Selected Stories By Henry Lawson Part 22

"Yes!" he snapped; the tone seemed defiant.

The old woman's hands trembled, so that she dropped a cup. Mary turned a shade paler.

"Here, git me some tea. Git me some tea!" shouted Mr Wylie. " I ain't a-goin' to sit here all night."

His wife made what haste her nervousness would allow, and they soon sat down to tea. Jack, the eldest son, was sulky, and his father muttered something about knocking the sulks out of him with an axe.

"What's annoyed you, Jack?" asked his mother, humbly.

He scowled and made no answer.

The younger children-three boys and a girl-began quarrelling as soon as they sat down. Wylie yelled at them now and then, and grumbled at the cooking, and at his wife for not being able to keep the children quiet. It was: "Marther! you didn't put no sugar in my tea." "Mother, Jimmy's got my place; make him move." "Mawther! do speak to this Fred." "Oh! father, this big brute of a Harry's kickin' me!" And so on.

II.

When the miserable meal was over, Wylie got a rope and a butcher's knife, and went out to slaughter the steer; but first there was a row, because he thought-or pretended to think-that somebody had been using his knife. He la.s.soed the beast, drew it up to the rails, and slaughtered it.

Meanwhile, Jack and his next brother took an old gun, let the dogs loose, and went 'possum-shooting.

Presently Wylie came in again, sat down by the fire, and smoked. The children quarrelled over a boy's book; Mrs Wylie made weak attempts to keep the peace, but they took no notice of her. Suddenly her husband rose with an oath, seized the novel, and threw it behind the fire.

"Git to bed! git to bed!" he roared at the children; "git to bed, or I'll smash your brains with the axe!"

They got to bed. It was made of saplings and bark, covered with three-bushel bags full of straw and old pieces of blanket sewn together. The children quarrelled in bed till their father took off his belt and "went into" them, according to promise. There was a sudden hush, followed by a sound like a bird-clapper; then howls; then a peaceful calm fell upon that happy home.

Wylie went out again, and was absent an hour; on his return he sat by the fire and smoked sullenly. After a while he s.n.a.t.c.hed the pipe from his mouth, and looked impatiently at the old woman.

"Oh! for G.o.d's sake, git to bed," he snapped, "and don't be a-sittin' there like a blarsted funeral! You're enough to give a man the dismals."

Mrs Wylie gathered up her sewing and retired. Then he said to his daughter: "You come and hold the candle."

Mary put on her hood and followed her father to the yard. The carcase lay close to the rails, against which two sheets of bark had been raised as a break-wind. The beast had been partly skinned, and a portion of the hide, where a brand might have been, was carefully turned back. Mary noticed this at once. Her father went on with his work, and occasionally grumbled at her for not holding the candle right.

"Where did you buy the steer, father?" she asked.

"Ask no questions and hear no lies." Then he added, "Carn't you see it's a clear skin?"

She had a keen sense of humour, and the idea of a " 'clear skin' steer" would have amused her at any other time. She didn't smile now.

He turned the carcase over; the loose hide fell back, and the light shone on a distinct brand. White as a sheet went Mary's face, and her hand trembled so that she nearly let the candle fall.

"What are you a-doin' of now?" shouted her father. "Hold the candle, carn't you? You're worse than the old woman."

"Father! the beast is branded! See!-What does PB stand for?"

"Poor Beggar, like myself. Hold the candle, carn't you?-and hold your tongue."

Mary was startled again by hearing the tread of a horse, but it was only the old grey munching round. Her father finished skinning, and drew the carcase up to a make-s.h.i.+ft "gallows". "Now you can go to bed," he said, in a gentler tone.

She went to her bedroom-a small, low, slab skillion, built on to the end of the house-and fell on her knees by the bunk.

"G.o.d help me! G.o.d help us all!" she cried.

She lay down, but could not sleep. She was nervously ill-nearly mad, because of the dark, disgraceful cloud of trouble which hung over her home. Always in trouble-always in trouble. It started long ago, when her favourite brother Tom ran away. She was little more than a child then, intensely sensitive; and when she sat in the old bark school she fancied that the other children were thinking or whispering to each other, "Her brother's in prison! Mary Wylie's brother's in prison! Tom Wylie's in gaol!" She was thinking of it still. They were ever with her, those horrible days and nights of the first shadow of shame. She had the same horror of evil, the same fearful dread of disgrace that her mother had. She had been ambitious; she had managed to read much, and had wild dreams of going to the city and rising above the common level, but that was all past now.

