Leslies sailed next morning; and, of course, the Emberlys could tell
nothing of any special stranger, there were so many whose names and
faces were equally unknown to them. Now are you satisfied?'
'It is like the beginning of a story--an overture that should be
followed by a concert. I wonder----'
Esther paused abruptly, scanning her sister's face with an inquiring
look.
'You must not get on the wrong track, Esther,' said Stella, who was now
weaving a little thimble-basket out of some everlastings that were left.
'Tom and Allie could not get over my sitting out nearly three dances
with anyone. I never did such a thing before; but the attraction was
unexpectedly meeting someone who seemed to have all the makings of a
friend in him.'
'A friend, my dear? Like Willie Stein and Mr. Harrison, I suppose?'
'How horrid you can be, Esther! It is the very fact that most men have
so few strings to their nature that makes one so soon understand the
sort of people that are different. I have for a long time thought that
one of the greatest pleasures of life would be a real, great, lasting
friendship. It takes so much to form a true one. There is, as a wise
man says, in human nature generally more of the fool than of the wise.
Yet the part of us which is not a fool responds so gladly to the sane,
enlightened strain of another mind. But it must be different from one's
own. That is why the best friendships require the difference of sex.'
'How very sage and calm that sounds,' said Esther, with an amused
expression. 'But, after all, what shoals there are! Most men and women
are either married or expect to be.'
'And yet my pair of friends must be single or widowed. They must have an
interest--and a deep one--in books, but still deeper in life itself, so
that they are like the spectators of a play in which nothing can happen
that has not some significance. Only life being so much greater, so
much wider, and more complex than any picture of it can possibly be, it
always strikes people--men and women especially--from opposite points of
view.'
'You are quite convinced that your ideal friendship must be based not
only on difference of sex, but dissimilarity of view? Well, you may be
right, but how long would it last between two disengaged people? How
many weeks would pass before that strong interest in books, and in the
general play of human affairs, would be centralized?'
'Oh, Esther, you are too tiresome. Of course, that is the rock on which
the ordinary friendship of an ordinary man and woman strikes--and it is
odious--it is worse than disillusionment.'
'My dear, you have gone through the process more than once,' said
Esther, a smile hovering round her lips.
'Yes; and the soft, silly look that comes into a man's eyes--the way in
which he is perpetually on the look-out for some point of personal
vantage--for the opportunity of paying some inane compliment--of course
all that is the very antipodes of true unbiassed intercourse. Flattery
is the lethal spot of friendship. It is the cryptogram for betrayal.'
'And yet I suppose friendship, like love, must be nourished by
admiration to some extent.'
'Yes; but then love, or at all events, the thinglet that usually goes by
that name, is always seeking its own ends, whereas friendship--well, it
is a root of that divine severe force which constantly calls upon us to
be true to our best capabilities. "No receipt openeth the heart, but a
true friend to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes,
suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it,
in a kind of civil shrift or confession." And again, "The best
preservative to keep the mind in health is the faithful admonition of a
friend." You know who says this?'
'Yes; but how rare such intercourse is between man and woman.'
'So it is, and that makes it all the more precious.'
'Well, if ever you form such a friendship, Stella, you must tell me; and
do not conceal the end,' said Esther with a smile.
By this time the sun had set, and a light mist hung over the sombre
ranges that stretched westward, giving them a mysteriously limitless
aspect, as though they extended beyond the confines of the world. This
impression was deepened by low masses of clouds driven before a rising
wind. The outlines were so uncertain and broken, and the prospect so
wide and lonesome and silent, that the whole formed a picture which for
weird austerity could hardly be surpassed.
'I'll tell you what, you must live at Coonjooree, and ask me to stay
with you, Esther,' said Stella. 'I am only just beginning to find out
all the allurements of the place. Last night I watched the moon
setting, and the look of the desert in the pale lessening light was
indescribably solemn. The place seems to have been created to make up
striking pictures that somehow make one in love with desolation.'
'And to carry a sheep to three acres--don't forget the sheep, Stella.
Would you really come and stay here with me? But I confess I would be
afraid of so much solitude. One must be either older or younger than I
am for that. I think we had better set off on our travels, you and I
and the children, and their governess----'
'Do you not find it chilly out there, my dears? There is such a
charming fire of Mallee roots here,' said Mrs. Courtland, opening the
window under which her daughters were sitting in the veranda.
