THE PARTING BY THE POOL
Now his mind was made up, he felt weakness leave him. Trouble never
nagged when there was work to do. The horse waited to be saddled at
the bottom of the hill, which task he did with the speed of long
custom. He had chosen for the day's work the little chestnut mare which
carried him from Surprise the night he met Moll Gregory. He had chosen
well, for she was staunch and willing--without airs and fancies. Once
he turned her towards the river, she held the way like a prim Miss
travelling to school.
The sky was green as he came down the hill; colour faded from it;
darkness fell upon the whole country. The stars took their places in
the sky, and began the slow turning which he had watched so many years
now that they told him the month and the hour as might a clock.
The breeze had lessened to a tremble as he climbed down to the
plain, and the night clapped a warm breath upon him. Distant summer
lightnings flicked across the lower skies. The feet of the stepping
mare trod evenly upon the pebbles and on the bare earth. He chose her
often for the day's work because of the speed of her walk; but to-night
she seemed turned sluggard to enrage him. Yet the road was falling
behind. The hill he had climbed was far over his shoulder. The Conical
Hill of Surprise had risen on the horizon. Now the green belt of timber
was hinted at a few miles ahead. Now he saw it with distinctness.
Thought took hold of him again until he found himself in the desolate
strip of country where the floods ran in the rains. The warm night was
wrapped about him. Crickets shrilled everywhere. Several times sounded
the thump of startled kangaroos. Lightnings flickered without pause
above the outline of the hills. It seemed to him he was part of great
music working in crescendo.
Here was the Pool. He knew it was the Pool; but it was too dark to
discover the waters. She lived here. He would see her in a few moments.
He would see her. He would see her in a moment. He lived through the
long day that he might see her a little while in the night. He would
see her again when this slow beast had trodden a little farther.
Suddenly he grew cold with such a greediness of cold as the passion of
the tropic night could not appease. He had come to say good-bye. In
half-an-hour he would be moving away from the Pool, nevermore while
she lived there to ride that way. He could not do that. No, not he. He
was but a man. His shaking body was a man's body. He was unworthy to
be battleground of contending right and wrong. Not to-night. He could
not make an end to-night. To-morrow, but not to-day.... A moment ago
he rode by the beginning of the Pool, and now he passed the castor-oil
tree. The trees were breaking apart. There stood the hut and the tents.
From a chaos of fancies he presently took hold upon realization. In the
doorway of the hut, looking towards him through the dark, stood Moll
Gregory. Lamplight from inside passed her and pierced the night with a
long beam. She held an empty basin in her hands. The dark was clear to
him who had ridden half-a-dozen miles through it; but she looked before
her in a puzzled way.
"Is that you, Mr. Power?"
"Yes, Molly."
He believed he shook when he spoke to her. She was a draught of water,
chilled by snows from high peaks, offered into the hands of a dying
man. How she impassioned the night with her loveliness. He would never
find her beauty staling, though he looked on her for ever. All the
moments of a day brought new emotions watching from her eyes, new
passions sitting upon her lips. He never knew how holy beauty might be
until he looked upon her. How the light shone on her brown hair, lying
coiled on her head and brooding round her brows.
He found he had pulled up the mare in the doorway.
"I've come to see you, Molly."
Why did she not answer, instead of standing like that, tapping the
basin on her knee and looking first at him, and then away, and then
at him again? Did she understand at last he loved her? Another man
kneeling in homage to her. She was frowning a little bit. He found
himself dismounting. The dog, grown friendly now, came forward with
waving tail. The hut was empty.
"Mum and Dad went over to the shaft a while back," she said just then.
"There's nobody here."
He led the mare a little way away; tethered her; unsaddled her. She
drooped her head after the day's work. Another hour he would have led
her to drink; but now where was the time?
The girl had gone indoors when he returned to the hut. She stood by
the table putting the crockery into the basin. The room was heavy with
heat. The lamp wick was untrimmed, smoking a little and lending a
needy light. Nothing was changed.
