Over the Sliprails Part 17

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 brothers 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.

Mitch.e.l.l on the "s.e.x" and Other "Problems"

"I agree with 'T' in last week's 'Bulletin'," said Mitch.e.l.l, after cogitating some time over the last drop of tea in his pannikin, held at various angles, "about what they call the 's.e.x Problem'. There's no problem, really, except Creation, and that's not our affair; we can't solve it, and we've no right to make a problem out of it for ourselves to puzzle over, and waste the little time that is given us about. It's we that make the problems, not Creation. We make 'em, and they only smother us; they'll smother the world in the end if we don't look out. Anything that can be argued, for and against, from half a dozen different points of view--and most things that men argue over can be--and anything that has been argued about for thousands of years (as most things have) is worse than profitless; it wastes the world's time and ours, and often wrecks old mates.h.i.+ps. Seems to me the deeper you read, think, talk, or write about things that end in ism, the less satisfactory the result; the more likely you are to get bushed and dissatisfied with the world. And the more you keep on the surface of plain things, the plainer the sailing--the more comfortable for you and everybody else. We've always got to come to the surface to breathe, in the end, in any case; we're meant to live on the surface, and we might as well stay there and look after it and ourselves for all the good we do diving down after fish that aren't there, except in our imagination.

And some of 'em are very dead fish, too--the 's.e.x Problem', for instance. When we fall off the surface of the earth it will be time enough to make a problem out of the fact that we couldn't stick on. I'm a Federal Pro-trader in this country; I'm a Federalist because I think Federation is the plain and natural course for Australia, and I'm a Free-tectionist because I'm in favour of sinking any question, or any two things, that enlightened people can argue and fight over, and try, one after the other, for fifty years without being able to come to a decision about, or prove which is best for the welfare of the country.

It only wastes a young country's time, and keeps it off the right track.

Federation isn't a problem--it's a plain fact--but they make a problem out of every panel they have to push down in the rotten old boundary fences."

"Personal interests," suggested Joe.

"Of course. It's personal interest of the wrong sort that makes all the problems. You can trace the s.e.x problem to people who trade in unhealthy personal interests. I believe in personal interests of the right sort--true individualism. If we all looked after ourselves, and our wives and families--if we have any--in the proper way, the world would be all right. We waste too much time looking after each other.

"Now, supposing we're travelling and have to get a shed and make a cheque so's to be able to send a few quid home, as soon as we can, to the missus, or the old folks, and the next water is twenty miles ahead.

If we sat down and argued over a social problem till doomsday, we wouldn't get to the tank; we'd die of thirst, and the missus and kids, or the old folks, would be sold up and turned out into the streets, and have to fall back on a 'home of hope', or wait their turn at the Benevolent Asylum with bags for broken victuals. I've seen that, and I don't want anybody belonging to me to have to do it.

"Reminds me that when a poor, deserted girl goes to a 'home' they don't make a problem of her--they do their best for her and try to get her righted. And the priests, too: if there's anything in the s.e.x or any other problem--anything that hasn't been threshed out--they're the men that'll know it. I'm not a Catholic, but I know this: that if a girl that's been left by one--no matter what Church she belongs to--goes to the priest, they'll work all the points they know (and they know 'em all) to get her righted, and, if the chap, or his people, won't come up to the scratch, Father Ryan'll frighten h.e.l.l out of 'em. I can't say as much for our own Churches."

"But you're in favour of socialism and democracy?" asked Joe.

"Of course I am. But the world won't do any good arguing over it.

The people will have to get up and walk, and, what's more, stick together--and I don't think they'll ever do that--it ain't in human nature. Socialism, or democracy, was all right in this country till it got fas.h.i.+onable and was made a fad or a problem of. Then it got smothered pretty quick. And a fad or a problem always breeds a host of parasites or hangers-on. Why, as soon as I saw the advanced idealist fools--they're generally the middle-cla.s.s, shabby-genteel families that catch Spiritualism and Theosophy and those sort of complaints, at the end of the epidemic--that catch on at the tail-end of things and think they've caught something brand, s.h.i.+ning, new;--as soon as I saw them, and the problem spielers and notoriety-hunters of both s.e.xes, beginning to hang round Australian Unionism, I knew it was doomed. And so it was.

The straight men were disgusted, or driven out. There are women who hang on for the same reason that a girl will sometimes go into the dock and swear an innocent man's life away. But as soon as they see that the cause is dying, they drop it at once, and wait for another. They come like b.l.o.o.d.y dingoes round a calf, and only leave the bones. They're about as democratic as the crows. And the rotten 's.e.x-problem' sort of thing is the cause of it all; it poisons weak minds--and strong ones too sometimes.

"Why, you could make a problem out of Epsom salts. You might argue as to why human beings want Epsom salts, and try to trace the causes that led up to it. I don't like the taste of Epsom salts--it's nasty in the mouth--but when I feel that way I take 'em, and I feel better afterwards; and that's good enough for me. We might argue that black is white, and white is black, and neither of 'em is anything, and nothing is everything; and a woman's a man and a man's a woman, and it's really the man that has the youngsters, only we imagine it's the woman because she imagines that she has all the pain and trouble, and the doctor is under the impression that he's attending to her, not the man, and the man thinks so too because he imagines he's walking up and down outside, and slipping into the corner pub now and then for a nip to keep his courage up, waiting, when it's his wife that's doing that all the time; we might argue that it's all force of imagination, and that imagination is an unknown force, and that the unknown is nothing. But, when we've settled all that to our own satisfaction, how much further ahead are we?

In the end we'll come to the conclusion that we ain't alive, and never existed, and then we'll leave off bothering, and the world will go on just the same."

"What about science?" asked Joe.

"Science ain't 's.e.x problems'; it's facts.... Now, I don't mind Spiritualism and those sort of things; they might help to break the monotony, and can't do much harm. But the 's.e.x problem', as it's written about to-day, does; it's dangerous and dirty, and it's time to settle it with a club. Science and education, if left alone, will look after s.e.x facts.

"You can't get anything out of the 's.e.x problem', no matter how you argue. In the old Bible times they had half a dozen wives each, but we don't know for certain how THEY got on. The Mormons tried it again, and seemed to get on all right till we interfered. We don't seem to be able to get on with one wife now--at least, according to the 's.e.x problem'.

The 's.e.x problem' troubled the Turks so much that they tried three. Lots of us try to settle it by knocking round promiscuously, and that leads to actions for maintenance and breach of promise cases, and all sorts of trouble. Our blacks settle the 's.e.x problem' with a club, and so far I haven't heard any complaints from them.