“Oh, here you are!” cried Mrs. Wendover, in accents of genuine welcome. “This is the most lucky chance. You must all positively stay to lunch. I was getting tired of my own company for once in a way. John had sent a messenger to say that he would not come out till the evening. So you are evidently sent by Allah to cheer my loneliness.”
“We should all be charmed,” replied Imogen, taking her place as chief chaperon, “but it is simply impossible. Captain Warrender will tell you that we are all going to the naval ball this evening, and by the time we get to Hobart we sha’n’t have a minute to spare, to dress in time and get the sunburn off our faces.”
“Then you must come in and have raspberries and cream. It’s quite a charity to take them off our hands. Walter and Nora and I are going to the ball too, so I must insist.”
Cooled and refreshed, indeed invigorated by the raspberries and Jersey cream, with suitable accompaniments, the jocund crew bade adieu to their hostess, and trooped off to the Fairy Bower, that fern-shaded trysting place in the heart of the forest, dear to so many generations of holiday folk, where the four-in-hand drag awaited them by the fountain, and bore them safely to their several destinations. The naval ball was a pronounced success. Could it be otherwise “manned” by the officers of the half-dozen men-of-war then in harbour? The band, the waiters at the buffet, the assistants who held the dividing line in the ball-room, the attendants at the doors of the supper-room, were all in uniform, while the epaulettes and profusion of gold lace lit up the mass of civilian costumes. It was a contention seriously debated at the time, and never satisfactorily settled, as to whom the honour of being the belle of the ball should be awarded. But all agreed that the crown of the Queen of Beauty, if there had been a tournament, as in the days of chivalry, at which to present it, should have been awarded either to Mrs. Blount (née Imogen Carrisforth) or to Miss Leslie, a native-born Tasmanian, whose complexion was held to be unapproachable south of the Line, and whose pre-eminence in loveliness had never before been disputed.
Each had their partisans, sworn admirers and liegemen. Each was declared to be the prettiest girl, or the handsomest woman in Australasia—for the New Zealand competitor “took a lot of beating,” as an ardent youthful admirer phrased it. It remained, however, undecided, and will probably be revived, like other vexed questions from time to time, with similar lack of finality. As to one thing, however, the unanimity was pronounced and decisive—the success of the entertainment. When “God Save the Queen” was played, it was nearer three o’clock in the morning than two, and all but the most inveterate dancers had had enough of it. Some of the junior division indeed petitioned for just one more waltz and a galop; but discipline being the soul of the navy, as well as the army, the Admiral’s fiat had decided the matter irrevocably. Carriages were ordered, shawls and wraps were donned by the matrons and maids who had “seen it out,” as their partners expressed it, and the curtain fell upon one of the most successful comedies or melodramas, as the case may be, still popular, as in old historic days, on the mirthful, mournful, but ever mysterious stage of human life.
After this crowning joy came a succession of fêtes. Meetings of the Racing and Polo Clubs, with a gymkhana arranged by the latter society, also picnics and private parties, the Garden Party in the lovely grounds of Government House, where that befitting architectural ornament overlooks the broad winding reaches of the Derwent. All these had to be attended and availed of. The great events of the Polo Club, in “potato and bucket” race, when the competitors were compelled to dismount, pick up a potato from the ground and deposit the same in a bucket, placed for the purpose; as also the tandem race, when the aspirant riding one horse, had to drive another, with long reins, before him, also to negotiate a winding in and out course, before returning to the starting point, were both won by an active young squatter from the Upper Sturt, to the unconcealed joy of Mrs. Bruce and Imogen, the latter race, indeed, after a very close finish with a naval officer, who was the recognised champion at this and other gymkhana contests. But won it was, by the pastoral champion, though only by a nose. So after an inquiry meeting by the committee of the club, it was to him adjudged, and the trophy borne off in triumph. It is not to be supposed that the squirearchy of the land was unrepresented at these Isthmian Games, or that under such circumstances they left their wives and daughters, aunts and cousins behind; or, if such an unnatural piece of selfishness had been for a moment contemplated, that the women of the land would not have organised a revolt, declared a republic, elected a president, and marched down with banners flying to invest the capital, and make their own terms with the terrified Government of the day. No such Amazonian action was, happily, rendered necessary by sins of omission or commission on the part of their liege lords or legal protectors.
That they had sufficient courage and martial spirit for such an émeute, no one doubted. But with the exception of a quasi-warlike observation by a Tasmanian girl, on beholding the phalanx of alien beauty arrayed at the naval ball, that on the next occasion of the sort she intended to bring her gun and shoot a girl or two “from across the Straits” by way of warning, no specific action was taken.
So the old antagonism (veiled, of course, and conventional) that has existed between the home-grown and the imported feminine product, was conducted with discreet diplomacy, and the admirers of Helen or Briseis had to content themselves with displaying personal or conversational superiority in lieu of lethal weapons.
So on the ground in drags, mail phaetons, buggies and dogcarts of the period, the female contingent arrived, chiefly before the first gun of the engagement metaphorically aroused the echoes in the glens and forest glades around Mount Wellington. The Hollywood Hall family was fully represented, the Claremonts, the Bowyers. The magnate of Holmby, Mr. Dick Dereker, in all his glory, had deposited himself and his most intimate friend, John Hampden, a new arrival from England, at the club, and was daily to be viewed by the admiring population of Hobart in Davey or Macquarie Street in company with other stars of the social firmament. Mr. Blount noticed with interest the extraordinary popularity which encircled this favourite of fortune in the chief city of his native land. As he walked down the street it was a kind of royal progress. He was the people’s idol, the uncrowned king of the happy isle. Men of note and standing crossed over to greet and shake hands with him. Even the shady characters had a soft spot in their hardened hearts for “Dicky Dereker.” Why was this adulation? Other country gentlemen were handsome and chivalrous. All of them rode, drove, shot well; they, like him, had been born “in the island,” and as such had the claims of a patriot for the suffrages of their countrymen.
But the difficulty was to find all these virtues, personal recommendations, gifts and graces, centred in one individual. The popular verdict so declared it. And if the “classes and the masses” in Tasmania had been polled as to his fitness for any post of eminence, from the vice-regal administrator of the government downward, every man, woman and child in the island would have gone “solid” for “Dicky Dereker.”