This song ended and the vocalists dispersing, Claude ventures to ask the singer, “as a stranger in a strange land,” what the Corps may be and what its duties. He finds that so far from the young officer being ashamed of his profession, he evidently feels proud of his position in the Black Police. The conversation is continued next day, and before Claude says good-bye he discovers that the doctor was right in his surmise.
“Yes,” the young sub-lieutenant once said to him, when they had become somewhat confidential, “there is a good deal about the work I don’t like. The worst part is the terrible anxiety lest any one owing me a grudge should go in for proving a case against me. It is not a pleasant feeling, the noose-round-your-neck idea one has at times. I’m getting used to it, however; but there, I confess I don’t like some of the business.”
He also told Claude a curious little incident about a young “sub,” new in the force, who made a sad mistake in the first report he sent into headquarters, describing a successful “rounding-up” of a party of natives. He used the word “killed” instead of the official “dispersed” in speaking of the unfortunate natives left hors de combat on the field. The report was returned to him for correction in company with a severe reprimand for his careless wording of the same. The “sub,” being rather a wag in his own way as things turned out, corrected his report so that the faulty portion now read as follows: “We successfully surrounded the said party of aborigines and dispersed fifteen, the remainder, some half-dozen, succeeded in escaping.”
CHAPTER X.
MISS LILETH MUNDELLA AND MR. WILSON GILES.
“Where the banana grows the animal system is indolent, and pampered at the cost of the higher qualities; the man is sensual and cruel.”—Emerson.
T is a blazing winter day in Northern Queensland; a morning when it is quite a pleasure to turn one’s eyes from the sun-scorched, shadowless “open country” outside to the cool, thatched verandah of “Government House” (head station-house), where Mr. Wilson Giles, the owner of Murdaro run, resides. It is particularly grateful to do so to-day, for in addition to the soft green shade of crimson-blossomed Bougainvillias and other northern floral favourites, the presence of a fair female form in a cool, light dress—that sight so dear to men imprisoned in up-country, societyless wilds—lends a double charm to the already attractive shelter from the sun’s rays. The young lady who is now to engage our attention for a brief period is Miss Lileth Mundella, to whose future hopes and ambitions we have already alluded in Chapter V. On the day in question she sits in the shelter of the verandah, slowly rocking herself in a great cane-chair, the embroidery of light and shadow cast by the motionless leaves falling in picturesque chiaroscuric effect upon her handsome, artistically-draped figure.
Miss Mundella is in deep thought, and the long, dark lashes of her half-closed eyes are turned earthwards as she gently rocks herself to and fro. In front of the low-eaved station-house, on a withered grass-plot,—a futile attempt at a tennis-lawn,—two of the house cats are bounding in turns over a small brown snake, trying to get an opportunity of breaking the angry reptile’s back with their sharp teeth. Upon the verandah a few emerald lizards are chasing the house-flies; and, looking through the passage to the quadrangle at the back of the house, where the store, bachelors’ quarters, and kitchen buildings are situated, we can see the dark-skinned, brightly-dressed aboriginal “house-gins” as they prowl about, grinning and chattering over the preparation of “tucker long a boss,” or master’s dinner. It is nearly “tiffen time,”—a term for the midday repast copied by Australians from their Anglo-Indian brethren,—and Miss Mundella, who acts as housekeeper to her uncle, having finished her light household duties for the day, is now giving herself up to her thoughts anent the scheme which so nearly concerns our young friend Claude Angland.
A casual male observer, with the average amount of discernment and experience of the fair sex, would doubtless have decided in his own mind that this young thinker, with the low forehead and dark, pronounced eyebrows, was pondering over her next new costume, or perhaps of some rival’s successes. For the young lady’s thoughts are evidently intense, and also unpleasant. But neither dress, envy, nor in fact any of those other common troubles that come to ruffle the soft feathers of ordinary maidens’ meditations, ever disturb the firm balanced mind of Miss Lileth Mundella.