Chapter VI: Part 6

'Yes,' she said, 'I suppose so.' She sat silent a little time. 'But then it was you who came,' she urged again. 'We used to be quiet and happy in our own way, even if we were unprogressive and unintelligent. It seems, to a woman, we might have been left alone.'

'Ah, but,' he said, 'there were bigger issues than that at stake. You have read--I can see that you have read--you must know why we are fighting.'

'Somewhere at the top,' she said, with a wan smile, 'there may be a few--a very few--on both sides who know. But our men don't know. They have been told they will lose their liberty and homes if they don't fight; that is all any of my cousins knew, and they went off to death, not cheerfully, but because there was nothing else to be done. Your men, of course they come because they are sent, and they fight their best because they are brave and obey orders. We have been insolent--isn't that what you say of us?--and we must be crushed. But some of you must know the rights of it all. Think how much wiser you are than we. You read while we plough. Those of you who know should stay behind.'

'No,' he smiled; 'that is not our way either. We are no different from you. We pay a few great men to do the thinking for us, and if they say it's got to be fighting, then, whatever it seems to us individually, collectively we just shoot.'

The fire burnt lower and lower; it was the only light in the room, for the oil-lamp, exhausted, had died out. Outside the rain still fell in straight soaking sheets over the thatched roof of the little house. A wind moaned restlessly over the empty country; you fancied it was lost and full of woe, because it had no trees to wander through. Once or twice a horse whinnied, once or twice there came through the night the inexpressibly mournful sound of the bleat of a sheep. You felt the rain was like no other rain at all; it seemed as if the land, swollen-eyed, was weeping in the quiet of midnight for its unutterable woes.

The girl's head drooped back against the wall. Sleep had claimed her; but, by the anguish of the mouth and the pitiful stirring of the breast, you knew it was but to show her the body of her young husband, cast with a score of others in a trench, all wet with red.

Stevenson sat, a cold sweat upon his brow; he felt he was the only soul awake on all the frightful continent.

Then through the silence of the house came a woman's voice reading the Bible--the mother seated a foot away from her quiet son. The thin wood offered no resistance to the sound of her voice.

'"Gather up thy wares out of the land, O thou that abidest in the siege. For thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will sling out the inhabitants of the land at this time, and will distress them, that they may feel it. Woe is me for my hurt! My wound is grievous: but I said, Truly this is my grief, and I must bear it."'

The sound of the voice pierced into Linda's wretched slumbers. She opened dilated eyes, and stared wildly at Mortimer. And the voice went on again:

'"My tent is spoiled, and all my cords are broken: my children are gone forth of me, and they are not: there is none to stretch forth my tent any more, and to set up my curtains. For the shepherds are become brutish, and have not inquired of the Lord: therefore they have not prospered, and all their flocks are scattered. The voice of a rumour, behold it cometh, and a great commotion out of the north country, to make the cities of Judah a desolation, a dwelling-place of jackals."'

'Oh,' said the girl with a sobbing breath, 'it is only aunt, of course; she often reads aloud like that. But, oh, I have had such dreams--such frightful dreams!'

The voice went on.

'"O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps. O Lord, correct me"'--the tone of the voice fell a little--'"but with judgment; not in Thine anger, lest Thou bring me--to nothing."'

'I dreamt--I dreamt,' said the girl, pressing both hands on her throbbing heart--'ah, I could never tell you what I dreamt!'

'Hush,' said Mortimer, 'don't try, don't try! Won't you go to your room, and try to sleep in comfort?'

She looked at him with distended eyes.

'I daren't,' she said. 'O God, I never shall dare to sleep again!'

The voice rose; the horrible exultant thrill in it made the flesh creep.

'"Pour out Thy fury upon the heathen that know Thee not, and upon the families that call not on Thy name: for they have devoured Jacob, yea, they have devoured him and consumed him, and have laid waste his habitation."'

The girl staggered to her feet.

'I will go and sit with her,' she said; 'she should not be alone.'

*CHAPTER XVIII*

*A Skirmish by the Way*

At earliest dawn Mortimer was up and away again.

Linda had risen up and prepared breakfast for him; quiet, capable, busied with frying-pan, fire, the setting of a place at table; he looked at her as she moved about the kitchen, and wondered had not the sight of her face of agony last night been a dream? She even rallied him a little.

'You must eat well,' she said, as she put fried eggs and bacon before him--the pleasantest meal he had eaten since he had left Sydney; 'you don't want to be out another night with those despatches of yours loose.'

'I want shooting,' he said, his forehead burning.

'Oh no,' she said, 'you are young yet to it all; you will have plenty of time to learn carefulness before the war is over.'

'I hope so,' he said.

'I am afraid so,' she assented.

Something struck him. That soldier-farmer in the quiet front room--who was to bury him? who dig his grave?

'If I had thought,' he said, 'I would have done it myself the--the grave, you know--instead of having breakfast. You girls cannot do it. Is the old man strong enough? I would do it now, but my time is not my own.' He looked at his watch.

