The Best Australian Bush Stories Page 12

  Then Jock became miserable. He sat before the fire in his lonely hut and thought, and thought; and it seemed to him that life was blacker than the darkness that covered the earth. No mate was his, and years were going by. Fielding was dead, whom he remembered since they were boys together. Morton was dead; and Joyce. He, too, would be called upon some day, the dream within his heart unrealised.

  Suddenly his face brightened. He stirred the fire nervously and rubbed his hands. ‘Take the sheep round that way tomorrow,’ he muttered. And so the die was cast.

  She was not an angel, this newest of Jock’s chosen. Even he guessed that. Her history no man knew; and as for her name—they called her ‘Strawberry’. She came a stranger to that place, but whence or how no tongue ever told. This only the Dogwood people knew: she had possessed herself of a hut and strip of land in their midst; she wrought, and tilled, and delved as men do, and she lived somehow.

  Now, Jock was vaguely conscious that Strawberry would not make an ideal wife, but he was desperate. So he bore up along the bank of the creek next day, stooping to keep under cover, and made his attack.

  Strawberry was hoeing a row of potatoes near the fence. Jock could see the back of her head rising and falling with every stroke, and his heart thumped. He had often seen her thus, and he wished now that he had introduced himself before—it would have made the task so much easier. However, he crept up to the fence, and on hands and knees spent some time looking through a hole.

  Presently he stood up and whistled, but bobbed down again immediately, with his heart thumping louder than ever. Strawberry worked on. A pebble was lying at his hand. He picked it up and threw it over gently, so that it would not hurt. But the pebble fell short in the soft ground, and the hoe came down with its rhythmic beat.

  Jock got another stone, and, standing up, put his best effort into the aim. This time it hit Strawberry on the ankle just where there was a big hole in her stocking, and she wheeled round in time to see a grinning face disappear behind the logs.

  That was enough for Strawberry. Hoe in hand, she rushed to answer the challenge. But Jock made off backwards, grinning and showing all possible signs of peace. He wanted the lady to understand that this was merely his playful way of introducing himself, but he stammered badly, and she was forcing matters.

  ‘You dashed gorilla!’ she called out, climbing the fence; ‘I’ll teach you!’

  But just then Jock fell flat into the creek with a splash that startled the birds a hundred yards off. He struggled out on the other side dripping, with hat in hand, only to find his lady-love still brandishing the hoe.

  ‘Will yer marry me?’ he called out across the water.

  The hoe was gradually lowered.

  ‘Eh! What’s that?’

  Jock put the question again, adding, ‘That’s what I came for.’

  ‘Well, why didn’t you say so, you grinning idiot?’

  Jock looked pleased at the compliment.

  ‘Who the devil are you, anyway?’ she went on.

  He told her.

  ‘Well, come over here!’

  He waded through and stood meekly on the bank. Then they sat on the fence for a while, and later on Jock helped to carry her things to his hut.

  There was not much romance about it as the world judges, but poor old Jock was satisfied at the time. And even afterwards, when Strawberry took command and upset all his household arrangements, when she was spending his money freely on visits to the township, and bullying him of nights, he was very patient.

  Throughout long days, while following the sheep, he discussed the matter with his dogs; but Rover showed plainly that he had no opinion whatever concerning marriage, and Laddie only wagged his tail.

  At length, Jock came to regard his experience as natural, and this bred in him a kind of helpless pity for all married men. He began secretly to long for his lost solitude, and his face grew sullen.

  Then, one night, after yarding the sheep, he found a visitor at home. A big, heavy-browed man it was, dark-looking as a Spaniard. He nodded carelessly as Jock entered, and took no further notice, while Jock sidled into a corner to sulk. All the evening, the stranger talked familiarly with Strawberry. They laughed and joked coarsely, and about ten o’clock the stranger turned abruptly to Jock: ‘About time you sloped, isn’t it?’ he said

  Jock stared like an owl.

  ‘About time you got!’ repeated the stranger.

  ‘Where to?’ Jock asked, stupidly.

