Part 13

'I have never seen any great picture-galleries,' said Miss Browne, 'but I know there is something about this that must be good. It could not work up the feelings in me that it does, if it were just an ordinary picture. Look at the man's eyes, my love--isn't the hopelessness frightful?--and yet look at him well. You just know he'll keep on trying and trying till he gets there.'

Challis gazed at it for a long time.

'Yes,' she said slowly; 'that is how it makes me feel. I feel I want to beg him to stop trying, and lie down and go to sleep. But it wouldn't be any use. You feel the storm will last for ever, and the captain will go on trying for ever to get to wherever he has made up his mind to get to.'

'Your father intends it to represent the Flying Dutchman,' said Miss Browne.

'Oh yes!' Challis said. 'Of course. I ought to have known. But it is just like this picture--just as sad. And I play it too. Wagner, you know,--Der fliegende Hollander,--it makes you want to cry.'

'My love,' cried Miss Browne, 'you say you know an artist in Paris. Why, surely that would be the very thing! I believe they are all jealous of him in Sydney. Write to your friend. He would take notice of a letter from you. Write to him, and send the picture too. You can afford to, and it is not likely to go astray, since you know the exact address. Suppose we start to do it now?'

Challis sprang up with shining eyes. It seemed the loveliest plan in the world.

'It shall be our secret, you dear, dear thing!' she cried. 'We won't tell a single soul in the world--not even mother. Let's write it down that we promise.' She pushed pen and ink to Miss Browne. 'Write on this paper,' she said, '"I promise Challis Cameron faithfully I won't tell any one in the world."'

Miss Browne wrote the compact down, smiling.

Challis seized the pen.

'I promise Miss Brown faithfully I won't tell,' she wrote.

'Oh, my dear, my love!' said Miss Browne distressed. 'My love, how careless of you! I spell my name with an "e." I never thought you would forget, my love. No, don't add it on there; it looks as if it were an afterthought. Please write it again. We have always spelt our name with an "e," my love.'

*CHAPTER XXI*

*The Morning Cables*

'With rending of cheek and of hair, Lament ye, mourn for him, weep.'

Bart came clattering at a great pace up the path with the mail. It was the midday dinner-time; and such pleasant appetising foods were the order of the day now, boylike he did not care to be a moment late.

He took the saddle off, laid it down on the verandah, drove the horse down to the first paddock, and hastened in to the dining-room.

His father was just unfolding the daily paper he had brought, and opening it to find the war cables.

'Read them out, Jim,' said Mrs. Cameron, looking up from her task of apportioning the peas and cauliflower and potatoes.

Cameron read out the headings:

'"DESPERATE FIGHTING AT KRUG'S SPRUIT."

"GALLANT ATTEMPTS TO RESCUE GUNS."

"OFFICERS SERVING THE ARTILLERY."

"FIFTEEN THOUSAND BOERS IN ACTION."

"BRITISH UNDER A GALLING CROSS-FIRE."

"BRITISH CASUALTIES."

"CONSPICUOUS GALLANTRY BY A NEW SOUTH WALES PRIVATE."

"LOSSES OF AUSTRALIAN TROOPS."'

The last two headings sent Cameron's eyes hurrying down the long column to seek details.

'Oh,' he said, 'poor lad, poor lad! Oh, I'm sorry for this--sorry for this!'

'Not old Morty,' said Bart--'not poor old Morty, dad?' Yet even as he spoke he knew it must be, for who else of all the contingent had they a personal interest in? He pushed his chair back and went to his father's shoulder. His eyes read the meagre paragraph, and burnt with swift tears for his friend.

'CONSPICUOUS GALLANTRY BY A NEW SOUTH WALES TROOPER'

was the heading of the cable. Below it said:

'During the engagement, Trooper Stevenson, of the N.S.W. Bush Contingent, made a most gallant rescue. He galloped to the assistance of General Strong, whose horse had fallen, and bore him under a scathing fire to a place of safety. General Strong escaped unhurt, and obtained another horse, but while galloping after his troop through the dusk, Stevenson was hit by a bullet, and killed instantaneously.'

'Just the sort of thing old Morty would do,' Bart said, his throat thick.

