AustLit
“Well! We are bushed Peter. That is evident,” said Charles Verner, as he dipped to avoid the limb of a tree, which, in the thick darkness, he had not seen till it threatened violent contact with his head.
Peter pushed his cabbage-tree hat very much on one side, in order to have fuller space to scratch his head, and conducted the operation in a leisurely manner before he replied—
“Well, it seems so; we’ve missed the track, anyway.”
“I suppose we had better camp till daybreak, eh?” inquired young Verner, who was a new chum, and very much fatigued with his first day’s travelling in the Queensland bush, although he had too much pluck to confide the fact to the old stockman.
But Peter had been occupying the time in which he had been scratching his head in also peering round in the darkness; and his accustomed eyes had recognised one or two signs which gave him a slight knowledge of his whereabouts; and he was too old a campaigner to pass a night in the bush at a time when the dews were at their heaviest, and the shooting pains in his much suffering extremities were at their acutest, if shelter was to be got.
“If I don’t mistake there’s a house not far from here, or leastways the skeleton of a house, which was never finished because it got a bad name. Now I don’t lie out at nights unless I’m forced. I’ve seen too much of that game. So I shall push on a bit farther, and I advise you to come too.”
“Of course I will stick to you,” said Verner, in as brisk and unconcerned a tone as he could manage, though he wished from the bottom of his heart that old Peter had less objection to the dews and their attendants rheumatics; for he was decidedly tired, and so was his horse. However, Peter turned at right angles to the way they had been travelling; and Charlie Verner followed him at best he could, over logs and under branches, the dingy puggaree round Peter’s hat being his guide. They travelled in this fashion for nearly half an hour, when Verner heard the distant murmur of the sea.
“I did not know we were so near the coast, Peter,” he roused himself to exclaim as the sound caught his ear.
“Not a mile from the shore of Moreton Bay,” said Peter, “I can see the house I think.”
“Thank Heaven,” ejaculated Charlie, “for I think my horse is beginning to get tired.”
Peter chuckled. He knew quite as well as Charlie himself the condition of both horses and riders. However, a Queensland stockman is not given to expend many words on sympathy for the sufferings of new chum awkwardness. So he contented himself with his chuckle, and fagged on in a darkness in which, to Charlie, it seemed impossible to recognise anything.
“We’ll soon get a fire,” said Peter, as he dismounted, while Charlie knocked his head against a post which he had not discovered until too late.
Peter was as good as his word. While Charlie was still fumbling with his saddle he had unstrapped the tomahawk he had carried in front of him, and chopped off some branches of a dead tree near; and in a few minutes there was a blasing fire, whose warmth was very welcome after the long exposure to the keen west wind, and whose light enabled Charlie to see the accommodation which awaited him.
It was hardly to be called a house, so dilapidated were the remnants of what at best had only been the skeleton of a building—but some sheets of bark were still left over a portion of the roof; and that part bore traces of having been recently used as a camping place.
“There’s one part where there was a room quite perfect,” said Peter; “but it’s badly haunted.”
Charlie laughed. His more recent education caused him to take a different view of the terrors of haunted places from that taken by Peter.
“If it is a good room, I vote we sleep in it, haunted or not. The wind cuts in here pretty sharp.”
Peter shook his head. “I am not more afraid than any other man,” he said slowly, shaking his head, “At things which I know I can fight. But I do not know anything about the unnatural like. And there I draws a line. I sleep here. You sleep where you like.”
“Well, I may as well sleep here too, if you will not come. I’m not afraid of ghosts, but I like company on such a night as this.”
And truly the sounds of the night were wild and weird enough without a need for supernatural additions.
Charlie soon took his first lesson in hobbling his horse, and in bush camping arrangements generally, and felt wonderfully revived, and able to contend with any enemies, ghostly or fleshly, by the time he had had his supper, and was lying on his blanket in full enjoyment of his pipe.
“This was meant to be a good house evidently. That would have been a fine large room,” he remarked.
“Yes, and there is a grand view over Moreton Bay,” replied Peter; “it is a wonderfully pretty place. That is what made the lady take such a liking to it.”
“What lady?”
“The lady the house was built for, who died here some twenty years ago.”
“And does she haunt it?”
“Yes, she or her dog, or something.”
Charlie laughed with all the magnificent superciliousness of two-and-twenty; “the arrogance of youth” which mocks at the superstitions of the old age.
But Peter frowned and looked grave. Those who have lived long in the bush, and passed through the grim stages which belong to the pioneers of civilisation, whether in lonely watching with the sheep, or in the wild rides and wandering of stock driving, see Nature in some of her uncanniest forms. They, though of slender education, know by experience that there are many more things than are known in our philosophy; that it is easy to laugh and scoff for those who have never been tried. Peter had passed nights and days in long succession without encountering the glance of his fellow men; and the world in which he had lived so long alone had not been utterly unpeopled; and what he had seen and felt in those grand days of isolation and privation he had no wish to meet again. He had gone through some of those queer mental stages, in which things which are not pass before the mind as if they actually were, in which the distinction between illusion and reality is no longer clear and well defined. He had known the effect which scant, bare living, and the action of the mind always preying upon itself, because never distracted from its own workings by contact with the mind of its fellows, produce; and he had felt their result in a kind of mental dislocation. And, though this stage too had passed away, it had left its mark as well as its memory behind.
“You leave them jokes alone, Charlie Verner,” he said gruffly, “or you go to sleep in one part, and I sleep in another.”
Charlie, seeing that the man’s temper was ruffled, and feeling that, no matter how philosophical he might be in ordinary times, he had no wish to spend this dark tempestuous night alone, and perhaps also influenced unconsciously by the evident convictions as the existence of an unseen world shown by his companion, held his peace for a short time, and watched the white curls of smoke ascend from his pipe, as he lay luxuriously on his back on his conspicuously new blankets.
