The Best Australian Bush Stories Page 10

  He was so NICE; everything about him was nice: his velvety brown eyes and white teeth; his pink cheeks and fair hair. And when he took his coat off and sat down, and rolled up his sleeves and spanned his wrists on the oars, she liked him better still: he looked so strong . . . almost as if he could have picked the boat up and carried it. He wasn’t at all forward either (she hated cheeky boys): when he had to touch her hand he went brick red, and jumped his own hand away as quick as he could.

  With one stroke they were off and gliding downstream . . . oh, so smoothly! It made her think of floating in milk . . . though the water was really brown and muddy-looking. Soon they would be quite away from the houses and the little back gardens and allotments that ran down to the water, and out among the woods, where the river twisted like a snake, and the trees hung over the edge and dipped their branches in . . . most romantically. Then perhaps he would say something. He hadn’t spoken yet; he was too busy rowing, making great sweeps with the oars, and not looking at her . . . or only taking a peep now and then, to see if she saw. Which she did, and her heart thumped with pleasure. Perhaps, as he was so clever at it, he’d be a sailor when he was a man and go to sea. But that would mean him travelling far away, and she might never see him again. And though she’d only known him for a fortnight, and at first he hadn’t liked to speak, but had just stood and made eyes at her when they met going home from school, she felt she simply couldn’t bear it if he did.

  To hide her feelings, she hung one hand over the side of the boat and let it trail, through the water—keeping it there long after it was stone cold, in the hope that he would notice it and say something. But he didn’t.

  The Boy was thinking: I wonder if I dare tell her not to . . . her little hand . . . all wet like that, and cold. I should like to take it in both mine, and rub it dry, and warm it. How pretty she is, with all that fuzzy-wuzzy hair, and the little curls on her forehead. And how long her eyelashes are when she looks down. I wish I could make her look up . . . look at me. But how? Why, say something, of course. But what? Oh, if only I could think of something! What does one? What would Jim say, if he wanted to make his girl look at him? But nothing came.

  Here, however, the hand was jerked from the water to kill a gnat that had settled on the other. This was his cue. He parted hastily with his saliva.

  ‘I say! Did it sting?’

  She suppressed the no that was on her lips.

  ‘Well . . . yes . . . I think it did, rather.’ And doubling her bony little schoolgirl fingers into her palm, she held out the back of the hand for his inspection. Steadying the oars, the Boy leant forward to look, leant so far that, for a wild moment, she believed he was going to kiss the place, and half instinctively, half from an equally strong impulse to ‘play him’, drew it away. But he did not follow it up: at the thought of a kiss, which had occurred to him, shyness lamed him anew. So nothing came of this either. And we’ve only half an hour, thought the Girl distractedly. If he doesn’t say something . . . soon . . . there won’t be any time left. And then it will all have been for nothing.

  She, too, beat her brains. ‘The trees . . . aren’t they pretty, the way they hang right down in the water?’ (Other couples stopped under these trees, she’d seen them, and lay there in their boats; or even went right in behind the weeping willows.) But his sole response was: ‘Good enough.’ And another block followed.

  Oh, he saw quite well what she was aiming at: she wanted him to pull in to the bank and ship his oars, so that they could do a bit of spooning, she lying lazy in the stern. But at the picture a mild panic seized him. For, if he couldn’t find anything to say even when he was rowing, it would be ten times harder when he sat with his hands before him and nothing to do. His tongue would stick to the roof of his mouth, dry as a bone, and then she’d see for sure how dull he was. And never want to go out with him again. No, thank you, not for him!

  But talk wasn’t everything—by gum, it wasn’t! He might be a rotten hand at speechifying, but what he could do, that he’d jolly well show her! And under this urge to display his strength, his skill, he now fell to work in earnest. Forward swung the oars, cleanly carving the water, or lightly feathering the surface; on flew the boat, he driving to and fro with his jaws grimly set and a heightened colour, the muscles standing out like pencils on his arms. Oh, it was a fine thing to be able to row so well, and have a girl, THE girl, sitting watching you. For now her eyes hung on him, mutely adoring, spurring him on to ever-bolder strokes.

