Selected Stories (51 page)

“Oh, Uncle Abel,” cried Aunt Emma, “whatever have you done?”

“Well,” said Uncle Abel, “why didn’t she get the writin’s as I told her? It’s to be hoped she won’t make such a fool of herself next time.”

Half an hour later, or thereabouts, Mary sat on Bertha Buckolt’s bed, with Bertha beside her and Bertha’s arm round her, and they were crying and laughing by turns.

“But—but—why didn’t you
tell
me it was Jim?” said Mary.

“Why didn’t you tell me it was Harry, Mary?” asked Bertha. “It would have saved all this year of misery…I didn’t see Harry Dale at all that night,” said Bertha. “I was—I was crying when Jim left me, and when Harry came along I slipped behind a tree until he was past. And now, look here, Mary, I can’t marry Jim
until he steadies down, but I’ll give him another chance. But, Mary, I’d sooner lose him than you.”

Bertha walked home with Mary, and during the afternoon she took Jim aside and said:

“Look here, Jim, I’ll give you another chance—for a year. Now I want you to ride into town and send a telegram to Harry Dale. How long would it take him to get here?”

“He couldn’t get here before New Year,” said Jim.

“That will do,” said Bertha, and Jim went to catch his horse.

Next day Harry’s reply came—“Coming.”

NEW YEAR’S EVE. The dance was at Buckolts’ this year, but Bertha didn’t dance much; she was down by the gate most of the time with little Mary Carey, waiting, and watching the long, white road, and listening for horses’ feet, and disappointed often as other horsemen rode by or turned up to the farm.

And in the hot sunrise that morning, within a hundred miles of Rocky Rises, a tired, dusty drover camped in the edge of a scrub, boiled his quart-pot, broiled a piece of mutton on the coals, and lay down on the sand to rest an hour or so before pushing on to a cattle-station he knew to try and borrow fresh horses. He had ridden all night.

Old Buckolt and Carey and Reid smoked socially under the grape vines, with bottles of whisky and glasses, and nudged each other and coughed when they wanted to laugh at Old Abel Albury, who was, for about the first time in his life, condescending to explain. He was explaining to them what thund’rin’ fools they had been.

Later on they sent a boy on horseback with a bottle of whisky and a message to Ryan, who turned up in time to see the New Year in with them and contradict certain slanders concerning the breed of his bull.

Meanwhile Bertha comforted Mary, and at last persuaded her to go home. “He’s sure to be here to-morrow, Mary,” she said, “and you need to look fresh and happy.”

But Mary didn’t sleep that night; she was up before daylight, had the kettle on and some chops ready to fry, and at daybreak she was down by the slip-rails again. She was turning away for the second time when she heard a clear whistle round the Spur—then the tune of “Willie Riley”, and the hobble-chains and campware on the pack-horse jingling to the tune.

She pulled out the rails with eager, trembling hands and leaned against the tree.

An hour later a tired drover lay on his back, in his ragged, track-worn clothes and dusty leggings, on Mary’s own little bed in the skillion off the living-room, and rested. Mary bustled round getting breakfast ready, and singing softly to herself; once she slipped in, bent over Harry and kissed him gently on the lips, and ran out as he stirred.

“Why, who’s that?” exclaimed Uncle Abel, poking round

early and catching a glimpse of Harry through the open door.

“It’s only Harry, Uncle Abel,” said Mary.

Uncle Abel peered in again to make sure.

“Well, be sure you git the writin’s this time,” he said.

God’s preacher, of churches unheeded, God’s Vineyard, though barren the sod, Plain spokesman where spokesman is needed, Rough link ’twixt the Bushman and God.

—The Christ of the Never

I NEVER told you about Peter M’Laughlan. He was a sort of Bush missionary up country and out back in Australia, and before he died he was known from Riverina down South in New South Wales to away up through the Never-Never Country in Western Queensland.

