RESPONSIBILITIES
MOTHER had gone to Melbourne, much against her will, to see the
dentist—that useful person who secures for many Bush mothers their only
chance of a holiday to the city. But on this occasion Mrs. Weston was
not in the least grateful for the trip. In better times, when a visit to
Town meant pretty clothes, theatres and smart restaurants, the necessity
for a few painful hours in the dentist’s chair never seemed a high price
to pay. But now, with so little money to spare that her beloved twins
had to work at home, the journey was merely a nuisance, and she resented
having to spend so much upon herself—after the fashion of mothers.
Melbourne was hot, dusty, and empty of all the people she knew: they
were all at the seaside or in the cool shelter of the hills. Mrs. Weston
harried the dentist until he consented to hurry through her treatment,
and thankfully sent a telegram to Emu Plains to announce her speedy
return.
Tom Holmes brought the telegram out, driving his father’s car. A long
trail of dust marked his dash up the track through the grassless
paddock. The twins, just returned from bathing, met him on the verandah.
“Lucky people—you look disgustingly cool,” said the stout youth,
pushing his broad Panama back from his hot forehead. “How do you manage
it?”
“Swimming,” said Jean, shaking her damp curls. “There’s still water in
the bathing-pool, though very little in the other part of the river.”
“Well, it’ll soon be the only place in this district that isn’t solid
dust, if we don’t get rain before long,” declared Tom. “Our billabong
and creek are bone-dry, and the river’s only a trickle. Father says
he’ll have to send every hoof off the place—not that he’s got many
left.”
“The whole country looks awful,” Jo said. “It doesn’t seem possible that
there was ever thick green grass on those bare paddocks—or that there
ever would be any again. How are your horses, Tom?”
“Poor as crows, except two or three that we keep in the stable. Of
course, there are hardly any here now; they’ve all gone away for change
of air,” said Tom, laughing rather bitterly. “Well, I’m generally keen
enough on being at home, but I’m beginning to feel I can stand a change
of scene myself; it gives a fellow the blues to see nothing but dust and
half-starved stock. For once in my life I’d rather drive the car than
ride; one gets about the country more quickly. That reminds me. I
thought I’d bring out your mail. There’s a wire for you.”
“Father’s out, so we’d better open it—I expect it’s from Mother,” Jo
said. “Yes; and she’ll be home to-morrow, Jean—hooray! It seems an age
since she went away, and it’s only four days. Thanks, ever so, Tom. Do
you feel like tea? Or a lemon squash?”
“If I’m to be strictly truthful,” said Tom, “I feel like both. A squash
would make me less like a sandy desert, and then I’d enjoy some tea. At
present, tea would be wasted on me: it would merely hiss when it struck
me, and immediately vanish in steam!”
“Poor boy!” laughed Jo. “Come along, and we’ll brew the squash before
tea comes in. Thank goodness Father planted lemon-trees near the spring;
they haven’t the least idea there’s a drought on. Would you like a wash
first, Tom?”
“I was afraid I looked like that,” said Tom unhappily. “Yes, please.
Bathroom on the verandah?”
“Yes. And you really didn’t look like it, only I thought it might make
you feel a bit happier. Is it necessary to say, ‘Don’t waste the water,’
or would you be insulted?”
“I should think I would,” declared Tom; “we’ve got a drought of our own,
haven’t we?” He strode off, returning presently to find a brimming
tumbler awaiting him in the cool dimness of the shaded dining-room.
“That’s gorgeous!” he declared, putting down the empty glass. “I had a
drink from the tap in the bathroom first, because, of course, no drink
is really long enough in weather like this, and——”
“You shouldn’t have drunk that water,” stated Jean anxiously. “It isn’t
drinking-water. Now we ought to sterilize you.”
“Any water’s drinking-water in weather like this,” said Tom, unmoved.
“Besides, it will get thoroughly boiled when I go out into the heat
again, so why worry? Water is always purified if you submit it to a high
enough temperature—and goodness knows the thermometer is doing its best
to break records to-day. How’s your pupil-teaching going, Jean?”
