Gripped By Drought Read online

  “Where are you making for now?”

  “Wot’s that to do with you? Ain’t this a free country?”

  “Decidedly. Yet I was considering. I thought, perhaps, I might be of assistance to you.”

  For twenty seconds Mary O’Doyle was occupied in examining Feng Ching-wei from his feet upwards to his head. Then:

  “You’re a Government ’Ouse man. I know you! You’re the manager of Atlas Station.”

  Once more the slow, upward-moving scrutiny, insulting in its minuteness. But when her gaze crossed his the belligerent expression vanished, and the hard curves of her body appeared to soften. In quite a different tone of voice she said:

  “Could you give us a job, mister? I’m broke, an’ me shoe-leather is thin, an’–and I’d like to sleep in a bed o’ nights atween sheets.”

  “What can you do?” inquired Feng doubtfully.

  “I kin mend an’ sew an’ scrub an’ cook.”

  “Then why are you on tramp? A woman with your abilities need never sleep out of a bed.”

  Once again fell the mantle of truculence.

  “That’s right, mister! Go yer gab! How old am I? How many times ’ave I bin in the jug? ’ave I bin rescued from the streets? Go on-let’s ’ave it–all the catechism!”

  Looking into the woman’s blazing eyes, Feng thought he understood her attitude that moment to represent her sole armour against the world with which she was in perpetual conflict. Masculine in physical strength, even so she appealed to his sense of chivalry, and unexpectedly, even to himself, he made up his mind.

  Come along to Atlas,” he said with a disarming smile. “I will inform the housekeeper of your coming.”

  “Is it a job ye’ll be givin’ me?” Mary O’Doyle demanded with lingering suspicion.

  “I’ll find you one.”

  “Thanks, mister! I’m coming,” Mary said firmly, and dashed down the bank to retrieve her hand-line, her swag, and the billy-can.

  A diamond in the rough. Indeed, it was a day of diamonds.

  4

  "Atlas"

  The thrill expressed in Frank Mayne’s voice when he saw the red-roofed, white-painted buildings of the homestead march out of the river gums to meet them, caused his wife to glance at him sharply. Mayne himself was driving the station car, and beside him sat Ethel with the boy sleeping on her lap. She wondered at the ecstatic look on his face even whilst she pondered on the strange absence of any thrill in her own heart at coming to her new home. Here, over all the buildings she was to be queen, to face a future all unknown. To her husband it was a known equation, to use his own words, and he strained to reach it as a hound on the leash. A minute later they drew up before a group of people standing at the open gateway in a white-painted paling fence that appeared to keep in a neat line the thick mass of the bamboo hedge within.

  “Hallo, Feng!”

  “Hallo, Frank!”

  Feng Ching-wei grasped the hand held out to him, and beamed into the hazel eyes of the man he had always regarded as his brother. He was dressed immaculately and with distinction–greater distinction than Mayne in his Bond Street cut clothes. His dress, his manner, and his cultured voice reached Ethel Mayne’s fastidious standard. Mayne said, when his wife was assisted from the car:

  “Meet Feng Ching-wei, my dearest friend! Feng–my wife!”

  Mayne took the child from her arms to permit her to shake hands with Feng. With inherent grace Feng bowed. He saw a tall, slender woman whose hair and eyes were dark, whose complexion was creamy white–a really beautiful woman.

  “Permit me, Mrs. Mayne, to extend an official but none the less sincere welcome to Atlas,” he said. “You arrive as the mistress of a district larger than some European States. I assure you, you will find us all your devoted subjects.”

  “Thank you-Feng! As my husband’s lifelong friend, I shall, if you will allow me, call you Feng,” she said, in the clear, well-modulated voice of one used to cultured society. There was, however, unnecessary emphasis on the words “thank” and “allow”, due no doubt to high-school elocutionary training.

  “You honour me, Mrs. Mayne. Now to introduce you to–well, the executive officers of your State. This is Mrs. Morton, the housekeeper.”

  A tall, grey-haired woman, rigid in carriage, dressed in severe black, stepped forward. Her hand left her side to offer welcome, but, no response being made, was quickly withdrawn. Ethel Mayne bowed her head stiffly. Her expression was subtly changed. It was cold. Mrs. Morton flushed, bowed in return, and retired several paces.

