Part 36

My mother followed me to my room. I think she, too, was a little angry, but she wouldn’t allow it to me, she only scolded me for stopping in the parlour so long.

“You ought to know better at your age,” she said. “It was wrong and foolish of you to stop when you saw they were getting excited.” My mother always glossed a disagreeable truth over to herself in that way. She never said, “Your father has had too much to drink,” though he had at least once a week, but it was always, “Your father is excited,” or “over-tired.” My poor mother; I have learned to pity her for those deceptions that deceived nobody, since I have grown older and wiser. Still, that night she was hard on me. Perhaps because she felt I had been hardly dealt with, and she had nobody else to vent her anger on. That is the way with some people.

“Don’t be silly, now, and cry,” she said, for I had flung myself down on my little bed, and was vainly trying to suppress the sobs that would come, “It’s not the least good in the world to cry. You shouldn’t have stopped so long. It’s entirely your own fault. You have nobody to blame but yourself. There, there, for heaven’s sake, child, don’t cry like that, they ‘ll have forgotten all about it to-morrow morning, when their heads are clear. I don’t know what was the matter with Dick Stanton, I never saw him so excited.”

I could have told her, but I held my peace, and she went away, and I cried myself to sleep.

But the matter was not forgotten next day, for my father told us, as if it were a huge joke, that he had bet me against a hundred pounds that Boatman could win the grass-fed steeplechase.

“So you see,” he said, laughing at the recollection, “it cuts both ways. If I lose I get my daughter comfortably settled in life, and if I win I ‘m at least 100L. to the good.”

I looked at my mother appealingly, but she only shook her head. My father was not a man whose whims could be lightly crossed, and she would not let me even try. Ashamed! oh, child! I was never so ashamed in my life! I hung my head all day and was afraid even to look the servant maid in the face. I felt she must despise a girl whose own father held her so lightly, And Paul, there ‘s where the hardest part of all came. How was I to tell my lover what my father had done? And how was I not to tell him, for I knew that Dick Stanton was not the man to keep such a wager to himself; he would bruit it abroad, if it were only for the sake of angering his rival. I was ashamed, ashamed, ashamed. It seemed to me I could never hold up my head again, and oh, how was I to meet Paul! I thought of nothing else for the next two days, and I had not a chance of seeing him or telling him, for posts were not in those days. And so, though he was only ten miles away, I had to wait two whole days before I saw him again. Then we met in the gully under the shade of the tree ferns. I remember now how the sunlight, coming through their great fronds, made a pattern as of dainty lace work on my white dress, and I studied that pattern carefully, and tried to make out what it reminded me of, though I heard quite plainly a man crushing through the bracken. That is just like a woman though, she longs and longs, and when at last the longed-for hour has come, she is frightened at her own temerity, and half wishes herself back again. I was not often afraid to meet Paul, but I was to-day, and I never looked up till I felt his arm around me and his dear voice in my ear.

“Why, my little girl, my little girl, what is the matter with my little girl?”

Then I told him, with my face hidden on his broad shoulder, I told him, and he was very angry. I knew he would be, but I had not realized how angry, and I was fairly frightened.

“Oh, Paul!” I could only gasp, “Oh, Paul!”

He swore an oath when he saw that I was trembling, and recovered himself a little. Just occasionally, I think, a woman likes the man she loves to be thoroughly angry, and if he does swear then she accepts it as a relief to her own feelings as well as his. So I did not mind Paul swearing, seeing that he was not given to that sort of thing. I felt he was entirely in sympathy with me, and was glad of it.

“What a fool I have been,” he said, “what an utter fool. I might have known there was something up when Stanton came to me so confoundedly civil all at once. He made me a sort of apology for his rudeness to you the other day, congratulated me on my good luck in winning you, and then finally suggested that I should ingratiate myself with your father by offering to ride Boatman for him in the grass-fed steeplechase, and of course--”

“You said ‘No!’ Oh, Paul! you said ‘No!’”

“No! darling, of course I said ‘Yse.’ What else could I say? And I wanted to please your father. How could I know--that--that--what the fellow was up to.”

“But now, Paul, you won’t ride him, now you do know, will you, my dearest?” And because I was afraid he would, I put my arms coaxingly round his neck and tried to draw his face down to mine. It did not want much trying, he was always ready enough to kiss me, my dear love, but he shook his head when I tried to dissuade him from riding Boatman.

“After all, sweetheart,” he said, “I really think I’m the proper person to ride the grey. If you’re to be the prize, well it can’t make any more talk, my riding, and, of course, it will give me a sort of right to you.”