His past was a mystery, so, of course, there were all sorts of yarns about him. He was supposed to be a Scotchman from London, and some said that he had got into trouble in his young days and had had to clear out of the old country; or, at least, that he had been a ne’er-do-well and had been sent out to Australia on the remittance system. Some said he’d studied for the law, some said he’d studied for a doctor, while others believed that he was, or had been, an ordained minister. I remember one man who swore (when he was drinking) that he had known Peter M’Laughlan as a medical student in a big London hospital, and that he had started in practice for himself somewhere near Gray’s Inn Road in London. Anyway, as I got to know him he struck me as being a man who had looked into the eyes of so much misery in his life that some of it had got into his own.

He was a tall man, straight and well-built, and about forty or forty-five, when I first saw him. He had wavy dark hair, and a close, curly beard. I once heard a woman say that he had a beard like you see in some Bible pictures of Christ. Peter M’Laughlan seldom smiled; there was something in his big dark brown eyes that was scarcely misery, nor yet sadness—a sort of haunted sympathy.

He must have had money, or else he got remittances from home, for he paid his way and helped many a poor devil. They said that he gave away most of his money. Sometimes he worked for a while himself as book-keeper at a shearing-shed, wool-sorter, shearer, even rouseabout; he’d work at anything a Bushman could get to do. Then he’d go out back to God-forgotten districts and preach to Bushmen in one place, and get a few children together in another and teach them to read. He could take his drink, and swear a little when he thought it necessary. On one occasion, at a rough shearing-shed, he called his beloved brethren “damned fools” for drinking their cheques.

Towards the end of his life if he went into a “rough” shed or shanty west of the Darling River—and some of them
were
rough—there would be a rest in the language and drinking, even a fight would be interrupted, and there would be more than one who would lift their hats to Peter M’Laughlan. ABushman very rarely lifts his hat to a man, yet the worst characters of the West have listened bare-headed to Peter when he preached.

It was said in our district that Peter only needed to hint to the squatter that he wanted fifty or a hundred pounds to help someone or something, and the squatter would give it to him without question or hesitation.

He’d nurse sick boundary-riders, shearers, and station hands, often sitting in the desolate hut by the bedside of a sick man night after night. And, if he had time, he’d look up the local blacks and see how they were getting on. Once, on a far out-back sheep station, he sat, for three nights running, by the bedside of a young Englishman; a B.A. they said he was, who’d been employed as tutor at the homestead and who died a wreck, the result of five years of life in London and Paris. The poor fellow was only thirty. And the last few hours of his life he talked to Peter in French, nothing but French. Peter understood French and one or two other languages, besides English and Australian; but whether the young wreck was raving or telling the story of a love, or his life, none of us ever knew, for Peter never spoke of it. But they said that at the funeral Peter’s eyes seemed haunted more than usual.

There’s the yarn about Peter and the dying cattle at Piora Station one terrible drought, when the surface was as bare as your hand for hundreds of miles, and the heat like the breath of a furnace, and the sheep and cattle were perishing by thousands. Peter M’Laughlan was out on the run helping the station-hands to pull out cattle that had got bogged in the muddy water-holes and were too weak to drag themselves out, when, about dusk, a gentlemanly “piano-fingered” parson, who had come to the station from the next town, drove out in his buggy to see the men. He spoke to Peter M’Laughlan.

“Brother,” he said, “do you not think we should offer up a prayer?”

“What for?” asked Peter, standing in his shirt sleeves, a rope in his hands and mud from head to foot.

“For? Why, for rain, brother,” replied the parson, a bit surprised.

Peter held up his finger and said “Listen!”

Now, with a big mob of travelling stock camped on the plain at night, there is always a lowing, soughing or moaning sound, a sound like that of the sea on the shore at a little distance; and, altogether, it might be called the sigh or yawn of a big mob in camp. But the long, low moaning of cattle dying of hunger and thirst on the hot barren plain in a drought is altogether different, and, at night, there is something awful about it—you couldn’t describe it. This is what Peter M’Laughlan heard.

“Do you hear that?” he asked the other preacher.

