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"Come, give us a taste of your quality." --SHAKESPEARE.

I DO not know that there is anything more irritating to a placid temperament, convinced of the futility of "kicking against the pricks," than the constant companionship of a carping spirit, or a mind prone to indulge in what has been happily designated "harking back" upon grievances. In the first place, the process appears almost as foolish in the eyes of an onlooker as the worrying of an unsound tooth, that would not be aggressive if it were only let alone; and in the second there is a terrible sense of impotence in the good-will with which one applies the oftused salve. Small wonder if faith in its healing power becomes less and less every time it is called upon to act. A trouble of this kind is almost invariably a woman's trouble. Men would not dare to inflict it on one of themselves. A man has been scripturally commanded, it is true, to forgive his brother unto "seventy times seven," but nothing was said as to the number of times he must submit to hear a repetition of his old grievances. I doubt whether the most forbearing of brothers would not indulge in a little pardonable profanity long before the seventy-seventh repetition had been reached. But for women there is no such outlet for justifiable irritation, and unless they are hysterically inclined there is no escape.

Perhaps the cultivation of such a spirit as Mrs. Cavendish possessed would be the best resource after all, though I admit, at the outset, that it is not within the bounds of every one's attainment. This stout, classic--featured, comely wife was constrained to sit still and listen--every time her lord had lost at whist, or was reminded of the existence of his liver--to a sort of synopsis of the fatalities that had attended the House of Devonshire from the moment of his birth. And she listened without detriment to her matronly portliness, or even much diminishing of her wifely affection. "Your papa," she would tell the girls, after Mr. Cavendish had worn his voice to the pitch of a rasp, "your papa wants a little cheering up. See now, to talk lively to him, Sara!"--an injunction that Sara generally interpreted by keeping carefully out of her father's way until he had been "cheered up" by other means than hers.

Mrs. Cavendish had heard less of the catastrophes that had overtaken the "House of Devonshire" since she had embarked on board the Henrietta Maria than at any former period of her life. She had battled through a weary phase before Mr. Cavendish could be induced to accept her brother's offer and emigrate with his wife and daughters to Melbourne. Nothing short of necessity made him yield at last. He had all Sara's antipathy to being forced to acknowledge his humbly-born connections. With half a world between them he could condescend to be benefited by his wife's brother with a charming affability, but it was quite another thing to come to Australia at his bidding, and almost entirely at his expense. The parvenu butcher might prove insufferably familiar, and the unfortunate circumstances of the case left him without defence.

I believe this feeling was inherent in him. In virtue of his episcopalian belongings it may be inferred that his theological views were sound, and that he would have acquiesced in the gospel views of equality generally. But in virtue of his instinctive prejudices--stronger than any orthodoxy consequent on the possession of a bishop in the family--he was one of a race as distinct from the plebeian Pipers as though blue-dyed blood had actually run through his veins, and common human blood through theirs. His definition of evil, if he had been forced to think out his conception of it, would have been the unaccountable oversight in the arrangement of the universe that left patrician humanity open to the same wants as grosser clay, and neglected to endow it with the means of supplying them.

It was in this mood that he had come on board, though once there, to his wife's surprise and delight, "your pa" took a turn. The pastime of posing for Lord Byron, whom he had been said to resemble in his youth, wrapped in a long cloak that had protected a Devonshire of the last generation from Peninsular breezes, sufficed to amuse him until the Southern Hemisphere was reached. Moreover, there was his favourite whist, in which even the antiquity of his family was sometimes forgotten in his cordiality towards a partner who held five trumps; there was the sympathetic M'Bride, who, as showing an unbroken descent from a king contemporary with St. Patrick, was eligible as a deck chum; there was an absence of the perplexity of beholding the flourishing condition of his tradesmen as compared with his own; and there was, in a physical sense, an inability to keep awake when he sought his wife's cabin at night that gave her an immunity from the familiar narratives of his ill-usage.

But the inevitable reaction occurred on the last night of the journey, as was evident to Margaret, lying wide awake in the adjoining cabin, while Sara slept soundly as a child. The sound of her father's voice, that reached her ears like a continuous unbroken grating, filled her with anxiety for her mother. She longed to knock at the door, to say a word only that might stem for an instant's space the monotonous flow, hardly interrupted by the soft rejoinders that she could not hear. But old experience had proved to Margaret that a pretext of the sort was invariably detected, and only served to add a parental grievance to the ancestral list. She sat up, feeling sadly helpless and full of commiseration, until a hearty "Bother papa!" from the opposite berth proved that Sara had been aroused.