  “I shall be glad to have you show me to our apartments, Mrs. Morton, and later take me round the house.”

  “Very well, madam,” assented Mrs. Morton, with equal coldness. Ethel frowned. Feng, sensing strain, introduced the accountant, who had been appointed when he had undertaken the management of Atlas. The accountant was tall, white-haired, beyond sixty years of age.

  “This is Mr. Barlow, Mrs. Mayne,” Feng said suavely. “Mr. Barlow’s finger is always on the financial pulse of Atlas.”

  Barlow had observed Mrs. Mayne’s aloofness towards Mrs. Morton, and merely inclined his head. Ethel nodded coolly. Her husband grew hot with annoyance, and checked an impulse to explain that Barlow was their social equal, and was counted as a friend from the years he had served Old Man Mayne. Feng noted the flash that sprang into Mayne’s eyes, and calmly went on with the introductions.

  “This is Mr. Noyes and this is Mr. Andrews, both of whom are serving their articles with us. Mr. Noyes comes from near Cobar, where his people are squatters. Mr. Andrews’ people are stock and station agents and financiers of Sydney.”

  Feng was enjoying himself. In introducing these jackeroos he purposely published their connexions. A woman more subtle than Ethel would have discerned the cynic behind the bland mask.

  “I am very glad to meet you,” she said, smiling graciously at each. “I hope to come to know you both much better after we are settled. “

  They bowed and fidgeted, as young men of nineteen are apt to do, before withdrawing with ill-concealed relief. Despite Feng’s recommendations, both Andrews and Noyes were less uncomfortable on the back of a buck-jumping fool of a horse than in their peoples’ drawing-rooms. They did not hear Feng when he again spoke:

  “And now, Mrs. Mayne, last but by no means least in either physical weight or loyalty–Aunty Joe! Aunty Joe was Old Mrs. Mayne’s nurse-girl, who shepherded both Frank and myself from countless childish dangers, and can be guaranteed to shepherd your baby boy from every danger too.”

  A vision in pink stood before them. A shining, ebony-black face, crowned by snow-white hair, beamed first on the master of Atlas, who grinned at her, and then on the new “missus”, who examined her as though she were a brontosaurus. Time had matured Aunty Joe, yet still was she straight of back and strong, despite her fifteen stone.

  “Mine tinkit I orl funny here,” she cried, her hands pressed hard against her vast bosom. “Oh, Boss! Gibbit me!”

  Aunty Joe ambled towards the wide-eyed child in Frank’s arms. The boy, observing her approach, cried: “Oo-o–Oo-o!” Wonderful blue eyes were wide; the smile angelic.

  But it was Ethel who took him from Mayne’s arms, almost snatching him to her. Without a word she hurried to the house veranda, followed by the rigid Mrs. Morton.

  Mayne was astonished. Feng’s eyes were veiled by lids that almost hid them. Aunty Joe’s broad face had changed in expression from sunshine to rain. Her wide mouth trembled.

  “Aunty Joe, listen to me,” Mayne said softly, passing an arm around her shoulders. “Missus come from far country where no lubra live. She does not understand, but bime-bi she let you have Little Frankie. ’Member how you jumped into the river that day I fell in at Sheep Bend?”

  Aunty Joe blinked her eyes. Her hands flew up to his, which rested on her left shoulder. And then quickly she turned and faced him, and he saw how hurt she was.

  “Ole Aunty Joe unnerstan’, boss. Bime-bi. orl thing goodo. Bime
-bi missus gibbit me likkle fellow. Oh my!”

  Without warning of her departure she rolled away towards the kitchen. Mayne squared himself and sighed almost audibly. When his eyes met Feng’s gaze the scene was still reflected in them, although he was smiling.

  “Feng, old man, I’m darned glad to be home,” he said. “I want to rush about all over the place, and see all the old faces and things. But look! The sun’s gone. Is the medicine chest stocked?”

  Feng’s eyebrows rose interrogatively at Barlow.

  “There are, I know, ointments and lotions in the chest, Mr. Mayne,” Barlow stated in his thin voice, his light-grey eyes twinkling.

  “Then let’s sample the lotions. Come on, Feng! You, too, Inky Fingers! Let’s drink to Atlas and prosperity.”

