VIII
THE ADMIRABLE MILES
If Mr. Miles was systematically "spoilt" by the Bristos, he was more orless entitled to the treatment, since it is not every guest who has hadthe privilege of saving his host from drowning. But Mr. Miles was inother ways an exceptional visitor. He contrived to create entertainmentinstead of requiring it. He was no anxiety to anybody; he upset nohousehold routine; he might have remained for months, and not outstayedhis welcome; from the first he made himself at home in the mostagreeable fashion. In a word, he was a very charming man.
Moreover, he was unlike other men: he was far more independent, and farless conventional. It was impossible to measure him by a commonplacestandard. He had little peculiarities which would not have recommendedother men, but which in his case were considered virtues: he was quiteartless in matters of etiquette. Indeed, he was a splendid specimen offree, ingenuous manhood--an ideal Australian, according to the notionsof the old country.
The least breath against their guest on conventional grounds would havebeen indignantly resented by the Graysbrooke people. They put upon hispeculiarities an interpretation which in Mrs. Parish's case resolveditself into a formula:
"They are so free-and-easy out there; they despise conventionality; theyare natural. Oh that we were all Australians!" (Mr. Miles was the oneAustralian of her acquaintance.)
Thus when he swore unmistakably at a clumsy oarsman while piloting theladies through a crowded lock, the offence was hushed up with a formula;and so were other offences, since formulas will cover anything.
One day Mrs. Parish, going into the drawing-room, paused on thethreshold with an angry sniff.
"Smoke--in here! It is the very first time in all these years," severelyto Alice, "that I have ever known your papa--"
"It was not papa, it was Mr. Miles," said Alice quietly. "He walked inwith his pipe, and I really did not like to tell him. I believe he hasgone for more tobacco."
"Why, how stupid of me! Of course, with Mr. Miles it is quitedifferent." (Mrs. Parish assumed an indulgent tone.) "He is not used tosuch restraints. You were quite right to say nothing about it. He shallsmoke where he likes."
Again the little old lady came to Alice, and said very gravely:
"My dear, did you notice the way our visitor refused the hock thisevening? Of course they do not drink such stuff in the bush, and he musthave what he is accustomed to. I will arrange with Tomlin to have thewhisky decanter placed quietly in front of him for the future."
Alice, for her part, not only permitted but abetted this system ofindulgence; for she agreed with Mrs. Parish that the guest was a noblecreature, for whose personal comfort it was impossible to show too muchsolicitude--which, indeed, was the least they could do. He had saved herfather's life.
That incident--which she had related to Dick with a wonderful absence offeminine exaggeration--had been in itself enough to plant in her heart avery real regard for Mr. Miles. That was but natural; but one or twoother things which came to her knowledge furthered this regard.
One Saturday morning in Kingston market-place Alice met a bosom friend,who informed her that she had seen the Graysbrooke pleasure-boat beingtowed up-stream by a tall gentleman--("So handsome, my dear; who ishe?")--while a miserable, half-starved wretch sat luxuriously in thestern-sheets. Rallied with this, the Australian's brick-dust complexionbecame a shade deeper. Then he made a clean breast of the affair, in hisusual quiet tone, but with a nearer approach to diffidence than he hadyet shown them. He had gone out for a solitary pull, and had no soonerstarted than a cadaverous creature with a tow-rope pestered him for ajob. Miles had refused the man; doubted his strength to tow a flea witha silk thread; and observed that he, Miles, was more fit to tow theother, if it came to that. At this, Miles, being sworn at for makinggame of a starving man, had promptly landed, forced the man, speechlesswith amazement, into the boat, towed him to Kingston, and left him to agood dinner, with some wholesome advice touching immediate emigration.
A few days later, at dusk on a wet afternoon, Mrs. Parish, from herbedroom window, saw Mr. Miles walk quickly up the drive in hisshirt-sleeves. It transpired that he had given his coat to a ragged,shivering tramp on the London road--plus the address of the EmigrationOffice.
"You see," he said, on both these occasions, "I never saw anything halfso bad in my own country. If you aren't used to it, it knocks a man'sheart to see a poor devil so far gone as all that."
In short, Mr. Miles exhibited to the Bristos, on several occasions, apropensity to odd and impulsive generosity; and the point toldconsiderably in their general regard for the man, which day by day grewmore profound.
