The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn by Henry Kingsley (page 8)

What tales he would have for his father to-night. He would bring him here, and show him all the wonders, and perhaps he would build a new hut over here, and come and live in it? Perhaps the pretty young lady, with the feathers in her hat, lived somewhere here, too?

There! There is one of those children he had seen before across the river. Ah! ah! it was not a child at all, but a pretty grey beast, with big ears. A kangaroo, my lad; he won’t play with you, but skips away slowly, and leaves you alone.

There is something like the gleam of water on that rock. A snake! Now a sounding rush through the wood, and a passing shadow. An eagle! He brushes so close to the child; that he strikes at the bird with a stick, and then watches him as he shoots up like a rocket, and, measuring the fields of air in ever-widening circles, hangs like a motionless speck upon the sky; though, measure his wings across, and you will find he is nearer fifteen feet than fourteen.

Here is a prize, though! A wee little native bear, barely eight inches long,–a little grey beast, comical beyond expression, with broad flapped ears, sits on a tree within reach. He makes no resistance, but cuddles into the child’s bosom, and eats a leaf as they go along; while his mother sits aloft, and grunts indignant at the abstraction of her offspring, but, on the whole, takes it pretty comfortably, and goes on with her dinner of peppermint leaves.

What a short day it has been! Here is the sun getting low, and the magpies and jackasses beginning to tune up before roosting.

He would turn and go back to the river. Alas! which way?

He was lost in the bush. He turned back and went, as he thought, the way he had come, but soon arrived at a tall, precipitous cliff, which, by some infernal magic, seemed to have got between him and the river. Then he broke down, and that strange madness came on him which comes even on strong men when lost in the forest: a despair, a confusion of intellect, which cost many a bold man his life. Think what it must be with a child.

He was fully persuaded that the cliff was between him and home, and that he must climb it. Alas! every step he took aloft carried him further from the river and the hope of safety; and when he came to the top, just at dark, he saw nothing but cliff after cliff, range after range, all around him. He had been wandering through steep gullies all day unconsciously, and had penetrated far into the mountains. Night was coming down, still and crystal-clear, and the poor little lad was far away from help or hope, going his last long journey alone.

Partly perhaps walking, and partly sitting down and weeping, he got through the night; and when the solemn morning came up again he was still tottering along the leading range, bewildered; crying, from time to time, “Mother, mother!” still nursing his little bear, his only companion, to his bosom, and holding still in his hand a few poor flowers he had gathered the day before. Up and on all day, and at evening, passing out of the great zone of timber, he came on the bald, thunder-smitten summit ridge, where one ruined tree held up its skeleton arms against the sunset, and the wind came keen and frosty. So, with failing, feeble legs, upward still, towards the region of the granite and the snow; towards the eyrie of the kite and the eagle.

* * * * *

Brisk as they all were at Garoopna, none were so brisk as Cecil and Sam. Charles Hawker wanted to come with them, but Sam asked him to go with Jim; and, long before the others were ready, our two had strapped their blankets to their saddles, and, followed by Sam’s dog Rover, now getting a little grey about the nose, cantered off up the river.

Neither spoke at first. They knew what a solemn task they had before them; and, while acting as though everything depended on speed, guessed well that their search was only for a little corpse, which, if they had luck, they would find stiff and cold under some tree or crag.

Cecil began: “Sam, depend on it that child has crossed the river to this side. If he had been on the plains he would have been seen from a distance in a few hours.”

“I quite agree,” said Sam. “Let us go down this side till we are opposite the hut, and search for marks by the river side.”

So they agreed; and in half an hour were opposite the hut, and, riding across to it to ask a few questions, found the poor mother sitting on the door-step, with her apron over her head, rocking herself to and fro.

“We have come to help you, mistress,” said Sam. “How do you think he is gone?”

She said, with frequent bursts of grief, that “some days before he had mentioned having seen white children across the water, who beckoned him to cross and play; that she, knowing well that they were fairies, or perhaps worse, had warned him solemnly not to mind them; but that she had very little doubt that they had helped him over and carried him away to the forest; and that her husband would not believe in his having crossed the river.”

“Why, it is not knee-deep across the shallow,” said Cecil.

“Let us cross again,” said Sam: “he MAY be drowned, but I don’t think it.”

In a quarter of an hour from starting they found, slightly up the stream, one of the child’s socks, which in his hurry to dress he had forgotten. Here brave Rover took up the trail like a bloodhound, and before evening stopped at the foot of a lofty cliff.

“Can he have gone up here?” said Sam, as they were brought up by the rock.

“Most likely,” said Cecil. “Lost children always climb from height to height. I have heard it often remarked by old bush hands. Why they do so, God, who leads them, only knows; but the fact is beyond denial. Ask Rover what he thinks?”

The brave old dog was half-way up, looking back for them. It took them nearly till dark to get their horses up; and, as there was no moon, and the way was getting perilous, they determined to camp, and start again in the morning.

They spread their blankets and lay down side by side. Sam had thought, from Cecil’s proposing to come with him in preference to the others, that he would speak of a subject nearly concerning them both; but Cecil went off to sleep and made no sign; and Sam, ere he dozed, said to himself, “By Jove, if he don’t speak this journey, I will. It is unbearable that we should not come to some understanding. Poor Cecil!”

At early dawn they caught up their horses, which had been hobbled with the stirrup leathers, and started afresh. Both were more silent than ever, and the dog, with his nose to the ground, led them slowly along the rocky rib of the mountain, ever going higher and higher.

“It is inconceivable,” said Sam, “that the poor child can have come up here. There is Tuckerimbid close to our right, five thousand feet above the river. Don’t you think we must be mistaken?”

“The dog disagrees with you,” said Cecil. “He has something before him not very far off. Watch him.”

The trees had become dwarfed and scattered; they were getting out of the region of trees; the real forest zone was now below them, and they saw they were emerging towards a bald elevated down, and that a few hundred yards before them was a dead tree, on the highest branch of which sat an eagle.

“The dog has stopped,” said Cecil, “the end is near.”

“See,” said Sam, “there is a handkerchief under the tree.”

“That is the boy himself,” said Cecil.

They were up to him and off in a moment. There he lay, dead and stiff, one hand still grasping the flowers he had gathered on his last happy play-day, and the other laid as a pillow, between the soft cold cheek and the rough cold stone. His midsummer holiday was over, his long journey was ended. He had found out at last what lay beyond the shining river he had watched so long.

Both the young men knelt beside him for a moment in silence. They had found only what they had expected to find, and yet, now that they had found it, they were far more touched and softened than they could have thought possible. They stayed in silence a few moments, and then Cecil, lifting up his head, said suddenly,–

“Sam Buckley! there can be no debate between us two, with this lying here between us. Let us speak now.”

“There has never been any debate, Cecil,” said he, “and there never would be, though this little corpse was buried fathoms deep. It takes two to make a quarrel, Cecil, and I will not be one.”

“Sam,” said Cecil, “I love Alice Brentwood better than all the world besides.”

“I know it.”

“And you love her too, as well, were it possible, as I do.”

“I know that too.”

“Why,” resumed Cecil hurriedly, “has this come to pass? Why has it been my unlucky destiny, that the man I love and honour above all others should become my rival? Are there no other women in the world? Tell me, Sam, why is it forced on me to choose between my best friend and the woman I love dearer than life? Why has this terrible emergency come between us?”

“I will tell you why,” said Sam, speaking very quietly, as though fearing to awaken the dead: “to teach us to behave like men of honour and gentlemen, though our hearts break. That is why, Cecil.”

“What shall we do?” said Cecil.

“Easily answered,” said Sam. “Let her decide for herself. It may be, mind you, that she will have neither of us. There has been one living in the house with her lately, far superior in every point to you or I. How if she thought fit to prefer him?”

“Halbert!”

“Yes, Halbert! What more likely? Let you and I find out the truth, Cecil, like men, and abide by it. Let each one ask her in his turn what chance he has.”

“Who first?”

“See here,” said Sam; “draw one of these pieces of grass out of my hand. If you draw the longest piece ask her at once. Will you abide by this?”

He said “yes,” and drew–the longest piece.

“That is well,” said Sam. “And now no more of this at present. I will sling this poor little fellow in my blanket and carry him home to his mother. See, Cecil, what is Rover at?”

Rover was on his hind legs against the tree, smelling at something. When they came to look, there was a wee little grey bear perched in the hollow of the tree.

“What a very strange place for a young bear!” said Cecil.

“Depend on it,” said Sam, “that the child had caught it from its dam, and brought it up here. Take it home with you, Cecil, and give it to Alice.”

Cecil took the little thing home, and in time it grew to be between three and four feet high, a grandfather of bears. The magpie protested against his introduction to the establishment, and used to pluck billfulls of hair from his stomach under pretence of lining a nest, which was never made. But in spite of this, the good gentle beast lived nigh as long as the magpie–long enough to be caressed by the waxen fingers of little children, who would afterwards gather round their father, and hear how the bear had been carried to the mountains in the bosom of the little boy who lost his way on the granite ranges, and went to heaven, in the year that the bushrangers came down.

Sam carried the little corpse back in his blanket, and that evening helped the father to bury it by the river side. Under some fern trees they buried him, on a knoll which looked across the river, into the treacherous beautiful forest which had lured him to his destruction.

Alice was very sad for a day or two, and thought and talked much about this sad accident, but soon she recovered her spirits again. And it fell out, that a bare week after this, the party being all out in one direction or another, that Cecil saw Alice alone in the garden, tending her flowers, and knew that the time was come for him to keep his bargain with Sam and speak to her. He felt like a man who was being led to execution; but screwed his courage to the highest point, and went down to where she was tying up a rose-tree.

“Miss Brentwood,” he said, “I am come to petition for a flower.”

“You shall have a dozen, if you will,” she answered. “Help yourself; will you have a peony or a sunflower? If you have not made up your mind, let me recommend a good large yellow sunflower.”

Here was a pretty beginning!

“Miss Brentwood, don’t laugh at me, but listen to me a moment. I love you above all earthly things besides. I worship the ground you walk on. I loved you from the first moment I saw you. I shall love you as well, ay, better, if that could be, on the day my heart is still, and my hand is cold for ever: can you tell me to hope? Don’t drive me, by one hasty half-considered word, to despair and misery for the rest of my life. Say only one syllable of encouragement, and I will bide your time for years and years.”

