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- Herausgeber: DigiCat
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Sprache: Englisch
The Complete Works of Lord Byron stands as a monumental testament to Romantic literature, showcasing the breadth and depth of Byron's poetic genius. This collection encompasses his celebrated narrative poems, lyrical verses, and poignant reflections that explore themes of love, nature, and the complexities of the human condition. Characterized by its vivid imagery and emotive language, Byron's work encapsulates the spirit of the early 19th century, mingling personal introspection with broader philosophical inquiries. His innovative use of the English language and unflinching engagement with controversial subjects make this anthology a pivotal cornerstone in literary history. George Gordon, Lord Byron, was a key figure of the Romantic movement, whose life experiences profoundly influenced his writing. Born into an aristocratic family in 1788, Byron's tumultuous relationships and his quest for personal freedom fueled his artistic expressions. His travels across Europe, coupled with his political views and advocacy for social reform, provided rich material for his narratives, reflecting the zeitgeist of a generation yearning for change and liberation. This comprehensive collection is essential reading for anyone interested in the evolution of poetry and the thematic explorations of love and identity. Readers will find Byron's works resonate with modern sensibilities while offering profound insights into the eternal struggles of the human spirit, making it a rich resource for both scholars and general readers alike.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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Outlaw and Lawmaker
Table of Contents
Elsie
OUTLAW AND LAWMAKER.
CHAPTER I.
ELSIE.
Anyone who has travelled through Australia will identify the Leichardt's Land of these pages, though in the map it is called differently, with that colony in which the explorer Leichardt met his tragic fate, and to a part of which he gave his name, and the same person, if he will examine the map, should have no difficulty in discovering the Luya district, which lies on the southern border of the colony in a bend of the great Dividing Range.
The Luya, in its narrowest part, is fenced on almost three sides with mountains. Here the country is wild and mostly scrubby, intersected by spurs from the range, and broken by deep ravines and volcanic-looking gorges. There is scarcely any grazing land, and till Goondi Diggings were started, the Upper Luya was spoken of as the most picturesque district in Leichardt's Land, but as offering the least attractions to a settler of any kind. Even the Goondi "rush" some few years back, though it had for a time let loose a horde of prospectors, did not do much towards populating this particular nook below the Dividing Range. Goondi became a flourishing township and its output of gold continued steadily, but though other gold fields sprang up on the further side of the district, contrary to expectations no gold was discovered on the Luya waters, and prospectors had now given up the useless search. Moreover, Goondi was on the very edge of the district, across the highroad to the next colony, and beyond lay open country and fine stations for cattle and sheep. Goondi called itself the township for the Luya district, but as a matter of fact, the Luya had no especial head-centre. It is a secluded corner hemmed in by mountains, and though at no great distance from the capital of the colony and within easy reach of civilization, it is cut off by its, geographical position from the main current of life and action.
The river which waters the district has its rise in Mount Luya, the highest point of the range, then reputed inaccessible to white men. There are strange fastnesses at the foot of Mount Luya—places where, report still declares, foot of European has never trod. The Blacks have a superstitious reverence, amounting to terror, for this region, and in the aboriginal mythology, if there be indeed any such, Mount Luya with its grey desolate crags and mysterious fissures, and, on either side, twin peaked Burrum and Mount Goondi with its ribbed rampart of rock and black impenetrable scrub, might well represent the lair of Demons or the abode of Gods.
A few stray selectors had settled themselves at the head of the Luyaon the small flats and wattle ridges that offered a certain scant subsistence for stock. But these selections had, for the most part, a suspicious reputation, as affording a convenient base of operations for cattle-stealing and such nefarious practices. Certainly, one or two of these petty land-owners might be credited with strictly honourable intentions, as, for instance, that unprofitable scion of aristocracy, Lord Horace Gage, who, more romantic than practical, had been seduced by the beauty of the scenery and by a keen artistic instinct, as well as by the fascinating prospect of hunting big game in the shape of wild horses, and of starting an industry in hides and horsehair. Or a guileless new chum, such as Morres Blake, of Baròlin Gorge, with a certain ironic humour described himself, taken in by an old hand who was eager to dispose to advantage of a property no seasoned bushman would buy. It may be added that Mr. Blake had accepted his bargain with resignation. He turned the Gorge into a nursery for thoroughbred horses, and seldom visited the Luya, leaving the management of affairs there to his working partner, Dominic Trant. Except, however, for these selectors' homesteads, a great part of the Upper Luya belonged to the Hallett Brothers, and made portion of their station Tunimba—a troublesome bit of country in mustering time, when the broken gorges and undergrowth formed an almost impregnable refuge for "scrubbers."
Tunimba was one of the principal stations on the Luya, and extended beyond this mountainous region to the open country where was good grazing land, and where the river was no longer a shallow, uncertain stream brawling over miniature precipices, trickling through quicksands, or dropping into a chain of still, deadly-looking pools—except in flood-time, when it had a way of coming down from its source with amazing volume and rapidity. As the mountains widened out, the Luya widened and deepened, and flowed quite sedately through wooded pastures and the paddocks of well-kept head stations. Lower down it washed peaceful German plantations and the settlements of cedar-cutters, who floated their logs on its surface to the township, below which it finally emptied itself into the ocean.
Of the squatters on the Upper Luya, the Hallett Brothers were perhaps the most important, and with the prospect of greater wealth in the future than any others of the settlers in the district. They were young and enterprising, and besides Tunimba, owned stations out west, which they worked in conjunction with their southern property. Tunimbah was always quoted as the most comfortable and best managed of the Luya stations. Young Mrs. Jem Hallett, the eldest brother's wife, was considered a model housekeeper, and the most dressy woman in the district. She went to Leichardt's Town for the Government House balls, and was a lady not slow to assert her pretensions, social and otherwise. Frank Hallett, the unmarried brother, was popular in the neighbourhood as a capital fellow and a clear-headed man of business. He was particularly popular with ladies, being a good match and a sociable person who got up races and picnic parties in slack times, and liked to amuse himself and other people, and he was vaguely known in the colony as a man of promise. He had been mentioned in the newspapers and publicly congratulated by the Governor on having taken high honours at the Sydney University, and was considered a person likely to distinguish himself in politics. He had gone through one election, and had been beaten with credit. Since then he had been biding his time and hoping that the Luya constituency might fall vacant. Yesterday there had seemed little prospect of this being the case. Now, in a few moments after the first shock of a tragic disclosure, he saw himself member for Luya, and at no very distant date leader of the Opposition in the Leichardt's Land Assembly.
