Part 12

When Mortimer looked round again, they were mere specks on the veldt.

'Poor little beggars!' he said, smiling as he thought over the adventure again. He flung two of the rifles into the river; the third he carried with him as far as the British camp, and gave it to some one of the ambulance there, promising a five-pound note if it were kept safely till the end of the war.

'Roly'll go off his head at such a trophy,' he thought.

He handed in his despatches not many hours later, with no further adventures.

*CHAPTER XIX*

*The Mood of a Maid*

'Do you know what it is to seek oceans, and to find puddles, to long for whirlwinds, and have to do the best you can with the bellows? That's my case.'

Bartie had gone up to Coolooli for the afternoon. Old Mr. Stevenson had taken a great fancy to the boy, and prophesied that he had the making of a fine squatter in him.

Stevenson had ridden in to the selection on his way from Wilgandra. It was not often he passed the neat new gate in these days without turning in. He always felt a pleasant glow of conscious virtue, as his eyes marked all the improvements that had so suddenly sprung up.

'Me boy's pleasing me,' he would mutter. 'It wasn't much to ask.'

He told the surprised Cameron that it was his fad to leave none of his property unimproved, and that he was merely making the trial on this particular selection, to see what might be done with a small holding. Cameron was rather relieved than otherwise that he no longer owned the place; the money he had borrowed on it at different times was almost equal to the sum he had paid for it at first. With such a landlord it was a much less responsible thing to be merely a tenant, especially as Stevenson, since he had foreclosed, would accept no rent, professing that he was getting the place ready for some one who could not take possession for a year or two, and that it was a convenience to him for Cameron to stay on the place and keep it in order. The long-established character of the man as hard and close kept any suspicion from Cameron that he was being helped out of kindness.

The old man had come in this afternoon to carry Bartie up to Coolooli with him, to show him the new invention he was about to try for the destruction of rabbits. Bart rushed off to get his horse ready while Stevenson stayed talking of the war and his son to Mrs. Cameron. It was quite a surprise to her when she learned much later that the old man had five other sons. This one at the front was the only one he ever spoke about.

He liked talking to this practical, sensible mother of the family. He felt amazed that such a shiftless fellow as Cameron should own such a treasure, and he felt, as he looked at her, that the salvation of the family would have been assured after her arrival, even if he himself had not lent a hand. With Hermie his manner was unconsciously somewhat aggressive, and she shrank from the rugged-faced old man who looked at her so sharply from under his bushy eyebrows. He saw her one day as he passed her in the verandah, reading a book fresh from London. Mrs. Cameron saw to it that the poor girl had time now for such rest and recreation.

'Can you make soap and candles?' he said, stopping suddenly in front of her.

It was not likely such arts had been learned on Dunks' selection.

'No,' said Hermie. 'At least, we did try once with the fat to make soap, but it went wrong.'

'How would you instruct your men to corn beef or make mutton hams?'

Hermie looked at him distressed.

'I have never done any,' she said.

'Humph!' he growled, and went to untie his horse, muttering, 'A pretty wife, a pretty wife!' to himself.

This particular afternoon Bart went off in high spirits, Challis watching him wistfully from the verandah.

Hermie was--oh, who knew where Hermie was? Wandering up and down among the roses perhaps, her eyes soft with tears--Challis had found her like that two or three times--or reading poetry in some quiet corner in the paddocks, or writing it in the secret solitude of her bedroom, or on Tramby's back riding, riding with dreamy eyes down the road to the sunset. Wherever she was, she did not want Challis.

Mrs. Cameron was with her husband. Up and down the path they walked, his arm round her waist, her hand in his, talking, talking a little of the future, not at all of the quivering past, mostly of the tender all-sufficing present. Challis, who had had such sweet monopoly of her mother for so long, missed it exceedingly now, while readily acquiescing that the turn for the others had come. She looked from the verandah with yearning eyes. It seemed months instead of weeks since she had poured all her hopes and imaginings and longings and queer little fancies into that ever-ready ear.

