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Title: Thirty Years in Australia

Author: Ada Cambridge

Release Date: October 23, 2011 [EBook #37825]

Language: English

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THIRTY YEARS IN AUSTRALIA




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  THIRTY YEARS IN
  AUSTRALIA




  BY
  ADA CAMBRIDGE
  AUTHOR OF "PATH AND GOAL" AND "THE DEVASTATORS"




  METHUEN & CO.
  36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
  LONDON
  1903




  TO
  MY TWO LIVING CHILDREN
  AND THE DEAR MEMORY OF ONE
  WHO WAS LIVING WHEN I WROTE IT
  I DEDICATE THIS BOOK




CONTENTS


  CHAP. PAGE

      I. "ISLE OF BEAUTY, FARE THEE WELL!"                      1

     II. AUSTRALIA FELIX                                       11

    III. THE BUSH                                              23

     IV. THE FIRST HOME                                        35

      V. DIK                                                   48

     VI. THE SECOND HOME                                       64

    VII. THE THIRD HOME                                        79

   VIII. THE MURRAY JOURNEY                                    93

     IX. LOCAL COLOUR                                         111

      X. THE FOURTH HOME                                      126

     XI. THE FIFTH HOME                                       143

    XII. THE SIXTH HOME                                       161

   XIII. THE BOOM                                             177

    XIV. THE SEVENTH HOME                                     189

     XV. TOBY                                                 203

    XVI. THE GREAT STRIKE                                     214

   XVII. OVER THE BORDER                                      236

  XVIII. THE END OF BUSH LIFE                                 253

    XIX. THE EIGHTH HOME                                      272

     XX. CONCLUSION                                           295




THIRTY YEARS IN AUSTRALIA




CHAPTER I

"ISLE OF BEAUTY, FARE THEE WELL!"


I knew nothing whatever of Australia when I rashly consented to marry
a young man who had irrevocably bound himself to go and live there,
and, moreover, to go within three months of the day on which the wild
idea occurred to me. During the seven weeks or thereabouts of a
bewildering engagement, the while I got together my modest trousseau,
we hunted for information in local libraries, and from more or less
instructed friends. The books were mostly old ones, the tales the
same. _Geoffrey Hamlyn_ was my sheet anchor, but did not seem to be
supported by the scraps of prosaic history obtainable; we could not
verify those charming homes and social customs. On the other hand,
cannibal blacks and convict bushrangers appeared to be grim facts. As
for the physical characteristics of the country, there were but the
scentless flowers, the songless birds, the cherries with their stones
outside (none of which, actually, is the rule, and I have found
nothing to resemble the description of the latter), and the kangaroo
that carries its family in a breast-pocket, which we felt able to take
for granted. These things we did believe in, because all our
authorities mentioned them. G. had a letter from a college friend who
had preceded him to Australia, reporting the place not wild at all,
but quite like home. He instanced an episcopal dinner-party that he
had attended, and a church dignitary's "three sweetly pretty
daughters," who had come in the evening, and with whom he had sung
duets. But at time of writing he had got no further than
Melbourne--knew no more than we of the mysterious Bush, which I
thought of as a vast shrubbery, with occasional spears hurtling
through it. When we had assimilated all the information available, our
theory of the life before us was still shapeless. However, we were
young and trusting, and prepared to take things as they came.

G. was an English curate for a few weeks, and an English rector for a
few more. It was just enough to give us an everlasting regret that the
conditions could not have remained permanent. Doubtless, if we had
settled in an English parish, we should have bewailed our narrow lot,
should have had everlasting regrets for missing the chance of breaking
away into the wide world; but since we did exile ourselves, and could
not help it, we have been homesick practically all the time--good as
Australia has been to us. At any moment of these thirty odd years we
would have made for our native land like homing pigeons, could we have
found the means; it was only the lack of the necessary "sinews" that
prevented us. Such a severe form of nostalgia is, however, uncommon
here, and would be cured, I am told, by a twelve months' trip.
Certainly, in nine cases out of ten, where I have known the remedy
tried, it has seemed infallible. The home-goers come back perfectly
satisfied to come back. It is when they stay at home for more than
twelve months that they want to stay altogether.

G.'s brief curacy synchronised with our brief engagement. I was a
district visitor in the parish which he served, and in which he was
born. He became a rector on the wedding day. The charming rectory was
placed at our disposal for the honeymoon by the real incumbent, our
mutual friend, he and his good wife taking the opportunity to pay
visits until we had done with it. We drove thither in the afternoon,
and heard the bells ringing as we entered the village, and found the
rectory-gate set wide and the white-satin-ribboned maids awaiting us
on the doorstep of the beflowered house. We had two maids and a man
servant; we had a brougham; we had a tiny hamlet of a parish in which
(compared with what we have known of parishes) there was nothing to
do--two services on Sunday, and a little business of coal and clothing
clubs during the week--and where our parishioners dropped curtseys to
us on the road, and felt honoured beyond measure when we went to see
them. No wonder that, under the too totally opposite circumstances of
clerical life as we have lived it here, we have looked back to that
haven of dignified peace and ease with the wish--the stupid wish--that
we could have had it always.

Nothing could have suited us better while we did have it. We were but
four miles from our homes, and could see our people, who were to lose
us in a month, while still ostensibly in bridal seclusion. A sister
from whom I was separated for the whole of the thirty years, but who
is with me now, to gossip, as we are always doing, of those old days,
used to walk out before breakfast. We would have a quiet sewing
morning, getting forward with the preparations still so far from
completed; then we would perhaps drive her home in the afternoon, and
get an hour with my mother, who surpassed all the mothers I ever knew
in her unselfish passion for her children, and for whom my heart
bleeds to this day when I think of what my going cost her--for I know
more of mothers' sufferings in that way than I did then. She would be
working her dear fingers to the bone over something to add to the
array of zinc-lined boxes which were being fed by instalments in my
deserted room, and I see now the flash of tearful joy that lit her
fair, fine-featured face when I came with my poor crumb of comfort for
her hungry heart. Intimate girl companions walked over to lunch or to
play a game of croquet, or to make better use of the little time
remaining to us; and we walked half-way back with them on the lonely
road and through the leafy lanes. It was April and May, and, as far as
I can remember, all fine weather--a last impression of English
springtime that has lived with me like a beautiful portrait, an
idealised portrait, of a dead and longed-for friend. "Oh to be in
England now that April's there!" has been the yearly aspiration of my
homesick soul, which takes no account of east winds and leaden skies,
but only of chaffinches and apple boughs, just as Browning's did. My
birds are the skylarks above those fen-meadows, and the flower I think
of first my favourite lily-of-the-valley, of which I carried a great
bunch, with the dew still on it, to the cathedral on my
wedding-morning. And those golden May evenings, when we wandered back
along the empty road, after setting our friends on their homeward
way--I see them in some of Leader's pictures, which, if I were rich,
I would buy to live with me, for that reason only. The friends could
dine with us at the then usual hour, and still get home before the
slow twilight passed into night--a thing impossible in this country.
They were the last hours that we spent together--all young things
then, but now grey and elderly, though I cannot realise it; three of
them widows, most of them grandmothers, but never old to me, nor I to
them. For more than thirty years we have not met, and there have been
long gaps in our correspondence; but friendship has survived all,
unchanged. They still write to ask when they are to see me, and I
still write back to make provisional appointments which I can by no
effort contrive to keep.

I was married on the 25th of April 1870. On the same date of the
following month I left them all, never--as now seems only too
probable--to return. We buoyed ourselves up through the anguish of the
last farewells with a promise, made in all good faith, that I should
come back in five years. My husband promised to bring me. "We must
save up," we said to each other, "and have a holiday then." It was an
easy thing to plan, but proved too difficult to carry out. After we
became a family, going anywhere meant going as a family, and taking
all the roots of its support and livelihood with it. Theoretically, I
could have run home alone, if not in five years, in eight or ten--we
could have afforded that--but practically it was as impossible as that
we should all go, which we could never afford. So here we are still,
and my poor mother, who lived to the last on the hope that we had
given her, has long been in her grave. There is no trace of an English
home to go back to now.

We went alone to London for two or three busy days. Friends of G.'s,
whom I had never seen before, adopted us for the time, and fathers and
mothers could not have done more for us. They furnished our cabin in
the docks, and attended to our luggage--we saw neither until we went
on board at Plymouth--and pressed help and comfort of every kind upon
us. The ship's regulation against private liquors was set at naught by
a great box that stood in our cabin throughout the voyage, placed
there by the order of one of these friends. The box was a complete
wine-cellar, containing, in addition to wines of the best and dozens
of soda water, an assortment of choice cordials and liqueurs, the like
of some of which we have not tasted since. There was a particular
ginger-brandy--administered to me in the cold, wild weather of which
we had so much--that we have tried to get at various times in vain.
What we get is as moonlight unto sunlight compared with that
ginger-brandy of the ship. I may say that the donor was a London wine
merchant in extensive business. Not we only, but many a sick and
shivering fellow-passenger had cause to bless his generous heart and
hand.

Our last sight of this gentleman and his family was on Paddington
platform, whither they had driven us after a festive farewell dinner,
at which our healths were drunk and good fortune invoked upon our
journey. We sat in the train, and they piled their parting presents on
our laps. One of them brought me a fine pair of field-glasses to look
at flying-fish and porpoises with--I use them now, daily, to watch the
approach of family and visitors coming across Hobson's Bay; another
rushed to the bookstall that had already supplied us with all its
papers, bought a complete set of Dickens' novels, and tumbled them in
armfuls upon the carriage seat beside us, just as the train was moving
off. Australian hospitality cannot surpass that of those kind people,
to whom I had been a perfect stranger two days before.

Most of the night, as we travelled down to Plymouth, I talked with paper
and pencil to my beloved ones at home. For change of position, and to
get better light, I knelt on the carriage seat for a time, spreading my
sheet on the leather of the back. Our one fellow-traveller, a stout
clergyman, dozing since we started in his distant corner, woke up to see
what I was doing, and remonstrated with me. "Don't you think," said he,
"that you had better try to sleep a little now, and write your letters
in the morning?" In the fulness of my heart, I told him that I did not
know how much of the morning might be left me, and the pressing reasons
that there were for making the most of my time. Then he informed us that
he too was to sail for Australia to-morrow, and by the same ship; and it
immediately transpired that he was the person for whose sake that ship
had been chosen for us. We had arranged a later start by one of Green's
line, when a venerable archdeacon, visiting us at our rectory, urged us
to change to one of Money Wigrams', because he knew of a Melbourne
clergyman who was going in her. The clergyman had his wife with him,
which our archdeacon thought would be so nice for me. With great
difficulty we transferred ourselves, anticipating advantages that we did
not get. The Melbourne clergyman--here revealed--was a good man, but an
uncongenial companion at close quarters; his wife--she was his second,
and had been the servant of his first--was more so, and a terrible
stirrer-up of strife amongst the other lady passengers. She had embarked
in London.

I remember the look of Devonshire in the early May dawn. My
grandmother had died at Ottery St. Mary, and I loved the pleasant
county and for years had wanted to explore it. But this was all I ever
saw of its beautiful face--Ivy Bridge (was that the name?), one scene
that has not faded, and the place where the railway ran close beside
the sea. We reached Plymouth at a ghastly hour before anybody was up.
At the hotel recommended to us by our latest friend we were shown into
a room where the dirty glasses and tobacco ashes of the night before
still defiled the air and the tablecloth. Here we sat until a bedroom
was ready for us, when we went to bed--which seemed a most useless
proceeding--until there was a fair chance of getting breakfast. A bath
and a good meal pulled us together, and then we went out for our last
walk on English ground. A charming walk it was, exploring that old
town--I would give something to be able to repeat it--and a sweet
conclusion to our home life. We returned to our hotel for a bite of
lunch, hired an old man and a barrow to trundle our few things (the
heavy baggage having been put on board in London) to the waterside,
and after him a waterman and a boat, and got out to our ship lying in
the Sound--the first we saw of her--at a little before noon, which was
her advertised sailing hour. The newspapers called her a "fine
powerful clipper ship of 1150 tons," and boasted that her saloon,
which was "a very spacious apartment," could "accommodate forty
passengers with ease." We were thirty-two and a baby, which seemed
just to fill it comfortably. Such were the mammoth liners of those
days. As we were rowed up to her gangway, bashful under the eyes of a
number of keenly-interested spectators, whose heads hung over the
bulwark, we thought her wonderful.

The wife of our latest acquaintance received us on deck, but all she
wanted of us was information as to where her husband was and what he
was doing. We could not tell her; we had not seen him since our
arrival in the town. She could do nothing but watch for him, fuming;
and we went to our quarters and our discoveries of the comforts there
provided for us by the thoughtfulness of our London friends. We had
one of the only two large cabins on the ship; the other was the
captain's; the rudder clanked between us and him, behind the bulkhead
at the end of our wide curved sofa, where the pillow, tucked into a
bright rug, was a full-sized feather bed, a wedding present that at
first we did not know what to do with, but which soon proved the most
valuable of them all, as it still is, in the form of plenty of soft,
fat cushions all over the house. I spent a large part of my days at
sea reclining upon this downy mass, which began below my
shoulder-blades and sloped upward nearly to the ceiling; as I lay I
could look out of and down from the row of stern windows that made one
side of my couch, and watch the following birds and fishes--sometimes
a shark beguiled with a piece of pork--without lifting my head. It was
an envied place in the tropics, when the air swept free to the main
deck through open doors; but in rough weather--and it was nearly all
rough weather--the swing of the sea-saw was killing. It used to fling
me out of bed over a high bunk board until I was black and blue with
my falls, and it kept me sea-sick the whole voyage.

We "settled up" our room according to our inexperienced notions, and
at four o'clock we sat down to dinner in the "cuddy," still in port.
Excellent dinners we had at that odd hour for dining, which was the
regular hour, and really a very suitable one under the circumstances
of sea life, breaking up the long day of which most of us were tired
by the time the first dressing-bell rang at half-past three. The
function practically occupied the afternoon, and, as I said, was
carried out to the satisfaction of all save those who would never have
been satisfied with anything. That the company could feed us so well,
and lodge and carry us, for less than ten shillings a day argued good
management, but I think they must have relied on the dead cargo for
their profits. We were in Plymouth Sound on Sunday morning. On Sunday
evening a party of passengers went ashore to attend church. "Mind,"
said the captain, "if a wind gets up while you are away, I shall not
wait for you." But no wind stirred that night, nor all the next day,
nor the next. Our clergyman friend (without his wife) darted to and
fro, for he was confident that no ship would venture to leave a person
of his importance behind, but we dared not risk it. We spent our time
leaning over the poop-rail, gazing at the dear land, so near and yet
so far, and thinking of our mourning relatives, with whom we might
have been if we had known. When I was not doing that, I was writing to
them. On Wednesday morning, the 1st of June--we had embarked on
Saturday--the post-bag was closed for the pilot, and I looked my last
on England through a grey sheet of rain.




CHAPTER II

AUSTRALIA FELIX


The story of a sea-voyage thirty years ago, if it could properly be
included in this chronicle, might interest the young reader, born
since the era of the sailing ship, and to whom therefore the true
romance of ocean travel is unknown. To me, who, if I could cross the
world to-morrow, would choose the most civilised steamer I could
afford, the memory of the _Hampshire_ on her maiden trip brings regret
for beauty vanishing from the world, as the Pink Terraces of New
Zealand have vanished, or the big bird-thronged hedges of rural
England in my nutting and blackberrying childhood. All such losses
have been amply compensated for, no doubt--I am not of those who,
having outlived them, insist that the old times were better than the
new--but they are losses, notwithstanding. The fine old sailing
sailor-men and their noble seamanship, and the almost sentient
responsiveness of the "powerful clipper" of a thousand tons or so in
their hands--the spectacle of her with all her tiers of sails full,
leaning to the breeze, or fighting storms, bare-poled, by sheer brain
sense and the inspiration of the divinest unconscious courage that
human history can show--there is nothing in the splendid new regime to
touch the heart and the imagination as these did. I forget the
hard-bottomed and treacherous bunks, the soon-carpetless, soaked
floors, the dancing table that shot fowls and legs of mutton into our
laps out of dish and fiddle, the cold that one could find no shelter
from except in bed, the terrible gales, the incurable sea-sickness,
the petty feuds of the lady passengers; that is, I think of them as
not worth thinking of, with the feeling that it was finer to rough it
a bit as we did than to be pampered at every turn as sea-travellers
are now, and in recognition of the fact that my sufferings brought me
many pleasures that otherwise I should have been deprived of. The
captain wanted to--only I would not let him--give me his own swinging
cot. The head steward used to smuggle in mysterious parcels, which,
when unwrapped, disclosed little dainties, specially prepared and hot
from the cooking-stove, to tempt her who was said to be "the most
sea-sick lady they had ever carried." The other ladies, when not
immersed in their little social broils, from which my physical state
and geographical position detached me, were kindness itself. One of
them gave me that nearly extinct article, a hair net--it was the day
of chignons, the manufacture of which was beyond me--and seldom have I
received a more useful gift. With my hair tucked into this bag,
dressing-gowned and shawled, I used to go up after nightfall to a
couch on the skylight; there I would enjoy myself, feeling fairly well
until I moved to go down again--amused with the little comedies going
on around me, and enraptured with the picture of the winged vessel as
I looked up through her labyrinth of rigging to the mastheads and the
sky, and then down and around at the sea and the night through which
she moved so majestically. Pictures of her sweeping through a
dream-like world of moonlight and mystery are indelible in my mind.
Sometimes the moonlight was so bright that we played chess and card
games by it on the skylight and about the deck. At other times we lay
becalmed, and I had my chance to dress myself and enjoy the evening
dance or concert, or whatever was going on. But at the worst of
times--even in the tremendous storms, when the ship lay poop-rail
under, all but flat on her beam ends (drowning the fowls and pigs on
that side), or plunged and wallowed under swamping cross-seas that
pounded down through smashed skylights upon us tumbling about
helplessly in the dark--even in these crises of known danger and
physical misery there was something exhilarating and uplifting--a
sense of finely-lived if not heroic life, that may come to the coddled
steamer passenger when the machinery breaks down, but which I cannot
associate with him and his "floating hotel" under any circumstances
short of impending shipwreck.

We sighted Cape Otway on the 16th of August. Seventy-seven days! Yet
the Melbourne newspapers of the 19th called it smart work, considering
the sensational weather we had passed through. More than forty ships
were reported overdue when we arrived--a curious thing to think of
now, with the steamers crowding every port keeping time like
clockwork. The pilots that bring them up the bay can rarely enjoy the
popularity and prestige of their predecessors of the last generation.
The sensation caused by the knowledge that ours was on board, with his
month-and-a-half-old letters and newspapers, filled with information
of the happenings in the world from which we had been totally cut off
for nearly a quarter of a year, must have been delightful to him. We
came out to breakfast to find him there, crowded about by the young
men, the honoured guest of the company, one and all of whom hung upon
his every word--particularly the gamblers who had had to wait till now
for the name of the Derby winner. I remember that this item of news
was considered the most important; next to it was the news that
Dickens was dead.

Although we sighted land on the 16th, it was not until the 19th that
we set foot upon it, so leisurely did we do things in those days.
Contrary winds kept us hovering about the Heads for some hours. The
pilot who came on board before breakfast saw us well into our
afternoon dinner before he decided to tack through the Rip against
them; we shortened the meal which it was our custom to make the most
of in order to watch the manoeuvre, which was very pretty. The captain
was charmed with it, although there was one awful moment when the
vessel was but her own length from one of the reefs--the noise of the
wind had caused one of the yelled orders to be misunderstood--and it
was amusing to note his joyous excitement as he marched about, rubbing
his hands. "She's a yacht, sir," he bawled to the sympathetic pilot;
"you can do anything with her." "You can that," the pilot answered, as
he made his delicate zig-zags through that formidable gateway in the
teeth of the wind--a feat in seamanship that the dullest landlubber
could not but admire and marvel at.

And so we came to shelter and calm water at last. We anchored off
Queenscliff and signalled for the doctor, who did not immediately put
out to us, as he should have done. We had had such hopes of getting
to a shore bed that night that most of us had stripped our cabins--the
furniture of which had to be of our own providing--and packed
everything up; now we had to unpack again, to get out bedding for
another night and find a candle by which to see to take off the smart
shore clothes in which we had sat all day, eyeing each other's
costumes, which for the first time seemed to reveal us in our true
characters. We were ungratefully disheartened by this trivial
disappointment, and retired to rest all grumbling at the Providence
which had brought us through so many perils unharmed.

Next morning the ship seethed with indignation because the doctor
still made no sign. What happened to him afterwards I don't know, but
the penalties he was threatened with for being off duty at the wrong
time were heavy. He detained us so long that again our confident
expectation of a shore bed was frustrated; for yet another night we
had to camp in our dismantled cabin. The pair of tugs that dragged us
from the Heads to Hobson's Bay, making their best pace, could not get
us home until black night had fallen and it was considered too late to
go up to the pier.

I suppose it was about nine o'clock when we dropped anchor. All we
could see of the near city was a three-quarter ring of lights dividing
dark water from dark sky--just what I see now every night when I come
upstairs to bed, before I draw the blinds down. We watched them,
fascinated, and--still more fascinating--the boats that presently
found their way to us, bringing welcoming friends and relatives to
those passengers who possessed them. We, strangers in a strange land,
sat apart and watched these favoured ones--listened to their callings
back and forth over the ship's side, beheld their embraces at the
gangway, their excited interviews in the cuddy, their gay departures
into the night and the unknown, which in nearly every case swallowed
them for ever as far as we were concerned. Three only of the whole
company have we set eyes on since--excepting the friend who became our
brother--and one of these three renewed acquaintance with us but a
year or two ago. Another I saw once across a hotel dinner-table. The
third was the clergyman who had been so kindly foisted on us--or we on
him--before we left England; and it was enough for us to see him afar
off at such few diocesan functions as we afterwards attended together;
we dropped closer relations as soon as there was room to drop them.
However, he was a useful and respected member of his profession, and
much valued by his own parish, from which death removed him many a
year ago. Quite a deputation of church members came off to welcome him
on that night of his return from his English holiday, and to tell him
of the things his _locum tenens_ had been doing in his absence. He was
furious at learning that this person--at the present moment the head
of the Church of England in this state--had had the presumption to
replace an old organ--_his_ old organ--with a new one. In the
deputation were ladies with votive bouquets for his wife; the perfume
of spring violets in the saloon deepened the sense of exile and
solitude that crept upon us when their boat and the rest had vanished
from view, leaving but the few friendless ones to the hospitality of
the ship for a last night's lodging.

However, in the morning, we had our turn. It was the loveliest
morning, a sample of the really matchless climate (which we had been
informed was exactly like that of the palm-houses at Kew), clear as
crystal, full of sunshine and freshness; and when we awoke amid
strange noises, and looked out of our port-hole, we saw that not sea
but wooden planks lay under it--Port Melbourne railway pier, exactly
as it is now, only that its name was then Sandridge and its old piles
thirty years stouter where salt water and barnacles gnawed them.

With what joy as well as confidence did we don our best clerical coat
and our best purple petticoat and immaculate black gown (the skirt
pulled up out of harm's way through a stout elastic waist-cord, over
which it hung behind in a soft, unobtrusive bag, for street wear), and
lay out our Peter Robinson jacket and bonnet, and gloves from the
hermetically sealed bottle, upon the bare bunk! And the breakfast we
then went to is a memory to gloat upon--the succulent steak, the fresh
butter and cream, the shore-baked rolls, the piled fruits and salads;
nothing ever surpassed it except the mid-day meal following, with its
juicy sirloin and such spring vegetables as I had never seen. This
also I battened on, with my splendidly prepared appetite, though G.
did not. The bishop's representative--our first Australian friend,
whose fine and kindly face is little changed in all these years, and
which I never look upon without recalling that moment, my first and
just impression of it and him--appeared in our cabin doorway early in
the morning; and it was deemed expedient that G. should go with him to
report himself at headquarters, and return for me when that business
was done. So I spent some hours alone, watching the railway station at
the head of the pier through my strong glasses. In the afternoon I
too landed, and was driven to lodgings that had been secured for us in
East Melbourne, where we at once dressed for dinner at the house of
our newest friend, and for one of the most charming social evenings
that I ever spent. The feature of it that I best remember was a vivid
literary discussion based upon _Lothair_, which was the new book of
the hour, and from which our host read excruciating extracts. How
brightly every detail of those first hours in Australia stands out in
the mind's records of the past--the refined little dinner (I could
name every dish on the dainty table), the beautiful and adored invalid
hostess, who died not long afterwards, and whom those who knew her
still speak of as "too good for this world"; the refreshment of
intellectual talk after the banalities of the ship; the warm kindness
of everybody, even our landlady, who was really a lady, and like a
mother to me; the comfort of the sweet and clean shore life--I shall
never cease to glow at the recollection of these things. The beautiful
weather enhanced the charm of all, and--still more--the fact that,
although at first I staggered with the weakness left by such long
sea-sickness, I not only recovered as soon as my foot touched land,
but enjoyed the best health of my life for a full year afterwards.

The second day was a Saturday, and we were taken out to see the
sights. No description that we had read or heard of, even from our
fellow-passengers whose homes were there, had prepared us for the
wonder that Melbourne was to us. As I remember our metropolis then,
and see it now, I am not conscious of any striking general change,
although, of course, the changes in detail are innumerable. It was a
greater city for its age thirty years ago than it is to-day, great as
it is to-day. I lately read in some English magazine the statement
that tree-stumps--likewise, if I mistake not, kangaroos--were features
of Collins Street "twenty-five years ago." I can answer for it that in
1870 it was excellently paved and macadamised, thronged with its
waggonette-cabs, omnibuses, and private carriages--a perfectly good
and proper street, except for its open drainage gutters. The nearest
kangaroo hopped in the Zoological Gardens at Royal Park. In 1870,
also--although the theatrical proceedings of the Kelly gang took place
later--bushranging was virtually a thing of the past. So was the Bret
Harte mining-camp. We are credited still, I believe, with those
romantic institutions, and our local story-writers love to pander to
the delusion of some folks that Australia is made up of them; I can
only say--and I ought to know--that in Victoria, at any rate, they
have not existed in my time. Had they existed in the other colonies, I
must have heard of it. The last real bushranger came to his inevitable
bad end shortly before we arrived. The cowardly Kellys, murderers, and
brigands as they were, and costlier than all their predecessors to
hunt down, always seemed to me but imitation bushrangers. Mining has
been a sober pursuit, weighted with expensive machinery. Indeed, we
have been quite steady and respectable, so far as I know. In the way
of public rowdyism I can recall nothing worth mentioning--unless it be
the great strike of 1890.

We went to see the Town Hall--the present one, lacking only its
present portico; and the splendid Public Library, as it was until a
few years ago, when a wing was added; and the Melbourne Hospital, as
it stands to-day; and the University, housed as it is now, and
beginning to gather its family of colleges about it. We were taken
a-walking in the Fitzroy Gardens--saw the same fern gully, the same
plaster statues, that still adorn it; and to the Botanical Gardens,
already furnished with their lakes and swans, and rustic bridges, and
all the rest of it. And how beautiful we thought it all! As I have
said, it was springtime, and the weather glorious. There had been
excessive rains, and were soon to be more--rains which caused 1870 to
be marked in history as "the year of the great floods"--but the
loveliness of the weather as we first knew it I shall never forget.

We finished the week in the suburban parish that included Pentridge,
the great prison of the State--an awesome pile of dressed granite then
as now. The incumbent was not well, and G. was sent to help him with
his Sunday duty. The first early function was at the gaol, from which
they brought back an exquisitely-designed programme of the music and
order of service, which I still keep amongst my mementoes of those
days. It was done by a prisoner, who supplied one, and always a
different one, to the chaplain each Sunday.

At his house--where again we were surprised to find all the
refinements we had supposed ourselves to have left in England, for he
and his wife were exceptionally cultivated persons--we slept on the
ground floor for the first time in our lives, all mixed up with
drawing-room and garden, which felt very strange and public, and
almost improper. Now I prefer the bungalow arrangement to any other; I
like to feel the house all round me, close and cosy, and to be able to
slip from my bed into the open air when I like, and not to be cut off
from folks when I am ill. For more than twenty years I was accustomed
to it, sleeping with open windows and unlocked doors, like any Bedouin
in his tent, unmolested in the loneliest localities by night-prowling
man or beast. I miss this now, when I live in town and have to climb
stairs and isolate myself--or sleep with shut windows (which I never
will) in a ground-floor fortress, made burglar-proof at every point.

Bishop and Mrs. Perry had a dinner-party for us on Monday. That day
was otherwise given to our particular ship friend (of whom I shall say
more presently); with him, a stranger in the land like ourselves, we
had adventures and excursions "on our own," eluding the many kind folk
who would have liked to play courier. We lunched plentifully at an
excellent restaurant--I cannot identify it now, but it fixed our
impression that we had indeed come to a land of milk and honey--and
then rambled at large. The evening was very pleasant. Whether as host
or guest, the first Bishop of Melbourne was always perfect, and we met
some interesting people at his board. Others came in after dinner,
amongst them two of the "sweetly pretty daughters," of whom we had
heard in England, and who did not quite come up to our expectations.
They are hoary-headed maiden ladies now--the youngest as white as the
muslin of the frock she wore that night.

We did many things during the remainder of the week, which was full of
business, pleasure, and hospitalities, very little of our time being
spent in privacy. The shops were surprisingly well furnished and
tempting, and we acted upon our supposition that we should find none
to speak of in the Bush. We made careful little purchases from day to
day. The very first of them, I think, was Professor Halford's
snake-bite cure. We had an idea that, once out of the city, our lives
would not be safe without it for a day. It was a hypodermic syringe
and bottle of stuff, done up in a neat pocket-case. That case did
cumber pockets for a time, but it was never opened, and eventually
went astray and was no more seen--or missed. Yet snakes were quite
common objects of the country then. I used to get weary of the
monotony of sitting my horse and holding G.'s, while at every mile or
so he stopped to kill one, during our Bush-rides in warm weather.
English readers should know that in the Bush it has ever been a point
of honour, by no means to be evaded, to kill every snake you see, if
possible, no matter how difficult the job, nor how great your
impatience to be after other jobs. That probably is why they are so
infrequent now that any chance appearance of the creature is
chronicled in the papers as news.

Another early purchase was a couple of large pine-apples, at
threepence a-piece. We each ate one (surreptitiously, in a retired
spot), and realised one of the ambitions of our lives--to get enough
of that delicacy for once.

On Saturday the 24th, the eighth day from our arrival, we turned our
backs upon all this wild dissipation and our faces towards stern duty.
We left Melbourne for the Bush.




CHAPTER III

THE BUSH


It was not quite bush, to start with, because we travelled by railway
to our immediate destination, and that was a substantial township set
amongst substantial farms and stations, intersected by made roads. But
on the way we had samples of typical country, between one
stopping-place and another. First, there were the ugly, stony plains,
with their far-apart stone fences, formed by simply piling the brown
boulders, bound together by their own weight only, into walls of the
required height. This dreary country represented valuable estates, and
remains of the same aspect and in the hands of the same families, I
believe, still. Gradually these stone-strewn levels merged into
greener and softer country, which grew the gum-trees we had heard so
much of; and presently we came to closely-folded, densely-forested
hills, the "Dividing Range"--a locality to be afterwards associated
with many charming memories--where snow and cloud-mists enwrapped one
in winter, and from which the distant panorama of the low-lying
capital and the sea was lovely on a clear day. But it was like eating
one's first olive, that first acquaintance with Bush scenery; we had
not got the taste of it. I cannot remember that we admired anything.
Rather, an impression remains--the only one that does remain--of a
cheerless effect upon our minds. Perhaps the weather had changed.

There was no lack of cheer in the welcome awaiting us at our journey's
end. Our clergyman-host met us on the railway platform with the face
of a father greeting children home from school. There was a cab
waiting, into which our traps were thrown, but we preferred to walk up
to the parsonage through the streets of the clean little town, that we
might study its unexpected points and see how enterprising and
civilised the Bush could be. The parson's wife, aged twenty-one and
four years married, received us on the doorstep of the cheerful house,
and at once we were as perfectly at home in it as in our own. That was
the way with all Australian houses, we found.

Sunday was certainly wet. The two parsons drove out to a Bush service
in the afternoon, and we their wives had a bad quarter of an hour
listening to the bell ringing for the evening one, while yet there was
no sign of their return who had promised to be back for tea; the boggy
roads and swollen water-courses so delayed them that it was on the
stroke of church time ere they turned up. But next day the sun shone
again, and we were taken for a drive over macadamised roads and shown
things that corrected our opinion of Bush scenery. And that day,
neighbouring clergymen, Sunday off their minds, came to make our
acquaintance, all full of information and advice for us, all eager
themselves for news from the "Old Country." Mrs C. gave them
shakedowns on sofas and floor, to which they repaired at disgraceful
hours of the night, because they could not stop talking. Where is that
party now?--the merriest clerical party I was ever in. The host, our
friend from that day, and godfather to one of our sons, was made a
bishop, and died but a few months ago; his merry wife is a
broken-hearted widow, crippled with neuritis. One of the guests, in
after years still more intimately dear, became an archdeacon, and is
now dead also. Two others are past work, resting in retirement until
the end comes. We, the youngest of the group, bar one, are beginning
to realise that the evening for us also is drawing on.

It was here, by the way, that we had news of the commencement of the
war between France and Prussia. It came by the monthly mail-boat,
which was our one channel of communication with the world. This budget
gave texts for the discussions that are so memorable for their
vivacity and charm. A great day was mail-day in those times. Looking
back, I cannot remember that we fretted much over our four blank
weeks, during which the most awful and personally serious things might
happen without our knowing it; but I do remember that when we got the
cable many of us grumbled because it took away the interest of
mail-day, which became to us as a novel of which we know the ending
before we begin to read it.

Holiday travels ended on the last day of August. That night we started
for the up-country post to which G. had been appointed, and where he
was expected to begin his duties on the following Sunday. August 31st
was a Wednesday, and therefore ample time seemed to have been allowed
for a journey from Melbourne which the daily coach accomplished in
less than a couple of days (and which is now done by the Sydney
express in four hours). However, "the year of the great flood" was
already making its reputation. Bridges and culverts had been washed
away, and the coach-road was reported impassable for ladies. Men could
wade and swim, assist to push the vehicle and extricate it from
bogs--they were expected to do so--but the authorities in Melbourne
advised my husband that the conditions were too rough for me.
Consequently we took a round-about route, whereby it was still
reckoned that we should get to our destination before Sunday.

The C.'s saw us off during the afternoon--not back to town, but on by
the railway which ended at the Murray. We were passed on from friend
to friend until a group of kind men--whom I never saw before or since,
but shall never forget--established us on board the little Murray
streamer which was to be our home till Saturday. It was the mild
spring night of that part of the colony, which embraces so many
climates; and I can see now, in my mind's eye, the swirl of the
brimming river that so soon after overflowed the town; the lights of
the wharf and the boat, which spangled the dark sky and water with
sparks from its wood-fed furnace; the generally romantic
picturesqueness of a scene--one of a sensational series--which
indelibly impressed itself upon me, an imaginative young person seeing
the world for the first time.

I can only with an effort remember how uncomfortable that boat was;
when I think of it at all, my mind fills with recollections of the
deeply interesting experiences that came to me by its means. On that
flooded river--so flooded that its bed, for the greater part of the
way, was marked by no banks, but only its bordering trees--I saw
blacks in native costume, the now rare kangaroo and emu in flocks;
black swans, white ibises, grey cranes; the iguana running up a tree,
the dear laughing jackass in his glory; all the notorious
characteristics of the country, and many more undreamed of. Most
distinctly do I remember, the unceasing chorus of the frogs, and the
solemn-sounding echo of the steamer's puffs and pants through the
solitary gum-forests, especially at night. But we soon had to leave
off travelling at night, on account of the many foreign bodies that
the flood was whirling down--the debris of houses and bridges, trees,
stacks, all sorts of things. Indeed, even in daylight the navigation
of the turbulent stream was a most risky business.

Consternation fell upon us when Saturday morning came, and we were
informed that there was small chance of completing the passage that
day. This meant being stranded in a strange township, at some possibly
low public-house, on Sunday, when the coach of our last stage would
not be running, and the breaking of an engagement that was considered
of immense importance.

"What shall we do?" we asked ourselves, and the question was overheard
by fellow-passengers, anxious, as everybody was, to help us.

"It's a pity you can't cut across," said one. "From here to W---- is
no distance as the crow flies."

Compared with the bow-loop we were making, it was no distance--a few
hours' drive, with normal roads and weather; and just then the steamer
stopped to take in cargo from a lonely shed, near which we perceived a
cart, a grazing horse, and a man, evidently belonging to each other,
and on the right (Victorian) side of the stream.

"Would it be possible," one of us suggested, "to hire that cart and
cut across?"

G. went to try, while I leaned over the boat's rail and anxiously
watched the negotiations. They were successful, and we hurriedly
collected our wraps and bags, our heavy luggage was put ashore, and
the steamer passed on and vanished round the next bend of the river,
which was all bends, leaving us on the bank--in the real Bush for the
first time, and delighted with the situation. The man with the cart
had guaranteed to get us home before nightfall.

We climbed over our boxes, which filled the body of the vehicle,
settled ourselves upon them as comfortably as their angles permitted,
and started merrily on our way. It was the morning of the day, of the
season, of the Australian year, of our two lives; and I could never
lose the memory of my sensations in that vernal hour. I can sniff now
the delicious air, rain-washed to more than even its accustomed
purity, the scents of gum and wattle and fresh-springing grass, the
atmosphere of untainted Nature and the free wilds. I can see the vast
flocks of screaming cockatoos and parrots of all colours that darted
about our path--how wonderful and romantic I thought them! And what
years it is since the wild parrot has shown himself to me in any
number or variety! Like the once ubiquitous 'possum, he seems a
vanishing race--at any rate, in this state. I suppose they still have
sanctuary in the larger and less settled ones. I hope so.

However, we were not far on this promising journey when troubles
began. The rain returned, and settled to a solid downpour, that
increased to a deluge as the day wore on. The Bush track became softer
and softer, stickier and stickier, the dreadful bogs of its deeper
parts more and more difficult of negotiation by the poor overweighted,
willing horse, whose strength, as we soon saw, was unequal to the task
before him. He got on fairly well until after the noonday halt, when
he was rubbed down and fed--when we also were fed by a poor selector's
wife at whose hut (in the absence of hotels) we solicited food, and
who gave us all she had, bread and cream, as much as we could eat, and
then refused to take a penny for it. But starting again, with rain
heavier than before, the poor beast's struggles to do his hopeless
best became more than I could bear. When I had seen him scramble
through three or four bogs that sucked him down like quicksands, and
it seemed that he must burst his heart in the effort to get out of
them, I stopped the cart and said I would walk. My weight might not be
much, but such as it was he should be relieved of it. G. also walked,
but as he was needed to help the driver I left him and was soon far
ahead, intending to give this negative aid to the expedition as long
as I could find my way.

I had been told to "follow the track," and I followed it for miles.
The Bush was drowned in rain, so that I had to jump pools, and climb
logs and branches, and get round swamps, in such a way that I felt it
every minute more impossible to retrace my steps. I carried an
umbrella, but I was wet to the skin. I was quite composed, however,
except for my distress on account of the poor horse, whose master's
voice and whip I could hear in the distance behind me from time to
time; and I was not at all alarmed. I had prepared myself for the
savageness of a savage country. I imagined that this was the sort of
thing I should have to get accustomed to. Now and then I sat down to
recover breath and to wring my sopping skirts, and to wait for the
sound of the cart advancing, after the frequent silences that
betokened bogs.

By the way, I hear nothing nowadays of those bogs which, in their
various forms, made our winter drives so exciting--the "glue-pots,"
the "rotten grounds," the "spue-holes," worst of all, indicated by a
little bubble-up of clayey mud that you could cover with a
handkerchief, but which, if a horse stepped on it, would take his leg
to the knee, or to any depth that it would go without breaking. "Made"
roads and drainage-works seem to have done away with them this long
time, for the other day I met a resident of the locality who did not
know, until I told him, what a spue-hole was.

At last it was all silence. I waited for the cart, and it did not
come. I called--there was no answer. At the end of an hour--it may
have been two or three hours--the situation was the same. What had
happened was that the horse was at last in a bog that he could not get
out of, and that bog was miles away. I could not go back to see what
had happened. I did not know where I was. I conjectured that I had
turned off the track somewhere, and that my husband was travelling
away from me; that I was lost in the Bush, where I might never be
found again--where I should have to spend the night alone, at any
rate, in the horrible solitude and darkness and the drenching rain.

Appropriately, in this extremity, and just as dusk was closing in, I
heard a splashing and a crashing, and my knight appeared--one of
those fine, burly, bearded squatter-men who were not only the backbone
of their young country, but everything else that was sound and strong.
He drew rein in amazement; I rose from my log and stood before him in
the deepest confusion. Finally I explained my plight, and in two
minutes all trouble was over. Bidding me stay where I was for a short
time longer, he galloped away, and presently returned in a buggy
loaded with rugs and wraps, and bore me off to his house somewhere
near, telling me that he would return again for my husband, and had
sent men to the rescue of the cart and horse, now so buried in the bog
that not much more than his head and neck were visible.

Ah, those dear Bush-houses--so homely, so cosy, so hospitable, so
picturesque--and now so rare! At least a dozen present themselves to
my mind when I try to recall a perfect type, and this one amongst the
first, although I never was in it after that night. They were always a
nest of buildings that had grown one at a time, the house-father
having been his own architect, with no design but to make his family
comfortable, and to increase their comfort as his means allowed. And
this must have been the golden prime of the squatter class in
Victoria, for the free selector had but lately been let loose upon his
lands, and the consequent ruin that he prognosticated had not visibly
touched him. In the early stages of home-making, his home-life had
been rough enough; but there was no roughness in it now, although
there was plenty of work, and although the refinements about him were
all in keeping with his hardy manliness, his simplicity, and sincerity
of character. I used to be much struck by the contrast of his
cherished "imported" furniture with its homely setting--the cheval
glass and the mahogany wardrobe on the perhaps bare, dark-grey
hardwood floor--incongruities of that sort, which somehow always
seemed in taste. Never have I known greater luxury of toilet
appointments than in some of those hut-like dwellings. In the humblest
of them the bed stood always ready for the casual guest, a clean brush
and comb on the dressing-table, and easy house-slippers under it. And
then the paper-covered canvas walls used to belly out and in with the
wind that puffed behind them; opossums used to get in under the roof
and run over the canvas ceilings, which sagged under their weight,
showing the impression of their little feet and of the round of their
bodies where they sat down.

The country-houses become more and more Europeanised, year by year.
The inward ordering matches the outward architecture, and, although
Australian hospitality has survived the homes that were its
birthplaces, one hesitates to present one's self as an uninvited guest
at the door with the electric bell and the white-capped maid, who
asks, "What name, sir?" when you inquire if the family are at home.
There is an off-chance that you may be unwelcome, or, at any rate
inopportune, whereas it was impossible to imagine such a thing in what
we now lovingly call "the old days."

I came in, an utter stranger, out of the dark night and that wet and
boggy wilderness, weary and without a dry stitch on me, to such a
scene, such a welcome, as I could not forget in a dozen lifetimes. The
door had been flung wide on the approach of the buggy, and I was
lifted down into the light that poured from it, and passed straight
into what appeared to be the living room of the family, possibly
their only one. The glorious log fire of the country--the most
beautiful piece of house-furniture in the world--blazed on the snowy
white-washed hearth, filling every nook with warmth and comfort; and
the young mistress, a new-made mother just up from her bed, in a smart
loose garment that would now be called a tea-gown, came forward from
her armchair to greet me as if I had been her sister, at the least.
The table was spread for the dinner, to which the husband had been
riding home when I encountered and delayed him; and what a feature of
the charming picture it was! I remember the delicious boiled chicken
and mutton curry that were presently set upon it, and how I enjoyed
them. But first I was taken into an inner bedroom, to another glowing
fire, around which were grouped a warm bath ready to step into, soft
hot towels, sponge and soap, and a complete set of my hostess's best
clothes, from a handsome black silk dress to shoes and stockings and a
pocket-handkerchief. In these I dined, and, retiring early, as she had
to do, found a smart nightgown, dressing-gown, and slippers toasting
by my fire. And I sank to rest between fine linen sheets, and slept
like a top until crowing cocks, within a few feet of me, proclaimed
the break of day.

That day was Sunday, and G. had to preach at morning service some
eight or nine miles away. So we were early seated at a good breakfast,
and a light buggy and a pair of strong, fast horses were brought
round, to take us in good time to our destination. Our host himself
drove us, and incidentally taught us what Bush driving meant. I
remember how we made new roads for ourselves on the spur of the moment
to avoid bogs, and how gamely we battled through those that were
unavoidable; how we flew over the treacherous green levels that the
expert eye recognised as "rotten," where, had the horses been allowed
to pause for a moment, they would have sunk and stuck; and how finally
we dashed in style into the township and up to the parsonage-gate,
where a venerable archdeacon was anxiously looking for the curate whom
he had almost given up for lost. The church-bell had not yet begun to
ring. In fact, the family were still at breakfast when we arrived.




CHAPTER IV

THE FIRST HOME


We had to wait in lodgings for a few weeks, during which time we made
acquaintance with the place and people.

Our lodgings were very comfortable. Sitting-room and bedroom, with a
door between, our other door opening upon a big plot of virgin bush,
alive with magpies, whose exquisite carolling in the early hours of
the day is the thing that I remember best. There is no bird-song in
the world so fresh and cheery. I seldom hear it now, but when I do I
am back again, in imagination, at breakfast near that open door,
drinking in the sweetness of the lovely September mornings which were
the morning of my life. Never had I known such air and sunshine, or
such health to enjoy them; and never do I feel so much an Australian
as when I go to the Bush again and am welcomed by that fluty note. The
spirit of happy youth is in it, and of those "good old times" which we
old colonists have so many reasons to regret to-day. No song of
English nightingale could strike deeper to my heart.

