Kitabı oku: «At Large», sayfa 10
The Colonel smiled. Then he thanked her graciously for the service.
"I am extremely obliged to you, Mrs. Parish, for the hundredth time. You have saved me yet another interview. That is, I should have made it awkward, but you, with your usual tact, have got at precisely what I wanted. I am perfectly satisfied."
Mrs. Parish bowed. She was not a little pleased with the compliment to her tact, on which she plumed herself above everything; but her pleasure was less than her surprise – that the Colonel should be so easily satisfied! She moved with dignity to the door. As she was shutting it, the Colonel rubbed his hands and exclaimed aloud:
"It is Dick!"
The door, which was at that moment swinging to, stopped, trembled, then shut with a vicious little bang. The Colonel could make a near enough guess at the expression of the face on the other side of it. He smiled benevolently.
"Silly lady! She thinks I have turned against my friend Miles – whom, by the way, she worships on her own account. Far from it, I miss him abominably. But when it comes to a choice between him and Dick – and where my girl is concerned – why, then, I confess, I'm all for the younger man and the older suitor."
XVII
"MILES'S BEGGARS"
Iris Lodge, during the first half of August, became for once gay, not to say festive – in a small way, as befitted a first experiment. Maurice managed to wrest his hard-earned annual holiday from the bank, and, on the very first day of the fourteen allotted him, back came Dick from abroad, bringing with him his friend Flint. After a remarkable display of obstinacy on this gentleman's part, Dick had at last prevailed upon him to leave his tenants to their own devices for one more week, and tarry by the Thames. But, though this was brought about by dint of hard persuading, in the end Mr. Flint somehow saw his way to doubling the week which at first he had grudgingly promised.
In his excuse it can only be urged that he enjoyed himself beyond expectation. The weather was very nearly faultless, the river at its best, formalities few, and the ladies – charming. The lawn-tennis court – though several inches short – was quite of the billiard-table order. The music in the evenings, though it did not run in a man's head, possessed a certain odd, mysterious, soothing, saddening, pleasing quality, that silenced one at the time, and left an impression that Miss Edmonstone could make her piano speak, if she tried. Perhaps it was classical music; very likely Chopin. Lastly – and last thing – the spirituous nightcap, though approached in a spirit of moderation, had a way of imparting the proper Eucalyptian flavour to all reminiscences of life among the gum-trees. Could there be better conditions for a pleasant visit? Flint asked himself. And if the house was the smallest he had ever stayed in, would not Castle Flint seem cheerless, vast, sepulchral, by comparison?
But indeed they were wonderfully bright and happy days: the ones on the river, when, in the bushmen's phrase, they all "camped," and Flint made tea in true bush fashion, and Dick a "damper" which no one but bushmen could eat; the afternoons at tennis, spent in wonderfully keen, if not deeply scientific, struggles; the morning at Hampton Court, when Flint owned himself completely "bushed" in the Maze, and when they were all photographed on the Green, bringing away with them the atrocious result in a gilt frame; and the day when Dick hired the four-in-hand (it created some sensation in the little road) and drove them all through Chertsey and Ascot, to Windsor, and back by Staines and Shepperton.
Certainly any outsider must have voted them a jovial, light-hearted party, without a serious care to divide among them; and even Flint, who had some power of observation, and also knew his friend thoroughly – even Flint told himself that old Dick had got back his good spirits, and was, in fact, "getting over it." But Flint did not know. Ever since their hurried interview on the 2nd of July, Dick had been as reticent as he had then been communicative of all that lay nearest his heart.
Yet never for one moment did Dick forget. He had no wish to forget. So long as he could keep his disappointment to himself, deep down within him, he would suffer and smile. For the sake of the others he could not rise in his place at the feast and declare himself the skeleton he felt. They must find it out sooner or later – then let it be later. Here his thoughts were all of his mother and Fanny; they would be heart-broken when he told them of his determination to go back to Australia. But a determination it was, growing more solid day by day, though as yet told only to Colonel Bristo, and that in the unguarded spontaneity of sudden emotion. But as for his people, better tell them just before he went – say the week before, or why not on the very day of sailing? Why make them unhappy before their time, when their happiness in having him back was still boundless?
