October, he might be back in March at the latest. The late roses would
be still in bloom, and the chrysanthemums would be coming in. He loved
her to wear great clusters of roses at the throat. What time of day
would it be when he came to the dear old Fairacre home? She hoped it
would be twilight--just before the lamps were lit. There would be great
china bowlfuls of roses in the hall, and delicate pink and pale
cream-coloured Japanese chrysanthemums. 'I love the Japanese for making
a festival in honour of this flower,' she thought. And then she mused
over far-away, strange countries. Would they see them all together? Oh!
what leaps to make! and they had not yet been betrothed. Yes, in the
twilight. There would be a golden glow lingering in the west, and far
above that the inimitable rose-lilac colour which steals so often into
the evening sky, when the wearying languor of the long summer is over.
Rose-lilac? no, that was a burlesque of the real tint. There was in it
the pink of wet sea-shells, and a faint tinge of a very pale lilac
pansy, and over all a divine haze, as if a great white star had been
melted in the air. What name was there for such a colour as that?
None. What name was there for the flood of happiness that thrilled her
through when their eyes and hands met at parting? Love! But all the
dreadful, commonplace, earthly creatures who ever got engaged took that
word in vain. Come back, ye wandering little imps of thoughts, and
finish this twilight scene. Would she be in the garden when he came?
Of course she would know about what time the vessel would reach Glenelg.
It would be telegraphed first from King George's Sound, and in less than
four days afterwards it would be sighted off Cape Borda. When Tom went
to his office that morning, she would take him aside, and say: 'Can you
keep a secret? I don't suppose you can. You mustn't laugh, you mustn't
cry; you must do the best you can.'
'What is it, Baby? Have you given away your last half-crown to Honora,
or some other old vagabond, and haven't got a pair of gloves to put on?'
'No, Tom, it isn't that. But the----' What would be the name of the
ship? The _Nepaul_ or the _Lusitania_? Some such name very likely. But
she would give it one of her own--the _Paquerette_. Where did that come
from? Oh, from some lines her old French master had taught her, telling
of a custom the village maidens had in France for testing how much they
were beloved:
"'La blanche et simple Paquerette,
Que ton coeur consult surtout
Dit: ton amant, tendre filette
J'aime, un peu, beaucoup, point du tout."'
Yes. 'But the _Paquerette_ is coming in to-day, and I want to know the
exact time she reaches Glenelg. Send me a telegram. Oh! put it in your
official note-book, and, whatever you do, don't forget. Ah, you are
very good; I know you never forget. But this is more important than the
creation of the world, or the Christian era, or anything.' She wouldn't
go anywhere that day, and if any visitors came, she would retreat into
the study--the dear old little library with the pale, sea-green cretonne
curtains, with brown sedges and water-lilies all over them. She had
bought them herself when the green damask ones had grown so very faded,
and she had climbed up on the ladder to fasten them, and caught sight of
a little row of books behind the old Divinity ones that were never
disturbed, and the first one she took up was _Candide_. She read twenty
pages of it standing on the ladder. Was there any domain of life so
pungently vulgar as those twenty pages? Or were books like _Candide_
hidden away behind tomes of Divinity because these last were so
fanciful--women and children might read them--while the others were too
true to be left within reach? Would she ever tell Anselm? Well,
perhaps; if he persisted in calling her St. Charity. What beautiful
intonations there were in his voice when he was talking very gravely,
and how deep and steadfast his eyes were! Would he ever look angrily at
her? Sometimes she had tried to provoke him, but the more she tried the
more he was amused. But then, after years of married life, would not
some taint of marital coldness creep into his manner? Heavens! what a
bound to make--and they had not yet met!
She would retreat into the library if visitors came that day. But she
would be unable to read. Nothing that ever was written could interest a
girl who was waiting for the beloved of her heart--the only man she ever
loved or ever could love. Oh, what a dreadful creature she had been to
think of marrying when her heart had been as unmoved as the nether
millstone. What could have possessed her on that steel gray day in
June, when Ted pressed his suit so ardently, and laid his thirteen
thousands a year at her feet, and told her he could never care for
anyone but herself; and at last she gave a shuddering half-reluctant
consent, and he trembled with happiness, and she allowed him to kiss
her? Great heavens! how could she? She rose up, and laved her face in
cold water as she thought of it.
