Irralie's Bushranger/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
THE BROKEN COLUMN
The plantation of pines formed three sides of the station yard, which, indeed, suggested a clearing on the edge of a natural forest rather than a single acre left exactly as it was found. The square was completed by the first and foremost of the homestead buildings: a long, regular structure, framed in the customary veranda, but containing (what was less conventional) the family quarters and the station store beneath one vast, white, corrugated roof. Other offices had buildings to themselves, such as the kitchen and the cook's room, the school-room and those of the three young men, wash-house and dairy, iron-store and blacksmith's forge. All these stood in hollow square, looking inward on the yard. And with the moon shining like a tempered sun on every roof, and the pine-trees whispering on all sides but one, there were worse tasks than learning the names of things from the mouth of Irralie Villiers.
"But if I am to show you the ropes," said the girl, "I may as well show you the lot. The stables are quite separate. The stock-yards are farther still. Would you care to see them to-night?"
He cared considerably, and appeared to find refreshment in the freedom of the situation. The father had gone into the store to write a letter for the outgoing mail; the mother had beaten a retreat earlier than usual after the burden and surprises of the day. The stranger and the girl were left to their own devices, without a hint of vulgar espionage in the name of a too self-conscious propriety. The stables were inspected. A handful of oats was taken to the night-horse in the yard. The men's hut was pointed out on rising ground still farther from the house; also a natural lawn-tennis court, marked out in a clay-pan; and here Irralie descried a racket which had been left out, and picked it up.
"So you actually play lawn-tennis up here!" exclaimed the owner.
"Actually!" repeated Irralie, with fine scorn. "Goodness! do you think we are so far behind you as all that?"
He laughed. "I beg your pardon, Miss Villiers. Still, your rackets are behind us—just a season or so."
"What do you mean ?"
"That one is bent. They are now made straight as a die!"
"I don't believe you," cried Irralie, warmly; and the argument ensuing was lively to the last degree. It ended, however, in laughter, swiftly followed by some consideration on the girl's part that cut her laughter short. It was as if she had suddenly found herself in church or in the presence of death. She stood quite still in the moonlight, and looked him very thoroughly up and down.
"You have lived here always?" he said at length, as if unconscious of her inquisitive gaze. She withdrew it by an effort.
"I wish we had! No; most of us were born in Tasmania; and that's a lovely country, far better than this, though personally I prefer the back-blocks. There's room for you to turn round up here!"
"I wonder what you would think of England."
"Not much! I should spend my time on St. Paul's Cathedral—throwing stones into the sea! Follow me, Mr. Fullarton, there's something else I want to show you before we go in; and we can get back this way."
She led him to a fence, squeezed through the wires, and crossed an open space dividing them from the fringe of the same plantation which extended to the house. This space was the width of a race-course, and struck the stranger as being planted with innumerable scarecrows shorn of their last rag. He asked what they were, and Irralie answered, "Our spare rooms."
"Your what?"
"Our spare rooms for Monday night. On Monday you will see this strip turned into a street of tents; these are the poles. When you go to a dance in the bush you stay the night. And the ladies take up all the rooms; and all the men camp out."
"I see," said the other; and he followed Irralie's lead among the pines.
"You aren't exactly keen about our party!" cried the girl, over her shoulder. "Can't you dance?"
"Not much."
"I thought not! But there is something else?"
"Yes; there are my clothes."
"I understood they were coming to-morrow?"
"Well, I expect them, certainly."
"I wonder if you do!"
And with the words the girl wheeled round and boldly regarded him by the light of the moon.
"Really, Miss Villiers, you take my breath away. Why should you doubt my word?"
He laughed, but he had colored first.
"Because I can't help it!" replied the girl, with a little gasp which she would have given her few possessions to prevent.
"Be frank with me, Miss Villiers. Tell me candidly what it is that makes you suspect me of—of whatever you do suspect?"
She shook her head; she would not or she could not speak; but her fine, unfaltering eyes never left his nor relaxed for one instant their soul-searching scrutiny.
"Was it about those papers?" pursued the other.
"That—for one thing."
"I see. You think I never had them at all!"
"I think you never would have thought of a lost overcoat if I hadn't put the words into your mouth!"
There was a pause; and the man's face showed, as plainly as rent sail or splintered spar, that the shot had gone home.
