BILLABONG
“Will it be fine, Murty?”
The person addressed made no answer for a moment, continuing to stare
at the western horizon with his eyes wrinkled and his face anxious. He
turned presently; a tall, grizzled man, with the stooping shoulders
and the slightly bowed legs that are the heritage of those who spend
nine-tenths of their time in the saddle.
“Sorra a one of me knows,” he said. “It's one of thim unchancy days that
might be annything. Have ye looked at the glass?”
“It's mejum,” replied the first speaker. She was a vast woman, with a
broad, kindly face, lit by shrewd and twinkling blue eyes, dressed, as
was her custom, in a starched blue print, with a snowy apron. “Mejum
only. But I don't feel comferable at that there bank of clouds, Murty.”
“I'd not say meself it was good,” admitted Murty O'Toole, head stockman
on the Billabong run. He looked again at the doubtful sky, and then back
to Mrs. Brown. “Have ye no corns, at all, that 'ud be shootin' on ye if
rain was coming?”
“Corns I 'ave, indeed,” said Mrs. Brown, with the sigh of one who admits
that she is but human. “But no--they ain't shootin' worth speakin'
about, Murty. Nor me rheumatic knee ain't givin' tongue, as Master Jim
would say.”
“Yerra, that's all to the good,” said the stockman, much cheered. “I'll
not look at the ould sky anny longer--leastways, not till I have that
cup of tea ye were speakin' about.”
“Come in then,” said Mrs. Brown, leading the way into the kitchen--a
huge place so glittering with cleanliness and polish that it almost hurt
the eye. “Kettle's boilin'--I'll have it made in a jiffy. No, Murty,
you will not sit on that table. Pounds of bath-brick 'ave gone into me
tables this last week.”
“Ye have them always that white I do not see how ye'd want them to be
whiter,” remarked Murty, gazing round him. “But I niver see anything to
aiqual the shine ye have on them tins an' copper. And the stove is that
fine it's a shame to be cookin' with it.” He looked with respect at the
black satin and silver of the stove, where leaping flames glowed redly.
“Well, I'll always say there isn't a heartsomer place to come into than
the Billabong kitchen. And isn't it the little misthress that thinks
so?”
“Bless her, she was always in and out of it from the time she could
toddle,” said Mrs. Brown, pausing with the teapot in her hand. “And
she wasn't much more than toddlin' before she was at me to teach her
to cook. When she was twelve she could cook a dinner as well as anyone
twice her age. I never see the beat of her--handy as a man out on the
run, too--”
“She was that,” said Murty solemnly. “Since she was a bit of a thing I
never see the bullock as could get away from her. And the ponies she'd
ride! There was nothin' ever looked through a bridle that cud frighten
her.”
“Poof! Miss Norah didn't know what it was to be afraid,” said Mrs.
Brown, filling the huge brown teapot. “Sometimes I've wished she was,
for me heart's been in me mouth often and often when I see her go
caperin' down the track on some mad-'eaded pony.”
“An' there was niver a time when they was late home but you made sure
the whole lot of 'em was killed,” said Murty, grinning. “I'd come in
here an' find you wit' all the funerals planned, so to speak--”
“Ah, go on! At least, I alwuz stayed at home when I was nervis,” said
Mrs. Brown. “Who was it I've known catch an 'orse in the dark, an' go
off to look for 'em when they were a bit late? Not me, Mr. O'Toole!” She
filled his cup and handed it to him with a triumphant air.
“Yerra, I misremember doin' any such thing,” said Murty, slightly
confused. “'Tis the way I was most likely goin' afther a sick bullock,
or it might be 'possum shootin'.” He raised his cup and took a deep
draught; then, with a wry face, gazed at its contents. “I dunno is this
a new brand of tea you're afther usin', now? Sure, it looks pale.”
Mrs. Brown cast a glance at the cup he held out, and gave a gasp of
horror.
“Well, not in all me born days 'ave I made tea an' forgot to put the tea
in!” she exclaimed, snatching it from his hand. “Don't you go an' tell
Dave and Mick, Murty, or I'll never hear the end of it. Lucky there's
plenty of hot water.” She emptied the teapot swiftly, and refilled it,
this time with due regard to the tea-caddy.
