Part 34

Why, Hope, you’re smiling at my foolishness, but isn’t that the way every woman feels when she’s in love; and I ‘m in love still, after three and thirty years, God help me, and a woman in the main is always the same, whether her hair is golden, or whether it ‘s grey and she hides it under a cap.

But this isn’t telling you my story, is it, child?

Not that there’s much to tell. You know Yanyilla. You know what a station was like in the old days. They have been described over and over again. But Yanyilla was always a nice place. A hundred and eighty miles from Melbourne is a good way even now in these railway days, and it was much further when we had to do the whole journey by Cobb’s coach. Oh, we were very much out of the world, and at first I used to feel lonely. My father--well you know pretty well what kind of a man your grandfather was, so it’s no use my trying to gloss over his character--and your grandmother, ah, my poor mother, I was always fond of my mother, but she had a hard life, and it made her fretful and not much of a companion for a young girl. She thought the world was a hard place for a woman to live in, and the sooner I found it out and indulged in no vain hopes the better for me. I thought then, rather vaguely to be sure, that she was wrong, and I know it now. But she is dead long, long ago, and perhaps she too knows it. Then there was my brother Ben, your father, Hope, he was always a dear good boy, but he was so much younger than me, I don’t suppose he ever thoroughly understood it all.

The homestead was just on the slope where the hills ran down into the plain country. Away to the west and north stretched the dull grey plains far as the eye could see, and behind us to the east and south were the ranges; dull and grey too, I used to think when first I went there, but I changed my mind afterwards. When the sun shone he transformed all things, and the sun shone very often in those days--he does so still maybe, if only I could see with the same eyes--and I loved those ranges. I liked to steal away on a hot day into the deep fern gullies, where the tall green tree-ferns were high over my head, and the dainty maidenhair grew among the rocks and stones at my feet. And someone else loved those gullies too--it’s all part of the story, dear, the same old story which comes to every woman at least once in her life.

The boundary between Yanyilla and Telowie was among those ranges, and Paul Griffith was the overseer at Telowie. I met him once or twice at musters at our place, and then we met again once or twice by accident in the gullies, where he was looking for stray cattle and I was gathering ferns. It was only once or twice it was by accident, afterwards it was by design. I can’t tell you now exactly how we made the appointments without putting it into so many words; but you are a girl, I dare say you will understand thoroughly. Ah! he was so good-looking, my Paul, so tall and fair and strong, and he had such kind blue eyes. Ah dear, ah dear, how different my life might have been!

Well it went on and on all through the months of August and September, and each time we parted the parting grew harder, and each time we met it was--I can’t tell you--just heaven to me, I think. Then one day--shall I ever forget it?--he told me that he loved me, but he told me too how poor he was, far too poor to ask my father for me; for though we were very poor ourselves, my mother had a way of always saying that never should her daughter be as badly off as she had been, so he knew and I knew it was hopeless to think of our being engaged. He said he ought not to see me again, and he would go away; but I cried then, I could not help it, the world seemed such a dreary place without him. Then--it was my fault, I suppose it generally is the woman’s fault--he took me in his arms and called me his little girl, and kissed me again and again. He ought not to have kissed me if we were to part, he ought not. You know the old couplet:

“Take hands and part with laughter, Touch lips and part with tears.”

And so it was with us, but it was not his fault I loved him, I loved him with all my heart, and I wanted to be kissed, and those kisses have cost me--no matter what they have cost me--I know now they were worth it.

But we could not make up our minds to part I was young and so was he, and first I made him tell me he loved me better than anything on earth, and then I laughed and said if it was only his poverty that stood between us, I would wait for him all my life. I wondered afterwards at my boldness--it did seem terribly bold, but there was nothing else to be done--it seemed the only thing, I believe it was the only thing, as I should have found it so utterly impossible to take my mother into my confidence, and so you see, my dear, we two embarked on that most foolish of all things, a secret engagement. But the fault was not his, it was mine entirely. He wanted to go and tell my father all about it; it would be better, he said, to be open and above board, and he didn’t think my father would mind much; but I wouldn’t let him.

I can excuse myself even now, for I was young, and I felt I could not stand my mother’s perpetual moan. She would have spoiled my Eden with her prognostications of possible evil. We met in the nearest gully whenever we had the chance, and after all it was not so bad. Now I look back on those two months of spring as the very happiest of my life. If anything went wrong at home, and things did go wrong very often, for my father was sure to be drunk once a week, and my mother’s misery made me unhappy, I always consoled myself with the reflection that Paul would understand, that Paul would pity and comfort me. And he never failed me, not once, my darling, not once.

Then there came upon me a new and unexpected trouble, one I might have foreseen had I been a little older and known something more of the world’s ways. Stanton of Telowie owned all the country for miles back, and consequently was a well-to-do man. I do not think he was a very reputable man, though he was my father’s great friend and boon companion. My mother, usually so hard on men who drank ever so little, and, as she said, led my father astray, would never blame Dick Stanton. It was for my sake he did it, she said, and I don’t know now whether she was right or not; he sold out and went to England thirty years ago, and I have never heard of him since. But I do know Paul Griffith, his overseer, hated him with a bitter hatred, and what Paul did I did. I was not a bad-looking little girl, and he may probably have meant to be kind, but it was not his kindness I wanted. Like many another man in those days, he wanted a wife, and this my mother dinned into my unwilling ears morning, noon, and night.

