Chapter VIII. 'Not my Other Half.'

As may readily have been premised by the reader, Leslie Hugill fell in love with Philiberta.

Mrs. Hugill was the first to know it, and half jealously, half page 55gladly watched the progress of the affair. I suppose every mother begins at a very early period to wonder what sort of people her children's wives and husbands will be, and to indulge in ideals. This mother was no exception, but her ideal had been in no degree like Philiberta. The woman of her dreams was a gentle creature, soft-skinned and fair, lacking will and individuality, in principle a tender, worshipful echo of her husband, in all things and at all times submissive and subservient. It was rather odd that Mrs. Hugill should have created an ideal so utterly different from herself, but perhaps she really did not know how different it was. I never knew another woman with such a talent for believing that her husband was her ruler while all the time she was his. When she saw that her son was in love with Philiberta, she felt half afraid, for about Philiberta there was a very positive individuality and intensity of character, a concentrativeness, a capacity for feeling and for doing good or evil which placed her beyond the rank of ordinary women.

Mrs. Hugill's ideal daughter-in-law would have been a thing to fondle and caress and take care of; Philiberta was a woman to talk to and admire. Mrs. Hugill's ideal would have made her a happy grandmother, giving over the little ones to her so that she might live over again her own dear early mother-days; but Philiberta! Well, Mrs. Hugill's imagination always stopped short before it got as far as Philiberta's children. But she loved the girl, and was very glad at the prospect of their closer relationship. That Philiberta might refuse Leslie never occurred to her. A mother so seldom does realize the possibility beforehand of a girl's refusing to marry her son.

Poor Leslie's symptoms developed themselves in the usual way, the chief being a sickly tendency to the lachrymose in literature and music. Throughout the winter Philiberta's health kept her indoors a great deal, but in the spring of the year she went out daily, riding and driving with her youthful cavalier. Spring, Australian spring, is as favourable to the growth of young love as to that of young chickens and young vegetables. Only a sudden sharp frost quite suffices some-page 56times to nip off the chickens and the vegetables beyond hope of resuscitation, and fortunately young love is often as delicate, and may be slain with a single snub. I say fortunately, because, seeing that nine times out of ten first love is a disappointment, it tends to the happiness of mankind generally that the passion and its effects should be transient.

There was something in Leslies face that morning that told his mother that the day was to be an important one to at least three people. Mr. Hugill did not count in an affair like this.

The mother plucked them both a tiny spray of bloom from the great wattle-tree that grew in front of the house and lit up the entire district with its glow of perfumed gold, and bound each spray to a bit of delicate maiden-hair from her fern box on the veranda, and then bade them God-speed, and enjoined Leslie not to let Berta sit down in that damp cave if he valued his own life. He muttered some sentimentality about the relative value of his life and hers, and then they cantered gaily away.

They returned white the sun was yet high in the heavens, and at first sight of their faces Mrs. Hugill knew that her son page 57had been rejected. Her heart ached for the lad's disappointment, so plainly revealed in his aspect, and burned with sudden angry resentment against the cause. She actually hated Philiberta that night.

Mr. Hugill was away on one of his district tours, so when Leslie, after a miserable pretence of taking tea, went out into the garden, the mother had the girl quite at her mercy. Her heart was full of bitter speech all ready to well out in angry utterance; but Philiberta lifted a pair of sad eyes to hers, and the two women looked at each other in dead silence for a few seconds, and then both burst out crying.

'I am so sorry and miserable,' sobbed the younger.

I hope Leslie did not—did not make himself too disagreeable,' said the other. And that was the end of her quarrel-someness.

'I would not have pained him for the world,' said Philiberta, and by this time they were sitting hand-in-hand together on the sofa.

'You could not say "Yes" to him, Berta?'

'Oh no.'

'And why?'

'Why? I don't know. I never thought why. But I couldn't.'