Roly? Roly was killing his Boers down in the paddock, or wheeling heavy loads of earth to make kopjes in the bush. He would tell her to 'clear out of the way of lyddite shells,' if she sought him out.

Floss? Floss, who hated a needle, was sitting on the grass making, with incredible labour, a pincushion for the mother she had begun to love with an almost fierce affection. Challis would have liked to go and help her, but the child, if she pricked her fingers till they were empty of blood, would have no stitch set in it that was not her own. Furthermore, all the dreams on the Utopia were dispersed. Challis had never buttoned one of the little girl's garments, never tied a sash, never brushed out a curl. The small woman had dressed herself independently ever since she was three, and indignantly scorned all help; she hated sashes--her straight light hair she raked herself. And though she accepted in an offhand fashion the toys Challis had chosen with such love and interest, she kept up an inexplicably warlike attitude towards her, and deprecated her on every possible occasion. Her hands--'Pooh! Well, I would be ashamed to have hands that colour! S'pose you never take your gloves off?' 'Frightened to walk in the bush 'cause of snakes! Well, some girls are ninnies!' 'Never been-on a horse--'fraid to get on Tramby! Why, she--Floss--had galloped all over on Tramby without a saddle when she was only four!'

Challis, sensitively aware of her own want of courage to explore and grow familiar with these bush things, got into the habit of shrinking away when Floss came on the scene.

There seemed no niche left for her in this home she had looked forward to; that was what it was. The place, rightly hers, had filled up entirely during her long absence.

No one understood her, or tried to. They took it for granted that her genius and her life abroad had lifted her to a higher plane than the one on which they themselves lived. It might be very cultivated and beautiful up there, but they were not familiar with it, and therefore did not take any interest in it.

The girl tried hard to get on to their plane, and be interested in their things; but they knew she was trying hard, and it merely irritated them. Let her stay where she belonged.

It was so lonely, too--so very lonely. Used to the pleasant uproar and friendliness and excitement of cities, this little clearing in the great silent bush oppressed her intolerably after a week or two.

She had been a little ill before leaving Sydney. The doctors had said her nervous system was completely run down--a shocking thing in a child! They advised complete rest for several months, and expressed their opinion that the quiet bush life at Wilgandra and roughing it with children, who would take her out of herself, would be the best possible thing for her, and the triumphal career could be resumed later on.

So there were to be no concerts yet, no happy strivings to interpret Chopin's varying moods to a breathless audience, to reach up with Mendelssohn to his pleasant sunlit heights, to go down with Wagner to strange depths that stirred her soul. She was to practise very little, to appear in public not at all. The papers expressed their regret at her illness, and said a kind thing or two. After that her name had no mention in them.

One paragraph she had read had touched her to the quick. Some interviewer who had been to see her in Sydney wrote in his paper, 'Thank Heaven, she is not pretty! Her chances are hereby much greater.'

Poor little Fifteen! Her pillow was wet that night. She felt she had much rather he had said, 'She has no genius, but she is very pretty.' She longed for Hermie's shining wavy hair, for the sweet blue of her eyes, the pink that pulsed about her cheeks. Who cared if you could interpret the waves and storms of Lizst's rhapsodies, and let the keen little rifts of melody in between the thunder until the almost intolerable sweetness made the heart ache? Who cared that Leschetizky himself had taught you and had tears in his eyes once, when you had played to him the wind in the trees just as he himself heard it? What did all these things matter? Every one went home from your concerts and forgot all about you. Oh, surely it were better to be so exquisitely pretty that all who saw you loved you on the spot!

She looked at herself again and again in the glass that night. Until that wounding paragraph, she had never given one thought to her looks; the sensitive small face, the grey eyes drenched with this new tragedy, the fair straight hair falling over her shoulders--not pretty, not pretty, and all the world knew it now!

