CHAPTER XV.
A VERANDAH RECEPTION.
It seemed to Elsie that never in all her life long should she forget that moonlight ride. The sun was setting when they found the horses. They waited a little while in, as far as Blake and Elsie were concerned, a constrained silence. Elsie talked to Pompo and the black boys. She was a favourite with the blacks, and had picked up something of the Luya dialect. King Tommy of the Dell had been her instructor, and King Tommy was old and garrulous, and had even been beguiled into discussing the sacred mysteries of the Bora. Elsie had a theory that the most sacred initiation grounds of the Bora mystery were somewhere at the foot of Mount Luya, and that hence arose the superstitious dislike of the blacks to going anywhere near the Baròlin Fall. But Pompo only grinned when she hazarded this theory, and declared "that White Missus plenty gammon," which is the recognized black formula for avoiding a delicate subject. He was more communicative when Elsie asked about the great Wolla-Wolla, the black parliament, and about the marriage laws of the Luya tribes, the Combo, Hippi, and Haggi families. Elsie had arrived at a due understanding of the fact that the child of a Combo-Hippi must marry a Hippi-Haggi, and their child in turn must wed with a Haggi-Combo, when the Coo-ees of the rear party sounded nearer and louder, and presently Hallett and Lady Horace, closely followed by Lord Horace and Mrs. Allanby, made their appearance, and proceeded at once to mount.
It was easy going all the way home. They rode across a series of flats made by the bends of the river. There was no excuse for loitering in twos. Lord Horace and Trant started a chorus—Lord Horace's adaptation of Adam Lindsay Gordon's spirited lines.
The moon was getting near its full, and cast ghostly shadows upon the flat and under the gnarled apple gums and the queer rocky knolls that had a way of starting up on the edge of a flat where the hills encroached towards the river. The way was not so picturesque as that which they had taken in the morning, but it was much better adapted to a night ride. Gipsy Girl knew she was going home, and went fleetly along—Hallett close by Elsie's side, for Blake made no attempt at any further talk, but rode by Lady Horace, who afterwards confessed to Elsie that he was certainly very agreeable. As for Elsie, she felt in a dream. She hardly knew what Frank Hallett was talking about, though she answered mechanically even and found herself laughing. He was telling her about his election campaign, and his coming tour on the Wallaroo, on which he was to start on the morrow.
And the Horace Gages and Elsie were going too, and the party was to break up.
They would meet no more till Parliament opened next month and Leichardt's Town gaieties had begun, and Elsie had, as she said, with her little laugh, got through her jam-making. Ina and Lord Horace were coming down to meet the Waveryngs, who were to turn up some time in the winter. All the while Elsie was thinking of Blake's strange words, seeing in fancy the dark, dangerous eyes which already imagination pictured too often for her heart's peace. What had he meant by saying that his life was wild and precarious—he whose life seemed so steady and safe, who had just been elected member for Luya, who was going through the usual Leichardt's Town routine, and who would be at Tunimba for their picnic in the spring? Why was he afraid of loving her? Why should she not love him? Why might he not open to her that world of new emotion, of which in very truth she had even now caught a faint glimpse? Why?—Why?
The night sounds mingled, with her thoughts and increased the dreamlike feeling. There was the strange pouring-water sound of the swamp pheasant, the little sweet guggle, like water trickling, and there were uncanny gr—rr—s and swishes of wings and harsh screeches as the horses' tread startled the waterfowl in the creek, and the wombats and opossums from their tree-lairs. And then from the scrub came the dingo's howl, weird and melancholy, and the curlews were wailing in the Boomerang Swamp. The horses' hoofs sounded pat-pat on the dry grass, and how curious the shadows were of the riders as they went by, like the dream shadows of the fairy story. A wild sense of irresponsibility came over Elsie. She almost laughed aloud at her fancy. She imagined a masked and armed horseman on a coal-black steed dashing into their midst, and bearing her away, away into the black depths of the scrub; away into an unknown life; away from all that was prosaic and commonplace, to a land of intoxicating surprises, of daring deeds, and love rapture. And somehow the masked horseman had Blake's eyes gleaming through his visor.
"Elsie," Hallett said suddenly, "I am sure that you are dreadfully tired. You haven't said a word for a quarter of an hour."
"Haven't I—not said a word? I thought I was saying—oh, all kinds of clever and brilliant things. Yes, I am tired."
"We shall soon be at home. There are the lights across the creek from the men's huts. Have you enjoyed your day?"
"Enjoyed my day? Yes, I have had a very happy day. I shall always remember to-day."
