Babes in the Bush

‘If you like, you can help me take off the feathers, and spare Jeanie’s everlastingly busy fingers,’ said Beatrice.

Here Annabel looked ruefully at her tiny, delicate hands, with a child’s pout.

‘Oh, it’s no use looking at your pretty hands,’ said the more practical Beatrice. ‘This is the land of work, and all who can’t make themselves useful will be treated like the foolish virgins in the parable. It always makes me smile when that chapter is read. I can fancy Annabel holding out her lamp, with an injured expression, saying, “Well, nobody told me it was time to get ready.”’

‘Beatrice, my daughter,’ said Mrs. Effingham gravely, ‘sacred subjects are not befitting matter for idle talking; dispositions vary, and you may remember that Martha was not praised for her anxiety to serve.’

At mid-day the kettle bubbled on the fire, kindled by the ever-ready Richard, cakes and sandwiches were handed round, the tea – thanks to Daisy – was gratefully sipped.

The sun shone brightly on the green flat, where the horses grazed in peace and plenty. The birds chirped and called at intervals; all Nature seemed glad and responsive to the joyous season of the southern spring.

Thus their days wore on, in peaceful progression, alike free from toil, anxiety, or adventure. The daily stage was accomplished, under Dick’s experienced direction, without mistake or misadventure. The evening meal was a time of rest and cheerful enjoyment, the night’s slumbers refreshing and unbroken.

‘What a delightful country this is! I feel quite a new creature, especially after breakfast,’ exclaimed Annabel one morning. ‘I could go on like this for months, till we reached the other side of the continent, if there is any other side. Will it be as nice as this, I wonder, at Malbrook, or Warbrok, or whatever they call it? Warbrok Chase won’t look so bad on our letters, when we write home. I must send a sketch of it to cousin Elizabeth, with a bark cabin, of course. She will never believe that we have a real house to live in among the backwoods. What sort of a house is it, Dick? Is it thatched and gabled and damp and delightful, with dear little diamond casements like the keeper’s lodge, or is it a horrid wooden barn? Tell me now, there’s a dear old man!’

‘We shall be there, Miss, the day after to-morrer, please God,’ responded Dick with respectful solemnity. ‘Parson Sternworth said I was to say nought about the place, but let it come on you suddent-like. And I’m a man as is used to obey orders.’

‘Very well, you disagreeable old soldier,’ said the playful maiden. ‘I’ll be even with you and the parson, as you call him. See if I don’t.’

‘Sorry to disobleege you, Miss Anniebell,’ said the veteran, ‘but if my old General, Sir Hugh Gough, was to come and say, “Corporal Richard Evans, hand me over the chart of the country,” I should have to tell him that he hadn’t got the counter-sign.’

‘And quite right too, Evans,’ interposed Mr. Effingham, ‘to keep up your good old habits in a new country. Discipline is the soul of the army.’

‘I was allers taught that, sir,’ replied Dick, with an air of military reminiscence which would have befitted a veteran of the Great Frederick. ‘But when we reaches Warbrok my agreement’s out with the Parson, and Miss can order me about all day.’

In spite of Annabel’s asseverations that the party would never reach the spot indicated, and that she believed there never was any such place, but that Dick would lead them into a trackless forest and abandon them, the journey ended about the time specified. A rugged track, indeed, one afternoon tried their patience. The horses laboured, the docile cow limped and lagged, the girls complained, while Andrew’s countenance became visibly elongated.

At length Dick Evans’s wooden facial muscles relaxed, as halting on the hardly-gained hill-top he pointed with his whip-handle, saying simply, ‘There’s Warbrok! So the young ladies and gentlemen can see for theirselves.’

How eagerly did the whole party gaze upon the landscape, which now, in the clear light of the Southern eve, lay softly in repose before them!

The character of the scenery had changed with the wondrous suddenness peculiar to the land in which they had come to dwell. A picture set in a frame of forest and unfriendly thickets! Now before their eyes came with magical abruptness a vision of green slopes, tall groves, and verdurous meadows. It was one of nature’s forest parks. Traces of the imperfect operations of a new country were visible, in felled timber, in naked, girdled trees, in unsightly fences. But nature was in bounteous mood, and had heightened the contrast with the barren region they had over-passed, by a flushed abundance of summer vegetation. This lavish profusion of herb and leaf imparted a richness of colouring, a clearness of tone, which in a less favourable season of the year Warbrok must perceptibly have lacked.

