Seven Little Australians

by Ethel Sybil Turner

  CHAPTER XV

  Three Hundred Miles in the Train

  They filled a whole compartment--at least there was one seat vacant,but people seemed shy of taking it after a rapid survey of them all.

  The whole seven of them, and only Esther as bodyguard--Esther--ina pink blouse an sailor hat, with a face as bright and mischievousas Pip's own.

  The Captain had come to see them off, with Pat to look after theluggage. He had bought the tickets--two whole ones for Esther andMeg, and four halves for the others. Baby was not provided with evena half, much to her private indignation--it was an insult to her fouryears and a half, she considered, to go free like the General.

  But the cost of those scraps of pasteboard had made the Captain lookunhappy: he only received eighteenpence change out of the ten poundshe had tendered; for Yarrahappini was on the borders of the Never-NeverLand.

  He spent the eighteenpence on illustrated papers--Scraps, AllySloper's Half-Holiday, Comic Cuts, Funny Folks, and the like,evidently having no very exalted opinion of the literary tastesof his family; and he provided Esther with a yellow-back--onwhich was depicted a lady in a green dress fainting in the armsof a gentleman attired in purple, and Meg with Mark Twain's "JumpingFrog", because he had noticed a certain air of melancholy in her eyeslately.

  Then bells clanged and a whistle shrieked, porters flew wildly about,and farewells were said, sadly or gaily as the case might be.

  There was a woman crying: in a hopeless little way on the platform,and a girl with sorrowful, loving eyes leaning out of a second-classwindow towards her; there was a brown-faced squatter, in a tweed capand slippers, to whom the three-hundred-mile journey was little moreof an event than dining; and there was the young man going selecting,and thinking England was little farther, seeing his wife and childwere waving a year's good-bye from the platform. There were sportsmengoing two hundred miles after quail and wallaby; and cars full ofladies returning to the wilds after their yearly or half-yearly tiltwith society and fashion in Sydney; and there were the eight we areinterested in, clustering around the door and two windows, smilingand waving cheerful good-byes to the Captain.

  He did not look at all cast down as the train steamed fussilyaway--indeed, he walked down the platform with almost a jaunty air as ifthe prospect of two months bachelordom was not without its redeemingpoints.

  It was half-past six in the afternoon when they started, and they wouldreach Curlewis, which was the nearest railway station to Yarrahappini,about five the next morning. The expense of sleeping-berths had beenout of the question with so many of them; but in the rack with the bagswere several rolls of rugs and two or three air-pillows against theweary hours. The idea of so many hours in the train had been delightfulto all the young ones; none of them but Judy had been a greater distancethan forty or fifty miles before, and it seemed perfectly fascinatingto think of rushing on and on through the blackness as well as thedaylight.

  But long before ten o'clock a change came o'er the spirit of theirdreams. Nell and Baby had had a quarrel over the puffing out of theair-cushions, and were too tired and cross to make it up again; Piphad hit Bunty over the head for no ostensible reason, and receivedtwo kicks in return; Judy's head ached, and the noise, was not calculatedto cure it; Meg had grown weary of staring out into the moving darkness,and wondering whether Alan would notice she was never on the river-boatnow; and the poor little General was filling the hot air withexpostulations, in the shape of loud roars, at the irregularities ofthe treatment he was undergoing.

  Esther had taken his day clothes off, and made a picture of him ina cream flannel nightgown and a pink wool jacket. And for half anhour, he had submitted good-temperedly to being handed about andtickled and half-smothered with kisses. He had eyen permitted Nell tobite his little pink toes severally, and say a surprising amount ofnonsense about little pigs that went to market and did similarlyabsurd things.

  He had hardly remonstrated when there had been a dispute about thepossession of his person, and Bunty had clung to his head and bodywhile Nell pulled vigorously at his legs.

  But after a time, when Esther made him a little bed on one of theseats and tried to lay him down upon it, a sense of his grievancescame over him.

