She in her virginal beautyAs pure as a pictured saint,How should this sinning and sorrowHave for her danger or taint?
The reason our sweet pale Margaret had been reluctant of her smiles was on account of the very man who alone missed them.
Quite a warm friendship had sprung up during the month between the little fair-faced girl, who looked with such serene blue eyes to a future she felt must be beautiful, and the world-worn man, who looked back to a past all blackened and unlovely by his own acts.
He rode with the two girls every-day, because Mrs. Hassal did not like them going long distances alone; and, seeing Judy seldom walked her horse, and Meg's steed had not a canter in it, it fell out that he kept beside the slow and timid rider all the time.
"You remind me of a little sister I had who died," he said slowly to Meg once, after a long talk. "Perhaps if she were alive now I should not be quite so contemptible."
Meg's face flushed scarlet, and a shamed look had come into her eyes. It seemed altogether terrible to her that he should know she knew of his failing.
"Perhaps it makes her sorry now," she said in a whisper he scarcely heard, and then she grew pale at her boldness, and rode on a little way to hide her distressed looks.
On the way home the pale-blue ribbon, that tied the strands of her sunny plait together, blew off. He dismounted and picked it up. Meg stretched out her hand for it, but he untied the bow and folded it slowly round his big hand.
"May I keep it?" he said in a low voice. "For my blue ribbon? I know the conditions that attach."
"If you would—oh, if you would!" Meg breathed rather than said. Then Judy galloped up and they rode home three abreast. It was such happiness to her all the hot, long days that followed; to a girl just entering life there can be no purer, deeper feeling of pleasure than that brought by the knowledge that she is influencing for good some man or woman older than herself, more sin-worn and earth-wearied. Poor little Meg! Her tender rose dreams had pictured her bigprotegea man among men again, holding up his head once more, taking his place in the world, going back to the old country, and claiming the noble lady her fertile imagination had pictured; waiting so patiently for him; and all this because she, Meg Woolcot, had stepped into his life and pointed the way he should go.
And then she went to swing in a hammock on the back veranda, and all her castles came tumbling about her ears, dealing her sharp, bitter blows. There was a thick creeper of passion-fruit vines behind her, and through it she could hear Tettawonga talking to the cook.
"Marse Gillet on the burst agen," he said, and chuckled through the side of his lips where his pipe did not rest.
Meg sat up in horror. Since she had been at Yarrahappini she had heard the phrase applied to too many of the station hands: not to know that it meant a reckless drinking bout.
"Lor'! I'M not surprised," the woman said, "he's been too sober late days to keep it up; s'pose he's been trying to last the visitors out, but found it too much. Who's got the keys?"
"Mis' Hassal," he said, "you to helpin' her—ba`al good for stores to-day, Marse Gillet—he, he, ha, ha!"
So that was what had happened to him all these three days she had not seen him! She had heard he had ridden over to the next station on business for Mr. Hassal, but had not dreamed such 'a thing had overtaken him. The fifth day she had seen him in the distance, once coming out of the storeroom and looking exactly like himself, only his shoulders stooped a little more, and once smoking outside his own door.
The sixth day was the picnic.
Just as light-hearted and merry as the others she could not feel, with this disappointment at her heart, this shaken trust in human nature.
How weak he was, she thought, how ignoble!
All her pity was swept away in a young, large indignation.
She had hardly shaken hands when they had met in the morning, and all the long drive she was persistently cold towards him.
After lunch the party became scattered. Judy took the General and went over to the belt of trees; Pip and Bunty occupied themselves with catching locusts; Baby and Nell gathered wild flowers. Meg knelt down to collect the spoons and forks: and put the untouched food back into the baskets away from the ants.
"I will do this—you look hot, Miss Meg; sit down quietly," Mr. Gillet said.
"Thank you, but I prefer to do it myself," Miss Meg said, with freezing dignity.
She did not look at him, but there was a certain tightness about her lips that made him know the light in her clear young, eyes was a scornful one.
He did not offer again, but sat and watched her pack up the things with an untranslatable look on his face. When she had almost finished he took something out of his pocket.
"I have to give you this again," he said, and handed her the blue length of ribbon, folded smoothly, but showing the crease where it had been tied.
She took it without lifting her eyes, crushed it up in her hand, and slipped it into her pocket.
