people's lives,' said Mrs. Claude, with a superior little smile which
Julia found very trying. 'You see,' she went on, with the combined
experience of one recently married and travelled, 'people in the Bush
think, as a rule, that if two people like Stella and Dr. Langdale have
long interesting talks, it must somehow mean love-making. So it does in
ninety-eight cases, but they are the ninety-ninth, and with them it
doesn't. And when you see a little more of the world you'll find there
are plenty more like them. Why, when we were at Geneva we met an
American lady and her mother. I suppose I ought to name the mother
first, but she was really as much in the background as an extra
dress-basket. Well, the daughter was not young, and there was a
countryman of hers, the Consul there, who had been her intimate friend
for fourteen years. During all that time when they are apart they write
long letters to each other every other week.'
'Good gracious! what a waste of time! Why in the world don't they
marry?' cried Julia energetically.
'Well, you see, they only want just to be friends,' answered Mrs.
Claude, with unconscious irony; 'and they had all sorts of things to
talk about, only they were always very serious. But Stella and the
Doctor have great fun very often.'
'Why, do they chaff each other much? Because, you know, that's a great
sign sometimes. That's the way Dan Wylie and Milly Waring used to go
on.'
'Mercy on us! do you suppose that Stella and Dr. Langdale go in for that
sort of horse-play?' said Mrs. Claude, with a comic look of horror.
'Well, I wish to goodness you would give me some idea of what they _do_
go in for. I might then get an opinion of my own. You mustn't think
it's just idle curiosity,' said Julia, with a solemn expression. 'Any
time I overhear them they laugh and smile at things that don't seem to
me in the least funny. And Hector, too, who is the slowest coach I ever
saw in my life, he seems quite lively and talkative with these two.'
'Well, you know, Hector and Dr. Langdale were great friends before ever
Stella came.'
'What was that talk going on about novel-writing on Thursday evening?'
'Oh, there is a theory that each is writing a novel. Stella declares
the Doctor is bent on making his book so agreeable that there are crowds
of obliging fairies in attendance on his characters, picking crumpled
rose-leaves out of their way, and so on. And he imagines that her
people in the end resolve to sit still all their lives, as the only way
in which they can avoid doing evil; and then when things go wrong they
call Nature, and Life, and Providence to the bar of judgment, and decree
that they ought to be hanged, so as to give the world a fresh start.
The Doctor declares that reaping as we sow makes up two-thirds of the
misfortunes of life. Then Stella asserts that life is so arranged that
you sow tares when you mean to sow wheat, and that when you do sow
honest grain an enemy comes in the night, who spoils the harvest.'
'Well, it's rather silly, don't you think, to go on so about far-off
things? And then they seem to turn even people's misfortunes into a
joke. They were actually smiling over Mr. Dene's compound fracture.
'Oh, Julia, how can you take up things in such a crooked way!' said Mrs.
Claude warmly. 'They did nothing of the sort. Hector had been to see
Mr. Dene, and said he was getting low-spirited through being confined to
the house so long. And then Stella said, quite gravely at first--she
often makes one believe she is in earnest when she is not--"I suppose in
writing a novel fit to be read when one smoked a pipe after the labours
of the day are over, an accident of this kind should be termed one of
the agreeable amusements of old age--or would you ignore a compound
fracture altogether?"'
'Well, I am sure that is chaffing, if not more so,' said Julia sturdily.
'And then, what did Dr. Langdale say?'
'"Not if it pointed one's pet moral so completely," he said. "You must
perceive that if an old gentleman at seventy-three persists in riding a
fiery horse imperfectly broken in, he lays himself open to accident; in
fact, he was so likely to get his neck broken, that a compound fracture
may be, in comparison, called a gentle warning."'
'And then Hector and Dr. Langdale have taken to calling Stella "St.
Charity." What is that for?'
'Oh, because she has the most extraordinary way of finding out creatures
that are hurt. Before we came, she found a little calf with a broken
leg when she was out riding. One of the boundary riders set the leg for
her, and she has nursed it in a fashion. It is now nearly well. Then
early last week she came upon an old crow badly wounded, and she brought
that right home, and tied up its broken wing and treated it with
vaseline. Hector and Dr. Langdale call it Satan; but Stella won't have
that name. She says the only time Satan was hurt it only made him
cleverer than ever. But it's a dreadfully cross old crow, and we all
think it is the queerest pet. But it really begins to hop after
Stella.'