‘Oh, what a lovely, lovely place!’ cried Annabel, transported beyond herself as she stood on tip-toe and gazed rapturously at the scene. ‘Those must be the Delectable Mountains. Dick, you are a Christian hero [the old man smiled deprecatingly], I forgive you on the spot. And there is the house, a real house with two storeys – actually two – I thought there were only cottages up the country – and an orchard; and is that a blue cloud or the sea? We must have turned round again. Surely it can’t be our lake? That would be too heavenly, and those glorious mountains beyond!’

‘That’s Lake William, miss, called after His Gracious Majesty King William the Fourth,’ explained Dick, accurate and reverential. ‘Fourteen miles long and seven broad. You’ll find the house big enough, but it’s a long way from being in good order; and it’s a mercy there’s a tree alive in the orchard.’

‘Oh, never mind, we’ll soon put things to rights, won’t we, mamma? And what splendid creatures those old trees will be when they come out in leaf. I suppose it’s too early in the spring yet?’ continued she.

‘Dead – every one of ’em, miss,’ explained their conductor. ‘They’ve been ring-barked, more’s the pity. They was beauties when I knowed ’em fust, before the blessed tenants was let ruinate everything about the place. I wonder there’s a stone of the house standing, that I do. And now, sir, we’ll get on, and the young ladies can have tea in their own parlour, if my old woman’s made a fire, accordin’ to orders.’

The hearts of the more reflective portion of the party were too full for comment, so Annabel’s chatter was allowed to run on unchecked. A feeling of despondency had been gradually stealing over Howard Effingham and his wife, as for the two last stages they had pictured to themselves the toil of building up a home amid the barren solitudes, such as, in their innocence, they thought their new property might resemble. Now, here was a spot in which they might live out their lives with cheerful and contented minds, thankful that ‘their lines had fallen in pleasant places’; having reason to hope that their children might dwell in peace and prosperity after them.

‘We can never be sufficiently grateful to your dear old friend,’ said Mrs. Effingham. ‘If he had not in the first place written you that letter, Howard, and afterwards acted upon his opinion so boldly, what might have been our fate?’

‘He always used to look after me when we were in the regiment,’ said her husband acquiescingly; ‘I daresay he’ll find a similar pleasure in taking charge of us now. Fortunately for you and the girls, he never married.’

A few miles only needed to be traversed before Mr. Evans triumphantly drove his team through the gate of the dilapidated garden fence surrounding the front of a large old-fashioned stone mansion, with wide verandah and lofty balcony, supported upon freestone pillars. A stout, elderly woman of decided aspect opened the creaking hall door, and casting a searching glance at Mr. R. Evans, made the strangers welcome.

‘I’m sure I’m very glad to see you, my lady,’ said she, bobbing an antiquated curtsey, ‘and you, sir, and the young ladies and gentlemen. I’ve done all I could to clean up the old barrack of a house; it was that lonesome, and made me frighted with ghosts, as I thought I’d never live to see you all; and Dick here, I knew there was no certainty of, as might have gone to Timor, or the Indies, and never let on a word about it. Please you to come in, my lady.’

‘My old woman’s temper is none of the best, Captain,’ said Dick, stating the fact with philosophical calmness, ‘but I’ll warrant she’s cleaned up as much as any two, and very bad it wanted it when Parson Sternworth brought us over.’

Now that a nearer view was afforded of the demesne and dwelling, it was evident that the place had been long abandoned to natural decay and sordid neglect. The fences were rotten, gapped, or fallen; the orchard, though the aged trees were high out of the reach of browsing cattle, had been used as a convenient species of stock paddock; the climbers, including a magnificent bignonia and a wistaria, the great laterals of which had erstwhile clothed the verandah pillars with beauty and bloom, were broken and twisted. In the rear of the building all the broken bottles and bones of the land appeared to be collected; while, with windows broken, shutters hanging on a single hinge, doors closing with difficulty, or impossible to open, all things told of the recklessness of ruined owners.

