Lord Thomas De Bohun had been married twice–and more. In fact, he wassick and tired of womenkind. And that is why he came out to Australia. Hethought a year or two of travel in a savage country, free of all thetrammels of civilization, would give him a rest. Besides, the second LadyThomas had been rather nice to him, and she had died pathetically, and hemissed her. Wherefore he loathed the British matchmaker for the present,and was glad to get as far away from her as possible.He was not a roué and a reprobate, such as this introduction might imply.Nothing of the sort. A better-natured or more charming young man–he wason the right side of forty still–was not to be found in London. But hewas the son of a duke, poor fellow, with a great deal of money, and nowork to do–misfortunes for which the fair-minded reader will make a large allowance.
In the beginning, Australia did not quite answer his expectations.Whereas he had imagined a dress-suit to be a thing unknown, he foundhimself obliged to wear one nightly, and he was just as ducal in our cityclubs and drawing-rooms as he would have been at home–indeed, a greatdeal more so. But as soon as he escaped into the country he was allright. Clad in moleskins and a Crimean shirt, with a soft felt hat on hishead, and big spurs on his heels, he galloped about at kangaroo hunts andcattle musters, a simple bushman of the bush (while his servant playedthe gentleman in Melbourne), enjoying health and happiness and theunrivalled charm of novelty to a degree unknown before. Anybody could gethim who had no right to get him. The great country houses, flatteringthemselves that they alone could entertain him suitably, found it a mostdifficult matter to drop salt on his elusive tail.
He was at a bush hotel one evening, spending a convivial hour withperfect strangers, who did not know he was Lord Thomas. Having heard hisname was De Bohun, they called him Mr. Bone, and were quite satisfiedwith that. So was he. The talk turned upon agricultural machinery, asused by English and Australian farmers respectively; and a member of thelatter class, as Lord Thomas supposed, was most anxious to show him afive-furrow plough and various modern implements–American “notions” ofthe labour-saving kind.
“You come home with me,” said the jolly old man, “and you shall see ’emworking. Now do, Mr. Bone. Pot-luck, you know, but a hearty welcome.”
Lord Thomas jumped at the chance, for, amongst other delightfully novelpursuits, he had set himself to the improvement of his mind in thesematters, as a responsible landlord and potential duke.
“But your family?” he objected. “Would it not inconvenience them toreceive a stranger without warning, and at so late an hour?”
“Not a bit of it, Mr. Bone. There’s always a bed ready for anybody thatmay turn up. Mrs. Kemp will be charmed to see you.”
“In that case,” said Lord Thomas, “I accept with pleasure.”
A pair of rough horses, in a ramshackle American wagon, were broughtround, and they set forth on a ten-mile voyage through the bush, withneither lamps nor moon to steer by. At a long, swinging trot, neverhastening and never loitering, the shabby animals did it in an hourwithout making a false step, and were as fresh at the end as at thebeginning. The mysterious, illimitable gloom and the romantic solitudewere very refreshing to the London man, and so was his host, who was fullof merry tales and valuable information. Lord Thomas, in short, enjoyedhis adventure thoroughly.
But he was taken aback by the sight of Mr. Kemp’s house. Instead of theshanty of his anticipations, he beheld a tall and imposing structure,cutting a great block out of the starry midnight sky. A sweet place bydaylight–ivied, virginia-creepered, grape-vined all over its mellow brickwalls and decaying verandahs, with a great garden and magnificent trees around it.
“Built by my father in the early days,” said Mr. Kemp. “The first bighouse in this district, and the only one for nigh twenty years. We’vebeen rich folks in our time, Mr. Bone, but the ups and downs, youknow,–things ain’t what they used to be, especially since the Boom.However, we’ve still got a roof over us, thank God, and a crust to sharewith a friend.”
The family had retired, and the guest, having been warmed with whisky,was escorted to his bedroom by the host. It was a kind of bedroom to makehim feel slightly nervous about meeting the hostess next morning. The bedcreaked with age, and so did the carpetless floor beneath it; but thelinen was fine and the pillows soft, the handsome old rosewood furnitureshone like glass, and there was an impalpable air about everything thatbespoke the house of a lady.
