Babes in the Bush. Rolf Boldrewood
of business at any time. My dear mother is a saint en habit de Cour; she will have to suffer a sea-change that might break the hearts of ordinary worldlings. Upon Rosamond and myself will fall the brunt of the battle. She has prepared herself for it, happily, by years of unselfish care and thought. I have been an idler and a loiterer. Now the time has come to show of what stuff I am made. It will mean good-bye to you, Gerald O’More, fast friend and bon camarade. We shall have no more shooting and fishing together, no more talk about art and poetry, no more vacation tours, no more rambles, for long years – let us not say for ever. Good-bye to my old life, my old Self! God speed us all; we must arm and away.’
‘I’d say you might have a worse life, Wilfred, though it will come hard on you at first to be shooting kangaroos and bushrangers, instead of grouse and partridges, like a Christian. But we get used to everything, I am told, even to being a land-agent, with every boy in the barony wondering if he could tumble ye at sixty paces with the ould duck gun. When a thing’s to be done – marrying or burying, standing out on the sod on a foggy morning with a nate shot opposite ye, or studying for the law – there’s nothing like facing it cool and steady. You’ll write me and Hallam a line after you’re landed; and we’ll think of ye often enough, never fear. God speed ye, my boy! Sure, it’s Miss Annabel that will make the illigant colonist entirely.’
The friends parted. Wilfred lost no time in reaching home, where his presence comforted the family in the midst of that most discouraging state of change for the worse, the packing and preparing for departure.
But he had utilised the interval since he left his friend by stern self-examination, ending in a fixed, unalterable resolve. His mother, his sisters, and his father were alike surprised at his changed bearing. He had grown years older in a week. He listened to the explanation of their misfortune from his father with respectful silence or short, undoubting comment. He confirmed the decision to which the family counsel had arrived. Emigration to Australia was, under the circumstances, the only path which promised reparation of the fortunes of the house. He carefully read the letter from Mr. Sternworth, upon which their fate seemed to hang. He cheered his mother by expressing regret for his previous desultory life, asking her to believe that his future existence should be devoted to the welfare of all whom both held so dear.
‘You have never doubted, my dearest mother,’ he said, ‘but that your heedless son would one day do credit to his early teaching? I stand pledged to make your words good.’
The arrival of the heir, who had taken his place at his father’s right hand in so worthy a spirit, seemed to infuse confidence into the other members of the family. Each and all appeared to recognise the fact that their expatriation was decided upon, and while lamenting their loved home, they commenced to gather information about their new abode, and to dwell upon the more cheering probabilities.
The family was not a small one. Guy Effingham was a high-spirited schoolboy of fourteen, whose cricket and football engagements had hitherto, with that amount of the humanities which an English public schoolboy is compelled to master, under penalties too dire for endurance, been sufficient to fill up his irresponsible life. It was arranged that he was to remain at school until the week previous to their departure. His presence at home was not necessary, while his mother wished him to utilise the last effective teaching which he was likely to have. To her was committed the task of preparing him for his altered position. Two younger daughters, with a boy and girl of tender years, the darlings of the family, completed the number of the Effinghams. The third daughter, Annabel, was the beauty of the family. A natural pride in her unquestioned loveliness had always mingled with the maternal repression of all save the higher aims and qualities which it had been the fond mother’s life-long duty to inculcate. Annabel Effingham had received from nature the revival of the loveliness of some ancestress, heightened and intensified by admixture of family type. She was fair, with the bright colouring, the silken hair, the delicate roseate glow which had long been the boast of the women of her mother’s family – of ancient Saxon blood – for many generations. But she had superadded to these elements of beauty a classical delicacy of outline, a darker shade of blue in the somewhat prouder eye, a figure almost regal in the nobility of carriage and unconscious dignity of motion, which told of a diverse lineage. Beatrice, the second daughter of the house, had up to the present time exhibited neither the strong altruistic bias which, along with the faculty of organisation, characterised Rosamond, nor the universally confessed fascination which rendered Annabel’s path a species of royal progress. Refined, distinguished in appearance, as indeed were all the members of the family, she had not as yet developed any special vocation. In her appearance one saw but the ordinary traits which stamp a highly cultured girl of the upper classes. She was, perhaps, more distinctly literary in her tastes than either of her sisters, but her reserved habits concealed her attainments. For the rest, she appeared to have made up her mind to the inevitable with less apparent effort than the other members of the family.
‘What can it avail – all this grieving and lamenting?’ she would say. ‘I feel parting with The Chase, with our relations and friends – with all our old life, in fact – deeply and bitterly. But that once admitted, what good end is served by repeating the thought and renewing the tears? Other people are ruined in England, and have to go to Boulogne and horrid continental towns, where they lead sham lives, and potter about, unreal in everything but dulness and poverty, till they die. We shall go to Australia to do something – or not to do it. Both are good in their way. Next to honest effort I like a frank failure.’
‘But suppose we do fail, and lose all our money, and have nothing to eat in a horrid new country,’ said Annabel, ‘what will become of us?’
‘Just what would become of us here, I suppose; we should have to work – become teachers at a school, or governesses, or hospital nurses; only, as young women are not so plentiful in Australia as in England, why, we should be better paid.’
‘Oh, but here we know so many people, and they would help us to find pleasant places to live in,’ pleaded Annabel piteously. ‘It does seem so dreadful to be ten thousand miles away from your own country. I am sure we shall starve!’
‘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,