THE OLD ADAM
Olivia said least. Her mother took Claude by the hand, and thanked him
with real tears in her eyes, for after all she was an Irishwoman, who
could be as emotional as possible when she chose. As for Mr. Sellwood,
he expressed himself as delightfully disappointed in the peer of whom he
had heard so much. Jack struck him as being an excellent fellow,
although not a golfer, which was a pity, and even apparently disinclined
to take up the game--which might signify some recondite flaw in his
character. So said the Home Secretary. But Olivia merely asked who had
put all those roses in her room; and when Claude told her, she simply
nodded and took hardly any notice of the Duke that night. Yet she wore a
handful of his flowers at her shapely waist. And she did thank him, in a
way.
It was not the sweetest way in the world, as all her ways had been,
these many weeks, in Jack's imagination. He was grieved and
disappointed, but still more was he ashamed. He had taken a liberty. He
had alienated his friend. Thus he blamed himself, with bitter, wordless
thoughts, and would then fall back upon his disappointment. His feelings
were a little mixed. One moment she was not all that he had thought her;
the next, she was more than all. She was more beautiful. Often he had
tried to recall her face, and tried in vain, having seen her but once
before, and then only for a few minutes. Now he perceived that his first
impression, blurred and yet dear to him as it had been, had done but
meagre justice to Olivia. He had forgotten the delicate dark eyebrows,
so much darker than the hair. The girl's radiant colouring had also
escaped him. It was like the first faint flush of an Australian dawn.
Yet he had missed it in June, just as he had missed the liquid hazel of
her eyes; their absolute honesty was what he remembered best; and, by a
curious irony, that frank, fine look was the very one which she denied
him now.
And so it was from the Friday evening, when the Sellwoods arrived, to
the Monday morning when duty recalled the Home Secretary to St.
Stephen's. He obeyed the call in no statesman-like frame of mind. He
had spent the Sabbath in open sin upon the new-made links, and had been
fitly punished by his own execrable play. The athletic agent had made an
example of him; he felt that he might just as well have been in church
(or rather in the private chapel attached to the Towers), reading the
lessons for his son-in-law, Francis Freke; and in the Saturday's
"foursome," with the reverend gentleman on his side, the Cabinet
Minister had done little better. So he had departed very sorely against
the grain, his white hairs bristling with discontent, a broken "driver"
hidden away in the depths of his portmanteau. And Olivia, seeing the
last of him from amid the tall columns of the portico, felt
heavy-hearted, because her father was also her friend.
Jack watched her at a distance. It did not occur to him that the girl's
mother was already pitching him at the girl's head, daily and almost
hourly, until she was weary of the very sound of his name. And though he
felt he must have overstepped some mark in the matter of the flowers, he
little dreamt how Miss Sellwood's maid had looked when she saw them, or
what disgraceful satisfaction Lady Caroline had exhibited before her
daughter on that occasion. He only knew that her Ladyship was treating
him with a rather oppressive kindness, and that he would much sooner
have had half-a-dozen words from Olivia, such as the first she had ever
spoken to him.
And now the girl was unhappy; it was plain enough, even to his untutored
eye; and he stepped forward with the determination of improving her
spirits, without thinking of his own, which were not a little flat.
"You must find it dull up the country, Miss Sellwood, after London,"
began Jack, not perhaps in his most natural manner. "I--I wish to
goodness you'd tell us of anything we could do to amuse you!"
"You are very good," replied Olivia, "but I don't require to be amused
like a child. Thanks all the same. As to finding the country dull, I
never appreciate it so much as after a season in town."
She was not looking at the Duke, but beyond him into the hall. And
encountering no other eyes there, her own grew softer, as did her tone,
even as she spoke.
"You know this old place off by heart, Miss Sellwood, I expect?" pursued
Jack, who had taken off his straw hat in her presence, being in doubt as
to whether the portico ranked indoors or out.
"Oh, well, I have stayed here pretty often, you know," said Olivia.
"What do you think of the place?"
"I can't hardly say. I've never seen anything else like it. It's far too
good, though, for a chap like me; it's all so grand."
"I have _sometimes_ felt it a little too grand," the girl ventured to
observe.
"So have I!" cried Jack. "You can't think how glad I am to hear you say
that. It's my own feeling right down to the ground!"
