where the Old Country licks us. This Colony can't come within a cooee of
you with the beer, and I'm the first to own it! We kep' nothing like
this at my place on the Murray, now did we?"
Dick was forced to shake his head, for, in fact, the Honourable Stephen
had formerly kept a flourishing "hotel" on the Murray, where the
Colonial beer had been no better than--other Colonial beer--a brew with
a bad name. Dick observed an odd habit Mr. Biggs had of referring to his
native heath as though he were still on it, speaking of his country as
he would have spoken of it out there--as "this Colony."
The Honourable Steve now insisted on tacking himself on to Dick, and
they roamed the Exhibition together. Biggs talked volubly of his
impressions of England and the English (he had crowded a great deal into
his first few days, and had already "done" half London), of the
Exhibition, of being feted by the flower of Britain and fed on the fat
of the land; and though his English was scarcely impeccable a vein of
shrewd common sense ran through his observations which was as admirable
in the man (he had risen very rapidly even for Australia) as it was
characteristic of his class.
"By-the-bye," said Mr. Biggs, after they had freely criticised the
romantic group of blacks and fauna in the South Australian Court, "have
you seen the Hut?"
"No," said Dick.
"Then come on; it's the best thing in the whole show; and," dropping
his voice mysteriously, "there's the rummest go there you ever saw in
your life."
Everybody remembers the Settler's Hut. It was a most realistic property,
with its strips of bark and its bench and wash-basin, though some
bushmen were heard to deny below their breath the existence of any hut
so spick and span "where they come from."
"Good!" said Dick, as soon as he saw the Hut. "That's the real thing, if
you like."
"Half a shake," said Mr. Biggs, "and I'll show you something realler."
He drew Dick to the window of the hut. "Look there!" he whispered,
pointing within.
Three or four persons were inspecting the interior, and debating aloud
as to how they personally should care to live in such a place; and each,
as he surveyed the rude walls, the huge fireplace, the primitive cooking
utensils, reserved his most inquisitive scrutiny for an oddly-dressed
man who sat motionless and silent on the low bank, as though the Hut
belonged to him. A more colourable inference would have been that the
man belonged to the Hut; and in that case he must have been admitted the
most picturesque exhibit in the Colonial Courts, as he looked the most
genuine; for the man was dressed in the simple mode of an Australian
stockman, and looked the part from the thin soles of his plain
side-spring boots to the crown of his cabbage-tree hat. From under the
broad brim of the latter a pair of quick, dark eyes played restlessly
among the people who passed in and out, or thronged the door of the hut.
His shoulders were bent, and his head habitually thrust forward, so that
it was impossible, in the half-light, to clearly make out the features;
but long, iron-gray locks fell over the collar of his coarse tweed coat,
and a bushy, pepper-and-salt beard hid the throat and the upper portion
of the chest. Old though the man undoubtedly was, his massive frame
suggested muscularity that must once have been enormous, and must still
be considerable.
"Now, what do you think of that cove?" inquired the Hon. Stephen Biggs
in a stage whisper.
"Why," said Dick, who was frowning in a puzzled manner, "he looks the
real thing too. I suppose that's what he's there for. Now, I wonder
where----"
"Ah, but it ain't that," broke in Biggs, "I've been here every day,
almost, and when I see him here every day, too, I soon found out he
don't belong to the place. No; he's an ordinary customer, who pays his
bob every morning when the show opens, and stays till closing-time. He's
to be seen all over the Exhibition, but generally at the Hut--most
always about the Hut."
"Well, if he isn't paid for it, what on earth is his object?" said Dick,
as they moved away.
"Ah," said Mr. Biggs darkly, "I have a notion of my own about that,
though some of the people that belong to this here place share it with
me."
"And?" said Dick.
"And," said Mr. Biggs with emphasis, "in my opinion the fellow's the
dead spit of a detective; what's more, you may take your Colonial oath
he is one!"
"Well," said Dick coolly, "I've seen him before, though I can't tell
where. I remember his bulk and shape better than his face."
"Yes? By Jove, my boy, you may be the very man he's after!"
