CHAPTER III.
LORD AND LADY HORACE AT HOME.
Lord Horace was scrambling up the bank, leaning well over his saddle bow and clinging to his horse's mane. His seat was a little uncertain, and it was evident that he was only a spurious sort of bush man, in spite of his rather elaborate bush get-up of Crimean shirt, spotless moleskins, and expensive cabbage-tree hat. He had a stockwhip, too, coiled over his left arm, though he had made no pretence of going after cattle, and had indeed only a few stray beasts to go after. He was a tall, slight dark young man with a profile somewhat after the Apollo Belvedere type, fine eyes, and a weak mouth. He was distinctly aristocratic looking, clipped his g's after the English aristocratic fashion, and had certain little ways of his class, in spite of his efforts to be rough. He had an attractive manner, and apart from his wish to ape bushman's habits, seemed quite without affectation. He looked, certainly, however, more suited for a London life than for that of an Australian settler, and it was equally certain from his physiognomy that he would never take the world by storm with his talents.
"Moonlight!" he cried out in answer to Elsie's question. "Been huntin' for him all up the Luya. No chance whatever of their findin' him. I say, Hallett—How do you do, old chap. Let's make a party—get some good black trackers, don't you know? and go out on the trail, eh?—man-catching. It would be rare sport."
"If you and Mr. Hallett were to do such a thing I'd never speak to you again," said Elsie indignantly.
"Look here, she has been ravin' about the fellow. I must say I think it was rather a fine thing refusing Slaney's cheque, and trusting to his honour. Slaney's honour! Poor chap, he's dead, so mustn't abuse him. You should have heard the fellows at the Bean-tree discussin' your chances, Hallett. I suppose you are going to stand for the district?"
"I suppose so," Hallett answered. "But," he added, "it is too soon to talk about that with poor Slaney not yet in his grave."
"Oh, nobody cares about Slaney. The king is dead, long live the king—that's my motto, and' Slaney was a confounded Radical, hand and glove with the working man. I'm a working man myself, but I ain't a Radical." Lord Horace talked excitedly and rather thickly. Elsie looked at him, and drew her delicate eyebrows together in a frown.
"I think we had better walk on to the Humpey," she said. "Ina will be wondering what has become of us all."
"Yes, come along, and have a refresher, and talk over things," said Lord Horace. "It's a beastly ride from the Bean-tree. I went over to see if some of those selectors wouldn't get their meat from me—might as well turn an honest penny, you know; and I wanted to hear the news about Moonlight. Macpherson and his men are mad at his having given them the slip, and are scouring the country till they find his hiding-place. They're mad, too, against poor Slaney, for not letting them nab Moonlight at the bank. By Jove, that was a neat trick, and I like old Slaney, though he was a beast. I like him for havin' stood on the square to Moonlight. But come along, and let us talk it over. It's canvassin' I'm thinking of. I canvassed once for my brother-in-law Waveryng—before he was Waveryng, you know—got him in too with singing comic songs—I'm first rate at 'em. By Jove, Waveryng isn't half as grateful as he might be, or he'd do something for me now."
Lord Horace spurred his horse and cantered on executing a series of Alpine calls to which there came a response from the house in the shape of a faint "Coo—ee."
Frank Hallett did not mount, but walked beside Elsie, who was silent and looked worried.
"I forgot," said Frank abruptly. "I've got a note for you from Mrs. Jem. She wants you to come over next week, and Lady Horace of course. I believe there's to be a dance or something at Tunimba."
"I'm going home next week," said Elsie.
"But you can wait for that. Nobody wants you in Leichardt's Town."
"Heaps of people want me, and heaps of things. Mamma wants me; my winter gowns want me, and the fruit wants me. It has to be made into jam, and my dresses have to be made; there's nobody to do them but me. You see Ina used to be the practical person among us—the Prime Minister, the dressmaker, and the cook all in one. And now Ina is gone."
"Oh, but haven't you?" Frank began and stopped awkwardly.
"Haven't we a cook? you were going to say. No, we haven't. Mammie and I do the cooking for each other, and a nice mess we make of it, and the Kanaka boy who does the garden cleans the pots and pans. Now you know all about it. Have you any idea, Mr. Hallett, what Mammie and I have to live upon?"
"No—that is, I didn't imagine of course that you were millionaires."
"We've got exactly one hundred and twenty-five pounds a year, not counting the garden produce—a hundred and twenty-five pounds a year to pay our rent and to feed and clothe our two selves and buy all the necessaries of civilization. I suppose I pass as a civilized young person out in Australia, though I am quite sure I shouldn't if you put me down in London society. Oh dear, I wonder if I shall ever have a taste of London society."