Speaking of breakfast reminds me of the luxury we lived in, in respect
of food. Never was such a land of plenty as this was then, when no one
dreamed of butter and beef at what is their market rate this day. We
had young appetites, in fine order after the sea-voyage, and the more
we ate the better was our landlady pleased. It hurt her as a hostess
and housewife to have any dish neglected. And she simply stuffed us
with good things; the meal prepared for us two might have served
half-a-dozen, and given bilious attacks to all. One mistake only did
she make in the arrangement of her bill of fare--she gave us too many
quinces; apparently they were a superfluity in her garden, as they
have since been in nearly all of ours. At first they were a novel and
welcome delicacy, but when we had had them at every meal for weeks--in
jam, jelly, tart, pudding, and pie, with cream, with custard, with
bread and butter, and inlaid in sandwich cake--we were so thoroughly
sickened of them that neither of us have wanted to look at a quince
since. We have given the fruit away in sacksful to our neighbours,
season after season, all these thirty years, and not cooked one; just
lately--tempted by a brilliant carbuncle-hued jelly presented to me by
a gifted little cook in my family--I have suddenly re-acquired a taste
for it (which G. says will never happen to him), and now for the first
time we have no quinces in the garden. That is to say, we have
quinces--as also pears and almonds and other fruits--but the thieving
little town-boys that live around us steal everything before it is fit
to pluck. And I may here add, in regard to this sad fact, that when we
came to our town-house we found a notice-board up in the
orchard-paddock at the back, offering a reward of L5 for the
apprehension of "trespassers upon these premises." While it remained
up, there was always a policeman outside the fence. It was the joy of
our own school-boys to bamboozle him by scaling the fence at night or
in some surreptitious manner, pretending to be trespassers, and only
when they had given him all the trouble and satisfaction of
apprehending them, revealing their identity as sons of the house. But
I could not bear this board--such an anomaly in the colony, as I had
known it; I thought it horrible in any case, but on a clergyman's land
quite scandalous; and I did not rest until it was taken down. Now I
understand the meaning of it. No sooner was it gone than the policeman
disappeared for ever. And the thieving boys took, and keep, possession
of the place--at any rate, of the fruit; and of the flowers when they
fancy them, as occasionally they do. The fowls are locked up in their
house at night, and could defend themselves with audible squawks in
day-time. The back gate is also locked. But those young villains make
their own gates; they breach the defences by simply tearing down a few
palings, and pass through the hole. We mend it up, or hire a man to
mend it--more than the L5 of the reward must have gone in this
way--and next night they break it open again, or make another in an
easier place. Then quite calmly, and boldly they come in and out, sit
in the rifled and broken tree or on the top of the fence to munch
their spoil and "cheek" the poor maid who goes out to expostulate;
and, the once zealous policeman steadily holding aloof (he has been
appealed to for succour a dozen times in vain), we have no redress,
except when we take the law into our own hands, which is an
unprofitable proceeding. One of my ex-schoolboys administers justice
occasionally, in a fashion to bring irate parents, and threats of
summonses for assault about his ears, but he cannot be in two places
at once, and his long absences from this place are calculated upon. As
for Bob, the current house-dog, a fox-terrier of some intelligence,
he behaves like a perfect idiot in this case. He will bark furiously
at the boys when ordered to do so, but will neither initiate the chase
nor follow it up with effective action. My idea is that he takes them
for permanent members of the establishment. Or "boys will be boys," he
thinks. Or he has seen me bribe them to come and ask for fruit,
instead of stealing it. Anyway the result is that we have no fruit for
ourselves. Year after year we see our trees blossom and the young crop
set and swell, knowing we shall gather no harvest beyond a few hard,
half-grown pears, which can be stewed soft. If I want to make quince
jelly, as now I do, I must buy the quinces.

But in the country there were no thieves--no locks and bars in use--no
need for the policeman. The only raiders of the orchards were the
birds, who had the right to tax us.

That town of W----, where we spent the first year of our Australian
life, was a typical country-town of the better class, and at that
period very lively and prosperous. The railway afterwards drained it
of much of its local importance, which has only revived again in quite
recent times--since the fat lands about it have become studded with
dairy-farms and butter and tobacco factories, industries and
population which have contrived to hold their own here and there
against the crushing discouragements to which both are subjected.
Within the last few months it has been made the seat of a bishopric.

We found a highly-civilised society. The police magistrate at the head
of it--always a P.M. was at the head in those days, in the
country-towns big enough to have one, and not only by virtue of his
official standing, but by every right of personal character and
culture, as a rule--was a (to me) surprisingly well bred as well as
kindly gentleman; and his wife was as nice as he. They gave bright
evening-parties, at which he played the flute with a delicate skill,
and he read largely and liked to talk of what he read; also he was an
exemplary husband and father. In the group of pleasant households his
was one of the most serenely pleasant, and so we felt it deeply when
one morning, a few months after our arrival, the news of his sudden
death was brought to us. He had risen that morning apparently in his
usual health, and was in his dressing-room, making his toilet and
chatting with his wife through the open door between them--she with a
baby a week or so old--when she heard him fall; he did not answer her
call to know what was the matter, and when she went to see she found
him dead upon the floor. The catastrophe left her with six little ones
to provide for, and next to nothing to do it with. The good husband
and father, taken without warning in his prime (of unsuspected heart
disease), had begun to make provision for the rainy day, but not
completed the task. However, with pupils and boarders and what not,
she made a splendid fight of it. The baby son did not long survive his
father, but the five daughters grew up to testify to her good
mothering and to reward her for it. They are now good mothers in their
turn, sharing her society between them.

Next to the P.M. in the social scale came the doctors. There were two,
English gentlemen both. One had emigrated for adventure and the
goldfields, and spent good years seeking his fortune by short cuts,
but had been glad at last to return to his profession for a living.
He was courting a girl of exactly half his age when we came upon the
scene, and their wedding was the first smart function that we
attended. The other doctor and his wife were new arrivals from home,
like ourselves; they had landed but a month or two before us; and they
were our special and best-beloved companions and friends. Alas! he
too--one of the most delightful of men--died suddenly and dreadfully,
shortly before the death of the P.M., also leaving six mere babies and
a wife to whom he was perfectly devoted, as she to him. She came to
stay with me after the funeral, and the almost simultaneous birth of
my first child--the latter event hastened, it was thought, by the
shock and grief that I had shared with her. She was the most uncommon
woman I ever met, as she was one of the most adorable. Superficially,
both in face and figure, with the exception of her beautiful hands,
she was quite plain, and absolutely without trace of conscious
fascination or coquetry--the only instance I have known of a woman of
that sort being irresistible to every man she came across. The story
of her engagement, as told me by her husband, was exactly appropriate
to them both. He was leaving England for a foreign appointment, with
but a few days to spare, when a friend or relative--a high church
dignitary--wrote to beg a farewell visit, mentioning by way of special
inducement that a charming girl was staying in the house. The doctor
responded by falling in love with her on sight, in such a desperate
and successful manner that she married him within those few spare days
and accompanied him to his foreign appointment. Perfect love and bliss
had been their portion ever since; it was an ideal union. They had the
habit of driving up to our door, just as we were finishing dinner,
and calling us, one or both, to come out with them. The country was
new to us all, and we spent many of the evenings of our first summer
exploring it together. We made common cause as new chums, although
they were such citizens of the world as to feel at home anywhere. Even
the little ones in the nursery could put us to shame in respect of
their cosmopolitan experience. It filled me with envy to hear them
chattering their pretty baby French to their Swiss nurse. The mother
married again some years afterwards. And not a man of her acquaintance
but felt and said--as my own husband did--that the not-too-well-off
bachelor who saddled himself with the almost penniless widow and her
six children did by that act the best day's work for himself that he
had ever done or was likely to do. He, we have been told (for it is
many a year since she drifted out of our reach), followed the example
of his predecessor in marital behaviour--waiting on her hand and foot,
writing her letters and packing her trunks to save her trouble, and
generally worshipping the ground she walked on. That also is
considered matter of course. But I wonder how it is with her now? She
is living still, I hear. And she is considerably older than I am.

Next to the doctors, the bankers--_i.e._, the officials of the four or
five banks which have branches in every town of any importance. The
managers are handsomely housed, and live in the best Bush-town style;
they are really the backbone of country society, it being to the
interest of their employers that they should be popular with their
constituents, as well as to a man's own interest to make life pleasant
in a place where he may be settled for many years. The smart young
bank clerks are the natural complement of the young Bush-town ladies,
whose brothers always go away; the clerks will be managers in time,
and meanwhile are essential to the upkeep of tennis clubs and the
success of balls and picnics. In W----, in 1870-1, the bank people
were of very good quality--one household in particular, the heads of
which belonged to two substantial colonial families of high repute
(which they still enjoy); the lady here was a charming woman and
hostess, famous in local circles for her pleasant parties, for which I
frequently needed the evening dresses that I had supposed would be
superfluous. Indeed, with one thing and another, I was gayer in that
first year of "missionary" life than I had ever been in England.

There were bazaars and church teas and such things--quite as exciting
as the private functions--at which our circle of friends and
acquaintances was augmented by the leading tradesfolk, between whose
class and that conventionally supposed to be above them the line of
demarcation is always very thin, sometimes scarcely perceptible--and
properly so, in these isolated communities. I keep in affectionate
remembrance the wife of a stationer who was like a mother to me, the
wife of a general storekeeper who often sat with me when I was lonely
and needed looking after, and the wife of a chemist with whom I was in
particular sympathy at the time. We sewed baby-clothes together, she
and I, and the wearers of them arrived in this world within an hour of
each other. My beloved first-born died at five years old; his
birth-mate at about twelve, I think. The gate by which he went seemed
awful enough, but the passing of the poor little girl was too dreadful
for words. She was coming home from a visit one day in the charge of a
friend: the creeks were flooded that they had to cross, and one of
them swept away horse and buggy, and drowned the driver. He hooked his
little companion to a branch or snag sticking out of the swirl, before
leaving her, as it was supposed, to swim ashore for help; there she
clung through the whole of the long night, from early evening to
daylight next morning, and was then found--warm, the breath just gone,
not more, the doctor said, than a few minutes too late. And there were
people living about the spot who testified that they had heard her
crying in the night, without knowing what the sound meant!

And as for the cottage people--the marked thing about them was that
they were not "the poor." There was none with whom a clergyman or his
wife could safely take the liberties so customary at home. When a
sister-in-law, once my fellow district-visitor, came out to be our
guest for awhile, and started to make herself useful by teaching our
parishioners their duty on the traditional lines and by bestowing
doles of old clothes and kitchen scraps upon them, she got some
tremendous surprises--"insolence" that simply staggered her. No, what
they loved was to bring us little presents of new-laid eggs or poultry
or what not, and to charge us less than they charged the laity for
what they did for us in the way of business. The whole attitude of
parishes and lay people in this country towards their spiritual
pastors is benevolent to a degree. The parental spirit, tolerant,
indulgent, making allowances (in more senses than one), is here on
their side. The schools teach their children for half fees; the
doctors doctor them for no fees at all; the very shipping
companies--some, at least--make special fares for them. And so long as
they accept this role of the lame dog that needs helping over the
stile, so long will there be that tinge of contempt and patronage
which embitters these favours to some of us who receive them.

Coming straight from our dignified Cathedral life, with its high and
mighty Church-and-State traditions, into this democratic
Salem-Chapel-like atmosphere, we still found nothing to disagree with
us--only one circumstance excepted, for which neither the country nor
the parish was to blame. Pure loving-kindness and open-armed
hospitality to strangers surrounded us on all sides but one, and the
unexpected welcome went to our young hearts. The single disappointment
came from a quarter whence it was least expected. But, as to that,
bygones may be bygones at this time of day. I shall not tell tales.

The absorbing joy, to start with, was the making of the first home.
The town was so well filled that it was a difficult matter to find a
house; we took the first possible one that offered, after waiting
several weeks for it.

A large railway station now stands, and for many years has stood, upon
the site. Walking about the Bush in the vicinity, we used to find here
and there in the ground small pegs which we were informed were the
surveyors' marks for the line--the line which now runs all the way to
Sydney, and thence to Brisbane, but which was then but beginning to be
made.

The spot was quite on the outskirts of the township, and we passed
from our premises straight into the Bush behind the house, which faced
some open waste ground, analogous to an English common of unusual
size, which divided us from streets and church. House, do I call it!
Three tiny rooms, opening one into the other, the first into the
outer air, a lean-to at the back, and a detached kitchen--that was
all. We paid one pound a week for it, which certainly was an excessive
rent for such a place. Excessive also were the wages we gave our first
servant, an amiable but inefficient Irish girl--fifteen shillings a
week. We were told that these were the ruling rates; if they were,
they did not long remain so.

The landlord papered the front rooms for us--for those to be occupied
in day-time we chose from a local store an appropriate pattern of
brown _fleur-de-lys_ on a green ground; we papered the back ourselves.
I made the drugget and matting floor-coverings, the chintz curtains,
the dimity bed-furniture--made everything, in fact, that was sewable,
for, fortunately, I come of a long line of good needle-women. When I
remember the time-honoured theory that a writing person is no good for
anything else, I feel obliged, at the risk of appearing a braggart, to
parade the above fact. I take pride in announcing that I never hired a
sewing-woman--that, having made all my own clothes as a girl, even to
the wedding-gown, I made all my children's, until the boys grew beyond
their sailor suits, and the girl put her hair up. In fact, housework
has all along been the business of life; novels have been squeezed
into the odd times. It was many a long year before I had a
dress-maker's dress, or went to such lengths of luxury and
extravagance as to order carpets or curtains to be made for me. I have
even manufactured sofas, with G.'s assistance, he making the very
solid hardwood frames. We once had two beautiful ones, regular
Chesterfields, entirely home-made, in one of the several auction sales
that the distance between one home and the next have forced upon us;
there was quite a rush to buy them. Only when the purchasers attempted
to take them away, it was found almost impossible to lift them from
the ground. The feather bed that had cradled me on board ship--we had
two really, but the smaller one cradled servants for awhile--now took
its permanent place amongst the never-failing comforts of the house; I
broke it up into pillows and cushions, a few of which covered, like
charity, all the sins of amateur workmanship in our springless
couches.

The room of our cottage that had the front door in it was the
sitting-room, of course. Here we dined in full view of the street--had
there been one--when summer evenings gave light enough; our doctor and
his wife, pulling up their horses before the house, could see for
themselves whether we were at the end of our meal or in the middle; I
would go out with an offer of pudding or coffee sometimes, but as a
rule I left everything and flew for hat and gloves. The room at the
other end was our bedroom. The little cubicle between combined
dressing-room and study. There was not space to swing a cat in any of
them, had we wanted to swing a cat. There certainly was no room to
swing the cradle, when that article of furniture was introduced;
fortunately, we did not want to swing that either. We did not believe
in rockers, and made a great virtue of necessity when we took them
off.

But after all, humble as it was, it was a sweet little place when we
had fixed it up. Bishop and Mrs Perry, paying us their first call,
were enthusiastic about it. They had been making a long tour from
country parsonage to country parsonage, which, notwithstanding the
benevolence of parishioners, are as a rule struggling homes, "shabby
genteel," in their appointments; and this bright, simple, tidy
(though I say it that shouldn't) little toy dwelling was, to use their
own word, an "oasis" amongst them. One truth that I have learned from
my manifold domestic vicissitudes is that you can make a nice home out
of anything, if you choose to try. You do not really want all the
things that you are brought up to think you want. Sometimes it is even
a relief to be without them.




CHAPTER V

DIK


All my recollections of the first home, and the one succeeding it,
embrace the figure of a friend who was virtually of the family while
we lived in them. He has so long been dead that I may with propriety
refer to him more fully than I can speak of his contemporaries yet
living, and it is a particular pleasure to do so in view of his
nationality and of the times in which I write. For he was a
Dutchman--and everything, almost, that a man should be. If he did no
good for himself in Australia--his birth and training were against
that--he did much for his country within the compass of his little
sphere. He gave some of us a faith in and a respect for it that
nothing in the South African struggle has been able to impair. I have
been British throughout the war to the marrow of my bones, but in the
worst of times have had to bear in mind that our veldt foe comes of
the stock which produced that perfect gentleman. I have not otherwise
compared them, but I can never think meanly of any Dutchman after
knowing him.

He joined our ship in London, and during the voyage we noticed that he
was a lonely traveller, silent and sitting by himself. We therefore
made little overtures, thinking to cheer him for the moment, and not
foreseeing what they would lead to. G. played chess with him a good
deal; when I was well enough to join them I undertook the difficult
but interesting task of drawing him out of his shell, where his
thoughts were. Although we learned from him that a knowledge of the
English language was imperative in Holland amongst cultured people, it
needed friendship to cast out of him the fear of making himself
ridiculous by his manner of speaking it, which certainly was quaint.
Without protestations on either side, friendship was established, and
then he talked, and did not mind our laughing at him. We instructed
him in our idioms and customs, and he us in his; some of the Dutch
names for things that we learned from him are in domestic use to this
day. I cannot remember that he overcame his sensitive reserve in
respect of any other passenger, unless in the case of a childless
married lady who was accompanied by her pet cat and dog. Pussy lived
with her and her husband in their cabin, where the arrangements for
its accommodation, and the cat's own intelligent adaptation to them,
were so wonderful that it caused no annoyance either to them or us;
the dog, for whom a high passage fare had been paid, spent his nights
somewhere under the care of the butcher, but his days with his devoted
mistress. Dogs were a passion with our friend, and there was soon an
affectionate understanding between him and this one. He got permission
to give it lessons, and at stated times went off with it under his arm
to his own cabin, where they would be closeted together for an hour or
two. Not a sound would we hear of what went on, but at intervals there
was a public performance by the pupil, which, eye to eye with its
teacher, would go through tricks and evolutions that a circus dog
might envy. This was the only instance I can recall of social
intercourse on his part with anyone on board, save us.

He was intensely proud, with a temper behind his pride that could
never be safely played with, even by his familiar housemates; life
itself was a trifle compared with any point of honour in his code--to
be given in its defence, if need were, without an instant's
hesitation; but there was not a trace of false pride in the whole warp
and woof of him. This, however, goes without saying, since I have
already said that he was at all points a gentleman.

And, back of his reserve and pride, which wore so cold and stolid an
air, was a heart like a shut furnace. Rarely did the flame shine
through his grave eyes, but it did when the moment of threatened
parting came. "Tell me where you live," he said, as if asking for his
life; "I must live there."

As soon as we knew, we told him, and a week after our arrival at W----
he turned up, together with a pair of beautiful (and very expensive)
dogs. He boarded at the hotel, and came to us every day. And, so far
as Australia was concerned, we were his family, and our house his
home, thenceforth.

His name was Diederik, which we shortened to Dik. His other name was
not undistinguished in his own country, as we learned from his family
photographs and the casual but complete evidence provided by the
conditions of our joint domestic life--not by direct statement from
him, the most modest of men. The picture of his home in Leyden showed
a beautiful old house on a tree-bordered canal; in this house, it
seemed, each member of the large family had his or her suite of rooms
and separate personal servant. "This is a brother of me," he would
say, as we turned over his album; and questions would elicit the fact
that the person indicated held a court appointment at the Hague.
Another "brother of me" filled an important post in the Dutch East
Indies; he was governor--kontroleur 1st klasse--of Riouw. Dik was a
younger son, born with that bent for wandering which is not confined
to any class or nation. And his equipment for the enterprise to which
he had committed himself was almost ludicrously elaborate. He had a
perfect arsenal of deadly weapons--for the native savages and wild
beasts, I suppose. Guns and small arms of all sorts and sizes, the
finest of their kind, with tons of ammunition to match, enough to
furnish forth a small regiment. I still have a stumpy little
six-chambered revolver, which he insisted on my keeping by me, in case
I should be molested while alone in the house; and I ought to have
also a beautiful inlaid hair-trigger pistol, which was the instrument
with which he taught me the art of self-defence. Daily he would call
me from my sewing or cooking to shoot bottles off the yard fence,
until my execution upon ounce phials satisfied him that I was able to
protect myself from the marauding black or bushranger. He had a
tool-chest which contained every tool, and large sets of most of them,
that handicraftsman could need under any circumstances--even to a
turning-lathe, with which, and a great hunk of ivory tusk, he used to
make me buttons and sleeve-studs. As for "hempjes" and such things,
they were in dozens upon dozens. And all that costly outfit to be so
soon disintegrated and dispersed!

The first thing he did at W---- was to help us into our cottage,
himself inheriting our lodgings and the quinces from us. How useful he
was! Until I had a maid--the last piece of furniture procured--he was
up o' mornings to chop wood, draw water, boil kettles, and so on; and
all day he was on the look-out for a job, the more menial the better.
Tears, even now, are not far from my eyes when I open my old diary
upon such items as these:--"October 31st. Dik beginning to make a
garden for me." ... "December 7th. Dik up in the dark to catch fish
for breakfast." ... "December 8th. Dik up early again to get me fish."
Whenever he was at home this sort of thing went on, and all without
the slightest fuss or gush, and with a frown for thanks. When there
came the prospect of a most important domestic event, we had every
reason to flatter ourselves that he had not the dimmest notion of it,
from first to last. I made every scrap of baby-clothes myself, and he,
being so constantly with us, must have seen me doing it; in fact, I
abandoned the usual precautions just because he seemed too utterly
dense to notice anything. He was nothing of the sort. It was part of
his perfect gentlemanliness not by word or sign to show that he knew,
even in his private talks with my husband, otherwise the talk of
brothers. One evening he left for his lodgings, as usual, and the
great business was comfortably disposed of before the hour of his
return in the morning. G. and I, in the midst of our excitements,
found a moment to laugh together over the tremendous shock of surprise
that we were going to give him. But lo! when he came he manifested no
surprise--only quite broke down in trying to express his thankfulness
that it was safely over. He was brought in to peep at the new
arrival, and I felt like a scoffer at sacred things to have met with a
jest that smileless and speechless emotion. On leaving my room, he
dashed for his horse, tied to the front gate, and galloped off towards
the town; thence in a few minutes he returned, bearing as his offering
to the new master of the house a wicker cradle on the saddle before
him! He must have looked a ridiculous object, but was lifted above all
care for the opinion of the street. That was the cradle I had to wedge
into such a tight place that rockers were no use to it. Later it was
his joy to nurse the little one, to watch his first movements of
intelligence, and speculate as to what period "his nose would come
downstairs."

I ought to mention here that his attitude towards women was one of
austerest respect and dignity. I shall never forget the blackness of
his brow and mood when we returned one night from a day's outing,
having left him to keep house for us. It appeared that our Irish maid
had taken advantage of the opportunity to make tender overtures to
him. She had come behind him as he was reading and smoking, stroked
his hair, and addressed him as a "poor feller." I was not supposed to
know anything of this, but got the tale from G., and was thus able to
take steps to prevent such assaults in future. To me, for whom he had
so deep a regard, Dik was a brother, without ever using a brother's
familiarities. No man ever treated me with such absolute reverence and
respect.

Between the 30th of that first October, when he was making me a road
through the "common" that the continued rains had turned into a
swamp, and the 7th of December, when he went a-fishing for my
breakfast, he made a start upon his own Australian career--the bright
beginning that declined to so sad an end. By no fault of his, poor
boy! unless his breeding was his fault. He was young and
strong--immensely strong--the typical big-limbed, burly Dutchman,
eager to work and to rough it, afraid of nothing; he simply failed as
I have seen dozens of young men of good family fail--as they all do,
if I may judge by my own experience--who come out to make their
fortunes under the same conditions. Had he been a skilled mechanic, he
would have found his luck immediately; had he been prepared to pay his
premium as a "jackaroo"--_i.e._ an apprentice to the run-holder, who
charged L100 a year or so for imparting "colonial experience"--he
would have been taken into one of those delightful Bush-houses that I
have mentioned, and might have risen (without capital) to be a station
manager. But as an amateur who did not know the ropes, his ideas of
the situation gathered from books or evolved from his inner
consciousness, Dik fared as I shall describe. I give his case because,
in its way, it is so distinctly characteristic of the country, and as
such may be instructive to the English reader.

Having received ourselves such extraordinary kindness and attentions
from the squatter families of our parish (hundreds of miles in area),
we thought it an easy thing to make interest for our friend; and so it
proved--to a certain extent, which did not go beyond the rough
regulations of the Bush, not yet grasped by such new chums as we. An
old squatter accepted our guarantee for Dik, and told us to send him
along. It was the busy shearing-season, when odd hands were required.
Joyfully we took home our news. Hopefully we borrowed a buggy, and
ourselves drove him to the house of that old squatter, nursing-father
that we imagined him. It was so far that we stayed the night, and we
thought it odd to lose sight of Dik as soon as we arrived, and not to
see him again to say good-bye; but we came away under the impression
that, when not out on the run, he would be treated by the house as it
treated us.

He left W---- on the 10th of November. On the night of the 19th he
rode back, departing at dawn on the 21st, which means that he spent
Sunday, his free day, with us. He was invisible for a time, while G.
got him a bath and clean linen, and when he appeared he was taciturn
and depressed, loth to talk of his experiences, which had evidently
been a shock to him. Of course he had been sent to live at the "men's
hut" amongst the all-sorts that at shearing season crowd that
unsavoury abode. It was his place, but he had not known it; nor had
we; and I for one was furious at the outrage, as I considered it, that
had been put upon him. He had had fights, it appeared, with the lowest
of the low--possibly decent work fellows, who had not understood him;
he had come through personal foulnesses not to be mentioned in ladies'
company. G. told me all about it afterwards.

On the 26th that job was done. He returned to us like a released
convict, and we made much of him for a time. This would not do,
however, and again he sought for employment. One night, in a fit of
desperation at the delay in finding it, he took a sudden resolution to
go out into the Bush, with a swag on his saddle, and ask for work from
station to station, resigned to the men's hut--to anything. I remember
my feelings as I saw him start in the moonlight, just before I went to
my own comfortable bed. He was going to ride all the cool night, and
take his rest in the fiery day; for it was December now, and horses
and dogs were as children to Dik. By the way, he left his dogs with us
while on these expeditions. Their puppy exuberance got us into many
scrapes, although I do not believe that all the tattered fowls brought
to us by our neighbours, with hints that we should make their
excessive value good, came by their deaths as we were told they did.
Otherwise the keep of the playful creatures cost little or nothing,
because they were fed mainly upon opossums. Nightly, after dinner, the
gun or guns were taken out, and I don't know which enjoyed the
expedition most, the sportsmen or the dogs. There were 'possums in
every tree in those days, and Dik and G. were both good marksmen. When
too dark to distinguish 'possum or gun-barrel, they tied a white
handkerchief round the muzzle of the latter and located the former
(already approximately located by the dogs) with the stable-lantern
usually held up by me. An artificial light not only fascinates but
paralyses the little animal, draws him like a magnet, and then holds
him rigid, his large, liquid eyes fixed upon it, so that he is as
steady to shoot at as a target at the butts. Under those circumstances
he seems completely indifferent to his shrieking enemies at the foot
of the tree, ready to tear him in pieces the moment his limp body
thuds down to them. Although our valuable pair flourished upon it, I
am horrified now to think of feeding dogs upon such meat. Well, we
could not do it now, if we wanted to. At that time 'possums were
vermin to the white man, pests of the fruit garden (though we never
found them eating fruit, but only leaves), like the parrots and
minahs, from whom nothing was sacred. Not that they could have
troubled us, for all the fruit we had was a double row of peach trees
down one side of our back paddock. We had peaches of the finest
quality literally in tons--and nothing else. In their season I would
peel the flannel jackets from half a dozen before breakfast, and go on
eating them at intervals all day (whereby I destroyed my taste for
peaches, as it had already been destroyed for quinces, for the rest of
my life); and the ground was so cumbered with them that we were
grateful to the neighbours who came with buckets and wheelbarrows to
get them for their pigs. The railway absorbed the peach trees with the
cottage, and I buy peaches at the door to-day at a shilling the
plateful. And the opossum seems in a fair way to become extinct--at
any rate, in this state.

I still go, almost yearly, to rest from town life a a station in the
neighbourhood of W----. The house--one of the first English-style
houses in the district--is the same that it was thirty years ago,
except that its red walls are mellower and its girdle of choice trees
more grown and beautiful; and the dear family is the same, only the
young ones now the elders, and a new generation in their place. On a
late visit they drove me to W----, some eighteen or twenty miles
distant; strange to say, it was the first time I had been into the
town since those early days of which I am talking, although I had
passed it many times on the railway; and we started on our journey
home in a soft twilight, prelude to a clear, faintly-moonlit
night--such a night as, thirty years earlier, would have shown us an
opossum in nearly every tree we drove by. It was country road or
bush-track all the way, and "Now, surely," I said, "I shall have the
long-desired pleasure of seeing a 'possum again." I settled down into
my front seat of the waggonette, laid my head back, and watched and
watched for little ears sticking up, and bushy tails hanging down,
which I should have been so quick to distinguish if they had been
there. Not a hair--not a sign that a 'possum had ever lived in the
land--all those lonely miles!

But a few nights afterwards I had my wish in rather a strange way.
Being sleepless, I lit a candle at twelve or one o'clock, and tried to
tranquillise myself with a book. The candle made a little halo about
the bed, but left the rest of the room dim. One window was wide open,
as I always had it; an armchair, with a cushion in its back, stood
near the window. I heard no sound, but suddenly had that curious
feeling of fright which precedes the discovery of the thing that
frightens you; and, looking up, I saw two eyes, terrifyingly intense
in their expression, glowing and glaring at me from the armchair. The
thing crouched upon the top of the cushion, quite still, as if it had
been there for hours. I thought it was a cat, and shooed and slapped
my book; when it made no response to these manifestations, I knew it
was an oppossum. The candle-light outside had lured him to its source,
and he now sat lost in contemplation of the magic flame. I got out of
bed and ran window-wards, in the greatest haste to be rid of the
creature I had so long wished to see; he crawled cringingly an inch or
two, but I had to push him with the edge of my book off the cushion
and the window-sill and out into the night. I could not imagine how he
had got in, for my room was in an upper storey of the tall old house,
the roof of the verandah some distance below; but, looking out in the
morning, I saw that a course of brickwork, just about wide enough for
a mouse, ran along the face of the wall, not far from the window, and
that a great white cedar tree stood close to one end of it. I boasted
at breakfast that I had seen a 'possum at last, but I am careful now,
when I sleep in that room, not to burn a midnight candle with the
window open.

To return to Dik. On the 18th he came back to tell us he had found a
job. I do not remember what it was, but it is recorded in my diary
that we had a gala dinner in honour of it. He returned again before
breakfast on Christmas Day. G. had distant country services afternoon
and evening, and the three of us went together and made a picnic of
it, keeping our domestic festival for Boxing Day, in the night of
which Dik left us, while we slept. But on the 28th of January that job
also came to an end--not from any fault of his, but just because it
was a little one and he had finished it. The neighbourhood was
searched again, and he went work-hunting into New South Wales with no
success. He had long ago sold his horse, and now he began to sell his
other things--guns, tool-chest, lathe, non-essential clothes--throwing
them away one after the other, for a mere song, in spite of our
remonstrances. He left his lodgings for cheaper ones; later on we
persuaded him to exchange these for a shakedown with us; but he was
too proud to owe us bed and board, and only stayed in the brief
intervals between his futile tramps, when he knew we should be cut to
the heart if he did not. It came to broken boots and ever-increasing
shabbiness, to the shunning and slighting of him by persons who were
not worthy to be named in the same breath with him, to his growing
gaunt for want of sufficient food. "This in your hospitable
Australia!" the reader may exclaim. Yes, indeed; and he is not the
only one I have seen thus circumstanced, by many--only the others were
mostly getting their deserts, which he was not.

One night a mysterious message was brought to G., who slipped out of
the house in answer to it. It transpired later that Dik was lurking in
the vicinity wanting to know if there were any letters for him. He had
sent word secretly to G., not wishing me to know, because he was "not
fit to see her any more." Of course, I was not going to stand that. We
dragged him in, gave him a bath and clothes, fed him and talked to
him--scolded him well, indeed, for his obstinate refusal to write to
his father, a course that we had urged upon him until we were tired of
the hopeless conflict with his preposterous pride.

However, he melted at last--that very night, I think. His confession
was made and posted, and all we had to do was to hold on until the
answer arrived. As it chanced, the only serious accident that I can
remember happening to a P. and O. steamer on the Australian line
(prior to the wreck of the _China_) happened to the one that had his
money on board. Her letters were recovered from the sea-bed, but not
in time to be of use to us; so there was yet another long delay. But
eventually all came right. His empty pockets were filled once more,
and a new career provided for him. He was to go to his brother in the
Dutch East Indies, and become a planter of something.

The change was so great and sudden that he did not all at once "know
how he had it with himself," to use his own phrase. He wrote to us
from Melbourne before he sailed (April 20th, 1872):--"You know me
enough for being a bad hand in making speeches. What I want to let you
feel is"--and he made a very touching one upon the subject of our
friendship for him. Then he mentioned his state of mind. "The time
passes quick away. At day-time I have plenty to do, and in the evening
I am in the opera, what makes me a little jolly, but yet there is a
kind of stupidity about me. I don't know what it is." From Galle he
wrote at length, and with his old ease, describing his voyage in
detail, and his fellow-passengers, of whom one was a wholesome
annoyance to him. "When you are talking with somebody he always will
put his nose between it, and the rest of the day he whistle tunes out
of operas." In Ceylon he made a sporting expedition into the country,
and "after you have seen so long the miserable Bush of Australia is
this beautiful." He had some delightful shooting, in spite of the fact
that, in consequence of having cut his feet against a "coral riff"
while swimming, "the only way I could go shooting was on a pair of
slippers." Then, with the Dutch mail from Singapore to Batavia:--"it
was very pleasant for me, as you understand, to hear the Dutch again.
Everything was so as it was at home, no more puddings on table, but
delicious vegetables, and the bitterjes like the home ones." And he
had once more that first thing necessary to a happy life, his dog; not
one of those mentioned, which remained with us, but a new one. On
landing at Batavia, "I give my hondtje a walk. This is a beautiful
creature, and came all the way good over. From Melbourne to Singapore
was it expensive. I had to pay five pounds for him." Here he met
Leyden friends, with whom he "passed the time jolly," and who led him
to a place where he "had to get a ticket to be able to stop in this
country;" and "the last days," he writes, "I feel me quite different,
more as I was at home, surely in better spirits as on our road to
Melbourne."

His brother shepherded him for a short time--took him to a place or
two, from which, when they left, were "fired from shore canons"--but,
unfortunately, the resident was ordered home by his doctor, and Dik
was left once more to his own guidance. He presently reported himself
from Deli, where he was learning the business of a "nutmace" planter.
But his teacher, he was sorry to say, had turned out an "offel snob,"
and he (Dik) had "little to make with him. I have my room and
everything I want and pay him monthly, and when he is in a bad humour
he can go his way and don't talk to him." When this gentleman "used
one of his rough expressions to me," wrote Dik, "I got offel angry"--I
can imagine it!--"and told him if he did so again he would know me
better. You understand a fellow who stand that in his own house what
he is. So you see I am not all right yet. But I am practising
patience, fine thing, but offel tiresome." Incidentally he remarks, "I
see you think I am sitting on Java, but am a good distance away from
there;" and he gives much interesting information about Dutch colonial
government and customs, which I have not space to reproduce. He wishes
he had an Australian horse again. "These little things I am tired of;
they are very pretty, but I am too heavy for them." He promises me a
tiger skin, and mentions the ever-to-be-regretted fact that he had
found "no occasion" to have his likeness taken.

The next letter (Deli, March 20th, 1873) was all unclouded joy. He had
left "that fellow" and was now "as jolly as possible," settled down in
partnership with four other gentlemen of his own class, one Dutch and
three English--"so you see there is no fear I will forget my English
the first time." They had 250 "culies." "I have a field where 100 are
working, and go there and see them work every day, with Victor my dog,
named after Victoria ... so you see at last I come to a good place,
and hope to stick to this ... if I don't get along will be my own
fault."

Glad indeed were we to read those words! We wrote to tell him so. And
the letter containing our congratulations came back to us long months
afterwards, with this message scrawled across the envelope:--"Dead. Mr
van K---- died in Deli."

The last document of the little bundle from which these extracts are
taken is as graceful a piece of composition as was ever penned. The
handwriting is Dutch, but the words are English, and I have never read
an English letter that was more faultlessly expressed. It is his
family's acknowledgment of what we did--little enough, but made much
of in his home letters--for their beloved son, "to support his
energies in his days of trial." From this we learned that he had been
"seized with typhus fever, to which he succumbed on the 4th of June
1873, after ten or twelve days' illness."




CHAPTER VI

THE SECOND HOME


On the 26th of July 1871 we moved into our second home--not more than
a mile or so from the first--Dik again helping us. The chance to get a
little more breathing-space and elbow-room, much needed since we had
become a family, fell to us through the death of our friend the police
magistrate. That sad event left his widow with means too small to
permit of her retaining her pretty home for a day after she was able
to leave it. We took it from her, and lived in it for about four
months--until G. was appointed to his first parish; after which our
house was provided for us, with no rent to pay any more.

Distance lends enchantment to it, of course, but it is impossible that
"Como" could have been other than charming, with its then
surroundings. It had been the dwelling of two police magistrates, and
the first and longest occupier had made the place, while his wife had
been a gardener. My journal reeks of that garden. In the prime of the
spring season (October 12th) there is an entry which credits it with
"innumerable varieties of everything," including, naturally, "roses
all over the house" and "our own asparagus for dinner every other
day." The (even then) old house, masked with shrubs and hedges,
surrounded by beds and borders full of sweets, turned its face upon a
wooded paddock, through which a path led out to the road; the ground
behind fell steeply to the "lake" so ambitiously named--a large
backwater of the river, preserved by the landlord (who allowed only
himself and his tenant to shoot over it), and therefore the sanctuary
of native aquatic fowl.

That lake was the region of romance to me. The sunrises out of its
mists and shimmers, the moonbeams on its breast at night, that I used
to step out upon the terrace-like verandah to feast upon--they are
pictures of memory that can never fade. Flocks of black swans used to
sail past the kitchen door within reach not of a stone, but of a
potatoe peeling; early and late the air was full of the quick beat and
rush of wings--wild duck in hundreds and thousands going out or coming
home. They quacked and scuffled in the thick reeds at night, as we
walked near them. The two sportsmen could not resist the temptation to
shoot more than we could eat. I have it down in my diary that on the
28th of July 1871 G. killed three teal with one shot. I saw it done,
and it was no great feat, seeing that the little birds were so thick
that their flight at the moment was like the flutter of silver cloth.
In that watery time the lake was generally brimming. One night we were
called up by the bellowing of the cow, and Dik and G. rode naked into
the inclosure where her calf had been submerged to its nose by a
sudden rise; they were only just in time to save it. We had a roomy
boat, in almost constant use. A friend or two would come out to dine,
and after dinner we would paddle them about in the moonlight--explore
the "North-West Passage," which reminded me of a "fleet" in the
Broads at home. We fished sometimes for next day's breakfast; I
believe they were catfish and other coarse things, but we seem to have
eaten them contentedly; I remember how we used to light a candle to
see to bait our hooks. And it was, of course, a very paradise for
'possums. So near the water they swarmed--water being no less
attractive to trees, which crowd upon it wherever they can find
footing. Under the trees around Como we and the dogs enjoyed such
'possum hunts as we never had elsewhere. It was mostly dark, and on
warm nights dangerous--though we never thought of that--snakes being
as partial to the water-side as 'possums and trees; many an one did we
encounter when looking for something else, and we have seen them
undulating in mid-stream like miniature sea-serpents.

But a greater danger than snakes attended these expeditions, as we
discovered on a certain night (August 28th). The sportsmen were too
well trained to be careless with firearms, but when you carry them in
the dark through a thicket of saplings and stumps and prostrate logs,
accidents are liable to happen. On this night we were proceeding
Indian file, Dik leading, I next, G. protecting my rear, when Dik's
gun, carried muzzle down, touched an invisible snag, which jerked it
from his arm. In falling forward the trigger was struck or jagged with
sufficient force to explode the charge. I saw down the barrel as the
flame leaped out, apparently at my breast; and then we all stood still
for some seconds, expecting horrors. When nothing more happened, and
each was proved unhurt, we returned home very soberly, Dik himself
much shaken. I then went to my room, took off the thick shawl in which
I had wrapped myself against the night air, and held it up before a
light. It was riddled with little holes. I took it back to the
sitting-room, and spread it between Dik's eyes and the lamp, and made
some joke about his having tried to kill me. I never joked that way
again. He could not have felt it more deeply if he had really injured
me and done so on purpose. I don't think he ever got over it.

It was at Como that I had my first private snake adventure. I was
giving my baby an airing in the garden when a call from the
maid-of-all-work sent me hurrying into the backyard. A deadly
six-footer (carefully measured afterwards) sat upon a few rings of its
tail near the wall of the little dairy--a most enticing place to
snakes--the rest of its body upreared to about the level of my waist,
its head, with the flickering tongue, distractedly darting to and fro.
I often worried about snakes when I could not see them; having this
one in the open before me, I was not in the least afraid of it.

"You keep it there," said the girl--for there was no man on the place
at the time--"while I go and get the clothes' prop."

For some minutes I stood within a few feet of it, the baby in my arms,
cutting it off from its lakeside lair; and it must have been my
formidable calmness which kept it from flinging itself upon me, as I
have seen other snakes do when thus desperately at bay, although they
will always wriggle out of a difficulty if a loop-hole is left to
them. We killed it with the clothes' prop and put it under an inverted
wash-tub, whence I proudly drew it in the evening when the doctor came
to dinner. I gave him the history of the execution, and he read me a
serious lecture. I promised him never to "hold up" a cornered snake
again.

But if I let myself go with snake stories I shall not know where to
stop, so I will only tell one more, which has some features out of the
common. This snake lived in the church of G.'s first parish. Its hole
was visible to the congregation, and it used to show its head to them
in service time (during the sermon, probably) and make them nervous.
So it was sought to entice it to its destruction with saucers of milk.
The parson used to lay the bait over-night, and go to look for results
in the morning. Always the saucer was found empty, but for a long time
the snake was not found. At last he saw it coiled asleep upon the
white cloth laid over the chancel carpet, where the sun from the east
window poured warmly down upon it. So he hewed it in pieces before the
altar, as Samuel hewed Agag.

What alarmed me much more, though with less cause, than snakes were
the blacks, which at that time wandered into one's life as they never
did afterwards. Some remnants of the river tribes remained about their
old haunts, apparently in their old state of independence. I had seen
them from the deck of the steamer, squatting on the banks in their
'possum skins, or fishing naked from a boat that was simply a sheet of
bark as torn from the tree; in W---- they trailed about the streets in
some of the garments of civilisation, grinning amiably at the white
residents, on the look-out for any trifles of tobacco or coppers that
a kindly eye might give hope of. They are hideous creatures, poor
things, and their attempts at European costume did not improve their
appearance. The most extraordinary human figure that I ever saw was a
black gin in a bird-cage crinoline. She had something else on, but not
much--only what would drape a small part of the lattice-work of steels
and tapes, through which her broad-footed spindle legs were visible,
strutting proudly. When I, being alone in the house, saw a black
fellow evidently making for it, I used to think of all the horrible
tales I had read in missionary magazines as a child, and wonder where
Dik's revolver was. He only wanted bacca, or an old rag of clothes, or
a penny, or a bit of meat--bacca first, always; and there was nothing
savage about him except his looks. Some of the stations in that
district made a point of protecting and showing kindness to the
blacks. On these they made their camps, and swarmed like the dogs
about the homesteads, bringing offerings of fish, and receiving all
sorts of indulgences in return. I visited at the one of those places
which was most notoriously benevolent in this direction. The gins
whose husbands had used the waddy to them used to come to the house to
have their wounds plastered; the nursing mothers got milk and other
privileges; some of the least lazy and dirty young ones were put into
the family's cast-off clothes and taken into a sort of service--given
little jobs of dish-washing and wood-chopping, for which they were
overpaid in such luxuries as they most valued. I was deeply interested
in seeing them at such close quarters, and studying their strange
habits and customs; it was a valuable and picturesque experience. But
there was not a lock or bolt on any door, and a half-witted black
woman who was a particular pet used to roam into my bedroom in the
middle of the night, to examine me, my baby, my clothes, my trinkets
on the dressing-table--which was too much of a good thing. When I
hinted as much to the hospitable family, they used to say easily,
"Oh, she's quite harmless." But I never could get used to it. After
leaving W---- I saw little more of these disinherited ones, until many
years later a few visited us in the Western District. These were
refugees or escapees from a neighbouring Mission Settlement. Theirs
was a tale of tyranny and injustice to melt a heart of stone. They had
been compelled to sing and pray without getting any remuneration for
it. "Not a farden!" said one black man, solemnly, with a dramatic lift
and fall of the hands. "Not a farden!" I remember wondering how he had
come by the phrase, since I do not recollect ever seeing a farthing in
this country. The Australian despises a coin so petty. He treats it as
though it were not in the currency. To be sure, the tradesman charges
elevenpence three-farthings for many things, but an odd farthing on
the total of his bill always becomes a halfpenny.

It was while living at Como that I "went to town" for the first and
last time in many years. There is a gap in my diary where the
happenings of November and December (1871) should have included this,
but memory easily retains the correct impression of such a sharply-cut
event.

We made the trip in a ramshackle little open buggy, consisting of a
floor and two movable seats--a most useful country vehicle, upon which
you could cart firewood or potatoes, when it was not wanted to cart
human beings. We took a girl friend with us (the baby was left with
the visiting sister-in-law), and our three portmanteaux; and one poor
horse managed the journey in four or five days. We jogged along
easily, as near the making railway as we could get, because the scrub
had been cleared from that track more or less; camping in the shade
at mid-day to lunch and rest the horse, and putting up for the night
in a convenient township, taking our chances in the way of hotel
accommodation, which was of all sorts. Rarely could we bring ourselves
to make full use of the beds provided for us; we slept, as a rule,
outside of them, in blankets of our own improvising.

