`Yes; the Boss did. The little ones were buried on the Lachlan river
at first; but the Boss got a
horror of having them buried in the Bush,
so he had them brought to Sydney and buried in the Waverley Cemetery
near the sea. He bought the ground, and room for himself and Maggie
when they go out. It's all the ground he owns in wide Australia,
and once he had thousands of acres. He took her to the grave one day.
The doctors were against it; but he couldn't rest till he tried it.
He took her out, and explained it all to her. She scarcely seemed interested.
She read the names on the stone, and said it was a nice stone,
and asked questions about how the children were found and brought here.
She seemed quite
sensible, and very cool about it. But when he got her home
she was back on the fairy idea again. He tried another day,
but it was no use; so then he let it be. I think it's better as it is.
Now and again, at her best, she seems to understand that the children
were found dead, and buried, and she'll talk sensibly about it,
and ask questions in a quiet way, and make him promise to take her to Sydney
to see the grave next time he's down. But it doesn't last long,
and she's always worse afterwards.'
We turned into a bar and had a beer. It was a very quiet drink.
Andy `shouted' in his turn, and while I was drinking the second beer
a thought struck me.
`The Boss was away when the children were lost?'
`Yes,' said Andy.
`Strange you couldn't find him.'
`Yes, it was strange; but HE'LL have to tell you about that.
Very likely he will; it's either all or nothing with him.'
`I feel
damned sorry for the Boss,' I said.
`You'd be sorrier if you knew all,' said Andy. `It's the worst trouble
that can happen to a man. It's like living with the dead.
It's -- it's like a man living with his dead wife.'
When we went home supper was ready. We found Mrs Head, bright and cheerful,
bustling round. You'd have thought her one of the happiest and brightest
little women in Australia. Not a word about children or the fairies.
She knew the Bush, and asked me all about my trips.
She told some good Bush stories too. It was the pleasantest hour I'd spent
for a long time.
`Good night, Mr Ellis,' she said
brightly, shaking hands with me
when Andy and I were going to turn in. `And don't forget your pipe.
Here it is! I know that Bushmen like to have a whiff or two
when they turn in. Walter smokes in bed. I don't mind.
You can smoke all night if you like.'
`She seems all right,' I said to Andy when we were in our room.
He shook his head mournfully. We'd left the door ajar,
and we could hear the Boss talking to her quietly. Then we heard her speak;
she had a very clear voice.
`Yes, I'll tell you the truth, Walter. I've been deceiving you, Walter,
all the time, but I did it for the best. Don't be angry with me, Walter!
The Voices did come back while you were away. Oh, how I longed
for you to come back! They haven't come since you've been home, Walter.
You must stay with me a while now. Those awful Voices kept
calling me,
and telling me lies about the children, Walter! They told me to kill myself;
they told me it was all my own fault -- that I killed the children.
They said I was a drag on you, and they'd laugh -- Ha! ha! ha! -- like that.
They'd say, "Come on, Maggie; come on, Maggie." They told me
to come to the river, Walter.'
Andy closed the door. His face was very miserable.
We turned in, and I can tell you I enjoyed a soft white bed
after months and months of
sleeping out at night, between watches,
on the hard ground or the sand, or at best on a few boughs
when I wasn't too tired to pull them down, and my
saddle for a pillow.
But the story of the children
haunted me for an hour or two.
I've never since quite made up my mind as to why the Boss took me home.
Probably he really did think it would do his wife good to talk to a stranger;
perhaps he wanted me to understand -- maybe he was weakening as he grew older,
and craved for a new word or hand-grip of
sympathy now and then.
When I did get to sleep I could have slept for three or four days, but Andy
roused me out about four o'clock. The old woman that they called Auntie
was up and had a good breakfast of eggs and bacon and coffee ready
in the detached kitchen at the back. We moved about on tiptoe
and had our breakfast quietly.
`The wife made me promise to wake her to see to our breakfast
and say Good-bye to you; but I want her to sleep this morning, Jack,'
said the Boss. `I'm going to walk down as far as the station with you.
She made up a
parcel of fruit and sandwiches for you and Andy.
Don't forget it.'
Andy went on ahead. The Boss and I walked down the wide silent street,
which was also the main road; and we walked two or three hundred yards
without
speaking. He didn't seem sociable this morning,
or any way
sentimental; when he did speak it was something about the cattle.
But I had to speak; I felt a swelling and rising up in my chest,
and at last I made a
swallow and blurted out --
`Look here, Boss, old chap! I'm
damned sorry!'
Our hands came together and gripped. The
ghostly Australian daybreak
was over the Bathurst plains.
We went on another hundred yards or so, and then the Boss said quietly --
`I was away when the children were lost, Jack. I used to go
on a howling spree every six or nine months. Maggie never knew. I'd tell her
I had to go to Sydney on business, or Out-Back to look after some stock.
When the children were lost, and for nearly a
fortnight after,
I was
beastly drunk in an out-of-the-way shanty in the Bush --
a sly grog-shop. The old brute that kept it was too true to me.
He thought that the story of the lost children was a trick to get me home,
and he swore that he hadn't seen me. He never told me.
I could have found those children, Jack. They were
mostly new chums and fools
about the run, and not one of the three policemen was a Bushman.
I knew those scrubs better than any man in the country.'
I reached for his hand again, and gave it a grip. That was all I could do
for him.
`Good-bye, Jack!' he said at the door of the brake-van. `Good-bye, Andy! --
keep those bullocks on their feet.'
