Gripped By Drought Page 3

  After a while he explained something of this to Feng, surprising himself as well as his friend with his eloquence. It was the moment when he realized how firmly he was gripped by Atlas, by the Australian bush which is known no more intimately by bushmen than is London by Londoners. Feng Ching-wei was wholly sympathetic. Whilst lacking the inherent land-love that possessed Mayne, he yet understood much. It is said that no man leaves the Darling River who does not strive to return that he may die beside it.

  Mayne had returned, and knew he wanted never again to leave it, and felt joy in the knowledge that he was its slave.

  Frank Mayne sat staring over the bush-darkened land lying beneath the sky as the sea-bed beneath fathoms of translucent water. Watching him, his friend saw that he was changed, much changed.

  To be sure, he had not altered greatly in physical aspect, although his face was without its old-time tan; but it seemed as though during his travels he had caught fire from some mysterious spiritual fount, a negative personality having been electrified into a positive one. He wondered if the change had been brought about by travel or–love.

  The artist in him cried out now to paint the face of his loved friend: in the old days he had painted it merely for friendship’s sake.

  “Well, what do you think of Ethel?” Mayne asked abruptly. Wide, fearless hazel eyes gazed deep into the slanting black eyes.

  “I think,” Feng began, “I think Mrs. Mayne is a very beautiful woman. The tall slimness of her figure arouses my admiration whilst I have never seen a more perfectly oval face. The dark brown, almost black eyes and the black hair bring up in startling relief the pale, beautifully chiselled features. How old is she?”

  “She is twenty-five,” Mayne replied a little impatiently, as though a catalogue of his wife’s good looks was not what he required. After a pause he said: “Do you think I have done right?”

  “Surely you love your wife, Frank?”

  “With all my heart and soul, and every nerve and fibre,” was the earnest reply. “And yet––”

  Mayne again turned to stare out over Atlas. Feng laid a long-fingered white hand on his friend’s arm.

  “We used to say: ‘Trouble divided is trouble vanquished’,” he murmured softly. When Mayne next spoke his words were deliberately candid.

  “l am wondering whether it was right or wrong of me to marry Ethel. There was no mistake about my loving her, nor do I think there was any about her loving me. Her father is a dean of the Church of England. Ethel comes from genuine English gentlefolk, and her ideas of things conventional, of things hallowed by a thousand years of tradition, are as fixed as these river gums. You have no idea, can have no idea, of the caste system of England, its rigid iron boundaries which really are no less rigid in the provinces now than they were before the War. To some extent money counts, but money does not count in all things.

  “l am greatly afraid, Feng, that she will find our easy bush conventions most irritating. The majority of people in Great Britain, even the educated classes, cherish many illusions regarding us. Retired squatters and blatherskiting politicians appear to have given people over there the idea that a sheepman is a millionaire, and the working man almost as well off. Time is going to destroy that illusion, which my wife holds in common with thousands of Britishers, and I am beginning to be fearful that disillusionment will affect her love for me. If it does, our social laxity will become trebly irritating to her, and, doubtless, her reaction to us will make us all, as well as herself, very unhappy.”

  “If you find that she does not take kindly to us, Frank, then you must take her back to England and there make your home.”

  “That is what I can’t do.” Mayne suddenly stood up and swept his hand in an arc. “I’ve told you how it has got me. All that is mine, and I can’t give it up. I don’t want to give it up. I shall never be able to give it up.”

  “Don’t you think you are making a sand-hill out of an ants nest?” Feng said slowly. “You think that because Mrs. Mayne disapproved of the reception given you at the Menindee Hotel, because she did not make a fuss of Mrs. Morton and old Barlow, and almost ran away from Aunty Joe, she will never come to accept our standards. Really, you must give her a chance, Frank. You must credit her with common sense. It is said, and I believe with truth, that a new-chum finds the first six months in the bush pass easily as a period of novelty, but during the second six months the bush becomes loathsome and the torment of homesickness intolerable. After this second phase has worn away, the mystic allure of the bush begins to exert its power, so that even should he return to his homeland he will feel always that sweet allure.”

  “You may be right, Feng. You generally are, you know.”

  “I think I am right now. Be advised. Don’t keep Mrs. Mayne here too long without a change. Even if you do not want to leave Atlas, take her for a trip to Melbourne and New Zealand this coming summer. Remember, too, we are a tolerant people towards the new-chum. Mrs. Mayne will settle down eventually. Her ideas may be cast-iron, but her common sense will find the flaws in the metal.”

  4

  “I have endeavoured to carryout your policy in all respects,” Feng said, when by tacit consent the subject of Ethel Mayne was dropped. “In breeding I have striven to continue the production of a robust merino, annually buying the best Bungaree rams and culling the ewes with severity. My aim has been your aim–to breed hardy sheep, long in the leg, with a big frame, and growing wool of a medium strength. Wool first and the meat market second.”

  “Good! That was Old Man Mayne’s policy after nineteen-ten.”

