Outlaw and Lawmaker/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV.
"ARE WE ENEMIES?"
Baròlin was only a bachelors' house, and a bachelors' house of the roughest kind, as Trant and Blake impressed upon their guests. But there were things in it which one does not usually find in a bachelor's dwelling in the bush—notably a piano, which Lord Horace insisted on trying, while they were waiting for luncheon, and which he pronounced to be one of the best cottage pianos he had ever played on. Trant sang at Elsie's request—one of his passionate love-songs, which produced a sort of reflex emotion in several of the persons present—excepting perhaps Miss Garfit, who remarked that it was sweet; Miss Garfit had a trick of saying that things were "sweet," and the epithet was not quite in keeping with her robust personality. Then there were various odds and ends which betokened a more refined taste than one discovers as a rule among lone squatters—some fine bits of Eastern embroidery, a silver perfume sprinkler, two or three jewelled daggers, and so forth, which Lord Horace pounced upon.
"These are Algerian," he said. " My sister has got a lot of 'em. Fancy finding Algerian embroideries in an Australian hut!"
"I am sure," said Miss Garfit, "this is far too sweet a place to be called a hut. Have you really been in Algiers, Mr. Blake?"
Blake laughed. "Ask Trant. He was in a regiment of Irregulars. That's how he learned to speak French so well."
"And you?" said Elsie. "Was that where you learned to speak French?"
"As I have told you, my grandmother was a French-woman, Miss Valliant. But I have knocked about among the Arabs a good deal, and I learned to speak"
There was a sudden crash. Trant had jumped up hastily and had overturned a chair. Blake's sentence remained unfinished.
"By Jove, you've got some nice firearms here," said Lord Horace, who had been examining a rack of guns and pistols over the chimney-piece. "These are stunners—all the latest improvements. I see you are prepared for Moonlight."
Was it Elsie's fancy, that as Frank Hallett and the other men came up to examine the weapons, a sudden glance was interchanged by the partners? Anyhow she thought that Blake rather hastily interposed. "Never mind those, Lord Horace, I am sure luncheon is ready. Come—Trant, will you bring Miss Valliant? Lord Horace, please show Miss Garfit the way."
He offered his arm to Ina, and Elsie accepted that of Trant. Luncheon was not quite ready, but the delay afforded opportunity for admiring the view from the verandah of the dining room, which looked out on Mount Luya. Trant was full of apologies for his bachelor housekeeping, which, however, were unnecessary, for the meal was excellently served, and he was much complimented by Mrs. Jem Hallett, who considered herself an authority in such matters, and who made a mental memorandum that she would always in future give her guests coffee after luncheon.
It was mid-afternoon before the coffee had been drunk, they were again mounted, and on their way back to Point Row. Frank Hallett got beside Elsie at the start, and Blake was fain to content himself with Lady Horace. Ina did not, care much for Blake, but she made herself as agreeable as she could, because she wanted to keep him from Elsie. Lady Horace was beginning to be a little frightened of Blake's influence over Elsie.
Hallett was not quite himself, or was it that Elsie was disturbed and preoccupied? "Have you enjoyed your day?" he asked.
"It is not finished yet. Call no man happy till he is dead, you know."
He laughed, and then said with some embarrassment, "You and Blake seemed to be talking very earnestly when you were waiting by the sliprails."
"Were we? I forget."
"He was holding your hand."
"You have very keen eyes, Mr. Hallett."
"But he was holding your hand?"
"Yes, then he was."
"That was odd, wasn't it?"
"It isn't at all odd when a person holds out his hand and asks you to forgive him. You naturally take it."
"Oh! he asked you to forgive him! Had he offended you?"
"Yes."
"By something he said?"
"Yes."
"I wish I knew what he had said."
"How inquisitive you are. Well, it was about you," said Elsie.
"About me?"
"He spoke of you in a way I didn't like."
"Indeed! I don't mind in the least what Mr. Blake says about me."
"Your tone shows that you do. He spoke very nicely of you. He said you were a generous foe, and that he admired and respected you."
"That was very kind of him. Did you object to his praising me?"