“Oh, well enough,” Jean answered. “We’re beginning to feel we’re making
some progress. At first we were very scared of our job, but we are
plucking up courage now. Rex is getting much more like an ordinary boy,
and that’s a comfort. We were afraid he’d never be ordinary, but it’s
surprising to see how soon polish like his disappears among plain and
honest folk!”
“Is that what you are?” Tom demanded, round-eyed.
“Yes—very plain and honest. Don’t you dare to say we’re not, Tom
Holmes!”
“All right,” said Tom, meekly; “I won’t; only just you remember it
wasn’t me that said you were plain. And what about the riding-lessons?
Is the kid shaping well at that?”
“Oh, rather. Father says he took to it from the start like a duck to
water. He goes cantering round the home-paddock now on old Merrilegs,
with Billy on one of our ponies. Sits well too, and he has good hands.
He tried to jump a log the other day, and came to grief, but he didn’t
mind.”
“He wasn’t hurt?”
“Oh, no. You see, Merrilegs has ideas of his own about jumping, now: he
thinks he’s too old, and it takes Billy all he knows to get him over a
log. So, when Rex rode him at this one—it was only a wee little log—he
just propped. And Rex shot over the log all right, except that the pony
didn’t go with him. Rex was awfully disgusted, but he wasn’t hurt.”
“And, of course, Billy yelled with laughter?”
“Well, that’s what Billy _would_ do,” said Jo. “All the same, I think
it’s very likely that Master Rex will go off by himself some fine
morning and get Merrilegs over that log—just as he did with swimming.”
She told the story of the boys’ early-morning bathe, and Tom nodded
approvingly.
“Shows he’s got something in him. Well, I went to school with the other
Forester boys, and they certainly weren’t the kind of chaps to be beaten
by anything.”
“And, of course, his sister Helen is the same. Why, she was Captain of
Merriwa!” said Jo, as though that assertion implied every possible
virtue. “Only, Rex hasn’t had a fair chance, between illnesses and being
handed over to a prim old governess who did her best to make an Early
Victorian young lady of him. He was like nothing earthly when he came,
but there’s a good deal of commonplace small boy cropping out now, thank
goodness!”
“And how about you two?” demanded Tom, with a grin. “How’s work suiting
you?”
“Oh, work’s all right,” said Jo shortly.
Not even Jean knew how her twin longed in secret for the school-life
they had lost. School had always been a glad prospect ahead of them, for
Mrs. Weston had loved her years at Merriwa and she had brought up the
twins in happy anticipation of just as good a time when their own turn
should come. And it had been all, and more, that they had hoped.
Lessons, thanks to their mother’s good grounding, had been not too
difficult: out of school hours the time had been all too brief for the
packed interests, the jolly friendships, the long, intimate talks. Their
first year had gone in a happy whirl: they had looked forward to others
as good. And now it was all over.
Not that Jo was discontented with home-life. It was not in her nature to
be discontented with anything for more than five minutes at a time. She
loved her home, and there was plenty of interest in each day’s work and
play, besides the solid satisfaction of knowing that she and her twin
were doing something really worth while—something that helped to lift
the burden from her father’s shoulders. But they were not yet sixteen:
and sometimes there came over her a wave of longing for the care-free
days when there had been no worries, no responsibilities. “We were just
kids, last year,” she thought, sometimes. “It’s a bit sudden to be
grown-up.”
Then she would wonder if Jean thought the same. But, whatever Jean
thought, she made no sign.
Something of this longing for the life of last year came over Jo at
Tom’s careless question. She looked at him half-resentfully: he was so
unconscious of any real worries, although he grumbled cheerfully at the
heat and the drought. They really touched him very little: he would go
back to school, bored at going, feeling certain that before he returned
the drought would be broken and the country smiling again. He was a year
and a half older than they, and yet he was only a child, playing: and
they were workers——
She gave herself a mental shake.
