'Yes, I dare say it will be as good as a play for the Aldersleys. You
may call Mrs. A. a frump and think she's slow, but let me tell you she
is as sharp as a needle. She agrees with everything, so that people may
give themselves away more completely. She keeps a diary, and writes
pages upon pages in it every night. Two people that know her well have
told me she means to publish a book on "Life at the Antipodes" when she
gets back to England, and, of course, Uncle John would be regular nuts
for her.'
'But who the deuce cares what these tourist people say? They either put
down stuff that everybody knows from the beginning of creation, or they
tell crammers that suck in nobody but their own friends,' said Ted,
lighting a cigar, and resuming his semi-recumbent attitude.
'And it isn't even as if one could make him out to be eccentric or an
oddity,' went on Laurette in a bitter tone. 'He won't change his boots
in the house, but he'll put on a dress-suit and a white tie that goes
slipping round his neck like a third-rate hotel waiter's. And it's ten
to one if he doesn't blurt out how long his wife was in service with him
before he married her.'
'Well, you may put your money on it that all the world over people have
got to be in service, or have enough money of their own to live on, or
live on someone else,' returned Ted, with philosophic calm. 'You're
always kotooing at Government House here and in Melbourne--and aren't
they all in service? Living on money they get out of the country, for
looking on while other people manage affairs. It's a perfect chouse.
When Aunt Sally was in service at Kataloonga she worked for all the
money she earned, I bet.'
'You talk as if you hadn't a scrap of proper pride about you. You take
good care only to ask a lady to be your own wife,' retorted Laurette
rather vindictively.
'It's not because she's a lady; it's just because she's Stella, and I've
known her all my life, and every other girl seems common and flat beside
her,' answered Ted, holding his cigar in his hand as he spoke.
A half-resentful expression came into Laurette's keen dark eyes at this
speech. But before she could make any rejoinder Ted laughed softly in
that gratified way which is significant of pleasant recollections.
'By Jove! I had a jolly evening! I never knew any girl that can make
as much out of a little thing as Stella does sometimes. We played
euchre together,' he went on, in answer to Laurette's interrogative
'Oh?' 'Stella at first wouldn't play for money, because she hasn't a
sou, being near the end of the quarter. Think of that, you know; and me
with over a hundred and fifty thousand pounds in spanking investments,
not to mention the yearly income of Strathhaye. I'd like to fill all
her pockets with gold and diamonds, and I can't offer her even a shabby
tenner. She had a great run of luck with the cards at the
beginning--right bower and joker and a couple of high trump cards--time
after time. At last she consented to play for money, and then--confound
it!--the luck changed. I tried to pack the cards so that she might win.
But she's got eyes like an eagle-hawk, and bowled me out at once. You
should hear all the penances she set me. She lost five shillings and
gave me an I.O.U.' Ted took a note out of his pocket-book and gazed at
it fondly. 'I'll keep this till all I've got belongs to her.'
'Well, I sometimes fancy that will never be the case, after all,'
returned Laurette, who, for various reasons, was in that 'put out' frame
of mind in which one finds a gloomy satisfaction in dashing the hopes of
another.
'What do you mean by that?' asked the young man quickly. 'Hasn't she
promised to come to see you in Melbourne?'
'Yes; in a sort of a way. Instead of being grateful and pleased at the
idea of seeing some good society, she said, "Well, if you let me come on
my way to Lullaboolagana, without pledging myself beforehand as to the
length of the visit,"' and Laurette mimicked Stella's tone as well as
she could, grossly exaggerating her little drawl.
'Excuse me for saying so, Larry, but if the Lord meant you to talk like
Stella He'd have given you a prettier mouth,' said Ted, with slow
deliberation. 'And as for good society--what have you better than she
has been in all her life?'
'Oh, yes; a narrow, Churchy little clique, mixed up with all sorts of
outsiders. People here always rave about Mrs. Courtland being so sweet
and unworldly. It's my belief she's full of old Highland pride at
heart. They're on a sort of little suburban pinnacle, without the least
idea of anything like real style or _chic_. And that Alice speaking of
themselves as "the poorer classes." If that's not the pride that apes
humility I should like to know what is... I don't know why you've set
your heart so on wooing that girl. Why, with your fortune you might
easily marry a lord's daughter.'