When not far from Melbourne we fell in, towards evening, with the most
ferocious thunder-storm of my experience--and that is saying a great
deal. All we could do was to get ourselves and the horse away from the
trees and the buggy, over the tyres and metal work of which the
lightning ran like lighted spirit, and then stand doggedly--the horse
with head and tail between his legs, we three tightly clasped
together, our faces turned inward and hidden--and silently endure
until the fury of the elements was past. When it was passed, and we
drove drenched and dripping to the nearest hotel, which fussed over us
with fires and hot drinks, it was found that my little portmanteau
(frocks folded close in those days) had been put into the buggy that
morning wrong side up. The deluging rain, running inside the flap, had
saturated all my best clothes! My wedding-dress was done for; my next
best gory all over with the dye from cerise ribbons that had lain next
it; muslins and laces a flimsy pulp. And the ruin was irremediable,
except in the case of the latter (I sent the two silks to be dyed
black, and they were returned after some months stiff and crackly, so
obviously dyed that they were no use as frocks again). Literally, I
had not a stitch to wear. My companion lent me clothes while my
travelling things were drying, and when I got to Melbourne I could
hardly put my nose out of doors. Instead of enjoying myself with my
friends, I had to scheme to hide myself from them--the only thing to
be done, since I could not afford to repair my losses on the spot. As
soon as G. had done his necessary business, we turned round and came
home again.

We brought back with us the widow of that police magistrate who had
dropped dead in his dressing-room at Como, and her baby. And we had
the hottest of midsummer weather, and the fiercest of north winds. The
tracks were deep in dust like sea-shore sand; our faces were skinned
with the sun; we wilted on the hard buggy seats under our useless
umbrellas; the poor horse gave up, and had to be left by the way. But
all our concern was for the unfortunate infant. Whenever we came to
sheltered water we used to get down and lay him in; we carried bottles
of it with us to pour over him as we drove. We spent one night in a
red-hot corrugated-iron hotel, and his mother and I sat up through the
whole of it, taking turns at sponging him. He came through safely,
although she lost him afterwards--her only son.

That abortive expedition was, as I have said, the last I made to
Melbourne for a very long time. The Bush "township" became my world.
When I speak of the Bush, it is understood that I do not mean a place
of bushes. The term, with us, is equivalent to "the country"--the
country generally, though particularly and originally its uncultivated
parts. "The miserable Bush of Australia," poor Dik called it, and it
has that character with many, I know; but--save, perhaps, at the first
glance--it never struck me that way. In the exquisite lights, the
clear distances, the fine atmosphere of this climate, Nature has to
be beautiful, whatever she wears. I love her in this grey-green
gown--and I have been a bushwoman for twenty-three years in all. The
trouble is, of course, that man, who does not live by bread alone,
lives still less on scenery.

We did not really settle down in W----. Life there was difficult and
worrying on the professional side, and with every passing week we
longed more to extricate ourselves from a position that we had seen at
the beginning to be without promise of comfort or success. But on the
social, the secular, side, we had nothing to complain of. We had not
begun to miss the things we were cut off from, and the new experiences
were delightful. So also with the domestic conditions. It was here
that I mastered the rudiments of Bush housekeeping, and no lessons
were ever more interesting.

I may say, at once, of my Bush life that, from the housekeeper's point
of view, it has been full of comfort--always. This is, I suppose,
chiefly because I have never had that servant trouble which seems to
keep families in general in constant distress and turmoil. The Irish
girl who took liberties with Dik was otherwise a willing and likeable
person; the vinegary widow who followed her, and who, being the mother
of a boy of twelve, made me put her down in the census paper as aged
twenty-five, would have been considered an excellent servant in the
most proper English household; and so would her successor, a smart
lady who went to church o' Sundays in silks and velvets, and drank all
our spirituous liquors that she could lay her hands on. And these were
the slight, very slight, mistakes at the beginning. Since then I have
had virtually unbroken peace. I have never had to "look for a girl,"
never been to a registry office, never wanted for the best. And I
have never yet met the missus who could say the same. I have my own
opinions on this servant question. They may be heterodox, but they
work out all right, which is the main thing. The proof of the pudding
is in the eating. At the same time I know that I have had exceptional
luck. The dear servants and friends who did so much to make my life
happy were born good.

One devoted nurse who was with me for many years postponed a fixed
wedding-day three times, rather than leave me when she thought I
needed her more than usual. "No," she said, inexorably, when I
remonstrated with her on behalf of her poor young man, "I am going to
see you better first." On the last occasion it was:--"I am not going
to let you have the trouble of moving with only strangers to help you.
I shall see you settled first." She married from the house at last, so
collapsed with grief over the parting that she could not touch the
wedding-breakfast we had prepared. The bridegroom sat about forlornly,
while I struggled to rally her with brandy and water and (when I dared
not give her more of that) tea; and she drove away with the cake whole
in her box, drowned in tears. She was a strong-minded woman too, who
as a rule never "gave way," whatever the rest of us did.

Another long-service paragon, an Irish woman with a warm temper, could
not get on with the lady-helps--sub-housekeepers during the years that
I had no health to speak of. "No, ma'am," she said, when their
disputes were brought before me, "I'll do anything for you, but I
won't take orders from a person who's no better than I am." Although
servants like her were precious rarities, and lady-helps a drug in
the market, I felt bound to stand by my representative--the
intermediary whose position is always difficult; and so the result
would be that the other got a week's notice there and then. It made no
difference. She stayed on just the same, although I did not ask her.
They all stayed on--only leaving us to be married, or owing to family
circumstances over which they had no control. The present incumbent of
the kitchen has occupied it for nearly nine years.

Living, _i.e._, feeding, in Australia is proverbially good, although
the cooking is often unworthy of the material. Few in the land are,
perhaps I should say were, they who do (or did) not sit down to a meat
meal three times a day. Fruit that in England was nursed in
orchard-houses and counted on south walls we could batten on now; a
few pence would heap the sideboard with grapes or apricots, but all
was so plentiful that it generally cost us nothing. Wine was not what
it is now, and we could not at once break ourselves of our English
beer; but it was not long before we learned to prefer the product of
the local vineyards, to which we shall remain faithful to our lives'
end. We got it, as we do still, in large stone jars, at less than the
price of Bass or Guinness. With a poultry yard and a cow, and John
Chinaman's vegetables, even a poor parson could live like a prince.

Two or three times a week, regular as clockwork, "John" came to the
back door with his loaded baskets of the vegetables in season, fresh
and good, various and cheap. Europeans had not the patience to grow
them where they had so many enemies; it did not pay to do it, while he
did it for us on such terms; it has been so all these years, and is
so still. You will hardly find a private kitchen garden, except on the
isolated stations, where the gardener is nearly always a Chinaman.
Every little township depends, for the food it can least afford to do
without, on the industry of this man who, of all others, is the most
despised in the community, and of all others--tradesmen, at any
rate--is the most reliable. I never was cheated, or in any way "let
in," by a Chinaman, and never found him discourteous or disobliging.
Those who clamour for his extinction from amongst us do not realise
what country folk would miss if he were gone.

Poor John Chinaman! so industrious, so frugal, so inoffensive and
law-abiding--an example to the white citizen of his class--if ever I
feel ashamed of Australia it is on his account. Its treatment of him,
who seems to have no friend amongst the nations, is indeed a strange
satire upon the traditions of the British race. One can see a certain
reasonableness in the poll tax of L50, hard as it seems that one only
of the various aliens amongst us should be thus penalised (and for his
industry too); it is, doubtless, advisable that we should prevent
ourselves from being over-run (seeing that the earth is _not_ for
all); but the law which constitutes one Chinaman a factory is worthy
of the Dark Ages, simply. Here is a sample of the sort of thing that
Englishmen, with the Union Jack over their heads, can read in their
newspapers of a morning as calmly as they read reports on the
weather:--

"Hop Lee, who keeps a laundry in Gertrude Street, was charged at the
Fitzroy Police Court this morning with having worked after hours on
Saturday, the 26th January, contrary to the provisions of the Shops
and Factories Act. Constable P---- deposed that about 5.30 P.M. on the
day named he went into defendant's premises and found him ironing
collars. In September 1899 the defendant was fined for a similar
offence. As L5 is the minimum penalty for a second conviction, Hop Lee
was mulcted in that amount and ordered to pay L1, 1s. costs.

"Sam Pittee, who also keeps a laundry in Gertrude Street, was then
charged with a similar offence, also on the afternoon of the 26th
January. The defendant having pleaded guilty, the Bench inflicted a
fine of L1, with L1, 1s. costs."

These are not men employing hands, but poor cottage workers "on their
own"; and the police--who cannot take them up for brawling, or
thieving, or woman-beating--because they don't do such things--watch
and spy, as perhaps is their duty, to see that they sit with their
hands before them through all the cool hours, while the wash that
customers may be clamouring for lies about them undone. One poor
Chinaman was arrested and fined for--according to his defence in
court, which it appeared was not listened to--ironing his own shirt
out of factory hours. And when candidates for the Federal Senate and
House of Representatives were making their stump speeches, a
"Reverend" gentleman amongst them, now a M.H.R., shouted these words
to his electors (to be quoted almost without comment in the papers
next morning):--"Chinese should be either pole-axed or poll-taxed in
such a manner as would make the country too hot for them."

Ah, poor country! By the mouths of dozens of her most patriotic
children I have heard her sigh for the old days (before my time) when
a deputy of the Crown and a few soldiers and policemen were all her
Government. And no wonder.




CHAPTER VII

THE THIRD HOME


On the 1st of January 1872 G. ceased to be a curate. On the 4th--and
with thankfulness, I must confess--we left W---- for our own first
parish.

It comes back to me, as if it were yesterday, the departure from Como.
One of the numerous kind friends who seemed sorry to part with us lent
us a roomy buggy, into which we packed many things besides
ourselves--the small treasures of the house that we did not like to
entrust to the waggons sent on before us with our modest stock of
furniture. The last offerings of fruit and flowers being stowed on the
top of these, the last good-byes said, we set off at a quiet pace, and
took the whole day to the journey. It was all Bush track amongst the
hills, and the weather, for midsummer, was kind. Twice we made a camp
in a shady spot, sprawled on the grass while the horse grazed and the
billy boiled, and ate our picnic meal luxuriously; and for miles we
walked beside and around the buggy, fern hunting and curiosity
gathering on behalf of the sister-in-law, whose main interest in
Australia was centred in these things. It was our intention to make a
holiday of the occasion, and we carried the intention out. But, oh,
how tired we were when at last we sighted our destination! That is
the moment that I remember best, when we crawled down that break-neck
"gap" which was the gateway to our valley, and saw across it on the
other side, sitting on a soft slope, with a great blue mountain behind
it, the little stone church and parsonage-house which were our bourne.
In pity for our worn-out horse, we three elders were afoot, hobbling
stiffly and uttering involuntary moans of exhaustion; only the dear
baby, from whom we had not had a cry, lay fast asleep in the bottom of
the buggy, in no way upset by his adventures.

The picture is before me now, bathed in the last lights of the summer
day. It is one of the most beautiful that Australia can show. A
newly-arrived bishop, being in the same spot as we were, and also for
the first time, said he could not understand how we, having been
privileged to live in such a place, had voluntarily left it! for we
had left it then, because, as we reminded him, man needs more than
scenery to satisfy him in this world. The little township nests in its
fertile valley, and from the top of the gap you look down upon it and
see no prosaic details, only that it is in itself a detail, completing
the charm of the natural scene, the scheme of colour of which the
lovely mountain blue is the dominant note--that blue which flames
celestial pink in parts when the sun goes down. An awful trap to the
amateur Jehu was that gap in those days; we realise it now far better
than we did then. A metalled road, cut out of the hillsides and
fenced, now winds through it, but it still calls for a good driver and
a strong brake. We used to blunder down it, as down a wrecked
staircase, in the darkest nights, and think nothing of it; no,
although we were shown the spot where a coach, whose horses missed
their footing, was hurled down the ravine to utter smithereens with
all hands. The fact was that in those days and in that part of the
country we had to do these foolhardy things all the time, or we should
never have got about at all. When confronted with a tight place--a
gully almost as steep as a house wall, or a river which was
continually changing its soon-washed-out crossing-place, without
putting up a guide post--we just "started in" and chanced it. It was
the custom of the country, and the custom which made its drivers what
they are, skilful and fearless beyond any in the world, unless we
except the Americans, who built the vehicles that we used, the only
sort capable of such use as we put them to. I do not remember that we
worried in the least over the dangers to life and limb that we saw
quite plainly before us; we were too well used to them. Now, when we
recall our exploits, we tell each other that nothing would induce us
to repeat them.

Descending the Gap for the first time G. led the Bush-horse, which was
an old stager if we were not, calmly taking things as they came; and
the Bush harness, on which life so often depends, was equal to its
responsibilities (the owner was to be trusted to see to that). So we
arrived safely at the door of what looked like the principal inn--the
place and we were as yet strangers to each other--and there we camped
for the night. Beds were our crying need. Everything else had to wait
until sleep had recruited us. We were fairly dead beat.

But next morning we were all alive and vigorous again, in a fever of
impatience to get home--completely home. The vans with our furniture
had not arrived; the parsonage was shut and empty; we had designedly
kept ourselves and our movements unannounced, so there was no one to
show us the way about. Still, we lost not a moment after breakfast in
getting the buggy re-packed, getting the keys of the house and church,
and driving thither--through the tiny town, over the bridge spanning
the willowy creek, and up the hilly road--firmly resolved to sit down
by our own hearthstone forthwith, for good and all. But we always did
that. In all our movings and re-furnishings, the first proceeding was
to go in ourselves; a shakedown and something to eat, and we set to
work from the centre and not from the outside. It is far the best way.
And if there is one thing I love more than another it is the whole
process of shifting camp--odd as I am sure it must appear: I grudge to
miss a bit of it.

What a morning we had! Although the vans had not come, there was
plenty to do in examining the premises, planning out rooms, and
utilising the contents of the buggy, now put up, with the horse, in
our own good brick stables. We were charmed with our house, which was
nearly new and very complete in its appointments. Its walls of dressed
granite made it very sound and cool; it was papered and painted as
well as it could be, and the garden and young orchard were laid out
with the same care to have all of the best; while its situation was
almost unmatchable. The outlook from the French windows and the
verandah outside them down the valley of the town to the Gap beyond,
and backwards to the blue range behind, was one of ever-changing but
constant beauty; none of our eight Australian homes had a lovelier
setting. The brilliance and purity of the mountain air enhanced the
complexion of it all, as well as the healthful capacity of the seeing
eye. Down that grassy slope to the front gate big bushes of spiraea
billowed in the spring; their overlapping wreaths were enormous; their
masses of white gleamed right across the valley, visible from the Gap
road. Everything one planted seemed to flourish there, and
particularly the vineyards on some of the hillsides. Fine wines went
out from that little town, to win medals and honourable mentions at
the industrial exhibitions of the world. The manufacturer combined the
professions of vigneron and doctor--in our time the only doctor for
many miles around. He was a German gentleman who had left his country
to escape some difficulty connected with military service, and was
debarred from returning thither by the knowledge that he would thereby
land himself in a fortress. Not that he had any hankerings for the
Fatherland; he might have been born where we found him, so attached
was he to his little town and the interests he had gathered about him;
he lived there for over forty years, I believe, and is buried there,
in the hill cemetery above our old home. Cut off as he seemed to be
from the intellectual world, he yet kept touch with it; with all the
work of his practice and his wine-making, he found time for scientific
studies, not reading only, but writing for magazines and newspapers;
and his active mind was absolutely free and fearless. Of course he
never came to church--his English wife did--but that made no
difference in the relations between us. No one was more welcome to the
house than he, and his company was the salt that gave savour to the
social life of the out-of-the-way little place. In his old age he
became an ardent spiritualist, much to my surprise and puzzlement, and
he died in that faith. His death was described to me by the doctor who
attended him, a mutual friend. The good old man was seized with
something which his medical knowledge told him must prove fatal within
a given number of hours. He made no fuss or bother about it, and
allowed no one else to do so, but chatted cheerfully with his
colleague until speech failed him, with no more emotion than if he was
preparing to go to bed and to sleep as usual.

His vineyards--doubled and quadrupled as time went on--were carved out
of virgin Bush, and that Bush was a paradise for wild flowers and
ferns. From creek gullies close by I used to gather armfuls of
maiden-hair for church decoration, some fronds of which, measured on
the dining-room table, spanned the whole width from side to side. One
Christmas Eve I made the church a bower of it; every window was veiled
in the green lace. Unfortunately, it was withered by morning--the
usual condition of church decorations, on the actual day of festival,
in this country.

The church, which we also rummaged over without loss of time, was of a
piece with the house. Here we found the same careful arrangements and
completeness of equipment, the lack of which in other colonial
churches had so much surprised us, coming to them with our English
eyes and notions; the stamp of the mind and quality of the first
incumbent was plain in every direction (he was an Oxford man,
expatriated for his health). A year or two ago I was there again; it
and the house had faded and been neglected, and I was struck by the
unexpected smallness of them both; but even then they were a pleasant
contrast to those at W----, as they were in '72. And regarding the
beauty of their situation, I found that memory had played no tricks
with the records.

In the middle of our rummagings we realised that we were starving.
That air was the hungriest we had ever breathed, and we had no food
with us except the baby's. G. was despatched on a foraging expedition
to the town, and presently returned with bread, butter, cheese, beer,
meat, and a frying pan, together with smaller trifles, all in his own
arms and pockets--for he never minds what he carries or where he
carries it--the sister-in-law and I having prepared a fire in his
absence. Shortly afterwards we enjoyed the meal which stands out amid
the records of the past as _the_ meal of my life--my only excuse for
mentioning it. Soon the parish woke up to the fact of our presence in
its midst, and invitations and offers of assistance poured in upon us;
but I am always pleased to think that we got that wonderful scratch
lunch first. It is a delicious memory.

The vans came, and we settled ourselves. I find an entry in my journal
for February 10th (1873), "G. and I making a dining-table." And, three
days later, "G. and I making a sideboard." We must have done these
things, or they would not be set down, but how we did them, and with
what result, I have no recollection, although the two sofas, also made
for this house, are as plain to the mind's eye as they ever were. We
could buy furniture at the shops--"stores" we called them--of our
little town; bullock drays, that took weeks to do the journey from
Melbourne, kept us regularly supplied with all necessary goods; so
that the explanation of our various dabblings in the art of cabinet
making will at once occur to the reader. We had expended the capital
of L50 with which we started housekeeping, and, if I remember rightly,
the parson's stipend did not exceed L250 per annum. In a parish of the
dimensions of this one, horses (as distinct from a horse) were
indispensable, and they had to be fed and shod. A buggy (second hand)
and a piano (on time payment) were here added to the establishment;
likewise a second baby and a nurse-girl. To make ends meet, and at the
same time to have things as one wished--nay, as one was determined--to
have them, considerable ingenuity and invention were required. I
flatter myself that we did well, considering our youth, and that we
were new to the conditions in which we found ourselves; but still we
had to learn experience in many directions at an unexpected cost in
cash. It is extraordinary how quickly money melts in Australia,
compared with what it does at home. The reason is not that living is
dearer, but that the ways of this country are so lavish and
free-handed.

It was about this year (1873) that I began to write for the
_Australasian_--trifling little papers, at long intervals--not because
I found any fascination in such work to dispute the claims of the
house and family, but to add something to the family resources when
they threatened to give out. I had no time for more, until one day the
editor of the _Australasian_ wrote to inquire what had become of me
and my contributions, when it occurred to me that it might be worth
while to make time.

The Sunday school was at the further end of the township--it was the
common school on week-days--and I used to rush thither morning and
afternoon on Sundays, and return breathless to attend to my baby and
play the (American) organ in church. I trained the choir, visited
every parishioner within reach, did all that hard work unfairly
demanded of the parson's wife under these democratic systems of church
government; besides the multifarious work at home--making and mending,
cooking and nursing, and, as it appears, building sideboards and
dining-tables. Moreover, the Free and Compulsory Education Act had
come into force (January 1873), and as the State had to be satisfied
that our little nursemaid, who was within school age, was being
educated according to law, I charged myself with this job also, rather
than lose her services for the greater part of the day. And I may add
that the baby in arms was rarely trusted to this functionary, except
for airings in the garden under my eye. All other attentions that it
required I gave myself. So there was enough occupation for one
not-over-robust woman, without the addition of literary work.

Touching upon this matter, I am reminded of a conversation that I had
with Bishop Perry soon after our arrival. It was not the hardships of
the clergy that troubled him, he said, but the killing strain upon
their wives--literally killing, for he quoted figures to show the
disproportionately high rate of sickness and untimely death amongst
them. I rather think I have heard Bishop Moorhouse express himself to
the same effect. Certainly my own long and intimate acquaintance with
the subject leaves me in no doubt as to which of the clerical pair is
in the shafts and which in the lead. It is not the parson who, to use
the phrase so often in his mouth, bears the burden and heat of the
day, but the uncomplaining drudge who backs him at all points, and
too often makes him selfish and idle by her readiness to do his work
as well as her own. Under colonial and "disestablished" conditions, he
is not largely representative of the class from which our home clergy
are drawn; as a general rule he comes from that which, while as good
as another in many ways, and perhaps better in some, is not bred to
the chivalrous view of women and wives--regards them, that is to say,
as intended for no other purpose than to wait upon men and husbands.
The customs of the profession accord so well with this idea that it is
not surprising to find a pious man killing his wife by inches without
having the slightest notion that he is doing so.

Amongst my colleagues of those days was a lady of exceptional culture
and refinement. Her husband, a Bush clergyman like my own, was poor,
of course, and they averaged a baby a year until the baker's dozen was
reached, if not passed. The way she "kept" this family was such that I
never saw a dirty child or a soiled table-cloth or a slatternly touch
of any sort in her house. She taught the children as they grew old
enough; I know that she did scrubbing and washing with her own hands.
In addition, she did "the parish work."

One day, when she was run down and worn out, her husband told her that
the organist, from some cause, was not forthcoming, and there was no
time to procure a substitute. "So, my dear, you will have to play for
us." He knew that she could do it, for she had often done it before;
it was the merest trifle of a task, compared with those she hourly
struggled with; but it was the one straw too many that breaks the
over-loaded back. She looked at him in silence for a moment, flung out
her arms wildly, and, exclaiming "I can do no more!" went mad upon
the spot. She had to be put into an asylum, and the parish and the
husband and the growing young ones had to do the best they could
without her. The husband, I may say, was--apart from being the
inadvertent accomplice of the parish in her destruction--one of the
very best of husbands and of men.

Only the other day I attended a gathering of the friends of a lady to
whose loved memory it was desired to raise some public monument. She,
lately dead, had been our bishop's wife, and so the meeting was
appropriately presided over by dignitaries of the Church. They stood
up, one after another, to air their views. "I propose," said a worthy
canon, with the most matter-of-fact air in the world, "that every
clergyman's wife be a collector for the fund"--of course. I heard a
sigh and a _sotto-voce_ ejaculation behind me--"the poor clergymen's
wives!"--and the incident exactly shows how their male belongings
treat them.

I, however, have not been a victim. Before I was willing myself to
lighten the double strain, I was compelled to do so, and the
parish--as well as all succeeding parishes--had to put up with it. But
very early in the day I evolved opinions of my own as to the right of
parishes to exact tributes of service from private individuals in no
way bound to give them. And I came to a conclusion, which I have never
since seen reason to alter, that the less a clergyman's wife meddles
with her husband's business (except between themselves) the better,
not only for her but for all parties. After I could plead the claims
of a profession of my own, my position in the scheme of things was
finally and comfortably defined. Parishes, like clerical husbands,
when they tyrannise, do it unconsciously, from want of thought, and
not from want of heart. At any rate, my parish, for the time being,
never, so far as I can see, bears me any malice for my desertion of
the female-curate's post, but quite the contrary. For whereas we
should be sure to chafe each other if forced into an unnatural and
uncongenial relationship, we are now the best of neighbours and
mutually-respecting friends.

Having been a fervid young churchwoman at home, where I
district-visited in the most exemplary manner, with tracts and
soup-tickets and all the rest of it, for my own pleasure, parish work,
when it became my business, was not at all irksome as such. And there
was one part of it which was a source of great enjoyment during the
three years that we lived in Y----.

It was the training of the choir. At first, with much nervousness and
diffidence, I taught hymns and chants for an hour a week, and played
them at the Sunday services in the midst of my little band, which had
never conceived of higher flights. But ambition was generated in us as
we warmed to our work. Recruits arrived from far and near, some of
whom could read music, and we spread ourselves in an occasional
anthem. There have been, and are, many thousands of choirs as pleased
with themselves as we were, but never was there one more harmonious,
in every sense of the word. To the best of my recollection we never
had a tiff, and such was the attraction of our meetings that no
weather--rain, storm, mud, darkness--could keep away the men (some of
them quite elderly), who had to tramp miles through the Bush, after a
hard day's work, to attend them. Especially in the winter.

For when winter came, and the church was cold, I had the practices in
the house, with piano accompaniment. The bright log fire--firewood is
the one thing we have always been extravagant in, on principle--and
the much-pillowed amateur sofa, and the chairs collected from the
general stock and grouped invitingly, made the homely drawing-room a
good, thawing sort of place for the storm-buffeted to come to and to
sing in. Most carefully were wet wraps and umbrellas left outside, and
boots rubbed and scrubbed on door-mats; and never did an evening-party
show itself better bred. For that is what the choir practice came
to--a "musical evening" once a week. We fell into the habit of
clearing off the chants and hymns rather hastily, and devoting the
bulk of our ever-extending time to experiments in the higher forms of
part-singing. We were not experts, any of us, but we made up in
enthusiasm what we lacked in knowledge, and ended by so distinguishing
ourselves that the fame of our performances has not died out in the
district yet. For although on pleasure bent, we kept an eye to
business, and selected music with the secondary view of getting
anthems out of it eventually. Our great achievement was Mozart's
Twelfth Mass. It took us a long time, but we fumbled through it from
beginning to end. And then we astonished the congregation with
"Glorious is Thy Name," and "Praise the Lord, for He is Gracious," and
other classic gems, as we got them perfectly.

It was my first attempt at choir-leading and--which I am sure is a
very good thing for my reputation--the last. Thenceforth the parson
wielded the baton. The choir that now is, which could sing the Twelfth
Mass straight off as easily as look at it, if it had never seen the
thing before, would feel insulted at any comparison between their work
and ours; but often, when I am listening to the evening anthem, the
notes of those old voices, so fervid and sincere, float back upon the
tide of memory from those old days, with a heart-melting power that
these finished performances will never possess, for me.

A year or two ago G. was escorting me to my seat in the cathedral
through a crowd pressing into the building to some special function--I
forget what--and he was accosted by a fine-looking grey-bearded
gentleman, with a lady on his arm. "You don't know who that is," said
G., turning to me. I looked, and knew--one of those men who used to
walk so far o' nights to attend choir practice, after working at his
mine all day--seven-or eight-and-twenty years before. We clasped hands
with some emotion and looked at each other, and the question that
sprang to our eyes was, "Do you remember the Twelfth Mass?" It was as
plain as print to both of us. Then we were swept apart before I could
learn where he was living, or anything about him, except that the lady
on his arm was his daughter.

I hope many more have survived and prospered, and that they will read
these words so as to know how I remember them.




CHAPTER VIII

THE MURRAY JOURNEY


This parish, although sparsely populated, was enormous in size; it
stretched out in one direction more than a hundred miles as the crow
flies. And when G. went that way he rode with a fat valise on the
saddle and did not return under a fortnight, during which time we were
unable to communicate with each other. It was the nearest thing to
being a missionary that he ever came to. There are roads and thriving
townships along that route now; in our time it was the wildest
Bush-track, about which lay the homesteads of the pioneer squatters,
at a day's journey one from another. These good men used to welcome
warmly the infrequent parson, round up their hands for service in
dining-room or wool-shed, fetch in the babies born since the last
visitation, and any candidates for matrimony anxious to seize a golden
chance. In the case of the latter it was not unusual for the whole
process of proposal, engagement, and marriage to take place during the
few hours that the clergyman was available.

We called this expedition "the Murray Journey," and once I took it
with him. It was soon after we arrived in the district--the 24th of
March. That morning his horse, with the long-distance bolster on its
back, was saddled and he in his Bush riding costume of short coat,
tough trousers, and leather leggings, ready to set forth in the usual
way. But I was ill just then, and when it came to saying good-bye he
felt unable to leave me. At the same time, placards posted on trees
and fences and school-house doors had made engagements for him which
he could do nothing to cancel.

"Suppose you come too?" he suggested, as the best way out of the
difficulty. "The change of air and the outing may be just what you
need."

It seemed a good idea, and was acted upon at once. With a hopeful
effort I prepared a portmanteau for myself, and another for my little
boy, whom we proposed to leave at a friend's house (the sister-in-law
having left us) until our return; and G. went down to the township to
find a buggy. We had not yet provided ourselves with a vehicle of our
own, although we owned a horse. Practically we owned dozens of horses,
because the squatters were always pressing loans of them upon us,
exchanging fresh for stale, paddocking any that needed to be turned
out; and on this occasion the doctor, whom I have already spoken of,
hearing of our enterprise and approving it, made an offer of a good
animal which G. accepted. It was understood that relays, if needed,
would not be wanting on the road. The buggy he hired at hotel stables
for L5 the trip.

We started after luncheon, and in the evening reached a place where we
were very much at home. It was one of the newer two-storey brick
houses, with a double girdle of wide verandahs outside, and any amount
of solid British furniture within--an imposing mansion for the times.
It had enormous willow trees about it, which the owner had planted--he
white-haired and a grandfather, but Australian born, as also was his
wife. They were the oldest of old families, their history interwoven
with the very foundations of the State. Her father was killed by
bushrangers, his father was almost killed by them, or by blacks--I
forget which; and he showed me dinted gun-barrels and other trophies
that implied a battle for existence on his own part in the stirring
days gone by. He was one of the finest men I ever met. The
never-ending--unless South African battle-fields have ended
it--argument that the British type of physique degenerates in her
colonial-born sons was made short work of in his neighbourhood. "Look
at Mr B." the defender of his country would remark, and the abashed
opponent was left without a word to say.

I had a day's rest under his wide, warm roof, which it was hoped would
recuperate my strength for further efforts. On the 26th we started
again, leaving behind us our little son and his nurse--leaving also
the doctor's horse, which Mr B. pronounced inadequate. He had the
shafts removed from our buggy, and a pole substituted, and gave us a
pair of strong, staunch, sweet-tempered horses, which I have no doubt
saved our lives on one occasion, if not on two. There was no
discussion about it. They were simply ordered, and brought round when
we were ready. And I do not remember that my mortal hatred of debts
and favours stood in the way at all. The idea of being "under an
obligation" to these men did not occur to one, somehow. The pleasure
was theirs.

At 9 A.M. we set out, calculating to make the next stage by nightfall.
The autumnal days were such that I could not describe them without
rhapsodising, but the nights were dark, and closed in at about seven
o'clock. Mrs B. stuffed luncheon basket and invalid comforts under the
buggy seat. Everybody did that when seeing us off. It was a pity I
could not do justice to the good things we turned out upon the grass
when we made our noontide halts. If I had been well, what feasts I
should have had, in that wholesome, hungry air. A normal picnic always
finds me ravenous. As it was, my main support was milk, with a dash of
brandy in it. Nothing heavier would "stay."

Now began the struggles which I know were so painful at the time, but
which were so amply paid for. Our track was through the wild Bush,
sparely bisected by the primitive bush-fence--two or three a day,
perhaps--brush, dog-leg, chock-and-log, the post-and-rail reserved for
the stockyards and home enclosures; and it soon began to climb rough
hills and fall into abrupt ravines such as no sane driver would
attempt to negotiate nowadays. Not we, at any rate. The hills crowded
upon the river, and to get past them you either had to make a long and
uninteresting detour inland or clamber over the shoulders that sloped
sheer into the swiftly-running stream. We chose this left-hand route,
and thus put the splendid mettle of our horses to full proof for the
first time. Some of those "sidings" were so steep that while the
staunch creatures clung to the track, digging their toes in at every
step, the buggy hung at right angles to them down the hill; the least
jib would have run us plump into the water beneath. I walked while I
had the strength to do so; at the sharpest pinches we both walked; but
there was too much of it. I had to mount when I could crawl no more,
and tucking myself under the seat and covering my eyes, give myself up
into the hands of fate. "Tell me when it is all over," I said to G.

G. had the good character in the Bush of being "so unlike a parson,"
which meant he could ride and drive (accomplishments acquired at home,
fortunately), and go anywhere without losing himself. In those endless
miles of wilderness, faintly scratched with crossing and re-crossing
bridle-tracks, nothing to guide him that was visible to me, he was,
from the first, as good a Bushman as those to the manner born, as sure
of his course as a sailor on the sea. Nevertheless, we fell into the
disgrace (to an Australian Jehu) of being "bushed" that night.

In mere miles it was a long day's journey; the difficult country made
it a slow one, and it was necessary to "out span" for an hour in the
middle of it, to feed and rest the horses. We started in the
afternoon, watch in hand. "We shall do it," said G.; and then, "We
shall just do it;" and then, "We've got our work cut out to do it." We
counted minutes, and watched the glooming sky. The horses raced in and
out amongst the trees and scrub while any shadow of trunk or stump
could be discerned by the straining eye; then they slackened, checked,
stumbled; branches broke under their feet and in the buggy wheels and
swished our hands and faces; and we had to recognise that we were off
the track, and that the darkest of dark nights had untimely caught us.
We were not lost, because we could hear the dogs barking at the
homestead that was our goal, but we were as good as lost--"bushed" for
the night, although for some time we would not acknowledge it. If the
reader asks what carriage-lamps were made for, I reply, not for
Bushmen in those days. People living in and about the towns used
them, in obedience to by-laws, and the coaches travelled at night with
grand hoods of light around their faces, top and sides; but
country-folks despised such artificial aids, such enervating luxuries.
They used to say they could see better without lamps than with, and
we, being Bush persons, thought so too. On any ordinary night and
fairly open track, we could manage to get along, but this night was
not only moonless but starless, and thick with gathering rain. "Black
as a wolf's mouth" well describes it. And we were in riverside scrub,
which is always dense and confusing, traversing it, moreover (since it
was not G.'s riding route, a still rougher one) for the first time.

G. got down and hunted with lighted matches for the lost track. When
he thought he had discovered it he backed the horses and ran the buggy
into a worse fix than before. This manoeuvre was repeated several
times. While I held the reins, he made little excursions by himself,
and with the greatest difficulty found me again. The horses stood
quiet and patient, just snuffing and jingling a little, and we tied
them up and crept around the immediate neighbourhood together, hand in
hand, until they in turn were lost--lost for many agonising minutes.
Reminding ourselves of our responsibility for their welfare, and that
we should have to pay goodness only knew what for the buggy if harm
came to it, we decided, when reunited once more, not to part again.
Bushed we were, and had to make up our minds to it.

So we unharnessed the gentle animals and haltered them, and let them
graze and rustle round within safe reach and the limit of their
tether, and we did what we could to ease the situation for ourselves.
I was deadly sick and tired, and had to lie down somewhere. The floor
of the buggy being too short for a bed, we were driven to seek rest on
the bosom of Mother Earth. We spread our one rug thereon, and covered
ourselves with the shawl that had Dik's shot-holes in it. That
shawl--a wedding present--was a dream of a shawl for softness,
thickness, cosiness, a family treasure for ever so many years. Babies
were rolled in it, and little invalids sitting up, and anybody who was
shivery or ailing (disease germs and such things not being in fashion
then); nothing was ever woven that gave so much comfort to so many
people. It was in constant demand--"the grey shawl"--as the last
safeguard against damps and chills, and so, as a matter of course, I
took it with me on the Murray Journey. But it was wofully insufficient
for the requirements of that cold March night.

A mouthful from G.'s pocket-flask warmed me for a while, and there was
a romantic hour during which I lay and listened to the strange
undertones of the Bush, charmed to have fallen in with so interesting
an experience. It was, by the way, the only time that I ever "camped
out," although I have wished ever since to do it again, when well in
health and otherwise properly equipped. About two years ago I returned
(for the first time since '73) to that neighbourhood, and arrangements
were made for me and another enterprising matron to camp out with a
party of engineers surveying a proposed road through a wild jumble of
hills and glens, at what would have been an ideal spot. They were
taking tents and beds, and nice things to cook at the glorious fire
they would keep us warm with; nothing they could think of to enhance
our enjoyment had been forgotten. Alas! the rain came, and
extinguished that project and my joy. On the afternoon of the expected
happy night, a host-that-should-have-been drove me over one of the
old-time break-neck roads--but a real road now--and showed me the
scene of the camp that never was. Peeping from the mackintoshes that
he had heaped over me, I saw, through the driving rain and across a
thickly-wooded gorge, a high, dim hill. There it was, more than
half-way up--the loneliest eyrie. What a place to look down from at
nightfall, at daybreak, and in the dead waste and middle of the dark!
And not only the camp fire to make magic of it, but a moon!

On the occasion of our involuntary camp-out in '73 there was neither.
I fancy we had used all our matches, but if not, we dared not have
made a fire. Grass and dead leaves were still tinder to a spark, and a
Bushman knows when he must respect that state of things. A Bush fire
is more easily started than put out. So we lay and listened to the
trampling and munching of the invisible horses, the scratchings and
runnings and snoring growls of the opossums, and those imaginary
footsteps that, to ears at the ground, were more distinct than either,
until we ached with the hardness of our bed and our teeth chattered
with cold. And then it began to rain.

We sought the shelter of the buggy, and covered ourselves with the rug
and the grey shawl. We sat in the vehicle, where there was no room to
lie down, leaning one against the other, dropping this way and that,
sighing from our very boots, watching for a glint of dawn. It seemed a
thousand hours before it came. As soon as we could find our way we
went to the river to wash. How starvingly raw and cold that early
morning was! And to this day I am sorry for myself when I remember how
I felt, after the sleepless, supperless, wet, sick night. I would have
been glad to lie down and die, rather than face a pack of strangers.
However, we harnessed up, and set out for the house for which we were
bound. We seemed to have hardly started before we got there--a good
"Cooee" might have rescued us over-night--and nobody was stirring,
except a servant beginning to sweep.

A new baby had recently arrived--it appears to me, looking back, that
in those days there was always a new baby in every house--so that the
mistress was invisible for a time; but I was soon in kind hands of
some sort, which helped me to tumble straightway into bed. For it was
useless to attempt to observe any of the usages of polite society,
under the circumstances. Daily, through that trip, I arrived in this
condition, more or less, at some new strange house--an uninvited
guest, too ill to talk to anyone, thrown at once upon the charity of
the family, and of course filled with the shame of so ignominious a
position; but I should have lost much more than I did lose if I had
been well.

I slept till noon, while G. mended what he could of his broken
engagements (there should have been a service over-night, and now the
congregation had dispersed to its work); and after an early lunch we
took the road again. I was firm in insisting upon keeping a tight hold
of my husband, though I should die for it, rather than be left behind
to be nursed, which he and everyone deemed the proper thing to do with
me.

In the evening we came to the place that, of all places visited at
this time, is the one I remember best and with most pleasure. A fine
day, after the rain, was closing with a finer sunset when we saw the
house, so effectively situated on a hill-side sloping to the river,
its pretty garden dropping down before, its neat vineyard and orchard
climbing behind, that as a picture I hung it "on the line," there and
then, and the gallery of memory holds nothing of the same age that has
worn so well. It was a bachelor establishment--an awkward
circumstance, at the first blush, but soon perceived to lack no
advantage on that account. One young partner was away; the one at home
came forth to receive us, with his nice, frank, gentlemanly air, that
made such an impression upon me. I don't know who he was; I never saw
or heard of him again; I have forgotten his name; but him I shall
never forget.

He had made the most careful and graceful preparations for us. A
dinner-party had been arranged, the guests to meet us being a squatter
and his wife, of the same good class as himself, from the New South
Wales side of the river, which they crossed in their private
boat--evidently a voyage often taken--at the due hour. Sad to relate,
I could not join that party, much to the host's concern and my own
disappointment. The housekeeper bore me off to bed, and coddled me
with arrowroot or beef-tea or something, while at the same time she
supervised the serving of a meal which was described to me afterwards
in tantalising terms. I was glad that my bedroom was close to the
dining-room--probably opened out of it, like so many guest-chambers of
the period. I could hear the pleasant, cultivated voices, the bright
chat, broken by little silences during which the master of the house
waited to hear how I was, and whether I could fancy this or that; and
later in the evening I could follow the whole course of the service
that was held in the same apartment, and for which he had diligently
gathered in every stray sheep within his reach.

As soon as dinner was over the other lady guest came in to sit with
me, and stayed with me until it was time for her to re-cross the dark
river to her own home and bed. We talked of our children, in low
tones, not to disturb the adjacent worshippers. She, too, I never saw
before or since--it was indeed a case of ships that pass in the
night--but I have loved her always, and thought of her as a life-long
friend. We promised to meet again. If she is alive now, I am sure she
regrets, as I do, that Fate declined to give us another chance.

Refreshed by a night's rest, I rose early, and enjoyed my host's
companionship for perhaps half an hour. He took me for a gentle stroll
about the garden while breakfast was preparing, and I was sorry the
half hour could not be lengthened to a day--or a week. But the
exigencies of G.'s time-table drove us on. We had another day-long
journey before us to the next port of call, and it was necessary to
start betimes if we were not to be bushed again.

We travelled beside the river for some hours, and my recollections are
of particularly lovely views. Doubtless the radiant morning gave them
much of their charm--Australian scenery is really a matter of light
and atmosphere--and allowance must be made for that enchantment which
distance lends; still, it was a pretty country. The Murray wriggles
through its two colonies like a length of waved dress braid, and here
it curved between hilly banks and woods whose fringes dipped into the
stream. Primeval forest it was, too (except for that daily rarer
brush fence), the free home of beautiful birds that may now be sought
in vain within the boundaries of the state; and a stream still
populous with wild-fowl of many kinds. By noon we must have worked a
little inland, for my journal says it was a creek we camped by for
lunch; and in the afternoon, during which we skirted a little hamlet
that is now a considerable town, we descended to country called
"Plains" in the title of its presiding station--the house we reached
safely just as night closed in. Here there was the usual new baby
(which G. christened next day), and no hostess immediately visible;
the governess received me--in the inevitable condition--and put me to
bed.

Speaking of those Bush babies, I would point out that medical
attendance was in the category of non-essential luxuries that are now
necessaries of life in every class. When it cost a little fortune and
the waste of days to get a doctor, the struggling Bushman's wife, as a
rule, took her chance without him. Occasionally she was conveyed to a
township which possessed one, and there awaited in lodgings the
opportunity to profit by his services; but the majority of Bush women
preferred to stay at home and make shift with the peripatetic Gamp,
old and unscientific as she always was. There was no fuss made over
these affairs. The wives took after their husbands, who could drive
without gig-lamps in the darkest night. I remember, however, that the
mistress of this last house had all but lost her life in her recent
confinement. She was a beautiful woman, delicate in every way--not of
the ordinary type of squatter's wife.

With her I rested for a day, while G. made business excursions on
horseback, and we spent a second night under that roof. This brought
us to Sunday--a typical Bush Sunday.

A large family party loaded the waggonette which took us to morning
service some miles distant. The place of worship, as usual in such
parts, was the district school-house, called the Common School (the
title "State" was substituted for "Common" when the Compulsory
Education Act came into force, after which these buildings, enormously
multiplied, were not so readily obtainable for what are called
"sectarian" purposes). The school-house was utilised by the
denominations in turn, all having been placed on the same footing by
the withdrawal of State aid from the originally established (English)
church, only the Roman Catholics standing out from the miscellaneous
company. This seemed a sad "come-down" to us at first, with our
hereditary reserve and exclusiveness in relation to "dissenters"--a
word long eliminated from our vocabulary. The miner who, being invited
to church, replied affably, "Ay, ay, I'll give ye all a turn," showed
us our place in the colonial scheme of things, and we did not like it
a bit. But we soon adapted ourselves. And G. and the current
Presbyterian parson of the parish, that he could not call his own,
used to study their mutual convenience in arranging country services,
and give each other a lift when on the road together. A pity it was
that the "dissidence of dissent" could not have been further
modified--a pity it is, and must continue to be--for the existence of
half a score of little conventicles struggling one against the other
for the suffrages of one poor little town--the money question in each
case dominating and determining every other--is not good for their
common cause.

In the simple seventies and these remote outskirts of the world, one
could still cherish the ideals of that English prelate who said of
Disestablishment that "it will nearly drown us, but at least it will
kill the fleas," one could survey the Church purified, before the new
vermin hatched. It was charming to see the country carts gathered
round the lowly wooden building, the horses unharnessed, feeding under
the trees; they had brought worshippers from many miles away, their
sincerity as such proved by the trouble they had taken to reach the
rendezvous, and by the heartiness of their demeanour while service was
going on. The school forms, made for children, would bend, and
sometimes break, under the heavy men, close-packed along them; the
mothers peacefully suckled their babes as they listened to the sermon;
the dogs strolled in, and up and down. Sometimes a dog had a
difference with another dog and disturbed the proceedings, but unless
this happened no one thought of driving the dear creatures out. They
were the sheep and cattle dogs of the congregation, each inseparable
from his master.

This sort of function it was that I attended on the morning of the one
Sunday of that Murray Journey. A family present then convoyed us to
their home--another solitary station--whence, after a good meal, they
drove us to the second service of the day, similar to the first. We
then drove ourselves to a third station (a delightful place, G.'s
favourite camping-ground on every Murray trip), where, of course, I
went at once to bed, G. "having church" for the last time in the
evening, in the dining-room of the house.

Monday was a rest-day here. On Tuesday morning we made the necessary
early departure, and a few hours later met with the first of our two
serious adventures.

It was soon after our picnic lunch, early in the afternoon. We were
trundling through the eternal solitude, refreshed and content,
enjoying our conversation and the brilliant weather, when we saw a
Bush fire far ahead. Since we were not responsible for starting it, we
hailed it as a welcome variation in the monotony of our drive. We
hoped to skirt it near enough to see what it was doing. Bush fires
were pleasing novelties in those days; now the faintest distant scent
of them gives me a "turn" like a qualm of sickness. I shall explain
why later on. This incident does not explain it, although it well
might.

As we advanced, the area of conflagration opened out. It was an
extensive fire, and in thick country. Not grass, but trees were
roaring to the sky. Our anxiety to get close to it gradually gave
place to a wish that it were further away. Misgivings deepened as we
drew near; alarm supervened. "It is right across the track," said G.
at last; and so it was, and far to right and left.

