As their open carriage rolled through the wide, straight streets, in which long rows of lamps glittered on either side, or faded star-like in the far distance, they were impressed with the utterly different expression of Melbourne from that of their own fair city by the sea.
'What a wonderful place!' said Pollie, gazing up the great street which contains all the pleasures and palaces, and is nightly crowded with their votaries. 'How the lamps glow and shimmer! What a vast size and almost sombre uniformity in the buildings which line the streets! There is something weird, too, in the electric lights which create a pale daylight around those endless colonnades. I feel as if I had been transported to some city raised by the wand of an enchanter.'
'Not unlike a little sorcery,' said one of the party, 'when you come to think. There were gum-trees and blacks here "in full blast" half a century ago. Here we are at the Royal.'
It was a command night. The representative of Her Majesty had signified his intention of being present. One of the best boxes in the dress-circle—but two distant from the vice-regal compartment—had been secured by the forecasting captain. The house was crammed. As the popular governor and his party entered, the great assemblage rose like one man to the air of the National Anthem, which aroused Pollie to a burst of loyal enthusiasm.
'It always brings the tears into my eyes,' she said; 'it looks foolish, but I cannot help it. Something in the old tune and the reverence with which our people always greet it stirs my very heart's core. I suppose these feelings are hereditary.'
'The colonies are wonderfully loyal,' said the captain. 'I never saw anything like it. You are more English than the English themselves.'
'I hope we shall always remain so,' said Mrs. Devereux, 'though I believe at home they think we must be essentially different. But the curtain rises. Now, Pollie!'
It follows, as a thing of course, that the whole party, and more particularly Pollie, with her sensitive nature, appreciative as well of the lightest touches of humour as the deeper tones of pathos, were charmed with the play, which had enthralled London nightly for a whole year.
When, after the finale, the party adjourned to the carefully appointed supper which the gallant captain had insisted upon providing—when, amid the popping of champagne corks, a flow of pleasant criticism and enjoyable badinage went round—Pollie realised that she was tasting one of those highly flavoured, almost forbidden pleasures of life which she had read of, but hardly dared to think of sharing.
'This sort of thing is too good to be true,' she replied to Captain Belmont, who was expressing his general and particular satisfaction with 'the way things had gone off.' 'There is so much enjoyment that it must be a little sinful. Don't you think so? I shall wake to-morrow to find it all a dream; or mother will decide that I am never to go to a theatre party again.'