"I objected to his calling you a Philistine."
"Oh! now I understand. Thank you, Elsie." His whole face beamed. "You are loyal."
"Am I? I am afraid not. Don't be a Philistine, Frank. I don't like Philistines."
They were able to canter almost all the way to the turning off to Point Row. At the bend where the Point Row gulley fell into the Luya a great rock bulged out into the stream. It was covered with a wonderful growth of ferns, birds' nests, and staghorn with branching antler-like fronds, which so fascinated Elsie that she wanted to get off her horse and clamber up the boulder to gather them. But Pompo stepped gallantly forward. "Ba'al!" he cried. "White Mary plenty gammon. Suppose white missus go up that fellow rock she tumble and break her neck. Then mine dig him hole to put her in."
The creature swung himself up, grinning all the time, and presently came back with an armful, which he slung on to his saddle. They went very slowly now. Pompo first, with the packhorse, all the rest following in single file. The hills closed in on either side, and the gulley was in deep shade. There was a little wind, and the she-oaks by the creeklet made a melancholy sighing. The stream ran over a pebbly bed with big boulders here and there, breaking its course and damming it into a deep black pool. In some places the pool was covered with a strange iridescent film. Now a rocky wall rose ahead. The gulley made a bend, and the creeklet wound between two fantastically-shaped ridges of grey rock. It was impossible to ride further, and they all dismounted, Pompo unsaddling the packhorse and carrying the saddlebags with the tea things down through the rocky heads, whence he led the way into what seemed the heart of the hills, while Jack Nutty, the other half-caste twin, and two black boys drove the horses back and round the ridge to meet the picnickers on the other side of the gorge.
The ladies tucked up their habits, and each with her attendant swain picked her way over the rocks, and across the stepping-stones, and through the tangle of fern and creeper, which choked the entrance to the ravine. It was rough walking. The ravine was a rocky trough. On each side rose a wall of grey volcanic stone hollowed in places at the base, and making tiny caves rich in maiden-hair fern. It was broken in others and overgrown with the red kennedia and the fleshy wax plant, and had tufts of orchids, creeping jasmine and tiny shrubs, with blue-green leaves that gave out a strong aromatic scent. The creeklet was here a chain of dark clear pools, the last hemmed in all round by rock, black and looking unfathomable. A sort of natural stair led to a higher plateau, and it was here that Pompo had laid the saddlebags and was building up a fire of brushwood for the making of the quart-pot tea.
The still place echoed with talk and laughter, and the sacred rock wallabies darted out of their holes, and made for the higher level and for the impenetrable scrub. Some of the party climbed above the plateau, and from here the sun could be seen, a golden flame, through the trees. Among these adventurous ones were Blake and Elsie. Frank, in his capacity of host, remained below with Mrs. Jem, and lifted off the quart pot and sugared and cooled the tea. Rose Garfit held one pint pot and he another, and backwards and forwards they poured the smoking beverage. Elsie did not care for quart-pot tea; she said that she liked the spring water better, and that she wanted to see if there were any late mulgams. Blake was of her opinion, and the two did find some untimely berries. They had climbed some fifty feet. Up here the hoya grew luxuriantly, and there were clusters of the waxen flowers sweet as honey, which Elsie gathered, and with which she pelted those below.
"Elsie, Elsie," Ina cried; "come down; you'll be losing yourselves up there, and we shall never get to the horses, and Mr. Hallett says the place is full of snakes."
But Elsie only laughed.
"Why should I climb down to climb up again? We've got to get over the ridge before we find the horses. Mr. Blake will look after the snakes. You are to take care of me and show me the way," she added demurely, to Blake, "though we have agreed to be enemies."
"Are we enemies?" he said in an odd dreamy way. "Let us suspend hostilities then for a little while. No, I don't think we be enemies."
Elsie turned from the precipice, and moved about among the shrubs and plants, gathering a flower here and there. There were many that she had never seen before, peculiar to these mountain places, and she gathered them and brought them to Blake with all the interest of a child. There were trees with a glossy green leaf and bright orange seed pods, and there was another plant with a cone of brilliant crimson berries. "I wonder what sort of flower they had," she said. "If one only knew in autumn what things were like in spring."