“It was a strange story,” said Peter in a reflective tone of voice. He had stopped smoking for some time, and had been gazing at the burning logs which now gave out a subdued reddish light, with an occasional shower of sparks; “and yet not strange, for the women are all alike, weak, weak as water.” And he gave a sigh, which raised the almost impossible supposition that in days far remote the women, or at least one woman, had once held her away over Peter, and that, grim, gruff, ugly, and ungainly as he now as, he had not escaped the arrow of the ruthless god. Charlie wisely did not allow himself to smile, as he noted the contrast between the indication of the sigh and the actual man.
“Tell me the yarn, Peter,” he said simply.
Peter did not immediately reply, but gazed still on the flickering fire. If a painter had wanted to take his portrait, and, before beginning to portray, had wished to comprehend the character of the man under the Protean aspects which it is the privilege of all specimens of the human animal to assume, he would have gloated over his opportunity. Here was not only Peter, the stockrider, fearless, determined, undaunted, and unsurprised; rough of manner and aspect and speech; accustomed to live hard and concentrate his thoughts on the practical work in hand; unmindful of the past, careless of the morrow, without a link in the family of humanity but such as the day brought forth, and tho morrow would tear asunder; with more affection for his horse than for any other living being; living by himself for himself, and yet not hardened by such life; but here was also a Peter full of strange memories, tender yet terrible. Here were written large some of the mysteries which the man had found in the world of nature, in the world of man, in the long years he had lived in the Australian bush. There was almost a weird beauty in the rough-hewn face, as memory lived over again passages which had left a mark which, though not always visible, was yet always existent.
“I saw Miss Lilian Falconer,” he said, in a dreamy manner, after a long silence, in a way as if he were continuing rather than beginning a relation, “directly after she landed. It is more than thirty years ago now. She was the daughter of one of the officers who lived with the Government resident; for there weren’t no Queensland in them days. Her father went down to the port to meet her; for she came out in charge of the captain’s wife. And mortal proud he was of her. She was as white as a lily, and that was the name her father always called her by; and her ways were as soft and gentle as her face was lovely.”
And here Peter paused, evidently dwelling on the picture he had recalled to his own mind.
“I was with Captain Falconer at that time, odd man like; for I had come from his part of the old country, and he made something of a friend of me like. There were not many free men about in those days. They were most all of them convicts. Miss Lily, she took particular notice of me from the first day she landed, because she knew I knew Mr. Stanley, the young fellow as she was engaged to. Whether her father knew it or not, I never heard; but, whether or no, she loved him with all her heart, and she knew how Mr. Stanley, Mark Stanley his name was, favoured me. Many a little thing she would ask me to do for her; and, though she never talked about Mr. Stanley to me, I knew who she was thinking of, and sometimes by chance like I would say something which Mr. Mark had said to me, just to see the colour come into her pretty cheeks, and her bright eyes grow brighter. She knew some of my secrets, too—ay, she was good, very good to me, and--.” Here Peter’s voice died away, and either he could not articulate the syllables, or muttered them too low for Charlie to catch. “Miss Lily was devoted to her father, too, only she was a little afraid of him. And I don’t think, no, I don’t think, he knew how she cared about Mr Mark; and I suppose he never guessed, either, why she was so mortal fond of her little dog—Peter, it was named, not after me though;” and Peter gave a faint chuckle.
“He was a nice little dog, he was; a little white poodle, as’ cute as’ cute could be. I often thought what a lot those bright eyes of his, which you could only just see through his hair, seemed to know. He knew everything, and that is about the fact; and he knew why his mistress loved him so, and could not say ‘no’ to anything he wanted. And so he took advantage of her love for him just like any Christian. Ay, poor thing! she little thought he was to bring about her death—such a death!” And Peter’s voice dropped again, as he gazed out at the fire. Suddenly he started violently, and looked round. The motion was so sudden and unexpected that it made Verner jump too. Peter seemed listening to something, and the horror-stricken look on his face prevented Verner from laughing at his own sudden start; and in spite himself and his philosophy he, too, looked in the direction to which Peter had turned.
“Law! I seem to see it now,” said Peter; turning toward the fire again, and mopping the perspiration which stood out in great beads upon his brow. “It was there, in that room,” he said, pointing toward the large, and but slightly dilapidated, room in which he had refused to sleep. “I wish we had not come.”
“What was there?” said Verner, rather coldly. He did not like feeling himself agitated in this way by an ignorant man’s talk.
“You killed her! Impossible!”
“Aye, it sounds so. But we had to do it. It was the surest mercy.”
“He went mad, did Peter,” continued Peter, hoarsely. “A little more than six months after they were married and he bit her.”
“Then they were married!” exclaimed Verner.
“Ay, she was married, but not to Mr. Mark. It seemed like a judgement.”
“But I thought there had never been a mad dog in Australia,” said Verner, determinedly defending his philosophy.
“They say so. But this one went mad, anyhow. He was an imported dog, you know. Miss Lily brought him out herself, and he went mad and bit her; and she went mad too, raving mad!”
“Horrible!” exclaimed Verner, shuddering.
Peter sat silent some time, with a visible shudder now and again convulsing him, and turning toward the fatal room in a manner which compelled Verner to look in spite of himself, and made his blood curdle with the vision which he conjured up in its dark recesses.
“I do not know how it came about,” Peter went on again. “Mr. Howard was a very rich man, and he loved the grey ground Miss Lily trod on. It was plain to see that; and whether it was his pleading or her father’s orders, or what not, Miss Lily gave up Mr. Mark, though I knew, and she knew, too, he was to be out come Christmas. And she married Mr. Howard, and by the time Christmas came she was dead. I was with her through it all, and though I never said a word—never mentioned Mr. Mark’s name—she seemed to feel I was thinking of him. And so I was, poor fellow! I felt for him. I used to think, What should I feel if the woman I loved served me the same way? And she did. Great heavens, she did,” said Peter, with a convulsive sob.
