 CHAPTER VI. A BUNDLE OF OLD LETTERS. Elsie had a headache when Francis came to take possession of his new home, and scarcely made her appearance. But Jane, who felt none of her sisters shrinking from him, showed him over the house and told him how it had been managed, hoped he would keep the present servants, and particularly recommended to his care the gardener, who, though rather superannuated and rheumatic, had been forty years in the service of the family and understood the soil and the treatment of it very well. He was not only glad to hear what she said, but was resolved to be guided by it, and took a memorandum of her poor pensioners that they at least should not suffer by Mr. Hogarth's will. Then she walked with him over the grounds and pointed at what improvements her uncle had made, and what more he had contemplated making. She was rather deficient in taste for rural beauty. She loved Cross Hall because it was her home, and because she had been happy there, rather than because she fully appreciated the loveliness of the situation and the prospect. Her cousin, Townsman as he was, had far more natural taste. It was romantically situated, and the grounds were beautifully laid out. There were pretty hamlets in the distance, gentlemen's country suits embellished in trees, green cornfields, merry brooks, and winding valleys. Francis's eyes and heart were filled with the exceeding beauty of the landscape. You must be very sorry to leave all this, Jane, he said. I believe that is the least of my troubles. I am more sorry to leave these, and she led him to the stables and showed him the two beautiful horses she and her sister had been accustomed to ride. You will be kind to them for our sakes and the dogs too. I am, we are both, very concerned apart with the dogs. Should you not like to take any of them with you, said Francis eagerly. No, no, dogs such as these would be a nuisance in a crowded little room in Edenburg, and I do not think they would like such a life, for their own part. You will take better care of them than we could possibly do, but I forget. You have, perhaps, as little affection for animals as I have taste for scenery. I am not naturally fond of pets, which is rather strange, for my solitary life should have made me attach myself to the lower animals. But perhaps I am not naturally affectionate. I must cultivate this deficient taste, however, and be assured that anything you have loved will always be cherished by me. And every wish that you may express, or that I can even guess at, that I am allowed to gratify, I will be only too happy to do so. It has been a strange and stormy introduction we have had to each other, but I am so grateful to you for not hating me, that I shape still the more at the cruel way in which my hands are tied. I have consulted several imminent lawyers in the hope of being enabled to overturn my father's will, but without success. If a man is not palpably mad, he may make as absurd a settlement of his own property as he pleases, and your assertion of your uncle's peculiar opinions tends to support the validity of the testament. Though no one thinks that the disposition of the money will serve the end, Mr. Hogarth intended, yet he believed it would, and the spirit and intention of the will must be carried out. Oh, my father, why did you not give me a little love in your lifetime instead of this cursed money after your death? Cousins, said Jane cheerfully, I believe you will make a good use of this money, as my uncle says you have served well and should be able to rule justly and kindly. I do not think so much about the improvement of the property by your taste as of the care you will take of the condition of the people upon it. This last month has been a hard but a useful school to me. I have thought more of the real social difficulties of this crowded country than ever I did before. Bringing my own talents and acquirements into the market, and finding myself elbowed out by competition, I think of those who have to do the real hard necessary work of the world with more sympathy and more respect. Not that I ever despise them, you must not imagine me to be so hard-hearted as that, but my feeling for them is deepened and heightened wonderfully of late. Now they are apt to say that parvenues are of all men the most exacting and the most purse proud, and that a mistress who has been a servant is harsher to her female dependence than one who has been accustomed to keep domestic saw her life. It is difficult for me to conceive this, but there must be truth in it, or it would not be a proverb in all languages. You will be an exception, Francis. You will have my uncle's real kindness without his crochets in his dictatorial manner. You must not be offended if I call you a parvenue in spite of your birth. You have come suddenly into wealth that you were not brought up to expect. If I do not recollect my past life, I will certainly remember your present advice whenever I am tempted to think too much of myself and too little of others. Everything is to lead to the perfecting of your character, you see, said Jane. I cannot bear even improvement at the expense of anyone suffering but my own, said Francis. I have been thinking so much about that sermon I heard at your church. I do not know that the preacher brought out the particular point, but we are made such dependent beings, not only on God, but on each other, that we do indirectly profit by what we do not purchase by our own effort or pains. We would not choose to have it so, but when providence brings on ourselves or other sorrows we grieve for, we are right to draw from them all the good we can. It is something if my uncle's rather unjust will has given you property with a sobered sense of its privileges and a strong sense of its duties, something to set against LC's sufferings in mind. And besides, the loss of it has done me one great benefit. Tell me what, said Francis eagerly. It is quite possible, though I cannot tell how probable, that I might have made a man to whom I am not well suited in any respect and who was still less adapted to make me happy if I had not been disinherited. I am thus frank with you, cousin Francis, for I should like to give you all the consolation I can. And you have been deserted by a lover, as well as impoverished, and you ask me to take consolation from it? No, no, nothing so bad as that. I only explained matters to him and we parted. I am very glad of it. Be you the same, said Jane, looking frankly and cheerfully in her cousin's face and the cloud passed off it. Your sister has no affair of this kind. No, nothing, said Jane, and yet she seems to suffer more. Not now. She is busy writing a volume of poems that is to make our fortune, dear Elsie, I hope it may. Poems? Well, she may succeed, but I have more hope of you than of her. Because you know me better, but yet my efforts have all been very fruitless. I am not a judge of poetry, though I like what Elsie writes. I wished her to consent to my taking your opinion as to her verses, but she shrank from it with most unaccountable and, as I thought, unreasonable fear. I wonder how she can bring her work before the public if she dreads one critic. It is very natural, Jane. Among the public there may be some to admire and some to depreciate, but the one critic to whom the author submits his work may be of the latter class, and there seems to be no refuge from him. It is curious to see the revelations of the inner self that some authors make to the world, revelations that they would often shrink from making to their nearest friends. They appeal to the few in the world who sympathize with them and disregard the censure of all the rest. And recollect that, though to you I am a friend, your sister has seen very little of me, and her first impression was exceedingly painful. If you have told her I am a good judge of poetry, she will be all the more adverse to submit her compositions to my criticism. From my opinion, might bias yours, and yours is her greatest comfort and encouragement. No one can wish her success more earnestly than I do. But, for yourself, what are your present intentions? If it were not for leaving Elsie, I might try for a situation as housekeeper in a large establishment. I know I am fully competent for that. I should prefer something by which I could rise, but the choice may not be given to me. We go to Edenburg tomorrow. I do not think the small room we are going to will hold all the furniture we are entitled to, so will you be good enough to let what we cannot accommodate remain at cross-haul till we can send for it? Certainly, you had better lock up your room with your own things in it and take the key, said Francis. No, no, I am housekeeper enough to know that all rooms must have occasional air and sunshine. I can trust either yourself or the housemaid with the key, knowing well that everything will be kept safe. Where are you going to live? With a very humble friend in…street. That is very near where my earliest recollections of life in Edenburg found me situated. Do you remember your mother at all? I am not quite sure, but I think I have some shadowy recollection of a place before I came to Edenburg, where I think I was with my mother. Do you think she is alive now? Mr. McFarlane says he believes she is. Do you think I should try to discover her? Alive all these years and never taking any care or notice of you? Very unmotherly on her part, said Jane thoughtfully. No one knows how she may be situated. Her relations with my father must have been very miserable. I cannot tell who was most to blame, but if she were in distress, and I could help her, I am not forbidden to do that. Though Mr. McFarlane strongly advises me to make no inquiry. I think if she hears of your inheriting Cross Hall, she is likely to come forward if she needs assistance, and you certainly should give it. I wish very much to look over Mr. Hogarth's private papers. Mr. McFarlane has given me the keys of all his repositories. I particularly wish you to go over them all with me, as there may be many that concern you far more than myself. Could you spare me a few hours today for that purpose? I am in hopes that we may find some clue to this marriage, and perhaps some hint that might guide me in my conduct to my mother. Supposing she is still alive. If I could find anything that would upset or modify the will, I am sure your happiness in the discovery would be less than mine. The long and patient search, which extended over the greater part of two days, discovered nothing whatever at all definite with regard to Francis' birth. No scrap of writing could be found that could be supposed to be from his mother. An old bundle of papers marked outside Francis' school bills was all that rewarded their search, and they gave no information except that his education had cost his father a considerable sum of money. A packet of letters in a female hand, with a French postmark, was eagerly opened by the cousins, and contained a number of long and confidential letters from a Marguerite de Verrecourt, which extended over a number of years and stopped at the year when Jane and Elsie came to live with their uncle. Jane's knowledge of French was better than her cousins, and the sight of the words Le Pauvaro Francois arrested her attention in the first she opened. We have come to something at last, said she, and she translated the passage. I am glad to hear that the poor Francis is doing so well at school. Surely you must learn to love him a little now. My Arnold grows very intelligent, and Clements, with no teaching but my own, makes rapid progress. That is all. Your name is not mentioned again in this letter. We must go on to the next. Letter after letter was glanced over and then translated because though there was little mention of the poor Francis, but such a short allusion to something Mr. Hogarth had written about him as was found in the first letter, there was much that was very interesting in them all. They were written with that curious mixture of friendship and love so natural and easy to French women, and so difficult to English women. Madame de Verrecourt appeared to be a widow with two children, a boy and a girl. Her letter showed her to be a capable and cultivated woman, passionately