  He had a swinging cot at home; with little gold bars at the foot toblink at--he could not see why he should be mulcted of it, and made toput up with a rug three times doubled. He was accustomed, too, to ashaded light, a quiet room, and a warning H'sh! h'sh! wheneverpeople forgot themselves sufficiently to make the slightest noise.

  Here the great yellow light flared all the time, and every one of thenoisy creatures at whose hands he endured so much was within a fewfeet of him.

  So he lifted up his voice and wept. And when he found weeping did notproduce his gold-barred cot, and the little dangling tassels on themosquito nets, he raised his voice two notes, and when even thereEsther only went on patting his shoulder in a soothing way he burstinto roars absolutely deafening.

  Nellie dangled all her long curls in his face to engage hisattention, but he clutched them viciously and pulled till the tearscame into her eyes. Esther and Meg sang lullabies till their tonguesached, Judy tried walking him up and down the narrow space, but hestiffened himself in her arms, and she was not strong enough to holdhim. Finally he dropped off into an exhausted sleep, drawing deep,sobbing breaths and little hiccoughs of sorrow.

  Then Bunty was discovered asleep on the floor with his head under a seat,and had to be lifted into an easier position; and Baby, bolt uprightin a corner, was nodding like a little pink-and-white daisy the sun hasbeen too much for.

  One by one the long hours dragged away; farther and farther throughthe silent, sleeping country flew the red-eyed train, swerving roundzigzag curves, slackening up steeper places, flashing across theendless stretching plains.

  The blackness grew grey and paler grey, and miles and miles ofmonotonous gum saplings lay between the train and sky. Up burstthe sun, and the world grew soft and rosy like a baby waked fromsleep. Then the grey gathered again, the pink, quivering lightsfaded out, and the rain came down--torrents of it, beating againstthe shaking window-glass, whirled wildly ahead by a rough morningwind, flying down from the mountains. Such a crushed, dull-eyed,subdued-looking eight they were as they tumbled out on the Curlewisplatform when five o'clock came. Judy coughed at the wet, early,air, and was hurried into the waiting-room and wrapped in a rug.

  Then the train tossed out their trunks and portmanteaux and rushed onagain, leaving them desolate and miserable, looking after it, for itseemed no one had come to meet them.

  The sound of wet wheels slushing through puddles, the crack of a whip,the even falling of horses' feet, and they were all outside again,looking beyond the white railway palings to the road.

  There were a big, covered waggonette driven by a wide yellow oil-skinwith a man somewhere in its interior, and a high buggy, from which animmensely tall man was climbing.

  "Father!"

  Esther rushed out into the rain. She put her arms round the drippingmackintosh and clung fast to it for a minute or two. Perhaps that iswhat made her cheeks and eyes so wet and shining.

  "Little girl--little Esther child!" he said, and almost lifted heroff the ground as he kissed her, tall though Meg considered her.

  Then he hurried them all off into the buggies, five in one and threein the other. There was a twenty-five-mile drive before them yet.

  "When did you have anything to eat last?" he asked; the depressedlooks of the children were making him quite unhappy. "Mother hassent you biscuits and sandwiches, but we, can't get coffee oranything hot till we get home."

  Nine o'clock, Esther told him, at Newcastle, but it was so boilinghot they had had to leave most of it in their cups and scramble intothe train again. The horses were whipped up; and flew over themuddy roads at a pace that Pip, despite his weariness, could not butadmire.

  But it was a very damp, miserable drive, and the General wept withhardly a break from start to
finish, greatly to Esther's vexation,for it was his first introduction to his grandfather.

  At last, when everyone was beginning to feel the very end of patiencehad come, a high white gate broke the monotony of dripping wetfences.

  "Home!" Esther said joyfully. She jumped the General up and down onher knee.

  "Little Boy Blue, Mum fell off that gate when she was three," said she,looking at it affectionately as Pip swung it open.

