kept rising in her mind like the refrain of a ballad heard long ago, and
chiming perpetually beyond her power to still it, these gaunt writhing
trees seemed to draw her to them as by a spell. It lay in her nature to
seek serenity in a scene that had not one of the charms which ordinarily
woo the heart. The cultured beauty of the Home Field, with its wealth
of leafing trees and budding roses and spring flowers, disquieted her.
*CHAPTER XXXIV.*
Stella resolved that she would merely reach the Wicked Wood and then
return--keeping unsleeping guard on Orlando all the time. Not even the
sight of two yellow-rumped geobasileus birds, twittering on a dwarf
honeysuckle near the road, made her forget to be cautious, though their
notes were symptomatic of housekeeping, and one of their curious double
nests was a thing she much longed to see. Orlando seemed to enjoy the
spin as much as his rider--and that was saying much. Those who love
riding find a fascination in the exercise it would be difficult to
define. Care, or the shadow of trouble, has in it something unreal,
while the free-bounding motion of a horse seems to add a new strength
and buoyancy to one's flagging vitality. The air is lighter, the horizon
widens, heaven is nearer, and the songs of birds come in ecstatic rain
while mile after mile of forest, or wood, or plain is rapidly passed.
Within a mile of the Wicked Wood Dustiefoot lagged behind and barked in
a way that told his mistress he was out of breath. She slackened speed,
and then for the first time noticed the strange change that had come
over the sky. Up from the north a long wide column of clouds, low and
black, was rushing with incredible velocity. The wind, too, had
shifted, and suddenly lost its warmth, and seemed to be gathering
strange voices from the wilderness. It was evident that a storm was
brewing. It was in this moment of surprised inattention that her
brother's mistrust of Orlando's open vice was justified. Without any
ostensible reason he suddenly bounded from one side of the road to the
other, and Stella, who sat at ease, her eyes fixed on the quickly
gathering clouds, found herself in the twinkling of an eye low in the
dust, with one shoulder feeling very numbed, and a general sense of
dislocation weighing heavily upon her. 'I have had an experimental
burster after all,' was the first thought; and then she attempted to
rise, but she could only limp very slowly and painfully. Orlando
cantered out of sight, the loose reins and flying stirrup, and all that
marks the demoralizing contrast between a horse ridden and guided and
one who is a lawless runaway, prompting him to flee from the scene of
his escapade. Dustiefoot looked after the defaulter lost in amazement,
which presently gave place to an indignant bark. Then he came and
fawned on his mistress, and held her riding-whip in his mouth till she
took it from him.
There are few occasions in which the pangs of conscience make themselves
felt more acutely than after being rolled in the dust by a horse that
one has been warned not to take beyond the stock-paddock. As far as she
could ascertain, Stella had no limbs broken, but both the right shoulder
and arm felt extremely stiff and sore, and there was some twist in her
right foot which made it impossible for her to walk even a mile, much
less seven or eight. The only alternative was to sit by the roadside
till some one passed who could take her home. And then arose the very
unwelcome and disturbing thought that tramps and vagabond sundowners
were just as likely to pass as friendly squatters in buggies, or a
resident from Nareen or Warracootie eager to show a kindness to anyone
belonging to Lull. There was a large fallen gum tree on one side of the
road at about thirty or forty yards away from it. With considerable
pain Stella dragged herself to this, and sat so as to be as much as
possible protected from the storm, which would evidently soon break in
its wrath.
Even as she reached this place of refuge, there was that curious lull
which foretold a fierce outbreak. All heaven was now clothed with a
shroud of storm-black clouds. The wind, which had quickly risen and
broken into keen shrill voices, seemed for a moment suspended. The
birds had betaken themselves to the covert of the trees, and were as
silent as though night had fallen. Then, with a sudden obscurity of
darkness, there was a great sound as of many rushing waters--a far-off
gathering murmur, that had at first something plaintive, almost musical,
as of many harpers harping on their harps. But this was soon drowned in
a hoarse, ever-rising roar. Gust after gust of terrific violence, each
one higher than the other, swept over the woods, till all the air was
darkened and thick with dust, with branches torn from the trees, with
fragments of blackened grass trees, with withered boughs that had been
long dead of old. The spirits of the tempest were all abroad--a
thousand jarring voices seemed let loose at once, rising in wails, and
shrieks, and fiery confused sounds, as of battle and lamentation. Then
a great flame of lightning swept the horizon, and peal after peal of
thunder broke and resounded as though the earth were undermined with
Cyclopean chambers, through which the deafening crashes hurtled and
reverberated endlessly. Quivering, wide-drawn flames swept constantly
across the face of the sky, as if the darkened heavens were being
searched with flaring torches.
