My steed is weary of his stall,
And I am sick of captive thrall;
I would I were, as I have been,
Hunting the roe in forest green,
With bended bow and bloodhound free,
For that is the life that is meet for me.’
‘I know from experience that it is as probable that a star should come down from the sky and do duty in the kitchen grate,’ said Courtenay Neuchamp sardonically, ‘as that you should listen to any one’s opinion but your own, or I would suggest that the falcon, and greyhound, and steed business is better if not exclusively performed in this hemisphere. I never doubted you would go your own road. But what does Antonia say to leaving the land of court circulars and Queen’s drawing-rooms and Paris bonnets fresh once a week?’
‘She says’—and here Mrs. Neuchamp crept up to her husband’s side and placed her hand in his—‘that she is tired of Paradise—tired of perfect houses, unsurpassable servants and dinners, drives and drawing-rooms, lawn parties and archery meetings, the Academy and the Park, Belgravia and South Kensington—in fact, of everything and everybody except Neuchampstead and dear old Courtenay. She wants, like some one else, to go out into the world again, a real world, and not a sham one like the one in which rich people live in England. She is living, not life. Perhaps I am “un peu Zingara”—who knows? It’s a mercy I’m not very dark, like some other Australians I have seen. But it is now the time to say, my dear Courtenay, that Ernest and I have grown tired of play, and want to go back to that end of the world where work grows.‘
‘Please don’t smother me with wisdom and virtue,’ pleaded Courtenay, with a look of pathetic entreaty. ‘I know we are very ignorant and selfish, and so on, in this old-fashioned England of ours. I really think I might have become a convert and a colonist myself, if taken up early by a sufficiently zealous and prepossessing missionaress. I feel now that it is too late. Club-worship is with me too strongly ingrained in my nature. Clubs and idols are closely connected, you know. But are we never to meet again?’ and here the rarely changed countenance of Courtenay Neuchamp softened visibly.
‘We will have another look at you in late years,’ said Antonia softly; ‘perhaps we may come altogether when—when—we are old.’