"How you always harp on England," said young Hallett.
"Well, isn't it supposed to be the Paradise of Australian girls, as they used to say Paris was to Americans? I'm certain that one of the reasons Ina married Horace was because she thought he might take her to England. I can't imagine any other."
Frank laughed. "Oh, he's a very good fellow, though he is a lord, as they say about here. But why do you say that your sister married him because she wanted to go to England? She is not ambitious, she doesn't care about that sort of thing. She is not"
"Not like me," Elsie interrupted. "If I were only half as good as Ina."
"She married him, I suppose, because she loved him," Hallett went on uneasily.
"Do you think he is the kind of person a girl would fall in love with?" said Elsie.
"Why not? He is very handsome, and he has nice manners."
"And he is horribly selfish, and he is shallow—as shallow as the creek at the Crossing. Mr. Hallett, do you know I am worried about Ina. I don't think somehow she is very happy. But she is much too proud and much too good to own it."
Hallett looked uncomfortable. His memory went back to a certain day not many months back—a day when he had confided to Ina Valliant the love he felt for her sister Elsie, and of which he never could think without a painful twinge, a horrible suspicion that she had once cared for him herself. It was true he had no reason for the suspicion—nothing but a stifled exclamation, a quiver of the voice, a sudden paling. The suspicion had been joyfully lulled to sleep, when a month or so afterwards she had accepted Lord Horace, and when she had told him again, and this time firmly and unfalteringly, that she would do everything in her power to further his suit with Elsie. And she had done everything she could. She had asked him over repeatedly, had been sweet, frank, and sister-like, and had seemed absolutely satisfied. And yet when Elsie said that Ina was not happy, he knew that she was only echoing his own miserable thought.
"Tell me," he said, "why do you fancy that? Isn't he good to her?"
"Oh, yes. He is always making love to her, if you call that being good. It is really quite embarrassing sometimes, and if I were Ina I wouldn't have it. And then he flies out because the dinner isn't quite right, or because some little stupidity is wrong, and sulks like a spoiled child. It's because Ina doesn't sulk too—because she puts up with his pettishness so angelically, and takes such pains that everything shall be right next time, that I am sure she isn't happy. It's unnatural."
"Surely it's very natural if she cares for him."
"Poor Ina," said Elsie, softly. "Well, she is happy enough, apparently, when she is fidgetting after the chickens and furbishing up her doll's house."
"It does look a little like a bush doll's house," said Frank.
They were close to the Humpey now. It was a queer little slab place, roofed with bark, standing against a background of white gum-trees, which, with their tall, ghostlike trunks and sad grey foliage, gave a suggestion of dreariness and desolation to the otherwise cosey homestead. Lord Horace had made the best of the Humpey. It had been a stockman's hut, two slab rooms and a lean-to; and now another hut had been joined to it, which was Lord Horace's kitchen, and there were sundry other lean-to's and straggling shanties, which served for guest-rooms and meat-stores. The verandah of the Humpey had an earthen floor, and, the posts were of barked saplings. But there were creepers growing around the posts and festooning the bark roof, and there were stands of ferns against the slab walls, and squatters' chairs with crimson cushions which made splashes of colour. Lord Horace's chair had a glass of some spirituous concoction on its arm-table, which his attentive wife had just brought to him, and he was filling his pipe, while Ina, who was only a few degrees less lovely than Elsie, leaned against the post, and waited submissively to be told the day's news. Lord Horace took a great deal of credit to himself for having left the Humpey in its original state of roughness. "Some fellows, you know, would have gone to no end of expense in cartin' cedar and shinglin' and paintin', and spoilin' a really good Australian effect," he was wont to say. "That's the worst of you Australians, you've got no sense of dramatic fitness. And that's what I say to Ina and Elsie when they want me to fill up the chinks between the slabs, and put in plate glass windows. A bush hut is a bush hut, and there's something barbarous in the idea of turning it into a villa. Wait till I've finished my stone house. Then you shall see something really comfortable and harmonious, too. In the meantime, if we can't be comfortable, let us at least be artistic."
Those were Lord Horace's sentiments.
The new house had come to a standstill for want of funds after the foundations had been laid, and it was not likely to get beyond the foundations, unless Lord Waveryng sent out further supplies; but Lord Horace talked of it with as proud a certainty as if an army of master builders were already at work.
Lady Horace came slowly down the log steps, and held out her hand to Hallett.