Dustiefoot cowered close to his mistress, and both were fortunately
sheltered from the brunt of the storm by the closely interwoven branches
under which they had taken shelter. Every now and then sticks and
broken limbs, and all the debris that floats at large when the wind is
blowing with hurricane violence over great tracts of thickly wooded
country, fell around them. Now and then a branch was broken off
overhead, and lifted high up as though it were a feather-weight. At
each peal of thunder the dog gave a low growl, the hair round his neck
bristling on end. Stella called him by name from time to time, but a
trumpet-blast would have been lost in that terrific din as completely as
a whisper. The touch of her hand on his head, however, seemed to
reassure him. It was certain that the almost human intelligence of the
dog's eyes, as he alternately fixed them wistfully on her face and
looked abroad wrathfully when he gave a low growl, as if warning the
elements not to go too far, gave Stella a sense of companionship, even
of amusement. But the air seemed loaded with sulphureous vapours that
gradually made her head feel at once giddy and very heavy. Once or
twice she caught herself opening her eyes with the sudden start of one
who has dozed. At such times Dustiefoot seemed more than ever on the
alert with a brisk, protecting air. It was when the fury of the storm
was spent that the thick end of a bough, which had been denuded in its
flittings of all the lighter branches, crashed through the thinned-out
boughs overhead, grazing Stella on the temple and falling heavily
end-ways on poor Dustiefoot's left paw. He gave one low, yelping bark,
but did not whine or moan once, though the jagged end of the storm's
missile had cut and bruised him badly. The sight of the blood dripping
from the wounded paw made Stella turn faint and cold. She could not
spare her handkerchief in all that blinding dust, but she had a fine
white silk one round her throat, and tearing this in two, she bound one
half of it round the maimed limb. Dustiefoot lay close by her, his head
in her lap, and more than ever, as the storm subsided, Stella felt that
she could not keep her eyes open. She felt sure, however, that
Dustiefoot would not let any vehicle or horseman pass by without giving
timely notice. Already he had started up barking clamorously, but the
passer-by each time was a stray bullock, which hurried into a thicker
part of the woods as if fearful that the worst was yet to come.
Once or twice Stella aroused herself with thinking of the consternation
her absence, through such a storm and on a horse of Orlando's character,
would cause at Lullaboolagana. Well, at the worst they would send out in
search of her when the evening drew near. And Dunstan had seen her take
the road that led to Nareen. The atmosphere and the shock of the fall,
and perhaps, too, the little blow on her temple and the previous night's
vigils, all combined to bring on a queer feeling of stupor. She was not
asleep nor insensible, and yet she felt as if even to move were a
trouble. She felt a slow trickling on her temple, and thought it must
be rain. A few large heat-drops had fallen as the storm abated, but
nothing more. It was a little rivulet of blood which trickled from the
left temple, where it was grazed by the tree-branch. She rested her
head against a large, smooth bough behind her, and sat with closed eyes,
deathly pale.
It seemed to her that hours passed as she sat in this way--never wholly
unconscious, yet overcome with an irresistible languor. In reality only
half an hour had passed, till one drove up rapidly in a buggy, with
Orlando led captive behind it. It was Dr. Langdale on his way from
Nareen. He had been caught in the storm, but was fortunately in the
stringy bark wood where the trees were covered with vigorous young
foliage. In the Wicked Wood the ground was simply littered with dead
wood, which the violence of the storm had strewn broadcast like chaff.
Half-way he saw Orlando, which he failed to recognise as one of the
Lullaboolagana horses, but he knew the side-saddle daintily embroidered
with scarlet. A horrible fear shot through his heart, but he strove to
believe that it was misplaced. He could never quite recall how he got
through the Wicked Wood. He kept glancing from side to side at the
great withered trunks and limbs that the storm had felled, his mind
filled with a sickening apprehension of what the next turning might have
in store.
