Chapter 11
“Now, I ‘ll find you a man to ride. He thoroughly understands horses, I ‘ll say that for him, though I have no cause to love him. He ‘ll ride for you, but I don’t believe Boatman is as good as Vixen.”
“I ‘ll lay you anything you like he is, if only I get the right man up.”
“Done with you, then. You shall have the right man, that I promise. Mind, you said anything I liked. You won’t go back on your word?”
“Anything to within half my kingdom,” laughed my father, who was getting a good way down his bottle, or I ‘m sure he never would have agreed to what Dick Stanton asked.
“That’s settled, then, for I suppose you don’t count your daughter near half your kingdom,” said Stanton, and he looked at me as if he would have said, “See how I pay you out. Then if Vixen beats Boatman I marry your daughter out of hand; that’s the arrangement, isn’t it?”
To this day, in spite of after events, I don’t believe he was in earnest, for no man could seriously want to marry a girl who had just shown him as plainly as possible she was in love with another man. I think he just wanted to torment and frighten me by showing me his power, as part punishment for my behaviour of the morning. But I didn’t think so at the time. For the moment astonishment took my breath away, and then, when I found my voice, I vehemently protested.
“No! no!” I cried, “I will never marry you! Never! never! I hate you! If you only knew how I Hate you!”
And the two men only laughed at me. My father was more than half through his bottle, or he would never have shamed me so, but the other man was sober enough, he knew what he was doing, and I think was pleased to move me, for usually I would not look at him. I think sometimes now it was the sight of my helpless anger made him carry the joke so far.
“Well, well, you shall have her if you’re first past the post,” said my father, leaning back in his chair, and laughing heartily, “but I ‘m thinking there ‘ll be two Vixens over at Telowie then, and I know which I ‘d rather have the riding of.”
“Oh! trust me. Gently does it. Ride her with the snaffle, with just a touch of the spur now and then, just to show her you mean business,” and he looked me full in the face and laughed, as if he were taunting me with my helplessness.
If I shut my eyes I can see them now, for all it is so long ago. The long, low, poorly-furnished room, badly lighted by one colza oil lamp, the head of a dingo and two brushes crossed, over the mantelpiece, the only attempt at ornament, and the two men seated at the table, the decanter between them, gambling away my life and happiness. Maybe it was only in jest; I try to think so now, but the consequences were so fatal, there must have been just a spice of earnest in it even then, at least on Dick Stanton’s part. But not on my father’s. Even now I pray that my father was not in earnest.
The more I protested, the more determined they grew, till at last my mother came in to see what all the laughter was about, and promptly sent me to bed, and the last thing I heard as I made my escape through the door was Dick Stanton’s mocking voice calling, “Well, we needn’t fear but there’ll be plenty of entries for the Yanyilla Steeplechase, once the boys get to hear that Miss Hope Forde is to be the prize.”
My mother followed me to my room. I think she, too, was a little angry, but she wouldn’t allow it to me, she only scolded me for stopping in the parlour so long.
“You ought to know better at your age,” she said. “It was wrong and foolish of you to stop when you saw they were getting excited.” My mother always glossed a disagreeable truth over to herself in that way. She never said, “Your father has had too much to drink,” though he had at least once a week, but it was always, “Your father is excited,” or “over-tired.” My poor mother; I have learned to pity her for those deceptions that deceived nobody, since I have grown older and wiser. Still, that night she was hard on me. Perhaps because she felt I had been hardly dealt with, and she had nobody else to vent her anger on. That is the way with some people.
“Don’t be silly, now, and cry,” she said, for I had flung myself down on my little bed, and was vainly trying to suppress the sobs that would come, “It’s not the least good in the world to cry. You shouldn’t have stopped so long. It’s entirely your own fault. You have nobody to blame but yourself. There, there, for heaven’s sake, child, don’t cry like that, they ‘ll have forgotten all about it to-morrow morning, when their heads are clear. I don’t know what was the matter with Dick Stanton, I never saw him so excited.”
