[Illustration: IN THE CHURCHYARD. _Page_ 83.]
RUBY.
_A STORY OF THE AUSTRALIAN BUSH._
BY
MOLLY E. JAMIESON,
AUTHOR OF “JACK,” “AT SUNSET,” “MOLLY AND I,” ETC.
PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE GENERAL LITERATURE
COMMITTEE.
LONDON:
SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE,
NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C.;
43, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, E.C.
BRIGHTON: 129, NORTH STREET.
NEW YORK: E. & J. B. YOUNG AND CO.
“Love not pleasure; love God. This is the everlasting Yea, wherein all
contradiction is solved, wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with
him.”--CARLYLE.
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CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. AN AUSTRALIAN CHRISTMAS 7
II. JACK 17
III. THE CHRISTMAS CARD 28
IV. RUBY’S DREAM 38
V. THE BUSH FIRE 48
VI. “I CAN NEVER DO IT NOW!” 57
VII. A SUMMER MORNING 63
VIII. ANOTHER CHRISTMAS DAY 72
IX. FOR WAT’S SAKE 81
X. MAY 91
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RUBY.
CHAPTER I.
AN AUSTRALIAN CHRISTMAS.
“We shall think on Christmas morning
Of our dear ones far away,
Wafting them the tender wishes
That, alas! we cannot say;
Longing for their presence with us,
Eye to eye, and hand to hand,
On that day of happy meetings,
Joy and peace throughout the land.”
Christmas Day in the Australian bush! Not the sort of Christmas Day we
dwellers in bonnie Scotland or merry England are accustomed to. The
sun is blazing down in remorseless strength upon the parched ground,
where the few trees about the station cast so slight a shadow. Past the
foot of the straggling garden the little creek dances and ripples on
its way to the river, half a mile away, and, as far as eye can reach,
stretch the blue distances of bush in long, monotonous undulation.
“Wish he’d come,” says Ruby. “The pudding will be quite cold.”
On such a day as this it does not seem of paramount importance whether
the pudding be hot or cold. In fact, Christmas Day though it be, it
would be rather a relief to have a cold pudding than otherwise.
Ruby’s anxious little face testifies that such is not her opinion. She
has come out to the verandah, and, shading her eyes with her hand from
the white glare of the sun, gazes now this way, now that. The pudding
lies heavily upon her heart.
“Ruby!” comes a rather querulous voice from the room beyond the shady
blue blinds.
The little girl gives one last long glance in every direction, then
lets the shading hand drop, and passes through the open doorway of the
pretty cottage which is Ruby’s home.
“Isn’t he coming, Ruby?”
The yellow-haired woman lying on the sofa is Ruby’s step-mother. The
roses of the once pretty pink cheeks have paled to white, and there are
fretful little lines about the corners of the mouth, and a discontented
expression in the big blue eyes; but with it all Mrs. Thorne has
pretensions to beauty still.
“He’s not in sight yet, mamma,” returns Ruby, wrinkling up her brow.
She calls Mrs. Thorne “mamma,” for the fair-faced unaffectionate woman
is the only mother the child has ever known. Ruby was only a baby when
her own mother died, and “mamma in heaven” is a far less real personage
to her little daughter than “mamma” on earth.
“It’s very tiresome.” The lady’s tone is peevish, and she fans herself
languidly with a large fan lying by her side. “I can’t conceive what
makes your father so irregular at mealtimes. Do bring me something cool
to drink, Ruby, like a good child. This heat is intolerable.”
The “station” is built in a quadrangle, and across one corner of this
quadrangle Ruby has to go ere she reaches the kitchen. If it is hot in
the living room, it is ten times hotter here, where Jenny, a stout,
buxom Scotchwoman of forty or thereabouts, who for love of her mistress
has braved the loneliness of bush life, is busy amidst her pots and
pans getting ready the Christmas dinner.
“Dad’s not come yet, Jenny,” Ruby says as she reaches down a tumbler
and prepares the cooling drink which her step-mother has requested. “Do
you think the pudding will keep all right?”
