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Philiberta: A Novel

Chapter IV. John Campbell's Station

Chapter IV. John Campbell's Station.

The station at Emu Creek prospered exceedingly. Partly because John Campbell was a thrifty man, and one whose foresight and judgment in all matters pertaining to stock were little short of genius; partly because he had exceptional luck. Someone will argue that there is no such thing as luck, that ''Tis in ourselves that we are thus and thus,' and so on. But how then account for the way in which some good men fail while others succeed?

Two men, equal as to faculties and facilities, start in life under equal conditions. The one finds his stock increase and multiply almost beyond computation. His harvests are always a success; rain falls just when needed, and holds off just when wet would spoil everything. His fruit trees never know blight; wool is always at the highest just when he has the most to sell. His cattle always run to fat and fetch ten shillings or a pound a head more than any others in the markets.

The other—well, an untimely rain spoils his first crops, and for three years running the rust gets at his wheat; wool falls threepence a pound the very day before he gets into market. Fluke and scab destroy half his sheep before he can help him-page 28self. One of his best draught horses drops dead in harness without warning; and another dislocates its shoulder through fright, and has to be shot; some strange disease nips off all his best poultry in one day. A bush fire devastates half his land, and he has much ado to save the homestead. Crowning calamity—his youngest child dies of sunstroke, and the mother goes demented with grief.

Now, what is all this but luck? The will of God, some theological philosophers may call it, talking by the hour of the holiness of resignation, and quoting that happy martyr to boils and divine favours—Job. And, all blind and ignorant as we are, and ever must be, in regard to the mysterious workings of the mighty system in and around us, we have nothing we can safely cast at the theological philosophers in the way of contradiction. Nor can we help envying them their way of looking at trouble, and their strength to bear it. All the same, a few of us would rather put down all this seeming injustice of dispensation to 'luck' than attribute it to a Deity whom we are called upon to worship. But away with moralizing when there is nothing to be gained by it.

John Campbell's station prospered, and we leave it entirely to theologians to decide whether that was because he was a favoured child of Providence or the reverse. 'The wicked shall flourish as a green bay tree,' on one side; on the other, 'In his days shall the righteous flourish, and have peace and abundance as long as the moon endureth.'

Controversy and discussion of these matters might be carried on 'as long as the moon endureth'—doubtless will—and the debaters be as far off conclusion at the end as at the beginning. Like the denizens of one portion of Swedenborg's marvellously conceived spirit land, 'They will walk and walk for ever and ever, but always bring their feet down in the same place, till a hole is worn in the ground deep enough to bury them in.' (The above may not be an accurate quotation from Swedenborg, but the same idea is conveyed.)

John Campbell named his place Morven, in loving compliment to the peaks that were the most familiar and prominent page 29objects in his memory of his home. From the homestead could be seen a forest-covered, many-tinted range of mountains as unlike the majestic, mist-enveloped friends of his childhood as could well be; but hills are hills all the world over, though the generic term differs of course according as languages differ, and any hills worthy the name somehow suggested the hills of his boyhood to our Highlander, and so he called this range, and his home lying by it, Morven. The station had had another name, for, be it known, John Campbell was not the first owner. He purchased from another lucky individual who was selling out in order to revisit the old country, so John Campbell had none of the difficulties of a pioneer to contend against. Post-and-rail and live fences were all there, stock also, and a homestead very different from the habitation of the new settler's 'bark-hut and tin-pot era.'

Burnagulla was the original and aboriginal title of the place; and Philiberta always rebelled against the substitute.

'Why,' she would say, 'can't people accept the native names, instead of importing old commonplace titles from old commonplace countries? In a new land, why not have everything new? The aborigines, when they christen a place, do so with reference to some distinguishing feature, and the name therefore must be the most appropriate, not to say the most euphonious, possible.

