IV

BETHUNE OF THE HALL

Theodore Bethune was a young man of means, with the brains to add to them, and the energy to use his brains. As the eldest of his family he had inherited a special legacy in boyhood; had immediately taken himself away from the Church of England Grammar School, and booked his pa.s.sage to London by an early boat. On the voyage he read the cla.s.sics in his deck chair, asked copious questions in the smoking-room, and finally decided upon Cambridge as the theatre of his academical exploits.

Jesus was at that time the College most favoured by Australasian youth: this was quite enough for Theodore Bethune. He ultimately selected Trinity Hall, as appearing to him to offer the distinction of Trinity without its cosmopolitan flavour, and a legal instead of an athletic tradition. In due course he took as good a degree as he required, and proceeded to be called at the English bar before returning to practice in Melbourne. In connection with his university life he had two or three original boasts: he had never been seen intoxicated, never played any game, and only once investigated Fenner's (to watch the Australians). On the other hand, he had added appreciably to his income by intelligent betting on Newmarket course.

Temperament, character, and attainment seemed to have combined to produce the perfect barrister in Theodore Bethune, who was infinitely critical but himself impervious to criticism, while possessed of a capital gift of insolence and a face of triple bra.s.s. The man, however, was not so perfect; even the gentleman may exhibit certain flaws. Of these one of his sisters had latterly become very conscious; but they came out as a boon to her on the second evening of this visit to Eureka Station, New South Wales.

For in conversation Bethune was what even he would formerly have called "a terror," an epithet which he still endeavoured to deserve, though he no longer made use of it himself. Captious, c.o.c.ksure, omniscient, he revelled in the uses of raillery and of repartee. Nothing pleased him more than to combat the pet theories of persons whom he had no occasion to conciliate. He could take any side on any question, as became the profession he never ceased from practising. He destroyed illusions as other men destroy game, and seldom made a new acquaintance without securing a fair bag. Better traits were a playful fancy and an essential geniality which suggested more of mischief than of malice in the real man; the pose, however, was that of uncompromising and heartless critic of every creature of his acquaintance, and every country in which he had set foot.

The first night he had behaved very well. Moya had made him promise that he would not be openly critical for twenty-four hours. He had kept his word like a man and a martyr. The second night was different. Theodore was unmuzzled. And both Moya and Rigden were thankful in their hearts.

Sir Oracle scarce knew where to begin. There were the turkeys which a child could have hit with a pop-gun; there were the emus which the Queen's Prizeman could not have brought down with his Lee-Metford. But Theodore had discovered that there was no medium in the bush. Look at the heat! He had been through the Red Sea at its worst, but it had not fetched the skin from his hands as this one day in Riverina. Riverina, forsooth! Where were their rivers? _Lucus a non lucendo._

The storekeeper winked; he was a humorist himself, of a lower order.

"No good coming it in Greek up here, mister."

The jackeroo was the storekeeper's hourly b.u.t.t. The jackeroo was a new chum who had done pretty badly at his public school, and was going to do worse in the bush, but he still knew Latin from Greek when he heard it, and he perceived his chance of scoring off the storekeeper.

"Greek is good," said the jackeroo. "Greek is great!"

"Ah, now we have it!" cried the storekeeper, who was a stout young man with bulbous eyes, and all the sly glances of the low comedian. "'Tis the voice of the scholard, I heard him explain! He comes from Rugby, Mr.

Bethune; hasn't he told you yet? Calls himself an Old Rug--sure it isn't a plaid-shawl, Ives? Oh, you needn't put on side because you can draft Greek from Latin!"

Ives the jackeroo, a weak youth wearing spectacles, had put on nothing but the long-suffering smile with which he was in the habit of receiving the storekeeper's grape-shot. He said no more, however, and a brief but disdainful silence on the part of Bethune made an awkward pause which Rigden broke heroically. Hitherto but little talking had been required of him or of Moya. The aggressive Theodore had been their unwitting friend, and he stood them in better stead than ever when the young men adjourned to smoke on the verandah.

This was the time when the engaged couple would naturally have disappeared; they had duly done so the previous evening; to-night they merely sat apart, out of range of the lamp, and the young men galled them both by never glancing their way. Nothing had been noticed yet; nor indeed was there anything remarkable in their silence after so long a day spent in each other's exclusive society. From time to time, however, they made a little talk to save appearances which were incriminating only in their own minds; and all the time their eyes rested together upon the black stack of logs and corrugated iron which was the store.