Among other peculiarities, so excellently appreciated, Mr. Miles had asingular manner of speaking. It was an eminently calm manner; but forthe ring of quiet audacity in every tone, it might have been called asubdued manner. He never raised his voice; he never spoke with heat.When he said to Colonel Bristo, clinging to him in the sea, "If you hangon like that I must fell you," his tone was as smooth as when heafterwards apologised for the threat. When he paid Alice his firstcompliment he did so without the smallest hesitation, and in hisordinary tone; and his compliments were of the most direct order. Theyonce heard him threaten to thrash a bargee for ill-treating a horse, andthey were amazed when the man sulkily desisted; the threat was so gentlyand dispassionately uttered. As for his adventures, they were told withso much of detail and gravity that the manner carried conviction wherethe matter was most fantastic. Miles was the best of "good company."Apart from the supreme service rendered to him, Colonel Bristo was fullypersuaded that he was entertaining the best fellow in the world. Add tothis that Mrs. Parish adored the handsome Australian, while Alice meeklyrevered him, and it will be easily seen that a hostile opinion of theirhero was well calculated to recoil on its advocate.
During the short period in which the hero was also the stranger, hespent all his time in the Colonel's society. Apparently the two menfound many subjects of mutual interest. Once, when Alice interruptedthem in the study, Mr. Miles seemed to be eloquently enumerating theresources and capabilities of some remote district of the Antipodes; forthough she spent some minutes getting a book, he took no notice of herpresence in the room. On another occasion Alice saw her father examininga kind of map or plan, while Mr. Miles bent over him in explanation. Sheafterwards learnt that this was a plan of the Queensland station ofwhich Mr. Miles was part owner.
After the first day or two it seemed evident that Mr. Miles disliked thesociety of ladies.
On the third evening, however, the men patronised the drawing-room forhalf-an-hour, and the Colonel asked Alice to sing something. She sang,and Mr. Miles listened. When she had finished, Mr. Miles coolly askedher to sing again. The following night he extracted three songs fromher. Then Mr. Miles began to spend less time in his host's sanctum. Hecultivated Alice; he interested himself in her amusements--photographyfor one; he got her to sing to him in the daytime. He was civil to Mrs.Parish.
When the young lady sat down to the piano, this sun-burned Apollo didnot hang over her, as other men did (when they got the chance); nor didhe turn over a bar too soon or too late--like the others. He made nopretence of polite assistance, not he. But he flung himself in a chair,threw back his head, and drank in every note. At first it was generallywith his back to the piano, and always with closed eyes. Then he foundanother chair--one a little further away, but so placed that the girl'sprofile was stamped like a silhouette on the sunlit window, directly inhis line of vision. And he no longer listened with closed eyelids.
Mrs. Parish, a keen observer, hovered about during these performances,and noted these things. She had perceived at the time the impressionAlice's first song made upon Mr. Miles: she saw that he had regarded thegirl from that moment with a newly awakened interest. Thenceforth he hadmade himself agreeable to both ladies, whereas before he had ignoredthem both. Now, although she knew well enough that Miles's attentions,so far as she wa
s concerned, could be but politic, yet such was theinveterate vanity of this elderly duenna that she derived therefrom nosmall personal gratification. An impudent compliment thrilled her as itmight have thrilled a schoolgirl. But this did not prevent her seeingwhat was really going on, nor secretly rejoicing at what she saw.
She watched the pair together from the first. She watched the girlinnocently betray her veneration for the man who had saved her father'slife. She knew that it is perilous for a man to see that a girl thinkshim a hero, and she awaited results. She soon fancied that she saw some.She thought that Miles's habitual insouciance was a trifle less apparentwhen he conversed with Alice; certainly his eyes began to follow her andrest upon her; for Mr. Miles did such things openly. But she detected nocorresponding symptoms in Alice; so one day she told her bluntly: "Mr.Miles is falling in love with you, child."
Alice was startled, and coloured with simple annoyance.
"What nonsense!" she said indignantly.
Immediately she thought of the absent Dick, and her blushdeepened--because she thought of him so seldom. Mrs. Parish replied thatit was not nonsense, but, instead of urging proofs in support of herstatement, contented herself with cataloguing Mr. Miles's kinglyattributes. Here Alice could not contradict her. The old lady even spokeof the station in Queensland and the house at Sydney. Encouraged by thegirl's silence, however, she overshot the mark with a parallelreference--and not a kind one--to Dick Edmonstone. She saw her mistakeat once, but too late; without a word Alice turned coldly from her, andthey barely exchanged civilities during the rest of that day.
