Babes in the Bush

‘Don’t be a goose, Annabel. How can we starve? First, we have the chance of making money and living in plenty, if not in refinement, on this estate that papa is going to buy. And if that does not turn out a success, we must find you a place as companion to the Governor-General’s wife, or as nursery governess for very young children. I’ll become a “school marm” at Yass – that’s the name – and Rosamond will turn dressmaker, she has such a talent for a good fit.’

‘Oh dear, oh dear! don’t talk of such dreadful things. Are we to go all over the world only to become drudges and work-women? We may as well drown ourselves at once.’

‘My child! my child!’ said a gentle voice. ‘What folly is this? What are we, that we should be absolved from the trials that others have to bear? God has chosen, for His own good purpose, to bring this misfortune upon us. He will give us strength to bear it in a chastened spirit. If we do not bear it in a resigned and chastened spirit, we are untrue to the teaching which we have all our lives affected to believe in. We have all our part to perform. Let us have no repining, my dearest Annabel. Our way is clear, and we have others to think of who require support.’

‘But you like to be miserable, you know, mother; you think it is God’s hand that afflicts you,’ sobbed the desponding spoiled child. ‘I can’t feel that way. I haven’t your faith. And it breaks my heart; I shall die, I shall die, I know.’

‘Pray, my darling, pray for help and grace from on high,’ continued the sweet, sad tones of the mother, as she drew her child’s fair head upon her lap, and passed her hand amid ‘the clustering ringlets rich and rare,’ while Beatrice sat rather unsympathetically by. ‘You will have me and your sisters to cheer you.’ Here the fair disconsolate looked distrustfully at Beatrice.

By degrees the half-mesmeric, instinctive influence of the loved mother’s pitying tones overcame the unwonted fit of unreason.

‘I will try and be good,’ she murmured, looking up with a soft light in her lovely eyes, ‘but you know I am a poor creature at best. You must bear with me, and I will help as much as I can, and try to keep from repining. But, oh, my home, my home, the dear old place where I was born. How dark and dreary do this long voyage and journey seem!’

‘Have we not a yet longer voyage, a more distant journey to make, my own one?’ whispered the mother, in accents soft as those with which in times gone by she had lulled the complaining babe. ‘We know not the time, nor the hour. Think! If we do not prepare ourselves by prayer and faith, how dark that departure will appear!’

‘You are always good and kind, always right, mother,’ said the girl, recovering her composure and assuming a more steadfast air. ‘Pray for me, that I may find strength; but do I not know that you pray for all of us incessantly? We ought – that is – I ought to be better than I am.’

Among the lesser trials which, at the time of his great sorrow, oppressed Howard Effingham, not the least was the necessity for parting with old servants and retainers. He was a man prone to become attached to attendants long used to his ways. Partly from kindly feeling, partly from indolence, he much disliked changing domestics or farm labourers. Accustomed to lean against a more readily available if not a stronger support than his own, he was, in most relations of life, more dependent than most men upon his confidential servants.

In this instance, therefore, he had taken it much to heart that his Scotch land-steward, a man of exceptional capacity and absolute personal fidelity, having a wife also, of rare excellence in her own department, should be torn from him by fate.

Backed up by his trusty Andrew, with his admirable wife, he felt as if he could have faced all ordinary colonial perils. While under Jeanie Cargill’s care, his wife and daughters might have defied the ills of any climate, and risked the absence of the whole College of Physicians.

Andrew Cargill was one of those individuals of strongly marked idiosyncrasy, a majority of whom appear to have been placed, by some mysterious arrangement of nature, on the north side of the Tweed. Originally the under-gardener at The Chase, he had risen slowly but irresistibly through the gradations of upper-gardener and under-bailiff to the limited order of land-steward required by a moderate property. He had been a newly-married man when he formed the resolution of testing the high wages of the Southron lairds. His family, as also his rate of wages, had increased. His expenses he had uniformly restricted, with the thoroughness of his economical forefathers. He despised all wasteful ways. He managed his master’s affairs, as committed to his charge, with more than the rigorous exactitude he was wont to apply to his own. Gaining authority, by the steady pressure of unrelaxing forecast habit of life, he was permitted a certain license as to advice and implied rebuke. Had Andrew Cargill been permitted to exercise the same control over the extra-rural affairs that he was wont to use over the farm-servants and the plough-teams, the tenants and the trespassers, the crops and the orchards, the under-gardeners and the pineries, no failure, financial or otherwise, would have occurred at The Chase.

