We were moving now too far to take all the furniture with us; in bulk it was not valuable enough to be worth the heavy railway charges. So I packed the special treasures and all else that I could, and, leaving G. to struggle with the sale and the final farewells, preceded him to Melbourne, that I might lay the foundations of the new home before he came to it.
CHAPTER XIX[ToC]
THE EIGHTH HOME
The eighth home was quite an imposing house—for us—too much so for my taste and the resources of the moment, insomuch that I had to leave the furnishing of the drawing-room to a future day; but what an interesting time I had, with my paper-hangers and people! In a few days I had the walls—raw plaster and grubby at that—decorated and dry, and the floor-staining done, and the elementary necessaries of family life collected; so that when I, and the little daughter who had been with me, met our male belongings at Spencer Street Station on the 30th of October, we went home together for good and all. G. took over his parish on the 1st of November, and we were then settled down, although the delights of "fixing up" went on for weeks—I may say for years—if it has not continued even to this day. A week or two after the induction ceremonies the parish made a splendid evening party for us in the largest public room of the town. A great horse-shoe of flowers with "WELCOME" on it—the iron frame is still preserved in the gas cupboard—was presented with charming compliments: members of Parliament and mayors and other distinguished persons flattered us in cordial speeches from the platform; professional singers—Ada Crossley amongst them—rendered a choice programme. It was a proud occasion, a happy beginning of the new life—the first rush of the champagne out of the freshly-opened bottle—sweet to remember, but sad also, because, like all such sanguine moments, it both gave and asked too much.
And now here I was living by the sea at last—the desire of my heart from childhood. There is a family tradition that when, as a mere infant on its mother's lap, I saw the sea for the first time—at Hunstanton it was—I was so overcome with sentimental emotion that I burst into tears. I can quite believe it. I do not remember ever to have seen it, after absence, without feeling more or less that way, whether I expressed the feeling or not. "Hunst'on" in those times was only the old village of the L'Estranges; where the watering-place proper was afterwards established there stood but a lonely inn on the cliff—the New Inn, it was called, though it looked far from new—where brides and bridegrooms went to get out of the world. We used to have lodgings at the Coastguards' (parents and children, nurse and governess, distributed amongst them at sleeping-time, with a common rendezvous for meals), or at "Willoughby's," within a cobbled courtyard with gates that shut at night, or at the Post Office, which sold the wooden spades and pails that were always our first purchase, or—when we could get it—a whole house of our own, bespoken for the season from the year before. The same families, more or less, occupied the limited accommodation of the place summer after summer, and it was necessary to be beforehand to secure a footing. There was one year when we were absolutely crowded out—a black year indeed! I see myself now, face downwards in the orchard grass, broken-hearted by the calamity. In those days we made the journey from Lynn on a stage coach—the last one left in England, I should imagine—and the red mass of Rising Castle was the memorably romantic feature of that drive, next to the first opening to view at the end of it of the ever-wonderful and mystic sea. We used to arrive late in the afternoon and first open one of the enormous hampers and feed like a pack of cormorants: then we little girls were fitted out in our sea-clothes—all made on purpose, from the cotton hoods to the raw-leather shoes—and the boys put on their fishermen's guernseys, and down we went to revel in sand and rocks and sea-water until the latest possible bed-time. Old Sam Dunn, the only waterman and one of my dearest early friends, would already have been up to our lodgings to welcome us, to take over the boys as partners for the summer in his boat and enterprises, and to bring his votive offering of cornelian stones and bits of jet and things to his "little missy." What days! What days! When my own children were small I went to no end of trouble and expense to give them the bliss that had made life so heavenly to me at their age. I took them to the seaside; I bought them wooden spades and pails; I would have got them a donkey (like Callaby's) if there had been such a thing procurable. In vain. It was like trying to teach them to understand Christmas. The sea is not in the blood of Australian children as it was in ours.
During all my inland life at home and twenty-three years in the Australian bush, however happy I may have been, there was always that one thing wanting—the near neighbourhood, the salt breath of the sea. I used, when in the Western District, to spend hours sitting amongst she-oak trees in a wind, because, with the eyes shut, one could believe that there one listened to its very voice. Twice, when ill in bed, I found the craving overmastering. "I know that, if I could get to the sea, I should get well," I cried at a time when I was unable to take myself thither and G. said he was too busy to take me. "Not for one day?" I implored. "What's the use of wearing yourself out with those two long journeys, and spending five or six pounds, for one day?" he asked. It did seem unreasonable, but I begged and bribed him to give me my wish. We left B—— one afternoon, reaching Melbourne late at night; next morning took boat for Sorrento and the open Pacific; saturated ourselves with sea-essences until night again, and returned home next day. The result was so miraculous that, under the same circumstances, we repeated the experiment three months later: only then we took four days instead of one. I do now go back to the hills for strength, as I said in the last chapter, but quite as often exchange the sea for more sea.
For where I live I am still forty or fifty miles from the shore whereon the ocean rollers break. To be sure I can hear the sound of waves on our Back Beach—one may occasionally be knocked over by them in the Baths—but, looking across the water that runs sheer to the sky, I am conscious of the engirdling land that I cannot see; it is not the great deep that the great storms play with. Even upon this the house turns its back; my windows command only Hobson's Bay—just a pond with city round it—the mouth of the river piercing the ring to my left, the mouth of escape to the sea and the world on my right, round the breakwater pier and sea-wall that the convicts built. Well, I am satisfied with that. I have a moving panorama before my eyes that they never tire of dwelling on. I had amongst my wedding presents a pair of good field-glasses that lay stowed away and forgotten in drawer or cupboard until I came here; now they hang by my writing window, and the case is worn out with the daily handling they get. Every ship that comes in view passes me by, the multifarious craft going to or from the river wharves, the great liners that tie up at Port Melbourne opposite—these last the objects that fascinate me most. A kind superintendent of the P. and O. Melbourne office sent me, when I first arrived, a packet containing a separate letter of introduction to every purser of every ship of theirs visiting the port, instructing each gentleman to give me "all possible facilities" to "fully inspect" his vessel. It was my favourite recreation for a long time to rummage through these floating hotels, and pretend to myself that I was a potential traveller in them; and then I came home to watch them steam away without me, as I have watched them week by week ever since. It is a melancholy pleasure that never palls. But I have four of those letters to P. and O. pursers unexpended still.