  Splash through the rain again; the wheels went softly now, for theway was covered with wet fallen leaves.

  "Oh, where IS the house?" Bunty said, peeping through Pip's armon the box seat, and seeing still nothing but an endless vista ofgum trees. "I thought, you said we were there, Esther."

  "Oh, the front door is not quite so near the gate as at Misrule,"she said. And indeed it was not.

  It was fifteen minutes before they even saw the chimneys, then therewas another gate to be opened. A gravel drive now trimly kept,high box round the flower-beds, a wilderness of rose bushes thatpleased Meg's eye, two chip tennis-courts under water.

  Then the house.

  The veranda was all they noticed; such a wide one it was, as wide asan ordinary room, and there were lounges and chairs and tablesscattered about, hammocks swung from the corners, and a green thickcreeper with rain-blown wisteria for an outer wall.

  "O--o--oh," said Pip; "o--oh! I AM stiff--o--oh, I say, what are youdoing?"

  For Esther had deposited her infant on his knee, and leapt out ofthe waggonette and up the veranda steps.

  There was a tiny old lady there, with a great housekeeping apronon. Esther gathered her right up in her arms, and they kissed andclung to each other till they were both crying.

  "My little girl!" sobbed the little old lady, stroking, with eagerhands, Esther's wet hair and wetter cheeks.

  And Bunty, who had followed close behind, looked from the tall figureof his stepmother to the very small one of her mother and laughed.

  Esther darted back to the buggy, took the General from Pip, and,springing up the steps again, placed him in her mother's arms.

  "Isn't he a fat 'un!" Bunty said, sharing in her pride; "just youlook at his legs."

  The old lady sat down for one minute in the wettest chair she couldfind, and cuddled him close up to her.

  But he doubled his little cold fists, fought himself free, andyelled for Esther.

  Mr. Hassal had emptied the buggies by now, and came up the stepshimself.

  "Aren't you going to give them some breakfast, little mother?" hesaid, and the old lady nearly dropped her grandson in her distress.

  "Dear, dear!" she said. "Well, well! Just to think of it! But itmakes one forget."

  In ten minutes they were all in dry things, sitting in the warmdining-room and making prodigious breakfasts.

  "WASN'T I hungry!" Bunty said. His mouth was full of toast, and hewas slicing the top off his fourth egg and keeping an eye on a dishthat held honey in one compartment and clotted cream in another.

  "The dear old plates!" Esther picked hers up after she had emptied itand looked lovingly at the blue roses depicted upon it. "And to thinklast time l ate off one I--"

  "Was a little bride with the veil pushed back from your face," the oldlady said, "and everyone watching you cut the cake. Only two have brokensince--oh yes, Hannah, the girl who came after Emily, chipped off thehandle of the sugar-basin and broke a bit out of the slop-bowl."

  "Where did Father stand?" Meg asked. She was peopling the room withwedding guests; the ham and the chops, the toast and eggs and dishesof fruit, had turned to a great white towered cake with silverleaves.

  "Just up there where Pip is sitting," Mrs. Hassal said, "and hewas helping Esther with the cake, because she was cutting itwith his sword. Such a hole you made in the table-cloth, Esther, myvery best damask one with the convolvulus leaves, but, of course,I've darned it--dear, dear!"

  Baby had upset her coffee all over herself and her plate and Bunty,who was next door.

  She burst into tears of weariness and nervousness at the new people,and slipped off her chair under the table. Meg picked her up.

  "May I put her to bed?" she said; "she is about worn out."

  "Me, too," Nellie said, laying down her half-eaten scone and pushingback her chair. "Oh, I am so tired!"

  "So'm I." Bunty finished up everything on his plate in chokinghaste and stood up. "And that horrid coffee's running into myboots."

  So just as the sun began to smile and chase away the sky's heavytears, they all went to bed again to make up for the broken night,and it was: six o'clock and tea-time before any of them opened theireyes again.