hair, and with a very charming girl upon his arm, looked into the
Settler's Hut. They did not remain within above ten seconds; but during
those ten seconds the genus loci--who was in his customary place on the
bunk--heard a voice without which caused him to start, pull the brim of
his cabbage-tree hat further over his eyes, and draw a long breath
through his teeth.
"I won't come in," said this voice, which was low and unconcerned; "I've
seen it before; besides, I know the kind of thing rather too well."
The shadows of the old gentleman and the girl had hardly disappeared
from the threshold when the man in the cabbage-tree hat and side-spring
boots rose swiftly, and peered stealthily after them. What he saw caused
him to smile with malignant triumph. A tall, well-dressed man walked
beside the old gentleman and his daughter.
The watcher allowed them to pass almost out of sight, then followed
warily. He followed them all the afternoon, keeping so far behind, and
dodging so cleverly, that they never saw him. When the trio at length
quitted the building and took a cab, this man followed through the
streets at a double. He followed them to Waterloo. He got into the same
train with them. They got out at a station on the loop line; he got out
also, paid his fare to the ticket collector, and once more dogged his
quarry. An hour later the cabbage-tree hat was attracting attention on
that same suburban platform; later still the occupants of a third-class
smoking carriage in an up train thought that they had never before seen
such an evil expression as that which the broad brim of the cabbage-tree
hat only partially concealed.
This also was on the 1st of July.
IX
A DANCING LESSON AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
To enter a cricket-field in mid-winter and a ballroom at midday are
analogous trials, and serious ones to enthusiasts in either arena; but
the former is a less depressing sight in January than in December, while
there is something even inspiriting about a ballroom the day before the
dance.
When, quite early in the afternoon, Alice slipped unobserved into the
cool and empty dining-room, her cheeks glowed, her eyes sparkled, and
the hard boards yielded like air beneath her airy feet. She shut the
door quietly, though with an elbow; her hands were full. She carried two
long wax candles that knew no flame, two gleaming dinner-knives, and a
pair of scissors. These were deposited on a chair--provisionally--while
the young lady inspected the floor with critical gaze.
She frowned--the floor was far from perfect. She slid out one small
foot, as if trying dubious ice--yes, most imperfect. The other foot
followed; it would be impossible to dance on a floor like this. Next
instant the lie was given to this verdict by the judge herself, for Miss
Bristo was skimming like a swallow round the room.
Would you see a graceful maiden at her best? Then watch her dancing.
Would you behold her most sweet? Then catch her unawares--if you can.
Most graceful and most sweet, then--I admit that the combination is a
rare one, but she should be dancing all alone; for, alas! the ballroom
has its mask, and the dual dance its trammels.
In this instance it was only that Alice desired to try the floor, and to
assure herself that her feet had lost none of their cunning; and only
once round. No, twice; for, after all, the floor was not so very bad,
while the practice was very good, and--the sensation was delicious. Yet
a third round--a last one--with quickened breath and heightened colour,
and supple curves and feet more nimble, and a summer gown like a silver
cloud, now floating in the wake of the pliant form, now clinging
tenderly as she swiftly turned. And none to see her!
What, none?
As Alice came to an abrupt pause in front of her cutlery and candles, a
deep soft voice said, "Bravo!"
She looked quickly up, and the base of a narrow open window at the end
of the room was filled by a pair of broad shoulders; and well set up on
the shoulders was a handsome, leonine face, with a blond beard and a
pair of bold, smiling eyes.
"Bravo, Miss Bristo!"
"Well, really, Mr. Miles--"
"Now don't be angry--you can't be so unreasonable. I was out here; I saw
something white and dazzling pass the window twice; and the third time I
thought I'd see what it was. I came and looked, and thought it was an
angel turned deserter, and dancing for joy to be on earth again! There
was no harm in that, was there?"
"There is a great deal of harm in compliments," said Alice severely;
"especially when they are wicked as well as rude."
Mr. Miles smiled up at her through the window, completely unabashed.
"I forgot. Of course it was rude to liken you to gods I never saw, and
never hope to see. Forgive me!"
But Alice was thinking that her freak required a word of explanation.
"I was only just trying the floor," she said. "I never dreamt that
anyone would be so mean as to watch me."
"Unfortunately one can't learn from merely watching," Mr. Miles replied,
quietly raising himself upon the sill. "You surely haven't forgotten the
lesson you promised to give me?"--swinging his legs into the room--"I
claim that lesson now." He towered above her, a column of gray tweed,
his arms folded lightly across his massive chest.