She drifted in from the verandah to the living-room, where the piano stood open as Hermie had left it, when, imagining Challis out of hearing an hour or two ago, she had sat down to it for a few minutes. But the cheap tinkling stuff that comprised poor Hermie's _repertoire_--the jingling waltzes, the pretty-pretty compositions of Gustave Lange and Brindley Richards, 'Edelweiss' and 'Longing,' 'Warblings at Eve,' and such--they set her ear horribly on edge, though she would rather have died than have said so. It were less torture to hear Flossie thumping conscientiously away at 'The Blue Bells of Scotland' and 'We're a' Noddin'.'

The very piano was a heartache; it was seven years since it had been tuned, and despite the careful dusting of Miss Browne, the silverfish led a gay existence in its interior, and ate all the softness and depth from the notes.

But this afternoon the girl, with that vague misery tugging at her heart, was driven to it; nothing else could ease her. She put her foot down on the soft pedal, to keep the discordant jangle away, and avoiding as much as she could the B that was flat, and the D that was dumb, and the F sharp that Roly had torn off bodily, she worked off the gloom that oppressed her with Beethoven and Bach.

Roly came in. He was arming himself for a new attack on Ladysmith; he had the kitchen poker and the stove-brush, the tin-opener, a knife from a broken plough, a genuine boomerang, the corkscrew, the gravy-strainer, and the carving-knife, disposed about his person, and he came into the living-room, his eye roving about in search of fresh implements of warfare. Nothing seemed to appeal to him, however, and he was going out again discontentedly when he noticed his new sister had dropped her hands from the keyboard, and was resting her forehead there instead.

He approached her with some awe.

'Can you play with your head too?' he asked; then he noticed there were tears running down her cheeks. 'Don't cry,' he said; 'I'll run out and ask mother to let you off. Did she say you'd got to practise an hour? Oh, I'll soon get her to let you off!'

Challis smiled faintly through her tears.

'It's all right,' she said; 'don't disturb mother. No one told me to practise.'

'Well, you _are_ a muggins!' said the uncouth bushikin. 'Catch _me_ setting myself a copy or a sum! Why don't you go out and play?'

Challis let a new tear fall.

'I don't know how to play at anything,' she said. 'I never had any one to play with.'

Roly's breast swelled with magnanimity.

'Look here,' he said, 'you can be Cronje if you like. Here, you can have these two for your weapons.' He handed her the stove-brush and the corkscrew. 'Come on down here, I'll soon show you how to do it.'

Challis shook her head.

'No,' she said, 'I'm fifteen; it's too late to learn now. I'll just have to go on playing and playing at concerts. And who cares when you're playing your very best, and have practised one composition six hours a day? Who cares?' She looked at him miserably.

'Look here, Chall,' he said, a most brotherly, kindly tone in his voice, 'it's only because you play such fat-headed things, that's why they don't care. I can't listen to them myself. Often when I've been digging my garden outside the window, and you've started to play, I've just had to go away. If you'd learn some nice-sounding pieces now, instead of things like Flossie's scales, only worse! There's Peter Small's sister, down in W'gandra, you ought to hear _her_ play; she can play "Soldiers of the Queen," and "Sons of the Empire," and "Absent-Minded Beggar," and "Girl He Left Behind Him," and all those things, and she jumps her hands about, and runs up and down, and crosses them just as much as you do. If you like, I'll ask Peter to get her to lend you them; I'm friends with Peter just now.'

Challis smiled and dried her tears.

'I mightn't be able to play them, Roly,' she said; 'so I don't think I'll trouble you to ask.'

'Oh,' said Roly encouragingly, 'you'd soon pick them up. You could watch her a few times, and notice how she does them. But I'll have to be going now, Challis, if you don't want me. I'll be down in the bush at the back, if you want to come and have a try to play. Don't let on to Brownie that I've collared this.' He pointed to the gravy-strainer that adorned his breast. I'll bring it back all right.'

Left alone once more, Challis wandered about the little house. Miss Browne's door was half open, to let in the evening breeze. Miss Browne herself, her day's work finished, was sitting at the table writing a multitude of letters with a happy flush on her cheeks.

Challis looked on wistfully.

'Would you mind if I came in and sat with you?' she said.

Miss Browne dropped her pen and jumped up to welcome her.

