The Crooked Stick; Or, Pollie's Probation. Rolf Boldrewood
slabs, lined more carefully as to the inner side; the whole finished with gay, fresh wall-papers and appropriate mouldings. A broad, low verandah ran around the house. A wide hall, of which both back and front doors seemed to be permanently open, completely bisected the building. Wire stands, upon which stood delicate pot-plants of every shade of leaf and flower, gave a greenhouse air to this division. At a short distance, and situated within the enclosed garden, was a smaller, older building of much the same form and proportion. This was known as 'the barrack,' and was delivered over to Mr. Gateward and such bachelor guests as might from time to time visit the station. This arrangement, which often obtains in bush residences, is found to be highly convenient and satisfactory. In the sitting-room smoking and desultory, even jovial conversation can be carried on, together with the moderate consumption of refreshments, around the fire, after the ladies of the household have retired, without disturbing any one. In summer the verandah, littered with cane lounges and hammocks, can be similarly used. In the event of an early departure being necessary, the man-cook of the junior establishment can be relied on to provide breakfast at any reasonable, or indeed unreasonable, hour.
On several accounts Corindah was looked upon as a representative station, one of the show places of the district. It was a stage which was seldom missed by any of the younger squatters who could find a convenient excuse for calling there, upon the journey either to or from the metropolis. It was a large, prosperous, naturally favoured tract of country, a considerable and increasingly valuable property. It was managed after a liberal, hospitable, and kindly fashion. Mrs. Devereux, though most unobtrusive in all her ways, permitted it to be known that she did not approve of her friends passing the door without calling; and they were, certainly, treated so well that there was no great inducement to neglect that form of respect. There was yet another reason why few of the travellers along the north-western road, friends, acquaintances, or even strangers, passed by the hospitable gate of Corindah. During these eventful years Mary Augusta, generally spoken of as 'Pollie Devereux' by all who could claim anything bordering upon the necessary grade of intimacy, had grown to be the handsomest girl within a hundred miles of the secluded spot in which she had been born and brought up.
And she was certainly a maiden fair, of mien and face that would have entranced that sculptor of old whose half-divine impress upon the marble will outlast how many a changing fashion, how many a fleeting age! Tall, lithe, and vigorous, yet completed as to hand and foot with an exquisite delicacy that contrasted finely with the full moulding of her tapering arms, her stately poise, her rounded form, blue-eyed, tawny-haired, with classic features and a regal air, she looked like some virgin goddess of the olden mythology, a wood-nymph strayed from Arcadian forests ere earlier faiths grew dim and ancient monarchs were discrowned.
CHAPTER II
The heiress of Corindah had been carefully educated in a manner befitting her birth, as also the position she was likely to occupy in after-life. Governesses had been secured for her of the highest qualifications, at the most liberal salaries. Her talents for music and drawing had been highly cultivated. For the last three years of her educational term she had resided in Sydney with a relative, so that she might have the benefit of masters and professors. She had profited largely by instruction. She had read more widely and methodically than most young women. Well grounded in French and Italian, she had a handy smattering of German, such as would enable her, in days to come, either to perfect herself in the language by conversation or to dive more deeply into the literature than in the carelessness of youth she thought necessary.
These things being matters of general knowledge and common report in the district, it was held as a proved fact by the wives and daughters of her neighbours that Pollie Devereux had got everything in the world that she could possibly wish for. Agreed also that, if anything, she was a great deal too well off, having been petted and indulged in every way since her babyhood. That she ought to be only too thankful for these rare advantages, whereas at times she was discontented with her lot in life, and professed her desire for change – which was a clear indication that she was spoiled by overindulgence, and did not know what was for her real good. That her mother, poor Mrs. Devereux, ought to have been more strict with her. These well-intentioned critics were not so far astray on general principles. They, however, omitted consideration of one well-established fact, that amid the hosts of ordinary human beings, evolved generation after generation from but slightly differing progenitors, and amenable chiefly to similar social laws, strongly marked varieties of the race have from time to time arisen. These phenomenal personages have differed from their compeers in a ratio of divergence altogether incomprehensible to the ordinary intelligence.
Whence originating, the fact remains that each generation of mankind is liable to be enriched or confounded by the apparition of individuals of abnormal force, beauty, or intellect. Neither does it seem possible for the Attila or the Tamerlane, the Semiramis or the Cleopatra of the period to escape the destiny that accompanies the birthright, whether it be empire or martyrdom, the sovereignty of hearts or the disposal of kingdoms. In spite of all apparent restraint of circumstance, the unchangeable type, dormant perhaps for centuries, reasserts its ancestral attributes.
Such, will be the course of Nature. The 'mute inglorious Milton' is the poet's fiction. He is not mute, but bursts into song, which, if a wild untutored melody, has the richness of the warbling bird, the power of the storm, the grandeur of heaven's own wind-harp. The 'Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood' remains not in the stern world of facts the patient hind, the brow-beaten servitor. He leads armies and sways nations. To the soldier of fortune, who smiles only on the battlefield, and comprehends intuitively the movements of battalions, book-knowledge is superfluous and learning vain. He finds his opportunity, or makes it. And the world of his day knows him for its master.
'Till the sun turns cold,
And the stars grow old,
And the leaves of the Judgment-book unfold,'
And the queen of society, what of her? Like the poet, nascitur non fit, she is born not manufactured. Doubtless, the jewel may be heightened by the setting, but the diamond glitters star-like in the rough. The red gold-fire burns in the darksome mine. Pollie Devereux, her admirers asserted, would have ruled her monde had she been born a nursery-maid or an orange-girl. Her beauty, her grace, her courage, her natural savoir-faire, would have carried her high up the giddy heights of social ladders in despite of all the drawbacks which ever delayed the triumph of a heroine.
Still, the while we are indulging in these flights of imagination, our bush-bred maiden is a calmly correct damsel, outwardly conventionally arrayed, and but for a deep-seated vein of latent ambition and an occasional fire-flash of brilliant unlikeness, undistinguishable from the demoiselles bien-élevées of eighteen or twenty that are to work such weal or woe with unsuspicious mankind. In a general way this young woman's unrest and disapproval of her environments merely took the form of a settled determination to explore the wondrous capitals, the brilliant societies, the glory and splendour of the Old World – to roam through that fairy-land of which from her very childhood she had eagerly read the legends, dreamed the dreams, and learned the languages. 'Eager-hearted as a boy,' all-womanly as she was in her chief attributes, she could not slake the thirst for change, travel, and adventure, even danger, with a draught less deep than actual experience. If she had been her father's son instead of his daughter, the inborn feeling could hardly have been stronger.
When she thought of leaving her mother, in whom all the softer feelings of her heart found their natural home and refuge, she wept long and often. But still the passionate desire to be a part of all of which she had read and dreamed, to see with her eyes, to hear with her ears, the sights and sounds of far lands, grew with her growth and strengthened with her strength. As the months, the years rolled on, it acquired the power of fate, of a resistless destiny for good or evil; of a dread, unknown, controlling power, which beckoned her with a shadowy hand, and exercised a mysterious fascination.
That there are men so formed, so endowed with natures apart from the common herd of toilers and pleasure-seekers, no one doubts. It is equally true that there are women set apart by original birthright as clearly distinct from the tame tribes of conventional captives. But society, to strengthen its despotic rule, chooses to ignore the fact, preferring rather to coerce rebellion than to decorate distinction.
The