Part 8

On these occasions, which I am happy to say were very frequent, the dinner had to be of the most simple character and compressed into the shortest possible space. I do not remember whether he took wine or not, but he consumed an immense amount of black coffee, not at dinner, but directly after, when we adjourned to the verandah and cigarettes were lighted. Every half-hour a servant brought a fresh cup of fragrant coffee, and noiselessly put it on the little table at Colonel Gordon’s elbow, and this went on for hours! It is impossible to convey in words any idea of the singular charm of Gordon’s conversation. With so appreciative and sympathetic a listener as my dear husband was, he gave of his best and that was very good. Not in the least egotistical, his vivid narratives were the most thrillingly interesting it has ever been my good fortune to listen to. Every word he said, for all its picturesqueness, bore the stamp of reality, and the scenes he described at once stood out before your eyes. A question now and then was all that was needed to sustain the delightful flow of talk. He never uttered a word which could be called “cant,” nor did he bring his religious opinions into prominence. One gathered from his utterances that he was more deeply imbued with the “enthusiasm of humanity” than with any dogma.

His eyes were the most remarkable part of his face, and I cannot imagine any one who has ever seen them forgetting their wonderful beauty. It was not merely that they were of a crystal clearness and as blue as a summer sky, but the expression was different to that of any other human eye I have ever seen. In the first place, instead of the trained, conventional glance with which we habitually regard each other and which, certainly at first, tells you nothing whatever of your new acquaintance’s character or inner nature, Gordon’s beautiful, noble soul looked straight at you, directly from out of these clear eyes. They revealed him at once, as he was, and I am sure the secret of his extraordinary and almost instantaneous influence over his fellow-creatures lay in that glance. There was a sort of wistful tenderness in it for all its penetration, an extraordinary magnetic sympathy, and yet you felt its authority. The rest of his face was rugged, and, I suppose, what would be called plain, but one never thought of anything beyond the soul shining out of those wonderful windows. To look at any other face after his was like looking at a lifeless mask. A few months after he arrived the General commanding the troops in Mauritius left, and Colonel Gordon was promoted and succeeded him. He had been very active among the Chinese mercantile class (a very numerous one) and had done much good, not merely of a missionary but of a social nature, explaining the duties of citizenship to them, and enforcing local laws and rules which they probably had not understood. That part of the community became much easier to manage after he took them in hand.

But there was a strangely unpractical side to General Gordon’s nature, apart from his utter disregard of what might be called his own interests. Those he never thought of for one moment, and I honestly believe that his feelings about the value or importance of money—_as_ money—were on a par with the ideas of a nice child of five years old! Coins of the realm remained but a short time in his pocket, and were only welcome to him as a means of helping others. Still his charity was not at all indiscriminate, and in the numerous instances of which I knew his help was always judiciously given.

Curiously enough, the scheme of defence for Mauritius, which General Gordon was requested officially to draw up, was found to be absolutely impossible. He bestowed much pains and care on it, but his plans involved many alterations and changes not one of which were found practicable. I have in my possession some charming letters of his to my husband, who had written privately to the General to state that in forwarding this scheme of defence to the War Office, he, as Lieutenant-Governor, had felt obliged to disagree entirely with it, and to point out the utter impossibility on every ground of carrying it out. Now my husband was one of General Gordon’s warmest and most discriminating admirers, and he showed me the private correspondence on the subject as illustrating the noble and beautiful nature of the man. There was not the slightest trace of annoyance or even pique at the uncompromising terms in which a civilian Governor had felt it his duty to differ from so eminent a military authority. The General just recognised that it was a plain expression of an honest opinion and respected it accordingly, nor was there the slightest friction between them nor the least check upon their friendly intercourse.

I remember particularly one merry evening in the verandah after dinner, when the General had just returned from an official visit to the Seychelles, a little group of islands nearly 1000 miles from Mauritius, but in those days one of its _dépendences_. He was full of a brand new theory, based on the coco-de-mer, a gigantic palm which he saw for the first time, and which convinced him that he had discovered the site of the Garden of Eden. He explained with great eagerness how he felt sure of the existence of the four encircling rivers of that favoured spot (only they now ran underground), but his strong point was the strange weird fruit which hung, some eighty feet or so above the ground, from those splendid palms which are peculiar to the Seychelles group. In vain the Governor pointed out, with much laughter, that our first parents must have been of a goodly height to reach this fruit, and in the next, that it was not good to eat!