“Well, you are a pig, Jo Weston!” she addressed herself silently.
“Jealous and bad-tempered, and altogether piggish! Be ashamed of
yourself!”—and forthwith smiled cheerfully at the unconscious Tom.
“Work’s really rather a lark when you get going,” she stated
unconcernedly. “We get a lot of fun out of it.”
“Well, you both look as if you were always on the grin,” said Tom.
“Goodness knows, there’s not much laughing going on at our place.
Father’s always growling at the drought, and Mother says she’s tired of
looking at bare paddocks and she means to have a flat in Town. And
Father says he’d rather be shot than live in a flat. So there it is, and
I’m beginning to think it won’t be so bad to go back to school, though
the bare idea of swotting over Latin gives me the creeps. Hullo, Sarah!
how are you?”
“I’ve been better, and I’ve been worse,” said Sarah, non-committally,
putting down a loaded tea-tray. “And how’s yourself, Master Tom?”
“Oh, first-rate,” Tom said. “Is it hot enough for you, Sarah?”
“That’s one of them questions as ought to be put down by an Ack of
Parlyment,” said Sarah testily. “I druv into the township with Miss Jean
yesterday, an’ it was just as ’ot as ’ot: an’ every one arsked the same
thing, no matter what shop I went into. A body knows she ain’t lookin’
’er best with ’er face the colour of a tomato an’ perspiration droppin’
off ’er forehead, an’ it sort of rubs it in to be arsked all the time,
‘Is it ’ot enough for you?’ Anyone lookin’ at me with ’alf an eye could
see it was a good deal more’n ’ot enough for me. But they kep’ on
arskin’, all the same.”
“Sorry,” said Tom, laughing. “Stupid of me, Sarah—but when it’s as hot
as this all one’s brain turns to dough.”
“Oh, ’ot!” said Sarah, with scorn. “It makes me tired to hear every one
growlin’ about the ’eat, and sayin’ there was never such a drought.”
“But you said yourself it was hot yesterday,” protested the bewildered
Tom.
“Well, I did; an’ it _was_ ’ot. But I don’t go growlin’ all the time.
Summers ain’t nothing to what they was: I tell you, in my young days
’eat was ’eat, an’ drought was drought, an’ no mistake. Just you think
what summers was twenty years ago—oh, well, of course you can’t”—as
her hearers shouted with laughter—“but any’ow, you can take my word for
it we knew what temp’rashur was! Soarin’ well above the ’undred for a
fortnight on end. An’ droughts lasted years. Nowadays, every one thinks
they’re killed if they get a few days’ ’eat, an’ a bit of a drought like
this makes ’em think the world’s comin’ to an end.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that, Sarah. But it’s bad enough.”
“Aw, bad!” sniffed Sarah. “Them old droughts was bad, if you like, when
the ground was as bare as Collins Street, an’ all the sheep got boiled
down for tallow. An’ there wasn’t the grumblin’ then that there is now.”
“Gammon!” said Tom unexpectedly. “Don’t tell me people didn’t growl,
Sarah. Why, anyone on the land will growl even in a good season, let
alone a bad one. Did you ever know a man on the land who was satisfied
with the weather?”
“Well, no, I don’t suppose I did,” admitted Sarah, gazing with some
amazement at her opponent. “Farmers an’ sich especially: you can’t
please ’em with weather, not if you made it to order. But what I do say
is, that it’s no good grumblin’ an’ grousin’, even if there is a bit of
a drought. Keep smilin’, an’ it’ll rain some day.” With which philosophy
Sarah collected her temporarily scattered forces and withdrew.
“She didn’t say that, at all, of course,” remarked Tom. “At least, I
don’t think she did, but Sarah’s so eloquent, when she gets going, that
I’m really not sure. I’d love to take her last bit of advice home to
Father and give it to him when he was being really excited about the
drought. ‘Keep smilin’, an’ it’ll rain some day!’ But I’d wish to be
well out of his reach when I delivered it.”