“I don’t know whether you like the windows shut?” said Mr. Kemp,hospitably bustling about. “We always keep them open, and the blinds up.Nobody to overlook us here, you know.” He tried to pull down a sash whichstuck in the frame, but at Lord Thomas’s request desisted.
“Leave it as it is,” said the guest. “I like them open. It’s soAustralian!”
And he presently lay down on his lavender-perfumed couch, feeling–afterhis experience of bush inns–that it was the nicest bed he had everoccupied. And that scent of the earth and of the night, coming in throughopen windows, how exquisite it was! He blew out his candle–a home-madecandle in an old chased silver candlestick–and slept like a baby.
Not for long, however. Voices called him through those open windows, andbefore six o’clock he was leaning out of one of them, awake and alive ashe had rarely been at such an hour.
What an Arcadian world was this, in which he felt like a man new born!Air as clear as crystal, and dew shining on shrubs and trees; giantacacias and native white cedars, and pink and white oleanders that couldhave swallowed an ordinary bush house; the morning moon still gleaminglike a jewel over the saffron sunrise and the intensely dark-blue hills.He had heard curlews in the night and frogs at the break of dawn; now themagpies were fluting all over the place, cheerful fowls were crowing,laughing jackasses shouting “Ha-ha-ha!” and “Hoo-hoo-hoo!” to oneanother. Delicious sounds! But none so acutely audible as the immensesilence at the back of them.
“This,” said he to himself, “is the real bush, that we have heard so muchabout, at last.”
He looked down from his window, and saw the sparrows at the ripe grapesnow loading the eaves of the verandah; saw a hare limping along thegravelled paths, where no hare should be. He looked over the gardenhedges to the peaceful fields outside, where cows were feeding quietly,throwing shadows on the wet grass; flocks of cockatoos were screamingamongst them, and sprinkling themselves like white flowers over thefresh-ploughed land; and an army of dusky jays held the vineyard on thehill, whence their joyous gabble rose continuously. It was not hisproperty they were destroying, and he saw and heard them withdelight–those denizens of the wild bush–that was healing him, body andsoul, of the ills of excessive civilization.
The pink dawn spread and glowed, quenching the horned moon and dimmingthe sapphire hues of the distant ranges. Then some white bee boxesgleamed conspicuously to the right of the flower garden–an orderlyencampment, like tents on a field of battle–and he could see the busyswarms going forth to their day’s labour. He could even hear themhumming, they were in such myriads. And another thing he heard–a faint,muffled clatter–which he traced to a little building near the gate of the bees’ enclosure; a shed made of reeds, with two windows and a door in it–doubtless the honey-house, in which some one was early at work. As helistened to the noise within, he watched the door, which faced his view,and presently he saw a girl come out of it. She wore a pink cottonsun-bonnet, veiled with a bushman’s fly net, and an all-embracing tightapron, which made her look like the toy figures of a Noah’s ark. In eachhand she carried a long tin box, one heavier than the other, by roughloops of fencing wire; and she marched with them down an alley betweenthe bee hives. Mr. Kemp had casually mentioned his daughter, who, at thetime, Lord Thomas had not regarded as affecting him in any way. Evidentlythis was she, and the circumstances of the house disposed him to takeanother view of her.
He saw her put the boxes on the grass and set the lids open, then liftthe roof from one of the wooden hives. A cloud of angry insects rose toher stooping face and buzzed about her; it made him tingle to see them,but she heeded them no more than if they had been motes in the sun-raysthat now lighted up her figure so effectively. She puffed something thatsmoked into the open hive from a sort of little bellows arrangement, andthen lifted out the frames of comb, held them dangling in the air whileshe brushed black masses of bees off them, and placed them edgewise inone of the boxes on the grass until she had quite filled it. Out of theother she took similar frames, which she dropped into the emptiedchamber, and shut down there. Then he saw her labouring towards the honeyhouse with the weighted box, and was exasperated to note how it draggedher down. She passed it from hand to hand to ease the strain, but couldnot carry it without a twist of her supple body, a staggering gait, andpantings that he seemed to hear, though of course he could not.