After all, it would only be a temporary trouble; for Dick had evolved a great scheme for the future, which was this: He would go out and buy a small station in a first-rate district – at arm's length, indeed, from towns and railroads, but still just in touch with civilisation. Then he would send home for them all. Yes, all. For Maurice would make an ideal book-keeper. Fanny would revel in the life, and Mrs. Edmonstone would certainly prefer it to the small house at Teddington. This plan was conceived, matured, calculated out, and found feasible, during the many long summer nights wherein Dick never closed his eyes, when perhaps it was well that there was this object of focus for his mind.
As for his attitude towards Flint, Dick was well aware that his access of reserve, after the way in which he had unburdened his soul at their first meeting, must appear strangely inconsistent. He had rushed to join his friend on the Continent, travelled with him for nearly a month, and not told him another word of his affairs. It could not be helped; it would be impossible to tell Flint anything of what had followed their first talk at Teddington without making a clean breast of his discovery that Miles the Australian was no other than Sundown the bushranger, and this Dick would not tell a soul unless Miles broke faith with him. Least of all would he confide in Flint, for Flint would be the very first to turn round and call him madman.
Nevertheless the days seemed to chase each other pleasantly enough for one and all, actually doing so for all but one; and, as always happens in such cases, the fortnight drew far too quickly to its close.
"To-day is Thursday – the Twelfth, by-the-bye – and here we are within sight of Sunbury Lock; and on Monday, and ever afterwards, the bank; the blessed bank!"
This cheerful reminder proceeded (one day up the river) from the lips and soul of the man in the stern, who was steering. There was a sympathetic groan from the man in the bows, who was smoking. The working half of the crew received the observation, which was thrown out gratuitously to all, in business-like silence, broken only by the flash of four sculls as one, and the swish of the feather blades through the air. The groan in the bows was followed by a reflection of kindred pathos, delivered in a high key:
"We will call next Monday Black Monday; for to me it means Holyhead, Dublin, Kerry, and tenants! blessed tenants! But not for always," added Flint suddenly; "I don't say 'ever afterwards;' why should you? Why should I be a slave to my Castle and you to your City? Why shouldn't we emigrate together?"
No one in the boat could see the speaker's face; it was impossible to tell whether he was jesting or serious.
"Oh, I'm game!" cried Maurice, very much in earnest at once.
"Well, then, just hold on till I give Castle Flint the sack."
"Or until it is sacked about your ears," suggested stroke jerkily. "But what nonsense you two are talking!"
"Not at all, Miss Edmonstone – if you will allow me. You can't expect a man to live out his life in troubled Ireland when there's a happy Australia to go to: there, you know, you may combine the blessings of liberty, equality, and Home Rule of the most advanced kind, with the peculiar satisfaction of calling yourself a staunch Tory, and believing it! But as for our friend here, station life would add a year to his life for every year the City is capable of shortening it. He'd make a first-rate jackeroo."
"What is that?"
"What's a jackeroo? Oh, a young gentleman – for choice, the newest new chum to be found – who goes to a station to get Colonial experience. He has to work like a nigger, and revels in it, for a bit. If he is a black sheep, and has the antique ideas of the Colonies held by those who sent him out to whiten him, his illusions may last a couple of days; if he has read up Australia on the voyage, they will probably hold out a little longer, while he keeps looking for what his book told him he would find; the fact being that the modern bush life hasn't yet been done into English. Meanwhile he runs up the horses, rides round boundaries, mends fences, drives sheep to water – if it is a drought – and skins the dead ones, weighs out flour and sugar, cleans harness, camps anywhere, and lives on mutton and damper, and tea."
"But what does he get for all that?" asked Maurice, with visions of money-bags.
"Rations and experience," replied Flint promptly. "When he's admitted to be worth his salt he will be asked to make other arrangements. Then some still newer new chum will be selected for the post, through the introductions he has brought to the stock and station agents, and in his turn will drive his teeth into the dirty work of the station, which the ordinary pound-a-week hands refuse, and so get his Colonial experience!"
"Thanks; I'll stop where I am," said Maurice.
"He isn't fair," said Dick, speaking for the first time. "You know you aren't fair, old chap, raking up your own case as typical, when it was exceptional. Jackeroos are treated all right, and paid too, so long as they're smart and willing – the two things needful. Come, I've been a squatter myself, and can't hear my class run down."