“Now, Murty, don't you sit there grinnin' at me like a hyener--it isn't
every day I get Miss Norah home.”
“It is not,” said Murty, taking his renewed cup and a large piece of
bread and butter. “Sure, I'd not blame ye if ye fried bacon in the
tea-pot--not this morning. I dunno, meself, am I on me head or me heels.
All the men is much the same; they've been fallin' over each other,
tryin' to get a little bit of extra spit-an'-polish on the whole place.
I b'lieve Dave Boone wud 'a' set to work an' whitewashed the paddock
fences if I'd encouraged him at all.”
“There's that Sarah,” said Mrs. Brown. “Ornery days it takes me, an
alarum clock, an' Mary, to say nothin' of a wet sponge, to get her out
of bed. But bless you--these last three days she's up before the pair
of us, rubbin' an' polishin' in every corner. An' she an' 'Ogg at each
other's throats over flowers; she wantin' to pick every one to look
pretty in the 'ouse, an' 'Ogg wantin' every one to look pretty in the
garden.”
“Well, Hogg's got enough an' to spare,” was Murty's comment. “No union
touch about his work. I reckon he's put in sixteen hours a day at that
garden since we heard they were comin'.”
“But there never was any union touch about Billabong,” said Mrs. Brown.
“Not much! We all know when we're well off,” said Murty. “I'll bet no
union was ever as good a boss as David Linton.”
Two other men appeared at the kitchen door--Mick Shanahan and Dave
Boone--each wearing, in defiance of regulations, some battered remnant
of uniform that marked the “digger,” while Mick, in addition, would walk
always with a slight limp. He was accustomed to say 'twas a mercy it
didn't hinder his profession--which, being that of a horsebreaker, freed
him, as a rule, from the necessity of much walking. Other men Billabong
had sent to the war, and not all of them had come back; the lonely
station had been a place of anxiety and of mourning. But to-day the
memories of the long years of fighting and waiting were blotted out in
joy.
“Come in, boys,” Mrs. Brown nodded at the men. “Tea's ready. What's it
going to be?”
“Fine, I think,” said Boone, replying to this somewhat indefinite
question with complete certainty as to the questioner's meaning. “I
seen you an' Murty pokin' your heads up at them clouds, but there ain't
nothin' in them.” A smile spread over his good-looking, dark face.
“Bless you, it couldn't rain today, with Miss Norah comin' home!”
“I don't believe, meself, that Providence 'ud 'ave the 'eart,” said Mrs.
Brown. “Picksher them now, all flyin' round and gettin' ready to start,
and snatchin' a bite of breakfast--”
“If I know Master Jim 'twill be no bite he'll snatch!” put in Mick.
“Well, all I 'ope is that the 'otel don't poison them,” said Mrs.
Brown darkly. “I on'y stopped in a Melbin' 'otel once, and then I got
pot-o'-mine poisoning, or whatever they call it. I've 'eard they never
wash their saucepans!”
“No wonder you get rummy flavours in what you eat down there, if that's
so,” said Dave. “Surprisin' what the digestions of them city people
learn to put up with. Well, I suppose you won't be addin' to their risks
by puttin' up much of a dinner for them to-day, Mrs. Brown.” He grinned
wickedly.
“You go on, imperence!” said the lady. “If I let you look into the
larder now (w'ich I won't, along of knowin' you too well), there'd be
no gettin' you out to work to-day. Murty, that turkey weighed
five-and-thirty pound!”
“Sure he looked every ounce of it,” said Murty. “I niver see his
aiqual--he was a regular Clydesdale of a bird!”
“I rose him from the aig meself,” said Mrs. Brown, “and I don't think
I could 'a' brung meself to 'ave 'im killed for anythink less than them
comin' 'ome. As it was, I feel 'e's died a nobil death. An' 'e'll eat
beautiful, you mark my words.”
