Chapter IV: Part 4

And Wei was as good as his word. With every regard to ceremony and ancient usage, the marriage of Tu and Jasmine was celebrated in the presence of relatives and friends, who, attracted by the novelty of the antecedent circumstances, came from all parts of the country to witness the nuptials. By Tu’s especial instructions also a prominence was allowed to Wei, which gratified his vanity and smoothed down the ruffled feathers of his conceit.

Jasmine thought that no time should be lost in reducing Miss King to the same spirit of acquiescence to which Wei had been brought, and on the evening of her wedding-day she broached the subject to Tu.

“I shall not feel, Tu, dear,” she said, “that I have gained absolution for my many deceptions until that very forward Miss King has been talked over into marrying Wei; and I insist, therefore,” she added, with an amount of hesitancy which reduced the demand to the level of a plaintive appeal, “that we start to-morrow for Ch’engtu to see the young woman.”

“Ho! ho!” replied Tu, intensely amused at her attempted bravado. “These are brave words, and I suppose that I must humbly register your decrees.”

“O Tu, you know what I mean. You know that, like a child who takes a delight in conquering toy armies, I love to fancy that I can command so strong a man as you are. But, Tu, if you knew how absolutely I rely on your judgment, you would humour my folly and say yes.”

There was a subtle incense of love and flattery about this appeal which, backed as it was by a look of tenderness and beauty, made it irresistible; and the arrangements for the journey were made in strict accordance with Jasmine’s wishes.

On arriving at the inn which was so full of chastening memories to Jasmine, Tu sent his card to Mr. King, who, flattered by the attention paid him by so eminent a scholar, cordially invited Tu to his house.

“To what,” he said, as Tu, responding to his invitation, entered his reception-hall, “am I to attribute the honour of receiving your illustrious steps in my mean apartments?”

“I have heard,” said Tu, “that the beautiful Miss King is your Excellency’s cousin, and having a friend who is desirous of gaining her hand, I have come to plead on his behalf.”

“I regret to say,” replied King, “that your Excellency has come too late, as she has already received an engagement token from a Mr. Wen, who passed here lately on his way to Peking.”

“Mr. Wen is a friend of mine also,” said Tu, “and it was because I knew that his troth was already plighted that I ventured to come on behalf of him of whom I have spoken.”

“Mr. Wen,” said King, “is a gentleman and a scholar, and having given a betrothal present, he is certain to communicate with us direct in case of any difficulty.”

“Will you, old gentleman,” [a term of respect] said Tu, producing the lines which Miss King had sent Jasmine, “just cast your eyes over these verses, written to Wen by your cousin? Feeling most regretfully that he was unable to fulfil his engagement, Wen gave these to me as a testimony of the truth of what I now tell you.”

King took the paper handed him by Tu, and recognised at a glance his cousin’s handwriting.

“Alas!” he said, “Mr Wen told us he was engaged, but, not believing him, I urged him to consent to marry my cousin. If you will excuse me, sir,” he added, “I will consult with the lady as to what should be done.”

After a short absence he returned.

“My cousin is of the opinion,” he said, “that she cannot enter into any new engagement until Mr. Wen has come here himself and received back the betrothal present which he gave her on parting.”

“I dare not deceive you, old gentleman, and will tell you at once that that betrothal present was not Wen’s but was my unworthy friend Wei’s, and came into Wen’s possession in a way that I need not now explain.”

“Still,” said King, “my cousin thinks Mr. Wen should present himself here in person and tell his own story; and I must say that I am of her opinion.”

“It is quite impossible that Mr. Wen should return here,” replied Tu; “but my ‘stupid thorn’ [wife] is in the adjoining hostelry, and would be most happy to explain fully to Miss King Wen’s entire inability to play the part of a husband to her.”

“If your honourable consort would meet my cousin, she, I am sure, will be glad to talk the matter over with her.”

With Tu’s permission, Miss King’s maid was sent to the inn to invite Jasmine to call on her mistress. The maid, who was the same who had acted as Miss King’s messenger on the former occasion, glanced long and earnestly at Jasmine. Her features were familiar to her, but she could not associate them with any lady of her acquaintance. As she conducted her to Miss King’s apartments, she watched her stealthily, and became more and more puzzled by her appearance. Miss King received her with civility, and after exchanging wishes that each might be granted ten thousand blessings, Jasmine said, smiling:

“Do you recognise Mr. Wen?”

Miss King looked at her, and seeing in her a likeness to her beloved, said:

“What relation are you to him, lady?”

“I am his very self!” said Jasmine.

Miss King opened her eyes wide at this startling announcement, and gazed earnestly at her.

“_Haiyah!_” cried her maid, clapping her hands, “I thought there was a wonderful likeness between the lady and Mr. Wen. But who would have thought that she was he?”

“But what made you disguise yourself in that fashion?” asked Miss King, in an abashed and somewhat vexed tone.

“My father was in difficulties,” said Jasmine, “and as it was necessary that I should go to Peking to plead for him, I dressed as a man for the convenience of travel. You will remember that in the first instance I declined your flattering overtures, but when I found that you persisted in your proposal, not being able to explain the truth, I thought the best thing to do was to hand you my friend’s betrothal present which I had with me, intending to return and explain matters. And you will admit that in one thing I was truthful.”

