RUBY.

A STORY OF THE AUSTRALIAN BUSH.

BY MOLLY E. JAMIESON, AUTHOR OF “JACK,” “AT SUNSET,” “MOLLY AND I,” ETC.

PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE GENERAL LITERATURE COMMITTEE.

LONDON: SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C.; 43, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, E.C. BRIGHTON: 129, NORTH STREET. New York: E. & J. B. YOUNG AND CO.

“Love not pleasure; love God. This is the everlasting Yea, wherein all contradiction is solved, wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him.”—Carlyle.

CONTENTS.

[Pg 7]

RUBY.

CHAPTER I. AN AUSTRALIAN CHRISTMAS.

CHRISTMAS DAY in the Australian bush! Not the sort of Christmas Day we dwellers in bonnie Scotland or merry England are accustomed to. The sun is blazing down in remorseless strength upon the parched ground, where the few trees about the station cast so slight a shadow. Past the foot of the straggling garden[Pg 8] the little creek dances and ripples on its way to the river, half a mile away, and, as far as eye can reach, stretch the blue distances of bush in long, monotonous undulation.

“Wish he’d come,” says Ruby. “The pudding will be quite cold.”

On such a day as this it does not seem of paramount importance whether the pudding be hot or cold. In fact, Christmas Day though it be, it would be rather a relief to have a cold pudding than otherwise.

Ruby’s anxious little face testifies that such is not her opinion. She has come out to the verandah, and, shading her eyes with her hand from the white glare of the sun, gazes now this way, now that. The pudding lies heavily upon her heart.

“Ruby!” comes a rather querulous voice from the room beyond the shady blue blinds.

The little girl gives one last long glance in every direction, then lets the shading hand drop, and passes through the open doorway of the pretty cottage which is Ruby’s home.

“Isn’t he coming, Ruby?”

The yellow-haired woman lying on the sofa is Ruby’s step-mother. The roses of the once pretty pink cheeks have paled to white, and there are fretful little lines about the corners of the mouth, and a discontented expression in the big blue eyes; but with it all Mrs. Thorne has pretensions to beauty still.

[Pg 9]“He’s not in sight yet, mamma,” returns Ruby, wrinkling up her brow. She calls Mrs. Thorne “mamma,” for the fair-faced unaffectionate woman is the only mother the child has ever known. Ruby was only a baby when her own mother died, and “mamma in heaven” is a far less real personage to her little daughter than “mamma” on earth.

“It’s very tiresome.” The lady’s tone is peevish, and she fans herself languidly with a large fan lying by her side. “I can’t conceive what makes your father so irregular at mealtimes. Do bring me something cool to drink, Ruby, like a good child. This heat is intolerable.”

The “station” is built in a quadrangle, and across one corner of this quadrangle Ruby has to go ere she reaches the kitchen. If it is hot in the living room, it is ten times hotter here, where Jenny, a stout, buxom Scotchwoman of forty or thereabouts, who for love of her mistress has braved the loneliness of bush life, is busy amidst her pots and pans getting ready the Christmas dinner.

“Dad’s not come yet, Jenny,” Ruby says as she reaches down a tumbler and prepares the cooling drink which her step-mother has requested. “Do you think the pudding will keep all right?”

“It’ll be none the waur if he’ll no be that long,” Jenny returns, giving the fire a stir-up.[Pg 10] “I’d no mind the cookin’ if it wasna’ for the heat; but the heat’s maist awfu’. It near sends a body gyte. To think o’ the Christmas they’ll be havin’ in Scotland too. It a’most gars me greet to think o’ it a’, Miss Ruby, and us awa’ in this queer-like place. It’s fine enough to say that fortunes can be made out here; but I wad rather dae wi’out the fortune an’ stay at hame.”

“But, you see, this is home now,” Ruby says, stirring up her decoction gravely. “That’s what papa always says when mamma gets cross. Mamma doesn’t like staying here, you see. She says Scotland never seemed so bonnie as when she’s away from it. And I’m Scotch, too.” Ruby gives her head rather a proud little toss. “But I call this home. But of course I don’t remember Scotland—hardly,” the little girl admits slowly.

The tumbler has received its final stir-up now, and Ruby carries it through the blazing sun of the courtyard to her step-mother, still lying on the sofa.

“I’ll fan you, mamma, while you’re drinking it, and that’ll make you feel cooler.”

“Thanks, dear; you are a good little girl,” her mother says, with an approving pat for the small hand wielding the fan.

