result a failure more elaborate than the ordinary type.'
'I cannot quite make out why you are so radically sceptical on the
subject of marriage. I am sure a great many of those we know most
intimately have made harmonious unions. Ah! I can see by your face you
are thinking of poor dear Esther. Certainly, that marriage turned out a
failure, though at first it promised to be an exceptionally happy one.
But, at any rate, the more mistrustful you are the more careful you
should be not to run risks. Even when people start with a good stock of
affection, what terrible ruin often overtakes them! There was your poor
friend Cicely----'
'It is curious to have the poor woman quoted from two such opposite
points of view in one afternoon. Well, at this moment she is living in
a four-roomed weather-board cottage in a township in New South Wales,
where her husband plays the harmonium in a little Baptist Chapel on
Sundays. I do not say that there is not an element of terrible ruin in
this, but not in the sense you mean.'
'Her husband?'
'Yes; as soon as she was divorced they were married. I found out where
they are living, and sent some help at a time when she badly needed it.
We have corresponded from time to time since then.'
'Does mother know this, Stella?'
'Well, no. There are some things one's mother should be spared. The
first letter I had was too pitiful.'
'Of course, I know you used to be very fond of each other, but----'
'The friendships of women should always have a limit. I admit it is very
dangerous to find out how things have really happened. You then find
there are cases in which, if you knew all, you would connive at
"terrible ruin" rather than avert it.'
'But, Stella, we must not let our sympathy with people blind us. There
are some actions that cut away the roots of friendship. I would rather
you had found a way of helping the poor woman without corresponding.'
'I wrote to her regularly after I knew she was living with a horrible
man, who used to lock himself up and drink till he was in delirium
tremens--one who was a dipsomaniac before she married him, and yet
managed to conceal it from her till after they were married. I know she
is living a purer life now than she could then. The only child that was
born to her was paralytic and imbecile. Fortunately it died. What sort
of a crime would it have been against herself, and still more against
society, if she had gone on adding to the probable criminals of the
world--to its certain weaklings?'
'I know how frightfully hard life may become; but at the worst, no
matter how we may be sinned against, we may at least refrain from
joining the ranks of those who have wronged us.'
'Meaning the criminals?'
'Yes.'
'Do you consider suicide a crime?'
'Need you ask, dear?'
'Because there were two courses open to Cicely--to kill herself, or go
away with the man who had for over two years protected her at intervals
from the maniacal conduct of her husband.'
'Who was this man?'
'An overseer on their station--a gentleman by birth. I suppose every
country evolves its own special tragedies. You see, Mowbray's run is
four hundred miles north. When he came to town now and then before he
was married, he managed to keep sober. At any rate, Cicely, during the
five months' engagement, never heard a breath or had the least
suspicion; and if her aunt did, she took good care not to mention it.'
'Surely she would never be guilty of such atrocity!'
'Oh, but she would. After the death of the child Cicely told her all,
and implored her to let her stay in town. No; a woman's proper place
was with her husband. That's the sort of venomous old lynx she
is--always comfortable and decorous, and going about with a bottomless
pouch of gossip. If ever she comes to a steep place she throws herself
upon tradition and conventional morality to save herself from the least
collision with virtue.'
'Stella, dear, that is very severe,' said Cuthbert, fondly stroking his
sister's glowing cheek. There was summer lightning in her eyes. Her
voice, when she was moved, had a resistant silvery tone, whereas when
she was indifferent or merely amused, she drawled a little.
'You wouldn't say so, Cuth, if you knew the old dame. But she was the
only relative Cicely has in Australia; so there was nothing for her but
to go back. Two months after she did so I heard she ran away with
Stoneleigh.'
'I remember how dreadfully cut up you were.'
'Yes, we are often sorriest for people when the worst is over. Now,
Cuth, don't sermonise; I see it is in your eyes. Just look how the
hills are catching the sunset glow.'
'Is it so late? Let me help you up on your beloved gum-tree stump to
see the sun set.'
