Chapter X ‘I Love You’
‘The bird of life is singing on the bough
His two eternal notes of “I and Thou.”’
It was after tea, and the long shadows of the dusk had fallen so gently, so tenderly, that even Dunks’ selection had a beauty of its own.
Mortimer sat on the verandah and talked war to Mr. Cameron till his very soul loathed the Transvaal. Then he was captured by Bart, and forced into the dining-room to explain something in the Town and Country Journal, and give his opinion on the merits of Johnson’s Grass.
And when he went outside again, Roly and Floss hung upon his arms and begged and begged him to ‘come with us a bit.’
At eight o’clock he broke away from them, and stumbled through the dark passage to the kitchen regions to seek Miss Browne.
But here only an oil-lamp flickered in the breeze; even Lizzie was away from her post, having gone before tea to walk to Wilgandra, in the urgent need of a little pleasant human intercourse, ere she began another grey week.
There was a door open near by, and glancing in Morty saw Miss Browne, seated at her cleared dressing-table so busily writing and so surrounded by little papers and letters he came to a vague conclusion that she was ‘literary.’
‘Miss Browne,’ he called imploringly.
She laid down her pen and hastened to the door to him.
He seized both her hands, he pressed them, he wrung them as he stood, labouring with his excitement.
‘Miss Browne,’ he said, ‘will you help me? You must help—oh, do not refuse—she has gone down the garden alone—I think she is leaning on the gate. I must go to her. I must go to her. Will you keep them back—all the others—could you get them in a room and turn the key—how can I tell her if they follow me like this?’
‘Tell her—who—what—why?’ said the astonished Miss Browne.
‘I love her,’ said the man; ‘I love her with all my soul—I must tell her; you will help me?’
His face looked quite white; there was a moisture on his forehead, his eager voice shook.
Miss Browne was crying; she had taken one of his big hands and was stroking it.
‘Oh, my dear, my dear!’ she said. ‘How beautiful, how very beautiful! Oh, my love, how sweet—oh, how sweet, my love!’
‘You will help?’ he said. ‘You will keep those little beggars away?’
‘Leave it to me,’ she said; ‘you go to her, down in the garden, and the dusk is here, and the moon beginning to rise! How sweet, how beautiful! And she has on a white dress! Don’t trouble about anything, my love—just go out to her.’ The happy tears were gushing from her eyes.
‘What a good sort you are!’ he said, and wrung her hand, and patted her shoulder, then went plunging out into the sweet darkness to tell his love.
He found her where the wattles grew thickest, leaning on the fence, her flower-face turned to the young rising moon.
‘How did you know I was here?’ she said.
‘I knew,’ he answered, and a long silence fell. ‘What are you thinking of?’ he whispered.
‘I don’t—know,’ she said, and a strange little sob shook in her throat.
His arm sprang round her.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I love you—I do love you! Dearest, dearest, I love you! Do love me, darling—I love you, I love you so!’
Hermie was trembling like the little leaves around them—too surprised, too stricken with the newness of the situation even to slip out of his arms. The pleased young moon smiled down at them, the leaves whispered the news all along the bush, an exquisite perfume of flowers and trees and freshening grass rose up to them. How sweet something was—the clasp about her waist, the kisses that had rained upon her cheeks, the eager, beautiful words that still were beating in her ears!
‘Oh, I don’t understand, I don’t understand,’ said the excited girl, and burst into strange tears, and tried to move from his arms, and put a startled hand to her cheeks, to feel what difference those kisses had made.
‘Did I frighten you—did I frighten you, my darling, my little girl?’ he said. ‘See there, don’t tremble, I will take my arm away. It is too big and rough, isn’t it? There, there, I won’t even kiss you; let me hold your hand, there. You have only to understand that I love you, that I have always loved you—ever since you were a tiny thing of twelve, and I used to ride this way just for the pleasure of watching you. You were like no other child here, so slender and sweet and white and pink, and all that shining hair hanging round you. I think I wanted you always. I wanted to pick you up and put you on the saddle in front of me and ride away with you—away and away right out of the world. You will let me, darling? You will try to love me a little? You will be my own little wife?’
