Selected Stories (45 page)

“No wonder you were, Mrs Head,” I said. “It was terrible trouble.”

“Yes, and I made it worse. I was so selfish in my trouble. But it’s all right now, Walter,” she said, rumpling the Boss’s hair. “I’ll never be so foolish again.”

“Of course you won’t, Maggie.”

“We’re very happy now, aren’t we, Walter?”

“Of course we are, Maggie.”

“And the children are coming back next year.”

“Next year, Maggie.”

He leaned over the fire and stirred it up.

“You mustn’t take any notice of us, Mr Ellis,” she went on. “Poor Walter is away so much that I’m afraid I make a little too much of him when he does come home.”

She paused and pressed her fingers to her temples again. Then she said quickly:

“They used to tell me that it was all nonsense about the fairies, but they were no friends of mine. I shouldn’t have listened to them, Walter. You told me not to. But then I was really not in my right mind.”

“Who used to tell you that, Mrs Head?” I asked.

“The Voices,” she said; “you know about the Voices, Walter?”

“Yes, Maggie. But you don’t hear the Voices now, Maggie?” he asked anxiously. “You haven’t heard them since I’ve been away this time, have you, Maggie?”

“No, Walter. They’ve gone away a long time. I hear voices now sometimes, but they’re the Bush Fairies’ voices. I hear them calling Maggie and Wally to come with them.” She paused again. “And sometimes I think I hear them call me. But of course I couldn’t go away without you, Walter. But I’m foolish again. I was going to ask you about the other voices, Mr Ellis. They used to say that it was madness about the fairies; but then, if the fairies hadn’t taken the children, Black Jimmy, or the black trackers with the police, could have tracked and found them at once.”

“Of course they could, Mrs Head,” I said.

“They said that the trackers couldn’t track them because there was rain a few hours after the children were lost. But that was ridiculous. It was only a thunderstorm.”

“Why!” I said, “I’ve known the blacks to track a man after a week’s heavy rain.”

She had her head between her fingers again, and when she looked up it was in a scared way.

“Oh, Walter!” she said, clutching the Boss’s arm; “whatever have I been talking about? What must Mr Ellis think of me? Oh! why did you let me talk like that?”

He put his arm round her. Andy nudged me and got up.

“Where are you going, Mr Ellis?” she asked hurriedly. “You’re not going tonight. Auntie’s made a bed for you in Andy’s room. You mustn’t mind me.”

“Jack and Andy are going out for a little while,” said the Boss. “They’ll be in to supper. We’ll have a yarn, Maggie.”

“Be sure you come back to supper, Mr Ellis,” she said. “I really don’t know what you must think of me—I’ve been talking all the time.”

“Oh, I’ve enjoyed myself, Mrs Head,” I said; and Andy hooked me out.

“She’ll have a good cry and be better now,” said Andy when we got away from the house. “She might be better for months. She has been fairly reasonable for over a year, but the Boss found her pretty bad when he came back this time. It upset him a lot, I can tell you. She has turns now and again, and always ends up like she did just now. She gets a longing to talk about it to a
Bushman and a stranger; it seems to do her good. The doctor’s against it, but doctors don’t know everything.”

“It’s all true about the children, then?” I asked.

“It’s cruel true,” said Andy.

“And were the bodies never found?”

“Yes;” then, after a long pause, “I found them.”

“You did!”

“Yes; in the scrub, and not so very far from home either—and in a fairly clear space. It’s a wonder the search-parties missed it; but it often happens that way. Perhaps the little ones wandered a long way and came round in a circle. I found them about two months after they were lost. They had to be found, if only for the Boss’s sake. You see, in a case like this, and when the bodies aren’t found, the parents never quite lose the idea that the little ones are wandering about the Bush to-night (it might be years after) and perishing from hunger, thirst, or cold. That mad idea haunts ’em all their lives. It’s the same, I believe, with friends drowned at sea. Friends ashore are haunted for a long while with the idea of the white sodden corpse tossing about and drifting round in the water.”

