Mr. Clarkson and his young men sat at meat that evening with a Miss
Bouverie hard to recognize as the apparently austere spinster who had
hitherto been something of a skeleton at their board. Coldly handsome
at her worst, a single day had brought her forth a radiant beauty
wreathed in human smiles. Her clear skin had a tinge which at once
suggested and dismissed the thought of rouge; but beyond all doubt she
had done her hair with less reserve; and it was coppery hair of a
volatile sort, that sprang into natural curls at the first relaxation of
an undue discipline. Mr. Clarkson wondered whether his wife's departure
had aught to do with the striking change in her companion; the two young
men rested mutually assured that it had.
"The old girl keeps too close an eye on her," said little Mr. Hack, who
kept the books and hailed from Middlesex. "Get her to yourself, Ted, and
she's as larky as they're made."
Ted Radford, the station overseer, was a personage not to be dismissed
in a relative clause. He was a typical back-blocker, dry and wiry,
nasally cocksure, insolently cool, a fearless hand with horse, man, or
woman. He was a good friend to Hack when there was no third person of
his own kidney to appreciate the overseer's conception of friendly
chaff. They were by themselves now, yet the last speech drew from
Radford a sufficiently sardonic grin.
"You see if she is, old man," said he, "and I'll stand by to collect
your remains. Not but what she hasn't come off the ice, and looks like
thoring if you take her the right way."
Ted Radford was a confirmed believer in the rightness of his own way
with all mankind; his admirable confidence had not been shaken by a long
succession of snubs in the quarter under discussion. As for Miss
Bouverie, it was her practice to play off one young man against the
other by discouraging each in his turn. But this evening she was a
different being. She had a vague yet absolute conviction that her
fortune was made. She could have sung all her songs to the twain, but
for the reflection that Mr. Clarkson himself would hear them too, and
report the matter to his wife on her return.
And the next night the male trio were strangely absorbed in some station
happening which did not arouse Miss Bouverie's curiosity in the least.
They were excited and yet constrained at dinner, and drew their chairs
close together on the veranda afterward. The young lady caught at least
one word of which she did not know the meaning. She had the tact to keep
out of earshot after that. Nor was she very much more interested when
she met the two young men with revolvers in their hands the following
day.
"Going to fight a duel?" she inquired, smilingly, for her heart was
still singing Grand Opera and Oratorio by turns.
"More or less," returned the overseer, without his usual pleasantry.
"We're going to have a match at a target behind the pines."
The London bookkeeper looked an anxious clerk: the girl was glad when
she saw the pair alive at dinner. There seemed to be little doing.
Though the summer was already tropical, there had been plenteous rains,
and Mr. Clarkson observed in Hilda's hearing that the recent day's
mustering would be the last for some little time. She was thrown much in
his company, and she liked Mr. Clarkson when Mrs. Clarkson was not
there. In his wife's hands the good man was wax; now a mere echo, now a
veritable claque in himself, he pandered indefatigably to the
multitudinous vanities of a ludicrously vain woman. But it was soon Miss
Bouverie's experience that he could, when he dared, be attentively
considerate of lesser ladies. And in many ways these were much the
happiest days that she had spent on the station.
They were, however, days of a consuming excitement for the caged and
gagged nightingale that Hilda Bouverie now conceived herself to be. She
sang not another note aloud. Mr. Clarkson lived in slippers on the
veranda, which Hilda now associated chiefly with a stranger's spurs: for
of the booted and spurred stranger she was thinking incessantly, though
still without the emotions of an ordinarily romantic temperament. Would
he be at the concert, or would he not? Would he turn out to be what she
firmly imagined him, or was she to find out her mistake? Might he not in
any case have said or written some pregnant word for her? Was it beyond
the bounds of possibility that she should be asked to sing after all?
The last question was the only one to be answered before the time,
unless a point-blank inquiry of Mrs. Clarkson be included in the
category. The lady had returned with a gorgeous gown, only less full of
her experiences than of the crowning triumph yet to come. She had bought
every song of Sir Julian's to be had in Melbourne, and his name was
always on her lips. In a reckless moment Miss Bouverie had inquired his
age.
