BURNT OUT
And the creek of life goes wandering on,
Wandering by;
And bears for ever its course upon
A song and a sigh.
—_Henry Lawson._
A DROVER on the road with store cattle miles away saw the glow in the
sky that night, and reported it next morning to a farmer driving in to
Cunjee; and before noon half the township seemed to be out at the
station.
Little Dr. Anderson, in his motor, was the first to appear. He found the
Billabong inhabitants straying about the ruins to see what remained to
them. The overseer’s cottage and the men’s hut had given them shelter
for the remnant of the night after the fire had been finally
extinguished, except Mr. Linton and Jim, who remained on guard until
morning.
Within, the devastation was only partial. Most of the rooms in front
were practically untouched, though all had been damaged by water. The
back of the house had suffered most; little but the walls were left. Jim
brought a long ladder for further explorations, for the stairs were
unsafe, being burnt through in two places. He found that the rooms
belonging to his father, Norah and himself bore traces of flood rather
than of fire. The walls were cracked with heat, but otherwise they were
intact. But the water had done its worst, and he groaned over the
spectacle of Norah’s pretty room, its red carpet a vision of discoloured
slush, and the white furniture stained and blistered. All its little
adornments were lying in confused heaps, swept down by the water. It was
a gruesome sight.
Within the wardrobe and chest of drawers, however, clothes were unhurt.
Jim took up a rope and lowered bundles down to his father, so that when
Norah and Jean awoke, very late in the morning, it was to find clean
raiment laid out for them by Brownie, and breakfast waiting for them in
Mrs. Evans’s neat little kitchen.
“Isn’t it a mercy?” Jean confided to Norah. “Last night it didn’t seem
to matter at all running round before all Billabong in a nighty and a
coat, but I went to sleep wondering how they’d look in the daytime!”
Brownie and the maids were the most to be pitied, for they had lost
everything but a few cherished possessions, snatched up as they ran out
of the house. Mary and Sarah were not hard to clothe—but Mrs. Brown was
a different proposition. The united wardrobes of Mrs. Evans and Mrs.
Willis, the men’s cook, contrived something in the nature of a rig-out
by dint of ripping out gathers and tucks and using innumerable safety
pins. “I’m covered, if not clothed!” said Brownie, “an’ thankful to be
anything!”
Mr. Linton had resolutely put away his trouble, and was inspecting the
remains with a keen, businesslike face.
“It’s a matter of restoring rather than rebuilding,” he told Dr.
Anderson, who was spluttering with indignation still, more than an hour
after his arrival. “The insurance should cover the damage, I fancy; and
the back of the house can be built after more modern notions, which
won’t be a disadvantage. The stables? No—they will go up again
precisely as they were. And the place will look the same, in the main;
we don’t want it altered. It will look abominably new, of course; our
old mantle of ivy and virginia creeper is destroyed, and the walls will
be bare for a long while. Poor old Hogg is mourning over his dead roses
and the general havoc in his garden.
“Well, you take it calmly!” said the little doctor, explosively.
David Linton shrugged his shoulders.
“No good doing anything else,” he answered. “And, after all, I have such
immense cause for thankfulness in getting Norah out of that confounded
place unhurt, that nothing else really matters. It’s a nuisance, of
course, and what I’m to do with the youngsters’ holidays I don’t know;
it’s pretty rough on them. But—good Lord, Anderson! I want to go and
feel the child whenever I look at her, to make sure that she’s really
all right! It seems incredible—I never saw so hideously close a shave!”
“Norah’s absolutely matter of fact over it,” the doctor said. “I rebuked
her in my best professional manner for doing such a mad thing, and she
looked at me in mild surprise, and remarked, ‘Why, if I hadn’t, Jim
would have gone!’ It seemed to finish the argument as far as she was
concerned. Wonder if your fellows have got Harvey?”
