allowed him to retain possession of the nine hundred pounds that had
been netted by the timely sale of her shares in that mine. Tareling had
gone to Banjoleena with this money to his credit, confident of doubling
or trebling the amount in a few days. Perhaps he had. But she knew
that he would return from Sydney penniless, yet imperturbably
unrepentant. It was one of Tareling's aristocratic characteristics,
that he never attempted the _role_ of the Prodigal Son. He was obliged
to come home when the fun was over; but there any simulacrum of
repentance began and ended. So it had been before, so it would be no
doubt to the end. But just now, owing to a conjunction of untoward
events, this spell of riotous living meant for Laurette--unless she
could by some means or other raise the wind--the almost immediate giving
up of the costly furnished house at Toorak, and retirement to the
intolerable solitude of Cannawijera. And this to Laurette presented all
the concentrated bitterness of a hopeless defeat in the hour of greatest
triumph. She had married Talbot Tareling not for love, for even if she
had been capable of it, he was the last one qualified to evoke any such
passion when the two met; not for his good looks, for he had none; not
for his morals, for if he ever possessed any, the world, the flesh, and
the devil had wholly despoiled him long before he left his native
shores. She had married him simply because he was the younger son of an
English peer; relying on this circumstance, and her own tact and
heiress-ship, to become one of the elect of Melbourne society. Yet,
with all these advantages, the struggle had been very uphill. Her
income, when the marriage took place, was over three thousand a year.
The Hon. Talbot was supposed to have five hundred a year, but it was
invariably in the hands of disreputable Hebrews twelve months in
advance. The sinews of war were wholly inadequate to the sort of
campaign that Laurette undertook. And then, even in a frankly
democratic country, the cadet of a noble house, bankrupt in money and
reputation, does not meet with unqualified social success. But Laurette
was indefatigable, and year by year she made a little headway. Only
year by year there was an accumulation of debt, and tradespeople made
their terms harder, and her father and brother were more reluctant to
supplement her income from Cannawijera by random cheques for a couple of
hundred pounds.
But then came the brilliant windfall of the new Governor and his
wife--high in rank, and nearly connected with her husband's family.
This gave her at one stroke that right of tambour at Government House
which had been her cherished dream from early girlhood. She planted her
feet on the neck of recalcitrant tradesmen and spiteful foes of her own
sex, in the inner cliques of that curiously disintegrated mass which
calls itself 'good society' in the capitals of Australian colonies. Her
hour of victory had come. The Governor's wife was not only closely
related to Tareling's family, but an intimate friend of his mother's.
Before leaving London she had pledged herself to do all she could for
Talbot, vaguely imagining that, in a wealthy young country like
Victoria, it would be easy to smuggle a relative into some cosy sinecure
worth, well, say seven or eight hundred a year.
But a very brief sojourn in Australia reveals the fact that to appoint a
man to a post worth even one hundred a year, apart from fitness for the
work or claims on the country, would at once arouse a ferment of
Parliamentary inquiry. Now the Hon. Talbot Tareling's fitness for any
appointment was limited to a well-cultivated and hereditary incapacity
for any form of steady employment. His claims on the country consisted
in having spent all his own and a great deal of his wife's money in very
equivocal ways. The profound etiquette and the glamour of monarchical
institutions are needed to elevate such traits into an irresistible
claim on the public finances.
But at least it was in Lady Weavelow's power to shower those delicate
attentions on her cousin and his wife which, from a viceregal personage,
are objects of keener ambition in Melbourne than money or appointments.
In Laurette, Lady Weavelow was agreeably surprised to find a lady whose
demeanour, dress, and general _savoir faire_ would bring no discredit on
her husband, even among the order to which he belonged. Stella had once
spoken of the hard, crude touch of the social amateur in Laurette. But
like all who do not possess the ultimate distinction of manners moulded
by hereditary culture, or the spontaneous courtesy of an essentially
kind heart, Laurette's behaviour was largely dependent on circumstances.
With people like the Courtlands, whose unostentatious family pride made
them indifferent to those forms of social distinctions which had the
keenest fascination for Laurette, she was probably at her worst. Their
simple mode of living, their ardour for books and ideas, their absence
of chic measured by local standards; the humble nondescript sort of
people, marked only by unselfish aims of life, that one constantly met
at Fairacre--all gave her a certain sense of superiority to them, and
yet a baffling sense that they would regard such an assumption as very
amusing, and not to be taken seriously. She was at her best with those
whose rank and position towered above her own. She was then on her
guard against the robust vulgarity that formed the real substratum of
her nature. She was quick and clever in her own way, and prided herself
on knowledge of the world. In her case, as in that of all intrinsically
shallow natures, such knowledge is largely, though unconsciously,
founded on the dictum of the Scotchman: 'There is no an honest man in
the world; I ken it by mysel'.'
