A LONELY EYRIE.
"Then we will say Melbourne to begin with. Not for a permanence, but
until we have gained a little more experience," said Patty, with
something of regret and reluctance in her voice. By this time the sun
had set and drawn off all the glow and colour from sea and shore. The
island rock was an enchanted castle no longer, and the sails of the
fishing-boats had ceased to shine. The girls had been discussing their
schemes for a couple of hours, and had come to several conclusions.
"I think so, Patty. It would be unwise to hurry ourselves in making
our choice of a home. We will go to Melbourne and look about us. Paul
Brion is there. He will see after lodgings for us and put us in the
way of things generally. That will be a great advantage. And then the
Exhibition will be coming--it would be a pity to miss that. And we
shall feel more as if we belonged to the people here than elsewhere,
don't you think? They are more likely to be kind to our ignorance and
help us."
"Oh, we don't want anyone to help us."
"Someone must teach us what we don't know, directly or indirectly--and
we are not above being taught."
"But," insisted Patty, "there is no reason why we should be beholden
to anybody. Paul Brion may look for some lodgings for us, if he
likes--just a place to sleep in for a night or two--and tell us where
we can find a house--that's all we shall want to ask of him or of
anybody. We will have a house of our own, won't we?--so as not to be
overlooked or interfered with."
"Oh, of course!" said Eleanor promptly. "A landlady on the premises is
not to be thought of for a moment. Whatever we do, we don't want to be
interfered with, Elizabeth."
"No, my dear--you can't desire to be free from interference--unpleasant
interference--more than I do. Only I don't think we shall be able to be
so independent as Patty thinks. I fancy, too, that we shall not care to
be, when we begin to live in the world with other people. It will be so
charming to have friends!"
"Oh--friends!" Patty exclaimed, with a little toss of the head. "It is
too soon to think about friends--when we have so much else to think
about! We must have some lessons in Melbourne, Elizabeth. We will go
to that library every day and read. We will make our stay there a
preparation for England and Germany and Italy. Oh, Nell, Nell! think of
seeing the great Alps and the Doge's Palace before we die!"
"Ah!" responded Eleanor, drawing a long breath.
They all rose from the grass and stood still an instant, side by side,
for a last look at the calm ocean which had been the background of
their simple lives. Each was sensible that it was a solemn moment, in
view of the changes to come, but not a word was spoken to imply regret.
Like all the rest of us, they were ungrateful for the good things of
the present and the past, and were not likely to understand how much
they loved the sea, that, like the nurse of Rorie Mhor, had lulled them
to sleep every night since they were born, while the sound of its many
waters was still in their ears.
"Sam Dunn is out late," said Eleanor, pointing to a dark dot far away,
that was a glittering sail a little while ago.
"It is a good night for fishing," said Patty.
And then they turned their faces landward, and set forth on their road
home. Climbing to the top of the cliff on the slope of which they had
been sitting, they stood upon a wide and desolate heath covered in all
directions with a short, stiff scrub, full of wonderful wild-flowers
(even at this barren season of the year), but without a tree of any
sort; a picturesque desert, but still a desert, though with fertile
country lying all around it--as utterly waste as the irreclaimable
Sahara. Through this the girls wended their way by devious tracks
amongst the bushes, ankle deep in the loose sand; and then again
striking the cliff, reached a high point from which they had a distant
view of human habitations--a little township, fringing a little bay;
a lighthouse beyond it, with its little star shining steadily through
the twilight; a little pier, running like a black thread through the
silvery surf; and even a little steamer from Melbourne lying at the
pier-head, veiling the rock-island, that now frowned like a fortress
behind it, in a thin film of grey smoke from its invisible little
funnels. But they did not go anywhere near these haunts of their
fellow-men. Hugging the cliff, which was here of a great height,
and honeycombed with caves in which the green sea-water rumbled and
thundered like a great drum in the calm weather, and like a furious
bombardment in a storm, they followed a slender track worn in the scant
grass by their own light feet, until they came to a little depression
in the line of the coast--a hollow scooped out of the great headland
as if some Titanic monster of a prehistoric period had risen up out of
the waves and bitten it--where, sheltered and hidden on three sides by
grassy banks, sloping gently upward until they overtopped the chimneys,
and with all the great plain of the sea outspread beneath the front
verandah, stood the house which had been, but was to be no more, their
home.
It was well worth the money that the storekeeper had offered for it. It
was a really charming house, though people had not been accustomed to
look at it in that light--though it was built of roughest weatherboard
that had never known a paint-brush, and heavily roofed with great
sheets of bark that were an offence to the provincial eye, accustomed
to the chaste elegance of corrugated zinc. A strong, and sturdy,
and genuine little house--as, indeed, it had to be to hold its own
against the stormy blasts that buffeted it; mellowed and tanned with
time and weather, and with all its honest, rugged features softened
under a tender drapery of hardy English ivy and climbing plants that
patient skill and care had induced to grow, and even to thrive in
that unfriendly air. The verandah, supported on squat posts, was a
continuation of the roof; and that roof, with green leaves curling
upward over it, was so conspicuously solid, and so widely overspread
and over-shadowed the low walls, that it was about all that could be
seen of the house from the ridges of the high land around it. But
lower down, the windows--nearly all set in rude but substantial door
frames--opened like shy eyes in the shadow of the deep eaves of the
verandah, like eyes that had expression in them; and the retiring
walls bore on numerous nails and shelves a miscellaneous but orderly
collection of bird-cages, flower boxes, boating and fishing apparatus,
and odds and ends of various kinds, that gave a charming homely
picturesqueness to the quaint aspect of the place. The comparatively
spacious verandah, running along the front of the house (which had been
made all front, as far as possible), was the drawing-room and general
living room of the family during the greater part of the year. Its
floor, of unplaned hardwood, dark with age and wear, but as exquisitely
clean as sweeping and scrubbing could make it, was one of the loveliest
terraces in the country for the view that it afforded--so our girls
will maintain, at any rate, to their dying day. Now that they see it no
more, they have passionate memories of their beloved bay, seen through
a frame of rustling leaves from that lofty platform--how it looked in
the dawn and sunrise, in the intensely blue noon, in the moonlight
nights, and when gales and tempests were abroad, and how it sounded
in the hushed darkness when they woke out of their sleep to listen
to it--the rhythmic fall of breaking waves on the rocks below, the
tremulous boom that filled the air and seemed to shake the foundations
of the solid earth. They have no wish to get back to their early home
and their hermit life there now--they have tasted a new wine that is
better than the old; but, all the same, they think and say that from
the lonely eyrie where they were nursed and reared they looked out
upon such a scene as the wide world would never show them any more.
