chum to be found--who goes to a station to get Colonial experience. He
has to work like a nigger, and revels in it, for a bit. If he is a black
sheep, and has the antique ideas of the Colonies held by those who sent
him out to whiten him, his illusions may last a couple of days; if he
has read up Australia on the voyage, they will probably hold out a
little longer, while he keeps looking for what his book told him he
would find; the fact being that the modern bush life hasn't yet been
done into English. Meanwhile he runs up the horses, rides round
boundaries, mends fences, drives sheep to water--if it is a drought--and
skins the dead ones, weighs out flour and sugar, cleans harness, camps
anywhere, and lives on mutton and damper, and tea."
"But what does he get for all that?" asked Maurice, with visions of
money-bags.
"Rations and experience," replied Flint promptly. "When he's admitted to
be worth his salt he will be asked to make other arrangements. Then some
still newer new chum will be selected for the post, through the
introductions he has brought to the stock and station agents, and in his
turn will drive his teeth into the dirty work of the station, which the
ordinary pound-a-week hands refuse, and so get his Colonial experience!"
"Thanks; I'll stop where I am," said Maurice.
"He isn't fair," said Dick, speaking for the first time. "You know you
aren't fair, old chap, raking up your own case as typical, when it was
exceptional. Jackeroos are treated all right, and paid too, so long as
they're smart and willing--the two things needful. Come, I've been a
squatter myself, and can't hear my class run down."
"You won't hear me defend the landlords on that ground," remarked Flint,
who had contracted eccentric politics.
"Well," said Dick, experimentally, "if I go back to it, Maurice shall be
my jackeroo, and judge for himself whether you haven't painted us too
black."
He shipped his oars. Flint was standing up with the boat-hook to pilot
them through the open lock-gates.
"Then I'll ride the boundaries!" cried Fanny, who sat a horse like a
leech, but had had no mount for years.
"In that case," added Flint quietly, "I'll apply for overseer's billet,
with the right of sacking slack hands."
For a moment Dick looked really pleased: this jesting about a station in
Australia was, so far, feeling the way, and might make matters a trifle
easier when the time came. But the smile quickly faded from his face. In
truth, on no day during these last weeks had he been so troubled in
spirit, so tossed between the cross-currents of conflicting feelings.
That morning he had received two letters, apparently of contrary
character: for while the perusal of one gratified him so intensely that
he could not help handing it round for them all to see, the mere sight
of the other was sufficient to make him thrust the unopened envelope
hurriedly into his pocket.
The first letter was indeed a matter for congratulation, for it was the
most completely satisfactory, though not the first, of several similar
communications which Dick had received since his return from Australia.
It was a short note from the editor of the "Illustrated British
Monthly," accepting (for immediate use: a great point) a set of sketches
entitled "Home from Australia," which set forth the humours and trials
of a long sea voyage, and were, in fact, simply a finished reproduction
of those sketches that had delighted the passengers on board the Hesper.
But it was more than a mere formal acceptance: besides enclosing a
cheque (in itself a charming feature) to meet the present case, the note
contained a complimentary allusion to the quality of the "work," and a
distinct hint for the future. This in a postscript--observing that as
Australian subjects were somewhat in demand since the opening of the
Colonial Exhibition--he (the editor) would be glad to see anything
thoroughly Australian that Mr. Edmonstone might chance to have ready.
Of course the precious note was read aloud, and greeted with cries of
delight. Fancy an opening with the "Illustrated British" at this stage!
What could be better? And it did look like a real opening. The hero of
the moment alone sat silent; the unread letter in his pocket checked his
speech; it was from Yorkshire.
"Why did you ever leave us, when you can do so splendidly here at home?"
Mrs. Edmonstone asked him, half in regret for the past, half in joy for
the future.
Flint saw his friend's preoccupation, and answered for him.
"He didn't know it was in him till he got out there, I fancy. I remember
him sending his first things to the Melbourne and Sydney papers; and
before a year was out, his famous buck-jumping picture was stuck up in
every shanty in New South Wales and Victoria."
"Eh?" said Dick, looking up abruptly. "Oh, they coloured it vilely! What
do you say, mother? No, I say, don't jump to conclusions. How do you
know I can do any real good? I've been lucky so far, but I'm only at the
very, very beginning. I may fail miserably after all. And then where
should I be without my little pile?"