But probably the very narrowness of Laurette's aims made her feel all
the more acutely the prospect of speedy social extinction. After she
reached her own room, she reread the telegram with a sickening heart.
She recalled her father's obstinate refusal at Christmas-time to advance
a few hundred pounds till after shearing-time. Of course he knew that
to 'advance' was merely a euphemism for giving. He told her that till
the rabbits were exterminated on his runs he would neither give nor
advance a single copper, and advised herself and her husband to live
quietly on their Cannawijera property, instead of running head over ears
into debt in Melbourne. To go to these desolate wilds from the very
apex of her triumph--from the haunts and assemblies whose open-sesame
had cost her so many toilsome years of guerilla warfare with millionaire
women, whose dull resentment she had aroused with the unguarded malice
of a sharp and vindictive tongue! In a week after her departure her
place in society would know her no more. The world abounds with those
who are terrified at nothing so much as being forgotten. If people are
buried in the Mallee Scrub, society has no alternative but to forget
them. The thought suffocated Laurette in advance. And then Talbot--she
knew--he would not stay at Cannawijera more than a week at the outside.
To make life endurable to him in such a _cul-de-sac_, it would be
necessary to erase twelve hours out of the twenty-four. Even in
Melbourne he was often dull. Against dulness he had not one honest
resource. Still less would this be the case when his wife was
permanently at Cannawijera, and he was permanently a man about town. He
had an incredible knack of obtaining credit. It must have been
inherited with his blue blood. A man habituated to the brutal habit of
paying for what he got could never attain such perfect mastery of the
art. He was skilful too, or lucky rather, at games of chance. Yes, he
would keep afloat for a few months. But after that? He would join some
theatrical company, and leave the colonies. Laurette was sure of it.
He was a good amateur actor: he had been trained by experts. There were
_roles_ in many popular plays in which he could give well-salaried
actors points, and yet come off winner, from the fact that in such
_roles_ he had only to present his own character in the less habitual
parts that were fitted for stage representation--that of a well-bred,
cool, unscrupulous man of the world. It was his one chance of getting a
livelihood. He had more than once spoken of taking it up, when the dark
desolation of Cannawijera loomed in the foreground as the only refuge
open to him apart from gaining an independent livelihood. 'He will
attach himself to Mademoiselle de Melier's company, and go to San
Francisco,' thought Laurette; and she turned cold and faint with the
conviction the thought carried--all that she had lived for seemed to be
crumbling around her.
She covered her face with her hands, and felt better after she was able
to cry. She heard Stella leave the drawing-room, and she debated with
herself whether she would go to her brother and throw herself at his
feet and implore him to save her from the ignominious series of defeats,
of social annihilation, which she saw in store for her. But the next
moment she rejected the thought. If a couple of hundred pounds would do
her any good Ted would give a cheque at once. But he was far more
obdurate about larger sums than ever her father had been. He knew too
well what Tareling's mode of life was. He himself had worked hard from
the age of sixteen till his uncle's death left him sole master of
Strathhaye, and he had an invincible objection to placing an unlimited
supply of cash at the disposal of 'an image of a man who never did a
stroke of work in his life, for himself or anyone else.'
Laurette buried her face in her hands, and one design after another
flashed hastily across her mind. To write and tell her father that some
dire catastrophe impended, unless he could send her, say, a thousand
pounds? No, she had done that more than once before. It was the story
of the shepherd-boy and the wolf over again. Then slowly something like
a feasible plan suggested itself. But she determined to ponder over it
for a day or two. At the end of that time, however, events ranged
themselves precisely in the direction she wished. Stella announced to
her that Louise was not well, and asked her to hasten her visit as much
as possible. 'If you will let me leave by the early train to-morrow,
Laurette, I shall write and let Mrs. Coram, and the others whose
invitations I accepted, know that I have been called away, and then I
can see you again on my way home if you wish.'
