Beyond The Blue Mountains

“But it’s hell, James, hell on earth!” James thought that didn’t matter because they were only convicts. But Miss Kelly’s brother had gone there and he had died there. It made Miss Kelly terribly sad at times; it made her snappy. Mamma said: “You must be kind to Miss Kelly, because she has suffered a lot.”

So Miss Kelly came in and said: “What is all this noise?”

“We’re birds!” Katharine told her.

“You’re nothing of the sort,” said Miss Kelly.

“You’re a naughty girl and three naughty boys!”

Miss Kelly spoke in short clipped sentences. She dispelled any make-believe merely by talking of it. You could never be anything but what people actually thought you were, with Miss Kelly looking on.

“Now come,” said Miss Kelly without a smile; she rarely smiled; she seemed to hate to see people laughing, and when they laughed it must remind her of her poor brother’s going to Van Diemen’s Land to be prodded with flaming pitchforks by the demons there, because naturally the demons would laugh while they prodded.

“Breakfast in half an hour. Do you want to wake your poor Papa and Mamma?”

“They are not poor, are they, Miss Kelly?” asked Martin anxiously.

“They’re rich!”

Katharine tried painstakingly to explain to him what Miss Kelly meant, because she thought others cared as deeply as she did about getting to the truth of even the smallest details.

“She does hot mean they are poor because they haven’t money. She means poor to get woken up too early in the morning.”

Martin irritated Katharine. His mind flew from one subject to chase one that momentarily appealed to him more.

“Is Papa very rich?”

“Of course he is very rich!” said Katharine grandly.

“The richest man in the world?”

“Is he, Miss Kelly?” asked Katharine, now very interested to know.

“Of course not,” said James, very superior.

“That would be Governor Macquarie.”

Katharine wished she had thought of that. Of course the richest man in the world must be Governor Macquarie.

“Is he the richest man in the world?” persisted Katharine.

“Is he, Miss Kelly?”

Miss Kelly said: “Rich indeed I And very free with other people’s money, if you’ll be asking me. We must have roads here, buildings there … He’ll be trying to make Sydney rival London. That’s what he’s after!”

Katharine wanted to say: “Why do you hate people who other people think are cleverer than other people, Miss Kelly?” but Martin was chasing a new idea.

“Miss Kelly, tell us about London.”

“I’ll tell you something else.”

“What, Miss Kelly? Oh, what?”

“If you don’t get dressed, and quick about it, there’ll be no breakfast for you.”

“We’d rather hear about London than have breakfast,” said Katharine with dignity.

That made Miss Kelly angry.

“Oh, you would, would you! It’s a pity you can’t taste a bit of starving for a while, then you wouldn’t be so ready to say No to good food.”

“Miss Kelly, how do you taste starving?”

They all laughed, Martin and James throwing themselves on their beds in sudden amusement, lifting their legs high in the air and trying to touch the ceiling. Edward scrambled up and tried to do the same just as Miss Kelly put a stop to it.Poor Edward.he always wanted to imitate the others and was generally too late.

Only Katharine knew that Miss Kelly’s sudden flush of anger meant she was thinking of her brother, so she did not laugh but said sharply: “Come on, you three! Get washed.”

“Oh!” wailed James.

“We want Miss Kelly to tell us about London.”

Edward became so excited that he nearly choked. They all stared at him.

“Mamma…” he stammered.

“Mamma… went to London.” He looked up expectantly to see the result of his statement. Poor Edward! The things he said never meant anything.

Katharine walked out of the room; she was begi

The porringers from which they ate their bread and milk were blue. If you put your head right in, you could imagine you were in the heart of the Blue Mountains. The pieces of bread floating about in the milk, were pioneers trying to climb the Blue Mountains. The evil spirits had sent down a big milky lake to drown them. She must disperse the lake as quickly as possible.

“Katharine!” said Miss Kelly, turning the lake into a bowl of milk, and the mountains into a porringer.

“Don’t drink so fast!

Milk needs digesting.”

Miss Kelly gave them lessons after breakfast. Reading, writing, arithmetic, a little French and Latin. How dull were lessons as taught by Miss Kelly. The boys were difficult this morning; Katharine’s dream of Christmas had upset them. The heat was intense. Katharine almost dozed. Miss Kelly gave the two boys dictation; it was all about Christmas in the Old Country, the snow on the trees, and the stage coach rattling down the road. It was very dull. That was not the sort of thing she wanted to hear about the Old Country. Edward was scratching on a slate. Edward was very silly, he could not make his letters yet. Katharine was supposed to be reading Monsieur Moliere’s Le Misanthrope, in French; she could not understand a word of it. Through the window she saw Papa and Mamma. They came out into the yard, and Papa was dressed for a journey. Mamma was very beautiful in a dress of muslin with green ribbons. Mamma was one of the most beautiful women in Sydney, she had heard people say. People looked sly when they talked of Mamma. Why? Why? That was the sort of thing she wanted to know; not Latin, not Greek, not French.

A happy couple. They kissed. Katharine had seen them kiss often. Papa kissed Mamma as though he didn’t want to stop a make-it-last-as-long-as-I-can sort of kiss.

She wished she were going out with Papa. How pleasant to ride along on her own mare, a present from Papa who said she rode well enough to be done with ponies! Where was Papa going? Why hadn’t he taken her with him? A day which had begun with a dream of Christmas is not the day to be spent idling over a lesson book.

A smell of coffee came up from below, reminding her of Margery. She sidled off her chair.

“Miss Kelly, I ca

“Yes,” said Miss Kelly, ‘you may.”

Katherine wandered downstairs. Moliere under her arm. On the first floor she paused. First Wife. Did a first wife always have her room on the first floor? Silent it was on the first floor. Margery always hurried past it. If she came up, she liked someone to come with her; she would rather have Edward with her than no one. Katharine opened a door and peeped in. The toilet-room. The guests used that. Papa bad had another toilet-room put on the second floor. Hip-bath and mirror and cupboards and table, with dusting powder on the table. Old haunting perfume. She tiptoed in, and as she looked at herself in the long glass, tried to think of the house without Mamma, and if Mamma was not there neither she nor James, Martin and Edward could be either, for they were all Mamma’s children. Why did grownups try to keep so much from you? There were three doors leading out of the toilet-room. One she had just opened from the corridor; the other two merely led to two rooms, just ordinary bedrooms with big canopied beds. Nothing there to excite one. She went into one of the bedrooms.

A sudden sound startled her. A footstep in the toilet-room. A ghost? Yes, that was it: there were ghosts on the first floor. Not ghosts perhaps, but a ghost; the ghost of Papa’s first wife. She was terrified; she ran to the bed. She got into it and drew the curtains. She peeped through them. Her heart beat so loudly that it was like the strokes of the blacksmith’s hammer. The door was pushed open slowly, and Mamma came into the room-Mamma’s face was working queerly; she had never seen Mamma look like that; had never known Mamma could look frightened just like a child. One could not imagine Mamma like a child. Mamma looked all round the room. She was breathing queerly; her breath made gasping noises. Poor Mamma so frightened. Hastily she pulled back the bed curtains, but in that split second when the curtains began to move. Mamma’s face went white and she caught her breath, so that it whistled like the wind in the eucalyptus trees in the cove.