‘What letter are you holding in your hand all this time, my dear?’ said Captain Howard Effingham to his wife during a certain family council.
‘Really, I had almost forgotten it. A foreign postmark—I suppose it is from your friend Mr. Sternworth, in Australia or New Zealand.’
‘Sternworth lives in New South Wales, not New Zealand,’ returned he rather testily. ‘I have told you more than once that the two places are a thousand miles apart by sea. Yes! it is from old Harley. When he was chaplain to our regiment he was always hankering after a change from routine duty. Now he has got it with a vengeance. He was slightly eccentric, but a better fellow, a stauncher friend, never stepped.’
‘Don’t people go to Australia to make money?’ asked Rosamond Effingham, a girl of twenty, with ‘eldest daughter’ plainly inscribed upon her thoughtful features. ‘I saw in a newspaper that some one had come home after making a fortune, or it may have been that he died there and left it to his relatives.’
‘Sternworth has not made a fortune. He is not the man to want one. Still, he seems wonderfully contented and raves about the beauty of the climate and the progress of his colony.’
‘Let me read his letter out,’ pleaded the anxious wife softly, and, with a gesture of assent, the father and daughter sat expectant.
Mrs. Effingham had the gift of reading aloud with effect, which, with that of facile, clear-cut composition, came to her as naturally as the notes of a song-bird, which indeed her tuneful voice resembled.
‘The letter is dated from Yass—(what a funny name! a native one, I suppose)—in New South Wales, and June the 20th, 1834. Nearly six months ago! Does it take all that time to come? What a long, long way off it must be. Now then for the contents.
‘My dear Effingham—I have not written for an age—though I had your last in reply to mine in due course—partly because, after my first acknowledgment, I had nothing particular to say, nor any counsel to offer you, suitable for the situation in which you appear to have landed yourself. When you were in the old regiment you were always a bad manager of your money, and the Yorkshireman had to come to your assistance with his hard head more than once. I thought all that sort of thing was over when you succeeded to a settled position and a good estate. I was much put out to find by your last letter that you had again got among the shallows of debt. I doubt it is chronic with you. But it is a serious matter for the family. If I were near you I would scold you roundly, but I am too far off to do it effectually.
‘My reason for writing now—for I am too busy a man to send the compliments of the season across the globe—is that a tempting investment in land—a perfect gift, as the phrase is—has come to my knowledge.
‘Now, I am not hard-natured enough to tempt you to come here with your amiable wife, whose praises, not always from yourself, I have often heard—[really, my dear, I had no idea you paid me compliments in your letters to your friends]—and your tenderly nurtured family; that is, if you can retain your position, or one in any way approaching it. But I know that the loss of fortune in the old country entails a more complete stripping of all that men hold dear, than in this new land, where aristocratic poverty, or rather, scantiness of money, is the rule, and wealth, as yet, the exception.
‘I cannot believe that you are totally without means. Here, cash is at a premium. Therefore, if you have but the shreds and fragments of your fortune left, you may still have capital available from the wreck sufficient to make a modest venture, which I shall explain.
‘A family long resident near this rising town—say forty or fifty miles distant—have been compelled, like you, to offer their estate for sale. I will not enter into the circumstances or the causes of the step. The fact that we are concerned with is, that a valuable property—as fair judges consider it—comprising a decent house and several thousand acres of good land, may be bought for three or four thousand pounds.
‘I do not hide from you that many people consider that the present bad times are likely to last, even to become more pressing. I fully expect a reaction. If you can do better in any way I do not ask you for one moment to consider this matter, much as I should like to see my old comrade and his family here.
‘But if otherwise, and the melancholy life of the ruined middle-aged Briton stares you in the face, I say boldly, do not go to Boulogne, or other refuge for the shady destitute, where a man simply counts the days which he must linger out in cheap lodgings and cheese-paring idleness, but come to Australia and try a more wholesome, more manly, if occasionally ruder life. I know what you home-keeping English think of a colony. But you may find here a career for your boys—even suitable marriages for your girls, whose virtues and accomplishments would doubtless invest them with distinction.
