THE THREE MISS KINGS
An Australian Story
BY
ADA CAMBRIDGE
AUTHOR OF MY GUARDIAN
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1891
CONTENTS
I. A DISTANT VIEW
II. A LONELY EYRIE
III. PREPARATIONS FOR FLIGHT
IV. DEPARTURE
V. ROCKED IN THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP
VI. PAUL
VII. A MORNING WALK
VIII. AN INTRODUCTION TO MRS. GRUNDY
IX. MRS. AARONS
X. THE FIRST INVITATION
XI. DISAPPOINTMENT
XII. TRIUMPH
XIII. PATTY IN UNDRESS
XIV. IN THE WOMB OF FATE
XV. ELIZABETH FINDS A FRIEND
XVI. "WE WERE NOT STRANGERS, AS TO US AND ALL IT SEEMED"
XVII. AFTERNOON TEA
XVIII. THE FAIRY GODMOTHER
XIX. A MORNING AT THE EXHIBITION
XX. CHINA _v._ THE CAUSE OF HUMANITY
XXI. THE "CUP"
XXII. CROSS PURPOSES
XXIII. MR. YELVERTON'S MISSION
XXIV. AN OLD STORY
XXV. OUT IN THE COLD
XXVI. WHAT PAUL COULD NOT KNOW
XXVII. SLIGHTED
XXVIII. "WRITE ME AS ONE WHO LOVES HIS FELLOW-MEN"
XXIX. PATTY CONFESSES
XXX. THE OLD AND THE NEW
XXXI. IN RETREAT
XXXII. HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF
XXXIII. THE DRIVE HOME
XXXIV. SUSPENSE
XXXV. HOW ELIZABETH MADE UP HER MIND
XXXVI. INVESTIGATION
XXXVII. DISCOVERY
XXXVIII. THE TIME FOR ACTION
XXXIX. AN ASSIGNATION
XL. MRS. DUFF-SCOTT HAS TO BE RECKONED WITH
XLI. MR. YELVERTON STATES HIS INTENTIONS
XLII. HER LORD AND MASTER
XLIII. THE EVENING BEFORE THE WEDDING
XLIV. THE WEDDING DAY
XLV. IN SILK ATTIRE
XLVI. PATTY CHOOSES HER CAREER
XLVII. A FAIR FIELD AND NO FAVOUR
XLVIII. PROBATION
XLIX. YELVERTON
L. "THY PEOPLE SHALL BE MY PEOPLE"
LI. PATIENCE REWARDED
LII. CONCLUSION
THE THREE MISS KINGS.
CHAPTER I.
A DISTANT VIEW.
On the second of January, in the year 1880, three newly-orphaned
sisters, finding themselves left to their own devices, with an income
of exactly one hundred pounds a year a-piece, sat down to consult
together as to the use they should make of their independence.
The place where they sat was a grassy cliff overlooking a wide bay
of the Southern Ocean--a lonely spot, whence no sign of human life
was visible, except in the sail of a little fishing boat far away.
The low sun, that blazed at the back of their heads, and threw their
shadows and the shadow of every blade of grass into relief, touched
that distant sail and made it shine like bridal satin; while a certain
island rock, the home of sea-birds, blushed like a rose in the same
necromantic light. As they sat, they could hear the waves breaking and
seething on the sands and stones beneath them, but could only see the
level plain of blue and purple water stretching from the toes of their
boots to the indistinct horizon. That particular Friday was a terribly
hot day for the colony, as weather records testify, but in this
favoured spot it had been merely a little too warm for comfort, and,
the sea-breeze coming up fresher and stronger as the sun went down, it
was the perfection of an Australian summer evening at the hour of which
I am writing.
"What I want," said Patty King (Patty was the middle one), "is to
make a dash--a straight-out plunge into the world, Elizabeth--no
shilly-shallying and dawdling about, frittering our money away before
we begin. Suppose we go to London--we shall have enough to cover our
travelling expenses, and our income to start fair with--surely we could
live anywhere on three hundred a year, in the greatest comfort--and
take rooms near the British Museum?--or in South Kensington?--or
suppose we go to one of those intellectual German towns, and study
music and languages? What do you think, Nell? I am sure we could do it
easily if we tried."