“But that is neither here nor there,” he went on, quickly recovering himself. “After Miss Lily married she seemed to set more store on her cattle dog than ever. Mr. Howard did not like him. I don’t think he ever knew who gave him to his wife, but he hated him, seemed jealous of him like, and Peter knew it as well as she did or I did, and he seemed to take a pleasure, the little scamp did, in provoking his mistress to show her love for him, and at the same time to show how he detested Mr. Howard. It was comical sometimes to watch the little brute’s tricks. One day he did not seem quite well, and Miss Lily; as I could not help calling her, was quite concerned. Mr. Howard was cross with her for fondling Peter, and gave him a kick to send him from her. Well, nothing happened that day. Only the dog seemed very uneasy, and it would not go near Mrs. Howard. We all noticed it and the next morning he had a kind of fit. Miss Lily, Mrs. Howard, I mean, went to it, in spite of Mr. Howard, and knelt down, when all of a sudden the poor brute sprang up, and tore round the yard quite wild like. “He’s mad,” says Mr. Howard, “I’ll shoot him.” “No, no,” cried his wife; and she called to Peter, and tried to catch him, while Mr. Howard went for his gun. Peter tore round the yard again, and then turned straight at her, and flew up and bit her on the wrist—a sharp, quick bite, which brought the blood and made her cry out. Mr. Howard heard her cry and ran back, but it was too late. His gun was only just inside a shed close by, but it was all done in a minute like; but he took aim, and shot Peter as he was tearing off—his poor black tongue hanging out of his mouth. And so there was no more mischief done.
“Mrs. Howard made light of the bite. She would not allow that Peter was mad; and she was wild with Mr. Howard for shooting him. She cried bitterly, and took on so much that, if Mr. Howard could have brought the dog to life again, mad or not mad, I’m sure he’d have done it. But still, he was very anxious about his wife. He cauterised the wound as well as he could himself, and then insisted that we should go to the town to see a doctor. Mrs. Howard was very unwilling. She said she was quite well; and, indeed, she was no ways nervous, although such a frail, delicate-looking woman. We were out Gympie way, although there was no Gympie in those days, nor Maryborough either; and it took us pretty nearly three weeks to get down to town, for the rains had begun early, and the rivers and creeks were swollen. Well, we had got nearly to Brisbane; in fact very nearly here, for we meant to pass by here to see how they were getting on with the house. Mrs. Howard had taken a great fancy to the place before they were married; and so Mr. Howard had bought up a large bit of country and was putting this house up on it just to please her, when Mrs. Howard fell ill. Mr. Howard never said a word, but I shall never forget his face that day. I said nothing either; but we both were thinking the same thing, and neither of us dared to say it.
“Mrs. Howard got worse, much worse. I dare not think of that time,” said Peter shuddering, and covering his eyes with his hand. “I do not know what dragged me to come to the cursed place again.”
“The workmen went away. They would not stay to hear her awful cries, except one, whom I persuaded to stay. Mr. Howard was stupefied like. He crouched down and stopped his ears, while we held her down by main force. Never shall I forget that night. At last it got so terrible that the man who stayed with us took a large soft cloak which she had been wearing, doubled it, and laid it over her face. He said not a word; but he looked at me, and I held it down with him. It was horrible; but not as horrible as to see her agony, dashing herself against the wall till her beautiful face was a mass of wounds. We held it, and the struggles grew fainter. It was the middle of the night—dark, dark as pitch; just such a night as this. There was a fire of logs outside, and we had a candle in the room. Mr. Howard still sat crouched all in a heap. I believe he was insensible with grief and horror; and we too hung over her and held fast down the cloak.
“She got quite quiet at last. There was not a sound to be heard, when suddenly from beneath the cloak, there came a wild shrill cry; at the selfsame instant through the air there came a sharp short bark. It was Peter’s bark—the bark he gave when he was hurt! The two sounds mingled together, and died slowly away; and from that moment there was never another movement in the poor convulsed body.”
Peter shuddered again. Suddenly he sprang up; his eyes almost starting from his head.
Charlie Verner sprang from the ground almost as terror-stricken as old Peter himself. The cry was so distinct, so close.
“It is in there,” he said, pointing toward the room. “Come.”
But Peter, white as the dead, only shook his head, and Charlie, furious with himself at his own terror, advanced, match in hand, and by the feeble light peered in the dark room.
Empty, quite empty, except for a sack of grass which lay in a corner.
In spite of all his pluck, Charlie felt his blood grow chill as he looked in the room which had witnessed such a tragedy; and while he looked the same mingled cry broke forth, only fainter—more distant than before.
Charlie dropped the match involuntarily, and turned to Peter; but Peter had fainted, and lay perfectly unconscious, the feeble light of the fire flickering on the white features, and giving them a ghastly look.
Fortunately, there was some water in the billy, and Charlie set to work to revive his companion; but his own face was very pale, and his heart beat tumultuously against his side. And never did man more gladly welcome the break of day than did Charlie Verner after the first night of his camping out in Queensland.
“Well! We are bushed Peter. That is evident,” said Charles Verner, as he dipped to avoid the limb of a tree, which, in the thick darkness, he had not seen till it threatened violent contact with his head.
Peter pushed his cabbage-tree hat very much on one side, in order to have fuller space to scratch his head, and conducted the operation in a leisurely manner before he replied—
“Well, it seems so; we’ve missed the track, anyway.”
“I suppose we had better camp till daybreak, eh?” inquired young Verner, who was a new chum, and very much fatigued with his first day’s travelling in the Queensland bush, although he had too much pluck to confide the fact to the old stockman.
But Peter had been occupying the time in which he had been scratching his head in also peering round in the darkness; and his accustomed eyes had recognised one or two signs which gave him a slight knowledge of his whereabouts; and he was too old a campaigner to pass a night in the bush at a time when the dews were at their heaviest, and the shooting pains in his much suffering extremities were at their acutest, if shelter was to be got.
“If I don’t mistake there’s a house not far from here, or leastways the skeleton of a house, which was never finished because it got a bad name. Now I don’t lie out at nights unless I’m forced. I’ve seen too much of that game. So I shall push on a bit farther, and I advise you to come too.”
“Of course I will stick to you,” said Verner, in as brisk and unconcerned a tone as he could manage, though he wished from the bottom of his heart that old Peter had less objection to the dews and their attendants rheumatics; for he was decidedly tired, and so was his horse. However, Peter turned at right angles to the way they had been travelling; and Charlie Verner followed him at best he could, over logs and under branches, the dingy puggaree round Peter’s hat being his guide. They travelled in this fashion for nearly half an hour, when Verner heard the distant murmur of the sea.
