Babes in the Bush

Shaggy and swift and strong of limb,All Tartar-like he carried him.

The Arab blood, which old Tom’s charger displayed, prevented any particular shagginess; but in the bright eye, the lean head, the sure unfaltering step, as well as in the power of withstanding every kind of climate, upon occasion, upon severely restricted sustenance, ‘Boney’ might have vied with the Hetman’s, or any other courser that

… grazed at easeBeside the swift Borysthenes.

Such in appearance, and so mounted, were the horsemen who now approached. Their mode of accost was characteristic. Dick rode up straight till within a few paces of his employer, when he briskly dismounted, and stood erect, making the ordinary salute.

The effects of the week’s dissipation were plainly visible in the veteran’s countenance, gallant as were his efforts to combine intrepidity with the respectful demeanour of discipline. A bruise under one eye, with other discolorations, somewhat marred the effect of his steady gaze, while a tremulous muscular motion could not be concealed.

‘How is this, Evans?’ said his commander; ‘you have broken your leave, and put us to much inconvenience; what have you been doing with yourself all this time?’

‘Got drunk, Captain!’ replied the veteran, with military brevity, and another salute of regulation correctness.

‘I am sorry to hear it, Richard,’ said Mr. Effingham. ‘You appear to have had a skirmish also, and to have suffered in engagement. I daresay it will act as a caution to you for the future.’

‘Did me a deal of good – begging your honour’s pardon – though I didn’t ought to have promised to come back next day. I was that narvous at breakfast afore I went that I couldn’t scarce abear to hear the old woman’s voice. I’ll be as right as a Cheshire recruit till Christmas now. But I’ve done the outpost duty I was told off for, and brought Tom Glendinning. He’s willin’ to engage for ten shillin’ a week and his keep, and his milkin’s worth that any day.’

The individual addressed moved up his elderly steed, and touching his hat with a faint flavour of the gentleman’s servant habitude long past, fixed upon the group the gleaming eyes which surmounted his hollow cheek. The face itself was bronzed, well-nigh blackened out of all resemblance to that of a white man. Trousers of a kind of fustian, buttressed with leather under the knees and other places (apparently for resisting the friction involved by a life in the saddle), protected his attenuated limbs. The frame of the man was lean and shrunken. He had a worn and haggard look, as if labour, privation, and the indulgence of evil passions had wrecked the frail tenement of a soul. Yet was there a wiry look about the figure – a dauntless glitter in the keen eyes which told that their possessor could yet play a man’s part on earth before he went to his allotted place. A footsore dog with a rough coat and no particular tail had by this time limped up to the party and lay down under the horses’ feet.

‘Are you willing to engage with me on the terms mentioned by Richard Evans?’ asked Mr. Effingham. ‘You are acquainted with this place, I believe?’

‘I was here,’ answered the ancient stock-rider, ‘when the Colonel first got a grant of Warbrok from the Crown. A lot of us Government men was sent up with the overseer, Ben Grindham, to clear a paddock for corn, where all that horehound grows now. We had a row over the rations – he drove us like niggers, and starved us to boot (more by token, it’s little we had to ate) – and big Jim Baker knocked his head in with an axe, blast him! He was always a fool. I seen him carried to the old hut where you see them big stones – part of the chimney, they wor.’

‘Good heavens!’ said Wilfred. ‘And what was done?’

‘Jim was hanged, all reg’lar, as soon as they could get him back to Sydney. We was all “turned in to Government,”’ said the chronicler. ‘After a bit, the Colonel got me back for groom, so I stayed here till my time was out. I know the old place (I had ought to), every rod of it, back to the big Bindarra.’

‘You can milk well, I believe?’

‘He can do most things, sir,’ said Dick, comprehensively guaranteeing his friend, and mounting his mare, he motioned to the old fellow, who had just commenced to emit a derisive chuckle from his toothless gums, to follow him. ‘If you’ll s’cuse us now, sir, we’ll go home and get freshened up a bit. Tom won’t be right till he’s had a sleep. He’s hardly had his boots off for a week. You’ll see us at the yard in the morning all right, sir, never fear.’

‘Well, I’m glad you’ve come back, Dick,’ said Guy; ‘we’ve missed you awfully. The heifers are too much for Andrew. However, it’s all right now, so the sooner you get home and make yourself comfortable the better.’

This suggestion, as the ancient prodigals ambled away together, caused old Dick to grin doubtfully. ‘I’ve got to have it out with my old woman yet, sir.’

