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THE BAR AND THE BUSH;

OR, COMING HOME FOR A WIFE.

BY OUIDA.

I.

WILLIE DE ROHAN AND MYSELF; AND WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT.

"I SAY, Mount, who the deuce do you think is coming home? Guess. You can't? Why, Goring-dear old Tom! I'd a letter from him this morning, written just before he started from Nelson. Ten years, as I live, since we saw him. Poor old Tom!"

'Pon

So spake my chum De Rohan, bursting into my chambers as I sat drinking Glenlivat and reading a yellow-papered roman. "Goring ?" I repeated, in bewilderment; "my dear Will, you don't mean it. my life, I'm delighted! I've mourned over him as quite as much buried away from anything like life as if he were under one of those tipsylooking tombstones up at Kensal-green. Will he bring his squaw and all the papooses with him? I hope not-I hate black women.'

"For Heaven's sake, Mount, clear up your queer ideas of New Zealand before we see Tom, or he'll think they're very shadowy, to say the least, for a (should-be) well read embryo Q.C. He'll be here some time next week, I suppose. He's made a fortune out there one way and another; gold turned up on his land among other things, lucky dog! I'm afraid we might dig a long time in the Temple-gardens without chancing on a farthing's worth. He's coming home for a wife on the strength of it."

"Is he so sure he'll get one?"

"What! a man worth 20007. a year? He'll find the market overstocked, my boy. No woman ever refused a good income. Master Tom will find only too many fish to snap at his fly."

"But the Bush isn't such a charming prospect?"

"Pooh! Mount, any marriage (leave alone the certainty of a good settlement) is a godsend to a woman. Goring will only have l'embarras des richesses, take my word for it; and whoever has his handkerchief thrown at her will pick it up with thanksgiving. Poor Tom, won't you be glad to see him? It seems only the other day that we were boys together fishing for surreptitious Jack and smoking smuggled Queens in barns; and here is he coming back to get married, and you and I are growing old in chambers."

"I'm much obliged to you, Will," said I. "If you choose to fancy yourself feeling old at four-and-thirty, I don't. The deuce! we're mere infants at the Bar, and ten years hence, if we like to take a fancy to any pretty girl, we shall be young enough.

"And keep her on a farthing a week? Pleasant, certainly. Tom can marry, you and I can't, and I'm sure I don't covet the privilege-not half as much as I do his power of shooting anything he likes, from bandicoots to pigs, without license or fear of the keeper."

"By George! I should say so. Well," said I, as a bright idea struck

me, I wish he'd take one of the Lessingham girls back with him. They ain't exactly Bush style, to be sure; but that don't matter, it would be an intense comfort to their poor old governor.' "What are they like?" asked Willie.

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Very pretty, I've heard. I haven't seen 'em the last two or three years. There are three, and two little ones coming up after 'em and four boys-horrible! How's any man to expect to get them off his hands? It's enough to make the old rector shoot himself!" "Or them," said De Rohan. "Well, we'll see about it. I dare say I shall be Tom's commissariat in the matrimonial department, and if I can do anything for your cousins, I will. Didn't you say they were coming to town?"

"In a day or two, to stay with my mother, and Goring will be here by then."

"Mounteagle turning matchmaker! By George, what a novel rôle !" laughed De Rohan. "I say, I'm going to dine at Richmond with Ferrers and Maberley. We want a partie carrée; you may as well come. Do."

"Very well," said I. And go we did accordingly.

De Rohan, Goring, and I had been boys together at one of our great public schools, no matter which, and chums ever since the day Willie fought (and licked) us both, all the lower school looking on. Willie was one of those slap-up foreign races who take the shine out of the British peerage as a thorough-bred Arab, whose descent is traced up to Kadijah's courser, takes it out of some pretentious colt who can go no further back than to a winner of sweepstakes or Innkeepers' Plates. Willie's governor had dropped his title when he had to fly for his life, and Willie, living in the Middle Temple and going the Home Circuit, with about 400l. a year, was given to calling himself a beggar, and flinging pointed sarcasms at the difference between his name and his means. Will was a dear old fellow, and cut me and Tom out in society as he used to do in football, swimming, and cricket. He'd the handsome clear-cut intellectual features of his race, and all the women he met fell in love with his "dear dark eyes," as girls termed 'em, as naturally as I take my pipe of Cavendish before turning in. Willie had made love, too, plenty of it, in his time, though he chose to call it bosh now. and energy and high spirits made him go fast, as young fellows will; and His pluck I don't suppose, when he and I and Goring did the grand when we were about twenty, that any wilder men patronised the Château des Fleurs, wore dominoes at bals d'Opéra, and took grisettes to the Bois du Boulogne. Oh! the jolly days when we sang with hearts as light as the wine with which we washed them down, and made love as free and evanescent as the perfumy smoke curling out of our meerschaums. You remember days like them, too, don't you, ami lecteur? The first-rate Steinberg you drink now hasn't got the flavour that bad Hock had, and the fine cheroot you smoke in fear and trembling lest madame up in the drawing-room should scent it out, hasn't the fragrance of that cabbageleaf tobacco, eh?