'I have sent the three little boys to Du Toit's farm,' she said, 'five miles away, to ask them to send two of their Kaffir boys down. All of ours have gone off.'

He shook hands with her when he was going, thanked her for all she had done.

'It is nothing,' she said; 'we have to thank you, yet we don't, you notice. It is war-time. Good-bye.'

The grey air freshened as the sun climbed foot by foot up over the great kop to the east. The night's storm had left the veldt fragrant as our own bush after rain. The deserted farms looked at him, a mist of sleep and forgetfulness in their eyes. Those every-day fences, those gates made for farmers to pass through, farmers' daughters to lean on watching for their lovers, farmers' children to swing on--was it possible half a dozen regiments had gone crashing through and over them, hastening to headquarters only a week before?

Mortimer looked at the healthy land with a bushman's appreciative eyes. He wondered now many sheep the farms held. A Boer prisoner at the camp had told him the country carried a sheep to six acres, an ostrich to twelve, and a horse to twenty. He speculated loosely on the chances there would be for an army of drought-ruined Australian settlers to come here after the war with modern implements and knowledge, and astonish these pastoralists, who were a century at least behind Europe in the way of agriculture.

'Even Cameron's ahead of them,' Mortimer thought, his mind reverting sadly to the poor little selection at Wilgandra that bounded Hermie's life.

A heavy waggon went past drawn by a span of mules, and driven by a Kaffir, who cracked a whip of such length that the ordinary stockwhip was nowhere beside it.

A bent old man, with a cart of vegetables and a horse too decrepit for the war, crept by. Smoke in a place or two went up from the chimneys of the scattered farmhouses. The continent was awake.

Riding yesterday, Mortimer had never known when he might run into a Boer picket, but the farther he went now the danger lessened--in another dozen miles he ought to be somewhere about the beginning of the line the British had made to defend a railway. And after that his ride would lie through country dotted over by the British army.

He pushed on; his horse was fresh and ready again after the night's rest and a couple of good feeds; his own spirits, chiefly owing to his excellent breakfast, began to rise again and push his carelessness from the chief place in his mind; he grew aflame for a chance to prove his courage, and respect himself once more. Before he left the camp it had been held that a big engagement was certain in a very few days; his mind leapt forward to it now with a keenly sharpened appetite, and he beheld himself making famous his country's name by impossible feats of strength.

Crack! To the left of him a firearm went off; the bullet passed clear over his head, and rattled on some loose stones as it fell.

He glanced round less in fear than astonishment. At the spot the veldt was singularly clear, and the nearest kopje was far beyond rifle-range. Whir! A second shot struck his helmet, a third grazed his shoulder! His horse plunged and reared; he spun it round and faced a clump of karoo bushes twenty yards to his left, the only place from which the shots could have come, and even these seemed absurd, for no shrub was more than two or three feet high. He raised his revolver; his finger was at the trigger. Then he saw three small faces over the edge of one of the bushes--three that he knew; they were the stolid, secret-looking little boys who had lighted him to the stable last night.

'The little sweeps!' he muttered, but moved his finger from the trigger, even though he kept the revolver cocked at them.

'Do you want me to blow the brains of all three of you out?' he called. 'Lay down those guns this minute, or I will.' He was close up to them, and a sharp glance among the sparse bushes showed him that beyond these small youths he had no other attackers. At the sight of British might in the concrete form of a mounted soldier standing right over them, two of the lads instantly laid down their ponderous old style weapons. The third essayed another shot, but his rifle kicked and the bullet went wild.

'You young beggar!' said Stevenson; 'put it down this instant.'

The lad obeyed sullenly; he was the eldest of the three, and yet not more than twelve; a thickset boy with a heavy, brooding face and fine eyes.

'And what's the meaning of this little performance?' said Mortimer.

Two of the boys had very little knowledge of English, but the eldest had been quick to pick it up from his grandmother and Linda, who had just become his aunt.

'You killed our fathers,' he said doggedly. 'They've taken all the good guns with them, or we wouldn't have missed like this.'

Mortimer had no doubt of it; as it was, the shots had landed so near to the mark that it was plain what was the Boer boys' pastime at present. There was something about the three small lads that reminded Mortimer irresistibly of Roly--Roly, hung all over with the kitchen cutlery, or prowling about the bush with a broken-barrelled gun, Roly lying face downward behind a great ant-bed and picking off his foes at a lightning rate. He found it hard not to smile.

'Hand me up those guns,' he said to the eldest boy.

The boy gave him a stubborn glance, and it needed the discharge of a cartridge over his head to bring him to obedience. Then he handed the poor old musket up sullenly to the conqueror.

'See here,' Mortimer said, 'you'll make fine soldiers by-and-by. Don't go and get yourselves into trouble while you're young, and so ruin your chances. If it had happened to be some one less in a hurry than I am, he'd have marched you over and seen you among the prisoners, just to keep you out of mischief.'

'He'd have to catch us first,' said the boy, with a defiant smile.

