Death of a Swagman Read online

  Bony was not a champion axeman, which she quickly saw, but he could cut wood for a stove, and he didn’t rest till he had six sections of the log lying at his feet. She was saying: “Oh, that will do. That will do very nicely, thank you. I wanted only a stick or two just now. The man is due to come this evening to chop for an hour.”

  “He might not turn up, marm,” Bony told her. “Sometimes they don’t,” and he fell to work splitting the sections. Having done that, he knelt on one knee and began to pile the billets on the crook of an arm. When he rose, the pile was large and heavy.

  “Where will you have the wood, marm?” he asked.

  “Oh! I could take it to the kitchen. Thank you for having cut it.”

  “Where is the kitchen? Suppose you show me. If I have to drop this load through sheer weariness...”

  “Oh, over here. Thank you so much.”

  She snatched up his felt hat and almost ran before him to the kitchen door, where she indicated a box to take the wood. She stood in the kitchen doorway looking at him whilst he dusted his hands and accepted from her his hat, her eyes large and a trifle misty, and on her face an expression of wistful appreciation. She said:

  “When you have finished your interview with Mr James, perhaps you would like to come back here for a cup of tea?”

  “I would appreciate it, marm. Never at any time do I refuse a cup of tea. Thank you.” And now, with the smile gone from his eyes, he bowed as no man ever had bowed to Lucy James.

  Walking back down the driveway beside the house, he took the path to the front veranda steps, taking care to move soundlessly. Mr James was still interested in his paper-covered book, the title of which Bony could now see. Many other people, not necessarily ministers, were interested in A Flirt in Florence.

  Purposely Bony kicked against the lowest step, and his head was bent when Mr James swiftly lowered his book and looked sharply at his visitor. When Bony looked up and began mounting the steps, Mr James had in his hands the leather-covered tome: The Life and Epistles of St Paul.

  “What d’you want?” asked the startled minister.

  “I called, Padre, to see if you’ve done anything about seeing Mr Leylan for me,” Bony said mildly and, on reaching the top step, sat down on the veranda floor.

  Mr James swung his legs off the chair and put down his big book. His light blue eyes were still uneasy, and anger gleamed from their depths.

  “I am not sure, but I fancy that I am displeased by your apparent disrespect to a minister,” he said brittlely. “Let me see now. Your name is...”

  “Burns—Robert Burns,” Bony announced.

  “Ah, yes ... Burns. I remember you. I did speak to Mr Leylan about you. He said he would consider giving you a job. Should he do so, I trust you will work hard and honestly, and not make a mock of my recommendation.”

  “I will do my best,” he was assured gravely.

  “‘Adversity is useful to us if we profit by it,’” Mr James went on, his voice betraying the quotation. Bony could not resist the temptation, and so he also quoted:

  “‘If all were prosperity, we all would be without character.’”

  “Ah, yes ... yes ... to be sure.”

  Mr James noted the brown hand dive into a trousers pocket, and he saw the hand withdrawn with tobacco and cigarette papers.

  “I ask you not to smoke here,” he said sternly. “I approve of neither tobacco nor drink. Remember that this is the parsonage. I will speak again to Mr Leylan about you, as he is a great friend of mine. I will also have a word with Sergeant Marshall before you are finally freed. Is there anything else?”

  “Yes, Padre. I’d like to come to church tomorrow evening. The sergeant says I may.”

  “You will be welcome. The service begins at seven,” Mr James said, although there was neither interest nor welcome in his voice. “You must leave me now. I have work to do. Good day!”

  Bony rose languidly, and when he gained the path he turned round to say “Good dayee, Padre!” and to see the minister standing foursquare on his feet at the top of the steps. He felt the light blue eyes boring into his back as he walked down the driveway to the street.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Bony Goes to Church

  AT HALF PAST SIX O’CLOCK that same Saturday, Marshall entered Bony’s cell to find the detective brushing his black, sleek hair.

