Selected Stories (44 page)

She seemed extra glad to see me. I thought at first that she was a bit of a gusher.

“Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come, Mr Ellis,” she said, giving my hand a grip. “Walter—Mr Head—has been speaking to me about you. I’ve been expecting you. Sit down by the fire, Mr Ellis; tea will be ready presently. Don’t you find it a bit chilly?” She shivered. It was a bit chilly now at night on the Bathurst plains. The table was set for tea, and set rather in swell style. The cottage was too well furnished even for a lucky boss drover’s home; the furniture looked as if it had belonged to a tony homestead at one time. I felt a bit strange at first, sitting down to tea, and almost wished that I was having a comfortable tuck-in at a restaurant or in a pub dining-room. But she knew a lot about the Bush, and chatted away, and asked questions about the trip, and soon put me at my ease. You see, for the last year or two I’d taken my tucker in my hands—hunk of damper and meat and a clasp-knife mostly—sitting on my heel in the dust, or on a log or a tucker-box.

There was a hard, brown, wrinkled old woman that the Heads called “Auntie”. She waited at the table; but Mrs Head kept bustling round herself most of the time, helping us. Andy came in to tea.

Mrs Head bustled round like a girl of twenty instead of a woman of thirty-seven, as Andy afterwards told me she was. She had the figure and movements of a girl, and the impulsiveness
and expression too—a womanly girl; but sometimes I fancied there was something very childish about her face and talk. After tea she and the Boss sat on one side of the fire and Andy and I on the other—Andy a little behind me at the corner of the table.

“Walter—Mr Head—tells me you’ve been out on the Lachlan River, Mr Ellis?” she said as soon as she’d settled down, and she leaned forward, as if eager to hear that I’d been there.

“Yes, Mrs Head. I’ve knocked round all about out there.”

She sat up straight, and put the tips of her fingers to the side of her forehead and knitted her brows. This was a trick she had—she often did it during the evening. And when she did that she seemed to forget what she’d said last.

She smoothed her forehead, and clasped her hands in her lap.

“Oh, I’m so glad to meet somebody from the back country, Mr Ellis,” she said. “Walter so seldom brings a stranger here, and I get tired of talking to the same people about the same things, and seeing the same faces. You don’t know what a relief it is, Mr Ellis, to see a new face and talk to a stranger.”

“I can quite understand that, Mrs Head,” I said. And so I could. I never stayed more than three months in one place if I could help it.

She looked into the fire and seemed to try to think. The Boss straightened up and stroked her head with his big sun-browned hand, and then put his arm round her shoulders. This brought her back.

“You know we had a station out on the Lachlan, Mr Ellis. Did Walter ever tell you about the time we lived there?”

“No,” I said, glancing at the Boss. “I know you had a station there; but, you know, the Boss doesn’t talk much.”

“Tell Jack, Maggie,” said the Boss; “I don’t mind.”

She smiled. “You know Walter, Mr Ellis,” she said. “You won’t mind him. He doesn’t like me to talk about the children; he thinks it upsets me, but that’s foolish: it always relieves me to talk to a stranger.” She leaned forward, eagerly it seemed, and went on quickly: “I’ve been wanting to tell you about the children ever since Walter spoke to me about you. I knew you would understand directly I saw your face. These town people
don’t understand. I like to talk to a Bushman. You know we lost our children out on the station. The fairies, took them. Did Walter ever tell you about the fairies taking the children away?”

This was a facer. “I—I beg pardon,” I commenced, when Andy gave me a dig in the back. Then I saw it all.

“No, Mrs Head. The Boss didn’t tell me about that.”

“You surely know about the Bush Fairies, Mr Ellis,” she said, her big eyes fixed on my face—“the Bush Fairies that look after the little ones that are lost in the Bush, and take them away from the Bush if they are not found? You’ve surely heard of them, Mr Ellis? Most Bushmen have that I’ve spoken to. Maybe you’ve seen them? Andy there has.” Andy gave me another dig.

“Of course I’ve heard of them, Mrs Head,” I said; “but I can’t swear that I’ve seen one.”

“Andy has. Haven’t you, Andy?”

“Of course I have, Mrs Head. Didn’t I tell you all about it the last time we were home?”

“And didn’t you ever tell Mr Ellis, Andy?”

