The Wonder-Child: An Australian Story

by Ethel Sybil Turner

  *CHAPTER X*

  *'I Love You'*

  'The bird of life is singing on the bough His two eternal notes of "I and Thou."'

  It was after tea, and the long shadows of the dusk had fallen so gently,so tenderly, that even Dunks' selection had a beauty of its own.

  Mortimer sat on the verandah and talked war to Mr. Cameron till his verysoul loathed the Transvaal. Then he was captured by Bart, and forcedinto the dining-room to explain something in the _Town and CountryJournal_, and give his opinion on the merits of Johnson's Grass.

  And when he went outside again, Roly and Floss hung upon his arms andbegged and begged him to 'come with us a bit.'

  At eight o'clock he broke away from them, and stumbled through the darkpassage to the kitchen regions to seek Miss Browne.

  But here only an oil-lamp flickered in the breeze; even Lizzie was awayfrom her post, having gone before tea to walk to Wilgandra, in theurgent need of a little pleasant human intercourse, ere she begananother grey week.

  There was a door open near by, and glancing in Morty saw Miss Browne,seated at her cleared dressing-table so busily writing and so surroundedby little papers and letters he came to a vague conclusion that she was'literary.'

  'Miss Browne,' he called imploringly.

  She laid down her pen and hastened to the door to him.

  He seized both her hands, he pressed them, he wrung them as he stood,labouring with his excitement.

  'Miss Browne,' he said, 'will you help me? You must help--oh, do notrefuse--she has gone down the garden alone--I think she is leaning onthe gate. I must go to her. I must go to her. Will you keep themback--all the others--could you get them in a room and turn the key--howcan I tell her if they follow me like this?'

  'Tell her--who--what--why?' said the astonished Miss Browne.

  'I love her,' said the man; 'I love her with all my soul--I must tellher; you will help me?'

  His face looked quite white; there was a moisture on his forehead, hiseager voice shook.

  Miss Browne was crying; she had taken one of his big hands and wasstroking it.

  'Oh, my dear, my dear!' she said. 'How beautiful, how very beautiful!Oh, my love, how sweet--oh, how sweet, my love!'

  'You will help?' he said. 'You will keep those little beggars away?'

  'Leave it to me,' she said; 'you go to her, down in the garden, and thedusk is here, and the moon beginning to rise! How sweet, how beautiful!And she has on a white dress! Don't trouble about anything, mylove--just go out to her.' The happy tears were gushing from her eyes.

  'What a good sort you are!' he said, and wrung her hand, and patted hershoulder, then went plunging out into the sweet darkness to tell hislove.

  He found her where the wattles grew thickest, leaning on the fence, herflower-face turned to the young rising moon.

  'How did you know I was here?' she said.

  'I knew,' he answered, and a long silence fell. 'What are you thinkingof?' he whispered.

  'I don't--know,' she said, and a strange little sob shook in her throat.

  His arm sprang round her.

  'Oh,' he said, 'I love you--I do love you! Dearest, dearest, I love you!Do love me, darling--I love you, I love you so!'

  Hermie was trembling like the little leaves around them--too surprised,too stricken with the newness of the situation even to slip out of hisarms. The pleased young moon smiled down at them, the leaves whisperedthe news all along the bush, an exquisite perfume of flowers and treesand freshening grass rose up to them. How sweet something was--theclasp about her waist, the kisses that had rained upon her cheeks, theeager, beautiful words that still were beating in her ears!

  'Oh, I don't understand, I don't understand,' said the excited girl, andburst into strange tears, and tried to move from his arms, and put astartled hand to her cheeks, to feel what difference those kisses hadmade.

  'Did I frighten you--did I frighten you, my darling, my little girl?' hesaid. 'See there, don't tremble, I will take my arm away. It is too bigand rough, isn't it? There, there, I won't even kiss you; let me holdyour hand, there. You have only to understand that I love you, that Ihave always loved you--ever since you were a tiny thing of twelve, and Iused to ride this way just for the pleasure of watching you. You werelike no other child here, so slender and sweet and white and pink, andall that shining hair hanging round you. I think I wanted you always.I wanted to pick you up and put you on the saddle in front of me andride away with you--away and away right out of the world. You will letme, darling? You will try to love me a little? You will be my ownlittle wife?'