The ivy-covered gum-tree stump, thirty-five feet in circumference, relic
of an old monarch of the primaeval woods, was close to the northern
boundary wall of the garden. This point of vantage commanded varied and
lovely views. Beyond North Adelaide and its sub-adjacent villaships,
looking to the east and south-east, one saw St. Peter's, College Town,
Norwood, and Kensington lying in graduated perspective, and beyond these
pretty prosperous suburbs full of charming houses and rose-filled
gardens, stretched the Adelaide hills. Their bases and quiet darkling
gullies were now in clear blue and pale purple shadows, their summits
beautifully flushed with the gold and crimson splendour of a brilliant
sunset. Northward the wide fertile Gawler Plain stretched beyond sight,
thickly sprinkled with tree-encompassed homesteads, and great
corn-fields, now ripely yellowing for the harvest. Westward lay
Hindmarsh and Bowden, the manufacturing suburbs of the city, Torrenside
in the foreground, with some delightfully old-fashioned, many-windowed
houses, their cream-coloured walls gleaming through fig-trees and
vine-trellised verandas. Beyond these might be discerned Port Adelaide,
with its forests of ship-masts lying along the wharves, and beyond all,
the ocean flushed to the verge of the wide horizon with the setting sun.
For a moment it rested like a quivering ball of flame on the level
waters, and then dropped out of sight, leaving a fiery glow wide and
high in the sky, passing towards the zenith into the most delicate tones
of pink. The same tints were reflected on the hilltops for some time, as
vividly as though they were mirrors throwing back a not distant picture.
The two gazed on these lovely scenes with crowding associations that
stretched back to the first twilight of childish memories, and lingered
in the garden till the sound of the dinner-bell summoned them into the
house.
Fairacre both within and without bore the traces of easy affluence. The
house was a large one-story building, substantially built of stone, with
a deep veranda, furnished with Venetian shutters, running all round it.
The principal rooms were large and lofty, and opened by wide doors, half
glass, upon the garden, which from one season to another was never seen
without the radiance of many flowers. The sparkling old silver, and the
delicately fine table-linen, were family heirlooms, as were also several
rare works of art, and a large proportion of the rosewood furniture.
Mrs. Courtland was now close on sixty-five years of age, invariably
attired in widow's weeds since her husband's death years previously.
She was descended from an old Highland family, and in face and bearing
she bore the unmistakable stamp of high-bred refinement. Her features
had never been strictly beautiful, but her countenance must always have
been marked by the calm gentleness, the sweet, kindly serenity which
imparted to it so much charm and distinction. It must even in youth
have been distinguished by that guileless sincerity which formed an
index to a mind curiously free from any taint of worldliness or
self-seeking.
The Courtland family numbered eight in all, though there were at this
period but four of them under the paternal roof. The eldest daughter,
Barbara, was married to the Rev. Joseph Wallerton, an Episcopalian
clergyman settled in Sydney; the second daughter, Esther, Mrs. Raymond,
was a widow of over two years' standing. Her husband had been a wealthy
squatter in the south-eastern district of the colony, where Mrs. Raymond
and her four children chiefly resided. There were two unmarried
daughters still at home--Stella and Alice, eighteen months her senior,
but looking incredibly young for her age, being _petite_ and
rosy-cheeked, with overflowing spirits--circumstances which were,
perhaps, providential, as she had recently entered on an engagement that
threatened to be rather indefinite. Tom, the other son who was at home,
was a lawyer in good practice, and three years older than the young
clergyman. The other two brothers, Hector and Claude, the eldest and
second eldest respectively, had been for over twenty-one years engaged
in squatting pursuits with almost unbroken success in the adjacent
colony of Victoria. Ten years previously a wealthy cousin of Mrs.
Courtland's in the Indian Civil Service had left her a legacy of
thirteen thousand pounds. This had been invested in Lullaboolagana, the
Victorian station, which not only ensured the increasing prosperity of
the two squatters, but added handsomely to the general income of the old
home.
The visitors at Fairacre on this Sunday afternoon were Mrs. Harrison, a
daughter and two sons. It was to Felix, the younger of these, and an
architect by calling, that Alice was engaged. The elder brother,
Andrew, was a journalist. The support of the rest of the family depended
largely on the two young men, as the father, a clergyman and an old
college friend of the late Mr. Courtland's, had died a few years
previously, leaving his widow with but a small annuity and younger
children to be educated. The elder daughter, Fanny, was now eighteen,
and there were growing symptoms of an attachment between herself and
Tom--a circumstance which drew the remark from Stella that it seemed as
though some families had hereditary tendency to catch infantile maladies
from each other. It was when she made observations of this kind that
Tom used to wonder why the youngest of an otherwise well-conducted
family should be hopelessly spoiled.