The disclosure was made by a girl.
The girl was standing on a point of rock above the steep bank, at what was called Lord Horace's Crossing. Lord Horace's homestead, Luya Dell, lay behind her. The girl was Lord Horace's wife's sister. The crossing was one of Lord Horace's fads.
He had wasted a great deal of money and labour in making it more beautiful than Nature had already done, and that was quite unnecessary, for Nature had not been niggardly in her provisions.
It was a creek flowing down one of the many gorges of Mount Luya. The creeklet ran between high banks, mostly of grey lichen-covered rock—banks which curved in and out, making caves and hollows where ferns, and parasites, and rock lilies, and aromatic smelling shrubs grew in profusion—banks that sometimes shelved upward, and sometimes hung sheer, and sometimes broke into bastion-like projections or into boulders lying pell-mell, and it seemed only kept from crashing down by the binding withes of a creeper, or the twisted trunk of a chestnut tree or crooked gum. Then there were mysterious pools with an iridescent film upon their surface and dank beds of arums and fallen logs and rugged causeways, and the triumph of Lord Horace's engineering skill, a bridge of unhewn stone that might have been laid in prehistoric ages by some Australian Titan.
The girl stood framed between two great cedars and outlined against a bit of blue sky. Just here there was a gap in the mountains, and a long narrow flat, on the discovery of which Lord Horace prided himself, curved round a projecting bluff and constituted the freehold of Luya Dell. It was Lord Horace who had christened the place. The girl might have postured as a model for some semi-allegoric Australian statue of Liberty. The cairn of rocks, patched with lichen and the red blossoms of the Kennedia creeper, and tufted with fern, made her a suitable pedestal. She was tall, slender, and lithe of limb, with something of the virginal grace and ease of a Diana, and her clinging holland gown was not an altogether un-goddess-like drapery. She had a red merino scarf twisted round her shoulders and waist, and wore a sort of toque of dark crimson upon her trim little head with its tendril fringe in front and knot of brown curling hair behind. Her face was oval in shape, though the features were not exactly classic. At this moment she looked alert and expectant, her dark eyes were dilated and alight, and her red lips were slightly parted in an eager smile. There was a flush on her soft almost infantine cheek which was of the warm pale tint of a fruit ripened in the shade. She had one arm lifted, and beckoned excitedly to Frank Hallett, whose pulses tingled at the sight of her.
"Stop," she cried, "I want to talk to you."
As if there were any power on earth except that she herself wielded which just then would have kept him from stopping and talking to her! He raised his hat, and put spurs to his horse. He did not trust himself to Lord Horace's bridge, which was in truth intended more for ornament than for use, but splashed through the shallow stream, and scrambled up the steep hill. She watched him leaning forward, raised in the saddle, one hand lightly clutching his horse's mane, his eager face upturned to her. It was an attractive face, bronzed, wholesome, well-featured, with clear eyes frank and straight looking, a pleasant smile, dark brown whiskers and moustache, and a square-cut shaven chin. He looked a typical bushman, with a little more polish than one associates with the typical bushman—had the bushman's seat, and the bushman's sinewy sapling-like figure.
But the girl did not admire the typical bushman. She would have preferred the product of a more complex civilization. In this she resembled what indeed she was, the typical Australian girl. She had not a very varied experience of the human product of a complex civilization. Her reading convinced her that she must not generalize by the specimens that drifted to Australia, and of which her own brother-in-law was an example. When she was in a discontented mood she always brought herself into a state of resignation by reflecting that nothing would have induced her to marry Lord Horace Gage.
"Of course I might have married him if I had chosen to cut Ina out," Elsie Valliant had always said to herself, with the complacent vanity of a spoiled beauty. "But one must remember that there's honour among thieves, and besides he is too great a bore for any one to put up with but Ina, who is a placid angel."
To be sure, if Lord Horace had been the heir to the Marquisate, instead of the youngest of many scantily portioned younger sons, Elsie might have altered her mind, for she had the reputation of being a very worldly and a very heartless young lady. At any rate, this was what her rejected admirers declared.
"He really is good-looking," she thought now, as she watched Frank Hallett. And she added:
"It is such a pity that he is—only Frank Hallett."
"Tell me, have you met Braile?" she questioned anxiously, as he pulled up his panting horse and flung himself from the saddle.
"Braile—the postman? No, I've been out on the run. I left Tunimba early."
"That's a pity," said the girl. "He is brimful of news —dying to communicate it to someone. Mrs. Jem will have a benefit when he gets to Tunimba."
"Well, I have no doubt Edith will reward him by an extra glass of grog, and that the mail will be late at Corinda in consequence," said Hallett. "What has happened?"
"Braile is never late," said the girl, not answering the question. "He is wound up to carry the mails, and nothing short of a creek risen past his saddle flaps will stop him. I have a respect for Braile. The way in which he grasped the dramatic points of the situation was most admirable."
"What is the situation? You shouldn't tantalize me. I believe it's only some joke. Nothing really exciting now—is there?"
Elsie nodded gravely. "Enough to excite Braile and Horace, and even Ina—and me. Enough to raise the district and to make you wish you were a bushranger, or the head of police, that you might be in the play-bill too."
"Then it's Moonlight out again. Have they caught him?"
"It's Moonlight, and if they had caught him should I say that you would like to be in his place?"
"I suppose not. Not," and the young man reddened and stammered and looked at her in a curious way—"not if you cared two straws about me."
He seemed to wait for her reply, but she only stared at the ground, gazing from her lofty position over his head.