When the dread disaster could no longer be concealed, it is questionable whether Mr. Effingham felt anything more acutely than the necessity which existed of explaining to this faithful follower the extent, or worse, the cause of his misfortune. He anticipated the unbroken silence, the incredulous expression, with which all attempts at favourable explanation would be received. Open condemnation, of course, was out of the question. But the mute reproach or guarded reference to his master’s inconceivable imbecility, which on this occasion might be more strongly accented than usual, would be hard to endure.

Mr. Effingham could not depute his wife, or one of the girls, to convey the information to the formidable Andrew. So he was fain to pull himself together one morning, and go forth to this uncompromising logician. Having briefly related the eventful tale, he concluded by dispensing with his faithful servant, as they were going to a new country, and very probably would never be able to employ servants again.

Having thrown down the bombshell, the ‘lost leader’ looked fixedly at Andrew’s unmoved countenance, and awaited the particular kind of concentrated contempt which he doubted not would issue forth.

His astonishment was great when, after the hurried conclusion, ‘I shall miss you, Andrew, you may be sure, more than I say; and as for Jeanie, I don’t know how the young ladies and the mistress will get on without her,’ the following words issued slowly and oracularly from Andrew’s lips: —

‘Ye’ll no miss me ava, Maister Effingham. Dinna ye think that it’s a’ news ye’re tellin’ me. I behoved just to speer a bit what garred the puir mistress look sae dowie and wae. And the upshot o’ matters is that I’m gaun wi’ ye.’

‘And your wife and children?’

‘Ye didna threep I was to leave them ahint? Andra’ Cargill isna ane o’ thae kind o’ folk, sae just tak’ heart, and for a’ that’s come and gane ye may lift up your heid ance mair; it’s nae great things o’ a heid, as the auld wife said o’ the Deuk’s, but if Botany Bay is the gra-and country they ca’ it, and the book-writers and the agents haena been tellin’ the maist unco-omon set o’ lees, a’ may gang weel yet.’

‘But what’s put this in your head, of all people in the world, Andrew?’ queried his master, becoming bold, like individuals, or corporate bodies, of purely defensive ideas, after observing tokens of weakness in the besieging force.

‘Weel, aweel, first and foremost, Laird, ye’ll no say that we haena eaten your bread and saut this mony a year; there’s been neither stint nor stay till’t. I hae naething to say against the wage; aiblins a man weel instructed in his profession should aye be worthy o’ his hire. Jeanie has been just spoiled by the mistress – my heart’s sairvice to her and the young leddies – till ilka land they were no in, wad be strange eneugh to her, puir body. And the lang and short o’ the hail matter is, that we loe ye and your bonnie lads and lassies, Laird, sae weel that we winna be pairted frae ye.’

As Mr. Effingham grasped the hand of the staunch, true servitor, who thus stood by him in his need, under whose gnarled bark of natural roughness lay hid so tender and true a core, the tears stood in his eyes.

‘I shall never forget this, Andrew,’ said he; ‘you and Jeanie, old friend, will be the comfort of our lives in the land over-sea, and I cannot say what fresh courage your determination has given me. But are you sure it will be for your own advantage? You must have saved money, and might take a farm and live snugly here.’

‘I was aboot to acquent ye, Laird,’ said the conscientious Scot, too faithful to his religious principles to take credit for a disinterestedness to which he felt but partially entitled. ‘Ye’ll see, Laird, for ye’re weel acquent wi’ the Word, that the battle’s no always to the strong, nor the race to the swift. Ye’ll ken that, frae your ain experience – aweel, I winna just say that neither’ – proceeded Andrew, getting slightly involved between his quotations and his determination to be ‘faithful’ to his erring master, and by no means cloaking his sins of omission. ‘I’ll no say but what ye’ve been lettin’ ither folks lead ye, and throw dust in ye’re een in no the maist wiselike fashion, as nae doot ye wad hae dune wi’ the tenants, puir bodies, gin I had letten ye. But touchin’ my ain affairs, I haena sae muckle cause to brag; for maybe I was unco stiff-necked, and it behoved to chasten me, as weel’s yersell; I hae tint – just flung awa’ – my sma’ scrapin’s and savin’s, these saxteen years and mair, in siccan a senseless daft-like way too!’