“What a shame!” he inwardly ejaculated. And he withdrew into his room,emptied a can of water into a battered old bath, and dressed in haste.The clatter in the honey-house, which had ceased while she was amongstthe bees, showing that she worked single-handed, began again.
“I wonder,” quoth Lord Thomas, “what she’s doing in there?”
He thought he would go down to see, and went, stepping softly, so as notto disturb the rest of the family, who did not seem to rise so early asshe. As usual in the bush, no locks or bolts impeded him; he turned thehandle of the hall door, and noiselessly slipped out.
What a morning indeed! Freshly autumnal–for it was the end ofMarch–though the day would be all summer until the sun was low again;cool almost to coldness, with an air that washed the lungs andinvigorated the heart in a manner to make mere living an ecstasy, even toa lord–the air of the spacious, untainted bush, and of nowhere else inthe wide world. He stood a moment on the steps of the verandah to drinkit in–to sniff the wholesome odour of gum trees and the richer scent ofthe perennial orange flower starring the thick green walls of the orchardpaths. Then he strolled down one of those perfumed lanes–the one thatdivided the back garden from the front–and presented himself at the gateof the bee enclosure just as Miss Kemp, with one of her tin boxes, dashed out of the honey-house and slammed the door behind her, disappointing theexpectations of a cloud of besieging bees.
She saw him and stopped short, evidently taken aback, and conscious ofher coarse apron and limp sun-bonnet, not worn for company. He hesitatedfor a moment in sympathetic confusion, but, being immediately aware thatthe form thus plainly outlined was a charming one, as also the pink facein the frame of pink calico, stood his ground and modestly accosted her.He lifted his cap gracefully, and a bee got under it.
“Good morning–you brute!” was what he said.
“Don’t come,” she cried in answer, waving him back. Then she pulled off asticky glove and held a bare hand over the gate, regardless of bees,expressing a polite astonishment at his being up so soon.
“I heard of your arrival, Mr. Bone,” said she. “I hope you slept well. Ihope you like Australia, as far as you have seen it.”
They chatted conventionally for some minutes. He apologised for hispresence, and she reassured him, on behalf of the family, with an easyfrankness that seemed to say he was but one of dozens of Mr. Bonesflowing in a continuous stream through the house, like tramps through acasual ward. And then he begged to be allowed to help her in her work. “Iam sure,” said he, “you must want somebody to carry that heavy box–oh,conf–! They knew I am a stranger, evidently.”
“Go away,” she laughed. “You have no business here. I don’t want help–Iam quite used to doing it all–and you’d better go and sit on theverandah, where you can be at peace. Or wouldn’t you like a stroll round?With a pipe, perhaps?”
“Will you show me round?”
“I’m sorry I can’t; I must be busy here. The honey is coming in so fastthis weather–which may break at any moment–that I can’t gather it quicklyenough. I get on an average nearly a quarter of a ton per day.”
She looked at him with an air of professional pride, forgetting hercostume; and he looked at her. The closer view showed freckles and aretroussé nose, without at all detracting from her charm. He could gazefull into her face without being rude, because her eyes were continuallyfollowing the movements of the bees that buzzed about him. Every now andthen her fingers skirmished round his head like a flight of butterflies.
Five minutes more, and she was tying a large apron round his waist, overa very old coat that did not fit him, and he was planting on hisaristocratic head an aged straw hat, flounced with mosquito netting. Inthis costume, finished off with a pair of good gloves of his own,cheerfully sacrificed, he was allowed to pass through the gate and takeup the box by its handles of fencing-wire. The sun was well above theranges now, and every dewy leaf and blade of grass glittering.
“What a heavenly morning!” he sighed ecstatically.
“Isn’t it?” she assented, and then fell to work again with an energyinteresting to contemplate in a person of her sex and years. She walkedbetween the rows of hives till she came to the one to be operated on; hewalked after her, inwardly nervous, but with an air of utmost valour.
“Now be careful,” said she, as she seized her little bellows. “Tuck thatnet into your waistcoat in front, and then lift the lid off for me.”