“Oh, they’re bound to get him,” the squatter answered. “And I wouldn’t
care to be Harvey when they do.”
Murty O’Toole had commenced detective operations with break of day. He
had not ceased to abuse himself for failing to be at the stables in time
to help.
“A set of useless images,” said he, in profound scorn. “Slapin’ an’
snorin’ like so manny fat pigs—an’ Miss Norah an’ Masther Jim on the
shpot! Bad luck to the heat an’ the races!—ivery man jack of us was
aslape almost before we was in bed, ’twas that tired we was. But that’s
no excuse!” Murty refused to be comforted, and only derived faint solace
from the determination to find out the cause of the fire.
It did not require sleuth-hound abilities. The little paddock had burned
in patches, for here and there were green expanses of clover that had
checked the fire, and the hawthorn hedge had helped to stop it at the
boundary; but the west wind had taken it straight across to the stables,
and in the morning light the brown, burnt ground led Murty quickly to
the clump of lemon gums. Behind them a kerosene tin stood, inverted, and
the burn began there. When the stockman picked it up the blackened
square of charred grass beneath it showed out sharply.
“That ain’t the kind of thing that happens wid an accident,” said Murty
between his teeth. He looked further.
Behind the burnt ground, the place where a man had lain was easily
visible in the long grass. There were cigarette butts in plenty, and a
little further away an empty cigarette box. Murty pounced upon it in
triumph.
“Humph!” he said. “Harvey smokes that brand—an’ no wan else on
Billabong.”
Then the whisky bottle, half hidden in the hedge, caught his eye, and he
picked it up. He was sure now. The smell of fresh spirit was still in
it; and he had seen the bottle in Harvey’s room two days before. And,
with that, black rage came over Murty’s honest heart, and for five
minutes his remarks about the absent Harvey might have withered that
individual’s soul, had he indeed possessed such a thing. Then Murty
replaced his evidence, and went for Mr. Linton.
He led the men away from the homestead an hour later, each as keen and
as enraged as himself.
“Mind, boys, you’ve promised not to hurt him,” David Linton said, “He’ll
get all that’s coming to him—but I won’t have the station take the law
into its hands. We can’t be absolutely certain.” The men were certain:
but they had promised, unwillingly enough. They went down the paddock at
a hand-gallop, with set, angry faces.
Wally had ridden into Cunjee, to send telegrams and letters, and with an
amazing list to be telephoned to Melbourne shops, since the township
could not rise to great heights in the way of personal effects,
saddlery, or even groceries. Billabong was, in patches, blankly
destitute. Not a decent saddle was left, save those belonging to the
men: buggies, harness, tools, horse feed—all had gone in the
destruction of the stables. Norah and Jean were completely hatless,
their head gear having been downstairs; and as Jim was wont to keep most
of his every-day possessions in a downstairs bathroom where he shaved
and dressed, he had nothing left but his best clothes, and a Panama
sternly reserved, as a rule, for trips to Melbourne.
“Nice sort of a Johnny you look, to be wandering round ther—ruined
ancestral hall!” Wally told him derisively. “You might be a bright young
man on the stage. It’s hardly decent and filial for you to think so much
of personal adornment at a time like this!” Further eloquence was
checked by sudden action on the part of his friend, who was too unhappy
over his own grandeur to bear meekly any jibes on its account. He had
headed the telephone list with urgent messages for riding breeches and
leggings, and a felt hat of the kind his soul desired. There was
something little short of appalling to Jim in finding himself suddenly
without any old clothes!
Following Dr. Anderson came riders from other stations, policemen from
two or three scattered townships, and many other people anxious to help,
so that the fences near the homestead were soon thickly occupied with
horses “hung up” in every patch of shade. There was, of course, nothing
to do. Nor could Billabong even maintain its reputation for hospitality,
since it had been left almost without provisions. The storeroom
containing the main quantities of groceries, as well as the meat house,
had been amongst the first parts of the house to catch. Bags of flour
could be seen, burst open, in the ruins, and thick masses of what looked
like very badly-burned toffee, and had been sugar. The men’s hut had fed
the exiles, and further supplies would be brought out from Cunjee by
Evans in his buggy—the only vehicle, except the station carts and
drays, left on Billabong.