“What was that?” asked the maid.

“Why,” answered Jasmine, “I said that if I did not marry your lady I would never marry any woman.”

“Well, yes,” said the maid, laughing, “you have kept your faith royally there.”

“The friend I speak of,” continued Jasmine, “has now taken his doctor’s degree, and this stupid husband and wife have come from Mienchu to make you a proposal on his behalf.”

Miss King was not one who could readily take in an entirely new and startling idea, and she sat with a half-dazed look, staring at Jasmine without uttering a word. If it had not been for the maid, the conversation would have ceased; but that young woman was determined to probe the matter to the bottom.

“You have not told us,” she said, “the gentleman’s name. And will you explain why you call him your friend? How could you be on terms of friendship with him?”

“From my childhood,” said Jasmine, “I have always dressed as a boy. I went to a boy’s school--”

“_Haiyah!_” interjected the maid.

“And afterward I joined my husband and this gentleman, Mr. Wei, in a reading-party.”

“Didn’t they discover your secret?”

“No.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“That’s odd,” said the maid. “But will you tell us something about this Mr. Wei?”

Upon this, Jasmine launched out in a glowing eulogy upon her friend. She expatiated with fervour on his youth, good looks, learning, and prospects, and with such effect did she speak that Miss King, who began to take in the situation, ended by accepting cordially Jasmine’s proposal.

“And now, lady, you must stay and dine with me,” said Miss King, when the bargain was struck, “while my cousin entertains your husband in the hall.”

At this meal the beginning of a friendship was formed between the two ladies which lasted ever afterward, though it was somewhat unevenly balanced. Jasmine’s stronger nature felt compassion mingled with liking for the pretty doll-like Miss King, while the young lady entertained the profoundest admiration for her guest.

There was nothing to delay the fulfilment of the engagement thus happily arranged, and at the next full moon Miss King had an opportunity of comparing her bridegroom with the picture which Jasmine had drawn of him.

Scholars are plentiful in China, but it was plainly impossible that men of such distinguished learning as Tu and Wei should be left among the unemployed, and almost immediately after their marriage they were appointed to important posts in the empire. Tu rose rapidly to the highest rank, and died, at a good old age, viceroy of the metropolitan province and senior guardian to the heir apparent. Wei was not so supremely fortunate, but then, as Tu used to say, “he had not a Jasmine to help him.”

THE REVENGE OF HER RACE, By Mary Beaumont

The low hedge, where the creepers climbed, divided the lawn and its magnificent Wellingtonias from the meadow. There was little grass to be seen, for it was at this time one vast profusion of delicate ixias of every bright and tender shade.

The evening was still, and the air heavy with scent. In a room opening upon the veranda wreathed with white-and-scarlet passion-flowers, where she could see the garden and the meadow, and, beyond all, the Mountain Beautiful, lay a sick woman. Her dark face was lovely as an autumn leaf is lovely--hectic with the passing life. Her eyes wandered to the upper snows of the mountain, from time to time resting upon the brown-haired English girl who sat on a low stool by her side, holding the frail hand in her cool, firm clasp.

The invalid was speaking; her voice was curiously sweet, and there was a peculiarity about the “s,” and an occasional turn of the sentence, which told the listener that her English was an acquired language.

“I am glad he is not here,” she said slowly. “I do not want him to have pain.”

“But perhaps, Mrs. Denison, you will be much better in a day or two, and able to welcome him when he comes back.”

“No, I shall not be here when he comes back, and it is just as it should be. I asked him to turn round as he left the garden, and I could see him, oh, so well! He looked kind and so beautiful, and he waved to me his hand. Now he will come back, and he will be sad. He did not want to leave me, but the governor sent for him. He will be sad, and he will remember that I loved him, and some day he will be glad again.” She smiled into the troubled face near her.

The girl stroked the thick dark hair lovingly.

“Don’t,” she implored; “it hurts me. You are better to-night, and the children are coming in.” Mrs. Denison closed her eyes, and with her left hand she covered her face.

“No, not the children,” she whispered, “not my darlings. I cannot bear it. I must see them no more.” She pressed her companion’s hand with a sudden close pressure. “But you will help them, Alice; you will make them English like you--like him. We will not pretend to-night; it is not long that I shall speak to you. I ask you to promise me to help them to be English.”

“Dear,” the girl urged, “they are such a delicious mixture of England and New Zealand--prettier, sweeter than any mere English child could ever be. They are enchanting.”

But into the dying woman’s eyes leaped an eager flame.

“They must all be English, no Maori!” she cried. A violent fit of coughing interrupted her, and when the paroxysm was over she was too exhausted to speak. The English nurse, Mrs. Bentley, an elderly Yorkshire woman, who had been with Mrs. Denison since her first baby came six years ago, and who had, in fact, been Horace Denison’s own nurse-maid, came in and sent the agitated girl into the garden. “For you haven’t had a breath of fresh air to-day,” she said.

At the door Alice turned. The large eyes were resting upon her with an intent and solemn regard, in which lay a message. “What was it?” she thought, as she passed through the wide hall sweet with flowers. “She wanted to say something; I am sure she did. To-morrow I will ask her.” But before the morrow came she knew. Mrs. Dennison had said _good-bye_.