'But what the devil do I want with a lord's daughter?' cried Ted, in an
amazed voice. 'The only one I ever knew had a scrag of a neck, and was
as yellow as a buttercup.'
'Oh, it's just like a man only to think of looks. I'd like to know who
all Stella's partners were at the Emberly ball. I fancy there was
something in the background. The moment I spoke of the affair she
blushed up to the whites of her eyes----'
'But Stella always does that. I never see her but she colours, off and
on, twenty times an hour.'
'Yes; she's one of those girls that always look more charming when an
admirer is by, whether they care for him or not. She has that slow kind
of half-smile and a droop in her eyes, as if to show her long lashes,
and she sometimes says the most biting things with that gentle sort of
drawl, and then she laughs right out when you least expect it. I never
did like girls that find things so amusing which are serious to other
people. They're always coquettes, more or less. Oh, you don't half
understand Stella Courtland!'
'Well, perhaps a fellow sees rather more than is good for him of the
sort of women who are too easily understood.... At any rate, I
understand this much about Stella. I'd sooner hear her laugh without
quite understanding why she's amused than have any other woman in the
world at my feet. And, by George! if she throws me over at the
last--well, it's all U P with me. I know that.... They're coming to
dinner on the 26th,' he added, relighting his cigar, 'and we're going
out riding together most mornings till then.'
'Well, Ted, you've always been very good to me when we've been in a
financial fix,' said Laurette, 'and I'll do what I can for you. As I
said before, I think part of a season in Melbourne among people who are
really in the swim may open Stella's eyes a little. She'll find what it
is to have a fashionable connection and good horses, and dresses from
Worth, and the last touch in a Parisian bonnet. She'll see the crowds of
girls nearly as well born as she is, and more fashionably dressed, and
handsomer, whose mouths would water at the chance of an offer from you.'
'Now, Larry, there you're out of it completely. The girls you call
handsomer would have their numbers taken down the instant they stood in
the same room with Stella. As for being more fashionably dressed--why,
whatever she puts on is the best and most fashionable. And it's just
the same with what she says. She may mock at me, or say things I don't
quite catch, or laugh when I don't know the reason why; but whatever she
does is just right--except refusing me--and, by the Lord, I sometimes
think that just a proof she's really long-headed. And yet I believe I
could make her as happy as any other fellow would.'
Ted had ceased smoking, and now stared before him with a look of care on
his face which was very unusual.
'Now, Ted, whatever you do, don't let your spirits go down,' said
Laurette. 'Of course the life of a man is as different from that of a
girl as chalk is from cheese. After all, the more high-falutin' a girl
is, the more she has to knuckle under to the inevitable.... I remember
when I used to stay at Fairacre in the old days Stella was always
reading some rubbishy old fathers, or tragedies, or wild German stories.
Her father used to call her his little "improvisatrice," and she would
sometimes start off and tell stories that would make your backbone
quiver. She always had too much imagination; and that's the one thing a
woman can best do without. It makes her draw pictures of life each one
more unlike reality than the other. But in the end she'll have to put
up with things as they are, just like the rest of us. Women have
dreams, only to give them up when they marry.'
When Laurette took to moralizing it was in the robust strain of one to
whom delicacy of mind was not a lost, but an unknown attribute.
'Well, Larry, if nothing comes of this visit to Melbourne--if before
this time next year Stella is not my wife--why, I think I must give the
affair up for good and all.'
'Quite right, Ted. The end of everything ought to come before it's too
late. Whatever lies in my power shall be done. I think Melbourne will
open her eyes a little.'
'And if you're in a fix for some tin, Larry, before the end of the
season--why, just let me know,' said Ted, who knew by experience that a
season in Melbourne seldom passed in which a hundred pounds or two was
not a welcome, if not an indispensable gift to Laurette, notwithstanding
the station in the Mallee country, worth over three thousand a year,
which her father settled on her when she married the Hon. Talbot
Tareling five years previously.
A look of vivid interest suddenly came into Laurette's face. It was the
being 'in a fix' for some time which had mainly inspired her present
visit to her father.
'Well, Ted----' Laurette began, and suddenly paused. Various thoughts
swept through her mind, and then what she had intended to say ended in
the bald statement: 'It is really very late.' But at that moment
certain seed had dropped into fertile ground--seed that was destined to
bear fruit in the not distant future, which, to their bitter ruing, must
be eaten by others rather than by herself.