"I had almost hoped you would say I might keep it, in spite of everything," he said, "just as a talisman against the future, but your lips are too severe, Miss for me to cherish the hope longer."
"It would be as useless as it has been," she said stiffly. Her hands moved nervously, however, and she wrapped up the remains of a duck and a jam tart together.
"Then I am not to have another chance?" he said.
"It would be no use," Meg repeated, gathering up bananas and oranges with a heightened colour.
He does not realize how wicked he has been, he thinks he ought to be forgiven at once was her thought.
He emptied the billy slowly on the ground, he put on its blackened lid and tied the newspaper around it. Then he looked at her again, and the way her soft hair fell on her forehead made him think of his young dead sister.
"I BEG you to give it to me again, little Miss Meg," he said.
Meg's heart and head had a rapid battle; the former was tender and charitable, and bade her take the little ribbon and give it to him instantly; the latter said he had sinned greatly, and she must show him her disapproval by her manner, even if she yielded what he asked her in the end. The head won.
"My influence is evidently useless—that bit of ribbon would make no difference in the future," she said very coldly.
He leaned back against the tree and yawned, as if the subject had no more interest for him.
"Ah well," he said, "I dare say you are right." Meg felt a little taken down.
"Of course, if you really want the ribbon you can have it," she said loftily. She took it from her pocket and tendered it to him.
But he made no effort to take it.
"Keep it to tie your hair again, little girl," he said; "after all, I don't suppose it would be any use."
Meg continued her packing with burning cheeks, and he filled up his pipe and smoked it, watching her idly the while.
"It's an odd thing," he said, more as if making an observation than addressing her, "but the gentlest-looking women are nearly always the hardest."
Meg opened her mouth to speak, but found nothing to say, so closed it again and began to count Mrs. Hassal's forks for the fourth time.
"I wonder would you mind if I gave you a little advice, Miss Meg, in return for all you have given me," he said, taking his pipe from his mouth and looking at it as if he were trying to find out the lettering on its nickel plate.
"Certainly not."
She laid down the bundle and looked at him with calm, surprised eyes. "Say whatever you please, I do not mind in the very least."
He sat up and played with the handle of a strap while he spoke.
"You have brothers," he said; "some day they will go a little astray—for it is only women like you, Miss Meg, and angels who can keep to the path always. Don't be too hard on them. Don't make an effort to show them the difference between your whiteness and their blackness. They will see it right enough, but they won't like you to draw their attention to it. Try and look gentle and forgiving—they'll feel quite as miserable as you could wish them to feel. The world has a beautiful frown of its own, and an endless vocabulary of cold words—wouldn't it do if the little sisters left it the monopoly of them?"
"Oh-h-h!" said Meg. Her cheeks were crimson, and all the dignity had oozed out of her voice.
He buckled the strap round nothing with infinite care, and went on again in a low tone:
"Suppose Pip did something very wrong some day, and the world flung stones at him till he was bruised all over. And suppose feeling very wretched, he came home to his sisters. And Meg, because wickedness was abhorrent to her, threw a few more little stones, so that the pain might teach him a lesson he could not forget. And Judy, because he was her brother and in trouble, flung her arms round him and encouraged him, and helped him to fight the world again, and gave him never a hard word or look, thinking he had had plenty. Which sister's influence would be greater, Miss Meg?"
Meg's little soft mouth, was quivering, her eyes were on the ground, because the tears would have splashed out if she had lifted them.
"Oh-h-h!" she said again. "Oh, how very horrid I have been—oh-h-h!"
She covered her face with her hands, for one of her quickly gathered tears was trembling on her lashes.
Mr. Gillet dropped the strap and the pipe, and looked across to her with tender eyes.
"I am more than twice your age, Miss Meg, old enough nearly to be your father—you will forgive me for saying all this, won't you? I was thinking, of my sister who died. I had another little sister, too, a year older, but she was hard—only event to her once. She is one of the best women in England now, but her lips are severe. Little Miss Meg, I could not bear the thought of you growing hard."
Half a dozen big tears had fallen down among the forks. Meg was crying because it was borne upon her what a very hateful creature she was. First Alan lectured her and spoke of his sister, and now this man.
He misinterpreted her silence.
