CHAPTER XXX.
"A BUSH PICNIC."
But in spite of the chase of Moonlight, in spite of the great Waveryng diamond robbery, which had furnished food for sensational leaders and sensational telegrams, both in England and Australia—what a fertile theme for romance-mongering penny-a-liners and society journalists!—in spite of the tragic complications of poor Elsie's love affairs and Frank Hallett's heart-sickness, and Ina Gage's sympathetic dread of some terrible coming calamity, life on the Luya had to continue its ordinary course. Its ordinary course just now meant the carrying-out of Mrs. James Hallett's scheme of a house-party at Tunimba, modelled on the lines of English comfort and the due subservience of Australian roughness to aristocratic sensibilities, but with all the dramatic fitness which local colour could impart; a house-party which should be duly chronicled in Lady Waveryng's book of travels, and which should pave the way for Mrs. Jem's reception into aristocratic circles in England when that long-talked-of trip Home should take place; and Mrs. Jem intended that it should take place before the Waveryng impressions had time to fade.
Mrs. Jem had for some time been silently making preparations. She was quite as good a caterer of amusement as Lord Horace, and made less fuss about it. The best rooms had been garnished in readiness for the Waveryngs, the bachelors' quarters had been made ready. By a diplomatic arrangement with the dentist, old Mrs. Hallett had been persuaded into taking her annual trip to Sydney a little earlier than usual, and her cottage was at the disposal of Mrs. James's guests.
She had invited a select party to meet the Waveryngs, including the Garfits and Minnie Pryde, and such of the neighbours as were thought either sufficiently refined for such exalted company, or sufficiently amusing to afford "copy" for Lady Waveryng. Dominic Trant had been asked, and had readily accepted the invitation; and Blake had been asked also, but had left it uncertain whether he could come. It was possible, he wrote, that his official duties might prevent him from being at the picnic to which he had so looked forward. He begged his kind regards to Miss Valliant, and his assurances to Lady Waveryng that zeal on behalf of the recovery of her jewels had something to do with his uncertainty.
"Ah, Blake knows that he will have a bad time when the House meets in October," said Jem Hallett. "No doubt, Sir James, you and your colleagues mean to make capital out of this Moonlight business?"
Sir James Garfit smiled sardonically, and remarked drily that they had their work cut out for that summer session. He meant, for his part, to make it last as short a time as possible, and he shouldn't be surprised if there was to be a general election, and in that case no one knew what would happen.
Thus it was understood that Sir James Garfit meant to force the hand of the Government. The summer session had been a concession to public feeling. Nobody liked a summer session, and it meant an involved state of political business.
"Think, Em," cried Lord Horace, "the loss of your diamonds may be a turning point in colonial history—a defeat of the Ministry and an appeal to the country; and all because your vanity made you insist on dragging about these historic heirlooms."
"It was Waveryng's vanity, not mine. He didn't like the idea of my not appearing properly, and, you see, we knew we should be in the wake of the Prince everywhere," said Lady Waveryng, apologetically.
Nature had assisted Mrs. Jem Hallett in her endeavours. Never was there a more glorious September; never had Tunimba looked more beautiful. The pale green pods of the eucalyptus flowers were opening to let out their honied balls, the white cedars were a mass of lilac blossoms, and the chestnut trees by the creek spread their orange clusters. The young green of the quantongs showed in the scrub fringe, and here and there in the mountain gorges the flame tree shone like a burning bush. The race-course in front of the house was brilliant green, and covered with butter-cups and wild violets, and the cultivation paddocks were greener still. The flat-stone peach trees were covered with bloom, and so were the orange trees, making the air almost heavy with their fragrance. And roses rioted on the fences, and the wistaria was sweet, and the purple scrub plums were beginning to ripen.
"What a pity it is that Elsie is not going to be married this month!" somebody said. "We might all be smothered in real orange blossoms."
But Elsie said nothing. She had grown strangely silent these days, and from her manner would scarcely have been recognized as the brilliant Miss Vajliant, of Leichardt's Town renown. She rarely alluded to her marriage, nor did Frank; and Lady Garfit pronounced them an extraordinary engaged couple, and began to think there might after all be a chance for Rose. Of late, however, she had taken a fancy to Blake in the light of a possible son-in-law. She lived in hope that he might be induced to change his politics, and to join Sir James Garfit's ministry. She was very much put out that he could not be at the picnic.
For he was not to be there. A telegram had arrived with prepaid messenger from the Bean-Tree to say that he was unavoidably prevented from joining the party. Elsie read the telegram—Mrs. Hallett handed it to her—with a curious sinking of her heart. She had been looking forward with a guilty joy to the prospect of meeting him at the picnic, and yet she had told herself all the time that she was wicked to wish for him, and that in reality she was anxious that he should not come.
