Outlaw and Lawmaker/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII.
"HEARTS NOT IN IT."
The greater number of the guests left on the morrow. The Horace Gages, and Elsie, as well as the Baròlin gentlemen, the Garfits, and one or two of the Leichardt's Town people had been asked to stay a day longer, to join a riding party, which Frank Hallett had organized, to a picturesque gorge up the Luya. Hallett had done this partly to compensate Elsie for her disappointment in the matter of the picnic, and also because she had promised to ride Gipsy Girl, and he thought that he should thus have a chance of riding with her. He was a little disconcerted when Blake suggested to Mrs. Jem that since Point Row was not far from his place, Baròlin Gorge, they should ride over in the morning, have luncheon with Trant and himself, in their bachelor domicile, and take Point Row on their way homeward—or go to Point Row first, dine at the Gorge, and ride back the ten miles by moonlight.
It was the first plan which was decided upon. Before twelve o'clock the outsiders had all departed, and the remaining guests were on their way to Baròlin. Trant had started at daybreak, to make preparations for their reception.
Pompo, the half-caste, remained to drive the pack-horse, and, as he expressed it, "make him road budgery." Pompo was an elfish creature devoted to his master Blake, and curiously attracted to Elsie, perhaps because he saw that Blake was attracted in a greater and different degree. Pompo did not like Elsie's riding Gipsy Girl, and pointing to the Outlaw, with an air of reproach, asked, "What for you no like it yarraman, belonging to Blake."
"But I like your master's horse very much, Pompo," said Elsie, sweetly. "Only, you see, I rode it instead of Mr. Hallett's the other day, and it wouldn't be fair to ride it again."
Pompo did not fully enter into this reasoning, and he made Frank Hallett cross by coming perpetually to examine Elsie's girths, or to ask her if she wanted him to "make him road budgery." He rode ahead with a tomahawk slung over his shoulders, and would stop every now and then to cut away some overhanging vine, or to remove a piece of driftwood which the February floods had brought down. The impish creature's bead-like eyes continually turned to Elsie in a half-amused inquiring way, while he acted as guide, and did the honours of the road to Baròlin Gorge, which was certainly rough enough for a guide to be necessary.
It ran along the river bank—a track in places barely distinguishable from the cattle-tracks, which sloped sideways to the water, with here and there stony pinches and steep gulleys, almost hidden by the rank blady grass.
Now it ran through a patch of scrub or among glossy chestnut trees with their red and orange blossoms, or between white cedars on which the berry sprays were already yellowing. When the scrub ended, there were melancholy she-oaks, and every now and then a shrub of the lemon-scented gum, which Elsie would snatch at as they passed and crush between her fingers, for the sake of the curious aromatic perfume it gave forth. There was something strange and dreamy in this ride along the bank of the Luya—here scarcely to be called a river, a ride so wild that for the most part they had to go in single file. It all harmonized with the phase of mental exaltation which had come over Elsie during the last few days. Anything might happen in this enchanted forest.
In places the creek would make a bend, winding round a little flat, and then there would be a quick canter, with a warning from Pompo to look out for paddy-melon holes. And then they would mount a stony ridge, with weird-looking grass trees, lifting their blackened spears, and gray-green wattles, and unhealthy gums, and sparse blady grass. And then, perhaps they would get away from the river for a little way, and the gum trees would close in around them, and the whirring of the locusts would be almost deafening, and the dreaminess more intense. Elsie would almost call out in terror as an iguana scuttled up a gum tree, or a herd of kangaroo made a dash across the track. Once they had an exciting spin after an "old-man " kangaroo with all the dogs in full cry, but he escaped them, for the river had twisted round again, and they were in scrub once more. And here were deep rippleless pools surrounded by beds of poisonous arums, with the wrack of the flood-mark clinging to their pulpy stems, and horrid water snakes showed themselves from under decaying logs, and the fallen chestnut pods had rotted, and there was a moist fetid feeling that Elsie said reminded her of Hans Andersen's witch stories.
