Ada Cambridge

“ There were some wild ducks dotting the moonlight in the deep pool above us—if it had been a week-night they never would have swum about in that confidential way; and a pair of ridiculous laughing jackasses sat over our heads and jeered at us.
“Oh, Kitty, Kitty, how many nights like this shall we have, I wonder, out of six weeks of nights! What a dreadful little time it is!”
“Hush now, Tom. Don’t let us talk of anything but what is nice and pleasant. The other things can wait.” ”

“ I joined the family on the stairs, and went down to dinner on uncle Goodeve’s arm. I heard cousin Bertha say to father behind me, “How very nice-looking Kitty is, uncle Chamberlayne.”
“Oh, she’ll do,” responded daddy in an offhand tone, but, as I knew, swelling with pride like a dear old turkey-cock. “She’s not so bad, for a colonial.”
“But she doesn’t look the least colonial, uncle; that is what surprises us so much. Mamma says she cannot understand it. We thought she’d be—well, a little shy and awkward—a little uncomfortable in society—that sort of thing.” ”

“ As soon as I could escape, I went to my own room and locked the door, and tried to straighten my somewhat untidy drawers and cupboards, while I impatiently waited to know my fate. I heard Tom open and shut the gate, and heard his long stride over the gravel, his leap up the verandah steps, and his peculiar authoritative knock at the front door. I heard Bridget ask him into the drawing-room; I heard father go in after him and close the door; and, two minutes later, mother’s dress rustled up the hall, and she, too, followed them, and softly shut herself in. ”

“ On this day two years—the day I am twenty-six—I’ll meet you in England, wherever you are. When you get up in the morning, you may feel sure you will meet me somewhere before night.”
“Oh, Tom, what a happy day! but it will never, never come. I might be dead—we might both be dead—before that.”
“Don’t talk of such dreadful things, child; don’t make matters worse than they are. Let us trust one another, and trust in God to keep us safely till we meet again. Let us look forward to that day, Kitty. ”

“ Here is the family party, on its way to dinner:—
First in order, next to mother and uncle Groodeve, is dear aunt Kate, with her gentle face like Eleanor’s, her soft grey hair, her soft grey dress—less like father in some ways than aunt Alice, but with more of his genial frankness in her kind [Pg 208] eyes. A very pretty woman she must have been when she was young; even now she has a certain bloom and brightness in her fair faded face that is very winning to me, expressing, as it clearly does, a warm, and loving, and sympathetic nature. ”

“ No merry drive home through the parrot-haunted bush, one buggy at the tail of the other; no stopping at Narraporwidgee for the immemorial “cold collection” (for the new owner was a retired storekeeper, ambitious, like the merchant princes at home, in his smaller way, of becoming a country gentleman and a J.P.) ; no happy talks under the apple-trees in the warm afternoons; no hand-in-hand rambles by the river in the lovely moonlight. ”

“ Did I say that his name was Smith—Tom Smith? I am very sorry, but so it was. He ought to have had a nobler name to match his noble height of six feet two and a half, and his noble, honest, handsome face, and the noble old blood that mother said he inherited on both sides; but—well, he hadn’t. And, after all, what does it matter? It is only in novels that names are always appropriate to the people who own them; it very seldom is so in real life.
When I began to think of Tom, I became far more melancholy than any thought of Spring or Bronzewing had [Pg 28] made me. How Tom would miss me! ”

“ I was thinking of the little bush township and the little brick church, with its shingle roof and its bell tinkling cheerily from the limb of a gum-tree, wondering whose buggy would appropriate the particular corner of the fence where ours used to stand, and who would sit in the choir instead of me, and how my dear love was bearing the dreadful new solitude that had come to him. ”

