sister's visit bright and enjoyable--no easy task in the lonely
back-blocks where our station was, and where the dreary loneliness and
deadly monotony of the West Australian bush reaches its climax. Miles
upon miles of uninteresting plains, covered with the usual gums and
undergrowth, surrounded us on all sides; beautiful, indeed, in early
spring, when the wealth of West Australian wild flowers--unsurpassed for
loveliness by those of any other country--enriched the land, but at
other times painfully unattractive and monotonous.
Except kangaroos, snakes, and lizards, animal life was a-wanting. Bird
and insect life, too, was hardly to be seen, and owing to the absence of
rivers and lakes, aquatic life was unknown.
The silent loneliness of the bush is so oppressive and depressing that
men new to such conditions have gone mad under it when living alone, and
others almost lose their power of intelligent speech.
Such were hardly the most cheerful surroundings for a young convalescent
girl, and so I fully shared Jack's anxiety as to how to provide healthy
excitement during his sister's stay.
Preparations for the blacks' Christmas feast were at once proceeded
with. A camp of aboriginals living by a small lakelet eighteen miles off
was visited, and the natives there were informed of a great feast that
was to be given thirty days later, and were told to tell other blacks to
come too, with their wives and piccaninnies.
[Sidenote: A large order]
Orders were sent to the nearest town, fifty-three miles off, for six
cases of oranges, a gross of gingerbeer, and all the dolls, penknives
and tin trumpets in stock; also (for Jack got wildly extravagant over
his project) for fifty cotton shirts, and as many pink dresses of the
readymade kind that are sold in Australian stores. These all came about
a fortnight before Christmas, and at the same time our expected visitor
arrived.
She at once got wildly enthusiastic when my husband told her of his
plan, and threw herself into the preparations with refreshing energy.
She and I, and the native servants we had, toiled early and late,
working like galley-slaves making bread-stuffs for the feast. Knowing
whom I had to provide for, I confined myself to making that Australian
standby--damper, and simple cakes, but Maggie produced a wonderfully
elaborate and rich bun for their delectation, which she called a
"Selkirk bannock," and which I privately thought far too good for them.
Well, the day came. Such a Christmas as you can only see and feel in
Australia; the sky cloudless, the atmosphere breezeless, the temperature
one hundred and seven degrees in the shade. With it came the aboriginals
in great number, accompanied, as they always are, by crowds of
repulsive-looking mongrel dogs.
Maggie was greatly excited, and not a little indignant, at seeing many
of the gins carrying their dogs in their arms, and letting their infants
toddle along on trembling legs hardly strong enough to support their
little bodies, and much astonished when, on her proposing to send all
their dogs away, I told her that this would result in the failure of the
intended feast, as they would sooner forsake their children than their
mongrels, and if the dogs were driven away, every native would
indignantly accompany them.
Maggie, with a sigh and a curious look on her face that told of the
disillusioning of sundry preconceived English ideas regarding the noble
savages, turned to look at Jack, and her lips soon twitched with
merriment as she listened to him masterfully arranging the day's
campaign.
[Sidenote: A Magnificent Bribe]
Marshalling the blacks before him like a company of soldiers--the women,
thanks to my prudent instructions, being more or less decently dressed,
the men considerably less decently, and the younger children of both
sexes being elegantly clad in Nature's undress uniform--Jack vigorously
addressed his listeners thus: "Big feast made ready for plenty
black-fellow to-day, but black-fellow must make clean himself before
feast." (Grunts of disapprobation from the men, and a perfect babel of
angry protestation from the women here interrupted the speaker, who
proceeded, oblivious of the disapproval of his audience.) "Black-fellow
all come with me for washee; lubras and piccaninnies (_i.e._, women and
children) all go with white women for washee." (Continued grumbles of
discontent.) "Clean black-fellow," continued Jack, "get new shirtee,
clean lubra new gowna." Then, seeing that even this magnificent bribe
failed to reconcile the natives to the idea of soap and water, Jack, to
the amusement of Maggie and myself, settled matters by shouting out the
ultimatum: "No washee--no shirtee, no shirtee--no feastee," and stalked
away, followed submissively by the aboriginal lords of creation.