I could have told her, but I held my peace, and she went away, and I cried myself to sleep.
But the matter was not forgotten next day, for my father told us, as if it were a huge joke, that he had bet me against a hundred pounds that Boatman could win the grass-fed steeplechase.
“So you see,” he said, laughing at the recollection, “it cuts both ways. If I lose I get my daughter comfortably settled in life, and if I win I ‘m at least 100L. to the good.”
I looked at my mother appealingly, but she only shook her head. My father was not a man whose whims could be lightly crossed, and she would not let me even try. Ashamed! oh, child! I was never so ashamed in my life! I hung my head all day and was afraid even to look the servant maid in the face. I felt she must despise a girl whose own father held her so lightly, And Paul, there ‘s where the hardest part of all came. How was I to tell my lover what my father had done? And how was I not to tell him, for I knew that Dick Stanton was not the man to keep such a wager to himself; he would bruit it abroad, if it were only for the sake of angering his rival. I was ashamed, ashamed, ashamed. It seemed to me I could never hold up my head again, and oh, how was I to meet Paul! I thought of nothing else for the next two days, and I had not a chance of seeing him or telling him, for posts were not in those days. And so, though he was only ten miles away, I had to wait two whole days before I saw him again. Then we met in the gully under the shade of the tree ferns. I remember now how the sunlight, coming through their great fronds, made a pattern as of dainty lace work on my white dress, and I studied that pattern carefully, and tried to make out what it reminded me of, though I heard quite plainly a man crushing through the bracken. That is just like a woman though, she longs and longs, and when at last the longed-for hour has come, she is frightened at her own temerity, and half wishes herself back again. I was not often afraid to meet Paul, but I was to-day, and I never looked up till I felt his arm around me and his dear voice in my ear.
“Why, my little girl, my little girl, what is the matter with my little girl?”
Then I told him, with my face hidden on his broad shoulder, I told him, and he was very angry. I knew he would be, but I had not realized how angry, and I was fairly frightened.
“Oh, Paul!” I could only gasp, “Oh, Paul!”
He swore an oath when he saw that I was trembling, and recovered himself a little. Just occasionally, I think, a woman likes the man she loves to be thoroughly angry, and if he does swear then she accepts it as a relief to her own feelings as well as his. So I did not mind Paul swearing, seeing that he was not given to that sort of thing. I felt he was entirely in sympathy with me, and was glad of it.
“What a fool I have been,” he said, “what an utter fool. I might have known there was something up when Stanton came to me so confoundedly civil all at once. He made me a sort of apology for his rudeness to you the other day, congratulated me on my good luck in winning you, and then finally suggested that I should ingratiate myself with your father by offering to ride Boatman for him in the grass-fed steeplechase, and of course--”
“You said ‘No!’ Oh, Paul! you said ‘No!’”
“No! darling, of course I said ‘Yse.’ What else could I say? And I wanted to please your father. How could I know--that--that--what the fellow was up to.”
“But now, Paul, you won’t ride him, now you do know, will you, my dearest?” And because I was afraid he would, I put my arms coaxingly round his neck and tried to draw his face down to mine. It did not want much trying, he was always ready enough to kiss me, my dear love, but he shook his head when I tried to dissuade him from riding Boatman.
“After all, sweetheart,” he said, “I really think I’m the proper person to ride the grey. If you’re to be the prize, well it can’t make any more talk, my riding, and, of course, it will give me a sort of right to you.”
“But--but--you mustn’t ride Boatman, you mustn’t--you mustn’t--you mustn’t. He baulks, and he runs down his fences, and he pulls, and--and--oh, my darling! you mustn’t ride Boatman!”
“What a list of crimes,” he said, smiling at my vehemence. “Still, I have ridden a horse or two in my life, and I’m inclined to think I ‘m equal to this one. He can beat anything, your father tells me, this side of the Dividing Range. I had a trial this morning, and I ‘m inclined to think the old gentleman hasn’t put too high a value on him. Boatman’s an out-and-outer, once one gets on good terms with him. And there ‘s the difficulty no one can manage him.”
