The Wonder-Child: An Australian Story

  *CHAPTER XX*

  *Miss Browne*

  'I shall have no man's love For ever, and no face of children born Or tender lips upon me. Far off from flowers or any love of man Shall my life be for ever.'

  What was it that broke the barriers down? The wet eyelashes of thelittle music-maker? The droop of her soft mouth? Or came there acrossthat poor room one of those divine waves of sympathy and understandingthat wash at times from a richly endowed soul to a lonely stunted one?

  Miss Browne found herself telling anything and everything that hadhappened in her life, and even the things that might have happened. Notthat the whole of them made a sum of any account, if you condensed them;but, told ramblingly and with pauses for tears, they fell patheticallyon the young listening ears.

  Thirty-eight grey years! Life in this country town and that countrytown, in this crowded suburb or on that out-back station or selection--ahireling always. The first twenty-five had dragged by under Englishskies that even in summer had no sun for a motherless, fatherless girl,pupil-teacher from the age of fourteen. She bore twelve years of itpatiently enough, and indeed would have borne another score, but twofriends, stronger, more restless souls than she, though chained to thesame life, told her they were going to break through it all, strike outof the stagnant waters of suburban England into the fresh, glitteringsea the other side of the world.

  They were saving their salaries to pay their passage to Australia.Governesses were royally paid out there, they had heard, and more thanthat--they whispered this a little ashamed--husbands grew on every bush.

  Miss Browne scraped and saved for a year, cheerfully shivering without awinter jacket, happily heedless of the rain that came through the holesof her umbrella. If it had been a question of economising in her diet,she would have brought herself down to a crust a day, in her eagernessto make a plunge into a different life, but fortunately governesses are'all found.' The three women cheerfully cramped their bodiesthird-class for the voyage, letting their souls soar boundlessly in thepleasant evenings on deck.

  They came to their new land, saw it, and after a few years wereconquered. Almost the same conditions of life, the same sickeningstruggle of a multitude of educated women for one poor place, the samegrey outlook. One found a husband; he took her to some heaven-forgottencorner of North Queensland, where she had for neighbours Japanese andChinese and Javanese, and he drank, as the men all do in those forgottencorners, where alligators are to be found on the river-banks, andcoloured labour crowds out the white man's efforts. She bore him sixchildren in eight years, and then died thankfully. The second womanwent into a hospital and became a nurse; for the last five years she hadbeen in Western Australia, kept busy with the typhoid in Perth. Once ina while she wrote to Miss Browne; once or twice she had eagerly said shewas 'all but engaged,' but later letters never confirmed the hope, andnow a dull commonplace had settled down over the correspondence.

  Miss Browne drifted from place to place, place to place; there wasnothing she was capable of doing really well, and no land has ahospitable welcome for such.

  'It is a funny thing,' she said to Challis, 'but, however hard I try, Inever seem able to do things like other people can.' Her eyes stared infront of her. 'If it had been your mother now in my place, she couldhave managed; she is made of the stuff that never goes under. But youwould have thought any one like I am would have been shelteredand--cared for--as so many women are cared for.'

  Challis stroked her restlessly moving hand.

  'Sometimes,' she continued--her voice dropped, her eyes stared straightout before her--'sometimes I can't help feeling as if Providence haspushed me out to the front, and quite forgotten to give me anything tofight with.'

  Then she pulled herself together reprovingly.

  'Of course, that attitude is very wrong of me,' she said. 'It is onlyvery seldom I think that, my love.'

  Challis squeezed her hand sympathetically.

  'It will all come right some day,' she said, with the large vaguehopefulness of the very young.

  'That's what I have always told myself,' said Miss Browne; 'but you mustsee, my love, if--if it does not come right very soon, it will be toolate. I am thirty-eight--there, there is no need to mention it toHermie or the rest of the family, my love.'

  'But thirty-eight is not old,' said Challis, so eager to comfort, sheleft truth to take care of itself. 'Think what lots of people arefifty, and they don't think themselves a bit old.'

  'But who will marry you after you are thirty-eight?' said poor MissBrowne, unable to keep any ache back to-night.

  'Oh,' said Challis, 'lots of people don't get married, and they are ashappy as anything.'

  Miss Browne's lip quivered.

  'If I had been asked,' she said, 'then I should not mind so much. But Iam--thirty-eight, and no one has--ever asked me.'

  Challis put her arm round the poor woman's neck; she stroked her cheek,patted her shoulder.

  'Of course,' Miss Browne said at last, sitting up with tremulous,red-eyed dignity, 'there is no need to tell Hermie that, my love.'

  'But you must have lots of friends,' said Challis, looking at the numberof envelopes lying on the dressing-table. The colour ran up into MissBrowne's face. She half put her hand over the letters, then drew itback.

  'If I told you about these, you would think me so foolish, my dear,' shefaltered.

  'Oh no, I wouldn't!' said Challis. 'Now I know you so well, I seem tounderstand everything.'

  Miss Browne got some little papers out of a drawer, English pennyweeklies devoted to 'ladies' interests.' She turned to the Answers toCorrespondents pages, 'Advice on Courtship and Marriage.'