“ When we got out of the house, we cast about for freedom, Tom and I, and obtained it without any trouble.
“Kitty,” said father, “go into the orchard and see how those pears are getting on.”
“Pears, daddy!” replied I. “Why, of course they are as hard as nails, and will be for I don’t know how long.”
“Well, greengages, then—they’re ripe, aren’t they? Take a basket and see if you can find a dishful for tea. I always think”—turning to Mrs. Smith—“that fruit is never so nice as when freshly gathered off the tree and put on green leaves, as Kitty does it.” ”

“ Then, by the vague moonlight, I saw the horses in the home paddock quietly sauntering about and enjoying the night air, and amongst them I easily recognized my own lovely Bronzewing—the most perfect lady’s horse, many people said, in the whole of the Western district. The pretty creature! I should know him from a thousand in any scrap of moonlight—the graceful droop and lift of his strong, supple neck, and the way he raised his feet as he trod the earth, that hardly seemed good enough for him to walk on. ”

“ Though,” correcting herself, “I can trust my son not to marry an unworthy woman.”
I threw my arms round the old lady’s neck, and kissed her eagerly. “If ever I have them I will value them, and take care of them as never diamonds were taken care of before,” I cried, almost in tears; “but oh, dear Mrs. Smith, you think I am good enough for Tom, and that is more to me than all the diamonds, lovely as they are.” ”

“ She is younger than aunt Alice, but she does not wear a low-bodied dress, and flowers in her hair, as Mrs. Goodeve does. Some soft old lace, and a pearl brooch at her throat, and a little lace cap with lappets on her head, are the modest ornaments of her elderly lady costume; and father tells her, as he lays his broad palm on the thin fingers she rests on his coat sleeve, that she is prettier than she was when she was the belle of the family, and all the beaux of the county were after her. ”

“ It is in my constitution, somehow, to like the society of men better than that of women; and nature, I am fain to hope, justifies herself in these matters, and does not leave us responsible. Whether it is that men are more intellectually entertaining, or more thoroughly cultured, or take more trouble to make things pleasant, I do not know; but it is certain that I have more interest, and find more sympathy (as a rule) in the conversation of my fellow-men than I do in that of my fellow-women—and particularly of my fellow-girls. ”

“ My pretty Kitty! Bless you, my darling!” he exclaimed in a strong passion of emotion that went over me like a tidal wave; and he kissed the top of my head in a way that made my very toes tingle. “Why need we be [Pg 72] separated, my own dear love? If you want me I will come—or I will wait and come—or I will keep you back. Somehow—some way—I will manage that we shall not lose one another. Do you want me, Kitty?”
“Do you want me?” I whispered, lifting my head a little, without drawing it away. “That is the question.” ”

“ When I reflected that Punch was a journal of public opinion, enjoying an immemorial repute and prestige as a faithful mirror of contemporary manners, I could not wonder that uncle and aunt Goodeve and my cousins were so astonished to see me behaving myself like a civilised being. ”

“ Uncle Armytage, though he comes last, as aunt Alice’s chosen squire, must be [Pg 209] introduced with his wife. Tall, large-framed, majestic, with fine lines at the corners of his mouth, and a noble old Roman nose much elevated in the air, he has a dignified and imposing presence which awes me just a little. His voice is measured, his accent particularly pure and refined, his manner the least trifle verging upon pompousness; but, as mother says, and she ought to know, there is no mistaking him for a well-born and well-bred gentleman in whatever company you find him. ”

“ Aunt Kate thinks, like you, that it beats everything. I suppose the old Thames is as fine a river as many, after all.”
“A river!” I echoed, thinking of that little watercourse between Narraporwidgee and Booloomooloo, over which the gum-trees shook hands, and which was crossed by fallen logs in all directions. “Oh Regy, what a river!” I wondered if Tom had ever seen it from this point; and I mentally determined that, when the time came for him to ask me where I would like to spend my honeymoon, I would propose a sojourn in Richmond, that we might come and sit on the terrace every day. ”

