Having communicated this sentiment in a tone which did not conduce to
the lighter graces of conversation, Miss Neuchamp resumed her reading.
Silence, the ominous oppressive silence of those who do not wish to
speak, reigned unbroken for a while.
At length, lifting her head as if the thought had suddenly struck her,
she said, ‘I cannot think why you did not buy a station nearer to town,
where you might have lived in a comparatively civilised way.’
‘For the very sufficient reasons that there is never so much money to
be made at comfortable, highly improved stations, and the areas of land
are invariably smaller.’
‘Then you have come to regard money as everything? Is this the end of
the burning philanthropy, and all that sort of thing?’
‘You are too quick in your conclusions, my dear Augusta,’ replied
Mr. Neuchamp, somewhat hurt. ‘It is necessary, I find, to make some
money to ensure the needful independence of position without which
philanthropical or other projects can scarcely be carried out.’
‘I daresay you will end in becoming a mere colonist, and marrying a
colonial girl, after all your fine ideas. I suppose there are some a
shade more refined than this one.’
Mr. Neuchamp stood aghast—words failed him. Augusta went on quietly
reading her book. She failed to perceive the avalanche which was
gathering above her head.
‘My dear Augusta,’ he said at length, with studied calmness, ‘it is
time that some of your misconceptions should be cleared away. Let me
recall to you that you were only a few days in a hotel in Sydney before
you started on your journey to this distant and comparatively rude
district. If you had acted reasonably, and remained in Sydney to take
advantage of introductions to my friends, you would have had some means
of making comparisons after seeing Australian ladies. But with your
present total ignorance of the premises, I wonder that a well-educated
woman should be so illogical as to state a conclusion.’
‘Well, perhaps I am a little premature,’ conceded Miss Augusta, whose
temper was much under command. ‘I suppose there is a wonderful young
lady at the back of all this indignation. Mr. Croker said as much. I
must wait and make her acquaintance. I wish you all sorts of happiness,
Ernest. Now I must go and look after the _other_ young lady.’
When Miss Neuchamp returned to the dining-room she perceived that the
damsel whose social status was so difficult to define had finished her
mid-day meal, and had also completed the clearing off and washing up
of the various articles of the service. She had discovered for herself
the small room used as a pantry, had ferreted out the requisite cloths
and towels, and procured hot water from the irascible Johnny. She had
extemporised a table in the passage, and was just placing the last of
the articles on their allotted shelves with much deftness and celerity,
when Miss Neuchamp entered. Her riding-skirt lay on a chair, and she
had donned a neat print frock, which she had brought strapped to the
saddle.
‘I was coming to give you instructions,’ said Miss Neuchamp, ‘but I see
you have anticipated me by doing everything which I should have asked
you to do, and very nicely too. What is your name?’
‘Mary Anne Freeman,’ said Tottie demurely.
‘I thought I heard Mr. Neuchamp address you by some other Christian
name,’ said Miss Neuchamp, with slight severity of aspect.
‘Oh, Tottie,’ said the girl carelessly; ‘every one calls me Tottie, or
Tot; suppose it’s for shortness.’
‘I shall call you Mary Anne,’ said Miss Neuchamp with quiet decision;
‘and now, Mary Anne, are you accustomed to the use of the needle? do
you like sewing?’
‘Well, I don’t _like_ it,’ she replied ingenuously, ‘but of course I
can sew a little; we have to make our own frocks and the children’s
things at home.’
‘Very proper and necessary,’ affirmed Augusta; ‘if we can get the
material I will superintend your making a couple of dresses for
yourself, which perhaps you will think an improvement in pattern on the
one you wear.’
‘Oh, I should _so_ like to have a new pattern,’ said Tottie, with
feminine satisfaction. ‘There’s plenty of nice prints in the store;
I’ll speak to Mr. Banks about it, mem.’
‘I will arrange that part of it,’ said Miss Neuchamp. ‘In the
meanwhile I’ll point out your bedroom, which you can put in order as
well as mine for the night.’
After the first day or two Miss Neuchamp, though occasionally shocked
at the Australian girl’s ignorance of that portion of the Church
Catechism which exhorts people to behave ‘lowly and reverently to
all their betters,’ was pleased with the intelligence and artless
good-humour of her attendant. She was sufficiently acute to
discriminate between the genuine respect which the girl exhibited to
her, ‘a real lady,’ and the mere lip service and servility too often
yielded by the English poor, from direct compulsion of grinding poverty
and sore need. She discovered that Tottie was quick and teachable
in the matter of needlework, so that, having been stimulated by the
alluring expectation of ‘patterns,’ she worked readily and creditably.