*CHAPTER V.*
Cuthbert Courtland left for Melbourne on the 28th of December. On the
afternoon of the same day Edward Ritchie called at Fairacre to say
good-bye.
He looked dejected and very much out of sorts; weary, with an unusual
pallor on his face.
'You really were ill, then, on the 26th?' said Stella, noticing the
change in his appearance.
'Yes, of course. Did you think I would stay away for a trifle when you
went to my father's? It was a horrid sell altogether. Two of the best
horses behaved like shoe-trunks.'
'Why, I thought you were at Mr. Edwin Emberly's place near Reynella?'
'Yes, and we had a private steeplechase--gentlemen riders--and the day
was most abominable. Everything went wrong. If I had only stayed at
home----'
'You see, Ted, you cannot have your cake and eat it.'
'Cake? it was a cake. You seem to have an idea I stayed away on
pleasure.'
'Well, you know, it was an atrocious day, with a fierce east gully wind.
It's always a little cooler at Reynella.'
'Not on the 26th, with an amateur steeplechase and only a mob of young
bachelors together.'
'But then, in the evening, instead of dressing for dinner, no doubt you
lounged in pyjamas and smoked, and had "long drinks" out on the
verandas. Whereas we fanned ourselves languidly through thirteen
courses, and listened to the good old Bishop speaking on surpliced
choirs and the ultimate cost of the cathedral. I certainly thought you
had the best of it. But now I see you really were ill. Did you have a
sunstroke, or did your horse roll over you--or what?'
'Oh, it was just what!' answered Ritchie grimly. 'The fact is, I'--he
was staring hard at the girl as he spoke, but something in her gay
smiling unconsciousness arrested the words on his lips--'I believe my
heart has gone back on me rather badly. It keeps thumping about in the
most confounded manner.'
'Your heart, Ted? Now do you know what side it is on?' she asked
laughingly.
'Oh yes, Stella, it's all very well for you. You're on the right side
of the hedge. You never had a day's illness in your life since you were
a baby. I've had many an attack. And to have old Mac and his wife
bringing you in beef-tea you can't drink, and lie awake half the night,
and no one to talk to, or ride out with in the morning and have some
fun---- You can't wonder I run off to Melbourne pretty often. What is
there to keep me at home? Now, if you were there--but I'm not going to
say any more just now. I am going on to Strathhaye, to see to a few
things there; and then I'm going to have a complete change for some
months. I've been feeling rather dicky off and on for some time. Oh
yes, I look well enough generally; but you can't always go by that. I
think I shall give up horse-racing--it keeps a fellow racketing about
so.'
'What! sell Konrad and Circe, and all the rest, and have no more "sweet
little fillies" and year-old colts, that are so knowing and thoroughbred
they take to racing almost without being told? What in the world would
you talk about, Ted?'
'Oh, I wouldn't sell them all. I'll always keep good horses. I can't
stand any other kind; but not to go flying about from one race-meeting
to the other. It begins to tell on a fellow after a few years. I think
I'll try and read a little more. You remember the list of books I got
you to give me once? Well, there's a big boxful at Strathhaye never
opened. I'll take it with me. But I don't think I can ever make much
out of sonnets, Stella.'
'Why, have you actually been reading sonnets? Ah, poor Ted! you must
have been feeling bad.'
'Yes, I felt very low last night, after I got home; and I thought I
would try to improve my mind, as Edwin Emberly calls it. I thought I
would try to understand more about the things you care for. I have a
Wordsworth that was given me for a prize at St. Peter's. Oh, it was for
regular attendance. When a fellow was there for a couple of years, and
they couldn't give him a prize for anything else, they gave him one for
not playing the tally. As I was a boarder, I couldn't do that very
well.'
'And did you really get out your prize Wordsworth and read it?'
'Yes, I read some of the sonnets; but it was for all the world like a
bullock trying to jump in hobbles. He makes a great clanking with the
chains, and he heaves up his horns, but he doesn't get any further. And
there's no story in the thing. At least, if there is, it's so thin I
can never catch it. Now, when I was about ten, I remember, you read me
"The Lady of the Lake" once, and, by Jove! it made my heart beat. It
was one Saturday. I came from St. Peter's to stay till Monday. Cuth
was always very kind to me, though he was at the head of his class and I
was always at the bottom, and one below my age. You sat up in the
branches of the Moreton Bay fig-tree, and I sat beside you and turned
the leaves. Good Lord! I wish I was ten to-day, and you nine!'
