Front matter (continued 7)

Indeed, so great an impression had this made on Miss Morton's mind that, though Mr. Haydon had been the previous Sunday at Broadmead, she had not stirred beyond the veranda. Still, it was comforting to know that he had made one or two artless plans to lure her away beyond the family circle.

The afternoon turned out very cloudy and sultry. Tantaro, the native boy, had had an accident with Duke a few days previously in riding to one of the out-stations. In jumping a fence the horse had struck his near fore-leg and cut it so badly that he could not be ridden for some days. Louise had not ridden for many years, so there was not a great choice of ladies' horses. There was Andy, voted an impossible little animal by Stella; and there was Norman, just then in a distant part of the run; and Orlando, who was in the stock-paddock close to the house, but had an evil name.

'He has splendid paces, and a head like an Arab,' pleaded Stella.

'Yes; but he has a concealed vice which is now an open secret,' returned her brother Hector. 'He shies at the most unexpected moments. Yes, you'll be on your guard if you see a lumbering bullock-dray, or a white log lying close to the road, or anything else that a nervous horse objects to. But how if he gives a sudden swerve when you are cantering along a tract as smooth and level as a bowling-green?'

'In that case I should either stick in my saddle or have a fall; and that reminds me, I've never had as many falls as people say go to the making of a good rider. Hadn't I better improve the shining hour?'

'You had—in keeping out of mischief. No, Baby, you must have no experimental bursters when you ride alone. You can have Andy to go anywhere with, and you can ride Orlando in the stock-paddock, then on Thursday you may have Norman.'

Stella rode Orlando once or twice round the stock-paddock, and highly approved of him. It is true he shied once or twice, but nothing to signify to anyone who knew how to sit in a saddle. On this dark, sultry afternoon she felt an uncontrollable longing to ride for miles in the open air. She was weary, but she could not sleep; restless and unable to work. She would ride to the Wicked Wood. It was only between seven and eight miles away, with a well-made road leading through it, little frequented by any save riders or the light vehicles of surrounding squatters, or people journeying between Minjah Millowie and Nareen. This wood had made a strange impression on Stella. It was only a few days previously that she had written of it to her sister Esther:

'Are there such tracts of utter desolation in any other country? Acres upon acres, nay, in one direction, mile after mile, with each tree bleached and bare as the planks of a wrecked ship that has lain for centuries on the coast of an uninhabited island. They are tall, and gaunt, and white, standing close to each other, so that their limbs—their poor skeleton-intertwisted branches—touch each other overhead. They look as though they had been convulsed with throes of mortal agony, and were then suddenly petrified. They are like the numberless trunks and bones of dead things reared in air instead of being kindly hidden in the bosom of the great mother. Are the limbs of living trees twisted and twirled and twined and twinged in this way? Is it possible that bark and leaves and the breath of life have such magic that they do not let us catch one glimpse of the real anatomy of a tree until their masking raiment is entirely gone? Some of the great old trees in the Wicked Wood have, through all these years, kept their tiniest twigs in extraordinary completeness. Standing under them and looking upward, they look more like delicate carving in ivory, like marvellous etching in silky-gray and pure white against a deep blue background, rather than the corpse of what was once dense foliage. It seems as if no great storm could ever have swept through the wood since it became a burial-ground of trees, whose hold of life was so strong that even in death they stand upright. Else how is it that those delicate cobwebs of interlacing twigs, those fine slender branches, dry and brittle-looking as an old grass-tree, have not been strewn in crumbling fragments—in dust, I had almost said? Underfoot there is a little vegetation—a sad gray-green, with wide patches of yellow sand showing between. I thought the Mallee country round Goonjooree might be taken as a type of the most weird aspect of our scenery, but the Mallee sinks into tameness compared to the Wicked Wood. It seems to stretch out unseen arms and compel you to stand and look from tree to tree, and try to draw in the secret of its strange fascination. It is too terrible, one says; and then, because of this, one visits the place again and again. It nourishes the imagination. There are some spots in it of which I dream by night. In the daytime I try to think of stories into which they could come. But then their barrenness—their lean detachment from all the glad life of the world around, freezes the impish fancies that seek to give them a local habitation and a name. The Wicked Wood is a sort of belt half a mile wide as one passes through it from here to Nareen, but miles away on each side, to the right hand and to the left. A mile further on, within sight of Nareen, there is a wide stringy bark valley, in which a bush fire raged not very long ago. It must have leapt from tree to tree and up the trunks to the very tips of the branches, for all are blackened and charred, and many are dead. But most of them have put forth young twigs and leaves. Some among them are, indeed, a perfect idyll of spring—all a mass of tender young leaves, clad in pale green, the youngest and smallest of them tinged with a pure bronzy shade, fluttering above the charred branches and along the coal-black trunks as if planted by some fantastic gardener in hidden vases.'

Now that the thought, 'The way is so long and the sea so treacherous,' kept rising in her mind like the refrain of a ballad heard long ago, and chiming perpetually beyond her power to still it, these gaunt writhing trees seemed to draw her to them as by a spell. It lay in her nature to seek serenity in a scene that had not one of the charms which ordinarily woo the heart. The cultured beauty of the Home Field, with its wealth of leafing trees and budding roses and spring flowers, disquieted her.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

Stella resolved that she would merely reach the Wicked Wood and then return—keeping unsleeping guard on Orlando all the time. Not even the sight of two yellow-rumped geobasileus birds, twittering on a dwarf honeysuckle near the road, made her forget to be cautious, though their notes were symptomatic of housekeeping, and one of their curious double nests was a thing she much longed to see. Orlando seemed to enjoy the spin as much as his rider—and that was saying much. Those who love riding find a fascination in the exercise it would be difficult to define. Care, or the shadow of trouble, has in it something unreal, while the free-bounding motion of a horse seems to add a new strength and buoyancy to one's flagging vitality. The air is lighter, the horizon widens, heaven is nearer, and the songs of birds come in ecstatic rain while mile after mile of forest, or wood, or plain is rapidly passed.

Within a mile of the Wicked Wood Dustiefoot lagged behind and barked in a way that told his mistress he was out of breath. She slackened speed, and then for the first time noticed the strange change that had come over the sky. Up from the north a long wide column of clouds, low and black, was rushing with incredible velocity. The wind, too, had shifted, and suddenly lost its warmth, and seemed to be gathering strange voices from the wilderness. It was evident that a storm was brewing. It was in this moment of surprised inattention that her brother's mistrust of Orlando's open vice was justified. Without any ostensible reason he suddenly bounded from one side of the road to the other, and Stella, who sat at ease, her eyes fixed on the quickly gathering clouds, found herself in the twinkling of an eye low in the dust, with one shoulder feeling very numbed, and a general sense of dislocation weighing heavily upon her. 'I have had an experimental burster after all,' was the first thought; and then she attempted to rise, but she could only limp very slowly and painfully. Orlando cantered out of sight, the loose reins and flying stirrup, and all that marks the demoralizing contrast between a horse ridden and guided and one who is a lawless runaway, prompting him to flee from the scene of his escapade. Dustiefoot looked after the defaulter lost in amazement, which presently gave place to an indignant bark. Then he came and fawned on his mistress, and held her riding-whip in his mouth till she took it from him.

There are few occasions in which the pangs of conscience make themselves felt more acutely than after being rolled in the dust by a horse that one has been warned not to take beyond the stock-paddock. As far as she could ascertain, Stella had no limbs broken, but both the right shoulder and arm felt extremely stiff and sore, and there was some twist in her right foot which made it impossible for her to walk even a mile, much less seven or eight. The only alternative was to sit by the roadside till some one passed who could take her home. And then arose the very unwelcome and disturbing thought that tramps and vagabond sundowners were just as likely to pass as friendly squatters in buggies, or a resident from Nareen or Warracootie eager to show a kindness to anyone belonging to Lull. There was a large fallen gum tree on one side of the road at about thirty or forty yards away from it. With considerable pain Stella dragged herself to this, and sat so as to be as much as possible protected from the storm, which would evidently soon break in its wrath.

Even as she reached this place of refuge, there was that curious lull which foretold a fierce outbreak. All heaven was now clothed with a shroud of storm-black clouds. The wind, which had quickly risen and broken into keen shrill voices, seemed for a moment suspended. The birds had betaken themselves to the covert of the trees, and were as silent as though night had fallen. Then, with a sudden obscurity of darkness, there was a great sound as of many rushing waters—a far-off gathering murmur, that had at first something plaintive, almost musical, as of many harpers harping on their harps. But this was soon drowned in a hoarse, ever-rising roar. Gust after gust of terrific violence, each one higher than the other, swept over the woods, till all the air was darkened and thick with dust, with branches torn from the trees, with fragments of blackened grass trees, with withered boughs that had been long dead of old. The spirits of the tempest were all abroad—a thousand jarring voices seemed let loose at once, rising in wails, and shrieks, and fiery confused sounds, as of battle and lamentation. Then a great flame of lightning swept the horizon, and peal after peal of thunder broke and resounded as though the earth were undermined with Cyclopean chambers, through which the deafening crashes hurtled and reverberated endlessly. Quivering, wide-drawn flames swept constantly across the face of the sky, as if the darkened heavens were being searched with flaring torches.

