'In short,' said Pollie, before whom and for whose benefit and edification this effusive statement was made, 'in short, he is perfection—a man without a fault. What a pity it is that paragons are never attractive!'
'Beware of false fires, my darling,' said the tender mother—'misleading lights of feeling apart from reason, which are apt to wreck the trusting, and to end in despairing darkness.'
Among the visitors to Corindah, who made at least a bi-monthly call, was the Honourable Hector MacCallum, M.L.C.
He was a prosperous bachelor, verging on middle age, with several good stations, and an enviable power of leaving them in charge of managers and overseers, while he disported himself in the pleasantest spots of the adjacent colonies, or indeed wheresoever he listed—sometimes even in Tasmania, where he was famed for his picnics, four-in-hand driving, and liberality in entertaining. In that favoured isle, where maidens fair do so greatly preponderate, Mr. MacCallum might have brought back a wife from any of his summer trips; and few would have asserted that the damsel honoured by his choice was other than among the fairest and sweetest of that rose-garden of girls.
But then something always prevented him. He wanted to go to New Zealand. It was impossible to settle down before he had seen the wonders of that wonderland—the pink-and-white terraces, the geysers, the paradisiacal gardens, the Eves that flitted through the 'rata' thickets, the fountains that dripped and flashed through the hush of midnight. Something was always incomplete. He would come again. And more than one fair cheek grew pale, and bright eyes lost their lustre, ere the inconstant squatter prince was heralded anew.
But now it seemed as if the goodly fish, which had so often drawn back and disappeared, was about to take the bait.
Mr. MacCallum's visits were apparently accidental. He happened to be in that part of the country, and took the opportunity of calling. He was on his way to Melbourne or Sydney, and was sure he could execute a commission for Mrs. Devereux or Miss Pollie. This, of course, involved a visit on the way back. He was a good-looking, well-preserved man, so that his forty odd years did not put him at much disadvantage, if any, when he came into competition with younger men. Indeed, it is asserted by the experienced personages of their own sex that young girls are in general not given to undervalue the attentions of men older than themselves. It flatters their vanity or gratifies their self-esteem to discover that their callow charms and undeveloped intellects, so lately emancipated from the prosaic thraldom of the schoolroom, suffice to attract men who have seen the world—have, perhaps, borne themselves 'manful under shield' in the battlefield of life, have struck hard in grim conflicts where quarter is neither given nor received, and been a portion of the great 'passion-play' of the universe. They look down upon their youthful admirers as comparatively raw and inexperienced, like themselves. Theirs is a career of hope and expectation all to come, like their own. They like and esteem them, perhaps take their parts in rehearsals of the old, old melodrama. But in many cases it is not till they see at their feet the war-worn soldier, the scarred veteran who has tempted fate so often in the great hazards of the campaign, who has shared the cruel privations, the deadly hazards of real life—that the imaginative heart of woman fills up all the spaces in the long-outlined sketch of the hero and the king, the lord and master of her destiny, to whom she is henceforth proud to yield worship and loving service.
Why Mr. MacCallum did not marry all this time—he owned to thirty-seven, and his enemies said he was more like forty-five—the dwellers in the country towns on the line of march exhausted themselves in conjecturing. The boldest hazarded the guess that he might have an unacknowledged wife 'at home.' Others averred that he was pleasure-loving, of epicurean, self-indulgent tastes, having neither high ambition nor religious views. They would be sorry to trust Angelina or Frederica to such a guardianship. Besides, he was getting quite old. In a few years there would be a great change in him. He had aged a good deal since that last trip of his to Europe, when he had the fever in Rome. Of course he was wealthy, but money was not everything, and a man who spent the greater part of the year at his club was not likely to make a particularly good husband.
The object of all this criticism, comment, and secret exasperation was a squarely built, well-dressed man, slightly above the middle height, and with that indefinable ease of manner and social tact that travel, leisure, and the possession of an assured position generally produce. He was kindly, amusing, invariably polite, and deferential to women of all ages; and there were few who did not acknowledge the charm of his manner, even when they abused him in his absence, or deceived him for their own purposes. In spite of all he was popular, was the Honourable Hector, a man of wide and varied experience, of a bearing and general tournure which left little to be desired. In the matter of courtship he knew sufficiently well that it was injudicious to force the running; that a waiting race was his best chance. He took care never to prolong his visit; always to encircle himself with some surrounding of interest during his stay at Corindah. He pleased Pollie and her mother by being in possession of the newest information on all subjects in which he knew they were interested. He was good-natured and bon camarade with the young men, at the same time in a quiet way exhibiting a slight superiority—as of one whose sphere was larger, whose possessions, interests, opportunities, and prospects generally, placed him upon a different plane from that with which the ordinary individual must be contented. This, of course, rendered more effective the habitual deference which he invariably yielded to both the ladies whom he wished to propitiate, rightly deeming that all the avenues to Pollie's heart were guarded by the mental presentment of her mother.
'Really, we quite miss Mr. MacCallum when he leaves Corindah,' said Pollie one day, as she watched the well-appointed mail-phaeton and high-bred horses which that gentleman always affected, disappearing in the distance. 'He's most amusing and well-informed; his manners are so finished—really, there is hardly anything about him that you could wish altered.'