The funeral was over. Mr. Denison, who had looked unaccountably ill and weary for months, had been sent home by Mr. Danby for at least a year’s change and rest, and the doctor’s young sister had yielded to various pressure, and promised to stay with the children until he returned. There was every reason for it. She had loved and been loved by the gentle Maori mother; she delighted in the dark beauty and sweetness of the children. And they, on their side, clung to her as to an adorable fairy relative, dowered with love and the fruits of love--tales and new games and tender ways. Best reason of all, in a sense, Mrs. Bentley, that kind autocrat, entreated her to stay, “as the happiest thing for the children, and to please that poor lamb we laid yonder, who fair longed that you should! She was mightily taken up with you, Miss Danby, and you’ve your brother and his wife near, so that you won’t be lonesome, and if there’s aught I can do to make you comfortable, you’ve only to speak, miss.” As for Mr. Denison, he was pathetically grateful and relieved when Alice promised to remain.

After the evening romp and the last good-night, when the two elder children, Ben and Marie, called after her mother, Maritana, had given her their last injunctions to be sure and come for them “her very own self” on her way down to breakfast in the morning, she usually rode down between the cabbage-trees, down by the old rata, fired last autumn, away through the grasslands to the doctor’s house, a few miles nearer Rochester; or he and his wife would ride out to chat with her. But there were many evenings when she preferred the quiet of the airy house and the garden. The colonial life was new to her, everything had its charm, and in the colonies there is always a letter to write to those at home--the mail-bag is never satisfied. On such evenings it was her custom to cross the meadow to the copse of feathery trees beyond, where, sung to by the brook and the Tui, the children’s mother slept. And from the high presence of the Mountain Beautiful there fell a dew of peace.

She would often ask Mrs. Bentley to sit with her until bedtime, and revel in the shrewd north-country woman’s experiences, and her impressions of the new land to which love had brought her. Both women grew to have a sincere and trustful affection for each other, and one night, seven or eight months after Mrs. Denison’s death, Mrs. Bentley told a story which explained what had frequently puzzled Alice--the patient sorrow in Mrs. Denison’s eyes, and Mr. Denison’s harassed and dejected manner. “But for your goodness to the children,” said the old woman, “and the way that precious baby takes to you, I don’t think I should be willing to say what I am going to do, miss. Though my dear mistress wished it, and said, the very last night, ‘You must tell her all about it, some day, Nana,’--and I promised, to quiet her,--I don’t think I could bring myself to it if I hadn’t lived with you and known you.” And then the good nurse told her strange and moving tale.

She described how her master had come out young and careless-hearted to New Zealand in the service of the government, and how scandalised and angry his father and mother, the old Tory squire and his wife, had been to receive from him, after a year or two, letters brimming with a boyish love for his “beautiful Maori princess,” whom he described as having “the sweetest heart and the loveliest eyes in the world.” It gave them little comfort to hear that her father was one of the wealthiest Maoris in the island, and that, though but half civilised himself, he had had his daughter well educated in the “bishop’s” and other English schools. To them she was a savage. There was no threat of disinheritance, for there was nothing for him to inherit. There was little money, and the estate was entailed on the elder brother. But all that could be done to intimidate him was done, and in vain. Then silence fell between the parents and the son.

But one spring day came the news of a grandson, called Benjamin after his grandfather, and an urgent letter from their boy himself, enclosing a prettily and humbly worded note from the new strange daughter, begging for an English nurse. She told them that she had now no father and no mother, for they had died before the baby came, and if she might love her husband’s parents a little she would be glad.

“My lady read the letters to me herself,” Mrs. Bentley said; “I’d taken the housekeeper’s place a bit before, and she asked me to find her a sensible young woman. Well, I tried, but there wasn’t a girl in the place that was fit to nurse Master Horace’s child. And the end of it was, I came myself, for Master Horace had been like my own when he was a little lad. My lady pretended to be vexed with me, but the day I sailed she thanked me in words I never thought to hear from her, for she was a bit proud always.” The faithful servant’s voice trembled. She leaned back in her chair, and forgot for the moment the new house and the new duties. She was back again in the old nursery with the fair-haired child playing about her knees. But Alice’s face recalled her, and she continued the story. She had, she said, dreaded the meeting with her new mistress, and was prepared to find her “a sort of a heathen woman, who’d pull down Master Horace till he couldn’t call himself a gentleman.”

But when she saw the graceful creature who received her with gentle words and gestures of kindliness, and when she found her young master not only content, but happy, and when she took in her arms the laughing healthy baby, she felt--though she regretted its dark eyes and hair--more at home than she could have believed possible. The nurseries were so large and comfortable, and so much consideration was shown to her, that she confessed, “I should have been more ungrateful than a cat if I hadn’t settled comfortable.”