  Wife! One of the Daly girls had just been married to a boundary ridernear. Hermie had seen the lonely place where they were to live togetherwith no one else to break the monotony.

  Wife! All those dull, uninteresting women who came to call in Wilgandrawere wives, all those dull, horrid men in Wilgandra were their husbands.

  Be married; she, Hermie Cameron, like the girls in Miss Browne's books!Perhaps it might not be so very bad--they all seemed to look forward toit.

  But to Mortimer Stevenson! Oh no, none of them ever married any onelike that, the men there were all officers, penniless young artists andauthors, or at least earls. Most of them had proud black eyes andcynical smiles, and spoke darkly of their youth. Or else they weredebonair young men with laughing blue eyes and Saxon curly hair.

  Mortimer! She had actually forgotten it was only Mortimer speaking allthis time, Mortimer Stevenson, who wore red and blue painful ties, andgrew red if she spoke to him, and knocked chairs over in his clumsiness,and had never been anywhere farther than Sydney, and thought Wilgandraand his father's station the nicest places in the world.

  A cloud came over the happy moon, the leaves hung sad and still; fromsomewhere far away came the piteous wail of the curlew.

  Hermie freed her hand and found her voice.

  'This is really ridiculous,' she said petulantly. 'I suppose you are infun.'

  'In fun!' he echoed dully.

  'Yes, you can't really be serious. Think what a fearfully long time wehave known each other! I'd as soon think of being married to Bart, orBill Daly.'

  He winced at Daly--big, coarse, uneducated bushman.

  'If I waited a long time, couldn't you grow to love me?' he said. 'Icould stop doing anything you don't like; I--I would go through theUniversity like James and Walter did, if you liked.'

  The exceeding pain in his voice touched the girl's awakening heart.

  'Forgive me, Morty,' she said, 'it must seem very horrid of me. Ididn't understand myself at first----'

  'Perhaps--perhaps----' he began hopefully.

  'No, I am sure, quite, quite sure I could never love you,' she saiddecidedly. 'I shall never marry, I have quite made up my mind. There isno one I could ever care for enough.'

  'Have you anything particularly against me?' persisted Mortimer. 'I'dalter anything; you don't know how I would try.' His voice choked.

  She could not instance his ties, his clumsy length of limb, his habit offurious blushing.

  'You make it very hard for me,' she said. 'I--I wish you would go home;I want to go to bed.'

  'Forgive me,' he said humbly. 'Forgive me; you have been very good andpatient with me. I will go at once.'

  Hermie looked for him to move. He took a step away from her--a stepback--a step away. The sad moon came out and showed her his blurredmiserable eyes, his working mouth.

  'Oh, I am sorry--sorry!' she cried.

  'May I kiss you--just once?' he whispered.

  She stood still, her head drooped down, till he lifted it, very gently,very tenderly, and bent his head and put his quivering lips on hers.

  Her hand went gently round his neck a minute.

  'Poor Morty, dear Morty!' she said. Her breath came warm on his cheekone second, and a feather kiss, a sweet little sorry kiss that made hisheart like bursting, was laid there.

 
The next second she had slipped away into the darkness, and he wasstumbling to find his horse and carry his misery as far as he might.

  Hermie went a circuitous route round the back of the cottage, so anxiouswas she to reach her bedroom without having her hot cheeks challenged bythe sharp eyes of Floss or Roly. And there on the back verandah, wherethey never went, the two little figures were sitting, one at either endwith their backs against a post.

  'It's time you were in bed,' were the natural words that sprang to herlips, when she found she might not elude them.

  Two laughs bubbled up. 'We're not going to bed for hours,' they said;'we're having a 'speriment.'