‘If you can get this sum together, and a few hundreds to have in your pocket at landing, I can guarantee you a livelihood—you know my caution of old—with many of the essentials, God forbid I should say all, of “the gentle life.” Still, you may come to these by and by. The worst of my adopted country is that there is a cruel uncertainty of seasons, at times sore on man and beast. That you must risk, like other people. If you come, you will have one friend here in old Harley Sternworth, who, without chick or child, will be proud to pour out whatever feelings of affection God has given him, into the lap of your family. If you decide on coming, send a draft for three thousand pounds payable to my order at once. I will manage the rest, and have Warbrok ready to receive you in some plain way on your arrival. So farewell for the present. God bless you and yours, says your old friend,
As the letter disclosed this positive invitation and plan of emigration which, whether possible or impossible, was now brought into tangible form, the clasp in which lay the father’s hand and the daughter’s slightly tightened. Their eyes met, their faces gradually softened from the expression of pained endurance which had characterised them, and as the clear tones of the reader came to an end, Rosamond, rising to her feet, exclaimed, ‘God has sent us a friend in our need. If we go to this far land we may work together and live and love undivided. But oh, mother, it breaks my heart to think of you. We are young, it should matter little to us; but how will you bear to be taken away from this pleasant home to a rude, waste country, such as Australia must be?’
‘My darling,’ said the matron, as she folded the letter with an instinctive habit of neatness, and handed it to her husband, ‘the sacrifice to me will be great, far greater than at one time I should have thought it possible to bear. But with my husband and children are my life and my true dwelling-place. Where they are, I abide thankfully to life’s close. Strength, I cannot doubt, will be given to us all to bear our—our——’
Here the thought, the inevitable, unimaginable woe of quitting the loved home of youth, the atmosphere of early friendship, the intertwining ties of relationship, completely overcame the courage of the speaker. Her eyes overflowed as, burying her face in her husband’s arms, which were opened to receive her, she wept long and silently.
‘How could we think of such a thing, my darling, for one moment?’ said Effingham. ‘It would kill you to part, at one blow, from a whole previous existence. I hardly foresaw what a living death it would be for you, more than all, to leave England for ever. There is a world of agony in that thought alone! I certainly gave Sternworth a full account of my position in my last letters. It was a relief. He has always been a true friend. But he has rashly concluded that we were prepared to go to his wild country. It would be your death-blow, darling wife; and then, what good would our lives be to us? Some of our friends will help us, surely. Let us live quietly for a year or two. I may get some appointment.’
‘It relieves my bursting heart to weep; yet it will fit me for future duty. No, Howard, we must not falter or draw back. You can trust, I know, in Mr. Sternworth’s practical wisdom, for you have a hundred times told me how far-seeing, shrewd, and yet kindly he was. In his plan there is the certainty of independence; together we can cheer each other when the day’s work is done. As for living in England, trusting to the assistance of friends, and the lingering uncertainty of a provision from the Government, I have seen too many families pitiably drifting towards a lower level. There is no middle course. No! Our path has been chosen for us. Let us go where a merciful Providence would seem to lead us.’
The fateful conference was ended. A council, not much bruited about, but fraught with momentous results to those yet unborn, in the Effingham family, and it may be to other races and sections of humanity. Who may limit the effects produced in the coming time, by the transplantation of but one rarely endowed family of our upward-striving race?
Nothing remained but to communicate the decision of the high contracting parties of the little state to the remaining members. The heir was absent. To him would have been accorded, as a right, a place in the parliament. But he was in Ireland visiting a college chum, for whom he had formed one of the ardent friendships characteristic of early manhood. Wilfred Effingham was an enthusiast—sanguine and impulsive—whose impulses, chiefly, took a good direction. His heart was warm, his principles fixed. Still, so sensitive was he to the impressions of the hour, that only by the sternest consciousness of responsibility could he remain faithful to the call of duty.
Devoted primarily to art and literature; sport, travel, and social intercourse likewise put in claims to his attention and mingled in his nature the impulses of a refined Greek with the energy and self-denial of his northern race.