"Poor mother!" said Margaret. "Don't you think I'd better say something, Sara? It might do some good."

"Oh, ma's used to it!" said Sara sleepily, and carefully doubling down her soft pillow over her free ear, was soon drawing regular breaths that were not far removed from snore. Margaret, meanwhile, continued to listen with a feeling which in a less filially disposed daughter would have borne a close resemblance to exasperation. She knew that her mother had been toiling through the greater part of the afternoon, and that, thanks to her care, every article of her father's clothing was in a condition of immaculateness that might have satisfied even the head of the House of Devonshire himself. She knew, too, how sorely rest and sympathy must be needed by a mind almost painfully strained with the anticipation of the morrow's meeting. And, knowing these things, she could have wished it was not so horribly undutiful to ponder on the relief it must have afforded her mother if her father could have been instantly gagged.

Nothing, in point of fact, short of gagging, could have restrained Mr. Cavendish once he had entered upon the subject of his grievances. Did you ever see a man thoroughly convinced that the world has been ill-using him from his cradle? There is something almost touching in the naïve egotism with which he puts his case, and expects you to see it solely and entirely from his own injured point of view. If all the universe had only taken shape from nebulous chaos for the purpose of thwarting him he could not show a more profound conviction that he had been singled out for ill-treatment. For an evangelised Christian who may be possessed of such a delusion there is the comforting reflection that he has been selected for chastisement as an object of Divine favour. But Mr. Cavendish was not an evangelised Christian--only an orthodox one--and could have foregone with great resignation any of the striking marks of "Divine favour" that made the subject of his plaints.

I am sure his wife could have foregone with equal resignation the recapitulation of them to-night. The brush almost dropped out of her hand--so weary she felt--as she prolonged the brushing of her hair with seraphic endurance all the time her husband was speaking; sitting right up in her cabin-chair, lest it should appear she was not wide-awake to his troubles, while he, too excited to rest, walked up and down the confined length of their cabin, wrapped in his flowered dressing-gown.

Even under his present fretful, undignified aspect--for there is nothing more undignified than the attitude of a grumbling man, not an inveigher against fate, but a carper against petty ills--Mr. Cavendish asserted his derivation. He was a slight man, with a generally pinched but thoroughly refined set of features, not unbecomingly bald about the temples, and graceful, even to his manner of extending a slender taper forefinger upon the occasion of haranguing his wife or daughters. He had never had a beard, and was almost whiskerless, a fact which, coupled with his slight figure, made him look like his wife's son in the distance. But on a closer inspection her face was found to be smooth and youthful, with the enduring youth of a perfect texture of skin, and a chiselled nose and chin, while his was seamed with the grievances of his five and fifty years of life. I do not think he had omitted to emphasise a single one of these life-long grievances to-night. The cabin candle--alight in defiance of Captain Chuck's printed regulations--was burning low--upon ordinary occasions it would have lasted for a week--before he had half exhausted himself, and poor Mrs. Cavendish's eyes were blurred with something which made the candle throw out long quivering darts of light as he said, "It's most unaccountable--most unaccountable; indeed, I might say--most extraordinary--your brother's conduct. In fact, it's not far short of presuming. By what earthly right does he suppose the Cavendish family is to be at his beck and call? I shouldn't wonder if he were to send for my brother the Bishop next. Upon my honour, I shouldn't be in the least surprised. To say the least of it, it's a gross piece of officiousness on his part. I never objected, that I'm aware of, to your receiving his little presents in England! Can you charge me, I say, with ever offering an objection to your receiving them?"

His wife shook her head--and indeed, considering that the "little presents" had signified their daily bread to the Cavendish family, an objection on the part of Mr. Cavendish would have been a somewhat unlikely proceeding. "No! I'm not aware, I repeat, of offering any obstruction to his communication with you. What did he require? More facilities for correspondence? Had you ever to complain of a delay in the delivery of your letters? No!" He stood before his wife and extended the inevitable forefinger, marking off each phrase with it, as if he had been delivering the heads of a discourse. "I can see his motive, of course! He never considers what it is to me, at my advanced age"--nothing would have irritated Mr. Cavendish more than a hint of the sort proffered by any one else--"to leave my country, my kin, my ancestral associations, and die in a country of convicts and gold-diggers." Nothing could impress Mr. Cavendish with the fact that Botany Bay was not in Victoria. "To die there, I repeat," solemnly, "and why?"--the forefinger took a prolonged swoop--"Yes, why? Only because your brother mistrusts me! He cannot believe his paltry benefits are fittingly bestowed. Good Heavens! what a want of consideration--of delicacy. I am well aware that it is useless to look for delicacy from people of a certain class--no one need tell me that, I have had sufficient experience of it, unfortunately. I don't expect you to sympathise with me. I see it all clearly enough, and I must repeat what a want of good breeding, of proper feeling, to extort, as it were, a sort of guarantee in my presence--a guarantee, evidently, of the way in which I dispose of his money! But it is useless, as I said before, to expect anything else--quite useless."

He stopped short to give vent to a profound sigh. Mrs. Cavendish had the silver teapot on the tip of her tongue, but she refrained.

"You ain't fair to my brother, Mr. Cavendish," was all she said. When scenes of this nature took place, the poor woman betrayed her emotion by relapsing into early untutored expressions, and above all, by calling her husband "Mr." Cavendish--at other times he was "Pa." "You don't give him his due. I'd like to know where we'd be now if it wasn't for him."

"Be now," said Mr. Cavendish sharply; "in England, of course." Mrs. Cavendish forbore again to observe that England might have many meanings, and that a poorhouse in that favoured country need not display any singular advantages over a poorhouse in any other part of the world. She returned to the defence by remarking--

"Tom 'ud take it to heart sadly, Mr. Cavendish, or I don't know him. Do you think I can't say what was his main thought in bringing us away? It wasn't to see how we were spending his money, as you said awhile ago, nor yet to set eyes on his sister again, though, trust my heart, that 'ud something to do with it. It was all so as we should 'better ourselves,' nothing but that--or he's not the Tom that I remember--when I hadn't a friend but him in the world!"

"Better ourselves!" objected Mr. Cavendish scornfully. "I do wish, Elizabeth, you would make use of more appropriate expressions. A valet 'betters' himself! A chambermaid 'betters' herself when she marries the butler. Your brother, I am quite willing to concede, has 'bettered' himself, taking into consideration the circumstances in which he was left by your unfortunate father. The House of Devonshire can have no motive for bettering itself. Pray remember that!"

He was so irritated as he began to pace the cabin floor again that his wife would not risk a rejoinder. All thought of personal hurt was merged into pity for him. What if it were only "proper pride," after all, that made him seem so hard? For he had always, chafed against the sense of being under obligations, and surely it was natural for a man so well born to feel it out of place that he should come for help to those below him. Thus she argued, resenting in no wise the fetish régime by virtue of which she was morally belaboured so severely--but feeling tired, and sick at heart, and desiring nothing so much as rest.

That peculiar sensation of anticipation, that affecting some people physically produces an actual sense of internal strain, had well nigh worn her out.

All pleasure in the morrow's meeting was gone. The zest of presenting "your pa" to her brother Tom--of bidding her beautiful Sara and Margaret, of the sweet manners, kiss their Uncle Piper; nay--for she had not forgotten Tom's blunt appreciation of her girlish charms--the pleasure of greeting him again with her own comely visage still smooth and recognisable--had all been destroyed by her husband's remarks. The whole aspect of the meeting was changed. Mr. Cavendish would make it plain that he had no intention of being "friendly" from the first. And what more natural than that Tom should be "short" with him, if that was all the return he was to get for his kindness? He was a "plain-spoken" man, as she remembered him. She could not even picture him as living in other than a plain way, having but vague ideas of colonial life and its near approach, among the wealthy, to the luxury indulged in at home. But that was the more reason for refusing to be "put off" with mere cold civility. How could she possibly soften her husband's heart before the morrow's meeting? How lead him to pardon, as it were, his benefactor, for having dared to benefit him? Not, it was evident, by twitting him with the lavishness of his brother, the well-born bishop, and the episode of the silver teapot. Not by saying to him, "You married me, believing you were lowering yourself; you have often hinted as much to me since. You thought it a piece of condescension to let me write to my own brother; you would hardly as much as believe that I had any feeling for him. Yet who, when your brother played the Jacob to you, and took our only piece of plate before he would save you from starving--who, when your child might have been born in a lying-in hospital, for all you could have done to prevent it--who, I ask, came to your help then? Who has sent us money time after time without being asked for it? Who after pretty well keeping us at home all these years, wishes to have us come to him, only that he may see better what more he can do for us? Who is it that you are abusing, after taking his presents? It is true you may have a crest of your own, and may talk about ancestors who cut people's throats three hundred years ago. It is true my brother Tom can remember no farther back than his father's counter, and that he began his life by 'butchering,' but which of you can hold his head the highest now? You whose gentle blood would not have kept your wife and children from the workhouse, or he whose honest hands have made him independent of all the world; who has never wronged a man of a penny; who has not only provided for his own family and his wife's daughter (who had no claim upon him), but for you and your family to boot?"

