An Outback Marriage, Banjo Paterson [top ten books of all time .TXT] 📗

“We’ll have to give up this sort of thing, you know; it’ll be getting you talked about, and that’ll never do.”

She hardly knew what he meant. Having lived so long in a fool’s paradise, she could not realise that her world was coming down about her ears.

“We’ll have to be proper in future,” he said. “I’ve had the most fiendish run of bad luck lately, and it’s just as well there never was any engagement between us. It would have had to come to nothing.”

She drew back, and looked at him with frightened eyes. He had great power over her⁠—this big, masterful man, whom she had looked upon as her lover; and she could not believe that a little trouble about money could really make any difference to him. She believed him able to overcome any such difficulty as that of earning a living for her and himself.

“But, Gavan,” she said, “what have I done?”

“Done, little girl? you’ve done nothing. It’s all my fault. I’ve lost heart over things lately, and it will only harm you if we keep up this pretence of being engaged. Nothing can come of it.”

“Why not? Why can’t we wait?”

“Wait! To be stuck in Tarrong all my life among these people, and up to my neck in debt! No, little woman, as soon as ever I can get things squared up, I’m off out of this, and I dare say we’ll never see each other again. I’ve made a mess of things here, and I’m off somewhere else.”

It seemed almost incredible to her that a man could so throw up the fight; and then a thought flashed into her mind.

“It is not because Miss Grant has come that you do this?”

He laughed with a well-simulated indifference.

“Miss Grant!” he said, “I have only seen her twice⁠—that day on the coach and last night.”

She seemed to study the question, still holding his hands, and looking up into his face. The light in the room was stronger, and there were sounds as if some of the household were stirring.

“So we must say ‘Goodbye!’ ” she said, “just because you are short of money. Gavan, I would have thought more of you, had you told me you were tired of me and were going in for the other girl. I think I could have respected you at any rate; but to sneak out on the story of not being able to afford it⁠—”

His face darkened, and he began to speak, but she stopped him, and went on in a passionless sort of voice. “Someone is coming,” she said, “and we must say goodbye; and since you wish it, it is ‘Goodbye.’ But I’m not a child, to change my fancies in a day, so I won’t promise to forget. And I think you have treated me very badly, so neither will I promise to forgive. I had set my heart on you, Gavan. You seemed to me⁠—but there, it’s no use talking. I suppose I should be meek and mild, and⁠—”

“But, Ellen⁠—”

“No, don’t interrupt me. It is the last talk together we shall have. I suppose I can go governessing, or nursing, to the end of the chapter. It seems a dreary outlook, doesn’t it? Now go, and remember that I do not forgive easily. I had built such castles, Gavan, and now⁠—” She slipped quietly from the room, and was gone.

Gavan Blake drove home, feeling a trifle uneasy. He had expected some sort of outburst, but the curious way in which she had taken it rather nonplussed him.

“She won’t stick a knife in herself, I suppose,” he mused. “Just like her to do something unusual. Anyway, she has too much pride to talk about it⁠—and the affair had to come to an end sooner or later.”

And feeling that if not “on with the new love,” he was, at any rate, satisfactorily “off with the old,” Blake drove his spanking ponies off to Tarrong, while Ellen Harriott went about her household work with a face as inscrutable and calm as though no stone had ruffled the millpond of her existence.

XIII The Rivals

For the next couple of weeks, affairs at Kuryong flowed on in usual station style. A saddle-horse was brought in for Miss Grant, and out of her numerous boxes that young lady produced a Bond Street outfit that fairly silenced criticism. She rode well too, having been taught in England, and she, Poss, Binjie and Hugh had some great scampers after kangaroos, half-wild horses, or anything else that would get up and run in front of them. She was always so fresh, cheerful, and ready for any excitement that the two boys became infatuated in four days, and had to be hunted home on the fifth, or they would have both proposed. Some days she spent at the homestead housekeeping, cooking, and giving out rations to swagmen⁠—the wild, half-crazed travellers who came in at sundown for the dole of flour, tea and sugar, which was theirs by bush custom. Some days she spent with the children, and with them learnt a lot of bush life. It being holiday-time, they practically ran wild all over the place, spending whole days in long tramps to remote parts in pursuit of game. They had no “play,” as that term is known to English children. They didn’t play at being hunters. They were hunters in real earnest, and their habits and customs had come to resemble very closely those of savage tribes that live by the chase.

With them Mary had numberless new experiences. She got accustomed to seeing the boys climb big trees by cutting steps in the bark with a tomahawk, going out on the most giddy heights after birds’ nests, or dragging the opossum from his sleeping-place in a hollow limb. She learned to hold a frenzied fox-terrier at the mouth of a hollow log, ready to pounce on the kangaroo-rat which had taken refuge there, and which flashed out as if shot from a