"Terrible place, indeed; see if _you_ had to provide a home what you"d have in it. You was never done squarkin" for that stove; some one else had one like it, an" you was goin" to do strokes w"en you got it. It"s always easy to complain about things w"en you are not the one responsible!"
Grandma and I decided to go to the kitchen and prescribe for the stove.
From an idle onlooker"s point of view it seemed an excellent domestic implement in good health; but the beautiful cook averred it would produce no heat.
"It must be like Bray"s," said grandma, "they thought it was no good, and it was only because of some damper that had to be fixed."
"Yes; and they had a man there to fix it for them; that"s the terrible want about this place, there being no _man_ about it to do anything,"
Dawn said pointedly, looking at Uncle Jake, who was calmly sitting in his big chair in the corner. He was not disconcerted. A man who could live for years on a widowed sister without making himself worth his salt is not of the calibre to be upset by a few hints.
"I"ve busted up me pants again," cheerfully announced Andrew from the doorway--misfortunes never come singly. "Dawn, just get a needle and cotton and st.i.tch "em together."
"I never knew you when they weren"t "busted up," and you can get another pair or hold a towel round you till Carry comes home; she"s got to do the mending, it"s her week in the house. I"ve got enough to worry me, goodness knows!"
"Dear me!" said grandma, walking away as I once more volunteered to be a friend in need to Andrew, "w"en people is young, an" a little thing goes wrong, they think they have the troubles of a empire upon them, but the real troubles of life teaches "em different. You are a good-for-nothink lump anyhow, Andrew. Where have you been on a Sunday morning tearing round the country?"
Andrew threw no light on the question, and his grandma repeated it.
"Where have you been, I say--answer me at once?"
"Oh, where haven"t I been!" returned Andrew a trifle roughly, "I couldn"t be tellin" you where I"ve been. A feller might as well be in a bloomin" gla.s.s case as carry a pocket-book around an" make a map of where he"s been."
The old lady"s eyes flashed.
"None of yer cheek to me, young man! You"re getting too big for yer boots since you left school. If in five minutes you don"t tell me where you"ve been an" who you was with, I"ll screw the neck off of you. Nice thing while you"re a child an" looking to me for everythink that goes into your stummick an" is put on your back, an" I"m responsible for you, that you can"t answer me civil. Your actions can"t bear lookin" into, it seems. I"ll go over an" see Mr Bray about it this afternoon if you don"t tell me at once."
"I ain"t been anywhere, only pokin" up an" down the lanes with Jack Bray."
"Well, why couldn"t you say so at once without raisin" this rumpus.
Them as has rared any boys don"t know what it is to die of idleness an" want of vexation."
"It wasn"t _me_ rose the rumpus. Some people always blames others for what they do themselves: it "u"d give a bloke th" pip," grumbled Andrew, as I put the last st.i.tch in his trousers and his grandma departed. Her black Sunday dress rustled aggressively, and her plain bibless holland ap.r.o.n, which she never took off except when her bonnet went on for street appearance or when she went to bed, and her little Quaker collars and cuffs of muslin edged with lace, were even more immaculate than on week-days. She scorned a cap, and her features were so well cut that she looked well with the grey hair--wonderfully plentiful and wavy for one of her years,--simply parted and tidily coiled at the back. This costume or toilet, always fresh and never shabby, was invariably completed by a style of light house-boots, introduced to me as "lastings"; and there was an unimpaired vigour of intellect in their wearer good to contemplate in a woman of the people aged seventy-five.
It came on to rain after dinner and confined us all to the house.
Dawn borrowed an exciting love-story from Miss Flipp; grandma read a "good" book; Uncle Jake still pored over the "Noonoon Advertiser,"
while Andrew repaired a large amount of fishing-tackle, with which during the time I knew him I never knew him to catch a fish, and Carry grumbled about the rain.
"Poor Carry!" sympathised Andrew, "she can"t git out to do a spoon with Larry, an" the poor bloke can"t come in--he"s so sweet, you know, a drop of rain would melt him."
"It would take something to melt you," retorted Carry. "The only thing I can see good in the rain is that it will keep Mrs Bray away."
And thus pa.s.sed my first full day at Clay"s.
SEVEN.
THE LITTLE TOWN OF NOONOON.
The little town, situated whereaway it does not particularly matter, and whose name is a palindrome, is one of the oldest and most old-fashioned in Australia. Less than three dozen miles per road, and not many more minutes by train from the greatest city in the Southern hemisphere, yet many of its native population are more unpolished in appearance than the bush-whackers from beyond Bourke, the Cooper, and the far Paroo. It is an agricultural region, and this in some measure accounts for the slouching appearance of its people. Men cannot wrest a first-hand living from the soil and at the same time cultivate a Piccadilly club-land style and air.