But whatever name it went by, the place was in a region of never-failing interest and delight to Philiberta. She learnt stock-riding as easily as she had learned to read, and soon knew so much about sheep and cattle that John Campbell used to say: 'He wass not afraid now to leave Rosamond O'Brien a widow. Phil would pe able to manage the station, and to make it pay petter as himself.'

But often and often he said to Rosamond, and Rosamond said to him, that it was a shame and a wrong to let the girl grow up as she was growing, wild and untaught, save in what she taught herself.

'She will pe nothing more as a wild girl of the woods,' said he plaintively.

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'An' is it me ye're after blaming for that?' said she aggressively. 'Why don't you take her away to school, John Campbell?'

'Bekass you wass not able to do without her, Rosamond O'Brien. You wass telling me that the ferry last time we wass speaking about it whateffer.'

'Me! The like o' that for a big story, now! It was yourself said how long the days would be to us wanting her; and yourself that druv me out o' me mind intirely wid saying how they starve and ill-use the girrls in the boarding-schools.'

'She will haf a plenty of money,' said John Campbell, ignoring all this from his wife, 'and it will pe no goot to her, bekass she will hef no education. What hef we two, John Campbell and Rosamond O' Brien, to do with the proper rearing up of a young girl that is growing to pe peautiful and rich? She will hef no more manners as a lubra, whateffer. She will not speak the good English; there will pe in her speech a bit of Rosamond O'Brien's Irish, and a bit of John Campbell's Highland Scotch, and eferybody will pe laffin' at the lass, though she will pe a goot lass, and handsome, and rich.'

'Ah! and anybody that laughs at Philiberta will not get much the best of it, anyhow, darlin'; she's aiqual to anything and anybody, and will have the laugh ginerally on her own side, more power to her, the colleen! But why d'ye let her grow up wild this way, to be laughed at? If you had given me my own way wid her from the first as I wanted——'

'Now, Rosamond O'Brien,' he began, lifting one hand deprecatorily, but before he could say another word his wife bade him 'Hush !' and looking from under the vine that climbed about the veranda, where he and Rosamond sat, he saw Philiberta coming towards them.

A tall, straight, slender girl, with great brown eyes, as true and fearless as a child's or a dog's, and a face that would have been more beautiful if it had been less firm and powerful of expression. Yet it was a girlish face then, and promising to be in time a very womanly face, but a face that would, and did, depend a great deal upon happiness for its beauty. Just now page 31it was beautiful, with the beauty of life, and youth, and strength, and earnestness. She approached the veranda rapidly, her riding-skirt held in one hand, her own particular stockwhip in the other. She scorned the pretty, delicate, lady-like, silver-mounted thing John Campbell had been at much pains to procure for her.

'My horse never needs the whip,' she would say, as she embraced the animal's arching neck lovingly; 'and of what use would that wisp of a thing be among cattle?'

She sprang lightly up the one step, and seated herself on John Campbell's knee.

'There's another tear in your petticoat, Philiberta,' said Mrs. Campbell, pointing in rebuke at the damage.

'Yes, mother, I know.'

'It's ruined I shall be wid you frowning hard in order to suppress a smile; 'but mend that hole you shall before you go to bed this night, now.'

'Oh, mother, anything but the needle; you know I hate sewing, I wish I were a boy.'

'You will maype wear the breeches quite soon enough as it wass, Phil,' observed Mr. Campbell; 'that iss, if you will follow the example of Rosamond O'Brien there, mirofer.'

'Arrah, don't insult me,' said Rosamond.

'Mother, never mind the hole in my petticoat. Daddy, listen, I've got something to tell you; I've been playing the spy, accidentally at first, afterwards on purpose. Do you remember what I said about those two new hands you took on the other day? Well, I was right; I saw them washing their feet in the creek, and round their ankles is the mark of the prison-irons.'

'That iss no way unpossible,' said John Campbell carelessly.

'An' the straps they wear on their wrists,' went on Philiberta; 'they are to hide the marks of handcuffs, I thought it was odd they should both have sprained wrists at the same time. They have been handcuffed together, these two, daddy, and they have not been long at liberty.'