*CHAPTER III.*
On the following Monday afternoon Laurette Tareling, or, to give her the
designation which was dear to her as a title, the Hon. Mrs. Talbot
Tareling, paid the call of which her brother had spoken on Sunday.
She was of the medium height, though something in her face and figure
gave the impression that she was small, being slight and fair with a
faint colour deepened with a little rouge so skilfully that it was
unsuspected by all save the most practised eyes. She had fair fluffy
hair, lightened by gold dust, descending in a fringe of infantile
curliness to within a short distance of her eyes, which were dark brown,
rather small, but very bright and keen, and altogether somewhat like
those of a parrot that is bent on finding out a great deal. An
expression that was further carried out by the nose, which took the
liberty of turning up a little, and a mouth which, though it smiled very
often, had something rather hard and beakish in its formation. Yet, on
the whole, Mrs. Tareling was considered pretty. She dressed extremely
well, and was never seen beyond the domestic circle without an air of
determined vivacity. She had the reputation of being one of the
'smartest' talkers in Melbourne society, and had a knack of telling a
story against those to whom she owed any grudge, which at once made her
popular, and created many enemies.
Mrs. Courtland and her two daughters were in the drawing-room when the
visitor was shown in. Mrs. Tareling bestowed sharp little explosive
kisses on each, ending with Stella, at whom she looked inquiringly, her
head a little to one side.
'Why, Stella, you have grown thinner,' she said, half pensively. 'My
dear Mrs. Courtland, has Stella been ill?'
'Oh no; Stella is never ill!' answered the mother with a fond smile.
'Well, just look at the two--who, to see them, would think Allie was
older?'
'Ah, Laurette, you are letting me down gently,' said Stella, trying to
keep back the mischievous smile that lurked round her lips. 'What you
mean is that I am "going off"--that my first youth is over.'
'Oh, well! in a climate like ours we must make up our mind that we shed
our first youth when we leave our teens--except fortunate people like
Allie, who discover some elixir----'
'Which they don't give even their sisters,' laughed Stella. 'Well,
Larry, I promise you if ever I get the chance I shall have a sip--if
only to save you pain.'
'Oh, as for that, who is such a wreck as I am myself for my age? I
assure you the day before I left Melbourne I nearly wept at finding that
I was suddenly an old hag. Oh, positively! In the morning I found two
gray hairs in my comb. I always heard people speak of the first gray
hair, but there were two, showing that somewhere my head was getting
powdered with the frost of age. And that wasn't all. In the afternoon
I stood in a cross light, opposite a mirror. I turned round with a
start; who is that creature, thought I, with her cheeks so hollow and a
faded colour, and lines deepening round her mouth? And then, to crown
it all, Talbot came in that moment leading Gwendolen by the hand,
looking atrociously tall for her four years----'
'Is that your little daughter, Laurette?' asked Mrs. Courtland, who was
getting a little hard of hearing, and did not quite catch the drift of
these remarks, which were delivered in a rapid, semi-staccato tone
levelled especially at Stella.
'Yes, dear Mrs. Courtland; and growing such a big girl, and so
precocious. She wanted to know, the other day, whether her little
brother Howard would not be Lord Lillimore when he grew up. And then
she was sure, she said, that Uncle Ted would be Sir Edward Ritchie.'
'My dear, you must not let her be too much with the servants. You
should get a nice young lady as nursery-governess for her,' said Mrs.
Courtland, in a motherly way, never dreaming that this precocious tattle
had been invented by Laurette on the spur of the moment.
'Well, life is full of accidents; who knows but both these events may
come off one day,' said Alice solemnly, though there was a merry gleam
in her eyes.
And then Mrs. Tareling went off on another tack.
'You are always so beautifully quiet and sedate in Adelaide, it is
really like coming to another world from Melbourne. And the season was
so late with us this year. What with the Russian and German men-of-war
and the visit of the Sultan of Morocco, it was a perfect whirlpool. I
felt at last I would like to retire to the Grande Chartreuse.'
