THE FOURTH HOME
Sad indeed was the breaking-up of that pleasant home at Y----. It
followed upon, and was a consequence of, the death of our little
daughter, when she was nearly a year old.
These are the times when the Bush dweller feels his geographical
position most keenly--when he needs the best medical advice and cannot
get it. I do not say that our dear old German doctor was not a good
doctor in his way, for he was; but practically nothing had been added
to his knowledge since he was young, and in this case he confessed
frankly that he was altogether at fault. He had never met with a
similar one--nor have I; and after looking up all the authorities at
his command, even to the papers and notes of lectures of his student
days, his honest mind would not pretend to have made itself up. His
professional credit was not so dear to that man as truth. "I don't
know," he said in so many words. And how often I have wondered
whether, if we had been rich, we could have found someone else who
did! Would a special train and a thousand guinea fee have saved her?
These are questions that shock some of my clerical friends, mothers
amongst them. "It was the Lord's will," they say, and seem to think
that settles it. A few months ago I was spending an evening with a
young curate and his wife, whom I had not met before; they were
ardently religious people, in their own line, and they had recently
lost their only son. The mother gave me the history. He had had an
internal tumour or something of the sort, a growth that steadily
increased, and which the doctors had plainly said must be removed if
his life was to be saved. The parents replied--and they repeated the
words with such proud confidence that they were right words--"No, if
the Lord intends him to get well, he will get well without that." And
instead of the operation--urged by their incumbent, who also gave me
these facts, as well as by other friends--they had prayer-meetings at
the bed-side. The little sufferer, described as a bright boy of nine,
swelled and swelled until he died. "The Lord needed him," said the
mother to me. And "We feel so honoured to have a child in Heaven." She
made my blood run cold. I can never have shocked the "good" people
more than that ultra "good" woman shocked me.
We left nothing to these chances. When whooping-cough came to the
township, I took extraordinary precautions to keep my children from
catching it. The epidemic was nearly over when the little boy fell a
victim, and then I watched day and night to prevent contact with the
baby. Quite at the last (the lady I have spoken of would have some
remarks to make on this) my efforts were defeated; the baby took it in
spite of me. She was a healthy and happy little soul, and at first her
case seemed just an ordinary one. But after coughing for a week or
two, she ceased to cough suddenly, and fell into strange
fainting-fits; they seized her so silently and swiftly that I hardly
once saw her go into one, although she was in the room with me, and my
eye, as I thought, never off her. A cry from her nurse or somebody
would cause me to jump as if I had been shot, and there lay my little
one, wherever she happened to have been sitting or crawling, exactly
like one dead--grey, limp, eyes sunk, lips drawn back, neither breath
nor heart-beat discoverable. We would snatch her up and rub her and
give her brandy; and after some minutes, more or less, she would
struggle painfully back to life, and as soon as respiration returned
begin to shriek in the most terrible manner, and keep it up until
completely exhausted; then she would drop asleep, remain asleep for a
whole day, perhaps, and awake placid and cooing, ready to be fed and
played with, apparently as well as ever. At intervals of a day, or two
days, she had perhaps half a dozen of these fits; then she had one
that lasted nearly three hours. All the while that she lay in our
arms, we having no hope that she would revive again, a thin stream of
what looked like grey water trickled from one nostril; it was the only
sign of life. The old doctor, having done all he knew, sat looking on,
as helpless as we. However, again she struggled back, and, getting
breath, began that quick, agonising shriek which was so maddening to
hear and impossible to stop. The doctor put his hands to his ears. "I
can't stand it," he said; "I must go outside. Call me if you want me."
After awhile he went home, but the shrieks lasted the greater part of
the night, gradually, as her strength wore out, dying into hoarse
wails and moaning off at last into exhausted sleep.
She slept the entire day, and I sat by the cradle and watched her,
sopping several handkerchiefs with those foolish tears which I am
supposed to weep for the pleasure of it and could help shedding if I
liked. Then, towards evening, a little hand began playing with the
cradle-frills, and the happy little coo that used to wake me of a
morning broke the silence of the room. I could not believe my eyes and
ears. We sent post-haste for the doctor. Well, there she was, looking
as if nothing had happened. And for three weeks thereafter she had no
more fits, but ate and played, and throve and fattened, apparently
better than she had ever done in her life.
"Whatever it was," said the doctor, "that last attack has carried it
off. You will see she will be all right now."