It is a valley of small holdings, being divided into farms and orchards, varying in size from several to two or three hundred acres.
Many grants were apportioned there in the early days. Representatives of the original families in some instances still hold portions of them, and the stationary population has drifted into a tiny world of their own, and for want of new blood have ideas caked down like most of the ground, and evinced in many little characteristics distinct from the general run of the people of the State.
Though they were, when I knew them, possessed of the usual human failings in an average degree, they were for the most part a splendid cla.s.s of population--honest, industrious producers, who, in Grandma Clay"s words, "Keep the world going." There was only a small percentage of idlers and parasites among them, but they did duty with a very small-minded unprogressive set of ideas.
There is a place in New South Wales named Grabben-Gullen, where the best potatoes in the world are grown. Great, solid, flowery beauties, weighing two pounds avoirdupois, are but ordinary specimens in this locality, and the allegorical bush statement for ill.u.s.trating their uncommon size has it that they grow under the fences and trip the horses as they travel the lanes between the paddocks. Similarly, to explain the wonderful growth of vegetation in the fertile valley of Tumut, its inhabitants a.s.sure travellers that pumpkin and melon vines grow so rapidly there that the pumpkins and melons are worn out in being dragged after them.
Now, as I strolled around the lanes of Noonoon, I felt the old slow ways, like Grabben-Gullen potatoes, protruding to stifle one"s mental flights; but there was nothing representative of the Tumut pumpkin and melon vines to wear one out in a rush of progress. The land was rich and beautiful and in as genial and salubrious a climate as the heart of the most exacting could desire; but the residents had drifted into unenterprising methods of existence, and progress had stopped dead at the foot of the Great Dividing Range. The great road winding over it bore the mark of the convicts, and other traces of their solid workmanship were to be found in occasional buildings within a radius of twenty miles; but their day had pa.s.sed as that of the bullock-dray and mail-coach, superseded by the haughty "pa.s.senger-mail" and giant two-engined "goods" trains,--while for quicker communication with the city than these afforded, the West depended upon the telegraph wires.
In days gone by the swells had patronised Noonoon as a week-end resort, and some of their homes were now used as boarding-houses,--while their one-time occupants had other tenement, and their successors patronised the cooler alt.i.tudes farther up the Blue Mountains, or had followed the governor to Moss Vale.
Once upon a time Noonoon had rushed into an elaborate, unbalanced water scheme, and had lighted itself with electricity. To do this it had been forced to borrow heavily, so that now all the rates went to the usurer, and no means were available for current affairs. The sanitation was condemned, and the streets and roads for miles, as far as the munic.i.p.ality extended, were a disgrace to it.
Exceedingly level, they possessed characteristics of some of the best thoroughfares; but the wheel-ways were formed of round river stones which neither powdered nor set, and to drive along them was cruel to horses, ruinous to vehicles, and as trying on the nerves of travellers as crossing a stony stream-bed. There seemed to be nothing possible in the matter but to abuse the munic.i.p.al council as numskulls and crawlers, and this was done on every hand with unfailing enthusiasm.
Though so near the metropolis, Noonoon was less in touch with it than many western towns,--in most respects was a veritable great-grandmother for stagnation and bucolic rusticity, and in individuality suggested one of the little quiet eddies near the emptying of a stream, and which, being called into existence by a back-flow, contains no current. But while thus falling to the rear in the ranks of some departments of progress, the little town retained a certain degree of importance as one of the busiest railway centres in the state, and its engine-sheds were the home of many locomotives. Here they were coaled, cleaned, and oiled ere taking their stiff two-engine haul over the mountains to the wide, straight, pastoral and wheat-growing West, and their calling and rumbling made cheery music all the year round, excepting a short s.p.a.ce on Sundays; while at night, as they climbed the crests of the mountain-spurs, every time they fired, the red light belching from their engine doors could be seen for miles down the valley. Thus Noonoon"s train service was excellent, and a great percentage of the town population consisted of railway employes.