“And you never told Mrs Head about the children being found?”

“Not for a long time. It wouldn’t have done any good. She was raving mad for months. He took her to Sydney and then to Melbourne—to the best doctors he could find in Australia. They could do no good, so he sold the station—sacrificed everything, and took her to England.”

“To England?”

“Yes; and then to Germany to a big German doctor there. He’d offer a thousand pounds where they only wanted fifty. It was no good. She got worse in England, and raved to go back to Australia and find the children. The doctors advised him to take her back, and he did. He spent all his money, travelling saloon, and with reserved cabins, and a nurse, and trying to get her cured; that’s why he’s droving now. She was restless in Sydney. She wanted to go back to the station and wait there till the fairies brought the children home. She’d been getting the fairy idea into
her head slowly all the time. The Boss encouraged it. But the station was sold, and he couldn’t have lived there anyway without going mad himself. He’d married her from Bathurst. Both of them have got friends and relations here, so he thought best to bring her here. He persuaded her that the fairies were going to bring the children here. Everybody’s very kind to them. I think it’s a mistake to run away from a town where you’re known, in a case like this, though most people do it. It was years before he gave up hope. I think he has hopes yet—after she’s been fairly well for a longish time.”

“And you never tried telling her that the children were found?”

“Yes; the Boss did. The little ones were buried on the Lachlan River at first; but the Boss got a horror of having them buried in the Bush, so he had them brought to Sydney and buried in the Waverley Cemetery near the sea. He bought the ground, and room for himself and Maggie when they go out. It’s all the ground he owns in wide Australia, and once he had thousands of acres. He took her to the grave one day. The doctors were against it; but he couldn’t rest till he tried it. He took her out, and explained it all to her. She scarcely seemed interested. She read the names on the stone, and said it was a nice stone, and asked questions, about how the children were found and brought here. She seemed quite sensible, and very cool about it. But when he got her home she was back on the fairy idea again. He tried another day, but it was no use; so then he let it be. I think it’s better as it is. Now and again, at her best, she seems to understand that the children were found dead, and buried, and she’ll talk sensibly about it, and ask questions in a quiet way, and make him promise to take her to Sydney to see the grave next time he’s down. But it doesn’t last long, and she’s always worse afterwards.”

We turned into a bar and had a beer. It was a very quiet drink. Andy “shouted” in his turn, and while I was drinking the second beer, a thought struck me.

“The Boss was away when the children were lost?”

“Yes,” said Andy.

“Strange you couldn’t find him.”

“Yes, it was strange; but
he’ll
have to tell you about that. Very likely he will; it’s either all or nothing with him.”

“I feel damned sorry for the Boss,” I said.

“You’d be sorrier if you knew all,” said Andy. “It’s the worst trouble that can happen to a man. It’s like living with the dead. It’s—it’s like a man living with his dead wife.”

When we went home supper was ready. We found Mrs Head, bright and cheerful, bustling round. You’d have thought her one of the happiest and brightest little women in Australia. Not a word about children or the fairies. She knew the Bush and asked me all about my trips. She told some good Bush stories too. It was the pleasantest hour I’d spent for a long time.

“Good night, Mr Ellis,” she said brightly, shaking hands with me when Andy and I were going to turn in. “And don’t forget your pipe. Here it is! I know that Bushmen like to have a whiff or two when they turn in. Walter smokes in bed. I don’t mind. You can smoke all night if you like.”

“She seems all right,” I said to Andy when we were in our room.

He shook his head mournfully. We’d left the door ajar, and we could hear the Boss talking to her quietly. Then we heard her speak; she had a very clear voice.

“Yes, I’ll tell you the truth, Walter. I’ve been deceiving you, Walter, all the time, but I did it for the best. Don’t be angry with me, Walter! The Voices did come back while you were away. Oh, how I longed for you to come back! They haven’t come since you’ve been home, Walter. You must stay with me a while now. Those awful Voices kept calling me, and telling me lies about the children, Walter! They told me to kill myself; they told me it was all my own fault—that I killed the children. They said I was a drag on you, and they’d laugh—Ha! ha! ha!—like that. They’d say, ‘Come on, Maggie; come on, Maggie.’ They told me to come to the river, Walter.”

