looking at some `indications' (of the
existence of gold) he had found.
It was no use
trying to `pump' him
concerning his sister-in-law;
Brighten was an `old hand', and had
learned in the old Bush-ranging
and cattle-stealing days to know nothing about other people's business.
And, by the way, I noticed then that the more you talk and listen
to a bad
character, the more you lose your
dislike for him.
I never saw such a change in a woman as in Brighten's sister-in-law
that evening. She was bright and jolly, and seemed at least
ten years younger. She bustled round and helped her sister to get tea ready.
She rooted out some old china that Mrs Brighten had stowed away somewhere,
and set the table as I seldom saw it set out there. She propped Jim up
with pillows, and laughed and played with him like a great girl.
She described Sydney and Sydney life as I'd never heard it described before;
and she knew as much about the Bush and old digging days as I did.
She kept old Brighten and me listening and laughing till nearly midnight.
And she seemed quick to understand everything when I talked.
If she wanted to explain anything that we hadn't seen, she wouldn't say
that it was `like a -- like a' -- and
hesitate (you know what I mean);
she'd hit the right thing on the head at once. A squatter with a very round,
flaming red face and a white cork hat had gone by in the afternoon:
she said it was `like a
mushroom on the rising moon.'
She gave me a lot of good hints about children.
But she was quiet again next morning. I
harnessed up, and she dressed Jim
and gave him his breakfast, and made a comfortable place for him on the load
with the 'possum rug and a spare pillow. She got up on the wheel
to do it herself. Then was the
awkward time. I'd half start to speak to her,
and then turn away and go fixing up round the horses, and then make
another false start to say good-bye. At last she took Jim up in her arms
and kissed him, and lifted him on the wheel; but he put his arms
tight round her neck, and kissed her -- a thing Jim seldom did with anybody,
except his mother, for he wasn't what you'd call an
affectionate child, --
he'd never more than offer his cheek to me, in his
old-fashioned way.
I'd got up the other side of the load to take him from her.
`Here, take him,' she said.
I saw his mouth twitching as I lifted him. Jim seldom cried nowadays --
no matter how much he was hurt. I gained some time fixing Jim comfortable.
`You'd better make a start,' she said. `You want to get home early
with that boy.'
I got down and went round to where she stood. I held out my hand
and tried to speak, but my voice went like an ungreased
waggon wheel,
and I gave it up, and only squeezed her hand.
`That's all right,' she said; then tears came into her eyes,
and she suddenly put her hand on my shoulder and kissed me on the cheek.
`You be off -- you're only a boy yourself. Take care of that boy;
be kind to your wife, and take care of yourself.'
`Will you come to see us?'
`Some day,' she said.
I started the horses, and looked round once more. She was looking up at Jim,
who was waving his hand to her from the top of the load.
And I saw that
haggard, hungry,
hopeless look come into her eyes
in spite of the tears.
I smoothed over that story and shortened it a lot, when I told it to Mary --
I didn't want to upset her. But, some time after I brought Jim home
from Gulgong, and while I was at home with the team for a few days,
nothing would suit Mary but she must go over to Brighten's shanty
and see Brighten's sister-in-law. So James drove her over one morning
in the spring-cart: it was a long way, and they stayed
at Brighten's
overnight and didn't get back till late the next afternoon.
I'd got the place in a pig-muck, as Mary said, `doing for' myself,
and I was having a snooze on the sofa when they got back.
The first thing I remember was some one stroking my head and kissing me,
and I heard Mary
saying, `My poor boy! My poor old boy!'
I sat up with a jerk. I thought that Jim had gone off again.
But it seems that Mary was only referring to me. Then she started
to pull grey hairs out of my head and put 'em in an empty match-box --
to see how many she'd get. She used to do this when she felt a bit soft.
I don't know what she said to Brighten's sister-in-law
or what Brighten's sister-in-law said to her, but Mary was extra gentle
for the next few days.
`Water Them Geraniums'.
I. A Lonely Track.
The time Mary and I shifted out into the Bush from Gulgong
to `settle on the land' at Lahey's Creek.
I'd sold the two tip-drays that I used for tank-sinking and dam-making,
and I took the traps out in the
waggon on top of a small load
of rations and horse-feed that I was
taking to a sheep-station
out that way. Mary drove out in the spring-cart. You remember
we left little Jim with his aunt in Gulgong till we got settled down.
I'd sent James (Mary's brother) out the day before, on horseback,
with two or three cows and some heifers and steers and
calves we had,
and I'd told him to clean up a bit, and make the hut
as bright and
cheerful as possible before Mary came.
We hadn't much in the way of furniture. There was the four-poster
cedar bedstead that I bought before we were married, and Mary was
rather proud of it: it had `turned' posts and joints that bolted together.
There was a plain hardwood table, that Mary called her `ironing-table',
upside down on top of the load, with the
bedding and blankets
between the legs; there were four of those common black kitchen-chairs --
with apples painted on the hard board backs -- that we used for the parlour;
there was a cheap batten sofa with arms at the ends and turned rails
between the uprights of the arms (we were a little proud of the turned rails);
and there was the camp-oven, and the three-legged pot, and pans and buckets,
stuck about the load and
hanging under the tail-board of the
waggon.
There was the little Wilcox & Gibb's sewing-machine -- my present to Mary
when we were married (and what a present, looking back to it!).