"You won't hear me defend the landlords on that ground," remarked Flint, who had contracted eccentric politics.
"Well," said Dick, experimentally, "if I go back to it, Maurice shall be my jackeroo, and judge for himself whether you haven't painted us too black."
He shipped his oars. Flint was standing up with the boat-hook to pilot them through the open lock-gates.
"Then I'll ride the boundaries!" cried Fanny, who sat a horse like a leech, but had had no mount for years.
"In that case," added Flint quietly, "I'll apply for overseer's billet, with the right of sacking slack hands."
For a moment Dick looked really pleased: this jesting about a station in Australia was, so far, feeling the way, and might make matters a trifle easier when the time came. But the smile quickly faded from his face. In truth, on no day during these last weeks had he been so troubled in spirit, so tossed between the cross-currents of conflicting feelings.
That morning he had received two letters, apparently of contrary character: for while the perusal of one gratified him so intensely that he could not help handing it round for them all to see, the mere sight of the other was sufficient to make him thrust the unopened envelope hurriedly into his pocket.
The first letter was indeed a matter for congratulation, for it was the most completely satisfactory, though not the first, of several similar communications which Dick had received since his return from Australia. It was a short note from the editor of the "Illustrated British Monthly," accepting (for immediate use: a great point) a set of sketches entitled "Home from Australia," which set forth the humours and trials of a long sea voyage, and were, in fact, simply a finished reproduction of those sketches that had delighted the passengers on board the Hesper. But it was more than a mere formal acceptance: besides enclosing a cheque (in itself a charming feature) to meet the present case, the note contained a complimentary allusion to the quality of the "work," and a distinct hint for the future. This in a postscript – observing that as Australian subjects were somewhat in demand since the opening of the Colonial Exhibition – he (the editor) would be glad to see anything thoroughly Australian that Mr. Edmonstone might chance to have ready.
Of course the precious note was read aloud, and greeted with cries of delight. Fancy an opening with the "Illustrated British" at this stage! What could be better? And it did look like a real opening. The hero of the moment alone sat silent; the unread letter in his pocket checked his speech; it was from Yorkshire.
"Why did you ever leave us, when you can do so splendidly here at home?" Mrs. Edmonstone asked him, half in regret for the past, half in joy for the future.
Flint saw his friend's preoccupation, and answered for him.
"He didn't know it was in him till he got out there, I fancy. I remember him sending his first things to the Melbourne and Sydney papers; and before a year was out, his famous buck-jumping picture was stuck up in every shanty in New South Wales and Victoria."
"Eh?" said Dick, looking up abruptly. "Oh, they coloured it vilely! What do you say, mother? No, I say, don't jump to conclusions. How do you know I can do any real good? I've been lucky so far, but I'm only at the very, very beginning. I may fail miserably after all. And then where should I be without my little pile?"
After breakfast Dick read the letter from Yorkshire in his own room.
"At the risk of being unduly persistent," wrote Colonel Bristo, "I must ask you to reconsider your decision." (Dick had refused a short but pressing invitation the week before.) "I know something of your reasons for refusing, and I believe them to be mistaken reasons. If you have really settled to return to Australia, that is all the more reason why you should come. If you like, I will undertake not to press you to stay beyond one day; only do come to bid us good-bye. Do not, however, fear to offend me by a second refusal. I shall be grievously disappointed, but nothing more. We really want you, for we shall be short of guns; two of the men only stay till Monday, so come on that day. But apart from all this, I am very sure that your coming will make the days a little less dull and dreary for one of us. Everything else has failed."
The letter ended abruptly. Dick read it through twice, and put it back in his pocket with a full heart.
But what was he to do? Here was the good Colonel honestly trying, in his own way, to set matters right between him and Alice; but it was a childlike, if not a childish way – a way that ignored causes and refused to realise effects.
Dick trusted he was no such fool as to be affected by the hope that breathed in the Colonel's letter. The Colonel was confessedly unversed in women's ways – then why did he meddle? Surely it would have been more natural, more dignified, to send him, Dick, to the deuce, or to the Colonies – they were much the same thing in the Old Country – than to waste another thought on the man whom his own daughter (who could surely judge for herself) had chosen to jilt? Dick savagely wished that the former had been his treatment; and, rowing down from Sunbury that afternoon, he was so far decided that the phrases of his refusal were in his head. Call it rude, churlish, obstinate; he was obstinate, and was willing to own it; he had refused the Colonel once, and that refusal should be final.
