CHORDS AND DISCORDS.
On the verandah of Barellan Mrs. Dickson was sitting, with the eyes that
saw not staring away into the blue distance, with the soft, warm breeze
blowing gently on to her face, and with a smile playing round her mouth.
She was contented, more contented than she had been for many years; for
since Ailleen had come to the station to live, there had not been a day
when Willy had been entirely absent from the house, and so long as he
was somewhere near her Mrs. Dickson was contented. The love, the
unreasoning, unrequited love, she lavished on the boy was the one
mainspring of her existence, the one gleam of happiness left to her
since the terrible day when she had chanced upon the wreck of the
stuck-up coach, and had returned to the station with the alarm, only to
fall, when no one was near to help her, and lie with the fierce sunlight
burning her eyes into blindness, and the weight of a knowledge upon her
mind which would have killed her had not the needs of another life,
dependent upon hers, maintained her.
There was a grim story behind it all--a grim story such as hovers over
the life of a woman who plays with Fate, and is overtaken in the game.
Vanity; love of admiration; thirst for notoriety; the love of men,
easily won and lightly held, till the fascination of one came after
gratified ambition had raised a barrier to its acceptance; the recoil of
jealousy until the barrier was swept away; flight with the one whose
influence had changed the current of life; discovery, and then
disaster--it was a whirl of emotion, a flood of passion, an unkempt
stream of mischief, till the compensating balance swung, and through the
long, black years of blindness the chief character in the drama marked
time while the outlying skeins of the tangle were unravelled, and Fate
resumed control.
In the long, dark, lonely years it grew upon her how terrible a thing it
would be if the one link which connected the happiness of the past with
the present should snap; if the boy, who was the one gleam of light
shining through the gloom of her life, should fail her. As the years
rolled on, and the boy--always a boy to her--had passed from childhood
into youth, his bearing towards her had been constantly in keeping with
the opinion he usually expressed to any of his companions about her:
"She's dotty half the time, and when she ain't, she's scotty." She was
"dotty" when she tried to induce him to talk to her and tell her all he
was doing out in the world of sunlight and sight, the world she could no
longer know; she was "scotty" when she upbraided him, gently and
lovingly, for needing so much questioning and inducing to talk. He gave
her no love: she felt that, though she would never have admitted it by
word of mouth; for even if he turned away from her, with brusqueness
and hard words, she could not but love the boy her eyes had never seen.
The memories he brought back to her, the associations of the years which
had preceded the time of affliction, and the play of emotions and
passions which she had known before the side-wash of life's stream
caught her and drifted her, a dismantled derelict, on to the dreary
salt-marsh of blind solitude, were enough to shed a glamour over him,
however selfish and shallow-minded he might be.
And yet all the memories he brought back to her were not peaceful. There
were some which broke the sunlight of the past by broad black bands of
shadow, some which of late had been forcing themselves into her mind
with an assertiveness that made her long for the companionship of some
one with sympathy; such a one, indeed, as she realized Ailleen to be the
moment the warm, big-hearted girl clasped her hand when she thought a
stray word had given pain.
Shut out from the world by her blindness, she was still further isolated
by the circumstances under which she was situated at Barellan. An
up-country station has not a very large visiting list at the best of
times; in the early days of a district there are the gum-trees and the
'possums, the scenery and the stock, and that is about all wherewith a
woman can interest herself beyond those with whom she is immediately
associated. With all these eliminated, the world of a white woman on a
station is not likely to be particularly large nor especially
attractive; and so the advent of Ailleen at Barellan put a fresh
interest, and a kindly interest, into the blind woman's life. It was
sorrow which had driven Ailleen away from Birralong--a sorrow and grief
which the girl had bravely striven to keep in subjection by care and
attention to the woman whose hospitality she was enjoying. But there was
little heed of that in the mind of the Lady of Barellan. She was
contented, and the cause of her content, or the price, so long as
another paid it, was nothing to her now, any more than it had been in
the far-off days before the curtain came down upon her vision.
The thoughts in her mind were pleasant, for she was thinking how the
present attraction for Willy at the station might be made a permanent
attraction, and then there would never be a risk of his being taken away
from her. The chance idea for a moment troubled her--it suggested the
black line of shadow which had marred the sunshine in the olden days.