The last thing we wanted to do was to turn back, and indeed the wings
of flame curved in behind us even as we drew rein to discuss our
chances--not until we had driven quite up to the blazing wall, in the
hope of seeing through to the other side, and finding a
crossing-place. To go into the unburnt scrub on either hand would have
been madness, for nothing could have saved us had the fire caught us
there. Every inch of earth provided fuel for it, except the narrow,
dusty buggy track. To that we knew we must stick at all hazards, and a
very hurried survey of our unpleasant position showed us that there
was nothing for it but to go on--to plunge into the flaming belt, and
get out as best we could.

A few yards, we hopefully reckoned it: it turned out nearer half a
mile. It might have been midnight, for all the daylight or sunlight
that we saw during that dreadful passage: we were like Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego in the burning fiery furnace, enveloped in a
glare as of the infernal regions. The tree-torches over our heads
dropped blazing leaves on us (the useful grey shawl again
intervening): the grass-blades caught and curled up at the very tires
of the wheels; the buggy sides blistered like our hands and cheeks.
Not a word did we speak, except to urge on the horses, on which our
lives depended, and which we are convinced they saved.

They shivered and jumped and snorted a little when the flames came
very near, or they were touched by a spark, but never for a moment
gave way to the panic which would have been natural, and which would
have destroyed us all. Digging their heads into their chests, obeying
voice, whip, and rein, they strained along doggedly, keeping the track
as they had done on the steep sidings, until they brought us out at
last into light and safety. Such nerve and courage I never saw or
heard of in horses, which can stand almost anything better than fire
at close quarters. But this pair were unmatchable.

We staggered into port, and tried, with our parched tongues, to tell
the tale. Never shall I forget the shock I received from the behaviour
of the person interviewed. The thin veneer of his sympathy for us was
as glass over his solid and shining satisfaction at hearing how his
waste land was getting cleared--at no expense to him. I thought I had
never met a more heartless man.

Then, after a night in the humble _chalet_ of two young fellows, just
starting squatting for themselves in a romantic nook of the hills--who
ought not to have been asked to entertain a lady, but did it most
hospitably with the best at their command, we passed on to our next
adventure.

It was another lovely morning, and the usual bottle of new milk and
private spirit-flask compensated somewhat for the chops I had not been
able to eat at breakfast. It was a beautiful if rough drive down the
hills to the river-flats and another little hamlet that is now a
full-grown town, with a railway to it. On the way we stopped to watch
the evolutions of an eagle-hawk, which had caught up an opossum
(stupid as an owl in daylight), and was sailing through the ether with
it, fiercely chased by all the other birds of the neighbourhood. They
call these great creatures eagle-hawks, but they are wholly eagles, to
all intents and purposes. I have seen one swoop over a terrified
flock, claw up a good-sized lamb, and soar away with it as if it were
a mouse.

Leaving the township, we came presently to a river--the Mitta, in
flood. And here our incomparable horses, which had saved us from a
fiery, saved us from a watery, grave--possibly. G., it is true, was a
good swimmer, but I was not, and the worst might have happened.
Drownings of venturesome travellers, under the same circumstances,
were frequently reported in those days.

That river had to be crossed. There was no bridge, of course, and not
a soul within miles of whom to make inquiries as to the
fording-place. The only thing to do, therefore, was to take the last
one known, while anticipating--rightly as it proved--that it would be
found washed out and gone. "Oh, you can't cross there now," they told
us, after we had done it.

I and all our belongings were gathered upon the buggy seat, skirts
tucked round me, railing and portmanteau tightly clutched; G. knelt on
the cushion of the driver's seat, and we plunged in. Deeper, deeper,
deeper, until we swayed and rocked and swung round upon our axis, and
the current took the horses off their feet and began to drift them
down. But their heads still pointed to the old landing-place: with all
their strength they held back against the stream; and swimming
steadily, got us ashore without an upset, and, with a tremendous spurt
and scramble, up a bank that would have tried the mettle of a South
African bullock team.

It was the last "pinch." By noon we reached the wide-spreading roofs
of a house which was simply a free hotel for every passer-by--that
house where even the blacks were made welcome, one of them having the
run of visitors' bedrooms in the night. There G. left me, returning
after a few hours with our little boy and his nurse and the doctor's
horse. And the following day we were at home.




CHAPTER IX

LOCAL COLOUR


I often wonder what G. would have done if he had been a weakly man or
an indifferent rider. There were lengthy periods during which he
practically lived in the saddle, getting out of it merely for meals
and sleep. For a time we kept records of the totals of miles covered
per week or per year, but, these matters ceasing to be notable, we
lost them long ago. And it is better not to trust even to his memory
to reproduce them, for I am certain that no figure near the truth
would be credited by the English reader.

The following is the programme for a monthly Sunday in W----, where
the breaking-in began:--Up at 4 A.M. Breakfast at a station
twenty-five miles distant. Morning service five miles further distant
(in an open shed, the congregation sitting on wheat-sacks or what
not). Dinner near by, and ride of twelve miles to afternoon service.
Tea, and ride of five miles to evening service. Ride of seventeen
miles home. Of course he could have started on Saturday and returned
on Monday, but he never spent a night away from his own house unless
absolutely compelled. I used to wake from my first sleep at the sound
of the cantering hoofs, pop on my dressing-gown, and go and hold the
lantern for him while he made his horse comfortable, and then join
him at his well-earned supper. He was always fresh at the end of this
tremendous day, or, at anyrate, not more than pleasantly
tired--generally more disposed to sit up and gossip than to go to bed.
The horse, too, which had carried him all day, though glad to reach
his journey's end, was undistressed. It was by no means an exceptional
day's work for an Australian horse.

Only once do I remember seeing G., at the end of one of these Bush
excursions, thoroughly knocked up. That was in furnace-hot midsummer
weather, when he had been out all day in a north wind. He had been
sent for to take a burial service, and was first driven twenty-five
miles to the station where the body was lying. Hence the funeral
party, on horseback and in black clothes and hats, proceeded at a slow
foot-pace another twenty-five miles to the station where the family
burying-ground was situated. Here, at the grave, one mourner fell,
sun-struck; the rest were more or less prostrated. G. rode those
terrible twenty-five miles, and the same distance back to the first
station; there he had a meal and a short rest, and then rode home in
the night, which was pitchy dark. The temperature was still over 100 deg.
and the wind in the north, and the whole thing proved too much even
for his strength. He was really tired out, for once. But that was the
only time that I remember him being so (from riding) in all the years
that I have known him.

I may mention another funeral with some old-time features about it.
The summons came one evening, from a long distance, and the man
bringing it left directions for G. to follow in riding to the
appointed spot next day--for he had but just arrived in the district,
which was all unknown land to him. The man promised to meet him at a
certain swamp of some miles in extent; the funeral would have to skirt
round this swamp, but there was a track through it, known to the
initiated, by which a rider could save much distance; he had, however,
to be a good rider, on a good horse, because it was a quicksandy sort
of ground, and a guide was necessary. G. managed to find this place
and duly met his guide, who upbraided him for not being there earlier.
The man then led the way through the swamp, at a pace as near to
flying as possible, to avoid being sucked in; if a horse rested his
weight on the ground for a moment, he began to sink. They were awful
places, those. I once saw G. (I was riding behind him) caught by one
unawares. The instant he knew it he rolled off the saddle and back to
_terra firma_ like a streak of lightning, and eventually he got his
horse out too; but it gave me cold shivers to think what might have
happened. Though, as I never heard of anyone being engulfed entirely,
I suppose there were bottoms somewhere.

On this occasion the guide tore along at the pace I have mentioned,
kicking up the sticky stuff behind him; G., obliged to ride in his
tracks and close at his heels, was smothered in the shower, and when
he joined the funeral procession was a cake of black mud from head to
foot. Arrived at the cemetery, it was found that the grave had not
been dug--not begun to be dug--and the party had to sit around for
three hours while this necessary business was transacted. A hospitable
soul amongst the mourners took G. to his neighbouring shanty, cleaned
him down a bit, and gave him eggs and chops and tea and all the usual
kindness. Word was brought to them when the grave was ready, and they
returned to finish the proceedings.

This cemetery, although remote and small, was a public one; that of
the other funeral was private. I have known several of these family
burying-places, made in the first instance for the pioneers who "took
up" the land--crown land, become freehold and virtually entailed--now
occupied by their descendants; some of them are used still. Only a
short time ago I was visiting one of the old homes, a wealthy station,
administered by the third generation of its possessors; and, walking
about the grounds after luncheon, I was shown the cemetery, with its
rows of head-stones and monuments and its fence and gate, like a
section cut out of any well kept municipal burial-ground; only this
lay amongst garden-beds and orange-groves, in full view of the windows
on one side of the house. Hither had been brought back the daughters
who had married and gone away. "And here," said my white-haired host,
"we," indicating the family group of which he was the centre, "shall
all come, I hope." I trust there will be no law made to prevent it.
Technically unconsecrated, as I suppose they are, these little family
burying-places have a peculiar sacredness, to my thinking, not
belonging to the common gathering-places of the dead; the difference
is as between a bed at home and a bed in a hotel.

One friend of ours, bachelor-owner of one of the finest properties in
the wealthy Western District, ordered that he should be interred on
the top of a hill on his estate, and that no monument was to be
erected over him. His wishes were carried out. G. read the burial
service at the lonely grave, which is marked only by a cairn of
stones.

Some of the Bush weddings of those early times were as unconventional
as the Bush funerals. Our verger and odd man about the church at Y----
(we took him over from our predecessor) could not read. G. called upon
him one day to say the responses at a marriage service, there being no
other congregation, and he pleaded this disability. "Well, at least,"
said G., "you can say 'Amen' can't you?" Oh, yes, he could do that.
And he did--with a vengeance. Every time G. paused to take a breath,
no matter where, a loud "Amen!" was shot into the breach. Who giveth
this woman to be married to this man?--"Amen!" There was nothing for
it but to race through the ceremony, and "Old Jimmy" was not required
to officiate again.

G. was often nonplussed in this way, by finding ignorance where he
expected knowledge as a matter of course. Once he started to read the
Litany in a strange place for the first time. Dead silence followed
the opening sentence. In a low voice he directed the congregation what
to do, but nothing would make them do it; evidently they had never had
the Litany before, and did not know what to make of it. In the end he
had to read the whole alone. I myself came upon a crowded class of
Sunday-school children who did not know who Noah was. I was trying to
stuff them with that legend of a submerged world, and I put the
question encouragingly: "Now, who was the good man whom God spared
when all the rest were drowned?" Rows and rows, dozens and dozens
(they filled that flower-stand-like arrangement of stair-seats running
up the wall, which the village school provides for the infant
scholars) of blank little faces were interrogated one by one. "Can't
you tell me? Can't _you_?" No, none of them could. At last one bright
little boy spoke up. "I know, teacher!" "Ah, then you tell these other
little boys and girls. Who was it?" He shouted triumphantly, "Robinson
Crusoe!"

There was a Bush wedding that would have made quite a romantic story,
if I had thought to write it. G. was on the Murray Journey, and it was
one of his engagements for the outward route. Cantering along through
the Bush, he was met and accosted by a drunken old man, who asked him
whether he was not the parson and on the way to marry So-and-so. G.
informed him that he was. "Well, don't you do it," said the man. "I'm
the girl's father, and she's under age, and she can't marry without my
consent, and I won't give it." G. rode on, and at the appointed
rendezvous met the young couple, a nice modest girl and a
respectable-looking young man. Documents were produced for filling up
and signing, and G. asked for that necessary one which he feared would
not be forthcoming. It was not. The bridegroom-elect pretended that it
had been mislaid--"bluffed" all he knew, poor fellow--but he could not
produce it, and without it there could be no marriage. The bride,
being in her teens, must have her father's written consent, and this
father had refused it. They tried to persuade G. to marry them without
it, but, as he told them, it was more than his place was worth; the
law was plain and had to be obeyed. They retired for a while to
discuss the unhappy situation, and then the bride came back alone,
weeping, to renew the useless appeal. She had a wretched life with her
drunken father, who ill-used her, and her lover had prepared for her a
good and happy home, and oh, couldn't G., for once and in
consideration of the hard circumstances, stretch a point? He was
sorry enough that he could not. All he could do was to promise to see
them again on his homeward journey, and to marry them then if in the
meantime they had been able to soften the father's heart. But when he
returned he found the situation unchanged; the old ruffian's heart was
flint. The end of it all was that the poor young things, using the
legal knowledge acquired from G., went off to another colony and
another clergyman who knew them not, to whom the bride gave her age as
over twenty-one. G., when he heard of this, did not make it his
business to denounce the desperate young criminals.

He celebrated another Bush wedding--and there was a wedding party to
it--in the destined home of the happy pair. It was a bark hut, with a
mud floor and as yet without a shred of furniture in it. The papers
were filled up and signed on an up-ended cask. At another marriage
feast all the guests were drunk to start with. They offered him a
glass of neat brandy in which to drink the health of the contracting
parties. In all sorts of places, and at all hours of the day and
night, he has been called upon to weld the bands of holy matrimony;
the evening--after dark--is the time preferred by those casual couples
who do not bother about wedding garments and the other conventional
displays.

I once got a pathetic glimpse of one of these belated functions; it
was performed for G. by a _locum tenens_ in one of our country
parishes. "Why," said he to me, before going into church, "why do
these people make a point of being married in the vestry and not
before the altar?" They had pressed this point with such earnestness
that he had yielded to it. His idea was that they did not feel
themselves smart enough for the usual observances, although there were
to be no spectators; but even to him it seemed an absurd one. We knew
them well--that the mother, authorising the marriage as the only
surviving parent, was a highly-respected lady, and the bridegroom a
steady young man, long a member of her establishment; the bride, who
was very young, was her only child. The hour and the place chosen, and
the secrecy of the whole affair, puzzled us, though we might easily
have guessed their meaning. I happened to see the vestry door open on
the conclusion of the ceremony. In the bright patch of light suddenly
flung upon the screen of darkness stood mother and daughter, locked in
each other's arms, apparently weeping bitterly. "Tell me," said the
officiating minister, when he came in, "tell me how this business
turns out," and he left us next day for his home in Melbourne. The
first thing I heard was the news that the girl had been married, all
unbeknown to her friends and at some distant church, several months
before the date on which I knew she had been married; everybody told
me this, and of course I did not contradict the statement. Four or
five months later I met her in a railway carriage, and she had a
bouncing baby in her arms. The strict moralist would have been
horrified to see how proud of it she was, and how blooming and happy
and satisfied she looked.

Strange to say, evening weddings are _de rigueur_ in the upper circles
of the place where I now live--the only place thus distinguished, so
far as I know. Soon after we came here a particularly "swell" wedding
took place--that may have set the fashion--the hour of which was fixed
at 8 P.M. The bridal robe, with its court train, had been sent from
London, the gift of a wealthy sister; it was a wonderful white
brocade shot with silver threads, and certainly shimmered in the
gaslight as it could not have done by day. The gorgeous costumes of
the guests also "lit up" with great effectiveness, as did the
elaborate decorations of the church. It was really a dramatic
spectacle. And the church was almost pulled to pieces by the crowd who
went to see it.

And so now all the butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers have
their weddings at night. Business is over, and they can revel
thoroughly while they are about it. And outsiders, being also free to
enjoy themselves, come in shoals to see the fun. Gates have to be
locked and defended by brute force like barricades against besiegers,
and the police are welcome when they deign to grace the scene. We hate
this custom, which for several reasons is not nice to think of, but
cannot alter it. Fashion is always irresistible when there is no law
to the contrary, and canonical hours are ignored in this country. In
the Bush, in the old days, persons got married at night only because
they were ashamed to do so by day, or because they had no choice.

Another more purely social function of the Church had its Australian
peculiarities, so marked at times as to obscure the lines of the
original model, followed with such religious care. I allude to the
time-honoured tea-meeting. I shall never forget how the first one that
I attended on this side of the world astonished me.

It was while we were at W----, and the occasion was the laying of the
foundation stone of a church at a mining township some twelve miles
off. A large party of us, headed by our archdeacon, had a pleasant
drive to the spot during the afternoon; on arrival our buggies were
variously disposed of amongst the local residents, who, after the
business ceremony, welcomed us to the hall or schoolroom where the
festive tables were spread. I had seen the festive tables at
home--bread and butter, substantial whitish cake, currant buns--and
expected some approximation to that immemorial bill of fare, which to
me was all one with the Rubrics.

I did not know--though I soon learnt--that the poorest Sunday-school
child would not look at it. For the Sunday-school treat--just so much
on a lower plane than a tea-meeting as boys and girls are inferior to
men and women--you must have nothing plainer than ham-sandwich; that
is the basis on which to build the rich edifice of sweets. Ham it must
be, and no meaner substitute. So, at least, it was when I took active
part in such affairs; for I know that once, when we thought to
economise with beef, an irate mother came to ask us what we meant by
it. The children never had been put off with beef, and she considered
it a burning shame. One year, when the "treat" food was provided, as
usual, by the ladies of the congregation, each cooking to outvie the
rest, I took upon myself to remonstrate with them for _their_
cruelty--in stuffing the poor children with unlimited cream-cakes and
meringues. Yes, actually meringues, on my word of honour. But that, I
must admit, was an exceptional circumstance.

Nowadays, as I am informed, things are not quite the same. For
instance, the current Sunday-school attached to this establishment
makes its annual sandwiches of ham, beef, and German sausage, in about
equal parts, and I do not hear of any complaints. It is a large
Sunday-school, and therefore not so much all one family as those
little ones of the past: and ham is something like a shilling a
pound; and town ways are not as Bush ways. In town it is a common
thing to employ a caterer at so much per head. So that we may say the
times have changed. But the children, wherever they are and whoever
makes it for them, still pack rich puff pastry on the top of their
sandwiches, and rich plum cake on the top of that, and miscellaneous
"lollies" on the top of all, until there is no room for a crumb more;
and what happens to them next day, and the day after, is a question
that yearly agitates my mind. Quite unnecessarily, I suppose. Their
little stomachs are hardened to it.

So the aspect of my Bush feast--the tea-meeting tea--may be inferred.
Chickens and turkeys, hams and tongues, pies and sucking-pigs, jellies
and trifles--in short, all the features of an old-fashioned wedding
breakfast or a ball supper were there, except the wine. You had,
naturally, to drink tea at a tea-meeting--if you wanted to drink
anything with such oceans of whipped cream. But the tea is the only
remaining link between the Australian tea-meeting and the English one,
unless the English one has changed greatly since my time.

A purely social function, did I call it? It had, of course, its
_raison d'etre_ if only to "draw the people together," which is its
last excuse (the first always "goes without saying"). On one occasion
a tea-meeting was attached to a movement for getting some parochial
work done, of which part of the parish approved and part did not.
Speeches for and against were made when the tables had been cleared,
and G. spoke for the side that he personally espoused. The local
paper, which was on the opposite side, reported his speech in the
following ingenious manner: "The reverend gentleman was understood to
say" so and so (substantially what he actually did say), "but what he
meant to say was" so and so (what the local paper and its party
thought he ought to have said).

The great tea-meeting of all is what is called the Diocesan Festival.
It is held annually, at the time of the sitting of the Church
Assembly, which is our House of Convocation; and all the leading
(English) Churchmen of the diocese, lay and clerical, take their part
in "running the show." The Melbourne Town Hall is filled with
tea-tables, individually donated by parishes or private families;
Church of England people, and many besides, flock thither and pack the
place to suffocation before six o'clock, at which hour they sit down
to eat and drink, having paid eighteen pence per head for the
privilege. When tea is over there is a great struggle for room to
remove the tables and their furnishings, but it is done somehow, and
only benches and chairs left for the evening assembly, augmented by
many not present at the tea. During this interval the cathedral
organist gives selections on the great instrument that was the city's
pride in the seventies and eighties, but now needs more money than
City fathers care to give (for mere artistic purposes) to bring it up
to the requirements of these times and of a self-respecting performer;
then, when all is ready, the orchestra platform fills with
big-wigs--governor, bishops, "special attractions" bespoken long
before--and stirring speeches fill the rest of the bill. It is a great
carnival for pious folk, and not without interest for mere ordinary
beings like myself; and the substantial profit resulting from it is
one of the mainstays of the "Bishop of Melbourne's Fund," which is the
general fund in aid of general diocesan distress.

Substantial profit, it is needless to remark, is the first object of
the promoters of all these entertainments, so many and
various--tea-meetings, bazaars, "sales of gifts," Bruce auctions, cake
fairs, concerts, etc., etc.--and has to be so while the voluntary
system and poor human nature exist together. Each event is contrived
"for the benefit of the Church," a term well understood by all its
members, who will contribute pounds of money and endless time and
trouble to such affairs sooner than lay an extra shilling or two in
the offertory plate. Every parish is running its little money-making
enterprise at short intervals, the other denominations, whose parish
it is also, doing the same. Sometimes there is an unfriendly
competition between the churches, smart dodges to take the wind out of
a rival's sails; more often they have a tacit fraternal arrangement to
aid each other, or at anyrate not get into each other's way. You will
hear it said at a ladies' working party, "What a shame of the
Catholics to take our conversazione night for their concert!" Or, "The
Presbyterians sent a lot of things to our bazaar, so it is only right
we should help them with theirs."

The concert is the commonest of these events. It costs, in money,
time, and trouble, less to get up than the others. Domestically, this
is a musical country, and local performers are never hard to find. My
natural impulse is to stay at home when the miscellaneous amateur is
abroad, but sometimes, when I have steeled myself to endure him or
her, I have been rewarded beyond my expectations or deserts. One thing
stands out from my experiences in this line that is worthy of
note--the high average of excellence in the quality of the amateur
voice. I am convinced there are as good fish in the sea as the Melbas
and Crossleys that have come out of it, judging by the number of
little girls, hardly past childhood, whom I have seen come upon the
stage in parish schoolrooms and rural shire-halls, and proceed to give
forth full, ringing notes that, for power, would do justice to the
Albert Hall or the Crystal Palace, and with the right training (as I
think) might do anything. I believe it is the climate that accounts
for it--the air that throat and lungs have grown on; and if so, this
is the place for the speculator in such wares to come to. Expert
fossicking might reveal a new Kimberley to the world.

Still, in spite of these occasional surprises, the parish
concert--after so many of them--is apt to pall upon the too-accustomed
ear. One looks to the human interest for entertainment, rather than to
art. In what I believe was the very first parish concert that I went
to, this element largely predominated.

It was held at a hamlet some eight or ten miles from head-quarters,
and we drove to it in a party, taking several of the performers with
us. Before business began, our _prima donna_, a young married lady,
confessed to not feeling very well; she said she had been eating
fruit, which had disagreed with her. However, she went through the two
hours' programme unflinchingly, and so acquitted herself as to rouse
no suspicion of the fact that she herself was perfectly aware of. She
was a tall, handsome, resolute sort of woman, who, finding herself in
a horrible dilemma, determined to brave it out. "I _had_ to do it,"
she said to us afterwards, "or else upset everything and make a
disgraceful exhibition of myself. And I thought there would be plenty
of time." But she had miscalculated in this respect, as it is so easy
to do, and the situation had grown desperate before she was nearly
through with her last number; I noted her damp brow and deeply flushed
face, and wondered at the unsmiling look in her eyes when they met
mine; her accompanist also was put about a little here and there;
nevertheless, she made a finish of her song before she bowed to our
applause and bowed herself off the stage. Then a word went round
amongst the matrons which filled us with dismay and concern. The
doctor's horses were put to his buggy, and the doctor and his wife and
Mrs T. were gone ere "God Save the Queen" was finished. When the rest
of us got home afterwards, it was to hear that our _prima donna_ had
become a mother rather less than two minutes after gaining the shelter
of her own house.

I think that was the most interesting concert I was ever at. Others
who were there, remembering it with equal vividness, say the same.




CHAPTER X

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.




CHAPTER XI

THE FIFTH HOME


We left B---- in 1877. The diocese of Ballarat had been carved out of
that of Melbourne, hitherto bounded by the boundaries of the colony;
and the knife had lopped off a portion of our parish, leaving only
enough to support a "reader," who is supposed not to want anything to
live on.

We passed then into the new diocese. And, to begin with, we did a
stupid thing--possibly two stupid things. G., after consultation with
his bishop, accepted a living without seeing it. A charming photograph
of the parsonage, and the knowledge that it was situated in a pleasant
district, within a short drive of our then metropolis, Ballarat,
seemed to make a preliminary inspection unnecessary, especially as the
financial soundness of the parish was guaranteed. We had dismantled
our house at B---- and packed our furniture for L---- before personally
making acquaintance with the latter place. Then--for I was fretting to
see and rummage over my new home with a measuring tape in my hands--we
arranged to drive over. It was on a Saturday that we started, in very
wintry weather; and all our subsequent lives might have been different
if only it had been summer or a fine day.

We spent the night in Ballarat, and after breakfast drove to L----,
timing ourselves to get there for morning service, G. having taken
duty for the day. It teemed. There was hardly any congregation in
consequence, and the church was dark, cold, and dismal. Amongst the
absentees was the organist, and I was called upon to play the selected
music, without preparation, to a few watchful critics. They gave us a
kindly welcome after service, and invitations to dinner and tea; after
which we were able to inspect the parsonage in privacy. It had been
empty for some weeks, and rain had rained on it for days. The
picturesqueness of the photograph had been wholly washed away. We
should have made allowances for all this, but when we found one room
with the paper peeling from the wall, and another showing a wet patch,
and when we sniffed the fusty, mouldy, shut-up air, we exclaimed to
each other, "A damp house!" and there and then determined that it was
impossible for us to go into it. We had lost two children; nothing
should induce us to imperil the safety of the third.

At dinner, and again at tea, our entertainers apologised for the
exceptional weather, and assured us that all was quite otherwise as a
rule. The parsonage needed fires for a few days, perhaps a patch on
the roof, possibly the clearing of leaves and birds' nests from the
water-pipes. They answered for it that, when in order, it was a
perfectly healthy house. I daresay they were right, for we never heard
that the family of the clergyman who subsequently jumped at it took
any harm while living there. But the possibility of its being damp was
enough for us; we dared not risk it.

It was with some difficulty, and not without unpleasantness, that we
backed out of the engagement we had deliberately made. It was our
unexpected luck not to suffer more than we did. In the end, instead of
declining upon a lower level in the matter of the next appointment, it
fell to our lot to be promoted to what I think was considered at the
time the most important country parish in the diocese.

Here, at anyrate, there was no fault to find with the parsonage house,
unless one objected to its lonely situation--which we did not. As a
parsonage house it was unique in Victoria, and I believe in Australia.
The wayfaring stranger might have taken it for but another station
homestead, on a smaller scale than most; as a fact, he frequently did,
in the person of the professional sundowner.

We did not go there at once on leaving B----. Our first welcome was to
one of the "mansions" in its neighbourhood--the seat, as it might be
called, of the new squire of the parish--and such was the treatment we
received in it that we remained there as visitors for nearly half a
year. The lady of the house was young, and we became friends. She
said, "Why should I be here by myself, while you are over there by
yourself? Let us keep each other company." Never did I live in such
utter ease and luxury. Men and maid-servants to wait on one at every
turn, and to pet the year-old baby so that even her nurse found her
place a sinecure; a dear old housekeeper continually pursuing me with
"nourishment"; daily drives with my hostess, alone or with a cavalcade
of more ephemeral guests--so numerous that we seemed to have a
dinner-party every night; no domestic cares; no parish work--the
conditions were not only pleasant, but most beneficial to my health.
Meanwhile G. worked the parish from this base, using the horses and
buggies of the establishment as if they were his own.

From July 25th, 1877, to January 8th of the following year, we lived
this feather-bed life. Then our friends set us gently down upon our
own premises--there had been a doubt as to whether they were to be our
own, up to this time, which partly accounted for the delay--and
started us in life again on our own base. A Brussels carpet from one,
a set of tea-things from another--it was like the going to
housekeeping of the newly-married. The buggy that finally took us to
our fifth home was found on arrival packed with toothsome tokens of
affection which the housekeeper had stuffed in at the last moment.

That fifth home was a survival of the old, old times--quite the
beginnings of the colony. In those old times, before townships were,
the princely pioneer squatters (our late host the chief), wishing to
have their church represented amongst them, made a first gift for the
purpose of one hundred acres of their fat lands and a house--the
nucleus of this house. It was an inalienable endowment, not to any
parish--for there was none--but to the incumbent for the time being;
so that afterwards, when it came to belong to a parish, whose centre
of town and church was six miles off, the vestry could not turn it
into money, as they desired, so as to bring their parson to
headquarters.

The first incumbent--a D.D. eminent in the Church and in the history
of the Western District, a pioneer himself, whose name is now
perpetuated in a Trinity College scholarship--began his long ministry
as a missionary at large. He saw all the changes that turned that
fertile wilderness into the garden of Victoria, studded with wealthy
homesteads and prosperous towns, while sitting, as Dik would say, upon
his own valuable bit of it, living the same pastoral life as the
squatters around him. The reader will remember that the term
"squatter," with us, means roughly the landed gentry; in its original
sense the word has no meaning now.

In his old age Dr R. went "home" for a holiday, leaving two curates in
charge. Shortly before he was expected back, came the news of his
death, and, after a sorrowful time of inaction on the part of the
mourning parish, G. was selected to take his place. It was always
impressed upon us that it was to take his place, not to fill it, which
nobody could do.

For six years we lived as he lived. Then the authorities six miles off
decided to put an end to the old _regime_. Incumbent No. 3 had to be
brought into line with other incumbents somehow. His property could
not be sold, but apparently (with his consent, I presume) it could be
let; for let it was, as soon as we had vacated it. Tenants of a class
to suit the house needed more than a hundred acres of land with it, so
it was let to a farmer, an ex-free-selector, whose selection adjoined.
He took up his abode in what we called the "old part"--the original
house (our kitchens, store-rooms, etc.), to which, according to Bush
custom, another and better had been attached, the two being connected
by a planked, bark-roofed, trellis-walled passage; and he used my
drawing-room and our other living-rooms to stack his produce in. And
the parson went to live in the town, beside his church--in a
corrugated iron house that was run up for him.

I am glad it was he--not his predecessor. There is no ill-nature in
this, seeing that he doubtless congratulated himself also. For he
could get daily letters and newspapers, immediate access to the
stores, the schools, the church, the doctor, and next-door neighbours;
whereas we were often in straits owing to our six miles' distance from
them. Between us and the road lay a (to us) bridgeless river--it is
called a river--which it was necessary to pass to get to church and
back, and at the best of times its banks at the crossing-place were so
steep down and up again that I dreaded the spot on a dark night, after
going through it in safety hundreds of times, and after all the
breaking-in to such things that I had had. Its flood-water used to
overflow into what we called our "lane," the unavoidable approach to
the house, covering the fences on either side in the lower parts,
which between-whiles were either soft bogs or rough ruts and ridges
like those of a frosted ploughed field. Owing to these lions in the
path, we had few visitors in winter. In summer there were Bush
fires--of which I will say more presently.

Then there were long waits for the doctor in dire emergencies, and
per-mile fees (if the doctor were non-Church-of-England, or you could
successfully save yourself from taking charity) for his tardy
attendance. Our groom nearly killed a pair of horses one night--when a
commonplace domestic event was impending--trying to make them do
twelve miles in time that would but comfortably cover four. One day my
nurse and I found a white speck on the throat of the youngest baby,
when no man or buggy or even wood-cart was at home. While I looked at
my devoted colleague in despair she began briskly to gather and tie on
our respective hats. "We have to get him to the doctor somehow," said
she. And off we started, and carried him (he was then twenty-one
months old), turn and turn about, the whole six miles, all up-hill,
since there was practically no alternative. As it chanced, the doctor,
when we got to him--dead beat as ever women were--laughed at the
baby's throat; but the incident illustrates some of the drawbacks of
our isolated life which were not suffered by our successors.

Household supplies had to be laid in wholesale--sacks of sugar and
flour, chests of tea, boxes of kerosene and candles. We had to make
our own bread, and our own yeast for it; we had to kill our own mutton
and dress it; gather our own firewood and chop it. This meant keeping
a man (for the first time); beside whom we had a general servant, a
nurse, and a young lady companion.

The kitchen party were not at all lonely in these wilds. They had
friends on the neighbouring stations and farms, with whom they
foregathered in their leisure hours; they had many picnics and
excursions to the town; they gave a ball every Christmas (which rather
scandalised a section of the parish, although the rigid etiquette
observed at them might have been copied with advantage in higher
circles), and were tendered balls in return. At ordinary times they
seemed sufficient for themselves. Sitting in my detached house of an
evening, I would hear cheerful sounds from the other building, and,
being mysteriously summoned thither, would find the groom, with his
concertina, playing reels and jigs for the little ones to dance to,
the dancing-mistresses standing by to enjoy the achievements of their
pupils and the surprise they had prepared for me.

A new member was added to the household in a singular manner. The
selectors with families needed a school. To get a school, Government
had to be assured that so many children--twenty-five or
thereabouts--were entitled to it; and the parents came to ask if we
would aid them to make up the number. Our three were babies, and we
certainly did not mean to foist them on the State for their education,
but we somehow reconciled it with our consciences to sign the
requisition on our poorer neighbours' behalf. Thus they got their
school--a tiny white wooden building, and one teacher. The building,
consisting of schoolroom and teacher's quarters, was set up on the
public highway, just outside our outer gate, on the bank of the
so-called river (where the bridge was), a night camping-place of all
the teamsters and drovers on the road; and the teacher appointed to
live there, beyond call of any other house, was a good-looking young
woman.

She came to us one day in great distress--perplexity, rather, for she
was far too sensible to make a fuss. She could not, under the
circumstances, live alone in her school quarters, and she had tried in
vain to find lodgings in the farmers' cottages: they were all too
small and full. What should she do?

She was an extremely nice girl, and, finding we could solve her
difficulty in no other way, we took her in ourselves. Strange to say,
the experiment answered admirably. In the servants' house there was a
large spare room, which had once been Dr R.'s study. We put a screen
across the middle of it, made a bedroom behind and a simple
sitting-room in front, and there installed her. She attended to her
own little housework, and the servants took her in her meals from the
adjacent kitchen--a job to which they had no objection in the world;
and she used to sit in her basket-chair on their common verandah and
pass the time of day with them when so inclined, and adjusted herself
to the position generally with perfect taste, just as they did. To us
personally she made no difference whatever, except in her services to
the children. She paid us the trifle that covered the cost of her
board, and as a further return for hospitality took the two older
little ones to school with her once a day, taught and specially
shepherded them while there, and brought them back again. So, by
accident, we kept faith with the Government after all; and anything
like the rapidity and thoroughness with which all the drudgery of the
three R's was got through in that little school-house I never saw. I
used to walk over the paddock of an afternoon to see the process. We
made a new track across the paddock with our goings and comings, the
home-returning before nursery tea being usually a family procession,
led by the baby's perambulator. We were amused one wet winter to find
Miss C. and her charges making a bridge of a bullock's carcase that
conveniently spanned a muddy rift. They went over it, they said, until
the ribs bent too much and threatened to "let them through."

Besides the milking cows of the establishment, we always had a herd of
bullocks on the place. We bought them as "store," intending to sell
them as "fats"--intending, indeed, to make our fortunes as land-owners
and cattle-dealers. Our hundred acres were notoriously one of the rich
patches of the district, coveted by our wealthy neighbours as badly as
ever Ahab coveted Naboth's vineyard; anything could be made of it--on
paper.

Alas! the usual fate of the amateur farmer befell us. Perhaps we were
not there long enough. Certainly we had the worst of luck in the
matter of seasons. It was one long series of droughts, punctuated by
those floods already alluded to, which came at the wrong time to
benefit the grass. The store cattle would not make fat, on which we
could make profit; the precious "water-frontage," when it became a
rope of sand threaded with water-holes, unfenced one side of the
property, allowing the stock to stray at large. The stock, also, by
degrees became largely composed of unproductive horses, those
happening to be G.'s special weakness and temptation. He had an
assortment, continually being added to, for his own riding, and we had
two concurrent pairs for the buggy; the groom had one or two for his
constant journeys to the post, and there was one for the wood-cart.
They were for ever going to be shod, or they met with accidents and
had to be replaced. The most valuable that we ever possessed was
pricked in the haunch with a point of fencing wire--a wound almost
invisible to the naked eye--and died of lockjaw from it.

Finally, we let fifty acres to a real farmer at L1 per acre. He
strongly fenced this off, and grew lovely crops of corn on it. And I
think that was about all the "increment" we enjoyed.

Here we learned something of what Bush settlers have to suffer in our
frequent years of drought. We had a large underground rain tank, with
a pump to it, but there were times when it seemed a perfect sin to
wash. Our selector neighbours had only their zinc tanks and the
river--muddy, and fouled by creatures alive and dead; and the nurse
and children used to make it an object of their summer evening walks
to carry little cans of water to their friends, to make at least one
nice cup of tea with. It was regarded as a handsome present. Hydatids
raged over the country-side. Two of our servants (who married each
other, and went to live at the school-house by the river, in Miss C.'s
empty quarters) were crippled with the disease.

"The reservoiring of rain-water is the greatest economic question in
South Africa," says the Subaltern in those charming _Letters to His
Wife_. "At present little or nothing is done to combat drought." The
same here, to the very word and letter. Another thing he says:--"After
all, it is the atmospheric conditions that make the veldt, and give
their character to its children." That applies as exactly to the
Australian Bush.

A young soldier of ours came home from the war the other day. He had
been in seventy-five engagements, and might reasonably have felt a
little sick of South Africa. But no. "When it is all over, I am going
back there to settle," said he. "The climate and the country--somehow
they just suit me."

Those hills around us, in formation like bread-dough turned out upon
the board and just beginning to sink--low and softly wavy, like the
Sussex Downs--were as good as tropical seas for the sun to set on, and
better. Such lights! Such tints! Such purity! Apply to them the
Subaltern's description of the uplands of the Orange River Colony--of
the sunset that he saw as he rode to Bloemfontein--and there you are.
I need not add a word.

We were very close to Nature at this place. The wild things lived with
us even more intimately than at Como. Opossums did not keep to the
river; they loved the fruity old garden, and stuck to it in spite of
dogs and guns. Driving home o' nights we used to see them sitting on
the house roofs, silhouetted against the sky, and they used to keep us
awake with their talk to each other in a tree near our bedroom window.
On one occasion we were roused by the nurse calling to us that a
'possum had come down the chimney, and was flying round the nursery
and smashing everything. A candle and a stick soon ended the career of
that enterprising little animal.

We had all the birds of the country flighting over us in the grey
dawns and the golden twilights. The lovely gabble of the cranes and
the wild swans comes back to me whenever I think of the place. My
diary records that on one occasion we had a young native companion,
"roast, with forcemeat," for dinner, and that it was "delicious." Also
that, two days later, we experimented upon a swan, and found it "not
so good." The gun, of course, went out for duck and snipe and quail in
their season, to vary the too-constant mutton. They were not easy to
get, for this is no true game country, but those huge sheep stations,
with their lonely dams, were practically wild country for them.

In the elbow of the river at the corner of our paddock we used to
watch for the platypus, which had a home there, under the broken
banks. Four of these precious rarities were shot in the six years--we
are sorry for that now, but were proud of it at the time--and the
house smelt horribly while their dense, oily coats were being stripped
off and dressed. The same river provided a beautiful set of furs for
my friend at M----; they were made of the golden-brown skins of
water-rats, caught and cured for her by her butler. There, too, we
used to sit amid the evening mosquitoes, and angle for black-fish and
"yabbies." It was a corner much beloved by school-boys of our
acquaintance with Saturday afternoons or long twilights upon their
hands. One young fellow, the son of a lawyer in the town, spent many
patient hours there, all alone; but we, prolonging his enjoyment by
the offer of a meal or a bed, would sometimes look on at his tranquil
sport, amused by his methods. When he needed to bait a hook, he bent
the crown of his head earthward and took off his cap gingerly,
afterwards combing his rough locks with his grubby paw. He kept his
worms there, between his cap lining and his hair; it saved the trouble
of a bait-can. When he caught a fish, he slipped it into his pocket,
where it tangled itself with his handkerchief and oddments in its
dying throes. We were somewhat nicer in our proceedings. Neat little
blobs of meat at the end of strings were let down into the water, and
when the tiny cray-fish fastened upon them they were lifted delicately
into the air, the whole art consisting in not frightening them into
dropping off until the bank was under them. Nothing messy or murderous
or offensive to the sensibilities of women and children--until the
black creatures were boiled red for tea or breakfast, and that was
done by the cook in private, and we tried not to know anything about
it. A few dozens of them, warm from the pot, with bread and butter,
made a delicious meal.

But Nature took toll of us in return for what she gave. Eagle-hawks,
that hankered after the lambs, and their lesser brethren that were
interested in the poultry, hares that loved young vegetables with the
morning dew upon them, nocturnal wildcats, and the tame cats gone wild
that were far worse than they--for them, too, the gun was kept in
readiness, and, alas! I grieve to say, the trap. Once we had an
extraordinary visitation of caterpillars; a dense, enormous mass,
marching straight in one direction, taking everything as it came. We
were in its path, and, until it had disentangled itself from the
premises, were simply overwhelmed. We barricaded all doors and
windows; we tried, like so many Mrs Partingtons, to sweep back the
living waves with brooms--in vain; those little, soft, green things
were as irresistible as the sea. We ran about, shuddering and in
tears, while they crawled up legs and arms, and down necks, and
amongst our hair; we went into the dairy to find them lining roofs and
walls and drowning all over the cream in every milk-pan--went to bed
to find sheets and pillows thick with them. No plague of Egypt could
have been more agonising while it lasted, which, fortunately, was not
long. They did not even stay to eat the garden up, as the grasshoppers
did when similarly out on a big march. Some end they had in view and
pursued relentlessly, without a pause. It was a phenomenon never, in
my experience, repeated or explained.

But the terror of terrors was--fire. The land was rich, the years were
droughty, and we the innocent victims of a systematic incendiarism
directed against somebody else. The somebody else was like the Russian
Government, all palace and diamonds at the top and all black bread and
taxes at the bottom; or like the Government that we here groan under,
which acts upon the theory that the more you cut down trade the more
money you will get out of it. A station that "marched" with our
Naboth's vineyard had a black mark against it.

Why does the Australian pastoralist provide free board and lodging
for every loafer that comes for them, instead of kicking him out and
telling him to go to work? Because he knows how easily and safely the
loafer could avenge himself if sent empty away--and how well the
loafer knows that he knows it. There is a tacit understanding between
them. The wise blackmailer is easy in his demands--the regulation
allowance and no more--and the blackmailed is glad to purchase
valuable good-will at no greater cost. It is one of the oldest
institutions of the country, which even we upon our hundred acres
would not have dared to flout. Our wealthy but frugal neighbour did,
as we were told, and reaped the consequences--which would not have
mattered much if the undeserving poor had not stood in the path of the
reaper. Thus, for weeks together, G. and his man never put up their
horses at night until they had circled round and round the place,
looking for little trails of dead sticks and straw carefully led into
a fat paddock that was not ours, as a fuse to a mine. One Sunday
night, on the way home from church, without looking for them--because
they were all alight, though refusing to burn effectively without a
wind--he found three.

This was in what we call the "fire year." That summer we had ten in
almost ten consecutive days, each of which menaced the mass of old
sun-dried woodwork in which we lived. Two horses stood ready to mount
at the first signal, every homestead around being similarly prepared.
We slept with blinds up and windows open, and anyone waking would at
once jump up and go out and look into the night for the dreaded flare.
No matter where it was, or when, the men were off to it with the speed
of professional firemen; and if it was near, or the wind towards us,
we women started to make bucketsful of tea to send out to them.
Helpless with a new-born baby, I used to lie and smell the smoke and
listen to the flap of the bags, and wonder what was happening, and
nearly died from want of rest. One morning one of us unluckily
remarked that "actually here was breakfast nearly over, and no fire!"
Scarcely were the words uttered before the groom appeared with his
"Fire, sir!" and the next instant both were galloping across the
downs, to join other horsemen converging from all points of the
compass upon the same spot. It was Saturday morning, and that battle
lasted into Sunday, when we could have walked, we were told, ten miles
in a straight line from our back door without going off burnt ground.
One other morning, when I was well enough for a drive and wanted to do
some shopping, and it seemed safe to leave home for an hour or two, G.
took me to the township. We were hurrying through our business in the
street when a man came up and said to G., "There's a fire over your
way, sir." We had a pair of very fast horses, and we flew down those
hills in record time. Reaching home, we found our good neighbours
pouring water over the charred posts of the garden fence.

Of course, this was not all incendiarism. Even the aggrieved sundowner
is not so bad as that. Under suitable conditions, nothing is easier
than to start a blaze that flies out of your hand before you see the
spark. A castaway bottle, a little ash knocked out of a pipe, will do
it. My own eyes have proved to me from what a small cause a great
conflagration may result. A cavalcade of vehicles from M----, while
we were staying there, was on the road to church; it was a well-used,
fenced Bush road, all dust and wild peppermint weed--a fire-break in
itself, one would have thought. But I, in the second buggy, saw a
flicker under the wheel of the first; it ran from one scrap of tinder
to another and was away over the country before one could draw breath.
"Like wildfire" is the best image for speed that I know. It used to
pour over those grassy rises just as released water does, a spreading
black stream with a scintillating yellow edge; not a menace to life as
in forest country, but sickening to the heart of one who knows his
home to windward of it, and knows the frailty of the most
carefully-prepared "break." The buggies were stopped, the men in their
Sunday coats out and after it on the instant, but there was no church
that day for any male of the party except the parson. An examination
of the spot where the fire started showed that the buggy wheel had
passed over a wax match. The unwritten law of the Bush is that no
matches must come into it, at these times, except the wooden ones
guaranteed to strike on the box only.

The "fire year"--or the fire summer rather (1879-80)--is literally
burnt into my memory. Now, when I smell Bush smoke I feel as I would
at the sudden sight of blood in large quantities. All those old scenes
come back, and the old terror of the nerves, which were strained so
long that the effect upon me was something like what in pre-scientific
days was called going into a decline. My strength refused to return
after the birth of the child that arrived in the middle of the ordeal,
so that at last I had to be sent away out of sight, sound, and smell
of the place, to give me a chance to recover. But the worst was over
before I went. We were sitting at tea one night--evening dinners, by
the way, had early been given up--when there suddenly fell upon our
ears the sound of rain pattering. We nearly jumped from our chairs; we
looked at each other, beyond speech; and then I burst into a fit of
hysterical tears--some of the happiest I ever shed.