He did as she bade him, and gasped at the spectacle presented. How allthose bees managed to breathe and move, let alone work, in the space theyoccupied, was more than he could understand. She had no time to explainjust now. While he stood rigid, and imagined bees under the hems of histrousers–for they were thick in the grass he stood on–she rapidly smokedthe hive and drew out the frames of comb, heavy with honey, brushedthousands of stinging things off them, and placed them in the empty tin.From the full one she took the frames, filled only with hollow cells,which she had brought from the honey house; and these she dropped intothe hive amid the masses of bees, leaving less than an inch between onewall of comb and another.
“And you make the same wax do again?” he inquired, thirsting forknowledge.
“Many times,” she replied, pleased to inform his ignorance. “That combwill be refilled in about ten days. Put the lid on again, please.Gently–don’t crush more than you can help. Now–“
She straightened her back and looked at him.
“Now what?” he inquired eagerly.
“Well, if you would, you might be filling the other box while Iextracted.”
But this was rather more than his courage was equal to. He said he was afraid he did not know enough about it yet.
“Very well; we will go and extract the lot we have.”
They went to the honey-house together, and she quickly shut the door assoon as both were in. He smiled to himself as he saw her do it. Thesituation to him was–well, noticeable; to her it was absolutely withoutsentimental suggestions. The honey-house was the place for work, not forplay.
It was a stuffy and a sticky place, for its little windows, as well asthe door, had to be closed to keep the bees out. Ventilation depended onthe loosely-woven canvas lining the reed-thatched walls. Half of thefloor was raised above the other half, so that the honey from theextractor, pouring from the spout upon a fine sieve, could flow downwardsto the great tank, and from that into the tins which conveyed it tomarket. Five tons’ weight of these tins were stacked on the lower floor,all filled and soldered up; and many more, Miss Kemp stated, were storedin the house.
“I used to get sixpence a pound for it,” she informed him, with ananxious, business look in her pretty grey eyes; “but now the stores won’tgive more than threepence. It really doesn’t seem worth while, at thatprice, taking railway charges and all do you think it does?”
Lord Thomas did not, emphatically.
“So I am going to try exporting. I have the regulation boxes andtins–fifty-six pounds in a tin, and two tins in a case–and, as soon as Ican get my hands free here, I shall prepare a consignment for the Londonmarket. I do hope that will pay! You are an Englishman, Mr. Bone–what isyour opinion of the chances of a trade in Australian honey?”
With the confidence of utter ignorance, Lord Thomas assured her thatthere was a splendid opening. He knew people–heaps of people–who wouldsnap it up gladly; and proposed to himself to be her purveyor to thosepeople, comprising all the De Bohuns and his numerous lady friends.
“Oh, I am so thankful to hear you say that!” Miss Kemp ejaculated, with aheave of the chest. “You see wool is down, and cattle selling for nothingand the value of places like this dropped to less than what they aremortgaged for; therefore something must be done. I’ve begun with honey,so I want to go on with it. I can increase to any extent, if I can onlyget a regular and paying market.”
He was oddly touched, and more interested and amused than he had everbeen in his life, to see a pretty girl regarding her destiny from such apoint of view. It was something quite out of his experience. She reallywanted to work, and not to flirt–to do something for men, instead ofbeing done for by them. And yet there was nothing of the new woman abouther. She was sweetly old-fashioned.
For instance, it gave her a visible shock to learn, in the course ofmiscellaneous conversation, that he had a baby ten months old and hadleft it behind in England.
“What!” she exclaimed tragically, “without either father or mother tolook after it?”
“Oh,” said he, “there are plenty of people to look after it.”
“Who will–who could–like its own parents?”
“Well, you wouldn’t have a fellow travel about the world with a nurseryin his train–now would you?”
“I don’t know how you can travel, under such circumstances.”
He thought this very funny. And yet he liked it. Lady Thomas the first had detested children; Lady Thomas the second, a mother for a day, hadshown no feeling for them. This girl’s evident concern for his virtualorphan–who, as she said, might die of croup or convulsions without hisknowing it, while he idly gadded about like an irresponsible bachelor–struck him as very interesting. She asked questions about it inan earnest way, and made him feel quite fatherly and serious. He wondered if the poor little brat was really being cared for properly, and determined to make strict inquiries by the next mail.