Whatever might have occurred in the progress of a difficult explanation with Mrs. Evans, the result was so far satisfactory that on the following morning, when Wilfred went down to the milking-yard, he found the pair in full possession of the situation, while the number of calves in companionship with their mothers, as well as the state of the brimming milk-cans, testified to the early hour at which work had commenced.

Dick had regained his easy supremacy, as with a mixture of fearlessness and diplomacy he exercised a Rarey-like influence over the wilder cows, lately introduced to the milking-yard.

His companion, evidently free of the guild, was causing the milk to come streaming out of the udder of a newly calved heifer, as if by the mere touch of his fingers, the bottom of his bucket rattling the while like a small-sized hailstorm.

Greeting the old man cheerfully, and making him a compliment on his milking, Wilfred was surprised at the alteration in his appearance and manner.

The half-reckless, defiant tone was replaced by a quiet bearing and respectful manner. The expression of the face was changed. The eyes, keen and restless, had lost their savage gleam. An alert step, a ready discharge of every duty, with the smallest details of which he seemed instinctively acquainted, had succeeded the lounging bearing of the preceding day. Wilfred thought he had never seen a man so markedly changed in so short a time.

‘You both seem improved, Dick. I suppose the morning air has had something to do with it.’

‘Yes, sir – thank God,’ said he, ‘I’m always that fresh after a good night’s sleep, when I’ve had a bit of a spree, that I could begin again quite flippant. Old Tom had a goodish cheque this time, and was at it a week afore I came in. He looked rather shickerry. But he’s as right as a toucher now, and you won’t lose no calves while he’s here, I’ll go bail. He can stay in my hut. My old woman and he knowed one another years back, and she’ll cook and wash for him, though they do growl a bit at times.’

It soon became apparent, making due deductions for periodical aberrations, that Mr. Effingham possessed in Dick Evans and Tom Glendinning two rarely efficient servitors. They knew everything, they did everything; they never required to be reminded of any duty whatsoever, being apparently eager to discover matters for the advantage of the establishment, in which they appeared to take an interest not inferior to that of the proprietor. Indeed, they not infrequently volunteered additional services for their employer’s benefit.

The season had now advanced, until the fervid height of midsummer was near, and still no hint of aught but continuous prosperity was given to the emigrant family.

Though the sun flamed high in the unspecked firmament, yet from time to time showers of tropical suddenness kept the earth cool and moist, refreshing the herbage, and causing the late-growing maize to flourish greenly, in the dark unexhausted soil. Their wheat crop had been reaped with but little assistance from any but the members and retainers of the family. And now a respectable stack occupied jointly, with one of oaten hay, the modest stack-yard, or haggard, as old Tom called it.

The cheese operations developed, until row upon row of rich orange-coloured cheeses filled the shelves of the dairy.

The garden bore token of Andrew’s industry in the pruned and renovated fruit trees, which threw out fresh leaves and branches; while the moist open season had been favourable to the ‘setting’ of a much more than ordinary yield of fruit. The crops of vegetables, of potatoes, of other more southern esculents looked, to use Andrew’s phrase, ‘just unco-omon.’ Such vegetables, Dick confessed, had not been seen in it since the days of the Colonel, who kept two gardeners and a spare boy or two constantly at work. Gooseberries, currants, and the English fruits generally, were coming on, leading to the belief that an extensive jam manufacture would once more employ Jeanie and the well-remembered copper stew-pan – brought all the way from Surrey.

The verandah was once more a ‘thing of beauty’ in its shade of ‘green gloom.’ The now protected climbers had glorified the wreathed pillars; again gay with the purple racemes of the Wistaria and the deep orange flowers of the Bignonia venusta. The lawn was thickly carpeted with grass; the gravelled paths were raked and levelled by Andrew, whenever he could gain an hour’s respite from dairy and cheese-room.

The increase of the cattle had been of itself considerable, while the steers of the Donnelly contingents fattened on the newly matured grasses, which now commenced to send forth that sweetest of all summer perfumes, the odour of the new-mown meadows.

The small but gay parterres, which the girls and Mrs. Effingham kept, with some difficulty, free from weeds, were lovely to the eye as contrasted with the bright green sward of the lawn.

The wildfowl dived and flew upon the lake, furnishing forth for a while – as in obedience to Mr. Effingham’s wishes a close season was kept – unwonted supplies to the larder.

