TOONARBIN.
"But," I think I hear you say, "What has become of Mary Hawker all this
time? You raised our interest about her somewhat, at first, as a young
and beautiful woman, villain-beguiled, who seemed, too, to have a
temper of her own, and promised, under circumstances, to turn out a bit
of a b--mst-ne. What is she doing all this time? Has she got fat, or
had the small-pox, that you neglect her like this? We had rather more
than we wanted of her and her villanous husband in the first volume;
and now nothing. Let us, at all events, hear if she is dead or alive.
And her husband, too,--although we hope, under Providence, that he has
left this wicked world, yet we should be glad to hear of it for
certain. Make inquiries, and let us know the result. Likewise, be so
good as inform us, how is Miss Thornton?"
To all this I answer humbly, that I will do my best. If you will bring
a dull chapter on you, duller even than all the rest, at least read it,
and exonerate me. The fact is, my dear sir, that women like Mary Hawker
are not particularly interesting in the piping times of peace. In
volcanic and explosive times they, with their wild animal passions,
become tragical and remarkable, like baronesses of old. But in tranquil
times, as I said, they fall into the back-ground, and show us the value
and excellence of such placid, noble helpmates, as the serene,
high-bred Mrs. Buckley.
A creek joined the river about a mile below the Buckleys' station,
falling into the main stream with rather a pretty cascade, which even
at the end of the hottest summer poured a tiny silver thread across the
black rocks. Above the cascade the creek cut deep into the table land,
making a charming glen, with precipitous blue stone walls, some eighty
or ninety feet in height, fringed with black wattle and lightwood, and
here and there, among the fallen rocks nearest the water, a fern tree
or so, which last I may say are no longer there, Dr. Mulhaus having cut
the hearts out of them and eaten them for cabbage. Should you wander up
this little gully on a hot summer's day, you would be charmed with the
beauty of the scenery, and the shady coolness of the spot; till coming
upon a black snake coiled away among the rocks, like a rope on the deck
of a man of war, you would probably withdraw, not without a strong
inclination to "shy" at every black stick you saw for the rest of the
day. For this lower part of the Moira creek was, I am sorry to say, the
most troubled locality for snakes, diamond, black, carpet, and other,
which I ever happened to see.
But following this creek you would find that the banks got rapidly less
precipitous, and at length it swept in long curves through open forest
glades, spreading, too, into deep dark water-holes, only connected by
gravelly fords, with a slender stream of clear water running across the
yellow pebbles. These water-holes were the haunts of the platypus and
the tortoise. Here, too, were flocks of black duck and teal, and as you
rode past, the merry little snipe would rise from the water's edge, and
whisk away like lightning through the trees. Altogether a pleasant
woodland creek, alongside of which, under the mighty box-trees, ran a
sandy road, bordered with deep beds of bracken fern, which led from
Baroona of the Buckleys to Toonarbin of the Hawkers.
A pleasant road, indeed, winding through the old forest straight
towards the mountains, shifting its course so often that every minute
some new vista opened upon you, till at length you came suddenly upon a
clear space, beyond which rose a picturesque little granite cap, at the
foot of which you saw a charming house, covered with green creepers,
and backed by huts, sheepyards, a woolshed, and the usual concomitants
of a flourishing Australian sheep station. Behind all again towered
lofty, dark hanging woods, closing the prospect.
This is Toonarbin, where Mary Hawker, with her leal and trusty cousin
Tom Troubridge for partner, has pitched her tent, after all her
spasmodic, tragical troubles, and here she is leading as happy, and by
consequence as uninteresting, an existence as ever fell to the lot of a
handsome woman yet.
Mary and Miss Thornton had stayed with the Buckleys until good cousin
Tom had got a house ready to receive them, and then they moved up and
took possession. Mary and Tom were from the first copartners, and,
latterly, Miss Thornton had invested her money, about 2,000 pounds, in
the station. Matters were very prosperous, and, after a few years, Tom
began to get weighty and didactic in his speech, and to think of
turning his attention to politics.