'Why?--that we might go and sit in the branches of the fig-tree?
Perhaps it isn't too late even now----'
'I hate those words "too late!"' said Ritchie, with unusual
irritability.
He rose and strode about the room, and stared out through one of the
windows overlooking the garden.
'Really, Ted shows himself in quite a new aspect to-day. It is as though
he had the first faint beginnings of a soul,' thought Stella, looking at
him with a new interest. 'Why do you hate the words "too late," Ted?
Have you any association with them?' she said, going up to him where he
stood at the window.
'Yes; we had a knock-about hand at Strathhaye once, and I can't forget
the way he said the words over and over at the last. Well, he was
hardly middle-aged, really; but the life he led made him seem so. He
belonged to one of the old swell families in England, and got engaged,
but had no money to marry on. So he sold out of a crack regiment and
came to try his luck at the diggings. He was among the lucky ones--he
and his mate, who had been a gamekeeper on his uncle's estate. They got
one nugget worth four thousand pounds, and there was more to follow; and
there, in the very middle of his luck, came a letter telling him his
sweetheart was married to an old baboon with ever so many thousands a
year. It put him off his chump entirely. He went completely to the
bad. He was two years at Strathhaye. He would go off every now and
then with a cheque, and come back blue with the horrors--even his coat
and his blanket sold for a last nobbler or two. At last he stayed away
for over a month, and came back one night more dead than alive. Why he
didn't do away with himself, I can't make out. Sometimes, I believe,
people get too miserable even to hang themselves. We had the doctor for
him; but there was nothing he could do except give him some stuff that
made it easier to die.'
'Was there no one to look after him?' asked Stella, her eyes large and
dim with pity.
'Oh yes; he was in the men's hut, and Mrs. Mackenzie used to go to him
for a couple of hours every day. I used to go in, too, most days; but,
by Jingo! I can't think of anything more awkward than to sit by a
fellow like that when you know he's dying, and he knows that you know.
You can't even say you hope he'll soon be better. You know nothing of
where he's going; and it would hardly be decent to talk of horses and
classifying wool to a man with the death-rattle in his throat, so to
speak. I offered to read the Bible to him, but I was always coming
across some queer yarn that made one feel anyhow. At last he gave me a
little purple Book of Common Prayer to read; but there, what was the
good of reading "The Publick Baptism of Infants," or "The Churching of
Women," or "The Solemnization of Matrimony"----'
'Oh, Ted! why didn't you read "The Psalms," or "The Visitation of the
Sick," or a collect?' said Stella, unable to refrain from a smile,
though the picture called up by the young man's unstudied narrative
touched her deeply.
'Well, you see, you know the run of the Prayer-Book, but I don't; and I
just used to start off where I opened it. Once I began with "The Burial
of the Dead;" but I wasn't sorry, for it made poor old Travers laugh so.
"Not yet, my boy--not yet!" he said. That was a few evenings before he
died. And just two days before, a lawyer's letter came, telling him he
was heir to his uncle's estate. The old man was dead, the eldest son
had come to grief hunting buffaloes somewhere in North America, and the
second had got killed in the Zulu War years before. So there was this
estate, with thirteen or fourteen thousand a year, for Travers to step
into, just as he got his last marching-orders--barely two days before he
turned up his toes. I was sorry the letter came before he died. He was
rather gone in his mind, what with sleeping-draughts and one thing and
another. And after he read the letter everything about him passed out
of his mind, and he thought he was a young fellow with the ball at his
feet, and he and his Nellie were to be married. I sat by his bedside in
the dusk, and he kept on saying, "I am so glad this has come before it
was too late, Nell! It is sometimes awful. I knew of a fellow that
went to the dogs away in Australia; but then the girl he loved threw him
over. You would never do that, Nellie darling! Thank God, it's not too
late--it's not too late!" By Jove! you know, it gave me a lump in the
throat as big as a potato. Somehow it was worse than if he said it
_was_ too late; and he kept on hammering at the same thing, and thanking
God she was so true to him, and marking down on a map where they were
going for their wedding-trip. And then he would say, "Now, Nell, don't
keep me waiting long at the church. I have been waiting such a long
time; and sometimes I had the most awful dreams. But it's not too
late!" he would begin again. I was glad when it was all over.'