"I really don't know," said Mrs. Clarkson. "What _can_ it matter?"
"I only wondered whether he was a youngish man or not."
Mrs. Clarkson had already raised her eyebrows; at this answer they
disappeared behind a _toupet_ dating from her late descent upon the
Victorian capital.
"Really, Miss Bouverie!" she said, and nothing more in words. But the
tone was intolerable, and its accompanying sneer a refinement in
vulgarity, which only the really refined would have resented as it
deserved. Miss Bouverie got up and left the room without a word. But her
flaming face left a misleading tale behind.
She was not introduced to Sir Julian; but that was not her prime
disappointment when the great night came. All desire for an
introduction, all interest in the concert, died a sudden death in Hilda
Bouverie at her first glimpse of the gentleman who was duly presented to
Mrs. Clarkson as Sir Julian Crum. He was more than middle-aged; he wore
a gray beard, and the air of a somewhat supercilious martyr; his near
sight was obviated by double lenses in gold rims. Hilda could have wept
before the world. For nearly three weeks she had been bowing in
imagination to a very different Sir Julian, bowing as though she had
never beheld him in her life before; and yet in three minutes she saw
how little real reason she had ever had for the illogical conclusion to
which she had jumped. She searched for the sprightly figure she had
worn in her mind's eye; his presence under any other name would still
have been welcome enough now. But he was not there at all. In the patchy
glare of the kerosene lamps, against the bunting which lined the
corrugated walls of Gulland's new iron store, among flower and weed of
township and of station, did Miss Bouverie seek in vain for a single
eye-glass and a military mustache.
The concert began. Miss Bouverie opened it herself with the inevitably
thankless pianoforte solo, in this case gratuitously meretricious into
the bargain, albeit the arbitrary choice of no less a judge than Mrs.
Clarkson. It was received with perfunctory applause, through which a
dissipated stockman thundered thickly for a song. Miss Bouverie averted
her eyes from Sir Julian (ensconced like Royalty in the centre of the
first row) as she descended from the platform. She had not the hardihood
to glance toward the great man until the indistinct stockman had had his
wish, and Mrs. Clarkson, in her fine new raiment, had both sung and
acted a coy ditty of the previous decade, wherein every line began with
the word "somebody." It was an immediate success; the obstreperous
stockman led the encore; but Miss Bouverie, who duly accompanied,
extracted solace from the depressed attitude in which Sir Julian Crum
sat looking down his nose.
The township boasted its score of dwellings, but few of them showed a
light that evening; not less than ninety of the round hundred of
inhabitants clapped their hands and mopped their foreheads in Gulland's
new store. It might have been run up for its present purpose. There was
an entrance at one end for the performers, and that on the platform
level, since the ground sloped a little; at the other end was the only
other entrance, by which the audience were admitted. A makeshift lobby
had been arranged behind the platform, and thither Mrs. Clarkson retired
to await her earlier encores; when the compliment became a recognized
matter of course, she abandoned the mere form of a momentary retirement,
and stood patiently smiling in the satin ball-dress brought from
Melbourne for the nonce. And for the brief intervals between her efforts
she descended to a throne specially reserved on the great musician's
right.
The other performers did not dim her brilliance by reason of their own.
There was her own dear husband, whose serious recitation was the one
entertaining number. There was a Rabbit Inspector who rapped out "The
Scout" in a defiant barytone, and a publican whose somewhat uneven tenor
was shaken to its depths by the simple pathos of "When Sparrows Build."
Mrs. Clarkson could afford to encourage such tyros with marked applause.
The only danger was that Sir Julian might think she really admired their
untutored attempts.
"One must do it," she therefore took occasion to explain as she clapped.
"They are so nervous. The hard thing is to put oneself in their place;
it's nothing to me to sing a song, Sir Julian."
