My Brilliant Career Part 39

I bathed, dressed, arranged my hair, got something ready for tea, and prepared a room for our visitor. For this I collected from all parts of the house--a mat from one room, a toilet-set from another, and so on--till I had quite an elaborately furnished chamber ready for my one-time lover.

They returned at dusk, Rory again seated on Harold's shoulder, and two of the little boys clinging around him.

As I conducted him to his room I was in a different humour from that of the sweep-like object who had met him during the afternoon. I laughed to myself, for, as on a former occasion during our acquaintance, I felt I was master of the situation.

"I say, Syb, don't treat a fellow as though he was altogether a stranger," he said diffidently, leaning against the door-post.

Our hands met in a cordial grasp as I said, "I'm awfully glad to see you, Hal; but, but----"

"But what?"

"I didn't feel over delighted to be caught in such a stew this afternoon."

"Nonsense! It only reminded me of the first time we met," he said with a twinkle in his eye. "That's always the way with you girls. You can't be civil to a man unless you're dressed up fit to stun him, as though you couldn't make fool enough of him without the aid of clothes at all."

"You'd better shut up," I said over my shoulder as I departed, "or you will be saying something better left unsaid, like at our first meeting.

Do you remember?"

"Do I not? Great Scot, it's just like old times to have you giving me impudence over your shoulder like that!" he replied merrily.

"Like, yet unlike," I retorted with a sigh.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Once Upon a Time, when the days were long and hot

Next day was Sunday--a blazing one it was too. I proposed that in the afternoon some of us should go to church. Father sat upon the idea as a mad one. Walk two miles in such heat for nothing! as walk we would be compelled to do, horseflesh being too precious in such a drought to fritter it away in idle jaunts. Surprising to say, however, Harold, who never walked anywhere when he could get any sort of a horse, uttered a wish to go. Accordingly, when the midday dinner was over, he, Stanley, and I set out. Going to church was quite the event of the week to the residents around Possum Gully. It was a small Dissenting chapel, where a layman ungrammatically held forth at 3 p.m. every Sunday; but the congregation was composed of all denominations, who attended more for the sitting about on logs outside, and yarning about the price of b.u.t.ter, the continuance of the drought, and the latest gossip, before and after the service, than for the service itself.

I knew the appearance of Harold Beecham, would make quite a miniature sensation, and form food for no end of conjecture and chatter. In any company he was a distinguished-looking man, and particularly so among these hard-worked farmer-selectors, on whose careworn features the cruel effects of the drought were leaving additional lines of worry. I felt proud of my quondam sweetheart. There was an unconscious air of physical lordliness about him, and he looked such a swell--not the black-clothed, clean-shaved, great display of white collar-and-cuffs swell appertaining to the office and city street, but of the easy sunburnt squatter type of swelldom, redolent of the sun, the saddle, the wide open country--a man who is a man, utterly free from the least suspicion of effeminacy, and capable of earning his bread by the sweat of his brow--with an arm ready and willing to save in an accident.

All eyes were turned on us as we approached, and I knew that the attentions he paid me out of simple courtesy--tying my shoe, carrying my book, holding my parasol--would be put down as those of a lover.

I introduced him to a group of men who were sitting on a log, under the shade of a stringybark, and leaving him to converse with them, made my way to where the women sat beneath a gum-tree. The children made a third group at some distance. We always divided ourselves thus. A young fellow had to be very far gone ere he was willing to run the gauntlet of all the chaff levelled at him had he the courage to single out a girl and talk to her.

I greeted all the girls and women, beginning at the great-grandmother of the community, who ill.u.s.trated to perfection the grim sarcasm of the fifth commandment. She had worked hard from morning till night, until too old to do so longer, and now hung around with aching weariness waiting for the grave. She generally poured into my ears a wail about her "rheumatisms", and "How long it do be waiting for the Lord"; but today she was too curious about Harold to think of herself.

"Sure, Sybyller, who's that? Is he yer sweetheart? Sure he's as fine a man as iver I clapped me eyes on."

I proceeded to give his pedigree, but was interrupted by the arrival of the preacher, and we all went into the weatherboard iron-roofed house of prayer.

After service, one of the girls came up to me and whispered, "that is your sweetheart, isn't it, Sybyller? He was looking at you all the time in church."

"Oh dear, no! I'll introduce him to you."

I did so, and watched him as they made remarks about the heat and drought. There was nothing of the cad or sn.o.b about him, and his short season of adversity had rubbed all the little crudities off his character, leaving him a man that the majority of both s.e.xes would admire: women for his bigness, his gentleness, his fine brown moustache--and for his wealth; men, because he was a manly fellow.

