Читать книгу The Confessions of a Currency Girl - Carlton Dawe - Страница 3

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Chapter 1

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I AM not aware that I ever had any of that unnatural precocity which is supposed to distinguish the clever child, but I believe I must have been a very small thing indeed when my mind took its first impressions of this terrestrial sphere. What my age was at that particular time I have never been able to ascertain, though I have a most vivid recollection of my father’s grand, sad face, seared with pain, as it were, and bronzed by the fierceness of the sun; of my mother, with her gentle ways and winning smiles; and of Will, dear old Will, with his sturdy boyish figure, his fearless blue eyes, and his thick golden curls. And then came Harold, poor little Harold. He was younger than I, and was our pet, our baby. How proud we all were of him. What a grand head we thought he had; and when we saw him take to books as naturally as other children do to toys and sweetstuffs, we all prophesied for him a great future. Then came that dreadful accident to his spine, and we knew that he was crippled for life. Poor Harold! We watched his beautiful face grow thinner, paler, and, oh, so spiritual-looking, so dreamy, so utterly unlike anything of the earth, that often I was afraid to look into his great eyes; and I have seen mother sit with him in her lap staring at him in a blank, wondering sort of way, till, overcome by her emotions, she would clasp him suddenly to her breast and sob convulsively.

But they were peaceful, blessed times, and though I had no knowledge of father’s yearly income, I knew that we never had any debts we could not meet, that the larder was always full, and that the clothes we wore were of the finest. Indeed, I was always under the impression that we were very rich, for, with the exception of Mr. Langton—the wealthy squatter from whom we rented our land—there was no one in the neighbourhood who had a better house or finer horses than ours. Father, being a thrifty man, and proud of his wife and family, had saved and schemed to better our condition, and I have often heard him declare that he would let them see if there was anything in the country too good for his children. I didn’t think there was, myself—I didn’t see how there could be—but I not infrequently wondered who the mysterious “they” were, why he was so fond of repeating the expression, and why he always looked so combative when he said it. Usually his nature was as placid as mother’s, and if not quite so sweet—which no man’s could be—it was more intense, and this became doubly impressive from the very repression of the stronger spirit. He would fondle us by the hour, and in the winter nights, when the wind howled fiercely without and the rain fell, turning each little creek into a raging torrent, we would draw our chairs round the big wood fire, father in one corner, mother in the other, and he would read to us stories of heroic deeds, of great fights by sea and land, or the biographies of those great Englishmen who have immortalized their country; or, to please Harold, who usually nestled at his mother’s feet, staring with his big eyes into the leaping, crackling fire, he would read or narrate wonderful legends of good and evil spirits, giants and dwarfs, dragons, and all the catalogue of horrors which, strangely enough, are served up to appease the intellectual cravings of the infant. And Harold loved these weird, grotesque stories, and the stronger and more improbable they were, the more interested and enthusiastic grew he over them. And father, with one of his rare, sweet smiles, would pat the lad on the head and call him a strange boy, and at regular intervals would send off to Melbourne for books of poetry and fairy lore, till Harold had quite a little library of such treasures, which he guarded with jealous pertinacity.

It is the pride of intellect that all shall honour it. No matter how the cynic may sneer, the vulgar laugh in his vacant way, nature forces them, inwardly at least, to confess its power. I think this reverence for what we call the brain is, like our religion, born in us. We cannot cast it aside even if we would. A man may not be religious—nay, he may even be deemed irreligious—and yet he will have no one tamper with his faith, nor would be change it for worlds—that is, if he possess any of that doggedness which sets the world spinning. Strange thing, is it not? For, after all, is our religion born in us? It seems so, since man has evolved it from chaos. Or is this brainworship born in us also? Or what is born in us, except sin?

Nevertheless, this homage to intellect is, in its way, as true as most things; and whether it be real or affected—for what is not tinged with insincerity?—it is a fact of which every ordinary observer must be well aware. I know we were all proud enough at the thought of Harold possessing more than the average share of brain-power, and when, in his eighth year, he penned a short fairy tale, which bore a striking resemblance to certain portions of Jack the Giant-Killer, we thought that greatness had at last dawned upon the family, and regarded Harold as a being to be cherished and pampered. What possibilities were not centred in that pale-faced lad? Who could say what thoughts were simmering in that little head? In this is the glory, almost the terror, of children. The imagination fails to picture what they may not be, and the fond parent, left to her own imaginings, sees a star brighter than any other in the firmament. I know my mother worshipped her youngest born; perhaps because she was so proud of his intelligence, perhaps—and this I think more likely—because he was so dreadfully afflicted. And then, he was never happy unless he could touch her hand, her dress, or at least look upon her; while Will and I, both being strong and therefore independent, grew more in touch, in sympathy with each other. We rode our ponies to school together, and many a helter-skelter over the dusty roads or across the long dry plains have he and I enjoyed; and he, who was venturesome even for a boy, put me up to many a trick of horsemanship, and, instilling me with much of his own recklessness, taught me to despise creeks and fences and boulders, till he used to say there was no better or pluckier rider in the district than I. But that was Will’s modesty, for he sat his own pony like an ideal horseman, and knew not the meaning of the word fear. And what a boy he was! Straight and strong as a mountain pine, with eyes as blue as the heavens on a still, hot day, and hair as yellow and curly as a cluster of honeysuckle; the flush of healthy youth on his cheek, and strength and freedom in every movement. Poor old Will! They were happy days, were they not? The air was nectar to us then, and in the very thought of life there was so much joy that we had no time to think of the morrow or the morrow’s clouds. And yet they were so dark when they came, and so charged with woe for us.