Nevertheless, he was absent and distrait all day, whereas the others were in rather higher spirits than usual, and the contrast was uncomfortable. Dick therefore invented an excuse for running up to town, promising himself a quiet corner of his club, in which to write to the Colonel and pull himself together. He needed pulling together: he was yearning to see Alice again – perhaps only to ask her forgiveness and bid her good-bye – yet vowing between his teeth to see her no more; he would not be entirely himself until his refusal was penned and posted.
He walked absently to the station, forgot his change at the ticket-office, and jumped into the nearest compartment of the first train that came in. A man and a woman got into the same compartment. Dick did not see them, for he was attempting to interest himself in an evening paper; but he could not help hearing their voices as they sat opposite him in close conversation. And, hearing, Dick was startled. His pulse beat violently; his fingers tightened upon the edges of the newspaper.
"His fine friends," the man was saying, "are gone into the country somewhere. We must find out where."
The tones were Jem Pound's.
"Why?" asked the same woman's voice that Dick had heard in Bushey Park.
"Because if Ned Ryan hasn't fled the country, that's where he is!"
"But he has gone back to Australia."
"Not he! He daren't go out there again. He'd be a fool to do it if he dared. No, no. He cleared out o' this because of you and me. He cracked he was going out there again, because he knew we'd come asking after him and they'd tell us that yarn. But he's no more gone than I have. Mark me, missis, we'll find him at this here Colonel's country place! But we must find the place first."
Dick did not lower his paper until the train reached Waterloo. Long before that his mind was filled with one absorbing idea. A swift but complete reaction had taken place within him; he was charged with nervous energy and primed with impatience. Some of the impatience he worked off in a rapid walk to his club, where he answered Colonel Bristo's note in a dozen words; but one idea continued in fierce possession of his mind, to the exclusion of all others.
XVIII
ALICE SPEAKS FOR HERSELF
Monday, August 9th. – Here we are at last, at the shooting box on the Yorkshire moors; or rather in the Yorkshire dales. I mean, papa and I are here: our faithful Mrs. Parish follows to-morrow, and the "guns" are expected on Wednesday. We two have been staying at a little seaside place on the coast – quite a charming place, with not only broad sands, but very presentable cliffs, and other things worth looking at besides the sea; delightful gardens, for instance, where the inevitable band played, instead of on the everlasting pier. Of course, it was all rather tedious; but the North Sea breezes and the delicious air did one no harm, I felt, while they seemed to do papa visible good. Indeed, he declares he feels fit for anything now – meaning, of course, in the way of sport, which I only hope he won't overdo. So perhaps, after all, we did well to leave home a week earlier than we at first intended (much as I hated leaving home at all), for we have come to the moorland air with lungs full of sea-air, and papa says there couldn't be a finer mixture than that for me.
But it is difficult to think of the sea here in the dales, where we are so far from it. We are far from everything, as it seems to me. Yet I am told, and I suppose I must believe, that the great smoky town which we passed through the other day is within twenty miles of us, and we are assured that there is a very "canny" village – if not a small town – four or five miles from us. It is also true that it only took an hour and twenty minutes to drive from the railway station, but then there wasn't much of a village there. Now we expected to find one here, and papa even professed to point it out to me as we drove through; but as it was nearly dark, and I could only make out a short, huddled-up row of houses on one side of the road, I couldn't see where the village came in, and told him so. Still, it is down on the Ordnance map, Gateby by name; and, though it is too dark to see now, it can only be a few hundred yards from us.
As for this house – which, by-the-bye, is nameless – I am sure it has never been anything but a shooting box, for it has no pretence to a garden, but stands behind a hedge almost in a bare field – a plain, gaunt, two-storied, evenly-balanced stone building. In the three rooms down stairs there is very little furniture, except what we sent before us. In one of them, the smallest, a book-case with glass doors has been made into a gun-rack, and this may point to the fact that the place was not always what it is. This room we will call "the gun-room." Whether it was built for better things, I don't know; but for ages the house has been let year after year for the shooting alone.
