The Crooked Stick Or Pollies's Probation Part 13

After the splendour and distinction of the _Cathay_, the voyage to New Zealand was a tame affair, voted so even by Mrs. Devereux. Both ladies were heartily glad when the wooded heights of the Britain of the South rose from the underworld, and they addressed themselves to the great question of disembarkation with earnestness.

Of their stay in the land of the Maori and of their enjoyment of the daily supply of delights and wonders, it were superfluous to tell; of Pollie's reverential admiration for the first Rangatira whom she encountered--a grizzled, war-worn chief who had fought stubbornly against us at the Gate Pah, and had in his day killed (and eaten) many a tribal foe. Upon the brilliant verdure of the pasture refreshed by the perennial moisture of a sea-girdled isle, the hawthorn hedges, the roadside ditches, the old-world English look of so many things and people, she was never tired of expatiating. The people, the scenery, the climate, and the soil were new. The forests of strange glossy-leaved trees, of n.o.ble pines, of clinging parasites with crimson blossoms, held neither bird, nor beast, nor leaf, nor flower akin to those of the Australian continent.

'What a wonderful region! So near to us--a few days' voyage only--and yet so unlike. And what a sheep country! No dingoes, no eagles, no snakes, no crows! This last is simply incredible. Fancy a country without crows! There must be something wrong about it. What would Mr.

Gateward say? And such gra.s.s! If we only could have "travelled" over here in the drought! It seems hard that Providence devoted all the intervening distance to water. Had it been dry land, it would have been worth all the rest of our continent.'

'"The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof," my darling,' said the mother. 'I don't like to hear you talk lightly about such things.

Seas and lands were doubtless arranged as they are for some wise purpose.'

'I never meant to be irreverent, my dearest. I was only thinking what a pity this fine south lat.i.tude region should be useless. Only fancy, except this little New Zealand dot, there is no habitable land between us and the South Pole. Oh! I forgot the Crozets--those islands where the ship was wrecked, and the pa.s.sengers were cast away nearly twelve months. All their hair turned white as fleeces. So complexion is only a matter of lat.i.tude after all.'

Their time was all too short when the route was again given, and the party with which they had amalgamated proceeded by tourist stages to the dream-region of Rotomahana.

Of the glories and triumphs of that wonderland who shall tell adequately, who depict with a t.i.the of the fresh brilliant colouring that Nature--earliest of Royal Academicians--has invented?

'I will never go back,' quoth Pollie; 'here I will live and die. I will become a guide, like Maori Kate here--magnificent creature that she is!

I will never be proud of civilisation again. What do we get by it forsooth? Headaches, neuralgia, nervous systems, toothaches, and shortened lives. These n.o.ble Maoris never have headaches, except from too much rum--which is only a transient, not a chronic ailment--but unfailing appet.i.te, health, strength and activity; hair that doesn't come out or turn bald and grey; teeth that serve to reduce food and not to enrich dentists. I say we are manifestly inferior to this n.o.ble people. Why do we want to conquer them or convert them?'

'My darling,' said Mrs. Devereux, 'this air is too stimulating; I am afraid you are going out of your mind. It will never do for you to go on in England like this. Fancy what your father's family would think!'

'I shall sober down before we take our European tour,' answered the young lady. 'I shall have something to talk about, though, shan't I? And we must go through Paris; I don't want to be "bonneted" metaphorically (that's rather neat, dear, between ourselves) because my headgear is not up to the fashionable cousins' standard. But I think I could hold my own. I shall begin by being _very_ simple, and having things explained to me that I have known all my life; then dawn on them by degrees.'

'My darling, you only need to be your own dear, sweet self, and be a.s.sured you will be able to hold your own with any people you are likely to meet at home or abroad. I don't wish my pet to affect anything, either below or above her. You have great natural gifts, a fairly good education, and what experience you are deficient in will always be made up by your unusual quickness of comprehension. That is your old mother's honest opinion, and she would not deceive you for the world.'