'Oh, she's a spoilt thing; she always does just whatever comes into her
head, however queer it may be,' said Julia impatiently. She really
seemed as far as ever from any guiding light as to that walk with
Timothy.
'Well, what comes into her head in that way is very kind and sweet,'
returned Mrs. Claude. 'There is poor old Mick----'
'Mick? Is that a crow, or a calf, or what?' said Julia pettishly.
'Not nearly so interesting--to most people, at any rate,' laughed Mrs.
Claude. 'He is a dreadful little old ragged, drunken Irishman, who has
eight young children. He used to come to Lull sometimes asking for a
job; but Dunstan and some of the other men thought so badly of him,
Louise dared not give him any work. But one day when he came, Stella
met him by the creek, and had a long chat with him, and coaxed Dunstan
to give him work; and now he is in constant employment in the Home
Field, and hardly a day passes but he says something ridiculously droll
to Stella. She declares that naturally he is one of the best little men
she ever knew.'
'What, that awful little Mick Doolan, that has been so often in gaol for
drunkenness?'
'Yes; but Stella has found out it is his wife who drives him to the
public-house. She is a perfect virago, and every now and then Mick
comes with a black eye and a funny shade over it. He says he was
breaking wood, and a stick flew up and hit him. Stella goes to see her
regularly now when she goes into Minjah, and we fancy things are a
little better. But Stella does not like to talk of her charities. She
says they nearly always turn out addled eggs.'
'I don't wonder at it if she takes up people like Mick. Mrs. Wylie met
her near the cemetery the other day, and she watched her go into it with
a basket of flowers. What does she do that for?'
'She weeded Rupert Courtland's grave, and puts flowers on it once or
twice a week. The cousin, you know, who planted the Home Field, and
lived there with the Courtland brothers so many years. He was so fond
of trees and flowers, and planted so many rose-trees that are now in
full bloom.'
'Well, you may say what you like, but I think she is rather queer,' said
Julia. 'Then, do you really think, Nell, that neither Stella nor Dr.
Langdale care for each other, except as friends? Mind, as I said
before, I have good reason for wishing to know.'
'But what good reason can anyone else have to know what chiefly concerns
themselves? I should be very sorry to answer decidedly for either,
especially for--well, I don't think I should say it.'
'For whom? What a close sort of thing you are getting, Nell!'
'Well, for Dr. Langdale, if you must know. When he walks across in the
afternoon, if Stella is not in the room, or in the veranda where we sit
so often, and he catches sight of her coming, or hears her voice, his
whole face lights up. You see, his is a face that must show what he
feels more than most men's. There is no part of it hidden. The eyes and
mouth sometimes look as tender as a woman's, and yet there is something
a little hard about him. And suddenly, when he is talking, something
makes him look almost stern.'
'Well, Nell, you always were one to notice a great deal and find things
out long before other people did!' said Julia with sisterly admiration.
She herself seldom noticed things unless they had a distinctly personal
bearing; and then she invariably interpreted them according to her own
wishes.
'It seems to me you have been taking Dr. Langdale out of winding pretty
completely,' she said after a pause.
'Well, you see, one must do something when one has to keep in-doors so
much, and do a lot of sewing,' said Mrs. Claude with a pensive little
sigh, unconsciously hitting upon one of the keys to that passion for
psychological observations which, with some women, develops into a sort
of sixth sense; 'but for all that, you know, I shouldn't be a bit
surprised if they parted friends and nothing more. Certainly Dr.
Langdale doesn't talk of returning to England much, lately; and Stella
too, sometimes, when she speaks of returning to Fairacre, suddenly turns
very silent. But that may be because she thinks of Ted. She is to stay
at Laurette's on her way back.
'But what do Louise and Claude say? As for Hector, he's such a
stick-in-the-mud, he wouldn't see anything unless several people told
him plump.'
'Claude and Louise? We none of us exchanged a syllable on the matter.
Oh, you mustn't imagine we sit and talk things over, and try to ferret
things out, as--as we girls used to.'
'Well, I call that a very cold, reserved sort of way for a family,' said
Julia, with a touch of scorn. 'And that's one of the things that the
tourist people who come here for a few weeks, and write books, praise us
for. They say we have such an open, unreserved, easy way.
'But then you see those tourists mostly see the people who have made
money in business in the towns, and they are nearly always garrulous
everywhere. It's their life,' said Mrs. Claude, with a touch of her
husband's manner that was not lost upon Julia.