Well, we came back. De Rohan and I entered our names at Middle Temple, and Goring, after his Paris life, had no taste to accept the quiet living his governor had in his gift (Goring senior's a county M.P. and

a crusty old cove), and made up his mind to levant to New Zealand. His governor told him he could do as he liked; what was Tom to him— only one among many. Tom told him he'd rather shear sheep than take orders, and so it came to pass that one morning Willie and I saw him off on board a clipper for Nelson, and I don't think De Rohan was ever more down in his mouth in his life than he was about losing his old chum. I myself wasn't sorry Tom was gone. I was very fond of De Rohan, and was jealous of any other man he liked, as a young fellow is sometimes jealous over his pet Pylades.

Fourteen years had passed. By Jove! I shall be finding my first grey hair in a few years. De Rohan and I went the circuit, he, young though he was, astonishing the old stagers, I can tell you, when he did get a junior's brief, taking occasional runs up the Rhine or down the Mediterranean, shooting blackcock on the moors, and trolling in the Wye or the Severn whenever we could, and boring ourselves at drums, crushes, whitebait dinners, and Star and Garter luncheons, while Tom was living his nomadic life in patriarchal fashion among his herds and flocks, retrograding in civilisation as far as ever he could, and trying hard, I dare say, to think he enjoyed it.

II.

VIVIA LESSINGHAM.

"LET's see," said De Rohan, as we drove in a Hansom to my mother's house, up in St. John's Wood, taking out Goring's letter, "Tom says, 'I'm coming home for a wife, and mean to take back a pretty, accomplished girl, who'll put me in mind of old times, to be mistress of my new house, which is just three parts built of the finest timber you ever,' &c. &c. Well, Mount, will any of your cousins answer that ?" "See for yourself," said I, "for here we are. The young ladies little know they're on trial before the commissary-matrimonial. Do your best for 'em, old boy."

"That's Bertie Mounteagle, I know. What a horrid bore, just as that dear Vavasour is in such trouble!" cried one of my cousins, shutting a Parlour Library book as the Buttons opened the drawing-room door.

66 I'm sorry I'm a bore, ma cousine; it's the first time I was ever thought so," said I, going up to a young lady, who, when I'd last seen her, had been little Maude in the nursery, and was now got up very grand in crinoline, fixatrice, organdie muslin, and all the rest of it, and stood as high as my shoulder, and I'm six feet two inches. I kissed her, by right of my cousinship, and Maude blushed and looked pretty, and I thought her decidedly improved since the nursery and pinafore days. What a pity it was those girls had no tin: they were certainly very good style, though their father had only a living of 7001. a year, and nine children. Heaven help him, poor fellow !

"What a comfort it would be if Tom would but take one off his hands," I thought, as I introduced the commissary to the goods he was to choose from. He talked to Helen, the eldest, who's one-and-twenty, tall, fair, and handsome, looked at Maude (the prettiest of the trio, to my mind), and then crossed over to Vivia, the second, who's a great pet with all the men, and, though not strictly pretty, is very picturesque and

winning. I don't know what it is about that girl; she's no remarkable beauty, though it's a mignonne face, but she can bewitch us by dozens, and distances regular belles by twenty lengths. Upon my word, I think women are like racers: your wild little filly will often go in and win at an easy canter, while the favourite, whom everybody has backed from the day she was entered, can't keep the pace at all against her.

"I say, mother, Tom Goring's coming back," said I, while Willie was amusing his mind looking at Vivia's drawings. "He's worth two thousand a year, and is come to get a wife to

"Good gracious, Bertie," interrupted Vivia, arching her eyebrowsvery contemptuous, mobile little eyebrows they are-"you talk of getting a wife as you might of buying a flock of Southdowns, or the last new drilling machine. You speak as if girls were to be bought for all the world like horses at Tattersall's."

"Well, Miss Lessingham," said De Rohan, "I think society is very much like Tattersall's; young ladies, like young fillies, are trotted out to show their paces, and are knocked down to the highest bidder. A ball-room always makes me think of an auction-day at the Yard." Vivia looked at him with superb disdain. "Gentlemen with such ideas of women had better never bid for a wife, or they may find one that will turn restive at being estimated no higher than his hunter or his hack. Every woman will not so easily submit to that alien tyranny,' with its dynastic reasons of larger bones and stronger sinews."

