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 spiræa
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 £50 with which we started housekeeping, and, if I remember rightly,
the parson's stipend did not exceed £250 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 £5 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°
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'être_ 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 _mésalliance_ 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 æsthetic 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 _régime_. 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 £1 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