Then came nearly five happy years, during which time her young mistress had found a warm and secure place in the good Yorkshire heart. “She was that loving and that kind that Dick Burdas, the groom, used to say that he believed she was an angel as had took up with them dark folks, to show ‘em what an angel was like.” Mrs. Bentley went on:

“She wasn’t always quite happy, and I wondered what brought the shadow into her face, and why she would at times sigh that deep that I could have cried. After a bit I knew what it was. It was the Maori in her. She told me one night that she was a wicked woman, and ought never to have married Master Horace, for she got tired sometimes of the English house and its ways, and longed for her father’s _whare_; (that’s a native hut, miss). She grieved something awful one day when she had been to see old Tim, the Maori who lives behind the stables. She called herself a bad and ungrateful woman, and thought there must be some evil spirit in her tempting her into the old ways, because, when she saw Tim eating, and you know what bad stuff they eat, she had fair longed to join him. She gave me a fright I didn’t get over for nigh a week. She leaned her bonny head against my knee, and I stroked her cheek and hummed some silly nursery tune,--for she was all of a tremble and like a child,--and she fell asleep just where she was.”

“Poor thing!” said Alice, softly.

“Eh, but it’s what’s coming that upsets me, ma’am. Eh, what suffering for my pretty lamb, and her that wouldn’t have hurt a worm! Baby would be about six months old when she came in one day with him in her arms, and they _were_ a picture. His little hand was fast in her hair. She always walked as if she’d wheels on her feet, that gliding and graceful. She had on a sort of sheeny yellow silk, and her cheeks were like them damask roses at home, and her eyes fair shone like stars. ‘Isn’t he a beauty, Nana?’ she asked me. ‘If only he had blue eyes, and that hair of gold like my husband’s, and not these ugly eyes of mine!’ And as she spoke she sighed as I dreaded to hear. Then she told me to help her to unpack her new dress from Paris, which she was to wear at the Rochester races the next day. Master Horace always chose her dresses, and he was right proud of her in them. And next morning he came into the nursery with her, and she was all in pale red, and that beautiful! ‘Isn’t she scrumptious, Nana?’ he said, in his boyish way. ‘Don’t spoil her dress, children. How like her Marie grows!’ Those two little ones they had got her on her knees on the ground, and were hugging her as if they couldn’t let her go. But when he said that, she got up very still and white.

“‘I am sorry,’ she said; ‘they must never be like me.’

“‘They can’t be any one better, can they, baby?’ he answered her, and he tossed the child nearly up to the ceiling. But he looked worried as he went out. I saw them drive away, and they looked happy enough. And oh, miss, I saw them come back. We were in the porch, me and the children. Master Horace lifted her down, and I heard him say, ‘Never mind, Marie.’ But she never looked his way nor ours; she walked straight in and upstairs to her room, past my bonny darling with his arm stretched out to her, and past Miss Marie, who was jumping up and down, and shouting ‘Muvver’; and I heard her door shut. Then Master Horace took baby from me.

“‘Go up to her,’ he said, and I could scarce hear him. His face was all drawn like, but I felt that silly and stupid that I could say nothing, and just went upstairs.” Mrs. Bentley put her knitting down, and throwing her apron over her head sobbed aloud.

“O nurse, what was it?” cried Alice, and the colour left her cheeks. “Do tell me. I am so sorry for them. What was it?” It was several minutes before the good woman could recover herself; then she began:

“She told me, and Dick Burdas he told me, and it was like this. When they got to the race-course,--it was the first races they’d had in Rochester,--all the gentry was there, and those that knew her always made a deal of her, she had such half-shy, winning ways. And she seemed very bright, Dick said, talking with the governor’s lady, who is full of fun and sparkle. The carriages were all together, and Major Beaumont, a kind old gentleman who’s always been a good friend to Master Horace, would have them in his carriage for luncheon, or whatever it was. Dick says he was thinking that she was the prettiest lady there, when his eye was caught by two or three parties of Maoris setting themselves right in front of the carriages. There were four or five in each lot, and they were mostly old. They got out their sharks’ flesh and that bad corn they eat, and began to make their meal of them. Near Mrs. Denison there was one old man with a better sort of face, and Dick heard her say to master, ‘Isn’t he like my father?’ What Master Horace answered he didn’t hear; he says he never saw anything like her face, so sad and wild, and working for all the world as if something were fighting her within. Then all in a minute she ran out and slipped down in her beautiful dress close by the old Maori in his dirty rags, and was rubbing her face against his, as them folks do when they meet. She had just taken a mouthful of the raw fish when Master Horace missed her. He hadn’t noticed her slip away. But in a moment he seemed to understand what it meant. He saw the Maori come out strong in her face, and he knew the Maori had got the better of everything, husband and friends and all. He gave a little cry, and in a minute he had her on her feet and was bringing her back to the carriage. Some folks thought Dick Burdas a rough hard man, and I know he was a shocker of a lad (he was fra Whitby), but that night he cried like a baby when he tell ‘t me,” and Mrs. Bentley fell for a moment into the dialect of her youth.

“He said,” she continued, “that she looked like a poor stricken thing condemned, and let herself be led back as submissive as a child, and Master Horace’s face was like the dead. He didn’t think any one but the major and Dr. Danby saw her go, all was done in a minute. But it was done, and some few had seen, and it got out, and things were said that wasn’t true. Not the doctor! No, miss, you needn’t tell me that; he’s told none, that I’ll warrant. He’s faithful and he’s close.”

