The Crooked Stick; Or, Pollie's Probation

Among the natural endowments lavished upon this young creature was such a voice as few women possess, few others adequately develop or worthily employ. Rich, flexible, with unusual compass, depth, and power, it combined strangely mingled tones, which carried with them smiles or tears, hate, defiance, love and despair, the child's glee, the woman's passion; all were enwrapped in this wondrous organ, prompt to appear when the magician touched her spirit with his wand. Harold once said that in her ordinary mood all the glories of vocal power seemed imprisoned in her soul, like the tunes that were frozen in the magic horn.

Men were used to sit with heads bent low, lest the faintest note might escape their highly wrought senses. Grizzled war-worn veterans had wept unrestrainedly as she sang the simple ballads that recalled their youth. Women even were deeply affected, and could not find one word of delicatest depreciation that would sound otherwise than sacrilegious. This was one of her good nights, her amiable, well-behaved nights, Harold said. So the men sat and smoked in the verandah, with Mrs. Devereux near them; all in silence or low, murmuring converse, while the stars burnt brightly in the blue eternity of the summer night – the season itself in its unchanging brightness an emblem of the endless procession of creation – while the girl's melodious voice, now low and soft, now wildly appealing, tender or strong, rose and fell, or swelled and died away – 'like an angel's harp,' said Harold to her mother, as she arose and came towards them; 'and it is specially fortunate for us here,' he continued, 'as the season is turning us all into something like the other thing.'

'Hush, Harold, my boy; have faith in God's providence!' replied Mrs. Devereux, placing her hand on his. 'We have been sorely tried at times, but that hope and faith have never failed me.'

'What a lovely, glorious, heavenly night!' said the girl, stepping out on the broad walk which wound amid the odorous orange-trees, still kept in leaf and flower by profuse watering. 'What a shame that one should have to go to bed! I feel too excited to sleep. That is why you fortunate men smoke, I suppose? It calms the excitable nervous system, if you ever suffer in that way.'

'Ask Jack,' said Mr. Atherstone; 'he is more delicately organised. I suppose I like smoking, because I do it a good deal. It is a contemplative, reflective practice, possessing at the same time a sedative effect. It prevents intemperate cerebration. It arrests the wheels of thought, which are otherwise apt to go round and round when there's nothing for them to do – mills with no corn to grind.'

'I never heard so many good reasons before for what many people call a bad habit,' said Pollie. 'However, I must say, considering the hard work you poor fellows have to do at times, I think a man enjoying his pipe after his day's work a dignified and ennobling spectacle.'

'Quite my idea, Miss Pollie,' said Jack. 'I really thought my brain was giving way once in a dry season. If I hadn't smoked, should have had to fall back upon drinking. Dreadful to think of, isn't it? A mixture of Latakia and Virginia I got from a fellow down from India on leave saved my life.'

'I think we are all sufficiently soothed and edified now to go to bed,' said Mrs. Devereux, with mild, suggestive authority. 'Dear me! nearly twelve o'clock too. The days are so long now that it is ever so late before dinner is finished and the evening fairly begun.'

The parcel from England to which reference had been made on the occasion of Pollie's excursion to Mogil Mogil clump had arrived safely, and its contents been duly admired, when a letter received by the next mail-steamer contained such exceptional tidings that all other incidents became tame and uninteresting.

This English letter proved to be from Captain Devereux's elder brother, with whom, since the former's death, Mrs. Devereux had kept up a formal but regular correspondence. The members of her husband's family had proved sympathetic in her hour of sorrow. They had possibly been touched by the passionate grief of a relative whose letters after a while commenced to exhibit so much sound sense and proper feeling. From that time the elders of the house of Devereux never omitted befitting attention and friendly recognition of the far-off, unknown kinswoman.

And now, it seems, they had despatched Mr. Bertram Devereux, late lieutenant in Her Majesty's 6th Dragoon Guards, who, from force of circumstances, reckless extravagance and imprudence no doubt, but from no improper conduct, had been compelled to quit that crack corps and the brilliant society he adorned. He had a small capital, however, several thousand pounds fortunately, the bequest of an aunt. Having decided upon a colonial career, he was anxious to gain the requisite experience on the estate of his cousin, Mrs. Brian Devereux. If she had no objection, would she lay them all under a deep obligation by receiving the young man into her family, and by acting a mother's part to one who was forced to quit home and native land, perhaps for ever?'