She wished that no one had ever loved her; and yet how could she tell
that she could not have loved anyone but Anselm if no one else had wooed
her? But then she should not have found it so amusing. Yes, she knew
well she had a thread of the coquette in her. She liked to know that
people thought her charming and admired her. How unworldly she had been
at one time! How incredible it seemed that her keenest ideal of joy had
been to give herself wholly to God--to the lowliest services of life.
What voices were these that came wandering back, austere with
renunciations and sleepless vigils? Poor earthworm, yearning for
security in the contentments of this fleeting show--a perpetual
day-drudge to the delusion of perfect earthly happiness--consider how
slight a breeze may scatter thy bliss--even as a gust of wind levels a
small dust-heap! Hast thou forgotten what a thankless runaway slave is
joy? She had read so many of the Saints and Fathers, she could have run
on in homilies for hours. But, after all, there was something unreal in
their depreciation of life--they spoke in the hieratic style, as Anselm
had said..... Would she get into the trick of quoting him eternally, as
so many wives did? Wives! Do people ever know how bold girls can be in
their imagination?
No, she could not read while she waited. She would sit in the chair in
which her father always sat when he taught the three of them--Cuthbert,
Alice, and herself. How kind and gentle he always was--how he taught
them to love the best books, and make fast friends of them, and as far
as in them lay to do good to all men. How brave and pure and just his
life had been--how full of kindly deeds and thoughts; and yet to the
last his mind retained that lambent play of humorous irony--that quick
perception of what was droll or incongruous. She could see the quiet
half-smile that played so habitually round his lips. Only two days
before his death, she had read to him some scenes out of
_Cymbeline_..... That was a strange awakening before dawn, when, at the
last, the end came so unexpectedly. The cocks were crowing when Kirsty
called herself and Alice, and there was a strange grayness on his face
when they entered the room.
How often since, when she woke at cock-crow, she had gone over the story
of her father's life--thinking even of the day on which he first saw
light--and then his brilliant student days, when he had won scholarly
distinctions; and the long vacation, one summer, when he met his future
bride in the old Surrey deanery where she was spending the summer. She
was nearly twenty-one and he was twenty-four, and a year later they were
married. And now it was all over; but surely--surely somewhere that
spirit, so keen to feel and love up to the last, was enshrined in a
fuller, larger life than that can ever be where the soul is clogged by a
material companion..... Could Anselm be now content to believe that we
became a thread in the living garment of the Infinite only by being
transmuted into lowlier forms? .... How quickly they had crept into each
other's modes of thought and opinions and most cherished fancies! They
never spoke to others of the things they discussed together. Would they
ever listen to each other with a yawn, and even forget in time the
anniversary of their wedding-day? What, married again--and they were
not yet plighted lovers....
Well, when the visitors were gone, she would go back into the
drawing-room and watch the clock. The sun was setting, and the
_Paquerette_ had come in at five. Would she stay in the garden till
some one came and told her he had come? Yes, of course, Alice would
know, and her mother; for Anselm was going to write to her from England.
What would she wear? Pink _crepe de chine_ and cream-coloured
chrysanthemums--no; cream-coloured cashmere and scarlet fairy roses.
She would pluck them at sunset, so that they would be fresh and
fragrant; and at that moment Alice would skim down the vine-arcade: 'He
is here, Stella; your friend has come!' Her heart beat so loud and
hard, that she placed her hand over it. She went up through the
vine-arcade, that bent under its great clusters of grapes--a
white-breasted fantail carolling overhead, mad with mirth, as though it
had sipped some frantic liquor; and now she was in the hall, her hand
was on the door. Stella!--Anselm!--and then she shrank from his
encircling arms with the thought, 'I am glad it will be yet four months
before we meet as lovers!' And then a quick, sudden fear awoke in her
heart. 'Oh, my love--my love, you have come back, all the way across
the salt dividing sea!' and with that she burst into low sobs: 'Oh, the
way is so far--so far; and sometimes there are dreadful storms!' she
moaned. The adder that lies ever at the heart of passion had awakened,
and stung her.
What light was this stealing into the room? She looked at the stars and
found them pale and shrunken; there was no need to turn to the east for
tidings of the dawn. Already the birds had learned the secret. A
Boobook owl gave a loud sad koor-koo, as if the light had suddenly
smitten it blind. A curlew called in the distance by the Oolloolloo,
and near at hand some magpies began their finished trills and flutings,
but stopped short as they seemed on the point of breaking into the
mellow ripeness of summer song.
