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BABES IN THE BUSH
[Illustration: Publisher's logo]
BABES IN THE BUSH
by
ROLF BOLDREWOOD
Author of
‘Robbery Under Arms,’ ‘The Miner’s Right,’ ‘The Squatter’s Dream,’
‘A Colonial Reformer,’ etc.
London
Macmillan and Co., Limited
New York: The Macmillan Company
1900
All rights reserved
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
‘FRESH FIELDS—AND PASTURES NEW’ 1
CHAPTER II
THE FIRST CAMP 21
CHAPTER III
THE NEW HOME 43
CHAPTER IV
MR. HENRY O’DESMOND OF BADAJOS 59
CHAPTER V
‘CALLED ON BY THE COUNTY’ 77
CHAPTER VI
AN AUSTRALIAN YEOMAN 93
CHAPTER VII
TOM GLENDINNING, STOCK-RIDER 111
CHAPTER VIII
MR. WILLIAM ROCKLEY OF YASS 125
CHAPTER IX
HUBERT WARLEIGH, YR., OF WARBROK 139
CHAPTER X
A PROVINCIAL CARNIVAL 149
CHAPTER XI
MR. BOB CLARKE SCHOOLS KING OF THE VALLEY 161
CHAPTER XII
STEEPLECHASE DAY 173
CHAPTER XIII
MISS VERA FANE OF BLACK MOUNTAIN 189
CHAPTER XIV
THE DUEL 204
CHAPTER XV
THE LIFE STORY OF TOM GLENDINNING 220
CHAPTER XVI
‘SO WE’LL ALL GO A-HUNTING TO-DAY’ 238
CHAPTER XVII
THE FIRST MEET OF THE LAKE WILLIAM HUNT CLUB 251
CHAPTER XVIII
THE MAJOR DISCOVERS HIS RELATIVE 265
CHAPTER XIX
BLACK THURSDAY 282
CHAPTER XX
AN UNEXPECTED DEVELOPMENT 296
CHAPTER XXI
A GREEN HAND 312
CHAPTER XXII
INJUN SIGN 328
CHAPTER XXIII
THE BATTLE OF ROCKY CREEK 339
CHAPTER XXIV
GYP’S LAND 352
CHAPTER XXV
BOB CLARKE ONCE MORE WINS ON THE POST 366
CHAPTER XXVI
THE RETURN FROM PALESTINE 387
CHAPTER XXVII
THE DUEL IN THE SNOW 401
CHAPTER I
‘FRESH FIELDS AND PASTURES NEW’
‘What letter are you holding in your hand all this time, my dear?’ said
Captain Howard Effingham to his wife during a certain family council.
‘Really, I had almost forgotten it. A foreign postmark—I suppose it is
from your friend Mr. Sternworth, in Australia or New Zealand.’
‘Sternworth lives in New South Wales, not New Zealand,’ returned he
rather testily. ‘I have told you more than once that the two places are
a thousand miles apart by sea. Yes! it is from old Harley. When he was
chaplain to our regiment he was always hankering after a change from
routine duty. Now he has got it with a vengeance. He was slightly
eccentric, but a better fellow, a stauncher friend, never stepped.’
‘Don’t people go to Australia to make money?’ asked Rosamond Effingham,
a girl of twenty, with ‘eldest daughter’ plainly inscribed upon her
thoughtful features. ‘I saw in a newspaper that some one had come home
after making a fortune, or it may have been that he died there and left
it to his relatives.’
‘Sternworth has not made a fortune. He is not the man to want one.
Still, he seems wonderfully contented and raves about the beauty of the
climate and the progress of his colony.’
‘Let me read his letter out,’ pleaded the anxious wife softly, and, with
a gesture of assent, the father and daughter sat expectant.
Mrs. Effingham had the gift of reading aloud with effect, which, with
that of facile, clear-cut composition, came to her as naturally as the
notes of a song-bird, which indeed her tuneful voice resembled.
‘The letter is dated from Yass—(what a funny name! a native one, I
suppose)—in New South Wales, and June the 20th, 1834. Nearly six months
ago! Does it take all that time to come? What a long, long way off it
must be. Now then for the contents.
‘MY DEAR EFFINGHAM—I have not written for an age—though I had your last
in reply to mine in due course—partly because, after my first
acknowledgment, I had nothing particular to say, nor any counsel to
offer you, suitable for the situation in which you appear to have landed
yourself. When you were in the old regiment you were always a bad
manager of your money, and the Yorkshireman had to come to your
assistance with his hard head more than once. I thought all that sort of
thing was over when you succeeded to a settled position and a good
estate. I was much put out to find by your last letter that you had
again got among the shallows of debt. I doubt it is chronic with you.
But it is a serious matter for the family. If I were near you I would
scold you roundly, but I am too far off to do it effectually.
‘My reason for writing now—for I am too busy a man to send the
compliments of the season across the globe—is that a tempting investment
in land—a perfect gift, as the phrase is—has come to my knowledge.
