Chapter 9

CHORDS AND DISCORDS.

On the verandah of Barellan Mrs. Dickson was sitting, with the eyes that saw not staring away into the blue distance, with the soft, warm breeze blowing gently on to her face, and with a smile playing round her mouth. She was contented, more contented than she had been for many years; for since Ailleen had come to the station to live, there had not been a day when Willy had been entirely absent from the house, and so long as he was somewhere near her Mrs. Dickson was contented. The love, the unreasoning, unrequited love, she lavished on the boy was the one mainspring of her existence, the one gleam of happiness left to her since the terrible day when she had chanced upon the wreck of the stuck-up coach, and had returned to the station with the alarm, only to fall, when no one was near to help her, and lie with the fierce sunlight burning her eyes into blindness, and the weight of a knowledge upon her mind which would have killed her had not the needs of another life, dependent upon hers, maintained her.

There was a grim story behind it all--a grim story such as hovers over the life of a woman who plays with Fate, and is overtaken in the game. Vanity; love of admiration; thirst for notoriety; the love of men, easily won and lightly held, till the fascination of one came after gratified ambition had raised a barrier to its acceptance; the recoil of jealousy until the barrier was swept away; flight with the one whose influence had changed the current of life; discovery, and then disaster--it was a whirl of emotion, a flood of passion, an unkempt stream of mischief, till the compensating balance swung, and through the long, black years of blindness the chief character in the drama marked time while the outlying skeins of the tangle were unravelled, and Fate resumed control.

In the long, dark, lonely years it grew upon her how terrible a thing it would be if the one link which connected the happiness of the past with the present should snap; if the boy, who was the one gleam of light shining through the gloom of her life, should fail her. As the years rolled on, and the boy--always a boy to her--had passed from childhood into youth, his bearing towards her had been constantly in keeping with the opinion he usually expressed to any of his companions about her: "She's dotty half the time, and when she ain't, she's scotty." She was "dotty" when she tried to induce him to talk to her and tell her all he was doing out in the world of sunlight and sight, the world she could no longer know; she was "scotty" when she upbraided him, gently and lovingly, for needing so much questioning and inducing to talk. He gave her no love: she felt that, though she would never have admitted it by word of mouth; for even if he turned away from her, with brusqueness and hard words, she could not but love the boy her eyes had never seen. The memories he brought back to her, the associations of the years which had preceded the time of affliction, and the play of emotions and passions which she had known before the side-wash of life's stream caught her and drifted her, a dismantled derelict, on to the dreary salt-marsh of blind solitude, were enough to shed a glamour over him, however selfish and shallow-minded he might be.

And yet all the memories he brought back to her were not peaceful. There were some which broke the sunlight of the past by broad black bands of shadow, some which of late had been forcing themselves into her mind with an assertiveness that made her long for the companionship of some one with sympathy; such a one, indeed, as she realized Ailleen to be the moment the warm, big-hearted girl clasped her hand when she thought a stray word had given pain.

Shut out from the world by her blindness, she was still further isolated by the circumstances under which she was situated at Barellan. An up-country station has not a very large visiting list at the best of times; in the early days of a district there are the gum-trees and the 'possums, the scenery and the stock, and that is about all wherewith a woman can interest herself beyond those with whom she is immediately associated. With all these eliminated, the world of a white woman on a station is not likely to be particularly large nor especially attractive; and so the advent of Ailleen at Barellan put a fresh interest, and a kindly interest, into the blind woman's life. It was sorrow which had driven Ailleen away from Birralong--a sorrow and grief which the girl had bravely striven to keep in subjection by care and attention to the woman whose hospitality she was enjoying. But there was little heed of that in the mind of the Lady of Barellan. She was contented, and the cause of her content, or the price, so long as another paid it, was nothing to her now, any more than it had been in the far-off days before the curtain came down upon her vision.

The thoughts in her mind were pleasant, for she was thinking how the present attraction for Willy at the station might be made a permanent attraction, and then there would never be a risk of his being taken away from her. The chance idea for a moment troubled her--it suggested the black line of shadow which had marred the sunshine in the olden days.

