Chapter 6

THE LADY OF BARELLAN.

It was a ride of ten miles from Birralong township to Barellan, and from the Murray's selection another two miles had to be added. So it was arranged that Ailleen should ride out to a certain point and wait there for the Murrays to come (if she did not find them waiting for her), and then the three could ride on until they met Dickson, who was to come out to meet them.

Ailleen had her horse saddled, and was away immediately after the early breakfast, and the schoolmaster, being in the enjoyment of the holidays, watched her as she rode down the road and away into the bush. It was quite possible that Nellie Murray and her brother might be already at the trysting-place, and Ailleen rode at a full canter so as not to waste time on the way. She had covered more than half the distance when she heard a shout behind her, and, reining in her horse, there came to her the sounds of another horse galloping and a man's voice calling her name. She faced round and saw Dickson approaching her.

"Why, how did you get as far as this?" she asked as he rode up. "The Murrays were to be by Price's Waterhole, or I was to wait for them there, and we were to meet you later."

He looked at her with an uneasy grin on his face and a shifty look in his watery eyes.

"I didn't think Nellie would care to come. I don't think she will, so I rode on for you. We can go right on together," he answered.

"You didn't think?" she asked. "What did Nellie say? It was her suggestion that----"

"Yes, I know; but--we don't want her. You come on alone. I'd rather you did. Mother won't want to have a crowd about the place. It's only you she wants to see," he said, interrupting her, and speaking quickly.

"And let them wait all day for me when I said I would meet them? What next?" Ailleen exclaimed; and as there was a suspicion of ruffled temper at his proposal, she sought her usual cure by moving her horse forwards, as she could not move about herself.

As the horse started, Dickson brought his round in front of it.

"Here, I say," he said, "it's no good playing the fool like that. We don't want the others. You come by yourself."

For answer Ailleen turned her horse round from him, and he strove to keep his in front of it, but failing, he leaned forward and caught hold of the bridle.

"I'm not going to be----" he began.

"Leave go," Ailleen exclaimed sharply, looking him full in the face with eyes that were dangerously angry.

"I don't want, and I won't have, the others," he retorted, retaining his hold of the bridle.

The thin switch Ailleen carried fell across the back of his hand sufficiently hard to induce him to let go.

"If I tell Nellie what you said?" she remarked.

"I was only in fun," he answered, the uneasy grin still on his face and his eyes shifting. "I only wanted to see if you would let them wait."

The girl looked at him steadily.

"Willy Dickson, don't tell me lies," she said severely; and he evaded her look. "If I had not promised to meet Nellie, I'd go straight back again."

She set her horse at a canter without waiting for him to reply, and rode steadily on, he after her, till Price's Waterhole was reached. It was a small lagoon surrounded by sturdy ti-trees, and with its surface almost covered by the blooms and leaves of pink water-lilies, over which a myriad of blue dragon-flies and other winged insects were skimming. Under the shade of the trees two horses were standing, and on the bank of the lagoon, watching the dragon-flies as they flashed to and fro, Nellie and her brother were sitting.

Fashions do not change with the month in bush communities, and Nellie's hat was one of a pair with Ailleen's--they both came out of the same lot from Marmot's store. Mushroom was the appropriate name given to them, for they were wide of brim and small of crown, and the brims had the extra recommendation of being bendable, up or down, forming an excellent frame for the long, thin veil the dust and mosquitoes sometimes made a necessity. They might not be especially beautiful of themselves, but many a manly Australian heart has beaten more quickly at the sight of one, with the fresh face of a bush maiden under it. As the two girls' hats were alike, so were their costumes. Marmot kept more brands of tobacco than varieties of dress material, and beyond the resources of Marmot's, the Birralong maidens knew not. But a plain grey dress has many a charm when the wearer has a figure of native worth and a carriage as free and graceful as that of a bush-bred girl. The likeness between the two, however, did not extend beyond the clothes they wore, and beyond the fact that both were attractive. Where Ailleen was fair as a Saxon, Nellie was dark brown of hair and eyes, slight in build, and quick in temper.

There was more than a suspicion of the latter in her eyes as she turned her head at the sound of the approaching horses and saw who was Ailleen's companion. Her greeting was brief, and she at once mounted her horse, saying that there was no time to lose now that the others had managed to arrive. As the four rode off towards Barellan, Ailleen, with more loyalty than her friend gave her credit for, tried to keep behind with Bobby; but Dickson was in no way anxious to fall in with the arrangement, and instead of following Nellie as she cantered ahead, hung back till the others caught him up.

"Go on with Nellie; what are you dawdling for?" Ailleen called out as they came up.

"Why can't we all keep together? What's the good of splitting up?" Dickson answered, as he came alongside Ailleen on the opposite side to young Murray.

