“Steady! steady!” he shouted.
“Sure O’i can’t plaze yez anyhows,” I replied.
“If you don’t try to plaze me directly I’ll punish you in a way you
won’t relish,” he said laughingly. But I knew he was thinking of a
punishment which I would have secretly enjoyed.
“If you don’t let me finish this work I’ll make one of the men do it
tonight by candle-light when they come home tired. I know you wouldn’t
like them to do that,” he continued.
“Arrah, go on, ye’re only tazin’!” I retorted. “Don’t you remember
telling me that Warrigal was such a nasty-tempered brute that he
allowed no one but yourself to touch him?”
“Oh well, then, I’m floored, and will have to put up with the
consequences,” he good-humouredly made answer.
Seeing that my efforts to annoy him failed, I gave in, and we were soon
done, and then started for the river—Mr Beecham clad in a khaki suit
and I in a dainty white wrapper and flyaway sort of hat. In one hand my
host held a big white umbrella, with which he shaded me from the hot
rays of the October sun, and in the other was a small basket containing
cake and lollies for our delectation.
Having traversed the half-mile between the house and river, we pushed
off from the bank in a tiny boat just big enough for two. In the teeth
of Harold’s remonstrance I persisted in dangling over the boat-side to
dabble in the clear, deep, running water. In a few minutes we were in
it. Being unable to swim, but for my companion it would have been all
up with me. When I rose to the surface he promptly seized me, and
without much effort, clothes and all, swam with me to the bank, where
we landed—a pair of sorry figures. Harold had mud all over his nose,
and in general looked very ludicrous. As soon as I could stand I
laughed.
“Oh, for a snapshot of you!” I said.
“We might have both been drowned,” he said sternly.
“Mights don’t fly,” I returned. “And it was worth the dip to see you
looking such a comical article.” We were both minus our hats.
His expression relaxed.
“I believe you would laugh at your own funeral. If I look queer, you
look forty times worse. Run for your life and get a hot bath and a drop
of spirits or you’ll catch your death of cold. Aunt Augusta will take a
fit and tie you up for the rest of the time in case something more will
happen to you.”
“Catch a death of cold!” I ejaculated. “It is only good, pretty little
girls, who are a blessing to everyone, who die for such trifles; girls
like I am always live till nearly ninety, to plague themselves and
everybody else. I’ll sneak home so that your aunt won’t see me, and no
one need be a bit the wiser.”
“You’ll be sun-struck!” he said in dismay.
“Take care you don’t get daughter-struck,” I said perkily, turning to
flee, for it had suddenly dawned upon me that my thin wet clothing was
outlining my figure rather too clearly for propriety.
By a circuitous way I managed to reach my bedroom unseen. It did not
take me long to change my clothes, hang them to dry, and appear on the
main veranda where Miss Augusta was still sewing. I picked up the book
I had left on the mat, and, taking up a position in a hammock near her,
I commenced to read.
“You did not stay long at the river,” she remarked. “Have you been
washing your head? I never saw the like of it. Such a mass of it. It
will take all day to dry.”
Half an hour later Harold appeared dressed in a warm suit of tweed. He
was looking pale and languid, as though he had caught a chill, and
shivered as he threw himself on a lounge. I was feeling none the worse
for my immersion.
“Why did you change your clothes, Harold? You surely weren’t cold on a
day like this. Sybylla has changed hers too, when I come to notice it,
and her hair is wet. Have you had an accident?” said Miss Augusta,
rising from her chair in a startled manner.
“Rubbish!” ejaculated Harold in a tone which forbade further
questioning, and the matter dropped.
She presently left the veranda, and I took the opportunity to say, “It
is yourself that requires the hot bath and a drop of spirits, Mr
Beecham.”
“Yes; I think I’ll take a good stiff nobbler. I feel a trifle
squeamish. It gave me a bit of a turn when I rose to the top and could
not see you. I was afraid the boat might have stunned you in capsizing,
and you would be drowned before I could find you.”
