of its early mountainous shore,
yet a solemn peace of its own.”
A footstep was heard behind them. It was Edgar, come to say that Mrs. and Miss Medwin had arrived and were up in the drawing-room with Mr. Alcock.
Gildea stepped out onto the lawn.
“Let us go up by the balcony,” he said to Maddock.
VI.
Mrs. Medwin was the only native-born australian lady who was “good style.” So at least a Governor’s wife, about the “goodness” of whose “style” there could be no question, had declared. It was not, this Governor’s wife had explained, that there were no ladies in Australia, (There were not however many, par parenthèse, and such style as they had was at best but second-rate american), but they none of them had that manner of dressing, moving, and speaking which characterizes what (to use this rather objectional term again, for want of a better) we call “good style.” This Governor’s wife, with her usual delicate feminine instinct, had felt on the occasion of this now socially celebrated description of Mrs. Medwin, that she had not quite satisfied herself, that the description did not contain the truth, all the truth, and nothing but the truth, of the matter; and she was right, it did not. Mrs. Medwin undoubtedly possessed that serene refinement of movement and speech which go so far to making up that all but defunct individuality, a “lady,” but she was wanting in the final gift of a “lady,” social charm. The flower was scentless, or rather the scent it had was of another description. Her life had not, indeed, been favourable to the development of this final gift. She had been married early, a ready enough victim to the convenience of her family, to a man with whom she had little in common and much in opposition. He was liked by none and feared by all those who had any personal dealings with him: his savage outbursts of passion recalled to memory the dark stories that were told of his father who had, as the Australians euphemistically put it, come out at the government expense. But she, having calmly decided to accept Medwin and life with him, set herself by the sheer intrepidity of her sweet high beauty, to dominate them. She succeeded. And she won, not only the control, but the deep, admiring love, of the man. Then came the catastrophe which those who knew him had prophesied and recanted. In one of his savage outbursts of passion, he struck her. The blow was a cruel one and its results life-long. Much as she then suffered in body and soul, she could have no other feeling for him than that of pity. For days he would take no food, but sat in a chair outside her door, like a dog that waits in silence on an idolized master; and, when he was first permitted to enter, flung himself onto his knees by the bedside, sobbing and moaning and covering her hand with kisses. And she, who had had little or no care for him before, save as the principal incident in her life, now to her own surprise found that from out this appalling misery was born affection for him and even love. Her life from then onwards had been spent in a struggle far more terrible than that which she had waged with him. At first the idea of wasting away inch by inch on a diseased sick-bed almost overwhelmed her: she longed, she prayed for death. But death did not come; and then her spiritual pride began to reassert itself, and, like the captain of a battered ship, she once more thought how she could rule these waters that had ruled her. For long it seemed as if the effort would be too much for her: she said to herself one sleepless horrible night that she was being consumed alive. Her very latest gift seemed but as an added thorn to her; for now that she had affection and even love, she had also jealousy. The spell of her sweet, fearless health and strength and beauty was passed from him save as a memory: his love, deepened it might be by his abiding remorse, was (as she thought) deprived of that admiration which had been her first and strongest hold on him. Nothing more pitiful, than to see the womanliness in her assert itself against her pride and speak in jealousy! With wonderful intuition, however, she divined and with wonderful determination carried out, what was the only plan of still keeping for herself his admiration. She, who since she had married him had not given his business affairs a thought, now gave herself up to the mastery of them. She had herself taught all arithmetic thoroughly, and, in little less than three years after her misfortune, knew more of all his business affairs than he did himself. And more. She stirred up in him the ambition to become the leader of that great amorphous section of colonial society of which he was a member, the land-owners, the “squatters.” She had a certain liking for society, and when she was in England went into it as much as her extremely delicate health would permit her: in Australia, however, where, as she said, there was no society, or only of a sort which she did not like, she yet entertained a good deal, as she wished her husband to be popular in view of his entering parliament and attempting to organize his party. But her entertainment was more after the fashion of a listless social empress than an interested hostess: she did not care enough about these people to make, what would have been to her, a painful physical effort to attract them. She had indeed something of the feeling of one of the old aristocrats forced by the pressure of the time to open their houses to the Middle-class; she acknowledged the salute of her guests, and provided them with fine rooms, music, amusement, foods and drinks, and what more could they want? Her coldness was generally ascribed to her notorious ill-health, but the young people felt instinctively that she condemned them, and were not drawn to her. Between her and Gildea, however, there was an understanding that was not without either charm or brightness to both. He understood her, and she half-felt this and, never having been really understood before, was in a way pleased at it and drawn to him. She amused him and at times, thanks to the pity with which her sweet courage inspired him, affected him. He was not too without respect for her intuitional capacities. He said once to Sydney Medwin, who was complaining that his mother was fifty years behind the time, (Mrs. Medwin supported her husband in his views for their elder son), that, on the contrary, she was fifty years before; for she was the only person he had met or heard of in the Colony who clearly saw that the Land Question was upon them. Mrs. Medwin indeed, as has been noticed, saw that the attempt of the Australian land-owners to repeat the performance of those of England and form a dominant aristocracy, would be met with keen opposition, and that the only hope of success lay in creating out of an amorphous class a party, and organizing it. The feeling of possession and caste had grown a strong one in her, in her more or less absorbed in the life of her husband. Hers, then, with all its powers of passionate attachment to an individual, was one of those not frequent female souls that see beyond a man into the cause which he represents. Her elder son she looked upon as a failure, as useless, as worth no more than making behave himself. Her younger son, Stephen, she was training with some care, and to him the far greater bulk of his father’s wealth and property was at present destined. Miss Medwin, whom Mrs. Medwin called her niece, and who called Mr. and Mrs. Medwin respectively uncle and aunt, but who was in reality no such relation, being the daughter of Mr. Medwin’s father’s brother’s son; of Miss Medwin it will perhaps be enough to state, that the report which Gildea had unexpectedly received of her from the Private Enquiry Office was correct, and that she was the possessor of a moderate fortune who had come out to Australia, half for a change from her English life of which she was weary, half in search of an old schoolfellow to whom she was much attached.
Gildea and Maddock stepped out together along the lawn and mounted the steps that led up to the sitting-room balcony. The sunlight, intercepted by an angle of the house, covered half of this portion of it, almost so exactly half that the glass door, open in the middle of the bay window, was partly in the sun and partly in the shade. As they reached the balcony, Gildea, with the gesture of a courteous host, indicated to Maddock to enter first, but he, with the no less courteous gesture of a guest, refused and returned the indication. Gildea stepped into the open doorway and, as he stood there for a moment with the sunlight and shade playing upon him, met the gaze of Miss Medwin, seated upright, looking almost proudly before her. Behind her was the dark red of the curtain with its subdued white of delicately wrought muslin. Two rays of sunlight lay along the rich variegated colours of the carpet, diffusing a little light about her. She was very beautiful. They had recognized one another at once. And more. They both were undergoing that feeling of half-forgotten recollection that affects us with such unprepared and mystic strangeness. Had they, then, seen one another before that day when she had almost ridden over him under the Domain trees? had they met in some way similar to their meeting now? At such moments the past, the present, and the future, all half unknown, seem to join hands, and kiss, and part with eyes dimmed with a regretless regret.
It had passed in a few moments. Gildea, with something that might be called a sudden freak of tact, stepped into the room, turning a quite self-possessed face to Mrs. Medwin. She was sitting on a sofa dispensing serene little nothings to Alcock, whose face and manner beamed with social polish. Gildea came straight to her and made his greetings with winning grace: then, obeying a slight gesture of hers, moved aside and she introduced him to her niece, Miss Medwin. With the same winning grace, head courteously bowed, he stepped to Miss Medwin, and lightly raised the hand she held up to him. Maddock was greeting Mrs. Medwin.
“I think,” said Gildea smiling slightly, “I think, Miss Medwin, that we are not quite strangers.”