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THE BOSTON-LIBRARY SOCIETY.
ORGANIZED 1792. INCORPORATED 1794.
18 BOYLSTON PLACE.
Added Ami? 18 1893
To be returned in five weeks. A fine of one cent
will be incurred for each day this volume is detained
beyond that time.
CRVARD COLLEN


1893
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UNDER TWO SKIES





UNDER TWO SKIES
A Collection of Stories
BY
ERNEST WILLIAM HORNUNG
AUTHOR OF "A BRIDE FROM THE BUSH"
IBRARY,
BOSTON
SOCIETY
LONDON AND EDINBURGH
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1892


$7856
KD 3419
HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
Oct 18, 1941)


CONTENTS
PAGE
JIM-OF-THE-Whim
.
.
.
.
.
.
1
.
.
.
NETTLESHIP's SCORE . . . .
THE LUCKIEST MAN IN THE COLONY.
THE NOTORIOUS Miss ANSTRUTHER
STRONG-MINDED Miss METHUEN
AN IDLE SINGER . . .
.
.
·
155
.
.
185
SERGEANT SETA .
.
.
.
.
.
.





JIM-OF-THE-WHIM
UTIS real name had gone no further than the
11 station store. There it appeared in the
ledger, and sometimes (though very rarely) on
a letter in the baize-covered rack, under post-
marks which excited the storekeeper's curiosity;
but beyond the store verandah he was known
only as Jim-of-the-Whim.
He lived by himself at the Seven-mile whim.
Most of his time was spent under a great
wooden drum, round which coiled a rope with
its two ends down two deep shafts, raising a
bucketful of water from the one while lowering
an empty bucket down the other. The buckets
filled a tank; the tank fed the sheep-troughs;
and what Jim did was to drive a horse round


UNDER TWO SKIES
and round to turn the drum. It was not an
arduous employment. Jim could lean for hours
against a post, smoking incessantly and but
occasionally cracking his whip, yet serenely
conscious that he was doing his duty. In times
of plenty, when there was water in the pad-
docks and green life in the salt-bush, the whim
was not wanted, and other work was found for
the whim-driver. Unhappily, however, such
intervals were in his time rare, and Jim was
busy, though his work was light.
Jim never neglected his work. Sometimes
he took a few days' holiday, and exchanged his
half-year's cheque for poisonous bush alcohol ;
this was only customary; and Jim was highly
considerate in his choice of the time, and would
go after a rainfall, when the sheep could not
suffer by his absence. He never allowed his
excesses to degenerate into irregularities. He
knew his work thoroughly, and applied his
knowledge without sparing his bones; when
not actually driving the whim, he was scour-
ing the plains for thirsty stragglers. As a
permanency at the Seven-mile he was worth
higher wages than he was ever likely to get from


JIM-OF-THE-WHIM
Duncan Macdonald, though this squatter would
have conceded much (for him) rather than lose
so reliable a hand. But Jim never asked for a
rise; and Macdonald was perhaps not eccentric
in declining to take the initiative in this
matter.
Jim's hut was two hundred yards from the
whim. As bush-huts go, it was a superior
habitation. It was divided by a partition into
two rooms; it had a floor. In the larger room
stood a table and a bench, which were both
movable; and this merit was shared in an
eminent manner by a legless armchair mounted
on an old soap-box. Prints from illustrated
papers were pasted neatly on strips of sacking
nailed to the walls. Sacks filled with the
current rations hung from the beams. The
roof was galvanised iron ; the walls, horizontal
logs of pine between pine uprights.
Civilisation was met with on the threshold in
the shape of a half-moon of looking-glass,
nailed to the doorpost on the inside. This
glass was only put to practical use on the in-
frequent occasions when Jim amused himself by
removing his beard. At such times, when the


4
UNDER TWO SKIES
operation was over, and Jim counted the cuts,
the reflection showed a sun-browned face of much
manly beauty, invested with a fine moustache
in a state of picturesque neglect. His eyes
were slightly sunken, but extremely blue; and
he had an odd way of looking at you with his
head on one side, owing to a breakage of the
collar-bone from a fall far up country, when the
bones had overlapped before growing together
again.
The station storekeeper, a young Englishman
named Parker, who gave his services to the
economic Macdonald in return for Colonial
experience,' and, among other duties, drove out
with Jim's rations, was the only regular visitor
at the Seven-mile hut. Yet Jim had one con-
stant companion and sympathetic friend. This
was Stumpy, the black kitten. The genesis of
Stumpy was unknown to Jim, who had found
him in a hollow log, while chopping up a load
of wood sent from the homestead. Jim had
chopped off two inches of what he took to be a
new variety of the black snake before discover-
ing that he had mutilated an unlucky kitten.
The victim became “Stumpy' on the spot; and


JIM-OF-THE-WHIM
from that moment the kitten shared every meal
and sentiment of the man, and grew in wisdom
with increasing inches.
One cloudless winter's day (it was in July)
Mr. Parker, arriving at the Seven-mile hut at
high noon, found Jim idly caressing the kitten,
and singing. He always did sing when he
played with Stumpy, except when he broke off
into affectionate imprecations upon some new
impertinence on the part of that quaint little
creature. In fact, Jim sang a good deal at any
time. At general musters of all hands, such as
at the lamb-marking, his voice made him popu-
lar in spite of his reserve, though he sometimes
sang over the heads of his mates. To-day his
singing was over the head of Mr. Parker, for it
was in Italian, and Jim looked up with a quick
change of colour at detection. He had, however,
nothing to fear. Young Parker, so far from
knowing Italian when he heard it, had been
sent away from his public school because the
rudiments of Latin were still beyond him at
seventeen. Jim was pronouncing his words
funnily—that was all that struck young Parker.
*You've heard the news, Jim ?’ were Parker's


UNDER TWO SKIES
first words. “We've a visitor—a lady, ye gods !
- Mrs. Macdonald's sister.'
appealed to Stumpy, and inquired if he had any
ligence with indifference, and went on playing
with the kitten. Parker was piqued. He was
full of the guest at the homestead, Mrs. Mac-
donald's enchanting sister, and must tell some
one about her, even though the only accessible
ear was a whim-driver's. He launched into a
rhapsody which occupied some minutes, and
blended the old public school slang with the
stronger-flavoured bush idiom, newly acquired.
Jim heard him stoically; then he held up
Stumpy by the fore-quarters, and addressed this
animal gravely.
'D'ye hear all that, Stumpy? Then just
you forget it again, my little feller. Wimmin
is nothink to us, as I've told you before ; so
never think on 'em, Stumps, or you an' me'll
fall out! That's it-he says he hears, Mr.
Parker.'
Parker changed the subject.
Here's a letter for you,' he said, and tossed


JIM-OF-THE-WHIM
a square blue envelope across to the whim-
driver. It was not one of the well-directed
letters he occasionally received, with English
postmarks which invited speculation. It came
only from Sydney, and the superscription was
amusingly illiterate. Jim opened the letter-
and turned whiter than the soiled sheet which
now began to tremble violently in his hand.
There were merely a few written words on
this sheet of paper, but a short newspaper
extract was pasted below them. The written
words danced before Jim's eyes ; the printed
words became illegible ; and if young Parker
had not been deep in the contemplation of his
own face in the looking-glass on the doorpost
began to merely a mint a sho
russet bushman's beard, and wishing he could
have his photograph taken as he was, to
send home to the old country), he might
have seen Jim shiver from head to foot, and
push the kitten from his trembling knees. As
it was, by the time the youth did turn round,
Jim-of-the-Whim looked and spoke like a calm
and rational man.
Mr. Parker, sir—I want a cheque.'


UNDER TWO SKIES
You aren't going on the booze again, Jim-
already ??
'No, sir. I want you to make out a cheque
for—as much as I'm worth, payable to this name
and at this address.' He tore off the portion of
the sheet of letter-paper above the newspaper-
cutting, scored out a few words with a stump
of pencil, added three words of his own, and
handed this upper portion to young Parker.
And please to put in this slip with the cheque,
sir.'
These were the three words that Jim had
written-
"To cover expenses.'
II
The young lady whom Mr. Parker had
raved about to Jim-of-the-Whim was Miss
Genevieve Howard, of Melbourne ; and, to do
that young fellow justice, he had but praised
one who gained golden opinions on almost every
hand.
Miss Jenny had a pretty face, a perfect


JIM-OF-THE-WHIM
figure, a sweet soprano voice; and she was
run after at the Government House assemblies.
She was hardly, however, one of the Melbourne
beauties. Her hair was free from special merit ;
she had no complexion at all. Even her eyes
were of a neutral tint, though as a rule they
were subject to such clever control that the
colour was of no consequence; the rule was
broken when emotion softened them; then they
required no management to render them quite
bewitching. Genuine feeling was no stranger
to Miss Jenny, but depth of feeling was. She
was emotional. And greater even than her
talent for singing was her natural turn for
coquetry, which amounted to genius.
But when Miss Jenny came to stay in the
back-blocks with her sister (whose invitations
she had persistently refused for years) her
little fling was over : she was engaged. It was
a startling engagement. Her world could
scarcely believe its ears when it was announced
that the popular Genevieve—with her beauty,
her money, her fairly smart tongue—had
engaged herself to Clinton Browne, a country
curate no better than a pauper. It seemed pre-


10
UNDER TWO SKIES
posterous. It vexed many; it wounded one or
two; but at least it scored off those hanging
judges of Miss Jenny's own sex who had averred
that Miss Jenny was holding back until the
in the bay, or another cricketing team come over
from the old country. But these were not the
people to be silenced for long. They presently
heard of Mr. Browne's translation from the
country to a town curacy, and about the same
time that Miss Jenny was going up country.
They promptly declared that she was frightened
of seeing too much of him. She was tired of an
amphibious position in society (for Government
House had been renounced); her enthusiasm
for aboriginal missions and the rest had gone
out as suddenly as it had caught fire; the
originality, pathos, and romance attaching to
the voluntary immolation of the brilliant Miss
Howard on true love's altar were losing their
fragrance in her own delicate nostrils. All
these points, and worse, her judges insisted
on-not knowing that their most ingenious
malice could not have condemned the accused
to a worse servitude than station-life in the


JIM-OF-THE-WHIM
11
remote lonely regions of Riverina, where Miss
Jenny now was.
The well-built homestead among the tall
pines on the sandhills had absolutely no attrac-
tion for the town-bred girl. The surrounding
miles of salt-bush plains and low monotonous
scrub oppressed her when she wandered abroad.
There was not one picturesque patch on the
whole dreary 'run.' Then she was prejudiced
against squatters in general, and unjustly ac-
cepted her taciturn, close-fisted brother-in-law
as a type of the class. Him she could not en-
dure. She pitied her elder sister, the gentle
Julia, who, having thrown herself away to
begin with, made the worst of the bargain by
becoming her children's meek, submissive slave.
Their name was legion, and they were young
savages one and all; the only one of them that
Aunt Jenny would have anything at all to do
with, while she could help it, was the reigning
baby in arms.
At first, it is true, the young lady thought
it rather nice to have a horse to ride at her
own sweet pleasure. But this treat was mini-
mised after the first ride, when Duncan gravely


12
UNDER TWO SKIES
cautioned her against galloping his horses while
'feed' was so scarce in the paddocks and chaff
so expensive ; and after Miss Jenny had
frightened herself horribly by losing her way
in the scrub, and not finding it again for
several hours, she removed the ride from her
daily programme, and reserved it for those
times when her nephews and nieces suc-
ceeded in making a perfect pandemonium of
the homestead. Her days were spent chiefly
among the pines, with a book or some
fancy-work, or in the verandah when the
children were out of the way. It was here
that she made Clinton a gorgeous sermon-
case of purple velvet, with C. B. in a crest
of gold on one cover and I. H. S. on the
other. This touching and suggestive present
brought down upon her head a very beautiful
letter from the ardent curate, who rashly stated
that henceforth his sermons would be inspired.
But the letter was far too beautiful to be
answered immediately, or even to be read over
twice. Not that Browne had rivals in Messrs.
Bird and Parker, overseer and storekeeper
respectively. Miss Howard took not the faint-


JIM-OF-THE-WHIM
13
est interest in either of them, though she had
subjugated poor Parker (quite unintentionally)
on the evening of her arrival, and been com-
pelled to snub the forward and facetious young
overseer a few days later.
'I declare, Jenny wrote to a friend, 'except
dear old Julia, there's not a soul fit to speak to
on the premises ! And the children prevent
one speaking to Julia— little wretches ! My
dear, I mayn't even sing in the evenings for
fear of waking them, and even if I might it
would be no pleasure with a pannikin of a piano,
besides which, none of them know a note of
music! I wish I had never carted all my songs
up here—the sight of them tantalises me. As
for the men, they are insufferable—not that I
want to go back to Melbourne just yet. After
all, I knew what to expect, for, as you know too,
all bushmen are the same !'
Fate, coming down from heaven in the form
of a heavy and welcome rainfall, proved Miss
Genevieve Howard at fault in respect of this
sweeping judgment.
On a gray and lowering day that young lady
might have been seen cantering by the Seven-


14
UNDER TWO SKIES
mile whim; she was seen, in fact, by the whim-
driver, who ran to open a gate for her. 'The
act of politeness did not strike Miss Jenny—as
it ought to have done---as abnormal on the
part of a station hand; nor did a hint about
coming foul weather, spoken with unusual
deference, receive the slightest attention. She
threw a bone of thanks to the dog her gate-.
opener, and rode through without once looking
under the brim of the gray felt wideawake on
a level with her dogskin gloves.
But a few minutes later, as Jim stood at his
hut door watching the rain come down in real
earnest, there was a muffled tattoo of hoofs
upon the soft sandy soil, and a horse pulled up
in front of the hut.
The diffident tone and manner in which the
young lady now addressed him offered such a
pretty contrast to her monosyllable at the gate
that Jim very nearly burst out laughing ;
instead, however, he bared, and ever so slightly
inclined, his head, just as a gentleman would
have done in his place.
'I think this is called the Seven - mile
hut?'


JIM-OF-THE-WHIM
“Yes, miss.
'Is Mr. Macdonald here?'
“No, miss.'
* But you expect him ?'
*No. I've heard nothing about it.'
"Oh, but I heard him say he was coming here.'
“Then he'll come, you may be sure, miss.'
The drops were falling thick and heavy.
And I thought,' said Miss Jenny doubtfully,
'I might drive back with him in the buggy,
which has a hood. I know Mr. Macdonald is
coming here, for I heard him say so. I am
only surprised he hasn't come yet.'
'He'll come any minute,' said Jim with de-
cision. “Help you to dismount, miss? That's
it. Now, if you'll step in there out o'the rain,
I'll take the saddle orf of the 'orse.
The whim-driver followed Miss Jenny into
the hut, carrying the saddle. Then he kicked
the log into a blaze, drew near it the legless
armchair on the soap-box, observed that Mr.
Macdonald was certain not to be long, and,
without another word, went out.
Miss Jenny listened to his retreating steps
(and those of her horse, which he was evidently


16
UNDER TWO SKIES
leading to some shelter) until they were lost
to the ear in the rattle of rain on the iron roof;
then she stood irresolute, her mouth pursed
into the tiniest crimson circle, and doubt in
her eyes. She made a pretty picture in her
dark blue habit, the firelight sweeping over
the flushed face underneath the white straw
hat, and dancing in her hair—a pretty picture
in a frame of unbarked pine, with a beading of
galvanised iron.
She glanced round the wooden walls. How
clean and tidy everything was! She had never
imagined that common bushmen looked after
their huts like this. Was this a common bush-
man, by the way? He certainly said “orf of '
for off,' and dropped the h from “horse'; but
herself; his manners were better than those,
say, of Mr. Bird ; and he was really handsome
-she had discovered this at last. What a
pity he was only an ignorant bushman! He
was nothing more, after all; or else, for one
thing, he would not fight so shy of a riding-
habit.
The girl sat down on the quaint seat in front


JIM-OF-THE-WHIM
17
of the fire, and the spurting flames made her
thoughtful. . . . Presently she realised that
there were no more flames, but only embers :
her meditations had taken time. Yet the
whim-driver did not return. Where had he
gone? Did the absurd creature mean to leave
her sitting there all day? She would demand
her horse and brave the rain-only, now that
she had waited so long for Duncan, it would be
weak not to wait a little longer and be driven
home dry. She raised her eyes from the red
embers of the fire; they had rested on the
glowing logs too long; they burned and ached,
so that the rest of the hut was dark and indis-
tinct to them.
Had this sensation lasted, Miss Jenny would
at least have been spared a more startling one;
for her clearing eyesight was greeted by a pair
of emerald eyes transfixing her from the
blurred gloom of the chimney corner. The
eyes had no body, and Miss Jenny jumped up
in high alarm, tumbling the legless chair from
its pedestal the soap-box. A horrible sound
issued from the region of the staring eyes.
Miss Jenny leapt upon the soap-box, and


18
UNDER TWO SKIES
thence, with immense agility, on to the table.
Her sight lost all its dimness: the owner of
the unearthly eyes, the author of the unearthly
sound, stood revealed—a small black demon,
with a back bent like a bow before the arrow
leaves it.
Now, cats were this young lady's pet abhor-
rence; so she instinctively took the measure
that had served her through life on like occasions,
and screamed out lustily. Nor did she stop
until the whim-driver appeared at the door
with a scared face. Then, in an instant, she
was sufficiently collected, and more than suffici-
ently indignant.
Take that nasty, horrid little wretch
away !' gasped Miss Jenny.
Jim simultaneously grasped the situation
and poor Stumpy—the latter by that loose
skin at the back of the neck which is to your
hand what the loop of your overcoat is to
the peg.
Stumpy !' he began, in a terrible voice,
'you're a little—–
His teeth came together with a snap.
Terror filled his face, for he felt as a man who


JIM-OF-THE-WHIM
19
has driven within an inch of a precipice, and
pulled the right rein at the right second. And
the words that Jim checked in his throat it
would be grossly unfair to conjecture. He
relieved himself by tossing Stumpy into the
inner room, and banging the door.
'Danger's past,' he then said, smiling at the
goddess aloft, with his head cocked at the
rakish angle which he could not help. “You
may venture on deck, miss.
He held up his hands to her assistance.
What else could he do? But he may have
done it awkwardly, for Miss Jenny stood im-
movable, vowing she was all right where she
was. Jim thereupon threw himself with vigour
into mending the fire. A modest idea occurred
to him that advantage might perhaps be taken
of his back being turned; and he was quite
right, for there followed a flutter in the air and
a light bounce on the floor; and when Jim
looked round, after a decent interval, Miss
Howard was standing gazing out of doors.
He was glad she had not fallen and bothered
him to pick her up.
Out of doors it was raining hopelessly; nor


20
UNDER TWO SKIES
was there any sign of the good Duncan. The
heavy framework of the whim loomed dispirit-
ingly through the rain. There was nothing
else to look at.
‘How do you work a whim ?' all at once
asked the visitor.
“By driving a horse round and round,' Jim
answered ; and he came and looked out at a
respectful distance from her.
“How very lively! I should rather like to
see one working.
We don't do it in wet weather; there's
plenty of water without. But if you cared
to come some hot-wind day, miss, I'd show
you the whole thing, and welcome.'
There was no eagerness in his tone; the in-
vitation was inspired by a civil instinct, nothing
more; and at that moment Jim-of-the-Whim
was as good a misogynist as he had ever been.
But Miss Jenny was rude enough not to
answer; and Jim became exasperated : and
that was the beginning of it all.
'Will you look round again to see the
whim at work?' Jim asked, out of pure
pique.


JIM-OF-THE-WHIM
21
I don't mind.'
*Make it a bargain, miss!'
“A bargain, then. If Mr. Macdonald doesn't
come at once, I must ride back, rain or no
rain.'
Jim thought that he should not grieve if she
did, 'I hope you'll do no such thing, miss,'
was, however, what he said ; and certainly, for
a common man, he was wonderfully ready with
a polite falsehood. “I'll make you a billy of
tea and a johnny-cake in true bush style, miss,
if you'll do me the honour to try 'em when
made.'
Miss Howard consented with light hauteur,
and went on gazing out into the rain, wonder-
ing by what stages such a good-looking, decent-
spoken man had gravitated to the bush; and
whether he had ever been anything very much
better than a whim-driver.
As for Jim, he made himself very busy
indeed, sitting on his heels over the fire in an
attitude peculiar to back-blockers; and there
was silence in the hut for several minutes.
Then Miss Jenny grew tired of looking out
of doors, and wandered round the room, exam-


22
UNDER TWO SKIES
ining the prints on the walls. Many of these
she remembered in the English and Colonial
illustrated papers. One from the Sketcher-
one that occupied a place of honour on the
line'-she remembered particularly well; for
it represented a scene from an opera of which
she was passionately fond, in her passionate
little way. The opera was La Traviata. In a
twinkling Verdi's airs were chasing each other
in her ears. Half unconsciously she began
humming the one that came first. This was
the duet beginning ‘Parigi, o cara,' which had
made a great impression on Miss Jenny once
(nay, many times more than once), all because
of the soulful tenor who had played Alfred.
With this tenor, in fact—one Signor Roberto-
Miss Howard, in common with other little senti-
mentalists, had fallen innocently and entirely
in love during the run of Traviata at the
opera-house.
But before she had hummed the second bar
of that duet, Miss Jenny turned sharply round
—with animation practically suspended; for
from some quarter of the hut, as if by magic,
a tenor voice like unto the divine Roberto's


JIM-OF-THE-WHIM
23
was boldly singing the lines that had risen
faintly and formlessly to the girls lips-
*Parigi, o cara, noi lasceremo. ...'
Genevieve disbelieved her ears; their evi-
dence should have been corroborated by her
eyes, but it was not. She rubbed her eyes,
and fastened them upon the one possible and
visible owner of a tenor voice; but the whim-
driver still sat at ease upon his heels, with his
face turned to the fire and his back to Miss
Jenny; and, before she could make up her
mind that the whim-driver and the singer were
one, the voice ceased softly.
Miss Jenny knew what ought to happen now:
the soprano ought to catch up the refrain, and
repeat the solo. It was only a little bit of a
solo, of two dozen bars or so; then why not?
Wild with excitement, knowing the thing
by heart, she opened her lips, and out it came.
It was no humming matter now ; Miss Jenny
was on her mettle; and if there was a slight
nervous tremor in the notes, they were none
the less true for that, and all the more tender.
A moment later the pace quickened, and


24
UNDER TWO SKIES
both voices were in the running. Then it was
that Jim rose to his feet—that the singers faced
one another with sparkling eyes—that the
whole hut rang and trembled with enchant-
ing sounds. After that the voices sank and
slackened, and died away in a soft embrace-
pianissimo. And poor little Miss Jenny knew
what she had done, and was instantly stunned
by the buffets of a dozen different emotions.
'I've no right to know Italian; please keep
it quiet, miss,” said Jim humbly, speaking first,
and as though nothing much had happened,
yet with a rather sad smile; and some day
I'll show you how the whim works.'
For at this moment Macdonald's buggy
swept in front of the hut and pulled up.
And Jim said that night to his mate:
"Stumpy, you recollect what I was saying to
you not so long since about wimmin? Keep
clear of 'em, Stumps, my son. Never let me
catch you frightening 'em no more, and getting
your master mixed up in it, or I'll chuck you
down the blessed whim, little Christian though
you are !'


JIM-OF-THE-WHIM
25
III
About this time a change came over the
whim-driver at the Seven-mile. It was noticed
by young Parker, who saw him frequently, and
lamented by the landlord of the Governor
Loftus Hotel, the nearest grog-shanty, where
Jim and his cheque were now several weeks
overdue. The fact was, Jim had renounced
the luxury of the periodical ‘drunk,' and was
coming out as a bush dandy. He shaved himself
every morning of his life; he appeared in none
but the snowiest moleskins and the pinkest and
most becoming of striped cotton shirts; he even
went to the extreme lunacy of shining his boots
every evening before retiring to his bunk. But,
what was far more remarkable, his speech was
the speech of Jim-of-the-Whim no more. He
dropped no aspirates, his sentences were gram-
matical; and without any specific deduction
from his case, it may be noted as a curious fact
that errors of speech may be easily acquired
by any educated man who chooses to live long
enough in a low grade, and takes pains to for-


26
UNDER TWO SKIES
get what culture he once possessed. He
seldom swore, and when he did the short sharp
pistol-crack was a mere mockery of his former
bullock-driving broadside. Stumpy, could he
but have spoken, would have borne valuable
testimony on the latter point, since he was the
party most affected (not forgetting the whim-
horse, a hardened drudge) by his master's
change in this respect; and the sagacious little
animal would have assured you that the en-
dearing epithets now showered upon him were
entirely inoffensive in their nature.
It would have been taxing feline intelligence
unfairly, however, to have expected the little
cat to note the subtler indications of the change
in Jim : the look of expectancy and hope with
which he rose of mornings, the disappointment
in his face at evening, the glances he would
cast all day along the track towards the home-
stead, the frequency with which he sang,
whistled, and hummed one tune. These points
were too fine for the cleverest cat in the world
—even Dick Whittington's might have missed
them.
But events long looked for come in the end


JIM-OF-THE-WHIM
27
when least expected; and the coming of Jim's
goddess was a case in point.
The whim was out of order, and Jim for
once idle, waiting for the blacksmith, who had
been sent out from the homestead, and gone
back to his forge there with a bit of greasy
paper covered with diagrams. Jim sat outside
on the ground in the shade of the hut, toes up,
arms folded, eyes closed. A clay pipe was be-
tween his teeth, but the ashes in the bowl were
cold. Jim was asleep, and dreaming of her
who was alternately minx and angel in his
waking mind, but always angel in his dreams.
Suddenly he awoke : and the angel sat not far
from him in her saddle.
The pipe fell from Jim's lips as his jaw
dropped. Next moment he had sprung to his
feet, and a dusky colour flooded his face with
one swift wave.
'Good afternoon, he said, snatching off his
wideawake. 'I-I beg your pardon, miss.'
Miss Jenny begged his. “I have come to be
shown how a whim works,' said she.
"Ah, I feared you had forgotten all about
that!'


28
UNDER TWO SKIES
"So I had,' declared Miss Jenny with un-
blushing readiness. "I never thought of it
until, riding this way again, the whim reminded
me. I am ready to be shown at once, if'-
severely—you are not too busy!'
Jim stepped diffidently forward, gnawing at
his moustache, and proffered his aid as formerly.
But she cut him short.
No, thank you ; I'm not going to get off;
I can't stay a moment longer than just to see
this wonderful whim—then I'm off.'
This was delicious. If the whim were
admitted to be out of gear she would simply
canter away without a thank-you; therefore
Jim would admit nothing. In silence he led
the way to the whim, Miss Jenny riding after
him at a walk. Under the black ugly wooden
framework, which was high enough for Miss
Jenny to continue sitting upright in her
saddle, they both stopped ; and Jim began to
explain.
He began with the great wooden drum
above their heads, and step by step expounded
the working of the whim; but when he led
the lady's back into such a position that Miss


JIM-OF-THE-WHIM
29
Jenny could see down into the shaft, he had
not yet mentioned that an accident had
suspended the working.
The sides of the shafts were lined with
horizontal slabs of wood; and the mischief was
that one of the slabs near the top had become
loose, and had at last fallen the full depth of
a hundred feet, and so smashed and jammed the
bucket, which was just clear of the water at the
bottom, as to make it immovable. One slab
having loosened itself, others were likely to do
the same; the shafts were no longer secure,
and the danger of descending to the injured
bucket (without testing every slab on the way,
as the blacksmith proposed) was great.
There was only one shaft for Miss Jenny to
look down, for the uninjured bucket hung at
the mouth of the other. She did not much like
looking down the smooth-sided, damp, narrow
shaft; it put her in mind of the bottomless pit;
yet to gaze down, down, down, rather fascinated
her.
"You have not yet shown me how it works,'
she said presently, glancing across the raised
lips of the shaft at the whim-driver, who was


30
UNDER TWO SKIES
leaning over them and grasping the perpendicular
rope a little higher than his head.
*The whim's not in working order.'
As he spoke Jim watched her face, with a
rather reckless light in his blue eyes, for the
effect of his little sell. He expected her to
ride off at once; but she did nothing of the
kind. She exhibited no annoyance at all, but
would know all about the jamming of the bucket
at the bottom.
Then will some one have to go to the
bottom ?' she asked, shuddering—down this
endless awful rope ?'
"Some one will. There's nothing else for it.'
Miss Jenny's eyes had been downcast; now
she raised them swiftly. Her eyes often were
downcast, and she as often raised them thus.
'Dare you?'
'I shouldn't wonder.'
The next sound was a sharp shrill cry from
Miss Jenny. The little dainty riding-whip-
which she had never once dropped on all her
long and lonely rides—had somehow slipped
from her fingers and fallen fairly into the mouth
of the shaft, and so out of sight.