"I wish you'd tell me why in any case I should wish to be Captain Moonlight."
"Because he is a hero," said the girl.
"Do you think so? Must one wear a mask and rob one's neighbours to be a hero?"
The girl made an impatient gesture. "You don't understand. You've no romance; you've no ideas beyond the eternal cattle. You are quite satisfied to be a bushman—you are more humdrum even than Ina."
He did not answer for a moment: "I am very anxious to know what the news was that old Braile brought. Look here, let me help you down from those rocks. You seem such miles above me. You look as if you had put yourself up for a landmark."
"So I did. I thought my red shawl would attract attention. I was trying how far I could see down the Gorge—wondering if anyone were in hiding there, and from how far they could see me. I was thinking how easy it would be to hide up in Mount Luya, and wondering"—— She stopped, and then taking his proffered hand, stepped from the pointed stone on which she had been balancing herself to a lower one, and so till she was on the level beside him. He finished her sentence—
"Wondering if there was any chance of Moonlight coming along. How should you like to be carried off by him?"
"On his black horse Abatos?"
"How do you know that his black horse is called Abatos?"
"Ah, that's part of Braile's story. Moonlight hardly ever speaks, you know. It is the Shadow who conveys his orders and intentions. But that night Moonlight was heard to say one word as he rode towards the coach, and that was 'Abatos.'"
"Why his horse's name? Why not a new 'swear'?"
"Oh!" she said with a slight accent of contempt. "Ask Horace to lend you his Lemprière."
Hallett flushed. "I am not as ignorant as you think. I had forgotten for the moment. And so you would like to be carried off by the bushrangers?"
"I think I should like it immensely. I should enjoy the opportunity of talking to Moonlight and his masked henchmen. I shouldn't be at all afraid of their not treating me in a gentlemanly and considerate manner. Only you see I shouldn't be worth carrying off. Unless Mammie realized on the piano and the sewing-machine—we've not a stick else worth twopence—there would be nothing to ransom me with. And anyhow the piano and the sewing-machine would hardly run to a ransom."
"Your brother-in-law?" suggested Hallett.
"Poor Horace has telegraphed to his brother-in-law. The Bank will come down on the Dell unless Lord Waveryng sends him a thousand pounds at once. Leichardt's Town, and the wedding trip, and the imported bull have cleared him out. No, I should be left to my fate."
"That seems a melancholy state of things," said Hallett, with an embarrassed laugh; "but in the event of such a calamity as your abduction by Moonlight, Miss Valliant, I think there are some of us fellows who wouldn't think twice of selling the last hoof off their runs to buy you back."
The girl laughed too, and blushed. "Perhaps, after all, I shouldn't want to be bought back. Now I am going to tell you——"
She seated herself on the lowest boulder of the cairn, and he, holding his horse's bridle, leaned against the cedar tree and listened.
She began, "Goondi coach was stuck up on Thursday night."
"Ah! So that's it. The brutes!"
"Do you mean the bushrangers? No, they didn't behave like brutes. Two men against a coachful. Think! Peter Duncan, the millionaire, was on the coach, and Moonlight made him sign a cheque for £2,000 to be cashed at Goondi Bank."
"By Jove!" exclaimed Hallett, "that was cheek. Well, I'm glad it was Peter Duncan. The old miser. He deserves it."
"Moonlight only robs people who deserve to lose their money, and the Government, and the Banks, who don't miss it," went on Elsie imperturbably. "He protects the widow and the orphan. There was a widow on the coach too. She was an old German woman, and she was hurrying down to Leichardt's Town to say goodbye to her only son. He was to sail in The Shooting Star, and her only chance of seeing him was by catching the Goondi coach the next morning. She had her savings with her to give him. She offered them all to Moonlight if he would get her into Goondi."
"And he took them?"
"No," cried the girl triumphantly. "He gave them all back to her. Well, Mr. Slaney was in the coach also, and he was in a bad way too. He had got bitten by something, and was blood-poisoned, and he was going to the doctor."
"Slaney the member?"
"Yes, the member for Luya. Oh, I have been thinking of something. I'll tell you presently. I'm a wretch, but I can't help it. Who could be sorry for Mr. Slaney?"
"You don't mean?"
"Wait, wait. I must first prove to you that Moonlight is a hero. He and his Shadow—you know that's what they call the other man—sacked the mail, got Mr. Duncan's cheque, and then tied up the driver and the passengers each to a separate tree, some way off the road. You see Moonlight's only chance of cashing his cheque was by being at the Goondi Bank directly it opened, before the coach was missed, or the telegraph wires could be set working."
"I see. It struck me at first that it would have been safer to have had the cheque drawn on the Leichardt's Town Bank; but of course the other was his wisest plan. Moonlight is a shrewd fellow. Well, Miss Valliant, what is the rest of Braile's story?"
"Ah, now comes the point. Think of the daring! Moonlight meant to leave the coach and the passengers tied up till someone found them in the morning. The old German woman went on her knees to him and cried about her son. Mr. Slaney offered a cheque for £500 if only he would get the coach to Goondi. Mr. Slaney guessed that he was dying."
"Dying!"
"Wait. Moonlight refused the cheque, but said that he would take Mr. Slaney's word. Moonlight and his Shadow had an argument. The Shadow told him he was a fool. It ended in Moonlight having his way. He gave his horse to the Shadow, mounted the box, and drove the coach to within a mile of Goondi, with Mr. Slaney and the German woman, leaving all the others tied up to their respective gum-trees."
"And then?"
"Then day was breaking. Moonlight turned the coach off the road, fastened the horses, and remounted his own. Mr. Slaney was groaning with pain. The coach to Leichardt's Town, which the German woman wanted to catch, was to start at eight. The Bank opens at nine. You see what a risk it was. Moonlight explained the situation, and told them he would trust to their honour. He showed the German woman a cross-cut by which she could meet the down coach outside Goondi. Mr. Slaney gave his word that he would not give information to the police, and walked on to Goondi straight to the doctor's house. Moonlight waited——"
Elsie paused dramatically.
