An Australian Girl. Catherine Martin
face which was very unusual.
'Now, Ted, whatever you do, don't let your spirits go down,' said Laurette. 'Of course the life of a man is as different from that of a girl as chalk is from cheese. After all, the more high-falutin' a girl is, the more she has to knuckle under to the inevitable. … I remember when I used to stay at Fairacre in the old days Stella was always reading some rubbishy old fathers, or tragedies, or wild German stories. Her father used to call her his little "improvisatrice," and she would sometimes start off and tell stories that would make your backbone quiver. She always had too much imagination; and that's the one thing a woman can best do without. It makes her draw pictures of life each one more unlike reality than the other. But in the end she'll have to put up with things as they are, just like the rest of us. Women have dreams, only to give them up when they marry.'
When Laurette took to moralizing it was in the robust strain of one to whom delicacy of mind was not a lost, but an unknown attribute.
'Well, Larry, if nothing comes of this visit to Melbourne—if before this time next year Stella is not my wife—why, I think I must give the affair up for good and all.'
'Quite right, Ted. The end of everything ought to come before it's too late. Whatever lies in my power shall be done. I think Melbourne will open her eyes a little.'
'And if you're in a fix for some tin, Larry, before the end of the season—why, just let me know,' said Ted, who knew by experience that a season in Melbourne seldom passed in which a hundred pounds or two was not a welcome, if not an indispensable gift to Laurette, notwithstanding the station in the Mallee country, worth over three thousand a year, which her father settled on her when she married the Hon. Talbot Tareling five years previously.
A look of vivid interest suddenly came into Laurette's face. It was the being 'in a fix' for some time which had mainly inspired her present visit to her father.
'Well, Ted——' Laurette began, and suddenly paused. Various thoughts swept through her mind, and then what she had intended to say ended in the bald statement: 'It is really very late.' But at that moment certain seed had dropped into fertile ground—seed that was destined to bear fruit in the not distant future, which, to their bitter ruing, must be eaten by others rather than by herself.
CHAPTER V.
Cuthbert Courtland left for Melbourne on the 28th of December. On the afternoon of the same day Edward Ritchie called at Fairacre to say good-bye.
He looked dejected and very much out of sorts; weary, with an unusual pallor on his face.
'You really were ill, then, on the 26th?' said Stella, noticing the change in his appearance.
'Yes, of course. Did you think I would stay away for a trifle when you went to my father's? It was a horrid sell altogether. Two of the best horses behaved like shoe-trunks.'
'Why, I thought you were at Mr. Edwin Emberly's place near Reynella?'
'Yes, and we had a private steeplechase—gentlemen riders—and the day was most abominable. Everything went wrong. If I had only stayed at home——'
'You see, Ted, you cannot have your cake and eat it.'
'Cake? it was a cake. You seem to have an idea I stayed away on pleasure.'
'Well, you know, it was an atrocious day, with a fierce east gully wind. It's always a little cooler at Reynella.'
'Not on the 26th, with an amateur steeplechase and only a mob of young bachelors together.'
'But then, in the evening, instead of dressing for dinner, no doubt you lounged in pyjamas and smoked, and had "long drinks" out on the verandas. Whereas we fanned ourselves languidly through thirteen courses, and listened to the good old Bishop speaking on surpliced choirs and the ultimate cost of the cathedral. I certainly thought you had the best of it. But now I see you really were ill. Did you have a sunstroke, or did your horse roll over you—or what?'
'Oh, it was just what!' answered Ritchie grimly. 'The fact is, I'—he was staring hard at the girl as he spoke, but something in her gay smiling unconsciousness arrested the words on his lips—'I believe my heart has gone back on me rather badly. It keeps thumping about in the most confounded manner.'
'Your heart, Ted? Now do you know what side it is on?' she asked laughingly.
'Oh yes, Stella, it's all very well for you. You're on the right side of the hedge. You never had a day's illness in your life since you were a baby. I've had many an attack. And to have old Mac and his wife bringing you in beef-tea you can't drink, and lie awake half the night, and no one to talk to, or ride out with in the morning and have some fun—— You can't wonder I run off to Melbourne pretty often. What is there to keep me at home? Now, if you were there—but I'm not going to say any more just now. I am going on to Strathhaye, to see to a few things there; and then I'm going to have a complete change for some months. I've been feeling rather dicky off and on for some time. Oh yes, I look well enough generally; but you can't always go by that. I think I shall give up horse-racing—it keeps a fellow racketing about so.'
'What! sell Konrad and Circe, and all the rest, and have no more "sweet little fillies" and year-old colts, that are so knowing and thoroughbred they take to racing almost without being told? What in the world would you talk about, Ted?'
'Oh, I wouldn't sell them all. I'll always keep good horses. I can't stand any other kind; but not to go flying about from one race-meeting to the other. It begins to tell on a fellow after a few years. I think I'll try and read a little more. You remember the list of books I got you to give me once? Well, there's a big boxful at Strathhaye never opened. I'll take it with me. But I don't think I can ever make much out of sonnets, Stella.'
'Why, have you actually been reading sonnets? Ah, poor Ted! you must have been feeling bad.'
'Yes, I felt very low last night, after I got home; and I thought I would try to improve my mind, as Edwin Emberly calls it. I thought I would try to understand more about the things you care for. I have a Wordsworth that was given me for a prize at St. Peter's. Oh, it was for regular attendance. When a fellow was there for a couple of years, and they couldn't give him a prize for anything else, they gave him one for not playing the tally. As I was a boarder, I couldn't do that very well.'
'And did you really get out your prize Wordsworth and read it?'
'Yes, I read some of the sonnets; but it was for all the world like a bullock trying to jump in hobbles. He makes a great clanking with the chains, and he heaves up his horns, but he doesn't get any further. And there's no story in the thing. At least, if there is, it's so thin I can never catch it. Now, when I was about ten, I remember, you read me "The Lady of the Lake" once, and, by Jove! it made my heart beat. It was one Saturday. I came from St. Peter's to stay till Monday. Cuth was always very kind to me, though he was at the head of his class and I was always at the bottom, and one below my age. You sat up in the branches of the Moreton Bay fig-tree, and I sat beside you and turned the leaves. Good Lord! I wish I was ten to-day, and you nine!'
'Why?—that we might go and sit in the branches of the fig-tree? Perhaps it isn't too late even now——'
'I hate those words "too late!"' said Ritchie, with unusual irritability.
He rose and strode about the room, and stared out through one of the windows overlooking the garden.
'Really, Ted shows himself in quite a new aspect to-day. It is as though he had the first faint beginnings of a soul,' thought Stella, looking at him with a new interest. 'Why do you hate the words "too late," Ted? Have you any association with them?' she said, going up to him where he stood at the window.
'Yes; we had a knock-about hand at Strathhaye once, and I can't forget the way he said the words over and over at the last. Well, he was hardly middle-aged, really; but the life he led made him seem so. He belonged to one of the old swell families