Part 6

He opened the door, and they went out together, and neither looked at the sky. But here had gathered a brave cloud host, and there another contingent came, determined, black-browed, strenuously fighting the long-victorious sun, desperately clinging together. And over the fainting earth flashed its lights, and through the heavens tore the sudden thunder of its guns.

And the battle was to it.

Down came the sweet torrents of the rain, and the cracked, piteous earth lay breathlessly glad and still beneath it. You heard the calves call to their mothers, the surprised whinny of the horses seeking shelter. You saw the sheep struggling to their feet and lapping the wet grass with swollen tongues.

You heard the birds making all sorts of new little cries and noises, as they flew wildly for shelter--birds many of them that had been born and grown to make nests for themselves, and never known the strange phenomenon of rain.

You heard the hisses and splutters of the bush fires, as the evil spirit went out of them.

You saw a lad come up from them, his beating bough still in his hand, the lines of his young grave face all broken up, and the glad tears bursting out, to meet the deluge of rain that beat in his face.

You saw a small girl rushing out half dressed and heedless of the torrent, for the exquisite pleasure of seeing the sheep drink.

You saw a woman with thin, blown hair and a drab complexion saying her prayers in her bedroom.

Down where the roses were just recalled to life, Hermie was clinging to her father, both wet through with the sweet blinding rain.

'Oh, you didn't believe me, did you?' she cried. 'As if I could--as if I could! It was just that the dust had got into my heart and choked me. Oh, darling, I never really meant that dreadful thing! Dearest, you don't think I meant it, do you?' Her tears were gushing out in streams.

'I never believed it for one moment,' he said, and kissed her, and led her back to the house.

*CHAPTER IX*

*Mortimer Stevenson*

He was a man, take him for all and all.'

Morty came up to the selection the next Sunday--Mortimer Stevenson.

'Glad to see you, Morty,' Cameron said. 'What's the news of the war? It is a week since we have seen the paper.

Mortimer fastened his horses' reins to the verandah-post, then drew half a dozen papers out of his saddle-bag--a daily or two, a couple of weeklies, one or two English special war numbers.

'I'd rather you read for yourself,' he said, handing them to the older man; 'it's not pretty enough to talk about much. Those Boers take a lot of beating. Of course, it will be all right as soon as Lord Roberts takes charge.'

The crisp papers were in Cameron's hands; a few yards away an old canvas chair stretched itself out invitingly.

'Hermie, my dear--Miss Browne--here is Mr. Stevenson,' he called down the passage of the little house.

'Don't mind me, I'll just sit down here and have a smoke while you read,' Stevenson said; 'don't disturb any one, perhaps they are busy.'

He sat down on the verandah step, and began to fill his pipe, and Cameron, relieved, opened his papers, and was in the Transvaal for the rest of the afternoon.

To look at, Stevenson was a typical young bushman. He had added inches to his stature so rapidly, and breadth to his shoulders, that he was ill at ease anywhere but in the saddle. His complexion was burnt to a deep copper. Grey, good eyes looked squarely at you.

Used to cities, you would not like his dress. A serviceable tweed suit, country-cut, one of the brilliant ties, which, so the storekeepers persuade the bush, are worn in Sydney, a soft brown hat with its dangling, string-coloured fly-veil.

His father was a vigorous old man of seventy; his type occurs again and again on the out back stations.

He had gathered great wealth during all those laborious years, and he spent it, if not frugally, at least with full respect for its difficult garnering. He had been a member of the Upper House, and his wife, during her lifetime, had much enjoyed the dignity of seeing his letters addressed, 'The Hon. Matthew Stevenson, M.L.C.'

He had had but a rudimentary education, yet his plain common-sense and clear intellect had made the loss only a slight one to him. To his sons--six of them he had--he offered education, or at all events its equivalent--the money for it--liberally, and three of them had taken advantage of it, and gone finally into various professions in Sydney.

The others--the duller three--had assimilated just as much of the tonic waters as does the ordinary youth of eighteen; then they shook the dust of Sydney off their feet, and returned thankfully to the station where their hearts had always been. Mortimer was youngest of this latter three, and the only one now unmarried.

Bart came down the passage, and his eyes brightened at the sight of the figure smoking on the verandah step.

'Hallo!' he said, 'just the fellow I wanted. Look here, Daly gave me a whole lot of new seed--Sheep Burnett I think he called it. Will it hurt to sow it on that place where the sorghum was?'

