IN THE WOMB OF FATE.
Mrs. Duff-Scott came for her gossip on Saturday afternoon, and it
was a long one, and deeply interesting to all concerned. The girls
took her to their trustful hearts, and told her their past history
and present circumstances in such a way that she understood them even
better than they did themselves. They introduced her to their entire
suite of rooms, including the infinitesimal kitchen and its gas stove;
they unlocked the drawers and cupboards of the old bureau to show her
their own and their mother's sketches, and the family miniatures, and
even the jewels they had worn the night before, about which she was
frankly curious, and which she examined with the same discriminating
intelligence that she brought to bear upon old china. They chattered
to her, they played to her, they set the kettle on the gas-stove and
made tea for her, with a familiar and yet modest friendliness that
was a pleasant contrast to the attitude in which feminine attentions
were too often offered to her. In return, she put off that armour of
self-defence in which she usually performed her social duties, fearing
no danger to pride or principle from an unreserved intercourse with
such unsophisticated and yet singularly well-bred young women; and she
revelled in unguarded and unlimited gossip as freely as if they had
been her own sisters or her grown-up children. She gave them a great
deal of very plain, but very wholesome, advice as to the necessity
that lay upon them to walk circumspectly in the new life they had
entered upon; and they accepted it in a spirit of meek gratitude that
would have astonished Paul Brion beyond measure. All sorts of delicate
difficulties were touched upon in connection with the non-existent
chaperon and the omnipotent and omnipresent Mrs. Grundy, and not only
touched upon, but frankly discussed, between the kindly woman of the
world who wished to serve them and the proud but modest girls who were
but too anxious to learn of one who they felt was authorised to teach
them. In short, they sat together for more than two hours, and learned
in that one interview to know and trust each other better than some of
us will do after living for two years under the same roof. When at last
the lady called her coachman, who had been mooning up and down Myrtle
Street, half asleep upon his box, to the gate of No. 6, she had made a
compact with herself to "look after" the three sweet and pretty sisters
who had so oddly fallen in her way with systematic vigilance; and
they were unconsciously of one mind, that to be looked after by Mrs.
Duff-Scott was the most delightful experience, by far, that Melbourne
had yet given them.
On the following Monday they went to her house, and spent a ravishing
evening in a beautiful, cosy, stately, deeply-coloured, softly-lighted
room, that was full of wonderful and historical bric-à-brac such as
they had never seen before, listening to Herr Wüllner and three brother
artists playing violins and a violoncello in a way that brought tears
to their eyes and unspeakable emotions into their responsive hearts.
Never had they had such a time as this. There was no Mr. Duff-Scott--he
was away from home just now, looking after property in Queensland;
and no Mrs. Aarons--she was not privileged to join any but large and
comprehensive parties in this select "set." There were no conceited
women to stare at and to snub them, and no girls to sing sickly
ballads, half a note flat. Only two or three unpretentious music-loving
ladies, who smiled on them and were kind to them, and two or three
quiet men who paid them charmingly delicate attentions; nothing that
was unpleasant or unharmonious--nothing to jar with the exquisite music
of a well-trained quartette, which was like a new revelation to them
of the possibilities of art and life. They went home that night in a
cab, escorted by one of the quiet men, whose provincial rank was such
that the landlady curtsied like an English rustic, when she opened
the door to him, and paid her young lodgers marked attentions for days
afterwards in honour of their acquaintance with such a distinguished
individual. And Paul Brion, who was carefully informed by Mrs. M'Intyre
of their rise and progress in the world that was not his world, said
how glad he was that they had been recognised and appreciated for what
they were, and went on writing smart literary and political and social
criticisms for his paper, that were continually proving too smart for
prudent journalism.
Then Mrs. Duff-Scott left Melbourne for a visit to some relations
in Brisbane, and to join her husband on his homeward journey, and
the girls fell back into their old quiet life for a while. It was an
exceedingly simple and homely life. They rose early every morning--not
much after the hour at which their neighbour on the other side of the
wall was accustomed to go to bed--and aired, and swept, and scrubbed
their little rooms, and made their beds, and polished their furniture,
and generally set their dwelling in an exquisite order that is not at
all universal with housewives in these days, but must always be the
instinct of really well-bred women. They breakfasted frugally after the
most of this was done, and took a corresponding meal in the evening,
the staple of both being bread and butter; and at mid-day they saved
"messing" and the smell of cooking about their rooms, and saved also
the precious hours of the morning for their studies, by dining at a
restaurant in the city, where they enjoyed a comfortable and abundant
repast for a shilling apiece. Every day at about ten o'clock they
walked through the leafy Fitzroy and Treasury Gardens, and the bright
and busy streets that never lost their charm of novelty, to the Public
Library, where with pencils and note-books on the table before them,
they read and studied upon a systematic principle until the clock
struck one; at which hour they closed their books and set off with
never-failing appetites in search of dinner. After dinner, if it was
Thursday, they stayed in town for the organ recital at the Town Hall;
but on other days they generally sauntered quietly home, with a new
novel from Mullen's (they were very fond of novels), and made up their
fire, and had a cup of tea, and sat down to rest and chat over their
needlework, while one read aloud or practised her music, until the time
came to lay the cloth for the unfashionable tea-supper at night-fall.
And these countrified young people invariably began to yawn at eight
o'clock, and might have been found in bed and asleep, five nights out
of six, at half-past nine.