'Yes, and no doubt the Courtlands are extra reserved because of their
ancestry,' she said, tossing her head. 'It's good of you to keep so
friendly with us, Nell, after marrying into such a set.'
'Don't be so absurd, Julia; and whatever you do, don't mention a word of
what I've said to anyone.'
'What have you said, then?' cried Julia, in high dudgeon. 'I could
imagine ten times as much in half a minute. I believe you know more
than you say. I think Stella Courtland is a perfect flirt, and you
don't like to--to tell on her. But, after all, I don't believe she'll
ever give up a man with fifteen thousand a year for one that has to look
at people's tongues for a living.'
Mrs. Claude could not refrain from laughter at this incisive summing-up.
'Dr. Langdale needn't if he does not like. You know he has seven
hundred a year private income.'
'Yes; his father was in business, at any rate--a London fruit-broker. I
don't think that was so very aristocratic,' said Julia, who really was
in the mood in which certain women love to fling their tongue abroad
like a javelin.
'Yes, his father was a London fruit-broker and the grandson of a
baronet,' answered Mrs. Claude calmly. 'Oh, Mrs. Morrison only mentioned
it in the course of conversation, just when I told her that my pretty
moss-green bonnet was bought in London, in a shop kept by a lord's
daughter.'
'Well, if Stella didn't feel it was wrong to make such fast friends with
one man when she's engaged to another, surely she would have said
something to you or Louise about Ted,' said Julia, making a last
despairing effort to 'fossick' out some more highly coloured hint than
she had yet obtained.
'Oh, as to that, Stella got so much blamed on all sides for getting
engaged to Ted for a week and then breaking it off: we none of us expect
to hear of her being engaged till she's on the eve of marrying. You
know it was after that affair she came to see Louise, over three years
ago; and she said then she never would be engaged for more than a few
days. The temptation of throwing it all up again might be too great.'
'Oh, she's a conceited thing! I always think there's something almost
impertinent in the cool way she treats everything,' said Julia
viciously.
'Look here, Julia, if you don't like Stella, we'll stop talking about
her,' said Mrs. Claude; and with that she returned to the house. Julia
lingered for a few moments in the arbour, trying to decide whether it
would not be safer to have Mr. Haydon to dinner next Sunday, and
renounce all chance of Ted for good and all--'that Stella is too risky a
creature to let anything hang on her ways,' she thought, and she slowly
followed Mrs. Claude into the house.
'Oh, my dears,' her mother was saying, 'did you hear that Sally
Richardson died on Saturday night at twenty minutes past twelve? She
ate a little sago, with a tablespoonful of port wine in it, only half an
hour before; and she said the whole of "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild," a
little afterwards. Her poor dear mother----' and Mrs. Morton wiped her
eyes.
'Well, mamma, you know what a fearfully tiresome creature Sally always
was,' said Julia tartly.
Sally had been a housemaid in the Morton family for some time, but
indeed it needed not this tie in the past to make Mrs. Morton dwell with
effusion on every small particular she could glean of a death, or on the
blank that it caused. It is sometimes curious to observe the
modifications which parental traits undergo in a second generation.
Julia had inherited all her mother's ardour for the details of other
people's lives, but utterly divested of her mother's quick sympathy.
There was really no personal gratification which Mrs. Morton would have
purchased during any period of her life, had it been in her power, at
the cost of a finger-ache to a Mandarin in China. Whereas there was no
kind of ache Julia would have saved any young woman she knew, if such
pain could advance her own scheme of life. Perhaps when the laws of
heredity are better understood, the danger of saddling a daughter with
callous indifference to the claims of others will serve to curb the too
expansive altruism of mothers like Mrs. Morton.
'The idea of mamma going to sit up with that Richardson woman all Friday
night!' said Julia in a discontented voice.
'Well, my dear, you ought to be used to your mother being a real
Christian by this time,' said her father, not without intentional
sarcasm.
He was a hale old man of seventy-five, who enjoyed the distinction of
being the only squatter in the Warracootie District who had lived fifty
years of his life in Australia. He was one of three
brothers--descendants of an old English squire who had lost his
land--who had come to Victoria with a little capital, which had all been
lost in unprofitable speculations, so that they were for some time
knock-about hands, till a fortunate gold claim formed the foundation of
the wealth which they now enjoyed.
