Ethel Turner

“ A CONFLICT OF WILLS
‘What things wilt thou leave me,
Now this thing is done?’ Wednesday loosened itself from the other pearls and dropped off the string of days into the strange awful place where have fallen all the days that have ever been. Thursday slid along the thread, trembled and fell. Friday moved on to fill its place. Such a little time, and it too, and the things of it would be gone beyond recall for ever.
Larrie had grown visibly thinner in the short space. He was staking all the happiness of his life on the issue of this. ”

“ Brown waves of hair strayed on the pillow, brown eyelashes lay motionless on cheeks where the lifeless tinge of grief knew itself for stranger, and was slowly giving way once more to the healthy life-colour that loved to dwell there. The contour of the face was at once grave and childish; an irresponsible flower-life of happiness would have accentuated certain lines about the nostrils and mouth into a look of spirited wilfulness, but the hard climbing of hills had been given to her instead, and the mouth at eight-and-twenty was wholesomely self-reliant. ”

“ It seemed years since she had been engrossed with the latest mode in hat trimming, the dip of "umbrella" skirts, and the best method of making the hands white. Years since she had tried a trembling 'prentice hand at flirtations. Years, almost, since she had given the little blue ribbon at Yarrahappini, that was doing more good than she dreamed of.
Alan looked at her from his pew—the little figure in its sorrowful black, the shining hair hanging in a plait no longer frizzed at the end, the chastened droop of the young lips, the wistful sadness of the blue eyes. ”

“ But Dolly was quite alone and there was no sign of her bodyguard.
"What-tever rare you after, Miss Dolly?" he said in amazement. "Where's Bridget?"
An eye more trained than that of an amorous postman might have noticed the whiteness of the child's face and the heroic steadfastness of her lips. But Peterson's nature was a slow one; he merely stared at her as if he expected she had Bridget hidden away under the folds of her little red cloak. ”

“ Pip in a sailor suit and his eyes red; little dear Judy with wild, bright eyes and trembling lips; Nellie with a headless doll clasped in her arms; Bunty in a holland pinafore stained with jam.
Nobody heeded the tiny baby that lay just in the hollow of mother's arm,—what was a baby, even one almost new to them all, when mother was dying?
But the next day, when all was over, and every one was tired of crying and feeling the world had stopped for them for ever, the strange nurse brought in the little lonely baby and gave it to Meg to nurse, because she was the eldest. ”

“ Up burst the sun, and the world grew soft and rosy like a baby waked from sleep. Then the grey gathered again, the pink, quivering lights faded out, and the rain came down—torrents of it, beating against the shaking window-glass, whirled wildly ahead by a rough morning wind, flying down from the mountains. Such a crushed, dull-eyed, subdued-looking eight they were as they tumbled out on the Curlewis platform when five o'clock came. Judy coughed at the wet, early, air, and was hurried into the waiting-room and wrapped in a rug. ”

“ Hassal had laid aside her girlish accomplishments, her fancy work, her guitar, her water-colours, and had scrubbed and cooked and washed as many a settler's wife has done before, until the anxiously watched wool market had brought them better days.
Then a big stone cottage reared itself slowly right in front of the little old place with its bottle-bordered garden plot, where nothing more aristocratic than pig's face and scarlet geranium had ever grown. A beautiful cottage it was, with its plenitude of lofty rooms, its many windows, and its deep veranda. ”

“ CHAPTER XXIII THE PICNIC AT THE FALLS The morning rose in mist; the sun moved upwards and still the mist lingered, as if anxious to drape and hide the rough edges of this oddly-arranged picnic.
Sometimes the wagonette in front was lost to sight by a rolling curtain of gauze; sometimes a wind swept the road clear and then the children waved hats and kissed hands to each other.
Dora and Beatrice were visions of beauty and fashion in smartly-cut linen gowns and the latest thing in stocks and belts and shoes and hats and gloves and parasols ”