attached to her children, living much in society for part of the year in Paris, but spending the summer in a country chateau where she became a child again with the little ones. She wrote about her affairs and her children as if she were in the habit of transacting business, and thoroughly understood it, and as if she knew Mr. Hogarth's whole history and circumstances, and took a very affectionate interest in them. She reminded him frequently of conversations they had had together, of long walks and excursions they had taken in company. Her children sent messages to her good friend, and she took notice of expressions in his letters which had pleased or disappointed her. For herself she had been unhappily made when extremely young, but before the correspondence had begun she had been for some years a widow, and she was fully aware of the position of Mr. Hogarth. The most interesting letter of all was the last, which appeared to have been written in answer to his, telling of his resolution to adopt his sister's children, and she seemed very much delighted at the idea. Since you say you cannot bring yourself to love the poor Francis, whom, nevertheless, my heart yearns after, and of whom I love to hear even the meager details you give to me, I rejoice, my friend, that you have made a home for your sister's sweet little girls. You must have something to love. Ah, to me my Arnold and my Clements brought unspeakable comfort. I do not think of them as Philippe de Veracourt's children. They are the children whom God have given to me. I do not watch fearfully, lest his ungovernable temper and his selfish soul should be reproduced in them. I trust that God will make them good and happy, and aid me in my efforts toward that end. You cannot separate the idea of Francis from that of the woman who cheated you, and did not love you, who has blighted your hopes of domestic happiness, and who still, even from a distance, has the power to threaten you with exposing the disgrace that you are connected with her. I am sorry that you cannot feel as I do, but if you can love these little girls, it may make you softer towards him. When you wrote to me of your poor Mary's sad death, and of the sadder life that had preceded it, I began to wonder whether, after all, your system of free choice in marriage produces greater happiness or greater misery than ours of a marriage settled by our parents. I recollect how bitterly I felt that I had been made over, without my wishes or taste being consulted, to a man who cared so little for my happiness. But at least I had no illusion to be dispelled. I did not marry as your sister did, hoping to find Elysium, and landing in hopeless misery, and yet my parents loved me after their fashion. I have often thought that those whom we love and who love us have far more power to injure us than those who hate us. But alas, neither friends nor enemies can injure us more than we do ourselves. Your sister Mary had the disenchantment to go through. I had to chafe at the coercion, while you, my friend, had to muse bitterly on the consequence of one rash speech of your own which chained you to an unworthy and detested wife. I think we need a future state that we may do justice to ourselves in it quite as much as to repair the wrongs we have done to others, which of us has really made the best of himself or herself. I really try now for the sake of my children to be cheerful, but sad and bitter memories are too deeply interwoven with my being for me to succeed as I should wish. If I live, I hope that the fate of my Clements may be happier than her mother's. So far as the state of society and France will allow of it, I will give her a choice and at any rate a power of refusing even what appears to me to be a suitable marriage. For no doubt it is better for an intelligent and responsible human being to choose its own destiny and to run its own risks. I fancy that the mistake in your English society is that your girls have apparently the freedom of choice without being trained to make good use of it. If your sister Mary was as inexperienced and as ignorant as I was at the time when my parents gave me to M. de Veracourt, she could not distinguish between the selfish fortune hunter and the true lover. The conventional manners were all the same and she chose for herself a life of misery. Your interference only roused the spirit of opposition and without preventing the marriage made your brother-in-law regard you with more dislike and suspicion. Ah, my friend, when I see a young girl about to be married, my heart is full of anxieties for her. I know the risks she runs, but I did not feel them much for myself. I grew into the knowledge of my unhappiness as I grew in knowledge of what might have been. But the recluse life of a French girl prevents her from expecting much from marriage but an increase of consequence. With us it is a step from tutelage to liberty, from non-entity to importance. It cannot be quite so much in England but, from the greater prevalence of celibacy, it has even more a clot and prestige than here. Where marriage is the rule? The trousseau, the presence, the congratulations, the going into society under the interesting circumstances of an engagement must divert a girl's attention from the really serious nature of the connection she is forming. You will have pleasure in educating your little girls. Make them strong in body and independent in mind if you can. They are likely to be handsome, intelligent, and if you continue to be prejudiced against poor Francis, rich. Give them more knowledge and more firmness than their poor mother had. I have no doubt that they will grow up good, for you will be kind to them. Girls all turn out well if you give them good training and a happy home. But as for happiness, that depends so much on their choice in marriage that all you have done for them may be thrown away if you do not educate them to be something more than amiable and pleasing companions. They must be trained to feel that they are responsible beings, that their reading be as various, their education is comprehensive as you would give to boys of their rank. You know that ignorance is not innocence and that some knowledge of the world is necessary to all of us if we are to pass safely through it. I am glad to hear that Jane so much resembles you and that Alice is so like her mother, and that you find their dispositions amiable and remarkably sincere. I have told you that I have difficulties with Clements in the matter of truthfulness. She cannot bear to say or to do what she fancies will be disagreeable or painful to anyone. She fears, if she does so, that she will not be loved. But I think I am succeeding in convincing her that we must learn to bear pain and occasionally to inflict it. When I stood over her last night with a cup of bitter medicine, she drank it like an angel, and I said to her, My love, I taste this bitter taste with you, and I would rather that I had not to give it to you. But if I, or anyone whom you love needs it, you must learn the courage to present it. Arnaud disobeyed my orders one day last week and played with his ball in the drawing room and broke a vase that I prized highly. Clements took the blame on herself, for she thought I should be less displeased with her than with her brother. But she was not sufficiently skillful to hide the truth. Her Bonnie was enraptured with her generosity and embraced her with the impressment, which is so ridiculous to your encealer ideas. But Clements saw that I was not pleased. Mama, said she, Is it not right I should bear something for Arnaud? I thought you would be so angry with him. More angry than he deserves, said I. No, Mama, but I thought he would feel it so much, and even if you were as angry with me and punished me as severely as you would have chastised him, I should have felt that I did not deserve it. And that, on the contrary, you were very generous? Yes, Mama. Then Arnaud would have escaped altogether, and you would have borne any pain like a martyr. But would not Arnaud have loved me for it? I do not know, Clements, said I. He knew when he did the mischief that I would be displeased, and it is just and right that he should take the consequences. A noble soul feels a certain satisfaction in bearing deserved punishment, but it can never rejoice in the punishment of another for its fault. I know you meant kindly. But, my love, you should make no unnecessary sacrifices. Providence will bring to you many opportunities of giving up your wishes and of bearing a great deal for others, but it must never be done at the sacrifice of truth. Clements was much impressed with what I said to her, and Arnaud, too, seemed to feel that it would have been mean to have taken advantage of his sister's mistaken generosity. I labor to make them think for themselves, for I often fear that my life will not be spared to guide them much longer. When you come again to France, bring with you your little girls. I have spoken to my children about them, and they are eager to become acquainted with them. At the end of this letter was written and Mr. Hoggar's handwriting died, October 14th, 18th, shortly after the date of the letter. I wish, said Jane, that my uncle had shown me these letters, but I suppose there are some things that one cannot tell to another person. There is no encouragement here to induce me to make inquiries about my mother, said Francis. I think for the present I will let the matter rest. End of Chapter 6 Recorded by Amanda Heinman, Glenn, Mississippi Chapter 7 of Mr. Hoggar's Will This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Amanda Heinman Mr. Hoggar's Will by Catherine Helen Spence Chapter 7 Up and Down When Jane had spoke of twenty thousand pounds each as the probable fortune of herself and her sister, if their uncle had made his will in their favor, she'd rather under than overestimated the value of Mr. Hoggar's property. She had expected that many legacies to old servants and bequests to several charitable institutions might have been left, and there still would have been that handsome sum for his adopted children. Francis Hoggar found that he had come into possession of a compact little estate in a very fine part of the country, a small part of which estate had been farmed by the proprietor, who had tried various experiments on it with various success. There was also money invested in the funds and money laid out in railway shares, as well as a considerable sum in the bank for any present necessity or to be spent in the improvement of the property. Elsie had expressed a doubt of her cousins getting into society, but there appeared to be no likelihood of any of the country's entry looking down on the new Laird of Cross Hall. The visiting acquaintance of people of sufficient standing in and about Swinton had consisted of twenty-four marriageable ladies and only four marriageable gentlemen, even including William Dalzell, who was known to be both poor and extravagant, and an old bachelor proprietor nearly as old as Mr. Hoggar Sr., and as unlikely to marry. Parties in the country were greatly indebted to striplings and college students home for holidays to represent the male sex. They could dance and could do a little flirtation and thought much more of themselves than they ought to do, but as for marrying, that was out of the question. An exchange of two heiresses for one area of Cross Hall could not be but considered to be an advantageous one. It was not in human nature that the young ladies themselves and their fathers and mothers and party-givers generally should not be eager to know Francis Hogarth and be more than civil to him. The court that is paid to any man who is believed to be in a position to marry is one of the most distressing features in British society. It is most mischievous to the one sex and most degrading to the other. Long, long may it be before we see anything like it in the Australian colonies. No doubt if it is excusable anywhere, it is so in country or provincial society in Scotland. We cannot help spoiling the men, says a distressed party-giver in these latitudes, conscious that this state of things is not right and half ashamed of herself for giving into it. There are really so few of them. The sons of families