"Oh, great! Look at that!" said he, drawing back to exhibit a really
clean table; and as it would not have conduced to our friendship had I
pointed out that it had been arrived at at the expense of slushing the
lime-washed wall and the stand of the separator, I wisely kept
silent.
"There! I reckon me grandma nor Jim Clay neither never done a table
better," he said with enviable self-appreciation. "You know I reckon
them old yarns about the people bein' so good w'en they was young is a
little too thin to stand washin'--don't you? You've only got to take
the things the wonderful Jim Clay and me grandma done w'en they was
courtin',--you get her on a string to tell you,--an' if Dawn done the
same with any of the blokes now, she'd jolly soon hear about it; an'
as for old Jake there, I reckon I'd be able to put him through meself
at his own age--don't you? Anyhow, I'm full of farmin'. It's only
fools an' horses sweat themselves, all the others go in for
auctioneering, or parliament, or something, and have a fine screw
comin' in for nothing."
"But think of those water-melons," I said; for as a subject of
conversation he most frequently and most lovingly referred to these.
"But I could buy a waggon-load of 'em for one day's pay, an' not have
any tuggin' and scratchin' with 'em. Melons ain't too stinkin', but
lor', tomatoes is a stunner! They rotted till you couldn't stand the
smell of them, and it would give a billy-goat the pip to hear them
mentioned. There was no sale, and the blow-flies took to 'em. One man
down here had thirty acres. I'm goin' to be somethink, so I can make a
bit of money. No one thinks anythink of you if you ain't got plenty
money. You know how you feel if a person has plenty money, you think
twice as much of him as if he hasn't any. There's nothink to be made
at farmin', delvin' and scrapin' your eyeballs out for no return,"
said this youngster, who did barely enough to keep him in exercise,
who had been fed to repletion, and comfortably clothed and bedded all
his sixteen years.
Luncheon or dinner was enlivened by an altercation between Dawn and
her uncle.
The blacksmithing to which he had referred was the act of sitting down
beside the forge, where he had grown so warm that the sequel to
mending trousers with cobbler's wax had eventuated. The melted wax had
attached the garment to the old man's person, and he had sat--his
sitting capacity was incalculable--until it had cooled again, and on
rising suffered an amount of discomfort it would be graceful to leave
to the imagination. Uncle Jake however was not so considerate, and
aired his grievance in a manner too brutally real for imagination.
To do her justice Dawn did not think of the joke going thus far, so I
attempted to take the blame, but she would not have this.
"I want him to think I knew how it would turn out. I'd do it to him
every day if I could."
Grandma fortunately took her part, and the mirth of Andrew and Carry
was very genuine.
"I reckon I was as smart as my mother that time," giggled Dawn, as she
carried in the dinner.
"It would have been a funny joke if you played it on some
good-humoured young feller," said grandma, "but Jake there is entitled
to some kind of consideration, because he is old and crotchety."
"I'd play it on 'Dora' Eweword," said Dawn, "only that he might stick
here so that he'd never move at all if I didn't take care."
The first moment we had in private she took opportunity of saying--
"I think I'll go over to Grosvenor's with you this evening, but not
to tea. I'll go over to bring you home, if you'll help me make some
excuse to get out of going rowing with 'Dora.'"
"Why not come to tea? that would be sufficient excuse."
"Oh, but they try to ape the swells, and grandma doesn't like them;
but I'll be sure to go for you after it, and that will save Mr Ernest
coming round with you."
I thanked her, though her escort was not at all necessary, seeing that
instead of saving Ernest it would only make his presence surer. There
being nothing else to do during the afternoon, I awaited the time of
setting out for the Grosvenor's, who tried to ape the swells--the
swells of Noonoon! These being, as far as I could gather, the doctors,
the lawyer, a couple of bank managers on a salary somewhere about £250
per annum, the Stip. Magistrate, and one or two others--surely an
ordinarily harmless and averagely respectable section of the
community, in aping whom one would be in little danger of being called
upon to act up to an etiquette as intricate and tyrannous as that in
use at court.