It must be confessed that these latter qualities were chiefly in the embryonic stage. So latent and undeveloped were they, indeed, that no one but his fond mother had fully credited his possession of them.
But as the rounded limbs of the Antinous conceal the muscles which after-years develop and harden, so in the graceful physique and sensitive mind of Wilfred Effingham lay hidden powers, which, could he have foreseen their future exercise, would have astonished no one more than himself. Such was the youth recalled from his joyous revel in the Green Isle, where he had been shooting and fishing to his heart’s content.
A letter from his mother first told that his destiny had been changed. In a moment he was transformed. No longer was he to be an enjoyer of the hoarded wealth of art, letters, science, sitting on high and choosing what he would, as one of the gods of Olympus. His lot, henceforth, would be that of a toiler for the necessaries of life! It was a shrewd blow. Small wonder had he reeled before it! It met him without warning, unsoftened, save by the tender pity and loving counsel so long associated with his mother’s handwriting. The well-remembered characters, so fair in delicate regularity, which since earliest schooldays had cheered and comforted him. Never had they failed him; steadfast ever as a mother’s faith, unfailing as a mother’s love!
Grown to manhood, still, as of old, he looked, almost at weekly intervals, for the missive, ever the harbinger of home love, the herald of joy, the bearer of wise counsel—never once of sharp rebuke or untempered anger.
And now—to the spoiled child of affection, of endowment—had come this message fraught with woe.
A meaner mind, so softly nurtured, might have shrunk from the ordeal. To the chivalrous soul of Wilfred Effingham the vision was but the summons to the fray, which bids the knight quit the tourney and the banquet for the stern joys of battle.
His nature, one of those complex organisms having the dreamy poetic side much developed, yet held room for physical demonstration. Preferring for the most part contemplation to action, he had ever passed, apparently without effort, from unchecked reverie and study to tireless bodily toil in the quest of sport, travel, or adventure. Possessed of a constitution originally vigorous, and unworn by dissipation, from which a sensitive nature joined with deference to a lofty ideal had hitherto preserved him, Wilfred Effingham approached that rare combination which has ere now resulted, under pressure of circumstance, in the hero, the poet, the warrior, or the statesman.
He braced himself to withstand the shock. It was a shrewd buffet. Yet, after realising its force, he was conscious, much to his surprise, of a distinct feeling of exaltation.
‘I shall suffer for it afterwards,’ he told his friend Gerald O’More, half unconsciously, as they sat together over a turf fire which glowed in the enormous chimney of a rude but comfortable shooting lodge; ‘but, for the soul of me, I can’t help feeling agreeably acted upon.’
‘Acted upon by what?’ said his companion and college chum, with whom he had sworn eternal friendship. ‘Is it the whisky hot? It’s equal to John Jameson, and yet it never bothered an exciseman! Sure that same is amaylioratin’ my lot to a degree I should have never believed possible. Take another glass. Defy Fate and tell me all about it. Has your father, honest man, discovered another Roman tile or Julius Cæsar’s tobacco-pouch? [the elder Effingham was an antiquarian of great perseverance], or have ministers gone out, to the ruin of the country, and the triumph of those villains the radicals? ’Tis little that ever happens in that stagnant existence that you Saxons call country life, barring a trifle of make-believe hunting and shooting. Sure, didn’t me uncle Phelim blaze away into a farmer’s poultry-yard in Kent for half-an-hour, and swear (it was after lunch) that he never saw pheasants so hard to rise before.’
Thus the light-hearted Irishman rattled on, well divining, for all his apparent mirth, that something more than common had come in the letter, that had the power to drive the blood from Wilfred’s cheek and set Care’s seal upon his brow. That impress remained indelible, even when he smiled, and affected to resume his ordinary cheerfulness.
At length he spoke: ‘Gerald, old fellow! there is news from home which most people would call bad. It is distinct of its kind. We have lost everything; are ruined utterly. Not a chance of recovery, it seems. My dear mother bids me understand that most clearly; warns me to have no hope of anything otherwise. The governor has been hard hit, it seems, in foreign bonds; Central African Railways, or Kamschatka telegraph lines,—some of the infernal traps for English capital at any rate. The Chase is mortgaged and will have to go. The family must emigrate. Australia is to be the future home of the Effinghams. This appears to be settled. That’s a good deal to be hid in two sheets of note-paper, isn’t it?’ And he tossed up the carefully directed letter, caught it as it fell, and placed it in his pocket.
