PREPARATIONS FOR FLIGHT.
Melbourne people, when they go to bed, chain up their doors carefully,
and bar all their windows, lest the casual burglar should molest them.
Bush people, no more afraid of the night than of the day, are often
quite unable to tell you whether there is such a thing as an effective
lock upon the premises. So our girls, in their lonely dwelling on the
cliff, slept in perfect peace and security, with the wind from the sea
blowing over their faces through the open door-windows at the foot of
their little beds. Dan Tucker, the terrier, walked softly to and fro
over their thresholds at intervals in the course of the night, and kept
away any stray kitten that had not yet learned its proper place; that
was all the watch and ward that he or they considered necessary.
At five o'clock in the morning, Elizabeth King, who had a little slip
of a room to herself, just wide enough to allow the leaves of the
French window at the end of it to be held back, when open, by buttons
attached to the side walls, stirred in her sleep, stretched herself,
yawned, and then springing up into a sitting posture, propped herself
on her pillows to see the new day begin. It was a sight to see, indeed,
from that point of view; but it was not often that any of them woke
from their sound and healthy slumber at this time of the year, until
the sun was high enough to shoot a level ray into their eyes. At five
o'clock the surface of the great deep had not begun to shine, but it
was light enough to see the black posts and eaves of the verandah, and
the stems and leaves that twined about them, outlined sharply upon the
dim expanse. Elizabeth's bed had no footrail, and there was no chair
or dressing-table in the way to impede a clear view of sea and sky.
As she lay, the line of the horizon was drawn straight across the
doorway, about three feet above the edge of the verandah floor; and
there a faint pink streak, with fainter flushes on a bank of clouds
above it, showed where the sun was about to rise. The waves splashed
heavily on the beach, and boomed in the great caves of the rocks below;
the sea-gulls called to each other with their queer little cry, at
once soft and shrill; and the magpies piped and chattered all around
the house, and more cocks than could anyhow be accounted for crowed
a mutual defiance far and near. And yet, oh, how still--how solemnly
still--it was! I am not going to describe that sunrise, though I saw
one exactly like it only this very morning. I have seen people take out
their tubes and brushes, and sit down with placid confidence to paint
sun-kissed hills, and rocks, and seas; and, if you woke them up early
enough, they would "sketch" the pink and golden fire of this flaming
dawn without a moment's hesitation. But I know better.
Ere the many-coloured transformation scene had melted in dazzle
of daylight, Elizabeth was dressing herself by her still open
window--throwing long shadows as she moved to and fro about the now
sun-flooded room. Patty was busy in her dairy churning, with a number
of her pets round the door, hustling each other to get at the milk
dish set down for their breakfast--the magpies tugging at the cats and
kittens by ears and tail, and the cats and kittens cuffing the magpies
smartly. Eleanor, singing her German ballads still, was hard at work
in the kitchen, baking delicate loaves for breakfast, and attending to
kitchen matters generally. The elder sister's office on this occasion
was to let out and feed the fowls, to sweep and dust, and to prepare
the table for their morning meal. Never since they had grown out of
childhood had they known the sensation of being waited upon by a
servant, and as yet their system of education had been such that they
did not know what the word "menial" meant. To be together with no one
to interfere with them, and independent of everybody but themselves,
was a habit whose origin was too remote for inquiry, and that had
become a second nature and a settled theory of life--a sort of instinct
of pride and modesty, moreover, though an instinct too natural to be
aware of its own existence.
When the little loaves were done and the big ones put in the oven,
Eleanor fetched a towel, donned a broad hat, and, passing out at the
front of the house, ran lightly down the steep track on the face of
the cliff to their bath-house on the beach--a little closet of rough
slabs built in the rock above high water; whence she presently emerged
in a scanty flannel garment, with her slender white limbs bare, and
flung herself like a mermaid into the sea. There were sharks in that
bay sometimes, and there were devil-fish too (Sam Dunn had spread one
out, star-wise, on a big boulder close by, and it lay there still,
with its horrible arms dangling from its hideous bag of a body, to be
a warning to these venturesome young ladies, who, he fully expected,
would be "et up" some day like little flies by a spider); but they
found their safety in the perfect transparency of the water, coming
in from the great pure ocean to the unsullied rocks, and kept a wary
watch for danger. While Eleanor was disporting herself, Patty joined
her, and after Patty, Elizabeth; and one by one they came up, glowing
and dripping, like--no, I _won't_ be tempted to make that familiar
classical comparison--like nothing better than themselves for artistic
purposes. As Elizabeth, who was the last to leave the water, walked
up the short flight of steps to her little dressing closet, straight
and stately, with her full throat and bust and her nobly shaped limbs,
she was the very model that sculptors dream of and hunt for (as
many more might be, if brought up as she had been), but seldom are
fortunate enough to find. In her gown and leather belt, her beauty of
figure, of course, was not so obvious: the raiment of civilisation,
however simple, levelled it from the standard of Greek art to that of
conventional comparison with other dressed-up women--by which, it must
be confessed, she suffered.
