# Tallentyre and the Goddess

Extracted from Windsor magazine, v. 45 1909, pp. 513-522. Accompanying illustration by Stanley Davis may be omitted. By Edith Joan Lyttleton, writing as G. B. Lancaster
TALLENTYRE AND THE GODDESS
By G. B. LANCASTER.
THERE were three of them. Tallentyre, drawn by the laughter, dropped his crutch on the headland and dragged himself through the scented ti-tree scrub by the little tough roots of it until his chin stuck over the edge and he looked down. One lay between white surf and yellow sand; this he knew later for shy Jessica, with the swing of the tide lifting the dark frill of her bathing-frock round her like a halo. One, in a tumble of scarlet, and sunburned limbs—this was Dolly—knotted a yapping terrier up in great glistening lengths of fresh kelp, and laughed until the sandy cliffs and the grey gum-forest behind flung echo back to her. And one—this was the Goddess—stood with white feet in the blue water and hands clasped behind her head.
She looked to the rising sun, where the world was saffron and pink and bird's-egg blue, and her dress was a smoky grey, which made her elusive and all things wonderful, even then. She was Venus rising from the sea, only much more respectable. She was tall and lithe as a sapling, and white as a peeled wand, and her hair was burnished where the strengthening sunlight struck it. Tallentyre understood that he had come suddenly into Paradise, and he lay, scarcely daring to breathe, and absolutely certain that if he blinked once, the whole thing would be gone. The last sea-bathing he had known was on the Anzac beach at Gallipoli, with sand and water scarred by the hopping bullets, and a naked, weather-stained, grimly-gay horde purging bodies and souls for a wild moment in the breast of that lover of men, the sea. Tallentyre himself had often bathed there, ducking to the sing of the bullets, and for a moment his haggard eyes burnt and his lame leg ached more poignantly over thinking of that deserted beach now.
Then the magpie chorus rang out from the bush; that dark and glorious memory passed, and the full blaze of sunshine and heat, of sweet home-scents and sounds, and a breeze sharp like electricity and mellowed like old wine, took his very flesh and fibres with the magic of it. Last night Tallentyre had come to the coast. He was only off the hospital ship at Melbourne two days ago, and he had been a civilian again for just thirteen hours. With the first feel of his old tweed clothes—left behind a million years ago—he had understood that he must go to the bush and hear the magpies call the sun up out of the sea. He had not expected them also to call up goddesses; but this was doubtless in reward for the trouble he had had to get out of the little hotel before dawn. Such things as a stray broom left on the stairs and a jammed back gate and a spitting cat had delayed, but not discouraged him. He had waddied up the stiff latch with a brick, and used the broom as a second crutch across the sandy stretch to the head-land, and the cat, having experienced both his weapons, had gone up into an apple-tree cursing.
The magpie calling deepened, lengthened into golden ropes of sound that set the air dancing with joy. Down below, Dolly was skipping with her loop of kelp, a perfect melody of movement. Then she lassoed the Goddess, and drew her out to sea in a foam of white sparkles, and Jessica rose up and filing herself on the two. The heat soaked into Tallentyre, and the lines of pain and concentration on his dark, thin face smoothed out. And a queer little exultant voice inside was telling him that, in some measure, he and his mates had so suffered in order that these young girls should romp here. That, Tallentyre considered, gave him full right to watch. And in any case he did not intend to inquire of his conscience too closely. Australia had given him a royal welcome home, and though the three vanished out there in the foam—as he half expected—he would not be ungrateful for what he had already received.
