Chapter II. Two Kindly Hearts.

That evening, when the sun was losing colour by descent towards the trees, and the circle of fire, spreading outwards in the propitious stillness, so abated danger to the township that the anxious watchers were one and all gone home to rest, Mrs. John Campbell stood at her house-door, shading her pretty Irish eyes with her pretty dimpled hands, and wondering aloud, in her pretty Irish brogue, what had become of her husband. Even as she watched and conjectured she was gladdened by the sight of him, yet afar off. A stalwart man, six feet four of handsome, well-made ruddy Scotch humanity, bearing for home with a swift directness that showed that all his heart and will were already there.

Although fully two years had passed since that Eureka Stockade affair (everyone knows or has heard of those riots at Ballarat; the riots in which Mr. Peter Lalor lost his arm), Mrs. John Campbell could never behold her husband at a little distance without remembering the whole thing as vividly as if it were an occurrence of only yesterday.

To those riots John Campbell owed his appointment under Government as sergeant of police at Merlyn Creek. 'As if,' said he, when the honour was conferred upon him in reward and recognition of his bravery, etc., etc.—'as if it wass not alwiss reward enough for a man to pe in any fight whateffer. What petter thing wass there effer for a man as to pe in a fight?'

Whereby it will be seen that John Campbell was made of the right kind of stuff for a soldier. That his fighting was on the right side on that particular occasion at Ballarat was rather a matter of luck than volition. Or perhaps it would be more page 12accurate to say that he got on the right side first, because the right side at that moment happened to be the weaker, and it was in the nature of John Campbell always to help the weak against the strong. There was just sufficient ancient Highland lawlessness in his composition to have ranged him easily on the other side under other circumstances, and just enough gratuitous spontaneous love of fighting to make him not care particularly which side he was on.

But, however one might speculate as to his principles (and, seeing that he was on the right side, it seems a little mean to attempt analysis, after all), there could be no two opinions about his prowess. And so both his party and the opposite one thoroughly felt and realized.

John Campbell was indebted for his wife, as well as his appointment, to this little scrimmage about miners' rights at Ballarat.

Rosamond O'Brien, poor lonely little immigrant, had somehow drifted into the trying and dubious, though withal lucrative position of barmaid in a grog-shanty, where her lustrous grey eyes, wavy brown hair, flashing smile, and ready tongue, filled her patrons' hearts and emptied their pockets, so entirely to the satisfaction of her employer, that that gentleman seriously contemplated her promotion to the dignity of wife and mistress. The girl was sadly out of place in this den; yet being plucky to the core, she kept on for the sake of the little money she could send to the ailing and poverty-stricken old folks at home.

Pending the drunken landlord's proposal came the riots; and the initial fight was waged upon the very threshold of Blue Gum Shanty, as the place was called. Rosamond was improving a few welcome moments of rare leisure by study of the small prayer-book (the 'Garden of the Soul') which the parish priest had given her on her departure from the old country, when she was suddenly startled by the report of firearms, and the vision of a fighting, struggling, yelling crowd, that surged and swarmed into the bar.

Panting and palpitating, flushing and paling, she gazed with eyes that seemed to flash grey lightning upon the striving mass page 13for a few seconds; then, with a wild musical little shout, 'Whurroo!' she kicked off one shoe, snatched off the stocking, dropped the 'Garden of the Soul' into the foot of it, and, deftly whirling it about her head, made one spring that landed her in the very midst of the fray.

'Shure, the first bit of a row since last St. Patrick's Day at Ballyconnell Fair, an' me heart's in it. More power to us, bhoys; an' though it isn't ofthen ye'll be hearin' the Word o' God in this murdherin' counthry, it's feelin' it ye'll be this day, an' glory be to the same!'

And, indeed, there was not a head of all the dozen or so that did not feel it, and bear lumpy witness, at short notice, of the force and dexterity with which it was wielded.

And it was in this scene that John Campbell first looked upon his fate. Within a month from that day Miss O'Brien had changed her name. Hasty marriages were very common in the colonies then, long courtships extremely hazardous. The trousseau of a bride at that period, and also her new establishment, might be of the simplest description, without exciting any irritating or humiliating comment.

John Campbell was wealthy, having become so suddenly through 'a pocket:' but if he had been in the condition of the proverbial church mouse, it would have made no difference in respect to his getting his wife. When he said, half doubtfully, but very insinuatingly:

'It would be a ferry pright day for me, Miss O'Brien, the day you would say to me, "I will marry you, John Campbell," she was quick with her reply, though she flushed all over a rosy red as she uttered it.