In the old days the town had been the terminus of the train, and it
had squatted at the foot of the mountains, while strings of teams
carried the goods up the great western road out to Bathurst and
beyond, to Mudgee, Dubbo, and Orange. Nearly all the old
houses--grandma's and Grosvenor's among them--had been hotels in those
days, when the miles had been ticked off by the square stones with the
Roman lettering, erected by our poor old convict pioneers, who blazed
many a first track. Every house had found sufficient trade in giving
D.T.'s to the burly, roystering teamsters who lived on the roads,
dealt in no small quantities, and who did not see their wives and
sweethearts every week in the year.
As the afternoon advanced, true to appointment, "Dora" Eweword arrived
to take Dawn for a row. His chin was red from the razor, and he looked
well in a navy-blue guernsey brightened by a scarlet tie knotted at
the open collar, displaying a columnar throat which, if strength were
measured by size, announced him capable of supporting not only a Dawn,
but a Sunset. He sat on an Austrian chair, for which he was some sizes
too large and too substantial, and reddened as he laughed and talked
with Carry, till I appeared and spent some time in talking and
admiring his appearance until Dawn came upon the scene.
"Well, Dawn," he said, "I'm waiting for this row; are you ready?"
Dawn glanced at me.
"Dawn has promised to chaperon me to-night," I said. Dawn decamped.
"Miss Grosvenor has invited Mr Ernest and me to tea, and to go without
a representative of Mrs Grundy, I believe, is not correct in the
social life of Noonoon."
Eweword laughed; but his face fell, and his reply showed him less
obtuse than he appeared on the surface, seeing he was the first and
only person to see through my matchmaking tactics.
"Touting for the red-haired bagman," he said, as Ernest could be seen
swinging up the path.
"Supposing I am, what then?" I asked, regarding him with a level
glance, and feeling more respect for his intelligence than I had
heretofore experienced.
"Oh, well, I suppose all is fair in some things."
He would not say _love_, as that would have admitted too much, and a
lover admitting his passion and a drunkard confessing his disease are
exceptions that prove the rule.
His remark was uttered with a broad good nature that would lead him to
do and leave undone great things. In a desire to please the present
girl he was not above saying he had been "pulling the leg" of the one
absent, but he would also be capable of standing aside when he felt
deeply--as deeply as he could feel--to allow a better man sea-room;
and he was further capable of sufficient humility to think there could
be a better man than himself, or so I adjudged him, and being the only
narrator of this, the only history in which he is likely to receive
mention, this delineation of his character will have to remain
unchallenged.
Ernest had a geranium in his button-hole, and looked more immaculately
spruce than ever, and even his red hair could not obliterate the fact
of his being a goodly sight, and as such grandma recognised him.
"That's a fine sturdy chap," she afterwards observed. "It's a pity he
ain't got somethink to do to keep him out of mischief. Is he a
unemployed? He don't look like one of these Johnnies that has nothink
to do but hang around a street corner and smoke a cigarette."
The two young men measured glances every whit as critically as girls
do under similar conditions, and then equally as casually made
reference to the weather. Ernest was somewhat overshadowed by Eweword,
as the latter was superior in size and cast of features, being fully
six feet, while Ernest was not more than five feet nine inches; but as
a girl very rarely, if she has a choice, cares most for the handsomest
of her admirers, I was not in the least cast down about this.
When it was time for me to depart, Ernest rose too, but not Dawn.
Ernest's face went down, Eweword's brightened.
"Miss Dawn is not coming over now, but later on," I said.
The men's glances reversed once more. As the former and I
departed--Ernest carrying a wrap for me--I heard Eweword say--
"Well, come on, Dawn, you're not going to Grosvenor's after all. It
seems that old party was only pulling my leg."
Ernest good-naturedly struggled to talk with me, but I spared him the
ordeal, and, arrived at Grosvenor's, interestedly studied them to
discover what manner of procedure "trying to ape the swells" might
be--the swells of Noonoon--the doctor who thought I might "peg out"
any minute, and the bank managers and the parsons.
The only difference to be observed between the tea-table at Clay's and
Grosvenor's was that at the latter the equivalents of Uncle Jake and
Andrew did not appear in a coatless condition, were treated to the
luxury of table-napkins, and Mrs Grosvenor, who served, attended to
people according to their rank instead of their position at the table,
and entrusted them with the sugar-basin and milk-jug themselves.