But they came back, treading the water, and with linked hands. The Goddess was in the centre—Tallentyre saw that she was nearly a head the tallest—and she halted, looking up at the headland with her hair blown back. Tallentyre pasted himself flat among the ti-trees, and his eyes—the keen, clear eyes of one accustomed to looking over long distances—fastened on her face. He never knew if it was strictly beautiful, that face. But it was ever so to him. He was never sure if her eyes were blue or brown. They changed so with her moods, and the deeps of them were like mountain tarns. It was said that Claudia Senior's mouth was a shade too large. Tallentyre only saw that it was a very perfect mouth for kisses. She stood moveless, touched with a strange gravity, almost as if she saw his tired, scarred face and his broken body, and did them homage in her silent girl-way. Then she turned with swift grace, called her sisters, and fled with them along the beach and up a narrow track in the sandy cliff. A moment they showed on the sky-line, black against the pulsing blue of sky. Then they were gone, and it seemed that youth and life and merriment went with them. Tallentyre hobbled home. And after breakfast he took sudden and enormous interest in the landlord's pigs, and learned many things concerning the merits of Berkshires and Tarnworths and, incidentally, of the Seniors. And after that he stretched himself on two hard chairs in the sun, with his hat over his eyes, and sorted his information out.
It was not tremendously encouraging. The Seniors had been at Kyarra ever since the beginning. They were the folk of the district; poor as you make 'em, but the young ladies were bound to marry well. A beauty, the eldest one, and half a dozen chaps after her. The mother was an invalid, and the son—there was no father—managed everything, and worked like ten. A fine chap, and doing his best to give his sisters a chance. Wouldn't enlist, though everyone knew his heart was in it. Spent all his spare time drilling recruits. Tallentyre let all that pass. Her name was Claudia, and there were half a dozen chaps after her, and she was expected to marry well. This was enough for any man to grapple with at one sitting. Tallentyre grappled, knowing that sunrise picture already etched indelibly on his heart; knowing his up-country Queensland station, although it gave him kudos for fifty miles around, did not, and never would, spell anything near to riches; knowing that anyone with the name of Claudia is naturally certain to achieve something out of the common; and knowing, too, that for all the large friendliness of Australian hospitality, he had little chance of laying claim to acquaintance with the Seniors. He groaned, twisting on the hard chairs. His leg ached, and the softness had gone out of the day before a burning glare. He was weaker than he had thought, and after having been continuously with odd hundreds of his kind for close on two years, he felt strangely lonely. Even the civilian clothes were queer—baggy, and pockets all wrong—and the blue tie which he had dragged out of his trunk at random was purely indecent. His straw hat had a coloured band, too. Heavens! What a gaudy mountebank he looked! In khaki a fellow knew what he was at, even if it did make him yellow as sin. The old life was gone—blocked out—and the life of the last two years was gone, too. Individuality had been suddenly thrust upon him again, and he was too weak and weary to meet it. His head ached and his leg ached. Why hadn't he gone straight home—if there was anything left of the station to go to? Robinson was always a hideously bad manager. He would go home to-morrow——
He fell uncomfortably asleep, with his thoughts on their way to the station, and was awaked by the yapping of a dog. On principle he threw his crutch at it before his eyes were fully open. Then, seeing a blur of khaki and a sunburned face, he tumbled up as best he could and saluted. And beyond the khaki he saw Claudia Senior in a riding-habit, kneeling on one knee to console the dog. The crutch had hit it, for Tallentyre's aim was naturally good. Meeting his eyes, she smiled faintly, picked up the crutch, and brought it to him.
"I think you dropped this," she said, and then the big blur of khaki and sunburn bellowed a huge laugh.
"Don't be a minx, Claud. I say … sorry we woke you up, and all that, you know; but the cowboy told us there was a wounded soldier here." Tallentyre had expected an introduction along these lines. "And old Bailey said your name was Tallentyre, Fifth Light Horse. That right, eh?"
"Yes." If Tallentyre was to be presently flayed alive under those considering beautiful eyes of Claudia's, he could not have been more hopelessly tongue-tied. Donald Senior held out a great hand.
