the hospital. He had twelve shillings of his wages left, and this kept
him for a fortnight, with the help of what he received for an odd job or
two. The last week had been the worst of all. On Saturday he had
elevenpence only left; he lived on it that day, Sunday, and Monday,
sleeping in the Domain at night. On Tuesday he had in the course of his
wanderings come to Malcolm's favourite restaurant, and lingered around
it, trying to feed his poor hungry body with the appetising smells that
issued from the door. At last he could bear it no longer; he went in
and asked if they wanted a boy to wash up or wait, offering to do so in
return for food and a bed at night. They had been very pushed for help,
for one of the waiters had fallen ill, and they told him he could try it
for a day or two. All Tuesday he worked hard there, washing up, peeling
potatoes, running errands; the meals seemed more than ample repayment to
him in his half-starved state.
On Wednesday the absent waiter had sent word to say he would be at his
duties the following day. Just as Bunty was lading his tray to carry it
round he dropped a couple of tumblers,--he had broken two or three
things the previous day,--and the manager in annoyance told him he could
stay the rest of the day but need not come back to-morrow. Sick at heart
at the thought of the streets again, the poor boy had picked up his tray
and gone out into the big room with it.
And the next minute there came that wild, glad shriek, and Poppet had
flung herself upon him half mad with joy.
Just as the tale ended Nellie burst into the room. She went straight
over to the sofa and fell down on her knees beside it.
"Oh, how can you ever forgive us, Bunty!" she said, tears brimming over
in her eyes. "Oh, Bunty, I shall never forgive myself, never!"
Esther had followed, her face' shining with gladness. "Mr. Burnham is
here," she said, "and----"
"Bunty never did it, 'twath Bully Hawkinth!" burst out Peter, pushing
Nellie aside, and actually trying to kiss his injured brother in his
excitement.
Bunty rose to his feet, pale, trembling.
"What is it, Esther?" he said. "Nellie--tell me!"
"Only it _was_ young Hawkins after all who took the money," said Esther,
in tones that trembled with gladness for the news, and grief for the
poor boy's unmerited sufferings. "He broke his collar bone at football
yesterday, and he thought at first he was going to die; he confessed it
to his mother, and made her send word to school. Mr. Burnham has come
straight here with the news, and says he can never forgive himself for
all you have suffered over it."
"Oh, Bunty! how hateful we were not to believe you," said Nellie, wiping
her eyes; "we don't deserve for you to speak to us."
But Bunty put his poor rough head down on the cushions again, and great
hard sobs broke from him, sobs that he was bitterly ashamed of, but that
he had absolutely no strength to restrain.
No one would ever know quite how wretched this thing had made him.
However warm the welcome home had been, there would always have been
that cloud.
The relief was almost too much for him in his weak state.
At night, when Meg was tucking Poppet up in bed, the little girl sat up
suddenly.
"Meg, that is the most wonderfullest tree in the world," she said in a
low, almost reverential tone.
Meg asked her to explain, and she told how she and Martha had walked
backwards three times, around the "wishing-tree" in the Botanical
Gardens.
Meg stooped down and kissed the dear little face; how she envied Poppet
to-day! she was the only one who had had faith all the time.
"What did you wish?" she asked, though she knew without telling.
"That Bunty might be found this vewy day, and that they might find out
about the money."
"But I think I know a little girl who has said that in her prayers every
day for five months," whispered Meg. "Which do you think answered, God
or the tree?"
The little girl was quiet for a minute, then she knelt up on her pillow
and drooped her sweet, grave face with its closed eyelids over her two
small hands.
When she cuddled down among the clothes again, she drew Meg's bright
head down to her.
"I was thanking Him," she said.
*CHAPTER XIII.*
*PARNASSUS AND PUDDINGS.*
"When for the first time Nature says plain 'No
To some 'Yes' in you, and walks over you
In gorgeous sweeps of scorn."
Pip had not spoken to Meg for over three weeks. There had been one fiery
outbreak consequent upon Miss Jones' dismissal of him. When he learnt
Meg had been to her he had accused his sister of treachery, of trying to
ruin his happiness; he had been willing, he said, to put off the
question of marriage for a year or two, but no power on earth would have
made him promise to give Mabelle up.
And she had given him up! Put him aside as if he had been a schoolboy,
or a worn-out glove! And with astonishing firmness. He had even seen
her already walking out with a man who sold saucepans and kettles and
fire-grates in the one business street of the suburb.