'There is such a thing as putting a bullet into the legs,' said Mortimer gravely. 'But now cut along and fetch those Kaffirs for your aunt.'

The boys turned round and struck off dejectedly in a new direction; they had come three miles off the road their aunt had sent them by to execute this plot, secretly formed by the eldest boy, for killing off one at least of the enemy.

When Mortimer looked round again, they were mere specks on the veldt.

'Poor little beggars!' he said, smiling as he thought over the adventure again. He flung two of the rifles into the river; the third he carried with him as far as the British camp, and gave it to some one of the ambulance there, promising a five-pound note if it were kept safely till the end of the war.

'Roly'll go off his head at such a trophy,' he thought.

He handed in his despatches not many hours later, with no further adventures.

*CHAPTER XIX*

*The Mood of a Maid*

'Do you know what it is to seek oceans, and to find puddles, to long for whirlwinds, and have to do the best you can with the bellows? That's my case.'

Bartie had gone up to Coolooli for the afternoon. Old Mr. Stevenson had taken a great fancy to the boy, and prophesied that he had the making of a fine squatter in him.

Stevenson had ridden in to the selection on his way from Wilgandra. It was not often he passed the neat new gate in these days without turning in. He always felt a pleasant glow of conscious virtue, as his eyes marked 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 his property unimproved, and that he was merely making the trial on this particular selection, to see what might be done with a small holding. Cameron was rather relieved than otherwise that he no longer owned the place; the money he had borrowed on it at different times was almost equal to the sum he had paid for it at first. With such a landlord it was a much less responsible thing to be merely a tenant, especially as Stevenson, since he had foreclosed, would accept no rent, professing that he was getting the place ready for some one who could not take possession for a year or two, and that it was a convenience to him for Cameron to stay on the place and keep it in order. The long-established character of the man as hard and close kept any suspicion from Cameron that he was being helped out of kindness.

The old man had come in this afternoon to carry Bartie up to Coolooli with him, to show him the new invention he was about to try for the destruction of rabbits. Bart rushed off to get his horse ready while Stevenson stayed talking of the war and his son to Mrs. Cameron. It was quite a surprise to her when she learned much later that the old man had five other sons. This one at the front was the only one he ever spoke about.

He liked talking to this practical, sensible mother of the family. He felt amazed that such a shiftless fellow as Cameron should own such a treasure, and he felt, as he looked at her, that the salvation of the family would have been assured after her arrival, even if he himself had not lent a hand. With Hermie his manner was unconsciously somewhat aggressive, and she shrank from the rugged-faced old man who looked at her so sharply from under his bushy eyebrows. He saw her one day as he passed 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 and recreation.

'Can you make soap and candles?' he said, stopping suddenly in front of her.

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 make soap, 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 pretty wife, a pretty wife!' to himself.

This particular afternoon Bart went off in high spirits, Challis watching him wistfully from the verandah.

Hermie was--oh, who knew where Hermie was? Wandering up and down among the roses perhaps, her eyes soft with tears--Challis had found her like that two or three times--or reading poetry in some quiet corner in the paddocks, or writing it in the secret solitude of her bedroom, or on Tramby's back riding, riding with dreamy eyes down the road to the sunset. 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 of the future, not at all of the quivering past, mostly of the tender all-sufficing present. Challis, who had had such sweet monopoly of her mother for so long, missed it exceedingly now, while readily acquiescing that the turn for the others had come. She looked from the verandah with yearning eyes. It seemed months instead of weeks since she had poured all her hopes and imaginings and longings and queer little fancies into that ever-ready ear.

Roly? Roly was killing his Boers down in the paddock, or wheeling heavy loads of earth to make kopjes in the bush. He would tell her to 'clear out of the way of lyddite shells,' if she sought him out.

Floss? Floss, who hated a needle, was sitting on the grass making, with incredible labour, a pincushion for the mother she had begun to love with an almost fierce affection. Challis would have liked to go and help her, but the child, if she pricked her fingers till they were empty of blood, would have no stitch set in it that was not her own. Furthermore, all the dreams on the Utopia were dispersed. Challis had never buttoned one of the little girl's garments, never tied a sash, never brushed out a curl. The small woman had dressed herself independently ever since she was three, and indignantly scorned all help; she hated sashes--her straight light hair she raked herself. And though she accepted in an offhand fashion the toys Challis had chosen with such love and interest, she kept up an inexplicably warlike attitude towards her, and deprecated her on every possible occasion. Her hands--'Pooh! Well, I would be ashamed to have hands that colour! S'pose you never take your gloves off?' 'Frightened to walk in the bush 'cause of snakes! Well, some girls are ninnies!' 'Never been-on a horse--'fraid to get on Tramby! Why, she--Floss--had galloped all over on Tramby without a saddle when she was only four!'

Challis, sensitively aware of her own want of courage to explore and grow familiar with these bush things, got into the habit of shrinking away when Floss came on the scene.