“O Mrs. Bentley, how dreadful for her, how dreadful!” and the girl went down on her knees by the old woman, her tears flowing fast.

“That’s it, miss, you understand. I feel like that. It was bad enough for Master Horace with the future before him, and his children to think of, but for her it was desperate cruel. Eh, ma’am, what she went through! She loved more than you’d have thought us poor human beings could. And, after all, the nature was in her; she didn’t put it there. I’ve had a deal to do to keep down sinful thoughts since then; there’s a lot of things that’s wrong in this world, ma’am.”

“What did she do?” Alice whispered.

“She! She was for going away and leaving everything; she felt herself the worst woman in the world. It was only by begging and praying of her on my knees that I got her to stay in the house that night, for she was so far English, and had such a fancy, that she saw everything blacker than any Englishwoman would, even the partick’lerest. Afterward Master Horace was that good and gentle, and she loved him so much, that he persuaded her to say nothing more about it, and to try to live as if it hadn’t been. And so she seemed to do, outward like, to other people. But it wasn’t ever the same again. Something had broken in them both; with him it was his trust and his pride, but in her it was her heart.”

“But the children--surely they comforted her.”

“Eh, miss, that was the worst. Poor lamb, poor lamb! Never after that day, though they were more to her nor children ever were to a mother before, would she have them with her. Just a morning and a good-night kiss, and a quarter of an hour at most, and I must take them away. She watched them play in the garden from her window or the little hill there, and when they were asleep she would sit by them for hours, saying how bonny they were and how good they were growing. And she looked after their clothes and their food and every little toy and pleasure, but never came in for a romp and a chat any more.”

“Dear, brave heart!” murmured the girl.

“Yes, ma’am, you feel for her, I know. She was fair terrified of them turning Maori and shaming their father. That was it. You didn’t notice? No; after you came she was too ill to bear them about, and it seemed natural, I dare say. The Maoris are a fearful delicate set of folks. A bad cold takes them off into consumption directly. And with her there was the sorrow as well as the cold. It was wonderful that she lived so long.”

Alice threw her arms round Mrs. Bentley’s neck.

“O nurse, it is all so dreadful and sad. Couldn’t we have somehow kept her with us and made her happy?”

The old woman held her close. “Nay, my dear bairn, never after that happened. It, or worse, might have come again. It’s something stronger in them than we know; it’s the very blood, I’m thinking. But she’s gone to be the angel that Dick always said she was.”

Alice looked away over the starlit garden to where the plumy trees stirred in the night wind. “No,” she said, fervently, “not ‘gone to be,’ nurse dear; she was an angel always. Dick was right.”

KING BILLY OF BALLARAT, By Morley Roberts

King Billy was given to strolling up and down the streets of Ballarat when that eviscerated city was merely in process of disembowelment, before alluvial mining gave way to quartz-crushing, when the individual had a chance, if a very vague one, of sudden and delightful fortune. The Ballarat blacks were a scaly lot, to talk of them like ill-fed hogs, as men were wont to do. They dwined and dwindled, as natives will before the resources of civilisation: the bloodthirsty ones got killed out; the rumthirsty ones died out; the wild corroboree was reduced to a poverty-stricken imitation of its former glory. King Billy’s authority grew less with the increase of his clothes. The brass plate with his name on it was about the last relic of his precarious power, and was chiefly valued as a means of notifying the public generally that they might stand drinks to a monarch if they saw fit and were not too humble. He was not haughty, and never presumed on his plate, as parvenus will. He came of an ancient stock, and could afford to condescend, even if he could not afford to pay for drinks. He was very kind to children,--white children, of course,--and was hale-fellow-well-met with many of them.

He was particularly fond of Annie Colborn, whose father was a magistrate and a gold commissioner, and a person of very great importance. Whether or not King Billy was wise in his generation, and out of the unwritten Scriptures of the somber bush had culled a maxim inculcating the wisdom of making friends of the sons of Mammon, I cannot say, but he was always good to Annie. For my own part, I do not believe the simple-hearted old king had any such notion inside his thick antipodean skull. He was good because he was not bad, which is the very best morality after all, and a great advance on much we hear of. And, besides, he was sometimes hungry, and Mr. Colborn’s Chinese cook was very haughty, and not to be approached except through an intermediary. And who so capable of conciliating Wong as Annie? Wong would make her cakes even when his pigtail hung despondently from his aching head after an opium debauch, and his cheeks were shining with anything but gladness; for if you get drunk very often on opium you shine.

Old Billy was mostly to be found where there was a chance of a drink; but if the fountains were dried up, or he had been insulted by some democratic, revolutionary, king-hating miner knocking his high hat down over his eyes, he usually went up to Mr. Colborn’s place, and sat on the fence, or on a log outside the gate. So he was often very melancholy when Annie came out. One day his hat was very, very badly bulged indeed.

“Your hat is very bad to-day, King Billy,” said six-year-old Annie, as she stood in front of him critically, with her head on one side. Without knowing it, the child had come to look upon the state of the poor king’s hat as emblematical of his state of mind. When it shut up like a closed concertina his barometer was low.

