Australia Felix (7 page)

"Moth . . . Mrs. Beamish will need me to help her with tea. And . . . and would you please walk back with Jinny?"

Before he could reply, she had turned and was hurrying away.

They got home from the cave at sundown, he with the ripe Jinny hanging a dead weight on his arm, to find tea spread in the private parlour. The table was all but invisible under its load; and their hostess looked as though she had been parboiled on her own kitchen fire. She sat and fanned herself with a sheet of newspaper while, time and again, undaunted by refusals, she pressed the good things upon her guests. There were juicy beefsteaks piled high with rings of onion, and a barracoota, and a cold leg of mutton. There were apple-pies and jam-tarts, a dish of curds-and-whey and a jug of custard. Butter and bread were fresh and new; scones and cakes had just left the oven; and the great cups of tea were tempered by pure, thick cream.

To the two men who came from diggers' fare: cold chop for breakfast, cold chop for dinner and cold chop for tea: the meal was little short of a banquet; and few words were spoken in its course. But the moment arrived when they could eat no more, and when even Mrs. Beamish ceased to urge them. Pipes and pouches were produced; Polly and Jinny rose to collect the plates, Tilly and her beau to sit on the edge of the verandah: they could be seen in silhouette against the rising moon, Tilly's head drooping to Purdy's shoulder.

Mrs. Beamish looked from them to Mahony with a knowing smile, and whispered behind her hand: "I do wish those two 'ud 'urry up an' make up their minds, that I do! I'd like to see my Tilda settled. No offence meant to young Smith. 'E's the best o' good company. But sometimes . . . well, I cud jus' knock their 'eads together when they sit so close, an' say: come, give over yer spoonin' an' get to business! Either you want one another or you don't. -- I seen you watchin' our Polly, Mr. Mahony " -- she made Mahony wince by stressing the second syllable of his name. "Bless you, no -- no relation whatsoever. She just 'elps a bit in the 'ouse, an' is company for the girls. We tuck 'er in a year ago -- 'er own relations 'ad played 'er a dirty trick. Mustn't let 'er catch me sayin' so, though; she won't 'ear a word against 'em, and that's as it should be."

Looking round, and finding Polly absent from the room, she went on to tell Mahony how Polly's eldest brother, a ten years' resident in Melbourne, had sent to England for the girl on her leaving school, to come out and assist in keeping his house. And how an elder sister, who was governessing in Sydney, had chosen just this moment to throw up her post and return to quarter herself upon the brother.

"An' so when Polly gets 'ere -- a little bit of a thing in short frocks, in charge of the capt'n -- there was no room for 'er, an' she 'ad to look about 'er for somethin' else to do. We tuck 'er in, an', I will say, I've never regretted it. Indeed I don't know now, 'ow we ever got on without 'er. -- Yes, it's you I'm talkin' about, miss, singin' yer praises, an' you needn't get as red as if you'd bin up to mischief! Pa'll say as much for you, too."

"That I will!" said Mr. Beamish, opening his mouth for the first time except to put food in it. "That I will," and he patted Polly's hand. " The man as gits Polly'll git a treasure."

Polly blushed, after the helpless, touching fashion of very young creatures: the blood stained her cheeks, mounted to her forehead, spread in a warm wave over neck and ears. To spare her, Mahony turned his head and looked out of the window. He would have liked to say: Run away, child, run away, and don't let them see your confusion. Polly, however, went conscientiously about her task, and only left the room when she had picked up her full complement of plates. -- But she did not appear again that night.

Deserted even by Mrs. Beamish, the two men pushed back their chairs from the table and drew tranquilly at their pipes.

The innkeeper proved an odd, misty sort of fellow, exceedingly backward at declaring himself; it was as though each of his heavy words had to be fetched from a distance. "No doubt about it, it's the wife that wears the breeches," was Mahony's inward comment. And as one after another of his well-meant remarks fell flat: "Become almost a deaf-mute, it would seem, under the eternal female clacking."