There are some dawns that enfold the earth as with the unspeakable
beauty of Holiness. This was one of them. There was none of the fiery
splendour that so often heralds day in Australia--especially in the
summer, when the whole east is often kindled into a throbbing ocean of
almost intolerable beauty. But this divine hue was the selfsame '_dolce
color d'oriental zaffiro_' that blessed Dante's sight when he escaped
from the murky atmosphere of hell. Morn, treading proudly on golden
sandals, spread from horizon to horizon, till it seemed as if day were
added to day, and the whole world overflowed with light. It was so
keenly luminous that the trees on the Messmate ranges stood sharply
outlined instead of being merged in a continuous mass of foliage. Then,
gradually, a deep rose-tint stole into the east, as if halls were
disclosed heaped up and running over with rose-leaves. Never does
heaven draw so near earth, and the earth lie so open to heaven, as in
those moments when we can first say it is morning.
Stella could not remain within doors. She threw a soft woollen shawl
over her shoulders and went out among the shrubs and trees. There was a
great bush of Rosamond's glory near the front of the house, and the
heavy clusters of burning red roses that open their hearts so lavishly
to the wind, keeping back no folded petal, drew her to them as with
silken cords. The roses quivered fitfully in the breeze, scattering
their petals on the ground, where they glowed like delicate leaflets of
vivid flame. 'Oh, what passionate prodigals you are to shed yourselves
on the relentless earth in this fashion! Why do you not tarry a little
longer, you generous spendthrifts?' said Stella softly, looking at them
with dimmed eyes. Why did the tears rise so quickly, when beforetime
they came to her so tardily? Had the weak destiny of a woman at last
overtaken her? The dawn had always before been so full of joy and
promise--like a great exulting _Te Deum_, the triumph of light over
darkness, the glad beginning of a new day. But now it was strangely
solemn, charged with thoughts of those who had been and were no more, of
quiet chambers in which women had watched their dying children, their
husbands, their lovers. Oh, the sadness and the strange mystery of those
never-ending changes that strike a chill to the heart in its gladdest
hours of fruition! How many there were to whom the pale splendour of
this dawn brought only the awakening consciousness of a life emptied of
joy! How many idylls of youth and love would come to a tragic close
before night fell once more upon land and sea! There were husbandmen
sowing grain which they would never reap, young mothers making garments
for babes that would never see the light of day, men working and waiting
for brides that would never be theirs, gallant ships sailing the main
which would never reach their haven. Oh, why did these dismal thoughts
rise in that hour full of the budding promise of the crowning happiness
of life? And all the time every bird that had a note was pouring out
melody ceaselessly, vehemently, as if it would sing its little heart
into shreds. The sparrows were deafening each other with their
breathless chatter--but high above this rose the clear sweet treble of
the fantails. One might suppose that the swallows saw glancing water
for the first time, so buoyantly did they skim its surface, singing
snatches of madrigals the while that were composed long before the first
cave-man scratched rude figures on stones. Among the bamboos the
reed-warblers poured out with pauseless haste those melodious but
capricious lays in which many stolen goods are brought to light. Now a
stave from a warbling grass-parrot, then a careless parody of the
swallow's tittering; anon the cadence of a shell-parrot's love-song--and
in between liquid blithe little legends all their own.
'They are perfect little rogues, these brown water songsters,' thought
Stella, with a smile. 'They have as wide a range of musical sounds as
Sir Thomas More's wife, who took lessons on the lute, the cithara, the
viol, the monochord, and the flute, which she daily practised to her
husband--poor man: and I cannot play a single instrument, though I love
music so insanely. If Anselm is fond of musical evenings we must get a
"merlodeon."'
At this thought she laughed outright. And then she went inside lest she
might be seen in evening attire like a strayed reveller--for it was now
close on sunrise, and smoke was ascending from the kitchen chimney, from
the men's hut near the wool-shed, and Dunstan's cottage. She knew that
sleep was impossible; but after bathing and putting on a crisp morning
dress she felt quite refreshed.