To Mary the past seemed like a dream--as an old dream, well-nigh
forgotten. The scene was so changed that at times she could hardly
believe that all those dark old days were real. Could she, now so busy
and happy, be the same woman who sat worn and frightened over the dying
fire with poor Captain Saxon? Is she the same woman whose husband was
hurried off one wild night, and transported for coining? Or is all that
a hideous imagination?
No. Here is the pledge and proof that it is all too terribly real. This
boy, whom she loves so wildly and fiercely, is that man's son, and his
father, for aught she knows, is alive, and only a few poor hundred
miles off. Never mind; let it be forgotten as though it never was. So
she forgot it, and was happy.
But not always. Sometimes she could not but remember what she was, in
spite of the many kind friends who surrounded her, and the new and busy
life she led. Then would come a fit of despondency, almost of despair,
but the natural elasticity of her temper soon dispersed these clouds,
and she was her old self again.
Her very old self, indeed. That delicate-minded, intellectual old maid,
Miss Thornton, used to remark with silent horror on what she called
Mary's levity of behaviour with men, but more especially with honest
Tom Troubridge. Many a time, when the old lady was sitting darning (she
was always darning; she used to begin darning the things before they
were a week out of the draper's shop), would her tears fall upon her
work, as she saw Mary sitting with her child in her lap, smiling, while
the audacious Tom twisted a flower in her hair, in the way that pleased
him best. To see anything wrong, and to say nothing, was a thing
impossible. She knew that speaking to Mary would only raise a storm,
and so, knowing the man she had to deal with, she determined to speak
to Tom.
She was not long without her opportunity. Duly darning one evening,
while Mary was away putting her boy to bed, Tom entered from his wine.
Him, with a combination of valour and judgment, she immediately
attacked, acting upon a rule once laid down to Mary--"My dear, if you
want to manage a man, speak to him after dinner."
"Mr. Troubridge," said Miss Thornton. "May I speak a few words to you
on private affairs?"
"Madam," said Tom, drawing up a chair, "I am at your service night or
day."
"A younger woman," said Miss Thornton, "might feel some delicacy in
saying what I am going to say. But old age has its privileges, and so I
hope to be forgiven."
"Dear Miss Thornton," said Tom, "you must be going to say something
very extraordinary if it requires forgiveness from me."
"Nay, my dear kinsman," said Miss Thornton; "if we begin exchanging
compliments, we shall talk all night, and never get to the gist of the
matter after all. Here is what I want to say. It seems to me that your
attentions to our poor Mary are somewhat more than cousinly, and it
behoves me to remind you that she is still a married woman. Is that too
blunt? Have I offended you?"
"Nay--no," said Tom; "you could never offend me. I think you are right
too. It shall be amended, madam."
And after this Mary missed many delicate little attentions that Tom had
been used to pay her. She thought he was sulky on some account at
first, but soon her good sense showed her that, if they two were to
live together, she must be more circumspect, or mischief would come.
For, after all, Tom had but small place in her heart. Heart filled
almost exclusively with this poor sulky little lad of hers, who seemed
born to trouble, as the sparks went upward. In teething even,
aggravating beyond experience, and afterwards suffering from the whole
list of juvenile evils, in such a way as boy never did before; coming
out of these troubles too, with a captious, disagreeable temper,
jealous in the extreme,--not a member who, on the whole, adds much to
the pleasure of the little household,--yet, with the blindest
passionate love towards some folks. Instance his mother, Thomas
Troubridge, and Sam Buckley.
For these three the lad had a wild hysterical affection, and yet none
of them had much power over him. Once by one unconsidered word arouse
the boy's obstinacy, and all chance of controlling him was gone. Then,
your only chance was to call in Miss Thornton, who had a way of
managing the boy, more potent than Mary's hysterics, and Tom's
indignant remonstrances, or Sam's quiet persuasions.
