The emigrant's wife; or, One in ten thousand

Chapter I

Oh dear ! what consummate idiots very young men are ! — boys of two or four-and twenty — (though, for that matter, some are idiots and boys at two or four and forty). To see their vanity ! If a woman only laughs with them, or blushes before them, or so much as giggles in their august presence, she is straightway in love with them ! How these fellows, when they come to their senses and their thirties, and real attractions, laugh at their former selves ! Upon my veracity Chartres, with his leather strap round his waist, and in his Crimean shirt sleeves and digging boots, was almost frightened. He, once or twice, almost found himself wonder- VOL. II. F. ing whether Wilkins was a jealously inclined fellow or not, and was anything but quite comfortable until John returned and sat down for a time, when he found that Mar garet became even worse than ever.

The blushes and the finger twisting, or rather diamond and emerald ring turnings of that kind-hearted lady ; the number of times she moved in her seat ; the varied poses she took ; and the smiling head-shakings she was guilty of, were wonderful ! For a stranger to have passed judgment on her conduct that morn ing, the verdict would have been " she is a thoroughly vain and flighty woman ;" but her old friend knew all about her and her motives after the first half-hour of trepida tion on his part. Chartres, the gentleman, the handsome young fellow, with his great taste for female beauty — hadn't he confessed his taste a dozen times in England to her — was there to see the great change for the better in his friend ! Why shouldn't she show him all those new graces and lady-like airs which she had been so assiduously learning of the dancing master, ever since fortune had smiled on the poor couple's hard labour ?

WThy should she not let him see that she — being a clever woman — had been learning a little French, and a good deal of music and poetry since the old depressed days in London ? Margaret and her husband had regularly, evening after evening, after their daily toil, sat down like school-children to their tasks, under the guidance of some digging friend, until their first two years in the colony had passed. And they had studied well, and were still working with the children's governess. Yes ; and the governess being one who formerly had seen better days, the energetic adult female pupil had learned the art of lady like deportment from a good teacher. And the new graces were there ; and the fine clothes, and the long words, and even the French phrases ; and here was an opportunity of showing the difference between the English Margaret Wilkins and the Australian one — the well-to-do gentleman's wife ; for wealthy shopkeepers rank high in the colonies, and the lady of the Kooroc-aboolshire councillor and J. P. of the territory of Victoria.

Mar garet was proud of the new Mr. Wilkins, as B proud as a loving wife could be. He was a pushing man, and in her estimation stood second to none in the land ; and she respected him. Before Chartres left the house that evening, he almost felt that he was now the plebeian, and Wilkins the gentleman, so vast was the change which three years of success in a democratic community had made in the quondam corn-dealer. Chartres stayed and took tea with his friends that evening. Wilkins was really concerned for him. " I'll tell you what, Mr. Chartres, I buy here for the bank of Victoria, and I ought to know on what ground a man has the best chance. I hear mostly everything that is to be heard ; and I'll be bound I'll find you a mate before Tuesday night." And hearing this, Chartres went away to his bed a happier man, perhaps, than he had been since the first week after his own, and the first day after his own family's arrival in the colony.

Hope ! Why, doesn't the thought even of a good dinner make a man, under the divine influence, a happy being for the time ? Much less — but we all know what the new gold seeker hopes ! Here is the epistle from the lady of the house in Melbourne. "Oh! William, how very cruel of you not to write ! you promised most faithfully that I should hear from you every day ; and yet — but I won't say any thing more to blame you, my own kind husband." Of course Chartres did not have any opportunity of sending a letter home while he was on the mountain bridle-path. He should have thought of this before pro mising to send home letters while on the road. " My poor headache is still very bad. I sometimes at night, when I fancy you may be lying ill all alone in the bush, feel as if it would be an inexpressible relief to have the top part of my head lifted off, so as to let my poor brain swell with its load of anxiety.

Then I have to get up and wake the children, to get them to talk to me, and I make them tell me how they think you are. Perhaps God really gives them power to know about you. At all events the darlings always comfort me by saying, ' Papa is asleep now. He will soon bring us home plenty of gold.' And then, my darling, I feel calmer for a time ; for if their prophecy about your bringing home the gold is true you cannot be in danger. Talk about an occasional separation being pleasant ! Ah ! my love, what a misery it is to me to be away from you in the best of times, much less when you are in trouble. God alone knows what your poor Lucy suffers in your absence ! O, what kind of love is this of ours ? Is it more pleasure or pain-giving than that of others ? Sometimes I think, yes ; sometimes, no. Now you are away again from us I find what I believed impossible, that my love for you has actually grown more absorbing than ever.