“You’d think Sarah was such a Tartar, just to listen to her, wouldn’t
you?” laughed Jean, pouring out tea. “And she’s really so mild she’d eat
out of your hand. She’s been teaching us the proper way to turn out
rooms, and polish floors, and to keep the silver, in the hope of making
us what she calls ‘house-proud.’ She says no woman is any good unless
she’s house-proud.”
“Whatever’s that?” asked the bewildered masculine hearer.
“Oh, being mad keen on one’s house, and having everything ‘just-so.’
It’s really rather fun, too, only poor old Sarah’s so quaint over it;
she shows us how to do a thing with heaps of ‘elbow-grease,’ and then
she sighs over our doing it at all, and begs us to go and rub cold cream
on our hands or they’ll never be as nice as Mother’s! Which they
certainly never will,” added Jean, placing a brown paw on the table near
her twin’s. “And then she goes and hurriedly cooks something we like for
tea. But if we thank her she only looks down her nose and mutters
something, and, if you didn’t know her well, you’d think she was
offended at being thanked at all. But she’s a darling when you do happen
to know her.”
There was a pounding of horses’ feet in the paddock, and Jo ran to the
window. .
“Father and the boys are coming!” she cried. “They’ve been out to one of
the back paddocks. Look at Rex, Tom—doesn’t he ride decently, for a
new-chum?”
There was a cloud of dust, out of which the forms of the riders were
looming indistinctly. Old grey Merrilegs came along at a smooth, easy
canter, his rider bumping a little, but clearly happy. Mr. Weston rode a
little to the right, on a big, good-looking bay, and Billy scampered in
front on Punch, Jean’s pony. He rode as if he were part of the little
black he was on: his hands down, his head up, all his merry face flushed
with excitement.
“Rex’ll never ride like Billy,” said Tom, watching him.
“Oh, but Billy has been on a horse ever since he was six months old and
Father used to take him out in front of him,” Jo said. “Billy can’t help
riding. But Rex is not bad, now, is he?”
“No, indeed, he’s not. And with goggles, too—I always think glasses
must be terribly hampering to a kid,” remarked Tom. “Oh, he’ll do, if
only you people can keep him for a bit. It would be no end of a pity if
he wasn’t able to follow up his big brothers at Grammar: they’ve been
such good all-round men.”
“He’s going to be just as good as they are,” declared Jo hotly. “When he
gets stronger he’ll probably be able to leave off the glasses
altogether—the oculist said so. And his muscles are developing
already.”
“Yes, and he can box, too,” chimed in Jean. “Father gives them lessons
every night, and he says Rex will have a punch like the kick of a mule!”
“And you’re just like a pair of old hens with a turkey-chick,” grinned
Tom. “You know what delicate little squeakers they are at first—have to
be fed every hour, and all that sort of thing. And then, suddenly, they
get big and strong and turn into proud gobblers! Take care, or that’s
what young Rex will be doing—and proud gobblers have no sort of a time
when they go to school.”
The twins laughed, but they accepted the big fellow’s warning meekly
enough.
“We’re going to be awfully careful, really. He’s such a nice kid—when
he isn’t polished—that it would be easy to spoil him; and then, it does
feel as if he really were our own turkey-chick. And we keep remembering
how small he is, and that his mother’s thousands of miles away. But
we’re trying hard to keep our feelings to ourselves, when he’s about:
and Father has promised to come down on us heavily if he sees any signs
of molly-coddling. So perhaps there’s hope.” The twins, who had rendered
these remarks in a composite fashion peculiarly their own, paused, and
looked anxiously at Tom, who suddenly loomed before them as a possible
Grammar School senior what time Rex might be joining as a palpitating
junior.
Tom nodded, aware of his masculine superiority.
“Oh, if Mr. Weston’s keeping an eye on him he won’t go far wrong,” he
said—and then Sarah stalked in, tall and grim, with a loaded tray.