In the evening a neighbour rode over--for the first time, as he
remarked, without his sack on the saddle, and for the first time on
any errand unconnected with its use. We had all been keeping guard of
our homes for weeks that had seemed years, friends meeting only on the
field of battle--as heroic a field of battle as those that our
"contingenters" went to, and better than the playing-fields of Eton as
a preparation for them; but we were free at last. And we could hardly
realise it. All the evening we sat, almost in silence, inanely
smirking at each other and listening to the rain. It was too sweet a
sound to drown with talk.

The "old parsonage" was (allowing again for the enchantment that
distance lends) a charming home; but it had that against it. I have
been glad ever since to live where there is nothing more to do than
turn the gas off at the meter when one goes to bed.




CHAPTER XII

THE SIXTH HOME


The charms of solitude at "The Old Parsonage" were outweighed by its
disadvantages when I became that miserable creature, the confirmed
invalid. The fire danger which made me nervous in summer was bad for
health; the silence and loneliness of the winters, when nobody came,
were worse. My husband, of course, was much away from home; the
servants lived in their detached house; and so good and capable were
they that for a time--after the elder babies began to go with Miss C.
to school--I saved the expense of my dear little lady-help, who,
however, came back to me later on. It was only with the greatest
difficulty that I could get hold of my own children. Their devoted
nurse and mine, already mentioned, watched us like a cat to keep us
apart, lest their exuberance should fatigue me. The hour before tea
(not afternoon tea, but the solid evening meal) was grudgingly
conceded to us. Maria--she, like Dik, is dead, and I may give her the
name now held in so much love and honour--would then bring them,
beautifully brushed and garbed (she used to put clean socks and
pinafores on them twice a day, although there was nobody but ourselves
to see them), to my sofa side, and permit us to play together,
provided we behaved ourselves. All the while she hovered in the
doorway to see that I was not clambered over or roughly handled in any
way, and long before time was up would advance to sweep them out, with
her "Come now, I can see that mother is getting tired." She saw it
before I did. They were as good as gold, thanks to her splendid
training. Never were such model children--until the day that, as a
broken-hearted bride, she parted from them, when they "played up" in a
manner to drive the house distracted. When they had their little aches
and pains, and I used to beg Maria to let them sleep in my room, she
would not allow it. Many a time have I surreptitiously carried a
fretful child to my bed, and settled down with it comfortably, as I
thought, and then had it gently but firmly taken from me, despite my
expostulations. I had, at anyrate, the comfort of knowing that no
mother could tend them better than she did, and the theory of the
household that I was not strong enough to stand anything had some
foundation in fact. But my inactive life--although I still got through
a large amount of sewing and novel-writing--and my many hours of
brooding solitude, had their own bad effect upon my broken health.
There came a day when I declared, with tears, that if I had to spend
another winter in that place I should go melancholy mad.

So I did not spend another. G. also had had enough of it. And
particularly he wanted to get back to the Melbourne diocese, from
which he had been automatically expelled. But although he had been
automatically expelled, his old diocese held him to be a legal
stranger when he applied for re-admittance. It had a regulation, since
abrogated, that no clergyman from outside could take a living until he
had served unbeneficed for a year; and no exception was made in his
peculiar case. However, we freely paid the price to get our
way--exchanged our substantial parish, secure for life, had we so
willed it, for a humble curacy, which might lead to anything or
nothing--and on the 16th of November 1883 left the old parsonage for a
home that was the greatest possible contrast to it--a grubby little
terrace house in a low part of one of our premier cities--a house we
had to take as the only one in our new parish that was then available.
Our principal occupation and amusement during the short time that we
lived there was hunting for another, which fortunately we had not
found when the summons came to us again to move on.

But there was an interval between the uprooting in the Western
District and the re-planting in this cramped spot--for the children
and me. The elder ones were placed with some friends who kept a
kindergarten at the seaside, and the baby and Maria accompanied me on
a round of visits which lasted into January of the following year.
This was perhaps the gayest period of my life, in spite of increasing
invalidism. Socially it was the most brilliant era that Victoria has
known in my time, and I was so placed that the best of everything came
my way. The house that was my town head-quarters for many years then
possessed its magnet of a daughter--now on the roll of the grandees of
England, by her marriage an aunt to Royalty--and wherever she was,
there was good company and plenty of it, for she had her pick and
choice. And there for the time being was I also, for we were close
friends, as we remain to this day, none of the usual arguments of the
world against it having had any effect upon that faithful heart.

And this reminds me to make--as in these intimate disclosures I have
an opportunity to do--a little explanation. When I wrote a novel
called _The Devastators_, I knew that I was laying down a rule
contradicted in my own circle by two glaring exceptions. This bright
and beautiful woman is one of them; the other is a person still nearer
to me. I had to apologise to both of them when that book came out.
From their childhood they have been exposed to flatteries that should
have spoiled them utterly; both have proved unspoilable. In the case
of one of the pretty faces, it does not even care to look at itself in
the glass; the mere ordinary vanity of the ordinary female is lacking.
So that to this large extent my theory of the effect of physical charm
upon its possessor is discredited. While I am glad to state the fact,
I am sorry to remain of the opinion that such exceptions are
exceptions, and that the rule is still the rule.

With the elder of the incorruptible pair--the younger was then a small
child--I had great times in Melbourne, varying my social revels with a
visit to the doctor twice or thrice a week. The distinguished
globe-trotter was plentiful at that time. Lord and Lady Rosebery,
amongst others, were touring the colonies and the houses of some of my
friends. At one I spent three days with them. At another I had a still
more interesting week-end with Archibald Forbes. He came nearest to
the popular newspaper presentment of him, but I have little faith left
in printed history when it deals with the inner lives of my
illustrious contemporaries; from which it logically follows that I am
a hopeless sceptic in respect of the printed history of the past. "It
may have been thus," think I, when I con the so-called authentic
records of my race in this or that particular, "but I wish I could
have been there to see for myself."

It is not for me, a fellow-guest, to play reporter, but some incidents
of those occasions when I could study England and Australia in
conjunction upon the domestic stage may be mentioned without offence
to taste or hospitality. For instance:--One fine afternoon the
house-party, which included the Roseberys, went out to the tennis
ground of the establishment. When we arrived there we found the
beautiful grass court, kept like a bowling green, in the possession of
a crowd of strangers, holiday trippers of the 'Arry and 'Arriet type;
they had invaded the grounds from the railway near by, had found
racquets and balls, and were in the middle of an exciting game. Did
they scurry away, scared, on the appearance of the smart folks from
the house? Did anybody order them off, or even request them to desist?
Not a bit of it. They calmly continued their game, which took a long
time, while we sat down meekly and waited. When they had quite done
they trooped away without a word, and then Lord Rosebery wearily took
up his racquet and started in. Typically Australian as this incident
was, I cannot imagine it happening to those older great houses spoken
of in a former chapter--houses of no particular size, as far as their
material fabric is concerned, and with no liveried servants attached
to them, but of a dignity secure of public respect, even in this
disrespectful country.

Male house-servants, by the way, and men's valets, seem to me quite
out of harmony with the domestic traditions of this land. With us they
mark no caste, save that of wealth, and belong mainly to those who do
not know what to do with them. I have sat at breakfast with a regiment
of men in full-dress livery in waiting round the table--a degree of
state that, to the best of my belief, an English duke dispenses
with--and this in a house with no morning-room to go to when breakfast
was over, but only the same gilded and satiny drawing-room used
over-night; and where guests who had never done such a thing in their
lives might find themselves put to sleep in the same room with
strangers. A young titled Englishman, to whom this happened, cut his
acquaintance with the place in consequence, although his entertainers
never knew it. My "old families" are very chary of these exotic
innovations, and, whatever one's aristocratic leanings, it does hurt
one to think of an Australian man--synonym for simple and hardy
manliness--submitting to be dressed and coddled by a trousered
lady's-maid, and to think of another Australian man condescending to
that sort of servitude. But no Australian man does condescend to it, I
am sure; the Australian valet, as well as his liveried house-mates, is
an imported article.

Against the lady's-maid in petticoats, who outnumbers him a hundred to
one, I have nothing to say--quite the contrary. She is a "grateful and
comforting" institution in this country, so far as I have known her,
and three representatives of her class are on my list of friends. I
like a lady's-maid myself at times, and my own Maria took up the
_role_ as one to the manner born when she and I were visiting "the
quality" together. She packed and unpacked, and sewed tuckers, and
laid out my evening clothes, and was as jealous of my dignity and her
own, amongst strange servants, as if we had been grandees all our
lives. I was envied the possession of her. "How do you come to have a
woman like that?" said a person of wealth and consequence to me one
day. "Why doesn't she go to the good houses? She would be snapped up
anywhere. She could command any wages she liked to ask." "Well," said
I, with a serene smile, "you offer her a better place. I will not
stand in her way if she likes to take it." Maria's father was overseer
of a great station, and she had never been in service until she came
to me. I knew no bribe short of a husband and home of her own would
entice her to leave me.

Charming associations surround the spot where I foregathered with the
great war correspondent. There is a Mount--for it is not quite a
mountain, while it is much more than a hill--situated forty-four miles
from Melbourne and about seventeen hundred feet above it. In its
natural state every inch was covered with forest trees and scrub, so
that our mutual friend and host, who was one of the first to make a
residential suburb of it, had to chop out a hole in the dense growth
upon the steep hill-side to see where he was, when prospecting for a
site on which to make a home. That home, when I began to frequent it,
had become the show-place of the district. The pretty house made no
pretensions to be more than a cottage, but the garden was notoriously
one of the loveliest in the land. Its owner was a gardener born; he
came up twice a week to his family from his business in town and his
bachelor quarters at the Melbourne Club, and revelled in his darling
pursuit through all his leisure hours. His head gardener was an
importation from famous gardens at home; he had a salary of L200 a
year, a house in the grounds, and two men under him; and all their
work was exquisite. The garden dropped down and down, from the terrace
that had been cut for the house to stand on, to an artificial lake at
the bottom--velvet lawns and precious trees and shrubs, with a "fern
gully" on one side of it, where you stepped down a glade dark with
arching fronds, protecting thickets of innumerable rare varieties,
from New Zealand and elsewhere, kept moist and cooled by a perennial
cascade of crystal-clear mountain water, punctuated at intervals by
pools with goldfish or water-flowers in them. In the spring that fairy
tunnel was carpeted with lilies of the valley in myriads--the only
place where I have seen them growing in this country, except in
flower-pots. Up under the verandah roofs red bells of lapageria used
to hang like a drapery, and the treasures of the unpretentious glass
houses into which the sitting-rooms opened were beyond count. It was a
fitting environment for one of the finest flower-painters of her
day--known far beyond the limits of these realms, as, indeed, so is
the place which reared her. Many a globe-trotter would recall it if he
chanced to read these words. The Prince of Wales and his brother, when
they were boys, stayed here; their noble chief took the opportunity to
choose a wife for himself out of the house, a sister of the gifted
lady who painted flowers so marvellously, and with whom Archibald
Forbes fell--in a strictly platonic fashion, of course, for she was
already married and he about to become so for the second time--so
deeply in love. He raved about her in an English magazine article
after he got home. He said she was ... but there is the article (in a
bound volume) to speak for itself.

It was winter when I went to this house to meet him. Beautiful as the
place was in warmer seasons, abloom with flowers, when one sat under
trees to read, and, looking up from one's book, looked down again upon
the glimmering city and the sea fifty miles away, I think it was in
winter that I liked it best. Oh, it was cold! Wrapped about with
mountain mists or with whirling snow, it was like an Alpine _chalet_;
but one came in out of this weather to great wood-fires with cushioned
basket-chairs beside them--a fire to each room--and that was an effect
that could not have been surpassed. It poured with rain on the night I
speak of. I was staying at a neighbouring country-house, and joined
the Saturday party coming up from town at a wayside station. A son of
my host, who had been through the Russo-Turkish war with Archibald
Forbes--one on one side, one on the other--was with them; and fine
company they made, with their deadly reminiscences. They had met on
the bloody field of Plevna, the most vivid incident of which, it
appeared, was a banquet upon a looted German sausage (I think it was)
when both were starving.

We passed, in dripping mackintoshes, across the little platform lonely
in the scrub--there is a considerable station there now, and the Mount
is populous with country-houses--to the covered waggonette awaiting
us. Up the steep and miry Bush track, then like any other Bush track,
the poor horses strained and struggled, slipped and fell. The men had
to get out and do the climb on foot. It was pitchy dark, and the trees
closed us round. But presently we turned in at a gate and passed
through the perfect garden to the lighted house--the blazing bedroom
fire to dress by, the glowing drawing-room hearth to gather around
afterwards, the exhilarating dinner and evening talk. Mr Forbes had
just come from New Zealand, and that country had enchanted him. He had
roamed the earth--Switzerland, Norway, the Rockies, the Yosemite, all
the famous beauty spots--but never, he declared, had he seen anything
to match New Zealand scenery. A coach drive through the Otira Gorge
had simply turned his head. The husband of the flower-painter had
captained British troops in the Maori wars, and the house happened to
possess a fine collection of New Zealand photographs, bound in several
volumes. These I spent a long Sunday morning over, while Mr Forbes
descanted upon the pages as I turned them. I made a promise to myself
and him that not many years should pass before I saw the originals of
those pictures, but--as a matter of course--I have not seen them yet.
In my sadder moments I am convinced that I never shall. There was no
church upon the mountain then--only a little school-house where, on
alternate Sunday afternoons, an Anglican clergyman took a turn with
his Presbyterian brother; on such occasions we ladies of the house
brushed through the bracken-fern and woodland scrub to the humble
tabernacle. My hostess played the harmonium; the potential Personage
of the family led the singing. But on this wet and wintry Sunday we
stayed at home. I had much friendly intercourse with our chief guest,
and we corresponded afterwards. This was about four months before the
gay time which included the Rosebery episode.

The diversions of that gay time soon palled upon me. I was glad to
exchange my camp in town--lap of love as well as luxury though it
was--for a home of my own, however 'umble. We collected ourselves in
the little terrace house, which managed to hold us, a governess for
the children included; and as soon as she had made us as comfortable
as she could, Maria's ill-used young man came for her, and we lost a
friend who could never be replaced. The 20th of February 1884 was her
wedding-day, and no obsequies were ever celebrated with more pangs and
tears.

Miss P., the new governess, was a treasure notwithstanding. A curate
brother (he is a portly canon now), who wanted her for his
housekeeper, reft her from me three months afterwards; and she is
married, I hear, this long time, and I hope the man who has got her
appreciates his luck. She had a handful with those children after
Maria's influence was removed, but the way she managed them (in that
confined space) made me envious of her moral vigour and the texture of
her nerves.

When they were all disposed of for the night she and I used to take
walks together. In my state of health, especially in the hot
weather--and that was a particularly hot place--dressing and calling
were too much for me; I waited until after dark, and then went out in
about three garments, the most delightful costume that I ever wore in
my life, and one to which I look back now with regret and longing
unspeakable. Oh, why can we not relieve the inescapable fatigue of
life in that way always, and not only for a few brief hours in thirty
years! It was the heavenly fashion then to wear a long, light, loose
paletot of China silk--the early dust-coat, before it had been
spoiled. It buttoned at the throat and all down the front to the hem,
which cleared the ground by about three inches. It had roomy pockets
outside; the sleeves were roomy also; there was no need to wear a
dress under it, nor anything whatever round the waist. I did not, and
so walked with the sensations (as I should imagine them) of a
disembodied spirit.

Night after night, in this delicious liberty, we roamed that city
everywhere. It is a big city--the third in the state--with its due
proportion of dens and slums, of drunks and larrikins, but there was
not a hole or corner that we feared or had cause to fear. She, calm,
strong, protective, was the man of the pair; I, with my hand on her
arm, could wish no better. It was our joy to wander in the most
out-of-the-way places, and to find a new one if possible every night.
We watched trains from black railway embankments; we sat in the public
gardens away from lamps and out of call of people; we poked into blind
alleys and prowled over deserted mines--and we were never molested or
annoyed by anybody or anything. One day we read, with high
indignation, a letter in the newspaper which represented the town as
so rowdy at night-time that it was not safe for decent people to be
abroad. I became a newspaper controversialist myself, for once, in
order to confute that gratuitous liar, who, I am quite sure, was not a
decent person. The manners of our people may not be superfine, and in
fact they are not--there was no justification for the fastidiousness
of some persons who could not see any good in Archibald Forbes because
he drank his tea out of the saucer instead of the cup--but in the
conduct at the back of manners I have always found them decent to the
decent, in whatever walk of life.

The pokiness of the poky house did not trouble me, but its situation
was detestable. Never will I live in a terrace house again, if I can
help it. I used to hunt in vain for a quiet corner to write in, for I
am not like my friend, "Rolf Boldrewood," who can calmly pursue his
literary labours in a roomful of noisy family. If I settled myself at
the rear of the premises, the maid next door would take the
opportunity to sing in her back-yard at the top of her voice, and, in
view of the performances of the children in mine, I was not in a
position to expostulate. If I fled to the front, I was distracted with
the rattle of the street and the horrible jingle of a public-house
piano out of tune. In the stilly night one had sometimes to bury one's
head in the bed-clothes to avoid hearing the conversations of the
husband and wife in the next house. Their window was close alongside
ours, and we had to open them in summer to enable us to breathe. Twice
a week or so G. used to go out with his broom and pail of
disinfectant, and, starting at the top of the terrace, flush and sweep
the main gutter of all the houses down to the bottom--and then was
summoned for creating a nuisance, because the overflow of a
neighbour's nastiness, from an unreachable source, was detected in our
ground. We had good reason to believe that this deadly insult (to
persons who made domestic sanitation a fad, if not a passion) was
contrived as a punishment for his impertinence in meddling with other
people's drains. One or two of them used to stand at their yard doors
and look at him sourly while he was doing it, but it was the only way
of cleansing our own.

In spite of these drawbacks, our sojourn here was pleasant. There was
no hardship in being curate to such an incumbent as Archdeacon M'C.,
beloved by all who knew him. The taste of town life was sweet, after
so many years of rural isolation. My friends were near, dropping in
continually, between one train and another, as they passed up and down
on the railway; and, best of all, there were the most "filling"
library and reading-rooms, conveniently near to me, that I had ever
had the run of. My pleasantest memories of this particular year are of
that institution and the grave, grey, bookish old librarian, who did
all he knew to make it delightful to me. Though I never saw him after
'84, he has his place in the little company of true friends made for
life; "gone, but not forgotten," as the obituary column says of a baby
buried yesterday--I have not forgotten him in seventeen years, nor
ever shall. We used to talk books by the hour when he was disengaged.
He hoarded volumes for me in the secret recesses of his desk, and of
the new publications coming in I always had my choice before they were
put upon the shelves. It mattered not that I was entitled to but one
or two at a time, the more I would accept in excess of my allowance,
the better he was pleased. Sometimes he left them at my door on his
way home to bed, although my door was out of his road. And I never was
at a loss for recreation with those reading-rooms to browse in--green
pastures and still waters for the fattening and refreshing of mind and
soul. They alone would have made any place good to live in.

Just before Christmas, 1884, Bishop Moorhouse offered G. the parish
which was our favourite of the whole series--for six months. A
clergyman in England, belonging to one of our old families, already
mentioned, had a wish to return to his own people. He offered himself
unconditionally to the Bishop of Melbourne, who responded by
appointing him to this parish, up in the northeastern mountain
country, in the neighbourhood of our early homes; and G. was to take
charge of it until its incumbent-elect was ready. The latter, finding
it beneath his expectations, and being simultaneously offered a London
living, decided, after long deliberations, to remain where he was; and
we, who went there for six months, stayed nine years. It was so
congenial a place, that when (June 12, 1885) news came up to us that
the Board of Nominators in Melbourne had elected G. to the incumbency,
we said to each other that we had nothing left to wish for. To be safe
and settled once more had been our anxious desire for some months; we
now felt that if we had had our choice of all the districts and
dwellings in the diocese, we could not have suited ourselves better.

But first we had to pay toll--heavy toll. My health continued to fail,
so that I could not enjoy my pretty home, and the end of years of
stop-gap doctoring was the announcement that it was useless, and that
radical measures must be resorted to. On March 9, 1886, I was
deposited in a private hospital in Melbourne, fully aware of the fact
that my case was considered serious enough to make it as likely as not
that I should die there. Of all the black hours of my life, I think
that was the worst--when my husband had said good-bye to me and gone
back to the children whom I dared not hope to see again, and I was
left to my hard fate (on a very hard bed) amongst cold-eyed strangers
to whom I was of no account whatever, except in the way of business.
Once, when I was a child under governesses, I took a violent fancy to
go to boarding-school; I pestered doting parents until they
reluctantly acceded to my wish; but no sooner was it realised than I
began to weep and pine away with a home-sickness that could only be
cured by fetching me back again--I think at the end of the first
quarter. That brief experience of exile from the Place of Love faintly
foreshadowed my mental sufferings--worse than the physical ones, which
were indeed no joke--under this bitterer separation; yet both school
and hospital did their best for me, and were governed with all the
kindness and good-will that discipline and the general conditions
admitted of.

For months, that seemed years, I was imprisoned in the latter
place--even now I cannot pass it without a shudder, a thrill of
thankfulness to be outside instead of in--and I was then sent forth
with a reprieve only, and not a full discharge. The nurse, strange to
say, gave me the hint that I should probably "die of it" shortly; the
doctor, appealed to for the honest truth, first abused the nurse for
her indiscretion, and then endorsed her view. But nurses and doctors
have their human limitations; even they don't know everything. The
kindly reader may like to hear that I not only did not die of it, but
am in no danger of ever doing so.




CHAPTER XIII

THE BOOM


I am not going to disgust the patient reader with sick-room talk. But
certain facts connected with my hospital life bear directly upon the
object of this book, which is to reflect in my trivial experiences the
character of the country as modified by its circumstances from year to
year.

I had to pay L6, 6s. per week while an inmate of the house. This sum
did not cover medicines or washing, but board and nursing only. The
doctor who gave me chloroform three times charged me L5, 5s. on the
first occasion, and the same on the second; then his conscience
pricked him, I suppose, for he made me a present of his further
services. The surgeon's fee of L105 was comparatively moderate. _Per
contra_, I had a skimpy bed and room, and just the necessaries of life
as far as nursing was concerned. My nurse had too many other cases in
charge to give more attention to me than was surgically necessary; for
little spongings and pillow-shakings, a clean handkerchief, or such
trifle of comfort, I had to depend upon my friends when they were
allowed to see me. In dangerous crises a night nurse had me in charge;
at ordinary times a lay girl slept in my room. I moped in loneliness
through the greater part of the day, not knowing when I was well off,
until one morning the doctor asked me if I would mind having a
patient in with me, as the house was full. I weakly consented,
although horrified at the idea, and my one luxury of privacy was taken
from me. She was another surgical patient--another poor mother weeping
all the time for her children--and my sufferings on her account, which
included the total banishment of my friends from what was still my own
room, had such a bad effect upon me that they were soon obliged to
remove her. With regard to diet, I could hardly have cost more than
the cat. Fish, rabbit, cow-heel (not poultry) were the strong meats of
my convalescence; most of the time I was on broth and gruel--when not
sucking milk and soda from a spout. Nevertheless, I was no green
victim to experienced rapacity. None of those in whose power I
was--unless it were the chloroformist, who, I have been assured by
competent authority, did exceed his rights a little--took any unfair
advantage of me. The lady at the head of the establishment was a woman
of the very highest character, and is still my dear and honoured
friend; and the last of the facts I will give in connection with this
case is the fact that she could not make the hospital pay, even on
such terms, and although she worked herself to skin and bone to do it.

Why? Because this was the merry Boom time, when rents were what we now
call "fabulous"--houses letting at three times the present rates--and
the general cost of living in proportion. Her expenditure, kept down
to the lowest limit, was so heavy that her large receipts would not
cover it.

It is not for me, who never could do sums in my life, to give opinions
on matters of intricate finance that have proved beyond the grasp of
the most hard-headed experts, but no story of the country, or of
anyone living in it during the years when the great Land and Company
Boom occurred, would be complete without some description of that
amazing episode. I can, at least, give an interesting fact or two from
what I know.

While I was still in my hospital bed, one public authority--not
listened to, of course--was telling the mad land-speculators that
already more allotments had been put up for suburban residences than
would suffice to house the population of London. "When the rage was at
its height, and land-sales and champagne lunches were _de rigueur_ on
Saturday afternoons, every available bit of land in the suburbs was
bought up by syndicates ... orchards were ruthlessly cut down, gardens
uprooted, hedges broken down, and surveyors set to work to mark out
streets and small allotments, while the astonished owners received
small fortunes for the title-deeds. Numbers of these _nouveaux riches_
are now--this was written in '92--"touring in Europe, or living
comfortably at their ease on competencies thus acquired." But
some--friends of my own amongst them--handed over their properties to
be thus devastated for a further and higher sale, and got only a first
instalment of the purchase-money, or none at all; the "bottom fell
out" of the Boom before they knew it. While those who bought and were
too late to sell again--"witness," says the writer I am quoting, "the
suicides, the deserted homes, the present penury," domestic tragedies
beyond anything that "the pen of fiction" could produce.

One affair caused much excitement in clerical (Church of England)
circles. Our cathedral was a-building. Dr Moorhouse had started the
work, after a strenuous fight on his part for the site it now
occupies--in the very heart of the busy city, which time has proved to
be the right place--as against one more retired and picturesque, the
land in both cases being Church property from the days of old. The
work, as far as it had gone, represented about L62,000, "when hungry
syndicates were casting about to find city blocks, then considered of
unassailable value," and it was announced in the papers that L300,000
had been offered for the unfinished building and the land. "The
authorities were informed that even half a million might be
forthcoming, if they would appoint a committee to confer upon the
subject," and, oh, how that golden bait tantalised us all--or nearly
all! Bishop Moorhouse was gone to his see of Manchester, but there
were still a few men strong enough to breast the tide. "A fatal odd
vote," as it was called, saved us, the voter making himself for a
short time one of the most unpopular persons in the community.
"Business men will remember bitterly in the future, when funds are
scarce, that the sale of the cathedral would have represented a
perpetual income of L15,000 to L20,000 a year," wrote one of the many
good Churchmen who voiced their feelings in the newspapers; and he
said that those business men would be justified in refusing help to
the foolish ones who had "persisted in building on a veritable gold
mine," when those dark days came. The temptation was scarcely put
aside before the collapse occurred, and then, oh, what a sigh of
thankfulness went up from us all that the cathedral was there still!

When it was known by the high financiers behind the scenes that the
bottom had fallen out of the Land Boom proper, then the
company-promoting began. Some idea of the energy that at once poured
itself into this channel may be derived from the statement that within
one year 270 new companies were registered in Melbourne, having an
aggregate nominal capital of fifty-two millions. These were the traps,
baited with the names of men in high positions, notorious for piety,
respectability, and business acumen, into which walked that long
procession of honest toilers who, with their little savings in their
hands, aimed, not to make a fortune, but a comfortable provision for
old age.

Here is a sample of the kind of thing that might be found daily in the
newspapers--it is from the prospectus of the Centennial Land Bank,
Limited, Capital, L1,000,000, in 200,000 shares of L5 each:--

  "The following statistics as regards the present values in
      kindred institutions speak for themselves, and it is scarcely
      necessary to point out the fact that this Company cannot
      fail, with proper management, to have equally good, if not
      better, returns:--

  Australian Property and Investment Company, L5 paid; present
      value, L8, 15s.

  Henry Arnold and Company, L5 paid; present value, L12.

  Standard Financial Investment and Agency Company, L1 paid; present
      value, L7.

  Mercantile Finance and Guarantee Company, 25s. paid; present
      value, L4, 19s.

  Freehold Investment and Banking Company, L2, 15s. 6d. paid;
      present value, L10, 7s. 6d.

  Real Estate Bank, 50s. paid; present value, 73s.

  Australian Deposit and Mortgage Bank, L25 paid; present value,
      L46.

  All the above have been paying dividends at the rate of from 10 to
      50 per cent."

Is it any wonder that a spider's web of this description was simply
black with flies? Poor old maids, widows, parsons, school-marms, small
tradesmen who had laboriously put by a little--they tumbled over each
other in their eagerness to put a splendid finishing-touch to the work
of their industrious lives. They could not believe in frauds and
swindles at the hands of such men as they who enticed them to
irreparable financial ruin. Of the companies named in the Centennial
Land Bank prospectus, all, as I read in the records of the time, came
to grief, and "the names of four of them figure in the list of 133
limited companies that the _Government Gazette_ supplies as having had
to wind up their affairs during the twelve months from June 1891 to
June 1892 inclusive."

I said I would not meddle with figures, which are not in my line, but
I am tempted to give just a few more while I am about it.

Purchasers (at slightly under L1100 per foot) of land in Collins
Street, on which a draper's shop had been burnt to the ground, refused
L2000 per foot for their bargain. Another block, with frontage to
Collins Street, was bought for L65,000, and sold a few months later
for L120,000. Other premises purchased for L25,000 were sold four
months later for L55,000--L2000 per foot. The Equitable Life Assurance
Company of New York paid, I believe, L2500 per foot for the fine site
on which they have erected the finest commercial building in
Melbourne. It was the same in the outside suburbs, where as yet they
were not suburbs at all. At Surrey Hills land worth 15s. in 1884 rose
to L15 in 1887. A "moderate estimate" of the sales of the latter year
was officially reported as over L14,000,000. But one of the best
indications of the violence of these ups and downs is afforded by a
comparison of the advertisement-columns of the newspapers one year
with another. In 1888 the Saturday issue (for several consecutive
Saturdays) of a morning journal averaged 170 advertisement-columns of
fine print; in 1892 (also for several Saturdays) the average number
was 67. It was calculated by "one of our leading financiers" that the
"shrinkage" which occurred in stocks and shares, together with the
shrinkage in silver (which had had a world-famed boom of its own),
from 1889 to 1892 totalled "the appalling sum of L50,000,000." It only
remains to add that the population of the entire continent did not
total 4,000,000.

G. and I were amongst the fortunate ones who had no spare money to
play with, and so, when the crash came, we were in the position of the
cathedral--where we were--poor but free, not mortgaged body and bones
for "calls," like so many that we knew. Still, we had to bear our
little share of the general calamity. About a week after the State
Proclamation of five days' compulsory Bank Holiday--disregarded by the
only two banks which (with the exception of one little one) passed
unscathed through the storm--and when it was supposed that Government
had thereby checked the epidemic of bank disasters, G. was paid his
stipend, and on the stroke of three o'clock made a wild rush to
deposit the money before his bank shut for the day; _his_ bank being
above suspicion (to him), whatever others might be. He just, and only
just, managed it, and the doors that closed on him a minute afterwards
remained closed next morning. And so, as that money was for many a day
beyond recall, I had to make mine do for both of us, until I in my
turn was rendered penniless. With the narrow-mindedness of my sex in
business matters, I withstood the appeals of the manager of my own
bank, who assured me that his little all and the combined possessions
of his whole family reposed therein, and transferred what I had to the
Government Savings Bank, as being an approximately safe place--while
inclined to think that a hole in the ground or a tea-pot or an old
stocking would be safer--until things should have settled down. When
they did settle down, I opened my account with one of the two great
banks that had proved themselves impregnable.

From a newspaper of May 20th, 1893, I take the following:--"Counting
in all stoppages up to Tuesday last, about L55,000,000 of Australian
money is now locked up in suspended banks of issue--not counting the
amounts locked up in about fifty bursted land banks, building
societies and investment companies, and leaving the Mercantile"--this
was the particularly scandalous boom-bank--"out of the calculation
altogether.... Within a year 64 per cent. of the working capital of
Queensland has been locked up, 60 per cent. of that of Victoria, 55
per cent. in New South Wales, and 40 per cent. in South Australia." So
it appears, if these figures are correct, that there was still one
colony worse off than we were.

But it was not 1893--it was 1886--when I was in hospital, and the
"high old times" were in full swing. When I came out, to remain for a
long time under the necessity of reporting myself to the doctor at
frequent intervals, I was again, at those frequent intervals, in the
thick of the distractions of our still gay capital, where it was the
aim of my friends to make me forget that I was going to "die of it" or
to persuade me that my medical adviser was a fool.

I was not in the fevered crowd of those who "ran" the boom and made
the smell of money so rank in the nose; but it was high tide in the
fortunes of the landed gentry, and, indeed, generally speaking, of the
whole community. All in their degree were rich and lived lavishly; the
upper classes seemed wholly given over to pleasure-making, and their
appetite for social diversion was catered for as it never was before
or since. It was now that I heard so much good music, saw so much good
acting, met so many interesting travellers, enjoyed the greatest
race-meetings in the history of splendid Flemington, the hospitalities
of Government House in its best days, the most memorable
entertainments of a time when nothing but the first-rate was
tolerated. I look back now and wonder at my keen appreciation of it
all. But it never took much to make me enjoy myself, and I was younger
then.

Out of the crowded spectacle, which in memory resembles the dream of
Verdant Green's father after the first visit to Oxford, the Centennial
Exhibition stands most conspicuous. As first conceived, it was to cost
L25,000, because the buildings of the Exhibition of 1880 were still
there to work upon. Being a Boom enterprise, it had not gone far
before it was estimated that L70,000 would be needed to complete it
properly. When the bill at last came in, it totalled L250,000. "A
costly blunder," it is called in these soberer times. Costly it was
certainly, but a blunder--no. Not to us who made it our haunt and
rendezvous, our palace of pleasure in a thousand forms. I should think
that no money ever spent gave so much direct enjoyment to so many
people.

Ah, those days! Those days! I too had had my little boom on the
Australian press, and it was not yet over; bad times were still
undreamed of, the London Syndicate had not yet taken possession of the
fiction columns, pounds were freely to be had (I received L197 for the
serial rights of _A Marked Man_) where now shillings are hard to come
by; and my children were still under the expensive age. So that the
cost of two long journeys for a day or two in town seemed not worth
considering, and I appear never to have considered it. We were all
extravagant together. We made hay while the sun shone, if ever people
did.

Therefore, looking back upon those gay times, I have not to regret
that I missed anything (except Madame Norman-Neruda), whatever else I
may regret. Living nearly 200 miles away I had all the good of the
Exhibition that I could have desired; more would have meant satiety.
Scores and scores of those orchestral concerts (under Frederick
Cowen's conductorship) I must have attended, first and last; there
were two a day, and they gave you the best music of all countries, and
you only had to stroll into the hall and sit down and listen, as if in
your own house. It was here that I learned to be a Wagnerite, after
several unsuccessful attempts. By finding a very quiet corner, and
listening with my eyes close shut and a fan before my face, I
discovered the secret; now there is no luxury in life like a Wagner
concert--other music, even other great music, that I am bidden to
place higher, seems by comparison what other novels seem beside George
Meredith's best (the Meridithian will understand me). As it has
chanced, all the Wagner that I have heard since Exhibition days has
been rendered by the still more highly-trained orchestra of Mr
Marshall Hall, ex-Ormond Professor of Music in the University of
Melbourne; and, as a musician, we have never had his equal amongst us
here, and are never likely to have his superior.

The Art Galleries of the Exhibition were more to us than the Concert
Hall, for we were more in them. Amongst the Loan Pictures, of one
country or another, we met our friends; here we sat on soft lounges to
muse upon our favourites, in more or less congenial company, or we let
the pictures alone and gave friendship the whole field. There were
times in the day--the place was open from 11 A.M. to 10:30 P.M.--when
persons who desired privacy had no difficulty in finding it at fifty
different spots; wherefore it was a very paradise for lovers. And you
could live there all day long, with every comfort, including free
education worth years of school. It was delightful to show children
biscuits and hats and wire-mattresses a-making under their very noses,
and when they were tired of that to take them to see the seals fed in
the cool Aquarium, or up on the hydraulic lift to survey all Melbourne
from the great dome. The meals are a delicious memory--the little
lunches and dinner-parties, the afternoon teas (for nothing) in the
dainty tea-pavilions--all flavoured with the holiday spirit, the
bright talk of meeting friends. And the saunters to and fro, and up
and down (fatiguing, no doubt, but I have forgotten that), always with
something beautiful to look at, something interesting to do, and
generally with a comrade of your heart to talk to about it all! When
the place was shut at last, we wandered forlorn and lost for a long
time. We were spoiled for humdrum life.

The Centennial Exhibition--our "Great" Exhibition--marked the climax
of the Boom, of what we erroneously call the "good times," when we
were rich and dishonest and mercenary and vulgar. The end was not far
off. A few more luxuries awaited us, of which the one that recalls
itself most vividly to my mind is Madame Patey's singing of "Alas!
Those Chimes," from _Maritana_. This was on 27th November 1890. On the
25th June 1801 I saw Sara Bernhardt in _Theodora_. She it was who rang
down the curtain. We were able to give her a good season, to treat
ourselves once more regardless of expense; then, upon the heels of her
departure, the bubble burst. "Thank God," I heard a man say, "that we
got Sara first." It was our last chance for many a long day.

But the best thing that ever happened to Melbourne Society, as I have
known it, was the snuffing out of the lights of that feast, the coming
of that cold daylight to the revellers. A better example of the
vulgarising effects of wealth, and of the refining effects of being
without it, was never packed in a neater compass.




CHAPTER XIV

THE SEVENTH HOME


Towards the end of May 1886--against professional advice, to which we
opposed our private opinion that the best way to get well was to get
rid of the homesick cravings that were beyond doctor's reach--I was
transferred from my hospital bed to one in the house of a dear
Melbourne friend, where I lay in all the luxury that love and money
could provide, and with portions of family around me, for a few more
weeks; until at last it was considered that I might make the long
journey to my home in safety. I had a bed in the railway carriage, and
reached the goal of my desires at midnight, when the long-motherless
bairns were asleep. Thereafter, although weighed down at times with
the thought of my supposed impending doom--never really out of my
mind, and constantly spurring me to extreme efforts to turn the
available time to the best account, in the interests of my prospective
orphans--I persisted in getting well and in enjoying myself
accordingly. Indeed, the charm of life at this period--only to be
understood by those in like case, who have been so near to losing
it--is a bloom upon the retrospect that is likely to misrepresent it
in these pages. Beauty is in the eye and heart of the beholder more
than in the thing beheld. However, I can only paint as I have seen,
and the reader will make allowances.

Certainly Home No. 7, which was in the near neighbourhood of Homes 1,
2, and 3, was a trifle dilapidated. G.'s successor there, when he
first saw it, called it a "shanty"--he came from the modern suburban
villa which we now occupy, and was used to high ceilings and electric
bells--and he thought (until the rain ceased and the sun came out)
that it would be impossible to bring his family to quarters so mean by
comparison with what they were accustomed to. But they were good
enough for us. The most we asked of the vestry was to keep roofs
weather-tight; for the rest, we felt ourselves equal to making a
satisfactory abode out of a far worse shanty than that. Indeed, we had
done so more than once.

All the paint was off it, and the soft grey of the dissolving
wood-work was in perfect harmony with every other detail of the
composition; I used to dread to turn my back on the place, lest the
parish should take a notion to smarten up while I was away, although I
knew that the time was near when something would have to be done. They
could only have put staring patches on their old garment, which would
have made it hideous. It was so beautifully, mellowly "all of a piece"
now, that I begged G., who rather hankered after painters and
carpenters, to keep their hands off, if he loved me. "It will last our
time," I said, as he drove the amateur nail, and I saw to it that old
age did not mean dirt; and we made it do that--barely. The back of the
house was level with the ground, but the front was in the air, so that
its verandah was a balcony and you descended from it to the garden by
a flight of twelve steps; before we left we had abandoned the front
entrance because it had become impossible by our unaided efforts to
keep those steps in place. Also the verandah floor in places was
dangerous to walk upon; the constant watering of flower-pots and
palm-tubs had rotted it through. And the ivy, cut into a hood round
one of the drawing-room windows, rioted out of bounds. On the whole, I
was glad to go when the time came--to our sunny, airy, far-too-public
villa with the high ceilings and the electric bells, which will never
suit me as well. We had grown too dilapidated to keep tidy, too
picturesque for health.

After our time--and soon after--an opportune legacy to the parish was
devoted to the work of restoration, and enabled the restorers to make
what they called a good job of it. I saw the place the other day, and
it is now almost like a common house. The ivy is all cleared away; so
are some of the trees which, while I knew they were too many, I could
not bear to have touched; the verandahs are sound and painted, the
rooms light. My aesthetic soul grieved over some details of the change,
but my hygienic conscience admitted that the whole change was a good
one.

Many things were gone from the garden, which in our time had sheltered
us from every prying eye. The thinning of the trees and bushes had
left spaces bare but for pine-needles and cones, and exposed the house
to the gaze of the passer-by. Great screens of laurel used to stand
this way and that, and some had been taken down; a magnificent
lemon-tree had disappeared--but I think that was our fault. We sunk a
kerosene tin, with small holes in the bottom, in the earth beside it,
and filled the cavity with water whenever we thought of it, so that
moisture was always percolating to the roots; and the result of this
treatment was such splendid growth that the tree doubled and trebled
its size in two or three seasons. The fruit was enormous and weighed
it down. I used to break off a branch bearing a cluster of half a
dozen or more, and by the time I had carried it to a friend in the
town my arm would feel as if I had been carrying a pail of milk; and I
was ready to teach anybody the true art or lemon-growing. But after a
few splendid years the tree suddenly got tired: I suppose it had
worked itself out; and then it dwindled steadily, despite our care,
and we left it ragged and sick. It must have died of that illness.
Another lemon-tree, treated in the same way, lives still, in a sticky,
threadbare fashion, but this bears a small, half-sweet fruit, whereas
its neighbour was Lisbon of the finest quality. Evidently lemons do
not object to that vigorous climate, where it snows in winter, for our
doctor up there, whose recreation is fruit-farming, has a fine grove
of young trees, the produce of which has already gained top prices in
the market; but oranges will not climb so high. Within a few miles,
however--at W----, near Home No. 1--they grow to perfection.

The two things in the parsonage garden which make it unique are there
still--the avenue and the slabbed pathways. The avenue, from the front
door to the front gate, is of some kind of pine that runs up in a
straight mast to a great height and then branches like an umbrella;
here it makes a roof to the descending aisle. And the aisle is paved
with shallow steps of the silvery granite which is the very substance
of the hills. No one step matches another; all are rough-hewn and of
about the same width, but they are long or short, thick or thin, just
as it happens, dropping down and down in a manner as informal as the
architecture of Nature herself; and the same arrangement obtains where
it has been necessary to make footholds round steep corners. Those
original alley-and-stairways were an inspiration of the designer, who
probably had no design but to face his tracks with something that the
rain would not wash away; but how often has the amiable Philistine
urged us to get the vestry to "make proper paths!" They will do it
some day, and then I hope no reader of these pages, touring in the
locality, will look for Home No. 7 in the expectation of finding it.
But, all the same, that garden was a trap to the stranger on a dark
night.

I remember on one occasion being awakened from my first sleep--my
hours are early at both ends of the day--by terrifying bumpings and
crashes amongst the thick bushes and down the treacherous paths. G.
was at a meeting in the town; maid and lady-help had both followed the
children to bed; it was nine o'clock or thereabouts, when any other
house would have been still alive. My fears of burglars or stray
cattle were dispelled by the voices of lost and floundering men
calling to each other. Supposing the servant about, I left her to
attend to them, but it was a long time before they brought up at the
dining-room verandah. There she argued with them at length, and
presently tapped at my door.

"It's two gentlemen from Melbourne, ma'am." Like Maria, she was most
particular in giving me that title so rare in this country.

"Didn't you tell them Mr C. was out?" I called.

"I did, ma'am. And they want to see you."

"Didn't you tell them I had gone to bed?"

"I did, ma'am. But--"

"Well, go and tell them again that I have gone to bed." The idea of
that statement, once made, not being sufficient! I was indignant.

She went, and talked to them again; she returned with a pair of
visiting-cards, and protested, as she lit my candle, that the
gentlemen would not go. I read the names, and knew them, although the
owners were strangers to me. One was a University Professor.
(N.B.--Since this was written he has joined the majority, one of the
greatest losses to the country, outside the University as well as in,
that it has sustained for many a day.) I decided to get up.

"Put the lamps in the drawing-room, and tell them I will be there in a
minute." And I whisked up my hair, tossed on a tea-gown, and went
forth to receive them. "We were determined to have you out," said the
Professor to me years afterwards, and dwelt upon the extraordinary
difficulties that he and his friend had had to overcome to compass
that end. Glad enough was I, and still am, that they succeeded. No
talk that I ever had is more refreshing to remember than that which I
enjoyed until past midnight--especially after G. came back from his
meeting to divide us into pairs. There are books and ideas that can
never suggest themselves without bringing it all to mind. The garden
is haunted by the figures of those groping and resolute men.

There, too, walks the ghost of that dear vice-regal lady whom we all
remember with such love. I see her slowly mount the rugged path under
the pines, glancing from side to side upon the half-wild growth with
pleasure in her artistic eye; coming for that quiet talk which
municipal dignity would have baulked us of, and the memory of which is
precious now that I am never likely to have another. I read somewhere
not long ago, in gossip of old Holland House and the charming society
that once gathered there--by one who was of it--that she was lovely as
a budding girl, and remarkable for her air of high distinction;
immediately I thought of her as she looked that day, coming towards me
under the trees. Like the rest of us, she is growing old now, but she
will always have that beauty and that air, the blend of a gentle
nature with gentle blood.

An account of this visit from our then Governor's wife may be worth
giving, if only to illustrate municipal dignity--Government
authority--as it is conceived of in these parts.

She had honoured me with a private friendship--unsought by me--for
some time when, in the ordinary routine of state functions,
arrangements were made for the Governor to visit our town, she
accompanying him. It was an exceptional compliment, conferred for the
first time, and the excitement throughout the district was intense.