At the end of the three happy weeks that seemed to prove him right, I
gave a little musical party. He brought his flute, and we were in the
middle of a more or less orchestral performance, when I fancied I
heard a cry from the next room--a cry with that peculiar sharp edge to
it that I had so learned to dread. I rushed to the cradle, the doctor
after me, and we lifted the child up and examined her. "Oh, she's all
right," we said, with long breaths of relief; "it was only our noisy
music that disturbed her." We placed the nursemaid on guard, and went
back to the drawing-room, and for the rest of the evening made less
noise, while she made none, but slumbered peacefully.
In the morning she woke up as usual; that is, I did not know when she
woke. She hardly ever cried to be taken up, but played with her
bed-clothes and her toes, and gurgled and gabbled to herself until I
chose to lift her into my bed. She was in the most blooming condition.
From the time that I dressed her, until breakfast was ready, she
played with the cat on the dining-room floor, and a vivid memory of
the day is of the smothered chuckles of the two servants while G. was
reading prayers, because of the hilarious and irreverent shouts and
crows with which baby enlivened the proceedings. When breakfast came
in she was carried out. At the door her nurse held her up and told her
to say good-bye to her father and mother. The bright little creature,
perfection in my eyes, with her sunny curls and blue eyes and the
little face lit up with the fun of going through her tricks, kissed
her hand and waved it, and nodded and farewelled us in her baby
language, and the door closed upon our last sight of her in life.
It was my habit to take her for an airing after breakfast, while the
servants helped each other with the housework, and this particular
morning was a glorious one, the crisp, sunny winter morning of
Australian hill country, with the first hint of spring in it. I got
her little cloak and hood and went to the kitchen to fetch her. The
kitchen was large and airy, opening upon the garden, and her cradle
was sometimes placed in a corner there, where she could be watched by
the servants, who were both devoted to her. It was there now, and she
was in it. "She seemed sleepy," said the elder girl, "so we laid her
down."
"She must have been awake earlier than usual," I thought, and,
stooping over the cradle, I saw her, as I believed--and still
believe--sleeping quietly, carefully tucked up, the little golden head
laid sidewise on the pillow. It was not her bed-time by an hour or
two, but her habit of not telling me when she started the day seemed
to explain the too early sleepiness. I told the girls they were right
to put her down, and went off to the housework on my own account.
Some time later the elder servant came to me where I was busy, G.
being with me. "Oh, ma'am," said she, gaspingly, "I wish you'd come
and look at baby. She's so pale!" G. almost flung me aside lest I
should get to the door first, and dashed to the kitchen. We both knew
instantly what had happened. The servants had not left her for a
moment; she had not made a movement or a sound; she could not have
known what had happened herself, which was something to be thankful
for. One of her strange fits had seized her--the one, at last, that
she would never come out of. Her father snatched her up--lying exactly
as I had left her--and called for the brandy; we tried to pour it down
her throat, where not a drop would go, until she grew quite cold and
rigid in our arms.
It was the first of these almost insupportable bereavements, and the
effect on my health was so severe that a complete change of
surroundings was considered necessary--to get me away from the house
whose every nook and corner was haunted by such agonising visions of
what had been. G., for his part, could no longer stand the Murray
journeys, involving such long and complete separation at a time when
we needed so much to be together. So he cast about for a more compact
parish, and one offered that fulfilled the requirements--and more.
It was so far away from Y---- that we had to sell our furniture and
begin at the beginning again. At this auction the amateur sofas went,
and from that time I bought sofas. The new drawing-room was graced
with a "suite" in green rep--such was our taste in pre-exhibition
days--and the sofa was of that curly shape which prohibited repose. By
filling the upper concave end with my big cushions I could make head
and shoulders comfortable, but then there was no scope for legs and
feet; and one had to anchor one's self with the right hand to the
sloping and slippery framework of the back to keep from rolling off. I
never did appreciate that ingenious design, and the suite was no
sooner in its place than I found even the colour of it annoying. To
improve the effect I made holland covers for every piece--pretty
chintzes were unprocurable--and at least a fresher and brighter air
was imparted to the room; but I was not sorry that we had to have
another auction at the end of three years' companionship with the
suite.
In other ways this fourth home was a great change from the other
three. We were now down in the flat, settled, macadamised country,
only twenty miles or so from Ballarat and fifty from the
metropolis--quite "in the world." I say "down," but it was a colder,
wetter, snowier place to winter in than any other that we have known
on this side of the globe--seventeen hundred feet above sea-level.
