Mary Gaunt

“ I have tried to do my best, but somehow my life has been a failure all round; I'm not much use to anybody. They say love doesn't last, but I think they are wrong; I know it has lasted me all these years, and the thought of seeing him again—well, well, you will think an old woman foolish, dear, but it makes my heart beat like a young girl's. ”

“ My father was not a man whose whims could be lightly crossed, and she would not let me even try. Ashamed! oh, child! I was never so ashamed in my life! I hung my head all day and was afraid even to look the servant maid in the face. I felt she must despise a girl whose own father held her so lightly. And Paul, there's where the hardest part of all came. How was I to tell my lover what my father had done? And how was I not to tell him, for I knew that Dick Stanton was not the man to keep such a wager to himself ”

“ And I brushed away the tears and tried to tell him again how dear he was to me. But what is the good of going over the old story once again, child. It is just the same old story for every man and woman, with variations so slight as hardly to be worth counting. And yet it is natural that every woman thinks her own love story the most interesting on the face of the earth. No one was ever like her lover, no one was ever loved like she was. ”

“ I could not help being anxious, very anxious, and as the time grew nearer it grew worse to bear; but still it was a happy time with Paul by my side, with his strong arm to lean on, with his kind face so near to my own. I wonder why one's happy days in this world are so brief. It has often seemed to me the arrangements of Providence are a little hard.
We always managed to have three days' racing at Yanyilla, and all the country side for miles round gave itself up to the delights of racing; and of course that meant a week's dissipation, just like "cup week" in Melbourne now. ”

“ That is just like a woman though, she longs and longs, and when at last the longed-for hour has come, she is frightened at her own temerity, and half wishes herself back again. I was not often afraid to meet Paul, but I was to-day, and I never looked up till I felt his arm around me and his dear voice in my ear.
"Why, my little girl, my little girl, what is the matter with my little girl?" ”

“ One morning, a few days after Paul and I had settled matters so very much to our own satisfaction, the boy who brought up the milkers fell sick, and Ben, who took his place, failed to find them. It was a thing of not infrequent occurrence, and I turned out as usual to help him. As usual, too, those wretched cows had turned up the creek and lost themselves in the gullies among the ranges to the south. As the grass grew dry-on the plains they would wander along the sheltered creek, where in patches it was still fresh and green. ”

“ Down in the gully Paul and I watched the shadows grow longer as the day crept on towards evening, and I tried once more to dissuade him from riding Boatman. I might just as well have spoken to the winds.
"My dear child," he said a little severely, "you must know you are asking an impossibility. All the district round has put its money on the horse because I'm riding, and they say I'm the only man in the district that can ride him. I never could play it so low down on your father as to desert him at the last moment. Don't you see, my darling?" ”

“ My mother saw the traces of tears, and asked what I had been crying for, but I kept my own counsel, for where was the good of enlightening her till I could tell her everything was settled? There are many in the world who can rejoice with them that rejoice, many, quite as many, thank God for it, who will weep with them that weep; but to very few is it given, I think, to share another's anxiety sympathetically. Fear and hope, we hardly know which predominates, and the pain, which is of necessity the result, is best borne in silence and alone. ”

“ My father—well you know pretty well what kind of a man your grandfather was, so it's no use my trying to gloss over his character—and your grandmother, ah, my poor mother, I was always fond of my mother, but she had a hard life, and it made her fretful and not much of a companion for a young girl. She thought the world was a hard place for a woman to live in, and the sooner I found it out and indulged in no vain hopes the better for me. ”

“ How could I care for these things; love is so selfish! Only a little while now and the race would be over, and I had no power to think of another's possible pain. All I thought was that the first fence was safely over, and it gave me courage for those that were to come later. One more fence, and then came the jump right in front of the verandah which did duty as a stand, and I held my breath as the horses came up to it in a lump, except the big grey, which was leading by about a length. ”

“ Boatman himself was camped not a mile from the house by the big water-hole, and thither went my father and Paul every day to see that he was getting on all right. Even now I don't understand my father's conduct; you'd think no sensible man would have seriously considered the foolish wager he had made, and yet I had a feeling that he cared very little about his own horse's chances and a great deal about Vixen's. He used to laugh to Paul and say, "He's good enough; he's good enough." But in the evening, after a glass or two of Battle-axe brandy, my mother and I heard quite a different story. ”

“ You 're a pretty little girl, Hope—it wasn't fair to have called you Hope, it's such an unlucky name—but if you'd been young when I was they'd just have raved about you.
Had I lovers, dear?
Of course I had lovers. Every woman who isn't downright repulsive has, I think. Willie Maclean doesn't come here to see me, does he? Ah! I thought——
There, never mind, there's no harm done. It's thirty years since the men used to ride across the ranges just to stay the night at Yanyilla, and I don't think it was wholly for your grandfather's society they came. ”