Mr. Biggs burst into a loud guffaw; then turned grave in a moment, and
repeated impressively: "A detective--my oath!"
"But he looks a genuine Australian, if ever I saw one," objected Dick.
"Well, maybe he's what he looks."
"Then do you think he's come over on purpose? It must be a big job."
"I think he has. It must."
"Ah," said Dick, "then I have seen him out there somewhere; probably in
Melbourne."
"Quite likely," said Mr. Biggs. "There are plenty of his sort in this
Colony, and as sharp as you'll find anywhere else, my word!"
A little later they left the Exhibition, and spent the evening
together.
VIII
THE ADMIRABLE MILES
If Mr. Miles was systematically "spoilt" by the Bristos, he was more or
less entitled to the treatment, since it is not every guest who has had
the privilege of saving his host from drowning. But Mr. Miles was in
other ways an exceptional visitor. He contrived to create entertainment
instead of requiring it. He was no anxiety to anybody; he upset no
household routine; he might have remained for months, and not outstayed
his welcome; from the first he made himself at home in the most
agreeable fashion. In a word, he was a very charming man.
Moreover, he was unlike other men: he was far more independent, and far
less conventional. It was impossible to measure him by a commonplace
standard. He had little peculiarities which would not have recommended
other men, but which in his case were considered virtues: he was quite
artless in matters of etiquette. Indeed, he was a splendid specimen of
free, ingenuous manhood--an ideal Australian, according to the notions
of the old country.
The least breath against their guest on conventional grounds would have
been indignantly resented by the Graysbrooke people. They put upon his
peculiarities an interpretation which in Mrs. Parish's case resolved
itself into a formula:
"They are so free-and-easy out there; they despise conventionality; they
are natural. Oh that we were all Australians!" (Mr. Miles was the one
Australian of her acquaintance.)
Thus when he swore unmistakably at a clumsy oarsman while piloting the
ladies through a crowded lock, the offence was hushed up with a formula;
and so were other offences, since formulas will cover anything.
One day Mrs. Parish, going into the drawing-room, paused on the
threshold with an angry sniff.
"Smoke--in here! It is the very first time in all these years," severely
to Alice, "that I have ever known your papa--"
"It was not papa, it was Mr. Miles," said Alice quietly. "He walked in
with his pipe, and I really did not like to tell him. I believe he has
gone for more tobacco."
"Why, how stupid of me! Of course, with Mr. Miles it is quite
different." (Mrs. Parish assumed an indulgent tone.) "He is not used to
such restraints. You were quite right to say nothing about it. He shall
smoke where he likes."
Again the little old lady came to Alice, and said very gravely:
"My dear, did you notice the way our visitor refused the hock this
evening? Of course they do not drink such stuff in the bush, and he must
have what he is accustomed to. I will arrange with Tomlin to have the
whisky decanter placed quietly in front of him for the future."
Alice, for her part, not only permitted but abetted this system of
indulgence; for she agreed with Mrs. Parish that the guest was a noble
creature, for whose personal comfort it was impossible to show too much
solicitude--which, indeed, was the least they could do. He had saved her
father's life.
That incident--which she had related to Dick with a wonderful absence of
feminine exaggeration--had been in itself enough to plant in her heart a
very real regard for Mr. Miles. That was but natural; but one or two
other things which came to her knowledge furthered this regard.
One Saturday morning in Kingston market-place Alice met a bosom friend,
who informed her that she had seen the Graysbrooke pleasure-boat being
towed up-stream by a tall gentleman--("So handsome, my dear; who is
he?")--while a miserable, half-starved wretch sat luxuriously in the
stern-sheets. Rallied with this, the Australian's brick-dust complexion
became a shade deeper. Then he made a clean breast of the affair, in his
usual quiet tone, but with a nearer approach to diffidence than he had
yet shown them. He had gone out for a solitary pull, and had no sooner
started than a cadaverous creature with a tow-rope pestered him for a
job. Miles had refused the man; doubted his strength to tow a flea with
a silk thread; and observed that he, Miles, was more fit to tow the
other, if it came to that. At this, Miles, being sworn at for making
game of a starving man, had promptly landed, forced the man, speechless
with amazement, into the boat, towed him to Kingston, and left him to a
good dinner, with some wholesome advice touching immediate emigration.
