*CHAPTER XIX*
*The Mood of a Maid*
'Do you know what it is to seek oceans, and to find puddles, to long forwhirlwinds, and have to do the best you can with the bellows? That's mycase.'
Bartie had gone up to Coolooli for the afternoon. Old Mr. Stevenson hadtaken a great fancy to the boy, and prophesied that he had the making ofa fine squatter in him.
Stevenson had ridden in to the selection on his way from Wilgandra. Itwas not often he passed the neat new gate in these days without turningin. He always felt a pleasant glow of conscious virtue, as his eyesmarked all the improvements that had so suddenly sprung up.
'Me boy's pleasing me,' he would mutter. 'It wasn't much to ask.'
He told the surprised Cameron that it was his fad to leave none of hisproperty unimproved, and that he was merely making the trial on thisparticular selection, to see what might be done with a small holding.Cameron was rather relieved than otherwise that he no longer owned theplace; the money he had borrowed on it at different times was almostequal to the sum he had paid for it at first. With such a landlord itwas a much less responsible thing to be merely a tenant, especially asStevenson, since he had foreclosed, would accept no rent, professingthat he was getting the place ready for some one who could not takepossession for a year or two, and that it was a convenience to him forCameron to stay on the place and keep it in order. The long-establishedcharacter of the man as hard and close kept any suspicion from Cameronthat he was being helped out of kindness.
The old man had come in this afternoon to carry Bartie up to Coolooliwith him, to show him the new invention he was about to try for thedestruction of rabbits. Bart rushed off to get his horse ready whileStevenson stayed talking of the war and his son to Mrs. Cameron. It wasquite a surprise to her when she learned much later that the old man hadfive other sons. This one at the front was the only one he ever spokeabout.
He liked talking to this practical, sensible mother of the family. Hefelt amazed that such a shiftless fellow as Cameron should own such atreasure, and he felt, as he looked at her, that the salvation of thefamily would have been assured after her arrival, even if he himself hadnot lent a hand. With Hermie his manner was unconsciously somewhataggressive, and she shrank from the rugged-faced old man who looked ather so sharply from under his bushy eyebrows. He saw her one day as hepassed her in the verandah, reading a book fresh from London. Mrs.Cameron saw to it that the poor girl had time now for such rest andrecreation.
'Can you make soap and candles?' he said, stopping suddenly in front ofher.
It was not likely such arts had been learned on Dunks' selection.
'No,' said Hermie. 'At least, we did try once with the fat to makesoap, but it went wrong.'
'How would you instruct your men to corn beef or make mutton hams?'
Hermie looked at him distressed.
'I have never done any,' she said.
'Humph!' he growled, and went to untie his horse, muttering, 'A prettywife, a pretty wife!' to himself.
This particular afternoon Bart went off in high spirits, Challiswatching him wistfully from the verandah.
Hermie was--oh, who knew where Hermie was? Wandering up and down amongthe roses perhaps, her eyes soft with tears--Challis had found her likethat two or three times--or reading poetry in some quiet corner in thepaddocks, or writing it in the secret solitude of her bedroom, or onTramby's back riding, riding with dreamy eyes down the road to thesunset. Wherever she was, she did not want Challis.
Mrs. Cameron was with her husband. Up and down the path they walked,his arm round her waist, her hand in his, talking, talking a little ofthe future, not at all of the quivering past, mostly of the tenderall-sufficing present. Challis, who had had such sweet monopoly of hermother for so long, missed it exceedingly now, while readily acquiescingthat the turn for the others had come. She looked from the verandahwith yearning eyes. It seemed months instead of weeks since she hadpoured all her hopes and imaginings and longings and queer littlefancies into that ever-ready ear.
Roly? Roly was killing his Boers down in the paddock, or wheeling heavyloads of earth to make kopjes in the bush. He would tell her to 'clearout of the way of lyddite shells,' if she sought him out.