Still, in despite of all deficiencies, the essentials of value could not be overlooked. The house, though naked and desolate of aspect, was large and commodious, promising in its shingled roof and massive stone walls protection against the heat of summer, the cold of winter. The deep black mould needed but ordinary culture to respond generously. The offices might be mouldering and valueless, but the land was there, thinly timbered, richly grassed, well adapted for stock of all kinds. And though the gaunt limbs of the girdled trees looked sadly unpicturesque between the front of the house and the lake shore, some had been left untouched, and the grass was all the more richly swarded. The lake itself was a grand indisputable fact. It was deep and fresh, abounding in water-fowl, a priceless boon to dwellers in a climate wherein a lack of rivers and permanent reservoirs is unhappily a distinguishing characteristic.

Let it not be supposed that Wilfred and his mother, the girls and Jeanie were outside the house all this time. Very promptly had Dick unloaded the household stores, pressing all able-bodied persons, including his wife, into the service, until the commissariat was safely bestowed under shelter. His waggon was taken to the rear, his horses unharnessed, and he himself in a marvellously short space of time enjoying a well-earned pipe, and advising Andrew to bestow Daisy’s calf in a dilapidated but still convertible calf-pen, so that his mother might graze at ease, and yet be available for the family breakfast table in the morning.

‘The grass here is fust-rate,’ he said, in a tone of explanation to Andrew. ‘There’s been a lot of rain in spring. It’s a pity but we had a few good cows to milk. It would be just play for you and me and the young master in the mornings. Teach him to catch hold like and learn him the use of his hands.’

‘Him milk!’ exclaimed Andrew, in a tone of horrified contempt. ‘And yet – I dinna say but if it’s the Lord’s will the family should ha’ been brocht to this strange land, it may be no that wrang that he should labour, like the apostles, “working with his hauns.” There’s guid warrant for’t.’

Meanwhile, inside the house important arrangements were proceeding. The sitting-room, a great, bare apartment, had an ample fireplace, which threw out a genial warmth from glowing logs. There was a large, solid cedar table, which Mrs. Evans had rubbed and polished till the dark red grain of the noble wood was clearly visible. Also a dozen real chairs, as Annabel delightedly observed, stood around, upon which it was possible to enjoy the long-disused comfort of sitting down. Of this privilege she promptly availed herself.

The night-draperies were disposed in the chief bedchamber, though until the arrival of the furniture it was apparent that the primitive sleeping accommodation of the road would need to be continued. Mr. Effingham and his sons were luxuriously billeted in another apartment, where, after their axle-tree experiences, they did not pity themselves.

Andrew and his family were disposed of in the divisions of the kitchen, which, in colonial fashion, was a detached building in the rear. Mr. and Mrs. Evans had, on their previous entry on the premises, located themselves in an outlying cottage (or hut, as they called it), formerly the abode of the dairyman, where their possessions had no need of rearrangement. Even the dogs had quarters allotted to them, in the long range of stabling formerly tenanted by many a gallant steed in the old extravagant days of the colony, when unstinted hospitality and claret had been the proverbial rule at Warbrok.

‘Oh dear!’ exclaimed Annabel from her chair, ‘what a luxurious feeling it is to be once more in a home of one’s own! Though it’s a funny old place and must have been a tempting refuge for ghosts wandering in search of quarters. And then to think that to-morrow morning we shall not have to move on, for ever and ever. I was beginning to get the least bit tired of it; were not you, mamma? Though I would have died sooner than confess it.’

‘Words cannot describe how thankful I am, my dear child,’ said her mother, ‘that we have had the good fortune to end this land journey so well. It is the first one of the kind I ever undertook, and I trust it will be the last. But let us remember in our prayers to-night whose hand has shielded us from the perils of the deep, and whatever dangers we may have escaped upon the land.’

‘I feel as if we had all been acting a charade or an extended tableau vivant,’ said Rosamond. ‘Like you, Annabel, dear, I am not sorry that the theatricals are over, though the play has been a success so far. It has no more nights to run, fortunately for the performers. Our everyday life will commence to-morrow. We must enter upon it in a cheerful, determined spirit.’

‘I cannot help fancying,’ said Beatrice, ‘that colonial travellers enjoy an unnecessary amount of prestige, or some experiences must differ from ours. We might have had a Dick who would have lost his horses or overturned the waggon, and bushrangers (there are bushrangers, for I saw in a paper that Donohoe and his gang had “stuck-up,” whatever that means, Mr. Icely’s drays and robbed them) might have taken us captive. We have missed the romance of Australian life evidently.’