“Yes; I would have been such a loss to the world in general if I had
been drowned,” I said satirically.
Several jackeroos, a neighbouring squatter, and a couple of bicycle
tourists turned up at Five-Bob that evening, and we had a jovial night.
The great, richly furnished drawing-room was brilliantly lighted, and
the magnificent Erard grand piano sang and rang again with music, now
martial and loud, now soft and solemn, now gay and sparkling. I made
the very pleasant discovery that Harold Beecham was an excellent
pianist, a gifted player on the violin, and sang with a strong, clear,
well-trained tenor, which penetrated far into the night. How many, many
times I have lived those nights over again! The great room with its
rich appointments, the superb piano, the lights, the merriment, the
breeze from the east, rich with the heavy intoxicating perfume of
countless flowers; the tall perfect figure, holding the violin with a
master hand, making it speak the same language as I read in the dark
eyes of the musician, while above and around was the soft warmth of an
Australian summer night.
Ah, health and wealth, happiness and youth, joy and light, life and
love! What a warm-hearted place is the world, how full of pleasure,
good, and beauty, when fortune smiles! _When fortune smiles!_
Fortune did smile, and broadly, in those days. We played tricks on one
another, and had a deal of innocent fun and frolic. I was a little
startled one night on retiring to find a huge goanna near the head of
my bed. I called Harold to dislodge the creature, when it came to light
that it was roped to the bedpost. Great was the laughter at my expense.
Who tethered the goanna I never discovered, but I suspected Harold. In
return for this joke, I collected all the portable clocks in the
house—about twenty—and arrayed them on his bedroom table. The majority
of them were Waterburys for common use, so I set each alarm for a
different hour. Inscribing a placard “Hospital for Insane”, I erected
it above his door. Next morning I was awakened at three o’clock by
fifteen alarms in concert outside my door. When an hour or two later I
emerged I found a notice on my door, “This way to the Zoo”.
It was a very busy time for the men at Five-Bob. Waggons were arriving
with shearing supplies, for it was drawing nigh unto the great event of
the year. In another week’s time the bleat of thousands of sheep, and
the incense of much tar and wool, would be ascending to the heavens
from the vicinity of Five-Bob Downs. I was looking forward to the
shearing. There never was any at Caddagat. Uncle did not keep many
sheep, and always sold them long-woolled and rebought after shearing.
I had not much opportunity of persecuting Harold during the daytime. He
and all his subordinates were away all day, busy drafting, sorting, and
otherwise pottering with sheep. But I always, and Miss Augusta
sometimes, went to meet them coming home in the evening. It was great
fun. The dogs yelped and jumped about. The men were dirty with much
dust, and smelt powerfully of sheep, and had worked hard all day in the
blazing sun, but they were never too tired for fun, or at night to
dance, after they had bathed and dressed. We all had splendid horses.
They reared and pranced; we galloped and jumped every log which came in
our path. Jokes, repartee, and nonsense rattled off our tongues. We did
not worry about thousands of our fellows—starving and reeking with
disease in city slums. We were selfish. We were heedless. We were
happy. We were young.
Harold Beecham was a splendid host. Anyone possessed of the least
talent for enjoyment had a pleasant time as his guest. He was
hospitable in a quiet unostentatious manner. His overseer, jackeroos,
and other employees were all allowed the freedom of home, and could
invite whom they pleased to Five-Bob Downs. It is all very well to talk
of good hosts. Bah, I could be a good hostess myself if I had Harold
Beecham’s superior implements of the art! With an immense station,
plenty of house-room, tennis courts, musical instruments; a river
wherein to fish, swim, and boat; any number of horses, vehicles,
orchards, gardens, guns, and ammunition no object, it is easy to be a
good host.