'Oh, any place will do, old chap; but you needn't waste your best ground; it's great stuff, you know--it would grow in the Sahara. Just sow it along with your grass or clover seeds.'

'It comes up quickly, doesn't it?' Bart said anxiously. 'Do you think it would make all down there look smooth and green and nice in a month?'

Mortimer laughed. 'Are you taking to landscape gardening, Bart?' he said. 'I never knew before you had an eye for effect.'

Bart sat down on the step. 'It's no joking matter, Morty,' he said. 'My mother and Challis will be home in a month; we've got to make the place look up a bit before they come. The governor's been making bonfires of all the rubbish since breakfast--it does look tidier, doesn't it?'

Mortimer looked round. 'It's not the same place,' he said heartily, and added for encouragement, 'And after all, perhaps they won't come, old fellow; you know you've had a lot of false alarms.'

'Oh, but this time it's certain,' Bart said, and not without unhappiness; 'they've actually started by this.'

Floss came clattering out in her rough boots. She sat down on the other side of the family friend.

'I knewed it was you when I heard Pup bark,' she said; 'you came last Sunday, too, and the Sunday before that.'

'Did I, Flossie?' he said. 'That sounds as if it were a Sunday too many.'

'Oh no, no one minds you,' she answered; 'if it were your father, now, or the Revering Mr. Smith, it might be a nuisance; we'd have to put a clean tablecloth on for them.'

'And that sounds as if I am going to be asked to stay to tea, Floss?' Mortimer said.

'Of course you are,' was Flossie's reply. 'Miss Browne says it's the least we can do, considering all the papers and things you give us. Only she says she doesn't know how she's going to make the butter spin out. We don't get it from the store again till Thursday.'

'There, hold your tongue, Floss,' said Bart, 'you'll make Morty afraid to take any.'

'Oh no, he needn't be,' Floss said. 'Me and Roly's going to say we don't like it under our jam.'

Roly came stealthily from behind some trees.

'Where is she?' he whispered.

'It's all right,' Floss said; 'she's got to change her dress, and her hair was pretty awful, so she'll have to do it again.'

Thus reassured, Roly ventured to the step, and took up a position at Mortimer's shoulder. He was attired in an orange and blue-striped football jersey, and the most respectable pair of knickerbockers he possessed. Mortimer had given him the jersey on his last birthday, and it was the boy's dearest possession.

'Why,' said Mortimer, 'what have you been after? Is Miss Browne laying wait for you for stealing her jam?'

'Oh no,' said Roly. 'It's only this,' and he pointed to his jersey; 'she doesn't think it's religious to wear football things on Sunday.'

'Well,' said Floss, in the virtuous tone a clean pinafore made justifiable, 'I don't think it is, either. Look at me. I learnt a collect this morning.'

'A what?' said Roly.

'A collect,' said Floss. 'Collect for the thirteenth Sunday after Trinity. Hermie wasn't sure if this was the right Sunday, only it was a nice short one to begin with.'

'Does Miss Hermie teach you your collects?' asked Mortimer, his head turned away a little.

'She wants to,' said Floss, 'but I don't know if she'll always be able to find me. She was looking for Roly, too, this morning, only he was playing Boers somewhere, so he got off.'

'Wasn't playing Boers,' said Roly. 'I was putting a new name on our gate.'

'What a story you are!' cried Floss. 'I saw you creeping along with father's guns.'

'Wasn't!' said Roly. 'Hadn't I got this jersey on?'

'That's nothing; you sleep in it--truly he does, Morty. As soon as Hermie or Miss Browne go out of the room, he puts on the jersey over his pyjamas. Why he hates school is 'cause he can't go in it.'

'What name were you writing on the gate, old fellow?' asked Mortimer, to save the situation.

'Transvaal Vale,' said Roly; 'come on down and see--it looks great. I rubbed Hermie's silly name off.'

But Mortimer did not move. Dunks' Selection the place had always been, and always would be called; but Hermie in piteous rebellion had written years ago in violet ink on the sliprails, The Rosery. Mortimer would not go and look at the poor little name defaced.

Miss Browne came out, Miss Browne with her face shiny with recent washing, her hair almost tidy, the better of her two colourless gowns on her back.

