Part 15 (2/2)

Marshalling the blacks before him like a company of soldiers--the women, thanks to my prudent instructions, being more or less decently dressed, the men considerably less decently, and the younger children of both s.e.xes being elegantly clad in Nature's undress uniform--Jack vigorously addressed his listeners thus: ”Big feast made ready for plenty black-fellow to-day, but black-fellow must make clean himself before feast.” (Grunts of disapprobation from the men, and a perfect babel of angry protestation from the women here interrupted the speaker, who proceeded, oblivious of the disapproval of his audience.) ”Black-fellow all come with me for washee; lubras and piccaninnies (_i.e._, women and children) all go with white women for washee.” (Continued grumbles of discontent.) ”Clean black-fellow,” continued Jack, ”get new s.h.i.+rtee, clean lubra new gowna.” Then, seeing that even this magnificent bribe failed to reconcile the natives to the idea of soap and water, Jack, to the amus.e.m.e.nt of Maggie and myself, settled matters by shouting out the ultimatum: ”No washee--no s.h.i.+rtee, no s.h.i.+rtee--no feastee,” and stalked away, followed submissively by the aboriginal lords of creation.

The men, indeed, and, in a lesser degree, the children, showed themselves amenable to reason that day, and were not wanting in grat.i.tude; but in spite of Maggie's care and mine, the gins (the gentler s.e.x) worthily deserved the expressive description: ”Manners none, customs beastly.”

They were repulsive and dirty in the extreme. They gloried in their dirt, and clung to it with a closer affection than they did to womanly modesty--this last virtue was unknown.

We, on civilising thoughts intent, had provided a number of large tubs and soap, and brushes galore for the Augean task, but though we got the women to the water, we were helpless to make them clean.

Their declaration of independence was out at once--”Is thy servant a dog that I should do this thing?” Wash and be clean! Why, it was contrary to all the time-honoured filthy habits of the n.o.ble self-respecting race of Australian gins, and ”they would have none of it.” At last, in despair, and largely humiliated at the way in which savage womanhood had worsted civilised, Maggie and I betook ourselves to the long tables where the feast was being spread, and waited the arrival of the leader of the other s.e.x, whose success, evidenced by sounds coming from afar, made me seriously doubt my right to be called his ”better half.”

After a final appeal to my hard-hearted lord and master to be spared the indignity of the wash-tub, the native men had bowed to the inevitable.

Each man heroically lent himself to the task, and diligently helped his neighbours to reach the required standard of excellence.

Finally all save one stubborn aboriginal protestant emerged from the tub, like the immortal Tom Sawyer, ”a man and a brother.”

Well, the feast was a great success. The corned and tinned meat, oranges, tomatoes, cakes and gingerbeer provided were largely consumed.

The eatables, indeed, met the approval of the savages, for, like Oliver Twist, they asked for ”more,” until we who served them got rather leg-weary, and began to doubt whether, when night came, we would be able to say with any heartiness we had had ”a merry Christmas.”

Clad in their clean s.h.i.+rts, and with faces s.h.i.+ning with soap-polish, the men looked rather well, despite their repulsive and generally villainous features. But the women, wrinkled, filthy, quarrelsome and disgusting, they might have stood for incarnations of the witch-hags in _Macbeth_; and as we watched them guzzling down the food, and then turning their upper garments into impromptu bags to carry off what remained, it is hard to say whether the feeling of pity or disgust they raised was the stronger.

After the feast, Jack, for Maggie's entertainment, tried to get up the blacks to engage in a corroboree, and give an exhibition of boomerang and spear-throwing; but the inner man had been too largely satisfied, and they declined violent exertion, so the toys were distributed and our guests dismissed.

When she and I were dressing that evening for our own Christmas dinner, Maggie kept talking all the time of the strange experience she had pa.s.sed through that day.

[Sidenote: A Striking Picture]

”I'll never forget it,” she said. ”Savages are so different from our English ideas of them. Did you notice the dogs? I counted nineteen go off with the first native that left. And the women! Weren't they horrors? I don't think I'll ever feel pride in my s.e.x again. But above all, I'll never forget the way in which Jack drove from the table that native who hadn't a clean s.h.i.+rt on. It was a picture of Christ's parable of the 'Marriage Feast,'” she added softly.

Before I could reply the gong, strengthened by Jack's imperative ”Hurry up, I'm starving,” summoned us to dinner.

[Sidenote: A story of Sedgemoor times and of a woman who was both a saint and a heroine.]

My Mistress Elizabeth

BY

ANNIE ARMITT

I committed a great folly when I was young and ignorant; for I left my father's house and hid myself in London only that I might escape the match he desired to make for me. I knew nothing at that time of the dangers and sorrows of those who live in the world and are mixed in its affairs.

Yet it was a time of public peril, and not a few who dwelt in the quiet corners of the earth found themselves embroiled suddenly in great matters of state. For when the Duke of Monmouth landed in Dorsets.h.i.+re it was not the dwellers in great cities or the intriguers of the Court that followed him chiefly to their undoing; it was the peasant who left his plough and the cloth-worker his loom. Men who could neither read nor write were caught up by the cry of a Protestant leader, and went after him to their ruin.

The prince to whose standard they flocked was, for all his sweet and taking manners, but a profligate at best; he had no true religion in his heart--nothing but a desire, indeed, for his own aggrandis.e.m.e.nt, whatever he might say to the unhappy maid that handed a Bible to him at Taunton. But of this the people were ignorant, and so it came to pa.s.s that they were led to destruction in a fruitless cause.

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