Once the storekeeper approached with discreet deliberation.

"I've lost my key of the store, Mr. Rigden; may I borrow yours?"

"It's I who've lost mine, Spicer, so I took yours from your room. No, don't bother about your books to-night; don't go over there again. Look after Mr. Bethune."

He turned to Moya when the youth was gone.

"One lie makes many," he muttered grimly.

There was no reply.

Meanwhile Bethune was in his element, with an audience of two bound to listen to him by the bond of a couple of his best cigars, and with just enough of crude retaliation from the storekeeper to act as a blunt cutla.s.s to Theodore's rapier. The table with the lamp was at the latter's elbow, and the rays fell full upon the long succesful nose and the unwavering mouth of an otherwise rather ordinary legal countenance.

There was plenty of animation in the face, however, and enough of the devil to redeem a good deal of the prig. The lamp also made the most of a gleaming shirt-front; for Theodore insisted on dressing ("for my own comfort, purely,") even in the wilderness, where black coats were good enough for the other young men, and where Mora herself wore a high blouse.

"But there's nothing to be actually ashamed of in an illusion or two,"

the jackeroo was being a.s.sured, "especially at your age. I've had them myself, and may have one or two about me still. You only know it when you lose them, and my faith in myself has been rudely shattered. I've shed one thundering big illusion since I've been up here."

The Rugby boy was not following; he had but expressed a sufficiently real regret at not having gone up to Cambridge himself; and he was wondering whether he should regret it the less in future for what this Cambridge man had to say upon the subject. On the whole it did not reconcile him to the university of the bush, and for a little he had a deaf ear for the conversation. A question had been asked and answered ere he recovered the thread.

"Oh, go on," said the storekeeper. "Give the back-blocks a rest, Bethune!"

"I certainly shall, Mr. Spicer," rejoined Theodore, with the least possible emphasis on the prefix, "once I shake their infernal dust from my shoes. Not that I'd mind the dust if there was anything to do in it.

Of course this sort of thing's luxury," he had the grace to interject; "in fact, it's far too luxurious for me. One rather likes to rough it when one comes so far. Anything for some excitement, some romance, something one can't get nearer home!"

"Well, you can't get this," said the loyal storekeeper.

"I never was at a loss for moonlight," observed Theodore, "when there happened to be a moon. There are verandahs in Toorak."

Spicer lowered his voice.

"There was a man once shot dead in this one. Bushrangers!"

"When was that?"

"Oh, well, it was before my time."

"Ten years ago?"

"Ten to twenty, I suppose."

"Ten to twenty! Why, my good fellow, there was a blackfellows' camp in Collins Street, twenty years ago! Corrobborees, and all that, where the trams run now."

"I'm hanged if there were," rejoined Spicer warmly. "Not twenty years ago, no, nor yet thirty!"

"Say forty if it makes you happy. It doesn't affect my argument. You don't expect me to bolt out of this verandah because some poor devil painted it red before I was breeched? What shall it profit us that there were bushrangers once upon a time, and blacks before the bushrangers? The point is that they're both about as extinct as the plesiosaurus----"

"Kill whose cat?" interposed the storekeeper in a burst of his peculiar brand of badinage. "He's coming it again, Ives; you'll have another chance of showing off, old travelling-rug!"

"And all you've got to offer one instead," concluded Bethune, "besides the subtleties of your own humour, is a so-called turkey the size of a haystack, that'll ram its beak down your gun-barrel if you wait long enough."

The Rugbeian laughed outright, and Spicer gained time by insulting him while he rummaged his big head for a retort worthy of Bethune; it was worthier of himself when it came.

"You want adventure, do you? I know the place for you, and its within ten miles of where you sit. Blind Man's Block!"

"Reminds one of the Tower," yawned Bethune.

"It'll remind you of your sins if ever you get bushed in it! Ten by ten of abandoned beastliness; not a hoof or a drop between the four fences; only scrub, and scrub, and scrub of the very worst. Mallee and porcupine--porcupine and mallee. But you go and sample it; only don't get too far in from the fence. If you do you may turn up your toes; and you won't be the first or the last to turn 'em up in Blind Man's Block."

"What of?" asked Bethune sceptically.

"Thirst," said Spicer; "thirst and hunger, but chiefly thirst."

"In fenced country?"

"It's ten miles between the fences, and not a drop of water, nor the trace of a track. It's abandoned country, I'm telling you."

"But you could never be more than five miles from a fence; surely you could hit one or other of them and follow it up?"