‘Now, I am not hard-natured enough to tempt you to come here with your
amiable wife, whose praises, not always from yourself, I have often
heard—[really, my dear, I had no idea you paid me compliments in your
letters to your friends]—and your tenderly nurtured family; that is, if
you can retain your position, or one in any way approaching it. But I
know that the loss of fortune in the old country entails a more complete
stripping of all that men hold dear, than in this new land, where
aristocratic poverty, or rather, scantiness of money, is the rule, and
wealth, as yet, the exception.
‘I cannot believe that you are _totally_ without means. Here, cash is at
a premium. Therefore, if you have but the shreds and fragments of your
fortune left, you may still have capital available from the wreck
sufficient to make a modest venture, which I shall explain.
‘A family long resident near this rising town—say forty or fifty miles
distant—have been compelled, like you, to offer their estate for sale. I
will not enter into the circumstances or the causes of the step. The
fact that we are concerned with is, that a valuable property—as fair
judges consider it—comprising a decent house and several thousand acres
of good land, may be bought for three or four thousand pounds.
‘I do not hide from you that many people consider that the present bad
times are likely to last, even to become more pressing. _I_ fully expect
a reaction. If you can do better in any way I do not ask you for one
moment to consider this matter, much as I should like to see my old
comrade and his family here.
‘But if otherwise, and the melancholy life of the ruined middle-aged
Briton stares you in the face, I say boldly, do not go to Boulogne, or
other refuge for the shady destitute, where a man simply counts the days
which he must linger out in cheap lodgings and cheese-paring idleness,
but come to Australia and try a more wholesome, more manly, if
occasionally ruder life. I know what you home-keeping English think of a
colony. But you may find here a career for your boys—even suitable
marriages for your girls, whose virtues and accomplishments would
doubtless invest them with distinction.
‘If you can get this sum together, and a few hundreds to have in your
pocket at landing, I can guarantee you a livelihood—you know my caution
of old—with many of the essentials, God forbid I should say _all_, of
“the gentle life.” Still, you may come to these by and by. The worst of
my adopted country is that there is a cruel uncertainty of seasons, at
times sore on man and beast. That you must risk, like other people. If
you come, you will have one friend here in old Harley Sternworth, who,
without chick or child, will be proud to pour out whatever feelings of
affection God has given him, into the lap of your family. If you decide
on coming, send a draft for three thousand pounds payable to my order at
once. I will manage the rest, and have Warbrok ready to receive you in
some plain way on your arrival. So farewell for the present. God bless
you and yours, says your old friend,
HARLEY STERNWORTH.’
As the letter disclosed this positive invitation and plan of emigration
which, whether possible or impossible, was now brought into tangible
form, the clasp in which lay the father’s hand and the daughter’s
slightly tightened. Their eyes met, their faces gradually softened from
the expression of pained endurance which had characterised them, and as
the clear tones of the reader came to an end, Rosamond, rising to her
feet, exclaimed, ‘God has sent us a friend in our need. If we go to this
far land we may work together and live and love undivided. But oh,
mother, it breaks my heart to think of _you_. We are young, it should
matter little to us; but how will you bear to be taken away from this
pleasant home to a rude, waste country, such as Australia must be?’
‘My darling,’ said the matron, as she folded the letter with an
instinctive habit of neatness, and handed it to her husband, ‘the
sacrifice to me will be great, far greater than at one time I should
have thought it possible to bear. But with my husband and children are
my life and my true dwelling-place. Where they are, I abide thankfully
to life’s close. Strength, I cannot doubt, will be given to us all to
bear our—our——’
Here the thought, the inevitable, unimaginable woe of quitting the loved
home of youth, the atmosphere of early friendship, the intertwining ties
of relationship, completely overcame the courage of the speaker. Her
eyes overflowed as, burying her face in her husband’s arms, which were
opened to receive her, she wept long and silently.
‘How could we think of such a thing, my darling, for one moment?’ said
Effingham. ‘It would kill you to part, at one blow, from a whole
previous existence. I hardly foresaw what a living death it would be for
you, more than all, to leave England _for ever_. There is a world of
agony in that thought alone! I certainly gave Sternworth a full account
of my position in my last letters. It was a relief. He has always been a
true friend. But he has rashly concluded that we were prepared to go to
his wild country. It would be your death-blow, darling wife; and then,
what good would our lives be to us? Some of our friends will help us,
surely. Let us live quietly for a year or two. I may get some
appointment.’
‘It relieves my bursting heart to weep; yet it will fit me for future
duty. No, Howard, we must not falter or draw back. You can trust, I
know, in Mr. Sternworth’s practical wisdom, for you have a hundred times
told me how far-seeing, shrewd, and yet kindly he was. In his plan there
is the certainty of independence; together we can cheer each other when
the day’s work is done. As for living in England, trusting to the
assistance of friends, and the lingering uncertainty of a provision from
the Government, I have seen too many families pitiably drifting towards
a lower level. There is no middle course. No! Our path has been chosen
for us. Let us go where a merciful Providence would seem to lead us.’
