Poor, miserable Mrs. M’llwraith! To be asked a favour by the renowned Professor Josling, and such a favour; to have Professor Josling inviting himself to her house, in the most delightful, unceremonious, and friendly fashion; and to be powerless to say him yea or nay, or to do anything but sit in her chair and gasp for breath! It was a terrible punishment for a few harmless tarradiddles such as were every day demanded from the most virtuous by the exigencies of town life!
“He would have accompanied me this afternoon,” added Mrs. Josling, “but for his book; he is sending the final sheets of the revise to the printers this evening.”
That he had not come that afternoon was a small mercy, if he was bent upon coming sooner or later; but Mrs. M’llwraith had never felt so thankful for anything in her life as for the Professor’s present pressing engagements. She shuddered as she figured in her mind the scene she had escaped. She glanced towards the door in apprehension, dreading, even yet, to see him enter at any moment. An acquiescent smile of ghastly serenity froze upon her lips; she wrenched and wrung her fingers with such quiet violence that the diamonds on one hand must have cut the flesh of the other had the hands been less plump.
“And so, my dear Mrs. M’llwraith—if you are certain that he will not bother you—if you are quite sure he will not be in your way—if you are positive that it will not weary you to entertain for one short hour, if as much, an old and ardent enthusiast—why then, might we say one afternoon this week?”
Mrs. M’llwraith bowed. For the life of her she could not melt or modify or in any way alter the horrid grin that had settled upon her rigid countenance.
“To-morrow,” suggested Mrs. Josling, whose manner was an ingenious blend of persistency and condescension, “to-morrow, perhaps, would not do?”
Then at last, and with a desperate effort, Mrs. M’llwraith loosened her tongue. Mrs. Josling was begged to understand that to-morrow afternoon would, as it happened, do beautifully. The Professor would be only too welcome, at whatever hour he chose to come. As for Mrs. M’llwraith, her feelings had temporarily prevented her from expressing herself; she apologised for the weakness; but, indeed, nobody could tell what a pride and a pleasure it was to think that her simple little relic should attract the attention of so distinguished a connoisseur. The last sentence almost stuck in her throat half-way; it was helped out only by a tremendous resolve to be taken with sudden sickness that very night, and ordered off to the country by her physician the next day.
So the Professor’s visit was arranged. And Nettleship, sitting like a mouse in his obscure corner, admired Mrs. M’llwraith for the first time in his life, and determined to make amends in the future for the torture he was inflicting upon her in the present. Nor did he add to the latter by contributing a single word to this part of the conversation. On the contrary, when Mrs. Josling was seen with pince-nez levelled inquiringly at the little plush table that supported the vase no longer, it was young Mr. Nettleship, and no one else, who adroitly decoyed the lady’s attention, and came to the rescue for a second time with a felicitous change of subject. Thereafter the conversation gradually drifted into safer channels. And presently, one by one, the people went, until there was nobody left but young Mr. Nettleship in his quiet corner. Then he, too, got up to go, and bent over his hostess with impassive face and outstretched hand. But Mrs. M’llwraith refused his hand, or rather, did not raise her own to meet it, but looked him full in the face, and said—
“Do not go just yet. Enid, my love, I hear your brothers making a dreadful noise in the schoolroom; go to them.” Enid went. Elaine had already gone. “Now, Mr. Nettleship, sit down there; I want to have a little chat with you.”
Nettleship took the low chair pointed out to him; it was almost at the lady’s feet. He had counted on something of this sort, but not on a manner quite so calm and unruffled. After all, she was a wonderful woman—a woman capable of coping with the occasion, perhaps. It was quite possible that to score off such a woman might prove a more difficult task than it had appeared at first sight But Nettleship had never in all his life either feared or despised the bowling before going in. He went in now on his mettle.
Mrs. M’llwraith opened the attack by coming to the point in the very first sentence.
“About this vase. You know something about it, Mr. Nettleship; more than I do, it would appear. Tell me what you know.”
Nettleship drew up his shoulders an inconsiderable fraction of an inch.
“I never heard you speak of it before last night. You kept your heirloom so dark, Mrs. M’llwraith.” He was beginning with confidence, but with caution—the bases upon which most scores are built.
“Indeed! I will not ask you not to be impertinent. I will merely ask you where you saw it before.”
“Why, Mrs. M’llwraith, I can’t remember your ever showing it to me before in all my life,” exclaimed Nettleship.
Mrs. M’llwraith tried a plainer ball.
“You know, as well as I do, that one cannot always tell the truth in trifles.”
“I know that one does not.”
“Very well. You will readily understand it when I tell you that this stupid vase is no heirloom at all.”
“I understand that perfectly. But—but which vase?”
He swung about in his chair, with half-closed eyes and craning neck, looking for what was not there. It was an effective stroke.
“The vase is no longer in my house,” said Mrs. M’llwraith. “You knew that too.”
Nettleship glanced at her swiftly. “Did you only get it on approval?”
The lady started. “What makes you think that?”
“Perhaps I go to Labrano’s now and then.”