The window by which Miles entered was five feet above the river lawn,
and one of three at that end of the room--the other walls had none.
Standing with one's back to these windows, the door was on the right
hand side, and, facing it, a double door communicating with the
conservatory. Before this double door, which was ajar, hung a heavy
curtain, awaiting adjustment for the evening.
"I did not ask you in," remarked Alice with some indignation. It was
just like Mr. Miles, this; and for once he really was not wanted.
"Unfortunately, no; you forced me to ask myself. But about the lesson?
You know I never danced in my life; am I to disgrace my country
to-night?"
"You should have come to me this morning."
"You were--cooking, I believe."
"Thank you, Mr. Miles! Then yesterday."
"We were all in town. Now do be the angel you looked a minute since,
Miss Bristo, and show me the ropes. It won't take you ten minutes; I
assure you I'm a quick learner. Why, if it's time you grudge, we have
wasted ten minutes already, talking about it."
Impudence could no higher climb; but Mr. Miles was not as other men
are--at least, not in this house. There was nothing for it but to give
in, show him the rudiments, and get rid of them as quickly as possible;
for Dick might arrive at any moment.
"Ten minutes is all I shall give you, then. Attention! One, two, three;
one, two, three; so! Can you do it?"
Of course he could not, after a niggardly example of half-a-dozen steps:
he did not try; he insisted on her waltzing once right round the room
very slowly.
"Then it is your last chance," exclaimed Alice. "Now watch: you begin
so: one--a long one, remember--then two, three--little quick ones. Now
try. No, you needn't lift your feet; you are not stamping for an encore,
Mr. Miles. It is all done by sliding, like this. Now, try again."
Miles bent his six feet three into five feet nothing, and slid gravely
round with an anxious watch upon his feet.
"Why, you are bent double," cried Miss Bristo, sharply; "and, let me
tell you, you will never learn while you look at your feet."
Miles stopped short.
"Then how am I to learn?" he asked, gazing helplessly at his
instructress.
Alice burst out laughing.
"You had better lock yourself in your room and practise hard until
evening. The ten minutes are up; but you have exactly six hours and
twenty-nine minutes before you, if you make haste."
"Well, you shall suffer if I cut a poor figure to-night, Miss Bristo,
and it will serve you right, for I intend to have my share of your
dances."
"That remains to be seen," said Alice tritely.
"Stay, though," said Miles, drawing himself up to the last of his
seventy-five inches, and speaking in that smooth, matter-of-fact tone
that ushered in his most astounding audacities, "suppose we two try--in
double harness--now?"
"Mr. Miles!"
"Miss Bristo, I am sure I should get on a thousand times better. Is it
so very much to ask?" he added humbly--for him.
The inner Alice echoed the question: Was it so very much to ask--or to
grant? The answer came at once: To anyone else, yes; to Mr. Miles, no;
grave, heroic, middle-aged Mr. Miles! With a mighty show of
condescension, Miss Bristo agreed to one round, and not a step more. She
would not have been called prude for the world; but unluckily, prudery
and prudence so often go hand in hand.
The two went whirling round the empty room. Before they were half-way
round, Alice exclaimed:
"You have cheated; never danced, indeed!"
He murmured that it was so many years ago, he thought he had forgotten.
Having thus discovered that she could teach her pupil nothing, it was
Alice's plain duty to stop; but this she forgot to do. Mr. Miles, for
his part, said not a word, but held her firmly. He, in fact, waltzed
better than any man she had ever danced with. Two
rounds--three--six--without a word.
Even if they had not been dancing they might have failed to hear a
buoyant footstep that entered the conservatory at this time; for the
worst of an india-rubber sole is the catlike tread that it gives the
most artless wearer. But it was an unfortunate circumstance that they
did just then happen to be dancing.
There is no excuse for Miss Bristo, that I know of. Pleas of faulty
training or simplicity within her years would, one feels, be futile.
Without doubt she behaved as the girl of this period is not intended to
behave; let her be blamed accordingly. She did not go unpunished.
After waltzing for no less a space than five minutes--in a ballroom bare
as a crypt, in broad daylight, and in silence--Alice, happening to look
up, saw a look on her partner's face which made her tremble. She had
never seen a similar expression.
It was pale and resolute--stern, terrible. She disengaged herself with
little ado, and sank quietly into a chair by the window.