The fateful conference was ended. A council, not much bruited about, but
fraught with momentous results to those yet unborn, in the Effingham
family, and it may be to other races and sections of humanity. Who may
limit the effects produced in the coming time, by the transplantation of
but _one_ rarely endowed family of our upward-striving race?
Nothing remained but to communicate the decision of the high contracting
parties of the little state to the remaining members. The heir was
absent. To him would have been accorded, as a right, a place in the
parliament. But he was in Ireland visiting a college chum, for whom he
had formed one of the ardent friendships characteristic of early
manhood. Wilfred Effingham was an enthusiast—sanguine and
impulsive—whose impulses, chiefly, took a good direction. His heart was
warm, his principles fixed. Still, so sensitive was he to the
impressions of the hour, that only by the sternest consciousness of
responsibility could he remain faithful to the call of duty.
Devoted primarily to art and literature; sport, travel, and social
intercourse likewise put in claims to his attention and mingled in his
nature the impulses of a refined Greek with the energy and self-denial
of his northern race.
It must be confessed that these latter qualities were chiefly in the
embryonic stage. So latent and undeveloped were they, indeed, that no
one but his fond mother had fully credited his possession of them.
But as the rounded limbs of the Antinous conceal the muscles which
after-years develop and harden, so in the graceful physique and
sensitive mind of Wilfred Effingham lay hidden powers, which, could he
have foreseen their future exercise, would have astonished no one more
than himself. Such was the youth recalled from his joyous revel in the
Green Isle, where he had been shooting and fishing to his heart’s
content.
A letter from his mother first told that his destiny had been changed.
In a moment he was transformed. No longer was he to be an enjoyer of the
hoarded wealth of art, letters, science, sitting on high and choosing
what he would, as one of the gods of Olympus. His lot, henceforth, would
be that of a toiler for the necessaries of life! It was a shrewd blow.
Small wonder had he reeled before it! It met him without warning,
unsoftened, save by the tender pity and loving counsel so long
associated with his mother’s handwriting. The well-remembered
characters, so fair in delicate regularity, which since earliest
schooldays had cheered and comforted him. Never had they failed him;
steadfast ever as a mother’s faith, unfailing as a mother’s love!
Grown to manhood, still, as of old, he looked, almost at weekly
intervals, for the missive, ever the harbinger of home love, the herald
of joy, the bearer of wise counsel—never once of sharp rebuke or
untempered anger.
And now—to the spoiled child of affection, of endowment—had come this
message fraught with woe.
A meaner mind, so softly nurtured, might have shrunk from the ordeal. To
the chivalrous soul of Wilfred Effingham the vision was but the summons
to the fray, which bids the knight quit the tourney and the banquet for
the stern joys of battle.
His nature, one of those complex organisms having the dreamy poetic side
much developed, yet held room for physical demonstration. Preferring for
the most part contemplation to action, he had ever passed, apparently
without effort, from unchecked reverie and study to tireless bodily toil
in the quest of sport, travel, or adventure. Possessed of a constitution
originally vigorous, and unworn by dissipation, from which a sensitive
nature joined with deference to a lofty ideal had hitherto preserved
him, Wilfred Effingham approached that rare combination which has ere
now resulted, under pressure of circumstance, in the hero, the poet, the
warrior, or the statesman.
He braced himself to withstand the shock. It was a shrewd buffet. Yet,
after realising its force, he was conscious, much to his surprise, of a
distinct feeling of exaltation.
‘I shall suffer for it afterwards,’ he told his friend Gerald O’More,
half unconsciously, as they sat together over a turf fire which glowed
in the enormous chimney of a rude but comfortable shooting lodge; ‘but,
for the soul of me, I can’t help feeling agreeably acted upon.’
‘Acted upon by what?’ said his companion and college chum, with whom he
had sworn eternal friendship. ‘Is it the whisky hot? It’s equal to John
Jameson, and yet it never bothered an exciseman! Sure that same is
amaylioratin’ my lot to a degree I should have never believed possible.
Take another glass. Defy Fate and tell me all about it. Has your father,
honest man, discovered another Roman tile or Julius Cæsar’s
tobacco-pouch? [the elder Effingham was an antiquarian of great
perseverance], or have ministers gone out, to the ruin of the country,
and the triumph of those villains the radicals? ’Tis little that ever
happens in that stagnant existence that you Saxons call country life,
barring a trifle of make-believe hunting and shooting. Sure, didn’t me
uncle Phelim blaze away into a farmer’s poultry-yard in Kent for
half-an-hour, and swear (it was after lunch) that he never saw pheasants
so hard to rise before.’
Thus the light-hearted Irishman rattled on, well divining, for all his
apparent mirth, that something more than common had come in the letter,
that had the power to drive the blood from Wilfred’s cheek and set
Care’s seal upon his brow. That impress remained indelible, even when he
smiled, and affected to resume his ordinary cheerfulness.
