At Large
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Title: At Large
Author: E. W. Hornung
Release date: March 26, 2011 [eBook #35684]
Most recently updated: January 7, 2021
Language: English
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OTHER BOOKS BY MR. HORNUNG
THE AMATEUR CRACKSMAN. $1.25.
RAFFLES. MORE ADVENTURES OF THE
AMATEUR CRACKSMAN. Illustrated by
F. C. YOHN. $1.50.
PECCAVI. A NOVEL. $1.50.
THE SHADOW OF A MAN. $1.25.
DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES. A
NOVEL. $1.25.
SOME PERSONS UNKNOWN. $1.25.
YOUNG BLOOD. $1.25.
MY LORD DUKE. $1.25.
THE ROGUE'S MARCH. A ROMANCE.
$1.50.
THE BOSS OF TAROOMBA. [_Ivory
Series._] 16mo. $0.75.
A BRIDE FROM THE BUSH. [_Ivory
Series._] 16mo. $0.75.
IRRALIE'S BUSHRANGER. A STORY
OF AUSTRALIAN ADVENTURE. [_Ivory
Series._] 16mo. $0.75.
AT LARGE
AT LARGE
_A NOVEL_
BY
E. W. HORNUNG
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK::::::::::::::::: 1902
COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
_All rights reserved_
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY, 1902
TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK
CONTENTS
Page
I. A Nucleus of Fortune 1
II. Sundown 11
III. After Four Years 20
IV. How Dick Came Home 28
V. The First Evening at Graysbrooke 41
VI. Sisyphus 53
VII. South Kensington 64
VIII. The Admirable Miles 72
IX. A Dancing Lesson and its Consequences 86
X. An Old Friend and an Old Memory 98
XI. Dressing, Dancing, Looking on 109
XII. "To-Morrow, and To-Morrow, and To-Morrow" 123
XIII. In Bushey Park 132
XIV. Quits 152
XV. The Morning After 163
XVI. Military Manoeuvres 174
XVII. "Miles's Beggars" 185
XVIII. Alice Speaks for Herself 196
XIX. Conterminous Courses 206
XX. Strange Humility 216
XXI. An Altered Man 227
XXII. Extremities 234
XXIII. The Effect of a Photograph 244
XXIV. The Effect of a Song 256
XXV. Melmerbridge Church 271
XXVI. At Bay 286
XXVII. The Fatal Tress 296
XXVIII. The Effort 307
XXIX. Elizabeth Ryan 313
XXX. Sweet Revenge 325
XXXI. The Charity of Silence 333
XXXII. Suspense: Reaction 343
XXXIII. How Dick Said Good-Bye 353
AT LARGE
At Large
I
A NUCLEUS OF FORTUNE
A hooded wagon was creeping across a depressing desert in the middle of
Australia; layers of boxes under the hood, and of brass-handled,
mahogany drawers below the boxes, revealed the licensed hawker of the
bush. Now, the hawker out there is a very extensive development of his
prototype here at home; he is Westbourne Grove on wheels, with the
prices of Piccadilly, W. But these particular providers were neither so
universal nor so exorbitant as the generality of their class. There were
but two of them; they drove but two horses; and sat shoulder to shoulder
on the box.
The afternoon was late; all day the horses had been crawling, for the
track was unusually heavy. There had been recent rains; red mud clogged
the wheels at every yard, and clung to them in sticky tires. Little
pools had formed all over the plain; and westward, on the off-side of
the wagon, these pools caught the glow of the setting sun, and filled
with flame. Far over the horses' ears a long low line of trees was
visible; otherwise the plain was unbroken; you might ride all day on
these plains and descry no other horse nor man.
The pair upon the box were partners. Their names were Flint and
Edmonstone. Flint was enjoying a senior partner's prerogative, and
lolling back wreathed in smoke. His thick bare arms were idly folded. He
was a stout, brown, bearded man, who at thirty looked many years older;
indolence, contentment, and goodwill were written upon his face.
The junior partner was driving, and taking some pains about it--keeping
clear of the deep ruts, and pushing the pace only where the track was
good. He looked twenty years Flint's junior, and was, in fact, just of
age. He was strongly built and five-feet-ten, with honest gray eyes,
fair hair, and an inelastic mouth.
Both of these men wore flannel shirts, buff cord trousers, gray felt
wideawakes; both were public-school men, drawn together in the first
instance by that mutually surprising fact, and for the rest as different
as friends could be. Flint had been ten years in the Colonies,
Edmonstone not quite ten weeks. Flint had tried everything, and failed;
Edmonstone had everything before him, and did not mean to fail. Flint
was experienced, Edmonstone sanguine; things surprised Edmonstone,
nothing surprised Flint. Edmonstone had dreams of the future, and golden
dreams; Flint troubled only about the present, and that very little. In
fine, while Edmonstone saw licensed hawking leading them both by a short
cut to fortune, and earnestly intended that it should, Flint said they
would be lucky if their second trip was as successful as their first,
now all but come to an end.
The shadow of horses and wagon wavered upon the undulating plain as
they drove. The shadows grew longer and longer; there was a noticeable
change in them whenever young Edmonstone bent forward to gaze at the sun
away to the right, and then across at the eastern sky already tinged
with purple; and that was every five minutes.
"It will be dark in less than an hour," the lad exclaimed at last, in
his quick, anxious way; "dark just as we reach the scrub; we shall have
no moon until eleven or so, and very likely not strike the river
to-night."
The sentences were punctuated with sharp cracks of the whip. An answer
came from Edmonstone's left, in the mild falsetto that contrasted so
queerly with the bodily bulk of Mr. John Flint, and startled all who
heard him speak for the first time.
"My good fellow, I implore you again to spare the horseflesh and the
whipcord--both important items--and take it easy like me."
"Jack," replied Edmonstone warmly, "you know well enough why I want to
get to the Murrumbidgee to-night. No? Well, at all events, you own that
we should lose no time about getting to some bank or other?"
"Yes, on the whole. But I don't see the good of hurrying on now to reach
the township at an unearthly hour, when all the time we might camp in
comfort anywhere here. To my mind, a few hours, or even a night or two,
more or less----"
"Are neither here nor there? Exactly!" broke in Edmonstone, with
increasing warmth. "Jack, Jack! the days those very words cost us! Add
them up--subtract them from the time we've been on the roads--and we'd
have been back a week ago at least. I shall have no peace of mind until
I step out of the bank, and that's the truth of it." As he spoke, the
fingers of Edmonstone's right hand rested for a moment, with a curious,
involuntary movement, upon his right breast.
"I can see that," returned Flint, serenely. "The burden of riches, you
see--and young blood! When you've been out here as long as I have,
you'll take things easier, my son."
"You don't understand my position," said Edmonstone. "You laugh when I
tell you I came out here to make money: all the same, I mean to do it. I
own I had rotten ideas about Australia--all new chums have. But if I
can't peg out my claim and pick up nuggets, I'm going to do the next
best thing. It may be hawking and it may not. I mean to see. But we must
give the thing a chance, and not run unnecessary risks with the gross
proceeds of our very first trip. A hundred and thirty pounds isn't a
fortune; but it may be the nucleus of one; and it's all we've got
between us in this world meanwhile."
"My dear old boy, I'm fully alive to it. I only don't see the point of
finishing the trip at a gallop."
"The point is that our little all is concealed about my person," said
Edmonstone, grimly.
"And my point is that it and we are absolutely safe. How many more times
am I to tell you so?" And there was a squeak of impatience in the absurd
falsetto voice, followed by clouds of smoke from the bearded lips.
Edmonstone drove some distance without a word.
"Yet only last week," he remarked at length, "a store was stuck up on
the Darling!"
"What of that?"
"The storekeeper was robbed of every cent he had."
"I know."
"Yet they shot him dead in the end."
"And they'll swing for it."
"Meanwhile they've shown clean heels, and nobody knows where they
are--or are not."
"Consequently you expect to find them waiting for us in the next clump,
eh?"
"No, I don't. I only deny that we are absolutely safe."
Flint knocked out his pipe with sudden energy.
"My dear boy," cried he, "have I or have I not been as many years out
here as you've been weeks? I tell you I was in the mounted police, down
in Vic, all through the Kelly business; joined in the hunt myself; and
back myself to know a real bushranger when I see him or read about him.
This fellow who has the cheek to call himself Sundown is not a
bushranger at all; he and his mates are mere robbers and murderers. Ned
Kelly didn't go shooting miserable storekeepers; and he was the last of
the bushrangers, and is likely to remain the last. Besides, these chaps
will streak up-country, not down; but, if it's any comfort to you, see
here," and Flint pocketed his pipe, made a long arm overhead and reached
a Colt's revolver from a hook just inside the hood of the wagon, "let
this little plaything reassure you. What, didn't you know I was a dead
shot with this? My dear chap, I wasn't in the mounted police for
nothing. Why, I could pick out your front teeth at thirty yards and
paint my name on your waistcoat at twenty!"
Flint stroked the glittering barrel caressingly, and restored the pistol
to its hook: there was a cartridge in every chamber.
The other said nothing for a time, but was more in earnest than ever
when he did speak.
"Jack," said he, "I can only tell you this: if we were to lose our money
straight away at the outset I should be a lost man. How could we go on
without it--hawking with an empty wagon? How could I push, push,
push--as I've got to--after losing all to start with? A hundred pounds!
It isn't much, but it is everything to me--everything. Let me only keep
it a bit and it shall grow under my eyes. Take it away from me and I am
done for--completely done for."
He forgot that he was using the first person singular instead of plural;
it had become natural to him to think out the business and its
possibilities in this way, and it was no less in Flint's nature to see
no selfishness in his friend's speech. Flint only said solemnly:
"You shouldn't think so much about money, old chap."
"Money and home!" exclaimed Dick Edmonstone in a low, excited tone.
"Home and money! It's almost all I do think about."
Jack Flint leaned forward, and narrowly scanned the face of his friend;
then lay back again, with a light laugh of forced cheerfulness.
"Why, Dick, you speak as though you had been exiled for years, and it's
not three months since you landed."
Dick started. It already seemed years to him.
"Besides," continued the elder man, "I protest against any man growing
morbid who can show a balance-sheet like ours. As to home-sickness, wait
until you have been out here ten years; wait until you have tried
digging, selecting, farming, droving; wait until you have worn a
trooper's uniform and a counter jumper's apron, and ridden the
boundaries at a pound a week, and tutored Young Australia for your
rations. When you have tried all these things--and done no good at any
of 'em, mark you--then, if you like, turn home-sick."
The other did not answer. Leaning forward, he whipped up the horses, and
gazed once more towards the setting sun. His companion could not see his
face; but trouble and anxiety were in that long, steady, westward gaze.
He was very young, this lad Edmonstone--young even for his years. Unlike
his mate, his thoughts were all of the past and of the future; both
presented happy pictures; so happy that his mind would fly from the one
to the other without touching the present. And so he thought now, gazing
westward, of home, and of something sweeter than home itself; and he
blended that which had gone before with that which was yet to come; and
so wonderful was the harmony between these two that to-day was entirely
forgotten. Then the sun swung half-way below the dark line of the
horizon; a golden pathway shone across the sandy track right to the
wheels of the wagon; the dark line of scrub, now close at hand, looked
shadowy and mysterious; the sunset colours declared themselves finally
in orange and pink and gray, before the spreading purple caught and
swallowed them. The dreamer's face grew indistinct, but his golden
dreams were more vivid than before.
A deadly stillness enveloped the plain, making all sounds staccato: the
rhythmical footfall of the horses, the hoarse notes of crows wheeling
through the twilight like uncanny heralds of night, the croaking of
crickets in the scrub ahead.
Dick was recalled to the antipodes by a mild query from his mate.
"Are you asleep, driver?"
"No."
"You haven't noticed any one ahead of us this afternoon on horseback?"
"No; why?"
"Because here are some one's tracks," said Flint, pointing to a fresh
horse-trail on the side of the road.
Edmonstone stretched across to look. It was difficult in the dusk to
distinguish the trail, which was the simple one of a horse walking.
"I saw no one," he said; "but during the last hour it would have been
impossible to see any one, as close to the scrub as we are now. Whoever
it is, he must have struck the track hereabouts somewhere, or we should
have seen his trail before sundown."
"Whoever it is," said Flint, "we shall see him in a minute. Don't you
hear him? He is still at a walk."
Edmonstone listened, and the measured beat of hoofs grew upon his ear;
another moment and a horseman's back was looming through the dusk--very
broad and round, with only the crown of a wideawake showing above the
shoulders. As the wagon drew abreast his horse was wheeled to one side,
and a hearty voice hailed the hawkers:
"Got a match, mateys? I've used my last, and I'm just weakening for a
smoke."
"Here's my box," said Dick, pulling up. "Take as many as you like."
And he dropped his match-box into a great fat hand with a wrist like a
ship's cable, and strong stumpy fingers: it was not returned until a
loaded pipe was satisfactorily alight; and as the tobacco glowed in the
bowl the man's face glowed in company. It was huge like himself, and
bearded to the eyes, which were singularly small and bright, and set
very close together.
"I don't like that face," said Dick when the fellow had thanked him with
redoubled heartiness, and ridden on.
"It looked good-natured."
"It was and it wasn't. I don't want to see it again; but I shall know it
if ever I do. I had as good a look at him as he had at us."
Flint made no reply; they entered the forest of low-sized malee and pine
in silence.
"Jack," gasped Edmonstone, very suddenly, after half-an-hour, "there's
some one galloping in the scrub somewhere--can't you hear?"
"Eh?" said Flint, waking from a doze.
"Some one's galloping in the scrub--can't you hear the branches
breaking? Listen."
"I hear nothing."
"Listen again."
Flint listened intently.
"Yes--no. I thought for an instant--but no, there is no sound now."
He was right: there was no sound then, and he was somewhat ruffled.
"What are you giving us, Dick? If you will push on, why, let's do it;
only we do one thing or the other."
Dick whipped up the horses without a word. For five minutes they trotted
on gamely; then, without warning, they leaped to one side with a shy
that half-overturned the wagon.
Side by side, and motionless in the starlight, sat two shadowy forms on
horseback, armed with rifles, and masked to the chin.
"Hands up," cried one of them, "or we plug."
II
SUNDOWN
There was no time for thought, much less for action, beyond that taken
promptly by Flint, who shot his own hands above his head without a
moment's hesitation, and whispered to Dick to do the same. Any other
movement would have been tantamount to suicide. Yet it was with his eyes
open and his head cool that Flint gave the sign of submission.
The horsemen sat dark and motionless as the trees of the sleeping forest
around them. They were contemplating the completeness of their triumph,
grinning behind their masks.
Flint saw his chance. Slowly, very slowly, his left arm, reared rigidly
above his head, swayed backward; his body moved gently with his arm; his
eyes never left the two mysterious mounted men.
He felt his middle finger crowned by a cool ring. It was the muzzle of
his precious Colt. One grasp, and at least he would be armed.
He turned his wrist for the snatch, gazing steadily all the while at the
two vague shadows of men. Another second--and a barrel winked in the
starlight, to gleam steadily as it covered Flint's broad chest. He who
had called upon them to throw up their hands spoke again; his voice
seemed to come from the muzzle of the levelled rifle.
"Stretch an inch more, you on the near-side, and you're the last dead
man."
Flint shrugged his shoulders. The game was lost. There was no more need
to lose his head than if the game had been won. There was no need at all
to lose his life.
"I give you best," said he, without the least emotion in his
extraordinary voice.
"Fold your arms and come down," said the man with the rifle, his finger
on the trigger.
Flint did as he was ordered.
"The same--you with the reins."
Edmonstone's only answer was a stupefied stare.
"Jump down, my friend, unless you want helping with this."
