Читать книгу The Confessions of a Currency Girl - Carlton Dawe - Страница 8

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AND so one after the other rolled the days along, changeless except for the changing seasons. Ours was a very even, methodical life, and if we knew no great joy we experienced no deep sorrow. I suppose there are thousands who live the same dull, happy lives, for happy they are in their own uninteresting way. Happy the nation that has no history. Happy the people, too, say I. I sometimes forgot that I had one, and wished that I might forget it altogether. But that was not to be, worse luck! Our miseries, like our vices, are too fond of us ever to part company.

Harold still went on with his verse-making and his reading. Poor boy, he could not walk much owing to his sad affliction, but whenever the weather was fine (and sometimes in summer it was a little too fine), he would hobble across the paddock to the creek, and there would sit by the hour reading, and dreaming, no doubt, of the great verses he would write, and the fame which would one day be his. What a fairyland is this in which these young poets exist. A dream-life whose ways are strewn with roses, the odour of which, rising up to the brain, intoxicates the soul. What know they of the ways of the world and the harshness of man? Do they ever think of it, I wonder, these unpractical poets? Or do they hear the birds sing always, as they, too, bird-like, whirl through the summer air? They dream of fame, surely, but not as men dream of it. In their craving is no sordid thought, no vain, pretentious fluttering of the poetic wing. They have but one idea—to produce the beautiful, to make sweet music. As the birds sing, so sing they, till the elder birds peck them and they die.

Will went his way also, which was not that of Harold; yet he was a good fellow through and through; as strong as Harold was weak, as practical as the poet was dreamy. He was a great help to father now, and was given a pound a week pocket money, or wages, so that he was quite independent, and as a consequence he soon took unto himself the masculine air of importance. Not that he carried it off with very much dignity, for he could never be anything but a great, softhearted boy. I saw, with something much akin to fear, that his visits to Wallan did not decrease with his exalted status, and I doubted not that Polly Lane and the “Shearer’s Rest” were the attraction. I dreaded that girl, and knew that she would like to do me an ill turn through him; but he always laughed at me whenever I spoke of her, and told me that she was a profound admirer of mine.

“She knew that would please you, you booby,” I said, for our family devotion was a by-word in the place.

“Don’t be uncharitable, Flos,” he replied. “Try to give the girl credit for being honest once in a way. Everybody knows that you are beautiful. She only spoke the truth.”

“But I am not beautiful,” I said in my vainness, not unwilling to hear my praises sung even by a brother’s lips.

“By George, ain’t you?” he said—he was never very particular in his choice of words, poor old Will! But in his eyes there was something better than the sound of sweet words. Dear old fellow I wonder if all brothers and sisters love each other as we did? If so, how pleasant some portion of their lives must have been; in what a world of delightful memories they may revel when time has stiffened their joints and bade them sit down and think.

Of course I couldn’t scold him any more after his flattering estimation of myself; it would have been like putting a knife into my own breast. Neither could I tell him how Ella had coaxed me to speak, because she had forbidden me to mention her name. Poor Ella! So I dismissed him with a warning against all red-haired girls; at which he laughed and said her hair (meaning Polly Lane’s) was golden; kissed me and pointed out that my own shone with a reddish tinge in the sunlight, and then read me a warning against myself, which, in the light of after events, reads somewhat like a prophecy. But I understand you now, Will. Dear old fellow, you knew more of the world than I, clever as I thought myself.