JIM-OF-THE-WHIM
31
Then came a shriller, sharper cry from Miss
Jenny, followed by the exclamation, ‘Don't!'
reiterated in great alarm.
But it was too late : Jim was descending the
single rope into the horrible pit, hand under
hand. Jenny's vision grew dim; she lost sight
of him in the deeper gloom of the shaft; and as
she saw him last his upturned eyes were fixed
upon her with a strange, smiling, singular
expression.
Suddenly the rope, on which the girl now
concentrated her trembling, anxious gaze, ceased
to vibrate. He had reached the bottom, then.
But why did he not shout up to her his safety?
She swayed in her saddle with the sus-
pense.
she hardly breathed until it began once more
to vibrate; then she lowered her eyes into the
impenetrable gloom; and at length a figure,
spattered and stained with dirt, sweat streaming
from the white forehead, and blots of blood upon
the hands, with the little riding-whip between
his teetha figure that ten minutes of strenu-
ous effort had turned into an apparition-


32
UNDER TWO SKIES
climbed slowly into sight, and so, hand over
hand, into the open air.
A Count de Lorge would have struck the
lady with the whip; but Jim just handed it
over without a word, and flung himself upon
the ground. Without a word Miss Jenny
received her whip; she could not speak; but
she could see four deep dents in the whalebone,
where Jim's teeth had done their best to
meet, in the struggle of the stifling upward
climb.
All at once a noise came from the shaftma
thumping and a bumping against its sides-
growing more distant, but ending in a loud
metallic crash. Jim had leapt to his feet, and
was gazing down the shaft.
• What is it?' asked Miss Jenny tremu-
lously; her nerves were shaken.
Only another slab, miss. It'll about do for
the old bucket.'
• Are the slabs so heavy ?'
Damp, and heavy as lead.'
‘Suppose—oh, suppose you had been down
Why, miss, I should have been a stiff ’un!'


JIM-OF-THE-WHIM
33
There was a long pause between them. Miss
Jenny broke it at last in a whisper-
Did you know the—the danger—before you
went down ?'
The whim-driver laughed without answering;
and a minute later a cloud of orange-coloured
sand, far over the plain, was all that could be
seen of Miss Jenny from the whim, even from
the top of the framework, on which Jim had
mounted.
IV
The gate between the home-paddock and
the horse-paddock, half a mile from the home-
stead : half-past nine on a hot Sunday evening
in December.
A slim figure all in white leant over the gate,
and the full moon shone so brilliantly that
any one within a hundred yards might have
seen that it was Miss Jenny. Moreover, but
for the hindering box clump on the other side
of the gate, Miss Jenny might herself have seen
some one hurrying across the paddock towards


34
UNDER TWO SKIES
her, and have conquered her uneasiness; for
this was Jim-of-the-Whim.
It was their first meeting by design, but
there had been accidental meetings, one, two
and three, since Jim's risky descent of the
whim-shaft: at least, they appeared to be acci-
dents—like the slipping of the whip that day
from Miss Jenny's fingers.
All at once the night air was filled with a
music that should have silenced every chirruping
locust in the land—music whereat Miss Jenny
sighed her deep relief and fluttered with
delight.
* La donna è mobile' sang the voice, and
bis most tuneful : in the moonlit wilderness :
by the sweetest tenor out of Italy.
Miss Jenny had heard Rigoletto with the
same tenor that took more than her fancy in
Traviata. For the first time—for she had only
heard Jim sing once before-she compared his
voice with the heavenly Roberto's. And then
and there a suspicion entered her soul that
would have been torture had not the oppor-
tunity of satisfying it been immediately at


JIM-OF-THE-WHIM
35
hand. For the song had come to an undignified
end in the full tide of the second verse, and —
and Miss Jenny was on one side of the gate
and Jim on the other.
•You were singing Rigoletto?' said Jenny.
· Yes ; I was forced to sing something for
very joy.'
'I have heard Roberto sing that thing ; and,
do you know, you sing exactly like Roberto,
and look like him too!'
No answer.
· Are you Roberto ?' cried Jenny, in the
greatest excitement.
*Can it make any difference to you? Even
so, should I not be miles beneath you still ?'
Miss Jenny did not answer.
You own that I should—and,' cried Jim,
that's the best of it! You take me for what
I am. Very well ; I'll tell you what I was—I
was Roberto! Does it make any difference?'
It did not—but it made them practically
silent. The full moon sank lower, and peeped
under the very broad brim of Jim's wideawake.
That was bad taste on the moon's part.
You were to tell me your whole history,'


36
UNDER TWO SKIES
Miss Jenny whispered. "Were you always on
the stage?'
"No,' said Jim. "Ten years ago I was at
the 'Varsity. You wouldn't have thought it,
would you?'
"Oh, indeed, 1
"Oh no, you wouldn't! I had forgotten it
myself until_until I saw you! No, it was the
common savage you liked, not the ex-gentleman;
and by liking him you have saved him! My
angel! My good angel! For your sake I'll
be the man I was once, so help me God!'
The girl blushed crimson in the moonlight,
and Jim liked her the better for it. The poor
fellow little dreamt how much she had to blush
for.
'I'm the prodigal son of rather a well-known
parent,' Jim went on. You can see his name
in any English newspaper. It is the parable
all through so far, minus the happy ending.
That's what you and I are going to bring
about.'
You mean that you are disinherited !
What was it you did ?'
Inquisitiveness was innate in Miss Jenny;


JIM-OF-THE-WHIM
37
but at the same time, to do her justice, she was
thinking of her own little dower, and of its
possibilities as an aid to reconciling her future
husband with his family. Yet she would have
given something to know what Jim's original
crime had been.
Jim would not answer. He said that it
was a long story, and his face showed that
the memory pained him still. Nor would he
say why he had quitted the stage, on which he
had achieved a great though brief reputation
throughout the Colonies.
Soon Miss Jenny looked at her watch, and
said she must fly. Whereupon Jim opened the
gate to fly with her as far as he dare. But
they did not fly at all; they walked very slowly
indeed ; and on this walk they made their final
arrangements. There is nothing to conceal in
these arrangements. In the circumstances, they
were the simplest and most natural in the
world. Jim was to get his cheque next day,
and set off walking for Wagga-Wagga. He
was to wait in that town; if not in the church-
porch, at any rate on the platform of the
railway-station. He would not have to wait


38
UNDER TWO SKIES
many days, though the date of Miss Howard's
departure from her brother-in-law's station was
not absolutely settled. She was preparing,
however, to go down to Melbourne for Christ-
mas, and she intended travelling by rail from
Hay, by way of Wagga and Albury, instead of
in the coach by the more direct route to
Deniliquin. She would leave the train at
Wagga, and be married then and there.
After that, as Jim said, the world lay at
their feet. They would go to England. His
father would forgive everything; all would be
well; the years of exile and degradation should
be forgotten. Nor were all Jim's prophecies
so vague, and Genevieve quickly shared his
high hopes ; for among her own people the
realisation of half the golden programme that
Jim now unfolded would atone for the rash
plunge she was going to take. She was
intoxicated with joy, for there were prospects,
as it turned out, undreamed of till now,
though she had suspected from the beginning
that Jim had sunk from some better state.
But her little heart was honestly on fire as it
had never quite been before ; and in her


JIM-OF-THE-WHIM
39
happiness she for once shook off the haunting
vision of poor Clinton, who at that moment
was walking home to his Melbourne lodgings
from Sunday supper at the parsonage, hugging
to his heart the velvet embroidered case that
had 'inspired' his evening sermon.
As for Jim, he carolled all the way back to
the hut-still in Italian.
On Mr. Parker's high office-stool at the desk
in the store sat Miss Jenny-deep in the
composition of a letter. This letter was a long
business, and, what was worse, it cost the
writer tribulation over every word; when from
time to time she looked up, her eyes were
swimming with tears. Her letter, in fact, was
full of sorrow and remorse : its frankness did
the writer some credit—it was the letter of a
weak nature rising almost to strength in the
honest admission of its weakness : it was a
letter to Clinton Browne.
It was strange that she should have the


40
UNDER TWO SKIES
store all to herself this sultry afternoon; but
the fact was that all hands were away 'muster-
ing'in a distant paddock; and, as it was mail-
day, Macdonald had intrusted the key of the
store to his sister-in-law, with injunctions about
the despatch of one mail-bag, and permission
to open the other.
At last the dreadful letter was written,
directed, stamped, and dropped into the out-
going bag. Then Miss Jenny dried her eyes,
tied string round the mouth of the bag, and
sealed it as she had once or twice seen Mr.
Parker do. The wax was still warm when the
inward mail was fetched into the store.
"The other bag is ready,' said Miss Jenny,
pointing to it. You'd better take it.'
'No; I'll come back for it in an hour, when
me and my 'orse has had a snack. Lots o'time
for the other bag then.' And the highly
Colonial mail-boy swaggered out with charac-
teristic independence, not having demeaned
himself by a single 'miss,' 'please,' or 'thank
you.'
The weekly mail had always been a source
of pleasurable excitement to Miss Jenny,


JIM-OF-THE-WHIM
41
though of late she had neglected her formerly
enormous correspondence, and allowed it to
dwindle. Still, there were a hundred people
from whom she might hear to-day; and it was
not a little disappointing to find absolutely
nothing addressed to Miss Howard. There
was, however, a letter bearing the name that
was soon to become her own, and its mere
exterior interested Miss Jenny more than
whole sheets addressed to herself could have
done.
This letter she kept in front of her on
the desk after she had poured everything else
back into the bag. It bore the postmark of an
English town which, until the other day, had
been no more than a name to her. It was
superscribed in a firm, businesslike, masculine
hand. Without doubt it was from Jim's
father! Miss Jenny toyed musingly with the
envelope. She tried to guess the contents; she
even held the letter up to the light; but the
paper of the envelope was provokingly opaque.
If the letter itself was written on such thick
paper it must be a pretty short letter. It has
been said that Genevieve was naturally in-


42
UNDER TWO SKIES
quisitive; other unfortunate qualities of hers
combined to strengthen the temptation now
thrown in her way.
Perhaps the drowsy stillness of the store
and her entire solitude fed that temptation ;
perhaps, on the contrary, she argued that she
had almost a right to read the letters of the
man she meant to marry next week; or it may
even have crossed her mind that possibly she
held in her hands words of forgiveness from
father to son, and that in this case Providence
had clearly reserved it for her to break the
good news to Jim. In any case, the fact
remains that she opened the envelope with a
paper-knife, and so cleverly that she separated
the flap without tearing it. Having done this
she was startled. She told herself that she had
done it without thinking. This was partly true,
for she made more bones about reading the
letter now that it was opened than about open-
ing it. It may have been the sight of a gum-
bottle and brush among the inkstands that
helped to decide her the wrong way.
When Genevieve Howard had read three
lines of the letter to the man she had promised


JIM-OF-THE-WHIM
to marry, she sank forward on the sloping desk
as if in a swoon, and the letter fluttered to the
floor. There it lay in the dust-after all, not
much more than the three lines that had been
read.
*Dear James,' the letter ran, 'when I refused
to see you or communicate with you any more,
after your disgraceful marriage with an opera
singer, I took the step after due deliberation.
My decision was therefore irrevocable, and I am
sorry you again compel me to emphasise it. I
am not surprised to learn that this woman has
proved your final ruin. That you have separated
from her and left the stage may possibly be for
your comparative good, unless you once more
go from bad to worse. But I must repeat, and
I trust for the last time, that you cheat and
deceive yourself in looking to a reconciliation,
no matter at how distant a date, with your
father.'
A jingle of spurs sounded along the verandah
outside. The mail-boy re-entered the store.
"I'll take the bag now,' said this young
Australian; and he was walking off with it
when Miss Howard started up from the desk


44
UNDER TWO SKIES
with burning cheeks and flashing eyes, and
stopped him.
* Bring it to me!' she cried. There is a
letter in the bag that must not go!'
She cut the string, extracted the letter
addressed to Clinton Browne, and tore it into
a hundred fragments before the mail-boy's eyes.
He saw her tie up and seal the bag once more;
he saw her hands tremble so that she burnt
herself with the sealing-wax. In his uncouth
way he lent a hand; and he went out and told
all the men at the hut that his girl' was
certainly taken worse.' Nor did Miss Jenny's
white face that evening escape the notice of
her brother-in-law, though he said nothing
until she told him that she had given up the
idea of rail from Hay to Albury viâ Wagga,
and so on, in favour of the more direct and
cheaper coach journey to Deniliquin; and then
he merely praised her economy, which was after
his own heart.


JIM-OF-THE-WHIM
45
VI
On the railway platform at Wagga-Wagga
there was to be seen daily, right through the
busy time of the Christmas holidays, and prin-
cipally at the hour when the train came in from
Hay, a man whose appearance, at first gentle-
manlike and irreproachable in point of dress,
became rapidly shabby-genteel. This man
attracted attention at first by reason of his
good looks, and at last because people femem-
bered his good looks, and wondered what had
become of them. His expression, however,
forbade inquiry; and as he never was seen in
even the primary and confidential stage of
intoxication (being evidently a teetotaller, since
he was sober on Christmas Day) he was left
unmolested. Just before he disappeared from
Wagga, towards the end of January, this man
presented an appearance that is familiar enough
in cities : he had good clothes on his back and
no money to live up to them ; his cheeks were
sunken, his chin stubbly, his linen grimy. At
the first glance the man looked well to do;


46
UNDER TWO SKIES
at the second, you could see that he was
starving
About a fortnight later the same man walked
into the store at Macdonald's station, and young
Parker cried out in surprise across the ledger-
Jim-of-the-Whim!'
There was nothing surprising about Jim's
return, though he had never before stayed away
quite so long. What was surprising was the
urban cut and texture of his clothes. Parker
attempted to interrogate him lightly on the
point, but got short answers. The fact was,
the clothes were Jim's wedding garments, which
had been made for him immediately after his
arrival in Wagga, and which he would not part
with though everything else had to go to buy
him bread, while he waited for the bride who
never came.
Parker gave up the dress riddle, and in-
formed Jim that he had come back in the nick
of time, his successor at the whim having that
very morning rolled up his swag, got his cheque,
and gone.
At the news Jim's eyes lighted up ever so
little.


48
UNDER TWO SKIES
on the day when he first heard of Miss Jenny,
and would not listen. From this envelope
Jim took the newspaper cutting which had agi-
tated him on that occasion : it was an announce-
ment of the death of Jim's wife at Sydney.
Jim rose and obtained from the storekeeper
a clean envelope, into which he slipped his
newspaper cutting, closing up the envelope
without adding a written word ; merely under-
lining the date of his wife's death.
‘Mr. Parker, will you be so kind as to address
this to the young lady that was staying here-
Miss Howard, wasn't her name? You needn't
whistle ; it's only a cutting that'll interest her.
Come, sir, as a favour to me.'
That was what Jim said. But he was think-
ing—'I won't add a word. She'll see it all
and write. Then I'll go down to her, and after
all—after all—after all-
Her name isn't Howard, Jim,' said Parker,
taking the envelope.
• What is it, then ?
"This,' said young Parker, squaring his
elbows to direct the envelope : and the address
began : “Mrs. Clinton Browne.'


NETTLESHIP'S SCORE
TT was Nettleship’s match; or rather, the
1 University match that cricketers persist
in calling Nettleship’s, because it is generally
held to have been Nettleship’s long score (and
apparently nothing else) that ultimately won
the game for Oxford. It was the second day
of the match, and the luncheon interval, which
occurred shortly after Nettleship had gone in.
The day was gorgeous, as those who were
up at Lord's will remember; and the dresses
of the ladies were in keeping with the day, as
half a dozen newspapers observed next morning.
Never, it was agreed, had the well-appointed
ground in St. John's Wood presented a fairer
spectacle than during that interval. A perfect


50
UNDER TWO SKIES
galaxy of beauty floated before your eyes across
the trim green sward; behind you the dainty
picnic was already in full swing on the tops of
the handsome drags; and over all shone the
hot June sun. So the papers said, and not
without truth. Personally, however, it is more
than likely that you took little or no interest in
these phenomena. You knew them by heart as
well as the descriptive gentlemen who reported
them, at long range, from Fleet Street. More
probably you spent the time in those excep-
tionally delightful recognitions which come but
once a year, and at Lord's; where you have
the annual opportunity of offering a good cigar
to your old house-master (who had you flogged
for smoking in your study), and of patronising
the snob you used to fag for. You and some
other fellow strolled about the ground together,
sought out the old set, and criticised them
horribly; and, no doubt, among other objects,
you drew his attention to one of the players
who was lunching in a landau, and was some-
what conspicuous, being the only one of the
twenty-two, so far as could be seen, who pre-
ferred this sort of discomfort to the regular


NETTLESHIP'S SCORE
51
thing under cover. That's Nettleship, you
said ; ‘he's in, you know.' And of course the
other fellow said pointedly that he could see
that Nettleship was having his innings, and
laughed; and you laughed too, indulgently, but
drew nearer, to stare at the man who seemed
already to have collared the Cambridge bowling.
All Oxford knew Nettleship by sight, and
probably so did most Cambridge men. He
had played the three previous years at Lord's,
and though he had been a disappointment in
those three matches, no one who had seen him
in the field was likely to forget him ; not so
much because he was the finest cover-point in
either team, but almost entirely on account of
his good looks, which were not at all of the
conventional order. His jet-black hair was a
sheer anachronism in its length and curliness,
and would have been considered extremely bad
form in anybody but Nettleship. Also, his
pale face was vexatiously deprived of the mous-
tache which might at least have modernised
him ; but then his features were notably of a
classic cast. So, at least, they had seemed
when Nettleship played his first match at


52
UNDER TWO SKIES
Lord's as a freshman. They were now, it was
remarked, a trifle sharp and angular. In short
--though it was the face of a determined, per-
severing poet, at least looking the part, rather
than that of a born athlete—it was a face that
every one knew. Even the ladies at Lord's, who
notoriously never look at the cricket, except
to furnish their annual supply of high-class
comic copy' in the form of artless comment-
even the ladies knew Mr. Nettleship by sight,
and really watched the game if he fielded close
to the ropes. As for the men of his time, it
has been hinted that they judged him by no
ordinary standard of 'form,' though they may
have regarded him as a dangerous and even
impossible model. It may be added that they
did not even speak of him in the ordinary way.
It is Brown of Oriel, Jones of Brasenose,
Robinson of New. It was Nettleship of the
'Varsity-Nettleship of Oxford. And Nettle-
ship of Oxford was having his innings, it was
observed ; and the reference was not so much
to the thirty or forty runs he had already
made, and the hundred he was possibly good
for, as to the fact that Nettleship was calmly


NETTLESHIP'S SCORE
53
eating salmon mayonnaise by the side of one of
the loveliest girls on the ground, on the apex
of whose parasol flaunted a dark blue knot.
The landau patronised by the celebrated
Oxonian was a new one, though in point of
existence the crest upon the door was a good
deal newer. The liveries of footman and page
were also very new, and their wearers were at
any rate new to London (which was plain from
'Varsity was with painfully new people. Their
name was MʻIlwraith ; old MʻIlwraith was one
of the newest of the new M.P.'s; and their
town house was an institution whose age in
weeks could be reckoned on the fingers of two
hands.
Nettleship finished his salmon mayonnaise
as regardless of the world's eyes as though he
were still at the wicket.
at his side ; and Nettleship let her, or at any
rate did not attempt to prevent her until too
late. Then he apologised, of course, but coolly.
severity.
That is Thomas's business. Thomas!'.


54
UNDER TWO SKIES
Thomas, the page, arose somewhat flushed
from a playful bear-fight with the Masters
M'Ilwraith under the carriage, and was within
an ace of spilling the remains of the mayonnaise
over Miss M'Ilwraith's dress, in his self-con-
sciousness.
That boy is quite unbearable,' said Mrs.
M'Ilwraith with irritation. “Mr Nettleship,'
she continued, in tones that were artificially
hospitable but unmistakably cold, 'what dare
we offer you? My eldest boy has told me such
terrible tales about training, that really one
does not know, you know.'
There was a moral wheeze in the lady's voice
that Nettleship's ear detected with the celerity
and certainty of a stethoscope. At once he
became alert and attentive. He wanted nothing
more—not that cricket demanded any particu-
lar training, like the Sports—but what might
he get for Mrs. Mʻllwraith? Oyster patties,
salad, strawberries, an ice, champagne? He must
be allowed to make himself useful, he protested ;
and for some minutes Mrs. M'Ilwraith received
more assiduous attention at his hands than she
had ever seen him pay her daughter, or any


NETTLESHIP'S SCORE
55
other woman, young or old. This, of course,
may have been diplomacy in Nettleship. His
eyes were blue, and keen, and searching ; his
smile had of late taken a cynical curl; and
every corner of his mobile, clear-cut counten-
ance. But there was enough of careless can-
dour in his smiling glance-enough to be largely
genuine.
This glance, too, was levelled exclusively at
the elder lady. Nor could it have done any
violence to his optic nerves to contemplate Mrs.
MʻIlwraith closely and long, for, as elderly ladies
go, she was among the very prettiest. Stout
she undoubtedly was, but her hair was still
golden, almost, and her own entirely; while
her complexion had resolutely refused to grow
any older some thirty years ago, and had
carried out its independent resolve without
the aid of a single cosmetic. She was dimpled,
too, with sympathetic, poetical dimples not in
complete harmony with her present character,
though they had very well suited those idyllic
and comparatively humble days in which Mrs.
M'Ilwraith had read her "Tennyson' to such


56
UNDER TWO SKIES
practical purpose as to christen every child out
of the well-loved volume. In addition to these
lingering charms of a simple girlhood, there
was her later, more worldly, but scarcely less
pleasing attribute of being always thoroughly
well dressed in the best possible taste. This,
of course, was greatly en évidence to-day; while,
as usual, her face offered a choice study in com-
fortable serenity. As for Elaine MʻIlwraith,
she was precisely what it was plain that her
mother had been at Elaine's age ; only prettier,
you would have said; and less shallow, I
happen to know.
“You say you are living in town now?' said
Mrs. M'Ilwraith.
'For the last few months,' Nettleship replied.
"Since I got back from my globe trot.'
Then how does it happen that you are
· playing for your College still?'
'For his University,' Elaine suggested.
"Oh, we are allowed to play four seasons,
don't you know?' Nettleship explained. “It
wasn't my intention to play this year, and
I haven't been up once this term ; but they
bothered me about the London matches, and


NETTLESHIP'S SCORE 57
I suppose I was too keen, myself, to re-
fuse.'
At this moment an elephantine young man
rolled up to the carriage and leant heavily upon
the door. He was very stout indeed, and
extremely like Mrs. M'Ilwraith in face. In
fact, he was her eldest boy. But those terrible
tales of training mentioned by that lady were
evidently not her son's personal experiences.
Ned, my boy,' cried this young man,
slapping Nettleship heavily upon the shoulder,
'you're drinking nothing! Thomas-cham-
pagne for Mr. Nettleship.'
Arthur,' said Nettleship, 'I don't want
any.'
Arthur insisting, however, he took the glass,
put it once to his lips, and seized an early
opportunity of surreptitiously conveying it over
the far side of the carriage into the hands of
young Launcelot MʻIlwraith, who shared it
(unfairly) with the still younger Enoch Arden
M'Ilwraith ; who flung the dregs in the foot-
man's face.
The bell for clearing the ground was now
likely to ring at any moment. Luncheon, so


58
UNDER TWO SKIES
far as Nettleship was concerned, was long over.
He took the opportunity, however, before going
back to the pavilion, afforded by Arthur's
whispering into his mother's ear the names of
some nobles on a neighbouring drag, in fulfil-
ment of a solemn charge delivered before leaving
home-Nettleship took this opportunity to turn
and speak to Elaine.
What ages it is since we met !' he said,
looking at her critically.
• It is just a year and a half,' Elaine 'said
simply.
He, for his part, had no idea when it was ;
he would not have owned to one in any case;
but Elaine's long memory did not displease him,
and he answered with a laugh:
'Is it really all that? I say, Elaine, how
old we are all getting! You must be–let me
see-twenty-what?'
How ridiculous you are! Twenty's a year
away still. I'm nineteen on Friday, as you
might know if you—if —
'Friday! Oho, your birthday's on Friday!'
whistled Nettleship—as though, until the other
year, he had not sent her presents, regularly as


NETTLESHIP'S SCORE
59
the calendar, on that day. “You ought to
celebrate it, Elaine, in Sussex Square.'
"What is that, Mr. Nettleship?' said Mrs.
MʻIlwraith sharply. Her face, however, did
not for a moment lose its serenity. That was
its way.
'I made so bold as to suggest a birthday
party in Elaine's honour,' said Nettleship, with
the coolness of an old-established family friend.
Arthur, having detected his small brothers
in the act of opening a fresh bottle of cham-
pagne in their inferno under the carriage, was
engaged in brotherly chastisement, so he did
not hear what followed.
'A party!' cried Mrs. MʻIlwraith, taken
aback for the moment, but yet able promptly to
press her daughter's foot with her own. "Oh,
I see, an “At Home," a Reception. And all
because of a birthday! Why, really, Mr.
Nettleship—the children are not children now!'
'It appears not,' said Nettleship, rising as
the bell rang in the pavilion ; 'when they were
I was “Ned” to you all!' And with a some-
what cold smile, and a short leave-taking, he
was gone.


60
UNDER TWO SKIES
A thousand glances followed his retreating
form, in the jacket that was no longer dark
blue, but honourably faded. It was its fourth
and last appearance at Lord's on this great
occasion. A thousand tongues talked ‘Nettle-
ship’ for the moment. It was his last chance
in the 'Varsity match. He had never done
anything in it before. Yet he was the best bat
in the eleven; he had begun well; he did look
like rising to the occasion this time, and coming
But in the new landau Elaine ventured
at once upon a mild remonstrance with her
mother.
How very odd of you not to tell him about
Friday evening, mamma! You implied an un-
truth, even if you didn't tell one.'
'If it was only " a lie which is half a truth,”!
said Mrs. M'Ilwraith blandly, remembering a
phrase but entirely forgetting the context;
'if it was only that, my dear, I am sorry. It
shows that I need practice. Don't look absurd,
out the fib—the little, necessary fib. I settled
that before we left the country.'


NETTLESHIP'S SCORE
61
* But why on earth not ask him, when we
know him so well ?'
“Why on earth ? Every reason on earth,'
smiled Mrs. M'Ilwraith, in perfect good-humour.
* Must I remind you of some of them? Well,
then, they are losing money, the Nettleships,
as fast as ever they can. Before long they will
fail ; nothing can prevent it. Your father has
reason to know this. Your father saw reason
to cease doing business with them at least a
year ago. This young man has no longer any
prospects. Why did he hurry home from
abroad, after six months, when he went for
eighteen, if it was not that supplies ceased ?
Yes, all the sons had a few thousands from their
mother, I know that; but it is the merest
pittance, and goodness knows what he is doing
for a living in town, or how he dare be playing
here. These are a few of the reasons on earth;
and they are reasons enough for our not going
out of our way to ask him to the house.
Because a young man has a room in the
Temple, Elaine, it doesn't follow Elaine !
you are not listening! Why, the girl is clap-
ping her hands like a lunatic! What is it?'


62
UNDER TWO SKIES
Ned hit two fourers the first over !' Elaine
replied, without taking her sparkling eyes from
the game.
“Ned, indeed !' said Mrs. M'Ilwraith. But
it was obviously of no use to say more just
then, when Elaine was so shamefully excited.
Mrs. MʻIlwraith subsided into composed silence.
After all, it was not so very hard to get into
town ways; and, really, when one tried, it
came quite natural to show the cold shoulder to
one's oldest country friends. . . . Ned, indeed !
Mrs. M'Ilwraith raised her eyes to the box
of the vehicle. There sat Enid, the second
Miss MʻIlwraith, and by her side a most satis-
factory young man. These two were really
delightfully engrossed in one another. They
were in a planet of their own, from which it
seldom occurred to them to turn their heads
and look down. The young man was enor-
mously wealthy, though lineally of small account.
But everything was not to be compassed at
once. There should be no taint of trade in
Elaine's bargain, not even of successful trade.
The idea of 'Ned!'
The hot afternoon wore on, and the fields-


NETTLESHIP'S SCORE
63
men's shadows became longer and narrower
every over. Launcelot, Enoch, and their friend
the page snored happily under the axle-trees.
As for Mrs. M'Ilwraith, she had become inured
to rounds of applause that did not in the least
excite her curiosity, and was herself on the
point of dozing, when a peculiarly long and
loud uproar induced her to open her eyes.
She opened them upon the strangely pale face
of Elaine.
“Whatever is the matter?' cried Mrs.
MʻIlwraith.
Hush !' Elaine whispered. “He's out !
Wait a moment! There!'
Mrs. Mʻllwraith had descried the figure of
wicket, with bent shoulders-after the first
outburst, in dead silence. But as he neared the
densely crowded pavilion the shouting and clap-
ping of hands burst forth again with redoubled
enthusiasm. Elaine clapped too, clapped wildly,
and the pink was back in her face.
'Dear me, it must be something quite out
of the way to make all this fuss about,' said
Mrs. M'Ilwraith, perceiving at last that the


UNDER TWO SKIES
occasion was a great one. 'In whose honour,
pray, is all this din ?'
'In Ned's—Ned's !' cried Elaine, still clap-
ping furiously. See, the other side are
clapping too! Oh, I do hope it is a hundred
-it must be a hundred—it can't be short of
a hundred !!
But it was — by one run. Nettleship's
memorable score was exactly ninety-nine !
Sympathy at once made itself felt in a fresh
and touching roar. But as for Elaine, tears
sprang into her fine, flashing eyes ; she leant
back in the landau, and the match interested
her no more.
Her mother appeared to be thinking. At
last she said:
'Has he distinguished himself so very much,
my dear?'
Oh, mamma—tremendously!'
A pause. Then,' said Mrs. MʻIlwraith
naively, 'why don't he come back and sit with
us ?'
He might, perhaps,' answered Elaine, ‘if
he had distinguished himself less.' And for a
moment her wishes were at variance.


