IN HONOR BOUND.
Aboard the _Ballaarat_ Christina committed a new eccentricity, but it
may be well to state at once, a perfectly harmless one. She confided in
another girl--a practice which Tiny had avoided all her life. And this
very girl had offended her at first sight by looking aggressively happy
when the boat sailed and all nice women were in tears.
There had been a time when Christina seldom cried, but in England she
had grown very soft in some ways, and she looked her last at it, and at
the snow that had fallen in the night as if to please her, through
blinding tears. She had never in her life felt more acutely wretched
than when saying good-by to Ruth and Erskine, and her sorrow was
heightened by the feeling that she had been both unkind and ungrateful
to Ruth, to whom she clung for forgiveness at the last moment. The
reason why her parting words were jocular, though broken, was because
the sight of an honest, smiling face, which might have blushed for
smiling then, sent a fleam of irritation through her heart that awoke
the latent mischief in her wet eyes.
"I do wish you would ask Erskine to throw a snowball at that depressing
person," she whispered to Ruth, "who does nothing but laugh and look
really happy! If it was only put on for the sake of her friends I could
forgive her; but it isn't. Tell him I mean it--there's no fun in me
to-day; and you may also tell him that it would have been only brotherly
of him to kiss me on this occasion, when we may all be going to the
bottom!"
Erskine, who had crossed the gangway before his wife, so that she need
not feel that he overheard her final words to her own kin, shook his
head at Tiny when Ruth joined him on the quay. But his smile was
lifeless; there was no fun in him either to-day. He drew his wife's arm
through his own, and Tiny saw the last of them standing together thus.
They stood in snow and mud, but the railway shed behind them was a great
sheet of unsullied whiteness, softly edging the bright December sky, and
Christina never forgot her first glimpse of the snow and her last of
Ruth and Erskine. When their figures were gone and only the snow was
left for Christina's eyes, they filled afresh, and she broke hastily
from Herbert, who was himself uncommonly dejected. She hurried
unsteadily to her cabin, to find her cabin companion singing softly to
herself as she unstrapped her rugs; for her cabin companion was, of
course, the odiously cheerful person who already on deck had done
violence to Christina's feelings.
Thus the acquaintance began in a particularly unpromising manner; but
the cheerful person turned out to be as bad a sailor as Christina was a
good one, and she met with much practical kindness at Christina's hands,
which had a clever, tender way with them, though in other respects the
good sailor was not from the first so sympathetic. It is harder than it
ought to be to sympathize with the seasick when one is quite well one's
self; still Christina found it impossible not to admire her
extraordinary companion, who kept up her spirits during a whole week
spent in her berth, and was more cheerful than ever at the end of it,
when she could scarcely stand. Then Christina expressed her admiration,
likewise her curiosity, and received a simple explanation. The cheerful
person was on her way to Colombo and the altar-rails. Her _trousseau_
was in the hold.
The two became exceeding fast friends, and their friendship was founded
on mutual envy. Tiny was envied for the various qualities which made her
greatly admired on board, for that admiration itself, and for the marked
manner in which she paid no heed to it; and she envied her friend a very
ordinary love story, now approaching a very ordinary end. The cheerful
girl was plain, unaccomplished, and not at all young. But there was one
whom she loved better than herself; she was properly engaged; she was
happy in her engagement; her soul was settled and at peace. Also she was
good, and Christina envied her far more than she envied Christina, who
would listen wistfully to the commonplace expression of a commonplace
happiness, but was herself much more reserved. It was only when the
other girl guessed it that she admitted that she also was "as good as
engaged." The other girl clamored to know all about it; and ultimately,
in the Indian Ocean, she discovered that Christina was not the least in
love with the man to whom she was as good as engaged. Then this honest
person spoke her mind with extreme freedom, and Christina, instead of
being offended, opened her own heart as freely, merely keeping to
herself the man's name and never hinting at his high degree. She
declared that she was morally bound to him, adding that she had treated
him badly enough already; her friend ridiculed the bond, and told her
how she would be treating him worse than ever. Christina argued--it was
curious how fond she was of arguing the matter, and how she allowed
herself to be lectured by a stranger. But these two were not strangers
now; the cheerful girl was the best friend Tiny had ever made among
women. They parted with a wrench at Colombo, where Tiny saw the other
safely into the arms of a gentleman of a suitably happy and ordinary
appearance; and so one more friend passed in and out of the young girl's
life, leaving a deeper mark in the three weeks than either of them
suspected.