'Well?'

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'Well, I want you to send them away. I wanted you to refuse them employment, you know, daddy.'

'Yes, dearie; but it iss a little rough on the poor teffles to turn them away and gif them no work bekass they wass in prison. They hef had hard times enough in the prison without doubt We might gif them one chance to pe honest men when they come out.'

'But, daddy——'

'And it iss not the first time mirofer, Phil, that we hef had old hands on the station for the shearing. Jimmy, the overseer, is an old hand.'

'Yes, but, daddy, cannot you see the difference? And did Jimmy the overseer ever deny it; as these men did when you asked them?'

'A man iss not bound to tell eferybody about his little accidents,' said John Campbell.

'But these men are had, daddy; I know they are bad. They jump as if they were shot if you come upon them suddenly; they look back over their shoulders every now and then to see if some one is pursuing them; they move stealthily, and never speak above a whisper. Daddy, there's a red stain about them somewhere, mark my words. These are not the harmless old hands transported for horse-stealing, shop-lifting, and things of that kind, who rather like to tell what they did, how they did it, and how long they have had to suffer for it. Like Jimmy the overseer, for instance. There is something red about these men, daddy.'

The girl was an observer, you see. Away there in the bush, where incidents were so few, and daily life, you would imagine, so barren of aught worth studying, never a day elapsed without leaving its record upon her mind in some new item of knowledge.

'Well, and what then whateffer, my little lass? The men Will not do us any harm.'

'Even if they do not, they are bad men to have about the place. Their influence over the other men will be evil They are like poison-plants—even things that merely sit in their shadow must suffer.'

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'Preaching again, little Phil?'

'Because my daddy requires it. But you have not heard what I came home in haste to tell you. Listen. I was up in that old she-oak at the bend of the creeks seeing how that young 'possum family were progressing. And, by-the-bye, the old 'possum is getting as tame as can be. Well, Jimmy the half-caste and those two men came down to the creek to smoke and bathe their feet They were talking about the blacks,—you know how Jimmy hates his own kind—"Baal mine give them flour, mutton, baccy," said he, "Budgeree whitefellow, Missa Campbell, but dam fool him too. Blackfellow too much gammon him, then steal him flour, sheep—all." Then the old hands told how at some stations the blacks were cured of stealing by having traps of poisoned flour laid for them.'

'Goot Kott, yes!' said John Campbell, 'I wass hearing that too, one day. As if all that the wretched beggars could steal would hurt a man half so much as the weight of their murder on his soul.'

'Well, Jimmy laughed and hopped about as he always does when he is pleased, and then they all walked off together talking, but I could not heir any more. Now, will you send them away, daddy?

'I will look into it, Phil I will look into it, dear. Not for the price of a thousand head of cattle would I hef the plood of one blackfellow on my head But perhaps all this wass nothing. The men wass only talking about things that wass done at other places, and the men iss wanted here ferry bad just now, little Phil. And if we wass to send these two away, we might not get two more in time for the shearing. Or if we did get two, they might pe as bad or worse as this two wass mirofer.'

'Impossible,' said Philiberta, shaking her head and kissing him on the end of his sunburnt nose. 'Impossible to get worse, you will see.'

Then she quitted him, in obedience to a call from Rosamond, who had gone into the house some minutes before, and presently the voices of the two could be heard together in some merry Irish ditty.

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How happy they were, these people! Having no care for any world outside their own small bush dominion, where there were always the sight and sound of trees and running water, and bright birds and gay insects. Living in the love of each other and of every live thing that knew them. Having health, freedom, sun, rain, and fresh air, 'the free-will of the feet, and the feel of the wind,' and the changing gladness of swift passing seasons.

To the man and the woman life was one long, peaceful joy; to the girl, one glad exuberant dream, from which, as yet, she knew nought of the possibility of waking.

And that was well.

Life is a pitiful thing if you have not some bright passage in it to remember and hark back to from the heaviness of dark hours that are inevitable.