After breakfast Dick read the letter from Yorkshire in his own room.
"At the risk of being unduly persistent," wrote Colonel Bristo, "I must
ask you to reconsider your decision." (Dick had refused a short but
pressing invitation the week before.) "I know something of your reasons
for refusing, and I believe them to be mistaken reasons. If you have
really settled to return to Australia, that is all the more reason why
you should come. If you like, I will undertake not to press you to stay
beyond one day; only do come to bid us good-bye. Do not, however, fear
to offend me by a second refusal. I shall be grievously disappointed,
but nothing more. We really want you, for we shall be short of guns; two
of the men only stay till Monday, so come on that day. But apart from
all this, I am very sure that your coming will make the days a little
less dull and dreary for one of us. Everything else has failed."
The letter ended abruptly. Dick read it through twice, and put it back
in his pocket with a full heart.
But what was he to do? Here was the good Colonel honestly trying, in his
own way, to set matters right between him and Alice; but it was a
childlike, if not a childish way--a way that ignored causes and refused
to realise effects.
Dick trusted he was no such fool as to be affected by the hope that
breathed in the Colonel's letter. The Colonel was confessedly unversed
in women's ways--then why did he meddle? Surely it would have been more
natural, more dignified, to send him, Dick, to the deuce, or to the
Colonies--they were much the same thing in the Old Country--than to
waste another thought on the man whom his own daughter (who could surely
judge for herself) had chosen to jilt? Dick savagely wished that the
former had been his treatment; and, rowing down from Sunbury that
afternoon, he was so far decided that the phrases of his refusal were in
his head. Call it rude, churlish, obstinate; he was obstinate, and was
willing to own it; he had refused the Colonel once, and that refusal
should be final.
Nevertheless, he was absent and distrait all day, whereas the others
were in rather higher spirits than usual, and the contrast was
uncomfortable. Dick therefore invented an excuse for running up to town,
promising himself a quiet corner of his club, in which to write to the
Colonel and pull himself together. He needed pulling together: he was
yearning to see Alice again--perhaps only to ask her forgiveness and bid
her good-bye--yet vowing between his teeth to see her no more; he would
not be entirely himself until his refusal was penned and posted.
He walked absently to the station, forgot his change at the
ticket-office, and jumped into the nearest compartment of the first
train that came in. A man and a woman got into the same compartment.
Dick did not see them, for he was attempting to interest himself in an
evening paper; but he could not help hearing their voices as they sat
opposite him in close conversation. And, hearing, Dick was startled. His
pulse beat violently; his fingers tightened upon the edges of the
newspaper.
"His fine friends," the man was saying, "are gone into the country
somewhere. We must find out where."
The tones were Jem Pound's.
"Why?" asked the same woman's voice that Dick had heard in Bushey Park.
"Because if Ned Ryan hasn't fled the country, that's where he is!"
"But he has gone back to Australia."
"Not he! He daren't go out there again. He'd be a fool to do it if he
dared. No, no. He cleared out o' this because of you and me. He cracked
he was going out there again, because he knew we'd come asking after him
and they'd tell us that yarn. But he's no more gone than I have. Mark
me, missis, we'll find him at this here Colonel's country place! But we
must find the place first."
Dick did not lower his paper until the train reached Waterloo. Long
before that his mind was filled with one absorbing idea. A swift but
complete reaction had taken place within him; he was charged with
nervous energy and primed with impatience. Some of the impatience he
worked off in a rapid walk to his club, where he answered Colonel
Bristo's note in a dozen words; but one idea continued in fierce
possession of his mind, to the exclusion of all others.
