‘Neuchamp, like a fool as he was, had evidently not written lately. The cousin (and a deuced fine girl, too, with pots of money of her own) had been staying up at Rainbar—a queer thing to do. Old Middleton, when bringing her to his place, had told every one that she was his friend Neuchamp’s cousin. It would be some time before Frankston or his daughter would find out the untruth of the report. In the meantime he would butter up the old man, humbug him with regret for his occasional “wildness,” promise all kinds of amendment and square behaviour for the future; then go straight to the girl, who, of course, could know nothing of his life and time, and say, “Here am I, Hardy Baldacre, with a half share in Baredown, Gogeldra, and No-good-damper (hang it; I must change that)—anyway, three of the best cattle properties of the south; here am I, not the worst-looking fellow going, at your service. Take me, and we’re off to Melbourne or Tasmania for a wedding-trip, and that stuck-up beggar Neuchamp may marry his cousin, and go up King Street the next week for all we care.” I shan’t say the last bit. But it will occur to her. Women always think of everything, though they don’t say it. That might fetch her. Anyhow, the odds are right. I’m on!’
This exceedingly practical soliloquy having been transacted at his hotel during the performance of his toilette, Mr. Baldacre partook of the matutinal soda-and-brandy generally necessary for the perfect restoration of his nerves, and breakfasted, with a settled resolution to call at Morahmee that afternoon.
This intention he carried out. He found Antonia apparently not unwilling to receive him upon a more intimate conversational footing than he ever recollected having been accorded to him. She was in that state of anxiety, unhappiness, and nervous irritability which makes the patient only too willing to fly to the relief afforded by a certainty even of evil. The climber upon Alpine heights, with shuddering death-cry, ever and anon casts himself into the awful chasm on the verge of which his limbs trembled and his overwrought brain reeled. The overtaxed sufferer under the pangs of mortal disease chooses death rather than the continuance of the pitiless torment. So the agonised heart, poised on the dread pinnacle of doubt, flees to the Lethean peace of despair.
Having not unskilfully brought the conversation round to the subject of Miss Neuchamp, Mr. Baldacre touched, with more or less humour, on certain unguarded remarks of that inexperienced but decided traveller. He enlarged, as if accidentally, upon her good looks and apparent cleverness, giving her the benefit of a tremendous reputation for learning of the abstrusest kind, and generally exaggerating all the circumstances which might render probable the admiration of an ultra-refined aristocrat.
Much of this delicate finesse, as Mr. Baldacre considered it to be, was transparent and despicable in the eyes of his listener. But, difficult as it may be to account for, otherwise than by ignoring all known rules and maxims for the comprehension of that mysterious mechanism, the feminine heart, there was, nevertheless, something not wholly disagreeable in the outspoken admiration of the bold-eyed, eager admirer who now pressed his suit.
With one of the sudden, tempestuously capricious changes of mind, common to the calmest as to the most impulsive individual of the irresponsible sex, a vague, morbid desire for finality at all hazards arose in her brain. She had listened and loved, and waited and dreamed, and dedicated her leisure, her mental power, her life, to the path of habit and culture which would render her every thought and speech and act more harmonious with his ideal. She had thought but of him. He had his plans, his projects, a man’s career, his return to England—a thousand things to distract him—all these might delay the declaration of his love. But she had never thought of this! She had never in wildest flight of conjecture conjured up a fiancée, a cousin loved from earliest child-betrothals, to whom he doubtless had written pages of minute description of all their well-intended kindness and provincial oddities at Morahmee.
And was she to sigh and droop, and pale and wither, beneath the unexplained, unshared burden of betrayed love? Had she not seen the colour fade from the fair cheek, leaving a cold ashen-gray tint where once was bright-hued joy, eager mirth, and laughter? Had she not seen the light die out of the pleading, wistful eyes, once so deeply glowing, so tender bright, the step fall heavy, the voice lose its ring, the woman quit the haunted dwelling where a dead heart lay buried and a still, gray-hued, hard-toned tenant sat therein, for evermore resignedly indifferent to all things beneath the sky? Was this her near inexorable fate?
No! a thousand times, no! Had she not in her veins the bold blood of Paul Frankston, the fearless sea-rover, who had more than once awed a desperate crew by the promptness of his weapon and the terror of his name? And was she to sink into social insignificance, and tacitly sue for the pity of him and others, because she had mistaken his feelings and he had with masculine cruelty omitted to consider hers?
No! again, no! The rebellious blood rushed to her brow, as she vowed to forget, to despise, to trample under foot, the memory, false as a broken idol, to which she had been so long, so blindly faithful. And as all men save one—for even in that hour of her wrath and misery she could not find it in her heart to include her father among the reprobate or despicable of his sex—were alike unworthy of a maiden’s trust, a maiden’s prayers, why not confide herself and her blighted heart to the custody of this one, who, at least, was frank and unhesitating in proffering his love and demanding her own?
Mr Hardy Baldacre had not thought it expedient to delay bringing matters to a climax, fearing that highly inconvenient truth, with respect to the fair Augusta, might arrive at any moment. With well-acted bluntness of sincerity he had adjured Miss Frankston to forgive his sudden, his unpremeditated avowal of affection.