Ruby’s heart gives a great leap of joy. It is so seldom that her step-mother speaks to her like this. Not that Mrs. Thorne is unkind to[Pg 11] her husband’s little daughter; but, wrapped up in herself and her own ailments, she has but small sympathy to waste on others. Had she seen the gladness which shone out of the child’s eyes at the unaccustomed words of kindness, she might have spoken them oftener. Though she loves her husband as much as it is possible for such a nature to love any one, it has been a bitter trial to Dora Thorne, reared midst the refinements of a Scottish home, to leave friends and kindred for his sake, and to exchange the well-known, well-loved heather-hilled land of her birth for the hardships and uncertainties of the Australian bush. So perhaps it is no wonder that her time is so taken up in commiserating herself that she has but little leisure left to commiserate or sympathize with any one else.

Suddenly Ruby raises her head, a “listening” look on her face.

“That’s him!” she cries. “I hear him coming now!”

The child rushes out to the verandah, and again shades her eyes with her hand. Through the sunlight, across the cleared space of grass which surrounds the station, a horse and rider are coming. With the sunny glare in her eyes, it is not until he is quite near that Ruby sees that the approaching figure really is her father. Strangers do not come often to Glengarry; but it[Pg 12] so chances that now and again a stray traveller on his way to the coast claims the hospitality of the station.

He swings off his horse at the garden-gate, flings the reins to Dick, the stable-boy, and stoops to kiss the face of the little girl who has run out to meet him.

“I thought you were just never coming, dad,” complains Ruby, plaintively. “And Jenny’s afraid the pudding’ll be spoilt. It’s been ready ever so long.”

“Here I am at last anyway, little woman,” laughs the big man, whose brown eyes are so like Ruby’s, and whose voice is the sweetest sound in the world to his little daughter.

He goes into the house, with the child hanging upon his arm, her big eyes gazing up at him, reflecting every smile in the dear face above her. The love between those two is a very beautiful thing, like that sweet old-fashioned love of which we read, that it was “passing that of women.”

“I thought you were never coming, Will,” says his wife, giving vent to her thoughts in the same words as Ruby. “You do look hot, and no wonder; for it is hot enough even in here. And I have such a headache.”

“Poor little Dolly!”

Surely a shade of regret passes over the bronzed face as he strokes the soft golden hair with his big rough hand. He is reproaching[Pg 13] himself that he has not been unselfish enough, as many a man has, to face the battle alone, instead of bringing this fragile little Dolly of his away from the dear “kent faces” of the land where she was born, to brave the rough life and hardships of the Australian bush. And before his eyes uprises another face—a young, bright, dauntless face, with fearless grey eyes—the face of Ruby’s mother, who would have gone through fire and water for the sake of the man she loved; but who, in her quiet Scottish home, had not been called upon to do any great thing, only to leave her husband and child when the King called her away to that other land which is fairer even than the dearly loved bonnie Scotland she left behind.

It is no one’s fault that the wrong woman seems to have been put in the wrong place, that the fearless Scottish lassie who would fain have proved her love for her husband by braving peril and hardship for his sake, had comfortable circumstances and a peaceful life for her lot, and that the fair-faced, ease-loving woman who came after her should have had to brave those very hardships which the first had coveted.

To Ruby her own mother is nothing more than a name, and Scotland itself not much more. She was only three years old when the new golden-haired mother came home, and but[Pg 14] little more when the reverses followed which forced her father to seek his fortune in an unknown land over the sea. And Australia is now, as Ruby has said to Jenny, “home.”

The child goes dancing off, and across the sunshine of the quadrangle to tell Jenny to bring the Christmas dinner in. It is a dinner which is much too hot for an Australian bush Christmas; but, if we happen to be Scottish, let us be Scottish or die!

“I shouldn’t have brought you out here, Dolly,” the husband is saying. He has said the same thing for the last half-dozen years; but that does not mend matters, or bring the faded pink back to his Dolly’s cheeks. But she likes to hear him say it, poor little woman. It shows that he sympathizes with those not always imaginary ailments of hers.

“You’ll take me home again soon, Will,” she coaxes, clinging to him. Unlike Ruby, far-away Scotland is still home to Dora Thorne. “Now that you are getting on so well. Just for a little while to see them all. Couldn’t you manage, Will?”