“I made the biggest pot of tea,” she explained, “seein’ as ’ow they’ll
all be dusty and thirsty. They’ll be in in a minute; they’re washin’
themselves up now.”
“Thanks, Sarah dear,” said Jean. “Oh, and, Sarah—Mother’s coming home
to-morrow.”
Sarah’s dour face suddenly softened.
“That’s good news!” she said. “Some’ow the place is just an ’owlin’
desert when she’s away. Did she say if the dentist ’ad ’urt her much?”
“She didn’t say—there’s only a telegram,” Jean answered.
“I wish she ’ad,” said Sarah anxiously. She left the room, evidently
dissatisfied with the deficiencies of telegrams. They heard her joyfully
informing Mr. Weston, in the hall, of the news.
“Mother coming home!—that’s great!” he said, coming in. “You’re the
mail-man, I suppose, Tom—many thanks. We didn’t expect her so soon.
Yes, I’ll be glad of tea, twinses: it’s awfully hot and dusty in the
paddocks, and my two boundary-riders must be as thirsty as I am. Here
they come”—as the boys clattered up the hall. “Any news, Tom?”
“Nothing that I know of—barring drought,” Tom answered.
“That’s not news now, worse luck!” Mr. Weston said. “It’s what you might
call ancient history turned into an established fact. Well, I heard some
news, and it isn’t good news, either: a man who was mending a fence next
ours told me there are big fires at Gulgong Flat, fifteen miles away.
Several poor souls have been burned out, and a lot of damage done. Of
course, with such a season, it’s a wonder that we have not had fires in
the district before this: had there been more grass to carry them they
would certainly have come, for the whole country is as dry as a stick.”
“Father was saying a good many fires have started, but they have been
quickly got under,” Tom remarked.
“Yes—that’s one advantage of a drought. Fires won’t run over bare
ground, and most of the paddocks are bare enough. Even the roadsides
have been eaten right out by travelling stock. But there is plenty of
lightly timbered country about Gulgong Flat, and of course fire will
travel very fast in that. We can only hope they will get it under before
it comes our way.”
“Well, Emu Plains is safe enough, Mr. Weston,” said Tom.
“The house is, of course. There’s scarcely any chance of danger here,
for there’s no grass to carry a fire up to us, and no timber to speak
of. But I don’t want my back paddocks burned out—that’s about all the
grass I’ve got left; and I can’t afford to lose fencing. We may have to
move the cattle in a hurry, if the fire spreads; the boys and I rode
round them to-day, and drove them out of the timber, to accustom them to
the move, in case it has to be made.”
“It was grand fun,” said Rex. “And, Jean—I jumped a log, and I didn’t
fall off!”
“Didn’t I tell you you would?” said Jean, smiling at him. “How are the
cattle, Father?”
“Well, they’re holding their own, and that’s about all one can say,” her
father answered. “The water is good, of course: that helps a lot.
Goodness knows, there can’t be much nourishment in the sort of grass
that’s left, but, somehow, they are managing to pick up a living. I
suppose, some day, if rain doesn’t come, they’ll decide that it really
isn’t worth while, and they’ll lie down and die. But there’s always hope
that rain will come.”
“Then we’ll all go and sit and watch the grass grow and the cattle get
fat,” said Jo. “Won’t it be fun, Rex?”
“Will they really get fat while you look at them?” asked the small boy,
round-eyed behind his spectacles.
“Rather,” said Tom. “Of course, there are a few shy ones, which don’t
like getting fat in front of people, and they make for the scrub!”
“I don’t think that’s true!” said Rex solemnly. At which everybody
laughed, and Jean offered him a cake, which he ate in puzzled silence,
pondering on the queer ways of country folk. They were very jolly, Rex
thought, and he had quite made up his mind that when he was grown-up he
would own a station and manage it himself. But there was no doubt that
they were sometimes difficult to understand, and occasionally they
talked a language all their own, full of words that were quite
unfamiliar to him. He had mental notes of several queer expressions he
would ask the twins to explain: Why bullocks were “poor as crows,” and
why a crow was poor, anyhow; and what it was that cattle held when they
were said “to hold their own,” and how did they hold anything? Rex had
ridden that afternoon round more cattle than he had ever been near
before, but none of them were attempting to hold things, their own or
anyone else’s. He longed to catch a twin by herself, that he might ask
her. Other people might—and did—laugh at him; but never the twins.
