Even the two days' journey in the most uncomfortable train on earth
could not damp their ardour. Most of the time Louis was gay and
unusually chivalrous; at night, tiredness and heat cracked his nerves a
little, making him cross and cynical until, sitting bolt upright on the
wooden seat, she drew his head on her knee and stroked his eyes with
softened fingers till he fell asleep. At the stations where they
alighted to stretch cramped limbs she stayed beside him all the time.
Once, by a specious excuse, he tried to get rid of her, but she saw
through it and stayed beside him. He resented it bitterly.
"Damned schoolmistress," he growled. "Always round me, like a limpet."
In his eyes she read a flash of hate.
"My dear, do you think I want to be a limpet?" she said, "if I don't you
know we'll never catch the train when it starts again."
"Never have a free hand," he muttered.
She was puzzled. It seemed impossible to keep a constant watch on a man
of Louis's temperament. He resented her vigilance though he demanded it.
If she seemed to be leading him, he bolted. If she let him have his
head, he still bolted.
When they were in the train again, drawing away through miles of scrub
further and further from the cities, she felt very glad that the strain
was going to end soon: she would get a rest and so would he where
probably he would have to go fifty miles to get a drink. But she
tormented herself with the fear that inaccessibility was not going to
strengthen him; rather it would weaken, she was afraid.
At five o'clock the second day the train, which had dwindled down to one
coach and five trucks, rattled and groaned into Cook's Wall. The station
consisted of a rough wooden platform raised on wooden supports with a
weather-board hut which the stationmaster called porter's room,
booking-office, luggage-office and station hotel. Someone had
ambitiously painted the name on the station. "COOK'S WAL" and "STATION
HOT" appeared in green letters on the face of the structure. "L" and
"EL" appeared round the corner in red.
The surroundings of the station looked quite hopeless; a few sun-baked
sheep-pens and races stretched behind the Station Hotel, shimmering and
wavering in the heat haze; half a mile away was a collection of
home-made huts consisting of boxes and kerosene tins piled on top of
each other. A primitive winding-gear and a heap of slag marked the
position of a small manganese mine which had been the cause for
prolonging the single line railway so far into the Bush. To the west and
south and north stretched scrub and bush, right away to forest and
purple hills on the far horizon. Eastward the glittering rails shone
back to the city, sending out blinding little flashes of light as the
sun caught them.
The guard and driver got leisurely out of the train and stood on the
platform; the stationmaster-cum-porter-cum-hotel-keeper, in a pair of
dungaree trousers and a dusty vest of flesh-coloured cellular material
which gave him the effect of nakedness, stared at them as though
passengers were the last phenomenon he had expected to see.
"Cripes! What yous want?" he said.
"Are we far from anywhere?" asked Marcella, smiling at him. He spat
assiduously through a knothole in the boarding and looked from her to
Louis.
"Depends on what you call far," he said reflectively. "There's Gaynor's
about fifteen miles along, an' Loose End nigh on thirty. Where yous
makin' for, then?"
"I should say Loose End would suit us, by the sound of it," said Louis
with a laugh. "But it isn't much use starting out to-night."
The stationmaster looked proprietorially towards the station and the
hotel site. There seemed room for tickets, and for the man who sold
them--if he were not a very large man. There was not much hope for
visitors.
"I'm running up a bosker hotel soon's I can get a bit of
weather-boarding and a few nails along," he said hopefully.
"That doesn't solve th-th-the immediate problem," said Louis.
"Let's sleep with half of us in the hotel and half on the platform,"
said Marcella, delighted with the authentic lack of civilization.
"Be et up with h'ants," the driver informed them. "Look here, chum, if
I was you I'd sleep in the train. She don't set off till between seven
and eight to-morrow."
They jumped at the idea, and the stationmaster, suddenly helpful,
offered them the loan of his hut, his spirit lamp, his kerosene tins and
his creek which was half a mile away among a few trees, low-growing,
stunted blue gums.
"Have to have a wash," the stationmaster told himself unhappily, and
suggested the same course to the driver and guard as there was a lady to
dinner. Then he piloted Marcella and Louis to his hut.
It struck a homely note in several ways. The name of Rockefeller came to
them in the flattened out kerosene tins which, nailed to supports,
formed the roof; boxes stencilled with the names of well-known
proprietary English goods formed the walls. Inside was a bed in shape of
a frayed hammock; upturned boxes formed the chairs and there was an
incongruous leather-topped, mahogany-legged writing-table. A kerosene
tin was the toilet apparatus: another, cut in two, was used for boiling
water. Given a supply of kerosene tins in the Bush, one can make a villa
and furnish it, down to cooking utensils and baby's bath.