"A fine 'one round'!" she said demurely; "but it shall be deducted from
your allowance this evening."
She could not see him; he was behind her. His eyes were devouring the
shapely little head dipped in the gold of the afternoon sun. Her face he
could not see--only the tips of two dainty ears and they were pink. But
a single lock of hair--a wilful lock that had got astray in the dance,
and lay on her shoulder like a wisp of sunlit hay--attracted his
attention, and held it. When he managed to release his eyes, they roved
swiftly round the room, and finally rested upon another chair within his
reach, on which lay two wax-candles, two dinner-knives, and a pair of
scissors.
A click of steel an inch from her ear caused Alice to start from her
chair and turn round. Mr. Miles--pale, but otherwise undisturbed--stood
holding the scissors in his right hand, and in his left was a lock of
her hair. For one moment Miss Bristo was dumb with indignation. Then her
lips parted; but before she could say a word the door-handle turned, Mr.
Miles dropped the scissors upon the chair and put his left hand in his
pocket, and the head and shoulders of Colonel Bristo were thrust into
the room.
"Ah, I have found you at last!" the old gentleman cried with an
indulgent smile. "If you are at liberty, and Alice don't mind, we will
speak of--that matter--in my study."
"My lesson is just over," said Miles, bowing to Alice. He moved towards
the door; with his fingers upon the handle, he turned, and for an
instant regarded Alice with a calm, insolent, yet tender gaze; then the
door closed, and Alice was alone.
She heard the footsteps echo down the passage; she heard another door
open and shut. The next sound that reached her ears was at the other
side of the room in which she sat. She glanced quickly toward the
curtained door: a man stood between it and her. It was Dick.
Alice recoiled in her chair. She saw before her a face pale with
passion; for the first time in her life she encountered the eyes of an
angry man. She quailed; a strange thrill crept through her frame; she
could only look and listen. It seemed an age before Dick spoke. When he
did speak, it was in a voice far calmer than she expected. She did not
know that the calm was forced, and therefore the more ominous.
"I have only one thing to ask," he began hurriedly, in a low tone: "was
this a plot? If it was, do say so, and so far as I am concerned its
effect shall be quick enough: I will go at once. Only I want to know the
worst, to begin with."
Alice sat like a stone. She gave no sign that she had so much as heard
him. Poor girl, the irony of Fate seemed directed against her! She had
invited Dick on purpose to consult him about Mr. Miles, and now--and
now--
"You don't speak," pursued Dick, less steadily; "but you must. I mean to
have my answer before either of us leaves this room. I mean to know all
there is to know. There shall be an end to this fooling between us
two!"
"What right have you to speak to me like this?"
"The right of a true lover--hopeless of late, yet still that! Answer me:
had you planned this?"
"You know that is absurd."
How coldly, how evenly she spoke! Was her heart of ice? But Dick--there
was little of the "true lover" in his looks, and much of the true hater.
Yet even now, one gentle word, one tender look from him, and tears of
pity and penitence might still have flowed. His next words froze them.
"No conspiracy, then! Merely artless, honest, downright love-making;
dancing--alone--and giving locks of hair and (though only by
coincidence!) the man you loved once and enslaved for ever--this man of
all others asked by you to come at this very hour, and, in fact, turning
up in the middle of it! And this was chance. I am glad to hear it!"
Men have been called hard names for speaking to women less harshly than
this--even on greater provocation; but let it be remembered that he had
loved her long years better than his life; that he had wrenched himself
from England and from her--for her sake; that during all that time her
image had been graven on his soul. And, further, that he had led a rough
life in rough places, where men lose their shallower refinements, and
whence only the stout spirits emerge at all.
When recrimination becomes insult a woman is no longer defenceless;
right or wrong in the beginning, she is right now; she needs no more
than the consciousness of this to quicken her wit and whet her tongue.
"I do not understand you," exclaimed Alice, looking him splendidly in
the face. "Have the goodness to explain yourself before I say the last
word that shall ever pass between you and me."
"Yes, I will explain," cried Dick, beside himself--"I will explain your
treatment of me! While you knew I was on my way to you--while I was on
the very sea--you took away your love from me, and gave it to another
man. Since then see how you have treated me! Well, that man--the man you
flatter, and pet, and coquette with; the man who kennels here like a
tame dog--is a rogue: a rogue and a villain, mark my words!"
In the midst of passion that gathered before his eyes a marble statue,
pure and cold, seemed to rise out of the ground in front of him.