I had been just a week at Five-Bob when uncle Julius came to take me
home, so I missed the shearing. Caddagat had been a dull hole without
me, he averred, and I must return with him that very day. Mr and Miss
Beecham remonstrated. Could I not be spared at least a fortnight
longer? It would be lonely without me. Thereupon uncle Jay-Jay
volunteered to procure Miss Benson from Wyambeet as a substitute.
Harold declined the offer with thanks.
“The schemes of youngsters are very transparent,” said uncle Jay-Jay
and Miss Augusta, smiling significantly at us. I feigned to be dense,
but Harold smiled as though the insinuation was not only known, but
also agreeable to him.
Uncle was inexorable, so home I had to go. It was sweet to me to hear
from the lips of my grandmother and aunt that my absence had been felt.
As a confidante aunt Helen was the pink of perfection—tactful and
sympathetic. My feather-brained chatter must often have bored her, but
she apparently was ever interested in it.
I told her long yarns of how I had spent my time at the Beechams; of
the deafening duets Harold and I had played on the piano; and how he
would persist in dancing with me, and he being so tall and broad, and I
so small, it was like being stretched on a hay-rack, and very
fatiguing. I gave a graphic account of the arguments—tough ones they
were too—that Miss Augusta had with the overseer on religion, and many
other subjects; of one jackeroo who gabbed never-endingly about his
great relations at home; another who incessantly clattered about spurs,
whips, horses, and sport; and the third one—Joe Archer—who talked
literature and trash with me.
“What was Harry doing all this time?” asked auntie. “What did he say?”
Harold had been present all the while, yet I could not call to mind one
thing he had said. I cannot remember him ever holding forth on a
subject or cause, as most people do at one time or another.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Idylls of Youth
In pursuance of his duty a government mail-contractor passed Caddagat
every Monday, dropping the Bossier mail as he went. On Thursday we also
got the post, but had to depend partly on our own exertions.
A selector at Dogtrap, on the Wyambeet run, at a point of the compass
ten miles down the road from Caddagat, kept a hooded van. Every
Thursday he ran this to and from Gool-Gool for the purpose of taking to
market vegetables and other farm produces. He also took parcels and
passengers, both ways, if called upon to do so. Caddagat and Five-Bob
gave him a great deal of carrying, and he brought the mail for these
and two or three other places. It was one of my duties, or rather
privileges, to ride thither on Thursday afternoon for the post, a
leather bag slung round my shoulders for the purpose. I always had a
splendid mount, and the weather being beautifully hot, it was a jaunt
which I never failed to enjoy. Frank Hawden went with me once or
twice—not because grannie or I thought his escort necessary. The idea
was his own; but I gave him such a time that he was forced to
relinquish accompanying me as a bad job.
Harold Beecham kept a snivelling little Queensland black boy as a sort
of black-your-boots, odd-jobs slavey or factotum, and he came to
Dogtrap for the mail, but after I started to ride for it Harold came
regularly for his mail himself. Our homeward way lay together for two
miles, but he always came with me till nearly in sight of home. Some
days we raced till our horses were white with lather; and once or twice
mine was in such a state that we dismounted, and Harold unsaddled him
and wiped the sweat off with his towel saddle-cloth, to remove the
evidence of hard riding, so that I would not get into a scrape with
uncle Jay-Jay. Other times we dawdled, so that when we parted the last
rays of sunset would be laughing at us between the white trunks of the
tall gum-trees, the kookaburras would be making the echoes ring with
their mocking good-night, and scores of wild duck would be flying
quickly roostward. As I passed through the angle formed by the creek
and the river, about half a mile from home, there came to my ears the
cheery clink-clink of hobble-chains, the jangle of horse-bells, and the
gleam of a dozen camp-fires. The shearing was done out in Riverina now,
and the men were all going home. Day after day dozens of them passed
along the long white road, bound for Monaro and the cool country beyond
the blue peaks to the southeast, where the shearing was about to begin.
