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Hedged with Divinities

XIII

page 87

XIII.

The training of the constabulary during the three days had by no means filled in all Jack's hours. In a hundred directions his energies were applied, thinking, acting, teaching both by precept and example. He was about to head an expedition into the neighboring country to endeavor to collect and bring to town some of the scattered flocks and herds. With this end in view, many of the paddocks in the suburbs were full of the country-bred girls practising equitation, furbishing up saddlery, cracking whips, and entering into the spirit of the enterprise with cheery cries and shouts of laughter. Gangs of the town girls were carrying and cutting up firewood, which they stacked in great heaps; firewood procured by pulling down empty and deserted houses and breaking up the timber and planks. Some were cleaning out the hospital, others the Supreme Court, as in the latter the parliamentary sittings were to be held. With the help of Miss Henley and others Jack had drafted the delicate or highly-educated girls to the lighter or more intellectual tasks. The schools were re-opened, the delivery of letters (mainly for official purposes) commenced, chemists' shops and the store of drugs examined.

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"We shall want them directly," said Jack, "as soon as we get into swing we shall have a fearful quantity of accidents and casualties."

With this idea in his mind he assembled all those who had been on nursing staffs of hospitals, and the few lady medical students who had been preparing for that profession. These were sent to the hospital and encouraged to resume their studies and their duties with all application in their power. To those young ladies who had taken degrees at the University or shown any aptitude for mathematics, be lectured several times on bridges, earthworks, railway curves, etc, and the stronger members of this class with other women of physical power but less education he took with him to the railway workshops to assist him in taking to pieces and cleaning the locomotive engines. He visited the steamers that had been wrecked or driven ashore. Most of these were useless; only one, a small steamer named the 'Rose Casey,' was safe and sound, stranded in Mechanics' Bay. Her engines were quite in good order, except for the want of cleaning, and he resolved to make a strenuous effort to get her off the shore. He set several gangs at work to clear away the mudbank between the vessel and the water, and as this was heavy and dirty drudgery, the gangs only worked for some two hours at a time, and were relieved in watches. The outside of the vessel was scraped and painted at low water, and the work proceeded by night as well as by day; the darkness lighted by bonfires kept fed with the woodwork brought by the firewood gangs. In the meantime the election-lists had been compared, and Jack was glad to find among the fifty chosen names, those of Miss Henley, Miss Stanley and several others whom he knew. Jack's object in calling this Council was two-page 89fold; first, because being in favor of free institutions, he thought that his subjects should have a fair opportunity of expressing their sentiments and opinions; secondly and mainly, he wished them to act as a council for himself. He nevertheless did not mean to allow this body for some time to exert any considerable executive powers, believing that for business purposes one head should have control of entire direction. Still he looked forward to the time when he might resign what he considered his 'ridiculous dignity' and become an ordinary citizen, living like the others under a representative government. So he called a meeting of the new Council for three weeks' time, and then turned his thoughts to more pressing concerns.