  “I am not going to do any more painting,” announced Bony, continuing to regard himself in the mirror. “You promised to pay me my two bob per diem not later than five-thirty to give me a chance to spend it over at the pub before closing time.”

  Marshall could not forbear a grin. He said:

  “I’ve been out to Wattle Creek Station on your official business.”

  “That doesn’t quench my thirst with a nice cold pot of beer. Slaving for you all day, too. You never take me anywhere, you beast. I’ve a good mind to go home to Mother.”

  “Darling!” breathed the sergeant. “I’ve got a couple of bottles over in the office.”

  Bony sniffed, turned, and held out his hand.

  “My wages, please.”

  “Bit of a snorter, aren’t you, for a prisoner?” Marshall said, chuckling. “Two bottles waiting, and now wants two shillings. Here, take it. You’re mining that child of mine.”

  “Sez you. Now for that drink. Let’s go.”

  On entering the station office, Bony closed the door and the sergeant poured the drinks. From a nearby room came the sound of exercises being played on a piano by not too facile fingers.

  “Luck!” murmured Marshall.

  “Luck! How did you get on?”

  “I had a word or two with Perkins, the book-keeper,” began the sergeant. “Drew a blank. He was busy all that day the swagman was camped at the woolshed, and so he left the mailbox clearance a bit late. The mail car arrived before he had cleared and it was then a matter of grabbing the letters out of the box and bundling them with the office stuff, chucking the lot into a mailbag, sealing and handing to the driver.”

  “Oh! A pity.”

  “Yes. Anyway, Perkins didn’t leave his office all that day excepting to go to lunch, and during the time he was in the office the swagman didn’t post a letter in the station box, which was in his plain view.

  “Had afternoon tea with the Leylans,” Marshall went on. “Met a guest by the name of Lawton-Stanley. He’s engaged to Miss Leylan. Good fellow all which ways. He’s a bush evangelist and the real Mackie. Afterwards I asked Leylan point-blank where he was the night the swagman was done in, and he said he was up at Ivanhoe, slept at the hotel there, and didn’t leave next day till after nine.”

  “Good work, even if the results are apparently poor,” Bony said. “Now I want you to ring up Wattle Creek Station and contact that Lawton-Stanley. When you get him, just give me the telephone. Say nothing to the book-keeper or to the evangelist that I want to speak.”

  Marshall contacted Perkins, and a few minutes elapsed before Lawton-Stanley reached the telephone.

  “Are you alone?” Bony asked, deepening his voice.

  “I am,” came to his ear in the finely modulated voice of the man known to many hundreds of bushmen as a friend. “Who is speaking?”

  “I am the dark man whom the fortune-teller told you would have a great influence in your life,” replied Bony.

  “What are you saying? Who are you? What do you want of me?” inquired Lawton-Stanley.

  “Please do not repeat my name. Go back into the dreadful past, and see there a home at Banyo, and Charles, my son, whose ambition it is to become a medico-missionary.”

  Lawton-Stanley broke into a roar of laughter.

  “You villain!” he chortled. “Fancy you being down here. Where are you speaking from?”

  “I am in Merino,” replied Bony. “I understand that your fiancée and you are coming along to church tomorrow evening. Correct?”

  “Yes. It is our intention.”

  “I shall be at church too,” Bony said. “I shall be a
ccompanied by a lady who is anxious to meet you. You will be charmed by her. My name is Robert Burns, nicknamed Bony, and you will remember that we last met on a Queensland cattle station. Clear?”

  “Quite. You are always clear, most clear.”

  “I want you to be especially nice to my lady friend, and after service Mrs Marshall will ask Miss Leylan and yourself home for supper. You will accept—without fail. Clear?”

  “As a foggy night. Righto, Bobby! Gang your ain gait. Did you get over that drubbing I gave you before breakfast at Quinquarrie?”

  “Without losing a breath. How did your black eye get along?”

  “Nicely, thank you. How are you keeping?”

  “Fine. I’ve fallen in love again.”

  “What, again!”

  “Again. You’ll meet her tomorrow evening. My lady friend’s name is Rose Marie. Miss Leylan knows her quite well. Now good night, Padre, and all the best.”

