II. The Reverend Hector

Qu’on vante en lui la foi, l’honneur, la probité
Qu’on prise sa candeur et sa civilité
Qu’il soit doux, complaisant, officieux, sincère,
On le veut, j’y souscris....

Boileau.

Oh, dear! How well I understand the feelings of the Athenian who voted for the banishment of Aristides. The poor man was so tired of hearing him called “The Just” that he must have welcomed this means of getting rid of him.

Not that I wish to exile the Reverend Hector.

For one thing, it would not be of any use. Absence does not stop the everlasting pæan of praise, for as it is, he is scarcely ever at home.

He has not returned from the mission station since my arrival, consequently I know him only by reputation.

But what a reputation!

From my aunt I can understand it.

She is his mother.

From Meg, too, who assumes a beatified expression when his name is mentioned. She is his old nurse.

She actually smiled this morning—I underline the word three times—when Mrs. Deslandes told her to prepare her son’s room.

He is coming to spend Sunday here at the station.

But why should my uncle join in the daily litany of the Saint of Gwylata? or Mac, the old boundary-rider, who is teaching me to ride, and who, by way of encouragement I suppose, recounts the perilous equestrian feats of “Master Hector.”

He has all the talents, it seems—this young man—secular, as well as ecclesiastical.

The dining-room is decorated with trophies won at Oxford, either in sport or scholarship. He is a clergyman of the new school of muscular Christianity, and believes in developing the bodies of his parishioners equally with their souls.

Twenty times a day I hear: “Hector says this—. Hector does that—. Hector will teach you all about the English Poets, he is so well-read.”

It certainly is a fact that I am woefully ignorant of English literature. I really couldn’t say whether Chaucer and Shelley were contemporaries or not. I have a vague idea of Tennyson and Longfellow because we used to read them at the Lycee. I except Shakespeare; of course he is universal, like our Moliére.

To return to our paragon of perfection. Let me whisper the astounding truth: The name of the Reverend Hector is getting on my nerves.

I long to go and shout this phrase to the reeds on the lake.... But it is really too horrid to venture forth—108 degrees in the shade, in the shade, mind. Imagine it, and tell me if the effort would not be altogether too violent for the state of limpness and deliquescence to which the temperature has reduced me.

As an alternative, I take my water-colours and begin a fancy sketch of the much-lauded hero. I can’t get any help from the photograph in my aunt’s bedroom, taken when he was five years old.

My colouring is a bit crude, especially in the hair, where the soft Venetian red runs to the unmistakable hue of carrots.... Still, I am not altogether unsatisfied with my maiden effort in the art of portraiture.

I have never before felt the least inclination to devote my energies to the “Arts d’Agréments,” as we call them in France—“agrément?” For whom is the “pleasure?”

For the unhappy victim condemned to torture a long-suffering piano for four solid hours a day, or spoil nice clean white paper and canvas?

“Oh’que c’est beau la toile blanche,” as one of our decadent poets remarked when returning from the Salon. Perhaps the “pleasure” is for those still greater unfortunates who have to admire the works of the embryo artist, or listen to the exercises of the future Paderewski.

“Arts d’ Agréments” indeed! Truly language was given to man to conceal his thoughts!

During these profound reflections the portrait is completed. The long Roman nose indicates firmness of will (I have exaggerated the length a little). The eyes, turned heavenward—only the whites are visible—betray his angelic soul. The long legs clad in riding breeches and gaiters suggest his equestrian prowess, and a tiny, tiny bishop’s apron hints at the recompense due to his saintly and evangelical virtues.

In one hand he waves triumphantly a Bible, in the other a tennis racket.

Only two hands! How unfortunate! I want several (like a Hindoo God) to symbolise his many attributes.

Now let me add two little wings, and around his neck a chaplet of hearts on which to inscribe the names of his admirers—just a wee one to be left blank for mine.

While I contemplate this charming production of budding genius, Mr. Deslandes enters my little sitting-room, to which he has admission at all times.

I hand him my masterpiece without a word.

He laughs until the tears run down his cheeks, and wants to carry it off to show his wife.

“No, no, uncle, I beseech you. She might take it seriously, forgetting that it’s only a joke. I would not wound her feelings for the world; we are beginning to get on so nicely together.”

I have found out a way of being useful.

When my aunt is racked with neuralgia, I go and sit with her for an hour or two. My hand on her forehead soothes the pain.

How strange is that healing force which emanates unconsciously from some people!

It tires me a little sometimes, but a good walk, or better still, a ride accompanied by Mac, who won’t trust me alone on horseback yet, restores me.

They used to tease me at school about what they called my “magnetism,” which had a soothing effect on the sourest and most crabbed disposition. A gift not always without drawbacks, for on how many disagreeable missions was I not sent to placate a furious teacher—the old Fraulein, especially, who, because she was German, was always on the look out for slights, and distributed impositions right and left. To me only did she unbend. Perhaps a fellow-feeling drew us together, for was not the little orphan an exile from family life as she from her country?

I have tried to exercise my “powers” on Meg, but so far without success. The austere daughter of Scottish Puritans cannot stand my French ways. Even my dresses offend her, so my aunt tells me laughingly.

She cannot understand how a well brought up “young leddy” can come down to breakfast indecently clad in a “bed-goon,” as she designates my pretty peignoir of soft surah, trimmed with Valenciennes, a chef d’oeuvre of Laferrière.

Nevertheless, I am not going to lace myself stiffly all day in this hot-house sort of temperature just to please her offended prejudice. Besides, I love loose, flowing draperies, the soft swish of silken materials, and their graceful billowy folds. (The little Hindoo Princess peeping out, I suppose.)

But Meg’s antagonism worries me a little. I have as much need of affection as of air. Dislike, even indifference, causes me real physical suffering.

Every day I mount “Jenny,” a knowing old mare, who permits herself no liberties with my inexperience.

My riding-master is old Mac—MacMahon—to give him his rightful cognomen. Is he a distant cousin of the famous “Maréchal,” I wonder? The bush conceals many family secrets in its bosom.

Mac was once a boundary-rider, as those men are termed who pass their lives in the saddle, inspecting paddocks and runs, recovering strayed stock, and keeping the station generally in order. Too enfeebled by age—and whisky—to be of any great use now, my uncle, in the kindness of his heart, keeps him on without any defined duties. He still rides marvellously, and in lesson hours his bearing is most rigidly correct towards his “Miss Mam’selle,” as he calls me. Mademoiselle quite alone strikes him as too familiar.

It is one of my greatest delights to get him to talk during our rides. He is a perfect mine of information on the early days of the colony, the goldfields of Victoria, and the bush-rangers.

Under the seal of secrecy, he has actually confessed that he himself belonged to the famous Kelly Gang; and he calmly relates the most blood-curdling yarns of pillage of stations, banks held up, and furious rides to escape capture.

Sometimes I rather suspect him of imposing on my credulity—“pulling my leg,” as I heard one of the station hands say one day. Of course that is “slang,” and I must not use such naughty expressions; but Australian slang has for me a great fascination. There is always a decided twinkle in Mac’s small, shrewd blue eyes as he piles horror on horrors. It amuses us both, and I respond by marvellous stories of the Old World, which he left when a child, and still dreams of seeing again.

Mac knows also many of the legends of the black tribes, and when he has sufficiently scared me with the exploits of Captain Starlight, he relates the legend of the Pleiades—Mea-Mei—in the aboriginal tongue, and stories about the Bunyip, which are told to the picaninnies to make them good.