Meanwhile, inside the house important arrangements were proceeding. The sitting-room, a great, bare apartment, had an ample fireplace, which threw out a genial warmth from glowing logs. There was a large, solid cedar table, which Mrs. Evans had rubbed and polished till the dark red grain of the noble wood was clearly visible. Also a dozen real chairs, as Annabel delightedly observed, stood around, upon which it was possible to enjoy the long-disused comfort of sitting down. Of this privilege she promptly availed herself.
The night-draperies were disposed in the chief bedchamber, though until the arrival of the furniture it was apparent that the primitive sleeping accommodation of the road would need to be continued. Mr. Effingham and his sons were luxuriously billeted in another apartment, where, after their axle-tree experiences, they did not pity themselves.
Andrew and his family were disposed of in the divisions of the kitchen, which, in colonial fashion, was a detached building in the rear. Mr. and Mrs. Evans had, on their previous entry on the premises, located themselves in an outlying cottage (or hut, as they called it), formerly the abode of the dairyman, where their possessions had no need of rearrangement. Even the dogs had quarters allotted to them, in the long range of stabling formerly tenanted by many a gallant steed in the old extravagant days of the colony, when unstinted hospitality and claret had been the proverbial rule at Warbrok.
‘Oh dear!’ exclaimed Annabel from her chair, ‘what a luxurious feeling it is to be once more in a home of one’s own! Though it’s a funny old place and must have been a tempting refuge for ghosts wandering in search of quarters. And then to think that to-morrow morning we shall not have to move on, for ever and ever. I was beginning to get the least bit tired of it; were not you, mamma? Though I would have died sooner than confess it.’
‘Words cannot describe how thankful I am, my dear child,’ said her mother, ‘that we have had the good fortune to end this land journey so well. It is the first one of the kind I ever undertook, and I trust it will be the last. But let us remember in our prayers to-night whose hand has shielded us from the perils of the deep, and whatever dangers we may have escaped upon the land.’
‘I feel as if we had all been acting a charade or an extended tableau vivant,’ said Rosamond. ‘Like you, Annabel, dear, I am not sorry that the theatricals are over, though the play has been a success so far. It has no more nights to run, fortunately for the performers. Our everyday life will commence to-morrow. We must enter upon it in a cheerful, determined spirit.’
‘I cannot help fancying,’ said Beatrice, ‘that colonial travellers enjoy an unnecessary amount of prestige, or some experiences must differ from ours. We might have had a Dick who would have lost his horses or overturned the waggon, and bushrangers (there are bushrangers, for I saw in a paper that Donohoe and his gang had “stuck-up,” whatever that means, Mr. Icely’s drays and robbed them) might have taken us captive. We have missed the romance of Australian life evidently.’
Howard Effingham felt strangely moved as he walked slowly forth at dawn. He watched the majestic orb irradiate the mist-shrouded turrets of the great mountain range which lay to the eastward. Endless wealth of colour was evoked by the day-god’s kiss, softly, stealingly, suffusing the neutral-tinted dome, then with magical completeness flashing into supernal splendour. The dew glistened upon the vernal greensward. The pied warbler rolled his richest notes in flute-like carol. The wild-fowl, on the glistening mirror of the lake, swam, dived, or flew in playful pursuit. The bracing air was unspeakably grateful to Howard Effingham’s rurally attuned senses. Amid this bounty of nature in her less sophisticated aspects, his heart swelled with the thought that much of the wide champaign, the woodland, and the water, over which his eye roamed wonderingly, called him master. He saw, with the quick projection of a sanguine spirit, his family domiciled once more with comfort and security. And not without befitting dignity, so long despaired of. He prized the ability to indulge again the disused pursuits of a country life. Though in a far land, among strange people, separated by a whole ocean from the scenes of his youth and manhood, he now felt for the first time since the great disaster that contentment, even happiness, was possible. Once more he felt himself a country gentleman, or at the least an Australian squire. With the thought he recalled the village chimes in their lost home, and his wife’s reference of every circumstance of life to the special dispensation of a benign, overruling Providence occurred to him. With unconscious soliloquy he exclaimed, ‘I have not deserved this; God be merciful to me a sinner!’
Dick Evans, with his horses, now appeared upon the scene, bells, hobbles, and all. He bore every appearance of having been up at least two hours.
‘What a wonderful old fellow that is!’ said Wilfred, who had joined his father; ‘day or night seems alike to him. He is always hard at work at something or other—always helpful and civil, apparently good at a score of trades, yet military as a pipe-clayed belt. Mr. Sternworth admitted that he had faults, but up to this time we have never discovered them.’