"Awfully glad to meet you, then. We know friends of yours, the Wrights of Pleasant Valley, near Bunderberg——"
He plunged into friendly questioning and explanations, and Tallentyre mumbled agreement, hanging to the chair-arm and feeling the hot earth rock underfoot, until suddenly Claudia was close to him, speaking hurriedly, and her eyes seemed to grow and glow as if her winged soul had leapt into them. There was dark after that, and something cool, like soft hands, on his forehead, and a little frightened cry which Tallentyre tried to answer from a great distance. The struggle to answer brought sweat to his face and palms, and power came slowly back with a tearing sense of grief, as though he had failed to respond to some great need—some maiden need which could not be spoken, which he could not clearly meet or fathom. Water dripped on him now; the shadow of a big wattle-tree was over him, and the tang of whisky in his mouth, and Donald Senior's brown, jovial face very near. He was talking, but for a while Tallentyre could not piece out the words. Hearing cleared at last.
"… So you'll have to come to us at once, of course. Claudia will have the dog-cart here in ten minutes. You can sit in a trap, eh? Look here, I'm awfully sorry; never guessed you were as played out as all that …"
"I don't often make such an ass of myself." Tallentyre's tone was bitter. "I hope she—your sister—won't trouble. I must get back to town to-night."
"Rot! Mrs. Bailey said you'd taken your rooms for a fortnight. If you think we'd let you stay here, with Christmas so soon, too—— Claud, here's this fellow says he's going back to town to-night!"
"It's no end good of you"—Tallentyre looked at her miserably—"but I couldn't possibly be such a nuisance."
"Oh, if that's all——" The huge laugh bellowed out again. "Come along. Bailey will put your things together, and you can fix it with him all right."
They took possession of him, the two tall, healthy, handsome young things; and it was only among the violet dusks of that evening, with the scents of baronia and jasmine and all the haunting damp bush odours drawn warmly about him on the wide low stone verandah, that Tallentyre, who had slept most of the afternoon in a long room opening low windows to a garden that met the bush, screwed up his courage to the attack again. He had learned with horror and anger that the three girls did all the work in this old rambling house, with its thick stone walls built in the bushranging days. He had let Claudia bring him cake and tea from fine china, not only because Dolly had taken his crutch to knock down walnuts, but because Mrs. Senior desired it, and he was hot and cold with trouble and decision before the little table with its silver and white napery was taken in, and he was left for a few minutes alone.
"What a blind idiot I was to come!" he said half aloud. "It's awful—awful!"
"What on earth have we been doing now?"
Dolly's voice, rather shrill and amazed, rang at his elbow. Tallentyre flung his wrath at her, gripping the chair-arms with nervous fingers.
"You can't expect me to stay here and have you wait on me! I had no idea——"
Dolly dropped down beside the low chair. Her face was that of a mischievous little brown elf.
"Give me a cigarette, quick," she whispered. "And smoke yourself, so Don won't know. He hates girls to smoke." Tallentyre handed over his case with a vague sense of balm. Dolly nodded her thanks and blew smoke from her rosy lips. "That's good. So you don't like being waited on? Well, you'll have to be, until you get well enough to wait on us."
"I'd be very pleased to do that, of course. But I can't let you wait on me."
"You've put every woman in the world under an obligation to you—more or less." Dolly smoked reflectively. "And you object to my making you a pudding. I think that outlook is simply ungentlemanly."
"If it could be a roly-jam pudding," said Tallentyre, with sudden greed, "or blackcurrant——"
"Dear man, it shall be both!" She rocked with bubbling laughter. "And turkey, and gooseberry pies, and raspberry jellies, and everything else for Christmas. Come, now!"
"Don't," said Tallentyre, and tried to laugh. "The woman tempted me——"
"And I did eat. Biblical truth every time. What did you have for last Christmas dinner?"
"Hard tack and bully beef. I was up at Lone Pine, and it was snowing. And the one before that I was sick in camp. And the one before I was mustering out on the station, and never got a dinner at all. I—I don't believe I've had a real Christmas for years."
"You'll have one this time." Her little brown hand patted his in friendly fashion. "Don is most amazingly pleased to have you here. It'll comfort him a bit for not going himself. He would give anything to, you know."
"I can believe it," said Tallentyre, curtly. And then they smoked in silence and a strange comradeship. Out of the dim rooms behind came the sound of Jessica singing, and a thrush fluted back from the great gnarled apple-tree lifting among the shadowy syringa and orange and magnolia, tangle sweet with scent and misty with faint flowers down the sloping garden. Tallentyre drew a long breath, as though the very pleasure were pain, and Dolly sprang up, a hovering fragrant white moth above him.