“No saying, darling,” he responds brightly. He does not think it necessary to trouble this fragile little wife of his with the knowledge that things are not going on quite “so well” at present as she seems to fancy. “Next Christmas Day, God willing, we’ll try to spend[Pg 15] in bonnie Scotland. That brings the roses to your cheeks, little girl!”

It has brought the roses to her cheeks, the light to her violet eyes. Dora Thorne looks as young just now as she did one far-off June day when she plighted her troth to the man of her choice in the old parish kirk at home.

“Do you hear what papa says, Ruby?” she says when they are all three sitting at dinner, and the faintest breath of wind is stirring the blue blinds gently. “That we are going to Scotland for next Christmas Day, to dear bonnie Scotland, with its heather and its bluebells. I must write to the home people and tell them to-night. How glad they all will be!”

“O-oh!” cries Ruby, with wide-open brown eyes. Then, as another possibility dawns upon her, “But am I to go too?”

“If we go, of course our little girl will go with us,” her father assures her.

Christmas in Scotland! Ruby seems lost in a happy dream. Scotland! the dear, unknown land where she was born! The land, which to mamma and Jenny is the one land of all, far above all others!

“Will Jenny go too?” she inquires further.

The two elders look doubtfully at each other.

“I don’t know,” says mamma at length rather lamely. “Don’t say anything to her about it just now, Ruby, till it is quite settled.”

[Pg 16]Quite settled! In Ruby’s mind it is quite settled already. She goes out to the verandah after dinner, and, swinging idly in the hammock, indulges in the luxury of dreaming. Above her stretches the cloudless blue of the Australian sky, for miles on her every hand lie the undulations of Australian bush; but Ruby is far away from it all, away in bonnie Scotland, with its rippling burns and purple heather, away in the land where her mother lived and died, and where Ruby’s own baby eyes first opened.

“It’s about too good to be true,” the little girl is thinking. “It’s like dreaming, and then you waken from the dream and find it’s all just a make-up. What if this was a dream too?”

It is not a dream, as Ruby finds after she has dealt herself several sharp pinches, her most approved method of demonstrating to herself that reality really is reality. No dream, she has found by experience, can long outlast such treatment.

But by-and-by even reality passes into dreaming, and Ruby goes to sleep, the rippling of the creek in her ears, and the sunshine of the Christmas afternoon falling aslant upon her face.

In her dreams the splash of the creek is transformed into the babble of a Highland burn over the stones, and the sunshine is the sunshine of dear, unknown, bonnie Scotland.

[Pg 17]

CHAPTER II. JACK.

RUBY always remembers the day that Jack came to the station.

It is the twenty-sixth day of December, the day after Christmas, and Ruby, having busied herself about the house most of the morning, in her usual small way, has gone down to the creek to do Fanny and Bluebell’s washing.

There is no reason in the world why those young ladies’ washing should not be undertaken in the privacy of the kitchen, save that Jenny, in an inadvertent moment, has enlightened her[Pg 18] young mistress as to the primitive Highland way of doing washing, and has, moreover, shown her a tiny wood-cut of the same, carefully preserved in her large-print Bible.

It is no matter to Ruby that the custom is now almost obsolete. The main thing is that it is Scottish, and Scottish in every respect Ruby has quite determined to be.

Fanny and Bluebell sit in upright waxen and wooden silence against a stone, wrapped each in a morsel of calico, as most of their garments are now immersed in water. Bluebell is a brunette of the wooden-jointed species, warranted to outlive the hardest usage at the hands of her young owner. She has lost the roses from her cheeks, the painted wig from her head, one leg, and half an arm, in the struggle for existence; but Bluebell is still good for a few years more wear. The painted wig Ruby has restored from one of old Hans’ paint-pots when he renewed the station outbuildings last summer; but the complexion and the limbs are beyond her power. And what is the use of giving red cheeks to a doll whose face is liable to be washed at least once a day?

Fanny, the waxen blonde, has fared but little better. Like Bluebell, she is one-legged, and possesses a nose from which any pretensions to wax have long been worn away by too diligent use of soap and water. Her flaxen head of hair[Pg 19] is her own, and so are her arms, albeit those latter limbs are devoid of hands. Dolls have no easier a time of it in the Australian bush than anywhere else.

It is not amiss, this hot December morning, to paddle one’s hands in the cooling water, and feel that one is busily employed at the same time. The sun beats down on the large white hat so diligently bent above the running creek. Ruby, kneeling on a large boulder, is busily engaged wringing out Bluebell’s pink calico dress, when a new idea comes to her. She will “tramp” the clothes as they are doing in the picture of the “Highland washing.”