Dick obeyed apathetically; he was literally dazed. At a sign from the
man with the rifle he took his stand beside Flint; three paces in front
of the luckless pair shone the short barrel of the Winchester repeater.
The other robber had dismounted, and was standing at the horses' heads.
In this position, a moment's silence fell upon the four men, to be
broken by the coarse, grating laughter of a fifth. Edmonstone turned his
head, saw another horseman issuing from the trees, and at once
recognised the burly figure of the traveller who had borrowed his
match-box less than an hour before. At that moment, and not until then,
Dick Edmonstone realised the situation. It was desperate; all was lost!
The lad's brain spun like a top: reason fled from it; his hand clutched
nervously at the pocket where the money was, and he swore in his heart
that if that went, his life might go with it.
In another instant the hairy ruffian had ridden his horse close up to
Edmonstone, whipped his foot from the stirrup, and kicked the youngster
playfully in the chest--on that very spot which his thoughtless gesture
had betrayed.
At this the other bushrangers set up a laugh--a short one.
With a spring like a young leopard, Dick Edmonstone had the big horseman
by the beard, and down they came to the ground together. There, in the
sand, they rolled over each other, locked in mortal combat--writhing,
leaping, twisting, shifting--so that the leader of the band, though he
pointed his rifle at the struggling men, dared not fire, for fear of
hitting the wrong one. But there came a moment when the struggling
ceased, when Flint sprang forward with a hoarse cry on his lips and
Sundown took careless aim with the Winchester.
Dick Edmonstone was lying on his back with white, upturned face. Two
crushing weights pinned down each arm below the shoulder; his adversary
was kneeling on him with grinding teeth and a frightful face, and one
hand busy at his belt. His hand flew up with a gleam. It was at that
moment that the man with the rifle raised it and fired.
The bearded ruffian shook his hand as though hit, and the haft of a
knife slipped from it; the bullet had carried away the blade. With a
curse he felt for his revolver.
"Don't be a fool, Jem Pound," said the marksman quietly, lowering his
smoking piece. "Before you bring the lot of us to the gallows, I'll put
a bullet through your own fat head. Get up, you big fool! Cut the mokes
adrift, and turn everything out of the wagon."
The man Pound rose sulkily, with a curious last look at the young
Englishman's throat, and hell-fire in his little eyes.
"Ben, watch this cove," the chief went on, pointing to Flint, "and watch
him with the shooter. I'll see to the youngster myself. Come here, my
friend."
The speaker was plainly no other than the rascal who called himself
Sundown; the hawkers heard the sobriquet on the lips of the other masked
man, and their glances met. He was wrapped in a cloak that hid him from
head to heels, stooped as he walked, and was amply masked. What struck
Flint--who was sufficiently cool to remain an attentive observer--was
the absence of vulgar bluster about this fellow; he addressed
confederates and captives alike in the same quiet, decisive tones,
without either raising his voice to a shout or filling the air with
oaths. It appeared that Ned Kelly had not been the last of the real
bushrangers, after all.
"You come along with me," said he, quietly; and drew Dick aside,
pointing at him the rifle, which he grasped across the breech, with a
finger still upon the trigger.
"Now," continued Sundown, when they had withdrawn a few yards into the
scrub, "turn out that pocket." He tapped Edmonstone on the chest with
the muzzle of the rifle.
Dick folded his arms and took a short step backward.
"Shoot me!" he exclaimed, looking the robber full in the face. "Why did
you save me a minute ago? I prefer to die. Shoot me, and have done with
it."
"Open your coat," said the bushranger.
Edmonstone tore open not only his coat, but his shirt as well, thus
baring his chest.
"There. Shoot!" he repeated hoarsely.
Sundown stared at the boy with a moment's curiosity, but paid no heed to
his words.
"Empty that pocket."
Dick took out the pocket-book that contained all the funds of the firm.
"Open it."
Dick obeyed.
"How much is in it?"
"A hundred and thirty pounds."
"Good! Cheques!"
"More notes."
The robber laughed consumedly.
"Take them, if you are going to," said Dick, drawing a deep breath.
Sundown did take them--pocket-book and all--still covering his man with
the rifle. The moon was rising. In the pale light the young fellow's
face was ghastly to look upon; it had the damp pallor of death itself.
The bushranger eyed it closely, and half-dropped the bushranger's
manner.
"New chum, I take it!"
"What of that?" returned Dick bitterly.
"And not long set up shop?"
Dick made no answer. Sundown stepped forward and gripped his shoulder.
"Say, mate, is this hundred and odd quid so very much to you?"
Still no answer.
"On oath, now: is it so very much?"
Dick looked up wildly.
"Much? It is everything. You have robbed me of all I have! You have
saved my life when I'd as soon lose it with my money. Yes, it's all I
have in the world, since you want to know! Do you want to madden me, you
cur? Shoot me--shoot, I tell you. If you don't I'll make you!" And the
young madman clenched his fist as he spoke.
That instant he felt himself seized by the neck and pushed forward, with
a ring of cold steel pressing below his ear.
"Here you--Jem Pound--have your revenge and bind this cub. Bind tight,
but fair, for I'm watching you."
In five minutes the blood would scarcely circulate in a dozen different
parts of Edmonstone's body; he was bound as tightly as vindictive
villain could bind him, to the off hind-wheel of his own wagon. Sundown
stood by with the rifle, and saw it done.
Flint had already been bound to the near hind-wheel, so that the
partners were lashed back to back--both able to watch their property
looted at the rear of the wagon, but unable to exchange glances.
Sundown strolled about during the operation, which his subordinates
conducted with deepening disgust, till he returned and asked what they
had got.
"Precious little," was the answer. "Stock sold out--boxes mostly empty."
Nevertheless some few varieties of bush merchandise strewed the ground,
and hats, boots, and pipes were quickly selected by Jem Pound and the
man addressed as Ben; though as for Sundown, he seemed content with a
supply of smoking materials, and, indeed, to be more or less preoccupied
while the plunder went forward. At length, at a word from him, the other
men mounted their horses, while their leader walked round to where Flint
was spread-eagled against the wheel.
"Is there anything you want before we go?" the bushranger inquired, as
civilly as you please.
"Yes," said Flint; "I want you to fill my pipe, stick it in my mouth,
and put a match to it, if you will be so good."
The other laughed, but complied with the full request before turning his
attention to young Edmonstone.
"As for you," he said, "here's your pocket-book. I couldn't take such a
treasure from you. Better keep it in memory of the fortune (the immense
fortune of a hundred and thirty pounds) it once contained. Not that I
have quite emptied it, though; I may be a devil, but I never clean a man
out quite; so you'll find enough left to get you a night's lodging and
some tucker. And--and don't forget old Sundown altogether; you may be
able to put in a good word for him some day!"
These last words, though spoken after a pause, were thrown off lightly
enough; yet somehow they were unlike the rest that had gone before.
Before their sound had died away Sundown was in his saddle, and the
sound of horses galloping through the scrub was growing faint and far
away.
Flint was the first to free himself. It took him hours. His teeth ached,
his fingers bled, before the last knot that bound his hands was undone.
His knife quickly did the rest.
He went straight to Edmonstone, who had not spoken since the gang
decamped. Flint found him pale and cold, with a very hard expression
upon his face. Dick allowed himself to be set free without a
word--without so much as an intelligent glance.
The horses could be heard munching bits of bushes close at hand. They
were easily caught. Nor was it a difficult task to a ready-handed fellow
like Flint to splice the traces, which the bushrangers had cut.
The crestfallen partners were on the point of reentering the wagon, when
Flint saw the pocket-book lying where it had been dropped.
"Better take it," said Flint sorrowfully.
In utter apathy Dick picked it up.
"Wouldn't you see if they've cleaned it entirely?" suggested Flint.
With listless fingers Edmonstone withdrew the elastic and opened the
pocket-book.
By this time the moon had mounted high in the clear southern sky; by her
pure white rays they might have read small print. Flint's heart smote
him; it was by his doing they had carried so many notes, through a fad
of his about opening their banking account with hard cash; at cheques
the bushrangers might easily have turned up their noses, as bushrangers
had done before. But now, as it was--poor, poor young devil!
A cry broke the silence, and rang out loud and wild upon the still night
air. It came from Flint's side. He turned to find his companion
tottering and trembling.
Dick Edmonstone had dropped the pocket-book, and was nervously counting
a roll of crisp, crackling papers.
"They are all here!--all! all!" he whispered in a strange, broken voice.
"Never!"
"Yes, all--all! Only think of it; our fortune is not lost, after
all--it's made--the key to it is in my hand again! Jack, the fellow had
pity on me. No, I mean on us. I don't mean to be selfish, Jack; it's
share and share alike, between you and me, and always will be. But if
you knew--if you knew! Jack, I'll put in that good word for him--I'll
make it more than words, if ever I get the chance! For I do owe him
something," said the poor fellow, carried away by reaction and
excitement, so that his breaking voice trembled between sobs and
laughter. "I do owe that Sundown something. God bless him--that's all
_I_ say."
But Flint said nothing at all; he was much too amazed for words.
III
AFTER FOUR YEARS
One chilly night in June, 1886, the ship _Hesper_, bound from Melbourne
to London, sailed into the Channel. She carried the usual wool cargo and
twenty saloon passengers besides. When the Lizard light was sighted, the
excitement--which had increased hourly since the Western Islands were
left astern--knew no reasonable bounds. For the _Hesper_ was a hundred
and eight days out; and among her passengers were grizzled Colonists, to
whom this light was the first glimmer of England for thirty years; men
who had found in the Colonial Exhibition at South Kensington an excuse
to intrust vast flocks and herds to the hands of overseers, and to
consummate that darling scheme of every prosperous Colonial, which they
render by their phrase "a trip home." Sweepstakes on the date of
sighting England, got up in the tropics, were now promptly settled;
quarrels begun in the Southern Ocean were made up in the magic element
of British waters; discontent was in irons, and joy held the ship. Far
into the middle-watch festive souls perambulated the quarter-deck with
noisy expressions of mirth, though with the conviction that the vessel
was behaving badly; whereas the vessel was a good deal more innocent of
that charge than the gentlemen who preferred it. But even when the last
of these roysterers retired there was still one passenger left on the
poop.
A young man leaned with folded arms upon the port rail, staring out into
the night. It seemed as though his eye penetrated the darkness, and
found something bright beyond, so wistful was its gaze. One bell rang
out from the forecastle, two bells followed half an hour later at one
o'clock, but the figure of this dreamer remained motionless. For an hour
he did not stir; but, as his imagination became more vivid, the
expression of his eyes grew softer, until their yearning melted into a
thin, thin film, and the firm lines of the mouth relaxed, and facial
creases carved by a few hard years were smoothed away. He was only a few
hours ahead of the _Hesper_ after all: she was off the Cornish coast,
and he (in fancy) far up the Thames.
Three-bells aroused the dreamer. He stood upright with a start. He
passed his hand quickly across his forehead, as if to rid his brain of
weak thoughts. He began tramping the deck rapidly. Now the whole man was
changed: his step was brisk, his frame instinct with nervous animation,
his chest swelled proudly, his eyes sparkled with triumph. He had hung
over the rail like any sentimental home-comer; he marched the deck like
a conquering hero.
Yet this was one of the youngest men on board, and his years of absence
from England were but a tithe of some of his fellow-passengers. During a
long voyage the best and the worst of a man's character come out; but
this man's display had been less complete than any one else's, and he
was probably the better liked on board in consequence. Though reserved
and quiet, he had, indeed without being conscious of it, become very
popular. Perhaps one factor in this was the accidental discovery,
half-way through the voyage, that he could draw uncommonly well; for it
opened up a source of unexpected entertainment at a time when the stock
amusements of the high seas had begun to flag. But there was one thing
about him which, had his fellow-passengers suspected it, in all
probability would have interfered considerably with his popularity: this
was the astounding fact that at the age of twenty-five he had already
made his fortune.
One scene from the bush life of this exceedingly lucky young gentleman
has already been set forth. It will be sufficient to briefly glance at
the remainder of his Colonial career, since details of unbroken success
are voted a bore by common consent.
The firm of Flint and Edmonstone did well out of licensed hawking.
Perhaps their honesty--which was as transparent as it was original in
that line of business--had much to do with their success; for although
squatters were at first sceptical of the new firm, their eyes were at
once opened to the iniquitous prices of the Jews, who had hitherto
enjoyed a monopoly of their custom. The newcomers thus gained
experimental patronage, which they retained on their merits. After a
year they advanced a step in the mercantile scale of the Colony: they
set up a general store at a rising settlement on the Darling. The store
had not been opened six months when the senior partner's chequered life
in the Colonies was terminated in a manner utterly unforeseen. Word came
that he had inherited, through an accommodating series of deaths, money
and property in Ireland. It was no brilliant heritage, but it held out
advantages greater on the whole than back-block storekeeping could be
expected to afford. Withdrawing a temperate share of the profits, Mr.
John Flint kicked the dust of the Riverina from his long boots, and
finally disappeared from the face of the desert, and Edmonstone was left
sole proprietor of a most promising "concern."
The luck that had hitherto attended him was soon to be enhanced; for,
gold being discovered close to the little township on the Darling, a
"rush" from all parts of Australia followed. As in most similar cases of
late years, expectations were by no means realised on the new diggings.
Still, people came, and the storekeeper was a made man.
A colonist of less than three years' standing, he joined three congenial
spirits in the enterprise of stocking a station in the new Kimberley
district of Western Australia. Here a huge success seemed certain in
process of time; when, in the full tide of prosperity, with all he
touched turning to gold beneath his fingers, with the lust of wealth
upon him, there came a sudden revulsion of feeling. He realised that he
had already amassed a fortune--small enough as fortunes go, but beyond
his wildest hopes when quitting England. He saw that to go farther was
to pursue wealth for wealth's sake--which was a rather lofty view of it;
and that luck might not last for ever--which was shrewd; and that, with
the sufficiency he had won, a rather better kind of existence was within
reach. In short, he sickened of money-grubbing in a single night, and
turned desperately home-sick instead; and, as it was not a game of
cards, he was able, without incurring anything worse than compassion, to
rise a winner. He determined to go home, invest his "pile," live on the
interest, and--devote himself to art! He journeyed forthwith to
Melbourne, and there succeeded in disposing of his share in the
Kimberley station for a sum little short of five figures.
Dick Edmonstone was opposed to sensational methods, or he would have
taken the first mail-steamer and dropped like a thunderbolt among his
people in England, with his money in his pocket. Besides, an exceptional
amount of experience crammed into four years had robbed him, among other
things, of nearly (though not quite) all his boyish impetuosity. So he
merely wrote two letters by the first mail to his mother and to a
certain Colonel Bristo. Thereafter he took his passage by the clipper
_Hesper_, then loading at Williamstown, and prepared for a period of
reflection, anticipation, and well-earned rest.
Dick Edmonstone had altered a good deal during his four years in
Australia. In the first place, the big boy had become a man, and a man
who held up his head among other men; a man who had made his way by his
own indomitable perseverance, and who thereby commanded your respect; a
man of all-round ability in the opinion of his friends (and they were
right); a man of the world in his own (and he was wrong). And all at
twenty-five! The old tremendous enthusiasm had given place to a
thoroughly sanguine temperament of lusty, reliant manhood. He was cooler
now, no doubt, but his heart was still warm and his head still hot.
Strangers took him for thirty. His manner was always independent, could
be authoritative, and was in danger of becoming arrogant. This much,
successful money-hunting had naturally brought about. But a generous
disposition had saved him from downright selfishness through it all, and
the talisman of a loyal, honest, ardent love had led him blameless
through a wild and worldly life. And he was still young--young in many
ways. His hopes and beliefs were still boundless; they had all come true
so far. He had not found the world a fraud yet. On the contrary, he
liked the world, which was natural; and thought he knew it, which did
not follow because he happened to know some rough corners of it.