Apart from the trouble I have spoken of, and a bitterer one of the
same nature that was soon to follow it, and the further misfortune of
a carriage accident from the results of which I suffered for many
years, my life at B----, socially considered, was more to my taste
than had been the case before in Australia, or than has been since.
For there I first discovered the resources of the colony in its
intellectually-cultivated class, and enjoyed the society and
friendship of some who represented it at its best--members of a small,
inter-related, highly exclusive circle of about half a dozen families,
who had had time and the means to read, travel, and generally sustain
the traditions of refinement to which they were born.
Chronologically, they were the first gentlefolk of the land--"Rolf
Boldrewood" speaks of some of them in his _Old Melbourne
Memories_--and they still merit the title in another sense. The clans
have dwindled, indeed, but not all the original heads have fallen yet,
and I have not heard of a _mesalliance_ amongst their descendants. If
they do not marry with each other, they marry with their kind. As with
the Salisburys and Buccleuchs and modern London Society, they remain
uncontaminated by the influences which have made our own little world
of fashion a faint copy of the big one at home. Money, which "runs the
show" elsewhere, is no passport to those dignified homes, dating from
"before the gold," in which I have spent so many happy hours.
My own passport to it was a little tale in the _Australasian_--my
first to run as a serial in that paper. It is gone now, and was never
worth keeping, but as a story about the colony, written from within,
it aroused interest in its anonymous author at the time, amongst those
whose eyes were keen to note literary events, small as well as big. My
friend, "Rolf Boldrewood," had not yet received the worldwide
recognition that he now enjoys; he was a "Sydneysider," and supposed
to belong to his own colony. Poor "Tasma" had scarcely begun her brief
literary career; Mary Gaunt, and others now on the roll, were mostly
in their nurseries or unborn. So that I had the advantage of a stage
very much to myself, which of course accounted largely for the
attention I received. And of all the pleasure and profit that I
derived from my long connection with the Australian press, nothing
was more valuable to me than the uplifting sympathy of those readers I
have mentioned, who were also as fine critics as any in the world.
The first night at B---- gave me the key of the position. The one
socially "great house" of our new parish entertained us. Its owner, an
old Wykehamist and cadet of a noble Scottish family, who, having
practically built the church, and being its main supporter, stood for
what would have been the patron of the living at home, himself fetched
us from Ballarat, driving the wonderful "four greys" that were as well
known as he was. Never shall I forget my first sight of that sweet old
house in its incomparable old garden--of the sunset from the plateau
along which we drove to it from the lodge gates, the picture that has
delighted me so many, many times. And never shall I forget my
reception, the dinner, the evening, the sensation of finding myself
suddenly and unexpectedly in a place where brains and good breeding
alone counted, and nothing else was of any consequence. From the hour
that I set foot in that house the situation, as it concerned me
personally, was completely changed. I found, if not my level, the
level which suited me.
Another house of the charmed circle began to help to make life
interesting for us both. It lay within comfortable driving distance,
and its family had recently returned to it from extensive travels
about the world. The actual structure, to which I paid my first
visits, was a modest relic of the fifties, but already there was
arising from the crest-of a neighbouring hill the most desirable
country house, in its own style, then built or a-building--to my
thinking, at anyrate--the final dwelling-place of the owner of the
surrounding land, who had been its owner from "before the gold." It
was after this home of taste had been completed that we held our
famous International Exhibition of 1880, which first taught us as a
community the rudiments of modern art; and I remember the satisfaction
with which the mistress of G---- wandered from court to court, and
found no exhibits more pleasing, in their respective classes, than the
treasures she had gathered for herself in foreign parts. Whether it
were a Persian rug or a Venetian wine-glass, her specimen was, in her
opinion, unsurpassed by any picked model of the like manufacture; in
which I agreed with her. There is no lack now of what are generally
described as artistic things; hundreds of Victorian homes, big and
little, may in the tastefulness of their appointments outshine G----
to-day; but it was otherwise twenty years ago. At that date, when we
stay-at-homes were all for gold and white wall-paper and grass-green
suites (but the reader bears in mind that I put holland covers over
mine) in our drawing-rooms, I believe G---- was unique in the colony
as the first example of the new order. I may say here that we became
rapidly aesthetic afterwards, because it is our constant habit to
follow English fashions ardently as soon as we get an idea of what
they are.
