Ethel Turner

“ Miss Browne was helping Lizzie to fold the poor rags of clothes from the wash; the father still begged to be left alone; outside Bart and Roly still threshed monotonously at the fire.
Hermie went into the tiny bedroom that had been run up for her because the house was too small—the bedroom that the mother had been so pleased to hear was built. She found herself looking in the glass at herself, looking sadly, listlessly.
She saw a girl, thin, undeveloped, with a delicately cut face, and shadows lying like ink-smears beneath her eyes. Her womanhood was coming, and she had no strength to meet it ”

“ Near enough the big house for the old man, left to himself, not to feel lonely; far enough away for Hermie to be unquestioned queen, and free as the winds that blew.
Oh, the happy hours he had wandered on that farther hill, raising that happy home to receive his love! There had even been a moonlight night or two when he had furnished it—furnished it with deep chairs and wide sofas and delicious hammocks, all for the little light-haired girl who worked so hard on that wretched selection to nestle into and rest. ”

“ Cameron was leaning back, her eyes shining, a fond smile on her lips as she listened to the girl's prattle.
'Then there'll be Hermie, and I know she's lovely. Don't you think she will be? You said you always thought she would grow up very beautiful. Oh, isn't it dreadful that we've never had a photo of them? Such lots of mine sent to them, and never any of theirs! It's like drawing their faces with your eyes shut. I think Hermie will have her hair in a thick plait. I suppose she goes to picnics and dances and everything, and always knows what to say to people. ”

“ The gangways were hardly down before there hurried on board from the wharf a gentleman in a tall hat, and two others with the ungroomed, long-haired appearance of the musician the world over. One of them bore a moderate-sized bouquet of white flowers, and another a small harp of roses that looked a little dashed with the sun and dust.
'Miss Cameron, Miss Cameron!' was the call echoed all along the deck. The captain himself came up and took the little girl and her mother down to the men. They were warmly shaken hands with, their healths and the voyage asked after, and the flowers presented. ”

“ Mortimer waved his helmet gaily.
'What a fine fellow!' said Mrs. Cameron, and what a good face! Who is the old man?'
'Why, it's old Stevenson. Yes, just like him to do that,' Cameron answered. The old squatter had ridden alongside the Bushmen the whole of the line of march. His face was working with excitement; every time a cheer went up from the crowd he cheered too, standing up from time to time in his saddle and waving his soft felt hat. He kept beside his son as much as he could; he was almost bursting with the pride of his position.
Challis's eyes were full of tears. ”

“ Outside the rain still fell in straight soaking sheets over the thatched roof of the little house. A wind moaned restlessly over the empty country; you fancied it was lost and full of woe, because it had no trees to wander through. Once or twice a horse whinnied, once or twice there came through the night the inexpressibly mournful sound of the bleat of a sheep. You felt the rain was like no other rain at all; it seemed as if the land, swollen-eyed, was weeping in the quiet of midnight for its unutterable woes.
The girl's head drooped back against the wall. Sleep had claimed her ”

“ Challis would have liked to go and help her, but the child, if she pricked her fingers till they were empty of blood, would have no stitch set in it that was not her own. Furthermore, all the dreams on the Utopia were dispersed. Challis had never buttoned one of the little girl's garments, never tied a sash, never brushed out a curl. The small woman had dressed herself independently ever since she was three, and indignantly scorned all help; she hated sashes—her straight light hair she raked herself. ”

“ Miss Browne drifted from place to place, place to place; there was nothing she was capable of doing really well, and no land has a hospitable welcome for such.
'It is a funny thing,' she said to Challis, 'but, however hard I try, I never seem able to do things like other people can.' Her eyes stared in front of her. 'If it had been your mother now in my place, she could have managed; she is made of the stuff that never goes under. But you would have thought any one like I am would have been sheltered and—cared for—as so many women are cared for.'
Challis stroked her restlessly moving hand. ”

“ All the little house lay still as the tall, thin young farmer who, in the front room, was taking his rest for ever from the ploughing of fields, the sowing and reaping of crops, the blind and strenuous guarding of his land and liberty at the command of those in the high places.
The fire still burnt brightly in the grate. Linda sat before it so plunged in mournful thought she did not hear the young bushman's footfall.
Across one side of the fire a clothes-horse stood holding the draggled skirts of the girls, the grandfather's moleskin clothes, the familiar khaki of the uniform he had disgraced. ”

“ And thus was the painting of the ship begun.
'Can you see what I mean, Bart?' Cameron said two months later, when the picture was almost finished, so desperately had he worked at it.
'You mean it for a ship, don't you?' Bart said. 'If I'd been you, though, dad, I'd have painted a steamship with two funnels. People don't think much of sailing-boats now.'
'Can you see what I mean, Hermie?' Cameron said, and wistfulness had crept into his eyes.
Hermie's blue-flower eyes were regarding the great canvas dubiously.
'Couldn't you have made the water blue, papa?' she said; 'the sea is blue, you know. ”

“ I am thirty-eight—there, there is no need to mention it to Hermie or the rest of the family, my love.'
'But thirty-eight is not old,' said Challis, so eager to comfort, she left truth to take care of itself. 'Think what lots of people are fifty, and they don't think themselves a bit old.'
'But who will marry you after you are thirty-eight?' said poor Miss Browne, unable to keep any ache back to-night. ”

“ As a baby she had cried at discords; at three years old she used to stand at the end of the piano and make quite pretty little tunes with one hand in the treble, while Bartie thumped sticky discords in the bass. At four she used to stand beside Hermie, whom her mother was teaching regularly, and in five minutes understood what it took her sister an hour to learn imperfectly. At four, too, her head hidden in the sofa-cushion, she could call out the names of not only single notes but chords also, as Hermie struck them. ”

“ Now his heart felt the weight of the whole five, Hermie, Bartie and Challis, Roly and little Floss.
He gave his wife a passionate kiss.
'You are right,' he said, 'take it; I give it all up for ever, and begin from now to be a man.'
Time went past, and the criss-cross lines on the mother's brow were fading, and the anxious outlook of the eyes seemed gone. She called up a home around her where before had only been a house; the children were taught; she even, by dint of hard economy, made it possible to send to Sydney for the piano they had left as security for a debt. ”

“ In return the sunburnt Bushies waved their helmets and little toy flags; one held up a small fox-terrier, another an opossum by the tail; they rode along with one arm free for handshaking all along the route, threw kisses to the excited women, even at times leaned down and kissed some tip-toe eager girl in a white dress and a wonderful hat.
They looked as military as one could wish now; Cameron was amazed to think this was the same material he had seen drilling. A finer body of men had never passed down the streets of any city. ”

“ I know I shall love him till I die.'
The mother's heart ached, as all mothers' must do when their children have to stand alone in a grief, and there can no longer be any kissing of the place to make it well.
'It seems as if I have been blind,' went on the girl, sometimes wiping the tears away and hiding her swollen eyes, sometimes letting them trickle unchecked down her cheeks. 'I can't tell you how silly and small I have been—thinking men ought to be just like men in books, and never looking at what they really are. ”

“ Challis—I think I hate Challis! Going along quietly and happily, are we? Miss Macintosh taking your place? We are starving, worse than starving; the food we have to eat is worse than none at all. He needs delicate things, ice and invalid dishes, properly cooked. I have just been to the safe to look what I could get, and the mutton has gone bad—it goes bad nearly every day in summer here; there is no milk, for the cows have no feed, there is some nasty mouldy bread and bad butter, and golden syrup with flies in it, and sugar alive with ants. ”

“ Her dreamer of dreams depending on a selection, her children depending on her dreamer, become his own master!
Yet surely the man had had his lesson, and toiled now marvellously, piteously.
Five years, and not one idle day.
Five years of bewildered struggling with unknown enemies—drought, hurricanes of wind, bush fires, devastating rains, a soil that the farmer born and bred could hardly have made pay. Never a complaining word. Hermie, growing to womanhood, broke her heart over his life at times. ”

“ Bart, his conscience quick once more and in agony, watched him walking, house-coat on and no hat, down the main street of the township and up, up, never resting, to the top of the great hill the other side they call the Jib.
No further word of the matter was ever said till the next Christmas, when the boy marched in with the year's prize for punctuality under his arm. Then Cameron shook hands with him.
'I like a man of honour,' he said. ”

“ Bartie had gone up to Coolooli for the afternoon. Old Mr. Stevenson had taken a great fancy to the boy, and prophesied that he had the making of a fine squatter in him.
Stevenson had ridden in to the selection on his way from Wilgandra. It was not often he passed the neat new gate in these days without turning in. He always felt a pleasant glow of conscious virtue, as his eyes marked all the improvements that had so suddenly sprung up. ”

“ They advised complete rest for several months, and expressed their opinion that the quiet bush life at Wilgandra and roughing it with children, who would take her out of herself, would be the best possible thing for her, and the triumphal career could be resumed later on.
So there were to be no concerts yet, no happy strivings to interpret Chopin's varying moods to a breathless audience, to reach up with Mendelssohn to his pleasant sunlit heights, to go down with Wagner to strange depths that stirred her soul. She was to practise very little, to appear in public not at all. ”

“ Cameron had not once failed to furnish the reports due from him to the Government. The lady-help selected by the mother had the house and the children and the father in a state of immaculate order. She was a magnificently capable, managing woman; every one, Mr. Cameron especially, stood much in awe of her, and unquestioningly obeyed her smallest mandate; even Roly, unbidden, performed magnificent ablutions before he presented himself for a meal, and Hermie was often to be seen surreptitiously trying to mend her own pinafores in the paddock. ”

“ When the Marvellous One had gone off with her entrée dishes to her new home, the father had said, 'Children, we will not tell mother just yet that Miss Macintosh has left, it would only worry her. We will wait till we can write and say we have another one as good.'
So the tale of Hermie's housekeeping and the mislaid cheque never crossed the sea, and the mother in her far German boarding-house continued to comfort herself with the thought of Miss Macintosh's perfections.
When Miss Browne's shortcomings made themselves glaringly patent, the pens again shallied in telling the story. ”

“ I never travel without getting a bad head.'
Miss Browne shook up the pillows and left her; this idea of making capital out of the headache was her own. 'Flossie never can bear any one to suffer,' she said. 'I always remember when I first came here, and she was only about three, some one cut a snake in half along the road. And what must the child do but rush from us and pick up one half—by the mercy of God, the tail half! You remember, Hermie? Bart, my love, you can't have forgotten that shocking day? ”

“ Hermie told him, with eyes ashine with tears and little heaving breast, that he was never to do any more of that dreadful ploughing, that in three years they would be making thirty thousand a year, at least, by no harder work than just feeding the fowls and packing up eggs.
He smiled at them very gently; he could not bear to damp their ardour. In very truth he could not exactly find out why these figures should not be as they seemed.
'Of course you would have a huge feed-bill and want a big run of land,' he said. ”