But how endless the day seemed! At ten o'clock it was difficult to
realize that so much of the day still lay before her. At that hour a
note came from Langdale to Mrs. Courtland explaining that he would be
unable to visit Mrs. Parr, the caravan woman, as the servants called
her, on that day, as he was going to see some sick people at a distance
for Dr. Morrison. There was a message to St. Charity, directing her to
take the patient's temperature, and permit her to sit up for some hours
if it was not over one hundred and one. Stella carried out these
instructions, and wrote a note for the patient to a brother in
Melbourne. Then Mrs. Morton and Julia came to ask all the Lull household
to spend the day after the next at Broadmead, it being the fortieth
anniversary of Mr. and Mrs. Morton's wedding-day. 'I don't suppose
Hector and Claude will come till the evening, but you three, and the
older children, can come early in the day. It does seem like a tale
that John and I should be married for forty years, and never a cross
word in all that time, my dear,' she said, turning to Stella.
'Not one cross word, mamma? And Claude and I have not been married a
year, and we have had lots of little rows. But then I think it's more
interesting, for we are always better friends afterwards,' said Mrs.
Claude reflectively.
'Well, my dear, people must have their own way, but I prefer always to
give in,' said Mrs. Morton. 'And when I don't really give in, your papa
has so got into the habit, he thinks I do. And now, my dear, tell me
about your woman.'
On being thus appealed to, Stella told the curious little story she had
heard the previous day.
'Oh, my dear, if Miss Kibwell only heard that story, she would make
something quite beautiful out of it,' said Mrs. Morton enthusiastically.
And then she went on to tell who Miss Kibwell was--a young English lady
who wrote such beautiful stories for pious English magazines. 'We met
her at Basle, dear, where papa and I stayed for a month; and there was a
French cure staying at the same hotel. He spoke English nicely, and
when I pointed out to him the evils of idolatry, he listened to me most
attentively. I gave him two tracts on Mariolatry, and he thanked me
quite nicely and put them into his pocket. I prayed for him at sunset
regularly, as I noticed that about that time he always read his poor
Popish Breviary. And do you know, my dear, this young English lady made
such a pretty story of this for _Sunday in the Parlour_. She showed
how, when the cure was at his Popish prayers, some influence--occult, I
think she called it--was at work with him, till at last the "Hail Mary!"
stuck in his throat, and he could not get it out. She showed how my few
words and the tracts worked on him so that at last he had to renounce
his errors. And then, at the end, she made what she called a
word-picture of him--married, and with three or four children--the whole
family saying the Lord's Prayer at sunset on the very spot where the
lady from Australia--that was me, my dear!--first met him. But the
editor of _Sunday in the Parlour_ changed this into the family going to
church on Sunday morning, for he feared some of his readers might find a
Popish taint in prayers at sunset. Oh, they are wonderfully careful in
these pious magazines. Not a word of the worse things that really
happen will they allow into their stories.'
Stella, to whom this little tale was chiefly related, listened with both
ears. Nor did her interest relax when the good lady took up her parable
about Dr. Langdale, whose speedy departure was a subject of thrilling
interest. And to return again so soon. It must be some very important
piece of business.
'Had anyone died, or what had happened?' said Julia, in the sharp way in
which she invariably hankered after the concrete facts that underlay
events.
'He said it was some private family matter,' returned Mrs. Courtland,
'and that he expected to be back in Australia again in four months.'
'Well, that was just what we heard from Mrs. Morrison as we came through
Minjah Millowie,' said Julia. 'It seems funny, doesn't it, for one to
go for such a short time?'
Very recently Miss Morton had written to Mrs. Tareling a letter, in
which the words occurred: 'You may depend the next news you hear will be
that of the engagement of Stella and Dr. Langdale. Stella picked up a
dying woman--at least, she turned out not to be dying--and Dr. L. is
attending her; so they see more of each other than ever.'
Indeed, so great an impression had this made on Miss Morton's mind that,
though Mr. Haydon had been the previous Sunday at Broadmead, she had not
stirred beyond the veranda. Still, it was comforting to know that he
had made one or two artless plans to lure her away beyond the family
circle.
The afternoon turned out very cloudy and sultry. Tantaro, the native
boy, had had an accident with Duke a few days previously in riding to
one of the out-stations. In jumping a fence the horse had struck his
near fore-leg and cut it so badly that he could not be ridden for some
days. Louise had not ridden for many years, so there was not a great
choice of ladies' horses. There was Andy, voted an impossible little
animal by Stella; and there was Norman, just then in a distant part of
the run; and Orlando, who was in the stock-paddock close to the house,
but had an evil name.