One Sunday, shortly after this abortive attempt of mine to lead Will into the narrow way, the Wallaces, mother and father, Arthur and Ella, drove over in a body and took Granite Creek by storm. Arthur was going to Melbourne on the morrow to enter the university, and so it was decided that we should all dine together and wish him God-speed. We were all awaiting them on the verandah when they drove up in their nice new pair-horse buggy, and while Will and Arthur took the team round to the stables, I led Ella away to my room, mother showing a like attention to Mrs. Wallace, who, as I have already mentioned, had been her friend and companion in her young days in England. And how delighted they always seemed when they met—as though they had been parted for years. Mother used to say that the sight of her friend’s sweet face reminded her so much of the old, happy days; and then she would suddenly check herself and smile, and wonder how she could have been happy without her children. Poor thing! I see with different eyes now. What knew I then, what could I even guess, of the misery which had been hers, the dull hopelessness more bitter than the sharpest pain? She never complained; she had always a kiss and a smile for us children, a sad smile, truly, but, oh, so sweet. To father she was the calm, serious helpmate, the holy lover. Soft of speech, tender, solicitous; never did I know them speak angrily to each other; no shadow of a frown ever came between them. She, knowing what he had suffered, strove hard to lighten his burden, and he, forgetting nothing of the debt he owed her, worshipped the very ground she walked on. Often of an evening, as we all sat round the fire, he in one corner reading, she in the other plying her busy needle, have I seen him drop his book, look steadily at her till his eyes grew dim, and then, rising, walk over to her and take her dear head between his hands and kiss her as he must have kissed her in the days when they knew no sorrow. What would their lives have been under happier circumstances? Could they have loved each other more, would they even have been happier? Perhaps not. To me it seems as though this thing we call sorrow, sad and pitiful though it be, were the one thing requisite to insure man the eternal peace of heaven. Through sorrow, by sorrow, and out of sorrow come all things glorious; the sad symbol is it which veils the tiding of great joy. Only can the heavy thoroughly rejoice when it has emerged from the black clouds of despair. For the joy of nations was not the Cross uplifted on the Hill of Calvary?

Upon returning to the verandah we found the little party seated in easy chairs chatting amiably and eating peaches. Mr. Wallace was loudly dilating on the beautiful proportions of his new buggy, which had only arrived from Melbourne that week, while mother and Mrs. Wallace sustained a separate conversation on their own account. Will and Arthur were in the far corner of the verandah, also eating peaches, but looking very serious. At least Arthur was, for his dark face looked darker and gloomier than usual.

“Poor Arthur,” said I to Ella, “how serious he looks.”

“Yes, poor boy,” she answered mysteriously.

“I suppose most people feel rather queer when they leave home for the first time?”

“If that were all,” she said, “I wouldn’t mind it so much.”

“All! What else can it be? He is anticipating home-sickness already,” and I’m afraid I laughed somewhat heedlessly at the thought.

“How can you, Flossie! You seem to forget that Arthur is a man now.”

“Yes, I suppose he is. How strange it seems, doesn’t it? Why, I can shut my eyes and fancy that it was only the other day we went quong-dong hunting together.”

“He is twenty,” said she, as though that were a patriarchal age.

“Of course; and is about to enter the university, and become a famous physician. Fancy old Arthur famous.”

“Why shouldn’t he be!” she exclaimed reproachfully.

“Of course; why shouldn’t he be? I hope he may be.”

“Then why don’t you tell him so?”

“I suppose I never thought of it.”

I saw the pained look shoot across her face, and it at once struck me that I had been more than unsympathetic. Before I could explain, or get an explanation, however, Mr. Wallace called me to him, and my thoughts were immediately diverted into another channel.

He was singularly like Arthur in appearance, though the finely-chiselled face of the boy was here enlarged and coarse. The eyes were the same, though, and I doubt not but that the chin would have been as like, could I have seen it for the brindled beard which hid it. The mouth, too, was cut in the same firm way, though the lips had not the full curl of the boy’s. They used to say that thin mouth of his could look very cruel at times, and I have heard more than one story of the hard bargains he was wont to drive. I know not if they were true: perhaps there was some grain of truth in them. I know he was proud, not altogether purse-proud, but pompous like most successful men. That, however, is one of those petty weaknesses to which humanity is susceptible; it concerns us little. He was never hard to me or mine, and if he indulged in the “gentlemanly vice” of avarice (perhaps traceable to his Caledonian descent), as some said he did, it concerned him only. To us he was always amiable, the best of friends. As father and husband he was irreproachable —no mean catalogue of recommendations.

“Come and sit beside me, Flossie,” he said, “and let me think that I’m a boy again. It isn’t often, you know, that I get the opportunity of making love to such a fairy.”

“Whose fault is that?” I answered, entering into and enjoying the banter, for among Mr. Wallace’s many qualities might be reckoned his love of a joke.

“My own, truly,” he replied with a mock sigh. “What a depraved wretch I must be to shut the gates of Paradise on myself.”

At this there was a general laugh, though I could see that father did not receive the nonsense with much favour.

“You have not forgotten how to turn a pretty speech,” he said; and though he smiled, it was not too gaily. “If Florence were like other girls, I should tremble for her vanity.”

