Station Amusements in New Zealand, Lady Mary Anne Barker [fiction novels to read .TXT] 📗

perpetually blackening his apron and casting it aside. Then, he used suddenly to cease to take any interest in his occupation, and, seating himself sideways on the kitchen dresser, begin to whistle through a whole opera, or repeat pages of poetry. I tried the experiment of banishing Miss A---- from the kitchen during cooking hours, but a few bars played on the piano were quite enough to distract my cook from his work. My only quiet time was the afternoon, when about four o'clock, my amateur servants all went out for a ride, and left me in peace for a couple of hours. I had enough to do during that short time to tidy up; to collect the scattered books and music, and prepare the tea-supper, for which they came back in tearing spirits, and frantically hungry, between seven and eight o'clock. After this meal had been cleared away, and Mr. U---- and I had washed up (the others declaring they were too tired to stir), we all used to adjourn to the verandah. It happened to be an exceptionally _still_ week, no dry, hot nor'-westers, nor cold, wet sou'-westers, and it was perfectly delicious to sit out in the verandah and rest, after the labours of the day, in our cane easy-chairs. The balmy air was so soft and fresh, and the intense silence all around so profound. Unfortunately there was a full moon. I say "unfortunately," because the flood of pale light suggested to these dreadful young men the feasibility of having what they called a "servant's ball." In vain I declared that the housekeeper was never expected to dance. "Oh, yes!" laughed Captain George. "I've often danced with a housekeeper, and very jolly it was too. Come along! F----, _make_ her dance." And I was forced to gallopade up and down that verandah till I felt half dead with fatigue. The boards had a tremendous spring, and the verandah (built by F----, by the way), was very wide and roomy, so it made an excellent ball-room. As for the trifling difficulty about music, that was supplied by Captain George and Mr. U---- whistling in turn, time being kept by clapping the top and bottom of my silver butter dish together, cymbal-wise. Oh, dear! It takes my breath away now even to think of those evenings! I see Alice A---- flitting about in her white dress and fern-leaf wreath, dancing like the slender sylph she really was, but never can I forget the odd effect of the gentlemen's feet! No one had their dress boots up at the station, and as Alice and I firmly declined to dance with anybody who wore "Cookham" boots (great heavy things with nails in the soles), they had no other course open to them except to wear their smart slippers. There were slippers of purple velvet, embroidered with gold; others of blue kid, delicately traced in crimson lines; foxes heads stared at us in startling perspective from a scarlet ground; or black jim-crow figures disported themselves on orange tent-stitch. Then these slippers were all more or less of an easy fit, and had a way of flying out on the lawn suddenly, startling my dear dog Nettle out of his first sleep.

Ah, well! that may be an absurd bit of one's life to look back upon, but its days were bright and innocent enough. Health was so perfect that the mere sensation of being alive became happiness, and all the noise of the eager, bustling, pushing world, seemed shut away by those steep hills which folded our quiet valley in their green arms. People have often said to me since, "Surely you would not like to have lived there for ever?" Perhaps not. I can only say that three years of that calm, idyllic life, held no weary hour for me, and I am quite sure that quiet time was a great blessing to me in many ways. First of all, in health, for a person must be in a very bad way indeed for New Zealand air not to do them a world of good; next, in teaching me, amid a great deal of fun and laughter, sundry useful accomplishments, not easily learned in our luxurious civilization; and, lastly, those few years of seclusion from the turmoil of life brought leisure to think out one's own thoughts, and to sift them from other peoples' ideas. Under such circumstances, it is hard if "the unregarded river of our life," as Matthew Arnold so finely call it be not perceived, for one then

"---- Becomes aware of his life's flow
And bears its winding murmur, and he sees
The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze;
And there arrives a lull in the hot race,
Wherein he doth for ever chase
That flying and elusive shadow, rest."

One good effect of my sufferings with a house full of unruly volunteers, was that during the brief stay (only two months), of my next cook, I set to work assiduously to learn as many kitchen mysteries as she could teach me, and so became independent of Captain George or F----, or any other amateur, good, bad, or indifferent.