For a few days Miss Neuchamp managed to employ and interest herself
not altogether unpleasantly. Ernest, of course, betook himself off to
some manner of station work immediately after breakfast, returning,
if possible, to lunch. This interval Miss Neuchamp filled up in great
measure by means of her correspondence, which was voluminous and
various of direction, ranging from her Aunt Ermengarde, a conscientious
but ruthless conservative, to philosophical acquaintances whom she had
met in her travels, and who, like her, had much ado to fill up those
leisure hours of which their lives were chiefly composed. This portion
of the day also witnessed Tottie’s most arduous labours, to which she
addressed herself with great zeal and got through her work, as she
termed it, so as to attire herself becomingly and wait at table.
In the afternoon Ernest went out for walking excursions to such points
of interest, neither many nor picturesque, as the neighbourhood
supplied. There was a certain ‘bend’ or curving reach of the river
where, from a lofty bluff, the red walls of which the rushing tide had
channelled for ages, a striking and uncommon view was obtained. The
vast plain, here diversified by the giant eucalypti which fringed the
winding watercourse, stretched limitless to the horizon. But all was
apparently barren from Dan to Beersheba. The reed-beds were trampled
and eaten down to the last cane. The soft rich alluvium in which they
grew was cracked, yet hard as a brickfield. How different from the
swaying emerald billows with feathered tasselled crests which other
summers had seen there! Something of this sort had Ernest endeavoured
to explain to Miss Neuchamp when she spoke disrespectfully of the
trodden cloddy waste, contrasting it scornfully with the velvet meads
which bordered English rivers. But Augusta, defective in imagination,
never believed in anything she did not see. Therefore a reed-bed
appeared to her mental vision till the day of her death always as a
species of abnormal dismal swamp, lacking the traditional element of
moisture.
Other explorations were made in the cool hours of the evening, but
gradually Miss Neuchamp tired of the monotonous aspect of matters. The
dusty tracts were not pleasant to her feet. The mosquitoes assailed
her with savage virulence, whether she walked at sunrise, mid-day,
or darkening eve. If she sat down on the river bank and watched the
shallow but still pure and gleaming waters, ants of every conceivable
degree of curiosity or ferocity discomposed her. There was no rest,
no variety, no beauty, no ‘proper’ wood, valley, mountain, or brook.
She could not imagine human beings living constantly in such a hateful
wilderness. If Ernest had not all his life, and now most of all,
developed a talent for useless and incomprehensible self-sacrifice, he
would abandon such a spot for ever.
Mr. Neuchamp felt himself pressed to his last entrenchments to defend
his position; Fate seemed to have arrived personally, masked, not for
the first time in man’s strange story, in the guise of a woman. That
woman, too, his persistent, inexorable cousin Augusta. ‘The stars in
their courses fought against Sisera.’ The heavens,—dead to the dumb,
imploring looks of the great armies of perishing brutes, to the prayers
of ruined men; the earth, with withered herb and drying streamlet
gasping and faint, breathless, under the burning noon and the pitiless
dry moon rays,—alike conspired against him!
And now his cousin, who, with all her faults and defects, was stanchly
devoted to her kindred and what she believed to be their welfare, came
here to madden him with recollections of the wonderland of his birth,
and to fill him with ignoble longings to purchase present relief by the
ruinous sacrifice of purpose and principle.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, at the end of a closely contested argument,
‘whether all women are incapable of comprehending the adherence to a
fixed purpose, to the unquestioned end and climax. But you must forgive
me, my dear Augusta, for saying that you appear to me to be in the
position of a passenger who urges the captain of a vessel to alter
his course because the gale is wild and the waves rough. Suppose you
had made a suggestion to the captain of the _Rohilla_, in which noble
steamer you made your memorable voyage to these hapless isles. The
officers of the great company are polished gentlemen as well as seamen
of the first order, but I am afraid Gordon Anderson would have been
more curt than explanatory on _that_ occasion.’
‘And you are like the man in Sinbad the Sailor, as you like marine
similes,’ retorted Augusta; ‘you will see your vessel gradually drawn
toward the loadstone island till all the nails and rivets fly out
by attraction of ruin, and you will sink in the waters of oblivion,
unhonoured and unsung.’
‘But not “unloved,” I trust,‘ rejoined Ernest; ‘don’t think that
matters, even in Australia, will be quite so bad as that. By the way,
let me congratulate you upon your facility of quotation. Your memory
must have improved amazingly of late.’
This unfair taunt closed the conversation abruptly. But like some
squabbles between very near and dear friends, there was a tacit
agreement not to refer to it. Subsequently all went on as usual.
Miss Neuchamp was a very fair horsewoman, having hunted without coming
very signally to grief, by dint of a wonderfully broken hunter, who
was first cousin to a rocking-horse—after this wise: he would on no
account run away; he was easy, he was safe; you could not throw him
down over any species of leap,—hedge, ditch, brook, or bulfinch. It
was all alike to Negotiator. After a couple of seasons and the aid of
this accomplished palfrey, Miss Neuchamp, with some reason, came to the
conclusion that she could ride fairly well. So, having broached the
idea at breakfast one morning, Ernest joyfully suggested Osmund as the
type of ease and elegance, and of such a nerve that an organ and monkey
might, were the consideration sufficient, be placed on his short back
to-morrow without risk of casualty.