"Next time's yous happen along, I'll have a bonser hotel," he said, and
leading Marcella outside showed her, under the shade of a tree, a
_cache_ of dozens of eggs laid by the hens that ran wild, and buried in
the earth; half a sheep wrapped in canvas, surrounded by great clouds of
flies gave evidence that it had been long dead.
"Help yourself, missus. We'll all kip together. You'll find a bag o'
flour in the hammock," said the stationmaster, and wandered off to get
on with his hotel and his station.
Marcella looked at Louis and laughed.
"What luck! Here's a chance to experiment! If we get to the station
where they want a cook, to-morrow, I'll be able to say I gave every
satisfaction in my last place."
"Always supposing we're aren't all dead before then," said Louis.
The first job was to boil water and wash the plates on which she amused
herself by tracing the remains of quite half a dozen different meals.
She felt sickened by the sight of the dead sheep; Louis seemed unmoved
as he ran an anatomical eye over it and hacked off slices with a blunt
knife. He became very wise on the subject of flapjacks and felt that
Marcella was not quite playing up to him when she preferred to make
omelets. The meal was quite a success in spite of the fact that, when it
was ready Louis had difficulty in beating up the host and the other
guests, and there was nowhere to keep warm the mutton which congealed
and stuck hard on the plates. But no one troubled about such a detail.
They ate with enjoyment and drank vast quantities of tea with much sugar
and no milk.
They had an unbearably stuffy night in the breathless railway carriage;
once Marcella went out on the platform and sat down for awhile listening
to the echo-like barking of dingoes out on the ranges. In less than five
minutes she was back again, her feet and hands prickling and sore with
the bites of ants and sandflies. She was not at all sorry when dawn came
at half-past three. She was disappointed in the creek; it had sounded
luxuriously moist from the note of pride in the stationmaster's voice
when he mentioned it. It turned out to be a suncracked water-course
with a little muddy water lying in hollows, and one or two deeper holes
from which the manganese miners got their water. She had been hoping for
a swim: she had to be content with dipping a handkerchief in one of the
hollows and wiping her face with it, since all the rest was needed for
drinking.
"Next time yous come along we'll have had a drop o' rain, an' then you
can drownd yourselfs if you want to," said the stationmaster.
They started out at four o'clock with the information that Gaynor's
Station was a collection of weather-board huts, a homestead put together
by five lads from England who were trying to make a fortune each. They
had not yet made a living between them. Loose End was owned by an
elderly squatter with many children. Five big gums, which could be seen
for miles, stood sentinel over the homestead on a rising knoll of
ground.
"But if yous ain't lucky, don't hit up Loose End. Old Twist has lots o'
luck, but it's mostly bad luck. A kid every year, an' eether a bush fire
or a flood or something to make up for it. His eldest is going on for
ten, I think--an' how's he to pay for labour to clear his land?"
Neither of them knew, but they decided to make for Loose End and see
what was going on under the five gums.
That day was the strangest experience to them both. Louis had tramped
before in the cooler New Zealand summer; Marcella had walked miles on
Lashnagar. But this walking through the dry, sun-scorched scrub, on
which their feet slipped and slid was an experience quite unique. The
heat rose from the ground to meet that blazing down from the sky of
Prussian blue. At eight o'clock they were both tired, but Marcella, who
plodded on, calm and unworried, was not nearly so tired as Louis who
made himself hot and dissipated much energy in wondering when they would
get there--wherever "there" might be. He had started the day whistling
and gay; by ten o'clock he was in the depths of despair and took
Marcella's attempts to chaff him as insults and injuries. As soon as
they reached a patch of stunted bushes she decreed a halt and a rest.
They filled the billy from their water-bottles and, making a fire with
the scorched scrub, had it boiling in a few moments. Louis, though he
was revived to interest by the pannikin of tea and a cigarette and
biscuits, sank back into deep depression after a few minutes, saying
that their coming into the Bush had been the act of lunatics, that they
would die of starvation and thirst--until she made him take out his map
and find out where they were.
Together they pored over it. After much wrangling they located Loose End
beside a small lake and decided that they would reach there to-morrow
with considerable effort.
"Anyway, we'll have to, because of our water," said Louis. "Otherwise
we'll die." But Marcella found that, by going a few miles west, they
would catch up the creek that drained into the little lake.
"It'll only be a dried water-course," said Louis miserably.
"No it won't. It's sure to be a foaming torrent if I say it shall.
Didn't you know I was a witch?" she told him, and she was certainly more
right than he, for that night they camped under great eucalyptus trees
beside a water-course which ran deep and still at their feet. The first
thing they did was to gather wood and make a great fire. After the day's
anxiety about water it was intoxicating to know that unlimited
quantities were to be dipped up and made into tea. While the water
boiled they splashed about in the water, shaking sand out of the folds
of their underclothes and their hair.