'But I suppose you find the dear little farinaceous village almost as
quiet. Hardly anything happens with us,' said Alice. 'People die
occasionally, but only once and very seldom. Yes, and holes come
occasionally in the carpets--of the poorer classes, you know;' and Alice
glanced half ruefully at the Brussels pile which had been in the
drawing-room for twenty years and began to show signs of wear in places.
'Yes; and even your Governors last longer than they do elsewhere,'
answered Mrs. Tareling. 'Now, with us in seven years we have had two;
and next month Sir Marmaduke leaves; and who do you think is his
successor? Why, Lord Weavelow, whose wife is Talbot's first cousin, and
Lord Weavelow a connection of his sister-in-law, Lady Gertrude. It is
rather trying to be so closely related to the new Governor in our
circumstances.'
'Oh, my dear, it is very likely they will be quite nice people. I dare
say you will like them very well,' said Mrs. Courtland soothingly, which
amused her daughters not a little.
'Mother never did, and never will, comprehend the little subtleties of a
snob,' as Alice said afterwards half despairingly.
'Oh, I dare say we shall like them very much. But then we are so
poverty-stricken; and the people who entertain most in Melbourne get
more ostentatious every year--private theatres, and enormous ball-rooms,
and French cooks who keep a tandem and a Cremona violin.'
'Fancy all these complexities off the back of the idyllic sheep!' said
Stella, laughing. 'Well, Laurette, if I were you, I would go in for a
sweet and severe simplicity. It would really be more _distingue_.'
'That is true. But nothing is so costly as the only form of simplicity
open to you if you have the right of tambour at Government House,'
returned Mrs. Tareling, with the air of one who is laying down axioms
for the guidance of society from Olympian social heights.
At this moment a little diversion was caused by the entrance of two
elderly Quaker ladies, maiden sisters, in soft dove-coloured dresses and
bonnets, and white fichus of Indian muslin. They were followed by
afternoon tea, over which the older ladies fell into a group to
themselves, talking softly over sick and afflicted people, and new
candidates for admission to the Asylum for Incurables.
'Still, I suppose you will hardly retire to the wilds of Kannawijera
when your relatives begin to reign at Government House?' said Alice,
taking up the thread of conversation as she presided at the tea-tray.
'No; not this coming season, at any rate. We had to give up our house
at Yarra Yarra; they raised the rent so atrociously. But we have
secured a smaller one at Toorak, with the principal rooms _en suite_;
almost all the partitions in folding-doors, that can be pushed back in
the most wonderful way. Just like one of those knives--at least, they
look like knives, but when you open the handle it turns into corkscrews,
and toothpicks, and glove-buttoners, besides several blades. Everyone
says Melbourne will be awfully full by May; so we caught time by the
forelock, and took this house from November. But we don't pay a penny
more than if we waited later. It is to be a most brilliant season,
everyone says. And now, Stella, I want to arrange about your
long-promised visit.'
'Oh, you are very kind,' said Stella.
'Don't say that: it's a bad omen. Always before when I asked you to
come, you said, "You are very kind," and didn't turn up. It's no use
coming for a couple of weeks, like the girls who come from the wilds of
the Bush for a birthday ball, and don't know a soul but a few lanky men
in split gloves, who don't waltz, and huddle up together behind the
doors.'
'Ah, Laurette, you had better think twice before you are burdened
through part of a brilliant season with a country cousin like me,' said
Stella, laughing merrily at the picture called up by Laurette.
'I suppose it would be no use asking you to come as well, Allie, just
for a couple of weeks?' said Mrs. Tareling graciously.
Allie raised her hands in mock despair.
'How can you ask? I am in training to keep a house on nine or ten
pounds a week, and save out of that for a rainy day.'
'Oh, how very romantic! But surely no rainier day can come than nine or
ten pounds a week?' said Mrs. Tareling, with well-simulated wonder.
'You see, Larry, you who are poverty-stricken on over three thousand a
year can hardly plumb the depths of real destitution,' said Alice.
'There is the poverty of hot joints and "frugal days of interlinear
hash----"'
'Allie, whatever you do when you and Felix marry, do not have large
joints,' said Stella gravely. 'I am confident that the happiness of the
Australian household is more frequently wrecked by hash than any ethical
point.'
'Well, I am studying the question. Perhaps I may one day publish a
shilling cookery-book for young couples who ought not to have married.'