How could she rise when the cruel hand of disgrace was ever ready to drag her down at any moment. "Ah, G.o.d!" she moaned in her misery, "if we could only be born without kin-with no one to disgrace us but ourselves! lt's cruel, G.o.d, it's cruel to suffer for the crimes of others!" She was getting selfish in her troubles-like her mother. "I want to go away from the bush and all I know...O G.o.d, help me to go away from the bus.h.!.+" Presently she fell asleep-if sleep it may be called-and dreamt of sailing away, sailing away far out on the sea beyond the horizon of her dread. Then came a horrible nightmare, in which she and all her family were arrested for a terrible crime. She woke in a fright, and saw a reddish glare on the window. Her father was poking round some logs where they had been "burning-off". Apungent odour came through a broken pane and turned her sick. He was burning the hide.

Wylie did not go to bed that night; he got his breakfast before daylight, and rode up through the frosty gap while the stars were still out, carrying a bag of beef in front of him on the grey horse. Mary said nothing about the previous night. Her mother wondered how much "father" had given for the steer, and supposed he had gone into town to sell the hide; the poor soul tried to believe that he had come by the steer honestly. Mary fried some meat, and tried to eat it for her mother's sake, but could manage only a few mouthfuls. Mrs Wylie also seemed to have lost her appet.i.te. Jack and his brother, who had been out all night, made a hearty breakfast. Then Jimmy started to peg out the 'possum skins, while Jack went to look for a missing pony. Mary was left to milk all the cows, and feed the calves and pigs.

Shortly after dinner one of the children ran to the door, and cried: "Why, mother-here's three mounted troopers comin' up the gully!"

"Oh, my G.o.d!" cried the mother, sinking back in her chair and trembling like a leaf. The children ran and hid in the scrub. Mary stood up, terribly calm, and waited. The eldest trooper dismounted, came to the door, glanced suspiciously at the remains of the meal, and abruptly asked the dreaded question: "Mrs Wylie, where's your husband?"

She dropped the tea-cup, from which she had pretended to be drinking unconcernedly.

"What? Why, what do you want my husband for?" she asked in pitiful desperation. She looked like the guilty party.

"Oh, you know well enough," he sneered impatiently.

Mary rose and faced him. "How dare you talk to my mother like that?" she cried. "If my poor brother Tom was only here-you-you coward!"

The youngest trooper whispered something to his senior, and then, stung by a sharp retort, said: "Well, you needn't be a pig."

His two companions pa.s.sed through into the spare skillion, where they found some beef in a cask, and more already salted down under a bag on the end of a bench; then they went out at the back and had a look at the cow-yard. The younger trooper lingered behind.

"I'll try and get them up the gully on some excuse," he whispered to Mary. "You plant the hide before we come back."

"It's too late. Look there!" She pointed through the doorway.

The other two were at the logs where the fire had been; the burning hide had stuck to the logs in places like glue.

"Wylie's a fool," remarked the old trooper.

III.

Jack disappeared shortly after his father's arrest on a charge of horse- and cattle-stealing, and Tom, the prodigal, turned up unexpectedly. He was different from his father and eldest brother. He had an open good-humoured face, and was very kind-hearted; but was subject to peculiar fits of insanity, during which he did wild and foolish things for the mere love of notoriety. He had two natures-one bright and good, the other sullen and criminal. Ataint of madness ran in the family-come down from drunken and unprincipled fathers of dead generations; under different conditions, it might have developed into genius in one or two-in Mary, perhaps.

"Cheer up, old woman!" cried Tom, patting his mother on the back. "We'll be happy yet. I've been wild and foolish, I know, and gave you some awful trouble, but that's all done with. I mean to keep steady, and by-and-by we'll go away to Sydney or Queensland. Give us a smile, mother."

He got some "grubbing" to do, and for six months kept the family in provisions. Then a change came over him. He became moody and sullen-even brutal. He would sit for hours and grin to himself without any apparent cause; then he would stay away from home for days together.

"Tom's going wrong again," wailed Mrs Wylie. "He'll get into trouble again, I know he will. We are disgraced enough already, G.o.d knows."

"You've done your best mother," said Mary, "and can do no more. People will pity us; after all, the thing itself is not so bad as the everlasting dread of it. This will be a lesson for father-he wanted one-and maybe he'll be a better man." (She knew better than that.) "You did your best, mother."