“ No light burned in any of the rooms, but through the windows, where the blinds were up, a woe-begone struggling moon shone palely.
The big bedroom at the front of the house was empty, and the moonbeams lay quiet on the smooth white counterpane of the canopied bed. Even in so faint a light it was plain to see the room was unused; the chairs and sofa held no heaps of flung-off clothes, the dressing-table appointments were in the most precise order, the chill air lay over everything, unbroken by the regular fall and rise of human breath. ”

“ Larrie was smoking his third postprandial pipe, and was pacing up and down one side of the verandah; he would have liked to have gone the whole distance, but then there was the baby.
It was lying in a hammock in a nest of pillows, and looking with calm, large gaze out into all the world that appeared through a gap in the rose creeper. There was the pink flush of recent sleep on its little soft cheeks, and its hair, the softest, warmest gold in the world, was all tumbled and curly with washing. ”

“ Oh, to hold you all again, to feel you, to touch my Hermie's hair—is it all sunlight yet?—to be crushed with Bartie's hug, to hold again the poor little babies I left, my Roly, my little Floss. Ah, dear ones, dear ones, now it is all over, now we are coming, coming to you, I can let you know. Oh, these weary, weary years, these great cities where we have no home, no corner of a home. I have broken my heart for you all every night since I came away. Six years, my dear ones, six years of nights to break my heart. Be sorry for mother, and love her, darlings. Have you forgotten her, Hermie? ”

“ Down at the foot of the grass hill there was a flame-coloured sky, with purple, soft clouds massed in banks high up where the dying glory met the paling blue. The belt of trees had grown black, and stretched sombre, motionless arms against the orange background. All the wind had died, and the air hung hot and still, freighted with the strange silence of the bush. ”

“ More and more icy grew the hand at her heart, whiter and whiter shone the moon, longer and longer every minute took to pass. A sudden gust of wind blew over the pampas clumps full into her face, and the air was still again. Perhaps with that very wind Essie had left them.
She fell on her knees with wide, outstretched arms, and dropped her face on the low hedge. The twigs and leaves scratched and pricked her, the ground made her knees ache, the night air was freezing her; but that was happiness. The sky she dare not look at ”

“ Quite a warm friendship had sprung up during the month between the little fair-faced girl, who looked with such serene blue eyes to a future she felt must be beautiful, and the world-worn man, who looked back to a past all blackened and unlovely by his own acts.
He rode with the two girls every-day, because Mrs. Hassal did not like them going long distances alone; and, seeing Judy seldom walked her horse, and Meg's steed had not a canter in it, it fell out that he kept beside the slow and timid rider all the time. ”

“ She was on her knees now, clinging to the rails like a maniac drowning at sea. Jim was dead. A gang of men—they had all shot together. Jim was dead!
She forced her body down the staircase; her legs utterly refused to support her, but by clinging to the rails she huddled herself along that she might go to him.
Then the yellow light of the hall gas flashed in her eyes. Jim had lighted it himself, and was standing under it—right under the orange-coloured glass shade. Jim, in his tennis flannels, unhurt, with the revolver that he had transferred to his left hand still smoking. ”

“ A WINTER SUNDAY On Sunday evenings it had always been the custom for the little girls to gather round their mother, and talk of their funny little plans, tell of their past week’s naughtinesses, make high resolutions with earnest eyes for future weeks, and generally disburden themselves. Of late the time had been very precious to both mother and children, for all week-days had been so brimmed with work, the mother had scarcely any time to pause to watch the wings of their young souls develop, and prune them, and pluck out the dark feathers that creep in so readily. ”

“ Hush! every one is looking at you; be quiet now, an we'll go to the Gardens, or somewhere where we can talk, and then we'll go home."
"I can't go home," Bunty said faintly.
He wondered if those five terrible months behind him were a dream; or if little trembling Poppet, who was holding him so tightly, was a vision his disordered imagination had called up.
"Oh, I can't go home, of course," he said, and pushed his thick hair back in a tired kind of way. "Hush, Poppet; go home with Martha like a good girl, and, on no account, say you've seen me. ”