“I did not know we were so near the coast, Peter,” he roused himself to exclaim as the sound caught his ear.
“Not a mile from the shore of Moreton Bay,” said Peter, “I can see the house I think.”
“Thank Heaven,” ejaculated Charlie, “for I think my horse is beginning to get tired.”
Peter chuckled. He knew quite as well as Charlie himself the condition of both horses and riders. However, a Queensland stockman is not given to expend many words on sympathy for the sufferings of new chum awkwardness. So he contented himself with his chuckle, and fagged on in a darkness in which, to Charlie, it seemed impossible to recognise anything.
Peter’s eyes had not deceived him; and, though it was many years since he had been in the neighbourhood, he made almost a straight line to the house with a bad name.
“We’ll soon get a fire,” said Peter, as he dismounted, while Charlie knocked his head against a post which he had not discovered until too late.
"There's one part where there was a room quite perfect," said Peter; "but it's badly haunted."
Peter was as good as his word. While Charlie was still fumbling with his saddle he had unstrapped the tomahawk he had carried in front of him, and chopped off some branches of a dead tree near; and in a few minutes there was a blasing fire, whose warmth was very welcome after the long exposure to the keen west wind, and whose light enabled Charlie to see the accommodation which awaited him.
It was hardly to be called a house, so dilapidated were the remnants of what at best had only been the skeleton of a building—but some sheets of bark were still left over a portion of the roof; and that part bore traces of having been recently used as a camping place.
“There’s one part where there was a room quite perfect,” said Peter; “but it’s badly haunted.”
Charlie laughed. His more recent education caused him to take a different view of the terrors of haunted places from that taken by Peter.
“If it is a good room, I vote we sleep in it, haunted or not. The wind cuts in here pretty sharp.”
Peter shook his head. “I am not more afraid than any other man,” he said slowly, shaking his head, “At things which I know I can fight. But I do not know anything about the unnatural like. And there I draws a line. I sleep here. You sleep where you like.”
“Well, I may as well sleep here too, if you will not come. I’m not afraid of ghosts, but I like company on such a night as this.”
And truly the sounds of the night were wild and weird enough without a need for supernatural additions.
Charlie soon took his first lesson in hobbling his horse, and in bush camping arrangements generally, and felt wonderfully revived, and able to contend with any enemies, ghostly or fleshly, by the time he had had his supper, and was lying on his blanket in full enjoyment of his pipe.
“This was meant to be a good house evidently. That would have been a fine large room,” he remarked.
“Yes, and there is a grand view over Moreton Bay,” replied Peter; “it is a wonderfully pretty place. That is what made the lady take such a liking to it.”
“What lady?”
“The lady the house was built for, who died here some twenty years ago.”
“And does she haunt it?”
“Yes, she or her dog, or something.”
Charlie laughed with all the magnificent superciliousness of two-and-twenty; “the arrogance of youth” which mocks at the superstitions of the old age.
“I would uncommonly like to see her or hear her or her ‘dawg’ either. How can we rouse the wraith, Peter?”
But Peter frowned and looked grave. Those who have lived long in the bush, and passed through the grim stages which belong to the pioneers of civilisation, whether in lonely watching with the sheep, or in the wild rides and wandering of stock driving, see Nature in some of her uncanniest forms. They, though of slender education, know by experience that there are many more things than are known in our philosophy; that it is easy to laugh and scoff for those who have never been tried. Peter had passed nights and days in long succession without encountering the glance of his fellow men; and the world in which he had lived so long alone had not been utterly unpeopled; and what he had seen and felt in those grand days of isolation and privation he had no wish to meet again. He had gone through some of those queer mental stages, in which things which are not pass before the mind as if they actually were, in which the distinction between illusion and reality is no longer clear and well defined. He had known the effect which scant, bare living, and the action of the mind always preying upon itself, because never distracted from its own workings by contact with the mind of its fellows, produce; and he had felt their result in a kind of mental dislocation. And, though this stage too had passed away, it had left its mark as well as its memory behind.
“You leave them jokes alone, Charlie Verner,” he said gruffly, “or you go to sleep in one part, and I sleep in another.”
Charlie, seeing that the man’s temper was ruffled, and feeling that, no matter how philosophical he might be in ordinary times, he had no wish to spend this dark tempestuous night alone, and perhaps also influenced unconsciously by the evident convictions as the existence of an unseen world shown by his companion, held his peace for a short time, and watched the white curls of smoke ascend from his pipe, as he lay luxuriously on his back on his conspicuously new blankets.
“It was a strange story,” said Peter in a reflective tone of voice. He had stopped smoking for some time, and had been gazing at the burning logs which now gave out a subdued reddish light, with an occasional shower of sparks; “and yet not strange, for the women are all alike, weak, weak as water.” And he gave a sigh, which raised the almost impossible supposition that in days far remote the women, or at least one woman, had once held her away over Peter, and that, grim, gruff, ugly, and ungainly as he now as, he had not escaped the arrow of the ruthless god. Charlie wisely did not allow himself to smile, as he noted the contrast between the indication of the sigh and the actual man.
“Tell me the yarn, Peter,” he said simply.
Peter did not immediately reply, but gazed still on the flickering fire. If a painter had wanted to take his portrait, and, before beginning to portray, had wished to comprehend the character of the man under the Protean aspects which it is the privilege of all specimens of the human animal to assume, he would have gloated over his opportunity. Here was not only Peter, the stockrider, fearless, determined, undaunted, and unsurprised; rough of manner and aspect and speech; accustomed to live hard and concentrate his thoughts on the practical work in hand; unmindful of the past, careless of the morrow, without a link in the family of humanity but such as the day brought forth, and tho morrow would tear asunder; with more affection for his horse than for any other living being; living by himself for himself, and yet not hardened by such life; but here was also a Peter full of strange memories, tender yet terrible. Here were written large some of the mysteries which the man had found in the world of nature, in the world of man, in the long years he had lived in the Australian bush. There was almost a weird beauty in the rough-hewn face, as memory lived over again passages which had left a mark which, though not always visible, was yet always existent.