They seemed to be going right up into the mountains, which began to close in round them, all the seams and fissures in the precipices showing distinctly. Presently at its narrowest part the valley opened out in a chain of flats, and Frank pointed to a gully cutting down into the neck and said, "That's our show lion—Point Row—what we are coming out for to see. We shall stop there for tea, and then, if you don't mind a climb, we'll get down the rocks on the other side, and the black boys shall take the horses round to meet us, and we can come home by the Dead Finish Flats, and have a moonlight gallop, if you like."
"It would be heavenly," said Elsie. "Look! Isn't that Mr. Trant coming across the flat?"
It was Trant, who, mounted on a fresh horse, had ridden out to meet them.
"You can canter all the way now to the Gorge," he cried. "Come, Miss Valliant, luncheon is waiting."
He contrived to get beside Elsie. "I expected to see you riding with Blake," he said, "but it's a bad road, isn't it, for flirtation?"
"Why do you always drag in that horrible word?"
"Is it a horrible word? I thought it was one you were particularly fond of. You won't pretend that you haven't been flirting outrageously this last day or two. I hope you observed that I haven't given you much chance to-day of flirting with me."
"I wondered why you had gone away so early this morning."
"In order that you might have something to eat for luncheon. No, it wasn't that. Blake said he'd go. Or a message by Sam Shehan would have done as well. The truth is that you're beginning to make me uncomfortable, and I don't like it."
"I thought it was you who generally made people comfortable—at least you told me that you could make them afraid of you."
"I told you that I could generally make a woman like me if I wanted to."
"You said that you made them afraid of you as well. I suppose it's the same thing."
"I shouldn't say it was the same night at all."
"Well, I should think it would be very uncomfortable to be made to like a man you were afraid of," said Elsie.
"I don't intend to let you make me uncomfortable, Miss Valliant."
"I am very glad to hear that, Mr. Trant."
"Perhaps you won't like it so much when I tell you that the alternative is that you should be afraid of me."
"I don't feel in the least bit afraid of you now. I don't know what there is to be afraid of."
"Don't you? Well, perhaps some day you may find out. If I set my mind on a thing I always carry it through."
"Really, Mr. Trant, you are quite melodramatic. When you talk like that, and when you sing as you did the other night, you make me sorry"
"Sorry for what?"
"That you ignore your engagements with me in the very rude way in which you ignored them last night."
"I suppose you mean my not coming to claim my dance."
"Naturally."
"I didn't choose to be thrown a dance as you might throw a dog a bone, when you were sitting out half a dozen apiece with Blake and Hallett. I wanted you to sit out with me. And besides you wouldn't take my warning."
"I didn't know that you warned me against Mr. Hallett."
"No, but I warned you against Blake. It made me mad to hear people talking about you and him—knowing him as I do, and knowing very well that it was only because you were the prettiest woman in the room, and because Frank Hallett is said to be engaged to you, and he didn't choose that anybody should beat him—more especially Frank Hallett."
"Do you think it is very nice of you to talk about your partner behind his back in that way?"
"It is only what I have said to his face, and you are quite at liberty to repeat every word. Blake knows it is true. But I've put myself in your power in another way."
"How?"
"By letting you see that I am jealous."
"Now, Miss Valliant, this is good going ground." Blake had cantered up and reined in his horse for a moment.
Elsie touched Gipsy Girl with the whip. Blake rode the Outlaw. They were soon striding on in advance of the others. "So Trant is jealous! Poor Trant! You must be nice to him. Miss Valliant. He is a very good fellow in his way—Trant."
Elsie was struck by the cool, half-contemptuous tone in which he spoke. "Is Mr. Trant very much your inferior?" she asked.
"Good gracious! Inferior! In what way?"
"In birth and position, I suppose. You speak as if he were."
"I am sorry I gave you that impression. Trant is—well, perhaps his ancestors tilled the soil when mine rode over it. I don't know that that makes much difference."
"You said once that you came of a wild race."
He laughed. "Ah, that's true, and I think I've done my best to carry on the family traditions. I've been wild enough, too, at times."
Elsie was silent for a minute. At last she began impulsively and stopped.
"I wonder"
"What is it that you wonder?"