I knew then it was little good my speaking; dearly as he loved me, nay, for my sake even, he was determined to ride Boatman. And after all, looked at from his point of view, I think he was right.
Stanton’s Vixen was the only horse in the running, the only one in the least likely to win, and if I was to be the prize, as my father insisted, not once but twenty times, then, indeed, it was very necessary that our horse should be well ridden, and I knew, and he knew, nobody could do that so well as Paul. Then I don’t know what dark presentiments filled my mind, but something told me he should not ride in that race, something told me all was not fair and above board, and with all my strength, with all my powers of persuasion, I tried to stop him. I coaxed him, and he only stroked my hair fondly, told me I had nice dark eyes and pretty hair, and said if I made myself so sweet and dear, it only showed him all the more clearly I must be won by fair means or foul. Are you smiling, Hope? Ah, my dear, it is three-and-thirty years ago, and the remembrance of days like those is all I have. Then I stormed and raged, every unkind term I could think of I heaped on him, and that is like a woman too, I think--when all other means fail she tries anger.
Did he think, I asked, I was so slight a thing as to be bought and sold in that manner? Did he think that my father could give me away in that way, as if I were a horse or a bullock; and then, of course, just as I would have given anything to be dignified and grand, I spoiled it all, for my voice failed, and I burst into tears.
He was good to me! oh, he was good to me! He would not give up his point, but he comforted me, and he was good. Once I had fairly started I could not stop; all the pent-up misery of the last three days seemed bound up in those tears. Heaven knows never had woman greater cause for tears, though I only dimly felt it then, and never since have I cried as I cried that day. Paul was frightened at first, I think, for he said nothing but, “Poor little girl, poor little girl,” and held me closer than ever, but he would not give in, and at last, tired out, I could only sob.
“Must you ride him, Paul, must you ride him?”
“I must, my darling. I really think it is the only thing to be done, both for your sake and my own. It was a brutal thing to do, but it was none of my doing, and when Boatman passes the winning post with Paul Griffith up, why that settles everything, doesn’t it, my sweet?”
Ah, yes, that would have settled everything; and as he stood there beside me, so tall and straight and strong, I made up my mind my tears were idle tears, and it would all come right in the end. And before I went home we were both more than half convinced that there was likely to be more good in my father’s foolish wager than at first sight appeared, and we two would turn it to our own advantage. Paul, indeed, was jubilant, once he had got over his anger. He had come to tell me he had got the offer of the managership of a station across the border in Riverina. He would take it at the end of the year; there was a house a lady could live in--and--well--would I go? After he had won--fairly won--the Yanyilla Steeplechase, should he go to my father and ask for the wife he had won?
And he was so confident, so happy, so certain of success, how could I fail to be happy and confident too? I went home that night with a far lighter heart than I had carried for many a long day. My mother saw the traces of tears, and asked what I had been crying for, but I kept my own counsel, for where was the good of enlightening her till I could tell her everything was settled? There are many in the world who can rejoice with them that rejoice, many, quite as many, thank God for it, who will weep with them that weep; but to very few is it given, I think, to share another’s anxiety sympathetically. Fear and hope, we hardly know which predominates, and the pain, which is of necessity the result, is best borne in silence and alone. And at first with me hope reigned supreme; but not for long though.
One morning, a few days after Paul and I had settled matters so very much to our own satisfaction, the boy who brought up the milkers fell sick, and Ben, who took his place, failed to find them. It was a thing of not infrequent occurrence, and I turned out as usual to help him. As usual, too, those wretched cows had turned up the creek and lost themselves in the gullies among the ranges to the south. As the grass grew dry-on the plains they would wander along the sheltered creek, where in patches it was still fresh and green. And this day they had wandered farther than usual. We rode on and on, our horses stumbling among the rough ground, till at last we heard the cracked old cow bell and knew they were found.