'Shure, then, the bright day is to-day, Mr. Campbell.

'John!' said he, reaching out for her hand.

'John,' repeated she submissively.

Then he kissed her.

'And how long will it take for you to love me, Rosamond O'Brien?'

'I can never love you more or less, John Campbell.'

'Then if I was to say the day after to-morrow for the wedding?'

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'It isn't mesilf would be putting anything in the way of it.'

Then he kissed her again, and on the second day from that they were married; and, though having abundant leisure afterwards, yet never experienced aught of repentance for the step thus taken in haste. They grew more in love with each other every day, till, in the man's eyes, there was nothing so fair and winsome on earth as his wife, and in the woman's heart no thought or care for anything here or hereafter beyond her husband.

The only semblance of dispute ever between them was when they undertook to correct each other's English. Mrs. Campbell's brogue was the most dainty and delicious that ever made a man wish he had married an Irishwoman. Mr. Campbell talked exactly like the Highland characters in Mr. William Black's novels; and each one of this quaint couple thought or said that the accent of the other was simply heathenish. Mrs. Campbell always denied her brogue; Mr. Campbell sonorously defied 'any man alife to speak the English petter as himself could speak the English whateffer.'

'Faith, an' it's a pretty time intirely to be coming home to your supper, John Campbell,' said his wife at the close of this long hot day; 'and the scones, that took me such trouble to bake wid the heat, gone as cold as a stone.'

'That wass not possible this day, Rosamond O'Brien; there iss no cold anywhere, mirofer, except the cold in your head. And how iss that cold by this time, my wife?'

Mrs. Campbell's system was addicted to influenza. At the present moment she had to give way to two or three severe sneezes before her husband could pick her up in his arms, as he always did, to kiss her.

'The saints take the cold!' said she; 'the life is bothered out of me intirely wid it. And where have you been all the day, darlin'?

'It wass two hours, dearie, that I will pe locking up a trunken tiffle of a man till he will get sober. I wass having him by the collar—so, and he was pulling away—so. He will pull and I will pull, and then he will gif way quite sudden, and page 15then John Campbell will sit down quick in the dust. Then the trunken man wass sat down in the dust. Kott! what a time! An' the poth of us perspirin' enough to turn all the dust into tam'd mud.'

'So I see, then,' said Mrs. Campbell, turning him about and dusting him down with a motherly air. 'And why did ye bother about any drunken man at all, at all—such a day as this?'

'I wass wondering about that more as once myself, Rosamond. But, you see, I had said in the peginning that I would put him in the camp, and so into the camp he wass pound to go. And now we will hef the tea and the scones, Rosamond.'

While discussing the same, Mrs. Campbell observed that she had a good mind to run across to that little house beyond the creek after tea.

'And what will that pe for, Rosamond O'Brien?' inquired her husband.

'Shure, I'm onaisy all day about the woman that lives there. Never a sign of smoke from the chimney since yestherday morning; and herself sick, and not a soul but the child to speak to.'

'May pe that she will not want anyone else, Rosamond. She wass not ferry civil to you the last time you was trying to pe friendly.'

'Thrue for ye, dear; but it's just like a man to be remimbering a trifle like that. Is it a little snubbing, d'ye think, that would keep me from thryin' to do the poor soul a good turn in sickness, now?'

'If it wass not curiosity that wass making you want to go over, Mrs. Campbell? All the women was full of curiosity about their neighbours. There was Eve, now, in the garden of Eden; if she had not peen so curious——'

'Ah, be done wid yer nonsinse, John Campbell. Shure, if it was curiosity first made her dress herself like a respectable married woman, she ought to 've been thankful for curiosity. More tea, darlin'? More butter? Then put away the dishes like a good boy, whilst I'm gone.'

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So the sergeant of police—and for the matter of that, the only representative of the force at Merlyn Creek—meekly set about washing up the tea-things, while his wife tripped away over the parched ground, and through the lengthening shadows of trees, to the little house beyond the creek.

She found the door wide open, yet the light of the waning day was so dim that she could not for a moment or two discern anything of the interior. When her eyes had adapted themselves to the gloom, what she saw was the stretcher-bed against the wall opposite the door, beneath the bed a figure stretched stiffly all its length, a white dead face with fallen jaw and open eyes; and crouching over this a child.