"How do you know all these details?" asked Hallett, struck by the vivid way in which the girl told her story.
"Mr. Slaney told the doctor afterwards. Braile had got the particulars at Goondi. And it is easy enough to fill in from one's imagination. I have been thinking of nothing else all day. I have been picturing Moonlight nerving himself to walk into the Bank, not knowing whether a policeman would be there to take him. It seems to me a brave thing to have staked one's liberty on the honour of a poor old German woman and Mr. Slaney."
"They were true to him?"
"Yes. At nine o'clock, when the Bank opened, a very respectably got-up and quiet-looking bushman went in and presented Mr. Duncan's cheque, which he said had been paid him for a mob of store cattle. The Bank cashed it without question. Two hours afterwards it was all over the place that the Goondi coach had been stuck up, and Mr. Duncan bled of £2,000. But Moonlight and his Shadow and the respectably dressed bushman had disappeared."
"And Mr. Slaney?" asked Frank Hallett.
"Mr. Slaney," repeated Elsie solemnly. "Ah, this is what concerns you. The member for Luya died early this morning."
The legend of Baròlin
CHAPTER II.
THE LEGEND OF BARÒLIN.
"Ah!" Frank Hallett drew a long breath and stood in silent thought for a minute or more, Elsie watching him all the time saying nothing. The interest, half indignant, half admiring, and with a dash of the humorous in it, which Elsie's account of the sticking up of the Goondi coach and the robbery of the miser-millionaire had excited, faded suddenly, and gave way to a more personal and absorbing excitement. Moonlight's depredations were certainly a mystery and a shame to the district, and to a Government which was supposed to protect the property of peaceable colonists. But the Luya squatters had got into a way of looking upon Moonlight's misdeeds as not calling for very serious vengeance. He did not bail up their stations or steal their valuable cattle and horses, or frighten helpless women or respected inhabitants. There was, indeed, a certain odd chivalry and daredevilry of the Claude Duval kind in this masked miscreant with the soft voice and courteous manners, who flashed out on moonlight nights to stick up a gold escort and then disappeared into the bowels of the earth, as it seemed, or into the thickets of Baròlin Scrub. It was Moonlight's picturesqueness which appealed to the romantic element in more prosaic natures than that of Elsie Valliant. If truth were told, Frank Hallett was not inclined to judge too harshly a bandit who, granted that he robbed, robbed "on the square." No, it was not of Moonlight that he was thinking, but of the fact suddenly borne in upon him that Mr. Slaney's removal threw open the constituency of the Luya, and assured him of the opportunity for which he had been waiting, in order to begin his chosen career. In a flash he grasped the personal significance of Elsie Valliant's words. The member for Luya was dead. He himself might now be the member for Luya.
At the same moment a pang of remorse shot through him, remorse that he could so allow himself to speculate on the beneficial results to himself of a fellow-creature's death. But it was not in human nature that he could feel more than a passing pang. Mr. Slaney, though the chosen of the electorate, and the possessor of certain good qualities, as the Moonlight episode showed, was almost as unpopular in the district at large as the miser Duncan, whom everybody hated. Slaney had got into the Legislative Assembly on a reactionary wave, and through the vote of the Irish population on the Diggings. To Frank Hallett he had been privately and publicly obnoxious, and they had had more than one encounter, not wholly of a political nature. Slaney had kept a bush inn, and had made his money, people said, by doctoring the grog. He was a queer, cross-grained person, given to hard drinking, and with his blood in the condition in which a bite from a horsefly might prove a fatal poison. Everyone knew that he would not be returned a second time, and everyone said that Frank Hallett's election, should the seat become vacant, was a certainty. In a quick prophetic glance the young man saw himself in the position which he coveted—the leader of a party—a future premier of Leichardt's Land, a public personage whom the most ambitious girl in Australia might be content to own as her lover.
Then, with a thrill of triumph, he realized that Elsie too must have grasped this point in the situation, and he saw that she had worked her narrative up to it with a distinct appreciation of its dramatic importance. She had waited for him at the Crossing that she might be the first to tell him the news. From this, he must infer that she was interested in him—Frank Hallett—and not in the feats of Moonlight, and, as she phrased it, the "raising of the district." She was interested in the way in which he would take the information—in the bearing of the incident on his future fortunes with which, perhaps, she already identified herself. She had divined his secret ambition. Might it not well be that she had divined another ambition dearer and more secret still?
His breath came and went fast in the agitation of his fancied discovery and eager rushing hope. He had been looking away beyond the Crossing. Now he turned to her, and became aware that she was watching him. In an instant there was the shock of a recoil. The sweet indifference of her gaze, the mere friendly curiosity, the slight touch of feminine coquetry in her smile checked all his ardour, and made him draw back and pull himself together as though he had been hurt. He said very quietly:
"It is you who have grasped the dramatic points of the situation, Miss Valliant. I think you must have been giving Braile lessons."
She looked away from him and back again quickly.
"It interested me," she said. "I am interested in Moonlight. I should like very much to see him. But," she added with a little laugh, "even if he carried me off, as you suggested, I shouldn't get a sight of his face. They say no one has ever seen him without his mask."
"Perhaps be doesn't wear it in his hiding-place," said Frank. "I am sorry for Slaney," he went on in the same dulled tone. "And I am glad he kept his promise to Moonlight. I shall always think better of him for that. Yes—I am sorry—though——" He paused.
"Well?" she said, "Though——?"
"Though of course his death gives me a chance of standing for the Luya. Not that it matters so much. I should have got in for the northern district."
"But this will be much nicer," said she, demurely. "You won't have to go away on electioneering tours, and being our own especial member, we shall have a right to order you about, and to be interested in your general career."
"Shall you really be interested in my career?" he asked, bending a little toward her. She looked at him, letting her big brown eyes rest full on his for a moment or two.