  And then a sheerly dreadful thing happened. So lost was he in showing his mastery, in feeding on her looks, that he failed to keep his wits about him. And, coming to a place where the river forked, he took the wrong turning, and before he knew it they were in a part where you were not supposed to go—a bathing place for men, much frequented by soldiers.

  A squeal from the Girl roused him; but then it was too late: they had shot in among a score of bathers, whose heads bobbed about on the surface like so many floating footballs. And instantly her shrill cry was taken up and echoed and re-echoed by shouts, and laughter, and rude ‘hullos’, as the swimmers scattered before the oars.

  Coarse jokes were bandied, too, at the unwarranted intrusion. Hi! Wasn’t there nowhere else he could take his girl? Or was she coming in, too? Off with her togs then! Crimson with mortification at his blunder, at the fool he had made of himself (before her), the Boy savagely strove to turn the boat and escape. But the heads—there seemed to be hundreds of them—deliberately blocked his way. And while he manoeuvred, the sweat trickling down his forehead, a pair of arms and shoulders reared themselves from the water, and two hands grasped the side of the boat. It rocked; and the Girl squealed anew, shrinking sideways from the nearness of the dripping, sunburnt flesh.

  ‘Come on, missie, pay toll!’

  The Boy swore aloud. But even worse was to come. On one bank, a square of wooden palisades had been built out round a stretch of water and a wooden bath-house, where there were cabins for the men to strip in, platforms to jump from, ropes strung for those who could not swim. But in this fence was a great gap, where some of the palings had fallen down. And in his rage and confusion the Boy had the misfortune to bring the boat right alongside it; and then . . . then . . . .

  Inside the enclosure, out of the cabins, down the steps, men were running, jumping, chasing, leap-frogging . . . every one of them as naked as on the day he was born.

  For one instant the Girl raised her eyes—one only . . . but it was enough. She saw. And he saw that she saw. And now, to these two young creatures, it seemed as if the whole visible world—themselves, boat, river, trees and sky—caught fire, and blazed up in one gigantic blush. Nothing existed for them anymore but this burning redness. Nor could they escape; there they had to sit, knee to knee, face to face, and scorch, and suffocate; the blood filling their eyes till they could scarcely see, mounting to their hair roots, making even their fingertips throb and tingle.

  Gritting his teeth, the Boy rowed like a machine that had been wound up and was not to be stopped. The Girl sat with drooped head—it seemed to have grown strangely heavy—and but a single wish: to get out and away . . . where he could not see her. For all was over between them—both felt that.

  Something catastrophic had happened, rudely shattering their frail young dreams; breaking down his boyish privacy, pitching her headlong into a reality for which she was in no wise prepared.

  If it had been hard beforehand to find things to say, it was now impossible. And on the way home no sound was to be heard but the dip of the oars, the water’s cluck and gurgle round the boat. At the landing place, she got out by herself, took from him, without looking up, her strap of books, and said a brief goodbye; keeping to a walking pace till she had turned the corner, then breaking into a run, and running for dear life . . . as if chased by some grotesque nightmare-shape which she must leave far, far behind her . . . even in thought.

  SPICER’S COURTSHIP

  EDWARD DYSON

  SPICER WAS
A SELECTOR. Why he chose to be a selector rather than enjoy comparative ease and affluence as a corporation day labourer or a wharf-hand or navvy is inexplicable. He had taken to the wilderness, built his smart bark hut in the centre of an apparently impenetrable forest, and was now actively engaged eating his way out again. Along the bank of the trickling creek he had cleared an acre or so where a few fruit trees flourished and a methodical little vegetable garden looked green and encouraging. Dick Spicer was a methodical man; what he did he did well, and he was always doing.

  Dick was small, and he looked puny lifting his pygmy axe to those mighty gums, and patiently hewing splinters out of the compact bush. Having little or nothing to say to his scattered neighbours, he exchanged small talk with his hens, and favoured Griffin, the low-comedy dog-of-all-work, with his opinion of things.

