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.
"I am not so sure," said he sturdily. "I loved you dearly; _I_ could
have made you happy."
"It is well you think so," was the best answer she could think of for
that; and she did not think of it at once. "Do you know who he is?" she
added later.
"Herbert told me. It seems you have tampered with a splendid chance."
"I have tampered with three. I shall jump at the next--if I get
another."
"And if you don't?"
Involuntarily she drew a deep breath at the thought. Her head was
lifted, and her blue eyes wandered over the yellow distance of the
plains with the look of a prisoner coming back into the world.
"Nobody could blame him," she said at last, "and I should be rightly
served."
Swift crouched in front of her, almost sitting on his heels to peer into
her face.
"Tiny," he suddenly cried, "you don't love him one bit!"
"But I think he loves me," she answered, hanging her head, for he held
her hand.
"Not as I do, Tiny! Never as I have done! I have loved you all the time,
and never anyone but you. And you--you care for me best; I see it in
your eyes; I feel it in your hand. Don't you think that you, too, may
have loved me all the time?"
"If I have," she murmured, "it has been without knowing it."
It was without knowing it that she trod upon the truth. Their voices
were trembling.
"Darling," he whispered, "this would be home to you. It's the same old
Wallandoon. You love it, I know; and I think--you love----"
She snatched her hand from his, and sprang to her feet. He, too, rose
astounded, gazing on every side to see who was coming. But the plain was
flecked only with straggling sheep, bleating to the troughs. His gaze
came back to the girl. Her straw hat sharply shadowed her face like a
highwayman's mask, her blue eyes flashing in the midst of it, and her
lips below parted in passion.
"You? I hate you! I _do_ consider myself bound, and you would make me
false--you would tempt me through my love for the bush, for this
place--you coward!"
Swift reddened, and there was roughness in his answer:
"I can't stand this, even from you. I have heard that all women are
unfair; you are, certainly. What you say about my tempting you is
nonsense. You have shown me that you love me, and that you don't love
the other man; you know you have. You have now to show whether you have
the courage of your love--to give him up--to marry me."
This method must have had its attractions after another's; but it hurt,
because Tiny was sensitive, with all her sins.
"You have spoken very cruelly," she faltered, delightfully forgetting
how she had spoken herself. "I could not marry anyone who spoke to me
like that!"
"Oh, forgive me!" he cried, covered with contrition in an instant. "I am
a rough brute, but I promise----" He stopped, for her head had drooped,
and she seemed to be crying. He stood away from her in his shame. "Yes,
I am a rough brute," he repeated bitterly; "but, darling, you don't know
how it roughens one, bossing the men!"
Still she hung her head, but within the widened shadow of her hat he saw
her red mouth twitching at his clumsiness. Yet, when she raised her
face, her smile astonished him, it was so timorous; and the wondrous
shyness in her lovely eyes abashed him far more than her tears.
"I dare say--I need that!" he heard her whisper in spurts. "I think I
should like--you--to boss--me--too."
* * * * *
These things and others were tersely told in a letter written in the hot
blast of a north wind at Wallandoon, and delivered in London six weeks
later, damp with the rain of early April. The letter arrived by the last
post, and Ruth read it on the sofa in her husband's den, while Erskine
paced up and down the room, listening to the sentences she read aloud,
but saying little.
"So you see," said Ruth as she put the thin sheets together and replaced
them in their envelope, "she accepted him before she knew of Lord
Manister's engagement. _He_ knew of it, and had undertaken to tell her,
but that was only to give himself a last chance. Had she heard of it
first he would never have spoken again."
"I question that," Erskine said thoughtfully. "He might not have spoken
so soon; but his love would have proved stronger than his pride in the
end. Yet I like him for his pride. That was what she needed, and what
Manister lacked. It is very curious."
"I wonder if you really would like him," said Ruth, who no longer cared
for the sound of Lord Manister's name. "I don't remember much about him,
except that we all thought a good deal of him; but somehow I don't fancy
he's your sort."
"I wasn't aware that I had a sort," Erskine said, smiling.
"Oh, but you have. _I_ am not your sort. But Tiny was!"
He laughed heartily.
"Then we four have chosen sides most excellently! It is quite fatal to
marry your own sort. Didn't you know that, my dear?"
"No, I didn't," said Ruth, watching him from the sofa; "but I am very
glad to hear it, and I quite agree. You and Tiny, for instance, would
have jeered at everything in life until you were left jeering at one
another. Don't you think so?" she added wistfully, after a pause.
"I think you're an uncommonly shrewd little person," Erskine remarked,
smiling down upon her kindly, so that her face shone with pleasure.
