The Wonder-Child: An Australian Story Read online

  Produced by Al Haines.

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  'HERMIE.' (See page 134.)]

  THE WONDER-CHILD

  An Australian Story

  BY

  ETHEL TURNER

  (MRS. H. R. CURLEWIS)

  Author of 'Seven Little Australians,' 'The Camp at Wandinong,' 'The Story of a Baby,' 'Three Little Maids,' etc.

  'The common problem, yours, mine, every one's, Is, not to fancy what were fair in life, Provided it could be,--but finding first What may be, then find how to make it fair Up to our means,'--ROBERT BROWNING.

  With Illustrations by Gordon Browne

  _FIFTH IMPRESSION_

  LONDON THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY 4 Bouverie Street and 65 St. Paul's Churchyard E.C. 1901

  *CONTENTS*

  CHAP.

  I. TWO WORLDS II. THE WONDER-CHILD III. THE SECOND LADY-HELP IV. THE PAINTING OF THE SHIP V. DUNKS' SELECTION VI. THIRTY THOUSAND A YEAR VII. COME HOME! COME HOME VIII. AN ATHEIST IX. MORTIMER STEVENSON X. 'I LOVE YOU' XI. A SQUATTER PATRIOT XII. R.M.S. UTOPIA XIII. THE BUSH CONTINGENT XIV. HOME TO THE HARBOUR XV. HEART TO HEART XVI. THE ROSERY XVII. CROSSING THE VELDT XVIII. A SKIRMISH BY THE WAY XIX. THE MOOD OF A MAID XX. MISS BROWNE XXI. THE MORNING CABLES XXII. CONCLUSION

  *THE WONDER-CHILD*

  *CHAPTER I*

  *Two Worlds*

  'Ah me! while thee the seas and sounding shores Hold far away.'

  They were walking from the school to the paddock where the children'shorses, thirty or forty nondescript animals, grazed all day long.

  'Sh' think,' said Peter Small, son of the butcher who fedWilgandra,--'Sh' think you could have afforded one sprat at least forteacher's present!'

  'Afforded!' quoth Bartie Cameron. 'I could have afforded a thousandpounds!'

  'Then why d'ye 'ave 'oles in your stockings, and bursted boots?' askedPeter.

  ''Cause it's much nicer than having darns and patches,' returned Bartie,looking disparagingly upon his companion's neater garments.

  'My old man's got a mortgage on your sheep,' said Peter, baffled on thepatches.

  'We like mortgages,' said Bartie airily; 'they make the sheep grow.'

  'We've got a new red carpet comin' for our livin'-room,' shouted Peter.

  Bartie looked him over contemptuously.

  'I've got a sister in London, and she makes fifty pounds a night by herplaying.'

  'You're a lie!' said Peter, who was new to the school, and did not knowthe Camerons.

  'Take this, then!' said Bartie, and put his strong young fist in theface of his friend.

  A big girl, saddling her horse, came and pulled them apart, after theyhad had a round or two.

  'Haven't I got a sister who makes fifty pounds a concert?' demandedBartie breathlessly.

  'Ain't he a lie?' demanded the son of the slaughterer.

  The big girl arbitrated instantly. Certainly Bartie had a sister whomade hundreds and hundreds--more shame to her. Peter had better go homeand read the papers, if he did not believe it.

  Peter said he did read the papers; he had never seen anything in themabout no sisters.

  'What papers?' said the girl.

  '_P'lice Budget and War Cry_, of course,' answered the boy.

  'That's the sort of paper _your_ sister would be in,' Bartie said; 'mineis always in the cables.' He turned off from both girl and boy, andmade his way to where a half-clipped horse nibbled at the exhaustedpasturage.

  A small girl of eight had, with incredible exertion, put the huge saddleon its back; Bartie had nothing to do but fasten the girths in place andput on the bridle. He flung himself up, and moved the animal close to astump; Floss, the small girl, climbed to a place behind him, and anine-year-old boy, playing marbles near, rose up at the sight of themoving horse, pocketed his marbles, swung his bag of books round hisneck, and clambered up to the third place on the steed's broad neck.