*CHAPTER XXX.*
There are many days of an Australian spring on which to remain within
doors is an impossible heresy. This Sunday was one of them. The two
who afforded Miss Julia Morton so irritating a theme for conjecture and
comment were wandering in the Home Field in common with the rest of the
Lullaboolagana household. Dr. Langdale had a little
old-fashioned-looking book in his hand, and was engaged in the congenial
task of supporting a theory Stella had started some days previously.
She had found Virgil's 'Eclogues' full of notes in her deceased
kinsman's handwriting, and it suddenly occurred to her that the Home
Field was full of hints from those stately pastoral poems.
'Suppose we trace the resemblances one day?' said Langdale.
'May I say it?' asked Stella, smiling.
'You will say it, whether you may or not, when you look so mischievous,
St. Charity.'
'Well, don't you think it is the German in you who suggests that
heartless form of crushing my poor little fancy?'
'Now, as a penalty for that speech, I shall pelt you with proofs,' said
Langdale, laughing.
And now he was going to make good the threat, armed with the little book
in tarnished gold that bore traces of having been a treasured companion.
'I am waiting to be pelted,' said Stella.
'Well, there is Amaryllis, to begin with; swift as a fawn, lithe as a
young pine, flitting by, pretending she does not hear the lay that
Tityrus pipes on his lute----'
'But where is she?'
'Oh, a commentator is always allowed to see a little more than his
readers or hearers. I see her. And then there is the spreading beech
under which the swain reclines. Look, there are three beeches hard
by--all spreading as far as their age permits. Could the beech-tree
under which Tityrus reclines do more?'
'Oh, I see that in the matter of proving a theory you were born to
destroy Afreets,' said Stella, her face sparkling with fun at the
extreme gravity which her companion had assumed.
'But there is much more to follow. A little further on Melib[oe]us
says---- May one read a little Latin to you without scandal?'
'Surely that is an anachronism! What else would he read?' said Stella,
pretending to misunderstand.
They both laughed at this; and then Stella said: 'Yes, one may.'
'Then, "Hic inter densas corylos." The Oolloolloo is haunted with dense
hazel-bushes. Tityrus, in his reply, says that Rome lifts up her head
among other cities as high as cypress among bending osiers. I am not
sure about more than one patch of osiers, but cypresses you have in
abundance.'
'Yes, and of all the trees that grow, none look lovelier in the rose
twilight of sunset. See those clumps of them between the house and the
orchard, mingled with tamarisk-trees. At mid-day the cypress looks dark
and stern compared with the silky tamarisk locks. But when the sunlight
is dying, the cypress seems to disentangle its feathery foliage, till it
looks like an airy vision of a tree rather than one that has roots
underground.'
When Stella spoke of trees, or animals, or flowers, one could see that
they were like living humanized creatures to her.
'Now, I have often wondered why I like cypress-trees better at sunset.
Tell me some more about trees.'
'Oh, you haven't finished your proofs yet.'
'Well, Melib[oe]us speaks further of pine-trees, fountains, and
vineyards. Pines you have in hundreds; you have two fountains, and over
an acre of vines.'
'Really, the resemblance becomes quite startling!' laughed Stella.
'Yes; and then there is mention of willow-bloom on which the bees feast.
Then you have flocks of pigeons, and elms and turtle-doves without
number. In view of this, you must perceive that the lines concerning
the hoarse note of the wood-pigeon, the turtle-dove's complaint, and the
towering elm serve--first, either as a prophecy regarding Lull, or
second, that the place has been moulded upon these lines. I incline to
the _latter_ view. The emphasis is my own.'
'But seriously, it is an interesting coincidence that all the natural
objects named in the "Eclogues" seem to abound in the Home Field.'
'As you are convinced, even beforehand, my labours are at an end,' said
Langdale, closing the book. 'Now tell me, have you any funny little
stories of Mick or Dunstan?'
'Oh, Mick was better than a comedy yesterday. He hardly opened his
mouth without making a bull. He told me about one of his girls who is
at service and very much overworked. The mistress, it seems, gives
music-lessons. "But she's no great hand at the music," said Mick,
lowering his voice mysteriously; "indade, Miss Stella, they say she
niver saw a pianny till she came to Minjah four years ago, and thin
'twas an harmonium."'
'Well done, Mick!' said Langdale, laughing.