"How do you do?" she said, in her gentle little Australian drawl. "I'm very glad you have come. Elsie was saying yesterday that we were so dull."
"That's because we're on our honeymoon yet," put in Lord Horace. "Elsie says it's quite disgusting the way we spoon."
Frank Hallett noticed that Lady Horace flushed a brilliant red, and interpreted the blush as a favourable sign. Oh yes, she was happy. She must be happy. If she had not been happy she could not have answered so composedly.
"We were planning to take Elsie over to Tunimba to see Mrs. Jem Hallett, before she goes down to Leichardt's Town. But we're a little frightened of Mrs. Jem, because she is so dreadfully grand, and she might be vexed if we went without a formal invitation."
"Here is the formal invitation, anyhow," said Hallett, and he produced his sister-in-law's note, and gave it to Lady Horace, who duly handed it to her husband, and it was there and then settled that they would go.
Frank Hallett had brought something else for Ina—some of the famous Tunimba figs, which were now going off, and he had brought a book for Elsie, and while these offerings were being unpacked and commented on, he studied Lady Horace's face. Ina was not so pretty as her sister. She was not so tall, her colouring was less brilliant, she was much quieter. It was a wonder people thought that Lord Horace, who was a fastidious person, had fallen in love with her instead of with the all-conquering Elsie. But Elsie had snubbed him, and Ina was besides very pretty and very much more docile than her sister. She had a sweet little serious face, with a peculiarly delicate complexion, and a tender resolute mouth. The fault of her face lay in the light eyelashes and eyebrows, which gave her a certain insipidity. She had a very gentle manner, and she did not talk much, not nearly as much as Elsie.
She had been only four months married. Hallett asked her how she liked the Dell, and she told him in her childlike way all about her chickens, and her pigs, and the new garden, and the pump Lord Horace was making, and other domestic details. And she asked him various questions about .the working of Tunimba and Mrs. Jem Hallett's management, which showed that she had thrown herself entirely into her bush life.
He said something to this effect.
"Yes," she answered. "I want to make the Dell as much a model of a place in its small way as Tunimba is in its big way. And then, you know, Horace isn't like a regular bushman, he must have his little English comforts"
"Which he insists on combining with his Australian dramatic effects," put in Hallett, "and that must make management a little difficult for you, Lady Horace."
Ina laughed. "Oh, I don't mind," she said. "Now I want to show you the last improvement," and she took him into the sitting-room, which was a very cosey and picturesque place, though the walls were only of canvas stretched over the slabs, and the ceiling, of canvas too, was stained with rain droppings from the bark roof. Lord Horace had been amusing himself by drawing in sepia a boldly-designed flight of swallows along one end of the room.
"Not strictly appropriate to Australia, my dear fellow, but I couldn't stand the papers they showed me. I have sent home for something a little more artistic. It should be parrots, of course, or satin-birds, and, by the way, those beggars of satin-birds have gobbled up all our loquats—but my imagination wouldn't soar, and Ina is not inventive. I'm trainin' her faculties, but by slow degrees."
Ina flushed again. Between the flushes she was—so Hallett noticed—alarmingly pale. And surely she had got thinner. But she had taken ever so much pains over the arrangement of the drawing-room, which was in truth exceedingly pretty and full of English odds and ends, from a portrait of Lady Waveryng in full court dress to an an tiered stag's head over the doorway. Ina was proud of her charming room, though she gave Elsie all the credit of the arrangement. "It was always Elsie who did the prettinesses," she said, "whether it was in our ball dresses or our parlour. Elsie has only to put her hand to a thing and it gets somehow the stamp of herself. I was never good for anything but the useful things."
Lord Horace sat down to the piano, which was a fine instrument and was littered with music, and struck a few chords. "You must hear my newest thing. It's one of those spirited bush ballads of William Sharp's, and I've set it to music. Ina and I sat up till all hours last night practisin' it."
"Yes," interjected Elsie, "and you made poor Ina faint by keeping her standing so long."
"I wanted her to have some port wine," answered Lord Horace, "and she wouldn't. It was her fault, wasn't it, Ina, dear?"
"Yes, it was my fault," said Ina. "I didn't take the port wine in time."
"Well, never mind," said Lord Horace, "she shall have some port wine now to make up." He rushed off and brought the wine, which he made her swallow in spite of her protests. That was Lord Horace's way. A glass of port wine for a woman, and a brandy and soda for a man, were his notion of a panacea for ills of body and mind. When Ina had drunk her wine he began his accompaniment again and burst into the song. He had a fair baritone, and sang with a certain manner as of one who knew what he was about. He put a good deal of dramatic go into the rattling words—
"O'er the range and down the gully, across the river bed,
We are riding on the tracks of the cattle that have fled:
The mopokes all are laughing, and the cockatoos are screaming,
And bright amidst the stringy barks the parrakeets are gleaming.