A few days later, at dusk on a wet afternoon, Mrs. Parish, from her
bedroom window, saw Mr. Miles walk quickly up the drive in his
shirt-sleeves. It transpired that he had given his coat to a ragged,
shivering tramp on the London road--plus the address of the Emigration
Office.
"You see," he said, on both these occasions, "I never saw anything half
so bad in my own country. If you aren't used to it, it knocks a man's
heart to see a poor devil so far gone as all that."
In short, Mr. Miles exhibited to the Bristos, on several occasions, a
propensity to odd and impulsive generosity; and the point told
considerably in their general regard for the man, which day by day grew
more profound.
Among other peculiarities, so excellently appreciated, Mr. Miles had a
singular manner of speaking. It was an eminently calm manner; but for
the ring of quiet audacity in every tone, it might have been called a
subdued manner. He never raised his voice; he never spoke with heat.
When he said to Colonel Bristo, clinging to him in the sea, "If you hang
on like that I must fell you," his tone was as smooth as when he
afterwards apologised for the threat. When he paid Alice his first
compliment he did so without the smallest hesitation, and in his
ordinary tone; and his compliments were of the most direct order. They
once heard him threaten to thrash a bargee for ill-treating a horse, and
they were amazed when the man sulkily desisted; the threat was so gently
and dispassionately uttered. As for his adventures, they were told with
so much of detail and gravity that the manner carried conviction where
the matter was most fantastic. Miles was the best of "good company."
Apart from the supreme service rendered to him, Colonel Bristo was fully
persuaded that he was entertaining the best fellow in the world. Add to
this that Mrs. Parish adored the handsome Australian, while Alice meekly
revered him, and it will be easily seen that a hostile opinion of their
hero was well calculated to recoil on its advocate.
During the short period in which the hero was also the stranger, he
spent all his time in the Colonel's society. Apparently the two men
found many subjects of mutual interest. Once, when Alice interrupted
them in the study, Mr. Miles seemed to be eloquently enumerating the
resources and capabilities of some remote district of the Antipodes; for
though she spent some minutes getting a book, he took no notice of her
presence in the room. On another occasion Alice saw her father examining
a kind of map or plan, while Mr. Miles bent over him in explanation. She
afterwards learnt that this was a plan of the Queensland station of
which Mr. Miles was part owner.
After the first day or two it seemed evident that Mr. Miles disliked the
society of ladies.
On the third evening, however, the men patronised the drawing-room for
half-an-hour, and the Colonel asked Alice to sing something. She sang,
and Mr. Miles listened. When she had finished, Mr. Miles coolly asked
her to sing again. The following night he extracted three songs from
her. Then Mr. Miles began to spend less time in his host's sanctum. He
cultivated Alice; he interested himself in her amusements--photography
for one; he got her to sing to him in the daytime. He was civil to Mrs.
Parish.
When the young lady sat down to the piano, this sun-burned Apollo did
not hang over her, as other men did (when they got the chance); nor did
he turn over a bar too soon or too late--like the others. He made no
pretence of polite assistance, not he. But he flung himself in a chair,
threw back his head, and drank in every note. At first it was generally
with his back to the piano, and always with closed eyes. Then he found
another chair--one a little further away, but so placed that the girl's
profile was stamped like a silhouette on the sunlit window, directly in
his line of vision. And he no longer listened with closed eyelids.
Mrs. Parish, a keen observer, hovered about during these performances,
and noted these things. She had perceived at the time the impression
Alice's first song made upon Mr. Miles: she saw that he had regarded the
girl from that moment with a newly awakened interest. Thenceforth he had
made himself agreeable to both ladies, whereas before he had ignored
them both. Now, although she knew well enough that Miles's attentions,
so far as she was concerned, could be but politic, yet such was the
inveterate vanity of this elderly duenna that she derived therefrom no
small personal gratification. An impudent compliment thrilled her as it
might have thrilled a schoolgirl. But this did not prevent her seeing
what was really going on, nor secretly rejoicing at what she saw.