“Vanity,” exclaimed Mr. Wallace, “is an excellent thing, and knows how to take care of itself. Don’t you tremble for vanity, Hastings. It is the stream which sends this mill-wheel of a world buzzing; the life and soul of the universe. Keep vanity well in hand, as you would a partly-broken colt, and behold we have pride, emulation, and, indirectly, genius, immortality.” And at the conclusion of this magnificent outburst he turned to father with a triumphant look. Father smiled, but answered not. Perhaps he did not take such a broad-minded view of the subject as his friend; perhaps, too, knowing Mr. Wallace of old, he thought it would be a futile business to attempt to argue with a man who continually held himself up as a successful example of his own argument. No matter what the subject might be, Mr. Wallace would introduce into it his own personality, and from such premises would argue that such and such must be correct. “I made money easily; therefore money is easily made.” When a man takes this tone there is no gainsaying him.

“I think your idea of vanity differs slightly from the general meaning of the word,” said mother slowly.

“And pray how?” exclaimed Mr. Wallace, cocking up his ears, ever ready for an encounter.

“By it we mean something contemptible, shallow, conceited. Pride, on the other hand, is a noble quality.”

“My dear madam,” was the airy answer, “they are six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. Vanity, pride, and arrogance—a hair’s-breadth don’t divide ’em. Vanity in the great is emulation, ambition; ambition in the vulgar is vanity. Punctilious sticklers may rave about the precise shade of meaning, but I say they’re triplets, nothing more nor less. Now take me as an example, a successful example—” But we were luckily spared any further panegyrics on the great Me by the timely arrival of our cook, who brought the welcome intelligence that dinner was ready. So into the house we trooped, for whereas argument, transcendental or otherwise, can keep, the dinner rapidly goes cold.

We did not entertain very often, but when we did we strove to make a creditable show, and on this occasion the table, if it did not actually groan under the good things—which I have often read of tables doing—seemed to rejoice in the splendour that bedecked it. Father sat at the head with Mrs. Wallace on his right hand, mother at the foot with Mr. Wallace on her right hand and Harold on her left. Then came Arthur and I, Ella and Will. Cook, we called her “cook,” though she was only a “general,” flustered about with a face like a bit of beet, puffing and blowing like a porpoise and looking as though she were slowly melting in the heat; while the young girl whom we had engaged for the day, a farmer’s daughter entirely ignorant of service, went about dropping the potatoes on the floor and chipping our best bits of china. Still it was a great feast, a feast for the gods, as Mr. Wallace more than once declared; and, by the manner in which we manipulated our knives and forks, I have good reason for believing we did it justice—that is, all except poor Arthur, who seemed to be neither in appetite nor spirits.

When the meal was over Ella and I put on our hats and strolled away down to the creek, and as we walked I could not help referring to Arthur’s constrained manners, a reference which did not altogether please her, for she said something about people having no sympathy and caring little what became of “poor boys”; all of which, being so much Greek to me, I passed over with a smile, as people will a quotation in French which they do not understand.

“Will, too,” she remarked, as though she were about to pay me back in my own coin, “seemed so unlike the Will of old times that I should have thought he was going away as well.”

“Perhaps he is,” said I mysteriously.

“What do you mean?” The question came rather hurriedly.

“He has not stopped going to Wallan yet,” I answered with a meaning look, enjoying her consternation and being ignorant of the real pain I was inflicting.

“Was he there last week?”

“Every day.”

“And he never called on us once.” This she uttered very sorrowfully.

“You don’t keep the ‘Shearer’s Rest,’ ” said I.

“I wish we did.”

I could not help laughing outright. “What would papa say to that?”

“Do you think,” she said, and her hand slipped into mine, and her earnest eyes sought mine, “do you think that he—that he really cares for her?”

“No,” I answered decidedly, seeing that consolation was sorely required, “how could he?”

“But she is pretty.”

“She is freckled.”

“I know it, but what are a few freckles? Besides, they say she is not very particular.”

“Oh, but he is.”

And yet, strange to say, she did not seem to get as much consolation from this statement as might reasonably have been expected; so I continued to dilate upon Will’s lofty nature and elevated principles, showing off against them, in a very unbecoming and unflattering guise, Miss Polly Lane’s many infirmities. To all of which poor Ella listened with a resignation which was almost pitiful; and as much as I had hitherto disliked the alluring syren of the “Shearer’s Rest,” I now felt that dislike was too mild a word to give adequate expression to my feelings.