"It is ten years since," she said to herself, as the smile died from her
lips. "Ten years without a sign or a sound. Surely it will not come
again now; surely I may have some peace, some rest. Twenty years in
darkness, twenty years in lonely sorrow--surely that should pay the
penalty of one mistake."
As she thought she sat upright in her chair, with her hands clasped
suddenly together, her cheeks growing pale and her head leaning forward
as she listened intently.
From the distance, in the direction of the clump of trees which marked
the coaching disaster of years before, there came through the still,
hot air the sound of a dingo's howl. The woman shuddered as she heard
it--shuddered and lay back in her chair with tightly closed lips, and
breath that was short and hard. Again the howl sounded across the
paddock, and again she shuddered. Then, sitting upright, she twisted a
light shawl she had with her over her head, and rising to her feet,
slowly felt her way along the verandah, down the steps, and on until her
hand touched the rail which ran from the verandah to the trees across
the paddock.
She was following it, and was nearly halfway across, when Ailleen,
coming on to the verandah, saw her, and at once ran after her. She
turned as she heard the girl's voice calling, and waited where she
stood.
"Why, where are you going? And alone, too," Ailleen exclaimed, as she
came up; "and with only that rag on your head, and the sun scorching.
Why----"
The elder woman turned a pale, careworn face towards her, and held up
her hand.
"I ought to have told you--I forgot--but this--I always come alone. A
long time ago something happened, and--I come to think and--and
pray--here. You go back to the house. This rail is--to guide me, as I
always go--alone."
There was something in the words, something in the voice, something in
the face, which appealed to the girl.
"Just as you wish," she answered quietly. "Only let me get you a hat."
"I always come--like this," the other said. "I will wait till you go
back."
She stood still with her face towards the house as Ailleen returned, and
then, as she heard the girl's footsteps on the verandah, she turned and
walked to the clump of trees, disappearing under their shade through the
little gate in the fence. Closing the gate after her, she stepped
forward, holding out a hand slightly in front of her.
"Well?"
At the sound of the word she stood rigid, the pallor deepening on her
face. She knew where he was standing though she could not see; she knew
that barely a yard away the man who spoke was standing, his heavy black
brows forming a band across his forehead, drawn down in a scowl over
eyes that glared at her in all the cruelty of unredeemed hate.
"How's the boy?"
"He is well," she answered, "very well. He is----"
"I've come for him."
The woman gasped and caught her breath.
"No, no," she said in a strained tone. "I cannot part with him. It would
kill me."
"It's ten years and more since I was here, and now I've come back to see
you, perhaps at the risk of my neck, you--you shrink from me," the man
said, with cruelty in every line of his face and malice in his voice.
The woman stood still and silent. The last time, and every time, he had
come he had said such things, but only when he threatened to take from
her the one thing she cherished did she wince.
"Who was the girl?" he asked, watching her colourless face and staring
eyes from under his black, heavy brows.
"She is a friend staying with me."
He laughed, not unmusically.
"Staying with you? A plaything for the boy, eh?"
"No," she said quickly. "No; he is not like that."
Again the man laughed.
"There are different tales in the district," he said. "I've been back
long enough to learn that. If he were different, I'd have him out of
this soon enough to learn him what to do--only he don't want teaching."
She shrank back a step, and the man noticed it and understood.
"Do you think I have forgotten?" he said, with a return of the
vindictive cruelty in his voice. "Do you think I'd leave him here if it
weren't to make things square? I've been away ten years--where, it's
nothing to you; but it hasn't made me softer. I thought I'd come and see
how the old place looked, and see whether you still were enjoying the
affection of your son and keeping my hiding-place free."
"No one has touched it," she answered quietly.
"No; because you hadn't the pluck to destroy it. Don't tell me you kept
it because you promised. I know how much your promises are worth. I've
not forgotten."
She did not answer as he paused, and he went on:
"The boy's got to come here; I've got something for him to do. Then he
and I----"
"No," she said quickly; "he shall not come."
He took a step forward, and seized her arms between the shoulder and the
elbow in his strong, powerful grip, grasping them until his muscular
fingers seemed to sink into the flesh. Then, in a sudden access of rage,
he shook her to and fro, her slight form being as a lath in his hands.