She watched the pair together from the first. She watched the girl
innocently betray her veneration for the man who had saved her father's
life. She knew that it is perilous for a man to see that a girl thinks
him a hero, and she awaited results. She soon fancied that she saw some.
She thought that Miles's habitual insouciance was a trifle less apparent
when he conversed with Alice; certainly his eyes began to follow her and
rest upon her; for Mr. Miles did such things openly. But she detected no
corresponding symptoms in Alice; so one day she told her bluntly: "Mr.
Miles is falling in love with you, child."
Alice was startled, and coloured with simple annoyance.
"What nonsense!" she said indignantly.
Immediately she thought of the absent Dick, and her blush
deepened--because she thought of him so seldom. Mrs. Parish replied that
it was not nonsense, but, instead of urging proofs in support of her
statement, contented herself with cataloguing Mr. Miles's kingly
attributes. Here Alice could not contradict her. The old lady even spoke
of the station in Queensland and the house at Sydney. Encouraged by the
girl's silence, however, she overshot the mark with a parallel
reference--and not a kind one--to Dick Edmonstone. She saw her mistake
at once, but too late; without a word Alice turned coldly from her, and
they barely exchanged civilities during the rest of that day.
From that moment Miss Bristo's manner towards Mr. Miles was changed.
Mrs. Parish had put into her head a thought that had never once occurred
to her. An innocent pleasure was poisoned for her. She did not quite
give up the songs, and the rest, but she became self-conscious, and
developed a sudden preference for that society which is said to be no
company at all.
At this juncture the ship _Hesper_ entered the Channel, and was duly
reported in the newspapers. Alice saw the announcement, and knew that in
two or three days she should see her lover. These days she spent in
thought.
At seventeen she had been madly in love with young Edmonstone--what is
called a "romantic" or "school-girl" affair--chiefly sentimental on her
side, terribly earnest on his. At eighteen--parted many months from a
sweetheart from whom she never heard, and beginning to think of him
daily instead of hourly--she asked herself whether this was really love.
At nineteen, it was possible to get through a day--days, even--without
devoting sentimental minutes to the absent one. Alice was at least madly
in love no longer. There remained a very real regard for Dick, a
constant prayer for his welfare, a doubt as to whether he would ever
come home again, a wondering (if he did) whether she could ever be the
same to him again, or he to her; nothing more.
Mrs. Parish was in a great measure responsible for all this. That
excellent woman had predicted from the first that Dick would never make
his fortune (it was not done nowadays), and that he would never come
back. Another factor was the ripening of her understanding, aided by a
modicum of worldly experience which came to her at first-hand. Alice was
honoured with two proposals of marriage, and in each case the rejected
(both were wife-hunting) consoled himself elsewhere within three
months. To this groundwork Mrs. Parish added some judicious facts from
her own experience; and this old lady happened to be the girl's only
confidante and adviser. Alice gathered that, though man's honour might
be a steadfast rock, his love was but a shifting sand. Thus there were
such things as men marrying where they had ceased to love; thus Dick
might return and profess love for her which was no longer sincere.
In the end Miss Bristo was left, like many other young ladies, with an
imperfect knowledge of her own mind, and attempted, unlike most young
ladies, to mould her doubts into a definite and logical form. She did
arrive at a conclusion--when she learned that Dick was nearly home. This
conclusion was, that, whatever happened, there must be no immediate
engagement: she did not know whether Dick loved her still--she was not
absolutely sure that she still loved him.
We have seen how she communicated her decision to Dick. His manifest
agony when he heard it sent a thrill through her heart--a thrill that
recalled the old romance. The manly way in which he afterwards accepted
his fate touched her still more. She began to think that she might after
all have mistaken herself of late; and this notion would probably have
become a conviction but for one circumstance--the presence of Mr. Miles.
Dick was jealous: she saw it, or thought she saw it, from the first.
This vexed her, and she had not bargained to be vexed by Dick. It made
her more than half-inclined to give him something to be jealous of.
Accordingly she was once or twice so malicious as to throw Mr. Miles in
his teeth in their conversations, and watch the effect. And the effect
did not please her.