“Well, it'll be something to think of the Boss at the head of his table,
investigatin' a Billabong turkey again,” said Boone, putting down his
empty cup. “And as there's nothing more certain than that they'll all be
out at the stables d'reckly after dinner, wantin' to see the 'orses, you
an' I'd better go an' shine 'em up a bit more, Mick.” They tramped out
of the kitchen, while Mrs. Brown waddled to the veranda and cast further
anxious glances at the bank of clouds lying westward.
Norah was watching them, too. She was sitting in the corner of the
compartment, as the swift train bore them northward, with her eyes glued
to the country flying past. Just for once the others did not matter to
her; her father, Jim, and Wally, each in his own corner, as they had
travelled so many times in the past, coming back from school. Then she
had had eyes only for them; to-day her soul was hungry for the dear
country she had not seen for so long. It lay bare enough in the early
winter--long stretches of stone-walled paddocks where the red soil
showed through the sparse, native grass; steep, stony hillsides, with
little sheep grazing on them--pygmies, after the great English sheep;
oases of irrigation, with the deep green of lucerne growing rank among
weed-fringed water-channels; and so on and on, past little towns
and tiny settlements, and now and then a stop at some place of more
importance. But Norah did not want the towns; she was homesick for the
open country, for the scent of the gum trees coming drifting in through
the open window, for the long, lonely plains where grazing cattle raised
lazy eyes to look at the roaring engine, or horses flung up nervous
heads and went racing away across the grass--more for the fun of it than
from fear. The gum trees called to her, beckoned to her; she forgot the
smooth perfection of the English landscape as she feasted her eyes on
the dear, untidy trees, whose dangling strips of bark seemed to wave to
her in greeting, telling her she was coming home. They passed a great
team of working bullocks in a wagon loaded with an enormous tree trunk;
twenty-four monsters, roan and red and speckled, with a great pair of
polled Angus in the lead; they plodded along in their own dust, their
driver beside them with his immense whip over his shoulder. Norah
pointed them out to the others with a quick exclamation, and Jim and
Wally came to look out from her window.
“By Jove, what a team!” said Jim. “Well, just at this moment I'd rather
see those fellows than the meet of the Coaching Club in Hyde Park--and I
had a private idea that that was the finest sight in the world!”
“Aren't you a jungly animal!” quoth Wally.
“Rather--just now,” Jim rejoined. “Some day, I suppose, I'll be glad to
go back to London, and look at it all again. But just now there doesn't
seem to be anything to touch a fellow's own country--and that team of
old sloggers there is just a bit of it. Isn't it, old Nor?” She nodded
up at him; there was no need of words.
The morning was drawing towards noon when they came in sight of their
own little station: Cunjee, looking just as they had left it years ago,
its corrugated iron roofs gleaming in the sunlight, its one street green
with feathery pepper trees along each side. The train pulled up, and
they all tumbled out hastily; presumably the express wasted no more time
upon Cunjee than in days gone by, when it was necessary to hustle out
of the carriage, and to race along to the van, lest the whistle should
sound and your trunks be whisked away somewhere down the line.
There were many people on the platform, and, wonderful to relate, a band
was playing--Home Sweet Home; a little band, some of its musicians still
in the aprons in which they had rushed from their shop duties; with
instruments few and poor, and with not much training, so that the cornet
was apt to be half a bar ahead of the euphonium. The Lintons had heard
many bands since they had been away, and some had played before the King
himself; but no music had ever gripped at their heartstrings like the
music of the little backblocks band that stood on the gravelled platform
of Cunjee and played to welcome them home.
Suddenly, as they stood bewildered, there seemed people all round them;
kindly, homely faces, gripping their hands, shouting greetings. Evans,
the manager of Billabong, showed a delighted face for a moment, said,
“Luggage in the van. I'll see to it; don't you bother,” and was gone.
Little Dr. Anderson and his wife, friends of long years, were trying to
shake hands with all four at once. They were the centre of an excited
little crowd--and found it hard to believe that it was really for them.
