said the unsuspecting Ted--'make a garden--you've only got to irrigate,
you know: it's ridiculous to pay a manager on a little station like
that--and make the place trim and comfortable. In fact, Stella told me
she liked Coonjooree so much the last time she was there, she means to
go again before long. Jove, I hope I may be there if she does!'
'Well, you see, I am not one of the gifted souls that love a worm-eaten
old poet so much better than my fellow-creatures,' said Laurette a
little viciously, and the next moment regretted giving any indication of
the loathing that the place excited in her mind; but she had the faculty
of saying sharp things, and found it hard to resist the temptation.
'But now that nothing else is left to us,' she said with a pensive
resignation--'well, I dare say we shall make the best of it. Perhaps,
if you come to see us next month, Ted, you will find Talbot planting a
grass-tree against the wash-house wall.'
'You must bet him it won't grow, Larry, or he'll never finish the job,'
said Ted, laughing. 'You mean next year, though; not next month?'
By way of answer Laurette unfolded her husband's letter, and read aloud:
'"It is only fair to let you know at as early a date as possible that I
have lost every stiver of the money I brought with me, and am probably
liable for as much more. This comes of trying to earn money by
downright honest work----"'
'Baccarat!' interjected Ted; but Laurette did not heed this.
'"If I had been content, as so many are, to take the words of thieving
brokers, instead of coming here to see for myself, we would probably
have trebled our little haul from the Celestial Hills. But it's no use
crying over spilt milk. And I am determined that neither you nor I will
ask a loan or an advance from your father or----"'
Laurette stopped short.
'That close-fisted hunks of a brother of yours, that's about it, isn't
it?' said Ted, without a _soupcon_ of malice. 'Don't mind me, Larry;
Tareling and I understand each other. Well, what then?'
'"But we must at once leave Melbourne. So please put the house
immediately in Sibworth's hands, and make all your preparations for
leaving on or before the 24th of this month."'
Ted gave a low whistle, and Laurette folded up the letter with an
inimitable air of resignation.
'But if you go, then, what of Stella's visit?' said Ted, with folds in
his brow.
'Stella's visit?' repeated Laurette absently. 'Oh, to be sure! To tell
you the truth, my dear Ted, I am too much taken aback by the position to
think much of anything beyond the domestic horizon. It is so
sudden--yes, and unexpected--for if Talbot had had a little luck we
should have paid off nearly all our little arrears; and then, of course,
there would be the shearing in October.'
Laurette avoided allusion to the fact that this had been long ago
discounted and the advance used up, and creditors appeased only with
fictitious promises of payment after the shearing already disposed of.
'Of course you will see Stella at her own home, though I think there is
something in the wind about her going abroad with Mrs. Raymond. It is
to her I trace the rumour that has set Stella---- But there, I must not
mix up things and other people's secrets!'
'Larry, you mustn't leave--you mustn't give up Monico Lodge till after
September.'
'Ah, my dear boy, I would be only too happy, but it's beyond my power.
It did flash across my mind that I would write and ask father; but now
that you've explained about the rabbits and things----'
'But there are no rabbits at Strathhaye!'
Laurette looked wonderingly at her brother, and then a sudden light
seemed to dawn on her.
'Oh, Ted, don't tempt me. I'll be honest. It isn't what would keep
Monico Lodge going; but being so nearly connected with the Weavelows, we
are in the swim of everything. I wouldn't undertake to stay for the
rest of the season--not unless Talbot's aunt was kind enough to die, and
he got the few thousand pounds for which he is down in her will. But
she was always a cantankerous old cat. I dare say she'll live for
fifteen years to come. And lately she has taken quite a passion for the
Burmese. She helped to scud two missionaries among the Chins there, but
they were eaten or something. I don't know whether they do eat them in
Burmah; but at any rate she's going to send more. How old ladies of the
aristocracy of England should send missionaries anywhere while the young
men of their own class are what they are--and the old ones, too, for the
matter of that!--but I dare say they know how hopeless it would be;
whereas people that you never see, you can believe all sorts of romantic
things about them, their conversions and things; and then, I suppose,
wild creatures, who haven't got a stick of furniture or a shirt to their
backs, can afford to be really Christianized.'