There seemed no niche left for her in this home she had looked forward to; that was what it was. The place, rightly hers, had filled up entirely during her long absence.

No one understood her, or tried to. They took it for granted that her genius and her life abroad had lifted her to a higher plane than the one on which they themselves lived. It might be very cultivated and beautiful up there, but they were not familiar with it, and therefore did not take any interest in it.

The girl tried hard to get on to their plane, and be interested in their things; 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 and friendliness and excitement of cities, this little clearing in the great silent bush oppressed her intolerably after a week or two.

She had been a little ill before leaving Sydney. The doctors had said her nervous system was completely run down--a shocking thing in a child! They advised complete rest for several months, and expressed their opinion that the quiet bush life at Wilgandra and roughing it with children, who would take her out of herself, would be the best possible thing for her, and the triumphal career could be resumed later on.

So there were to be no concerts yet, no happy strivings to interpret Chopin's varying moods to a breathless audience, to reach up with Mendelssohn to his pleasant sunlit heights, to go down with Wagner to strange depths that stirred her soul. She was to practise very little, to appear in public not at all. The papers expressed their regret at her illness, and said a kind thing or two. After that her name had no mention in them.

One paragraph she had read had touched her to the quick. Some interviewer who had been to see her in Sydney wrote in his paper, 'Thank Heaven, she is not pretty! Her chances are hereby much greater.'

Poor little Fifteen! Her pillow was wet that night. She felt she had much 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 her eyes, the pink that pulsed about her cheeks. Who cared if you could interpret the waves and storms of Lizst's rhapsodies, and let the keen little rifts of melody in between the thunder until the almost intolerable sweetness made the heart ache? Who cared that Leschetizky himself had taught you and had tears in his eyes once, when you had played to him the wind in the trees just as he himself heard it? What did all these things matter? Every one went home from your concerts and forgot all about you. Oh, surely it were better to be so exquisitely pretty that all who saw you loved you on the spot!

She looked at herself again and again in the glass that night. Until that 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, not pretty, and all the world knew it now!

She drifted in from the verandah to the living-room, where the piano stood open as Hermie had left it, when, imagining Challis out of hearing an hour or two ago, she had sat down to it for a few minutes. But the cheap tinkling stuff that comprised poor Hermie's _repertoire_--the jingling waltzes, the pretty-pretty compositions of Gustave Lange and Brindley Richards, 'Edelweiss' and 'Longing,' 'Warblings at Eve,' and such--they set her ear horribly on edge, though she would rather have died than have said so. It were less torture to hear Flossie thumping conscientiously 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 been tuned, and despite the careful dusting of Miss Browne, the silverfish led a gay existence in its interior, and ate all the softness and depth from the notes.

But this afternoon the girl, with that vague misery tugging at her heart, was driven to it; nothing else could ease her. She put her foot down on the soft pedal, to keep the discordant jangle away, and avoiding as much as she could the B that was flat, and the D that was dumb, and the F sharp that Roly had torn off bodily, she worked off the gloom that oppressed her with Beethoven and Bach.

Roly came in. He was arming himself for a new attack on Ladysmith; he had the kitchen poker and the stove-brush, the tin-opener, a knife from a broken plough, a genuine boomerang, the corkscrew, the gravy-strainer, and the carving-knife, disposed about his person, and he came into the living-room, his eye roving about in search of fresh implements of warfare. Nothing seemed to appeal to him, however, and he was going out again discontentedly when he noticed his new sister had dropped her hands 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 were tears running down her cheeks. 'Don't cry,' he said; 'I'll run out and ask 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 to practise.'

'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 one to play with.'

Roly's breast swelled with magnanimity.

'Look here,' he said, 'you can be Cronje if you like. Here, you can have these two for your weapons.' He handed her the stove-brush and the corkscrew. '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 just have to go on playing and playing at concerts. And who cares when you're playing your very best, and have practised one composition six hours 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 they don't care. I can't listen to them myself. Often when I've been digging my garden outside the window, and you've started to play, I've just had to go away. If you'd learn some nice-sounding pieces now, instead of things 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 "Soldiers of 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 hands about, 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 friends with Peter just now.'

Challis smiled and dried her tears.

'I mightn't be able to play them, Roly,' she said; 'so I don't think I'll trouble you to ask.'

'Oh,' said Roly encouragingly, 'you'd soon pick them up. You could watch her a few times, and notice how she does them. But I'll have to be going now, Challis, if you don't want me. I'll be down in the bush at the back, if you want to come and have a try to play. Don't let on to Brownie that I've collared this.' He pointed to the gravy-strainer that adorned his breast. I'll bring it back all right.'

Left alone once more, Challis wandered about the little house. Miss Browne's door was half open, to let in the evening breeze. Miss Browne herself, her day's work finished, was sitting at the table writing a multitude 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.

*CHAPTER XX*

*Miss Browne*

'I shall have no man's love
For ever, and no face of children born
Or tender lips upon me.
Far off from flowers or any love of man
Shall my life be for ever.'