What is the typical Australian girl, is a subject frequently discussed. To find her it is necessary to study those reared in the unbroken bush,--those who are strangers to town life and its influences. City girls are more cosmopolitan. Sydney girls are frequently mistaken for New Yorkers, while Bostonian ladies are as often claimed to be Englishwomen; and it is only the bush-reared girl--at home with horse, gun, and stock-whip, able to bake the family bread, make her own dresses, take her brother"s or father"s place out of doors in an emergency, while at the same time competent to grace a drawing-room and show herself conversant with the poets--who can rightfully lay claim to be more typically Australia"s than any other country"s daughter. Of course the city Australians are Australians too. Australia is the land they put down as theirs on the census paper. She is their native land; but ah! their country has never opened her treasure-troves to them as to those with sympathetic and appreciative understanding of her characteristics, and many of them are as hazy as a foreigner as to whether it is the kooka-burra that laughs and the moke-poke that calls, or the other way about. They are incapable of completely enjoying the full heat of noonday summer sun on the plains, and the evening haze stealing across the gullies does not mean all it should. The exquisite rapturous enjoyment of the odour of the endless bush-land when dimly lit by the blazing Southern stars, or the companionship of a sure-footed nag taking the lead round stony sidlings, or the music of his hoof-beats echoing across the ridges as he carries a dear one home at close of day, are all in a magic storehouse which may never be entered by the Goths who attempt to measure this unique and wonderful land by any standard save its own,--a standard made by those whose love of it, engendered by heredity or close companionship, has fired their blood.
These observations lead up to the fact that Noonoon folk boasted their own individuality, smacking somewhat of town and country and yet of neither. Some of the older ones patronised the flowing beards and sartorial styles "all the go way up in Ironbark," yet if put Out-Back would have been as much new chums as city people, and were wont to regard honest unvarnished statements of bush happenings as "snake yarns"; while the youths of these parts combined the appearance of the far bush yokel and the city larrikin, and were to be seen following the plough with cigarettes in their mouths.
The small holdings were cut into smaller paddocks, the style of fence mostly patronised being two or three strands of savage barbed wire stretched from post to post. This insufficient separation of stock was made adequate by the cattle themselves carrying the remainder of the white man"s burden of fencing around their necks, in the form of a hampering yoke made of a forked tree-limb with a piece of plain fencing-wire to close the open ends. This prevented them pushing between the wires, and it was a pathetically ludicrous sight to see the calves at a very tender age turned out an exact replica of their elders. All the places opened on to the roads like streets; and to go across country was a sore ordeal, as one had to uncomfortably cross roughly upturned crop-land, and every few hundred yards roll under a line of barbed wire about a foot from the ground, at the risk of reefing one"s clothes and the certainty of dishevelment. To walk out on the main roads and stumble over the loose stones ankle-deep in the dust was torture. Some averred they had known no repairs for ten years, and that they were as good as they were, because to have been worse was impossible. Walking in this case being no pleasure, I bethought me of riding for gentle exercise, and inquired of Grandma Clay the possibilities in that respect.
"Ride! there ain"t nothink to ride in this district, only great elephant draughts or little tiddy ponies the size of dogs," she said with unlimited scorn; "I never see such crawlers, they go about in them pokin" little sulkies, and even the men can"t ride. In my young days if a feller couldn"t ride a buck-jumper the girls wouldn"t look at him, an" yet down here at one of the shows last year in the prize for the hunters, the horses had to be all rode by one man; there wasn"t another young feller in the district fit to take a blessed moke over a fence. I felt like goin" out an" tacklin" it meself, I was that disgusted. I never was a advocate for this _great_ ridin" that racks people"s insides out an" cripples them, there ain"t a bit of necessity for it, but there is reason in everythink, an" they"re goin" to the other extreme, and will have to be carried about on feather-beds in a ambulance soon if they keep on as they are. There"s nothink as good as it was in the old days. As for a woman ridin" here, all the town would go out to gape like as she was somethink in the travellin" show business. I used to ride w"en I come down here first,--that was sixteen year ago,--but every one asked me such questions, an" looked at me like a Punch an" Judy show, that I got sick of it. I rode into Trashe"s at the store there one day, an" w"en I was comin" out he says, "Will you have a chair to get on?" an" as he didn"t seem to be man enough to sling me on, I said I supposed so. He goes for one of them tallest chairs--it would be as easy to get on the horse as it--an" I sez, "Thanks, I"m not ridin" a elephant, one of them little chairs would do." But even that didn"t seem to content him; he put it high on the pavement an" put the horse in the gutter. Then, instead of puttin" the reins over the horse"s head proper, he left them on the hook, an" with both hands an" all his might holds the beast short by them in front of its jaw, like as it was the wildest bull from the Bogongs. The idiot! Supposin" the beast was flash an" pulled away from him, where would I be without the reins? That about finished me, I was sick of it, as I could not have believed any man, even out of a asylum, could be so simple about puttin" a person on a horse."