Dustiefoot cowered close to his mistress, and both were fortunately sheltered from the brunt of the storm by the closely interwoven branches under which they had taken shelter. Every now and then sticks and broken limbs, and all the débris that floats at large when the wind is blowing with hurricane violence over great tracts of thickly wooded country, fell around them. Now and then a branch was broken off overhead, and lifted high up as though it were a feather-weight. At each peal of thunder the dog gave a low growl, the hair round his neck bristling on end. Stella called him by name from time to time, but a trumpet-blast would have been lost in that terrific din as completely as a whisper. The touch of her hand on his head, however, seemed to reassure him. It was certain that the almost human intelligence of the dog's eyes, as he alternately fixed them wistfully on her face and looked abroad wrathfully when he gave a low growl, as if warning the elements not to go too far, gave Stella a sense of companionship, even of amusement. But the air seemed loaded with sulphureous vapours that gradually made her head feel at once giddy and very heavy. Once or twice she caught herself opening her eyes with the sudden start of one who has dozed. At such times Dustiefoot seemed more than ever on the alert with a brisk, protecting air. It was when the fury of the storm was spent that the thick end of a bough, which had been denuded in its flittings of all the lighter branches, crashed through the thinned-out boughs overhead, grazing Stella on the temple and falling heavily end-ways on poor Dustiefoot's left paw. He gave one low, yelping bark, but did not whine or moan once, though the jagged end of the storm's missile had cut and bruised him badly. The sight of the blood dripping from the wounded paw made Stella turn faint and cold. She could not spare her handkerchief in all that blinding dust, but she had a fine white silk one round her throat, and tearing this in two, she bound one half of it round the maimed limb. Dustiefoot lay close by her, his head in her lap, and more than ever, as the storm subsided, Stella felt that she could not keep her eyes open. She felt sure, however, that Dustiefoot would not let any vehicle or horseman pass by without giving timely notice. Already he had started up barking clamorously, but the passer-by each time was a stray bullock, which hurried into a thicker part of the woods as if fearful that the worst was yet to come.

Once or twice Stella aroused herself with thinking of the consternation her absence, through such a storm and on a horse of Orlando's character, would cause at Lullaboolagana. Well, at the worst they would send out in search of her when the evening drew near. And Dunstan had seen her take the road that led to Nareen. The atmosphere and the shock of the fall, and perhaps, too, the little blow on her temple and the previous night's vigils, all combined to bring on a queer feeling of stupor. She was not asleep nor insensible, and yet she felt as if even to move were a trouble. She felt a slow trickling on her temple, and thought it must be rain. A few large heat-drops had fallen as the storm abated, but nothing more. It was a little rivulet of blood which trickled from the left temple, where it was grazed by the tree-branch. She rested her head against a large, smooth bough behind her, and sat with closed eyes, deathly pale.

It seemed to her that hours passed as she sat in this way—never wholly unconscious, yet overcome with an irresistible languor. In reality only half an hour had passed, till one drove up rapidly in a buggy, with Orlando led captive behind it. It was Dr. Langdale on his way from Nareen. He had been caught in the storm, but was fortunately in the stringy bark wood where the trees were covered with vigorous young foliage. In the Wicked Wood the ground was simply littered with dead wood, which the violence of the storm had strewn broadcast like chaff. Half-way he saw Orlando, which he failed to recognise as one of the Lullaboolagana horses, but he knew the side-saddle daintily embroidered with scarlet. A horrible fear shot through his heart, but he strove to believe that it was misplaced. He could never quite recall how he got through the Wicked Wood. He kept glancing from side to side at the great withered trunks and limbs that the storm had felled, his mind filled with a sickening apprehension of what the next turning might have in store.

He breathed more freely when the Wicked Wood was left behind. A few minutes afterwards he recognised Dustiefoot's barking. Then, in one awful moment, he saw his worst forebodings beggared by the ghastly reality—Stella white and death-like, her face stained with blood. 'My God! my God!' he cried, with the intolerable agony of a strong man suddenly smitten beyond endurance. Stella heard the words distinctly, and recognised the voice. She had a struggling consciousness that if she willed it she could open her eyes and speak, but a kind of hunger fastened on her to hear what further he would say on perceiving her thus apparently insensible. She did not know how cruelly like death she looked—her face ghastly white, stained with dust and blood. In a moment he was by her side, kneeling by her, his breath coming in quick gasps. 'Oh! my darling, my darling—my darling!' he cried, his voice failing him with mortal fear. And then quick compunction seized on Stella, and she sighed softly. So extreme was his agitation, that for a moment he could hardly believe she was not mortally hurt. But he found that her heart beat with energy, he saw her eyelids quivering, and a faint tinge of colour stealing into her cheeks. She recovered consciousness slowly, so that he might not know she had heard those impassioned words which held the sweetest music that had ever fallen on her ears, also that he might not know the perfidy of which she had been guilty.

'You are badly hurt, I fear,' he said, as she at last looked up. His voice still thrilled with the sharp emotions which had rent him, but he had regained his self-possession.

'Dustiefoot is worse than I am,' she answered. She felt so absurdly happy that it was a surprise to her to find her voice so thin and faint.

Langdale went to his trap and produced one of those cases which are sometimes called the 'Bushman's Christian Companion.'

When it is remembered that such a case should contain a flask of the best brandy, with a neat silver top that can be used as a cup, also a flask of water and a pound or so of biscuits, the term will not seem out of place, especially if it is further remembered that those who make journeys in the Bush may often go scores of miles without seeing a human habitation of any kind. But perhaps the term is never so beautifully appropriate as when, as in the present instance, it is incumbent on the possessor of such a case, in the interests alike of science and humanity, to play the Good Samaritan.

'Now, one, two, three—and you are to drink this, every sup.'

'Do you really carry medicine about with you?' said Stella, with a little pout, as she sniffed the mixture.

'No questions, if you please. Remember, people who are picked up wounded and insensible are "cases."'

'Ah, that isn't so very inhuman!' she said, after gulping down the dose. 'It takes the breath away, but then it seems to bring back one's soul.'

'I am sorry to say that the noble art of healing does not invent such remedies. We cannot say, like the Bishop of Noyou, that this recipe came out of our own heads.'

'And who was the Bishop of Noyou?'

'A worthy ecclesiastic who used to say at the close of his sermons, "My brethren, I took none of these truths which I have just uttered from the Scriptures or from the Fathers—all came out of the head of your bishop." That was not a pharmacop[oe]ian drug you swallowed; it was brandy and water.'

'Dr. Johnson's beverage for heroes! Well, I felt heroic impulses the moment I drank it—no less than a resolve to mount Orlando. 'Oh, you unfaithful creature!' she said, looking reproachfully at the horse.

'Nonsense, you must submit to be driven home in my buggy, and I really must wash that wound on your temple.'

'A wound!' cried Stella, with incredulous amazement.

'Yes; was it the blow of a stray branch that threw you off the horse, or was it the fall that made you insensible?'

'Oh, I was not——' she stopped abruptly.

'Oh no, you were not insensible, I suppose, and you have not been hurt, and Orlando did not run away. In the meantime, this looks very much like blood.' He had wetted a handkerchief, and with the delicate touch of a trained hand washed away the clotted blood. Then he perceived that the wound was very slight, being, in fact, a mere scratch.

He assisted her to rise, and as she was determined to ride home, she repressed all sighs of pain. But he noticed her sudden paleness and the contraction of her lips.

'You are hurt. Pray let me drive you home.'

'Oh no, please. Claude will never let me forget it if I am ignominiously wheeled home.' And then it all came out—how she had persisted in leaving the stock-paddock on a horse notoriously unsafe, except, perhaps, for a buck-jumper.

'Well, do you know, Miss Stella Courtland, I begin to think you are rather a handful.'

'Yes, and I begin to see that you are rather tyrannical. Will you send Dr. Morrison to see how many of my bones are broken?'

'Yes, I shall send him; but I think it is a duty to warn him of the sort of patient he is likely to have. Poor old boy! your paw is really rather badly hurt. Would you like a biscuit, old fellow?'

Dustiefoot ate several. Then the 'Christian Companion' was put back in the buggy, Orlando's reins were mended with a piece of twine, and Stella rode him back, while Dustiefoot sat by Langdale's side in the buggy looking quite like an invalid. How incredibly happy they were as they went back through the woods, exchanging a few words now and then, laughing at the veriest trifles, watching Orlando's ears to see if he meant to shy once more, counting the notes of the birds that had found their voices now that the storm was over!

They parted at the avenue gate of the Home Field. 'I shall send Dr. Morrison at once. I know he is at home, because I took his distant patients for him to-day. Tomorrow I shall probably call in to see how Mrs. Parr and—Dustiefoot are going on.'

'Happy dog!' said Stella, with a mischievous laugh.

'Is it only a day since we sat by the hymenosperum tree?' she thought as she rode up the avenue. All her incipient fears and forebodings had vanished. The four months would speed away almost too swiftly—before she could fully realize this vast happiness which had come to her. There was some duty he had to fulfil before he asked her to be his wife. She accepted the fact without even speculating over it, so complete and whole-hearted was her confidence.