Howard Effingham felt strangely moved as he walked slowly forth at dawn. He watched the majestic orb irradiate the mist-shrouded turrets of the great mountain range which lay to the eastward. Endless wealth of colour was evoked by the day-god’s kiss, softly, stealingly, suffusing the neutral-tinted dome, then with magical completeness flashing into supernal splendour. The dew glistened upon the vernal greensward. The pied warbler rolled his richest notes in flute-like carol. The wild-fowl, on the glistening mirror of the lake, swam, dived, or flew in playful pursuit. The bracing air was unspeakably grateful to Howard Effingham’s rurally attuned senses. Amid this bounty of nature in her less sophisticated aspects, his heart swelled with the thought that much of the wide champaign, the woodland, and the water, over which his eye roamed wonderingly, called him master. He saw, with the quick projection of a sanguine spirit, his family domiciled once more with comfort and security. And not without befitting dignity, so long despaired of. He prized the ability to indulge again the disused pursuits of a country life. Though in a far land, among strange people, separated by a whole ocean from the scenes of his youth and manhood, he now felt for the first time since the great disaster that contentment, even happiness, was possible. Once more he felt himself a country gentleman, or at the least an Australian squire. With the thought he recalled the village chimes in their lost home, and his wife’s reference of every circumstance of life to the special dispensation of a benign, overruling Providence occurred to him. With unconscious soliloquy he exclaimed, ‘I have not deserved this; God be merciful to me a sinner!’

Dick Evans, with his horses, now appeared upon the scene, bells, hobbles, and all. He bore every appearance of having been up at least two hours.

‘What a wonderful old fellow that is!’ said Wilfred, who had joined his father; ‘day or night seems alike to him. He is always hard at work at something or other – always helpful and civil, apparently good at a score of trades, yet military as a pipe-clayed belt. Mr. Sternworth admitted that he had faults, but up to this time we have never discovered them.’

‘If he has none, he is such an old soldier as I have never met,’ said his father mildly. ‘Longer acquaintance will, I suppose, abate his unnatural perfection. But, in any case, we must keep him on until we are sufficiently acclimatised to set up for ourselves.’

‘Quite so, sir! We cannot have our reverend mentor always at beck and call. We want some one here who knows the country and its ways. Guy and I will soon pick up the lie of the land, as he calls it, but at present we are all raw and ignorant together.’

‘Then we had better engage him at once. I suppose he can tell us the proper wages.’

‘Very possibly; but now I think of it, sir, hadn’t you better delegate the executive department to me? Of course to carry out your instructions, but you might do worse than appoint me your responsible minister.’

‘My boy!’ said Effingham, grasping his son’s hand, ‘I should have made the suggestion if you had not anticipated me. I cheerfully yield the management to you, as you will have the laborious part of the work. Many things will need to be done, for which I am unfit, but which you will gradually master. I fully trust you, both as an example to Guy and Selden, and the guardian of your mother and sisters.’

‘As God will help me in my need, they will need no other,’ replied the eldest son. ‘So far I have led a self-indulgent life. But the spur of necessity (you must admit) has been wanting. Now the hour has come. You never refused me a pleasure; trust me to fulfil every duty.’

‘I never have doubted it, my boy! I always knew that higher qualities were latent in your nature. As you say, the hour has come. We were never laggards when the trumpet-call sounded. And now, let us join the family party.’

As they reached the house, from which they had rambled some distance, the sun was two hours high, and the smoke issuing from the kitchen chimney denoted that culinary operations were in progress. At that moment a serviceable-looking dogcart, drawn by a wiry, roan horse, trotted briskly along the track from the main road, and in drawing up, displayed in the driver the welcome presentment of the Rev. Harley Sternworth.

‘How do, Howard? How are you, Wilfred, my boy? Welcome to Warbrok – to Warbrok Chase, that is. I shall learn it in time. Very proper addendum; suits the country, and gratifies the young ladies’ taste. Thought I’d catch you at your first breakfast. Here, Dick, you old rascal – that is, you deserving veteran – take Roanoke.’

