An Australian Girl. Catherine Martin
pretty prosperous suburbs full of charming houses and rose-filled gardens, stretched the Adelaide hills. Their bases and quiet darkling gullies were now in clear blue and pale purple shadows, their summits beautifully flushed with the gold and crimson splendour of a brilliant sunset. Northward the wide fertile Gawler Plain stretched beyond sight, thickly sprinkled with tree-encompassed homesteads, and great corn-fields, now ripely yellowing for the harvest. Westward lay Hindmarsh and Bowden, the manufacturing suburbs of the city, Torrenside in the foreground, with some delightfully old-fashioned, many-windowed houses, their cream-coloured walls gleaming through fig-trees and vine-trellised verandas. Beyond these might be discerned Port Adelaide, with its forests of ship-masts lying along the wharves, and beyond all, the ocean flushed to the verge of the wide horizon with the setting sun. For a moment it rested like a quivering ball of flame on the level waters, and then dropped out of sight, leaving a fiery glow wide and high in the sky, passing towards the zenith into the most delicate tones of pink. The same tints were reflected on the hilltops for some time, as vividly as though they were mirrors throwing back a not distant picture.
The two gazed on these lovely scenes with crowding associations that stretched back to the first twilight of childish memories, and lingered in the garden till the sound of the dinner-bell summoned them into the house.
Fairacre both within and without bore the traces of easy affluence. The house was a large one-story building, substantially built of stone, with a deep veranda, furnished with Venetian shutters, running all round it. The principal rooms were large and lofty, and opened by wide doors, half glass, upon the garden, which from one season to another was never seen without the radiance of many flowers. The sparkling old silver, and the delicately fine table-linen, were family heirlooms, as were also several rare works of art, and a large proportion of the rosewood furniture. Mrs. Courtland was now close on sixty-five years of age, invariably attired in widow's weeds since her husband's death years previously. She was descended from an old Highland family, and in face and bearing she bore the unmistakable stamp of high-bred refinement. Her features had never been strictly beautiful, but her countenance must always have been marked by the calm gentleness, the sweet, kindly serenity which imparted to it so much charm and distinction. It must even in youth have been distinguished by that guileless sincerity which formed an index to a mind curiously free from any taint of worldliness or self-seeking.
The Courtland family numbered eight in all, though there were at this period but four of them under the paternal roof. The eldest daughter, Barbara, was married to the Rev. Joseph Wallerton, an Episcopalian clergyman settled in Sydney; the second daughter, Esther, Mrs. Raymond, was a widow of over two years' standing. Her husband had been a wealthy squatter in the south-eastern district of the colony, where Mrs. Raymond and her four children chiefly resided. There were two unmarried daughters still at home—Stella and Alice, eighteen months her senior, but looking incredibly young for her age, being petite and rosy-cheeked, with overflowing spirits—circumstances which were, perhaps, providential, as she had recently entered on an engagement that threatened to be rather indefinite. Tom, the other son who was at home, was a lawyer in good practice, and three years older than the young clergyman. The other two brothers, Hector and Claude, the eldest and second eldest respectively, had been for over twenty-one years engaged in squatting pursuits with almost unbroken success in the adjacent colony of Victoria. Ten years previously a wealthy cousin of Mrs. Courtland's in the Indian Civil Service had left her a legacy of thirteen thousand pounds. This had been invested in Lullaboolagana, the Victorian station, which not only ensured the increasing prosperity of the two squatters, but added handsomely to the general income of the old home.
The visitors at Fairacre on this Sunday afternoon were Mrs. Harrison, a daughter and two sons. It was to Felix, the younger of these, and an architect by calling, that Alice was engaged. The elder brother, Andrew, was a journalist. The support of the rest of the family depended largely on the two young men, as the father, a clergyman and an old college friend of the late Mr. Courtland's, had died a few years previously, leaving his widow with but a small annuity and younger children to be educated. The elder daughter, Fanny, was now eighteen, and there were growing symptoms of an attachment between herself and Tom—a circumstance which drew the remark from Stella that it seemed as though some families had hereditary tendency to catch infantile maladies from each other. It was when she made observations of this kind that Tom used to wonder why the youngest of an otherwise well-conducted family should be hopelessly spoiled.
CHAPTER III.
On the following Monday afternoon Laurette Tareling, or, to give her the designation which was dear to her as a title, the Hon. Mrs. Talbot Tareling, paid the call of which her brother had spoken on Sunday.
She was of the medium height, though something in her face and figure gave the impression that she was small, being slight and fair with a faint colour deepened with a little rouge so skilfully that it was unsuspected by all save the most practised eyes. She had fair fluffy hair, lightened by gold dust, descending in a fringe of infantile curliness to within a short distance of her eyes, which were dark brown, rather small, but very bright and keen, and altogether somewhat like those of a parrot that is bent on finding out a great deal. An expression that was further carried out by the nose, which took the liberty of turning up a little, and a mouth which, though it smiled very often, had something rather hard and beakish in its formation. Yet, on the whole, Mrs. Tareling was considered pretty. She dressed extremely well, and was never seen beyond the domestic circle without an air of determined vivacity. She had the reputation of being one of the 'smartest' talkers in Melbourne society, and had a knack of telling a story against those to whom she owed any grudge, which at once made her popular, and created many enemies.
Mrs. Courtland and her two daughters were in the drawing-room when the visitor was shown in. Mrs. Tareling bestowed sharp little explosive kisses on each, ending with Stella, at whom she looked inquiringly, her head a little to one side.
'Why, Stella, you have grown thinner,' she said, half pensively. 'My dear Mrs. Courtland, has Stella been ill?'
'Oh no; Stella is never ill!' answered the mother with a fond smile.
'Well, just look at the two—who, to see them, would think Allie was older?'
'Ah, Laurette, you are letting me down gently,' said Stella, trying to keep back the mischievous smile that lurked round her lips. 'What you mean is that I am "going off"—that my first youth is over.'
'Oh, well! in a climate like ours we must make up our mind that we shed our first youth when we leave our teens—except fortunate people like Allie, who discover some elixir——'
'Which they don't give even their sisters,' laughed Stella. 'Well, Larry, I promise you if ever I get the chance I shall have a sip—if only to save you pain.'
'Oh, as for that, who is such a wreck as I am myself for my age? I assure you the day before I left Melbourne I nearly wept at finding that I was suddenly an old hag. Oh, positively! In the morning I found two gray hairs in my comb. I always heard people speak of the first gray hair, but there were two, showing that somewhere my head was getting powdered with the frost of age. And that wasn't all. In the afternoon I stood in a cross light, opposite a mirror. I turned round with a start; who is that creature, thought I, with her cheeks so hollow and a faded colour, and lines deepening round her mouth? And then, to crown it all, Talbot came in that moment leading Gwendolen by the hand, looking atrociously tall for her four years——'
'Is that your little daughter, Laurette?' asked Mrs. Courtland, who was getting a little hard of hearing, and did not quite catch the drift of these remarks, which were delivered in a rapid, semi-staccato tone levelled especially at Stella.
'Yes, dear Mrs. Courtland; and growing such a big girl, and so precocious. She wanted to know, the other day, whether her little brother Howard would not be Lord Lillimore when he grew up. And then she was sure, she said, that Uncle Ted would be Sir Edward Ritchie.'
'My dear, you must not let her be too much with the servants. You should get a nice young lady as