About a week after the coronation a large cavalcade rode out from the city towards Parnell It consisted of several hundred horsewomen, while behind them followed a train of carte, and behind these again many hundreds on foot. They passed through Parnell and on towards Drury, their numbers drawing out more and more thinly as the pedestrians flagged. As they passed farm after farm parties of riders turned off to the right and left, and rode away up the country lanes. Soon the cracking of whips might have been heard, and over the fields through broken fences gallopped the country lasses rounding up the timid cattle, some of which were half wild and some wholly so. As the people on foot arrived they were drafted off in tens and dozens to occupy the deserted farm-houses, and the carts plied busily to these re-occupied buildings bearing the edibles that had remained in the country stores. Much of the flour was spoilt and the bags rat-eaten, but there was still some available, while a considerable quantity of wheat and oats would repay the trouble of grinding or bruising for page 90people whom long abstinence from anything like plenty had robbed of fastidiousness. The main party, with Jack in charge, had pushed on to explore the fertile fields of the Pakapura valley, when an incident occurred which nearly cost their leader his life. He, with Victoria Stanley, Mary Lockwood, and three other girls had been driving a mob of cattle along the Wairoa road when a young bull convoying two heifers, one of them with a calf at her foot, crossed the road. Chase was set up, a headlong delightful gallop across fence and field to the edge of the bush, but the strong bull gained the shelter of the timber and was lost to view. The cow having the calf also eluded them, but the other and the calf were secured and driven back quickly, followed by the enraged mother, whose repeated charges took all the riders knew to elude. So desperate were her attacks that Jack and two others had to devote all their attention and skill to her capture, and at last, close to the trees, they managed to throw her by means of a trailed rope. Jack leapt from his horse and took a turn or two round the animal's legs, crying out to one of the others to send up a cart and that they would carry her. As he stooped down at his work of lashing her legs, his back turned to the bush, he did not perceive the return of the bull, who, with his head low, rushed with great force and incredible swiftness at his human enemy. A cry arose from the throats of the riders, but Jack had not even time to turn his head before the angry beast was upon him. He would certainly have had the short cruel horns crushing through his ribs at the back had not Victoria Stanley, with one convulsive drive of her spurs into her horse's sides, leapt between him and the bull when only a yard of space intervened. Under the belly of Victoria's page 91horse went the curly frontal of the charging beast; down went Victoria and her steed, down went Jack over the heifer, while the bull turned a complete somersault over the group. In an instant Jack sprang up again, and drawing his revolver fired a shot which struck the bull between the horns as in a slow dazed way the animal staggered to its feet. Down it went again, on its knees this time, and with the blood running from nose and mouth, poor beast, so Jack had to end its misery at once with the knife.

"Thank you very much, Miss Stanley. I won't forget your courage and promptitude to-day," he said to Victoria, who, white and shaken with her heavy fall, was being brushed and petted by the others. "Send the cart," Jack continued, "and two of you come here and help me to skin the bull."

None of them seemed anxious to do this, all wanted to ride off to the cart, so Jack named two of them and made them dismount.

"Bare your arms," he said, "and hold the hide back as I cut." Then followed the revolting work of skinning, and removing the entrails of the bull; the ghastly bleeding carcase looking hideous in the bright sunlight on the pleasant grass. One of the girls fainted, and had to be succeeded by another, then another; they all sickened at the loathsome spectacle.

"I will not! I will not!" said one of them.

"You shall, I am determined," replied Jack; "you and others must learn; I cannot be butcher for the whole community. We haven't got vegetarian food for the thousands of people; you are half starved now, and meat must be got. When I return with the herds I will make regular parties take their turns. No humbugging now; lend a hand." The rough side page 92of his temperament was beginning to show itself, but in reality much of the roughness was assumed, for the work of a butcher was as loathsome to him as to them; but it was so absolutely necessary for the welfare of his project that he was determined to bully if he could succeed no other way. "If any woman or girl won't obey orders," he continued, "I will hand her over to Miss Stanley's charge, and she shall be sent to take her place at the town drainage. She will find that worse than skinning a bullock."

They got through their task at last, the dismembered beast was packed upon a cart, and they all joined the homeward procession. They had spent two nights already on their way, and passed another night at Otahuhu on their return journey, but on the evening of the fourth day those who had remained in Auckland were gladdened by the sight of huge clouds of dust, resonant with the lowing of cattle and bleating of sheep, moving towards the city. Crowds of the town dwellers went out to meet the procession of food-bringers, and, amid songs of rejoicing, the cattle and sheep were secured in safe paddocks.

While they were riding homewards, soon after the time of Jack's narrow escape, he was escorted by several of his guards, Mary Lockwood and Victoria Stanley among them. Victoria said to him, "I could not bear to hear you speak as you did to those girls to-day. I have heard you talk in a stern and peremptory way, and I thought it became you well enough; but this time, if your Majesty will pardon my telling you, I thought you harsh and overbearing. The repugnance of the girls was natural enough; I felt the same disgust to the whole business, and I think you wounded their feelings unnecessarily."

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"Not unnecessarily, I hope, Miss Stanley," replied Jack. "It was a cruel necessity; only harsh words and the threat I used would have overcome their dislike of the work. Now, that work has to be done; men have hitherto done it, there is no reason why, when men are absent, women should not do it. The hard rough work of the civilized world was carried on by men; your sex must do it now — or die."