Here, however, what further conversation we might have indulged in on this painful topic was brought to a hasty conclusion by the sudden arrival of Will and Arthur.

“You’re a queer pair,” cried the former as he came rushing up. “What did you want to run away like this for? Arthur and I have been looking for you everywhere.”

“We wanted to talk,” said I.

“Talk,” he echoed. “What can girls find to talk about?”

“What can’t they, you mean. Oh, lots of things, from the latest fashion to the ‘Shearer’s Rest.’ ”

He looked at me rather quizzingly and asked me what I meant.

“Nothing,” I answered with a laugh and walked on with Arthur, leaving him and Ella to follow at their own sweet will and explain matters if they chose.

For a time Arthur and I walked on in silence, he looking everywhere but at me, I stealing furtive glances at him, for in these little matters I fully believe the woman is invariably more self-possessed than the man. And I account for it, not through any physical superiority on her part, but simply because she need do nothing but hold her head down, blush or simper, while he makes most exhaustive and ridiculous efforts to escape the bog into which he has floundered. Then again, unless he should happen to know his subject, or make a very accurate guess, he is apt to begin operations on one who will not be operated upon. Confusion worse confounded naturally ensues, and the poor fellow cuts a lamentable figure as he beats an ignominious retreat. Amusing enough to the onlooker; but, said the frogs, what is play to you is death to us. Instinct, however, is man’s unfailing guide; a sort of Southern Cross in his volatile firmament—fixed, perhaps the only thing unchangeable about him. Let him follow this and it will rarely lead him astray; otherwise he is a blind creature.

That poor Arthur had something troublesome on his mind I could tell by the sympathetic throbbings of my own heart. I more than half-suspected what it was, and grew a trifle flurried in consequence, for no matter how little a girl may care for a man, the fact of his loving her must make him seem different from other men.

“I suppose you know I am going to-morrow?” he said at last.

Poor boy! Of course I did. Hadn’t I known it for more than a month?

“Oh, yes,” I answered, “and I suppose you are glad to go?”

“For some things, yes, though for others I am sorry.”

“Sorry! How can you be sorry when you are going away under such favourable conditions? If you work hard you may get your degree before you are twenty-five, and then think how proud we shall all be of you.”

“Will you be proud of me?” he said, quite boldly I thought, and not at all like Arthur.

“Of course,” I answered with a smile, “as proud of you as though you were my own brother.”

He turned away with an impatient gesture.

“But I am not your brother.”

“I have always thought of you as one,” I answered maliciously; “but if you wish to disown the relationship—”

“I do wish to disown it.”

“As you please.”

“Because I wish to claim a nearer.”

He now began to get very red in the face, and his earnest eyes seemed to look right through me. He stammered, too, quite painfully, and I could see that the poor fellow was in a state of the most acute agitation. I believe I grew half afraid myself. Anyway, the laugh that accompanied the question, “A nearer?” was more than half hysterical.

“Yes,” he repeated, “a nearer. Have you, truly, never thought of me as anything but a brother?”

“Of what else should I think of you?” I asked, nervously.

“As a lover,” he said, trying to take my hand.

“Oh, no! not that,” and I drew back with a slight gesture of pain.

“I was afraid you had not.”

For a moment he looked at me with eyes so full of tenderness that I felt my heart thump, thump with a sudden longing to throw myself at his feet and beg his forgiveness; but at that moment the loud voice of Will broke in upon me, and the good impulse died away.

* * * * * * * * *

That night the Wallaces drove home by moonlight, but before their setting-out Arthur found me alone in the garden.

“I don’t know when I shall see you again,” he said, “but you won’t forget me, Flos, will you?”

“Of course not. What makes you think of such a thing?”

“You are not angry, then?”

“Oh, no.”

“Brother or lover,” he whispered in a low, excited voice, “I am always yours, yours for ever, body and soul. Don’t forget that, will you?”

“Hush, hush! You must not talk like this.”

He laughed in a grim sort of way, but continued, “I’ve had my old silver ring made into two—a small one and a large one. I want you to accept the smaller as a keepsake. It’s not worth much as a gift—not what I’d like to give you—but in days to come you may prize it as a remembrance. Will you have it?”

I did not like taking it, but, being ashamed to refuse, assented. He slipped the thin silver band over my engagement finger, whether by design or accident I do not know, then lifting my hand to his lips kissed it passionately.