Miss Neuchamp thought that she should like to ride down and visit the
Freeman encampment, when Tottie, who would of course attend her, might
have the opportunity of seeing her mother and other kinsfolk.
The side-saddle was the next difficulty; but Tottie proffered hers at
once, saying that she could ride in a man’s saddle, which she could
borrow from Mr. Banks.
‘But you cannot ride in a man’s saddle, Mary Anne; at any rate with
me,’ said Miss Neuchamp decisively, while a maidenly blush overspread
her features.
‘Why not?’ inquired Tottie, with much surprise. ‘I can ride in one just
as well as the other. You have only to throw the off-side stirrup over
the pommel, sit square and straight, and there you are. You didn’t
think I was going to ride boy-fashion, did you?’
‘I was not sure,’ conceded Miss Neuchamp. However, your explanation has
satisfied me. If you like, we will ride down to your father’s place
this afternoon.‘
So Osmund being brought round, and Tottie’s side-saddle upon him
placed, that temperate charger walked off with Miss Neuchamp as if he
had carried a ‘pretty horsebreaker’ up Rotten Row before the eyes of
an envious aristocracy, while Tottie disposed herself upon a station
saddle and ambled off so erect and free of seat that few could have
known that she was crutchless and self-balanced. Mr. Windsor followed
at a respectful distance, in case of any _contretemps_ requiring a
groom’s assistance.
Miss Neuchamp was perhaps never more favourably impressed with the
South Land, in which she was sojourning, than when she felt herself
borne along by Osmund, a hackney of rare excellence—free, elastic,
safe, fast, easy! How many horses of whom so much can be said does one
come across in a lifetime?
‘This seems to be an exceedingly nice horse of my cousin’s,’ said she
to Tottie. ‘I had no idea that such riding horses could be found in the
interior. He must have been very carefully trained.’
‘He’s a plum, that’s what he is!’ affirmed Tottie with decision. ‘He’s
the best horse in these parts, by long chalks. Mr. Neuchamp let me have
a spirt on him one day. My word! didn’t I put him along?’
‘I am surprised that he should have let you ride him,’ replied Miss
Neuchamp with dignity; ‘but my cousin is very eccentric, and does not,
in my opinion, always keep his proper position.’
‘I don’t know about his proper position,’ said Tottie with great
spirit, ‘but before our people had the row with him—and that was Uncle
Joe’s fault—there was no one within fifty mile of Rainbar that wouldn’t
have gone on their knees to serve Mr. Neuchamp. _As a gentleman he
can’t be beat_; and many a one besides me thinks that.’
‘Oh well, if you have that sort of respectful feeling towards my
cousin, Mary Anne, I have nothing to say,’ said Miss Augusta. ‘No one
can possibly have better intentions, and I am glad to see them so well
appreciated, even in the bush. Suppose we canter.’
She drew the curb rein as she spoke, and Osmund sailed off at a long,
bounding, deerlike canter over the smooth dusty track, which convinced
Miss Neuchamp that she had not left all the good horses in England.
The scant provender had impaired his personal appearance, but had
not deprived him of that courage which he would retain as long as he
possessed strength to stand on his legs.
‘I have not enjoyed a ride like this for many a day,’ she said with
unusual heartiness. ‘This is a very comfortable saddle of yours, though
I miss the third pommel. How do you manage, Mary Anne, to ride so
squarely and easily upon that uncomfortable saddle?’
‘I’ve ridden many a mile without a saddle at all—that is, with nothing
but an old gunny-bag to sit on,’ said Tottie, ‘and jumped over logs
too. Of course I was a kid then.’
‘A what?’ said Miss Neuchamp anxiously.
‘Oh, a little child,’ explained Tottie. ‘I often used to go out at
daylight to fetch in the cows and the working bullocks when we lived
down the country. Bitter cold it was, too, in the winter; such hard
frosts.’
‘Frosts?’ asked Miss Augusta. ‘Do you ever have frosts? Why, I supposed
they were unknown here.’
‘You don’t suppose the whole country is like this, miss?’ said Tottie.
‘Why, near the mountains there’s snow and ice, and it rains every
winter, and the floods are enough to drownd you.’
‘Are there floods too? It does not look as if they could ever come.’
‘Do you see that hut, miss? That’s our place. I heard Piambook, the
black boy, tell father it would be swep’ away some day. Father laughed
at him.‘
Here they arrived at the abode of Freeman _père_, at which Miss
Neuchamp gazed with much curiosity.
