A Bride from the Bush (7 page)

‘'Twas merry ‘mid the black-woods when we spied the station roofs,
To wheel the wild scrub cattle at the yard,
With a running fire of stock-whips and a fiery run of hoofs,
Oh, the hardest day was never then too hard!
That's how it goes, I think. We used sometimes to remember it as we rode home, dog-tired. But it was sheep with us, not cattle,
more's the pity. Why, what's wrong, Alfred? Have you seen a ghost?'

‘No. But you fairly amaze me, darling. I'd no idea you knew any poetry. What is it?'

‘Gordon—mean to say you've never heard of him? Adam Lindsay Gordon! You must have heard of him, out there. Everybody knows him in the Bush. Why, I've heard shearers, and hawkers, and swagmen spouting him by the yard! He was our Australian poet, and you never had one to beat him. Father says so. Father says he is as good as Shakespeare.'

Alfred made no contradiction, for a simple reason: he had not listened to her last sentences; he was thinking how well she hit off the Bush, and how nicely she quoted poetry. He was silent for some minutes. Then he said earnestly:—

‘I wish, my darling, that you would sometimes talk to my mother like that!'

Gladys returned from the antipodes in a flash. ‘I shall never talk to any of your people any more about Australia!' And, by her tone, she meant it.

‘Why not?'

‘Because they don't like it, Alfred; I see they don't, though I never see it so clearly as when it's all over and too late. Yet why should they hate it so? Why should it annoy them? I've nothing else to talk about, and I should have thought they'd like to hear of another country. I know I liked to hear all about England from you, Alfred!'

Faint though it was, the reproach in her voice cut him to the heart. Yet his moment had come. He had decided, it is true, to say nothing at all; but then there had been no opening, and here was one such as might never come again.

‘Gladdie,' he began, with great tenderness, ‘don't be hurt, but I'm going to tell you what may have something to do with it. You know, you are apt to get—I won't say excited—but perhaps a little too enthusiastic, when you talk of the Bush. Quite right—and no wonder, I say—but then, here in England, somehow, they very seldom seem to get enthusiastic. Then, again—I think—perhaps—you say things that are all right out there, but sound odd in our ridiculous ears. For we are an abominable, insular nation of humbugs—' began poor Alfred with a tremendous burst of indignation, fearing that he had said too much, and making a floundering effort to get out of what he had said. But his wife cut him short.

The colour had mounted to her olive cheeks. Denseness, at all events, was not among her failings—when she kept calm.

She was sufficiently calm now. ‘I see what you mean, and I shall certainly say no more about Australia. “I like a man that is well-bred!” Do you remember how Daft Larry used to wag his head and say that whenever he saw you? “You're not one of the low sort,” he used to go on; and how we did laugh! But I've been thinking, Alfred, that he couldn't have said the same about me, if I'd been a man. And—and that's at the bottom of it all!' She smiled, but her smile was sad.

‘You are offended, Gladys?'

‘Not a bit. Only I seem to understand.'

‘You don't understand! And that isn't at the bottom of it!'

‘Very well, then, it isn't. So stop frowning like that this instant. I'd no idea you looked so well when you were fierce. I shall make you fierce often now. Come, you stupid boy! I shall learn in time. How do you know I'm not learning already? Come away; we've had enough of the water-hole, I think.'

She took his arm, and together they struck across to Ham Gate. But Alfred was silent and moody; and the Bride knew why.

‘Dear old Alfred,' she said at last, pressing his arm with her hand; ‘I know I shall get on well with all your people, in time.'

‘All of them, Gladdie?'

‘At any rate, all but Granville.'

‘Still not Gran! I was afraid of it.'

‘No; I shall never care much about Gran. I can't help it, really I can't. He is everlastingly sneering, and he thinks himself so much smarter than he is. Then he enjoys it when I make a fool of myself; I see he does; and—oh, I can't bear him!'

A pugnacious expression came into Alfred's face, but passed over, and left it only stern.

