Adolphe. That is his man--an Austrian by birth, but with a cosmopolitan
command of tongues. The Major and he bid each other an eternal farewell
every three months, if not oftener. Adolphe went yesterday morning to
send a telegram for his master, and did not return till late in the
afternoon, very much the worse for liquor, which he often takes beyond
the bounds of moderation, as he candidly explains, "pour la guerison de
doleur." He always knows when he has taken too much, and his custom is
to come to the Major with a virtuously determined air and say, "Sir, it
is wrong that I should longer anguish the heart of a true and loving
woman. I must return to my Julie--and yet to leave you----" then he
breaks down. Often as this little farce has been acted, with
variations, it always seems to rouse the Major's ire, and then make him
relent all in one scene.
'"If only his conscience could be touched!" murmured Mr. Ferrier. Would
the Major allow him to give Adolphe some little books on the evils of
alcohol? Certainly; but the Major thought it was only fair to tell Mr.
Ferrier that Adolphe was always ready to sign a pledge against
intoxicants. But when he is tipsy, next day he explains with great
fluency how the necessity for nervine aliment is insurmountable in a
climate like this.
'No; I am not going to Laurette at as early a date as was fixed, because
it is now quite evident that mother is out of health. I cannot go until
she is better. Dr. Stein is in attendance, and I am head nurse, Allie
bottle-washer, Kirsty major-domo. Dr. Stein tells me that our friend
Professor Kellwitz contemplates matrimony--at sixty-three, and for the
first time!--and to a lady who has been his intimate friend for over
twenty years. Is it not dreadful to spoil so tried a friendship in this
ruthless way?'
*CHAPTER XV.*
'Fairacre, 1st June.
'Poor, dear Mr. Ferrier has had a severe disappointment with Adolphe,
who, under the ex-missionary's unwearied efforts, became not only a
total abstainer, but to some extent a lecturer. He devoutly read Mr.
Ferrier's good little temperance booklets--nay, learnt much of them by
heart; so that when it occurred to some zealous teetotalers to put him
on the platform, Adolphe became at once very popular, and was always
greeted with cheers. No doubt, like M. Jourdain's dancing-master, who
hungered after _un peu de gloire_, Adolphe found that _applaudissements
me touchent_. Last Tuesday he went with Mr. Ferrier to address an
evening temperance assemblage at a little township four miles away. It
seems that on these occasions it is customary sometimes to make certain
experiments with alcohol to show its evil effects. When it came to
Adolphe's turn to address the meeting, he gave what Mr. Ferrier called
"an able and earnest address." At a certain point he broke an egg into
a glass and then poured some brandy on it to show what a deleterious
effect it had on the albumen. The audience cheered lustily, and were
much impressed. But when the next speaker rose, Adolphe was seen to
slip behind him and swallow the experiment in a few gulps. Loud
expressions of disapproval arose, and Adolphe instantly came forward to
defend himself from the "calumny." It was then apparent that he must
have been previously imbibing, and, in fact, he had taken a quarter of a
bottle of the Major's best brandy to make experiments which should
revolt the popular mind against "nervine aliment." When he returned
home that night he went weeping into the Major's room, imploring him not
to take any more stimulant of any kind, and holding himself up as an
example of its evil effects--and all through swallowing a small
experiment by an unaccountable error!
'Two days ago I was on a visit at Mrs. Marwood's, and went from there to
what the profane called a "disorganized charity meeting," along with
Mabel Towers. We, too, went as Mrs. Marwood's deputies. But what
singular instructions we received: "Here, you see, girls, is my list,"
said Mrs. Marwood, producing two octavo sheets with various names and
figures, etc.; "you see, there's a large committee of us, and we have to
be very business-like. Here are the numbers of things to be given
opposite each applicant's name. We decided that at a meeting some days
ago. Sometimes we run short, and are obliged to give a pair of trousers
instead of a dress; but if any complaints are made, give them a form to
fill up and send in, for we have to be very strict and accurate. And if
you happen to give too many things to one person, mind you give nothing
to the next. Mrs. Benjamin Ezra is to be there to-day; and you must
keep an eye on her that she does not give away my share. Her plan is to
give heaps away till everything is gone. She either loses her list, or
else never looks at it. This is very awkward in a society on such
strict business principles as the organized relief."
