The Crooked Stick; Or, Pollie's Probation. Rolf Boldrewood

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СКАЧАТЬ being plump, and merely pretty, but exceptionally well dowered.

      These and similar divagations of the ardent male adult Harold had seen – seen with alarm and surprise primarily, then with amused assent. For himself he could as little conceive such oscillations in his own tastes and affections as he could fancy himself emulating the somersaults of an acrobat or the witticisms of a clown. No! thrice no! For a man of his deep, dreamy, passionate, perhaps originally melancholy, nature there was but one sequel possible after the deliberate choice of youth had been ratified by the calm reason of manhood. If fate denied him this happiness, all too perfect for this world – the unearthly, unutterable bliss which her love would confer – there should be no counterfeit presentment, no mocking travesty of the heart's lost illusions. He had rightly judged that as yet the girl's feeling for him was that of a pure and deep friendship, but of friendship only. The love of a sister, unselfish, sinless, seraphic, not the fiercer passion akin to hate, despair, revenge in its inverted forces, bearing along with it the choicest fruits that mortal hands can cull, yet joined in unholy joy, in perverted triumph to the groans of the eternally lost, to the endless torment, the dread despair of the prison vaults beneath.

      Thus Harold Atherstone watched and waited – awaited the perhaps fortunate turn of events, the effect of the moral suasion which he knew Mrs. Devereux gently exercised. And she had told him that he was the one man to whom in fullest trust and confidence she could bequeath her darling, were she compelled to leave her.

      'But you must wait, Harold,' she said. 'My child's nature is one neither to be controlled nor easily satisfied. I can trace her father's tameless soul in her. Poor Pollie! it's a thousand pities that she was not born a boy, as she says herself. How much easier life would have been for her – and for me!' Here Mrs. Devereux sighed.

      'All very well, my dear Mrs. Devereux, but in the meantime nature chose to mould her in the form of a beautiful woman, so sweet and lovely in my eyes that I have never seen her equal, and indeed hardly imagined such a creation. She will pass through the unsettled time of girlhood in another year or two, and after that take pity upon her faithful slave and worshipper, who has adored her all his life and who will die in the same faith.'

      'That is the worst feature in your case, my poor Harold,' said Mrs. Devereux; 'I am as fond of you as if you were my own son, and she loves you like a brother. You have seen too much of each other. Women's fancies are caught by the unknown, the unfamiliar: we are all alike. I wish I could help you, or bend her to my wish like another girl, for I know how happy she would be. But she cannot be guided in the disposition of her affections.'

      'And I should not wish it,' said the young man, as his face grew hard. 'No, though I should die of the loss of her.'

      The contract time of the Wannonbah mail was indulgent. The driver had no particular reason to reach that somewhat prosaic and monotoned village before the stated hour. When Wanderer slackened speed a mile on the hither side of the Corindah gate, it was with some surprise that Pollie descried a strange four-in-hand converging from another point. Wanderer pricked up his ears, while his rider looked eagerly across the plain with the intense, far-searching gaze of a dweller in the desert, as if she had power to read, even at that distance, each sign and symbol of the equipage.

      'Can't be a coach, surely,' she soliloquised. 'One mail is more than enough for all our wants in the letter and passenger way. Cobb and Co. grumble at feeding their teams now, poor things! Who in the world is likely to drive four horses in a season like this? No one but a lunatic, I should think. Such well-bred ones too! I can see the leaders tossing their heads – a grey and a bay. I can't make out the wheelers for the dust. No! Yes! Now I know who it is. Oh, what fun! I beg his pardon. Of course it's Jack Charteris. He said he was going to town. Poor Jack! I wish I was going with him. But that won't do. I should like to go and meet him, only then he would make sure I was interested in him. What a misfortune it is to be a girl! Now I must go in and dress for the evening, and receive him properly, which means unnaturally and artificially. Come along, Wanderer!'

      When Mr. Jack Charteris swept artistically and accurately through the entrance gate and drew up before the stable range with a fixed expectation that some one might see and admire him, he was disappointed to observe no one but Mr. Gateward and a black boy. To them it was left to perform the rôle of spectators, audience, and sympathisers generally.

      'Why, Gateward, old man, what's the meaning of this?' said the charioteer, signing to his own black urchin to jump down. 'Are you and Tarpot all the men left alive on Corindah? Sad effects of a dry season and overstocking, eh? No rouse-abouts, no boundary riders, no new chums, no nobody? Family gone away too? I'm not going to ruin you in the forage line either. Brought my own feed – plenty of corn and chaff inside the drag. Don't intend to eat my friends out of house and home this beastly season.'

      By this time Mr. Gateward and the black boys had applied themselves with a will to the unharnessing of the team, so that the new-comer, who had uttered the preceding remarks, exclamations, and inquiries in a loud, cheerful, confident manner, threw down his reins and descended from his seat without more ado.

      Here he stood with his hands in his pockets, watching the taking out of his horses, a well-bred, well-matched, and well-conditioned team, never intermitting a flow of badinage and small-talk which seemed to proceed from him without effort and forethought.

      'Now then, Jerry, you put 'em that one harness along a peg, two feller leader close up, then two feller poler. Tie 'em up long a post, that one yarraman, bimeby get 'um cool, baal gibit water, else that one die. You put 'em feed along a manger all ready. Mine come out bimeby.'

      'I'll see after 'em, Mr. Charteris, don't you bother yourself,' said the overseer good-naturedly. 'Tarpot, you take 'em saddle-box belong a mahmee inside barracks. He'll show you, sir, – you know where the bathroom is. There's water there, though we are pretty short.'

      'Deuced glad to hear it. The dust's inside my skin like the wool bales last summer. Must be half an inch of it somewhere. I've been living in it all day. Frightful season! I'm just going down to file my schedule – fact – unless my banker takes a good-natured fit. Can't stand it much longer. Ladies well? Mrs. Devereux and Miss Pollie? Not got fever, or cholera, or consumption this God-forsaken summer?'

      The grave bushman smiled. 'I doubt we shall all have to go up King Street when you give in, Mr. Charteris! You can work it somehow or other, whoever goes under. Besides, rain ain't far off; can't be now. The ladies are all right, and a little cheering up won't hurt 'em. Miss Pollie was out for a gallop just before you came up.'

      'Then it was her I saw,' said the young man petulantly. 'Knocked smoke out of the team to catch her up, and missed her after all.'

      Mr. Jack Charteris, of Monda, was a young squatter who lived about a hundred miles to the west of Corindah, where he had a large and valuable station, a good deal diminished as to profits by the present untoward season. He was of a sanguine, intrepid, rather speculative disposition, having investments in new country as well. People said he had too many irons in the fire, and would probably be ruined unless times changed. But more observant critics asserted that under careless speech and manner Jack Charteris masked a cool head and calculating brain; that he was not more likely to go wrong than his neighbours – in fact, less so, being of uncommon energy and quite inexhaustible resource. With any decent odds he was a safe horse to back to land a big stake.

      For the rest he was a good-looking, athletic, cheery young fellow, in general favour and acceptation with ladies, having a great fund of good spirits and an unfailing supply of conversation, that most of his feminine acquaintances found agreeable. He was not easily daunted, and added the qualities of perseverance and a fixed belief in his persuasive powers to the list of his good qualities.

      The past masters in the science of conquest aver that the chief secret of fascination lies in the power to amuse the too often vacant and distraite feminine mind. СКАЧАТЬ