shortening it. He’d make a first-rate jackeroo.”
“What is that?”
“What’s a jackeroo? Oh, a young gentleman — for choice, the newest new chum to be found — who goes to a station to get Colonial experience. He has to work like a nigger, and revels in it, for a bit. If he is a black sheep, and has the antique ideas of the Colonies held by those who sent him out to whiten him, his illusions may last a couple of days; if he has read up Australia on the voyage, they will probably hold out a little longer, while he keeps looking for what his book told him he would find; the fact being that the modern bush life hasn’t yet been done into English. Meanwhile he runs up the horses, rides round boundaries, mends fences, drives sheep to water — if it is a drought — and skins the dead ones, weighs out flour and sugar, cleans harness, camps anywhere, and lives on mutton and damper, and tea.”
“But what does he get for all that?” asked Maurice, with visions of money-bags.
“Rations and experience,” replied Flint promptly. “When he’s admitted to be worth his salt he will be asked to make other arrangements. Then some still newer new chum will be selected for the post, through the introductions he has brought to the stock and station agents, and in his turn will drive his teeth into the dirty work of the station, which the ordinary pound-a-week hands refuse, and so get his Colonial experience!”
“Thanks; I’ll stop where I am,” said Maurice.
“He isn’t fair,” said Dick, speaking for the first time. “You know you aren’t fair, old chap, raking up your own case as typical, when it was exceptional. Jackeroos are treated all right, and paid too, so long as they’re smart and willing — the two things needful. Come, I’ve been a squatter myself, and can’t hear my class run down.”
“You won’t hear me defend the landlords on that ground,” remarked Flint, who had contracted eccentric politics.
“Well,” said Dick, experimentally, “if I go back to it, Maurice shall be my jackeroo, and judge for himself whether you haven’t painted us too black.”
He shipped his oars. Flint was standing up with the boat-hook to pilot them through the open lock-gates.
“Then I’ll ride the boundaries!” cried Fanny, who sat a horse like a leech, but had had no mount for years.
“In that case,” added Flint quietly, “I’ll apply for overseer’s billet, with the right of sacking slack hands.”
For a moment Dick looked really pleased: this jesting about a station in Australia was, so far, feeling the way, and might make matters a trifle easier when the time came. But the smile quickly faded from his face. In truth, on no day during these last weeks had he been so troubled in spirit, so tossed between the cross-currents of conflicting feelings.
That morning he had received two letters, apparently of contrary character: for while the perusal of one gratified him so intensely that he could not help handing it r
ound for them all to see, the mere sight of the other was sufficient to make him thrust the unopened envelope hurriedly into his pocket.
The first letter was indeed a matter for congratulation, for it was the most completely satisfactory, though not the first, of several similar communications which Dick had received since his return from Australia. It was a short note from the editor of the “Illustrated British Monthly,” accepting (for immediate use: a great point) a set of sketches entitled “Home from Australia,” which set forth the humours and trials of a long sea voyage, and were, in fact, simply a finished reproduction of those sketches that had delighted the passengers on board the Hesper. But it was more than a mere formal acceptance: besides enclosing a cheque (in itself a charming feature) to meet the present case, the note contained a complimentary allusion to the quality of the “work,” and a distinct hint for the future. This in a postscript — observing that as Australian subjects were somewhat in demand since the opening of the Colonial Exhibition — he (the editor) would be glad to see anything thoroughly Australian that Mr. Edmonstone might chance to have ready.
Of course the precious note was read aloud, and greeted with cries of delight. Fancy an opening with the “Illustrated British” at this stage! What could be better? And it did look like a real opening. The hero of the moment alone sat silent; the unread letter in his pocket checked his speech; it was from Yorkshire.
“Why did you ever leave us, when you can do so splendidly here at home?” Mrs. Edmonstone asked him, half in regret for the past, half in joy for the future.
Flint saw his friend’s preoccupation, and answered for him.
“He didn’t know it was in him till he got out there, I fancy. I remember him sending his first things to the Melbourne and Sydney papers; and before a year was out, his famous buck-jumping picture was stuck up in every shanty in New South Wales and Victoria.”
“Eh?” said Dick, looking up abruptly. “Oh, they coloured it vilely! What do you say, mother? No, I say, don’t jump to conclusions. How do you know I can do any real good? I’ve been lucky so far, but I’m only at the very, very beginning. I may fail miserably after all. And then where should I be without my little pile?”
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 225