"Them is to wash up," she said.
He was living again, standing thus beside her. Yet he was weary with
knowledge that he waited on her for the last time. He grew entranced
with her quick hands in the basin. She nodded her head to the dish-rag
hanging on the wall. He took it and faced her across the table, and
together they began to wash up.
He knew then that whatever waited for him in the long years to be lived
before he became an old man--whether there were other women to meet
and other lands to travel--these moments he was living now would walk
with him in memory to the very shadow of the grave. That strange mood
visited him, which sometimes comes to a man, when he stands out of
himself and views the scene as onlooker. He peered into future years,
when Maud and he journeyed kindly down the road together, and the worst
wounds of this summer madness were crusted over. But he knew there
would be hours when certain winds blew, or certain scents drifted out
of the scrub, or certain words were spoken, when he must go apart a
little while until memory slept again.
The mood passed as instantly as it arrived, and once more he stood
before her weary and miserable. She would tire of a glum face soon.
He had carried a long face lately when they walked together. Beauty
she, and he the Beast. Strangely she had passed it by. She was still
wilful and careless, yet now she had moods when she was thoughtful and
a little kind. Never was she heavy-hearted; though to-night she frowned
just a little and was as silent as himself. He heard a rattle of cups.
Within his heart--growing and growing with the moments--feeling was
in torrent, until it seemed excess in him must overflow and fill her
barren little heart. They chanced to look up at one moment from their
work--up and out at the door--and a great white star fell down the sky.
"Do you know what people say, Molly? Every falling star is a soul
hurrying from earth." She shrugged shoulders with faintest movement. "I
think a man's soul dies, Molly, when hope dies. Perhaps some man's hope
has died to-night."
For an instant she turned wide grave eyes upon him, then she went back
to work, moving her hands deftly in and out of the basin.
"Molly, you could get along without me, couldn't you? If I had to go
away for a while and could not come back, you would not be lonely with
other friends to look after you. You have been a good little comrade
to me; but I think our friendship was not meant to die of old age.
You could get along without me, couldn't you--and Molly, you wouldn't
forget me just at first?"
"No, Mister."
"I asked you not to call me Mister. Say Jim."
"No, Jim."
She had finished washing up. She went out into the dark and threw away
the water. She found a second cloth, and began quickly to dry the cups
he had lingered over.
"You aren't so slick to-night," she said. "You are pretty slick at this
kind of thing for a man."
"I was round the run to-day. I came here from across the other side.
The Pool is shrinking fast, Molly."
"The rains should be here, Christmas."
"It might be a pool of love, and all the drinks men take from it shrink
its rim. Molly, are you as clever as you pretend at forgetting? If
something happens, so that I come no more to the Pool--when you go
alone to fish or when you go with others, will you remember that once
or twice you fished with me?"
"You aren't to go away. Sometimes I think you couldn't."
The work was done. She turned with a graceful movement of her body as
she said the last words, and was putting the cups and saucers on the
shelf, and the spoons with a rattle into a box.
"Hang up the cloth, Jim, and wake up. You aren't always asleep. I heard
something about you yesterday. They say you are such a daddy man with
horses that when you camped out Brolga way, the brumbies came down from
off Mount Sorrowful to sing to you. Ah, Mister, I have got you smiling."
"I'm not Mister."
"Jim."
Silence fell again, and once more he grew conscious of the little
sounds that accompanied the flight of time--the flutter of wings round
a lamp; the swish of a girl's dress; the cries of insects from the
dark. It was like standing by a river filled to both banks, which
swept swiftly and smoothly to the sea, and hearing the small voices of
multitudinous waters.... What did she say now?
"I found them specimens this morning. They was a little higher up the
bank. Do you want to see them? They aren't far."
"We went to find them the first day I came here, Molly. Do you
remember? It does not matter now. I shall remember we never found them.