The look on the face of the old stockman, as he gazed at the flickering fire, struck young Verner strangely. There was more awe than terror on the man’s face. Yet he was evidently face to face with a scene which inspired him with horror.
“I saw Miss Lilian Falconer,” he said, in a dreamy manner, after a long silence, in a way as if he were continuing rather than beginning a relation, “directly after she landed. It is more than thirty years ago now. She was the daughter of one of the officers who lived with the Government resident; for there weren’t no Queensland in them days. Her father went down to the port to meet her; for she came out in charge of the captain’s wife. And mortal proud he was of her. She was as white as a lily, and that was the name her father always called her by; and her ways were as soft and gentle as her face was lovely.”
And here Peter paused, evidently dwelling on the picture he had recalled to his own mind.
"He was a nice little dog, he was; a little white poodle..."
“I was with Captain Falconer at that time, odd man like; for I had come from his part of the old country, and he made something of a friend of me like. There were not many free men about in those days. They were most all of them convicts. Miss Lily, she took particular notice of me from the first day she landed, because she knew I knew Mr. Stanley, the young fellow as she was engaged to. Whether her father knew it or not, I never heard; but, whether or no, she loved him with all her heart, and she knew how Mr. Stanley, Mark Stanley his name was, favoured me. Many a little thing she would ask me to do for her; and, though she never talked about Mr. Stanley to me, I knew who she was thinking of, and sometimes by chance like I would say something which Mr. Mark had said to me, just to see the colour come into her pretty cheeks, and her bright eyes grow brighter. She knew some of my secrets, too—ay, she was good, very good to me, and--.” Here Peter’s voice died away, and either he could not articulate the syllables, or muttered them too low for Charlie to catch. “Miss Lily was devoted to her father, too, only she was a little afraid of him. And I don’t think, no, I don’t think, he knew how she cared about Mr. Mr Mark; and I suppose he never guessed, either, why she was so mortal fond of her little dog—Peter, it was named, not after me though;” and Peter gave a faint chuckle.
“He was a nice little dog, he was; a little white poodle, as’ cute as’ cute could be. I often thought what a lot those bright eyes of his, which you could only just see through his hair, seemed to know. He knew everything, and that is about the fact; and he knew why his mistress loved him so, and could not say ‘no’ to anything he wanted. And so he took advantage of her love for him just like any Christian. Ay, poor thing! she little thought he was to bring about her death—such a death!” And Peter’s voice dropped again, as he gazed out at the fire. Suddenly he started violently, and looked round. The motion was so sudden and unexpected that it made Verner jump too. Peter seemed listening to something, and the horror-stricken look on his face prevented Verner from laughing at his own sudden start; and in spite himself and his philosophy he, too, looked in the direction to which Peter had turned.
A Bad Night's Camp
In the Queensland Bush
“Well! We are bushed Peter. That is evident,” said Charles Verner, as he dipped to avoid the limb of a tree, which, in the thick darkness, he had not seen till it threatened violent contact with his head.
Peter pushed his cabbage-tree hat very much on one side, in order to have fuller space to scratch his head, and conducted the operation in a leisurely manner before he replied—
“Well, it seems so; we’ve missed the track, anyway.”
“I suppose we had better camp till daybreak, eh?” inquired young Verner, who was a new chum, and very much fatigued with his first day’s travelling in the Queensland bush, although he had too much pluck to confide the fact to the old stockman.
But Peter had been occupying the time in which he had been scratching his head in also peering round in the darkness; and his accustomed eyes had recognised one or two signs which gave him a slight knowledge of his whereabouts; and he was too old a campaigner to pass a night in the bush at a time when the dews were at their heaviest, and the shooting pains in his much suffering extremities were at their acutest, if shelter was to be got.
“If I don’t mistake there’s a house not far from here, or leastways the skeleton of a house, which was never finished because it got a bad name. Now I don’t lie out at nights unless I’m forced. I’ve seen too much of that game. So I shall push on a bit farther, and I advise you to come too.”
“Well! We are bushed Peter. That is evident,” said Charles Verner, as he dipped to avoid the limb of a tree, which, in the thick darkness, he had not seen till it threatened violent contact with his head.
Peter pushed his cabbage-tree hat very much on one side, in order to have fuller space to scratch his head, and conducted the operation in a leisurely manner before he replied—
“Well, it seems so; we’ve missed the track, anyway.”
“I suppose we had better camp till daybreak, eh?” inquired young Verner, who was a new chum, and very much fatigued with his first day’s travelling in the Queensland bush, although he had too much pluck to confide the fact to the old stockman.
But Peter had been occupying the time in which he had been scratching his head in also peering round in the darkness; and his accustomed eyes had recognised one or two signs which gave him a slight knowledge of his whereabouts; and he was too old a campaigner to pass a night in the bush at a time when the dews were at their heaviest, and the shooting pains in his much suffering extremities were at their acutest, if shelter was to be got.
“If I don’t mistake there’s a house not far from here, or leastways the skeleton of a house, which was never finished because it got a bad name. Now I don’t lie out at nights unless I’m forced. I’ve seen too much of that game. So I shall push on a bit farther, and I advise you to come too.”
“Of course I will stick to you,” said Verner, in as brisk and unconcerned a tone as he could manage, though he wished from the bottom of his heart that old Peter had less objection to the dews and their attendants rheumatics; for he was decidedly tired, and so was his horse. However, Peter turned at right angles to the way they had been travelling; and Charlie Verner followed him at best he could, over logs and under branches, the dingy puggaree round Peter’s hat being his guide. They travelled in this fashion for nearly half an hour, when Verner heard the distant murmur of the sea.
“I did not know we were so near the coast, Peter,” he roused himself to exclaim as the sound caught his ear.
“Not a mile from the shore of Moreton Bay,” said Peter, “I can see the house I think.”
“Thank Heaven,” ejaculated Charlie, “for I think my horse is beginning to get tired.”
