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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.
RGL e-Book Cover
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
(*) Strawberry leaves. A heraldic symbol denoting ducal rank).
THE Aboriginal was an alien—the saddest, most unwilling alien that ever longed for a friendly Act to expel her from England's hospitable shores. In her own country they called her Stella, and the name was apt. She was as tall and straight as one of her native gum trees: her eyes were bits from a Southern sky. and her hair was dyed with the gold of an Australian sun. But the Star had fallen, and Lady Dux, who, by virtue of receiving £1000 per year, which was paid by the Aboriginal, was entitled to a free judgment, had called for such.
"She's a perfect barbarian, dears, she informed her daughters—"hasn't a ghost of an idea of correct manners."
Which was true. Stella's father, Clive Penrhyn—in England—had been a gentleman. The disreputable son of a disreputable family, ancient to a point of rottenness, he had passed an inglorious youth riding other men's horses, flirting with their wives, and eating and drinking at their expense— an unprincipled, blue-blooded sponge.
Then at last he fled, leaving his creditors, as sole exchange for his debts, his reputation, and under the blue sky and free wind of Australia he forgot he had ever been a gentleman and learned to be a man. He went straight back to the land, and toiled and laboured at it far harder than most English navvies, and his daughter was a true daughter of the prairie.
Nature in welding her had had a merciful lapse of memory, and targeting the vaunted pedigree, had endowed her only with her own particular charms. Stella's childhood had been free and happy, passed in a perfect climate and glorious liberty. The energy and strength that under other circumstances would have found a vent in athletics were devoted to household duties, and with practically the same happy results, and the remainder of her life was spent out of doors. Then came the boom in land, and changes; a sudden stroke of prosperity to Clive Penrhyn; then another stroke—apoplexy this time—and exit. But before he died Clive remembered the days when he was a gentleman, and as his eves were too dimmed with the world's last grip of mortal illness to see clearly, he sent his daughter Home to be made a lady. So from the Land of Sunshine Stella was remorselessly plucked, and borne away over the seas to the Western Land—the Land of Afternoon Tea.
Here she became the Aboriginal. Lady Dux had received the girl coldly. Her lack of tone to her worldly-wise eyes was unpardonable.
"She is hopeless, my dears," she told her friends. "I was really taken in. The girl is of good family, and the money made from land. Sounds so well. But an American girl who sprang from nowhere, and was hogs, or something horrid, would have done me more credit. American girls are adaptable, anyhow!"
Her daughters, girls of sixteen and fourteen, Sybil and Silvia, tried to initiate Stella into English ways. They began by trying to teach her to tame her rebellious locks with a fringe-net. But the Australian gold proved too full of life and vigour to yield to restraint, and they failed. Taking their tone from their mother, these demoiselles immediately considered their guest hopeless, so they began instead to teach her something else—how s shrug of the shoulders can wound, a raised eye-brow sting, a scornful smile rankle.
Stella took badly to Civilisation. She had never received the faintest social training, and pitfalls yawned round her at every step her unwilling feet took—the social pitfalls that would beset anyone suddenly translated to another sphere. She was ignorant of how to treat the scornful servants, for in the Australian home all had been equal. She was shy on greeting strangers, and, worst of all, the dinner-table afforded innumerable humiliations.
It was pathetic to see the big, bonny girl—for although eighteen, she looked twenty-five—trying to propitiate and grow friendly with the Honourable Sybil and Silvia, minute dainty pocket editions of a Society woman, and both so much older than the Australian heiress, with her big, simple heart of gold and her child's mind.
Stella was shrewd enough to know that her money purchased her any kindness and attention she received, but not clever enough to steer clear of the dangers attendant on afternoon tea, where etiquette dictates that appetite is to go unappeased. The instinct that might have helped her was deadened by the cloud of nervousness that enshrouded her, once she was fairly established in this wonderful England, with its traditions and institutions, with its thousand and one social Laws and codes, which were crystallised under the magic words Good Form.
Lady Dux kept her heiress perdue. When she had learned to act as a lady, she was to be plunged into a selected circle of Society, from which she would emerge only when death called her from the treadmill; but the summons would command her under another name—a title. Lady Dux had entered her protégé for the Strawberry-leaves Stakes.
Stella knew this, and rebelled. She had seen but few men since she had come to England, and she had contrasted them unfavourably with her chums across the sea. Therefore, the first wave of opposition asserted itself when Sybil told her one afternoon that they were to call at the Towers, one of the seats of the Duke of Maryland. She raised her large eye from the book she was reading.
"Will the Duke be there?" she asked simply.
Up went Sybil's hard-worked eyebrows, at the boldness of the question.