At length he spoke: ‘Gerald, old fellow! there is news from home which
most people would call bad. It is distinct of its kind. We have lost
everything; are ruined utterly. Not a chance of recovery, it seems. My
dear mother bids me understand _that_ most clearly; warns me to have no
hope of anything otherwise. The governor has been hard hit, it seems, in
foreign bonds; Central African Railways, or Kamschatka telegraph
lines,—some of the infernal traps for English capital at any rate. The
Chase is mortgaged and will have to go. The family must emigrate.
Australia is to be the future home of the Effinghams. This appears to be
settled. That’s a good deal to be hid in two sheets of note-paper, isn’t
it?’ And he tossed up the carefully directed letter, caught it as it
fell, and placed it in his pocket.
‘My breath is taken away; reach me the whisky, if you wish to save my
life, or else it will be——’ (prompt measures were taken to relieve the
unfortunate gentleman, but without success). ‘Wilfred, me dear fellow,
do you tell me that you’re serious? What will ye do at all, at all?’
‘Do? What better men have had to do before now. Face the old foe of
mortals, Anagkaia, and see what she can do when a man stands up to her.
I don’t like the idea any the worse for having to cross the sea to a new
world, to find a lost fortune. After all, one was getting tired of this
sing-song, nineteenth century life of fashionable learning, fashionable
play, fashionable work—everything, in fact, regulated by dame Fashion. I
shall be glad to stretch my limbs in a hunter’s hammock, and bid adieu
to the whole unreal pageant.’
‘Bedad! I don’t know. I’d say the reality was nearer where we are, with
all the disadvantages of good dinners, good sport, good books, and good
company. But you’re right, me dear fellow, to put a bold face on it; and
if you have to take the shilling in the divil’s regiment, sure ye’ll die
a hero, or rise to Commander-in-Chief, if I know ye. But your mother,
and poor Miss Effingham, and the Captain—without his turnips and his
justice-room and his pointers and his poachers, his fibulæ and
amphoræ—whatever will he do among blackfellows and kangaroos? My heart
aches for ye all, Wilfred. Sure ye know it does. If ye won’t take any
more potheen, let us sleep on it; and we’ll have a great day among the
cocks, if we live, and talk it over afterwards. There never was that
sorrow yet that ye didn’t lighten it if ye tired your legs well between
sun and sun!’
With the morrow’s sun came an unwonted calm and settled resolve to the
soul of Wilfred Effingham. Together, gay, staunch Gerald O’More and he
took the last day’s sport they were likely to have for many a day. The
shooting was rather above than under the average, as if the ruined heir
was willing to show that his nerves had not been affected by his
prospects.
‘I must take out the old gun,’ he said, ‘and keep up my shooting. Who
knows but that we may depend upon it for a meal now and then in this New
Atlantis that we are bound for. But one thing is fixed, old fellow, as
far as a changeable nature will permit. I shall have to be the mainstay
of my father’s house. I must play the man, if it’s in me. No more
dilettantism, no more mediæval treasures, no more tall copies. The
present, not the past, is what we must stand or fall by. The governor is
shaken by all this trouble; not the best man of business at any time. My
dear mother is a saint _en habit de Cour_; she will have to suffer a
sea-change that might break the hearts of ordinary worldlings. Upon
Rosamond and myself will fall the brunt of the battle. She has prepared
herself for it, happily, by years of unselfish care and thought. I have
been an idler and a loiterer. Now the time has come to show of what
stuff I am made. It will mean good-bye to you, Gerald O’More, fast
friend and _bon camarade_. We shall have no more shooting and fishing
together, no more talk about art and poetry, no more vacation tours, no
more rambles, for long years—let us not say for ever. Good-bye to my old
life, my old Self! God speed us all; we must arm and away.’
‘I’d say you might have a worse life, Wilfred, though it will come hard
on you at first to be shooting kangaroos and bushrangers, instead of
grouse and partridges, like a Christian. But we get used to everything,
I am told, even to being a land-agent, with every boy in the barony
wondering if he could tumble ye at sixty paces with the ould duck gun.
When a thing’s to be done—marrying or burying, standing out on the sod
on a foggy morning with a nate shot opposite ye, or studying for the
law—there’s nothing like facing it cool and steady. You’ll write me and
Hallam a line after you’re landed; and we’ll think of ye often enough,
never fear. God speed ye, my boy! Sure, it’s Miss Annabel that will make
the illigant colonist entirely.’
The friends parted. Wilfred lost no time in reaching home, where his
presence comforted the family in the midst of that most discouraging
state of change for the worse, the packing and preparing for departure.
But he had utilised the interval since he left his friend by stern
self-examination, ending in a fixed, unalterable resolve. His mother,
his sisters, and his father were alike surprised at his changed bearing.
He had grown years older in a week. He listened to the explanation of
their misfortune from his father with respectful silence or short,
undoubting comment. He confirmed the decision to which the family
counsel had arrived. Emigration to Australia was, under the
circumstances, the only path which promised reparation of the fortunes
of the house. He carefully read the letter from Mr. Sternworth, upon
which their fate seemed to hang. He cheered his mother by expressing
regret for his previous desultory life, asking her to believe that his
future existence should be devoted to the welfare of all whom both held
so dear.