of the middle and upper classes as they grow up are sent out to India, to the army, to America, or to the Australian colonies. Even when they do not leave the kingdom, they leave the neighborhood and go to large towns where they may practice a profession or enter into business with some chance of success. Their sisters remain at home with no business, no profession, no object in life, and no hope of any change except through marriage. Many of their contemporaries never return but settle in the colonies or die there. But if they do return with money, perhaps with broken constitutions and irritable tempers from India, they still consider themselves too young to look at the women with whom they flirted and danced before they left the old country and select someone of a different generation who was perhaps a baby at that time. The fathers and mothers see too clearly the advantages of an establishment to object to the disparity of years and the state of the liver, while the girl fluttered into importance, as Madame de Verrecourt says, by presence and jewels and shawls thinks herself a most fortunate woman, particularly if she is not required to go to India, but can have a good position at home. So when a young man, not more than 34, rather handsome of good character and apparently good temper, intelligent and agreeable, who went to church the first Sunday after he came to cross-hall and who was the legitimate heir of the old family of Hogarth, came to settle in the county as a neighbor, his having been clerk in a bank for 18 years was not looked on as a drawback. He was all the more likely to take good care of his money now he had got it, and calls and invitations came from every quarter. Mr. and Mistress Renny, who had visions of his being exactly the person to suit their Eliza, had a month's start of the country neighbors, but they feared the results of his being thrown among such families as the Charles Marseilles, Maxwell's, the Christians, and the Jardines. He had asked the Renny's to pay him a visit at cross-hall in the autumn, when they always took a run to the country or to the seaside and had accompanied his invitation with a request that if his cousins came to Edenburg the Renny's would show them some kindness and attention which they readily promised to do. If Mistress Renny had known his secret feelings towards the country families, she might have set her mind at rest as to their rivalry, but Francis was very reserved and his training had not led him to place confidence in anyone till his heart had recently opened to his cousin Jane. He received the visits of his new neighbor civilly and had accepted their invitations, but the conduct of these people towards the disinherited girls made him secretly repel their advances towards his prosperous self. It appeared to show bare-faced whirlliness and selfishness that he shrank from with the most insinuating speeches in the most flattering attentions. He did not know how much of the coldness of Jane and Elsie's old neighbors proceeded from the dislike and suspicion with which Mr. Hogarth's religious opinions or rather his religious skepticism was regarded in a particularly orthodox district. They had exchanged formal visits and had invited each other to large parties because not to do so would have been unneighborly, but with none of the people about Swinton had there ever been any familiar intimacy. Jane and Elsie were supposed to be deeply tinged with their uncle's heresies, and they were such very strange girls, having been so strangely brought up and having no mother or female relative to exert any influence. Their uncle had brought them up like boys which everybody thought very improper. Amelia Shalmers, who was musical, could not get on with them at all. The three Miss Jardines, who were very amiable girls, with nothing in them, could not tell whether to call them blues or hoidins. They're Latin and algebra, on the one hand, and their swimming bath and their writing about the country without a groom on the other, made them all together so unfeminine. Their uncle thought they were quite able to take care of themselves and of each other, and fancied more mischief might arise from the attendance of a groom that could result from his absence. And the girls cared for no company in their rise till William Dalzel had offered his escort and made himself so agreeable. Miss Maxwell and the Critchkins had failed to make either Jane or Elsie take an interest in a theological dispute on a point of doctrine between some neighboring ministers, which was agitating Elswitton at the time. And when, at last, Jane was forced to give an opinion on one side or the other, she gave it quiet on the contrary side from the right one, so that they were sure the girls were quite as bad as their uncle. Both girls had been educated to express themselves very clearly and decidedly, whereas, as Amelia Shalmer says, whenever a young lady gives an opinion, it should always be delivered so to voce. That is, under the powers of the performer's voice to borrow an image from her musical vocabulary. Even if she does know a thing very well, she should keep her knowledge in the background. There is a graceful timidity that is far more attractive than such unlady-like confidence. Depend upon it, gentlemen do not like it, Miss Jardine would say. If Jane Melville were not an heiress, do you think William Dalzel would submit to her heirs? I know him better than that. But, yet, when the girls were shown to be no heiresses, everyone was very sorry for them. If a subscription had been got up to assist them in their difficulties, there was no one who would not have given something. Even the Mrs. Critcheton and Miss Maxwell would have subscribed as much as they did to the foreign missions, and that was no inconsiderable sum. And if Jane and Elsie had thrown themselves on the compassion of the neighborhood, there were many who would have offered them a temporary home. But they preserved their independent spirit, even though they were not heiresses and could not sue and form a paparice. It was the subject of much conversation that the Mrs. Melville had preferred to go with Peggy Walker, the laundress, to some poor place in the old town of Edenburg, to making any application for assistance to people of their own sphere. What they could do under Peggy's auspices was not likely to be of a very brilliant description. It is not to be supposed that Peggy Walker was not as good a judge of orthodoxy as the Mrs. Critcheton and Miss Maxwell, but she had not so great a horror of the family at Cross Hall as they had. She had been for several years out of her own parish and country and had learned some toleration. As she said, the old lad was a just man and a kind one, and until he made his will she had no thought to find with him. And as for the young ladies, they were just the cleverest and the tenderest hearted to the poor of all the gentry in the countryside. Many a tale of distress had Peggy told them and had never failed to find the girls open their purses or go to see the poor people. They had a liberal allowance and had no extravagant tastes and dress, but their charities had been so extensive that at the time of their uncle's death there was no great balance in either girl's hands. They knew that Peggy was no nigerly woman, but a most liberal one according to her means and her opportunities, that she gave personal services out of a very busy life and money too out of an income that had many claims on it. The house servants and the laborers in Mr. Hogarth's immediate employment were very sad at parting with the young ladies who had always been so kind and so considerate. If the neighbors had thought the girls proud, none of the servants did. If Francis had not tried hard to please them all and to make them feel that he regarded them for the sake of those who had been before him, it would not have been likely that he would have gained their good opinion, but he succeeded in doing so. Peggy Walker thought she had got into a very snug and comfortable dwelling in a flat and street. When she gave what she considered the most cheerful looking apartment to the young ladies as their sleeping room, she certainly did all she could for their accommodation. The old man, Thomas Lowry, was particularly pleased with the lookout to the street. He could sit in his own chair and see all the bustle of life going on below and made little complaint of the noise at first. The five children thought there was nothing so charming as running up and down the common stair and were quite proud of their elevated position in the world. But the Mrs. Melville could not but feel an immense difference between their own ideas of comfort and those of the humble family with whom they lived. The floors were clean and the stairs too, after fashion. But the course, dark colored boards could not be made to look white. The walls, which Peggy's own hands had sized of a dark brown color, looked rough and cracked and gloomy. They were aware that their scanty means did not allow them to indulge in any separate meals or attendance and Jane and Elsie began as they meant to go on and shared the homely meals in the homely home. They had never thought that they had any luxurious taste but the very plain fare and the in elegant service seemed to take away even the natural healthy appetite of youth. The noise of the children and the quarrelous voice of the grandfather was Peggy's sharp decisive remarks were all different from the respectful silence with which they had been attended at Cross Hall. Peggy was anxious to make the girls as happy as she could and feared that they must feel this a down come but her hands were full of work and her head of cares. She had made her venture in the world too and was so many dependent on her it was a considerable risk. They could not help admiring the wonderful patience which she had with the old man who was not her own father but merely the father-in-law of her dead sister. She allowed him a weakly modicum of snuff and was particular that Tom or one of the other should read the Bible or the news to him in a clear distant voice that the old man might be able to hear all of it. In all little things she gave way to him but in all great and grave matters she judged and acted for herself whatever grumbling might follow. Over the children she kept a very careful watch and even when she was absent on necessary business her influence was felt in the household. After the first day was over and the girls had gone to their own room for the evening Elsie broke out with. Jane this is dreadful how different from what I imagined poor people's lives to be. Nothing beautiful or graceful about it. Poets and novelists write such fine things about poverty and honest toil and throw a halo of romance about them. Yet Peggy is above the average far above the average said Jane thoughtfully these children are better taught and better mannered than three-fourths of the peasantry in Scotland. But yet it is a great change to us a very great change. I am sure they might be a great deal better than they are. Oh Jane I really can't eat nothing served up as it is done here and that grumbling old man's Kilman arc night cap and his snuff are enough to disgust one. Even at tea did you notice Peggy stirring the tea cut was such bigger and balancing her saucer in the palm of her hand? I never fancied there was so much in little things said Jane but we must get over our fastidiousness we must indeed it is a pity we were wrought up so softly and delicately though we thought we were so remarkably hardened by our uncle's training. I cannot even write tonight said Elsie everything looks so sore and miserable and the town here is so dirty and mean. We must walk out tomorrow a good long way you know what beautiful walks we used to have all around Edenburg we must breathe fresh air and political inspiration. I wish I could write said Elsie turning over her sheets of manuscript I have been able to write a little every day since I began no matter how grieved or anxious I have been. Who is it says that genius is nothing but industry and I have been so industrious. I must try to write tonight we are settled as far as we can expect to be settled for some time and I ought to begin as I mean