"No," she answered coldly. "We are calling to see the Dowager."
"Then I'll go." said Stella.
Sybil's smile said plainly that she was not to be taken in. She paused with her hand on the handle of the door.
"And oh, Stella, mother wonders if you would like to cycle, or prefer to come with us in the motor?"
Sybil elected to cycle. She was forbidden the luxury of a horse, since, they had discovered that she had never used the King's high road, but had, happily unconscious, ridden over the land of two different county magnates.
As Stella spun along, she was keenly conscious of the beauty of the afternoon. It was June weather, and the sun poured down upon her in grateful warmth. The fragrance of honeysuckle and new-mown hay mingled together, while the dog-roses made lovely splashes of pink against the green of the hedges.
This harmony of colour was certainly spoiled by a pair of brown hoots, pointing suggestively to the heavens out of the tangle of foliage by the roadside. Stella's heart beat fast as she dimly distinguished a form lying in the shade of the hedge. The unconscious one was too well dressed to suggest the class that sleeps unconcernedly by the public roadway. Moreover, in the centre of the road was an empty motor car.
As the girl hesitated, a rush of memory swept over her. She remembered the course of lectures on first aid she had gone through in Australia. Even now she seemed to feel the glare of the sun on the zinc roof of the room where the class was held and to smell the hundred scents that were wafted in through the open door. She had been so keen upon the subject—had sat for the examination, and passed it with distinction. But she had never had a patient. In spite of the risks that were taken every day in that careless life, no one required her aid. It seemed as if she was fated to travel across the seas to find her first case.
Again she gazed, and this time the brown boots seemed to have an appealing appearance; she yielded to their influence, and, quickly dismounting, she hurried to their owners side.
Her investigation was timid and discreet at first, but gradually she became bolder. Then, peering s little closer, she saw his face, and started back on seeing that it was of a deep carnation colour.
"Poor man!" she said sympathetically. "Now what can be the matter?"
She went hurriedly through all the causes that produce unconsciousness.
"It can't be concussion or collapse, for then he would he pale and cold. Poisons?" This was a wide field, and she felt shaky, so they were quickly relegated to the background with a—
"No! He looks happy and composed. Then —let me see. Sunstroke, or apoplexy, or—oh dear!—it may be alcoholic poisoning!" Thus the polite term of the text-book.
She searched her memory, and then vaguely recalled the fact that she I should feel his pulse. No doctor ever assumed a more pompous air than did this pretty girl as she gravely took the sunburnt paw in hers.
"Ah! Just as I feared!Quick— heaving—thumping!" she said, quite unaware that her own was beating much faster.
Then came the crucial moment. "Now I must make up my mind which it is before I can proceed to treatment. I don't know which it can be—apoplexy,or the other dreadful thing. I have to lift up the eyelid to see if the pupil is conscious to light and touch."
Here she shivered, and a big bumble-bee, blundering by, buzzed his sympathy.
"Shall I? No, I can't do that! It makes me creepy." She leaned her head on her hand, a most charming picture of maiden meditation. Absorbed in her thoughts, she did not notice a gleam of intelligence beginning to break through the half-closed lids beneath her.
"Ah! I have it. You should always study the history of the case. Of course, if it is that, he will have a brandy-flask."
Glad of the reprieve, and with no hesitation this time, she knelt down and began vigorously to ransack the pockets of the man's Norfolk coat, when, to her horror, there was a sudden upheaval, and a huge brown hand clutched her wrist, while a voice thundered—
'What's your game?" The two stared at each other for the fraction of a minute. Incredulous surprise looked out of the man's eyes, and met startled horror in the blue orbs beneath. Then the man dropped Stella's hands and exclaimed—
"I beg your pardon?"
Stella felt a mad desire to bolt. She recognised the interrogative note in the polite words.
"And I beg yours," was the only reply she could frame.
The man continued to stare until he must have been familiar with every line of the flushed face before he spoke.
"A case of mistaken identity?"
"Yes."
"A lady has the last word always, I believe; "is she entitled, can you tell me, to the first explanation?"
Then he meant to have it. Stella sent a swift glance to the amused face. It seemed inexorable.
"It is so hard to explain," she murmured.
"Of course! I will tell you my mistake first. I thought you were—a tramp."
Stella grew crimson. Her recollections of English tramps were vivid. This was England's crowning insult!
"Tramps generally wear cycling costumes like this?" she queried, pulling vigorously at her white linen skirt.
The stranger's smile broadened. "Excuse me," he said, "but I was asleep. You must admit I did not see you. I only—ahem!—felt you."