"Ah, Mary! you don't know what I've gone through these thirty years in the bush with your father. I've had to go down on my knees and beg people not to prosecute him-and the same with your brother Tom; and this is the end of it."

"Better to have let them go, mother; you should have left father when you found out what sort of a man he was; it would have been better for all."

"It was my duty to stick by him, child; he was my husband. Your father was always a bad man, Mary-a bad man; I found it out too late. I could not tell you a quarter of what I have suffered with him...I was proud, Mary; I wanted my children to be better than others...It's my fault; it's a judgment...I wanted to make my children better than others...I was so proud, Mary."

Mary had a sweetheart, a drover, who was supposed to be in Queensland. He had promised to marry her, and take her and her mother away when he returned; at least, she had promised to marry him on that condition. He had now been absent on his latest trip for nearly six months, and there was no news from him. She got a copy of a country paper to look for the "stock pa.s.sings"; but a startling headline caught her eye: IMPUDENT ATTEMPT AT ROBBERY UNDER ARMS.

A drover known to the police as Frederick Dunn, alias Drew, was arrested last week at-- She read to the bitter end, and burned the paper. And the shadow of another trouble, darker and drearier than all the rest, was upon her.

So the little outcast family in Long Gully existed for several months, seeing no one save a sympathetic old splitter who would come and smoke his pipe by the fire of nights, and try to convince the old woman that matters might have been worse, and that she wouldn't worry so much if she knew the troubles of some of our biggest families, and that things would come out all right and the lesson would do Wylie good. Also, that Tom was a different boy altogether, and had more sense than to go wrong again. "It was nothing," he said, "nothing; they didn't know what trouble was."

But one day, when Mary and her mother were alone, the troopers came again.

"Mrs Wylie, where's your son Tom?" they asked.

She sat still. She didn't even cry, "Oh, my G.o.d!"

"Don't be frightened, Mrs Wylie," said one of the troopers, gently. "It ain't for much anyway, and maybe Tom'll be able to clear himself."

Mary sank on her knees by her mother's side, crying "Speak to me mother. Oh, my G.o.d, she's dying! Speak for my sake, mother. Don't die, mother; it's all a mistake. Don't die and leave me here alone."

But the poor old woman was dead.

Wylie came out towards the end of the year, and a few weeks later he brought home a-another woman.

IV.

Bob Bentley, general hawker, was camping under some rocks by the main road, near the foot of Long Gully. His mate was fast asleep under the tilted trap. Bob stood with his back to the fire, his pipe in his mouth, and his hands clasped behind him. The fire lit up the undersides of the branches above; a native bear sat in a fork blinking down at it, while the moon above him showed every hair on his ears. From among the trees came the pleasant jingle of hobble-chains, the slow tread of hoofs, and the "crunch, crunch" at the gra.s.s, as the horses moved about and grazed, now in moonlight, now in the soft shadows. "Old Thunder", a big black dog of no particular breed, gave a meaning look at his master, and started up the ridge, followed by several smaller dogs. Soon Bob heard from the hillside the "hy-yi-hi, whomp, whomp, whomp!" of old Thunder, and the yop-yop-yopping of the smaller fry-they had tree'd a 'possum. Bob threw himself on the gra.s.s, and pretended to be asleep. There was a sound as of a sizeable boulder rolling down the hill, and presently Thunder trotted round the fire to see if his master would come. Bob snored. The dog looked suspiciously at him, trotted round once or twice, and as a last resource gave him two great s...o...b..ry licks across the face. Bob got up with a good-natured oath.

"Well, old party," he said to Thunder, "you're a thundering old nuisance; but I s'pose you won't be satisfied till I come." He got a gun from the waggonette, loaded it, and started up the ridge; old Thunder rus.h.i.+ng to and fro to show the way-as if the row the other dogs were making wasn't enough to guide his master.

When Bob returned with the 'possums he was startled to see a woman in the camp. She was sitting on a log by the fire, with her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands.

"Why-what the dev-who are you?"

The girl raised a white desperate face to him. It was Mary Wylie.

"My father and-and the woman-they're drinking-they turned me out! They turned me out!"

"Did they now? I'm sorry for that. What can I do for you?...She's mad sure enough," he thought to himself; "I thought it was a ghost."