Here Andrew could not forbear a groan, which was echoed by an exclamation from his master.

‘I am sincerely grieved – astonished beyond expression! Why, Andrew, surely you have not been dabbling in stocks and foreign loans?’

‘Na – nae ga-amblin’ for me, Laird!’ replied Andrew sourly, and with an accentuation which implied speedy return to his ordinary critical state of mind; ‘but if I had minded the Scripture, I wadna hae lost money and faith at one blow. “Strike not hands for a surety,”’ it saith, ‘but I trusted Geordie Ballantyne like a brither; my ain cousin, twice removed. He was aboot to be roupit oot, stock and lock, and him wi’ a hoosefu’ o’ weans. I just gaed surety to him for three hunder pound!’

‘You were never so mad – a prudent man like you?’

‘And he just flitted to America, fled frae his ain land, his plighted word, and left me to bear the wyte o’t. It’s nae use greetin’ ower spilt brose. The money’s a’ paid, and Andra’ Cargill’s as puir a man’s when he cam’ to The Chase, saxteen years last Michaelmas. Sae, between the heart-break it wad be to pairt wi’ the family, and the sair heart I hae gotten at pairtin’ wi’ my siller, the loss o’ a friend – “mine own familiar freend,” as the Psawmist says – as weel’s the earnings o’ the maist feck o’ my days, at ae blast, I hae settled to gang oot, Laird, to Austra-alia, and maybe lay oot a wheen straight furrows for ye, as I did lang syne on the bonnie holms o’ Ettrick.’

Here Andrew’s voice faltered, and the momentous unprecedented conversation ended abruptly.

The unfeigned delight with which his wife and daughters received the news did much to reconcile Mr. Effingham to his expatriation, and even went far to persuade him that he had, in some way, originated the whole idea. Nor was their satisfaction unfounded. Andrew, with all his apparent sternness and occasional incivility, was shrewd, capable, and even versatile, in the application of his industry and unerring common sense to a wide range of occupations. He was the ideal colonist of his order, as certain to succeed in his own person as to be the most helpful and trustworthy of retainers.

As for Jeanie, she differed from her husband in almost every respect, except in the cardinal virtues. She had been a rustic celebrity in her youth, and Andrew occasionally referred still, in moments of unbending, to the difficulties of his courtship, and the victory gained over a host of rival suitors. She still retained the softness of manner and tenderness of nature which no doubt had originally led to the fascination of her masterful, rugged-natured husband.

For the rest, Jean Cargill had always been one of those servants, rare even in England, the land of peerless domestics, whose loving, unselfish service knew no abatement in sickness and in health, good fortune or evil hap. Her perceptive tastes and strong sense of propriety rendered her, as years rolled on, a trusted friend; an infinitely more suitable companion for the mistress and her children, as she always called them, than many a woman of higher culture. A tireless nurse in time of sickness; a brave, clear-headed, but withal modest and cautious, aid to the physician in the hour of peril. She had stood by the bedstead of more than one member of the family, in the dark hour, when the angel of death waited on the threshold of the chamber. Never had she slackened or faltered, by night or day, careless of food or repose till the crisis had passed, and the ‘whisper of wings in the air’ faded away.

Mrs. Effingham, with all her maternal fondness and devotion, had been physically unable at times to bear up against the fatigue of protracted watching and anxiety. She had more than once, from sheer bodily weakness, been compelled to abandon her post. But to Jeanie Cargill, sustained by matchless love and devotion, such a thing had never occurred. At noon or midnight, her hand was ever ready to offer the needful food, the vital draught; her ear ever watchful to catch the faint murmur of request; her eye, sleepless as a star, was ever undimmed, vigilant to detect the slightest change of symptom. Many nurses had been heard of, seen, and even read of, in the domestic circles of Reigate, but in the estimation of every matron capable of giving an opinion, Jeanie Cargill, by countless degrees of comparison, outshone them all.

