Chapter VII Come Home! Come Home
‘Oh, that ’twere possible,
After long grief and pain,
To find the arms of my true love
Around me once again!’
Five years dragged on. Sometimes word came that the travellers were at last coming home, and Cameron’s heart grew warm, only to grow cold again, as he realised he dare not let them come to this. Then, while the agony of dread still was crushing him, the next mail would bring the bitter relief that the time was not yet—the agent or the music masters or some one else had found another year was necessary, or the great career would be spoiled. Not one word all this time of the selection, else had the ‘career’ been in instant danger of the ruin predicted, the mother would have journeyed at the greatest possible number of knots an hour back to them. Her dreamer of dreams depending on a selection, her children depending on her dreamer, become his own master!
Yet surely the man had had his lesson, and toiled now marvellously, piteously.
Five years, and not one idle day.
Five years of bewildered struggling with unknown enemies—drought, hurricanes of wind, bush fires, devastating rains, a soil that the farmer born and bred could hardly have made pay. Never a complaining word. Hermie, growing to womanhood, broke her heart over his life at times.
There was even a day when she fell down on her knees at a chair, and covered paper wildly with a pen that commanded her mother to come home.
Cameron working obstinately on one frightful day, the thermometer one hundred and seventeen degrees, had a ‘touch of the sun,’ and even after the doctor had left him quieted, his head in cool cloths, his temperature falling, he still moaned for his wife, cried to her like a child, stretched out his arms, raved, besought her to hold his hand. It was then that Hermie broke her promise, down on her knees, just hidden by the bed-curtain, writing wildly with the pen she had brought for the doctor to write his prescription.
‘By the next boat,’ she wrote; ‘if you wait for the one after, it will be wicked of you. How can you stay like this? Challis, Challis—all our lives spoiled for her to have a chance! We have no chance; father’s life is worse than any dog’s. Challis—I think I hate Challis! Going along quietly and happily, are we? Miss Macintosh taking your place? We are starving, worse than starving; the food we have to eat is worse than none at all. He needs delicate things, ice and invalid dishes, properly cooked. I have just been to the safe to look what I could get, and the mutton has gone bad—it goes bad nearly every day in summer here; there is no milk, for the cows have no feed, there is some nasty mouldy bread and bad butter, and golden syrup with flies in it, and sugar alive with ants. You! You and Challis are eating the best things that can be bought with money. I hate Challis! The doctor says we are to keep his head cool with water, and to stand vessels full of water about the room to cool the air. The well is nearly dry, the sun has turned the tank water bad, or else a wombat or a bird has fallen in, and it is poisonous. Bartie has gone a mile with the cart to beg some from the Dalys.
‘Miss Macintosh taking care of us all so nicely! We have no one in the world but Miss Browne. Oh yes, we have told you lies and lies, but you ought not to have believed them. You should have come to see for yourself that he was happy and well. Oh, if you could hear him crying, just to hold your hand, he says, and to hear you talk! Ah, mother, mother, mother, how cruel you are!’
But the spirit of the man, just learning to be indomitable, kept him back from long illness. In four days he was up again, easily turned sick and faint, but able to lie on the sofa, and even take an interest in the delicacies that Hermie set before him. She had ridden Tramby into Wilgandra herself, gone to the grocer, and implored him for nice things—calf’s foot jellies, and whitebait, and Canadian tinned fruit.
‘My sister, Challis Cameron, the pianist will be back soon. I have written for them to come, so you will be sure to be paid.’
And the grocer, a kindly spot in his heart still for the youngest housekeeper he had ever taken orders from, made up a big basket of tinned goods, and said he would wait for Challis to pay him.
‘Hermie,’ Cameron said from the sofa on the fifth day, ‘my head is still confused, but I seem to remember when I was very bad that you kept telling me mamma was coming. There has been no letter, has there?’
Hermie grew a little pale.
‘No, there has been no letter, papa,’ she said.
‘Hermie,’ he cried, after spending a minute trying to find the reason for her curiously averted head, ‘you did not write for mamma, Hermie?’
She turned to him then, her blue young eyes on fire.
‘I did,’ she said; ‘it is time, more than time she came. If she does not come soon, you—we—we shall all be dead!’
‘Child, child!’ he said.
He had risen from his sofa and gone to the window, to look once more with aching eyes at his wretched lands. If this had been the green isle in the sea he had dreamed of making it, he would have sent long ago himself. But these desolate acres!
‘Child,’ he groaned, ‘I couldn’t let her come to this. I am only half a man—half a man. God left the manliness out of me when He made me, and gave me womanish ways instead. And I have never fought them down, as it must have been meant I should do. But I will begin again, I will work harder—things must take a turn, and then I can meet her, and she will not despise me. Child, God has no more awful punishment than when He lets those we love despise us. Send another letter, tell her not to come yet—not just yet. Let me have one more chance.’
Hermie was sobbing at his side, pulling at his arm, trying to urge him back to the sofa. She knew he was not talking to her, knew he was hardly aware she was there, but her sensitive spirit, leaping at his troubles with him, was bowed down with the knowledge and weight of them. How she loved this man—this grey-haired, blue-eyed man at her side! Hardly the love of daughter for father; her feelings for him had in them something of the passionate, protecting tenderness of a mother for a crippled child.
‘Lie down,’ she said, ‘there—let me move these pillows; that is better. She must come—she should have come long ago. And I told her to be sure to come by the next boat. Now lie still; I am going to get your lunch.’
The exertion and emotion had tried him exceedingly. He lay still, still, his face to the wall; and now his mood brought a tear from under his eyelid. It was too late! She would have started! Ah, well, praise God for that! God who took these things out of our hands. She was coming—he might give up for a little time, and lie with his head on her breast; she who had always forgiven him would forgive him still and clasp him to her, and call him, ‘Dear One.’ Then all he would ask would be the happiness of dying before the world began again.
The happy tears rolled down his cheeks. Hermie, tip-toeing back with her tray, saw them, and was filled with dismay. What had she done by this interference?
‘Darling,’ she said, dropping beside him, ‘don’t mind, don’t mind. The letter is not posted yet—Bartie was going to take it in this afternoon. It is not mail day till to-morrow. We will not send it.’
Not posted! Not posted! She was not coming—she might not know of his extremity, his need for her! The chill wind passed over him and dried his tears, dried his heart.
‘Here is the letter,’ the poor child cried; ‘don’t look like that, darling. I would not vex you for the world. Shall I tear it up?’
He looked at it piteously. Oh, that Bartie had it, riding with it through the bush, summoning her, summoning her!
‘Shall I burn it?’ said the poor little girl.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘burn it.’ His voice was lifeless, his eyes stared dully at the wall.