  With the energy of youth, with the sparkling impulsiveness of his boyhood, Frank Mayne slipped one arm through that of Feng, and the other through that of the old accountant. Whilst they walked towards the office he pressed their arms to his sides, and spoke of the season, the prospects, of anything but his wife.

  CHAPTER II

  ATLAS

  I

  ABOUT eleven o’clock the next day Mayne and Feng Ching-wei emerged from the wicket-gate in the south side of the white paling fence that enclosed the big, wide veranda’d house on three sides, the river skirting the east side. It was a sparkling morning, windless and cold. High in the great gum tree growing on the river bank near the wicket-gate, a score of Major Mitchell cockatoos–pure white with rose-tinted underwings and multi-coloured crests–greeted them with harsh, defiant cries.

  The house they had left was a rambling bungalow structure built of stone quarried twenty miles away, cooled by twenty-foot verandas, and double ceilings beneath the galvanized iron roof. Beside the eight bedrooms, there were breakfast-room, dining-and drawing-rooms, a spacious study, a billiard-room. The kitchen and servants’ quarters were in a separate building, connected with the house by a covered way.

  The main gate in the paling fence was on the west side. Directly opposite this, beyond the road that led to the township of Menindee up north and to Wentworth, beyond Tin Tin Station, down south, was the long weather-board and iron building devoted to a spacious office, a store like a well-stocked grocer’s shop, another store stocked as a combined ironmonger’s and saddler’s shop, and the quarters of the bookkeeper and the jackeroos, which included their combined dining-and sitting-room.

  When Mayne and Feng left the wicket-gate they proceeded south along the river bank, the former walking quickly, evidently anxious to reach a goal, obliging Feng to lengthen his stride.

  “The speed limit is only two and a half miles an hour,” he good-humouredly remonstrated. “Hang it, man! I’ll race you for a pound,” Mayne challenged.

  “I am over thirty,” Feng rejoined in his suave manner. “You are the Master of Atlas. For us to run would be out of character, as the novelists say. Go slowly! Notice the condition of your kingdom. Every wall and roof was repaired and painted last April. The interior of my cottage was done as well.”

  South of the office and store building was a square-built bungalow containing seven or eight rooms, and entirely surrounded by unusually wide verandas protected by canvas blinds now rolled up to the roof. Like every other building there, its walls were painted white and its roof red.

  “It all looks-darned good!” Mayne said, joy in his voice.

  A hundred yards farther south they reached a substantial bridge of hewn red-gum timber spanning a creek in which water lay even at that time, forming an outlet from the river proper. Beyond the creek, lining its south bank, was a cluster of small buildings forming the station hands’ quarters, dining-room and kitchen. Farther up the creek stood the giant corrugated iron shearing shed, flanked by the shearers’ quarters, the blacksmith’s and carpenter’s shops on one side, the maze of sheep-yards and runways on the other. Beyond the buildings stretched the grey river flats bearing the wide-spaced box trees, between which sometimes it was possible to see the red sand-hills a mile or more distant.

  When over the creek bridge and passing the men’s quarters they caught sight of the men’s cook in his kitchen. From the blacksmith’s shop came the ringing blows of hammer on iron. Back of them, beyond Government House–so named because it housed the station’s governing authority–a steam-engine methodically chugged at its labour of pumping water from the river to the big reservoir tanks set high on piles, so that gravitation might force the water to taps in the garden, the kitchens, and other offices.

  Proceeding downstream for a quarter of a mile, they skirted three large huts, or rather small houses, occupied by married people. About them played several small children. Mayne frowned.

  “No school, Feng?”

  “The teacher decided that no longer could she resist the call of the city.”

  “Is another one coming?”

  “I am hoping to hear so by the next mail.”

  Mayne hurried on, satisfied that nothing had been neglected. The average number of children of school age belonging to his employees was only six, which was below the number for which the Educational Department would supply a teacher. Atlas paid the teacher’s salary.

  High above the slowly moving grey-brown stream the two men walked for twenty minutes, when they came to rapidly rising ground that took them almost one hundred feet above the then level of the river. Here the river turned eastward, countless bygone floods having scooped out a great hole in its bed and formed precipitous cliffs where it was turned by the iron-hard limestone forming the high ground. On the summit grew two immense gum trees born centuries before ever Dampier saw Australia.