NETTLESHIP'S SCORE
65
'Elaine,' said her mother, after another and
a longer pause, 'will there be anything about
him in the papers to-morrow?'
Anything? Columns !'
And people will talk about him?'
"Of course, mamma—as the hero of the
match !'
Elaine,' said Mrs. M'Ilwraith at last (it was
just as they were going), “send Mr. Nettleship
a card this evening—for Friday, you know !'
II
So many men get a hundred runs in the Uni-
describe the variety of congratulations— from
excited clergymen and hardened Old Blues,
from hoary veterans and beardless boys--which
assailed Nettleship in the pavilion. Of late
years centuries' in first-class cricket have
become so terribly common, and at least one
century in the University match so entirely
inevitable, that Nettleship was rather glad than
otherwise to have fallen just short of the


66
UNDER TWO SKIES
commonplace three figures. He had achieved
a record all to himself, for ninety-nine is the
rarest of scores, and has never before or since
been made in the Oxford and Cambridge
perfectly contented but for the tiresome ex-
pressions of sympathy, on account of that one
buzzing in his ears. The popular commisera-
tion savoured of strained sentiment, for it could
not have been more demonstrative if he had
got no runs at all, and it bored Nettleship
supremely; in fact, it had a good deal to do
with his leaving the ground when he did, half an
hour before play ceased, there being no danger
of Oxford having to field again that evening.
He tried to get away unobserved; but the
penalties of a public personality are inexorable,
and the invitations and questions that pelted
him between the pavilion and the gates were
a little trying. Nettleship refused the invita-
tions, ignored the questions, and eventually
rattled off alone in a hansom.
Speeding towards the City in that hansom,
the young man underwent a swift transfigura-


NETTLESHIP'S SCORE
67
tion. His head drooped in dejection, his
pointed features grew sensibly sharper, his eyes
filled with bitterness; and an ugly distortion-
a mere parody of a smile, and a poor one-
froze upon his lips. Two pictures, both of
himself, were in his mind. Lord's cricket-
ground was the background of the one, an ill-
furnished room in the Temple that of the
other. His back was turned upon the first,
his face was set towards the second ; and the
iron was deep in his soul. He had carried off
the honours of this afternoon pretty coolly, if
not (from purely physical causes) exactly in
cold blood; yet, looking at him now, one
would have taken him for a young man denied
all his life the happiness of a single triumphal
hour. In point of fact, Nettleship was to be
pitied; but not at his own computation. For
young men are the worst judges of their own
hardships; and this one was driving to cham-
bers in the Temple, not to a garret—driving,
too, not walking—and had an income upon
which it was quite possible to live in tolerable
comfort, dress decently, and occasionally even
to drink wine at meals. What was impossible


UNDER TWO SKIES
for Nettleship was to live as he had been
accustomed to live; as he considered Nature
had intended him to live from the first; as all
the men he had been playing with to-day lived.
But, misery being purely a matter of compari-
son, even this qualified form of it was in
Nettleship's case considerable, not to say
grievous.
The hansom was half-way to the Temple
when, apparently on a sudden impulse, the
fare knocked violently with his knuckles upon
the trap overhead. A square of blue sky was
stamped for a moment in the roof of the cab,
and then hidden by a sun-flayed ear and whis-
kered cheek. Into that ear Nettleship pro-
nounced the name of a celebrated emporium
of fashionable virtu and saleable conceits in
metal and fabric. Three minutes later he was
in the artistic precincts of the shop itself,
asking for the manager by name, and giving
his own. The manager came forward at
once.
"Ah!' said he, “about your curios; follow
me, sir.'
Nettleship did so. They paused before a


NETTLESHIP'S SCORE
69
table, artistic in itself, upon which a number of
Asiatic curios were effectively arranged.
'Here they are, sir, and in advantageous
position, as I think you will admit. But I am
sorry to say their number is undiminished —
undiminished, sir, by so much as a single spear-
head. I told you my fears frankly, I think,
at the first; so far, I regret to say, they have
been realised. There is no sale for curios now.
They have gone out. They are not the Craze,
sir. You know what the Craze is now, sir ;
and two Crazes cannot be co-existent. I am
perfectly frank—they must be done to death
one at a time, sir, seniores priores.' Nettleship
smiled. “Now, a year ago it would have been
different. We would have speculated in these
things then, sir—for they are very pretty things
indeed, Mr. Nettleship—we would have nothing
to do with them at all, not even on the present
terms, if they were not such exceedingly pretty
things. But, as it is, we dare not speculate in
them; as it is, the speculation must be yours,
sir.'
The man was voluble, and knew his busi-
ness. Considering everything, there was a


70
UNDER TWO SKIES
pinch of humour in the situation. Nettleship
smiled again, not entirely in bitterness.
"There has been no inquiry at all about the
things, then ?' said Nettleship, preparing to
leave the shop.
“None to my knowledge. But stay: I will
make sure before you go.'
The manager left him. In less than a
minute he returned.
There has been an inquiry, after all—and a
good deal of interest shown—about this.' He
took up a small bronze water-vase, delicately
traced with strange figures. It was the one
thing in his collection that Nettleship had
supposed to be of real value, though he had
kept tobacco in it until the day it occurred to
him to make money out of his curios.
But,' said Nettleship, ‘nothing came of it,
you say?'
“No, because we named your price. It will
never go at fifty guineas, sir; it's too tall
altogether.
Nettleship looked coldly at the man of
business : he had a keen eye for Crazes, no
doubt, but what was he to know about the


NETTLESHIP'S SCORE
antique art of India ? On the other hand,
Nettleship himself was completely ignorant of
that subject. He had only some chance
acquaintance's word for it, out in India, that
this little vase was a valuable property. Nettle-
ship looked at the man of business very coldly
indeed.
Look here,' he said slowly, and in the
preternaturally calm tones in which one might
warn a fellow-creature of one's immediate
intention of throwing him through the window.
Look here : next time any one asks, let it go
for thirty!'
Without another word he stalked from the
shop. The hansom rattled on until it stopped
at Middle Temple Lane. There Nettleship got
out, walked into Brick Court, and up the stone
stairs to his chambers. For the next hour he
lounged in a chair, thinking the vagrant thoughts
that are encouraged, if not inspired, by the
smoking of several cigarettes at a sitting.
Naturally, in his case, they were not the
pleasantest thoughts in the world ; yet, when
he got up and stretched himself, and went out
to dine, his mood had improved. It was then


72
UNDER TWO SKIES
eight o'clock. He returned at five minutes to
nine; so that his dinner, wherever he got it,
could not have been a very elaborate affair.
Dropping once more into his armchair, he aban-
doned himself to further thought. Possibly
his thoughts were of a more concentrated
character than before, for a single cigarette
sustained them. The long summer twilight went
through all its mellow gradations, and finally
deepened into complete darkness, before the
young man at last rose and lit the lamp. This
done, he carried the lamp to a pedestal desk,
and sitting down at the desk drew up his chair
close. There was now an appearance of settled
purpose in his manner, and his face was full of
cool determination ; it wore, in fact, the iden-
tical expression which the Cambridge bowlers
of that year have such good reason to re-
member.
Nettleship had not sat down to write,
however. Unlocking a drawer in the left-hand
pedestal, he took out of it handfuls of photo-
graphs of various sizes, which he heaped
together on the flat part of the desk, close to
the lamp. Without more ado he proceeded


NETTLESHIP'S SCORE
73
deliberately to sort the photographs, throwing
most of them carelessly on one side, but picking
out one in twenty, or so, and placing it care-
fully on the slope in front of him. So might
the modern Paris approach his invidious task,
without embarrassment, the fatal apple already
packed up and ticketed for the Parcels Post;
for the photographs were nearly all of the
other sex. But there were evidences that this
was no selection of the fairest. In the first
world were tossed aside without a moment's
thought; in the second, the selected photographs
her girlhood. The conclusion was manifestly
foregone. The chosen woman was Elaine
M'Ilwraith.
Her photographs he now arranged in one
long row on the slope of the desk, in chrono-
logical order, from left to right. To the dis-
interested philosopher the series would have
offered interesting illustrations of the respective
improvements in photography and the female
dress during late years, quite apart from the
graduated coming forth of a most attractive


74
UNDER TWO SKIES
OW
flower of girlhood. Nettleship’s reflections, how-
ever, were to the point. He shifted the lamp
from the left side of the desk to the right, and
turned up the wick. The strongest rays now
fell upon the latest photographs. Upon these
young Nettleship gazed long and thoughtfully.
The act was sentimental; but the expression of
the actor was nothing of the kind. It was not
even a tender expression ; nor was it, on the
other hand, coldly calculating-altogether; it
was merely thoughtful. Edward Nettleship
was making up his mind.
He did make up his mind at last, and put
together the photographs of Elaine, and restored
them to the drawer—where, by the way, they
no longer kept theatrical company, or any com-
pany but their own. One of Elaine's photo-
graphs, however—the latest and the best—was
kept out. It was a full-length portrait in fancy
dress, with an expansive hat, a milk-pail, a milk-
ing-stool, and other pretty properties; and this
on the chimneypiece.
Nettleship had made up his mind at last,
once and for all, and for good. The words


NETTLESHIP'S SCORE
75
upon his lips as he blew out the lamp were
indicative of an uncompromising attitude.
"She would have liked it well enough once,'
he said ; "she will have to lump it now. The
fool of a woman!'
But this, as it happened, was scarcely kind
to the lady alluded to, seeing that an invitation
card for her ‘At Home' on Friday was even
then gravitating towards Nettleship's letter-box.
III
• Where did this come from?' said Elaine to
Enid.
It was Friday evening, at the new house in
Sussex Square. The first carriage might arrive
at any moment. As yet the two girls had the
drawing-room to themselves, and were delicately
disarranging the room in a truly enlightened
spirit; though there was in it a newness, a stiff-
ness, and a pervading sense of Tottenham Court
Road that only the hand of time could soften.
The subject of Elaine's inquiry, however, whence-
soever it had come, was not-it was safe to bet


76
UNDER TWO SKIES
-of that thoroughfare. And indeed, as Enid
explained, it had come from quite another
quarter, that afternoon, on approval.
Approval !' said Elaine, with a slight and
pardonable sneer. “Does that mean that it is
to be paraded to-night, and to-morrow returned
as unsuitable? It has happened before, you
know.'
Perhaps it is to happen again. I don't know.
I only know that, as we drove back from the
Park, mamma declared she must get something
pretty for the room ; so we went to Labrano's,
and this little oddity took her fancy. It is
pretty, isn't it?—and it looks well by itself
on this absurd little table. Well, you know
mamma's way–her town way. I heard her
say,“Mr. MʻIlwraith is a great judge of Eastern
work-quite his hobby, in fact—but it seems
an enormous price. I really cannot decide
until he sees it.” So it ended in our bringing
it away with us in the carriage.
'Hobby, indeed !' cried Elaine scornfully.
When had papa any hobby but one? But it
appears to be an article in the London creed-
at least, in mamma's interpretation of it-to tell


NETTLESHIP'S SCORE
77
stories whenever you possibly can. I must
say, I congratulate her on the case with which
she embraces the new faith. At least she has
the courage of her inventions.
'Hasn't she! But let us leave the vase
where it is, for it is really very pretty—-
“And no doubt valuable; which makes it
meaner still. Yes, it can stay there—but, hush!'
For at that moment Mr. M'Ilwraith entered
the room. As his daughter had truly observed,
he had but one hobby—and that was political,
which made him a dangerous man to meet
in quiet corners. He talked of nothing else.
Allowances could perhaps be made for him on
the plea that he was so very new to St.
Stephen's; but those best acquainted with him
found it hard to make them. A new Bill,
which affected Mr. M'Ilwraith's sympathies as a
politician no less than his personal interests as
an employer of labour, was then intermittently
before the House; and, naturally enough, his
head was full of it. It was a fine head, a
magnificent head, but he ran fearful risks with
it: it was quite distended with that Bill.
Even now, in the absence of men of his own


78
UNDER TWO SKIES
weight, the poltroon fell upon his defenceless
daughters, and assaulted them with his last
night's speech. No. They had not read it.
They confessed they had not, and hung their
heads.
"Ah !' said Mr. MʻIlwraith kindly. “No
time, I see; an exceptional day, I suppose.
Well, well, we'll say no more about it at pre-
sent. The Times is still intact, I daresay; you
have laid it aside for a quiet time perhaps.
Good! You will find the report of my speech
full-satisfactorily full, I may say—though not
verbatim. I could wish it had been verbatim.
But you will read it, girls, before you go to bed,
and we will discuss it at breakfast ; when I
shall be able to give you, word for word—for
my memory is luckily a good one-all that they
saw necessary to exclude.'
You are not going to-night, papa ?' Enid
ventured.
To the House? Yes, late—in time for the
division. I must do that in deference to my
constituents. Personally, however, there is
nothing of any interest to me going on to-night.
What is the division about, you ask, Elaine?


80
UNDER TWO SKIES
of her husband-whom they sedulously shunned
all the evening. There was the wife of an
illustrious lion-Professor Josling-who re-
gretted that that eminent antiquary could not
himself be present. There was a fearful and
wonderful lion from the Chinese Legation, who
was so scandalously guyed, behind his back, by
the well-bred Enoch Arden (instigated by the
bold Launcelot), that Thomas, the page, dis-
graced himself with the coffee-tray, and received
notice that very night. Then there was the
athletic lion captured at Lord's, a literary cub
from Fleet Street, and an artistic whelp from
Chelsea. To crown all, a professional lion-
with a high-class satirical entertainment, free
from vulgarity-was due at eleven.
As the evening advanced, Mrs. M'Ilwraith
might have been seen moving about among the
nobodies of her party and whispering into their
private ears interesting personalities concerning
the somebodies. For the time being, in fact,
hletic liet very nie the coffee.tr
evening press; and as she was, if possible,
rather more inaccurate than her prototype, the
listener was either distracted or entertained,


NETTLESHIP'S SCORE
81
according to his—or, more generally, her-
intelligence.
That, my dear Mrs. Smythe, is Mrs. Josling,
wife of the celebrated antiquary. He is busy
with the proofs of a new book, so was prevented
from coming-much to his disgust, he sends me
word. Proofs, you know-so like these terrible
professors—they are for ever proving what no-
body wants to know, you know! . . . And that
is our delightful oddity, Mr. Ling-Lung-Chinese
Embassy, you know. Shall I introduce you?
No? Then let me whisper : he came in those
lovely garments at my special request !...
You know Mr. Nettleship, of course ? No?
Dear me, I thought everybody knew Mr.
Nettleship. He is the champion cricketer of
England; bowled ninety-nine of the Cambridge
wickets at Lord's the other day. Ninety-nine,
poor man! So near and yet so far! We had
a carriage on the ground, and he lunched with
us during the match, you know.'
Having thus displayed her knowledge of the
national game, Mrs. M'Ilwraith raised her pince-
nez with a view to pointing out its doughty ex-
ponent. He was nowhere to be seen. Mrs.


82
UNDER TWO SKIES
MʻIlwraith steered a zigzag course down the
room, but could not find him. Elaine was
missing too. A sudden dread entered the lady's
breast.
The windows of the room were tall, narrow,
three in number, and opened each upon a small
balcony of the most useless type. They were
wide open on account of the excessively warm
weather; for the same reason the blinds were
up; and soft Oriental curtains (from Labrano's)
aloneand but partially—excluded the zephyrs
of Sussex Square. Naturally enough, among
the silky fabrics of window number three,
innocently contemplating the night, Mrs.
Mʻllwraith discovered the missing pair. Their
backs, of course, were alone presented; but
Mrs. MʻIlwraith instantly identified Elaine's
dress, and tapped her daughter on the shoulder
with her fan, in unconscious imitation of the
business between the smart detective and the
discomfited villain in the fifth act.
Elaine started, of course; nevertheless, the
radiance could not and would not at once for-
sake her face when she turned and confronted
her mother. Mrs. M'Ilwraith spoke not a word.


NETTLESHIP'S SCORE
83
Her blue eyes glittered upon Nettleship's cool
face for one instant; the next, she turned, as
abruptly as was possible in a woman of her size,
and sailed away with her prize. The little in-
cident was quickly over, and attracted no notice,
owing to forethought in the choice of windows.
Nettleship continued in solitude his survey
of the night. He was in no way put out; but
he did not immediately step back into the light
of the room. When he did, however, his step
was a thought jaunty, his smile bordered upon
insolence, and his hands were in his pockets.
He became at once aware that something of
interest was taking place at the other end of the
room. A small crowd was surrounding some-
body, reminding Nettleship, in a small way, of
the crowd by St. Clement Danes when the
converted cannibal is swallowing the lighted
fusees. With a somewhat similar amount of
curiosity he approached this crowd. On his
way he saw his host lead off the ill-starred
Chinaman to political execution in the study. A
moment later he heard the silvery tones of his
hostess proceeding from the centre of the little
crowd.


84
UNDER TWO SKIES
'Indeed, and indeed, you make too much of
my modest little heirloom, dear Mrs. Josling !'
'If the Professor were here, he would make
a good deal more of it,' that lady stoutly
rejoined. “But you must really allow me to
obtain a simple impression, with this pencil and
piece of paper, of such delicate and utterly
fantastic tracery. He shall see what that is
like, at all events.
There was a pause. Nettleship raised him-
self to his full height, and saw an intellectual-
looking lady carefully pencilling a piece of paper
held closely over a spherical surface. He was
mildly interested.
“And this has really been in your family for
a century, Mrs. M'Ilwraith ?' some one asked.
"Since the Battle of Plassey,' said Mrs.
MʻIlwraith glibly. “My grandfather fought
there.'
That's perfectly true,' thought Nettleship.
'I have heard of it often enough. But I never
before heard of any heirloom. What can it be?'
He drew himself up once more to his full
height, which it was his bad habit not to make
the most of. And then he saw what it was—and


NETTLESHIP'S SCORE
85
would have whistled aloud had he not been a
thoroughly cool-headed fellow. For the cyno-
sure of all eyes—the heirloom of the M'Il-
wraiths—the spoil of Plassey-was nothing more
nor less than the Indian vase of bronze lately in
Nettleship's own possession, and but three days
ago on sale at Labrano's !
And still they come !' cried Mrs. MʻIl-
wraith, smiling—under the public eye-quite
sweetly upon the famous cricketer. “Look at
it, Mr. Nettleship? Of course you may !
With pleasure ! But really, it is too absurd !
To think that our wretched little heirloom
should attract so much attention !'
Nettleship did look at it—with exagger-
ated interest; with unnecessary elaboration ; in
every light and upon every side; at ridiculous
length. His lingering manner was in itself
calculated to attract attention. Mrs. M'Ilwraith
began to feel uncomfortable.
Do you know, Mrs. Mʻllwraith,' he said at
last, with great distinctness, 'I cannot remem-
ber ever once to have seen this most interesting
curio up North ?'
Mrs. MʻIlwraith explained, with a strange


NETTLESHIP'S SCORE
87
but she was not the woman to faint, and
Nettleship knew it.
'I never knew before,' went on the forward
young man, humorously, that Mr. M'Ilwraith
smoked Callender's Honeydew Mixture !'
It was here put forward by several persons,
who considered Nettleship’s manner offensive,
that Mr. MʻIlwraith did not smoke at all, but,
on the other hand, cordially detested tobacco in
any shape or form. Nettleship knew this also ;
he had known it from his boyhood. Moreover,
he was perfectly aware that his manner was
offensive; and, at a glance of agonised appeal
from Mrs. M'Ilwraith, he had the wit at last to
change the subject. And this he did so deftly
that the lady experienced in her first moments
of relief an emotion of gratitude towards her
torturer. In the same way, perhaps, the me-
diævals loved the thumbscrew-man when he
slackened off on their renunciation of the faith.
We hear, it is true, only of those who never,
never renounced ; but no doubt there was an
unpretentious majority that did.
The entry of the distinguished entertainer,
however, set Mrs. M'Ilwraith free to begin


88
UNDER TWO SKIES
hating young Nettleship for the rest of her
natural life. Still, her presence of mind was
shattered for the evening; she had not even
enough left to prevent Elaine and Nettleship
sitting together during the entertainment.
And this is a portion of the whispered con-
versation that took place between the pair.
'I shall have to win your mother next.'
'I wish I thought you could, Ned.'
'I believe I can, though only by scoring off
her first.'
Then do, Ned, do! Don't mind me a little
bit.'
Well, I don't mean to in this case, my
darling. The fact is, I see my way to scoring
off her as it is—with absolute certainty!'
If he had seen his way to scoring off the
fiend himself in the shape of the Demon
Bowler) with absolute certainty (and on a bad
wicket), he could not have mentioned it with
greater exultation.


NETTLESHIP'S SCORE
89
At eleven o'clock the following morning
Nettleship strode into Labrano's. He was
waited upon by the manager with surprising
alacrity.
'I have good news for you, sir ; good news
at last, Mr. Nettleship.'
Have you, indeed !' said Nettleship coldly.
The man's congratulatory tone would have been
offensive to him under any circumstances.
Well, I think I have, sir. That little Indian
vase has been taken by a lady customer, on
approval —-'
"On approval, eh?' cried Nettleship.
“Well, yes; but you may rely upon it that
it is in safe hands; and I may tell you that I
have every reason to believe they will keep it,
and pay the price.
“There you are mistaken. They will neither
keep it nor will they pay the price. You must
get it back from them at once. Money will
not buy it now!'
'Sir!'
I have had a narrow escape,' continued


90
UNDER TWO SKIES
Nettleship. 'I have discovered that that
simple-looking vase is absolutely priceless.'
The shopman whistled, and turned red.
"So I must ask you, if you please, to send a
special messenger for it at once, in a hansom.
My good sir, I'll pay you for the trouble and
expense at your own figure—only send off your
messenger at once.
But the tradesman's confusion had nothing
to do with the young man's request. It was
simply accounted for by an overwhelming sense
of a marvellous bargain missed—through an
imperfect knowledge of Eastern relics, and an
exaggerated, narrow-minded, imbecile regard
for Craze.
The request, indeed, was immediately com-
plied with. In the course of an hour the
messenger returned with the vase, and brought
word from Mrs. MʻIlwraith that her custom
ceased from that hour. Nettlesbip paid up as
liberally for the trouble as the dignity of
Messrs. Labrano would permit, jumped into
the emissary's hansom, and drove off to the
Temple with his treasure. He entered his
chambers in high glee; the prospect of the


NETTLESHIP'S SCORE 91
score looked even rosier than when he had left
them an hour ago.
That was on the Saturday. Nettleship waited
patiently until the following Tuesday, which was
Mrs. M'Ilwraith's day for receiving callers. At
half-past four to the minute on the Tuesday after-
noon he presented himself in Sussex Square.
Even as he was announced, the flowing speech
of Mrs. Professor Josling fell upon his ears; and
Nettleship scented the vase. He was received
with flawless outward serenity, sat down mo-
destly in an obscure corner (which, however,
commanded a fine view of his hostess's face),
and flattered Mrs. Josling with a peculiarly
earnest attention as that lady resumed her
interrupted narration.
"Well, as I was saying, I was prepared to
interest my husband with my little reproduc-
tion of the tracery; but I did not expect to
administer a galvanic shock, my dear Mrs.
MʻIlwraith. He pushed back his proofs, and
said—indeed, I don't know what he didn't say.
He is so excitable, the Professor—and nervous,
and almost irritable—when he is busy with
proofs. The artistic temperament, Mrs. MʻIl-


92
UNDER TWO SKIES
wraith ; for, as you know, the Professor is a man
of letters as well as a scientist. But above all
he is a virtuoso; and my crude reproduction
absorbed him at the time to the exclusion of all
other subjects. At first I could learn nothing.
He was lost in rapt contemplation of the design.
But at last he told me that your vase must be
a very valuable possession indeed; that he only
knew of one other like it in existence, and that
in the British Museum. The quaint figures on
the vase, he says, probably represent scenes in
the life of Gautama Buddha, which would com-
plete the resemblance to the Museum vase.
But, to be quite sure, he would like above all
things to see the vase itself. He desired me
to tell you this, and to crave, on his behalf, the
favour of permission to call quietly one after-
noon and thoroughly examine the vase.'
Poor, miserable Mrs. MʻIlwraith! 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


NETTLESHIP'S SCORE
93
and gasp for breath! It was a terrible punish-
ment for a few harmless tarradiddles such as
were every day demanded from the most vir-
"He would have accompanied me this after-
noon,' 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. Mʻllwraith had never felt
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. MʻIlwraith—if you
are certain that he will not bother you—if you
are quite sure he will not be in your way-if


NETTLESHIP'S SCORE
95
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. MʻIlwraith 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 conversa-
tion 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'Ilwraith


96
UNDER TWO SKIES
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. MʻIlwraith 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'S SCORE
97
Nettleship drew up his shoulders an incon-
siderable fraction of an inch.
'I never heard you speak of it before last
night. You kept your heirloom so dark, Mrs.
M'Ilwraith.' 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'Ilwraith, I can't remember
your ever showing it to me before in all my
life,' exclaimed Nettleship.
Mrs. M'Ilwraith 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.
zas


98
UNDER TWO SKIES
“The vase is no longer in my house,' said
Mrs. M'Ilwraith. 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'Ilwraith 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


99
like duellists. Mrs. M'Ilwraith 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 discov-
ered 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 after-
noon until every one else was gone. Shall I tell
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'Ilwraith
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?'


100
UNDER TWO SKIES
The policy was startling, insolent, risky-
everything but unwise.
Mrs. M'Ilwraith smiled her scornful answer,
and only observed :
*You must have told the story briefly.'
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.'
'Such a thousand pities !' murmured Nettle-
ship to himself.
Are you referring to yourself and Elaine ?'
inquired Mrs. M'Ilwraith sweetly.
"Oh dear no. I was thinking of Pro-
fessor 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


NETTLESHIP'S SCORE
101
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'Ilwraith. Poor old
chap! It is hard lines on him.'
The picture of Mrs. M'Ilwraith 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'Ilwraith 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'Ilwraith straight. Then the cat would be
out of the bag—and the Professor out of your
visiting list !'


102
UNDER TWO SKIES
With a sudden sob Mrs. M'Ilwraith 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.
MʻIlwraith bowed her head.
The game was won.
You rule Mr. MʻIlwraith in such matters
with an absolute rule, do you not?' said Ned,
a few minutes later.
Mrs. M'Ilwraith 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 ?'


NETTLESHIP'S SCORE 103
'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 than negatively disagreeable; for you
may be miles from the nearest habitation, and
an unpremeditated bivouac, with neither food
nor blankets, demands a philosophic tempera-
ment 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


THE LUCKIEST MAN IN THE COLONY 105
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 him-
self 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


106
UNDER TWO SKIES
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,
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 manager-
ships 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. Further-
more, 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


THE LUCKIEST MAN IN THE COLONY 107
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


108
UNDER TWO SKIES
them with clouds of smoke, watch the clouds
disperse and the stars shine bright again, and
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 inveter-
ate 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 wide-
awake 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


THE LUCKIEST MAN IN THE COLONY 109
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


110
UNDER TWO SKIES
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 un-
rolled, his face to the flames, and his strong
jaws cupped in his hands, he discoursed very
freely of his luck.
'You're saving my life,' said he gaily. 'I
should have starved. I didn't think it at the
time, but now I know I should. I thought I
could hold out, between belt and 'baccy; but I
couldn't now, anyhow. If I hold out till the
damper's baked, it's all I can do now. It's like
my luck! I never saw anything look quite so
good before. There now, bake up. Got any
tea?'
"Yes.'
Meat ?'


THE LUCKIEST MAN IN THE COLONY
111
No.
Well, we could have done with meat, but
it can't be helped. I'm lucky enough to get
anything. It's my luck all over. I'm the
luckiest man in this Colony, let me tell you.
But we could have done with chops. Gad, but
I'd have some yet, if I saw a sheep! They're
all wethers in this paddock, but they don't
draw down towards the gate much.'
He turned his head, and knitted his brows,
but it was difficult to distinguish things beyond
the immediate circle of firelit sand, and he saw
no sheep. To be sure, he would not have
touched one; he had said what he did not
mean; but something in his way of saying it
made the old man stare at him hard.
Then you're one of the gentlemen from
Dandong Station, sir ?'
'I am,' said Deverell. "My horse is fresh
off the grass, and a bit green. He's knocked
up, but he'll be all right in the morning; the
crab-holes are full of water, and there's plenty
of feed about. Indeed, it's the best season
we've had for years—my luck again, you see !'
The tramp did not seem to hear all he said.