  “At the beginning of this year,” Feng went on, “Atlas was clear of all debt, the bank account being twenty-one thousand pounds to the good. Last shearing we shore fifty-nine thousand sheep, cutting seventeen hundred bales of wool, which topped at twenty pence halfpenny per pound. We should shear more this year than last year, and I have been regretting not having accepted twenty-one shillings a head from Adelaide buyers for nine thousand wethers.”

  “A guinea a head!” echoed Mayne.

  “Yes. At that time, early last January, I thought, as apparently you now do, that a guinea was not a reasonable offer, and I declined. I should have closed. I did not, thinking that this year’s weather conditions would have equalled last year’s. I thought it wise to hang on for a better price, which March rain would undoubtedly have made.”

  “lt didn’t rain in March?”

  “No. I offered to let the wethers go at one pound, but the highest offer then was only fifteen shillings. The market has been slowly falling all this year. I decided to hold the wethers and then sell off the shears at the coming shearing, besides culling the flocks most heavily if the season did not improve. No rain fell in April or May, and the young lambs suffered severely from lack of green feed. Every day now I regret more not having sold those surplus wether sheep in January for a guinea a head.”

  “Regret? Stuff!” Mayne exclaimed. “No man could know that the year would be dry, Feng. I would not have sold at a guinea, because the price then was about twenty-three shillings.”

  “But having those wethers now makes Atlas slightly overstocked,” Feng pointed out, to which Mayne rejoined in a brisk business tone, quite unlike his everyday speech:

  “We’ll sell off the shears, as you said, and cull heavily. Anyway, the rain has come and the market is bound to harden. Old Man Mayne always overstocked Atlas, a”ording to our more modern ideas. We’ll not make the very few mistakes he made, but profit by them. Come! It must be time for lunch. We’ll put in the afternoon among the books, and you can formally hand Atlas back to me. I’m taking over from to-morrow morning, and to-morrow morning your well-earned holiday starts.”

  5

  At half-past seven the next morning Frank Mayne met the hands working on the east end of the run outside the office, where they were waiting to receive the day’s orders. By then he knew the location and the condition of each of his flocks, the work of each man in the immediate past and in
the present, and he found himself as much master of affairs as if he never had been absent. So he began briskly and confidently to organize the work of the day.

  There was one man among the group not directly working for Atlas, and when the others had been detailed to the various kinds of work this man approached Mayne. Of medium height, nattily dressed in riding-boots, gabardine trousers, and serge jacket. It was obvious that he was highly strung, for when he spoke ingrained nervousness was revealed.

  “Can–can I have a word with you, Mr. Mayne?” he asked with unmistakable English accent.

  “Certainly. What is your name ?”

  “I’m Tom Mace.”

  “Oh! Mr. Ching-wei was telling me about you. I understand you have been making an excellent living at rabbiting.”

  “Y-yes, but not so excellent when a good deal of lost time is taken into account.”

  Mace began to stutter and became silent.

  “Well, go on, Tom. You can talk to me as you would to Mr.

  Ching-wei,” Mayne said encouragingly. With an effort Mace controlled his tongue.

  “I’ve–I’ve a proposition to make, Mr. Mayne,” Mace began quickly. “I got about two hundred pounds clear out of the rabbits this last summer, and I am wanting to buy a truck. You see, I’ve been using a horse and dray at the dam-trapping, which is all right in a way, but wastes a lot of time when I’ve to take a load of skins to the railway at Ivanhoe. If I had a truck I could cart my skins in a day, instead of almost a week, when I am earning nothing. But I don’t want to get a truck on time payments. The payments when they come due would worry me. I–er––”

  “Well?”

  Mace saw sympathy and kindliness in Mayne’s eyes.

  “You see, it’s like this, Mr. Mayne. A new truck would cost two hundred and twenty pounds. I’d have to keep back twenty-five pounds for floating expenses, and I am wanting to know if you would put up fifty pounds if I mortgaged the truck to you.”

  “Humph! How many rabbits did you take off Atlas last summer?”

  “Close on eighty thousand, and two hundred and thirty-seven eagles as well.”

  “Eighty thousand! You did fine. What are the rabbits like now?”

  “Well, the dry spell has thinned them out, but present fur prices are high and gin-trapping pays well. The recent rain will cause ’em to start breeding again; and, as it looks like a good season ahead of us, they should be almost as thick this coming summer as they were last summer.”

  “l suppose you are hoping that they will be so?”

  “Well, rabbits and foxes are my living. You––”

  “Of course they are, Tom! For your sake, I hope they are thick.

  For my sake, I hope every rabbit and every fox dies soon. What concessions were you getting from Atlas?” “Meat only.”

  “No scalp money? No tucker?” “No.”

  For a little while Mayne pinched his chin and gazed vacantly at a near gum tree.

  “How long have you been in Australia?” he asked.

  “Seven years, Mr. Mayne. I came out under the United Services scheme. But I couldn’t stick wheat-farming. To me it was too dead a life. In the bush a man’s always alive. I’m sure I could do much better with a truck. All that lost time travelling about could be saved.”

  Mayne’s eyes suddenly lost their look of introspection and came to bear on the rabbiter’s nose. He said, without smiling:

  “Was that you I saw with one of the maids last night?”