‘My breath is taken away; reach me the whisky, if you wish to save my life, or else it will be——’ (prompt measures were taken to relieve the unfortunate gentleman, but without success). ‘Wilfred, me dear fellow, do you tell me that you’re serious? What will ye do at all, at all?’
‘Do? What better men have had to do before now. Face the old foe of mortals, Anagkaia, and see what she can do when a man stands up to her. I don’t like the idea any the worse for having to cross the sea to a new world, to find a lost fortune. After all, one was getting tired of this sing-song, nineteenth century life of fashionable learning, fashionable play, fashionable work—everything, in fact, regulated by dame Fashion. I shall be glad to stretch my limbs in a hunter’s hammock, and bid adieu to the whole unreal pageant.’
‘Bedad! I don’t know. I’d say the reality was nearer where we are, with all the disadvantages of good dinners, good sport, good books, and good company. But you’re right, me dear fellow, to put a bold face on it; and if you have to take the shilling in the divil’s regiment, sure ye’ll die a hero, or rise to Commander-in-Chief, if I know ye. But your mother, and poor Miss Effingham, and the Captain—without his turnips and his justice-room and his pointers and his poachers, his fibulæ and amphoræ—whatever will he do among blackfellows and kangaroos? My heart aches for ye all, Wilfred. Sure ye know it does. If ye won’t take any more potheen, let us sleep on it; and we’ll have a great day among the cocks, if we live, and talk it over afterwards. There never was that sorrow yet that ye didn’t lighten it if ye tired your legs well between sun and sun!’
With the morrow’s sun came an unwonted calm and settled resolve to the soul of Wilfred Effingham. Together, gay, staunch Gerald O’More and he took the last day’s sport they were likely to have for many a day. The shooting was rather above than under the average, as if the ruined heir was willing to show that his nerves had not been affected by his prospects.
‘I must take out the old gun,’ he said, ‘and keep up my shooting. Who knows but that we may depend upon it for a meal now and then in this New Atlantis that we are bound for. But one thing is fixed, old fellow, as far as a changeable nature will permit. I shall have to be the mainstay of my father’s house. I must play the man, if it’s in me. No more dilettantism, no more mediæval treasures, no more tall copies. The present, not the past, is what we must stand or fall by. The governor is shaken by all this trouble; not the best man 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, my home, my home, the dear old place where I was born. How dark and dreary do this long voyage and journey seem!’
‘Have we not a yet longer voyage, a more distant journey to make, my own one?’ whispered the mother, in accents soft as those with which in times gone by she had lulled the complaining babe. ‘We know not the time, nor the hour. Think! If we do not prepare ourselves by prayer and faith, how dark that departure will appear!’
‘You are always good and kind, always right, mother,’ said the girl, recovering her composure and assuming a more steadfast air. ‘Pray for me, that I may find strength; but do I not know that you pray for all of us incessantly? We ought—that is—I ought to be better than I am.’
Among the lesser trials which, at the time of his great sorrow, oppressed Howard Effingham, not the least was the necessity for parting with old servants and retainers. He was a man prone to become attached to attendants long used to his ways. Partly from kindly feeling, partly from indolence, he much disliked changing domestics or farm labourers. Accustomed to lean against a more readily available if not a stronger support than his own, he was, in most relations of life, more dependent than most men upon his confidential servants.
In this instance, therefore, he had taken it much to heart that his Scotch land-steward, a man of exceptional capacity and absolute personal fidelity, having a wife also, of rare excellence in her own department, should be torn from him by fate.
Backed up by his trusty Andrew, with his admirable wife, he felt as if he could have faced all ordinary colonial perils. While under Jeanie Cargill’s care, his wife and daughters might have defied the ills of any climate, and risked the absence of the whole College of Physicians.
