Chapter X. 'A Little Talk Among the Tombs.'

Philiberta was up and out by seven of the clock next morning. The season of the year was autmn, and all New Zealanders know that that is the brightest and pleasantest season in the Middle Island.

The house in which our heroine was domiciled was situate on the South Town Belt, a little to the westward, and commanded page 71a wide view of the city and its surroundings. Out to the right loomed the sounding white-crested waves on Ocean Beach; and away to the horizon stretched the foam-flecked blue expanse of sea. Eastward of the beach rose the Peninsula hills, they and their loftier and lowlier neighbours having all a tendency to wrap their summits in becoming white clouds, as an elegant but fading beauty might drape her ageing head and neck in soft becoming lace.

Over the fair white city, as Philiberta looked out upon it brooded a fleecy mist which presently lifted itself to the sun and revealed the slender graceful spires and handsome architecture beneath. The vision of houses rising in tiers up the hillsides was a quaint one to our heroine, to whom the sight was all a novelty; and she felt rather ashamed when, making a steep descent at an undignified jog-trot (the only pace possible), she caught herself looking in at top-story windows on either side, upon unmade beds and other domestic untidinesses excusable at that hour of the day.

Presently she came upon a milkman busy ladling his milk from a can in his cart to another in his hand.

'Would you sell me a drink of milk, please?' said Philiberta, growing suddenly hungry and thirsty at the sight.

The man filled up his measure for her, and she drank heartily, and then drew out her purse.

'Hoot awa!' cried the milkman, 'pit it back intil yere pooch, them. It's no me will be wanting onything for a wee suppie o' milk.'

'But really I ought to pay——'

It was no use trying to say any more because he was up in his cart and away; and Philiberta, refreshed, and somehow rejoicing in this trifling kindness, passed on till she came to the brow of the last hill, looking out over the suburbs of St. Kilda and Caversham, and, just at the foot of the hill, the Southern Cemetery, where sleep all the first dead of Dunedin.

Philiberta always felt solemn at the sight of graves, and especially so at the sight of a large cemetery. It seemed to her that so many living hearts must be drawn together in that page 72common spot where the dead loved ones lay. She thought the old thoughts as she stood and looked—the thoughts that have been written and sung and spoken until they have become trite and commonplace—about the mystery and the mournfulness, the peacefulness and the pathos, the awfulness and the inexorableness of the Great Inevitable—the one True Democrat of the universe.

She descended the hill and entered at the little gate. And here she met a small boy who was whistling cheerfully, and had his hands thrust far down in his knickerbocker pockets for warmth, for autumn mornings are chill in Otago. He turned a ruddy, shining face up to our heroine as she bade him good-morning, and asked what he was doing abroad so early.

'Oh, jist pittin' a posy on dad's grave, ye ken,' said he. 'Mither's gey pertikler tae have it dune airly.'

'Do you come every morning, then?'

'Aye. She maks me.'

'But do you require to be made? Wouldn't love of your father make you do it?'

'Weel, it micht, ye ken. Ony rate I'm that used to it noo at I couldna weel knock it off, except when it's verry frosty. A wee bit frost like this the morn wadna keep me frae't. But, mind ye, I canna see the objek o' it mysen a'thegither. When a mon's ance gane and pitten sax feet unner grun', I canna see that a bit flooer or twa maks things ony the better for him.'

'Except that it is a sign to him that he is not forgotten,' said Philiberta.

'Aye, maybe,' said the lad reflectively. 'But supposin' the deid mon can see and unnerstan' what ye're daein' for him, d'ye think he mightna be better pleased for ye tae mak yersel' comfortable wi' yere parritch close in ower the fire than tae see ye gang fashin' a'roond the neighbourhood winnin' flooers? That is if he has ony hairt at a' for them 'at's daeing it. The trouble I'm at, whiles, to get a few posies when they're no in season is enough tae gar a body greet.'

'But you were very fond of your father, were you not?'

'Ou, aye, weel eneugh. I felt sair-hairted mony a nicht and page 73day after he was gane. But that kind o' thing canna last for ever, ye ken,' observed this young philosopher, looking gravely from under his glengarry up at his interlocutor. 'At least, it canna wi' maist people. It seems likely to last wi' my mither, but there's Sandy M'Donald's mither—weel, Sandy's dad hasna been unnergrun' mair nor a year, and there's Sandy's mother been mairrit again this eight weeks. Mairrit to the first mate of a big steamship; an' there was a gran' wedding, an' cake and sweetie and wine; an' every time the new dad comes home he brings something fine for Sandy, And sae there's nae end of fun ahead for Sandy, and yet,' with an air of reflective indignation, 'Sandy's no ony better lad than me.