But for each mortal there exists at least one theme to fire him. In the case of Beamish this turned out to be the Land Question. Before the gold discovery he had been a bush shepherd, he told Mahony, and, if he had called the tune, he would have lived and died one. But the wife had had ambitions, the children were growing up, and every one knew what it was when women got a maggot in their heads. There had been no peace for him till he had chucked his twelve-year-old job and joined the rush to Mount Alexander. But at heart he had remained a bushman; and he was now all on the side of the squatters in their tussle with the Crown. He knew a bit, he'd make bold to say, about the acreage needed in certain districts per head of sheep; he could tell a tale of the risks and mischances squatting involved: "If t'aint fire it's flood, an' if the water passes you by it's the scab or the rot." To his thinking, the government's attempt to restrict the areas of sheep-runs, and to give effect to the "fourteen-year-clause" which limited the tenure, were acts of folly. The gold supply would give out as suddenly as it had begun; but sheep would graze there till the crack of doom -- the land was fit for nothing else.

Mahony thought this point of view lopsided. No new country could hope to develop and prosper without a steady influx of the right kind of population and this the colony would never have, so long as the authorities, by refusing to sell them land, made it impossible for immigrants to settle there. Why, America was but three thousand miles distant from the old country, compared with Australia's thirteen thousand, and in America land was to be had in plenty at five shillings per acre. As to Mr. Beamish's idea of the gold giving out, the geological formation of the goldfields rendered that improbable. He sympathised with the squatters, who naturally enough believed their rights to the land inalienable; but a government worthy of the name must legislate with an eye to the future, not for the present alone.

Their talk was broken by long gaps. In these, the resonant voice of Mrs. Beamish could be heard rebuking and directing her two handmaidens.

"Now then, Jinny, look alive, an' don't ack like a dyin' duck in a thunderstorm, or you'll never get back to do your bit o' spoonin'! -- Save them bones, Polly. Never waste an atom, my chuck -- remember that, when you've got an 'ouse of your own! No, girls, I always says, through their stomachs, that's the shortcut to their 'earts. The rest's on'y fal-de-lal-ing." -- On the verandah, in face of the vasty, star-spangled night, Tilly's head had found its resting-place, and an arm lay round her waist.

"I shall make 'im cut off 'is beard first thing," said Jinny that night: she was sitting half-undressed on the side of a big bed, which the three girls shared with one another.

"Um! just you wait and see if it's as easy as you think," retorted Tilly from her pillow. Again Purdy had let slip a golden chance to put the decisive question; and Tilly's temper was short in consequence.

"Mrs. Dr. Mahony . . . though I do wonder 'ow 'e ever keeps people from saying Ma-hon-y," said Jinny dreamily. She, too, had spent some time in star-gazing, and believed she had ground for hope.

"Just listen to 'er, will you!" said Tilly angrily. " Upon my word, Jinny Beamish, if one didn't know you 'ad the 'abit of marrying yourself off to every fresh cove you meet, one 'ud say you was downright bold!"

"You needn't talk! Every one can see you're as mad as can be because you can't bring your old dot-and-go-one to the scratch."

"Oh, hush, Jinny" said Polly, grieved at this thrust into Tilly's open wound.

"Well, it's true. -- Oh, look 'ere now, there's not a drop o' water in this blessed jug again. 'Oo's week is it to fill it? Tilly B., it's yours!"

"Serves you right. You can fetch it yourself."

"Think I see myself!"

Polly intervened. " I'll go for it, Jinny."

"What a little duck you are, Poll! But you shan't go alone. I'll carry the candle."

Tying on a petticoat over her bedgown, Polly took the ewer, and with Jinny as torch-bearer set forth. There was still some noise in the public part of the house, beside the bar; but the passage was bare and quiet. The girls crept mousily past the room occupied by the two young men, and after several false alarms and suppressed chirps reached the back door, and filled the jug at the tap of the galvanised-iron tank.

The return journey was not so successful. Just as they got level with the visitors' room, they heard feet crossing the floor. Polly started; the water splashed over the neck of the jug, and fell with a loud plop. At this Jinny lost her head and ran off with the candle. Polly, in a panic of fright, dived into the pantry with her burden, and crouched down behind a tub of fermenting gingerbeer. -- And sure enough, a minute after, the door of the room opposite was flung open and a pair of jackboots landed in the passage.

Nor was this the worst: the door was not shut again but remained ajar. Through the chink, Polly, shrunk to her smallest -- what if one of them should feel hungry, and come into the pantry and discover her? -- Polly heard Purdy say with appalling loudness: "Oh, go on, old man-don't jaw so!" He then seemed to plunge his head in the basin, for it was with a choke and a splutter that he next inquired: "And what did you think of the little 'un ? Wasn't I right?"