112
UNDER TWO SKIES
He had turned his back, and was kneeling over
the fire, deeply engrossed with the water-bag
and the quart-pot, which he was filling. It
was with much apparent preoccupation that he
asked :
Is Mr. Deverell the boss there now?'
'He is.' Deverell spoke drily, and thought
a minute. After all, there was no object in
talking about himself in the third person to a
man who would come applying to him for
work the next day. Realising this, he added,
with a touch of dignity, 'I'm he.
The tramp's arm jerked, a small fountain
played out of the bottle neck of the water-bag
and fell with a hiss upon the fire. The tramp
still knelt with his back to Deverell. The
blood had left his face, his eyes were raised to
the pale, bright stars, his lips moved. By a
great effort he knelt as he had been kneeling
before Deverell spoke ; until Deverell spoke
again.
“You were on your way to see me, eh?'
'I was on my way to Dandong.'
“Wanting work? Well, you shall have it,'
said Deverell, with decision. “I don't want


THE LUCKIEST MAN IN THE COLONY 113
hands, but I'll take you on; you've saved my
life, my good fellow; or you're going to, in a
brace of shakes! How goes the damper?'
Well,' said the old man, answering Deverell's
last question shortly, but ignoring his first
altogether. "Shall I sweeten the tea or
not?'
"Sweeten it.'
The old man got ready a handful of tea and
another of sugar to throw into the quart-pot
the moment the water boiled. He had not yet
turned round. Still kneeling, with the soles
of his boots under Deverell's nose, he moved
the damper from time to time, and made the
tea. His hands shook.
Deverell made himself remarkably happy
during the next half-hour. He ate the hot
damper, he drank the strong tea, in a way that
indicated unbounded confidence in his digestive
powers. A dyspeptic must have wept for
envy. Towards the end of the meal Deverell
discovered that the swagman, who sat remote
from the fire, and seemed to be regarding
him with extreme interest, had scarcely broken
his bread.


114
UNDER TWO SKIES
Aren't you hungry?' asked Deverell, with
his mouth full.
'No.'
But Deverell was, and that, after all, was
the main thing. If the old man had no
appetite, there was no earthly reason for him
to eat; his abstinence could not hurt him
under the circumstances, and naturally it did
not worry Deverell. If, on the other hand,
the old man preferred to feed off Deverell—
with his eyes—why, there was no accounting
for preferences, and that did not worry
Deverell either. Indeed, by the time his pipe
was once more in blast, he felt most kindly
disposed towards this taciturn tramp. He
would give him a billet. He would take him
on as a rabbiter, and rig him out with a tent,
camp fixings, traps, and perhaps even a dog or
two. He would thus repay in princely fashion
to-night's good turn-but now, confound the
thing! He had been sitting the whole evening
on the old fool's blankets, and the old fool had
been sitting on the ground !
'I say! Why on earth don't you come and
sit on your own blankets ?' The young man


THE LUCKIEST MAN IN THE COLONY 115
spoke a little roughly; for to catch oneself in a
grossly thoughtless act is always irritating.
'I am all right here, thank you,' returned
the swagman mildly. The sand is as soft as
the blankets.'
Well, I don't want to monopolise your
blankets, you know,' said Deverell, without
moving. Take a fill from my pouch, will
you?'
He tossed over his pouch of tobacco. The
swagman handed it back; he did not smoke;
had got out of the way of it, he said. Deverell
was disappointed. He had a genuine desire at
all times to repay in kind anything resembling
a good turn. He could not help being a little
selfish ; it was constitutional.
"I'll tell you what,' said he, leaning back-
ward on one elbow, and again clouding the
stars with wreaths of blue smoke, “I've got a
little berth that ought to suit you down to the
ground. It's rabbiting. Done any rabbiting
before ? No. Well, it's easy enough; what's
more, you're your own boss. Catch as many
as you can or care to, bring in the skins, and
get sixpence each for 'em. Now the berth I


116
UNDER TWO SKIES
mean is a box-clump, close to a tank, where
there's been a camp before, and the last man
did very well there; still you'll find he has
left plenty of rabbits behind him. It's the
very spot for you; and look here, I'll start you
with rations, tent, camp-oven, traps, and all
the rest of it !' wound up Deverell generously.
He had spoken out of the fulness of his soul
and body. He had seldom spoken so decently
to a pound-a-week hand-never to a swagman.
Yet the swagman did not jump at the offer.
Mr. Deverell,' said he, rolling the name on
his tongue in a curious way, 'I was not coming
exactly for work. I was coming to see you.
I knew your father !'
The deuce you did !' said Deverell.
The old man was watching him keenly. In
an instant Deverell had flushed up from his
collar to his wideawake. He was manifestly
uncomfortable. Where did you know him ?'
he asked doggedly.
The tramp bared his head; the short gray
hair stood crisply on end all over it. He
tapped his head significantly, and ran the palm
of his hand over the strong bristles of his beard.


THE LUCKIEST MAN IN THE COLONY 117
“So,' said Deverell, drawing his breath hard.
Now I see; you are a brother convict!'
The tramp nodded.
And you know all about him—the whole
story?'
The tramp nodded again.
‘By God!' cried Deverell, 'if you've come
here to trade on what you know, you've chosen
the wrong place and the wrong man!'
The tramp smiled. 'I have not come to
trade upon what I know,' said he quietly, re-
peating the other's expression with simple
sarcasm. “Now that I've seen you, I can go
back the way I came; no need to go on to
Dandong now. I came because my old mate
asked me to find you out and wish you well
from him: that was all.'
He went in for life,' said Deverell, reflect-
ing bitterly. "I have the vaguest memories of
him; it happened when I was so very young.
Is he well ?'
'He was.'
* And you have been in gaol together! And
you know what brought him there, the whole
story!' Curiosity crept into the young man's


118
UNDER TWO SKIES
tone, and made it less bitter. He filled a pipe.
*For my part,' he said sadly, 'I never had the
rights of that story.'
There were no rights,' said the convict.
'It was all wrong together. Your father robbed
the bank of which he himself was manager.
He had lost money in mining speculations.
He took to the bush, and fought desperately
for his life.'
'I'm glad he did that!' exclaimed Deverell.
The other's eyes kindled, but he only said,
*It was what any one would have done in his
place.'
'Is it?' answered Deverell scornfully. Did
you, for instance ?'
The old man shrugged his shoulders.
Deverell laughed aloud. His father might
have been a villain, but he had not been a
coward. That was one consolation.
A silence fell between the two men. There
were no more flames from the fire, but only the
glow of red-hot embers. This reddened the
face of Deverell, but it did not reach that of
the old man. He was thus free to stare at
Deverell as hard and as long as he liked, and


THE LUCKIEST MAN IN THE COLONY 119
his eyes never left the young man's face. It
was a sufficiently handsome face, with eyes as
dark as those of the old man, only lightened
and brightened by an expression altogether
different. Deverell's pipe had soothed him.
He seemed as serene now as he had been before
he knew that his companion had been also the
companion of his father-in prison. After all,
he had grown up with the knowledge that his
father was a convicted felon; to be reminded
of it casually, but also privately, was not to
receive a new wound; and the old one was too
old to smart severely at a touch. The tramp,
staring at him with a fierce yearning in his
eyes, which the young man could not see,
seemed to divine this, but said :
'It cannot be pleasant for you to see me.
I wouldn't have come, only I promised to see
you; I promised to let him hear about you.
It would have been worse, you know, had he
got out on ticket-of-leave, and come himself !!
*It would so !' cried Deverell sincerely.
In the dark, the old man grinned like one
in torment.
*It would so, Deverell repeated, unable to


120
UNDER TWO SKIES
repress a grim chuckle. It would be the
most awkward thing that could possibly
happen to me—especially if it happened now.
At present I call myself the luckiest man in
the Colony; but if my poor father were to
turn up-
Deverell was not interrupted : he stopped
himself.
You are pretty safe,' said his companion,
in a somewhat singular tone—which, however,
he quickly changed. “As your father's mate,
I am glad you are so lucky; it is good hearing.'
Deverell explained how he was so lucky.
He felt that the sentiments he had expressed con-
cerning his father's possible appearance on the
scene required some explanation, if not excuse.
This feeling, growing upon him as he spoke,
led him into explanations that were very full
indeed, under the circumstances. He explained
the position he had attained as manager of
Dandong; and the position he was about to
attain through his marriage was quite as
clearly (though unintentionally) indicated. It
was made plain to the meanest perception how
very awkward it would be for the young man,


THE LUCKIEST MAN IN THE COLONY 121
from every point of view, if the young man's
father did turn up and ostentatiously reveal
himself. While Deverell was speaking the
swagman broke branches from the nearest
pines and made up the fire; when he finished
the faces of both were once more illumined;
and that of the old man was stern with resolve.
“And yet,' said he, “suppose the impossible,
or at any rate the unlikely: say that he does
come back! I know him well; he wouldn't be
a drag or a burden to you. He'd only just
like to see you. All he would ask would be
to see his son sometimes ! That would be
enough for him. I was his chum, mind you,
so I know. And if he was to come up here,
as I have come, you could take him on,
couldn't you, as you offer to take me?' He
leant forward with sudden eagerness-his voice
vibrated. You could give him work, as you
say you'll give me, couldn't you? No one'd
know it was your father! No one would ever
guess !!
'No!' said Deverell decidedly. "I'll give
you work, but my father I couldn't. I don't
do things by halves : I'd treat my father as my


THE LUCKIEST MAN IN THE COLONY 123
Yes, it would be devilish awkward. But I'd
stand by him, before Heaven I would !!
The old man breathed hard.
'I don't know how I've come to say so
much to you, though you did know my father,'
added Deverell, with a sudden change of tone.
'It isn't my way at all. I needn't tell you
that from to-morrow forward you're the same
as any other man to me. And if you ever go
to see my father, you must not tell him all I
have said to you about what, as you say, is never
likely to happen. But you may tell him-you
may tell him I am glad he was taken fighting !'
The old man was once more quite calm. 'I
shall never see your father again. No more
will you,' he said slowly and solemnly; "for
your father is dead! I promised him to find you
out when my time was up, and to tell you. I
have taken my own way of breaking the news
to you. Forgive me, but I couldn't resist just
seeing, first of all, if it would cut you up very
badly!'
Deverell did not notice the quiet bitterness
of the last words. He smoked his pipe out in
silence. Then he said: God rest him ! Per-


124
UNDER TWO SKIES
haps it's for the best. As for you, you've a
billet at Dandong for the rest of your days, if
you like to take and keep it. Let us turn in.'
The worn moon rose very late, and skimmed
behind the pines, but never rose clear of them,
and was down before dawn. It shone faintly
upon the two men lying side by side, packed up
each in a blanket–Deverell in the better one.
From the other blanket a hand would steal out
from time to time, grope tremulously over
Deverell's back, lie a minute, and then be
gently withdrawn. Long before dawn, however,
the old man noiselessly arose and rolled up his
swag. He packed up everything that he had
brought-everything except the better blanket.
Over that he smiled, as though it was an
intense pleasure to him to leave it behind,
Just before going, when the swag was on his
back, he stooped down once and put his face
very close to that of Deverell. The worn
moon glimmered through the pines upon them
both. The faces were strangely alike ; only
Deverell's was smiling in his dreams, while the


THE LUCKIEST MAN IN THE COLONY 125
old man's lips moved tremulously, and he
seemed much older than before : for the eager
look had gone for ever.
A few minutes later the gate in the Dandong
boundary-fence closed behind the gaol-bird
tramp. And Deverell's father was dead indeed
-to Deverell. Lucky for Deverell, of course.
But then he was the luckiest man in the whole
Colony. Didn't he say so himself ?


THE NOTORIOUS MISS
ANSTRUTHER
TT is prejudicial to the nicest girl in this
- unjust world to be asked in marriage too
frequently. Things come out, and she gets the
name of being a heartless flirt; her own sex
add that she cannot be a very nice girl. A
flirt she is, of a surety, but why heartless, and
why not a nice girl? So grave defects do not
follow. The flirt who doesn't think she is one
-the flirt with a set of sham principles and
ideals, and a misleading veneer of soul—is
heartless, if you like, and something worse.
Now the girl who gets herself proposed to
regularly once a week in the season is far less
contemptible; she is not contemptible at all,
for how could she know that you meant so
much more than she did ? She only knows


THE NOTORIOUS MISS ANSTRUTHER
127
a little too much to take your word for
this.
A sweetly pretty and highly accomplished
young girl, little Miss Anstruther, came to
know too much to dream of taking any man's
word on this point. She was reputed to have
refused more offers than a good girl ought to
get; for what in the very beginning conferred
a certain distinction upon her, made her
notorious at a regrettably early stage of her
career. The finger of feminine disapproval
pointed at her, presently, in an unmistakable
way; and this is said—by women—to be a very
bad sign. Men may not think so. Intensely
particular ladies, in the pride of their complete
respectability, tried to impress upon very young
men in whom they were interested that Miss
Anstruther was not at all a nice girl. But this
had a disappointing effect upon the boys. And
Miss Anstruther by no means confined herself
to rejecting mere boys.
flame were of every variety. They would
have made a rare collection under glass, with
pins through them ; Miss Anstruther herself


128
UNDER TWO SKIES
would have inspected them thus with the
liveliest interest. Her detractors also could
have enjoyed themselves at such an exhibition ;
but the more generous spirits among them,
those who had been young and attractive too
long ago to pretend to be either still, might
have found there some slight excuse for Miss
Anstruther. Of course, it was no excuse at
all, but it was notable that almost every moth
had some salient good point—something to
' account for it' on her side, to some extent-
say a twentieth part of the extent to which she
had gone. There was a great deal of assorted
merit scattered among those moths. Looks,
intellect, a nice voice, an operatic moustache,
an aptitude for the informal recitation of
engaging verses, were a purely random selection
from their several strong points; but even these,
picked out and fitted together, would have
furnished forth a dazzling being: whom Miss
Anstruther would have rejected as firmly and
as finally as she had already rejected his integral
parts.
For there was no pleasing the girl. Appar-
ently she did not mean to be pleased—in that


THE NOTORIOUS MISS ANSTRUTHER 129
way. She had neither wishes nor intentions, it
became evident, beyond immediate flirtation of
the most wilful description. To many honest
minds hers seemed actually depraved.
Her accomplishment was singing. She sang
divinely. Also she had plenty of money; but
the money alone was not at the bottom of many
declarations; her voice was the more infatuating
element of the two; and her way' did more
damage than either. She was not, indeed,
aware what a way she had with her. It was a
way of seeming desperately smitten, and a little
unhappy about it; which is quite sufficient to
make a man of tender years or acute conscien-
tiousness 'speak' on the spot. Thus many a
proposal was as unexpected on her part as it was
unpremeditated on his. He made a sudden
fool of himself—heard some surprisingly sensible
things from her frivolous lips—decided, upon
reflection and inquiry, that these were her
formula—and got over the whole thing in the
most masterly fashion. This is where Miss
Anstruther was so much more wholesome than
the flirt who doesn't think she flirts : Miss
Anstruther never rankled


130
UNDER TWO SKIES
She had no mother to check her notorious
propensity in its infancy, and no brother to
bully her out of it in the end. Her father, a
public character of considerable distinction,
was queer enough to see no fault in her; but he
was a busy man. She had, however, a kinsman,
Lord Nunthorp, who used to talk to her like a
brother on the subject of her behaviour, only a
little less heavily than brothers use. Lord
Nunthorp knew what he was talking about.
He had once played at being in love with her
himself. But that was in the days when his
moustache looked as though he had forgotten to
wash it off, and before Miss Anstruther came
out. There had been no nonsense between
them for years. They were the best and most
intimate of friends.
“Another !' he would say, gazing gravely
upon her as the most fascinating curiosity in the
world, when she happened to be telling him
about the very latest. Let's see—how many's
that ?'
There came a day when she told Lord Nun-
thorp she had lost count; and she really had.
The day was at the fag-end of one season ; he


132
UNDER TWO SKIES
have bowled out a pretty numerous team by
this time. My dear Midge,' said Nunthorp,
with a sudden access of paternal gravity, don't
you think it about time that somebody came in
and carried his bat?'
"Don't talk nonsense !' said Miss Anstruther
briskly. She added, almost miserably: 'I
wish to goodness they wouldn't ask me! If
only they wouldn't propose I should be all
right. Why do they want to go and propose ?
It spoils everything.'
Her tone and look were quite injured. She
was more indignant than Lord Nunthorp had
ever seen her-except once—for the girl was of
a most serene disposition. He looked at her
kindly, and as admiringly as ever, though
found she had still the most lovely, imperfect,
uncommon, and fragrant little face he had ever
seen in his life. He said candidly—
'I really don't blame them, and I don't see
how you can. If you are to blame anybody,
I'm afraid it must be yourself. You must give
them some encouragement, Midge, or I don't


THE NOTORIOUS MISS ANSTRUTHER 133
think they'd all come to the point as they do.
I never saw such sportsmen as they are! They
walk in and walk out again one after the other,
and they seem to like it -
'I wish they did !' Miss Anstruther exclaimed
devoutly. “I only wish they'd show me that
they liked it; I should have a better time then.
They wouldn't keep making me miserable with
their idiotic farewell letters. That's what they
all do. Either they write and call me every-
thing-rudely, politely, sarcastically, all ways
-or they say their hearts are broken, and
they haven't the faintest intention of getting
over it-in fact, they wouldn't get over it if
they could. That's enough to make any person
feel low, even if you know from experience what
to expect. At one time I didn't dare to look in
the paper for fear of seeing their suicides ; but
I've only seen their weddings. They all seem
to get over it pretty easily; and that doesn't
make you think much better of yourself, you
know. Of course I'm inconsistent !'
"Of course you are,' said Lord Nunthorp
cordially. “I approve of you for it. I'd
rather see you an old maid, Midge, than going


THE NOTORIOUS MISS ANSTRUTHER 135
*They wouldn't be much of heroes !' laughed
the girl. “But I heartily wish I did write.
Wouldn't I show up some people, that's all !
It would give me something to do, too; it
would keep me out of mischief, and really I'm
sick of men and their ridiculous nonsense.
And they all say the same thing. If only they
wouldn't say anything at all! Why do they ?
You might tell me!'
Nunthorp put on his thinking-cap. “You
see, you are quite pretty,' said he.
“Thanks.
• Then you sing like an angel.'
*Please don't! That's what they all say.'
“Ah, the singing has a lot to do with it;
you oughtn't to sing so well; you should culti-
vate less expression. And then --- I'm afraid
you like attention.'
Of course I do!'
And I'm sure it must be very hard not to
be attentive to you,' Lord Nunthorp declared,
with a rather brutal impersonality ; ‘for I should
fancy you have a way-quite unconscious, mind
--of giving your current admirer the idea that
he's the only one who ever held the office!'


136
UNDER TWO SKIES
*Thanks,'said she, with perfect good-humour;
'that's a very pretty way of putting it.'
*Putting what, Midge?'
* That I'm a hopeless flirt—which is the root
of the whole matter, I suppose !
She burst out laughing, and he joined her.
But there had been a pinch of pathos in her
words, and he was weak enough to make a
show of contradicting them. She would not
listen to him, she laughed at his insincerity.
The conversation had broken down, and, as
soon as he decently could, he went.
That was at the very end of a season; and
Lord Nunthorp did not see his notorious
relative again for some months. In the
following February, however, he heard her
sing at some evening party; he had no chance
of talking with her properly; but he was glad
to find that he could meet her at a dance the
next night.
Well, Midge !' he was able to say at last,
as they sat out together at this dance. "How
many proposals since the summer?'
She gravely held up three fingers. Lord
Nunthorp laughed consumedly.


THE NOTORIOUS MISS ANSTRUTHER 137
* Any more scalps ?' he inquired.
This was an ancient pleasantry. It referred
to the expensive presents with which some
young men had paved their way to disappoint-
ment. It was a moot point between Miss
Anstruther and her noble kinsman whether she
had any right to retain these things. She
considered she had every right, protesting that
these presents were her only compensation for
so many unpleasantnesses. He pretended to
take higher ground in the matter. But it
amused him a good deal to ask about her
scalps.'
She told him what the new ones were.
"And I perceive mine—upon your wrist !'
Nunthorp exclaimed, examining her bracelet ;
and he was genuinely tickled.
• Well !' said she, turning to him with the
frankest eyes, 'I'd quite forgotten whose it was
-honestly I had !'
He was vastly amused. So his bracelet-
she had absolutely forgotten that it was his-
did not make her feel at all awkward. There
was a healthy cynicism in the existing relations
between these two.


138
UNDER TWO SKIES
She had nothing very new to tell him. Two
out of the last three had proposed by letter.
She confessed to being sick and tired of answer-
ing this kind of letter.
I'll tell you what,' said her kinsman, looking
inspired, “you ought to have one printed !
You could compose a very pretty one, with
blanks for the name and date. It would save
you a deal of time and trouble. You would
have it printed in brown ink and rummy old
type, don't you know, on rough paper with
coarse edges. It would look charming. “Dear
Mr. Blank, of course I'm greatly flattered”-
no, you'd say “very”_"of course I'm very
flattered by your letter, but I must confess it
astonished me. I thought we were to be such
friends ?” Really, Midge, it would be well
worth your while !'
Miss Anstruther did not dislike the joke,
from him; but when he added, “The pity is
you didn't start it in the very beginning,
with young Ted Miller'— she checked him
instantly.
Now don't you speak about Ted,' she said,
in a firm, quiet little way: but he appreciated


THE NOTORIOUS MISS ANSTRUTHER 139
the look that swept into her soft eyes no
better than he had appreciated it six months
before ; he was merely amused.
• Why not?'
Because he meant it!'
Nunthorp wondered, but not seriously,
whether that young fellow, who had gone in
first, was to be the one, after all, to carry out his
bat. And this way of putting it, in his own
head, which was half full of cricket, carried him
back to their last chat, and reminded him of a
thing he had wanted to say to her for the past
twenty-four hours.
Do you remember my telling you,' said he,
when I last had the privilege of lecturing you,
that you sang iniquitously well? Then I feel
it a duty to inform you that your singing is now
worse than ever—in this respect. No wonder
you have had three fresh troubles ; I consider
it very little, with your style of singing. Your
songs have much to answer for ; I said so then,
I can swear to it now. Your voice is heavenly,
of course; but why pronounce your words so
distinctly? I'm sure it isn't at all fashionable.
And why strive to make sense of your sounds ?


140
UNDER TWO SKIES
I really don't think it's good form to do so.
And it's distinctly dangerous. It didn't happen
to matter last night, because the rooms were
so crowded; but if you sing to one or two as
you sing to one or two hundred, I don't wonder
at them, I really don't. You sing as if you
meant every word of the drivel—I believe you
humbug yourself into half meaning it, while
you're singing !'
'I believe I do,' Miss Anstruther replied,
with characteristic candour. “You've no idea
how much better it makes you sing, to put a
little heart into it. But I never thought of
this! Perhaps I had better give up singing !'.
*I'll tell you, when my turn comes round
again,' said he, leading her back to the ball-
room. “I'll think of nothing else meanwhile.'
He did not dance ; he was not a dancing
man; but he did think of something else
meanwhile. He thought of a pale, young, eager
face, which appeared over Miss Anstruther's
shoulder in far too many of this evening's
dances. Lord Nunthorp hated dancing, and he
had come here only to sit out a square or
two with his amusing relative. He had to


THE NOTORIOUS MISS ANSTRUTHER
141
wait some time between them ; he spent it in
watching her; and she spent it in dancing
everything with the same very young man,
excepting one waltz, during which Lord
Nunthorp transferred his attention from the
bow to its latest string, who, for the time being,
looked miserable.
Who,' he asked her, as they managed to
regain possession of their former corner in the
conservatory, 'is your darked-haired, pale-faced
friend ?'
Well,' whispered Miss Anstruther, with
grave concern, 'I'm very much afraid that he is
what you would call the next man in!'
Good heaven !' ejaculated Lord Nunthorp,
for once aghast. “Do you mean to say he is
going to propose to you?'
'I feel it coming; I know the symptoms
only too well!
Then perhaps you're going to make a
different answer at last ?'
My dear man !' said Lord Nunthorp's sisterly
little connection; and her tone was that of a
person rather cruelly misjudged.
The noble kinsman held his tongue for


142
UNDER TWO SKIES
several seconds. Man of the world as he was,
he looked utterly scandalised. Here, in this
fair, frail, beautiful form, lay a depth of
cynicism which he could not equal personally-
which he could not fathom in another, and that
other a quite young girl.
Midge,' he said at last, with sincere solem-
nity, 'you horrify me! You've often told me
the kind of thing, but this is the first time I've
seen you with a fly actually in the web: for I
don't think I myself counted, after all. That
boy is helplessly in love with you! And you
were smiling upon him as though you liked him
too!'
Nunthorp was touched tremulously upon
the arm. Was I?' the girl asked him, in a
frightened voice. Was I looking like that?'
'I think you were,' he answered frankly.
* And now you calmly scoff at the bare notion
of accepting him! You make my blood run
cold, Midge! I think you can have no heart!'
*Do you think that?' she asked strenuously,
as though he had struck her.
No, no; you know I don't ; only after
seeing you look at him like that --'


THE NOTORIOUS MISS ANSTRUTHER
143
Honestly, I didn't know I was looking in
any particular way. Miss Anstruther added
in a lowered, softened voice : 'If I was—well,
it wasn't meant for him.'
Lord Nunthorp dropped his eye-glass.
"And it wasn't meant for you, either !' she
superadded, smartly enough.
Lord Nunthorp breathed again, and ventured
to recommend an immediate snub, in the pale
boy's case.
When he had led her back to her chaperone,
he felt easier on her account than he had been
for a long time. It was obvious to him that
the biter was bit at last. The right man was
evidently in view, though he was not there at
the dance—which was hard on the white-faced
youth. Perhaps she was not the right girl for
the right man; perhaps he refused to be
attracted by her. That would be odd, but not
impossible; and a girl who had refused to fall in
love with every man who had ever fallen in love
with her, was the likeliest girl in the world to
care for some man who cared nothing for her-
primarily to make him care. That is a woman,
through and through, reflected Lord Nunthorp,


144
UNDER TWO SKIES
out of the recesses of a somewhat recherché
experience. But Midge would most certainly
make him care : she was fascinating enough to
capture any man (except himself) if she
seriously tried; and he sincerely hoped she
was going to try, to succeed, and to live happily
ever after. For Nunthorp had now quite a
fatherly affection for the girl, and he wished her
well from his heart, which was kindly enough,
though turning prematurely gray. But he did
not like a little scene, with her in it, which he
witnessed just before he quitted that party.
My dance !' said a boy's confident, excited
voice, just behind him ; and the voice of Miss
Anstruther replied, in the coldest of tones, that
he must have made a mistake, for it was not
his dance at all.
“But I've got it down,' the boy pleaded, as
yet only amazed ; his face was like marble as
Lord Nunthorp watched him; Miss Anstruther
was also slightly pale.
‘She's doing her duty, for once,' thought
Lord Nunthorp, to whom the pathos of the
incident lay in its utter conventionality. But
she plays a cruel game !'