Floss? Floss, who hated a needle, was sitting on the grass making, withincredible labour, a pincushion for the mother she had begun to lovewith an almost fierce affection. Challis would have liked to go and helpher, but the child, if she pricked her fingers till they were empty ofblood, would have no stitch set in it that was not her own. Furthermore,all the dreams on the Utopia were dispersed. Challis had never buttonedone of the little girl's garments, never tied a sash, never brushed outa curl. The small woman had dressed herself independently ever sinceshe was three, and indignantly scorned all help; she hated sashes--herstraight light hair she raked herself. And though she accepted in anoffhand fashion the toys Challis had chosen with such love and interest,she kept up an inexplicably warlike attitude towards her, and deprecatedher on every possible occasion. Her hands--'Pooh! Well, I would beashamed to have hands that colour! S'pose you never take your glovesoff?' 'Frightened to walk in the bush 'cause of snakes! Well, somegirls are ninnies!' 'Never been-on a horse--'fraid to get on Tramby!Why, she--Floss--had galloped all over on Tramby without a saddle whenshe was only four!'
Challis, sensitively aware of her own want of courage to explore andgrow familiar with these bush things, got into the habit of shrinkingaway when Floss came on the scene.
There seemed no niche left for her in this home she had looked forwardto; that was what it was. The place, rightly hers, had filled upentirely during her long absence.
No one understood her, or tried to. They took it for granted that hergenius and her life abroad had lifted her to a higher plane than the oneon which they themselves lived. It might be very cultivated andbeautiful up there, but they were not familiar with it, and thereforedid not take any interest in it.
The girl tried hard to get on to their plane, and be interested in theirthings; but they knew she was trying hard, and it merely irritated them.Let her stay where she belonged.
It was so lonely, too--so very lonely. Used to the pleasant uproar andfriendliness and excitement of cities, this little clearing in the greatsilent bush oppressed her intolerably after a week or two.
She had been a little ill before leaving Sydney. The doctors had saidher nervous system was completely run down--a shocking thing in a child!They advised complete rest for several months, and expressed theiropinion that the quiet bush life at Wilgandra and roughing it withchildren, who would take her out of herself, would be the best possiblething for her, and the triumphal career could be resumed later on.
So there were to be no concerts yet, no happy strivings to interpretChopin's varying moods to a breathless audience, to reach up withMendelssohn to his pleasant sunlit heights, to go down with Wagner tostrange depths that stirred her soul. She was to practise very little,to appear in public not at all. The papers expressed their regret ather illness, and said a kind thing or two. After that her name had nomention in them.
One paragraph she had read had touched her to the quick. Someinterviewer who had been to see her in Sydney wrote in his paper, 'ThankHeaven, she is not pretty! Her chances are hereby much greater.'
Poor little Fifteen! Her pillow was wet that night. She felt she hadmuch rather he had said, 'She has no genius, but she is very pretty.'She longed for Hermie's shining wavy hair, for the sweet blue of hereyes, the pink that pulsed about her cheeks. Who cared if you couldinterpret the waves and storms of Lizst's rhapsodies, and let the keenlittle rifts of melody in between the thunder until the almostintolerable sweetness made the heart ache? Who cared that Leschetizkyhimself had taught you and had tears in his eyes once, when you hadplayed to him the wind in the trees just as he himself heard it? Whatdid all these things matter? Every one went home from your concerts andforgot all about you.
Oh, surely it were better to be so exquisitelypretty that all who saw you loved you on the spot!
She looked at herself again and again in the glass that night. Untilthat wounding paragraph, she had never given one thought to her looks;the sensitive small face, the grey eyes drenched with this new tragedy,the fair straight hair falling over her shoulders--not pretty, notpretty, and all the world knew it now!
She drifted in from the verandah to the living-room, where the pianostood open as Hermie had left it, when, imagining Challis out of hearingan hour or two ago, she had sat down to it for a few minutes. But thecheap tinkling stuff that comprised poor Hermie's _repertoire_--thejingling waltzes, the pretty-pretty compositions of Gustave Lange andBrindley Richards, 'Edelweiss' and 'Longing,' 'Warblings at Eve,' andsuch--they set her ear horribly on edge, though she would rather havedied than have said so. It were less torture to hear Flossie thumpingconscientiously away at 'The Blue Bells of Scotland' and 'We're a'Noddin'.'