'Ah, what pitiful broken episodes many lives are!' said Stella softly.
'All that might have saved them is defeated--every touch leads to the
catastrophe, and then silence and darkness--and the great play goes on
just the same. And yet how good it is to be alive and see the sky and
look at the roses!'
'Will you give me a rose before I go, Stella?'
'Yes--what kind would you like?'
'One of those you're fondest of.'
'Well, those I love the very best are the white fairy roses, and the
cruel east wind on the 26th scorched the last of them, buds and all.
But I can give you a Gloire de Dijon.'
'And, Stella, would you mind giving me that book with the "Lady of the
Lake" in, and----'
'Oh, with great pleasure!'
'And just write my name in it, Stella--and the date--and here's a little
parcel. Don't open it till I'm gone. You know you said you liked
opening parcels.'
'But, Ted, I should see what it is before I take it.'
'No, you can settle about that when I see you in Melbourne.'
Stella took the little square parcel, and looked at it doubtfully.
'It's not another Kooditcha shoe?'
They passed into the library, where Stella got the book, and wrote 'E.
Ritchie, 28th Dec.,' on the fly-leaf. Then they stepped out into the
garden, and got an unopened rose, fragrant and smiling red at the lips.
'I am sorry your mother and Alice are out--say good-bye to them for me,
Stella--next time I meet them I hope--well, we shall see..... Now,
Stella, give me your two hands, and say, "God bless you, Ted!"'
She gave him her hands, and he looked into her face so long and
steadfastly that she suddenly crimsoned under his gaze, and said with a
little pout:
'Ted, you mustn't be so solemn. One would think you were going to
Central Australia, or whale-fishing to Greenland in very bad company.'
'Say it, Stella.'
'God bless you, Ted!'
He bent and kissed her hands, and then hurried away without once looking
behind.
Stella stood where he left her, till she heard the sound of his horse's
hoofs ringing on the roadway as he passed up Barton Terrace. And then
traces of contending emotions swept over her face.
'Poor old Ted! I believe he is in some trouble. What if his health is
really affected? But I can't believe it. That is a way men have if the
least thing is wrong--they take themselves as seriously as if they were
stuffed llamas. Well, I'm almost sorry I wasn't more sympathetic ....
only it is so dangerous.' And the thought of Ted trying to read sonnets
for her sake overcame her with amusement. Yet this was soon followed by
a feeling akin to self-reproach. In the old days she had read to
him--talked to him of what interested her most--but for the last two or
three years, when they met, her chief feeling was a wondering amusement
that one who had learned to read at all should so completely escape all
tincture of books. She had got into the habit of listening to him--of
apprehending his point of view--almost avoiding any direct personal talk
that might influence him or modify his mental habits. But was he so
entirely beyond any intellectual sympathy--so far removed from kinship
with matters that lay beyond the common grooves of common life? Why had
she relinquished those ardent dreams of being a power for good in the
lives of those to whom she was dear?
Her face grew hot as she recalled the frivolous way in which she had met
his half-expressed resolution of giving up horse-racing. And yet was
there any other pursuit that seemed so completely to arrest the better
development of a man's nature--to paralyze the worthier interests of
life? The perpetual contact with the ignoble rabble, whose keenest
interest was the excitement of betting, and winning money for which they
had not worked--must not this render the mind more and more callous to
all that was worth living for? And yet she had almost mocked his recoil
from his past devotion to the racecourse.
Her action suddenly appeared to her in so odious a light that she longed
to see Ted again for a few moments, to ask his pardon for her mocking
indifference--to encourage him in his new-born resolve--to tell him that
their native country was full of work which needed honest men and honest
money. How many fields were white for the harvest--how many labourers
were needed to dedicate their whole powers to the world's service!
'Oh, I shall have to come back to being as much in earnest as ever,' she
thought, half smiling at her rising zeal; and then the thought of Ted
blundering through 'The Publick Baptism of Infants' beside the poor
dying man made her feel inclined to laugh and cry at the same moment.