'My dear, my love, why, you know you may; most pleased, most delighted, whenever you like--honoured, most delighted.'

Challis stepped into the little room.

*CHAPTER XX*

*Miss Browne*

'I shall have no man's love For ever, and no face of children born Or tender lips upon me. Far off from flowers or any love of man Shall my life be for ever.'

What was it that broke the barriers down? The wet eyelashes of the little music-maker? The droop of her soft mouth? Or came there across that poor room one of those divine waves of sympathy and understanding that wash at times from a richly endowed soul to a lonely stunted one?

Miss Browne found herself telling anything and everything that had happened in her life, and even the things that might have happened. Not that the whole of them made a sum of any account, if you condensed them; but, told ramblingly and with pauses for tears, they fell pathetically on the young listening ears.

Thirty-eight grey years! Life in this country town and that country town, in this crowded suburb or on that out-back station or selection--a hireling always. The first twenty-five had dragged by under English skies that even in summer had no sun for a motherless, fatherless girl, pupil-teacher from the age of fourteen. She bore twelve years of it patiently enough, and indeed would have borne another score, but two friends, stronger, more restless souls than she, though chained to the same life, told her they were going to break through it all, strike out of the stagnant waters of suburban England into the fresh, glittering sea the other side of the world.

They were saving their salaries to pay their passage to Australia. Governesses were royally paid out there, they had heard, and more than that--they whispered this a little ashamed--husbands grew on every bush.

Miss Browne scraped and saved for a year, cheerfully shivering without a winter jacket, happily heedless of the rain that came through the holes of her umbrella. If it had been a question of economising in her diet, she would have brought herself down to a crust a day, in her eagerness to make a plunge into a different life, but fortunately governesses are 'all found.' The three women cheerfully cramped their bodies third-class for the voyage, letting their souls soar boundlessly in the pleasant evenings on deck.

They came to their new land, saw it, and after a few years were conquered. Almost the same conditions of life, the same sickening struggle of a multitude of educated women for one poor place, the same grey outlook. One found a husband; he took her to some heaven-forgotten corner of North Queensland, where she had for neighbours Japanese and Chinese and Javanese, and he drank, as the men all do in those forgotten corners, where alligators are to be found on the river-banks, and coloured labour crowds out the white man's efforts. She bore him six children in eight years, and then died thankfully. The second woman went into a hospital and became a nurse; for the last five years she had been in Western Australia, kept busy with the typhoid in Perth. Once in a while she wrote to Miss Browne; once or twice she had eagerly said she was 'all but engaged,' but later letters never confirmed the hope, and now a dull commonplace had settled down over the correspondence.

Miss Browne drifted from place to place, place to place; there was nothing she was capable of doing really well, and no land has a hospitable welcome for such.

'It is a funny thing,' she said to Challis, 'but, however hard I try, I never seem able to do things like other people can.' Her eyes stared in front of her. 'If it had been your mother now in my place, she could have managed; she is made of the stuff that never goes under. But you would have thought any one like I am would have been sheltered and--cared for--as so many women are cared for.'

Challis stroked her restlessly moving hand.

'Sometimes,' she continued--her voice dropped, her eyes stared straight out before her--'sometimes I can't help feeling as if Providence has pushed me out to the front, and quite forgotten to give me anything to fight with.'

Then she pulled herself together reprovingly.

'Of course, that attitude is very wrong of me,' she said. 'It is only very seldom I think that, my love.'

Challis squeezed her hand sympathetically.

'It will all come right some day,' she said, with the large vague hopefulness of the very young.

'That's what I have always told myself,' said Miss Browne; 'but you must see, my love, if--if it does not come right very soon, it will be too late. I am thirty-eight--there, there is no need to mention it to Hermie or the rest of the family, my love.'

'But thirty-eight is not old,' said Challis, so eager to comfort, she left truth to take care of itself. 'Think what lots of people are fifty, and they don't think themselves a bit old.'

'But who will marry you after you are thirty-eight?' said poor Miss Browne, unable to keep any ache back to-night.

'Oh,' said Challis, 'lots of people don't get married, and they are as happy as anything.'