Andrew Cargill was one of those individuals of strongly marked idiosyncrasy, a majority of whom appear to have been placed, by some mysterious arrangement of nature, on the north side of the Tweed. Originally the under-gardener at The Chase, he had risen slowly but irresistibly through the gradations of upper-gardener and under-bailiff to the limited order of land-steward required by a moderate property. He had been a newly-married man when he formed the resolution of testing the high wages of the Southron lairds. His family, as also his rate of wages, had increased. His expenses he had uniformly restricted, with the thoroughness of his economical forefathers. He despised all wasteful ways. He managed his master’s affairs, as committed to his charge, with more than the rigorous exactitude he was wont to apply to his own. Gaining authority, by the steady pressure of unrelaxing forecast habit of life, he was permitted a certain license as to advice and implied rebuke. Had Andrew Cargill been permitted to exercise the same control over the extra-rural affairs that he was wont to use over the farm-servants and the plough-teams, the tenants and the trespassers, the crops and the orchards, the under-gardeners and the pineries, no failure, financial or otherwise, would have occurred at The Chase.
When the dread disaster could no longer be concealed, it is questionable whether Mr. Effingham felt anything more acutely than the necessity which existed of explaining to this faithful follower the extent, or worse, the cause of his misfortune. He anticipated the unbroken silence, the incredulous expression, with which all attempts at favourable explanation would be received. Open condemnation, of course, was out of the question. But the mute reproach or guarded reference to his master’s inconceivable imbecility, which on this occasion might be more strongly accented than usual, would be hard to endure.
Mr. Effingham could not depute his wife, or one of the girls, to convey the information to the formidable Andrew. So he was fain to pull himself together one morning, and go forth to this uncompromising logician. Having briefly related the eventful tale, he concluded by dispensing with his faithful servant, as they were going to a new country, and very probably would never be able to employ servants again.
Having thrown down the bombshell, the ‘lost leader’ looked fixedly at Andrew’s unmoved countenance, and awaited the particular kind of concentrated contempt which he doubted not would issue forth.
His astonishment was great when, after the hurried conclusion, ‘I shall miss you, Andrew, you may be sure, more than I say; and as for Jeanie, I don’t know how the young ladies and the mistress will get on without her,’ the following words issued slowly and oracularly from Andrew’s lips:—
‘Ye’ll no miss me ava, Maister Effingham. Dinna ye think that it’s a’ news ye’re tellin’ me. I behoved just to speer a bit what garred the puir mistress look sae dowie and wae. And the upshot o’ matters is that I’m gaun wi’ ye.’
‘And your wife and children?’
‘Ye didna threep I was to leave them ahint? Andra’ Cargill isna ane o’ thae kind o’ folk, sae just tak’ heart, and for a’ that’s come and gane ye may lift up your heid ance mair; it’s nae great things o’ a heid, as the auld wife said o’ the Deuk’s, but if Botany Bay is the gra-and country they ca’ it, and the book-writers and the agents haena been tellin’ the maist unco-omon set o’ lees, a’ may gang weel yet.’
‘But what’s put this in your head, of all people in the world, Andrew?’ queried his master, becoming bold, like individuals, or corporate bodies, of purely defensive ideas, after observing tokens of weakness in the besieging force.
‘Weel, aweel, first and foremost, Laird, ye’ll no say that we haena eaten your bread and saut this mony a year; there’s been neither stint nor stay till’t. I hae naething to say against the wage; aiblins a man weel instructed in his profession should aye be worthy o’ his hire. Jeanie has been just spoiled by the mistress—my heart’s sairvice to her and the young leddies—till ilka land they were no in, wad be strange eneugh to her, puir body. And the lang and short o’ the hail matter is, that we loe ye and your bonnie lads and lassies, Laird, sae weel that we winna be pairted frae ye.’
As Mr. Effingham grasped the hand of the staunch, true servitor, who thus stood by him in his need, under whose gnarled bark of natural roughness lay hid so tender and true a core, the tears stood in his eyes.