The rest of the voyage dragged terribly with Christina, which is an
unusual experience for the prettiest girl aboard an Australian liner;
only on this voyage the prettiest girl was also the most unsociable.
Beyond her late companion (whose berth remained empty to depress
Christina whenever she entered the cabin) Miss Luttrell had formed few
acquaintances and no friendships between London and Colombo; between
Colombo and Melbourne she simply preyed upon herself. Herbert
remonstrated with her, and the third officer--who had been fourth on the
boat in which they had come over--was excessively interested,
remembering the difference six months earlier. Then, indeed, Christina
had found a good deal to say to all the officers, including the captain,
whom she had chaffed notoriously; but now she would stay out late and
alone on the starlit deck without ever breaking the rules by conversing
with the officer of the watch (her pet trick formerly), and only the
third, who knew her of old, had the right to bid her good-day. Tiny's
cheerful friend had left her wretched and apprehensive. She saw the
Southern Cross rise out of the Southern Sea without a thrill of welcome,
but rather with a vague dismay; from the after-rail she said good-by to
the Great Bear with a shudder at the thought of seeing it again. Neither
end of the earth presented a very peaceful prospect to Christina as she
hovered between the two on the steamer's deck. She had quite made up her
mind to return to England, however, and to reward Lord Manister's
long-suffering docility by marrying him at the end of the six months.
Meanwhile she would enjoy Australia and tell only one of her friends
there. One she must tell, and with her own lips, in case she should be
misjudged. And thinking not a little of her own justification, she
invented a small sophistry with which to defend herself as occasion
might arise. She argued that two men were in love with her, that she
herself was in love with neither, but that she liked one of them too
well to marry him without love. Therefore, she said, the easiest way out
of it was to marry the other, who not only had less in him to satisfy,
but who had more to give in place of real happiness. She was proud of
this argument. She was sorry it had not occurred to her before stopping
at Colombo--forgetting that she had told her friend of only one man who
was in love with her. But the heart starves on sophistry with nothing to
it; and with Christina the voyage dragged cruelly to its end.
But the moment she landed in Melbourne a good thing happened to
her--she was snatched out of herself. A common shock and anxiety awaited
both Christina and Herbert Luttrell: they found their mother in tears
over a piece of very bad news from Wallandoon. It seemed that Mr.
Luttrell had gone up to the station the week before to choose the site
for a well which he was about to sink at considerable expense, and that
he was now lying at the old homestead with a broken leg, the result of a
buggy accident with a pair of young horses. He was able to write with
his own hand in pencil, and he mentioned that Swift had fetched a
surgeon from the river in the quickest time ever known; that the surgeon
had set the leg quite successfully, so that there was no occasion for
anxiety, though naturally he should be unable to leave Wallandoon for
some weeks. He expressed forcibly the hope that his wife would not think
of joining him there; she was not strong enough, and he needed no
attention. Nevertheless, had the _Ballaarat_ arrived one day later, Mrs.
Luttrell would have gone. Her two children were in time to restrain her,
but only by undertaking to go instead. Before they could realize that
they had spent an afternoon and a night in Melbourne they had left the
city and had embarked on an inland voyage of five hundred miles up
country.