What was it that broke the barriers down? The wet eyelashes of the little music-maker? The droop of her soft mouth? Or came there across that poor room one of those divine waves of sympathy and understanding that wash at times from a richly endowed soul to a lonely stunted one?

Miss Browne found herself telling anything and everything that had happened in her life, and even the things that might have happened. Not that the whole of them made a sum of any account, if you condensed them; but, told ramblingly and with pauses for tears, they fell pathetically on the young listening ears.

Thirty-eight grey years! Life in this country town and that country town, in this crowded suburb or on that out-back station or selection--a hireling always. The first twenty-five had dragged by under English skies that even in summer had no sun for a motherless, fatherless girl, pupil-teacher from the age of fourteen. She bore twelve years of it patiently enough, and indeed would have borne another score, but two friends, stronger, more restless souls than she, though chained to the same life, told her they were going to break through it all, strike out of the stagnant waters of suburban England into the fresh, glittering sea the other side of the world.

They were saving their salaries to pay their passage to Australia. Governesses were royally paid out there, they had heard, and more than that--they whispered this a little ashamed--husbands grew on every bush.

Miss Browne scraped and saved for a year, cheerfully shivering without a winter jacket, happily heedless of the rain that came through the holes of her umbrella. If it had been a question of economising in her diet, she would have brought herself down to a crust a day, in her eagerness to make a plunge into a different life, but fortunately governesses are 'all found.' The three women cheerfully cramped their bodies third-class for the voyage, letting their souls soar boundlessly in the pleasant evenings on deck.

They came to their new land, saw it, and after a few years were conquered. Almost the same conditions of life, the same sickening struggle of a multitude of educated women for one poor place, the same grey outlook. One found a husband; he took her to some heaven-forgotten corner of North Queensland, where she had for neighbours Japanese and Chinese and Javanese, and he drank, as the men all do in those forgotten corners, where alligators are to be found on the river-banks, and coloured labour crowds out the white man's efforts. She bore him six children in eight years, and then died thankfully. The second woman went into a hospital and became a nurse; for the last five years she had been in Western Australia, kept busy with the typhoid in Perth. Once in a while she wrote to Miss Browne; once or twice she had eagerly said she was 'all but engaged,' but later letters never confirmed the hope, and now a dull commonplace had settled down over the correspondence.

Miss Browne drifted from place to place, place to place; there was nothing she was capable of doing really well, and no land has a hospitable welcome for such.

'It is a funny thing,' she said to Challis, 'but, however hard I try, I never seem able to do things like other people can.' Her eyes stared in front of her. 'If it had been your mother now in my place, she could have managed; she is made of the stuff that never goes under. But you would have thought any one like I am would have been sheltered and--cared for--as so many women are cared for.'

Challis stroked her restlessly moving hand.

'Sometimes,' she continued--her voice dropped, her eyes stared straight out before her--'sometimes I can't help feeling as if Providence has pushed me out to the front, and quite forgotten to give me anything to fight with.'

Then she pulled herself together reprovingly.

'Of course, that attitude is very wrong of me,' she said. 'It is only very seldom I think that, my love.'

Challis squeezed her hand sympathetically.

'It will all come right some day,' she said, with the large vague hopefulness of the very young.

'That's what I have always told myself,' said Miss Browne; 'but you must see, my love, if--if it does not come right very soon, it will be too late. I am thirty-eight--there, there is no need to mention it to Hermie or the rest of the family, my love.'

'But thirty-eight is not old,' said Challis, so eager to comfort, she left truth to take care of itself. 'Think what lots of people are fifty, and they don't think themselves a bit old.'

'But who will marry you after you are thirty-eight?' said poor Miss Browne, unable to keep any ache back to-night.

'Oh,' said Challis, 'lots of people don't get married, and they are as happy as anything.'

Miss Browne's lip quivered.

'If I had been asked,' she said, 'then I should not mind so much. But I am--thirty-eight, and no one has--ever asked me.'

Challis put her arm round the poor woman's neck; she stroked her cheek, patted her shoulder.

'Of course,' Miss Browne said at last, sitting up with tremulous, red-eyed dignity, 'there is no need to tell Hermie that, my love.'

'But you must have lots of friends,' said Challis, looking at the number of envelopes lying on the dressing-table. The colour ran up into Miss Browne's face. She half put her hand over the letters, then drew it back.

'If I told you about these, you would think me so foolish, my dear,' she faltered.

'Oh no, I wouldn't!' said Challis. 'Now I know you so well, I seem to understand everything.'

Miss Browne got some little papers out of a drawer, English penny weeklies devoted to 'ladies' interests.' She turned to the Answers to Correspondents pages, 'Advice on Courtship and Marriage.'

'Those marked with a little cross are the answers to me,' whispered Miss Browne. And Challis read these three marked paragraphs:

'_Fair Australienne_ writes: "I am the only daughter of a very wealthy squatter, and have two lovers. One is a squatter on an adjoining station, the other an English baronet travelling in Australia. If I marry the baronet, I must leave my father, who loves me dearly; but I care for him more than I do for the squatter. What would you advise me to do?"