‘I shall never forget this, Andrew,’ said he; ‘you and Jeanie, old friend, will be the comfort of our lives in the land over-sea, and I cannot say what fresh courage your determination has given me. But are you sure it will be for your own advantage? You must have saved money, and might take a farm and live snugly here.’
‘I was aboot to acquent ye, Laird,’ said the conscientious Scot, too faithful to his religious principles to take credit for a disinterestedness to which he felt but partially entitled. ‘Ye’ll see, Laird, for ye’re weel acquent wi’ the Word, that the battle’s no always to the strong, nor the race to the swift. Ye’ll ken that, frae your ain experience—aweel, I winna just say that neither’—proceeded Andrew, getting slightly involved between his quotations and his determination to be ‘faithful’ to his erring master, and by no means cloaking his sins of omission. ‘I’ll no say but what ye’ve been lettin’ ither folks lead ye, and throw dust in ye’re een in no the maist wiselike fashion, as nae doot ye wad hae dune wi’ the tenants, puir bodies, gin I had letten ye. But touchin’ my ain affairs, I haena sae muckle cause to brag; for maybe I was unco stiff-necked, and it behoved to chasten me, as weel’s yersell; I hae tint—just flung awa’—my sma’ scrapin’s and savin’s, these saxteen years and mair, in siccan a senseless daft-like way too!’
Here Andrew could not forbear a groan, which was echoed by an exclamation from his master.
‘I am sincerely grieved—astonished beyond expression! Why, Andrew, surely you have not been dabbling in stocks and foreign loans?’
‘Na—nae ga-amblin’ for me, Laird!’ replied Andrew sourly, and with an accentuation which implied speedy return to his ordinary critical state of mind; ‘but if I had minded the Scripture, I wadna hae lost money and faith at one blow. “Strike not hands for a surety,”’ it saith, ‘but I trusted Geordie Ballantyne like a brither; my ain cousin, twice removed. He was aboot to be roupit oot, stock and lock, and him wi’ a hoosefu’ o’ weans. I just gaed surety to him for three hunder pound!’
‘You were never so mad—a prudent man like you?’
‘And he just flitted to America, fled frae his ain land, his plighted word, and left me to bear the wyte o’t. It’s nae use greetin’ ower spilt brose. The money’s a’ paid, and Andra’ Cargill’s as puir a man’s when he cam’ to The Chase, saxteen years last Michaelmas. Sae, between the heart-break it wad be to pairt wi’ the family, and the sair heart I hae gotten at pairtin’ wi’ my siller, the loss o’ a friend—“mine own familiar freend,” as the Psawmist says—as weel’s the earnings o’ the maist feck o’ my days, at ae blast, I hae settled to gang oot, Laird, to Austra-alia, and maybe lay oot a wheen straight furrows for ye, as I did lang syne on the bonnie holms o’ Ettrick.’
Here Andrew’s voice faltered, and the momentous unprecedented conversation ended abruptly.
The unfeigned delight with which his wife and daughters received the news did much to reconcile Mr. Effingham to his expatriation, and even went far to persuade him that he had, in some way, originated the whole idea. Nor was their satisfaction unfounded. Andrew, with all his apparent sternness and occasional incivility, was shrewd, capable, and even versatile, in the application of his industry and unerring common sense to a wide range of occupations. He was the ideal colonist of his order, as certain to succeed in his own person as to be the most helpful and trustworthy of retainers.
As for Jeanie, she differed from her husband in almost every respect, except in the cardinal virtues. She had been a rustic celebrity in her youth, and Andrew occasionally referred still, in moments of unbending, to the difficulties of his courtship, and the victory gained over a host of rival suitors. She still retained the softness of manner and tenderness of nature which no doubt had originally led to the fascination of her masterful, rugged-natured husband.
For the rest, Jean Cargill had always been one of those servants, rare even in England, the land of peerless domestics, whose loving, unselfish service knew no abatement in sickness and in health, good fortune or evil hap. Her perceptive tastes and strong sense of propriety rendered her, as years rolled on, a trusted friend; an infinitely more suitable companion for the mistress and her children, as she always called them, than many a woman of higher culture. A tireless nurse in time of sickness; a brave, clear-headed, but withal modest and cautious, aid to the physician in the hour of peril. She had stood by the bedstead of more than one member of the family, in the dark hour, when the angel of death waited on the threshold of the chamber. Never had she slackened or faltered, by night or day, careless of food or repose till the crisis had passed, and the ‘whisper of wings in the air’ faded away.