"You tell me so?" he said. "You attempt to disobey me?"
He let go of her, and she sank to the ground.
"I'd kill you if I didn't hate you too much," he went on. "Get up and go
back to the house. When I am ready, I shall come again; and when I come,
I take him with me."
She heard his footsteps retreating through the clump of trees, and
waited as she was, half kneeling, half sitting, on the ground, where he
had left her. She felt her arms throbbing as the bruises formed where
his hands had gripped; her head was swimming and giddy from the shaking
he had given her; her heart was palpitating with fear and emotion; and
as she crouched to the ground, there came back to her the words she had
said to Ailleen. She had come to the place to think--and to pray!
The irony of it came to her in her helplessness and misery. Only a short
while before she had been flattering herself that, after an absence of
ten years, she might believe that the dark shadow which had so marred
her life had passed away for ever; that, after a period of ten years'
silence, she was never to hear again the voice of the man which held her
helpless and unresisting to do his bidding, to suffer whatever his
merciless hatred might dictate, to submit, silently and bitterly, to
anything that he should command. And even as the shattering of all those
hopes went on, leaving her trembling and unnerved, there came to her the
knowledge that with one effort she could snap the influence that he had
over her, could end for ever her thraldom to him. It looked so easy, so
simple, from her present position, and so awful. To speak, to tell the
world the great secret of her life, the maintenance of which had lain
between her and the chasm she, in her timidity, dare not look towards,
was to end this hold of terror, and, so it seemed to her, to shatter at
the same moment that to which she clung with all the instinct of her
very existence--the affection of her son.
That always appeared to her to be the price of her emancipation. Through
all the dark years of her blindness the solace had been in the love she
gave to him, and in the ideal sympathy with which she persuaded herself
he regarded her. Sometimes she thought what the effect would be if he
ever learned the truth, and was half inclined to speak and end her misery,
trusting to his generous instincts, which were so manifest to her when he
was absent; but when he came to her and spoke, there was something in his
voice and manner which she would not own, even to herself, as being a
contradiction to her faith, and yet which chilled her and made her seek
a refuge in the haven of the cowardly--procrastination.
Now another element had come into her life--her liking for Ailleen. The
simple courage the girl had displayed in the trial which had fallen upon
her, the unselfish putting aside of her own grief to soothe and make
happier the life of her blind friend, all weighed against the uttering
of the story which would destroy the overpowering demon of terror to
which she was subjected; for the uttering of the story would shatter, at
one word, she thought, the confidence, the affection, and the kindliness
of Ailleen.
Of the threat the man had made she thought nothing; he had made similar
threats too often before, until she felt he only used them to goad her
into deeper misery. He was merciless and, to all save himself,
treacherous--how much she dared not think--but she would not believe
that his threat to take her boy from her was genuine. All she could
think of, as she sat huddled up on the ground, was to cling to the
belief that her boy would not be taken away, and that somehow the mental
torture the man's existence caused her, and the physical pain he never
hesitated to inflict, might some day cease.
While she was under the protecting shade of the trees another little
drama was being enacted on the verandah of the station-house.
Scarcely had Ailleen, obedient to the elder woman's wish, reached it,
when she saw a horseman come through the gate from beside which she had
first seen Barellan. He rode rapidly towards the house, and as he
approached her heart gave a leap, for she recognized first the grey
horse, and then its rider. He saw her as she came up, and waved his
hand. Springing from the saddle a few moments later, he fastened the
bridle round the hand-rail which served as the blind woman's guide to
and from the house and the trees, and hastened to where Ailleen was
standing at the top of the steps.
"I only heard last night, Ailleen," he said simply, as he came and took
both her hands in his. "I--I don't know what to say; but you know, don't
you?"
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak to the only one whose sympathy
she really wanted, but whom she did not want to know it.
"I hardly knew what to do when they told me," he went on, looking at her
with eyes that she glanced into once and then avoided--sympathy, love,
and tenderness were too manifest in them for her to look again without
revealing what she, in the perversity of her feminine way, still wanted
to hide. "I didn't know what to make of it when they told me you were
here, till Nellie Murray said I should ride over to see."