“Yes, missy,” said the king; “white man knock ‘um over eyes, and”--with a rub down his face--“skin ‘um nose.”

She inspected his nose carefully--though from a certain distance, because her own nose was very good, both inside and out, and she knew the king never got washed unless it rained when he was very drunk. And this was the end of summer. It had not rained since November.

“There is not very much skin off,” said Annie. “You had better wash it.”

The king made a wry face and changed the conversation.

“You got ‘um hat, Missy Annie? One hat baal brokum, allasame white fellow hat. Bad hat, King Billy bad; black fellow, white fellow laugh.”

He peered into his hat, and, trying to straighten it out, put his fist through the side. Poor Billy looked as if he could cry.

“You stop a minute,” said Annie, and, flying indoors, she brought out a very good high hat indeed. “Budgeree!” thought the king, that was a good hat. He could go down the streets like a king indeed, able to hold up his head with any rich man in Ballarat. He tried it on, and though it was much too big, he knew it shone. And the glory of a hat is in its shining as much as its shape; even a black fellow knows that.

But that hat very nearly led to serious trouble. For one thing, Mr. Colborn missed it; and never thinking Annie had given it away, when he saw the king sitting on the fence decorated with it, he stopped and interviewed him.

“Where did you get that hat, you old thief?” asked the magistrate, without any politeness to him who ruled the land before white men broke into the country. Some in authority are polite to those they dispossess; the Prussians, for instance, to the miserable King Billys who strut about the empire. But the Anglo-Saxon only respects himself, and even that to a limited extent, in new conquests.

The question troubled King Billy greatly. He did not know that Mr. Colborn would as soon have thought of murdering Annie as of bullying her; so he lied promptly: “Me buy ‘um, Mistah Cobon!”

Mr. Colborn took it off of his head, and saw that it was his, as he had thought. What he would have said I do not know, for just then he heard a voice behind him:

“Papa, it is my fault; I gave it to King Billy.”

Colborn turned round and took her up, letting fall the hat as he did so. Billy made a jump, picked it up, and, in his agitation, brushed it carefully the wrong way.

“My dear, if you gave it to him it’s all right. But why didn’t the old fool tell me?”

“He’s not an old fool, papa, and you must not say so. He’s a good man, and I think he thought you would be angry with me. Didn’t you, King Billy?” And the king, with a smile of conscious rectitude, admitted it was so.

Mr. Colborn gave him sixpence; and he gave Annie a great many kisses, declaring, with uncommon thoughtlessness, that whatever she did was right, and that she could give the king all his house, and Australia to boot. Whereon King Billy smiled a smile that was portentous, and showed his teeth to the uttermost recesses of his ample mouth. Looking down, he surveyed the rest of his clothes, which in parts resembled the child’s definition of a net as a lot of holes tied together with string, and, looking up, he inspected Mr. Colborn as if estimating the resources of his wardrobe. But being urgently smitten with the necessity of getting rid of his sixpence, he shambled off into the town. Other matters might wait; that admitted of no delay.

The mind of King Billy was not a big mind; it would no more have taken in an abstract idea than his _gunyah_ would have accommodated a grand piano. He was as simple as sunlight, and to resolve his intellect into seven colours would want the most ingenious spectroscope. But he could make an inference from a positive fact, and, having made it, he did not allow more remote deductions to trouble his legitimate conclusion. He ceased to fear Mr. Colborn, and began to look upon the magistrate’s property as if it were at least half his own. So he got very drunk on the hospitality of a new chum miner who had been successful, and presently, presuming on his new possessions, got into a fight with his entertainer and a disrespectful subking of his own blacks, and was reduced to worse rags than ever.

Next morning he sat outside the magistrate’s house, on the lowest log he could find, and when Mr. Colborn came out he tackled him with the air of a subject king demanding redress of his suzerain.

“Well, Billy, what is it?” asked the suzerain.

“You belong gublement?” said Billy the king, with a question, an implied doubt, and a great complaint in his voice. Colborn laughed.

“Why, yes, Billy; I belong to the government, I suppose.”

“Then,” said Billy, “what you say to white fellow make ‘um black fellow drunk, knock ‘um all about? Call you that gublement?” And he showed his kingly robe, which had once been a frock-coat, with great disgust.

However, he met with no favour, and was told that he should not get drunk--that it served him right; with which magisterial decision Colborn got on his horse and rode off to the flat.

The king sat down sadly and considered thickly in his slow brain. Annie did not come out, and he knew better than to ask for her, for Mr. Colborn’s niece, who kept house for him, was but newly come from home, and thought all black fellows congenital murderers, which indeed they are in some parts of the north. So Billy sat and waited, for he wanted a new coat. How could he be respected in one whose natural divisions were unnaturally extended to the very neck? It was obviously necessary to get a new garment at once, and the best chance of a good one lay in little Annie’s kindness. But in order to obviate the slightest chance of his girl patron’s refusing, he must bring her some offering. He went off into the bush at the back of the town, and, coming to where three or four black fellows were camped, he sat down and talked with them. In spite of the heat, a wretched old gin, muffled up in her one garment, a ragged blanket, held her hands over the few burning sticks which represent an Australian native’s idea of a fire. Presently King Billy rose, and, taking a tomahawk, went farther into the bush. He looked about, and at last came to a tree, which he climbed native fashion, first discarding his clothes. When near the first big branches he came to a hole, and, putting in his hand, he extracted a lively young possum by the tail.