  All the paddock was a-move. There was a general race down to thesliprails, a gentle thunder of horses' hoofs and boys' shouts, broken bythe shriller cries and 'Good-byes' of the girls.

  Then up and down, left and right, away along the branching roads rodethe country school children, tea and home before them, behind, one moreday of the quarter's tedium dropped away for ever.

  The Cameron horse jogged along; as a rule she had only Roly and Floss tocarry, Bartie having a rough pony to journey on; but to-day the pony hadwandered too far to be caught before school-time, so Tramby had an extraburden, and walked sedately.

  Floss had a tiny red palm to show.

  'Why, that's three times this week you've had the cane! You must begoing it, Floss,' said Roly.

  'It was sewing,' sighed Floss; 'how would you like to sew? I know you'dgo and hide behind the shed.'

  The front horseman turned his head. 'It's time you did learn, Floss,'he said; 'look at my stockings, I'm sick of having holes in them. Lookat my trousers.'

  'I heard Miss Browne telling you to leave them for her to mend,' saidFloss.

  'No, thanks,' said Bart; 'I know her mending too jolly well. She'dpatch it with stuff that 'ud show a mile off.'

  'Yes, look at my elbows,' Roly said; and though the positions forbadethis, a mental picture of the clumsy mending with stuff worlds too newrose up before the eyes of his brother and sister.

  Floss was dressed with curious inequality; she wore heavy country shoesand stockings, like the rest of the children at that public school, andher bonnet was of calico and most primitive manufacture, but her frockwas exquisite--a little Paris-made garment of fine cashmere, beautifullyembroidered.

  'I wish some more of Challis's frocks would come,' she sighed; 'thisone's so hot. I wish mamma would make her always wear thin things.'

  'Why, she'd be shivering,' said Roly.

  'Think how cold it is in Paris and those places!'

  'Think how hot it is here!' sighed Floss and mopped at her streaminglittle face with her disengaged hand.

  'I got the mail,' Bartie said, and pulled two letters out of hispocket--a thick one from his almost-forgotten mother, and a pale bluewith a fanciful C upon the flap from his twin sister; they both bore thepostmark of Windsor.

  'Suppose they're stopping with the Queen again,' he added laconically.

  'Wonder what they have for tea at her house?' sighed Flossie, and hersystem revolted against the corned beef and ill-made bread that were inprospect for her own meal.

  Tramby turned of her own accord at a sudden gap in the gum-trees, andstood alongside while Roly stretched and contorted himself to lift outthe sliprail--nothing ever induced him to dismount for this task. Thenshe stepped daintily over the lower rail, and again waited while thepassenger in the rear stretched down and made things safe again.

  Their father's selection stretched before them, eighty acres ofmiserable land, lying grey and dreary under the canopy of a five o'clockcoppery sky, summer and drought time.

  HOME FROM SCHOOL.]

  Patches of fertility showed some one laboured at the place. There was astretch of lucerne, green as any in the district. But this was notsaying very much, for Wilgandra's vegetation as a rule copied theneutral tint of
the gum-trees, rather than the vivid emerald so pleasantto the eye in country wilds.

  There was a small patch under potatoes, there were half a dozenorange-trees, yellow with fruit. At the very door of the house a cowgrazed calmly, and everywhere browsed the sheep, brown, ragged, dirtythings, fifty or sixty of them, far more than the acreage should havecarried, but still in good condition--it seemed as if the mortgage wasfattening. The house was a poor weatherboard place, the paint blisteredoff, the windows rickety, the roof of cruel galvanised iron.

  Inside there were chiefly pictures, great canvases on which Thetis wasrising from a roughly tossing sea, her infant Achilles laughing in herarms; on which the lofty mountain Pindus towered, the Muses seated aboutin negligent attitudes; on which delicious twists and turns of the RiverThames flowed; on which wet, cool beaches glistened, and shallow waveslapped idly.

  There was also a piano with a mountain of music. Also a few chairs anda table.

  Bartie dragged off the saddle and harness, flung them on the verandah,and turned Tramby loose among the sheep. Then he went into the house.