And the 'Aunt Lucy' who conducted the page had replied:

'Marry where your heart dictates. Could you not induce your father to live in England with you?'

'_Sweet Rock Lily_.--"I am eighteen, and, my friends tell me, very, very beautiful. I am governess in a wealthy family, and the son is deeply in love with me. If he marries me, he will be disinherited. What should I do? I love him very much. And will you tell me a remedy for thin hair?"

'The editor's answer is: "Try to overcome the prejudice of the family, _Rock Lily_, and all will go well. Bay rum and bitter apples is an excellent tonic."

'_Little Wattle Blossom_.--"I am seventeen, and only just out of the schoolroom. I am passionately in love with a young handsome man, who loves me in return; but my parents are trying to force me into a marriage with an old foreign nobleman. They have even fixed the wedding day, and I am kept a prisoner. What would you advise me to do?"

'The editor's answer is: "You cannot be forced into a marriage in these days. Refuse firmly. In four years you will be of age. In answer to your second question, your friend had better try massage for the crow's feet and thin neck."'

Challis read in extreme puzzlement.

'I hardly understand,' she said. 'How do you mean--these are to you?'

'It is only my foolishness, my love,' said Miss Browne, gathering them up again; 'but I get a great deal of pleasure out of it. The days the mail comes and I get the papers, I am so excited I don't know what to do. You get into the way of feeling it really is yourself.'

But this phase of Miss Browne was beyond Challis's comprehension, and she only looked doubtfully at the papers, so Miss Browne was swift to change the subject.

'These letters,' she said, 'are to the Melbourne and Adelaide art societies. I should like to tell you about this, my love. Your father, about four years ago, painted a picture, and something happened that made him try to burn it. Well, we managed to prevent that, and I got hold of it and hid it away. He has forgotten all about it now, imagines I sold it, but I haven't, and it occurred to me lately to write to several artists and describe the picture to them, and see if they would buy it. I did not mention your father's name; just said it was by a friend of mine--you will forgive me for the liberty, my love?'

'But didn't you send the picture?' said Challis. 'They could hardly tell from a description.'

'I had no money,' said Miss Browne, sighing 'I made inquiries at Wilgandra, but it would cost so much to have it packed and sent to Sydney. And there is the risk of losing it. I was _very_ careful over the description; it took me five long evenings to write--I left no detail out.'

'And what happened?' said Challis.

Miss Browne flushed.

'Courtesy seems dying out,' she said. 'Not one of them answered. It might have been any lady writing--they could not know it was only I.'

Challis asked more questions about the picture. She asked to be shown it, and waited patiently while Miss Browne disinterred it from under the bed, and took off the old counterpane with which it was wrapped.

'I have never seen any great picture-galleries,' said Miss Browne, 'but I know there is something about this that must be good. It could not work up the feelings in me that it does, if it were just an ordinary picture. Look at the man's eyes, my love--isn't the hopelessness frightful?--and yet look at him well. You just know he'll keep on trying and trying till he gets there.'

Challis gazed at it for a long time.

'Yes,' she said slowly; 'that is how it makes me feel. I feel I want to beg him to stop trying, and lie down and go to sleep. But it wouldn't be any use. You feel the storm will last for ever, and the captain will go on trying for ever to get to wherever he has made up his mind to get to.'

'Your father intends it to represent the Flying Dutchman,' said Miss Browne.

'Oh yes!' Challis said. 'Of course. I ought to have known. But it is just like this picture--just as sad. And I play it too. Wagner, you know,--Der fliegende Hollander,--it makes you want to cry.'

'My love,' cried Miss Browne, 'you say you know an artist in Paris. Why, surely that would be the very thing! I believe they are all jealous of him in Sydney. Write to your friend. He would take notice of a letter from you. Write to him, and send the picture too. You can afford to, and it is not likely to go astray, since you know the exact address. Suppose we start to do it now?'

Challis sprang up with shining eyes. It seemed the loveliest plan in the world.

'It shall be our secret, you dear, dear thing!' she cried. 'We won't tell a single soul in the world--not even mother. Let's write it down that we promise.' She pushed pen and ink to Miss Browne. 'Write on this paper,' she said, '"I promise Challis Cameron faithfully I won't tell any one in the world."'

Miss Browne wrote the compact down, smiling.

Challis seized the pen.

'I promise Miss Brown faithfully I won't tell,' she wrote.

'Oh, my dear, my love!' said Miss Browne distressed. 'My love, how careless of you! I spell my name with an "e." I never thought you would forget, my love. No, don't add it on there; it looks as if it were an afterthought. Please write it again. We have always spelt our name with an "e," my love.'

*CHAPTER XXI*

*The Morning Cables*

'With rending of cheek and of hair,
Lament ye, mourn for him, weep.'