The twilight was deepening, and the clouds were gathering more
impenetrably. But within the quiet, warm little drawing-room, fragrant
with the breath of violets, it was that charmed hour when the hearth
'smiles to itself and gilds the roof with mirth,' and it would be 'a sin
to light the lamps as yet.' Some old writers speak of a substance
called Babylonian naphtha, which is so inflammable that it kindles into
flame if it is placed near fire without touching it. Old dry Mallee
roots when split up have something of that quality. They are strangely
twisted and gnarled, as if the waterless wastes in which they grew had
thwarted and stunted them till they are fit emblems of a defeated
existence. But when they break into flame, it is as though they pass
into a brief life of ecstatic joy. No other wood makes so vivid and
pure a fire. The flames are a delicate clear jonquil. The roots on the
least touch flash into ardent, lustrous arrows of light, whose glow
seems to warm the mind as well as the body.
The mother and her daughters sat round this glancing, softly brilliant
fire, and talked of the past and future, of things that had been and
that were to be, in the calm unapprehensive way which gradually returns
even to those who have sustained many of the storms and shocks of life.
*CHAPTER XIX.*
Her brother was absent in Tasmania when Stella arrived in Melbourne.
For the first two days nothing more noteworthy than drives and calls and
invitations to coming festivities marked the hours. The 'smaller house'
which the Tarelings had taken was in Toorak, 'one of our most
fashionable suburbs, as I dare say even you may see,' Laurette said, as
they drove by spacious mansions and large, well-kept grounds. Monico
Lodge was not distinguished by these advantages. It had that irritating
pretentiousness about it which takes the form of several large
reception-rooms and diminutive sleeping apartments. When Stella entered
her room she looked round it with a feeling of comical dismay. It
seemed as though the walls were not far enough apart to enable her to
breathe freely. As for the dressing-room, in which Maisie slept, the
wardrobe filled it up so completely that the poor maid seemed to have
been smuggled into the closet for some nefarious purpose. There was a
conservatory devoted entirely to exotics and gardeners' plants, but
there was no garden; and the 'grounds,' a most conventionally formed
snippit of land, were chiefly adorned with trees which refused to grow,
rooted in tubs that refused to be concealed.
But even more uncongenial than these surroundings was Laurette's
constant society, with her unconcealed triumph at being in the thick of
all that was most distinguished and fashionable in Melbourne, as she
herself expressed it. When this triumph seemed on the point of being a
little dimmed, she fell into transports of delight at the prospect of an
indefinite stay in town.
'If Talbot had not made this lucky hit in mining shares, I could only
have been here for a couple of weeks,' she said, 'what with the low
price of wool and papa's fearful losses with the rabbits. He has given
us a great deal of money from time to time, but he has turned very rusty
of late. As for Ted, you might as well ask a doornail for money. I
hope he will marry some nice girl soon who will teach him to despise
filthy lucre a little.' This with a sidelong look at Stella, who
laughed at this pious aspiration, but made no comment.
Everything jarred upon her so much that at first she could not even
write a letter. The day after her arrival she sent a telegram to
Coonjooree, proposing to write the next day. On the morrow she wrote a
post-card. On the third day she scolded herself seriously, and sat down
at her desk. She had only written the words, 'My darling Mother,' when
she leant her head on her hand and went into a long reverie, during
which a curiously wistful, softened expression came into her eyes. She
was roused by a tap at the door.
'Are you here, Stella?' It was Laurette, and she wore an impromptu air
of surprise. 'Guess who has come?' she said, with an arch smile.
'Oh, Cuthbert!' exclaimed Stella, her face radiant, as she hastened to
join him.
'No; your brother cannot be here till the evening. It is Ted.'
Stella's face flushed, but it did not escape Laurette's keen gaze that
with this deepening colour the sudden radiance of gladness died away.
'He is so delighted to find that you are here. I hadn't time to say
three words when he sent me off for you. I must interview the cook
about luncheon. You will find Ted in the breakfast-room.'
There was something in Laurette's tone and manner which Stella greatly
resented; but it was, on the whole, easier to ignore this than call it
in question.