"Cheer up!" she said. "We're going to have a bully time, and if you'll only play with Jess and me, we'll fetch and carry for you like puppies. And I'll smoke a cigarette with you sometimes, when Don is busy. You mustn't let Jess do it, though—she's only seventeen."
Through the next week Tallentyre doubted often if Dolly were more than twelve herself, for all the faint lines of trouble round her mouth and the occasional look of care in her eyes. Between that rare and gracious goddess, whose very presence sent his wits astray, and the quiet Jessica, who was a dead rifle-shot, and knew as much about machinery as Tallentyre, romped and laughed Dolly, doing half the work of the house, and crisp and merry-lipped at twilight as she was at sunrise. "A golden girl," Senior called her, and Tallentyre agreed, with reservations. She was a splendid pal, and Jessica a delightful anomaly; but Claudia was the sun and moon and all the little stars. He seldom talked alone with her. He did not want to. One cannot talk banalities with those one worships, and the time for more was not come yet. To bask in the knowledge that she was near, and to grow slowly back to what such life as this meant to a man who has lately been wracked and torn by all hideous stress and suffering and shock, was sufficient for anyone, considered Tallentyre, as the days slid by. Gems of days, linking up into a chain by which Tallentyre dreamed of catching the Great Glory of Life, which trembled now like a mirage in the offing. Days when he lay in the punt on the river, and watched the crested cranes stalking among the reeds and fern, or heard a wedge of swan clang over, black on a chrysolite sky; when he lay in a paddock lush with honey-sweet clover, and saw Jessica coaxing up the saddle-horse beneath the throaty whistles of the magpies; when he lay smoking the long warm evenings through on the jasmine-hung verandah, with 'possums rustling in the apple-trees, or jumping with soft furry bangs against the windows when someone made a light within doors, while the girls in their white frocks came and went, and Senior talked in his big comfortable voice. Days, too, of vivid sunshine, and tall white Christmas lilies, and flowers in the garden gay as the rosella parrots that made crimson and sapphire tornadoes among the flowering shrubs; of helping Claudia churn butter in the cool dairy among the weeping gums; of sniffing round the kitchen, whence came delightful, mysterious smells of Christmas cooking, while Dolly raced back and forth with floury brown elbows and nose; of stumbling down to the hearing-shed and dipping-pens, drawn by that familiar heart-pulling smell and sound which speaks to Australians the world over, to watch under the stringy barks while Senior, stripped to dungarees and singlet, slaved among dogs and men and crying sheep until the long purple shadows sliced the day up into dark, and silence fell, broken by the murmur of lambs and the song of the sea.
[Illustration: "'I think you dropped this,' she said."]
These days were rich to Tallentyre, and they taught him much. They showed him the spectre behind all this young courage and labour, and explained the shadow in Dolly's eyes, and the sweet gravity of Claudia, and the anxiety which all Senior's boisterous jollity could not completely hide. It was sapping the strength of them all, this struggle to keep the wheels going round; and although they talked lightly of foot-rot in the sheep, codlin-moth in the apples, a late burn which had brought no grass after it, drought, and poor prices because of the shortage of boats, Tallentyre knew that those who stayed behind to nurse the land he had suffered for were suffering, too. But how much he did not guess until of a sudden the bomb fell. This was two nights before Christmas, when, having made his first effort to help Senior in the yards—Senior was eternally short-handed now—he sat in the dusky verandah and dreamed of Claudia. This big, shabby, rambling place was full of her presence, full of her grave, wistful charm, and the man was planning for the day when he should nerve himself to speak the words that should send him away alone, or with a promise that would pay for all which had been. He had no scruples about staying for Christmas. On a place where all was home-grown he cost little, and he was the pivot on which most of their amusements turned. But on Christmas Day he would speak to Claudia, and after that—— Frowning, he watched the white moths busy in the white nicotine flowers, and listened to Dolly whistling as she used the hose down the garden. The grateful odour of drenched earth and flowers and blossoming shrubs after heat blew up to him. And then came Dolly, flicking wet finger-tips at him, and dropping down on the verandah-edge to demand a cigarette.