Bart came clattering at a great pace up the path with the mail. It was the midday dinner-time; and such pleasant appetising foods were the order of the day now, boylike he did not care to be a moment late.

He took the saddle off, laid it down on the verandah, drove the horse down to the first paddock, and hastened in to the dining-room.

His father was just unfolding the daily paper he had brought, and opening it to find the war cables.

'Read them out, Jim,' said Mrs. Cameron, looking up from her task of apportioning the peas and cauliflower and potatoes.

Cameron read out the headings:

'"DESPERATE FIGHTING AT KRUG'S SPRUIT."

"GALLANT ATTEMPTS TO RESCUE GUNS."

"OFFICERS SERVING THE ARTILLERY."

"FIFTEEN THOUSAND BOERS IN ACTION."

"BRITISH UNDER A GALLING CROSS-FIRE."

"BRITISH CASUALTIES."

"CONSPICUOUS GALLANTRY BY A NEW SOUTH WALES PRIVATE."

"LOSSES OF AUSTRALIAN TROOPS."'

The last two headings sent Cameron's eyes hurrying down the long column to seek details.

'Oh,' he said, 'poor lad, poor lad! Oh, I'm sorry for this--sorry for this!'

'Not old Morty,' said Bart--'not poor old Morty, dad?' Yet even as he spoke he knew it must be, for who else of all the contingent had they a personal interest in? He pushed his chair back and went to his father's shoulder. His eyes read the meagre paragraph, and burnt with swift tears for his friend.

'CONSPICUOUS GALLANTRY BY A NEW SOUTH WALES TROOPER'

was the heading of the cable. Below it said:

'During the engagement, Trooper Stevenson, of the N.S.W. Bush Contingent, made a most gallant rescue. He galloped to the assistance of General Strong, whose horse had fallen, and bore him under a scathing fire to a place of safety. General Strong escaped unhurt, and obtained another horse, but while galloping after his troop through the dusk, Stevenson was hit by a bullet, and killed instantaneously.'

'Just the sort of thing old Morty would do,' Bart said, his throat thick.

'I am thinking of the poor old man,' said Mrs. Cameron. 'It will kill him. Jim, you had better go up; you might be able to do something. None of the other sons are at home.'

'I'll go, certainly,' Cameron said; 'but it won't kill him. His pride in the lad's courage will keep him up.'

'I say,' said Bart, 'he won't have got the paper yet. That fellow Barnes was waiting for the mail while I was, and he had been drinking frightfully. It'll be hours before he gets back. I saw him turn in to the Golden Fleece as I came along.'

A strange stifled cry came from the end of the table. It was no use; Miss Browne had fought desperately to keep her self-control, but nature was too strong for her, and she was struggling with a piteous fit of hysterics.

Mrs. Cameron went round to her, got her to the sofa, opened the neck of her dress, administered cold water, spoke firmly and decidedly to her. There was nothing in the poor woman's cries for a long time, and she only pushed at Mrs. Cameron, as if trying to force her away. Finally a word came from her choking throat:

'Hermie!' she cried, and pointed to the open door. 'Go--to--Hermie.'

Where was Hermie? Mrs. Cameron looked round in surprise. It seemed only two minutes since she had been cutting the bread, and laughing at Roly because he had arranged his plate as a battle-field, with the peas for the army, the cauliflower as a kopje, the mashed potatoes in dots for the tents, while a slice of beef made the enemy's laager, and a gravy river flowed between the troops. Why had she left the table like this?

'Go--to--Hermie!' gasped the shivering, sobbing woman on the sofa. 'I--am--all right--quick, quick!'

Where had the girl gone? No one but Miss Browne had even noticed her chair was empty.

Mr. Cameron armed himself with another tumbler of cold water, and came across to the sofa.

'I will look after Miss Browne,' he said. 'You go to Hermie; perhaps she was a little faint.'

'Down--the--path,' gasped Miss Browne, 'near the wattles, most likely.'

Mrs. Cameron made her way down the path, looking from left to right, a puzzled expression on her face. The girl was nowhere to be seen. She looked among the roses, in the various shady corners, beneath the trees. Finally she came to the thick-growing wattles near the fence, and a gleam of blue cambric showed through the leaves. The mother went in among the bushes, and found the girl face downward on the ground, sobbing in so bitter and heartbroken a way that she was quite alarmed for a moment. Then a wondering comprehension came; her girl was almost a woman. Was it possible she had cared for this friend of the family in a different way from Bart and Floss and Roly?

'My poor little girl!' she said, and sat down on the ground beside her, and lifted the bright head that had been Morty's perpetual delight on to her knee.

But Hermie pulled herself away, and rose wildly to her feet, and ran this way among the bushes with her broken heart, and then that way.

'Oh,' she sobbed, 'go away, go away--I want to be alone! Oh, it is my fault!--I want to be alone--oh, mother, mother!'--and she came back to her mother's side, and fell down beside her again, clinging to her piteously. The mother said nothing at all--just stroked her hair and let her weep as she would, and soon a little calmness came back to the girl.