I had not been long in B---- before I heard of the flattering notice
excited by my story--_Up the Murray_ was its name--and by the
discovery, on the part of our neighbours aforesaid, that the humble
author was living where she was. Arrangements, unbeknown to me, were
made for mutual introductions and acquaintanceship, and one day I was
invited to join a driving party from our "great house"--which I wish
I could describe in less vulgar terms (but to call it B---- would be
confusing)--to meet half-way upon the road a driving party from the
other. The day was beautiful, and I see now before my mind's eye the
panorama of the spring landscape. We halted on the brow of a hill--the
four greys dancing themselves into complicated knots and being
dramatically disentangled with the whip-thong--and down below the
carriage from G---- toiling up the stony Gap track towards us. How
well we learned that road afterwards, going to and fro continually
either in the vehicles of our friends or in our own. If I have ever
done anything to earn a respectable place in my profession I owe it to
the awakening and educating influences that surrounded me at this
time. My intellectual life was never so well-fed and fortified.
Of Melbourne Society, so called, I knew little as yet. My "set" held
much aloof from it, gathering only its own affinities into the
charming house-parties that brought whiffs of the gay world to us from
time to time. Although I was now so near to it, I do not think I paid
one visit to the metropolis while we lived at B----; invitations I
had, but the inclination was lacking. I was satisfied as I was. We
made expeditions occasionally to Ballarat, then, as now, the second
city of our state, where a small group, long since vanished, of the
old families still resided, to attract our particular old family
thither, and where on our own account we had a few clerical and other
friends to welcome us. One of these expeditions was typical of
several.
The date it stands against in my diary is September 10th, 1873--the
time of budding spring. Our "squire," with a part of his family,
arrived at the parsonage in the lovely morning, with the "old
carriage," as it was called--a deep-seated, roomy vehicle that I can
hardly give a name to, but which was the easiest and cosiest that I
ever rode in. G. and I joined the party, and we started on our long
drive. It took us about three hours if we did not stop by the way, but
these excursions would have been very incomplete without the roadside
picnic. Picnics were our joy, also our _forte_, and the country is
made for them. So we stopped when we met the groom who had been sent
ahead with fresh horses--the "old carriage" was heavy, and not built
for Australian roads--and we lunched under the gum-trees with that
exquisite appetite that we never know indoors. Then, at our leisure,
on again until we trundled into the streets of the golden city--which,
I may remark in passing, is a truly charming city, and to my mind
ought to be the Federal Capital, if only because of its cool and
bracing climate (although it is also almost exactly central for all
the states as well). But in discussing sites for the future
Washington, no one seems to take into account what an effect upon
legislation a languid air and mosquitoes of a night may have.
We spent the balance of the afternoon shopping, and were then
deposited, with our evening clothes, at the house of one of the
historical few--perhaps the most witty and world-cultured of them all,
certainly the brightest company. He had been much in France, I think;
he spoke often of Paris, with the air and knowledge of a born
Parisian; his singing of French songs was as un-English as it could
be. It was always said of Colonel R. that he would never be old, and I
met him the other day on a tram, and in the course of our ride
together found him as mentally alert as ever, although he confessed
to me, with a comical dolefulness, that he was some years past eighty.
He still wore his smart, "well-groomed," gallant air (accent on the
first syllable of this adjective, please), and was as ready as of old
with his pretty compliments.
We dined with him and his wife, and then went all together to the
Academy of Music (newly built) to hear Ilma de Murska. She was a
small, fair-haired, glittering person, with a frilly train like a pink
serpent meandering around her feet, and the way she trilled and
rouladed was amazing. After the concert we had a merry supper, and
then--by this time indifferent to the flight of the hours--changed our
clothes and prepared for the homeward drive. We had but one pair of
horses now for the whole journey, so that it was necessary to take the
hills at a walk, and we reached B---- at about four in the morning. We
inside the carriage could have slept almost as easily as in our beds,
but we were obliged to keep awake to watch the swaying bodies on the
box. It was funny to see us winding scarves round our squire's ample
waist, and tying him to the low rail behind him, without disturbing
his slumbers. These precautions would have been useless, however, had
not one of us stood ready to clutch his sleeve at critical moments. On
finding himself too sleepy for our safety, he had given the reins to
his little son, who was a perfectly competent substitute. But that it
was thought well to tie him into his seat to prevent them from
dragging him over the dashboard, he could at nine or ten years old
drive four horses so well that I preferred to trust myself to him
rather than to any casual man, if I was to ride behind them.