"I don't know," she wailed, "I don't know. You're a man, and I'm a helpless girl. They turned me out! My mother's dead, and my brother's gone away. Look! Look here!" pointing to a bruise on her forehead. "The woman did that. My own father stood by and saw it done-said it served me right! Oh, my G.o.d!"

"What woman? Tell me all about it."

"The woman father brought home!...I want to go away from the bus.h.!.+...Oh! for G.o.d's sake take me away from the bus.h.!.+...Anything! anything!-you know!-only take me away from the bus.h.!.+"

Bob and his mate-who had been roused-did their best to soothe her; but suddenly, without a moment's warning, she sprang to her feet and scrambled to the top of the rock overhanging the camp. She stood for a moment in the bright moonlight, gazing intently down the vacant road.

"Here they come!" she cried, pointing down the road. "Here they come-the troopers! I can see their cap-peaks glistening in the moonlight!...I'm going away! Mother's gone. I'm going now!-Good-bye!-Good-bye! I'm going away from the bus.h.!.+"

Then she ran through the trees towards the foot of Long Gully. Bob and his mate followed; but, being unacquainted with the locality, they lost her.

She ran to the edge of a granite cliff on the higher side of the deepest of the rocky waterholes. There was a heavy splash, and three startled kangaroos, who had been drinking, leapt back and sped away, like three grey ghosts, up the ridge towards the moonlit peak.

The Story of the Oracle.

"WE young fellows," said "Sympathy Joe" to Mitch.e.l.l, after tea, in their first camp west the river-"and you and I are young fellows, comparatively-think we know the world. There are plenty of young chaps knocking round in this country who reckon they've been through it all before they're thirty. I've met cynics and men-o'-the-world, aged twenty-one or thereabouts, who've never been further than a trip to Sydney. They talk about 'this world' as if they'd knocked round in half-a-dozen other worlds before they came across here-and they are just as off-hand about it as older Australians are when they talk about this colony as compared with the others. They say: 'My oath-same here.' 'I've been there.' 'My oath!-you're right.' 'Take it from me!' and all that sort of thing. They understand women, and have a contempt for 'em; and chaps that don't talk as they talk, or do as they do, or see as they see, are either soft or ratty. Agood many reckon that 'life ain't blanky well worth livin';' sometimes they feel so blanky somehow that they wouldn't give a blank whether they chucked it or not; but that sort never chuck it. It's mostly the quiet men that do that, and if they've got any complaints to make against the world, they make 'em at the head station. Why, I've known healthy, single, young fellows under twenty-five who drank to drown their troubles-some because they reckoned the world didn't understand nor appreciate 'em-as if it could!"

"If the world don't understand or appreciate you," said Mitch.e.l.l solemnly, as he reached for a burning stick to light his pipe-"make it!"

"To drown their troubles!" continued Joe, in a tone of impatient contempt. "The Oracle must be well on towards the sixties; he can take his gla.s.s with any man, but you never saw him drunk."

"What's the Oracle to do with it?"

"Did you ever hear his history?"

"No. Do you know it?"

"Yes, though I don't think he has any idea that I do. Now, we were talking about the Oracle a little while ago. We know he's an old a.s.s; a good many outsiders consider that he's a bit soft or ratty, and, as we're likely to be mates together for some time on that fencing contract, if we get it, you might as well know what sort of a man he is and was, so's you won't get uneasy about him if he gets deaf for a while when you're talking, or does funny things with his pipe or pint-pot, or walks up and down by himself for an hour or so after tea, or sits on a log with his head in his hands, or leans on the fence in the gloaming and keeps looking in a blank sort of way, straight ahead, across the clearing. For he's gazing at something a thousand miles across country, south-east, and about twenty years back into the past, and no doubt he sees himself (as a young man), and a Gippsland girl, spooning under the stars along between the hop-gardens and the Mitch.e.l.l River. And, if you get holt of a fiddle or a concertina, don't rasp or sw.a.n.k too much on old tunes, when he's round, for the Oracle can't stand it. Play something lively. He'll be down there at that surveyor's camp yarning till all hours, so we'll have plenty of time for the story-but don't you ever give him a hint that you know.

"My people knew him well; I got most of the story from them-mostly from Uncle Bob, who knew him better than any. The rest leaked out through the women-you know how things leak out amongst women?"

Mitch.e.l.l dropped his head and scratched the back of it. He knew.