De Rohan laughed. "Nevertheless, few ladies are happy till their necks are under the yoke of that alien tyranny.' As soon as our poor friend Goring arrives, he will be surrounded by clever mammas, like skilful featherweights, bringing their darlings up to the winning-post." Vivia broke her crayon in impatient disgust. My mother smiled. dare say Mr. Goring will not be long before he finds somebody willing to share his two thousand a year."

"I

"If he make it such a matter of business," said Vivia, “I should advise him to go about with a placard before him, 'A Wife Wanted. The bidder worth two thousand a year.' It will advertise his intentions admirably."

"Oh! he won't need to take that trouble," said Willie, with a side glance to me, as much as to say what fun it was to hear her. "His only difficulty will be the superabundance of choice."

"To hear you, one would imagine the Bush was a species of Jannat al Aden," retorted Vy, quickly, "and not a wretched existence, a cross between a savage and a general servant, with damper for your only delicacy, and black snakes for your companions; if he want a wife, he must search among cooks and laundresses; nobody else will sweep out his warry."

"Yes they will, Miss Lessingham," laughed De Rohan. "Tom's not a wild man of the woods; he wants a pretty, accomplished girl, to"Grace his soirées, I suppose, and head his dinner-table," said the young lady, sarcastically.

"And he'll find plenty, I don't doubt," continued Willie, composedly. "There are too many girls now-a-days who, unless they can get a home of their own, have to turn out as governesses or companions, for a man like Goring to be obliged to throw his float in twice."

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"I dare say, to those who think so meanly of all women as to imagine they only marry for a home, the rejection of 20007. a year does seem a fabulous folly," said Miss Vy, with immense dignity, rising and sweeping past De Rohan to the piano, where, at my mother's entreaty, she sang the "Power of Love," and sang it very well too.

"That's the one," said De Rohan, as we drove away after luncheon. "Do you mean Maude ?" said I, for I'd just been thinking Maude was too pretty for the Bush.

"No, no; that little plucky, accomplished, amusing thing. I bet you she's the one Tom will like, and it will be such fun to see her caught and shipped off to the Bush, after all her eloquent tirades against it." "But perhaps she wouldn't go?"

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My dear fellow! Didn't you tell me she was one of nine children, and would have to go out as a governess if nobody took compassion upon her? Of course she'll go. Women talk a great deal about disinterested affection, but I never saw one of them practise it the moment after good settlements offered," said Willie, whose experience had made him decidedly sceptical, leaning back in the Hansom and lighting a cheroot. As I've told you, Willie is a splendid fellow, and his feelings, when they are roused, are very hot and strong; but his family, to my mind, hadn't ever understood him: they weren't fond of him, nor he of them. He'd been knocked about in the world, which, as we know by snowballs, has sometimes a hardening process; he'd never seen any clever women who were not actresses, nor any affectionate ones who weren't fools, and his experience had naturally given him anything but a high opinion of the beau sexe. But Willie had a very warm heart under his sarcasm, and though he was given to repeating the nursery ditty, "I care for nobody, no not I, and nobody cares for me," would have been glad to find somebody to care for him for all that.

One morning late, when I was sitting at breakfast (I'd been waltzing with Maude till five that morning), my boy, who is cautious in admitting callers, since he has had many duns and few clients to deal with in his time, after some parley showed in a man, tall, bronzed walnut colour, with a beard down to his waist. By Jove! I shouldn't have known him one bit. Ten years of the Bush had altered him as much as ten seasons' hard running after obstinate eligibles will alter a pretty fresh débutante into a rouged, tinted, and padded passée belle.

Poor old Tom! how he and Willie and I did talk! How late we sat that night over our regalias and toddy, recalling the old days when we'd robbed orchards and run to see the North Warwickshire throw off, cut our names during the Doctor's sermon, and hooked prohibited Jack for delicious secret suppers. How we talked of the old Paris times, too; of that black-eyed fleuriste that Tom was so spoony over, and that actress at the Odéon that we used to chaff Willie about; of the Bar, and the little we made at it; of the Bush, and the sport Tom had in it; of George Watson's fox-hounds and Hall's rifle powder; of shooting wild-ducks on the lagoons and hunting kangaroos, till our own deeds, trouting in the Derwent, shooting blackcock on the moors, and partridges among the stubble, looked quite tame beside this Nimrod of the West.

"And so you're come to get married, Tom?" said De Rohan, looking with eyes of love upon his ancient chum. "Pity, I think; but, however,