"You speak," said Victoria, resentfully, "as if women had not always done their share of the world's work."

"They may have done their share of the world's work, but they certainly haven't shared the rough unpleasant work. It is not for me to tell you, who to-day saved my life, that women are not capable of anything demanding either courage or toil; but, as a general rule, courage has been quite exceptional in their past history, and the toil has been performed by their male relatives."

"Let me tell you, Sir," said Victoria, her eyes now ablaze with anger, "that you are talking like a vain boy. Every woman who has borne a child has faced death as a soldier faces death, and her work in her home has been more long and incessant, if requiring less exertion, than a man's."

"Doubtless you are right, Miss Stanley," Jack replied. "Forgive me for vexing you, to whom I should be saying nothing but words of gratitude."

"Sire, doing my duty requires no thanks; allow me to leave you for a little while." And with cheeks still burning with subdued vexation she dropped behind and rode with one of the other girls.

Jack was left with Mary Lockwood, who took up the conversation. Mary was a very interesting companion, some years older than Victoria Stanley, but still page 94far from middle age. Her fine face and thoughtful eyes gave promise of a reflective character, which intimate acquaintance with her was sure to confirm. She said, "I am sorry that you vexed Victoria; she is a good warm-hearted girl, but she is a great champion of her sex, and cannot hear their weaknesses exposed. What she says is in one way true enough, men have never given women credit enough for facing the pain and danger which is the lot of married women. I mean that was the lot of married women, but neither she nor I nor any other single woman has the right to take much credit for that. Many of us avoided that danger coolly enough when we had the chance of marriage; now, when we would undertake any task, or dare any peril for the sake of a husband or children, those blessings are denied us."

"Why wouldn't you marry?" questioned Jack. "You must have been old enough for marriage before that terrible day three years ago?"

"Well," said Mary Lockwood, "the reason was— because I was a fool. There were many women in those days who would not marry; some from a sense of duties to others, some from delicacy of health, some from a spirit of independence, some because they would only marry for love and the right man didn't come along. None of these women were fools; I was. I was a fool because I was led away by the teachings of a clique of hysterical writers who deceived me as well as others; who preached that every bride would take to her bosom a debauched and worthless husband; that all men were selfish, all lustful, most of them brutal; that the pure ethereal wives of these men were fitted to do all things that men could do, and do them better if they had the chance. I believed these page 95follies; fled to the society of other women and to seclusion, to escape from the loathsome male. Now I see differently. Just as that bleeding carcase had to be skinned by you, so men have been doing our dirty work for ages. The women could eat the beef and mutton at dinner, but must not see the offal removed from the beast; they could wear the silks and laces from overseas, but need not stand lashed to the wheel of the merchantman in the bitter spray. They could sit by the warm fire, without one thought for the man working in the coalpit among the poisonous gas, where human lives are flung aside like withered leaves. Men protected us, worked for us, died for us, and we lied about them. Working women, women who in factories or as servants themselves knew labour, were grateful; but the cultured women had forgotten how to say 'Thank you!' That is why I believe that this trouble has come upon us, because we boasted our washing of babies and dusting of bedrooms against the clearers of forests and makers of railways. Now we know better—now that we have got to do it all ourselves."

"You are too hard upon your own sex, Miss Lockwood," said the King. "The women have done the work allotted to them as well as men have done theirs."

"I do not rail at my own sex, but at their latter-day false prophets, their leaders who gave us the phantoms engendered by an idle life upon a morbid brain, as ideals for guidance in a world of whose true aspects they knew nothing, and who taught us ingratitude to our helpers and protectors. For me, my lord, it is only bitterness to look back at myself, and see — a fool."

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That night, in the solitude of her bed-chamber, Mary Lockwood paced up and down, her cheeks growing hot as her memory recalled the conversation of the afternoon and the companionship of her manly comrade. "How I hate those leaders of the blind whom once I worshipped," she said, "those sowers of discord between men and women! What if, after love, death had come? I should have had one hour of real breathing life before the darkness fell. Now there can be nothing. How I loathe them, and how I loathe myself! Hateful bosom!" she cried, striking her breast with her open hand, "Bosom sterile to baby fingers and barren of lover's kisses! Would to God that the women had died with the men!"