They had brought eggs and flour and salt. Louis, looking pleased with
himself, produced a tin of Eno's Fruit Salt.
"Always take this stuff into the Bush," he explained. "If you can only
get muddy water, this makes it more possible. And it's dashed good stuff
for making damper less damping."
He put in too much and the damper was so light that it crumbled and got
mixed up in the wood ashes. But they were both too hungry to notice
whether they were eating damper or wood ash, and much too blissful to
care.
They spread the blankets against the roots of a great tree, over a bed
of heathery scrub, very soft and springy; they had no axe or any means
of chopping wood, but there was a thick carpet of dead stuff under the
trees. Noticing dead branches hanging by thin strips of bark Marcella
made a lasso with the swag straps and pulled them down. As far as warmth
went, there was no need for fire at all as soon as the meal was cooked:
but out there in the vast purple-blackness of the night with pin-points
of starlight in the illimitable loneliness the rose and gold of the
spurting flames was comforting and comradely. They piled the dead wood
upon it before they lay down; as one resinous branch after another
caught fire the trees danced round in giant shadows, as though they were
doing a death-dance for their limbs on the funeral pyre. The silence was
a complete blank except when a flapping of wings beat the air where some
bird changed its night perch, or a parrot squawked hoarsely for a
moment, causing a fluttering of smaller wings that soon settled to
silence again.
Louis rolled over; like Marcella he had been lying on his back, staring
through the trees at the stars. His hand sought hers and held it,
quivering a little.
"You know, it's going to be a hell of a fight, Marcella," he said.
"Oh my dear, do you think so?" she asked, surprised that he was
confirming her opinion.
"Yes. In the city, you see, I only have to fight myself. I know, there,
that I can always get the stuff--even if I've no money I can beg or
pinch it--All I've to fight there is the accessibility of it. Here I've
to fight the inaccessibility...."
"I don't quite understand that, Louis."
"I don't suppose you do. You see, dearie, out here it's quite on the
cards that I shall go completely off my rocker." He spoke quietly,
rather wistfully and sadly.
"Louis!" she cried, sitting up and looking down at him.
"I know I can't get whisky, you see. It's probably a hundred miles away.
And I've no money. You must keep it all. This craving comes on and
simply eats me up, dear. It's like a cancer, gnawing through bone and
flesh and muscle. In the city when the gnawing gets too awful there's
always an anesthetic in the nearest pub. In a way, to conquer it in the
city is more noble. I said 'noble' in inverted commas, dear. I don't
think it is particularly noble. But it's going to be the devil of a
fight."
She did not know what to say or think. It seemed, at any rate, better
that he should be removed from whisky, however hard it was going to be
for him.
"I've thought a lot about it," he went on, speaking more impersonally
than she had thought he could. "It's going to be so awful for you. I'll
be a fiend to you, I expect, when the hunger comes on. I suppose this is
one of the advantages of an inebriates' home. They'd shove me in a
straight jacket or give me drugs when I got like that. Out here, you
see, there's only you. I can't control myself. I may hurt you."
"You won't. If you do, I'll fight you, so you needn't worry on my
account. I think it's all a silly convention that says a man in a temper
mustn't thump a woman! If you want to thump me, do! But you'll probably
get a much worse thumping than you give."
He tried to be cheered by her, but could not. After awhile, she said:
"Besides, if you do get well here--and you're going to. I don't doubt
that for a moment--think how splendid it will be to know you've done it
without the sort of restrictions, and treatments you'd get in a Home.
Doing it just by your own strength is great, Louis."
He saw that, and was happier, but he could not break out of his morbid
introspection. Even after they had said good night and she was in the
hinterland of sleep, he wakened her by sitting up and lighting a
cigarette.
"Can't you sleep?" she murmured drowsily.
"I'm thinking about you," he said gloomily. "Marcella, I was a cad to
bring you out here into the backblocks, just because I wanted to escape
temptation. You need civilization just now--you need all the comforts of
civilization--care and--Oh the million things a woman needs."
"Oh, Louis, do be quiet!" she said, "all I need at this moment is a good
sleep."
He lay down again for ten minutes. Once more he started up, dragging the
blanket right away from her.
"How can you expect me to sleep? Marcella, what right had I to make you
have a child? We've no money."
"They don't cost anything," she said wide-awake now.
He made a gesture of impatience.
"We've no home--you've no attention."
She sighed.
"Listen to me, Louis, and then, my dear, for ever hold your peace. If
the Lord, or whoever it is that's responsible for babies, had meant them
to make women invalids, they'd never have been invented at all. Because
there's no real room in the world for invalids. They'd have been grown
on bushes, or produced by budding, wouldn't they? So just you forget it!
