Gentleman Craig never appeared to such excellent advantage anywhere as in ladies’ society. He really led the conversation at the dinner-table, though not appearing to do so, but rather the reverse, while in the drawing-room he was the moving spirit.
He also managed to make Findlayson happy after a way. The Scotchman had told Craig all his troubles, but Craig brought him his fiddle, on which he was a really excellent performer.
“Rouse out, Mr Findlayson, and join the ladies at the piano.”
“But, man,” the squatter replied, “my heart’s no in it; my heart is broken. I can play slow music, but when it comes to quick, it goes hard against the grain.”
Nevertheless, Findlayson took his stand beside the piano, and the ice thus being broken, he played every night, though it must be confessed, for truth’s sake, he never refused a “cogie” when the bottle came round his way. Towards ten o’clock Findlayson used, therefore, to become somewhat sentimental. The gentleman sat up for a wee half hour after the ladies retired, and sometimes Findlayson would seize his fiddle.
“Gentlemen,” he would say, “here is how I feel.”
Then he would play a lament or a wail with such feeling that even his listeners would be affected, while sometimes the tears would be quivering on the performer’s eyelashes.
At the end of the fortnight Findlayson went to Brisbane. He had some mysterious business to transact, the nature of which he refused to tell even Archie. But it was rumoured that a week or two later on, drays laden with furniture were seen to pass along the tracks on their way to Findlayson’s farm.
Poor fellow, he was evidently badly hit. He was very much in love indeed, and, like a drowning man, he clutched at straws.
The refurnishing of his house was one of these straws. Findlayson was going to give “a week’s fun,” as he phrased it. He was determined, after having seen Archie’s new house, that his own should rival and even outshine it in splendour. And he really was insane enough to believe that if Elsie only once saw the charming house he owned, with the wild and beautiful scenery all around it, she would alter her mind, and look more favourably on his suit.