Then more arrivals keep dropping in by twos and threes, neighbouring settlers and chums of ours. So at last a circle of some thirty more or less rough-looking men form a court about those two ladies. Then we go to dinner in another room. Most of us dine chiefly off Miss Fairweather, devouring her with our admiring gaze, listening enraptured to her chat, and pulsating with wild joy if she do but smile or speak to us personally. Many can hardly eat anything; they are too love-sick already.
After dinner our shyness has disappeared, and our native manhood re-asserts itself. The men of the Pahi must not be cut out by rivals from other rivers. They must do all they know to find favour in those beautiful eyes. We go strolling about the place in little knots, admiring the garden, eating fruit in the orchard, visiting the paddocks to see the stock and the crops, and generally enjoying ourselves after our manner.
Each of our ladies has a little group around her, which goes off separately. The component parts of Miss Fairweather's immediate train may change from time to time; men may come and men may go, as it pleases her; but the gallant O'Gaygun, the devoted Dandy Jack, the obliging Old Colonial, and the fascinating Fiend are ever hovering around her, deferent, attentive, and adoring. Whether she is strolling or sitting, walking or talking, one or all of them seem to be by her side. They will not leave the field open to their numerous rivals, not for one minute, if they know it.
How it was managed I cannot tell, but I have the fact on the best authority, Mrs. Member's in good sooth, that something happened very much. That is to say, my informant tells me that the young lady received no less than sixteen distinct proposals of marriage that day, nearly all of which were renewed on subsequent occasions. It can only have been for the barest fraction of a minute that any gentleman could find himself alone with her. But, whenever any one did get the chance, he must have jumped at the opportunity.
You see, it is the custom of the country, of the bush at all events. We have no time for courting, scarcely any opportunity for it. We propose first—marry first if we can—and do the courting afterwards. We have to be spry about these things if we ever intend to get wedded at all. It is the result of competition. A great many men are hungering and yearning for wives, and there are very few girls for them to choose among. So matches are made without very extensive preliminaries. The ladies appear to like this celerity. Perhaps they are unwittingly philosophic, and reflect that, with months of courting, they can really know little more of a man than they did the first hour they met him, because he is naturally on his best behaviour then. Marriage is a lottery any way you can work it. It is only afterwards that each partner can obtain a true knowledge of the other. And I am bound to say that you will not find better wives or better husbands anywhere, than you will in the bush.
So, as I have said, Miss Fairweather received sixteen offers that day. In point of fact she took all hearts by storm. Not a man in the Kaipara who would not have laid down and died for her. Not a bachelor among us who would not have felt exalted to the seventh heaven if he could have won her for his wife. But I dare say no more on this topic, and no more about the dear little beauty either, lest the too fortunate and ever-to-be envied gentleman, who now calls himself her husband, should come after me with his stock-whip.
When the sun has set and evening has come, supper over, we sit in the lamp-lit drawing-room, enjoying the sweet intoxication of the ladies' presence. Or we lounge on the verandah outside the open windows, listening to the chat within, hearing around us the whispers of the forest, or the ripple and risp of the moonlit river, gazing at the profound shadows of the wooded ranges opposite, and inhaling the fragrant sweets of the sleeping garden. Peaceful and silent is that starlit night in the bush.
Then, it being Sunday, the Member gives us service. And as the piano sounds, and we all join in singing the 23rd Psalm—
"In pastures green, He leadeth me,
The quiet waters by,"
I think, that to even the most irreligious or most careless among us, the words, under the influences of our situation, come fraught with homely inspiration.