'I am thinking of the poor old man,' said Mrs. Cameron. 'It will kill him. Jim, you had better go up; you might be able to do something. None of the other sons are at home.'

'I'll go, certainly,' Cameron said; 'but it won't kill him. His pride in the lad's courage will keep him up.'

'I say,' said Bart, 'he won't have got the paper yet. That fellow Barnes was waiting for the mail while I was, and he had been drinking frightfully. It'll be hours before he gets back. I saw him turn in to the Golden Fleece as I came along.'

A strange stifled cry came from the end of the table. It was no use; Miss Browne had fought desperately to keep her self-control, but nature was too strong for her, and she was struggling with a piteous fit of hysterics.

Mrs. Cameron went round to her, got her to the sofa, opened the neck of her dress, administered cold water, spoke firmly and decidedly to her. There was nothing in the poor woman's cries for a long time, and she only pushed at Mrs. Cameron, as if trying to force her away. Finally a word came from her choking throat:

'Hermie!' she cried, and pointed to the open door. 'Go--to--Hermie.'

Where was Hermie? Mrs. Cameron looked round in surprise. It seemed only two minutes since she had been cutting the bread, and laughing at Roly because he had arranged his plate as a battle-field, with the peas for the army, the cauliflower as a kopje, the mashed potatoes in dots for the tents, while a slice of beef made the enemy's laager, and a gravy river flowed between the troops. Why had she left the table like this?

'Go--to--Hermie!' gasped the shivering, sobbing woman on the sofa. 'I--am--all right--quick, quick!'

Where had the girl gone? No one but Miss Browne had even noticed her chair was empty.

Mr. Cameron armed himself with another tumbler of cold water, and came across to the sofa.

'I will look after Miss Browne,' he said. 'You go to Hermie; perhaps she was a little faint.'

'Down--the--path,' gasped Miss Browne, 'near the wattles, most likely.'

Mrs. Cameron made her way down the path, looking from left to right, a puzzled expression on her face. The girl was nowhere to be seen. She looked among the roses, in the various shady corners, beneath the trees. Finally she came to the thick-growing wattles near the fence, and a gleam of blue cambric showed through the leaves. The mother went in among the bushes, and found the girl face downward on the ground, sobbing in so bitter and heartbroken a way that she was quite alarmed for a moment. Then a wondering comprehension came; her girl was almost a woman. Was it possible she had cared for this friend of the family in a different way from Bart and Floss and Roly?

'My poor little girl!' she said, and sat down on the ground beside her, and lifted the bright head that had been Morty's perpetual delight on to her knee.

But Hermie pulled herself away, and rose wildly to her feet, and ran this way among the bushes with her broken heart, and then that way.

'Oh,' she sobbed, 'go away, go away--I want to be alone! Oh, it is my fault!--I want to be alone--oh, mother, mother!'--and she came back to her mother's side, and fell down beside her again, clinging to her piteously. The mother said nothing at all--just stroked her hair and let her weep as she would, and soon a little calmness came back to the girl.

'Oh,' she said, 'if you knew how I loved him, mother!'

'Did you, my darling?' said the tender mother, and never showed the ache that was at her heart because her child had kept so great a thing as this from her confidence.

'Ever since he went I have been loving him,' Hermie said, 'and yet when he told me, I sent him away, and he was so miserable. I am sure that is why he went to the war.'

'And you thought you did not care for him, then?' said Mrs. Cameron. 'Well, darling, that was not your fault.'

'Oh, it was--it was!' said Hermie. 'You don't understand, of course. You never could. But I shall be miserable now all my life!'

'You found you had made a mistake, and you cared for him after all?' said Mrs. Cameron.

'I didn't know quite how much till to-day!' sobbed Hermie. 'I have kept thinking of him and thinking of him ever since he went; out now--oh, now it is too late! I know I shall love him till I die.'

The mother's heart ached, as all mothers' must do when their children have to stand alone in a grief, and there can no longer be any kissing of the place to make it well.

