The Crooked Stick Or Pollies's Probation Part 14

'That's rather old-fas.h.i.+oned bush pleasantry,' said Pollie; 'he must have been very young. How did the horse like it?'

'I don't know, but he did it cleverly. I expected to see both their necks broken and the smash general; but all came right by a miracle, and the fellow won his bet--twenty pounds. I heard him make it.'

'And was that the only style of society you encountered?' queried Pollie, with a disdainful and disapproving air. 'You could have enjoyed that at Wannonbah.'

'Permit me. I did not enjoy it; I only observed it. But there were really some nice fellows, who had just come over from Queensland--Lord Harrowsby's younger brother, and Th.o.r.esby, a Suffolk man, whose cousin I was quartered with once. They had just been investing in a sugar plantation, and were going to make a fortune in three years. One of the local men asked us all out to his place. Drove four-in-hand, too. We had a famous week of it. I never expected to enjoy it so much. Lived in a really good style.'

'Wonderful, when you come to think of it,' said the girl saucily, 'that any one should have a decent establishment in Australia! But you'll make discoveries by degrees.'

'I'm afraid you're laughing at me,' he said gravely. 'I am not of a sanguine disposition, I own. I didn't expect _anything_ when I came here. But perhaps I shall have fewer mistakes to retract than if I had been imaginative.'

'I am not laughing at you; indeed, I think you wonderfully wise and prudent for the time you have been out. By and by you will know everything that we do ourselves. But what always entertains me about you recent importations is the mild air of surprise with which you regard the smallest evidence that the men that preceded you, and built up these great cities, this wonderful country, were of much the same birth, breeding, and social status as ourselves.'

'But many were not, surely? That must be admitted.'

'The majority were; the leaders, certainly, in every branch of civilisation: how else would the miraculous progress have been effected?

The rank and file were much like other people--good, bad, and indifferent.'

Once more the old life was resumed at Corindah. Once more the succession of easy tasks and simple pleasures obtained. The walks by the river-side--the rides and drives--the history readings--the French and Italian lessons--the peaceful mornings when tranquil Nature seemed a.s.sured against change, disturbance, or decay--the dreamy afternoons--the long, quiet evenings divided between books, music, and an occasional game of whist for Mrs. Devereux's entertainment when Harold Atherstone came over. As the weeks glided on, Pollie could not believe that she had ever left Corindah, that the voyages, the travel, the strange people and incidents were unrealities, fas.h.i.+oned of 'such stuff as dreams are made on.'

She had resumed her quasi-friendly relations with Bertram Devereux, who apparently had not noticed the alteration of her feelings towards him.

With his accustomed patience he had accepted the position, and merely set himself to overcome her doubts and maidenly scruples. In this attempt his knowledge of the subject a.s.sured him that he would ultimately succeed.

Harold Atherstone certainly came pretty frequently. He was not a man to be lightly regarded as a rival. 'What a stir he would have made in some places that I have known!' thought Devereux to himself. 'That _grand seigneur_ air of his, the height, the stalwart frame, his Indian-chief sort of immobility, joined to his consummate skill in all accomplishments of an athletic nature. Here,' he said to himself, with a sardonic smile, 'he is thrown away. The type is more common than with us, and he has the fatal drawback, in the eyes of our _prima donna_, of too early, too familiar, too brotherly an intimacy. She knows him like a book. With the perverse instinct of her s.e.x, she despises the well-read, dog's-eared volume, full of high thought and purpose, and longs for a newer work--inferior, possibly, as it may be, but with uncut pages. I shall win this game, I foresee, as I win the odd trick at our little whist tournaments--by superior science, even against better cards. Well, what then? As the husband of the handsomest woman of her year, with Corindah for her ultimate dowry, and a handsome allowance, I suppose one could live in London. Ah! would it not be life again? Not this vegetable existence, which one can stand for a year or two, but dull, dismal, _a faire peur_, after a while.'

Had the intensity of the feeling which Bertram Devereux had reached reacted upon the girl's sensitive organisation? No alteration of manner, or one so trifling that it could hardly be perceived, had taken place.

Still, like the swimmer on the smoothly gliding tide which leads to the whirlpool or the rapids, she felt conscious of a hidden force, which became daily more difficult to a.n.a.lyse or resist.