'Yes; so determined are we to imitate all the charities of the
mother-country, that before this "great fertile young Hercules" is yet
fifty years old, we not only provide relief works and soup-kitchens and
free breakfasts, as we did last winter, but this season we have also an
organized relief society, which, among other nefarious tricks,
distributes cast-off clothing. But, my dear, I warn you, do not send
any money to the philanthropic novelties of our Metropolis. They are
frightfully mischievous, and the really deserving poor do not go near
them. There is quite enough discriminating benevolence everywhere in
the country to cope with all honest poverty. It is when we begin to
tease charity-mongers with salaries that impostors and the cunningly
vicious have their innings, and that the unabashed professional pauper
appears in the land. We have now not only the weaklings, that have been
industriously sent us by emigration agents, but the greasy loafers of
other provinces who are attracted to ours by our notoriously
indiscriminate distribution of alms. Let me tell you of the two first
cases on our list, which may, I believe, be taken as average specimens
of what the rest were.
'No. 1 applicant: Mrs. O'Mulligan, with two girls.--Causes of
destitution: Husband, an ex-publican, long out of employment, large
family, furniture seized for rent. Mrs. O'Mulligan soon set us to work,
I can assure you. We were the first to arrive, and were ushered into a
room lined with wide shelves, full of clothing of all kinds, a great
deal of it as good as new. It was like a clothes pawn-shop without the
pathos, fortunately also without the dirt. Mrs. O'M. was down for one
woman's dress, two ditto for girls; one man's coat, one ditto trousers,
one ditto boots. She and the girls followed us into the clothes-room.
We soon found dresses for them. Then came the mother's turn; but as she
weighed over fourteen stone, it was no light task to fit her. "Shure,
now, and you see for yourselves, young ladies, that wouldn't kape on me
little finger. Yes, that's a foine thick stuff; but where 'ud I be in
it?--outside the most av it." At last she selected a pale blue
cashmere, not nearly as large as some useful dresses she had rejected.
Mrs. Marwood said this choice must have been made with a view to selling
or pawning, and no doubt that was the explanation. Then came the
husband's turn. He must have been phenomenal in his proportions, judging
by the yards of tape with which Mrs. O'M. measured the upper parts of
trousers we turned over for her. At last came a pair that looked as
though it must be the gift of a benevolent elephant; so this she put
aside. Then she pulled an endless sort of string from her pocket, which
turned out to be the measure for a pair of boots. Of course there were
none of such an impossible length.
'"It's not, thin, that Mr. O'Mulligan has such a large fut at all at
all, but he gets the swelled rheumatzises so bad. Indade, he had an
ilegant fut in his young days. But what with the throubles and the
sorrow, they seems to git larger ivery year." As the string was twenty
inches long, it was evident some mistake was made. It was, in fact,
"the lingth av little Paddy's throusers." After all the articles for
which this woman was put down had been produced, we politely asked her
to take them away. "Is it that this is all I'm to git?" she asked, with
a tragic air. We asked her what else she wanted, and she said: "I have
six helpless childer, and I want a complate shuit for each. Ye see thim
two girrls wid me? Wan av thim has a good ulster on, an' that's a lind;
the other, she has a good pair av boots, an' thim is a lind; so is the
hat wid a feather on top av my head, an' the gloves on me hands, an' the
mantle on me back wid a bead collar." She raised her voice and she
flourished her arms as she spoke. Finally she took up three pairs of
boys' trousers that were near her and went away, saying she would put us
in the papers for cruelty to an "onfortinate rispictable woman wid a
husband that had seen better days, and a large family and no support."
She turned back at the door and said: "Ye have a great roomful av things
sint by the charitable, an' ye sind me away wid a few miserable rags for
reasons best beknowns to yerselves!"
