The black pearl
A world where dissimilar beings lacking the ties of friendship,
education and intellect are united by circumstances in the trammels
of a common existence. How utterly antipathetic is such a life to
our French nature, to the intense reserve hidden under our frank and
cordial manners which guard sacredly and invulnerably the “Famille
Française,” modern novels and plays to the contrary. If we have not
the actual word “home” in our vocabulary--a favourite gibe of our
foreign friends--we have a more intimate term still, “le Foyer,” the
hearth, which suggests the primitive cult, the fire worship of our
ancestors--_the foyer_, which no one outside the family might touch.
Maybe that is the cause of our secret irritation and impatience when
an acquaintance takes it upon himself to poke our fire. To us it seems
presumption, an abuse of hospitality, to say nothing of the ingrained
belief that no one but ourselves can make it blaze.
But this is a digression.
Let us return to the boarding house, our poor third-rate boarding
house, with its inmates in respectfully appropriate keeping.
First, there are the permanent boarders, among whom I have no specially
delirious desire to be counted. A commercial traveller in a softgoods
firm, who affects “genteel” manners. (What a horrid expression,
genteel!) In other respects, a decent enough young man whose attentions
don’t annoy me too much. Already he has reposed certain sweet
confidences in my ear, so that I shall not indulge in any false hopes
as to his intentions, I presume.
He has been engaged for eight years!--eight years!--to a shop
assistant, and they wait patiently and persistently until they have put
by enough money to purchase a country store.
Every Saturday afternoon off they start for a township on a tour of
inspection. Saturday succeeds Saturday; the years come and go in this
life of long-deferred hopes.
Then there is, alas! a school mistress, no longer in the first bloom
of her youth. Shall I ever, in the years to come, grow like her? Every
morning she trudges to her little school. For years her life has been
passed in teaching the rudiments of arithmetic and grammar. Apparently
she possesses neither relatives nor intimate friends. All her energies,
apart from her teaching, are directed towards religion and divers
reforms. She belongs to several Guilds--the Young Women’s Christian
Association, the Women’s League, the Social Purity and Temperance
Leagues, etc., etc. Withal she is a kind-hearted, good woman, despite
her many perfections of character, and does not utterly wither me
when I decline to accompany her to “Meeting” on Sunday. All her spare
time is taken up with committee work for the regeneration of feminine
humanity. She doesn’t concern herself with the _strong sex_. That may
sink into the perdition it so richly merits. She has, of course, no
time for a simple unit like me.
Another inmate is an old German employé in a lighting establishment,
whether gas or electricity I know not. He appears at meals only on
Sundays.
There are casual visitors, too, racing people mostly, but we scarcely
see anything of them. The house is full, to the supreme exultation of
Mrs. Johnson, the sour-visaged virago whose stony glare fixes us if we
dare take more than our wee modicum of butter or sugar.
The sole ambition of her life is to get money. For what? Good heavens!
Not for her dress, which is austere beyond description. Not for the
benefit of her poor little son, whose life is a daily martyrdom. To
save and pinch and scrape, she does all the work of the house herself,
with the assistance of a little girl of fourteen, who waits at table.
Her son cleans the boots and runs errands.
Rising before daybreak, she does the dining-room and the parlor, a
horrid, stuffy room decorated with a horsehair suite, a round table
surmounted by a monstrosity having the temerity to style itself
wax flowers, glaring, shiny surfaced “chromos” on the walls, and a
yellowish carpet on the floor. But the crowning horror is reached in
the woollen and cotton crochet antimacassars--a name as horrible as the
articles themselves.
Billy Johnson is a small boy of twelve or thirteen. Ugly!--oh, so
ugly--one is irresistibly reminded of the Simian theory. A veritable
monkey, with elongated face, piercing, crafty eyes set close together,
large ears, a flat nose and facial muscles never still for a moment.
For the rest, a mischievous, inquisitive, ’cute young rascal, who knows
everybody and everything. As soon as a newcomer is installed, the
“little monkey,” an apt nickname bestowed by the boarders, does not
rest until he has ferreted out all there is to know. Up to the present
I have succeeded in baffling him. But he is not at all discouraged. My
only fear is that he may rummage my trunks and read my letters. Well,
let him! there is no mystery in my simple life, though I should not
like it bared to the gaze of the indifferent.
Billy, it seems, has taken a great liking to me, firstly because of the
pity in my eyes when his mother ill-treats him, and secondly because I
am French.
Not, indeed, that he loves the French. To him all foreigners are
inferior beings whom it behoves a little Australian to despise,
but because being French I must share his detestation of all
“_Deutschers_.” The German boarder is his “_bête noire_,” the only
being in the world who inspires him with terror. The German Invasion is
the bugbear which causes him sleepless nights.
What tricks he plays on the inoffensive old man, who cannot be other
than a “Prussian spy!” He confides his dire suspicions to my ears and
the means whereby his plots may be circumvented.
My evenings are dull, so I am giving him lessons in French. He is very
elated at his progress.
This morning everything is quiet in the house, the inmates are
presumably at Church. Mrs. Johnson is in the kitchen preparing the
Sunday dinner, the only meal at which we are allowed to satisfy our
hunger.