Andy closed the door. His face was very miserable.

We turned in, and I can tell you I enjoyed a soft white bed after months and months of sleeping out at night, between
watches, on the hard ground or the sand, or at best on a few boughs when I wasn’t too tired to pull them down, and my saddle for a pillow.

But the story of the children haunted me for an hour or two. I’ve never since quite made up my mind as to why the Boss took me home. Probably he really did think it would do his wife good to talk to a stranger; perhaps he wanted me to understand—maybe he was weakening as he grew older, and craved for a new word or hand-grip of sympathy now and then.

When I did get to sleep I could have slept for three or four days, but Andy roused me out about four o’clock. The old woman that they called Auntie was up and had a good breakfast of eggs and bacon and coffee ready in the detached kitchen at the back. We moved about on tiptoe and had our breakfast quietly.

“The wife made me promise to wake her to see to our breakfast and say Goodbye to you; but I want her to sleep this morning, Jack,” said the Boss. “I’m going to walk down as far as the station with you. She made up a parcel of fruit and sandwiches for you and Andy. Don’t forget it.”

Andy went on ahead. The Boss and I walked down the wide silent street, which was also the main road; and we walked two or three hundred yards without speaking. He didn’t seem sociable this morning, or any way sentimental; when he did speak it was something about the cattle.

But I had to speak; I felt a swelling and rising up in my chest, and at last I made a swallow and blurted out:

“Look here, Boss, old chap! I’m damned sorry!”

Our hands came together and gripped. The ghostly Australian daybreak was over the Bathurst plains.

We went on another hundred yards or so, and then the Boss said quietly:

“I was away when the children were lost, Jack. I used to go on a howling spree every six or nine months. Maggie never knew. I’d tell her I had to go to Sydney on business, or out back to look after some stock. When the children were lost, and for nearly a fortnight after, I was beastly drunk in an out-of-the-way shanty in the Bush—a sly grog shop. The old brute that kept it
was too true to me. I thought that the story of the lost children was a trick to get me home, and he swore that he hadn’t seen me. He never told me. I could have found those children, Jack. They were mostly new-chums and fools about the run, and not one of the three policemen was a Bushman. I knew those scrubs better than any man in the country.”

I reached for his hand again, and gave it a grip. That was all I could do for him.

“Good-bye, Jack!” he said at the door of the brake-van. “Good-bye, Andy!—keep those bullocks on their feet.”

The cattle-train went on towards the Blue Mountains. Andy and I sat silent for a while, watching the guard fry three eggs on a plate over a coal-stove in the centre of the van.

“Does the Boss never go to Sydney?” I asked.

“Very seldom,” said Andy, “and then only when he has to, on business. When he finishes his business with the stock agents, he takes a run out to Waverley Cemetery perhaps, and comes home by the next train.”

After a while I said, “He told me about the drink, Andy—about his being on the spree when the children were lost.”

“Well, Jack,” said Andy, “that’s the thing that’s been killing him ever since; and it happened over ten years ago.”

“TAP, tap, tap, tap.”

The little schoolhouse and residence in the scrub was lighted brightly in the midst of the “close”, solid blackness of that moonless December night, when the sky and stars were smothered and suffocated by drought haze.

It was the evening of the school children’s “Feast”. That is to say that the children had been sent, and “let go”, and the younger ones “fetched” through the blazing heat to the school, one day early in the holidays, and raced—sometimes in couples tied together by the legs—and caked, and bunned, and finally improved upon by the local Chadband, and got rid of. The schoolroom had been cleared for dancing, the maps rolled and tied, the desks and blackboards stacked against the wall outside. Tea was over, and the trestles and boards, whereon had been spread better things than had been provided for the unfortunate youngsters, had been taken outside to keep the desks and blackboards company.