"Oh," said Eleanor, the youngest of the trio, "I don't care so long as
we go _somewhere_, and do _something_."
"What do you think, Elizabeth?" pursued the enterprising Patty, alert
and earnest. "Life is short, and there is so much for us to see and
learn--all these years and years we have been out of it so utterly! Oh,
I wonder how we have borne it! How _have_ we borne it--to hear about
things and never to know or do them, like other people! Let us get
into the thick of it at once, and recover lost time. Once in Europe,
everything would be to our hand--everything would be possible. What do
you think?"
"My dear," said Elizabeth, with characteristic caution, "I think we are
too young and ignorant to go so far afield just yet."
"We are all over twenty-one," replied Patty quickly, "and though we
have lived the lives of hermits, we are not more stupid than other
people. We can speak French and German, and we are quite sharp enough
to know when we are being cheated. We should travel in perfect safety,
finding our way as we went along. And we _do_ know something of those
places--of Melbourne we know nothing."
"We should never get to the places mother knew--the sort of life we
have heard of. And Mr. Brion and Paul are with us here--they will tell
us all we want to know. No, Patty, we must not be reckless. We might
go to Europe by-and-bye, but for the present let Melbourne content us.
It will be as much of the world as we shall want to begin with, and
we ought to get some experience before we spend our money--the little
capital we have to spend."
"You don't call two hundred and thirty-five pounds a little, do you?"
interposed Eleanor. This was the price that a well-to-do storekeeper in
the neighbouring township had offered them for the little house which
had been their home since she was born, and to her it seemed a fortune.
"Well, dear, we don't quite know yet whether it is little or much,
for, you see, we don't know what it costs to live as other people do.
We must not be reckless, Patty--we must take care of what we have, for
we have only ourselves in the wide world to depend on, and this is
all our fortune. I should think no girls were ever so utterly without
belongings as we are now," she added, with a little break in her gentle
voice.
She was half lying on the grass, leaning on her elbow and propping her
head in her hand. The light behind her was growing momentarily less
fierce, and the breeze from the quiet ocean more cool and delicious;
and she had taken off her hat in order to see and breathe in freedom.
A noble figure she was, tall, strong, perfect in proportion, fine in
texture, full of natural dignity and grace--the product of several
generations of healthy and cultured people, and therefore a truly
well-bred woman. Her face was a little too grave and thoughtful for
her years, perhaps--she was not quite eight-and-twenty--and it was
not at all handsome, in the vulgar sense of the word. But a sweeter,
truer, kinder face, with its wide, firm mouth and its open brows, and
its candid grey eyes, one could not wish to see. She had smooth brown
hair of excessive fineness and brightness (a peculiarity of good blood
shared by all the sisters), and it was closely coiled in a knot of
braids at the back of her head, without any of those curls and fringes
about the temples that have since become the prevailing fashion. And
she was dressed in a very common, loosely-made, black print gown,
with a little frill of crape at her throat, and a leather belt round
her by no means slender waist. Her feet were encased in large and
clumsy boots, and her shapely hands, fine-skinned and muscular, were
not encased at all, but were brown with constant exposure to sun and
wind, and the wear and tear of miscellaneous housework. The impetuous
Patty, who sat bolt upright clasping her knees, was like her, but with
marked differences. She was smaller and slighter in make, though she
had the same look of abundant health and vigour. Her figure, though it
had never worn stays, was more after the pattern of modern womanhood
than Elizabeth's, and her brilliant little face was exquisite in
outline, in colour, in all the charms of bright and wholesome youth.
Patty's eyes were dark and keen, and her lips were delicate and red,
and her hair had two or three ripples in it, and was the colour of
a half-ripe chestnut. And altogether, she was a very striking and
unmistakeably handsome girl. She, too, wore a black print gown, and a
straw sailor hat, with a black ribbon, tilted back on her bead, and
the same country-made boots, and the same brown and gloveless hands.
