The Three Miss Kings

CHAPTER I.

A DISTANT VIEW

On the second of January, in the year 1880, three newly-orphaned sisters, finding themselves left to their own devices, with an income of exactly one hundred pounds a year a-piece, sat down to consult together as to the use they should make of their independence.

The place where they sat was a grassy cliff overlooking a wide bay of the Southern Ocean – a lonely spot, whence no sign of human life was visible, except in the sail of a little fishing boat far away. The low sun, that blazed at the back of their heads, and threw their shadows and the shadow of every blade of grass into relief, touched that distant sail and made it shine like bridal satin; while a certain island rock, the home of sea-birds, blushed like a rose in the same necromantic light. As they sat, they could hear the waves breaking and seething on the sands and stones beneath them, but could only see the level plain of blue and purple water stretching from the toes of their boots to the indistinct horizon. That particular Friday was a terribly hot day for the colony, as weather records testify, but in this favoured spot it had been merely a little too warm for comfort, and, the sea-breeze coming up fresher and stronger as the sun went down, it was the perfection of an Australian summer evening at the hour of which I am writing.

"What I want," said Patty King (Patty was the middle one), "is to make a dash – a straight-out plunge into the world, Elizabeth – no shilly-shallying and dawdling about, frittering our money away before we begin. Suppose we go to London – we shall have enough to cover our travelling expenses, and our income to start fair with – surely we could live anywhere on three hundred a year, in the greatest comfort – and take rooms near the British Museum? – or in South Kensington? – or suppose we go to one of those intellectual German towns, and study music and languages? What do you think, Nell? I am sure we could do it easily if we tried."

"Oh," said Eleanor, the youngest of the trio, "I don't care so long as we go somewhere, and do something."

"What do you think, Elizabeth?" pursued the enterprising Patty, alert and earnest. "Life is short, and there is so much for us to see and learn – all these years and years we have been out of it so utterly! Oh, I wonder how we have borne it! How have we borne it – to hear about things and never to know or do them, like other people! Let us get into the thick of it at once, and recover lost time. Once in Europe, everything would be to our hand – everything would be possible. What do you think?"

"My dear," said Elizabeth, with characteristic caution, "I think we are too young and ignorant to go so far afield just yet."

"We are all over twenty-one," replied Patty quickly, "and though we have lived the lives of hermits, we are not more stupid than other people. We can speak French and German, and we are quite sharp enough to know when we are being cheated. We should travel in perfect safety, finding our way as we went along. And we do know something of those places – of Melbourne we know nothing."

"We should never get to the places mother knew – the sort of life we have heard of. And Mr. Brion and Paul are with us here – they will tell us all we want to know. No, Patty, we must not be reckless. We might go to Europe by-and-bye, but for the present let Melbourne content us. It will be as much of the world as we shall want to begin with, and we ought to get some experience before we spend our money – the little capital we have to spend."

"You don't call two hundred and thirty-five pounds a little, do you?" interposed Eleanor. This was the price that a well-to-do storekeeper in the neighbouring township had offered them for the little house which had been their home since she was born, and to her it seemed a fortune.

"Well, dear, we don't quite know yet whether it is little or much, for, you see, we don't know what it costs to live as other people do. We must not be reckless, Patty – we must take care of what we have, for we have only ourselves in the wide world to depend on, and this is all our fortune. I should think no girls were ever so utterly without belongings as we are now," she added, with a little break in her gentle voice.