XVIII
ALICE SPEAKS FOR HERSELF
Monday, August 9th.--Here we are at last, at the shooting box on the
Yorkshire moors; or rather in the Yorkshire dales. I mean, papa and I
are here: our faithful Mrs. Parish follows to-morrow, and the "guns" are
expected on Wednesday. We two have been staying at a little seaside
place on the coast--quite a charming place, with not only broad sands,
but very presentable cliffs, and other things worth looking at besides
the sea; delightful gardens, for instance, where the inevitable band
played, instead of on the everlasting pier. Of course, it was all rather
tedious; but the North Sea breezes and the delicious air did one no
harm, I felt, while they seemed to do papa visible good. Indeed, he
declares he feels fit for anything now--meaning, of course, in the way
of sport, which I only hope he won't overdo. So perhaps, after all, we
did well to leave home a week earlier than we at first intended (much as
I hated leaving home at all), for we have come to the moorland air with
lungs full of sea-air, and papa says there couldn't be a finer mixture
than that for me.
But it is difficult to think of the sea here in the dales, where we are
so far from it. We are far from everything, as it seems to me. Yet I am
told, and I suppose I must believe, that the great smoky town which we
passed through the other day is within twenty miles of us, and we are
assured that there is a very "canny" village--if not a small town--four
or five miles from us. It is also true that it only took an hour and
twenty minutes to drive from the railway station, but then there wasn't
much of a village there. Now we expected to find one here, and papa even
professed to point it out to me as we drove through; but as it was
nearly dark, and I could only make out a short, huddled-up row of houses
on one side of the road, I couldn't see where the village came in, and
told him so. Still, it is down on the Ordnance map, Gateby by name; and,
though it is too dark to see now, it can only be a few hundred yards
from us.
As for this house--which, by-the-bye, is nameless--I am sure it has
never been anything but a shooting box, for it has no pretence to a
garden, but stands behind a hedge almost in a bare field--a plain,
gaunt, two-storied, evenly-balanced stone building. In the three rooms
down stairs there is very little furniture, except what we sent before
us. In one of them, the smallest, a book-case with glass doors has been
made into a gun-rack, and this may point to the fact that the place was
not always what it is. This room we will call "the gun-room." Whether it
was built for better things, I don't know; but for ages the house has
been let year after year for the shooting alone.
At this moment an old man, with a pale blue eye and a bright red nose,
who is apparently caretaker and general factotum of the establishment,
is expatiating to papa on the birds: their probable quantity and
unmistakable quality; but he has a barbarous tongue, and for my part I
am too tired to listen to him any longer.
Yes, tired--and sleepy too. If writing a diary has always this effect
upon me, it will more than fulfil its original mission--which was only
to help me to pass the intolerable time!
Tuesday, 10th.--I was up and out quite early, long before breakfast, on
a voyage of discovery. The first thing I had seen, on drawing up my
blind, was red-tiled Gateby, straight in front of my window, across
half-a-dozen fields. I could see a path winding through these fields,
and coming out into the road just below our house; so on this pathway I
settled for my first walk. I could see that it was the shortest way to
Gateby. I would inspect Gateby.
It was a perfect morning, with plenty of sunshine and blue sky, and the
last of a soft white mist just filling up the hollows of the meadows; so
that I knew that it would be a hot day, as, in fact, it is.
When I had followed the path across the fields until I had only two left
to cross (and these were a potato field and a meadow, from which a boy
was driving in the cows), I stopped and perched myself on a stone
gate-post, and surveyed Gateby. From there it looked like one long low
irregular building, stone-built and red-tiled. Only one house, and that
at the extreme left of the rest, was slated. More of Gateby I could not
see from there, so I went on looking all round me. Over the village rose
the hills, with bold but even outline. The hillsides are so evenly
divided by the hedges into so many squares that they look as though
great nets had been cast over them. The squares have all kinds of
colours--greens, and yellows, and dirty browns (of ploughed fields).
Following the bend of the valley, as the fields grew less in
perspective, I noticed that they took a commoner tint, between pale
green and dun, until the farthest range of all showed a uniform
greyish-blue. I did not expect to be able to see half so far when deep
down in a dale, and I thought the hills would be higher. In fact, with
this particular dale of ours I am a little bit disappointed; for,
instead of finding it a deep furrow in the face of Nature, as I had made
up my mind it would be, it is, after all, the veriest dimple.
Well, Gateby is a quaint enough little place when you attack it fairly,
from the front, as I presently did. It has about a dozen houses all
told, and they are all on one side of the road, and hug each other as
though space were an object of the first importance. Several of the
houses are, at least, demi-semi-detached. The largest of them is the
public-house; the best the schoolhouse, the front of which is simply one
mass of pink roses--I never saw anything like it.