  ‘To blazes—I don’t care. Ain’t room for three here, anyway.’

  Jock had come to that conclusion also, yet he was inclined to protest.

  ‘But . . .’ he commenced.

  ‘No buts,’ the visitor interrupted, standing before the fire. ‘There’s a hut down by the creek. Come on, now—get! This here’s my missus.’

  Jock turned pale, and his eyes rolled.

  ‘Her?’ he asked, jerking his thumb.

  Strawberry went towards him and said, more softly than he had ever heard her speak before, ‘You’d better go. Take a blanket and some tucker with you.’

  She made a bundle silently and opened the door, and when it closed again the shepherd realised that this had been his home for over thirty years.

  The man within laughed harshly. ‘Strange old bloke, that!’ he remarked.

  The woman did not answer for a while, then she said, ‘He’s not a bad sort, Bob.’

  Next day Jock met the ration-cart near the main road.

  ‘You needn’t go down to . . . to the hut today. I’ll carry the stuff,’ he said to the driver.

  The bag was handed out. ‘How’s the missus, Jock?’ the young fellow asked with a grin.

  ‘She . . . oh, she . . . the bag isn’t heavy,’ Jock answered, as he hurried away.

  So Jock lived in the hut that used to be Strawberry’s, and cooked his own meals again, and muttered, and stirred the fire just as in years gone by. And when about a month had gone a swagman passed towards the setting sun, and Jock knew that Strawberry, too, was alone.

  Then began a struggle. Should he go back to her? Should he claim his own hut? The dogs did not know; and while he was still pondering, and wearing himself to a skeleton, came a day when the sheep were not liberated. Another followed, and by noon Strawberry took his place. She let the hungry animals out and sought the shepherd by the creek. He was sick—was very sick. And she set to work to nurse him back to health.

  All day she watched his sheep, at night she yarded them, and came to sit beside the bed; and, while he lay thus unconscious in summer heat, a fire broke out. At sundown it seemed far away, but the north wind rose and urged it on, and by midnight the sky was red for miles, and the woman could hear the crackling grass and leaves. She thought of the penned-up sheep, and, single-handed, burned a strip around the yard. Then, with set face, she hurried back to the hut and stood on guard. And later, when the Dogwood people came, they saw against the broad front of the fire the solitary figure of a woman fighting as never woman fought before.

  So she worked and watched till Jock got well again, and together they went back to his hut. There she made a garden and planted fruit trees; she helped him with the flock; she saved money. They even enlarged the hut in the course of years; and when sickness came again it was Jock who bore the burden of the toil and the watching; and he it was who was left to mourn.

  He came home one day and found their visitor of years before waiting, his brows even more shaggy, his skin even darker.

  ‘Gone?’ the fellow asked laconically, pointing to the closed door.

  ‘Dead!’ Jock answered simply.

  The stranger started.

  ‘No! . . . She was my wife,’ he said quickly.

  ‘The gravestone says Missus J. Condon,’ was the response; and there was a touch of pride in the old man’s voice.

  A BOX OF DEAD ROSES

  ETHEL MILLS

  THE OLD LADY WAS a most amusing creature, and she had a past, which was a record amongst pasts. Only
that she was rich enough to buy the whole district, its ‘society’ would have ‘cut’ her long ago; as it was, people only talked about her with meaningful looks and whispered condemnation.

  At least, the generation to which she belonged did that; the younger one only looked and wondered. Bent with rheumatism, bushy-browed, fierce-eyed and hard-featured, there remained no trace of the beauty and charm which (so reports said) had sent more than one good man to the devil.

  On sunny days she would have her chair moved onto the wide, vine-sheltered verandah. She liked to see what was going on; and she said that in Australia most things happened on verandahs. This particular verandah had been planned and built in early pioneering days, and had, no doubt, seen many ups and downs of varied incident.

  One could listen to her by the hour when she was in the vein for remembering pages from her own life or from other lawless lives of early days, when all country west of the station was unknown Australia.