"It is ten years since," she said to herself, as the smile died from her lips. "Ten years without a sign or a sound. Surely it will not come again now; surely I may have some peace, some rest. Twenty years in darkness, twenty years in lonely sorrow--surely that should pay the penalty of one mistake."

As she thought she sat upright in her chair, with her hands clasped suddenly together, her cheeks growing pale and her head leaning forward as she listened intently.

From the distance, in the direction of the clump of trees which marked the coaching disaster of years before, there came through the still, hot air the sound of a dingo's howl. The woman shuddered as she heard it--shuddered and lay back in her chair with tightly closed lips, and breath that was short and hard. Again the howl sounded across the paddock, and again she shuddered. Then, sitting upright, she twisted a light shawl she had with her over her head, and rising to her feet, slowly felt her way along the verandah, down the steps, and on until her hand touched the rail which ran from the verandah to the trees across the paddock.

She was following it, and was nearly halfway across, when Ailleen, coming on to the verandah, saw her, and at once ran after her. She turned as she heard the girl's voice calling, and waited where she stood.

"Why, where are you going? And alone, too," Ailleen exclaimed, as she came up; "and with only that rag on your head, and the sun scorching. Why----"

The elder woman turned a pale, careworn face towards her, and held up her hand.

"I ought to have told you--I forgot--but this--I always come alone. A long time ago something happened, and--I come to think and--and pray--here. You go back to the house. This rail is--to guide me, as I always go--alone."

There was something in the words, something in the voice, something in the face, which appealed to the girl.

"Just as you wish," she answered quietly. "Only let me get you a hat."

"I always come--like this," the other said. "I will wait till you go back."

She stood still with her face towards the house as Ailleen returned, and then, as she heard the girl's footsteps on the verandah, she turned and walked to the clump of trees, disappearing under their shade through the little gate in the fence. Closing the gate after her, she stepped forward, holding out a hand slightly in front of her.

"Well?"

At the sound of the word she stood rigid, the pallor deepening on her face. She knew where he was standing though she could not see; she knew that barely a yard away the man who spoke was standing, his heavy black brows forming a band across his forehead, drawn down in a scowl over eyes that glared at her in all the cruelty of unredeemed hate.

"How's the boy?"

"He is well," she answered, "very well. He is----"

"I've come for him."

The woman gasped and caught her breath.

"No, no," she said in a strained tone. "I cannot part with him. It would kill me."

"It's ten years and more since I was here, and now I've come back to see you, perhaps at the risk of my neck, you--you shrink from me," the man said, with cruelty in every line of his face and malice in his voice.

The woman stood still and silent. The last time, and every time, he had come he had said such things, but only when he threatened to take from her the one thing she cherished did she wince.

"Who was the girl?" he asked, watching her colourless face and staring eyes from under his black, heavy brows.

"She is a friend staying with me."

He laughed, not unmusically.

"Staying with you? A plaything for the boy, eh?"

"No," she said quickly. "No; he is not like that."

Again the man laughed.

"There are different tales in the district," he said. "I've been back long enough to learn that. If he were different, I'd have him out of this soon enough to learn him what to do--only he don't want teaching."

She shrank back a step, and the man noticed it and understood.

"Do you think I have forgotten?" he said, with a return of the vindictive cruelty in his voice. "Do you think I'd leave him here if it weren't to make things square? I've been away ten years--where, it's nothing to you; but it hasn't made me softer. I thought I'd come and see how the old place looked, and see whether you still were enjoying the affection of your son and keeping my hiding-place free."

"No one has touched it," she answered quietly.

"No; because you hadn't the pluck to destroy it. Don't tell me you kept it because you promised. I know how much your promises are worth. I've not forgotten."

She did not answer as he paused, and he went on:

"The boy's got to come here; I've got something for him to do. Then he and I----"

"No," she said quickly; "he shall not come."

He took a step forward, and seized her arms between the shoulder and the elbow in his strong, powerful grip, grasping them until his muscular fingers seemed to sink into the flesh. Then, in a sudden access of rage, he shook her to and fro, her slight form being as a lath in his hands.