"It was on the Cudgegong River. My Uncle Bob was mates with him on one of those 'rushes' along there-the 'Pipeclay', I think it was, or the 'Log Paddock'. The Oracle was a young man then, of course, and so was Uncle Bob (he was a match for most men). You see the Oracle now, and you can imagine what he was when he was a young man. Over six feet, and as straight as a sapling, Uncle Bob said, clean-limbed, and as fresh as they made men in those days; carried his hands behind him, as he does now, when he hasn't got the swag-but his shoulders were back in those days. Of course he wasn't the Oracle then; he was young Tom Marshall-but that doesn't matter. Everybody liked him-especially women and children. He was a bit happy-go-lucky and careless, but he didn't know anything about 'this world', and didn't bother about it; he hadn't 'been there'. 'And his heart was as good as gold,' my aunt used to say. He didn't understand women as we young fellows do nowadays, and therefore he hadn't any contempt for 'em. Perhaps he understood, and understands them better than any of us, without knowing it. Anyway, you know, he's always gentle and kind where a woman or child is concerned, and doesn't like to hear us talk about women as we do sometimes.

"There was a girl on the goldfields-a fine lump of a blonde, and pretty gay. She came from Sydney, I think, with her people, who kept shanties on the fields. She had a splendid voice, and used to sing 'Madeline'. There might have been one or two bad women before that, in the Oracle's world, but no cold-blooded, designing ones. He calls the bad ones 'unfortunate'.

"Perhaps it was Tom's looks, or his freshness, or his innocence, or softness-or all together-that attracted her. Anyway, he got mixed up with her before the goldfield petered out.

"No doubt it took a long while for the facts to work into Tom's head that a girl might sing like she did and yet be thoroughly unprincipled. The Oracle was always slow at coming to a decision, but when he does it's generally the right one. Anyway, you can take that for granted, for you won't move him.

"I don't know whether he found out that she wasn't all that she pretended to be to him, or whether they quarrelled, or whether she chucked him over for a lucky digger. Tom never had any luck on the goldfields. Anyway, he left and went over to the Victorian side, where his people were, and went up Gippsland way. It was there for the first time in his life that he got what you would call 'properly gone on a girl'; he got hard hit-he met his fate.

"Her name was Bertha Bredt, I remember. Aunt Bob saw her afterwards. Aunt Bob used to say that she was 'a girl as G.o.d made her'-a good, true, womanly girl-one of the sort of girls that only love once. Tom got on with her father, who was packing horses through the ranges to the new goldfields-it was rough country, and there were no roads; they had to pack everything there in those days, and there was money in it. The girl's father took to Tom-as almost everybody else did-and, as far as the girl was concerned, I think it was a case of love at first sight. They only knew each other for about six months and were only 'courting' (as they called it then) for three or four months altogether; but she was that sort of girl that can love a man for six weeks and lose him for ever, and yet go on loving him to the end of her life-and die with his name on her lips.

"Well, things were brightening up every way for Tom, and he and his sweetheart were beginning to talk about their own little home in future, when there came a letter from the 'Madeline' girl in New South Wales.

"She was in terrible trouble. Her baby was to be born in a month. Her people had kicked her out, and she was in danger of starving. She begged and prayed of him to come back and marry her, if only for his child's sake. He could go then, and be free; she would never trouble him any more-only come and marry her for the child's sake.

"The Oracle doesn't know where he lost that letter, but I do. It was burnt afterwards by a woman, who was more than a mother to him in his trouble-Aunt Bob. She thought he might carry it round with the rest of his papers, in his swag, for years, and come across it unexpectedly when he was camped by himself in the bush and feeling dull. It wouldn't have done him any good then.

"He must have fought the hardest fight in his life when he got that letter. No doubt he walked to and fro, to and fro, all night, with his hands behind him, and his eyes on the ground, as he does now sometimes. Walking up and down helps you to fight a thing out.

"No doubt he thought of things pretty well as he thinks now: the poor girl's shame on every tongue, and belled round the district by every hag in the towns.h.i.+p; and her looked upon by women as being as bad as any man who ever went to Bathurst in the old days, handcuffed between two troopers. There is sympathy, a pipe and tobacco, a cheering word, and maybe a whisky now and then, for the criminal on his journey; but there is no mercy, at least as far as women are concerned, for the poor foolish girl, who has to sneak out the back way and round by back streets and lanes after dark, with a cloak on to hide her figure.