'Our next case was a small thin woman with an extraordinary facility for
tears. She wept copiously the moment we spoke to her. She never had
accepted charity before in all her life, and it was very hard to begin
now. With this she made a dart at a heap of boys' shirts that were near
her quite new, Mr. Marwood and other wholesale drapers having sent
various parcels of clothing from their warehouses. She wiped her eyes,
and folded up three shirts. She was down on the list as a widow with one
boy; name, Eliza Trimton; and the written oracle restricted her to two
articles for herself and three for the boy. I explained this to her,
and added that we were bound to keep to our list. Yes, of course--she
knew that; and she began to shed tears afresh, and pounced on an
elaborate tea-gown that had been sent by someone who had more money than
wit. Next she fixed her gaze on a very good ulster, and she instantly
began to cry afresh. No one, she said, but those that had seen better
days knew how bitter it was to accept alms. With that she folded up the
ulster, and put it with the other spoils. "It comes very hard to accept
charity for the first time," she murmured, seizing on a blue cloud, a
boy's vest, and a pair of merino stockings all at one swoop. For the
second time I read over to her the articles to which she was entitled,
and thought she had taken the hint, for she began to tie up her bundle.
But presently her tears flowed, and she picked up a woman's hat, a boy's
greatcoat, and a pair of boots in rapid succession. "But really, you
know, this is a great deal more than your share," said Mabel. "More
than my share!" retorted Mrs. Trimton, wiping her eyes vigorously. "Who
took it on theirselves to know all I want? I never breathed it to
anyone I needed so much. Never having accepted charity before, my
feelings was too delicate-like." With that she dried her eyes and went
away.
'By this time most of the committee-ladies had arrived, and one of them
said, as so many applicants were coming to-day, they had better not be
admitted into the room where the clothing was. "Of course that is the
proper plan," said another lady; "but there will be a heap of letters in
the papers saying the public gave so generously to the clothing fund,
and that the poor people were not allowed to fit themselves." However,
the applicants were finally made to wait outside, and served in their
turn alphabetically, an arrangement that gave great umbrage to some. I
heard one woman say it was a real shame she should have to wait so long
because her name began with Ho. Another woman was in tears because a
baby's hood given to her had no pink lining. A neighbour of hers, she
said, had one from the Belief Society last week lined with beautiful
pink silk, fit for a little princess! "Look at this," said another
recipient of aid, holding up a child's handsome scarlet mantle.
"There's where the tassel should be, and I won't go away till it's
found." Still another woman spoke in broken accents of despair of a
pair of shoes that were given to her with one buckle missing. It would
be unfair, however, not to mention one old woman who seemed to be quite
grateful. We came upon her in the lobby rearranging a man's greatcoat
and some other articles of male attire. Someone near her asked if any
mistake had been made. "Yes, my dear," she said, in a semi-confidential
whisper. Her face was very red, and she carried with her a strong odour
of some liquor. "There's been some blessed mistake, and I'm just
hurrying away before it's found out. I can get far more for these than
for any flimsy perticoats they'd give an old woman like me."
'I am this instant going into the Park Lands with Dorothy to see if a
magpie does not give us an act out of a bird comedy. By the way,
talking of birds, the last time Mr. Lindsay was here he told me a very
Haroun al Raschid anecdote of a man who lost a very peculiar sleeve-link
on the Murray Flats, and found it a year afterwards in the playhouse of
a silky bower-bird, dangling beside the capsule of a brandy-bottle and
the scarlet flowers of the pretty native wistaria. Mem. for my
note-book--Would this make a peg on which to hang an alibi? I asked Mr.
Lindsay the question, and he promptly said: "Oh, if it was to save a
fellow from swinging, of course it would never be found." Now, you know
how little speculative or "morbid" he is. Is it possible that life
itself is often more morbid than any reflections regarding it?'
*CHAPTER XVI*
'Fairacre, 9th June.
'I cannot report that mother is better; but she insists on thinking of
other people as much as if she were quite well. Poor Thomson is failing
rapidly. Yesterday at her wish I spent part of the day in taking care
of him. I must tell you what happened. After I had chatted with him
for a little he said: "There is a chapter, Miss Stella, as I liked when
I was a boy--somewhere in the Old Bible part--'tis about being took up
by the hair, and looking in at places, and seeing the women-folk weep
for Thomas. I'd like you to read it to me."