"Why, yes, naturally, and as far as we are concerned, I assure you your duties as member of Parliament will be no sinecure. When Ina and Horace and I want anything from the Government—such as a mail twice a week or a railway to the Luya, or any little trifle of that sort, we shall expect you to make a fuss about it in the House. And then if the Governor does not give balls enough you will be responsible for not voting a sufficient entertaining allowance. And of course when you become a Cabinet Minister we shall want you to look after us at the public functions—find us seats in the special saloon Government carriage when there's a Show or a Railway Opening. And we shall want to be asked to all the Government picnics down the bay. Oh, and I must insist on a seat on the dais—and no one looking askance at me as though I had no right to be there—at the Mayor's ball. And I always did want to be a Minister's wife, so that the Usher of the Black Rod might take me to my place at the Opening of Parliament."
"One might suggest, perhaps, that an opportunity may present itself of securing these advantages," said Hallett grimly.
"How?"
"Why——" Hallett reddened and stammered, abashed by her clear gaze. "It would not be so difficult to marry a Minister, would it?"
"Wouldn't it! But there doesn't happen at present to be an unmarried member of the Executive. Still, as you suggest, one may live in hope. There will be new politicians coming on, and I may have a chance yet. I will wait for a change of Ministry. Then your party will be in—and you may be in too."
Her laugh, which was innocent and frank as that of a child, robbed her speech of its audacious coquetry. Elsie said things which no other girl could have said without incurring the charge of being unmaidenly. No one would ever have called Elsie unmaidenly, though they might have called her, and with a good show of reason, an unprincipled flirt, and in spite of her freedom of manner no man would have ventured upon an impertinence towards this young lady, who knew very well upon occasion how to maintain her dignity.
"You are laughing at me," exclaimed Frank Hallett in a hurt tone. "You don't think it is in me to become a leader. Well, we shall see. Yes, Miss Valliant, that's my ambition and my intention. I mean to be a political leader, and I think that if a man has pluck and perseverance and a certain amount of brains, as well as a certain amount of money to make him independent of place, he is bound to get to the front and to make a position that he wouldn't be ashamed to offer to a woman he cared for." The young man's voice shook. "I think that before very long I shall be on the Ministerial bench, or at any rate in the front rank of the Opposition, and when that day comes I shall ask you for your congratulations. "
"And no one will give them with a more sincere heart than I," said Elsie gravely. "And you didn't understand me, Mr. Hallett. I never meant to laugh at you, or to doubt you. Oh, I know well enough that you are considered a coming man. Mamma and Ina and Horace and heaps of other people have told me that of you."
She stopped and blushed. She knew, though Frank did not, why she in particular had had all Frank's advantageous prospects impressed upon her. Oh, of course he would be a very good match for a penniless Leichardt's Town belle, and her mother knew it, and Lord Horace, and Ina, and all the rest of their world knew it too.
"Thank you for saying that, Elsie! If you only knew——" the young man began passionately. He came a step nearer her, but Elsie moved and put out her hand in a half laughing, half rebuking manner.
"But I don't know, and perhaps I don't want to know—there, never mind. ... I want you to tell me something——"
"Tell you—what?"
"Oh, it's nothing—only——"
"Tell me," she went on with the slightest confidential movement. "I'm so interested in Moonlight. Do you think it is true—what they say—that he has some secret hiding-place under Mount Luya?"
"How can I know, and why should I care!" exclaimed Hallett exasperated.
"I should have thought you would care, that you might have some idea if there really is such a hiding-place, for you are always about on the run, and they say no one knows the Upper Luya as well as you do."
"There might be any sort of cave or hiding-place up in the gorges by Bardlin Scrub. Cattle don't go there—except the regular scrubbers that it is no use trying to get at. They used to hunt there for gold. One of these prospecting chaps would have been more likely to come across it, or the Blacks——"
"Oh, but there's a Black's legend," said Elsie eagerly.
"If you are going to make a legend out of a Black's tale about the Bunyip or Debil-debil——!" he said contemptuously.
"It is a legend, and quite a respectable one. Yoolaman Tommy—King Tommy you know—told me. He says that close to Baròlin Waterfall at the back there is another smaller waterfall, and beside it a huge black rock which is shaped like a man's head with long grey moss growing upon it, so that it looks, as if it were a very old black man with grey hair and a beard. Have you ever seen it?"
"No, Baròlin Waterfall is a cul-de-sac. The water is supposed to come from the lake on the top of the mountain and the precipice cuts the mountain. They say the lake is the crater of an extinct volcano."
"Let us make a picnic there sometime and try to find old Baròlin—the Old Man of the Mountain. Do."
"You couldn't do it. I have never got to the waterfall myself, and I'm a pretty good rider and Pioneer as safe a horse in rough country as you'd find on the Luya."
Frank Hallett patted the big powerful bay who turned from rubbing his cheek against the cedar-tree, as if he knew that he was being talked about.
"We might ride as far as we could and walk the rest of the way," said Elsie.
"Walk five miles over the Luya rocks and through Baròlin Scrub! There wouldn't be much left of you, Miss Valliant."
"I am determined that somehow or other I will see Baròlin," said Elsie, with the wilfulness of a spoilt child. "Perhaps you don't know why the scrub and the waterfall are called Baròlin?"
"Did King Tommy tell you?"
"King Tommy told me that the white-haired old man was once a great chief who lived in Mount Luya and was a mighty man of war, against whom none of the other chiefs could stand. He got so powerful that he offended the great spirit Yoolatanah, and Yoolatanah turned him into a rock and shut him up behind the waterfall, which was called after him Baròlin. The Blacks say that he sleeps, and only wakes when someone goes near the fall. Then he seizes them, and they are never seen or heard of again. So the Blacks will not go near Baròlin or enter the scrub even at bunya time."
"I thought it was the Bunyip," said Hallett laughing. "I know none of the Blacks will go near Baròlin. They always say 'Debil debil sit down there,' and as there are any amount of bunyas in the scrub and none to speak of anywhere else, this superstition must be a pretty powerful one."
At that moment an Alpine call sounded from the other side of the creek. Elsie got up. "That's Horace. Now we shall hear something more about Moonlight."
"Why are you so interested in Moonlight?" asked Hallett jealously.