“It’s really rather like being cast on a desert island,” said Jean.
Norah laughed.
“I guess it’s like that to all the people who have come out,” she said.
“Just fancy, Jean, we can’t even give them a cup of tea. There’s milk,
and that’s all there is. Isn’t it awful?”
But the visitors had not come to be fed. They condoled, and looked round
the ruins, and made strong and unavailing comments, and then, in the
Australian fashion, offered all they had, from their houses to their
buggies, to fill in any deficiencies. Invitations to find shelter at
neighbouring places poured in upon Mr. Linton and his family. The
squatter would not leave the homestead, but he considered the question
of sending Jean and Norah to spend a week in Mrs. Anderson’s friendly
care, finally referring the matter to the girls themselves, and finding
them so horrified at the idea that he promptly withdrew it.
“I don’t want to crowd Evans’s cottage out altogether,” he said, half
apologetically.
“Well, Mrs. Evans has a spare room, and she lets us wash up, and I’m
going to bath the baby to-night!” said Norah. “And she wants us to
stay—and Jim and Wally and you are going to sleep in the tents, anyhow.
Oh, Daddy, don’t send us away. I would hate it so!”
“All right, all right, you needn’t go!” rejoined her father, laughing.
“But it will be very dull for Jean: you can’t ride or drive, and the
cottage isn’t as comfortable in this heat as Billabong.”
But Jean reassured him, hastily. She had no desire to migrate to a world
of strangers.
“It is hot, though, Daddy, that’s a fact,” said Norah. “I was
thinking——” She broke off, watching him a little doubtfully.
“When you think in that tone, I have generally no chance of escape,”
said he. “What is it this time?”
“Well, there’s another little tent.” Norah hesitated, half laughing.
“Jim would put it up and fix up bunks for us. Couldn’t we come and join
your camp down there?” She pointed towards the lagoon, where Jim had
already taken two small tents and was hunting about for ridge poles. The
bank looked cool and shady, fringed with groves of wattles and big box
trees. “We could keep our things up at Mrs. Evans’s cottage, and dress
there: but it would be lovely to sleep in a tent. That little room is
certainly hot.”
Mr. Linton pondered. The lagoon was only a hundred yards from the
cottage. Certainly, there was no great objection to the plan. And Norah
was still bearing traces of the previous night, in white cheeks and
heavy eyes: it was hard to refuse her anything in reason.
“Well, you may,” he said, “if you can arrange matters with Jim.”
“Oh, can we, Daddy? You are the blessedest——!” said Norah. Suddenly he
was alone. Two strenuous figures in blue frocks descended upon the
hapless Jim.
“Whatever’s the matter?” Jim asked, looking up as they raced down upon
him. “Not another fire? And aren’t you two hot enough without doing
Sheffield handicaps across here?” He had borrowed a pair of blue
dungaree trousers from the wardrobe of Mr. Evans, and was, in
consequence, much happier.
“Want you to put us up a tent,” Norah said, cheerfully. “You don’t mind,
do you, Jimmy?”
Jim whistled. “What does Dad say?”
“Says we can if you’ll fix it. You will, Jimmy, won’t you? We’ll help
you ever so. It would be so lovelier than sleeping in a hot little
room!”
“Oh, all right,” said her easy-going brother. “You’ll have to make
yourselves scarce in the mornings, you know—this is our bathing place.”
“Yes, we know. We’ll do whatever you say,” said Norah, with amazing
meekness. “You’re a brick, Jimmy. Shall we carry down the tent? I know
where it is.”