Alice was shocked and stunned. She saw he was in earnest, by his looks, and by his hurried, confused way of speaking. She feared she might have been to blame, and have encouraged him in her thoughtlessness, more than she ought. “I will make him angry with me,” she said to herself. “I will treat him to ridicule. It is the only chance, poor fellow!”

“Mr. Mayford,” she said, “if I thought you were in jest, I should feel it necessary to tell my father and brother that you had been impertinent. I can only believe that you are in earnest, and I deeply regret that your personal vanity should have urged you to take such an unwarrantable liberty with a girl you have not yet known for ten days.”

He turned and left her without a word, and she remained standing where she was, half inclined to cry, and wondering if she had acted right on the spur of the moment–sometimes half inclined to believe that she had been unladylike and rude. When a thing of this kind takes place, both parties generally put themselves in immediate correspondence with a confidant. Miss Smith totters into the apartments of her dearest friend, and falls weeping on the sofa, while Jones rushes madly into Brown’s rooms in the Temple, and, shying his best hat into the coalscuttle, announces that there is nothing now left for him but to drown the past in debauchery. Whereupon Brown, if he is a good fellow, as all the Browns are, produces the whisky and hears all about it.

So in the present instance two people were informed of what had taken place before they went to bed that night; and those two were Jim and Doctor Mulhaus. Alice had stood where Cecil had left her, thinking, could she confide it to Mrs. Buckley, and ask for advice. But Mrs. Buckley had been a little cross to her that week for some reason, and so she was afraid; and, not knowing anybody else well enough, began to cry.

There was a noise of horses’ feet just beyond the fence, and a voice calling to her to come. It was Jim, and, drying her eyes, she went out, and he, dismounting, put his arm round her waist and kissed her.

“Why, my beauty,” he said, “who has been making you cry?”

She put her head on his shoulder and began sobbing louder than ever. “Cecil Mayford,” she said in a whisper.

“Well, and what the d—-l has he been at?” said Jim, in a rather startling tone.

“Wants to marry me,” she answered, in a whisper, and hid her face in his coat.

“The deuce doubt he does,” said Jim; “who does not? What did you tell him?”

“I told him that I wondered at his audacity.”

“Sent him off with a flea in his ear, in fact,” said Jim. “Well, quite right. I suppose you would do the same for any man?”

“Certainly I should,” she said, looking up.

“If Doctor Mulhaus, now,–eh?”

“I’d box his ears, Jim,” she said, laughing; “I would, indeed.”

“Or Sam Buckley; would you box his ears, if he were to–you know?”

“Yes,” she said. But there spread over her face a sudden crimson blush, like the rosy arch which heralds the tropical sun, which made Jim laugh aloud.

“If you dared to say a word, Jim,” she said, “I would never, never–“

Poor Cecil had taken his horse and had meant to ride home, but came back again at night, “just,” he thought, “to have one more look at her before he entered on some line of life which would take him far away from Garoopna and its temptations.”

The Doctor (who has been rather thrust aside lately in the midst of all this love-making and so on) saw that something had gone very wrong with Cecil, who was a great friend of his, and, as he could never bear to see a man in distress without helping him, he encouraged Cecil to stroll down the garden with him, and then kindly and gently asked him what was wrong.

Cecil told him all, from beginning to end, and added that life was over for him, as far as all pleasure and excitement went; and, in short, said what we have all said, and had said to us in our time, after a great disappointment in love; which the Doctor took for exactly what it was worth, although poor little Cecil’s distress was very keen; and, remembering some old bygone day when he had suffered so himself, he cast about to find some comfort for him.

“You will get over this, my boy,” said he, “if you would only believe it.”

“Never, never!” said Cecil.

“Let me tell you a story, as we walk up and down. If it does not comfort you, it will amuse you. How sweet the orange bloom smells! Listen:–Had not the war broke out so suddenly, I should have been married, two months to a day, before the battle of Saarbruck. Catherine was a distant cousin, beautiful and talented, about ten years my junior. Before Heaven, sir, on the word of a gentleman, I never persecuted her with my addresses, and if either of them ay I did, tell them from me, sir, that they lie, and I will prove it on their bodies. Bah! I was forgetting. I, as head of the family, was her guardian, and, although my younger brother was nearer her age, I courted her, in all honour and humility proposed to her, and was accepted with even more willingness than most women condescend to show on such occasions, and received the hearty congratulations of my brother. Few women were ever loved better than I loved Catherine. Conceive, Cecil, that I loved her as well as you love Miss Brentwood, and listen to what follows.

“The war-cloud burst so suddenly that, leaving my bride that was to be, to the care of my brother, and putting him in charge over my property, I hurried off to join the Landsturm, two regiments of which I had put into a state of efficiency by my sole exertions.

“You know partly what followed,–in one day an army of 150,000 men destroyed, the King in flight to Konigsberg, and Prussia a province of France.

“I fled, wounded badly, desperate and penniless, from that field. I learnt from the peasants, that what I had thought to be merely a serious defeat was an irretrievable disaster; and, in spite of wounds, hunger, and want of clothes, I held on my way towards home.

“The enemy were in possession of the country, so I had to travel by night alone, and beg from such poor cottages as I dared to approach. Sometimes got a night’s rest, but generally lay abroad in the fields. But at length, after every sort of danger and hardship, I stood above the broad, sweeping Maine, and saw the towers of my own beloved castle across the river, perched as of old above the vineyards, looking protectingly down upon the little town which was clustered on the river-bank below, and which owned me for its master.

“I crossed at dusk. I had to act with great caution, for I did not know whether the French were there or no. I did not make myself known to the peasant who ferried me over, further than as one from the war, which my appearance was sufficient to prove. I landed just below a long high wall which separated the town from the river, and, ere I had time to decide what I should do first, a figure coming out of an archway caught me by the hand, and I recognised my own major domo, my foster-brother.

“‘I knew you would come back to me,’ he said, ‘if it was only as a pale ghost; though I never believed you dead, and have watched here for you night and day to stop you.’

“‘Are the French in my castle, then?’

“‘There are worse than the French there,’ he said; ‘worse than the devil Bonaparte himself. Treason, treachery, adultery!’

“‘Who has proved false?’ I cried.

“‘Your brother! False to his king, to his word, to yourself. He was in correspondence with the French for six months past, and, now that he believes you dead, he is living in sin with her who was to have been your wife.’

“I did not cry out or faint, or anything of that sort. I only said, ‘I am going to the castle, Fritz,’ and he came with me. My brother had turned him out of the house when he usurped my property, but by a still faithful domestic we were admitted, and I, knowing every secret passage in my house, came shoeless from behind some arras, and stood before them as they sat at supper. I was a ghastly sight. I had not shaved for a fortnight, and my uniform hung in tatters from my body; round my head was the same bloody white handkerchief with which I had bound up my head at Jena. I was deadly pale from hunger, too; and from my entering so silently they believed they had seen a ghost. My brother rose, and stood pale and horrified, and Catherine fell fainting on the floor. This was all my revenge, and ere my brother could speak, I was gone– away to England, where I had money in the funds, accompanied by my faithful Max, whom Mary Hawker’s father buried in Drumston churchyard.

“So in one day I lost a brother, a mistress, a castle, a king, and a fatherland. I was a ruined, desperate man. And yet I lived to see old Blucher with his dirty boots on the silken sofas at the Tuileries, and to become as stout and merry a middle-aged man as any Prussian subject in her young Majesty’s dominions.”

Chapter XXXI

HOW TOM TROUBRIDGE KEPT WATCH FOR THE FIRST TIME.

Human affairs are subject to such an infinite variety of changes and complications, that any attempt to lay down particular rules for individual action, under peculiar circumstances, must prove a failure. Hence I consider proverbs, generally speaking, to be a failure, only used by weak-minded men, who have no opinion of their own. Thus, if you have a chance of selling your station at fifteen shillings, and buying in, close to a new gold-field on the same terms, where fat sheep are going to the butcher at from eighteen shillings to a pound, butter, eggs, and garden produce at famine prices, some dolt unsettles you, and renders you uncertain and miserable by saying that “rolling stone gathers no moss;” as if you wanted moss! Again, having worked harder than the Colonial Secretary all the week, and wishing to lie in bed till eleven o’clock on Sunday, a man comes into your room at half-past seven, on a hot morning, when your only chance is to sleep out an hour or so of the heat, and informs you that the “early bird gets the worms.” I had a partner, who bought in after Jim Stockbridge was killed, who was always flying this early bird, when he couldn’t sleep for musquitoes. I have got rid of him now; but for the two years he was with me, the dearest wish of my heart was that my tame magpie Joshua could have had a quiet two minutes with that early bird before any one was up to separate them. I rather fancy he would have been spoken of as “the late early bird” after that. In short, I consider proverbs as the refuge of weak minds.

The infinite sagacity of the above remarks cannot be questioned; their application may. I will proceed to give it. I have written down the above tirade nearly, as far as I can guess, a printed pageful (may be a little more, looking at it again), in order to call down the wrath of all wise men, if any such have done me the honour of getting so far in these volumes, on the most trashy and false proverb of the whole: “Coming events cast their shadows before.”

Now, they don’t, you know. They never did, and never will. I myself used to be a strong believer in pre-(what’s the word?–prevarications, predestinations)–no–presentiments; until I found by experience that, although I was always having presentiments, nothing ever came of them. Sometimes somebody would walk over my grave, and give me a creeping in the back, which, as far as I can find out, proceeded from not having my braces properly buttoned behind. Sometimes I have heard the death-watch, produced by a small spider (may the deuce confound him!), not to mention many other presentiments and depressions of spirit, which I am now firmly persuaded proceed from indigestion. I am far from denying the possibility of a coincidence in point of time between a fit of indigestion and a domestic misfortune. I am far from denying the possibility of more remarkable coincidences than that. I have read in books, novels by the very best French authors, how a man, not heard of for twenty years, having, in point of fact, been absent during that time in the interior of Africa, may appear at Paris at a given moment, only in time to save a young lady from dishonour, and rescue a property of ten million francs. But these great writers of fiction don’t give us any warning whatever. The door is thrown heavily open, and he stalks up to the table where the will is lying, quite unexpectedly; stalks up always, or else strides. (How would it be, my dear Monsieur Dumas, if, in your next novel, he were to walk in, or run in, or hop in, or, say, come in on all-fours like a dog?–anything for a change, you know.) And these masters of fiction are right–“Coming events do not cast their shadows before.”