Conversation was not allowed to hinder business. While she talked in thisfriendly, human fashion, Miss Kemp worked as he had never seen a ladywork before, as he had never worked himself since he was born. With aframe of comb in one hand, and in the other a big knife, kept hot in atin of water standing on an oil-fed flame, she sheared off the capsulesfrom the cells that had been filled and closed, leaving those that hadbees in them, with the rapidity and dexterity of a performing conjuror.Then she dropped the frames into the wheel arrangement inside theextractor, and turned the handle violently–no, he turned it for her whileshe prepared more frames, full ones for the machine and empty ones forthe tin box, and cleared up the shreds of wax, and so on. She had noregard for attitudes, nor for the state of her complexion, and it wasclearly evident that she valued Lord Thomas for his services and not forhimself. He had never been in such a position since he was a fag atschool; in relation to a woman, never. It chagrined him a little, butpleased him much. He determined to remain Mr. Bone for the present.
Called to breakfast, he made the acquaintance of just such a hostess ashe had expected–a faded woman, with a refined face and voice, Englishborn, and homesick for her own country. He exercised upon her that art ofpleasing, of which he was a master, and she was so charmed with him thatshe begged him to stay a little, not to run away immediately, unlessbored by the dulness of the place. Her husband abetted her, with theunquestioning hospitality of the bush, which asks no more of a guest thanthat he shall know how to behave himself.
“And I’ll show you all my improvements,” said Mr. Kemp. “A good deal morethan you could run through in an hour or two, or even in a day.”
“Thanks, thanks,” Lord Thomas murmured. “Just at present I am moreinterested in the honey industry than in anything else. I intend to keepbees myself when I get back, and it is a great chance for me to see allthe working of the thing as it is done here. Er–er–how clear andbeautiful that is!” He looked at a dish containing a square block ofhoney in the comb, neatly removed from the wooden frame it was made in.Letty hastened to pass it to him.
“Isn’t it?” she crooned, surveying it with a maternal air. “And this iswhat I get only threepence for in the local market! I can’t but thinkthere must be ways of exporting it in sections, with careful packing.
Don’t you think if it could be brought on English breakfast tables in thecomb like this there would be a great demand for it? I am sure theyhaven’t honey to surpass our honey.”
Lord Thomas was equally sure of it–convinced, indeed, that benightedEngland never tasted anything like it in its life. Mrs. Kemp smiled asuperior British smile. Mr. Kemp pooh-poohed the fuss his daughter madeover comparative trifles. What was honey, as a topic of interest for an Englishman anxious to improve his mind, compared with ensilage, andirrigation, and six-furrow ploughs?
For two precious hours Lord Thomas found himself obliged to attend to these latter subjects with what interest he could muster, and he only got away from them so soon by force of misleading insinuations to the effect that bees were his natural hobby and bee-keeping his proposed profession. At eleven o’clock he resumed his sticky apron and gloves, his old coatand his veiled old hat, with more delight than he had ever taken inclothes before–ridiculous as it seemed, even to himself–and rushed to theheated and messy honey-house as he had never rushed to a royal garden party.
Letty’s hot face lighted up at sight of him. Beads of perspiration laylike dew under her clear eyes and over her pretty lips, but she carednot, neither did he. This sort of thing did not spoil the effect, asusual.
“Oh, how good of you!” she exclaimed. And at once she set him to work. Hebuckled to with might and main, as if his life and hers depended on theamount of honey they could extract in a given time. They had two hourstogether, talking while they worked, growing better friends every minute.
“Labour-saving machines,” said she, still harping on the one string, “aresplendid, I know; but they run away with money when there isn’t anymoney. My plan is just the opposite of father’s. It mightn’t be such goodeconomy in other circumstances, but as things are it is my idea ofeconomy. I don’t know what you think.”
