SARAH FULLER'S NIGHT IN THE BUSH

Southland Times, Issue 860, 6 December 1867, Page 2

SARAH FULLER'S NIGHT IN THE BUSH

BY 0. M. It was the afternoon of an English February day, in the year 1852. Every* thing in and around the pretty little churchyard of Bingley looked as if covered with one large winding-sheet ; even the trees, whose spreading branches caught the falling snow, seemed to have produced a crop of ghostly leaves. As if to complete the desolate' aspect of the scene, a young girl was sobbing violently beside a time-worn gravestone. She was not alone, however, her companion being a young man of the well-to-do farmer class, whose attempts to console her betrayed a tender relationship between himself and the mourner. | " Australia!" at length he said, " why, we never heard of it till lately. Come, think better of it dear. "Why should you leave the old spot ? "We shall be lost without you. Say you won't go ;do say, Sarah dear. It's such a long way. There's the dangers of the sea, and the dangers of a strange land to be faced before you can ever settle down to begin. It's a shame that we're to part, when we love each other as we do, and all to please hitn." Sarah's lips trembled as she said, "It is all true, John ; but you know he is my own and only brother. He does it for the best," "He does it because, though he's as poor as a rat, he's as proud as the devil I" was the angry retort. "He puts me past all patience with his stuck-up pride. If I love you dearly, and you know I do, without your having a penny, why should he put himself between us, because he must needs have it that his sister shall not be looked down upon ? Tour father was an honest man, Sarah, and-couldn't help his misfortunes. But even," he added, in a loud voice, " even if he'd been a rogue, I'd like to see one of my family who'd dare to look down upon my wife !" " You. would'nt have far to go, then," broke in the angry voice of William Fuller, as he placed himself between his sister and her lover. " But there, let the girl speak for herself. Shall it be me or you ? Will she go with her brother, that loves her better than his life j or will she be the wife of John Ainslie, and, as you said just now, looked down upon ? Ay, man, Ido say ' looked down upon ' by his purse-proud old mother, his fine dashing sisters, and the rest o^ 'em ? Why they'd sneer at her in the very church, and tell their friends, as I've heard 'emT before now, that when we were children we were glad of their old' clothes. Sally," he concluded, turning to his sister, his voice unconsciously softening as he spoke to her, " Sally, I'm a hard man, I know I am ; but you're the treasure of my life. You've never been more so than at this minute, when I don't know but you may say the words that will part us for ever. Polks have dealt ill with me — maybe I don't meet 'em in the right way; but never, my dear — since the night when father put you, a little chick of a thing, into my arms, and bid me cherish you for the sake of the mother who was gone and for ihis sake who going soon — no, never, Sally,- sleeping or waking have I had a thought but for your good. You think Ainslie loves you. Maybe he does now ; but he's too beset with relations, whore all against us, to let your life be happy for long. Still, make your choice, it's only natural you would like to. A brother is only a brother, be he ever so fond; so say your say, and let's be gone." There was a sad struggle in poor Sarah's mind. Her brother, she knew, had spoken truly, when he said how much he had treasured her from almost an infant until now, and she could hardly forbear reproachiug herself for the momentary hesitation, as, pressing her hand 1 upon her throbbing heart, she said to her frowning lover, " Dear John, standing as I do beside my parent's graves, I cannot be so selfishly unmindful of my duty to them as to drive my brother forth alone on his long journey. We are both young John ; Q-od grant us health and strength to bear our troubles bravely. A few years, and we may meet again. Yon will find me still the same, dear. Ours will not be the first long wooing with a happy ending. You do not doubt me, John ?" She held out to him a small white hand, which, with the modulation of her sweet Toice and the style of her address ahowed a marked difference between herself and her companions. " There's my own sweet sister," said William Fuller, who, in his joy at her decision, so far forgot his resentment against her lover as to walk up to him, and say, "We needn't part ill friends, John. When I've made something handsome for the girl, and if you're both still of the same mind, you shall have her. I promise you you shall, and you know my word's good. Come Sally." But Ainslie neither took the proffered hand nor answered the parting words of his long-loved Sally. He stood in sullen silence, watching the retreating figures of the brother and sister until he could see them no longer, when, flinging himself on the snow-covered ground, he made all sorts of resolutions to forget that he had ever loved, or been what he chose to cpn- • sider " given up." "The Mead" and "The Hill" farms had been held for generations by Ainsliea and Fullers, the latter having been the most prosperous family of the two until about five-and-twenty years before the commencement of this history, when Robert, the father of William and Sarah, fuller, became, at the earnest entreaty of his wife, security for her youngest brother; who, after robbing his employers, fled to America, leaving Fuller Ijo -sustain the cost of his delinquencies. This was the beginning of a series of troubles. "¥ear after year poor Fuller's crops failed, or his cattle died, until, finding his position insecure, with his usual honesty, he called his creditors together, paid them to the last farthing, and then, a ruined man, quitted the old house in which he was born ; and, too