‘_You_ have never doubted, my dearest mother,’ he said, ‘but that your
heedless son would one day do credit to his early teaching? I stand
pledged to make your words good.’
The arrival of the heir, who had taken his place at his father’s right
hand in so worthy a spirit, seemed to infuse confidence into the other
members of the family. Each and all appeared to recognise the fact that
their expatriation was decided upon, and while lamenting their loved
home, they commenced to gather information about their new abode, and to
dwell upon the more cheering probabilities.
The family was not a small one. Guy Effingham was a high-spirited
schoolboy of fourteen, whose cricket and football engagements had
hitherto, with that amount of the humanities which an English public
schoolboy is compelled to master, under penalties too dire for
endurance, been sufficient to fill up his irresponsible life. It was
arranged that he was to remain at school until the week previous to
their departure. His presence at home was not necessary, while his
mother wished him to utilise the last effective teaching which he was
likely to have. To her was committed the task of preparing him for his
altered position. Two younger daughters, with a boy and girl of tender
years, the darlings of the family, completed the number of the
Effinghams. The third daughter, Annabel, was the beauty of the family. A
natural pride in her unquestioned loveliness had always mingled with the
maternal repression of all save the higher aims and qualities which it
had been the fond mother’s life-long duty to inculcate. Annabel
Effingham had received from nature the revival of the loveliness of some
ancestress, heightened and intensified by admixture of family type. She
was fair, with the bright colouring, the silken hair, the delicate
roseate glow which had long been the boast of the women of her mother’s
family—of ancient Saxon blood—for many generations. But she had
superadded to these elements of beauty a classical delicacy of outline,
a darker shade of blue in the somewhat prouder eye, a figure almost
regal in the nobility of carriage and unconscious dignity of motion,
which told of a diverse lineage. Beatrice, the second daughter of the
house, had up to the present time exhibited neither the strong
altruistic bias which, along with the faculty of organisation,
characterised Rosamond, nor the universally confessed fascination which
rendered Annabel’s path a species of royal progress. Refined,
distinguished in appearance, as indeed were all the members of the
family, she had not as yet developed any special vocation. In her
appearance one saw but the ordinary traits which stamp a highly cultured
girl of the upper classes. She was, perhaps, more distinctly literary in
her tastes than either of her sisters, but her reserved habits concealed
her attainments. For the rest, she appeared to have made up her mind to
the inevitable with less apparent effort than the other members of the
family.
‘What can it avail—all this grieving and lamenting?’ she would say. ‘I
feel parting with The Chase, with our relations and friends—with all our
old life, in fact—deeply and bitterly. But that once admitted, what good
end is served by repeating the thought and renewing the tears? Other
people are ruined in England, and have to go to Boulogne and horrid
continental towns, where they lead sham lives, and potter about, unreal
in everything but dulness and poverty, till they die. We shall go to
Australia to _do_ something—or not to do it. Both are good in their way.
Next to honest effort I like a frank failure.’
‘But suppose we _do_ fail, and lose all our money, and have nothing to
eat in a horrid new country,’ said Annabel, ‘what _will_ become of us?’
‘Just what would become of us here, I suppose; we should have to
work—become teachers at a school, or governesses, or hospital nurses;
only, as young women are not so plentiful in Australia as in England,
why, we should be better paid.’
‘Oh, but here we know so many people, and they would help us to find
pleasant places to live in,’ pleaded Annabel piteously. ‘It does seem so
dreadful to be ten thousand miles away from your own country. I am sure
we shall starve!’
‘Don’t be a goose, Annabel. How can we starve? First, we have the chance
of making money and living in plenty, if not in refinement, on this
estate that papa is going to buy. And if that does not turn out a
success, we must find you a place as companion to the Governor-General’s
wife, or as nursery governess for _very_ young children. I’ll become a
“school marm” at Yass—that’s the name—and Rosamond will turn dressmaker,
she has such a talent for a good fit.’
‘Oh dear, oh dear! don’t talk of such dreadful things. Are we to go all
over the world only to become drudges and work-women? We may as well
drown ourselves at once.’
‘My child! my child!’ said a gentle voice. ‘What folly is this? What are
we, that we should be absolved from the trials that others have to bear?
God has chosen, for His own good purpose, to bring this misfortune upon
us. He will give us strength to bear it in a chastened spirit. If we do
not bear it in a resigned and chastened spirit, we are untrue to the
teaching which we have all our lives affected to believe in. We have all
our part to perform. Let us have no repining, my dearest Annabel. Our
way is clear, and we have others to think of who require support.’
‘But you _like_ to be miserable, you know, mother; you think it is God’s
hand that afflicts you,’ sobbed the desponding spoiled child. ‘I can’t
feel that way. I haven’t your faith. And it breaks my heart; I shall
die, I shall die, I know.’
‘Pray, my darling, pray for help and grace from on high,’ continued the
sweet, sad tones of the mother, as she drew her child’s fair head upon
her lap, and passed her hand amid ‘the clustering ringlets rich and
rare,’ while Beatrice sat rather unsympathetically by. ‘You will have me
and your sisters to cheer you.’ Here the fair disconsolate looked
distrustfully at Beatrice.