"I am glad of that, since it was I who suggested the picnic, though, to be sure, Blake has had more to do with the carrying out of it. You have been talking to Blake a great deal to-day, Elsie?"
"Yes."
"Do you like him?"
"Yes—no. I don't know. I think I hate him."
"Why, Elsie! You began by saying you liked him."
"I wasn't thinking."
"Then it is clear that it is not Blake who has made you enjoy to-day. And you ought to tell Lady Horace, for she was talking about him, and she seemed uneasy, and she made me uneasy too," said Hallett.
"What about?" asked Elsie.
"She thought he was getting, a kind of influence over you, and that it would lead to no good. It will be a relief to her to know that you don't like him."
"No, I don't like him. I will tell Ina so. Frank, tell me, do you think Ina is happy?"
"Honestly, I don't think she is. But Lord Horace is a harum-scarum chap, and makes her anxious perhaps. By-and-by he will tone down."
"I will tell you what I think. Horace is selfish, and he is fickle. He has fads. He had a fad for Australian picturesqueness. He fell in love with Ina because she is Australian, and he thought she was picturesque. He would have fallen in love with me if I had allowed it; it would have been all the same to him. Just now he is a little tired of picturesque barbarism. He begins to see that the bush life isn't a picnic, and he is taken up with Mrs. Allanby because she is English, and because his soul begins to hanker a little after the flesh-pots of Egypt, and Mrs. Allanby represents the older civilization. I have no patience with Horace. Ina would manage him a great deal better if she were not so submissive."
Frank laughed. "You don't mean to make that mistake anyhow," he said.
And just then they got to the creek, and the lights of the head station came into full view, and there was a chorus of dogs rushing out and barking to greet their masters.
Elsie had only a few words with Blake that night. "Goodnight and good-bye," he said. "We start at daylight tomorrow, and I shall be in Leichardt's Town by nightfall. Can I do anything for you there?"
"I shall be there very soon myself," she answered.
"Then I shall very shortly take advantage of your permission, and I shall present myself at Emu Point."
"You will begin your new duties very soon," said Elsie.
"Yes; Parliament meets in a few weeks, and as I suppose you know, there is a talk of the Ministry going out on the Address. Will you come to hear my maiden speech, Miss Valliant?"
"I never go to the Ladies' Gallery," she answered. "I have never taken any interest in politics."
"You must take a little interest in them now, however—now that both Hallett and I have gone into public life. Which of us, I wonder, will be first in the Cabinet?"
"You are going in for that?" she asked, in slight surprise.
"When I play a game I always play it thoroughly," he replied.
"Good-night," she said abruptly, "and good-bye." She left him.
Trant waylaid her as she was passing along the verandah to her room in Ina's wake.
"Miss Valliant, I have two things to ask you."
"What are they, Mr. Trant?"
"Will you let me come and see you in Leichardt's Town?"
"Why, of course. I have told Mr. Blake that he may come."
"I am not Blake, and Blake isn't me. I shall come on my own account. The second request is, that you will give me the first waltz at the May ball."
"I am afraid that is promised."
"Has Blake been beforehand with me?" Trant's face darkened. "I won't stand that."
"I am under a standing engagement to dance the first waltz at all the May balls with Mr. Frank Hallett."
"Oh! Is that engagement going to hold after you are married, Miss Valliant?"
"I don't see why it shouldn't."
"Your husband might object, that's all. Never mind, I'm not jealous of Mr. Hallett. You'll give me the second?"
"Promised, too."
"Blake?"
She nodded.
"Then the third?"
"Yes, the third, if you like; always supposing that his Royal Highness or his Excellency the Governor don't want to dance it with me."
"I have no doubt that his Royal Highness will want to dance with you, and the Governor, too; unless he is a staid old married man. I'll risk it for that dance, and I shall book the engagement."
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The cottage on Emu Point seemed smaller than ever after the comparative magnificence of Tunimba. Nobody had made the jam, and Mrs. Valliant was plaintively querulous. She was a delicate, rather would-be fine woman, who had once been as pretty as Elsie, but who had never had a tenth part of Elsie's brains and brightness, or of Ina's common sense. She looked a little draggled now, and had lost her hair and her teeth, and the badly fitting false teeth of the Leichardt's Town dentist gave her an artificial look.
"I shouldn't have minded about the jam if you had come back engaged to Frank Hallett," she said.
"But I haven't, mother, and there's an end of it," said Elsie; "and I don't see the remotest prospect of being engaged to anybody for a long time to come."