Having assumed this raiment, she followed her sisters up the cliff
path to the house; and there she found them talking volubly with Mrs.
Dunn, who had brought them, with Sam's best respects, a freshly caught
schnapper for their breakfast. Mrs. Dunn was their nearest neighbour,
their only help in domestic emergencies, and of late days their devoted
and confidential friend. Sam, her husband, had for some years been a
ministering angel in the back yard, a purveyor of firewood and mutton,
a killer of pigs, and so on; and he also had taken the orphan girls
under his protection, so far as he could, since they had been "left."
"Look at this!" cried Eleanor, holding it up--it took both hands to
hold it, for it weighed about a dozen pounds; "did you ever see such
a fish, Elizabeth? Breakfast indeed! Yes, we'll have it to breakfast
to-day and to-morrow too, and for dinner and tea and supper. Oh, how
stupid Sam is! Why didn't he send it to market? Why didn't he take it
down to the steamer? He's not a man of business a bit, Mrs. Dunn--he'll
never make his fortune this way. Get the pan for me, Patty, and set the
fat boiling. We'll fry a bit this very minute, and you shall stay and
help us to eat it, Mrs. Dunn."
"Oh, my dear Miss Nelly--"
"Elizabeth, take charge of her, and don't let her go. Don't listen to
her. We have not seen her for three whole days, and we want her to
tell us about the furniture. Keep her safe, and Patty and I will have
breakfast ready in a minute."
And in a short time the slice of schnapper was steaming on the table--a
most simply appointed breakfast table, but very clean and dainty in
its simplicity--and Mrs. Dunn sat down with her young _protégées,_ and
sipped her tea and gave them matronly advice, with much enjoyment of
the situation.
Her advice was excellent, and amounted to this--"Don't you go for to
take a stick o' that there furniture out o' the place." They were
to have an auction, she said; and go to Melbourne with the proceeds
in their pockets. Hawkins would be glad o' the beds, perhaps, with
his large family; as Mrs. Hawkins had a lovely suite in green rep,
she wouldn't look at the rest o' the things, which, though very
comf'able, no doubt--very nice indeed, my dears--were not what _ladies
and gentlemen_ had in their houses _now-a-days_. "As for that there
bureau"--pointing to it with her teaspoon--"if you set that up in a
Melbourne parlour, why, you'd just have all your friends laughing at
you."
The girls looked around the room with quick eyes, and then looked at
each other with half-grave and half amused dismay. Patty spoke up with
her usual promptness.
"It doesn't matter in the least to us what other people like to have
in their houses," said she. "And that bureau, as it happens, is very
valuable, Mrs. Dunn: it belonged to one of the governors before we had
it, and Mr. Brion says there is no such cabinet work in these days. He
says it was made in France more than a hundred years ago."
"Yes, my dear. So you might say that there was no such stuff now-a-days
as what them old gowns was made of, that your poor ma wore when she was
a girl. But you wouldn't go for to wear them old gowns now. I daresay
the bureau was a grand piece o' furniture once, but it's out o' fashion
now, and when a thing is out o' fashion it isn't worth anything. Sell
it to Mr. Brion if you can; it would be a fine thing for a lawyer's
office, with all them little shelves and drawers. He might give you
a five-pound note for it, as he's a friend like, and you could buy a
handsome new cedar chiffonnier for that."
"Mrs. Dunn," said Eleanor, rising to replenish the worthy matron's
plate, with Patty's new butter and her own new bread, "we are not going
to sell that bureau--no, not to anybody. It has associations, don't you
understand?--and also a set of locks that no burglar could pick if he
tried ever so. We are not going to sell our bureau--nor our piano--"
"Oh, but, my dear Miss Nelly--"
"My dear Mrs. Dunn, it cost ninety guineas, I do assure you, only five
years ago, and it is as modern and fashionable as heart could wish."