It was upon one of the hills between B---- and Ballarat that the
accident took place which impaired my health for many years; but then
no member of this family was driving. We had just started after our
picnic lunch on the second stage of the journey, and had come to the
top of a steep bit of road that had a sharp turn at the bottom, when
something went wrong with the brake. The huge, top-heavy vehicle--one
we called "the caravan"--ran upon the horses, which, as usual in Bush
harness, had no breeching to back against, and there was nothing for
it but to send them downhill at full gallop; they did their part, but
the sharp corner was too sharp for us, and as we swung round it we
swung right over. It seemed an inevitable thing, yet I am convinced
that our squire would not have allowed it to happen. He was taking a
brief rest inside the carriage, with the ladies, and so got a broken
arm and a dislocated shoulder, which, together with the disgrace of
the catastrophe, much incensed him. We used to get into marvellous
tight places under his devil-may-care handling of his notoriously
wild, half-broken horses, but never without coming safely out of them;
they were the occasions of proving what a miraculous whip he was. Once
a wheel came off when the team were in mid-career, and in the
twinkling of an eye he had so turned the other three wheels as to
balance the waggonette upon them until its occupants could get out.
One day four other horses were rushed up a broken hill track amongst
trees to some mine workings on the top, and as there was no turning
space here they had to come down backwards. We were showing the
country to some officers of an Italian man-o'-war, and the dumb
dignity with which those men went through the ordeal spoke volumes
for their breeding as well as for their nerve.
* * * * *
But I feel clogged and dulled while talking of this place. I do not
want to go on talking of it, but to get past it to scenes that are not
forever associated with sorrows that do not bear thinking of. It was a
pleasant dwelling-place, indeed, but now it remains, even at so great
a distance off, but the stage setting of the second domestic tragedy,
so much more terrible than the first--the death of our eldest son when
he was five. He was one of those bright and beautiful children of whom
people say, when they are gone, "He was too good for this world," and
"He was not meant to live"--that was the first thing my friends said
to me, or I should know my place better than to thus speak of him; and
every year and day your child is with you adds that much more of
strength and depth to the love whose roots are the very substance of
the mother's heart; and the bitterest thing of all is the suffering
you cannot alleviate, and not to lose them at a stroke, which I had
thought so supremely dreadful. After ailing nothing all his life, he
took scarlet fever in its worst form, struggled against it with all
the power of his perfect constitution and brave and patient temper,
rallied and relapsed, got dropsy, and died by inches--conscious nearly
to the last, and only concerned for his mother's tears and the trouble
he was giving people. If he had been humanly restive under the agonies
that he must have borne I could myself have borne it better; it was
his heroic patience and unselfishness--that "Please," and "Thank you,"
and "Don't mind," and "Don't cry" which only failed when he could no
longer force his tongue to act--which seemed the most heart-breaking
thing of all. "If you had read of this in a book," they said who
helped to nurse him, "you would never have believed it;" and so I may
expect incredulity from the reader to whom I now have the bad taste to
tell the tale; but whenever I have thought of his conduct during that
last and only trial of his short life, I have realised to the full
what he would have been to us if he had lived. People say to me, "Oh,
you cannot tell how he might have turned out." But I can tell.
Well, if he had lived he would have been a man of thirty now--married,
doubtless, and perhaps to some woman who would have made him wretched.
There is always that pitfall in the path of the best of men. Also the
success that must have attended the possession of such mental powers
as his would have been a danger. "Don't you teach that child anything
until he is seven at the least," our old German doctor was continually
warning us, and we did not; but somebody gave the child a box of
letters, and he could read the newspaper before he died. If you
recited to him, once, a long narrative poem--"Beth Gelert" or "The
Wreck of the Hesperus"--he would go off to his nurse or somebody and
repeat it from end to end, almost without a mistake. He had a passion
for mechanics, and, having seen a railway or mining or agricultural
engine at work, would come home and, with bits of string and
cotton-reels and any rubbish he could lay his hands on, make a model
of it in which no essential part was lacking. The frequent appeal at
the study door, "Just a few nails, please, daddy, and I won't 'sturb
you any more," was the nearest he came to teasing anybody.
Well, he died at five years old, and the common impulse of all who
knew him, including his fool of a mother, was to say, "Of course!" I
was childless for a fortnight. Then another little daughter came, as
it seemed, to save my life.