The dear General bore all our chaff with the sweetest good-humour, but remained as firmly fixed as ever in his idea. He was most eager and earnest about it all, and, though he found our laughter infectious and joined heartily in it, nothing made the least impression on him, and I believe he always thought the Garden of Eden had once united that little group of islets in one exquisite whole—for Mahé is certainly a lovely spot and as fertile as it is fair.

We always felt we could not expect to keep him long with us in Mauritius though he never chafed nor repined in any way, and just did his duty from day to day, and whatever other work for his fellow-men his hand found to do, with all his might. But all too soon he was summoned home, and quite the next thing we heard of him was that he was going out to India with the new Governor-General, Lord Ripon, as his Private Secretary. We all exclaimed at once, “Think of the dinner-parties!” and were not at all surprised to hear how short a time that arrangement had lasted, though the dreaded form of entertainment had really nothing whatever to do with Gordon’s resignation of his post long before India was reached. From time to time he wrote to my husband, and we followed every step of his subsequent career with the deepest interest. I have since heard, I do not know with what truth, that it was a mistake in a telegram which prevented his going to the Congo on King Leopold’s business instead of to Egypt on ours. However that may be, the rest of the story was quite in harmony with what one had known of him, but of all those who sorrowed for his tragic fate—and it was a nation that grieved—no one lamented him more than his official chief of the Mauritian days.

VIII

WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Few people can realise how rapid is the growth of a colony when once it begins to grow. Like a young tree, after reaching a certain stage, it may seem to have almost attained its limit, and one often feels disappointed that more visible progress has not been made. But come again a little later, and you will find your sapling shooting rapidly up into a splendid tree. It was really growing, as it were, _under_ ground; searching with its roots for the most favourable conditions. Perhaps there was a piece of rock to be got round before the good soil could be reached, but the little tree was covering that rock all the time with a network of roots so that it ceased to be an obstacle and was gathered up and assimilated with its growth. In the decade between 1880 and 1890 Western Australia was just in that stage, and the splendid young giant of to-day must have been growing underground then, though it did not seem to be making much progress as a colony. In those days we sadly called ourselves “Cinderella,” but the Fairy Prince—Responsible Government—was not far off, and I am proud to remember that my dear husband, then Governor of the colony, was one of those who helped to open the door and let Prince Charming in.

They tell me the colony is quite different now, and that Perth is unrecognisable. I try to be glad to hear it, and keep repeating to myself that the revenue of a month now is what we thought good for a year, fifteen years ago. But no one can be more than happy, and I question very much if the rich people there to-day are any happier or even better off, in the true sense of the words, than we were. Of course, enormous progress has been made, and many of the works and wants which we only dreamed of and longed for, have suddenly become accomplished facts. Our Cinderella’s shoes have turned out to be made of gold, but they pinch her now and then, and have to be eased here and there. Still they are, no doubt, true fairy shoes, and will grow conveniently with the growth of her feet.

In our day—which began in May 1883—the colony was as quiet and primitive as possible, but none the less delightful and essentially homelike. I must confess that one of its greatest attractions in my eyes was what more youthful and enterprising spirits used to call the dulness of Perth. But it never was really dull. To me there always appeared to be what I see American newspapers describe as “happenings” going on.

For instance, one morning I was called into the Governor’s office to look at a tin collar just sent up from the port of Freemantle for the Governor’s inspection. It appeared that the two little children of a respectable tradesman in Freemantle had that morning been playing on a lonely part of the beach, and had observed a large strange bird, half floating, half borne in by the incoming tide. It was a very flat bit of shore just there, and the sea was as smooth as glass, so the boy—bold and brave, as colonial boys are—fearing to lose the curious creature, waded in a little way, and, seizing it by the tip of the outstretched wing, dragged it safely to land. There, after a few convulsive movements and struggles, the poor bird died, and the little ones wisely set off at once to fetch their father to look at what they thought was an enormous seagull. When Mr. —— arrived at the spot, he at once saw that the bird was an albatross, and furthermore that a large fish was sticking in its throat. A closer inspection revealed that a sort of tin collar round the neck, large enough to allow of its feeding under ordinary circumstances, but not wide enough to let so big a fish pass down its gullet, had strangled it. The collar had evidently formed part of a preserved meat tin of rather a large size, with the top and bottom knocked out, and around it were these words, punched quite distinctly in the tin, probably by the point of a nail:—