For instance,--once, when he was about ten years old, his mother set
him to learn some lesson or another, when he had been petitioning to go
off somewhere with the men. He was furiously naughty, and threw the
book to the other end of the room, all the threats and scoldings of his
mother proving insufficient to make him pick it up again. So that at
last she went out, leaving him alone, triumphant, with Miss Thornton,
who said not a word, but only raised her eyes off her work, from time
to time, to look reproachfully on the rebellious boy. He could stand
his mother's anger, but he could not stand those steady wondering looks
that came from under the old lady's spectacles. So that, when Mary came
in again, she found the book picked up, and the lesson learned.
Moreover, it was a fortnight before the lad misbehaved himself again.
In sickness and in health, in summer and in winter, for ten long years
after they settled at Toonarbin, did this noble old lady stand beside
Mary as a rock of refuge in all troubles, great or small. Always
serene, patient, and sensible, even to the last; for the time came when
this true and faithful servant was removed from among them to receive
her reward.
One morning she confessed herself unable to leave her bed; that was the
first notice they had. Doctor Mayford, sent for secretly, visited her.
"Break up of the constitution," said he,--"no organic disease,"--but
shook his head. "She will go," he added, "with the first frost. I can
do nothing." And Dr. Mulhaus, being consulted, said he was but an
amateur doctor, but concurred with Dr. Mayford. So there was nothing to
do but to wait for the end as patiently as might be.
During the summer she got out of bed, and sat in a chair, which Tom
used to lift dexterously into the verandah. There she would sit very
quietly; sometimes getting Mrs. Buckley, who came and lived at
Toonarbin that summer, to read a hymn for her; and, during this time,
she told them where she would like to be buried.
On a little knoll, she said, which lay to the right of the house,
barely two hundred yards from the window. Here the grass grew shorter
and closer than elsewhere, and here freshened more rapidly beneath the
autumn rains. Here, on winter's evenings, the slanting sunbeams
lingered longest, and here, at such times, she had been accustomed to
saunter, listening to the sighing of the wind, in the dark funeral
sheoaks and cypresses, like the far-off sea upon a sandy shore. Here,
too, came oftener than elsewhere a flock of lories, making the dark low
trees gay with flying living blossoms. And here she would lie with her
feet towards the east, her sightless eyes towards that dreary ocean
which she would never cross again.
One fresh spring morning she sat up and talked serenely to Mrs.
Buckley, about matters far higher and more sacred than one likes to
deal with in a tale of this kind, and, after a time, expressed a wish
for a blossom of a great amaryllis which grew just in front of her
window.
Mrs. Buckley got the flower for her, and so holding the crimson-striped
lily in her delicate, wasted fingers, the good old lady passed from
this world without a struggle, as decently and as quietly as she had
always lived in it.
* * * * *
This happened when Charles was about ten years old, and, for some time,
the lad was subdued and sad. He used to look out of the window at night
towards the grave, and wonder why they had put her they all loved so
well, to lie out there under the wild-sweeping winter rain. But, by
degrees, he got used to the little square white railing on the sheoak
knoll, and, ere half a year was gone, the memory of his aunt had become
very dim and indistinct.
Poor Mary, too, though a long while prepared for it, was very deeply
and sincerely grieved at Miss Thornton's death; but she soon recovered
from it. It came in the course of nature, and, although the house
looked blank and dull for a time, yet there was too much life all
around her, too much youthful happy life, to make it possible to dwell
very long on the death of one who had left them full of years and
honour. But Lord Frederick, before spoken of incidentally in this
narrative, playing billiards at Gibraltar, about a year after this; had
put into his hand a letter, from which, when opened, there fell a lock
of silver grey hair on the green cloth, which he carefully picked up,
and, leaving his game, went home to his quarters. His comrades thought
it was his father who was dead, and when they heard it was only his
sister's old governess, they wondered exceedingly; "for Fred," said
they, "is not given to be sentimental."
And now, in a year or two, it began to be very difficult to keep Master
Charley in order. When he was about thirteen, there was a regular
guerilla-war between him and his mother, on the subject of learning,
which ended, ultimately, in the boy flatly refusing to learn anything.
His natural capacities were but small, and, under any circumstances,
knowledge would only have been acquired by him with infinite pains.
