AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF A STRONG WOMAN.

Press, Volume L, Issue 8477, 8 May 1893, Page 3

AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF A STRONG WOMAN.

By Michael Watt.

Once upon a time there lived a woman who knew not the meaning of the veib " to love." In the active voice, indeed, she regarded it rid Jealous —lor .what was there on the wide earth worth loving f—in the passive voice it was meet only for fool* and servile things. To be loved, good heavens! even if true, what maudlin sentimentality. Men had often come to her, and talked about their love for her. They came when ehe was busiest, invariably brought in muddy boots, or eat down on the very chair she wae wanting to sweep under. They were in her way. To get rid of them «he told them so, also that life was too short for such fooling round. She frankly pitied, if not despised, her leas strong-minded sisters. "Dwindled into the shadow of a man." was to her eye« the general standard of matrimonial bliss, and it was " not good enaaga." Without having studied Ibsen, whom the would wobablj have detested, ehe bad eet uo Iα-

dlvidaaltsm as her god, and regularly it v?aa her pride to kneel and worship. And this was the woman whose heart Danby Crane had set himself to win. Not because he knew its worth, miudyou ; it would have taken a far cleverer man than be was to understand that. To him Hester Mackay's affections were as yet of merely fictitious value, depending wholly on the difficulty of obtaining them. As a matter of fact, he had been piqued by descriptions of this complacently independent woman; and, in boasting of bis own unfailing fascinations for the fair sex, had accepted a bet that this should be the crowning triumph of his career. His interest was sharpened by the fact that " the virago " was "of a fair countenance and alluring withal," and to him at least the task of courtship was a pleasant one. And to her? Well, to her it was pleasant also. She had had many adorers, young and elderly, wildly sentimental and quietly matter-of-fact; but never a one like Danby Crane. To him the treatment accorded the rest could not apply. She was nonplussed, and for the first time in her life allowed her thoughts to dwell on a man.

She had first met him one day while strolling through the paddock after an errant cow. She was calling to her dogs, head thrown back, one hand shading her clear eyes from the sun, the other, strong and cool, closing the gate behind her. Her coarse gown clung round her firm straight limbs as if glorying in their supple strength, while the sun dashed hair and proud yet tender mouth showed her in spice of all pure womanly. Aud as she .stood in the sunlight aad the breeze a stranger rode up behind her. " Wonder if that's the virago," he thought, "By Jove, but she's a beauty," and dismounting he led bis horse up to the gate with a humble petition to be allowed to enter. Hester turned, met his eyes fixed on her, and for tho first time io her life perhaps was discomposed. "Miss Mackay, is it not!" "My name is Hester Mackuy." Had he guessed that the curtness of her answer was due not to strong mindedneas, but fco.womanly confusion, Danby Crane would have been a leas disconcerted man than he was. Hβ quickly .recovered his mental balance, however, and fortified by comfortable faith in his own irreslstableness, and by the reflection that" at all events she wears petticoats," he not unsuccessfully laid himself out to please. On arriving at the little farmhouse her invitatiou to enter, though he thought it cold, was perhaps more shyly cordial than had ever been accorded to any man on the island. They broke bread together, and the first footing of theiracquaintance was established. A change had come over Hester Mackay. Her father noticed it, and vaguely wondered. Others alao noticed it, and commented thereon. It was as though she were tired of wrangling with her male adorer*, and had given up the contest for sheer lack of while on tho other hand she was atlastawakenedup to the fact that there are other elements in life than household duties and farm management. Not that these were neglected, only they seemed to have lost power to absorb her ; she no longer scrubbed and dusted as though that were the only joy in life ; and after snubbing a too importunate admirer fiat, even she vaguely wondered that the exhilaration consequent of old on such an act was no longer there. "I am growing old," she sighed, as she thought of twentyeight years of sturdy happiness behind her; aud then she would laugh as she heard a whistle at the paddock gate, and would stand watching in the doorway as Dan by Crane rode up. She had not always been so gracious to her visitors, as the neighbours were not alow to remark. And some of the men of the island ground their teeth and swore, to ccc weak selfish vanity succeed where their Tieep-rooted honest love bad failed.