When the time approached she wrote to ask me to meet her on her
arrival, and I was duly at the station when the decorated train
arrived, but far, far away on the edge of the crowd, which built a
solid rampart between us--official representatives of the town, their
families, and the processions they had organised to receive and escort
the vice-regal party--and by no means could I get nearer. In normal
times I had every reason to feel myself a respected member of the
community, but I was now to be taught my place municipally as it were.
My representations were simply not listened to; I am sure they were
not believed. That vice-royalty could harbour a thought outside the
official demonstration was inconceivable to them. I could see my
friend's tall head turning from side to side as she sought for me over
the bowing heads of people presenting bouquets and reading addresses
of welcome, but I was not tall enough for her to see me; so I gave up
the struggle for that day, and went home and had a bath--it was
ragingly hot--intending to send her a note of explanation later. As I
was putting myself into an old, cool gown, word was brought to me that
she was coming up the garden. I went out to her as I was, and she
spent an hour or two, of happy memory, with me--the only resting time
she had throughout her visit--leaving me to my customary quiet evening
and early bed, while she returned to the hotel to the state banquet
and reception that filled the first day's programme.

That of the next day (December 30, 1885, and a burning north wind) was
packed with engagements in a fashion that took no account of a woman's
strength--and a delicate woman at that. There was first a monster
picnic to the show view of the neighbourhood, twelve steep miles up
into the hills; it was to start as early as nine or thereabouts, feast
sumptuously and make speeches when it got there, and return in time
for two more afternoon functions, at two separate public institutions,
and a concert in the evening. It was arranged overnight that I should
accompany my friend to the picnic, and after she left my house she
notified to the proper authorities her wish that I should be allotted
to the carriage selected for her. Next day she told me the result. The
answer of the town was that it was very sorry, but it could not be
done. _The order of precedence had to be observed._

I was at the hotel at the appointed hour, and she was already in her
seat--she had chosen it, under the circumstances, on the box, between
the Governor and the driver--and the body of the vehicle, a large open
brake, was packed with municipal ladies, every bit as "good" as I was,
of course, but all strangers to her. Behind the vice-regal carriage
stood a long line of other brakes, rapidly filling up. I sat down on a
bench under the hotel verandah to watch the process and await my turn.
My dear lady in the distance made a gesture which signified "Where are
you going to be put?" I shook my head to indicate that I had not the
least idea. Then the cavalcade started, and soon all the splendid
four-in-hands had vanished in a cloud of dust--and I was still sitting
under the verandah, I and a friend staying with me, a daughter of that
house where I encountered the midnight opossum. It was discovered then
that there was still a remnant left behind, and a buggy was brought
out, a scratch pair harnessed to it, and we and a few more odds and
ends, as it were, cleaned up.

Of course we were hours late at the rendezvous. When we arrived the
banquet was in progress, the Governor's wife sitting amid her court,
which occupied every chair, and looking almost as difficult to get at
as she had been at the railway station. I made no attempt to get at
her. My companion and I sat in our own buggy, and a nice man brought
us plates of turkey and trifle, and tumblers of champagne, and we
enjoyed our lunch and our liberty and the whole proceedings. By-and-by
the Governor came to tell me that he expected me to accompany his
party back to town the next morning. I had that to look forward to.

On our return from the picnic, and when near the gates of the first
institution that was to be inspected, the cavalcade halted and word
was passed back to me that my lady in the leading carriage wished to
speak to me. I went to her. She was dusty and sunburnt, and very
tired. "Go home," she said, "and rest. You can rest--I can't."

I went to Melbourne with her next day--the very hottest day, I think,
that I was ever out in. She had been unable to sleep, she said, and
was almost prostrated by the weather and her fatigues. In the state
carriage we could lie down on blue satin sofas, in the lightest indoor
clothes, and a maid in a little ante-room had cool drinks and sponges
and such things in readiness. The Governor held a cloth continually
soaked in water over an open window against the fierce north wind, to
try if by evaporation he could freshen the air; but it remained
oven-like for all his efforts.

At last, when we were halting at a wayside station for a train to
pass, a minister was sent for from the compartment where he was
travelling with the suite, in some kind of official charge of the
expedition.

"Do," said his liege lady, "do please go and ask them if they will
hose the carriage." She was fainting with the heat, and this seemed to
her the best way to get relief--as it would have been. He hurried off,
much concerned at her distress, to, as he said, see what he could do.
Presently he returned, and said--my own ears heard him--that he was
very sorry, but it could not be done. "_It would blister the paint._"

She was idolised throughout the colony as no Governor's wife ever was
before or since, and with good reason; and the people who, as in this
case, were supposed to be entertaining her, were neither mean nor
selfish, nor intentionally rude. I am sure the idea that they were not
treating her with the highest consideration never crossed their minds.

Other friends, departed or no more, are indissolubly one with that old
house and the old garden in which it stood. How many phantom faces
flit amongst those shades? Every block of stone, every step of the
verandah stairs, has a figure or a group. They sit in twilight, in
moonlight, musing alone or talking together--the deep, intimate talk
of those resting hours. There is a bishop amongst them with his
pipe--he, too, now on the other side of the world, but with a green
memory here that will not wither yet awhile. And still other friends,
that never talked, except in a language that few trouble to learn.

For originally the garden was a "Zoo" on a small scale. The first
parson was a rabid naturalist, who experimented with new breeds of
birds and collected snakes for the study of their habits and customs.
We were warned that one of their habits was to escape frequently, and
that we should probably find house and grounds alive with their
descendants, but we did not; only two put in an appearance upon the
premises in nine years. Two large aviaries remained of the birds'
village that once was when we took possession; we kept flower-pots and
tools in one, and for a while I had turtledoves in another--not for
long, since cages are an abomination to me, however big. Both are
cleared away now, with their leafy screens. But the wild birds love
the place--or did love it. It was mainly for their sakes that the axe
was not laid at the root of any tree while we were there, and they
came to it from far and near--far, I should say, since one rarely
heard a bird-note, not even that of the once ubiquitous magpie, on the
surrounding hills--and set up housekeeping in peace and privacy, and
in larger and larger numbers every year.

How soon they know where they are welcome! And it is the same with all
dumb things. I am convinced that there is scarcely a creature living
which does not prove itself possessed of quite human intelligence as
soon as one begins to make a friend of it. They walk under our feet
and scatter from our path in fear and trembling; their minds are
cramped and starved by their hunted, down-trodden, tragical lives;
they are shut up within themselves. But show them a little kindness
and understanding and comradeship, and the results are astonishing. I
have tried it often enough to know. I have had such things as toads
and hedgehogs scrambling after me about garden paths, preferring to
burst themselves rather than lose the chance of my company. Some white
rats presented to my children were let out of their cage to enjoy
themselves in an enemy-proof room, and had not been thus indulged for
a week before their endearments became overpowering. A widowed dove
was my companion for several years, and fell sick and refused food if
parted from me, which was only when I went out of the house; and then
it would follow if not guarded carefully, and was killed at last in a
tangle of street traffic through which it was hunting me. In this very
house at B---- I was silly enough to make friends with a mouse that
had a hole in the hearth by which I used to sit alone at work. All I
did was to put a crumb or a spoonful of milk between me and it. Soon
it took to sitting in its porch--we could just see its little snout
twiddling--to watch until the family were all gone from the room, and
to running out to me fearlessly the instant the door was closed behind
them.

This was in the dining-room. Opposite its glass doors, across the
verandah and a path, there was an arrangement of granite blocks to
shore up the ground where the hill had been cut away to make a level
for the house, and in the interstices of this rough wall more mice
lived. We were quite unaware of the fact until I had begun petting the
hearth-dweller, when they suddenly popped out from their burrows as
bold as brass. I could not resist giving them a crumb or two, and
their subsequent behaviour convinced me that their indoor neighbour
had communicated to them the fact that there was a friend at court. As
I sat at meals, in broad daylight and sunshine, the French window open
between us, I could see them sitting on their thresholds, staring
across the gap with all their eyes. "You will rue this," said the
person in authority, and I soon did. We became all at once inundated
with mice. Alas for the eternal tragedy of life! A cat was introduced.
One morning I was writing at the dining-table, with my back to the
hearth, when a tremendous clatter of fire-irons made me jump out of my
chair. I flew after that young tigress, and I got her prey from her,
but too late. My pet died in my hand--and I am never going to take any
notice of a mouse again.

Of all my dumb companions here--those humble fellow-creatures of ours,
the possibilities in the way of social intercourse with whom (I will
not say "which") are amongst the happy surprises reserved for an
enlightened future--Toby was the bosom friend.

Toby, although he was only a dog, shall have a chapter to himself. The
reader who is not a dog-lover, being hereby forewarned, can skip it.




CHAPTER XV

TOBY


All I know of his breeding is that he had none. His mother, a
drawing-room pet and the only acknowledged parent, was a little
long-bodied, dainty bundle of silver-grey silk that swept the ground;
he, fully twice her size and height, with a compact, sinewy frame and
a close, wire-haired, rusty-black coat, was more in the style of the
useful out-door terrier that loves a scrimmage in the street and is
rough on rats--mere dog, in short, and a despicable animal from the
fancier's point of view. But when I saw him first--he was brought to
my bedside during illness, as a present more likely to cheer me than
anything else--I thought I had never seen a sweeter pup; and I do not
hope to meet again, still less to own, a brighter, smarter, dearer
creature than he afterwards became.

There was nothing of the trick dog about him, and with respect to
striking exploits he was less distinguished than several of his
predecessors in my regard. One of these, for instance, was
part-proprietor of a town and a country house, both of which were kept
open and habitable (caretakers in one while the family occupied the
other), and there was a considerable railway journey between the two.
My canine friend preferred, of course, to live with the family, but
if they happened to hurt his feelings he quietly trotted to the
station, picked out the right train, and thereby conveyed himself to
his alternate home, where he remained until the trouble had blown
over. The railway officials at both ends knew him well, and he them,
but they declared that, even at the crowded station of the large town,
he was capable of finding his own train without their assistance. This
same dog knew when it was Sunday simply by count of days--at least, he
would seem to know before anything in the house could have told
him--and took his measures accordingly. He was always missing between
breakfast and church time, and always known to be in hiding under a
seat of the family pew during divine service, although an order
prohibiting his attendance had never been repealed. Another dog friend
used to wait for his mistress on doorsteps when she did errands or
paid calls, and one day she left a house by a different door from that
by which she had gone in, forgetting that he was there. Missing him
during the day, finding that he was not at home all night nor all next
day, she became frantic with fears that something dreadful had
happened to him, sending messages of inquiry in all directions. After
a hunt in more likely places, he was discovered on the doorstep where
she had left him. It had been snowing and blowing, and he was starved
with cold and hunger, but he had not budged. I knew a dog that nearly
died at his post in the same way, and quite lately the current dog of
this establishment spent a cold night at the local cemetery gates,
waiting for a master who had gone home unbeknown in a mourning coach
the day before. Dozens of incidents equally remarkable occur to me,
but not in connection with Toby; who, however, if he did not do any
very wonderful things, was capable of doing them. As with inglorious
Miltons amongst ourselves, he simply lacked opportunity.

What entitled him to be remembered as I remember him was his splendid
force of character and his absolutely faithful heart. He was, indeed,
energetic to a fault in nearly all directions. No dog walked that he
was not game to tackle, and no cat, except his own cat, whose
successive kittens he nursed as if engaged for the purpose, was safe
for a moment within range of his alert eye; while to see him careering
round the paddock after frenzied poultry, or throwing the garden
bodily over his back when burying his bones and digging them up again,
was to understand in some degree why he was not exactly popular with
the powers of his world. But the ardour of his affection for, and
devotion to, his particular owner was a thing to shame human
friendship at its best. I can never think of it without thinking what
life would be if men and women loved each other like that.

Full of business as he always was, I think he never lost the run of
his mistress for an hour when she was at home, unless he were tied up
for misdemeanours or otherwise forcibly restrained. A thing of
whalebone and quicksilver, of tireless energy and vivacity, he
schooled himself to the conditions of indoor companionship, and would
lie all day at my side, eyes watching for the merest glance from mine,
tail poised for a joyous thump the moment he received it. When I sat
out of doors, and he thought I was quite safe not to go away, he would
amuse himself in the vicinity in all sorts of cheerful ways. He always
took a deep interest in fowls, and a favourite game of his was to draw
an imaginary circle round a selected hen, and by working along that
line to keep her from breaking out of it. He did it so neatly and at
such a distance from her that she was not seriously alarmed; but when,
every time she started for a new point, she found him there ahead of
her, her disconcerted cluck and bewildered aspect were extremely
funny. The current kittens were also toys that he delighted in; he and
the mother cat would spend endless time and ingenuity in carrying them
away from one another and fetching them back again, all in the most
friendly fashion. Of course, he accompanied me everywhere in my walks
abroad. Some readers of these pages will recall his wit and his
persistence in following me into houses where I was paying calls after
doors and gates had been closed against him. How he did it we
sometimes could not tell, since he was neither a professional burglar
nor a kangaroo; and, of course, I ought to have brought him up not to
do it, as not to do a few other things that I weakly allowed for the
sake of the love that prompted them.

At night, when not on that chain which we both disliked so much, he
preferred to sleep on my doorstep--I had an outside doorstep, where a
French window opened upon the raised verandah--deserting the kennel in
which he could have been dry and warm. When I was alone--he always
knew when that was--the worst weather would not keep him away; but
when the rain, which occasionally was sleet and snow, beat on him, he
would scratch and whine to be let in; and then I would be inclined to
wish that one or other of us had never been born. It was a torment to
hear him and refuse his plea, but the most doggy person must draw the
line somewhere; besides, if I had admitted him once, he would have
suffered for my indiscretion many times, as also should I. So I used
to shout, "Go to bed, sir!" with a make-believe severity that had no
more effect than to send him dejectedly flopping down the verandah
steps, to creep up again before he had reached the bottom. But
generally he was good and quiet. I used to wake sometimes to hear a
subdued sniff under the door, or the thud of a soft body flinging
itself ostentatiously upon hard boards. These were his ways of
reminding me, in case I doubted it, that he was there.

Unfortunately, as before remarked, he was not popular with the
household. I daresay it was my fault. There are such differences of
opinion about dogs in our family that we never do have one without
quarrelling over it, more or less. Poor Toby was the domestic
scapegoat. If a chicken got roup or a stray cow walked over the
flower-beds, he was the suspected culprit; every muddy boot-print,
every unmentionable insect that came into the house, was laid at his
door; and to smell an unpleasant odour was at once to connect it with
his coat, and not with cabbage water in the kitchen or a neglected
drain.

I went out a-visiting for a week or two, and when I returned found
that he had been given away. He was still on the premises to welcome
me in his vociferous manner, and the news was not broken too abruptly:
but I had to hear it before the following afternoon, which was the
time fixed for his departure. It appeared that in my absence he had
taken up with some friends of ours whom he had often called upon with
me, particularly attaching himself to the eldest schoolboy son, and
had virtually been living with them nearly all the time. They were but
temporary dwellers in the town, and about to leave it; and as he had
greatly endeared himself to the numerous children, and was rightly
supposed to be unappreciated in his own house, they had asked to keep
him and take him with them. Evidently the request had been hailed as
delightfully opportune, and unhesitatingly granted by those who had no
authority to dispose of him.

"Now, you know," it was said to me, when, after something of a scene,
I was considered in a fit state to be reasoned with, "that Toby only
makes discord and dissension in an otherwise united family. He will
interfere with the fowls, and dig holes in the garden, and bring dirt
and fleas into the house; and then, when he is put on the chain, you
don't like it and make a fuss. Here's a splendid home for him, where
he'll be as happy as the day is long. The T.'s, who have just as much
as they can do to feed their own children and pay their own travelling
expenses, would not add him to the party if they were not really fond
of him; and you can see, by the way he has been haunting their place,
how fond he is of them. It is for the dog's own benefit as well as
ours, and we shall never get such another chance."

Well, I saw that. When you love a creature, dumb or otherwise, its own
happiness is what you consider first, and every proof had been given
that his new proprietors would be good to him. In this case, as in so
many cases, the benevolent heart went with the slender purse; Toby
himself was well aware of it. And so I consented to let the bargain
stand. I had promised to see my friends off at the railway station,
but now cancelled that engagement, sending them a message to say that,
though they might take Toby, I could not see him go. They told me
afterwards that he went quietly; I daresay he did, not knowing what
was happening and how we should feel about it at our next meeting.

I had no expectation, at the time, of any next meeting. But a year or
two later, while having a little travel for my health, I found myself
in the large town whither he had been taken when torn from me: and, of
course, I made it my business to find him there, if possible. I did
not know where his people lived, the streets were strange to me, and I
have no bump of locality whatever, so I started soon after breakfast
and gave the morning to it. By about lunch-time, after many inquiries
and misdirections, and much fatigue and exasperation, I discovered the
house in a very far-out suburb. But, before I discovered the house,
Toby discovered me. He had not seen me, I am convinced--had either
scented me in the distance or recognised my (to human ears inaudible)
step--when he uttered his first ecstatic yell and hurled himself over
the gate; I was still half a street's length off when I beheld him
tearing towards me as if discharged from a giant catapult. Literally,
I could hardly see him for dust. We fell into each other's arms
forthwith, and I must have looked, to the casual spectator, as if
engaged in a death grapple with a wild beast.

His young master appeared, and I managed to shake his hand and ask if
he lived there, and how his mother was. He took me in to her, and she
was delighted to see me; his father and the family joined us, and said
how good it was of me to look them up, and of course I must stay to
dinner, and how were all at home, and so on; but it was dumb show--we
could not hear ourselves speak. Toby nearly lifted the roof with his
uproar of welcome, and seemed to have lost the power to stop himself;
every breath was a shriek, so full of the fury and passion of joy that
it seemed like to choke him. This sounds like exaggeration, but really
is not, as those present with me will testify, supposing they read
this tale. Since they never can have seen a dog so conduct himself
before or since, I am sure they will remember the circumstance. He
clawed me frantically, hugged my knees with his strong forelegs,
grovelled at my feet, licked them, rolled over them, rubbed his dear
snout, his ears, his shoulders, upon every part of me that he could
get at, contorting his body in the most grotesque and violent fashion,
as if in the throes of some mysterious convulsive fit. In short, no
hatter or March hare was ever so entirely mad and off his head and
beside himself.

I confess I was almost as great a fool; seeing which, the kind
household bore with the deafening racket as long as we chose to make
it--ten minutes, perhaps, which must have had the wearing power of ten
hours in that small room. Then, out of pity for my hostess, who was
invalided at the time, and to give human friendship a chance, and
because really a continuation of that Bedlam hubbub would have been
too much for anybody's nerves, I consented to a suggestion that Toby
should be removed for an interval. His young master took him as far
away as the limits of the premises allowed, and shut as many doors
upon him as there were to shut. "Now we can talk," said my hostess,
with a sigh and smile of utter relief.

So we talked; and as friends who had not met for a long time, as
mothers whose respective children were the most important objects in
the universe, we had a great deal to talk about. We could have
gossiped about our families and affairs for a whole day quite
contentedly, and should have made excellent use of the two or three
hours actually available--had Toby permitted. But he wailed and howled
in his shed in the backyard, and no doors could smother the
distracting sound. We pretended for some time that we did not hear it,
while I answered questions at random, incapable of fixing my thoughts
on anything but him. Finally the strain became unbearable, and the
prisoner was released upon my giving an undertaking that he should
reasonably behave himself.

He returned like a whirlwind, but, after a brief struggle with
himself, submitted to what he perceived was necessary, and stood under
my hand, trembling, whimpering, thrilling in every fibre, his nose on
my knee, his liquid eyes fixed on my face with such an intensity of
adoring love as I never saw in any other pair. If the pressure was
relaxed for a moment, he leaped like a steel spring in an india-rubber
ball, because he could not help himself, and if I ventured to look at
him he yelped with delight; but he quieted down by degrees, lay on my
skirt, leaning against it in a way to drag the gathers out, licked my
fingers, and was quite happy.

To please us both he was allowed to stay to dinner, and by this time
he was so far restored to his sober senses that he went to others
beside me to ask for food; and the confidence with which he begged
from each in turn showed that parents and children were all his
trusted friends--that this home, unlike the last, was an ideal home
for a being of his persuasion, the unattainable paradise of the
average dog. This is my one comfort when I think of Toby now.

Having other engagements, I was obliged to say good-bye to my
entertainers immediately after the mid-day meal. But it was generally
felt that, in spite of his calmer demeanour, there must be no
good-byes to him. Stratagem was resorted to, together with tit-bits of
roast beef to lure him to a part of the house whence he could not see
me go; and as soon as the coast was clear I made off with all speed,
taking care that no door should creak, no gate click, no tip-toe
footstep leave an echo behind me.

Alas! he heard. No, he did not hear--he _knew_. I was not fairly into
the roadway before he began to shriek with all his might, and now the
shrieks were as full of anguish as they had previously been full of
joy. I never heard anything so heart-thrilling, so heart-breaking in
my life. He was again shut up, and even his strength was not equal to
tearing down the walls that held him, though I am sure he did his
best. I wonder sometimes whether he hurt himself in that paroxysm of
despairing fury, how long it lasted, and what he thought when he was
let out and found that I had not answered his cry, but left him
without a word.

All the way down the street, and down the next street, and into the
third, as far as the air-waves carried, I heard his voice at the same
pitch. I stood still again and again, agonised by the sound, and _now_
I cannot imagine how I resisted it. I was hundreds of miles from home;
I was staying in the sort of house that one cannot easily take
liberties with; and, at the end of a holiday, my purse was almost
empty; besides, Toby was no longer my dog, whatever might have been
his views to the contrary, and I knew that his reappearance with me on
my return to my family would be objected to in the strongest manner.
These trivial circumstances overcame the impulse of my heart, and I
passed on.

It is years and years ago, but I have never forgiven myself, and never
shall. Whenever I think of it--only I cannot bear to think of it--I
suffer pangs of regret and remorse acute enough to bring tears to my
eyes and make me miserable for a whole day. It sounds silly, I know,
but the fact remains. Oh, what things we would do--and not do--if we
could have our time over again! I am not so rich that I can afford to
throw money away, but I would give many hard-earned pounds to reverse
that deed. How readily he would have been given back to me, and
suffered to re-establish himself in his old home, had I properly
represented, and myself properly realised at the right moment, that
our two hearts were set on it; but I let the chance slip, and--his
people leaving soon afterwards for parts unknown--never had another.




CHAPTER XVI

THE GREAT STRIKE


This is another chapter that some readers may like to skip. If talk
about a dog is too trivial for those who do not care for dogs, talk
about strikes and such politico-industrial matters--especially by one
unlearned in the subject--is calculated to bore intolerably the person
who merely seeks in these humble pages a little amusement for an idle
hour. But our great strike, which in point of time belongs to this
portion of my narrative, was part and parcel of my Australian life,
and no picture of that life can be made clear unless I sketch in a
line or two to indicate surrounding social circumstances of the larger
kind.

When our vice-regal lady, already spoken of, was about to leave us, it
was inevitably desired to make her a parting gift. Subscriptions were
invited, and I gladly accepted the privilege of contributing thereto.
That is to say, I calculated what I could afford and prepared my
cheque. Then I was stopped by a move on the part of the official
promoters; they notified that the names of all subscribers would be
published, obviously with the intention of stimulating them to
generosity, which it did in many instances. It had the opposite effect
on me. Since it was under the eyes of the receiver that this parade of
the givers was to be made, and since there were certain to be
sneers--though it was small-minded to care about them--at the
self-advertiser with social ambitions, I had not the courage to enroll
myself. And the money I had set aside I sent to the funds of the great
Dock Strike in England, which was going on at that time.

I mention this fact so that the poor working man and his friends may
not gather from any remarks I may make on the subject of Australian
labour conditions the mistaken idea that I am out of sympathy with his
cause. The contrary has ever been the case, and I hope always will be;
as a worker myself, I feel beyond measure for those who are unfairly
hampered in what is so stern a struggle at the best. It has been the
religion of my youth--poorly practised, I confess--to stand by the
down-trodden as against those who in their prosperity walk over them;
but whereas I was once fanatical in the matter, I am cooler-headed
now. Increasingly ignorant as I know myself to be, I understand many
things better than I did in 1889. And such enlightenment as I have
grown to in respect of the case of the working man has been given me
by himself.

One thing that I have learned is to pay no regard to popular
definitions. The working man at the London Docks is so entirely unlike
in his circumstances to the whole body of working men here that it
seems an absurdity to use the same name for both. The one is possibly
the poorest of his class; the other, I should think, is beyond
question the richest. And half our working men, so-called, are not
only misnamed but grotesquely named; they are no more working men than
Paul Kruger's republic was a republic.

A few facts may be adduced to show this. But indeed the one bare fact
that this great, rich continent is in possession of less than four
million people, who say they are not able to make a living in it, is
proof enough.

The "starving unemployed" are never out of our streets. Yet, to quote
newspaper comments on this chronic situation--words continually
repeated, consistently unheeded, although no one can contradict
them--"the country is languishing for the labour congested in the
Metropolis. Private enterprise is dying, being slowly killed by
Government competition. Dairymen are turning their farms into
sheep-runs because they cannot get labour; fruit in the orchards is
rotting on the trees or on the ground from the same cause. The
selectors in Gippsland especially are crippled; they find it
impossible to get their land cleared. But everywhere through the state
there is the same complaint of scarcity of labour.... The Government
has raised the rate of wages to seven shillings a day ... the labourer
naturally prefers the Government stroke, and can be tempted away from
that easy and pleasant way of passing his time only by an increased
rate of wages. That increased rate very few industries can afford to
pay; thus all enterprise is crushed." So that one sees where the main
responsibility lies. It is not all the fault of the spoiled children
when they turn out badly.

This one of several political Frankensteins now has its creator by the
throat. The "Organised Unemployed of the City" do their best to make
the life of the Government a burden to it. They will not leave the
city even for the Government stroke (synonym for work scamped and
shirked, the pretence of work) elsewhere--on account of their
families, they say, whom they cannot expose to the rigours of Bush
life. "What," cried a shocked deputationist to a courageous Minister
of Railways who had ventured to suggest that course as better for the
families than having their husbands doing nothing in town, "you don't
mean to say that a man should take his wife into the Mallee with him?
Well, any man who wishes a woman to live there in a tent with her
husband has no respect for humanity." The Mallee was "a hell upon
earth," and--on account of the ants that crawled upon the
sleepers--"the sleeping accommodation beastly."

An independent inquiry amongst a crowd of "starving unemployed"
outside the Government Labour Bureau had some curious results. One
"young fellow" who had been railway cutting, "finding, after a
fortnight's trial, that he could not earn more than thirty shillings a
week, left the job and came back to join" these mendicants. The
reporter of this instance added that "fifty others left at the same
time and for the same reason." Another had thrown up a job of eight
shillings a day on the familiar plea that his wife and family were in
Melbourne. Asked by the inquirer whether he could not have taken them
with him to Camperdown--one of the finest settled districts in the
state--he answered "Yes," but "he could not carry along a quarter-acre
allotment." Another "did not care where he worked, but he must have
twelve shillings a day."

The same issue of the paper which enlightened us in this way as to
what starving means to some folks, published the following:--

"The contractor for the supply of road metal to the Coburg Shire
Council has informed the Shire Engineer that he cannot obtain
sufficient stone-breakers for the necessary work under his contract.
At the meeting of the Council last evening the recommendation of the
engineer that the matter be brought under the notice of the local
parliamentary representatives was adopted." The only comment to make
upon this paragraph is that Coburg is not even country like
Camperdown, but a part of Melbourne. Stone-breaking, it is to be
inferred, is too much like hard work.

This also is public and uncontradicted testimony:--

"It has been represented that many of the men who are clamouring for
employment are unfitted for heavy navvying labour but are eager for
light work. Mr Andrew Rowan, proprietor of St Hubert's Vineyard, put
this desire to the test yesterday. He wanted twenty men to assist in
gathering grapes ... and he went to the Labour Bureau to obtain them.
They were offered a fortnight's work at nine shillings per week, with
good quarters and food, and free passes to the vineyard. Out of 150
men who were outside the Bureau, only eight promised to go, but
actually only four proceeded to St Hubert's by the appointed train."

Exactly the same result of a Government effort to make acceptable work
for a large body of the unemployed occurred a few days previous to
this present date of writing.

But I must hasten to say that these State-made drones--these spurious
workers, deliberately manufactured by Government out of material from
which the genuine article might have been made--are not all the family
of labour in this house of ours. They are not even all the
unemployed, worse luck!

What, I wonder, are the numbers of those who starve--really starve--in
secret because the law forbids them to work for less than seven
shillings a day, which they cannot earn with service not worth the
half of it--all the old and slow and weak, but yet self-respecting and
self-reliant, whose honest bread the Minimum Wage Act has taken out of
their mouths? One is sick of the continual begging of these victims to
inexorable inspectors and Boards to be allowed to work for thirty
shillings a week--for twenty-five--one poor tailoress, who had
supported herself with her needle for fifteen years, stood up in court
and begged with tears to be allowed to work for twelve shillings and
sixpence, which she said would "keep" her--and seeing the invariable
brutal verdict given against them. I cannot bear to talk about it.

And there are all those outside what may be called the official
working class, to which even these compulsorily-idle unfortunates
belong--salt amid the rottenness that wastes our young nation almost
before it has begun to live. How many of the fine young fellows who
went soldiering to South Africa have looked to that country for home
and work when soldiering was done? I could name a round dozen amongst
my own acquaintances. As a fact, they and their civilian comrades are
pouring thither as fast as they can get passage money and a hundred
pounds together; every ship that sails that way is packed with them.
"There is no opening for them here," say the fathers and mothers who,
when they were young, fared so differently; and they scrape and screw
to give their boys a chance. Well will they prove the quality of their
manhood if they get it, as the "contingenters" amongst them have
already done. But imagine going from a country like Australia to a
country like South Africa (as it is now) for a chance!

Take again the youths of our cricket-fields--who, however, are one and
the same. Hard, quick-witted, thorough, "playing the game" in every
sense of the term, there is no evidence about them of deterioration
from British standards; rather the contrary, indeed, for the generous
climate and comparative brightness of life have added buoyancy to the
hereditary temperament, the good that happy circumstances always bring
to the originally wholesome nature. And those young men are the
diluted second generation of the race I knew in the old days--the
pioneers, who feared blacks and bushrangers far less than the
"starving unemployed" fear ants.

See also the gallant Bushmen who go out into the wilds to "take up"
land, and who stay there, fighting with bare hands not only against
the forces of virgin Nature, but under fiscal burdens heavier than are
borne by any other class; who scorn to ask alms of the State which
they serve so well, and who bring up hardy children to the same fine
traditions of manly self-respect. Think of these men having to "turn
their farms into sheep-runs because they cannot get labour"--working
themselves so hard, early and late, as they do (for at least that is
allowed in their case)--while unworthy loafers are cockered up with
"Government works," often devised on purpose for them, and fancy wages
that they do not pretend to earn!

Above all, there are the women. In the old times the Bush wives, from
the highest to the lowest, made their homes, so to speak, with their
own hands. The squatter's wife, who later came to her town house and
her carriage, did "all her own work" cheerfully "when she had to do
it," and is rarely ashamed to acknowledge the fact--refers to it,
indeed, with a wistful tenderness of voice and heart that plainly
tells how she compares the hard times with the easy ones. And after
that cataclysm already described--the Bursting of the Boom--when the
revels of riches were so rudely interrupted, as if somebody had turned
the gas off suddenly, what did we see? The girls who had never had to
work, who had seemed to live entirely for pleasure, who appeared to us
eaten up with the frivolity of their luxurious lives, as soon as their
great houses fell, instead of sitting down to mourn and weep,
overwhelmed with the shame of such a tremendous social "come-down,"
turned to, like Britons indeed, to help their ruined fathers and to
support themselves. In no faddy, fine-lady fashion either. They took
the work that they could do, with no false pride about its being trade
or otherwise, and at this day you may see them still at it, calm and
business-like, never wanting favour on the score of having "seen
better days," never so much as reminding one that they have seen them.
They run many tea-rooms, or wait in them, or make cakes for them; they
keep various little shops, are milliners and dressmakers, typewriters,
dentists, all sorts of things.

It was significant that our great Labour War developed with the Boom,
and that the defeat of the insurgents coincided with the downfall of
the rotten edifice that had towered so high. They were correlating
forces, the Boomsters and the Strikers, and worked together to pull
our house about our ears, as effectually as if it had been their
conscious purpose to do so. When the fight began the aggressors had no
wrongs to right, no worthy cause to fight for; on the contrary, they
were in a position to make them the envy of their class throughout the
world. They had but eight hours' toil for a day's wage of eight
shillings to ten shillings and more; universal suffrage; payment of
members in a Parliament where the labour vote was paramount; and
behind them that immense trades-union organisation which embraced the
whole continent, and as a governing power had but a handful of troops
and a few hundreds of police against it. What was left for the working
man to claim? I have searched the records for a justifiable cause of
the effects that made our strike unique in the industrial history of
those times, and I cannot find any. The only ostensible grievance on
the pastoral side was that a few squatters proposed to reduce wages
when wool was "up" and cheated their men by selling them poor food at
high prices; on the maritime side that ships' officers found
themselves, not ill-paid, except as all sailors are ill-paid, but paid
less than the unionist (and therefore more privileged) seamen under
them. If there was any other ground for hostilities it nowhere
appears, and as a fact hostilities were in progress long before the
two grievances mentioned took shape.

We laughed at a funny little incident that occurred at the beginning
of the year, not realising all it signified. A baker in a poor suburb
had a faithful servant who did not belong to the Operative Bakers'
Society. Discovering this, the O.B.S. demanded his dismissal. The
baker refused to dismiss him. The O.B.S. then detailed two delegates
in a buggy to follow the baker's cart on its rounds, and to prevent
the delivery of his bread at every door. Upon which the baker armed
himself with a gun, and in another buggy followed the delegates,
threatening to shoot them at each attempt to interfere with his
business. The little procession was the delight of the streets for
some hours, I believe, when the delegates retired from the contest to
take out a summons. The baker was haled before justices and fined--but
only ten shillings, in consideration of his gun having been empty, and
of the "considerable provocation" that he had received. What became of
the baker's man I do not know, but I can guess.

Another case, with nothing laughable about it, was that of a poor,
small farmer, who did all his own work. To him came the secretary of
the Slaughtermen's Union, demanding to be informed who killed his pigs
for market. When the farmer admitted doing it himself, he was told
that unless he joined the Union, and paid up all back fees, his pork
would not be allowed to be sold in the Melbourne markets. He wanted to
know whether the S.U. had leased the markets, or how else they
proposed to bar his pork. Simply, he was informed, by "calling out the
slaughtermen from the sheds of any salesman who dared to sell for
him." Thus this poor man had to join the Union, at a cost beyond his
means, to make himself liable for strikes and other things that he
disapproved of, or starve. And thus did Unionism, designed to
frustrate tyranny, play the licentious tyrant in its turn--not in
thoughtless passion but methodically and on principle, wresting the
liberty of the individual from him by brute force.

Instances of this kind multiplied daily, and slowly roused
us--long-suffering people as we are--to a perception of our case as
Britons who never would be slaves. This was slave-driving pure and
simple; a bit of the Middle Ages back again, when men were denied
their elementary rights and had no redress. The reign of ignorant
tyranny passed, as it was bound to pass, but it has left its mark on
the national character. The habit of the high hand comes out in all
sorts of ways--in our treatment of our Chinese fellow-citizens, in the
despotic attitude of our Federal Government, which regards foreign
nations as pirates and our coloured brothers as vermin unfit to live.
And how the habit of being bullied has demoralised us is shown by our
acquiescence in a state of political bondage that hardly leaves us
free to blow our own noses in our own way.

There was no limit to the extravagance of Unionist demands, most of
them ultimatums couched in Kruger-like terms. As, for instance, this
letter addressed to a ship captain who had dispensed with the services
of a misbehaving member of the crew who happened also to be a delegate
of the Seamen's Union:--"Dear Sir,--I am instructed by the members of
the above Society to state that we intend to have our delegate, ----
----, reinstated on board the ----. If he is not reinstated by the
return of the ship to Sydney, the crew will be given their twenty-four
hours' notice." The agents of the Company replied on behalf of the
captain that the man had been discharged "because a change was
considered advisable in the Company's interests," but that there was
"no objection to his joining one of the other vessels of the Company."
This mild and generous answer was of no avail. The Union called out
the crew, and forbade its members ever to ship under the offending
captain in any vessel whatever. It was the tone of voice in which the
"other side" was habitually addressed. The Mill Employes, who would
have all their managers--gentlemen with salaries of L300 and L400 a
year, not one of whom could have been replaced from their
ranks--forced to join their Union with them; the Stewards and Cooks,
who would have their members on ships exempted from the punitive
regulations attached to losses of plate, and so on; the Tinsmiths and
Ironworkers, who would abolish piecework--always hateful to the
political working man; the Implement-makers, who would make ten
shillings a day the minimum wage and required other privileges--all
formulated their demands in the terms of the Seamen's letter. Indeed,
the most painful part of the business was the callous rudeness of the
methods pursued, which openly made the redressing of wrongs of less
importance than the humiliating of the adversary on whom, as it were,
the tables had been turned. Of course, it is here that one must admit
the two sides to the question, and make allowances for the one that is
not one's own. Still--even if we would have done the same under the
same circumstances--the element of personal insult was deplorable.
That indignity put upon the captain who was not allowed to know his
own business, or do it, was repeated with others as often as occasion
offered. There was a member of the Engine-drivers' and Firemen's
Association who, being appointed a delegate to some meeting or other,
left his work and went off to attend it without troubling himself to
ask leave of absence. He returned after five days, and was dismissed
for his act of insubordination. Upon which his Union notified his
employers that if they did not reinstate him the workers at his trade
would be called out. No just-minded person, whatever his sympathies,
can condone such unfair and un-British tactics of war.

These, however, were but the sporadic skirmishes of the campaign. The
great engagements were two--they went on together and intermingled--the
Shearers' Strike and the Maritime Strike. I think the records establish
clearly that the Shearers began the trouble. Coincidently the Marine
Officers (not all the captains--at anyrate, not those of my
acquaintance--who do not desert their posts under any circumstances)
put themselves, which practically meant the ships as well, under the
"protection" of the Trades Hall--put themselves really under the
domination of the men they were supposed to govern, that they might
force the hands of their masters as the latter had done; but it was the
Shearers' announcement, already made, of their monstrous intentions
that showed the ship-owners what they were in for, and the necessity
for putting the foot down at this point. Having, as they expressed it,
"made concession after concession, for the sake of peace, until they
found that the ever-increasing requirements of the labour bodies
threatened to take the control of their business entirely from them,"
they now refused to treat with their officers as unionists, taking all
the consequences of so defiant an act. It was a fight for existence
that had come upon them and the Pastoralists, who between them
represented the staple interests of the country; and they combined
their forces and stood up to continue the argument with the weapons of
the other side. They too formed Unions.

But it was the Shearers who began it. Long before the shearing
season, the squatters had been commanded to employ none but Union men,
and had continued to employ non-unionists, although sparely, just to
show their independence. The squatters, with the farmers, and indeed
all the country dwellers who have settled homes, are the steady-going
Conservatives of the community, some good reasons for which will be
obvious to the thoughtful reader. Country interests seem always--which
is a great pity--opposed to town interests. There is a "country party"
in every parliament, and in the navigation of public affairs it
generally makes bad weather of it; but this is not due to the quality
of its representatives so much as to their deficient quantity, to the
fact that it is too busy at home to take such part in politics as
would qualify it to meet the other side on equal terms. But it is a
tough-fibred, stout-hearted breed of men, that has not accustomed
itself to being bullied. And it said--and stuck to it with truly
splendid gallantry--that no men or body of men could be allowed to
abrogate "the right of all to work peaceably under the laws of their
country." Very well, said the Shearers' Union in the inevitable
manifesto, then "not an ounce of non-union wool shall go unfought from
Australasia." "All right," rejoined the Pastoralists, in effect, "do
your worst."

Consider for a moment the Pastoralists' case. They too were men
working for their living--we have no leisured class here--and few of
them but had suffered from droughts and bad times, and depended on
their clip to ease financial embarrassments. "A ring of capitalists
conspiring to crush labour" was how they were constantly described by
the strike leaders, but nothing was further from their intentions than
to ruin themselves if they could help it--the patent result of
hostile action at this time. They only accepted that risk because
there was a higher thing than money at stake. The Shearers, on the
other hand, were exceedingly well off. Good men could get L30 for a
few weeks' work, and then have the bulk of the year for other
avocations, or go on earning at that rate for months together. And the
shearing was not only the sheep farmer's harvest, it was the country's
as well, and all the interests of the country were bound up with it.

But the strike leaders said that every ounce of wool that came from a
station on which so much as one non-unionist (a Chinese gardener was
sufficient in one case) was employed, was to be boycotted by the whole
strength of the federated labour organisations, and they
light-heartedly set out to do it. Very soon after the commencement of
active hostilities they claimed "the aid of the labour unions of
England, whom in their hour of need Australia aided so well"--as to
which it may be said that of the L20,887 sent to the London dockers up
to 20th November 1889, only L5817 was contributed by the trade
societies; the rest was the gift of soft-hearted non-unionists like
myself, who did not bestow it to ask it back again.

The great shipping companies--I think the British India was the
first--were ordered to refuse non-union wool as cargo. When they
protested that they were mere public carriers for the world, and that
such a local matter was no concern of theirs, the Wharf Labourers were
called upon to refuse to load it or "come out" in a body. Bakers,
butchers, and other trades were not to supply those vessels which
touched the forbidden thing. When clerks and other non-professional
persons took up the abandoned work, the usual picketing and
persecution ensued--the conventional routine of strikes in all
countries. The odds just here seemed hopelessly against the defenders,
the sheer force of numbers overwhelming. The Seamen's Unions, with
which the Marine Officers had cast in their lot, had cast in theirs
with the Shearers and others, or, rather, their leaders had done so
for them; and the crews came out, officers and all, at a few hours'
notice, as they were "called" one after another, although the
passengers might be on board and perishable cargoes doomed. "Wharves
deserted" was a flaring headline in our morning papers, and the number
of vessels named as compulsorily "laid up" rose daily. The campaign,
from the unionist point of view, progressed without a hitch.

Until the gas-works went on strike. "All the men at the works come
out," was announced to us one morning, and night brought an uncertain
dimness to the streets and a realisation of what was happening--the
plunging of our great city into darkness, while flooded with this
dangerous element of mob rule.

This did seem a little too much, and the worm turned. There were
meetings of the Cabinet, and a wholesale creation of special
constables. It was announced by Authority that "order must be
maintained at all hazards," and that it was resolved "to bring 100
members of the Mounted Rifles, with their horses, and 100 members of
the Rangers from the country districts into Melbourne without delay."
It was ordered that these troops "be kept on duty at the Military
Barracks, St. Kilda Road, and not brought into the city unless
occasion should demand it." But the Governor issued a proclamation
which warned all concerned that a state of legal "riot" had arrived,
which called for legal measures.

The strikers were nonplussed. First, they did not believe in it; then
they felt furiously insulted; then they "went for" revenge headlong.
That is to say, the strike leaders did so, not only because such was
the natural course for them to take, as enemies of society who had had
soldiers set at them, but because it would have been as much as their
places were worth to admit that they had over-reached themselves.
Powerful they must remain at any cost, or, as far as they were
personally concerned, the game was up; and for the remainder of the
fight, as we saw it, they used all that splendid loyalty and
confidence which was, as it were, trust-money in their hands, to this
one end. If the gas-works could not be taken by assault, they could by
mining. The order went forth that "no more coal ships owned by the
Victorian steamship owners be loaded." The ship-owners being to a
large extent the coal-owners, the wide-reaching effects of this move
can be imagined; every poor family felt them. With a stroke of the pen
the Labour Congress in Sydney called out not only "all the miners from
the Western mines," but "all shearers, rouseabouts, carriers and
others _in any way connected with the wool industry_"--plain wool now,
and never mind who took it from the sheeps' backs. This was the last
card of those desperate gamblers--to destroy the wool industry bodily,
L20,000,000 of the "living" of 4,000,000 people--and it finished the
game they had already thrown away, so far, at anyrate, as Victoria was
concerned. During the following year, 1891, there was a tough struggle
in Queensland, where shearing began with the first month. The
Amalgamated Shearers had hoped that Pastoralists (now amalgamated too)
would "yet see their foolhardiness, and come to some satisfactory
arrangement in favour of the portion of their new rules, which are
obnoxious to the Shearers;" but the Pastoralists did not. Freedom!
Freedom! was still their cry, and they had more strength to back it
now. And when the disappointed ones took to riding about the immense
colony in armed bands, firing grass and wool-sheds, turning (at
anyrate, threatening to turn) out rabbits, and laying obstructions on
the railway lines that carried non-union workmen, then troops and guns
were sent to all the endangered places as far as they would go round,
so that at last the defence was passed on to the Queensland Government
itself, which had to end the duel. But it was in November 1890 that
the Trades of our colony, in meeting assembled, were informed by their
leaders that the strike was at an end, and they must make the best
terms they could with the employers. And our soldiers had not to be
sent anywhere. The moral effect of their known proximity and purpose,
the disgrace of it, was enough to calm the disorder of the town.
Strike leaders took care to give them a wide berth, and the men, who
were not cowards, showed by their attitude of insulted dignity how
this strong measure on the part of Government brought home to them the
lengths to which they had gone. The captain of a mail steamer once
sketched for me the comical picture of his big ship lying off a
certain hostile shore, under the protection of a British gun-boat that
he could have "put into his pocket"; so this handful of
uniforms--militia at that--sufficed to check that mighty organisation
of tens of thousands which so far had stuck at nothing. They did it
by merely "keeping on duty at the Military Barracks," without showing
a nose outside the barrack gates.