“But, mother,” I said at last, driven to bay, “how do you know he wants me?”

“My dear,” she answered, “do you think I have lived all these years in the world for nothing? What do you suppose the man comes here twice a week for?”

“To see father,” I answered hotly, “and I hate him for it. Why can’t he let us alone? He comes, and it’s always ‘Another bottle, Hope; open another bottle for Mr. Stanton.’ I hate him, mother, I hate him.”

“Oh, Hope,” she went on unheeding, “it would be such a great thing for you. He’s worth at least three thousand a year, and he’s head over heels in love with you. Think what it’d be, child, never to be worried about money again,” and she sighed; my poor mother, she had been worried about every conceivable thing, and more especially this weary money, all her life, and she never expected to be free from care again.

“Think what it ‘d be like to be tied to a brute like Dick Stanton all your life!” But she only shook her head and said again, “he was so much in love with me I could do what I liked with him;” and then she added, that if I did not know what was good for me, she, my mother, did, and she would take care my interests did not suffer. It was her duty to look after them as my mother, and she would. Oh! that little word “duty”! It seems to me all sorts of petty cruelties are committed in the name of “duty.” And after that Dick Stanton never came to the house, but I, more unwilling than ever, was sent for to entertain him. Even now I don’t know whether he really cared, or whether it was simply that he wanted a wife, and I was the only decent-looking girl within reach. And I hated him for it with all my heart, and at last, as things got worse, for my mother had told him that my coldness was all shyness on my part, I was so miserable and perplexed I cried my heart out in the gully, and Paul came and found me and got the whole truth out of me. How angry he was! I can see him now walking up and down talking to himself, and I dried my eyes and began to think things were not half so bad, since I had thrown all my cares on him.

“But Paul,” I said, with an attempt at a smile, “you know after all it’s very foolish of me to make such a fuss. They can’t make me marry a man I don’t want to. And I hate him, I hate him. You just don’t know how I hate him.”

“My darling,” he said, sitting down on a log and drawing me towards him, “how am I to help you? I can’t have my little sweetheart’s life worried out of her in this way. Hope, I had better go to your father and tell him all about it.”

“And that would end it all effectually,” I sobbed. “Mother would say I was too young to know my own mind. She would say once you were away I would forget you, and she would get Dick Stanton to--to--”

“Give me the sack,” said Paul bitterly. “Who knows; perhaps it might be best for you. I ‘m not bringing you much happiness, dear.”

“Yes, yes, yes; what should I do without you, Paul? I wish I had not told you! You know--you must know--you’re all the happiness I have in my life.”

“I ‘m sure,” he said, kissing me fondly, “you make all the brightness in mine. But what am I to do to help you?”

“Just nothing. As I said before, they must give me a say in the matter before they marry me right out.”

“My colonial oath! Here ‘s a nice deceitful piece of baggage! Upon my word, Miss Hope! So you ‘re the shy little girl who’s quite overcome if a fellow so much as looks at her!”

He was standing on the rise of the hill close above us, and how he had come there without our seeing I ‘m sure I don’t know, except that lovers always are caught sooner or later, and I suppose it was our fate. I ‘d rather almost anybody than Dick Stanton had caught us though; for he was a vindictive little wretch, I always felt, and whether he cared for me or not he would not like to find himself cut out by his own overseer. We two sprang apart guiltily, and I saw my lover’s face grow red and angry, but not as dark and threatening as the one above me.

“So Mr. Griffith,” said our unwelcome third party, “it’s you who ‘ve been poaching on my manor. What the devil do you mean by it, sir?”

Paul, I saw, was too angry to trust himself to speak, only he waved his hand to me as if he would have sent me home; but I was too frightened to go. I was not twenty remember, and it seemed to me the two men were on the brink of a violent quarrel, and vaguely I hoped my presence might restrain them. I was wrong, I know now; I ought to have gone, and perhaps--who can tell? But there--all the misery of our lives is just summed up in thinking whether we might not have acted differently. And so I took no notice of Paul, though I saw he wanted me gone, and I stayed. Then Dick Stanton, seeing Paul did not speak, for the moment lost all control of himself, and raged and stormed and used such language as I had never heard in my life before, and I was well accustomed to bad language; for my father, when he had pretty well got to the bottom of the brandy bottle, didn’t care much what he said, but he never spoke as Dick Stanton did; oh, never. He was a gentleman at least, my father. Paul stood it just for a minute; I think he was too dumb-founded to speak, and then he made one step forward and caught the other man by the neck--he was so tall and strong, my sweetheart--and shook him as if he had been a child. It was Dick Stanton’s turn to look surprised then, and at first he swore harder than ever; then all at once he looked up in Paul’s face and burst out laughing.

“What the devil are we quarrelling about, Griffith?” he said, and his voice sounded amiable, though I never would have trusted him.