It came to her, with a jealous little twinge, that after all the haste
he had shown in riding had been prompted by another girl; and in the
midst of her battle with feelings realized and feelings unrealized, the
struggle between the important and the unimportant, Ailleen, as a woman,
naturally jumped at the unimportant, and clung to it.
"That was very good of her. I'm glad you had her advice. Won't you sit
down?"
The words were as foreign as they well could be to what was in her
heart, but they relieved the situation for the moment, and saved her
from showing what she really meant.
"Why didn't you go to the Flat?" he asked, not heeding her words;
"mother would do anything for you, and father too--or to the Murrays, or
anywhere but here? Won't you come now? Mother wants you to come to the
Flat, and every one in Birralong----"
"I promised before----" and her lip quivered for a moment--"to come to
Mrs. Dickson. She asked me. I don't want to--offend any one, but--she is
so kind to me, and she's blind too, poor creature, and all alone."
"But, Ailleen----" he began, and stopped, looking hard at her face,
turned half away from him in her anxiety to avoid meeting his glance.
"We've found gold," he went on presently, after a few moments' silence.
"Not much, but still enough to--enough for us. When I've got
enough--when I come back--after this trip--if--I----"
He was floundering along, struggling vainly to put just one simple
little sentiment into a simple little sentence, and drifting more and
more into confusion and away from what he wanted to say. What that was
she was quite well aware, and also was aware what reply she would make
to it when once it was said; but for the present, with eternal feminine
perversity, she did not want it said, so she saw an imagined rider
across the paddock, and exclaimed--
"Is that Willy Dickson over there?"
Tony looked, half angrily.
"It isn't anybody," he said.
"Oh, I thought--yes, it's a shadow," she said, as she walked to the end
of the verandah and, leaning her hands on the rail, looked away into
the distance.
He turned and followed her, and had one of his hands over hers and his
arm ready to put round her.
"Ailleen, you're all alone now. Let me be your----"
"You are always my friend," she answered softly, but without raising her
eyes, and with a barely perceptible movement away from him.
The arm that was ready was around and restrained her, and her hand he
was clasping was pressed to his breast.
"More than that, Ailleen."
She turned her head quickly, and looked at him with a flash in her eyes
as she disengaged her hand and stepped away.
"It will be less than that," she retorted quickly; and he, shamefaced
and repulsed, stood hesitating what to do--and so failed. "I am
perfectly comfortable here," she went on rapidly, lest he should recover
his wits and renew an attack she knew she could not withstand. "Mrs.
Dickson is very kind, and I've got my horse and all that I want; and
besides, I can do a lot for her, and I'm not like I should be if I
stayed with any one at Birralong."
He stood awkwardly, looking at her now that her eyes were no longer
turned upon him, and wondering, in a dim, uncertain way, whether she was
angered at the overtures he had made, or annoyed because he stopped when
he did. She, half regretting her brusqueness, feared she had offended
him, as he made no apparent effort to speak.
"And you have found gold," she went on, anxious that silence should not
come between them at that moment. "Tell me all about it. Was it in the
creek where they said it was--Boulder Creek, wasn't it?"
"Boulder Creek's down the gully beyond the Flat," he answered
mechanically; for the mistake in locality was one she ought not to have
made, and a young bushman is jealous of the landmarks that he knows.
"Oh, of course. How silly of me! It was Boulder Creek where----"
She stopped in time to avoid a reference to a bygone episode which would
not be too pleasant at that moment.
"Where Dickson threw my stirrup-irons and I made him go in after them,"
he said, finishing the sentence for her, and in a tone of voice which
showed that resentment was slowly taking the place of the uneasiness at
his discomfiture.
"Poor Willy! You always were quarrelling, you two. Why can't you be
friends? I'm sure he is good-natured enough."
Resentment was quickly re-inforced by another sentiment as he heard her
speaking of Dickson in a manner which suggested that in her eyes he was
the least offender of the two. The words which rose to his lips were
angry words, and he checked them because, for a moment, she looked up
and met his glance. The angry words died down, but no others took their
place, and he was once more awkward and ill at ease.