On stools running end to end along one side of the room sat about twenty more or less blooming country girls of from fifteen to twenty odd.

On the rest of the stools, running end to end along the other wall; sat about twenty more or less blooming chaps.

It was evident that something was seriously wrong. None of the girls spoke above a hushed whisper. None of the men spoke above a hushed oath. Now and again two or three sidled out, and if you had followed them you would have found that they went outside to listen hard into the darkness and to swear.

“Tap, tap, tap.”

The rows moved uneasily, and some of the girls turned paled faces nervously towards the side-door, in the direction of the sound.

“Tap—tap.”

The tapping came from the kitchen at the rear of the teacher’s residence, and was uncomfortably suggestive of a coffin being
made: it was also accompanied by a sickly, indescribable odour—more like that of warm cheap glue than anything else.

In the schoolroom was a painful scene of strained listening. Whenever one of the men returned from outside, or put his head in the door, all eyes were fastened on him in the flash of a single eye, and then withdrawn hopelessly. At the sound of a horse’s step all eyes and ears were on the door, till someone muttered, “It’s only the horses in the paddock.”

Some of the girls’ eyes began to glisten suspiciously, and at last the belle of the party—a great, dark-haired, pink-and-white Blue Mountain girl, who had been sitting for a full minute staring before her, with blue eyes unnaturally bright, suddenly covered her face with her hands, rose, and started blindly from the room, from which she was steered in a hurry by two sympathetic and rather “upset” girl friends, and as she passed out she was, heard sobbing hysterically:

“Oh, I can’t help it! I did want to dance! It’s a sh-shame! I can’t help it! I—I want to dance! I rode twenty miles to dance—and—and I want to dance!”

Atall, strapping young Bushman rose, without disguise, and followed the girl out. The rest began to talk loudly of stock, dogs, and horses, and other Bush things; but above their voices rang out that of the girl from the outside—being man comforted:

“I can’t help it, Jack! I did want to dance! I—I had such—such—a job—to get mother—and—and father to let me come—and—and now!”

The two girl friends came back. “He sez to leave her to him,” they whispered, in reply to an interrogatory glance from the schoolmistress.

“It’s—it’s no use, Jack!” came the voice of grief. “You don’t know what—what father and mother—is. I—I won’t—be able to ge-get away—again—for—for—not till I’m married, perhaps.”

The schoolmistress glanced uneasily along the row of girls. “I’ll take her into my room and make her lie down,” she whispered to her sister, who was staying with her. “She’ll start some of the other girls presently—it’s just the weather for it,” and she passed out quietly. That schoolmistress was a woman of penetration.

Afinal “tap-tap” from the kitchen; then a sound like the squawk of a hurt or frightened child, and the faces in the room turned quickly in that direction and brightened. But there came a bang and a sound like “damn!” and hopelessness settled down.

Ashout from the outer darkness, and most of the men and some of the girls rose and hurried out. Fragments of conversation heard in the darkness:

“It’s two horses, I tell you!”

“It’s three, you——!”

“Lay you——!”

“Put the stuff up!”

Aclack of gate thrown open.

“Who is it, Tom?”

Voices from gatewards, yelling, “Johnny Mears! They’ve got Johnny Mears!”

Then rose yells, and a cheer such as is seldom heard in scrublands.

Out in the kitchen long Dave Regan grabbed, from the far side of the table, where he had thrown it, a burst and battered concertina, which he had been for the last hour vainly trying to patch and make airtight; and holding it out towards the backdoor, between his palms, as a football is held, he let it drop, and fetched it neatly on the toe of his riding-boot. It was a beautiful kick; the concertina shot out into the blackness, from which was projected, in return, first a short, sudden howl, then a face with one eye glaring and the other covered by an enormous brickcoloured hand, and a voice that wanted to know who shot “that lurid loaf of bread”?

But from the schoolroom was heard the loud, free voice of Joe Matthews, M.C.: “Take yer partners! Hurry up! Take yer partners! They’ve got Johnny Mears with his fiddle!”