When I had come to Caddagat the last of them had gone “down” with
horses poor; now they were travelling “up” with their horses—some of
them thoroughbreds—rolling fat, and a cheque for their weeks of
back-bending labour in their pockets. But whether coming or going they
always made to Caddagat to camp. That camping-ground was renowned as
the best from Monaro to Riverina. It was a well-watered and sheltered
nook, and the ground was so rich that there was always a mouthful of
grass to be had there. It was a rare thing to see it without a fire;
and the empty jam-tins, bottles, bits of bag, paper, tent-pegs, and
fish-tins to be found there would have loaded a dozen waggons.
Thursday evening was always spent in going to Dogtrap, and all the
other days had their pleasant tasks and were full of wholesome
enjoyment. The blue senna flowers along the river gave place to the
white bloom of the tea-tree. Grannie, uncle, and aunt Helen filled the
house with girl visitors for my pleasure. In the late afternoon, as the
weather got hot, we went for bogeys in a part of the river two miles
distant. Some of the girls from neighbouring runs brought their
saddles, others from town had to be provided therewith, which produced
a dearth in sidesaddles, and it was necessary for me to take a man’s.
With a rollicking gallop and a bogey ahead, that did not trouble me.
Aunt Helen always accompanied us on our bathing expeditions to keep us
in check. She was the only one who bothered with a bathing-dress. The
rest of us reefed off our clothing, in our hurry sending buttons in all
directions, and plunged into the pleasant water. Then—such
water-fights, frolic, laughter, shouting and roaring fun as a dozen
strong healthy girls can make when enjoying themselves. Aunt Helen
generally called time before we were half inclined to leave. We would
linger too long, then there would be a great scramble for clothes, next
for horses, and with wet hair streaming on our towels, we would go home
full belt, twelve sets of galloping hoofs making a royal clatter on the
hard dusty road. Grannie made a rule that when we arrived late we had
to unsaddle our horses ourselves, and not disturb the working men from
their meal for our pleasure. We mostly were late, and so there would be
a tight race to see who would arrive at table first. A dozen heated
horses were turned out unceremoniously, a dozen saddles and bridles
dumped down anywhere anyhow, and their occupants, with wet dishevelled
hair and clothing in glorious disarray, would appear at table averring
that they were starving.
The Caddagat folk were enthusiastic anglers. Fishing was a favourite
and often enjoyed amusement of the household. In the afternoon a tinful
of worms would be dug out of one of the water-races, tackle collected,
horses saddled, and grannie, uncle, aunt, Frank Hawden, myself, and any
one else who had happened to drop in, would repair to the fish-holes
three miles distant. I hate fishing. Ugh! The hideous barbarity of
shoving a hook through a living worm, and the cruelty of taking the
fish off the hook! Uncle allowed no idlers at the river—all had to
manipulate a rod and line. Indulging in pleasant air-castles, I
generally forgot my cork till the rod would be jerked in my hand, when
I would pull—too late! the fish would be gone. Uncle would lecture me
for being a jackdaw, so next time I would glare at the cork
unwinkingly, and pull at the first signs of it bobbing—too soon! the
fish would escape again, and I would again be in disgrace. After a
little experience I found it was a good plan to be civil to Frank
Hawden when the prospect of fishing hung around, and then he would
attend to my line as well as his own, while I read a book which I
smuggled with me. The fish-hole was such a shrub-hidden nook that,
though the main road passed within two hundred yards, neither we nor
our horses could be seen by the travellers thereon. I lay on the soft
moss and leaves and drank deeply of the beauties of nature. The soft
rush of the river, the scent of the shrubs, the golden sunset,
occasionally the musical clatter of hoofs on the road, the gentle
noises of the fishers fishing, the plop, plop of a platypus disporting
itself mid stream, came to me as sweetest elixir in my ideal,
dream-of-a-poet nook among the pink-based, grey-topped, moss-carpeted
rocks.