No wonder his cup of bitterness seemed running over; no wonder he felt
Meg had sinned beyond forgiveness in thus interfering.
His last examination had not, it was found, been hopelessly bad, and he
had been granted a "_post mortem_." But even then he did not attempt to
work. He used certainly, to stay in his bedroom, where his table stood
with its wild confusion of books and papers, but he would sit hour after
hour staring moodily in front of him, with never a glance at the
Todhunter or Berkeley that so urgently required his attention. Or he
would read poetry, lying full length on his bed,--Keats, Shelley, and
Byron, tales of blighted passion and hopeless grief, till his eyes would
ache with the tears his young manhood forbade to fall, tears of huge
self-pity and misery.
Surely since the creation there had been no one quite so wretched, so
utterly bereft of all that made life worth living! How grey and
monotonous stretched out the future before him! The probable length of
his life made him aghast. The sheer uselessness of living, the hollow
mockery of the sunshine and laughter and birds' songs, and the
intolerable length of hours and days, seemed each day to strike him with
fresh force.
After a certain time his mood induced poetic outpourings. He thought
himself just as wretched,--even more so, indeed; but the mere fact that
his feelings were able to relieve themselves in this way showed the
first keenness was passing.
[Illustration: "HE WOULD SIT HOUR AFTER HOUR STARING MOODILY IN FRONT OF
HIM."]
Sheet after sheet of University paper was covered with wild, impassioned
addresses in the shape of sonnets and odes, or, when the pen was too
full for studied forms, of eloquent blank verse.
For instance, the following poem struck him as exceptionally fine. He
composed it at midnight, after eating his heart out in misery all the
day. It was written in his blackest writing, as might be expected, and
upon a sheet of grey note paper,--the University buff had suddenly
offended his sense of fitness.
"Oh, what is life when all its joys are fled!
I am in love with Death's long dreamful ease.
Over my head I hear th' unwelcome tread
Of future years; my aching eye still sees
New suns arise and set, and seasons wane.
I would take arms against this sea of pain,
I would embrace Earth's sea and sink to rest,
For ever lulled upon her soothing breast!
I would fling off this gift of Life, as you,
O bitter Love, flung me aside, your you!
O Love, O Love, O bitter, beauteous Love,
Heartless and cold, but still my one fair dove!
What is this life that some find strangely fair,
When but to think brings sorrow and despair?
What is this life when love, your love, lies dead,
And mine, too much alive, slays me instead?
I will give up, go down,--there is a sea,
A winding sheet, kept cool and green for me.
I will give up, go down! Yet, Love, but smile,
But stretch to me that hand so soft and white,
That seemed my own, that sad, sweet little while,
And all grows day, for ever dead the night."
He was not at all sure when he read it the eighth or ninth time that the
mantle of the "Sun-treader" had not fallen upon him, that Helicon's
drying fount would not spring up afresh at his bidding.
Other men in love, he knew, had made verses, but they were of the
mawkish, sentimental kind his more fastidious taste rejected, the kind
that generally began something like--
"Oh, Star of Beauty, all the night
Thou shinest in the sky;
For thee the dark doth grow quite bright--
Oh, hear my plaintive sigh!"
His, he felt, were strong with the strength born of fathomless misery,
and sweet with the bitter-sweet of undying and spurned love.
One day he met Mabelle; she was walking to church with her fat, honest
old mother, who preferred a man of saucepans with money far before one
of irreproachable shirt cuffs and empty pockets.
She smiled at him from her brown, beautifully lashed eyes, a kind of
for-goodness-sake-try-to-make- the-best-of-it-and-don't-look-so-tragic
smile, but he interpreted it as a sign of softening. When he got home
he sent her the poem,--if anything in the wide world could touch her
beautiful, stony heart he thought that would.
He entrusted it to the common post, and waited with an undisciplined
heart for the answer.
It came on a Monday morning. Poppet took it from the postman and
carried it up to him, but she was too busy with a scheme of Bunty's to
notice how white he turned, and how his hand trembled.
It was painfully short and to the point:--
"What's the use of writing poetery to me when all's up and done with? I
showed it to Ma and Pa and some one else, and they thort it very fine;
but said you oughtent to write it as some one else writes poetery for me
now. I think it's very nice of course and I'll keep it this time but
don't send any more.