He told her what he thought, and she told him it was beside the point. Soit was. So he wanted it to be. Hard as he worked at the handle of theextractor, he worked still harder at trying to change the subject. But,though she might be led aside a step or two, she could not be whollydrawn from it.
It was worse after lunch. She said to him, with the firm air of a generaldirecting military manoeuvres, “Now you know all that is to be done inthe house, so you can attend to that while I am changing the frames inthe hives. Oh, never mind the box; I can carry it quite easily. And we shall get on twice as fast.”
He found he had to do it–the uncapping with the hot knife, and all therest of it–while she went back and forth outside. It was a longafternoon, and the little shed was stifling. The perspiration poured fromhis brow and trickled down his neck as he strained every nerve to beready for her each time she brought the full box in. And his wages werenext to nothing.
But at last the sun went down, and his long struggle to get the better ofhis rivals seemed over. They came straggling home in the golden twilightto their well-earned rest, and Letty Kemp prepared to follow theirexample when it was too dark to work any more.
“There,” said she, with a sigh of utter weariness and satisfaction, “wehave done well, haven’t we? I can’t tell you how much obliged to you Iam, Mr. Bone.”
Suddenly he felt tired of being Mr. Bone and a casual labourer, so hesaid awkwardly, “Er–er–I think you haven’t got my name quite correctly.It is De Bohun–Thomas de Bohun.”
“Oh, I beg pardon,” she returned, in an airy manner; and he perceivedthat she was not enlightened. “You know, Mr. de Bohun, there is a littletalk and movement about eucalyptus honey just now. Some chemist people athome have been praising its medicinal properties. And it is everythingin these cases to strike while the iron is hot.”
“Ye–es,” drawled Lord Thomas absent-mindedly. Actually she had been soabsorbed in those blessed bees as not to have heard of him in his propercharacter.
They took off their sticky overalls and returned to the house to preparefor the evening meal. And when Miss Kemp came downstairs, washed andbrushed, in a pale-blue frock, a white muslin fichu, and a rose, LordThomas thought her beautiful. Yes, in spite of freckles and a turned-upnose. Never had he seen in woman’s shape such pure health and such anabsence of self-consciousness. Of all the charming novelties surroundinghim, these were the most charming.
“I suppose she’s too busy to notice what a sweet creature she is,” hethought, as he sat down to the juicy slice of mutton for which he hadearned so keen an appetite. And he anticipated with joy the leisure hourshe now expected to spend with her, undisturbed by bees, in the somewhatthreadbare drawing-room.
All went thither together at the conclusion of the meal–the comfortabletea-dinner of the bush. Mr. Kemp, desiring to talk ploughs and ensilage,proposed a smoke. His guest, yearning for tobacco, aching in every limb,declined. Mrs. Kemp sent her daughter to the piano, and Lettyplayed–admirably Lord Thomas thought–the intermezzo from Cavalleria, anda few things of that sort; and while he tried to listen, and to feed hissense of the girl’s many-sided excellence, his hostess babbled aboutLondon as she remembered it, and wanted a thousand and one details of thedear city as it was now. During a laborious description of the ThamesEmbankment, Letty rose from the music-stool, and softly moved about theroom. Her admirer flattered himself that she was listening to him, butwas shortly undeceived. She vanished at a moment when his face was turnedfrom the door, and never came back.
“Does she actually leave me!” he dumbly groaned. “Is she so lost to allthe feelings of her sex as to imagine that I won’t miss her while I havethis old woman to talk to?” It was enough to drive any titled gentlemanto extremities.
Soon he was hunting the dim verandahs round and round, in search of the fugitive. He explored the passages of the house; he walked about thegarden, smelling so strongly of orange blossom, in the pure night air;and he used bad language under his breath. At last he was drawn to alight shining like a thread of incandescent wire through a certainouthouse door. He lifted the latch and looked in.
There she was. Kneeling on a piece of sacking in the middle of the floor,with her blue skirt pinned up round her waist under a large apron, and with all the mess of a station workshop and lumber-shed around her, she was busily engaged in painting her brand on honey tins. A kerosene lampshed effective rays on her dainty figure, her fair, clear skin, hershining chestnut hair. In short, Lord Thomas stood and looked at her,fascinated. Of the thousands of pretty women that he had admired in histime, not one had ever appeared to such advantage in the matter ofbackground and grouping. Yet he protested at the sight.