But, as it was, with his selfishness fostered so excessively by his
mother's indulgence, and Tom's good-humoured carelessness, it became
totally impossible to teach him anything. In vain his mother scolded
and wept, in vain Tom represented to him the beauties and excellences
of learning--learn the boy would not; so that at fourteen he was given
up in despair by his mother, having learnt nearly enough of reading,
writing, and ciphering, to carry on the most ordinary business of life,
a most lamentable state of things for a lad who, in after life, would
be a rich man, and who, in a young and rapidly-rising country, might
become, by the help of education, politically influential.
I think that when Samuel Buckley and James Brentwood were grown to be
young men of eighteen or nineteen, and he was about seventeen or so, a
stranger would have seen a great deal of difference between the two
former and the latter, and would, probably, have remarked that James
and Sam spoke and behaved like two gentlemen, but that Charles did not,
but seemed as though he had come from a lower grade in society,--with
some truth too, for there was a circumstance in his bringing up which
brought him more harm than all his neglect of learning, and all his
mother's foolish indulgences.
Both Major Buckley and Captain Brentwood made it a law of the Medes and
Persians that neither of their sons should hold any conversation with
the convict servants, save in the presence of competent authorities;
and, indeed, they both, as soon as increased emigration enabled them,
removed their old household servants, and replaced them by free men,
newly arrived: a lazy independent class, certainly, with exaggerated
notions of their own importance in this new phase of their life, but
without the worse vices of the convicts. This rule, even in such
well-regulated households, was a very hard one to get observed, even
under flogging penalties; and, indeed, formed the staple affliction of
poor thoughtless Jim's early life, as this little anecdote will show:--
One day going to see Captain Brentwood, when Jim was about ten years
old, I met that young gentleman (looking, I thought, a little out of
sorts) about two hundred yards from the house. He turned with me to go
back, and, after the first salutations, I said,--
"Well, Jim, my boy, I hope you've been good since I saw you last?"
"Oh dear, no," was the answer, with a shake of the head that meant
volumes.
"I'm sorry to hear that; what is the matter?"
"I've been CATCHING it," said Jim, in a whisper, coming close alongside
of me. "A tea-stick as thick as my forefinger all over."--Here he
entered into particulars, which, however harmless in themselves, were
not of a sort usually written in books.
"That's a bad job," I said; "what was it for?"
"Why, I slipped off with Jerry to look after some colts on the black
swamp, and was gone all the afternoon; and so Dad missed me; and when I
got home didn't I CATCH IT! Oh lord, I'm all over blue wales; but that
ain't the worst."
"What's the next misfortune?" I inquired.
"Why, when he got hold of me he said, 'Is this the first time you have
been away with Jerry, sir?' and I said, 'Yes' (which was the awfullest
lie ever you heard, for I went over to Barker's with him two days
before); then he said, 'Well, I must believe you if you say so. I shall
not disgrace you by making inquiries among the men;' and then he gave
it to me for going that time, and since then I've felt like Cain and
Abel for telling him such a lie. What would you do,--eh?"
"I should tell him all about it," I said.
"Ah, but then I shall catch it again, don't you see! Hadn't I better
wait till these wales are gone down?"
"I wouldn't, if I were you," I answered; "I'd tell him at once."
"I wonder why he is so particular," said Jim; "the Delisles and the
Donovans spend as much of their time in the huts as they do in the
house."
"And fine young blackguards they'll turn out," I said; in which I was
right in those two instances. And although I have seen young fellows
brought up among convicts who have turned out respectable in the end,
yet it is not a promising school for good citizens.
But at Toonarbin no such precautions as these were taken with regard to
Charles. Tom was too careless, and Mary too indulgent. It was hard
enough to restrain the boy during the lesson hours, falsely so called.
After that he was allowed to go where he liked, and even his mother
sometimes felt relieved by his absence; so that he was continually in
the men's huts, listening to their yarns--sometimes harmless bush
adventures, sometimes, perhaps, ribald stories which he could not
understand; but one day Tom Troubridge coming by the hut looked in
quietly, and saw master Charles smoking a black pipe, (he was not more
than fourteen,) and heard such a conversation going on that he advanced
suddenly upon them, and ordered the boy home in a sterner tone than he
had ever used to him before, and looked out of the door till he had
disappeared. Then he turned round to the men.