'He has splendid paces, and a head like an Arab,' pleaded Stella.
'Yes; but he has a concealed vice which is now an open secret,' returned
her brother Hector. 'He shies at the most unexpected moments. Yes,
you'll be on your guard if you see a lumbering bullock-dray, or a white
log lying close to the road, or anything else that a nervous horse
objects to. But how if he gives a sudden swerve when you are cantering
along a tract as smooth and level as a bowling-green?'
'In that case I should either stick in my saddle or have a fall; and
that reminds me, I've never had as many falls as people say go to the
making of a good rider. Hadn't I better improve the shining hour?'
'You had--in keeping out of mischief. No, Baby, you must have no
experimental bursters when you ride alone. You can have Andy to go
anywhere with, and you can ride Orlando in the stock-paddock, then on
Thursday you may have Norman.'
Stella rode Orlando once or twice round the stock-paddock, and highly
approved of him. It is true he shied once or twice, but nothing to
signify to anyone who knew how to sit in a saddle. On this dark, sultry
afternoon she felt an uncontrollable longing to ride for miles in the
open air. She was weary, but she could not sleep; restless and unable
to work. She would ride to the Wicked Wood. It was only between seven
and eight miles away, with a well-made road leading through it, little
frequented by any save riders or the light vehicles of surrounding
squatters, or people journeying between Minjah Millowie and Nareen.
This wood had made a strange impression on Stella. It was only a few
days previously that she had written of it to her sister Esther:
'Are there such tracts of utter desolation in any other country? Acres
upon acres, nay, in one direction, mile after mile, with each tree
bleached and bare as the planks of a wrecked ship that has lain for
centuries on the coast of an uninhabited island. They are tall, and
gaunt, and white, standing close to each other, so that their
limbs--their poor skeleton-intertwisted branches--touch each other
overhead. They look as though they had been convulsed with throes of
mortal agony, and were then suddenly petrified. They are like the
numberless trunks and bones of dead things reared in air instead of
being kindly hidden in the bosom of the great mother. Are the limbs of
living trees twisted and twirled and twined and twinged in this way? Is
it possible that bark and leaves and the breath of life have such magic
that they do not let us catch one glimpse of the real anatomy of a tree
until their masking raiment is entirely gone? Some of the great old
trees in the Wicked Wood have, through all these years, kept their
tiniest twigs in extraordinary completeness. Standing under them and
looking upward, they look more like delicate carving in ivory, like
marvellous etching in silky-gray and pure white against a deep blue
background, rather than the corpse of what was once dense foliage. It
seems as if no great storm could ever have swept through the wood since
it became a burial-ground of trees, whose hold of life was so strong
that even in death they stand upright. Else how is it that those
delicate cobwebs of interlacing twigs, those fine slender branches, dry
and brittle-looking as an old grass-tree, have not been strewn in
crumbling fragments--in dust, I had almost said? Underfoot there is a
little vegetation--a sad gray-green, with wide patches of yellow sand
showing between. I thought the Mallee country round Goonjooree might be
taken as a type of the most weird aspect of our scenery, but the Mallee
sinks into tameness compared to the Wicked Wood. It seems to stretch
out unseen arms and compel you to stand and look from tree to tree, and
try to draw in the secret of its strange fascination. It is too
terrible, one says; and then, because of this, one visits the place
again and again. It nourishes the imagination. There are some spots in
it of which I dream by night. In the daytime I try to think of stories
into which they could come. But then their barrenness--their lean
detachment from all the glad life of the world around, freezes the
impish fancies that seek to give them a local habitation and a name.
The Wicked Wood is a sort of belt half a mile wide as one passes through
it from here to Nareen, but miles away on each side, to the right hand
and to the left. A mile further on, within sight of Nareen, there is a
wide stringy bark valley, in which a bush fire raged not very long ago.
It must have leapt from tree to tree and up the trunks to the very tips
of the branches, for all are blackened and charred, and many are dead.
But most of them have put forth young twigs and leaves. Some among them
are, indeed, a perfect idyll of spring--all a mass of tender young
leaves, clad in pale green, the youngest and smallest of them tinged
with a pure bronzy shade, fluttering above the charred branches and
along the coal-black trunks as if planted by some fantastic gardener in
hidden vases.'