If they did, how could it happen that Mary Hawker sat there in her verandah at Toonarbin singing so pleasantly over her work? And why did her handsome, kindly face light up with such a radiant smile when she saw her son Charles come riding along under the shadow of the great trees only two days after Cecil Mayford had proposed to Alice, and had been refused?

He came out of the forest shadow with the westering sunlight upon his face, riding slowly. She, as she looked, was proud to see what a fine seat he had on his horse, and how healthy and handsome he looked.

He rode round to the back of the house, and she went through to meet him. There was a square court behind, round which the house, huts, and store formed a quadrangle, neat and bright, with white quartz gravel. Bythe-bye, there was a prospecting party who sank two or three shafts in the flat before the house last year; and I saw about eighteen pennyweights of gold which they took out. But it did not pay, and is abandoned. (This in passing, A PROPOS of the quartz.)

“Is Tom Troubridge come home, mother?” said he, as he leaned out of the saddle to kiss her.

“Not yet, my boy,” she said. “I am all alone. I should have had a dull week, but I knew you were enjoying yourself with your old friend at Garoopna. A great party there, I believe?”

“I am glad to get home, mother,” he said. “We were very jolly at first, but latterly Sam Buckley and Cecil Mayford have been looking at one another like cat and dog. Stay, though; let me be just; the fierce looks were all on Cecil Mayford’s side.”

“What was the matter?”

“Alice Brentwood was the matter, I rather suspect,” he said, getting off his horse. “Hold him for me, mother, while I take the saddle off.”

She did as requested. “And so they two are at loggerheads, eh, about Miss Brentwood? Of course. And what sort of a girl is she?”

“Oh, very pretty; deuced pretty, in fact. But there is one there takes my fancy better.”

“Who is she?”

“Ellen Mayford; the sweetest little mouse—-Dash it all; look at this horse’s back. That comes of that infernal flash military groom of Jim’s putting on the saddle without rubbing his back down. Where is the bluestone?”

She went in and got it for him as naturally as if it was her place to obey, and his to command. She always waited on him, as a matter of course, save when Tom Troubridge was with them, who was apt to rap out something awkward about Charles being a lazy young hound, and about his waiting on himself, whenever he saw Mary yielding to that sort of thing.

“I wonder when Tom will be back?” resumed Charles.

“I have been expecting him this last week; he may come any night. I hope he will not meet any of those horrid bushrangers.”

“Hope not either,” said Charles; “they would have to go a hundred or two of miles out of their way to make it likely. Driving rams is slow work; they may not be here for a week.”

“A nice price he has paid!”

“It will pay in the end, in the quality of the wool,” said Charles.

They sat in silence. A little after, Charles had turned his horse out, when at once, without preparation, he said to her,–

“Mother, how long is it since my father died?”

She was very much startled. He had scarcely ever alluded to his father before; but she made shift to answer him quietly.

“How old are you?”

“Eighteen!” he said.

“Then he has been dead eighteen years. He died just as you were born. Never mention him, lad. He was a bad man, and by God’s mercy you are delivered from him.”

She rose and went into the house quite cheerfully. Why should she not? Why should not a handsome, still young, wealthy widow be cheerful? For she was a widow. For years after settling at Toonarbin, she had contrived, once in two or three years, to hear some news of her husband. After about ten years, she heard that he had been reconvicted, and sentenced to the chain-gang for life; and lastly, that he was dead. About his being sentenced for life, there was no doubt, for she had a piece of newspaper which told of his crime,–and a frightful piece of villany it was,–and after that, the report of his death was so probable that no one for an instant doubted its truth. Men did not live long in the chain-gang, in Van Diemen’s Land, in those days, brother. Men would knock out one another’s brains in order to get hung, and escape it. Men would cry aloud to the judge to hang them out of the way! It was the most terrible punishment known, for it was hopeless. Penal servitude for life, as it is now, gives the very faintest idea of what it used to be in old times. With a little trouble I could tell you the weight of iron carried by each man. I cannot exactly remember, but it would strike you as being incredible. They were chained two and two together (a horrible association), to lessen the chances of escape; there was no chance of mitigation for good conduct; there was hard mechanical, uninteresting work, out of doors in an inclement climate, in all weathers: what wonder if men died off like rotten sheep? And what wonder, too, if sometimes the slightest accident,–such as a blow from an overseer, returned by a prisoner, produced a sudden rising, un-preconcerted, objectless, the result of which were half a dozen murdered men, as many lunatic women, and five or six stations lighting up the hill-side, night after night, while the whole available force of the colony was unable to stop the ruin for months?

But to the point. Mary was a widow. When she heard of her husband’s death, she had said to herself, “Thank God!” But when she had gone to her room, and was sat a-thinking, she seemed to have had another husband before she was bound up with that desperate, coining, forging George Hawker–another husband bearing the same name; but surely that handsome curly-headed young fellow, who used to wait for her so patiently in the orchard at Drumston, was not the same George Hawker as this desperate convict? She was glad the convict was dead and out of the way; there was no doubt of that; but she could still find a corner in her heart to be sorry for her poor old lover,–her handsome old lover,–ah me!

But that even was passed now, and George Hawker was as one who had never lived. Now on this evening we speak of, his memory came back just an instant, as she heard the boy speak of the father, but it was gone again directly. She called her servants, and was telling them to bring supper, when Charles looked suddenly in, and said,–“Here they are!”

There they were, sure enough, putting the rams into the sheep-yard. Tom Troubridge, as upright, bravelooking a man as ever, and, thanks to bush-work, none the fatter. William Lee, one of our oldest acquaintances, was getting a little grizzled, but otherwise looked as broad and as strong as ever.

They rode into the yard, and Lee took the horses.

“Well, cousin,” said Tom; “I am glad to see you again.”

“You are welcome home, Tom; you have made good speed.”

Tom and Charles went into the house, and Mary was about following them, when Lee said, in so low a tone, that it did not reach the others,– “Mrs. Hawker!”

She turned round and looked at him, she had welcomed him kindly when he came into the yard with Tom, and yet he stood still on horseback, holding Tom’s horse by the bridle. A stern, square-looking figure he was; and when she looked at his face, she was much troubled, at–she knew not what.

“Mrs. Hawker,” he said, “can you give me the favour of ten minutes’ conversation, alone this evening?”

“Surely, William, now!”

“Not now,–my story is pretty long, and, what is more, ma’am, somebody may be listening, and what I have got to tell you must be told in no ear but your own.”

“You frighten me, Lee! You frighten me to death.”

“Don’t get frightened, Mrs. Hawker. Remember if anything comes about, that you have good friends about you; and, that I, William Lee, am not the worst of them.”

Lee went off with the horses, and Mary returned to the house. What mystery had this man to tell her, “that no one might hear but she”?– very strange and alarming! Was he drunk?–no, he was evidently quite sober; as she looked out once more, she could see him at the stable, cool and self-possessed, ordering the lads about: something very strange and terrifying to one who had such a dark blot in her life.

But she went in, and as she came near the parlour, she heard Charles and Tom roaring with laughter. As she opened the door she heard Tom saying: “And, by Jove, I sat there like a great snipe, face to face with him, as cool and unconcerned as you like. I took him for a flash overseer, sporting his salary, and I was as thick as you like with him. And ‘Matey,’ says I, (you see I was familiar, he seemed such a jolly sort of bird), ‘Matey, what station are you on?’ ‘Maraganoa,’ says he. ‘So,’ says I, ‘you’re rather young there, ain’t you? I was by there a fortnight ago.’ He saw he’d made a wrong move, and made it worse. ‘I mean,’ says he, ‘Maraganoa on the Clarence side.’ ‘Ah!’ says I, ‘in the Cedar country?’ ‘Precisely,’ says he. And there we sat drinking together, and I had no more notion of its being him than you would have had.”

She sat still listening to him, eating nothing. Lee’s words outside had, she knew not why, struck a chill into her heart, and as she listened to Tom’s story, although she could make nothing of it, she felt as though getting colder and colder. She shivered, although the night was hot. Through the open window she could hear all those thousand commingled indistinguishable sounds that make the night-life of the bush, with painful distinctness. She arose and went to the window.

The night was dark and profoundly still. The stars were overhead, though faintly seen through a haze; and beyond the narrow enclosures in front of the house, the great forest arose like a black wall. Tom and Charles went on talking inside, and yet, though their voices were loud, she was hardly conscious of hearing them, but found herself watching the high dark wood and listening to the sound of the frogs in the creek, and the rustle of a million crawling things, heard only in the deep stillness of night.

Deep in the forest somewhere, a bough cracked, and fell crashing, then all was silent again. Soon arose a wind, a partial wandering wind, which came slowly up, and, rousing the quivering leaves to life for a moment, passed away; then again a silence, deeper than ever, so that she could hear the cattle and horses feeding in the lower paddock, a quarter of a mile off; then a low wail in the wood, then two or three wild weird yells, as of a devil in torment, and a pretty white curlew skirled over the housetop to settle on the sheepwash dam.

The stillness was awful; it boded a storm, for behind the forest blazed up a sheet of lightning, showing the shape of each fantastic elevated bough. Then she turned round to the light, and said,–

“My dear partner, I had a headache, and went to the window. What was the story you were telling Charles, just now? Who was the man you met in the publichouse, who seems to have frightened you so?”

“No less a man than Captain Touan, my dear cousin!” said Tom, leaning back with the air of a man who has made a point, and would be glad to hear “what you have to say to that, sir.”

“Touan?” repeated Mary. “Why, that’s the great bushranger, that is out to the north; is it not?”

“The same man, cousin! And there I sat hob and nob with him for half an hour in the ‘Lake George’ public-house. If Desborough had come in, he’d have hung me for being found in bad company. Ha! ha! ha!”