"I have no right to speak to you like this, because my life has been any colour but white—that is it, isn't it, Miss Meg?" he said with great sadness.
Meg dropped her sheltering hands.
"Oh, no," she said, "oh! how CAN you think so? It is only I am so horrid." She rummaged in her pocket and brought out the ribbon.
"Will you take it again?" she said—"oh, PLEASE, just to make me feel less horrid. Oh, please take it!"
She looked at him with wet, imploring eyes, and held it out.
He took it, smoothed its crumpledness, and placed it in his pocket-book.
"God bless you," he said, and the tone made Meg sob.
Across the grass came a little flying figure, Judy in a short pink frock with her wild curls blowing about her face.
"Are you a candidate for sunstroke—where IS your hat, Miss Judy?" Mr. Gillet asked.
Judy shook back her dark tangle:
"Sorrow a know I knows," she said—"it's a banana the General is afther dyin' for, and sure it's a dead body I shall live to see misself if you've eaten all the oranges."
Meg pushed the bag of fruit across the cloth to her, and tried to tilt her hat over her tell-tale eyes.
But the bright dark ones had seen the wet lashes the first moment.
"I s'pose you've been reading stupid poetry and making Meg cry?" she said, with an aggressive glance from Mr. Gillet to the book on the grass. "You really ought to be, ashamed of yourselves, SICH behaviour at a picnic. It's been a saving in oranges, though, that's a mercy."
She took half a dozen great fat ones from the bag, as well as four or five bananas, and went back with flying steps to the belt of trees, where the General in his holland coat could just be seen.
He was calmly grubbing up the earth and putting it in his little red mouth when she arrived with the bananas.
He looked up at her with an adorable smile. "BABY!" she said, swooping down upon him with one of her wild rushes. "BABY!"
She kissed him fifty times; it almost hurt her sometimes, the feeling of love for this little fat, dirty boy.
Then she gathered him up on her knee and wiped as much of the dirt as possible from his mouth with the corner of his coat.
"Narna," he said, struggling onto the ground again; so she took the skin from a great yellow one and put it in his small, chubby hand.
He ate some of it, and squeezed the rest up tightly in his hands, gleefully watching it come up between his wee fingers in little worm-like morsels.
Then he smeared it over his dimpled face, and even rubbed it on his hair, while Judy was engrossed with her fifth orange.
So, of course, she had to whip him for doing it, or pretend to, which came to the same thing. And then he had to whip her, which did not only mean pretence.
He beat her with a stick he found near, he smacked her face and pulled her hair and bumped himself up and down on her chest, and all in such solemn, painstaking earnestness that she could only laugh even when he really hurt her.
"Dood now?" he said at last anxiously. And she began to weep noisily, with covered face and shaking shoulders, in the proper, penitent way. And then he put his darling arms round her neck and hugged her, and said "Ju-Ju" in a choking little voice, and patted her cheeks, and gave her a hundred eager, wide, wet kisses till she was better.
Then they played chasings, and the General fell down twenty times, and scratched his little knees and hands, and struggled up again. and staggered on.
Presently Judy stood still in a hurry; there was a tick working its slow way into her wrist. Only its two back legs were left out from under the skin, and for a long time she pulled and pulled without any success. Then it broke in two, and she had to leave one half in for little Grandma and kerosene to extract on their return.
Two or three minutes it had taken her to try to move it, and when she looked up the General had toddled same distance away, and was travelling along as fast as ever his little fat legs would carry him, thinking he was racing her. Just as she, started after him he looked back, his eyes dancing, his face dimpled and mischievous, and, oh! so dirty..
And then—ah, God!
It is so hard to write it. My pen has had only happy writing to-do so far, and now!
"You rogue!" Judy called, pretending to run very quickly. Then the whole world seemed to rise up before her.
There was a tree falling, one of the great, gaunt, naked things that had been ringbarked long ago. All day it had swayed to and fro, rotten through and through; now there came up across the plain a puff of wind, and down it went before it. One wild ringing cry Judy gave, then she leaped across the ground, her arms outstretched to the little lad running with laughing eyes and lips straight to death.
The crash shook the trees around, the very air seemed splintered.
They had heard it—all the others—heard the wild cry and then the horrible thud.
How their knees shook what blanched faces they had as they rushed towards the sound!