All the minor living possessions of the family appeared to bask and revel in the sunshine of the general prosperity. The greyhounds, comfortably housed and well fed, had reared a family, and were commencing to master the science of killing kangaroos without exposing themselves to danger.

The Jersey cow, Daisy, had produced a miniature copy of herself, in a fawn-coloured heifer calf, while her son, ‘The Yerl of Jersey,’ as Andrew had christened him, had become a thick-set, pugnacious, important personage, pawing the earth, and bellowing unnecessarily, as if sensible of the exalted position he was destined to take, as a pure bred Jersey bull, under two years of age, at the forthcoming Yass Agricultural Show.

As the days grew longer, and the daily tasks of labour became less exciting in the neighbourhood, as well as at Warbrok Chase, much occasional visiting sprang up. The stable was once more capable of modest entertainment, though far from emulating the hospitalities of the past, when, in the four-in-hand drag of the reigning regiment, the fashionables of the day thought worth while to rattle over the unmade roads for the pleasure of a week’s shooting on the lake by day, with the alternative of the Colonel’s peerless claret by night. Andrew’s boy, Duncan, a solemn lad of fourteen, whom his occasionally impatient sire used to scold roundly, was encouraged to be in attendance to receive the stranger cavalry.

For one afternoon, Fred Churbett’s Grey Surrey, illustrious as having won the Ladies’ Bag two years running at the Yass Races, and, as such, equal in provincial turf society to a Leger winner, would canter daintily up to the garden gate, followed perhaps at no great interval by Charlie Hamilton’s chestnut, Red Deer, in training for the Yass Maiden Plate, and O’Desmond’s Wellesley, to ensure whose absolute safety he brought his groom. On the top of all this Captain and Mrs. Snowden would arrive, until the dining-room, half filled with the fashion of the district, did not look too large after all.

By degrees, rising to the exigencies of his position, Wilfred managed to get hold of a couple of ladies’ horses, by which sensible arrangement at least three of the family were able to enjoy a ride together, also to return Mrs. Snowden’s call, and edify themselves with the conversation of that amusing woman of the world.

And the more Mr. Effingham and his sons saw of the men composing the little society which shared with them the very considerable district in which they resided, the more they had reason to like and respect them.

The blessed Christmastide was approaching. How different was it in appearance from the well-remembered season in their own beloved home! A thousand reminiscences came rushing across the fields of memory, as the Effinghams thought of the snow-clad hedges, the loaded roofs, the magical stillness of the frost-arrested air. Nor were all the features of the season attractive. Heavy wraps, closed doors, through which, in spite of heaped-up fires, keen draught and invisible chills would intrude; the long evenings, the dark afternoons, the protracted nights, which needed all the frolic spirits of youth, the affection of home life, and the traditional revelry of the season to render endurable.

How different were all things in this strange, far land!

Such soft airs, such fresh, unclouded morns, such far-reaching views across the purple mountains, such breeze-tossed masses of forest greenery, such long, unclouded days were theirs, in this the first midsummer of what Annabel chose to call ‘Australia Felix.’

‘I should have just the same feeling,’ she said, ‘if I lived in the desert under favourable circumstances. Not the horrid sandy, simoomy part of it, of course. But some of those lovely green spots, where there is a grey walled-in town, an old, old well, thousands of years old, and such lovely horses standing at the doors of the tents. Why can’t we have our horses broken in to stand like that, instead of having to send Duncan for them, who takes hours? And then we could ride out by moonlight and feel the grand silence of the desert; and at sunset the grey old chiefs and the maidens and the camels and the dear little children would come to the village well, like Rebekah or Rachel – which was it? I shall go to Palestine some day, and be a Princess, like Lady Hester Stanhope. This is only the first stage.’

CHAPTER VIII

MR. WILLIAM ROCKLEY OF YASS

Upon his next visit to The Chase, which took place shortly after this conversation, the Reverend Harley Sternworth was accompanied by a pleasant-looking, alert, middle-aged personage, who, descending from the dog-cart with alacrity, was introduced as Mr. William Rockley of Yass.

‘Bless my soul!’ said this gentleman, looking eagerly around, ‘what a fine property! Never saw it look so well before. I’m delighted to find it has got into such good hands; neglected in Colonel Warleigh’s time, even worse since by rascally tenants. Nearly bought it myself, but couldn’t spare the money. Splendid investment; finest land in the whole district, finest water, finest grass. I ought to know.’