By degrees the half-mesmeric, instinctive influence of the loved
mother’s pitying tones overcame the unwonted fit of unreason.
‘I will try and be good,’ she murmured, looking up with a soft light in
her lovely eyes, ‘but you know I am a poor creature at best. You must
bear with me, and I will help as much as I can, and try to keep from
repining. But, oh, my home, my home, the dear old place where I was
born. How dark and dreary do this long voyage and journey seem!’
‘Have we not a yet longer voyage, a more distant journey to make, my own
one?’ whispered the mother, in accents soft as those with which in times
gone by she had lulled the complaining babe. ‘We know not the time, nor
the hour. Think! If we do not prepare ourselves by prayer and faith, how
dark _that_ departure will appear!’
‘You are always good and kind, always right, mother,’ said the girl,
recovering her composure and assuming a more steadfast air. ‘Pray for
me, that I may find strength; but do I not know that you pray for all of
us incessantly? We ought—that is—I ought to be better than I am.’
Among the lesser trials which, at the time of his great sorrow,
oppressed Howard Effingham, not the least was the necessity for parting
with old servants and retainers. He was a man prone to become attached
to attendants long used to his ways. Partly from kindly feeling, partly
from indolence, he much disliked changing domestics or farm labourers.
Accustomed to lean against a more readily available if not a stronger
support than his own, he was, in most relations of life, more dependent
than most men upon his confidential servants.
In this instance, therefore, he had taken it much to heart that his
Scotch land-steward, a man of exceptional capacity and absolute personal
fidelity, having a wife also, of rare excellence in her own department,
should be torn from him by fate.
Backed up by his trusty Andrew, with his admirable wife, he felt as if
he could have faced all ordinary colonial perils. While under Jeanie
Cargill’s care, his wife and daughters might have defied the ills of any
climate, and risked the absence of the whole College of Physicians.
Andrew Cargill was one of those individuals of strongly marked
idiosyncrasy, a majority of whom appear to have been placed, by some
mysterious arrangement of nature, on the north side of the Tweed.
Originally the under-gardener at The Chase, he had risen slowly but
irresistibly through the gradations of upper-gardener and under-bailiff
to the limited order of land-steward required by a moderate property. He
had been a newly-married man when he formed the resolution of testing
the high wages of the Southron lairds. His family, as also his rate of
wages, had increased. His expenses he had uniformly restricted, with the
thoroughness of his economical forefathers. He despised all wasteful
ways. He managed his master’s affairs, as committed to his charge, with
more than the rigorous exactitude he was wont to apply to his own.
Gaining authority, by the steady pressure of unrelaxing forecast habit
of life, he was permitted a certain license as to advice and implied
rebuke. Had Andrew Cargill been permitted to exercise the same control
over the extra-rural affairs that he was wont to use over the
farm-servants and the plough-teams, the tenants and the trespassers, the
crops and the orchards, the under-gardeners and the pineries, no
failure, financial or otherwise, would have occurred at The Chase.
When the dread disaster could no longer be concealed, it is questionable
whether Mr. Effingham felt anything more acutely than the necessity
which existed of explaining to this faithful follower the extent, or
worse, the cause of his misfortune. He anticipated the unbroken silence,
the incredulous expression, with which all attempts at favourable
explanation would be received. Open condemnation, of course, was out of
the question. But the mute reproach or guarded reference to his master’s
inconceivable imbecility, which on this occasion might be more strongly
accented than usual, would be hard to endure.
Mr. Effingham could not depute his wife, or one of the girls, to convey
the information to the formidable Andrew. So he was fain to pull himself
together one morning, and go forth to this uncompromising logician.
Having briefly related the eventful tale, he concluded by dispensing
with his faithful servant, as they were going to a new country, and very
probably would never be able to employ servants again.
Having thrown down the bombshell, the ‘lost leader’ looked fixedly at
Andrew’s unmoved countenance, and awaited the particular kind of
concentrated contempt which he doubted not would issue forth.
His astonishment was great when, after the hurried conclusion, ‘I shall
miss you, Andrew, you may be sure, more than I say; and as for Jeanie, I
don’t know how the young ladies and the mistress will get on without
her,’ the following words issued slowly and oracularly from Andrew’s
lips:—
‘Ye’ll no miss me ava, Maister Effingham. Dinna ye think that it’s a’
news ye’re tellin’ me. I behoved just to speer a bit what garred the
puir mistress look sae dowie and wae. And the upshot o’ matters is that
I’m gaun wi’ ye.’
‘And your wife and children?’
‘Ye didna threep I was to leave them ahint? Andra’ Cargill isna ane o’
thae kind o’ folk, sae just tak’ heart, and for a’ that’s come and gane
ye may lift up your heid ance mair; it’s nae great things o’ a heid, as
the auld wife said o’ the Deuk’s, but if Botany Bay is the gra-and
country they ca’ it, and the book-writers and the agents haena been
tellin’ the maist unco-omon set o’ lees, a’ may gang weel yet.’