The very piano was a heartache; it was seven years since it had beentuned, and despite the careful dusting of Miss Browne, the silverfishled a gay existence in its interior, and ate all the softness and depthfrom the notes.
But this afternoon the girl, with that vague misery tugging at herheart, was driven to it; nothing else could ease her. She put her footdown on the soft pedal, to keep the discordant jangle away, and avoidingas much as she could the B that was flat, and the D that was dumb, andthe F sharp that Roly had torn off bodily, she worked off the gloom thatoppressed her with Beethoven and Bach.
Roly came in. He was arming himself for a new attack on Ladysmith; hehad the kitchen poker and the stove-brush, the tin-opener, a knife froma broken plough, a genuine boomerang, the corkscrew, the gravy-strainer,and the carving-knife, disposed about his person, and he came into theliving-room, his eye roving about in search of fresh implements ofwarfare. Nothing seemed to appeal to him, however, and he was going outagain discontentedly when he noticed his new sister had dropped herhands from the keyboard, and was resting her forehead there instead.
He approached her with some awe.
'Can you play with your head too?' he asked; then he noticed there weretears running down her cheeks. 'Don't cry,' he said; 'I'll run out andask mother to let you off. Did she say you'd got to practise an hour?Oh, I'll soon get her to let you off!'
Challis smiled faintly through her tears.
'It's all right,' she said; 'don't disturb mother. No one told me topractise.'
'Well, you _are_ a muggins!' said the uncouth bushikin. 'Catch _me_setting myself a copy or a sum! Why don't you go out and play?'
Challis let a new tear fall.
'I don't know how to play at anything,' she said. 'I never had any oneto play with.'
Roly's breast swelled with magnanimity.
'Look here,' he said, 'you can be Cronje if you like. Here, you canhave these two for your weapons.' He handed her the stove-brush and thecorkscrew. 'Come on down here, I'll soon show you how to do it.'
Challis shook her head.
'No,' she said, 'I'm fifteen; it's too late to learn now. I'll justhave to go on playing and playing at concerts. And who cares whenyou're playing your very best, and have practised one composition sixhours a day? Who cares?' She looked at him miserably.
'Look here, Chall,' he said, a most brotherly, kindly tone in his voice,'it's only because you play such fat-headed things, that's why theydon't care. I can't listen to them myself. Often when I've been diggingmy garden outside the window, and you've started to play, I've just hadto go away. If you'd learn some nice-sounding pieces now, instead ofthings like Flossie's scales, only worse! There's Peter Small's sister,down in W'gandra, you ought to hear _her_ play; she can play "Soldiersof the Queen," and "Sons of the Empire," and "Absent-Minded Beggar," and"Girl He Left Behind Him," and all those things, and she jumps her handsabout, and runs up and down, and crosses them just as much as you do.If you like, I'll ask Peter to get her to lend you them; I'm friendswith Peter just now.'
Challis smiled and dried her tears.
'I mightn't be able to play them, Roly,' she said; 'so I don't thinkI'll trouble you to ask.'
'Oh,' said Roly encouragingly, 'you'd soon pick them up. You couldwatch her a few times, and notice how she does them. But I'll have tobe going now, Challis, if you don't want me. I'll be down in the bushat the back, if you want to come and have a try to play. Don't let onto Brownie that I've collared this.' He pointed to the gravy-strainerthat adorned his breast. I'll bring it back all right.'
Left alone once more, Challis wandered about the little house. MissBrowne's door was half open, to let in the evening breeze. Miss Browneherself, her day's work finished, was sitting at the table writing amultitude of letters with a happy flush on her cheeks.
Challis looked on wistfully.
'Would you mind if I came in and sat with you?' she said.
Miss Browne dropped her pen and jumped up to welcome her.
'My dear, my love, why, you know you may; most pleased, most delighted,whenever you like--honoured, most delighted.'
Challis stepped into the little room.