Edward Ritchie met her in the hall, and took both her hands in his with
so eager and impassioned an air that Stella instinctively stepped back
and drew her hands quickly away, saying lightly, to hide her confusion:
'At last I shall know whether you have been in Egypt or Central
Australia.'
'You look thinner than you used to, Stella,' said the young man, so
absorbed in gazing at her that it seemed as though he heard nothing.
'And you--you have grown stouter. Yes, really, Ted, you remind one of
the beauties in the Arabian tales.'
'Like the beauties! Oh, come now, Stella, draw it mild. What kind of
beauties were they?'
'Oh, they used to have adventures. Sometimes they were put in a box,
the box in a chest with seven locks on it, and placed at the bottom of
the sea, beneath the roaring waves. Sometimes they were put in baskets
sewn up with red thread. But whatever happened to them, they always
turned up all right again, with faces like the moon in the fourteenth
night.'
'So that's why you compared me to those beauties, Stella. Well, I
couldn't believe you were paying me a compliment. But tell me now, are
you glad to see me?'
'Oh yes, of course. But why do you always alight like a bomb? Is the
wind from the east?'
'Oh, bother the wind! Tell me all about yourself. Have you been well
all the time? I don't believe you have. You used not to have circles
under your eyes; and they look bigger.'
'The better to see you with,' answered Stella, smiling.
The most obvious quotation, however, was always thrown away on Ted.
'But why are you not looking well?' he persisted.
'Well, you know, mother had a fever. But dancing is good for me; so I
have come to stay with Laurette, that I may dance for weeks before going
into the Bush.'
'How often will you dance with me, Stella?'
'Well, that depends; you used to waltz out of time. Have you had any
practice during your travels?'
'What travels? You seem to think I have been gallivanting about amusing
myself, whereas--oh, Stella, I barely know how to hold myself with joy
for seeing you again. And, do you know, you hardly shook hands with me!'
'But if someone held your ten fingers in a vice, could you shake hands?'
'Well, give me your hand again; I will not hold it hard. Or, I'll tell
you what, you just hold my hand about as tight as you wish me to hold
yours. You see, I'm perfectly reasonable.'
'Thank you, Ted. The way I want you to hold my hand is not to touch it
at present. We have a little Irishman who comes to work at Laracor, and
I have learned to talk Irish, you see.'
Stella was sitting on a low chair near the fire. Ritchie stood over
her, leaning against the mantelpiece. Carried away by a sudden impulse,
he knelt down and held her hands to his lips. They were so hot that
they seemed to scorch her fingers.
'Oh, but really, Ted, it appears to me that you are too absurd!' she
said, the feeling of amusement with which this faithful squire usually
inspired her struggling with a sense of growing discomfort.
'Do you remember the last time I saw you?' he asked, drawing a chair
close beside her.
'I cannot speak to you, Ted, without twisting my neck. Do, please, go a
little further off.'
'Oh, hang it all! Haven't I been far away long enough?'
He tried to hold her hands in his. She slipped away and took a chair
opposite to him.
'Now we can talk comfortably,' she said. 'Tell me, have the rabbits
eaten all your father's sheep, as Laurette says?'
'Do you remember how long it is since we parted?'
'We are just like two people in a burlesque,' said Stella, smiling. 'We
fire off question after question without once answering each other.'
'Well, why don't you answer me, and sit down nearer to me, and be a
little jollier?'
'But that is the point. I would not be at all jolly if I twisted my
neck. Oh, I assure you it is much worse than spraining one's ankle.'
'Do you remember the day we parted so many months ago?' persisted
Ritchie.
He was a man to whom rapid thought was impossible. But it was equally
impossible to divert his mind from the point of view which was uppermost
with him.
'Oh, heavens! yes. I remember everything,' cried Stella, with her low
merry laugh--a laugh that always had a magical charm for her companion.
'You remember everything,' he repeated slowly. 'I am glad of that, for
you know very well----'
He stopped abruptly. His eyes had been fixed on Stella's face intently,
and he noticed that it grew cold and a trifle hard. The change made his
heart heavy with apprehension.
'Yes; what do I know very well?' she answered, taking up the ravelled
thread with an impatient weariness.