For this kind of exercise there seemed no promising outlet, and I was put to it to think of some other. As grandma said, with few exceptions, the only horses in the district were draughts and ponies.
Every effect has a cause, and the reason of this was that these big horses were the only ones properly adapted to agriculture, and the smallness of the holdings did not admit of hacks being kept for mere pleasure, so the cheapest knockabout horse to maintain was a pony, as not only did it take less fodder and serve for the little saddle use of this place, but tethered to a sulky, took the wives and children abroad. It was the land of sulkies,--made in all sizes to fit the pony that had to draw them, and of quality in accordance with the purse that paid for them,--and a pair of horses and a buggy was a rare sight.
Andrew suggested that I should go rowing, and glowingly recommended a little two-man craft named the _Alice_, and as I could row well in my young days, I determined to test her capacity by going up stream very gently, as my time was unlimited and my strength painfully the reverse. It was a crisp day towards the end of April, so I was feeling brisker than usual, and the _Alice_ was deserving of her good reputation. The Noonoon was one of the n.o.blest and most beautiful streams in the State, and above the substantial and unique old bridge its deep, calm waters stretched for about two miles as straight as a ribbon, in a reach made historic because it has been the racecourse of some of the greatest sculling matches the world has known. Orange and willow-trees were reflected in the clear depths of the rippleless flow, and lured by its beauty, the responsiveness of my craft, and an unusual cheerfulness, I foolishly overdid my strength. I was thinking of Dawn. Her girlish confidence regarding the desire of her hot young heart had so appealed to me that I was exercised to discover a suitable knight, for this and not a career I felt was the needful element to complete her life and anchor her restless girlish energy.
To tell her so, however, would ruin all. Time must be held till the appearance of the hero of the romance I intended to shape. With this end in view I thought of recommending her grandma to let her voice be trained. Two years at the very least would thus be gained, and if properly floated and advertised in the matrimonial field, what may not be accomplished in that time by a beautiful and vivacious girl of eighteen or nineteen? I was recalled from such speculations by finding that it was beyond me to row another stroke, and I was in a fix. A slight wind turned the boat, and she drifted on to a fallen tree a little below the surface, and, though not upsetting, stuck there, and was too much for me to get off.
At that time of the year, except very occasionally, the river was free from boaters and the fishers who told of the fish that used to be got there in other times, so there was nothing to do but wait until my absence caused anxiety, when some one would surely come after me. Not a very alarming plight if one were well, but I felt one of my old cruel attacks was at hand, which was not encouraging. No one was within sight, but in case there should be a ploughman over a rise within hearing, I coo-eed long and well. My voice had been trained. I coo-eed three times, allowing an interval to elapse, and then settled into the bottom of the boat to await developments. Soon I was disturbed by the plunk! plunk! of a swimmer, and saw a young man approaching by strong rapid strokes. It is strange how hard it is to recognise any one when only their face is above water and one meets them in an unexpected place, and though this face seemed familiar there was nothing unusual in that, as I knew so many theatre patrons"
faces in a half fashion. My rescuer having ascertained the simple nature of my dilemma, and easily gaining the boat by reason of the log, exclaimed--
"Why, it"s never you! What on earth are you doing here?" and I responded--
"Ernest Breslaw! It"s never you! What are _you_ doing here? _I"m_ stuck on this log."
"And I"ve come to get you off it," he laughed.
"Yes, but otherwise? This may be a suitable cove for a damaged hull, but what can a newly-launched cruiser like you be doing here?"
"I"m in training, and was just taking a plunge; it"s first-cla.s.s!" he said enthusiastically, and looking at his splendid muscles, enough to delight the eye of even such a connoisseur in physique as myself, and well displayed by a neat bathing-suit, there was no need to inquire for what he was in training. "Twas no drivelling pen-and-ink examination such as I could have pa.s.sed myself, but something needing a Greek statue"s strength of thew.
"Are you feeling ill?" he considerately inquired, and as I a.s.sured him to the contrary, though I was feeling far from normal, he put me out on the bank while he rowed up stream for his clothes and returned to take me home. Having encased himself in some serviceable tweeds and a blue guernsey, he rolled me in his coat ere beginning to demolish the homeward mile--an infinitesimal bagatelle to such a magnificent pair of arms. I enjoyed the play of the broad shoulders and ruddy cheeks, and did not talk, neither did he. He was an athlete, not a conversationalist, while I was a conversationalist lacking sufficient athletic strength to keep up my reputation just then.