The latter looked over at him with an expression that showed he at least had a considerable objection to keeping all together. He was only a youngster of sixteen, but he was one among the many of Ailleen's admirers, and the price of his accompanying his sister was that he should have the enjoyment of Ailleen's company all the way to Barellan and back. There was little sympathy between him and Dickson; but the absent Tony was his ideal of all that a man should be, so that if there was any truth in the rumour that Tony and Dickson were rivals, he would not miss an opportunity of praising the one at the expense of the other, being satisfied that with Tony already a claimant, he could have no hope of ever enjoying Ailleen's undivided affections.

"It was the arrangement, anyway. If you don't like it, why did you hurry out? We didn't ask you," he said.

Nellie, finding herself alone, had turned back and rejoined the others.

"Heavens! are you all going to camp, or what?" she exclaimed. "Don't you want us to go to the station, Willy? Or perhaps Bobby and I can go back home--is that it? _We_ don't mind."

"Don't we? Well, we do," Bobby retorted. "It's Dickson who keeps loafing round. Here, go on," he added, as, turning his horse round, he hit Dickson's with a switch across the flank.

The horse plunged forward, and by the time its rider had it checked he was well ahead, with Nellie close at his heels.

"I'm not going to stand much of this, I can tell you," she exclaimed, as she came beside him. "If you think you're going to play with me as you like, you're mistaken. You treat me properly or I'll tell your mother all about----"

"You're always grumbling. I never saw such a girl," he interrupted.

"I'm not grumbling. I suppose you thought you'd trick me, and let Ailleen think I'd never been on the station before. Well, you see, you made a mistake. I shall tell her all about it. You know what you said and promised. If I tell Bobby he'll kill you, see if he won't."

The watery eyes were shifting rapidly from one side to the other, for there were many things which had occurred between him and Nellie about which he was by no means anxious Ailleen, least of any one, should know. But Nellie had a temper, and was somewhat prone to spiteful retaliations, and, without counting the cost to herself, might say enough to make the immediate future rather unsettled, if not actually painful, to him.

"You _are_ jealous," he mumbled. "I never saw such a girl. You think every other girl can cut you out by looking at me. You don't seem to think I've got eyes. I couldn't help it if I met her when I hurried to meet you. Why didn't you say you were going straight to the lagoon? You always came by the township road before. I didn't know."

It was a tone and a line of argument that had served him well on previous occasions when Nellie's temper had become ruffled; and if one dose were not enough, he was prepared to administer a second, and even a third, so long as his latest chance were not jeopardized by a disclosure which he knew would be fatal to him.

"I don't believe you," she replied, with an upward glance at him.

He met her glance and smiled, just as he did when Ailleen's switch fell across his hand. Nellie only looked up at him when she was mollified, and he was satisfied that the storm was over for the time being. But he did not attempt to fall back or wait for the others till the slip-rails leading into the home paddock were reached.

The station homestead was in view from the slip-rails, a long building, all on a floor, with a roof stretching from the ridge-pole down to the rones of the verandah, bungalow fashion. It stood some feet above the ground on a number of tarred and tin-capped piles, a necessary precaution in the land of the white ant. Some distance away from the station-house the outbuildings stood--the store, the men's quarters, and the like--for Barellan was worth having when fully stocked and properly worked. But now it was languishing for want of an energetic head.

Rumours floated about among the drifting comers and goers who formed the working staff from time to time; rumours which told of the thriving condition in which once it had been--when the lady who now reigned over it in sad and sightless solitude had been in the heyday of her youth and beauty. But that was nearly thirty years ago, and thirty years back reaches into the dark mists of the prehistoric age in many parts of Australia. The tales of that period were necessarily so vague, or hopelessly contradictory, as various travelling swagsmen tried to embellish them for the benefit of the listeners in the men's hut, that scant courtesy was paid to them. More recent stories were evasive enough as far as substantiation was concerned; all save one, and that was a gruesome tale--a tale of a fallen tree stretching out long, jagged branches, sharp at the ends and pointing up a by-track used by the station hands, years ago, as a short cut to the branding yards. A high wind had brought that tree down one night, and a new bend had been made in the track so as to avoid it where it lay with its jagged branches reaching out like the hungry prongs of a bundle of gigantic toasting-forks. Years afterwards a stranger, making for the men's hut at sunset, had passed that way, and, with a ghastly face and quaking limbs, had dashed into the hut as the men sat at supper, and had told a tale which was scoffed at, till later, one by one, the men learned to ride five miles round rather than pass that by-track alone at night.