'I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not honour more,'

were the words that rose to her lips as she thought of the firm self-repression which had so speedily succeeded his agitation. Not for worlds would she have missed hearing those passionate words of endearment, and yet she resolved to be very guarded during the days that lay between their separation—to help him in every way to keep to a purpose which would not have been formed without good reason.

It was near sunset next day when he called. Mrs. Parr was making rapid strides towards recovery. Dustiefoot was as well as could be expected. Stella was with her sister-in-law, Louise, in the drawing-room, her injured arm in a sling, the youngest Courtland on a big white bearskin at her feet, the 'Arabian Nights' on a little table near her.

'Behold how tragedies are made when common chances happen to wilful girls!' said Langdale, laughing, as he sat near her. 'What have you been doing in Arabia?'

'Oh, I drank coffee with the three ladies of Bagdad, and then I met Aladdin, the son of Shamseddin, on his way to that city. You know he left Cairo with fifty mules laden with merchandise?'

'Was he overtaken with a storm, and——'

'"Did he have an experimental burster?" Pray do not spare me, or let me for a moment forget that I was thrown in the dust like a foolish sack of potatoes.'

'Indeed, Baby dear, it might have been very serious,' said Louise, laughing.

'I assure you it looked serious enough when I saw her,' said Langdale gravely. 'And as it is, your arm is a good deal hurt,' he added in a lighter tone, turning to Stella.

'Yes; and I swallowed some dust.'

'And a tree hit you on the head and wounded your dog.'

'And before I entered the house yesterday the whole family met me in a procession—like one of those sculptures they dig up in Nineveh, you know—all asking what could possibly have induced me to ride Orlando.'

'Yes; and to-day I have come with my pockets full of mulberry-twigs to whip you till you repent or die.'

CHAPTER XXXV.

It was easy to keep on neutral ground when someone else was by, but next day, when Langdale called, all the rest of the family were at Broadmead, and Stella was alone on the western veranda with a large basket of flowers she was arranging in glasses and opal dishes containing clear fresh water from the creek.

'Are you allowed to sit up in this defiant attitude and do things?' Langdale asked, as he sat facing her.

'Oh yes. Dr. Morrison says I am going on famously; and that if no one scolds me I may ride Norman—say next Monday.'

She held up a great cluster of half-opened white fairy-roses as she spoke, looking at them sideways in the clear emerald light that came in through the thick woof of greenery that enclosed the veranda.

'I wonder if anyone ever really scolded you?' he said, drawing nearer, so as to hand her the flowers she was arranging in the glasses with such cunning effect.

'Yes, everybody in turn—except Dustiefoot. Do you know, he runs about as if nothing had happened to him, with merely the prettiest limp in the world.'

'Are these white roses off the bush close to the myall acacia by the Oolloolloo?' he asked, bending over to count the number clustered on one slender spray.

'Yes; it is only rose-trees close to flowing water that bear such roses. How I should like to paint them or embalm them in fitting verse!'

'But they come back again next spring in all their old witchery. It is only human lives that can never be repeated—never be acted over but once.'

'Unless they are like the tags of old rhymes and the rain-clouds that fall and are evaporated and come back in a dragon-fly's wings, or a plant struggling for life on the edge of a desert.'

'Wicked child! you are laughing at me to my face. But whether or not we come back like the roses, or the creatures you so much object to that have more legs than four, every day is as fresh and keenly interesting now as if it were created for us individually.'

She felt that they were getting on dangerous ground, and sought safety by retreating to a more impersonal region in the persiflage that came to her so readily.

'And yet to superior beings on a better ordered planet, I suppose our lives would seem little better than blobs in a world heaped up with tumbled cobwebs.'

'What is a blob?'

'Do you go out into the woods in the early mornings?'

'Often, since I have learned from you what an exquisite hour the dawn is in Australia.'

'Then, have you not noticed transparent little webs pearled with dew hanging on bushes and tree-trunks?'

'I have occasionally. Why don't you look at me to-day, St. Charity, when you speak to me?'

She attempted to do so in a laughing, careless way; but her glance fell under his, and her fingers trembled as she wreathed a long spray of native clematis with pale-green tendrils and delicate citron-coloured blossoms round the slender stem of a cloisonné vase.

'Well, have you not noticed,' she went on, making her work an excuse for not looking at him, 'how, when something has brushed against these webs, the side touched has curled up in a little blister? That is a blob.'

'Thank you. And do you really feel like one when you are arranging flowers like these?'

'Oh, let us speak in a broad general sense,' she said, laughing.

But, curious to say, he disregarded the suggestion.

'What do you call these white single roses?'

'They are the Macartney. Are they not lovely, with their golden centres and wide cups with "leves well foure paire"?'

'I shall always think of it as the Stella rose. It is so starry, and seems to look abroad with such fearless inquiry,' he said slowly.

At the words a deep damask flush mounted into her cheeks and remained there. Her deep lustrous eyes were, in truth, shining like twin stars. The pale-blue tea-gown she wore, with a cluster of white fairy-roses at the throat, threw the pure tints of her face and the soft brilliancy of her eyes into clear relief.

'You think they have an inquiring look? Yes, perhaps, something like the wide-opened eyes of calves, or the beaks of hungry sparrows.'

How angry she was at herself to find her face flushing more hotly, her fingers getting more tremulous, her heart beating more wildly!

'Give me one of them, Stella.'

She held out one to him, and their hands met. He took the rose, but did not release her hand.

'Were you quite unconscious when I reached you yesterday?' he said in a low voice.

But she could not speak; her reply was a long, shuddering sigh.

'You know my secret; and you are not angry, Stella?'

His voice was very agitated; and, as for her, she seemed to be enveloped in a throbbing haze through which she could not clearly see nor hear.

'Tell me, my own, that you are not offended,' he said, drawing nearer to her.

'No, I am not offended,' she said at last, her voice lower than a whisper.

'And do you know—oh, you cannot know—how I love you, with my whole heart and soul, as a man can love but once in his life!'

A fantail began suddenly to sing near them as if its heart would break with joy—the selfsame bird that trilled its golden carol above the vine-arcade when he came back in the Pâquerette four months later on! What strange confusion of time!

'You must not say more till you return,' she said, looking up at him, vainly trying to smile. The full knowledge that he loved her filled her with joy so keen that it bordered on pain.

'But, Stella, I must say more. I must hear you tell me that you love me just a little; say it, Stella—say "Anselm, I love you a little!"'

'But—Anselm—that would not be true.'

'Stella—my own sweet love—do not trifle with me.'

'Yes, it would be untrue, for I love you'—there was a pause in which he could not breathe, till the words came with a great thrill of gladness—'more than I can say.'

He knelt down by her side and folded her in his arms. Their lips met in a long, long kiss.

What a strange, memorable hour followed! It was almost unreal in its tumultuous happiness. It was to both the great sacrament of life—consecrating it; giving it fulness and meaning; seeming to lift it for evermore above the meanness of chance, and accident, and disaster; giving them a heavenly anchorage from all peril and storm.

'And now you must say no more,' said Stella at last, smiling through her happy tears; 'and there is to be no solemn revelation to anyone. It is our secret till you write from England, as you purposed at first.'

'Ah, but that was when I thought I was Stoic enough to keep to my purpose—now——!'

'Now it must be the same, Anselm,' she said quickly. 'Oh, do you not understand how frightfully tiresome it would be to have anyone else talking over this precious secret before we have realized it ourselves? In four little months I shall have got used to the thought. The same reason exists now that existed yesterday—does it not?'

'Yes, my own,' he replied, a shadow falling on his face. 'But now I think you ought to know all.'

'No, Anselm, let it be as though you had said no more. We need make no promises. Let what was your wish in this be my law till you return. Let us be friends a little longer. Oh, it has been so dear and good a bond! Can any other be better?'

'You little sceptic! You have sat too long in the scorner's chair. People have often told you their little stories, Stella. I also have one to tell you. But as you wish it, let it be when I return.'

'Yes, sir—some evening when we begin to yawn at each other.'

'Very well, madam—when we have worn every subject threadbare.'

'And we have learned to say "Not at all, my dear," with tightening lips.'

'When the honeymoon is quite over.'

'And the first quarrel an old, well-known story.'

'And poor little Cupid has been sent to weed poppies.'

'And you wonder why you used to call me St. Charity.'

'And life has turned into a blob.'

'Now we must lay down rules. You must not take my words without leave. You did not know that was in the English language till I used it. Say, "Dear Stella."'

'Dearest beloved Stella!'

'"Please may I say 'blob'?"'

'Oh, you artful, captivating rogue! Tell me, Stella, how do you manage to be such a wonderful darling?

'Just because I want you to be in love with me—oh! so much that you don't know whether you are on your heels or your head.'

'And then?'

'Oh, then you must keep an eye on Cupid at his weeding.'

'Stella, my belovedest, don't encourage yourself to be cruel. It is a taste that grows on people, like eating opium and stealing umbrellas.'

'That reminds me. Shouldn't I ask you how many of the commandments you have kept, if any?'

'Certainly not. It is the most dangerous habit a woman can contract, that of asking questions, more especially when she is going to be married.'