"You tell me so?" he said. "You attempt to disobey me?"

He let go of her, and she sank to the ground.

"I'd kill you if I didn't hate you too much," he went on. "Get up and go back to the house. When I am ready, I shall come again; and when I come, I take him with me."

She heard his footsteps retreating through the clump of trees, and waited as she was, half kneeling, half sitting, on the ground, where he had left her. She felt her arms throbbing as the bruises formed where his hands had gripped; her head was swimming and giddy from the shaking he had given her; her heart was palpitating with fear and emotion; and as she crouched to the ground, there came back to her the words she had said to Ailleen. She had come to the place to think--and to pray!

The irony of it came to her in her helplessness and misery. Only a short while before she had been flattering herself that, after an absence of ten years, she might believe that the dark shadow which had so marred her life had passed away for ever; that, after a period of ten years' silence, she was never to hear again the voice of the man which held her helpless and unresisting to do his bidding, to suffer whatever his merciless hatred might dictate, to submit, silently and bitterly, to anything that he should command. And even as the shattering of all those hopes went on, leaving her trembling and unnerved, there came to her the knowledge that with one effort she could snap the influence that he had over her, could end for ever her thraldom to him. It looked so easy, so simple, from her present position, and so awful. To speak, to tell the world the great secret of her life, the maintenance of which had lain between her and the chasm she, in her timidity, dare not look towards, was to end this hold of terror, and, so it seemed to her, to shatter at the same moment that to which she clung with all the instinct of her very existence--the affection of her son.

That always appeared to her to be the price of her emancipation. Through all the dark years of her blindness the solace had been in the love she gave to him, and in the ideal sympathy with which she persuaded herself he regarded her. Sometimes she thought what the effect would be if he ever learned the truth, and was half inclined to speak and end her misery, trusting to his generous instincts, which were so manifest to her when he was absent; but when he came to her and spoke, there was something in his voice and manner which she would not own, even to herself, as being a contradiction to her faith, and yet which chilled her and made her seek a refuge in the haven of the cowardly--procrastination.

Now another element had come into her life--her liking for Ailleen. The simple courage the girl had displayed in the trial which had fallen upon her, the unselfish putting aside of her own grief to soothe and make happier the life of her blind friend, all weighed against the uttering of the story which would destroy the overpowering demon of terror to which she was subjected; for the uttering of the story would shatter, at one word, she thought, the confidence, the affection, and the kindliness of Ailleen.

Of the threat the man had made she thought nothing; he had made similar threats too often before, until she felt he only used them to goad her into deeper misery. He was merciless and, to all save himself, treacherous--how much she dared not think--but she would not believe that his threat to take her boy from her was genuine. All she could think of, as she sat huddled up on the ground, was to cling to the belief that her boy would not be taken away, and that somehow the mental torture the man's existence caused her, and the physical pain he never hesitated to inflict, might some day cease.

While she was under the protecting shade of the trees another little drama was being enacted on the verandah of the station-house.

Scarcely had Ailleen, obedient to the elder woman's wish, reached it, when she saw a horseman come through the gate from beside which she had first seen Barellan. He rode rapidly towards the house, and as he approached her heart gave a leap, for she recognized first the grey horse, and then its rider. He saw her as she came up, and waved his hand. Springing from the saddle a few moments later, he fastened the bridle round the hand-rail which served as the blind woman's guide to and from the house and the trees, and hastened to where Ailleen was standing at the top of the steps.

"I only heard last night, Ailleen," he said simply, as he came and took both her hands in his. "I--I don't know what to say; but you know, don't you?"

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak to the only one whose sympathy she really wanted, but whom she did not want to know it.

"I hardly knew what to do when they told me," he went on, looking at her with eyes that she glanced into once and then avoided--sympathy, love, and tenderness were too manifest in them for her to look again without revealing what she, in the perversity of her feminine way, still wanted to hide. "I didn't know what to make of it when they told me you were here, till Nellie Murray said I should ride over to see."