There was certain ground for thegosaip —more wound than gossip generally has. For it was true thot Danby Crane did ride to the Heads every day that he did not spend there wholly. And that he could not be unwelcome was evident; from the very frequency of hla visits, for if he were in the way—as the rest of them had been —Heater would soon have let him know it. But she had not; he was evidently a welcome guest. Perhaps it was in the very weakness of his character that Danby Crane's success lay. The smiling lips delicate receding chin, long-lashed gentle eyes, certainly obtruded no masterfulness to challenge Hester's angry pride; while habitual deference to her wishes, and a courtesy wholly novel to the little community marked him as unique among her experiences of rough-and-ready wooing. Had she' known htm as lie ■ was,- weak, selfish, idle, somewhat dissipated, and sooth to say just a little vulgar, she would hardly have been aware of his existence. But the very poverty of his individuality caused It to lose itself in her own strong nature. What she saw in him was not his own faint colouring, but the vivid reflection of her own, enhanced and glorified by the glamour of strong young life. She did not fall in love with him, oh noonly this man was unlike all other men she had ever known.

So they rode together; and Hester showed him the likeliest spots for wild duck andpukaki, and initiated him into the mysteries of sheep and dairy farming. She showed him how to bait for congereel; and sat with him for hours on the rocks as he fished for cod. Sometimes she would rise to go; but he would always detain her. He had forgotten how you bait your line; or ho wanted somebody to talk to, and ehe could never he so inhospitable as to leave him; or "By Jove I What a funny fish over there?" So she would stay, and tell him of the curious fish that swarmed along the coast; and about the sea-weeds, and the shells of various shapes and hues stranded by the retreating tide. She did not know their Latin names, but she could tell you a good deal about them for all that.

And sometimes—onenight when the wind was driving white clouds across the moon, and the sea came swirling in among the rocks, grinding the pebbles in its outward rush—one night when there was no other sound but the rustling of the tussocks, and the sobbing wash of the tide, and far away over the dark promontory yonder, the faint lowing of cattle, she told him about her life on the island.

There was not much to tell. She had always lived there, at the little farm at the Heads. Her father had come there before she was born, and her mother had died there. Look I that was her grave on the hillside; an aloe grew there fenced in with white palings. Lonely? No! She never found the place lonely. There were always the beasts, and the hills, and the wide clears, and, best of all, the sea. What more would you have ? Danby timidly .suggested, " Perhaps a few people might be an improvement." " Oh, I don't know, people are often a great bother, besides there art plenty of people."

"But do you never want to leave the island 1 Never look forward to some other kind of life than merely cooking and scrubbing and trudaing through the bogs after the cows? By Jove—you know— you're far too pretty for that kind o thing." The last sentence was murmured in a deprecating tone that robbed ifc of half ita impertinence. Hester took no notice, but sat silent, her hands clasped idly over her knees, her eyes fixed on the heaving darkness. At last she spoke abruptly— " I needn't have stayed here if I hadn't wanted to. I could have gone often you see."

" How could you have gone V he asked. She laughed. " I might have married." She looked amueed, as if the matter were too obvious to need discussion.

He frowned. "Bow could you have married ? There's no one here to marry. You don't meant—Oh! I say.. Come, now I"

" And why not?" she flashed out. A more sensitive man would have taken warning, but Danby Crane was not sensitive.

"Oh ! well. Look here. This Iβ worse than Titania and a whole drove of donkeys. Not to disparage their understandings," he continued, swelling In his own complacent wit. "Their boutbullder alone could do justice to that. Ha Iha I You're not going, are you T* For Hester had risen, and there was a curious look on her face ; but this he was too blinded by hie selfconceit to see.

"Wait a bit," he cried, I am coming with you." So she waited restlessly, as he gathered up his lines. Her fingers nervously intertwined, her lips were set, she looked past her companion as though he were not there.

How dared he I How dared he I And to her? In what respect did she differ from her neighbours that he should sneer at them to heri It flashed across her mind how more than once before he had laughed at the homely garb, and uncouth ways and speech of the islanders; but were not hers the same ? Bid not his gibe apply to her as well f She, too, had coarse, ill-fitting clothes, toil-hardened hands, unpolished tongue, the manners—in Danby's mocking words— *' as the beasts that perish." "FoiT —fool that she had been 1" Tingling with the shame of humiliation, she felt loathing rise within her tor the man beside her. She was glad that he could not see her face as they turned to walk back together. Their walk home was a ailent one, her