They lifted it off the little bodies—the long, silvered trunk with the gum dead and dried in streaks upon it. Judy was face downwards, her arms spread out.
And underneath her was the General, a little shaken, mightily astonished, but quite unhurt. Meg clasped him for a minute, but then laid him down, and gathered with the others close around Judy.
Oh, the little dark, quiet head, the motionless body, in its pink, crushed frock, the small, thin, outspread hands!
"Judy!" Pip said, in a voice of beseeching agony. But the only answer was the wind at the tree-tops and the frightened breathings of the others.
Mr. Gillet remembered there was no one to act but himself. He went with Pip to the stockman's hut; and they took the door off its leather hinges and carried it down the hill.
"I will lift her," he said, and passed his arms around the little figure, raising her slowly, slowly, gently upwards, laying her on the door with her face to the sky.
But she moaned—oh, how she moaned!
Pip, whose heart had leapt to his throat at the first sign of life, almost went mad as the little sounds of agony burst from her lips.
They raised the stretcher, and bore her up the hill to the little brown hut at the top.
Then Mr. Gillet spoke, outside the doorway, to Meg and Pip, who seemed dazed, stunned.
"It will be hours before we can get help, and it is five now," he said. "Pip, there is a doctor staying at Boolagri ten miles along the road. Fetch him—run all the way. I will go back home—fourteen miles. Miss Meg, I can't be back all at once. I will bring a buggy; the bullock-dray is too slow and jolting, even when it comes back. You must watch by her, give her water if she asks—there is nothing else you can do."
"She is dying?" Meg said—"dying?"
He thought of all that might happen before he brought help, and dare not leave her unprepared.
"I think her back is broken," he said, very quietly. "If it is, it means death."
Pip fled away down the road that led to the doctor's.
Mr. Gillet gave a direction or two, then he looked at Meg.
"Everything depends on you; you must not even think of breaking down," he said. "Don't move her, watch all the time."
He moved away towards the lower road.
She sprang after him.
"Will she die while you are away?—no one but me."
Her eyes were wild, terrified.
"God knows!" he said, and turned away.
It was almost more than he could bear to go and leave this little girl alone to face so terrible a thing. "God help me!" she moaned, hurrying back, but not looking at the hot, low-hanging sky. "Help me, God! God, help me, help me!"
Such a sunset!
Down at the foot of the grass hill there was a flame-coloured sky, with purple, soft clouds massed in banks high up where the dying glory met the paling blue. The belt of trees had grown black, and stretched sombre, motionless arms against the orange background. All the wind had died, and the air hung hot and still, freighted with the strange silence of the bush.
And at the top of the hill, just within the doorway of the little brown hut, her wide eyes on the wonderful heavens, Judy lay dying. She was very quiet now, though she had been talking—talking of all sorts of things. She told them she had no pain at all.
"Only I shall die when they move me," she said.
Meg was sitting in a little heap on the floor beside her. She had never moved her eyes from the face on the pillow of mackintoshes, she had never opened her white lips to say one word.
Outside the bullocks stood motionless against the sky—Judy said they looked like stuffed ones having their portrait taken. She smiled the least little bit, but Meg said, "Don't," and writhed.
Two of the men had gone on superfluous errands for help; the others stood some distance away, talking in subdued voices.
There was nothing for them to do. The brown man had been talking—a rare thing for him.
He had soothed the General off to sleep, and laid him in the bunk with the blue blanket tucked around him. And he had made a billy of hot strong tea, and asked the children, with tears in his eyes, to drink some, but none of them would.
Baby had fallen to sleep on the floor, her arms clasped tightly around Judy's lace-up boot.
Bunty was standing, with a stunned look on his white face, behind the stretcher. His eyes were on his sister's hair, but he did not dare to let there wander to her face, for fear of what he should see there. Nellie was moving all the time—now to the fence to strain her eyes down the road, where the evening shadows lay heavily, now to fling herself face downward behind the hut and say, "Make her better, God! God, make her better, make her better! Oh! CAN'T You make her better?"
Greyer grew the shadows round the little but, the bullocks' outlines had faded, and only an indistinct mass of soft black loomed across the light. Behind the trees the fire was going out, here and there were yellow, vivid streaks yet, but the flaming sun-edge, had dipped beyond the world, and the purple, delicate veil was dropping down.