  'Those marked with a little cross are the answers to me,' whispered MissBrowne. And Challis read these three marked paragraphs:

  '_Fair Australienne_ writes: "I am the only daughter of a very wealthysquatter, and have two lovers. One is a squatter on an adjoiningstation, the other an English baronet travelling in Australia. If Imarry the baronet, I must leave my father, who loves me dearly; but Icare for him more than I do for the squatter. What would you advise meto do?"

  And the 'Aunt Lucy' who conducted the page had replied:

  'Marry where your heart dictates. Could you not induce your father tolive in England with you?'

  '_Sweet Rock Lily_.--"I am eighteen, and, my friends tell me, very, verybeautiful. I am governess in a wealthy family, and the son is deeply inlove with me. If he marries me, he will be disinherited. What should Ido? I love him very much. And will you tell me a remedy for thin hair?"

  'The editor's answer is: "Try to overcome the prejudice of the family,_Rock Lily_, and all will go well. Bay rum and bitter apples is anexcellent tonic."

  '_Little Wattle Blossom_.--"I am seventeen, and only just out of theschoolroom. I am passionately in love with a young handsome man, wholoves me in return; but my parents are trying to force me into amarriage with an old foreign nobleman. They have even fixed the weddingday, and I am kept a prisoner. What would you advise me to do?"

  'The editor's answer is: "You cannot be forced into a marriage in thesedays. Refuse firmly. In four years you will be of age. In answer toyour second question, your friend had better try massage for the crow'sfeet and thin neck."'

  Challis read in extreme puzzlement.

  'I hardly understand,' she said. 'How do you mean--these are to you?'

  'It is only my foolishness, my love,' said Miss Browne, gathering themup again; 'but I get a great deal of pleasure out of it. The days themail comes and I get the papers, I am so excited I don't know what todo. You get into the way of feeling it really is yourself.'

  But this phase of Miss Browne was beyond Challis's comprehension, andshe only looked doubtfully at the papers, so Miss Browne was swift tochange the subject.

  'These letters,' she said, 'are to the Melbourne and Adelaide artsocieties. I should like to tell you about thi
s, my love. Your father,about four years ago, painted a picture, and something happened thatmade him try to burn it. Well, we managed to prevent that, and I gothold of it and hid it away. He has forgotten all about it now, imaginesI sold it, but I haven't, and it occurred to me lately to write toseveral artists and describe the picture to them, and see if they wouldbuy it. I did not mention your father's name; just said it was by afriend of mine--you will forgive me for the liberty, my love?'

  'But didn't you send the picture?' said Challis. 'They could hardlytell from a description.'

  'I had no money,' said Miss Browne, sighing 'I made inquiries atWilgandra, but it would cost so much to have it packed and sent toSydney. And there is the risk of losing it. I was _very_ careful overthe description; it took me five long evenings to write--I left nodetail out.'

  'And what happened?' said Challis.

  Miss Browne flushed.

  'Courtesy seems dying out,' she said. 'Not one of them answered. Itmight have been any lady writing--they could not know it was only I.'

  Challis asked more questions about the picture. She asked to be shownit, and waited patiently while Miss Browne disinterred it from under thebed, and took off the old counterpane with which it was wrapped.

  'I have never seen any great picture-galleries,' said Miss Browne, 'butI know there is something about this that must be good. It could notwork up the feelings in me that it does, if it were just an ordinarypicture. Look at the man's eyes, my love--isn't the hopelessnessfrightful?--and yet look at him well. You just know he'll keep ontrying and trying till he gets there.'

  Challis gazed at it for a long time.

  'Yes,' she said slowly; 'that is how it makes me feel. I feel I want tobeg him to stop trying, and lie down and go to sleep. But it wouldn'tbe any use. You feel the storm will last for ever, and the captain willgo on trying for ever to get to wherever he has made up his mind to getto.'

  'Your father intends it to represent the Flying Dutchman,' said MissBrowne.

  'Oh yes!' Challis said. 'Of course. I ought to have known. But it isjust like this picture--just as sad. And I play it too. Wagner, youknow,--Der fliegende Hollander,--it makes you want to cry.'

  'My love,' cried Miss Browne, 'you say you know an artist in Paris.Why, surely that would be the very thing! I believe they are alljealous of him in Sydney. Write to your friend. He would take noticeof a letter from you. Write to him, and send the picture too. You canafford to, and it is not likely to go astray, since you know the exactaddress. Suppose we start to do it now?'

  Challis sprang up with shining eyes. It seemed the loveliest plan inthe world.

  'It shall be our secret, you dear, dear thing!' she cried. 'We won'ttell a single soul in the world--not even mother. Let's write it downthat we promise.' She pushed pen and ink to Miss Browne. 'Write onthis paper,' she said, '"I promise Challis Cameron faithfully I won'ttell any one in the world."'

  Miss Browne wrote the compact down, smiling.

  Challis seized the pen.

  'I promise Miss Brown faithfully I won't tell,' she wrote.

  'Oh, my dear, my love!' said Miss Browne distressed. 'My love, howcareless of you! I spell my name with an "e." I never thought you wouldforget, my love. No, don't add it on there; it looks as if it were anafterthought. Please write it again. We have always spelt our name withan "e," my love.'