The train roared away, unnoticed, and the station-master and the porter
ran up to add their voices to the chorus. Somehow they were outside the
station, gently propelled; and there was a great arch of gum leaves,
with a huge WELCOME in red letters, and beneath it were the shire
president and his councillors, and other weighty men, all with speeches
ready. But the speeches did not come to much, for the shire president
had lads himself who had gone to the war, and a lump came in his throat
as he looked at the tall boys from Billabong, whom he had known as
little children; so that half the fine things he had prepared were never
said--which did not matter, since he had it all written out and gave
it to the reporter of the local paper afterwards! Something of
speech-making there undoubtedly was, but no one could have told you much
about it--and suddenly it ended in some one calling for “Three cheers!”
which every one gave with a will, while the band played that they were
Jolly Good Fellows--and some of the band cheered while they played, with
very curious results. Then David Linton tried to speak, and that was a
failure also, as far as eloquence went; but nobody seemed to mind. So,
between hand grips and cheers, they made their way through the welcome
of Cunjee to where the big double buggy of Billabong stood, with three
fidgeting brown horses, each held by a volunteer. Beyond that was the
carry-all of the bush; an express wagon, with a grinning black boy at
the horses' heads--and Norah went to him with outstretched hands.
“Why, Billy!” she said.
Billy's grin expanded in a perfectly reckless fashion.
“Plenty glad!” he stammered--and thereby doubled his usual output of
words.
Willing hands were tossing their luggage into the wagon--unfamiliar
luggage to Cunjee, with its jumble of ship labels, Continental hotel
brands, and the names of towns all over England, Ireland and Scotland.
There were battered tin uniform cases of Jim and Wally's, bearing their
rank and regiment in half effaced letters: “Major J. Linton”; “Captain
W. Meadows”--it was hard to realize that they belonged to the two
merry-faced boys, who did not seem much changed from the days when
Cunjee had seen them arrive light-heartedly from school. Mr. Linton ran
his eye over the pile, pronouncing it complete. Then Evans was at his
side.
“The motor you sent is ready at the garage in the township if you want
it,” he said. “But you wired that I was to bring the buggy.”
“I did,” said David Linton, with a slow smile. “I suppose for
convenience sake we'll have to shake down to using the motor. But I
drove the old buggy away from Billabong, and I'll drive home now. Jump
in, children.”
He gathered up the reins, sitting, erect and spare, with one foot on the
brake, while the brown horses plunged impatiently, and the volunteers
found their work cut out in holding them. Norah was by him, Evans on her
other hand; Jim and Wally “tumbled up” into the back seat, as they had
done so many times. David Linton looked down at the crowd below.
“Thank you all again,” he said. “We'll see you soon--it's not good-bye
now, only 'so-long.' Let 'em go, boys.”
The volunteers sprang back, thankfully. The browns stood on their hind
legs for a moment, endeavouring to tie themselves in knots; then the
whip spoke, and they came to earth, straightened themselves out with a
flying plunge, and wheeled out of the station yard and up the
street. Behind them cheers broke out afresh, and the band blared once
more--which acted as a further spur to the horses; they were pulling
double as the high buggy flashed along the street, where every house and
every shop showed smiling faces, and handkerchiefs waved in welcome. So
they passed through Cunjee, and wheeled to the right towards the open
country--the country that meant Billabong.
There were seventeen miles of road ahead, but the browns made little of
them. They had come into the township the evening before, and had done
nothing since but eat the hotel oats and wish to be out of a close
stable and back in their own free paddocks. They took the hills at a
swift, effortless trot, and on the down slopes broke into a hand-gallop;
light-hearted, but conscious all the time of the hand on the reins, that
was as steel, yet light as a feather upon a tender mouth. They danced
merrily to one side when they met a motor or a hawker's van with
flapping cover; when the buggy rattled over a bridge they plainly
regarded the drumming of their own hoofs as the last trump, and fled
wildly for a few hundred yards, before realizing that nothing was really
going to happen to them. But the miles fled under their swift feet. The
trim villas near the township gave place to scattered farms. These in
their turn became further and further apart, and then they entered a
wide belt of timber, ragged and wind-swept gums, with dense undergrowth
of dogwood and bracken fern. The metalled road gave place to a hard,
earthern track, on which the spinning tyres made no sound; it curved in
and out among the trees, which met overhead and cast upon it a waving
pattern of shadows. Grim things had once happened to Norah in this belt
of trees, and the past came back to her as she looked at its gloomy
recesses again.
