I can excuse myself even now, for I was young, and I felt I could not stand my mother’s perpetual moan. She would have spoiled my Eden with her prognostications of possible evil. We met in the nearest gully whenever we had the chance, and after all it was not so bad. Now I look back on those two months of spring as the very happiest of my life. If anything went wrong at home, and things did go wrong very often, for my father was sure to be drunk once a week, and my mother’s misery made me unhappy, I always consoled myself with the reflection that Paul would understand, that Paul would pity and comfort me. And he never failed me, not once, my darling, not once.
Then there came upon me a new and unexpected trouble, one I might have foreseen had I been a little older and known something more of the world’s ways. Stanton of Telowie owned all the country for miles back, and consequently was a well-to-do man. I do not think he was a very reputable man, though he was my father’s great friend and boon companion. My mother, usually so hard on men who drank ever so little, and, as she said, led my father astray, would never blame Dick Stanton. It was for my sake he did it, she said, and I don’t know now whether she was right or not; he sold out and went to England thirty years ago, and I have never heard of him since. But I do know Paul Griffith, his overseer, hated him with a bitter hatred, and what Paul did I did. I was not a bad-looking little girl, and he may probably have meant to be kind, but it was not his kindness I wanted. Like many another man in those days, he wanted a wife, and this my mother dinned into my unwilling ears morning, noon, and night.
“But, mother,” I said at last, driven to bay, “how do you know he wants me?”
“My dear,” she answered, “do you think I have lived all these years in the world for nothing? What do you suppose the man comes here twice a week for?”
“To see father,” I answered hotly, “and I hate him for it. Why can’t he let us alone? He comes, and it’s always ‘Another bottle, Hope; open another bottle for Mr. Stanton.’ I hate him, mother, I hate him.”
“Oh, Hope,” she went on unheeding, “it would be such a great thing for you. He’s worth at least three thousand a year, and he’s head over heels in love with you. Think what it’d be, child, never to be worried about money again,” and she sighed; my poor mother, she had been worried about every conceivable thing, and more especially this weary money, all her life, and she never expected to be free from care again.
“Think what it ‘d be like to be tied to a brute like Dick Stanton all your life!” But she only shook her head and said again, “he was so much in love with me I could do what I liked with him;” and then she added, that if I did not know what was good for me, she, my mother, did, and she would take care my interests did not suffer. It was her duty to look after them as my mother, and she would. Oh! that little word “duty”! It seems to me all sorts of petty cruelties are committed in the name of “duty.” And after that Dick Stanton never came to the house, but I, more unwilling than ever, was sent for to entertain him. Even now I don’t know whether he really cared, or whether it was simply that he wanted a wife, and I was the only decent-looking girl within reach. And I hated him for it with all my heart, and at last, as things got worse, for my mother had told him that my coldness was all shyness on my part, I was so miserable and perplexed I cried my heart out in the gully, and Paul came and found me and got the whole truth out of me. How angry he was! I can see him now walking up and down talking to himself, and I dried my eyes and began to think things were not half so bad, since I had thrown all my cares on him.
“But Paul,” I said, with an attempt at a smile, “you know after all it’s very foolish of me to make such a fuss. They can’t make me marry a man I don’t want to. And I hate him, I hate him. You just don’t know how I hate him.”
“My darling,” he said, sitting down on a log and drawing me towards him, “how am I to help you? I can’t have my little sweetheart’s life worried out of her in this way. Hope, I had better go to your father and tell him all about it.”
“And that would end it all effectually,” I sobbed. “Mother would say I was too young to know my own mind. She would say once you were away I would forget you, and she would get Dick Stanton to—to—”