There was the chink of coins handled, and the other voice answered: "Here's what I think. Take your money, my boy, and be done with it!"

"Dick! -- Great Snakes! Why, damn it all, man, you don't mean to tell me. . . ."

"And understand, sir, in future, that I do not make bets where a lady is concerned."

"Oh, I know -- only on the Tilly-Jinny-sort. And yet good Lord, Dick!" -- the rest was drowned in a bawl of laughter.

Under cover of it Polly took to her heels and fled, regardless of the open door, or the padding of her bare feet on the boards.

Without replying to the astonished Jinny's query in respect of the water, she climbed over Tilly to her place beside the wall, and shutting her eyes very tight, drew the sheet over her face: it felt as though it would never be cool again. -- Hence, Jinny, agreeably wakeful, was forced to keep her thoughts to herself; for if you lie between two people, one of whom is in a bad temper, and the other fast asleep, you might just as well be alone in bed.

Next morning Polly alleged a headache and did not appear at breakfast. Only Jinny and Tilly stood on the verandah of romantic memories, and ruefully waved their handkerchiefs, keeping it up till even the forms of horses were blurred in the distance.

His tent-home had never seemed so comfortless. He ended his solitary ride late at night and wet to the skin; his horse had cast a shoe far from any smithy. Long Jim alone came to the door to greet him. The shopman, on whose doltish honesty Mahony would have staked his head, had profited by his absence to empty the cash-box and go off on the spree. -- Even one of the cats had met its fate in an old shaft, where its corpse still swam.

The following day, as a result of exposure and hard riding, Mahony was attacked by dysentery; and before he had recovered, the goods arrived from Melbourne. They had to be unloaded, at some distance from the store, conveyed there, got under cover, checked off and arranged. This was carried out in sheets of cold rain, which soaked the canvas walls and made it doubly hard to get about the clay tracks that served as streets. As if this were not enough, the river in front of the house rose -- rose, and in two twos was over its banks -- and he and Long Jim spent a night in their clothes, helping neighbours less fortunately placed to move their belongings into safety.

The lion's share of this work fell on him. Long Jim still carried his arm in a sling, and was good for nothing but to guard the store and summon Mahony on the appearance of customers. Since his accident, too, the fellow had suffered from frequent fits of colic or cramp, and was for ever slipping off to the township to find the spirits in which his employer refused to deal. For the unloading and warehousing of the goods, it was true, old Ocock had loaned his sons; but the strict watch Mahony felt bound to keep over this pretty pair far outweighed what their help was worth to him.

Now it was Sunday evening, and for the first time for more than a week he could call his soul his own again. He stood at the door and watched those of his neighbours who were not Roman Catholics making for church and chapel, to which half a dozen tinkly bells invited them. The weather had finally cleared up, and a goodly number of people waded past him through the mire. Among them, in seemly Sabbath dress, went Ocock, with his two black sheep at heel. The old man was a rigid Methodist, and at a recent prayer-meeting had been moved to bear public witness to his salvation. This was no doubt one reason why the young scapegrace Tom's almost simultaneous misconduct had been so bitter a pill for him to swallow: while, through God's mercy, he was become an exemplar to the weaker brethren, a son of his made his name to stink in the nostrils of the reputable community. Mahony liked to believe that there was good in everybody, and thought the intolerant harshness which the boy was subjected would defeat its end. Yet it was open to question if clemency would have answered better. " Bad eggs, the brace of them!" had been his own verdict, after a week's trial of the lads. One would not, the other apparently could not work. Johnny, the elder, was dull and liverish from intemperance; and the round-faced adolescent, the news of whose fatherhood had raced the wind, was so sheep-faced, so craven, in the presence of his elders, that he could not say bo to a battledore. There was something unnatural about this fierce timidity -- and the doctor in Mahony caught a quick glimpse of the probable reverse of the picture.

But it was cold, in face of all this rain-soaked clay; cold blue-grey clouds drove across a washed-out sky; and he still felt unwell. Returning to his living-room where a small American stove was burning, he prepared for a quiet evening. In a corner by the fire stood an old packing-case. He lifted the lid and thrust his hand in: it was here he kept his books. He needed no light to see by; he knew each volume by the feel. And after fumbling for a little among the tumbled contents, he drew forth a work on natural science and sat down to read. But he did not get far; his brain was tired, intractable. Lighting his pipe, he tilted back his chair, laid the Vestiges face downwards, and put his feet on the table.