"I don't mean to be rude," continued Olivia confidentially, seeing that
they were still unobserved, "but I have often felt that I wouldn't care
to live here altogether."
"No?" said the Duke, in a new tone; he felt vaguely dashed, but his
manner was rather one of apologetic sympathy.
"No," she repeated; "shall you like it?"
"Can't say. I haven't weakened on it yet, though it _is_ too fine and
large for a fellow. Shall I tell you what I've done? I've fixed up a
little place for myself outside, where I can go whenever I get full up
of the homestead here. I wonder--if it isn't too much to ask--whether
you would let me show you the little spot I mean?"
"Where is it?"
"In the pines yonder, on the far side o' the tank."
"The tank!"
"We call 'em tanks in Australia. I meant the lake. I could row you
across, Miss Sellwood, in a minute, if only you'd let me!" And he met
her doubtful look with one of frank, simple-hearted, irresistible
entreaty.
"Come on!" said Olivia suddenly; and as she went, she never looked
behind; for she seemed to feel her mother's eyes upon her from an upper
window, and the hot shame of their certain approval made her tingle from
head to foot. So she trod the close, fine, sunlit grass as far as
possible from her companion's side. And he, falling back a little, was
enabled to watch her all the way.
Olivia was very ordinarily attired. She wore a crisp white blouse,
speckled with tiny scarlet spots, and a plain skirt of navy blue, just
short enough to give free play to the small brown shoes whose high heels
the Duke had admired in the portico. Two scarlet bands, a narrow and a
broad, encircled her straw hat and her waist, with much the same
circumference: and yet this exceedingly average costume struck Jack as
the most delicious thing imaginable of its kind. He corrected another
impression before they reached the lake. Olivia was taller than he had
thought; she was at least five-feet-six; and she carried her slim, trim
figure in a fine upstanding fashion that took some of the roundness out
of his own shoulders as he noted it this August morning.
"It's the back-block bend," he remarked elliptically, in the boat.
His way with the oars was inelegant enough, without a pretence at
feathering; but it was quite effectual; and Olivia, in the stern-sheets,
had her back still presented to the Argus-eyes of the Towers. She
answered him with a puzzled look, as well she might, for he had done no
more than think aloud.
"What is that?" she said. "And what are the back-blocks; and what _do_
you mean?" for her puzzled look had lifted on a smile.
"I was thinking of my round shoulders. You get them through being all
your time in the saddle, up in the back-blocks. All the country in
Riverina--that is, all the fenced country--is split up into ten-mile
blocks. And the back-blocks are the farthest from the rivers and from
civilisation. So that's why they call it the back-block bend; it came
into my head through seeing you. I never saw anybody hold themselves so
well, Miss Sellwood--if it isn't too like my cheek to say so!"
The keel grounded as he spoke, and Olivia, as he handed her out, saw the
undulating battlements and toppling turrets of the olden pile
upside-down in the tremulous mirror of the lake. A moment later the
pine-trees had closed around her; and, sure enough, in a distant window,
Lady Caroline Sellwood lowered her opera-glasses with a sigh of
exceeding great contentment.
"So you haven't forgotten your old life yet," said the girl, as they
stepped out briskly across the shortening shadows of the pines. "I wish
you would tell me something about it! I have heard it said that you
lived in ever such a little hut, away by yourself in the wilderness."
"I did so; and in a clump of pines the dead spit of these here," said
Jack, with a relish. "When I saw these pines you can't think how glad I
was! They were like old friends to me; they made me feel at home. You
see, Miss Sellwood, that old life is the only one I ever knew, bar this;
often enough it seems the reallest of the two. Most nights I dream I'm
out there again; last night, for instance, we were lamb-marking. A nasty
job, that; I was covered with blood from head to heels, and I was just
counting the poor little beggars' tails, when one of the dead tails
wriggled in my hand, and blowed if it wasn't Livingstone's! No, there's
no forgetting the old life; I was at it too long; it's this one that's
most like a dream."
"And the hut," said Olivia, with a rather wry face; "what sort of a
place was that?"