'And I care not two straws for anybody else in comparison, you dear old darling. You are ever so clever too--if you were not so unreasonably diffident about yourself. However, I will educate you when we reach England. You'll see the firm of "Pollie and Mother" will achieve distinction.'

The summer joys pa.s.sed all too quickly. Why cannot one remain in fairy-land? Perhaps as the years rolled on we should hear one morning a dismal summons. The faces of our gay companions would undergo a terrible alteration. The dread messenger had arrived who was to exact 'the teind for h.e.l.l.' Thus it ran in the old ballad. So True Thomas found it. The fairy flowers withered, the fay faces changed. All was pale, awesome.

The day of payment for pleasure unstinted and unhallowed joys had arrived.

There is always a day of reckoning, a reactionary change from pleasant sojourns. True Thomas lies beneath the 'knowe' at Ercildoune. Our modern fairies are clad in tulle and tarlatan; are seen beneath electric lights. Old faiths are crumbling. They lie--like 'ancient thrones'--in the workrooms of scientists and positivists. Yet still is there a flavour of the old-world belief which clings about us. Remorse and regret, pa.s.sion and despair, survive. And even as we return from the land of pleasure along paths of duty, the refrain sounds sadly in our ears that all earth's joys are fleeting; that the ocean of eternity must be the end of life's bark; that its tideless waves may ever be heard, deeply dirgeful, in the intervals of vanity and madness.

So, when the first Australian winter month--that of May--found the travellers again _en route_ for Corindah, where everything bade fair to be as quiet and peaceful as on the day they left, Pollie's first feeling was one of indefinable regret. 'I could almost wish we had never left home, mother,' she said; 'everything will look so quiet and dull till we regain our eyesight. It looks mean and ungrateful to the dear old place and our friends to go back to them as a kind of _pis aller_ after having exhausted the pleasures of vagabondising. I suppose we shall drop into our old sleepy ways again by degrees. We are such creatures of habit.'

'For my part, I am thankful to get back,' said Mrs. Devereux. 'My dear garden will be looking so well, as I see that they have had rain. I quite pine for a little needlework, too. I miss my steady pursuits, I must say.'

'Garden!' said Pollie disdainfully; 'a pretty garden it will look after the bright rata and laurel thickets, the ancient groves of totara and kauri, the ferny dells of Waitaki! It seems like growing mustard and cress upon a yard of damp flannel, as I used to do in my childhood.

However, as I said before, our tastes will recover themselves I hope.'

Corindah once more. Again the endless grey-green plains--the sandhills--the myall--the mogil--the familiar, not ungraceful, but spa.r.s.e and monotonous woodland--the wire fences stretching for scores of miles on every side--the gates all of the same pattern--the hundreds of thousands of merino sheep, each unit undistinguishable from another save by the eye of experience--the blue heaven--the mirage--the boundary riders--the men--the horses--the collie dogs--all moving in unvarying grooves, as if they had never done anything else since the travellers departed, and were incapable of change, emotion, or alteration.

However, as the buggy from the station drove through the well-remembered gate, Harold Atherstone, with Bertram and Mr. Gateward, were there to meet the home-returning travellers. The evident pleasure in each face touched the girl's heart, and she pressed the gnarled hand of the overseer with considerably more cordiality than she was in the habit of putting into her greetings, as she replied to the general expression of welcome.

'Thought you'd followed my advice and taken the New Zealand mail-steamer for England,' said Mr. Devereux, with his usual calmness of intonation, though a flush on his ordinarily pale cheek betrayed suppressed emotion.

'I should have done so in your case I know.'

'I daresay they have only come home to pack now,' said Harold. 'A taste for travel, once acquired, is never shaken off--by women at any rate.

The West Logan must look like the Soudan after your late experiences.'

'You are all very unkind,' said Pollie; 'that is, except Mr. Gateward, who is too glad to see us to make rude speeches. Don't we enjoy coming home like other people with hearts? We are not going away for years, are we, mother?'

'Not if my wishes are consulted, my dearest,' said Mrs. Devereux, stretching her neck to look over the garden paling. 'I want rest, and time to think my own thoughts and enjoy a little quiet life again.'