One curious characteristic of young Edmonstone as a public schoolman and
a modern young Englishman was the entire absence in him of false pride.
Though transported pretty directly from Cambridge to Australia, he had
taken to retail trade (of a humble kind at that) with philosophical
sang-froid. On leaving England he had asked himself, What was his chief
object in going out? And he had answered, To make money and return. Did
it matter how he made it, once out there? No. No manual toil need
degrade him, no honest business put him to shame. In England it is
different; but in her democratic Colonies her younger sons--whether from
Poplar or from Eton--must take the work that offers, as they covet
success. Dick Edmonstone jumped at his first opening; that it chanced to
be in the licensed hawking line cost him hardly a pang.
Indeed, he looked back lovingly in his success on those early days,
when all he possessed in the world was invested in that daring venture.
He thought of the anxiety that consumed him at the time, and of Jack
Flint's cooling influence; and whenever he thought of those days one
episode rose paramount in his brain, obliterating other memories. That
episode was the "sticking-up" of the wagon on the first trip by Sundown
and his men, which must have meant his ruin but for the extraordinary
behaviour of the bushranger with regard to the pocket-book and its
contents. He did not forget that the bushranger had preserved his life
as well as restored his money. And that hundred pounds actually turned
out to be the nucleus of a fortune! Sundown--poor fellow--was captured;
perhaps by this time hanged, or imprisoned for life. Just before the
_Hesper_ sailed, word of the outlaw's arrest in a remote district of
Queensland was telegraphed from Brisbane. He had been heard of from time
to time during the preceding years, but on the whole his gang had done
less mischief and shed less blood than some of their predecessors. As
for Dick, when he read of the capture he was downright sorry. It may be
a passive order of kindness that refrains from robbing a man; yet Dick
was so peculiarly constituted as to feel in secret more than a passing
regret at the news.
But as the _Hesper_ drew towards the Channel he thought less and less of
the life he had left behind, and more and more of the life before him.
He longed all day to feel the springy turf of England under foot once
more; to have the scent of English flowers in his nostrils; to listen to
English larks carolling out of sight in the fleecy clouds of an English
sky. How green the fields would seem! How solid the houses, how
venerable the villages, how historic the rivers of the Old World! And
then how he longed to plunge into the trio he styled "his people"--his
mother the widow, his brother the City clerk, his sister the saint! Yet
what were these yearnings beside one other! What the dearest kin beside
her who must yet be nearer and dearer still!--the young girl from whom
he had fled to seek his fortune--for whom he had found it. In her his
honest yearning centred, in her his high hopes culminated. Of her he
thought all day, gazing out over the sun-spangled waves, and all night,
tossing in his berth. A thousand times he cursed his folly in choosing
canvas before steam; the time was so long--and seemed longer; the
brightest days were interminable ages; favouring gales were lighter than
zephyrs.
He allowed no doubts to interfere with the pleasures of anticipation; no
fears, no anxieties. If he thought of what might have happened at home
during the last four or five months since he had received news, the
catalogue of calamities was endless. He did not believe disappointment
possible through any sort of a calamity. If those he loved still
lived--as he knew they did five or six months ago--then he was sure of
his reception; he was sure of hearts and hands; he was sure of his
reception from every one--yes, from every one.
The future seemed so splendid and so near! Yet it was giving the future
hardly a fair chance to expect as much of it as young Edmonstone
expected during the last days of his homeward voyage.
IV
HOW DICK CAME HOME
A crowd of the usual dock order had gathered on the quay at Blackwall by
the time the _Hesper_ made her appearance, towed by two Channel tugs.
Some time, however, passed before the vessel swung near enough to the
quay for recognitions to begin; and by then the dingy line of dock
loafers and watermen was enhanced by a second rank of silk hats and a
slight leaven of bonnets. With intolerable sloth the big ship swung
closer and closer, broadside on; greetings were excitedly exchanged, and
at length the gangway was thrown across and held by a dozen eager hands.
Dick Edmonstone, at the break of the poop, bent forward to search among
the faces on the quay, apparently without finding any he knew. But
presently, as his eye glanced rapidly up and down the line, he became
conscious of one gaze fixed steadily upon him; twice he overlooked this
face; the third time, a mutual stare, a quick smile of delight, a bound
across the gangway, and Dick was grasping his brother's hand.
"Dick!"
"Maurice!"
Then they seemed to gasp in the same breath:
"Never should have known you!" "Nor I you--from Adam!"
And then they were silent for a whole minute, scrutinising one another
from head to heels; until Maurice said simply that he had got away from
the bank and needn't go back, and fell to asking about the voyage, and
the weather, and the passengers, and had the cabin been comfortable? and
what a stunning ship! To all of which Dick replied coherently; and for
five minutes they talked as though they had parted last week. Only for
such trifles could they find ready words; so much was inexpressible just
at first.
They went into Dick's cabin; and there their tongues loosened a little.
All were well at home, and happy, and comfortable; the news was good all
round, as Dick phrased it, with thankfulness in his heart. That was the
first delicious fact to be realised. After that, words flew with
marvellous rapidity; the brothers were soon like two competitive human
looms, turning them out one against the other. Fortunately the pace was
too quick to last; in ten minutes both were breathless. Then they
fastened upon stewards and Customs officials, and, by dint of some
bullying and a little bribing, managed finally to get clear of the ship
with Dick's luggage.
Dick was in tremendous spirits. He was back in old England at last, and
testified his appreciation of the fact every minute.
Between Blackwall and Fenchurch Street he made odious comparisons
touching Colonial travelling; in the four-wheeler across to Waterloo he
revelled in the rattle and roar of the traffic; along the loop-line his
eyes feasted on the verdant fields that had haunted his dreams in the
wilderness.
The Edmonstones lived in a plain little house in a road at Teddington,
in which all the houses were little, plain, and uniformly alike. They
called their house "The Pill Box"; but that was a mere nickname, since
all the houses in that plain little road were fearfully and wonderfully
christened, and theirs no exception to the rule. Its name--blazoned on
the little wooden gate--was Iris Lodge; and being sane people, and
sufficiently familiar with suburban ideas, the Edmonstones had never
attempted to discover the putative point of the appellation. They were
satisfied to dub the house "The Pill Box," with malicious candour, among
themselves. For the Edmonstones did not take kindly (much less at first)
to road or house. And naturally, since five years ago, before Mr.
Edmonstone's death, they had lived in a great, square, charming villa,
with a garden-wall running a quarter of a mile along the towing-path,
within sight of Kingston Bridge. But then Richard Edmonstone senior had
dropped dead, at the height of his reputed success on the Stock Exchange
and of his undoubted popularity in the clubs. To the surprise of all but
those who knew him most intimately, he had left next to nothing behind
him; the house by the river had been hurriedly sold, young Richard had
as promptly emigrated, and the rest of them had bundled into as small a
house as they could find in the neighbourhood.
But squat, snug, bourgeois as it was, Dick felt that the plain little
house was nevertheless home, as the cab rattled over the railway bridge
and along the road to the left, and so on towards "The Pill Box." It was
raining (that June was not an ideal month), and the vehicle was the
detestable kind of victoria so much affected by the honest cabmen of the
Thames valley; still, Dick insisted on having the hood down to sniff the
air of his native heath. Yet, though in sufficiently good spirits, his
heart was beating quickly within him. These homecomings are no small
things, unless the rover be old or loveless, and Dick was neither.
After all, the meeting was got over, as such meetings have been got over
before, with a few tears and fewer words and melting looks and warm
embraces. And so Dick Edmonstone was given back to the bosom of his
family.
When the first and worst of it was over, he could not rest in a chair
and talk to them, but must needs roam about the room, examining
everybody and everything as he answered their questions. How well his
mother was looking! and how her dark eyes beamed upon him!--the more
brightly, perhaps, from their slight moisture. Her hand was as smooth
and white as ever, and her hair whiter; how well it suited her to wear
no cap, and have the silver mass pushed back like that! He had declared
to himself he had never seen so pretty a woman over five-and-thirty--and
his mother was fifty, and looking every year of it. And Fanny--well,
she, perhaps, was as far from beauty as ever; but her wavy chestnut hair
was matchless still, and as for expression, had there ever been one so
sweet and gentle in the world before? It was Maurice who had all the
good looks, though. But Maurice was pale and slim and rather
round-shouldered; and instantly the image of the lad bending all day
over the desk rose in Dick's mind and made him sad. What a different
man the bush would make of Maurice! Then he looked round at the old
familiar objects; the Landseer engravings and Fanny's water-colour
sketches; the cottage piano, the writing-table, old pieces of odd ware
which he remembered from his cradle, the fancy ormolu clock, which he
had hated from his earliest days of discernment. He looked no further--a
telegram was stuck up in front of the clock, and flaunted in his face:
"Edmonstone, Iris Lodge, Teddington,--Ship _Hesper_ signalled Start
Point ten this morning.--Bone and Phillips."
He read it curiously.
"Why, that's three days old!" he said, laughing. "Do you mean to say you
have been staring at that bit of paper ever since--a sort of deputy-me,
eh?"
"It was the first we heard," said the mother simply; and a subtle
something brought back her tears. "I half think I'll frame it!" she
added, smiling at her own weakness.
"I found out your other signallings," said Maurice. "I was in Bone's
office half-a-dozen times yesterday."
Dick continued his survey of the room.
"Well, I think I recognise everything," he said presently; "but, I say,
Fanny, I've got a thing or two for you to arrange in your high-art
fashion; some odds and ends you haven't seen the like of before, I
expect."
"No!" said Fanny.
"Oh, but I have, though; and some of 'em expressly for you."
"No!--really?--then what?"
"Aha, you'll see," said Dick. "Maurice, we'll unpack them now--if that
brute of a Customs functionary has left a whole thing in the box." And
the two left the room.
"To think," said Fanny musingly, "that our Dick is back! Really back,
and never going out again; and been through all kinds of fearful
adventures; and sailed round the world, and been away four years and a
half--one can scarcely realise any of it. But above all, to think that
he has made his fortune!"
Mrs. Edmonstone started.
"Oh, Fanny," cried she, "I had forgotten that! He never once spoke of
it, and I didn't think of it. Oh, my boy, my boy!" She burst fairly into
sobs. Her joy had been too great to bear before she was reminded of this
overwhelming fact; it had brought the tears again and again to her eyes;
now it became akin to pain.
Yet she did nothing but smile after her sons returned, laden with
treasures and curios which they laid out all over the room. There was a
famous rug of Tasmanian opossum skins, a dozen emu eggs, the tail of a
lyre-bird, the skin of an immense carpet-snake, a deadly collection of
boomerangs and spears, and a necklace of quandong stones mounted with
silver. Mrs. Edmonstone beheld in silent wonder. As for Fanny, she was
in ecstasies ("It is as good as the Exhibition," she said). So the time
slipped away, and before half the quaint things had been examined and
described it was dinner-time. They were all so happy together that first
afternoon!
Few and simple were the courses at Iris Lodge, but at dessert Maurice
produced some particular old Benedictine (which had been in the family
as long as he had), and Dick's health was drunk with unspeakable
enthusiasm. Dick blushed; for it made what he burned to say more
awkward; but at last he blurted out, apparently appealing to the
mildewed Benedictine bottle:
"I say--will you all think me an awful brute if I clear out for an hour
or two? Mother, will you? You know what I have still to do--whom to
see--to complete my first day in old England."
"Why, of course!" from the younger ones; and Mrs. Edmonstone simply
pronounced the question: "Graysbrooke?"
"Yes," said Dick. "I must go and see them, you know. You know why, too,"
he added simply.
No one said anything. There was a rather awkward pause, which it fell to
Fanny to break.
"By the bye," she said tentatively, "they have a visitor there."
She was prepared to add further information, but Dick looked at her
blankly, and clearly was not listening. They rose from the table, and
almost directly the three who went into the drawing-room heard the front
door open and shut.
Dick was thankful to be out in the cool and the twilight, and alone. The
day had been showery and dull, but late in the afternoon the clouds had
broken up, and now they floated serenely in the still air, just touched
with a pale pink rim to westward. The gravelly ground was wet enough to
sound crisply underfoot--nothing more. Drip-drip fell the drops from the
laburnums in the gardens all down the road; drip-drip all round, from
tree, shrub, and flower; every leaf distilling perfume every minute.
Dick appreciated the evidence of his nostrils with the relish of a man
who has smelt nothing but brine for four months, nothing like this for
four years. Nevertheless, he walked on briskly, down into the London
road, that here lies parallel with the river, then down a curve to the
left, as the highroad bends away from the river to form the High Street
of Teddington; then to a full stop at a corner opposite the old
churchyard. He had intended to walk along the lower road towards
Kingston, straight to the gates of Graysbrooke, which fronted the river.
But now the thought occurred to him (prompted by the sweetness of the
evening, and backed up by the fact that it was as yet rather early to
drop in casually for the evening anywhere--even at the house of one's
sweetheart whom one hadn't seen for over four years). How about hiring a
boat and rowing to Graysbrooke? It was no distance; and then, only to be
afloat again on the dear old Thames! Dick did not hesitate at the corner
long, but turned sharp down to the left, and hired his shallop at the
ferry landing.
Down with the stream a hundred yards, and he was level with the lock; a
few strong strokes against the stream, and the way already on the boat,
and her nose grounded on the rollers; a minute's exertion, a minute's
fumbling for coppers, and he floated out into the narrow reach beyond
the lock. He paddled slowly along, bestowing friendly glances on the
banks. The cottages on the left, close to the lock, he remembered just
as he saw them; but the poplars on the island, inverted in the glassy
water--he felt convinced they had grown. With each stroke of the oars
the voice of the weir grew louder; it seemed to be roaring its rough
welcome to him, just as yonder alders, right across the stream, through
the danger-posts, were bowing theirs. How glorious it was, this first
row on the Thames!
But now the house was almost in sight, and he could think no longer of
the river. Slowly, as he sculled on, Graysbrooke discovered itself: a
gray, stone, turreted building, set in leafy trees. There were
battlements along the coping, which might have looked venerable but for
the slates that peeped between them; yet the stone was mellowed by time;
and altogether there was nothing either offensively new or unwholesomely
ancient in the appearance of the house. Dick saw it all in his mind even
before he stopped rowing to satisfy the cravings of his hungry eyes.
Still twilight, and the river here a mirror without flaw, every stone
had its duplicate in the clear depths below; that parallelogram of ruddy
light that fastened Dick's attention showed with especial sharpness in
the reflection. The light was in the drawing-room. They had finished
dinner. He could storm them now--at once.
A little inlet entered one end of the lawn; in here he sculled and
moored his boat. Then he sprang upon the close-cropped grass and stood
transfixed.
The light in the dining-room was turned low; but that in the room to the
right of the hall-door--the room with the French window--was shining
brightly. And through the open window there burst, as Dick's feet
touched the grass, the sound of a girl's song. The voice was low and
clear, and full of youth and tenderness; it rose, and fell, and
trembled, for the singer possessed feeling; it hastened here and
lingered there, and abused none of these tricks, for she sang with what
is rarer than feeling--taste. Dick trembled violently; he wanted to rush
into the room then and there, but he was thrilled, and rooted to the
ground; and after a bar or two the voice soothed him and set his spirit
at rest, like the touch of a true friend's hand in the hour of pain.
Then he stood quite humbly, hoping it would never, never end. What the
song was he didn't know, and never thought of finding out afterwards; he
might have heard it a hundred times or never before; he knew nothing
during these few transported minutes--nothing, except that he was
listening to her voice.