'Do you ever talk to your mother like this?' inquired our profoundly interested heroine.

'No me,' he replied, 'Whaur's the use o' argyin' wi' a woman?' with a superior curl of his bright red lips; 'she just begins tae greet, and there ye are, I tried it whiles, but soon parceived the folly o' it, ye ken, sae I gied it best.'

Philiberta laughed outright. 'Will you walk with me awhile?' she said, looking down with amused curiosity upon this small sage of ten years or so, with his mottled, bare legs showing between his knickerbockers and his socks, and his bright, round face full of shrewd thought. 'I shall be glad if you will. It is not every day one meets with an original. Will you come?'

'Thank ye, mem,' was his grave acceptance, and they went on together. 'But,' he added after a pause, 'I'll no gang far, because'—here he laid one small red hand upon his waistcoat—'because I have a feeling here, mem, that I'd be none the waur o' my breakfast.'

'Ah well, of course,' began Philiberta, remorsefully.

'But I'll gang wi' ye up ae path and doon anither till I've showed ye the maist important graves,' said he, forthwith beginning to point out this grave and that, while he related what he knew or had heard of the sleepers with a ready power of narrative and description that would have made his fortune as a showman. There was one very simple, but grand monument that excited much admiration in Philiberta.

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'Weel,' remarked her young guide, surveying it critically, feet well planted apart, face profoundly serious, hands firmly thrust down into his pockets, 'weel, I canna say for my ain pairt that I think much o' it. There's an awfu' waste o' stone, ye ken. Yairds o' stone, and no onything upon it but the name. I like poetry, or verses from the Bible gin ye like, but poetry's best.'

'And does your mother like that too?'

'Na; there's anither point that we canna hit thegither. Come ower here a bit, a' ye'll see oor property.'

A simple marble headstone, with the name, age, and date of death inscribed thereon. Flowers grew on the grave, which was enclosed by an iron railing. And right over where the heart of the dead man might be lay a freshly gathered bouquet—roses and fuchsias and mignonette, with a spray or two of fern.

'Some folks pit everlasting flooers on their graves,' said the lad, pointing to a wreath of immortelles that hung over a white marble cross near by, 'but they're no to my fancy. I should think a body wad get varry tired if everything lasted for ever. I canna bear thae flooers,—looking aye the same and cracklin' in yere fingers like paper. Gi' me flooers that dee—jist as a' things dee—sae's ye can get fresh anes.'

With another glance at his father's grave, and a feel of the railings with an air of proud proprietorship, he turned away, and Philiberta followed him.

'See,' said he, presently, with a new expression of sadness on his face 'see a' these graves without headstones, and naething to mark them ony gait. And see thae two or three, cast-out-like, and sinkin' flat tae the airth. That's the kind o' grave I feel maist sorry for.'

'Sorry for! Why?'

'Ech! but they look sae lonesome like.'

'So they do,' said Philiberta, grasping this new idea.

'Whiles I come and pit a bit blossom on ane or twa o' them,' said the boy. 'But 'tisna often, for I've eneuch tae dae wi' my ain. Ye'll be able tae fin' yere way a' about the place noo, mem?'

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'Oh, yes, thank you, if you must go. But I am sorry to say good-bye to you. And tell me —––'

'Aye?'

'Do you ever fly kites, or play marbles, or spin tops?'

'Great guns! Aye!' with an indrawn breath of excitement. 'Was ye thinkin' I couldna?'

'Well, I was not sure whether born philosophers ever did condescend to such trivialities. But since they evidently do'—holding out a small glittering coin—'I want you to favour me by getting the best this will buy in that line.'

'Guidness! but it's a half a sovereign,' exclaimed the lad. 'D'ye ken that, mem?'

'Certainly.'

'Weel, ye micht ha thocht it just a new sixpence, ye ken; that's why I spoke. Kites, marbles; why, this'll buy——'

But what he said it would buy, and what it did buy, Philiberta never knew, for he sped down the hillside like the wind, head well advanced, legs thrown out backward, and gleaming red and purple in the sun; and she saw him no more. But his conversation had suggested a fund of thought that caused her to prolong her walk a full half-hour yet. Then climbing the hill again, her nostrils were assailed by a flavour of bacon and eggs, and I put it to anyone who practises, voluntarily or otherwise, morning pedestrianism on an empty stomach, to say whether there is any scent more titillating to the appetite than that?