What a happy, happy creature I am when I think that your love has become so too, for one so unworthy as I ! I never, never cease thinking about you day or night, alone or in company I am enveloped by your image. Ah! when am I to be with you again ?" And here follow pages more. "Annie Short wrote to me yesterday asking whether you had arrived safely at the diggings ; but I am ashamed to answer her yet — to let her know that you have been such a long time without writing to me. Mr. Crowley, Junior, called last evening and was very kind. He brought a lot of passion-fruit for me ; how did he know I was fond of them ? And he was quite complimentary, Sir ; he had the assurance to say he had told you that I was the prettiest woman in the colony. Do you remember him saying that ? Papa is still at Drummond's ; and what do you think he is doing ?

Experimentalising on meat-pre serving for the European markets. He says that if he succeeds, he and you can make a fortune in a year or two. There, my darling ! Fancy dear old blind 'Pappy' making a fortune for us ! His sight too is better, especially in the right eye. Wasn't it very wonderful that he should have had a change for the better, after his attack of eye-blight last hot weather ? If he were to see well again, just fancy ! So here is a lot of good news for you, and I hope you have plenty for me." This is by no means all of Lucy's letter though ; but it will serve to show what sort of correspondence this young couple — now an old married one — kept up. I was about to remark that the letter might help to show what kind of affection they had for each other ; but no writing could do this, least of all a wife's love-letter, which is so twaddling to everyone but her husband.

Lucy wondered what sort of love theirs was, and well she might. It was no every day love, but one wonderful in its kind, wonderful in its intensity, wonderful, thrice wonderful, in its duration. It should lead either to lasting joy or to lasting sorrow. I don't think Chartres was made a more manly being by it though. I fancy if he had cared for his wife less, he would have cared the more for himself, and through himself for his family too. He would have been, in every respect harder hearted, as he should have been. When Lucy was not happy, he was surrounded by a world of gloom. And men like this are not likely to fight their way very well under adverse circumstances. All William's successes were valued accord ing to their powers of making his wife and family happy. Very good ; but not exactly a sublunar standard of measurement.

However he and she loved as they loved, they couldn't alter, nor would they even if they could. Even mortal affection can be carried to excess ; though I don't know whether I can have any hope to make women believe this doctrine. That night of receiving his wife's letter, Chartres sat or rather knelt down by his bedside with a board as a desk, and wrote to the poor little woman in Melbourne for whose sake he was now undergoing so many troubles, a long account of all his adventures. I won't gives his epistle, or even an extract from it. Faugh ! who would care to read a namby pamby letter of affection from a husband to a lawful wife ! If indeed it had been to somebody else's wife, the case would be different. But such is human nature ; and I try at all events — even if I don't succeed — to describe it.

No doubt it is very nice and proper to write about people as they might be ; I try to write about them as they are. A gentleman, well known as a poet in England and America, who was so good as to peruse my "bantling" told me, " You have perfectly succeeded, if realisation be your aim. You have hit the mark. But remember that there is such a thing in art as being too real." Is there in all kinds of art ? My readers will, I trust, think that there is not.

Chapter II

Murmurings at any time, from twelve to two a.m. ; a drunken tumble on the floor about three ; and thereafter any amount of snortings and chokings until half-past four o'clock from Chartres' five bedroom mates. He was too sleepy to take note of anything besides the phenomena described ; and when the cocks — of which there were plenty on the diggings — crew their salutations to this Sunday morning's advent, Chartres got up and walked out into the cold mountain morn ing air to see his new place of residence. It was the beginning of December now, just the last of the Spring, which had been a long and wet one, and consequently the forest looked its very best, and the hills and their productions were at their gayest. Water is a more attractive feature in Australian landscape than it is in most other habitable parts of the world.

How pleasant it was to Chartres, this lovely morning, to find not quite a mile over the hill, behind which the township was laid out, a lake of sweet water, fed by an ever running mountain stream. Talk of the bleakness of an Aus tralian view, of the leaden colour of all its trees, its songless birds and odourless flowers ! Nonsense ! We are accustomed to the scenery of an old continent, whose very forests are not primeval. Who can say that the Black Forest of Germany, or the woods of Switzer land and the Apennines have not once been cultivated ground ? Who can say that even the valley of the Amazon for ages had not been tilled ? The same doubt about India ; the same about Africa exist. Australia is the only country in the world which we are sure has never been inhabited by any but savage men.