I know he had walked to church on purpose to get a chance of speaking to me about Gertie, before approaching her parents on the matter; but Stanley accompanied us, and, boy-like, never relaxed in vigilance for an instant, so there was no opportunity for anything but matter-of-fact remarks. The heat was intense. We wiped the perspiration and flies from our face frequently, and disturbed millions of gra.s.shoppers as we walked. They had devoured all the fruit in the orchards about, and had even destroyed many of the trees by eating the bark, and now they were stripping the briers of foliage. In one orchard we pa.s.sed, the apricot, plum, and peach-stones hung naked on their leafless trees as evidence of their ravages. It was too hot to indulge in any but the most desultory conversation. We dawdled along. A tiger-snake crossed our path. Harold procured a stick and killed it, and Stanley hung it on the top wire of a fence which was near at hand. After this we discussed snakes for a few yards.

A blue sea-breeze, redolent of the bush-fires which were raging at Toc.u.mwal and Bombala, came rushing and roaring over the ranges from the cast, and enshrouded the scene in its heavy fog-like folds. The sun was obscured, and the temperature suddenly took such a great drop that I felt chilled in my flimsy clothing, and I noticed Harold draw his coat together.

Stanley had to go after the cows, which were little better than walking hides, yet were yarded morning and evening to yield a dribble of milk.

He left us among some sallie-trees, in a secluded nook, walled in by briers, and went across the paddock to roundup the cows. Harold and I came to a halt by tacit consent.

"Syb, I want to speak to you," he said earnestly, and then came to a dead stop.

"Very well; 'tear into it,' as Horace would say; but if it is anything frightful, break it gently," I said flippantly.

"Surely, Syb, you can guess what it is I have to say."

Yes, I could guess, I knew what he was going to say, and the knowledge left a dull bitterness at my heart. I knew he was going to tell me that I had been right and he wrong--that he had found some one he loved better than me, and that some one being my sister, he felt I needed some explanation before he could go in and win; and though I had refused him for want of love, yet it gave me pain when the moment arrived that the only man who had ever pretended to love me was going to say he had been mistaken, and preferred my sister.

There was silence save for the whirr of the countless gra.s.shoppers in the brier bushes. I knew he was expecting me to help him out, but I felt doggedly savage and wouldn't. I looked up at him. He was a tall grand man, and honest and true and rich. He loved my sister; she would marry him, and they would be happy. I thought bitterly that G.o.d was good to one and cruel to another--not that I wanted this man, but why was I so different from other girls?

But then I thought of Gertie, so pretty, so girlish, so understandable, so full of innocent winning coquetry. I softened. Could any one help preferring her to me, who was strange, weird, and perverse--too outspoken to be engaging, devoid of beauty and endearing little ways? It was my own misfortune and n.o.body's fault that my singular individuality excluded me from the ordinary run of youthful joyous-heartednesses, and why should I be nasty to these young people?

I was no heroine, only a common little bush-girl, so had to make the best of the situation without any fooling. I raised my eyes from the scanty baked wisps of gra.s.s at my feet, placed my hand on Hal's arm, and tiptoeing so as to bring my five-foot stature more on a level with his, said:

"Yes, Hal, I know what you want to say. Say it all. I won't be nasty."

"Well, you see you are so jolly touchy, and have snubbed me so often, that I don't know how to begin; and if you know what I'm going to say, won't you give me an answer without hearing it?"

"Yes, Hal; but you'd better say it, as I don't know what conditions--"

"Conditions!"--catching me up eagerly at the word. "If it is only conditions that are stopping you, you can make your own conditions if you will marry me."

"Marry you, Harold! What do you mean? Do you know what you are saying?"

I exclaimed.

"There!" he replied: "I knew you would take it as an insult. I believe you are the proudest girl in the world. I know you are too clever for me; but I love you, and could give you everything you fancied."

"Hal, dear, let me explain. I'm not insulted, only surprised. I thought you were going to tell me that you loved Gertie, and would ask me not to make things unpleasant by telling her of the foolish little bit of flirtation there had been between us."

"Marry Gertie! Why, she's only a child! A mere baby, in fact. Marry Gertie! I never thought of her in that light; and did you think I was that sort of a fellow, Syb?" he asked reproachfully.

"No, Hal," I promptly made answer. "I did not think you were that sort of fellow; but I thought that was the only sort of fellow there was."

"Good heavens, Syb! Did you really mean those queer little letters you wrote me last February? I never for an instant looked upon them as anything but a little bit of playful contrariness. And have you forgotten me? Did you not mean your promise of two years ago, that you speak of what pa.s.sed between us as a paltry bit of flirtation? Is that all you thought it?"

"No, I did not consider it flirtation; but that is what I thought you would term it when announcing your affection for Gertie."

"Gertie! Pretty little Gertie! I never looked upon the child as anything but your sister, consequently mine also. She's a child."

"Child! She is eighteen. More than a year older than I was when you first introduced the subject of matrimony to me, and she is very beautiful, and twenty times as good and lovable as I could ever be even in my best moments."

"Yes, I know you are young in years, but there is nothing of the child in you. As for beauty, it is nothing. If beauty was all a man required, he could, if rich, have a harem full of it any day. I want some one to be true."