'You have come to the right "shop" for that, as I heard one of the boundary riders say to-day, my dear Mrs. Devereux,' said Bertram.

'Anything more uniform, not to say monotonous, than our lives here in your absence cannot be imagined. Nothing ever happens here, now that the excitement of the drought is over.'

'I heard some news by telegram before I came over,' said Harold, 'which is likely to cause a stir in the district. It's rather bad of its sort, and may lead to worse results even.'

'Thank G.o.d for it, anyhow!' said Bertram; 'anything is better than the dead level of dulness we have lately been reduced to. What is it?'

The other man looked grave. 'It's not a matter to be lightly treated.

Two bushrangers are "out." They shot dead one of the escort troopers from Denman Gaol to Berrima, overpowered the others, and are now at large at no great distance from Wannonbah.'

'Oh!' said Mrs. Devereux, turning pale, 'I am so sorry. Not that I feel frightened; but now that they have shed blood, and must suffer if taken, they are desperate men, and will scarcely be taken alive. Do you know their names?'

'The younger man is Billy Mossthorne; as for the other, I don't know. He is an old offender. The police are, of course, all over the district.

Sergeant Herne pa.s.sed Maroobil in an old slouched hat and plain clothes, but one of the men knew him and told me. He will run them down if any one can. Every trooper in the North-West is out.'

'But what chance in a country like this will he have?' said Bertram.

'The outlaws are miles away by this time, and can easily cross the border into Queensland. I'd take short odds they are never seen again.'

Mr. Atherstone smiled. 'He has the chance of the sleuth-hound on the trail of the deer. The police force of this colony is well organised.

Mossthorne is a horseman, a bushman, and a dare-devil not easily matched; but there are as good men as he on his track.'

'If the brutes would only come into the open,' said Bertram, with his quiet sneer, 'one would be saved the bother of thinking about them. They haven't pluck enough for that, I expect.'

'To do them justice,' replied Atherstone, 'they don't lack the old English virtue of bulldog courage, as any one will find that meets them under fire. Personally, I should not be grieved if they got away to the "Never Never country," and were not heard of again. Mossthorne worked for me once. He was a fine manly young fellow, and I have always regretted deeply that he got into bad company and worse ways. In the front of a line regiment or on a quarter-deck, Billy would have shown what stuff he was made of, and his country might have been proud of him.'

'I have no sympathy with such ruffians, old or young,' said Devereux.

'The sooner they are hanged or shot the better, and I should like to have the chance of putting a bullet into either of them.'

'I daresay I shall shoot as straight as any one else if it comes to a scrimmage,' said the other; 'but I can't help mourning over a good man spoiled. That they will not be taken alive, we may make tolerably sure.'

At the commencement of the conversation Mrs. Devereux had turned pale.

The sad memories of the past were awakened. She took the first opportunity of retiring with her daughter, leaving the young men to their argument.

'And what have you done with yourself all the time?' said Pollie to her cousin, as they sat at breakfast next morning. 'It does seem so hard to have been shut up here while we were in Fairy-land--were we not, mother?' she said, appealing to Mrs. Devereux, who sat in her place with rather an abstracted air.

'What were you saying, my dear? Oh! yes, delightful, was it not? I was just thinking that we need not have hurried back. Did you go anywhere, Bertram, or see any society in our absence?'

'I went to Bourke for a fortnight?' he answered, with a smile in which there was more sarcasm than merriment. 'I was afraid to trust myself within the fascination of real civilisation, so I declined Melbourne or Sydney.'

'And what did you think of that desert city?' inquired Pollie, with mock humility. 'Did Your Royal Highness find anybody fit to talk to?'

'It struck me as a queer place,' he said. 'You could not expect me to have seen anything like it before. But it wasn't bad in its way. The weather was glorious. The men were better than I expected. Rather fast, perhaps. Their manners lacked repose. They took care no one else should have any, as they kept it up all night most of the time I was there. One young fellow jumped his horse over the hotel bar--a thing I had previously taken to be pure fiction, on the American pattern.'