  There rose up listlessly from the doorstep and a book an exquisitelypretty girl of seventeen, a girl with sea-blue eyes and a skin thatWilgandra could in no wise account for, so soft and fresh and pure itwas. You saw the same face again and again in the canvasses about theroom, sweetest as Isis, with the tender, anxious look of motherhood inher eyes, and Horus in her arms. This was Hermie.

  'Have you got the mail?' she asked.

  Bartie nodded.

  'Go and fetch father,' he said; 'he's down with the roses, I saw his hatmoving.'

  He flung himself on the ground, listless with the heat; Floss draggedoff her hot frock and her shoes, and revelled in the pleasure of herlittle petticoat and bare feet. Roly looked plaintively at the table,on which was no cloth as yet.

  'Miss Browne,' he called, the very tears in his voice, 'Miss Browne,isn't tea ready?'

  A faded spinster, lady-help to the family for six years, came hurryinginto the room.

  'Poor Roly!' she said. 'Yes, it is too bad of me, dear; I was mendingyour best jacket, and didn't notice the time. But I'll soon have itready now.' She ran hastily about the room looking for the cloth, andat last remembered she had put it under the piano-lid, to be out of thedust. She put on the vases of exquisite roses that Hermie had arranged,and a wild collection of odd china and crockery cups and enamelled ware.

  Then she noticed the rent of extraordinary dimensions in Bartie's coat,the same jagged place that had made even Peter Small exclaim.

  'Dear, dear,' she said, 'this will never do. This really must not go amoment longer. Where is my thimble? Where can I have put my thimble?Give me that coat, Bartie, this minute, if you please.

  Bartie took it off, but sat with jealous eye upon it all the time it wasin her hands. He would have it mended his way.

  'Now, look here,' he said, 'please don't go putting any fresh stuff init. Just sew it over and over, so the places come together. I'll taketo mending my own clothes. It's just the way you go letting new piecesin that spoils your mending, Miss Browne.'

  'But, Bartie dear,' the gentle lady said, 'see, my love, when a place istorn right away like this, we have to put fresh stuff underneath. I'lljust get a tiny bit from my work-basket.'

  'You just won't,' said Bartie stubbornly. 'You give it to me, and I'llmend it myself'--and he actually took the needle and cotton and cobbledit over till there certainly was no hole left.

  'Now, my love,' he said, and held it up triumphantly.

  'But it will break away again to-morrow,' said Miss Browne, in deepdistress. 'If you would just let me put a little patch, Bartie.'

  But Bartie clung to his coat.

  Roly had strayed out to look at his kangaroo-rats, but now came back.

  The tears came to his voice again at the sight of Miss Browne, sittingwith her thimble on, looking helplessly at Bartie.

  'Oh dear,' he said, 'isn't there never going to be any tea?'

  'You poor little fellow!' she said. 'Just one minute more, Roly dear.You can be sitting down.'

  Hermie had gone flying across the ground to a place in the eighty acreswhere the ground dipped into a little valley. It was all fenced roundwith wire, to keep off the fowls and sheep. Within there grew roses insuch beauty and profusion as to astonish one. She saw a very oldcabbage-tree hat bending over a bush, and darted towards it.

  'Dad,' she said, 'dad darling, come along in; the mail has come.'

  There rose up a man, grey as his own selection, a man not more thanfive-and-forty. Eyes blue as Hermie's own looked from under his greyeyebrows, a grey beard covered his mouth.

  'The mail, did you say, little woman?' he said, and stopped to prunejust one more shoot here, and snip off just one more drooping blossom.

  'And tea, too, darling; at least I suppose it will be ready some day.Come along, you are very tired, daddie. Why did you start ploughing aday like this?'

  The man sighed.

  'It had to be done, girlie; but see, I gave myself a reward. I havebeen down here an hour. Now let us go and read our letters.'

  As they reached the living-room they found Miss Browne dusting the pianoand tidying the music; the setting of the table was advanced one stagefurther, that is, the knives and forks were now on.

  Roly came up again from another visit to his rats.

  'Miss Browne,' he said, 'oh dear, oh dear!'--and stalked off to thekitchen, to demand of Lizzie, the young State girl who scrubbed andwashed for them, where was the corned beef for tea, and wasn't there anybutter?