The men, indeed, and, in a lesser degree, the children, showed
themselves amenable to reason that day, and were not wanting in
gratitude; but in spite of Maggie's care and mine, the gins (the gentler
sex) worthily deserved the expressive description: "Manners none,
customs beastly."
They were repulsive and dirty in the extreme. They gloried in their
dirt, and clung to it with a closer affection than they did to womanly
modesty--this last virtue was unknown.
We, on civilising thoughts intent, had provided a number of large tubs
and soap, and brushes galore for the Augean task, but though we got the
women to the water, we were helpless to make them clean.
Their declaration of independence was out at once--"Is thy servant a dog
that I should do this thing?" Wash and be clean! Why, it was contrary to
all the time-honoured filthy habits of the noble self-respecting race of
Australian gins, and "they would have none of it." At last, in despair,
and largely humiliated at the way in which savage womanhood had worsted
civilised, Maggie and I betook ourselves to the long tables where the
feast was being spread, and waited the arrival of the leader of the
other sex, whose success, evidenced by sounds coming from afar, made me
seriously doubt my right to be called his "better half."
After a final appeal to my hard-hearted lord and master to be spared the
indignity of the wash-tub, the native men had bowed to the inevitable.
Each man heroically lent himself to the task, and diligently helped his
neighbours to reach the required standard of excellence.
Finally all save one stubborn aboriginal protestant emerged from the
tub, like the immortal Tom Sawyer, "a man and a brother."
Well, the feast was a great success. The corned and tinned meat,
oranges, tomatoes, cakes and gingerbeer provided were largely consumed.
The eatables, indeed, met the approval of the savages, for, like Oliver
Twist, they asked for "more," until we who served them got rather
leg-weary, and began to doubt whether, when night came, we would be able
to say with any heartiness we had had "a merry Christmas."
Clad in their clean shirts, and with faces shining with soap-polish, the
men looked rather well, despite their repulsive and generally villainous
features. But the women, wrinkled, filthy, quarrelsome and disgusting,
they might have stood for incarnations of the witch-hags in _Macbeth_;
and as we watched them guzzling down the food, and then turning their
upper garments into impromptu bags to carry off what remained, it is
hard to say whether the feeling of pity or disgust they raised was the
stronger.
After the feast, Jack, for Maggie's entertainment, tried to get up the
blacks to engage in a corroboree, and give an exhibition of boomerang
and spear-throwing; but the inner man had been too largely satisfied,
and they declined violent exertion, so the toys were distributed and our
guests dismissed.
When she and I were dressing that evening for our own Christmas dinner,
Maggie kept talking all the time of the strange experience she had
passed through that day.
[Sidenote: A Striking Picture]
"I'll never forget it," she said. "Savages are so different from our
English ideas of them. Did you notice the dogs? I counted nineteen go
off with the first native that left. And the women! Weren't they
horrors? I don't think I'll ever feel pride in my sex again. But above
all, I'll never forget the way in which Jack drove from the table that
native who hadn't a clean shirt on. It was a picture of Christ's parable
of the 'Marriage Feast,'" she added softly.
Before I could reply the gong, strengthened by Jack's imperative "Hurry
up, I'm starving," summoned us to dinner.
[Sidenote: A story of Sedgemoor times and of a woman who was both a
saint and a heroine.]
My Mistress Elizabeth
BY
ANNIE ARMITT
I committed a great folly when I was young and ignorant; for I left my
father's house and hid myself in London only that I might escape the
match he desired to make for me. I knew nothing at that time of the
dangers and sorrows of those who live in the world and are mixed in its
affairs.
Yet it was a time of public peril, and not a few who dwelt in the quiet
corners of the earth found themselves embroiled suddenly in great
matters of state. For when the Duke of Monmouth landed in Dorsetshire it
was not the dwellers in great cities or the intriguers of the Court that
followed him chiefly to their undoing; it was the peasant who left his
plough and the cloth-worker his loom. Men who could neither read nor
write were caught up by the cry of a Protestant leader, and went after
him to their ruin.
The prince to whose standard they flocked was, for all his sweet and
taking manners, but a profligate at best; he had no true religion in his
heart--nothing but a desire, indeed, for his own aggrandisement,
whatever he might say to the unhappy maid that handed a Bible to him at
Taunton. But of this the people were ignorant, and so it came to pass
that they were led to destruction in a fruitless cause.