“Oh, I say! Haven’t you done enough work for one day, Miss Kemp? Are you trying to kill yourself?”
She looked up at him with a laugh; and her eyes, focussing the light,were like stars in the grubby gloom.
“Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. de Bohun! I thought as you were talking to mother, you would not notice if I slipped away for half an hour.”
“Did you?” said Lord Thomas, entering and shutting the door behind him.
“I want so badly to get my consignment away next week. And I thought if I painted the tins to-night, they would be dry for packing in the morning.”
She continued to dab her black brush upon a slip of perforated zinc, buther quick hand became slightly unsteady, and she blushed visibly, even inthat bad light. The fact was that Lord Thomas–not as Lord Thomas, but as a man–was a delightful fellow, and it was not in nature that a healthy,heart-whole girl could spend a long and intimate day with him withoutbeing more or less affected in the usual way. As yet her bees were ofmore consequence than lovers–he was resentfully aware of it–but that didnot prevent her feeling hourly more conscious that toil was sweetened byhis participation therein. She was pleased that he had found her. She wasmore pleased when he took the black brush from her, asked leave to removehis coat, turned up his cuffs, and began to paint honey tins himself.
“I am not a very practised hand at this sort of thing,” he confessed. “You must tell me if I don’t do it right.”
“You are quite as practised at that as I am at looking on while others do my work,” she replied.
“So I suppose,” he rejoined thoughtfully.
They had a happy hour, unmolested by the parents, who never supposed thattheir practical Letty could lend herself to foolishness. Lord Thomaspainted all the tins successfully. He could not well go wrong while sheheld the lettered label straight. Their two heads were within an inch oftouching as they bent over their job; a handkerchief might have coveredtheir four hands while the branding was in process. They looked at eachother’s fingers continually.
“Mine,” said Letty, “are quite rough compared with yours. I don’t think I ever saw such beautiful nails. It’s my belief you never did a stroke ofwork in your life until you came here.”
“Well,” said Lord Thomas, colouring a little, “I am afraid I haven’t done much. You make me awfully ashamed of myself, Miss Kemp.”
They fell into serious talk at this stage–the first serious talk LordThomas had ever had with a young lady, all his experiencesnotwithstanding.
“I wish,” he abruptly remarked, “you’d teach me to be as useful as youare.” There was much feeling in his voice.
She seemed to think the matter over. Then she asked him when he intendedto return home. He said he was not sure.
“Soon, I suppose?”
“Oh, I suppose so.”
“You must go soon,” she urged. “You must, for the sake of that poor baby,left to the tender mercies of hired people.”
“Well,” he said, “I will.”
“Then you will have an opportunity to be very, very useful. You can look after my honey for me in London–oh!”
He flung the paint-brush into the pot.
“I suppose it is useless,” he exclaimed, through grinding teeth, “to expect you to care a straw for anything except honey and bees!”
There were but two courses open to a self-respecting man, titled or otherwise–to make her do it, or die in the attempt.
She is Her Grace the Duchess now. And an excellent duchess into the bargain. The smart folks laugh at her for not “knowing her way about,”but the duke does not. He thoroughly realizes that she knows it betterthan they do. When, as a surprise present to her, he established amagnificent apiary in the castle grounds, and then found she did not carefor it, he was a little disappointed; but he soon woke to the fact thatbees had been merely the make-shift of circumstance until worthier objects for the exercise of her splendid abilities were provided. Withgreat households to administer and young dukes to rear–not to speak of athousand matters of more public moment–she advisedly transferred herinterest in honey to the wives of her husband’s tenants. “But they will never make honey like mine,” she says, shaking her coroneted head. “It wants the taste of the eucalyptus in it.”
– From “At Midnight and Other Stories” by Ada Cambridge
Courtesy: Project Gutenberg Australia – The above eBook produced by Colin Choat.
Grateful thanks to Ada Cambridge, Colin Choat and Project Gutenberg Australia.
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