'Now I begin to see how it is, dear, Leslie has been too precipitate. He has been in love with you for a long time, and I have known it; and neither of us has thought that, while we were getting every day more familiar with the idea, it had probably never entered your head. And now, when it is all out, it comes with a shock to you. We have blundered sadly, Leslie and I.'

Philiberta said nothing.

'It is exactly what we might have expected,' continued Mrs. Hugill cheerfully, as her mind expanded to the idea that the case was not hopeless yet.' Berta, my love, just forget all about this at once, and let everything be as it was before. I will take care that Leslie does not startle you again.'

'But, Mrs. Hugill, can everything be as it was before?'

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'Well, perhaps not quite, dear. Nor would one quite wish that. But you will get to see the whole thing in a different light presently, and then——'

'Then you think I will marry Leslie?'

'Yes. Don't you think so too, Berta?'

'No. I know that I never shall.'

'Ah, child! don't be so positive.'

'But I feel it so positively.'

'You are very cruel, Berta.'

'No, don't say that—dear, kind friend, don't say that. My being here at all is cruel, but I never meant it; I never knew.'

'That is just it,' said Mrs. Hugill; 'you didn't know, you don't know now. Wait a little.'

'I will go away to-morrow,' said the girl hysterically. 'It will be better for me to go away. I would have gone long ago if I had thought——'

'Berta, Berta, don't! this is heart-breaking. Hush! stop crying, and I will never mention the thing again, Leslie shall go away.'

'That would be worse than the rest. Why should Leslie be driven from his home by me?'

'But he won't. A change will do him good. He has not been away anywhere for ever so long; and his friends up at Bungalonga have been pestering him for months to go there for a little kangaroo-hunting. He shall go to-morrow.'

'No, Mrs. Hugill——'

'I say he shall; and you must stay, Berta. I cannot spare you both, and whether you go or stay, Leslie shall start for Bungalonga to-morrow. Don't go and leave me alone, Berta Don't!'

Philiberta said she would stay then, and Mrs. Hugill told herself that everything would come right after all.

Then the girl, sad and disquieted yet, went out into the cool fair evening, and presently walked down through the garden to the small farmyard beyond. This farm was Leslie's hobby. He was a born farmer, and management of live stock was his speciality. Every animal on the ground knew his voice and page 59would respond thereto; every fowl and duck and pigeon would flutter towards him when he approached their dominion. It was pleasant to see how every dumb thing loved him and acknowledged his rule.

Now, as Philiberta approached, the cackling and chuckling, the lowing, the whinnying, and the grunting proclaimed to her the master's presence among his subjects; so, instead of entering the farmyard, she only drew cautiously near to the fence until presently she could see the interior. There was Leslie, sitting on a stump in the middle of the yard in an attitude of deep dejection, and there was a cow resting her comely white face on one of his shoulders. And there was a saucy young colt lipping his neck on the other side; while two short-legged pigs stood directly in front and made remarks to each other about the tardiness of supper. Close to his knee, and as tall as it, stood a handsome Cochin China cock, breeched with yellow feathers down to its very toes, and gazing in quaint one-eyed fashion up into the troubled face, as one having sympathy through similar experience.

Philiberta could not help smiling at this absurdity; at the same time big tears stood in her eyes and dimmed the picture. 'Everything loves him, poor fellow,' she murmured. 'And no wonder. He is handsome and brave, and gentle and noble, but—oh, I wish he had not loved me!'

He must have detected the faint flutter of Philiberta's window-blind and known she was watching him, for he leaned back in his saddle and kissed his hand to the window twice, thrice; then Pompo uttered a howl of wild delight, and the horse a responsive whinny, and then they were gone. And Philiberta got back into bed, for the morning was nippingly frosty, and she was not permitted to rise very early yet.

'He is gone,' said Mrs. Hugill, when the two met at breakfast. 'He is gone,' she said, just as carelessly as if her heart was not aching over his departure.

'Yes,' said Philiberta.