A sudden fear shot through Stella's mind—a fear of the shadowy influence that, to her mind, seemed to pervade England—a terror that, to her, lurked ever in the background—the shadow of the law of England. She looked about her appealingly. But she saw that the man was waiting for her explanation, so she started off with a flourish of dignity.
"When I saw you lying under the hedge I naturally concluded you were ill. In England it is most unusual" (she felt sure of her ground here) "to see a man sleeping by the road."
Tho smile grew yet broader, till it merged into a grin.
"Indeed." he said. "Ill? I feel curious. What was my complaint?"
Stella hung her head. "I thought it was apoplexy, because you were so very red in the face," she said innocently.
It would have been impossible to have said a more unlucky thing. Nature had given the noble Duke—for so he was—a high colour, and foreign suns and recent motoring had fostered its intensity. But it was really his recumbent position, with his head lower than its wont, that gave such a beetroot hue to his face. Wounded on his sensitive point, he said in a frigid manner—
"I have yet to learn the connection between apoplexy and my coat-pocket."
The stern words had their effect. A sudden abject fear seized her. Ever since she left Australia she had offended the great social Bugbear of England —trodden on its toes, and got bitten and snapped at for her slips. But this was something that in her former lawless life she had heard of, and shuddered at. It was the very backbone of the whole English Constitution that she had injured, the vast majesty of the Law of England. She already felt herself within its grip, and then the primitive in her asserted itself. She looked round appealingly.
Her wild eyes failed to see her bicycle, which lay in the shadow of the hedge, but the motor-car was close, at her side. Stella neither appreciated nor understood automobiles. She had only ridden in the one belonging to Lady Dux, and to her it was only an ugly civilised mass of machinery, without fascination, for the Dux car was as decorous as its owners, and never dreamed of even approaching regulation speed. With one bound she jumped on the car—the sudden spring of a kangaroo that took the Duke completely by surprise—and snatched at something that released the brake. Flight was her only thought.
And she did fly! The car, being in excellent position at the top of the hill, suddenly realised its opportunity had come, and determined to make the most of it. Down the hill it tore, miraculously cutting a curve at the bottom, and crossing the small bridge over the little stream in safety. It slackened, panting, for half a minute, as though to congratulate itself on its skill, and then, emulated to fresh efforts, it raced along the level road in front.
Stella, still grasping something, gasped at the rapid pace. Its exhilaration gradually began to run through her veins. The. road was nothing hut a white ribbon, and the hedges green blurs. Then, to her horror, she saw someone on the road in front. She cried out, but her throat was dry, and so was the rustic's, and he was only intent on getting to the Dun Cow for a remedy.
Panic seized her; she touched the wheal, and the next moment found herself in the hedge.
What followed seemed like a bad dream. She remembered being shot out, and landing practically unscathed. She sat up on the grass and watched the sky chase the fields round and round.´Then suddenly her scattered energies were collected by something dreadful. There was a horrible hissing! It was the motor car. Its mad dash for freedom had been its last, and, like the martyrs of old. it was compensating for its sins in a fiery pile.
Stella stood, and gazed in speechless horror, on one aide: the rustic, the real cause of the disaster, gaped in silent enjoyment on the other. Presently a third spectator arrived, a ducal one. His face was redder than ever with the exertion of running. He regarded the blaze regretfully.
"Too far gone," he murmured. Then he turned to Stella, but she had collapsed on the ground, a pathetic heap of crumpled white linen, over which streamed her shower of golden hair, which was loosened by her fall and rapid journey. She stretched out her hands imploringly.
"Oh. don't send me to prison." she pleaded. "I only wanted to help you, and—I was so frightened."
For one minute amusement darted into the Duke's eyes. It was so comical to see this woman, who looked like a goddess from a Greek play, frightened out of her life by the bogey of a prison career. Then pity chased it away, as he saw her real distress. He took her hand clumsily and patted it. speaking consolingly, as though to a younger sister.
"Don't cry. old girl." ha said; "It's is all right—quite all right. The motor's insured" (oh. Recording Angel, look the other way!) "and as tor my red face, no wonder it took you in. You see." he went on, speaking rapidly to arrest the girls tears. "I could not stand England. Too stiff and starchy. So for the last few years I've lived in Australia—"
"Australia?" The question was cry—the bitter cry of weeks of concentrated home-sickness. Oh, have you come from Australia, too?" she asked, and then she suddenly began to cry again, but in a different way. and the Duke once more took her hand.
The story ends here. Stella's real life began at this moment, so the other details and explanations are quite superfluous. Everything passed away like a magic interlude, until the day when the Duke of Maryland surmounted his strawberry-leaves with a star.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.