As the last low note was borne out upon the air, and voices within the
room murmured the conventional grace after song, Dick stepped forward,
meaning to boldly enter. Two yards from the window, however, he silently
halted; it was so dark that he could see into the room without himself
being seen from within. The temptation to avail himself of so obvious an
advantage was too strong to be resisted.
There were three persons in the room, but for the eyes of Dick only
one--the two men made no immediate impression on his physical
perception. It was a supreme moment in his life. He had left England for
the sake of a young girl, to make his way in the world so that he might
return and proudly claim her: for he had won her heart. And now he had
made his way through toil and privation to a small fortune, and had
come back to woo her hand. She was here--this girl for whom he had given
his early manhood's strength, his brain's essence, the best drops of his
life's blood; this girl whose image had beckoned him onward when he grew
faint, and urged him still further in the hour of success; whose name
had risen to his lips in despair and in peril, inspiring new
courage--here, within ten feet of him; he striving to realise it, and to
grow cool before going into her presence, yet yearning to fling himself
at her feet.
It was good that she was ignorant of his approach, for it showed her to
him in a fair light straight away--completely natural and unconscious of
herself. She had seated herself after her song at a low table, and was
making an indolent attack on some trifling work with her scissors. The
lamplight, from under its crimson shade, fell upon her hair and face and
neck with marvellous results, for it made her beautiful. She was not at
all beautiful. She had a peerless complexion, a good nose, matchless
teeth; otherwise her features were of no account. But she was
exceedingly pretty; and as she sat there with the warm lamplight
changing her ordinary light-coloured hair into a ruddy gold fit for any
goddess, a much less prejudiced person than Dick Edmonstone might have
been pardoned the notion that she was lovely, though she was not.
When at last he managed to raise his eyes from her they rested upon a
face that was entirely strange. A tall, massive man, in evening dress,
leaned with an elbow on the chimneypiece, his head lightly resting on
his hand, one foot on the edge of the fender. There could be no two
opinions as to the beauty of this face--it was handsome and striking to
the last degree. Burnt, like Dick's, to the colour of brick-dust, it was
framed in dark curly hair, with beard and whiskers of a fairer hue,
while the mouth was hidden by a still fairer, almost golden, moustache.
The effect was leonine. Dick caught his profile, and saw that the
steady, downward gaze was bent upon the dainty little head that glowed
in the lamplight. From his vantage-post outside the window he glanced
from observer to observed. They were a sufficiently good-looking pair,
yet he overrated the one and underrated the other. He was by no means
attracted to this unknown exquisite; there was an ease about his pose
which bespoke freedom also; and his scrutiny of the unconscious girl was
of a kind that would at least have irritated any man in Dick's position.
Dick allowed his attention to rest but briefly upon the third occupant
of the room--a man with snowy hair and whiskers, who was apparently
dropping off to sleep in a big armchair. Somehow or other, the sight of
the men--but particularly of the stranger--acted on his heart like a
shower-bath on a man's head; his pulse slackened, he regained with
interest the self-possession with which he had first approached the
window. He took three steps forward, and stood in the middle of the
room.
A startled cry escaped the old man and the girl. The man by the
fireplace dropped his forearm and turned his head three inches.
Dick strode forward and grasped an outstretched hand.
"Colonel Bristo!"
"Dick Edmonstone!--is it really Dick?" a well-remembered voice repeated
a dozen times. "We knew you were on your way home, but--bless my soul!
bless my soul!"
The old soldier could think of nothing else to say; nor did it matter,
for Dick's salute was over and his back turned; he was already clasping
the hand of the fair young girl, who had risen, flushed and breathless,
to greet him.
He was speechless. He tried to say "Alice," but the sound was
inarticulate. Their eyes met.
A clatter in the fender. The tall man's heel had come down heavily among
the fire-irons.
"Let me introduce you," said Colonel Bristo to this man and Dick. "You
will like to know each other, since you both come from the same country:
Mr. Edmonstone, from Australia; Mr. Miles, from Australia! Mr. Miles was
born and bred there, Dick, and has never been in England before. So you
will be able to compare notes."
The two men stared at each other and shook hands.
V
THE FIRST EVENING AT GRAYSBROOKE
"Sit down, boy, sit down," said Colonel Bristo, "and let us have a look
at you. Mind, we don't know yet that you're not an impostor. You should
have brought proofs."
"Here are five-foot-ten of them," said Dick, laughing.
"To believe that, we must put you through examination--and
cross-examination," the Colonel added with a glance at his daughter;
"although I half believe you really are the man you profess to be. What
do you say, Alice?"
"I have a strong case--" Dick was beginning, but he was cut short.
"It is Dick," said the oracle sweetly.
"You take his word for it?" asked her father.
"No, I identify him," Alice answered with a quiet smile; "and he hasn't
altered so very much, when one looks at him."
Dick turned his head and met her eyes; they were serene and friendly.
"Thank you," he said to her, with gratitude in his voice. And, indeed,
he felt grateful to them all; to the Colonel for his ponderous
pleasantry, to Alice for her unembarrassed manner, to Mr. Miles for the
good taste he showed in minding his own business. (He had strolled over
to the window.)
"And when did you land?" inquired the Colonel.
"This morning."
"Only this morning!" exclaimed Alice; "then I think it was too good of
you to come and see us so soon; don't you, papa?"
Very kind of him indeed, papa thought. Dick was pleased; but he thought
they might have understood his eagerness. Alice, at any rate, should not
have been surprised--and probably was not. "I couldn't put it off," he
said, frankly.
There was a slight pause; then the Colonel spoke:
"That's kindly said, my boy; and if your mother knew how it does us good
to see you here, she would scarcely grudge us an hour or two this
evening--though grudge it you may depend she does. As for ourselves,
Dick, we can hardly realise that you are back among us."
"I can't realise it at all," murmured Dick, aloud but to himself.
"I won't worry you by asking point-blank how you like Australia," the
Colonel went on, "for that's a daily nuisance in store for you for the
next six months. But I may tell you we expect some tough yarns of you;
our taste has been tickled by Miles, who has some miraculous--why, where
is Miles?"
Miles had vanished.
"What made him go, I wonder?" asked Alice, with the slightest
perceptible annoyance. Dick did not perceive it, but he thought the
question odd. To disappear seemed to him the only thing a stranger, who
was also a gentleman, could have done; he was scarcely impartial on the
point, however.
Alice took up the theme which her father had dropped.
"Oh, Mr. Miles has some wonderful stories," said she; "he has had some
tremendous adventures."
"The deuce he has!" thought Dick, but he only said: "You should take
travellers' tales with a grain of salt."
"Thanks," Alice instantly retorted; "I shall remember that when you tell
yours."
They laughed over the retort. All three began to feel quite at ease.
"So you kept up your sketching out there, and drew bush scenes for our
illustrated papers?" said the Colonel.
"Two or three times; more often for the Colonial papers."
"We saw them all," said Alice, graciously--"I mean the English ones. We
cut them out and kept them." (She should have said that she did.)
"Did you, though?" said Dick, delighted.
"Yes," said Alice, "and I have a crow to pick with you about them. That
'Week in the Sandwich Islands'--it was yours, wasn't it?"
Dick admitted that it was.
"Oh, and pray when were you in the Sandwich Islands?"
He confessed that he had never seen them.
"So you not only cheated a popular journal--a nice thing to do!--but
deceived the British public, which is a far more serious matter. What
explanation have you to offer? What apology to 'One who was
Deceived'--as I shall sign my 'Times' letter, when I write it?"
"Alice, you are an inquisitor," said Colonel Bristo. But Alice replied
with such a mischievous, interested smile that Dick immediately ceased
to feel ashamed of himself.
"The fact is," he owned, "your popular journal doesn't care a fig
whether one has been to a place so long as one's sketches of it are
attractive. I did them a thing once of a bullock-dray stuck up in the
mud; and how did it appear? 'The War at the Cape: Difficulties in
Reaching the Front.' And they had altered the horns of my bullocks, if
you please, to make 'em into South African cattle! You see, just then
Africa was of more interest to your British public than Australia.
Surely you won't be so hard on me now? You see you have made me divulge
professional secrets by your calumnies."
Alice said she forgave him, if all that was true; but she added, slyly:
"One must take travellers' tales with a pinch of salt, you know!"
"Come, Alice," said her father, "if you insist on pitching into our
artist, he shall have his fling at our photographer. Dick, she's taken
to photography--it's lately become the fashion. Look on that table,
under the lamp; you'll find some there that she was trimming, or
something, when you dropped in our midst."
"May I look at them?" Dick asked, moving over to Alice.
"Certainly; but they're very bad, I'm afraid; and since you artists
scorn photography--as so inartistic, you know--I suppose you will be a
severe critic."
"Not when this is the subject," said Dick, in a low voice, picking up a
print; "how did you manage to take yourself?"
He was sitting beside her at the little table, with the lamp between
them and the Colonel; he instinctively lowered his voice, and a grain of
the feeling he had so far successfully repressed escaped into his tone.
"Someone took off the cap for me."
"Oh. Who?"
"Who? Oh, I get anybody to take the cap off when I am so vain as to take
myself--anybody who is handy."
"Mr. Miles, for instance?" It was a stray question, suggested by no
particular train of thought, and spoken carelessly; there was no trace
of jealousy in the tone--it was too early for that; but Alice looked up,
quick to suspect, and answered shortly:
"Yes, if you like."
Dick was genuinely interested, and noticed in her tone nothing amiss.
Several of the photographs turned out to be of Alice, and they charmed
him.
"Did Mr. Miles take all these?" he asked, lightly; he was forced to
speak so before her father: the restraint was natural, though he
marvelled afterwards that he had been able to maintain it so long.
Alice, however, read him wrong. She was prepared for pique in her old
lover, and imagined it before it existed. She answered with marked
coldness:
"A good many of them."
This time Dick detected the unpleasant ring in her words--he could not
help but detect it. A pang shot to his heart. His first (and only)
impression of Miles, which had fled from his mind (with all other
impressions) while talking to her, swiftly returned. He had used the
man's name, a minute ago, without its conveying anything to his mind; he
used it now with a bitterness at heart which crept into his voice.
"And don't you return the compliment? I see no photographs of Mr. Miles
here; and he would look so well in one."
"He has never been taken in his life--and never means to be. Now, Dick,
you have seen them all," she added quite softly, her heart smiting her;
and with that she rolled all the prints into one little cylinder. Dick
was in that nervous state in which a kind word wipes out unkindness the
moment it is spoken, and the cloud lifted at once from his face. They
were silent for more than a minute. Colonel Bristo quietly left the
room.
Then a strange change came over Dick. While others had been in the room,
composure had sat naturally upon him; but now that they were alone
together, and the dream of his exile so far realised, that armour fell
from him, and left his heart bare. He gazed at his darling with
unutterable emotion; he yearned to clasp her in his arms, yet dared not
to profane her with his touch. There had been vows between them when
they parted--vows out of number, and kisses and tears; but no betrothal,
and never a letter. He could but gaze at her now--his soul in that
gaze--and tremble; his lips moved, but until he had conquered his
weakness no words came. As for Alice, her eyes were downcast, and
neither did she speak. At length, and timidly, he took her hand. She
suffered this, but drew ever so slightly away from him.
"Alice," he faltered, "this is the sweetest moment of my life. It is
what I have dreamt of, Alice, but feared it might never come. I cannot
speak; forgive me, dear."
She answered him cunningly:
"It is very nice to have you back again, Dick."
He continued without seeming to hear her, and his voice shook with
tenderness: "Here--this moment--I can't believe these years have been; I
think we have never been separated----"
"It certainly doesn't seem four years," said Alice sympathetically, but
coolly.
Dick said nothing for a minute; his eyes hung on her downcast lids,
waiting for an answering beam of love, but one never came.
"You remember," he said at last, in a calmer voice, "you remember the
old days? and our promises? and how we parted?" He was going on, but
Alice interrupted him by withdrawing her hand from his and rising from
her chair.
"Dick," said she, kindly enough, "don't speak of them, especially not
now--but don't speak of them at all. We can't have childhood over again;
and I was a child then--of seventeen. I am grown up now, and altered;
and you--of course you have altered too."
"Oh Alice!"--the turning of the door handle made him break off short,
and add in a quick whisper, "I may speak to you to-morrow?"
"Very well," she answered indifferently, as there entered upon them a
little old lady in rustling silk and jingling beads--an old lady with a
sallow face and a piercing black eye, who welcomed Dick with a degree of
fussy effusiveness, combined with a look and tone which discounted her
words.
"Delighted to see you back, Mr. Richard--a pleasure I have often looked
forward to. We don't welcome conquering heroes every day," were in
themselves sufficiently kindly words, but they were accompanied by a
flash of the beady eyes from Dick to Alice, and a scrutiny of the young
fellow's appearance as searching as it was unsympathetic; and when a
smile followed, overspreading her loose, leathery, wrinkled skin, the
effect was full of uncanny suggestion.
"Yes, it is jolly to be back, and thanks very much," said Dick civilly;
"and it is charming to find you still here, Mrs. Parish."
"Of course I am still here," said the leathery little lady brusquely: as
if Colonel Bristo could live without his faithful domestic despot, as if
Graysbrooke could stand without its immemorial housekeeper! This Mrs.
Parish was ugly, vain, and old, and had appeared as old and as vain and
as ugly when, more than twenty years ago, she first entered the
Colonel's service. She had her good points, however, and a sense of duty
according to her lights. Though it be no extravagant praise, she was a
better person at heart than on the surface.
She now inquired with some condescension about Dick's Australian life,
and how he liked it, and where he had been, and how he should like
living altogether out there. She congratulated him on his success (she
called it "luck"), which she declared was in the mouths of everybody. On
that he felt annoyed, and wondered if she knew any details, and what
figure she would bid for some--of, say, his first year--in the local
gossip market.
"Of course you will go back," said the old woman with conviction; "all
lucky Colonists do. You will find England far too dull and slow for
you." At this point Colonel Bristo and Mr. Miles came back, chatting. "I
was saying," Mrs. Parish repeated for their benefit, "that of course Mr.
Richard will soon return to Australia; he will tire of England in six
weeks; it is always the way. Mr. Miles is the happy exception!" with a
smile upon that gentleman which strove to be arch--with doubtful
success.
"I never said I meant to make 'Home' my home," said the Australian, with
the drawl of his race, but in tones mellow and musical. His long frame
sank with graceful freedom into a chair beside Mrs. Parish, and his
clear blue eyes beamed upon them all--all except Dick, whom he forgot to
notice just then.
"I don't think Dick means to go back," said the Colonel cheerily. "That
would be treating us all abominably; in fact, we could never allow
it--eh, Dick?"
Dick looked gravely at the carpet.
"I mean to settle down in England now," said he; and he could not
refrain from a sly glance at Alice. Her eyes, bent thoughtfully upon
him, instantly filled with mischief.
"You mean to stay at home, yet sketch the ends of the earth; is that
it?" Her tone changed swiftly to one of extreme kindness. "Well, it
would be dreadful if you didn't stop at home now. Whatever you do" (he
changed colour; she added calmly), "think of Mrs. Edmonstone and Fanny!"
A little later, Alice and her father told Dick all the news of
themselves that they could think of--how they had been in Italy last
year, and in Scotland the year before, and how they had taken a
shooting-box in Yorkshire for this year. And Alice's manner was very
courteous and kindly, for she was beginning to reproach herself for
having been cruel to him on this his first evening, and to wonder how
she could have had the heart. She asked him if he had forgotten how to
dance, and said he must begin learning over again at once, in order to
dance at her ball--her very own party--on the second of July.