  Like most old people, she was given to repetition, but she told me a story once which neither I nor anyone else could ever induce her to tell again.

  It was about a young wife, the most innocent of brides, who thought the world of her husband, and had no wish or look for other men. Yet the house was full of other men in those days, and they all gave thoughts or looks, more or less, to the prettiest woman in the district.

  Every evening she used to stand at her bedroom door, looking along the verandah, until she saw her husband returning from his work; and every evening he brought her a rose from the big bush by the steps. That was during the first months of her marriage.

  Next year, the rose bush bore as abundantly as ever, but the man often forgot to pick a flower for her and, after a time, he forgot altogether.

  The young wife was painfully ideal and long-suffering, and never gave him a word of reproach; she was still so much in love with him that she was shy, and blushed like a girl when he came near her unexpectedly. ‘Fancy: after two years of married life!’ And the old lady smiled wickedly, and continued.

  ‘She was tired one night, and went to bed early, leaving her husband smoking and reading in the dining room; but it was so hot that she presently got up, threw on a gown, and strolled along the verandah in the shadow for a breath of cool air. The sultriness of the air brought out the strongest scent of the moonflowers. Just there, at the corner near the rose bush, she saw her husband with his arms round a woman, kissing her lips over and over again; they were full, very red lips, such as men like to kiss.

  ‘The woman was one of the housemaids, the soft-voiced, self-contained, velvet-footed one who usually brought in the tray for supper, and whose eyes never left the floor as she did so, a girl who seemed to have no thought beyond her duties.

  ‘The wife heard enough to show her that the woman had thoughts for many things besides. She heard enough to tell her that those kisses were not the first by any means; that the man’s life had been a long lie, except, perhaps, during the very early days of marriage. She liked to think that he was all hers then. A delusion also, possibly; but a harmless one.

  ‘As it was, she stole off to bed without saying a word. I call that a “verandah tragedy”, my dear; because her whole nature changed in a few moments. Not that there was much to notice one way or the other at first, except that she said she could not bear the scent of the moonflowers, and had the creeper taken up at the roots.

  ‘She did not even send away the housemaid. Why should she? But things were a great deal more pleasant for the “other men” afterwards—a great deal, my dear! She used to sing and play to them, and dance with them, and flirt with them, and fill the house with visitors, and so on. In fact, she was a beauty, and had only just awakened to a knowledge of her power. You see, the station and money belonged to her; so she was freer than most wives.

  ‘There was the baby, of course, a lovely, soft-faced little thing that used to take its midday sleep in a string hammock, swung up there by the trellis. She was fond of the child; yet, when it died and was buried by the lagoon in the garden, she used to sit dry-eyed, looking at the hammock that swung loosely in every breeze without its accustomed burden.

  ‘She even said she was not sorry; because the boy might have grown up to break some woman’s heart, and the world was well rid of the breed. Perhaps it was best so; though, looking at the other side of the question, he might have lived to blush for his mother.

  ‘One day her husband was brought in dead, kicked by the horse he was trying to catch in the yard. They carried him straight up the verandah to the big spare-room, and the blood was dripping—dripping all the way.

  ‘She was a tidy, methodical woman always, and she sent for the housemaid, the velvet-footed one, and bade her wash the boards. The girl had a wonderful power of self-command usually and yet, at sight of that blood, she shivered and trembled like one with the palsy. Sentimental people said the wife was perfectly inhuman to think of the state of her verandah at such a time and, of course, a kind friend told her what was said.

  ‘She laughed as she replied, “No! I am not heart-broken. I went through that experience two years ago.”

  ‘Well, my dear,’ (and here the old lady’s voice sounded a little tired), ‘she lived a long, long life, and rather a varied and interesting one, from an outsider’s point of view, at any rate.

  ‘I often sit and think of her and of many things that happened on this old verandah, but of late years I forget a great deal. I like best to remember the days when the young wife used to stand listening, listening for the husband’s step. It was the sweetest music in the world to her.