In the language of architecture, the construction had been but little
decorated. A plain and roughly-built abode, composed of round saplings
nailed vertically to the wall-plate, and plastered insufficiently with
mud. The roof was thatched with reeds, put on in a very ineffectual
and chance-medley manner. The hut or cottage contained two large and
three small rooms. There was no garden whatever, or any attempt at the
cultivation of the baked and hopelessly-looking clay soil. Close to
the side of the house was a stockyard, comprising the ‘gallows’ of the
colonists, a rough, rude contrivance, consisting of two uprights and a
crosspiece, for elevating slaughtered cattle. Upon this structure was
at present hanging the carcass of a fine six-months-old calf. No other
enclosure was visible, the only attempt at the preservation of neatness
being the sweeping of the earth immediately around the front and back
doors.
Tottie immediately clattered up to the hut door, the black mare putting
her head so far in that she obstructed the egress of a middle-aged
woman, who made haste to come forth and receive the guests.
‘Mother,’ said the girl, ‘here’s Miss Neuchamp come to see you; bring a
chair for her to get off by.’
This article of furniture having been supplied, Augusta was fain to
descend upon it with as much dignity as she could manage, not being
confident of her ability to drop down, like the agile Tottie, from a
tallish horse, as was Osmund. Tottie, having given the horses in charge
of a small brown-faced brother, who spent his whole time in considering
Osmund, and apparently learning him by heart, welcomed Miss Neuchamp
into her home. That young lady found herself for the first time under
the roof of an Australian free-selector, and felt that she had acquired
a new experience.
‘Come in, miss; I’m very glad to see you, I’m sure; please to sit
down,’ was the salutation Augusta received, in tones that spoke a
hearty welcome, in very pure unaccented English.
Miss Neuchamp selected the most ‘reliable’ looking of the wooden-seated
American chairs, and depositing herself thereon, looked around. The
dwelling was, she thought, more prepossessing than the outside had
led her to imagine. Though everything was plain to ugliness, there
was yet nothing squalid or repulsive. All things were very clean. The
room in which they sat was evidently only used as a parlour or ‘living
room.’ It was fairly large and commodious. The earthen floor was hard,
even, and well swept. A large table occupied the centre. The fireplace
was wide and capacious, the mantelpiece so high that it was not easy
to reach. There was a wooden sofa covered with faded chintz, and an
American clock. Half a dozen cheap chairs, a shelf well filled with
indifferently bound books, a few unframed woodcuts hung upon the walls,
made up the furniture and ornamentation. Opening from this apartment
laterally was evidently a bedroom. At the back a skilling, a lower
roofed portion of the building, contained several smaller rooms. A
detached two-roomed building, in what would have been the back-yard had
any enclosure been made, was probably the kitchen and laundry.
Mrs. Freeman insisted upon putting down the kettle to boil, in order
that she might make a cup of tea for her distinguished visitor,
evidently under the opinion that every one naturally desired to drink
tea whenever they could get it.
‘And how have you been behaving yourself, Tottie?’ said she, addressing
her daughter, as a convenient mode of opening the conversation. ‘I hope
and trust you’ve been a help to Miss Neuchamp. Has she, miss?’
‘Oh, certainly,’ answered Augusta; ‘Mary Anne has been a very good
girl indeed. I don’t know how I should get on without her. And I have
borrowed her side-saddle too. How long will it be before Mr. Freeman
comes home?’
‘Oh, he won’t be home much before dark. He’s always out on the run all
day long. He hates coming in before the day is done.’
‘Why is that, Mrs. Freeman?’
‘“Because,” he says, “what can a man do after his day’s work but sit
down and twirl his thumbs.” He haven’t got any garden here to fiddle
about in, and he can’t sit still and smoke, like some people.‘
‘But why don’t you have a garden?’ promptly inquired Augusta. ‘I
suppose there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have one?’
‘You see, miss,’ said Mrs. Freeman, casting about for a mode of
explaining to her young lady visitor that she didn’t know what she was
talking about, ‘the ground ain’t very good just here; and though it’s
so dry and baked just now, they say the floods come all over it; and
perhaps we mightn’t be here altogether that long. And Freeman, he’s
had a deal of trouble with the stock lately. I don’t say but what a
garden would look pretty enough; but who’s to work in it? It ain’t like
our place down the country. There we had a garden—lots of peaches and
grapes, and more plums, apples, and quinces than we could use and give
away, besides early potatoes and all kinds of vegetables.’
‘I suppose you regretted leaving such a home,’ said Miss Neuchamp,
rather impressed by the hothouse profusion of the fruits mentioned.
‘Well, I’d rather live there on a pound a week,’ said Mrs. Freeman,
‘than here on riches. Freeman thought the stock would make up for all,
but I didn’t, and I’m always sorry for the day we ever left the old
farm.’
As the good woman spoke the tears stood in her eyes, and Miss Neuchamp
much marvelled that any spot in the desolate region of Australia
should have power to attract the affection even of hard-worked,
unrelieved Mrs. Freeman.