The little parson said he did. Perhaps
he
only heard the weak lowing of cattle.

“Do you think that God will hear us when He does not hear
that
?” asked Peter.

The parson stared at him for a moment and then got into his buggy and drove away, greatly shocked and deeply offended. But, later on, over tea at the homestead, he said that he felt sure that that “unfortunate man”, Peter M’Laughlan, was not in his right mind; that his wandering, irregular life, or the heat, must have affected him.

I well remember the day when I first heard Peter M’Laughlan preach. I was about seventeen then. We used sometimes to attend
service held on Sunday afternoon, about once a month, in a little slab-and-bark school-house in the scrub off the main road, three miles or so from our selection, in a barren hole amongst the western ridges of the Great Dividing Range. School was held in this hut for a few weeks or a few months now and again, when a teacher could be got to stay there and teach, and cook for himself, for a pound a week, more or less contributed by the parents. Aparson from the farming town to the east, or the pastoral town over the ridges to the west, used to come in his buggy when it didn’t rain and wasn’t too hot to hold the service.

I remember this Sunday. It was a blazing hot day towards the end of a long and fearful drought which ruined many round there. The parson was expected, and a good few had come to “chapel” in spring-carts, on horseback, and on foot; farmers and their wives and sons and daughters. The children had been brought here to Sunday-school, taught by some of the girls, in the morning. I can see it all now quite plain. The one-roomed hut, for it was no more, with the stunted blue-grey gum scrub all round. The white, dusty road, so hot that you could cook eggs in the dust. The horses tied up, across the road, in the supposed shade under clumps of scraggy saplings along by the fence of a cattle-run. The little crowd outside the hut: selectors in washed and mended tweeds, some with paper collars, some wearing starched and ironed white coats, and in blucher boots, greased or blackened, or the young men wearing “larstins” (elastic-side boots). The women and girls in prints and cottons (or cheap “alpaca”, etc.), and a bright bit of ribbon here and there amongst the girls. The white heat blazed everywhere, and “dazzled” across light-coloured surfaces—dead white trees, fence posts, sand heaps, etc., like an endless swarm of bees passing in the sun’s glare. And over above the dry box-scrub-covered ridges, the great Granite Peak, glaring like a molten mass.

The people didn’t like to go inside out of the heat and sit down before the minister came. The wretched hut was a rough school, sometimes with a clay fireplace where the teacher cooked, and a corner screened off with sacking where he had his bunk; it was a camp for tramps at other times, or lizards and
’possums, but to-day it was a house of God, and as such the people respected it.

The town parson didn’t turn up. Perhaps he was unwell, or maybe the hot, dusty ten-mile drive was too much for him to face. One of the farmers, who had tried to conduct service on a previous occasion on which the ordained minister had failed us, had broken down in the middle of it, so he was out of the question. We waited for about an hour, and then who should happen to ride along but Peter M’Laughlan, and one or two of the elder men asked him to hold service. He was on his way to see a sick friend at a sheep-station over the ridges, but he said that he could spare an hour or two. (Nearly every man who was sick, either in stomach or pocket, was a friend of Peter M’Laughlan.) Peter tied up his horse under a bush shed at the back of the hut, and we followed him in.

The “school” had been furnished with a rough deal table and a wooden chair for “the teacher”, and with a few rickety desks and stools cadged from an old “provisional” school in town when the new public school was built; and the desks and stools had been fastened to the floor to strengthen them; they had been made for “infant” classes, and youth out our way ran to length. But when grown men over six feet high squeezed in behind the desks and sat down on the stools the effect struck me as being ridiculous. In fact, I am afraid that on the first occasion it rather took my attention from the sermon, and I remember being made very uncomfortable by a school chum, Jack Barnes, who took a delight in catching my eye and winking or grinning. He could wink without changing a solemn line in his face and grin without exploding, and I couldn’t. The boys usually sat on seats, slabs on blocks of wood, along the wall at the far end of the room, which was comfortable, for they had a rest for their backs. One or two of the boys were nearing six feet high, so they could almost rest their chins on their knees as they sat. But I squatted with some of my tribe on a stool along the wall by the teacher’s table, and so could see most of the congregation.