“Do you?” demanded Mrs. M’llwraith plainly. And indeed the indirect stage was past.
“Well, yes.”
“That is where you saw it?”
“One of the places.”
“One of the places! Did you know the owner, then?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Then who is the owner?”
“You wish to know?”
“I have asked you.”
“Well, then, I am the owner myself. I came by the vase in India. Labrano was trying to sell it for me.”
They were sitting near a window. The sun had sunk behind the opposite houses, and the soft summer light made their faces soft—all but the eyes. They were watching one another like duellists. Mrs. M’llwraith was a woman, after all, capable at least of grappling with an emergency. She showed it now.
“It was you, then,” said she, “who made Labrano send for it in haste last Saturday? You had a motive in that. It was you who tortured me the other night, when you discovered my trifling untruth. You had also a motive in that, I do you the credit of supposing. You had also a motive in stopping this afternoon until every one else was gone. Shall I tell you your motives? I will. But I will first make you easy on one point—they shall not succeed! I would die rather than forgive you for—for the other night!”
For the first time her calmness was shaken. The last words trembled with subdued ferocity.
Nettleship smiled. But the bowling had become uncommonly good. Mrs. M’llwraith continued:
“Your motives may be compressed into one word—‘Elaine’”
“Ah!” said Nettleship, ‘Elaine! I want to marry Elaine, and Elaine wants to marry me. Why should you object?”
The policy was startling, insolent, risky—everything but unwise.
Mrs. M’llwraith smiled her scornful answer, and only observed:
“You must have told the story briefly.”
“It was an old story retold—that takes less time,” replied Nettleship.
“Retold in vain, Edward Nettleship.”
The game was slow for a while after that.
“How about the Professor?” said Nettleship at last.
“I am laid up when he comes—sudden indisposition. I leave town the following day at my doctor’s urgent advice.”
Another pause.
“Such a thousand pities!” murmured Nettleship to himself.
“Are you referring to yourself and Elaine?” inquired Mrs. M’llwraith sweetly.
“Oh dear no. I was thinking of Professor Josling. The poor old chap will be so awfully cut up. After looking forward to his quiet afternoon with you—soaking in his favourite subject, and talking shop to a good listener, for once, and generally boring you to his heart’s content. He is counting upon an hour’s real sympathy, you may depend upon it; for clever men’s wives never appreciate them, as you know, Mrs. M’llwraith. Poor old chap! It is hard lines on him.”
The picture of Mrs. M’llwraith and Professor Josling in close confabulation over the vase, and presently over the five-o’clock teapot, and of the firm founding of an intimate friendship with that eminent man, proved quite irresistible. Mrs. M’llwraith closed her eyes and gloated over the splendid impossibility for one weak, yearning, despairing minute. And during that minute Nettleship felt that he had collared the bowling at last, and might safely force the game.
“There is,” he continued accordingly, in an altered tone, “another thing to consider—the Professor’s curiosity. He means getting a sight of the vase, and, like the indelicate little boy, he won’t be happy, you know, till he does get it. If you went away, he’d apply to Mr. M’llwraith straight. Then the cat would be out of the bag—and the Professor out of your visiting list!”
With a sudden sob Mrs. M’llwraith raised her hands to her face. “Then what am I to do?” she wailed.
Nettleship bounded from his chair, knelt before her, took her hands in his, and looked earnestly in the wretched lady’s face.
“Give me Elaine—for my Indian vase!”
Oh, beyond all doubt it was the most infamous, impudent price ever quoted in even our marriage market… And yet—Mrs. M’llwraith bowed her head.
The game was won.
“You rule Mr. M’llwraith in such matters with an absolute rule, do you not?” said Ned, a few minutes later.
Mrs. M’llwraith confessed to that.
“Then we must approach him together. I have not time to go to the Temple and dress and come back. May I stop as I am? Thank you. Then we’ll back each other up after dinner, and together we’ll carry our point in five minutes; and then I’ll bring the what’s-its-name in the morning. Is it agreed?”—
Again Mrs. M’llwraith bowed her head.
“I have scored,” said Ned to Elaine, in the private moment that was granted them before he left the house. “I was a brute about it, I know; but I scored.”
“You generally do,” Elaine returned, with liquid eyes.
“Ah! But it was a better score than that the other day, if that’s what you’re driving at. Better bowling, I assure you.”
He paused, surveyed the lovely girl before him, inwardly congratulated himself for a lucky rascal, and added with the utmost candour—
“And a better match, too!”
The Luckiest Man in the Colony.