‘Mother’s always fretting about that old place at Bowning,’ said
Tottie. ‘I don’t believe it was any great things either. It was a deal
colder than this, and we had lots of milk and butter always; but bread
and butter’s not worth caring about.’
‘You don’t recollect it, Tottie,’ said her mother, ‘or you would not
talk in that way. Don’t you remember going into the garden to pick the
peaches? How cool and shady it was in the mornings, to be sure, without
scores of mosquitoes to sting and eat us up! Then there was always
grass enough for the cows, and we had plenty of milk and butter and
cheese, except, perhaps, in the dead of winter. It was better for all
of us in other ways too, and that’s more.’
‘I don’t see that, mother,’ said Tottie.
‘But I do,’ said Mrs. Freeman, ‘and more than me knows it. There’s your
father isn’t the same man, without his regular work at the farm, and
the carrying and the other jobs, that used to fill up his time from
daylight to dark. Now he’s nothing but the cattle to look after; and
such weather as this there’s nothing to do from month’s end to month’s
end, unless to pull them out of the waterholes. And I _know_ he had a
“burst” at that wretched _Stockman’s Arms_ the last time he was down
the river. He that was that sober before you could not tell him from a
Son of Temperance.‘
‘I feel sorry that you should have so much reason to complain of your
lot,’ said Miss Neuchamp. ‘The poor, I am aware, are never contented,
at least none that I ever saw in England. Yet it seems a pity, indeed,
that want of patience and trust in Providence should have led to your
moving to this unsuitable and, I am afraid, ill-fated locality.’
‘We’re not altogether so poor, miss,’ said the worthy matron,
recovering herself. ‘Abe will have over five hundred pounds in the bank
when he’s delivered up the land and the stock to this Mr. Levison,
that’s bought us all out. But what’s a little money, one way or the
other, if your life’s miserable, and your husband takes to idle ways
and worse, and your children grow up duffers and planters, and perhaps
end in sticking up people?’
‘Oh, mother, shut up!’ ejaculated Tottie, with more kindliness in her
tone than the words would have indicated. ‘Things won’t be as had as
that. Don’t I teach Poll and Sally and Ned and Billy? Besides, what
does Miss Neuchamp know about duffing and sticking up? We’ll be all
right when we clear out next year, and you can go back to Bowning and
buy Book’s farm, and set father splitting stringy-bark rails for the
rest of his life, if that’s what keeps him good. I expect the tea is
ready. Won’t you give Miss Neuchamp a cup?’
Mrs. Freeman made haste to fill up a cup of tea, and a small jug of
milk being produced, Miss Augusta found herself in possession of
the best cup of tea she had tasted at Rainbar. She felt a sincere
compassion for her hostess as a woman of properly submissive turn of
mind, who had sense enough to regret her improper and irreligious
departure from the lowly state in which Providence had placed her.
Promising to call again, and comforting the low-spirited matron as
far as in her lay, she remounted Osmund with some difficulty by means
of the chair, and rode homewards, followed by Mr. Windsor, who had
solaced his leisure by extracting from the younger girls, whom he had
descried fishing, the latest news of the cattle operations of the
family generally.
‘Your mother seems to be very much of my opinion, Mary Anne,’ said Miss
Augusta as soon as they were fairly on the sandy home-station track,
‘that this is a most undesirable place to live in.’
‘Mother’s as good a woman as ever was,’ said Tottie, ‘but she don’t
“savey.” She’s always fretting about our old farm; and it certainly was
cooler—that’s about all the pull there was in it. Father’s made more
money here in two or three years than he’d have got together in twenty
there. I should have been hoeing corn all day with a pair of thick
boots on, and grown up as wild as a scrub filly. I don’t want to go
back.‘
‘Your mother seems a person of excellent sense, Mary Anne, and I must
say that I _fully agree with her_,’ said Miss Neuchamp, with her most
unbending expression, designed to modify her attendant’s lightness of
tone. ‘Depend upon it, unhappiness and misfortune invariably follow the
attempt to quit an allotted station in life.’
‘Oh, that be hanged for a yarn! Oh, I beg your pardon, miss,’ said
Tottie confusedly, for she was on the point of relapsing into the
Rainbar vernacular. ‘But surely every one ain’t bound to stop where
they’re planted, good soil or bad, water or no water, like a corn-seed
in a cow track or a pumpkin in a tree stump! Men and women have it
in ’em to forage about a bit, else how do some people get on so
wonderfully. I’ve read about self-help, and all that, and heaps of
people beginning with half-a-crown and making fortunes. Ought they to
have thrown the half-crown away or the fortune after they had made it?’
