Part 52 (1/2)

But the puppy, born under an unlucky star, who has been watching all these things from behind his mother, thinks at last, ”Here is some one to play with,” so he comes staggering forth and challenges the kitten to a lark.

She receives him with every symptom of disgust and abhorrence; but he, regardless of all spitting, and tail swelling, rolls her over, spurring and swearing, and makes believe he will worry her to death. Her scratching and biting tell but little on his woolly hide, and he seems to have the best of it out and out, till a new ally appears unexpectedly, and quite turns the tables. The magpie hops up, ranges alongside of the combatants, and catches the puppy such a dig over the tail as sends him howling to his mother with a flea in his ear.

Sam lay sleepily amused by this little drama; then he looked at the bright green arch which separated the dark verandah from the bright hot garden. The arch was darkened, and looking he saw something which made his heart move strangely, something that he has not forgotten yet, and never will.

Under the arch between the sunlight and the shade, bareheaded, dressed in white, stood a girl, so amazingly beautiful, that Sam wondered for a few moments whether he was asleep or awake. Her hat, which she had just taken off, hung on her left arm, and with her delicate right hand she arranged a vagrant tendril of the pa.s.sion-flower, which in its luxuriant growth had broken bounds and fallen from its place above.--A girl so beautiful that I in all my life never saw her superior. They showed me the other day, in a carriage in the park, one they said was the most beautiful girl in England, a descendant of I know not how many n.o.blemen. But, looking back to the times I am speaking of now, I said at once and decidedly, ”Alice Brentwood twenty years ago was more beautiful than she.”

A Norman style of beauty, I believe you would call it. Light hair, deep brilliant blue eyes, and a very fair complexion. Beauty and high-bred grace in every limb and every motion. She stood there an instant on tiptoe, with the sunlight full upon her, while Sam, buried in gloom, had time for a delighted look, before she stepped into the verandah and saw him.

She floated towards him through the deep shadow. ”I think,” she said in the sweetest, most musical little voice, ”that you are Mr. Buckley. If so, you are a very old friend of mine by report.” So she held out her little hand, and with one bold kind look from the happy eyes, finished Sam for life.

Father and mother, retire into the chimney corner and watch. Your day is done. Doctor Mulhaus, put your good advice into your pocket and smoke your pipe. Here is one who can exert a greater power for good or evil than all of you put together. It was written of old,--”A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his----” Hallo! I am getting on rather fast, I am afraid.

He had risen to meet her. ”And you, Miss Brentwood,” he said, ”are tolerably well known to me. Do you know now that I believe by an exertion of memory I could tell you the year and the month when you began to learn the harp? My dear old friend Jim has kept me quite AU FAIT with all your accomplishments.”

”I hope you are not disappointed in me,” said Alice, laughing.

”No,” said Sam. ”I think rather the contrary. Are you?”

”I have not had time to tell yet,” she said. ”I will see how you behave at lunch, which we shall have in half an hour TETE-A-TETE. You have been often here before, I believe? Do you see much change?”

”Not much. I noticed a new piano, and a little glove that I had never seen before. Jim's menagerie o wild beasts is as numerous as ever, I see. He would have liked to be in Noah's Ark.”

”And so would you and I, Mr. Buckley,” she answered, laughing, ”if we had been caught in the flood.”

Good gracious! Think of being in Noah's Ark with her.

”You find them a little troublesome, don't you, Miss Brentwood?”

”Well, it requires a good deal of administrative faculty to keep the kitten and the puppy from open collision, and to prevent the magpie from pecking out the c.o.c.katoo's eye and hiding it in the flower bed.

Last Sunday morning he (the magpie) got into my father's room, and stole thirty-one s.h.i.+llings and sixpence. We got it all back but half a sovereign, and that we shall never see.”

The bird thus alluded to broke into a gush of melody, so rich, full, and metallic, that they both turned to look at him. Having attracted attention, he began dancing, crooning a little song to himself, as though he would say, ”I know where it is.” And lastly he puffed out his breast, put back his bill, and swore two or three oaths that would have disgraced a London scavenger, with such remarkable distinctness too, that there was no misunderstanding him; so Sam's affectation of not having caught what the bird said, was a dead failure.

”Mr. Buckley,” said she, ”if you will excuse me I will go and see about lunch. Can you amuse yourself there for half an hour?” Well, he would try. So he retired again to the rocking-chair, about ten years older than when he rose from it. For he had grown from a boy into a man.

He had fallen over head and ears in love, and all in five minutes, fallen deeply, seriously in love, to the exclusion of all other sublunary matters, before he had well had time to notice whether she spoke with an Irish brogue or a Scotch (happily she did neither).

Sudden, you say: well, yes; but in lat. 34 degrees, and lower, whether in the southern or northern hemisphere, these sort of affairs come on with a rapidity and violence only equalled by the thunder-storms of those regions, and utterly surprising to you who perhaps read this book in 52 degrees north, or perhaps higher. I once went to a ball with as free and easy, heart-whole a young fellow as any I know, and agreed with him to stay half an hour, and then come away and play pool. In twenty-five minutes by my watch, which keeps time like a s.h.i.+p's chronometer, that man was in the tragic or cut-throat stage of the pa.s.sion with a pretty little thing of forty, a cattledealer's widow, who stopped HIS pool-playing for a time, until she married the great ironmonger in George Street. Romeo and Juliet's little matter was just as sudden, and very Australian in many points. Only mind, that Romeo, had he lived in Australia, instead of taking poison, would probably have

”Took to drinking ratafia, and thought of poor Miss Baily,”

for full twenty-four hours after the catastrophe.

At least such would have been the case in many instances, but not in all. With some men these suddenly-conceived pa.s.sions last their lives, and, I should be inclined to say longer, were there not strong authority against it.

But Sam? He saw the last twinkle of her white gown disappear, and then leant back and tried to think. He could only say to himself, ”By Jove, I wonder if I can ever bring her to like me. I wish I had known she was here; I'd have dressed myself better. She is a precious superior girl.

She might come to like me in time. Heigh ho!”

The idea of his having a rival, or of any third person stepping in between him and the young lady to whom he had thrown his handkerchief, never entered into his Sultans.h.i.+p's head. Also, when he came to think about it, he really saw no reason why she should not be brought to think well of him. ”As well me as another,” said he to himself; ”that's where it is. She must marry somebody, you know!”