"What else did Nellie Murray say?" she asked, still anxious to avoid
the embarrassment of silence, and unfortunately striking again a line of
thought in his mind which did not make for peace.
Nellie Murray, as a matter of fact, had thrown out hints, not by any
means too obscure, to the effect that if he hastened to Barellan he
might find Ailleen enjoying the society of Dickson to the exclusion of
all else. That had been the reason of his haste; that had been the
reason of his precipitate action when he found she was alone--fearing
that at any moment Dickson might appear. In the confusion of his mind
subsequent on her repelling his advances, he had lost sight,
temporarily, of the suspicions Nellie's words had roused in his mind.
Ailleen's reference brought them again to his memory. What else did
Nellie say? It was not so much what she said as what she implied. Before
he had gone away from Birralong--before the commencement of the tiff
which had come between Ailleen and himself, and which was so steadily
increasing in influence and importance, though its origin was impossible
to indicate--Nellie's opinion of Ailleen was the same as Ailleen's
opinion of Nellie, the opinion of one girl friend for her bosom
companion--enthusiastic, unmeasured, and, above all things, loyal. There
had certainly not been an excess of loyalty in Nellie's manner, or in
her words, when she urged him to go to Barellan; and he, remembering it,
was about to say something to that effect, when Ailleen cut him short by
exclaiming--
"Oh, look! There's Mrs. Dickson coming over to the house."
He looked where she pointed and saw the form of a woman walking slowly
along by the hand-rail. The sound of a horse galloping made him turn
round, when he saw Willy Dickson going straight for the hand-rail near
the house, and near where his grey was hitched. As Dickson came up he
tried to make his horse jump; instead, it baulked, and blundered into
the rail, carrying away some distance of it and liberating Tony's horse.
In the confusion of recovering the startled grey neither of the three
observed how Mrs. Dickson had walked to where the rail was broken, and
stood just beyond it, feeling from side to side, unable to realize where
it had gone. Ailleen noticed her, and ran to her assistance.
"Tony, look!" she exclaimed; and he, seeing what was the matter, also
hastened to her side.
Dickson, resenting Tony's appearance at the station, as well as the way
Ailleen behaved towards him, also hurried over.
"A horse has knocked the rail over," Ailleen exclaimed, as she took Mrs.
Dickson's arm.
"Let me help you," Tony said, as he took the other.
The blind woman stood motionless, with closely compressed lips and eyes
that stared in their sightless fixity.
"Here, I'll take her back," Dickson said abruptly, as he pushed Ailleen
aside. "Come on. What do you want mooning out here for?" he added
roughly to Mrs. Dickson, as he caught hold of her arm.
She half shuddered as he spoke and touched her, but moved forward,
leaning the more on Tony. At the steps her foot caught against the
lowest.
"Why aren't you careful?" Dickson exclaimed.
She freed her arm from his.
"Show me," she said to Tony, holding his arm tightly; and he gently led
her on to the verandah and up to the chair Ailleen moved forward for
her.
"Thank you," she said quietly. "Thank you;" and then, speaking as though
with an effort, she asked, "Who are you?"
"This is Tony Taylor--my--my friend," Ailleen said quickly.
The blind woman nodded slowly in answer, clasping her hands together in
her lap and closing her lips tightly.
"You should not have gone out in the sun with only that thin rag over
your head," Ailleen said gently to her. "You look knocked up. Shall
I----"
"No," Mrs. Dickson interrupted quickly and abruptly. "Where's Willy?"
"He's looking at that rail that is broken," Ailleen answered; and Tony,
standing by the steps, caught her eye, and forgot the anger he had felt.
"Shall I call him?" he said softly.
The blind woman's hands clutched one another convulsively, and she sat
up in her chair, rigid, with compressed lips and pale cheeks, the
staring eyes fixed in the direction whence she had heard Tony's voice.
"Tell him to go away. Tell him to go away," she said hurriedly to
Ailleen. "I want Willy. I want my boy. Where is my boy?"
Ailleen, meaning only to sign to Tony not to speak again, waved her hand
towards him as she bent over Mrs. Dickson. He, hearing the blind woman's
words, accepted the sign as a request to go, and, with anger again
rising in his breast, he turned away, caught and mounted his horse, and,
without a word or a glance, galloped from the station.