girl, no matter what fashions come an' go. I never can see why they
make such a fuss and get so frightened because wimmen does a thing or
two now they usedn't to. Nothing short of a earthquake can make them
not men an' wimmen, an' that's the main thing. Well, to go back to me
yarn, lots of other passengers got took the same way, an' there was
great bidding for the box seat: that was a perquisite belongin' to the
driver, an' me father used to get a sovereign for it often. I used to
dispose of it by a sort of tender, an' £5 was nothink for it; an' once
in the gold-rush times, w'en money was laying around like water, a big
miner, just to show off, gave me two tenners for it. They used to be
wantin' to drive, but I took me father's advice an' never let go the
reins. Well, among all these fine chaps Jim Clay wasn't noticed. He
was always a terrible quiet feller. _I_ did all the jorin'. He'd
always say, 'Come now, Martha, there's reason in everythink,' just
w'en I'd be mad because I couldn't see no reason in nothink. He was
sittin' in the back of the coach, an' it was one wet night, an' only a
few passengers for a wonder, who was glad to take refuge inside. Only
the lawyer feller was out on the box with me, an' makin' love heavier
than it was rainin'. I staved him off all I could, an' with him an'
the horses me hands was full. You never see the like of the roads in
them days. It was only in later years the Sydney road, I was
remarkin', was made good. In them times there was no made roads, and
you can imagine the bogs! Why, sometimes you'd think the whole coach
was going out of sight in 'em, and chargin' round the stumps up to the
axle was considered nothink. We had more pluck in them days! Well,
that night the roads was that slippery the brake gave me all I could
do, an' a new horse in the back had no more notion of hangin' in the
breechin' than a cow; so I took no notice to the lawyer, only told him
to hold his mag once or twice an' not be such a blitherer, but it was
no use, he took a mean advantage off of me. You can imagine it was
easy w'en I had five horses in a coach goin' round slippery sidlin's
pitch dark an' rainin'. He put his arms 'round me waist an' that
raised me blood, an' I tell you things hummed a little. You'll see
Dawn in a tantrum one of these days, but she ain't a patch on me w'en
me dander was up in me young days." Looking at the fine old flashing
eyes and the steel in her still, it was easy to see the truth of this.
"I jored him to take his hands off me or I'd pull up the coach an'
call the inside passengers out to knock him off. He gamed me to do it,
an' laughed an' squeezed me harder, an' the cowardly crawler actually
made to kiss me; but I bit him on the nose and spat at him, an took
the horses over a bad gutter round a fallen tree at the same time--an'
some people is afraid to let their blessed daughters out in a doll's
sulky with a tiddy little pony no bigger than a dog. If I had children
like that I'd give 'em all the chances goin' of breaking their neck,
as they wouldn't be worth savin' for anythink but sausage meat. Well,
this cur still kep' on at his larks, so soon as I got the team on the
level,--it was at Sapling Sidin', runnin' into Ti-tree creek; I could
hear the creek gurgling above the sound of the rain, and the white
froth on the water I can see it plain now,--I pulled sudden and said
'Woa!' an' it was beautiful the way they'd stop dead. The passengers
all suspected there must be a accident, or the bushrangers must have
bailed us up, for they was around in full blast in them days. Well,
w'en I pulled up I got nervous an' ashamed, an' bust out crying, an'
the passengers didn't know what to make of it; but Jim Clay, it
appears, had his eye an' ear cocked all the time, an' before any one
knew what had happened he had the lawyer feller welted off of the
coach an' was goin' into him right an' left. That's what give me a
feelin' to Jim Clay all of a sudden, like I never had to no one else
before or since. He was always such a terrible quiet feller that no
one seemed to notice, an' he'd never made love to me before, but he
got besides hisself then and shouts, 'If ever you touch my girl again
I'll hammer you to smithereens.' Then he got back on the box an' wiped
me eyes on his handkerchief an' protected me. The men inside--mostly
diggers makin' through to Victoria--w'en they got the hang of things
bust out roarin' an' cheerin', an' said, 'Leave the dawg on the road
an' giv him a stummick ache.' He tried to get up, but they pushed him
off. He made great threats about the law, but miners is the gamest men
alive an' loves fair play. It ain't any use in talking law to them if
it ain't fair play, an' they give him to understand if he said
anythink to me about it, or told any one an' didn't take his lickin'
like a man, they'd break every bone in his body, an' they meant it
too. Then they lerruped up the team and left him in the rain an' pitch
dark miles from anywhere. That was the only time I give up the reins.