Next morning he was sitting on the Colborns’ fence as usual. At his feet was a little box with two or three slats nailed roughly across it. Inside was the possum. King Billy wondered what kind of a coat he could get. He liked a frock-coat; there was something majestic about it, something fine and ample. Common morning coats would not do; no one would insult a king by offering him tweed; even little Annie knew better than that, especially if he gave her a live possum he had caught himself. And when Annie did come out, she was in the seventh heaven of delight with the possum, and ready to bestow anything in the world on King Billy.

“You give poor Billy one fellow coat, missy, and he go down along street like a king.”

Annie flew into the house and seized the first garment she laid her little hands on. It was her father’s dress-coat. She rolled it up, and, running out, thrust it excitedly into the king’s black paw. As he went off, she carried the possum indoors, and was deliriously happy for hours.

King Billy hurried into the bush till he came to a water-hole, and, stripping off his rags, he held up the coat. His jaw fell; there was a remarkable exiguity about the coat which was inexplicable. He had never observed such in his life. He put it on, and, bending over the surface of the still pool, took a good look at the general effect. It was not bad from some points of view, but Billy had his doubts as to whether he would be received with the respect due to his title if he went into Ballarat clothed thus. He tried to button it, but discovered that, if it had ever been intended for buttoning, he could not get it to meet across his chest. He picked up his discarded frock-coat, which was held together by the collar; then he felt the stuff of which the dress-coat was made, and the material pleased him. “Oh, why,” asked Billy, “had it not been made with front tails?” He saw at last that this coat and his high hat alone were insufficient for civilisation. For full dress in a corroboree it might do. Unconsciously, he was so wrought upon by the purpose for which the coat had been built that he determined to reserve it for parties in the seclusion of the bush, where any merriment could be rightly checked by a crack from his waddy. He planted it carefully in a hollow log, and, having inserted himself with as much care into his discarded rags, he wondered off into the town. He got very intoxicated that night, and determined to have a party all by himself.

Now it may seem very annoying, and I confess I find it so myself; but, having got so far, I don’t see my way to tell the rest, even if Annie Colborn told me the story herself. For after her father’s death she married a man who had a small sheep-station and a hotel not forty miles from Carabobla, in New South Wales. I stayed there a couple of days when I was going north to the Murrumbidgee. But though she told me, I cannot tell it again, at least not in bold, bad print. Still, it will occur to most that a man of King Billy’s sweet and innocent disposition might very likely create a sensation, when his natural discretion was drowned in bad whisky, if he ended his solitary corroboree in the moonlight by going up to Colborn’s house in order to deliver a speech of gratitude through the French windows.

So Colborn and the king had a corroboree all to themselves in the open space before the house, while the gold commissioner’s guests roared with laughter to find out where the missing dress-coat was. Next day King Billy resumed the split frock-coat.

THY HEART’S DESIRE, By Netta Syrett

The tents were pitched in the little plain surrounded by hills. Right and left there were stretches of tender, vivid green where the young corn was springing; farther still, on either hand, the plain was yellow with mustard-flower; but in the immediate foreground it was bare and stony. A few thorny bushes pushed their straggling way through the dry soil, ineffectively as far as the grace of the landscape was concerned, for they merely served to emphasise the barren aridness of the land that stretched before the tents, sloping gradually to the distant hills.

The hills were uninteresting enough in themselves; they had no grandeur of outline, no picturesqueness even, though at morning and evening the sun, like a great magician, clothed them with beauty at a touch.

They had begun to change, to soften, to blush rose red in the evening light, when a woman came to the entrance of the largest of the tents and looked toward them. She leaned against the support on one side of the canvas flap, and, putting back her head, rested that, too, against it, while her eyes wandered over the plain and over the distant hills.

She was bareheaded, for the covering of the tent projected a few feet to form an awning overhead. The gentle breeze which had risen with sundown stirred the soft brown tendrils of hair on her temples, and fluttered her pink cotton gown a little. She stood very still, with her arms hanging and her hands clasped loosely in front of her. There was about her whole attitude an air of studied quiet which in some vague fashion the slight clasp of her hands accentuated. Her face, with its tightly, almost rigidly closed lips, would have been quite in keeping with the impression of conscious calm which her entire presence suggested, had it not been that when she raised her eyes a strange contradiction to this idea was afforded. They were large gray eyes, unusually bright and rather startling in effect, for they seemed the only live thing about her. Gleaming from her still, set face, there was something almost alarming in their brilliancy. They softened with a sudden glow of pleasure as they rested on the translucent green of the wheat-fields under the broad generous sunlight, and then wandered to where the pure vivid yellow of the mustard-flower spread in waves to the base of the hills, now mystically veiled in radiance. She stood motionless, watching their melting, elusive changes from palpitating rose to the transparent purple of amethyst. The stillness of evening was broken by the monotonous, not unmusical creaking of a Persian wheel at some little distance to the left of the tent. The well stood in a little grove of trees; between their branches she could see, when she turned her head, the coloured saris of the village women, where they stood in groups chattering as they drew the water, and the little naked brown babies that toddled beside them or sprawled on the hard ground beneath the trees. From the village of flat-roofed mud houses under the low hill at the back of the tents, other women were crossing the plain toward the well, their terra-cotta water-jars poised easily on their heads, casting long shadows on the sun-baked ground as they came.