At this moment an old man, with a pale blue eye and a bright red nose, who is apparently caretaker and general factotum of the establishment, is expatiating to papa on the birds: their probable quantity and unmistakable quality; but he has a barbarous tongue, and for my part I am too tired to listen to him any longer.
Yes, tired – and sleepy too. If writing a diary has always this effect upon me, it will more than fulfil its original mission – which was only to help me to pass the intolerable time!
Tuesday, 10th. – I was up and out quite early, long before breakfast, on a voyage of discovery. The first thing I had seen, on drawing up my blind, was red-tiled Gateby, straight in front of my window, across half-a-dozen fields. I could see a path winding through these fields, and coming out into the road just below our house; so on this pathway I settled for my first walk. I could see that it was the shortest way to Gateby. I would inspect Gateby.
It was a perfect morning, with plenty of sunshine and blue sky, and the last of a soft white mist just filling up the hollows of the meadows; so that I knew that it would be a hot day, as, in fact, it is.
When I had followed the path across the fields until I had only two left to cross (and these were a potato field and a meadow, from which a boy was driving in the cows), I stopped and perched myself on a stone gate-post, and surveyed Gateby. From there it looked like one long low irregular building, stone-built and red-tiled. Only one house, and that at the extreme left of the rest, was slated. More of Gateby I could not see from there, so I went on looking all round me. Over the village rose the hills, with bold but even outline. The hillsides are so evenly divided by the hedges into so many squares that they look as though great nets had been cast over them. The squares have all kinds of colours – greens, and yellows, and dirty browns (of ploughed fields). Following the bend of the valley, as the fields grew less in perspective, I noticed that they took a commoner tint, between pale green and dun, until the farthest range of all showed a uniform greyish-blue. I did not expect to be able to see half so far when deep down in a dale, and I thought the hills would be higher. In fact, with this particular dale of ours I am a little bit disappointed; for, instead of finding it a deep furrow in the face of Nature, as I had made up my mind it would be, it is, after all, the veriest dimple.
Well, Gateby is a quaint enough little place when you attack it fairly, from the front, as I presently did. It has about a dozen houses all told, and they are all on one side of the road, and hug each other as though space were an object of the first importance. Several of the houses are, at least, demi-semi-detached. The largest of them is the public-house; the best the schoolhouse, the front of which is simply one mass of pink roses – I never saw anything like it.
I walked back by the road. The pathway through the fields merely cuts off, I now found, the angle made by the two roads: the road in which we are, which leads over the moor, and the road in which Gateby is, which leads in one direction to the railway, six miles off, and in the other – I don't know where. These two roads join at right angles, and I believe they are the only roads in the dale.
Nearing home, I met the person with the gay-coloured nose and eyes, and he stopped to bid me good morning. I thought his complexion looked a little cooler, but then it was very early morning. He inquired, with some pride and expectancy, what I thought of the dale. I answered, rather unkindly I am afraid, that I thought it pretty, but a fraud: the hills were too low, the valleys were too shallow.
"Ah!" he observed compassionately, "waät till thoo's been ower t' mower, an' seen t' view from Melmerbridge Bank; an' waät till thoo sees Beckdaäl!"
He went on to tell me all about Melmerbridge. I almost think he offered to personally conduct me over to Melmerbridge, and to show me its church, and its beck, and the view from its bank. At any rate, before I could get away from him I had learnt that his name was Andy Garbutt, and that he had been eight and twenty years, man and boy, come next Michaelmas, in the service of the owner of our nameless shooting-box.
I found papa ready for breakfast, and delighted to find that I had been out and about so early; there was no need to tell him that it was simply because I could not sleep or rest. And of course we both duly voted the real Yorkshire bacon the very best we had ever tasted in our two lives; though, for my part, I must own I only swallowed it to please papa, whose eye was upon my plate.