Poor Dick's spirits once more rose high, though this time an uneasy
sediment remained deep in his heart. Without the least intention in the
world, Alice was beginning a very pretty game of coquetry with her
sweetheart--alas! her quondam sweetheart. While they talked, Mr. Miles,
at the other side of the room, kept up an entertaining conversation with
Mrs. Parish. At the same time he observed Dick Edmonstone very
narrowly--perhaps more anxiously than he need have regarded an old
friend of his friends'; though perhaps with no more than a social lion's
innate suspicion of his kind. At last Dick rose to go.
Colonel Bristo went out with him, and thrust his arm affectionately
through the young man's as they crossed the lawn.
"Dick," said he, very kindly, "I thought I would wait till I saw you
alone to congratulate you most heartily on having made your way so
splendidly. Nay, don't interrupt me; your way in the world is already
made, and nobly made. I think you showed your sense--and more--in
stopping short, and coming home to follow up the career you love. That
was the intention expressed in your letter, I think?"
"Yes, sir. And that letter?" said Dick anxiously. He had felt misgivings
about it ever since the heat of triumph in which it was written and
posted in Melbourne.
"I liked it," said the Colonel simply; "it was manly and frank, and to
the point. You shall have my answer now; and I, too, will be frank. Four
years ago, more or less, I was forced to answer in a certain way a
certain question--there was no alternative. Dick, think seriously--you
are both four years older; are you, for one, still of the same mind?"
"I am; indeed I am," said Dick, earnestly.
"Then take your chance!" said Colonel Bristo. "I cannot say more; I
don't understand women; I find it bitter to say this much, I that am to
lose her. But you deserve her; come here as often as you will; you will
be very welcome. And if you both wish now--both, mind!--what you both
wished then, when for obvious reasons I could not hear of it----"
"You were right enough, sir," Dick murmured sadly.
"Then," continued the Colonel, "I frankly tell you, I shall like it.
That's all; good-night!"
Dick looked up from the dewy grass, and his lips formed a grateful
sentence, though no words could express his feeling just then. He looked
up, but the honest, simple-hearted soldier was gone. He who had faced
the Russian shot and shell had retreated cowardly before honest English
thanks!
The young man stepped into his boat, undid the painter, and floated out
upon the broad moonlit river. Ah, how kind of Colonel Bristo! But only
to think what those words would have been to them four years ago! Yes,
to them; for then Alice besought the consent that had just been given;
besought it as wildly as himself. And now did she even desire it? He had
found her so passionless, so different from all he had fancied, or
hoped, or feared. Once she had been cruel, but anon so kind; and then
she had ridiculed him in pure friendliness. Alas, fatal friendliness!
Had she but been awkward or shown him downright coldness--anything but
that. As to this Miles, no need to think about him yet. The question was
whether Alice Bristo still loved Dick Edmonstone, not whether there was
another man in the case; time enough for that afterwards. Yet a few
short hours ago the question--faced so calmly now--would have stunned or
maddened this ardent lover.
Down with the stream came peace and hope, with the soft, soothing touch
of the moonbeams; they stole into the heart of Dick Edmonstone; they
held it for one brief moment. For a sound broke on his ears which made
him stare and tremble, and drove out the sweet influences almost before
their presence was felt. Yet the sound of itself was sweet; the very
same sound had thrilled poor Dick as he leapt ashore; it was the voice
of Alice--singing to Mr. Miles!
VI
SISYPHUS
Dick Edmonstone slept badly, his first night in England; and no wonder,
since already a sense of grievous disappointment weighed him down. When
he reached home and his own room, this feeling grew upon him; it
distracted him, it denied him rest. Where his faith had been surest,
disillusion came slowly home to him; in the purest spot of the vision
the reality was dim and blurred. What a fool he had been to make sure of
anything! Above all, to build his peace of mind on the shifting sand of
a woman's love; to imagine--simply because his love for Alice had never
wavered--that Alice's love for him must perforce remain equally
unchanged. And all that night her voice, as he had last heard it, rang
cruelly in his ear, and a light remark, about what she had called her
"childhood," lay like lead at his heart.
At breakfast he could not quite conceal his trouble; he looked somewhat
haggard. He knew that he was expected to be in high spirits, and did his
best to feign them, but his mirth was perfunctory. This was obvious to
his sister, and not unnoticed by Mrs. Edmonstone. They spoke about it
afterwards, for they knew something of the circumstances at Graysbrooke,
and had their own opinion of the guest there.
Dick fidgeted all the morning, and passed some of the time in unpacking
his belongings. In the afternoon he left the house full of conflicting
emotions. As he walked up the drive, Dick could not tell how he had
waited until the afternoon, such a wild elation took possession of him
at the thought of again seeing his beloved. Miss Bristo was in the
garden, the butler told him--yes, alone; and Dick walked through the
house and on to the top of the shaven lawn that sloped to the river.
He found her deep in a magazine and in the stern sheets of the boat,
which was moored in the inlet. She was all in white, for the day was
sunny; and she smiled sweetly from under the broad brim of her straw hat
as Dick stepped gravely into the boat, and sat down on the thwart facing
her.
She looked so careless and so bright that he could not find it in his
heart to vex her straight away; so they talked lightly of this and that
for a full quarter of an hour, while Dick basked recklessly in her
smiles, and almost persuaded himself that this was happiness. But at
last came a pause; and then he nerved himself to speak.
"Alice," he began gravely, "you know our few words last night? You said
I might speak to you today."
"Well," said Alice, carelessly.
"You know very well what I want to speak about," rather warmly.
Alice turned down her leaf, shut up her magazine, leant back, and
surveyed him calmly.
"I wish I didn't, Dick," she answered, half in annoyance, half in pity.
But her look added: "Say on; let us have it out--and over."
"Last night," said Dick smoothly, "I asked you if you remembered old
days, and what there was between us, and so on. You said you didn't want
to remember them, and talked about your 'childhood.' You said you were
altered, and that, of course, I must be altered." He paused.
So far he had been cool and fluent; but he had rehearsed all this. His
next words came hot from the heart, and fell unsteadily from the lips.
"Oh, Alice," cried he, "did you mean that? Say that you didn't! I have
never changed, never can. Oh, say that you are the same. Say that you
only meant to tease me, or try me, or anything you like--anything but
that you meant all that about our being altered, and forgetting the
past--" his voice was piteous in its appeal; "say that you didn't mean
it!" he repeated in a whisper.
"I did mean it," Alice replied; not harshly or coldly, but with due
deliberation.
Dick turned pale. He grasped the gunwale nervously with each hand, and
leaned forward.
"Then I--no longer--have your love?" he asked in a hollow voice.
Alice looked at him reproachfully; there was even indignation in her
glance.
"How can you force such things from me? Have you no pride?" He winced.
"But, since you press for an explanation, you shall have one. Before you
went away I knew no one. I was a child; I had always been fond of you;
my head was full of nonsense; and, when you asked me, I said I loved
you. It was true, too, in a childish way."
"Go on," said Dick, in a low voice.
Alice was flushed, and her eyes sparkled, but her self-possession was
complete.
"Well, you come back after four years, and, it seems, expect to find me
still a child. Instead of that, I am a woman--a sensible woman," with a
good humoured twinkle of the eyes, "disinclined to go on with the old
nonsense just where it left off--you must admit that that would be
absurd? But for the rest, I am as fond of you, Dick, as I was then--only
without the childish nonsense. No one is more delighted to see you back,
and welcome you, than I am; no one is more your friend. Dear Dick," she
added in a tone of earnest entreaty, "cannot we be friends still?"
"No!" exclaimed Dick, hoarsely.
The flush died away from the girl's face, to return two-fold.
"No!" he repeated. "You give me your love, and then, after years of
separation, you offer me your friendship instead. What is that to me?
How can I make that do--a lamp instead of the sun? It is too much to ask
of any man: you know it. Who has taught you to play with men's hearts
like this?"
"I have been too kind," said Alice, coldly. She had stifled her
humiliation, and was preparing to leave the boat.
"Say rather too cruel!" returned Dick very bitterly. "Nay, not on my
account. I will save you the trouble of going."
He sprang from the boat as he spoke. One moment he stood on the bank
with a blight on his brave eyes; the next, he raised his hat proudly,
turned on his heel and was gone.
No sooner had he disappeared than the young lady produced a little lace
handkerchief, and rained her tears upon its wholly inadequate area. She
sobbed for nearly five minutes; and, after that, dipped her pink fingers
in the water, and made assiduous efforts to expunge the most tell-tale
symptoms. Then she took up the magazine and tried to revive her interest
in the story she had been reading, but she could remember nothing about
it. Finally she was about to quit the boat in despair, when, looking up,
whom should she see but Dick Edmonstone towering above her on the bank,
hat in hand.
"I want you to forgive me," he said very humbly. She affected not to
understand him, and intimated as much by raising her eyebrows.
"For what I said just now" (rapidly)--"for everything I have said since
I saw you first, last night. And I want to say--if you will still have
it--let us be--friends."
Her face instantly brightened; every trace of affectation vanished; she
smiled gratefully upon him.
"Ah, that is sense!" said she.
"But," said Dick, still more earnestly, "there are two questions I do
think I may ask, though whether you will answer them--"
"I will," the girl exclaimed rashly.
"Well, then, the first is, have you taken a dislike to me--a new one?
Don't laugh," he said, colouring; "I mean it. It is so possible, you
know. I have led a rough life; you might easily be ashamed of the
things I had to do, to make my way at first; you might easily think me
less polished, less gentlemanly: if it is that, I implore you to say
so."
She could scarcely keep grave; even he might have smiled, but for the
question he had still to ask.
"No, it is not that; to my mind you are just the same."
Dick drew a deep breath of relief.
"The second question may offend you; if it does--well, it can't be
helped. I think my old footing--even though you were a child then--is
sufficient excuse for it. It is, then--and, indeed, you must grant me an
honest answer--do you love another man?"
"And it is not that," said Alice shortly, nevertheless looking him full
in the face.
A great load was removed from his heart.
"Then it is only," he said eagerly--"only that you wish to cancel the
past? really only that?"
"Really only that," she repeated with a smile.
"Then," added Dick, hope rekindling in his heart, "may I never--that is,
won't you hold out to me the least faint spark?"
"I think you had better leave well alone," said Alice; and she stepped
lightly from the boat as she spoke. "Now I must go in. Will you come,
too?"
"No; I must say good-bye."
"Really? Then good-bye, Dick." Another sweet smile as she stretched out
her hand. "And come as often as ever you can; you will always be
welcome."
He watched her slim form tripping daintily across the grass.
"Ay, I will come!" he muttered between his teeth; "and I shall win you
yet, Miss Caprice, though I have to begin all over again. To start
afresh! How could I have borne the thought yesterday? Yet to-day it must
be faced. This minute I give up looking back, and begin to look forward.
And it may be better so; for when I win you, as win you I shall, you
will be all the dearer to me. I might not have valued you as I
ought--who knows? You do not deny me hope; I shan't deny it to myself.
You shall be mine, never fear. For the present, have your wish--we are
only friends."
His resolution taken, Dick Edmonstone threw up vain regrets; "friendly
relations" with Alice were duly established, and at first the plan
worked tolerably well. They had one or two common interests,
fortunately. Alice dabbled in water-colours; in which Dick could help
her, and did. In return, Alice took a lively interest in his sketches;
and they would sometimes talk of the career to which he was to devote
himself. Then there was the river; they were both good oars, and, with
Alice, rowing was a passion.
Beyond these things there was little enough to bring them together. In
everything else Mr. Miles either stepped in or enjoyed a previous
pre-eminence. At first Dick tried hard to hate this man for his own
sake, without being jealous of him; but under the circumstances it was
impossible for jealousy not to creep in. He certainly distrusted Miles;
the man struck him from the first as an adventurer, who had wormed
himself by mysterious means into the friendship of the guileless,
single-hearted Colonel Bristo; and observation deepened this
impression. On the other hand, the pair saw very little of each other.
Dick naturally avoided Miles, and Miles--for some good reason of his
own--shunned Dick. In fact, the jealous feeling did not arise from
anything he saw or heard: the flame was promoted and fed, as it were, at
second-hand.
Deep in his heart, poor Dick had counted on being something of a lion
(it was only human) on his return from Australia, at least on one hearth
besides his own; and lo! a lion occupied that hearth before him--a lion,
moreover, of the very same type. The Bristos didn't want to hear
Australian experiences, because they had already heard such as could
never be surpassed, from the lips of Miles; their palate for bush yarns
was destroyed. Dick found himself cut out, in his own line, by Miles.
His friends were very hospitable and very kind, but they had no wish to
learn his adventures. And those adventures! How he had hoarded them in
his mind! how he had dreamed in his vanity of enthralling the Colonel
and thrilling Alice! He had hoped at least to interest them; and even in
that he failed. Each little reminiscence yawned over, each comparison or
allusion ignored--these were slight things with sharp edges. With Alice,
it more than once happened that when he touched on his strange
experiences she forgot to listen, which wounded him; or if she made him
repeat it, it was to cite some far more wonderful story of Mr.
Miles--which sowed salt in the wound. Of course vanity was its own cure,
and he dropped the subject of Australia altogether; but he was very full
of his romantic life, and this took him a day or two, and cost him some
moments of bitterness.
So Dick's first fortnight in England passed, and on the whole he
believed he had made some sort of progress with Alice. Moreover, he
began rather to like wooing her on his merits. On consideration, it was
more satisfactory, perhaps, than reviving the old boy-and-girl sentiment
as if there had been no four years' hiatus; more satisfactory, because
he never doubted that he would win her in the end. It is to be noted
that his ideas about one or two things changed in a remarkable degree
during those first days.
One morning, when they chanced to be particularly confidential together,
Dick said suddenly:
"By the bye, how did you come to know this--Mr. Miles?" He had almost
said "this fellow Miles."
"Has papa never told you?" Alice asked in surprise.
"No, never."
"Nor Mr. Miles himself? Ah, no: he would be the last person to speak of
it. But I will tell you. Well, then, it was when we were down in Sussex.
Papa was bathing (though I had forbidden it), when he was seized with
cramp, out of his depth. He must certainly have been drowned; but a
great handsome fellow, dressed like a fisherman, saw his distress,
rushed into the sea, swam out, and rescued him with the help of a boat.
Poor papa, when he came to himself, at once offered the man money; and
here came the surprise. The man laughed, refused the money, dived his
hand into his own pocket, and threw a sovereign to the boatman who had
helped!"
Dick's interest was thoroughly aroused, and he showed it; but he thought
to himself: "That was unnecessary. Why couldn't the fellow keep to the
part he was playing?"
And Alice continued: "Then papa found out that he was a gentleman in
disguise--a Mr. Miles, from Sydney! He had been over some months, and
was seeing England in thorough fashion. Indeed, he seemed a regular
boatman, with his hands all hard and seamed with tar."
"And your father made friends with him?"
"Naturally; he brought him up to the hotel, where I heard all about the
affair. You may imagine the state I was in! After that we saw a good
deal of him down there, and papa got to like him very much, and asked
him to come and stay with us when he grew tired of that kind of life and
returned to London. And that's all."
"How long did you say it is since he saved your father's life?" Dick
asked, after a short pause.
"Let me see, it's--yes, not quite a month ago."
Dick gave vent to a scarcely audible whistle.
"And he has no other friends in England?"
"Not that I know of."
"And writes no letters nor receives any?" (He was speaking from his own
observation.)
"Not that I know of. But how should I know? or what does it matter?"
"In fact, he is a friendless adventurer, whom you don't know a thing
about beyond what you have told me?"
Alice suddenly recoiled, and a dangerous light gleamed in her eyes.
"What do you mean? I don't understand you. Why all these questions?"
Dick regarded her unflinchingly. He knew what an honest answer would
cost him, yet he was resolved to speak out.
