“As the coasting steamer churned the far from limpid waters of the Yarra, I waved my hand once and turned my head. They went their way. She and her companion to a rude life and a cheerless future, I to love and unclouded happiness, with fortune and social fame thrown in as makeweights. So there you have the whole of it. Last dying speech and confession of a sometime bachelor, but henceforth able to proudly describe himself ‘as a mawwied man,’ like the swell in the witness-box, ‘faw-mally in the awmy!’”
Edward Bruce came back from Queensland, and for fear of accidents the wedding was solemnised quietly, but with all due form and observance, between Valentine FitzEustace Blount, bachelor, and Imogen Carrisforth, spinster, of Marondah, in the parish of Tallawatta, district of Upper Sturt, colony of Victoria, Australia. The day was one of those transcendant glories of a summer land, which, as combining warmth with the fresh dry air of the Great South Land, are absolutely peerless. The lightly-wooded downs, verdant as in spring in this exceptional year, were pleasing to the eye as they stretched away mile after mile to the base of the mountain range. The exotic trees, oaks and elms, with a few beeches, walnuts, and an ash-tree, hard by the back entrance were in fullest leaf, most brilliant greenery. The great willows hung their tresses over the river bank, swaying over the murmuring stream, while they almost covered the channel with their trailing wreaths.
The glory of the wattle gold had departed; the graceful tender fern-frond appearing chaplets were no longer intertwined with the lavish spring gold which, following the windings of every streamlet and ravine, seems to penetrate the dim grey woodlands with golden-threaded devices. Herald and earliest note in tone and tendril of that manifold, divinest harmony, the Voice of Spring. A souvenir of the ocean in the form of a gladsome, whispering breeze came through the woodland at noon, tempering the sun’s potent influence, until all comments and criticisms united in one sincerest utterance, an absolutely perfect day, fitting, indeed, as the youngest bridesmaid asserted, for such an ideal marriage.
Nothing went wrong with train or coach this time. Fate had done her worst, and was minded to hold off from these persistent seekers after happiness. Edward Bruce had arrived from Queensland, sunbrowned, rather harder in condition than when he left home, but hale, strong, in good spirits, and even jubilant, having heard by wire of a six-inch rainfall since his departure.
Little-River-Jack and the O’Hara brothers had crowned themselves with glory on Crichel Downs since they had been employed there. Energetic, athletic, and miraculously learned in every department of bush lore, they had thrown themselves into the work of the drought-stricken district with an amount of enthusiasm that rejoiced the manager’s heart, moving him to declare that they were worth their weight in gold, and had saved the lives of sheep and cattle to the value of their wages six times over. He was going to give Little-River-Jack the post of overseer at a back outstation, and felt certain that no one would get hold of calf, cow, or bullock with the Crichel Downs brand as long as he was in charge. Phelim and Pat O’Hara were kept on the home station, and for driving a weak flock of sheep at night, or “moonlighting” the outlying scrub cattle, no one in all Queensland, except Jim Bradfield, was fit to “hold a candle” to them.
It was for various reasons, the bride’s recent illness and other considerations, that what is known as “a quiet wedding” took place, yet were there certain additions to the family circle.
Pastoral neighbours, such as the MacRimmons, the Grants, the MacAulays, the Chesters, the Waterdales, could not decently be left out. Besides the seniors, they included large families of young men and maidens born and reared among the forests and meadows of the Upper Sturt. The climatic conditions of this Highland region proved its adaptability for the development of the Anglo-Saxon and the Anglo-Celt, for finer specimens of the race than these young people who rode and drove so joyously to this popular function would have been difficult, if not impossible, to find. The men, tall, stalwart, adepts in every manly exercise; the girls, fresh-coloured, high-spirited, full of the joyous abandon of early youth, as yet unworn by care and with the instinctive confidence of all healthy minded young people in the continuance of the joie de vivre, of which they had inherited so large a share.
It was noticed by some of these whose eyes were sharp and general intelligence by no means limited, that at the breakfast there was a new damsel who assisted the waiting maid, Josephine Macintyre (chiefly known as Joe Mac), a smart soubrette of prepossessing appearance.
With her the bride and bridegroom shook hands warmly before they departed “for good.” Well and becomingly dressed, she was an object of more than ordinary interest to some of the youthful squirearchy.