"Your friend only and nothing more,
"Miss JONES (not Mabelle).
"P.S.--I suppose I may as well tell you as I'm engaged to be married to
Mr. Wilkes."
That was Pip's death-blow, and, if a paradox may be allowed, from that
minute he began to live again.
The thought that his cherished poem had been submitted to the critical
gaze of a man who sold frying pans and wrote "poetery" himself, stung
him to madness. He sat down and attacked his hydrostatics with savage
frenzy to prevent himself doing anything desperate.
He even played in a football match the next week, a thing he had not
done for a long time; and he took food less under protest.
But Meg he could not forgive; his manner to her, if compelled to speak,
was cold and contemptuous; when possible he totally ignored her
presence.
The girl found such conduct very hard indeed to bear from her favourite
brother, especially as it was only her keen anxiety for his welfare that
had made her act as she had done; she bore it in silence, however, and
without reproaching him. Some day, she knew, he would thank her from
his heart, and for the present she must content herself to lie under the
ban of his displeasure.
To solace herself she took to making puddings, learning the
technicalities of meat cooking, and concocting queer-smelling bottles of
stuff she labelled mushroom ketchup, tomato sauce, and Australian
chutnee in her neatest hand.
Esther smiled a little when first these operations began. Meg had
hitherto expressed the frankest dislike for culinary engagements.
Nellie laughed openly.
"Her 'prentice hand she tried on us,
And then she cooked for Alan, oh!"
she said one day, shaking her head as she eyed a surprisingly
queer-looking conglomeration Meg called amber pudding.
"Many thanks, but no, Meg dearest; I think I will finish with honest
bread and cheese!"
"Esther?" said Meg, pausing with uplifted tablespoon, and taking no
notice of Nell's sarcasm beyond blushing finely. "You'll try a little,
won't you? I'm sure it's very nice."
But even Esther looked dubious; the frothed icing on top had an elegant
appearance certainly, but underneath was a mass of strange colour and
consistency.
"Dear Meg," she said, "I am like the French lady, you know,--I eat only
my acquaintances. Nellie, pass me the cheese."
But this sort of thing did not damp Meg's spirits, not at least for more
than a day or two.
Perhaps the next three or four puddings would be long-established
favourites that no one could take exception to, but after that there
would appear one or two of French title and unknown quantities. Now and
again indeed they turned out brilliant successes, that every one praised
and longed for more of; but most often, it must be confessed, they were
failures, very trying to the tempers and digestions of all who ventured
on a helping.
"It was well to be Alan," Nellie said, "with nine innocent people
submitting themselves daily to the dangers of poisoning or lifelong
indigestion, just that in future he might escape and have his palate
continually pleased."
"If I can't practise on my own family," demanded Meg, smiling however,
"how am I to get experience? All of you have excellent digestions, so it
will not do you any real harm."
And she persevered with so much determination that they only groaned
inwardly when a "confection a la Marguerite," as Nellie called it, took
the place of old favourites, such as plum puddings, apple pies,
roly-polys and Queens. Every one accepted their portion in meekness,
and really tried to say encouraging things, especially if her face was
hot and anxious.
Bunty was just beginning to find his place in the family again. But he
was a changed boy. No one could doubt that those five hard months had
had the most beneficial effect on his character, although they had made
him so white and hollow-cheeked. He was stronger morally, more
self-reliant. The rough usage he had received seemed to have quite
dissipated his cowardice, and with it the inclination to falsehood. He
was almost pitifully careful not to make the slightest untrue statement
about anything; and now the barriers of reserve between himself and Meg
were broken down, she was able to help him more, and put herself more in
his place.
Poppet was as much as ever his faithful little companion; there was
absolutely nothing the child would not have done for this dear,
recovered brother. She even consulted Meg as to the practicability of
learning Latin, just that she might look up his words for him every
evening in the dictionary.
But as three-syllabled words in her own language made her pucker up her
poor little brows, and as English grammar still had power to draw weary,
dispirited tears, Meg advised a short postponement.
*CHAPTER XIV.*
*MUSHROOMS.*
"In what will all this ostentation end?"
A new house had been built lately not very far from Misrule, a grand,
showy-looking place, or red brick, in the Elizabethan style, which the
suburbs of Sydney are just beginning to affect largely.