poor to begin life again as a farmer, was content to become overseer to the purchaser of his own property. Puller's wife survived their altered circumstances but a few months, leaving him two children, the eldest and youngest of a once large family. William was then about fourteen, Sarah less than a year old. Farmer Fuller was too upright a man not to meet with a large amount of sympathy from his neighbors — none more kindly sincere than that of Thomas Ainsfie, whose smile ever afforded a warm welcome to his old friend and schoolfellow. Sarah was continually at the Mead Earm ; Mrs Ainslie, who was very fond of her, used to delight in cutting up all she could spare from her own daughters' wardrobes into little frocks and cloaks for Sarah, whom she would exhibit to the father with her favorite expressisns J of "Isn't she a little dolly now?" "Don't she look pretty?" and "such like. This conversion of old clothes into new, which Mrs Ainslie had, in common "with all thrifty housewives, practised for her own children in their younger days, was undertaken from pure good will, and so accepted by the appreciating gratitude of old .Robert Fuller. Not so, however, by the son, whose pride had indeed received a fall. Accustomed to domineer over the boys of the village as the best farmer's son, he found, like other deposed sovereigns, who have governed only the fears of their subjects, that the ill deeds of his reign were fresh in the memory of those who had once been too weak to resist. Upon every outbreak of his violent temper, he was met by the taants and jeers of his companions, who did not let even the attire of his little sister pass free of comment. .Thus, in his stubborn view, what was meant for kindness became a curse. When Sarah was about five years old, Uobert Fuller was attacked by a fit, and only sufficiently recovered consciousness a few minutes before his death, to place little Sarah in the arms of her brother, commending her to his "loving care." This " loving care" was through life the one redeeming trait of his otherwise cold hard nature. Mrs Ainslie would gladly have adopted Sarah, but William would not hear of it. Indeed, what she thought would have proved her greatest hit, proved her most fatal miss; when, putting her hand on William's shoulder, Bhe said — " Let her be with me, William, and I promise that she shall never know she don't belong to us." He turned angrily upon her, exclaiming, " You don't think that to be a kindness, do you ? — that she's to forget me, to be one of you —to wear your old clothes, and be your pauper in the house ! I tell you she shan't. I'm young and strong. Many a worse man has made his way in the world, and so will I. She's but a little thing — father saved more than sixty pounds — I'll put her to school, and go into the world, and fight for her. I'll make a lady of her, Mrs Ainslie." Mrs Ainslie's quick temper got the better of her good nature, and she said, " You'll make a beggar of her, and a fool of yourself." "Nay, nay, wife," said old Ainslie; " the lad's headstrong, no doubt ; still there's sense in what he says. He might put his sixty pounds to a worse use than schooling the child. I'll speak to Mrs Bird about it, and make it go as far as it can that way. If he don't do as well he hopeSj he can come back, and she'll be better for the learning. William," he added, " I'd like to have seen you in a better mood, but we've not all the same tempers, lad ; and I knew your father too many years ago, to quarrel with his son, iust back from the funeral. Good night, lad," and the kind old man took the boy's hand, and did all the shaking. This going out into the world and making a lady of his sister, was no new idea with William Fuller. Always clearheaded and reflective, even at the time when misfortune first fell upon them, he had not been slow to see that they never could hope to become farmers again, and that his father would in all probability die before he -should himself be of an age to succeed as overseer, even if his employer were so minded. He persuaded his father to apprentice him to Thomas Brown, the blacksmith, locksmith — in fact, the mechanical genius of the village from whom he soon gained as much knowledge as he was likely to obtain. On his father's death, his master, anxious to serve him, at his urgent request agreed to forego the two years of his time still unexpired, and started him with a " God speed ye," on his way to London. Old Ainslie, determined not to be offended, overcame all William's rebuffs by steady kindness, until at last he wrung from him a reluctant consent that little Sarah's holidays should be spent at the Mead, her interests otherwise looked to by the farmer and, as William insisted on calling her, " Madame Ainslie." (To be continued.)