"Don's gone to the township," she said, her roguish face bobbing into the match-light. "Dear man, he will have his little fancies. But he's the best ever."
Tallentyre lit his own cigarette, assenting. He felt already for Senior that warmth which, with what he believed to be a good omen, was developing into brotherly love very fast. Dolly sang snatches of songs and kicked her heels on the gravel. She seemed to be considering something. Then—
"Claudia's lover is coming to-morrow. Beastly nuisance!" she said.
"Her what?"
"Lover. Man who loves, you know." Her voice was jesting, but she glanced at Tallentyre sharply. And he sat rigid, with the sensation that every nerve of his body had been pulled up to a tenseness that dumbed him. Dolly smoked, speaking between slow puffs.
"I believe she's going to take him this time. The amount of energy—that man has spent—over her—would turn a water-mill. You wouldn't credit it. Always proposes the first night he comes—moons round with Don all the next day—proposes again that night—goes away day after and writes her reams. The very best hand-made and hand-printed paper, too. Frightful extravagance in war-time."
"But if she—if she refuses him?" Tallentyre forced his words out with almost physical pain, and Dolly grunted.
"Beggars can't be choosers," she said.
"Beggars! Good Heavens! The richest man on earth might be proud to——"
"Geoff Halliday is very nearly one of 'em. He'll dress her in chiffons and diamonds, and give her motor-cars instead of a push-bike. Poor old Claud, I dare say she won't mind once she gets used to it. Of course, we'd all be rather glad in a way, but she can't make up her mind. Wish he'd ask me. I'd jump at him, grey hairs and all!"
She laughed, sprang up, and ran off lightly. And Tallentyre sat unmoving, until the evening meal called him in, to sit opposite Claudia with averted eyes which dared not look, and galloping pulses which almost betrayed him. He fought with the matter ten ways at once, until a chance remark by Senior, as they smoked their last pipe together that night, broke down his barriers, and he told the brother without circumlocution that Claudia was the one woman in the world for him. The effect on Senior startled him. The ruddy face went almost grey, and sweat sprang on it. Senior's hand gripped on the table.
"Have you told her?"
"No. But——"
"Have you any reason to think she cares for you?"
"No. But——"
"I thought it was Dolly. I never dreamed … Tallentyre, I wouldn't have had this happen——"
Tallentyre leaned forward. The angle of his face was hard as his eyes.
"I'll be lame always," he said bitterly, "and my constitution is more or less affected, I suppose. I'm not a good match for her, but I can give her a fairly comfortable home, and I'm not quite a wreck."
"Ah! Don't talk like that. You've been out there while I stayed at home. I thought I might prevent——" He got up in lumbering haste and walked the half-lit room. "I've done my best … tried to keep things going … it hasn't been enough. I—I——"
Tallentyre watched, frowning with bitten lips.
"You ought to be glad to have one of them off your hands, if things are as bad as this," he said brutally.
Senior turned that grey, wet face on him. His voice was thick.
"That wouldn't help. Claud and I have talked it over. She's got to do her part now. Halliday is—he's offered me a good price for the place, and he'd keep me on as manager. I can do all right if I had some ready money to stock up with. And my mother and the girls—the weight would be taken off them. It's that or go under. Claud's seen it all along. But I wouldn't let her. I—I couldn't stick it that one of my sisters—that I couldn't support them. But it's too much. Too much for all of us!"
Tallentyre had seen men under mortal stress often enough in these last months. He had been through sufficient gruelling himself. But the torment of this big man who walked the floor unsteadily, broken down by his grief and pride and helplessness, was not easy to watch.
"You understand"—he was gasping now, with his drawn face turned to Tallentyre—"I wouldn't have told you, only—you may see—think—a man in love sees some things clear. She's made her mind up. She won't change it. But—I don't want things made harder for her …"
"Harder for her!"