‘Yes,' he said, ‘I know his infernal manner; but, when he sneers, it's only to show what a superior sort of fellow he is; he doesn't mean anything by it. The truth is, I fear he's becoming a bit of a snob; but at least he's a far better fellow than you think; there really isn't a better fellow going. Take my word for it, and for Heaven's sake avoid words with him; will you promise me this much, Gladdie?'

‘Very well—though I have once or twice thought there'd be a row between us, and though I do think what he'd hear from me would do him all the good in the world. But I promise. And I promise, too, not to gas about Australia, to any of them for a whole week. So there.'

They walked on, almost in silence, until Ham Common was crossed and they had reached the middle of the delightful green. And here—with the old-fashioned houses on three sides of them, and the avenue of elms behind them and the most orthodox of village duck-ponds at their feet—Gladys stopped short, and fairly burst into raptures.

‘But,' said Alfred, as soon as he could get a word in, which was not immediately, ‘you go on as though this was the first real, genuine English village you'd seen; whereas nothing could be more entirely and typically English than Twickenham itself.'

‘Ah, but this seems miles and miles away from Twickenham, and all the other villages round about that I've seen. I think I would
rather live here, where it is so quiet and still, like a Bush township. I like Twickenham; but on one side there's nothing but people going up and down in boats, and on the other side the same thing, only coaches instead of boats. And I hate the sound of those coaches, with their jingle and rattle and horn-blowing; though I shouldn't hate it if I were on one.'

‘Would you so very much like to fizz around on a coach, then?'

‘Would I not!' said Gladys.

The first person they saw, on getting home, was Granville, who was lounging in the little veranda where they had taken tea on the afternoon of their arrival, smoking cigarettes over a book. It was the first volume of a novel, which he was scanning for review. He seemed disposed to be agreeable.

‘Gladys,' he said, ‘this book's about Australia; what's a “new chum,” please? I may as well know, as, so far, the hero's one.'

‘A “new chum,'” his sister-in-law answered him readily, ‘is some fellow newly out from home, who goes up the Bush; and he's generally a fool.'

‘Thank you,' said Granville; ‘the hero of this story answers in every particular to your definition.'

Granville went on with his skimming. On a slip of paper lying handy were the skeletons of some of the smart epigrammatic sentences with which the book would presently be pulverised. Husband and wife had gone through into the house, leaving him to his congenial task; when the Tempter, in humorous mood, put it into the head of his good friend Granville to call back the Bride for a moment's sport.

‘I say'—the young man assumed the air of the innocent interlocutor—‘is it true that every one out there wears a big black beard, and a red shirt, and jack-boots and revolvers?'

‘No, it is not; who says so?'

‘Well, this fellow gives me that impression. In point of fact, it always was my impression. Isn't it a fact, however, that most of your legislators (I meant to ask you this last night, but our friend the senator gave me no chance)—that most of your legislators are convicts?'

‘Does your book give you that impression too?' the Bride inquired coolly.

‘No; that's original, more or less.'

‘Then it's wrong, altogether. But, see here, Gran: you ought to go out there.'

‘Why, pray?'

‘You remember what I said a “new chum” was?'

‘Yes; among other things a fool.'

‘Very good. You ought to go out there, because there are the makings of such a splendid “new chum” in you. You're thrown away in England.'

Granville dropped his book and put up his eyeglass. But the Bride was gone. She had already overtaken her husband, and seized him by the arm.

‘Oh, Alfred,' she cried, ‘I have done it! I have broken my promise! I have had words with Gran! Oh, my poor boy—I'm beginning to make you wish to goodness you'd never seen me—I feel I am!'

All men may be vain, but the vanity of Granville Bligh was, so to speak, of a special brand. In the bandying of words (which, after all, was his profession) his vanity was not too easily satisfied by his own performances. This made him strong in attack, through setting up a high standard, of the kind; but it left his defence somewhat weak for want of practice. His war was always within the enemy's lines. He paid too much attention to his attack. Thus, though seldom touched by an adversary, when touched he was wounded; and, what was likely to militate against his professional chances, when wounded he was generally winged. His own skin was too thin; he had not yet learned to take without a twinge what he gave without a qualm: for a smart and aggressive young man he was simply absurdly sensitive.