'Oh, how boldly and brazenly you pronounce the word! How glad I am that it cannot be for some time!'

'Not so very long, thank God! Let me count on your fingers.'

'Oh no—no, please,' she said, suddenly drawing her hand away.

'But why?'

'Superstition!'

'Ah! Have those beloved fingers of mine—yes, you are mine; you know you are!—have they been counted before?'

'It is the most dangerous habit a man can contract, that of asking questions, more especially when he is going to be married.'

'You have said it. Oh, you bold child, how brazenly you repeated the word! But, Stella——'

'Well, once upon a time, as you know already, I did think of marrying; but I never loved before.'

'And I, Stella, my darling——'

'Ah, that is part of your story!—ah, of course I know! I have read so many plays, and then there is Tom and people. How many sonnets did you write to eyebrows before you were eighteen, let us say?'

'Would you like me to count?'

'No. After all, you couldn't tell what a darling I am if you had not found how foolish it was to love anyone else.'

'Stella, will you be a good, loving child? Kiss me once of your own free will.'

'Oh, Anselm—next time, perhaps——'

'Will you really?—and after that?'

'And after that—and on and on till—— Can it ever be a tale too often told?'

'Never, never! But what has become of my rose? Give me another one. Let it be a "Stella" rose. What stupid people have the naming of flowers!'

'Oh, yes! and of most things. If only lovers were among the convocations that decide saintship, how easily the ultimate distinction of the Church would be obtained!'

'But the truest saints never get canonized, St. Stella—"ora pro nobis." Why that stifled sigh, my little heretic?'

'May I not sigh any more when I wish?'

'Yes, while I am away. Oh, I think I must set off to-morrow!'

'So that I may sigh?'

'So that I may return quickly. Ah, Stella darling, I have been waiting for you so long; and now I have found you—I have found you, in spite of everything!'

They fell into the sweet, endless repetitions of lovers' talk—grave and gay by turns. The sun was setting before Langdale could tear himself away. And then, before he rode off, Stella walked with him to the passion-flower bridge; and there they lingered till a great white star glowed in the rose twilight of the west, which spread far up, almost to the zenith of the sky. This great roseate wave of colour was a beautiful phenomenon of the season, and increased in brilliancy as the summer drew near.

'Perhaps it is star-mist, out of which new worlds are to be fashioned,' said Stella.

'Are you sorry for them, Liebe?'

'No; perhaps after long ages there will be people in them who love each other as we do—and that will make up for all.'

A proud smile stole over his face as he listened.

'Are you mocking or in earnest, Herzblättchen?'

'In deadly earnest. I foresee I shall be fearfully serious, Anselm.'

'No, no; you must not be a whit different—that would be a schism I could not bear. Stella, may I give you an old keepsake?'

'Do you love it very much?'

'Yes; and I have worn it for twelve years.'

'Then you may.'

He detached a small, old-fashioned gold ring from his watch-chain.

'It is a motto ring that was left by an old relative to my favourite sister Margaret, who gave it to me before her death.'

'Ah! she died?'

'Yes, at eighteen. "A pard-like spirit, beautiful and swift." Do you know, Liebe, you reminded me of her the first night we met—and oftentimes since.'

Stella took the ring and kissed it gently.

'I shall wear it next my heart,' she said. 'There is a motto on the inside—"Amore."'

'Yes. "Amore e 'l cor gentil sono una cosa"—"Love and a noble heart are one and the same." It is out of the "Vita Nuova."'

'Ah, the great master. From first to last he speaks more nobly of love than any other of the sons of light.'

'Shall we read him together next spring, Liebe? You know we shall be old married people by that time. Are you cold, Stella? You seem to shiver.'

'No; not cold. When you spoke of next spring, someone must have walked over the earth in which my grave is to be.'

'Oh, Blättchen, what a weird idea! You should not speak of such a thing.'

'Yes; we shall read Dante together. But won't that be reversing the usual order of married people—to be first in the Inferno, and then go on to Paradise?'

They laughed softly. They were so far removed from the sagging prose, the dulness, the satiety of the 'usual order of things.' The hour was one of the charmed soft-footed fairies which come once or twice in the years of man's earthly pilgrimage—bearing in both hands a cup filled to the brim with life's costliest wine. The soft rose-glow in the western heaven thrilled through the transparent atmosphere; the Oolloolloo babbled merrily on its way, its course as yet unstayed by the fiery ardours of the approaching summer. A solitary curlew called in the distance, but near at hand the liquid songs of the little reed-warblers fell thick and fast, like swift melodious raindrops. They turned at last towards the house with lingering footsteps.

'How can we meet after this like mere friends, Liebe?' said Langdale, as they paused at the end of the little passion-flower bridge. 'It is very good and generous of you only to think of what I could have wished, but——'

'I would like to see the sort of being that represents me in your imagination, Anselm. Oh, please don't make a Dalai-lama of me, for you will be most dreadfully disappointed by-and-bye. Remember that we propose to face the ordeal of matrimony——'

'I wish to heaven the ordeal were to begin——'

'You must not interrupt—I am going to make a confession.'

'Well, your father confessor is waiting to hear it, and, if possible, to grant absolution.'

'"Father confessor!" Oh, Anselm, if you could see your own eyes just now you wouldn't call yourself such names. But don't try to look different. You are one of the few people who can be happy without looking foolish. I am quite in earnest. When people have the wrong sort of profile, they pay a very heavy penalty for being glad. You know when you cried out on first seeing me—I heard you. I was not insensible. I could have moved and opened my eyes—at least, I am sure I could—but I didn't even try.'

'You cruel child! why didn't you?'

'Because—because—I wanted to hear you say "My darling." I was at once bold and hypocritical.'

'This is too sweet a crime to be lightly forgiven,' said Langdale gravely.

'Oh, what infatuation! Well, don't you see it was like waylaying you—surprising you out of your declaration? I ought to be sorry, but I cannot, for we would have lost this day, and no other could be quite so perfect. Only let your reason hold good. After all, it concerns only us two really. And do you not know how I love to fold this secret in my heart from everyone in the world but you for a little time? I could not bear to have it profaned all at once. So many women chatter about such things in a common, callous way. There is Helen's elder sister—a perfect image of earth—who gossips away perpetually. Her favourite subject is engagements. You may smile, but I am quite serious. She asks questions until you feel that you are lying about in fragments; then she puts you together and begins afresh.'

'Very well, sweet St. Charity, let it be your penance to have your own way in this.'

'And now, while we walk back to the house, you can practise talking and looking like a mere friend.'

'In that case, when I speak to you, you must look away.'

'Look away! that is what people in love do in a comedy. Why, the very magpies would point us out as lovers.'

'But what am I to do when you look at me with those eyes?'

'That is not the way to practise. Devise anecdotes about the weather, and try to be reasonable once more, for you have suddenly forsworn the art.'

'There is not the same call for it. You seem to have left off railing against nature and Providence, and the treacheries of life; remember what you said about the new world!'

Stella watched him ride away, turning at intervals to look at her till he was out of sight, and her eyes became suddenly dim with the thought—'Only eight more days before we must part!'

CHAPTER XXXVI.

Yes, these eight lengthening golden spring days swept on with cruel swiftness. And yet they held so much. The hours in which the heart is most deeply touched have something of the quality of eternity. They stretch backward and forward, allying themselves with all that is deepest and most enduring in human experience. Stella's was one of those complex, yet essentially feminine, natures which can only be gradually kindled with love. But when it comes to full being it is a passion which transforms all life. In place of discord there is harmony that before lay mute and unsuspected, like Hassan's gold covered over by common wood. The friendship which had ripened into the perfect blossom of love had been a very real one. Social intercourse is for the most part a pitifully shabby concern, in which the ashes of mere existence smother aspiration, the quick play of fancy, and the sympathetic flow of thoughts that range beyond merely egotistical aims; an affair in which men and women largely bear themselves as though they were automata moved only by the wheels of custom, taking thought mainly for the things that perish with the using. But fellowship with the kind of vitality which wakens deeper chords of thought and feeling is as the salt of life. There were moments at first in which Stella could have found it in her heart to be sorry that her friend had 'degenerated into a lover.' But if he had not, how unhappy she would have been! And how much she would have lost! Even the old faith she had given up seemed in some way gradually flowing back. When she prayed she no longer lost herself in weary conjectures as to its futility, doubting that her weak pitiful words could reach the great Omniscience, whose thought of order was the fixed law of all the starry hosts, doubting and wondering, till she seemed to be obliterated in a chaotic universe where nothing seemed certain but uncertainty.

And these long beautiful days passed without any of the jar and fuss and congratulation that would have robbed them of their serenity if the sweet notion of mere friendship had been abandoned. 'Please tell us about one of your hospital people,' Stella would say, as she often said before in the presence of her brothers, or their wives. And she would sit sewing and listening, hardly raising her eyes. There were so many people she had learned to know in this way—the old Scotch charwoman who never read fiction because, she said, it was mostly taken up by things that did not signify for this life or that which is to come; the little lame boy who told the sister of charity he did not believe God heard people about legs; the costermonger who had been run over, and whose wife candidly explained that the Lord had made him 'naterally so silly,' one could not tell oftentimes whether he was drunk or sober. And when they were alone after one of these episodes had been talked over, Stella would say with unaltered demureness, 'Dr. Langdale, do not go into partnership with your cousin in the West-End.'