'Would you be able to find a chapter in the Bible by this? I doubt
whether I would, only that lately I have been rather fascinated by
Ezekiel. It was the eighth chapter he meant--where the likeness as the
appearance of fire put forth the form of a hand, and lifted the prophet
up by a lock of his hair. "Then he brought me to the door of the gate
of the Lord's house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat
women weeping for Tammuz." "I like them parts o' the Bible, so strange,
and yet they seems quite real like." You may be sure that I did not
attempt to foist any interpretation upon the text. There is a point at
which those who have read much of the best, and those who have read very
little, seem to meet--enjoyment of vague mystery and wonder, leading to
a subtle sense of the marvels that lurk under the masking raiment of
common-place. Just as I rose to go, the storm, which had been gathering
all the morning, began to come down in torrents. The rain beat sharply
against the window-panes, and the room suddenly darkened. I noticed the
sick man gazing at the window with a very sombre look, an expression
that had in it something--how shall I say it?--more tragic than poverty
or disease. "Miss Stella," he said in a low voice, "do you believe as
them that is gone could ever come back from the other world?" "I don't
know. I have often wondered whether they do or can," I answered, awed
by a sudden conviction that the man, to use our nurses' phrase, had at
some time "seen something." He moved restlessly, as though his head
were uneasy. I smoothed and shifted his pillow, and then to my dismay I
saw that great tears were rolling down his cheeks. No doubt he had
moved so that I should not see them, and I had done the very thing I
ought not to have done. Some strong wave of emotion swept over him, his
bosom heaved convulsively, and he sobbed half aloud.
'I felt horribly distressed, and not knowing what else to do, I tidied
up the fireplace and put some wood on the fire. "I saw his face as plain
as daylight at that very window, a week ago," he said, when he recovered
himself. And then he told me this little story. He came to South
Australia twenty years ago, a lad of eighteen. He was for some weeks a
knock-about hand on a sheep-station near Jarranda Bay. One of the
shepherds suddenly left, and he was sent to take his place. A few days
after he went to the Stone Hut, as it was called, he found an old black
woman, who was dying, and had with her only her daughter, a half-caste,
a slip of a girl of fourteen. They were beside a little creek, and had
had nothing to eat for three days except a big snake the girl had killed
near the water. They were on their way with other blacks to a great
corroborree that was to be held eighty miles further on, when the mother
was taken ill and left behind with her only daughter Caloona. Thomson
fed them, and gave them all the comforts he could. In a week the old
black woman died, and then the girl lived with him. He engaged himself
as shepherd for two years, and stayed altogether for eight. Caloona, he
said, turned out mighty handy, and she was always so wonderfully
thankful. "When you told me about that little dog of yourn, Miss
Stella--Fly you call him--I thought he was for all the world like my
poor Caloona. She would follow me about, and wanted to wait on me hand
and foot, and thought so much on me. I tuk to reading the New
Testament, and minding all the good things my grandmother used to tell
me. Caloona soon learnt to cook and do things much handier nor many a
white woman, and she kept the hut as neat and clean as a new pin. I
bought clothes and things for her from a hawker, and, if you believe me,
Miss Stella, she looked much prettier in them than many an altogether
white girl. She would be up and working before it was light, so as to
have breakfast and dinner cooked and come out with me after the sheep.
Even when the little boy was born she stopped in the hut but a few days.
She was that proud of the little chap--he was fairer than you could
believe--and he grew very fast. He was out all day long in the woods
with his mother and me, and when it rained we just made a nia-mia of
boughs for him and put a 'possum skin over it. He was sharper nor a
needle; and many's the time he made us lie down on the grass roaring
with laughing at his old-fashioned ways.
'"But onfortinately as he grew older he showed signs of a very bad
temper, and he would turn and strike his mother for the least thing. I
could not stand that, but Caloona only laughed, and that encouraged him.
That was what come between us. I allays heard as mixed bloods was worse
nor full blacks or full whites, and I was afraid how the youngster might
turn out. When we was out shepherdin', and in the evenings, Caloona
used to tell me tales o' her mother's tribe, how they quarrelled and
fought, and in the end murdered each other, sometimes, perhaps, for the
sake of an emu-skin. As the boy got older I couldn't bear to hear her
laugh over them things. Then I thought, 'It's no use beginning to teach
the boy if the mother knows no better.' So I began to learn her to read
and write. She was not long in learning to read out of a big Testament
my mother give to me when I was leaving the old country. But she didn't
seem able to take in as Jesus Christ was man and God, and she gave Him a
native name as vexed me--meaning 'him as makes believe.' And I suppose
I couldn't explain proper, for when I tried most hard she would go off
in a fit of laughing, and the youngster would wake up and laugh too, fit
to crack his sides, and somehow, when the two laughed in that way, it
used to rile me oncommon. The boy was very sharp--everyone as saw him
said that--but somehow he was sharpest in doing things he oughter not to
do; and when I was trying to teach him like he allays seemed duller, and
given to cryin', and his mother used to watch me, her hands all of a
tremble at whatever she was doing.