"It is your own fault," moaned Mrs. Valliant. "You have got the name of being a flirt and of encouraging men who are no use in the way of marrying. These town men never are."
"They are very good to dance with," said Elsie. "Don't worry, mother. If the worst comes to the worst, and nobody will marry me, I can always end up as a barmaid, you know. I've got attractive manners—to men, at any rate. At least so they say."
"And the women hate you; I hear that old cat, Lady Garfit, has been setting it about that Frank Hallett has thrown you over because you flirted so abominably with that new man, Blake."
Elsie flushed. "Lady Garfit is jealous, because Rose was out of it, and Frank Hallett has not thrown me over. Oh, mother, let us forget for one whole evening that my mission in life is to marry, and help me to look over my old ball dresses, and see what I can do with them for this winter."
They were terribly poor, the Valliants, and it was not surprising that Mrs. Valliant should wish to marry off Elsie. No one but Elsie and Ina knew how they had to pinch and save, and to what straits they were sometimes reduced in order that Mrs. Valliant might have a decent black silk, with a high and a square-cut bodice, in which to take her place among the Leichardt's Town ladies at such functions as called for her attendance. No one but Ina and Elsie knew how the girls used to toil in the mornings to get their house work done to have the afternoons free for their visitors and for their flirtations, and how late they would sit up at nights to make the pretty, simple dresses which Elsie and Ina wore at the balls and garden parties, and which ill-natured mothers of less attractive daughters declared were bought at expensive shops with borrowed money, which Elsie's husband would one day have to pay back. But as a matter-of-fact it was Mrs. Valliant's boast that they had never owed a penny, and that Ina had gone to her husband with as respectable a trousseau as any other Leichardt's Town girl could have had. Ina's wedding, however, had crippled the widow's resources for some time to come, and there was little enough wherewith to fit Elsie out for her winter campaign. Yet in spite of their poverty, they got along happily enough, and Elsie sang over her work and Mrs. Valliant, in gloves, swept the floors, and made the beds, and did the clear-starching and ironing so beautifully that the Valliant girls' white frocks were the admiration of the town.
It was a pretty cottage in its way, though it was so small—only four rooms and a verandah and lean-to kitchen, but it had a little garden which Peter the Kanaka boy looked after—a garden with flaming poinsettia shrubs, and some oleander trees, and a passion-creeper arbour, and a small plantation of bananas, and some lantana shrubs growing on the bank which shelved down to the river. It was a great thing having this tiny bit of frontage on the river, for the girls had had a boat, which Elsie now managed alone, and which saved her a good deal in omnibus fares and ferriage. The Leichardt River winds about like a great S, and beyond Emu Point there lies the North Side, as it is called, where are all the grand shops and the Houses of Parliament and Government House and the Clubs, and beyond, again, is the South Side, where smaller folk dwell. The big people have mostly houses with large gardens along the north bank of the river, or off Emu Point. The Valliant cottage was not in the fashionable part of Emu Point, but lay in the neck, and was approached through a paddock of gumtrees, once part of a large property, now gradually being cut up and covered with little wooden houses, in which then lived the genteel poor of Leichardt's Town society.
The verandah at Riverside, as the Valliant's cottage was named, had a trellis of Cape jasmine and thumbergia, and in one corner of it Elsie had established herself with her sewing machine and a garden table, on which were her books and workbasket. The soft April wind from the river fanned her cheeks, and had a touch of chill. Winter was close at hand. The poinsettia was beginning to flaunt its red leaves, and the bougainvillea that covered the verandah roof had a tinge of pale mauve. Elsie was working diligently, and she made a pretty picture as she bent over the machine. She was so busy, and the treadle of the machine made such a noise that she did not hear the garden gate click, and it was not till a shadow came between her and the light that she looked up and saw Blake.
"How do you do, Miss Valliant?" he said quietly. "I should have been here before, but that I did not get to Leichardt's Town quite as soon as I expected; that is, I got here the evening of the day I left Tunimba, but I had to go away again immediately."
Elsie got up from the machine and gave him her hand. She was oddly confused. "I am sorry that my mother is not at home: she has gone over to the North Side. Will you sit here, or would you rather go in?"
"I would much rather sit here, if I may? "He drew forward a canvas chair. "I don't recognize you in your new character. I never saw you sewing before. What is it—a gown? It looks very pretty." He touched the delicate fabric which Elsie was hemming and gathering into frills.
