Dear Everard,
Thank you very much for the magazines and “An Australian Bush Track”. I
suppose you have quite forgotten us and Caddagat by this time. The sun
has sunk behind the gum-trees, and the blue evening mists are hanging
lazily in the hollows of the hills. I expect you are donning your
“swallow-tail” preparatory to leading some be-satined “faire ladye” in
to a gorgeous dinner, thence to the play, then to a dance probably. No
doubt all around you is bustle, glare of lights, noise, and fun. It is
such a different scene here. From down the road comes the tinkle of
camp-bells and jingle of hobble-chains. From down in that sheltered
angle where the creek meets the river comes the gleam of camp-fires
through the gathering twilight, and I can see several tents rigged for
the night, looking like white specks in the distance.
I long for the time to come when I shall get to Sydney. I’m going to
lead you and aunt Helen a pretty dance. You’ll have to keep going night
and day. It will be great. I must get up and dance a jig on the veranda
when I think of it. You’ll have to show me everything—slums and all. I
want to find out the truth of heaps of things for myself.
Save for the weird rush of the stream and the kookaburras’ good-night,
all is still, with a mighty far-reaching stillness which can be felt.
Now the curlews are beginning their wild moaning cry. From the rifts in
the dark lone ranges, far down the river, it comes like a hunted spirit
until it makes me feel—
At this point I said, “Bah! I’m mad to write to Everard Grey like this.
He would laugh and call me a poor little fool.” I tore the
half-finished letter to shreds, and consigned it to the kitchen fire. I
substituted a prim formal note, merely thanking him for the books and
magazine he had sent me. To this I never received an answer. I heard
through his letters to grannie that he was much occupied. Had been to
Brisbane and Melbourne on important cases, so very likely had not time
to be bothered with me; or, he might have been like the majority of his
fellows who make a great parade of friendship while with one, then go
away and forget one’s existence in an hour.
While at Caddagat there were a few duties allotted to me. One of these
was to attend to the drawing-room; another was to find uncle Jay-Jay’s
hat when he mislaid it—often ten times per day. I assisted my
grandmother to make up her accounts and write business letters, and I
attended to tramps. A man was never refused a bit to eat at Caddagat.
This necessitated the purchase of an extra ton of flour per year, also
nearly a ton of sugar, to say nothing of tea, potatoes, beef, and all
broken meats which went thus. This was not reckoning the consumption of
victuals by the other class of travellers with which the house was
generally full year in and year out. Had there been any charge for
their board and lodging, the Bossiers would surely have made a fortune.
I interviewed on an average fifty tramps a week, and seldom saw the
same man twice. What a great army they were! Hopeless, homeless,
aimless, shameless souls, tramping on from north to south, and east to
west, never relinquishing their heart-sickening, futile quest for
work—some of them so long on the tramp that the ambitions of manhood
had been ground out of them, and they wished for nothing more than
this.
There were all shapes, sizes, ages, kinds, and conditions of men—the
shamefaced boy in the bud of his youth, showing by the way he begged
that the humiliation of the situation had not yet worn off, and poor
old creatures tottering on the brink of the grave, with nothing left in
life but the enjoyment of beer and tobacco. There were strong men in
their prime who really desired work when they asked for it, and
skulking cowards who hoped they would not get it. There were the
diseased, the educated, the ignorant, the deformed, the blind, the
evil, the honest, the mad, and the sane. Some in real professional
beggars’ style called down blessings on me; others were morose and
glum, while some were impudent and thankless, and said to supply them
with food was just what I should do, for the swagmen kept the
squatters—as, had the squatters not monopolized the land, the swagmen
would have had plenty. A moiety of the last-mentioned—dirty, besotted,
ragged creatures—had a glare in their eyes which made one shudder to
look at them, and, while spasmodically twirling their billies or
clenching their fists, talked wildly of making one to “bust up the damn
banks”, or to drive all the present squatters out of the country and
put the people on the land—clearly showing that, because they had
failed for one reason or another, it had maddened them to see others
succeed.
In a wide young country of boundless resources, why is this thing? This
question worried me. Our legislators are unable or unwilling to cope
with it. They trouble not to be patriots and statesmen. Australia can
bring forth writers, orators, financiers, singers, musicians, actors,
and athletes which are second to none of any nation under the sun. Why
can she not bear sons, men of soul, mind, truth, godliness, and
patriotism sufficient to rise and cast off the grim shackles which
widen round us day by day?