"Because," said he, impressively and slowly, "because I don't believe
Mr. Miles is what he makes himself out to be."
He knew that he had made some advance in her esteem, he knew that these
words would lose him all that he had gained, and he was right. A flash
of contempt lit up the girl's eyes and pierced to his soul. "Noble
rival!" said she; and without another word swept haughtily past
him--from the garden where they had been walking--into the house.
VII
SOUTH KENSINGTON
The first act of every Australian who landed in England that summer was,
very naturally, to visit the Exhibition--their Exhibition--at South
Kensington.
Dick was not an Australian, and it therefore did not consume him to put
off South Kensington until he had been a week or so quietly at home.
Nevertheless he was sufficiently eager to inspect the choice products of
a land that he regarded with gratitude as indeed his alma mater; and
still more eager to expatiate on all that was to be seen to insular
friends, who believed that New Zealand was an inland colony, and who
asked if Victoria was not the capital of Sydney. On that very first
evening he had made a sort of offer to escort Colonel Bristo and Alice;
but there he was too late; and he experienced the first of a series of
petty mortifications--already mentioned--which originated from a common
cause. Mr. Miles had already been with the Bristos to the Exhibition,
and had proved a most entertaining showman. He had promised to accompany
them again in a week or two; would not Dick join the party? For three
visits would be more than impartial persons, such as the Colonel and his
daughter, were likely to care about--even with so splendid a cicerone as
Mr. Miles.
Of course, Dick was not going to play second fiddle to the Australian
deliberately and with his eyes open. He made his excuses, and never
alluded to the matter again. But one day, after a morning's business in
the City, he went alone.
When he was once in the vast place, and had found his way to the
Australian section, his interest speedily rose to a high pitch. It is
one thing to go to an exhibition to be instructed, or to wonder what on
earth half the things are; it is something quite different to find
yourself among familiar objects and signs which are not Greek to you, to
thread corridors lined with curios which you hail as the household gods
of your exile. Instead of the bored outsider, with his shallow
appreciation of everything, you become at once a discriminate observer
and intelligent critic, and sightseeing for once loses its tedium. Dick
wandered from aisle to aisle, from stand to stand, in rapt attention. At
every turn he found something of peculiar interest to him: here it was a
view of some township whose every stick he knew by heart; there a sample
of wood bearing on the printed label under the glass the name of a sheep
station where he had stayed time out of number.
The golden arch at the entrance to the Victorian Court arrested him, as
it arrested all the world; but even more fascinating in his eyes was the
case of model nuggets close at hand. He heard a small boy asking his
mamma if they were all real, and he heard mamma reply with bated breath
that she supposed so; then the small boy smacked his lips, and uttered
awed (though slangy) ejaculations, and the enlightened parent led him
on to wonders new. But Dick still gazed at the nuggets; he was
wondering--if he could have it all over again--whether he would rather
pick up one of these fellows than win again their equivalent through
toil and enterprise, step by step, when a smart slap on the back caused
him to turn sharp round with an exclamation.
A short, stout, red-faced man stood at his elbow with arms akimbo, and
grinned familiarly in his face. Dick looked him up and down with a stare
of indignation; he could not for the life of him recognise the fellow;
yet there he stood, his red-stubbled chin thrust forward, and a broad,
good-humoured grin on his apish face, and dressed gorgeously. He wore a
high white hat tilted backward, a snowy waistcoat, a dazzling tie, and a
black frock-coat, with an enormous red rose in the button hole. His
legs, which now formed two sides of an equilateral triangle with the
floor for its base, were encased in startling checks, and his feet,
which were small, in the glossiest patent leather. His left hand rested
gloved upon his hip, and four fingers of his ungloved right hand were
thrust into his waistcoat pocket, leaving the little one in the cold
with a diamond of magnitude flashing from its lowest joint.
"Euchred?" this gentleman simply asked, in a nasal tone of immense
mirth.
"If you mean do I know you, I don't," said Dick, only a degree less
haughtily than if he had come straight from Oxford instead of from the
bush.
"What! you don't remember me?" exclaimed the man more explicitly, his
fingers itching to leap from the waistcoat-pocket.
Dick stared an uncompromising denial.
The diamond flashed in his eyes, and a small piece of pasteboard was
held in front of him, on which were engraved these words:
"The Hon. Stephen Biggs."
Dick repressed an insane impulse to explode with laughter.
"What! of Marshall's Creek?"
"The same."
Dick stretched out his hand.
"A thousand pardons, my dear fellow; but how could I expect to see you
here? And--the Honourable?"
"Ah!" said Mr. Biggs, with legitimate pride, "that knocks you, old man!
It was only the Legislative Assembly when you and me was mates; it's the
Legislative Council now. I'm in the Upper 'Ouse, my son!"
"I'm sure I congratulate you," said Dick.
"But 'ang the 'andle," continued the senator magnanimously; "call me
Steve just the same."
"Well, it's like the whiff of the gum leaves to see you again, Steve.
When did you arrive?"
"Last week. You see," confidentially, "I'm in my noo rig out--the best
your London can do; though, after all, this Colony'll do as good any day
in the week. I can't see where it is you do things better than we do.
However, come and have a drink, old man."
In vain Dick protested that he was not thirsty; Mr. Biggs was. Besides,
bushmen are not to be denied or trifled with on such points. The little
man seized Dick's arm, marched him to the nearest bar, and called for
beer.
"Ah!" sighed Mr. Biggs, setting down his tankard, "this is the one point
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:
About four in the afternoon, an old gentleman, with snowy whiskers and
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."
"Oh, sir," exclaimed Mrs. Edmonstone, "do you think there is no spark of
goodness in the worst natures? of truth in the falsest? of generosity in
the most selfish?"
Jack Flint looked quaintly solemn; his face was in shadow, luckily.
"Yes," said Dick, gravely, "my mother is right; there was a good impulse
left in that poor fellow, and if you find gold in an outlaw and a thief,
you may look for it anywhere. But in my opinion there was more than a
remnant of good in that man. Think of it. He saved me from being knifed,
to begin with; well, it was to his own interest to do that. But after
that he took pity, and left us our money. That needed more than a good
impulse; it needed a force of character which few honest men have. Try
and realise his position--a price upon him, his hand against the world
and the world's hand against him, a villain by profession, not credited
with a single virtue except courage, not bound by a single law of God or
man; a man you would have thought incapable of compassion; and
yet--well, you know what he did."
There was a manly fervour in his voice which went straight to the hearts
of his mother and sister. They could not speak. Even Flint forgot to
look sceptical.
"If it had not meant so much to me, that hundred pounds," Dick
continued, as though arguing with himself, "it is possible that I might
think less of the fellow. I don't know, but I doubt it, for we had no
notion then what that hundred would turn to. As it is, I have thought of
it very often. You remember, Jack, how much more that hundred seemed to
me at that time than it really was, and how much less to you?"
"It was a hundred and thirty," said Flint; "I remember that you didn't
forget the odd thirty then."
"Dick," Fanny presently exclaimed, out of a brown study, "what do you
think you would do if--you ever met that bushranger again. I mean, if he
was at your mercy, you know?"
Flint sighed, and prepared his spirit for heroics.
"No use thinking," Dick answered. "By this time he's a life--if they
didn't hang him."
Flint became suddenly animated.
"What?" he cried, sharply.
"Why, the last I heard of him--the day I sailed from Melbourne--was,
that he was captured somewhere up in Queensland."
"If you had sailed a day later you would have heard more."
"What?" asked Dick, in his turn.
"He escaped."
"Escaped?"
"The same night. He got clean away from the police-barracks at Mount
Clarence--that was the little Queensland township. They never caught
him. They believe he managed to clear out of the country--to America,
probably."
"By Jove, I'm not sorry!" exclaimed Dick.
"Here are some newspaper cuttings about him," continued Flint, taking
the scraps from his pocketbook and handing them to Dick. "Read them
afterwards; they will interest you. He was taken along with another
fellow, but the other fellow was taken dead--shot through the heart.
That must have been the one he called Ben; for the big brute who tried
to knife you had disappeared some time before. When they were taken they
were known to have a lot of gold somewhere--I mean, Sundown was--for
they had just stuck up the Mount Clarence bank."
"Yes, I heard that when I heard of the capture."
"Well, it was believed that Sundown feared an attack from the police,
and planted the swag, went back to it after his escape, and got clear
away with the lot. But nothing is known; for neither Sundown nor the
gold was ever seen again."
"Mamma, aren't you glad he escaped," cried Fanny, with glowing cheeks.
"It may be wicked, but I know I am! Now, what would you do, Dick?"
"What's the good of talking about it?" said Dick.
"Then I'll tell you what I'd do; I'd hide this poor Sundown from
justice; I'd give him a chance of trying honesty, for a change--that's
what I should do! And if I were you, I should long and long and long to
do it!"
Flint could not help smiling. Dick's sentiment on the subject was
sufficiently exaggerated; but this young lady! Did this absurd
romanticism run in the family? If so, was it the father, or the
grandfather, or the great-grandfather that died in a madhouse?
But Dick gazed earnestly at his sister. Her eyes shone like living coals
in the twilight of the shaded room. She was imaginative; and the story
of Dick and the bushranger appealed at once to her sensibilities and her
sympathy. She could see the night attack in the silent forest, and a
face of wild, picturesque beauty--the ideal highwayman--was painted in
vivid colour on the canvas of her brain.
"Fanny, I half think I might be tempted to do something like that," said
Dick gently. "I have precious few maxims, but one is that he who does me
a good turn gets paid with interest--though I have a parallel one for
the man who works me a mischief."
"So it is a good turn not to rob a man whom you've already assaulted!"
observed Flint ironically.
"It is a good turn to save a man's life."
"True; but you seem to think more of your money than your life!"
"I believe I did four years ago," said Dick, smiling, but he checked his
smile when Flint looked at his watch and hastily rose.
Dick expostulated, almost to the extent of bluster, but quite in vain;
Flint was already shaking hands with the ladies.
"My dear fellow," said he, "I leave these shores to-night; it's my
annual holiday. I'm going to forget my peasants for a few weeks in Paris
and Italy. If I lose this train I lose to-night's boat--I found out that
before I came; so good-bye, my--"
"No, I'm coming to the station," said Dick; "at least I stickle for that
last office."
Mrs. Edmonstone hoped that Mr. Flint--her boy's best friend, as she was
assured--would see his way to calling on his way home and staying a day
or two. Mr. Flint promised; then he and Dick left the house.
They were scarcely in the road before Flint stopped, turned, laid a hand
on each of Dick's shoulders, and quickly delivered his mind:
"There's something wrong. I saw it at once. Tell me."
Dick lowered his eyes before his friend's searching gaze.
"Oh, Jack," he answered, sadly, "it is all wrong!"
And before they reached the station Flint knew all that there was to
know--an abridged but unvarnished version--of the withering and dying of
Dick's high hopes.
They talked softly together until the train steamed into the station;
and then it was Dick who at the last moment returned to a matter just
touched in passing:
"As to this dance to-night--you say I must go?"
"Of course you must go. It would never do to stay away. For one thing,
your friend, the Colonel might be hurt and bothered, and he is now your
best friend, mind. Then you must put a plucky face on it; she mustn't
see you cave in after the first facer. I half think it isn't all up yet;
you can't tell."
Dick shook his head.
"I would rather not go; it will be wormwood to me; you know what it will
be: the two together. And I know it's all up. You don't understand
women, Jack."
"Do you?" asked the other, keenly.
"She couldn't deny that--that--I can't say it, Jack."
"Ah, but you enraged her first! Anyway, you ought to go to-night for
your people's sake. Your sister's looking forward to it tremendously;
never been to a ball with you before; she told me so. By Jove! I wished
I was going myself."
"I wish you were, instead of me."
"Nonsense! I say, stand clear. Good-bye!"
Away went the train and Jack Flint. And Dick stood alone on the
platform--all the more alone because his hand still tingled from the
pressure of that honest grip; because cheering tones still rang in his
ears, while his heart turned sick, and very lonely.
XI
DRESSING, DANCING, LOOKING ON
The Bristos dined early that evening, and dressed afterwards; but only
the Colonel and Miles sat down. Mrs. Parish was far too busy, adding
everywhere finishing touches from her own deft hand; while as for Alice,
she took tea only, in her room.
When Mr. Miles went up-stairs to dress, the red sunlight still streamed
in slanting rays through the open window. His room was large and
pleasant, and faced the drive.
Mr. Miles appeared to be in excellent spirits. He whistled softly to
himself--one of Alice's songs; a quiet smile lurked about the corners of
his mouth; but since his yellow moustache was long and heavy, this smile
was more apparent in the expression of the eyes. He moved about very
softly for such a heavy man--almost noiselessly, in fact; but this
practice was habitual with him.
His dress-clothes were already laid out on the bed; they seemed never to
have been worn. His portmanteau, which stood in one corner, also
appeared to have seen little service: it would have been hard to find a
scratch on the leather, and the glossy surface bore but one porter's
label. But, naturally enough, Miles's belongings were new: a fresh
outfit from head to heel is no slight temptation to the Australian in
London.
The first step towards dressing for a ball is to undress; the first step
towards undressing is to empty one's pockets. With Miles this evening
this was rather an interesting operation. It necessitated several
niceties of manipulation, and occupied some little time. Miles carefully
drew down the blinds as a preliminary, and bolted the door.
He then crossed to the mantel-piece, lit the gas, and felt in his
breast-pocket.
The first thing to be removed from this pocket was an envelope--an
envelope considerably thickened by its contents, which crackled between
the fingers. Miles dropped the envelope into the fender after
withdrawing the contents. These he smoothed out upon the mantel-piece;
he fairly beamed upon them; they were ten Bank of England ten-pound
notes. Then he counted them, folded them into small compass, and
transferred them to the trousers-pocket of his evening dress. In doing
this his smile became so broad that his whistling ended rather abruptly.
It was a pleasant smile.
The next incumbrance of which he relieved himself came from that same
breast-pocket; but it was less easily placed elsewhere--so much less
that the whistling was dropped altogether, and, instead of smiling, Mr.
Miles frowned. Nay, a discovery that his dress-coat had no breast-pocket
was followed by quite a volley of oaths. Swearing, however, is a common
failing of the most estimable bushmen; so that, coming from a man like
Miles, the words meant simply nothing. Miles then tried the
trousers-pocket which did not contain the bank-notes; but though the
article was--of its kind--remarkably small, it was obviously too large
for such a pocket, and for the tail-pockets it was too heavy. Mr. Miles
looked seriously put out. His face wore just that expression which might
be produced by the rupture of a habit or rule of life that has become
second nature. In despair and disgust he dropped the thing into his
travelling bag, which he was careful to lock at once, and placed the key
in the pocket with the notes: the thing was a small revolver.
There followed, from the waistcoat, penknife, pencilcase, watch and
chain, and, lastly, something that created a strange and instant change
in the expression of Mr. Miles; and this, though it was the veriest
trifle, lying in a twisted scrap of printed paper. He spread and
smoothed out the paper just as he had done with the notes, and something
was displayed on its surface: something--to judge by the greedy gaze
that devoured it--of greater value than the bank-notes, and to be parted
with less willingly than the revolver. It was a lock of light-coloured
hair.