‘But what’s put this in _your_ head, of all people in the world,
Andrew?’ queried his master, becoming bold, like individuals, or
corporate bodies, of purely defensive ideas, after observing tokens of
weakness in the besieging force.
‘Weel, aweel, first and foremost, Laird, ye’ll no say that we haena
eaten your bread and saut this mony a year; there’s been neither stint
nor stay till’t. I hae naething to say against the wage; aiblins a man
weel instructed in his profession should aye be worthy o’ his hire.
Jeanie has been just spoiled by the mistress—my heart’s sairvice to her
and the young leddies—till ilka land they were no in, wad be strange
eneugh to her, puir body. And the lang and short o’ the hail matter is,
that we loe ye and your bonnie lads and lassies, Laird, sae weel that we
winna be pairted frae ye.’
As Mr. Effingham grasped the hand of the staunch, true servitor, who
thus stood by him in his need, under whose gnarled bark of natural
roughness lay hid so tender and true a core, the tears stood in his
eyes.
‘I shall never forget this, Andrew,’ said he; ‘you and Jeanie, old
friend, will be the comfort of our lives in the land over-sea, and I
cannot say what fresh courage your determination has given me. But are
you sure it will be for your own advantage? You must have saved money,
and might take a farm and live snugly here.’
‘I was aboot to acquent ye, Laird,’ said the conscientious Scot, too
faithful to his religious principles to take credit for a
disinterestedness to which he felt but partially entitled. ‘Ye’ll see,
Laird, for ye’re weel acquent wi’ the Word, that the battle’s no always
to the strong, nor the race to the swift. Ye’ll ken that, frae your ain
experience—aweel, I winna just say that neither’—proceeded Andrew,
getting slightly involved between his quotations and his determination
to be ‘faithful’ to his erring master, and by no means cloaking his sins
of omission. ‘I’ll no say but what ye’ve been lettin’ ither folks lead
ye, and throw dust in ye’re een in no the maist wiselike fashion, as nae
doot ye wad hae dune wi’ the tenants, puir bodies, gin I had letten ye.
But touchin’ my ain affairs, I haena sae muckle cause to brag; for maybe
I was unco stiff-necked, and it behoved to chasten me, as weel’s
yersell; I hae tint—just flung awa’—my sma’ scrapin’s and savin’s, these
saxteen years and mair, in siccan a senseless daft-like way too!’
Here Andrew could not forbear a groan, which was echoed by an
exclamation from his master.
‘I am sincerely grieved—astonished beyond expression! Why, Andrew,
surely _you_ have not been dabbling in stocks and foreign loans?’
‘Na—nae ga-amblin’ for _me_, Laird!’ replied Andrew sourly, and with an
accentuation which implied speedy return to his ordinary critical state
of mind; ‘but if I had minded the Scripture, I wadna hae lost money and
faith at one blow. “Strike not hands for a surety,”’ it saith, ‘but I
trusted Geordie Ballantyne like a brither; my ain cousin, twice removed.
He was aboot to be roupit oot, stock and lock, and him wi’ a hoosefu’ o’
weans. I just gaed surety to him for three hunder pound!’
‘You were never so mad—a prudent man like you?’
‘And he just flitted to America, fled frae his ain land, his plighted
word, and left me to bear the wyte o’t. It’s nae use greetin’ ower spilt
brose. The money’s a’ paid, and Andra’ Cargill’s as puir a man’s when he
cam’ to The Chase, saxteen years last Michaelmas. Sae, between the
heart-break it wad be to pairt wi’ the family, and the sair heart I hae
gotten at pairtin’ wi’ my siller, the loss o’ a friend—“mine own
familiar freend,” as the Psawmist says—as weel’s the earnings o’ the
maist feck o’ my days, at ae blast, I hae settled to gang oot, Laird, to
Austra-alia, and maybe lay oot a wheen straight furrows for ye, as I did
lang syne on the bonnie holms o’ Ettrick.’
Here Andrew’s voice faltered, and the momentous unprecedented
conversation ended abruptly.
The unfeigned delight with which his wife and daughters received the
news did much to reconcile Mr. Effingham to his expatriation, and even
went far to persuade him that he had, in some way, originated the whole
idea. Nor was their satisfaction unfounded. Andrew, with all his
apparent sternness and occasional incivility, was shrewd, capable, and
even versatile, in the application of his industry and unerring common
sense to a wide range of occupations. He was the ideal colonist of his
order, as certain to succeed in his own person as to be the most helpful
and trustworthy of retainers.
As for Jeanie, she differed from her husband in almost every respect,
except in the cardinal virtues. She had been a rustic celebrity in her
youth, and Andrew occasionally referred still, in moments of unbending,
to the difficulties of his courtship, and the victory gained over a host
of rival suitors. She still retained the softness of manner and
tenderness of nature which no doubt had originally led to the
fascination of her masterful, rugged-natured husband.