Stella spoke in an apologetic tone, feeling half guilty for beating so
hasty a retreat. But the enforced companionship with Laurette began to
be intolerable. Her sustained enthusiasm about trifles, the glow of
inextinguishable interest with which she retailed Lady Weavelow's
opinions and sayings and doings, the solemn reverence with which she
went over the connections of Lord Harry, the aide-de-camp, and entered
into endless details regarding those she held to be the great people of
Melbourne, bored Stella to the last point of ennui. It was like being
in the society of servants, but without the interest of the servants'
point of view at first hand. Then the whole atmosphere of Monico Lodge
oppressed her so that she could not even read any book she cared for.
The very walls and chairs seemed to whisper endless anecdotes full of
foolish self-importance, and count over the provincial notabilities who
paid them visits. 'We never know,' says Goethe somewhere, 'how
anthropomorphic we are.' Probably those who do have a glimmering of it
conceal the fact, because the habit of endowing lifeless objects with a
personality of their own has, in the eyes of most practical people,
something in it dangerously silly.
'Well,' said Laurette, a sudden light coming into her face, 'I will let
you off on condition you promise to stay two weeks with me when you
return. There is an English man-of-war to be here early in September,
and a French royalty incog.; so we shall have the place _en fete_
again.' But as Laurette spoke her heart sank as she thought: 'I may
then, perhaps, be entombed in the Mallee Scrub.'
Stella had spent the previous day with her brother by the seaside. Had
she made any irrevocable decision? Perhaps she meant to write to Ted.
Laurette had noticed the pearl horseshoe wrapped up on Stella's
toilet-table, in an isolated fashion, as if she did not mean to include
it in her belongings. Ted had gone to St. Kilda, and would not be back
till the next afternoon. Stella's departure in his absence was so far
fortunate--if no communication passed between them. Laurette was just
then in a curiously strained and watchful mood. She was all eyes and
ears.
She determined on a little conversation that might help to fetter
Stella's action till they met again--a conversation that might also aid
in the development of her little coup. It was not that facts were at all
necessary to her when she found a little impromptu history helpful. But
facts, even when twisted entirely from their true drift and context, are
valuable as imparting a certain _vraisemblance_ to supposed events.
There are people who will report an entirely imaginary conversation, and
find a kind of moral support in adding: 'Yes; he sat in an armchair all
the time, with his slippered feet on the fender.' The 'he' in question
may not have uttered a word of the many ascribed to him--but then he did
sit in an armchair, and his feet were really on the fender. After all,
human veracity has severe limitations. We cannot have everything
limning the severe countenance of truth. Let us remember this when, in
contemporary history, we have the conversation all askew, but the
armchair, the slippered feet, and the fender true to the life.
'Stella, may I speak to you a little about Ted?' said Laurette, with an
engaging air of timidity.
She was really very quick at times in diagnosing the frame of mind in
which people happened to be, and she had a prevision that her subject
just then must be cautiously broached. Stella had not gone out riding
with Ted since the evening he had offended her, and he had admitted to
Laurette before he went to Flemington that he had been a deuced jackass,
but when she questioned him he had relapsed into dogged silence.
'Why, Laurette, you speak as though Ted were at the other end of the
world. What do you wish to say?'
'Well, no doubt I am rather foolish to be so much concerned. You see,
Stella, you have so many brothers, you do not know how a woman feels
when she has only one. Poor dear Ted is so unhappy just now. He
offended you. Well, I undertook to make his peace with you. He did not
go into particulars; perhaps he begged for one of the many kisses you
owe him. Dear me, what a freezing air! I wonder how many kisses your
brother Tom snatched from me; and yet he never proposed to me even once.
Certainly I never set up for a monument of icy hauteur. Still, I never
forgot that I was Sir Edward Ritchie's daughter, any more than I am
likely to forget that I am the wife of the Hon. Talbot Tareling.'
Laurette drew herself up to her full height, and Stella was too much
amused to retain an air of offended majesty.
'At the same time,' said Laurette, astutely taking advantage of this to
show a sudden change of front, 'I don't think you need be afraid of Ted
pestering you again. Now, my dear, let us have a proper talk over this.
Sit down here; we may as well be comfortable, and not stand staring at
each other like two strange cats on the roof. I believe there were
tears in Ted's eyes when he took me into his confidence. "What do you
think I'd better do, Larry?" said he. "Do?" said I. "Why, nothing."