It came to her, with a jealous little twinge, that after all the haste he had shown in riding had been prompted by another girl; and in the midst of her battle with feelings realized and feelings unrealized, the struggle between the important and the unimportant, Ailleen, as a woman, naturally jumped at the unimportant, and clung to it.

"That was very good of her. I'm glad you had her advice. Won't you sit down?"

The words were as foreign as they well could be to what was in her heart, but they relieved the situation for the moment, and saved her from showing what she really meant.

"Why didn't you go to the Flat?" he asked, not heeding her words; "mother would do anything for you, and father too--or to the Murrays, or anywhere but here? Won't you come now? Mother wants you to come to the Flat, and every one in Birralong----"

"I promised before----" and her lip quivered for a moment--"to come to Mrs. Dickson. She asked me. I don't want to--offend any one, but--she is so kind to me, and she's blind too, poor creature, and all alone."

"But, Ailleen----" he began, and stopped, looking hard at her face, turned half away from him in her anxiety to avoid meeting his glance. "We've found gold," he went on presently, after a few moments' silence. "Not much, but still enough to--enough for us. When I've got enough--when I come back--after this trip--if--I----"

He was floundering along, struggling vainly to put just one simple little sentiment into a simple little sentence, and drifting more and more into confusion and away from what he wanted to say. What that was she was quite well aware, and also was aware what reply she would make to it when once it was said; but for the present, with eternal feminine perversity, she did not want it said, so she saw an imagined rider across the paddock, and exclaimed--

"Is that Willy Dickson over there?"

Tony looked, half angrily.

"It isn't anybody," he said.

"Oh, I thought--yes, it's a shadow," she said, as she walked to the end of the verandah and, leaning her hands on the rail, looked away into the distance.

He turned and followed her, and had one of his hands over hers and his arm ready to put round her.

"Ailleen, you're all alone now. Let me be your----"

"You are always my friend," she answered softly, but without raising her eyes, and with a barely perceptible movement away from him.

The arm that was ready was around and restrained her, and her hand he was clasping was pressed to his breast.

"More than that, Ailleen."

She turned her head quickly, and looked at him with a flash in her eyes as she disengaged her hand and stepped away.

"It will be less than that," she retorted quickly; and he, shamefaced and repulsed, stood hesitating what to do--and so failed. "I am perfectly comfortable here," she went on rapidly, lest he should recover his wits and renew an attack she knew she could not withstand. "Mrs. Dickson is very kind, and I've got my horse and all that I want; and besides, I can do a lot for her, and I'm not like I should be if I stayed with any one at Birralong."

He stood awkwardly, looking at her now that her eyes were no longer turned upon him, and wondering, in a dim, uncertain way, whether she was angered at the overtures he had made, or annoyed because he stopped when he did. She, half regretting her brusqueness, feared she had offended him, as he made no apparent effort to speak.

"And you have found gold," she went on, anxious that silence should not come between them at that moment. "Tell me all about it. Was it in the creek where they said it was--Boulder Creek, wasn't it?"

"Boulder Creek's down the gully beyond the Flat," he answered mechanically; for the mistake in locality was one she ought not to have made, and a young bushman is jealous of the landmarks that he knows.

"Oh, of course. How silly of me! It was Boulder Creek where----"

She stopped in time to avoid a reference to a bygone episode which would not be too pleasant at that moment.

"Where Dickson threw my stirrup-irons and I made him go in after them," he said, finishing the sentence for her, and in a tone of voice which showed that resentment was slowly taking the place of the uneasiness at his discomfiture.

"Poor Willy! You always were quarrelling, you two. Why can't you be friends? I'm sure he is good-natured enough."

Resentment was quickly re-inforced by another sentiment as he heard her speaking of Dickson in a manner which suggested that in her eyes he was the least offender of the two. The words which rose to his lips were angry words, and he checked them because, for a moment, she looked up and met his glance. The angry words died down, but no others took their place, and he was once more awkward and ill at ease.

"What else did Nellie Murray say?" she asked, still anxious to avoid the embarrassment of silence, and unfortunately striking again a line of thought in his mind which did not make for peace.