For the rest, Jean Cargill had always been one of those servants, rare
even in England, the land of peerless domestics, whose loving, unselfish
service knew no abatement in sickness and in health, good fortune or
evil hap. Her perceptive tastes and strong sense of propriety rendered
her, as years rolled on, a trusted friend; an infinitely more suitable
companion for the mistress and her children, as she always called them,
than many a woman of higher culture. A tireless nurse in time of
sickness; a brave, clear-headed, but withal modest and cautious, aid to
the physician in the hour of peril. She had stood by the bedstead of
more than one member of the family, in the dark hour, when the angel of
death waited on the threshold of the chamber. Never had she slackened or
faltered, by night or day, careless of food or repose till the crisis
had passed, and the ‘whisper of wings in the air’ faded away.
Mrs. Effingham, with all her maternal fondness and devotion, had been
physically unable at times to bear up against the fatigue of protracted
watching and anxiety. She had more than once, from sheer bodily
weakness, been compelled to abandon her post. But to Jeanie Cargill,
sustained by matchless love and devotion, such a thing had never
occurred. At noon or midnight, her hand was ever ready to offer the
needful food, the vital draught; her ear ever watchful to catch the
faint murmur of request; her eye, sleepless as a star, was ever
undimmed, vigilant to detect the slightest change of symptom. Many
nurses had been heard of, seen, and even read of, in the domestic
circles of Reigate, but in the estimation of every matron capable of
giving an opinion, Jeanie Cargill, by countless degrees of comparison,
outshone them all.
That night, when Mrs. Effingham, as was her wont, sought relief from the
burden of her daily cares, and the crowding anxieties of the morrow,
‘meekly kneeling upon her knees,’ it appeared to her as if in literal
truth the wind had been tempered to the shorn lamb. That terrible travel
into the unknown, the discomforts and dangers of the melancholy main,
with the dreary waste of colonial life, would be quite different
adventures, softened by the aid and companionship of everybody’s ‘dear
old Jeanie.’ Her patient industry, her helpful sympathy, her matchless
loyalty and self-denial, would be well-springs of heaven-sent water in
that desert. Andrew’s company, though not socially exhilarating, was
also an invigorating fact. Altogether, Mrs. Effingham’s spirits
improved, and her hopes arose freshly strengthened.
No sooner was it settled that Andrew and his fortunes were to be wafted
o’er the main, in the vessel which bore the Effingham family, than, with
characteristic energy, he had constituted himself Grand Vizier and
responsible adviser. He definitely approved of much that had been done,
and counselled still further additions to the outfit. Prime and
invincible was his objection to leave behind a certain pet ‘Jersey coo,’
‘a maist extraordinar’ milker, and for butter, juist unco-omon. If she
could be ta’en oot to thae parts, she wad be a sma’ fortune—that is, in
ony Christian land where butter and cheese were used. Maybe the
sea-captain wad let her gang for the value o’ her milk; she was juist in
the height o’t the noo. It wad be a sin and a shame to let her be roupit
for half price, like the ither kye, puir things.’
Persistent advocacy secured his point. Daisy had been morally abandoned
to her fate; but Wilfred, goaded by Andrew’s appeals, had an interview
with the shipping clerk, and arranged that Daisy, if approved of, should
fill the place of the proverbial milch cow, so invariably bracketed with
the ‘experienced surgeon’ in the advertisements of the Commercial
Marine. Her calf also, being old enough to eat hay, was permitted to
accompany her.
Andrew also combated the idea that the greyhounds, or at least a pair,
should be left behind, still less the guns or fishing-rods.
‘Wasna the Laird the best judge of a dog in the haill country-side, and
no that far frae the best shot? What for suld he walk aboot the woods in
Australia waesome and disjaskit like, when there might be kangaroos, or
whatna kind o’ ootlandish game, to be had for the killing? Hoot, hoot,
puir Page and Damsel couldna be left ahint, nor the wee terrier Vennie.’
There was more trouble with the greyhounds’ passage than the cows, but
in consideration of the large amount of freight and passage-money paid
by the family, the aristocratic long-tails were franked. Andrew, with
his own hands, packed up the fowling-pieces and fishing-rods, which,
with the exaggerated prudence of youth, Wilfred had been minded to leave
behind, considering nothing worthy of removal that would not be likely
to add to their material gains in the ‘new settlement.’ He had yet to
learn that recreation can never be advantageously disregarded, whether
the community be a young or an old one.
Little by little, a chain of slow yet subtle advances, by which, equally
with geologic alterations of the earth’s surface, its ephemeral living
tenants proceed or retrograde, effected the translation of Howard
Effingham, with wife and children, retainers and household goods. Averse
by nature to all exertion which savoured of detail, reserving his energy
for what he was pleased to dignify with the title of great occasions, as
he looked back over the series of multitudinous necessary arrangements,
Howard Effingham wondered, in his secret soul, at the transference of
his household. Left to himself, he was candid enough to admit, such a
result could never have been achieved. But the ceaseless ministration of
Jeanie and Andrew, the calm forethought of Mrs. Effingham, the unsparing
personal labour of Wilfred, had, in due time, worked the miracle.