“My dear partner,” she said, “what a terrible escape! Suppose he had risen on you?”

“Why I’d have broken his back, cousin,” said Tom, “unless my right hand had forgot her cunning. He is a fine man of his weight: but, Lord, in a struggle for life and death, I could break his neck, and have one more claim on Heaven for doing so; for he is the most damnable villain that ever disgraced God’s earth, and that is the truth. That man, cousin, in one of his devil’s raids, tore a baby from its mother’s breast by the leg, dashed its brains out against a tree, and then–I daren’t tell a woman what happened.” [Note: Tom was confusing Touan with Michael Howe. The latter actually did commit this frightful atrocity; but I never heard that the former actually combined the two crimes in this way.]

“Tom! Tom!” said Mary, “how can you talk of such things?”

“To show you what we have to expect if he comes this way, cousin; that is all.”

“And is there any possibility of such a thing?” asked Mary.

“Why not? Why should he not pay us the compliment of looking round this way?”

“Why do they call him Touan, Tom?” asked Charles.

“Can’t, you see,” said Tom, “the Touan, the little grey flying squirrel, only begins to fly about at night, and slides down from his bough sudden and sharp. This fellow has made some of his most terrible raids at night, and so he got the name of Touan.”

“God deliver us from such monsters!” said Mary, and left the room.

She went into the kitchen. Lee sat there smoking. When she came in he rose, and, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, touched his forehead and stood looking at her.

“Now then, old friend,” she said, “come here.”

He followed her out. She led the way swiftly, through the silent night, across the yard, over a small paddock, up to the sheep-yard beside the woolshed. There she turned shortly round, and, leaning on the fence, said abruptly–

“No one can hear us here, William Lee. Now, what have you to say?”

He seemed to hesitate a moment, and then began: “Mrs. Hawker, have I been a good servant to you?”

“Honest, faithful, kindly, active; who could have been a better servant than you, William Lee! A friend, and not a servant; God is my witness; now then?”

“I am glad to hear you say so,” he answered. “I did you a terrible injury once; I have often been sorry for it since I knew you, but it cannot be mended now.”

“Since you knew me?” she said. “Why, you have known me ever since I have been in the country, and you have never injured me since then, surely.”

“Ay, but at home,” he said. “In England. In Devonshire.”

“My God!”

“I was your husband’s companion in all his earlier villanies. I suggested them to him, and egged him on. And now, mind you, after twenty years, my punishment is coming.”

She could only say still, “My God!” while her throat was as dry as a kiln.

“Listen to what I have got to tell you now. Hear it all in order, and try to bear up, and use your common sense and courage. As I said before, you have good friends around you, and you at least are innocent.”

“Guilty! guilty!” she cried. “Guilty of my father’s death! Read me this horrible riddle, Lee.”

“Wait and listen,” said Lee, unable to forego, even in her terror, the great pleasure that all his class have of spinning a yarn, and using as many words as possible. “See here. We came by Lake George, you know, and heard everywhere accounts of a great gang of bushrangers being out. So we didn’t feel exactly comfortable, you see. We came by a bush public-house, and Mr. Troubridge stops, and says he, ‘Well, lad, suppose we yard these rams an hour, and take drink in the parlour?’ ‘All right,’ I says, with a wink, ‘but the tap for me, if you please. That’s my place, and I’d like to see if I can get any news of the whereabouts of the lads as are sticking up all round, because, if they’re one way, I’d as lief be another.’ ‘All right,’ says he. So in I goes, and sits down. There was nobody there but one man, drunk under the bench. And I has two noblers of brandy, and one of Old Tom; no, two Old Toms it was, and a brandy; when in comes an old chap as I knew for a lag in a minute. Well, he and I cottoned together, and found out that we had been prisoners together five-and-twenty years agone. And so I shouted for him, and he for me, and at last I says, ‘Butty,’ says I, ‘who are these chaps round here on the lay’ (meaning, Who are the bushrangers)? And he says, ‘Young ‘uns–no one as we know.’ And I says, ‘Not likely, matey; I’ve been on the square this twenty year.’ ‘Same here,’ says the old chap; ‘give us your flipper. And now,’ says he, ‘what sort of a cove is your boss’ (meaning Mr. Troubridge)? ‘One of the real right sort,’ says I. ‘Then see here,’ says he, ‘I’ll tell you something: the head man of that there gang is at this minute a-sitting yarning with your boss in the parlour.’ ‘The devil!’ says I. ‘Is so,’ says he, ‘and no flies.’ So I sings out, ‘Mr. Troubridge, those sheep will be out;’ and out he came running, and I whispers to him, ‘Mind the man you’re sitting with, and leave me to pay the score.’ So he goes back, and presently he sings out, ‘Will, have you got any money?’ And I says, ‘Yes, thirty shillings.’ ‘Then,’ says he, ‘pay for this, and come along.’ And thinks I, I’ll go in and have a look at this great new captain of bushrangers; so I goes to the parlour door, and now who do you think I saw?”

“I know,” she said. “It was that horrible villain they call Touan.”

“The same man,” he answered. “Do you know who he is?”

She found somehow breath to say, “How can I? How is it possible?”

“I will tell you,” said Lee. “There, sitting in front of Mr. Troubridge, hardly altered in all these long years, sat George Hawker, formerly of Drumston,–your husband!”

She gave a low cry, and beat the hard rail with her head till it bled. Then, turning fiercely round, she said, in a voice hoarse and strangely altered,–

“Have you anything more to tell me, you croaking raven?”

He had something more to tell, but he dared not speak now. So he said, “Nothing at present, but if laying down my life—-“

She did not wait to hear him, but, with her hands clasped above her head, she turned and walked swiftly towards the house. She could not cry, or sob, or rave; she could only say, “Let it fall on me, O God, on me!” over and over again.

Also, she was far too crushed and stunned to think precisely what it was she dreaded so. It seemed afterwards, as Frank Maberly told me, that she had an indefinable horror of Charles meeting his father, and of their coming to know one another. She half feared that her husband would appear and carry away her son with him, and even if he did not, the lad was reckless enough as it was, without being known and pointed at through the country as the son of Hawker the bushranger.

These were after-thoughts, however; at present she leaned giddily against the house-side, trying, in the wild hurrying night-rack of her thoughts, to distinguish some tiny star of hope, or even some glimmer of reason. Impossible! Nothing but swift, confused clouds everywhere, driving wildly on,–whither?

But a desire came upon her to see her boy again, and compare his face to his father’s. So she slid quietly into the room where Tom and Charles were still talking together of Tom’s adventure, and sat looking at the boy, pretending to work. As she came in, he was laughing loudly at something, and his face was alive and merry. “He is not like what his father was at his age,” she said.

But they continued their conversation. “And now, what sort of man was he, Tom?” said Charles. “Was he like any one you ever saw?”

“Why, no. Stay, let’s see. Do you know, he was something like you in the face.”

“Thank you!” said Charles, laughing. “Wait till I get a chance of paying you a compliment, old fellow. A powerful fellow–eh?”

“Why, yes,–a tough-looking subject,” said Tom.

“I shouldn’t have much chance with him, I suppose?”

“No; he’d be too powerful for you, Charley.”

A change came over his face, a dark, fierce look. Mary could see the likeness NOW plain enough, and even Tom looked at him for an instant with a puzzled look.

“Nevertheless,” continued Charles, “I would have a turn with him if I met him; I’d try what six inches of cold steel between—-“

“Forbear, boy! Would you have the roof fall in and crush you dead?” said Mary, in a voice that appalled both of them. “Stop such foolish talk, and pray that we may be delivered from the very sight of these men, and suffered to get away to our graves in peace, without any more of these horrors and surprises. I would sooner,” she said, increasing in rapidity as she went on, “I would far sooner, live like some one I have heard of, with a sword above his head, than thus. If he comes and looks on me, I shall die.”

She had risen and stood in the firelight, deadly pale. Somehow one of the bands of her long black hair had fallen down, and half covered her face. She looked so unearthly that, coupling her appearance with the wild, senseless words she had been uttering, Tom had a horrible suspicion that she was gone mad.

“Cousin,” he said, “let me beseech you to go to bed. Charles, run for Mrs. Barker. Mary,” he added, as soon as he was gone, “come away, or you’ll be saying something before that boy you’ll be sorry for. You’re hysterical; that’s what is the matter with you. I am afraid we have frightened you by our talk about bushrangers.”

“Yes, that is it! that is it!” she said; and then, suddenly, “Oh! my dear old friend, you will not desert me?”

“Never, Mary; but why ask such a question now?”

“Ask Lee,” she said, and the next moment Mrs. Barker, the housekeeper, came bustling in with smelling salts, and so on, to minister to a mind diseased. And Mary was taken off to bed.

“What on earth can be the matter with her, cousin Tom?” said Charles when she was gone.

“She is out of sorts, and got hysterical; that’s what it is,” said Tom.

“What odd things she said!”

“Women do when they are hysterical. It’s nothing more than that.”

But Mrs. Barker came in with a different opinion. She said that Mary was very hot and restless, and had very little doubt that a fever was coming on. “Terribly shaken she had been,” said Mrs. Barker, “hoped nothing was wrong.”

“There’s something decidedly wrong, if your mistress is going to have a fever,” said Tom. “Charley, do you think Doctor Mulhaus is at Baroona or Garoopna?”

“Up at the Major’s,” said Charles, “Shall I ride over for him? There will be a good moon in an hour.”

“Yes,” said Tom, “and fetch him over at once. Tell him we think it’s a fever, and he will know what to bring. Ride like h—-l, Charley.”

As soon as he was alone, he began thinking. “What the DOOSE is the matter?” was his first exclamation, and, after half-an-hour’s cogitation, only had arrived at the same point, “What the DOOSE is the matter?” Then it flashed across him, what did she mean by “ask Lee?” Had she any meaning in it, or was it nonsense? There was an easy solution for it; namely, TO ask Lee. And so arising he went across the yard to the kitchen.

Lee was bending low over the fire, smoking. “William,” said Tom, “I want to see you in the parlour.”

“I was thinking of coming across myself,” said Lee; “In fact I should have come when I had finished my pipe.”

“Bring your pipe across, then,” said Tom. “Girl, take in some hot water and tumblers.”