'It seems as if I have been blind,' went on the girl, sometimes wiping the tears away and hiding her swollen eyes, sometimes letting them trickle unchecked down her cheeks. 'I can't tell you how silly and small I have been--thinking men ought to be just like men in books, and never looking at what they really are. Oh, he was so good, such a brave fellow; ever since he has gone, people are always telling different brave or kind things he has been doing ever since he was a boy. And, just because he wore clothes and ties I didn't like, and sometimes knocked things over, I----'

Her voice choked, and she fell to sobbing again heart-brokenly.

Mrs. Cameron was silent again for a space; but when as the time went on the girl seemed to abandon herself more and more to her grief, she rose to her feet and drew the sobbing figure up also.

'There is a hard task before you, dear one,' she said, 'but I know you will do it.'

Hermie gazed at her helplessly.

'His poor old father does not know yet, for Bart tells me his man Barnes is still drinking in Wilgandra. I want you to go up to Coolooli and break it to him.'

'Me?' gasped Hermie. 'Me?'

'Yes, you, my dear. You cared for his son; it will establish a bond between you, and make it a little easier for him.'

'Oh, I couldn't!' cried the girl, shrinking back, actual alarm on her face. 'Oh, it is cruel of you to even ask me, mother! Why should I do such a thing? Surely it is hard enough already for me!'

'Because you are a woman, my dear, and must always think of yourself last,' the mother said quietly. 'How soon can you be ready to start?'

One glance the girl gave at her mother's face that was so quietly expectant that she would do the right thing. Her head lifted a little, and her mouth tried to compose itself.

'I have only my skirt to put on,' she said; 'I can do it while Bart saddles Tramby for me.'

Up to the cottage she walked again, and put on the neat blue riding-skirt her mother had lately made her. She bathed her red eyes; she drank two tumblers of cold water, to take the choking from her throat.

'Father will go with you,' the mother said, coming to the door; 'but when you get to Coolooli you can ride on ahead.'

Through the pleasant winter sunshine they rode, up hill, down dale, across bush stretches where Mortimer's horse had worn a path for them. Coolooli faced them at last, secret stern-looking, with its curtainless windows, its garden barren of sweet flowers. It was the first time the girl had been so near her lover's home.

She was among the trees now that lined the drive leading up to the house; her father had dropped behind, and was to follow on in half an hour.

Her heart seemed fluttering in her throat; a deadly sickness possessed her.

The old man was standing at a table on the verandah; he had a great map of the Transvaal spread open before him, and, with small flags stuck in it here and there, was following his son's footsteps.

He turned at the sound of the horse's hoofs. When he saw the rider he went down instantly on to the path, to help her to dismount.

'Well, little missie,' he said, 'it's not often you ride this way.' He looked at her colourless cheeks keenly. 'What is the matter--can't you jump down?'

She absolutely could not, and he had almost to lift her off her saddle. He tied the horse's reins loosely round the verandah-post, and looked at her again from beneath his shaggy eyebrows. He told himself he knew what was the matter. The family was in difficulties again, and had sent this particular member of it as an emissary to borrow money. Well, this freak of his son's was going to cost him dear. Still, the little thing was trembling dreadfully, and evidently did not like her task. He put his hand on her shoulder reassuringly.

'Out with it, lassie,' he said; 'how much do you want?'

Hermie clung to his arm--her very lips were white.

'Mortimer has been very brave,' she said; 'he has done something magnificent.' Her voice fell.

'My lad!' he cried, in a changed tone. 'Where? show me--I haven't seen the paper yet.'

She clung to it.

'You will be very proud of him,' she said 'All Australia is talking of him to-day.'

He pulled vigorously at the paper; his creased old face had a strangely illumined look; his hands were trembling with eagerness.

'I knowed it,' he said; 'he always had grit. I've kep' expectin' this. Well, I'll lie quiet in me grave now, whenever the Lord up there likes.'

'Yes,' the girl continued, and gave him the paper. 'All the world is proud of him to-day, so that must help you. He gave his life to save the general's.'

The old man drew a curious breath, and sat down on his chair; he opened the paper and read the paragraph. Then he read it again, and again, and again, until his eyes had carried the news to his brain twenty times at least.

'It was a fine thing to do,' he said at last.

'Yes,' said Hermie.

'No other Australian's been mentioned like that.'

'No,' said poor Hermie.