"I have told you. Because he is a hero. Horace—Horace; have they caught Moonlight?"
Lord and Lady Horace at home
CHAPTER III.
LORD AND LADY HORACE AT HOME.
Lord Horace was scrambling up the bank, leaning well over his saddle bow and clinging to his horse's mane. His seat was a little uncertain, and it was evident that he was only a spurious sort of bush man, in spite of his rather elaborate bush get-up of Crimean shirt, spotless moleskins, and expensive cabbage-tree hat. He had a stockwhip, too, coiled over his left arm, though he had made no pretence of going after cattle, and had indeed only a few stray beasts to go after. He was a tall, slight dark young man with a profile somewhat after the Apollo Belvedere type, fine eyes, and a weak mouth. He was distinctly aristocratic looking, clipped his g's after the English aristocratic fashion, and had certain little ways of his class, in spite of his efforts to be rough. He had an attractive manner, and apart from his wish to ape bushman's habits, seemed quite without affectation. He looked, certainly, however, more suited for a London life than for that of an Australian settler, and it was equally certain from his physiognomy that he would never take the world by storm with his talents.
"Moonlight!" he cried out in answer to Elsie's question. "Been huntin' for him all up the Luya. No chance whatever of their findin' him. I say, Hallett—How do you do, old chap. Let's make a party—get some good black trackers, don't you know? and go out on the trail, eh?—man-catching. It would be rare sport."
"If you and Mr. Hallett were to do such a thing I'd never speak to you again," said Elsie indignantly.
"Look here, she has been ravin' about the fellow. I must say I think it was rather a fine thing refusing Slaney's cheque, and trusting to his honour. Slaney's honour! Poor chap, he's dead, so mustn't abuse him. You should have heard the fellows at the Bean-tree discussin' your chances, Hallett. I suppose you are going to stand for the district?"
"I suppose so," Hallett answered. "But," he added, "it is too soon to talk about that with poor Slaney not yet in his grave."
"Oh, nobody cares about Slaney. The king is dead, long live the king—that's my motto, and' Slaney was a confounded Radical, hand and glove with the working man. I'm a working man myself, but I ain't a Radical." Lord Horace talked excitedly and rather thickly. Elsie looked at him, and drew her delicate eyebrows together in a frown.
"I think we had better walk on to the Humpey," she said. "Ina will be wondering what has become of us all."
"Yes, come along, and have a refresher, and talk over things," said Lord Horace. "It's a beastly ride from the Bean-tree. I went over to see if some of those selectors wouldn't get their meat from me—might as well turn an honest penny, you know; and I wanted to hear the news about Moonlight. Macpherson and his men are mad at his having given them the slip, and are scouring the country till they find his hiding-place. They're mad, too, against poor Slaney, for not letting them nab Moonlight at the bank. By Jove, that was a neat trick, and I like old Slaney, though he was a beast. I like him for havin' stood on the square to Moonlight. But come along, and let us talk it over. It's canvassin' I'm thinking of. I canvassed once for my brother-in-law Waveryng—before he was Waveryng, you know—got him in too with singing comic songs—I'm first rate at 'em. By Jove, Waveryng isn't half as grateful as he might be, or he'd do something for me now."
Lord Horace spurred his horse and cantered on executing a series of Alpine calls to which there came a response from the house in the shape of a faint "Coo—ee."
Frank Hallett did not mount, but walked beside Elsie, who was silent and looked worried.
"I forgot," said Frank abruptly. "I've got a note for you from Mrs. Jem. She wants you to come over next week, and Lady Horace of course. I believe there's to be a dance or something at Tunimba."
"I'm going home next week," said Elsie.
"But you can wait for that. Nobody wants you in Leichardt's Town."
"Heaps of people want me, and heaps of things. Mamma wants me; my winter gowns want me, and the fruit wants me. It has to be made into jam, and my dresses have to be made; there's nobody to do them but me. You see Ina used to be the practical person among us—the Prime Minister, the dressmaker, and the cook all in one. And now Ina is gone."
"Oh, but haven't you——?" Frank began and stopped awkwardly.
"Haven't we a cook? you were going to say. No, we haven't. Mammie and I do the cooking for each other, and a nice mess we make of it, and the Kanaka boy who does the garden cleans the pots and pans. Now you know all about it. Have you any idea, Mr. Hallett, what Mammie and I have to live upon?"
"No—that is, I didn't imagine of course that you were millionaires."
"We've got exactly one hundred and twenty-five pounds a year, not counting the garden produce—a hundred and twenty-five pounds a year to pay our rent and to feed and clothe our two selves and buy all the necessaries of civilization. I suppose I pass as a civilized young person out in Australia, though I am quite sure I shouldn't if you put me down in London society. Oh dear, I wonder if I shall ever have a taste of London society."
"How you always harp on England," said young Hallett.
"Well, isn't it supposed to be the Paradise of Australian girls, as they used to say Paris was to Americans? I'm certain that one of the reasons Ina married Horace was because she thought he might take her to England. I can't imagine any other."
Frank laughed. "Oh, he's a very good fellow, though he is a lord, as they say about here. But why do you say that your sister married him because she wanted to go to England? She is not ambitious, she doesn't care about that sort of thing. She is not——"
"Not like me," Elsie interrupted. "If I were only half as good as Ina."
"She married him, I suppose, because she loved him," Hallett went on uneasily.
"Do you think he is the kind of person a girl would fall in love with?" said Elsie.
"Why not? He is very handsome, and he has nice manners."
"And he is horribly selfish, and he is shallow—as shallow as the creek at the Crossing. Mr. Hallett, do you know I am worried about Ina. I don't think somehow she is very happy. But she is much too proud and much too good to own it."
Hallett looked uncomfortable. His memory went back to a certain day not many months back—a day when he had confided to Ina Valliant the love he felt for her sister Elsie, and of which he never could think without a painful twinge, a horrible suspicion that she had once cared for him herself. It was true he had no reason for the suspicion—nothing but a stifled exclamation, a quiver of the voice, a sudden paling. The suspicion had been joyfully lulled to sleep, when a month or so afterwards she had accepted Lord Horace, and when she had told him again, and this time firmly and unfalteringly, that she would do everything in her power to further his suit with Elsie. And she had done everything she could. She had asked him over repeatedly, had been sweet, frank, and sister-like, and had seemed absolutely satisfied. And yet when Elsie said that Ina was not happy, he knew that she was only echoing his own miserable thought.