I do not know whether they were disappointed that no more was required
of them, but I think they were, for it was their first chance of
service in the field--as much as they would ever get, it appeared at
the time. Certainly they responded with alacrity to the call for them,
and "stood by" for action with the air of men enjoying themselves.
Tents were pitched in the Barrack Square, and the little camp seethed
with the excitement of its sudden importance. This feature of the
great strike was one of much personal interest to me, because the
barracks were a haunt of mine at this period. A beloved friend, now in
her grave, was there, the wife of the colonel who created the Mounted
Rifles, who commanded the Second Victorian Contingent in South Africa,
a fine soldier of a race of soldiers, and now a C.B. in Imperial
recognition of the fact. Since the breaking-up of my town home at
Toorak, on the death of its head, whose daughter she was, her official
quarters had been its substitute; and many indeed are the happy
memories that flood back upon my mind when now I ride past the massive
granite pile without stopping as I used to do. As a family residence
it was not considered a success. The Barrack Square, seemingly walled
off, was not walled off enough for officers' little boys; the tall
rectangular rooms were gloomy, the stone stairs cold and prison-like,
the back-yard a mere well in the masonry--although the colonel kept
his shooting dogs there, and tried to keep a cow; the basement a haunt
of rats that ate our boots and shoes while they were down to be
cleaned, and one of those public stenches that Melbourne still keeps
amongst her institutions (though this particular one has been
eliminated) so close under the windows that it was necessary to shut
them when the wind blew a certain way. But it was an interesting place
to visit at, apart from the friendship that has hallowed it to me. The
bugle of a morning sent thrills through my waking senses, with its
associations of the past. The stately bustle of military business,
trampings and clankings, and the omnipotent word of command--the
pleasant officers dropping in so often, the reviews, the tattoos--all
had their charm for me, because then I knew only the picturesque
features of soldiering, the romantic side, which I think now it will
never wear again for anybody.

And there never was a more interesting time at the barracks than that
which saw these country troops massed on the parade ground, waiting to
be summoned to so new and strange a duty. Their colonel was a man
notorious for plain speaking as for plain acting; the straight word
and the swift blow (if necessary) were his, and a perfect scorn of
consequences. In military affairs especially there was no mincing
matters. Business was strictly business. So he told the men, who might
at any time be called out to suppress civilian rioters, what they were
to do in the terms that they were accustomed to. An orderly patience
was to be maintained up to that point where the line had to be drawn;
if that were passed, then, said he, simply, "Fire low and lay 'em
out."

To "fire low" was, I believe, enjoined under the given circumstances
by the regulations, and to "lay 'em out' is a colonial expression
covering a wide field. His men understood him perfectly, and nobody
within barrack walls had an idea of the potential sensationalism of
his words. But somebody repeated them outside; the exasperated
unionists got hold of them and found a plausible grievance in them,
and they seem to have been immortalised by the tremendous rumpus that
ensued. Here were poor innocent working men, and here was this
bloodthirsty swash-buckler inciting their own brothers to slay them.
Was the country going to allow such an outrage to pass? Not if they
knew it. The colonel had to stand a sort of military trial for his
offence before the avengers could be appeased. It came to nothing, but
gave him as a scapegoat to the revilings of those with whom soldiers
had become so unpopular. They hissed him in public places. They
soothed the soreness of their other reverses by trying to make his
life a burden to him. But it only hurt him through his wife, whose
bright, good life it saddened deeply for a time. "Fire-low" or "Lay
'em out" took the place of his Christian name in the public mouth, and
they keep it still, only that now the bitter nicknames have come to
sound almost like terms of endearment.

For when the South African struggle came to widen our outlook in so
many directions, there was such a unanimous call for him all over the
country that it cannot be supposed that his one-time enemies did not
join in it. He was not chosen to lead the First Contingent, and the
crowds through which it passed from us loudly voiced their sympathy
with him in the untoward circumstance. I saw him go with the Second,
and the cheers that followed him from the barracks to the ship were
heart-stirring to listen to. It was thought that he was riding his own
charger, which was safe on board, and his borrowed mount was almost
denuded of its mane and tail by the enthusiasts who wanted a hair as a
memento of him; he was nearly dragged from the saddle by the press of
parting hand-shakers. It was the same when he came back, only more so.
Every returned soldier was mobbed by his friends, but the frenzied
"There he is!" and "That's him!" when the big colonel turned a corner
into view, and the resultant roar of welcome, proclaimed the popular
as well as the peculiar hero.

The military intervention in the struggle of the strike appeared
decisive, but to deeper causes must be ascribed the modifications in
the situation that remained after the dust of combat was cleared away.
Labour Unions in this country were taught to "play the game" as
soldiers would never have taught them. It was the civilians who
manfully refused to knuckle under, who risked all for honour and the
public good, to whom, more than to any other cause whatever, we owe a
dozen years of industrial peace. And if that same wholesome spirit of
true patriotism would arise again to put down a form of tyranny that
has become quite as oppressive and ruinous as the Unionism of old....

But we shall see that too, some day.




CHAPTER XVII

OVER THE BORDER


My experiences of life in Australia, long in time, have been narrow in
space. Of the thirty years of this chronicle, not six months were
spent outside Victoria.

In earlier times I paid little visits to Albury, just over the border.
We drove from Y---- in our first buggy, which was bought there, taking
the babies to a house that was full of playmates for them, and where a
couple more or less added nothing to the family cares. Looking out of
my window one morning I realised why this was so. In a back-yard
below, on a kitchen chair, sat the hostess's young widowed
sister-in-law, who lived with her and was the mother of two; these
two, my two, and the dozen or thereabouts of the family proper, sat or
stood round her like a class in school, and from a huge basin on her
lap she fed the lot, each in turn, a spoonful at a time, round and
round, until the supplies were exhausted. The serious faces of the
little ones as they opened their mouths wide one after the other
showed they were not at games, but performing a duty they were
accustomed to. When I went down to breakfast I was quietly informed
that the children had had theirs and gone out to play. But I think my
clearest memory of Albury is of the splendid Fallon vineyards and
cellars, in which one morning a hospitable proprietor offered us
tastes of his famous brands in innumerable little glasses, which
politeness constrained me to "sample" at all costs. Taking but a sip
of each, I reckoned that I must have swallowed a quantity fully equal
to my daily allowance for a fortnight; and we drove home in the sun
directly afterwards. I am proud to say that, although not a seasoned
vessel, I passed the ordeal undisgraced even by a headache--my late
host had confidently predicted it--otherwise I should not tell this
tale.

Then I once went to Tasmania--for four hours. This was not very long
ago, and I have ever since been awaiting opportunities to extend my
acquaintance with that charming place--so green, so cool, so rich in
the quality of its earth and all that springs from it, rightly
entitled to its name of the "garden island" as far as my skimming eye
could judge. Being out of health, I had taken one of those sudden
longings for the sea which come over me at such times, an instinctive
animal craving after the natural remedy for my complaint; and I had a
friend in the captain of a smart steamer plying to Tasmanian ports. An
invitation to a trip, as a privileged passenger, was too tempting to
be refused. Thus I found myself one morning, tucked up in pillows and
a 'possum rug in a long chair on the bridge, eating my breakfast of
fried fish and coffee while I gazed at the Tasmanian shore, which we
skirted between ports for several hours. We were near enough to
discern the little farmhouses in the nooks of the hills, the little
figures of milkers and carters, and housewives hanging the wash on the
clothes line; and there was a beautiful coach-road running up and
down and round the corners amongst the trees that I shall never be
satisfied until I have driven over. I have spoken of it to those who
have, and they tell me that imagination cannot conceive of it as more
beautiful than it really is, given the right season and weather.

By-and-by we turned a corner ourselves and steered into a channel that
presently opened out into a little inland bay, a little port,
connected by a toy railway with Launceston. Its little town and
wharves, where other ships were loading and unloading, occupied a
section of the wooded hills enclosing it; elsewhere the green
basin-rim was dotted with nestling homes, and their orchards and
gardens. It was towards noon, and I was called to an early lunch,
after which the captain appeared in mufti to take me for a walk. We
were through the streets in a few minutes, and on a quiet road lined
with great holly-hedges, a mighty tree of which, one blaze of scarlet,
stood in a garden where the earliest spring flowers were sprouting
from rich brown earth such as I had never seen on this side of the
world. We followed the course of the bay as it narrowed in amongst the
hills until it became a mere woodland brook burrowing under the
bushes. The grass was lush and dewy, and the colour of the soil, where
the path revealed it, as delightful to English eyes as the colour of
flowers. It was too early for more than a sprinkling of these, but I
filled my hands with ferns and other vernal treasures that told me
what a Paradise the land would be in a few weeks if that was a fair
sample of it. We "hustlers" of the mainland think it a fine place to
visit in the hot weather, but far too dull and behind-the-times to
live in; but to those who love Nature and a quiet home, and find
their intellectual resources in themselves, what an ideal environment!
"Here," said I to the captain, as we strolled back to the ship, "is
where I should like to spend my last days--to rest when work is done."
The idea obscured for a time the settled plan of my life, which is to
get "Home" somehow before the final event. We sailed in the afternoon,
and from the bridge I watched the fading of the green land as I had
watched its unfolding, but feeling now that it was my friend for life.
Now and then you look into a face which gives you the masonic sign of
a natural affinity, absent in fifty faces that ought to be more dear;
thus it was with Tasmania, which captured my heart at the first
glance.

The furthest and the chiefest of my few jaunts abroad was to the
mother-city of the mother-state--Sydney. And there is no place like
Sydney. I am firm on that point, although I am a Victorian, in whom
such an admission is rank heresy; and a son of mine who has spent
several Long Vacs. there--in summer, when I would not go near it--is
even more decidedly of the same mind. It was in the year following
that of my illness in hospital, and while I was enjoying my fresh
lease of life, that I took the journey after several false starts.

The captain--an intimate friend in private life--of an Orient liner
telegraphed to me his arrival in port, the hour of his departure for
Sydney, and the information that cabins had been reserved for me. Two
of them, I found when I got on board. As I did not travel with a maid
I took but one, which afforded twice the accommodation that I had paid
for; even that I only occupied for a night. It was a stormy night, and
at daybreak the captain and stewardess surveyed from the doorway a
wretched object in the lower bunk, and it was ordered that I be
brought upstairs to the commander's quarters. His cabin on deck had
been my drawing-room the evening before; it now became my lodging
altogether until we reached port. In the fresh air blowing through it,
and after a light meal of champagne and biscuits, I recovered my
equilibrium, and was able to thoroughly enjoy myself all day. Then the
captain betook himself to the chart-room, where he had a bed that the
weather did not allow him to use, and his servant wedged me in with
pillows as I lay, still wearing the becoming and comfortable
dressing-gown of semi-public life. I had promised not to undress, in
view of his intention to fetch me up to the bridge when the little
world below had done with us, that I might be gratified by the sight
of a storm at sea under circumstances quite outside the common
experience and never likely to occur again in mine. It was officially
a "full" gale, and the newspapers of the next morning reported the
velocity of the wind to have been up to eighty miles an hour. It was,
moreover, the depth of winter and the dead of night. The turmoil of
the sea was tremendous, but it did not upset me now; I was quite well
and happy, swinging to the heavy roll and pitch of the ship in the
soft but tight clasp of my wedging pillows, thankful that no feeling
of sleepiness came to waste the time that was storing such romantic
impressions. Presently the skipper called at the half-open door. He
had oilskins and a woollen scarf, into which I was buttoned and tied;
he dragged me out into the storm, and somehow we staggered and
struggled over the swimming deck and up the stairs to the bridge and
the chart-room, where I spent half of the most wonderful night of my
life, with him and the helmsman and the spirits of the Deep. The
picture of that midnight sea could not fade from my memory in a
thousand years. Looking down from our high platform in the air at the
bulk of the vessel under us, big mail steamer that she was, the
thought of her as man's work, effectually defying, as it seemed, the
whole weight of the Universe, was more inspiring than words can say.
Still more wonderful was the fortitude and vitality of two ships that
passed us, fighting against the furious wind and not being hurtled
along before it as we were. I was sure they were foundering, but not a
bit of it--they were only going to be late at their destination.

We were early at ours, passing through Sydney Heads at daybreak before
pilots expected us. When I went down to my cabin to dress I found my
belongings stowed on the upper bunk and the rest of the room wet from
the deluging seas that had swept us through the night. It was raw and
grey now, but calm within the harbour, the loveliness of which did not
reveal itself to me immediately. I was too rushed to get my hair done
and my shore clothes on to have time to look for it. Here we have
three hours of smooth water on which to make landing toilets; Sydney
has but a few minutes. When I returned, cloaked and bonneted, to my
late host, his successor was with him, awaiting me; and I was soon at
breakfast on shore, making the acquaintance of what I believed to be
the most charming city in the southern hemisphere. Well, at anyrate,
it is incomparably charming to me. Of course, if I had gone there as a
friendless woman, to struggle for a living in cheap lodgings, I might
have pronounced it ordinary--even horrid, a term that I once actually
heard applied to it by a mole-eyed person to whom it had never given a
good time. Or if I had gone again, to get second impressions. Or if
the weather--that arbitrary dispenser of joy and beauty--had not been
as heavenly-sweet as it was for all the three weeks of my sojourn
there. My letters from home reported rain, snow, dull skies, bad
colds, a thorough winter of discontent; I was out every day in
sunshine tempered with cool sea winds, an exhilarating freshness that
made a bit of fur and an evening fire comfortable; and the wild
flowers of spring were beginning to speckle the hills--cascades of
something like white foam surrounded a rocky lunching camp on a
memorable occasion--although it was only July.

I cannot recall one hour that does not bring pleasant thoughts to
mind. Even at night I lay with the gleaming harbour under my eyes
whenever I liked to open them to look, and I loved the strange
experience of having my room flooded as with a search-light by the
revolving beam of the great South Head Light. As an early riser I
habitually wake at dawn, and then I watched the moving ships--a
pastime I could never weary of--until called to my bath. They curved
in and right up to the thresholds of our doors--that is one of the
features of this harbour which few others can match. The masts seem to
grow out of the streets, and you can step from the deck of a great
liner to your cab as easily as from one room to the next.

At breakfast the programme for the day was submitted, and always it
had been carefully compiled so as to comprise as much variety of
pleasure as possible. I was taken on a cursory tour over the city the
first day--round the Domain and through the main streets and
beauty-places, to get that first good impression which has so much to
do with the after ones. I was enchanted with Sydney--even with the
narrow and twisted thoroughfares that are the mock of all good
Melbournites; they give "bits" of architectural composition delightful
to the uncommercial eye. In the evening we went to the theatre, and
afterwards to Parliament House, where the debaters came between whiles
to speak to us, and where I enjoyed a quite new and intensely
interesting experience up to one o'clock in the morning. Next day I
was at the Prorogation, and members entertained us with champagne in
private rooms, and I was shown parliamentary life behind the scenes. I
remember Lord Brassey was there, a visiting yachts-man, whom we did
not then anticipate would be anything more to us. As the hero of _The
Voyage of the Sunbeam_--then lying in Farm Cove, open to sightseers--I
looked at him a great deal, and also at the author of that book, who
at the ceremony sat just before me with her little daughters. She was
having her last taste of travel and of life.

The afternoon of the same day brought quite a change of scene. That
very nice man, the current American Consul, came to fetch us to a
function that was after my own heart--the "send-off" of a popular
American actress by the San Francisco mail. I cared nothing who the
honoured person was; to assist at the departure of a ship was enough
for me. In a carriage piled with flowers we drove to the quay, and
there took tender for the _Zealandia_, lying in Lavender Bay. Before
the arrival of the heroine of the occasion I investigated the ship
that was to carry her--wondering if the day would ever come when such
an one would carry me. Then the crowd gathered until all one's wits
were needed to avoid being crushed in alley-ways and corners. The
distinguished traveller did not impair the effect by arriving too
early; her company preceded her, also her humble husband, hugging her
jewel-box to his breast as he hunted for the purser to take it from
him and deposit it in the strong-room, and while still unrelieved of
his responsibility naming to us and the general public the enormous
sum that it was worth. When at last she came--such a small and
ordinary-looking, every-day woman compared with the glittering stage
vision of the previous night--she was nursing and guarding a strange
bundle of her own, which, when opened in her cabin, disclosed a little
native bear that she was taking home to make a pet of. The wallet that
was to be its travelling house was lined with fur and had been
carefully constructed for the purpose, and a consignment of the
animal's natural foods was amongst her luggage. We crowded into her
room, where more champagne flowed, not always into the right
receptacles; bouquets were presented--they heaped her bed--and
speeches made. Then visitors were rung off the ship, and sat round in
their various small boats to cheer and wave handkerchiefs while the
_Zealandia_ got under way, and then chased the stately liner as long
as they could keep up with her. Our golden-haired friend was kind
enough to stand where we could see her, and was still hugging the fur
bag with the little bear in it as we looked our last. When we regained
the Consul's carriage he took us a drive round the Domain for the
balance of the afternoon, that loveliest hour when Sydney glows pink
in the setting sun and the whole scene is steeped in a dream-like haze
that I never saw in any other place. I suppose the smoke and other
breathings of the city, blending perhaps with exhalations of the sea,
weave that wonderful veil. It is certain that the paintings of a
sinking sun upon distant ranges in the country are never so beautiful
as when there is a Bush fire about.

Next morning to Lane Cove--the first of the unforgetable series of
excursions about that harbour which indeed the wildest boasts of its
shore-dwellers could never do justice to. In the bright winter
weather, which to all intents and purposes was spring--the mean
temperature of Sydney, by the way, is two degrees above that of Nice,
and roses are never out of flower the whole year round--I suppose I
saw it at its best. We landed from the steamer on a bosky and solitary
shore, and basked awhile on beach boulders encrusted with oysters,
before climbing the steep paths to look at views. My son tells me that
when he goes on these excursions with his young parties they take
bread and butter and their pocket-knives with them, so that they can
sit down to a meal of oysters at any place or time. There was another
charming drive in the afternoon; in the evening theatre again, and a
midnight visit to a great newspaper office, where I was initiated into
the mysteries of newspaper production by all the modern processes,
including that of photographing by electric light.

Next day to Coogee--an ocean shore, with great breakers thundering on
it. Here lived a literary wife and painter husband in a little wooden
house perched high upon the cliffs, where I think we lunched. A
Saturday night party of authors, artists, and press-men--my host was a
distinguished member of the latter clan--completed another day in the
most brilliant manner. Talk of good company! I smile when I compare
that party with any Society party that I ever attended. But no
comparison is possible.

It is one of my delightful memories of Sydney, that it had this
intellectual kernel at its heart. I might not have found it in a
lifetime had I entered the social life of the place by any other door,
and so I hardly like to say that we have nothing of the kind in
Melbourne, where my opportunities of search are limited. But friends of
my own profession, who know the resources of both capitals, agree in
the opinion that there really is nothing like it here. The number of
representatives of letters and the arts, to whom mind and not money is
the essential thing, may be as great, but there is no cohesion amongst
them. They are lost in the general crowd. The little guild in Sydney
was a compact and living body, and carried out its objects in uniting
together with a sincerity rarely to be met with in the history of
clubs. Subscriptions were not the first consideration--nor the second,
nor the third; the question of its outward appearance was of the least
importance. No gilding, no formality, no aesthetics--liberty and ease,
any sort of a chair, a pipe and the right companionship--that was the
idea; and it was good indeed to see the traditions of the intellectual
life respected in that way.

I was its guest at a conversazione on the Wednesday following the
Saturday supper-party. The intervening time was filled with fresh and
bright sensations--more harbour trips, alternating with rambles about
the old quarters of the town, the "Rocks," Argyle Cut, the
Observatory, those blind streets and steep stairs from one tier to
another, which struck me as so romantic and un-Australian; and the
Arts Club's entertainment made the best possible contrast and relief
to these. We did not dress too much. I was advised that my skirt must
clear the ground, and for the rest a modest fichu and elbow sleeves
seemed the most that good taste permitted. We set forth on foot in the
cool darkness, comfortably untrammelled, and on arrival were received
by our friends of the previous Saturday and many more, who piloted us
through a series of little rooms, which were soon packed to the point
where a dress-train would have rendered its wearer altogether
immovable. We squeezed from place to place, a step at a time, ever
meeting somebody or something to make us positively enjoy the heat and
crush. Chairs and necessary tables, a piano, a blackboard, a raised
platform or two, comprised the furniture of the homely suite; its
ornaments were sketches pinned all over the walls, and the scientific
and artistic things that covered the tables, outspread for the ladies'
amusement. The mural decorations were fine. Phil May was a leading
light of the society, and the grimy and bedaubed plaster laughed with
his conceits at every turn. Amongst them was a portrait of the then
Governor of New South Wales, Lord Carington, as an utterly
disreputable vagabond. With no name to it, it was such a speaking
likeness of him, as he would have been if he could have metamorphosed
himself into such a character, that no one mistook the subject for an
instant. It was a focus of mirth the evening through. I wonder what
became of it? It might have been disrespectful, but it was a work of
art, and I think he who had inspired it would have valued it as much
as anybody. When, amongst other entertainments, this gifted
artist--and his equally (I used to think more) gifted colleague, "Hop"
of the _Bulletin_, who, still remaining with us, has not shared his
comrade's fame--drew "lightning sketches" on the blackboard with a
lump of chalk, we saw pictures that it was indeed a wicked waste to
destroy for ever a few seconds after they were made. Consummate
artfulness as well as art was employed, for the strokes were so put in
that we could not make head or tail of them until only the crowning
one or two were needed; then suddenly the multitude roared as with one
throat, and someone in the audience sat up in confused astonishment,
while everybody else turned to look and laugh at him. The last touch
of the chalk had given us his portrait to the life, with a shade of
caricature more or less, but unmistakable. I have always looked back
to those lightning sketches, so witty, so good-natured, so extremely
clever, as the most refined form of entertainment that I ever enjoyed,
and certainly the most generous. In other rooms were music,
recitations, microscopes, and such things; and everywhere kindred
spirits were intermingling and intercommuning. The ungarnished supper
was carried on trays over our heads--coffee and sandwiches, and cakes
and tarts from the pastry-cook's--and distributed to hands and mouths
with much difficulty and various mishaps; and at last we broke up and
broke away, and trotted home through the beautiful fresh night, still
exhilarated with all the mental champagne we had imbibed, leaving our
hosts, as we were secretly informed, to make a night of it on their
own account over pipes and whisky.

There was yet another Saturday party--the party of them all. We
started out to it in the sweetest weather to be found on earth, sunny
and fresh, the living light of the sky the colour of nemophilas and
the sea like liquid diamonds under it--poor similes both for the glory
of that spring-like winter morning. On foot from Pott's Point to the
Quay, by boat to Mosman's, up the ferny sandstone hills to breezy
heights where I stood enraptured to look upon the Sound and the Heads
and the Pacific outspread below, and down a crooked woodland path to a
sequestered beach, we took our way: and if there had been nothing to
get to at the end, the walk alone would have been a joy for ever. But
on that lonely bit of shore, backed by the steep hills, fronted by the
open gateway of the Heads, stood "the Camp"--the camp, if I may be
allowed to remind the reader (with apologies, owed twice over, to the
camp's proprietors), which I sketched in my novel, _A Marked Man_,
written while the impressions of the place were fresh in my mind. The
proprietors were two members of the Arts Club--men with homes and
families in the city--who made this their private resting-place and
holiday resort. They had gathered a choice assortment of their
fellow-members on this occasion; they were "giving a party." But no
woman had been allowed to take any hand in the affair; their wives
were as much guests as I was; their cook was their old sailor
caretaker, whose huge blocks of cold roast and boiled, hot potatoes
and plum duff, bread and cake from his own camp oven, required no
kickshaws to supplement them. It was a banquet for the gods, with that
sauce of sea air to it. The permanent tent, combined sitting- and
bedroom, was the drawing-room of groups of us in turn; we crowded on
the covered-up truckle beds and the floor (of pine boards, well raised
from the sand) for afternoon tea; at lunch we sat on planks under an
awning, at long plank tables, like children at a school feast. It was
a perfect "spree," but at the back of the merry trifling was that deep
intellectual enjoyment of cultivated minds rubbing together which is
so rare in social gatherings. We strolled in twos and threes along the
lovely little beach, and sprawled under the bushes, and talked,
talked; a few games had been provided, but there were no blanks to
fill with them after lunch had crystallised us. The walk back to the
boat was the best of all. The sun was setting as we climbed out of the
glen of the camp, and, looking back from points of vantage as we rose,
we saw the moon swim up over the North Head--black as ebony above the
pale glitter of the water, while all other visible land was wrapped in
that beautiful rosy haze which so glorified every feature of it. Then
the great South Head Light began its revolutions, pouring over us and
the darkening path at intervals of a minute. I do not know how far
that long ray reaches, but I know that it is brilliant in the eyes of
the homing traveller for hours before his steamer makes the Heads.

It was on the following morning that we took boat for Watson's Bay,
and stood near the lighthouse to look down the sheer wall at the foot
of which the _Dunbar_ was wrecked, one only of her living freight
surviving to tell the tale. It was awful to think of that event with
the scene under one's eyes--the jagged cliff face going down and down,
the thundering whirlpool raging at the bottom of it; and this was a
sunny Sunday morning, and that was pitch-black night, so thick with
rain and storm that a careful navigator accustomed to the port could
not see the beacon lit for him. But it was not, I think, the present
light; it could not have been.

Those out-door excursions and intellectual entertainments--and I have
not named the half of them--come first in my memories of this time;
they are the pictures "on the line"; but around them were packed many
social incidents of a less special but still interesting kind. We went
to men-o'-war parties, which are always charming--the German
_Bismarck_ in particular was splendidly hospitable--and the American
Consul took pleasure in giving us dinner-theatre evenings. Between
whiles we gave parties at home, and filled the interstices with
drives. And so every day was a full holiday, and I was always well,
and the sky was always blue and the sun shining. And so, when people
ask me what I think of Sydney, I tell them that it is an earthly
Paradise. Nothing will shake that conviction--until I go again.

I returned home overland, rather than descend to the status of an
ordinary passenger on a steamboat to whose captain I was unknown, and
I left my glass slipper on the Redfern platform. "Would you," implored
a strange lady at my carriage window, as the express was about to
start, "oh, would you mind taking charge of this little girl, who is
travelling to Melbourne alone?" She handed up a child, and what could
I do? I said I was not accustomed to taking charge of myself, that I
had never made the journey before, and was not going as far as
Melbourne; but she was sure it would be all right. What a night I had,
with no sleeping berth available! And in the dark of the raw morning,
when we were bundled out at Albury and into the hands of the Customs'
officers, while looking after the child's luggage I lost my own, and
did not recover it for months afterwards. And then I landed at W----,
chilled to the bone and exhausted with my fatigues, and had to wait
many hours for the B---- branch train; and finally reached home to
find winter again and all kinds of arrears of work awaiting me. I sat
down to mend the stockings, and two days later there was snow upon the
ground.

After all, that was the best part of it.




CHAPTER XVIII

THE END OF BUSH LIFE


In 1893 our long country life came to an end. For years we had been
hankering after a Melbourne parish, and at times, I must confess, had
done a little canvassing for the vote and interest of the influential,
under the well-founded impression that Providence helps those who help
themselves; but it is very hard, when once "out of it," as the
country-clergy describe their case, to get in, and we had come to
consider our chances of metropolitan preferment as about equal to that
of the camel which would pass through a needle's eye. Then suddenly it
came to us, unsought.

There are three ways of reaching the goal, in our diocese. To be
elected by the Board of Nominators is the regular way. When a parish
falls vacant the Board meets to fill it from a prepared list of
eligible candidates. The diocesan nominators have probably agreed upon
their man; the equal number of parochial nominators have almost
certainly done the same; the Bishop, acting as chairman, has the
casting vote. There is generally a friendly discussion, in which one
side or the other may allow itself to be over-ruled, but the result
may be fairly calculated upon when the parish representatives are
united and resolute, and not too unreasonable in their choice. Since
they pay the piper, they naturally demand to call the tune, and
considerations of justice no less than of peace make it inadvisable to
force an unwelcome instrumentalist upon them. What the parishes want
is the man they know--the man on the spot, that is--and let him be as
young and smart as possible. Seniority and long service have no part
in the merits of the case, so far as they are concerned. The old Bush
parson who, in his favourite phrase, has borne the burden and heat of
the day, and sees himself deprived of what he regards as his
legitimate reward, is not the man for them; for the efficiency of a
church in this country is in the last resort a matter of money, which
is also--it cannot be denied, nor can it be helped--the matter of
first concern to its official guardians. A good man is desirable, of
course, but not if he is too old and out of date to draw the large and
lively congregation necessary to the maintenance of a satisfactory
income. This is the squalid way in which the voluntary system works,
and I often wish the advocates of Disestablishment at home could live
under it for a few years. On the other hand I know the defects of the
arrangement I was brought up to. I remember a half-witted rector of my
child's days, occupant of a family living, who used to run belated to
the reading-desk dragging on his surplice over his hunting pinks and
tops, or leave us to wait for him in vain while he carried his
Saturday diversions too far afield to get home for Sunday; and another
who left all to a poor curate while he lived on the income of his fat
living in foreign parts; and still another--the son of a bishop, who
had bestowed the plums of the see upon him ere he was grown up--whose
long retinue of liveried servants was an object of interest to me at
church, and who, one of the last of the big pluralists, still alive
in old age when I left England, was too high above his parishioners to
be approached except through the humble curate. There are faults in
both systems--in all. And as for the one I am speaking of, which
leaves the old worker unpaid, and gives the prize to the beginner who
has not earned it, I for my part do not see that any great wrong is
done. That the world is for the young is Nature's own decree; if we,
who are no longer of that fortunate company, cannot see it, we ought.
We too have been young, we should remember, and have had our favoured
day--that day when we had as good a chance of getting the better of
our betters (if they were our betters) as those who supersede us now.
But what I started to say was that the regular path of promotion to a
Melbourne parish is to be elected by the Board of Nominators, and that
that path was virtually closed to us--not because we were old, for we
were not, but because we were so distant and little known.

The second way is to be appointed directly by the Bishop. But, with
few exceptions, the Bishop can choose for himself only in the case of
parishes too small to have their own nominators, or not bothering to
have them, or not qualified to have them because their churches are
still in debt. A church must not only be built, but paid for, before
it can be consecrated, the act of consecration carrying with it full
parochial rights. These lame ducks of parishes did not come into our
account.

The third way is by exchange. This was our way.

G., being in town, fell in with the incumbent of the place which is
now our home. He had occupied it for many years, without thought of
leaving it; but his wife was convalescing from severe illness, and
the doctor had advised that she be taken from the sea to a bracing
inland climate. The climate we had to offer seemed the very thing--and
I may say here that it proved so, even beyond expectations--and the
suggestion of an exchange, coming in the nick of time as it did, was
hailed as a special interposition of Providence. That was exactly what
we thought it.

About a week after G.'s return, Canon S. came up to B---- to
investigate. It rained hard, and he was a little dashed at first; he
called the picturesque little house a "shanty," though not in our
hearing. But when the weather cleared he brightened with it, and I
think I may say that he never had another regret in connection with
the place. The vestry was consulted, and the three parish nominators
gave consent. A few days later the Bishop gave his. Then G. went to
town, to be "passed," in his turn, by the vestry of the other parish,
and a night or two afterwards, as I was going to bed, the telegraph
boy brought me a message from him:--"All satisfactorily settled."

The invalid came up, and we established her, with a daughter, in the
nicest lodgings we could find. She was a dreadful wreck, apparently
past being mended by any climate, but the next time I saw her she beat
all the records of persons of sixty-five for joyous energy and
youthfulness. "I wake up in the morning," she said to me, "and wonder
what it is that makes me feel so happy." It was the same with her
husband, several years her senior. "I can walk twelve hilly miles, and
take a service, and walk back again," he bragged, his figure and step
and fine-featured old face alert and alive. "I am twenty years younger
than when I came."

Certainly B---- deserves to be one of the sanatoriums of the world,
and it is the fact that English doctors, who knew its virtues, sent
several hopeless invalids to us, either to make miraculous recoveries
or to prolong for years in tolerable comfort some life not worth a
month's purchase at home. One of the latter cases I lovingly recall to
mind--that of a gifted young fellow who, with mother and sisters, had
rooms in our chief hotel year after year, although he came to us in
apparently the last stage of consumption. He was a dear friend of
mine, and a loss to the stock of intellect and genius in the world.
"Don't you think I'd better stop this?" he once said to me as we were
taking a Bush walk. "I am keeping my mother too long from her home and
the rest of her family, and doing nothing to compensate her for what I
cost." He meant that he had only to cease breathing that life-giving
air to bring on the inevitable end, and that the sooner it came the
better for those who were exiled for his sake. We discussed the matter
quite fully, and in the quietest way, and I persuaded him that it was
better to go on, on their account and his own, at least until the
effort became too painful. He died amongst us at last, but none of
them regretted those saved years which he unquestionably owed to the
B---- climate. A consumptive friend of his came out to try the cure,
and became so well that he thought himself proof against further
danger, and went home again--to die. Another consumptive, whom winters
on the Riviera and in the Engadine had failed to benefit, lived in
B---- for, I think, five years, and from the day he came gained much
ground and never lost any; he was an active townsman, hard put to it
to find enough to do, and seemed to enjoy life as much as any of us.
Unfortunately he had a delicate wife, a sufferer from acute asthma,
for which a milder climate was required. The rare and vigorous climate
of our hills was pronounced to be as bad for her as it was good for
him. She grew worse and worse, and so they struck camp and went down
to live by the sea--and there he died. Of course he might have died if
he had stayed in B----. On the other hand, he might have been alive
now.

But the best proof I can give of the healthiness of those parts is the
case of three brothers, the elder of whom entertained me on my first
visit into the remoter wilds of our first parish. Originally they were
four brothers, sons of a highly-placed English clergyman, all four
smitten with consumption, out in Australia to save their lives, if
possible. One was too far gone and died before he could get a start;
another, being at the time in apparently sound health, was killed in a
buggy accident many years later; the remaining two are still enjoying
life, as hale as the average old man of their age, and indeed more
than that. The elder, on that memorable drive to his home amongst the
Murray ranges, told me he had left England with but one lung. "I used
to feel it when digging or climbing hills," said he, "but now it
troubles me very little"--and that was thirty years ago. He had
already been some time in the country.

They had good blood in their veins, but little or no money in their
pockets, and they had to make their own way by the hardest of hard
work--the sort of work that was done in those days, when men were men.
Indeed, the history of their career is the most instructive thing that
I can put into this casual chronicle, and I am glad I thought of it
before too late.

The three brothers took up land, wild, uncleared land, together; each
had his own piece, but neighboured the other two. With their own hands
they felled trees and made fences, and built their huts and yards, dug
and ploughed and milked and all the rest of it--these consumptive
lads!--which seems to show that not only the right air, but strong
exercise in it, is necessary for the complaint. They spent nothing in
labour and next to nothing on food. They raised their own meat and
vegetables, made their own candles--after awhile sold them as
well--and their own soap; used wild honey for sugar, and indeed
carried frugality to the finest point in every direction. As soon as
they could marry they chose useful wives, who did not want servants,
but would nurse the baby with one hand and scrub and wash and make
butter with the other. When I paid the visit I speak of I found the
children trotting about bare-footed, in linsey-woolsey (I forget how
to spell that word) overalls, little sacks in shape, with two holes to
put the legs through, in which they could make mud pies without
spoiling anything. At dinner, after the mutton, there was a lovely
apple pudding, as I thought; I remember my greedy chagrin at finding
it was filled with quinces (so soon after the W---- quinces), to be
eaten with wild honey instead of sugar. The jams were also made with
wild honey, and the cakes and other sweets.

This was the way to get on in the world, and the fortunes of this
household rose to the level of its deserts. Soon after I had made his
acquaintance, the house-father took a trip home, leaving his admirable
wife to keep things going in his absence. He came back with three
young Jackaroos, sons of the good families associated with his own,
enterprising lads with money and a desire for the life he had made
successful; they paid him high premiums for instruction, and he set
them on his farm work--which was far better, from his point of view,
than paying professional labourers to do it. One of them felt
aggrieved at being kept at milking and fencing within such narrow
bounds, and ran away and was never heard of more--by me; the other
two, and more who followed them, bought stations and took root in the
country, which they have made their own.

So this plan of the relays of paying instead of paid labourers
increased the resources of our friend, and he started upon fresh
enterprises. He parted with his much-improved holding, settled his
family in a town where the growing children could go as day scholars
to one of the best public schools, and started for "out back" in
Queensland. Land speculation here was a big thing, with big money
hanging to it, in those days; and he was the right man for the golden
chance he saw. He took up country, no longer by acres but by miles,
did something to it to give it a claim to be a civilised "property,"
sold it, and went back further to repeat the process.

In a short time he was a very wealthy man. I believe the Boom and its
consequences gave him a bad set-back, but he could afford it. His
family, in a fine town house, have lived the life of the rich for many
years. The other surviving brother was of a slower temperament. He
still sits, as Dik would say, upon the same land that he first
squatted on--probably in the same house (with additions to it). He
dairy-farms, as so many of his neighbours now do, getting up with his
sons in the middle of the night to milk and to drive the load of cans
to the Butter Factory near by. He still works hard, and he has not
made his fortune. A quiet, staunch, useful man in shire and church and
all the relations of life, and "as good as they make 'em." Both are
good, and their country would be the better of a few more of the same
sort.

And to think that it was all due to the accident of climate! For one
may be almost sure it was.

Walk some fresh spring or autumn morning up those hills, as I used to
do--having always loved to kill two birds with one stone, and three
birds if possible, I would at those seasons take my work there, so as
to combine business with pleasure and with profit to my health--and
you will feel that you are literally drinking the elixir of life. A
week ago I went to call on an old friend come back from England, after
some years' residence there--her husband had been one of those very
Jackaroos of whom I have just been speaking--and she told me she had
been for a trip up to B----, where she had once lived, while we were
there. "I had forgotten," she said, "what that air was. It was a new
revelation to me. There certainly can be nothing like it in the
world"--and she had been travelling extensively. Yes, although I was
ill there, and felt that nothing but the sea would cure me, I go back
now at intervals, when the sea has temporarily failed in its effects,
and I get the same surprise that she did, every time. I step out upon
the little platform in the clear, cold night, at the end of my long
journey from the muggy city, and that stuff that I draw into my
expanding lungs makes a new creature of me in three breaths.

Well, those mornings in the hills ... let me try to describe one of
them--in April, let us say.

It begins with a nipping-cold bath and a roaring fire to breakfast by.
But while we pile the logs on the hearth we also set wide the two
door-windows to the sun. The meal and little housekeepings disposed
of, I look out over the tree-fern on the rockery to the sky which I
can see above the bank of new-blown chrysanthemums that line the upper
fence--look at the cat basking full-length on the threshold--and fetch
my big hat. Half an hour later I am in another world.

It is ten o'clock, and the sun has been shining with all its might
since eight, yet the dew is thick on the steep and rugged track and on
the little strips of lawn between the rocks; my stout boots, made on
purpose for this rough work, and the hems of my petticoats are
drenched. No delicate wild flowers in these verdant spaces now. The
grass tufts are sprinkled with dead leaves and wisps of bark with the
colour bleached out of them. When those brittle shavings were freshly
peeled their outsides were a rich chocolate tint and the insides a
tender shade of lilac. They come from a large-leaved kind of gum-tree,
and I have often carried bits home and laid them on my writing-table,
merely to look at the colour, as if they were flowers; but they fade
like flowers too.

11 A.M.--I sit with pencil and paper on my knee. The sun has long
since dried my skirts and is now burning my boots. I bask in the
warmth and the matchless air, like the cat on the doorstep, and
(having successfully dodged my dog) in the utmost solitude that can be
imagined. Though the hidden town behind me is so near, I have only
once, in scores of mornings, met a human being here--a local
naturalist with a butterfly-net. Not even a bridle-track threads the
thousand hills of which the one I sit on is as a single wave in a
heaving sea--a sea flowing to the horizon. The distant ranges and the
sky are of hues that neither language nor pigment could give an idea
of. The ranges are covered with trees, the rounded, feathery tops only
showing, with the effect of plush or the bloom of downy fruit; their
turquoise tint has a shade of indigo in it, deepening in the folds to
an intenser colour. The sky is living blue light, without an earthly
stain.

Nearer--more within the limits of this world--wooded and rocky slopes,
darkly green against those heavenly blues, fold over unseen valleys at
my feet; nearer still, the gum saplings, with the sun shining through
their leaves, the sharply-contrasting spears of Murray pine, the
tossed heaps of granite rocks, mossed, lichened, fern-fringed in shady
crevices, the wattle tree that makes a frame for the beautiful whole.
It will be a golden frame later on; to-day its blossoms are
represented by crinkled buds of the size of a pin's head. Spiders'
webs shine between twigs and the green blades under them. The light
flashes up and down the little threads continually; they are never
still, though there is hardly a stir of air.

But never was solitude less lonely. There is only too much
companionship for the purpose I have in view. The leaves talk,
although there is hardly a stir of air--the little tongues glitter at
the edges as they swing and turn; and another voice accompanies them,
one that never ceases and cannot be ignored. It belongs to a waterfall
in a hidden gorge near by. The stream, yellower than any Tiber with
the washings of gold mines, tumbles several hundreds of feet over a
jagged staircase of rock to the valley beneath, and makes a great
commotion at that place; here it is merely a purring, crooning whisper
all the time. Birds are scarce, but every now and then a handful of
minute brown things, with a delicate little unobtrusive twitter,
scatter themselves around me. A crow comes and sits as near as he
dare, to complain of my intrusion; perhaps he does not mean to
complain, but his comment upon my presence seems a perfect wail of
woe. As for the ground-dwellers--lizards, spiders, ants--they are
constant company, and the most distracting of all with their
complicated manoeuvres, which are full of cultivated intelligence when
you come to look into them, There was a time when the presence and
curiosity of so many little active creatures seemed a drawback to the
otherwise perfect charm of the place, but now I do not mind them any
more than they mind me. The trouble is that I cannot mind them less.
More and more I neglect my own business to watch them at theirs, until
I have to recognise that this study would have to be given up, even if
winter were not near.

Winter ... that word reminds me of other scenes. There is an entry in
my journal against June 6th, 1887:--"Five hours' heavy snow. Five
inches on the ground." And another for the same month two years
later:--"Woke up to find everything white with snow. Four inches
officially reported. Broke trees and bushes." Our distant ranges used
to wear white caps for weeks together, and white mantles on occasion,
but oh, the joy of shovelling snow in one's own garden! It rarely
stayed long enough to be shovelled, but once in a way it did, and the
first of the occasions cited is unforgetable, because it was the
first.

All the year round we sleep with windows open; here the upper sash was
pulled down level with the lower, and stayed so night and day; and
that window was at the foot of the bed. In wakeful hours I could watch
the stars shining through the branches of the trees, and trace the
shadow-patterns of the moon when it was her night out. Accustomed to
rise early, I rarely fail to note the first glimmer of the dawn, and
the first shaft of sunlight was levelled straight at my eyes, as by a
marksman ambushed behind the looking-glass. As the sun rose I used to
lie with eyes half shut to see the dazzle of rainbow colours that then
filled them--as likewise to see, involuntarily, how the room was swept
and dusted. There was a beautiful rosy-blossomed tree framed by that
open square--I forget its right name, the "Tree of Heaven" was that
given it by the vulgar tongue (I think it belongs to Queensland)--and
it was my almanac the year round. Every morning a little bud grew
bigger, a frond uncurled a little more; as the days passed the foliage
spread and thickened, the leaves yellowed, browned, and fluttered
away. And then the rain would drive in and make a mess on the
dressing-table. Or a wind blew down upon the bed, causing regrets for
the eider-down imprudently discarded overnight when we were full of
the warmth of the drawing-room fire. Or--wonderful and soul-stirring
experience--snow.

On that morning of June 6th, 1887, I felt the peculiar snow-cold,
without knowing what it was, when I got out of bed to take in my early
cup of tea. I had finished it, and was enjoying a few peaceful minutes
before going to the bathroom, gazing upon the bare tree-twigs and
their background of leaden sky, when suddenly I perceived the picture
speckled with fine white particles, and understood that it was
snowing. In the twinkling of an eye I was into dressing-gown and
slippers, calling up the house to look at the sight. The governess was
an Englishwoman, who had not seen snow since leaving her Kentish
village, and never expected to see it in Australia. I went to her room
first, colliding with a maid who was rushing thither on the same
errand; then to the nursery, where I found three little night-gowned
figures already at the window, flattening three little noses against
the glass. The children were chattering and shouting with delight. The
fine white particles had become substantial flakes by this time, and
were dusting the roofs and bushes to an extent that promised snowballs
presently; and the two small boys were wild at the prospect of fights
in the street on their way to school. Australian boys of British
parentage take as naturally to snowballing as to plum-pudding; you
would think, to see them at it, that it was their regular winter
amusement. The bath tap flowed unheeded, until the water overflowed on
to the floor; the fowls invaded the sacred precincts of a
beautifully-kept kitchen, and walked about there unmolested; the cat
got on the table and drank the milk. It was washing-day, but no one
thought of that. The snowstorm was the one absorbing interest to
everybody, except the father of the family, who likes his bed and is
not in the habit of exciting himself.

When the postman came it had been snowing--good solid snow--for more
than an hour, and as he tramped up the twelve white steps to the front
door his feet sank an inch and a half into the soft carpet that
covered them. Shrubs and trees, creepers and bushes were thick with
snow. Masses of the delicate foliage of the marguerite daisy and some
young pepper trees sent us into raptures with their beauty, for there
was no wind to shake them. So did some old fences smothered in green
creepers, the long sprays and trails of which were as neatly covered
as with hoar-frost. Each arching blade of pampas-grass bore heaped-up
ridges of snow, and the feathery heads looked as if they had been
dipped into cake-icing, as if nothing that was not sticky could have
adhered so thickly to such unsubstantial things. Every laurel leaf
held a sausage-roll of snow. The corrugated iron roofs were dazzlingly
white and smooth--two or three inches of snow in every groove. The
back-yard and orchard were a white plain, the latter diversified with
weeds and suckers that never looked so beautiful before, the naked
fruit-trees being loaded with the white powder on every branch and
twig. Beyond the outer fence on one side there was a mass of furze
bushes, covering a piece of waste land; all this was white, too,
stretching away to the grey sky.