'"Well, Miss Stella, to make a long story short, when the boy was a few
weeks over seven I found him setting a puppy on to some sheep with young
lambs. I took him by the hand to the hut, and before punishing him I
asked why he did such a thing. His mother stood there shiverin',
looking at us, and the boy burst out cryin' and denied it hard an' fast.
He said he was callin' the dog off. This riled me so much that on the
instant I give him a bad thrashin'--worse, I know, nor I should have--so
that the mother turned on me very fierce like. I got into a bad Scot,
an' told her if she didn't let me bring up the boy proper she had better
clear. In course, I never meaned a word of it, and never thought as
Caloona would take it to heart. But the boy sulked and would eat no
food, an' made believe he was very badly hurt. God knows, perhaps he
was, though I didn't believe a word of it, an' I felt very hard agin him
for telling such barefaced lies. Next day his mother stayed in the hut
with him, and wouldn't even look at me when I was going out. When I
came home that night they were both gone, an' from that day to this I
never set eyes on them. 'What became of them, an' where are they now?'
that's what I says to myself over an' over agin. An', then, a week ago,
before the lamp was lighted, I saw the boy out there at the window in
the rain as plain as I see you now, Miss Stella.
'"This morning the Canon said as I ought to take the Sacryment, and I
was thinking over things. The moment I heered your voice I says to
myself, 'I'll tell Miss Stella; she'll understand as 'twasn't through my
being such a bad lot.' I haven't got very much longer to live, and I've
many times heard that at the last people felt quieter like if they told
all that was on their minds. I couldn't tell the Canon, Miss Stella;
for in course he'd tell his wife, an' then Lord only knows how many
melanchorly psalmses she'd read to me next day! An' yet 'twas through
trying to do my best that it all come out wrong, as it were. I never
told a word of this to my wife; what 'd be the good? 'Twould only fret
her."
'The more simply anything is told, the more is lost in re-telling it
with the cold little snout of a pen. The very _mise-en-scene_--the
homely little room--the door leading into the kitchen behind, where the
worn-out wife rested--everything so quiet and common-place--the rain
dashing against the small window, through which the sick man fancied he
saw his half-savage boy out in the gloom--all helped to make a quiet but
forceful seizure on the heart. Thomson had hardly ceased speaking when
Mr. Ferrier entered. The moment I saw him it flashed across my mind
that the half-caste boy he told us of some time before might be
Thomson's child. The poor man was so exhausted that in a few minutes he
fell fast asleep. I motioned Mr. Ferrier to the window, and asked him
if he knew anything of that lad's mother. Yes; she had been at the
Mandurang Mission six months before she died. Her native name was
Caloona. I told him Thomson's story as briefly as possible. "Oh, how
wonderful are the ways of the Lord!" he ejaculated at the close--not
very relevantly, I thought.
'The sick man was soon wakened by a fit of coughing. When this was over,
Mr. Ferrier took his hand and said: "My friend, instead of reading
to-day, will you let me tell you a little incident that happened at the
Mandurang Mission Station?" Thomson nodded a weary assent, as if he
knew beforehand that this could have no interest for him. I was about
to slip away, but Thomson asked me to stay a little longer. The
ex-missionary's little incident was soon told: How, late at night, a
young half-caste woman, with a boy of nine, came to the mission spent
with illness and weary wandering. She had lived for years with white
people, and then gone back to her tribe. But the savage life was too
much for her, and when her strength began to fail she found her way to
the mission, anxious to have her boy properly cared for after her death.
'When he learned the names of the mother and son, Thomson's strength
seemed to return to him in a strange way. He half sat up, his face all
alight, asking a torrent of questions.
'With the tenderness of a gentle-hearted woman Mr. Ferrier gave full
details. He divined that this strong, rugged nature, wearied with
mortal illness, stricken with remorse for the past, craved hungrily for
all that could be told him of the poor fugitive mother and her boy.