'The Holy Virgin have pity!' ejaculated Mrs. Campbell, entering swiftly, and falling on her knees beside the pitiful group. 'Oh, my poor little mortal, come into me arms!'

'Don't, please,' said the child quietly, warding her off with one small hand while the other still clung to the mother's neck. 'Go away, please. My mother is dead.'

'No, dearie; only asleep—fast asleep,' said Mrs. Campbell, with the instinct we all have to deceive children about trouble. 'Only asleep, my pet.'

'No—dead!' said the child, with sad positiveness. 'She told me herself—my mother did—that whenever she could not speak to me she would be dead. And I've called her over a hundred times, and she has not spoken.'

Mrs. Campbell, shaken with a sudden rush of sobs and tears, leant over and strove to lift the child up to her own warm sympathetic heart. But the little one fought and struggled against her, mutely, tearlessly, but desperately, with her small grave face set defiantly, her great brown eyes turned upwards and full of rebellion. Mrs. Campbell was fain to let her go, and to kneel down again and gaze at her helplessly. And something mesmeric in her gaze, or maybe the heat and the tears, the long day and heavy woe, so wrought upon the little one that she drooped drowsily once, twice, thrice—rousing herself between—then for the last time, and lo! she was asleep, her head falling restfully on the still white bosom that she clung to.

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Then Mrs. Campbell touched her gently to try the depth o her slumber, and finding it safe, gathered her up quickly and fled.

'And what is it you hef got there?' cried John Campbell, when she entered her own house white and breathless.

For all answer she laid her burden on his knees.

'In the name of Kott—a child!'

'Yes, a child, John Campbell. And we two living here comfortably, and sleeping peaceably in our bed at night, with a woman dying of heat and starvation right foreninst us.'

'Kott forbid, Rosamond!'

'But He didn't forbid; and it's yerself had better speed over there and look to it now, John.'

Away went John Campbell with a chill of reproach at his heart for a thing that, after all, he could neither have helped nor hindered.

When the child Philiberta awoke it was to the sense of being tightly folded in a woman's soft caressing arms.

'Mother! I want my mother,' she said, struggling.

'My pretty, won't ye let me be your mother? and me crying me eyes out this year past for a babe. Ah! darlin', won't ye speak to me and let me be your mother, just a little while anyhow till the other one comes back?'

The little one turned her head away wearily, saying nothing. An hour later Mrs. Campbell awoke with a shudder, following some troubled dream, to find her arms empty.

'Holy Mother, my baby!' she cried, springing from the bed to arouse her husband, who was for this night relegated to the opossum-rug couch in the outer room. 'John, quick; I've lost my baby!'

They found her easily enough after all. She had not got as far as the creek, poor desolate little child, in her dark search for one whom she was to behold in this life never, never again. She yielded to her captors mutely, resignedly, like some small dazed bird after a momentary escape from its cage. She uttered no complaint; she listened patiently to all that was page 18said; she was dumbly submissive, quietly obedient, but of comfort she would have none.

Mrs. Campbell lay awake with her all the rest of that night, and watched her all the next day, saying and doing all that might be said and done to wean her from her grief.

On the second day the dead mother was buried, and the procession—all Merlyn Creek invariably attended a funeral—passed slowly by the sergeant's house to the plot of ground where rested, as yet, only an earth-crushed digger and weekold babe to give the place a right to its title of cemetery.

When Philiberta saw the crowd she screamed:

'Is that my mother they are carrying away in that box? Oh, they are carrying away my mother!'

Mrs. Campbell caught her and held her fast, soothing her with well-meant fictions and tenderest endearments, and the coffin and its followers passed on out of sight.

That evening the child escaped again and was not so easily recovered. When at last, guided by another child who had met and told her the way, they came upon her, she was stooping over the new-made mound of earth, digging desperately with her hands. Almost everyone knows that picture 'The Shepherd's Grave'—a shaggy, sorrow-stricken dog standing over a narrow hillock, and looking with eyes that seem to pierce the earth in search of the loved one lying beneath. Anything more profoundly pitiful and pathetic, more 'waesome' than that scene, can scarcely be imagined, unless it be this of a child, with eyes as full of dumb despair as those of the shepherd's dog, and two small busy hands digging—digging down—down into a new-made grave.