  Mr Spicer was a bachelor, approaching fifty, wiry, leathery, deliberative, and very diffident in company. But, despite his apparent uneasiness when chance threw him into the society of females, Dick was looking about for a wife. The stillness of the long evenings and the solitary Sundays implanted a great yearning for the companionship of a good wife in his lonely heart.

  In looking about, the selector’s view was very limited. There was not an unmarried woman of suitable years within a radius of twelve miles. Of all the approachable females, he admired Mrs Clinton the most, and his only hope lay in the fact that Clinton was in feeble health and reported to be sustaining life precariously with one lung.

  Clinton held a block about a mile up the creek, and Spicer paid him occasional abrupt and unceremonious visits there. Sometimes he would lean against a door jamb, with not more than his head inside, and pass a few remarks relative to nothing in particular, in an irresponsible sort of way; but more frequently he just stood about outside, and criticised the poultry in audible soliloquy, or reflected aloud upon Clinton’s ridiculous notions about dairy work and vegetable growing. However, he always displayed a proper neighbourly concern in inquiring after Clinton’s health before leaving.

  ‘Y’ain’t feelin’ no better, I s’pose?’ he would ask, with an appearance of anxious interest that quite touched the sick man.

  Clinton was always feeling ‘pretty bad’. He said as much in his dull, heavy manner, and Dick would go off to indulge in contemplation, and consult his dog.

  Spicer did not wish Clinton to die, he did not want to hurry him up; he was a patient, dispassionate man, and the possibility of his neighbour’s early demise entered into his calculations merely as a probable circumstance which, however regrettable, could not reasonably be overlooked.

  Clinton substantiated predictions, and obligingly died within a reasonable time, and Dick rode solemnly in the funeral cortege, behind the drays, on a lame cart horse borrowed from Canty for the occasion.

  After the funeral he looked in upon the widow and, feeling inspired to say something consolatory and encouraging, expressed his belief that she wouldn’t mourn much about Peter.

  ‘’Tain’t worthwhile,’ he said.

  Dick’s command of language was only sufficient to enable him to say the thing he meant once in a dozen tries, and on this occasion he was conscious the moment he had spoken that the sentiment expressed was hardly appropriate to the occasion. Before he could frame an apology the disconsolate widow attacked him with a spear-grass broom and stormed him out of the house. He walked home thoughtfully, afflicted with a nettle-rash and a vague idea that perhaps he had not made an altogether satisfactory beginning.

  But Spicer was not cast down. He had resolved upon a plan of courtship, and the object of his first manoeuvre was to break his intentions gently to the widow. This he thought to accomplish by hanging round the house a good deal. He would haunt her selection in the cool of the evening, or, in his more audacious moments, perch himself on the chock-and-log fence running by the side of the house, and whistle an unmelodious and windy jig, which was intended to convey some idea of his airy nonchalance and peace of mind.

  It was a long time before Dick progressed from the fence to the wood heap, and meanwhile the widow had not seemed to pay any particular attention to his movements. He sometimes addressed her with a portentous truth bearing upon the dieting of laying hens, or the proper handling of cows, or the medical treatment of ailing chickens; but usually satisfied himself with a significant grin and a queer twist of the head that was his idea of sheer playfulness and waggery.

  The neighbours came to notice him overlooking the selection or perched on the fence supervising the weather and things generally, and predicted that there would be ‘a marryin’ up the creek presently.

  Presently!

  Spicer did nothing hastily, nothing to lead anybody to believe that he had not all eternity to come and go on. He never considered the flight of time, and had made many calculations that carried him on to the end of the next century without discovering any incongruity.

  He did arrive at the wood heap eventually, though. Mrs Clinton’s boy John was too young to wield an axe with any effect, and one afternoon Dick lounged over to the logs, took up the axe, and examined it with an air of abstraction. He weighed it carefully in his hand, and satisfied his curiosity by trying it on a log.

  When he had chopped about half a ton of wood he appeared satisfied that it was a pretty good axe. That evening he chuckled all the way up the creek, and all the time it took to prepare his tea, and towards bedtime confided to Griffin, with more chuckles, his opinion that it was ‘’bout’s good ’s done.’