to go on. No my dear you feel disappointed and disenchanted tonight do not think of writing your work ought to be done at your best moments tomorrow is a new day and I believe it will be a fine one sleep till tomorrow but I cannot sleep either rest then as I mean to do a little tap at the door announced Peggy is there anything I can do for you young ladies nothing thank you Peggy but come in said Jane she entered and found Elsie hurriedly gathering together her manuscript with a heightened color and some agitation love letters were the only conceivable cause of a girl's blushing over anything she had been writing to Peggy's unsophisticated mind I should not interrupt you Miss Elsie I did not know you had letters to write it is not letters said Jane she is writing a book a book well that is not much in my line but no doubt books are things that are wanted in the world or there would not be such printing houses and grand shops for making and selling them and you are expecting to get a prize for that Miss Elsie I hope so well it is more genteel work than what I have been used to but the pen was always a weariness to me I thought shame of myself when I was in Australia that I could write nothing to the big creatures that I was spending my life for but just that I was will and hoped that they were the same and bidding them be good barons and obedient and dutiful to their grandfather and grandmother and that they should mind what the master said to them at school and then I would send kind regards to two or three folk in the countryside and signed myself their affection and aunt Margaret Walker but dear me I should have said fifty things for buy that senseless stuff I am thinking Miss Jane and Miss Elsie that if they had been your nephews and nieces and you had been parted from them by all these thousands of miles of land and water that your letters would have been twice as often and ten times as long full of good advice and loving words I have heard Bonnie letters read to me I marveled greatly at them everything so smooth and so distinct just as if the two were not far apart but had come together for an hour or so and the one just spoke by word of mouth all that the other wanted most to hear I would like the bands learned to write well and fast for when the pen is slow the heart cannot find utterance I have heard worse letters even than my own full of repetitions and stupid messages and nothing said of what the body that got the letters wanted most to hear there is a very great odds in letters Miss Melville and mine were so useless and so bare that I thought it better to sacrifice a good deal of money and come home to attend to the bands myself and to counsel them by word of mouth Peggy you have had adventures said Jane I wish you could tell my sister and me all that happened to you when you were in Australia your life may be useful to us in many ways not to put into a book I hope said Peggy suspiciously I have no will to be put into a book no fear of that said Elsie it's poetry you're writing like Robbie Burns is I can see the lines are different lengths I'm thinking you'll have no call to make any poetry on me so I may tell you my story it may make you think on somebody or something out of your own troubles it was a great wonder to the Swinton people that you returned a single woman said Jane they say Australia is the country to be married in I might have been made over and over again up in the country and in Melbourne too said Peggy but you see I had the thought of the barons on my head and I did not feel free to change my condition some of them said if I like it them well enough I could trust that they're doing better for the young folk than I could myself but I never let myself like them well enough to trust them so far though one or two of them were very likely men and spoke very fair perhaps when you return to Australia you may make it up with one of them yet said Elsie who in spite of her depression felt some curiosity as to Peggy's love passages the best of them married before I left Melbourne like a sensible man who knew better than to wait on my convenience I see Miss Elsie you are wondering that the like of me that never was what you would call well-favored should speak of offers and sweethearts and such like but in Australia it's the busy hand and careful eye that is the great attraction for a working man I never had much daffing or nonsense about me and did not like any of it in other folk but I had lots of sweethearts but I'll tell you the whole story as neither of you look the least sleepy and if I am hour long about it you may just tell me so and I'll finish it up the morn's night so Peggy sat down to tell her tale while Elsie crapped down on a little footstool and laid her head in her sister's lap glad to receive the fondling which Jane instinctively bestowed on her dependent and affectionate sister End of Chapter 7 Recorded by Amanda Heinemann Glen, Mississippi Chapter 8 of Mr. Hogarth Swill This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Amanda Heinemann Mr. Hogarth Swill by Katherine Helen Spence Chapter 8 Peggy Walker's Adventures You see, Miss Jean and Miss Elsie that my sister Bessie and me were always very much taken up with one another she was a good bit older than me and as my mother died when I was six years old she was like a mother to me I'll no say that she clapped and petted me as you are doing to your sister Miss Jean nor that she had the gentle ways of speaking that gentle folks have but therely to use the words of scripture our souls were knit together in love and we thought nothing too great to do or to bear for one another Bessie was far bonnier than me but scarcely so stout and Willie Lowry that had been at the school with her and a neighbor's son courted her when they came to man's and woman's estate for a long time My father was a codder on sending no farm a worthy god-fearing man but so distressed with the romantics that came upon him long before he was an old man and often laid him off work His sons went about their own business and he used to say that though they might help him in the way of money nows and thens it was from his two lasses that he had the most comfort Bessie waited till I was grown up and at service in a good place where I pleased the mistress before she married Willie My father went home with her and lived but three years afterwards saying always that Bessie and Willie were good barons to him and his gray hairs went down to the grave in peace But way sakes barons came to Bessie thick and fast and Willie took a bad cough and fell into a decline He just wasted away and died one cold winter day leaving her with four young things and another coming Bessie did not fold her hands in idle lamentation when the desire of her eyes was removed with a stroke No, she went to the at work and wrought double hard our hard poor thing for after little Willie was born she never looked up and then and there I vowed to God and to her that I would do a mother's part by her orphans as long as life was that's saved for me Willie's father and mother had left Sandy no and gone to a place about 40 miles off They were living poorly enough but they came to me in my desolation and offered to take the barons if we that is my brothers and me would help Wiles with money to get them through But you see James and Sandy were married men with families of their own and Robert and Daniel were like to be married soon and it was born on my mind that I was to be the chief person to be depended on I went home to my place at Greenwell's it was a big farmhouse and I was kitchen maid and had the milking of the kai and the making of the butter and cheese to do and such like and Mistress Henderson said that I was a faithful industrious lass but dear me what was seven pounds by the year to maintain the barons I thought over it and over it on the Sabbath night after I came home I tried to read the 14th of John's Gospel but my heart would be troubled and afraid in spite of those bonny consoling words I knew the old people the louries were not the best hands for bringing up the barons for they were so poor I had no money not a penny for you may guess that in my sister's straits I kept none in the shuttle of my chest and no way of keeping a house over their heads by myself could I see Mistress Henderson came into the kitchen with Miss Thompson you know Miss Thompson of Allendale she was on a visit to the mistress they are connections you know well Peggy said Mistress Henderson I see you are just fretting as usual I'm no fretting ma'am I'm praying said I the best thing you can do said Miss Thompson of course it is said Mistress Henderson provided it does not hinder work and Peggy is neglecting nothing I wish ma'am that you would let me take the housemaids place as well as my own I can do more work if you would raise my wages nonsense Peggy said the mistress you are busy from morning till night you cannot possibly do more than you are doing now you cannot be in two places at once no ma'am but I could take less sleep I am stronger than ever I was and I have so many to work for the barons maid and me could manage all the housework Mistress Henderson shook her head and said it was not to be thought of but she did not mind raising my wages to eight pounds by the year for I was a good servant and with that I had to be content at least I tried next day a fat turkey had to be killed and plucked and I had an old newspaper to burn for cinching the feathers I could not but look at the newspaper when I had it in my hand and the first thing that struck my eye was that domestic servants especially if they were skillful about a dairy might get a free passage to Melbourne by applying to such a person at such a place and that their wages when they got out to Australia would be from 16 to 25 pounds by the year it was born on my mind that I should go to Australia from the moment I cast eyes on that paragraph in the paper I did not just believe everything that was in print especially in the newspapers even in those days for I knew the real size of the big turnip that was grown in Mr. Henderson's field and it was not much more than half what the courier had it down for but I felt convinced that I should inquire about this matter of free passage to Australia it was a providence that Ms. Thompson was stopping in the house at the time for she was a woman of my ordinary discretion and great kindness so I opened my mind to her and she said I was right and gave me a letter to the agent who was a far away cousin of her own and three pounds in money for buy to buy fitting things for the voyage and she told me how I was to send money home for the youngsters and wrote a line to a friend of hers that lived close to the Lowries asking her to look wiles to see that the barons were well and thriving it is not often that I greet Ms. Jean but Ms. Thompson twice brought the tears to my eyes first with her kindness when I left Scotland and again with her kindness when I came back and brought her know the silver I would not shame her with giving back what had really been life and hope to myself and five orphan barons but some curious birds that I had got up the country that she sets great store buying I told her how I had got on and what had induced me to come back I told her that I never could pay back my debt to her and would not try to do it but that if we prospered there had been much of it her doing and she said she admired nothing so much as my resolution and courage and going to Australia until she admired still more my resolution and self denial and coming back I do not think much of flattering Ms. Celci they say it is very sweet to be young and the Bonnie but these words of praise from a good woman like Ms. Thompson made my heart swell and my eyes overflow you have been at Allendale Ms. Jean you must have seen the birds in the lobby Jane had been too engrossed in her own affairs during her only visit to Ms. Thompson to observe Peggy's birds but she drew a good omen from the coincidence of Ms. Thompson's assistance being given so frankly to two women both in distress and in doubt how did you like the voyage Peggy asked Jane it is queer how that voyage has faded out of my mind and yet it was a long one over five months they know the road better