Had any one told her, upon the arrival of Bertram Devereux at Corindah, that her heart would eventually be forced to surrender at his summons, the proud beauty would have laughed the prophecy to scorn. But now, when with pensive brow and thoughtful air she searched its recesses, and examined the feelings which held possession of her waking thoughts, she could not deny that the image of the stranger had no rival to fear, no refusal to dread, in the fateful hour which would decide two destinies.

But in the intervals of distrust which disturbed her mind--and there were many--one question invariably a.s.serted prominence, one dark spirit of doubt refused to be laid. She knew that Bertram Devereux had lived much in society in early life; had been of the _haute volee_ of the great world both in England and abroad. Was it possible that he should have been a recognised figure in those luxurious, exclusive circles without having given his heart to some one of the fascinating personages which there abounded?

Were it so, would it be possible that he had pledged himself, unalterably, irrevocably, to return from Australia and fulfil his promise within a certain time? Englishmen often did this, and when time had altered their ideas, or loosened the bonds which in good faith should have remained inflexible, married some girl that took their fancy in the colonies, and quietly settled down for life in the land of their adoption. But such a lover should not be hers, she told herself. He who for gold or light love forfeited his pledged word was a forsworn coward.

She could not for an instant brook the idea of being mentally compared with the former occupant of a heart every pulse of which should beat for her and her alone. She knew that every thought, every aspiration, every fibre of her being would be blended in the existence of her lover.

Proud, sensitive, unconsciously exacting, even jealous, the fierce blood she inherited from Brian Devereux boiled up as she thought of the indignity, the degradation of sharing in such a sense the affections of any living man. She did not rise from her long musing fit on that still, dreamy, silent eve without telling herself, that in the probable case of Bertram Devereux declaring himself, he should satisfy her fully upon this point, or hand of hers should never clasp his before the altar.

While the great hope which arises in every human breast was perfecting itself--that flower which blooms so fair, or pales and fades untimely, was daily ripening, tending towards fragrance and fruition--the little world of West Logan was apparently stationary. The vast green prairies were commencing to grow yellow before the warm breezes of the early summer; the days were lengthening; the dark-blue gold-fretted nights were shorter; the dawn followed midnight with lesser interval. All things appeared calm and changeless as a summer sea. The stormy ways of evil deeds, crime, and death seemed as improbable as messages from another planet.

Strangers came and went, but they were princ.i.p.ally camp-followers of the great armies of sheep which from time to time, being mobilised for various reasons, marched from one end of the territory to the other, or to the borders of other colonies. But one evening a shabbily-dressed man, on a rough-looking horse, rode into the stable-yard, where he encountered Mr. Gateward, whom he engaged in serious conversation.

'Who in the world can that be?' asked Bertram irritably, from his seat in the verandah. A book of Rossetti's poems was before him. He had been reading aloud to his cousin. Her work lay unheeded on the Pembroke table. 'Another of those confounded sheep "reporters"! I wish they would stay at home for a time. I am sure Gateward and I are sick of the very sight of travelling sheep.'

'Wait till I take a peep at him,' said the girl. 'He does not look altogether like a sheep man.'

Pollie walked to the end of the verandah, and peeping over the lemon hedge which bounded the garden, examined the stranger with a searching and practised eye.

'His bit and stirrups are rusty. He has an old slouched felt hat, and only one spur. He stoops as he sits in his saddle. Mr. Gateward is looking very serious. What do you make of all that?' she said archly, as she came back to her companion.

'Working overseer--thirty or forty thousand sheep--to be at our boundary gate to-night. Wants to go the inner track, where Gateward is saving the gra.s.s. No wonder he looks serious.'

'It would not be a bad guess if matters ran in their ordinary groove; but I see signs of a change, with danger signals ahead. That quiet-looking man is Miles Herne, one of the smartest sergeants in the police force. He has been on the track of the two bushrangers. I saw him two or three years ago, and I don't forget people that interest me. He is here to get information, or to give some that may be important.'

'That man a sergeant of police!' exclaimed Bertram, surprised out of his usual equanimity. 'You must surely be mistaken, or he is a consummate artist in disguise.'

'It is the man himself,' persisted she. 'We Australians have sharp eyes--savage attributes, you know. He has captured many a cattle-stealer, they say, in that una.s.suming bush attire. There is a good deal of talent among our New South Wales troopers. There was Senior-Constable Ross, who used to be told off to catch sly grog-sellers. His get-up was wonderful. Once, Harold told me, he went as one of a pair of blackfellows, and quite outdid the real aboriginal, securing a conviction too. Go down and see the sergeant. I am uneasy about his errand.'