Come outside. I have a lot to say to-night. It will be cooler there,
and talking is easier under the trees."
Then he found himself walking among the trees. She was on his right
hand, and water glimmered in the distance. Summer lightnings were
flickering in the skies. This night was as last night had been. Last
night was as the night before had been. He could not believe they
walked together for the last time. Yet Time moved out here, and Death
found work to do. A clumsy beetle had blundered out of the dark,
finding harbourage upon her fair hand. She had crushed it with a little
blow, and the body had fallen in the grasses to wait the busybody ants.
How much was starting and finishing just now over all the wide world?
They passed up the Pool with only a word or two spoken between them,
searching the water when the fishes jumped, listening to the creatures
pushing through the undergrowth, staying to look at strips of water
starred with white lilies. Her sober mood passed away as they went on.
Wantonly she dropped to her knees and gathered up twigs to cast into
the water. He heard her laughter in the dark like a peal of low bells.
Then he found they had reached the end of the Pool, and the hut was far
away.
"Molly, this is the end. The water finishes here. I have something to
tell you. Are you listening, Molly? It only takes a moment to say.
Good-bye. That's a strange word, isn't it? Have you heard it before?
Well, to-night we are saying good-bye."
Until the word was spoken he felt he might never need to say it; but
now it was said, and the night had turned deaf ears on his call for
mercy. He saw her plainly in the dark standing before him petrified, in
all her wonderful beauty, alert as though about to flee, with her great
eyes wide open looking at him. She had clasped her hands together in
front of her.
"What's took you now, Mr. Power? No, stay there. I can hear where I am."
"Don't start, Molly ... I have something to tell you.... I didn't mean
to tell you. But why not tell you?"
"Stay there, Mister. Don't look like that. I don't want to know. Let's
go home. Don't look like that. You----"
"Stop your sweet chatter, Molly. Listen, I say. I love you. I am
starving for want of you. Feel my hand, Molly. It trembles like the
hand Of a man in fever. Feel it, I say."
"Mister!"
"I am burning. I am burning inside and out. Let me touch your hand.
Give me your hand a moment to cool me. Give it to me, I say."
"Mr. Power, don't make me cry. I don't----"
"I am going away. Do you hear me. I am going away never to see you
again. Other men are to have your kisses. Your bosom is to beat on the
breasts of other men. My lips shall go unwashed. My heart shall thump
in an empty drum. Do you hear me?"
"Don't talk so loud, Mr. Power. Don't look like that. Mr. Power, don't
come so near. Please, Mister; please!"
"I am going away, Molly. I told you that, didn't I, just now? I have
come to see you for the last time. I have--Molly, all the fires of
heaven and hell are lighted in your eyes. You are doomed to live
burning men's hopes to ashes. Molly, the breeze is in your hair. It
flutters there, as your little soul flutters somewhere in your lovely
body. Let me touch your hair once--oh, so softly it shall be. Once."
"Mister!"
"Once."
"Mister!"
She was in his arms. He never remembered how they came together. But
all the parched streams of spirit and body were loosed in a flood
of waters. He was kissing her lips. He was kissing her eyes. He was
kissing her throat. Her hair touched his hair. Her hair was in his
mouth, and the sharp taste of it made him mad. He began to kiss her
in frenzy, until she ceased to struggle and lay in his arms sobbing
and laughing. He crushed her to him. He kissed her mouth again. He
kissed her eyes again. Again he kissed her hair. He kissed her brows.
He kissed her throat until the red marks rose in the brown skin. He
pressed his head against her bosom where her heart struck wildly. He
felt her tiny teeth against his lips. He buried his face in her coils
of hair. He held her two hands and covered his eyes with them. He
kissed their palms. He laid soft kisses in her eyes. He lifted her
from the ground. He fell upon his knees and laid her in the grass,
and himself fell down beside her. He interlaced her fingers with his.