This last enclosure was from Lady Anne Devereux, a lady in her own right, who, much to the distaste of her friends and family, had been fascinated by the handsome Colonel Dominick Daly Devereux, one of the military celebrities of the day. In the main the tone of the letter was proud and cold; but there were a few expressions which so plainly showed the mother's bruised heart, that Mrs. Devereux could not resist the appeal.

'I fear he will be a troublesome inmate in one sense or another,' she reflected. 'He is hardly young enough to take kindly to station life. Then again, how will my darling girl be affected by his companionship? But I can enter into a mother's feelings. I cannot refuse hospitality to my dear husband's nephew. We must make the best of it. He will not be worse, I suppose, than other newly arrived young men. They are an awful bother during the first year. After that they become like other people. I hope Mr. Gateward will take to him.'

And now the stated time had been over-passed. The Indus (P. and O. Service) had arrived; a telegram had been received; and Mr. Bertram Devereux was hourly expected by the mail-coach. This fateful vehicle did actually arrive rather late on the evening specified, it is true, but without having, according to Pollie's prophecies and reiterated assertions, either broken down, upset, or lost its way owing to the new driver taking a back track which led into the wilderness and ended at a lately finished tank, far from the habitations of civilised man.

As the coach swung round the corner of the stock-yard and drew up underneath a wide-branched white acacia which shaded a large proportion of an inner enclosure, the driver received a douceur which confirmed him in the opinion which he had previously entertained of his passenger being 'a perfect gentleman.' He therefore busied himself actively in unloading his portmanteau and other effects, deposited the station mail-bag, and without further loss of time took the well-trodden road to the township. As the eyes of his late fare rested mechanically upon the fast-departing coach, he saw little but a cloud of dust outlining every turn of the road, amid which gleamed the five great lamps, which finally diminished apparently into star-fragments, as they traversed the unending plain which stretched northward and northward ever.

A young man, whose Crimean shirt and absence of necktie denoted to the traveller the presumed abandon of bush life, advanced from the door of a species of shop for general merchandise, as it seemed to the stranger, and dragging in the mail-bag, saluted him courteously. 'Mr. Devereux, I think? Please to come in.'

Meekly following his interlocutor through the 'shop,' as he termed it, he found himself in a smaller and more comfortable room. Looking around at the somewhat 'cabin'd, cribb'd, and confin'd' section, he answered, 'My name is Devereux. I have come to remain. May I ask which of these rooms is to be allotted to me?'

The storekeeper smiled. 'You didn't think this was the house, sir? This is the overseer's place, the barracks, as we call it in the bush. If you come after me I'll show you the way. Your luggage will be brought to you if you will leave it here.'

The new-comer had not, in truth, troubled himself to consider what Australian dwellings might resemble. He expected nothing. He had made up his mind to the worst. Therefore he would not have been in the least surprised if his aunt or cousin had issued from one of the small apartments which opened out from the larger room; had directed him to occupy another; had then and there placed a kettle on the smouldering wood fire for the purpose of providing him with refreshment after his journey.

He therefore mechanically followed his guide through a passage and along a verandah until they reached a white gate in a garden paling, when the young man in the light raiment quitted him with this farewell precept —

'The front entrance is between those two large rose-bushes, and the first room to the right of the hall. Mrs. Devereux or Miss Pollie sure to be there.'

Proceeding along the path as he had been directed, Bertram Devereux commenced to experience a slight degree of surprise, even curiosity. He was evidently in an æsthetic region, short as had been the distance from the sternest commonplace. The borders had been carefully kept. Flowers were blooming profusely. Oranges and limes shed a subtle and powerful odour around. The stars gleamed on a sheet of water which had evidently helped to create this oasis in the desert. The whispering leaves of the banana brought back memories of tropic glories of foliage. Turning between two vast cloth-of-gold standards, the blooms of which met and clustered about his head, he ascended a flight of steps and found himself in a broad verandah furnished with cane lounges and hammocks.

The hanging lamp, which illumined a wide and lofty hall, showed ferns of various size and foliage, the delicate colouring of which struck gratefully upon his aching and dust-enfeebled eyes. A book, a few gathered flowers, lay upon a small table with some half-executed ornamental needlework. All told of recent feminine presence and occupation.

As he lingered in observation of these novelties, a lady passed into the hall from a side-door and advanced with a look of kindly welcome.

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