“It’ll be none the waur if he’ll no be that long,” Jenny returns,
giving the fire a stir-up. “I’d no mind the cookin’ if it wasna’ for
the heat; but the heat’s maist awfu’. It near sends a body gyte. To
think o’ the Christmas they’ll be havin’ in Scotland too. It a’most
gars me greet to think o’ it a’, Miss Ruby, and us awa’ in this
queer-like place. It’s fine enough to say that fortunes can be made out
here; but I wad rather dae wi’out the fortune an’ stay at hame.”
“But, you see, this is home now,” Ruby says, stirring up her decoction
gravely. “That’s what papa always says when mamma gets cross. Mamma
doesn’t like staying here, you see. She says Scotland never seemed so
bonnie as when she’s away from it. And I’m Scotch, too.” Ruby gives her
head rather a proud little toss. “But I call this home. But of course I
don’t remember Scotland--hardly,” the little girl admits slowly.
The tumbler has received its final stir-up now, and Ruby carries it
through the blazing sun of the courtyard to her step-mother, still
lying on the sofa.
“I’ll fan you, mamma, while you’re drinking it, and that’ll make you
feel cooler.”
“Thanks, dear; you _are_ a good little girl,” her mother says, with an
approving pat for the small hand wielding the fan.
Ruby’s heart gives a great leap of joy. It is so seldom that her
step-mother speaks to her like this. Not that Mrs. Thorne is unkind
to her husband’s little daughter; but, wrapped up in herself and
her own ailments, she has but small sympathy to waste on others. Had
she seen the gladness which shone out of the child’s eyes at the
unaccustomed words of kindness, she might have spoken them oftener.
Though she loves her husband as much as it is possible for such a
nature to love any one, it has been a bitter trial to Dora Thorne,
reared midst the refinements of a Scottish home, to leave friends
and kindred for his sake, and to exchange the well-known, well-loved
heather-hilled land of her birth for the hardships and uncertainties
of the Australian bush. So perhaps it is no wonder that her time is so
taken up in commiserating herself that she has but little leisure left
to commiserate or sympathize with any one else.
Suddenly Ruby raises her head, a “listening” look on her face.
“That’s him!” she cries. “I hear him coming now!”
The child rushes out to the verandah, and again shades her eyes with
her hand. Through the sunlight, across the cleared space of grass which
surrounds the station, a horse and rider are coming. With the sunny
glare in her eyes, it is not until he is quite near that Ruby sees
that the approaching figure really is her father. Strangers do not
come often to Glengarry; but it so chances that now and again a stray
traveller on his way to the coast claims the hospitality of the station.
He swings off his horse at the garden-gate, flings the reins to Dick,
the stable-boy, and stoops to kiss the face of the little girl who has
run out to meet him.
“I thought you were just never coming, dad,” complains Ruby,
plaintively. “And Jenny’s afraid the pudding’ll be spoilt. It’s been
ready ever so long.”
“Here I am at last anyway, little woman,” laughs the big man, whose
brown eyes are so like Ruby’s, and whose voice is the sweetest sound in
the world to his little daughter.
He goes into the house, with the child hanging upon his arm, her big
eyes gazing up at him, reflecting every smile in the dear face above
her. The love between those two is a very beautiful thing, like that
sweet old-fashioned love of which we read, that it was “passing that of
women.”
“I thought you were never coming, Will,” says his wife, giving vent
to her thoughts in the same words as Ruby. “You do look hot, and
no wonder; for it is hot enough even in here. And I have _such_ a
headache.”
“Poor little Dolly!”
Surely a shade of regret passes over the bronzed face as he strokes the
soft golden hair with his big rough hand. He is reproaching himself
that he has not been unselfish enough, as many a man has, to face the
battle alone, instead of bringing this fragile little Dolly of his away
from the dear “kent faces” of the land where she was born, to brave the
rough life and hardships of the Australian bush. And before his eyes
uprises another face--a young, bright, dauntless face, with fearless
grey eyes--the face of Ruby’s mother, who would have gone through
fire and water for the sake of the man she loved; but who, in her quiet
Scottish home, had not been called upon to do any great thing, only to
leave her husband and child when the King called her away to that other
land which is fairer even than the dearly loved bonnie Scotland she
left behind.