He breathed more freely when the Wicked Wood was left behind. A few
minutes afterwards he recognised Dustiefoot's barking. Then, in one
awful moment, he saw his worst forebodings beggared by the ghastly
reality--Stella white and death-like, her face stained with blood. 'My
God! my God!' he cried, with the intolerable agony of a strong man
suddenly smitten beyond endurance. Stella heard the words distinctly,
and recognised the voice. She had a struggling consciousness that if
she willed it she could open her eyes and speak, but a kind of hunger
fastened on her to hear what further he would say on perceiving her thus
apparently insensible. She did not know how cruelly like death she
looked--her face ghastly white, stained with dust and blood. In a
moment he was by her side, kneeling by her, his breath coming in quick
gasps. 'Oh! my darling, my darling--my darling!' he cried, his voice
failing him with mortal fear. And then quick compunction seized on
Stella, and she sighed softly. So extreme was his agitation, that for a
moment he could hardly believe she was not mortally hurt. But he found
that her heart beat with energy, he saw her eyelids quivering, and a
faint tinge of colour stealing into her cheeks. She recovered
consciousness slowly, so that he might not know she had heard those
impassioned words which held the sweetest music that had ever fallen on
her ears, also that he might not know the perfidy of which she had been
guilty.
'You are badly hurt, I fear,' he said, as she at last looked up. His
voice still thrilled with the sharp emotions which had rent him, but he
had regained his self-possession.
'Dustiefoot is worse than I am,' she answered. She felt so absurdly
happy that it was a surprise to her to find her voice so thin and faint.
Langdale went to his trap and produced one of those cases which are
sometimes called the 'Bushman's Christian Companion.'
When it is remembered that such a case should contain a flask of the
best brandy, with a neat silver top that can be used as a cup, also a
flask of water and a pound or so of biscuits, the term will not seem out
of place, especially if it is further remembered that those who make
journeys in the Bush may often go scores of miles without seeing a human
habitation of any kind. But perhaps the term is never so beautifully
appropriate as when, as in the present instance, it is incumbent on the
possessor of such a case, in the interests alike of science and
humanity, to play the Good Samaritan.
'Now, one, two, three--and you are to drink this, every sup.'
'Do you really carry medicine about with you?' said Stella, with a
little pout, as she sniffed the mixture.
'No questions, if you please. Remember, people who are picked up
wounded and insensible are "cases."'
'Ah, that isn't so very inhuman!' she said, after gulping down the dose.
'It takes the breath away, but then it seems to bring back one's soul.'
'I am sorry to say that the noble art of healing does not invent such
remedies. We cannot say, like the Bishop of Noyou, that this recipe
came out of our own heads.'
'And who was the Bishop of Noyou?'
'A worthy ecclesiastic who used to say at the close of his sermons, "My
brethren, I took none of these truths which I have just uttered from the
Scriptures or from the Fathers--all came out of the head of your
bishop." That was not a pharmacop[oe]ian drug you swallowed; it was
brandy and water.'
'Dr. Johnson's beverage for heroes! Well, I felt heroic impulses the
moment I drank it--no less than a resolve to mount Orlando. 'Oh, you
unfaithful creature!' she said, looking reproachfully at the horse.
'Nonsense, you must submit to be driven home in my buggy, and I really
must wash that wound on your temple.'
'A wound!' cried Stella, with incredulous amazement.
'Yes; was it the blow of a stray branch that threw you off the horse, or
was it the fall that made you insensible?'
'Oh, I was not----' she stopped abruptly.
'Oh no, you were not insensible, I suppose, and you have not been hurt,
and Orlando did not run away. In the meantime, this looks very much
like blood.' He had wetted a handkerchief, and with the delicate touch
of a trained hand washed away the clotted blood. Then he perceived that
the wound was very slight, being, in fact, a mere scratch.
He assisted her to rise, and as she was determined to ride home, she
repressed all sighs of pain. But he noticed her sudden paleness and the
contraction of her lips.
'You _are_ hurt. Pray let me drive you home.'
'Oh no, please. Claude will never let me forget it if I am
ignominiously wheeled home.' And then it all came out--how she had
persisted in leaving the stock-paddock on a horse notoriously unsafe,
except, perhaps, for a buck-jumper.