The wattle blooms are fragrant, and the great magnolias fair
Make a heavy sleepy sweetness in the hazy morning air;
But the rattle and the crashing of our horses' hoofs ring out,
And the cheery sound we answer with our long-repeated shout."
And then came the chorus which the four took up—
"Coo-ee—Coo-ee—Coo-ee—Coo-ee!"
"My dear Horace," said Hallett, "why didn't you try for fortune in the light operatic line? You are much better suited for that than for roughing it in Australia."
"I did think of it," replied Lord Horace seriously; "but the light operatic line is played out in England, there's no chance for anybody now. And then one's people would have thought it infra dig. They're old-fashioned, you know—don't go in for modern innovations—the stage cult and that sort of thing. It's not a bad notion of yours, though—an opera of bush life—openin' chorus of stockmen and bush-rangers, and Moonlight for a hero. It might pay better than free-selecting on the Luya."
"It might well do that," said Elsie, who was rather fond of a passage-at-arms with her brother-in-law.
Lord Horace caught her round the waist and gave her a twirl into the verandah. "A waltz—a waltz, Ina," he cried. Ina played. There were some blacks outside who clapped their hands and cried out "Budgery!" and the pair stopped to have what Lord Horace called a "yabber." Hallett and Ina were left alone. She let her hands fall from the piano, and her sweet serious eyes met his. "Mr. Hallett," she said, I think you ought to make haste."
"Tell me what I ought to do, Lady Horace."
"I think you ought to make Elsie understand how much you care for her."
"I have tried to do that. You were wrong. She doesn't care for me."
"I thought she did," said Ina faltering. The break in her voice reminded him of the break in it that day. Perhaps she was thinking of this, too. She went on in a different tone, "You must not judge Elsie as you would another girl. She is horribly proud, and she is horribly reserved, and she is horribly perverse. Oh, I know all my Elsie's faults."
"Tell me, Lady Horace, what made you think that she cared for me?"
Ina hesitated, and her soft colour came again. "I don't think I can do that quite, Mr. Hallett."
"Tell me," he urged.
She looked at him, and turned away her head. "Yes, I'll tell you," she said, in a forced sort of voice. "It was—do you remember that day at Tunimba—before I was engaged—when you told me that you were so fond of Elsie?"
"Yes," he answered, and his voice too was strained. "It was just after that, that Horace—that I began to think I might marry Horace. One day when Elsie teased me about it—she never cared very much for Horace, you know, though Mammie liked him so much—we spoke of you—and Elsie told me that you were the only man she had ever known whom she could fancy herself marrying. She told me that she had once fancied—before Horace came on the scene, you know"—Ina laughed a little unsteadily—"that you had had a—a regard for me. It was absurd, wasn't it?—and that the idea had made her unhappy and snappish to me, and that she had hated herself for minding. But she had minded. That meant a great deal from Elsie."
At that moment Lord Horace and Elsie came in.
"Mr. Hallett," she exclaimed, "I have been telling Horace that we are to have a picnic from Tunimba to the Baròlin Waterfall."
"Elsie is determined to find Moonlight's lair," said Lord Horace. "Well, I'm on for any fun of that sort. Talking of Baròlin, do you know the people there, Trant and Co.?"
"Blake and Trant," said Hallett. "It's Blake who is the boss, they say. But how anyone who wasn't quite a fool could have bought Baròlin Gorge!"
"They say Trant is doing a good thing with his horses, though," said Lord Horace. "Do you know the chap? He was at the Bean-tree to-day. I didn't fancy him. Looked to me like one of those low-bred half-Fenian fellows. I saw 'em when I went salmon fishin' with Waveryng to Ireland. I was wondering whether Blake could be one of the Blakes of Coola."
"Coola!" repeated Hallett.
"Blake of Coola is about as old a name as there is in Ireland. Castle Coola was close by our river. Lord Coola was a friend of Waveryng's. I never met him. The Castle was shut up the only time I went over. It is a common enough name though."
"I believe my sister-in-law has asked Mr. Trant over to Tunimba," said Hallett.
The bell rang for dressing. Lord Horace took his guest over to what was by courtesy called the Bachelor's Quarters. There was only one spare room in the Humpey, and that was occupied by Elsie Valliant.