"One word," said Alice Bristo, in the kind of voice that might come from
marble: "the last one. You spoke of putting an end to something existing
between us--'fooling' was the word you used. Well, there was something
between us long ago, though you might have found a prettier word for it;
but it also ended long ago; and you have known that some weeks. There
has since been friendship; yes, you shall have an end put to that too,
though you might have asked it differently. Stay, I have not finished.
You spoke of Mr. Miles; most of what you said was beneath notice;
indeed, you have so far lost self-control that I think you cannot know
now what you said a minute ago. But you spoke of Mr. Miles in a cruel,
wicked way. You have said behind his back what you dare not say to his
face. He at least is generous and good; he at least never forgets that
he is a gentleman; but then, you see, he is so infinitely nobler, and
truer, and greater than you--this man you dare to call a villain!"
"You love him!" cried Dick fiercely.
Instead of answering, Alice lowered her eyes. Stung to the quick--sick
and sore at heart--revenge came within her reach in too sweet a form to
be resisted.
Never was lie better acted. Dick was staggered. He approached her
unsteadily.
"It is a villain that you love!" he gasped. "I know it--a villain and an
impostor! But I will unmask him with my own hands--so help me God!"
He raised his pale face upward as he spoke, smiting his palms together
with a dull dead thud. Next moment he had vaulted through the open
window by which Miles had entered so short a time before--and was gone.
* * * * *
Meanwhile an interview of a very different character took place in
Colonel Bristo's sanctum. It ended thus:
"Then you are quite sure that this hundred will be enough for you to go
on with?"
"More than enough; fifty would have done. Another Queensland mail is due
a month hence; and they can never fail me twice running."
"But you say you are so far up country that you do not send down to meet
every mail. Your partner may not have thought you likely to run short."
"I wired him some weeks ago that I had miscalculated damages. I should
have had my draft by this mail but for the floods. I feel confident they
have prevented him sending down in time; there has been mention of these
floods several times in the papers."
"Well, my dear Miles, if you want more, there is more where this came
from. I cashed the cheque myself this morning, by the way; I happened to
be in the bank, and I thought you would like it better. Here they
are--ten tens."
"Colonel Bristo, I can never express--"
"Don't try, sir. You saved my life."
X
AN OLD FRIEND AND AN OLD MEMORY
When Dick Edmonstone opened the garden gate of Iris Lodge he was no
longer excited. The storm that had so lately shaken his frame and lashed
his spirit had spent its frenzy; no such traces as heaving breast or
quickened pulse remained to tell of it. The man was calm--despair had
calmed him; the stillness of settled gloom had entered his soul. His
step was firm but heavy; the eye was vacant; lips like blanched iron;
the whole face pale and rigid.
These are hall-marks graven by misery on the face of man; they are
universal and obvious enough, though not always at the first glance. For
instance, if prepared with a pleasant surprise for another, one is
naturally slow to detect his dismal mood. Thus, no sooner had Dick set
foot upon the garden path than the front door was flung open, and there
stood Fanny, beaming with good-humour, good news on the tip of her
tongue. It was like sunrise facing a leaden bank of western clouds.
"Oh, Dick, there is someone waiting to see you! You will never guess; it
is a bush friend of yours. Such an amusing creature!" she added sotto
voce.
Dick stood still on the path and groaned. "Biggs!" he muttered in
despair.
Nothing directs attention to the face so surely as the voice. There was
such utter weariness in this one word that Fanny glanced keenly at her
brother, saw the dulness of his eyes, read for apathy agony, and knew
that instant that there had been a cruel crisis in his affair with Alice
Bristo.
Instead of betraying her insight, she went quickly to him with a bright
smile, laid her hand on his arm, and said:
"His name is not Biggs, Dick dear. It is--but you will be very glad to
see him! Come in at once."
A flash of interest lit up Dick's clouded face; he followed Fanny into
the hall, and there, darkening the nearest doorway, stood a burly
figure. The light of the room being behind this man, Dick could not at
once distinguish his features. While he hesitated, a well-remembered
falsetto asked if he had forgotten his old mate. Then Dick sprang
forward with outstretched hand.
"Dear old Jack, as I live!"
"Dear old humbug! Let me tell you you've done your level best to miss
me. An hour and a half have I been here, a nuisance to these ladies--"
"No, no, Dick; Mr. Flint has done nothing but entertain us," put in Mrs.