She was half lying on the grass, leaning on her elbow and propping her head in her hand. The light behind her was growing momentarily less fierce, and the breeze from the quiet ocean more cool and delicious; and she had taken off her hat in order to see and breathe in freedom. A noble figure she was, tall, strong, perfect in proportion, fine in texture, full of natural dignity and grace – the product of several generations of healthy and cultured people, and therefore a truly well-bred woman. Her face was a little too grave and thoughtful for her years, perhaps – she was not quite eight-and-twenty – and it was not at all handsome, in the vulgar sense of the word. But a sweeter, truer, kinder face, with its wide, firm mouth and its open brows, and its candid grey eyes, one could not wish to see. She had smooth brown hair of excessive fineness and brightness (a peculiarity of good blood shared by all the sisters), and it was closely coiled in a knot of braids at the back of her head, without any of those curls and fringes about the temples that have since become the prevailing fashion. And she was dressed in a very common, loosely-made, black print gown, with a little frill of crape at her throat, and a leather belt round her by no means slender waist. Her feet were encased in large and clumsy boots, and her shapely hands, fine-skinned and muscular, were not encased at all, but were brown with constant exposure to sun and wind, and the wear and tear of miscellaneous housework. The impetuous Patty, who sat bolt upright clasping her knees, was like her, but with marked differences. She was smaller and slighter in make, though she had the same look of abundant health and vigour. Her figure, though it had never worn stays, was more after the pattern of modern womanhood than Elizabeth's, and her brilliant little face was exquisite in outline, in colour, in all the charms of bright and wholesome youth. Patty's eyes were dark and keen, and her lips were delicate and red, and her hair had two or three ripples in it, and was the colour of a half-ripe chestnut. And altogether, she was a very striking and unmistakeably handsome girl. She, too, wore a black print gown, and a straw sailor hat, with a black ribbon, tilted back on her bead, and the same country-made boots, and the same brown and gloveless hands. Eleanor, again, with the general family qualities of physical health and refinement, had her own characteristics. She was slim and tall – as slim as Patty, and nearly as tall as Elizabeth, as was shown in her attitude as she lay full length on the grass, with her feet on the edge of the cliff, and her head on her elder sister's knee. She had a pure white skin, and sentimental blue eyes, and lovely yellow hair, just tinged with red; and her voice was low and sweet, and her manners gentle and graceful, and altogether she was one of the most pleasing young women that ever blushed unseen like a wild flower in the savage solitudes of the bush. This young person was not in black – because, she said, the weather was too hot for black. She wore an old blue gingham that had faded to a faint lavender in course of numerous washings, and she had a linen handkerchief loosely tied round her neck, and cotton gloves on her hands. She was the only one of the sisters to whom it had occurred that, having a good complexion, it was worth while to preserve it.

The parents of these three girls had been a mysterious couple, about whose circumstances and antecedents people knew just as much as they liked to conjecture, and no more. Mr. King had been on the diggings in the old days – that much was a fact, to which he had himself been known to testify; but where and what he had been before, and why he had lived like a pelican in the wilderness ever since, nobody knew, though everybody was at liberty to guess. Years and years ago, he came to this lone coast – a region of hopeless sand and scrub, which no squatter or free selector with a grain of sense would look at – and here on a bleak headland he built his rude house, piece by piece, in great part with his own hands, and fenced his little paddock, and made his little garden; and here he had lived till the other day, a morose recluse, who shunned his neighbours as they shunned him, and never was known to have either business or pleasure, or commerce of any kind with his fellow-men. It was supposed that he had made some money at the diggings, for he took up no land (there was none fit to take up, indeed, within a dozen miles of him), and he kept no stock – except a few cows and pigs for the larder; and at the same time there was never any sign of actual poverty in his little establishment, simple and humble as it was. And it was also supposed – nay, it was confidently believed – that he was not, so to speak, "all there." No man who was not "touched" would conduct himself with such preposterous eccentricity as that which had marked his long career in their midst – so the neighbours argued, not without a show of reason. But the greatest mystery in connection with Mr. King was Mrs. King. He was obviously a gentleman, in the conventional sense of the word, but she was, in every sense, the most beautiful and accomplished lady that ever was seen, according to the judgment of those who knew her – the women who had nursed her in her confinements, and washed and scrubbed for her, and the tradesmen of the town to whom she had gone in her little buggy for occasional stores, and the doctor and the parson, and the children whom she had brought up in such a wonderful manner to be copies (though, it was thought, poor ones) of herself. And yet she had borne to live all the best years of her life, at once a captive and an exile, on that desolate sea-shore – and had loved that harsh and melancholy man with the most faithful and entire devotion – and had suffered her solitude and privations, the lack of everything to which she must have been once accustomed, and the fret and trouble of her husband's bitter moods – without a murmur that anybody had ever heard.