now and do it quicker I was not more than four months coming back in a bigger ship I mind we had a storm and all the women on board were awful feared and a boy was washed over board and there was some ill blood between the captain and the doctor but all that I could think on was to get to the end of the voyage and to make money to send home to the bands well to Melbourne we got it last and a shabby place I thought it looked but the worst of all was that such wages as had been spoken of in the papers were not to be had at all for if ever the folk there are in great want for anything there seems to be abundance of it before it can be sent out so I could not get the offer of more than 13 pounds and I mourned over the distance and the five months lost on the passage was such small advantage at the end of it I said I wanted a hard place I had no objections to go to the bush I dreaded neither natives nor snakes nor bush rangers but I behoved to make good wages I was explaining this at the agency labour office when a gentleman came in an Englishman I knew him to be by his tongue and he said like all newcomers this young woman is greedy of filthy lucre I have come here to better my condition said I and so you will in time said the gentleman but you must not expect a fortune all at once you and want of a servant sir said I very much but I don't know that you will suit me I'm thinking said I that if the mistress were to see me she would be of a different opinion sir very likely she would I dare say Mistress Brandon would highly approve of you perhaps after all you will do what are you plain cook laundress and dare you made said I age Mistress Brandon would like to know 25 I have got five years character from one place and three from another and a testimonial from the minister I may look rough was just being off the see sir but I think the mistress will find out that I am fit for any kind of work I am not afraid of work or distance or solitude or anything you are a Trump said he a regular brick but confess that you are greedy if I say 30 pounds a year you will go more than 100 miles of the country that was a great distance from town in those days Miss Jean though they think nothing of it now all my fellow passengers objected to such distances but I had no objection yes sir said I cheerfully I will go and be much beholden to you for the offer and start tomorrow wages to commence then said he the sooner the better said I only if I want to send Siller to my friends I may not be able to do it from such a wild place I will manage all that for you said the gentleman I am accustomed to do it for one of my shepherds but recollect he will have to do a great deal of work for your high wages the cows are wild and must be veiled up and foot roped you may get an ugly kick or butt as if I had never seen highland kylo's I am not at all feared Providence will protect me on land as it has protected me by water after five months of the sea with only a plank between me and eternity you cannot terrify me with Kai we have few conveniences for saving labor but I see I need not explain anything to you you think of nothing but you're 30 pounds a year so Mr. What's your name draw up the agreement for a year the agreement was drawn out and signed Walter Brandon and Margaret Walker and the next day I was on the road if road you could call it for the like of it you never saw sometimes rough and tangled sometimes soft and slumpy sometimes scrubby and stony I marveled often that they kept in the tracks I wrought on the top of a drae through the day and slept under it at night there were four men with us two of them were inclined to be rough but I soon let them see that they would need to keep a civil tongue in their heads to deal with me we were nigh a fortnight on the road but somehow I did not weary of that as I did of the voyage for my wages were going on and something making for the barons of that journey End of Chapter 8 Recorded by Amanda Hindman Glenn Mississippi Chapter 9 of Mr. Hogarth's Will This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Amanda Hindman Mr. Hogarth's Will by Catherine Hillen Spence Chapter 9 Peggy Walker's Adventures It was near dark on a Saturday when we got to Barragong which was the name of Mr. Brandon's station The master had got home long before us for he had gone on his horse Well Peggy said he as I got off the drae how do you like bush traveling slow but sure is it not Uncommonly slow said I Why you have got worse burnt on the top of the drae than even on shipboard spoiled your beauty Peggy My beauty is of no manner of consequence said I It has not broke my work arm and that is more to the purpose Will you please sir to ask the mistress to show me the kitchen You ask to see what is not to be seen said the master There is no kitchen to speak of and as for the mistress it is a pure invention of your own No mistress I gasped out You spoke of Mistress Brandon It was you that spoke of her Peggy and as I hope in time to have such a person on the premises I made bold to say that you would suit her and in the meantime I dare say we will get on very well You will be really the mistress here for there is not another woman within 20 miles I started back fairly cowed at the thought of being in that wild place alone among I knew not how many men of all sorts of characters It was not fair of you sir I said I never thought but what you were made when you took me up so natural But really Peggy you are the very person we want here and I can make it worth your while to stay You want good wages and you will get them You are not a child and you can take care of yourself It is hard because I am so unlucky as to have no wife I am to have neither cleanliness nor comfort Make the best of a bad bargain Peggy I confess that your eagerness after good wages led me too far but I felt the temptation strong Try the place for a week and if you do not like it you can go back Mr. Phillips's strays are going into town and if you cannot make up your mind to be contented here you can return to Melbourne with them I took the measure of Mr. Brandon that week and I came to the determination that I ought to stay To be sure it was wrong of him to fetch me out on false pretenses as it were but I had walked into the trap myself and as he said he was in great need of a servant He might be weak but he was not wicked at least I felt that I could hold my own It was a rough place for a gentleman to live in Am I wearying you young ladies? I could leave off now and go on the morn's night I am interested very much in your story said Elsie and so am I said Jane I know not where fortune or rather as you more properly call it Providence may send us and your experience has a peculiar fascination to me Do pray, go on Well as I was saying it was a rough place and he was a gentleman in his upbringing and in many of his ways You would not have believed if you had seen him in Melbourne and heard him speak such English that he could go about in an old ragged dirty shooting coat with a cabbage tree hat as black as a coal nearly that he could live in a slab hut with a clay or rather a dirt floor and a window bowl with no glass in it and that he could have all the cooking and half the work of the house done at the fire site he sat at and sit down at a table without a tablecloth and drink tea out of ten pentakins The notion of getting such wages in a place with such surroundings quite dumbfounded me and he had the things too for by and by I found a neighboring china in a big chest that I used for a table out of doors and bit by bit I made great improvements at Barragong He gave me one of the huts for myself and I was a thought frightened to sleep there my laffo lane at first but I put my trust in my maker and he watched over me I cooked in my own hut and settled up the masters he began to think that a boarded floor would be an improvement and he got them in to solve them up hard work it was for them and ill colored boards they made but when they were laid down and a glass window put in the masters hut looked more purpose like I was not feared for the wild kai when I saw that the stockkeeper would help me to get them into the bale and when we got a milkhouse dug out of the hillside I made grand butter I'll not soon forget the day I had my first kerning the stockkeeper George Powell was his name had got into the dairy as I thought to lick the cream for he was an awful hand on it but he kept hanging about and glowering at the milk pans and then looking at me till at last he said some nonsense and I told him to be off with his daffing I would tell the master if he said an uncivil word I don't mean to be uncivil Peggy quite the contrary says he then what do you mean says I taking his hand off my shoulder and driving it bang against the stone slab we put the milk pans on I mean Peggy will you marry me says he that's civil enough surely no I won't says I thank you for the compliment all the same but I have no wish to change my condition tell that to the marines says he if you don't like me tell me so but none of that nonsense I like you well enough but what I say is no nonsense I do not wish to change my condition it would be a good change for you says he I wonder you are not fighting to stay here a single woman now if you were my wife I could protect you and he flourished the arm I had given the bang to and a goodly arm it was I told him about the bands and he just laughed at me we'll see says he we'll see wait a little well every cunning that he was not out at a distance on the master's business did that man Powell come into the dairy and ask me the same question and get the same answer and three of the shepherds and a little Impavalati that looked after the horses made up to me too and seemed to think it was not fair that I would choose none of them any woman with a white face might have had as many sweethearts but I think it was my managing ways that took Powell's fancy if a fairy could only move a lot of the women from the places where they are not wanted and put them where they are there would be a wonderful thinning taking out of Scotland and planted in Australia but you see there are no fairies and at such a distance it cost a lot of money to move such commodities as single women I have puzzled my brains wiles about the matter Ms. Jane and many a time I have repented coming back to a place where hands are many and meat is scarce but it will not be for long and in the meantime I try to help all the distressed bodies that I know about and that I have kept my five bearings from being a burden to anybody is enough work for any woman either here or in Australia I'm going off my story but the marvel to me that I was so beset with sweethearts that did not want them while so many lassies here never can see the side of one always makes me think that there should be a medium and that lassies should neither be our much made of or neglected altogether but to go back to the bush I had to rule with a high hand at Marigong and really to demean myself as if I were the mistress to keep folk in their place but the worst was to come the master had not been well for a week or so and I had taken a special care of him and got him gruel and such like that he seemed very glad of and he was getting better and was sitting by the fire while I was sitting down the supper when he said no I cannot tell you what he said no he was not well and maybe did not know exactly what he was about I cannot tell his words though they are burned into my memory as clear and distinct as though I had heard them but yesterday but they were most unbefitting words for him to say or for me to hear I stood still for a whole minute or more and looked him in the face he did not like the fixed steady way I kept my eyes on him say such a thing again if you dare said I you had no such thought in your head or your heart when you brought me out to Marigong I knew that by your eyes you must treat me respectfully if you mean to call yourself a gentleman don't be so very hot Peggy you have made a fellow so comfortable that he may be excused for thinking more of you than he used to do says he think more of me says I you think less of me or you would not dare what was I to fancy says he when you refuse Powell so pertinaciously but that you are