In the foreground, immediately below the verandah, a little grass, a
few sturdy shrubs, and such flowers as could keep their footing in so
exposed a place, clothed the short slope of the edge of the cliff,
down the steep face of which a breakneck path zig-zagged to the beach,
where only a narrow strip of white sand, scarcely more than a couple of
yards wide, was uncovered when the tide was out. Behind the house was a
well-kept, if rather sterile, kitchen garden; and higher up the cliff,
but still partly sheltered in the hollow, a very small farm-yard and
one barren little paddock.
Through a back gate, by way of the farm-yard and kitchen garden, the
sisters entered their domain when it was late enough to be called
night, though the twilight lingered, and were welcomed with effusion
by an ugly but worthy little terrier which had been bidden to keep
house, and had faithfully discharged that duty during their absence. As
they approached the house, a pet opossum sprang from the dairy roof to
Eleanor's shoulder, and a number of tame magpies woke up with a sleepy
scuffle and gathered round her. A little monkey-bear came cautiously
down from the only gum tree that grew on the premises, grunting and
whimpering, and crawled up Patty's skirts; and any quantity of cats
and kittens appealed to Elizabeth for recognition. The girls spoke to
them all by name, as if they had been so many children, cuffed them
playfully for their forward manners, and ordered them to bed or to
whatever avocations were proper to the hour. When a match was struck
and the back-door opened, the opossum took a few flying leaps round
the kitchen, had his ears boxed, and was flung back again upon the
dairy roof. The little bear clung whining to his mistress, but was
also put outside with a firm hand; and the cats and magpies were swept
over the threshold with a broom. "_Brats!_" cried Patty with ferocious
vehemence, as she closed the kitchen door sharply, at the risk of
cutting off some of their noses; "what _are_ we to do with them? They
seem as if they _knew_ we were going away, the aggravating little
wretches. There, there"--raising the most caressing voice in answer
to the whine of the monkey-bear--"don't cry, my pet! Get up your tree,
darling, and have a nice supper and go to sleep."
Then, having listened for a few seconds at the closed door, she
followed Elizabeth through the kitchen to the sitting-room, and, while
her sister lit the lamp, stepped through the French window to sniff
the salt sea air. For some time the humble members of the family were
heard prowling disconsolately about the house, but none of them, except
the terrier, appeared upon the verandah, where the ghost of their evil
genius still sat in his old armchair with his stick by his side. They
had been driven thence so often and with such memorable indignities
that it would never occur to them to go there any more. And so the
sisters were left in peace. Eleanor busied herself in the kitchen for
awhile, setting her little batch of bread by the embers of the hearth,
in view of a hot loaf for their early breakfast, while she sang some
German ballads to herself with an ear for the refinements of both
language and music that testified to the thoroughness of her mother's
culture, and of the methods by which it had been imparted. Patty went
to the dairy for a jug of milk for supper, which frugal meal was
otherwise prepared by Elizabeth's hands; and at nine o'clock the trio
gathered round the sitting-room table to refresh themselves with thick
slices of bread and jam, and half-an-hour's gossip before they went to
bed.
A pretty and pathetic picture they made as they sat round that
table, with the dim light of one kerosene lamp on their strikingly
fair faces--alone in the little house that was no longer theirs,
and in the wide world, but so full of faith and hope in the unknown
future--discussing ways and means for getting their furniture
to Melbourne. That time-honoured furniture, and their immediate
surroundings generally, made a poor setting for such a group--a long,
low, canvas-lined room, papered with prints from the _Illustrated
London News_ (a pictorial European "history of our own times"), from
the ceiling to the floor, the floor being without a carpet, and the
glass doors furnished only with a red baize curtain to draw against
the sea winds of winter nights. The tables and chairs were of the
same order of architecture as the house; the old mahogany bureau,
with its brass mounting and multitudinous internal ramifications, was
ridiculously out of date and out of fashion (as fashion was understood
in that part of the world); the ancient chintz sofa, though as easy
as a feather bed, and of a capacity equal to the accommodation of
Giant Blunderbore, was obviously home-made and not meant to be
too closely criticised; and even the piano, which was a modern and
beautiful instrument in itself, hid its music in a stained deal case
than which no plain egg of a nightingale could be plainer. And yet this
odd environment for three beautiful and cultured women had a certain
dignity and harmoniousness about it--often lacking in later and more
luxurious surroundings. It was in tune with those simple lives, and
with the majestic solitude of the great headland and the sea.