Both of them were gone now from the cottage on the cliff where they had lived so long together. The idolised mother had been dead for several years, and the harsh, and therefore not much loved nor much mourned, father had lain but a few weeks in his grave beside her; and they had left their children, as Elizabeth described it, more utterly without belongings than ever girls were before. It was a curious position altogether. As far as they knew, they had no relations, and they had never had a friend. Not one of them had left their home for a night since Eleanor was born, and not one invited guest had slept there during the whole of that period. They had never been to school, or had any governess but their mother, or any experience of life and the ways of the world save what they gained in their association with her, and from the books that she and their father selected for them. According to all precedent, they ought to have been dull and rustic and stupid (it was supposed that they were, because they dressed themselves so badly), but they were only simple and truthful in an extraordinary degree. They had no idea what was the "correct thing" in costume or manners, and they knew little or nothing of the value of money; but they were well and widely read, and highly accomplished in all the household arts, from playing the piano to making bread and butter, and as full of spiritual and intellectual aspirations as the most advanced amongst us.

CHAPTER II.

A LONELY EYRIE

"Then we will say Melbourne to begin with. Not for a permanence, but until we have gained a little more experience," said Patty, with something of regret and reluctance in her voice. By this time the sun had set and drawn off all the glow and colour from sea and shore. The island rock was an enchanted castle no longer, and the sails of the fishing-boats had ceased to shine. The girls had been discussing their schemes for a couple of hours, and had come to several conclusions.

"I think so, Patty. It would be unwise to hurry ourselves in making our choice of a home. We will go to Melbourne and look about us. Paul Brion is there. He will see after lodgings for us and put us in the way of things generally. That will be a great advantage. And then the Exhibition will be coming – it would be a pity to miss that. And we shall feel more as if we belonged to the people here than elsewhere, don't you think? They are more likely to be kind to our ignorance and help us."

"Oh, we don't want anyone to help us."

"Someone must teach us what we don't know, directly or indirectly – and we are not above being taught."

"But," insisted Patty, "there is no reason why we should be beholden to anybody. Paul Brion may look for some lodgings for us, if he likes – just a place to sleep in for a night or two – and tell us where we can find a house – that's all we shall want to ask of him or of anybody. We will have a house of our own, won't we? – so as not to be overlooked or interfered with."

"Oh, of course!" said Eleanor promptly. "A landlady on the premises is not to be thought of for a moment. Whatever we do, we don't want to be interfered with, Elizabeth."

"No, my dear – you can't desire to be free from interference – unpleasant interference – more than I do. Only I don't think we shall be able to be so independent as Patty thinks. I fancy, too, that we shall not care to be, when we begin to live in the world with other people. It will be so charming to have friends!"

"Oh – friends!" Patty exclaimed, with a little toss of the head. "It is too soon to think about friends – when we have so much else to think about! We must have some lessons in Melbourne, Elizabeth. We will go to that library every day and read. We will make our stay there a preparation for England and Germany and Italy. Oh, Nell, Nell! think of seeing the great Alps and the Doge's Palace before we die!"

"Ah!" responded Eleanor, drawing a long breath.

They all rose from the grass and stood still an instant, side by side, for a last look at the calm ocean which had been the background of their simple lives. Each was sensible that it was a solemn moment, in view of the changes to come, but not a word was spoken to imply regret. Like all the rest of us, they were ungrateful for the good things of the present and the past, and were not likely to understand how much they loved the sea, that, like the nurse of Rorie Mhor, had lulled them to sleep every night since they were born, while the sound of its many waters was still in their ears.

"Sam Dunn is out late," said Eleanor, pointing to a dark dot far away, that was a glittering sail a little while ago.

"It is a good night for fishing," said Patty.

