THE RED ROAD COUNTRY
In cool weather the Red Road was very pleasant walking. It wound up hill
and down dale for many a mile till it reached Hornsby, and branched away
into different country.
All the way there were gum trees--gum trees and fences; here and there
were closer palings and garden shrubs indicating human residence, but
they were far apart and the road was very lonely. Parallel to it and
showing in places between the trees was the single line of the railway.
It did not spoil the scenery at all, it rather gave a friendly look to
it and reminded the pedestrian that in spite of the bush silences, the
towering trees, the vista of blue hills and the mountain-like freshness
of the air, he could be in all the bustle and happy fellowship of town
in half-an-hour.
Away to the left the ground dipped, then rose again, in a blue soft
hill, dipped again, and the new rise was purple and beautiful. The third
dip, just a line, white sometimes and again blue was the harbour. On
clear days one could see the smoke of vessels. Beyond the hills and the
water-line stretched Sydney city, white and shining in the distant
sunlight. Further away, over near the sky, the grey blue hills and the
light that meant sand-stretches was Botany.
Higher up, and between the first and second hill-rise, ran the river
they call Lane Cove. A great white building, St Ignatius, made one
land-mark and the Mortlake gas-works another; from those places the
residents knew their geography. That was Eastwood away over there,
nestling among hills; those blurred cottages indicated Ryde; just where
the tree tops showed in a hollow, was the head of the river, and right
away on the west horizon a certain patch was the highest place in the
blue mountains. In a few years the beautiful country-side will be
commonplace suburbs; there will be stucco villas and terrace houses,
shops and paved roads; the railway has broken its fastness and the
change is inevitable.
The smooth grass slopes, the wooded stretches will live only in memory.
The great red-and-black and silver-limbed gums will be hewn down to make
way for spreading civilisation. The blue gracious hills will be thick
with chimneys and advertisement boards. There will be a double line of
railway, no longer picturesque, and big spreading stations instead of
primitive sidings where one held up a 'flag by day and a light at night'
to be picked up of the passing train.
Past St Leonard's the railway is very new, a matter of months indeed.
Before it was opened there were obstacles in the way of reaching Sydney
that made would-be residents shake their heads, and go to live at
Paddington, and Forest Lodge, and such crowded places that could be
reached by tram with a certain degree of comfort.
But before the year of grace 1893, the train from the hills that only
just escaped being mountains, used to empty out its passengers on the
little St Leonard's Station. There were two ways only after that of
getting to Sydney.
Either one merrily trudged a pathway mile, and then caught a North Shore
cable tram to the point where the Ferry boat leaves for the Circular
Quay, or one entrusted one's life and well-being to a vehicle that might
have been a Noah's Ark, or a bathing machine, or a convict van.
In ancient days it used to run between Shoalhaven and Moss-Vale, as its
red painted sides still bore witness, but travellers in those parts did
better for themselves, so they brought it here, and charged sixpence
each way for the twenty-five minutes' journey. Now there is a
combination of the railway; pressure was brought to bear, and the New
South Wales Government finished in a hurry a work that had dragged on
till people despaired of its completion. The line winds down towards the
chimneys and smoke of 'The Shore'; one has glimpses from the train of
blue bright bays and white sails moored boats, and a broken wharf or two
waiting to catch the artist's eye. Then it skirts along the harbour,
close to the water, in a semi-circular sweep, and makes an eye-sore. Two
years ago, Lavender Bay was beautiful.
But about the Red Road. Just at the top of one of the elevations, there
was a big stone house standing in the middle of an orange and lemon
orchard. Dot's mother lived here by herself.
A mile and a half away down the road there was a weather-board cottage
in a garden running over with flowers. Larrie and Dot lived here, and
the baby of course. They had been going up to 'mother's' the afternoon
they quarrelled about carrying the child; they always went on Sundays.
Very often Dot went on Mondays too, that was the day Peggie, her
_aide-de-camp_, made the cottage unsavoury with soap-suds. Tuesday
nights they always had dinner up at the house, Peggie never had time to
cook on Tuesdays, there were so many of Dot's dresses and Larrie's
shirts, and baby's multitudinous garments to be finely ironed.
On Thursdays and Saturdays the mother used to come down to the cottage
and put it straight, and help poor Peggie, and bring a new knitted
jacket or bootees or a hood or pinafore for baby.
The house was a big lonely place for such a little woman. She was even
smaller than Dot. She had a tiny fragile figure, and a tiny face, brown
and shrivelled with Australian suns. Her eyes were very big and
pathetic, something like Dot's in wistful moments, and her mouth with
its infinitude of lines, was very sweet.
After her eyes, her brooch was the first thing that invited notice. It
was one of those large, very old-fashioned ones with a miniature set on
the front of it. Dot had begged her to cease wearing it; 'It isn't good
taste,' she had said once vexedly, 'keep it in a drawer;' but the mother
would not lay it aside even though it was the only thing in which she
had ever thwarted Dot in her life.
When she went to bed she pinned it on her night-gown, when she dressed
in the morning she fastened her collar with it. A hundred times a day
her fingers strayed to it. In her sleep her hand stole up and closed
upon it.
The miniature was of a very young man in the old fashioned naval uniform
that used to be worn forty years ago. He had the correct miniature
smile, but the eyes were well done and you could see his brow had been
splendid. He was Dot's father, dead sixteen years ago; it was the only
likeness he had ever had taken.
Inside the brooch was a cluster of little heads, gaudily painted, six in
all; Dot, the seventh, had been born after it was done.
Four of the heads pressed clay pillows in a churchyard not very far
away, seas washed over the fifth, and the sixth lay in a lonely grave in
the wilds of Western Australia.
Dot was the only one alive, and now she had flown from the home-nest to
one of her own, leaving unutterable desolation behind her in the
mother's heart.
It was because death had so broken and bruised this little frail mother
that she had never crossed Dot's will in anything since she was born.
The days of insistence and control, and obedience-seeking were buried
with the buried six. Dot ruled, and the mother poured out her heart at
her feet and worshipped with a love almost desperate.
So when Dot said she was going to be married at once, albeit only
seventeen years had passed over her little sunny head, the mother had
not been able to refuse. She had only reminded Larrie, whom she loved
dearly and had known for years, how young her darling was, and on her
knees she had prayed him to be good to her always. Larrie was
twenty-two. For sixteen years he had come up to the house in the
holidays at the first sign of a ripening orange; he had eaten bananas
with Dot, one of them at each end of the fruit, when she was two.
He had played cricket with her at six, climbed trees with her at ten,
pulled her hair and pinched her for being a girl at twelve, forgotten
her for a time at fifteen, and come back and married her at seventeen.
He had £250 a year, and no guardians or parents to give him unasked
advice. So he resolved to take a year's holiday according to his
doctor's orders, before he started his profession, and teach and train
Dot till she was an ideal wife. He had all kinds of ideas on the
subject, though he was so very boyish to look at, and he intended to
inculcate Dot with them all. But for the first year he was so
exuberantly happy he forgot all about them.
It was only when the baby was growing into months, and Dot was
continually forgetting some article of its clothing, or the kicking
exercise that was to make it an athlete, or when her piano made her
forget its existence for a little while, that he began to think he was
not doing his duty by her, and must turn over a new leaf.