The arrangements had been made with a view to the well-being and enjoyment of the elder and timorous as well as of the rasher spirits among the young. Lady Garfit did not think camping-out was quite appropriate at her age, or that of Sir James. Besides, she had not mounted a horse for years, and her size was hardly adapted to equestrian feats. Lady Waveryng, of course, wished to see and do everything that was to be seen and done. Rose Garfit thought she would see how they got on—of course camping-out would be sweet, but she was not sure that she ought to leave her mother. Mrs. James Hallett, with her usual sense of the fitness of things, decided that it was her duty to look after her elder guests. As for Minnie Pryde, she was equal to all dangers and difficulties. So it was settled that they were to follow the buggy track as far as that would take them towards one of the Selections in the mountains, and then a very short ride on a quiet horse, into which Lady Garfit was persuaded, would lead them to the Point Row Ravine, and there they would picnic, those so disposed returning in the late afternoon, while the rest would push on past the region of human tracks into the Gorges and camp for the night as near as might be to Baròlin Fall.
It was a goodly cavalcade, the two buggies, an escort of black boys leading spare horses, and followed by a pack of kangaroo hounds. Sam Shehan as pioneer—Sam always dour of face, but the typical stockman, in his tight mole-skins turned up at the bottom, his flannel shirt, and diagonally folded handkerchief knotted sailor-fashion on his chest, his cabbage tree hat on the back of his head, his stockwhip over his right shoulder, the thong trailing behind him, his waist-strap with its many pouches and implements of the bush, including a leather revolver case—for almost all the gentlemen carried revolvers—a precaution adopted on the Luya since the diamond robbery. There was always a hope of an encounter with Moonlight. The half-castes rode with Shehan, and kept somewhat apart from the other black boys. Elsie regarded the trio with a sort of instinctive shrinking, and yet with that vague interest which in her mind associated itself with anyone or anything that was connected with Blake. Trant was there of course, on a splendid animal, mettlesome yet docile, and as Trant said, accustomed to the ranges. Lady Waveryng, in her trim hunting get-up and mounted on Jem Hallett's best thorough-bred lady's hack, looked like an importation from the Shires. Every incident of the little journey gave fresh material. There was a spin after a kangaroo, and then one of the stockmen killed a 'guana, a black boy skinned it, carrying off the carcase for a camp supper, while Lady Waveryng bought the skin on the spot, and declared she would have it stuffed to take home with her. Then, as they skirted the scrub, the bell-bird rang its silvery peal, and the whip-bird gave its coachman's click. Never was September day more tender and dreamy and sweet, with always that strange exhilaration in the air which sets pulses old and young tingling.
"I will be happy; I will be happy," Elsie kept repeating to herself. She put away dark thoughts of Blake. He was going out of her life; he must be thrust out of her life; and she would begin to-day the battle with her ghost. It was only a ghost—the ghost of a happiness that might have been. And here by her side was a happiness that was. And ahead of her, in the shape of Trant, was a means of passing excitement. She worked herself into a reckless mood. Why should she not amuse herself with Trant? He was fairly warned. "Let us shuffle cards, Frank," she said. "We have been too much like Darby and Joan lately, and it isn't time for that yet. Go and flirt with Rose Garfit, and I will flirt with Mr. Trant."
She laughed with something of her old spirit, and Frank was not displeased, but rather welcomed the sally, as a sign that Elsie was becoming herself again. He was not jealous of Trant.
So Elsie called Trant to her, on some woman's pretext, and Frank dropped back to Hose Garfit. Trant was in an odd mood, too. He did not seem disposed for pleasantry. His manner suggested to Elsie the "villain of the piece," and so she told him, laughing.
"Well," he answered, a little grimly, "perhaps. Perhaps I may turn into the hero of the piece. We are only at the beginning of the play, you know, Miss Valliant."
"Oh, no," she said, "we are getting to the end. The play is nearly played out, for me at least. I am to be married in a month, Mr. Trant; and we are going to Tasmania for our honeymoon."
"Is that settled?" he asked.
"It was settled yesterday," she replied. She looked up from her horse's mane, with which her whip had been toying. His big black eyes were fixed on her with such a fierce, devouring kind of gaze, that the girl was startled and shrank.
"I wish you wouldn't look at me like that," she said. "Why do you look at me so wildly?"
"Because I am wild with love of you," he said. "It maddens me to think of you the wife of another man. I can't stand it, and I will not stand it." He did not speak for a moment or two, then exclaimed impetuously, "You are right, the play is nearly played out, for me as well as for you. In a month's time, I shall have left Australia. Blake and I have agreed to dissolve partnership and to sell Baròlin."