“Coming towards us too,” said Ben. “I wonder what started ‘em.”
“They knew it was time to come home,” I suggested; but Ben wouldn’t agree with me, and he knew a good deal about cattle for a boy of his age. Then we turned a shoulder of the hill, and there were the four wanderers making straight for us. There was something else besides, a tent pitched on a nice green patch of grass, and a horse feeding out of a bucket close beside it. A man at the door snatched up the bucket as we appeared and carried it into the tent, but I saw it as clearly as I see you now, and if I could not trust my own eyes there was Ben, and he saw it too.
He was quicker than I too, for he had been about among the men and heard them talk about such things.
“O my!” he said. “Here’s a go! That’s Vixen, Stanton’s mare. She’s a regular take down, ain’t she? She looks like an awful old stock horse, don’t she? Look here, Sissy, I believe they ‘re feeding her on the sly. What was she drinking out of that bucket?”
We turned the cows homewards, and then went towards the little tent. It was Vixen sure enough, and Stanton’s man, Dan O’Connor--Ticket-of-leave Dan, as they called him--was in charge. He bid us “Good morning” in the oily, slimy tones of the old convict, and said he was just going to bring back our stray cows.
“I seed the Yanyilla brand on ‘em, and I guessed some one ‘d be around lookin’ for ‘em soon, as they was milkers,” he said, and what could I say.
We and our cattle were the trespassers, for this bit of country belonged to Telowie, and Dick Stanton was only doing as others did when he sent out his horse to a picked bit of sweet grass in order to fit her for the coming race. She might have been drinking water out of the bucket. I had no possible means of knowing that she had not, and yet I felt sure, with Ben, that there had been oatmeal in the bucket, and that Vixen, who, until it had got about that Paul Griffith was to ride Boatman, had been first favourite for the Yanyilla Steeplechase, was being fed. I rode right up to the tent in order to be quite sure, and saw on the grass where the bucket had stood, a few white grains as of oatmeal, and Ben, whose eyes were keener for that sort of thing, saw them too. But what could we do? It was quite the thing for the horses that were going to run in the grass-fed steeplechase to be carefully fed by their owners or backers on some place where the grass seemed fresher, greener, and sweeter than anywhere else. About twenty horsts were entered, and all along the banks of the Yanyilla and Telowie Creeks, just before the race meeting, you might come across camps such as Ben and I had struck this morning. Boatman himself was camped not a mile from the house by the big water-hole, and thither went my father and Paul every day to see that he was getting on all right. Even now I don’t understand my father’s conduct; you ‘d think no sensible man would have seriously considered the foolish wager he had made, and yet I had a feeling that he cared very little about his own horse’s chances and a great deal about Vixen’s. He used to laugh to Paul and say, “He’s good enough; he’s good enough.” But in the evening, after a glass or two of Battle-axe brandy, my mother and I heard quite a different story. Boatman’s chances grew very small, and Boatman’s vices were so magnified that I could not sleep for fear. And when I told my sweetheart he only laughed, and said he knew the old horse now a good deal better than his master, and though he was a bad-tempered old brute there was not a horse in the colony could touch him, once you took him the right way. It was like a woman to be so full of fears and forebodings, and this morning, now that I seemed to have good ground for them, my fears redoubled, and Ben and I, in our excitement, fairly raced those milkers home, for which my mother very properly scolded me well. That troubled me little enough. I was all anxiety to see Paul, and waited down at the little camp watching Boatman crop the grass till he paid his daily visit, and then I poured into his ears all my fears. And Hope--he only laughed, turned up my face and kissed me, and laughed at my discovery and my fears.
“So that ‘s his little game, is it?” he said. “Well, I always knew he was a pretty bad lot, but I hardly thought he’d descend to that. Let him feed her. The little corn they dare smuggle into the mare won’t make any difference in the end. So cheer up, my little girl. Only a week more now and then we ‘ll see.”