That is never a nice moment when your horse knocks up under you, and you know quite well that he has done so, and that to ride him another inch would be a cruelty—another mile a sheer impossibility. But when it happens in the bush, the moment becomes more that negatively disagreeable; for you may be miles from the nearest habitation, and an unpremeditated bivouac, with neither food nor blankets, demands a philosophic temperament as well as the quality of endurance. This once befell the manager of Dandong, in the back-blocks of New South Wales, just on the right side of the Dandong boundary fence, which is fourteen miles from the homestead. Fortunately Deverell, of Dandong, was a young man, well used, from his boyhood, to the casual hardships of station life, and well fitted by physique to endure them. Also he had the personal advantage of possessing the philosophic temperament large-sized. He dismounted the moment he knew for certain what was the matter. A ridge of pines—a sandy ridge, where camping properly equipped would have been perfect luxury—rose against the stars a few hundred yards ahead. But Deverell took off the saddle on the spot, and carried it himself as far as that ridge, where he took off the bridle also, hobbled the done-up beast with a stirrup-leather, and turned him adrift.
Deverell, of Dandong, was a good master to his horses and his dogs, and not a bad one to his men. Always the master first, and the man afterwards, he was a little selfish, as becomes your masterful man. On the other hand, he was a singularly frank young fellow. He would freely own, for instance, that he was the luckiest man in the back-blocks. This, to be sure, was no more than the truth. But Deverell never lost sight of his luck, nor was he ever ashamed to recognise it: wherein he differed from the average lucky man, who says that luck had nothing to do with it. Deverell could gloat over his luck, and do nothing else—when he had nothing else to do. And in this way he faced contentedly even this lonely, hungry night, his back to a pine at the north side of the ridge, and a short briar pipe in full blast.
He was the new manager of Dandong, to begin with. That was one of the best managerships in the colony, and Deverell had got it young—in his twenties, at all events, if not by much. The salary was seven hundred a year, and the homestead was charming. Furthermore, Deverell was within a month of his marriage; and the coming Mrs. Deverell was a girl of some social distinction down in Melbourne, and a belle into the bargain, to say nothing of another element, which was entirely satisfactory, without being so ample as to imperil a man’s independence. The homestead would be charming indeed in a few weeks, in time for Christmas. Meanwhile, the “clip” had been a capital one, and the rains abundant; the paddocks were in a prosperous state, the tanks overflowing, everything going smoothly in its right groove (as things do not always go on a big station), and the proprietors perfectly delighted with their new manager. Well, the new manager was somewhat delighted with himself. He was lucky in his work and lucky in his love—and what can the gods do more for you? Considering that he had rather worse than no antecedents at all—antecedents with so dark a stain upon them that, anywhere but in a colony, the man would have been a ruined man from his infancy—he was really incredibly lucky in his love affair. But whatever his parents had been or had done, he had now no relatives at all of his own: and this is a great thing when you are about to make new ones in an inner circle: so that here, once more, Deverell was in his usual luck.
It does one good to see a man thoroughly appreciating his good luck. The thing is so seldom done. Deverell not only did this, but did it with complete sincerity. Even to-night, though personally most uncomfortable, and tightening his belt after every pipe, he could gaze at the stars with grateful eyes, obscure them with clouds of smoke, watch the clouds disperse and the stars shine bright again, and call himself again and again, and yet again, the very luckiest man in the Colony.
While Deverell sat thus, returning thanks on an empty stomach, at the northern edge of the ridge, a man tramped into the pines from the south. The heavy sand muffled his steps; but he stopped long before he came near Deverell, and threw down his swag with an emancipated air. The man was old, but he held himself more erect than does the inveterate swagman. The march through life with a cylinder of blankets on one’s shoulders, with all one’s worldly goods packed in that cylinder, causes a certain stoop of a very palpable kind; and this the old man, apparently, had never contracted. Other points slightly distinguished him from the ordinary run of swagmen. His garments were orthodox, but the felt wideawake was stiff and new, and so were the moleskins, which, indeed, would have stood upright without any legs in them at all. The old man’s cheeks, chin, and upper lip were covered with short gray bristles, like spikes of steel; his face was lean, eager and deeply lined.
He rested a little on his swag. “So this is Dandong,” he muttered, with his eyes upon the Dandong sand between his feet. “Well, now that I am within his boundary-fence at last, I am content to rest. Here I camp. To-morrow I shall see him!”
Deverell, at the other side of the ridge, dimming the stars with his smoke
, for the pleasure of seeing them shine bright again, heard presently a sound which was sudden music to his ears. The sound was a crackle. Deverell stopped smoking, but did not move; it was difficult to believe his ears. But the crackle grew louder; Deverell jumped up and saw the swagman’s fire within a hundred yards of him; and the difficult thing to believe in then was his own unparalleled good luck.
“There is no end to it,” he chuckled, taking his saddle over one arm and snatching up the waterbag and bridle. “Here’s a swaggie stopped to camp, with flour for a damper and a handful of tea for the quart-pot, as safe as the bank! Perhaps a bit of blanket for me too! But I am the luckiest beggar alive; this wouldn’t have happened to any one else!”
He went over to the fire, and the swagman, who was crouching at the other side of it, peered at him from under a floury palm. He was making the damper already. His welcome to Deverell took a substantial shape; he doubled the flour for the damper. Otherwise the old tramp did not gush.
Deverell did the talking. Lying at full length on the blankets, which had been unrolled, his face to the flames, and his strong jaws cupped in his hands, he discoursed very freely of his luck.
Under Two Skies Page 6