I couldn't see for tears, so Jim drove; an' the men took me inside so
he could attend to his work, they said, an' they cheered an' joked an'
asked w'en the weddin' was comin' off, an' said they'd all come an'
give us a rattlin' spree if we'd let 'em know. I didn't know what come
over me; I never was much for whimperin', but I cried an' cried as if
me heart was broke; an' it wasn't, because every time I thought of the
way Jim Clay stuck up for me it give me the best feelin' I ever knew,
an' the men was all on my side, an' there was no harm done, an' I
ought to have been smilin', but I could do nothink but sob, an' I
always think now w'en I see girls cryin' on similar occasions to let
'em alone. Girls can't tell what's up with them, and a cry is good,
because they ain't got the outlets that men has w'en they're worked
up. We came to the end stage, an' w'en we got off the men all shook
hands, an' one or two kissed me, an' pulled me curls, an' slapped Jim
Clay on the back, an' called him my sweetheart. W'en we delivered the
mail Jim drove me to where I stayed, an' it was terrible embarrassin'
w'en we was left alone with no extra people to take the down off of
the affair. Jim was painful shy, but he faced it manful; an' he said
it didn't matter what they said about us bein' lovers, if it was
disagreeable to me he'd never mention it nor think nothink about it,
an' it would be forgot in a day or two, as he was a feller of no
importance. That was the way he put it; he never was for puttin'
hisself up half enough. So crying again I just snuggled up to him an'
said I didn't want to forget it, I wanted to remember it more an'
more, an' with that he took the hint an' kissed me; an' that's how we
got engaged without no proposing or nothink. I didn't tell me mother,
or there would have been a uproar, an' just then Jim Clay got a coach
on the Cooma line, an' went right away. I told him I'd wait for him.
He was away two years, an' w'en he came home we found it was still the
same with us. I was eighteen then, an' him twenty-two.
He went away to Queensland for two years more, an' in that time the
sister next me was married, an' Jake there was comin' on; but he was
never no good on the box--he pottered round and grew forage. Me mother
began to suggest I ought to marry this one an' that one, but I waited
for Jim Clay, an' w'en I was gettin' on for twenty-one, old Jack Clay
reckoned he was gettin' too old for drivin' in all weathers, an' Jim
come home an' took his place. A fine great feller he was, all tanned
and brown, with his white teeth showin' among his black beard. He said
he'd seen no girl that wasn't as tame as ditch water after me, an' as
for me, no one else could ever give me the feelin' he could, so we
reckoned to be publicly engaged. It raised the most terrible bobberie,
and me mother nearly took a fit. She had me laid out for a swell like
me sisters, an' she said I must be mad to throw myself away like that.
Me brother-in-laws got ashamed of their wives' parents bein' in such a
trade, an' as they had made a comfortable bit, they was goin' to give
it best and rare a few sheep an' cattle, an' me sisters came down on
me an' said I would disgrace them now they had rose theirselves up in
the stirrups. Mother said she'd never give her consent, an' I told her
very saucy I'd do without it. That's why I know it don't do to press
Dawn over far; she must have the same fight in her, an' if drove in a
corner there'd be no doing anythink with her. Things was very strained
at home then; they thought to wean me of him, an' Jim Clay he hung
back some, sayin' I'd better think twice before I threw myself away on
him. That made me all the determinder. Jim was the only man for me. I
never did have patience with them as can't make up their mind. So I
waited, an' the day I was twenty-one--me two sisters was twins and
married, one at nineteen and the other at eighteen--I gathered up a
few things, and I had two hundred in the bank, and I went to a point
of the road, Fern-tree Gully it was named, an' w'en Jim come down the
hill with his horses I waved--we had it all made up--an' he stopped
till I clambered aboard, an' the box seat was reserved for me that day
for nothink, and at the end of the stage we was married. I stayed with
Jim's mother for a week or two till we seen a opening, an' I kep' a
accommodation while Jim drove a coach. Jim was always steady, an' we
was both very popular, though I never pandered to no one, or put up
with nothink that didn't please me. Our story was a sort of romance in
them days, an' money was changin' hands freely, an' we was all right.
The old folk died by-and-by; they didn't live very long, and Jake
there come to me. He wasn't good enough for his sisters, an' somehow
that's made us always cling together. I ain't blind, I can see he's no
miracle; he has his faults. Who hasn't?" the old lady fiercely
demanded. I assured her I knew none, and somewhat appeased by this she
proceeded.