Another tale there was of a coach stuck up on the old main road beyond the boundary fence, when the mail was burned, and one of the passengers, being shot, fell with his head in the fire, and lay there till the Lady of Barellan, riding down the road in the morning, found him, and the remainder of the company bound to the trees and gagged. She had ridden back for help, and had fallen on the verandah of the station-house as she gave her news, and the men had ridden off to help those of whom she told, and left her unnoticed, lying where the sun poured down on her in the full force of summer, scorching the sight out of her eyes. From that day she had been sightless, and soon after she was alone, save for the boy she idolized, for her husband had gone to the north to buy store cattle, and had disappeared from the ken of man, till a skeleton, with two broken spears through the ribs, and the remains of a swag and clothes, identified by some friends as Dickson's, were found in the neighbourhood whither he had intended to journey.

So the station had languished for the want of a guiding hand and head, while the owner passed her days sitting on the verandah, with her sightless eyes fixed where a clump of trees grew thickly on the spot where the coach had been stuck up so many years before. A slim hand-rail ran from a corner of the verandah to the clump three hundred yards away, and round the trees a high three-rail fence was built, with a gate where the hand-rail met it, and no one of the station ever went there save the Lady of Barellan; for it was a strange fancy, born of the fever that had followed the loss of her sight, some said, that she had of going there, feeling her way by the hand-rail, and staying there alone and silent, musing.

She was sitting on the verandah as the four rode up, with her eyes, which, save for a fixity of gaze, showed nothing of their affliction, staring away into the distance where the clump of trees stood out, purple-blue in their shade above the buff of the sun-dried grass and against the pure, transparent azure of the sky overhead.

Dickson mounted the steps leading on to the verandah, with Nellie close upon him and Ailleen further behind; while Bobby, not having outgrown the uneasiness of youth, remained in the saddle holding the bridles of the other three horses as well as his own.

"Here's Nellie," Dickson said abruptly, as he reached the chair where the sightless woman sat.

"How do you do, Nellie?" she said simply, as she held out her hand.

"And this is the other--Ailleen," he added, before Nellie could answer.

Ailleen, looking into the clear, open eyes which looked so steadily into hers, and were so different from what she had pictured to herself, took the extended hand.

"I am so glad to be able to see you. Oh, I forgot--I'm so sorry," she added quickly.

"Dearie, dearie," the blind woman said, in a gentle, caressing tone, placing her other hand over Ailleen's, "it's very kind of you to say that, very kind of you. There's many a one said far worse and never given a thought whether it hurt me or not. Come, sit ye down, dearie, and tell me all about yourself. Willy, bring a chair."

But Willy, convoyed by Nellie, had passed out of sight and hearing.

"I will sit here," Ailleen exclaimed, as she sat on the top of the steps leading to the ground from the verandah.

"Ay, ay," the other woman said. "He's no sooner here than he's away. Tell me, dearie, all about yourself. Never mind him; maybe he's gone to get some tea or some fruit for you--he's an unselfish boy, a good, unselfish boy."

Ailleen looked into the open eyes, sightless and expressionless, and felt a twinge of pity for the lonely heart who spoke so fondly of her boy--the boy who had spoken of her to Ailleen, and said that she was ill-tempered, fretful, and worrying. She, guileless herself, had sympathized with him, never doubting that some truth existed in his words. Now she had seen the two together, had heard the abrupt manner of the son to the mother and the almost pleading gentleness of the mother to the son, and in a trice there had come a dual sense--attraction to the mother; repulsion from the son.

As she sat talking to her, looking out across the level, sun-scorched paddocks to the fringe of standing bush, with the purple loom of the distant ranges showing over the irregular tops of the gums as a bank of purplish cloud against the blue of the sky, and with the chromatic whistle of the magpies coming faint but clear through the still air--just a glimpse of the Australian scenery that grows so dear in its simplicity and colour--she was more and more attracted to the woman who had known so much of human suffering, and waited so long and so patiently in darkness which was more than solitude. The simple story of her life Ailleen told--saving any reference to the absent Tony--and the blind woman caught with swift sympathy at the fact that she was motherless, and might at any moment be fatherless also.

"And you have no relatives--no friends?" she asked gently.

"Oh, heaps of friends, but no relatives," the girl answered.

"And if--supposing you were left alone----"

"Well, I can work," Ailleen added, as the other paused.

"Ay, dearie; but you'd be lonely, and it's bad to be lonely when you're young."

"Then I'll come and take care of you," the girl answered, as she laughed lightly.

The woman turned her head quickly and held out her hand, as a smile, soft and gentle, rippled over her face, and almost overcame the fixed stare in the sightless eyes.

"You will, dearie? Ay, and you shall. Come to me, dearie, when you are alone. Make Barellan your home whenever you need one."

As she spoke Dickson and Nellie came round the corner of the verandah. The shifty eyes of the one twinkled for a moment with a glee which was not beautiful to see; the dark eyes of the other glittered.

"She never said that to me," Nellie said under her breath. "You'll have to tell her--or I shall."

"She's only cranky," Dickson answered in the same tone. "She's dotty half her time and scotty the other."