Mr. Miles again unlocked his travelling bag, and took from it a packet
of oiled-silk, a pair of scissors, tape, a needle and thread. It is a
habit of many travellers to have such things always about them. Miles,
for one, was very handy in the use of them, so that in about ten minutes
he produced a very neat little bag, shaped like an arc, and hung upon a
piece of tape with ends sewn to the ends of the chord. Holding this bag
in his left hand, he now took very carefully, between the thumb and
finger of his right hand, the lock of light-coloured hair. He let it
roll in his palm, he placed his finger tips in the mouth of the little
bag, then paused, as if unwilling to let the hair escape his hand, and,
as he paused, his face bent down until his beard touched his wrist. Had
not the notion been wildly absurd, one who witnessed the action might
have expected Mr. Miles to press his lips to the soft tress that nestled
in his palm; but, indeed, he did nothing of the kind. He jerked up his
head suddenly, slipped the tress into its little case, and began at once
to stitch up the opening. As he did this, however, he might have been
closing the tomb upon all he loved--his face was so sad. When the thread
was secured and broken, he loosed his collar and shirt-band and hung the
oiled-silk bag around his neck.
At that moment a clock on the landing, chiming the three-quarters after
eight, bade him make haste. There was good reason, it seemed, why he
should be downstairs before the guests began to arrive.
In the drawing-room he found Colonel Bristo and Mrs. Parish. In face
benevolent rather than strong, there was little in Colonel Bristo to
suggest at any time the Crimean hero; he might have been mistaken for a
prosperous stockbroker, but for a certain shyness of manner incompatible
with the part. To-night, indeed, the military aspect belonged rather to
the lady housekeeper; for rustling impatiently in her handsome black
silk gown, springing up repeatedly at the sound of imaginary wheels,
Mrs. Parish resembled nothing so much as an old war horse scenting
battle. She welcomed the entrance of Miles with effusion, but Miles paid
her little attention, and as little to his host. He glanced quickly
round the room, and bit his lip with vexation; Miss Bristo was as yet
invisible. He crossed the hall by a kind of instinct, and looked into
the ballroom, and there he found her. She had flitted down that moment.
Her dress was partly like a crystal fall, and partly like its silver
spray; it was all creamy satin and tulle. Or so, at least, it seemed to
her partners whose knowledge, of course, was not technical. One of them,
who did not catch her name on introduction--being a stranger, brought
under the wing of a lady with many daughters--described her on his card
simply as "elbow sleeves;" and this must have been a young gentleman of
observation, since the sleeves--an artful compromise between long and
short--were rather a striking feature to those who knew. Others
remembered her by her fan; but the callow ones saw nothing but her face,
and that haunted them--until the next ball.
Mr. Miles, however, was the favoured man who was granted the first
glimpse of this lovely apparition. He also looked only at her face. Was
she so very indignant with him? Would she speak to him? Would she refuse
him the dances he had set his heart on? If these questions were decided
against him he was prepared to humble himself at her feet; but he soon
found there was no necessity for that.
For, though Alice was deeply angry with Mr. Miles, she was ten times
angrier with herself, and ten times ten with Dick. Her manner was
certainly cold, but she seemed to have forgotten the gross liberty Miles
had taken in the afternoon; at any rate, she made no allusion to it.
She gave him dances--then and there--since he brought her a programme,
but in doing so her thoughts were not of Miles. She gave him literal
carte blanche, but not to gratify herself or him. There were too few
ways open to her to punish the insults she had received that day; but
here was one way--unless the object of her thoughts stayed away.
She hurried from the ballroom at the sound of wheels. In a few minutes
she was standing at her father's side shaking hands with the people. She
seemed jubilant. She had a sunny smile and a word or two for all. She
was like a tinkling brook at summer noon. Everyone spoke of her
prettiness, and her dress (the ladies whispered of this), and above all,
her splendid spirits. She found out, when it was over, that she had
shaken hands with the Edmonstones among the rest. She had done so
unconsciously, and Dick, like everybody else, had probably received a
charming welcome from her lips.
If that was the case he must have taken the greeting for what it was
worth, for he seized the first opportunity to escape from Fanny and
Maurice, who were bent upon enjoying themselves thoroughly in
unsentimental fashion. He saw one or two men whom he had known before he
went to Australia, staring hard at him, but he avoided them; he shrank
into a corner and called himself a fool for coming.
He wanted to be alone, yet was painfully conscious of the wretched
figure cut by a companionless man in a room full of people. If he talked
to nobody people would point at him. Thus perhaps: "The man who made a
fool of himself about Miss Bristo, don't you know; went to Australia,
made his fortune, and all the rest of it, and now she won't look at him,
poor dog!" He was growing morbid. He made a pretence of studying the
water-colours on the wall, and wished in his soul that he could make
himself invisible.
A slight rustle behind him caused him to turn round. His heart rose in
his throat; it was Alice.
"You must dance with me," she said coldly; and her voice was the voice
of command.
Dick was electrified; he gazed at her without speaking. Then a scornful
light waxed in his eyes, and his lips formed themselves into a sneer.
"You can hardly refuse," she continued cuttingly. "I do not wish to be
questioned about you; there has been a little too much of that.
Therefore, please to give me your arm. They have already begun."
That was so; the room in which they stood was almost empty. Without a
word Dick gave her his arm.
The crowd about the doorway of the ballroom made way for them to pass,
and a grim conceit which suggested itself to Dick nearly made him laugh
aloud.
As they began to waltz Alice looked up at him with flashing eyes.
"If you hate this," she whispered between her teeth, "imagine my
feelings!"
He knew that his touch must be like heated irons to her; he wanted her
to stop, but she would not let him. As the couples thinned after the
first few rounds she seemed the more eager to dance on. One moment,
indeed, they had the floor entirely to themselves. Thus everyone in the
room had an opportunity of noticing that Alice Bristo had given her
first dance to Dick Edmonstone.
The Colonel saw it, and was glad; but he said to himself, "The boy
doesn't look happy enough; and as for Alice--that's a strange expression
of hers; I'll tell her I don't admire it. Well, well, if they only get
their quarrels over first, it's all right, I suppose."
Fanny noted it with delight. The one bar to her complete happiness for
the rest of the evening was now removed. The best of dancers herself,
she was sought out by the best. To her a ball was a thing of intrinsic
delight, in no way connected with sentiment or nonsense.
Mrs. Parish also saw it, but from a very different point of view. She
bustled over to Mr. Miles, who was standing near the piano, and asked
him confidentially if he had not secured some dances with Alice? He
showed her his card, and the old schemer returned triumphant to her
niche among the dowagers.
He followed her, and wrote his name on her empty card opposite the first
square dance; a subtle man, this Mr. Miles.
At the end of the waltz Miss Bristo thanked her partner coldly, observed
below her breath that she should not trouble him again, bowed--and left
him.
Dick was done with dancing; he had not wished to dance at all; but this
one waltz was more than enough for him--being with her. Love is
responsible for strange paradoxes.
He found two men to talk to: men who gloried in dancing, without greater
aptitude for the art (for it is one) than elephants shod with lead.
Being notorious, these men never got partners, save occasional ladies
from remote districts, spending seasons with suburban relatives. These
men now greeted Dick more than civilly, though they were accustomed to
cut his brother, the bank-clerk, every morning of their lives. They
remembered him from his infancy; they heard he had done awfully well
abroad, and congratulated him floridly. They were anxious to hear all
about Australia. Dick corrected one or two notions entertained by them
respecting that country. He assured them that the natives were
frequently as white as they were. He informed them, in reply to a
question, that lions and tigers did not prowl around people's premises
in the majority of Australian towns; nor, indeed, were those animals to
be found in the Colonies, except in cages. He set them right on the
usual points of elementary geography. He explained the comprehensive
meaning of the term, "the bush."
As Dick could at a pinch be fluent--when Australia was the subject--and
as his mood to-night was sufficiently bitter, his intelligent
questioners shortly sheered off. They left him at least better-informed
men. Thereupon Dick returned to the ballroom with some slight access of
briskness, and buried himself in a little knot of wall-flowers of both
sexes.
A dance had just begun--scarcely necessary to add, a waltz. Every man
blessed with a partner hastened to fling his unit and hers into the
whirling throng. After a round or two, half the couples would pause, and
probably look on for the rest of the time; but it seems to be a point of
honour to begin with the music. As Dick stood watching, his sister
passed quite close to him; she happened to be dancing with Maurice, her
very creditable pupil, but neither of them saw Dick. Close behind them
came a pair of even better dancers, who threaded the moving maze without
a pause or a jar or a single false step; they steered so faultlessly
that a little path seemed always to open before them; human teetotums,
obstacles to every one else, seemed mysteriously to melt at the graceful
approach of these two. But, in fact, it was impossible to follow any
other pair at the same time, so great were the ease, and beauty, and
harmony of this pair. They seemed to need no rest; they seemed to yield
themselves completely--no, not to each other--but to the sweet influence
of the dreamy waltz.
Dick watched the pair whose exquisite dancing attracted so much
attention; his face was blank, but the iron was in his soul. The other
wallflowers also watched them, and commented in whispers. Dick overheard
part of a conversation between a young lady whose hair was red (but
elaborately arranged), and a still younger lady with hair (of the same
warm tint) hanging in a plait, who was presumably a sister, not yet
thoroughly "out." Here is as much of it as he listened to:
"Oh, how beautifully they dance!"
"Nonsense, child! No better than many others."
"Well, of course, I don't know much about it. But I thought they danced
better than anyone in the room. Who are they?"
"Don't speak so loud. You know very well that is Miss Bristo herself;
the man is--must be--Mr. Edmonstone."
"Are they engaged?"
"Well, I believe they used to be. He went out to Australia because he
couldn't afford to marry (his family were left as poor as mice!), but
now he has come back with a fortune, and of course it will be on again
now. I used to know him--to bow to--when they lived on the river; I
never saw anyone so much altered, but still, that must be he."
"Oh, it must! See how sweet they----"
"Hush, child! You will be heard. But you are quite right; didn't you see
how----"
That was as much as Dick could stand. He walked away with a pale face
and twitching fingers. He escaped into the conservatory, and found a
solitary chair in the darkest corner. In three minutes the waltz ended,
and the move to the conservatory was so general that for some minutes
the double doors were all too narrow. Before Dick could get away, a
yellow-haired youth with a pretty partner, less young than himself,
invaded the dark corner, and by their pretty arrangement of two chairs
effectually blocked Dick's egress. They were somewhat breathless, having
evidently outstripped competitors for this nook only after considerable
exertion. The yellow-haired youth proceeded to enter into a desperate
flirtation--according to his lights--with the pretty girl his senior:
that is to say, he breathed hard, sought and received permission to
manipulate the lady's fan, wielded it execrably, and uttered
commonplaces in tones of ingenuous pathos. The conservatory, the
plashing fountain, and the Chinese lantern are indeed the accepted
concomitants of this kind of business, to judge by that class of modern
drawing-room songs which is its expositor. At length, on being snubbed
by the lady (he had hinted that she should cut her remaining partners in
his favour), the young gentleman relapsed with many sighs into personal
history, which may have been cunningly intended as an attack on her
sympathy, but more probably arose from the egotism of eighteen. He
inveighed against the barbarous system of superannuation that had
removed him from his public school; inquired repeatedly, Wasn't it
awfully hard lines? but finally extolled the freedom of his present
asylum, a neighbouring Army crammer's, where (he declared) a fellow was
treated like a gentleman, not like a baby. He was plainly in the
confidential stage.
All this mildly amused Dick, if anything; but presently the victim of an
evil system abruptly asked his partner if she knew Miss Bristo very
well.
"Not so very well," was the reply; "but why do you ask?"
"Because--between you and me, you know--I don't like her. She doesn't
treat a fellow half civilly. You ask for a waltz, and she gives you a
square. Now I know she'd waltzes to spare, 'cause I heard her give
one----"
"Oh, so she snubbed you, eh?"
"Well, I suppose it does almost amount to that. By the bye, is she
engaged to that long chap who's been dancing with her all the evening?"
"I believe she is; but----"
It was a promising "but;" a "but" that would become entre nous with very
little pressing.
"But what?"
"It is a strange affair."
"How?"
"Oh, I ought not to say; but of course you would never repeat----"
"Rather not; surely you can trust a fel----"
"Well, then, she used to be engaged--or perhaps it wasn't an absolute
engagement--to someone else: he went out to Australia, and made money,
and now that he has come back she's thrown him over for this Mr. Miles,
who also comes from Australia. I know it for a fact, because Mrs. Parish
told mamma as much."
"Poor chap! Who is he?"
"Mr. Edmonstone; one of the Edmonstones who lived in that big house
across the river--surely you remember?"
"Oh, ah!"
"I believe he is here to-night--moping somewhere, I suppose."
"Poor chap! Hallo, there's the music! By Jove! I say, this is awful; we
shall have to part!"
They went; and Dick rose up with a bitter smile. He would have given
much, very much, for the privilege of wringing that young
whippersnapper's neck. Yet it was not the boy's fault; some fate pursued
him: there was no place for him--no peace for him--but in the open air.
A soft midsummer's night, and an evening breeze that cooled his heated
temples with its first sweet breath. Oh, why had he not thought of
coming out long ago! He walked up and down the drive, slowly at first,
then at speed, as his misery grew upon him, and more times than he
could count. The music stopped, began again, and again ceased; it came
to him in gusts as he passed close to the front of the conservatory on
his beat. At last, when near the house, he fancied he saw a dark
motionless figure crouching in the shrubbery that edged the lawn at the
eastern angle of the house.
Dick stopped short in his walk until fancy became certainty; then he
crept cautiously towards the figure.
XII
"TO-MORROW, AND TO-MORROW, AND TO-MORROW"
Mr. Miles had written his name no fewer than six times on Alice's card.
On finding this out Alice had resolved to recognise perhaps half these
engagements--in any case, no more than should suit her convenience.
After her dance with Dick she found it would suit her admirably to
recognise them all.
For Dick had no word of apology or regret; in fact, he did not speak at
all. He did not even look sorry; but only hard and cold and bitter. It
was not in the power of woman to treat such a man too harshly.
Alice therefore threw herself into these dances with Miles with a zest
which brought about one good result: the mere physical effort gradually
allayed the fever of her spirit; with the even, rhythmical motion
sufficient peace stole into the heart of the girl to subdue the
passionate tumult of many hours. To this tranquillity there presently
succeeded the animation inseparable from ardent exercise.
While the music lasted Alice could scarcely bring herself to pause; she
seemed never to tire. Between the dances she spoke little to her
partner, but filled her lungs with new breath, and waited impatiently
for the striking of a new note; and when the new note sounded she turned
to that partner with eyes that may have meant to fill with gratitude,
yet seemed to him to glow with something else.
Once, when he led her from the heated room, she fancied many eyes were
upon her. She heard whispers; a murmur scarcely audible; a hum of
wonder, of admiration, perhaps of envy. Well, was she not to be admired
and envied? Could she not at least compare with the fairest there in
looks? Was there one with a foot more light and nimble? And was not
this, her partner, the manliest yet most godlike man that ever stooped
to grace a ballroom?--and the best dancer into the bargain?--and the
most admirable altogether? These questions were asked and answered in
one proud upward glance as she swept on his arm through the throng.
"She never looked so well before," exclaimed Mrs. Parish, in an ecstatic
aside to Colonel Bristo; "so brilliant, so animated, so happy!"
"I don't agree with you," the Colonel answered shortly; and he added,
with strange insight in one usually so unobservant: "Alice is not
herself to-night."
That seemed absurd on the face of it. Who that watched her dancing could
have admitted it for a moment? Well, last of all, probably her partner.
The music burst forth again. The dancers flocked back to the room, Alice
and Mr. Miles among them. It was the sixth dance, and their third
together.
Again they were dancing together, the glassy floor seeming to pass
beneath their feet without effort of theirs, the music beating like a
pulse in the brain. As for Alice, she forgot her partner, she forgot
Dick, she forgot the faces that fled before her eyes as she glided, and
turned, and skimmed, and circled; she only knew that she was whirling,
whirling, and that for awhile her heart was at rest.
Before the dance was fairly over, Miles led his partner into the
conservatory, but said to her: "We will go right through into the open
air; it will be so much pleasanter." And he did not wait her consent
either--which was characteristic.