She felt that this long serio-comic wooing must end once for all. Then,
as she noticed the agitated, breathless way in which Ritchie looked at
her, an acute apprehension of all that this long courtship meant to him
suddenly smote her, and therewith a pang of remorse as she realized how
far she had somehow travelled from the old tolerant half-responsive
standpoint, when she had decided that if she married anyone without
being in love it must be Ted.
He looked at her for some minutes without speaking, and Stella knew it
was because he feared to put the old question into words. She was
always ready to see how faulty she was--ready to blame herself where
blame was due. She was all the more conscious of any blame that might
attach to her in this long intermittent wooing, because by some process
which she herself could not have explained, the moment they met it
became clearer to her that those fugitive resolves that she harboured
from time to time after they last parted, of accepting Ritchie as her
lover--her future husband--were, in truth, impossible--or, at least,
possible only at some indefinite period--not now.
'Ted, I am very sorry,' she said humbly, after a pause.
'Sorry!' he echoed. 'Why are you sorry? I don't expect you to love me
as I love you. It's not the way of girls--like you.' Ted would
sometimes make running comments on herself and things in general that
amused Stella. Speculations, theories and musings on things in general
were quite foreign to his nature, while they were part of her daily
atmosphere. And yet she was vaguely conscious that, one-sided as his
point of view might be, it rested on contact with more sides of life
than were open to her ken. 'If you'll--you'll only just put up with me
at first, Stella, I'm willing to run the risk.'
'Oh, it isn't your risk I think of so much,' she answered, looking up
into his face smilingly.
He was standing nearer to her again, leaning on the mantelpiece, pulling
a large red rose asunder and letting the petals fall on her one by one.
'By the way, I heard Konrad jarred his knee--how is he?' she said, with
rather a barefaced attempt at getting away from the subject.
'All right again. But I haven't been thinking much of horses lately.
I've had other fish to fry.'
'What fish, Ted?'
'You--mostly.'
'Oh, Ted! To call me a fish, and speak of frying me, and pull that
beautiful burning-red rose to pieces at the same time! Why, it had
hardly opened, and roses just now are scarce.'
'What would you like me to do?'
'Why, let me see. I think, in this crisis of Australian history, every
squatter should study how to exterminate rabbits and conserve water.'
'Confound the rabbits and conserving water! Look here, Stella, you
always twist me round your fingers in this way.'
Stella held up her hands deprecatingly.
'What makes you say such dreadful things about my poor fingers?'
'Oh, you know very well what I mean. Time after time I've asked you to
marry me, and said to myself, "Now I'll decide it one way or the other."
But you turn it into a sort of joke. "What has put this funny notion of
marrying into your head, Ted?" you say; or you hold up your fingers
before I've said a word, and laugh, saying: "Now, Ted, when you knit
your brow in that way it always means something spoony."'
'Oh, Ted! I never used that word--never!' cried Stella, laughing
despite her efforts to keep serious.
'Well, it doesn't matter about one word. You know what I mean, don't
you?'
'Yes, I know what you mean--and I feel I have been very much to blame.'
'No, you haven't,' retorted Ritchie almost roughly. 'You haven't been to
blame; it's me who used to feel that I'd sooner be made a fool of by you
than have any other girl throw herself at my head. I've drawn back as
frightened as a wombat when you began to be serious. I wanted things to
be the same, for fear I mightn't even come to see you from time to time.
But everything must have an end. I'd like you to marry me on any
terms--unless--you're not fond of anyone else?'
She did not reply at once, and the young man recalled the hints that his
sister had thrown out at Godolphin House.
'Why don't you tell me?' he cried in a husky voice.
'No! But then I can imagine that I could love; and I think, before a
woman risks marrying, she should. We have been friends so long, I will
be quite frank with you. I have sometimes thought I could marry you
since we last parted----'
'Oh, Stella, Stella! God in heaven bless you for saying that,' cried
Ted breathlessly.
'But then, Ted, I have oftener thought I could not. I think that we
should be a little more alike. It is such a frightful long time----'
'Not always. Some people die off before they're anytime married.'
'But it would be unwise to count on that form of happiness,' answered
Stella; and then she gave way to an uncontrollable burst of laughter.
'And as for not being alike,' said Ted, who always enjoyed the girl's
merriment even when not a muscle of his own face moved, 'why, there's
not many fellows that would care to have their wives like themselves.