"Do you?" she said, as he helped her to rise. "You used to think me so
dense when Tiny was here; and I dare say I was--beside Tiny."
"My dearest girl," said Erskine, taking his wife in his arms, and
speaking in a troubled tone, "you have never said that sort of thing
before, and I hope you never will again. Tiny was Tiny--our Tiny--but
surely wisdom was not her strongest point? She amused us all because she
wasn't quite like other people; but how often am I to tell you that I am
thankful you are not like Tiny?"
"Ah, if you really were!" Ruth whispered on his shoulder.
"But I always was," he answered, kissing her; and they smiled at one
another until the door was shut and Ruth had gone, for there was now
between them an exceeding tenderness.
Ruth had left him her letter, so that he might read it for himself; but
though he lit a pipe and sat down, it was some time before Erskine read
anything. Had Ruth returned and asked him for his thoughts, he would
have confessed that he was wondering whether Tiny's husband would
understand the girl he had managed to tame; and whether he had a fine
ear for a joke. As wondering would not tell him, he at length turned to
the letter; and that did not tell him either; but before he turned the
first of the many leaves, it was as though the child herself was beside
him in the room.
The qualities she mentioned in her beloved were all of a serious
character, and the praises she bestowed upon him, at her own expense,
were a little tiresome to one who did not know the man. Erskine turned
over with excusable impatience, and was rewarded on the next page by a
sufficiently just summary of Lord Manister; even here, however, Tiny
took occasion to be very hard on herself. She declared--possibly she
would have said it in any case, but it happened to be true--that she had
never loved Lord Manister. On the way she had ill-used him she harped no
more; his own solution of his difficulties had, indeed, broken that
string. But she spoke of her "temptation" (incidentally remarking that
the hall windows haunted her still), and said she would perhaps have
yielded to it outright but for her visit to Wallandoon before sailing
for England; and that she would certainly have done so at the third
asking had it not been for that stronger temptation to go back with
Herbert to Australia. As it was, she had gone back fully determined to
marry Lord Manister in the end. And if that decision had been furthered
to the smallest extent by any sort of consideration for another, she did
not say so; neither did she seek to defend her own behavior at any
point, for this was not Tiny's way. However, with Jack she had burned to
justify herself, because love puts an end to one's ways. She had longed
to tell him everything with her own lips, and to have him forgive and
excuse her on the spot. This she admitted. But she denied having known
what her unreasonable longing really was. Did Ruth remember the "burning
of the boats" at Cintra? Well, she had spoken the truth about Jack then;
she had never "known" until the night of her last arrival at the
station; she had never been quite miserable until the succeeding days.
Reverting to Manister, she supposed the discovery of her departure the
day after their interview--in which she had studiously refrained from
revealing its imminence--had proved the last straw with him; she added
that such a result had been vaguely in her mind at the time, but that
she had never really admitted it among her hopes. Yet it seemed she had
cured him just when she gave him up for incurable--and how thankful she
was! A well-felt word about Lord Manister's future happiness and so on
led her to her own; and Erskine slid his eye over that, but had it
arrested by a loving little description of the old home to which she was
coming back for good. It was a hot wind as she wrote, and the beginning
of a word dried before she got to the end of it--so she affirmed. The
roof was crackling, and the shadows in the yard were like tanks of ink.
Out on the run the salt-bush still looked healthy after the rains. She
had given up whim driving; the manager had put in his word. But she was
taking long rides, all by herself; and the lonely grandeur of the bush
appealed to her just as it had when she first came back to it nearly a
year ago; and the deep sky and yellow distances and dull leaves were all
her eyes required; and she thought this was the one place in the world
where it would be easy to be good.
The letter came rather suddenly to its end. There were some very kind
words about himself, which Erskine read more than once. Then he sat
staring into the fire, until, by some fancy's trick, the red coals
turned pale and took the shape of a girl's sweet face with blemishes
that only made it sweeter, with dark hair, and generous lips, and eyes
like her own Australian sky. And the eyes lightened with fun and with
mischief, with recklessness, and bitterness, and temper; and in each
light they were more lovable than before; but last of all they beamed
clear and tranquil as the blue sea becalmed; and in their depths there
shone a soul.
THE END.
Transcriber's Note: The following typographical errors present in the
original edition have been changed.
In Chapter VI, ="It was not nonsense!" be cried.= was changed to ="It was
not nonsense!" he cried.=
In Chapter XI, a missing quotation mark was added after =Oh, it's all
that.=
In Chapter XVII, a missing quotation mark was added after =You shan't do
it!=
In Chapter XVIII, =there are some migivings= was changed to =there are some
misgivings=.