Under Two Skies (8 page)

“You know, as well as I do, that one cannot always tell the truth in trifles.”

“I know that one does not.”

“Very well. You will readily understand it when
I tell you that this stupid vase is no heirloom at all.”

“I understand that perfectly. But—but
which
vase?”

He swung about in his chair, with half-closed eyes and craning neck, looking for what was not there. It was an effective stroke.

“The vase is no longer in my house,” said Mrs. M'llwraith. “You knew that too.”

Nettleship glanced at her swiftly. “Did you only get it on approval?”

The lady started. “What makes you think that?”

“Perhaps I go to Labrano's now and then.”

“
Do
you?” demanded Mrs. M'llwraith plainly. And indeed the indirect stage was past.

“Well, yes.”

“That is where you saw it?”

“One of the places.”

“One of the places! Did you know the owner, then?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Then who is the owner?”

“You wish to know?”

“I have asked you.”

“Well, then, I am the owner myself. I came by the vase in India. Labrano was trying to sell it for me.”

They were sitting near a window. The sun had sunk behind the opposite houses, and the soft summer light made their faces soft—all but the eyes. They were watching one another like duellists. Mrs. M'llwraith was a woman, after all, capable at least of grappling with an emergency. She showed it now.

“It was you, then,” said she, “who made Labrano send for it in haste last Saturday? You had a motive in that. It was you who tortured me the other night, when you discovered my trifling untruth. You had also a motive in that, I do you the credit of supposing. You had also a motive in stopping this afternoon until every one else was gone. Shall I tell you your motives? I will. But I will first make you easy on one point—they shall not succeed! I would die rather than forgive you for—for the other night!”

For the first time her calmness was shaken. The last words trembled with subdued ferocity.

Nettleship smiled. But the bowling had become uncommonly good. Mrs. M'llwraith continued:

“Your motives may be compressed into one word—‘Elaine'”

“Ah!” said Nettleship, ‘Elaine! I want to marry Elaine, and Elaine wants to marry me. Why should you object?”

The policy was startling, insolent, risky—everything but unwise.

Mrs. M'llwraith smiled her scornful answer, and only observed:

“You must have told the story briefly.”

“It was an old story retold—that takes less time,” replied Nettleship.

“Retold in vain, Edward Nettleship.”

The game was slow for a while after that.

“How about the Professor?” said Nettleship at last.

“I am laid up when he comes—sudden indisposition. I leave town the following day at my doctor's urgent advice.”

Another pause.

“Such a thousand pities!” murmured Nettleship to himself.

“Are you referring to yourself and Elaine?” inquired Mrs. M'llwraith sweetly.

“Oh dear no. I was thinking of Professor Josling. The poor old chap will be so awfully cut up. After looking forward to his quiet afternoon with you—soaking in his favourite subject, and talking shop to a good listener, for once, and generally boring you to his heart's content. He is counting upon an hour's real sympathy, you may depend upon it; for clever men's wives never appreciate them, as you know, Mrs. M'llwraith. Poor old chap! It
is
hard lines on him.”

The picture of Mrs. M'llwraith and Professor Josling in close confabulation over the vase, and presently
over the five-o'clock teapot, and of the firm founding of an intimate friendship with that eminent man, proved quite irresistible. Mrs. M'llwraith closed her eyes and gloated over the splendid impossibility for one weak, yearning, despairing minute. And during that minute Nettleship felt that he had collared the bowling at last, and might safely force the game.

“There is,” he continued accordingly, in an altered tone, “another thing to consider—the Professor's curiosity. He means getting a sight of the vase, and, like the indelicate little boy, he won't be happy, you know, till he does get it. If you went away, he'd apply to Mr. M'llwraith straight. Then the cat would be out of the bag—and the Professor out of your visiting list!”

With a sudden sob Mrs. M'llwraith raised her hands to her face. “Then what am I to do?” she wailed.

Nettleship bounded from his chair, knelt before her, took her hands in his, and looked earnestly in the wretched lady's face.

“Give me Elaine—for my Indian vase!”

Oh, beyond all doubt it was the most infamous, impudent price ever quoted in even our marriage market… And yet—Mrs. M'llwraith bowed her head.

The game was won.

“You rule Mr. M'llwraith in such matters with an
absolute rule, do you not?” said Ned, a few minutes later.

Mrs. M'llwraith confessed to that.

“Then we must approach him together. I have not time to go to the Temple and dress and come back. May I stop as I am? Thank you. Then we'll back each other up after dinner, and together we'll carry our point in five minutes; and then I'll bring the what's-its-name in the morning. Is it agreed?”—

Again Mrs. M'llwraith bowed her head.

“I
have
scored,” said Ned to Elaine, in the private moment that was granted them before he left the house. “I was a brute about it, I know; but I scored.”

“You generally do,” Elaine returned, with liquid eyes.

“Ah! But it was a better score than that the other day, if that's what you're driving at. Better bowling, I assure you.”

He paused, surveyed the lovely girl before him, inwardly congratulated himself for a lucky rascal, and added with the utmost candour—

“And a better match, too!”