Mrs. Effingham, with all her maternal fondness and devotion, had been physically unable at times to bear up against the fatigue of protracted watching and anxiety. She had more than once, from sheer bodily weakness, been compelled to abandon her post. But to Jeanie Cargill, sustained by matchless love and devotion, such a thing had never occurred. At noon or midnight, her hand was ever ready to offer the needful food, the vital draught; her ear ever watchful to catch the faint murmur of request; her eye, sleepless as a star, was ever undimmed, vigilant to detect the slightest change of symptom. Many nurses had been heard of, seen, and even read of, in the domestic circles of Reigate, but in the estimation of every matron capable of giving an opinion, Jeanie Cargill, by countless degrees of comparison, outshone them all.
That night, when Mrs. Effingham, as was her wont, sought relief from the burden of her daily cares, and the crowding anxieties of the morrow, ‘meekly kneeling upon her knees,’ it appeared to her as if in literal truth the wind had been tempered to the shorn lamb. That terrible travel into the unknown, the discomforts and dangers of the melancholy main, with the dreary waste of colonial life, would be quite different adventures, softened by the aid and companionship of everybody’s ‘dear old Jeanie.’ Her patient industry, her helpful sympathy, her matchless loyalty and self-denial, would be well-springs of heaven-sent water in that desert. Andrew’s company, though not socially exhilarating, was also an invigorating fact. Altogether, Mrs. Effingham’s spirits improved, and her hopes arose freshly strengthened.
No sooner was it settled that Andrew and his fortunes were to be wafted o’er the main, in the vessel which bore the Effingham family, than, with characteristic energy, he had constituted himself Grand Vizier and responsible adviser. He definitely approved of much that had been done, and counselled still further additions to the outfit. Prime and invincible was his objection to leave behind a certain pet ‘Jersey coo,’ ‘a maist extraordinar’ milker, and for butter, juist unco-omon. If she could be ta’en oot to thae parts, she wad be a sma’ fortune—that is, in ony Christian land where butter and cheese were used. Maybe the sea-captain wad let her gang for the value o’ her milk; she was juist in the height o’t the noo. It wad be a sin and a shame to let her be roupit for half price, like the ither kye, puir things.’
Persistent advocacy secured his point. Daisy had been morally abandoned to her fate; but Wilfred, goaded by Andrew’s appeals, had an interview with the shipping clerk, and arranged that Daisy, if approved of, should fill the place of the proverbial milch cow, so invariably bracketed with the ‘experienced surgeon’ in the advertisements of the Commercial Marine. Her calf also, being old enough to eat hay, was permitted to accompany her.
Andrew also combated the idea that the greyhounds, or at least a pair, should be left behind, still less the guns or fishing-rods.
‘Wasna the Laird the best judge of a dog in the haill country-side, and no that far frae the best shot? What for suld he walk aboot the woods in Australia waesome and disjaskit like, when there might be kangaroos, or whatna kind o’ ootlandish game, to be had for the killing? Hoot, hoot, puir Page and Damsel couldna be left ahint, nor the wee terrier Vennie.’
There was more trouble with the greyhounds’ passage than the cows, but in consideration of the large amount of freight and passage-money paid by the family, the aristocratic long-tails were franked. Andrew, with his own hands, packed up the fowling-pieces and fishing-rods, which, with the exaggerated prudence of youth, Wilfred had been minded to leave behind, considering nothing worthy of removal that would not be likely to add to their material gains in the ‘new settlement.’ He had yet to learn that recreation can never be advantageously disregarded, whether the community be a young or an old one.