“_Treize naufragés sont refugiés sur les Iles Crozets, ce_”—then followed a date of about twelve days before. “_Au secours, pour l’amour de Dieu!_”

In those days everything used to be referred to the Governor, so Mr. —— at once went to the police station, got an Inspector to come and look at the bird, hear the children’s story, take the collar off—a work of some difficulty, in fact the head had to be cut off—and bring it up by next train to Perth.

It was an intensely interesting story, and aroused all our sympathy. A telegram was at once sent off to the Admiral commanding on the Australian station, telling the tale, and asking for help to be sent to the Crozets; but the swiftly returned answer stated, with great regret, that it was impossible to do this, and that the Cape Squadron was the one to communicate with. Now unfortunately this was impossible in those days, so another message was despatched directly to the Minister for Marine Affairs in Paris, and next day we heard that the Department had discovered—through an apparently admirable system of ship registry—that a small vessel had sailed from Bordeaux some months before and that the way to her destined port would certainly take her past the Iles Crozets. No news of her arrival at that port had ever been received, so a message was even then on its way to the nearest French naval station ordering immediate relief to be sent to the Crozets. This reply, most courteously worded, added that there were _caches_ of food on these islands, which statement was borne out by the fresh look of the tin collar. A curious confirmation of the story was elicited by the volunteered statement of the captain of a newly-arrived sailing wool-ship, who said that in a certain latitude, which turned out to be within quite measurable distance of the Crozets, an albatross had suddenly appeared in the wake of the ship, feeding greedily on the scraps and refuse thrown overboard, and the crew observed with surprise that the bird followed them right into the open roadstead which then represented Freemantle harbour. The date coincided exactly with the figures on the tin. The bird must have found the collar inconvenient for fishing, and had joined the ship to feed on these softer scraps, until, with the conclusion of the little vessel’s voyage, the supplies also ceased.

Stories should always end well, but alas! this one does not. We heard nothing more for several weeks, and then came an official document, full of gratitude for the prompt action taken, but stating that when the French gunboat reached the Crozets it was found quite deserted. A similar tin, with the same sort of punched letters on it, had been left behind saying that the contents of the _cache_ had all been used, and that, supplies being exhausted, the _naufragés_ were going to attempt to construct some sort of a raft on which to try to reach another of the islets where a fresh supply of food might possibly be found hidden. This message had briefly added that the poor shipwrecked sailors were literally starving.

The most diligent and careful search failed, however, to discover the slightest trace of the unfortunate men or their raft. Probably they were already so weak and exhausted when they started that they could not navigate their cumbrous craft in the broken water and currents between the Islands. We felt very sad at this tragic end to the wonderful message brought by the albatross, and only wished we had possessed any sort of steamer which could have been despatched that same day to the Iles Crozets.

Another morning—and such a beautiful morning too!—F. looked in at the drawing-room window, and asked if I would like to come with him to the Central Telegraph Office—a very little way off—and hear the first messages over a line stretching many hundreds of miles away to the far North-west of the colony. Of course, I was only too delighted, especially as I had “assisted” at the driving in of the very first pole of that same telegraph line two or three years before at Geraldton, some three hundred miles up the coast.

I was much amazed at the wonderful familiarity of the operator with his machine. How he seemed hardly to pause in what he was himself saying, to remark, “They are very pleased to hear your Excellency is here, and wish me to say,” and then would come a message glibly disentangled from a rapid succession of incoherent little clicks and taps. Presently came a longer and more consecutive series of pecks and clicks, to which the operator condescended to listen carefully, and even to jot down a pencilled word now and then. This turned out to be a communication from the sergeant of police in charge of the little group of white men up in that distant spot, where no European foot had ever trodden before, to the effect that he had lately come across a native tribe who had an Englishwoman with them. The sergeant went on to say that this woman had been wrecked twenty years before, somewhere on that North-west coast, and that she and her baby-boy—the only survivors of the disaster—had ever since lived with this tribe. She could still speak English, and had told the sergeant that these natives had always treated her with the utmost kindness, and had in fact regarded her as a supernatural and sacred guest. Her son was, of course, a grown-up man by this time, and had quite thrown in his lot with the tribe. She declared she had enjoyed excellent health all those years, and had never suffered from anything worse than tender feet. She hastened to add that whenever her feet became sore from travelling barefoot, the tribe halted until they had healed.