‘No doubt some people are apparently favoured,’ said Miss Augusta,
regarding Tottie’s argument as another result of the over-education of
‘these sort of persons.’ ‘In the end it is often the worst thing that
can befall them. Now let us canter.‘
When Augusta Neuchamp had remained for a fortnight at Rainbar she began
to perceive that the monotonous existence likely to be unreasonably
prolonged would serve no object either of pleasure or profit. No
amount of residence would teach her an iota more of the nature of such
an establishment as Rainbar than she knew already. What was there
to learn? The plains within sight of the cottage needed but to be
indefinitely multiplied; and what then? An area of country equally
arid, barren, unspeakably desolate. Other droves and herds of cattle
equally emaciated. Nothing possibly could be in her eyes more hopeless
and horrible than these endless death-stricken, famine-haunted wastes.
Why did Ernest stay here? She had tried her utmost to induce him to
abandon the whole miserable delusion, quoting the arguments of Mr.
Jermyn Croker until he spoke angrily about that gentleman and closed
the debate.
The obvious thing to do was to return to Sydney, but even this
comparatively simple step was difficult to carry out. Miss Neuchamp did
not desire again to tempt the perils of the road unattended. She had
taken it for granted that Ernest, the most complying and good-natured
of men ordinarily, would return to Sydney with her; and she had trusted
to the influence of civilisation and her steady persuasion to prevail
upon him to return to England to his friends, and to what she deemed to
be his fixed and unalterable position in life.
On this occasion she met with unexpected opposition. Ernest positively
declined to quit his station at present.
‘My dear Augusta,’ said he, ‘you do not know what you are asking. I
have a number of very important duties to perform here. My financial
state is an extremely critical one. I cannot with any decency appear in
Sydney when everything points to the ruin of myself and my whole order.
I am sincerely sorry that you should feel life here to be so extremely
_ennuyant_, but I should never, if consulted, have advised you to come;
and now I am afraid you must wait until a proper escort turns up or
until I can accompany you.’
‘And when will that be?’
‘When the rain comes, certainly not before.’
Miss Augusta said that this last contingency was as probable as the
near advent of the millennium. She would wait a given time, and, that
expired, would go down to Sydney as she had come up by herself.
A fortnight, even three weeks, passed away. Augusta had mentioned a
month as the outside limit of her forbearance. She read over and over
‘Mariana in the Moated Grange’ and ‘Mariana in the South’ with quite a
new appreciation of their peculiar accuracy as well as poetic sentiment.
Daily she worked and read, and walked and rode, and alternately was
hopeful or otherwise about the ultimate conversion of Tottie to the
true faith of proper English village lowliness and reverence. Daily
Ernest went forth ‘out on the run’ immediately after breakfast,
reappearing only at or after sunset. Insensibly Miss Neuchamp became
alarmed to find creeping over her a kind of provincial interest in the
affairs of the ‘burghers of this desert city.’ She listened almost
with excitement to the account of a lot of the new cattle having been
followed twenty miles over the boundary and recovered by Charley Banks.
She heard of a bushranger being captured about fifty miles off—this
was Jack Windsor’s story; of the mail coming in twelve hours late in
consequence of the horses being exhausted. Ernest gathered this from
the overseer of the last lot of travelling sheep that passed through,
having been locked up in Wargan Gaol for disobeying a summons. ‘Such a
handsome young fellow, miss.’ This was Tottie’s contribution.
What with the reading, the sewing, the teaching of Tottie, the
daily cousinly walks and talks, the hitherto uncompromising Augusta
became partially converted to station life, and finally admitted in
conversation with Ernest that, other things being equal, she _could_
imagine a woman enduring such privation for a few years, always
assuming that she had the companionship of the one man to whom alone
she could freely devote every waking thought, every pulsation of the
heart.
‘Do you think there’s any man born, miss,’ inquired Tottie, who was
laying the cloth for dinner, but who stopped deliberately and listened
with qualified approval to the sentence with which Miss Neuchamp
concluded her statement—‘any man born—except in a book—like that? I
don’t. They most of ’em seem to me to take it very easy, smoking and
riding about, and drinking at odd times. It’s the women that all the
real pull comes on.’
‘I was not addressing myself to you, Mary Anne,’ replied Miss Augusta
with dignity; ‘I was speaking to Mr. Neuchamp only. I should hardly
think your experience entitled you to offer an opinion.’
‘H—m,’ said Tottie, proceeding with the plates. ‘I’m young, and I
suppose I don’t know much. But I hear what’s going on. Don’t you think
I’d better go down to Sydney, to take care of you on the road, miss, in
case there’s a Chinaman to knock over? I think I could do that, if I
was drove to it.’
On the next day an unusual occurrence took place in that land where
events and novelties seemed to have perished like the grass, under the
slow calcining of the deadly season—a dray arrived from town.
Miss Neuchamp, in her sore need of change and occupation, could have
cheerfully witnessed the unpacking of ordinary station stores, in
which, as usual, a little drapery would be comprised. But here again
disappointment. It was merely a load of flour.