'And we will have ever such a good time together till he comes back,'

'No, we shall not,' said Philiberta. 'We shall all miss him too much. Everything will miss him.'

Mrs. Hugill's face grew glad The girl was relenting, she said.

'Ah, well,' she observed, still with assumed carelessness;' of course the farm will miss him, but you must look after it for him, Berta. The things won't miss him much then.'

She did look after the farm for him, and all the dumb things took to her as kindly as if she had always been their keeper—whether because theirs was merely cupboard love after all, or because Philiberta had the same subtle power of commanding the attachment of animals that Leslie had; who shall say?

Leslie was to return in a month; and the time seemed both lengthy and brief to those who waited. On the last day but two Philiberta spoke.

'My dear friend, my dear kind friend, I am going to pain you very much.'

Mrs. Hugill turned very pale, and bit her lips to keep them from trembling.

'Out with it,' she said at last, a taint of bitterness in her voice. 'Trouble is never lessened by sweet preliminaries. Out with it.'

'Mrs. Hugill, I am going away to-morrow.'

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'Why?'

'Because Leslie is coming home.'

'Then there is no hope?'

Philiberta did not speak, but her eyes said that there was no hope.

'And what is there about Leslie that offends you, then, Berta?' asked Mrs. Hugill, face and voice full of proud resentment. 'What is there in him to make you hate and despise him so?'

'Mrs. Hugill, how can you say such cruel things to me?'

'Nay, how can you do such cruel things to me, Berta?'

'I cannot help it. I cannot help it, dear.'

'Why cannot you? Why won't you marry Leslie?'

'Mrs. Hugill, I have tried to change myself all this month. And I cannot. Do you remember a long talk we had once, when you said that every woman had her other half somewhere in the world?'

'Well?'

'Well, Leslie—I love him very dearly, Mrs. Hugill, but he is not my other half.'

Then Mrs. Hugill knew that further discussion would be useless.

'We maun e'en thole't,' she said presently, using a phrase familiar to her through an old Scotch servant, 'Poor Leslie! Poor me! But we maun e'en thole't.'

'So I will go away before he comes back,' said Philiberta, with a sigh half of relief, half of regret.

'And where are you going? And what are you going to do with yourself?' inquired Mrs. Hugill, looking at her steadily, and trying not to think of the disappointment.

'Oh, I have thought it all out and made a plan,' said the girl. 'You know how ignorant I am of things that girls ought to learn. I never knew myself how uncivilized I was till I came to live here.'

'You shouldn't say that, Berta; it is like casting a reflection on——'

'But they used to say it too,' said the girl hastily. 'They page 62knew; but I was so obstinate always about everything. And they never could thwart me.'

'Well, what about your plan?' said Mrs. Hugill, because she knew Berta could not talk in this way without breaking down. 'About your plan?'

'Yes; I am going to Melbourne to school.'

'To school?'

'Yes. I will study night and day, for two years; and then I will come back here, and build a fine house next to yours, and live happily ever afterwards, if—if you will let me.'

'I shall always let you be happy, child, if I can,' said Mrs. Hugill, kissing her. 'But two years! that will make you twenty-one. I don't think you will come back, Berta.'

'Why?'

'Why? Why, because two years are like two centuries to girls of your age; and no one can compute the "infinite possibilities" concealed in them till they are past. But, child, I cannot justify myself in letting you go away to live two years among strangers.'

'I am not afraid. Hundreds of people do it. Girls have to go out and earn their own living among strangers often.'

'That is true, poor things. And it is not so bad as that with you, thank goodness and a good man. But, Berta, I shall be sorely anxious about you.'

'I will write to you every day if you like. And you know, dear friend, that it is better for me to go.'

'Yes, I believe it is better for Leslie, poor lad. Well, God bless you, Berta. You have crept far into my heart somehow. I never would have believed that I could love and forgive any woman that refused Leslie. Dear child, you won't forget us?'

'Dearest friend, how could I—ever?'