[Sidenote: French Leave]
But there were, besides the men that died nobly in a mistaken struggle
for religious freedom, others that joined the army from mean and ignoble
motives, and others again that had not the courage to go through with
that which they had begun, but turned coward and traitor at the last.
Of one of them I am now to write, and I will say of him no more evil
than must be.
How I, that had fled away from the part of the country where this
trouble was, before its beginning, became mixed in it was strange
enough.
I had, as I said, run away to escape from the match that my father
proposed for me; and yet it was not from any dislike of Tom Windham, the
neighbour's son with whom I was to have mated, that I did this; but
chiefly from a dislike that I had to settle in the place where I had
been bred; for I thought myself weary of a country life and the little
town whither we went to market; and I desired to see somewhat of life in
a great city and the gaiety stirring there.
There dwelt in London a cousin of my mother, whose husband was a mercer,
and who had visited us a year before--when she was newly married--and
pressed me to go back with her.
"La!" she had said to me, "I know not how you endure this life, where
there is nothing to do but to listen for the grass growing and the
flowers opening. 'Twould drive me mad in a month."
Then she told me of the joyous racket of a great city, and the gay shows
and merry sports to be had there. But my father would not permit me to
go with her.
However, I resolved to ask no leave when the question of my marriage
came on; and so, without more ado, I slipped away by the first occasion
that came, when my friends were least suspecting it, and, leaving only
a message writ on paper to bid them have no uneasiness, for I knew how
to take care of myself, I contrived, after sundry adventures, to reach
London.
I arrived at an ill time, for there was sickness in the house of my
cousin Alstree. However, she made me welcome as well as might be, and
wrote to my father suddenly of my whereabouts. My father being sore
displeased at the step I had taken, sent me word by the next messenger
that came that way that I might even stay where I had put myself.
So now I had all my desire, and should have been content; but matters
did not turn out as I had expected. There might be much gaiety in the
town; but I saw little of it. My cousin was occupied with her own
concerns, having now a sickly baby to turn her mind from thoughts of her
own diversion; her husband was a sour-tempered man; and the prentices
that were in the house were ill-mannered and ill-bred.
[Illustration: GALLANTS LOUNGING IN THE PARK.]
There was in truth a Court no farther away than Whitehall. I saw
gallants lounging and talking together in the Park, games on the Mall,
and soldiers and horses in the streets and squares; but none of these
had any concern with me.
* * * * *
The news of the Duke's landing was brought to London while I was still
at my cousin's, but it made the less stir in her household because of
the sickness there; and presently a new and grievous trouble fell upon
us. My cousin Alstree was stricken with the small-pox, and in five days
she and her baby were both dead. The house seemed no longer a fit place
for me, and her husband was as one distracted; yet I had nowhere else to
go to.
It was then that a woman whom I had seen before and liked little came to
my assistance. Her name was Elizabeth Gaunt.
She was an Anabaptist and, as I thought, fanatical. She spent her life
in good works, and cared nothing for dress, or food, or pleasure. Her
manner to me had been stern, and I thought her poor and of no account;
for what money she had was given mostly to others. But when she knew of
my trouble she offered me a place in her house, bargaining only that I
should help her in the work of it.
"My maid that I had has left me to be married," she said; "'twould be
waste to hire another while you sit idle."
I was in too evil a plight to be particular, so that I went with her
willingly. And this I must confess, that the tasks she set me were
irksome enough, but yet I was happier with her than I had been with my
cousin Alstree, for I had the less time for evil and regretful thoughts.
Now it befell that one night, when we were alone together, there came a
knocking at the house door.
[Sidenote: A Strange Visitor]
I went to open it, and found a tall man standing on the threshold. I was
used to those that came to seek charity, who were mostly women or
children, the poor, the sick, or the old. But this man, as I saw by the
light I carried with me, was sturdy and well built; moreover, the cloak
that was wrapped about him was neither ragged or ill-made, only the hat
that he had upon his head was crushed in the brim.
He stepped inside and shut the door behind him, and this frightened me
somewhat, for we were two lone women, and the terror of my country
breeding clung to me. There was, it is true, nothing in the house worth
stealing, but yet a stranger might not know this.