I was the only one at Caddagat who held these silly ideas. Harold
Beecham, uncle Julius, grannie, and Frank Hawden did not worry about
the cause of tramps. They simply termed them a lazy lot of sneaking
creatures, fed them, and thought no more of the matter.
I broached the subject to uncle Jay-Jay once, simply to discover his
ideas thereon.
I was sitting on a chair in the veranda sewing; he, with his head on a
cushion, was comfortably stretched on a rug on the floor.
“Uncle Boss, why can’t something be done for tramps?”
“How done for ’em?”
“Couldn’t some means of employing them be arrived at?”
“Work!” he ejaculated. “That’s the very thing the crawling divils are
terrified they might get.”
“Yes; but couldn’t some law be made to help them?”
“A law to make me cut up Caddagat and give ten of ’em each a piece, and
go on the wallaby myself, I suppose?”
“No, uncle; but there was a poor young fellow here this morning who, I
feel sure, was in earnest when he asked for work.”
“Helen!” bawled uncle Jay-Jay.
“Well, what is it?” she inquired, appearing in the doorway.
“Next time Sybylla is giving a tramp some tucker, you keep a sharp eye
on her or she will be sloping one of these days. There was a young
fellow here today with a scarlet moustache and green eyes, and she’s
dean gone on him, and has been bullying me to give him half Caddagat.”
“What a disgusting thing to say! Uncle, you ought to be ashamed of
yourself,” I exclaimed.
“Very well, I’ll be careful,” said aunt Helen, departing.
“What with the damned flies, and the tramps, and a pesky thing called
Sybylla, a man’s life ain’t worth a penny to him,” said uncle.
We fell into silence, which was broken presently by a dirty red-bearded
face appearing over the garden gate, and a man’s voice:
“Good day, boss! Give us a chew of tobaccer?”
“I’m not the boss,” said uncle with assumed fierceness.
“Then who is?” inquired the man.
Uncle pointed his thumb at me, and, rolling out on the floor again as
though very sleepy, began to snore. The tramp grinned, and made his
request of me. I took him round to the back, served him with flour,
beef, and an inch or two of rank tobacco out of a keg which had been
bought for the purpose. Refusing a drink of milk which I offered, he
resumed his endless tramp with a “So long, little missy. God bless your
pleasant face.”
I watched him out of sight. One of my brothers—one of God’s children
under the Southern Cross. Did these old fellows really believe in the
God whose name they mentioned so glibly? I wondered. But I am thankful
that while at Caddagat it was only rarely that my old top-heavy
thoughts troubled me. Life was so pleasant that I was content merely to
be young—a chit in the first flush of teens, health, hope, happiness,
youth—a heedless creature recking not for the morrow.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When the Heart is Young
About a week or so after I first met Harold Beecham, aunt Helen allowed
me to read a letter she had received from the elder of the two Misses
Beecham. It ran as follows:
“My dearest Helen,
“This is a begging letter, and I am writing another to your mother at
the same time. I am asking her to allow her grand-daughter to spend a
few weeks with me, and I want you to use your influence in the matter.
Sarah has not been well lately, and is going to Melbourne for a change,
and as I will be lonely while she is away Harold insists upon me having
someone to keep me company—you know how considerate the dear boy is. I
hardly like to ask you to spare your little girl to me. It must be a
great comfort to have her. I could have got Miss Benson to stay with
me, but Harold will not hear of her. He says she is too slow, and would
give us both the mopes. But he says your little niece will keep us all
alive. Julius was telling me the other day that he could not part with
her, as she makes ‘the old barracks’, as he always calls Caddagat, echo
with fun and noise. I am so looking forward to seeing her, as she is
dear Lucy’s child. Give her my love,” etc., etc.,
and as a postscript the letter had—“Harold will go up for Sybylla on
Wednesday afternoon. I do hope you will be able to spare her to me for
a while.”
“Oh, auntie, how lovely!” I exclaimed. “What are you laughing at?”
“For whom do you think Harry wants the companion? It is nice to have an
old auntie, as a blind, is it not? Well, all is fair in love and war.
You have permission to use me in any way you like.”