"Well, as I say, Jake there ain't a wonder of smartness, but he's the
only one belonging to the old days left to me, an' you couldn't
understand what that means till you get to be my age. If I went to any
one of your age, or old enough to be your mother, an' said, 'Do you
remember this or that,' how far back could they go with me, do you
think?"
"And then did you and Jim Clay--"
"Me an' Jim Clay was the happiest pair I think ever lived under a
weddin' ring, an' it was a love match. He was quiet an' easy-goin'
like, an' I was the one to bustle, consequently there would be times
w'en there would be a little controversy in the house; but Jim, he'd
always put his arm round me an' kiss me, an' that's the sort of thing
a woman likes. She doesn't like all the love-makin' to be over in the
courtin' days, as if it was only a bit of fishin' to ketch her. Tho'
of course I'd tell him to leave me alone, that I couldn't bear him
maulin' me; but women has to be that way, it bein' rared into them to
pretend they don't like what they do. An' you see Jim always
remembered how I had stuck to him straight, an' flung up swell matches
for him, which must have showed I loved him. That's what gets over a
man, he never forgets that in a girl, an' always thinks more of her
than the one with prawperty who marries a poor girl and is always
suspicioning she took him for what he has. Of course, there are some
crawlers of men ain't to be pleased anyhow, but they can be left out
of it. In givin' advice to young wives, I always tell 'em w'en they
get sick of their husbands, which they all do at times, especially at
the start before you get seasoned to endure them, never to let him
suspect it, for men, in spite of all their wonderful smartness, has a
lot of the child in 'em after all, an' can take a terrible lot of
love. (When it comes to givin' any in return, of course that's a horse
of another colour.) But of course this is only dealin' with a man
that's worth anythink; as I said, there are some crawlers you could
make a door-mat of yourself for, an' they'd dance on you an' think
nothink of it; but as I said before, there must be reason in
everythink to begin with. After Jim died I didn't care for livin' in
the old place, an' thought I'd like to get somewhere near the city.
Old people ought to have sense. They don't want to crawl round like
Methuselah at forty, but they know w'en they git up to seventy they
ain't goin' to live for ever, nor get any suppler in the joints, an'
ought to make some provision to get nearer churches an' doctors an'
all that's necessary to old people; so I sold out an' bought this
place down here."
"What family have you?"
"Only Dawn's mother and Andrew's, and two sons away in America. I was
misfortunate with me daughters; they both died young, one as I told
you, an' the other of typhoid; and so after bein' done with me own
family I started with others. I used to think once I'd be content to
live till I see me little ones grown up an' settled, an' then I wanted
to live till I see Dawn able to take care of herself, an' now I
suppose, if I didn't take care, I'd want to be waitin' to see Dawn's
children around me. That's the way; w'en we get along one step we want
to go another, an' it's good some matters ain't left for us to decide.
But it's all for Dawn and Andrew I bother now, only for them me work
would be done; but it's good to have them, they keep me from feelin'
like a old wore-out dress just hangin' up waitin' to be eat by the
moths."
"Grandma!" said the voice of Dawn in the doorway, "I can't get this
beastly old stove to draw, and I'm blest if I can cook the dinner. I
never saw such a place, one has to work under such terrible
difficulties. It's something fearful." Her voice was cross, and her
facial expression bore further testimony to a state of extreme
irritation.
Grandma rose to combat, she never meekly sat down under any
circumstances, great or small.
"Terrible place, indeed; see if _you_ had to provide a home what you'd
have in it. You was never done squarkin' for that stove; some one else
had one like it, an' you was goin' to do strokes w'en you got it. It's
always easy to complain about things w'en you are not the one
responsible!"
Grandma and I decided to go to the kitchen and prescribe for the
stove.
From an idle onlooker's point of view it seemed an excellent domestic
implement in good health; but the beautiful cook averred it would
produce no heat.
"It must be like Bray's," said grandma, "they thought it was no good,
and it was only because of some damper that had to be fixed."
"Yes; and they had a man there to fix it for them; that's the terrible
want about this place, there being no _man_ about it to do anything,"
Dawn said pointedly, looking at Uncle Jake, who was calmly sitting in
his big chair in the corner. He was not disconcerted. A man who could
live for years on a widowed sister without making himself worth his
salt is not of the calibre to be upset by a few hints.
"I've busted up me pants again," cheerfully announced Andrew from the
doorway--misfortunes never come singly. "Dawn, just get a needle and
cotton and stitch 'em together."
"I never knew you when they weren't 'busted up,' and you can get
another pair or hold a towel round you till Carry comes home; she's
got to do the mending, it's her week in the house. I've got enough to
worry me, goodness knows!"