"So I can see, madam," said he.
At the extreme end of the same row Miss Bouverie passed her unemployed
moments between Mr. Radford and the wall, and was not easy until she had
signalled to little Mr. Hack to occupy the seat behind her. With the two
together she felt comparatively comfortable. Mr. Radford's running
criticism on the performers, always pungent, was often amusing, while
Mr. Hack lost no opportunity of advancing his own ideals in the matter
of musical entertainment.
"A song and dance," said he, again and again, with a more and more
sepulchral deviltry--"a song and dance is what you want. You should have
heard the Sisters Belton in their palmy days at the Pav! You don't get
the best of everything out here, you know, Ted!"
"No; let's hope they've got some better men than you," returned
Radford, inspired by the quorum of three to make mince-meat of his
friend.
It was the interval between parts one and two. The platform was
unoccupied. A cool draught blew through the iron building from open door
to open door; there was no occasion to go outside. They had done so,
however, at the lower end; there was a sudden stampede of returning
feet. A something in the scuffling steps, a certain outcry that
accompanied them, caused Miss Bouverie and her companions to turn their
heads; they turned again at as sudden a jingle on the platform, and the
girl caught her breath. There stood her missing hero, smiling on the
people, dapper, swarthy, booted, spurred, and for one moment the man she
had reason to remember, exactly as she remembered him. The next his
folded arms sprang out from the shoulders, and a brace of long-barrelled
revolvers covered the assembly.
"Up with your hands, every man of you!" he cried. "No, not the ladies,
but every man and boy who doesn't want a bullet in his brain!"
The command was echoed in uncouth accents at the lower door, where, in
fact, a bearded savage had driven in all and sundry at his pistol's
point. And in a few seconds the meeting was one which had carried by
overwhelming show of hands a proposition from which the ladies alone
saw occasion to dissent.
"You may have heard of me before," said the man on the platform,
sweeping the forest of hands with his eye-glass. "My name's Stingaree."
It was the word which Hilda Bouverie had heard on the veranda and taken
for some strange expletive.
"Who is he?" she asked, in a whisper that bespoke excitement, agitation,
but not alarm.
"The fancy bushranger--the dandy outlaw!" drawled Radford, in cool
reply. "I've been expecting him. He was seen on our run the day Mrs.
Clarkson went down to Melbourne."
That memorable day for Hilda Bouverie! And it was this manner of man who
had been her hero ever since: a bushranger, an outlaw, a common robber
under arms!
"And you never told me!" she cried, in an indignant whisper.
"We never told Mrs. Clarkson either. You must blame the boss."
Hilda snatched her eyes from Stingaree, and was sorry for Mrs. Clarkson
for the first time in their acquaintance. The new ball-dress of bridal
satin was no whiter than its wearer's face, which had aged several years
in as many seconds. The squatter leant toward her with uplifted hands,
loyally concerned for no one and for nothing else. Between the couple
Sir Julian might have been conducting without his baton, but with both
arms. Meanwhile, the flashing eye-glass had fixed itself on Miss
Bouverie's companion, without resting for an instant on Miss Bouverie.
"Silence over there!" cried Stingaree, sternly. "I'm here on a perfectly
harmless errand. If you know anything about me at all, you may know that
I have a weakness for music of any kind, so long as it's good of its
kind."
The eye-glass dropped for a moment upon Mrs. Clarkson in the front row,
and the irrepressible Radford was enabled to continue his say.
"He has, too, from a mouth-organ to a full orchestra, from all accounts,
Miss Bouverie. _My revolver's in the coat-pocket next you!_"
"It is the music," continued Stingaree, looking harder than before in
their direction, "which has brought me here to-night. I've come to
listen, and for no other reason in the world. Unfortunately, when one
has a price upon one's head, one has to take certain precautions before
venturing among one's fellow-men. And, though I'm not here for gain or
bloodshed, if any man of you gives me trouble I shall shoot him like a
dog!"
"That's one for me," whispered the intrepid overseer, in lower key.