Philiberta sniffed the air and quickened her pace, yet was too far afield to find her lodgings easily. But for another juvenile guide, less interesting and conversational than the first, however, it is hard to say when she might have got there. As it was, she arrived just in time for a delicious hot breakfast of the very fare she was longing for.

After that she went forth to take the bearings of the city. The shops and display of merchandise seemed rather insignificant after Melbourne. There was a stillness, too, alack of business bustle that made the place remind her of an up-country town. (Dunedin is a very different town now, busy and progressive.) Five persons out of every six whose voices fell on Philiberta's page 76ears spoke 'Scotch;' and she liked the accent, having been imbued by and through John Campbell with an extreme affection for his nation.

As she sauntered leisurely down Princes Street, towards the Octagon, she came on a group at the corner by the Athenæum, one of which recognised her before she espied him. It was the genial little captain.

'Good-morning,' said he. 'I was just speaking about you; and here are two people whose acquaintance it will be pleasant for you to make. This is Mrs. Retlaw; this is Mr. Heatherwood. Miss—Miss—I've clean forgotten your name after all.'

'Campbell,' said Philiberta; and Mrs. Retlaw took her hand warmly, and said she was very glad to know her. And thus it was that Philiberta met Emma Retlaw—the grandest character in many ways that it was ever her good fortune to know. A woman who should have been christened Juno. A stately imperial woman; large-souled and magnificent. A woman of intense feeling and boundless sympathy; capable of wondrous self-sacrifice, but especially gifted with that noblest power of self-sacrifice—self-effacement. A woman who, having had experience and sorrow enough to make her own life like a romance, could yet forget it all in the contemplation of less serious woes in others; and who could, and did, and does devote time, health, and substance to the alleviation of other people's troubles. A woman who has been known to leave home and its comforts and interests to travel a hundred weary miles over a rough road in a jolting coach to nurse back from the grave another woman, a mere stranger, whose only claim upon her was the common claim of suffering; a woman of deep thought, high Intellect, strong reflective powers withal, with a talent for retaining as well as acquiring knowledge that is almost marvellous. Finally, a woman who could do good with her right hand without letting her left hand know it. All this was Mrs. Retlaw.

After all, Philiberta, though there was much in your life that makes it questionable whether you had not better have died in your cradle, yet there are two or three gold threads woven into your web that go a great way towards brightening the whole.

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And one of the brightest and goldenest is the loving friendship of Emma Retlaw.

The two became fast friends at once. In both was that keen instinct that is like the sense of the dog in its infallibility of perception; and both felt as their hands met, and they looked into each other's eyes, that the bond between them was a true one, and needed not words to seal it, or even to express it.

The captain and Mr. Heatherwood went away, the former being in a hurry to catch the train that would take him to his ship. The two women walked along the street together.

'You are quite alone here, then?' said Mrs. Retlaw.

'Yes, quite.

'Don't you feel nervous about it?'

'No. I have not felt so yet. Shall I, do you think?'

'No; I hardly think so. You don't look like one who would be easily frightened or obstructed. And after all there is nothing to make one nervous in travelling, that I can see. I travelled all round the world a year or two since, and found nothing to frighten me, except that I was shipwrecked once.'

'Well, most women would count that rather startling,' said Philiberta, laughing.

'And so it was, at the time,' replied Mrs. Retlaw, 'but there was no one drowned, so the effects were trifling.'

'How long did it take you to go round the world?' asked Philiberta.

'Oh, I was back again in a year or a little more.'

'Oh dear! that will be too short a time for me. It will take me all my life, I expect, because whenever I like a place I shall pitch my tent there until I am tired of it.'

'Then I hope you will like Dunedin, so that your camp here will be a long one. Your idea is a very pretty one and quite to my mind. But I was compelled to hurry a little because I had left my husband here alone—business would not admit of our getting away together, and he was "wearyin'" for me, as the Scotch say. By-the-bye, do you like the Scotch? Because Dunedin is nearly altogether made up of them.'

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'Yes, I do like them,' said Philiberta. 'My father was a Scotchman—a Highlander.'

'Your father?' inquiringly.

And then Philiberta explained, and told Mrs. Retlaw her brief history. By the time it was concluded they had travelled the length of George Street and back, and Mrs. Retlaw now guided her new friend's footsteps towards High Street.

'You will come home to lunch with me,' she said. 'We may be alone, or there may be half a dozen people in. My few friends go and come as they please. There is always a knife and fork for them, and they know it. And I want you to bear the same thing in mind, and not let your knife and fork grow rusty. As you are only a bird of passage, and no one here has any claim upon your time, you must come to me oftener than those whom, like the poor, "we have always with us." Come in, and be welcome.'