Such an idea is truly delightful, and Ruby at once begins to put it into practice by sitting down and unbuttoning her shoes. But the hand unfastening the second button pauses, and the face beneath the large white hat is uplifted, the brown eyes shining. The sound of horse’s hoofs is coming nearer and nearer.

“It’s dad!” Ruby’s face is aglow now. “He’s come back earlier than he thought.”

The washing is all forgotten, and flying feet make for the little side garden-gate, where the rider is in a leisurely manner dismounting from his horse.

“Oh, dad!” the little girl cries, then pauses, for surely this figure is not her father’s. Ruby pulls down her hat, the better to see, and looks[Pg 20] up at him. He is giving his horse in charge to brown-faced Dick, and, raising his hat, comes towards Ruby.

“Good morning,” he says politely, showing all his pretty even white teeth in a smile. “This is Glengarry, is it not? I am on my way to the coast, and was directed to Mr. Thorne’s as the nearest station.”

“Yes,” returns Ruby, half shyly, “this is Glengarry. Won’t you come in and rest. Mamma is at home, though papa is away.”

Ruby knows quite what to do in the circumstances. Strangers do not come often to Glengarry; but still they come sometimes.

“Thanks,” answers the young man.

He is of middle stature, with rather a tendency to stoop, and is of a complexion which would be delicate were it not so sunburnt, with light brown hair, dark brown eyes, and a smile which lights up his face like sunlight as he speaks.

Ruby leads him along the verandah, where the flowering plants twine up the pillars, and into the room with the shady blue blinds.

“It’s a gentleman, mamma,” Ruby gives as introduction. “He is on his way to the coast.”

When Ruby has finished her washing, spread out all the small garments to dry and bleach upon the grass, and returned to the house, she finds the stranger still there. The mistress had[Pg 21] said he was to wait over dinner, so she learns from Jenny.

“Oh, there you are, Ruby!” her step-mother says as the little girl comes into the room. “What did you run away for, child? Mr. Kirke fancies you must have been shy of him.”

“Little girls often are,” says Mr. Kirke, with that smile which illumines an otherwise plain face. “They think I’m cross.”

“I don’t think so!” decides Ruby, suddenly. She is gazing up into those other brown eyes above her, and is fascinated, as most others are, by Jack Kirke’s face—a face stern in repose, and far from beautiful, but lit up by a smile as bright as God’s own sunlight, and as kind.

“You don’t think so?” repeats the young man, with another smile for the fair little face uplifted to his. He puts his arm round the child as he speaks, and draws her towards him. “You are the little girl who thinks such a lot of Scotland,” Jack Kirke says.

“How did you know?” Ruby questions, looking up with wide brown eyes.

“I rather think a little bird must have sung it to me as I came along,” the stranger answers gravely. “Besides, I’m Scotch, so of course I know.”

“Oh-h!” ejaculates Ruby, her eyes growing bigger then. “Tell me about Scotland.”

[Pg 22]So, with one arm round Ruby, the big brown eyes gazing up into the honest ones above her, and the sunshine, mellowed by the down-drawn blinds, flooding on the two brown heads, Jack Kirke tells the little girl all about the unknown land of Scotland, and his birthplace, the grey little seaport town of Greenock, on the beautiful river Clyde.

“You must come and see me if ever you come to Scotland, you know, Ruby,” he tells her. “I’m on my way home now, and shall be jolly glad to get there; for, after all, there’s no place like home, and no place in all the world like bonnie Scotland.”

“Do you think that too?” Ruby cries delightedly. “That’s what mamma always says, and Jenny. I don’t remember Scotland,” Ruby continues, with a sigh; “but I dare say, if I did, I should say it too. And by next Christmas I shall have seen it. Dad says, ‘God willing;’ but I don’t see the good of that when we really are going to go. Do you, Mr. Kirke?”

The sunlight is still flooding the room; but its radiance has died away from Jack Kirke’s face, leaving it for the moment cold and stern. Ruby is half frightened as she looks up at him. What has chased the brightness from the face a moment ago so glad?

“When you are as old as dad and I you[Pg 23] will be thankful if you can say just that, little girl,” he says in a strange, strained voice.

Then Ruby knows that Mr. Kirke is sorry about something, though she does not know what, and, child-like, seeks to comfort him in the grief she does not know. She slips her small hand into his.

“I’m sorry too,” she whispers simply.