The black pearl
who work on the station, some grown old in the service of their
beloved master and mistress, has affected me deeply, and been a great
consolation in my distress.
* * * * *
The station is sold. The price covers the mortgage and the debts
contracted during the last years of my uncle’s life, when all his
credit was used to pay up the calls of the miserable mine. A small sum
remains, sufficient to assure the future of some of the old servants,
of Meg and her husband, on whom Mrs. Deslandes had intended to settle a
small annuity.
Mr. Saunders, the lawyer engaged in liquidating the estate, thinks it
madness on my part to give up this money, but the obligation is as
sacred to me as a debt. How can I permit these poor souls to go to the
Destitute Asylum while I enjoy the money promised to them?
Hector has devoted his small patrimony to the work to which he has
consecrated his life. In his last letter he speaks of his experiments
about to be tried in the laboratory which he has had fitted up in order
to seek a remedy to the frightful disease. I will not trouble him with
these worldly cares, from which he seems to be gradually detaching
himself.
Many proffers of assistance reach me. Daisy, married during those
wearying months occupied in the settling of my uncle’s affairs, has
entreated me to make my home with her. A room is always ready for me in
the pretty cottage at Wellington.
* * * * *
I have been staying with Daisy’s parents. They insisted on my leaving
the great empty house. But I do not want to tax their hospitality.
Their own future is precarious. Perhaps the new owner of Gwylata may
not retain the old manager? If so, it may be difficult to find another
position at his age.
Other friends of my uncle have written, offering an asylum and material
help. People are warm-hearted and generous in Australia, where life
is easy. But I am young and strong, and I shall find some means of
gaining a livelihood in this new land to which I am becoming daily more
attached.
Mr. Saunders, the lawyer, who still retains his interest in me, in
spite of what he calls my foolishness, has just brought me a letter
from his niece, Mrs. Clarke, whom I met at Strathalbyn, during the Hunt
Club meet. It was she, I remember, who defended Mr. Russell so warmly.
She offers me a position as governess to her small children, if the
journey to New South Wales does not frighten me.
“The house is very modest,” says Mr. Saunders; “the place is really
only a large farm. My niece is not rich, but you know her, and she will
make you happy. Your business methods are about on a par, so you should
suit each other admirably!”
* * * * *
I have bidden a tender “adieu” to all my Gwylata friends, including
little Bahloo, who weeps bitterly. Dick and Daisy are to escort me as
far as Murray Bridge, where I take the Melbourne Express.
Once again we three glide along the smooth waters of the great river.
My thoughts return to the first time I saw the noble waterway of
Australia, the day I fled from Gwylata to escape Allan Russell’s visit.
How far off it all seems! What trouble have I not been through since
then!!!
* * * * *
Away with sad thoughts! A new life is beginning, unknown, but full of
possibilities.
XIII
At
Anchor
The alternative of light and darkness must continue as long as we live
in this world of illusion.
--“On the Threshold.”
Gum trees!!! For two days and nights I have been flying past their
serried ranks, as the train rushes on through Victoria and New South
Wales. I begin to sympathise with the little Globe-Trotter whom my
uncle could never persuade to go for a walk or, indeed, any sort of
excursion.
“Go out! What for? Just to look at your old gum trees. Thanks! One
gum is rather interesting; it has even a certain distinction and
individuality, but thousands upon thousands, millions upon millions,
and nothing else but your everlasting gum trees!”
Can it be really true, as I have been assured, that the eucalypti,
like the pines, are reservoirs of the vital force of the sun which
they radiate in torrents of rose-coloured atoms, pouring strength and
vitality into the atmosphere surrounding them. How precious they would
be were the idea accepted!
What a sanatorium Australia would become for the poor anaemic humanity
of the old world! What an inexhaustible storehouse of health and energy!
* * * * *
Mrs. Clarke, who meets me at Oberon, is indeed a charming woman. Simple
and unaffected, she treats me at once as a friend. She is happy in
her homely life on the big farm, which she manages in her husband’s
absence. Mr. Clarke had been obliged to go to England to settle a
question of succession.
The children are darlings: Lucille, an angel of six; Jack, a little
demon of five, dowered with an inexhaustible energy and mischievousness
which keep us breathless until he is safely tucked up in his cot at
night. The mother is bringing them up in true Australian fashion, which
certainly has the merit of allowing individuality to develop unhampered.
Just now they are very interested in the Bible stories their nursemaid
tells them every morning, and in their enthusiasm they dramatize them,
which leads occasionally to unexpected catastrophes.
The other day at lunch time Lucille was missing.
After an hour’s fruitless search, Jack confessed that she was in the
old dry well.
“In the well?” we exclaimed, horrified.
“Ye-e-e-s; we was playin’ Joseph and his brudders. I was de _only_
brudder,” added the young rascal, regretfully. “I made her go down de
well and den I pulled up de rope, so she tuddn’t det out.”
Leaving nurse to exhaust her vocabulary on the youthful reprobate, we
hurried to the well, not very deep, happily.