"Doth Mrs. Gaunt still live in this house?" he asked. "Is she not a
woman that is very, charitable and ready to help those that are in
trouble?"
I looked at him, wondering what his trouble might be, for he seemed
well-to-do and comfortable, except for the hat-brim. Yet he spoke with
urgency, and it flashed upon me that his need might not be for himself,
but another.
I was about to answer him when he, whose eye had left me to wander round
the narrow passage where we were, caught sight of a rim of light under a
doorway.
"Is she in that chamber, and alone? What, then, are you afraid of?" he
asked, with impatience. "Do you think I would hurt a good creature like
that?"
"You would be a cruel wretch, indeed, to do it," I answered, plucking up
a little spirit, "for she lives only to show kindness to others."
"So I have been told. 'Tis the same woman," and without more ado he
stalked past me to the door of her room, where she sat reading a Bible
as her custom was; so he opened it and went in.
I stood without in the passage, trembling still a little, and uncertain
of his purpose, yet remembering his words and the horror he had shown at
the thought of doing any hurt to my mistress. I said to myself that he
could not be a wicked man, and that there was nothing to fear. But,
well-a-day, well-a-day, we know not what is before us, nor the evil that
we shall do before we die. Of a surety the man that I let in that night
had no thought of what he should do; yet he came in the end to do it,
and even to justify the doing of it.
I waited outside, as I have said, and the sound of voices came to me. I
thought to myself once, "Shall I go nearer and listen?" though it was
only for my mistress's sake that I considered it, being no eavesdropper.
But I did not go, and in so abstaining I was kept safe in the greatest
danger I have been in throughout my life. For if I had heard and known,
my fate might have been like hers; and should I have had the strength to
endure it?
In a little time the door opened and she came out alone. Her face was
paler even than ordinary, and she gave a start on seeing me stand there.
"Child," she said, "have you heard what passed between us on the other
side of that door?"
I answered that I had not heard a word; and then she beckoned me to
follow her into the kitchen.
When we were alone there I put down my candle on the deal table, and
stood still while she looked at me searchingly. I could see that there
was more in her manner than I understood.
"Child," she said, "I have had to trust you before when I have given
help to those in trouble, and you have not been wanting in discretion;
yet you are but a child to trust."
"If you tell me nothing I can repeat nothing," I answered proudly.
"Yet you know something already. Can you keep silent entirely and under
all circumstances as to what has happened since you opened the street
door?"
"It is not my custom to gabble about your affairs."
"Will you seek to learn no more and to understand no more?"
"I desire to know nothing of the affairs of others, if they do not
choose to tell me of their own free will."
She looked at me and sighed a little, at the which I marvelled somewhat,
for it was ever her custom to trust in God and so to go forward without
question.
"You are young and ill prepared for trial, yet you have wandered
alone--silly lassie that you are--into a wilderness of wolves."
"There is trouble everywhere," I answered.
"And danger too," she said; "but there is trouble that we seek for
ourselves, and trouble that God sends to us. You will do well, when you
are safe at home, to wander no more. Now go to bed and rest."
"Shall I not get a meal for your guest?" I asked; for I was well aware
that the man had not yet left the house.
[Sidenote: "Ask no Questions!"]
"Do my bidding and ask no questions," she said, more sternly than was
her custom. So I took my candle and went away silently, she following me
to my chamber. When I was there she bid me pray to God for all who were
in danger and distress, then I heard that she turned the key upon me on
the outside and went away.
I undressed with some sullenness, being ill-content at the mistrust she
showed; but presently she came to the chamber herself, and prayed long
before she lay down beside me.
And now a strange time followed. I saw no more of that visitor that had
come to the house lately, nor knew at what time he went away, or if he
had attained the end he sought. My mistress busied me mostly in the
lower part of the house, and went out very little herself, keeping on me
all the while a strict guard and surveillance beyond her wont.
But at last a charitable call came to her, which she never refused; and
so she left me alone, with instructions to remain between the kitchen
and the street-door, and by no means to leave the house or to hold
discourse with any that came, more than need be.
I sat alone in the kitchen, fretting a little against her injunctions,
and calling to mind the merry evenings in the parlour at home, where I
had sported and gossiped with my comrades. I loved not solitude, and
sighed to think that I had now nothing to listen to but the great clock
against the wall, nothing to speak to but the cat that purred at my
feet.