'Why not, Miss Stella?' he would say with responding gravity.

'Because you like the poor so much, and'—dropping her voice with a quick change of manner—'we shall have enough money. And medicine has the trick of turning into a trade when it makes a big income.'

The 'we' had a magical sound to Langdale. Then sometimes they would talk of the work on which he had been engaged. At first he persisted he would tell her nothing about it till his return.

'You have woven so many brilliant fancies about it, St. Charity, and the reality is such homespun stuff.'

Then she found he had been engaged on a dual task—one a treatise on some aspects of hypnotism, the other on the conditions of factory labour. On this she expounded a brilliant plan by which they might be unified, and so produce a novel with a solid realistic background, relieved by incidents of ideal romance, in which 'suggestion' should play the part of the genii.

'Never were so many plots thrown away on a material, semi-Teutonic mind before,' laughed Langdale.

Before these charmed days were over he could not forbear confiding to Hector Courtland that his purpose in returning so speedily to Australia was to visit Fairacre, on which Courtland heartily wished him good luck, and prophesied that he had a good show, but said not a word to Stella.

He told his wife, however, and she was delighted, but a little provoked at what she thought was some sort of caprice on Stella's part. She assumed that Langdale had put his fortune to the touch, and that the girl was too wayward or too proud—too much in love with her dearly cherished liberty—to be at once entirely guided by her heart.

'She will be sorry when he is gone, and it serves her right,' she said, a little vindictively.

'Oh, Stella may as well have a good long think over it; she is just the sort of girl that might be happier single all her life,' returned her brother meditatively. He fully adopted his wife's opinion, without, however, ascribing his sister's supposed action to caprice.

'Oh, you think Stella means all those wicked little speeches she makes about marriage?' said the wife.

'Well, she means some of them, or they would not occur to her,' returned Hector, with a touch of that fine discrimination which often characterizes reticent natures.

Mrs. Courtland's resentment was not of a serious nature, and, indeed, chiefly took the form of contriving to give the friends that solitude à deux which so often leads to a change of programme, and even of life. Thus, on the afternoon of the day preceding Stella's departure, the two, after strolling for some little time with Mrs. Courtland and Mrs. Claude among the rose-trees by the Oolloolloo, found themselves left alone, heartlessly deserted by their companions. It was the fourteenth of September. The season was dry and warm, and already the time of roses had begun at Lullaboolagana. Some were out very early, some were half open, some just in bud, but all of them were very lovely. The white and pale cream Banksias were out in clustering festoons against walls and espaliers; there were tall standard rose-trees of Fortune's yellow, cloth of gold, white and pink moss, the Safrano and the generous old cabbage—all were loaded with opening roses. The Ophiric, with its shining, unserrated leaves and roses of pale flame, the delicate yellow of the Narcisse, the camellia-like pure pink of the Princesse de Hazel, were among those that were opening earlier. The Solfataro, too, with its large, greenish-white buds, pale, wax-yellow when they first unclose, but later white as the breast of a sea-gull; La Brillante, with its fiery, coal-like buds; the Gloire de Dijon, dark-red in early infancy—all were slipping their sheaths and coyly uncurling their outer petals. Dry as the season might be, the roses never lacked for water in the Lullaboolagana Home Field. They were its great glory—the joy of its mistress and the pride of Dunstan's heart. There were stations not twenty miles away in which roses paled and dwindled like rare exotics under an inclement sky. But here on the banks of the little Oolloolloo, and all within the spacious field, they bloomed early and late.

'How do you manage it, Dunstan?' visitors used to say in wondering admiration; and the old man, who was careful always to conceal his pride, would reply:

'Oh, it's the sile as does it—the sile and the creek and the underground tank and the tubing. You see, if I say to the mistress, "I wants this or that—or the t'other must be done," why, there 'tis, you know. 'Course, I don't say that I'm a born jackass, and don't know that one rose wants to be treated one way and another quite contrairy.'

Gardening was a topic on which Dunstan was never unwilling to enlarge when Stella spoke to him as he worked in the Home Field. He did so on this afternoon, when she stood lost in admiration of a young Murray wattle, whose great golden racemes, drooping one over the other, all the folds of the wide woolly tufts fully open, formed a sight of exceeding joy.

'Yes, 'tis purty fair,' he said, giving it a sidelong look; 'and yet, if I hadn't a-pruned it a bit last season and given it more water, 'twould have give up the ghost. A man may put as much work inter ground as would make trees and flowers spring up like shiverin' grass, and he may get naught but barrenness, if so be his work isn't what it should be. 'Tis for all the world like a man going out shootin', Miss Stelly. He may fire away till he's black in the face, and yet not bring home a crow's feather—like Bill Wilton, who's so fond of carryin' a gun—why, the Lord only knows, if it's not to show how much powder and shot may be wasted, and no harm to any creature with a wing, though I've known him to graze the tail-end of a bullock pretty bad. 'Twas after that I was out with him once at Swamp Desolation, and he kep' on blazing away in such a permiscous way, I said to him at larst, sez I, "Look here, Bill, if you're to go on firing like that, I must go into the swamp and sit down among the wild ducks; 'tis the only spot where I'll be sure of a whole skin."'

Stella, who had stayed behind her companions to talk to Dunstan, was laughing merrily over this incisive illustration, when Langdale came back alone; and then the two wandered by the Oolloolloo, whose silvery whispering was growing fainter day by day.

'Teach me before we part, ever belovedest, how I am to live so long without seeing you or hearing you laugh!' said Langdale, as they stood to watch the ripple of the wind among the tender leaflets of a beech-tree. 'Don't sigh, Stella. See what a perfect love-day has been sent us to-day by——'

'Heaven—say Heaven, not Nature, Anselm. A little while ago I kept wondering what they could grow in heaven lovelier than a Murray wattle and rose-buds. And now look up there, where tiny flakes of cloud leaflets seem to be floating. They are really young angels, who are waiting for an excuse to come down.'

'Do they despair of seeing people as happy up there as here? But tell them, Liebe—for they will hear your slightest whisper—if they want to see perfect happiness, to come all the way down next spring. Do you remember what brave old Homer puts in the mouth of Ulysses when he wishes that Nausicaa may be happily married?—"Nothing is better or more beautiful than when a man and a woman inhabit a house being one in heart."'

'We must not have too many possessions, Anselm. People get so fearfully stupid—so swallowed up in furniture. It would be adorable to start life like Hassan the camel-driver, with a cruse of water and a plume of curled feathers.'

'You often gibe, Liebstes Herz, at the commonplace, as though it were a penal settlement; but I confess I have often seen a day-labourer return to his home at night with feelings akin to envy.'

'Dear darling, you have often been lonely, and I wasn't there to comfort you. But after this——'

'Tell me, Stella, when I return home will you hasten to meet me, walking buoyantly on the fore-part of your feet like a figure in antique sculpture, as you walked among the rose-trees just now? Come and sit in this charming little summer-house—all one mass of jasmine and passion-flowers! Why, Stella, my darling—good God, you are crying!'

'Anselm, how foolish of you to be alarmed because I shed a few tears! Did you think I never, never cried? I believe Cuthbert is quite pleased when he sees me reduced to tears. Not that he has witnessed me often in that plight. You see, we were so much together, and, as boys do not cry, I got quite out of the habit.'

'But, my child, all this does not explain why you weep now. Herzblättchen, I cannot bear to see you anything but gay—or smilingly serious.'

'It is because we are too happy, Anselm. All day it comes over me afresh every now and then like a great wave of incredible gladness. Sometimes I cannot sleep, thinking it is all too like a fairy-tale. The first thing in the morning, before I open my eyes, my heart begins to beat wildly for joy—every bird that sings has a lilt in its song to which I could dance; and then in the middle of it all comes a sudden shiver of fear. Ah, there are such frightful accidents—such catastrophes in life! I think of my old friend Stanhope cut off in a few days! It all came up so vividly last night.'

'And the tears are in your eyes still, you fearless, fun-loving little Australian, with strong roots of the Keltic melancholy and superstition lying deep under all. Get a "pâquerette," and pluck the leaves to see how I worship you. Daisy petals are truer than dreams.'

He drew her close within his arms. Here she was safe. Here the billows of life's bitter waters could not reach or affright her. The jasmine summer-house was over-arched by a tall white poplar, whose young leaves with fair silver lining quivered on the slender stalks with as swift a motion as on the day that the old Greek poet compared the maidens to them who spun late and early in the household of King Alcinous. Through the roof of leaves and blossoms overhead, and the poplar limbs with their mist of tender leaves, the blue crystalline dome of the sky could be seen, stretching above all like a great benign smile. How peaceful it all was! How much more reasonable to believe the waking assurances of earth and sky than the vague presentiments of a sleeping girl!

'O gentle wind, that bloweth south,

From where my love repaireth,

Convey a kiss from his dear mouth,

And tell me how he fareth.'

She chanted the words with the old glad light in her eyes, and laid solemn charges on him to turn towards Australia night and morning and waft her greetings.