'Very glad indeed to see you--very sorry to keep you waiting so long--hope you, your father is quite well--Bart, my dear, a chair--what are you thinking of, to let Mr. Stevenson sit on the step?--very sad about the war--Flossie, don't tease Mr. Stevenson, my dear--quite a cool day--providential thing the drought has broken--hope you will stay to tea.'

These and sundry other remarks she delivered breathlessly, and at the end put her hand to her side and gasped gently.

'I shall be most pleased to stay, Miss Browne, if it will be putting you to no inconvenience,' Mortimer said.

'Most pleased--most happy--an honour--who is so kind, so thoughtful--those English magazines--and she had never thanked him yet, and those delicious chocolates--too good of him; most glad if he would stay--uncomfortable house--unavoidable--bush, no comfort--he would understand----'

'He knows he's not to take more than two helpings of butter,' said Bart, with a twinkle in his eye.

'Bart, my dear--oh, my love--your mother--what would she say?--Mr. Stevenson--what can he think?--my dear--oh, my love,' and the poor lady withdrew in hot haste, to hide the embarrassment Bart had plunged her into, and to laboriously prepare tea.

'I see your father's come down generously,' said Mr. Cameron, glancing up a moment from his papers. 'Matthew Stevenson--that is your father, of course--five thousand pounds, and more if wanted, to the fund for the Bushmen's Contingent.'

'Yes, that's the governor,' Mortimer said. 'He's red-hot on the war. I believe if he were five years younger, wild horses wouldn't keep him back from volunteering himself. You must come up to Coolooli and have a chat with him over it, Mr. Cameron.'

But Cameron was deep again in the war correspondent's letter.

Bart went off to feed the calves--Roly had vanished at the sound of Miss Browne's footstep.

'Did you know our mother and Challis was coming home, Morty?' said Floss.

'Bart just told me--yes, that will be very nice for you, Flossie. All will be well, now, won't it?' said Mortimer.

'Oh, you're like the rest, are you?' Floss said. 'Every one going to live happy ever after, eh? No, thank you, not me; I'm always going to hate them. They don't get over me. No, thank you. I know them--bring me a doll, won't they? and "There you are, Flossie darling, sweetest, come and kiss us." Not me. See my finger wet, see it dry, cut my throat sure's ever I die, if I have anything to do with them. Stuck-ups, that's what they are!'

Mortimer gazed on the child, a little uncomfortable horror mixed with his amusement; his bringing-up had been orthodox, and reverence for parents was entwined with all his life.

'Why, girlie,' he said, 'this is shocking! Your own mother!'

'Challis's mother,' corrected Floss. 'Didn't she go off and leave me? Lot she cared! I was only two, Lizzie says, and I might have picked up anything, and eaten it and died. Even Mrs. Bickle minds her baby, although she does get drunk at times. S'pose I'd had measles? or Roly? We'd have died, or at least got dropsy, Lizzie says, having no mother to nurse us. No, thank you--no getting round me with a doll. As for that Challis, I'll give her a time of it--just you see.'

'But--but--but,' cried Mortimer, greatly at a loss, 'your mother is as fond of you as anything, of course. I expect it is very hard for her to go so long without seeing you. She doesn't do it on purpose, old woman. You see, Challis was so clever they had to give her a chance.'

'How do they know I'm not clever?' demanded Floss. 'I believe I am. You should have seen the man I drew on my slate this morning. Or how do they know I couldn't play before the Queen? I'm up to "What are the Wild Waves Saying?" and it's got two flats.'

Mortimer had no answer for this; he could only gaze at her.

There was another step in the doorway, and Hermie came out, a very slender-looking Hermie in the let-down white frock that had made a woman of her in a day. Floss leaned back and giggled as her sister shook hands with the visitor.

'He! he! he! She's put her long dress on,' she said. 'Morty, look! it's as long as Miss Browne's. You'd think she never had short ones, wouldn't you? She's 'tending she's growed up.'

'Flossie,' said Mortimer, 'wouldn't you like to look at my watch? you haven't seen the works for a long time.'

'Me holding it then,' stipulated Flossie.

'All right,' said Mortimer, and gave up his valuable timekeeper into the bony little outstretched hand.

'You spoil that child shockingly,' Hermie said.

Floss looked up from the entrancing little wheels.

'He spoils you worser,' she said. 'Look at the books and flowers and chocolates he brings over and gives you, no matter how bad-tempered you may be.'