A curlew's note broke the silence, wild, mournful, unearthly. Meg shivered, and sat up straight. Judy's brow, grew damp, her eyes dilated, her lips trembled.
"Meg!" she said, in a whisper that cut the air. "Oh, Meg, I'm frightened! MEG, I'm so frightened!"
"God!" said Meg's heart.
"Meg, say something. Meg, help me! Look at the dark, Meg. MEG, I can't die! Oh, why don't they be quick?"
Nellie flew to the fence again; then to say, "Make her better, God—oh, please, God!"
"Meg, I can't think of anything to say. Can't you say something, Meg? Aren't there any prayers about the dying in the Prayer Book?—I forget. Say something, Meg!"
Meg's lips moved, but her tongue uttered no word.
"Meg, I'm so frightened! I can't think of anything but `For what we are about to receive,' and that's grace, isn't it? And there's nothing in Our Father that would do either. Meg, I wish we'd gone to Sunday-school and learnt things. Look at the dark, Meg! Oh, Meg, hold my hands!"
"Heaven won't—be—dark," Meg's lips said. Even when speech came, it was only a halting, stereotyped phrase that fell from them.
"If it's all gold and diamonds, I don't want to go!" The child was crying now. "Oh, Meg, I want to be alive! How'd you like to die, Meg, when you're only thirteen? Think how lonely I'll be without you all. Oh, Meg! Oh, Pip, Pip! Oh, Baby! Nell!"
The tears streamed down her cheeks; her chest rose and fell.
"Oh, say something, Meg!—hymns!—anything!"
Half the book of "Hymns Ancient and Modern" danced across Meg's brain. Which one could she think of that would bring quiet into those feverish eyes that were fastened on her face with such a frightening, imploring look?
Then she opened her lips:
"Come unto Me, ye weary,And I will give you rest,Oh, bl—
"I'm not weary, I don't WANT to rest," Judy said, in a fretful tone.
Again Meg tried:
"My God, my Father, while I strayFar from my home on life's rough way,Oh, teach me from my heart to say———————— Thy will be done!"
"That's for old people," said the little tired voice. "He won't expect ME to say it."
Then Meg remembered the most beautiful hymn in the world, and said the first and last verses without a break in her voice:
"Abide with me, fast falls the eventide,The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me!
Hold Thou Thy Cross before my closing eyes,Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows fleeIn life, in death, O Lord, abide with me!
"Oh! and Judy, dear, we are forgetting; there's Mother, Judy, dear—you won't be lonely! Can't you remember Mother's eyes, little Judy?"
Judy grew quiet, and still more quiet. She shut her eyes so she could not see the gathering shadows. Meg's arms were round her, Meg's cheek was on her brow, Nell was holding her hands, Baby her feet, Bunty's lips were on her hair. Like that they went with her right to the Great Valley, where there are no lights even for stumbling, childish feet.
The shadows were cold, and smote upon their hearts; they could feel the wind from the strange waters on their brows; but only she who was about to cross heard the low lapping of the waves.
Just as her feet touched the water there was a figure in the doorway.
"Judy!" said a wild voice; and Pip brushed them aside and fell down beside her.
"Judy, Judy, JUDY!"
The light flickered back in her eyes. She kissed him with pale lips once, twice; she gave him both her hands, and her last smile.
Then the wind blew over them all, and, with a little shudder, she slipped away.
"She seemed a thing that could not feelThe touch of earthly years."
"No motion has she now—no force;She neither hears nor sees;Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,With rocks and stones and trees."
They went home again, the six of them, and Esther, who, all her days, "would go the softlier, sadlier" because of the price that had been paid for the life of her little sweet son. The very air of Yarrahappini seemed to crush them and hang heavy on their souls.
So when the Captain, who had hurried up to see the last of his poor little girl, asked if they would like to go home, they all said "Yes."
There was a green space of ground on a hill-top behind the cottage, and a clump of wattle trees, dark-green now, but gold-crowned and gracious in the spring.
This is where they left little Judy. All around it Mr. Hassal had white tall palings put; the short grave was in the shady corner of it.
The place looked like a tiny churchyard in a children's country where there had only been one death.
Or a green fair field, with one little garden bed.