The grounds were laid out by a landscape gardener, and there were velvet
lawns, carpet beds, and terraces reaching down to the river, where at
Misrule there was only a wilderness of a garden with broken palings, and
a couple of sloping paddocks where long rank grass and poppies
flourished. Then the carriage drive,--such a grand, smooth, red sweep,
serpentining up to the great porch. The Misrule drive was hardly red at
all; the gravel had mostly vanished, the dead leaves were generally of
Vallambrosian thickness, and weeds raised cheerful heads at intervals.
The name of the people who had built the new house was
Browne,--Fitzroy-Browne, with a hyphen and an e.
Mr. Fitzroy-Browne was a railway contractor, and had builded himself an
ample fortune out of a Government that not yet had need to cheese-pare.
There were three or four Misses Fitzroy-Browne, that fashionable
boarding-schools, dressmakers, and several seasons had done their best
for. There was a Mr. Fitzroy-Browne junior, who waxed his moustache,
wore clothes of chessboard device, and kept racehorses. And there was
Mamma Fitzroy-Browne, who was fat and good-natured, and said "Bless yer
'art" with a cheeriness refreshing in these days of ceremony, and then
pulled herself up short and looked unhappy.
Poor Mamma Browne! who sometimes thought wistfully of the long-dead days
when Papa had been only an honest navvy, and her little girls and boy
too small to snub and suppress her, and order her about.
Mamma Browne, who had liked her little old "best" room, with its big
round table, holding the Bible, three gilt-edged books, and some wax
grapes under a glass shade, far better than her grand new drawing-room,
that was like a furniture show-place, all mirrors and cabinets, and
green and gold.
How many Mamma Brownes there are in Australia! It is quite pitiful.
Good dear creatures, with their bones too set to adapt themselves to the
change the golden days have brought; poor simple-minded things, who,
having consistently left "h" out of their language for forty or fifty
years, cannot remember it now till an embarrassed cough or a blush and
sneer from a Miss Hyphen Browne makes their old hearts ache for shame of
themselves.
Dear housewives, who wasted not their husbands' substance in the old
days, and now bring down vials of contempt from the daughters for
anxious watchfulness over reckless servants! Sociable old bodies, to
whom a cup of tea in the kitchen with a gossiping friend had been
happiness, but "At Homes," thronged with stylish people whose speech
fairly bristled with h's and g's, bewildering misery.
Comfortable women who have weaknesses for violet, crimson, and bright
brown, with large bonnets heavily trimmed, and are sternly arrayed in
fashionable no colours, and for bonnets forced to wear a bit of jet, a
flyaway bow and strings, that they say piteously feels as if they had no
head covering at all.
I should like to build a Home for them, these dear, fat, snubbed orphans
of society that is altogether too fine for them--I said _fat_, because
if you notice it is always the fat ones who get into trouble: the thin
ones can shape themselves into place better,--to build a Home full of
small cosy rooms, with centre tables, and chairs, not artistically
arranged but set straight against the walls, with vases (pronounced
vorses) in pairs everywhere, waxen fruit and flowers under glass, and
china animals that never were on sea or land. There should always be a
tea-pot, warmly cosied, cups big enough to hold more than one mouthful
and not sufficiently precious to make one uncomfortable, plates of cake,
cut, not in finikin finger strips, but in good hearty wedges.
These to be in readiness for all the dear old vulgar friends who had not
got to fortune yet and loved to "drop in."
And if I had a uniform at all for my orphans it should be of a good warm
purple, with plenty of fringe and plush and buttons; and the standard
weight of the bonnets should be thirteen ounces.
All this because of Mrs. Fitzroy-Browne!
Captain Woolcot had told Esther she need not call when the new people
came to the district: he said he "hated mushroom growths, especially
when they were so pretentiously gilt-edged,"--which was rather a mixed
metaphor, by the way but no one could tell him so.
For some time therefore all the young Woolcots saw of the "mushrooms"
was on Sundays, when a pew that had belonged to two sweet old
maids--grey-clad always, sisters and lovers, never apart even in their
recent deaths--blossomed out into a gay dressmaker's showroom, from
which all the congregation could during sermon time take useful notes
for the renovation of their wardrobes.