"Never mind. He's not looking at us now. I believe Mrs. Clarkson's going
to faint. _You take what I told you and slip it under your shawl, and
you'll save a second by passing it up to me the instant you see her
sway!_"
Hilda hesitated. A dead silence had fallen on the crowded and heated
store, and in the silence Stingaree was already taking an unguarded
interest in Mrs. Clarkson's appearance, which as certainly betokened
imminent collapse. "_Now!_" whispered Radford, and Hilda hesitated no
more. She was wearing a black lace shawl between her appearances at the
piano; she had the revolver under it in a twinkling, and pressed it to
her bosom with both hands, one outside the shawl and one underneath, as
who should hug a beating heart.
"Mrs. Clarkson," said Stingaree, "you have been singing too much, and
the quality of your song has not been equal to the quantity."
It sounded a brutal speech enough; and to do justice to a portion of the
audience not hitherto remarkable for its spirit, the ungallant criticism
was audibly resented in the back rows. The maudlin stockman had indeed
to be restrained by his neighbors from precipitating himself upon the
barrels of Stingaree. But the effect upon Mrs. Clarkson herself was
still more remarkable, and revealed a subtle kindness in the desperado's
cruelty. Her pale face flushed; her lack-lustre eyes blazed forth their
indignation; her very clay was on fire for all the room to see.
"I don't sing for criminals and cut-throats!" the indignant lady cried
out. She glanced at Sir Julian as one for whom she did sing. And Sir
Julian's eyes twinkled under the bushranger's guns.
"To be sure you don't," said Stingaree, with as much sweetness as his
character would permit. "You sing for charity, and spend three times as
much as you are ever likely to make in arraying yourself for the
occasion. Well, we must put up with some song-bird without fine
feathers, for I mean to hear the programme out." His eyes ranged the
front rows till they fell on Hilda Bouverie in her corner. "You young
lady over there! You've been talking since I called for silence. You
deserve to pay a penalty; be good enough to step this way."
Hilda's excitement may be supposed; it made her scandalously radiant in
that company of humiliated men and women, but it did not rob her of her
resource. Removing her shawl with apparent haste, but with calculated
deliberation, she laid it in a bunch upon the seat which she had
occupied, and stepped forward with a courage that won a cheer from the
back rows. Stingaree stooped to hand her up to the platform; and his
warm grip told a tale. This was what he had come for, to make her sing,
to make her sing before Sir Julian Crum, to give her a start unique in
the history of the platform and the stage. Criminal, was he? Then the
dearest, kindest, most enchanting, most romantic criminal the world had
ever seen! But she must be worthy of his chivalry and her chance; and,
from the first, her artistic egoism insisted that she was.
Stingaree had picked up a programme, and dexterously mounted it between
hammer and cartridge of the revolver which he had momentarily
relinquished, much as a cornet-player mounts his music under his nose.
With both weapons once more levelled, he consulted the programme now.
"The next item, ladies and gentlemen," said he, "is another pianoforte
solo by this young lady. We'll let you off that, Miss Bouverie, since
you've got to sing. The next song on the programme is called 'The
Unrealized Ideal,' and the music is by our distinguished visitor and
patron, Sir Julian Crum. In happier circumstances it would have been
sung to you by Mrs. Montgomery Clarkson; as it is, I call upon Miss
Bouverie to realize her ideal and ours, and on Sir Julian Crum to
accompany her, if he will."
At Mrs. Clarkson's stony side the great man dropped both arms at the
superb impudence of the invitation.
"Quite right, Sir Julian; let the blood run into them," said Stingaree.
"It is a pure oversight that you were not exempted in the beginning.
Comply with my entreaty and I guarantee that you shall suffer no further
inconvenience."
Sir Julian wavered. In London he was a club-man and a diner-out; and
what a tale for the Athenaeum--what a short cut to every ear at a
Kensington dinner-table! In the end it would get into the papers. That
was the worst of it. But in the midst of Sir Julian's hesitation his
pondering eyes met those of Miss Bouverie--on fire to sing him his own
song--alight with the ability to do it justice. And Sir Julian was lost.