He drew each open hand of hers slowly about his cheek. He lifted her
from her grassy bed and pressed her to him. The coarse stems of plants
pushed about his face. Great grasshoppers leapt from their beds into
the dark. The stars seemed to blink and flash. He pressed his mouth to
hers again, and held her there through an eternity. And then he fell
down beside her with his face in the grasses, hearing her tiny sobs,
and, more tremendous than that, the shrill of the insects, and more
tremendous than the chorus of insect voices, the living stillness of
the night.
After an age, he raised himself on both hands, lifting his head above
the grass stems. She lay close by, her face turned away, and her heavy
hair ragged with little leaves and tiny twigs. She was sobbing very
quietly. It seemed to Power he and she lay at the bottom of a deep
pit whence he and she had tumbled in headlong flight from the stars.
Brave boasts fled in wind. Big words gone in sound. "Traitor" seared in
red letters across his soul. A harvest to reap from this sowing. What
harvest to reap? Would this child learn to love him as he loved her?
No. He believed already her little heart beat to other time than his.
Well, the draught had proved too bitter for his tasting. He had put
down the cup as it touched his lips.
He raised himself to his knees and bent over her. "You must get up,
child. It won't do to lie like that. Crying has never mended matters
since the world began."
He found her hand and she answered his touch, rising slowly, and
presently standing up. He stood beside her and tenderly picked the
rubbish from her hair. She stooped to smooth her dress, and afterwards
he kissed her once, and they turned towards home. They did not speak
all the journey by the water; but he thought the stars stared down on
them like dismal virgins whose virtue has grown strong with loveless
years. Sometimes he held a bough aside that she might go by. At the end
of a long time they were by the castor-oil tree, and light from the hut
shone through the dark.
"Don't come home," she said. "Not to-night." And she had slipped away
in a moment through the trees, while he stood staring where she went.
He saddled the mare in brief space. He could look into the distant
lighted hut; but it was empty. She was not there. He drew the reins
together on the chestnut's neck and gained the saddle. When the mare
found her head turned home she started away primly at her swift walk.
He gave the reins to her neck. But they had not put behind half a mile
of the journey when the steps of a second horse approached, and a
whinney came through the dark.
"You, Mick?"
"Hullo, boss."
They pulled up with one accord. He saw O'Neill in the dark, wearing
a wide-brimmed hat, a shirt open at the neck, riding trousers and
leggings below, and long spurs strapped at his heels. His happy smile
had departed, and Power knew he was face to face with the first reaping
of his harvest.
"I haven't got back yet," he said. "I went as far as the big hole past
the Ten Mile, and then round Mount Dreary way. There were a couple of
mobs by the water--doing right enough." He came to the end of what he
had to say. O'Neill sat gloomily, tapping the arch of his saddle with
his fingers. "I looked in at the Gregory's a bit on the way back."
Power added.
Then O'Neill spoke. His old swagger came into his bearing, and he
lifted his head defiantly. "Boss, do you reckon you are on the square
game down there?"
Anger blazed in Power's face. He felt a weight upon his chest and the
chords of his throat tighten. But he had caught hold of himself before
the words left his lips. After a long moment he said almost gently:
"Fast talking won't do us good, Mick. It looks that the road is pretty
rough for you and me just now. We were friends before ill-luck sat
down between us. It is a poor crush that won't hold the beast when the
branding starts."
O'Neill stared gloomily at the neck of his horse. "Boss, it's no game
I'm playing there, I swear. It's no come-and-go affair with me."
"And how is it better for me?"
The man flashed up his head. "Miss Neville," he said.
The pain in Power's face told the rest of the story. A moment later
Power spoke.
"A man has his life to live, and wins or loses as his turn comes. One
of us must finish on top; but it needn't break our friendship."
"Straight wire you mean it, boss?"
"Straight wire."
He found the mare, fretful of delay, was moving down the road. O'Neill
had gathered up his reins. Without more talk they were moving--each
going his way.