"Dear me!" said grandma, walking away as I once more volunteered to be
a friend in need to Andrew, "w'en people is young, an' a little thing
goes wrong, they think they have the troubles of a empire upon them,
but the real troubles of life teaches 'em different. You are a
good-for-nothink lump anyhow, Andrew. Where have you been on a Sunday
morning tearing round the country?"
Andrew threw no light on the question, and his grandma repeated it.
"Where have you been, I say--answer me at once?"
"Oh, where haven't I been!" returned Andrew a trifle roughly, "I
couldn't be tellin' you where I've been. A feller might as well be in
a bloomin' glass case as carry a pocket-book around an' make a map of
where he's been."
The old lady's eyes flashed.
"None of yer cheek to me, young man! You're getting too big for yer
boots since you left school. If in five minutes you don't tell me
where you've been an' who you was with, I'll screw the neck off of
you. Nice thing while you're a child an' looking to me for everythink
that goes into your stummick an' is put on your back, an' I'm
responsible for you, that you can't answer me civil. Your actions
can't bear lookin' into, it seems. I'll go over an' see Mr Bray about
it this afternoon if you don't tell me at once."
"I ain't been anywhere, only pokin' up an' down the lanes with Jack
Bray."
"Well, why couldn't you say so at once without raisin' this rumpus.
Them as has rared any boys don't know what it is to die of idleness
an' want of vexation."
"It wasn't _me_ rose the rumpus. Some people always blames others for
what they do themselves: it 'u'd give a bloke th' pip," grumbled
Andrew, as I put the last stitch in his trousers and his grandma
departed. Her black Sunday dress rustled aggressively, and her plain
bibless holland apron, which she never took off except when her bonnet
went on for street appearance or when she went to bed, and her little
Quaker collars and cuffs of muslin edged with lace, were even more
immaculate than on week-days. She scorned a cap, and her features were
so well cut that she looked well with the grey hair--wonderfully
plentiful and wavy for one of her years,--simply parted and tidily
coiled at the back. This costume or toilet, always fresh and never
shabby, was invariably completed by a style of light house-boots,
introduced to me as "lastings"; and there was an unimpaired vigour of
intellect in their wearer good to contemplate in a woman of the people
aged seventy-five.
It came on to rain after dinner and confined us all to the house.
Dawn borrowed an exciting love-story from Miss Flipp; grandma read a
"good" book; Uncle Jake still pored over the 'Noonoon Advertiser,'
while Andrew repaired a large amount of fishing-tackle, with which
during the time I knew him I never knew him to catch a fish, and Carry
grumbled about the rain.
"Poor Carry!" sympathised Andrew, "she can't git out to do a spoon
with Larry, an' the poor bloke can't come in--he's so sweet, you know,
a drop of rain would melt him."
"It would take something to melt you," retorted Carry. "The only thing
I can see good in the rain is that it will keep Mrs Bray away."
And thus passed my first full day at Clay's.
SEVEN.
THE LITTLE TOWN OF NOONOON.
The little town, situated whereaway it does not particularly matter,
and whose name is a palindrome, is one of the oldest and most
old-fashioned in Australia. Less than three dozen miles per road, and
not many more minutes by train from the greatest city in the Southern
hemisphere, yet many of its native population are more unpolished in
appearance than the bush-whackers from beyond Bourke, the Cooper, and
the far Paroo. It is an agricultural region, and this in some measure
accounts for the slouching appearance of its people. Men cannot wrest
a first-hand living from the soil and at the same time cultivate a
Piccadilly club-land style and air.
It is a valley of small holdings, being divided into farms and
orchards, varying in size from several to two or three hundred acres.
Many grants were apportioned there in the early days. Representatives
of the original families in some instances still hold portions of
them, and the stationary population has drifted into a tiny world of
their own, and for want of new blood have ideas caked down like most
of the ground, and evinced in many little characteristics distinct
from the general run of the people of the State.
Though they were, when I knew them, possessed of the usual human
failings in an average degree, they were for the most part a splendid
class of population--honest, industrious producers, who, in Grandma
Clay's words, "Keep the world going." There was only a small
percentage of idlers and parasites among them, but they did duty with
a very small-minded unprogressive set of ideas.
There is a place in New South Wales named Grabben-Gullen, where the
best potatoes in the world are grown. Great, solid, flowery beauties,
weighing two pounds avoirdupois, are but ordinary specimens in this
locality, and the allegorical bush statement for illustrating their
uncommon size has it that they grow under the fences and trip the
horses as they travel the lanes between the paddocks. Similarly, to
explain the wonderful growth of vegetation in the fertile valley of
Tumut, its inhabitants assure travellers that pumpkin and melon vines
grow so rapidly there that the pumpkins and melons are worn out in
being dragged after them.