Peter chuckled. He knew quite as well as Charlie himself the condition of both horses and riders. However, a Queensland stockman is not given to expend many words on sympathy for the sufferings of new chum awkwardness. So he contented himself with his chuckle, and fagged on in a darkness in which, to Charlie, it seemed impossible to recognise anything.
Peter’s eyes had not deceived him; and, though it was many years since he had been in the neighbourhood, he made almost a straight line to the house with a bad name.
“We’ll soon get a fire,” said Peter, as he dismounted, while Charlie knocked his head against a post which he had not discovered until too late.
Peter was as good as his word. While Charlie was still fumbling with his saddle he had unstrapped the tomahawk he had carried in front of him, and chopped off some branches of a dead tree near; and in a few minutes there was a blasing fire, whose warmth was very welcome after the long exposure to the keen west wind, and whose light enabled Charlie to see the accommodation which awaited him.
It was hardly to be called a house, so dilapidated were the remnants of what at best had only been the skeleton of a building—but some sheets of bark were still left over a portion of the roof; and that part bore traces of having been recently used as a camping place.
“There’s one part where there was a room quite perfect,” said Peter; “but it’s badly haunted.”
Charlie laughed. His more recent education caused him to take a different view of the terrors of haunted places from that taken by Peter.
“If it is a good room, I vote we sleep in it, haunted or not. The wind cuts in here pretty sharp.”
Peter shook his head. “I am not more afraid than any other man,” he said slowly, shaking his head, “At things which I know I can fight. But I do not know anything about the unnatural like. And there I draws a line. I sleep here. You sleep where you like.”
“Well, I may as well sleep here too, if you will not come. I’m not afraid of ghosts, but I like company on such a night as this.”
And truly the sounds of the night were wild and weird enough without a need for supernatural additions.
Charlie soon took his first lesson in hobbling his horse, and in bush camping arrangements generally, and felt wonderfully revived, and able to contend with any enemies, ghostly or fleshly, by the time he had had his supper, and was lying on his blanket in full enjoyment of his pipe.
“This was meant to be a good house evidently. That would have been a fine large room,” he remarked.
“Yes, and there is a grand view over Moreton Bay,” replied Peter; “it is a wonderfully pretty place. That is what made the lady take such a liking to it.”
“What lady?”
“The lady the house was built for, who died here some twenty years ago.”
“And does she haunt it?”
“Yes, she or her dog, or something.”
Charlie laughed with all the magnificent superciliousness of two-and-twenty; “the arrogance of youth” which mocks at the superstitions of the old age.
“I would uncommonly like to see her or hear her or her ‘dawg’ either. How can we rouse the wraith, Peter?”
But Peter frowned and looked grave. Those who have lived long in the bush, and passed through the grim stages which belong to the pioneers of civilisation, whether in lonely watching with the sheep, or in the wild rides and wandering of stock driving, see Nature in some of her uncanniest forms. They, though of slender education, know by experience that there are many more things than are known in our philosophy; that it is easy to laugh and scoff for those who have never been tried. Peter had passed nights and days in long succession without encountering the glance of his fellow men; and the world in which he had lived so long alone had not been utterly unpeopled; and what he had seen and felt in those grand days of isolation and privation he had no wish to meet again. He had gone through some of those queer mental stages, in which things which are not pass before the mind as if they actually were, in which the distinction between illusion and reality is no longer clear and well defined. He had known the effect which scant, bare living, and the action of the mind always preying upon itself, because never distracted from its own workings by contact with the mind of its fellows, produce; and he had felt their result in a kind of mental dislocation. And, though this stage too had passed away, it had left its mark as well as its memory behind.
“You leave them jokes alone, Charlie Verner,” he said gruffly, “or you go to sleep in one part, and I sleep in another.”
Charlie, seeing that the man’s temper was ruffled, and feeling that, no matter how philosophical he might be in ordinary times, he had no wish to spend this dark tempestuous night alone, and perhaps also influenced unconsciously by the evident convictions as the existence of an unseen world shown by his companion, held his peace for a short time, and watched the white curls of smoke ascend from his pipe, as he lay luxuriously on his back on his conspicuously new blankets.
“It was a strange story,” said Peter in a reflective tone of voice. He had stopped smoking for some time, and had been gazing at the burning logs which now gave out a subdued reddish light, with an occasional shower of sparks; “and yet not strange, for the women are all alike, weak, weak as water.” And he gave a sigh, which raised the almost impossible supposition that in days far remote the women, or at least one woman, had once held her away over Peter, and that, grim, gruff, ugly, and ungainly as he now as, he had not escaped the arrow of the ruthless god. Charlie wisely did not allow himself to smile, as he noted the contrast between the indication of the sigh and the actual man.
“Tell me the yarn, Peter,” he said simply.
Peter did not immediately reply, but gazed still on the flickering fire. If a painter had wanted to take his portrait, and, before beginning to portray, had wished to comprehend the character of the man under the Protean aspects which it is the privilege of all specimens of the human animal to assume, he would have gloated over his opportunity. Here was not only Peter, the stockrider, fearless, determined, undaunted, and unsurprised; rough of manner and aspect and speech; accustomed to live hard and concentrate his thoughts on the practical work in hand; unmindful of the past, careless of the morrow, without a link in the family of humanity but such as the day brought forth, and tho morrow would tear asunder; with more affection for his horse than for any other living being; living by himself for himself, and yet not hardened by such life; but here was also a Peter full of strange memories, tender yet terrible. Here were written large some of the mysteries which the man had found in the world of nature, in the world of man, in the long years he had lived in the Australian bush. There was almost a weird beauty in the rough-hewn face, as memory lived over again passages which had left a mark which, though not always visible, was yet always existent.
The look on the face of the old stockman, as he gazed at the flickering fire, struck young Verner strangely. There was more awe than terror on the man’s face. Yet he was evidently face to face with a scene which inspired him with horror.
