A STAR IN TWILIGHT
Mrs. Oxenham was immensely kind to Jenny when the pair were again upon
the road.
"They seemed to want you so much, darling, and I thought your mother
would wish you to show them some attention," she said. "But goodness
knows what Harry and I will do without you! We shall be quite lost, and
the children too, till you come back again."
"You are too good to me," murmured Jenny, half inclined to cry. "I think
I am getting quite spoiled."
"Oh, no! You are not one of the spoilable sort," said Mary tenderly.
Jenny had but one portmanteau with her, and into this she packed all her
belongings before starting off next day. Mr. Oxenham put it and her into
the buggy with his own hands, and, because he was not directly
responsible for her departure, bewailed it loudly.
"I call it too bad of you--downright mean, I call it--to run away from
us like this, Miss Liddon," he said to her again and again, to the
unconcealed irritation of his wife.
"You go on, Harry, as if she were leaving us for ever. We haven't seen
the last of her yet--not by a long way, have we, dear?"
The parting guest was sped with warmest kisses and handclasps, and
bidden vaguely to come back again soon. But as she stood up to wave her
handkerchief to the children from the middle of the home paddock,
looking back upon the great, rambling house, where she had had such a
good time, she said to herself that she should go back no more. If
matters had turned out differently she would have called her conviction
of that moment a presentiment.
Aunt Emma and Cousins Clementine and Alice received her cordially, and
at once began to pelt her with questions concerning the Oxenham
household, and as to what she knew of the Churchills in town. Uncle
John, the bank manager, lunching with his family, asked about Joey, and
the state of the restaurant business, and other practical matters. In
the afternoon she helped to carry cakes and cream jugs to the
tennis-ground, and was there introduced to the rank and fashion of the
town, not as "My cousin, who keeps the tea-room in Little Collins
Street," but as "My cousin, who is staying with Mrs. Oxenham at
Wandooyamba," and she sat under a tree and watched the players, and
talked when she was obliged to talk, and, when she wasn't, thought her
own thoughts, which were chiefly concerned in devising some way of
getting home immediately.
The tennis-tea was followed by tea at the bank, composed of the remains
of the former, with cold meat and eggs; and by-and-by the moon got up,
and it was proposed that the young people should have a walk to enjoy
the pleasant night. A bank-clerk and a bachelor lawyer, who had "dropped
in," attached themselves to Clem and Alice, and Mrs. Rogerson and her
niece soberly chaperoned the party, and talked family affairs together.
The night train from Melbourne came in at ten o'clock, and the little
township loved to catch it in the act. All townships which have a train
do. It is a never-failing joy to them. And, finding themselves in the
neighbourhood of the station at about 9.35, the Rogerson girls exclaimed
with one voice, "Let's stay and see the train come in."
The motion was carried unanimously, and for half an hour they loitered
up and down the platform, looking into the vagueness of the moonlit
night, and talking and laughing rather loudly; all but Jenny, who,
though she was so much less genteel than these relations, did not think
it good manners to make a noise. And so it came to pass that she
presently saw a buggy dash into the station-yard, and recognised it as
the one that had brought her in in the morning.
"That's to meet somebody," said Clem to Alice, with intense curiosity.
"Jenny, who's expected at Wandooyamba to-night?"
"Nobody, that I know of," said Jenny. "They are always sending for
parcels and things."
The train signalled from a distance, hummed through the still night, and
clattered up to the platform, watched intently by all the eyes
available. It was not the great express, but a local off-shoot from it,
and the passengers it disgorged at this point were not very numerous.
The first to tumble out was a big man with a red beard.
"Oh! _Oh!_ OH! It's Mrs. Oxenham's brother! It's Mr. Anthony Churchill!
He hasn't been here for ages--they said he was in England. Oh, isn't he
handsome? Oh, I wonder if he will come to the town at all? Oh, Jenny,
just see what you have missed!"