If there was one thing that kept us free from trouble so long it was, perhaps, the strange, almost lonesome, life we led at Granite Creek—for such was the name of the watercourse which ran through our land. We rarely had any visitors, and more rarely still went anywhere. Once father took us all to Melbourne for a month, and I shall never forget how delighted I was with the marvels of the great city, but when we returned the old lonely life commenced again, never so lonely as now. Oh, to live for ever in the whirl of a great city, amid its roar and bustle, thought I, and for a full month I chafed foolishly at the dulness of Eden. But, after all, there is life, blood, movement in a city. The men in it are the men who move the levers which set the world buzzing. You are one of the mighty; and I often wished that fate had formed me of the other sex, so that I too might go among men and place my hand upon the lever of the world, and set all things in motion. Dreams, of course; but what would the world be without its dreams?

In saying that we never went anywhere, or that we never had any visitors, I meant that we did not engage in social duties to the extent which might reasonably have been expected of us, owing principally, so I thought, to mother’s want of energy and father’s rooted dislike to society of any kind. He worked hard all day, and so that he could have his family about him when the night drew in, he cared for nothing else. This was a source of considerable surprise to me, for whenever anyone did come to our homestead father was always so courteous, so extremely affable, that one could scarcely help thinking that in the society of strangers he found his keenest pleasure. There were, however, two or three people with whom our family was on excellent footing, chief among them being the Wallaces of Wallan, and the rich squatter, Mr. Langton, who had known father in England; indeed, they had both been at Cambridge University together.

But of the two the Wallaces were the dearer friends, for there was not that difference in our purses which we had to confront when in Mr. Langton’s presence; besides, mother and Mrs. Wallace had been schoolgirls together, and when mother left England to join father, her friend accompanied her, for she too had set her heart on a man who had quitted the Old Country to seek his fortune. Brave men; how I envy them! They are the true knights-adventurers of these later days, and though they swing the axe and the pick instead of riding about in tenfold steel and rescuing timid maidens, they are none the less heroes, heroes to the core. No wonder the new countries thrive when the energy of the old pours into them.

Our friendship with the Wallaces dates back to my earliest recollection, and I know I used to think Mr. Wallace a very great person, and one possessed of unlimited power, especially after I had seen him at a great auction sale disposing of countless head of cattle in the most unconcerned and indifferent manner imaginable—for he was auctioneer, civil engineer, architect, estate agent, and goodness only knows what not. He had been everything in his day, father used to say, and had tramped the colony from end to end; had fought in the stockade at Ballarat, and had been mainly instrumental in effecting the capture of more than one notorious bushranger. But as trooper or digger, swagman or gentleman, he was always the same kindhearted, genial man; a trifle pompous, perhaps, a little rough on the surface, and liable, at times, to make use of blunt language—language, too, which might easily disconcert you were it not for the eternal twinkle in his clear eyes. Of a different pattern, but equally as genial and full of warm affection, was his good wife. She and mother, as I have said, had been schoolgirls together, and the devotion of those two old friends would have convinced the most cynical that there is yet unswerving love and loyalty in the human heart. It seemed as though they had formed themselves on each other’s virtues, and had striven all the days of their life to live up to their lofty ideal. That they failed in their endeavours I cannot even now believe, knowing how weak flesh is.

The Wallace family consisted of two children, Arthur and Ella, the boy being some two years older than Will, the girl a few months older than I. But in spite of the disparity of our ages—and children are great sticklers in this respect—we were fast friends from the early days of our infancy. Indeed, I had no other girl friend, and if I was not staying with Ella, Ella was staying with me. Then there was Arthur, too, of whom they always teased me—a great, shy, overgrown boy who used to look exceedingly embarrassed whenever I spoke to him, and who would blush and tremble like a baby at any little attention I might be considerate enough to pay him. Yet he was a handsome lad; that is, I think he must have been, for he had a pair of great, brown earnest eyes — almost as earnest as Harold’s—and a dark, clear-cut face like those which I have so often seen since in pictures of young Italians. But I never thought much of poor Arthur’s looks then, for those were the days of the ephemeral mind for which there is no morrow.