But, though weaker in defence than might have been expected, Granville was no mean hand at retaliation. He neither forgot nor forgave; and he paid on old scores and new ones with the heavy interest demanded by his exorbitant vanity. Here again his vanity was very fastidious. First or last, by fair means or foul, Granville was to finish a winner. Until he did, his vanity and he were not on speaking terms.

There were occasions, of course, when he was not in a position either to riposte at once or to whet his blade and pray for the next merry meeting. Such cases occurred sometimes in court, when the bench would stand no nonsense, and brusquely said as much, if not rather more. Incredible as it may seem, however, Granville felt his impotency hardly less in the public streets, when he happened to be unusually well dressed and gutter-chaff rose to the occasion. In fact, probably the worst half-hour he ever spent in his life was one fine morning when unaccountable energy actuated him to walk to Richmond, and take the train there, instead of getting in at Twickenham; for, encountering a motley and interminable string of vehicles en route to Kempton Park, he ran a gauntlet of plebeian satire during that half-hour, such as he never entirely could forget.

To these abominable experiences, the Bride's piece of rudeness unrefined (which she had the bad taste to perpetrate at the very moment when he was being rude to her, but in a gentlemanlike way) was indeed a mere trifle; but Granville, it will now be seen, thought more of trifles than the ordinary rational animal; and this one completely altered his attitude towards Gladys.

If, hitherto, he had ridiculed her, delicately, to her face, and disparaged her—with less delicacy—behind her back, he had been merely pursuing a species of intellectual sport, without much malicious intent. He was not aware that he had ever made the poor thing uncomfortable. He had not inquired into that. He was only aware that he had more than once had his joke out of her, and enjoyed it, and felt pleased with himself. But his sentiment towards her was no longer so devoid of animosity. She had scored off him; he had felt it sufficiently at the moment; but he felt it much more when it had rankled a little. And he despised and detested himself for having been scored off, even without witnesses, by a creature so coarse and contemptible. He was too vain to satisfy himself with the comfortable, elastic, and deservedly popular principle that certain unpleasantnesses and certain unpleasant people are ‘beneath notice.' Nobody was beneath Granville's notice; he would have punished with his own boot the young blackguards of the gutter, could he have been sure of catching them, and equally sure of not being seen; and he punished Gladys in a fashion that precluded detection—even Gladys herself never knew that she was under the lash.

On the contrary, she ceased to dislike her brother-in-law. He was become more polite to her than he had ever been before; more affable and friendly in every way. Quite suddenly, they were brother and sister together.

‘How well those two get on!' Lady Bligh would whisper to her husband, during the solemn game of bezique which was an institution of their quieter evenings; and, indeed, the Bride and her brother-in-law had taken to talking and laughing a good deal in the twilight by the open window. But, sooner or later, Granville was sure to come over to the card-table with Gladys's latest story or saying, with which he would appear to be hugely amused: and the same he delighted to repeat in its original vernacular, and with its original slips of grammar, but with his own faultless accent—which emphasised those peculiarities, making Lady Bligh sigh sadly and Sir James look as though he did not hear. And Alfred was too well pleased that his wife had come to like Granville at last, to listen to what they were talking about; and the poor girl herself never once suspected the unkindness; far from it, indeed, for she liked Granville now.

‘I thought he would never forgive me for giving him that bit of my mind the other day; but you see, Alfred, it did him good; and now I like him better than I ever thought possible in this world. He's awfully good to me. And we take an interest in the same sort of things. Didn't you hear how interested he was in Bella's sweetheart at lunch to-day?'

Alfred turned away from the fresh bright face that was raised to his. He could not repress a frown.

‘I do wish you wouldn't call the girl Bella,' he said, with some irritation. ‘Her name's Bunn. Why don't you call her Bunn, dear? And nobody dreams of making talk about their maids' affairs, let alone their maids' young men, at the table. It's not the custom—not
in England.'