I open my trunks to get some books and photographs to make my room
look less forlorn. The casket containing the necklace is among my
treasures. I have never worn it since the night of my betrothal. It
recalls too many painful and passionate memories. I love their pure
milky beauty even while I fear the strange influence of the pearls. As
I touch them caressingly, the door half-opens and Bill’s touzled head
frames itself in the aperture. There is no sanctuary from Bill, no spot
sacred from his inquisitiveness. Catching sight of my open trunk, he
enters, regardless of my remonstrances, pulling such a droll grimace
that I have not the heart to put him outside.
“Oh, what boshter pearls, my word! They look like the real thing!”
“They _are_ real pearls,” I reply, thoughtlessly, without reflecting on
the anomaly of such a necklace being in the possession of one of his
mother’s boarders.
“My word! Real pearls, eh!” exclaims Bill, putting unimaginable
expression into his favourite exclamation, varying intonations of which
depict faithfully the state of his mind.
“Yes, it’s the real thing, and no mistake.”
The “Little Monkey” is fancying himself a connoisseur in pearls as in
everything else.
“Hide it well, miss; if mum sees it she’d twist your neck to get hold
of it.”
“Oh, Bill! How can you speak like that of your mother?”
“It’s the truth, Miss,” nodding his head sapiently. “’Taint her fault,
poor mum; she loves money like some loves drink. She’d risk her life
(he says ‘loife’) for the money she’d get for them pearls. As for
yours, she wouldn’t think twice about it.” Bill is right. I have
surprised glints of almost criminal covetousness in her eyes when a
boarder has worn a bit of jewellery.
However, on principle, I continue to scold Bill, who looks cautiously
around, opens the door, winks in a knowing fashion, and placing his
finger on his lips, murmurs dramatically,
“Hist! Hide the treasure! Silence and secrecy!”
The idea is worth acting upon. It would be safer to wear the necklace
under my dress than leave it in my trunk.
* * * * *
I have had a troubled night, dream chasing dream through my restless
brain, leaving only a chaotic jumble of impressions. Am I to ascribe it
to the thoughts of yesterday, or to the influence of the pearls around
my neck?
Allan Russell seemed to dominate them all, sometimes as he appeared
the night of the ball, sometimes as the Rajah of India, and yet again
assuming a personality of times more remote. Only one of these visions
detached itself clearly. Two men, rough and ferocious in aspect, were
fighting savagely. In the heat of the struggle the red hair tied on the
top of their heads was tossed back mane-like on their shoulders. They
hurled imprecations at each other in a sort of wild chant. I heard the
clashing of their short swords. I seemed to contemplate the scene with
a dull, apathetic gaze. Finally one was killed. The victor, advancing,
cut the thongs which bound me and bore me off in his brawny arms.
The blue eyes plunged into mine were those of Allan Russell, the
colouring was changed, that is all. The features were those of a Gael
instead of the Rajah or the Australian squatter, but the same soul
animated all three, the violent and passionate soul of the man who in
my dreams pursues me with a love which one life could not quench.
* * * * *
I have just received a letter from old Meg, full of particulars about
my Gwylata friends. Daisy’s father is retained as manager, the new
proprietor wishing to profit by his experience.
Meg and Mac have left the station.
“I could not stand,” writes Meg, “seeing a silly little thing like her
(it is thus she sums up the wife of the new squatter) flaunting about
in my dear mistress’s home. We are living at Wellington. Mac has
bought a boat with part of the money you gave us, and Bahloo has become
a fine fisherman.”
Atavism, I suppose; all the Blacks love the water; not to the extent,
though, of desiring to wash in it. Bahloo used to say, with a certain
amount of reason, that it is only dirty people who want to wash; the
others, being clean, need not.
Meg, however, was quite deaf to the ingenious line of reasoning, and
the little man, despite his tearful protests, was scrubbed daily from
head to foot.
“I’m not going to give anyone the chance of calling you ‘a dirty little
nigger,’” Meg used to say. It was the only bone of contention between
them.
“Mac lets his boat on hire every Saturday,” the letter continues. “Dick
and Daisy, now married, often go for a row.”
I let the letter fall. My thoughts revert to that day we spent on the
river, the two lovers and myself. They, all in all to each other, I
glad and sorry to have avoided Allan Russell. Where is he now? In
Europe? Perhaps he is here in Melbourne, where Mrs. Clarke told me
he has a house. I live such an isolated life, reading no newspaper,
knowing nothing of the whirl of society life, except through the echoes
which reach me at the house of Mrs. Forest, who herself lives on its
frontiers, as well defined here as in the West End of London or the Old
Faubourg St. Germain. The standard is different, rather lower, but the
threshold is equally difficult to cross. Mrs. Forest is a “Climber,”
one who will arrive at the top by dint of much toadying, but the set
to which she belongs has only the vices of the “Smart Set.” The women
composing it are always in a whirl, running from a luncheon to a bridge
party, from a _matinée_ to a sale, where their frivolous minds exhaust
all their energy.
My little pupils, Sylvia and Gladys, are not bad children now, but
will they grow up empty headed like their elders, gauging life only by
its opportunities for wearing pretty dresses, having a good time, and