Eleanor, again, with the general family qualities of physical health
and refinement, had her own characteristics. She was slim and tall--as
slim as Patty, and nearly as tall as Elizabeth, as was shown in her
attitude as she lay full length on the grass, with her feet on the
edge of the cliff, and her head on her elder sister's knee. She had a
pure white skin, and sentimental blue eyes, and lovely yellow hair,
just tinged with red; and her voice was low and sweet, and her manners
gentle and graceful, and altogether she was one of the most pleasing
young women that ever blushed unseen like a wild flower in the savage
solitudes of the bush. This young person was not in black--because, she
said, the weather was too hot for black. She wore an old blue gingham
that had faded to a faint lavender in course of numerous washings, and
she had a linen handkerchief loosely tied round her neck, and cotton
gloves on her hands. She was the only one of the sisters to whom it had
occurred that, having a good complexion, it was worth while to preserve
it.
The parents of these three girls had been a mysterious couple, about
whose circumstances and antecedents people knew just as much as they
liked to conjecture, and no more. Mr. King had been on the diggings
in the old days--that much was a fact, to which he had himself been
known to testify; but where and what he had been before, and why he
had lived like a pelican in the wilderness ever since, nobody knew,
though everybody was at liberty to guess. Years and years ago, he
came to this lone coast--a region of hopeless sand and scrub, which
no squatter or free selector with a grain of sense would look at--and
here on a bleak headland he built his rude house, piece by piece, in
great part with his own hands, and fenced his little paddock, and made
his little garden; and here he had lived till the other day, a morose
recluse, who shunned his neighbours as they shunned him, and never was
known to have either business or pleasure, or commerce of any kind
with his fellow-men. It was supposed that he had made some money at
the diggings, for he took up no land (there was none fit to take up,
indeed, within a dozen miles of him), and he kept no stock--except a
few cows and pigs for the larder; and at the same time there was never
any sign of actual poverty in his little establishment, simple and
humble as it was. And it was also supposed--nay, it was confidently
believed--that he was not, so to speak, "all there." No man who was not
"touched" would conduct himself with such preposterous eccentricity as
that which had marked his long career in their midst--so the neighbours
argued, not without a show of reason. But the greatest mystery in
connection with Mr. King was Mrs. King. He was obviously a gentleman,
in the conventional sense of the word, but she was, in every sense,
the most beautiful and accomplished lady that ever was seen, according
to the judgment of those who knew her--the women who had nursed her in
her confinements, and washed and scrubbed for her, and the tradesmen
of the town to whom she had gone in her little buggy for occasional
stores, and the doctor and the parson, and the children whom she had
brought up in such a wonderful manner to be copies (though, it was
thought, poor ones) of herself. And yet she had borne to live all
the best years of her life, at once a captive and an exile, on that
desolate sea-shore--and had loved that harsh and melancholy man with
the most faithful and entire devotion--and had suffered her solitude
and privations, the lack of everything to which she _must_ have been
once accustomed, and the fret and trouble of her husband's bitter
moods--without a murmur that anybody had ever heard.
Both of them were gone now from the cottage on the cliff where they had
lived so long together. The idolised mother had been dead for several
years, and the harsh, and therefore not much loved nor much mourned,
father had lain but a few weeks in his grave beside her; and they had
left their children, as Elizabeth described it, more utterly without
belongings than ever girls were before. It was a curious position
altogether. As far as they knew, they had no relations, and they had
never had a friend. Not one of them had left their home for a night
since Eleanor was born, and not one invited guest had slept there
during the whole of that period. They had never been to school, or had
any governess but their mother, or any experience of life and the ways
of the world save what they gained in their association with her, and
from the books that she and their father selected for them. According
to all precedent, they ought to have been dull and rustic and stupid
(it was supposed that they were, because they dressed themselves so
badly), but they were only simple and truthful in an extraordinary
degree. They had no idea what was the "correct thing" in costume or
manners, and they knew little or nothing of the value of money; but
they were well and widely read, and highly accomplished in all the
household arts, from playing the piano to making bread and butter, and
as full of spiritual and intellectual aspirations as the most advanced
amongst us.