Wife! One of the Daly girls had just been married to a boundary rider near. Hermie had seen the lonely place where they were to live together with no one else to break the monotony.
Wife! All those dull, uninteresting women who came to call in Wilgandra were wives, all those dull, horrid men in Wilgandra were their husbands.
Be married; she, Hermie Cameron, like the girls in Miss Browne’s books! Perhaps it might not be so very bad—they all seemed to look forward to it.
But to Mortimer Stevenson! Oh no, none of them ever married any one like that, the men there were all officers, penniless young artists and authors, or at least earls. Most of them had proud black eyes and cynical smiles, and spoke darkly of their youth. Or else they were debonair young men with laughing blue eyes and Saxon curly hair.
Mortimer! She had actually forgotten it was only Mortimer speaking all this time, Mortimer Stevenson, who wore red and blue painful ties, and grew red if she spoke to him, and knocked chairs over in his clumsiness, and had never been anywhere farther than Sydney, and thought Wilgandra and his father’s station the nicest places in the world.
A cloud came over the happy moon, the leaves hung sad and still; from somewhere far away came the piteous wail of the curlew.
Hermie freed her hand and found her voice.
‘This is really ridiculous,’ she said petulantly. ‘I suppose you are in fun.’
‘In fun!’ he echoed dully.
‘Yes, you can’t really be serious. Think what a fearfully long time we have known each other! I’d as soon think of being married to Bart, or Bill Daly.’
He winced at Daly—big, coarse, uneducated bushman.
‘If I waited a long time, couldn’t you grow to love me?’ he said. ‘I could stop doing anything you don’t like; I—I would go through the University like James and Walter did, if you liked.’
The exceeding pain in his voice touched the girl’s awakening heart.
‘Forgive me, Morty,’ she said, ‘it must seem very horrid of me. I didn’t understand myself at first——’
‘Perhaps—perhaps——’ he began hopefully.
‘No, I am sure, quite, quite sure I could never love you,’ she said decidedly. ‘I shall never marry, I have quite made up my mind. There is no one I could ever care for enough.’
‘Have you anything particularly against me?’ persisted Mortimer. ‘I’d alter anything; you don’t know how I would try.’ His voice choked.
She could not instance his ties, his clumsy length of limb, his habit of furious blushing.
‘You make it very hard for me,’ she said. ‘I—I wish you would go home; I want to go to bed.’
‘Forgive me,’ he said humbly. ‘Forgive me; you have been very good and patient with me. I will go at once.’
Hermie looked for him to move. He took a step away from her—a step back—a step away. The sad moon came out and showed her his blurred miserable eyes, his working mouth.
‘Oh, I am sorry—sorry!’ she cried.
‘May I kiss you—just once?’ he whispered.
She stood still, her head drooped down, till he lifted it, very gently, very tenderly, and bent his head and put his quivering lips on hers.
Her hand went gently round his neck a minute.
‘Poor Morty, dear Morty!’ she said. Her breath came warm on his cheek one second, and a feather kiss, a sweet little sorry kiss that made his heart like bursting, was laid there.
The next second she had slipped away into the darkness, and he was stumbling to find his horse and carry his misery as far as he might.
Hermie went a circuitous route round the back of the cottage, so anxious was she to reach her bedroom without having her hot cheeks challenged by the sharp eyes of Floss or Roly. And there on the back verandah, where they never went, the two little figures were sitting, one at either end with their backs against a post.
‘It’s time you were in bed,’ were the natural words that sprang to her lips, when she found she might not elude them.
Two laughs bubbled up. ‘We’re not going to bed for hours,’ they said; ‘we’re having a ’speriment.’
‘A what?’ said Hermie.