So their first full day ashore was spent in a railway carriage; but all
that night the stars were in their eyes, and the gum trees racing by on
either hand, and the warm wind fanning their faces, because Tiny would
never travel inside the coach. They were back in Riverina. The Murray
coiled behind them; the Murrumbidgee lay before. And the night after
that they were creeping across the desert of the One Tree Plain, with
the Lachlan lying ahead and the Murrumbidgee left behind. Here the
leather-hung coach labored in the mud, for the Lachlan district was
suffering before it could profit from a rather heavy rainfall three days
old; and the driver flogged seven horses all night long instead of
mildly chastening five, and the girl at his side could not have slept if
she had tried, but she did not try. To her the night seemed too good to
miss. The stars shone brilliantly from rim to rim of the unbroken plain,
and upward from the overflowing crab-holes, and even in the flooded
ruts, where the coach wheels split and scattered them like quicksilver
beneath the thumb. There was no conversation on the coach. On the eve
of facing his father Herbert was rehearsing his defense, while Tiny was
just reveling in the night, and feeling very happy, so she said.
For a couple of hours before dawn they rested at Booligal. But Booligal
is notorious for its mosquitoes, and there had been three inches of rain
there, so the rest was a mockery. Tiny had a bed to lie down on, but she
did not lie long. She was found by Herbert (who smoked six pipes in
those two hours), leaning against one of the veranda posts as if asleep
on her feet, but with eyes fixed intently upon a dull, reddening arc on
the very edge of the darkling plain.
"By the time we get there," said Herbert severely, "you'll be just about
dished! What on earth are you doing out here instead of taking a spell
when you can get it?"
"I'm watching for the sun," murmured Christina, without moving. "It's a
regular Australian dawn; you never saw one like it in England. Here the
sun gets up in the middle of the night, and there he very often doesn't
get up at all. Oh, but it's glorious to be back--don't _you_ think so,
old Herbs?"
"I might--if it wasn't for the governor."
Tiny flushed with shame. She had forgotten the accident. Being reminded
of it she turned her back on the sunrise in deep contrition, but she had
not taken Herbert's meaning.
"I funk facing him," said he gloomily. "I have nothing to say for
myself, and if I had a fellow couldn't say it with the poor governor
lying on his back."
"Poor old Herbs!" said Tiny kindly. "I don't think you have much to
fear, however. It was our mistake in wanting you to go to Cambridge when
you'd been your own boss always. You were born for the bush--I'm not
sure that we both weren't!"
He did not hear her sigh.
"It's all very well for you to talk, Tiny! You haven't to make your
peace with anybody--you haven't to confess that you've made a ghastly
fool of yourself!"
"Have I not?" exclaimed the girl bitterly.
"I thought you weren't going to mention his name?" Herbert said in
surprise.
"No more I am," replied Tiny, recovering herself. "So, as you say, it is
all very well for me to talk." And as she turned a ball of fire was
balanced on the distant rim of the plain, and the arc above was now a
semicircle of crimson, which blended even yet with the lingering shades
of night.
Even Herbert was not in all Tiny's secrets. He never dreamt that she had
before her an ordeal far worse than his own. When they sighted the
little township where the station buggy always met the coach, he thought
her excitement due to obvious and natural causes. The township roofs
gleamed in the afternoon sun for half an hour before one could
distinguish even a looked-for object, such as a buggy drawn up in the
shade at the hotel veranda. Herbert had time to become excited himself,
in spite of the ignoble circumstances of his return.
"I see it!" he exclaimed with confidence, at five hundred yards. "And
good old Bushman and Brownlock are the pair. I'd spot 'em a mile off."
"Can you see who it is in the buggy?" asked Tiny, at two hundred. She
was sitting like a mouse between Herbert and the driver.
"I shall in a shake; I think it's Jack Swift."
He did not know how her heart was beating. At fifty yards he said, "It
isn't Swift; it's one of the hands. I've never seen this joker before."
"Ah!" said Tiny, and that was all. Herbert had no ear for a tone.