That night, when Mrs. Effingham, as was her wont, sought relief from the burden of her daily cares, and the crowding anxieties of the morrow, ‘meekly kneeling upon her knees,’ it appeared to her as if in literal truth the wind had been tempered to the shorn lamb. That terrible travel into the unknown, the discomforts and dangers of the melancholy main, with the dreary waste of colonial life, would be quite different adventures, softened by the aid and companionship of everybody’s ‘dear old Jeanie.’ Her patient industry, her helpful sympathy, her matchless loyalty and self-denial, would be well-springs of heaven-sent water in that desert. Andrew’s company, though not socially exhilarating, was also an invigorating fact. Altogether, Mrs. Effingham’s spirits improved, and her hopes arose freshly strengthened.

No sooner was it settled that Andrew and his fortunes were to be wafted o’er the main, in the vessel which bore the Effingham family, than, with characteristic energy, he had constituted himself Grand Vizier and responsible adviser. He definitely approved of much that had been done, and counselled still further additions to the outfit. Prime and invincible was his objection to leave behind a certain pet ‘Jersey coo,’ ‘a maist extraordinar’ milker, and for butter, juist unco-omon. If she could be ta’en oot to thae parts, she wad be a sma’ fortune – that is, in ony Christian land where butter and cheese were used. Maybe the sea-captain wad let her gang for the value o’ her milk; she was juist in the height o’t the noo. It wad be a sin and a shame to let her be roupit for half price, like the ither kye, puir things.’

Persistent advocacy secured his point. Daisy had been morally abandoned to her fate; but Wilfred, goaded by Andrew’s appeals, had an interview with the shipping clerk, and arranged that Daisy, if approved of, should fill the place of the proverbial milch cow, so invariably bracketed with the ‘experienced surgeon’ in the advertisements of the Commercial Marine. Her calf also, being old enough to eat hay, was permitted to accompany her.

Andrew also combated the idea that the greyhounds, or at least a pair, should be left behind, still less the guns or fishing-rods.

‘Wasna the Laird the best judge of a dog in the haill country-side, and no that far frae the best shot? What for suld he walk aboot the woods in Australia waesome and disjaskit like, when there might be kangaroos, or whatna kind o’ ootlandish game, to be had for the killing? Hoot, hoot, puir Page and Damsel couldna be left ahint, nor the wee terrier Vennie.’

There was more trouble with the greyhounds’ passage than the cows, but in consideration of the large amount of freight and passage-money paid by the family, the aristocratic long-tails were franked. Andrew, with his own hands, packed up the fowling-pieces and fishing-rods, which, with the exaggerated prudence of youth, Wilfred had been minded to leave behind, considering nothing worthy of removal that would not be likely to add to their material gains in the ‘new settlement.’ He had yet to learn that recreation can never be advantageously disregarded, whether the community be a young or an old one.

Little by little, a chain of slow yet subtle advances, by which, equally with geologic alterations of the earth’s surface, its ephemeral living tenants proceed or retrograde, effected the translation of Howard Effingham, with wife and children, retainers and household goods. Averse by nature to all exertion which savoured of detail, reserving his energy for what he was pleased to dignify with the title of great occasions, as he looked back over the series of multitudinous necessary arrangements, Howard Effingham wondered, in his secret soul, at the transference of his household. Left to himself, he was candid enough to admit, such a result could never have been achieved. But the ceaseless ministration of Jeanie and Andrew, the calm forethought of Mrs. Effingham, the unsparing personal labour of Wilfred, had, in due time, worked the miracle.

CHAPTER II

THE FIRST CAMP

Whatever may be the loss or injury inseparable from misfortune, no one of experience denies that the pain is lightened when the blow has fallen. The shuddering terror, the harrowing doubts, which precede an operation, far outrun the torture of the knife. Worse a thousandfold to endure than actual misery, poverty and disgrace, is the dull sense of impending doom, the daily anxiety, the secret dread, the formless, unhasting, unsparing terror, which each day brings nearer to the victim.

Howard Effingham had, for weeks past, suffered the torments of the lost. An unwise concealment of the coming ruin which his reserved temperament forbade him to announce, had stretched him upon the rack. The acute agony was now past, and he felt unspeakably relieved as, with increasing completeness, the preparations for departure were accomplished.