"I am glad of that," she said.
He laughed in a strange, wild way. They were at the entrance to the cleft through which wound the Point Row gulley, the scene of their picnic in the autumn. The buggies crawled along a rough cedar-cutter's track for a little way, and then at Lady Garfit's request the ladies got out and a general shifting of baggage and dismounting and remounting took place, Lady Garfit being hoisted on the safest of the Tunimba steeds and placed under the care of the steadiest of the Tunimba stockmen, who led the lady and the horse along the bridle path to the lichen-covered boulders whence it was necessary to proceed on foot. Lady Waveryng uttered cries of delight. The place was in all the beauty of spring blossom. The rock-lilies were in flower, and stuck out all over the precipice in tufts like plumes of cream coloured feathers. Orchids, with white and purple tassels hung down from the crevices, the shrubs were nearly all in bloom, and so was the wild begonia, and the ferns were in their glory of new pale green fronds.
They picnicked on the higher plateau. It was a very sumptuous luncheon, got up in Mrs. Jem Hallett's best fashion. She was determined that the luncheon and the expedition should be immortalized in Lady Waveryng's book. A clever young "new-chum" from one of the Luya stations who had joined the party, and who had brought a Kodak, took photographs, grouping the stockmen and black boys and guests under Lady Waveryng's direction. He insisted on including Elsie in each group; Lady Waveryng made a greater point of the black boys. She raved about the picturesqueness of Pompo and Jack Nutty. Elsie submitted willingly to be posed. She did not want to climb higher, as Frank Hallett proposed. She had too vivid a remembrance of the ramble with Blake. And she thought of that saying of hers on which he had sadly commented. Yes; if she had only known in the autumn what the spring would bring forth!
It was a very successful day, so everyone declared over the quart-pot tea. Mrs. Jem had provided cream and sugar for those who had not Mr. Micawber's sense of the fitting in regard to a colonial life. Some of the black boys, with Sam Shehan, had been sent forward towards the Baròlin Falls early in the day to prospect for the adventurous as to the state of the track. They brought back accounts so daunting, of the quicksands in the creek, made more dangerous by the late rains, of the density of the spinnifex, through which it was almost impossible to force a way, of the close growth of the prickly bunyas in the scrub, and of the far-famed and almost fabulous "piora" snake, said to pursue its victim, unlike its lethargic brethren, and to haunt these fastnesses of the Luya, which so frightened Miss Garfit and others of weak soul and body that the camping-out party finally dwindled considerably below its first planned proportions, and those who turned back to the comforts of Tunimba were more than they who faced Baròlin-wards.
It was Sam Shehan who told the tale of the spinnifex and the piora. The blacks had flatly refused for fear of "Debil-debil" to go into the bunya scrub. This to them was the forbidden region, forbidden of Puyme, the Misty One, and Yooltanah, the Great Spirit. Only Jack Nutty and Pompo were of the emancipated from superstition's bondage, and were regarded as pariahs in consequence by their more dusky brethren.
Rose Garfit went back with her mother. So did Lord Waveryng, who complained of a twinge of sciatica. His spouse was intrepidity itself. "Take care of them all, Frank," plaintively adjured Mrs. Jem. Jem accompanied his wife.
"You have been drawing the long bow, Shehan," said Frank to the stockman. "It's my belief," he added to Trant, "that Shehan has a cattle-stealing plant up this way, and is afraid of my finding it out. He has been dead against this expedition, and throwing all the difficulties he could in the way."
If, however, Shehan was dead against the expedition, certainly Trant was wild that it should be carried through. He had wakened out of his grim and apathetic mood at a suggestion on Lord Waveryng's part that the Falls should be abandoned. Ina had timidly seconded the suggestion. She did not want Elsie to go and get lost in the Bush, and perhaps bitten by a snake. Ina, herself, was one of those who turned back. She was not a coward, but she was delicate, and Lord Horace did not seem to want her company. It was quite evident that he thought Mrs. Allanby enough to take care of. Mrs. Allanby had in her way a sort of quiet recklessness. She had never looked handsomer: the slumbering fires of her eyes had darted into life, and her pale cheeks were reddened with excitement or sunburn. Trant swore that he would be responsible for Elsie's safety. He knew the country better than Frank—scrubbers from Baròlin Gorge often got lost in Baròlin scrub, he explained. Lady Horace need not be alarmed. Ina kissed her sister in a melancholy way as they parted at the lichen-covered boulders. Both afterwards remembered Ina's fears. Lord Horace grumbled—Jem Hallett laughed at her. "I'm superstitious," said the little woman—"yes, I know. But I can't help it, and I shall not be happy until you all get safe back to Tunimba."