On the other hand, about Mr. Miles there was no particle of jealousy
(one thing more to his credit). Why, he had asked with the greatest
interest all about Dick, after he had gone that first evening; and her
answers had been most circumspect: she had let him suppose that Dick was
a squatter during his whole term in Australia. After that Mr. Miles had
asked no more. But Dick had never asked one word about Mr. Miles until
he had been in England a fortnight, and then he offended her deeply. Up
to that point her interest in Dick had been gradually growing more
tender; she felt him to be true and brave, and honoured him; and
contrasted her own fickleness with his honest worth. Once or twice she
felt a longing to make him happy. Even as she felt herself irresistibly
bowed down before him her idol fell. From this man, whom she was
learning to truly love, came a mean, unmanly suggestion. To further his
progress with her he stooped to slander the man whom he was pleased to
consider his rival, and that rival the noblest, the most generous of
men.
She could not easily forgive this; she could never forget it, and never
think quite the same of Dick afterwards. And then the conduct of the
other one was so different! Her manner instinctively warmed towards Mr.
Miles: she should be his champion through thick and thin. As for Dick,
after that little scene, he did not come near Graysbrooke for a week.
Now, during that week, the words that had offended her recurred many
times to Alice. The pale, earnest, honest face with which Dick had
uttered them also rose in her mind. Was it possible that his suspicion
could be absolutely groundless? Was it not credible that he might have
reasons for speaking--mistaken ones, of course--which he could not
reveal to her? In any case, his words rankled; and so much sting is
seldom left by words which we have already dismissed, once and for all,
as utterly and entirely false.
During that week, moreover, there occurred a frivolous incident, of
which Alice would have thought nothing before the expression of Dick's
suspicions but which now puzzled her sorely. One brilliant afternoon she
found herself completely indolent. She wandered idly into the garden,
and presently came upon a rather droll sight: her father and Mr. Miles,
sound asleep, side by side, in a couple of basket-chairs under the shade
of a weeping willow. The girl conceived a happy roguery: what a subject
for a photograph! She stole into the house for her camera. When she
returned, her father was gone. She was disappointed, hesitated a few
moments, and then coolly photographed the still unconscious Mr. Miles.
An hour later she greeted him with the negative--an excellent one.
"You said you had never been taken," said she mischievously. "Well, here
is your first portrait. It will be capital."
He asked to look at it, in his quiet way. Alice handed him the dripping
glass. He had no sooner held it up to the light than it slipped through
his fingers, and broke into a dozen fragments upon the gravel path.
Mr. Miles apologised coldly, and proceeded to pick up the pieces with a
provoking smile. Alice was irate, and accused him of breaking her
negative purposely. Mr. Miles replied with charming candour that he had
never been photographed in his life, and never meant to be. Already
blaming herself for having yielded to a silly impulse, and one which was
even open to wrong construction, Alice said no more; and presently, when
the Australian gravely begged her forgiveness, it was granted with equal
gravity. Nevertheless she was puzzled. Why should Mr. Miles so dread a
photograph of himself? What had he to fear? Would Dick add this to his
little list of suspicious circumstances? If he did, it would be the
first item not utterly absurd. What if she were to tell him, and see!
As it happened, Dick called the very next day, a Wednesday, and the last
day in June. Alice received him coldly. There was a natural restraint on
both sides, but she thawed before he went. As he was saying good-bye,
she asked him (casually) if he would come on Friday afternoon--the day
of her dance--and help with the floor and things. She really wished him
to come very much, for she foresaw an opportunity for explanation,
without which the evening would be a misery to her; besides, they could
talk over Mr. Miles fairly and confidentially. Dick jumped at it, poor
fellow, brightened up at once, and walked home a happier man.
The following day Alice accompanied her father to town, on pleasure
bent. The little jaunt had been long arranged, and Mr. Miles was their
efficient escort.
That was on Thursday, July 1st.
Unfortunately for Mr. Biggs, M.L.C., he could not spend all his days at
the Exhibition, so that a certain little drama, not widely differing
from that astute legislator's preconception, was at last played to an
altogether unappreciative house. The facts are these: