Under Two Skies (12 page)

She rose resolutely from her chair, and with difficulty rekindled her fire; it ruined her elaborate dress, but she was glad never to wear this one again. It did not seem to her that she was about to do anything cruel or unnatural. She was going to do violence to her own feelings only. It would please Ted that she was not going to keep his letters, to read them in her better moods, and less and less as the years went on. For her own part, she felt she would like to have them a little longer. It was a subtle sense of sacrifice for his sake—her first and last—which nerved her to burn his letters. Overstrung as she was, she burnt them, every one, and without a tear.

A half-leaf happened to escape. She picked it out of the fender when the rest were burnt black, and as
her heart was beginning to ache for what she had done. She took it to the window, and read on the crisp, scorched paper the ordinary end of an ordinary letter—the end of all was, as ever: “Yours always, E. M.”

Without a moment's warning, her tears rattled upon the hot paper; she pressed it passionately to her mouth; she flung herself upon the bed in a paroxysm of helpless agony.

When Canon Methuen was offered the least tempting of Australian bishoprics, strong hopes of a refusal were entertained by admirers of that robust and popular divine. His chances of a much more desirable preferment, if he would but wait for it, were, on the one hand, considerable; and on the other hand was his daughter Evelyn. Miss Methuen, an only unmarried child, was not the one to suffer transportation to the bush, while she was the very one to influence her father's decision. So said those who knew her, showing, as usual, how little they did know her. For whatsoever was novel, romantic-sounding, or unattractive to her friends, most mightily attracted Evelyn Methuen; and the Australian bishopric possessed all these merits. Her friends were right about the girl's influence in general with their beloved Canon; they did not over-rate the weight of her say in this particular matter; but beyond this their fond calculations proved sadly adrift. Evelyn never even
paused to consider the thing, say in the light of transportation and live burial; she jumped at it; and on this occasion she did not jump back. Her father, who knew her, gave her time for the customary rebound. But for once she knew her mind, and on the fifth day the world learnt that a Colonial bishopric of which it had never heard before had been definitely accepted by the Reverend Canon Methuen.

Miss Methuen had done it, and apparently she knew no regrets. That repentance at leisure of which her father had disquieting visions, founded on past experience of her, did indeed become conspicuous, but only in a delightful manner. She was not, of course, without a proper sorrow at departure; the spires at sunset made her pensive; she duly cried when the wrench came, but performed that wrench strong-mindedly, notwithstanding. This was her accredited characteristic, strength of mind. It enabled her to tear herself away from a grand old town for which she had an unaffected veneration—where she spent most of her life, where her mother lay buried, where two sisters lived married: from some precious Extension Lectures, in the middle of the Browning Course: from her own little room, made pretty with her own hands, at small cost, with fans and Aspinall and photographs in frames: from those very young men who were foolish about her at this time; and almost as easily, six weeks later, from
the more mature and less impossible admirers of the outward voyage. But though, to be sure, she had never had absolute occasion for a refusal of marriage, she would have refused Lord Shields himself—
the
fellow-passenger—on the voyage out. Her heart was set upon the wilderness, and on that Bishop's Lodge there, her future home; and after devouring some Australian romances, she felt that she would rather encounter one bushranger on his professional rounds than plough the seas with a boat-load of friendly peers.

Before reading those romances—that is, until there came the prospect of living in Australia—Miss Methuen's ideas of that continent had been very vague, very elementary, and rather funny. Her timely reading gave shape and background to her ideas, but left them funnier than ever; it did not prepare her for the place she was going to, perhaps it did not pretend to do so, that romantic literature; but Miss Methuen had chosen to assume that all Australian scenery would be in the same style. She was prepared for gullies, gum-trees, caves, ranges, kangaroos, opossums, claims, creeks, snakes in the grass, and chivalrous robbers on the highroad; but she was not prepared for a dead level of sandy desert, broken only by the river-timber of a narrow, sluggish stream, nor for a wooden township where the worst weapons of man were strong drink in the head and strong language on the tongue; and this was
what she found. Great was the disillusion, and in every respect; it discounted and discoloured all things, even to the Bishop's Lodge, which, with its complete margin of creeper-covered verandah, was charming in everything but situation.

“Call this the bush!—where are the trees?” she said rather petulantly to her father; and, as she looked at his long dust-coat of light-coloured silk, duck trousers, and pith helmet, she might have added: “Call you a Bishop!—where are your gaiters?”

In fact, Miss Methuen's contentment wore away, very nearly, with the novelty. The Bishop saved the situation by taking her with him on his first episcopal round up country. He wore, too, on that round, his gaiters (with a new chum's stout shooting-boots underneath) and black garments, for the cool weather was coming on. They had a delightful cruise among the sheep-stations of the diocese (a little district the size of England), their pilot being the Bishop's Chaplain, who, as it happened, was a son of the soil. They gave the hospitality of the squatter a splendid trial, and found that celebrated Colonial quality rated not at all too high. The Bishop held services in the queerest places, and administered holy rites to the most picturesque ruffians, winning in all quarters the respect and admiration of men not prone to respect or to admire, for his broad shoulders and grizzled beard and his erect
six feet, as well as for the humanity and virility of every sentence in his simple, telling addresses. Evelyn, perhaps, was admired less; but she did not suspect this, and she enjoyed herself thoroughly. There were gentlemanly young overseers at nearly all the stations. These young men, naturally taken with the healthy colour and good looks of the English girl, were sufficiently attentive, and seemed duly impressed by her conversation. So they were. But clever Evelyn was not clever in her topics; she talked Browning to them, and culture, and the “isms”; and they mimicked her afterwards—the attentive young men. This she did not suspect either. She returned from the cruise in the highest spirits, her preconceptions of the bush not realised, indeed, but forgotten; and after weeks among the stations the wooden town seemed a different and a better place, and the Bishop's Lodge a paradise of ease and beauty.

But during the less eventful period of the Bishop's ministry at headquarters, the satisfaction on his daughter's part tapered, as it invariably did in the absence of variety. She began systematically to miss things “after old England”; and here the Bishop could sympathise, though the forced expression of his sympathy galled his contented and tolerant nature. He pointed out that comparison was scarcely fair, and hinted that it lay with Evelyn, as with himself, at once to enjoy and to
improve the new environment. Naturally there were matters for regret, occasions for a sigh. The service of the sanctuary was necessarily less sumptuous here than in the old English minster; and Evelyn had a soul of souls for high mass, and the exaltation of the spirit through the senses. Then when the service was over, there were no young curates of culture to step in to Sunday supper or dinner, as the case might be. This was a want of another kind; it is not suggested that it was the greater want. The social void, certainly, was an unattractive feature of Bishop's Lodge, where even the young overseers of the back-blocks, who had barely heard of Browning and were not ashamed of themselves would have been royally welcomed visitors. As it was, almost the only visitors were the Chaplain and his wife, who did not count, since they practically lived at the Lodge. Nor was either of this excellent couple to Evelyn's taste. The Chaplain, indeed, was but a bush-man with a clean mouth; clerical, to the eye, in his clothes only. No one could have accused him of polish, nor yet, on the other hand, of laziness or insincerity. Evelyn, however, tilted her nose at him. As for the Chaplain's wife, she was just one of those kind, unpretentious women who are more apt to be spoken of as “bodies.” She did many things for Evelyn; but she had also many children, and spoilt them all; so that Evelyn could do nothing but despise her. For, in her
reputed strong mind, Miss Methuen nursed a catholic contempt for human weaknesses of every shade.