“ Then I began to grow old, dear, though I was not twenty, and I have been growing old ever since.
Why, there 're tears in your eyes, child! Don't cry; I am old now and some of the bitterness has gone. One doesn't understand why the good Lord should let life be so bitter for some of us, but I suppose it is for some good reason, only—only, you see it was another man's wickedness spoiled my life. Yes, yes, I know there was foul play. Dick Stanton rushed his horse down on Boatman like that, just to spoil his chance of the race, and many there were who thought as I did ”

“ If you 're to be the prize, well it can't make any more talk, my riding, and, of course, it will give me a sort of right to you."
"But—but—you mustn't ride Boatman, you mustn't—you mustn't—you mustn't. He baulks, and he runs down his fences, and he pulls, and—and—oh, my darling! you mustn't ride Boatman!"
"What a list of crimes," he said, smiling at my vehemence. "Still, I have ridden a horse or two in my life, and I'm inclined to think I'm equal to this one. He can beat anything, your father tells me, this side of the Dividing Range. ”

“ It's entirely your own fault. You have nobody to blame but yourself. There, there, for heaven's sake, child, don't cry like that, they 'll have forgotten all about it to-morrow morning, when their heads are clear. I don't know what was the matter with Dick Stanton, I never saw him so excited."
I could have told her, but I held my peace, and she went away, and I cried myself to sleep.
But the matter was not forgotten next day, for my father told us, as if it were a huge joke, that he had bet me against a hundred pounds that Boatman could win the grass-fed steeplechase. ”

“ I put my arm round the verandah post, for I felt I could hardly stand without support. Speak I could not; all sorts of hopes and fears were madly coursing through my brain, and I listened as a woman beside me put my thoughts into words.
"Oh," she said, with a long-drawn breath, "what an awful pace! And they 've got to go round again, too! That horse in front will be done before they've gone much farther."
"Not much," said the man on the other side, scornfully, "that big grey can keep it up for a week. He's all there as long as Griffith can keep him quietly in front. ”

“ Such a little thing, dear, such a little thing. Boatman stood off his fence, landed on top, and turned clean over on to his rider. Vixen hit all round, but by rattling good horsemanship—as good as Paul's own, they said—was kept on her legs, and came in winner of the Yanyilla Steeplechase.
I wanted to go to Paul, to rush across to where already a little crowd were collecting. Why should he be hurt—so many had fallen already, and not one was badly hurt—why should he be? ”

“ Just occasionally, I think, a woman likes the man she loves to be thoroughly angry, and if he does swear then she accepts it as a relief to her own feelings as well as his. So I did not mind Paul swearing, seeing that he was not given to that sort of thing. ”

“ They told me afterwards, when it was nothing to me whether a race was ever run again in this world. The grey had the race easily, they said, and was going strong. Paul steadied him for the fence, but in the last couple of strides the Vixen came with a tremendous rush, at the risk of his own neck, they said, and the grey stood off his fence. ”

“ We and our cattle were the trespassers, for this bit of country belonged to Telowie, and Dick Stanton was only doing as others did when he sent out his horse to a picked bit of sweet grass in order to fit her for the coming race. She might have been drinking water out of the bucket. I had no possible means of knowing that she had not, and yet I felt sure, with Ben, that there had been oatmeal in the bucket, and that Vixen, who, until it had got about that Paul Griffith was to ride Boatman, had been first favourite for the Yanyilla Steeplechase, was being fed. ”

“ Some unfortunate had already got himself into trouble, for what I know not, but I suspected it was too close an acquaintance with the wine when it is red, for over on the other side of the paddock from the house I saw an unfortunate chained to a tree with a stout bullock chain, yelling with all his might, a solemn warning to others not to go and do likewise. ”

“ Let him feed her. The little corn they dare smuggle into the mare won't make any difference in the end. So cheer up, my little girl. Only a week more now and then we'll see."
That week, that week, my last week of happiness, and to think I wished it over! Oh! Hope, Hope! never wish the time gone child! you may be wishing away the last happy days of your life, as I did!
Every day now I saw Paul, every day we met at the camp where was Boatman, and after seeing he was all right wandered away into the gullies together. ”

“ Presently they began to talk about the race meeting. We always had a race meeting at Yanyilla once a year, just about the beginning of November. I forget whether there was a cup in those days, but I know all the people about were quite as much excited about the Yanyilla meeting as you are now about the cup. The township was on our run, only three miles away, and took its name from the station, and the paddock we used as a race course was just within sight of the house. ”