That week, that week, my last week of happiness, and to think I wished it over! Oh! Hope, Hope! never wish the time gone child! you may be wishing away the last happy days of your life, as I did!
Every day now I saw Paul, every day we met at the camp where was Boatman, and after seeing he was all right wandered away into the gullies together. I could not help being anxious, very anxious, and as the time grew nearer it grew worse to bear; but still it was a happy time with Paul by my side, with his strong arm to lean on, with his kind face so near to my own. I wonder why one’s happy days in this world are so brief. It has often seemed to me the arrangements of Providence are a little hard.
We always managed to have three days’ racing at Yanyilla, and all the country side for miles round gave itself up to the delights of racing; and of course that meant a week’s dissipation, just like “cup week” in Melbourne now. The last day was always an off-day--an afterthought--not arranged for in the original programme; I don’t know exactly for what reason they held it, except that they thought it a pity not to make out the week. I fancy the races on the last day were very poor affairs, only got up because the men had got the racing fever on them, and wanted to bet on something; but I ought not to say much, for I really don’t know. My interest in racing came to an end for ever that first day, and I have never seen a race run since, and never shall in this world. I don’t suppose they ever have races in the next.
The eventful day came at last, the first Tuesday in November, the day that would be “cup day” now-a-days. Monday was an exciting day for us. The stewards came out and saw to the preparing of the racecourse, which was ordinarily simply a piece of flat paddock close to Yanyilla homestead, and it seemed the entire population of the township accompanied them, to see that it was properly done, I suppose, and not only the entire population of the township, but of all the district round I think. My father was in his glory. He was a most hospitable man, and everyone he came across he asked up to the house, regardless of the fact that we were already as full as we could possibly be, and that long before mid-day my mother and I were weary washing and rewashing our very limited stock of glasses, for the visitors who came, if they did nothing else, partook very freely of our brandy. That is the way with many good-natured people, I think; my father was voted a jolly good fellow by his guests, and I don’t suppose anybody ever thought that the hardest part of the work fell on us two women. I ought not to complain now, it is all over so long ago, but I have always felt it a terribly hard thing that the last happy day I had should have been so utterly spoilt. Paul and I had arranged to spend it together down in the gully where we first made each others acquaintance; he had come to the house for me; he had grown bolder now that he was to ride my father’s horse, and there he sat on the verandah, waiting more than half the day, while I washed and wiped that seemingly endless array of glasses.
Do you wonder that I complain, Hope?
Even now, if I shut my eyes, I seem to see the glorious November sunshine beckoning me out, to hear the impatient shuffle of my lover’s feet as he sat and waited, and yet there seemed no prospect of release for me. At last, I suppose my mother guessed something of my feelings, for when the kitchen clock was on the stroke of four she said--
“You can go now, Hope. If they want any more they ‘ll just have to drink it out of dirty glasses,” and I went gladly, and selfishly too, for I knew whatever she might say, I had left her to bear the burden and heat of the day alone. Still I am glad--even now I am deeply thankful to my mother--for those hours of happiness she gave me, almost, I think, unconsciously.
Down in the gully Paul and I watched the shadows grow longer as the day crept on towards evening, and I tried once more to dissuade him from riding Boatman. I might just as well have spoken to the winds.
“My dear child,” he said a little severely, “you must know you are asking an impossibility. All the district round has put its money on the horse because I ‘m riding, and they say I ‘m the only man in the district that can ride him. I never could play it so low down on your father as to desert him at the last moment. Don’t you see, my darling?”
I didn’t see. But what was I to do? I saw he was still a little weak from the effects of an attack of fever and ague he had had some time before, but when I urged that as a reason he only laughed, and said I was a very Job to worry myself about such trifles; as for the fever there was hardly a trace of it left, and it was tact, not strength, Boatman wanted to ride him. Then there was nothing more to be said. I could only put my arms round his neck and tell him it was only my love for him made me foolishly anxious, and he must not think badly of me for it. After all, it was only natural I should be anxious; he would have had more cause to grumble if I had not been.