The somewhat decided features of the old army chaplain softened visibly as, entering the bare uncarpeted apartment, he descried Mrs. Effingham and her daughters sitting near the breakfast table, evidently awaiting the master of the house. His quick eye noticed at once the progress of feminine adaptation, as well as the marked air of comfort produced with such scanty material.

He must surely have been gratified by the sensation he produced. The girls embraced him, hanging upon his words with eagerness, as on the accents of the recovered relative of the melodrama. Mrs. Effingham greeted him with an amount of warmth foreign to her usual demeanour. The little ones held up their faces to be kissed by ‘Uncle Harley.’

‘We are just going to have our first breakfast,’ said Annabel. ‘Sit down this very minute. Haven’t we done wonders?’

Indeed, by the fresh, morning light, the parlour already looked homelike and attractive. The breakfast table, ‘decored with napery,’ as Caleb Balderstone phrased it, had a delicately clean and appetising appearance. A brimming milk jug showed that the herbage of Warbrok had not been without its effect upon their fellow-passenger from the Channel Islands. A goodly round of beef, their last roadside purchase, constituted the pièce de résistance. A dish of eggs and bacon, supplied by Mrs. Evans, whose poultry travelled with her everywhere, and looked upon the waggon as their home, added to the glory of the repast. A large loaf of fresh bread, baked by the same useful matron, stood proudly upon a plate, near the roadside tea equipage, and a kettle like a Russian samovar. Nor was artistic ornamentation wholly absent. Annabel had fished up a broken vase from a lumber room, which, filled with the poor remnants of the borders, ‘where once a garden smiled,’ and supplemented with ‘wild buttercups and very nearly daisies,’ as she described the native flora, made an harmonious contribution.

Before commencing the meal, as Mr. Effingham took his seat at the head of his own table once more, humble as were the surroundings, his wife glanced at the youngest darling, Blanche. She ran across to a smaller table covered with a rug, and thence lifting off a volume of some weight, brought it to their guest. His eyes met those of his old comrade and of her his life’s faithful companion. The chaplain’s eyes were moistened, in despite of his efforts at composure. What recollections were not summoned up by the recurrence of that simple household observance? His voice faltering, at first, with genuine emotion, Harley Sternworth took the sacred volume, and read a portion, before praying in simple phrase, that the Great Being who had been pleased to lead the steps of His servants to this far land, would guide them in all their ways, and prosper the work of their hands in their new home. ‘May His blessing be upon you all, and upon your children’s children after you, in this the land of our adoption,’ said the good priest, as he arose in the midst of the universal amen.

‘Do you know that it was by no means too warm when I left Yass at daylight this morning? This is called a hot climate. But in our early summer we have frosts sometimes worthy of Yorkshire. Yesterday there was rather a sharp one. We shall have rain again soon.’

‘Oh, I hope not,’ said Annabel. ‘This is such lovely, charming weather. So clear and bright, and not at all too warm. I should like it to last for months.’

‘Then, my dear young lady, we should all be ruined. Rain rarely does harm in this country. Sometimes there are floods, and people who live on meadowlands suffer. But the more rain the merrier, in this country at least. It is a land of contradictions, you know. Your Lake William, here, will never overflow, so you may be easy in your minds, if it rains ever so hard.’

‘And what does my thoughtful young friend, Rosamond, think of the new home?’ inquired the old gentleman, looking at her with affectionate eyes.

‘She thinks, Uncle Sternworth, that nothing better for us all could have been devised in the wide world, unless the Queen had ordered her Ministers to turn out Sir Percy de Warrenne and put us in possession of Old Court. Even that, though Sir Percy is a graceless kinsman, might not have been so good for us, as making a home for ourselves here, out of our own heads, as the children say.’

‘And you are quite satisfied, my dear?’

‘More than satisfied. I am exulting and eager to begin work. In England I suffered sometimes from want of occupation. Here, every moment of the day will be well and usefully employed.’

‘And Miss Beatrice also approves?’

‘Miss Beatrice says,’ replied that more difficult damsel, who was generally held to be reserved, if not proud, ‘she would not have come to Australia if it could have been helped. But having come, supposes she will not make more useless lament than other people.’

‘Beatrice secretly hates the country, I know she does,’ exclaimed Annabel, ‘and it is ungrateful of her, particularly when we have such a lovely place, with a garden, and a lake, and mountains and sunsets, and everything we can possibly want.’