Above us bare tie-beams and the round sapling rafters (with the bark still on), and the inner sides of the sheets of stringy-bark
that formed the roof. The slabs had been lined with sacking at one time, but most of it had fallen or dry-rotted away; there were wide cracks between the slabs and we could see the white glare of sunlight outside, with a strip of dark shade, like a deep trench in the white ground, by the back wall. Someone had brought a canvas water-bag and hung it to the beam on the other side of the minister’s table, with a pint-pot over the tap, and the drip, drip from the bag made the whole place seem cooler.

I studied Peter M’Laughlan first. He was dressed in washed and mended tweed vest and trousers, and had on a long, light-coloured coat of a material which we called “Chinese silk”. He wore a “soft” cotton shirt with collar attached, and blucher boots.

He gave out a hymn in his quiet, natural way, said a prayer, gave out another hymn, read a chapter from the Bible, and then gave out another hymn. They liked to sing, out in those places. The Southwicks used to bring a cranky little harmonium in the back of their old dog-cart, and Clara Southwick used to accompany the hymns. She was a very pretty girl, fair, and could play and sing well. I used to think she had the sweetest voice I ever heard. But—ah, well!——

Peter didn’t sing himself, at first. I got an idea that he couldn’t. While they were singing he stood loosely, with one hand in his trouser pocket, scratching his beard with his hymn-book, and looking as if he were thinking things over, and only rousing himself to give another verse. He forgot to give it once or twice, but we got through all right. I noticed the wife of one of the men who had asked Peter to preach looking rather black at her husband, and I reckoned that he’d get it hotter than the weather on the way home.

Then Peter stood up and commenced to preach. He stood with both hands in his pockets, at first, his coat ruffled back, and there was the stem of a clay pipe sticking out of his waistcoat pocket. The pipe fascinated me for a while, but after that I forgot the pipe and was fascinated by the man. Peter’s face was one that didn’t strike you at first with its full strength, it grew on you; it grew on me, and before he had done preaching I thought it was the noblest face I had ever seen.

He didn’t preach much of hope in this world. How could he? The drought had been blazing over these districts for nearly a year, with only a shower now and again, which was a mockery—scarcely darkening the baked ground. Wheat crops came up a few inches and were parched by the sun or mown for hay, or the cattle turned on them; and last year there had been rust and smut in the wheat. And, on top of it all, the dreadful cattle plague, pleuro-pneumonia, had somehow been introduced into the district. One big farmer had lost fifty milkers in a week.

Peter M’Laughlan didn’t preach much of hope in this world; how could he? There were men there who had slaved for twenty, thirty, forty years; worked as farmers have to work in few other lands—first to clear the stubborn bush from the barren soil, then to fence the ground, and manure it, and force crops from it—and for what? There was Cox, the farmer, starved off his selection after thirty years and going out back with his drays to work at tank-sinking for a squatter. There was his eldest son going shearing or droving—anything he could get to do—a stoop-shouldered young-old man of thirty. And behind them, in the end, would be a dusty patch in the scrub, a fence post here and there, and a pile of chimney stones and a hard-wood slab or two where the hut was—for thirty hard years of the father’s life and twenty of the son’s.

I forget Peter’s text, if he had a text; but the gist of his sermon was that there was a God—there was a Heaven! And there were men there listening who needed to believe these things. There was old Ross from across the Creek, old, but not sixty, a hard man. Only last week he had broken down and fallen on his knees on the baked sods in the middle of his ploughed ground and prayed for rain. His frightened boys had taken him home, and later on, the same afternoon, when they brought news of four more cows down with “the pleuro” in an outer paddock, he had stood up outside his own door and shaken his fist at the brassy sky and cursed high Heaven to the terror of his family, till his brave, sun-browned wife dragged him inside and soothed him. And Peter M’Laughlan knew all about this.