Jenny drew back into the dim crowd, on which he cast no glance as he
strode to the buggy, calling to a porter to bring his things. She said
nothing, but she thought--it was a thought that stung like fire--"Now I
know why I have been sent away from Wandooyamba."
Anthony's journey had been a pleasant one--especially the latter part of
it, when the coolness of a dewy night had replaced the glare of day;
smoking quietly, and meditating upon his prospects, he would not have
changed places with a king. Since he had definitely made up his mind to
marry Jenny, and since his father had admitted the wisdom of that
proceeding, and consented to it, all seemed plain and clear before him;
for he had no fear of Mary, who was the first to know her worth, and
already treated her as a sister, and no fear at all that the girl
herself would for a moment dream of refusing him. He was too deeply
experienced in the signs and tokens of the supreme sentiment not to
recognise it when he saw it, and he had seen it very plainly once or
twice through the modest disguises that she flattered herself had
screened it from him.
All the way up he had been thinking of her, imagining their meeting at
Wandooyamba, and all that he would do on the morrow, which was Sunday,
and a most beautiful day for love-making. He planned the time and
circumstances of his marriage, and how the other Liddons should be
disposed of while he was showing the world to his bride, and where he
and she would live, and what sort of home they would have when they
settled down after their travels. Being Saturday night, which passengers
by the express who want to go all the way to Sydney don't choose for
starting on that journey, if they can help it, he had room to put up his
legs and make a rug pillow for his head; in which condition of bodily
ease, his mind, so to speak, went out to play, and amused itself
delightfully. Jenny would not have known herself had she seen how she
was pictured in the fancies of his dreaming brain.
Needless to say, he never dreamed of seeing her on the platform when he
arrived, and did not do so. At each of the country stations there was a
lounging crowd to see the train come in, people to whom it was the chief
entertainment in life, and who were a great nuisance occasionally to the
hungry and thirsty traveller with but a few minutes in which to get his
meal; but these had nothing to do with Jenny or with him, and were
ignored as far as possible. He distinctly heard the "Oh's" of Clementine
and Alice, and the sound of his name, and nothing was less likely to
suggest the presence of his little sweetheart, with her shy refinement.
He knew that a man would have been sent to meet the train, and looked
for him and him only. In two minutes his rug and luggage were in the
buggy, and the light vehicle spinning out of the town.
The groom was a youth who was not supposed to know anything about the
inside of his master's house, and Anthony heard no news that interested
him--except that Mr. Oxenham did not intend to drive Emily again with
ladies and children behind her; which was a great relief to him. He lit
his pipe afresh, and leaned back in his corner with arms folded, and
thought of what was coming, in a mood of mind that he had imagined
himself to have outgrown years and years ago. The night was very sweet
and still, with its delicate mixture of moonlight and shadow; a night to
make the most world-hardened man feel sentimental. And the spell of the
lonely bush is very strong upon those who are native to it, when they
have been away for a long time.
"There will be a moon again to-morrow night," he thought. "And all these
leagues of solitude to lose ourselves in! It shall be settled to-morrow
night, and then we will both stay for Christmas, while I teach her to
get used to it. Oh, this is better than the Richmond lodgings, or the
St. Kilda pier!"
Through the trees he saw a dark bank, crowned with a cluster of low
roofs, uplifted from the valley pastures to the palely shining sky. He
looked at it with kindling eyes, and thought of the little figure moving
about the many rooms, in the atmosphere of cultured people--its native
air--and how considerate and sagacious his sister Mary was. A light
like a star stole out upon the hill, and another, and another. He hoped
devoutly that Mary had not sent her charge to bed.
"What time do you make it, Pat?"
"About eleven, sir; not more."
Oh, that wasn't bed-time! And she was not ill now. Perhaps, however, she
would make an excuse to retire, lest she should be in the way at the
family meeting; it would be just like her. Perhaps she would go to bed
to avoid him, out of pure shyness. The doubt worried him, for he had set
his heart on seeing her that night--just to satisfy himself that she was
really alive and well, and had not been forgetting to care for him
during his long absence from her.