CHAPTER IX

Before the young man made his way into the stable-yard, Pollie meanwhile retreating to her mother's room, the strange horseman had hung up his steed to a post and followed Mr. Gateward to the barracks, in the sitting-room of which unpretending but useful adjunct to the mansion proper Mr. Devereux found them in earnest conclave. They stopped speaking when he entered. The stranger looked searchingly at the young Englishman, who decided, after encountering the keen grey eye and marking the resolute face and wiry, athletic frame, that no ordinary man was before him.

Gateward, after looking round carefully, began in a tone of solemnity and mysterious import. 'Mr. Devereux, this is Sergeant Herne, stationed at Warban, but now on duty out of uniform, for reasons as you'll understand. He's on the track of the men we've heard on.' The stranger saluted in military style, and Bertram instinctively returned the courtesy in like form. 'And bad news he've heard, I'm afraid,' continued Mr. Gateward.

'The sergeant will tell us himself,' interposed Bertram. 'These bushrangers are in the neighbourhood? We heard that before.'

'It's a trifle worse than that, sir,' said the disguised man-at-arms, unbuckling a leather belt and placing a navy revolver, previously concealed by his coat, upon the table. 'Unless my information is false--and I have every reason to think otherwise--the pair of them, the Doctor and Billy Mossthorne, will be here to-night.'

'Here! good G.o.d!' said Bertram. 'Why the deuce should they come here?

Fancy having to fight the scoundrels with ladies in the house! Can't we meet them and have it out on the road?'

'It's impossible to say which way they'll come in,' said the sergeant thoughtfully. 'Fellows like them don't travel on roads. They know every inch of the bush from here to the Lachlan, and can go as straight as a blackfellow by night as well as by day. They're hid in the Warrambong scrubs now, it's a good way off, and my men have run them close. But by hard riding they'll get here by midnight, expecting every one in the place to be sound asleep.'

'But what do they want here?'

'It's hard to know what the Doctor wants. He's one of the biggest scoundrels unhanged. But what Bill Mossthorne is after is a couple of your best horses, and as much clothes and grub as'll see them across the Queensland border. He was hurt in the scuffle, and walking in his leg-irons for forty-eight hours gave him a terrible shaking. The Doctor had to carry him on his back part of the last day, I was told.'

'Then we shan't see them until they turn up here?'

'Not if I'm laid on properly,' said the hunter of men. 'Between twelve and one o'clock to-night, if we've luck, they'll drop into as pretty a trap as ever they were in in their lives.'

'The Doctor, as they call that scoundrel--haven't I heard something about him before?' said Bertram musingly. 'It must have been long ago, but I seem to have an indistinct memory concerning him.'

The two others looked meaningly at each other. Then Mr. Gateward spoke.

'Perhaps it will be as well to keep it from the missis, sir. It might shake her a deal, thinkin' on it. But the Doctor's the man that shot her husband thirteen years ago this very month. The Captain hit him hard the same time, and he's been heard to say he'll leave his mark on Corindah yet.'

Bertram Devereux set his teeth, and a smile, such as men wear in the moment of hard and bitter resolve, pa.s.sed slowly over his face, while his eyes lightened and gleamed, as if he saw his dearest hope realised.

'By G.o.d! you don't tell me so?' he said, in so changed a voice that both of the men s.h.i.+fted position and gazed upon him as he spoke. 'What an astonis.h.i.+ng coincidence! I wouldn't have missed this night for a fortune. To think, too, that I was so nearly off to that back station this morning, Gateward, wasn't I? And now, sergeant, you are our commanding officer. You have the _carte du pays_. What is the order of the day, or rather of the night?'

The sergeant sat himself composedly down on the substantial table which took up the centre of the apartment, and in a businesslike tone of calculation and arrangement unfolded his plan of action.

'You see, I had only one trooper with me,' he said. 'The rest are round Warrambong Mountains. I sent him with a note to Maroobil. Mr. Atherstone will be here to-night. That will be plenty. We don't want a mob round the place. Some one might show out too soon, and then they wouldn't come. If they're let alone, and come in as I say, we'll get them "to rights." There'll be some close shooting, but they can't get away if we've a rag of luck.'