'Well, do you know, Miss Stella Courtland, I begin to think you are
rather a handful.'
'Yes, and I begin to see that you are rather tyrannical. Will you send
Dr. Morrison to see how many of my bones are broken?'
'Yes, I shall send him; but I think it is a duty to warn him of the sort
of patient he is likely to have. Poor old boy! your paw is really
rather badly hurt. Would you like a biscuit, old fellow?'
Dustiefoot ate several. Then the 'Christian Companion' was put back in
the buggy, Orlando's reins were mended with a piece of twine, and Stella
rode him back, while Dustiefoot sat by Langdale's side in the buggy
looking quite like an invalid. How incredibly happy they were as they
went back through the woods, exchanging a few words now and then,
laughing at the veriest trifles, watching Orlando's ears to see if he
meant to shy once more, counting the notes of the birds that had found
their voices now that the storm was over!
They parted at the avenue gate of the Home Field. 'I shall send Dr.
Morrison at once. I know he is at home, because I took his distant
patients for him to-day. Tomorrow I shall probably call in to see how
Mrs. Parr and--Dustiefoot are going on.'
'Happy dog!' said Stella, with a mischievous laugh.
'Is it only a day since we sat by the hymenosperum tree?' she thought as
she rode up the avenue. All her incipient fears and forebodings had
vanished. The four months would speed away almost too swiftly--before
she could fully realize this vast happiness which had come to her.
There was some duty he had to fulfil before he asked her to be his wife.
She accepted the fact without even speculating over it, so complete and
whole-hearted was her confidence.
'I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honour more,'
were the words that rose to her lips as she thought of the firm
self-repression which had so speedily succeeded his agitation. Not for
worlds would she have missed hearing those passionate words of
endearment, and yet she resolved to be very guarded during the days that
lay between their separation--to help him in every way to keep to a
purpose which would not have been formed without good reason.
It was near sunset next day when he called. Mrs. Parr was making rapid
strides towards recovery. Dustiefoot was as well as could be expected.
Stella was with her sister-in-law, Louise, in the drawing-room, her
injured arm in a sling, the youngest Courtland on a big white bearskin
at her feet, the 'Arabian Nights' on a little table near her.
'Behold how tragedies are made when common chances happen to wilful
girls!' said Langdale, laughing, as he sat near her. 'What have you
been doing in Arabia?'
'Oh, I drank coffee with the three ladies of Bagdad, and then I met
Aladdin, the son of Shamseddin, on his way to that city. You know he
left Cairo with fifty mules laden with merchandise?'
'Was he overtaken with a storm, and----'
'"Did he have an experimental burster?" Pray do not spare me, or let me
for a moment forget that I was thrown in the dust like a foolish sack of
potatoes.'
'Indeed, Baby dear, it might have been very serious,' said Louise,
laughing.
'I assure you it looked serious enough when I saw her,' said Langdale
gravely. 'And as it is, your arm is a good deal hurt,' he added in a
lighter tone, turning to Stella.
'Yes; and I swallowed some dust.'
'And a tree hit you on the head and wounded your dog.'
'And before I entered the house yesterday the whole family met me in a
procession--like one of those sculptures they dig up in Nineveh, you
know--all asking what could possibly have induced me to ride Orlando.'
'Yes; and to-day I have come with my pockets full of mulberry-twigs to
whip you till you repent or die.'
*CHAPTER XXXV.*
It was easy to keep on neutral ground when someone else was by, but next
day, when Langdale called, all the rest of the family were at Broadmead,
and Stella was alone on the western veranda with a large basket of
flowers she was arranging in glasses and opal dishes containing clear
fresh water from the creek.
'Are you allowed to sit up in this defiant attitude and do things?'
Langdale asked, as he sat facing her.
'Oh yes. Dr. Morrison says I am going on famously; and that if no one
scolds me I may ride Norman--say next Monday.'
She held up a great cluster of half-opened white fairy-roses as she
spoke, looking at them sideways in the clear emerald light that came in
through the thick woof of greenery that enclosed the veranda.
'I wonder if anyone ever really scolded you?' he said, drawing nearer,
so as to hand her the flowers she was arranging in the glasses with such
cunning effect.
'Yes, everybody in turn--except Dustiefoot. Do you know, he runs about
as if nothing had happened to him, with merely the prettiest limp in the
world.'