And then they turned their faces landward, and set forth on their road home. Climbing to the top of the cliff on the slope of which they had been sitting, they stood upon a wide and desolate heath covered in all directions with a short, stiff scrub, full of wonderful wild-flowers (even at this barren season of the year), but without a tree of any sort; a picturesque desert, but still a desert, though with fertile country lying all around it – as utterly waste as the irreclaimable Sahara. Through this the girls wended their way by devious tracks amongst the bushes, ankle deep in the loose sand; and then again striking the cliff, reached a high point from which they had a distant view of human habitations – a little township, fringing a little bay; a lighthouse beyond it, with its little star shining steadily through the twilight; a little pier, running like a black thread through the silvery surf; and even a little steamer from Melbourne lying at the pier-head, veiling the rock-island, that now frowned like a fortress behind it, in a thin film of grey smoke from its invisible little funnels. But they did not go anywhere near these haunts of their fellow-men. Hugging the cliff, which was here of a great height, and honeycombed with caves in which the green sea-water rumbled and thundered like a great drum in the calm weather, and like a furious bombardment in a storm, they followed a slender track worn in the scant grass by their own light feet, until they came to a little depression in the line of the coast – a hollow scooped out of the great headland as if some Titanic monster of a prehistoric period had risen up out of the waves and bitten it – where, sheltered and hidden on three sides by grassy banks, sloping gently upward until they overtopped the chimneys, and with all the great plain of the sea outspread beneath the front verandah, stood the house which had been, but was to be no more, their home.

It was well worth the money that the storekeeper had offered for it. It was a really charming house, though people had not been accustomed to look at it in that light – though it was built of roughest weatherboard that had never known a paint-brush, and heavily roofed with great sheets of bark that were an offence to the provincial eye, accustomed to the chaste elegance of corrugated zinc. A strong, and sturdy, and genuine little house – as, indeed, it had to be to hold its own against the stormy blasts that buffeted it; mellowed and tanned with time and weather, and with all its honest, rugged features softened under a tender drapery of hardy English ivy and climbing plants that patient skill and care had induced to grow, and even to thrive in that unfriendly air. The verandah, supported on squat posts, was a continuation of the roof; and that roof, with green leaves curling upward over it, was so conspicuously solid, and so widely overspread and over-shadowed the low walls, that it was about all that could be seen of the house from the ridges of the high land around it. But lower down, the windows – nearly all set in rude but substantial door frames – opened like shy eyes in the shadow of the deep eaves of the verandah, like eyes that had expression in them; and the retiring walls bore on numerous nails and shelves a miscellaneous but orderly collection of bird-cages, flower boxes, boating and fishing apparatus, and odds and ends of various kinds, that gave a charming homely picturesqueness to the quaint aspect of the place. The comparatively spacious verandah, running along the front of the house (which had been made all front, as far as possible), was the drawing-room and general living room of the family during the greater part of the year. Its floor, of unplaned hardwood, dark with age and wear, but as exquisitely clean as sweeping and scrubbing could make it, was one of the loveliest terraces in the country for the view that it afforded – so our girls will maintain, at any rate, to their dying day. Now that they see it no more, they have passionate memories of their beloved bay, seen through a frame of rustling leaves from that lofty platform – how it looked in the dawn and sunrise, in the intensely blue noon, in the moonlight nights, and when gales and tempests were abroad, and how it sounded in the hushed darkness when they woke out of their sleep to listen to it – the rhythmic fall of breaking waves on the rocks below, the tremulous boom that filled the air and seemed to shake the foundations of the solid earth. They have no wish to get back to their early home and their hermit life there now – they have tasted a new wine that is better than the old; but, all the same, they think and say that from the lonely eyrie where they were nursed and reared they looked out upon such a scene as the wide world would never show them any more. In the foreground, immediately below the verandah, a little grass, a few sturdy shrubs, and such flowers as could keep their footing in so exposed a place, clothed the short slope of the edge of the cliff, down the steep face of which a breakneck path zig-zagged to the beach, where only a narrow strip of white sand, scarcely more than a couple of yards wide, was uncovered when the tide was out. Behind the house was a well-kept, if rather sterile, kitchen garden; and higher up the cliff, but still partly sheltered in the hollow, a very small farm-yard and one barren little paddock.