When, however, the time came for further episcopal visitations, Evelyn, who accompanied her father as before, once more enjoyed herself keenly. Her pleasure was certainly enhanced by the fact that the ground traversed was not the old ground. But this turned out to be her last treat of the kind for some time to come. The next round of travels was arranged with the express object of Confirmation, and the Bishop seemed to feel that in this connection the companionship of his daughter might be out of place. He decided, at all events, to take no one but the Chaplain. So Evelyn was left behind with the Chaplain's wife, and neither lady had a very delightful time. The girl spent most of hers in writing exhaustive letters to her friends, prolix with feminine minutiae, but pathetically barren of the adventures which she longed to recount, if not to experience. In particular she corresponded with some old friends in Sydney, at whose fashionable residence she had spent a night before accompanying her father up country. These people sympathised with her on many sheets of expensive note-paper. The letters became mutually gushing; and long before the Bishop's return, Evelyn had arranged to spend the term of his next absence with her opulent friends in Sydney.

When he did return, Evelyn, as it happened, was not in the house. In point of fact, she was reading under the gum-trees by the sluggish little river, but, as usual, the Chaplain's wife was not in the unnecessary secret of her whereabouts. Evelyn's book on this occasion had itself a strong odour of the gum-trees, for it chanced to be the Poems of the bush poet, Lindsay Gordon. Now Evelyn, having attended University Extension Lectures on the subject of “Modern Poetry,” was of course herself an authority on that subject; equally of course she found much to criticise in these bush ballads. What, however, not even Miss Methuen could find fault with was their local colour. She had seen it herself up the country; she only wished she had seen more of it—more of Gordon's bush and Gordon's bushmen. Oddly enough, though in his book, the verses that attracted her most were never written by Gordon at all: —

“Booted, and bearded, and burnt to a brick,
I loaf along the street;

I watch the ladies tripping by,
And I bless their dainty feet.”

She liked these lines well enough to learn them as she walked back to the house; and it was impossible to avoid glancing at her own dainty feet in doing so. Why did
she
never encounter the booted bushman who had seen better days?

“I watch them here and there,
With a bitter feeling of pain;

Ah! what wouldn't I give to feel
A lady's hand again!”

“Ah!” echoed Evelyn, looking at her own small hand, “and what wouldn't I give—to pull some poor fellow to the surface with
you
!”

And indeed she was ready to give much, having some soul for the romantic, and being bored.

Looking up from her book, she was startled to see her father hurrying towards her, his fine face beaming with gladness. Evelyn beamed too, and they embraced in the road, very prettily. The Bishop explained his early arrival; the last stages he, even he, had driven furiously—to get back to his darling girl. Then he thrust his strong, kind arm through hers, and led her home. But as they neared the Lodge his steps hesitated.

“My dear, I have a confession to make to you!”

“A confession! Have you done something naughty, father?”

“Yes! I have taken pity on an undeserving young man. You know, Evelyn, this colony is full of educated young men who have gone hard down hill until reaching the bottom here in the bush. I have come across I can't tell you how many instances up country, men from our Universities and public schools, living from
year's end to year's end in lonely huts, mere boundary-riders and whim-drivers.”

“Contemptible creatures!” exclaimed Miss Evelyn, with virtuous vigour. “I have no sympathy with them, not an atom!”

Though Gordon was still under her arm, the bush-man who had seen better days had vanished quite out of her head, which contained, as we know, a strong mind, and was perhaps rather swollen by conscious strength.

The Bishop was not pleased.

“Come, come, Evelyn! I do not like to hear my dear girl settle questions in that way—questions of humanity, too. It was not our blessed Lord's way, Evelyn, my darling! However, the young man I speak of has done nothing to merit any one's contempt—nothing, nothing,” averred the Bishop, with disingenuous emphasis. “He is merely a young fellow who came out to the Colonies and—and has not as yet done so well as he hoped to do. And I found I had been at school with his father!”

“Where is he now?” asked Evelyn, divining that he was not far off.

“Here in the house,” confessed the Bishop. “He goes on in the coach—it leaves in an hour, at seven; and, Evelyn, my dear, I'd rather you didn't see him before he went. He is going down to Sydney to get
himself some decent clothes, and I have also asked him to have his beard shaved off, as he is quite a young man. The fact is, he will be back here in a fortnight, and you will see him then; for he is coming back as my Lay Reader!”