Allanby's mood, too, was fitful. In both were the signs of repressed excitement. They appeared to avoid each other. But their eyes were continually meeting.
It was a curious and romantic scene. The lonely night and solemn mountains, the black forest in which perhaps white foot had never trodden, the fire-illumined patch and grey boulders that seemed to belong to primeval times. And in contrast, this little group of nineteenth-century people, all young—almost all handsome, the outside band of stockmen and the two half castes and this inner circle—the men in their bushmen's dress. Frank Hallett and Trant stalwart and splendid with animal health and vigour; Lord Horace with his Apollo face and that nameless stamp of the old world aristocracy; Lady Waveryng, with the same stamp—highbred, and yet simple, the natural product of centuries of civilization; Mrs. Allanby—a perfumed exotic, not altogether wholesome; Elsie—wild, tropical flower, and Minnie Pryde—typically Australian, reminding one with a tendency for floral simile of a sprig of her own fresh native wattle.
Someone suggested songs. Trant's rich voice rose and fell on the luxurious night in those exquisitely passionate words of Shelley, "I arise from dreams of thee," his eyes fixed all the while on Elsie. It was to her that he was singing: it was for her that his soul was thrilling. Poor Dominic Trant! He was almost poetic when he sang.
Lord Horace's neat tenor went well with his sister's mild but cultivated soprano, in some of the Gilbert and Sullivan airs. They both liked modern opera. One song led on to another— Gilbert and Sullivan and nigger melodies, and old English glees, till somebody—it was Lady Waveryng—cried out that it was a shame and a treachery on this Australian night, under these Southern stars, and in this lonely Australian bush, not to sing one truly Australian song.
Then Trant lifted his voice again, in that favourite bush lament for the dead stockman, Lord Horace and the others joining in the refrain:—