Laurette had taken up a seam from a work-basket near, and was sewing
away most industriously, while she rambled on in this artless fashion.
Ted rose abruptly, and, without saying a word, went to his own room. He
returned presently, and Laurette noticed, with a beating heart, that he
had a cheque-book in his hand.
He sat down at a davenport in the corner of the room, and wrote for a
few minutes rapidly, blotted the cheque, and stood near his sister.
'Don't talk in that cold-blooded way about the old woman, Larry. I
think you may always reckon that the Australian side of your clan will
do more for you than the "English-nobility" side. Keep this as much as
you can in your own hands; and, if you want it, you can have as much
again at the end of September.'
With that, Ted put down the cheque before Laurette, and hastened to
leave the room. It was for fifteen hundred pounds. It seemed to Ted
that Larry didn't look at the amount at all, when she rose with a little
exclamation of joy, intercepted him, and threw her arms round him.
'There, Larry, don't slobber! I think you ought to say your prayers for
that old woman. It sticks in my gizzard entirely to hear people talk in
that way of old people--grudging them their bit of tucker and their own
fireside. Why, even the niggers never knocked the old ones on the head
unless there was a big famine.'
With this little homily, Ted went out; and Laurette, hardly able to
believe her senses, stared at the cheque with beaming eyes. She had
hardly dared to hope for such complete success.
'As much again at the end of September!' But of course that was spoken
in the elation of believing his suit was to prosper. Like a wary
general, Laurette began to sum up the situation. She was secure against
detection as to those excursions of the imagination she had dealt in
till her brother and Stella met; and as far as Ted was concerned,
probably altogether secure; for if that idiotic girl finally rejected
him, that was the ultimate misfortune to him, and everything else would
sink into insignificance. Stella would be the first to let the cat out
of the bag; for if she were still obdurate, the first thing she would
say, no doubt, would be: 'Now, Ted, I thought you had made up your mind
that we were just to be friends. That is not the sort of thing friends
say.' She mimicked her half aloud, and for the first time felt her
smouldering dislike to the girl warm up to something like hatred. She
was almost sure Stella would cheat her out of the other fifteen hundred
pounds. Well, but it was good of Ted--at least good, considering he had
never given her more than three or four hundred pounds at a time before.
But, after all, a young man with about fifteen thousand a year: 'If we
only had a run like Strathhaye instead of that desolate hole! Oh, thank
God, we can stay in Melbourne after all!'
It may seem curious that one should thank God for the result of so much
devious by-play and deception. But when we consider how a strong nation
will attack a weaker one for no better motive than greed or ambition or
the lust of tyranny, and then go to church _en masse_ to chant the
praises of the Almighty because tens of thousands of human beings have
been slaughtered and tens of thousands of homes have been desolated and
impoverished, the wonder of the solitary case diminishes. It is not
safe to assume that the individual conscience is invariably less frayed
than that of the collective nation.
*CHAPTER XXVI.*
The home-station of Lullaboolagana was one of those delightful places
which at once convey an assurance of welcome, comfort and repose. It
was partly of wood, partly stone, with additions that formed an
irregular chronology of the past. The snug-looking detached cottage,
with a billiard-room and two or three bedrooms, marked the season in
which the number of sheep shorn touched fifty thousand. The addition
with the gable end dated the year in which the little Courtlands first
had a governess, etc., etc. The house had deep verandas round three
sides. The roof, washed snow-white, so as to lessen the force of the
summer sun, gleamed with a seductive cheerfulness and air of salutation
among the encircling foliage. Several outbuildings at varying distances
made the home-station look at a little distance like a miniature
village. The wool-shed and shearers' house, with two or three huts,
formed a second group of houses westward, beyond the confines of what
was known as the Home Field. This consisted of over forty acres of
land, which had been subjected to an artless form of landscape gardening
by a relative of the Courtlands, who had left England under sentence of
death from consumption, and had lived at Lullaboolagana for eighteen
years, though it had been authoritatively predicted he could not survive
the long sea-voyage. Here, then, he had employed his lease of
semi-invalid life in testing the capabilities of Australian soil in
growing trees and plants from widely-separated countries. Here, like
Shenstone, though on a smaller scale, he planted groves and avenues and
alleys, diversified his woods, pointed his walks, and entangled his
shrubberies. The result was a charming semi-English _milieu_ of the
kind that the British race are so skilful in creating in the far regions
of the earth, giving their dwelling-places under alien skies a touching
resemblance to the old quiet homes in which their forefathers may have
lived for many generations.