Nellie Murray, as a matter of fact, had thrown out hints, not by any means too obscure, to the effect that if he hastened to Barellan he might find Ailleen enjoying the society of Dickson to the exclusion of all else. That had been the reason of his haste; that had been the reason of his precipitate action when he found she was alone--fearing that at any moment Dickson might appear. In the confusion of his mind subsequent on her repelling his advances, he had lost sight, temporarily, of the suspicions Nellie's words had roused in his mind. Ailleen's reference brought them again to his memory. What else did Nellie say? It was not so much what she said as what she implied. Before he had gone away from Birralong--before the commencement of the tiff which had come between Ailleen and himself, and which was so steadily increasing in influence and importance, though its origin was impossible to indicate--Nellie's opinion of Ailleen was the same as Ailleen's opinion of Nellie, the opinion of one girl friend for her bosom companion--enthusiastic, unmeasured, and, above all things, loyal. There had certainly not been an excess of loyalty in Nellie's manner, or in her words, when she urged him to go to Barellan; and he, remembering it, was about to say something to that effect, when Ailleen cut him short by exclaiming--

"Oh, look! There's Mrs. Dickson coming over to the house."

He looked where she pointed and saw the form of a woman walking slowly along by the hand-rail. The sound of a horse galloping made him turn round, when he saw Willy Dickson going straight for the hand-rail near the house, and near where his grey was hitched. As Dickson came up he tried to make his horse jump; instead, it baulked, and blundered into the rail, carrying away some distance of it and liberating Tony's horse.

In the confusion of recovering the startled grey neither of the three observed how Mrs. Dickson had walked to where the rail was broken, and stood just beyond it, feeling from side to side, unable to realize where it had gone. Ailleen noticed her, and ran to her assistance.

"Tony, look!" she exclaimed; and he, seeing what was the matter, also hastened to her side.

Dickson, resenting Tony's appearance at the station, as well as the way Ailleen behaved towards him, also hurried over.

"A horse has knocked the rail over," Ailleen exclaimed, as she took Mrs. Dickson's arm.

"Let me help you," Tony said, as he took the other.

The blind woman stood motionless, with closely compressed lips and eyes that stared in their sightless fixity.

"Here, I'll take her back," Dickson said abruptly, as he pushed Ailleen aside. "Come on. What do you want mooning out here for?" he added roughly to Mrs. Dickson, as he caught hold of her arm.

She half shuddered as he spoke and touched her, but moved forward, leaning the more on Tony. At the steps her foot caught against the lowest.

"Why aren't you careful?" Dickson exclaimed.

She freed her arm from his.

"Show me," she said to Tony, holding his arm tightly; and he gently led her on to the verandah and up to the chair Ailleen moved forward for her.

"Thank you," she said quietly. "Thank you;" and then, speaking as though with an effort, she asked, "Who are you?"

"This is Tony Taylor--my--my friend," Ailleen said quickly.

The blind woman nodded slowly in answer, clasping her hands together in her lap and closing her lips tightly.

"You should not have gone out in the sun with only that thin rag over your head," Ailleen said gently to her. "You look knocked up. Shall I----"

"No," Mrs. Dickson interrupted quickly and abruptly. "Where's Willy?"

"He's looking at that rail that is broken," Ailleen answered; and Tony, standing by the steps, caught her eye, and forgot the anger he had felt.

"Shall I call him?" he said softly.

The blind woman's hands clutched one another convulsively, and she sat up in her chair, rigid, with compressed lips and pale cheeks, the staring eyes fixed in the direction whence she had heard Tony's voice.

"Tell him to go away. Tell him to go away," she said hurriedly to Ailleen. "I want Willy. I want my boy. Where is my boy?"

Ailleen, meaning only to sign to Tony not to speak again, waved her hand towards him as she bent over Mrs. Dickson. He, hearing the blind woman's words, accepted the sign as a request to go, and, with anger again rising in his breast, he turned away, caught and mounted his horse, and, without a word or a glance, galloped from the station.