I was a creature of joy in those days. Life is made up of little
things. It was a small thing to have a little pocket-money to spend on
anything that took my fancy—a very small thing, and yet how much
pleasure it gave me. Though eating is not one of the great aims of my
life, yet it was nice to have enough of any delicacy one fancied. Not
that we ever went hungry at home, but when one has nothing to eat in
the hot weather but bread and beef it gives them tendency to dream of
fruit and cool dainties. When one thinks of the countless army of one’s
fellows who are daily selling their very souls for the barest
necessaries of life, I suppose we—irresponsible beings—should be
thankful to God for allowing us, by scratching and scraping all our
lives, to keep a crust in our mouth and a rag on our back. I am not
thankful, I have been guilty of what Pat would term a “digresshion”—I
started about going for the mail at Dogtrap. Harold Beecham never once
missed taking me home on Thursdays, even when his shearing was in full
swing and he must have been very busy. He never once uttered a word of
love to me—not so much as one of the soft nothings in which young
people of opposite sexes often deal without any particular
significance. Whether he went to all the bother and waste of time
accruing from escorting me home out of gentlemanliness alone, was a
mystery to me. I desired to find out, and resolved to drive instead of
ride to Dogtrap one day to see what he would say.
Grannie assented to the project. Of course I could drive for once if I
didn’t feel able to ride, but the horses had been spelling for a long
time and were very frisky. I must take Frank with me or I might get my
neck broken.
I flatly opposed the idea of Frank Hawden going with me. He would make
a mull of the whole thing. It was no use arguing with grannie and
impressing upon her the fact that I was not the least nervous
concerning the horses. I could take Frank with me in the buggy, ride,
or stay at home. I preferred driving. Accordingly the fat horses were
harnessed to the buggy, and with many injunctions to be careful and not
forget the parcels, we set out. Frank Hawden’s presence spoilt it all,
but I determined to soon make short work of him.
There was one gate to go through, about four miles from the house.
Frank Hawden got out to open it. I drove through, and while he was
pushing it to, laid the whip on the horses and went off full tilt. He
ran after me shouting all manner of things that I could not hear on
account of the rattle of the buggy. One horse began kicking up, so, to
give him no time for further pranks, I drove at a good round gallop,
which quickly left the lovable jackeroo a speck in the distance. The
dust rose in thick clouds, the stones rattled from the whirling wheels,
the chirr! chirr! of a myriad cicadas filled the air, and the white
road glistened in the dazzling sunlight. I was enjoying myself tip-top,
and chuckled to think of the way I had euchred Frank Hawden. It was
such a good joke that I considered it worth two of the blowings-up I
was sure of getting from grannie for my conduct.
It was not long before I fetched up at Dogtrap homestead, where,
tethered to the “six-foot” paling fence which surrounded the
flower-garden, was Harold Beecham’s favourite, great, black,
saddle-horse Warrigal. The vicious brute turned his beautiful head,
displaying a white star on the forehead, and snorted as I approached.
His master appeared on the veranda raising his soft panama hat, and
remarking, “Well I never! You’re not by yourself, are you?”
“I am. Would you please tell Mrs Butler to bring out grannie’s parcels
and post at once. I’m afraid to dawdle, it’s getting late.”
He disappeared to execute my request and reappeared in less than a
minute.
“Mr Beecham, please would you examine Barney’s harness. Something must
be hurting him. He has been kicking up all the way.”
Examining the harness and noticing the sweat that was dripping from the
animals, panting from their run, he said:
“It looks as though you’ve been making the pace a cracker. There is
nothing that is irritating Barney in the least. If he’s putting on any
airs it is because he is frisky and not safe for you to drive. How did
Julius happen to let you away by yourself?”
“I’m not frightened,” I replied.
“I see you’re not. You’d be game to tackle a pair of wild elephants, I
know, but you must remember you’re not much bigger than a sparrow
sitting up there, and I won’t let you go back by yourself.”
“You cannot stop me.”
“I can.”
“You can’t.”
“I can.”
“You can’t.”
“I can.”
“How?”
“I’m going with you,” he said.
“You’re not.”
“I am.”
“You’re not.”