Its forests are in a state of nature, as its soil is. Talk about the vege tation of Europe ! Are not its very timber trees culled from different habitats, one good kind from among a hundred bad. Who would plant useless timber ? Have not those culled trees become more beautiful and useful still, through cultivation ? In Australia, nature wears her rough primeval dress ; she gives us her unsightly gifts rugged and plain ; but yet she gives us lovely scenes withal. Look at the matchless beauty of the dells and flats among volcanic ranges ; here the fostering soil has been washed down from the hills, and here from this nature's cultiva tion, her vegetation is its loveliest. The very birds choose these spots to dwell in ; and here, too, even the butterflies abound in all their beauty. When our friend had taken a bath, eked out with a plentiful allowance of soap, to get rid of the road-dust, he sauntered round the lake.

What gigantic trees, what glorious ferns, what tall and beautiful grasses of many kinds ! No songless birds ! Listen to that bell-bird, with its notes just like a silver bell ; and those soldier-birds, with their strange chatterings ; and here is a flock of love-birds twittering and " creek-creeking" merrily as they settle on the highest boughs ; and (can it be true?) here is a robin, a scarlet-breasted little thing, that settles quite close to a man, and Seems to know no fear, just like its English namesake. There is a dozen of black and white crows on the ground, and wonder ful to hear, each bird seems to have half-a dozen different songs — all pretty, although short. And what is that laughing, as if its sides must ache ? Chartres knows it must be the laughing-jackass ; and he listens to it and laughs too.

Ah ! my friends, you plump little quails, come down for your morning draught, look out ! There is your ruthless enemy, the wedge-tailed eagle ; he, too, is here for his drink, just as well as those diggers' goats with the little long-tailed fly birds standing on their backs, are. No flowers ? Why, didn't Banks christen part of the country Botany Bay from their abundance ? It would take up too much space even to name the pretty ones among them. Some of the trees — large ones too — seem all flowers ; and here, on this stony patch, which in Europe wouldn't grow a weed, there is a regular forest of flame and incense, a forest of yellow-blossoming acacias, whose flowers are so plentiful that they actually conceal the leaves and stems. And the perfume ! match it if you can in any other country. Rimmel, the perfumer, knows some thing about this, since he has introduced its essential oil under the name of Australian Wattle scent.

Here, farther up the gully among the rocks themselves, although in mixed volcanic soil it is true, is another grove of — what ? Why musk trees, large trees, not having the sickly heavy smell of the animal matter, but with a refreshing ethereal perfume all their own. Chartres plucked down a bough, broke it just as if it were only a common white or scarlet myrtle tree, and kept it to perfume his room with. I cannot mention half the beautiful things he met with in this one spot by the lake. True, it is a favoured spot, and all the rest of the country is not like it ; but the good must be taken with the bad. It is not fair to describe any place by its bad features alone. We have our gardens in England filled with trees and flowers, that have beauty and perfume, and they are collected from every country under the sun, and planted by man because of their worth.

But some large countries don't naturally yield more than one or two of these valuables. How many of them are indigenous to England I wonder ? And be cause the majority of our Australian wild flowers have no perfume, the bush is said to be odourless ! I believe that decried Australia can show a greater number of blossoms, valuable either for beauty or perfume, than any other country, Brazil perhaps excepted. Eight o'clock is breakfast time ; and Chartres is back just as his fellow-lodgers are sitting down to their meal. It is laid out on a long deal table in the common room, and bare forms are the seats. There are sixteen eaters all told ; — namely, eleven lodgers, the landlord, his wife, his son and daughter, (one a young man, the other a " slip of a girl" of fourteen), and the servant. Beefsteaks and onions — they announced themselves up the street ; cold lamb, plenty of chops, bacon, and hot potatoes, good bread and butter, and abundance of tea and milk.