Meg was glad the little mound looked to the east; the suns died behind it—the orange and yellow and purple suns she could not bear to watch ever again while she lived.
But away in the east they rose tenderly always, and the light crept up across the sky to the hill-top in delicate pinks and trembling blues and brightening greys, but never fiery, yellow streaks, that made the eyes ache with hot tears.
There was a moon making it white and beautiful when they said good-bye to it on the last day.
They plucked a blade or two of grass each from the fresh turfs, and turned away. Nobody cried; the white stillness of the far moon, the pale, hanging stars, the faint wind stirring the wattles; held back their tears till they had closed the little gate behind them and left her alone on the quiet hill-top. Then they went-back to Misrule, each to pickup the thread of life and go on with the weaving that, thank God, must be done, or hearts would break every day.
Meg had grown older; she would never be quite so young again as she had been before that red sunset sank into her soul.
There was a deeper light in her eyes; such tears as she had wept clear the sight till life becomes a thing more distinct and far-reaching.
Nellie and she went to church the first Sunday after their return. Aldith was a few pews away, light-souled as ever, dressed in gay attire, flashing smiling, coquettish glances across to the Courtneys' pew, and the Grahams sitting just behind.
How far away Meg had grown from her! It seemed years since she had been engrossed with the latest mode in hat trimming, the dip of "umbrella" skirts, and the best method of making the hands white. Years since she had tried a trembling 'prentice hand at flirtations. Years, almost, since she had given the little blue ribbon at Yarrahappini, that was doing more good than she dreamed of.
Alan looked at her from his pew—the little figure in its sorrowful black, the shining hair hanging in a plait no longer frizzed at the end, the chastened droop of the young lips, the wistful sadness of the blue eyes. He could hardly realize it was the little scatterbrain girl who had written that letter, and stolen away through the darkness to meet his graceless young brother.
He clasped her hand when church was over; his grey eyes, with the quick moisture in them, made up for the clumsy stumbling words of sympathy he tried to speak.
"Let us be friends always, Miss Meg," he said, as they parted at the Misrule gate.
"Yes, let us," said Meg.
And the firm, frank friendship became a beautiful thing in both their lives, strengthening Meg and making the boy gentler.
Pip became his laughing, high-spirited self again, as even the most loving boy will, thanks to the merciful making of young hearts; but he used to get sudden fits of depression at times, and disappear all at once, in the midst of a game of cricket or football, or from the table when the noise was at its highest.
Bunty presented to the world just as grimy a face as of old, and hands even more grubby, for he had taken a mechanical turn of late, and spent his spare moments in manufacturing printing machines—so called—and fearful and wonderful engines, out of an old stove and some pots and rusty frying-pans rescued from the rubbish heap.
But he did not tell quite so many stories in these days; that deep sunset had stolen even into his young heart, and whenever he felt inclined to say "I never, 'twasn't me, 'twasn't my fault," a tangle of dark curls rose before him, just as they had lain that night when he had not dared to move his eyes away from them.
Baby's legs engrossed her very much at present, for she had just been promoted from socks to stockings, and all who remember the occasion in their own lives will realize the importance of it to her.
Nell seemed to grow prettier every day. Pip had his hands full with trying to keep her from growing conceited; if brotherly rubs and snubs availed anything, she ought to have been as lowly minded as if she had had red hair and a nose of heavenward bent.
Esther said she wished she could buy a few extra years, a stern brow, and dignity in large quantities from some place or other—there might be some chance, then, of Misrule resuming its baptismal and unexciting name of The River House.
But, oddly enough, no one echoed the wish.
The Captain never smoked at the end of the side veranda now: the ill-kept lawn made him see always a little figure in a pink frock and battered hat mowing the grass in a blaze of sunlight. Judy's death made his six living children dearer to his heart, though he showed his affection very little more.
The General grew chubbier and more adorable every day he lived. It is no exaggeration to say that they all worshipped him now in his little kingly babyhood, for the dear life had been twice given, and the second time it was Judy's gift, and priceless therefore.
My pen has been moving heavily, slowly, for these last two chapters; it refuses to run lightly, freely again just yet, so I will lay it aside, or I shall sadden you.
Some day, if you would care to hear it, I should like to tell you of my young Australians again, slipping a little space of years.
Until then, farewell and adieu.