Farther than this there was no distinction, and this was not an
alarming one. Certainly Miss Grosvenor, who had not enjoyed half
Dawn's educational advantages, did not as glaringly flout syntax, and
slang was not so conspicuous in her vocabulary. She and Ernest got on
so well that none but my practised eyes could detect that as the
evening advanced his brown ones occasionally wandered towards the
entrance door, which showed that much as Miss Grosvenor had got him
out of his shell, she had not obliterated Dawn.
That young lady arrived at about a quarter to ten, and we started
homewards, determining to go a long way round, first by way of the
Grosvenor's vehicle road to town, by this gaining the public highway,
along which we would walk to the entrance to grandma's demesne. This
was preferable to a short-cut and rolling under the barbed-wire
fencing in the long grass sopping with dew, which at midnight or
thereabouts would stiffen with the soft frosts of this region that
would flee before the sun next morning.
Dawn's cheeks were scarlet from rowing on the river with "Dora"
Eweword, and she spoke of her jaunt as soon as we got outside,
apparently pregnant with the knowledge innate in the dullest of her
sex, that the most efficacious way of giving impetus to the love of
one lover is to have another.
This, however, is another art which, like good cooking, must be "done
to the turn," and in this instance there was danger of it being done
too soon, as Ernest's amour had not taken firm root yet; and a man,
unless he be either of gigantic pluck or no honour at all, will not
hurry to interfere with the secured property of another man.
They chatted in a desultory fashion while I manoeuvred to relieve
them of my presence. The night was lit by a million stars, paling
towards the east, where behind the hills a waning moon was putting in
an appearance. The electric lights of the town scintillated like
artificial stars, and away down the long valley could be seen here and
there the twinkle of a farmhouse light, showing where some held mild
wassail or a convivial evening; for there were not many of the
agriculturalists, tired from their heavy toil, who were otherwise out
of bed at this ungodly hour of the night.
The crisp winter air agreed with me, and I felt unusually well.
"Let me walk behind, this night is too glorious to waste in talking
politics, so you young people get out of my hearing and thresh out
your candidate's merit and demerit and leave me to think," I said, for
politics were in the air and they were touching upon them. They obeyed
me, and soon were lost to view in the dark of the osage and quince
hedges grown as breakwinds on the west of Grosvenor's orangery. Soon I
could not hear their footfalls, for I stood still to watch the trains
pass by. 'Twas the hour of the last division of the Western passenger
mail, bearing its daily cargo of news and people to the great plains
beyond the hills that loomed faintly in the light of the half moon.
Haughtily its huge first-class engine roared along, and its carriage
windows, like so many warm red mouths, permitted a glimpse of the folk
inside comfortably ensconced for the night. It slowed across the long
viaduct approaching the bridge, and crossed the bridge itself with a
roar like thunder, then it swerved round a curve to Kangaroo till the
window-lights gave place to its two red eyes at the rear. As it
climbed the first spur of the great range, and all that could be seen
was a belch of flame from the engine-door as it coaled, something of
the old longing awoke within me for things that must always be far
away. The throbbing engines spoke to my heart, and forgetting its
brokenness, it stirred again to their measure--the rushing, eager
measure of ambition, strife, struggle! I was young again, with youth's
hot desire to love and be loved, and as its old bitter-sweet
clamourings rushed over me I rebelled that my hair was grey and my
propeller disabled. The young folks ahead had put me out of their life
as young folks do, and, measuring the hearts of their seniors by the
white in their hair and the lines around their eyes, would have been
incredulous that I still had capacity for their own phase. Only the
royalty of youth is tendered love in full measure; those who fail to
attain or grasp it then find this door, from which comes enticing
perfume and sound of luring music, shut against them for all time, and
no matter how appealingly they may lean against its portals, it will
rarely open again, for they have been laid by to be sold as remnants
like the draper's goods which have failed to attract a buyer during
the brief season they were displayed. I stood under the whispering
osage and listened to the now distant train puffing its way over the
wild mountains, also to be crossed by the great road first cut by
those whose now long dead limbs had carried chains--members of a
bygone brigade as I was one of a passing company. But probably they
each had had their chance of love, and the old bitterness upsprung
that mine had not fallen athwart my pathway. Fierce struggle had
always shut me away from similar opportunity to that enjoyed by the
young people ahead.