‘See this,’ said Floss, standing up, ‘we’re both tied to the posts with the clothes-line. Such larks! Brownie said she wanted to try a ’speriment on us, and see if we could sit still for two hours. If we do, she’s going to give me her little gold brooch, and Roly the green heart out of her work-box.’
‘We can swop them at school for usefuller things,’ interpolated Roly.
‘The best is,’ giggled Floss, ‘we like sitting still, we’d been running about all day. And she forgot to tell us not to speak to each other, and she didn’t put us too far to play knuckle-bones. I’ve wonned Roly three times.’
But Hermie had gone in, an impatient doubt as to Miss Browne’s sanity crossing her mind.
She found Bart climbing out of the dining-room window.
‘Did you go doing that?’ he demanded.
‘What?’ said Hermie.
‘Lock the door while I was reading.’
‘Of course I didn’t,’ Hermie said impatiently.
‘It’s that young beggar Roly,’ Bart said; ‘I’ll have to take it out of him for this. He’d even jammed the window, and I’d no end or work to get it open. I want to go and help father.’
‘Where is he?’ Hermie said.
‘He’s washing the paint-brushes in the cowshed,’ said Bart. ‘Isn’t it lucky? Morty says there are about three dozen tins of red paint at his place, no earthly good to any one, and he’s going to send them down in the morning, and dad and I are going to give all the place a coat of paint before mother comes.’
Hermie went to her bedroom, shut the door, and sat down by the window, glad of the sheltering darkness.
But two or three feet away, at the next window, sat Miss Browne, also in the dark, Miss Browne, now crying happily into her wet handkerchief, now looking at the moon and whispering, ‘Love, love, how beautiful, how beautiful!’
The sound of footsteps, however, in the adjoining room brought her swiftly outside Hermie’s window.
‘Hermie!’ she cried in a breathless tone at the sight of the girl sitting there in her white dress. ‘That cannot be you?’
‘Yes, it is,’ said Hermie; ‘why shouldn’t it be?’
‘Oh, my love, my love! It is hardly half an hour. I thought two hours, at the least. My dear, my love, no one disturbed you? Oh, my love, don’t tell me Roly and Floss got loose?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Hermie said shortly, ‘but I can’t help thinking it is rather ridiculous to keep those children sitting there. They ought to be in bed. I am going to bed.’
‘To bed—my love—my dear!’ gasped Miss Browne. ‘Where is he?’
‘Where is who?’ asked Hermie impatiently.
‘M-M-Mr. M-Mortimer Stevenson,’ said Miss Browne in a whisper.
Hermie had her secret to hide.
‘What should I know about Mr. Stevenson?’ she said coldly. ‘I presume he has gone home.’
Gone home! All could not have gone well and happily in half an hour! Miss Browne grew quite pale.
Such a sweet half-hour it had been for her! For twenty minutes of it she had thought of nothing but the white light of love that was going to flood Hermie’s life. But during the last ten minutes there had come to her a thought of the material advantages that would accrue to the girl—Stevenson would have four or five thousand a year at his father’s death. It had been very sweet to sit and think of dear little flower-faced Hermie lifted for ever above the sordid cares of wretched housekeeping.
‘My love—my dear,’ she faltered, ‘I—I am old enough to be your mother. Could you trust me—won’t you——’
But Hermie, with the blind young eyes of a girl, saw nothing outside her window but tiresome Miss Browne, crying a little into her handkerchief (she often cried), stammering out sentences that seemed to have no beginning or end (her sentences seldom had), twisting her fingers about (she never kept them still).
This, when the girl’s excited heart wanted to be away from all voices, all eyes, and go over the strange sensations, with the moon alone for witness.
‘Miss Browne,’ she said, making a strong effort not to speak unkindly, ‘I have a headache to-night, and want to be alone. Would you be so kind as to keep what you have to say till morning, and tell me then?’
Nothing could have been swifter than the way Miss Browne melted away into the darkness.