“Now, Lee,” said Tom, as soon as Lee had gone through the ceremony of “Well, here’s my respex, sir,” “Now Lee, you have heard how ill the mistress is.”

“I have indeed, sir,” said he; “and very sorry I am, as I am partly the cause of it.”

“All that simplifies matters, Will, considerably,” said Tom. “I must tell you that when I asked her what put her in that state, she said, ‘ask Lee.'”

“Shows her sense, sir. What she means is, that you ought to hear what she and I have heard; and I mean to tell you more than I have her. If she knew everything, I am afraid it would kill her.”

“Ay! I know nothing as yet, you know.”

Lee in the first place put him in possession of what we already know– the fact of Hawker’s reappearance, and his identity with “The Touan;” then he paused.

“This is very astonishing, and very terrible, Lee,” said he. “Is there anything further?”

“Yes, the worst. That man has followed us home!”

Tom had exhausted all his expressions of astonishment and dismay before this; so now he could only give a long whistle, and say, “Followed us home?”

“Followed us home!” said Lee. “As we were passing the black swamp, not two miles from here, this very morning, I saw that man riding parallel with us through the bush.”

“Why did not you tell me before?”

“Because I had not made up my mind how to act. First I resolved to tell the mistress; that I did. Then after I had smoked a pipe, I resolved to tell you, and that I did, and now here we are, you see.”

That was undeniable. There they were, with about as pretty a complication of mischief to unravel as two men could wish to have. Tom felt so foolish and nonplussed, that he felt inclined to laugh at Lee when he said, “Here we are.” It so exactly expressed the state of the case; as if he had said, “All so and so has happened, and a deuce of a job it is, and here sit you and I, to deliberate what’s to be done with regard to so and so.”

He did not laugh, however; he bit his lip, and stopped it. Then he rose, and, leaning his great shoulders against the mantelpiece, stood before the fireless grate, and looked at Lee. Lee also looked at him, and I think that each one thought what a splendid specimen of his style the other was. If they did not think so, “they ought to it,” as the Londoners say. But neither spoke a few minutes; then Tom said,–

“Lee, Will Lee, though you came to me a free man, and have served me twenty years, or thereabouts, as free man, I don’t conceal from myself the fact that you have been convict. Pish, man! don’t let us mince matters now,–a lag.”

Lee looked him full in the face, without changing countenance, and nodded.

“Convicted more than once, too,” continued Tom.

“Three times,” said Lee.

“Ah!” said Tom. “And if a piece of work was set before me to do, which required pluck, honesty, courage, and cunning, and one were to say to me, ‘Who will you have to help you?’ I would answer out boldly, ‘Give me Will Lee the lag; my old friend, who has served me so true and hearty these twenty years.'”

“And you’d do right, sir,” said Lee quietly. And rising up, he stood beside Tom, with one foot on the fender, bending down and looking into the empty grate.

“Now, Will,” said Tom, turning round and laying his hand on his shoulder, “this fellow has followed us home, having found out who we were. Why has he done so?”

“Evident,” said Lee, “to work on the fears of the mistress, and get some money from her.”

“Good!” said Tom. “Well answered. We shall get to the bottom of our difficulty like this. Only answer the next question as well, and I will call you a Poly–, Poly–; d–n the Greek.”

“Not such a bad name as that, I hope, sir,” said Lee smiling. “Who might she have been? A bad un, I expect. You don’t happen to refer to Hobart-town Polly, did you, sir?”

“Hold your tongue, you villain,” said Tom, “or you’ll make me laugh; and these are not laughing times.”

“Well, what is your question, sir?” asked Lee.

“Why, simply this: What are we to do?”

“I’ll tell you,” said Lee, speaking in an animated whisper. “Watch, watch, and watch again, till you catch him. Tie him tight, and hand him over to Captain Desborough. He may be about the place tonight: he will be sure to be. Let us watch to-night, you and I, and for many nights, till we catch him.”

“But,” whispered Tom, “he will be hung.”

“He has earned it,” said Lee. “Let him be hung.”

“But he is her husband,” urged Tom, in a whisper. “He is that boy’s father. I cannot do it. Can’t we buy him off?”

“Yes,” answered Lee in the same tone, “till his money is gone. Then you will have a chance of doing it again, and again, all your life.”

“This is a terrible dilemma,” said Tom; and added in a perplexity almost comical, “Drat the girl! Why did’nt she marry poor old Jim Stockbridge, or sleepy Hamlyn, or even your humble servant? Though, in all honour, I must confess that I never asked her, as those two others did. No! I’ll tell you what, Lee: we will watch for him, and catch him if we can. After that we will think what is to be done. By-the-bye, I have been going to ask you:–do you think he recognised you at the public-house there?”

“That puzzles me,” said Lee. “He looked me in the face, but I could not see that he did. I wonder if he recognised you?”

“I never saw him in my life before,” said Tom. “It is very likely that he knew me, though. I was champion of Devon and Cornwall, you know, before little Abraham Cann kicked my legs from under me that unlucky Easter Monday. (The deuce curl his hair for doing it!) I never forgave him till I heard of that fine bit of play with Polkinghorn. Yes! he must have known me.”

Lee lit the fire, while Tom, blowing out the candles, drew the curtains, so that any one outside could not see into the room. Nevertheless, he left the French window open, and then went outside, and secured all the dogs in the dog-house.

The night was wonderfully still and dark. As he paused before entering the house, he could hear the bark falling from the trees a quarter of a mile off, and the opossums scratching and snapping little twigs as they passed from bough to bough. Somewhere, apparently at an immense distance, a morepork was chanting his monotonous cry. The frogs in the creek were silent even, so hot was the night. “A good night for watching,” said he to Lee when he came in. “Lie you down; I’ll take the first watch.”

They blew out the candle, and Lee was in the act of lying down, when he arrested himself, and held up his finger to Tom.

They both listened, motionless and in silence, until they could hear the spiders creeping on the ceiling. There it was again! A stealthy step on the gravel.

Troubridge and Lee crouched down breathless. One minute, two, five, but it did not come again. At length they both moved, as if by concert, and Lee said, “‘Possum.”

“Not a bit,” said Troubridge; and then Lee lay down again, and slept in the light of the flickering fire. One giant arm was thrown around his head, and the other hung down in careless grace; the great chest was heaved up, and the head thrown back; the seamed and rugged features seemed more stern and marked than ever in the chiaroscuro; and the whole man was a picture of reckless strength such as one seldom sees. Tom had dozed and had awoke again, and now sat thinking, “What a terrible tough customer that fellow would be!” when suddenly he crouched on the floor, and, reaching out his hand, touched Lee, who woke, and silently rolled over with his face towards the window.

There was no mistake this time–that was no opossum. There came the stealthy step again; and now, as they lay silent, the glass-door was pushed gently open, showing the landscape beyond. The gibbous moon was just rising over the forest, all blurred with streaky clouds, and between them and her light they could see the figure of a man, standing inside the room.

Tom could wait no longer. He started up, and fell headlong with a crash over a little table that stood in his way. They both dashed into the garden, but only in time to hear flying footsteps, and immediately after the gallop of a horse, the echoes of which soon died away, and all was still.

“Missed him, by George!” said Lee. “It was a precious close thing, though. What could he mean by coming into the house,–eh?”

“Just as I expected; trying to get an interview with the mistress. He will be more cautious in future, I take it.”

“I wonder if he will try again?”

“Don’t know,” said Troubridge; “he might: not to-night, however.”

They went in and lay down again, and Troubridge was soon asleep; and very soon that sleep was disturbed by dreadful dreams. At one time he thought he was riding madly through the bush for his bare life; spurring on a tired horse, which was failing every moment more and more. But always through the tree-stems on his right he saw glancing, a ghost on a white horse, which kept pace with him, do what he would. Now he was among the precipices on the ranges. On his left, a lofty inaccessible cliff; on the right, a frightful blue abyss; while the slaty soil kept sliding from beneath his horse’s feet. Behind him, unseen, came a phantom, always gaining on him, and driving him along the giddiest wallaby tracks. If he could only turn and face it, he might conquer, but he dare not. At length the path grew narrower and narrower, and he turned in desperation and awoke–woke to see in the dim morning light a dark figure bending over him. He sprang up, and clutched it by the throat.

“A most excellent fellow this!” said the voice of Doctor Mulhaus. “He sends a frantic midnight message for his friend to come to him, regardless of personal convenience and horseflesh; and when this friend comes quietly in, and tries to wake him without disturbing the sick folks, he seizes him by the throat and nearly throttles him.”

“I beg a thousand pardons, Doctor,” said Tom; “I had been dreaming, and I took you for the devil. I am glad to find my mistake.”

“You have good reason,” said the Doctor; “but now, how is the patient?”

“Asleep at present, I believe; the housekeeper is with her.”

“What is the matter with her?”

“She has had a great blow. It has shaken her intellect, I am afraid.”

“What sort of a blow?” asked the Doctor.

Tom hesitated. He did not know whether to tell him or not.

“Nay,” said the Doctor, “you had better let me know. I can help then, you know. Now, for instance, has she heard of her husband?”

“She has, Doctor. How on earth came you to guess that?”

“A mere guess, though I have always thought it quite possible, as the accounts of his death were very uncertain.”

Tom then set to work, and told the Doctor all that we know. He looked very grave. “This is far worse than I had thought,” he said, and remained thoughtful.

Mary awoke in a fever and delirious. They kept Charles as much from her as possible, lest she should let drop some hint of the matter to the boy; but even in her delirium she kept her secret well; and towards the evening the Doctor, finding her quieter, saddled his horse, and rode away ten miles to a township, where resided a drunken surgeon, one of the greatest blackguards in the country.

The surgeon was at home. He was drunk, of course; he always was, but hardly more so to-day than usual. So the Doctor hoped for success in his object, which was to procure a certain drug which was neither in the medicine-chest at the Buckleys’ nor at Toonarbin; and putting on his sweetest smile when the surgeon came to the door, he made a remark about the beauty of the weather, to which the other very gruffly responded.

“I come to beg a favour,” said Doctor Mulhaus. “Can you let me have a little–so and so?”