“No, you won’t,” said Jim, severely. “You can’t try to commit suicide
over-night and then make yourself a beast of burden in the morning. Wal.
and I can bring it when he comes out; he ought to be back soon. Just you
sit down in the shade and think of your sins.”
“That won’t keep me busy,” Norah retorted. But she did as she was told,
and they sat peacefully under a big weeping willow until Mrs. Evans
summoned them to dinner.
After lunch there was nothing to be done at the homestead. Mr. Linton
had gone to Cunjee in Dr. Anderson’s motor to transact much business and
talk on the telephone to Melbourne insurance people and building
contractors. Wally appeared about three o’clock, hot and dusty, and
reported the condition of the township.
“Every one’s talking fire,” he said. “The police and half the men are
out after Harvey. I’ve never seen Cunjee so excited—it seems quite
appropriate that they’ve still got the Christmas decorations in the
streets! They’re considerably withered, of course, but it seems to
indicate that something’s in the air. I guess Harvey will have a lively
time when they catch him.”
“Wish I could be in at the death,” said Jim, grimly. His father’s wish
had kept him from joining the pursuit, but he had stayed unwillingly.
“Yes, it wouldn’t be bad fun, would it? Wonder is they haven’t got him
already. He must be pretty well planted,” Wally said. “He’s certainly
the man you’ve got to thank: if he’d a clear conscience he’d be in
Cunjee now, instead of nobody knows where. Whew—w, it is hot! Come and
have a swim, Jim.”
“No swim for you yet awhile,” Jim told him, grimly. “You’ve got to come
and fix camp.”
“Me?” asked Wally, blankly. “Of all the unsympathetic, slave-driving
wretches——”
“Yes, that’s so,” grinned his chum. “All the same, you’ve got to come.”
“I felt there was something in the wind,” said Wally, lugubriously. “I
left you as beautiful as a tailor’s block, and looking very like one,
only woodener, in your best suit; and I find you in dungarees and a
shirt, and hideously happy. It isn’t fair, and me so hot. Isn’t he a
brute, Norah?”
“Not this time,” laughed Norah. “You see, it’s our tent you’ve got to
fix. Go on, and we’ll get a billy from Mrs. Evans and brew afternoon tea
for you down by the lagoon.”
So they spent the hot hours in the shade, while the boys made the little
camp ship-shape, their tent and that of Mr. Linton close together near
the bank, and the girls’ a little way off in a clump of young wattles.
Jim fixed up bunks in bushman fashion, with saplings run through bags
endways, and supported on crossed sticks.
“You won’t want any mattresses on those,” he said: “they’re fit for
anyone. What about blankets, Norah?”
“Brownie’s been drying the ones you amateur firemen soaked last night,”
said his sister, unkindly. “They’re all water-marked, of course, but
they’re quite good enough for camping.”
“First rate,” Jim agreed. “We’ll get ’em. Come along, Wally.”
“More toil!” groaned that gentleman, who had been working with the
cheerful keenness he put into all his doings. “Why did I come here?”
“Poor dear, then!” said a cheerful, fat voice. The creaking of a
wheelbarrow accompanied it, and preceded Mrs. Brown, who came into view
wheeling a load of bedclothes.
“Brownie, you shouldn’t, you bad young thing!” exclaimed Wally. He
dashed to take the barrow, and was routed ignominiously.
“Never you mind—I can manage me own little lot,” said Brownie,
cheerfully. She pulled up, panting a little. “Lucky for me it was all
down hill; I don’t know as I could have managed to get it up a rise.”
“You oughtn’t to have wheeled that load at all,” Jim said, with an
excellent attempt at sternness. It appeared to afford Brownie great
amusement, and she chuckled audibly.
“Bless you, it pulled me here!” she answered. “I come down at no end of
a pace. Now haven’t you got it all just as nice as it can be. Makes me
nearly envious!”
“We’ll fix up a tent for you, if you like,” Jim told her. “Just say the
word.”
