"I think it"s about the only thing we can do. We would never be let come out again."
There was perfect silence for a minute. My tree was n"t a large one, and the near front wheel of the buggy was almost against it. Not daring to move hand or foot, I could only wish myself a rhinoceros.
"Come on," said one of the voices, at last.
"Come on how?" asked Harry innocently. "Look here: the agreement is that each of you is to give me a kiss, of her own good will.
I"m not going to move."
"O, you horrid wretch! Do you think we"re going to demean ourselves?
You"re mighty mistaken if you do."
"Go on, Jerry." And the buggy started.
"We"re not frightened of you now," remarked one of the voices complacently, whilst I threw myself on the ground, and rolled like a liberated horse.
"If you dare to say one single word, we"ll just expose your shameful proposal.
You mean wretch! you make people think it"s safe to send their girls with you, to be insulted like this. O, we"ll expose you!"
"Expose away. And don"t forget to mention that you both agreed to the shameful proposal. I"ll tell your mothers that I made that proposal just to try you, and you consented on condition of me keeping quiet.
You"re both up a tree. "Weighed in the balances, and found wanting.
Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin." Go on, Jerry, and let"s have it over."
"What do you think, Annie?" asked one of the voices, whilst I made for my third tree.
"He"s the meanest wretch that ever breathed," replied the other vehemently.
"And I always thought men was so honourable!"
"Live and learn," rejoined the escort pithily.
"O, Harry!" panted one voice, "I seen a white thing darting across there!"
"Quite likely," replied Harry. "When a girl"s gone cronk, like you, she must expect to see white things darting about. But I"ll give you one more chance."
"I think we better," suggested one of the voices.
"There"s nothing else for it," a.s.sented the other.
By this time, the buggy had disappeared in the darkness. I heard it stop; then followed, with slight intervals, two unsyllabled sounds.
"Over again," said Harry calmly. "You both cheated."
The sounds were repeated.
"Over again. You"ll have to alter your hand a bit--both of you--or we"ll be here all night. Slower, this time."
Once more the sounds were repeated; then the buggy started, and Harry"s voice died away in the distance to an indistinct murmur, as he reviled the girls for this new exhibition of their shamelessness.
Whilst undecided whether to follow the buggy any further, I saw a light on the other side of the road. Making my way toward it, I crossed a log-and-chock fence, bounding a roughly ploughed fallow paddock, and then a two-rail fence; wondering all the while that I had never noticed the place when pa.s.sing it in daylight. At last, a quarter of a mile from the road, a white house loomed before me, with the light in a front window. I opened the gate of the flower garden, and was soon crouched under the window, taking stock of the interior.
A middle-aged woman was sitting by the table, darning socks; and at the opposite side of the lamp sat a full-grown girl, in holiday attire, with her elbows on the table and her fingers in her hair, reading some ill.u.s.trated journal; while a little boy, squatted behind the girl"s chair, was attaching a possum"s tail to her improver.
Like Enoch Arden (in my own little tin-pot way) I turned silently and sadly from the window, for I was n"t wanted in that company. I thought of going round to the back premises in search of a men"s hut; but before regaining the gate, I trod on a porcupine cactus, and forgot everything else for the time. Then, as I lay on the ground outside the gate, caressing the sole of my foot, and comforting myself with the thought that a brave man battling with the storms of fate is a sight worthy the admiration of the G.o.ds, a white dog came tearing round from the back yard, and rushed at me like a coming event casting its shadow before.
"Soolim, Pup!" I hissed. That was enough. Pup"s colour rendered him invisible in the dark, and his stag-hound strain made him formidable when he was on the job. The office of a chucker-out has its duties, as well as its rights; and in half a minute that farm dog found that one of these duties demanded a many-sided efficiency with which Nature had omitted to endow him. He found that, though the stereotyped tactics of worrying, and freezing, and chawing, were good enough as opposed to similar procedure, they became mere bookish theories when confronted with the snapping system.