  But the father was tearing open the letters. Hermie and Bartie hung overhis shoulder, reading just as eagerly as he. Floss crouched between hisknees to catch the crumbs. Roly, munching while he waited at a hunch ofill-coloured bread, kept an eye and an ear for any spoken news, and MissBrowne moved continually about the room, straightening chairs, alteringthe position of the table vases, rearranging the knives and forks.

  Mr. Cameron looked up, and drew forward a chair next to his own.

  'Do sit down, Miss Browne,' he said; 'I am sure you are very tired. Sitdown, and let us enjoy this all together.'

  So Miss Browne, too, joined the circle, Roly watching her with abrooding eye.

  'WINDSOR CASTLE.

  'OH, MY DEAR ONES, MY DEAR ONES' ran the white letter,--'Is the earthshaking beneath me, have my hands ague, that my pen trembles like this?We are coming home, home, home. No false reports this time, noheart-sickening disappointment; the papers are actually signed for along season, and we leave by the Utopia in six weeks. The news came anhour ago. I saw an equerry coming in with the letters, saw the letterthat meant so much carried up to my room by a house steward, and had topass along the corridor and leave it. Challis was going down to play tothe Queen in her private sitting-room. But after it all was over how wewent to our rooms again! There was only a chambermaid in sight, and forthe last twenty yards of corridor we ran. Home, home, home, to yourarms, my husband, my dear one, my patient old sweetheart! Home to mylittle girls, my boys, my little boys! Darlings, my eyes are streaming.Oh, to hold you all again, to feel you, to touch my Hermie's hair--is itall sunlight yet?--to be crushed with Bartie's hug, to hold again thepoor little babies I left, my Roly, my little Floss. Ah, dear ones,dear ones, now it is all over, now we are coming, coming to you, I canlet you know. Oh, these weary, weary years, these great cities where wehave no home, no corner of a home. I have broken my heart for you allevery night since I came away. Six years, my dear ones, six years ofnights to break my heart. Be sorry for mother, and love her, darlings.Have you forgotten her, Hermie? Bart, Bart, have you kept a little lovewarm for her? Ah, dear God, my babies will not know me, little Flosswill turn away her head. My sweetheart, my sweetheart, if the time hasbeen as long for you, and pleasures as tasteless, and all things asvoid, then my heart sickens afresh, for I know what your life has been.

  'What has kept me up all this weary time I cannot even th
ink. Whateverit was, it has snapped now, and I am limp, useless, broken up intolittle bits, like nothing so much as a little child stretching out itsarms and crying to its mother. Can you not see my arms stretching,stretching to you? Does not my cry come to your little town? It isChallis who is the woman now; she sees my work is done. She had begunto show me the bracelet the Queen gave her, and to tell me what everyone had said, but I had torn open Warner's letter, and found the homeorders had come. She is packing various little things now, and hasrung, and given orders with the dearest little air of self-possession."Sit down and write, and tell daddie," she said; "I will see toeverything now."

  'The carriage is to come for us in an hour. We have been here threedays, and every one has been as kind and as enthusiastic as they arealways. We go to Sandringham on Friday; the Princess asked for Challisto play for her guests that night; the Dowager Empress is to be there,and others.

  'Then at Manchester an immense farewell concert on Monday; Mr. Warnersays two thousand seats are already booked to hear the "Wonder-Child";another at Plymouth on Friday; a rush up to Edinburgh, just for her toappear at the Philharmonic. They are only giving her forty pounds forthe night, but Mr. Warner is unwilling for her to lose the Scotchconnection.

  'Then peace, perfect peace, and home. I sit and try to fancy thechanges the six years have made in the home. I am glad you have had twonew bedrooms built; that will allow you to have a study again,sweetheart, and Hermie a drawing-room--sixteen is sure to be hankeringfor one. The furniture is looking a little shabby, I know; but ofcourse that can be easily remedied, and I have always had my boxesstuffed with art vases and bits of brass and bronze, ready for when thegood time came. You have probably laid down new carpets long ere thisin all the rooms, but I shall bring some rugs and Eastern squares, for Idoubt if your back-block towns have supplied what would satisfy my nowcultured taste.

