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Chapter LII. An Old Friend and a New Interest.

In the beginning of long hot December Edgar Paget came home. The soft green verdure he had left behind him at Yoanderruk was fast changing to a dingy brown; the creek was narrowing perceptibly; the earth seemed to languish in anticipation of her yearly recurring trial of dry heat.

Little Teddy limped out first to meet his father; Janet came next; then old Rob and Colin, and all the servants.

Philiberta was watching in Mrs. Paget's room, so she did not see Edgar until she was called to join him at dinner.

'Well, Tempest.'

'Well, Mr. Paget.'

'Everything going well in there?'

'As well as we can expect, you know. No change for the better.'

'I did not suppose there would be. I have stayed longed away than I meant to at first But town is a temptation after a long duty-spell up here; one is glad to rest on one's oars lazily after pulling up stream for so many months.'

'Yes, it is pleasant to drift with the tide sometimes,' said Philiberta.

'If it were not that one can do that now and then, Tempest, I don't think many of us would manage to get through the allotted span of years. These occasional lapses, these little points of restful anchorage, give one nerve for the work of living. But for them I, for one, would be glad of the final drifting into eternity.'

'This rest of yours seems to have made you melancholy,' said Philiberta, smiling. 'Pray, was town dull, or is it sorrow for leaving it that has started you in this vein? Did you meet Mr. Fairweather down there?'

'No, he has gone to England at last. He won't stop, though. He will be back here within a year, and ready to squat again, page 337or I am no prophet. When a man has had a realm of his own out here, under a broad sunny sky, for a few years, he can't stand the cramped space and muddy atmosphere of the old country long. But I had a good laugh at the club the other day, Tempest, over a fellow who had come out here to squat, but was clearing out again within a year. "The old place for me," said he hilariously; "the old place, where there's plenty of mud, and clouds and snow, and slush. None of your infernal perpetual sunshine for me."'

'Well, our last winter might have satisfied him, I think,' said Philiberta, laughing.

'Yes; but he didn't get it. He was on the Queensland side, and they had no winter over there this year, I believe. How did you get on with the weaners, Tempest?'

Philiberta took this as a signal to give an account of her stewardship, and proceeded to that forthwith.

'It was a wonderful relief to me to know you were here in my absence, Tempest. Last year nearly everything went wrong while I was away. The weaners were mismanaged; two shepherds cleared out, and a third hung himself in his hut doorway. I was a good five hundred out of pocket by that trip beside having no end of bother. I won't say anything in the way of thanks, my boy, because thanks are only words, after all. But I won't forget you.'

'What a hot day this has been!' observed Philiberta, looking a little embarrassed.

'Awfully hot,' said Paget, accepting the change of subject 'I don't think I ever felt the heat in my life before as I felt it to-day crossing that bit of plain from Tarragut.'

'Tarragut! Have you been there, then? I thought you came straight in from Eominda to-day.'

'No. I left Eominda for home yesterday, and met with an adventure a few miles out An odd kind of adventure, Tempest, that set me thinking of what some one has said about the world's being so small a place that it was impossible to move in it without knocking up against some one you know. Well, some time ago, I must tell you, when I was in town page 338after a three years' close spell up here, I made acquaintance with——'

With whom Philiberta was not fated to hear, for Janet entered with little Teddy, and the thread of conversation was broken, and the adventure was never told to her after all. But this is what it was and how it happened: When Paget was about ten miles on the homeward road from Eominda, he came upon a ghastly group of three people, a dead horse, and a smashed buggy. One of the three people was a woman, as dead as the horse apparently. Of the two men, Paget promptly recognised one as John Wilks, of Tarragut.

'What on earth have you been doing?' cried Paget, alighting quickly from his own trap.

'Thank God you have come!' exclaimed Wilks, lifting a horror-stricken face to Paget's. 'She's dead, I do believe. What in the name of heaven am I to do?'

Paget leaned over his shoulder to look. 'Good God!' he said, 'it is Madge Fitzroy.' And so it was. She had arrived at Eominda that very day, on her way to Tarragut, whither she was bound for a long visit to the squatter's wife. Mrs. Wilks (between us) had been a leading personage for two seasons at the Theatre Royal, before she married Mr. Wilks. It was there she met Miss Fitzroy, and the two being different in style and talent, struck up a friendship which, strange to say, became permanent. Madge Fitzroy was not long returned from England, and feeling a little lonely in Sydney, where she intended to live in future, she wrote to her old friend offering to fulfil an ancient promise by visiting Tarragut. Of course Mrs. Wilks was delighted. Station life was intolerably dull to the little woman. Nothing but love ever kept her there, she was wont to say, kissing her husband's plain round affectionate face as she said it The event of a visit from charming Madge Fitzroy seemed almost too delightful a thing to contemplate. All kinds of preparations were made, and on the appointed day John Wilks and Mrs. Wilks's young brother, Tom Biglow, set off together in high spirits and the new high-seated buggy behind a new high-spirited horse.

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'Now, be very careful with that brute,' cried Mrs. Wilks, as they were starting.

'My dear, did you ever know me to be anything else? Did I ever have an accident in my life?'