They did not say farewell that evening. Hector Courtland was to accompany his sister part of the way to Melbourne, and was to take her by way of the Peeloo Plain, on the borders of which his friend Mr. Dene lived, and Langdale proposed to pay a long-promised visit at the same time. But many farewells had to be spoken, nevertheless, and do what she would, the feeling lay heavy at Stella's heart that in leaving Lullaboolagana, the dearest, tenderest chapter in the book of her history was over. Here life's dearest mount of vision had been scaled, its sweetest idyll had been told.

Poor old Mick wept effusively when she bade him good-bye; Dunstan made it very clear that it was her duty to come back to Lullaboolagana early next spring, if not sooner.

'Why, Miss Stelly, the place was made for you, I may say; and what will become of the vagabonds that get their legs broke, I dunno: The crow has took to no one but yourself, and that poor female as went away with her brother last week whole and well, and the three horses a kickin' up their legs as if they never knew what it was to be skelingtons; and even that blasphemin' cockie had forgotten some of his worst curseses——'

Dunstan lost himself in enumerating the caravan procession that had so deeply impressed him.

The next afternoon Stella and her brother reached Peeloo Station, where they were to stay the night. Langdale came near sundown, after paying some professional visits for Dr. Morrison by the way. There was but a meagre garden at this station, though it was a wealthy one, like most in the district. The house, too, had a curiously makeshift appearance. The fact was that the family from year to year proposed residing in the vicinity of Melbourne. Near sunset the host proposed an evening ride to all who cared to go over the great Peeloo Plain, which stretched for over sixty miles westward. There was an artesian well ten miles off, on the plain of weeping myalls, he wished to show Courtland.

'Whom the gods love ride across a great Australian plain in the evening,' said Stella; and Langdale, of course, was instantly converted to the same opinion. So the four set off westward, when the sun was low on the horizon. There were heat clouds piled up in an unmoving bank, through which the sun burned, as it sank, like a smouldering fire that the wind has fanned till the coals kindle into red heat and the flames break out, eating their way through the fuel. For a moment before setting the sun stood all undimmed on the level horizon like a great fiery ball, and then dropped suddenly out of sight, leaving a deep soft glow which reached high up in the heavens, and so remained for hours. This beautiful, unusual appearance was more vivid that evening than it had ever been before.

The riders followed no road, but took their way across the plain, still clothed with the luxuriant winter grass, which here and there was beginning to be touched with the heat languor that a few weeks later would turn the verdure into sapless flax. But as yet the herbage was so close and rich that the hoof-beats of the horses scarcely awoke an echo. The few sounds that were borne with startling distinctness through the sonorous air died away. The shrill scream of a black cockatoo in the depths of a weeping myall, the twitter of a little emu wren bounding through the grass, the loud calls of the white-fronted honey-birds in a flowering acacia, the hysterical chorus of laughing jackasses in the wooded bend of a watercourse densely lined with ti-tree, the sudden caw of a solitary crow in a box-gum, all became silent, one by one. Now and then a red kangaroo, with his beautiful ruddy tints and faint flush of dawn-rose on the under-neck, or a doe, clad in delicate steely blue, bounded near them as they passed.

They flew over the great smooth plain, while the spring wind, vivifying as a sea-breeze, blew in their faces. At times they came to a stretch of kangaroo grass, tall and rustling, swayed by the wind that came now and then running up in little fitful gusts, till the faint billows formed an exact image of the half-formed waves seen in mid-ocean in placid summer weather. The earth and sky equally had an unfamiliar boundlessness that at first lay like a weight on the spirit, and yet gradually soothed it as the imagination gathered impulse and repose from the sad magnificent horizons, unbroken by wood or hill, or the gleam of water. At rare intervals the marvellous uniformity was heightened rather than interrupted by the course of a creek whose abrupt banks were marked by a wavering line of box-wood or weeping myall, and sometimes dense undergrowth. The light of day and the brilliant blue of the sky were replaced by the dreamy paleness which falls on the world when the heavens are cloudless, yet hold the stars for some time out of sight, and the earth lies stretched below without limit and without shadow.

There was no cold look in the sky, no bleakness on the earth. It was noble in its vast breadth, its virgin promise of fertility—fit to be the dwelling-place of a race strong, free and generous; careful not only for the things that advance man's material prosperity, but caring infinitely as well for all that touches the human spirit with quick recognition of its immortal kinships.

'It is like no other scene I have ever looked at,' said Langdale, at length breaking the silence.

'Don't you feel you will remember it all to your dying day?' asked Stella softly.

'Yes; perhaps when we die we shall remember it better than ever. It is like a picture of the old classic underworld, with its pale light and its wide, homeless pastures.'

'Oh, if it would only last for ever—the world flooded in mysterious light, the horses never tired, the horizon never visible! Why are you smiling?'

'I would not wish it to go on for ever. I have an earth-creeping imagination that would soon pine for a local habitation—and Blättchen waiting for me inside. But how often we shall recall this ride till we meet again!'

There were cadenced cries far overhead, as if among the stars, which began to swim into sight all over the firmament, and looking upward, a long line of great birds, with dusky wings wide spread, became visible.

'They are swans going to their nesting-places by some swamp,' said Stella. 'How plaintive and musical their notes are! Don't they make you understand what someone meant when he said that virtuous melodies teach virtue?'

'And what virtue could they teach Herzblättchen that she does not possess?'

'Handfuls! Try to believe this in time: gentleness, resignation, hope. Did you not tell me yourself, some time ago, that I was curiously lacking in hope? I always knew that a friend was more faithful than a lover!'

'But, Liebe, I am both; only the more I know you, the less I could bear to have you different.'

'That is what I am always promising when my happiness makes me afraid to be different. I take refuge in the thought that I am going to be so useful and helpful—to make some lives happier that without us might be intolerably hard; to make our future home a little radiant centre. Anselm, I had rather be a cat and mew at the moon than be self-complacent and wrapped up in my own prosperity like a cocoon.'

Langdale laughed softly at this quick vehemence of speech.

'But, Stella, how little danger there is of that! Do you want to make me believe that you have not always been helpful and loving—full of sympathy and tenderness and quick insight, ready always?'

'Ah, but you don't know how indifferent in between—how ready at any moment to believe that after all it does not much matter. You do not know this vagrancy of temperament. You are protected by your nationalities and your love of work. That gives you an ideal of duty apart from whim and sudden changes of mood.'

'I always knew that a friend was more faithful than a "Little-heart-leaflet."'

'Don't laugh at me, Anselm. We shall recall this ride so often, as you have said: when the days are too long—when people are wearisome: and that is one of the great qualities of our race everywhere.'

Langdale laughed again, and took off his hat in acknowledgment of this wide compliment.

'Forgive me, Liebe,' he said, recovering his gravity; 'but this air seems to get into one's head like champagne. But I promise not to interrupt again.'

'Well, always while you are away—when I am bored, when I am overcome with the feeling,

'"Only my love's away,

I'd as lief the blue were gray'—

I shall think of this ride, and remember that I made resolutions to be better—above all, to be more patient. I can so well understand how it was with the Foolish Virgins. It is never amusing to wait long. I should have gone to sleep, I am sure. I should have been caught with my lamp extinguished. Do you know that seeing you so unwearied—so lost to every thought but the welfare of that poor woman during the days when she was so near death—has given me, I think, a more abiding sense of duty.'

'Sweet St. Charity! how divinely serious your face is just now—heroic in its earnestness!'

'My heroic moods are exotics; the wings of my soul are not full-grown, and it takes but very short flights; it comes nestling back to earth so quickly; it will follow in the wake of your vessel all the way; you may not see it, but it will be there—especially at dawn. Leave your cabin window open; for it is only the spirit of a dead soul that can go through cracks and bars of iron and glass.'

'And will your beloved little soul come and lay a kiss on my face?'

'No. It is not the vocation of a soul to kiss.'

'Nor even to whisper those delicious little niaiseries that make me so happy? Cruel little soul! Why, then, will it come all that long way?'

'To get into your waistcoat pocket with your watch, and count how fast time flies.'

It was past nine o'clock when they returned to the Peeloo station. The host and Courtland lingered at the stable after they dismounted.

Langdale and Stella bade each other farewell on the wide veranda covered in with passion-flowers and a luxuriant Queensland bignonia.

Langdale had to leave by daybreak, as he was anxious about one of the patients he visited that day—a splitter living among the great tiers of peppermint eucalyptus that lay behind the Messmate Ranges—a man who had been injured by a falling tree. Stella was very brave, and kept a smiling face to the last. Then she went in and chatted for awhile with the lady of the house, while the men smoked on the veranda. She had gone to her own room before they came in.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

Laurette had never been more airily cheerful and full of gossip than she was on the day after Stella's arrival.

'We have all the morning to gossip in. I asked Mrs. Carter and Dora to afternoon tea, so there is no chance of their dropping in at some unearthly hour. To-morrow evening we are going to rehearsals of private theatricals at the Jorans'. By the way, they have returned from England since you were here. They are among our créme de la créme in Melbourne. What confers the distinction? Well, at present, the very inner circle is rather High-Church, and of course has the right of tambour at Government House, and one must be very wealthy or'—Laurette made a slight pause, so as to make the point with emphasis—'one must be connected with the British aristocracy, or with the viceregal family.'