“See you d–d first,” was the polite reply. “A man comes a matter of fourteen thousand miles, makes a pretty little practice, and then gets it cut into by a parcel of ignorant foreigners, whose own country is too hot to hold them. And not content with this, they have the brass to ask for the loan of a man’s drugs. As I said before, I’ll see you d–d first, AND THEN I WON’T.” And so saying, he slammed the door.

Doctor Mulhaus was beside himself with rage. For the first and last time since I have known him he forgot his discretion, and instead of going away quietly, and treating the man with contempt, he began kicking at the door, calling the man a scoundrel, &c., and between the intervals of kicking, roaring through the keyhole, “Bring out your diploma; do you hear, you impostor?” and then fell to work kicking again. “Bring out your forged diploma, will you, you villain?”

This soon attracted the idlers from the public-house: a couple of sawyers, a shepherd or two, all tipsy, of course, except one of the sawyers, who was drunk. The drunken sawyer at length made out to his own complete satisfaction that Doctor Mulhaus’ wife was in labour, and that he was come for the surgeon, who was probably drunk and asleep inside. So, being able to sympathize, having had his wife in the straw every thirteen months regularly for the last fifteen years, he prepared to assist, and for this purpose took a stone about half a hundredweight, and coming behind the Doctor, when he was in full kick, he balanced himself with difficulty, and sent it at the lock with all the force of his arm, and of course broke the door in. In throwing the stone, he lost his balance, came full butt against Dr. Mulhaus, propelled him into the passage, into the arms of the surgeon, who was rushing out infuriated to defend his property, and down went the three in the passage together, the two doctors beneath, and the drunken sawyer on the top of them.

The drunken surgeon, if, to use parliamentary language, he will allow me to call him so, was of course underneath the others; but, being a Londoner, and consequently knowing the use of his fists, ere he went down delivered a “one, two,” straight from the shoulder in our poor dear Doctor’s face, and gave him a most disreputable black eye, besides cutting his upper lip open. This our Doctor, being, you must remember, a foreigner, and not having the rules of the British Ring before his eyes, resented by getting on the top of him, taking him round the throat, and banging the back of his head against the brick floor of the passage, until he began to goggle his eyes and choke. Meanwhile the sawyer, exhilarated beyond measure in his drunken mind at having raised a real good promising row, having turned on his back, lay procumbent upon the twain, and kicking everything soft or human he came across with his heels, struck up “The Bay of Biscay, Oh,” until he was dragged forth by two of his friends; and, being in a state of wild excitement, ready to fight the world, hit his own mate a violent blow in the eye, and was only quieted by receiving a sound thrashing, and being placed in a sitting posture in the verandah of the public house, from which he saw Doctor Mulhaus come forth from the surgeon’s with rumpled feathers, but triumphant.

I am deeply grieved to have recorded the above scene, but I could not omit it. Having undertaken to place the character of that very noble gentleman, Doctor Mulhaus, before my readers, I was forced not to omit this. As a general rule, he was as self-contained, as calm and as frigid as the best Englishman among us. But under all this there was, to speak in carefullyselected scientific language, a substratum of pepper-box, which has been apparent to me on more than one occasion. I have noticed the above occasion per force. Let the others rest in oblivion. A man so true, so wise, so courteous, and so kindly, needs not my poor excuses for having once in a way made a fool of himself. He will read this, and he will be angry with me for a time, but he knows well that I, like all who knew him, say heartily, God bless you, old Doctor!

But the consequences of the above were, I am sorry to say, eminently disastrous. The surgeon got a warrant against Doctor Mulhaus for burglary with violence, and our Doctor got a warrant against him for assault with intent to rob. So there was the deuce to pay. The affair got out of the hands of the Bench. In fact they sent BOTH parties for trial, (what do you think of that, my Lord Campbell?) in order to ge rid of the matter, and at sessions, the surgeon swore positively that Doctor Mulhaus had, assisted by a convict, battered his door down with stones in open day, and nearly murdered him. Then in defence Doctor Mulhaus called the sawyer, who, as it happened, had just completed a contract for fencing for Mrs. Mayford, the proceeds of which bargain he was spending at the public-house when the thing happened, and had just undertaken another for one of the magistrates; having also a large family dependent on him; being, too, a man who prided himself in keeping an eye to windward, and being slightly confused by a trifling attack of delirium tremens (diddleums, he called it): he, I say, to our Doctor’s confusion and horror, swore positively that he never took a stone in his hand on the day in question; that he never saw a stone for a week before or after that date; that he did not deny having rushed into the passage to assist the complainant (drunken surgeon), seeing him being murdered by defendant; and, lastly, that he was never near the place on the day specified. So it would have gone hard with our Doctor, had not his Honour called the jury’s attention to the discrepancies in this witness’s evidence; and when Dr. Mulhaus was acquitted, delivered a stinging reproof to the magistrates for wasting public time by sending such a trumpery case to a jury. But, on the other hand, Dr. Mulhaus’ charge of assault with intent fell dead; so that neither party had much to boast of.

The night or so after the trial was over, the Doctor came back to Toonarbin, in what he intended for a furious rage. But, having told Tom Troubridge the whole affair, and having unluckily caught Tom’s eye, they two went off into such hearty fits of laughter that poor Mary, now convalescent, but still in bed, knocked at the wall to know what the matter was.

Chapter XXXII

WHICH IS THE LAST CHAPTER BUT ONE IN THE SECOND VOLUME.

The state of terror and dismay into which poor Mary Hawker was thrown on finding that her husband, now for many years the BETE NOIR of her existence, was not only alive, but promising fairly to cause her more trouble than ever he did before, superadded, let me say, for mere truth’s sake, to a slight bilious attack, brought on by good living and want of exercise, threw her into a fever, from which, after several days’ delirium, she rose much shattered, and looking suddenly older. All this time the Doctor, like a trusty dog, had kept his watch, and done more, and with a better will than any paid doctor would have been likely to do. He was called away a good deal by the prosecution arising out of that unhappy affair with the other doctor, and afterwards with a prosecution for perjury, which he brought against the sawyer; but he was generally back at night, and was so kind, so attentive, and so skilful that Mary took it into her head, and always affirmed afterwards, that she owed her life to him.

She was not one to receive any permanent impression from anything. So now, as day by day she grew stronger, she tried to undervalue the mischief which had at first so terrified her, and caused her illness;– tried, and with success, in broad daylight; but, in the silent dark nights, as she lay on her lonely bed, she would fully appreciate the terrible cloud that hung over her, and would weep and beat her pillow, and pray in her wild fantastic way to be delivered from this frightful monster, cut off from communion with all honest men by his unutterable crimes, but who, nevertheless, she was bound to love, honour, and obey, till death should part her from him.

Mrs. Buckley, on the first news of her illness, had come up and taken her quarters at Toonarbin, acting as gentle a nurse as man or woman could desire to have. She took possession of the house, and managed everything. Mrs. Barker, the house-keeper, the only one who did not submit at once to her kindly rule, protested, obstructed, protocolled, presented an ultimatum, and, at last, was so ill advised as to take up arms. There was a short campaign, lasting only one morning,–a decisive battle,–and Mrs. Barker was compelled to sue for peace. “Had Mr. Troubridge been true to himself,” she said, “she would never have submitted;” but, having given Tom warning, and Tom, in a moment of irritation, having told her, without hesitation or disguise, to go to the devil (no less), she bowed to the circumstances, and yielded.

Agnes Buckley encouraged Dr. Mulhaus, too, in his legal affairs, and, I fear, was the first person who proposed the prosecution for perjury against the sawyer: a prosecution, however, which failed, in consequence of his mate and another friend, who was present at the affair, coming forward to the sawyer’s rescue, and getting into such a labyrinth and mist of perjury, that the Bench (this happened just after quarter sessions) positively refused to hear anything more on either side. Altogether, Agnes Buckley made herself so agreeable, and kept them all so alive, that Tom wondered how he had got on so long without her.

At the end of three weeks Mary was convalescent; and one day, when she was moved into the verandah, Mrs. Buckley beside her, Tom and the Doctor sitting on the step smoking, and Charles sleepily reading aloud “Hamlet,” with a degree of listlessness and want of appreciation unequalled, I should say, by any reader before; at such time, I say, there entered suddenly to them a little-cattle dealer, as brimful of news as an egg of meat. Little Burnside it was: a man about eight stone nothing, who always wore top-boots and other people’s clothes. As he came in, Charles recognised on his legs a pair of cord breeches of his own, with a particular grease patch on the thigh: a pair of breeches he had lent Burnside, and which Burnside had immediately got altered to his own size. A good singer was Burnside. A man who could finish his bottle of brandy, and not go to bed in his boots. A man universally liked and trusted. An honest, hearty, little fellow, yet, one who always lent or spent his money as fast as he got it, and was as poor as Job. The greatest vehicle of news in the district, too. “Snowy river Times,” he used to be called.

After the usual greetings, Tom, seeing he was bursting with something, asked him, “What’s the news?”

Burnside was in the habit of saying that he was like the Lord Mayor’s fool–fond of everything that was good. But his greatest pleasure, the one to which he would sacrifice everything, was retailing a piece of news. This was so great an enjoyment with him that he gloried in dwelling on it, and making the most of it. He used to retail a piece of news, as a perfect novel, in three volumes. In his first he would take care to ascertain that you were acquainted with the parties under discussion; and, if you were not, make you so, throwing in a few anecdotes illustrative of their characters. In In his second, he would grow discursive, giving an episode or two, and dealing in moral reflections and knowledge of human nature rather largely. And in his third he would come smash, crash down on you with the news itself, and leave you gasping.

He followed this plan on the present occasion. He answered Tom’s question by asking,–

“Do you know Desborough?”

“Of course I do,” said Tom; “and a noble good fellow he is.”

“Exactly,” said Burnside; “super of police; distinguished in Indian wars; nephew of my Lord Covetown. An Irishman is Desborough, but far from objectionable.”