This is the bill of fare. The table has a cloth on it, though a brownish one ; and the knives and forks are not scrupulously bright ; but there is a suffi ciency of them, and of crockery of all kinds. The company is orderly enough, very nearly as quietly spoken as a company of artizans in London ; and to tell the truth, most of them are rather subdued this morning, as last night was Saturday night. Here I am afraid my English friends will be angry with me, and wrathfully repudiate my description of an Australian digging lodg ing-house. They have been accustomed to the highly spiced narratives of either the first gold fever times, when all the ruffianism which could find its way across the ocean, and a good deal of the same thing already in the land, were seething and bubbling together ; or else they remember scenes made up by the " arm-chair travellers," who even now talk of bowie-knives and revolvers in the best streets of Melbourne and Sydney.

I don't know that it won't make this chapter too tame, when I say that not a single one of these diggers here possesses any weapon of greater offence than the useful pick and shovel. The times are vastly different from the old days. When the law is now broken on the diggings, it must be broken by stealth, as everywhere else. In the old days it was set at naught openly. Now there is but little VOL. II. C opportunity for the thief ; for there are gold buyers and branch banks everywhere ; and the digger takes his week's " washings" to Mr. Wilkins's, or some other store, and sells it, instead of keeping it in his tent, and pro tecting it vi et armis. A good deal of crime is still to be found on new rushes ; but it is mostly stealthy theft. Drunkenness there is, galore ; but all acts of violence are surpris ingly rare ; and so effective is the protection of the law afforded by the police and mounted troopers, that a woman may live alone in safety, with no other better guard round her than a calico tent.

There is certainly a free and easy mannerism about the denizens of a new rush which is not to be found elsewhere. Jack on the gold-fields is as good as his master — and better ; and he thinks it, no doubt, a very fine and independent thing to interlard his speech with expletive adjectives. Oddly enough, too, these adjectives are those which are much affected by sailors. The voyage from Europe has nauticalised the Aus tralians a good deal ; even the women talk of south-westerly and north-easterly winds ; and if they can read at all, know what latitude means. " Well, mate," says the landlord, a black bearded, fierce-looking Dublin man, but who is in reality as gentle as an infant, " I hope you have a good appetite. Sit down here and eat your breakfast." Chartres does so. He eschews the beef steak and onions ; but tries the chops, greasy as they are.

The landlady pours out the tea ; while the daughter and the servant-girl help her in sundry ways. Not that they walk about attending ; each man helps him self when he can reach what he desires, and when he can't a neighbour passes it to him. The conversation does not become, general until breakfast is nearly finished ; for hungry men are silent ones. Chartres is hungry enough and eats heartily, though he can't help comparing the table and cookery with his own scrupulously neat and well ordered meals. "There is plenty of water about here if there is only the gold to find," Chartres remarks to his host. " Aye, too much of it," a digger styled Scotty Wallace, answers. Nearly every man in the company has a nick-name. This is c the law on diggings and nobody kicks against it. " How is that ?" asks Chartres.

" Why half our time is taken up pumping." " Yes, by Jingo," interrupts another man, " I'd rather have to cart the wash-dirt a mile or two, as we was obliged to do up at Gypsey Gully nigh Dunolly, than have to break one's heart pumping all day as we must here." " Is there no way of draining a claim up on these hills ?" is the innocent inquiry of Chartres. But this question only gets for an answer a shout of laughter. Even the women smile. " My word !" the host's daughter says, " you haven't been a digger long, have you ? " No ;" is the reply, " this is my first trial." "Then I'll bet a note," a little sleepy looking fair man, just opposite Chartres, says emphatically, and looking round on the company, " I say I'll lay a pound that he'll find something worth while." " How do you know that, Foxey Sam ?" some one inquires.

"It's always so I tell you," is the answer, with all the dogmatism of fatalistic belief. " Don't the new chums that has worked only a few days always find more than the poor devils that's striving all their lives ?" " Well, there's a good deal in that, Foxey," the host and several others assent. There is, in gold hunting, all the excitement and a good deal of the superstition connected with gambling, and it is a received axiom among many diggers that new hands are lucky. " Aye," cries Foxey Sam, who by the way is the discoverer of this very rush, " look at that fellow there last week. He was only about a month in the colony, and he comes up here, he and his mate takes up a claim where nobody but himself would have " sunk," and drops on a fifty-three pound nugget besides nearly a pound weight of gold to the load."