After the shock of the disaster he commenced the necessary duties with an unwontedly tranquil mind. He had despatched a bank draft for the amount mentioned by his friend and counsellor the Rev. Harley Sternworth. Prior to this needful act, he held various conferences with the trustees of Mrs. Effingham’s settlement. In many instances such authorities are difficult, even impracticable, to deal with, preferring the minimum interest which can be safely procured in the matter of trust money, to the slightest risk. In this instance, the arbiter of destiny was an old gentleman, at once prudent yet liberal-minded, who did not disdain to examine the arguments in favour of the Australian plan. After reading Mr. Sternworth’s letter, and comparing the facts therein stated with colonial securities, to which he had access, he gave in his adhesion to the investment, and converted his coadjutor, a mild, obstinate personage, who could with difficulty be induced to see any other investment legally open to them but the ‘sweet simplicity of the three per cents.’

Long was the last day in coming, but it came at last. Their stay in the old home was protracted until only time was given for the journey to Southampton, where the staunch, old-fashioned wool-ship lay, which was to receive their condensed personal effects and, as it seemed to them, shrivelled-up personalities.

Adieus were said, some with sore weeping and many tears; some with moderate but sincere regret; some with the half-veiled indifference with which any action not affecting their own comfort, interest, or reputation is regarded by a large class of acquaintances. The minor possessions – the carriages, the horses, the library, the furniture – were sold. A selection of the plainest articles of this last requisite, which, the freight being wonderfully low, their chief adviser had counselled them to carry with them, was alone retained.

‘It will sell for next to nothing,’ his last letter had said, ‘judging from my experience after the regiment had “got the route,” and you will have it landed here for less than the price of very ordinary substitutes. Bring all the small matters you can, that may be useful; and don’t leave the piano behind. I must have a tune when I come to see you at Warbrok, and hear Mrs. Effingham sing “Auld Robin Gray” again. You recollect how our old Colonel broke down, with tears rolling over his wrinkled cheeks, when she sang it?’

All was now over. The terrible wrench had been endured, tearing apart those living fibres which in early life are entwined around hearth and home. They had gazed in mournful farewell upon each familiar thing which from childhood’s hour had seemed a portion of their sheltered life. Like plants and flowerets, no denizens of hothouse or simulated tropic clime, but not the less carefully tended from harmful extremes, climatic or social, had the Effingham family grown and flourished. Now they were about to be abandoned to the elemental forces. Who should say whether they would wither under rude blasts and a fiercer sun, or, from natural vigour and inherent vitality, burgeon and bloom beneath the Southern heavens?

Of the whole party, she who showed less outward token of sorrow, felt in her heart the most unresting anguish. To a woman like Mrs. Effingham, reared from infancy in the exclusive tenets of English county life, the idea of so comprehensive a change, of a semi-barbarous migration, had been well-nigh more bitter than death – but for one source of aid and spiritual support, unendurable.

Her reliance had a twofold foundation. The undoubting faith in a Supreme Being, who ordered aright all the ways of His creatures, even when apparently remote from happiness, remained unshaken. Firmly had she ever trusted in that God by whom her former life had been guided. Events might take a mysteriously doubtful course. But, in the wilderness, under leafy forest-arches, beneath the shadow of the gathering tempest, on land or ocean, she would trust in God and her Redeemer. Steadfast and brave of mien, though with trembling lip and sickened heart, she marshalled her little troop and led them on board the stout ship, which only awaited the morrow’s dawn to spread her wings and sweep southward – ever southward – amid unknown seas, until the great island continent should arise from out the sky-line, telling of a land which was to provide them with a home, with friends, even perhaps a fortune. What a mockery in that hour of utter wretchedness did such hope promptings appear!

After protracted mental conflict, no more perfect system of rest can be devised than that afforded by a sea-voyage. Anxiety, however mordant, must be lulled to rest under the fixed conditions of a journey, before the termination of which no battle of life can be commenced, no campaign resumed.

Toil and strife, privation and poverty, labour and luck, all the contending forces of life are hushed as in a trance. As in hibernation, the physical and mental attributes appear to rally, to recruit fresh stores of energy. ‘The dead past buries its dead’ – sorrowfully perchance, and with silent weeping. But the clouds which have gathered around the spirit disperse and flee heavenwards, as from a snow-robed Alp at morning light. Then the roseate hues of dawn steal slowly o’er the silver-pure peaks and glaciers. The sun gilds anew the dark pine forest, the purple hills. Once more hope springs forth ardent and unfettered. Endeavour presses onward to victory or to death.