Presently, in the distance, from the direction of the sunlit hills opposite a little group of men came into sight. Far off, the mustard-coloured jackets and the red turbans of the orderlies made vivid splashes of colour on the dull plain. As they came nearer, the guns slung across their shoulders, the cases of mathematical instruments, the hammers, and other heavy baggage they carried for the sahib, became visible. A little in front, at walking pace rode the sahib himself, making notes as he came in a book he held before him. The girl at the tent entrance watched the advance of the little company indifferently, it seemed; except for a slight tightening of the muscles about her mouth, her face remained unchanged. While he was still some little distance away, the man with the notebook raised his head and smiled awkwardly as he saw her standing there. Awkwardness, perhaps, best describes the whole man. He was badly put together, loose-jointed, ungainly. The fact that he was tall profited him nothing, for it merely emphasised the extreme ungracefulness of his figure. His long pale face was made paler by the shock of coarse, tow-coloured hair; his eyes, even, looked colourless, though they were certainly the least uninteresting feature of his face, for they were not devoid of expression. He had a way of slouching when he moved that singularly intensified the general uncouthness of his appearance. “Are you very tired?” asked his wife, gently, when he had dismounted close to the tent. The question would have been an unnecessary one had it been put to her instead of to her husband, for her voice had that peculiar flat toneless sound for which extreme weariness is answerable.

“Well, no, my dear, not very,” he replied, drawling out the words with an exasperating air of delivering a final verdict, after deep reflection on the subject.

The girl glanced once more at the fading colours on the hills. “Come in and rest,” she said, moving aside a little to let him pass.

She stood lingering a moment after he had entered the tent, as though unwilling to leave the outer air; and before she turned to follow him she drew a deep breath, and her hand went for one swift second to her throat as though she felt stifled.

Later on that evening she sat in her tent, sewing by the light of the lamp that stood on her little table.

Opposite to her, her husband stretched his ungainly length in a deck-chair, and turned over a pile of official notes. Every now and then her eyes wandered from the gay silks of the table-cover she was embroidering to the canvas walls which bounded the narrow space into which their few household goods were crowded. Outside there was a deep hush. The silence of the vast empty plain seemed to work its way slowly, steadily in toward the little patch of light set in its midst. The girl felt it in every nerve; it was as though some soft-footed, noiseless, shapeless creature, whose presence she only dimly divined, was approaching nearer--_nearer_. The heavy outer stillness was in some way made more terrifying by the rustle of the papers her husband was reading, by the creaking of his chair as he moved, and by the little fidgeting grunts and half-exclamations which from time to time broke from him. His wife’s hand shook at every unintelligible mutter from him, and the slight habitual contraction between her eyes deepened.

All at once she threw her work down on to the table. “For heaven’s sake--_please_, John, _talk_!” she cried. Her eyes, for the moment’s space in which they met the startled ones of her husband, had a wild, hunted look, but it was gone almost before his slow brain had time to note that it had been there--and was vaguely disturbing. She laughed a little unsteadily.

“Did I startle you? I’m sorry. I”--she laughed again--“I believe I’m a little nervous. When one is all day alone--” She paused without finishing the sentence. The man’s face changed suddenly. A wave of tenderness swept over it, and at the same time an expression of half-incredulous delight shone in his pale eyes.

“Poor little girl, are you really lonely?” he said. Even the real feeling in his tone failed to rob his voice of its peculiarly irritating grating quality. He rose awkwardly, and moved to his wife’s side.

Involuntarily she shrank a little, and the hand which he had stretched out to touch her hair sank to his side. She recovered herself immediately, and turned her face up to his, though she did not raise her eyes; but he did not kiss her. Instead, he stood in an embarrassed fashion a moment by her side, and then went back to his seat.

There was silence again for some time. The man lay back in his chair, gazing at his big, clumsy shoes as though he hoped for some inspiration from that quarter, while his wife worked with nervous haste.

“Don’t let me keep you from reading, John,” she said, and her voice had regained its usual gentle tone.

“No, my dear; I’m just thinking of something to say to you, but I don’t seem--”

She smiled a little. In spite of herself, her lip curled faintly. “Don’t worry about it; it was stupid of me to expect it. I mean--” she added, hastily, immediately repenting the sarcasm. She glanced furtively at him, but his face was quite unmoved; evidently he had not noticed it, and she smiled faintly again.

“O Kathie, I knew there was _something_ I’d forgotten to tell you, my dear; there’s a man coming down here. I don’t know whether--”

She looked up sharply. “A man coming _here_? What for?” she interrupted, breathlessly.

“Sent to help me about this oil-boring business, my dear.”

He had lighted his pipe, and was smoking placidly, taking long whiffs between his words.

“Well?” impatiently questioned his wife, fixing her bright eyes on his face.

“Well--that’s all, my dear.”