THE NOTORIOUS MISS ANSTRUTHER 145
You've got it down ?' said Miss Anstruther,
very clearly, examining her card with ostenta-
tious care. “Excuse me, but there is really
some mistake; I haven't got your name down
for anything else!'
For an instant Lord Nunthorp held himself
in readiness for a scene : he half expected to
see the boy, whose white face was now on fire,
snatch the card from her, expose her infamy,
tear up the card and throw the pieces in her
face. His face looked like it for a single
instant, and Nunthorp was prepared to protect
him if he did it. But the boy went away
without a word.
Lord Nunthorp met the girl's eyes with his.
He knew she was looking for his approval :
he knew she had earned it, by preventing one
poor fellow from going the whole humbling
length, and he was glad to think that she had
taken his advice : but the glance he gave her
was very grim. He could not help it.
He went away feeling quite unlike him-
self.
Just outside, in the street, some one brushed
past him, sobbing an oath. And Lord Nun-
IO


146
UNDER TWO SKIES
thorp became himself again ; for this person
was Miss Anstruther's last victim.
*That's all right,' he muttered; 'not a broken
heart-only broken pride. That's all that's
breakable, after all; and it mends.' He walked
home rather pleased with Midge, as he called
her, for having done her duty, no matter how
late, in at least one case. He was vexed with
himself for having been stupid about it at the
moment. But it delighted him to think that
most likely this would be the last case of the
kind; for he took always the most good-natured
whom, once upon a time, he had himself been
slightly smitten.
But how plain it was to the world that Miss
Anstruther was motherless! No mother would
have allowed her to behave as she did. With
a mother she would have married one of the
many, whether she loved him or not. Her
father, whose time was much taken up, was
so blind as to see no harm in her. The only
people she had to remonstrate with her were
her married sisters. One of these had been
Miss Anstruther's chaperone at this dance, where


THE NOTORIOUS MISS ANSTRUTHER
147
she sat out twice with her kinsman, Lord Nun-
thorp, and broke a silly youth's pride. This
sister ventured to remonstrate with her (but
very gently) when they got home, in the small
hours of the February morning.
Miss Anstruther had been silent and sub-
dued during the drive home. She was con-
siderably ashamed of herself. She was more
ashamed of having ill-treated the white-faced
boy over that dance—now that it was done-
than she would have been to reject his hand
after encouragement; use had blunted her feel-
ings to this sort of sin ; but the wrong of
breaking in cold blood an engagement to
dance was altogether out of harmony with her
character and practices. She was notorious
for leading men on to certain humiliation; she
was celebrated for the punctilio with which she
kept her word in the smallest matter. She
had injured the good reputation in snapping
the backbone of the bad one; and she did not
feel at all pleased with Lord Nunthorp, who
had said or implied one thing, and then stared
its opposite. Her spirits had improved, how-
ever, on her arrival at the house : she had


148
UNDER TWO SKIES
found a letter for herself, with three bright
blue stamps in the corner, stuck up on the
mantelpiece. Her hand had closed eagerly
over this letter before the lamp was turned
up. She was twisting it between her fingers,
under her shawl, while her sister reproved her.
not too seriously, for her treatment of that
boy.
'I know it,' she answered rather dolefully ;
'I know well enough what a flirt I am! I
have never denied it in my life, not even to
them. But I really never mean them to go so
far. And—and I don't think I'm so heartless
as I make myself out to be!'
Her sister gazed at her fondly. Her own
family, at all events, loved and believed in
Miss Anstruther, and held her faults to be all
on the surface. The sister now saw in the
sweet, flushed face the look that Lord Nun-
thorp had noticed more than once, but never
interpreted.
'Is there some one you care for after all,
Midge, dear ?' she asked softly.
There may have been some one all the
time, the young girl whispered, her eyelids


THE NOTORIOUS MISS ANSTRUTHER 149
fallen, her hand squeezing the letter under
her shawl.
"Is it—is it Ted Miller ?'
Midge looked up into her sister's eyes. Her
lip was quivering. She was a girl who seldom
cried — her detractors would have told you
why. She controlled herself before speaking
now.
'It was the most hopeless affair of them
all,' she said simply; but—but he was the
only one who really meant it!'
His letter was against her bosom.
The married sister's eyes had filled. You
write to each other still, don't you, Midge?'
“Yes—as friends. Good-night, Helen!'
"Good - night, darling Midge; forgive me
for speaking !' Helen murmured, kissing her
eyes.
*Forgive you? You've said nothing to what
I deserve !'
The girl was running up to her room two
steps at a time. Ted Miller's letter was pressed
tight to her heart.
Ted Miller had been four years in Australia.
He had written to her regularly, the whole


150
UNDER TWO SKIES
time, as her friend; and she had written fairly
regularly to him, as his. His was the one
refusal in which she had not been a free
agent; she had been but seventeen at the
time. There was love between them when
they parted; there was never a word of it in
their letters. He wrote and told her all that
he was doing: he was roughing it in the
wilderness; he was not making his fortune :
he never spoke of coming home. She wrote
and told him-nearly all.
A pleasant fire was burning in her room.
She lit the candles, and sat down just as she
was, in her very extravagant ball-dress, to read
his present letter. She felt, as always in open-
ing a letter from Ted, that she was going to
open a window and let in a cool current of
fragrant, fresh air upon an unhealthy, heavy
atmosphere; and she noticed, what she had not
noticed downstairs, through hiding the letter
before the lamp was turned up, that its super-
scription was not in Ted's hand. The bright
blue stamps of New South Wales were really
all she had looked at downstairs. She now
tore open the envelope with strange misgivings;


THE NOTORIOUS MISS ANSTRUTHER 151
and the letter turned out to be from the
squatter's wife on Ted Miller's station, telling
how a buck-jumper had broken Ted Miller's
back; and how, before his death, which ensued
in a matter of hours, he had directed her to
to “his greatest friend.'
The fire dulled down, the candles shortened,
and in their light Miss Anstruther sat in her
dazzling ball-dress, her face as gray as its satin
sheen. Her rounded arms had more colour
than her face. She moaned a little to herself ;
she could not cry.
At last she stirred herself. Her limbs were
from head to foot in her pier-glass- with all
her grace of form and motion dead and stiff
within her dress. She saw herself thus, but at
the time with senseless eyes; the sight first
came back to her when she next used that
mirror. She was going to a certain drawer;
she unlocked it, and drew it out bodily; she
carried it to the table where the candles were
slowly burning down. The drawer was filled
with Miller's letters.


152
UNDER TWO SKIES
His greatest friend !' They had been
merely friends from the day they parted. He
had nothing. Out there he had found fortune
but a little less inaccessible than at home; he
had written her no words of love, for how
could there be any hope for them? She had
plenty of money, but that was all the more
reason why he must have some. His letters
were not vulgarised by a single passionate, or
sentimental, or high-flown passage. They
were the letters of an honest friend; they
losing side, certainly, but fighting, not talking
about fighting-talking, indeed, of quite other
matters. And because these letters had been
just what they were, Ted Miller himself had
been to a frivolous girl, through frivolous
years, what no one else had ever been—not
even himself as she had known him face to
face. Their friendship had been pure and
strong and strengthening; their love idealised
by improbability, and further by not being
discussed, and yet further by being written
'friendship.' His tone to her had been : ‘En-
joy yourself. I want to hear you're having a


THE NOTORIOUS MISS ANSTRUTHER
153
good time. I am—there's nothing like work.'
She had answered, very truthfully, that she
was doing so; and now he knew how! This
was the bitterest thought: that the new know-
ledge was now his, and she, in his eyes, just
wbat she had been in the eyes of the throng!
She sat down and read all his letters. The
pure breath of heaven rose from every leaf.
They did not touch her yet: her heart was
numb. But the tones that had once come to
her ears from every written word came no
longer; the voice was silenced. She returned
the letters to the drawer. She would keep
them till her death.
And yet—would he like that?
She sat very still, trying to answer this
question. The candles went out, but a leaden
light had crept into the room through the
blinds. She thought that he saw her, that he
had seen her for weeks, that she had been
grieving him the whole time, that she might
please him now. And he was the one man she
had known who would have wished her not to
keep his letters.
She rose resolutely from her chair, and with


154
UNDER TWO SKIES
difficulty rekindled
her
fire; it ruined her
this one again. It did not seem to her that
she was about to do anything cruel or un-
natural. She was going to do violence to her
own feelings only. It would please Ted that
she was not going to keep his letters, to read
them in her better moods, and less and less as
the years went on. For her own part, she felt
was a subtle sense of sacrifice for his sake-her
first and last- which nerved her to burn his
letters. Overstrung as she was, she burnt
them every one, and without a tear.
A half-leaf happened to escape. She picked
it out of the fender when the rest were burnt
black, and as her heart was beginning to ache
for what she had done. She took it to the
window, and read on the crisp, scorched paper
the ordinary end of an ordinary letter—the
end of all was, as ever : ‘Yours always, E. M.'
Without a moment's warning, her tears
rattled upon the hot paper; she pressed it
passionately to her mouth; she flung herself
upon the bed in a paroxysm of helpless agony.


156
UNDER TWO SKIES
Australian bishopric possessed all these merits.
Her friends were right about the girl's influence
in general with their beloved Canon ; they did
not over-rate the weight of her say in this
particular matter; but beyond this their fond
calculations proved sadly adrift. Evelyn never
even paused to consider the thing, say in the
light of transportation and live burial; she
jumped at it; and on this occasion she did not
jump back. Her father, who knew her, gave
her time for the customary rebound. But for
once she knew her mind, and on the fifth day
the world learnt that a Colonial bishopric
of which it had never heard before had been
definitely accepted by the Reverend Canon
Methuen.
Miss Methuen had done it, and apparently
she knew no regrets. That repentance at
leisure of which her father had disquieting
visions, founded on past experience of her, did
indeed become conspicuous, but only in a
delightful manner. She was not, of course,
without a proper sorrow at departure; the
spires at sunset made her pensive; she duly
cried when the wrench came, but performed


STRONG-MINDED MISS METHUEN 157
that wrench strong-mindedly, notwithstanding.
This was her accredited characteristic, strength
of mind. It enabled her to tear herself away
from a grand old town for which she had an
unaffected veneration—where she spent most of
her life, where her mother lay buried, where
two sisters lived married : from some precious
Extension Lectures, in the middle of the Brown-
ing Course : from her own little room, made
pretty with her own hands, at small cost, with
fans and Aspinall and photographs in frames :
from those very young men who were foolish
about her at this time ; and almost as easily, six
weeks later, from the more mature and less
impossible admirers of the outward voyage.
But though, to be sure, she had never had
absolute occasion for a refusal of marriage, she
would have refused Lord Shields himself—the
fellow - passenger-on the voyage out. Her
heart was set upon the wilderness, and on that
Bishop's Lodge there, her future home; and
after devouring some Australian romances, she
felt that she would rather encounter one bush-
ranger on his professional rounds than plough
the seas with a boat-load of friendly peers.


158
UNDER TWO SKIES
Before reading those romances—that is, until
there came the prospect of living in Australia
- Miss Methuen's ideas of that continent had
been very vague, very elementary, and rather
funny. Her timely reading gave shape and
background to her ideas, but left them funnier
than ever; it did not prepare her for the
place she was going to, perhaps it did not
pretend to do so, that romantic literature ; but
Miss Methuen had chosen to assume that
all Australian scenery would be in the same
style. She was prepared for gullies, gum-
trees, caves, ranges, kangaroos, opossums,
claims, creeks, snakes in the grass, and chival-
rous robbers on the highroad; but she was
not prepared for a dead level of sandy desert,
broken only by the river-timber of a narrow,
sluggish stream, nor for a wooden township
where the worst weapons of man were strong
drink in the head and strong language on
the tongue; and this was what she found.
Great was the disillusion, and in every
respect; it discounted and discoloured all
things, even to the Bishop's Lodge, which,
with its complete margin of creeper-covered


STRONG-MINDED MISS METHUEN 159
verandah, was charming in everything but
situation.
Call this the bush !—where are the trees ?'
she said rather petulantly to her father; and,
as she looked at his long dust-coat of light-
coloured silk, duck trousers, and pith helmet,
she might have added : ‘Call you a Bishop !-
where are your gaiters ?'
In fact, Miss Methuen's contentment wore
away, very nearly, with the novelty. The
Bishop saved the situation by taking her with
him on his first episcopal round up country.
He wore, too, on that round, his gaiters (with a
new chum's stout shooting-boots underneath)
and black garments, for the cool weather was
coming on. They had a delightful cruise among
the sheep-stations of the diocese (a little district
the size of England), their pilot being the
Bishop's Chaplain, who, as it happened, was a
son of the soil. They gave the hospitality of
the squatter a splendid trial, and found that
celebrated Colonial quality rated not at all
too high. The Bishop held services in the
queerest places, and administered holy rites to
the most picturesque ruffians, winning in all


160
quarters the respect and admiration of men not
prone to respect or to admire, for his broad
shoulders and grizzled beard and his erect six
feet, as well as for the humanity and virility of
every sentence in his simple, telling addresses.
Evelyn, perhaps, was admired less; but she
did not suspect this, and she enjoyed herself
thoroughly. There were gentlemanly young
overseers at nearly all the stations. These young
men, naturally taken with the healthy colour
and good looks of the English girl, were suffi-
ciently attentive, and seemed duly impressed
by her conversation. So they were. But
clever Evelyn was not clever in her topics; she
talked Browning to them, and culture, and the
‘isms'; and they mimicked her afterwards--
the attentive young men. This she did not
suspect either. She returned from the cruise
in the highest spirits, her preconceptions of the
bush not realised, indeed, but forgotten; and
after weeks among the stations the wooden town
seemed a different and a better place, and the
Bishop's Lodge a paradise of ease and beauty.
But during the less eventful period of the
Bishop's ministry at headquarters, the satisfac-


STRONG-MINDED MISS METHUEN
161
tion on his daughter's part tapered, as it in-
variably did in the absence of variety. She
began systematically to miss things after old
England'; and here the Bishop could sym-
pathise, though the forced expression of his
sympathy galled his contented and tolerant
nature. He pointed out that comparison was
scarcely fair, and hinted that it lay with
Evelyn, as with himself, at once to enjoy and
to improve the new environment. Natur-
ally there were matters for regret, occasions
for a sigh. The service of the sanctuary was
necessarily less sumptuous here than in the old
English minster; and Evelyn had a soul of
souls for high mass, and the exaltation of the
spirit through the senses. Then when the
service was over, there were no young curates
of culture to step in to Sunday supper or
dinner, as the case might be. This was a
want of another kind; it is not suggested that
tainly, was an unattractive feature of Bishop's
Lodge, where even the young overseers of
the back - blocks, who had barely heard of
Browning and were not ashamed of themselves
II


162
UNDER TWO SKIES
would have been royally welcomed visitors. As
it was, almost the only visitors were the Chaplain
and his wife, who did not count, since they
practically lived at the Lodge. Nor was either
of this excellent couple to Evelyn's taste. The
Chaplain, indeed, was but a bushman with a
clean mouth ; clerical, to the eye, in his clothes
only. No one could have accused him of polish,
nor yet, on the other hand, of laziness or insin-
cerity. Evelyn, however, tilted her nose at him.
As for the Chaplain's wife, she was just one of
those kind, unpretentious women who are more
apt to be spoken of as 'bodies.' She did many
things for Evelyn; but she had also many
children, and spoilt them all; so that Evelyn
could do nothing but despise her. For, in her
reputed strong mind, Miss Methuen nursed a
catholic contempt for human weaknesses of
every shade.
When, however, the time came for further
episcopal visitations, Evelyn, who accompanied
her father as before, once more enjoyed herself
keenly. Her pleasure was certainly enhanced
by the fact that the ground traversed was not
the old ground. But this turned out to be her


STRONG-MINDED MISS METHUEN
163
last treat of the kind for some time to come.
The next round of travels was arranged with
the express object of Confirmation, and the
Bishop seemed to feel that in this connection
the companionship of his daughter might be
out of place. He decided, at all events, to take
no one but the Chaplain. So Evelyn was left
behind with the Chaplain's wife, and neither
lady had a very delightful time. The girl spent
most of hers in writing exhaustive letters to
her friends, prolix with feminine minutiæ, but
pathetically barren of the adventures which
she longed to recount, if not to experience.
In particular she corresponded with some old
friends in Sydney, at whose fashionable resid-
ence she had spent a night before accompany-
ing her father up country. These people
sympathised with her on many sheets of
expensive note-paper. The letters became
mutually gushing; and long before the Bishop's
return, Evelyn had arranged to spend the term
of his next absence with her opulent friends
in Sydney.
When he did return, Evelyn, as it happened,
was not in the house. In point of fact, she


164
UNDER TWO SKIES
was reading under the gum-trees by the
sluggish little river, but, as usual, the Chaplain's
wife was not in the unnecessary secret of her
whereabouts. Evelyn's book on this occasion
had itself a strong odour of the gum-trees, for
it chanced to be the Poems of the bush poet,
Lindsay Gordon. Now Evelyn, having attended
University Extension Lectures on the subject
of “Modern Poetry,' was of course herself an
authority on that subject; equally of course she
found much to criticise in these bush ballads.
What, however, not even Miss Methuen could
find fault with was their local colour. She
had seen it herself up the country; she only
wished she had seen more of it-more of
Gordon's bush and Gordon's bushmen. Oddly
enough, though in his book, the verses that
attracted her most were never written by
Gordon at all :-
'Booted, and bearded, and burnt to a brick,
I loaf along the street ;
I watch the ladies tripping by,
And I bless their dainty feet.'
She liked these lines well enough to learn
them as she walked back to the house; and


STRONG-MINDED MISS METHUEN 165
it was impossible to avoid glancing at her own
dainty feet in doing so. Why did she never
encounter the booted bushman who had seen
better days?
'I watch them here and there,
With a bitter feeling of pain ;
Ah! what wouldn't I give to feel
A lady's hand again !'
"Ah!' echoed Evelyn, looking at her own
small hand, “and what wouldn't I give—to
pull some poor fellow to the surface with
you !'
And indeed she was ready to give much,
having some soul for the romantic, and being
bored.
Looking up from her book, she was startled
to see her father hurrying towards her, his fine
face beaming with gladness. Evelyn beamed too,
and they embraced in the road, very prettily.
The Bishop explained his early arrival; the last
stages he, even he, had driven furiously—to
get back to his darling girl. Then he thrust
his strong, kind arm through hers, and led her
home. But as they neared the Lodge his steps
hesitated.


166
UNDER TWO SKIES
My dear, I have a confession to make to
you!'
A confession! Have you done something
naughty, father?'
Yes! I have taken pity on an undeserving
young man. You know, Evelyn, this colony is
full of educated young men who have gone
hard down hill until reaching the bottom here
in the bush. I have come across I can't tell
you how many instances up country, men from
our Universities and public schools, living from
year's end to year's end in lonely huts, mere
boundary-riders and whim-drivers.'
*Contemptible creatures !' exclaimed Miss
Evelyn, with virtuous vigour. “I have no sym-
pathy with them, not an atom!'
Though Gordon was still under her arm,
the bushman who had seen better days had
vanished quite out of her head, which con-
tained, as we know, a strong mind, and was
perhaps rather swollen by conscious strength.
The Bishop was not pleased.
Come, come, Evelyn! I do not like to
hear my dear girl settle questions in that way
-questions of humanity, too. It was not our


168
UNDER TWO SKIES
the house, the Bishop persuaded his daughter
to efface herself until the coach had gone; it
was not fair, he said, to meet the young man as
he was, when in a few days he would come
back a different being. It would have been
inevitable, such a meeting, had Evelyn been in
when they arrived; but now that it was so
easily avoidable, would she not have the
strength of mind to avoid it? He knew she
must feel very inquisitive. So she did ; but
she loved, above most things, an appeal to her
strength of mind. She promised. To see,
however, was not to meet. And strong-minded
Evelyn contrived to see, through a window of
the room in which the future Reader was waiting,
herself unseen in the gathering shades.
She could not see much : a slim young man
sitting over the fire; a bronzed face, illumined
by the flames with flickering patches of orange;
thick black hair, a thin beard, moleskins, leg-
gings, Crimean shirt, and a felt wideawake
on the floor between his feet. This was abso-
lutely all that Evelyn saw. But it was enough.
The contempt she felt or affected for weak
humanity did not trouble her just then. Miss


170
UNDER TWO SKIES
man. And within the week after that he
found it impossible to sail under false colours
with one so honest and high-souled, so frank
and strong-minded as Miss Methuen. He told
her his story, including the worst part of it,
which the Bishop had not told her, in a sudden
burst of mingled shame and thankfulness,
and in a chance five minutes in the starlit ver-
andah. His curse had been drink. Yet Miss
Methuen heard this revolting confession with-
out being visibly revolted—even without that
contemptuous curl which came too easily to
her lips.
*Forgive me,' he murmured, 'forgive me for
telling you! I couldn't help it! I can't go on
pretending to have been what I have not been
—not to you, who are so honest, and open, and
strong!'
How do you know I am strong?' asked the
girl, colouring with pleasure ; for he had flat-
tered her to the quick.
'I see it.'
Oh, but I am not.'
“You are! you are!'he exclaimed, contra-
dicting her almost as vehemently as she desired.


STRONG-MINDED MISS METHUEN
171
* And now you can never think the same of me
again—though you will not show it!'
*You are wrong,' whispered Evelyn, in her
softest tone. “I will think all the more of you
- for having climbed out of that pit! You are
going on climbing now : only think how much
nobler it will be to have climbed from the
bottom of the horrible pit, than had you started
from the level land, and never fallen!'
And indeed the sentiment itself was not
free from nobility. As she uttered it she gave
him her hand, frankly and cordially. Then
she left him alone in the starlight, inspired to
do and to dare glorious things, and burning to
scale the glittering heights of divine enterprise
—always supported by the strong soul of
Evelyn Methuen.
The obvious sequel of that starry night took
place just two months later-it was surely very
creditable to both parties that it did not take
place much sooner. At length, however, on a
similar night of stars, only in the warmer air of
November, Miss Methuen found herself in the
angle of Follet's arm-heard him whisper to the
sweet end what others, mere boys, had but


172
UNDER TWO SKIES
timidly and tentatively begun in the old days
at home-found her head lying back upon his
shoulder—and breathed, scarcely knowing it, a
little word which was pleasant speaking, even
though the sound of it on her own lips vaguely
alarmed her soul. You see, it was the first
time she had been properly and definitely asked
in marriage, the incomparable Miss Methuen.
Then Bishop Methuen made the force of his
character unpleasantly apparent.
truly amazing capacity for anger—and anger of
a very downright, usual, and Britannic descrip-
tion. Angry, however, as he was with the
culprits, he was still more angry with himself ;
and—what was not usual, but the very reverse
—this made him blame the culprits less and
himself more. Putting the pair on parole, he
promised to give the matter fair consideration,
and he did so in portentous privacy. Then
emerging, like the jury, after a mercifully
short delay,' he gave what was really, on the
whole, a most merciful verdict. Evelyn was to
go down to Sydney, and stay with her fine
friends there as many months as they would


STRONG-MINDED MISS METHUEN
173
have her—six if possible. There were to be
.no letters, no direct communication of any kind.
But if they were both of the same mind when
Evelyn came back, and always supposing
Follet was as zealous and earnest a worker then
as now, then the Bishop would consider the
whole matter afresh. They need not look for
an unconditional consent even then. The very
promise of reconsideration was essentially
conditional.
So Miss Methuen went down to Sydney a
month before Christmas; and the Bishop, in
his human inconsistency, granted her a long
interview with Follet on the eve of her de-
parture. Nor did Dr. Methuen’s goodness end
then or there : he was ridiculously good to
Follet from that time forth. The very next
day he made the young man fetch his trunks
from the Chaplain's house, where hitherto he
had lodged, and keep bed and board hence-
forward at the Lodge. Both were free; and it
was the Bishop, of course, who had paid for
those trunks and their contents, not as a
present (so he said), but as an advance of
salary. He would have had us remember that


174
UNDER TWO SKIES
the young fellow was his old schoolfellow's son.
The young fellow, however, had amiable
characteristics of his own. More than this, he
was of real use to the Bishop, being, in spite of
his sins, more to the manner born than the
honest (but indigenous) Chaplain. A strong
mutual affection came into being between the
old man and the young one, and daily in-
creased; an attachment apart from gratitude.
Follet's gratitude was a thing by itself, some-
thing never expressed in words nor by any
conscious look or act. Unconsciously he ex-
pressed it every day. And these bonds were
supplemented by the impalpable bond of Evelyn.
They seldom spoke of her; never in any but
the most casual connection. But Follet loved
to think of the good old man as Evelyn's
father. The Bishop, on the contrary, hated to
think of Follet as her lover. He knew Evelyn
not only better than Follet knew her, but
better than Evelyn knew herself.
The girl's letters naturally were mentioned
when they arrived, though they never, of
course, contained a message. The nearest the
pair came to joining hands over Evelyn was,


STRONG-MINDED MISS METHUEN
175
however, in the matter of a letter from her..
It came when the Bishop was busy; it begged
him to send her a certain book of poems, and
when nobody could find the book, the Bishop
said rather testily: "Write, like a good fellow,
and tell her it isn't in the house. And you
may as well say we're all right, but too busy-
well, that we're busy.' The Bishop remembered
what he was doing; yet he presently added,
*Stay! If there's anything to interest her, say
it; it will save me a letter; and really I am
very busy.' Nor was the inconsistency merely
human this time; the Bishop was curious to
see what notice would be taken of Follet's
letter. Would her next be nominally to Follet
direct, in answer, or would she thank him in a
message? There was justifiable occasion for
the former course : but Evelyn did not seize
the occasion : she took no notice at all.
Whereupon the Bishop became vastly uneasy,
and wished with all his heart that he did not
know his daughter so well.
This was not until the fourth month of
Evelyn's absence, and her friends in Sydney
had been only too delighted to take her for the


176
UNDER TWO SKIES
six; but long before that time had elapsed the
Bishop was upset by a telegram announcing
that she was already on her way home. No
reason, no explanatory hint was given. He
who knew her so well was prepared for any-
thing. It was a two days' journey, she could
not arrive before the evening following the
receipt of her telegram. In his perplexity the
Bishop took the news straight to Sam Follet.
That young man was now reading earnestly
for Orders. He had, indeed, been intended for
the Church from early years; but he was a
clergyman's son; he had disappointed, and
been sent to the Colonies—to the dogs, in other
words—for it is so with those who are sent out
to be got rid of. But now Bishop Methuen
was in communication with his rejoicing old
schoolfellow, and the boy was to be ordained
after all. The Bishop found him busy reading
in his bedroom. This was the first time he
had intruded on him there. Follet was seated
at a little table touching the wall; from a peg
high over the table depended a surprising
collection of old garments, crowned by a gray
felt wideawake. They interested the Bishop


STRONG-MINDED MISS METHUEN
177
ro
in spite of his errand; he was glad, besides, to
curve round to the point; so, as Follet turned
round in his chair, he greeted him extempore.
What in the name of fortune are those
things over your head, my dear boy?'
Follet blushed a little, tilted his chair back-
ward, eyed the queer garments, and rather
timorously answered :
They're my old bush togs, sir. I keep
them there to—to remind me—that is, so that
I shan't forget-
He stuck. The Bishop hastily changed the
subject by coming to his point. In an instant
Follet was on his legs, his face irradiated.
You'll let me meet the coach, won't you?
- Oh, I forgot! One of us has to go to
Stratford Downs to-morrow!'
You must be the one,' said the Bishop. 'I
must be the one to see Evelyn first,' he added,
in a reminding tone. 'I can't divine what is
fetching her home so suddenly as this !' And
as he watched the summer-lightning play of
joy and anxiety over the young man's face, his
heart pained for him, for he did divine evil.
He knew Evelyn only too well.
12


178
UNDER TWO SKIES
'I am glad he is not in,” she said when she
arrived. Her eyes and manner betrayed
excitement with difficulty controlled. And
oh, father! how thankful I am you wouldn't
let me be engaged to him !'
Why?' asked the Bishop, sternly, as he
instinctively put her hands from him.
Miss Methuen tremblingly skinned the
glove from her left hand, which she held up to
her father's eyes, only to dazzle them with the
blaze of diamonds on the third finger. The
sight hit him to the heart, stopping its beat.
now-now that I really love! What will he
do to me, do you think? Will he kill me? I
thought I loved him, God knows I did, but I
you speak to me? I am engaged. You cannot
prevent it - you will not want to when you
know all, when you know him! Speak to me,
father!'
But the Bishop only stung her with his
eye.
You'll break it to him, father? Then I'll
see him myself. He'll be more merciful than


180
UNDER TWO SKIES
intercessory prayer; but early in the morning
he went again to the door; and there was no
more sound of breathing within. The wind
came through the keyhole, no other breath
touched the ear; a thread of sunlight marked
the bottom of the door. In sudden frenzy the
Bishop burst it open, and stood panting in an
empty room, his beard bisected by the draught
between the open window and the broken door.
The bushman's clothes had vanished from their
peg; those of the Reader lay neatly folded on
the little table underneath.
The wholesale jeweller was for some time
prevented by the exigencies of a thriving busi-
ness from following Evelyn up country.
She had worn his grand ring upwards of a
month, when, while driving with her father in
the neighbourhood of the river, she descried a
man lying on his face in the sun, with his hat
off. Evelyn pointed with the finger of contempt
to this self-evident case of drunkenness; and
the Bishop also took characteristic action. He
stopped the buggy, handed the reins to Evelyn,
and jumped out. The man lay at a distance,


STRONG-MINDED MISS METHUEN
181
un
which Bishop Methuen covered at the double.
He found a flat stone, placed it under the
sleeper's forehead, and fixed the wideawake as.
securely as possible over the back of his head
and neck. Then he returned to the buggy,
again running, and drove homeward at an
unusual rate.
How despicable !' Evelyn exclaimed.
• Which of us ?' asked her father, with a
sarcasm he would not have employed towards
her in former days.
That intoxicated wretch, of course!'
Dr. Methuen lashed his horses. “Evelyn,'
said he between the strokes, 'I profoundly
wish that you would be less free with your
contempt. There are worse sins than drunken-
ness, which is chiefly shocking. You should
pray to avoid those sins—mark me, they are
so much the worse for not looking so bad—and
try yourself to be becomingly humble.'
Evelyn, not unnaturally, sulked during the
remainder of that drive. She was too much
offended to take notice even of the unwonted
pace. On reaching the Lodge she went straight
to her room. And the Bishop, saddling his


182
UNDER TWO SKIES
riding horse with his own hands, galloped back
to the spot where he had left the drunken
sleeper. The man was gone. The Bishop had
recognised him; he was unaware that the man
was then in the recovering stage, and that he
had himself been recognised.
He scoured the country. Late in the even-
ing, which was very dark, with a sandy wind,
he rode slowly home, completely crestfallen.
He bitterly upbraided himself for having
spared Evelyn's feelings with a result infinitely
more deplorable than any scene she could have
created on the road. He had imagined the
poor fellow to be incapable for hours to come.
Leaving the horse with the groom, he was
following round the picket-fence to the front
gate, as the night was so dark, when a figure
rose from the ground at his very feet. Dr.
Methuen had no time to draw back. Strong
arms embraced him, a heart thumped thrice
against his own, and then the Bishop was left
standing alone, peering into the darkness and
dust, and listening to the dying beat of footsteps
he should never overtake.
And this was the last he saw of his old


STRONG-MINDED MISS METHUEN
183
schoolfellow's son. Some few weeks later
came the noted night when the wholesale
jeweller was at length known to be on his way
inland to caress the hand that exhibited his
merely representative ring. On that night the
Bishop read in The Grazier of the violent death
of Samuel Follet, by drowning, many miles
higher up the river. It appeared that the
young man's condition had become such as to
necessitate a constant supply of watchers; that
from one of these he had broken away, jumping
into the river and being drowned, as stated.
This was all. The Bishop had been alone with
it more than an hour when Evelyn came in to
bid him good-night. The paper was clenched
tightly in his two hands. The pipe between
his teeth had long been out.
Of late there had been little enough in com-
mon between Evelyn and her father; but
to-night she desired to say more than the
customary three words. She was in great
spirits, naturally; she wanted to talk. She
shut the door and sat down ; she sat down in
the chair in which Follet had sat night after
night for nearly five months.