‘It is most gratifying to hear a gentleman of your experience speak so highly of Warbrok,’ said Mr. Effingham. ‘Our good friend here has been the making of our fortunes.’

‘Just like him! just like him!’ said the new-comer, lighting a cigar and puffing out smoke and sentences with equal impetuosity. ‘Always attending to other people’s business; might have made his own fortune, two or three times over, if he’d taken my advice.’

‘I know some one else who is tarred with the same brush,’ returned the parson. ‘Who bought in young Harding’s place the other day, when his mortgagee sold him up, and re-sold it to him on the most Utopian terms? But shouldn’t you like to walk round while you smoke your cigar this morning? We can pay our respects to the ladies afterwards.’

‘Just the very thing. Many a time I’ve been here in the old days. What a change! What a change! Bless my soul, how well the garden looks; never expected to see it bloom again! And the old house! – one would almost think Mrs. Warleigh was alive.’

‘The best of wives and mothers,’ said Mr. Sternworth with feeling. ‘What a true lady and good Christian she was! If she had lived, there would have been a different household.’

‘Daresay, daresay,’ said Mr. Rockley meditatively. ‘Precious rascals, the sons; hadn’t much of a chance, perhaps. Wild lot here in those days, eh? So I see you have had that mound moved from the back of the cellar.’

‘We couldn’t think what it was,’ said Mr. Effingham. ‘The excavation must have been made long ago.’

‘Not heard the story, then? Wonderful how some secrets are kept. Never mind, Sternworth, I won’t tell Captain Effingham the other one. Randal Warleigh, the eldest son, was one of the wildest devils that even this country ever saw. Clever, handsome, but dissipated; reckless, unprincipled, in fact. Old man and he constantly quarrelling. Not that the Colonel was all that a father should have been, but he drank like a gentleman. Never touched anything before dinner. He finished his bottle of port then, and sometimes another, but no morning spirit-drinking. Would as soon have smoked a black pipe or worn a beard. It came to this at last, that when he went away he locked up sideboard and cellar, forbidding the housekeeper to give his sons any liquor.’

‘The Colonel left home for a week in Yass, when Randal arrived with some cattle and two fellow-roysterers. No grog available. Naturally savage. Swore he would burn the old rookery down before he would submit to be treated so. Behaved like a madman. Ordered up his men, got picks and shovels, dug a tunnel under the cellar wall, and helped himself, ad libitum, to wine and spirits.’

‘The governor’s a soldier,’ he said; ‘I’ve given him a lesson in civil engineering. Here’s his health, boys!’

‘What an outrage!’ said Mr. Effingham.

‘You would have said so if you had seen Warbrok when the old gentleman returned. Every soul on the place – all convict servants in those days – had been drunk for a week. Cellar half-emptied, house in confusion. Randal and his friends had betaken themselves, luckily, the day before, to the Snowy River, or there might have been murder done. As it was – ’

‘I think we may spare our friend any more chronicles of the good old times, Rockley; let us go down and see the dairy cows, those that Harry O’Desmond sold him.’

‘All right!’ said his friend good-humouredly, accepting the change of subject. ‘I daresay Harry O’ had his price, but they are the best cattle in the country.’

Mr. Rockley was equally hearty and complimentary as to the live stock. Didn’t think he had ever seen finer cows, finer grass; he believed Mr. Effingham, if he went on as he was doing, would make a fortune by dairying. If old Colonel Warleigh had not been ignorant of rural matters, and his elder sons infernal low-lived scoundrels, a fortune would have been made before at Warbrok. Nothing could have prevented that family from becoming rich, with this estate for a home farm, and two splendid stations on Monaro, but the grossest mismanagement, incompetence, and vicious tendencies – he might say depravity – of course, he meant on the part of the young men. The Colonel was indiscreet – in fact, a d – d old fool – but everybody respected him.

The three gentlemen completed the round of the establishment, during which progress their mutual friend had praised the stock-yard, the wheat stack, the lake, the garden, and had pretty well exhausted his cigar-case. It was high noon in Warbrok, and the shelter of the broad verandah, which he eulogised by declaring it to be the finest verandah he had ever been under in his life, was distinctly grateful.