I was, however, presently to have company that I little expected. For,
as I sat with my seam in my hand, I heard a step upon the stairs; and
yet I had let none into the house, but esteemed myself alone there.
It came from above, where was an upper chamber, and a loft little used.
My heart beat quickly, so that I was afraid to go out into the passage,
for there I must meet that which descended, man or spirit as it might
be. I heard the foot on the lowest stair, and then it turned towards the
little closet where my mistress often sat alone at her devotions.
While it lingered there I wondered whether I should rush out into the
street, and seek the help and company of some neighbour. But I
remembered Mrs. Gaunt's injunction; and, moreover, another thought
restrained me. It was that of the man that I had let into the house and
never seen again. It might well be that he had never left the place, and
that I should be betraying a secret by calling in a stranger to look at
him.
So I stood trembling by the deal table until the step sounded again and
came on to the kitchen.
[Sidenote: The Man Again]
The door opened, and a man stood there. It was the same whom I had seen
before.
He looked round quickly, and gave me a courteous greeting; his manner
was, indeed, pleasant enough, and there was nothing in his look to set a
maid trembling at the sight of him.
"I am in luck," he said, "for I heard Mrs. Gaunt go out some time since,
and I am sick of that upper chamber where she keeps me shut up."
"If she keeps you shut up, sir," I said, his manner giving me back all
my self-possession, "sure she has some very good reason."
"Do you know her reason?" he asked with abruptness.
"No, nor seek to know it, unless she chooses to tell me. I did not even
guess that she had you in hiding."
"Mrs. Gaunt is careful, but I can trust the lips that now reprove me.
They were made for better things than betraying a friend. I would
willingly have some good advice from them, seeing that they speak wise
words so readily." And so saying he sat down on the settle, and looked
at me smiling.
I was offended, and with reason, at the freedom of his speech; yet, his
manner, was so much beyond anything I had been accustomed to for ease
and pleasantness, that I soon forgave him, and when he encouraged me,
began to prattle about my affairs, being only, with all my conceit, the
silly lassie my mistress had called me.
I talked of my home and my own kindred, and the friends I had had--which
things had now all the charm of remoteness for me--and he listened with
interest, catching up the names of places, and even of persons, as if
they were not altogether strange to him, and asking me further of them.
"What could make you leave so happy a home for such a dungeon as this?"
he asked, looking round.
Then I hung my head, and reddened foolishly, but he gave a loud laugh
and said, "I can well understand. There was some country lout that your
father would have wedded you to. That is the way with the prettiest
maidens."
"Tom Windham was no country lout," I answered proudly; upon which he
leaned forward and asked, "What name was that you said? Windham? and
from Westover? Is he a tall fellow with straw-coloured hair and a cut
over his left eye?"
"He got it in a good cause," I answered swiftly; "have you seen him?"
"Yes, lately. It is the same. Lucky fellow! I would I were in his place
now." And he fell straightway into a moody taking, looking down as if he
had forgotten me.
"Sir, do you say so?" I stammered foolishly, "when--when----"
"When you have run away from him? Not for that, little maid;" and he
broke again into a laugh that had mischief in it. "But because when we
last met he was in luck and I out of it, yet we guessed it not at the
time."
"I am glad he is doing well," I said proudly.
"Then should you be sorry for me that am in trouble," he answered. "For
I have no home now, nor am like to have, but must go beyond seas and
begin a new life as best I may."
"I am indeed sorry, for it is sad to be alone. If Mrs. Gaunt had not
been kind to me----"
[Sidenote: Interrupted]
"And to me," he interrupted, "we should never have met. She is a good
woman, your mistress Gaunt."
"Yet, I have heard that beyond seas there are many diversions," I
answered, to turn the talk from myself, seeing that he was minded to be
too familiar.
"For those that start with good company and pleasant companions. If I
had a pleasant companion, one that would smile upon me with bright eyes
when I was sad, and scold me with her pretty lips when I went
astray--for there is nothing like a pretty Puritan for keeping a
careless man straight."
"Oh, sir!" I cried, starting to my feet as he put his hand across the
deal table to mine; and then the door opened and Elizabeth Gaunt came
in.