oompanton taking his cue from hef abstracted mood. Truth to tell, he, too, had food for reflection this evening. He had unconsciously drifted far from hit origJaal stand point as regard* Hester: the courtship begun in selfish vanity had ended by rousing a dominant craving which sho only could allay. This night he felt for him strangely anxious. The avowal of her numerous conquents, of the possibility of any attachment in her former life, her abstraction, all filled him with alarm. Could it Iks that Hester cared for anyone else? that she did not care foi him? Tho anger that takes the place of Borrow in petty natures overwhelmed him: and when at the paddock gate with a quiet "good-night," she offered him her hand he roughly seized this proud piece of maidenhood in his arms, and kissed her. In one Instant »he was free; and Danbj Crane stood alone, his faco bruised and tingling from the blow it had received. Locked in her room Hester lifted up her white face and stretched her trembling arms. "I am glad " she s»ld aloud, "Oh God I I am so glnd. My love is dead tor ever—for ever—for ever." Then she lay with wide open eyes till the dark became grey, and the grey was lost in golden light; when she arose and went about hex work as usual. That day passed somehow, and the next day and the next; and the days lengthened into weeks; but they brought neither word nor sign of Danby Crane. Uβ had paused as completely out of Hoster'e material llfe'aa though he had never entered it. Only once, passing by the gate where his lines still lay as ho had thrown them down that nicht, she had shivered ac at the recollection of an evil dream. For the future she avoided that track.

Thr weeks lengthened into months, and the shore line was hidden in fogs, and the swamps became lakes, and the dark thread-like bog creeks swollen rivers. Th» wind came keenly over the hills and down tho valleys and across the clears, and the eea moaued incessautly, and the rain fell, when an evil thiug was brought to the light of day. A shepherd found ib in what in summer was merely a streak of black bog water flowing half underground! now it was a rushing torrent. In lookinjr for a fording place his eye had beet arrested by a dark object swaying witb the current. One glance told him what il was, and, help having been summoned, something foul and hideout In Its inky ooze was dragged upon the bank. An ln> formal inquest was held. Identification was impossible. It must have lain tangled there for months. Had anyone been missing lately ? Someone remembered Danby Crane. He had not been seen for months, ho had certainly not left the island in the Sweetheart when she sailed. Witness had fancied he might have got off in some whaling vessel niace, but now there was no doubt. The thing they had found wu Danby Crane. So because the suggestion was feasible, and so as to get it underground and out of sight without delay, the unanimous verdict was returned—" Danby Crane, accidentally drowned." And Hester—whose new-born love had been killed by that outburst of brute passion, how long ago was it? Hester, when they told her, said to herself," Now I shall never marry." And she went about her household duties, and her face became lined, and her hair streaked with gray. But she did not keep her word. For after many years a man came to the Island, and loved her, and asked her to bo his wife. And because an ordinary work-a-day lite does much towards taking the romance out of one, and because Hester was a good woman, and knew, and was unwilling to grieve, a good man who loved her, she married him ; and letb the island (or tht great world beyond. My story Is almost ended. I see nomore the strong laughing beauty of the isle. She stoops a little now, and the proud curves of her mouth are lost in the tremulous smile of sweet old age. But the young men still idolize her; and she it very tender to them for the sake of an old, old dream under the stars by the sea-side long ago. And if at times there steals into her eyes a far away look of pain, yet her wedded life is full of calm happiness ; and when her husband's arm encircles her she will wake up. from her abstraction with a smile.

They are at the theatre together a childless old couple, yet happy an children In the play enacted before them. Mrs Douglas presses her husband's arm. " Who Iβ that, dear 1 I seem to know the face." She indicated a flaccid over-jewelled man seated between two very showy women. "H'ml —Ahl you don't know him I Hβ used to talk about your quarter of the globe." And rising in answer to the eagerness In his wife's, eyes, the doctor walked over to the individual In question. "Mywife," he said, "would like a cbafi with you about the Gladstone Islands." " With pleasure." And so the presentation took place. "Mr Danby Crane, Mrs Douglas." A sudden thought struck Mrs Douglas: she wondered It ufFected her so little. For just one Instant she did not hear what her companion was saying, as breathlessly she tried to conjure up the emotions of the past. " Dr Douglas says you know the island! pretty well. Couldn't have met you there, though? Never forget a charming face you know." She looked at him and half shook her head. " No, I suppose not." She laughed. Then laying her head upon her husband* arm, " Isn't it a capital comedy/ she said. But he thought she referred to (he play*