It was amusing to see the consternation of the fowls when they were
let out. They had never seen snow before, and did not know what to
make of it. They tried to walk through it, and they tried to eat it;
they flew from point to point and back again, craning their necks from
side to side, in search of the earth that had disappeared. They took
refuge in the kitchen under dressers and tables, and, when driven
thence, under the fowl-house walls, where they stood all day, each on
a single leg, with feathers puffed up, the picture of patient misery.
The cat had left her kittens in an outhouse before the snow began, and
afterwards proposed to return to them. She daintily sounded the snow
with her fore-paw, mewed piteously, and in the end went back to the
kitchen and left the kittens to their fate. But she was, for a dumb
animal, a singularly bad mother. The first time she had kittens she
overlaid and suffocated them, and the second batch she carried from a
warm bed in the middle of the night, and in a tempest of rain, while
they were yet blind and helpless, and deposited them beside an
overflowing water-tank, so that when they were found they were so
drowned and chilled that it took a whole day's nursing to bring them
round.

This was the state of things at half-past eight. It snowed, without
stopping for a minute, until twelve, when the drift was six inches in
some places, and in others a foot. All the heads of pampas-grass were
broken off, borne down with the weight; and stout myrtle and box
bushes, which had taken the snow solidly, were trailing to the ground
with their stems splitting. We had one tree-fern that rose from the
centre of a rockery, and spread itself over it like a handsome
umbrella. It stood in front of the dining-room windows, and was an
object of constant interest to the family, which always knew when it
started a new frond and how it was getting on generally. At twelve
o'clock ferntree and rockery were one smooth white mound--the snow
covered the whole thing completely; not so much as a green tip the
size of a pin's head stuck out anywhere. Even the native gums had
managed to catch and accumulate the soft flakes, so that they looked
as if full of white blossoms; wattles were bent and loaded like the
pepper-trees, while the great pines would not have disgraced a
Canadian winter forest. Such a sight had not been seen in that town
since it was planted in the mountains in the old gold days. We
neglected all our work to gaze upon it. And then a little wind began
to blow through the white stillness, and there were signs that the
snow was going to turn to rain. Huge masses fell from roof eaves and
boughs, falling with a soft but heavy thud upon the garden beds and
paths, which had been so smooth and spotless. "Pure as untrodden
snow"--that is a good phrase. How dazzlingly pure it is! I know it is
silly to say these things to an English reader, but let him be an
exile for seventeen years, as I had been, and see how a snow-storm
will strike him then. It brought to my home-sick heart memories of the
old days of youth, before one realised that there was such a place as
Australia in the world; visions of flat fen marshes, all black, white,
and grey, like a photograph--of frozen meres fringed with pollard
willows, and dry reed-beds rattling in the wind--of old snowballings,
old skatings, old walks with old sweethearts on the ringing roads, old
talks by the winter firesides ... things unspeakable.

By half-past twelve the rain had come, the snow was going. It was
already slushy about the doors, semi-transparent under eaves and
branches. More and bigger lumps of it slid and fell, revealing the
broken limbs of the trees that had seemed so strong, but were not
strong enough for the weight they had had to bear. The boys had come
home with rosy faces and exulting mien, their collars limp as rags,
their boots and stockings saturated, their coats plastered with
melting snow. They had had as good a snowballing as England could have
given them--one they will not forget as long as they live.

But the common winter day up there was, in fine weather, a thing
beyond words. The nipping and eager temperature, the iced pools and
frosted grass in the shadows, the dazzling sun in the open, the
diamond glitter and transparency of the air through which one viewed
the sapphire-blue ranges miles away, the ringing granite roads, that
knew neither mud nor dust, the exhilaration, the invigoration, the
pure joy of life....

And I left this sweet place hard-heartedly, without a pang. So did G.
His dignity of Rural Dean was laid aside with no more regret than I
felt for the old frocks that I gave away because they were not worth
packing. We were Bush folks no more. He was going to be "town clergy,"
and no unimportant member of that much-envied band; and I was going to
live with books and other stirring things--the "larger life," which
somehow never proves quite deserving of its name. And we were going
nearer to England than we had yet been. The day after I knew "all
satisfactorily settled," I began sorting, clearing up, dismantling--a
job I love only a few degrees less than the rebuilding of a new home
out of chaos. "The nuisance of moving!" is a lamentation one hears
often from those who have to do it; nobody ever heard it from me. It
puzzles me how any housewife, interested in having her things nice,
can fail to enjoy such an opportunity for putting new ideas in
practice. I have thoroughly enjoyed it eight times, and should like
nothing better than to move again to-morrow, provided it were to the
right place--the place that I am so long getting to that I almost
despair of seeing it again.

We were moving now too far to take all the furniture with us; in bulk
it was not valuable enough to be worth the heavy railway charges. So I
packed the special treasures and all else that I could, and, leaving
G. to struggle with the sale and the final farewells, preceded him to
Melbourne, that I might lay the foundations of the new home before he
came to it.




CHAPTER XIX

THE EIGHTH HOME


The eighth home was quite an imposing house--for us--too much so for
my taste and the resources of the moment, insomuch that I had to leave
the furnishing of the drawing-room to a future day; but what an
interesting time I had, with my paper-hangers and people! In a few
days I had the walls--raw plaster and grubby at that--decorated and
dry, and the floor-staining done, and the elementary necessaries of
family life collected; so that when I, and the little daughter who had
been with me, met our male belongings at Spencer Street Station on the
30th of October, we went home together for good and all. G. took over
his parish on the 1st of November, and we were then settled down,
although the delights of "fixing up" went on for weeks--I may say for
years--if it has not continued even to this day. A week or two after
the induction ceremonies the parish made a splendid evening party for
us in the largest public room of the town. A great horse-shoe of
flowers with "WELCOME" on it--the iron frame is still preserved in the
gas cupboard--was presented with charming compliments: members of
Parliament and mayors and other distinguished persons flattered us in
cordial speeches from the platform; professional singers--Ada
Crossley amongst them--rendered a choice programme. It was a proud
occasion, a happy beginning of the new life--the first rush of the
champagne out of the freshly-opened bottle--sweet to remember, but sad
also, because, like all such sanguine moments, it both gave and asked
too much.

And now here I was living by the sea at last--the desire of my heart
from childhood. There is a family tradition that when, as a mere
infant on its mother's lap, I saw the sea for the first time--at
Hunstanton it was--I was so overcome with sentimental emotion that I
burst into tears. I can quite believe it. I do not remember ever to
have seen it, after absence, without feeling more or less that way,
whether I expressed the feeling or not. "Hunst'on" in those times was
only the old village of the L'Estranges; where the watering-place
proper was afterwards established there stood but a lonely inn on the
cliff--the New Inn, it was called, though it looked far from
new--where brides and bridegrooms went to get out of the world. We
used to have lodgings at the Coastguards' (parents and children, nurse
and governess, distributed amongst them at sleeping-time, with a
common rendezvous for meals), or at "Willoughby's," within a cobbled
courtyard with gates that shut at night, or at the Post Office, which
sold the wooden spades and pails that were always our first purchase,
or--when we could get it--a whole house of our own, bespoken for the
season from the year before. The same families, more or less, occupied
the limited accommodation of the place summer after summer, and it was
necessary to be beforehand to secure a footing. There was one year
when we were absolutely crowded out--a black year indeed! I see myself
now, face downwards in the orchard grass, broken-hearted by the
calamity. In those days we made the journey from Lynn on a stage
coach--the last one left in England, I should imagine--and the red
mass of Rising Castle was the memorably romantic feature of that
drive, next to the first opening to view at the end of it of the
ever-wonderful and mystic sea. We used to arrive late in the afternoon
and first open one of the enormous hampers and feed like a pack of
cormorants: then we little girls were fitted out in our
sea-clothes--all made on purpose, from the cotton hoods to the
raw-leather shoes--and the boys put on their fishermen's guernseys,
and down we went to revel in sand and rocks and sea-water until the
latest possible bed-time. Old Sam Dunn, the only waterman and one of
my dearest early friends, would already have been up to our lodgings
to welcome us, to take over the boys as partners for the summer in his
boat and enterprises, and to bring his votive offering of cornelian
stones and bits of jet and things to his "little missy." What days!
What days! When my own children were small I went to no end of trouble
and expense to give them the bliss that had made life so heavenly to
me at their age. I took them to the seaside; I bought them wooden
spades and pails; I would have got them a donkey (like Callaby's) if
there had been such a thing procurable. In vain. It was like trying to
teach them to understand Christmas. The sea is not in the blood of
Australian children as it was in ours.

During all my inland life at home and twenty-three years in the
Australian bush, however happy I may have been, there was always that
one thing wanting--the near neighbourhood, the salt breath of the sea.
I used, when in the Western District, to spend hours sitting amongst
she-oak trees in a wind, because, with the eyes shut, one could
believe that there one listened to its very voice. Twice, when ill in
bed, I found the craving overmastering. "I know that, if I could get
to the sea, I should get well," I cried at a time when I was unable to
take myself thither and G. said he was too busy to take me. "Not for
one day?" I implored. "What's the use of wearing yourself out with
those two long journeys, and spending five or six pounds, for one
day?" he asked. It did seem unreasonable, but I begged and bribed him
to give me my wish. We left B---- one afternoon, reaching Melbourne
late at night; next morning took boat for Sorrento and the open
Pacific; saturated ourselves with sea-essences until night again, and
returned home next day. The result was so miraculous that, under the
same circumstances, we repeated the experiment three months later:
only then we took four days instead of one. I do now go back to the
hills for strength, as I said in the last chapter, but quite as often
exchange the sea for more sea.

For where I live I am still forty or fifty miles from the shore
whereon the ocean rollers break. To be sure I can hear the sound of
waves on our Back Beach--one may occasionally be knocked over by them
in the Baths--but, looking across the water that runs sheer to the
sky, I am conscious of the engirdling land that I cannot see; it is
not the great deep that the great storms play with. Even upon this the
house turns its back; my windows command only Hobson's Bay--just a
pond with city round it--the mouth of the river piercing the ring to
my left, the mouth of escape to the sea and the world on my right,
round the breakwater pier and sea-wall that the convicts built. Well,
I am satisfied with that. I have a moving panorama before my eyes that
they never tire of dwelling on. I had amongst my wedding presents a
pair of good field-glasses that lay stowed away and forgotten in
drawer or cupboard until I came here; now they hang by my writing
window, and the case is worn out with the daily handling they get.
Every ship that comes in view passes me by, the multifarious craft
going to or from the river wharves, the great liners that tie up at
Port Melbourne opposite--these last the objects that fascinate me
most. A kind superintendent of the P. and O. Melbourne office sent me,
when I first arrived, a packet containing a separate letter of
introduction to every purser of every ship of theirs visiting the
port, instructing each gentleman to give me "all possible facilities"
to "fully inspect" his vessel. It was my favourite recreation for a
long time to rummage through these floating hotels, and pretend to
myself that I was a potential traveller in them; and then I came home
to watch them steam away without me, as I have watched them week by
week ever since. It is a melancholy pleasure that never palls. But I
have four of those letters to P. and O. pursers unexpended still.

Close about me lie piers, ships, boat-slips, collections of anchors,
buoys, boilers, the old bones of dead vessels once so bravely
alive--more alive, as I think, than anything else that hand of man has
made; everything that meets the eye suggests the sea in some form.
"The fishing village" is a newspaper term for the place, and when I
was coming to live in it every other letter that I received condoled
with me on my being obliged to do so. It is not a village; it is not
more fishy than other towns along the shore; and I have never pitied
myself for belonging to it. The fact that it is not a watering-place,
with an esplanade and summer boarders, pleases me. It could easily
have rivalled the "residential suburbs" across the way, which are
cooled by the sea-breezes on one side only and not on three; but far
be it from me to put such an idea into its head. Let it jog along in
its unfashionable, unenterprising, unbusiness-like way while I am of
it, and begin its hustling--as it will do sooner or later, if the
powers that be allow our limbs to move again--when I am gone. It is a
treat to find something that does not know how to advertise itself,
nor want to know.

In this humdrum place, that is so cool and quiet, and to me so
congenial, there is but one interesting walk. That is to say, but one
that I consider worth giving an afternoon to. G. says he gets tired of
it; I do not; and I am sure that Bob, the fox terrier, spends the week
looking forward to it. The three of us ramble off together on
Saturdays after lunch, weather and other circumstances permitting, and
our faces turn the one way automatically.

We go "along the front"--_i.e._, the one-sided street that fronts
Hobson's Bay--until the little marine stores and cook-shops and
sailors' pubs lose themselves in a wilderness of docks and railway
yards and buildings, lonely and grass-grown since the river and the
port opposite took so much of our shipping from us, though there was a
partial return to some of the activities of former days while the war
was going on. Seldom a Saturday then that we did not find ourselves
blocked by rows of trucks shunting back and forth across our short
cuts, carrying hay or horses to the steamers whose clacking windlasses
we heard from the neighbouring piers.

First we come to the yard within which lies the Graving Dock--once so
wonderful, now so inadequate, but seldom empty and always interesting,
no matter how insignificant the vessel on the chocks. Those
weather-worn tramps that fight the unseen Powers at a disadvantage in
everything, except courage and seamanship, are the ones I like to look
at best. Sometimes we are asked on board, and a rough old salt, hero
of untold brave deeds, shows us round and gives us tea, and feels
himself honoured by the visit of persons not worthy to brush his
shoes. These casual entertainments are my delight. Sometimes the
captain's wife is _cicerone_ and hostess. There was a whole family in
one case, including a melancholy and discontented girl, who had a
piano to practise on, and whose sad lot I was not too sea-crazy to
understand. I sent her a bundle of old novels to vary the monotony,
which was perhaps a cruel kindness.

Now and then tragedy comes upon the scene. A wreck is dragged in to be
operated on. Some poor ship that has had a fire at sea, or her nose
smashed or her side ripped open in a collision, or who has drifted for
weeks with her propeller gone, lies naked before us with her wounds
exposed; and then I stand and gaze and imagine things until G. gets
cross because I cannot drag myself away. When the _Ormuz_ had that
accident in the Rip she so tightly filled the dock that her skeleton
bow was almost within my touch. No more do I wonder at what ships can
go through, having seen how that giant frame was put together. I went
down to the bottom of the dock and held up the great hull in the palms
of my hands. It was a strange sensation.

From the dock we pass by devious ways from yard to yard and pier to
pier, descending and climbing, turning narrow corners, poking
walking-stick or umbrella into the tufts of coarse grass and
scrap-heaps of rusted iron or sea-rotted timber where Bob has his
exciting hunts for the rats he smells but never catches. "No
admittance except on business" is a legend with no meaning for us. If
it rains, or the sun is over-hot, we retire to a dark and spacious
shed where rows of gas buoys await their turn to shine beneficent in
the stormy nights. Impressive creatures they are when viewed so near.
Now and again we are shown torpedoes and compressed-air engines and
such things, but as a rule we are not sight-seeing in a business way
and do not desire company.

So we drift to the outermost pier of all--the Breakwater, half of
which is stone rampart between Hobson's Bay and Port Phillip Bay,
which stands to us for open sea. We sit as long as Bob's patience
holds out on the bulkhead at the extreme end, and watch the ships go
past us--so near sometimes that we could toss a biscuit on to a deck.
They are intercolonial steamers that have started from a Melbourne
wharf or are bound thither; the great liners, of which few are visible
at this end of the week, take a more distant track. In the yachting
season the blue water is sprinkled with white sails; we follow the
manoeuvres of the boats we know, and wait to see the winner come home,
if she is not too long about it. Several times I have been aboard one
of those racing cutters in a "sailing wind," and--I refrain from
rhapsodising on the subject.

If the afternoon is still young we stroll on around the point, along
that sea-wall which was built by convict labour--significant words,
recalling days we do not care to think of. The wall is broken down in
places, and stays so; this is the "old part" as the old times left
it--some day to be repaired and used, but gently going to pieces in
the meantime. All around us here we feel the spirit of those old
times, so stern and sad. Close by is the spot where Commandant Price
was murdered. It was before my time, but I have heard the tale of his
life and death from friends and relatives, co-officials and
eye-witnesses, authorities whom the author of _His Natural Life_ never
had opportunity to consult. They say--of course I can only take their
word--that he was a brave and just, if undoubtedly hard, man, and that
Frere in _His Natural Life_, supposed to be a portrait of him, is a
cruel caricature. One of his official colleagues, who was also one of
the kindest and most high-minded of men, solemnly assured me that what
he did was "what he had to do" and represented to him his duty.

And just here, until a short time ago, lay the strangest little
graveyard that I ever knew. Its enclosing walls had fallen into
rubbish-heaps amongst the grass, which looked too thick and rank to
safely walk in except when summer heats had dried it up; then we would
prowl gingerly amid the forgotten graves--forty years old and
upwards--and read the touching legends on the dilapidated headstones,
which showed, amongst other things, that John Price was not the only
one done to death "in the execution of his duty." Here lay a whole
little world of people as utterly of the past as if they had lived
centuries ago. Periodically someone protested in the local papers
against the disgraceful condition of this lone bit of land, and at
last the town decided to transfer its contents to the present
cemetery. In a corner of that pretty garden they dug one big grave to
accommodate the remains of what they calculated would be between two
and three hundred bodies. The number found was nearly a thousand. I
saw them stacked in little boxes, like a grocer's stock of tea or
candles, half in the new grave, half piled on the brink. Several
pathetic secrets that Mother Earth might well have kept to herself
were dragged to light, and I am sure it must have been impossible to
avoid mixing the fragments up. The new grave now looks very neat,
slabbed all over; and the old burial-ground is ready to build on
whenever good times arrive. But when we walk past the spot we miss
something. We feel that we liked it best as it was.

Usually we do not go beyond this point. We scramble out to the
furthest tenable boulder, and sit with our faces to the water, and
watch the practice of the big gun of the fort close by, firing at a
buoyed flag; and tease crabs, and lay plans for going Home some day,
until it is time to return. But we can go on along the shore until we
all but complete the circuit of the town, which is really a good walk
for cold weather.

The sea makes in a sense the foreground of any picture I can draw of
my eight to nine years of Melbourne life, but there was more than the
sea to render the change to Melbourne instantly beneficial to us. That
was a luxury, an adornment, of our new life; a solid advantage to me
personally, since its air and influence improved my health, but not
otherwise to be so designated. The first substantial profit that we
reaped was in our nearness to the best schools.

It is for his children that the poor Bush parson feels his isolation,
more than for himself. In Victoria he is never placed where he cannot
give them an education of a kind--at the private schools of his
township or the State School in the last resort--but the cost of the
better one that he must desire for them, to fit them for professions
and a good place in the world, is mostly beyond his means. The custom
of the great schools is to charge half fees to clergymen--I do not
know why, any more than I can see the justice of the doctors charging
them no fees at all, as the majority of them will not, unless you
force them to it--but even upon those easy terms I know from
experience that you cannot keep a son at a public school, giving him
all the advantages of it, for much under L100 a year. Lay mothers have
told me that in their case L150 was not too much to set aside for the
purpose to cover all expenses. The Public School means possible
scholarships, not only for the school years but for the University
afterwards; and it is hard to have a bright boy and see him blocked at
the outset from this shining path along which alone he can directly
attain distinction. I know one poor country clergyman who, with his
wife and daughters, lived servantless and on next to nothing to give
the only son his chance. Half their little income must have gone to
pay for it, and the boy was still a poor boy at school, in dress,
pursuits, pocket-money, friends, at a disadvantage amongst his
fellows. It is pleasant to record that he proved superior to these
petty circumstances and worthy of the sacrifices that were made for
him. But he is only a bank clerk now, because, not having a home near
the University, it was impossible for him to go there. Another
clergyman's son of my acquaintance, who had this convenient base, did
his course as an "out-patient," while earning his fees at other work.
He is now a "don" himself.

So, with sons of our own, we soon had occasion to congratulate
ourselves--in the case of one, at anyrate. The boy who had been
pursuing a costly education more than two hundred miles from home was
now within easy reach of it; I could visit him by water for
half-a-crown. And of course I did so the very first thing, fetching
him back with me to make the house-warming complete. It was then
represented to him that the greater part of the expenses incurred on
his behalf might be saved by the simple expedient of transferring
himself from the "Geelong Grammar" to the sister, if rival, "Melbourne
Grammar," which he could attend as a day boy. His answer was--for he
had been over four years at Geelong, and his boat had been Head of the
River most of the time, and it was his school--"I would sooner kill
myself." We quite understood. It was perceived that in his case
economy might be practised at too great a cost, and we refrained from
further argument. The younger brother jumped at the privilege thus
scorned, and turned it to such account that in the following month we
were relieved of all pecuniary liability in respect of his education
for three years to come. In the result there were certain little
embarrassments which took time to wear off. States of tension occurred
in the vacations, and an occasional approach to civil war, all on
account of the merits and demerits of the respective corporations to
which they belonged, and I narrowly escaped witnessing a Public
School's Boat Race in which I must inevitably have seen a son
defeated. I used to wear at these functions, at one time, a
breast-knot of light-blue and dark-blue ribbons, mixed in exactly
equal proportions.

I think the Boat Races and Speech Days have furnished the keenest
joys of my Melbourne life. At B---- there was racking suspense before
the postmaster's son came tumbling down the garden steps to the
dining-room window, waving the telegram and shouting--in defiance of
the regulations--"He's won!" And now, without the wicked waste of
money that I had once been guilty of to obtain the privilege, I could
follow the race on the umpire's boat, and drop proud hints to other
mothers that it was my son who--etc. As for the Speech Days, modesty
forbids me to say more than that I would not have missed them for the
world. But apart from these strictly personal enjoyments, many and
many, long unknown, now came to me.

"Mullens," to start with--everyone who knows Melbourne at all knows
that delightful haunt of the book-lover--and all the new books I could
want, and more; and never the lack of a new magazine to entice me to
bed early. Any night of the week--the day's work done, even to the
last toilet, and a reading-lamp shining softly down upon the page
before me--I can realise my idea of luxury. Old books too--the
Literatures of the Past and of the World (of which I had scarcely
heard in youth before I was cut off from access to them)--these I
could batten on, and at no cost at all. The great Free Library--the
greatest, to my mind, of all Melbourne's civic institutions--was but
an hour's distance from me. It is rather the resort of the street
loafer, looking for a place to rest and doze in, than of the
student--other than press hacks and such like, who go there with the
business note-book and pencil; one never sees--at least, I have never
seen--any of those gentlefolk who throng Mullens's daily; it seems to
lie off the track somehow. I, like the rest, forget to go often when
I might go, but when I do think of it I am amazed at my neglect. A
lending library is included in the many privileges conferred upon
those who pay nothing, and there come from it into the family circle
weighty as well as up-to-date works not otherwise in library
circulation, and beyond the resources of the family purse and the
family bookshelves. For one reason why we do not buy books much more
largely than we do, is the want of settled homes for them. To a people
so wandering and restless, books in quantities become physically
burdensome; they take up too much room in a temporary house, and are
too costly as travelling furniture. By the way, I have not found that
rich people, with whom these considerations need not count, care to
accumulate them.

Gathered under the same roof as this treasure of books are fine,
although relatively less fine, collections of objects representing the
arts of the world; and the picture galleries, with their medley of
good and bad, can charm a loafing hour at any time. Pictures, however,
unlike books, are amongst the things that are still too scarce. In
girlhood I used to haunt their homes in London, when periodically
visiting a spinster aunt who allowed me no more frivolous
entertainment; and it is the memory of those old feasts that keeps me
dissatisfied with the crumbs that have been cast up here. But the
crumbs are adequate to the general demand for them. Art, like Letters,
is still an exotic in the land. In the furnishing of ninety-nine out
of every hundred of the fine mansions that surround the capital,
pictures--real pictures--have, I have been told by those who know,
been the last thing thought of. Yet I have seen two private
collections--one loaned to an exhibition and one in the house it
belonged to--which would be hard to match for beauty and choiceness.
And there may be more.

But I believe there are already guide-books to the city of Melbourne,
with all its British institutions common to every British city of any
consequence precisely catalogued. And I have lived too retired a life
as a Melbourne citizen to be qualified to enter into competition with
them. I do not know the faces of the City fathers when I see them, and
am unacquainted with much else that is common knowledge to any man in
the street. On the other hand I have strayed into some of the by-ways,
the underground tunnels, of our local civilisation, where the local
historian would feel off his beat.

For some years, while in town on business or holiday from the country
(and parish), I was much with a dear friend who, while living far
above it in what we call the best society, shared my passion for
unconventional excursions into what answers here to Gissing's
Nether-World. We did not go "slumming" or anything of that sort--we
would have been the last to commit such impertinences--but we wanted
to see deeper into the workings of the mysterious problems of social
life which so much and equally concerned us. In memory of her and
those days of lofty thought and helpful companionship I keep on a
shelf apart the books she gave me--Mill, Morley, Thoreau, and the
like--that we read together under the trees of her beautiful garden or
by a secluded fireside, and which inspired us to the search for that
ideal truth which we could not admit was inaccessible. Our husbands
were both indulgent to our aberrations from the beaten path. In G.'s
case, I must confess, I traded a little upon the fact that what the
eye does not see the heart does not grieve for; I thought it just as
well that a parson--and one so far away--should not know everything; I
took the view that I was at large for the time being, and to that he
never made objection. Of course, I respected the altered circumstances
when we came to live in town together, and have known nothing of alien
"persuasions" and their goings on of a Sunday since.

But it was just these irregular operations in the moral world that we
desired to investigate, my friend and I: our outlook over it was not
bounded by the walls of the Church of England or of our class. Drawn
as we felt ourselves to be towards our fellow-strugglers after light
and knowledge, we wanted to know what they were doing in furtherance
of the common aim. The phenomena of spiritual life, in whatever form,
attracted us; the more curious and unconvincing to us personally, the
more earnestly to be searched into and understood, if possible. The
Salvation Army was a case in point. Why was it such a power in the
land? Eclectic as we were, we could find but one theory to account for
it--which I still think a good one, _i.e._, that men and women share
equally and intimately in the whole work from top to bottom--but this
did not cover all the ground. It did not adequately explain the number
and fervour of its non-official adherents, and their long continuance
in faith. According to appearances, it is all force and artificial
emotionalism, the "unhealthy excitement" against which I have heard so
many good clergymen earnestly warn their flocks; yet time falsifies
the prediction I remember they made from the pulpit at least eighteen
years ago, that it was a passing craze, a grotesque epidemic, that
would quickly die.

My friend and I--our minds burdened with, our thoughts and
conversation full of, the (to us) injustices of human arrangements,
and our responsibilities towards the (to us) enslaved and
wronged--wondered how much real amelioration of the lot of the more
miserable was wrought by this particular agency. We knew that, as we
sat, like Buddha in his palace, within our social shelters, we could
know little about it; we resolved to go outside and see. It was Sunday
morning, and we said we would go to a Salvation Army meeting, at the
Head-Quarter Barracks, that night. My friend's husband, who would have
liked to keep her (she was so precious) in a glass case, yet could not
bear to balk her wish if it was anywhere within the bounds of reason,
asked leave to take us into the city and to the door of the
tabernacle, and to wait for us until we came out; but we agreed that
that would spoil it all. For what we wanted to feel was that we were
one with our poorer fellow-wayfarers on this pilgrimage of life, afoot
and equal, not carrying any of our unfair privileges into their
rougher line of march. Her correct English maid, who must have had her
thoughts, though she did not express them, produced a plain waterproof
and a gossamer veil, in which my companion could hide her native
elegance from a curiosity that we did not wish to court--I easily made
myself inconspicuous--and we set forth, escorted only as far as the
railway station of our exclusive suburb.

When we got into the Sunday-night city streets we were a happy pair.
Manners in Australia do not deteriorate as the social scale descends;
we were jostled on the crowded pavements, but not rudely; in fact, the
sensation was grateful to us. We were literally in touch with our
kind, free of artificial restrictions, and "seeing life" as we had
desired to see it. The crowds were later, however; going in we were
before them, thinking it wise to be early since we had to find our
way. The large building was filling fast when we arrived, but we
secured what we thought safe seats--near the door, and with a pillar
or something buttressing our backs--and from this point studied the
scene and the proceedings with rapt attention. I should think no
Salvation Army meeting ever included two persons at once so devout and
so hopelessly impervious. But, though impervious, we were deeply
impressed. The only thing that offended us--unless I except a hectic
and hysterical preaching girl, whose health we saw being destroyed
before our eyes--was the conduct of a group of lads who had evidently
come for the fun of the thing. They sat just within the door, and
ought to have been put outside it; yet their ill manners were
compensated for by the patient courtesy of the officer who from time
to time came to expostulate with them. For myself, I could willingly
have boxed their ears. I remembered this incident when afterwards I
had a Salvation Army servant and it was reported to me that my own
mischievous boys had gone to the little conventicle of her sect to
hear her preach. She was a quiet-mannered, sedate sort of person, and
never gave us Salvation Army in the house, except in the form of a
modest brooch; but on Saturday evenings--the Australian servants' free
time--she stole off in her hallelujah bonnet, and, I was told, carried
a torch or a banner in the procession that patrolled the town, and
sang and prayed with the best of them. We never minded these little
things, holding the view that a good servant was a good servant, and
that her religion was her own business. One of the best we ever had
was a Roman Catholic of the strictest type. I believe that girl never
omitted an observance required of such an one; yet she never allowed
us to be inconvenienced on that account. She would do her washing, or
whatever it was, in the middle of the night to go to a morning
service; on Sundays she would come out from her devotions at her
church, which was not a stone's throw from ours, to put on the
potatoes, and trot back again. Between our kitchen and that of the
Presbytery the most neighbourly relations existed during her reign.
They borrowed of each other without any false pride, and many a time,
at my secret instigation, B. went over to assist when the priest was
having company, sometimes carrying extra silver and such like from my
store. I was always desperately afraid of his hearing of these
liberties that a black heretic was taking with him--and he a dean, if
you please; mentally putting myself in his place, I knew how I should
feel, and I was always exhorting B., who was garrulous, to guard
against this risk.--One Christmas I heard that he was to have a party
of priests to dinner, and that his cook was quite incapable of rising
to such an occasion. "I'd like to send over one of our puddings," said
I, "only that I'd be so afraid he might ask who made it"--for our
puddings, I may modestly state, were good. B. jumped at the tentative
offer, and the pudding, with a few etceteras from the same source,
duly graced the dean's table. Our Christmas feast took place in the
middle of the day, his in the evening, so she could attend to both.
When she returned at night from the second function she was radiant.
The table, she said, was something beautiful, and they ate up all the
pudding, and praised it to the skies. "I do hope to goodness you never
breathed a word," said I, "and that that cook will keep the secret."
Alas! it transpired that B. herself had been unable to keep it. "But,"
said she, "you needn't worry yourself at all, for he was quite pleased
about it, and says he is coming himself to thank you for your
kindness."

That was a good old man, and the most liberal-minded ecclesiastic of
his faith that I ever came across. B. being so strict a daughter of
her Church, and living in a place where its influence was strong--for
the matter of that, it is strong everywhere in Australia--she used to
have qualms of conscience now and again, after the nuns had been
talking to her, as to the lawfulness of dwelling under a Protestant
roof. She went to the dean for advice, and he gave it promptly. "Don't
you be a little fool"--his very words, she told me. "You get more
Catholic privileges where you are than you'd get in many a Catholic
house. You stay where you are well off." Under these circumstances she
was delighted to stay. But some time afterwards, when under more rigid
discipline, she was inveigled from us--the only one of our good
servants who went, even to that extent from choice, except to be
married. But she still maintains intimate relations with the family,
and brings each little Pat and Biddy to show us as soon as it is old
enough to take the air.

But to return to the Salvation Army. Personally, as I have said, we
were cold to its appeals, but seldom had our hearts been so warmed by
the reflected feeling around us. It was perfectly apparent to us that
we were in contact with things as sincere and real as they could be.
Even the hectic girl preacher, who almost frothed at the mouth, was in
earnest, whatever the old hands amongst her colleagues, who sat about
her and watched her, might have been. The music--their best--with its
swing and precision, was splendid, incalculably effective as a
stimulant; I could have thrilled to that if I had not heard so much of
the excruciating performances of the humbler rank and file. But it was
the congregation which so impressed us. Going to church all my
life--much against the grain sometimes, I must confess--I had never
seen anything like it; so many men in proportion to women, such
intensity of religious feeling as distinct from superficial ardour and
rant. The service was very long, and we grew anxious as the hours
passed, knowing how our husband and host would worry about us if we
missed the train he had fixed on for our return, and we had carefully
left our watches at home. So I leaned towards my next neighbour on the
left, a respectable and very quiet and silent young working-man--just
as I would have done in any other church--and whispered to him, "Would
you kindly tell me the time?" As soon as the words were out of my
mouth I was smitten with compunction, and felt more ashamed of myself
than I had ever done in my life. Wild prayers were going on, and the
young man was on his knees, and his uplifted face wore a stern
solemnity that showed him miles and miles above all such
considerations as the time of day. At first he took no notice, as if
he had not heard me; then he slowly climbed down and down from his
heights and looked at me with a blank, dazed stare; and his eyes were
full of tears. I shall never forget him, and all that he taught me in
that moment. We went home thoughtful, humbled in our intellectual
conceit, deeply touched and moved; certainly all the better for our
excursion into this by-path of national life, although we never felt
drawn to go into it again.

On another Sunday evening we attended some sort of Free Thought
service in one of the theatres. Here the "minister," if not a
charlatan, was something of a fraud--to us, at anyrate, who had made a
deeper study of the questions dealt with than he had. But in this case
again the congregation, which filled the building, was the instructive
and surprising feature. Not only perfectly respectable and orderly,
but grave and attentive, and the majority well-dressed middle-class
people, husbands and wives together, dropping into their seats with
the air of habitual attendants. The proverbial pin might have been
heard while the pseudo-teacher poured forth words and phrases that had
no intelligible meaning in them; every eye was fixed on him, every ear
listening. We were much exercised in mind over the results of this
experiment. The size, seriousness, and social quality of the
congregation were our chief concern. Evidently seekers after light and
knowledge, like the rest of us--no mere heathen idlers wilfully or
carelessly breaking the Sabbath day. "And," sighed we, "getting only
this rubbish for their pains!"

Then there was a place called, I think, the Progressive Lyceum--a
small body this, but, once in it, you found it a little world to
itself. I went there one Sunday, and again felt how little the
classified majority of us knew what the mixed minority was about. I
was with two other inquiring friends this time, and we were invited to
stay to a sort of little conference that was to conclude the morning
exercises. Well, before we knew it, we were joining in the
discussion--carried on without a trace of theological rancour--with
half-a-dozen or so of the leading members sitting in a group in a
corner of the otherwise emptied room, all as friendly as could be.
Other little worlds within worlds, colonies within the colony, I have
wandered into from time to time, never without gaining fresh
conviction of the interestingness of my fellow-creatures and of their
inherent goodness--more trust in and respect for that poor human
nature which, fumbling along its confused and crooked paths, yet ever
seems to be aiming at the true goal. More than that--as one can see by
taking the general bearings at intervals--it is getting there by
degrees.




CHAPTER XX

CONCLUSION


The thirty years covered by this chronicle came to an end with the
nineteenth century and the history of these colonies as such.

On the last day of 1900 I sat at my writing window to watch the drop
of the time-ball that regulates all the Government clocks--the clocks
which the morning papers had warned us to set our time-pieces by at 1
P.M., so as not to be a second out, if we could help it, when the
midnight hour should strike. I cannot describe the state of tension we
were in, the sense of fateful happenings that possessed us that day.
The New Year and the New Century were coming to all peoples, but we
could not think of them save as satellites of our New Commonwealth,
arranged for the purpose of fitly inaugurating the New Nation.
Australia believed herself on the threshold of the Golden Age. I
myself openly boasted of my happiness--reviewing my peaceful family
life, my little home circle, unbroken since 1876--when we began
wishing happy new years to one another.

The same scene lies before me now. Hobson's Bay in the
foreground--never professing to be picturesque, but to me as full of
variety and charm as a good, homely human face--and the long line of
city dividing it from the sky. In the sunset of a fine day--sunset
taking place behind me--that thread of crowded life is glowing
beautifully, isolated buildings, as they catch the direct gleam,
standing out as distinctly as if they were not leagues away. And after
dark it will shine a thick-set band of lights many miles in length.
And then, later, a clear moon will flood the whole. All as it was
twenty months and more ago, when our hearts were so confident and our
hopes so high.

But Fate has dealt with our hearts and hopes in the usual way. The
closing of this book synchronises with the ending of one of those
lives integrally a part of mine--that of my eldest son, in the prime
of his fine young manhood--which for me has altered the whole face of
the world and of the future, but yesterday so smiling for us both. I
took no account of the Ambushed Enemy when I said on that New Year's
night that I was happy.

And as for the country that went mad with joy on the same occasion,
how does it feel now? Where is the enthusiasm for Federation which
then turned every head?

Federation, so far as we can see, has put back the Golden Age. The
triumphant shout, "Advance, Australia!" has become a mockery in our
ears. "Australia for the Australians!"--that ignoble aspiration, which
even then meant "Australia for the Australians now in it"--less than
two to the square mile--now means that Australia is not even for them.
No, for the census returns of this state for 1891 gave us 446,195 young
persons of what census people call the marrying age (15 to 35), of whom
the excess of young men over young women was 17,047; and the census for
1901 shows 419,910, and the excess on the other side--16,742 more
young women than young men. Where are those lost young men? And why
have they gone from one of the gardens of the world, as Victoria should
be, with its temperate climate and its consequent potential fertility?
Most of them have gone since the new century came in, and the other
states have to mourn similar losses within the same short space of
time. There have been no gains. Immigration, even of the most desirable
"White Australia" brand, is discouraged in all possible ways, in the
supposed interests of the beneficiaries in possession--reapers of the
sowings of far different men--with their "work" and "wages" which no
longer correspond to the old meanings of those words. While as for our
coloured brothers--including Britain's ally, Japan--they are not
recognised as men at all. They are vermin, to be stamped out like
rabbits.

One third of Australia lies within the tropic belt, where manual
labour is incompatible with the white man's physique, and where no
industry could afford him, at the price he puts upon himself. What
matter? Let the Queensland sugar fields, and the seven millions sunk
in them, revert to the desert waste they were before. Let the pearling
industry go to foreigners, as it must go. Let the Northern Territory,
an area equal to that of France, Germany, and Austria combined, with
all its known potential wealth, lie waste and empty, while millions
upon millions of our co-inheritors of the earth swarm upon little bits
of land that do not give them room to turn round. What does it care,
this dog in the manger? It will starve itself--it is starving
itself--to keep the world out, to shut off competition with existing
interests, to nip back growth at every point. Oh, that we had a
Washington to lead our young nation in more righteous paths, to nobler
ends! Had "Australia for the World" been the watchword of the
Commonwealth, we might now be making a second great United States such
as only the glorious First could rival. Instead of that a stationary
population of less than four millions, from which the best elements
are being rapidly drained away.

For these four millions we have fourteen Houses of Parliament, with
over fifty ministers and little under a thousand members. They are
housed magnificently--in this State, at anyrate--regardless of
expense; they have billiard-rooms, and bowling and tennis grounds, and
every club luxury, the "keep" of the Victorian establishment alone
(the parliamentary bill for the year) running to L141,549. Each pair
of State Houses can pledge the credit of its section of the country as
it likes (what our public debt amounts to everybody knows); the
Federal Houses can pledge the credit of the whole. And what is there
to control them? "The State servants," says the _Argus_, "already
constitute almost a clear majority of the names on the electors'
rolls." Government "promises soon to become the sole employer of
labour in the community." The octopus of political rule holds the
private citizen--"pursued with regulations and prohibitions in his
uprising and his down-sitting," so that "there will soon be absolutely
no room left" for him--helpless in its grasp.

And who are they that work this Juggernaut of an engine, that run this
overgrown business of state? To quote again the authority
above-mentioned, not seldom "men who, in private life, would hardly
be trusted to run an apple stall."

There was a _Times_ correspondent with the royal party that recently
visited us, and he published his impression that "political
corruption" was amongst our little failings that he had noticed. That
was an observant man, worthy of his post. Here nobody had an idea of
such a thing, and the outcry that ensued upon the cabled report of his
report, the indignant protest of injured innocence, was almost
unanimous throughout the land. Every newspaper repudiated the foul
aspersion, and in good faith--because, as a fact, the parliamentary
candidate does not bribe and corrupt within the meaning of the act as
traditionally understood; he does not buy the individual's vote with
coin from his pocket or a pot of beer. But what he does--which
probably never strikes him as political corruption, although
recognised as that by the _Times_ correspondent--is to buy _en bloc_
the party which gives him his comfortable place and perquisites--his
trade and living, in fact; and that party will be paid in full or know
the reason why. They support each other--both at the expense of the
general community. There is a printed rule of a Political Labour
League which says that "before any person can be accepted as a
candidate for the Federal or State Parliament" he shall "place in the
hands of the executive of the league an agreement that in the event of
his acting contrary to the policy of the combined Labour
Organisation," and of their consequently "passing a vote of
no-confidence in him, he will resign his seat." Furthermore, he is to
"place his resignation (undated) in the hands of the executive,
together with a document authorising the executive to fill in the date
subsequent to the day on which the vote is taken." Parliament would
not be what it is if there were not plenty of men willing to subscribe
to such contracts as these--to sell their votes in the House
beforehand, in order to get there. We all know that they do so sell
them. We see the price paid when such legislation as the Minimum Wage
Act is concocted, that pitiable outrage upon the natural, the moral,
and the economic law which is visibly recoiling upon the heads of
those it was framed to benefit, killing their goose of the golden eggs
as well as ours.

It was to the Commonwealth Government that we looked for relief and
redress--that was the meaning of our wild jubilation when the union of
the states was consummated. Alas! Could we have foreknown the history
of its first couple of years, there would have been no federation in
our time. Could we be unfederated to-morrow, the _status quo ante_
would be restored the day after, beyond the shadow of a doubt. For the
Federal politician is but the State politician writ large. His wider
sphere of action means but greater opportunities for the exercise of
those political vices which are so ingrained in him as to have become
his second nature. The first act of the Federal Ministry was one of
sordid personal greed; every following act seems to have been worse.
Federation, so far, has but riveted our chains at home and darkened
our character abroad--and I do not know which we feel most keenly, the
latter, I think. For when six voices spoke for us there was a chance
that some of them would do us justice; when the one voice that speaks
for all betrays and disgraces us, we have to take the loss and odium
silently and seem to acquiesce.

However, the country itself is still, potentially, as fine a country
as the world contains--a huge manger, with provision for the
sustenance of myriads of happy homes--and it cannot always remain the
personal possession of a ring of unpatriotic self-seekers which may
more appropriately be likened to a vampire than to a dog. It was meant
to be a great country, and some day the hands that know how to make it
so will get hold of it, perhaps sooner than we think--possibly before
these pages see the light. I close my chronicle on the 18th of
September, 1902, at a moment when the political sky in this State is
brightened by a ray of hope such as it has not known for many a day,
and which may signify the approach of a new era, not for us only but
for the Commonwealth at large.

Some months ago a movement of revolt against the state of things was
started by a few farmers, humble representatives of the uncorrupted
manhood of the community; they met in their little country town and
formed themselves into a league, which in a few months had branches in
all the rural districts. The moral force generated was enough to put
in a Government pledged (although no one believed its word) to the
league's programme of Economy and Reform. Only the typical, the
professional, politician jibed and jeered at the country bumpkins who
thought to touch his long-established power and his State-filled
pocket. "Is not this mine ass?" said he in effect, and, as soon as the
Reform Government submitted its Reform proposals, voted against them
with a light and fearless heart. But then an unexpected thing
happened. That Government chanced to be in earnest. On that vote it
not only resigned, but applied to the Governor for a dissolution--and
got it. "People's Turn Now" says (in big capitals) a city daily,
repeating the phrase with the same emphasis in every issue; and the
fact does seem to have come home to them at last. On the first of
October we shall see what we shall see. The Labour Party and the Civil
Service are combining in defence of the old _regime_, and their
numbers may be overwhelming; on the other side are the patriots, one
and all, and at their backs the Press, never before united at such a
time.

I ought to have mentioned sooner--what everyone who knows this country
knows--how high and dignified is the moral and intellectual as well as
(comparatively speaking) the literary standard of our representative
journalism. It is beyond a doubt, and was never more so than at this
moment, that the Press of Australia has a consistent respect for
itself that is not found in some far greater nations. If there is a
"gutter" belonging to it, it is so small and inoffensive that no whiff
has reached my nose. With few exceptions (for which more or less can
be said on the score of other good qualities), there is nothing in
general circulation that is not almost austerely respectable. I have
been told of an editor of high position who, if "darling" appears in a
contributor's MS., crosses it out as an improper word, unfit for the
family circle. We are so respectable as that. The _Society Journal_,
vulgar spy and tale-bearer, cannot make a living here. In all the
papers, more or less, "social columns" are available for those who
wish to make public display of their frocks and entertainments, but
the old-fashioned lover of domestic privacy may count on being left
alone. As with some other of our national institutions, the founders
of our Press system were gentlemen. A standard of good taste and
high-mindedness was set in the beginning, and the tradition of it
remains a living force. When Edward Wilson of the _Argus_ bequeathed
the charge of his interests in that paper to the friend who for thirty
years conserved them so well--who for two-thirds of that time, until
his death, was my friend also and told me the story--the last
instructions of the dying man were: "Keep it gentlemanly, and never
let them be mean." The rival "great daily," the _Age_, is a power in
the State such as, I should think, no individual newspaper ever was in
any land, and the literary beauty and philosophical significance of
some of its Saturday leaders have reached a level that would have made
them notable amongst men of letters anywhere. And his daily newspaper
is as necessary as his meals to the average citizen, while the weekly
that belongs to it, a wonderful compendium of miscellaneous matter, is
drained to its last drop by the Sunday-resting Paterfamilias of the
rural districts, whose only book it is, and whom I have seen poring
over it luxuriously the live-long day.

The Press of a country leads it, but it follows also, if only for the
reason that it has its living to earn. And our newspapers being what
they are--capable of the almost incredible nobleness of sinking their
life-long quarrels and party policies to stand shoulder to shoulder
when the true welfare of their State demands it--is the best proof of
its inherent soundness that any country could show. For the example of
Victoria will be an inspiration to her sister colonies, which are all
one people with her, and all in like case.

It is indeed a good country, even as it stands. I can say with truth
and gratitude, homesickness notwithstanding, that nowhere could I have
been better off. And I am as sure as I am of anything that sooner or
later--this year or next year, or after my time--the day of
emancipation and enlightenment will come, to inevitably make it as
great as it is good.


THE END


  _Colston & Coy., Limited, Printers. Edinburgh_

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