  ‘No doubt she was an arrant little fool and bored him to death. I think, now, that he was no worse than the majority of men: a clever, interesting woman could have managed him. She became all that afterwards . . . for other men. But, as I said before, she was a totally different woman then.

  ‘Live every inch of your life, my dear!’ the old lady concluded, impressively. ‘One life, one love! Why, the idea is perfectly absurd.’

  * * *

  Two years later I saw the old lady again, feebler, worn in body and mind. She still sat in sunny weather on the verandah, but now she always had a little cardboard box on her lap, caressing it with her withered fingers.

  ‘Look, my dear!’ she said, ‘this box is full of dead roses; they all came off that bush by the corner, years ago.

  ‘I may die at any moment and young people are so careless and forgetful. Unless I had these with me they would never remember to bury them in my grave. They are the dearest things I possess; but the reason why they are so dear I shall carry as a secret to my grave also.’

  The old lady had forgotten that she had ever told me a story with roses in it.

  DRIFTED BACK

  HENRY LAWSON

  THE STRANGER WALKED INTO the corner grocery with the air of one who had come back after many years to see someone who would be glad to see him.

  He shed his swag and stood it by the wall with great deliberation; then he rested his elbow on the counter, stroked his beard, and grinned quizzically at the shopman, who smiled back presently in a puzzled way.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ said the grocer.

  ‘Good afternoon.’

  Pause.

  ‘Nice day,’ said the grocer.

  Pause.

  ‘Anything I can do for you?’

  ‘Yes; tell the old man there’s a chap wants to speak to him for a minute.’

  ‘Old man? What old man?’

  ‘Hake, of course—old Ben Hake! Ain’t he in?’

  The grocer smiled. ‘Hake ain’t here now. I’m here.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Why, he sold out to me ten years ago.’

  ‘Well, I suppose I’ll find him somewhere about town?’

  ‘I don’t think you will. He left Australia when he sold out. He’s . . . he’s dead now.’

  ‘Dead! Old Ben Hake?’

  ‘Yes. You knew him, then?’

  The stranger
seemed to have lost a great deal of his assurance. He turned his side to the counter, hooked his elbow on it, and gazed out through the door along Sunset Track.

  ‘You can give me half a pound of nailrod,’ he said, in a quiet tone. ‘I s’pose young Hake is in town?’

  ‘No; the whole family went away. I think there’s one of the sons in business in Sydney now.’

  ‘I s’pose the M’Lachlans are here yet?’

  ‘No; they are not. The old people died about five years ago; the sons are in Queensland, I think; and both the girls are married and in Sydney.’

  ‘Ah, well! . . . I see you’ve got the railway here now.’

  ‘Oh, yes! Six years.’

  ‘Times is changed a lot.’

  ‘They are.’

  ‘I s’pose . . . I s’pose you can tell me where I’ll find old Jimmy Nowlett?’

  ‘Jimmy Nowlett? Jimmy Nowlett? I never heard of the name. What was he?’

  ‘Oh, he was a bullock-driver. Used to carry from the mountains before the railway was made.’

  ‘Before my time, perhaps. There’s no one of that name round here now.’

  ‘Ah, well . . . I don’t suppose you knew the Duggans?’

  ‘Yes, I did. The old man’s dead, too, and the family’s gone away, Lord knows where. They weren’t much loss, to all accounts. The sons got into trouble, I b’lieve—went to the bad. They had a bad name here.’

  ‘Did they? Well, they had good hearts, at least old Malachi Duggan and the eldest son had . . . You can give me a couple of pounds of sugar.’

  ‘Right. I suppose it’s a long time since you were here last?’

  ‘Fifteen years.’

  ‘Indeed!’

  ‘Yes. I don’t s’pose I remind you of anyone you know around here?’

  ‘Nnn . . . no!’ said the grocer with a smile. ‘I can’t say you do.’

  ‘Ah, well! I s’pose I’ll find the Wilds still living in the same place?’

  ‘The Wilds? Well, no. The old man is dead, too, and . . .’