  2

  Old Man Mayne’s wife had had one failing to set off her many virtues. Predeceasing her husband by five years, the old man invariably extolled her virtues, but never mentioned the one failing, which was a rarely silent tongue.

  He created an arbour where he might withdraw to smoke his pipe in peace, and ponder the sheepman’s ever recurrent problems, whilst gazing far and wide over his vast domain.

  Forty feet up, on the lower branches of one of the two trees on the high ground of the river bend, he had caused to be made a stout platform, on which had been placed a sawn square of timber to serve as a seat. The great branches above the platform gave excellent shade from the summer sun. From it the sitter could view thousands of acres of the run. It had become known as the “Seat of Atlas”.

  It was the objective of Mayne and Feng Ching-wei this sparkling June morning. Sitting together on the great wood block, Feng was more interested in the open face of his companion than in the scenery which at once absorbed Frank Mayne.

  At their elevation the slight undulations of the land were unmarked. Save to east and north, where the river trees cut off the view, the far-flung horizon was almost as level as at sea. Here the sky was as brilliant–nay, its brilliance was heightened by the land covered with dark-green scrub in the foreground merging into black toward the background. Pure crystal light above, mysterious darkness below, met with a sword-edge on the horizon.

  To the north the deep-cutting river, marked by the avenue of tall gums, ran almost straight for three miles before it deviated north-east. Ten miles up-river lay the northern boundary of Atlas. Fifteen miles south ran the southern boundary, beyond which a low ridge marked the position of the Tin Tin homestead. As far as the eye could reach westward, and farther, far beyond the horizon, seventy miles away, lay the western limits of Atlas. Mile after mile, thousands of acres added to thousands of acres, paddocks with forty-mile boundary fences-mulga forests, pine ridges, salt-bush plains–all under the government of him who sat with Feng Ching-wei.

  Originally, Atlas had comprised eleven hundred thousand acres, but the State Government had resumed block after block of land under closer settlement schemes, giving this applicant twenty thousand acres and that man thirty thousand; taking from Atlas, in bites here and there, three hundred thousand acres, so that now in shape Atlas was similar to a
Cubist’s drawing of a German sausage. Along the river frontage the width was about twenty-five miles in a straight line; at the western end its width was forty-five miles; somewhere about the middle the width was only five miles.

  Atlas! Mayne’s inheritance: a state, a country of nearly eight hundred thousand acres, a sheep-run seventy miles in length. And the population of Atlas never higher than forty. Nowhere, save to the immediate south, could a house be seen, or even any indication of the white man’s lordship excepting at one point on the horizon where, south of a clump of big pine trees, the sun flashed on the vanes of a revolving windmill.

  3

  For quite a long time neither man on the Seat of Atlas spoke a word. He who was born at the edge of the restless sea and has returned after years of absence; the blind man who, by miracle, again can see; the dungeon captive of long years restored to freedom and the light of day–these and such as these know just how Frank Mayne felt this morning whilst seated on the romantically named Seat of Atlas. During many months the bush had called–softly, sweetly, alluringly. He had heard the call in the streets of London and New York, in the depths of the Black Forest, on the canals of Venice, amid Alpine snow and ice, and on the sun-heated steps of the Great Pyramid. His ears had hearkened vainly for the sough of the wind through pines; his nostrils had twitched to catch the scent of gum leaves burning in a camp fire. Amid the roar of traffic he sometimes fancied he heard the musical tinkle of a horse-bell; in slush and rain he had pictured such days as this; whilst the glitter of ice and the touch of the raw east wind had brought to memory their antithesis, the scorching summer sun of Central Australia, where one lived with the minimum of clogging clothes and could really breathe. At a thousand unexpected moments, in a thousand tones of elfin music, the great, the vast, the humanly indescribable, the alluring, the masterful, the all-conquering bush had called, called, insistent1y called.

  And at last he had answered the call. Love had kept him away in strange lands. Now he knew that love of woman and by woman would not much longer have held him from obeying the call; knew that he had almost reached the breaking-point, that had his wife not finally consented to return with him to the bush he would have returned alone. Such as he are as the slaves of an autocrat.