Upon his introduction to Mrs. Effingham and the young ladies, he was afflicted with an inability to express adequately his respectful admiration of the whole party. Everything elicited a cordial panegyric. It was apparent, even without the aid of a few guarded observations from Harley Sternworth, that Mr. Rockley’s compliments arose from no weak intention of flattery, no foolish fondness or indiscriminate praise. It was simply the outpouring of a spring of benevolence which brimmed over in an important organ, which, for greater convenience in localising the emotions, is known as the heart. Longing to do good to all mankind, with perceptions of rare insight and keenness, much of Mr. Rockley’s philanthropy was necessarily confined to words. But when the opportunity arrived of translating good wishes into good deeds, few – very few – of the sons of men embarked in that difficult negotiation with half the pleasure, patience, and thoroughness of William Rockley.

The friends had not intended to stay the night, the time of a business man being limited, but upon invitation being pressingly made, first by Mrs. Effingham and then by the young ladies, one after another, Mr. Rockley declared that he couldn’t resist such allurements, but that they must make a cruelly early start and get back to Yass to breakfast next day. He believed they would see him there often. Mrs. Rockley had not had the pleasure of calling upon Mrs. Effingham, because she had been away in Sydney visiting her children at school, as well as an aunt who was very ill – was always ill, he added impatiently. But she would drive over and see them, most likely next week; and whenever Mrs. Effingham and the young ladies came to Yass, or the Captain and his sons, they must make his house their home – indeed, he would be deeply offended if he heard of their going to an hotel.

‘Well, really I’m afraid – ’

‘My dear sir,’ interrupted Mr. Rockley, ‘of course you meant what you said about the need of recreation for young people. Your sons have not had any since you came here, except an odd slap at a flock of ducks – and these Lake William birds are pretty shy. Then the ladies have hardly seen any one in the district, except the half-dozen men that have been to call. Don’t you suppose it’s natural that they should like to know the world they’ve come to live in?’

‘We are such a large party, Mr. Rockley,’ said Mrs. Effingham, who felt the necessity of being represented at this important council. ‘It is extremely kind of you, but – ’

‘But look here, Mrs. Effingham,’ interrupted Mr. Rockley with fiery impatience, so evidently habitual that she could not for a moment consider it to be disrespectful, ‘don’t you think it probable, in the nature of things, that you may visit Yass – which is your county town, remember – at the time of the races? All the world will be going. It’s a time of year when there is nothing to do – as the parson here will tell you. There will be balls, picnics, and parties for the young ladies – everything, in fact. You must go, you see that, surely? You’ll be the only family of position in the country-side that won’t be there. And if you go and don’t make my house your home, instead of a noisy, rackety hotel, why – I’ll never speak to one of you again.’

Here Mr. Rockley closed his rapidly delivered address, with a look of stern determination, which almost frightened Mrs. Effingham.

‘You will really offend my good friend and his most amiable and hospitable lady if you do not accept his invitation,’ said Mr. Sternworth. ‘It is hardly an ordinary race-meeting so much as a periodical social gathering, of which a little racing (as in most English communities, and there never was one more thoroughly British than this) is the ostensible raison d’être.’

‘Well, Howard, for the young people’s sake, we really must think of it,’ said Mrs. Effingham, answering, lest her husband, in distrust of a colonial gathering, might definitely decline. ‘There will be time enough to apprise Mrs. Rockley before the event.’

‘My wife will write to you when I get home,’ said Mr. Rockley, ‘and explain matters more fully than I can do. – Everything goes off pleasantly at our annual holiday, doesn’t it, Harley?’

‘So much so, that in my office of priest I have never had occasion to enter my protest. The people need a respite from the toils and privations of their narrow home world, almost more than we do.’

The evening passed most pleasantly. The parson and the soldier talked over old army days. While Mr. Rockley, who had been a squatter before finally settling down at Yass as principal merchant and banker, gave Wilfred and Guy practical advice. Then he assured Mrs. Effingham that at any time when she or the young ladies required change, they had only to write to Mrs. Rockley – or come, indeed, without writing – and make their house a home for as long as ever it suited them. Subsequently he declared that he had never heard any music in the least degree to be compared to the duet which Rosamond and Annabel executed for his especial benefit. He charmed Mrs. Effingham by telling her that her son Wilfred was the most promising and sensible young man he had ever noticed as a beginner in the bush, and must infallibly do great things. Lastly, he begged that he might be provided with a cup of coffee at daylight, as, if he and Mr. Sternworth were not at Yass by breakfast-time, dreadful things might happen to the whole district. Annabel declared that she would get up and make it for him herself. Their visitors then retired for the night, all hands being in a high state of mutual appreciation.