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Philiberta: A Novel

Chapter XXXII. A Little Conversation

page 214

Chapter XXXII. A Little Conversation.

'I have come to say good-bye,' said Edgar Paget.

'What, so soon?'

'Soon! Do you know that I have been in town nearly three months now?'

'Only two to me. I have only known you two months.'

'Then I wasted that first month.'

'Fie! I thought there were to be no vain compliments between us two.'

'No vain ones—no insincere ones. If what I said just now is a compliment, it is at least clear from any taint of insincerity.'

'Worse and worse. Pray say no more, or we shall flounder into the very lowest depths of the mutual flattery mire. But I am sorry you are going."

'So am I, in one way. In many other ways I am glad. One gets rather weary of Melbourne dust and bustle, you know. One finds one's self panting on these hot days for sight and scent of the bush.'

'But the bush gets hot, too, does not it?'

'Perhaps it does. But I think one does not feel the heat so much.'

'My impression is that you feel it more, only habit inures you to it. You have not half the facilities for keeping yourself cool in the bush that you have in town. First, you have no ice.'

'True—and that is a drawback.'

'How do you cool your drinks there?'

'Well, I put mine underground. We have a pretty good cellar at Yoanderruk. But people in the bush don't trouble about those things generally.'

'Ouf! Fancy lukewarm water, or wine, or whatever it may be! Then those wooden houses that let the sun through as if they were no better than pasteboard.'

'Yes, they do get like ovens at short notice, I admit; but they cool off as rapidly as they heat up. I won't grant you that brick page 215houses, which take three days to get heated through and a week to get cool again, are any improvement upon wooden ones Unless you get the middle floor of a three-storied brick house, the heat at this time of year is insufferable.'

'That is true. This house of mine, for instance; a week's cold weather scarcely cools it once it gets hot through. All the same you cannot persuade me that life in the bush is in any way comparable with life in town for comfort and enjoyment. In town you can always get anything you want at a moment's notice, provided you have the money; up in the bush you have to wait until all desire for the thing, whatever it may be, is worn off.'

'But people are not so subject to sudden capricious desires in the bush; there is nothing to suggest them. One's time and thoughts are so taken up with work that is full of interest to anyone at all adapted to the life.'

'Ah well, I don't want to argue. Women almost invariably lose ground in cool argument. All that you can say about your beloved bush will not convince me that a human being has anything more than a vegetable existence there. Give me the city, where there is—

"Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least! Here, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect [gap — reason: invisiable]east, While up in the bush one lives, I maintain it no more than a beast."'

'Come, that's calling names, as the children say,' said Paget.

'When do you start, Mr. Paget?'—'To-morrow, early.'

'And when will you be down again?'

'Heaven only knows. You see, this has been such a long holiday, I shall scarcely be justified in taking another one soon. Not this year, at any rate.'

'Oh, what a long time!'

'There were three years between this trip and my last, Miss Fitzroy.'

'Yes, you told me. What marvellous strength of mind and power of self-denial you must possess!'

'I don't know about that. When a man has seen all that he page 216had in the world slipping through his fingers hopelessly, and then finds it all mysteriously and almost miraculously restored to him, he is apt to be very thankful and to do his level best to make his new hold a firm and fast one. Then it was rather a point of honour with me too.'

'How so?'

'Well, the least I could do in return for Myall and Box's faith and splendid generosity was to show myself not unworthy of it.'

'And you really believe then that those men did it'—'Yes.'

'I don't.'—'Why?'

'Oh, men of that stamp never do things in that way.'

'I think you are wrong. But suppose they did not do it, who did?'

'Some woman.'—'What!'

'Some woman who loved you. It is just what such a woman would do, and just the way she would do it.'

'Absurd!'—'I am sure of it.'

'Then, now I bring you to judgment, though in doing so I get off the track a little. Who was it said, only yesterday, in the presence of more than one witness, that no woman was ever capable of doing a noble action and keeping it a secret?'

'It was I said so. And without passing any comment upon the meanness of casting one's random speeches back in one's teeth in this manner, I will just say that I abide by my assertion, and ask you how you know that the woman who did this special noble action kept it a secret?'

'I don't know anything about it, and you are simply putting me in a fog. If you want me to understand that last lucid speech, you will have to repeat it all over again.'

'Which would be like learning a new part; so I must decline on the principle of never working in play-hours.'