Little by little, a chain of slow yet subtle advances, by which, equally with geologic alterations of the earth’s surface, its ephemeral living tenants proceed or retrograde, effected the translation of Howard Effingham, with wife and children, retainers and household goods. Averse by nature to all exertion which savoured of detail, reserving his energy for what he was pleased to dignify with the title of great occasions, as he looked back over the series of multitudinous necessary arrangements, Howard Effingham wondered, in his secret soul, at the transference of his household. Left to himself, he was candid enough to admit, such a result could never have been achieved. But the ceaseless ministration of Jeanie and Andrew, the calm forethought of Mrs. Effingham, the unsparing personal labour of Wilfred, had, in due time, worked the miracle.
Whatever may be the loss or injury inseparable from misfortune, no one of experience denies that the pain is lightened when the blow has fallen. The shuddering terror, the harrowing doubts, which precede an operation, far outrun the torture of the knife. Worse a thousandfold to endure than actual misery, poverty and disgrace, is the dull sense of impending doom, the daily anxiety, the secret dread, the formless, unhasting, unsparing terror, which each day brings nearer to the victim.
Howard Effingham had, for weeks past, suffered the torments of the lost. An unwise concealment of the coming ruin which his reserved temperament forbade him to announce, had stretched him upon the rack. The acute agony was now past, and he felt unspeakably relieved as, with increasing completeness, the preparations for departure were accomplished.
After the shock of the disaster he commenced the necessary duties with an unwontedly tranquil mind. He had despatched a bank draft for the amount mentioned by his friend and counsellor the Rev. Harley Sternworth. Prior to this needful act, he held various conferences with the trustees of Mrs. Effingham’s settlement. In many instances such authorities are difficult, even impracticable, to deal with, preferring the minimum interest which can be safely procured in the matter of trust money, to the slightest risk. In this instance, the arbiter of destiny was an old gentleman, at once prudent yet liberal-minded, who did not disdain to examine the arguments in favour of the Australian plan. After reading Mr. Sternworth’s letter, and comparing the facts therein stated with colonial securities, to which he had access, he gave in his adhesion to the investment, and converted his coadjutor, a mild, obstinate personage, who could with difficulty be induced to see any other investment legally open to them but the ‘sweet simplicity of the three per cents.’
Long was the last day in coming, but it came at last. Their stay in the old home was protracted until only time was given for the journey to Southampton, where the staunch, old-fashioned wool-ship lay, which was to receive their condensed personal effects and, as it seemed to them, shrivelled-up personalities.
Adieus were said, some with sore weeping and many tears; some with moderate but sincere regret; some with the half-veiled indifference with which any action not affecting their own comfort, interest, or reputation is regarded by a large class of acquaintances. The minor possessions—the carriages, the horses, the library, the furniture—were sold. A selection of the plainest articles of this last requisite, which, the freight being wonderfully low, their chief adviser had counselled them to carry with them, was alone retained.
‘It will sell for next to nothing,’ his last letter had said, ‘judging from my experience after the regiment had “got the route,” and you will have it landed here for less than the price of very ordinary substitutes. Bring all the small matters you can, that may be useful; and don’t leave the piano behind. I must have a tune when I come to see you at Warbrok, and hear Mrs. Effingham sing “Auld Robin Gray” again. You recollect how our old Colonel broke down, with tears rolling over his wrinkled cheeks, when she sang it?’
All was now over. The terrible wrench had been endured, tearing apart those living fibres which in early life are entwined around hearth and home. They had gazed in mournful farewell upon each familiar thing which from childhood’s hour had seemed a portion of their sheltered life. Like plants and flowerets, no denizens of hothouse or simulated tropic clime, but not the less carefully tended from harmful extremes, climatic or social, had the Effingham family grown and flourished. Now they were about to be abandoned to the elemental forces. Who should say whether they would wither under rude blasts and a fiercer sun, or, from natural vigour and inherent vitality, burgeon and bloom beneath the Southern heavens?
Of the whole party, she who showed less outward token of sorrow, felt in her heart the most unresting anguish. To a woman like Mrs. Effingham, reared from infancy in the exclusive tenets of English county life, the idea of so comprehensive a change, of a semi-barbarous migration, had been well-nigh more bitter than death—but for one source of aid and spiritual support, unendurable.