The cattle-train went on towards the Blue Mountains. Andy and I sat silent
for a while, watching the guard fry three eggs on a plate over a coal-stove
in the centre of the van.
`Does the boss never go to Sydney?' I asked.
`Very seldom,' said Andy, `and then only when he has to, on business.
When he finishes his business with the stock agents, he takes a run
out to Waverley Cemetery perhaps, and comes home by the next train.'
After a while I said, `He told me about the drink, Andy --
about his being on the spree when the children were lost.'
`Well, Jack,' said Andy, `that's the thing that's been killing him ever since,
and it happened over ten years ago.'
A Bush Dance.
`Tap, tap, tap, tap.'
The little
schoolhouse and
residence in the scrub was lighted
brightlyin the midst of the `close', solid
blackness of that moonless December night,
when the sky and stars were smothered and suffocated by
drought haze.
It was the evening of the school children's `Feast'. That is to say
that the children had been sent, and `let go', and the younger ones `fetched'
through the blazing heat to the school, one day early in the holidays,
and raced -- sometimes in couples tied together by the legs -- and caked,
and bunned, and finally improved upon by the local Chadband, and got rid of.
The
schoolroom had been cleared for dancing, the maps rolled and tied,
the desks and blackboards stacked against the wall outside.
Tea was over, and the trestles and boards,
whereon had been spread
better things than had been provided for the
unfortunate youngsters,
had been taken outside to keep the desks and blackboards company.
On stools
running end to end along one side of the room sat about twenty
more or less
blooming country girls of from fifteen to twenty odd.
On the rest of the stools,
running end to end along the other wall,
sat about twenty more or less
blooming chaps.
It was
evident that something was
seriously wrong. None of the girls
spoke above a hushed
whisper. None of the men spoke above a hushed oath.
Now and again two or three sidled out, and if you had followed them
you would have found that they went outside to listen hard into the darkness
and to swear.
`Tap, tap, tap.'
The rows moved
uneasily, and some of the girls turned pale faces nervously
towards the side-door, in the direction of the sound.
`Tap -- tap.'
The tapping came from the kitchen at the rear of the teacher's
residence,
and was uncomfortably
suggestive of a
coffin being made:
it was also accompanied by a
sickly,
indescribable odour --
more like that of warm cheap glue than anything else.
In the
schoolroom was a
painful scene of strained listening.
Whenever one of the men returned from outside, or put his head in at the door,
all eyes were fastened on him in the flash of a single eye,
and then
withdrawnhopelessly. At the sound of a horse's step
all eyes and ears were on the door, till some one muttered,
`It's only the horses in the paddock.'
Some of the girls' eyes began to
glisten suspiciously,
and at last the belle of the party -- a great, dark-haired,
pink-and-white Blue Mountain girl, who had been sitting for a full minute
staring before her, with blue eyes unnaturally bright, suddenly covered
her face with her hands, rose, and started
blindly from the room,
from which she was steered in a hurry by two
sympathetic and rather `upset'
girl friends, and as she passed out she was heard sobbing hysterically --
`Oh, I can't help it! I did want to dance! It's a sh-shame!
I can't help it! I -- I want to dance! I rode twenty miles to dance --
and -- and I want to dance!'
A tall, strapping young Bushman rose, without
disguise, and followed
the girl out. The rest began to talk loudly of stock, dogs, and horses,
and other Bush things; but above their voices rang out that of the girl
from the outside -- being man comforted --
`I can't help it, Jack! I did want to dance! I -- I had such --
such -- a job -- to get mother -- and -- and father to let me come --
and -- and now!'
The two girl friends came back. `He sez to leave her to him,' they
whispered,
in reply to an interrogatory glance from the
schoolmistress.
`It's -- it's no use, Jack!' came the voice of grief. `You don't know what --
what father and mother -- is. I -- I won't -- be able -- to ge-get away --
again -- for -- for -- not till I'm married, perhaps.'
The
schoolmistress glanced
uneasily along the row of girls. `I'll take her
into my room and make her lie down,' she
whispered to her sister,
who was staying with her. `She'll start some of the other girls
presently --
it's just the weather for it,' and she passed out quietly.
That
schoolmistress was a woman of penetration.
A final `tap-tap' from the kitchen; then a sound like the squawk
of a hurt or frightened child, and the faces in the room
turned quickly in that direction and brightened. But there came a bang
and a sound like `damn!' and hopelessness settled down.
A shout from the outer darkness, and most of the men and some of the girls
rose and
hurried out. Fragments of conversation heard in the darkness --
`It's two horses, I tell you!'
`It's three, you ----!'
`Lay you ----!'
`Put the stuff up!'
A clack of gate thrown open.
`Who is it, Tom?'
Voices from gatewards, yelling, `Johnny Mears! They've got Johnny Mears!'
Then rose yells, and a cheer such as is seldom heard in scrub-lands.
Out in the kitchen long Dave Regan grabbed, from the far side of the table,
where he had thrown it, a burst and battered concertina,
which he had been for the last hour
vainlytrying to patch and make air-tight;
and,
holding it out towards the back-door, between his palms,
as a football is held, he let it drop, and fetched it neatly
on the toe of his riding-boot. It was a beautiful kick,
the concertina shot out into the
blackness, from which was projected,
in return, first a short, sudden howl, then a face with one eye glaring
and the other covered by an
enormous brick-coloured hand,
and a voice that wanted to know who shot `that lurid loaf of bread?'
But from the
schoolroom was heard the loud, free voice