There was a cheap little rocking-chair, and a looking-glass and some pictures
that were presents from Mary's friends and sister. She had her
mantel-shelf ornaments and crockery and nick-nacks packed away,
in the linen and old clothes, in a big tub made of half a cask,
and a box that had been Jim's
cradle. The live stock was a cat in one box,
and in another an old
rooster, and three hens that formed cliques,
two against one, turn about, as three of the same sex will do
all over the world. I had my old cattle-dog, and of course a pup on the load
-- I always had a pup that I gave away, or sold and didn't get paid for,
or had `touched' (stolen) as soon as it was old enough. James had
his three spidery, sneaking, thieving, cold-blooded kangaroo-dogs with him.
I was
taking out three months' provisions in the way of ration-sugar,
tea, flour, and potatoes, &c.
I started early, and Mary caught up to me at Ryan's Crossing on Sandy Creek,
where we boiled the billy and had some dinner.
Mary bustled about the camp and admired the
scenery and talked too much,
for her, and was extra
cheerful, and kept her face turned from me
as much as possible. I soon saw what was the matter.
She'd been crying to herself coming along the road. I thought it was all
on
account of leaving little Jim behind for the first time. She told me
that she couldn't make up her mind till the last moment to leave him,
and that, a mile or two along the road, she'd have turned back for him,
only that she knew her sister would laugh at her. She was always
terribly
anxious about the children.
We cheered each other up, and Mary drove with me the rest of the way
to the creek, along the
lonely branch track, across native-apple-tree flats.
It was a
dreary,
hopeless track. There was no horizon,
nothing but the rough ashen trunks of the gnarled and stunted trees
in all directions, little or no undergrowth, and the ground,
save for the
coarse, brownish tufts of dead grass, as bare as the road,
for it was a dry season: there had been no rain for months,
and I wondered what I should do with the cattle if there wasn't more grass
on the creek.
In this sort of country a stranger might travel for miles
without
seeming to have moved, for all the difference there is in the
scenery.
The new tracks were `blazed' -- that is, slices of bark cut off
from both sides of trees, within sight of each other, in a line,
to mark the track until the horses and wheel-marks made it plain.
A smart Bushman, with a sharp tomahawk, can blaze a track as he rides.
But a Bushman a little used to the country soon picks out
differences
amongst the trees, half
unconsciously as it were,
and so finds his way about.
Mary and I didn't talk much along this track -- we couldn't have
heard each other very well, anyway, for the `clock-clock' of the
waggonand the
rattle of the cart over the hard lumpy ground.
And I suppose we both began to feel pretty
dismal as the shadows lengthened.
I'd noticed
lately that Mary and I had got out of the habit of talking
to each other -- noticed it in a vague sort of way that
irritated me
(as vague things will
irritate one) when I thought of it. But then I thought,
`It won't last long -- I'll make life brighter for her by-and-by.'
As we went along -- and the track seemed endless -- I got brooding, of course,
back into the past. And I feel now, when it's too late, that Mary
must have been thinking that way too. I thought of my early boyhood,
of the hard life of `grubbin'' and `milkin'' and `fencin'' and `ploughin''
and `ring-barkin'', &c., and all for nothing. The few months
at the little bark-school, with a teacher who couldn't spell.
The cursed
ambition or
craving that tortured my soul as a boy --
ambition or
craving for -- I didn't know what for! For something
better and brighter, anyhow. And I made the life harder by
reading at night.
It all passed before me as I followed on in the
waggon,
behind Mary in the spring-cart. I thought of these old things
more than I thought of her. She had tried to help me to better things.
And I tried too -- I had the
energy of half-a-dozen men when I saw a road
clear before me, but shied at the first check. Then I brooded,
or dreamed of making a home -- that one might call a home -- for Mary --
some day. Ah, well! ----
And what was Mary thinking about, along the
lonely, changeless miles?
I never thought of that. Of her kind,
careless, gentleman father, perhaps.
Of her girlhood. Of her homes -- not the huts and camps she lived in with me.
Of our future? -- she used to plan a lot, and talk a good deal of our future
-- but not
lately. These things didn't strike me at the time -- I was so deep
in my own brooding. Did she think now -- did she begin to feel now
that she had made a great mistake and thrown away her life,
but must make the best of it? This might have roused me, had I thought of it.
But
whenever I thought Mary was getting
indifferent towards me,
I'd think, `I'll soon win her back. We'll be sweethearts again --
when things
brighten up a bit.'
It's an awful thing to me, now I look back to it, to think how far apart
we had grown, what strangers we were to each other. It seems, now,
as though we had been sweethearts long years before, and had parted,
and had never really met since.
The sun was going down when Mary called out --
`There's our place, Joe!'
She hadn't seen it before, and somehow it came new and with a shock to me,
who had been out here several times. Ahead, through the trees to the right,
was a dark green clump of the oaks
standing out of the creek,
darker for the dead grey grass and blue-grey bush on the
barren ridge
in the
background. Across the creek (it was only a deep, narrow
gutter --
a water-course with a chain of water-holes after rain),
across on the other bank, stood the hut, on a narrow flat
between the spur and the creek, and a little higher than this side.
The land was much better than on our old
selection, and there was good soil
along the creek on both sides: I expected a rush of selectors out here soon.
A few acres round the hut was cleared and fenced in by a light two-rail fence
of
timber split from logs and saplings. The man who took up this
selectionleft it because his wife died here.
It was a small oblong hut built of split slabs, and he had roofed it
with shingles which he split in spare times. There was no verandah,
but I built one later on. At the end of the house was a big
slab-and-bark shed, bigger than the hut itself, with a kitchen,
a skillion for tools,
harness, and horse-feed, and a spare bedroom
partitioned off with sheets of bark and old chaff-bags.
The house itself was floored
roughly, with cracks between the boards;
there were cracks between the slabs all round -- though he'd nailed
strips of tin, from old kerosene-tins, over some of them;
the partitioned-off bedroom was lined with old chaff-bags