Depressed and discouraged, Miss Neuchamp had condescended to watch
the unloading of the unromantic freight, deriving a faint interest in
noting with what apparent ease Jack Windsor and Charley Banks placed
the heavy bags upon their shoulders and deposited them in the store.
Rarely was Miss Augusta so lowered in spirit as not to be able to
talk. On this occasion she had informed Tottie, with some relish, that
English country girls were much ruddier and more healthy looking, as
well as, she doubted not, stronger and more capable of endurance, than
those born in Australia could possibly be.
‘Why so?’ inquired Tottie with animation.
‘Why?’ said Miss Neuchamp with asperity; ‘because of the cool,
beautiful climate they live in, the regular, wholesome labour they are
born to, the superiority of the whole land and people to this dull,
deceitful country, all sand and sun-glare.’
‘Well, I can’t say, miss,’ replied Tottie, plotting a surprise, with
characteristic coolness, ‘about English girls’ looks, because I’ve
hardly ever seen any; but as for health, I’ve a middling appetite, I
never was a day ill since I was born, and as to being strong—look here.‘
Before the horrified Augusta could forbid her rapid motion, she bounded
over to the dray, from which Mr. Windsor had just borne his two hundred
pounds of farina. She placed her back beneath the lessening load, and
stretching her arms upward in the way proper to grasp the tied corner
of the bag, said imperiously, ‘Here, Mr. Carrier, just you lower that
bag steady; I want to show the English lady what a Currency girl can
walk away with.’
The tall sunburned driver entered into the joke, and winking at Charley
Banks, who stood by laughing, he placed the heavy bag fairly and square
upon Tottie’s plump shoulders. Miss Neuchamp’s gaze was riveted upon
the erratic ‘help’ as if she had been about to commit suicide.
‘Oh! don’t—don’t,’ she gasped; ‘are you mad, Mary Anne? You will break
your back, or cripple yourself for life. Mr. Banks, pray interfere! I
am sure my cousin will be angry—pray stop her!’
Charley Banks was not afraid that anything dreadful would happen. He
had seen the bush girls perform feats of strength and activity ere now
which proved to him that very little cause for apprehension existed in
the present case.
And there was not much time. For one moment the girl stood, with her
arms raised above her head, her figure, in its natural and classic
grace, proving the unspeakable advantage of the free, open-air life,
with fullest liberty for varied exercise, which she had had from her
birth. The next she had moved forward with firm, elastic tread, under
a load which a city man out of training would have found no joke, and,
walking into the store, permitted it to fall accurately beside the
others which had been shot from the backs of Jack Windsor and Mr. Banks
into their appointed corner.
There was a slight cheer, and an exclamation of, ‘Well done, Tottie,’
as she returned with a heightened colour and half-triumphant,
half-confused air to Miss Neuchamp, who, relieved at her safe return
from the dangerous feat, did not administer so severe a rebuke as might
have been expected.
‘You may be thankful, Mary Anne, if you do not hereafter discover that
this day’s folly has laid the foundation of lifelong ill-health. But
come into the house, child. You _have_ some colour for once. Let me see
no more pranks of this sort again, while _I_ am here.’
‘Lor, miss,’ said Tottie, ‘that’s not the first bag of flour I’ve
carried. And father says there was a girl he knew at the Hawkesbury
that took one—and _him a-top of it_—around her father’s barn. He was
only a boy then.’
‘I think you may lay the tea, Mary Anne,’ said Miss Neuchamp, not
requiring any more Hawkesbury anecdotes. ‘I feel unusually fatigued
to-day.’
Fortunately for all parties, before the extreme limit of Miss
Neuchamp’s patience and the resources of Rainbar had been reached, a
welcome auxiliary arrived in the person of Mr. Middleton. That worthy
paterfamilias had been compelled to visit his outlying stations, in
order to ascertain the precise amount of death and destruction that
was taking place, and was returning to his usual residence nearer the
settled districts. He travelled in a light buggy with one horse, being
thus enabled to carry a supply of forage, and even water, with him.
This, the only known plan for crossing ‘dry country’ in a bad season,
and at the same time maintaining a horse in tolerable condition, was
not ornamental in detail. The buggy, with two bags of chaff secured
behind, a bushel of maize in front, and a large water bag and bucket
swung from the axle, had a striking and unusual effect. But the active,
upstanding roadster was in better condition than any horse which had
passed Rainbar for many a day, and Mr. Neuchamp at once saw his way to
a transfer of responsibility, as far as Miss Augusta was concerned.
‘Well, Neuchamp, what do you think of Australia now?’ said the old
gentleman, in a jolly voice, as, sunburned and dusty, with a great
straw hat, a curtain and a net veil, a canvas hood to his buggy, and
the fodder previously referred to picturesquely disposed about his
travelling carriage, he drove up to the verandah, causing Augusta to
put up her eyeglass with amazement. ‘Made any striking alterations for
our good? Wish you’d try your hand at the weather, if that’s in your
line.’