“But--but--you mustn’t ride Boatman, you mustn’t--you mustn’t--you mustn’t. He baulks, and he runs down his fences, and he pulls, and--and--oh, my darling! you mustn’t ride Boatman!”

“What a list of crimes,” he said, smiling at my vehemence. “Still, I have ridden a horse or two in my life, and I’m inclined to think I ‘m equal to this one. He can beat anything, your father tells me, this side of the Dividing Range. I had a trial this morning, and I ‘m inclined to think the old gentleman hasn’t put too high a value on him. Boatman’s an out-and-outer, once one gets on good terms with him. And there ‘s the difficulty no one can manage him.”

I knew then it was little good my speaking; dearly as he loved me, nay, for my sake even, he was determined to ride Boatman. And after all, looked at from his point of view, I think he was right.

Stanton’s Vixen was the only horse in the running, the only one in the least likely to win, and if I was to be the prize, as my father insisted, not once but twenty times, then, indeed, it was very necessary that our horse should be well ridden, and I knew, and he knew, nobody could do that so well as Paul. Then I don’t know what dark presentiments filled my mind, but something told me he should not ride in that race, something told me all was not fair and above board, and with all my strength, with all my powers of persuasion, I tried to stop him. I coaxed him, and he only stroked my hair fondly, told me I had nice dark eyes and pretty hair, and said if I made myself so sweet and dear, it only showed him all the more clearly I must be won by fair means or foul. Are you smiling, Hope? Ah, my dear, it is three-and-thirty years ago, and the remembrance of days like those is all I have. Then I stormed and raged, every unkind term I could think of I heaped on him, and that is like a woman too, I think--when all other means fail she tries anger.

Did he think, I asked, I was so slight a thing as to be bought and sold in that manner? Did he think that my father could give me away in that way, as if I were a horse or a bullock; and then, of course, just as I would have given anything to be dignified and grand, I spoiled it all, for my voice failed, and I burst into tears.

He was good to me! oh, he was good to me! He would not give up his point, but he comforted me, and he was good. Once I had fairly started I could not stop; all the pent-up misery of the last three days seemed bound up in those tears. Heaven knows never had woman greater cause for tears, though I only dimly felt it then, and never since have I cried as I cried that day. Paul was frightened at first, I think, for he said nothing but, “Poor little girl, poor little girl,” and held me closer than ever, but he would not give in, and at last, tired out, I could only sob.

“Must you ride him, Paul, must you ride him?”

“I must, my darling. I really think it is the only thing to be done, both for your sake and my own. It was a brutal thing to do, but it was none of my doing, and when Boatman passes the winning post with Paul Griffith up, why that settles everything, doesn’t it, my sweet?”

Ah, yes, that would have settled everything; and as he stood there beside me, so tall and straight and strong, I made up my mind my tears were idle tears, and it would all come right in the end. And before I went home we were both more than half convinced that there was likely to be more good in my father’s foolish wager than at first sight appeared, and we two would turn it to our own advantage. Paul, indeed, was jubilant, once he had got over his anger. He had come to tell me he had got the offer of the managership of a station across the border in Riverina. He would take it at the end of the year; there was a house a lady could live in--and--well--would I go? After he had won--fairly won--the Yanyilla Steeplechase, should he go to my father and ask for the wife he had won?

And he was so confident, so happy, so certain of success, how could I fail to be happy and confident too? I went home that night with a far lighter heart than I had carried for many a long day. My mother saw the traces of tears, and asked what I had been crying for, but I kept my own counsel, for where was the good of enlightening her till I could tell her everything was settled? There are many in the world who can rejoice with them that rejoice, many, quite as many, thank God for it, who will weep with them that weep; but to very few is it given, I think, to share another’s anxiety sympathetically. Fear and hope, we hardly know which predominates, and the pain, which is of necessity the result, is best borne in silence and alone. And at first with me hope reigned supreme; but not for long though.

One morning, a few days after Paul and I had settled matters so very much to our own satisfaction, the boy who brought up the milkers fell sick, and Ben, who took his place, failed to find them. It was a thing of not infrequent occurrence, and I turned out as usual to help him. As usual, too, those wretched cows had turned up the creek and lost themselves in the gullies among the ranges to the south. As the grass grew dry-on the plains they would wander along the sheltered creek, where in patches it was still fresh and green. And this day they had wandered farther than usual. We rode on and on, our horses stumbling among the rough ground, till at last we heard the cracked old cow bell and knew they were found.

“Coming towards us too,” said Ben. “I wonder what started ‘em.”