Eviction becomes tedious when the intruder"s teeth are always meeting in the hind quarters of the ejecting party; and the latter can neither get his antagonist in front of him, nor haul off to investigate damage.
Of course, I fanned the flame of discord as well as I could, hoping that some one of my own denomination would come out to see what was the matter.
But no: the parlour door opened, Mam came out to the gate, and, in the broad bar of light extending from the door, I saw her pick up a clod, and aim it at the war-clouds, rolling dun. I was crouching some yards away to one side, but the clod crumbled against my ear. Then the storm of one-sided battle went raging round the back premises, as the farm dog returned to tell Egypt the story. Mam retreated from the gate in haste, and for a minute or two there was a confused clatter of voices in the house, and some opening and shutting of doors. Then all was silent again.
Presently Pup returned, and accompanied me back to the road, carrying something which I ascertained to be a large fowl, plucked and dressed in readiness for cooking.
Musing on the difficulties of this Wonderland into which, according to immemorial usage, I had been born without a rag of clothes, I waited for Pup whilst he ate his fowl, and then again pressed forward, alert and vigilant, as beseemed a man scudding under bare poles through an apparently populous country, which by right ought to have been a sheeprun, with about one selection every five miles.
I had managed to put another mile between myself and my camp, when two hors.e.m.e.n met and pa.s.sed me at a canter, singing one of Sankey"s Melodies. I made a modest appeal, but they didn"t hear me, and so pa.s.sed on, unconscious of their lost opportunity.
Then I saw, a long way ahead, the lamps of an approaching vehicle, and at the same time, I heard, close in front, the trampling of horses, and voices raised in careless glee. I headed straight for the horses.
As I neared them, the laughing and chatting ceased, and I was about to open negotiations when a woman"s awe-stricken voice asked,
"Wha--what"s that white thing there in front?"
Before the last syllable had left her lips, that white thing was receding into the darkness, like a comet into s.p.a.ce. The party stopped for a minute, and then went on, conversing in a lower tone.
More pilgrims of the night. This time, the slow footfalls of horses, and a low, inarticulate murmur of voices, out in front and a little to the left, gave me fresh hope. Warned by past failures, I thought best to forego the erect posture to which our species owes so much of its majesty.
I therefore dropped on all-fours and went like a tarantula till I distinguished two horses walking slowly abreast, jammed together; the riders presenting an indistinct outline of two individuals rolled into one; and it was from this amalgamation that the low, pigeon-like murmurs proceeded.
An instinct of delicacy prompted me to pause, and let the Siamese twins pa.s.s in peace; but, unfortunately, I happened to be straight in the way, and just as I started to creep aside, one of the horses extended his neck, and, with a low, protracted snore, touched me on the back with the coa.r.s.e velvet of his nose. Then followed two quick snorts of alarm; the horses shied simultaneously outward, while down on the ground between them came two souls with but a single thud, two hearts that squelched as one.
In spite of the compunction and sympathy I felt, modesty compelled me to glide un.o.bstrusively away, leaving the souls to disentangle themselves and catch their horses the best way they could.
By this time, the buggy lamps had approached within fifty yards.
Knowing how dense the outside darkness would appear to anyone in the vehicle, I made a circuit, and got round to the rear. It was a single-seated buggy, with a white horse, travelling at a walk; and, in the darkness behind the lamps, two figures were discernible. I followed a little, to hear them introduce themselves. They did so as follows:--
"Now, Archie; I"ll scream."
"My own sweetest"----
"Letmego! O,youwon"tletmego!"
Why, the district was fairly bristling with this cla.s.s of people!
I had never seen anything like it, except in the Flagstaff Gardens, when I was in Melbourne.
"My precious darling! My sweetest"----
"I"iltellmotherIwill! O!"
"My sweetest, my beautiful"----
"O! Idon"tloveyoudear! Idon"tloveyounow! Andyouwon"tletmego!"
"There, then, sweetest. Kiss me now."
"Yes, Archie, my precious love."