"She likes him—likes him quite a lot, or I couldn't … She'd have done it long ago, but I—I held her back. Now … the mother and the girls … it's too much! We'd have to sell out, you know. I couldn't get through another year. The girls say they'll go out to work. They're all working now beyond their strength. I can't let it go on …"
"And so you'd sell her—Claudia!" There was neither pity nor softness in Tallentyre just now. The pain was too great.
"I—won't try to prevent it any longer. And she likes him! If you'll only leave her alone!" He turned his strained face to Tallentyre. "You—perhaps you owe me that. I asked you here," he said.
The intolerable burden which he had shouldered for so long had beaten him down at last. "You owe me that," he repeated. And then, without a word, Tallentyre got up and crutched himself over to the door. As he reached it, a heavy hand fell on his shoulder. "Tallentyre, I didn't mean to hurt you. But——"
"You have the right," said Tallentyre thickly. "I can't do for you all what the other fellow can." And then he went out.
The next two days were something that Tallentyre never dared look back upon. Convention commanded him to take the hand of Halliday when he came; to talk and laugh, and smoke and sing, as before; to walk into the verandah with jovial Christmas greetings and jokes on the morning which he believed to be the most wretched of his life. He was mad with anger against Senior, unreasonably savage with Dolly and Jessica and the gentle, sickly mother; shaken beyond the confines of common-sense when he came near to Claudia. She had stopped him on the stair the night before, looking up with her arms full of roses, and the light behind her cloudy hair.
"Be prepared for a hard day to-morrow," she said gaily. "Flannels, and faithful attention to business. A picnic of twenty-four out to the Island isn't achieved without discipline, as Dolly will teach you."
Tallentyre shot a glance at her left hand. No sign of what might have passed between herself and the little grey brisk man showed there yet. Perhaps she still hung in the wind—afraid of what was before her. Perhaps, if he spoke now—loosed something of the flame and passion in him—let her know that which she did not know, which her white grave innocence had never known—his breath came unevenly and his eyes met hers with a sudden stern boldness that brought the colour. Goddess, wrapped in mists of maidenhood, she still was to him, but too fine, too delicately poised, surely, to give herself without love. And if she once knew what love meant …
"Won't you teach me?" he asked, and saw her bite her lip as she shook her head.
"Too busy. There'll be all the others to look after, you know. And we row home by moonlight, singing carols. That's part of the usual Christmas ritual. Oh, you needn't be afraid! Dolly will bully you into doing your work."
She ran on, laughing. But to Tallentyre, hobbling downward, came the sudden fear that she, too, thought it was Dolly; that if she knew … if he could tell her … He lay awake biting on that thought all night, and the merriment of the next day was ashes in his mouth. Claudia was bound to the horns of the altar, as sacrifice, not as deity, and the furrows on Senior's face had lessened; and, although Dolly was unduly and strangely nervous, the shadow was fainter in her eyes. Tallentyre got through that boisterous picnic somehow: sparring with Dolly; watching Halliday always at Claudia's elbow; helping Senior wait on the elders. These young things grappled with the moments bravely, but to him all was a hideous farce. Courage of body and mind were worn down by those realities which he had suffered and seen. He was in a dead end, and since all he could do for this girl who was more to him than the sunlight was to take himself out of her life, he grimly determined to do it the very next day. As Senior and Dolly both said, she would probably be happy enough—if he did not waken her. A flower sheathed close in green leaves she was still, and knowing nothing of the force and passion of wind and sun. But Tallentyre could have taught her. By every fibre in him he believed that he could have taught her—he who had waded neck-deep among the essentials of life; had known all that was ardent and fierce, and selfless and strong, and who had not come away from that learning as he went to it. Something of individuality and recklessness had been seared out of him. Something which accepted the inevitable had grown.