looking higher Mr. Brandon says I George Powell is high enough for me for he would make me his wife and if I was free to marry I would look for no higher match but to think that what you offer is higher may God forgive you for the thought why Peggy perhaps I may offer higher yet you are a good and a clever girl and will make an admirable wife not to you sir nor to anyone out of my own station do not think of making a fool of yourself just because there is nobody here to compare with homely Peggy Walker he looked at me more particularly than he ever had done before I leaned my hands on the table and squared my elbows and spread my great brown hand and red arms before him he laughed and said Peggy you are right you are a worthy girl and a clever and in the sight of God are worth 10 of me but when I think of taking you home and presenting you to my mother and sisters as Mistress Brandon it is rather comical as for anything else you are too good a girl and I will say no more about it only I wish you would marry Powell and be done with it well Miss Jean this was the beginning and the end of it with the master but I think that man Powell was my greatest temptation especially after Mr. Brandon's words he really was a protection to me for he was always civil and respectful in his language to me and there was not one of the men who dared say the thing that would anger him but it fell out that I was removed from Barogong before I had given in to Powell though I'm not saying what might have happened if I had stopped there for six months longer the master had a friend a Mr. Phillips who lived 20 miles off who had more stock and more men on his station than we had at Barogong a nice quiet gentlemanly man who had done as silly a thing as Mr. Brandon had half even himself to he had married out of his degree though he had more temptation to it than the other for the last he was very bonny and very young and I dare say he thought he could learn her the ways of gentle folks be that as it may the lady Mistress Phillips was expecting her in line and her husband had twisted a skilled nurse from Melbourne for a doctor could not be had but when the appointed time came the nurse had made some other engagement and could not or would not come nor did she send a fit person in her place there was not time to get anyone from Melbourne and Mr. Phillips came to Barogong and entreated me to come to his wife and Mr. Brandon to spare me I said I had but little skill but that I would do the best I could look for the poor lady in her straits and the master said he would let me go with pleasure if I would only promise to come back when Mistress Phillips was well and about again I thought I had been rather deceived in this instance too for I fancied there was no woman about the place but the Mistress herself but I saw a well-grown strapping lass in the kitchen and I thought she might have answered as well as me but I soon found out that though the woman Martha they called her had legs and arms and a goodly body of her own she had no more head than a baron and would have been a broken reed to trust whom in any time apparel or difficulty it did not seem to me at first that Mistress Phillips was so unlike a lady for she had an English tongue and she was very well favored and sat quiet in her seat and ordered folk about quite natural she had been made now well on for a year and had got used to be the Mistress but I had not been long there ere I found out her faults and failings and to my mind her husband had but a poor life with her though he did seem to be very fond of the young creature with all her deficiencies you see she had not an atom of consideration either for him or for any other body on the station she was either too familiar or too haughty to the girl Martha as for me I knew my place better and if she did not keep me at my distance I could mostly keep her at hers not many days after I went to the philipsis she was taken ill and safely delivered of a fine lassie I have seen women make a great fuss about barons till I cannot be surprised at anything they say or do but the joy of the father over the wee Emily was beyond anything I ever saw to see the great bearded man taking the our old infant in his arms kissing it over and over again and speaking to it in the most daft like language and calling on everyone to admire its beauty no doubt the Baron had as much beauty as a thing of that age can have but I don't think any of the men he showed it to admired it much I know Powell for one when he came with his master's compliments to inquire for Mistress Phillips and maybe to have a crack with myself was not much taken up with the brat as he called it I had it in my arms and it was greeting poor thing so I had no time to give Powell a word except just the message for Mr. Brandon Mistress Phillips was by no means an easy lady to nurse I knew well how strict old to be Campbell who used to nurse Mistress Henderson used to be about what a lying in woman should have to eat and drink and what care she took that she could catch no cold and I thought I be hoped to be as particular with Mistress Phillips but she would not hear reason she said that such a climate as Scotland should be no rule for treatment in Australia and she thought she should know her own constitution best and what was likely to agree with her so she would take no telling from me as for Mr. Phillips he would always give her what she wanted if she teased for it long enough or if she began to greet so she carried her point in spite of my teeth and poor thing she suffered for it for she first took the cold and then the fever she was out of her senses for five weeks and barely escaped with her life it was a weary nursing Mr. Phillips was wonderful in a sick room and relieved me greatly but I had such an anxious life with the Baron as well as the mother he used to beg me with tears in his eyes to save the bitlassy if it was in my power and the man's life seemed hang on the little ones his eye was as sharp as a mother's sharper than most mother's to notice if Emily looked worse or better it was a novelty to me to see such care and thought in a man not but what it is well a father's part to care for his own offspring and to take trouble and fatigue for them Mr. Brandon all the time that the mistress was lying between life and death was wondrous patient and never made a complaint for the want of me though I am sure things were at sixes and sevens at Varigong but when mistress Phillips had got the turn and was able to move about again he sent me a message to come back well I had promised no doubt and I had a far easier life at Mr. Brandon's than where I was and nothing had ever been said about wages by Mr. Phillips to me but then the poor lassie it seemed as much as her life was worth to leave her to her mother and the last Martha for they had not the sense of an ordinary woman between them and my heart clung to the bit barren with great affection one day Powell came over with the spring cart to fetch me home and I was in a swither what to do for you don't just like to press services on folk that do not want them but by that time Mr. Phillips had got to know the necessity of the case and it was only because he wanted the offer to come from his wife that he had not asked me before but she was unreasonable and he had to do it himself she did not see why she and Martha could not manage the baby she was sure Peggy was no such marvel that there was no difficulty in feeding the child that it was cruel to put a strange woman over to give her orders for Peggy was far too independent for her place and then Emily would love her nurse better than her own mother I know that was the way she went on to Mr. Phillips but on this point he was unmovable when he asked me as a great favor to stay I consented for the sake of him and of Emily Powell was very angry at me for stopping and took quite a spite to the little lassie that caused my stay the way he spoke of that barren decided me if he could not be fast with one how could he be fast with five I was determined on one thing that I should not have a house of my own unless there was room in it and a welcome in it for Bessie's orphans so it was settled in my mind that day that I never could be Mistress Powell I stopped at the Philipses for more than 18 months the mistress got used to me and the barren Emily was as fond of me as barren could be I had more freedom from sweethearts there at first for the men were greatly taken up with Martha but by the time I had been three months there I had nigh hand as many followers as she called them as she had herself and followers she might well call them I could not go out with the barren for a walk or out to the kai or turn my head any way without one or other of them being at my heels and when Martha got made to one of the men on the place which happened ere long I seemed to have the whole station bothering me but I would have nothing to do with any of them Mistress Phillips gave more credit than any of the folk I had ever seen to my yearnings after Bessie's orphans and my resolutions to live single for their sake but he never could see that they would be such a drawback to any decent man that liked me but I knew there were few men so taken up with barrens as he was well as I said Mistress Phillips finding I did my work well and quietly gave over interfering with me and seemed to get to like me but when her time was drawing near again she was not disposed to trust herself to my care altogether nor indeed was I very keen of the responsibility she wanted to go to Melbourne but the master would not hear of it and not all her fleeting nor her tears nor three day sulks in which she would not open her mouth to him would make him give in to that he seemed to have the greatest dread of parting with her particularly to go to Melbourne and it was a busy time of the year so that he could not stay with her there but he said he would go and fetch a doctor if one was to be had and keep him in the house till he was needed and for as long as she was in any peril and with that she behoved to be contented he was as good as his word for he fetched one from the town I did not much like the looks of the man but I said nothing and the Mistress seemed to be quite satisfied but Mistress Phillips took me by myself and says he to me I believe this man is skillful enough and clever enough but he has one fault we must keep drink from him and him from drink or we cannot answer for the consequences but for this fault he would have had too good a practice in Melbourne for us to be able to have him for weeks here there is no place near where he can get drink so I think we can easily manage to keep him all right we need not tell Mistress Phillips Peggy well I kept watch over this Dr. Carter very well for a fortnight or more and he seemed to go on all right but after that time he got very restless and I used to hear him walking about at night as if he could not sleep and through the day he could not settle to his book as he used to do at first or go to take a quiet walk or ride not over far from the house but took little starts and turned back as if something was on his mind I mist doubted him but with all my watching I could see nothing as ill luck would have it the night the Mistress was taken ill and I went to call him up there I found this man Carter as drunk as he could be to be able to stand with an empty brandy bottle beside him that he had knocked the head off the keys were in my pocket and not a bottle missing out of the press there never was much kept in the house for Mr. Phillips was the most moderate man and tea is the great drink in the bush but in case of sickness we I had some brandy by us but the poor deluded man had got one of the men about the place to ride 40 miles to get him this brandy that had just come at the time when he was especially needed to be sober I told him the lady was wanting him and Mr. Phillips and me shook him up and he half came to himself and if the Mistress had not smelled the drink so strong upon him she might not have known she had another fine lassy and all was going on very well for the Mistress was more reasonable she had bought her experience very dear at the time before and would take a telling when the doctor had got over his