Nellie's hats were good signs of the times. The boys chaffed and
scorned her unmercifully, but the poor child had such a weakness for
having things "in fashion" that for her very life, when the Misses
Fitzroy-Browne's trimmings were all severely at the back of their hats,
she could not leave hers at the front. Or if their frills crept up into
the middle of their skirts and had an insertion heading, how could she
be strong-minded enough to let hers remain on the hem with only a
gathering thread at the top?
Poor Nellie! she had a great, secret hankering for the flesh-pots of
Egypt. The love of pretty things amounted to a passion with her, and
the shabby carpets, scratched furniture, and ill-kept grounds of Misrule
were a source of real trouble to her.
Privately, she took a great interest in the rich Brownes, and envied
them not a little. Their grand house and beautiful grounds, their army
of trained servants, their splendid carriages and horses, and their
heaps of dresses and jewellery seemed to the half-grown girl the most
desirable things on earth.
But if you had put it to the test whether she would change Esther's
beautiful, quiet grace of manner for Mrs. Browne's nervous fussiness;
her soldierly, upright father for little, mean-looking Mr. Browne;
handsome, careless Pip, who looked like a king in his flannels and old
cricket cap, for Mr. Theodore Fitzroy-Browne of the careful toilets and
bold eyes; or sweet, gracious Meg, who always said the right thing at
the right time, for one of the over-dressed, gushing Miss Brownes, I
think--even with all the money thrown in--she would have clung to
Misrule.
For their part, the Brownes took a great interest in the Woolcot family,
and felt themselves much aggrieved that, with all their shabbiness, they
had been too "stuck-up" to call upon them.
They would have liked Pip for their "At Homes" and dances; and the
young, grave-faced doctor, who was always turning in at the Misrule
gate; Meg, who looked "such a lady"; and Nellie, whose beautiful face
would be so great an attraction to--at any rate--the masculine portion
of their guests.
When, after some five or six months, no cards from Captain, Mrs., and
Miss Woolcot had been deposited at the shrine of their wealth, they
began to make overtures themselves.
[Illustration: "MEG AND NELLIE HAD BEEN HELPING TO DECORATE THE CHURCH
ONE AFTERNOON."]
Meg and Nellie had been helping to decorate the church one
afternoon,--it was Easter-time,--when two of the Misses Browne came in,
followed by a man in livery, bearing a great basket of exquisite white
roses, and kosmea. Mrs. Macintosh, the clergyman's wife, introduced the
girls to each other, since they were so close, and they hammered their
fingers and exchanged civilities together for the next hour.
Miss Browne at the end of that time wanted to know if they were not
passionately fond of tennis.
"Oh yes--very," said Nellie. "We love it!"
"Of course you have a court?"
"Only a chip one the boys made; but it does very well."
It was Meg's answer. Nellie grew red, and wondered why her sister could
not have contented herself with "Yes, of course!" seeing there was small
chance the Fitzroy-Brownes would ever be asked inside the gates of
Misrule.
Miss Browne was silent a minute, then she said,--
"We have three beautiful grass courts. I wish, Miss Woolcot, you would
come up and have a game with us sometimes--and your sister, of course;
we should be glad to see your brother as well, if he would care to
come."
Meg tried not to look surprised, and did her best to find "the right
word for the right place."
"Thank you very much," she said; "but our afternoons are very much
filled, I am afraid we should not be able to."
"Then come in the morning," urged Miss Browne. "We always practise in
the morning--it fills the time, for, of course, there is nothing else
for us to do."
"I am always busy in the morning, and my brother is at lectures," Meg
said; "thank you all the same."
"Well, your sister," said Miss Browne. "Won't you come, Miss Nellie?
You can't be busy as well."
Nell looked at Meg as much as to say, "Why can't we?" but Meg was
somewhat annoyed at the persistency.
"I am very sorry, but Nellie still studies in the morning," she said,
just a little stiffly; "she is not old enough to be emancipated yet."
"Well, I think it's very mean of you, you know," was Miss Browne's
answer; but she had not taken offence, for Meg's tone had been pleasant.
"Still, if ever you can find time, we shall be delighted to see you; we
are always at home on Tuesdays and Fridays, evenings as well as
afternoons; or if you just sent me a little note to say you were coming
I would stay in."
Again Meg thanked her politely, if not warmly, and managed not to commit
herself to a promise. She moved away, however, from the danger of it as
soon as she could, and helped Mrs. Macintosh to decorate the chancel
with kosmea and asparagus grass.