Thirty Years in Australia

by Ada Cambridge

I was at the hotel at the appointed hour, and she was already in her seat—she had chosen it, under the circumstances, on the box, between the Governor and the driver—and the body of the vehicle, a large open brake, was packed with municipal ladies, every bit as "good" as I was, of course, but all strangers to her. Behind the vice-regal carriage stood a long line of other brakes, rapidly filling up. I sat down on a bench under the hotel verandah to watch the process and await my turn. My dear lady in the distance made a gesture which signified "Where are you going to be put?" I shook my head to indicate that I had not the least idea. Then the cavalcade started, and soon all the splendid four-in-hands had vanished in a cloud of dust—and I was still sitting under the verandah, I and a friend staying with me, a daughter of that house where I encountered the midnight opossum. It was discovered then that there was still a remnant left behind, and a buggy was brought out, a scratch pair harnessed to it, and we and a few more odds and ends, as it were, cleaned up.

Of course we were hours late at the rendezvous. When we arrived the banquet was in progress, the Governor's wife sitting amid her court, which occupied every chair, and looking almost as difficult to get at as she had been at the railway station. I made no attempt to get at her. My companion and I sat in our own buggy, and a nice man brought us plates of turkey and trifle, and tumblers of champagne, and we enjoyed our lunch and our liberty and the whole proceedings. By-and-by the Governor came to tell me that he expected me to accompany his party back to town the next morning. I had that to look forward to.

On our return from the picnic, and when near the gates of the first institution that was to be inspected, the cavalcade halted and word was passed back to me that my lady in the leading carriage wished to speak to me. I went to her. She was dusty and sunburnt, and very tired. "Go home," she said, "and rest. You can rest—I can't."

I went to Melbourne with her next day—the very hottest day, I think, that I was ever out in. She had been unable to sleep, she said, and was almost prostrated by the weather and her fatigues. In the state carriage we could lie down on blue satin sofas, in the lightest indoor clothes, and a maid in a little ante-room had cool drinks and sponges and such things in readiness. The Governor held a cloth continually soaked in water over an open window against the fierce north wind, to try if by evaporation he could freshen the air; but it remained oven-like for all his efforts.

At last, when we were halting at a wayside station for a train to pass, a minister was sent for from the compartment where he was travelling with the suite, in some kind of official charge of the expedition.

"Do," said his liege lady, "do please go and ask them if they will hose the carriage." She was fainting with the heat, and this seemed to her the best way to get relief—as it would have been. He hurried off, much concerned at her distress, to, as he said, see what he could do. Presently he returned, and said—my own ears heard him—that he was very sorry, but it could not be done. "It would blister the paint."

She was idolised throughout the colony as no Governor's wife ever was before or since, and with good reason; and the people who, as in this case, were supposed to be entertaining her, were neither mean nor selfish, nor intentionally rude. I am sure the idea that they were not treating her with the highest consideration never crossed their minds.

Other friends, departed or no more, are indissolubly one with that old house and the old garden in which it stood. How many phantom faces flit amongst those shades? Every block of stone, every step of the verandah stairs, has a figure or a group. They sit in twilight, in moonlight, musing alone or talking together—the deep, intimate talk of those resting hours. There is a bishop amongst them with his pipe—he, too, now on the other side of the world, but with a green memory here that will not wither yet awhile. And still other friends, that never talked, except in a language that few trouble to learn.

For originally the garden was a "Zoo" on a small scale. The first parson was a rabid naturalist, who experimented with new breeds of birds and collected snakes for the study of their habits and customs. We were warned that one of their habits was to escape frequently, and that we should probably find house and grounds alive with their descendants, but we did not; only two put in an appearance upon the premises in nine years. Two large aviaries remained of the birds' village that once was when we took possession; we kept flower-pots and tools in one, and for a while I had turtledoves in another—not for long, since cages are an abomination to me, however big. Both are cleared away now, with their leafy screens. But the wild birds love the place—or did love it. It was mainly for their sakes that the axe was not laid at the root of any tree while we were there, and they came to it from far and near—far, I should say, since one rarely heard a bird-note, not even that of the once ubiquitous magpie, on the surrounding hills—and set up housekeeping in peace and privacy, and in larger and larger numbers every year.

How soon they know where they are welcome! And it is the same with all dumb things. I am convinced that there is scarcely a creature living which does not prove itself possessed of quite human intelligence as soon as one begins to make a friend of it. They walk under our feet and scatter from our path in fear and trembling; their minds are cramped and starved by their hunted, down-trodden, tragical lives; they are shut up within themselves. But show them a little kindness and understanding and comradeship, and the results are astonishing. I have tried it often enough to know. I have had such things as toads and hedgehogs scrambling after me about garden paths, preferring to burst themselves rather than lose the chance of my company. Some white rats presented to my children were let out of their cage to enjoy themselves in an enemy-proof room, and had not been thus indulged for a week before their endearments became overpowering. A widowed dove was my companion for several years, and fell sick and refused food if parted from me, which was only when I went out of the house; and then it would follow if not guarded carefully, and was killed at last in a tangle of street traffic through which it was hunting me. In this very house at B—— I was silly enough to make friends with a mouse that had a hole in the hearth by which I used to sit alone at work. All I did was to put a crumb or a spoonful of milk between me and it. Soon it took to sitting in its porch—we could just see its little snout twiddling—to watch until the family were all gone from the room, and to running out to me fearlessly the instant the door was closed behind them.