"Do you know," he said, "that there is a great philosophical problem underneath that remark of yours? If one could only know in autumn what had been the promise of the spring. If in the spring one could only know what the autumn would bring forth, one might in that case make a better thing out of life."
"Oh!" she cried, "to know in spring what the autumn is going to bring forth! It would he terrible. It would spoil life. I should hate it. I don't want to know anything. I want to live from day to day, never looking forward."
"So that is your theory! The mere joy of life contents you?"
"No, no," she cried, impetuously. "I say so, but it is not true. I want much more than the mere joy of life. I am always looking forward—always wondering what is going to happen—always inventing situations—always expecting people who never by any chance come along."
"What sort of people?" he asked.
"The people who apparently live in romance, and not in real life," she answered lightly.
There was a "Coo-ee" from below. Elsie peeped over the ledge.
"They are coming. Now we are going to where the horses are waiting."
"They will not be waiting yet. Pompo and the black boys have to lead them a good three miles round the ridge."
"And we have to climb down this ridge. Do you know the way?" she asked.
"No, but I am as good a bushman, I think, as most people. I'll engage to strike the horses at the bottom of the gulley."
"Mr. Frank Hallett knows the way," said Elsie. "He is coo-eeing to us to wait for him."
"I don't want to wait for Mr. Frank Hallett. I would rather show you the way myself. Will you let me be your guide?"
"If you like," she answered.
"Come, then." He held back an overhanging withe of a creeper, for her to pass through into the denser bush beyond the little plateau. The ground sloped downward. There was a faint track, but it was difficult to tell whether it was a cattle track, or made by the passage of man. On each side, and all down the hill, were cairns of grey volcanic stone, covered with a yellow- white lichen, that gave them a strange and hoary appearance. The white gums had something of the same eldritch look on account of the withes of greenish-grey moss which hung from their branches. Through their straight lanky stems could be seen glimpses of the grey precipice of Mount Luya. A few jagged grass-trees, some melancholy wattles, and stunted cinchona shrubs added to the wildness of the scene. As they got down into the gulley, the rocks became more steep and slippery, and the way more difficult. Blake held out his hand to help Elsie over the stones. She slipped and fell into his arms, but quickly recovered herself, and poised with the lightness of a fawn on a jutting rock. "You don't seem to like taking my hand," said Blake, resentfully.
"I am a very good climber," she answered. " And besides, Mr. Blake, did you really mean what you said? Is everything that you or I do or say to be counted as a move in the game?"
"Most certainly, since we have determined to play the game. But you need not be so proud about accepting help over the stones. It will be I who run a risk, not you."
"I don't understand you." As she spoke, she put out her hand to balance herself, for she had slipped again. He took it in his, and with his eyes admiringly fixed upon her face guided her down a bad bit. Again that curious thrill of contact of which Elsie was distinctly sensible. So also seemed Blake.
"Can't you understand," he said, in a voice unlike his usual deliberate utterance, "that there might be a risk to a man in touching the hand of a woman like you, if"
"If?" she asked.
"If he were fighting not so much against you as against himself?"
"Ah!" cried Elsie, triumphantly, quoting his own words. "Doesn't it seem a little like a confession of cowardice?"
"No," he said, looking up to her from his lower level and then taking her bodily in his arms and lifting her down a miniature precipice; "whatever I may be I am not a coward, and if you make me love you, Elsie—well, then we shall be quits. You shall love me too."
"And then?" she said almost below her breath, looking at him with fascinated eyes.
"Then," he said, with a light laugh, "the game will be a drawn one, the battle lost for the two of us. We shall go our ways both wounded, and perhaps—who knows—neither of us sorry, though we may have to bear the pain of the hunt till our lives' end."
She drew herself from him, throwing her body back against the rock. And at that moment there was a rustle in the dry leaves that choked a fissure almost at her elbow, and the gleam of something black and shining, which disappeared in the rank blady grass. Elsie gave a cry, and darted from the place, leaping past him on to a fallen log.