But the smell of wood-smoke and hot gum-leaves and yellow dropping wattle-balls, of broom and gorse-pods splitting with heat among the tall toffee-brown rocks, hurt with a poignancy beyond belief. They were his untried youth calling to him across the gulf he would never pass again. They were that mysterious power of the primeval which lurks in every man's blood to his undoing. When the sunset was a scarlet flood across sea and bush, and the fires died down, and a cool breeze blew, and the jolly chattering crowd broke up into twos and threes and disappeared round rocky corners and into the warm deeps of the bush, a sudden sickness and dread came on Tallentyre. The thing was for now, if it had not come yet. Halliday would not let this chance escape, and Senior had said … He got up abruptly and limped away from Jessica and the few who still sat singing, and the lilt of "God bless you, merrie gentlemen, let nothing you dismay," followed him into the tangle of wattle-scrub and tree-fern and sassafras, where he sought silence and shadow, as the wild animal who goes to the jungle to lick his wounds in secret. The matter had become a personal one to him now. Could not all he had endured save the happiness of this one girl? The boom of the sea where it hit the stark rocks flung his mind back to Gallipoli. He bowed his head, cursing the fate that had brought him out of that to send him empty down the long years to come. And then he went on; while the sea-birds wheeled, and the parrots called, and the blood-red and king's purple and the aftermath of silver faded from the world, and dusk grew to dark in heavy blocks that smelt of sea, and fern, and sappy sun-hot things.
Somewhere on the crest of a scarp that looked to open sea and one golden star low in an opal sky, he trod on a shadow that sank beneath him. When the dust and the giddy sense of horror cleared a little, he found himself hanging by one elbow and a hand above nothing, with his shoulder braced against the far side of the split in the rock, and sending out wild shouts which told him that, for the moment, his nerve had deserted him. Sweat broke out on him, and already his elbow seemed to be slipping. He struggled for foothold and found none, and sheer terror caught him in its pangs. He was not strong yet to face the thought of such a death as this. To lie for days, perhaps, at the bottom of this deep cleft, crawled over by snakes and spiders while he died by inches. He shouted again. And then he heard her, running lightfoot up the path, and knew her before he saw. In the next instant she was kneeling, with her face glimmering moth-white above him, and her strong young hands coming under his armpits.
"Put your right arm round my neck," she commanded. "Quick! I can hold you!"
"You can't—I'm too heavy. Claudia! … I'll pull you in! …"
"Your right arm … now. Lift yourself as I lean back." He felt the soft warmth of her flesh below his naked arm; felt the milky sweetness of her breath on his forehead; the strain and panting of her breast against his own as she flung herself back. Then he was on the earth again, gathering himself up unsteadily while she lay gasping.
"It's nothing," she said to his broken words, "I ran fast. I thought you——" And then the tears came, and shudderings, and, before Tallentyre knew it, he had his arms about her and his lips on hers. There was one moment which he never forgot before she pushed him off and sprang away from him.
"Don't! Oh, how could you? I've promised. I——"
"So have I," said Tallentyre. "I can't help that now. Nor can you. We love each other—we love each other!" He almost shouted it, but she wrung her hands, sobbing.
"Oh … don't! I've promised him … Geoff Halliday. Oh … please go away!"
Tallentyre crushed her hands in a grip that numbed them. His keen dark face came close. He was driven beyond all but thought of her.
"You're done with Halliday. He's off the map. Darling—dearest one—he doesn't count any more. I count now. You love me—Claudia …"
"I don't know. I—didn't know." She trembled and gasped. "Let me go! I promised poor old Don …"
"Don?" Tallentyre stiffened suddenly with realisation whirling back to him, and the memory of the other night leaping up clear. Donald Senior had fought a harder and bitterer battle than himself. Could any decent man turn him back to face the guns again? And yet … He drew the girl's hands to his breast.
"We must find a way. We will find a way. Listen … you shall not tell me I've got to give you up now. We must find a way …"
Back in the dusk a tree-fern rustled, and, had they seen the bright eyes peering through the fronds, they would have thought of 'possums only. But no animal eyes ever held what shone in those brown eyes of Dolly's as she crouched with a gum-stick between her little sharp teeth, as though she had bitted and bridled herself for the bearing of some great load. The gripped hands in the faint moonlight fell apart at last. Tallentyre turned away, moving unsteadily. And then Dolly sprang out as a mountain-cat springs, and faced them.