"I'll show you," replied the Duke, in what struck the other as a
superfluously confidential tone. "It was a little bit of a place, all
one room, with a galvanised iron roof and mother-earth for floor. It was
built with the very pines that had been felled to make a clearing for
the hut: so many uprights, and horizontal slabs in between. A great
square hearth and chimney were built out at one end, like the far end of
a church; and over my bunk I'd got a lot of pictures from the
_Australasian Sketcher_ just stuck up anyhow; and if you weren't
looking, you knocked your head against the ration-bags that hung from
the cross-beams. You slept inside, but you kept your bucket and basin on
a bench----"
"Good heavens!" cried Olivia. And she stood rooted to the ground before
a clearing and a hut which exactly tallied with the Duke's description.
The hut was indeed too new, the maker's stamp catching the eye on the
galvanised roofing; and, in the clearing, the pine-stumps were still
white from the axe; but the essentials were the same, even to the tin
basin on the bench outside the door, with a bucket of water underneath.
As for the wooden chimney, Olivia had never seen such a thing in her
life; yet real smoke was leaking out of it into the pale blue sky.
"Is this a joke or a trick?" asked the girl, looking suspiciously on
Jack.
"Neither; it's meant for the dead image of my old hut up the bush; and
it's the little place I've fixed up for myself, here on the run, that I
wanted to show you."
"You've had it built during these last few weeks?"
"Under my own eye; and bits of it with my own hand. Old Claude thought
it sheer cussedness, I know; perhaps you will, too; but come in, and
have a look for yourself."
And unlocking the padlock that secured it, he opened the door and stood
aside for the young girl to enter. Olivia did so with alacrity; her
first amazement had given way to undiluted interest; and the Duke
followed her, straw hat in hand. There was a tantalising insufficiency
of light within. Two small windows there were, but both had been filled
with opaque folds of sackcloth in lieu of glass; yet the Duke pointed to
them, as might his ancestors to the stained-glass lights in chapel and
library, with peculiar pride; and, indeed, his strange delight in the
hut, who cared so little for the Towers close at hand, made Olivia
marvel when she came to think about it. Meanwhile she found everything
as she had heard it described in the Australian hut, with one exception:
there were no ration-bags to knock one's head against, because nobody
made meals here. Also the pictures over the bunk were from the
_Illustrated London News_, not from the _Sketcher_, which Jack had been
unable to obtain in England; and they were somewhat unconvincingly clean
and well-arranged. But the bunk itself was all that it might have been
in the real bush; for it was covered over with Jack's own old blanket;
whereon lay a purring, yellow ball, like a shabby sand-bank in a sea of
faded blue.
"So this is Livingstone!" exclaimed the girl, stooping to scratch that
celebrity's head.
"Yes; and there's old Tom and Black Maria in front of the fire. I lock
them all three up during the day, for it isn't so like the bush in some
ways as it is in others. They might get stolen any day, with so many
people about; that's the worst of the old country; there was no other
camp within five miles of me, on Carara."
"It must have been dreadfully lonely!"
"You get used to it. And then every few months you would tramp into the
homestead and--and speak to the boss," said Jack, changing his mind and
his sentence as he remembered how he had once shocked Claude Lafont.
Olivia took notice of the cats, at which Jack stood by beaming. The
kitten she had brought down from town in a basket. It lived in Olivia's
room, but she now suggested restoring it to its own people. Jack,
however, reminded her that it was hers, in such a tender voice; and
proceeded to refer to her kindness at their first meeting, in so
embarrassing a fashion; that the girl, seeking a change of subject,
found one in the long, low bunk.
"I see," said she, "that you come here for your afternoon siesta."
"I come here for my night's sleep," he replied.
"Never!"
"Every night in life. You seem surprised. I did ask old Claude not to
mention it--and--oh, well, it's no use keeping the thing a secret, after
all. It suits me best--the open country and the solitude. It's what I'm
accustomed to. The wind in the pines all around, I wake up and hear it
every night, just like I did in the old hut. It's almost the same thing
as going back to the bush to sleep; there's not two penn'orth of
difference."
"You'd like to go back altogether," said the girl, affirming it as a
fact; and yet her sweet eyes, gravely unsatisfied, seemed to peer
through his into his soul.
"I don't say that, Miss Sellwood," he protested. "Of course it's a great
thing for me to have come in for all this fortune and power--and it'll
be a greater thing still once I can believe it's true! That's the
trouble. The whole show's so like a dream. And that's where this little
hut helps me; _it's_ real, anyway; I can sight _it_. As for all the
rest, it's too many measles for me--as yet; what's more, if I was to
wake up this minute on Carara I shouldn't so very much mind."