drinking fit he was very penitent and spoke quite feelingly on the subject Mr. Phillips turned off the man that had fetched him the brandy and told all the men on the station the reason why the man Carter did not want for skill nor for kindness either when he was sober so as we were more fearful for the fortnight after than the fortnight before the birth we just kept him on little Harriet was a fortnight old and the Mistress was doing so nicely that Mr. Phillips thought he might leave us for one of his outstations where he was wanted and said he would not be home for two or three days and then the poor demented creature of a drunken doctor contrived again to get hold of drink and was far more outrageous this time Mistress Phillips was lying on the sofa in the parlor when he came in and terrified her by roaring for more brandy and when I came in to settle him he gripped me by the arm and threatened me with I don't know what if I refused him the Mistress entreated me to turn him out of doors and so I did he got on a horse of the Masters I marveled how he kept his seat and set off and I felt easy in my mind but I had just got the Mistress quieted down when the native boy Jim that was always doing odd jobs about the place came running past the window with such a look of terror on his face that I saw something was wrong I ran out quick but quietly to ask what was the matter fire Peggy says he and then sure enough I looked out and the grass was on fire but very far off and a strong wind blowing it right to the slab huts on the head station with their thatched roofs nothing could save us if it came near and as I have told you it was a busy time and the men were all hither and thither and nobody left on the place but Martha and Jim and myself and the Mistress ill and the two infants as I may say for Emily was not 13 months old the only thing that could be done was to burn a broad ring around the houses as I had seen done at Barragong but that craved wary watching by good luck the bands were both sleeping and Mistress Phillips resting quiet so I called Martha and Jim and said we must take wet bags and green bows and beat the fire out as we burned Jim was as quick and clever as need be and set about in earnest but Martha said she could do nothing for terror and prayed me to remember her situation your situation says I will be far worse if you don't bestear yourself for your own safety if you won't lend a hand for the sake of your poor helpless Mistress and the innocent barons you behoved to do it for the sake of your own four quarters so she got more reasonable and helped us somewhat but it was close work for the fire was near it was all that poor wretch of a doctor's doing too for he had been trying to smoke and had dropped his lighted pipe in the dry withered grass and it blazed up like wild he got out of it for he was traveling against the wind while we were in full waft of it I thought the wind and the fire would beat us and was like to throw up the work in despair when I saw a man on horseback galloping for dear life I thought it was the master at first but it was Mr. Brandon and he was nigh hand as good for he fell to and worked with all his might and with his help we saved the house and all the precious ones in it in time the men dropped in and they set about working to save the run but if the wind had not providentially changed at night they would scarcely have been able to save it as it was there was thousands of acres of land laid bare and a flock of sheep killed the poor beasts have not the sense to run away out of the fire oh the appearance of the place that night was awful to behold and just before the wind chopped round the master came home riding like fury we are all safe said I as I ran to meet him and I saw his face by the light of the blazing fires around us as pale as death Mistress Phillips and the barons are not a hair the worse thank God for all his mercies thank God said he thank God now they are preserved I can bear the loss of anything else he came to his wife and kissed her and the barons was solemn and as I thought with pathetic thankfulness I was afraid she would be sorely upset with the terrible events of the day and I never closed my eyes that night but sat up by her bedside lest she should take a bad turn but she did not seem any the worse of it and both her and the barons got on brawly the loss of the sheep was no such great matter in these times for there was so little market for them that we had to boil them down for the sake of the tallow that could be sent to England times were changed before I left the colony for the diggings made a great demand for sheep and cattle to kill but when I was up the country the wastery of flesh was sinful to behold I have many a day since he thought on the beast and the sheep that were slaughtered there for the working men and have the bits that they threw about or left on their plates might be a good dinner for many a hungry stomach in Scotland well when I had been more than a year and a half at Mr. Phillips's my wages just running on as they had done at Mr. Brandon's and five pounds sent every quarter as opportunity offered for the barons I heard word of a cousin of William Lowry's coming out to Melbourne to follow his trade of a stone mason there and I had a strong desire to see him to ask after my orphans for if my letters to them were but poor the letters I got back were no better so my heart was set on seeing Sandy Lowry who had lived close by and knew the barons well it chanced that Mr. Phillips had a man and his wife on the station at the time that had no family the man was nothing of a hand at work but the wife was one of those bright clever cheery little English women that can turn hand to anything and had such a fine temper nothing ever could put her out so as she could do for the mistress as well as myself I asked Lee from the master and Mistress Phillips to go to the town and see Sandy the mistress was fascist for she did not like anybody about her to please themselves and she had got used to me as I said before but the master was as reasonable as she was the contrary he said to me the day before I left Peggy I owe you a great debt you have saved the life of my wife and children under providence sir said I under providence of course said he but I fear providence would have done little for them if Martha had been the only instrument providence had at hand to use so I am overhead in ears in debt to you no Mr. Phillips said I my work you have paid me well for my kindness you have returned with kindness and consideration such as I never hope to meet with in a strange land if I have nursed and cared for your children you have comprehended my love for my own poor parents and this permission to visit Melbourne that I may hear about them is a great favor and one I will never forget to be grateful for you are not to let me off in this way said he you will find a hundred pounds lying in the bank to your credit which as you are a prudent woman you may be trusted to invest yourself in any way that you may judge best for yourself or the orphans my idea is that you may take a little shop and this sum would stock it I could assist you with my name further than the sum of money I have given to you if it is necessary it flashed on my mind that this was a grand opening but it seemed so selfish and greedy like to take advantage of his kindness and to leave him and Mrs. Phillips and the Bairns to further my own plans I said as much to him but he would not hear of a refusal you never can manage to do much for the children at service for all your wages except your unnecessary expenses goes home and is spent but by having a little business you may save more than you could send to them now and get them a better education and give them a better start no doubt we will miss you here but Mistress Bennett is a very excellent person and now I hear that Dr. Grant is going to buy Mr. McDougal's station only 15 miles off we can get him to come on an emergency though he says he would rather not practice I will not say that we can do very easily without you but we must not keep you always here the kindness of Mr. Phillips I will never forget well it was done all as he planned it I went to Melbourne and saw Sandy Lowry and he gave me good accounts of the Bairns as growing in stature and Tam and Jamie keen of their learning but the old woman their grandmother he said was sore failed and no likely to be long spared I took a little shop at a low rent in a little village a bit out of the town for I was frightened to incur much risk and I set up on my own footing with M. Walker General Store over my door cheek I was doing a decent business in a small way among poor people mostly and I set my face very steady against giving credit for two reasons first that I was not clever enough to keep accounts and besides that it just does working folk harm to let them take on at a time of sickness I might break through my rule but at no other time all the folk about me called me Ms. Walker very much to my surprise and as I was thought to be making money I had no want of sweethearts after I had gone on for some years the diggings broke out and there was an awful overturn of everything in Melbourne I made a lot of money and bought the shop from the landlord and was very proud to get my title deed written out on parchment and to see myself a woman of landed heritable property and then I made my will too for I had something to leave I never was doing better in business in my life than when Robbie Lowry, a brother of Sandy's came out to go to the diggings and maybe with an eye to make up to myself but the news he brought me made me change all my plans and return to Scotland he told me that the grandmother was dead and that the old man who never had half the gumption of his wife was not able to control the five youngsters so that they were getting out their heads at no allowance Tam in particular he said was a most chemistry callant but the old man he said was fairly off all work and not one of his own parents were either able or willing to help him and I knew that he had an awful horror of the sea so I let my shop and sold the stock for time and indeed the payments have no been our regular and the man that took it is still in my debt I found the grandfather and the barons were really as Robbie had said and I have had my own work to set things to rights they were in debt too though I had sent them double the money after I had the shop them before but they just thought that a rich auntie in Australia was a mine of wealth and the folk very unwisely gave them trust whenever they asked it but they were doing very well at the school and I find it a handle cheaper to give them learning here than in Melbourne so it answers me better to buy it here than to take them out even if grandfather would agree he was good to me and mine in my straits and I cannot think to leave the old man now but what with the rent and the schooling and one thing and another I found that the rent of my bit shop would not pay all expenses so I took in washing and dressing for the folk about Swinton I was eye clever at it and I got a great inkling about clear starching and fine dressing from that measures been it at Mr. Phillip's station for she was a particular good laundress a body learns it all hands if one only has the will and you see now it seems better for Tam and the rest that I should try my luck in a bigger place and I hope I may not repent of it that's all my story it's no much tell but yet you see that none of my brothers have been burdened with my bairns I have done it all myself Jane sat silent a few moments after Peggy had finished her narrative and then thanked her gravely and earnestly for it LC2 had been much interested in the adventures of this clever upright woman and was only sorry it could not be available neither incident nor sentiment for her poetry now I have kept you up long enough young ladies if what I have said gives you any heart I will be glad I hope you will sleep well and have lucky dreams so good night End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 of Mr. Hogarth's Will This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Amanda Heineman Mr. Hogarth's Will by Katherine Helen Spence Chapter 10 LC's