"You will see me wearing it," she said; "and I wonder if you will like me in it—white muslin. It sounds very innocent and Miss Edgeworthish, doesn't it? but it is to be glorified white muslin—copied from the print of somebody's picture—a Romney, I think."
"Yes, Romney would have found you a delightful model—almost as good as Lady Hamilton, and he would have given all the soft richness of your colouring."
At his compliment Elsie recovered her self-possession. "Never mind my colouring. Tell me what news there is while I work. I am going to sew all these strips together, if you don't mind."
"No, I don't mind at all. I like to see a woman working, especially if she is worth watching. One can stare at her without seeming rude, and then it makes one feel more at home. I have some news for you, Miss Valliant; news which ought to interest you very much. I don't think you can have heard it, for they had got it at the Club just as I left."
"What is it? Is the date fixed for the first Government House 'At home'? I don't know of anything else which will interest me particularly."
"Really, not even Mr. Frank Hallett's election?"
"He has got in then. Of course I knew he would get in."
"Yes, he has got in, and by a good majority. I am honestly glad. By all the laws of justice he ought to have beaten me at Groondi."
"Why, I suppose the best man wins, wherever it is."
"I am afraid that in this case it wasn't the best man winning. If he had been an Irishman, he would have had a walk over. The patriotic spirit was roused, and I got the benefit of it. Well, you will see now how we shall fight in the Legislative Assembly. Parliament opens, you know, next week."
There was another click at the gate. Blake cursed the untimely visitor.
It was Captain Macpherson, who, since the races on the Luya, had developed a tenderness for Elsie. He looked a little cross at the sight of Blake, who scarcely stirred from his seat. Captain Macpherson threw himself on the edge of the verandah, with an air of easy familiarity. He had brought an offering, in the shape of banana candy, and Elsie nibbled at it daintily.
"I wonder you aren't ashamed to come to town. Oughtn't you to be looking after Moonlight?"
"Moonlight is the devil," exclaimed Captain Macpherson. "I beg your pardon, Miss Valliant, but what can you say of a fellow who disappears from mortal ken on the Luya with the whole army of police and trackers on the look out for him, and then all of a sudden turns up, mask, black horse, and everything else, close by Wallaroo; and when the moon is new. Nobody expects Moonlight to be on the rampage unless it's full moon."
"Ah!" said Blake, indifferently. "And the police have no clue?"
"None in the world, and never will have, unless one of the gang turns traitor."
"That's my belief, though perhaps I am not the person to state it."
Another visitor appeared, one who had come in a boat to the landing, and now approached through the banana grove, a young man, very neatly got up, and with a town air, and an evident determination to be equal to all circumstances. He was, in fact, a clerk in the Post Office, and was also honorary secretary to a new club. His ostensible reason for coming was, in fact, to give the information that the committee of this same club had fixed the date for their house-warming ball, and that it would take place the night but one after the Government House birthday ball. He had brought his offering too, in the shape of two first-blown camellias of the year, which, he said, he had got from the curator of the Botanical Gardens. Elsie accepted the flowers graciously, and took them up and looked at them alternately with her nibblings of Captain Macpherson's banana candy. She seemed to take the offerings for granted, and Blake could not help saying, "I see that it is the custom to lay propitiatory tribute at the feet of the goddess."
"That is a very horrid way of putting it," said Elsie, flushing up. "They call this sort of thing my verandah receptions," she added. "A lot of gentlemen always turn up when there is anything going on."
One or two others turned up later, and Elsie went in and came out presently, followed by the Kanaka boy, with a tray and the tea things. Then Elsie requested Mr. Saunders, the young man in the Post Office, to cut some bread and butter, and there was some joking about the next cake-making day, and it transpired that on one occasion Elsie's admirers had been turned into amateur cooks, and had helped to bake a batch of biscuits. Certainly there was very little formality about Elsie's verandah receptions. The Kanaka boy in his gardening clothes stood gravely waiting to get hot water as required, and Elsie requested her guests to help themselves from the various bunches of bananas hanging from the verandah rafters. "Riverside is famous for its bananas," she said to Blake, "bananas and strawberry guavas, those are our attractions, not counting the chucky-chucky tree by the river. Will you come some time and help me to get chucky-chuckies?"
Mr. Holmes, one of Elsie's army of detrimentals, proposed a pull on the river before the weather got cold, and Elsie gravely made the appointment and accepted an invitation to meet somebody else on the North Side, and get an ice at the Leichardt's Town Gunter's. About sunset Mrs. Valliant appeared. She made Blake think of the descriptions he had read of the American mother. She was a personage equally unimportant in the general scheme of things.