Tom said good-bye presently, and they all went out to the gate with him,
after the friendly Bush fashion, and watched him disappear in a cloud of
dust. The twins hurried back to take out the tea-tray.
In the kitchen they came suddenly upon Sarah, who straightened up
guiltily at their approach. But the twins had seen, for a moment, a
bowed head, her face hidden in her hands; and as she turned from them to
stir a saucepan which obviously contained only hot water they saw that
she was pale, with heavy rings under her eyes. Jean looked a minute, and
then put down her tray.
“What’s the matter, Sarah?”
“There ain’t nothing the matter,” Sarah said. “What would there be?”
“I don’t know,” said Jean. “But there’s something, all the same. Tell
us, Sarah dear—let’s help.”
“Well, I’ve just a little ’eadache,” admitted the gaunt handmaiden.
“It must be a pretty big headache, to make you look like that,” Jo said.
“You might as well tell us, Sarah, old thing.”
“It’s me rubbishy old neuralgy,” Sarah said, capitulating. “I do get it
’ot an’ strong, an’ that’s a fack. Comes all over me ’ead. I been tryin’
to beat it all day, but it’s near got me down. It’s like a red-’ot knife
goin’ in an’ out of me left eye.”
“Why, you poor old dear!” cried the twins. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Oh, I ’ates makin’ a fuss,” said the sufferer. “I did ’ave thoughts of
goin’ to tell you, when I seen you come back from bathin’: an’ then Mr.
Tom came, an’ on top of ’im the news of the Missus comin’ ’ome. An’ I
can’t go an’ get sick just as she comes. So I determined not to be. But
the pain seems a bit ahead of the determination: I expect it got a
start.”
“Well, you’re just going to lie down now,” Jean said firmly. “Real
lie-down—dress and shoes off: and you’re not to come out again
to-night, or to-morrow, or until you’re better. I’ll come in ten minutes
with a cup of tea and some aspirin.”
“But the tea!” groaned Sarah. “I got a potato pie made, but, of course,
it ain’t time to put it in. Lemme stay till I’ve washed up after
tea——”
The twins each took an arm, and propelled her, gently but firmly,
towards the door.
“I guess we’ll manage the pie,” Jo said, with the firmness possible to a
cookery prize-winner. “Now, we’re coming in ten minutes, Sarah, and just
you be lying down, or there’ll be awful trouble.”
They found her, pale, but protesting, when they visited her room, and
having administered tea and aspirin, bathed her throbbing brows with
eau-de-Cologne.
“That’s lovely,” she admitted. “My word, it’s great to be lyin’
down—but I do ’ate leavin’ everything to you. It don’t seem fair, when
you’ve all the work you ’ave.”
“Now, will you just be a sensible old thing and not talk rubbish!” Jean
said, giving a final dab with her little sponge. “What do you think
Mother would say to us if she came home and found you doing the work and
looking like a demented ghost?”
“Demented I was beginnin’ to feel, an’ no mistake,” said poor Sarah
wearily. “You really won’t do any more than you ’ave to, will you, me
dears?”
“We won’t start cleaning the kitchen, if that’s what you mean,” said Jo,
laughing. “Go to sleep, if you can, and forget about everything until
you wake up better.” They tiptoed out, closing the door gently, and
softly danced down the passage to the kitchen.
[Illustration: “‘Oh, we’re quite all right,’ Jo replied. ‘It’s really
great fun, Father, and we’re enjoying it. And we _do_ want to have things
nice for Mother.’”
_The Twins of Emu Plains_] [_Page 166_]