Edmonstone.
"A charitable version," said Flint, bowing clumsily. "But I tell you, my
boy, in half-an-hour my train goes."
"Don't delude yourself," said Dick; "you won't get off so easily
to-night, let alone half-an-hour."
"Must, sir," Jack Flint replied. "Leave Dover by to-night's
boat--holiday. If you'd only come in sooner! I wonder now where he's
been?" Flint added, with a comic expression on his good-natured face.
"No place that I wouldn't have left for an hour or two with you, old
chap," said Dick in a strange tone; "nowhere very pleasant."
Nothing better could have happened to Dick just then than seeing the
chum from whom he had parted nearly three years ago. It was as though
his good angel had stored up for him a sovereign simple, and
administered it at the moment it was most needed. In the presence of
Flint he had escaped for a few minutes from the full sense of his
anguish. But now, by an unlucky remark, Jack had undone his good work as
unconsciously as he had effected it. Dick remembered bitterly that long
ago he had told his friend all about his love--as it then stood.
"Mr. Flint has been telling us some of your adventures, which it seems
we should never have heard from you," observed Fanny, reproachfully.
This was quite true. Once snubbed at Graysbrooke, his system of silence
on that subject had been extended to Iris Lodge. One set of people had
voted his experiences tiresome; that was enough for him. This was
doubtless unfair to his family, but it was not unnatural in Dick. He was
almost morbid on the point.
"Indeed!" he replied; "but suppose he gives us some of his Irish
adventures instead? How many times have they tried to pot you, my unjust
landlord? You must know, mother, that this is not only my ex-partner in
an honourable commercial enterprise--not only 'our Mr. Flint' that used
to be--but John Flint, Esq., J.P., of Castle Flint, county Kerry;
certainly a landholder, and of course--it goes without saying--a
tyrant."
"Really?" said Mrs. Edmonstone. "He did not tell us that."
"It's the unhappy fact," said Flint, gloomily. "A few hundred acres of
hills and heather, and a barn called by courtesy 'Castle'; those are my
feudal possessions. The scenery is gorgeous, but the land--is a
caution!"
"Barren?" asked Dick.
"As Riverina in a drought."
"And the tenants?"
"Oh, as to the tenants, we hit it off pretty well. It's in North Kerry
they're lively. I'm in the south, you see, and there they're peaceable
enough. Laziness is their worst crime. I do all I can for 'em, but I
don't see how I can hold on much longer."
"Evict?"
"No," said Flint, warmly; "I'd rather emigrate, and take the whole
boiling of them with me; take up new country, and let them select on it.
Dick, you savage, don't laugh; I'm not joking. I've thought about it
often."
"Would you really like to go back to Australia, Mr. Flint?" Mrs.
Edmonstone asked, glancing at the same time rather anxiously at her son.
"Shouldn't mind, madam," returned Flint.
"No more should I!" broke in Dick, in a harsh voice.
Flint looked anxiously at his friend, and made a mental note that Dick
had not found all things quite as he expected. For a minute no one
spoke; then Fanny took the opportunity of returning to her former
charge.
"We have heard some of your adventures which you seemed determined to
keep to yourself. I think it was very mean of you, and so does mamma.
Oh, Dick, why--why did you never tell us about the bush-ranger?"
Mrs. Edmonstone gazed fondly at her son--and shivered.
"Has he told you that?" Dick asked quickly. "Jack, old chap"--rather
reproachfully--"it was a thing I never spoke of."
"Nonsense, my dear fellow!"
"No, it's a fact. I never cared to talk about it, I felt it so
strongly."
"Too strongly," said Flint; "I said so at the time."
For a little while Dick was silent; then he said:
"Since he has told you, it doesn't matter. I can only say it nearly
drove me out of my mind; it was the bitterest hour of my life!"
A little earlier that day this would have been true.
His mother's eyes filled with tears. "I can understand your feeling,
dear Dick," she murmured; "yet I wish you had told us--though, indeed,
it would have made me miserable if you had written it. But now Mr. Flint
has given us a graphic account of the whole incident. Thank Heaven you
were spared, my boy!"
"Thank Sundown," said Dick dryly.
"Oh, yes!" cried Fanny. "Noble fellow! Poor, wicked, generous man! I
didn't think such robbers existed; I thought they went out with wigs and
patches, a hundred years ago."
"So they did," muttered Flint. "They're extinct as the dodo. I never
could make this one out--a deep dog."