From that moment Miss Bristo's manner towards Mr. Miles was changed.Mrs. Parish had put into her head a thought that had never once occurredto her. An innocent pleasure was poisoned for her. She did not quitegive up the songs, and the rest, but she became self-conscious, anddeveloped a sudden preference for that society which is said to be nocompany at all.
At this juncture the ship _Hesper_ entered the Channel, and was dulyreported in the newspapers. Alice saw the announcement, and knew that intwo or three days she should see her lover. These days she spent inthought.
At seventeen she had been madly in love with young Edmonstone--what iscalled a "romantic" or "school-girl" affair--chiefly sentimental on herside, terribly earnest on his. At eighteen--parted many months from asweetheart from whom she never heard, and beginning to think of himdaily instead of hourly--she asked herself whether this was really love.At nineteen, it was possible to get through a day--days, even--withoutdevoting sentimental minutes to the absent one. Alice was at least madlyin love no longer. There remained a very real regard for Dick, aconstant prayer for his welfare, a doubt as to whether he would evercome home again, a wondering (if he did) whether she could ever be thesame to him again, or he to her; nothing more.
Mrs. Parish was in a great measure responsible for all this. Thatexcellent woman had predicted from the first that Dick would never makehis fortune (it was not done nowadays), and that he would never comeback. Another factor was the ripening of her understanding, aided by amodicum of worldly experience which came to her at first-hand. Alice washonoured with two proposals of marriage, and in each case the rejected(both were wife-hunting) consoled himself elsewhere within threemonths. To this groundwork Mrs. Parish added some judicious facts fromher own experience; and this old lady happened to be the girl's onlyconfidante and adviser. Alice gathered that, though man's honour mightbe a steadfast rock, his love was but a shifting sand. Thus there weresuch things as men marrying where they had ceased to love; thus Dickmight return and profess love for her which was no longer sincere.
In the end Miss Bristo was left, like many other young ladies, with animperfect knowledge of her own mind, and attempted, unlike most youngladies, to mould her doubts into a definite and logical form. She didarrive at a conclusion--when she learned that Dick was nearly home. Thisconclusion was, that, whatever happened, there must be no immediateengagement: she did not know whether Dick loved her still--she was notabsolutely sure that she still loved him.
We have seen how she communicated her decision to Dick. His manifestagony when he heard it sent a thrill through her heart--a thrill thatrecalled the old romance. The manly way in which he afterwards acceptedhis fate touched her still more. She began to think that she might afterall have mistaken herself of late; and this notion would probably havebecome a conviction but for one circumstance--the presence of Mr. Miles.
Dick was jealous: she saw it, or thought she saw it, from the first.This vexed her, and she had not bargained to be vexed by Dick. It madeher more than half-inclined to give him something to be jealous of.Accordingly she was once or twice so malicious as to throw Mr. Miles inhis teeth in their conversations, and watch the effect. And the effectdid not please her.
On the other hand, about Mr. Miles there was no particle of jealousy(one thing more to his credit). Why, he had asked with the greatestinterest all about Dick, after he had gone that first evening; and heranswers had been most circumspect: she had let him suppose that Dick wasa squatter during his whole term in Australia. After that Mr. Miles hadasked no more. But Dick had never asked one word about Mr. Miles untilhe had been in England a fortnight, and then he offended her deeply. Upto that point her interest in Dick had been gradually growing moretender; she felt him to be true and brave, and honoured him; andcontrasted her own fickleness with his honest worth. Once or twice shefelt a longing to make him happy. Even as she felt herself irresistiblybowed down before him her idol fell. From this man, whom she waslearning to truly love, came a mean, unmanly suggestion. To further hisprogress with her he stooped to slander the man whom he was pleased toconsider his rival, and that rival the noblest, the most generous ofmen.
She could not easily forgive this; she could never forget it, and neverthink quite the same of Dick afterwards. And then the conduct of theother one was so different! Her manner instinctively warmed towards Mr.Miles: she should be his champion through thick and thin. As for Dick,after that little scene, he did not come near Graysbrooke for a week.