"But I am afraid she's very angry," said he. "She hasn't even ridden
out with me since, and now she's away for the whole day. It feels as
long as a month of Sundays. I shouldn't wonder if she sent me back that
dashed horseshoe"--indeed, I am afraid he used a stronger word. Poor
old Ted! you know he is a little rough sometimes. But how good and
generous he is!--though I sometimes call him stingy in fun. There he
was yesterday, trying to make me take a cheque for I don't know how
much. But, of course, when a woman is married, there is a limit to what
she can accept, even from a brother. Besides, I had a sort of feeling
that it was more for your sake than my own--a sort of testimonial
because I am nice enough for you to visit me.'
Laurette, when it suited her purpose, was a finished mistress of that
adroit flattery which seema inseparable from radical insincerity of
nature.
'I must say that was very humble of you,' said Stella, laughing
outright.
It is foolish to flatter people with a strong sense of humour; even if
they like it, they must see through it.
'Well, but to return to this storm in a teacup. I couldn't help
laughing about the horseshoe; and I said, "If Stella wants to get rid of
that in a huff, why, I'll take charge of it."'
'I wish you would, Laurette. I'll leave it in your hands,' said Stella.
'Oh, certainly,' returned Laurette, with an indulgent smile; and she
mentally ticked this off as one point gained. But she had not finished
yet. 'Then Ted said to me, "Now, Larry, tell me--do you think I'm any
nearer the end of this long courtship, one way or the other? Is it more
likely or unlikely that Stella will have me?" "Ted," said I, "don't ask
me what Stella will do or will not do. I've long ago felt about this
affair as if I were looking at a play--one of the sort that nearly makes
you fall in pieces with yawning, don't you know. It's so long, and
people come on and off, and you sit through one act after another,
thinking that surely something will happen soon; but it doesn't, and
there you gape till the curtain is rung down, and you feel like a
perfect fool." At that Ted got rather angry, as if I were prophesying
evil. Of course, I didn't mean to do that; so I simply said, "When a
girl lets a man dangle after her for years----"'
'You had no right to say----' said Stella, colouring hotly.
'Well, please remember this was a confidential chat with my only
brother. "When a girl lets a man dangle after her for years, and
prevents him from thinking of anyone else, and in the end doesn't know
whether she'll have him or leave him--why, then I think it is time for
him to take his fortune into his own hands."'
'Well, that, at least, was good advice,' said Stella, 'and I hope Ted
will act on it.'
'Will you believe it?' said Laurette, laughing--'he has solemnly made up
his mind that unless you write to him about something, or give him some
direct encouragement, he will from this time forth try to think of you
only as a friend. I believe that is partly why he has gone to
Flemington.'
'I am glad that he is reasonable at fast,' answered Stella; but,
notwithstanding the words, Laurette felt sure there was some pique in
the flush that settled in the girl's cheeks.
*CHAPTER XXV.*
When Ritchie returned, and found that during his absence Stella had
taken her departure for Lullaboolagana, his chagrin was extreme.
'She asked me to say good-bye to you for herself and Dustiefoot, and
gave her kind regards to Shah,' said Laurette, as she sat skimming a
budget of letters and notes that had just been delivered.
Ted felt like one who has suddenly been dragged out of the sunlight, and
has had the key turned on him in a cheerless dungeon.
'She is to finish her visit in September,' said Laurette, when she found
that Ted made no response.
He stared at the _Age_ for some time in gloomy silence, glancing from
one column to another as if he were reading, but not seeing a line.
'Well, I don't suppose it's to make much difference to me whether she
comes here or anywhere else,' he answered.
Laurette made no reply.
'Was that all Stella said?' asked Ritchie after a pause; 'just to say
good-bye? Was she at all put out that Louise wanted her at once, or was
the thing a plant, do you think--just an excuse to be off?'
'Ted, don't ask so many questions, or I shall betray confidence,' said
Laurette.
'Betray confidence? Bosh!' retorted Ritchie in a disdainful tone. 'You
can't run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. At Christmas-time you
thought you were going to do great shakes by getting Stella here, and
showing her what a dash you cut; and now she's gone off in less than two
weeks without even saying good-bye to me. And then there's something
that you know in confidence. I should think I am the proper person to
be taken into confidence, if there's anything to confide.'
'You asked if Stella only said good-bye,' said Laurette, in an
impressive tone. 'Well, we had a long, private talk.'
Ted leant forward, no longer pretending to read the newspaper.
'Yes; and what was the talk about?'
'Before telling you that, I must get your promise that you will not let
Stella know I told you.'
'I'm not such a confounded blab as to carry yarns between people.'
'Then tell me, has Stella, since she came here, said anything that led
you to think she had been debating in her own mind whether or not she
would accept you?'