"Put back your cruel wheel, O Time!" I cried in my heart, "and give me
but one hour's youth again--sweet, ecstatic youth with the bounding
pulse, led by the purple mirage of Hope, whose sirens whisper that the
world's sweets are sweet and its crowns worth winning. Let me for a
space be free from this dastard age creeping through the veins,
dulling the perspective of life and leadening the brain, whose carping
companions draw attention to the bitters in the cups of Youth's
Delights, and mutter that the golden crowns we struggle for shall
tarnish as soon as they are placed on our tired brows!" Suddenly my
bitter reverie was broken by the knight and the lady calling in
startled tones. I replied, and presently they were upon me, Dawn very
much out of breath.
"Oh, goodness, we thought you were ill again. You have given us such a
shock. You should not have been left behind. I was a terrible brute
that I didn't harness the pony and drive over for you;" and Ernest
came in a slow second with--
"You should have taken my arm," and he wrapped my cloak about me with
the high quality of gentleness peculiar to the best type of strong
man.
Despite my assurance that I never had felt better, they insisted upon
supporting me on either side; so slipping a hand through each of the
young elbows conveniently bent, I playfully put the large hand on the
right of me over the dimpling one on the left.
"There!" I said, taking advantage of the liberties extended a probable
invalid, "I've made a breastwork of the hands of the two dearest young
friends I have, so now I cannot fall;" and seeing I put it at that, at
that they were content to let it remain, and the big hand very
carefully retained the little one, so passive and warm, in its shy
grasp. At the gate I dismissed Ernest, and Dawn condescended to remark
that he wasn't _quite_ such a fool as usual, which interpreted meant
that he had not been so guardedly stand-off to her as he sometimes
was.
The trains once more entertained my waking hours that night. Under
Andrew's tutorage I had learned to distinguish the rumble of a "goods"
from the rush of a "passenger," a two-engine haul from a single, and
even the heavy voice of the big old "shunter" that lived about the
Noonoon station had grown familiar; but the haughtiest of all was a
travelling engine attended only by its tender, and speeding by with
lightsome action, like a governor thankfully free from officialdom
and hampered only by a valet.
Musing on what a little time had elapsed since the work of the
passenger trains had been done by the coaches with their grey and bay
teams of five, swinging through the town at a gallop, and with their
occupants armed to the teeth against bushrangers, I dozed and dreamt.
I dreamt that I was in one of the sleeping-cars which had superseded
Cobb & Co.'s accommodation for travellers, and that from it I could
see in a bird's-eye view not only the magnificent belt of mountains,
the bluest in the world, but whirling down their westward slopes with
a velocity outstripping the scented winds from sandal ridges and myall
plains, I slid across that great western stretch of country where a
portion of the railway line runs for a hundred and thirty-six miles
without rise or fall or curve in the longest straight ribbon of steel
that is known. But ere I reached its end I wakened with a start
through something falling in Miss Flipp's room.
Surely I had not slept for more than half an hour, because the light
which had shone in the adjoining room as we returned from Grosvenor's
was still burning. Presently Miss Flipp put it out, and closing her
door after her, stealthily made her way from the house. She trod
cautiously and noiselessly, but her gown caught on the lower sprouts
of the ragged old rose-bushes beside the walks, and though she took a
long time to open the little gate opening towards the wharves and the
narrow pathway running along the river-bank to the bridge, it creaked
a little on its rusty hinges, so that I heard it and fell to awaiting
the girl's return.