“ Smith and me there existed at this time a close attachment. I took no care to avoid hurting my dear mother by an ostentatious display of affectionate attentiveness to her; but, at the same time, there was a decided clandestine element in our intercourse. When we were alone we had long talks about Tom, and exchanged confidences that neither of us shared with anybody else. I made Mrs. Smith understand and believe that I should never love another man, if I lived to be a hundred, and that I should consider myself as good as married to him all the two years that we were to be separated ”

“ I must just run home to get married, and bring you back with me, Kitty. I hope it won’t be very hard on you, dear. We’ll have a house in Melbourne for part of the year, if you like; I won’t keep you always in the bush. And when the poor old people are gone, then we’ll live in any part of the world you like best. I don’t care a pin for the colony except for their sakes. ”

“ Bella Goodeve and Bertie Armytage bring [Pg 215] up the rear of the family procession, which is closed by aunt Alice and her distinguished brother-in-law. Bella is a weak copy of Bertha, and both of them (as far as I can judge from so short an acquaintance) fair types of a common class of fashionable young ladies not quite in the best society. Cousin Bertie is like his father, in a loose, unformed, elementary way, with a thin, bright-eyed, hook-nosed face, a large frame unfilled and angular, and the shy, quiet manners of a gentlemanly boy. ”

“ I knew so well how he would go wandering about by himself, while his father nodded over his English papers, and his mother dozed in her armchair—how he would sit on that stump at the water’s edge, with our two dogs running races round him, with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, and think of his Kitty at the other [Pg 197] side of the world, and wonder if she would keep true to him through those two long, long years.
“Oh, Tom,” I murmured aloud to the empty air, while my tears dropped fast upon the white sheet before me, “what shall we do without one another? ”

“ He was so ready with that pleasant smile that it was quite evident he had expected to meet me; but I had no more expected to see him than to see my dear Tom himself. I gave a joyful start, and held out my hand eagerly, and he grasped it with a warm and friendly pressure that I did not hesitate to respond to.
“Kitty,” whispered Bertha, sidling up to me when he had passed on, “I ought to have told you that people don’t shake hands when they are introduced. ”

“ I was taken to the park, and the opera, and the Royal Academy, and the Albert Hall, [Pg 219] and Westminster Abbey, driven in an open carriage through the enchanted streets and the lovely summer weather, in a state of rapturous enjoyment of the novelty of everything and the fulness and brightness of my new life, that no words can adequately describe. I went to Madame Tussaud’s and the Zoological Gardens too, surreptitiously, with daddy, at an abnormal hour, and I could have gone on sight-seeing all night, if any one would have taken me. ”

“ We reached the orchard, and sauntered silently to a remote shady corner, where, under a huge apple tree, stood a low rustic seat.
“Let’s sit down a bit, Kitty; it’s too soon after dinner for you to go rampaging about, making yourself hot. They don’t want the fruit till tea-time, and that won’t be for hours yet.”
“And I don’t believe the greengages are ripe any more than the pears,” I said; “we have not had one yet. There might be a few raspberries and some apricots left.” ”

“ I went through a few hurried introductions on the arm of my uncle, and was delivered over to Captain Damer’s charge; and then poor Mr. Goodeve, who was the soul of punctuality, and a little of a gourmand to boot (in spite of that traditional mutton chop and pint of half-and-half) , took out his watch and sighed audibly. I felt disappointed in our unconventional nobleman, who showed himself wanting in good taste, according to my view of things, though my cousins apparently considered it quite correct that so great a man should keep little people waiting for him ”

“ As soon as father is satisfied that this last clip of wool is all right, we are to start.”
Tom was silent after this, and I began to think it was time to be going home.
“Wait a moment, Kitty. I can’t take it all in at once. How long are you going for? When will you be back?”
“I don’t think we shall ever be back,” I answered in a despairing tone. “Father is going to sell everything; and I believe, if mother once finds herself in England again, a team of bullocks wouldn’t drag her back.” ”