'When the two are combined, one must hold every blessing that this life affords in the hollow of one's hand,' said Stella with a becoming gravity.

'Yes, my dear, unless one has to retreat to the depths of the Mallee Scrub, as I must shortly do. But I shall devote myself to the education of the children. But about the Jorans. Thomas Joran has had what you might call a romantic career. The very earliest glimpse of him in colonial history: he hawked elderly cabbages in the streets of Melbourne—at least, they would have been streets if they had been made. Well, I don't mean that any decaying vegetable is romantic; but then compare the status of a man employed in that way and one who entertains a Duke and goes to Court. But it was rather a sell about the Duke. You see, the Jorans entertained him sumptuously. Some people say that, in all, they spent four thousand pounds on him in less than a week. What it must have cost them in special trains alone! I myself have sometimes seen Joran haggard with anxiety, hunting up railway officials, while Mrs. Joran stood sentinel lest a common populace should even peep in at the blue satin lining, or the butler, who was in a separate compartment, in charge of the ice and champagne. Naturally a man could not have all this gold and incense lavished on him without making some return. So when the Duke left our shores, he cordially invited the Jorans to visit Rookcourt when they were next in England, thinking he was safe because they had only just returned.

'But "the dear Duke" had scarcely sailed, when weighty reasons compelled the Jorans to do likewise. In fact, Mrs. Joran, in a burst of confidence, confided to me that it would be unpardonable not to respond to the Duke's pressing invitation. But sad to say, the only recognition his Grace accorded them was that a younger son asked Mr. Joran to lunch with him at a Radical Club. You may talk of the aboriginal myths, but I think they are very paltry compared to spending five or six thousand pounds, and getting in return a five-shilling lunch! It could not have cost more, for out of compliment to his guest, Lord Augustus had colonial claret, the kind we can buy in Melbourne at fifteen shillings a gallon. Oh, I assure you, it was quite five or six thousand pounds the Jorans spent, between the voyages and a mansion in Park Lane for three months, and servants that made them believe the nobility never ate beefsteak that cost less than two-and-sixpence a pound. Still this last visit to England was not altogether without consolation. The British Government was about that time bent on what is called "knitting the bands of the empire closer." So people from the remotest isles and colonies were patronized and invited in troops, like tenants on rent-day, to various very funny entertainments. The Jorans went with a crowd of others, to lunch or breakfast or something at Windsor Castle. The greatest mar-joy in the arrangement was that an over-worried Court official was heard to exclaim in despair, "Good Lord! I thought this was the day for the negroes!" Mrs. Joran never mentions the Windsor visit to me now; she did so once or twice to begin with, but I invariably said, "Well, it must have been comical to see all those darkies from Benares and Ceylon and the Malay Peninsula. And, by the way, were there any of the Chins from Burmah who hang missionaries to make the rice grow? I take an interest in them, because the Dowager Countess of Essington—Talbot's aunt, you know—spends a small fortune on the dreadful creatures—— But no, I am mixing things up like the poor gold-rod-in-waiting, or whoever it was.... Haven't you heard the story, dear Mrs. Joran?" Naturally she doesn't give one the chance to trot this out too often.'

'Well, I suppose Mrs. Joran does not sheathe her claws when she gets a chance to tell you amusing anecdotes,' said Stella, who sat listening to this sprightly malice with a good deal of amusement. 'I have always heard that kindness and a wish to please are at the root of true breeding—so you seem to have the article here to perfection.'

'Oh, that's all very well, when one is in the country,' returned Laurette. 'Why, when I am at Cannawijera, and the squatters' wives around ask me my opinion of their bonnets, I assure them they are perfectly chic—awful things, you know, with black cotton lace, and the wings of those demi-monde African parrots, that tear your eyes out with their staring yellow and green. Oh, Talbot is well, thanks. He has gone into some sort of partnership with a man who buys land at a shilling a yard, and sells it at £10 a foot. Mining is so frightfully risky—perhaps land is, too; but you can cut up land, it seems, into minute globules, and yet build houses on it. I don't understand exactly how it is done, and yet I have seen it in a way, just as I have seen conjurers' tricks. You give one of these men your handkerchief and he gets eggs out of it—though you know there were none when you gave it to him.

'Driving about in the suburbs, I have often seen vacant pieces of land for awhile. By-and-by there are great placards as big as a house put up on lofty poles: "This valuable piece of land, situated in the very best suburb of the metropolis of the Southern Hemisphere, is to be sold at a ridiculously low price," and so on. That is what they write on these enormous placards. And though there is nothing to be seen near them, except, perhaps, a few dirty children and rusty kerosene tins, when you see such an announcement in big letters for a few weeks you somehow begin to believe it.

'Then there are columns in the newspapers about the rising suburb—the suburb which is coveted by the élite of Australia; the suburb where the irritating hum of the sanguinary mosquito is never heard. Then you get a fat letter containing an elegant circular, with daisies and butterflies round the border, and a map of the place—all showing that in some way every blessing this earth affords is grouped round the rising suburb. If you read the advertisement and the circular, and have a five-pound note to spare, and never go near the land, you're sure in the end to buy an allotment. You see, you need pay only a few pounds to begin with. But then you pay a few shillings a week as well, for the rest of your life, or till you throw it up—I mean the land, not your life, though some unfortunate people have done both. But if you do that you lose all you have paid. So altogether it comes to a lot of money—only I am afraid the "boom," as they call it, is going off, for at a sale last week, only the auctioneer, and the boy that rang the bell, and Talbot, turned up. But now tell me about Lull and Minjah-Millowie, and all your people there; and the Mortons, don't they live not far off? And who is this Dr. Langdale all the good people rave about?'

Only once before had Laurette seen the colour flash into Stella's face in such endless wavelets. To hide her confusion she broke into a laughing account of some of Mrs. Morton's funny little stories. But without this Laurette had concluded that all Julia's surmises were well founded. The girl looked so radiantly, so insultingly happy. She fell into such dreamy little reveries—her lips softly parted, her eyes shining with a gentler irradiation than of old. And then she studiously avoided Langdale's name. Heartless coquette that she was, after encouraging Ted's addresses for years, she was now prepared to throw him over at a moment's notice to satisfy an absurd whim of being in love. As if there were no such thing as duty in the world! Nothing was more characteristic of Laurette than the way in which she always fell back on the moral foundations of life as the true mainspring of her actions when she found herself in what she called a 'fix.' She ignored everything that it suited her to forget, and when meditating some paltry little scheme that had every element of meanness and treachery on a small scale, a virtuous glow stole over her as if she were reinforced by the law and the prophets, and obedience to the Ten Commandments was what she lived for. But here she seemed to have entered a cul-de-sac in which there was no move in her power that could further her purposes.

'There is nothing so easy to make as a tradition,' one of our best-loved novelists once wrote; and many lesser people find it also very easy upon occasion. There was no tradition, oral or written, that Laurette was not prepared to invent. But to what avail? Ted would come, and the first few words between him and Stella might serve to explode all Laurette's painstaking efforts to keep the girl in the strait and narrow path of duty. A point had come in which invention without deeds was valueless—but what could she do? Nothing except wait the course of events with a heart prepared for any little justifiable artifice that would keep her brother's life from being wrecked by the selfish perversity of a heedless girl—one bent only on her own scheme of happiness, regardless of the sacred claims of the past! She was undoubtedly in love with this man—was she engaged to him? A hundred times the question rose to Laurette's lips. A feverish sort of hopelessness grew on her as she marked those little signs that in themselves are so slight, and which yet, linked together, furnish so strong a chain of evidence.

Many things had conspired to tax Laurette's nerves lately, and she found this additional suspense intolerable. But the instinct of secrecy, of concealment, which comes to be a second nature with those in whom a life of small intrigue has grown and waxed strong, restrained her. Nothing could, after all, be gained by asking this question. She would wait and watch.

Stella escaped early into her own room that night, and wrote for a long time, a happy light on her face, and warm blushes often mantling in her cheeks, which would have told their own tale to an onlooker. This was what she wrote:

'DEAREST FRIEND,

'I was half glad and half sorry that we did not meet in the morning. Our homeward ride was so altogether precious—so far removed from the ordinary grooves of life—it was better to part in the starlight and see each other no more. I almost wish we should not meet again till you return from England. And yet, of course, it is only my pen that says this. Yes, I soon went to my room; I sat without a lamp looking out into the beautiful night, with its soft, deep glow and ethereal starlight, and I made a picture of it all in my mind, which I will keep forever and forever. Oh, I am so very sure that nothing we can see in any other world in any other life can be dearer or more alluring than that ride together over the great plain, stretching indefinitely on every side as if it passed beyond the confines of the world. The shadowy clumps of trees, the dark lines that marked the watercourses, the tall kangaroo grass undulating gently like stormless billows, the cries of water-fowl far overhead, the muffled hoof-beats of our horses, the boundless expanse, the solitude, above all, the pale, wistful light, making visible the faint lilac of the sky, the uncertain gray-green of the earth—I held them all, making a picture of them that should not pass away. I looked at them long and steadfastly till the secret of their changeless uniformity, their unbroken peace, their sweet serenity, penetrated my heart. Do you remember the fragrance of the wild geraniums that our horses crushed under their hoofs in one place? It comes floating in with the moonbeams at this moment. But to be the elixir of life it must be accompanied with the sound of a voice—the voice which in all God's wide universe—— But is this what one writes to a "friend"? And what is the use of trying to make a pen say all that rises in the heart?