He bent down from his saddle, and looked at her with that curiously sweet smile which he had.
"I was wondering, Mr. Blake, that you, who I suppose belong to some great old family, and who have lived in Europe, and care so much for excitement and—and all that you have talked to me about"
"Well?"
"That you can be content to live in the bush, and in such a quiet place as Baròlin Gorge."
"But I don't live in Baròlin Gorge. At least I haven't lived there much as yet. And then you forget, that I am going in for the maddening excitement of the Australian political arena. What more could I have?"
"I should have thought you could have had much more in Europe, and that at least you would have had the society of people you cared about."
"I have society that I care about in Australia."
"How long is it since you left England, Mr. Blake?"
He seemed to be thinking. "It is about twelve, years since I left Ireland."
"Ireland—yes, I forgot. Do you care very much for your country?"
"I sucked in patriotism with my mothers milk. It was born in me with many other things that I should be better without."
"Better?"
"Happier, at any rate."
"But you—you ought to be happy," said Elsie, falteringly.
He looked at her lingeringly. Her eyes were turned away. She was sitting very erect. Her profile was towards him. There was a lovely glow on her delicate cheeks, a still more beautiful glow in her eyes, and her lips were sweet and tremulous.
"Yes, I ought to be happy," he repeated, "and especially at this moment. Well, I am happy, Miss Valliant. Or it would be truer to say that the one man in me is happy."
"I don't understand."
"Don't you know," he said, "that in most of us there are two beings? Sometimes the one is kept so utterly in subjection by the other that you hardly know it is there. But in some people the two natures are both so strong that life is always a battle. It's the Celt in me that gives me no peace."
"I don't understand," she said again.
He laughed. "No, I don't suppose you do. For your own sake I hope not. And yet sometimes I fancy that you've got a little bit of the same nature in you, and that, to a very faint extent, we are companions in misfortune."
"Misfortune!"
"Isn't it a misfortune to have the rebel taint? You couldn't bind yourself down to the sort of life which would content that very estimable young lady Miss Grarfit."
"No."
"Nor could I lead the calm decorous existence of—shall I say Mr. Frank Hallett? an existence made up of going out on the run, managing a model station, observing all the social, domestic, and religious obligations, amassing an honourable fortune by strict attention to business and by prudent investment, loving one woman and cleaving to her. No, I do the Celt injustice there. His morals are his strongest point—my grandmother was French. Miss Valliant, have I offended you?"
"Yes." Elsie had turned to him bright dilated eyes. "I will not have you speak in that sneering way of Frank Hallett."
"Forgive me, I did not mean to sneer. And I ought to have remembered what I was told last night."
"What was that?"
"That he is to be your husband."
Elsie rode on with flaming cheeks, distancing the Outlaw by a few paces. They were a long way in advance of the others. In the distance was to be seen a cluster of buildings standing back against a hill, which was covered with dense scrub. A little to the right rose Mount Luya, a majestic object, with its encircling precipiced battlement of grey rock, making it look like some Titanic fortress. Its strange rents and fissures and the black bunya scrub clothing its lower slopes made it seem still more grim and gloomy.
"I don't wonder that the blacks think that Debil-debil lives on Mount Luya," said Elsie.
"Do you see that dark ravine, with the two spurs of rock going down from the precipice—just as if a thick wedge had been cut out of the mountain?" asked Blake.
"Do you think it will be very easy to reach Baròlin Waterfall?"
"Is that Baròlin Waterfall?"
"Yes, the dread abode of the great Spirit Baròlin. Captain Macpherson may 'blow,' as you say in Australia, but I am certain that he and his merry men never got beyond the foot of those rocky spurs. There's a pretty little cascade there, but it is not the real Baròlin Fall. That will not be the scene of your spring picnic, Miss Valliant, unless you are prepared to force your way on foot through scrub as impenetrable as an Indian jungle."
"How do you know all this, Mr. Blake? I thought you were almost a stranger on the Luya."