“Of course he did!” I said, coming to Andy’s rescue; “I remember it now. You told me that night we camped on the Bogan River, Andy.”

“Of course!” said Andy.

“Did he tell you about finding a lost child and the fairy with it?”

“Yes” said Andy; “I told him all about that.”

“And the fairy was just going to take the child away when Andy found it, and when the fairy saw Andy she flew away.”

“Yes,” I said; “that’s what Andy told me.”

“And what did you say the fairy was like, Andy?” asked Mrs Head, fixing her eyes on his face.

“Like? It was like one of them angels you see in Bible pictures, Mrs Head,” said Andy promptly, sitting bolt upright, and keeping his big innocent grey eyes fixed on hers lest she might think he was telling lies. “It was just like the angel in that Christ-in-the-stable picture we had at home on the station—the right-hand one in blue.”

She smiled. You couldn’t call it an idiotic smile, nor the foolish smile you see sometimes in melancholy mad people. It was more of a happy childish smile.

“I was so foolish at first, and gave poor Walter and the doctors a lot of trouble,” she said. “Of course it never struck me, until afterwards, that the fairies had taken the children.”

She pressed the tips of the fingers of both hands to her forehead, and sat so for a while; then she roused herself again——

“But what am I thinking about? I haven’t started to tell you about the children at all yet. Auntie! bring the children’s portraits, will you, please? You’ll find them on my dressing-table.”

The old woman seemed to hesitate.

“Go on, Auntie, and do what I ask you,” said Mrs Head. “Don’t be foolish. You know I’m all right now.

“You mustn’t take any notice of Auntie, Mr Ellis,” she said with a smile, while the old woman’s back was turned. “Poor old body, she’s a bit crotchety at times, as old women are. She doesn’t like me to get talking about the children. She’s got an idea that if I do I’ll start talking nonsense, as I used to do the first year after the children were lost. I was very foolish then, wasn’t I, Walter?”

“You were, Maggie,” said the Boss. “But that’s all past. You mustn’t think of that time any more.”

“You see,” said Mrs Head, in explanation to me, “at first nothing would drive it out of my head that the children had wandered about until they perished of hunger and thirst in the Bush. As if the Bush Fairies would let them do that.”

“You were very foolish, Maggie,” said the Boss; “but don’t think about that.”

The old woman brought the portraits, a little boy and a little girl: they must have been very pretty children.

“You see,” said Mrs Head, taking the portraits eagerly, and giving them to me one by one, “we had these taken in Sydney some years before the children were lost; they were much younger then. Wally’s is not a good portrait; he was teething then, and very thin. That’s him standing on the chair. Isn’t the
pose good? See, he’s got one hand and one little foot forward, and an eager look in his eyes. The portrait is very dark, and you’ve got to look close to see the foot. He wants a toy rabbit that the photographer is tossing up to make him laugh. In the next portrait he’s sitting on the chair—he’s just settled himself to enjoy the fun. But see how happy little Maggie looks! You can see my arm where I was holding her in the chair. She was six months old then, and little Wally had just turned two.”

She put the portraits up on the mantelshelf.

“Let me see; Wally (that’s little Walter, you know)—Wally was five and little Maggie three and a half when we lost them. Weren’t they, Walter?”

“Yes, Maggie,” said the Boss.

“You were away, Walter, when it happened.”

“Yes, Maggie,” said the Boss—cheerfully, it seemed to me—“I was away.”

“And we couldn’t find you, Walter. You see,” she said to me, “Walter—Mr Head—was away in Sydney on business, and we couldn’t find his address. It was a beautiful morning, though rather warm, and just after the break-up of the drought. The grass was knee-high all over the run. It was a lonely place; there wasn’t much bush cleared round the homestead, just a hundred yards or so, and the great awful scrubs ran back from the edges of the clearing all round for miles and miles—fifty or a hundred miles in some directions without a break; didn’t they, Walter?”

“Yes, Maggie.”

“I was alone at the house except for Mary, a half-caste girl we had, who used to help me with the housework and the children. Andy was out on the run with the men, mustering sheep; weren’t you, Andy?”

“Yes, Mrs Head.”

“I used to watch the children close as they got to run about, because if they once got into the edge of the scrub they’d be lost; but this morning little Wally begged hard to be let take his little sister down under a clump of blue-gums in a corner of the home paddock to gather buttercups. You remember that clump of gums, Walter?”

