CHAPTER XXVI.
"COPY" FOR LADY WAVERYNG.
The Waveryngs were a success. Ina was perhaps happier with "Em Waveryng" than she had been during her short married life. Em was sweet, warm-hearted, and utterly without affectation. She had no nonsense about her, and in spite of her weak devotion to Lord Horace, she was not by any means blind to his faults. She was, however, like a doting mother who pardons everything to her darling, and is prepared in the long run to uphold his vagaries. Lady Waveryng. notwithstanding, found it a little difficult to pardon Lord Horace for Mrs. Allanby.
She was sufficiently ill-advised to speak to Ina on the subject of Lord Horace's flirtation. But Ina would have none of it. She was exaggerated in her defence of her husband. Lady Waveryng reported what she had said to her brother, and Lord Horace went in a shame-faced kind of way to his wife.
"Ern says you have been fightin' for me like a bantam hen for her chick," he said. "Don't do that, my dear. You may come to find that I don't deserve it."
Something in his tone struck Ina.
"Why do you say that, Horace?" she said.
"Because it's true. I'm a bad lot—always was. You know I told you before I married you that I couldn't see a pretty woman without wanting to flirt with her."
"Yes, I know you did. And I don't mind in the least your flirting with Mrs. Allanby."
"By Jove, I see that plainly enough," he answered sulkily. "If If you minded and made a row sometimes, life would be a little more amusing."
Ina's soft face flushed. "I know that Mrs. Allanby is much cleverer than I am, and altogether more the kind of woman that men admire," she said, with some dignity. "I am quite willing that you should amuse yourself. I am quite aware that you have not always found me very entertaining. I—I often think, Horace, that our marriage was a great mistake"—Ina's voice faltered, but she went bravely on—"still it is a mistake that cannot be mended now. And if I thought you were wronging either Mrs. Allanby or me, or yourself by your flirtation, I think you would find that I did mind a little, and that I should not hesitate to say so."
Lord Horace did not answer for a minute or two; then he said, "Why do you say that our marriage is a mistake?"
"Because you yourself have told me so," Ina answered.
"That was only when I was in a rage, and the cooking was abominable. A fellow who has been accustomed to a decent style of life in England can't be expected to put up with Australian roughness."
"I thought you called it picturesque," said Ina with unconscious sarcasm.
"So it is—the outside of it. And there's a freedom about it that's splendid. I never could stand all that cut and dried conventionalism of English society, and even English sport. Over there it's all a question of money. Given a certain income and you know exactly what you can afford to have. You can't have a moor and a deer forest on a precarious six hundred a year. Here you can have as good, and no scale of income to measure by. But I suppose I'm like the boy who wanted to have his cake and eat it too. The life is magnificent—out of doors—only I want indoor comfort as well, and I'm getting a little tired of it. I tell you what, Ina" he stopped rather guiltily.
"What are you going to tell me?" she asked presently.
"Nothing; only if Waveryng is as good as his word, and the investments turn out as they ought, we might put a manager here and take a run home."
He had been discussing it with Mrs. Allanby the night before. Ina said nothing.
Lord Horace was very full of his corroboree. "I don't know what you fellows of the Executive will do to me," he said to Blake, who with the rest of the Dell party was lounging in the verandah of the Humpey. "I've been doing my best to get up a war among the natives. There's three tribes of them," he went on to explain—"the Moongan and the Baròlin and the Durundur, and they are all at loggerheads with each other. It's quite a romantic affair, a sort of Paris and Helen and Siege of Troy business."
"Oh, do tell us," murmured Mrs. Allanby.
"Is he cramming me? " observed Lady Waveryng. "Remember I am going to write a book. Let us hear the Blacks' Iliad, Horace."
"This is it. Paris—otherwise Luya Tommy—ran away with Helen, commonly called Bean Tree Bessy. Paris is a Moongan. Helen is of the Baròlins. Helen has a husband who is of the Durundur tribe, and he is a chief also, and not by any means of a complaisant turn of mind. He resents the theft of his wife, or else his terms for the transfer are too high to be within Paris Tommy's means. Menelaus Tommy—they are both Tommies—is disposed for battle, and the Durundurs are a mighty tribe, so that the only chance for Paris and Helen, there being no Troy convenient, is in the Baròlins and the Moongans joining forces and fighting the Durundurs, and this is what I have been trying to compass—all for the benefit of your book of travels, Em, so I think it is rather hard of you to throw doubts on my veracity."