There were avenues on every side of the Home Field, composed chiefly of
Italian pines, which in twenty years had attained a size almost
incredible for that period. The Home Field was not closely planted.
All over it there were wide open spaces between the groves and woodlets
and groups of trees that embraced endless species, from the firs and
pines of the north to the palms of the torrid zone, with a liberal
proportion of Australian trees. Simplicity was certainly the governing
taste, but combined with a blending of effects which, when perceived,
added a new attraction. All round the house there were blossoming
shrubs, rose-trees, and a great variety of flowers that kept up a
procession of blooms year in, year out. The secret of perpetual spring
in flowers is well-nigh solved by gardeners in the more favoured
portions of Australia. There were several gentle hillocks in the Home
Field, which lent themselves to landscape effects in a very agreeable
manner. But the most charming natural feature of all was the creek
known by its native name, the Oolloolloo. It meandered through the
whole length of the Home Field. The orchard, which was half hidden in a
deep little valley, lay in two unequal portions, one on each side of the
creek. Its course was still marked by the tall eucalyptus-trees, seldom
absent from the banks of creeks. Indeed, these trees never attain their
finest development except by running water; and yet they have to live
through centuries in waterless wastes. Is there not here something of
the same curious contradiction that we find between the complex social
etiquette of the aborigines and their very primitive stage of savagedom?
It is often forced upon the observer of nature in Australia that in the
past she has been playing strange pranks; among other trifles, brewing
pepper for her children instead of nourishing them with milk.
But the eucalypti were far from being the only trees that grew by the
Oolloolloo. Side by side with these natives of the primeval woods were
copses of alders, overgrown bushes of sweetbriar, bamboos springing up
tall and slender, and falling wide apart, making pictures against denser
foliage like Japanese screens; here and there a hazel with its 'artless
bower'; wide clumps of pampas grass, with their silky, flax-like blooms
softly stirred by every breath of wind. Then one would come on a dense
little grove of elms and native cherry-trees, mingled with scrub
cypress--a combination which, of all others, makes the most alluring
secular cloisters; a place in which to dream with open eyes; to catch
phantasies by the wing; to read Shakespeare to one's self aloud; to
muse, to brood, to meditate. Over all there was an enchanting air of
leisure, of tranquil repose, which was heightened by the woods that lay
on every side except to the south, where Minjah-Millowie, a township of
seven or eight hundred inhabitants, extended in an irregular fashion
within two miles of the Lullaboolagana home-station.
This was the direction the house fronted, and opposite to it there was a
bridge across the Oolloolloo of solid masonry. It was the third that
spanned the creek in the Home Field, but the only one that could be
depended on when the winter rains were heavy, and the sluggish little
creek, with its silent pools connected by a slender trickling thread of
running water, was transformed into a rushing, turbid fury of a rivulet
that filled the adjacent groves with its enchanting sound. The second
bridge was an enormous gum-tree, which from time immemorial had lain
across the creek as it fell, its great old withered branches extending
over a hundred feet beyond the creek on the Home Field side of it. There
were marks all along the upper side of this tree made by the stone axe
of the aborigine, who had climbed it in quest of opossums, or to place
his bark-enclosed dead among the boughs, or perhaps to scan the
surrounding country for the little column of pale blue smoke that might
proclaim the presence of a tribal foe not far off.
The third bridge, so called, was beneath a tall, slim white gum-tree,
close to the orchard, and was a little rustic erection perched high up,
completely covered on both sides with trailing creepers, conspicuous
among them the wide-leaved passion-flower plant, now loaded with
blossoms, scarlet and pale purple and white.
'What a graceful creature it is, garlanded with leaves and flowers,'
said Stella, as she approached it with her sister-in-law the morning
after her arrival. 'It looks like the beginning of a poem, or some
place that should come into a story. Has nothing ever happened there?'