  ‘She can’t go back on that,’ he said with assurance.

  But Spicer lingered at this stage for a long time; he cut all the wood the widow needed, and did other little things about the selection, and often sat on the fence, as usual, and gradually grew to be quite at home there. The widow accepted his services now as a matter of course, and though she was often betrayed into expressions of great impatience, Dick remained oblivious, and worked out his courtship in his own ponderous way.

  His next step towards strengthening his position was when he took it upon himself to put several palings on the roof of Mrs Clinton’s house. This was a decided advance, and when the buxom little woman thanked him, his odd screw of the face and sidelong nod clearly conveyed the impression that he was beginning to regard himself as a ‘perfect devil amongst the women’. There was more chuckling that evening, and further confidences for the dog. After this Spicer ceased working seriously on his own selection, and slowly extended his sphere at the widow’s.

  He did some gardening, and repaired the fences, and dictated improvements, but it was not till eighteen months after Clinton’s death that he made his great stroke. It was on Sunday afternoon that Dick discovered Mrs Clinton in hot pursuit of the boy John, with one shoe in her hand and one on her foot. John was in active rebellion, and yelling his contempt for the maternal authority. Spicer rose to the occasion. He secured boy John, took off his belt, and proceeded to strap the unfilial youth—to give him a grave, judicious, and fatherly larruping—under the eye of his mother. Then the selector drew off to consider and weigh the important step he had taken, with the result that, half an hour after, he hung his head in at the kitchen door, and said abruptly:

  ‘Treaser, when’s it to be?’

  ‘Meanin’ which?’ asked the unconscious widow.

  ‘Meanin’ marryin’.’

  The widow thought for a moment, and said, just as if she were contemplating the sale of a few eggs:

  ‘This day month’ll suit me.’

  ‘Done,’ said Spicer.

  Then he felt called upon to make some kind of a demonstration, and edged up to Mrs Clinton in a fidgeting sort of way, and when near enough made as if to kiss her, paused halfway in doubt, and then didn’t.

  ‘The man’s a fool,’ said the stout little widow composedly.

  They were married though, under conditions of great secrecy, at the parson’s house in the township, with the blinds down. It was with great difficulty Dick was convinced of the necessity of wit
nesses.

  DAVE IN LOVE

  STEELE RUDD

  PLOUGHING AND SOWING ALL over. A hundred acres of the plain-land under wheat and light showers falling every week. Dad’s good luck was continuing. Yet we were sharing other misfortunes freely enough. The children were all down with measles, Sarah with face-ache, Joe with a broken rib, a draught horse broke it for him (Joe had sandy-blight, and one morning approached the wrong end of a horse with the winkers), and Dave was the victim of a fatal malady.

  Dave was always the unlucky one. When he wasn’t bitten by a snake or a dog he was gored by a cow or something. This time it was a woman. Dave was in love. And such love! We could see it working in him like yeast. He became affable, smiled all day long and displayed remarkable activity. He didn’t care how hard he worked or whose work he performed. He did anything, everything, and without help. He developed a passion for small things, trifles he had hitherto regarded with contempt, purchased silk handkerchiefs and perfume and conversation-lollies at the store, and secreted them in the pockets of his Sunday coat, which he left hanging in his room. Sarah would find them when dusting the coat and hawk them to Mother, and they’d spend an hour rejoicing and speculating over the discovery. Sarah never allowed any dust to settle on Dave’s Sunday coat.

  Dave went out every night. It amused Joe. He would be on pins and needles till supper was ready, then he’d bolt his food and rush off to saddle a horse, and we wouldn’t see him again till breakfast-time next morning.

  For more than a year Dave rushed off every night. ‘Damn! Look at that horse!’ Dad used to say, when he’d be at the yard. Then he’d think hard, and begin again when he met Mother. ‘This night work’ll have t’ stop, or there won’t be a horse about the place fit t’ ride. What the devil the fellow wants chasing round the country for every night I don’t know, I’m sure.’