In point of fact, the nearest bush country was a hundred miles away, but he had said that he was going to the bush “to end a life already prolonged beyond the limits of human endurance and find forgetfulness in oblivion,” and he had probably kept his word. So far as the “bush” part of the contract was concerned. She did not mourn him. If she wondered at all, it was as to the circumstances in which he would reappear and claim some eight thousand pounds neatly tied in one package that it might be the more effectively and dramatically thrown at her feet, and which in truth missed her feet by a wide margin and struck the station cat, who, being newly maternal, flew at Dempsi and accelerated his wild flight. She did not tell her aunt about the eight thousand; Mrs. Tetherby being, as she had been described, “inert,” had an objection to fuss of any kind. More than this, she possessed one curious weakness—a horror of debt. The knowledge that she was under monetary obligation kept her awake. An overlooked garage account once reduced her to a state of nervous prostration. Other people’s money she would not touch, and, on an occasion when, having paid her shearers, she was requested by the men to keep the money from Saturday to Monday, she paced the verandah for two nights, a shot gun under her arm.
It was largely due to this weakness that all money affairs were in Diana’s hands from the age of fifteen. Diana put the eight thousand to her own account and spent an interesting three months planning and drawing expensive memorials to the departed Dempsi. In the back pages of a dictionary, under the heading “Foreign words and phrases,” she discovered an appropriate epitaph.
SATIS ELOQUENTIÆ SAPIENTIÆ PARUM
“He had great eloquence but little sense.”
As the years passed, and her uneasiness increased, she made half-hearted attempts to discover his relatives, though she knew that he was without so much as a known cousin. And then, gradually, Dempsi had receded into the background. She was beloved of a romantic squatter. This affair ended abruptly when the romantic squatter’s unromantic wife arrived in a high-powered car and bore him off to serve the remainder of his sentence.
Diana gave exactly five minutes of her thoughts to Dempsi. For the remainder of the evening she practised a new waltz step which had surprisingly found its way into jazz.
“What I can’t understand,” said Trenter, “is why the boss allows this sort of thing to go on. It’s downright improper, a young woman living in a bachelor’s house. It reminds me of a case old Superbus once told me about—he’s a court bailiff and naturally he sees the seamy side of life——”
“I wouldn’t have a bailiff for a friend if you paid me a million,” said Eleanor, who had been brought up in an atmosphere of financial embarrassment. “I’d sooner have a burglar. Don’t you worry about our young Di, Arthur. She’s all there! Personally speaking, I’m glad she’s arrived. What about me—haven’t I any morals? Hasn’t me and cook—cook and I, that is to say—lived in the same house with a bachelor for a year?”
“You’re different,” said Trenter.
“Guess again,” said Eleanor.