'Oh,' she said, 'if you knew how I loved him, mother!'

'Did you, my darling?' said the tender mother, and never showed the ache that was at her heart because her child had kept so great a thing as this from her confidence.

'Ever since he went I have been loving him,' Hermie said, 'and yet when he told me, I sent him away, and he was so miserable. I am sure that is why he went to the war.'

'And you thought you did not care for him, then?' said Mrs. Cameron. 'Well, darling, that was not your fault.'

'Oh, it was--it was!' said Hermie. 'You don't understand, of course. You never could. But I shall be miserable now all my life!'

'You found you had made a mistake, and you cared for him after all?' said Mrs. Cameron.

'I didn't know quite how much till to-day!' sobbed Hermie. 'I have kept thinking of him and thinking of him ever since he went; out now--oh, now it is too late! I know I shall love him till I die.'

The mother's heart ached, as all mothers' must do when their children have to stand alone in a grief, and there can no longer be any kissing of the place to make it well.

'It seems as if I have been blind,' went on the girl, sometimes wiping the tears away and hiding her swollen eyes, sometimes letting them trickle unchecked down her cheeks. 'I can't tell you how silly and small I have been--thinking men ought to be just like men in books, and never looking at what they really are. Oh, he was so good, such a brave fellow; ever since he has gone, people are always telling different brave or kind things he has been doing ever since he was a boy. And, just because he wore clothes and ties I didn't like, and sometimes knocked things over, I----'

Her voice choked, and she fell to sobbing again heart-brokenly.

Mrs. Cameron was silent again for a space; but when as the time went on the girl seemed to abandon herself more and more to her grief, she rose to her feet and drew the sobbing figure up also.

'There is a hard task before you, dear one,' she said, 'but I know you will do it.'

Hermie gazed at her helplessly.

'His poor old father does not know yet, for Bart tells me his man Barnes is still drinking in Wilgandra. I want you to go up to Coolooli and break it to him.'

'Me?' gasped Hermie. 'Me?'

'Yes, you, my dear. You cared for his son; it will establish a bond between you, and make it a little easier for him.'

'Oh, I couldn't!' cried the girl, shrinking back, actual alarm on her face. 'Oh, it is cruel of you to even ask me, mother! Why should I do such a thing? Surely it is hard enough already for me!'

'Because you are a woman, my dear, and must always think of yourself last,' the mother said quietly. 'How soon can you be ready to start?'

One glance the girl gave at her mother's face that was so quietly expectant that she would do the right thing. Her head lifted a little, and her mouth tried to compose itself.

'I have only my skirt to put on,' she said; 'I can do it while Bart saddles Tramby for me.'

Up to the cottage she walked again, and put on the neat blue riding-skirt her mother had lately made her. She bathed her red eyes; she drank two tumblers of cold water, to take the choking from her throat.

'Father will go with you,' the mother said, coming to the door; 'but when you get to Coolooli you can ride on ahead.'

Through the pleasant winter sunshine they rode, up hill, down dale, across bush stretches where Mortimer's horse had worn a path for them. Coolooli faced them at last, secret stern-looking, with its curtainless windows, its garden barren of sweet flowers. It was the first time the girl had been so near her lover's home.

She was among the trees now that lined the drive leading up to the house; her father had dropped behind, and was to follow on in half an hour.

Her heart seemed fluttering in her throat; a deadly sickness possessed her.

The old man was standing at a table on the verandah; he had a great map of the Transvaal spread open before him, and, with small flags stuck in it here and there, was following his son's footsteps.

He turned at the sound of the horse's hoofs. When he saw the rider he went down instantly on to the path, to help her to dismount.

'Well, little missie,' he said, 'it's not often you ride this way.' He looked at her colourless cheeks keenly. 'What is the matter--can't you jump down?'

She absolutely could not, and he had almost to lift her off her saddle. He tied the horse's reins loosely round the verandah-post, and looked at her again from beneath his shaggy eyebrows. He told himself he knew what was the matter. The family was in difficulties again, and had sent this particular member of it as an emissary to borrow money. Well, this freak of his son's was going to cost him dear. Still, the little thing was trembling dreadfully, and evidently did not like her task. He put his hand on her shoulder reassuringly.

'Out with it, lassie,' he said; 'how much do you want?'

Hermie clung to his arm--her very lips were white.

'Mortimer has been very brave,' she said; 'he has done something magnificent.' Her voice fell.

'My lad!' he cried, in a changed tone. 'Where? show me--I haven't seen the paper yet.'

She clung to it.

'You will be very proud of him,' she said 'All Australia is talking of him to-day.'

He pulled vigorously at the paper; his creased old face had a strangely illumined look; his hands were trembling with eagerness.

'I knowed it,' he said; 'he always had grit. I've kep' expectin' this. Well, I'll lie quiet in me grave now, whenever the Lord up there likes.'

'Yes,' the girl continued, and gave him the paper. 'All the world is proud of him to-day, so that must help you. He gave his life to save the general's.'