'Are these white roses off the bush close to the myall acacia by the
Oolloolloo?' he asked, bending over to count the number clustered on one
slender spray.
'Yes; it is only rose-trees close to flowing water that bear such roses.
How I should like to paint them or embalm them in fitting verse!'
'But they come back again next spring in all their old witchery. It is
only human lives that can never be repeated--never be acted over but
once.'
'Unless they are like the tags of old rhymes and the rain-clouds that
fall and are evaporated and come back in a dragon-fly's wings, or a
plant struggling for life on the edge of a desert.'
'Wicked child! you are laughing at me to my face. But whether or not we
come back like the roses, or the creatures you so much object to that
have more legs than four, every day is as fresh and keenly interesting
now as if it were created for us individually.'
She felt that they were getting on dangerous ground, and sought safety
by retreating to a more impersonal region in the persiflage that came to
her so readily.
'And yet to superior beings on a better ordered planet, I suppose our
lives would seem little better than blobs in a world heaped up with
tumbled cobwebs.'
'What is a blob?'
'Do you go out into the woods in the early mornings?'
'Often, since I have learned from you what an exquisite hour the dawn is
in Australia.'
'Then, have you not noticed transparent little webs pearled with dew
hanging on bushes and tree-trunks?'
'I have occasionally. Why don't you look at me to-day, St. Charity,
when you speak to me?'
She attempted to do so in a laughing, careless way; but her glance fell
under his, and her fingers trembled as she wreathed a long spray of
native clematis with pale-green tendrils and delicate citron-coloured
blossoms round the slender stem of a cloisonne vase.
'Well, have you not noticed,' she went on, making her work an excuse for
not looking at him, 'how, when something has brushed against these webs,
the side touched has curled up in a little blister? That is a blob.'
'Thank you. And do you really feel like one when you are arranging
flowers like these?'
'Oh, let us speak in a broad general sense,' she said, laughing.
But, curious to say, he disregarded the suggestion.
'What do you call these white single roses?'
'They are the Macartney. Are they not lovely, with their golden centres
and wide cups with "leves well foure paire"?'
'I shall always think of it as the Stella rose. It is so starry, and
seems to look abroad with such fearless inquiry,' he said slowly.
At the words a deep damask flush mounted into her cheeks and remained
there. Her deep lustrous eyes were, in truth, shining like twin stars.
The pale-blue tea-gown she wore, with a cluster of white fairy-roses at
the throat, threw the pure tints of her face and the soft brilliancy of
her eyes into clear relief.
'You think they have an inquiring look? Yes, perhaps, something like
the wide-opened eyes of calves, or the beaks of hungry sparrows.'
How angry she was at herself to find her face flushing more hotly, her
fingers getting more tremulous, her heart beating more wildly!
'Give me one of them, Stella.'
She held out one to him, and their hands met. He took the rose, but did
not release her hand.
'Were you quite unconscious when I reached you yesterday?' he said in a
low voice.
But she could not speak; her reply was a long, shuddering sigh.
'You know my secret; and you are not angry, Stella?'
His voice was very agitated; and, as for her, she seemed to be enveloped
in a throbbing haze through which she could not clearly see nor hear.
'Tell me, my own, that you are not offended,' he said, drawing nearer to
her.
'No, I am not offended,' she said at last, her voice lower than a
whisper.
'And do you know--oh, you cannot know--how I love you, with my whole
heart and soul, as a man can love but once in his life!'
A fantail began suddenly to sing near them as if its heart would break
with joy--the selfsame bird that trilled its golden carol above the
vine-arcade when he came back in the _Paquerette_ four months later on!
What strange confusion of time!
'You must not say more till you return,' she said, looking up at him,
vainly trying to smile. The full knowledge that he loved her filled her
with joy so keen that it bordered on pain.
'But, Stella, I must say more. I must hear you tell me that you love me
just a little; say it, Stella--say "Anselm, I love you a little!"'
'But--Anselm--that would not be true.'
'Stella--my own sweet love--do not trifle with me.'
'Yes, it would be untrue, for I love you'--there was a pause in which he
could not breathe, till the words came with a great thrill of
gladness--'more than I can say.'
He knelt down by her side and folded her in his arms. Their lips met in
a long, long kiss.