Literary Adventure and its Success LC Melville found the second day in Street better than the first An early walk with Jane restored her to her equilibrium and she sat down to ride in her own room with more rapidity than before while Jane went out and made inquiries at registry offices or anywhere else that was likely to lead to employment but day after day passed without success rather than do nothing she assisted Peggy in the lighter parts of her work made clothes for the children and helped them with their lessons in the evening Peggy was astonished at the progress which they all made with such assistance and particularly delighted with the great influence Jane had over Tom as she grew accustomed to the ways of the house she learned to endure the noise patiently and she found these five young glories really interesting and remarkably intelligent Tom especially was eager for knowledge and his trade which he entered into with all his heart was calling out all his abilities and all his ambition there were many things that he had difficulty in getting information about for he was but a young apprentice and the journeymen and older apprentices wanted him to wait on them rather than to learn the business but he was not to be kept back in that way he was determined to find things out for himself and in every difficulty he found help and sympathy from Jane Melville her out-of-the-way knowledge made her a most useful auxiliary and she rejoiced that there was one person in the world that she could assist with she did not forget Peggy's wish about the quick writing and taught those peasant children to express themselves fluently on paper their manners were improved under her influence and what was still uncouth or clumsy she learned to bear with another resource to lighten the weight of anxiety and disappointment was found in Peggy's extraordinary gift in finding out distressed people which even in her new residence did not desert her Jane who had been accustomed to put her hand in her purse for the benefit of Peggy's protégés felt at first very grieved that she had nothing to give but she learned that a great deal of good can be done with very little money and satisfied herself by giving sympathy personal services and advice it was astonishing what good advice she gave to other people for bettering their prospects while she seemed quite unable to do anything for herself but so long as Elsie was busy and hopeful with her poems Jane could not bear to leave her if they failed they must try what they could do separately in the meantime she was more disposed to try classes than anything else for her experience with the Lowries proved to her that she could teach clever children at any rate with success but as she could not get the promise of any pupils of the rank and circumstances that can make them pay she hesitated about incurring any risk Elsie had completed poems sufficient to fill a small volume before her sister had seen any opening for herself it was with some strong agitation on Jane's part and still stronger on Elsie's that they presented themselves to the publisher who had said he would give a good prize for a good book written by a woman and offered him the manuscript for publication alas tastes differ as to what is a good book and in nothing is there so much disparity of opinion as in the article of poetry he did not give much encouragement to the sisters but said he would read over the manuscript and give an answer in 10 days anyone who has ever written with the hope of publishing can fancy Elsie's feeling during these 10 days her own verses rang in her ears she recollected passages she might have altered and improved and wondered if they would strike the critic as faulty then again she recalled passages which she fancied could not be improved and hoped he would not skip them now she would sit idle on the thought that until she saw there was a market for her productions there was no necessity for multiplying them then again she would work with redoubled industry to see if she had not quite exhausted her fancy and her powers the final verdict was unfavorable there is some sweetness of versification and of expression in this maleville's poems but they are unequal and want force and interest they never would become popular so that i feel obliged to decline the publication poetry is at all times heavy stock unless by authors of established reputation Elsie sat sad and dispirited at this her first failure but her sister comforted her by saying that edenberg was not the best market for anything new london was the place where a new author had some chance Elsie easily caught at the hope and retouched some of her most imperfect pieces before sending them to a great london house to publisher after publisher the manuscript was sent and after due time occupied in reading it the parcel returned with the disappointing note mr b's compliments and he begs to decline with thanks miss maleville's poems as in the opinion of his literary advisor they could not answer the purpose of publication or measures hb and company's compliments and though they are over stocked with poetry they have read carefully miss maleville's poems but find them of the most unmarketable kind so beg to decline publication or misures s e and companies compliments and they regret that the subjective character of all miss maleville's poems will make them uninteresting to the general reader they therefore regret that they cannot bring them out when the notes were as brief as the foregoing samples the pain was not so severe as in the last which lc received in which a careful but most cutting criticism accompanied the refusal there is no doubt that lc's poems were crude but she had both fancy and feeling with more knowledge of life and more time she was capable of producing something really worth reading and publishing if there had been no talent in her verses she would not have had a reading from so many good publishing houses but she did not know enough of the trade to know this and her humiliation at her repeated disappointments was exceedingly bitter there is no species of composition that should be less hurried than poetry even if it is struck off in a moment of inspiration it should not be published then but laid aside for alteration and polishing after a considerable time has elapsed and much of our best poetry has been very slowly composed even at first our poor little lc had prepared by great industry her volume of poems in less than four months and had not taken time to reconsider them they were not narrative pieces in which the interest of the story carries you along in reading whether the diction is perfected or not but mostly short lyrical poems and contemplative pieces which are always much more effective when found amongst other descriptions of poetry or in the magazine than when collected together in a volume they were generally sad a common fault with poets but poor lc had more excuse for taking that tone than many others who have done so she had to mourn the loss of fortune and the coldness of friends the conduct of william dal zelta her sister had made a deeper impression on her mind than on that of jane she had more capacity of suffering than jane had and when she took the pen in her hand she felt that her life and all life was full of sorrow jane had induced lc to accompany her to the chapel where she herself had learned her first lessons of submission and the christian hope but even in religion lc inclined to the contemplative and the tender rather than to the active and the cheerful side of it she looked with far more intense longing to the heaven beyond the earth than jane did and had not the interest in the things about her to make the dreariness of her daily life and durable her poetry had been her one resource and that appeared to be very weak and contemptible in the opinion of those who ought to know whether the literary taster for the publisher last applied to was less engrossed with business than the others or whether he thought it would do the aspiring poet his good to show her her faults i cannot tell but he wrote a long letter of critical remarks there was one ballot an idealization of the incident in jane's life which had so much impressed lc in which william dowsell was made more fascinating and more faithless and jane much more attached to him than in reality which this correspondent said was good though the subject was hackneyed but on all the others the sweeping sky the censure fell unsparingly her poems he said were very tolerable and not to be endured mediocrity was insufferable in poetry the tone of them was unhealthy and would feed the sentimentalism of the age which was only another name for discontent if poetesses went on as they were doing nowadays and only extracted a whale from life the sooner they gave up their lays the better the public wanted healthy cheerful breezy poetry with a touch of humor here and there and a varied human interest running through it a fit companion to the spirited novels of charles kingsley then at the height of his fame if poets were to teach the world as they boasted that they were they should not shut themselves up and practice variations on the one poor tune i am miserable i am not appreciated the world is not worthy of me but go forth to the world and learn that there are nobler subjects for poetry than themselves then with regard to lc's diction and rhymes this critic selected a number of the most faulty and imperfect verses for censure and lc had the miserable satisfaction of having to acknowledge that they deserved it i have little doubt that the critic thought he was giving the poet is a good lesson but if he had seen the suffering that his letter caused and the youth and inexperience and the sad circumstances of the poor girl who received it he would have repented somewhat of his very clever and satirical letter heart sick and humbled lc lost hope and health and spirits she wrapped the rejected manuscript and brown paper and put it in the farthest corner of one of her drawers she was only prevented from committing it to the flames by jane's interference now said she i must be as busy as you pegie must teach me to iron surely i can learn to do that and let me make nancy's frog but after all jane this will not do for a continuance we must seek for employment somewhere i have spent a good deal of time over this useless work and postages have come heavy on our small means i must try to earn something the heavy tears fell fast on the frog as the girl worked at it the listless hands dropped their hold of it occasionally and she was lost in bitter thoughts she however finished it and then busied herself with a new bonnet for pegie which was to be made not at all fashionable but big and rather doubty lc's taste rebelled a little at the uncongenial task but she was doing her best to please pegie when the postman delivered two letters to jane one from francis and the other from mr's reanie francis's letters had been frequent and had been a little interesting even to lc and this one was more so than usual he was coming to edenberg for a week or two and meant to see them as much as possible during his stay he was to be at a party at the renees on new year's day and his cousins were to be invited also he trusted to meet them there the renees had occasionally called and shown the girls more kindness than any of their swinton friends or their other edenberg acquaintances they had spent a fortnight in autumn at cross hall and had enjoyed it very much the note from mr's renie contained an invitation for both sisters to this party and to girls who had been shut up so many months with no society but that of pegie and her relations the prospect of spending one evening among their equals in social position was very pleasant jane anticipated pleasure besides from seeing and talking with her cousin about everything and everybody in and about cross hall as well as about a tour on the continent which he had taken even lc's face brightened a little as she gave the last loving touches to her sister's dress and said that she had never seen her look better though she was a little thinner and paler than she used to be to lc's eyes she was quite as pretty end of chapter 10 recorded by amanda hindman in glenn mississippi