'Yes; she told me that since I last saw her she had sometimes thought
she would come to the scratch.'
'Ah! Well, after all, you understood her better than I do. They say
that women have so much penetration; but I think some men have. You
asked me one day if I thought Stella had heard anything.'
'Well?'
'She has.'
'Ah, I suppose Cuth, the parson, has fossicked?'
'I don't think so. I believe it is a slight rumour, but enough to
disquiet her--to make her uncertain.'
'I shall write and make a clean breast of it; tell her all.'
'Not for your life. At least, not if you don't mean to lose her.'
'Lose her? I haven't got her, and not likely to now!'
'Ah, there you are mistaken. Stella loves you, Ted,' and Laurette,
without a quiver of her eyelid, gazed into the young man's face. He
flushed deeply, and walked about the room with signs of evident emotion.
'If I could believe that----' he said, and stopped.
'You may believe it,' she said, in a tone of quiet confidence which
thrilled him with joy.
'And in spite of--what she has heard?'
'Yes; and when she returns here in September--well, I can only judge by
what she said, and by what she did not say, which is often quite as
important, and by what I observed--I believe you will get a speedy
answer. But, whatever you do, don't write to her till you do see her,
for she would instantly think I told you all that passed between us, and
I have not done that, and don't mean to.'
'Well, Larry, this is very good news you have given me,' said Ted, and
he was so much moved that his voice trembled.
Some visitors were announced, and Ted took himself off, and went for a
long spin on Shah, trying to realize that his tedious years of waiting
were after all to be crowned with the one great joy that had so long
seemed a vision beyond his reach.
The next little scene in Laurette's coup took place three days later, in
the evening. Ted was to return to Strathhaye on the following day. A
servant brought in some letters on a salver. Among them was one which
Laurette had posted to herself, containing a long letter that Tareling
had written to her a year or two previously. Latterly he never wrote
long letters, even on business. Laurette crushed the envelope into her
pocket, and began to read this letter with an air of absorbed attention.
Presently she gave a little sharp cry.
'What's the row?' said Ted, looking up. 'A letter from Tareling?' he
said, glancing at the sheet, which Laurette re-perused with a most
dejected countenance. But she said nothing. She read one or two more
notes; one of them a delightfully intimate one from the Hon. Miss
Brendover, Lady Weavelow's sister, asking Laurette and Miss Courtland to
spend an afternoon at Government House in an informal way two days
hence.
'Tell me, Ted,' said Laurette suddenly, 'how much is father really
affected by the rabbits?'
'How much? Well, there, you ask a question that neither he nor I can
answer at present. Within the last twelve months he has spent L9,000 on
sending the bunnies to kingdom-come; and how much he'll spend during the
current twelve months, the Lord only knows!'
'But I thought this rabbit extermination was partly at the expense of
Government?'
'Exactly; and that's why the vermin have been increasing head over
heels. Why, the governor himself has had forty-three rabbits trapped,
with the scalp taken off, and let run again that they may go on
breeding. You see, these scoundrels in Government pay mean to make a
permanent job of it. They get so much for every scalp, so, instead of
killing the little brutes, they sometimes carefully take the skin off
the top of the head, and in the course of a few months there are
thousands more bred by the animals they have been paid for killing.
When the governor saw what was going on he jacked up at once--gave the
Government notice he would see to doing away with the rabbits on his own
account. So there he is paying at the rate of L30 a day, and putting up
a rabbit-proof fence between his land and the land in Government
possession.'
'But, then, of course, father has been saving a lot of money all these
years. It doesn't take more than eight or nine thousand a year to keep
Godolphin House going.'
'Yes, he has unfortunately put four or five hundred thousand pounds into
good investments in South Australia,' said Ted grimly. 'He had L150,000
in Commercial Bank Shares, which at the present moment may be had
wall-high for an old song; he has L100,000 in the Town and Country Bank,
which is more shaky than a poplar leaf; he has a pot of money in tram
lines that will yet be sold for old iron; and he has heaps of tin in
houses that cost him a handsome sum every quarter for broken windows,
and advertisements for tenants that don't turn up. Perhaps you thought
the governor cut up rather rough when he had to shell-out a thousand
pounds over that shady concern of Tareling's six months ago; but, by
Jove! if you knew how much money the old man has dropped lately in one
way or another----'
'Well, I suppose we'll have to take up our abode permanently at
Cannawijera,' said Laurette in a resigned tone.