184
UNDER TWO SKIES
*Do not sit there, Evelyn.'
Dr. Methuen had found his voice, but to
Evelyn it seemed a new voice. It was harsh,
yet it quavered. She rose hastily, and as she
rose the diamonds on her finger lightened under
the lamp.
Why not?'
'Because—because I wish to be alone.'
She stooped to kiss him.
‘Do not kiss me!' he cried, pushing back
his chair.
• Why—why ever not ?'
'I am smoking strong tobacco.'
You are not; your pipe is out.'
'I don't think so,' said the Bishop, pulling
in quite good faith at cold tobacco. "Good-
night, Evelyn.'
You are vexed with me!' exclaimed the
girl, indignantly. 'I shan't go until you tell
me the reason. Pray, what have I done ?'
Then the Bishop could contain it no longer;
though he never forgave himself for what he
did. He jumped up, holding out the paper, and
answered with a trembling finger on the place :
· This!'


AN IDLE SINGER
'T HAVE it !' cried the Editor suddenly.
1 Adeane, who was spoken to, looked up
quickly, but a little mechanically, for his mind
was inconveniently preoccupied with the sestett
of an unwritten sonnet; and “it' was merely
the subject of his prose contribution to the
Christmas Number of the Spider. Still, as
this contribution meant as many sovereigns in
Adeane's pocket as the sonnet would fetch
shillings, he was compelled to roll down from
poetic heights, to trump up a look of acute
personal interest, and to ask what 'it' was to
be after all.
The Editor of the Spider—who was the
Spider-got up from his chair and went into


186
UNDER TWO SKIES
a corner where a small table stood stacked
with new books. He chuckled as he found the
book he wanted, and he handed it to Adeane
with an air of occult humour.
*The Lesser Man, Adeane read aloud from
the cover. But I don't see who it's by?'
'Anonymous—some woman, in spite of the
title.'
Adeane glanced at the title-page, but it was
innocent of previous record : this was a first
conviction.
* All right,' said he, tucking the volume
under his arm, and letting his soul soar back
to the sestett. “I suppose you aren't in a great
hurry for the review ?'
Review! I didn't say anything about a
review, did I?' The Spider spoke rather
sharply ; and really Adeane was very absent.
"We were talking about your thing for the
Christmas Number. I want you to fill a couple
of pages with your smartest stuff—something in
story shape, but topical. And you say you can't
get a subject. Very good, here's your subject :
write me a smart, tart skit on The Lesser Man,
and it'll be the very thing—the very thing !'


AN IDLE SINGER
187
'Is it so popular?' asked Adeane, who
worked too hard to keep quite abreast of the
literary current.
Now my dear Mr. Adeane !' said the Spider,
with a kind of fatherly compassion for his
youthful contributor, 'both press and public
are idiotic about this book; I'm surprised
you haven't heard of it. I haven't read it, but
I've glanced at it, and it looks pretty good,
though plainly feminine ; it's highly impas-
sioned, and a little embittered; and the title's
ironical—one for us. There's humour in the
title before you touch it! I saw no humour
anywhere else, but that's all the better; you'll
extract lots. Popularity apart, from what I've
seen and heard of it, the book was made to
burlesque ; some books are. Mind you mangle
the title ; it's a pity there's no author's name
to hash up as well; but you must just do your
best, Mr. Adeane.
'I'll certainly try to,' Adeane said earnestly,
with the timorous humility with which he treated
all his editors in those days. But he had just
skimmed half a page of The Lesser Man and
seen a phrase that pleased him, and he could


AN IDLE SINGER
189
and in the twenty-third of his age. He was
at this time beating round the financial Horn,
and not yet out of dangerous waters; in fact,
his income was trembling between two and
three figures a year. He was a literary free-
lance, and more or less a poet; more by
inclination, by necessity less. At present he
could afford to mix very little verse with his
assorted prose. Verse supplied but a doubtful
tithe of that extremely doubtful hundred a
year. On the other hand, more than half of
this income was derived from the Spider.
There is little to be said about the Spider.
It dealt with most things, and it seldom dealt
gently. It cost a piece of silver, it was nicely
printed, its wrapper suggested respectability
and good taste, and from some points of view
the paper may have justified its publication.
Certainly the Christmas and Summer Numbers
were in fair demand; but these were something
special. In the ordinary way it was written
by a clever, if a slightly lawless, crew; and
Adeane was glad enough to be one of them;
though if he found one paper absolutely un-
readable (with the exception of his own things,


AN IDLE SINGER
191
principles which he did not exert himself to
live up to personally; and his intimate friend,
Digby Willock, who had a legal mind, but no
principles and no ideals, had certainly the
advantage of him here ; but for all that there
was some good in Adeane, quite apart from
his brains.
He carried The Lesser Man between two and
three miles to his lodging, which so far con-
sisted of one room only. But he forgot about
sestett, and his mind did not quit it again for
some time. The words seemed very nearly to
have sorted themselves by the time he reached
his room. He sat down for a minute to write
them roughly; and the minute lasted a couple
of hours. For it is one thing to get a poem
into your head, and another thing to get it out
again, on paper. The fitting together of any
form of verse is the most soul-possessing em-
ployment to be found; but its hard-and-fast
requirements render the sonnet the greatest
strain of all. Adeane did not even smoke
during those two hours, nor pause to put on
his slippers ; yet he was a terrible fellow for


192
UNDER TWO SKIES
his slippers and his pipe. But when he did
rise he had not only ground the thing out at
last but rewritten it, and enclosed it in an
envelope, with an 'accompanying note.' More-
over, he took that sonnet to the post before
either looking at his slippers or smelling tobacco;
and after many days it brought back ten-and-
sixpence.
Rid at last of the sonnet, which had been
with him all day, Adeane washed his mind of
it with bird's-eye, relit the fire (versifying in-
variably put it out) and carelessly cut open The
Lesser Man.
An hour later Adeane’s landlady came up
with tea and eggs, the poet's repast. She kept
him very comfortable up in his garret; there
was nothing she would not do for him. The
gas was lit, and the poet was lying on his bed
reading. The landlady introduced the tea in a
word or two of rather timid entreaty, received
no answer, and discreetly retired. Her young
man was reading much too attentively to look
up from his book or to speak to her.
She returned in another hour. Adeane had
not moved; his tray was untouched, and the


AN IDLE SINGER
193
woman felt personally stung, and complained.
But Adeane only opened his mouth to refuse
sustenance, waved his hand as from another
world, and was once more left in peace, reading
now with a ravenous, glistening eye.
'Is Mr. Adeane in ?' a young fellow in-
quired at the street door later in the evening.
"Well, now, Mr. Willock, you're the very
gentleman I wanted to see,' cried Mrs. Trotter,
with warm welcome, and an air of personal
relief. “He is in, sir ; but he wants rousing-
he wants rousing very bad. He's lying like a
log, a-reading some new trash or other he
brought home this afternoon. He won't look
an' he won't speak, and, would you believe it,
he's never touched his tea, though it was that
strong it might ha’ lifted his ’air off, which he
will persist in, though I tell him what it'll end
in till I'm sick and tired. And the eggs done
as he likes 'em to a second. What do you
think o' that, sir ? What am I to do with
him?'
It's very sad,' said Willock, clicking his
tongue and affecting concern; 'but, you see, he's
a poet. They're all either sad, or bad, or mad.


AN IDLE SINGER
195
Adeane had thrown down the book after finish-
ing it, and been for some time perambulating
the floor with his hands in his pockets and a
cutty in his mouth; he had walked himself
back into realities; he had smoked himself
into the frame of mind required by the Spider.
At first, indeed, he had been weak enough to
think of returning the book to the Spider, with
a sturdy, independent letter; but he had con-
quered that temptation as he conquered few
others. Perhaps it was not a really powerful
temptation. And no doubt the smoking had
blunted his moral sense. For already, actually,
he had seen the comic side of the situation
which had upset him, and made a note or two
for his own version of that scene; and Willock
found him with the fag-end of a grin on his
lips—in very queer contrast to certain signs
about the eyes.
And Willock incurred on the spot, and
without the option of other refreshment-
a dose of The Lesser Man, so potent and so
absurdly sweet as to prejudice anybody against
the best book ever written. But Willock knew
better than to listen ; he knew Adeane of old.


196
UNDER TWO SKIES
He hadn't read the book, he rarely did read
novels; he only read his law books and the
amusing papers; but he was a kind of intimate
friend of Adeane—not a very true friend—and
he pretended to listen, and caught a sentence
here and there. He sneered when the poet
paused. He had a trick of sneering at Adeane
in a quasi-friendly way, which Adeane used to
note, as he noted most things, more on reflec-
tion than at the moment.
So this is the best book you ever read in
your life, eh ?'
'I believe it is, upon my word,” said Adeane,
childishly. 'In some ways it most certainly is.'
‘But you always say that,' rejoined Willock,
rolling up his smooth upper lip and showing
his teeth. "It always is the last love with you.'
Not always now, hang it !' cried Adeane,
quite earnestly. He was fully conscious of a
certain fickle strain in his character; he was
beginning to get reconciled to this, as you do
get reconciled to your faults between twenty
and thirty. “But it is a treat to be able to
like a new book unstintedly, and to be in a
position to say so.'


198
UNDER TWO SKIES
should have thought it was against those prin-
ciples of yours to turn into rot what you think
so admirable.
"Well, it is against them,' Adeane owned.
* Then why do it?'
"Well, I must.'
“Then why have principles ?'
Willock was filing his fingers upon his chin ;
he was quite grave, and looking at his friend in
a psychological light, as he generally did. The
result gratified in some subtle way his peculiar
order of mind. But Adeane laughed again, and
still good-humouredly.
"Confound you,' he said, 'I'm not in the
witness-box, nor are you public prosecutor,
yet. Come, I say, I can't stand your shrewd
questions to-night. Besides, after all, there's
no greater advertisement for a book than a
skit on it; the Spider said so this afternoon,
and the thing's obvious.'
Much the Spiler cares about the advertise-
ment!'
But I do.'
"Come, I don't think the advertisement has
much to do with it in your case either,' said


AN IDLE SINGER
199
Willock, buttoning up his coat; and this rankled
with Adeane when he remembered it afterwards:
for it was perfectly true.
Will you come out and see something ?'
Willock added.
No, thanks; I shall be working late.'
"Good-night, then. No, I won't have any-
thing to drink,' said the legal limb, looking
askance at what Adeane offered him; he was
as bad as a teetotaler, and he could not refuse
to drink—at all events with Adeane—without
a faint suggestion of personal superiority.
Some men are like this.
*I'm afraid he doesn't like me so much as he
used to,' Adeane said rather sadly to himself ;
not because he had a particularly exalted
opinion of Digby Willock, but because they
had been greater friends once than they were
now, and he had very few friends in the world ;
and also because liking to be liked was his
weakest point but one.
• But Willock had met the landlady on the
stairs with a loaded tray. And he was think-
ing:
“A set of principles, for ornament, not use ;


AN IDLE SINGER
201
work; and this is just what Adeane's work
was. His notes were sweet, his tone tender,
his manner airy ; but it was a lovable some-
thing, on every page, in every stanza, that sold
Variations.
A new poet was wanted, to cultivate the
masses, to educate the classes, to elevate the
age, and to hustle up the millennium. That
poet is wanted still. The post remains vacant.
Adeane never applied for it. He had neither
the qualifications nor the temperament of a
professional prophet. He was no Thinker: he
could simply sing; and he owed half his success
to his doing very well what it was well within
him to do—the other half to his knowing where
to stop. He lacked the public spirit of a social
thorough-cleaner : he let the dust lie on the old
order of things, save where he traced his verses
in it, and his finger but skimmed it then-he
never handled the corruption underneath. For
he was confessedly of the minor poets: in an age
infested with them he had the insolence to
come forward and make one more. He was a
minor poet to the marrow; he never tried to be
anything better. But in one respect (apart


AN IDLE SINGER
203
of it with the loftiest scorn. His ignorant
poet's prejudices died a violent death. He
had his eyes opened, which did him good.
And he heard many untrue and ridiculous
things about his Variations and himself.
He heard that they were so very original.
This tickled him. Considering that he had
saturated himself with Locker and Praed, among
others, and that he said the Variations were on
them, their alleged originality tickled him
immensely. Yet what he had absorbed came
himself could have believed this. Praed had
certainly inspired him ; his was the standard to
which Adeane humbly strove to attain. Yet a
lot of original Adeane did come out with the
imitation Praed; so much, in fact, that the
model was seldom suggested. Adeane, you
perceive, was self-conscious on the point; he
could not forget his method. Yet even Adeane
must have known that there was freshness in
his stuff. He did know it; only he was such
an excessively modest young man. He heard
that this also was being said about him, and
the rumour amused his vanity.


204
UNDER TWO SKIES
For the people who praised his cool-headed-
ness knew very little of what they were talking
about. They could not see into the poet's
heart; they could not even peep into the poet's
den. One glimpse of his den, with him in
it, warm from their praises, would have
been a sufficient revelation to them. They
would have seen him pacing his floor, unable to
work, unable to think closely, but gloating
inanely over phrases to which he had lately
listened with a marble mien. He kept every
compliment, no matter how ridiculous—and
compliments can be very ridiculous indeed—for
private consumption of a contemptible kind.
So much for their modest young man.
You can enjoy the sweets of gratified vanity
all the more for not putting on a vulgar
swagger. That is only possible to the thick-
skinned man, who doesn't know how to make
the most of things. To play the hedge-sparrow
while you feel a peacock is the acme of refined
egotistical indulgence; so Adeane said.
Adeane actually took a delight in posing as
unspoilt ; but nevertheless he did get a little
sick of flattery; and he was honestly delighted


AN IDLE SINGER
205
one evening by a chat he had with a peerless
creature, who never flattered him once. At
least, he was honestly delighted at first. He
forgot to be secretly self-conscious, and for a
few minutes he was at his very best; but it
dawned upon him presently that the lady had
never heard of him, and at that, very properly,
he felt slightly piqued—more than slightly,
indeed, for he vastly admired her.
He went up to his hostess afterwards to
inquire the lady's name. He had not caught
it at the introduction. Who ever does? Yet
this conscientious hostess seemed sincerely
shocked with herself.
How exceedingly stupid ! Now I am sorry!
I wanted you two to make the greatest
friends.
But who is she?' pursued the poet, with
mild insistence. He had said how glad he had
been not to be talked to about his twopenny
poems. It is as unnecessary to explain that
in reality he was not glad as to point out the
insincerity of the commercial adjective.
'It was Miss Cunningham,' said the hostess,
regretfully—Maud Cunningham, you know,


206
UNDER TWO SKIES
who writes the novels. Don't you know them ?
I think you must. But she is only just
beginning to own up to them. The first were
anonymous, and the first of all was, as usual,
the best of all—The Lesser Man.'
Adeane's jaw should have fallen : Adeane's
bones should have rattled; but the young
sinner did not turn a hair. So many things
had happened since he had wept over that
story before spitting it for the fire; he had
written so much since then, and the Spider
had so long been incorporated with some other
insect, and become unfit to write for, that
Adeane had succeeded in forgetting his par-
ticular contributions to those obsolete columns.
He said he remembered reading the book, he
thought, and being struck by it; but he had
quite forgotten what it was about. He added
that he would go and introduce himself over
again. He went off to do so, but did not suc-
ceed that night, for the rooms were crowded,
and at that moment Miss Cunningham was
gravitating towards the hostess from the oppos-
ite pole, to say good-bye—and something else.
Do you know,' she began, in an aggrieved


208
UNDER TWO SKIES
And the old spell held him as before. He
only dipped this time; but it all came back
to him, and he saw what a book it was; and
even now, when he tasted the strong situation,
it dimmed his eyes.
He remembered now, of course, how he had
read it before simply to burlesque it for the
Spider ; and when he had closed the book, he
fished out that Christmas Number to have
another look at what he had written; and
when he had done with that, his face was a
study.
*Heavens ! what a savage I must have been
in those days !' he said, with unfeigned horror,
as he put the paper behind the fire. “It knocks
the conceit out of a man to read his old stuff.
I knew it was pretty bad, but I didn't think I
had ever done anything quite so brutal as this.
After this, I'll believe there's no crime man
wouldn't commit for bread. . . . And she ...
she's the ideal I thought I was never, never
to find !'


AN IDLE SINGER
209
III
Variations appeared one autumn, and by the
following spring Adeane and Miss Cunningham
had seen a good deal of each other. They had
met many times and in many houses, and
Adeane had frequently dined at the Cunning-
hams. Old Cunningham was a London M.P.;
he was a genial widower; Miss Cunningham was
the lady of his house, and the most charming
hostess in the town.
It looked a promising thing enough. Adeane
would never be rich, certainly ; but he was a
popular poet, you must be conventional in
some things, and one would not have had him
rich on any account. Really the money ele-
ment was all right; and their spirits dove-tailed
in a way that was enough to spoil them both
for the society of other mortals. They reacted
upon each other quite ideally. He modified
her opinion of men, which had been early
warped ; she drew out his finest side as no one
had ever done before. For a long time, of
course, it was all strictly according to Plato;


210
UNDER TWO SKIES
but Ovid is a jealous Shade, who sooner or
later puts a stop to that. The friends of
Adeane and of Miss Cunningham said that in
this case it would be sooner; and neither of
them made friends of fools.
They soon knew each other too well to have
their private frailties mutually obscured by
their public form. This was a great thing,
especially as regards Adeane's frailties, which,
I trust, are pretty conspicuous by this time.
Miss Cunningham had only one important
weakness : she was touchy; bad notices cut
her to the heart, and she had very little else
but bad ones now, because her first book had
been her best. Also she had an incomplete
sense of humour, but this is only admitting
that she was human, and a woman. Adeane
could stand chaff better than some other things,
but then he was a man, and his heart had
been hardened on the Spider.
The Cunninghams had a country house in
one of the Home Counties. Here they enter-
tained small parties-chiefly senatorial-over
the various holidays; and hither, at Whitsun-
tide, came Adcane the poet. It was the first


212
UNDER TWO SKIES
'I recollect that I wasn't very keen to know
people,' Adeane admitted.
*Nicely put! You had vigorous views on
the subject.
'I know. Adeane laughed softly at his
own expense. “But, you perceive, I have
grown out of those views. And now you
haven't told me a word about yourself, Digby.
Where have you been ? What are you
doing?'
Digby Willock smiled; this was so like
Adeane! It was his old sweet way to talk
volubly about himself until he had talked him-
self out (for the moment), and then, prompted
by some sudden twinge of conscious egotism,
to show an almost painful interest in the affairs
of his friend. But Digby was not as poets are
as regards egotistical talking; his egotism was
of the hard-headed, self-sufficing, secretive kind;
he would take a man's confidence, not neces-
sarily to betray it, but more as a possible fund
of private amusement. He was never caught
confiding in anybody himself.
He stated a few facts, however.
*I'm not doing much ; I'm still reading. I


AN IDLE SINGER
213
take my time over it, you see. I have been
round the world since I saw you, and on the
Continent all this winter. I've only just got
home. Travelling spoils you for this climate-
at least, in winter. I wonder you don't go
abroad sometimes. You can do your work
anywhere; and I assure you there are more
inspiring spots than London lodgings; only I
suppose society couldn't spare you. I must
say I like knocking about. You meet a better
set of Britishers out of Britain than in it. I
am on my way at the present moment to stay
with some people of whom I saw a good deal
at Schwalbach last autumn. What's more-by
Jove! here's the station, so I shall have to say
ta-ta, and glad to have seen you.'
But what station is it?' Adeane asked,
peering through the window.
* Reading
jumping up.
"Going any further ?
No. I also am going to stay with friends
near here. I half expect they'll have sent a
trap of some sort to meet me.'


AN IDLE SINGER
215
occupied to see through people in a moment-
his insight was all retrospective. And Adeane,
in his turn, made no secret of the almost
intimate footing on which he himself stood
with the Cunninghams; while as to Miss
Cunningham— Willock had merely to press
that button, and his friend was a bell ringing
her praises until the pressure was removed.
He praised her unreservedly, with that fine
childish indiscretion which was one of the
sweet traits of his character. And Willock
leant so far back in his corner that his face was
little seen; its expression was not pretty. He
was silent for some time when Adeane stopped.
Then he took a curious line.
Adeane had been wont to tell him everything
in the very old days. He reminded Adeane
remember. He did it, of course, very craftily,
very innocently, and Adeane answered as care-
lessly as he could. They were foolish things
rather than bad ones; Adeane had crammed
many follies into his earlier years; he was a
poet. He had tried to realise his ideal more
than once before meeting Miss Cunningham;


216
UNDER TWO SKIES
that was all. Willock knew all about those old
affairs, and inquired after each in turn, in the
ostensible innocence of his heart. Adeane's
answers afforded him a certain amount of grati-
fication, which was more subtle than satisfying.
But the conversation, very naturally, was not
to Adeane's taste just then; and in the end he
put a stop to it, though not before they had
entered the Bladen drive.
Bladen Abbey lies in a rich little bit of
pastoral England. It is an undulating country,
with waves of juicy meadow-land curling to
wooded crests, and the weather-beaten Abbey
in their trough. The woods did not always
delight the eye as on this afternoon of budding
summer, though on the other hand they
became more than delightful under an autumn
tarnish; the sky could smile, as now, and it
could also frown and weep, and fill with wailing;
but there was an air of superiority about the
gray old Abbey, which was always the same.
Even the Abbey, however, looked the better for
the level sunlight now gilding the windows and
picking out buttresses and balustrades with sharp
black shadows. Adeane's poetic heart leapt


AN IDLE SINGER
217
against his ribs at the first sight of it. He
gazed raptly, looking much more the poet than
usual. But immediately the æsthetic fire in
his eyes burnt a softer flame, for there, waiting
to receive them on the stone terrace, stood the
lady of the house.
Miss Cunningham was not the hostess to
welcome one young man more cordially than
the other. She was charming to them both, as
also to those amiable fogies, her father's friends,
during the remainder of the afternoon. But
Digby Willock was not wanting in perception,
and, unlike Adeane's, his vision was instantane-
ous; he saw from the first moment that the
poet stood on very much higher ground in the
lady's favour than he did. She did, indeed,
take both young men together to see the little
room in which she worked; but in that little
room Willock had found himself unable to
contribute a word to the somewhat esoteric
conversation. He had too good an ear not
to know from Miss Cunningham's lightest
tones that Adeane was the favourite friend,
if not worse, for he knew the fellow's wheed-
ling way with women; while he, who had


218
UNDER TWO SKIES
really seen a great deal of her at Schwal-
bach, was the mere acquaintance. Considering
how much he had seemed to amuse Miss
Cunningham in the German hotel, this was
galling to Willock. Over there he had amused
and delighted her, he was sure of it, with his
wit and his personal charm, of course. And,
as a matter of fact, he had delighted her, but
not quite in the way he imagined. His hair
would have stood on end had he dreamt how it
was that he came to delight her, or what she was
doing with him, or why he had been invited to
Bladen. His hair would stand up now if he
could recognise himself in the book. But he
can't; because he told her himself that she had
drawn that nasty fellow to the life.
Adeane dressed for dinner in the best
possible spirits; and his best spirits were as
effervescent and as pure as an infant's. He
had been paid some pretty compliments by the
fogies, and poets are very human in these
things; but what really exhilarated him was
the gracious sweetness of his goddess. Already
she had been as he had never known her before.
She had never seemed so near him in town.


AN IDLE SINGER
221
the more interesting—it is infinitely the less
debasing. This is not prejudice, but fact.
When one or two authors are gathered to-
gether you can trust them to saturate the
and the politicians are only too glad (as they
may well be) to get into the purer atmosphere.
It is so, honestly ; it was more so than usual
on the present occasion; only—Mr. Cunningham
should have kept out of it.
Some disinterested person should have told
himself off to confine this old gentleman to the
House. He was all right there; he had en-
joyed personal relations with leaders, of which
he delighted to speak; but in literary talk he
was impossible. He approached the sacred
subject in a thoroughly profane spirit. He
had no respect for the creative temperament.
He was destitute of imagination, and, what
was worse, of consideration for those who had
it. His daughter's work, about which she was
peculiarly sensitive, he had always regarded as
the family joke.
• Reviews ?' he said, catching at a word, and
feeling that here, at least, he was qualified


222
UNDER TWO SKIES
to speak. “How do you stand reviews,
Adeane?'
Adeane replied, like a nice little boy, that
ill-conditioned notice, though, on the whole, he
steeled himself against taking them unduly to
heart, whatever they said.
'I'm glad to hear it,' said Mr. Cunningham
approvingly, ‘for it's the very thing you don't
do, isn't it, Maud? I assure you, Adeane, she
was ill for a week after that review of her first
book in the Times.'
• How absurd you are, father,' said the clever
girl-girlishly, not cleverly; and she blushed a
little.
* But it's a fact,' said her father, turning
confidently to the lady on his right.
“The ghost of a fact, grossly exaggerated,
and all wrong besides !' declared Miss Cunning-
ham, disliking the subject, but disliking still
more to appear to dislike it. “For it wasn't
the Times at all.'
'She's right,' said Mr. Cunningham to his
right-hand neighbour, and to the whole party,
for all were listening 'I recollect perfectly.


AN IDLE SINGER
223
My memory never plays the fool for long-
kept too well oiled for that. It wasn't the
Times, I beg it's pardon, it was that uncommon
smart skit in the Spider.'
The ladies shivered—all but Miss Cunning-
ham, who smiled, though her heart frowned
heavily.
'I was very young then, and I hadn't written
a book before,' she said, almost apologetically,
to everybody. “But you all remember what a
horrid, common paper the Spider was, and that
thing about my story was even more odious
than its standard.'
As she closed her lips she looked at Adeane,
perhaps for sympathy, and perhaps uncon-
sciously. And she nearly jumped from her
chair to support him, for he wore the look that
comes over the face before one faints. There
was no colour in his face, no flexibility, and the
forehead--the fine, poetic forehead-shone in
the candle-light like wet marble.
She watched him with a shocked fascina-
tion; he was recovering himself. She heard
her father speaking ; his voice sounded as if
· the length of the table had been trebled.