"Fashionable! why, it might as well be a cupboard bedstead, in that
there common wood. Mrs. Hawkins gave only fifty pounds for hers, and it
is real walnut and carved beautiful."
"We are not going to sell that piano, my dear woman." Though Nelly
appeared to wait meekly upon her elder sisters' judgment, it often
happened that she decided a question that was put before them in this
prompt way. "And I'll tell you for why," she continued playfully. "You
shut your eyes for five minutes--wait, I'll tie my handkerchief over
them"--and she deftly blindfolded the old woman, whose stout frame
shook with honest giggles of enjoyment at this manifestation of Miss
Nelly's fun. "Now," said Nelly, "don't laugh--don't remember that you
are here with us, or that there is such a thing as a cupboard bedstead
in the world. Imagine that you are floating down the Rhine on a
moonlight night--no, by the way, imagine that you are in a drawing-room
in Melbourne, furnished with a lovely green rep suite, and a handsome
new cedar chiffonnier, and a carved walnut piano--and that a beautiful,
fashionable lady, with scent on her pocket-handkerchief, is sitting at
that piano. And--and listen for a minute."
Whereupon, lifting her hands from the old woman's shoulders, she
crossed the room, opened the piano noiselessly, and began to play her
favourite German airs--the songs of the people, that seem so much
sweeter and more pathetic and poetic than the songs of any other
people--mixing two or three of them together and rendering them with a
touch and expression that worked like a spell of enchantment upon them
all. Elizabeth sat back in her chair and lost herself in the visions
that appeared to her on the ceiling. Patty spread her arms over the
table and leaned towards the piano, breathing a soft accompaniment
of German words in tender, sighing undertones, while her warm pulses
throbbed and her eyes brightened with the unconscious passion that was
stirred in her fervent soul. Even the weather-beaten old charwoman fell
into a reverent attitude as of a devotee in church.
"There," said Eleanor, taking her hands from the keys and shutting up
the instrument, with a suddenness that made them jump. "Now I ask you,
Mrs. Dunn, as an honest and truthful woman--_can_ you say that that is
a piano to be _sold?_"
"Beautiful, my dear, beautiful--it's like being in heaven to hear the
like o' that," the old woman responded warmly, pulling the bandage
from her eyes. "But you'd draw music from an old packing case, I
do believe." And it was found that Mrs. Dunn was unshaken in her
conviction that pianos were valuable in proportion to their external
splendour, and their tone sweet and powerful by virtue solely of the
skill of the fingers that played upon them. If Mr. King had given
ninety guineas for "that there"--about which she thought there must be
some mistake--she could only conclude that his rural innocence had been
imposed upon by wily city tradesmen.
"Well," said Nelly, who was now busy collecting the crockery on the
breakfast table, "we must see if we can't furbish it up, Mrs. Dunn.
We can paint a landscape on the front, perhaps, and tie some pink
satin ribbons on the handles. Or we might set it behind a curtain, or
in a dark corner, where it will be heard and not seen. But keep it
we must--both that and the bureau. You would not part with those two
things, Elizabeth?"
"My dear," said Elizabeth, "it would grieve me to part with anything."
"But I think," said Patty, "Mrs. Dunn may be right about the other
furniture. What would it cost to take all our things to Melbourne, Mrs.
Dunn?"
"Twice as much as they are worth, Miss Patty--three times as much.
Carriage is awful, whether by sea or land."
"It is a great distance," said Patty, thoughtfully, "and it would be
very awkward. We cannot take them with us, for we shall want first
to find a place to put them in, and we could not come back to fetch
them. I think we had better speak to Mr. Hawkins, Elizabeth, and, if
he doesn't want them, have a little auction. We must keep some things,
of course; but I am sure Mr. Hawkins would let them stay till we could
send for them, or Mr. Brion would house them for us."
"We should feel very free that way, and it would be nice to buy new
things," said Eleanor.
"Or we might not have to buy--we might put this money to the other,"
said Patty. "We might find that we did not like Melbourne, and then we
could go to Europe at once without any trouble."
"And take the pianner to Europe along with you?" inquired Mrs. Dunn.
"And that there bureau?"