There is a subdued moan round the table, and everybody looks covetously at Chartres' trim face and white hands. " I declare too," Foxey continues, " I had to tell them poor devils what to do. They didn't know no more than the child unborn. When they got down about three feet, what do you think they began doing ?" " Go on, Foxey, and tell us. What do you want us to tell lies for ?" is the en couraging remark. " They actually began washing up !" "Phew !" says the landlord. " Why this gentleman would know better than that I'll be bound." "Upon my word," this gentleman confesses, very much abashed, " I don't think I should. I don't know the wash-dirt from any other earth, except I should see the specks of gold in it. Foxey Sam fixes his ferret eyes on the last speaker, as if he would read his very soul.

Then he gives the table a blow. " You wouldn't know the wash-dirt, Mister — do you mean to say that ?" " I do indeed, and I'm on the look out for a mate that does know something," is the meek answer. " Well," and here the host returns to the narration, " Foxey had to tell them to go on sinking — " " Stop with your sinking !" cries Foxey. " Here is a man as good as them and better, looking for a mate." He turns towards Chartres, " You want a mate you say, Mister ? I'll buckle on with you to-morrow morning if you like." The man could not have been more eager to secure Chartres' help if the latter were a living divining-rod, and Chartres is really glad to have the assistance of one who appears so experienced a miner. " Agreed, mate ?" asks Foxey, while Chartres thinks. " Agreed !" cries Chartres, and so the bargain is struck.

It is wonderful after this to see the esti mation in which the formerly degraded new chum is held. " But go on," says Chartres, " and tell us about the fortunate new diggers." " Well, I had to tell 'em to go down sixteen or eighteen foot more. But mind you, this wasn't all. Before they got down ten foot it was the greatest mercy the shaft didn't fall in on 'em, it was sunk so crooked. I told 'em how to shore it, and then they went at it again. Well, they came to the wash-dirt ; and there on the top of it was the fifty-three pound nugget ! and I'm blessed if I couldn't have stole it !" "How?" asks a big red-haired digger anxiously. "Why this-a-way. I was standing by the old cove when he drew it up in the bucket, thinking it was a bit of stone, and throwing it down along with the rest of the top-dirt.

" ' Mate,' says I, ' that last bucketful looks as if you was come to the wash-dirt.' " ' Does it ?' says he, quite innocent. ' Is that the earth we shall have to wash out ? It's uncommon heavy at all events.' " With that I goes over to where he had thrown it, and takes out my knife and stoops down to fossick among it. The first thing I scraped against was the stone as we thought, and I pushed it aside with my hand, when the weight — by golly ! wasn't I all of a tremble !" Even now Foxey quivers at the recollection. " Curse me !" Red-head cries, " if I wouldn't have said nothing about — " and hereupon the speaker leaving his sentence to be guessed at, suddenly jerks out, " Go on, Foxey," and Foxey goes on. "What do you stop a fellow for that a-way ? But I sees it in a minit, and — like a honest man as I am, though I ain't afeard or ashamed to say so — I goes up to the fellow and — for I couldn't speak mind you I was that trembling — I touches him on the shoul der and brings him over to the lump of gold.

We both knelt down and cleaned it, what do you think of that, boys ?" This is a theatrical point, this final question. Foxey Sam has the " gift of the gab." Chartres, who now hears this narrative for the first time, cries out eagerly " Go on." " Well, the cove fell all of a shake, like I was myself, only a good bit worse ; and he goes down on his marrow-bones and puts his two hands together this way," (imitating a child crying), " and speaks to himself. Then he goes to lift the light stone, as it appears to him ; and my word ! to see the way he looked at me when he finds it was half a hundredweight— a little thing so heavy ! I offered to help him, but he wouldn't let me ; but suddenly he shouts out ' Charley, Charley, Chawley !' — you know the way the cockneys does. And sits down on it and hollows out ' Chawley, Chawley,' agin.

Then the young one scrambles up the rope, and runs to him, and my word ! to see him ! Blest if he didn't take off his hat and go down on his knees like the other ; and then the old fellow kisses his son, and the son kisses him : and then the ruxions began ! All the fellows came running to see what was up !" "I hear they that found the gold was gentlefolk at home, come out here to make their fortune," the landlord remarks. " That may be," says Foxey Sam ; " but if they hadn't been new chums, they might have gone home with as much more as they found." " How so ?" asks Chartres. " This-a-way. They might have kept it to themselves that they had struck on a new lead (a vein of gold), and after they had worked out their claim, taken up the ground next it. But bless you, before an hour, all the ground around for nigh quarter of a mile was pegged out.