It is no one’s fault that the wrong woman seems to have been put in
the wrong place, that the fearless Scottish lassie who would fain have
proved her love for her husband by braving peril and hardship for his
sake, had comfortable circumstances and a peaceful life for her lot,
and that the fair-faced, ease-loving woman who came after her should
have had to brave those very hardships which the first had coveted.
To Ruby her own mother is nothing more than a name, and Scotland itself
not much more. She was only three years old when the new golden-haired
mother came home, and but little more when the reverses followed which
forced her father to seek his fortune in an unknown land over the sea.
And Australia is now, as Ruby has said to Jenny, “home.”
The child goes dancing off, and across the sunshine of the quadrangle
to tell Jenny to bring the Christmas dinner in. It is a dinner which is
much too hot for an Australian bush Christmas; but, if we happen to be
Scottish, let us be Scottish or die!
“I shouldn’t have brought you out here, Dolly,” the husband is saying.
He has said the same thing for the last half-dozen years; but that does
not mend matters, or bring the faded pink back to his Dolly’s cheeks.
But she likes to hear him say it, poor little woman. It shows that he
sympathizes with those not always imaginary ailments of hers.
“You’ll take me home again soon, Will,” she coaxes, clinging to him.
Unlike Ruby, far-away Scotland is still home to Dora Thorne. “Now that
you are getting on so well. Just for a little while to see them all.
Couldn’t you manage, Will?”
“No saying, darling,” he responds brightly. He does not think it
necessary to trouble this fragile little wife of his with the knowledge
that things are not going on quite “so well” at present as she seems to
fancy. “Next Christmas Day, God willing, we’ll try to spend in bonnie
Scotland. That brings the roses to your cheeks, little girl!”
It has brought the roses to her cheeks, the light to her violet eyes.
Dora Thorne looks as young just now as she did one far-off June day
when she plighted her troth to the man of her choice in the old parish
kirk at home.
“Do you hear what papa says, Ruby?” she says when they are all three
sitting at dinner, and the faintest breath of wind is stirring the blue
blinds gently. “That we are going to Scotland for next Christmas Day,
to dear bonnie Scotland, with its heather and its bluebells. I must
write to the home people and tell them to-night. How glad they all will
be!”
“O-oh!” cries Ruby, with wide-open brown eyes. Then, as another
possibility dawns upon her, “But am I to go too?”
“If we go, of course our little girl will go with us,” her father
assures her.
Christmas in Scotland! Ruby seems lost in a happy dream. Scotland! the
dear, unknown land where she was born! The land, which to mamma and
Jenny is the one land of all, far above all others!
“Will Jenny go too?” she inquires further.
The two elders look doubtfully at each other.
“I don’t know,” says mamma at length rather lamely. “Don’t say
anything to her about it just now, Ruby, till it is quite settled.”
Quite settled! In Ruby’s mind it is quite settled already. She goes
out to the verandah after dinner, and, swinging idly in the hammock,
indulges in the luxury of dreaming. Above her stretches the cloudless
blue of the Australian sky, for miles on her every hand lie the
undulations of Australian bush; but Ruby is far away from it all, away
in bonnie Scotland, with its rippling burns and purple heather, away
in the land where her mother lived and died, and where Ruby’s own baby
eyes first opened.
“It’s about too good to be true,” the little girl is thinking. “It’s
like dreaming, and then you waken from the dream and find it’s all just
a make-up. What if this was a dream too?”
It is not a dream, as Ruby finds after she has dealt herself several
sharp pinches, her most approved method of demonstrating to herself
that reality really is reality. No dream, she has found by experience,
can long outlast such treatment.
But by-and-by even reality passes into dreaming, and Ruby goes to
sleep, the rippling of the creek in her ears, and the sunshine of the
Christmas afternoon falling aslant upon her face.
In her dreams the splash of the creek is transformed into the babble of
a Highland burn over the stones, and the sunshine is the sunshine of
dear, unknown, bonnie Scotland.
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