224
UNDER TWO SKIES
"I thought it pretty rich, you know,' he was
saying to the lady on his right, though nasty,
distinctly nasty.'
'It was detestable !' said Miss Cunningham
severely. She had not taken her eyes from
Adeane. She heard some one asking :
'Did you say the Spider, sir?' The voice
was Willock's.
Yes; you mayn't remember the paper;
dead some time since. I was rather sorry,'
remarked Mr. Cunningham; “there is plenty
of room for that sort of thing.'
"Oh, I remember the paper perfectly; but
it didn't die, sir-it married beneath it-incor-
porated with something rather more so,' re-
turned Willock cheerily; and quite suddenly
he leant forward and twisted himself about
until he had discovered a passage through
the flowers and ferns and candles, at the end
of which was Adeane's white face. By the
way, Adeane,' he said airily, "didn't you use
to write for the Spider ?
"To be sure, I wrote a bit for them in my
struggling days,' Adeane replied, with forced
frankness. “But' – to all — 'you'll write


AN IDLE SINGER
225
for anything, you know, in the begin-
ning.'
"And write anything, too !' said Digby, still
leaning forward, with his head on one side,
and his teeth showing; Adeane was colour-
ing up; it did his old friend good to watch
him.
Why, Maud !' cried Mr. Cunningham in-
evitably, perhaps Mr. Adeane's the culprit !
If so, you can have your revenge at last. Was
it you that guyed her book, Adeane ?'
The old savage was laughing heartily; it
was the greatest of jokes to him.
"No, Mr. Cunningham,' said Adeane, in a
clear voice.
Maud seemed not to have heard her father's
question. She had never taken her eyes from
the face of Adeane. Did you write it?' she
asked.
Her voice sounded quite unconcerned to all
but Adeane. He knew her tones as none other
knew them, and his heart beat badly. But he
did not look at her; he looked steadily at
Willock through the ferns and candles, and
answered coolly :


228
UNDER TWO SKIES
nights to inspire the lyric muse. Yet the poet
hung over the old stone balustrade of the
terrace, unmoved, untouched.
There was no poetry in Adeane to-night.
The moon, the nightingales, and the sweet
breath of May were less than nothing to the
miserable young man. A weeping, wailing,
passionate night might have spoken to his
spirit; but in this peaceful sweetness his
spirit was deaf and blind, and no better
than dead. His soul was heavy with what
had happened and with what might never
happen now.
As to the lie he had told, he was less
ashamed of it than he should have been. He
was filled to overflowing with shame and self-
contempt, but not exclusively on account of his
barefaced falsehood at the dinner-table; he
felt it far more degrading to stand suddenly
convicted of frequent contributions to the
Spider. Even had his pen been guiltless of
that unlucky parody, he would have found it
difficult to look Maud Cunningham in the eyes
again. But he had written it, she knew that
he had written it; and she had learnt this, not


AN IDLE SINGER
229
from himself, but from his friend. The friend
had given him a rude lesson in human nature
—a salutary experience for Adeane and his
sort; but this bit of education had cost him
his happiness. She would never forgive him.
She would have forgiven him fast enough had
she heard the story as he would have told it
to her one day, when he was sure of her.
He was bitterly sure of her now; so sure that
it would be idle and humiliating even to ask
her forgiveness.
The moon became blurred and big: his sight
was dimmed.
Adeane dreaded humiliation more than
most things. He fancied the proud contempt
in her voice; he had already seen it in her
eyes; the memory of that look would hurt
him enough without a memory of words to
double the pain. That look was for the lie ;
he had not been able to deceive the one
soul that understood his soul. The lie alone
would never be forgiven him; no power on
earth could make Maud Cunningham see its
justification ; because it was a lie—and she a
woman. She was a slave to unreasoning


AN IDLE SINGER
231
blackening all within them. It threw out every
buttress, and let the embrasures sink inward,
instead of painting parallelograms of light on
à sable screen. Even in his trouble Adeane
could not help appreciating the difference;
and he watched the windows with a kind of
personal pride in the moonshine, which so
chastened and subdued the gaslit panes. But,
as he watched, the sudden illumination of
one window on the basement killed his artistic
sense and quickened his heart. This window
belonged to Maud Cunningham's den, which she
had herself graciously shown him, within an
hour of his arrival.
He found himself moving firmly towards
her window without knowing in the least what
he was going to do or to say. He saw the
lamp on her desk; he saw her white face
behind the lamp; he had the presence of mind
to delight in the swift reflection that with the
lamp set on this side of her she could not
possibly see him. As he came nearer he saw
that she was examining a heap of manuscript,
turning over the leaves impatiently-merely
glancing at them, nothing more. He divined at


AN IDLE SINGER
233
'I told you a lie,' he added plainly, after a
pause.
She waited for more. She had lowered her
eyes; she was putting her manuscript together
again. Her indifference irritated Adeane.
'I would tell it you again!' cried the young
man, with sudden vigour.
This time he had the satisfaction of diverting
Miss Cunningham's attention from her novel to
himself; her indignant stare transfixed him,
and her hands grasped the arms of her chair.
'I am afraid I should do it again,' he said
more quietly, though by no means tamely.
•That settles it, of course. I ought to thank
you for not getting up and going out of the
room after that! As you are lenient enough
to remain listening, you must judge between
this fellow and me. I mean Willock. He is a
friend of yours; I don't want to blacken him in
your eyes so as to whiten myself; but you
must know that some time ago he was a friend
of mine. He knew I had written that abomin-
able thing; he was in my room the night I
began it, and I remember how he laughed at
me. Would you have had him make a scene


AN IDLE SINGER
235
Then it is no good my telling you. At
least I liked the book; only at that time—I was
forced to write much that I detested,' said
Adeane, with visible shame, 'or I would hardly
have written for the Spider.'
'I see; for the money.'
For one's bread-to be bombastic.'
There was no need to make a point of
this. Maud Cunningham was essentially sym-
pathetic and imaginative. As she gazed at
him, certainly he was standing in the moon-
light not far from where she sat; but she beheld
him at the same moment, and almost as plainly,
ill-dressed, ill-fed, and in a garret. Her imagina-
tion overdid the garret a little, but at any
rate the picture touched her. Before she
could help herself she felt the sting of that
travesty less, and her sympathy with Adeane
greater than she had ever felt either before.
She was not likely to say so, however; she
wished very much that he would go ; her hands
went back to her manuscript.
'Is that the novel ?' Adeane felt emboldened
to inquire.
• Yes,' sighed the girl; for this novel had stuck.


236
UNDER TWO SKIES
You have taken it up again? I am so
glad!'
Miss Cunningham glanced at him sharply.
“Why?' she asked. “Do you hope to make fun
of this one too?'
'I hope to read it some day.'
The manuscript was put away; the desk was
shut with some vehemence.
"That you will never do; no one will; I am
done with it.'
She spoke with the bitterness of the artist
who has failed so badly as to have acute con-
viction of the failure; and the cause of it all
stood before her, for Adeane had long ago spoilt
her for her work, and sown a nobler interest
only to pluck it up and leave her desolate in
the end. The tears were in her eyes as she
rose from her chair. Adeane saw them.
*If you were to let me see it as it is,' he
said, with much diffidence, 'I might convince
you that it is better than you think, or I might
even suggest some way of making it so. I
don't write stories; but two heads are better
than one.'
She gazed down upon him with appealing


238
UNDER TWO SKIES
window at last. She paused with her hands
upon the sash, and looked long and keenly at
her lover.
You are a poet,' she said slowly, “but you
are all the man as well. You have told a
downright lie, and told it to me, and you are
not ashamed of it. You have wounded me
deeply, since it turns out that it was you who
wrote the cruellest thing that ever was written
about me and mine; but no, you are not
greatly ashamed of that either. But we have
got to know that our popular poet was on the
Spider in its time; and that, and that only, has
stung you. You are thoroughly ashamed of
that. Do you know, I begin to think you are
as bad as other men, and very, very vain after
all ?'
'I always was,' he answered, in quite sad
and serious humility. “I am glad you have
found it out, for I am afraid I always
shall be.'
“Yet you hide it very well, you know!
'I do know; but that's the acute form of
vanity.
It's the best form,' said Maud Cunningham,


SERGEANT SETH
MTROOPER WHITTY was off for a holiday
at last. The circumstance was in itself
strange enough, for Whitty had been two years
in the Mounted Police without ever once seeking
leave of absence until now. What, however,
seemed really unique was that a man who took
only one holiday in two years should be content
to go and spend it in a dismal, dead-alive
hamlet like Timber Town.
"Some jokers are easily pleased, we know,
and you're one; but what can be the attraction
in that dull hole, Seth ?' Whitty's sergeant
asked him the night before he started. "If
there is one you might have ridden over there
any day these eighteen months; but I never
heard you had a friend there, did I?'


242
UNDER TWO SKIES
friend, sergeant-a very great friend. I'll go
in plain clothes.'
It was Christmas Eve at the loneliest little
police-barracks in those ranges. The verandah
was too dark for the sergeant to see how the
younger man's face flushed, how his eyes
glistened, as he spoke of his friend. Nor did
the sergeant know, in the early morning follow-
ing, with what high spirits his subordinate set
off. Seth hummed in his bedroom, whistled
in the stables, and burst into lusty song as he
rode out of the yard at daybreak; and the
sergeant would certainly have been interested
had he been awake, for Seth was seldom so ill-
advised as to try to whistle or sing, while
his normal temper was sedate and self-contained
to a degree unusual in young men.
It is a matter of opinion, however, whether
Seth Whitty was a young man; and if he was
not, there was something highly refreshing in
the middle-aged fellow's boyish behaviour. In
dry fact, Seth was just thirty; but a man, one
knows, does not age only by years. Seth looked
more than thirty. Often he looked nearer
forty. The times when one would have stood


SERGEANT SETH
243
a chance of gauging his years accurately were
rare; but this morning was such a time.
Whitty was so very happy this Christmas
morning; his face showed it so very plainly,
too. It was not by any means a striking face :
the cheek bones were prominent, the nose
aquiline and thin; but a broad high forehead
and good brown eyes, and a certain regularity
of features, gave him at least average good
looks. Moreover, his short black beard and
long black moustache, though they helped to
make him look so old, became his dark style
very suitably.
The sun had made him very dark indeed;
but it had not blistered him as it blisters
your 'new chum'; he was an Australian by
birth, and he only bronzed. And this man's
eyes this morning shone with a happy, hope-
ful, youthful light, having good reason so
to shine : for Trooper Whitty had had his
chance, and seized it; Trooper Whitty had
covered himself with honour and glory; the
immediate promotion of Trooper Whitty was
certain, and something a million times nearer
to his heart than prosperity and promotion and


244
UNDER TWO SKIES
fame Trooper Whitty was all but certain of,
and intended to make dead certain of, that
Christmas Day.
No wonder he rode away singing. When
the sun got up (which was not just at once)
and struck fire from Seth's spur and stirrup on
the near side, he was singing still, in his own
quaint fashion. Ultimately Whitty fell into
a more natural mood. He grew silent and
sensible. But the joyous light shone as bright
as ever in his eyes; though his mind was oc-
cupied with some very ticklish questions.
‘Shall I find her the same?' This was the
main question. It's eighteen months ago ;
lots of time to change. We have heard nothing
of each other all the time; every facility for
getting out of it. But no, no, no: she promised ;
I promised too, and to-day I'll fulfil-my future
being so certain now—though even if it weren't
I couldn't help it, knowing her so near. If only
she thinks as she thought then! But all life is
change. Eighteen months ago! Who'd have
dreamt then that Barbara Lyon would clear
out of the station to work for her living ?
Who could fancy Barbara as schoolmissis ?


SERGEANT SETH
245
But it shall not be for long, Barbara ; it
shall be for a very, very little while now, my
darling!'
This, in fact, was the 'very old friend'-
Barbara Lyon. It is not strictly true that
she was a very old friend. Whitty's first
six months in the constabulary he was
quartered near Kyneton, and within pistol-
shot of Barbara's father's boundary fence.
The very old friendship was squeezed into
that half-year.
The ride to Timber Town was a long one :
fifty miles. Whitty left home at four in the
morning; he hoped to arrive, riding easily, not
much later than noon. Rapid travelling was
impossible, for the track was not only very
rugged, and often steep, but it was so extremely
faint, in the hard flinty places, that some
vigilance was required merely to follow it.
But it was wild, picturesque country, and the
morning air was fresh and cool; and Whitty
was not much more impatient than most men
would have been in the circumstances. At
nine he breakfasted at a queer little hostelry
deep in a gully of gum-trees. Then came a


246
UNDER TWO SKIES
long, slow, tiresome ascent; but Seth was on
the southern edge of the ranges well before
noon, winding slowly down to the thickly-
timbered flats. Just below him, thin columus
of smoke ascended through the tree-tops. The
chimneys that the smoke came from were in-
visible; but deep down there, at the bottom of
that leafy sea, and on the very edge of the
level country, lay Timber Town; and Timber
Town was just sufficiently civilised to have its
State school; and the Timber Town State
scholars were so inexpressibly privileged as to
have Barbara Lyon for their schoolmistress—at
the moment.
Whitty's predatory designs upon the Timber
Town scholars swelled within him when his
sharp eye descried the Timber Town smoke.
He pressed on down the steep winding path.
The trees closed over him; the track twisted,
turned, but still descended ; and Seth lost
patience at last, and was riding recklessly,
when a loud shout from the hill-side on the
right startled him. He pulled up with some
difficulty. Peering upward through the colon-
nade of smooth round trunks, he saw a tent,


SERGEANT SETH
247
and, what was more alarming, a human ball
bounding down headlong through the trees;
and in an instant an acrobatic young man—a
well-built and particularly nice-looking young
man, of the Saxon order-stood breathless at
the horse's head.
"Seth Whitty, as I live !' gasped the acrobat.
“That's my name, mate; but
Mean to say you don't know me?'
I'll be shot if I do.'
"You don't remember the new chum who
brought a letter of introduction to your father,
stayed at your farm at Whittlesea for weeks on
end, shot—but you're playing it too low down,
Seth! Never pretend you don't remember
Jack Lovatt !
Seth jumped from his horse and wrung the
young fellow's hand.
How should I have remembered you? You
were a boy then, without a hair on your face ;
now you sport a thundering great moustache-
And have just shaved off a thundering
great beard : made to.
Then, too, you were a bit of a wild young
spark; frankly, I never thought you'd do much


248
UNDER TWO SKIES
good; I made sure you'd either be back home
years before this, or at the dogs; but now—'
"Now I've gone in for complete reformation :
made to !'
“Who is it that's taken you in hand ?'
Jack Lovatt winked, but said there was
time enough for that, and that he too had some
questions to put. And he soon learnt how
Seth's old father had been dead and buried
those two years; how the farm at Whittlesea
had been sold, and at a cruel figure ; and how
Seth had joined the Mounted Police and been
quartered six months near Kyneton and
eighteen at his present station in the ranges.
Lovatt said that Seth's being in the force was no
news to him—for wasn't Trooper Whitty a
public hero? A hand-shaking over the Red Jim
affair naturally followed, Lovatt being bound
over to hold his tongue about it in the town-
ship. Then the two men strolled down the
track together, Whitty leading his horse; and
it was Lovatt's turn to give an account of
himself. He had been four years and a half in
items on his fingers.


250
UNDER TWO SKIES
'I'm going to marry here! I'm engaged.
That tent you saw is the site of my homestead;
I've taken up two hundred acres.'
Trooper Whitty stopped short in his walk,
and whistled. But he did not get a chance to
say much; Jack Lovatt took care of that.
Jack Lovatt opened his heart.
Whitty listened with very natural sympathy,
seeing what his own condition was; but he did
not speak of his own condition. He listened
with great interest, but with an unpleasantly
vivid remembrance of a previous occasion
when Jack Lovatt had opened his heart to him
about the girl in England who had engaged
herself to some one else. Jack's calm, reason-
able, blissful state to-day did not contrast to
Whitty's liking with the wild, hopeless, honest
fervour of four or five years ago. But then
Jack was so much older now, so much more
sensible. There was no reason for supposing
that he was less in love now than he had
been then, simply because he showed it less.
In any case, Seth, who was such an accom-
plished hand at concealing his own feelings,


252
UNDER TWO SKIES
township. They stopped at the barracks
and leant against the fence, to which Whitty
tethered his horse. He was most interested,
of course, in the State school; but Lovatt
drew his attention to the church over the way.
They're in at service now, but they'll be
out directly; and then, Seth-
She's there, of course ?'
Rather! She plays the harmonium for
them. Hark! there it goes! That's the last
hymn.'
It was strange to hear the glad old Christ-
mas hymn across that glaring road, in the
breathless heat, under that sky of flawless
sapphire; at least, it should have struck the
Englishman as strange. As for Seth, his only
ideas of English Christmases came from English
Christmas cards; and as he stood listening he
was wondering how it was that Barbara did not
play the harmonium for the Timber Town folks.
Barbara was so very musical. He was wonder-
ing also why Lovatt was not in church with
his sweetheart on Christmas morning, as he
himself would have been with Barbara, could
he only have managed to reach Timber Town


SERGEANT SETH
253
earlier. And as he wondered and speculated,
and as his pulse quickened—his meeting with
Barbara, who of course was in church, being so
very near—the hymn ended. Then there was
a short silence; then the voluntary sounded,
and the small oddly - assorted congregation
poured out.
*I'll go and fetch her,' said Lovatt. “Stop
where you are ; you shall be introduced to her
now at once.'
He hurried over.
Seth felt that he ought to go too—that he
must go; yet he remained where he was. He
could not move. He was trembling with
excitement. He had no desire just then to
see Lovatt's sweetheart; he was straining his
eyes to find his own. She did not come. Yet
all the other people were now clear of the church
— all but the organist. Was she a friend of
the organist—of Lovatt's intended ? Was she
waiting back for her? Stop. The voluntary
is over at last. Here is Jack Lovatt-
"Ah!'
Seth Whitty started back against the picket
fence. His hands clutched it. His eyes


256
UNDER TWO SKIES
*All right again, thanks.'
'I feared it was our poor sergeant over
again. You had such a jolly bad look a moment
ago; hadn't he, Barbara ?'
Barbara said nothing.
But look here; don't be in such a hurry, if
you're all right!' Lovatt caught hold of the
bridle. "We two are going to picnic at the
selection. Join us. Since you know Barbara
—a rum coincidence that you won't mind ?
And as for us, we shall be delighted ; sha'n't
we, Barbara ?'
Again Barbara did not speak.
Come and make up a jolly party, and blow
the proverb !' said Lovatt persuasively.
Whitty vaulted into the saddle, with another
grating laugh, and rode off without so much as
a thank-you.
Higher up the street, in the alcoholic region,
he met one of his own kind, a trooper, but on
foot, and in full uniform. He was the poor
sergeant's temporary substitute, and he and
Whitty had met before. They stopped and
conversed now. The man who was in uniform
complained of the man who was not.


SERGEANT SETH
257
'If you'd got the togs on,' he said, 'you
might have been of some use, and seen me
through, instead of playing the bloated civilian.'
“Then there aren't two men stationed here ?
Township duty must be pretty light duty if
one's enough.'
'It is ; but not at Christmas,' grumbled the
war-paint man. 'You might have seen a fellow
through.'
Trooper Whitty regretted he couldn't, and
went on to say he was particularly anxious
that no one there should know he was Trooper
Whitty. Trooper Whitty had been ass enough
to make himself notorious, but, oddly enough,
had not the least wish to get drunk at the
expense of Timber Town. The other trooper
made promises accordingly, and claimed to be
rendering good for evil.
Whitty rode on, and put up his horse at
Burns's Royal Hotel, one of the slightly less
disreputable establishments. Already there
was a good deal of advanced drunkenness there.
Seth had never been a drinking man, but the
sight of the men lying serenely senseless in the
shade filled him with a sudden, passionate
17


258
UNDER TWO SKIES
envy. They had forgotten their troubles,
those happy wretches. The means lay handy
for drowning his trouble too. A savage craving
came over him, and held him one hellish minute.
He conquered it, and strode alone into the
breathless solitude of the surrounding forest.
First the township was left behind ; then
all its sounds, and there were no sounds at
all save the chattering of parrots, the murmur-
ing of leaves, and the swish of Whitty's legs
through the ferns and long rank grass. The
latter sound was exchanged from time to time
for a ringing tread on the dry bed of a creek
or in odd spots where the ground was hard and
flinty; but the swift restless footsteps never
ceased. What was more peculiar, Whitty never
raised his eyes from the ground-never directed
his steps by one moment's reflection. He was
reflecting, indeed, but of the dead past that had
died that day. The present was nothing to
him ; the future, which until to-day had been
all in all to him, was less than nothing to him
now. But what was all over now had never
been so dear to him. When the body is newly
dead, and even more beautiful than it seemed


260
UNDER TWO SKIES
Whitty stumbled across a blue-gum newly
felled. He went on and came to another, at
which he looked up, and there, straight in
front of him, was Lovatt’s tent. He had come
in a circle right round to Lovatt's selection.
The rough downward track ran twenty yards
below.
Seth smiled bitterly. His unconsidered
wandering seemed to show the guidance of a
malignant fate, now that it had led him here.
Ile stood still, and inspected the spot grimly.
There were the traces of the lovers' picnic, the
white ashes of the fire still hot, and the air
above it tremulous. Here they had sat, hand
in hand, on this smooth round trunk. These
nodding sapplings had heard their whispers,
their tender talk, their lovers' sighs. Seth
stepped over to the place, and sat down where
they had sat, with a strange cold-blooded com-
placency. It did not move him to sit there,
lonely and humiliated : so, then, nothing could
move him any more, and the jangling of their
wedding-bells would fall quite peacefully upon
his ears.
His foot touched a book that lay in the long


263
She took off her great round hat and played
nervously with the strings. The soft twilight
fell on her with great purity, leaving neither
line nor shadow from the undecided edge of
her hair to the extremely decided curve of
her chin. She raised her eyes.
Now, Seth, be frank. Tell me candidly that
you have not been thinking about me all these
months—that you have not been counting upon
me. You are hurt, you are mortified; but
frankly, admit that you are not heart-broken?'
*You really want an answer?'
“Yes, I do.'
* Then I say that I have thought of you all
these months, every day and every hour. As
for counting, I am human; and until to-day
I believed in things, so I have counted too. My
feelings at the moment are beside the point;
it is of no account whether I am hurt, or so on.
But as for breaking my heart for you, it may
seem unmannerly, but I shall not do it. I
should also say that I shall not think about
you much more.'
Barbara winced. Her heel sunk deeper
in the ground. Her eyes flashed.


SERGEANT SETII
265
verandah with the soapsuds on his chin, razor
in hand.
“What on earth brings you back at this
hour? You must have heard !'
Heard what?'
*Your own good luck. I congratulate you
-Sergeant Seth Whitty!'
Whitty stared like a fool.
You're promoted,' the other sergeant went
on. 'I told you they'd take the first oppor-
tunity, and they've taken it. You're to be
sergeant, and sole boss of the show - for
they don't need two there—at Timber Town.
What's wrong? Isn't it good enough? You
look like death, mate !
Seth tumbled out of the saddle and stood
just outside the verandah, shaking.
'I can't go there !' he said in a low hollow
voice. “Anywhere else, but not there. I'll
leave the force!'
Certainly his bearing before Barbara had
been very, very different.
5.


266
UNDER TWO SKIES
U1
Of course Seth Whitty did not leave the
Mounted Police, and of course he went to
Timber Town, as sergeant, in the end. He
was the last man to obey on calm reflection the
impulse of a craven moment. At the same
time, the calmest reflection could not deny that
Timber Town, in the circumstances, held out a
prospect of personal discomfort such as a man
might well be justified in shirking; and Whitty
went there with set teeth and a heart of lead.
Timber Town made a fuss about him, but
not the fuss it would have made at Christmas.
It was a reactionary period: the New Year
was just in; Timber Town had a headache :
so Whitty got off cheaply. It was not the only
respect in which he was to get off cheaply.
For weeks and weeks he had nothing at all
to do. Timber Town showed its high appre-
ciation of his professional parts (as exemplified
in the fate of Red Jim) by a temporary lapse
into respectability; so that offences worth
troubling about were unheard of, and even


SERGEANT SETH
267
common assault became the most uncommon
thing in the district. They were slack weeks
at the barracks. With the schoolmistress's
love affair going on under his nose, the weeks
were something worse than slack for Seth.
Now, had the authorities only sent some one
else to Timber Town, Seth would have been
spared all this, while the other fellow might
have filled up his odd half hours very agree-
ably with Lovatt and Barbara. If a student
of human nature, he never need have been
dull; the characters of this pair were so well
worth looking into.
Any one but Seth would have begun by
making friends with his little neighbour the
schoolmistress - of whom Seth had made an
enemy on Christmas Day. He would have ad-
mired her greatly, and without danger or re-
servation, seeing she was already engaged; he
would have admired above all things her pluck
and spirit in coming out into the world to work
for her own living, though not more than Seth
did, who knew the circumstances. He would
have discovered in her all the sweetest attri-
butes of woman, and some masculine little traits


268
UNDER TWO SKIES
as well. Only, he would have found her a
coquette. Any one but Seth, it is to be feared,
would have found her a dire and a mischievous
coquette-and the worst one in that she had
fallen too desperately in love with Jack Lovatt
to work off her coquetries any more upon him.
To Sergeant Seth (though one would think he
might have known by this time what Barbara
was) this experience was denied at present for
a very simple reason : he was barely on bowing
terms with the schoolmistress.
As for Jack Lovatt, he would have afforded
a still more entertaining study, though one that
required a key. The key to Lovatt's character
was his past life. You would not have thought
it of the energetic young bushman, but he was
a gilded youth, with the gilt gone. Eton had
expelled this free-selector; Christ Church had
sent him down ; at twenty his character had
been too bad to be permissible in any com-
moner. Jack was only the son of a successful
public man, and not even his heir; in him
such conduct was intolerable. You have no
idea what a devil of a fellow he was at twenty.
Yet at that very time the fellow was in love.


SERGEANT SETH
269
A double crisis ensued. The girl gave up Jack
for some one else, who was not going to the
deuce, but in quite the contrary direction-
got engaged, in fact, to her uncle's curate; and,
contemporaneously, Jack's father cut him off
with a thousand and closed the doors upon him.
So Lovatt came out to Australia. On the
voyage he saw his follies in the plain light
of reflection, and brooded fiercely over what
he had lost, but railed at his family. And the
first thing he did in Melbourne was to take a
few letters that were awaiting him, slip them
unopened into a big envelope, and post them
home with his initials. Then he went to
Whittlesea (a fellow-passenger gave him the
introduction), and was quiet there. He was
quieter still in the far interior. Gradually he
came to forget, more than to regret; but, be-
fore that, he had made up his mind never to
return to England, and had dismissed that
thought finally. So he did not hanker for
home, as some exiles do. On the other hand,
he fell in love with bush life. Moreover, he
became a highly respectable member of bush
society; in spite of those occasional months


270
UNDER TWO SKIES
in Melbourne, his moral colour toned down to
a decent drab; and ultimately young Lovatt
saved some money and determined to select.'
His selection went rather farther than he had
intended it to go; it so very soon included
Barbara.
Lovatt was five-and-twenty now, and suffi-
ciently attractive still; his attractiveness had
been the ruin of him in England. He had hair
like Byron's; nor was his hair the only point
in which he plagiarised from that poet: one
need not name them all; one need only mention
that he was addicted by turns to infectious
high spirits and a peculiarly winning form of
melancholy. It was when the latter fit was on
him that he met Barbara, and told her his story,
omitting the love episode. Between them they
substituted a new episode of a similar nature.
There was plenty of intensity about this one too.
Barbara, especially, was quite ridiculously in
love ; and Lovatt possessed the very qualities
to keep her in love: thorough-going masculine
selfishness, and a command of others which was
as strong as his self-command had been weak.
Sergeant Whitty, during his first weeks at


SERGEANT SETH
271
Timber Town, saw a good deal of Lovatt, and,
as has been indicated, next to nothing of Bar-
bara. To the sergeant's thinking, the Colonies,
and the Colonies alone, had made a man of
Lovatt; and, allowing for Colonial bias, there
is no doubt that the sergeant was mainly right.
Certainly Lovatt had roughed it a good deal,
and that is always improving. His English
conceit (Seth called it 'English') was, at least,
no longer conspicuous : those English manner-
isms which, in the new chum, had been so
very offensive to Colonial Seth, were invisible
in the energetic selector. Yet the young
fellow's charm of manner remained, and this
was considerable ; it had made even the new
chum popular, and popular even in the bush.
It was not difficult to conceive how Barbara had
been fascinated by this young man; Seth was
fascinated himself. Seth should have hated
him ; but it was impossible to hate the fellow.
Seth came nearest to hating him when he
fancied (as he sometimes did fancy, from
little things) that Lovatt did not value Barbara
quite as he ought.