“Not for me, thank you,” said Brownie, hastily. “This open-air sleeping
notion is all very well for them as likes it—but I’m used to four walls
an’ a winder. I like something you can lock—an’ where can you lock a
tent, Master Jim?—tell me that!” She propounded this unanswerable query
with an air of triumph. “Besides, it wouldn’t be fair to any bunk to put
me into it, bunks not bein’ built on my lines. I’d hate to come down in
the night, like that there Philistine idol in the Bible.”
“Why, you wouldn’t have far to fall!” said Jim, laughing.
“Thank you, but any distance is far enough when you’re my weight,”
Brownie responded, with dignity. “Now, Miss Norah an’ Miss Jean, seein’
as how I’ve got my breath again, I think we’d better start bedmaking.”
“Don’t you bother, Brownie; we can fix up our own,” Jim said,
politely—and greatly hoping that his politeness would have no effect.
It had none.
“Humph!” said Mrs. Brown. “Handy you may be with tools an’ horses,
Master Jim, but I never yet did see the man or boy that was handy with
bedmaking. I’ve noticed that bedclothes seem to paralyse a man’s common
sense when he starts to make a bed; he don’t seem to be able to realize
what relation they have to the mattress. Generally he fights with them
quite desperate, and gets them nearly tied in knots before the job’s
done. So just you two lie there peaceful, an’ me an’ the young ladies
will do it in two twos.”
The boys’ bedmaking ambition was of no soaring nature, and they were
very content to “lie peaceful,” watching the sun dip behind the trees
that fringed the lagoon. Then came Mr. Linton, who nodded approval of
the workmanlike camp.
“First rate!” he said, warmly. “For destitute and burnt-out people, we
shan’t fare too badly.”
“Rather not!” Jim answered. “How did you get on, Dad?”
“Oh, all right. Telephone was as indistinct as usual, but I managed to
say a good deal of what I wanted through it. There will be an insurance
man down to-morrow.” Mr. Linton smiled at the bedmakers, who came out of
the last tent and settled down under the trees thankfully. “They’ve
found Harvey,” he concluded.
“Found the brute, have they?” Jim exclaimed. “What did he have to say,
Dad? Did they hurt him?”
“Harvey had had luck,” said Mr. Linton, slowly. “He’d hurt himself
first.”
“How? Tell us, Dad.”
“Well, they hunted most of the day before they got him. They had every
road searched before noon, the police were in communication with all the
townships in the district, and there was no sign of him. Then the men
left the roads and went across country, hunting up the river and along
any creek, and through scrub. But I don’t think Mr. Harvey would have
trusted himself in scrub without a horse.”
“Not he!” Jim agreed.
“Murty found him. He was riding across the Duncans’ big plain, and
thought he heard a coo-ee; but there was no cover anywhere, and he
couldn’t see a man wherever he looked. But he rode about, and found him
at last in a little bit of a hollow. Murty said you might have ridden
past it a hundred times and never have seen anyone. Harvey had shouted
once, but when he saw that it was Murty he was afraid to call again, and
tried to lie low.”
“Couldn’t he walk?”
“He broke his leg last night,” Mr. Linton answered. “The poor wretch has
had a pretty bad time. He was jumping over a log, he says, and came down
with one leg in a crab-hole, and it twisted, and threw him down. He
didn’t know it was broken at first, but he found he couldn’t use it. So
he crawled away from the log, being afraid of snakes, and got a couple
of hundred yards into the paddock. Since then he’s kept still.”
“What—out in the open?” Jim asked.
“Yes; not a scrap of cover. And think of the day it’s been—it was 112°
in the shade in Cunjee—and Harvey wasn’t in the shade. He told Murty he
was badly thirsty before he got hurt, and had been looking for water.
His leg is in a bad state, and he must have had a terrible day. Murty
came in for the doctor, and we went for him in the car—of course, Murty
could do nothing on horseback. Harvey was a bit delirious by the time we
got to him. Anderson says he’ll be three months in hospital.”