Through a back gate, by way of the farm-yard and kitchen garden, the sisters entered their domain when it was late enough to be called night, though the twilight lingered, and were welcomed with effusion by an ugly but worthy little terrier which had been bidden to keep house, and had faithfully discharged that duty during their absence. As they approached the house, a pet opossum sprang from the dairy roof to Eleanor's shoulder, and a number of tame magpies woke up with a sleepy scuffle and gathered round her. A little monkey-bear came cautiously down from the only gum tree that grew on the premises, grunting and whimpering, and crawled up Patty's skirts; and any quantity of cats and kittens appealed to Elizabeth for recognition. The girls spoke to them all by name, as if they had been so many children, cuffed them playfully for their forward manners, and ordered them to bed or to whatever avocations were proper to the hour. When a match was struck and the back-door opened, the opossum took a few flying leaps round the kitchen, had his ears boxed, and was flung back again upon the dairy roof. The little bear clung whining to his mistress, but was also put outside with a firm hand; and the cats and magpies were swept over the threshold with a broom. "Brats!" cried Patty with ferocious vehemence, as she closed the kitchen door sharply, at the risk of cutting off some of their noses; "what are we to do with them? They seem as if they knew we were going away, the aggravating little wretches. There, there" – raising the most caressing voice in answer to the whine of the monkey-bear – "don't cry, my pet! Get up your tree, darling, and have a nice supper and go to sleep."

Then, having listened for a few seconds at the closed door, she followed Elizabeth through the kitchen to the sitting-room, and, while her sister lit the lamp, stepped through the French window to sniff the salt sea air. For some time the humble members of the family were heard prowling disconsolately about the house, but none of them, except the terrier, appeared upon the verandah, where the ghost of their evil genius still sat in his old armchair with his stick by his side. They had been driven thence so often and with such memorable indignities that it would never occur to them to go there any more. And so the sisters were left in peace. Eleanor busied herself in the kitchen for awhile, setting her little batch of bread by the embers of the hearth, in view of a hot loaf for their early breakfast, while she sang some German ballads to herself with an ear for the refinements of both language and music that testified to the thoroughness of her mother's culture, and of the methods by which it had been imparted. Patty went to the dairy for a jug of milk for supper, which frugal meal was otherwise prepared by Elizabeth's hands; and at nine o'clock the trio gathered round the sitting-room table to refresh themselves with thick slices of bread and jam, and half-an-hour's gossip before they went to bed.

A pretty and pathetic picture they made as they sat round that table, with the dim light of one kerosene lamp on their strikingly fair faces – alone in the little house that was no longer theirs, and in the wide world, but so full of faith and hope in the unknown future – discussing ways and means for getting their furniture to Melbourne. That time-honoured furniture, and their immediate surroundings generally, made a poor setting for such a group – a long, low, canvas-lined room, papered with prints from the Illustrated London News (a pictorial European "history of our own times"), from the ceiling to the floor, the floor being without a carpet, and the glass doors furnished only with a red baize curtain to draw against the sea winds of winter nights. The tables and chairs were of the same order of architecture as the house; the old mahogany bureau, with its brass mounting and multitudinous internal ramifications, was ridiculously out of date and out of fashion (as fashion was understood in that part of the world); the ancient chintz sofa, though as easy as a feather bed, and of a capacity equal to the accommodation of Giant Blunderbore, was obviously home-made and not meant to be too closely criticised; and even the piano, which was a modern and beautiful instrument in itself, hid its music in a stained deal case than which no plain egg of a nightingale could be plainer. And yet this odd environment for three beautiful and cultured women had a certain dignity and harmoniousness about it – often lacking in later and more luxurious surroundings. It was in tune with those simple lives, and with the majestic solitude of the great headland and the sea.