'Surely Felix's income must be considerable now. They say he is the
best architect in the place,' said Laurette somewhat abruptly.
This laughing raillery about poverty did not commend itself to her in
the least. It is mortifying, when one wants to make a girl feel how
comparatively humble her prospects are, to find her treating the subject
in a serio-comic vein.
'But then there are the younger children to provide for--quite dependent
on Felix and Andrew,' returned Alice.
'Well, it's a pity you girls couldn't go in for a little division of
poverty,' replied Laurette. 'Here is Stella's _fiance_ rolling in
money.'
'As it happens, that young woman hasn't got a _fiance_,' returned Stella
quickly.
'No? You and Ted keep on such good terms, I always forget the affair
was broken off,' said Laurette rather maliciously. 'But now for your
visit, Stella.'
'I must talk it over with mother before making ultimate arrangements.'
'But we all know beforehand what that means. Your mother says, "Yes,
darling," to all you propose. Pray, my dear, don't forget that I've
known you from childhood. It was never a secret you were rather
spoiled.'
Thus pressed, Stella said half hesitatingly:
'Well, if you let me come to you on my way to Lullaboolagana, without
pledging myself to the length of the visit. But do you know that
Dustiefoot insists on coming wherever I go?'
'Oh yes; and you always take Maisie when you pay a long visit--at least,
someone said so the other day----'
'Yes,' put in Alice; 'we spare Maisie to Stella because she could never
bear to brush her dresses or sew on bits of braid. It is a case of
atavism. She has reverted to the only duchess that was in our
family--more than three centuries ago.'
'That is curious,' said Stella, maintaining the mock gravity with which
her sister spoke; 'for after twelve generations the proportion of blood
of any one ancestor in only 1 in 2,048.'
'At any rate, it is settled you are to come--Dustiefoot, Maisie, and
all,' said Laurette. 'By the way, how did you enjoy the Emberly ball?'
'Oh, immensely,' answered Stella; and then a quick wave of colour
suffused her face, mounting even to her forehead.
'We enjoyed it "not wisely, but too well." We fancy there has been no
nice weather since that ball was over,' said Alice, who sympathetically
noted this uncompromising blush, and tried to attract Laurette's
gleaming eyes from her sister's face.
But Laurette had in an eminent degree what Talleyrand considered the
whole art of politics--that is, the art of seeing--at any rate, what was
on the surface.
'Oh, very much, did you? And you used to be so disdainful of dancing.
But, to be sure, that was when you were much younger. And those alcoves
one heard so much about--were they a great success? I declare, Stella,
there must be something behind this. Do you know you are blushing most
furiously?'
'Oh, I always blush when I ask Alice for a second cup of tea,' replied
Stella, recovering her self-possession. 'As for the alcoves--the half
was not told you. There are eight windows in the ball-room, and round
each window an alcove much larger than an ordinary bay-window, all lined
with salmon-coloured satin with a seat running round each; up the front,
on both sides, brackets with great vases full of ferns and roses, and
lotos blooms and asphodel; overhead an electric light in an opal globe,
exactly like a great piece of the full moon put into a crystal prison,
only more lambent.'
'And don't forget the cream lace curtains in front lined with salmon
satin, Stella,' said Alice, looking at her sister with a dancing light
in her eyes. And then turning to Laurette: 'The thing was to meet
Prince Charming at the ball--dance and chat with him, and then sit out
the rest of the evening in an alcove, behind the curtains and two
chaperons, just fashioned by Providence so as to completely screen you
from the other men to whom you might have promised dances.'
'Indeed, and who--who was your chaperon?' said Laurette, looking from
one to the other of the sisters.
Stella had grown suddenly grave, though the remnants of her 'furious'
blushing still lingered in her cheeks.
'Oh, Mrs. Marwood and Tom and Felix and Andrew,' answered Alice lightly.
'And which of you retired into the alcove with the imprisoned moonlight
and asphodel--and Prince Charming?'
'How literal you are, my dear!' said Alice, laughing. 'But you see,
after one's ideals of life have been exalted by such alcoves you must
not expect Stella to fall quite prostrate before the grandeurs of
Melbourne society.'
Laurette seemed only half satisfied with this explanation, but feeling
that further investigation would be useless just then, she allowed the
subject to drop.