"You idiots! You jolly idiots! Yes, you!" She stamped her foot at Tallentyre. "Are you meaning to let her go without a word?"
This accusation was sufficiently outrageous to rouse him, stunned though he was. "As you appear to have been listening, I imagine you know better than that," he said coldly.
"Without a word of sense," amended Dolly. "Haven't you learnt anything yet?"
"Dolly—you don't understand." Claudia's voice quavered, and Dolly flashed round on her, seeing tears in the great starry eyes.
"Shut up, Claud," she said roundly. "You're as silly as he is. Mr. Tallentyre, you'd best have died out there if you don't know yet what you're all fighting for."
Tallentyre had stood a good deal of plain-speaking from Dolly. He could stand nothing more at this moment.
"Your sister and I have finished our discussion," he said.
"You haven't. Unless you want me to tell Geoff Halliday that I saw you two kissing each other just now."
"Oh!" cried Claudia, and covered her face. Tallentyre shut his teeth on an oath.
"That's enough," he said. "It's not your business, Dolly." And then that voice which was dear beyond all things sloughed his fury from him.
"Dolly, dear … for Don's sake … for the sake of you all … we—we'll learn to forget. And … Geoff knows I don't love him. He is satisfied with—with——"
"And are you satisfied?" Dolly wheeled on Tallentyre.
"Dolly … don't!" Claudia's voice was sharp with agony. But those moments in the fern-tree, which had taught Dolly the one thing needful, gave her force now.
"You've seen men fighting—dying," she cried to the man. "You've seen more of the essentials of life than I ever will. But you don't know. Oh … couldn't you feel … in all that rush and awfulness and blood and pain … that there was one thing—one beautiful, immortal thing—alive in you? Wasn't it a sort of belief in the right of it all that made you able to stick it? You've fought for truth—the truth of all the world. You've fought for truth with all the men who died. And you'll let Claudia live a lie—desecrate the great thing you fought for—the only vital bedrock thing that really matters. Oh, you have a funny idea of right and wrong, you men!"
"You seem to forget"—Tallentyre's tone was ice—"that it is for the sake of all of you."
"That's rot. You'd have room for mother and Jess on your station, surely. And Don can sell Kyarra and go to the War. He'd give his ears to. And I'm going to do war work somewhere. I'm sick of stagnating here—sick of it! And, anyway, you've no business to think of us first. For goodness' sake be a man and fight for what you know to be the truth. That's the only thing that can stand now all the world's gone to chaos. That's the only thing that will come out clean and whole. And the truth is that Claud belongs to you, and that no money or convenience or crazy ideas of honour ought to make you stand by and see her give herself to another man. Isn't that true?"
"Yes," said Tallentyre.
"Then have done with shams," cried Dolly, and the two never saw how she was trembling. "If there hasn't been enough blood shed to wash them away for ever … if you haven't seen yet that the future generations must be built up on the one thing that you know for the real honest truth … if you who have been down into the pit and up into the heavens don't know yet that we mustn't any more do evil that good may come … then I—I'm hanged if I'm going to stay here and teach you better!"
She fled, but they scarcely saw her go. And it was in the dark of her room, with the 'possums barking in the big magnolia tree outside, and the pillow hot beneath her flushed cheek, that Claudia found her and took her in her arms for a moment with a long kiss.
"Dolly, Dolly," she whispered, "you were right! But how did you know?"
Dolly winced away from those soft lips, knowing whose they had kissed last.
"I read it in a book," she said. "Dear old girl, I'm so glad. Good night. I'm awfully sleepy."
A moment she saw her sister's face in the candle-light, transfigured into a rare and awed loveliness. And then she resolutely shut her eyes and lay still, with her teeth bitten into the sheet, and heard the long hours go by.
Copyright 1917, by G, B. Lancaster, in the United States of America.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1945, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 78 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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