  'I suppose people wonder at you still being stuck to the Civil Serviceat a wretched two hundred and fifty pounds a year. Isn't the prevailingidea that we are rolling in money? There is surprisingly little for allthe enthusiasm there has been--I think Mr. Warner said he had bankedthree thousand pounds for her--all the rest goes in expenses, which areenormous. We are obliged to be at the best hotels, and to be dressedup-to-date; that runs away with big sums. And the advertising that Mr.Warner says is so necessary swallows gigantic amounts. This has beenthe first year with much profit. Sometimes when I dress my littlegirlie in her Paris frocks I think of Hermie, making last season's doagain, perhaps. Did the last box of Challis's frocks do for Flossie?The lady-help, I am sure, will have been able to cut them down.

  'Do not let us think of the future, sweetheart, I cannot bear it yet. Icannot leave you any more, you must not be left; Challis has had hermeed of her mother now, and it is the turn for the others. Yet Mr.Warner says it must be kept up, this life of hers, this Wandering Jewlife. It is the price great artists pay. But the child is brave.

  '"You shall not have it any more, mamma," she said when I read this out;"you shall go home to daddie for always now."

  'But when I looked at her face it was pale, and there was that wan lookin it that comes sometimes. To think of the little tender thing bearingall this alone!

  'But we must not think of the future, sweetheart; we must not think ofit for an instant. You will come to Sydney to meet us? Perhaps only you.And we will come straight home to Wilgandra with you. If she ruins herchances for ever, she shall have one month's quiet home before theSydney season begins. Mr. Warner will try to prevent this, but I shallbe very firm. Then you must get leave, and children and all, we will goto Sydney together, and you shall hear the darling play. To think youhave none of you ever seen great audiences carried away by her littlefingers!

  'Ask the lady-help not to do up my bedroom for me. I want to see thefaded pink and white hangings, and the sofa with the green roses on it,and the knitted counterpane that grandma made--just as they were when Ileft them.

  'Oh, my little home, not beautiful, not even very comfortable, stuckaway in that hot little town hundreds of miles from Sydney--my heart isbreaking for you!'

  Nobody spoke when the letter was finished--nobody, indeed, had spokenall the way through. Tired little Floss, finding no news forthcoming,had fallen asleep.

  Roly had sat down to the table, and was sawing an end off the cornedbeef. Miss Browne, since nothing was read aloud, had gently risen upand was dusting the piano, to be less in the way. But from time to timeshe glanced at the letter, alarm in her eyes. Could it be the littlegolden girl was ill?

  The father put down the letter, and his hand shook.

  'Coming home,' he said, and rose up, looking dazed; 'we--we must stopher at once, of course. Children, how can we stop her?'

  Bart's chest was heaving. For a second he had heard the crying come tothe little town, and seen the stretching of the arms.

  But out of the window lay the grey selection that she had never seen;closer at hand were the rents in his clothes, the broken places on hisboots. He pulled himself together.

  'I'll go down to the post and cable to her not to come,' he said; 'yoube writing it down, dad.'

  And Hermie's girl-heart was breaking. The letter had shaken the verycentre of her being, and wakened in her a passion of love and longingfor this tender woman. Oh, to be held by her, kissed, caressed--to feelthat hand on the hair she could not help but know was pretty!

  But looking up she saw her father's anguished gaze around him--Bart'smanly mastery of himself. She brushed her tears aside.

  'I'll get the pen and ink,' she said; 'it--it's late--the cable ought togo to-night.'

  Miss Browne sat down, quivering with the suspense.

  'Which,' she whispered, 'which of them is dead, your mother or littleChallis?'

  Bartie it was who laughed--a hoarse apology for a laugh.

  'Dead!' he said; 'they're coming home, Miss Browne!'

  It was Miss Browne's turn to look anguished. She rose up and moveduncertainly about the room, she began to tidy the music in feverishhaste, she dusted the piano yet again.

  Then she turned to Mr. Cameron with one hand fluttering out.

  'I--I--must ask you to let me have a s--shilling,' she quavered;'the--the boys really must have their hair cut before she sees them.'