To Kate’s call a small voice came up:
“Is you the ’Gyptian merchants?”
One of the farm hands descended, and picked up the child enveloped in
an Indian curtain of many colours.
Mrs. Clarke put her histrionic offspring to bed without further ado,
Lucille to get warm, for she was shivering with cold, and Master Jack
to punish him.
He looked so angelic in his long white nightgown that one could never
suspect the diabolical ideas which enter his little brain.
With hands meekly folded and innocent eyes raised heavenward, he
lisped: “Pease take care of father, mamma, Lulu, and Jeanne--but not
nurse,” he added, with a resentful glance at the maid.
* * * * *
For some days Lucille has been playing a rather mysterious game. While
Jack is having his afternoon sleep, she sits down in a certain corner
of the room to play with her dolls.
Entering unperceived a day or two ago, I heard her put questions and
give answers, as though she were talking to a companion. She made
gestures, nodded and seemed very interested in her conversation.
Catching sight of me, she made a sign to arrest my advance. Then,
running towards me, said:
“Betty is very shy. She won’t say a word when anyone is here.”
“Betty?” I replied, inquiringly, lending myself to the game.
“Yes, my little friend. She comes every day to play with me when Jack
is asleep. She does not like Jack; he is too rough,” she explains,
shaking her little head. “Betty loves you, pretty well, but she always
hides when anybody comes into the room. That’s her hiding place,”
pointing to a crack in the panelling, which had given a little with the
heat.
The child evidently has too much imagination. I must speak to her
mother about it.
To-day I find Lucille in tears when I enter the day nursery to give her
a French lesson. Nurse is angry, and is scolding her severely.
“It’s wicked of you, Miss Lucille, to tell stories like that.”
“It isn’t a story,” protests the child; “Betty was there just now, and
you made her go when you began to scold me.”
“Look, Miss Jeanne,” continues the maid, turning towards me, “this
naughty little girl declares that there was another child in the room
with her. Isn’t it wicked of her to tell such stories. God will punish
her.”
Lucille’s body stiffens. She says nothing more, but rebellious sobs
shake her small frame.
I try to pacify nurse, and when she has gone away, muttering that I
spoil the child, I take Lulu on my knees. She nestles lovingly into my
arms and whispers:
“You _do_ believe me, don’t you? Betty _was_ there, and ... why, there
she is again,” holding her little arms, her face brightens, her large
eyes shine with excitement.
She is not lying; she really does see some one.
I try to explain that grown-ups cannot always see what children see.
“You must not blame nurse, darling; tell me what your little playmate
says.”
Then follows a strange converse wherein Lucille acts as interpreter to
a little child invisible to all except herself....
When the children have been put to bed, I tell Mrs. Clarke what has
passed. She seems less surprised than I had expected.
“Yes, I have noticed that Lulu is not quite as other children. Her soul
is too evolved for its frail tenement. At times it breaks the veil
between the astral and spiritual worlds. Lucille then finds herself
in communion with the beings who live and move on the plane which
interpenetrates ours.”
My blank look of amazement betrays my utter ignorance of Kate’s
meaning. She proceeds to tell me of the psychical studies which in the
last decade have pulled down the barriers between the material and the
invisible world. She quotes the words of Sir Oliver Lodge: “We are
beginning to hear now and again, the strokes of the pick-axes of our
comrades on the other side.” She hands me some Theosophical reviews and
articles on Psychical Research.
I exclaim: “What, you! a sensible woman, believe in theosophy, that
mixture of old superstitions and new-fangled notions, as my uncle used
to term it.”
“It is because I _am_ a sensible woman,” Kate replies, “that I am a
theosophist. If you had studied this science as much as I have, you
would speak of it with more consideration.”
For the next hour, she talks on until the strange words,
Re-incarnation, Karma, astral bodies, and Devachan begin to dance in
my poor brain like a juggler’s balls.... My eyes close, I lose the
thread....
“Please excuse me, dear; I forget everything once I am on this topic.
It is getting late, and you are dead tired.” Kissing me, she adds:
“To-morrow, we will consider what to do with Lucille. Perhaps together
we may evolve some means of minimising the influence of the phenomena
which over-excites her brain. When she reaches the age of seven, the
door now half-open to the invisible world will probably close outright.
Meanwhile, take this little book, written by Will Canton, ‘The
Invisible Playmate,’ wherein you will find an analogous case.”
In my room, Kate’s words return to me. Can it be true? Does another
world, invisible to our grosser perceptions interpenetrate this?
The idea fascinates and scares me at the same time.
But no, no, I will not dwell on these religious questions. They have
cost me too dear in the past. Neither will I read the books.
After a troubled night, wherein astral bodies, elementals and various
sorts of “spooks” indulge in terrific combats, I am brought abruptly
back to realities.
In the weekly paper, “The Australasian,” which I open after breakfast,
is an account of a sensational divorce suit. A name catches my eye,
and makes my heart beat almost, it would seem, before my brain could
register the impression.
What is this strange sub-consciousness which acts on the human
organism, often in spite of ourselves, making the blood recede and the