And I would, perhaps, get a little bit like you after we married,
Stella. We would have so much time together at Strathhaye--or we could
travel, or whatever you liked.'
The door-handle was turned in an ostentatiously preliminary way, and
then Laurette came in.
'Would you mind keeping away for a little longer, Larry?' said her
brother; on which Laurette laughed in a knowing way, bowed, and
disappeared.
'Oh! how could you, Ted? Laurette will imagine all sorts of
absurdities.'
'She will imagine that we are getting engaged; and that's what's going
to happen, Stella. You never could throw me off after all these years.
You know that I love you with my whole heart and soul, don't you?'
'I believe that you love me a great deal more than I deserve. But try
and put yourself in my place; think how different the thought of
marrying me would be if you did not love me.'
'It's no use my trying to think that; I've loved you ever since I was
that high,' said Ted, holding his hand four feet from the ground.
'Well, it goes to my heart to think of grieving you; but----'
'Don't, Stella--don't say it. You can't know what a God-forsaken
good-for-nothing I'd be if you took away all hope from me. Let's stay
as we are and think over it--get used to the thought that you are to be
my wife.'
'Don't plead with me so much--it worries me. I feel as if I must give
way; and that would be fatal. Do not interrupt me. You don't
understand what a hatefully cold-hearted creature I feel when I get
indifferent to people.'
'But you are not indifferent to me--not quite?'
'No, not now; but then I see so little of you!'
'Well, I wouldn't be always at home; don't think it. I'm away from
Strathhaye sometimes for weeks; and when I'm there, I'm out most of the
day. Well, you can laugh as much as you like, though I'll be shot if I
can make out often what amuses you so much!'
'Well, you really are too original in some ways. You tell me that
sometimes people die off early in married life, and that we would not
see much of each other--all by way of encouragement.'
'Yes, because I'm trying hard to follow your lead; though, by Jove! it
would go very much against the grain with me either to die or be away
from you after we are married.'
'Heavens, you make my flesh creep when you talk as if it were an
accomplished fact! There is one thing I want to say to you, Ted.'
'One thing?--say a thousand! Say so many that you will never be done
till we are both old and gray-headed.'
'I must go away and write my letters if you are to be so foolish.'
'No, no--no, Stella; I'll be dumb as a sonnet. Tell me the one thing.'
'Those pearls that you left the day before you went away----'
'What about them? Don't you care for them?'
'They are very lovely; but wait a moment.'
Stella went to her room, and presently returned with the morocco case in
her hand. On seeing this, Ritchie's face became very sombre.
'It was very kind of you to think of my birthday; only mind you must
forget so tiresome an anniversary after I'm twenty-five. But you know I
cannot take such a costly gift from you.'
'All I have is yours. Why shouldn't you take this? It's a horse-shoe,
isn't it? You know that is for luck.'
He pressed the spring, and looked at the pearls.
'No; they are too superb to be given or accepted in a careless way. You
must take them back, please: I did not even show them to anyone.'
'Take them back!' repeated Ritchie, his face flushing with vexation.
'What should I do with the damned thing?'
'Is it right for you to say that before me?'
'No; and I beg your pardon. But you should not vex me so much. You
must keep them. Now, I've got to see my trainer at one o'clock, and
after that to take a spin down to St. Kilda. But I want you to promise
to come out for a ride with me to-morrow morning. I have the neatest,
best-bred little colt for you that ever you saw. Now I can see you are
trying to think of an excuse.'
'Indeed I am not. I shall be delighted to ride. The air here stifles
one. I am only thinking how I shall be dragged to give an account of
all these friendly rides and talks the next time the spirit moves you to
have a "square understanding."'
'Well, you needn't think anything of the kind. You _have_ sometimes
thought you could marry me. Why, Stella, I could live on that for a
year. The last thing I do at night is to look at your picture. When I
look at it to-night, I shall hardly be able to believe you said that.
Now put both your hands in mine--I won't hurt them--and say, "God bless
you, Ted," the same as you did in the Fairacre garden.'
She gave him her hands, and repeated the words with a little tremor in
her voice, which thrilled him through and through with happiness. He
held her hands very gently, and lifted them one after the other to his
lips, and then he hurried away.