"I have promised you the proceeds of that book anyhow, Horace," put in Lady Waveryng "so that you are an interested party."
"Oh! then that accounts for Horace's zeal, and now I understand why he was so anxious to soothe the free-selectors and the cedar-cutters, who object to have the Blacks encouraged about the place," said Lord Waveryng. "It's all with a view to ultimate profit in providing copy for my lady."
"I've managed it."' Lord Horace went on triumphantly, "with a considerable expenditure of rum and tobacco—doled out in driblets. If I had given it in a lump, the Tommies, Paris and Menelaus, might have struck a bargain, and the dramatic motif of the corroboree would have been done for. Yesterday there was a little throwing of spears, and the end of it is that the Moongans and the Baròlins have agreed at my suggestion to have a big corroboree and a 'woolla'—that's what they call their Parliamentary Council, Em—the night after to-morrow, and then to go forth and fight the Durundurs. Get your note book ready, Em dear. It's to be a real swagger thing in corroborees."
Lady Waveryng's book was a stock joke. It afforded a pretext for the trotting out of all the oddities available, and gave point to the various expeditions and bush experiences. She insisted upon learning everything that had to do with station routine, and handled saddles as if she had been born in a stockman's hut, and she was learning to crack a stock whip, to plait a dilly-bag, and to make a damper. Lord Waveryng took life less enthusiastically, perhaps because he was a little gouty. Pacing and stud cattle were his hobbies, and he was interested in the Baròlin and Tunimba breeds, and rode about a good deal, admiring the scenery and getting a fair amount of amusement out of the free-selectors and the proprietors of the grog-shanties.
A black boy was despatched to Tunimba, and Mr. and Mrs. Jem Hallett turned up the next day in time for breakfast. The party was a large one, for Blake and Trant were there also, and naturally Frank Hallett, and besides the Waveryngs, Mrs. Allanby and Elsie.
Elsie was strangely subdued, indeed almost melancholy. Do what she would to distract her thoughts—and surely in the attentions of her lover and the discussion of future plans there was enough to distract them—she could not keep them a way from Blake, and the mystery of his life—for she was certain there was a mystery. Apart from Blake and her immediate matrimonial prospects, Lady Waveryng as the typical aristocrat, the embodiment of that sphere of life for which Elsie had always vainly sighed, afforded fertile subject for reflection. Elsie could not help being impressed by Lady Waveryng's thorough-bred simplicity, her dignity, combined with perfect freedom of manner, her absolute refinement, and all those delicate niceties, and all those indefinable characteristics which make up what is technically termed among the lower classes a "real lady," as distinguished from a fine lady. Lady Waveryng was a "real lady," but she was not in the very least a fine lady—except indeed when she was in her full panoply of diamonds and velvet and Venetian point. Elsie pondered a good deal upon these qualities of Lady Waveryng's. She began to realize how entirely impossible it would have been for Lady Waveryng to do many of the things which she, Elsie, had done so ignorantly and so innocently. She could not imagine Lady Waveryng "on the rampage for beaux," which was Minnie Pryde's inelegant way of expressing a fashion peculiar to some of the faster young ladies of Leichardt's Town, of sauntering about the Botanical Gardens, or up and down Victoria-street, ready to meet the salutations of their admirers with smiling readiness for flirtation. She could not imagine Lady Waveryng holding verandah receptions, or receiving tribute from her various adorers, or allowing herself to be taken home by a young man after a dance like a servant maid keeping company. Elsie grew hot and red as she thought of that walk from Fermoy's, of many other walks, of many other episodes. She was unconsciously learning lessons. She would never again be the Elsie Valliant who had "got engaged" to Jensen, for fun, and broken the young man's heart, the Elsie Valliant who had challenged Blake to a flirtation tournament, and who had been the object of Lord Astar's disrespectful attentions.