This by way of first volume: now comes his second:–

“Now, sir, I, although a Scotchman born, and naturally proud of being so, consider that until these wretched national distinctions between the three great nations are obliterated we shall never get on, sir; never. That the Scotch, sir, are physically and intellectually superior—-“

“Physically and intellectually the devil,” burst in Tom. “Pick out any dozen Scotchmen, and I’ll find you a dozen Londoners who will fight them, or deal with them till they’d be glad to get over the borders again. As for the Devon and Cornish lads, find me a Scotchman who will put me on my back, and I’ll write you a cheque for a hundred pounds, my boy. We English opened the trade of the world to your little two millions and a-half up in the north there; and you, being pretty well starved out at home, have had the shrewdness to take advantage of it; and now, by Jove, you try to speak small of the bridge that carried you over. What did you do towards licking the Spaniards; eh? And where would you be now, if they had not been licked in 1588, eh? Not in Australia, my boy! A Frenchman is conceited enough, but, by George, he can’t hold a candle to a Scotchman.”

Tom spoke in a regular passion; but there was some truth in what he said, I think. Burnside didn’t like it, and merely saying, “You interrupt me, sir,” went on to his third volume without a struggle.

“You are aware, ladies, that there has been a gang of bushrangers out to the north, headed by a miscreant, whom his companions call Touan, but whose real name is a mystery.”

Mrs. Buckley said, “Yes;” and Tom glanced at Mary. She had grown as pale as death, and Tom said, “Courage, cousin; don’t be frightened at a name.”

“Well, sir,” continued Burnside, putting the forefinger and thumb of each hand together, as if he was making “windows” with soapsuds, “Captain Desborough has surprised that gang in a gully, sir, and,” spreading his hands out right and left, “obliterated them.”

“The devil!” said Tom, while the Doctor got up and stood beside Mary.

“Smashed them, sir, “continued Burnside;” extinguished them utterly. He had six of his picked troopers with him, and they came on them suddenly and brought them to bay. You see, two troopers have been murdered lately, and so our men, when they got face to face with the cowardly hounds, broke discipline and wouldn’t be held. They hardly fired a shot, but drew their sabres, and cut the dogs down almost to a man. Three only out of twelve have been captured alive, and one of them is dying of a wound in the neck.” And, having finished, little Burnside folded his arms and stood in a military attitude, with the air of a man who had done the thing himself, and was prepared to receive his meed of praise with modesty.

“Courage, Mary,” said Tom; “don’t be frightened at shadows.”–He felt something sticking in his throat, but spoke out nevertheless.

“And their redoubted captain,” he asked; “what has become of him?”

“What, Touan himself?” said Burnside. “Well, I am sorry to say that that chivalrous and high-minded gentleman was found neither among the dead nor the living. Not to mince, matters, sir, he has escaped.”

The Doctor saw Mary’s face quiver, but she bore up bravely, and listened.

“Escaped, has he?” said Tom. “And do they know anything about him?”

“Desborough, who told me this himself,” said Burnside, “says no, that he is utterly puzzled. He had made sure of the arch-rascal himself; but, with that remarkable faculty of saving his own skin which he has exhibited on more than one occasion, he has got off for the time, with one companion.”

“A companion; eh?”

“Yes,” said Burnside, “whereby hangs a bit of romance, if I may profane the word in speaking of such men. His companion is a young fellow, described as being more like a beautiful woman than a man, and bearing the most singular likeness in features to the great Captain Touan himself, who, as you have heard, is a handsome dog. In short, there is very little doubt that they are father and son.”

Tom thought to himself, “Who on earth can this be? What son can George Hawker have, and we not know of it?” He turned to Burnside.

“What age is the young man you speak of?” he asked.

“Twenty, or thereabouts, by all description,” said the other.

Tom thought again: “This gets very strange. He could have no son of that age got in Van Diemen’s Land: it was eight years before he was free. It must be some one we know of. He had some byeblows in Devon, by all accounts. If this is one of them, how the deuce did he get here?”

But he could not think. We shall see presently who it was. Now we must leave these good folks for a time, and just step over to Garoopna, and see how affairs go there.

Chapter XXXIII

IN WHICH JAMES BRENTWOOD AND SAMUEL BUCKLEY, ESQUIRES, COMBINE TO DISTURB THE REST OF CAPTAIN BRENTWOOD, R.A. AND SUCCEED IN DOING SO.

The morning after Cecil Mayford had made his unlucky offer to Alice, he appeared at Sam’s bedside very early, as if he had come to draw Priam’s curtains; and told him shortly, that he had spoken, and had been received with contempt; that he was a miserable brute, and that he was going back home to attend to his business;–under the circumstances, the best thing he could possibly do.

So the field was clear for Sam, but he let matters stay as they were, being far too pleasant to disturb lightly; being also, to tell the truth, a little uncertain of his ground, after poor Cecil had suffered so severely in the encounter. The next day, too, his father and mother went home, and he thought it would be only proper for him to go with them, but, on proposing it, Jim quietly told him he must stay where he was and work hard for another week, and Halbert, although a guest of the Buckleys, was constrained to remain still at the Brentwoods’, in company with Sam.

But at the end of a week they departed, and Jim went back with them, leaving poor Alice behind, alone with her father. Sam turned when they had gone a little way, and saw her white figure still in the porch, leaning in rather a melancholy attitude against the door-post. The audacious magpie had perched himself on the top of her head, from which proud elevation he hurled wrath, scorn, and mortal defiance against them as they rode away. Sam took off his hat, and as he went on kept wondering whether she was thinking of him at all, and hoping that she might be sorry that he was gone. “Probably, however,” he thought, “she is only sorry for her brother.”

They three stayed at Baroona a week or more, one of them riding up every day to ask after Mary Hawker. Otherwise they spent their time shooting and fishing, and speculating how soon the rains would come, for it was now March, and autumn was fairly due.

But at the end of this week, as the three were sitting together, one of those long-legged, slab-sided, lean, sunburnt, cabbage-tree-hatted lads, of whom Captain Brentwood kept always, say half-a-dozen, and the Major four or five (I should fancy, no relation to one another, and yet so exactly alike, that Captain Brentwood never called them by their right names by any chance); lads who were employed about the stable and the paddock, always in some way with the horses; one of those representatives of the rising Australian generation, I say, looked in, and without announcing himself, or touching his hat (an Australian never touches his hat if he is a free man, because the prisoners are forced to), came up to Jim across the drawingroom, as quiet and as self-possessed as if he was quite used to good society, and, putting a letter into his hand, said merely, “Miss Alice,” and relapsed into silence, amusing himself by looking round Mrs. Buckley’s drawing-room, the like of which he had never seen before.

Sam envied Jim the receipt of that little threecornered note. He wondered whether there was anything about him in it. Jim read it, and then folded it up again, and said “Hallo!”

The lad,–I always call that sort of individual a lad; there is no other word for them, though they are of all ages, from sixteen to twenty,–the lad, I say, was so taken up with the contemplation of a blown-glass pressepapier on the table, that Jim had to say, “Hallo there John!”

The lad turned round, and asked in a perfectly easy manner, “What the deuce is this thing for, now?”

“That,” said Jim, “is the button of a Chinese mandarin’s hat, who was killed at the battle of Waterloo in the United States by Major Buckley.”

“Is it now?” said the lad, quite contented. “It’s very pretty; may I take it up?”

“Of course you may,” said Jim. “Now, what’s the foal like?”

“Rather leggy, I should say,” he returned. “Is there any answer?”

Jim wrote a few lines with a pencil on half his sister’s note, and gave it him. He put it in the lining of his hat, and had got as far as the door, when he turned again. He looked wistfully towards the table where the pressepapier was lying. It was too much for him. He came back and took it up again. What he wanted with it, or what he would have done with it if he had got it, I cannot conceive, but it had taken his simple fancy more, probably, than an emerald of the same size would have done. At last he put it to his eye.

“Why, darn my cabbage-tree,” he said, “if you can’t see through it! He wouldn’t sell it, I suppose, now?”

Jim pursed his lips and shook his head, as though to say that such an idea was not to be entertained, and the lad, with a sigh, laid it down and departed. Then Jim with a laugh threw his sister’s note over to Sam. I discovered this very same note only last week, while searching the Buckley papers for information about the family at this period. I have reason to believe that it has never been printed before, and, as far as I know, there is no other copy extant, so I proceed to give it in full.

“What a dear, disagreeable old Jim you are,” it begins, “to stay away there at Baroona, leaving me moping here with our daddy, who is calculating the explosive power of shells under water at various temperatures. I have a good mind to learn the Differential Calculus myself, only on purpose to bore you with it when you come home.”

“By the bye, Corrella has got a foal. Such a dear little duck of a thing, with a soft brown nose, and sweet long ears, like leaves! Do come back and see it; I am so very, very lonely!”

“I hope Mr. Halbert is pretty well, and that his wound is getting quite right again. Don’t let him undertake cattle-drafting or anything violent. I wish you could bring him back with you, he is such a nice, agreeable creature.”

“Your magpie has attacked cocky, and pulled a yellow feather out of his crest, which he has planted in the flower-bed, either as a trophy, or to see if it will grow.”

Now this letter is historically important, when taken in connexion with certain dates in my possession. It was written on a Monday, and Halbert, Jim, and Sam started back to Garoopna the next day, rather a memorable day for Sam, as you will see directly. Now I wish to call attention to the fact, that Sam, far from being invited, is never once mentioned in the whole letter. Therefore what does Miss Burke mean by her audacious calumnies? What does she mean by saying that Alice made love to Sam, and never gave the “poor boy” a chance of escape? Can she, Lesbia, put her hand on her heart and say that she wasn’t dying to marry Sam herself, though she was (and is still, very likely) thirty years his senior? The fact is, Lesbia gave herself the airs, and received the privileges of being the handsomest woman in those parts, till Alice came, and put her nose out of joint, for which she never forgave her.

However, to return to this letter. I wonder now, as I am looking at the age-stained paper and faded writing, whether she who wrote it contemplated the possibility of its meeting Sam’s eye. I rather imagine that she did, from her provoking silence about him. At any rate, Jim was quite justified in showing him the letter, “for you know,” he said, “as there is nothing at all about you in it, there can be no breach of confidence.”

“Well!” said Sam, when he had read it.

“Well!” said Jim. “Let us all three ride over and look at the foal.”

So they went, and were strictly to be home at dinner time; whereas not one of them came home for a week.