"Tell me," he said, "why do you fancy that? Isn't he good to her?"
"Oh, yes. He is always making love to her, if you call that being good. It is really quite embarrassing sometimes, and if I were Ina I wouldn't have it. And then he flies out because the dinner isn't quite right, or because some little stupidity is wrong, and sulks like a spoiled child. It's because Ina doesn't sulk too—because she puts up with his pettishness so angelically, and takes such pains that everything shall be right next time, that I am sure she isn't happy. It's unnatural."
"Surely it's very natural if she cares for him."
"Poor Ina," said Elsie, softly. "Well, she is happy enough, apparently, when she is fidgetting after the chickens and furbishing up her doll's house."
"It does look a little like a bush doll's house," said Frank.
They were close to the Humpey now. It was a queer little slab place, roofed with bark, standing against a background of white gum-trees, which, with their tall, ghostlike trunks and sad grey foliage, gave a suggestion of dreariness and desolation to the otherwise cosey homestead. Lord Horace had made the best of the Humpey. It had been a stockman's hut, two slab rooms and a lean-to; and now another hut had been joined to it, which was Lord Horace's kitchen, and there were sundry other lean-to's and straggling shanties, which served for guest-rooms and meat-stores. The verandah of the Humpey had an earthen floor, and, the posts were of barked saplings. But there were creepers growing around the posts and festooning the bark roof, and there were stands of ferns against the slab walls, and squatters' chairs with crimson cushions which made splashes of colour. Lord Horace's chair had a glass of some spirituous concoction on its arm-table, which his attentive wife had just brought to him, and he was filling his pipe, while Ina, who was only a few degrees less lovely than Elsie, leaned against the post, and waited submissively to be told the day's news. Lord Horace took a great deal of credit to himself for having left the Humpey in its original state of roughness. "Some fellows, you know, would have gone to no end of expense in cartin' cedar and shinglin' and paintin', and spoilin' a really good Australian effect," he was wont to say. "That's the worst of you Australians, you've got no sense of dramatic fitness. And that's what I say to Ina and Elsie when they want me to fill up the chinks between the slabs, and put in plate glass windows. A bush hut is a bush hut, and there's something barbarous in the idea of turning it into a villa. Wait till I've finished my stone house. Then you shall see something really comfortable and harmonious, too. In the meantime, if we can't be comfortable, let us at least be artistic."
Those were Lord Horace's sentiments.
The new house had come to a standstill for want of funds after the foundations had been laid, and it was not likely to get beyond the foundations, unless Lord Waveryng sent out further supplies; but Lord Horace talked of it with as proud a certainty as if an army of master builders were already at work.
Lady Horace came slowly down the log steps, and held out her hand to Hallett.
"How do you do?" she said, in her gentle little Australian drawl. "I'm very glad you have come. Elsie was saying yesterday that we were so dull."
"That's because we're on our honeymoon yet," put in Lord Horace. "Elsie says it's quite disgusting the way we spoon."
Frank Hallett noticed that Lady Horace flushed a brilliant red, and interpreted the blush as a favourable sign. Oh yes, she was happy. She must be happy. If she had not been happy she could not have answered so composedly.
"We were planning to take Elsie over to Tunimba to see Mrs. Jem Hallett, before she goes down to Leichardt's Town. But we're a little frightened of Mrs. Jem, because she is so dreadfully grand, and she might be vexed if we went without a formal invitation."
"Here is the formal invitation, anyhow," said Hallett, and he produced his sister-in-law's note, and gave it to Lady Horace, who duly handed it to her husband, and it was there and then settled that they would go.
Frank Hallett had brought something else for Ina—some of the famous Tunimba figs, which were now going off, and he had brought a book for Elsie, and while these offerings were being unpacked and commented on, he studied Lady Horace's face. Ina was not so pretty as her sister. She was not so tall, her colouring was less brilliant, she was much quieter. It was a wonder people thought that Lord Horace, who was a fastidious person, had fallen in love with her instead of with the all-conquering Elsie. But Elsie had snubbed him, and Ina was besides very pretty and very much more docile than her sister. She had a sweet little serious face, with a peculiarly delicate complexion, and a tender resolute mouth. The fault of her face lay in the light eyelashes and eyebrows, which gave her a certain insipidity. She had a very gentle manner, and she did not talk much, not nearly as much as Elsie.
She had been only four months married. Hallett asked her how she liked the Dell, and she told him in her childlike way all about her chickens, and her pigs, and the new garden, and the pump Lord Horace was making, and other domestic details. And she asked him various questions about .the working of Tunimba and Mrs. Jem Hallett's management, which showed that she had thrown herself entirely into her bush life.
He said something to this effect.
"Yes," she answered. "I want to make the Dell as much a model of a place in its small way as Tunimba is in its big way. And then, you know, Horace isn't like a regular bushman, he must have his little English comforts——"
"Which he insists on combining with his Australian dramatic effects," put in Hallett, "and that must make management a little difficult for you, Lady Horace."
Ina laughed. "Oh, I don't mind," she said. "Now I want to show you the last improvement," and she took him into the sitting-room, which was a very cosey and picturesque place, though the walls were only of canvas stretched over the slabs, and the ceiling, of canvas too, was stained with rain droppings from the bark roof. Lord Horace had been amusing himself by drawing in sepia a boldly-designed flight of swallows along one end of the room.
"Not strictly appropriate to Australia, my dear fellow, but I couldn't stand the papers they showed me. I have sent home for something a little more artistic. It should be parrots, of course, or satin-birds, and, by the way, those beggars of satin-birds have gobbled up all our loquats—but my imagination wouldn't soar, and Ina is not inventive. I'm trainin' her faculties, but by slow degrees."