Nothing could be more extraordinary than the way in which the two affectionate sisters, mentioned [earlier] and who succeeded Euphemia and Lois, quarrelled. They were very unlike each other in appearance, and one fruitful source of bickering arose from their respective styles of beauty. Not only did they wrangle and rave at each other all the day long, during every moment of their spare time, but after they had gone to bed, we could hear them quite plainly calling out to each other from their different rooms. If I begged them to be quiet, there might be silence for a moment, but it would shortly be broken by Maria, calling out, "I say, Dinah, don't you go for to wear green, my girl. I only tell you friendly, but you're a deal too yellow for that. It suits _me_, 'cause I'm so fresh and rosy, but you never _will_ have my 'plexion, not if you live to be eighty. Good night. I thought I'd just mention it while I remembered." This used to aggravate Dinah dreadfully, and she would retaliate by repeating some complimentary speech of Old Ben's, or Long Tom's, the stockman, and then there would be no peace for an hour.

Their successors were Clarissa and Eunice. Eunice wept sore for a whole month, over her sweeping and cleaning. To this day I have not the dimmest idea _why_. She gave me warning, amid floods of tears, directly she arrived, though I could not make out any other tangible complaint than that "the dray had jolted as never was;" and to Clarissa, I gave warning the first day I came into the kitchen.

She received me seated on the kitchen table, swinging her legs, which did not nearly touch the floor. She had carefully arranged her position so as to turn her back towards me, and she went on picking her teeth with a hair-pin. I stood aghast at this specimen of colonial manners, which was the more astonishing as I knew the girl had lived in the service of a gentleman's family in the North of England for some time before she sailed.

"Dear me, Clarissa," I cried, "is that the way you behaved at Colonel St. John's?"

Clarissa looked at me very coolly over her shoulder (I must mention she was a very pretty girl, blue-eyed and rosy-cheeked, but with _such_ a temper!) and, giving her plump shoulders a little shrug, said, "No, in course not: _they_ was gentlefolks, they was."

I confess I felt rather nettled at this, and yet it was difficult to be angry with a girl who looked like a grown up and very pretty baby. I restrained my feelings and said, "Well, I should like you to behave here as you did there. Suppose you get off the table and come and look what we can find in the store room."

"I _have_ looked round," she declared: "there 'aint much to be seen." My patience began to run short, and I said very firmly, "You must get off the table directly, Clarissa, and stand and speak properly; or I shall send you down to Christchurch again." I suppose that was exactly what the damsel wished, for she made no movement; whereat I said in great wrath, "Very well, then you shall leave at the end of a month." And so she did, having bullied everybody out of their lives during that time.

Whilst we are on the subject of manners, it may not be out of place to relate a little episode of my early days "up country." I think I have alluded [in "Station Life in New Zealand"] to our book club; but I don't know that it has been explained that I used to change the books on Sunday afternoon, after our little evening service. It would have been impossible to induce the men to come from an immense distance twice a week, and it was therefore necessary that they should be able to get a fresh book after service. Nothing could have been better than the behaviour of my little congregation: they made it a point of giving no trouble whatever with their horses or dogs, and they were so afraid of being supposed to come for what they could get, that I had some difficulty in inducing those who travelled from a distance to have a cup of tea in the kitchen before they mounted, to set off on their long solitary ride homewards. They were also exceedingly quiet and well-behaved; for if even a dozen men or more were standing outside in fine weather, or waiting within the kitchen if it were wet or windy, not a sound could be heard. If they spoke to each other, it was in the lowest whisper, and they would no more have thought of lighting their pipes anywhere near the house than they would of flying.

This innate tact and true gentlemanly feeling which struck me so much in the labouring man as he appears in New Zealand, made the lapse of good manners, to which I am coming, all the more remarkable. Of course they never touched their hats to me: they would make me a bow or take their hats _off_, but they never touched them. I have often seen a hand raised involuntarily to the soft felt hat, which every one wears there, but the mechanical action would be arrested by the recollection of the first article of the old colonial creed, "Jack is as good as his master." I never minded this in the least, and got so completely out of the habit of expecting any salutations, that it seemed quite odd to me to receive them again on my return. No, what I objected to was, that when I used to go into my kitchen, about ten minutes or so after the service had been concluded, with the list of club books in my hand, not a single man rose from his seat. They seemed to make it a point to sit down somewhere; on a table or window seat if all the chairs were occupied, but at all events not to be found standing. They would bend their heads and blush, and glance shyly at each other for encouragement as I came in, but no one got up, or took his hat off. This went on for a few weeks, until I felt sure that this curious behaviour did not spring from forgetfulness, or inattention. When I mentioned my grievance in the drawing-room to the gentlemen, I only got laughed at for my pains, and I was asked what else I