Naturally, we were deeply thrilled by this unexpected romance clicked out in such a commonplace way, and the Governor at once authorised the sergeant—all by telegraph—to tell the poor exile that, if she chose, she and her son should be brought down to Perth at once, cared for, and sent to any place she wished, free of all expense.

Of course we had to wait a few moments whilst the sergeant explained this message, though he had wisely taken the precaution of getting the tribe to “come in” to the little station as soon as he knew the line would be open. I spent the interval in making plans for the poor soul’s reception and comfort, promising myself to do all I could to make up to her for those years of wandering about with savages. But my schemes vanished into thin air as soon as the clicks began again, for the woman steadily refused to leave the friendly tribe—who, I may mention, were listening, the sergeant said, with the most breathless anxiety for her decision. She declared that nothing would induce her son to come away, and that she had not the least desire to do so either. The Governor tried hard, in his own kind and eloquent words, to persuade her to accept his offer, or, failing that, to say what she would like done for her own comfort, and to reward the tribe who had been so hospitable and good to her. She would accept nothing for herself, but hesitatingly asked for more blankets and a little extra flour and “baccy” for the tribe. This was promised willingly, and some tea was to be added.

My contribution to the conversation was to demand a personal description of the woman from the sergeant, but I cannot say that I gathered much idea of her appearance from his halting and somewhat laboured word-portrait. Apparently she was not beautiful; no wonder, poor soul!—tanned as to skin, and bleached as to hair, by exposure to weather. Only her blue eyes and differing features showed her English origin. She had kept no count of time, nothing but the boy’s growth told that many years must have passed.

“They look upon her as a sort of Queen,” the sergeant declared, “and don’t want her to leave them.” It was very tantalising, and I felt quite injured and hurt at the collapse of all my plans for restoring such an involuntary prodigal daughter to her relatives.

I fear I became rather troublesome after this episode, and got into a way of continually demanding if there were nothing else interesting going on up in that distant region; but, except the sad and too frequent report of interrupted communication, which was nearly always found to mean a burned-down telegraph pole, there was nothing more heard of the tribe or its guest whilst we remained in the colony. But these burned telegraph poles held a tragedy of their own; for they were always caused by a fire lighted at their base as the very last resource of a starved and dying traveller to attract attention. I fear I was just as grieved when, as sometimes happened, it turned out to be a convict, who was making a desperate and fruitless effort to escape, as when it was an explorer who perished. The routine followed was that, as soon as the line became interrupted, two workmen with tools and two native police officers would set out from the hut, one of each going along the line in opposite directions until the “fault” was found. As the huts or stations were at least a hundred and fifty miles apart, and the dry burning desert heat made travelling slow work, this was often an affair of days, and I was assured that the relieving party never yet found the unhappy traveller alive. All this is now quite a thing of the dark and distant ages, for a railway probably now runs over those very same sand plains, and no doubt Pullman cars will be a luxury of the near future.

I wonder, however, if the natives of those North-west districts still contrive, from time to time, to possess themselves of the insulators, which they fashion with their flint tools into admirable spear-heads. Also if they have at all grasped the meaning of those same telegraph poles. In the days I speak of, they considered the white man “too much fool-um,” as the kangaroos could easily get under this high fence, which was supposed to have been put up to keep them from trespassing!

It must have been towards the end of 1889 that men began to hope the statement of an eminent geologist, made years before, was going to prove true, and that “the root of the great gold-bearing tree would be found in Western Australia.” Reports of gold, more or less wild, came in from distant quarters, and although it was most desirable to help and encourage explorers, there was great danger of anything like a “rush” towards those arid and waterless districts from which the best and most reliable news came.

One of the many “gold” stories which reached us just then amused me much at the time, though doubtless it has settled into being regarded as a very old joke by now. Still it is none the less true.