"What is it?" he said.
"Didn't you see a snake? Ina said this place was full of them, and I had forgotten. I am terrified of snakes. When I have a nightmare it is that I am bitten by a snake, and that I am somewhere out of reach of remedies. What should I have done if that thing had bitten me?" She shuddered.
"I should have sucked the poison from the bite, and then I should have given you ammonia—I always carry it with me in the bush"—he touched his coat pocket, "and in the long run you would not be very much the worse."
"And you would have saved my life?"
"Yes, I suppose so, always allowing that it was a deadly snake, and that it had bitten you."
They did not speak for some time. Elsie was pale. She moved on hurriedly, looking to the right and left as she picked her steps. They had nearly got to the bottom of the ridge when Blake gave a "Coo-ee." There was no answer. "They are a long way behind us," he said, coolly. "We have come down by a short cut."
"But where are the horses? Perhaps we have come down quite wrong." Elsie looked uneasy.
"No, we have not. It is they who have gone out of their way. The horses are down there, and he pointed a little to the right.
"How do you know?"
"Oh, I know the country. You will see." He called again, this time with a totally different note from the ordinary Australian "Coo-ee." It was a strange wild sound, something like the cry of a bird, a most peculiar and wailing sound.
"They won't know that. What an odd Coo-ee!" exclaimed Elsie. As she spoke, the cry was repeated, and from the direction which Blake had indicated.
"That is Pompo," he said. "Pompo knows my call. Now, Miss Valliant, sit down on this log and rest till the others come. They will coo-ee fast enough. There, listen! Didn't I tell you?"
And from above and a good way off, to the left, there sounded Ina's coo-ee—then another, in a man's voice.
"Sit down," said Blake. "You are panting, and you are quite pale. A few minutes ago you had the loveliest flush imaginable."
Elsie flushed now. She did not sit down, but leaned against a white gum-tree, tapping her riding skirt with her whip in an embarrassed manner.
"Mr. Blake," she began.
"Well, Miss Valliant."
"You were wrong—in what you said—in what you thought. I am not engaged to Mr. Frank Hallett."
"Ah ! I wonder whether that is so much the better for him, or the worse."
"The worse. I am not the kind of girl to make a man happy."
"I think you might make a certain kind of man intensely happy—and under certain conditions."
"What conditions?"
"First of all, he must be free to love you—free to make you his wife. And yet "—he paused for a moment, then went on—"I can imagine the desperate sort of joy—a joy in which minutes would count as years, and a week as a lifetime—the joy of loving you, and conquering you, and teaching you the ineffable bliss of love—opening to you a whole world of new emotions and gathering the first fruits of your heart, with bliss intensified to an ecstasy of pain by the knowledge that it must end in a week. Perhaps that short-lived rapture might be worth more than a long married life of decorous commonplace conventional happiness, a Frank Hallett kind of happiness."
"Don't, don't say things like that. I don't know anything about such feelings."
"No, but the time will come when you will know, and then you will remember my words. You will remember that it was as I told you, that you had in you the capacity for passion."
"Yes," she answered in a low voice; "I will remember."
"You understand now what I meant when I told you that I realized the risk I was running."
"No," she exclaimed. "You talk in enigmas. You speak of a certain kind of man—of certain conditions which don't apply to you."
"But if they did apply to me?—if I was thinking, speaking of myself?"
"How can that be? You are free. Your life is your own."
"It is true," he said slowly, "that my life is my own. But it is true also that my life may be forfeited at any moment, and that I am not free to link the life of a woman like you with a career so wild and precarious as mine."
"Wild! precarious!" she repeated, in wonder.
"You don't know what I mean. It is not possible that you should. I am saying to you what I have said to no other woman in the world—to no other person in Australia. My life is wild and precarious—it is not necessary, not advisable, that you should understand in what way. Only understand this—I am the last man to ask a woman I love to share it."
"I understand," she said—"no, I shall never understand, but I know what you wish to convey to me. I thank you for your warning. It was not needed. Will you show me now where the horses are?"