'Then I asked after the eldest boy, who has got a situation lately in a
little store. He doesn't get on with the mother--no one can long--so
last week he went to board at an aunt's. Poor Mick was much
scandalized. "'Why, Patrick,' says I to him, 'what do people's children
do who have no parents but lodge wid their father's sister? And thin
the house is near the swampy end of the town, and people die there that
niver died anywhere else.'" Well, you may laugh, but there is sound
sense under it all. I shall miss Mick's little anecdotes sadly when I
go away.'
'When you go!' repeated Langdale, and his face fell visibly. On meeting
his eyes a deeper tinge stole into the girl's cheeks. Then he added in
a lighter tone: 'There are days in August when people who speak of going
away should be fined, or at any rate set to counting the vine-buds and
gadding tendrils.'
'And yet how very human it is to go away, even as human as it is to
come. You see, I am catching a little of your reasonableness,' said
Stella.
'That may be; but on a day like this, when the veriest little locust
chirps in the sun as "though he never should be old," I maintain it is
little short of felony to speak of the accidents that mar life.... You
see, I am catching a little of your unreason,' he added.
They had crossed the stone bridge, and stood on a hillock clothed with
elms, she-oaks, and scrub cypresses, where the breath of hidden violets
came and went on the air like tremulous music. From this slight
eminence they had a far-reaching view of the country round--the Messmate
Ranges, with their dim gullies; the Wicked Wood, spectral in its
bareness; the break in the far distance, where one became sensible of
the Peeloo Plain; the flat, well-wooded country, and the contour of
ridgy hills that stretched beyond Minjah Millowie. On every side lay
the still wide woods, motionless as a great picture framed between
heaven and earth, all clothed with the overflowing sunshine as with a
garment.
And yet these two, as they stood there and looked afar and listened to
the songs of birds and all the woodland sounds which filled the
air--what influence was it that stirred both so deeply in the midst of
this peaceful idyllic scene? Who can tell what vague outward gropings
of the spirit make the heart turn on itself in some rare soft-footed
hour as with a quickened sense of the sweet calm of the present, a
shrinking fear of the uncertain days to come which may be clouded with
futile agony, drenched with the storm-spray of life's keenest sorrows?
For some moments neither spoke.
'You will never know how good it is of me not to talk like your friend
Ivan Michalowicz just now,' said Stella, breaking the silence. 'I could
believe the air is full of unseen presences----'
'That is a plagiarism from Mick. Go on--and unheard wails,' Langdale
said, laughing.
'Yes; and souls that can find no home. But I forbear.'
'Well, I must admit that on a perfect day like this--and the only fault
it has is that it keeps time to a clock--a kind of sadness creeps over
me. It is the penalty for looking before and after.'
'Yes; neither a cat nor a marigold uses the sunlight as an invocation to
call ghosts into a circle.'
'Ghosts? You know nothing of them!'
'At this very moment the air is drenched with ghosts. Ghosts of days to
come--lean and gray, when youth is left far behind--when those that look
out at the window are darkened, and the daughters of music are laid
low.'
'It is good of you not to speak like Ivan,' said Langdale gravely. 'He
said once that the great melancholy steppes of his native land had got
into his disposition. I think the vast solitudes of your Australia have
got into yours.'
'But do you never think how dreadful it is to grow old? And it goes on
all the time. Why, since we have been here, if your eyes were keen
enough, you would see wrinkles deepening on my face.'
'Thank Heaven my eyes are not so precocious!'
'Ah, now you have betrayed yourself. You are not so hopelessly
reasonable after all. I may yet hear you rail at life in good set
terms.'
'But don't you think it is time enough to speak of wrinkles when they
come?'
'Ah, but they have come. I discovered a little sly wretch of a
crow's-foot at the corner of my eye the other day. Look there when I
stand sideways in the light,' and Stella stood so that her crow's-foot
might be more clearly seen.
Langdale could not resist laughing. 'My eyesight is not sharp enough,
or else your crow's-foot does not exist,' he said.
'Spoken like a courtier. But it would be more friendly to see it, and
then to say something out of Seneca to comfort me. When will your
profession make some real advance?'
'And invent an elixir for renewing youth--or perhaps you are thinking
more of the happy despatch of superfluous beings?'
'But as it is, you are chiefly concerned with screening fools from their
folly----'
'And thwarting the beneficent severity of Nature? Yes, it is painfully
humdrum. Have you ever thought what calling in life might put one in
the way of doing least mischief?'