"I wonder," said Olivia, with her fine eyes looking through him still.
"I just wonder!" And her tone set him wondering too.
"Of course," he faltered, "I should be mighty sorry to wake up and find
I'd only dreamt _you_!"
"Of course," she returned, with a laughing bow; but there had been an
instant's pause; and she was studying the picture-gallery over the bunk
when she continued, "I see you've been long enough in England to acquire
the art of making pretty speeches. And I must tell you at once that
they never amuse me. At least," she added more kindly, again facing him,
"not when they come from a person as a rule so candid as yourself."
"But you mistake me; I was perfectly candid," protested poor Jack.
"It won't do," said the girl. "And it's time we went."
Olivia felt that she had made excellent friends with the Duke; that the
more she saw of him, the better she would probably like him; and that
she could possibly be of use to him, in little ways, if he would be
sensible, and make no more than a friend of her. She was not so sure of
him, however, as she could have wished; and she was anxious to leave
well alone. It was thus the worst of luck that at this last moment she
should perceive the suggestively white bouquet upon the high deal
chimney-piece.
"You've been to a wedding," she cried, "and I've never heard a word
about it! Whose was the wedding? Some of the tenantry, of course, or the
bride would hardly have presented you with her bouquet!"
And she reached it down, and widened her pretty nostrils over the fading
flowers; but they smelt of death; and their waxen whiteness had here
and there the tarnish of a half-eaten apple.
"There was no bride," said Jack, "and no wedding."
"Then why this bride's bouquet? No! I beg your pardon; it isn't a fair
question."
"It is--perfectly. I had it made for a young lady. The head-gardener
made it, but I told him first what I wanted. There was no word of a
wedding; I only thought a nosegay would be the right sort of thing to
give a young lady, to show her she was mighty welcome; and I thought
white was a nice clean sort of colour. But it turned out I was wrong;
she wouldn't have liked it; it would only have made her uncomfortable;
so, when I found out that, I just let it rest."
"I see," said Olivia, seeing only too clearly. "Still, I'm not sure you
were right: if I had been the girl----"
"Yes?"
The quick word altered the speech it had also interrupted.
"I should have thought it exceedingly kind of you," said Olivia, after a
moment's reflection.
She replaced the flowers on the chimney-board, and then led the way out
among the pines.
"I'm sorry you were in such a hurry," he said, overtaking her when he
had locked up the hut. "I might have made you some billy-tea. The
billy's the can you make it in up the bush. I had such a work to get one
over here! I keep some tea in the hut, and billy-tea's not like any
other kind; I call it better; but you must come again and sample it for
yourself."
"We'll see," said Olivia smilingly; but with that she lost her tongue;
and together they crossed the lake in mutually low spirits. It was as
though the delicate spell of simple friendship had been snapped as soon
as spun between them, and the friends were friends no more.
On the lawn, however, in a hammock under an elm, they found a young man
smoking. It was Mr. Edmund Stubbs, who had arrived, with his friend the
Impressionist, on the Saturday afternoon. He was smoking a pipe; but the
ground beneath him was defiled with the ends of many cigarettes; and
close at hand a deck-chair stood empty.
"I smell the blood of Mr. Llewellyn," said Olivia, coming up with the
glooming Duke. "He smokes far too many cigarettes!"
"He has gone for more," said the man in the hammock.
"I wonder you don't interfere, Mr. Stubbs; it must be so bad for him."
"On the contrary, Miss Sellwood, it is the best thing in the world for
him. A man must smoke something. And an artist must smoke cigarettes.
You can tell what he does smoke, however, from his work. Pipe-work is
inevitably coarse, banal, obvious, and only fit to hang in the front
parlours of Brixton and Upper Tooting. Cigar-work is little better; but
that of the cigarette is delicate, suggestive, fantastic if you will,
but always artistic. Ivor Llewellyn's is typical cigarette-work."
"How very interesting," said Olivia.
"My colonial!" muttered the Duke.
At the same time they caught each other's eyes, turned away with one
consent, nor made a sound between them until they were out of earshot of
the hammock. And then they only laughed; yet the spell that had been
broken was even thus made whole.