So the days wore on, one very much like another, and all very gentle
and peaceful, though not without the small annoyances that beset the
most flowery paths of this mortal life, until October came--until
the gardens through which they passed to and from the city, morning
and afternoon (though there were other and shorter routes to choose
from), were thick with young green leaves and odorous with innumerable
blossoms--until the winter was over, and the loveliest month of the
Australian year, when the brief spring hurries to meet the voluptuous
summer, made even Melbourne delightful. And in October the great
event that was recorded in the annals of the colony inaugurated a new
departure in their career.
On the Thursday immediately preceding the opening of the Exhibition
they did not go to the Library as usual, nor to Gunsler's for their
lunch. Like a number of other people, their habits were deranged and
themselves demoralised by anticipations of the impending festival. They
stayed at home to make themselves new bonnets for the occasion, and
took a cold dinner while at their work, and two of them did not stir
outside their rooms from morn till dewy eve for so much as a glance
into Myrtle Street from the balcony.
But in the afternoon it was found that half a yard more of ribbon was
required to complete the last of the bonnets, and Patty volunteered to
"run into town" to fetch it. At about four o'clock she set off alone
by way of an adjoining road which was an omnibus route, intending to
expend threepence, for once, in the purchase of a little precious time,
but every omnibus was full, and she had to walk the whole way. The
pavements were crowded with hurrying folk, who jostled and obstructed
her. Collins Street, when she turned into it, seemed riotous with
abnormal life, and she went from shop to shop and could not get waited
on until the usual closing hour was past, and the evening beginning
to grow dark. Then she got what she wanted, and set off home by way
of the Gardens, feeling a little daunted by the noise and bustle of
the streets, and fancying she would be secure when once those green
alleys, always so peaceful, were reached. But to-night even the gardens
were infested by the spirit of unrest and enterprise that pervaded the
city. The quiet walks were not quiet now, and the sense of her belated
isolation in the growing dusk seemed more formidable here instead of
less. For hardly had she passed through the gates into the Treasury
enclosure than she was conscious of being watched and peered at by
strange men, who appeared to swarm all over the place; and by the time
she had reached the Gardens nearer home the appalling fact was forced
upon her that a tobacco-scented individual was dogging her steps, as if
with an intention of accosting her. She was bold, but her imagination
was easily wrought upon; and the formless danger, of a kind in which
she was totally inexperienced, gave a shock to her nerves. So that when
presently, as she hurriedly pattered on, hearing the heavier tread and
an occasional artificial cough behind her, she suddenly saw a still
more expeditious pedestrian hastening by, and recognised Paul's light
figure and active gait, the words seemed to utter themselves without
conscious effort of hers--"Mr. Brion!--oh, Mr. Brion, is that you?"
He stopped at the first sound of her voice, looked back and saw her,
saw the man behind her, and comprehended the situation immediately.
Without speaking, he stepped to her side and offered his arm, which
she took for one happy moment when the delightful sense of his
protection was too strong for her, and then--reacting violently from
that mood--released. "I--I am _mortified_ with myself for being such
a fool," she said angrily; "but really that person did frighten me. I
don't know what is the matter with Melbourne to-night--I suppose it is
the Exhibition." And she went on to explain how she came to be abroad
alone at that hour, and to explain away, as she hoped, her apparent
satisfaction in meeting him. "It seems to promise for a fine day, does
it not?" she concluded airily, looking up at the sky.
Paul Brion put his hands in his pockets. He was mortified, too. When he
spoke, it was with icy composure.
"Are you going to the opening?"
"Yes," said Patty. "Of course we are."
"With your swell friends, I suppose?"
"Whom do you mean by our swell friends? Mrs. Duff-Scott is not in
Melbourne, I believe--if you allude to her. But she is not swell. The
only swell person we know is Mrs. Aarons, and she is not our friend."
He allowed the allusion to Mrs. Aarons to pass. "Well, I hope you will
have good seats," he said, moodily. "It will be a disgusting crush and
scramble, I expect."
"Seats? Oh, we are not going to have seats," said Patty. "We are going
to mingle with the common herd, and look on at the civic functions,
humbly, from the outside. _We_ are not swell"--dwelling upon the
adjective with a malicious enjoyment of the suspicion that he had not
meant to use it--"and we like to be independent."
"O yes, I know you do. But you'll find the Rights of Woman not much
good to you to-morrow in the Melbourne streets, I fancy, if you go
there on foot without an escort. May I ask how you propose to take care
of yourselves?"
"We are going," said Patty, "to start very early indeed, and to take
up a certain advantageous position that we have already selected
before the streets fill. We shall have a little elevation above the
heads of the crowd, and a wall at our backs, and--the three of us
together--we shall see the procession beautifully, and be quite safe
and comfortable."
"Well, I hope you won't find yourself mistaken," he replied.
A few minutes later Patty burst into the room where her sisters were
sitting, placidly occupied with their bonnet-making, her eyes shining
with excitement. "Elizabeth, Elizabeth," she cried breathlessly, "Paul
Brion is going to ask you to let him be our escort to-morrow. But you
won't--oh, you _won't_--have him, will you?"
"No, dear," said Elizabeth, serenely; "not if you would rather not. Why
should we? It will be broad daylight, when there can be no harm in our
being out without an escort. We shall be much happier by ourselves."
"Much happier than with _him_," added Patty, sharply.
And they went on with their preparations for the great day that had
been so long desired, little thinking what it was to bring forth.