"Trant has told me, and he has heard it from Sam Shehan, and Pompo, and Jack Nutty, who, in the days of their nefarious practices, probably 'nuggetted' a good many of Mr. Hallett's calves up here on the Luya, and know every inch of country practicable for that purpose. Here we are at the sliprails, Miss Valliant. I am glad we have reached them before the others, and that I am the one to let them down for you."
He dismounted and waited at the sliprails till she had ridden through. Then before mounting again he came to Gipsy Girl's side and held out his hand, "Welcome to Baròlin."
She put her hand in his. Their eyes met. In her look there was a troubled consciousness. In his there was consciousness too, but it was nevertheless a bold and masterful gaze.
"Will you forgive me," he said, "and believe that I meant no disrespect to Mr. Frank Hallett? I admire him immensely. He is a good fighter and a gallant foe. I got to like him ever so much during the election, and I hope yon will be happy with him."
Elsie did not answer. He released her hand. There had been something very strange, she thought, in his clasp. It had given her an odd tingling sensation, which no other touch had ever produced. She wondered whether there was any truth in the idea that some people were magnetic. He looked at her all the time. He went on:
"Yes, I admire Frank Hallett. I don't believe he would do a dishonourable thing to save his life. He has all the sterling virtues. But he is—you must own it—he is something of the Philistine, and I am a Bohemian rebel to the very core of me, and can't be expected to feel that deep sympathy with his views of life which perhaps you feel, Miss Valliant."
"I think," she said slowly, "that I have a little of the Bohemian in me, too."
He laughed. "Oh, yes, I know that. Didn't I tell you that we were something akin? Well, I wonder if you will be as generous a foe as Mr. Frank Hallett."
"As generous a foe!" she repeated, startled.
"We are fighting, aren't we? Don't you remember that challenge of the other night? I accepted it. Don't you recollect our talk that evening—before I told you of my friendship with Jensen? I beg your pardon for alluding again to what you said was disagreeable."
"I understand," she said coldly; "you want to avenge Mr. Jensen's wrongs. That is what you were thinking of."
"I beg your pardon," he said. "It wasn't to be a case of avenging anyone or anything—nothing so melodramatic. It was to be a trial of skill, a tournament between a young lady, who frankly owned that she had played with a man's heart—and who had ruined his life—for an experiment, and another person who confessed to having played justly or unjustly for amusement at the game of flirtation. That's all. There is nothing melodramatic about it. And it was understood that hearts were not in the business."
"Mr. Blake, you are cruel—you have no right—it is unfair."
"If you think a moment," he said, gently, "you will see that it is all fair—a challenge given—to a tournament—on certain lines—given and seriously taken up. I suppose the laws of knightly warfare hardly apply to a lady, and that your word must he my law, but still you will admit that to draw back would seem"
"Well?"
"Forgive me, but wouldn't it seem a little like a confession of cowardice?"
Elsie flushed, and her eyes gleamed; and a spirit of recklessness took possession of her. "Very well; whatever I am, I am not a coward, and I am not in the least afraid of you, Mr. Blake."
He bowed. "That I can perfectly understand. It is I who have cause to be afraid."
"Why shouldn't we play the game, since it amuses you and it amuses me—since it is a case of hearts not in it?"
"Why not indeed?" he answered. "It seems to me that one of the objects of living at all is that one may cram as many experiences as one can into the few years in which experience can be enjoyed. You are fond of drama, Miss Valliant, so am I. You don't get the sort of drama we should enjoy (on the Australian stage it is too crude—too much of the blood and thunder, 'Unhand me, villain' sentiment)—not complex enough for people who by right of nature belong to an advanced civilization. We don't get an advanced civilization out here, do we? and so we must make our own drama. I am quite certain that one in which you played the principal part would be bound to be exciting."
"Thank you."
"And then," he went on, "you like making experiments in human chemistry, and so do I. You remember that book you were reading the day we first met. Experiments in a laboratory are sometimes dangerous. Experiments in human chemistry may be much more dangerous. But I never really cared for anything in which there was no danger. I perfectly realize the danger in this case. ... Here come the rest. I think I may leave the putting up of the sliprails to Trant." He mounted again, and they rode together up to the house.