  'A what?' said Hermie.

  'See this,' said Floss, standing up, 'we're both tied to the posts withthe clothes-line. Such larks! Brownie said she wanted to try a'speriment on us, and see if we could sit still for two hours. If wedo, she's going to give me her little gold brooch, and Roly the greenheart out of her work-box.'

  'We can swop them at school for usefuller things,' interpolated Roly.

  'The best is,' giggled Floss, 'we like sitting still, we'd been runningabout all day. And she forgot to tell us not to speak to each other,and she didn't put us too far to play knuckle-bones. I've wonned Rolythree times.'

  But Hermie had gone in, an impatient doubt as to Miss Browne's sanitycrossing her mind.

  She found Bart climbing out of the dining-room window.

  'Did you go doing that?' he demanded.

  'What?' said Hermie.

  'Lock the door while I was reading.'

  'Of course I didn't,' Hermie said impatiently.

  'It's that young beggar Roly,' Bart said; 'I'll have to take it out ofhim for this. He'd even jammed the window, and I'd no end or work toget it open. I want to go and help father.'

  'Where is he?' Hermie said.

  'He's washing the paint-brushes in the cowshed,' said Bart. 'Isn't itlucky? Morty says there are about three dozen tins of red paint at hisplace, no earthly good to any one, and he's going to send them down inthe morning, and dad and I are going to give all the place a coat ofpaint before mother comes.'

  Hermie went to her bedroom, shut the door, and sat down by the window,glad of the sheltering darkness.

  But two or three feet away, at the next window, sat Miss Browne, also inthe dark, Miss Browne, now crying happily into her wet handkerchief, nowlooking at the moon and whispering, 'Love, love, how beautiful, howbeautiful!'

  The sound of footsteps, however, in the adjoining room brought herswiftly outside Hermie's window.

  'Hermie!' she cried in a breathless tone at the sight of the girlsitting there in her white dress. 'That cannot be you?'

  'Yes, it is,' said Hermie; 'why shouldn't it be?'

  'Oh, my love, my love! It is hardly half an hour. I thought two hours,at the least. My dear, my love, no one disturbed you? Oh, my love, don'ttell me Roly and Floss got loose?'

  'I don't know what you mean,' Hermie said shortly, 'but I can't helpthinking it is rather ridiculous to keep those children sitting there.They ought to be in bed. I am going to bed.'

  'To bed--my love--my dear!' gasped Miss Browne. 'Where is he?'

  'Where is who?' asked Hermie impatiently.

  'M-M-Mr. M-Mortimer Stevenson,' said Miss Browne in a whisper.

  Hermie had her secret to hide.

  'What should I know about Mr. Stevenson?' she said coldly. 'I presumehe has gone home.'

  Gone home! All could not have gone well and happily in half an hour!Miss Browne grew quite pale.

  Such a sweet half-hour it had been for her! For twenty minutes of it shehad thought of nothing but the white light of love that was going toflood Hermie's life. But during the last ten minutes there had come toher a thought of the material advantages that would accrue to thegirl--Stevenson would have four or five thousand a year at his father'sdeath. It had been very sweet to sit and think of dear littleflower-faced Hermie lifted for ever above the sordid cares of wretchedhousekeeping.

  'My love--my dear,' she faltered, 'I--I am old enough to be your mother.Could you trust me--won't you----'

  But Hermie, with the blind young eyes of a girl, saw nothing outside herwindow but tiresome Miss Browne, crying a little into her handkerchief(she often cried), stammering out sentences that seemed to have nobeginning or end (her sentences seldom had), twisting her fingers about(she never kept them still).

  This, when the girl's excited heart wanted to be away from all voices,all eyes, and go over the strange sensations, with the moon alone forwitness.

  'Miss Browne,' she said, making a strong effort not to speak unkindly,'I have a headache to-night, and want to be alone. Would you be so kindas to keep what you have to say till morning, and tell me then?'

  Nothing could have been swifter than the way Miss Browne melted awayinto the darkness.