Miss Browne's lip quivered.

'If I had been asked,' she said, 'then I should not mind so much. But I am--thirty-eight, and no one has--ever asked me.'

Challis put her arm round the poor woman's neck; she stroked her cheek, patted her shoulder.

'Of course,' Miss Browne said at last, sitting up with tremulous, red-eyed dignity, 'there is no need to tell Hermie that, my love.'

'But you must have lots of friends,' said Challis, looking at the number of envelopes lying on the dressing-table. The colour ran up into Miss Browne's face. She half put her hand over the letters, then drew it back.

'If I told you about these, you would think me so foolish, my dear,' she faltered.

'Oh no, I wouldn't!' said Challis. 'Now I know you so well, I seem to understand everything.'

Miss Browne got some little papers out of a drawer, English penny weeklies devoted to 'ladies' interests.' She turned to the Answers to Correspondents pages, 'Advice on Courtship and Marriage.'

'Those marked with a little cross are the answers to me,' whispered Miss Browne. And Challis read these three marked paragraphs:

'_Fair Australienne_ writes: "I am the only daughter of a very wealthy squatter, and have two lovers. One is a squatter on an adjoining station, the other an English baronet travelling in Australia. If I marry the baronet, I must leave my father, who loves me dearly; but I care for him more than I do for the squatter. What would you advise me to do?"

And the 'Aunt Lucy' who conducted the page had replied:

'Marry where your heart dictates. Could you not induce your father to live in England with you?'

'_Sweet Rock Lily_.--"I am eighteen, and, my friends tell me, very, very beautiful. I am governess in a wealthy family, and the son is deeply in love with me. If he marries me, he will be disinherited. What should I do? I love him very much. And will you tell me a remedy for thin hair?"

'The editor's answer is: "Try to overcome the prejudice of the family, _Rock Lily_, and all will go well. Bay rum and bitter apples is an excellent tonic."

'_Little Wattle Blossom_.--"I am seventeen, and only just out of the schoolroom. I am passionately in love with a young handsome man, who loves me in return; but my parents are trying to force me into a marriage with an old foreign nobleman. They have even fixed the wedding day, and I am kept a prisoner. What would you advise me to do?"

'The editor's answer is: "You cannot be forced into a marriage in these days. Refuse firmly. In four years you will be of age. In answer to your second question, your friend had better try massage for the crow's feet and thin neck."'

Challis read in extreme puzzlement.

'I hardly understand,' she said. 'How do you mean--these are to you?'

'It is only my foolishness, my love,' said Miss Browne, gathering them up again; 'but I get a great deal of pleasure out of it. The days the mail comes and I get the papers, I am so excited I don't know what to do. You get into the way of feeling it really is yourself.'

But this phase of Miss Browne was beyond Challis's comprehension, and she only looked doubtfully at the papers, so Miss Browne was swift to change the subject.

'These letters,' she said, 'are to the Melbourne and Adelaide art societies. I should like to tell you about this, my love. Your father, about four years ago, painted a picture, and something happened that made him try to burn it. Well, we managed to prevent that, and I got hold of it and hid it away. He has forgotten all about it now, imagines I sold it, but I haven't, and it occurred to me lately to write to several artists and describe the picture to them, and see if they would buy it. I did not mention your father's name; just said it was by a friend of mine--you will forgive me for the liberty, my love?'

'But didn't you send the picture?' said Challis. 'They could hardly tell from a description.'

'I had no money,' said Miss Browne, sighing 'I made inquiries at Wilgandra, but it would cost so much to have it packed and sent to Sydney. And there is the risk of losing it. I was _very_ careful over the description; it took me five long evenings to write--I left no detail out.'

'And what happened?' said Challis.

Miss Browne flushed.

'Courtesy seems dying out,' she said. 'Not one of them answered. It might have been any lady writing--they could not know it was only I.'

Challis asked more questions about the picture. She asked to be shown it, and waited patiently while Miss Browne disinterred it from under the bed, and took off the old counterpane with which it was wrapped.