When they came to the door at Garoopna, there was Alice, most bewitchingly beautiful. Papa was away on the run, and Dr. Mulhaus with him; so the three came in. Alice was very glad to see Halbert–was glad also to see Sam; but not so glad, or, at all events, did not say so much about it.

“Alice, have you seen the newspaper?” said Jim.

“No; why?”

“There is a great steamer gone down at sea, and three hundred persons drowned!”

“What a horrible thing! I should never have courage to cross the sea.”

“You would soon get accustomed to it, I think,” said Halbert.

“I have never even seen it as yet,” she said, “save at a distance.”

“Strange, neither have I,” said Sam. “I have dim recollections of our voyage here, but I never stood upon the shore in my life.”

“I have beat you there,” said Jim. “I have been down to Cape Chatham, and seen the great ocean itself: a very different thing from Sydney Harbour, I promise you. You see the great cape running out a mile into the sea, and the southern rollers tumbling in over the reefs like cascades.”

“Let us go and see it!–how far is it?” said Alice.

“About thirty miles. The Barkers’ station is about half a mile from the Cape, and we could sleep there, you know.”

“It strikes me as being a most brilliant idea,” said Sam.

And so the arrangement was agreed to, and the afternoon went on pleasantly. Alice walked up and down with Sam among the flowers, while Jim and Halbert lay beneath a mulberry tree and smoked.

They talked on a subject which had engaged their attention a good deal lately: Jim’s whim for going soldiering had grown and struck root, and become a determination. He would go back to India when Halbert did, supposing that his father could be tempted to buy him a commission. Surely he might manage to join some regiment in India, he thought. India was the only place worth living in just now.

“I hope, Halbert,” he said, “that the Governor will consent. I wouldn’t care when I went; the sooner the better. I am tired of being a cattle-dealer on a large scale; I want to get at some MAN’S work. If one thing were settled I would go to-morrow.”

“And what is that?” said Halbert.

Jim said nothing, but looked at the couple among the flower-beds.

“Is that all?” said Halbert. “What will you bet me that that affair is not concluded to-night?”

“I’ll bet you five pounds to one it ain’t,” said Jim; “nor any time this twelvemonth. They’ll go on shillyshallying half their lives, I believe.”

“Nevertheless I’ll bet with you. Five to one it comes off to-night! Now! There goes your sister into the house; just go in after her.”

Jim sauntered off, and Sam came and laid his great length down by the side of Halbert.

They talked on indifferent matters for a few minutes, till the latter said,–

“You are a lucky fellow, Sam.”

“With regard to what?” said Sam.

“With regard to Miss Buckley, I mean.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Are you blind, Sam? Can’t you see that she loves you better than any man in the world?”

He answered nothing, but turning his eyes upon Halbert, gazed at him a moment to see whether he was jesting or no. No, he was in earnest. So he looked down on the grass again, and, tearing little tufts up, said,–

“What earthly reason have you for thinking that?”

“What reason!–fifty thousand reasons. Can you see nothing in her eyes when she speaks to you, which is not there at other times; hey, Bat?– I can, if you can’t.”

“If I could think so!” said Sam. “If I could find out?”

“When I want to find out anything, I generally ask,” said Halbert.

Sam gave him the full particulars of Cecil’s defeat.

“All the better for you,” said Halbert; “depend upon it. I don’t know much about women, it is true, but I know more than you do.”

“I wish I knew as much as you do,” said Sam.

“And I wish I knew as little as you do,” said Halbert.

Dinner-time came, but the Captain and the Doctor were not to the fore. After some speculations as to what had become of them, and having waited an hour, Jim said, that in the unexplained absence of the crowned head, he felt it his duty to the country, to assume the reins of government, and order dinner. Prime Minister Alice, having entered a protest, offered no further opposition, and dinner was brought in.

Young folks don’t make so much of dinner as old ones at any time, and this dinner was an unusually dull one. Sam was silent and thoughtful, and talked little; Alice, too, was not quite herself. Jim, as usual, ate like a hero, but talked little; so the conversation was principally carried on by Halbert, in the narrative style, who really made himself very useful and agreeable, and I am afraid they would have been a very “slow” party without him.

Soon after the serious business of eating was over, Jim said,–

“Alice, I wonder what the Governor will say?”

“About what, brother?”

“About my going soldiering.”

“Save us! What new crotchet is this?”

“Only that I’m going to bother the Governor, till he gets me a commission in the army.”

“Are you really serious, Jim?”

“I never was more so in my life.”

“So, Mr. Halbert,” said Alice, looking round at him, “you are only come to take my brother away from me!”

“I assure you, Miss Brentwood, that I have only aided and abetted: the idea was his own.”

“Well, well, I see how it is;–we were too happy I suppose.”

“But, Alice,” said Jim, “won’t you be proud to see your brother a good soldier?”

“Proud! I was always proud of you. But I wish the idea had never come into your head. If it was in war time I would say nothing, but now it is very different. Well, gentlemen, I shall leave you to your wine. Mr. Halbert, I like you very much, but I wish you hadn’t turned Jim’s head.”

She left them, and walked down the garden; through the twilight among the vines, which were dropping their yellow leaves lightly on the turf before the breath of the autumn evening. So Jim was going,–going to be killed probably, or only coming back after ten years’ absence, “full of strange oaths and bearded like a pard!” She knew well how her father would jump at his first hint of being a soldier, and would move heaven and earth to get him a commission,–yes, he would go–her own darling, funny, handsome Jim, and she would be left all alone.

No, not quite! There is a step on the path behind her that she knows; there is an arm round her waist which was never there before, and yet she starts not as a low voice in her ear says,–

“Alice, my love, my darling, I have come after you to tell you that you are dearer to me than my life, and all the world besides. Can you love me half as well as I love you? Alice, will you be my wife?”

What answer? Her hands pressed to her face, with

flood of happy tears, she only says,–

“Oh! I’m so happy, Sam! So glad, so glad!”

Pipe up there, golden-voiced magpie; give us one song more before you go to roost. Laugh out, old jackass; till you fetch an echo back from the foggy hollow. Up on your bare boughs, it is dripping, dreary autumn: but down here in the vineyard, are bursting the first green buds of an immortal spring.

There are some scenes which should only be undertaken by the hand of a master, and which, attempted by an apprentice like myself, would only end in disastrous failure, calling down the wrath of all honest men and true critics upon my devoted head,–not undeservedly. Three men in a century, or thereabouts, could write with sufficient delicacy, and purity to tell you what two such young lovers as Sam Buckley and Alice Brentwood said to one another in the garden that evening, walking up and down between the yellow vines. I am not one of those three. Where Charles Dickens has failed, I may be excused from being diffident. I am an old bachelor, too–a further excuse. But no one can prevent my guessing, and I guess accordingly,–that they talked in a very low tone, and when, after an hour, Alice said it was time to come in, that Sam was quite astonished to find how little had been said, and what very long pauses there had been.

They came in through the window into the sittingroom, and there was Dr. Mulhaus, Captain Brentwood, and also, of all people, Major Buckley, whom the other two had picked up in their ride and brought home. My information about this period of my history is very full and complete. It has come to my knowledge on the best authority, that when Sam came forward to the light, Halbert kicked Jim’s shins under the table, and whispered, “You have lost your money, old fellow!” and that Jim answered, “I wish it was ten pounds instead of five.”

But old folks are astonishingly obtuse. Neither of the three seniors saw what had happened; but entered CON AMORE into the proposed expedition to Cape Chatham, and when bedtime came, Captain Brentwood, honest gentleman, went off to rest, and having said his prayers and wound up his watch, prepared for a comfortable night’s rest, as if nothing was the matter.

He soon found his mistake. He had got his boots off, and was sitting pensively at his bedside, meditating further disrobements, when Jim entered mysteriously, and quietly announced that his whole life in future would be a weary burden if he didn’t get a commission in the army, or at least a cadetship in the East India Company’s service. Him the Captain settled by telling, that if he didn’t change his mind in a month he’d see about it, and so packed him off to bed. Secondly, as he was taking off his coat, wondering exceedingly at Jim’s communication, Sam appeared, and humbly and respectfully informed him that he had that day proposed to his daughter and been accepted,– provisionally; hoping that the Captain would not disapprove of him as a sonin-law. He was also rapidly packed off to bed, by the assurance that he (Brentwood) had never felt so happy in his life, and had been sincerely hoping that the young folks would fall in love with one another for a year past.

So, Sam dismissed, the Captain got into bed; but as soon as the light was blown out two native cats began grunting under the washing-stand, and he had to get out, and expel them in his shirt; and finally he lost his temper and began swearing. “Is a man never to get to sleep?” said he. “The devil must be abroad tonight, if ever he was in his life.”

No sleep that night for Captain Brentwood. His son, asking for a commission in the army, and his daughter going to be married! Both desirable enough in their way, but not the sort of facts to go to sleep over, particularly when fired off in his ear just as he was lying down. So he lay tossing about, more or less uncomfortable all night, but dozed off just as the daylight began to show more decidedly in the window. He appeared to have slept from thirty to thirty-five seconds, when Jim awoke him with,–

“It’s time to get up, father, if you are going to Cape Chatham to-day.”

“D–n Cape Chatham,” was his irreverent reply when Jim was gone, which sentiment has been often re-echoed by various coasting skippers in later times. “Why, I haven’t been to sleep ten minutes,–and a frosty morning, too. I wish it would rain. I am not vindictive, but I do indeed. Can’t the young fools go alone, I wonder? No; hang it, I’ll make myself agreeable to-day, at all events!”

Chapter XXXIV

HOW THEY ALL WENT HUNTING FOR SEA ANEMONES AT CAPE CHATHAM–AND HOW THE DOCTOR GOT A TERRIBLE FRIGHT–AND HOW CAPTAIN BLOCKSTROP SHOWED THAT THERE WAS GOOD REASON FOR IT.

And presently, the Captain, half dressed, working away at his hair with two very stiff brushes, betook himself to Major Buckley’s room, whom he found shaving. “I’ll wait till you’re done,” said he; “I don’t want you to cut yourself.”

And then he resumed: “Buckley, your son wants to marry my daughter.”

“Shows his good taste,” said the Major. “What do you think of it?”

“I am very much delighted,” said the Captain.