Part 2 (1/2)
Christina was awakened in the morning by the holland blind flapping against her open window. It was a soft, insinuating sound, that awoke one gradually, and to Christina both the cause and the awakening itself seemed incredibly familiar. So had she lain and listened in the past, as each day broke in her brain. When she opened her eyes the shadow of the sash wriggled on the blind as it flapped, a blade of suns.h.i.+ne lay under the door that opened upon the veranda, and neither sight was new to her.
The same sheets of the _Australasian_ with which her own hands had once lined the room, for want of a conventional wallpaper, lined it still; the same area of printed matter was in focus from the pillow, and she actually remembered an advertis.e.m.e.nt that caught her eye. It used to catch her eye two years before. Thus it became difficult to believe in those two years; and it was very pleasant to disbelieve in them. More than pleasant Christina found it to lie where she was, hearing the old noises (the horses were run up before she rose), seeing the old things, and dreaming that the last two years were themselves a dream. Her life as it stood was a much less charming composition than several possible arrangements of the same material, impossible now. This is not strange, but it was a little strange that neither sweet impossibilities nor bitter actualities fascinated her much; for so many good girls are morbidly introspective. As for Christina, let it be clearly and early understood that she was neither an introspective girl by nature nor a particularly good one from any point of view. She was not in the habit of looking back; but to look back on the old days here at the station without thinking of later days was like reading an uneven book for the second time, leaving out the poor part.
In making, but still more in closing that gap in her life (as you close a table after taking out a leaf) she was immensely helped by the a.s.sociations of the present moment. They breathed of the remote past only; their breath was sweet and invigorating. Her affection for Wallandoon was no affectation; she loved it as she loved no other place.
And if, as she dressed, her thoughts dwelt more on the young manager of the station than on the station itself, that only ill.u.s.trates the difference between an a.s.sociation and an a.s.sociate. There is human interest in the one, but it does not follow that Tiny Luttrell was immoderately interested in Jack Swift. Even to herself she denied that she had ever done more than like him very much. To some ”nonsense” in the past she was ready to own. But in the vocabulary of a Tiny Luttrell a little ”nonsense” may cover a calendar of mild crimes. It is only the Jack Swifts who treat the nonsense seriously and deny that the crimes are anything of the sort, because for their part they ”mean it.” Women are not deceived. Besides, it is less shame for them to say they never meant it.
”He must marry Flo Trevor of Meringul,” Christina said aloud. ”It's what we all expect of him. It's his duty. But she isn't pretty, poor thing!”
The remarks happened to be made to Christina's own reflection in the gla.s.s. She, as we know, was very pretty indeed. Her small head was finely turned, and carried with her own natural grace. Her hair was of so dark a brown as to be nearly black, but there was not enough of it to hide the charming contour of her head. If she could have had the altering of one feature, she would probably have shortened her lips; but their red freshness justified their length; and the crux of a woman's beauty, her nose, happened to be Christina's best point. Her eyes were a sweeter one. Their depth of blue is seen only under dark blue skies, and they seemed the darker for her hair. But with all her good features, because she was not an English girl, but an Australian born and bred, she had no complexion to speak of, being pale and slightly freckled. Yet no one held that those blemishes prevented her from being pretty; while some maintained that they did not even detract from her good looks, and a few that they saved her from perfection and were a part of her charm.
The chances are that the authorities quoted were themselves her admirers one and all. She had many such. To most of them her character had the same charm as her face; it, too, was freckled with faults for which they loved her the more.
One of the many she met presently, but one of them now, though in his day the first of all. Swift was hastening along the veranda as she issued forth, a consciously captivating figure in her clean white frock.
He had on his wide-awake, a newly filled water-bag dripped as he carried it, the drops drying under their eyes in the sun, and Christina foresaw at once his absence for the day. She was disappointed, perhaps because he was one of the many; certainly it was for this reason she did not let him see her disappointment. He told her that he was going with her father to the out-station. That was fourteen miles away. It meant a lonely day for Christina at the homestead. So she said that a lonely day there was just what she wanted, to overhaul the dear old place all by herself, and to revel in it like a child without feeling that she was being watched. But she told a franker story some hours later, when Swift found her still on the veranda where he had left her, but this was now the shady side, seated in a wicker chair and frowning at a book. For she promptly flung away that crutch of her solitude, and seemed really glad to see him. Her look made him tingle. He sat down on the edge of the veranda and leaned his back against a post. Then he inquired, rather diffidently, how the day had gone with Miss Luttrell.
”I am ashamed to tell you,” said Christina graciously, for though his diffidence irritated her, she was quite as glad to see him as she looked, ”that I have been bored very nearly to death!”
”I knew you would be,” Swift said quite bitterly; but his bitterness was against an absent man, who had gone indoors to rest.
”I don't see how you could know anything,” remarked Christina. ”I certainly didn't know it myself; and I'm very much ashamed of it, that's another thing! I love every stick about the place. But I never knew a hotter morning; the sand in the yard was like powdered cinders, and you can't go poking about very long when everything you touch is red hot.
Then one felt tired. Mrs. Duncan took pity on me and came and talked to me; she must be an acquisition to you, I am sure; but her cooking's better than her conversation. I think she must have sent the new chum to me to take her place; anyway I've had a dose of him, too, I can tell you!”
”Oh, he's been cutting his work, has he?”
”He has been doing the civil; I think he considered that his work.”
”And quite right too! Tell me, what do you think of him?”
Christina made a grotesque grimace. ”He's such a little Englishman,” she simply said.
”Well, he can't help that, you know,” said Swift, laughing; ”and he's not half a bad little chap, as I told you last night.”
”Oh, not a bit bad; only typical. He has told me his history. It seems he missed the army at home, front door and back, in spite of his crammer--I mean his cwammer. He was no use, so they sent him out to us.”
”And he is gradually becoming of some use to us, or rather to me; he really is,” protested Swift in the interests of fair play, which a man loves. ”You laugh, but I like the fellow. He's much more use--forgive my saying so--than Herbert ever would have been--here. At all events he doesn't want to fight! He's willing, I will say that for him. And I think it was rather nice of him to tell you about himself.”
”It's nicer of you to think so,” said Christina to herself. And her glance softened so that he noticed the difference, for he was becoming sensitive to a slight but constant hardness of eye and tongue distressing to find in one's divinity.
”He went so far as to hint at an affair of the heart,” she said aloud, and he saw her eyes turn hard again, so that his own glanced off them and fell. But he forced a chuckle as he looked down.
”Well, you gave him your sympathy there, I hope?”
”Not I, indeed. I urged him to forget all about her; she has forgotten all about him long before now, you may be sure. He only thinks about her still because it's pleasant to have somebody to think about at a lonely place like this; and if she's thinking about him it's because he's away in the wilderness and there's a glamour about that. It wouldn't prevent her marrying another man to-morrow, and it won't prevent him making up to some other girl when he gets the chance.”
”So that's your experience, is it?”
”Never mind whose experience it is. I advised the young man to give up thinking about the young woman, that's all, and it's my advice to every young man situated as he is.”
Swift was not amused. Yet he refused to believe that her advice was intended for himself: firstly, because it was so coolly given, which was his ignorance, and secondly, because, literally speaking, he was not himself situated as the young Englishman was, which was merely unimaginative. In his determination, however, not to meet her in generalizations, but to get back to the storekeeper, he was wise enough.