"Why did you do it?" he cried unwarily.
"You may well ask! Goodness knows—not I!"
"But I have lost a coat," he added, vehemently, perceiving his mistake. "I give you my word I lost one to-day; and those papers were in it as certainly as that moon is in the sky. You may believe or doubt it as you like. It is the case, and you will know it by and by. What else is there suspicious about me?"
Evidently he had forgotten his revolver; but Irralie knew that it was in his pocket still, though she did not intend to remind him of that. His tone was both angry and injured, but the injury appealed to her more than the anger. It destroyed her self-confidence, and, in doing so, restored some confidence in him. Then she recalled her earliest prejudicial observation, and smiled at her momentary misgivings.
"There was your horse!" said she—and saw him wince at the word.
"What about my horse?"
"It had come farther than you said; it had gone longer without water. A horse can go twice as long as a man; yet you were only thirsty, but your horse was hollow as a drum and nearly dead!"
For some moments he either could not or would not face her eyes; when once more he did so it was with a recovered calm, and something more than his former urbanity of speech.
"Will you then kindly tell me what you think?"
"I cannot!" cried the girl. "I think one thing one moment and another thing the next. I give you up; but as I had never any right to attempt to unriddle you, I also beg your pardon. Consider unsaid every word I've spoken; and forgive me if you can."
He laughed aloud.
"Forgive you. Miss Villiers! That's taking it a little too seriously, I am sure. But—the fact is—you are right! And upon my word I've a good mind to tell you everything on the spot!"
Irralie looked in the handsome, reckless face, and involuntarily drew back. "You must do as you please," she said.
"I could trust you? Yes, yes, I could trust you with my life. You are not the one to give a fellow away!"
"I hope not. But that would depend."
"That—would—depend," he repeated slowly. "On the nature of the confidence, of course! Well, well, let it rest. There was something else you were going to show me before we went in?"
"There was," said the girl. "Come this way; it's something that I think is certain to appeal to you."
And once more she led him through the moonlit pines, with a heart in chaos, and thoughts so tangled that unravelment seemed as distant as the day of doom. This much she knew: there was a loaded pistol in his pocket, and the crackling of each twig was like the cocking of the hammer behind her back. And, again, this much she knew even better: that she would have felt no safer out shooting with her father than here and now under the eye of this privily armed man.
So she led him through the soft sand between pine and hop-bush; and the moon peeped over one shoulder now, and now the other, until at last it shone with startling brilliance on white palings, and on a granite column in the midst of them, broken as a tree by the wind.
"A grave!" said Irralie's companion. But the girl said nothing. And when she looked at him his head was bare.
Indeed the unexpectedness of the spot and its memorial compelled an unpremeditated awe; nor could a stranger or a sweeter place have been chosen for the repose of human ashes. Homestead and outbuildings were alike beyond sight and sound. Here was no music but that of the constant cricket and the wind among the trees; and here, for days or for weeks together, no eyes save those of heaven itself. Companion of a thousand pines, yet still with a stillness which exaggerated their every sound and motion, stood the painted palings, the simply storied pedestal, the granite column snapped like a mast. And the spirit of the sepulchre, which all who came there must feel, was one unattainable in sunlit, sweet-smelling cemetery or cool cathedral crypt. It brought the living nearer to the dead; it left the dead more convincingly at peace and rest for ever.
Still bare-headed, the man crept forward and read—
SACRED
TO
THE MEMORY OF
CECIL GORTON GILES,
BORN AT HAMPSTEAD, LONDON,
May 15th, 1833,
DIED AT ARRAN DOWNS, N.S.W.,
January 4th, 1875.
"How sad!" murmured Fullarton. "I know of nothing in life like the pity of a young fellow cut off in all his sins and all his joy. And suddenly, too! I think this is the most touching tomb I have ever seen. Who was he; and how did it happen?"
Irralie was watching him with keen eyes.
"It was before our time," she said; "but he was a young fellow almost straight from his public school, like Mr. Hodding; only he came up here as storekeeper. His people had the memorial sent up from Melbourne. But it was by his own request that he was buried here; he lived some hours after it happened."
"But what did happen?"
"A bushranger shot him through the lungs."
He looked at her sharply; she was more than looking at him. Without a word he signified his readiness to return to the house; without a word she led the way.