I waited and waited, and beguiled the time by counting the trains that
passed with the quarter hours. There were so many that I soon lost
count. This line carried goods to the great wheat and wool-growing
west and brought its produce to the city. Many of the noisy trains
were laden with "fifteen hundred" and "two thousand" lots of "fats,"
and the yearly statistics dealing with the sales at Homebush
chronicled their total numbers as millions. From beyond Forbes,
Bourke, and Brewarrina they came in trucks to cross the bridge
spanning the noble stream at the mountain's base, but they never went
back again to the great plains where they had basked in plenty or
staggered through droughts as the fickle seasons rose and fell. The
voracious, insatiable maw of the city was a grave for them all, and
the commercial greed which falls so heavily on the poor dumb beasts in
which it traffics, caged them so tightly for their last journey that
by the time they reached Noonoon they were bruised and cramped and not
a few trodden under foot. The empty trucks going west again made the
longest trains, as they could be laden with nothing but a little
wire-netting for settlers who were fighting the rabbits, and were
easily distinguishable from other "goods," as when they clumsily and
jerkily halted the clanking of their couplings and the bumping of
their buffers could be heard for a mile or more down the valley. The
splendid atmosphere intensified all sounds and carried them an unusual
distance, and many a time at first I was wont to be aroused from sleep
in the night with a notion that the thundering trains were going to
run right over the house.
On the night in question I had not heard Miss Flipp return from her
midnight tryst, though all the luggage trains had passed and it neared
the time of the first division of the up or citywards mail from the
west, which was the earliest train to arrive in town from the country
daily. It passed Noonoon in the vicinity of 4 A.M.--a radiant hour in
the summer dawn, but then in winter, the time when bed is most
alluring, when the passengers' breath congeals on the window-panes,
they complain that the foot-warmers have got cold, and give yet one
more twist to their comforters and another tug at their 'possum or
wallaby rugs. This train passed with its shaking thunder, drew into
Noonoon for refreshments, then on and on with noisy energy, but still
Miss Flipp did not return.
I concluded that she must have decided to leave us in this fashion, or
that I had missed her entry during the rumble of a passing train, or
mayhap I had snoozed for a moment, or perhaps an hour, as the
unsympathetic heavy sleepers aver the insomnists must do; and ceasing
to be on the alert any longer, I really slept.
FIFTEEN.
ALAS! MISS FLIPP!
I hastened to appear at the half-past seven breakfast, as no excuse
for non-appearance was taken, and the only concession made to Miss
Flipp, who had not been present at it for some time, was that she
could make herself a cup of cocoa when she chose to rise. For this
meal grandma ladled out the porridge and flavoured it with milk and
sugar in the usual way.
"I say, Dawn, which of them blokes, Ernest or Dora, is the best
boat-puller?" inquired Andrew as he received his portion. "You were
mighty stingy with the sugar, grandma!"
"Dora isn't in it," responded Carry. "Mr Ernest could get ahead of him
every time."
"So he ought!" said Dawn. "His ears are the size of a pair of sails,
and would pull him along."
Thus was published another defect in my knight, till I feared that it
must be only my partial gaze that discerned a knight at all.
"Dear me," interposed grandma, "a man can't look or speak or walk but he's
this, that, and the other. Things weren't so in my day. Of course there
were some things that were took exception to, but there must be reason in
everythink, an' I don't see what difference a man's ears being a little big
makes. My father's ears--your great-grandfather's--was none too small, an'
he was always a good kind man."
"I don't care if my own ears were big, it wouldn't make me like them,"
said the irrepressible Dawn; and grandma had just finished what she
termed "dosing" the last plate of porridge, when we were interrupted
by the appearance of policeman Danby at the French Lights. There was
nothing strange in this appearance of the embodiment of the law, even
at that early hour of the morning; for the huge young man with the
rollicking face and curly hair, though a good officer in attending to
his work, was a better in admiring a girl, which, after all, taking
matters at the base, is the chief and most vital business of life, as,
were it neglected, there would be no police or populace.
Well, as I said, policeman Danby knew a pretty girl when he saw one,
and there being two at Clay's, that household, in the way of the law,
was very well looked after indeed; and for the purpose of escaping the
annual registration fee, Andrew's little dog, "Whiskey," had remained
a puppy as long as some young ladies tarry under thirty.
Carry on rising to admit the caller had the usual tussle with the
door, while grandma reiterated uncomplimentary remarks about the
"blessed feller" who should some time since have effected repairs, and
Danby upon entering wore an extremely grave face, looked neither at
Dawn nor Carry, but addressed himself straight to Mrs Martha Clay.
"I have to trouble you about a very unpleasant matter," he said, and
cruelly all eyes went to poor Andrew, as it was but recently he had
to be chased home for breaking the law.