In the afternoon we walked up to the moor together, and papa was charmed because we "put up" quite a number of birds. I could not stay long, however, as papa wished me to drive off to meet Mrs. Parish, and I am writing this while waiting for the trap, because, somehow, I cannot settle to reading – not even yellowbacks. A horrid nuisance, her coming! I do wish it had not been just yet. By-the-bye, papa tells me he has heard from Mr. Miles, who, after all, has not yet left England, his business having turned out different from what he expected. Then how strange that we have never heard from him all these weeks! I quite thought he would be out there by this time. However, he says he really does sail in a few days, and he only wishes he saw his way to running down to say good-bye to us – but that will be impossible. I believe papa has written to him, telling him all about the place, and the prospects, and who are coming. I am not sorry that he is not coming, I think. This reminds me that papa says that Dick Edmonstone has written saying that he cannot possibly come. I am not at all sorry to hear that. I think he shows his sense.
Thursday, 12th. – Everybody came yesterday; and now they are all on the moor, and we two women are to go and have lunch with them at one. There are five guns, and we hear them distinctly from time to time. Besides papa, there are Cousin Philip (who likes to be called Doctor Robson now), and Laurence Pinckney, and Captain Awdry, and Mr. Oliver.
Cousin Philip has been a long voyage to New Zealand and back, as ship's surgeon, since we last saw him. It ought to have improved him, and perhaps it has; but to me he seems as dull and ponderous and undecided as ever. He tells me that he interested himself at sea by getting up prayer-meetings in the steerage, which, he says, had far more heart in them than the captain's perfunctory services on the quarter-deck; but it seems that his zeal got him disliked – most unrighteously – by the other officers. He is certainly a good young man. Captain Awdry I have met once or twice before; he is a great beauty, a great sportsman, and that's all; but Mr. Oliver is new to me. I fancy he is local – an ironmaster or something. He is old, and tall, and well set-up; very deferential to me, if you please, and tremendously keen about the grouse. As for Laurence Pinckney – one has to call him Mr. Pinckney now – he is nothing short of a revelation.
When I knew him before, he used to go to some public school – I forget which, but it can't be many years ago. And now he is a "writing man," fresh from Fleet-street, with all the jargon at his tongue's end – and, in short, quite the most amusing boy. In appearance he is just what he ought not to be. I have always pictured to myself the literary man – especially the literary young man – with long hair and eye-glasses, and the rest bizarre. Therefore Laurence Pinckney disappoints me; he is spruce, brisk, and sharp-eyed, short, dark, and unguarded.
He sat next me at dinner, and talked nothing but his "shop" – which, however, is a kind of "shop" that rather interests one; besides, the egotism of a raw recruit in the noble army of authors is really diverting. He talks fluently about all the new books, criticising most of them severely, and I should say that he has read and remembered at least two or three reviews of each. He has told me the different magazines he writes for, so that I shall know where to seek his name – if I don't forget. He "thinks nothing of bearding literary lions in their editorial dens;" and this, I shouldn't wonder, has something to do with that drawer full of rejected MSS. of which he has already been frank enough to whisper – in fact, he has quite taken me into his literary confidence. But indeed he is rather amusing.
Friday, 13th. – Mrs. Parish is really very agreeable, and easier to get on with than for a long while past. She tells me, among other things, that she saw more of Mr. Miles's beggars after we left home – caught them talking to the servants, and packed them off about their business. Poor things! From her account, I rather fancy they were the same I saw. She went with me to luncheon on the moor yesterday. It was really not bad fun. They were all in good spirits, because, on the whole, they had made a good start. Captain Awdry had done the most execution, and took it the most sadly. But old Mr. Oliver had drawn first blood, and, unlike the blasé Captain, was not above showing his delight. Papa and Cousin Philip were modest about their share: it was impossible to find out exactly what they had done. Poor Laurence Pinckney, however, had hit nothing at all; and, indeed, his shooting must be execrable, to judge by what one hears. I heard Mr. Oliver muttering that he would not get within range of him, not if he knew it; while Captain Awdry's contempt lies too deep for smiles or sneers. But Mr. Pinckney does not care; he carries a notebook with him, which he whips out whenever the view strikes him as worth remembering, or whenever something happy occurs to him. He says it is extraordinary what happy thoughts do come to a man who carries a gun. I tell him that to-morrow he must think of nothing but his next shot. He answers that to-morrow he must not shoot, as Saturday is always a busy day with him, wherever he is: – on it he writes for his weekly paper. He calls it "his," as though the paper belonged to him, and I tell him so. He explains that he is "on the staff – practically." He keeps to himself the name of the paper and the nature of his contributions: it is best to make no inquiries, I think.