Now, during that week, the words that had offended her recurred manytimes to Alice. The pale, earnest, honest face with which Dick haduttered them also rose in her mind. Was it possible that his suspicioncould be absolutely groundless? Was it not credible that he might havereasons for speaking--mistaken ones, of course--which he could notreveal to her? In any case, his words rankled; and so much sting isseldom left by words which we have already dismissed, once and for all,as utterly and entirely false.
During that week, moreover, there occurred a frivolous incident, ofwhich Alice would have thought nothing before the expression of Dick'ssuspicions but which now puzzled her sorely. One brilliant afternoon shefound herself completely indolent. She wandered idly into the garden,and presently came upon a rather droll sight: her father and Mr. Miles,sound asleep, side by side, in a couple of basket-chairs under the shadeof a weeping willow. The girl conceived a happy roguery: what a subjectfor a photograph! She stole into the house for her camera. When shereturned, her father was gone. She was disappointed, hesitated a fewmoments, and then coolly photographed the still unconscious Mr. Miles.An hour later she greeted him with the negative--an excellent one.
"You said you had never been taken," said she mischievously. "Well, hereis your first portrait. It will be capital."
He asked to look at it, in his quiet way. Alice handed him the drippingglass. He had no sooner held it up to the light than it slipped throughhis fingers, and broke into a dozen fragments upon the gravel path.
Mr. Miles apologised coldly, and proceeded to pick up the pieces with aprovoking smile. Alice was irate, and accused him of breaking hernegative purposely. Mr. Miles replied with charming candour that he hadnever been photographed in his life, and never meant to be. Alreadyblaming herself for having yielded to a silly impulse, and one which waseven open to wrong construction, Alice said no more; and presently, whenthe Australian gravely begged her forgiveness, it was granted with equalgravity. Nevertheless sh
e was puzzled. Why should Mr. Miles so dread aphotograph of himself? What had he to fear? Would Dick add this to hislittle list of suspicious circumstances? If he did, it would be thefirst item not utterly absurd. What if she were to tell him, and see!
As it happened, Dick called the very next day, a Wednesday, and the lastday in June. Alice received him coldly. There was a natural restraint onboth sides, but she thawed before he went. As he was saying good-bye,she asked him (casually) if he would come on Friday afternoon--the dayof her dance--and help with the floor and things. She really wished himto come very much, for she foresaw an opportunity for explanation,without which the evening would be a misery to her; besides, they couldtalk over Mr. Miles fairly and confidentially. Dick jumped at it, poorfellow, brightened up at once, and walked home a happier man.
The following day Alice accompanied her father to town, on pleasurebent. The little jaunt had been long arranged, and Mr. Miles was theirefficient escort.
That was on Thursday, July 1st.
Unfortunately for Mr. Biggs, M.L.C., he could not spend all his days atthe Exhibition, so that a certain little drama, not widely differingfrom that astute legislator's preconception, was at last played to analtogether unappreciative house. The facts are these:
About four in the afternoon, an old gentleman, with snowy whiskers andhair, and with a very charming girl upon his arm, looked into theSettler's Hut. They did not remain within above ten seconds; but duringthose ten seconds the genus loci--who was in his customary place on thebunk--heard a voice without which caused him to start, pull the brim ofhis cabbage-tree hat further over his eyes, and draw a long breaththrough his teeth.
"I won't come in," said this voice, which was low and unconcerned; "I'veseen it before; besides, I know the kind of thing rather too well."
The shadows of the old gentleman and the girl had hardly disappearedfrom the threshold when the man in the cabbage-tree hat and side-springboots rose swiftly, and peered stealthily after them. What he saw causedhim to smile with malignant triumph. A tall, well-dressed man walkedbeside the old gentleman and his daughter.
The watcher allowed them to pass almost out of sight, then followedwarily. He followed them all the afternoon, keeping so far behind, anddodging so cleverly, that they never saw him. When the trio at lengthquitted the building and took a cab, this man followed through thestreets at a double. He followed them to Waterloo. He got into the sametrain with them. They got out at a station on the loop line; he got outalso, paid his fare to the ticket collector, and once more dogged hisquarry. An hour later the cabbage-tree hat was attracting attention onthat same suburban platform; later still the occupants of a third-classsmoking carriage in an up train thought that they had never before seensuch an evil expression as that which the broad brim of the cabbage-treehat only partially concealed.
This also was on the 1st of July.