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Philiberta: A Novel

Chapter LI. Life at Yoanderruk

page 331

Chapter LI. Life at Yoanderruk.

The following months revealed how accurately Edgar Paget had gauged his own prospects. He had once warned Tempest that the place would sometimes be 'a very hell upon earth,' and verily it seemed so. It was as if the devil that had slumbered in Florence Paget for one brief year had multiplied itself sevenfold, and gathered sevenfold strength with each addition. It was beyond all amazed comprehension how so much strength of evil could exist in a woman who was, in the intervals, like nothing so much as a limp, dead flower. Still stranger was it that her life ever came back after those intervals of deathly exhaustion. Stranger, perhaps, than everything else that so much of her curious beauty outlived it all. She required almost constant watching and attendance, and by degrees a large share in this fell to Philiberta. Edgar Paget half unconsciously shifted a heavy part of his heavy burden on to these new and willing shoulders. Janet, half resentful at first, came to be glad of the relief she too experienced. So as the days went on, Philiberta did less of boundary-riding and other station duties, than of nursing and keeping vigil.

Winter fell late that year, but with unusual severity. Rain was too abundant, and the creek flooded up to the very threshold of the homestead. For many weeks the sky hung like a heavy grey pall over the earth, and the sun scarce showed himself, save as a pale vaporous disc, having in him neither light nor warmth. Birds were mute, except the curlew and the mopoke —the wail of the one ringing out above the shrieking night-wind like the wail of a lost soul; the short melancholy note of the other falling on the sometime stillness like a knell.

It was on one of these many wild nights that a great temptation came to Philiberta. It was her watch; all else in the house slumbered; she lay between sleeping and waking on a couch in a room adjoining Mrs. Paget's. She and Paget and Janet took it in nightly turns to rest there, ready dressed, in page 332case of violent symptoms or dangerous illness in the patient. Sometimes the night passed peacefully; sometimes the watcher had a hard time of it. On this night Mrs. Paget lay for many hours in one of the heavy lethargic slumbers that came to her now and then in ever-welcome relief, and Philiberta rested and dozed without anxiety. It must have been some time towards morning that she started up hastily, aroused by some slight sound, and saw through the half-open doorway Mrs. Paget, white-robed, dishevelled, smiling in that devilish fashion that always betrayed her worst moods, standing before the large toilet mirror, examining her own fair throat and a bright keen razor-blade that she held in her hand. Afterwards, when the dual individuality, that surely exists in every human being, argued this thing out in Philiberta's heart, it was a subject of bitter debate whether she was not bound and paralyzed by the sudden horror of the sight. Yet she remembered right well— cruelly well—that every sense was as alert as if there had been no surprise, and it was as if a living voice bade her hold stilt and not hinder Edgar Paget's only possibility of release. There was a vision of a limitless realm of relief and freedom opening out over a dead, white, blood-stained body. A wide world of peace; a time when she might reveal herself to him and perchance—ah! 'Help!' she cried, not meaning help to disarm the woman whose throat was already pressed against the sharp keen blade so much as help for herself—help against a something within her that made her afraid of herself ever after. And help came. Even the mere cry for it saved her, for the sound startled the would-be suicide, so that she dropped her weapon before she had done more than merely graze the skin of her neck; and the next instant Philiberta had her clasped tightly in both arms. Then another cry brought Janet in to the chamber, and Mrs. Paget was coaxed, smiling and exulting in the alarm she had caused, to bed. Janet was profuse in her accusations of carelessness, laxity, negligence, and the rest; but Philiberta answered never a word to her reproaches—only she would have nothing more to do with the nursing for some days. She must strengthen herself out of doors, she said, and so she. page 333rode the length and breadth of the land daily through the sleet and the wind and the rain. Once, after deep study of herself, she resolved to leave Yoanderruk; and then, coming home in the wet dusk, Edgar Paget met her, with quiet earnest welcome and need of her revealed in his dark sad face, and she knew that she could not go.

'There are two worlds for me,' she murmured, insensibly quoting a figure she had gathered from some book, 'the one where he is, the other where he is not. And, having choice, how shall I shut myself into the darkness of the one where he is not?'

So she stayed, none knowing—Edgar Paget least of all knowing—how dark an hour her soul had passed.