  When Bony hung up he turned to Marshall, saying:

  “Finest man in the back country. Fights like a threshing machine. Isn’t really happy unless he puts on the gloves before breakfast. You any good?”

  “Not according to Queensberry,” replied Marshall.

  “Won’t do. Must be Queensberry. Lawton-Stanley bars knees and boots at his pre-breakfast exercises. Now we shall have to be especially nice to your wife, for as yet she knows nothing of her invitation to Lawton-Stanley and Miss Leylan. How will your wife take it, do you think?”

  “Pretty crook, probably,” replied Marshall. “You’ll be doing the talking. Come on. Dinner’s ready.”

  “Oh, there you are!” exclaimed Mrs Marshall when they entered the living room. “Dinner’s waiting. I’ll call Rose Marie.”

  “Er—one moment,” Bony interposed blandly. “I have a confession to make ... a moment of weakness. A great friend of mine is staying at Wattle Creek Station. He is the Rev. Lawton-Stanley, a bush evangelist known far and wide.”

  Mrs Marshall’s eyes grew big.

  “I have seen him, but I’ve never actually met him,” she said. “He’s engaged to Edith Leylan, so I’m told.”

  “Yes, that is so. Er—as a matter of fact, they are both coming to church tomorrow evening, and I told him a moment ago on the phone that, after service, you would invite them both home to supper.”

  “That will be lovely. I’ve always wanted to meet him. But ... I think I’d better not go to the service. There will be supper to prepare.”

  “I said that you would be going to the service,” insisted Bony. “You see, Mrs Marshall, I am taking Rose Marie, and in view of my present social status it would be proper if you chaperoned us.”

  Mrs Marshall hesitated, smiled, and assented.

  “It beats me,” snorted her husband. “Easy victory! If it had been me there would have been yells and screams about not having had sufficient notice, and this and that.”

  His wife smiled at him affectionately and said:

  “You’d better behave yourself, young man.”

  “I’m trying to in spite of my hunger.”

  “Well, then, sit down. I’ll call Rose Marie.”

  “Let me,” requested Bony and with the freedom of a member of the household he passed to the “front room”, where Rose Marie was courageously working and wondering when on earth her mother would release her from durance vile.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed when Bony came silently to stand at her side.

  “You play very nicely,” he told her. “I’ve been listening to you. Dinner is waiting, and here are my wages for today for you to put into your box. Is your dress all ready for church tomorrow?”

  “Yes. Mother ironed it this afternoon. And your clothes too?”

  “And have you decided what to say to Miss Leylan’s sweetheart?”

  “No ... I haven’t. What shall I say, Bony?”

  “The first thing that enters your head.”

  For this Marshall family Bony had come to have an affectionate regard. Beneath his official exterior Marshall himself was a kindly man and generous in his outlook to everyone, a good husband to a woman who gave as well as accepted, and matched his sense of humour, and a father who had an enormous and secret pride in his daughter, in whom quaintness and precociousness were due to the undisputed place she occupied in their hearts. Mrs Marshall was one of those rare women who seem incapable of finding any fault in any person. And in both her husband and Bonaparte she had good companions.

  The following evening, dressed in a grey frock and velour hat, she called on Bony to tell him it was time for church and that her mother was waiting.

  “Do you think I look nice?” she asked him.

  “I think you are adorable, Rose Marie, and I am sure that Mr Lawton-Stanley will think so too. Do I look all right enough for church?”

  “Of course,” replied Rose Marie.

  Together they crossed the open space to the front of the police station, where Mrs Marshall waited. The sergeant accompanied them as far as the front gate, and Mrs Marshall told him:

  “Don’t let the fire go out, Father, and don’t stoke it up so that the house will be a furnace by the time we get back.”

  “I’ll do my best,” he promised, and stood watching them walking down the street, Bony on the outside and Rose Marie walking sedately between him and her mother. He reckoned he had known a number of good half-castes in his time, and a lot of white men too, but not a man approaching the one who was taking his wife and daughter to church.