“I saw Miss Lilian Falconer,” he said, in a dreamy manner, after a long silence, in a way as if he were continuing rather than beginning a relation, “directly after she landed. It is more than thirty years ago now. She was the daughter of one of the officers who lived with the Government resident; for there weren’t no Queensland in them days. Her father went down to the port to meet her; for she came out in charge of the captain’s wife. And mortal proud he was of her. She was as white as a lily, and that was the name her father always called her by; and her ways were as soft and gentle as her face was lovely.”
And here Peter paused, evidently dwelling on the picture he had recalled to his own mind.
“I was with Captain Falconer at that time, odd man like; for I had come from his part of the old country, and he made something of a friend of me like. There were not many free men about in those days. They were most all of them convicts. Miss Lily, she took particular notice of me from the first day she landed, because she knew I knew Mr. Stanley, the young fellow as she was engaged to. Whether her father knew it or not, I never heard; but, whether or no, she loved him with all her heart, and she knew how Mr. Stanley, Mark Stanley his name was, favoured me. Many a little thing she would ask me to do for her; and, though she never talked about Mr. Stanley to me, I knew who she was thinking of, and sometimes by chance like I would say something which Mr. Mark had said to me, just to see the colour come into her pretty cheeks, and her bright eyes grow brighter. She knew some of my secrets, too—ay, she was good, very good to me, and--.” Here Peter’s voice died away, and either he could not articulate the syllables, or muttered them too low for Charlie to catch. “Miss Lily was devoted to her father, too, only she was a little afraid of him. And I don’t think, no, I don’t think, he knew how she cared about Mr. Mr Mark; and I suppose he never guessed, either, why she was so mortal fond of her little dog—Peter, it was named, not after me though;” and Peter gave a faint chuckle.
“He was a nice little dog, he was; a little white poodle, as’ cute as’ cute could be. I often thought what a lot those bright eyes of his, which you could only just see through his hair, seemed to know. He knew everything, and that is about the fact; and he knew why his mistress loved him so, and could not say ‘no’ to anything he wanted. And so he took advantage of her love for him just like any Christian. Ay, poor thing! she little thought he was to bring about her death—such a death!” And Peter’s voice dropped again, as he gazed out at the fire. Suddenly he started violently, and looked round. The motion was so sudden and unexpected that it made Verner jump too. Peter seemed listening to something, and the horror-stricken look on his face prevented Verner from laughing at his own sudden start; and in spite himself and his philosophy he, too, looked in the direction to which Peter had turned.
“Law! I seem to see it now,” said Peter; turning toward the fire again, and mopping the perspiration which stood out in great beads upon his brow. “It was there, in that room,” he said, pointing toward the large, and but slightly dilapidated, room in which he had refused to sleep. “I wish we had not come.”
“What was there?” said Verner, rather coldly. He did not like feeling himself agitated in this way by an ignorant man’s talk.
“She died—or we killed her rather,” replied Peter, still wiping his damp forehead.
“You killed her! Impossible!”
“Aye, it sounds so. But we had to do it. It was the surest mercy.”
“He went mad, did Peter,” continued Peter, hoarsely. “A little more than six months after they were married and he bit her.”
“Then they were married!” exclaimed Verner.
“Ay, she was married, but not to Mr. Mark. It seemed like a judgement.”
“But I thought there had never been a mad dog in Australia,” said Verner, determinedly defending his philosophy.
“They say so. But this one went mad, anyhow. He was an imported dog, you know. Miss Lily brought him out herself, and he went mad and bit her; and she went mad too, raving mad!”
“Horrible!” exclaimed Verner, shuddering.
Peter sat silent some time, with a visible shudder now and again convulsing him, and turning toward the fatal room in a manner which compelled Verner to look in spite of himself, and made his blood curdle with the vision which he conjured up in its dark recesses.
“I do not know how it came about,” Peter went on again. “Mr. Howard was a very rich man, and he loved the grey ground Miss Lily trod on. It was plain to see that; and whether it was his pleading or her father’s orders, or what not, Miss Lily gave up Mr. Mark, though I knew, and she knew, too, he was to be out come Christmas. And she married Mr. Howard, and by the time Christmas came she was dead. I was with her through it all, and though I never said a word—never mentioned Mr. Mark’s name—she seemed to feel I was thinking of him. And so I was, poor fellow! I felt for him. I used to think, What should I feel if the woman I loved served me the same way? And she did. Great heavens, she did,” said Peter, with a convulsive sob.
“But that is neither here nor there,” he went on, quickly recovering himself. “After Miss Lily married she seemed to set more store on her cattle dog than ever. Mr. Howard did not like him. I don’t think he ever knew who gave him to his wife, but he hated him, seemed jealous of him like, and Peter knew it as well as she did or I did, and he seemed to take a pleasure, the little scamp did, in provoking his mistress to show her love for him, and at the same time to show how he detested Mr. Howard. It was comical sometimes to watch the little brute’s tricks. One day he did not seem quite well, and Miss Lily; as I could not help calling her, was quite concerned. Mr. Howard was cross with her for fondling Peter, and gave him a kick to send him from her. Well, nothing happened that day. Only the dog seemed very uneasy, and it would not go near Mrs. Howard. We all noticed it and the next morning he had a kind of fit. Miss Lily, Mrs. Howard, I mean, went to it, in spite of Mr. Howard, and knelt down, when all of a sudden the poor brute sprang up, and tore round the yard quite wild like. “He’s mad,” says Mr. Howard, “I’ll shoot him.” “No, no,” cried his wife; and she called to Peter, and tried to catch him, while Mr. Howard went for his gun. Peter tore round the yard again, and then turned straight at her, and flew up and bit her on the wrist—a sharp, quick bite, which brought the blood and made her cry out. Mr. Howard heard her cry and ran back, but it was too late. His gun was only just inside a shed close by, but it was all done in a minute like; but he took aim, and shot Peter as he was tearing off—his poor black tongue hanging out of his mouth. And so there was no more mischief done.