Ina flushed again. Between the flushes she was—so Hallett noticed—alarmingly pale. And surely she had got thinner. But she had taken ever so much pains over the arrangement of the drawing-room, which was in truth exceedingly pretty and full of English odds and ends, from a portrait of Lady Waveryng in full court dress to an an tiered stag's head over the doorway. Ina was proud of her charming room, though she gave Elsie all the credit of the arrangement. "It was always Elsie who did the prettinesses," she said, "whether it was in our ball dresses or our parlour. Elsie has only to put her hand to a thing and it gets somehow the stamp of herself. I was never good for anything but the useful things."
Lord Horace sat down to the piano, which was a fine instrument and was littered with music, and struck a few chords. "You must hear my newest thing. It's one of those spirited bush ballads of William Sharp's, and I've set it to music. Ina and I sat up till all hours last night practisin' it."
"Yes," interjected Elsie, "and you made poor Ina faint by keeping her standing so long."
"I wanted her to have some port wine," answered Lord Horace, "and she wouldn't. It was her fault, wasn't it, Ina, dear?"
"Yes, it was my fault," said Ina. "I didn't take the port wine in time."
"Well, never mind," said Lord Horace, "she shall have some port wine now to make up." He rushed off and brought the wine, which he made her swallow in spite of her protests. That was Lord Horace's way. A glass of port wine for a woman, and a brandy and soda for a man, were his notion of a panacea for ills of body and mind. When Ina had drunk her wine he began his accompaniment again and burst into the song. He had a fair baritone, and sang with a certain manner as of one who knew what he was about. He put a good deal of dramatic go into the rattling words—
"O'er the range and down the gully, across the river bed, We are riding on the tracks of the cattle that have fled: The mopokes all are laughing, and the cockatoos are screaming, And bright amidst the stringy barks the parrakeets are gleaming. The wattle blooms are fragrant, and the great magnolias fair Make a heavy sleepy sweetness in the hazy morning air; But the rattle and the crashing of our horses' hoofs ring out, And the cheery sound we answer with our long-repeated shout."
And then came the chorus which the four took up—
"Coo-ee—Coo-ee—Coo-ee—Coo-ee!"
"My dear Horace," said Hallett, "why didn't you try for fortune in the light operatic line? You are much better suited for that than for roughing it in Australia."
"I did think of it," replied Lord Horace seriously; "but the light operatic line is played out in England, there's no chance for anybody now. And then one's people would have thought it infra dig. They're old-fashioned, you know—don't go in for modern innovations—the stage cult and that sort of thing. It's not a bad notion of yours, though—an opera of bush life—openin' chorus of stockmen and bush-rangers, and Moonlight for a hero. It might pay better than free-selecting on the Luya."
"It might well do that," said Elsie, who was rather fond of a passage-at-arms with her brother-in-law.
Lord Horace caught her round the waist and gave her a twirl into the verandah. "A waltz—a waltz, Ina," he cried. Ina played. There were some blacks outside who clapped their hands and cried out "Budgery!" and the pair stopped to have what Lord Horace called a "yabber." Hallett and Ina were left alone. She let her hands fall from the piano, and her sweet serious eyes met his. "Mr. Hallett," she said, I think you ought to make haste."
"Tell me what I ought to do, Lady Horace."
"I think you ought to make Elsie understand how much you care for her."
"I have tried to do that. You were wrong. She doesn't care for me."
"I thought she did," said Ina faltering. The break in her voice reminded him of the break in it that day. Perhaps she was thinking of this, too. She went on in a different tone, "You must not judge Elsie as you would another girl. She is horribly proud, and she is horribly reserved, and she is horribly perverse. Oh, I know all my Elsie's faults."
"Tell me, Lady Horace, what made you think that she cared for me?"
Ina hesitated, and her soft colour came again. "I don't think I can do that quite, Mr. Hallett."
"Tell me," he urged.
She looked at him, and turned away her head. "Yes, I'll tell you," she said, in a forced sort of voice. "It was—do you remember that day at Tunimba—before I was engaged—when you told me that you were so fond of Elsie?"
"Yes," he answered, and his voice too was strained. "It was just after that, that Horace—that I began to think I might marry Horace. One day when Elsie teased me about it—she never cared very much for Horace, you know, though Mammie liked him so much—we spoke of you—and Elsie told me that you were the only man she had ever known whom she could fancy herself marrying. She told me that she had once fancied—before Horace came on the scene, you know"—Ina laughed a little unsteadily—"that you had had a—a regard for me. It was absurd, wasn't it?—and that the idea had made her unhappy and snappish to me, and that she had hated herself for minding. But she had minded. That meant a great deal from Elsie."
At that moment Lord Horace and Elsie came in.
"Mr. Hallett," she exclaimed, "I have been telling Horace that we are to have a picnic from Tunimba to the Baròlin Waterfall."
"Elsie is determined to find Moonlight's lair," said Lord Horace. "Well, I'm on for any fun of that sort. Talking of Baròlin, do you know the people there, Trant and Co.?"
"Blake and Trant," said Hallett. "It's Blake who is the boss, they say. But how anyone who wasn't quite a fool could have bought Baròlin Gorge!"
"They say Trant is doing a good thing with his horses, though," said Lord Horace. "Do you know the chap? He was at the Bean-tree to-day. I didn't fancy him. Looked to me like one of those low-bred half-Fenian fellows. I saw 'em when I went salmon fishin' with Waveryng to Ireland. I was wondering whether Blake could be one of the Blakes of Coola."
"Coola!" repeated Hallett.
"Blake of Coola is about as old a name as there is in Ireland. Castle Coola was close by our river. Lord Coola was a friend of Waveryng's. I never met him. The Castle was shut up the only time I went over. It is a common enough name though."
"I believe my sister-in-law has asked Mr. Trant over to Tunimba," said Hallett.
The bell rang for dressing. Lord Horace took his guest over to what was by courtesy called the Bachelor's Quarters. There was only one spare room in the Humpey, and that was occupied by Elsie Valliant.