How she sang it may be guessed. Sir Julian bowed and swayed upon his
stool. Stingaree stood by with a smile of personal pride and
responsibility, but with both revolvers still levelled, and one of them
cocked. It was a better song than he had supposed. It gained enormously
from the composer's accompaniment. The last verse was softer than
another would have made it, and yet the singer obeyed inaudible
instructions as though she had never sung it otherwise. It was more in a
tuneful whisper than in hushed notes that the last words left her
lips:--
"Lightly I sped when hope was high,
And youth beguiled the chase;
I follow--follow still; but I
Shall never see her Face."
The applause, when it came, was almost overwhelming. The bushranger
watched and smiled, but cocked his second pistol, and let the programme
flutter to the floor. As for Sir Julian Crum, the self-contained, the
cynical, he was seen for an instant, wheeled about on the music-stool,
grasping the singer by both hands. But there was no hearing what he
said; the girl herself heard nothing until he bellowed in her ear:
"They'll have their encore. What can you give them? It must be something
they know. 'Home, Sweet Home'? 'The Last Rose'? 'Within a Mile'? The
first, eh? Very well; it's a leaf out of Patti's book; but so are they
all."
And he struck the opening bars in the key of his own song, but for some
moments Hilda Bouverie stood bereft of her great voice. A leaf out of
Patti's book, in that up-country township, before a roomful held in
terror--and yet unmindful--of the loaded pistols of two bloodthirsty
bushrangers! The singer prayed for power to live up to those golden
words. A leaf out of Patti's book!
It was over. The last poignant note trembled into nothingness. The
silence, absolutely dead for some seconds, was then only broken by a
spirituous sob from the incorrigible stockman. There was never any
applause at all. Ere it came, even as it was coming, the overseer
Radford leapt to his feet with a raucous shout.
The bushranger had vanished from the platform. The other bushranger had
disappeared through the other door. The precious pair of them had melted
from the room unseen, unheard, what time every eye doted on handsome
Hilda Bouverie, and every ear on the simple words and moving cadences of
"Home, Sweet Home."
Ted Radford was the first to see it; for by the end of the brief song he
had his revolver uncovered and cocked at last, and no quarry left for
him to shoot. With a bound he was on the platform; another carried him
into the canvas anteroom, a third and a fourth out into the moonlight.
It was as bright as noon in a conservatory of smoked glass. And in the
tinted brightness one man was already galloping away; but it was
Stingaree who danced with one foot only in the stirrup of a milk-white
mare.
Radford rushed up to him and fired point-blank again and again. A series
of metallic clicks was all the harm he did, for Stingaree was in the
saddle before the hurled revolver struck the mare on the ribs, and sent
the pair flying through the moonlight with a shout of laughter, a cloud
of sand, and a dull volley of thunderous hoofs. The overseer picked up
his revolver and returned crestfallen to examine it in the lights of the
emptying room.
"I could have sworn I loaded it," said he. "If I had, he'd have been a
dead man six times over."
Miss Bouverie had been talking to Sir Julian Crum. On Radford's entry
she had grown _distraite_, but at Radford's speech she turned back to
Sir Julian with shining eyes.
"My wife wants a companion for the voyage," he was saying. "So that will
cost you nothing, but if anything the other way, and once in London,
I'll be answerable. I've adjudicated these things for years to voices
not in the same class as yours. But the worst of it is you won't stay
with us."
"I will."
"No; they'll want you at Covent Garden before we know where we are. And
when you are ready to go to them, go you must."
"I shall do what you tell me."
"Then speak to Mrs. Clarkson at once."
Hilda Bouverie glanced over her shoulder, but her employers had left the
building. Her smile was less roguish than demure.
"There is no need, Sir Julian. Mrs. Clarkson has already spoken to me,
though only in a whisper. But I am to take myself off by the next
coach."