‘Come in, and we’ll talk it over,’ replied Ernest. ‘I’m charmed to see
you in any kind of weather. Permit me to present you to my cousin, Miss
Neuchamp, who doesn’t approve of your country at all. I must inform
you, Augusta, this is Mr. Middleton, my fellow-passenger, whom you have
heard me mention. I hope the ladies are all well.’
‘Pretty well when they wrote last; but, like all ladies, I fancy, they
are terribly tired of the present state of the season—and no wonder.
I can only recollect one worse drought during the thirty years I have
been out here.’
‘Worse!’ ejaculated Augusta, ‘I should have thought that impossible.
How did you contrive to exist?’
‘We _did_ manage to keep alive, as I am here to testify,’ laughed the
old gentleman, whose proportions were upon an ample and generous scale;
‘but of course it was a serious matter in every aspect. However, we
weathered that famine, and we shall get over this, with patience and
God’s blessing.’
That evening it was definitely arranged that Mr. Middleton should give
Miss Neuchamp a seat in his encumbered but not overladen buggy as far
as his own home station, which he trusted to reach in a week; after
which he would undertake, when she was tired of Mrs. Middleton and the
girls, to deposit her safely in Sydney.
This was an unlooked-for piece of good fortune. Ernest was much
relieved in mind at being freed from the dilemma of returning Augusta
as a kind of captive princess of Rainbar, or undertaking an expensive
and inopportune journey for the sole purpose of accompanying her to a
place which she never should have quitted.
Mr. Middleton, confident of securing provender, now that he had
commenced to approach the confines of civilisation, was not sorry to be
provided with a young lady companion, having had of late much of his
own unrelieved society; and Augusta was more pleased than she cared
to show at the prospect of escape from this Sahara existence, without
the prestige of the desert or the novelty of Arabs. That night her
portmanteau was packed, Tottie coming in for the reversion of as much
raiment as constituted her an authority in fashions ‘on the river’
ever after, and such a _douceur_ as confirmed her in Mr. Bank’s high
estimate of Miss Neuchamp as a ‘real lady.’
At six o’clock next morning Augusta Neuchamp bade farewell for ever to
the abode of the Australian representative of her ancient house.
‘When shall I see you in Sydney, Ernest?’ she said, as a last inquiry.
‘I daresay they will wish to know at Morahmee.’
‘When the rain comes,’ said Ernest resolutely. ‘Good-bye, Middleton;
take great care of her. Remember me to the ladies.’ And they were off.
It has been more than once remarked by those of our species who rely
for their intellectual recreation less upon action than observation,
that great events are apt to be produced by inconsiderable causes.
The sighing summer breeze sets free the mountain avalanche. The spark
creates the red ruin of a conflagration. The rat in Holland perforates
a dam and floods a province.
Mr. Neuchamp sat in his apartment at Rainbar contrasting, doubtfully,
his regret at the departure of his cousin with his recovered sense
of freedom and independence. True, she was the sole link which in
Australia connected him with the thousand spells of home.
But, ever angular in mind, she had proved herself to be so incapable
of accommodation to the necessarily altered conditions of a new land,
that he had despaired of her acclimatisation. She had even failed to
comprehend them.
‘This is the result,’ he would assert to himself, ‘of her deficiency in
the faculty of imagination. It may be there are other reasons, but I
trace her special failure in _camaraderie_ to this neglect of her fairy
godmother.’
A person with deficient ideality is necessarily imprisoned by the
present. Unable to portray for themselves a presentment of unaccustomed
conditions on the mental canvas, such as is traced by Fancy, coloured
by Hope, yet corrected by Prudence, they are wholly precluded from
the prevision, even in part, of the living wonders, the breathing
enchantments, of the future. To them no city of rest, glorious and
beautiful, arises from the dull vulgarities of life and endeavour;
all with them is of the earth, earthy. A gospel of hard-eyed economy,
grudging gain, unrelieved toil, for the poor; for the sordid aspirant,
by endless thrift and striving, ‘property, property, property;’ for the
rich, a message of selfish enjoyment, grasping monopoly, ungenial ease.
‘Such would the world be were the human mind divested of the sublime
attributes of Faith and Imagination!’ exclaimed Ernest, borne away from
his present cares. ‘There may be perils for the glad mariner on the
sun-bright, flashing wave; but he has the possible glory of descrying
purple isles, undiscovered continents. Dying, he falls as a hero;
living, he may survive to be hailed as the world’s benefactor.’
Much comforted by these bright-hued imaginings and illuminings of the
path in which he knew himself to be an ardent traveller, Mr. Neuchamp
awaited his mail-bag with more than usual serenity.