272
UNDER TWO SKIES
not think a girl perfection just because you are
in love with her, but there is generally some-
thing wrong somewhere if you don't. Perfec-
tion had once been too weak a word for Seth's
estimation of Barbara. Unfortunately it was
so still. But it was not a word that would
have occurred to Lovatt. There was some-
thing wrong somewhere.
Lovatt worked hard and heartily on his
selection, clearing the ground and preparing the
site for the homestead ; Barbara was happily at
work in school; their spare hours they spent
together. It was only the sergeant who was
idle, and lonely, and sad.
Seth was no reader, so books could not help
him through. Nor had he ever been a particu-
larly sociable fellow; so the verandah of the
Royal Hotel had no attractions for him. He
occupied himself during the first week or two
by setting his house and garden in order ; but
the garden, unfortunately, had been very well
cared for by his predecessor, so there was no
lasting labour there : and crime was still scarce.
At length came a regular inspiration. Whitty
offered to lend a hand at the selection, and the


SERGEANT SETH
273
offer was accepted. Here he toiled the harder
of the two. A craving for Barbara's good
opinion lent him feverish energy, for it was an
odd fact that what had principally troubled
Seth of late weeks was the haunting recollection
of that uncomfortable interview with Barbara on
Christmas Day. He was ashamed of his part
in it. Not only did the memory of it prey
upon him, but Barbara's cold looks reminded
him of it whenever he saw her. If he had only
slave out there at her future home without
rewarding him by so much as a smile. So at
last he gave that up too, and sank into
deeper dejection than ever. He gnashed his
teeth over the continued law-abiding charac-
ter of Timber Town, and yearned for another
Red Jim to rise up and depredate the neigh-
bourhood.
No such luck was in store ; but an exciting
thing did happen one evening in February. It
was late, and the sergeant was smoking gloomily
in his front verandah, when it all came about
very suddenly. It began with a single sound :
the sergeant just heard it, and it tightened
18


274
UNDER TWO SKIES
every constabulary nerve; it was a woman's
short, stifled cry of alarm.
The sergeant bounded out of the verandah,
and crouched an instant to listen and to draw
his revolver. In that instant the cry was re-
peated, still more faintly, but he knew now
that it came from a back room in the school-
house, and from Barbara's lips. He leapt two
fences and was in the school verandah in three
seconds. The door was locked. He tried it
with his shoulder; it would not yield. Bar-
bara's cry came again. Then Seth stood back
a yard and brought his flat foot with full force
against the door right over the keyhole. The
door flew in. Seth followed. A light came
from under a door at the far end of the passage.
Seth ran down the passage and opened this
door upon a curious scene.
The room was a sitting-room-Barbara's
sanctum, in fact; and at the far side of it,
under the window, Barbara was sitting at a
little round work-table, with her work-basket not
twenty inches from her dilated eyes, and a brown
snake rearing itself out of the work-basket.
Barbara never took her eyes from the snake


SERGEANT SETH
275
when the door opened. The sergeant saw that
she was paralysed with fright. Therefore the
first thing he did was to say three words in a
confident whisper :
He's not deadly!'
But Barbara did not seem to hear.
Whitty was a fine shot with a revolver.
But the snake was in a dead straight line be-
tween his hand and Barbara's bosom, picked
out sharply against her loose white blouse, like
a shadow on a screen. Whitty shifted his
revolver to the left hand, crept forward with
his right extended, and forefinger and thumb
forming the capital letter C— pinched the
snake just below the head in this forceps, and
whisked it like lightning through the window.
Barbara glanced up in his face one instant;
then she lay back in her chair and burst out
sobbing.
The sergeant went away and conscientiously
despatched the snake. When he had killed it
to his entire satisfaction, having smashed the
vertebræ in seven different places, he stood for
a moment in indecision. A faint voice came
to his rescue, calling him to the window.


276
UNDER TWO SKIES
· "Sergeant Whitty!'
Barbara leant in silhouette across the sill.
Seth went up to the window.
You are very, very brave-and foolish,'
she murmured. 'I don't know what to say to
you. Thanks will not do.'
“There's no need to say anything,' said
Whitty awkwardly. "There was no danger.'
Barbara took him up sharply.
“You know that there was. You know as
well as I do those brown snakes are deadly. I
do detest humbug! Yet I must thank you.'
Her tone turned to honey. She held out
her hand to him ; he gave her his; she turned,
and drew it through the window to the light,
and critically examined it, her little head on
one side. No, there was no bite there.
If you had been bitten,' said Barbara,
dropping his hand, 'do you know that it would
have made me the most miserable woman in
the Colony ?'
Seth was staggered.
* Because, you see, I should have felt I had
killed you! Imagine it. Who could have
been happy after that! But, do you know,'


SERGEANT SETH
277
- here the coquetry in her voice became
sad to hear, —'I rather wish it had been not
quite a deadly snake, and that it had bitten
you, not quite mortally. Can you guess
why?'
Seth hung his head.
You might have been less rude, and less
cruel, the last time we talked together, Sergeant
Seth !'
He could contain himself no longer.
‘Oh, Barbara,' he cried, with an effort, rais-
ing his face to her, 'please, please, forgive me !
Let us be friends. You don't know how I
have hated myself ever since for that evening's
words. I was beside myself that night. If
you will only forgive me—if you will only
make friends,
Barbara raised her hands to the sash.
Of course I forgive you. There, it is all
forgotten!'
She shut down the window. A minute
later all was in darkness, and Seth went back
to the barracks in a tumult of honest emotions
--- not suspecting for a moment that he had
stultified himself and utterly undone the whole-


278
UNDER TWO SKIES
some effect of his admirable attitude on Christ-
mas Day.
As for Barbara, her vanity had been liber-
ally gratified. Moreover, a sore point, dating
from Christmas, was now healed. And lastly,
she had played the rôle she revelled in-the
rôle that was out of the question with the man
she really loved. So altogether she may have
gone to bed an extremely happy woman. But
I try to think that she came to feel slightly
ashamed of herself before falling asleep.
IV
Sergeant Seth and the schoolmistress were
now good neighbours; and as she did not again
treat him so reprehensibly as at their recon-
ciliation (which makes one really think she was
ashamed of herself, that time), the sergeant
had at least a less bad time than before. In-
deed, a nice little larceny in the township, and
ing run, made it, in part, quite a good time. So
some weeks passed. Then fell a thunderbolt.


280
UNDER TWO SKIES
the coach start with Jack Lovatt in the best
place (trust him for that) by the driver; and
he did not think very much more about Jack
Lovatt until three days later; and then, in the
evening, the sergeant received a letter which
fairly electrified him.
The letter was from Jack Lovatt in Mel-
bourne, and it read thus :
some nev
'Scott's HOTEL, COLLINS STREET, W.
7th March.
*DEAR SETH—I want you to give the en-
closed to Barbara, but first to break to her
some news which will, I fear, just at first, dis-
tress her greatly. Before this reaches you I
shall have sailed for London! Think what
you will of me; but do take the trouble to
read the circumstances first.
You are already aware that I have not
been in communication with my people for
nearly five years—never, in fact, since I left
home. I learnt last night that my brother-I
had only one-who was heir to everything, has
been dead these two years, and that my father
was at death's door two months ago. I cabled
at once to learn his condition. The reply is


SERGEANT SETH
281
just to hand. He is still lingering on; he de-
sires to see me. What can I do but sail at
once? The steamer leaves to-morrow; there
is no time to go back to Timber Town and bid
Barbara good-bye, and I dare not put off start-
ing for a week. As it is, I do not expect to
find my poor father alive; and in that case I
should return at once-well, long before the
end of the year—to marry Barbara. I have a
mother and a sister, you know : there will be
matters to arrange for them; but they shall
not keep me from Barbara one day longer than
I can help. My first thought shall be of her.
My first thought now is of her; and I am
downright cut up on her account. She will
feel it sorely; but the letter I enclose is far
more explicit than this one; and she is so sen-
sible, she will understand. And she will trust
me, and wait patiently, and confidently, till I
come back and carry her off. And then, in-
stead of going to two hundred acres and a hut,
she will go one day to an estate in Norfolk and
another in Scotland! I don't say I relish the
idea of all this; I have got so used to the bush,
and so content with it; but, as we should have


282
UNDER TWO SKIES
been happy with less than our needs, so we
ought to be happy with more than our wishes.
At present, however, I can't realise it at all ; I
only realise that I sail to-morrow in the Orient
liner.
"Only one word more. Seth, I know some-
thing of your old relations with Barbara. She
told me. She was terribly at fault, and she
knows it. But you will forget all about this
now, won't you? No, I believe you have for-
gotten about it. Fellows always do get over
these things: you know I did. But even if
you hadn't got over it, I believe you would
do what I'm now going to ask of you without
implore it. I implore you, Seth, to look after
her, to watch over her, to be good to her.
She is sensible; she will listen to reason. So
yours will only be a difficult task in the
beginning. The breaking of the news will of
course be worse than difficult. But you will
do it as nicely as anybody could ; and so we
two shall be grateful to you for the term of
our natural lives; and one day the three of
us (I hope) will smile over the memory of
son


SERGEANT SETH
283
this rather ugly dawn of more booming days
than ever we dreamt of. Good-bye. To you
I commend her.—Yours ever,
"J. A. LOVATT.'
Now there was not a little sincerity in this
letter, in spite of its conspicuous egotism and
its frequent jauntiness of expression. More-
over, there was a touch or two of genuine
feeling, and one questions whether Lovatt
wrote the whole letter with dry eyes. Yet,
when the letter was written, and the emotion
of the moment over, it is very possible that
his confidence in himself was as shaky as his
confidence in Barbara was profound. He
may have trusted to Barbara's great love, and
hoped for the best with regard to himself.
But the chances are that he had not the
pluck conscientiously to investigate his own
feelings.
When Sergeant Whitty had read to the
end of the letter, he delivered himself first
of a round oath, and then of the following
peculiar sentiment:
If my father had turned me adrift as his


UNDER TWO SKIES
turned him— well, I'd have let him die first
before I'd have left my girl without saying
good-bye! No, by Heaven! before I'd have
gone at all—without her!'
He looked at the letter again.
“Curse his good spirits!' he cried, and
tore it to pieces. Then he fumed up and
down the room until his eye fell upon the
enclosure, a swollen envelope ; and at that he
ran his hands through his hair and ground
his teeth.
Barbara was seated sewing, alone, and in
the same little room where the snake had
frozen her blood. She was making—is it
difficult to guess ?—something or other for
her house. But she was not in her usual
spirits : Jack was away in Melbourne.
There came an unexpected knock at the
outer door. Barbara dropped her work,
jumped up, and stood for a moment in
alarmed surmise. Then a great thought
struck her; it was Jack !
She flew down the passage ; it was not
Jack ; of all people, it was the sergeant.
Barbara, I want a word with you.'


SERGEANT SETH
285
His tone was as extraordinary as the words.
She drew back coldly.
'It is a queer time to choose, Sergeant
Whitty. Say your word by all means, how-
ever.' Her attitude plainly added, “Say it
here.'
The perspiration broke out over the ser-
geant's face.
*It's news !' he gasped desperately.
*News ?'
“Yes, news.
She stood one instant, straining her eyes
at him through the dark, then seized his arm,
dragged him to the sitting-room, caught up
the lamp, and held it to his face.
'It is bad news !' she cried in a hard,
hollow tone. “He is dead! Oh, is he dead ?'
"God forbid !' said Whitty loudly.
Then ill ?
He is not ill.'
There flashed across the woman a worse
alternative still.
*Then he has
She could not get it out. She seemed about
to drop the lamp. Seth took it hastily from


286
UNDER TWO SKIES
her, and led her to a chair. She sank down,
trembling violently. He dropped on one knee
before her.
*Barbara,' he said very gently, he is
neither dead, nor ill, nor untrue to you. But
you must prepare for å terrible surprise, a
terrible shock.'
*Do not keep me in suspense !' she mur-
mured piteously.
*Then here is a letter that he has sent me to
hand to you. It will explain all.'
He took the envelope from his pocket.
She snatched it from him, and was tearing
it open; all at once her fingers closed upon
it, and were still.
'I will read it alone.' There was new
strength in her tones. “Leave me now,
please. And thank you, Seth, from my break-
ing heart!'
Seth went back to the barracks, and strode up
and down his verandah. The moon rose, and
poured into the verandah in a gleaming flood.
Seth marched to and fro, a black sentinel in
the pale pure light. For hours the tread of
his feet and the jingle of his spurs upon the


SERGEANT SETH
287
boards were the only sounds in the sleeping
township. Then there came another sound-
the click of a latch. Seth heard it, stopped,
and turned ; and Barbara was coming up the
path towards him, her white frock shining
mystically in the moonlight. She paused some
paces from the verandah, and her face was as
ghostly as her dress, and stained with tears.
He has done right,' she said in a low clear
voice. He has done his duty. I say so. Oh,
tell me, Seth, that you think so too ?'
There was the slightest pause; then, with
extreme emphasis, Seth said after her:
"I think so too.'
Thank you, Seth. More than for everything
else, thank you for this !' She turned wearily
away, and then sobs shook her frame. Seth
followed her hastily, took her hand in his,
placed it within his arm, and led her to her
own door.
He came back and slammed the police-
barrack gate, midnight though it was.
She has begun by making me a liar," he
swore savagely, 'a mean, miserable, cowardly
liar, if there is one in the Colony!'


SERGEANT SETH
289
steamer, and home, in anticipation, was all the
sweeter.
Not only in point of distance did Eng-
land come nearer and nearer every day, and
Australia sink back, and back, and back.
This went on in Jack Lovatt's heart as
well.
The five years out there compressed them-
selves into about as many months. The most
recent events of those five years seemed to
have happened five years ago. The brain -
picture of the little township assumed more
and more portable dimensions, and it was more
often veiled than not. Barbara haunted him
still, but less obtrusively.
Leaning over the rail at night and watching
the wake reel out like a great, endless, creamy
ribbon, the thoughts with which he had last
beheld this sight came back to him, and with
them the same faces, the same voices, the same
regrets that had haunted him then. It was
intoxicating to awake from these reveries and to
realise that he was not fleeing from those faces
now, but hastening toward them. There were,
of course, sad circumstances in his return, and
19


SERGEANT SETH
291
Of what ?' Jack turned white. Was Laura
dead too?
'Her engagement was broken off. Oh, it
must have been directly after you sailed. They
were never meant for each other, you know.
No one could understand the engagement;
and now I don't think Laura will ever marry
at all.'
For a minute Jack's face was transfigured.
It shone with a light that did not seem human,
though it cannot have been divine. During
that minute Australia was wiped clean from
his mind. And it was a disastrous minute for
poor Barbara over the seas in Timber Town.
VI
The antipodean winter of that year is still
remembered for its excessive rainfall, and for
the floods that resulted in certain districts. In
Victoria the damage was widespread, but, merci-
fully, for the most part it was also spread out
thin'; and among scores of Victorian townships,
which, without attracting popular sympathy by
becoming the scene of any tragical disaster,


292
UNDER TWO SKIES
still suffered sufficiently in an undistinguished
way, Timber Town was one; its single street
was for many days a running river, and for
several weeks a festering bog. Business (what
there was of it in Timber Town) was at a
standstill, except at the bars. That sort of
business received an impetus, until the casks
ran dry; and then, the state of the roads
entirely preventing the approach of wheels,
the excellent township endured a short, bitter
period of enforced sobriety. As a local wag
put it (in chalk, on the verandah of the Royal
Hotel), there was
WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE, BUT NOT
A DROP OF DRINK!'
The feminine disadvantages were almost as
serious. The women saw nothing of one an-
other, save at a distance; and gossip, if shouted
across gulfs of rushing water, quite ceases to
be gossip. They tried it, and found this out,
and waited patiently for the flood to dry up,
themselves setting the example. Meanwhile,
indeed, the fairest game for gossip was in-
visible. This was the schoolmistress, who was
engaged to that young Lovatt, who had gone


SERGEANT SETH
293
away on the coach one day in the autumn, and
had never to Timber Town knowledge been
heard of since. She was a complete prisoner
in the schoolhouse, and very nearly a solitary
prisoner. A few parents, however, did from
time to time land their offspring on the school-
house verandah either from rafts or from the
paternal shoulders. These children reported
the teacher as being cross and irritable and
feebly indulgent by turns ; but, on being
closely questioned, they also compared her
wrists to pipe-stems and her face to a sheet.
Their mothers' curiosity mounted to fever-
heat. The moment the mud would bear them
they called in person upon Barbara. Idle,
gossiping women are not necessarily unfeeling;
what they found made some of them shed tears
on the walk home.
Barbara was the shadow of her former self
-herself of a fews weeks ago. Thin and pale
and bright-eyed, irascible, listless, limp, she
was indeed a proper object for compassion ;
and compassion was the last thing Barbara
could stand. Yet, though the callers were sent
away with their sympathy still on their hands,


294
UNDER TWO SKIES
they did not toss it to the winds for that reason.
It was impossible to resent the schoolmistress's
incivility while the schoolmistress looked so.
One or two of them felt for her all the
little presents of butter and eggs and apples.
These offerings Barbara accepted ungraciously
enough from the inoffensive bearers, but after-
wards grew ashamed, and sent those children
home with courteous, grateful little letters. All
such presents, however, were invariably the ser-
vant's perquisites.
Barbara's servant—a mere girl herself, no
older than her mistress —had come with her
from Kyneton. She knew very well that her
mistress was eating her heart out, and she
knew why, though not from Barbara, who, as
we have seen, was by no means free from pride.
The whole township was more or less in posses-
sion of this fact and its obvious reason. But
Annie, the maid, knew one little circumstance
which no one else guessed; this she longed to
disclose to some sympathetic ear, and at last
she did disclose it to the motherly soul that
kept house for Sergeant Whitty.


SERGEANT SETH
295
They had been discussing poor Barbara rather
freely, but very far from unkindly.
Mrs. Waters,' Annie said, 'shall I tell you
a secret ?'
'If you like, my dear. You know I can
keep a secret. But I don't ask you to tell me
nothing. Mrs. Waters was old and guarded.
"Well, but I must! It mustn't go no
further, and I know it won't; but I can't keep
it to myself no longer. Did you ever guess
that my mistress and your sergeant was ac-
quainted before ?'
Are you sure?' cried Mrs. Waters.
Positive. Two years ago.'
Mrs. Waters threw up her hands. That
accounts for everything!'
For what?'
For his pacing the room, or the verandy,
one or t'other, till all hours, night after night
--for a hundred other things—for goodness
knows what all! You mean he was in love
with her ?'
Annie nodded.
· Mark my words, then, Annie : he's in love
with her still, but too honourable to speak it !


296
UNDER TWO SKIES
And he as fine a man as ever walked : and
she going throwing her heart away on a villain
that's cleared out and left her!'
What Mrs. Waters went on to say there is
no need to record. She inveighed vehemently
against the idiocy of women generally, and
that of Barbara in particular, and worked her-
self into such a temper that Barbara's servant
began to regret having said anything at all.
And from that day the sergeant had the old
woman's eyes upon him. She noted his moodi-
ness, his depression, the growing shortness of
his temper. The latter failing only drew from
her daintier dishes than the sergeant had ever
before enjoyed at his housekeeper's hands.
But the sergeant was not to be comforted in
this way. It would have been some comfort
to him if the State school had been swept
away by the floods, and he had had the rescu-
ing of Barbara. It would have been an inex-
pressible consolation to the sergeant to have
got at Jack Lovatt in some lonely place and
torn him to pieces : he would have gone exult-
ant to the gallows after that. But the floods
did no important damage at Timber Town;


SERGEANT SETH
297
and the scoundrel Lovatt was, no doubt, safe
in England, though no one knew for certain ;
and nothing short of the heroic or the out-
rageous could have afforded the smallest satis-
faction to Sergeant Seth now.
The sergeant saw Barbara often enough, but
seldom said much to her, and, when he did,
never mentioned Lovatt's name—that is, never
after Lovatt ceased writing; and he only wrote
once on the voyage-never afterwards. But
one day, when the floods were over, the ser-
geant came across her suddenly, and she asked
him without preamble :
'Do you think he is dead ?'
No, I don't,' said Seth bluntly.
Your reason-?'
'I am having the English papers searched,
week by week, in Melbourne.'
Her eyes filled with tears. “How good you
are! Will you keep on having them searched,
please? And will you tell me the moment you
hear anything ?'
"I will.'
Anything, mind !'
'I promise.'


300
UNDER TWO SKIES
who was never mirth-provoking, combed out
his wits to amuse her, and to hear her sweet
laughter once more. He almost succeeded :
Barbara did smile ; but before they separated
her face changed, and sad eyes asked a ques-
tion that was never spoken now.
Seth shook his head. There was no news
yet. Barbara drooped, and went into her
house with heavy steps.
And the very next day the news came.
The people in Melbourne who were search-
ing the English papers for Whitty sent him a
London evening paper with the following small
paragraph framed in red ink :
A marriage has been arranged to take place
carly next year between Mr. John A. Lovatt, of
Darley Hall, near Norwich, and Castle Auchen,
N.B., and Laura, daughter of Major-General
Ralph Eliot, R.H.A.'
Seth read it in his verandah while the bell
was ringing for afternoon school, and the
school-children were straggling past. The
news must have had some visible effect upon
him, of which he was unconscious, for the
children turned round and stared at him Of


SERGEANT SETH
301
this he did become conscious, and turned hastily
into the house. But the paper had slipped
from his fingers the moment the marked para-
graph was read; the wind caught it (it was
the first hot-wind day of that spring), and,
as chance had it, the paper was whisked out of
the verandah and fell at the feet of the most
incorrigible little boy in the school. This small
savage appropriated the paper, folded it small,
and carried it into school for surreptitious per-
usal, while the sergeant played the caged tiger up
and down the long-suffering carpet of his room.
The news had come at last, and it was no
worse than Seth had anticipated ; indeed, he
had looked with confidence to receiving sooner
or later the announcement of Lovatt's marriage.
He knew all about Laura Eliot, you see ; and
five years ago he had told Lovatt—from what
Lovatt told him—that he shouldn't be sur-
prised if that engagement with the curate
never came to anything. Nor did Whitty
think any worse of Lovatt because of this
news than he had already thought of him for
his heartless behaviour; that, indeed, would


SERGEANT SETH
303
"Sergeant, make haste !' shrill voices
screamed in his ears. "Teacher's dead !'
Seth scattered them right and left, and was
in the schoolroom in a twinkling. At the
same moment Annie, the maid, burst in by
another door.
The benches were empty-not a child had
remained ; and, on the raised platform at the
end of the room, Barbara lay lifeless. Seth
ran across the desks, sprang upon the platform,
and knelt beside her. Annie stood shrieking
at the door, until the sergeant looked up and
reviled her.
You idiot! She has only fainted. Fetch
Mrs. Waters.' And he lowered her head
gently upon the boards, so that it should lie
no higher than the rest of her, and fanned
her face with both hands.
The young woman returned with the old
one.
‘She is coming to,' said the sergeant quietly,
still kneeling and fanning. Which is her
room? Lead the way, one of you.
He lifted her tenderly in his arms, and
followed Annie. A moment later he had laid


SERGEANT SETH
305
• “You stole the paper from my verandah-
eh?
It b-b-blew out, sir!'
Why didn't you blow it in again ?'
No answer ; tears; on the part of the others,
preparations for fun—but not, most likely, for
what took place. For the sergeant marched
off that brat to the barracks, and clapped him
into the prisoners' cell; and his schoolfellows
heard the bolts drawn with horrible clangs,
and slunk away in terror. It was a sufficiently
high-handed proceeding, no doubt; though the
incarceration lasted only an hour; and though
it was from this hour that the young savage's
parents (who thanked Seth with tears in their
eyes) afterwards came (one hopes not pre-
maturely) to date his reformation.
But Barbara was lying like death upon her
bed.
VII
While Barbara Lyon lay senseless in the
schoolroom at Timber Town, Australia, Jack
Lovatt, in his bed at Castle Auchen, N.B.,
20


306
UNDER TWO SKIES
dreamed a disquieting dream. It must be
remembered that, though the Australian time
was between two and three in the afternoon, in
Scotland it was about five o'clock in the early
morning.
It was an emphatically bad dream. The
Laird (Jack was the Laird at Auchen, and the
Squire in Norfolk) came downstairs looking
haggard and even haunted. This was the
more annoying because the Laird's fiancée had
arrived from London the previous evening.
To add to the annoyance (though here one
adds effect to cause), he shot execrably all
day, and caught the gillies smiling. Up on
the moors that day they had a champagne
luncheon (planned overnight), the ladies join-
ing the shooters; but Jack was not Jack at all.
His mother and sister, and some others of the
party (mostly a family party), studied Laura's
manner towards him for an explanation; but
her manner was all that they, in Jack's place,
could have desired. In point of fact, Laura
was as deeply mystified as they were, and her
grievance was infinitely greater.
That evening Laura's grievance became


310
UNDER TWO SKIES
'I shall never, never believe it!'
Then I must tell you everything. Can
you bear it ?'
'I can bear anything but your silence,
Jack.
They walked side by side in the moonlight,
very, very slowly; but their shadows on the
shingly drive went wider and wider apart.
Often he paused; but she put in no word,
no syllable, until the whole shameful tale
was told.
'Is that all ?'
Yes.'
You have kept back nothing ?'
'I swear I have told you the worst.'
"Ah!'- a deep sad sigh — 'well, I was
hasty to say I never could believe you a coward
or a villain ; for I am afraid you have been
both.'
Her voice was very sad, but equally firm.
'I know it! I own it!' said Lovatt in a
low, husky tone. "No one knows except
myself the mean despicable cur I have been.
Yet it seems hard to hear it from your lips-
you that have bewitched me so! I swear,


SERGEANT SETH
311
until two nights ago, I was bewitched ! I
seemed to have forgotten her, and my life out
there, completely, utterly. But then I dreamt
of her-dreamt I saw her dead! And now
she haunts me, now that it is too late. For
what can one do after so long?'
'Leave me a little ; then I will try to tell
you. I cannot think—in your presence.
He moved on, bowed and broken, and
leaned over the plain wooden gate at the
entrance to the drive. It might have been a
moment later or an hour-he never knew-
when she touched him on the shoulder.
“Will you do what I tell you?'
He bowed submissively. It touched her
to see him so sadly humbled, and all at once,
before her stronger will. Her own power rose
up before her, and frightened her. With a
calm, strong, spiritual effort she nerved herself
to use this will of hers for once as her con-
science ordered and her heart forbade.
Will you go back to her ?' The words came
in a tremulous whisper ; but the tremor was
only the vibration of taut, resolute nerves.
When he had bowed his promise (for though


312
UNDER TWO SKIES
his lips moved, no words left them), and when
thus it was all over, a greater calmness, and
with it a chill dread feeling, came over this
strong-minded girl.
'I tell you to go back to her,” she said,
speaking quite steadily now. 'Go back to
her at once. Leave England within a fort-
night, at latest, from now. This will be easy;
we are all in our last week here; and you and
I must act a part until my father telegraphs for
me, which must be tomorrow. Then you go
back to her, and all is over for ever between
you and me. You may find her dead; but
between us two all, all is over. All is over!'
Her dress whispered as she turned and went.
The tall trees on either side the drive whispered
too; and their dewy leaves, quivering in the
moonlight, shimmered like phosphorus on a
dark and tranquil sea. Over the gate the black
hills cut into the moonlit sky as though heaven
and hell touched one another; above, the stars
were shining like the eyes of angels; below,
the fir-trees sighed and sobbed like the spirits
of the lost.


SERGEANT SETH
313
VIII
One night some two months later, a night of
intense darkness and of intolerable heat, a
young man tramped into Timber Town from
the south. He did not carry the 'swag' of
the common traveller, nor were his clothes
bushman's clothes. He wore a suit of some
thin light material, and a pith helmet; yet, for
all this, he seemed to know every inch of the way.
His tactics indicated a desire to glide swiftly
through the township without either stopping
or being stopped, if possible without being
seen. He took the very centre of the broad
straggling street, and showed in this a nice
judgment, for the night was so thick that
from neither side of the street could one
see half-way across it. But the flaring hotel
verandahs on either side were plain enough
from the middle of the road, and not only
could the traveller hear the sounds of revelry
issuing from them for these had been audible
for the last half-mile—but he distinguished
some of the voices, and caught scraps of the


SERGEANT SETH
315
knew well enough where it was. The State
school and the police barracks, on the other
side of the road, were also invisible, at least
their outlines were ; but faint lights revealed
their whereabouts.
The mysterious visitor now left the middle
of the road, skirted the police-barrack fence,
and came—with steps that all at once became
halting and unsteady-to the school gate ; and
there he paused, and started backward with
his hand upon the latch.
Barbara was seated in the verandah, leaning
forward, her head bowed and her hands clasped.
Seth Whitty bent over her.
You know how I have waited,' he was
pleading — and dignity and humility jostled
each other in his deep manly tones ; how long
I have loved you, how hopelessly once, how
deeply all through. You must know that
what I profess is at least true.'
"I know that. Oh, I know that so well!'
Yet you still refuse me.'
“No, no. I say, give me time. Do not count
upon me; never again count upon a woman.'


316
UNDER TWO SKIES
"And I have said I will give you until we
both are gray!'
'It shall not be so long as that, if it is to
be at all,' said Barbara gently; "only do not
count.'
They were both silent. Seth disturbed the
eloquent silence most rudely by flying incon-
tinently to the gate, where he stood motionless
in a listening attitude.
“What was it?' Barbara called to him.
'I heard something.'
Can you see anything?'
Nothing. The night is like pitch. But I
feel certain —
At that moment the bells rang forth, and
unholy shouts came with the clangour from the
iron church over the way. Seth came back to
the verandah.
'It was those men that you heard,' said
Barbara.
'I don't think it was; it seemed like foot-
steps quite near, and I thought someone
touched the latch. But it doesn't matter now;
for it's Christmas morning–Christmas again,
Barbara! And I wish you a very happy


SERGEANT SETH
317
Christmas, and—and I will wait as long as you
like!'
He pressed her hand and dropped it: he
took her hand again, and raised it reverently
to his lips.
Those merry souls tugged at the bell-ropes
until they were tired, and that was not im-
mediately. But before the wild ringing ceased
the solitary mysterious pedestrian had retraced
his steps rather better than a mile. None
knew his coming nor his going; and the single
street of Timber Town never saw him more.
THE END
Printed by R. & R. CLARK, Edinburgh


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THE
COLLECTED WRITINGS
OF
THOMAS DE QUINCEY,
“THE ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.”
NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION
EDITED BY DAVID MASSON, M.A., LL.D.,
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OP
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