I walked back by the road. The pathway through the fields merely cuts
off, I now found, the angle made by the two roads: the road in which we
are, which leads over the moor, and the road in which Gateby is, which
leads in one direction to the railway, six miles off, and in the
other--I don't know where. These two roads join at right angles, and I
believe they are the only roads in the dale.
Nearing home, I met the person with the gay-coloured nose and eyes, and
he stopped to bid me good morning. I thought his complexion looked a
little cooler, but then it was very early morning. He inquired, with
some pride and expectancy, what I thought of the dale. I answered,
rather unkindly I am afraid, that I thought it pretty, but a fraud: the
hills were too low, the valleys were too shallow.
"Ah!" he observed compassionately, "waaet till thoo's been ower t' mower,
an' seen t' view from Melmerbridge Bank; an' waaet till thoo sees
Beckdaael!"
He went on to tell me all about Melmerbridge. I almost think he offered
to personally conduct me over to Melmerbridge, and to show me its
church, and its beck, and the view from its bank. At any rate, before I
could get away from him I had learnt that his name was Andy Garbutt, and
that he had been eight and twenty years, man and boy, come next
Michaelmas, in the service of the owner of our nameless shooting-box.
I found papa ready for breakfast, and delighted to find that I had been
out and about so early; there was no need to tell him that it was simply
because I could not sleep or rest. And of course we both duly voted the
real Yorkshire bacon the very best we had ever tasted in our two lives;
though, for my part, I must own I only swallowed it to please papa,
whose eye was upon my plate.
In the afternoon we walked up to the moor together, and papa was charmed
because we "put up" quite a number of birds. I could not stay long,
however, as papa wished me to drive off to meet Mrs. Parish, and I am
writing this while waiting for the trap, because, somehow, I cannot
settle to reading--not even yellowbacks. A horrid nuisance, her coming!
I do wish it had not been just yet. By-the-bye, papa tells me he has
heard from Mr. Miles, who, after all, has not yet left England, his
business having turned out different from what he expected. Then how
strange that we have never heard from him all these weeks! I quite
thought he would be out there by this time. However, he says he really
does sail in a few days, and he only wishes he saw his way to running
down to say good-bye to us--but that will be impossible. I believe papa
has written to him, telling him all about the place, and the prospects,
and who are coming. I am not sorry that he is not coming, I think. This
reminds me that papa says that Dick Edmonstone has written saying that
he cannot possibly come. I am not at all sorry to hear that. I think he
shows his sense.
Thursday, 12th.--Everybody came yesterday; and now they are all on the
moor, and we two women are to go and have lunch with them at one. There
are five guns, and we hear them distinctly from time to time. Besides
papa, there are Cousin Philip (who likes to be called Doctor Robson
now), and Laurence Pinckney, and Captain Awdry, and Mr. Oliver.
Cousin Philip has been on a long voyage to New Zealand and back, as
ship's surgeon, since we last saw him. It ought to have improved him,
and perhaps it has; but to me he seems as dull and ponderous and
undecided as ever. He tells me that he interested himself at sea by
getting up prayer-meetings in the steerage, which, he says, had far more
heart in them than the captain's perfunctory services on the
quarter-deck; but it seems that his zeal got him disliked--most
unrighteously--by the other officers. He is certainly a good young man.
Captain Awdry I have met once or twice before; he is a great beauty, a
great sportsman, and that's all; but Mr. Oliver is new to me. I fancy he
is local--an ironmaster or something. He is old, and tall, and well
set-up; very deferential to me, if you please, and tremendously keen
about the grouse. As for Laurence Pinckney--one has to call him Mr.
Pinckney now--he is nothing short of a revelation.
When I knew him before, he used to go to some public school--I forget
which, but it can't be many years ago. And now he is a "writing man,"
fresh from Fleet-street, with all the jargon at his tongue's end--and,
in short, quite the most amusing boy. In appearance he is just what he
ought not to be. I have always pictured to myself the literary
man--especially the literary young man--with long hair and eye-glasses,
and the rest bizarre. Therefore Laurence Pinckney disappoints me; he is
spruce, brisk, and sharp-eyed, short, dark, and unguarded.
