The Romance of a Station Rosa Praed Author

There’s a fire at the South End, Mrs. Ansdell. Your husband issignalling for Rame’s boat. You’ll see him this evening.I ran out to the verandah of the Police Magistrate’s house. Yes,there was the beacon light shining like a big red star, low down inthe heavens, far off across Gundabine Bay. I heard one of the pilotsshouting at the verandah of the wooden public-house opposite:Rame, I say! Hurry up with your nobbler. There’s Ansdell on theIsland signalling to be brought over. Then I saw Rame slouch out ofthe bar, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his Crimean shirt, and trotdown to the wharf; and I knew that in two or three hours’ time myhusband would be with me, and I was glad, for I was a bride, and thishad been our first week of separation.I shall go back with my husband to-morrow, I declared resolutely.Mrs. Jarvis, the Police Magistrate’s wife, shook her headremonstrantly.It will be much wiser to wait a little longer. The house isn’tready for you: I fancy the carpenters are at work still.I’ll help the carpenters, I replied.There are no servants, and you aren’t used to roughing it in thebush.Oh, yes, I am. Why, I have lived all my life in the bush, and Ilove it. If you had ever seen dear old Bungroopim, Mrs. Jarvis, youwouldn’t wonder that I am glad to have married a squatter instead of atownsman.We both laughed, for we both knew that that wouldn’t have made anydifference; and Captain Jarvis put in–Oh, yes; I know what your ‘bush’ was like–cool verandahs coveredwith roses and Cape jasmine and grape-vines, mountains in thedistance, good buggy roads, and plenty of neighbours–lots of girlsand young men, and races and picnics, and good times all round. Thatwas kid-glove roughing it, Mrs. Ansdell, and you’ll find life on theIsland a different sort of thing.The roses and the Cape jasmine will cover the verandah in time, Ianswered; and as for the girls and the young men and the good times,I don’t care about all that now.But the mosquitoes, Mrs. Ansdell? said his wife. You can’timagine how bad they are on the Island at this time of the year. Don’tyou think it would be wiser to wait till the plague has lessened?The mosquitoes could not be worse than they are here, I returned;for as we sat in the verandah the air was full of the buzzing ofinsects, and we flourished whisks of horsehair while we talked.I am sorry to disturb your calm resignation, said Captain Jarvis,but I am afraid they will if I do not. The Island mosquito is apeculiarly ferocious beast. Let me give you a bit of advice, Mrs.Ansdell. Buy up all the gauze netting and all the Persian insect-powder in Gundabine before you go over. It’s a fact that Lambert andhis hands always went out mustering with their heads in bags.Lambert was the former owner of the Island, from whom my husband hada few months before bought the station and the cattle which ran uponit.In spite of Captain Jarvis’s warnings, and Mrs. Jarvis’s gentledissuasion–in spite also of a certain sinister suggestiveness in thecompassionate interest which was shown in me by every inhabitant ofGundabine, from the postmistress to the storekeeper’s assistant, myresolution, fixed some days before, had not wavered. I was determinedto brave all discomfort–to brave even my husband’s opposition, and toinsist upon returning with him.I had been married only a month. I was longing to start on my newlife, and to settle into my new home, the blue shores of which weretantalisingly visible across the bay; and here I was, imprisoned inthis dreary coast township in sight of the Promised Land, andforbidden to pass the strip of water that separated me from it. Iliked the idea of living on an island. This stretch of country, fortymiles long by fourteen broad, was to be our kingdom–my husband’s andmine. There was no one to dispute possession except a little colony ofpilots who lived at the lighthouse and telegraph station quite at thenorth end, and with whom I determined to make friends–they hadalready sent me wedding presents of coral and mother-of-pearl from thenautilus shell.