Force and Fraud. Ellen Davitt
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was in reference to this engagement that Herbert Lindsey was now conversing with his friend, Pierce Silverton – the privileged companion of Flora McAlpin, and the trusted agent of her father. They sat on the verandah of The Southern Cross a full hour after the other guests had dispersed. At length Silverton, in his turn, prepared to go, saying, “Well, Lindsey, as you will have another long walk tomorrow morning, I ought not to detain you. It would not be proper for Flora to go far into the forest to meet you.”
“I will take care of that. I shall be at the boundary of her father’s station by eight o’clock in the morning.”
“Can you manage that? You will have a walk of a dozen miles.”
“I shall rise at daybreak, take a cup of coffee, which will be ready for the coach-passengers, and that same coach will give me a lift, thus saving me three or four miles.”
“It will set you down at the entrance of the forest; but take care you don’t get entangled amongst the branches.”
“Not I, indeed. The forest that I passed through this morning is more dense, but I chopped away the branches like a thorough bushman, I can tell you. I have a first-rate bowie knife; look here.”
Lindsey felt in his pocket for the article, and suddenly exclaimed, “Why, where the deuce has it got to? O, upstairs in my other coat I suppose. But I was going to ask, is there any likelihood of McAlpin returning tonight? Not that I care for the old fellow; but I don’t want to give him a pretext for tyrannising over my darling Flora.”
“No; he only started yesterday. I almost wonder you did not meet him.”
“There is no horse-track through the part of the forest I travelled. I purposely kept out of his way; the obstinate old fellow – to turn against the son of his best friend for such a trifle!”
“Men of McAlpin’s stamp do not regard the squandering of three thousand pounds in less than two years as a trifle.”
“Especially in the manner I spent it. Men of his sort are more ready to find an excuse for swindling and speculation than for the follies of a youth who is led astray by the fascinations of the Continent. I do not mean to vindicate myself; I did spend my fortune and now–”
“True – you spent your money like an ass; and now you have to earn it like a horse.”
“I wish you wouldn’t talk proverbs, Pierce. I hate that sort of humbug; besides, they are generally nonsensical. Asses don’t spend money though they earn it sometimes for their masters. I never had a master; and, by Jove, I never will.”
Lindsey spoke with more temper than he had hitherto done, and Silverton added, “It is not only having spent your money that irritates McAlpin, but he thinks you will never settle to anything.”
“Tell him to give me a station and his daughter, and I will be the steadiest fellow in the colony. I should like to know how a man is to settle when he is obliged to tramp about the country looking out for chances as I do.”
“He thinks you might have followed the profession of medicine. You walked the hospitals for a year, did you not?”
“Yes, and got sickened with horrors; I can’t bear the sight of blood, Pierce.” Herbert Lindsey turned pale, and entering the room through the window of the verandah, drew from the filter a glass of water, which he drank eagerly.
“I have often wondered to hear you say so, a brave fellow like you, Lindsey!” said his friend.
“Pshaw! A mere physical defect that I inherit from my mother, who was frightened a short time before my birth. But I do not permit this disgust to take a morbid possession of my faculties. I would not turn away from a sight of pain if I could do any good, and thus nerving – but no matter. I did not choose to become a surgeon, and, perhaps if I had never got amongst those students I might have been a rich man to day.”
“Another of McAlpin’s objections; he says you suffer yourself to be led away by any wild fellow.”
“Six years since probably I did, but I am another man now. Can’t he allow a poor devil a chance to reform? I never was vicious and I never did anything to leave a stain on my name, and that’s more than some people can say. I tell you. Pierce, that McAlpin is an obstinate, pig-headed old Highlander, and I’ll marry his daughter in spite of him.”
Chapter III
The Artist’s Love
Some portion of the young artist’s past career may be gathered by the dialogue recorded in our last chapter. It will easily be seen that Herbert Lindsey had been a spend-thrift. In fact, like many other young men who become possessed of wealth in early life, he once thought that money would never come to an end. At the age of twenty-one he became entitled to £3000; and, two years later, not a shilling remained.
To his credit, however, be it recorded, that a great part of it had been absorbed in the purchase of valuable books – scientific, artistic, and historical; and, when disgusted with the profession of medicine, which he had once prepared to follow, in the expenses necessary to qualify himself as an artist. In pursuit of the latter, he had travelled in France, Italy, Spain, and Germany, studying in the best galleries, and under the best masters. Thus, after all, Herbert Lindsey had spent as little money in foolish extravagance as the generality of young men would do under similar circumstances.
Like many others, he had paid a high price for experience, having been robbed and defrauded by those on whose good faith he relied. But never having been addicted to vice, when he found himself nearly penniless, he could at least commence a fresh career, unembittered by the pangs of remorse.
About two years after having devoted himself to the Arts, being on a sketching tour in Germany, he met Mrs McAlpin and her daughter – the former having been recommended by her physician to try the waters of Baden. Mrs McAlpin was an English lady of good family, refined and highly educated. In her youth she had been very romantic, and after reading The Lady of the Lake, amidst the scenes described in that beautiful poem, she married a great strapping Highlander, because she fancied he resembled Rhoderick Dhu.
As that renowned chieftain died a bachelor, it would not be fair to surmise what sort of husband he might have made; nevertheless, the poet has not endued him with the sweetest of tempers. And so it is probable that poor Lucy discovered, too late, that her husband resembled the hero of her romance in one very undesirable point of view.
Poor Lucy McAlpin! Her illusions were dispelled one by one, and she at last became aware that her lord and master cared more for making money, than for either his gentle wife or his pretty daughter; as, having heard that, in Australia, he could easily become possessed of vast and valuable lands, he resolved to go thither at once.
A considerable delay would have been caused by waiting till his elegant and somewhat fastidious wife had made, what she thought, the indispensable preparations: till a suitable governess could be prepared for Flora, and till various other preliminaries could be arranged. Her husband told her that she was making a fuss about things that were not of the least consequence. The result was that Angus McAlpin set off alone, having readily assented to his wife’s proposal that she should remain behind till Flora had finished her education.
On arriving in the land of his adoption, McAlpin congratulated himself on the steps he had taken, the wild life of the wildest part of the bush, being just the thing for the hardy Highlander, but not quite adapted to the tastes of a fanciful lady. Thus Mrs McAlpin continued to dwell amongst her own relations, occupying herself – for a period of five years after her husband’s departure – with the education of her child. At the end of this time, a complaint with which she had long been afflicted, assumed a threatening appearance, and (as we have stated) she was recommended to try the waters of Baden.
Unable to enter into the pleasure of that gay scene, she gladly welcomed the society of Herbert Lindsey. The more so, that she had known him since his childhood; his father and her husband having been early friends.
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