The baby is my affair. It's nothing to do with you, and I positively
refuse to be fussed over. I call it indecent to talk about ill-health.
It's the one thing in life I'd put covers on and hide up. You must just
think you've been to a factory and ordered a baby, and they said, 'Yes,
sir--ready in six months from now, sir.' And then you walk away and call
again in six months!"
"Oh Lord!" he groaned, "why _did_ I marry a kid?"
"You can talk about him as much as you like," she went on calmly, "the
finished article. But I simply won't have you fussing about the details
of his manufacture, and all his trimmings. And that's final."
"But he's my child," protested Louis.
"Not yet! In six months' time, perhaps. But you've enough worries, real
worries, without making them up. There, dear heart, I don't mean to be
cross with you. But you're such an idiot, and I'm so sleepy."
They said good night once more, and she was falling asleep when he
pulled her hair gently. He was frowning, with deep lines on his
forehead.
"But look here, old lady. If we're going right away from everywhere
without any home, where's the child going to be born?"
"On the battlefield," she murmured sleepily.
He groaned, and once more his impatient twistings snatched the blanket
away.
"Oh damn the Keltic imagination! Why can't you get a grip on things and
be practical?"
Once more she was wide-awake, laughing with intense enjoyment.
"I can't see what there is to laugh at," he protested. "Marcella, has it
occurred to you what sort of heritage this kiddy of ours has?"
Purposely misunderstanding him she flung out both arms wide, to embrace
the whole of Australia, bush and forest, mountain, river and desert from
sea to sea.
"You know what I mean," he said desperately. "Me, his father, a
drunkard, with drink in his family, and you the descendant of dozens of
drunkards. And what's more, though you are not a drunkard, you're as mad
as a hatter. What the devil is the poor little beggar going to do?"
She was suddenly awake and very serious.
"Listen, Louis," she said, holding his hands very tight. "I got that
jerk-back most dreadfully in Sydney. Mrs. King was saying that the
crowning mercy of her life was the fact that she hadn't any children.
But it's a mad, bad, heretical sort of fear, the sort of heresy against
nature that people ought to be burnt at the stake for believing! This
child is no more your child and mine than Jesus was the child of Joseph
the carpenter, or--or Romulus and Remus were the children of the
wolf-mother. We've given him his flesh. We're his foster-parents, if you
like. But God and Humanity are his father and mother. I found all this
out one night on the roof in Sydney. He's a little bit of the spirit of
God incarnate for awhile."
"Keltic imagination," he said tentatively.
"Very well, then. If you don't like it my way, I'll put it in the
scientific way. You twitted me once for forgetting that biology applied
to us two. Doesn't it apply here? Biology shows that nature's pushing
out, paring down weaknesses and things that get in the way. If a
drunkard--who is a weakness, a scar on the face of nature--was going to
have drunkard babies, nature would make something happen to drunkards so
that they can't have children at all...."
"She does--in the last stages," murmured Louis.
"That's a good thing, perhaps. But I don't believe in inheriting things
like drinking. I don't believe my people inherited it at all. They
inherited a sort of temperament, perhaps--and it was the sort of
temperament that was accessible to drink-hunger. People talk about
drinking, or other weaknesses being in their families. Drinking seems to
be in most families nowadays, simply because people are slack and lazy
and drinking is the easiest and least expensive weakness to pander to.
But I certainly believe most hereditary weakness comes from legend or
from imitation. It's idiotic nonsense. When you're a kiddie you hear all
sorts of family talk about family characteristics; it becomes a sort of
legend and you live up to it unconsciously. You see your parents doing
things, and because you're with your parents a great deal just at the
time when you're soft, like a jelly just poured into a mould, you get
like your parents. And then it's too late--too late to alter, I mean,
unless you take a fork and beat the jelly up again, or warm it on the
fire and make it melt. I've read a lot about this, and I believe it's at
the bottom of half the morbid stuff people write and talk about
hereditary drunkards and criminals...."
"But statistics," began Louis.
"The worst of statistics is that people only quote the statistics that
will prove their argument. They don't quote those for the other side. If
drunkards' children become drunkards it's probably because their lives
are so desperately miserable that they take the most obvious way of
drowning the misery. Anyway, Louis--"
"Lord, you are getting dictatorial, Marcella," he said.
"Yes. I know. I mean to be, on this subject. I'll tell you this much, my
dear. If you tell this child of ours that you're a drunkard, I'll shake
the life out of you and then run away with him where he'll never see you
again. And if he sees you drunk--! But he won't. Anyway, you won't be
any more. And now, seriously, after all that speech, let's go to sleep."
It was his turn to lie awake for hours this time, thinking and listening
to her quiet breathing.