Now, as I strolled around the lanes of Noonoon, I felt the old slow
ways, like Grabben-Gullen potatoes, protruding to stifle one's mental
flights; but there was nothing representative of the Tumut pumpkin and
melon vines to wear one out in a rush of progress. The land was rich
and beautiful and in as genial and salubrious a climate as the heart
of the most exacting could desire; but the residents had drifted into
unenterprising methods of existence, and progress had stopped dead at
the foot of the Great Dividing Range. The great road winding over it
bore the mark of the convicts, and other traces of their solid
workmanship were to be found in occasional buildings within a radius
of twenty miles; but their day had passed as that of the bullock-dray
and mail-coach, superseded by the haughty "passenger-mail" and giant
two-engined "goods" trains,--while for quicker communication with the
city than these afforded, the West depended upon the telegraph wires.
In days gone by the swells had patronised Noonoon as a week-end resort,
and some of their homes were now used as boarding-houses,--while their
one-time occupants had other tenement, and their successors patronised
the cooler altitudes farther up the Blue Mountains, or had followed the
governor to Moss Vale.
Once upon a time Noonoon had rushed into an elaborate, unbalanced
water scheme, and had lighted itself with electricity. To do this it
had been forced to borrow heavily, so that now all the rates went to
the usurer, and no means were available for current affairs. The
sanitation was condemned, and the streets and roads for miles, as far
as the municipality extended, were a disgrace to it.
Exceedingly level, they possessed characteristics of some of the best
thoroughfares; but the wheel-ways were formed of round river stones
which neither powdered nor set, and to drive along them was cruel to
horses, ruinous to vehicles, and as trying on the nerves of travellers
as crossing a stony stream-bed. There seemed to be nothing possible in
the matter but to abuse the municipal council as numskulls and
crawlers, and this was done on every hand with unfailing enthusiasm.
Though so near the metropolis, Noonoon was less in touch with it than
many western towns,--in most respects was a veritable great-grandmother
for stagnation and bucolic rusticity, and in individuality suggested
one of the little quiet eddies near the emptying of a stream, and which,
being called into existence by a back-flow, contains no current. But
while thus falling to the rear in the ranks of some departments of
progress, the little town retained a certain degree of importance as one
of the busiest railway centres in the state, and its engine-sheds were
the home of many locomotives. Here they were coaled, cleaned, and oiled
ere taking their stiff two-engine haul over the mountains to the wide,
straight, pastoral and wheat-growing West, and their calling and
rumbling made cheery music all the year round, excepting a short space
on Sundays; while at night, as they climbed the crests of the
mountain-spurs, every time they fired, the red light belching from their
engine doors could be seen for miles down the valley. Thus Noonoon's
train service was excellent, and a great percentage of the town
population consisted of railway employés.
What is the typical Australian girl, is a subject frequently
discussed. To find her it is necessary to study those reared in the
unbroken bush,--those who are strangers to town life and its
influences. City girls are more cosmopolitan. Sydney girls are
frequently mistaken for New Yorkers, while Bostonian ladies are as
often claimed to be Englishwomen; and it is only the bush-reared
girl--at home with horse, gun, and stock-whip, able to bake the family
bread, make her own dresses, take her brother's or father's place out
of doors in an emergency, while at the same time competent to grace a
drawing-room and show herself conversant with the poets--who can
rightfully lay claim to be more typically Australia's than any other
country's daughter. Of course the city Australians are Australians
too. Australia is the land they put down as theirs on the census
paper. She is their native land; but ah! their country has never
opened her treasure-troves to them as to those with sympathetic and
appreciative understanding of her characteristics, and many of them
are as hazy as a foreigner as to whether it is the kooka-burra that
laughs and the moke-poke that calls, or the other way about. They are
incapable of completely enjoying the full heat of noonday summer sun
on the plains, and the evening haze stealing across the gullies does
not mean all it should. The exquisite rapturous enjoyment of the odour
of the endless bush-land when dimly lit by the blazing Southern stars,
or the companionship of a sure-footed nag taking the lead round stony
sidlings, or the music of his hoof-beats echoing across the ridges as
he carries a dear one home at close of day, are all in a magic
storehouse which may never be entered by the Goths who attempt to
measure this unique and wonderful land by any standard save its
own,--a standard made by those whose love of it, engendered by
heredity or close companionship, has fired their blood.