Chapter XXX. Mudgeeurra.

Philiberta was awakened, from a sleep that would naturally have lasted much longer, by a sharp fire of stockwhips outside her window. With a feeling that morning had come too soon, she dragged herself up stiffly and looked about her. She was already dressed; for a nervous dread of discovery had impelled her to sleep in her clothes. Very tired and uncomfortable she felt; even a good splash in the bucket of water Antonio had put in the room for toilet purposes failed to recover her.

'You don't look very fresh,' said her employer, when she at last made her appearance in the yard, where two saddled horses stood waiting.

'Yesterday's riding has knocked me up a little,' she answered, with an effort to brighten up and look manly. 'But it is nothing—once in the saddle I shall soon warm to my work.'

'Well, there's no occasion for you to kill yourself over it at first,' said Mr. Fairweather. 'I've mapped you out an easy line for to-day. A fellow can't expect to be particularly bright just after an illness. Tonio—breakfast. While we are at it, Tempest, I'll just give you instructions. And afterwards, we will start out together,'—'Thanks.'

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The squatter was really very thoughtful; and Philiberta found her duties wonderfully easy for the first few days. After that, they were heavier; yet never beyond her strength, which increased day by day in that bright, pure, exhilarating atmosphere, until she was bravely well again. It was a curious venture, this of hers—one of the most curious in her whole strangely curious career; yet somehow she fell into the manner of it easily, and in many ways it suited her well. She gained in mental, as well as physical health and vigour; each day brought its own work and interest, that kept her thoughts from too much indwelling, and the monotony of the life did not for a long while weary or oppress her. Mr. Fairweather made a friend of her; Tonio conceived a special attachment for her, and though Tonio's affection may seem a matter of slight importance to the casual observer, it was indeed and in reality quite otherwise. For Tonio's loves and hatreds always exhibited themselves in his culinary attentions to their objects; and woe betide the unhappy wight whom Tonio did not love! With a marvellous talent for making things nice this ex-steward combined a perfectly diabolical capacity for inventing and compounding things nasty; and he never made any mistake in his dispensations either. The Tight thing always reached the right man; that is, the man for whom it was intended; and Mr. Fairweather told Philiberta that it had more than ones nearly cost him a funeral.

There were no women at Mudgeeburra homestead. Tonio was worth half a dozen of them, his master asserted; and everyone knows that when a man does turn with a will to matters domestic he can beat the other sex on its own ground. There is food for comfortable reflection in this fact, since women have taken nowadays to trying to beat the men on theirs.

Then Philiberta had a good horse, and took a passionate delight in those long gallops across country, when her old gift came back to her and found utterance to the measured beat of hoofs in rhythmical verse full of quaint philosophy and metaphor, of swift changes and mingled moods, but ever in that minor key of mournfulness in which all the music of her life was set. For two years she dwelt at Mudgeeburra, and in all that page 204time knew nought of any world beyond that wide, waste, brown-green world of Wimmera plains, save and except when fragments of news reached the station through wanderers. She wrote to Mrs. Hugill in the very beginning of her sojourn there, and followed up the first letter with several others, but never received any answer, and presently grew to think that this was for the best perhaps. The letters went astray in the post somehow, but she never knew that; nor that, when she had been about a year missing, her old true friend's mind had been startled out of mourning for her by a new sudden calamity; a stroke of paralysis that brought Mr. Hugill awfully near the grave, and made of him a pitiful imbecile wreck during the remnant of years left to him. Philiberta never knew aught of this. For two years she abode at Mudgeeburra, and then the old spirit of restlessness came over her, and she said she must go away.

Mr. Fairweather opposed her strenuously.

'I don't know how I shall get on without you, Tempest. I don't indeed. I've grown so used to you, you see, and we have got so into each other's ways, that it's like cutting a fellow's right hand off losing you. I think you ought to stand by me to the last now; I do, upon my soul.'

'Two years ago,' said Philiberta, 'you said that that period of time would see you away from this.'

'Yes, I know. Two good years, I said.'

'Well, have they not been good years, Mr. Fairweather?'

'Pretty good. I may say very good, Tempest But the fact is, I've been thinking what a lot of money a fellow can get through when he has nothing to do but spend it And so I don't want to leave off making it until I am quite sure I have enough for unlimited expenditure.'