Without entering upon so exhaustive a method of reasoning as the above, Mrs. Cavendish was aware of the futility of "speaking her mind," even a mind so lenient and charitably inclined as hers. But she apologised for the slight offered to the House of Devonshire.

"I didn't mean it that way, Mr. Cavendish--you know I didn't. I'd only money in my mind when I was talking o'bettering ourselves."

"Bettering ourselves, indeed!" repeated Mr. Cavendish, in whose mind the expression apparently rankled; you call it 'bettering ourselves' when you force me to sell my birthright for money? This is what my ancestors fought and died for, I suppose--that I may be transported to a land of upstarts and convicts--this is what you call 'bettering ourselves.'"

His voice failed him in his choking indignation. And it was the more embarrassing that, even granting he had had the best of grounds for posing as a martyr, there was clearly nothing to be done, the family fund being represented by £27, together with a few odd shillings left over from Uncle Piper's largesse, a sum insufficient even to take Mr. Cavendish back in the Henrietta Maria, should his aversion to being "bettered" by his wife's relations make him refuse to leave the ship when the moment for landing had arrived.

The point of the discussion was now reached at which a right-minded woman, in Mrs. Cavendish's place, knowing what was due to herself, would have sobbed loudly and continuously. Noise has in all times been the weapon of weakness--force, for the most part, working silently--and the acknowledgment of weakness that tears bring with them has sometimes a mollifying effect on the tyrant, especially where they are accompanied by some nicely pitched moans. For of two results, one. Either the man is flattered by the commotion he has aroused or fearful lest some sympathetic soul should hear it. In either case he is quieted for the time being. Therefore, despite those misleading theories which would have you believe that a man is goaded by a woman's tears, and that a "soft answer" is the surest means of disarming him, I counsel all young wives starting in life with a grumbling helpmate, or hindermate (as the case may be), to cultivate a facility for crying instantaneously, distinctly, and perseveringly.

But Mrs. Cavendish, as I have said, had never been taught their value in a crisis of this sort, and spontaneously they could hardly have come to her aid, seeing that her life from its outset had been developed in a school of self-restraint. She sat perfectly still, with all foretaste of gladness in the morrow's meeting crushed out of her--while the candle, which, I think, must have been her ally, spluttered significantly. "You may well sit like a log," said Mr. Cavendish, in bitter allusion to her crushed quiescence; "if you had a spark of sensibility--a spark of womanly--of lady-like feeling"--there was such a disclaimer from the candle at this point that he turned to pull the wick up--"if you were not a 'Piper,'" extending a delicate forefinger towards the flame--"if you were not a 'Piper,' I say---Damn--" the flame had gone out, while the wick held fast to Mr. Cavendish's finger. Four bells, faintly repeated by a ghostly peal from the distant forecastle, sounded in the pause that followed--during which Mrs. Cavendish inferred from the solemn stillness that her husband was nursing his finger. It would have been dangerous to advance any sympathy. She felt her way almost noiselessly to her berth--so wearied out, that it was only reserved for Margaret in the next cabin to know that her father had gone to bed under difficulties in the dark.

Meanwhile the Henrietta Maria, as unheeding as Jonah's whale of all the fretting ambitions, the hopes, the despondencies, the passions that she held massed for the last time between her bulging sides, was slowly making her way up the bay. Already the stars that had encrusted the sky all night, like so many pale precious stones of enduring brilliance, were effacing themselves in the deepening pink--the forerunner of a light before which they must all obliterate themselves. And of two watchful souls among the passengers who were aware of this first early summer sunrise over the Australian coast were Margaret lying quietly awake, with sad sleepless eyes, and the Rev. Mr. Lydiat looking from his port-hole at the distant scrubenfolded hills, whose black outline he could trace distinctly against the brightening sky. For it was not only in Shakespeare's age that--

"Some must watch while some must weep. Thus runs the world away."