He sat next me at dinner, and talked nothing but his "shop"--which,
however, is a kind of "shop" that rather interests one; besides, the
egotism of a raw recruit in the noble army of authors is really
diverting. He talks fluently about all the new books, criticising most
of them severely, and I should say that he has read and remembered at
least two or three reviews of each. He has told me the different
magazines he writes for, so that I shall know where to seek his name--if
I don't forget. He "thinks nothing of bearding literary lions in their
editorial dens;" and this, I shouldn't wonder, has something to do with
that drawer full of rejected MSS. of which he has already been frank
enough to whisper--in fact, he has quite taken me into his literary
confidence. But indeed he is rather amusing.
Friday, 13th.--Mrs. Parish is really very agreeable, and easier to get
on with than for a long while past. She tells me, among other things,
that she saw more of Mr. Miles's beggars after we left home--caught them
talking to the servants, and packed them off about their business. Poor
things! From her account, I rather fancy they were the same I saw. She
went with me to luncheon on the moor yesterday. It was really not bad
fun. They were all in good spirits, because, on the whole, they had made
a good start. Captain Awdry had done the most execution, and took it the
most sadly. But old Mr. Oliver had drawn first blood, and, unlike the
blase Captain, was not above showing his delight. Papa and Cousin Philip
were modest about their share: it was impossible to find out exactly
what they had done. Poor Laurence Pinckney, however, had hit nothing at
all; and, indeed, his shooting must be execrable, to judge by what one
hears. I heard Mr. Oliver muttering that he would not get within range
of him, not if he knew it; while Captain Awdry's contempt lies too deep
for smiles or sneers. But Mr. Pinckney does not care; he carries a
notebook with him, which he whips out whenever the view strikes him as
worth remembering, or whenever something happy occurs to him. He says it
is extraordinary what happy thoughts do come to a man who carries a gun.
I tell him that to-morrow he must think of nothing but his next shot.
He answers that to-morrow he must not shoot, as Saturday is always a
busy day with him, wherever he is:--on it he writes for his weekly
paper. He calls it "his," as though the paper belonged to him, and I
tell him so. He explains that he is "on the staff--practically." He
keeps to himself the name of the paper and the nature of his
contributions: it is best to make no inquiries, I think.
Saturday, 14th.--Papa tells me that Dick has written to say he finds he
can come after all, and is coming.
Somehow it has been a wretched day. I seem to have done absolutely
nothing all day, and, now that it is evening, my head aches, and I have
come upstairs quite early, though I know I shall never sleep. Poor papa
has been saying he sees I find it dull, and blaming himself because I
have no companion. As it happens, that is, in my eyes, the most joyful
feature of the business, but I could not tell dear papa so; and he was
full of regrets that Cousin Maggie was prevented from coming at the last
moment--a circumstance for which I can never be too thankful. Poor
Maggie would have been an infliction indeed. She has all the heavy
virtues of her brother--and imagine a feminine Philip! That creature
himself has annoyed me sufficiently this evening: tacked himself on to
me, talked in a low voice, looked like a sheep, and would not be
snubbed--he never would, and never will. To escape him, and for no other
reason, I sang a song in response to Laurence Pinckney's absurd
pleadings. But I hate singing! I hate the sound of my voice! I would
give worlds to be away from here, and at home again and alone. I am
tired of the place, and to be forever saying civil things to people is
insupportable, and replying to their civility-speeches even worse. This
minute I hate everything and everybody, and myself the worst of all!
Sunday, 15th.--I wrote some contemptible nonsense last night, when my
head was splitting; but I will not score it out; if ever I go mad these
gradations will be interesting, if not useful!...
It is, by-the-bye, to-morrow, papa tells me, that Dick is coming.
XIX
CONTERMINOUS COURSES
Between five and six o'clock in the afternoon of Monday, August 16th,
when the last train but one steamed into the small station at Inglesby,
six miles from Gateby, one passenger left it. He was a tall man in a
light tweed suit. His luggage consisted of a portmanteau and a gun-case.
After looking in vain for a conveyance outside the station, he found the
station-master and asked where he could get one to take him to Gateby;
the station-master directed him to the inn.