He never had had previously; but then everyone who knew him knew that 'it was more good luck than good management' that kept him safe. Well, he tried the whip on that horse just outside of Eominda as they were coming home, and the horse forthwith bolted, and then, being pulled up with a powerful curb, set to work to kick the buggy to pieces. This he managed very successfully, but he got so much mixed up with the wreck—for John Wilks still clung to the reins—that he ran one slender shaft right into his side, and that was the end of him. When Wilks looked round he saw Miss Fitzroy lying a crushed still heap in the dusty road, blood oozing from an ugly wound in one fair temple. Biglow, like himself, was unhurt, save a harmless scratch or two. The two were at their wits' end when Paget came up with them.

'What had we better do?' cried Wilks piteously.

'Take her back to Eominda in my trap at once,' replied Paget promptly, 'and get the doctor.'

Very gently and tenderly they lifted her into the buggy, and Paget held her in his arms that she might not be jolted, and wiped the blood and dust from her white face. He had seen that face often before, but the perfect loveliness of it—now as it rested against his shoulder—deathlike, still, with half-closed eyes and slightly parted lips—was a revelation to him.

When they got back to Eominda and hunted up Eominda's one representative of the medical faculty, that authority decided at once on the sufferer's removal to Tarragut.

'I will go with you,' he said; 'this may be a lengthy affair, or she may get over it quickly. In any case she had better be with friends than roughing it here. I can ride over to her every day.' (Tarragut lay much nearer to the township than did Yoanderruk.)

So, still insensible, except that now and then pain roused her into the utterance of a piteous little moan, Madge Fitzroy was page 340borne as tenderly as could be to Tarragut, Paget's buggy being fitted up with a maltress and pillows, and driven at funeral pace by Tom Biglow; Paget, Wilks, and the doctor rode behind.

'What on earth shall I say to Annie? What on earth will Annie say to me?' groaned poor Wilks, with a monotony that caused Paget to turn round upon him.

'Damn it, man!' he cried, 'is that all you can think about? What can anything that anyone says matter if you have killed that girl? And what can anything matter so long as you haven't?'

So Wilks held his peace after that, and in due time the sad little procession reached Tarragut. Mrs. Wilks said nothing to her husband after all, so he need not have been so apprehensive. Once realizing what had happened, that good and clever little woman had eyes and ears for none and nought beyond her friend. Afterwards, when the accident was only a thing of memory, Mrs. Wilks used to take pride in telling people that the doctor had said that Madge would never have recovered but for Mrs. Wilks's skilful care. I wonder if there was ever a case of recovery from illness or accident in which some doctor did not say a similar thing to some one. Nevertheless, there is not the slightest doubt that Madge owed her swift healing to Mrs. Wilks in a considerable degree.

When first her eyes opened in slow returning consciousness, their glance fell full on Edgar Paget's face.

'You!' she exclaimed, her voice full of energy, considering her condition. 'Am I at your place? I hope not. If I am, I will go away at once.' Then she fainted again, and the doctor banished everyone but Mrs. Wilks.

Long afterwards Paget asked Miss Fitzroy what she meant by that 'opening address.' She coloured and hesitated, and said she did not want to tell.

'But I wish you would,' he persisted; 'it has puzzled me so. Why should you object to being at my place? I think you ought in fairness to explain.'

'Then I will,' she said, turning upon him defiantly. 'Perhaps you have forgotten, Mr. Paget, a conversation we once had page 341in Melbourne, when you gave me a cleverly vague invitation to your place. I have always remembered it, though there was nothing in it that should have surprised or vexed me, seeing that I was used to it.'

'What can you mean? Used to what?'

'To being held an ineligible partie to introduce to men's wives and feminine belongings.'

He looked at her long and steadily. She laughed, or tried to.. It was not a successful laugh.

'And did you really think,' said he presently, 'that I considered you an ineligible partie to introduce to my home?'

'What else could I think?'

'Well, anything but that. Words are not easy to a man in a case like this. The more one says the more one may offend. Dealing with a sensitive woman is like trying to play the harp with clumsy fingers that have never touched the instrument before—some delicate chord is bound to suffer. But you might have thought better of me than that, Miss Fitzroy.'

'How should I? My conclusion was a very natural one.'

'And a very unjust one.'

'Ah, well, it is only fair to have a little injustice on our side to counterbalance the extra amount on yours. But now we will let the subject drop, please.'

All this was said on an occasion long subsequent to the accident, for at the time of that mishap, and for many days after, Madge Fitzroy was in no condition for a discussion like the above.

Philiberta, then, never heard of this affair, because when Paget commenced its narration he was interrupted, and afterwards it either never occurred to him to mention it, or else deliberate reflection decided him to keep it to himself. But, within a week of his return to Yoanderruk, he visited Tarragut again, and stayed there two days. For many days after this he was restless and preoccupied in manner, and then again he rode over to Tarragut. It was unusual for him to visit his neighbours like this, and Janet remarked upon it. Philiberta heeded the matter very little, save in feeling the emptiness of the hours of his absence.

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Once he spoke to Philiberta about his lost love. 'That woman's memory will always be the dearest thing on earth to me, Tempest,' he said. 'It is no sin to say so now she is dead. She would have been more to me than all the world beside if I had gained her. I killed her, but her grave is in my heart. There can be only one well-loved woman in such a lifetime as mine, and Berta was that woman.'

Any other listener might have noticed that he spoke assertively, as if trying to convince himself, as if striving against a new conviction. But to Philiberta every word was a grain of happiness, to be treasured up and lived upon night and day.