'That desire might keep a man on a sheep-run for ever. I suppose it is that which keeps so many at it until, when they at last conclude they have enough, they find all possibility of enjoyment is taken out of them by toil and old age.'

'Oh, but I don't intend it to be that way with me, you know. Another year will see me through, to a certainty. Look here, page 205Tempest, if you will agree to stop, I'll make a solemn promise to clear out in a year.'

'I should be of no use now if I did stay, Mr. Fairweather. I have grown so tired and restless.'

'But I shouldn't care if you never turned a hand, Tempest. It is your company I want now.'

'Thanks; I ought to stay because of your goodness to me. But I cannot. A spirit of discontent has gotten the better of me, and nothing but roving will serve me now. Indeed, the wonder is, I think when I look back, that I have rested tranquil so long.'

'I am with you there. I wonder how any fellow can put in such an existence without the big stake in it that I have, and the hope of rich escape that buoys me up. Nothing less would hold me down to the desolate, dreary, soul-killing, mind-narrowing life, I assure you.'

'Oh, I do not feel quite like that about it,' said Philiberta. 'To me there is something very pleasant in the life one leads here. There is a grandeur in the vastness and loneliness of these great wide stretches of plain that gives one a new feeling of reverence every time one contemplates them.'

'Ah, it all depends on how you view the thing,' said Mr. Fairweather, heaving a sigh that might have been an anchor, judging by the effort it cost. 'I only know that I'd give all the plains God ever made for one sweet hawthorn-hedged lane in the old country, and think I'd made a cheerful swop. Ah well! I shall enjoy the dear old places all the better for the contrast when I do see them, I suppose. So you are bent on making tracks, then, Tempest?'

'Yes, it will be better.'

'When shall you start?'

'Early next week, if I may. Luckily that new hand seems able. He will fill my place.'

'No one can fill your place exactly, Tempest, but it's no use talking. I should like to make you a present of five thousand sheep.'

'What should I do with five thousand sheep?'

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'Sell them back to me at five shillings a head directly after the deed of gift. It would be a bargain for me, because they're worth fifteen with the clip, if they're worth a penny.'

Philiberta was touched.

'That is a pretty way of offering me a too generous gift, Mr. Fairweather,' she said, smiling, 'but I cannot be so greedy. The money I have earned at Mudgeeburra will keep me going prosperously until I am ready to earn more. But do not think me ungrateful.'

'Oh, let's go out for a spin across the country,' cried the squatter, with pretended petulance. 'Your pretty speeches will not go down with me in face of your heartless determination to desert.'

And so Philiberta quitted Mudgeeburra. With easy staging, and long halts at Maryborough, Talbot, Daylesford, Creswick, Ballarat, and so on, all down the road, she managed to make the journey to Melbourne a considerably lengthy holiday jaunt, and when at last she reached the great metropolis the Christmas pantomime season was almost over. She made her way into the stalls of the Royal within two hours of her arrival in town, and feasted her eyes upon the vision of Miss Fitzroy, arrayed as a queen, in apple-green satin robes, imitation ermine mantle and gold (paper) crown, and looking as youthful, as fascinating, as bewilderingly lovely as ever.

Next day she looked in at the hour of rehearsal. The choruses were practising. Signor Blankini and Mr. G. were there, and cast angry glances at her as an intruder. As she passed out again into the street she came suddenly face to face with Miss Fitzroy, who was leisurely entering the theatre. Philiberta lifted her hat and stood aside with a bow. Miss Fitzroy lifted her eyes and saw—a young bushman. She did not like young bushmen. They were awkwardly effusive when introduced; they always wore new trousers which showed the shop creases front and back of the legs, and, if closely approached, they always smelt unpleasantly of new leather and perspiration, owing to a habit of buying new boots directly they entered town and walking about too much.

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So Miss Fitzroy bent her head slightly, and with an air of easy graceful indifference, swept by.

Then Philiberta went back to her hotel and gravely inspected her own image in a mirror.

'I am altered,' she said, with an odd pang at her heart. 'No one will ever recognise me now. I wish she had, but since she has not, I will e'en keep to my breeches a little longer. Petticoats would hardly suit me now. Ah well! Time will not stand still for everybody, and I, for one, am not sorry. But I wish she had recognised me; I do wish that!'