That is never a nice moment when your horse knocks up under you, and you know quite well that he has done so, and that to ride him another inch would be a cruelty—another mile a sheer impossibility. But when it happens in the bush, the moment becomes more that negatively disagreeable; for you may be miles from the nearest habitation, and an unpremeditated bivouac, with neither food nor blankets, demands a philosophic temperament as well as the quality of endurance. This once befell the manager of Dandong, in the back-blocks of New South Wales, just on the right side of the Dandong boundary fence, which is fourteen miles from the homestead. Fortunately Deverell, of Dandong, was a young man, well used, from his boyhood, to the casual hardships of station life, and well fitted by physique to endure them. Also he had the personal advantage of possessing the philosophic temperament large-sized. He dismounted the moment
he knew for certain what was the matter. A ridge of pines—a sandy ridge, where camping properly equipped would have been perfect luxury—rose against the stars a few hundred yards ahead. But Deverell took off the saddle on the spot, and carried it himself as far as that ridge, where he took off the bridle also, hobbled the done-up beast with a stirrup-leather, and turned him adrift.

Deverell, of Dandong, was a good master to his horses and his dogs, and not a bad one to his men. Always the master first, and the man afterwards, he was a little selfish, as becomes your masterful man. On the other hand, he was a singularly frank young fellow. He would freely own, for instance, that he was the luckiest man in the back-blocks. This, to be sure, was no more than the truth. But Deverell never lost sight of his luck, nor was he ever ashamed to recognise it: wherein he differed from the average lucky man, who says that luck had nothing to do with it. Deverell could gloat over his luck, and do nothing else—when he had nothing else to do. And in this way he faced contentedly even this lonely, hungry night, his back to a pine at the north side of the ridge, and a short briar pipe in full blast.

He was the new manager of Dandong, to begin with. That was one of the best managerships in the colony, and Deverell had got it young—in his twenties,
at all events, if not by much. The salary was seven hundred a year, and the homestead was charming. Furthermore, Deverell was within a month of his marriage; and the coming Mrs. Deverell was a girl of some social distinction down in Melbourne, and a belle into the bargain, to say nothing of another element, which was entirely satisfactory, without being so ample as to imperil a man's independence. The homestead would be charming indeed in a few weeks, in time for Christmas. Meanwhile, the “clip” had been a capital one, and the rains abundant; the paddocks were in a prosperous state, the tanks overflowing, everything going smoothly in its right groove (as things do not always go on a big station), and the proprietors perfectly delighted with their new manager. Well, the new manager was somewhat delighted with himself. He was lucky in his work and lucky in his love—and what can the gods do more for you? Considering that he had rather worse than no antecedents at all—antecedents with so dark a stain upon them that, anywhere but in a colony, the man would have been a ruined man from his infancy—he was really incredibly lucky in his love affair. But whatever his parents had been or had done, he had now no relatives at all of his own: and this is a great thing when you are about to make new ones in an inner circle: so that here, once more, Deverell was in his usual luck.

It does one good to see a man thoroughly appreciating his good luck. The thing is so seldom done. Deverell not only did this, but did it with complete sincerity. Even to-night, though personally most uncomfortable, and tightening his belt after every pipe, he could gaze at the stars with grateful eyes, obscure them with clouds of smoke, watch the clouds disperse and the stars shine bright again, and call himself again and again, and yet again, the very luckiest man in the Colony.

While Deverell sat thus, returning thanks on an empty stomach, at the northern edge of the ridge, a man tramped into the pines from the south. The heavy sand muffled his steps; but he stopped long before he came near Deverell, and threw down his swag with an emancipated air. The man was old, but he held himself more erect than does the inveterate swagman. The march through life with a cylinder of blankets on one's shoulders, with all one's worldly goods packed in that cylinder, causes a certain stoop of a very palpable kind; and this the old man, apparently, had never contracted. Other points slightly distinguished him from the ordinary run of swagmen. His garments were orthodox, but the felt wideawake was stiff and new, and so were the moleskins, which, indeed, would have stood upright without any legs in them at all. The old man's cheeks, chin, and upper lip were covered with short gray
bristles, like spikes of steel; his face was lean, eager and deeply lined.

He rested a little on his swag. “So this is Dandong,” he muttered, with his eyes upon the Dandong sand between his feet. “Well, now that I am within his boundary-fence at last, I am content to rest. Here I camp. To-morrow I shall see him!”

Deverell, at the other side of the ridge, dimming the stars with his smoke, for the pleasure of seeing them shine bright again, heard presently a sound which was sudden music to his ears. The sound was a crackle. Deverell stopped smoking, but did not move; it was difficult to believe his ears. But the crackle grew louder; Deverell jumped up and saw the swagman's fire within a hundred yards of him; and the difficult thing to believe in
then
was his own unparalleled good luck.

“There is no end to it,” he chuckled, taking his saddle over one arm and snatching up the waterbag and bridle. “Here's a swaggie stopped to camp, with flour for a damper and a handful of tea for the quart-pot, as safe as the bank! Perhaps a bit of blanket for me too! But I
am
the luckiest beggar alive; this wouldn't have happened to any one else!”

He went over to the fire, and the swagman, who was crouching at the other side of it, peered at him from under a floury palm. He was making the damper
already. His welcome to Deverell took a substantial shape; he doubled the flour for the damper. Otherwise the old tramp did not gush.

Deverell did the talking. Lying at full length on the blankets, which had been unrolled, his face to the flames, and his strong jaws cupped in his hands, he discoursed very freely of his luck.

“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?”

“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. 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: