Rolf Boldrewood
Babes in the Bush
‘Your troubles are just commencing, my dear madam, but with Harley Sternworth’s help something may be done to lighten them. Still I feel sure that these young ladies will look upon difficulties in a sensible way, not expecting too much, or being discouraged – just at first, you know.’
‘Your country, my old friend, will have to look bad indeed if my wife cannot find a good word to say for it,’ said Mr. Effingham, roused to unwonted cheerfulness. ‘At any rate, it suits you well; you look as hard as a west country drover.’
‘Never was better. Haven’t had a dose of medicine for years. Ride fifty miles a day if necessary. Finest climate – finest country – under the sun. Lots of parish work and travelling, with a dash of botanising, and a pinch of geology to fill up spare time. Wouldn’t go back and live in a country town for the world. Mope to death.’
All this time the reverend gentleman was pressing forward up a gentle incline, towards the lower end of George Street, and after walking up that noble thoroughfare, and discreetly refraining from mention of the buildings which ornament that part of it, he turned again towards the water and piloted his party successfully to Batty’s Hotel.
‘Here, my dear madam, you will find that I have secured you pleasant apartments for a week or ten days, during which time you will be able to recruit after the voyage, and do justice to the beauties of the city. You are not going up country at once. A few days’ leisure will be economy in the end.’
‘So we are not to start off hundreds of miles at once, in a bullock dray, as the captain told us?’ said Rosamond.
‘No, my dear young lady, neither now nor, I hope, at any time will such a mode of travelling be necessary. I cannot say too much for your conveyance, but it will be fairly comfortable and take you to your destination safely. After that will commence what you will doubtless consider to be a tolerably rough life. Yes – a rough life.’
‘These young people have made up their minds to anything short of living like Esquimaux,’ said Mr. Effingham. ‘I don’t think you will frighten them. You and I saw curious backwoods places when we were quartered in Canada, didn’t we? You will hardly match them in Australia.’
‘Nothing to be compared to it,’ said Mr. Sternworth earnestly. ‘We have no winter here, to begin with; that is, none worth speaking about for cold. Moreover, the people are intensely British in their manners and customs, in an old-fashioned way. But I am not going to explain everything. You will have to live the explanation, which is far better than hearing it, and is sure to be retained by the memory.’
It was decided that no move was to be made for the interior until the baggage was landed, and arrangements made for its safe carriage by dray.
‘If you leave before all is ready,’ said their mentor, ‘you run risk of the loss of a portion, by mistake or negligence; and this loss may never be repaired. You will find your furniture of immense value in the new abode, and will congratulate yourself upon having brought it. It is astonishing with what different eyes you look upon a table or sideboard here and in England.’
‘I was anxious to bring out some of our old possessions,’ said Mrs. Effingham. ‘But I had hard work to persuade my husband that we might not be able to procure such here. Your advice was most opportune. I feel more pleased than I can say that we were able to act upon it.’
At lunch they were joined by Wilfred, who had discovered that there was no chance of all the furniture coming ashore that day. He had arranged with the captain that Andrew and his family should remain on board, as also Daisy the cow, until everything was ready to load the drays with the heavy baggage.
Andrew had expressed himself much pleased with the arrangement, regarding the ship as ‘mair hamelike’ than the busy foreign-looking city, to the inhabitants of which he did not take kindly, particularly after an exploring stroll, which happened to be on the Sunday after arrival.
‘A maist freevolous folk, given up to mammon-worship and pleesure-huntin’, – walkin’ in thae gairdens – no that they’re no just by-ordinar’ for shrubs and floorin’ plants frae a’ lands – walkin’ and haverin’ in the gairdens on the Sawbath day, a’ smilin’ and heedless, just on the vairge o’ happiness. Saw ye ever the like? It’s juist fearsome.’
Upon the lady portion of the family, the city with its shops, parks, and inhabitants made a more favourable impression.
Mr. Sternworth was untiring in showing them, in the excursions which Mrs. Effingham and the girls made under his guidance, the beauties of the city. They wandered much in the lovely public gardens, to Mrs. Effingham’s intense delight, whose love of flowers was, perhaps, her strongest taste. They drove out on the South Head road, and duly noted the white-walled mansions, plunged deeply in such luxuriant flower-growth as the Northern strangers had rarely yet beheld. Wonderfully gracious seemed the weather. It was the Australian spring with air as soft and balmy as that of Italy in her fairest hours.
How enjoyable was that halt between two stages of existence! Daily, as they rose from the morning meal, they devoted themselves to fresh rambles around the city, under the chaperonage of the worthy person. They commenced to feel an involuntary exhilaration. The pure air, the bright days, the glowing sun, the pleasant sea-breeze, combined to cause an indefinable conviction that they had found a region formed for aid and consolation.
The streets, the equipages, the people, presented, it is true, few of the contrasts, to their English experience, which a foreign town would have afforded. Yet was there the excitement, strong and vivid, which arises from the first sight of a strange land and an unfamiliar people.
‘This town has a great look of Marseilles,’ said Wilfred, as they loitered, pleasantly fatigued, towards their temporary home in the deepening twilight. ‘The same white, balconied, terraced houses of pale freestone; the southern climate, the same polyglot water-side population, only the Marseilles quay might be stowed away in a hundred corners of this wonderful harbour; and the people – only look at them – have a Parisian tendency to spend their evenings in the streets. I suppose the mildness of the climate tends to it.’
‘This kind of thing, I suppose, strikes you sharply at first,’ said Mr. Sternworth; ‘but my eyes have become so accustomed to all the aspects of my little world, that I cannot see much difference between it and many English places I have known in my day. The variations noted at first have long since disappeared; and I feel as much at home as I used to do at Bideford, when I was quartered there with the old regiment.’
‘But surely the people must be different from what they are in England,’ said Beatrice. ‘The country is different, the trees, the plants – how beautiful many of them are! – and the climate; surely all this must tend to alter the character or the appearance of the people.’
‘It may in a few centuries have that effect, my dear young lady,’ said the old gentleman, ‘but such changes are after the fashion of nature’s workings, imperceptibly slow. You will agree with me in another year, that many old acquaintances in men and manners are to be met with out here, and the rest present only outward points of divergence.’
The days of restful peace had passed. The valuable freight – to them invaluable – having been safely loaded, Mr. Sternworth unfolded the plan which he had arranged for their journey.
‘You are aware,’ he said, ‘that Warbrok Chase, as the young ladies have decided to call your estate, is more than 200 miles from Sydney. It lies 40 miles beyond Yass, which town is distant 180 miles from the Metropolis. Now, although we shall have railways in good time, there is nothing of the sort yet, and the roads are chiefly in their natural state. I would therefore suggest that you should travel in a roomy horse-waggon, comfortably fitted up, taking a tent with you in which to sleep at night. I have procured a driver well acquainted with the country, who knows all the camps and stopping-places, and may be depended upon to take you safely to your journey’s end.’
‘No railways, no coaches,’ said Mr. Effingham; ‘yours is rather a primitive country, Harley, it must be confessed; but you know what is best for us all, and the weather is so mild that none of us can suffer from the bivouac.’
‘I should not have hazarded it if there had been any risk to health,’ said the old gentleman, bowing courteously. ‘There are coaches, however, and you might reach your destination in four days, after hurried travelling. But the tariff is expensive for so large a party; you would be crowded, or meet unsuitable fellow-travellers, while you could take but little of your luggage with you.’
‘I vote for the overland journey,’ said Rosamond. ‘I am sure it will be quite refreshingly eastern. I suppose Andrew and Jeanie and poor dear Daisy and the dogs and everything can go.’
‘Everything and everybody you please but the heavy luggage. Your servants will be able to sleep under a part of the waggon-tilt, which will be comfortable enough at night. The cow will give you milk for your tea. Even the greyhounds may catch you a wallaby or two, which will come in for soup.’
‘There could not be a better scheme,’ said Wilfred exultingly. ‘My dear sir, you are a second father to us. How long do you think it will take us to get to Warbrok altogether?’
‘You will have to make up your minds to ten or twelve days’ travelling, I am afraid – say, twenty miles a day. I really believe you will not find it tedious, but, as with your water journey, get quite to like it. Besides, there is one grand advantage, as far as the young ladies are concerned.’
‘What is that?’ said Annabel, with added interest, but somewhat doleful countenance. ‘Is there any advantage in travelling like gipsies?’
‘It is this, then, my dear girls,’ said the old man, bending upon them his clear, kindly beaming eyes, ‘that you will make acquaintance with the rougher habitudes (and yet not unduly so) of country life in Australia by this primitive forest journeying. When you arrive at your destination you will therefore be proportionately satisfied with your new residence, because it will represent a settled home. Your daily journey will by that time have become a task, so that you will hail the prospect of repose with thankfulness.’
‘Is that all?’ asked Annabel with a disappointed air. ‘Then we are to undergo something dreadful, in order that something only disagreeable may not look so bad after it. Is all Australian life like that? But I daresay I shall die young, and so it won’t matter much. Is the lunch nearly ready? I declare I am famishing.’
Every one laughed at this characteristic sequence to Annabel’s prophecy, and the matter of the march having been settled, their friend promised to send up the waggon-driver next morning, in order that the proper fittings and the lamps – indispensable articles – and luggage might be arranged and packed. A tent also was purchased, and bedding, cooking utensils, provisions, etc., secured.
‘You will find Dick Evans an original character,’ said the parson, ‘but I do not know any man in the district so well suited for this particular service. He has been twenty years in Australia, and knows everything, both good and evil, that can be known of the country and people. He is an old soldier, and in the 50th Regiment saw plenty of service. He has his faults, but they don’t appear on the surface, and I know him well enough to guarantee that you will be wholly ignorant of them. His manners – with a dash of soldier servant – are not to be surpassed.’
At an hour next morning so soon after dawn that Andrew Cargill, the most incorruptible of early birds, was nearly caught napping, Mr. Dick Evans arrived with two horses and his waggon. The rest of the team, not being wanted, he had left in their paddock at Homebush. He immediately placed the waggon in the most convenient position for general reference, took out his horses, which he accommodated with nose-bags, and with an air of almost suspicious deference inquired of Andrew what he could commence to do in the way of packing.
The two men, as if foreseeing that possible encounters might henceforth take place between them, looked keenly at each other. Richard Evans had the erect bearing of which the recipient of early drill can rarely divest himself. His wiry figure but slightly above the middle height, his clean-shaved, ruddy cheek, his keen grey eye, hardly denoted the fifty years and more which he carried so lightly.
A faultless constitution, an open-air occupation with habits of great bodily activity, had borne him scatheless through a life of hardship and risk.
This personage commenced with a request to be shown the whole of the articles intended to be taken, gently but firmly withstanding any opinion of Andrew’s to the contrary, and replying to his protests with the mild superiority of the attendant in a lunatic asylum. After the whole of the light luggage had been displayed, he addressed himself to the task of loading and securing it with so much economy of space and advantage of position, that Andrew readily yielded to him the right to such leadership in future.
‘Nae doot,’ he said, ‘the auld graceless sworder that he is, has had muckle experience in guiding his team through thae pathless wildernesses, and it behoves a wise man to “jouk and let the jaw gae by.” But wae’s me, it’s dwelling i’ the tents o’ Kedar!’
Dick Evans, who was a man of few words and strong in the heat of argument, was by no means given to mixing up discussion with work. He therefore kept on steadily with his packing until evening, only requiring from Andrew such help and information as were indispensable.
‘There,’ said he, as he removed the low-crowned straw hat from his heated brow, and prepared to fill his pipe, ‘I think that will about do. The ladies can sit there in the middle, where I’ve put the tent loose, and use it as a sofy, if they’ve a mind to. I can pitch it in five minutes at night, and they can sleep in it as snug as if they had a cottage with them. You and your wife can have the body of the waggon to yourselves at night, and I’ll sleep under the shafts. The captain and the young gentlemen can have all the room between the wheels, and nobody can want more than that. I suppose your missis can do what cooking’s wanted?’
‘Nae doot,’ Andrew replied with dignity, ‘Mistress Cargill wad provide a few bits o’ plain victual. A wheen parritch, a thocht brose, wad serve a’ hands better than flesh meat, and tea or coffee, or siccan trash.’
‘Porridge won’t do for me,’ said the veteran firmly, ‘not if I know it. Oatmeal’s right enough for you Scotchmen, and not bad stuff either, in your own country, but beef and mutton’s our tack in Australia.’
‘And will ye find a flesher in this “bush,” as they ca’ it, that we’ve to push through?’ demanded Andrew. ‘Wad it no be mair wiselike to keep to victual that we can carry in our sacks?’
‘Get plenty of beef and mutton and everything else on the road,’ said Mr. Evans, lighting his pipe and declining further argument. ‘Don’t you forget to bring a frying-pan. I’ll take the horses back to the paddock now and be here by daylight, so as we can make a good start.’
It had been arranged by Mr. Sternworth that the boys, as he called them, should set forth in the morning with Evans and the waggon, as also Andrew and Jeanie, taking with them the cow, the dogs, and the smaller matters which the family had brought. No necessity for Captain Effingham and the ladies to leave Sydney until the second day. He would drive them in a hired carriage as far as the first camp, which Evans had described to him.
They would thus avoid the two days’ travel, and commence their journey after the expedition had performed its trial trip, so to speak.
‘What should we have done without your kind care of us?’ said Mrs. Effingham. ‘Everything up to this time has been a pleasure trip. When is the hard life that we heard so much of to begin?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Rosamond, ‘Mr. Sternworth is going to be like the brigand in the romances, who used to lure persons from their homes. I have no doubt but that there are “hard times” awaiting us somewhere or somehow.’
‘My dear young lady, let me compliment you on your good sense in taking that view of the future. It will save you from disappointment, and fill your mind with a wholesome strength to resist adversity. You may need all your philosophy, and I counsel you to keep it, like armour, well burnished. I do not know of any evil likely to befall you, but that you will have trouble and toil may be taken as certain. Only, after a time, I predict that you will overcome your difficulties, and find yourselves permanently benefited.’
The old gentleman, whose arrangements were as successfully carried out as if he had been the commissary instead of the chaplain of his former regiment, made his appearance on the following day in a neat barouche drawn by a pair of good-looking bay horses, and driven by a highly presentable coachman.
‘Why, it might pass muster for a private carriage,’ said Annabel. ‘And I can see a crest on the panels. I suppose we shall never own a carriage again as long as we live.’
‘This is a private carriage, or rather was, once upon a time,’ said Mr. Sternworth; ‘the horses and the coachman belonged to it. Many carriages were put down last year, owing to a scarcity of money, and my old friend Watkins here, having saved his wages, like a prudent man, bought his master’s carriage and horses, and commenced as cab proprietor. He has a large connection among his former master’s friends, and is much in demand at balls and other festivities.’
The ex-coachman drove them at a lively pace, but steadily, along a macadamised turnpike road, not so very different from a country lane in Surrey, though wider, and not confined by hedges. The day was fine. On either side, after the town was left behind, were large enclosures, wherein grazed sheep, cattle, and horses. Sometimes they passed an orangery, and the girls were charmed with the rows of dark green trees, upon which the golden fruit was ripe. Then an old-fashioned house, in an orchard, surrounded by a wall – wall and house coloured red, and rusty with the stains of age – much like a farmhouse in Hertfordshire. One town they passed was so manifestly old-fashioned, having even ruins, to their delight and astonishment, that they could hardly believe they were in a new country.
‘Some one has been playing Rip Van Winkle tricks upon us,’ said Rosamond. ‘We have been asleep a hundred years, and are come back finding all things grown old and in decay.’
‘You must not forget that the colony has been established nearly fifty years,’ said Mr. Sternworth, ‘and that these are some of the earliest settlements. They were not always placed in the most judicious sites; wherefore, as newer towns have passed them in the race for trade, these have submitted to become, as you see them, “grey with the rime of years,” and simulating decay as well as circumstances will permit.’
‘Well, I think much more highly of Australia, now that I have seen a real ruin or two,’ said Annabel decisively. ‘I always pictured the country full of hideous houses of boards, painted white, with spinach green doors and windows.’
The afternoon was well advanced as the inmates of the carriage descried the encampment which Mr. Evans had ordered, with some assistance from his military experience. So complete in all arrangements for comfort was it – not wholly disregarding the element of romantic scenery – that the girls cried aloud in admiration.
The streamlet (or creek) which afforded the needful water meandered round the base of a crag, jutting out from a forest-clothed hill. The water-hole (or basin) in the channel of the creek was larger than such generally are, and reflected brightly the rays of the declining sun. The meadow, which afforded space for the encampment, was green, and fertile of appearance. The waggon stood near the water; the four horses were peacefully grazing. At a short distance, under a spreading tree, the tent had been pitched, while before it was a wood fire, upon which Jeanie was cooking something appetising. Wilfred and his brother were strolling, gun in hand, up the creek; the cow was feeding among the rushes with great contentment; Andrew was seated, meditating, upon a box which he had brought forth from the recesses of the waggon; while Dick Evans, not far from a small fire, upon which stood a camp-kettle at boiling-point, was smoking with an air of conscious pride, as if not only the picturesque beauty, but the personages pertaining to the landscape, belonged to him individually.
‘I could not leave you more comfortably provided for,’ said their ‘guide, philosopher, and friend.’ ‘Old Dick may be trusted in all such matters as implicitly as the Duke of Wellington. I never knew him at fault yet in this kind of life.’
‘You must positively stay and have afternoon tea with us,’ exclaimed Annabel. ‘It is exactly five, and there is Dick putting a tin cupful of tea into the teapot. What extravagant people you colonists are! I never drank tea in the open air before, but it seems quite the right thing to do. I see Jeanie has made griddle-cakes, like a dear old thing. And I know there is butter. I am so hungry. You will stay, won’t you?’
‘I think, sir,’ said the ex-family coachman, looking indulgently at the special pleader, ‘that we shall have time to get back to the Red Cow Inn to-night, after a cup of tea, as the young lady wishes it. I’ll run you into town bright and early to-morrow.’
‘Very well then, Miss Annabel, I shall have the honour to accept your invitation,’ bowed the old man. ‘I go away more cheerfully than I expected, now that I leave you all so comparatively snug. It will not be for long. Be sure that I shall meet you on the threshold of Warbrok.’
The al fresco meal was partaken of with much relish, even gaiety, after which civilisation – as personified by the reverend gentleman and the carriage – departed. Annabel looked after it ruefully, while Jeanie and Mrs. Effingham took counsel together for the night. It was for the first time in the family history. Never before had the Effinghams slept, so to speak, in the open air. It was a novel adventure in their uneventful lives – a marked commencement of their colonial career. It affected them differently, according to their idiosyncrasies. Rosamond was calmly resolute, Annabel apprehensive, and Beatrice indifferent; the boys in high spirits; Mr. Effingham half in disapproval, despondently self-accusing; while Mrs. Effingham and Jeanie were so fully absorbed in the great bedding question that they had no emotions to spare for any abstract consideration whatever.
The moon, in her second quarter, had arisen lustrous in the pure, dark blue firmament, fire-besprinkled with ‘patines of bright gold,’ before this important matter (and supper) was concluded. Then it was formally announced that the tent was fully furnished, and had turned out wonderfully commodious. The mattresses were placed upon a layer of ‘bush-feathers,’ as Dick Evans called them, and which (the small twigs and leaf-shoots of the eucalyptus) he had impressed Wilfred and his brother to gather. There was a lantern secured to the tent-pole, which lighted up the apartment; and sheets, blankets, coverlets being brought forth, Annabel declared that she was sure they would all sleep like tops, that for her part she must insist on going to bed at once as the keen air had made her quite drowsy. A dressing-table had been improvised, chiefly with the aid of Mr. Evans’ mechanical skill. When the matron and her daughters made their farewell for the night, and closed their canvas portal, every one was of the opinion that a high degree of comfort and effective lodging had been reached.
Mr. and Mrs. Cargill and family retired to the inmost recesses of the upper waggon, where the ends of the tilt, fastened together, protected them. Mr. Effingham and his sons joined Dick Evans at his briskly burning fire, where the old man was smoking and occasionally indulging in a refresher of tea as if he had no intention of going to bed till he reached Warbrok.
‘We are having glorious weather to travel in, Evans,’ said Mr. Effingham. ‘You have been in the service, Mr. Sternworth tells me; what regiment?’
‘I was in the old 50th for many a year, Captain,’ he said, unconsciously standing erect and giving the salute. ‘I served under Sir Hugh Gough in India, where I got this slash from a Mahratta sabre. Didn’t seem a hard cut neither; the fellow just seemed to swing his wrist, careless-like, as he rode by, but it was nigh deep enough to take the “wick” out of me. Their swords was a deal sharper than ours, and their wooden scabbards kept ’em from getting blunt again. I had a great argument with my sergeant about it once,’ continued the old man. ‘I couldn’t a-bear to see our poor chaps sliced up by them razor-edged tulwars, while our regulation swords was a’most too dull to cut through a quilted cotton helment. Ah! them was fine times,’ said the old soldier, with so genuine a regret in his tones that Howard Effingham almost believed he had, for the first time in his life, fallen across a noble private, pleased with his profession, and anxious to return to it.
‘I have rarely heard a soldier regret the army,’ said he. ‘But you still retain zeal for the service, I am pleased to find.’
‘Well, sir, that’s all very well,’ said the philosophical man-at-arms; ‘but what I was a-thinking of was the “loot.” It’s enough to bring tears into a man’s eyes that served his Queen and country, to think of the things as we passed over. Didn’t Jimmy O’Hara and two or three more men of my company get together once and made bold to stick up the priest of one of them temples. No great things either – gold earrings and bangles, and a trifle of gold mohurs, the priest’s own. There was a copper-coloured, bronze-looking idol – regular heathen god, or some such cretur – which the priest kept calling out “Sammy” to, or “Swammi.” The ugly thing had bright glittering eyes, and Jim wanted to get ’em out badly, but the priest said, “Feringhee wantee like this?” and he picked up a bit of glass, and smiled contempshus like. At last we left him and “Swammi,” eyes and all. I don’t ever deserve to have a day’s luck, sir, agin, as long as I live.’
‘Why so?’ said Mr. Effingham, astonished at the high moral tone, which he had not been used to associate with the light infantry man of the period. ‘Not for taking the image away, surely?’
‘No!’ shouted the old man, roused from his ordinary respectful tone. ‘But for leavin’ him behind! That Sammy, sir, was pure gold, and his eyes was di’monds, di’monds! Think o’ that. We left a thousand pound a man behind, because we didn’t know gold when we seen it. It will haunt me, sir, to my dying day.’
The boys laughed at the unsentimental conclusion of the veteran’s tale. Their father looked grave.
‘I cannot approve of the plunder of religious edifices, Evans; though the temptation was too great for soldiers, and indeed for others in those days.’
The chief personages having retired, Mr. Effingham and his sons essayed to make their couch under the waggon.
‘It is many a year since I had any experience in this kind of thing,’ said he; ‘but, if I remember rightly, it was in Spain that I bivouacked last. This locality is not unlike Estramadura. That rocky ravine, with the track running down it, is just where you would have expected to see the muleteer stepping gaily along beside his mules singing or swearing, as the case might be; and they do both with great vigour.’
‘I remember Don Pedro, Captain,’ said Dick. ‘I mind the wine-skins putty well too. It wasn’t bad stuff; but I don’t know as dark brandy doesn’t come handier if ye wants a stir up. But there’s one thing you can’t have forgot, Captain, that beats this country holler.’
‘You must mean the fleas,’ said Effingham; ‘they certainly could not be surpassed. I hope you don’t mean to rival them here.’
‘Well, I don’t deny, Captain, that in some huts, where the people aren’t particular, in a sandy country, in summer you will find a few, and likewise them other reptiles, ’specially where there’s pine slabs, but in a general way we’re pretty clean in this country, and you’ve no call to be afeard to tackle your blankets.’
‘I’m glad to hear it, Evans,’ said Effingham, yawning. ‘I have no doubt that your camp is always fit for inspection. I think we may say good-night.’
Between the keen air of the forest, and the unwonted exercise, a tendency to drowsiness now set in, which Mr. Effingham and his sons discovered by the time that the blankets were drawn over them. The sides of their apartment, represented by the wheels of the waggon, were covered by the canvas tilt, the ceiling was low but sufficient. It was the ideal chamber in one respect. Ventilation was unimpeded, while shelter was secured.