Hermie looked vaguely disturbed.

'Spoil me--do you spoil me? Surely I'm too big,' she said.

The man's heart leapt to his eyes.

'Wish I'd the chance,' he muttered.

'What did you say?' said Hermie.

'Nothing,' said Mortimer, and began to smoke furiously again.

'Morty,' said Floss, 'Morty, how many times does the littlest wheel turn while the big wheel turns once?'

'Thirteen,' Mortimer said recklessly.--'I hear your mother is coming home, Miss Cameron?'

'Yes,' sighed Hermie.

'This is surely very good news?'

Hermie gave a troubled glance around.

'Y-yes,' she said.

'Why, what a story you are, Morty!' said Floss. 'It doesn't turn thirteen times.'

'I mean thirty,' said Morty. 'Miss Cameron, I have three men loafing around at the sheds, and can't find work for them to do. It would be doing me a real kindness if you'd let them put in their time straightening up this place.'

'Thank you,' Hermie said, 'but we should not like to employ men we were not paying.'

'Not when they're eating their heads off in idleness?' implored Morty.

'No, thank you,' Hermie said stiffly.

'I beg your pardon,' Mortimer said dejectedly.

'I should think you do,' cried Floss; 'it doesn't turn anything like thirty times. I wouldn't have a watch I didn't understand. Here, take it.'

He pocketed it humbly.

'I'd like to see the ground Bart spoke of sowing Burnett on,' he said, plunging away from his mistake. 'Will you walk down with me, Miss Cameron? It is quite cool and pleasant now.'

Hermie rose to her feet, then remembered her shabby little shoes that she had all this time been successfully hiding beneath her long dress.

'Oh,' she said, 'it's too far. Floss will go with you, won't you, Floss? I will go in and help Miss Browne with tea.'

*CHAPTER X*

*'I Love You'*

'The bird of life is singing on the bough His two eternal notes of "I and Thou."'

It was after tea, and the long shadows of the dusk had fallen so gently, so tenderly, that even Dunks' selection had a beauty of its own.

Mortimer sat on the verandah and talked war to Mr. Cameron till his very soul loathed the Transvaal. Then he was captured by Bart, and forced into the dining-room to explain something in the _Town and Country Journal_, and give his opinion on the merits of Johnson's Grass.

And when he went outside again, Roly and Floss hung upon his arms and begged and begged him to 'come with us a bit.'

At eight o'clock he broke away from them, and stumbled through the dark passage to the kitchen regions to seek Miss Browne.

But here only an oil-lamp flickered in the breeze; even Lizzie was away from her post, having gone before tea to walk to Wilgandra, in the urgent need of a little pleasant human intercourse, ere she began another grey week.

There was a door open near by, and glancing in Morty saw Miss Browne, seated at her cleared dressing-table so busily writing and so surrounded by little papers and letters he came to a vague conclusion that she was 'literary.'

'Miss Browne,' he called imploringly.

She laid down her pen and hastened to the door to him.

He seized both her hands, he pressed them, he wrung them as he stood, labouring with his excitement.

'Miss Browne,' he said, 'will you help me? You must help--oh, do not refuse--she has gone down the garden alone--I think she is leaning on the gate. I must go to her. I must go to her. Will you keep them back--all the others--could you get them in a room and turn the key--how can I tell her if they follow me like this?'

'Tell her--who--what--why?' said the astonished Miss Browne.

'I love her,' said the man; 'I love her with all my soul--I must tell her; you will help me?'

His face looked quite white; there was a moisture on his forehead, his eager voice shook.

Miss Browne was crying; she had taken one of his big hands and was stroking it.

'Oh, my dear, my dear!' she said. 'How beautiful, how very beautiful! Oh, my love, how sweet--oh, how sweet, my love!'

'You will help?' he said. 'You will keep those little beggars away?'

'Leave it to me,' she said; 'you go to her, down in the garden, and the dusk is here, and the moon beginning to rise! How sweet, how beautiful! And she has on a white dress! Don't trouble about anything, my love--just go out to her.' The happy tears were gushing from her eyes.

'What a good sort you are!' he said, and wrung her hand, and patted her shoulder, then went plunging out into the sweet darkness to tell his love.

He found her where the wattles grew thickest, leaning on the fence, her flower-face turned to the young rising moon.