They were all silent. There had been few questions to ask of Evans, a
few to be answered; then speech fled from them and the old spell of the
country held them in its power. Every yard was familiar; every little
bridge, every culvert, every quaint old skeleton tree or dead grey log.
Here Jim's pony had bolted at sight of an Indian hawker, in days long
gone, and had ended by putting his foot into a hole and turning a
somersault, shooting Jim into a well-grown clump of nettles. Here Norah
had dropped her whip when riding alone, and her fractious young mare had
succeeded in pulling away when she dismounted, and had promptly departed
post-haste for home; leaving her wrathful owner to follow as she might.
A passing bullock-wagon had given her a lift, and the somewhat anxious
rescue party, setting out from Billabong, had met its youthful mistress,
bruised from much bumping, but otherwise cheerful, progressing in slow
majesty towards its gates. Here--but the memories were legion, even to
the girl and the two boys. And David Linton's went further back, to the
day when he had first driven Norah's mother over the Billabong track;
little and dainty and merry, while he had been as always, silent, but
unspeakably proud of her. The little mother's grave had long been green,
and the world had turned topsy-turvy since then, but the old track was
the same, and the memory, and the pride, were no less clear.
They emerged from the timber at last, and spun across a wide plain,
scattered with clumps of gum-trees. Then another belt of bush, a narrow
one this time; and they came out within view of a great park-like
paddock where Shorthorn bullocks, knee-deep in grass, scarcely moved
aside as the buggy spun past, with the browns pulling hard. The track
ran near the fence, and turned in at a big white gate glistening with
new paint. It stood wide open, and beside it was a man on a splendid bay
horse.
“There's Murty, and he's on Garryowen,” spoke Jim quickly. “The old
brick!”
“I guess if anyone else had wanted to open the gate for you to-day, he'd
have had to fight Murty for the job,” said Evans. “And Garryowen's been
groomed till he turns pale at the sight of a brush, Great horse he's
made, Mr. Jim.”
“He's all that,” said his owner, leaning out to view him better, with
his eyes shining. He raised his voice in a shout as they swung in
through the gateway. “Good for you, Murty! Hurroo!”
“Hurroo for ye all!” said Murty, and found to his amazement that his
voice was shaky. “Ah, don't shtop, sir, they're all waitin' on ye. I'll
be up as soon as ye.”
Norah had tried to speak, and had found that she had no voice at all.
She could only smile at him, tremulously--and be sure the Irishman did
not fail to catch the smile. Then, as they dashed up the paddock, her
hand sought for her father's knee under the rug, in the little gesture
that had been hers from babyhood. The track curved round a grove of
great pines, and suddenly they were within sight of Billabong homestead,
red-walled and red-roofed, nestled in the deep green of its trees.
“By Jove!” said Jim, under his breath. “I thought once I'd never see the
old place again.”
They flashed through mighty red gums and box trees, Murty galloping
beside them now. There was a big flag flying proudly on Billabong
house--they found later that the household had unanimously purchased it
on the day they heard that Jim had got his captaincy. The gate of the
great sanded yard stood open, and near it, on a wide gravel sweep, were
the dear and simple and faithful people they loved. Mrs. Brown first,
starched and spotless, her hair greyer than it had been five years
before, with Sarah and Mary beside her--they had married during the war,
but nothing had prevented them from coming back to make Billabong ready.
Near them the storekeeper, Jack Archdale, and his pretty wife, with
their elfish small daughter; and Mick Shanahan and Dave Boone, with the
Scotch gardener, Hogg, and his Chinese colleague--and sworn enemy--Lee
Wing. They were all there, a little welcoming group--but Norah could see
them only through a mist of happy tears. The buggy stopped, and Evans
sprang out over the wheel; she followed him almost as swiftly, running
to the old woman who had been all the mother she had known.
“Oh, Brownie--Brownie!”