The party divided. Those turning their faces to the wilderness mounted and rode into the defile with the blackness of the scrub before them and Mount Luya barring the horizon, while the others went down along the gulley, and both parties were soon swallowed up in the gloom of the gorge. Elsie seemed fated to hear the asides of Trant and his henchman. Perhaps this was because Trant kept so assiduously at her bridle rein. Lord Waveryng had solemnly committed his wife into Frank Hallett's keeping. Lady Waveryng did not like Trant—she had counted, she said, on Mr. Blake being of the party, and joined her entreaties to those of her husband. Thus Elsie found herself for the nonce deserted by her legitimate protector, and it was she herself, partly out of perversity, who claimed Trant as a cavalier. The half-castes jogged ahead, Frank Hallett and Lady Waveryng followed, and then Minnie Pryde and a young bushman who showed symptoms of adoration. Mr. Craig was a well-to-do squatter, albeit rough in his ways, and Elsie thought that Minnie meant business this time, and she wondered how she should like Minnie for a neighbour on the Lower Luya, where was being built the splendid new house which she and Frank were to inhabit after their honeymoon and the English trip. Lord Horace and Mrs. Allanby were behind everyone else. Sam Shehan was riding sulkily in front of Elsie and Trant.
"Sam," called out Trant, "you'd better push ahead and see about the camp."
Sam took no notice. Trant looked annoyed. "Sam is not in the best of tempers," he said. "This kind of ladies' picnic is not much in his way. I'll go and give him a bit of my mind."
Trant spurred his horse, and the two were presently in a somewhat animated conference. It struck Elsie that it was Shehan who was giving his master a bit of his mind. Elsie lagged. She looked round for Lord Horace. And then she saw what gave her an odd start and opened her eyes to the state of affairs. Lord Horace was bending close to Mrs. Allanby. The faces of the two were turned to each other. Lord Horace looked very handsome: he was evidently pleading, and Mrs. Allanby was listening to him with a dreamy passionate eagerness. Elsie had never seen that expression upon her still, reserved face. The girl knew intuitively that the woman loved her brother-in-law. And then she saw Lord Horace bend closer still, and as the two horses touched, Lord Horace laid a kiss upon Mrs. Allanby's responsive lips. Elsie's heart swelled with anger and shame. A fierce blush came to her face—that Ina should be so insulted!—Ina, who was angelic in her goodness to Horace. Did Ina know or guess? and was this the cause of Ina's pale sad face? Or was it possible that Ina knew and did not care, because she had ceased to love her husband—had perhaps never loved him? Like a lightning flash this truth seemed borne in upon Elsie. She, too, urged on her horse, and the spirited creature in a few bounds had taken her almost beside Trant and his stockman. And then Elsie heard Sam Shehan say in angry tones "What is the sense of bringing these swell English toffs up here—and that dd Frank Hallett? I tell you I don't like it. The thing is too dangerous."
"If you reflect a moment, my good Sam, you will see that it is the most diplomatic course one could possibly pursue. I was in great hopes that Macpherson would have joined our party. Now, that would have been truly dramatic! He would never have come this way again."
"Oh, blow all that nonsense!" said Shehan. He looked round as he spoke, and became aware that Elsie was within earshot. He shut his mouth with the stockman's expressive click of his tongue and teeth which implies reserve and caution. Elsie was quite aware of this, but she only took in dazedly the significance of Sheehan's sudden silence. She was too pre-occupied with her own discovery, and the manner in which it might affect her sister's happiness, to give much thought to the mysteries of Sam Shehan and Dominic Trant.
Trant noticed her discomposed look as he came back to her, while Shehan pushed on, as he had been bid, and joined the half-castes.
"Shehan has the true native's objection to swell English people," he said airily, though he furtively watched the effect of his words. "I am sorry to say that he has been swearing vigorously at Lord and Lady Waveryng, and even at Mr. Frank Hallett, who he fancies is responsible for having brought them here. The fact is," Trant added, "Shehan wanted to have a chase after Moonlight—he has a theory that the Bushrangers are in hiding somewhere up here, and he doesn't want the game disturbed by this sort of thing. I told him that we were near having Captain Macpherson, and that we might have shown the troopers a bit of really wild country, but Sam didn't see the fun."
Elsie did not answer. "What is the matter?" he said. "You look as if you had seen a ghost."
"I have seen a ghost," she replied. "Never mind. Don't speak to me for a bit. I want to think."
And just then silence became compulsory, for the track was too narrow and broken for them to ride any more together.
The sun had set when they reached the border of the scrub, where Sam Shehan and the half-castes had already lighted the camp fires.