'Then it seems you do not see them at all?'
'No, father, never; and all the time they are there doing the strangest things. They catch falling stones and toss them back into the sky, and there they give more light than fever, and don't fall down any more. They take old bits of dead bark and make them into butterfly wings, with gold and purple spots on them. When an old log is burnt up they make the little geraniums, that smell so sweet, out of the ashes. They never go to sleep, and they never stop working, and they are never tired and never seen, and they never let the tiniest scrap of anything go to waste.'
The father listened with smiling seriousness to these wonders of the wood. Later on he pleaded to be among the audience when Stella told twilight stories to the children, and he would listen with profound interest to the mystical events and subtle fancies that rose to 'Baby's' lips with tireless vivacity. She certainly had something of the improvisatrice in her, for never, except when she threw the reins on fancy's neck in speaking, did such winged words, luminous reaches of imagination, and quick touches of pathos come to her. Sometimes, when the grave elder brother listened, he would almost question whether this could be the merry little child with wide open eyes who had been the baby among them all when he left home. She had in a manner remained 'Baby' to him ever since.
There is something pathetic in the way that those who are most closely related may come to be entire strangers. When we are in daily communion we inevitably weave fancies one concerning the other, which stand to us in place of knowledge. But all the time—between not only dumb natures, but those most subtly gifted with utterance—there is that baffling, inexorable wall of division, that unfathomed abyss in which each human soul is shrouded from the cradle to the grave.
CHAPTER XXVII.
It might seem at first sight that station life in Australia must be a very slow and dull kind of existence. As a rule, the centres of civilization are far off, the nearest neighbours many miles away; and the ordinary modes of amusement, balls, parties, opera, and theatre-going, etc., are unknown. To many, no doubt, a life so cut off from external excitement would seem a very maimed and incomplete affair. But, on the other hand, it must be remembered that all the most healthful forms of recreation, as opposed to pleasure-seeking, are opened to squatting life. There are books and magazines to read, buggies to drive in, horses to ride, visits to be received and paid, and all the engrossing interests of family life for the women-folk. For the men there is the ceaseless round of duties, which are on the whole not more monotonous than the calling of average professional men, and less arduous, after the early struggles are over, than most other forms of work. And, then, who has lived for years encircled by great woods without finding that these unpeopled spaces exercise a fascination, all their own, over the mind? The tranquil gullies, in which the slender, stringy bark-trees grow so thick that every sun-ray is intercepted; the scrubby ranges, which the radiant epacris sometimes turn into a mass of colour; the swamps, with their wide, gray-green fringe of reeds and rushes and flocks of water-fowl, that come to them in straggling lines from far districts that have become waterless; the treeless plains, that stretch like a mimic ocean to the verge of the far horizon; the swelling hills, that break the monotony of well-timbered, undulating country; the sombre vegetation, the gleam of brilliant desert flowers, the calls and songs of birds, all have a charm of their own, and rise up in the memory of the Australian exile with an allurement which he never finds in the crowded cities—nay, not even in the scenery of the Old World.
Stella took very kindly to station life. She found it delightful to be so closely neighboured by the great unmeasured woods of her native land. She even regretted that the township of Minjah Millowie was so near. The views she liked best were those that swept the woods to the north and west, where one might travel on and on for days without striking any signs of human habitation. Next day she was on the passion-flower bridge, alternately absorbed in Keats and in looking across the Home Field and the stirless masses of foliage beyond, when she heard approaching footsteps. She turned, to find herself face to face with her unknown partner at the Emberly ball.
'Miss Stella! Is it possible?' he said in a delighted tone.
They shook hands cordially.
'I believe I know your name now,' said Stella laughingly.