Oh, the little dark, quiet head, the motionless body, in its pink, crushed frock, the small, thin, outspread hands!
"Judy!" Pip said, in a voice of beseeching agony. But the only answer was the wind at the tree-tops and the frightened breathings of the others.
Mr. Gillet remembered there was no one to act but himself. He went with Pip to the stockman"s hut; and they took the door off its leather hinges and carried it down the hill.
"I will lift her," he said, and pa.s.sed his arms around the little figure, raising her slowly, slowly, gently upwards, laying her on the door with her face to the sky.
But she moaned--oh, how she moaned!
Pip, whose heart had leapt to his throat at the first sign of life, almost went mad as the little sounds of agony burst from her lips.
They raised the stretcher, and bore her up the hill to the little brown hut at the top.
Then Mr. Gillet spoke, outside the doorway, to Meg and Pip, who seemed dazed, stunned.
"It will be hours before we can get help, and it is five now," he said. "Pip, there is a doctor staying at Boolagri ten miles along the road. Fetch him--run all the way. I will go back home--fourteen miles. Miss Meg, I can"t be back all at once. I will bring a buggy; the bullock-dray is too slow and jolting, even when it comes back.
You must watch by her, give her water if she asks--there is nothing else you can do."
"She is dying?" Meg said--"dying?"
He thought of all that might happen before he brought help, and dare not leave her unprepared.
"I think her back is broken," he said, very quietly. "If it is, it means death."
Pip fled away down the road that led to the doctor"s.
Mr. Gillet gave a direction or two, then he looked at Meg.
"Everything depends on you; you must not even think of breaking down,"
he said. "Don"t move her, watch all the time."
He moved away towards the lower road.
She sprang after him.
"Will she die while you are away?--no one but me."
Her eyes were wild, terrified.
"G.o.d knows!" he said, and turned away.
It was almost more than he could bear to go and leave this little girl alone to face so terrible a thing. "G.o.d help me!" she moaned, hurrying back, but not looking at the hot, low-hanging sky. "Help me, G.o.d! G.o.d, help me, help me!"
CHAPTER XXI
When the Sun Went Down
Such a sunset!
Down at the foot of the gra.s.s hill there was a flame-coloured sky, with purple, soft clouds ma.s.sed in banks high up where the dying glory met the paling blue. The belt of trees had grown black, and stretched sombre, motionless arms against the orange background.
All the wind had died, and the air hung hot and still, freighted with the strange silence of the bush.
And at the top of the hill, just within the doorway of the little brown hut, her wide eyes on the wonderful heavens, Judy lay dying.
She was very quiet now, though she had been talking--talking of all sorts of things. She told them she had no pain at all.
"Only I shall die when they move me," she said.
Meg was sitting in a little heap on the floor beside her. She had never moved her eyes from the face on the pillow of mackintoshes, she had never opened her white lips to say one word.
Outside the bullocks stood motionless against the sky--Judy said they looked like stuffed ones having their portrait taken. She smiled the least little bit, but Meg said, "Don"t," and writhed.
Two of the men had gone on superfluous errands for help; the others stood some distance away, talking in subdued voices.
There was nothing for them to do. The brown man had been talking--a rare thing for him.
He had soothed the General off to sleep, and laid him in the bunk with the blue blanket tucked around him. And he had made a billy of hot strong tea, and asked the children, with tears in his eyes, to drink some, but none of them would.
Baby had fallen to sleep on the floor, her arms clasped tightly around Judy"s lace-up boot.
Bunty was standing, with a stunned look on his white face, behind the stretcher. His eyes were on his sister"s hair, but he did not dare to let there wander to her face, for fear of what he should see there. Nellie was moving all the time--now to the fence to strain her eyes down the road, where the evening shadows lay heavily, now to fling herself face downward behind the hut and say, "Make her better, G.o.d! G.o.d, make her better, make her better! Oh! CAN"T You make her better?"
Greyer grew the shadows round the little but, the bullocks" outlines had faded, and only an indistinct ma.s.s of soft black loomed across the light. Behind the trees the fire was going out, here and there were yellow, vivid streaks yet, but the flaming sun-edge, had dipped beyond the world, and the purple, delicate veil was dropping down.
A curlew"s note broke the silence, wild, mournful, unearthly. Meg shivered, and sat up straight. Judy"s brow, grew damp, her eyes dilated, her lips trembled.
"Meg!" she said, in a whisper that cut the air. "Oh, Meg, I"m frightened! MEG, I"m so frightened!"
"G.o.d!" said Meg"s heart.
"Meg, say something. Meg, help me! Look at the dark, Meg. MEG, I can"t die! Oh, why don"t they be quick?"
Nellie flew to the fence again; then to say, "Make her better, G.o.d--oh, please, G.o.d!"
"Meg, I can"t think of anything to say. Can"t you say something, Meg? Aren"t there any prayers about the dying in the Prayer Book?--I forget. Say something, Meg!"
Meg"s lips moved, but her tongue uttered no word.
"Meg, I"m so frightened! I can"t think of anything but `For what we are about to receive," and that"s grace, isn"t it? And there"s nothing in Our Father that would do either. Meg, I wish we"d gone to Sunday-school and learnt things. Look at the dark, Meg! Oh, Meg, hold my hands!"
"Heaven won"t--be--dark," Meg"s lips said. Even when speech came, it was only a halting, stereotyped phrase that fell from them.
"If it"s all gold and diamonds, I don"t want to go!" The child was crying now. "Oh, Meg, I want to be alive! How"d you like to die, Meg, when you"re only thirteen? Think how lonely I"ll be without you all. Oh, Meg! Oh, Pip, Pip! Oh, Baby! Nell!"
The tears streamed down her cheeks; her chest rose and fell.