'How did you know I was here?' she said.

'I knew,' he answered, and a long silence fell. 'What are you thinking of?' he whispered.

'I don't--know,' she said, and a strange little sob shook in her throat.

His arm sprang round her.

'Oh,' he said, 'I love you--I do love you! Dearest, dearest, I love you! Do love me, darling--I love you, I love you so!'

Hermie was trembling like the little leaves around them--too surprised, too stricken with the newness of the situation even to slip out of his arms. The pleased young moon smiled down at them, the leaves whispered the news all along the bush, an exquisite perfume of flowers and trees and freshening grass rose up to them. How sweet something was--the clasp about her waist, the kisses that had rained upon her cheeks, the eager, beautiful words that still were beating in her ears!

'Oh, I don't understand, I don't understand,' said the excited girl, and burst into strange tears, and tried to move from his arms, and put a startled hand to her cheeks, to feel what difference those kisses had made.

'Did I frighten you--did I frighten you, my darling, my little girl?' he said. 'See there, don't tremble, I will take my arm away. It is too big and rough, isn't it? There, there, I won't even kiss you; let me hold your hand, there. You have only to understand that I love you, that I have always loved you--ever since you were a tiny thing of twelve, and I used to ride this way just for the pleasure of watching you. You were like no other child here, so slender and sweet and white and pink, and all that shining hair hanging round you. I think I wanted you always. I wanted to pick you up and put you on the saddle in front of me and ride away with you--away and away right out of the world. You will let me, darling? You will try to love me a little? You will be my own little wife?'

Wife! One of the Daly girls had just been married to a boundary rider near. Hermie had seen the lonely place where they were to live together with no one else to break the monotony.

Wife! All those dull, uninteresting women who came to call in Wilgandra were wives, all those dull, horrid men in Wilgandra were their husbands.

Be married; she, Hermie Cameron, like the girls in Miss Browne's books! Perhaps it might not be so very bad--they all seemed to look forward to it.

But to Mortimer Stevenson! Oh no, none of them ever married any one like that, the men there were all officers, penniless young artists and authors, or at least earls. Most of them had proud black eyes and cynical smiles, and spoke darkly of their youth. Or else they were debonair young men with laughing blue eyes and Saxon curly hair.

Mortimer! She had actually forgotten it was only Mortimer speaking all this time, Mortimer Stevenson, who wore red and blue painful ties, and grew red if she spoke to him, and knocked chairs over in his clumsiness, and had never been anywhere farther than Sydney, and thought Wilgandra and his father's station the nicest places in the world.

A cloud came over the happy moon, the leaves hung sad and still; from somewhere far away came the piteous wail of the curlew.

Hermie freed her hand and found her voice.

'This is really ridiculous,' she said petulantly. 'I suppose you are in fun.'

'In fun!' he echoed dully.

'Yes, you can't really be serious. Think what a fearfully long time we have known each other! I'd as soon think of being married to Bart, or Bill Daly.'

He winced at Daly--big, coarse, uneducated bushman.

'If I waited a long time, couldn't you grow to love me?' he said. 'I could stop doing anything you don't like; I--I would go through the University like James and Walter did, if you liked.'

The exceeding pain in his voice touched the girl's awakening heart.

'Forgive me, Morty,' she said, 'it must seem very horrid of me. I didn't understand myself at first----'

'Perhaps--perhaps----' he began hopefully.

'No, I am sure, quite, quite sure I could never love you,' she said decidedly. 'I shall never marry, I have quite made up my mind. There is no one I could ever care for enough.'

'Have you anything particularly against me?' persisted Mortimer. 'I'd alter anything; you don't know how I would try.' His voice choked.

She could not instance his ties, his clumsy length of limb, his habit of furious blushing.

'You make it very hard for me,' she said. 'I--I wish you would go home; I want to go to bed.'

'Forgive me,' he said humbly. 'Forgive me; you have been very good and patient with me. I will go at once.'

Hermie looked for him to move. He took a step away from her--a step back--a step away. The sad moon came out and showed her his blurred miserable eyes, his working mouth.

'Oh, I am sorry--sorry!' she cried.

'May I kiss you--just once?' he whispered.

She stood still, her head drooped down, till he lifted it, very gently, very tenderly, and bent his head and put his quivering lips on hers.

Her hand went gently round his neck a minute.