“My precious lamb!” said Brownie, and held her tightly. She had no hands
left for Jim and Wally, and they did not seem to mind; they kissed her,
patting her vast shoulders very hard. Then Mrs. Archdale claimed Norah,
and Brownie found herself looking mistily up at David Linton and he was
gripping her hand tightly, the other hand on her shoulder.
“Why, old Brownie!” he said. “Dear old Brownie!”
They were shaking hands all round, over and over again. Nobody made any
speeches of welcome--there were only disjointed words, and once or
twice a little sob. Indeed, Brownie only found her tongue when they had
drifted across the yard in a confused group, and had reached the wide
veranda. Then she looked up at Jim and seemed suddenly to realize his
mighty height and breadth.
“Oh!” she said. “Oh! Ain't 'e grown big an' beautiful!” Whereat Wally
howled with laughter, and Jim, scarlet, kissed her again, and told her
she was a shameful old woman.
No one on Billabong could have told you much of that day, after
the first wonderful moment of getting home. It was a day of blurred
memories. The new-comers had to wander through the house where every big
window stood open to the sunlight, and every room was gay with flowers;
and from every window it was necessary to look out at the view across
the paddocks and down at the gardens, and to follow the winding course
of the creek. The gong summoned them to dinner in the midst of it, and
Brownie's dinner deserved to be remembered; the mammoth turkey flanked
by a ham as gigantic, and somewhat alarming to war-trained appetites;
followed by every sweet that Brownie could remember as having been a
favourite. They drifted naturally to the stables afterwards, to find
their special horses, apparently little changed by five years, though
some old station favourites were gone, and the men spoke proudly of some
new young ones that were going to be “beggars to go,” or “a caution to
jump.” Then they wandered down to the big lagoon, where the old boat
yet lay at the edge of the reed-fringed water; and on through the home
paddock to look at the little herd of Jerseys that were kept for the
use of the house, and some great bullocks almost ready for the Melbourne
market. So they came back to the homestead, wandering up from the creek
through Lee Wing's rows of vegetables, and came to rest naturally in the
kitchen, where they had afternoon tea with Brownie, who beamed from ear
to ear at the sight of Jim and Wally again sitting on her table.
“I used to think of you in them 'orrible trenches, an' wonder wot you
got to eat, an' if it was anything at all,” she said tremulously.
“We got something, but it was apt to be queer,” said Jim, laughing.
“We used to think of sitting on the table here, Brownie, and eating hot
scones--like this. May I have another?”
“My pore dears!” said Brownie, hastily supplying him with the largest
scone in sight. “Now, Master Wally, my love, ain't you ready for
another? Your appetite's not 'alf wot it used to be. A pikelet, now?”
“I believe I've had six!” said Wally, defending himself.
“An' wot used six pikelets to be to you? A mere fly in the ointment,”
said Brownie, whose similes were always apt to be peculiar. “Just
another, then, my dear. An' I've got your fav'rite sponge cake, Miss
Norah--ten aigs in it!”
“Ten!” said Norah faintly. “Hold me, daddy! Doesn't it make you feel
light-headed to think of putting ten eggs in one cake again?”
“An' why not?” sniffed Brownie. “Ah, you got bad treatment in that old
England. I never could see why you should go short, an' you all 'elpin'
on the war as 'ard as you could.” Brownie's indifference to national
considerations where her nurselings were concerned was well known, and
nobody argued with her. “Any'ow, the cake's there, an' just you try
it--it's as light as a feather, though I do say it.”
Once in the kitchen Norah and the boys went no further. They remained
sitting on the tables, talking, while presently David Linton went away
to his study, and, one by one, Murty and Boone and Mick Shanahan drifted
in. There was so much to tell, so much to ask about; they talked until
the dusk of the short winter afternoon stole into the kitchen, making
the red flames in the stove leap more redly. It was time to dress for
tea. They went round the wide verandas and ran upstairs to their rooms,
while old Brownie stood in the kitchen doorway listening to the merry
voices.
“Ain't it just 'evinly to 'ear 'em again!” she uttered.
“It is that,” said Murty. “We've been quare an' lonesome an' quiet these
five years.”