'It was a fine thing to do,' he repeated. He got little further than that all the time the girl stayed; even when Cameron came up, all a-quiver with deep sympathy, he still only said, 'It was a fine thing to do.' After an hour or so, he looked at them expectantly.

'I suppose you'll have to be getting back?' he said; and Cameron and Hermie rose at once.

He saw them down the steps, and even helped Hermie on her horse again. Cameron rode on.

'Good-bye, missie,' he said. Then he shot an almost aggressive look at her. 'You ought to be fine and set up that a fellow like that loved you.'

'I am,' said Hermie bravely. 'I shall be proud of it just as long as I live, Mr. Stevenson.'

He softened a little, then looked suddenly old and very tired.

'I want to be alone now,' he said. 'But I don't mind if you come up again to-morrow.'

With that he went back to the house, the paper still in his hand. But the next day, when she went, she found him pacing the place like a wounded tiger. The servants told her he had been very quiet all the morning and the previous evening, and had told them all several times about the fine thing his son had done. But Barnes had brought in the day's papers an hour ago, and he had been raging like this ever since. The girl found him with bloodshot eyes and clenched hands, walking the big verandahs.

'Go away!' he shouted when he saw her. She turned and went into the house at once, to wait the passing of the mood. She stood at the window of one of the handsome rooms, and looked with dreary eyes out to the twin hill that lay bathed in the clear sunshine half a mile away, and never knew how often Mortimer had sat at that same window, smoking his after-dinner pipe, and building his sunny cottage for her on the bright hill-top.

Presently the old man came in to her.

'Take the paper from me,' he said quaveringly, and held it out to her. 'If I read it any more, I'll lose me reason!'

The girl looked startled.

'I didn't know there was anything new to-day,' she said. 'Bart told me he had lost our paper on the way.' Her eyes, large with fear and grief, tore through the cables they had kept back from her at the selection.

'Private Stevenson,' said a paragraph, 'did not die instantaneously. He was shot through the jaw and through one lung, and dragged himself to a rock, leaving a long trail of blood behind. He must have lingered in frightful agony all night, for when his body was picked up by the ambulance, it was found that he had written the word "Cold" on the ground with his finger.'

'Dear God, how can they do this?' Mrs. Cameron had cried, when she saw the paragraph. 'Have they no sense of pity or decency, that they print these frightful details? This is more terrible a thousandfold for those who loved him than the plain news that he was dead.'

The poor little girl, who had gone up so resolved to be calm and brave, screamed out uncontrollably at the cruel news, then buried her head in her hands to keep the moans back.

The old man brought her a glass of water from the sideboard.

'Let's tear it up,' he said, and rent the horrid news in pieces. 'Let's only remember the boy did the right thing, and died like a man.'

He found himself comforting the girl who had come to comfort him. She found herself telling him with streaming eyes how she had loved his boy and thought of him, even though at the time he asked her she had said, 'No.'

'If only he could have known!' she sobbed. 'Perhaps, perhaps he was thinking of me part of that night when he--was cold.'

The next day there was another cable about the affair.

'The trooper who saved General Strong's life at Krug's Spruit was Private Mark Stevenson, of the Queensland Contingent, not Mortimer Stevenson of the New South Wales, as reported yesterday.'

Hermie tore along the road to Coolooli to rejoice with the old man, since before she had gone to grieve with him.

He was sitting on the verandah looking very shaken and bewildered, and reading the third cable as often as he had read the first.

'I--hardly understand,' he said feebly.

Hermie had seized his two hands, and was shaking them joyously.

'He is alive--alive!' she cried.

He looked at her piteously.

'Didn't he do that fine thing at all?' he said.

'No,' she cried. 'Some other man did it, thank God! He is alive, alive--Mortimer--he is not dead!

He drew his hands out of her eager ones a little pettishly.

'They should be more careful with these cables,' he said.

'Oh,' she cried happily, 'we will forgive them anything! He is alive--alive!'

'But he never did that fine thing,' he repeated sadly.

*CHAPTER XXII*

*Conclusion*

'Let one more attest I have lived, seen God's hand through a lifetime, and all was for best.'