With the spring came better times—at least more cheerful times. The waters dried off from the face of the earth and left it a very miracle of vivid green. The garden beds sent up their treasures of narcissus, crocus, polyanthus, and other spring beauties with sudden surprising charm and fragrance. Parrot and cockatoo life reasserted itself; the pretty flycatcher whipped its long tail with swift rustle among the shrubs; jackasses laughed uproariously at everything and nothing; minahs stalked impudently up to the very doors, and the magpies filled their little world with melody. But the crowning glory of the season was the blossoming of the wattle-trees, gladdening and brightening all with a wealth of sweet colour and scent The fair loveliness thrilled Philiberta almost with pain; and she counted and wondered over the years that had passed since she had plucked a yellow spray for John Campbell's coat, or thrust a bloom of special beauty in amongst Rosamond's dark glossy hair. She felt faint with self-pity when she saw all that seemed so unnecessarily cruel in her life. 'I hope, oh, dear lost ones, I hope there is nothing beyond, this; for if your loving souls have been suffered to watch me since the day you had to leave me, heaven has been a sad place to you, I think.' It was only sometimes that melancholy like this overcame her; we know that she was no coward, that she had gathered up the fragments of her broken life and gone bravely on.

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The wattle-blossoms paled and died, and summer came on apace, filling the garden with glow of roses, verbenas, and gladioli The year had been a prosperous one for Yoanderruk, despite the severity of the winter. The lambing had resulted fairly; the shearing promised handsomely. The season of shearing was one of bustle, toil, and weariness to all—except perhaps to little Teddy and a couple of piccaninnies belonging to the stray members of the Loddon blacks, who always made Yoanderruk head-quarters from September to December. These three juveniles—the one white, pallid, crooked, and well clad; the two black, straight, shining, and naked—were in their glory, watching operations in the wash-pen and woolshed; contriving and constructing, under old Rob, miniature imitations of all the important business; living in the native camp and holding small corroborees round the fire; helping, or fancying they helped, at the drafting and branding of the bleating, shorn, ill-used-looking merinos; making small nuisances of themselves in games of hide-and-seek among the manifold heaps and bales of snowy fleece. To these three young ones shearing-time was a gorgeous holiday, a time of festival, and made belter for the ailing Teddy by magnificent sunlit weather, which took all the aches and pains out of his small sensitive bones. To everyone else it was a toilsome period, and Edgar Paget felt when it was over that he for one had earned a rest. He offered Philiberta first turn in the matter of taking holiday, though.

'You want a change as much as I do,' he said. 'I have not been blind to the way you have worked, Tempest You go to town for a fortnight, and I'll take my spell when you come back.'

But she said, No; town had no attraction for her. She would rather stay where she was, and rest and read when she had nothing else to do. But he ought to go, he looked so tired.

'I feel so,' he said. 'I think I shall make a month of it in Melbourne. I won't stay longer this time, because it would be rough on you, Tempest, knowing all you will have to see to, and remembering all you have done for me lately.'

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Her face flushed and her heart thrilled under his praise 'I am glad to be of use to you,' she said simply.

Her apparent devotion to Yoanderruk often perplexed Paget. It was not the kind of thing a man usually met with in an employé; still, it was Tempest's nature, he supposed, for Fairweather had spoken of it. Fairweather had said that Tempest 'would always put his heart in his work.' So, resolving that Tempest should at any rate find him substantially grateful when cheque-day came round, Edgar Paget congratulated himself and went to town.

After his departure Yoanderruk seemed to go to sleep. The shearers were all gone, of course; the blacks had retired to far-off wildernesses. Little Teddy returned to his old allegiance, with some penitence for having neglected old Bob and Colin during the reign of the piccaninnies. Janet—hard-working, silent, indefatigable Janet—had a little time now and then to sit down and fold her hands, and sigh for very thankfulness that the hardest part of the year was over once again. Janet was one of those women whose sole ideas and capabilities are comprised in three words—housekeeping, truth, and faithfulness; but that last signified a great deal with Janet The one love of her life— that dry, barren life, so destitute of all that goes to make a woman happy—was the love she bore her mistress; her one friendship, that of her mistress's husband. Her reserved, exclusive nature—long habit perhaps helping—seemed to need nothing beyond the occupation of working faithfully and unceasingly for these two. She resented Philiberta's intrusion into the narrow circle at first, as we have seen. But presently her resentment gave way to a sense of surprised admiration at what she mentally termed 'the handiness o' the cretur.' That in turn yielded to a sentiment of heartfelt gratitude for help and attention that she felt vaguely were beyond the power of mere money to purchase. So Philiberta gradually won her way as near to the old woman's heart as any outsider could ever hope to be; and in the absence of Yoanderruk's master the two drew very closely together in the care and trouble of their mutual interest.