  There were some thirty people already within the building when Rose Marie led her mother and Bony into a pew. Bony recognized Mrs Fanning with her husband, and Mrs Sutherland with her two boys. Mrs Sutherland rose and came to them to whisper a few words of welcome. Her girlish figure was moulded into a black gown, both gown and figure sufficient to make envious any girl of seventeen.

  Soon after she had gone back to her pew, Mrs James emerged from the vestry and went up to the pulpit with a sheaf of papers which she placed on the reading desk and weighted with a block of white marble. Her short-skirted costume seemed to emphasize the slenderness of her body, which, however, radiated energy in every quick and purposeful movement.

  Rose Marie nudged Bony’s elbow and he, looking down at her, followed the direction of her eyes and saw Edith Leylan and Lawton-Stanley walking down the far aisle to a large family pew. The girl walked easily. She was plainly but expensively dressed, and it did not appear strange to either Bony or Lawton-Stanley that many of the women present dressed with better taste than the average city women. Lawton-Stanley wore laymen’s clothes. He was six feet tall and his well-knit, lean body was perfectly balanced on his feet. His features were slightly sharp and on the bridge of his long, straight nose were rimless pince-nez. They could only see his face in profile, strong, open, and clean, and lighted by a lamp of inner joy.

  Covertly Bony glanced down at Rose Marie, to observe her flushed cheek and one very wide and bright grey eye, and he whispered:

  “What do you think?”

  “He’s just lovely,” she replied.

  Mrs James, having prepared the pulpit, passed down the steps to the church floor, and then crossed to welcome Lawton-Stanley. Bony could see that she was being torn by two opposing forces, that opposed to her desire to welcome the bush evangelist being the great enemy Time. Three minutes later she emerged from a side door into the choir gallery, seated herself at the organ, and began to play. The gallery filled up with senior boys and girls of the Sunday school.

  The Rev. Llewellyn James entered from the vestry. He was arrayed in his black crepe gown and moved with ponderousness in contrast to the lightness of his wife. When he mounted the pulpit steps he appeared to haul himself upward by a hand upon the single banister. The organist ceased playing. The minister stood up and removed the marble block from the sheaf of papers. He picked up the top one and announced the opening hymn without any warmth in his voice.

  Mrs James played the opening bars and led the choir. Bony could not hea
r her voice but he knew that she was singing with all her might. Her head was held well back, her face lifted so that she must have been looking high at the organ pipes and not at the music.

  It became plain that the Rev. Llewellyn James was an automaton. The entire service was set out for him on that sheaf of papers placed by his wife in the pulpit. The hymn numbers were there. The prayers were there for him to read. The passages of Scripture were marked ready for him in the Book. And from the sheaf of papers he read his sermon. His voice was strong and his enunciation good, but that was spoiled by the overlaying nasal whine and the ending of every sentence on too high a note, which became monotonous. He was as lacking in spiritual warmth as was the block of marble on his desk.

  After the service the Rev. Llewellyn James hurried from his pulpit to the vestibule to speak a few parting words with members of his congregation. His wife remained at the organ. Bony, with his two ladies, left before Edith Leylan and her escort, Mr James shaking hands with Mrs Marshall and giving Rose Marie a pat on the shoulder. He stared at Bony and said not a word.

  “He might have spoken to you,” Mrs Marshall remarked.

  “I find it hard to blame him for being speechless,” Bony said gravely. “After all, he has reason for being astonished at a known jailbird taking to his church the wife and daughter of Merino’s senior police officer. Even to me, it doesn’t all seem to square. Ah, here comes Lawton-Stanley.”

  The bush evangelist’s expressive hands were held out to clasp Bony’s shoulders.

  “Bony!” he said slowly, and then went on at quicker tempo: “I never thought to see you in this part of the continent. You are looking well.”

  “I am feeling better than I did two minutes ago, Padre. Oh, good evening, Miss Leylan. You remember me, I hope. We met on the Walls of China.”