The smooth lawn leading down to the river was illuminated, and now that
it was quite dark it had a very effective appearance, and was a charming
resort between the dances. The lawn was bounded on the right by the
little inlet which has been mentioned. A rustic bridge crossed this
inlet, leading into a meadow, where seven tall poplars, in rigid rank,
fronted the river. Without a protest from the girl, Miles led her over
the bridge, and across the meadow, and down to the river's brim, under
the shadow of the stately poplars. Most likely she did not heed where
they were going; at any rate, they had been there often enough together
before--in daylight.
It was a heavenly night; the pale blue stars were reflected in the black
still mirror of the Thames, the endless song of the weir was the only
sound that broke the absolute stillness of the meadow. No voices reached
them from the house, no strains of music. As though influenced by the
night, the two were silent for some minutes; then Alice said lightly:
"I am glad you brought me out; I was beginning to stifle. What a lovely
night! But I thought there would be a moon. When is there a moon, Mr.
Miles?"
No answer but a deep breath, that was half a groan Alice thought.
Perhaps she was mistaken. She could not see his face, unless she moved
away from him, he was so tall. She repeated the question:
"I want to know when there will be a moon. It would be so delicious now,
if it shot up right over there, to be reflected right down there--but
why don't you speak, Mr. Miles?"
Still no answer. She drew back a step. He was standing like a monument,
tall and rigid, with his hands clasped tightly in front of him and his
face turned slightly upward. He seemed unconscious of her presence at
his side. Something in his motionless attitude, and the ghastly pallor
of his face in the starlight, sent a thrill of vague fear to the heart
of Alice. She drew yet a little farther from him, and asked timidly if
anything was the matter.
Slowly he turned and faced her. His head drooped, his shoulders sank
forward. She could see little beads glistening on his forehead. His
hands loosed each other, and his arms were lifted towards her, only to
be snatched back, and folded with a thud upon the breast. There they
seemed to sink and fall like logs upon a swollen sea.
"Matter?" he cried in a low, tremulous voice; then, pausing, "nothing is
the matter!" Then in a whisper, "Nothing to tell you--now."
A strange coldness overcame Alice--the sense of an injury wrought in her
carelessness on the man before her. She tried to speak to him, but could
find no words. With a single glance of pity, she turned and fled to the
house. He did not follow her.
So Mrs. Parish had been right, after all; and she, Alice--a dozen names
occurred to her which she had heard fastened upon women who sport with
men's hearts to while away an idle month.
She reached the conservatory, but paused on the stone steps, with a hand
lightly laid on the iron balustrade--for the floor-level was some feet
above that of the garden-path. The music was in full swing once more,
but Alice's attention was directed to another sound--even, rapid,
restless footsteps on the drive. She peered in that direction; for it
was possible, from her position on these steps, to see both the river to
the left and the lodge-gates far off on the right--in daylight. She had
not long to wait. A figure crossed quickly before her, coming from the
front of the house: a man--by his dress, one of the guests--and
bare-headed. When he first appeared, his back was half-turned to her; as
he followed the bend of the drive she saw nothing but his back! then she
lost sight of him in the darkness and the shadows of the drive.
Presently she heard his steps returning; he was perambulating a beat.
Not to be seen by him as he neared the house, Alice softly opened the
door and entered the conservatory. It was at that moment quite deserted.
She moved noiselessly to the southern angle, hid herself among the
plants, and peered through the glass. It was very dark in this corner,
and the foliage so thick that there was small chance of her being seen
from without. The solitary figure passed below her, on the other side of
the glass; it was Dick: she had been sure of it.
She watched him cross and recross twice--thrice; then she trembled
violently, and the next time she could not see him distinctly, because
tears--tears of pity--had started to her eyes. If a face--haggard,
drawn, white as death, hopeless as the grave--if such a face is a sight
for tears, then no wonder Alice wept. Was it possible that this was he
who landed in England less than a month ago--so gay, so successful, so
boyish? He looked years older. The eager light had gone out of his eyes.
His step, so buoyant then, was heavy now, though swift with the fever of
unrest. He bent forward as he walked, as though under a burden: a month
ago he had borne no burden. Was this the man she had loved so wildly
long ago--this wreck? Was this the result of trying to rule her heart by
her head? Was this, then, her handiwork?
Her cup to-night was to be filled to overflowing. Even now her heart had
gone out in pity to another whom also she had wronged--in pity, but not
in love. For here, at last--at this moment--she could see before her but
one: the man who had loved her so long and so well; the man who had once
held her perfect sun of love--Heaven help her, who held it still!
A faintness overcame this frail girl. Her frame shook with sobs. She
could not see. She leant heavily against the framework of the glass. She
must have fallen, but a gentle hand at that moment was thrust under her
arm.
"Oh, fancy finding you here! Your father sent me--" the pleasant voice
broke off suddenly, and Alice felt herself caught in strong and tender
arms. She looked up and saw Dick's sister. Her poor beating heart gave
one bound, and then her head sank on Fanny's shoulder.
Presently she was able to whisper:
"Take me up-stairs; I am ill. It has been a terrible day for me!"
* * * * *
Mr. Miles still stood by the river, erect, motionless; his powerful
hands joined in front of him in an iron knot, his fine head thrown
slightly backward, as though in defiance. At first the thoughts in his
mind were vague. Then, very slowly, they began to take shape. A little
later his expression was soft and full of hope, and his lips kept
repeating inaudibly one word: the word "to-morrow."
Then in a moment his mind was chaos.
There is nothing more confusing to the brain than memory. Often there is
nothing so agonising and unsparing in its torture, when memory preys
upon the present, consuming all its peace and promise like some foul
vampire. Miles was now in the clutch of memory in its form of monster.
His teeth were clenched, his face livid, the veins on his forehead
standing out like the spreading roots of an oak. Spots of blood stood
under the nails of his clenched fingers.
The stars blinked high overhead, and the stars deep down in the tranquil
water answered them. The voice of the weir seemed nearer and louder. A
gentle breeze stirred the line of poplars by the river's brink in the
meadow, and fanned the temples of the motionless man at their feet. A
bat passed close over him, lightly touching his hair with its wing.
Miles did not stir.
Slowly--as it were, limb by limb--he was freeing himself from the grip
of the hideous past. At last, with a sudden gesture, he flung back his
head, and his eyes gazed upward to the zenith. It was an awful gaze: a
vision of honour and happiness beyond a narrow neck of crime--a glimpse
of heaven across the gulf of hell.
His tongue articulated the word that had trembled on his lips before:
now it embodied a fixed resolve--"To-morrow! to-morrow!"
* * * * *
Mr. Miles became suddenly aware that his name was being spoken somewhere
in the distance by a voice he knew--young Edmonstone's. A moment later
the speaker was with him, and had added:
"There is someone who wants to speak to you, standing outside the gate."
There was a gleam of triumph in the younger man's eyes that shot out
from the misery of his face like lightning from a cloud, throwing that
misery into stronger relief. Miles noted this swift gleam, and it struck
terror into his heart--at this moment, more than terror. He was as a
general who, on the eve of the brilliant stroke that is to leave him
conqueror, hears the alarm sounded in his own rearguard. He stared Dick
up and down for some moments. When he spoke, it was--to the ear--with
perfect coolness:
"Thanks. I half-expected something of the kind; but it is an infernal
nuisance to-night. I must get a coat and hat, for I may have to go up to
town at once." And he strode away.
Dick watched him out of sight, admiring more than anything he had seen
in this man his readiness and resource at this moment. He would have
liked to follow Miles, and keep him within reach or sight; but those
were not his directions. Instead, he crossed the bridge, at once bore to
the left, and crept into the shrubbery. Keeping close to the wall,
without stirring a single leaf, he gained a spot within ten paces of the
gate, whence he could command most of the drive and a fair slice of the
road. In a minute Miles approached at a swinging walk. He passed close
to Dick, and so through the gate. At that moment a man emerged from the
shadows at the other side of the road; it was the man Dick had
discovered in the shrubbery, though he had seen him before--in the
Settler's Hut!
The two men were now but a few paces apart; with little more than a yard
between them, they stopped. A low chuckle escaped one of them; but
without another sound they turned--passed slowly down the road, side by
side, and so out of sight.
Dick gasped: it was so very unlike his preconceived notions of arrest!
XIII
IN BUSHEY PARK
"So boss, you know me?"
"I have not forgotten you, you scoundrel!"
Such was the interchange of greetings between the man from the
Exhibition and Mr. Miles, the Australian. They had halted at a lamp-post
some distance down the road, and stood facing each other in the
gaslight.
"That's right. I'm glad you don't forget old mates," said the stout,
round-shouldered man. "That's one good thing, anyway; but it's a bad'un
to go calling them names first set-off, especially when----"
"Look here," interrupted Miles, with an admirable imitation of his
ordinary tone; "I haven't much time to give you, my man. How the deuce
did you get here? And what the deuce do you want with me?"
"Oh, so you're in a hurry, are you?" sneered the man. "And you want to
get back to the music, and the wine, and the women, do you?"
"Listen!" said Miles smoothly; "do you hear that step in the distance?
It's coming nearer; it's the policeman, for certain; and if you don't
get your business stated and done with before he reaches us, I'll give
you in charge. Nothing simpler: I know the men on this beat, and they
know me."
"Not so well as I do, I reckon!" returned the other dryly, and with the
quiet insolence of confident security. "And so you're the fine gentleman
now, are you?"
"If you like--and for all you can prove to the contrary."
"The Australian gentleman on a trip home, eh? Good; very good! And your
name is Miles!"
"It's worth your neck to make it anything else?"
The other thrust forward his face, and the beady eyes glittered with a
malignant fire. "You don't lose much time about coming to threats,
mate," he snarled. "P'r'aps it'ud be better if you waited a bit; p'r'aps
I'm harder to funk than you think! Because I dare prove to the contrary,
and I dare give you your right name. Have you forgotten it? Then I'll
remind you; and your friend the bobby shall hear too, now he's come so
close. How's this, then?--Edward Ryan, otherwise Ned the Ranger;
otherwise--and known all over the world, this is--otherwise--"
Miles stopped him with a rapid, fierce gesture, at the same time quietly
sliding his left hand within his overcoat. He felt for his revolver. It
was not there. He recalled the circumstance which had compelled him to
lay it aside. It seemed like Fate: for months that weapon had never been
beyond the reach of his hand; now, for the first time, he required it,
and was crippled for want of it. He recovered his composure in a moment,
but not before his discomfiture had been noticed, and its cause shrewdly
guessed. Laying a heavy hand on the other's broad, rounded shoulder, he
said simply and impressively:
"Hush!"
"Then let's move on."
"Where?"
"Where we can talk."
The man pointed across the road to a broad opening directly opposite the
lamp-post. It was the beginning of another road; the spot where they
stood was indeed the junction of the cross and down-stroke of a capital
letter T, of which the cross was the road that ran parallel with the
river.
"Very well," said Miles, with suspicious alacrity; "but I must go back
first to make some excuse, or they will be sending after me."
"Then, while you are gone, I shall confide in your friend the
policeman."
Miles uttered a curse, and led the way across the road and straight on.
There were no lamps in the road they entered now--no houses, no lights
of any kind--but on the right a tall hedge, and on the left trim posts
and rails, with fields beyond. They walked on for some minutes in
silence, which was at length broken by Miles's unwelcome visitor.
"It's no sort o' use you being in a hurry," said he. "I've found you
out; why not make the best of it?"
"What am I to do for you?" asked Miles, as smoothly as though the man by
his side were an ordinary highway beggar.
"You'll see in good time. Sorry I've put you to inconvenience, but if
you weren't passing for what you ain't you wouldn't feel it so; so you
see, Ned Ryan, playing the gent has its drawbacks. Now, after me having
crossed the whole blessed world to speak to you, it would be roughish if
you refused me your best ear; now wouldn't it?"
"You have just landed, then?" said Miles; and added, after a pause, "I
hoped you were dead."
"Thanks," returned the other, in the tone of coarse irony that he had
employed from the beginning. "Being one as returns good for evil, I
don't mind saying I was never so glad as when I clapped eyes on you
yesterday--alive and safe."
"Yesterday! Where?"
"Never mind where. But I ain't just landed--Oh, no!"
Suddenly Miles stopped short in his walk. They had entered again the
region of lights and houses; the road was no longer dark and lonely; it
had intersected the highroad that leads to Kingston, and afterwards bent
in curves to the right; now its left boundary was the white picket-fence
of the railway, and, a hundred yards beyond, a cluster of bright lights
indicated Teddington station.
"Not a step further," said Miles.
"What! not to the station? How can we talk--"
"You are a greater fool than I took you for," said Miles scornfully.
"Yes? Well, anyway, I mean to say what I've got to say, wherever it is,"
was the dogged reply. "If you came to town to my lodging, not a soul
could disturb us. We can't talk here."
Miles hesitated.
"There is a place, five minutes' walk from here, that I would trust
before any room," he said presently. "Only be reasonable, my good
fellow, and I'll hear what you have to say there."
The man turned his head and glanced sharply in the direction whence they
had come. Then he assented.
Miles led the way over the wooden footbridge that spans the line a
little way above the station. In three minutes they walked in the shadow
of great trees. The high wall in front of them bent inwards, opening a
wide mouth. Here were iron gates and lamps; and beyond, black forms and
deep shadows, and the silence of sleeping trees. Without a word they
passed through the gates into Bushey Park.
Miles chose the left side of the avenue, and led on under the spreading
branches of the horse-chestnuts. Perhaps a furlong from the gates he
stopped short, and confronted his companion.
"Here I will settle with you," he said, sternly. "Tell me what you want;
or first, if you like, how you found me. For the last thing I remember
of you, Jem Pound, is that I sacked you from our little concern--for
murder."
The man took a short step forward, and hissed back his retort:
"And the last thing I heard of you--was your sticking up the Mount
Clarence bank, and taking five hundred ounces of gold! You were taken;
but escaped the same night--with the swag. That's the last I heard of
you--Ned Ryan--Ned the Ranger--Sundown!"
"I can hang you for that murder," pursued Miles, as though he had not
heard a word of this retort.
"Not without dragging yourself in after me, for life; which you'd find
the worse half of the bargain! Now listen, Ned Ryan; I'll be plain with
you. I can, and mean to, bleed you for that gold--for my fair share of
it."
"And this is what you want with me?" asked Miles, in a tone so low and
yet so fierce that the confidence of Jem Pound was for an instant
shaken.
"I want money; I'm desperate--starving!" he answered, his tone sinking
for once into a whine.
"Starvation doesn't carry a man half round the world."
"I was helped," said Pound darkly.
"Who helped you?"
"All in good time, Sundown, old mate! Come, show me the colour of it
first."
Miles spread out his arms with a gesture that was candour itself.
"I have none to give you. I am cleaned out myself."
"That's a lie!" cried Pound, with a savage oath.
Miles answered with cool contempt:
"Do you think a man clears out with five hundred ounces in his pockets?
Do you think he could carry it ten miles, let alone two hundred?"
Jem Pound looked hard at the man who had been his captain in a life of
crime. A trace of the old admiration and crude respect for a brilliant
fearless leader, succeeded though this had been by years of bitter
hatred, crept into his voice as he replied:
"You could! No one else! No other man could have escaped at all as you
did. I don't know the thing you couldn't do!"
"Fool!" muttered Miles, half to himself.
"That's fool number two," answered Pound angrily. "Well, maybe I am one,
maybe I'm not; anyhow I've done what a dozen traps have tried and
failed, and I'll go on failing--until I help them: I've run you to
earth, Ned Ryan!"
"Ah! Well, tell me how."
"No,
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