“Mrs. Howard made light of the bite. She would not allow that Peter was mad; and she was wild with Mr. Howard for shooting him. She cried bitterly, and took on so much that, if Mr. Howard could have brought the dog to life again, mad or not mad, I’m sure he’d have done it. But still, he was very anxious about his wife. He cauterised the wound as well as he could himself, and then insisted that we should go to the town to see a doctor. Mrs. Howard was very unwilling. She said she was quite well; and, indeed, she was no ways nervous, although such a frail, delicate-looking woman. We were out Gympie way, although there was no Gympie in those days, nor Maryborough either; and it took us pretty nearly three weeks to get down to town, for the rains had begun early, and the rivers and creeks were swollen. Well, we had got nearly to Brisbane; in fact very nearly here, for we meant to pass by here to see how they were getting on with the house. Mrs. Howard had taken a great fancy to the place before they were married; and so Mr. Howard had bought up a large bit of country and was putting this house up on it just to please her, when Mrs. Howard fell ill. Mr. Howard never said a word, but I shall never forget his face that day. I said nothing either; but we both were thinking the same thing, and neither of us dared to say it.
“Mrs. Howard got worse, much worse. I dare not think of that time,” said Peter shuddering, and covering his eyes with his hand. “I do not know what dragged me to come to the cursed place again.” And he glared darkly round, a very terror-stricken Peter now. “The workmen went away. They would not stay to hear her awful cries, except one, whom I persuaded to stay. Mr. Howard was stupefied like. He crouched down and stopped his ears, while we held her down by main force. Never shall I forget that night. At last it got so terrible that the man who stayed with us took a large soft cloak which she had been wearing, doubled it, and laid it over her face. He said not a word; but he looked at me, and I held it down with him. It was horrible; but not as horrible as to see her agony, dashing herself against the wall till her beautiful face was a mass of wounds. We held it, and the struggles grew fainter. It was the middle of the night—dark, dark as pitch; just such a night as this. There was a fire of logs outside, and we had a candle in the room. Mr. Howard still sat crouched all in a heap. I believe he was insensible with grief and horror; and we too hung over her and held fast down the cloak.
“She got quite quiet at last. There was not a sound to be heard, when suddenly from beneath the cloak, there came a wild shrill cry; at the selfsame instant through the air there came a sharp short bark. It was Peter’s bark—the bark he gave when he was hurt! The two sounds mingled together, and died slowly away; and from that moment there was never another movement in the poor convulsed body.”
Peter shuddered again. Suddenly he sprang up; his eyes almost starting from his head.
“Listen.” he cried, and on the wild night air, amid the soughing of the branches, and the dull roar of the waves, a short, sharp, bark of pain, mingled with a human cry, could be distinctly heard.
Charlie Verner sprang from the ground almost as terror-stricken as old Peter himself. The cry was so distinct, so close.
“It is in there,” he said, pointing toward the room. “Come.”
But Peter, white as the dead, only shook his head, and Charlie, furious with himself at his own terror, advanced, match in hand, and by the feeble light peered in the dark room.
Empty, quite empty, except for a sack of grass which lay in a corner.
In spite of all his pluck, Charlie felt his blood grow chill as he looked in the room which had witnessed such a tragedy; and while he looked the same mingled cry broke forth, only fainter—more distant than before.
Charlie dropped the match involuntarily, and turned to Peter; but Peter had fainted, and lay perfectly unconscious, the feeble light of the fire flickering on the white features, and giving them a ghastly look.
Fortunately, there was some water in the billy, and Charlie set to work to revive his companion; but his own face was very pale, and his heart beat tumultuously against his side. And never did man more gladly welcome the break of day than did Charlie Verner after the first night of his camping out in Queensland.
If I don’t mistake there’s a house not far from here, or leastways the skeleton of a house, which was never finished because it got a bad name. Now I don’t lie out at nights unless I’m forced. I’ve seen too much of that game. So I shall push on a bit farther, and I advise you to come too.”
“Of course I will stick to you,” said Verner, in as brisk and unconcerned a tone as he could manage, though he wished from the bottom of his heart that old Peter had less objection to the dews and their attendants rheumatics; for he was decidedly tired, and so was his horse. However, Peter turned at right angles to the way they had been travelling; and Charlie Verner followed him at best he could, over logs and under branches, the dingy puggaree round Peter’s hat being his guide. They travelled in this fashion for nearly half an hour, when Verner heard the distant murmur of the sea.
“I did not know we were so near the coast, Peter,” he roused himself to exclaim as the sound caught his ear.
“Not a mile from the shore of Moreton Bay,” said Peter, “I can see the house I think.”
“Thank Heaven,” ejaculated Charlie, “for I think my horse is beginning to get tired.”
Peter chuckled. He knew quite as well as Charlie himself the condition of both horses and riders. However, a Queensland stockman is not given to expend many words on sympathy for the sufferings of new chum awkwardness. So he contented himself with his chuckle, and fagged on in a darkness in which, to Charlie, it seemed impossible to recognise anything.
Peter’s eyes had not deceived him; and, though it was many years since he had been in the neighbourhood, he made almost a straight line to the house with a bad name.
“We’ll soon get a fire,” said Peter, as he dismounted, while Charlie knocked his head against a post which he had not discovered until too late.
“Well! We are bushed Peter. That is evident,” said Charles Verner, as he dipped to avoid the limb of a tree, which, in the thick darkness, he had not seen till it threatened violent contact with his head.
Peter pushed his cabbage-tree hat very much on one side, in order to have fuller space to scratch his head, and conducted the operation in a leisurely manner before he replied—
“Well, it seems so; we’ve missed the track, anyway.”
“I suppose we had better camp till daybreak, eh?” inquired young Verner, who was a new chum, and very much fatigued with his first day’s travelling in the Queensland bush, although he had too much pluck to confide the fact to the old stockman.
But Peter had been occupying the time in which he had been scratching his head in also peering round in the darkness; and his accustomed eyes had recognised one or two signs which gave him a slight knowledge of his whereabouts; and he was too old a campaigner to pass a night in the bush at a time when the dews were at their heaviest, and the shooting pains in his much suffering extremities were at their acutest, if shelter was to be got.
“If I don’t mistake there’s a house not far from here, or leastways the skeleton of a house, which was never finished because it got a bad name. Now I don’t lie out at nights unless I’m forced. I’ve seen too much of that game. So I shall push on a bit farther, and I advise you to come too.”