'Let me see. Hector and I often walk to and fro on it in the moonlight,
when the nights are very warm.'
'Ah, if you were only lovers--that had to part, you know, Louise----'
'Thank goodness we are not!' laughed Louise.
'Not lovers? Oh, of course not--you are married people.'
'Well, Baby, you are as wicked as ever. I do like to hear Hector call
you Baby. You see, though you may be very grown-up, and serious at
times, Hector best remembers you as the baby of the household, when he
left home twenty-one years ago. What ancient folk we are getting, to be
sure!'
They had by this time reached the passion-flower bridge, which was
provided with seats on each side, and was, indeed, much resorted to as a
sort of outside sitting-room. It was a point of vantage, and commanded a
good view of the country round. Eastward there were low ranges. Between
those and Lullaboolagana lay one of the tracts of dead trees that in
Australian scenery make up so weird a picture of desolation. It was
known as the Wicked Wood, from some unknown aboriginal tradition.
Looking steadily northward, one became sensible of a break in the
distant woods that betokened the beginning of a great plain, which
stretched many scores of miles in that direction.
'The Messmate Ranges, where I first saw a lyre-bird; the Wicked Wood,
where only grass-trees and scorpions live; the Weeloo Plain, where a
buggy seems to glide along like a boat--everything is just as it was
over three years ago,' said Stella, looking around with glad
recognition.
Here the sisters-in-law indulged in one of those long wandering and
delightful chats possible only to people who have had interests in
common for many years. This lasted till a servant came to announce that
Mrs. and Miss Morton had called.
'My dear, how you have grown since I saw you!' were Mrs. Morton's first
words as she kissed Stella. 'This is Julia; you did not see her when
you were here--how many years since?'
'Oh, a dreadful long time ago,' said Stella; 'but not long enough for me
to have grown, Mrs. Morton.'
'Oh, but positively you have, love,' said Mrs. Morton, surveying the new
arrival with fond eyes.
She was a fair, stout woman, long past middle life, but endowed with one
of those exuberantly kind natures which seem to defy the worst inroads
of age. She certainly never wore a face of joy merely because she had
been glad of yore. The annals of daily life almost invariably supplied
her with food for wreathed smiles. Not that she was callous to the
accidents that marred other people's pleasures, though mishaps of all
sorts had hitherto been unfamiliar to her personally. Only, though she
knew well how to mourn with the unfortunate, she made an offering to
oblivion of all that bordered on sorrow in an incredibly short time.
Still, no one unconnected with a local catastrophe took it to heart so
thoroughly for a day and a half as Mrs. Morton did. And on this very
occasion she gave proof of this.
'Oh, my dear, have you heard of the dreadful accident?' she said to
Louise after a few casual remarks had been interchanged.
'No--what accident?' said Louise, a little startled by the concern
depicted on Mrs. Morton's face as she spoke. It is curious how the
people who feel the most acutely connect any show of deep concern with
personal misadventure.
'Well, it was at Dr. Morrison's yesterday evening. We called at one of
the Minjah shops on our way, and heard all about it. A man came in from
the Bush with a fearful gumboil. Dr. Morrison found the tooth would
have to come out. He put the man under chloroform, and extracted the
tooth most successfully--but the man never got over it. The chloroform
killed him. Oh, my dear, wasn't it dreadful?' and Mrs. Morton took out
her handkerchief--not unnecessarily, for the tears were trickling down
her cheeks.
'Oh, I am sorry--and poor dear Mrs. Morrison so easily upset, it would
give her a dreadful shock,' said Louise.
'That is the best of using ether,' returned Mrs. Morton tearfully. 'If
it hurts the patient it does not show till afterwards. But for a man to
die under your hands--without getting away from you! Oh, it is so very
shocking!'
'But, after all, mamma,' said her daughter, 'he was quite a common man,
and very fond of drink.'
'Well, Julia, my dear, if you were his wife, or his mother, or his
sister, that isn't the way you would speak,' said Mrs. Morton, wiping
her eyes. 'It's of them I think.'
'But he didn't have any, mamma. He was just a knock-about hand on the
Tarra-tarra Station.'