'Miss Fitzroy,' said Paget, with sudden earnestness, 'if you are behind the scenes in this affair of that money, I pray you tell me. I would give ten years of my life to understand it all truly and beyond doubt.'

'Oh dear! And of what use would ten years of your life be page 217to me, pray? But you needn't get so dramatic about it,' said Miss Fitzroy, laughing. 'I know nothing whatever about the money, beyond what you have told me. My conclusions are derived entirely from that instinctive reasoning which is in all women, and which amounts to positive clairvoyance in some. I feel that that opportune godsend came to you from a woman.'

'And I feel,' he said, after pondering gravely for a few minutes, 'that such a thing is impossible. There is no woman living who could do so much for me. You see, you don't understand Myall and Box as I do. I grant that there is not one firm in a million who would do such a thing in such a way. But then it was the only way in which it could be done, and they knew that. Had they offered me the money as a loan, I should have refused it. I would never venture so large a portion of other men's substance, with the risk of losing it as I had lost my own. But they had known me all the years that I had been land-holding. They had seen me rise, and known that I had risen by sheer effort against many drawbacks. And they knew that what I had done once I could do again. They had more faith in me and hope for me than I had myself. They were bent on my risking one more chance in the game, and I have won. And the twelve thousand lies in the bank ready for them whenever they choose to confess and take it. They won't confess yet, because they probably think I am not quite out of the wood yet; but sooner or later they will own up to the whole thing. They are splendid fellows; and if you knew them as well as I, you would never doubt about their having managed it in the way they did. I am very grateful to them. It was such a grand thing to do for a man whose downhill gallop was so much his own fault. We both know the world pretty well, Miss Fitzroy, and have a fair gauge of average friendship and the sacrifices it will make. I don't know one man in the world that I would have appealed to for the sum necessary to fill the breach in my fortunes—for after all, one has no right to risk a friend's cargo in a ship that may sink; but if I had appealed to any, the chances are it would have been in vain; those who might have been willing would have not been able, and the able ones would page 218probably have lacked the will. I shall never forget Myall and Box. But for that help I don't know where I should be now. Probably shepherding the very sheep that had been my own.'

'You could never have done it,' said Miss Fitzroy. 'You would have died.'

'I should have prayed to die, I know. But men are made of tough material; it takes a good deal of adversity to kill them. I should have felt it doubly on the little fellow's account, you know. A poor cripple has but a bad chance in the world.'

'Don't talk of it! Poor little lad! How did his accident happen? You never told me.'

'Didn't I? He fell out of the window when he was a baby.'

(A man cannot bring himself to utter evil about his wife, however true and cruel it may be.)

'Poor boy! Is he like you? I should dearly like to see him.'

'One of these days you must pay Yoanderruk a visit,' said Pager, vaguely, whereat Miss Fitzroy took sudden affront.

'One of these days!' she repeated to herself scornfully; with all her defiance of society and its broad distinctions, she was painfully sensitive to slights. 'Like all the rest!' she murmured very bitterly. 'Like all the rest! I am well enough to pass an hour with, to make an outside friend of, but to introduce to his wife!—out of the question. Oh, Pariah Madge, what a fool you are to care!'

'A penny for your thoughts,' said Paget, smiling a little confusedly from thoughts of his own.

'They are not worth the sum, even if I were inclined to trade,' said Miss Fitzroy, sharply.

'Have I vexed you?' he inquired, in surprise and concern.

'Not at all.'—'You look as if I had.'

'And I say that you have not. Is not someone coming up the path?'

'Yes,' replied Paget, who was sitting near the window. 'It is young Hugill. I had better be off.'

'And why, pray?'

'Oh, because I had,' said Paget, laughing. 'Women never require a more definite reason than that, do they? One word page 219before I go, Miss Fitzroy. Don't be hard on young Hugill. He is in desperate earnest about you.'

'With true masculine earnestness, I suppose, that lasts an hour—a week—a day.'

'No, it is worse—or better—than that with him. Take care.' 'Of myself? I always do. That advice is superfluous. Herself is the only thing such a woman as I is likely to take care of.'

'You are turning bitter. But I meant the boy.'

'Mr. Hugill? Pray don't harass yourself about him, Mr. Paget. I intend to be very good to him. I intend to marry him.'

The words were scarcely uttered when Leslie Hugill entered, with a scowling hauteur of salutation to Mr. Paget that would have made the fortune of a bandit chief on the stage.