'Oh, you little cold, good creature! I say to it; you are sometimes wonderfully cunning. You have a tongue of your own that often dives down after thoughts, and brings them out triumphantly, after a fashion that sets stammering speech at defiance. But where are your eyes, that brighten with happy smiles, and grow dim with excess of joy? And where are your cheeks to glow and turn cold in a breath? And, above all, where are your hands that with a touch, a little timid good-night clasp, make the tongue feel like a clown who has nothing to say but the worn-out tags of songs long known by heart? All these gifts come to you only in the hands of a master from whom you learn the strange magic of playing on the hearts of men from generation to generation, like a clarion heard at dawn....

'But I have no power to teach you how to tell the thoughts that rise in my hearts in these days—the wonderful long, swift days in which so many thousand strange, sweet, shuddering thoughts storm and foam, and then flow in strong deep tranquillity, like an impetuous mountain brook that grows ever wider, till it becomes a river and loses itself in the sea. But help me, little pen, to tell a few of these myriad fleeting thoughts that will not let sleep come beyond the threshold. Is it true, then, that this dear friend and I belong to each other for time and eternity? That neither life nor death, nor principalities nor powers, can ever mar the perfectness of our love? Is this true? Yes—yes—yes. Yesterday is irrevocably ours, and to-day belongs to us, and to-morrow dawns that we may still know how perfect life may be. Henceforth our lives are double—one within the other, in heart and spirit—never to live apart, even though seas may roll between and continents divide us.

'And can it be that from year to year the heavens will be so high and golden, the earth so wide and loving, that the heart will thrill with a power of loving which lifts the soul as on eagle pinions, till life and death are but twin brothers, equally welcome so that we are undivided?

'Ah! what a strange thought, almost to wish for death now! Yes, would it not be good to escape a possibility of the cruel ironies that Nature keeps so often in store for the children of men? Can any mortal measure the power which time has to bring in its train change and weariness? What if the day should come when this love, so strong and ardent now, should become one more of the beautiful illusions of life, a deserted pavilion flecked through and through with the mildew of indifference? Has my heart been too readily given? Is it not written in song and story that men prize most what is won with difficulty? But as for me, the first time we spoke to each other, did not my heart stir tumultuously? Could I not have opened my eyes if I had willed that day when the storm had raged so fiercely—was it not because I hungered to hear him speak his love? ... Well, be it so. I am glad that I know the truth—that it will be with me through these long months of separation, like a nest of singing birds whose wings grow strong for flight, and who yet, like doves that fly afar in the day-time, always return to their dove-cotes before night falls.... Tell me of the gentle, tender thoughts which cast out every lurking shadow of fear; of the new ties that may arise to knit us ever closer, heart to heart, in the higher duties of life, till we

"'Learn by a mortal yearning to ascend.

Seeking a higher object,'

till in imagination I draw near to the dim bourne without any heart-quaking. Yes, even Death must doff his terrors when we know that the infinitely beloved of our soul must pass through the shadow of the dark valley. Ah! gentle, kindly Death, grant us that last favour of life—not to be long apart after the last farewells are spoken. After all, it is the might of love that takes the victory from Death and robs the grave of its terror. We learn to know too well that not a clod can ever touch the outer bark of the spirit's life. Abide with me, thoughts of pensive gentleness, that fill the mind with calm till all forecasting doubts and fears are swallowed in the azure of peace, like clouds that wander on the wide horizon till they are spun into the flawless dome of heaven....

'After all, little pen, there is a touch of the laity about you, so that the heart cannot take you into its full confidence. But do not stand in the outer court of the Gentiles—the dear friend for whom you are writing loves our babbling. What other small broods of fancies do you hear chirping out their slender roundelays? No, let us not speak of our happiness. It is foolish to cut snippets out of so endless a theme. What was that little whisper of fear or regret?—no, nothing so resolute as these feelings, but a vagrant little misgiving, that trips so swiftly before one looks it in the face. One cannot say whether it is a scout, or a forerunner, or an idle little gad-about, who has nothing to do but snatch an ear of corn, melting melodious airs to the most wayward woodland fancies. Are you not afraid to marry when you are so desperately in love? Ah, wicked little rover! I have caught you merrily whistling your treasons. Now I have put the tip of my pen through your errant fancy, and transfixed it for my friend. I should not wonder if he would beat you as blue as a violet when he catches you. But what treacherous little arrow have you let fly? Let me get at the core of this half-jocund lay which leaves a sting behind. Youth, love and marriage, are these the three fearful felicities of a woman's life, and is the most fearful of these marriage? And love, the most exquisite vision which life holds, is it in imminent peril when it is imprisoned in the service of every-day life? ...

'Lovely as one of the muses, and crowned with the first violets of spring, this vision loved to wander solitary on mountain peaks, when they were first lightly touched with the vermilion of brightening day. It came and went at will—this radiant dream, casting a glamour over the world, like the reflection of a damask rose falling athwart the half-opened chalice of a white magnolia. Dreams shun the glare of day; but one morning the voice of him to whom this vision of right belonged called to it to come from its lonely haunts, and abide by the altar which he had dedicated to it in a secure dwelling-place—alas! is it too secure, too untroubled? Who could believe that a little air of revelry, whistled on an oaten pipe by the most insouciant of wandering minstrels, should awaken such qualms? Go on, little pen—an altar fitted to guard the fairest dreams. Even Love's purple wings and golden arrows are touched to finer issues when they are consecrated with life-long vows. Yes, like other monarchs, he comes to his kingdom by making covenants; and yet, and yet, we cannot give up the dream for the reality without heart-quaking and doubt, and something of poignant regret. Flashes of thought come like cloven tongues of fire, in whose light the soul waxes faint and timorous and cries in anguish. Is it, then, true that love's inmost life is rooted in the senses, are its keenest aspirations to be tamed like caged birds, to be merged in the commonness of every day content? Yet, for all possible fears and doubts and questions there is an answer: Perfect love casteth out fear. Love, the crowning felicity of life, that light of the world which shines more unquenchably than the stars of heaven. It is strong, not only to bear sorrow and anguish, but also to meet the common needs and common joys of daily life, buoyant enough to sustain the secure happiness of wedded as well as the despair of parted lovers.

'Dear friend, does this appear to you as the cloven foot of those heretical images of marriage which haunt me so often? But who can go through life with open eyes and not perceive that the average run of married people seem to have but entered on business contracts, in which anything like the ardour of love is absent as conspicuously as in any huckster's bargain? Do you remember my telling you one day that I could not be so very sorry for Romeo and Juliet? You asked me why, and a coach-whip bird flew snapping by, and I followed it to make sure whether it had a white spot above each eye. And then, though you may not think it, ever belovedest friend, I often hesitated to say things because of your calm, clear reasonableness. But now there is no coach-whip bird, and you are three hundred miles away. Therefore do I thank the gods that here and there we have the immortal story of lovers who died before their hearts and lives were touched with the corrosion of life's invading commonness. Why should we regret those who knew how to die so well for dear love's sake? So many and so many live to bear false witness to it—to sit under a ragged banner and eat garlic, nor ask to be stayed with flagons and comforted with wine. But then, again, there are the fortunate few. I must stop. I should have written to my mother this evening, but I wrote to you instead, though I parted from you only the day before yesterday. Oh, Anselm Langdale, do you not call this the utmost peak to which ingratitude can climb? A mother's love; whose is like it?—giving so much, asking so little! Do not pretend that you ask little. History, poetry, the drama, your eyes, all betray you. But this first tender love that enfolded us from the dawn of life, that bore with all our waywardness, that watched over us in illness, that was with us like the benediction of God when we first folded our hands in prayer. And then, like long-legged, every-day chickens, we leave the loving mother to scratch up the dust for ourselves, without the shadow of an excuse that she pecks us away in favour of a younger brood. Don't I know? Have I not watched my old hen, Augusta, rearing brood after brood? And now I watch myself looking forward to the return of the Pâquerette with hardly a pang. Hardly a pang? You hypocrite—with a heart that keeps time to dance-music all day long; yes, and beats wide awake at night to keep up the revel. Think of it—coldly to leave the sweet mother when the night is drawing on apace, when all the vivid personal gladness of being alive is over, to wander to the far ends of the earth, perhaps to meet never again. Oh, infinite pathos and mystery of our being! Life, hast thou never a draught of joy to offer that is sparkling throughout? I am ashamed I did not write to my mother instead of writing to you; and yet, no, because to-morrow is Friday, and I would not write my first letter to you on that day for the world, it would be a bad omen. Why do you smile so? I could prove to you that from the first dawn of history until now, omens have played a strange part in the life of man. Think how ominous of their future career it was that all the Ten Commandments were broken even before they were given to mankind! I spare you the rest. This in itself is an army set in array.