“Whew-w!” whistled Wally. “Three months!”
“Then he’ll have three munce to reflect on the error of his ways!” said
Brownie, implacably. “Oh, I know me feelings aren’t Christian, an’ I
don’t set a good example to the young; but what did he want to go and do
it for?”
“Break his leg? But did he want to?” Jim grinned.
“You know very well I don’t mean his wretched little leg,” Brownie said,
testily. “He never had no call to burn us all out. Now he’s broke his
leg, an’ you’ll think he’s an object of sympathy an’ compassion, an’
nex’ thing Miss Norah’ll be visitin’ him in the ’Ospital an’ holdin’ his
hand an’ givin’ him jelly!”
“By gad, she won’t!” uttered Norah’s father, with satisfying emphasis.
“There are limits, Brownie. But it’s all very well for you to talk—if
you’d seen the poor little weed you’d have been sorry for him.”
“Not me!” Brownie answered, truculently. “I only got to think of Miss
Norah in that horrid stable, an’ every soft feelin’ leaves me, like a
moulting hen.” Brownie’s similes were apt to be mixed, and nobody marked
them. “Does he say why he did it? He’s got nerve enough to stick out
that he never lit it at all!”
“Oh, no, he hasn’t—not now,” said Mr. Linton. “He admitted it to Murty
meekly enough, and Murty says he was awfully taken aback at hearing the
amount of the damage; he said he only thought of burning the grass.
Whether his concern is for my loss or the possible results to himself,
I’m not clear. I don’t regard him as exactly a philanthropist.”
Brownie snorted wrathfully as they rose to go up to the cottage. The sun
had set, and Mrs. Evans was calling from the hill.
“I don’t give him credit for no decent motives at all,” she said. “He’s
bad right through—an’ don’t you ask me to be sorry for him—he’ll have
three munce takin’ it easy in ’Ospital, livin’ on the fat of the land
an’ doin’ no work—an’ that’ll just suit Harvey! I got no patience with
that sort of worm in sheep’s clothing!” She subsided, muttering darkly,
and Wally offered her his arm up the hill, while Jim wheeled the barrow.
Brownie dropped her voice as they neared the cottage.
“Ah, well,” she said—and paused. “I don’t suppose them gaol ’Ospitals
is exackly dens of luxury. If you an’ Master Jim, Master Wally, think as
how a little strong soup or meat jelly might go in to that poor, wicked,
depraved little wretch——?”
“Fattening him for the slaughter, eh, Brownie?” asked Wally, gravely.
“Yes, that’s it,” said the fierce Mrs. Brown, accepting the suggestion
with ardour. “P’r’aps he mightn’t get what he deserves if he looked pale
an’ thin at his trile!” She mused over the matter. “Wonder if they feed
’em on skilly when they’re in ’Ospital,” she pondered. “An’ a leg like
that. Well, well, we’re all ’uman, after all, an’ likely his mother
never did much by him—he looks as if he had growed up casual! You find
out about that soup, Master Wally.” And Wally nodded, his eyes kindly as
he smiled at the broad, motherly face.
“Makes you feel a bit small, though,” he confided to Jim later on.
“Because I’m not in the least sorry for Harvey. I think he deserved all
he got, and more, and these beggars don’t mind gaol. Suppose I’m a
hard-hearted brute!”
“Well, I’m another,” Jim responded. “When I think of young Norah—and
the horses! I guess my poor old Garryowen had about as bad a time as
Harvey. Says he never thought of the house! Well, he lit the grass three
hundred yards from it, with a west wind blowing—that’s all! When I can
work up any sorrow for Harvey I’ll let you know!” And the stern and
unmoved pair sought the lagoon for a final swim before “turning in.”
[Illustration: “‘Brownie, you shouldn’t, you bad young thing!’”]