Life, so long a hopeless tangle, smoothed itself out at last for the little family. Challis was well again, and had gone off to give a series of concerts in the respective capitals of each colony; gone off in high spirits, touched with sweet responsibility, inasmuch as she was the bread-winner for the family. Mr. Cameron went with her this time, and her mother stayed thankfully at home on the selection. And Australia, despite the fact that she neither recited 'The Absent-Minded Beggar,' nor yet had 'Sons of the Empire' in her _repertoire_, gave her so warm a welcome everywhere that in three months she was back again at The Rosery with a fresh thousand pounds put to her credit in the bank.

This pleasant sum was to pay passages across the sea for all the family.

For, warm-hearted as the big overgrown young island had proved, its eager, easily roused enthusiasm would soon be turned upon some other object, and there would be no permanent opening for the girl-musician. She must go to the little, pulsing, crowded island the other side of the world for that.

Mrs. Cameron had the plan of campaign all in readiness in her head. They were to find an ideal house in a pleasant countrified suburb just out of London, and Challis, accompanied by her father, was to fulfil her English engagements from there.

When she went abroad, they would all, when possible, go with her, and make headquarters in some inexpensive French or German village. The benefit of a varied life like this would be incalculable to the young ones, after the stagnant years at Wilgandra.

Bart was to go to an English public school the moment they touched land after the voyage. He had but three or four years left now in which to crowd all his school education, and he was eager to begin. In general education and the making of moral fibre, Wilgandra had done a better work than Eton or Rugby could ever hope to do.

'But I shall come back and be a squatter,' he always insisted. 'No other life for me.'

'If he sticks to that,' old Stevenson said to his father, 'send him back to me. I'll give him a start, and be thankful to do it. He's got the stuff in him to make the kind of man this country wants.'

Then he fell to chuckling over the memory of the calf that Bart had sold him, and so started the intimacy between them.

Hermie was to travel as much as possible, take lessons in various subjects from good masters, and go on with her general education under the able guidance of her mother. And there were picnics and dances and all manner of brightness for her in her mother's campaign, to counteract the grey monotony of her earlier girlhood.

And, when the war was over, one in khaki would step in and take the young life into his keeping, and make all the sunshine for it that a boundless love makes possible.

On his far battle-fields Mortimer knew now the little girl's heart was his own. His father had written to him one of his characteristic letters.

'I'm glad to hear, my boy, you're still alive, but it was a fine thing that other fellow Stevenson did for his general. I take pride that my name's the same. But perhaps you'll get a chance yet to do the same thing. I've been looking round, and I think the hill over the way will make the best place for your house, and I daresay two or three thousand a year would keep you going for a time, as she's not flighty and used to fine things, like Luke's wife. It's a pity she can't make soap and such things, but maybe she can learn; she may favour her mother, who seems a sensible body, more than that fool of a father of hers. I'll give the little baggage credit, at all events, for being fond of you. A nice job of it I had with her, when we thought it was you killed instead of that fine fellow Mark Stevenson. She was nearly crazy, because she said you'd never know how she loved you.'

So Mortimer fought the rest of his battles with a light heart, and many a night, when the veldt slumbered restlessly beneath its covering of white, harmless-looking tents, he lay happily awake, thinking of the green twin hill at home and the bright cottage that was going to crown it.

'But I shall insist that he travels about with you for a year or two before you settle down,' said the mother; 'it will do you both good. And he must bring you for a visit home to us at least every three years.'

The girl went on her way, shyly, sweetly, learning all she might to fit her for the high office of woman and wife.

Miss Browne?

At first Mrs. Cameron had almost obeyed the natural impulse to dismiss her kindly, give her a handsome present of money, and help her to find a comfortable situation. But the vision perpetually haunted her of the poor woman with a strand of dull hair blown loose, and her blouse and skirt not quite meeting, and her face moist with perspiration, toiling in one hot country town after another, getting sparks in her eyes, cooking other peoples' food, dragging fat babies out for a walk, battling helplessly with naughty small boys and girls, and distractedly saying to them, 'My love, my dear.'

This while she and her own family, their eyes turned eagerly to a glowing future, sailed thankfully away from all the misery and monotony of the past.

She could not do it. The woman seemed to stand right in their path, a moral responsibility for all their lives.