“I remember, Maggie.”

“I won’t go through the fence a step, mumma,” little Wally said. I could see Old Peter—an old shepherd and station hand we had—I could see him working on a dam we were making across a creek that ran down there. You remember Old Peter, Walter?”

“Of course I do, Maggie.”

“I knew that Old Peter would keep an eye to the children; so I told little Wally to keep tight hold of his sister’s hand and go straight down to Old Peter and tell him I sent them.”

She was leaning forward with her hands clasping her knee, and telling me all this with a strange sort of eagerness.

“The little ones toddled off hand in hand, with their other hands holding fast their straw hats. ‘In case a bad wind blowed,’ as little Maggie said. I saw them stoop under the first fence, and that was the last that anyone saw of them.”

“Except the fairies, Maggie,” said the Boss quickly.

“Of course, Walter, except the fairies.”

She pressed her fingers to her temples again for a minute.

“It seems that Old Peter was going to ride out to the musterers’ camp that morning with bread for the men, and he left his work at the dam and started into the Bush after his horse just as I turned back into the house, and before the children got near him. They either followed him for some distance or wandered into the Bush after flowers or butterflies——” She broke off, and then suddenly asked me, “Do you think the Bush Fairies would entice children away, Mr Ellis?”

The Boss caught my eye, and frowned and shook his head slightly.

“No. I’m sure they wouldn’t Mrs Head,” I said—“at least not from what I know of them.”

She thought, or tried to think, again for a while, in her helpless puzzled way. Then she went on, speaking rapidly, and rather mechanically, it seemed to me—

“The first I knew of it was when Peter came to the house about an hour afterwards, leading his horse, and without the children. I said—I said, ‘O my God! where’s the children?’” Her fingers fluttered up to her temples.

“Don’t mind about that, Maggie,” said the Boss, hurriedly, stroking her head. “Tell Jack about the fairies.”

“You were away at the time, Walter?”

“Yes, Maggie.”

“And we couldn’t find you, Walter?”

“No, Maggie,” very gently. He rested his elbow on his knee and his chin on his hand, and looked into the fire.

“It wasn’t your fault, Walter; but if you had been at home do you think the fairies would have taken the children?”

“Of course they would, Maggie. They had to: the children were lost.”

“And they’re bringing the children home next year?”

“Yes, Maggie—next year.”

She lifted her hands to her head in a startled way, and it was some time before she went on again. There was no need to tell me about the lost children. I could see it all. She and the half-caste rushing towards where the children were seen last, with Old Peter after them. The hurried search in the nearer scrub. The mother calling all the time for Maggie and Wally, and growing wilder as the minutes flew past. Old Peter’s ride to the musterers’ camp. Horsemen seeming to turn up in no time and from nowhere, as they do in a case like this, and no matter how lonely the district. Bushmen galloping through the scrub in all directions. The hurried search the first day, and the mother mad with anxiety as night came on. Her long, hopeless, wild-eyed watch through the night; starting up at every sound of a horse’s hoof, and reading the worst in one glance at the rider’s face. The systematic work of the search-parties next day and the days following. How those days do fly past. The women from the next run or selection, and some from the town, driving from ten or twenty miles, perhaps, to stay with and try to comfort the mother. (“Put the horse to the cart, Jim: I must go to that poor woman!”) Comforting her with improbable stories of children who had been lost for days, and were none the worse for it when they were found. The mounted policemen out with the black trackers. Search-parties cooeeing to each other about the Bush, and lighting signal-fires. The reckless break-neck rides for news or more help. And the Boss himself,
wild-eyed and haggard, riding about the Bush with Andy and one or two others perhaps, and searching hopelessly, days after the rest had given up all hope of finding the children alive. All this passed before me as Mrs Head talked, her voice sounding the while as if she were in another room; and when I roused myself to listen, she was on to, the fairies again.

“It was very foolish of me, Mr Ellis. Weeks after—months after, I think—I’d insist on going out on the verandah at dusk and calling for the children. I’d stand there and call ‘Maggie!’ and ‘Wally!’ until Walter took me inside; sometimes he had to force me inside. Poor Walter! But of course I didn’t know about the fairies then, Mr Ellis. I was really out of my mind for a time.”