There were three of them, all convicts, one of whom, the one he had
heard talking when he came in, was a large, desperate-looking fellow.
When these men mean to deprecate your anger, I have remarked they
always look you blankly in the face; but if they mean to defy you and
be impudent, they never look at you, but always begin fumbling and
fidgetting with something. So when Tom saw that the big man before
mentioned (Daniel Harvey by name) was stooping down before the fire, he
knew he was going to have a row, and waited.
"So boss," began the ruffian, not looking at him, "we ain't fit company
for the likes of that kinchin,--eh?"
"You're not fit company for any man except the hangman," said Tom,
looking more like six-foot-six than six-foot-three.
"Oh my---- (colonial oath!)" said the other; "oh my---- 'cabbage tree!'
So there's going to be a coil about that scrubby little myrnonger; eh?
Don't you fret your bingy; boss; he'll be as good a man as his father
yet."
For an instant a dark shadow passed over Tom's face.
"So," he thought, "these fellows know all about George Hawker, eh?
Well, never mind; what odds if they do?" And then he said aloud,
turning round on Harvey, "Look you here, you dog; if I ever hear of
your talking in that style before that boy, or any other boy, by George
I'll twist your head off!"
He advanced towards him, as if to perform that feat on the spot; in a
moment the convict had snatched his knife from his belt and rushed upon
him.
Very suddenly indeed; but not quite quick enough to take the champion
of Devon by surprise. Ere he was well within reach Tom had seized the
hand that held the knife, and with a backward kick of his left foot
sent the embryo assassin sprawling on his back on the top of the fire,
whence Tom dragged him by his heels, far more astonished than burnt.
The other two men had, meanwhile, sat taking no notice, or seeming to
take none, of the disturbance. Now, however, one of them spoke, and
said,--
"I'm sure, sir, you didn't hear me say nothing wrong to the young
gent," and so on, in a whining tone, till Tom cut him short by saying
that, "if he had any more nonsense among them, he would send 'em all
three over to Captain Desborough, to the tune of fifty (lashes)
a-piece."
After this little EMEUTE Charles did not dare to go into the huts, and
soon after these three men were exchanged. But there remained one man
whose conversation and teaching, though not, perhaps, so openly
outrageously villanous as that of the worthy Harvey, still had a very
unfortunate effect on his character.
This was a rather small, wiry, active man, by name Jackson, a native,
colonially convicted, very clever among horses, a capital light-weight
boxer, and in running superb, a pupil and PROTEGE of the immortal
"flying pieman," (May his shadow never be less!) a capital cricketer,
and a supreme humbug. This man, by his various accomplishments and
great tact, had won a high place in Tom Troubridge's estimation, and
was put in a place of trust among the horses; consequently having
continual access to Charles, to whom he made himself highly agreeable,
as being heir to the property; giving him such insights into the worst
side of sporting life, and such truthful accounts of low life in
Sydney, as would have gone far to corrupt a lad of far stronger moral
principle than he.
And so, between this teaching of evil and neglect of good, Mary
Hawker's boy did not grow up all that might be desired. And at
seventeen, I am sorry to say, he got into a most disreputable connexion
with a Highland girl, at one of the Donovans' out-station huts; which
caused his kindly guardian, Tom Troubridge, a great deal of vexation,
and his mother the deepest grief, which was much increased at the same
time by something I will relate in the next chapter.
So sixteen years rolled peacefully away, chequered by such trifling
lights and shadows as I have spoken of. The new generation, the
children of those whom we knew at first, are now ready to take their
places, and bear themselves with more or less credit in what may be
going on. And now comes a period which in the memory of all those whom
I have introduced to you ranks as the most important of their lives. To
me, looking back upon nearly sixty years of memory, the events which
are coming stand out from the rest of my quiet life, well defined and
remarkable, above all others. As looking on our western moors, one sees
the long straight sky-line, broken only once in many miles by some
fantastic Tor.