'Oh, my dear, not have a mother? how thoughtless you are. If Dr.
Langdale had been there, I cannot help thinking he would have seen the
man couldn't stand chloroform.'
'But isn't Dr. Langdale there? He was here the day before yesterday,
and didn't say a word of leaving for any length of time.'
'He is at Nareen, staying with the Kenleighs. You know, they worship
the ground he walks on since he performed that wonderfully successful
operation on Mark.'
'Do you think he'll really stay in Australia, Mrs. Courtland?' said Miss
Morton.
'I do not know,' answered that lady; 'I am afraid not. You see, it was
not to stay he came, but for a year's change and rest.'
'But then he's always writing--he must be writing a book,' said the
young lady. 'I asked Mrs. Morrison the other week whether he wasn't,
but she only shook her head and smiled. I don't know why some people
are so fond of making secrets of things. Either he is or he is not.
Why shouldn't she say "Yes" or "No"?'
'Perhaps she doesn't really know,' answered Louise, smiling. She knew
that anything in the nature of a secret was abhorrent to Miss Morton,
who loved nothing so well as talking of other people's affairs, except
talking of her own. She was a tall, good-looking young woman of
twenty-five, with large brown eyes, a brilliant complexion, and that
stamp of figure which milliners call 'stylish.'
The visitors stayed for many hours in the friendly leisurely fashion of
neighbours in the Bush, who are separated by fifteen miles of unpeopled
woods. Miss Morton had three weeks previously returned from a visit to
her brother, Mr. John Morton, coming back by way of Melbourne, where she
had stayed a couple of days with Mrs. Tareling.
'I would have seen you there,' she said to Stella, 'only you were so
long in coming. Laurette thought you were going to give her up
altogether. What a dear Laurette is, to be sure!'
To this Stella assented, in the facile way in which we all help to swell
social fictions.
'I do not feel as if I remembered much of my new sister-in-law. Is Helen
like Julia at all?' Stella asked a little hesitatingly, after the
Mortons had gone.
'Not much. Helen takes more after her father. Not but what Mrs. Morton
is the dearest and kindest of women. You will like Helen, dear,' said
Louise, who was essentially one of the peacemakers of life, who not only
prophesy smooth things, but help materially to bring them to pass.
'And who is this Dr. Langdale you all conspire to----'
'Now, Stella, I warn you to say nothing disparaging,' said Louise,
laughing. 'Dr. Langdale is an immense favourite with us here. You are
sure to see him as soon as he returns from Nareen. He strolls across
from Dr. Morrison's house in Minjah Millowie most days in the afternoon,
when his writing for the day is over. He does write, for Hector told
me. You know how slowly Hector makes friends.'
'Does he? You see, I really know very little of Hector and Claude.'
'I always forget that. Of course, you see them only at long intervals,
and for a short time. Well, it's about five or six months since Dr.
Langdale came. He had been in the other colonies some little time. He
and Hector became great cronies almost at once. He is related to the
Morrisons. We heard a good deal about him before he arrived. He has
inherited a pretty good income, and does not need to work for his
living. But he always had a great liking for the medical profession.
He is much interested, too, in all sorts of social questions. He had an
appointment in a large London hospital; in fact, he has never practised
anywhere else. He previously held a merely honorary post there for two
or three years. Then an uncle--a great physician in the West End--died,
and his son wished Dr. Langdale to enter on a partnership with him.
Before deciding on this, he came away for a year's rest and change.'
'How old is he?'
'About thirty-one, only, like most Englishmen, he looks younger, at
least as compared with Australians. But he isn't all English; he is
German on the mother's side.'
'Indeed! What is he like?'
'Now, Stella, you are interested. You do so love the Germans. I know
you will like Dr. Langdale, if only for that reason.'
'Yes; and because you are giving me such a vivid description of him,'
said Stella, laughing. The soft flush in her cheeks would have shown
one who knew her that she was more interested than she chose to appear.
'Well, I'll do my best, only the moment you see him you'll say----'
'Oh, here you are, both gossiping away nineteen to the dozen! Well,
Baby, are you tired from your journey yesterday? After all, you are
really quite grown up.'