  The blood flew into Tom Mace’s fresh-complexioned face. “Ye-es.”

  Continuing to gaze hard at the man’s nose, Frank Mayne said, still unsmiling:

  “I trust your intentions are strictly honourable.”

  “They-they are. Eva and me are going to be married as soon as we can get a place to live in, so that I can box on with my work and not leave here.”

  “Which is Eva?”

  “Eva! Eva’s the first housemaid, Mr. Mayne.”

  “Humph, you are a good picker! Well, Mr. Ching-wei’s opinion of you is high. I’ll advance you the fifty pounds, and I’ll pay you a rabbit scalp bonus of twenty shillings a thousand, and give you station rations. Later I may be able to find you a house on the run, but any hanky-panky with Eva will result in your leaving Atlas. You see, the maids are my responsibility. You will please me by not keeping Eva out later than half-past nine.”

  For a space of three seconds they regarded each other with penetrating keenness. Then Mace said: “Half-past nine it shall be, Mr. Mayne. Thank you very much! I’d like to leave for Broken Hill on the mail-car to-night.”

  “Very well. Come for my cheque at eleven.”

  6

  Mace’s business disposed of, Frank Mayne walked slowly toward the creek and the men’s quarters beyond. Skirting the river bank, he noted how low was the brownish stream, more than twenty feet below him, and idly his gaze swept downstream, noting, too, the wonderfully even cut of the grey banks, appearing almost as though the huge ditch had been the careful engineering of man. At the men’s quarters he visited the men’s cook.

  “Morning, Todd!” he said to a short, clean-shaven, fierce-eyed man about sixty years old. Todd Gray rose from the table at which he was eating breakfast, revealing fully the speckless white trousers and the apron that covered his chest and fell to his knees. In a swift survey Mayne examined the long combined kitchen and dining-room. One bench was littered with used baking dishes, but of those utensils used by the men at breakfast he saw no sign. Already they had been washed and put back in their respective places. Todd said:

  “Strike-me-dead! It’s good to see you again, Mr. Mayne, ’deed it is. Have a good trip?”

  “Splendid, Todd, splendid! I’m very glad to find you still on deck.”

  “Ain’t I been on this deck for forty years? Course I have. A drink of tea?” Todd went over to the wall at the end of his service table, and regarded for a second the three rows of enamelled pint pannikins, each hanging from a nail by its handle. The three pannikins at the end of the top row were half-pints in size. Above each was attached to the wall a short piece of tin and each piece of tin had a name punched through it. The pannikin beneath the name

  “Mister Frank”, Todd took down to fill. Above the adjoining pannikin was the name “Mister Feng”, and over the third “Miss Ann”. There was no pannikin on the fourth nail.

  “Still keeping those three pannikins clean, Todd?”

  “Of course, Mr. Mayne. No one dare use ’em but their owners, but they gets washed with the others three times every day, including Sundays. Master Frankie’s pannikin goes on that fourth nail. Gus is doing the name now. I got Mr. Feng to order the pannikin from Menindee yesterday. It should be here on its nail to-morrow.”

  Filling Mayne’s pannikin from the big tea-urn, Todd brought it to the table, on which he set it down opposite his unfinished breakfast. Mayne took the form for a seat and added milk and sugar, whilst Todd continued his breakfast.

  “It was Mr. Feng who started it,” Todd said, as though making a complaint. “Used to run along here every time he could sneak away from old Mrs. Mayne, who was so dead frightened he’d fall off the bridge. And then he brought you along when you could toddle about, and you had to have a pannikin. No thought for me, who had to keep washin’ ’em up. Oh no! When Mrs. Shelley died and old Mrs. Mayne used to have Miss Ann stay here for months, then Miss Ann must have a pannikin too. And all these years them three pannikins have had to be washed up, and me getting older and older.

  I’m getting wore out. Me blasted feet is that sore that I can’t sleep o’

  nights. You know, Mr. Mayne, seven days a week, month after month, sets up friction and emphasizes the sidereal influences, threatening to cause combustion in the mental chamber. What about a week off? I could do with a week’s spell in Menindee.”

  “You’d start talking about the stars and forget to come home, Todd,” Mayne said, with a show of indecision. “I’d come back to-day week on the mail, for sure!’
/>
  “Very well,” with seeming relief. “But you must first persuade Archie to carry on in your place.”

  “All right!” Todd grumbled. “He’ll cost me a couple of quid, but I’ll have to pay him, I suppose. Only lunatics take on cooking for a living. Archie will carry on for the two quid, and he promises to hang Master Frankie’s pannikin on that nail directly it arrives. Can the youngster walk yet?”

  “No, not yet,” replied Mayne, smiling. Todd Gray had been his boyhood’s hero, then a young man with a brilliant imagination to evolve an everlasting line of adventure stories. Well educated, Todd Gray’s reason for undertaking station cooking always had been a mystery. The years had seen him degenerate into the free and easy bush manner of thought and speech, only alcohol pulling him back to those days when he had spoken culturally.

  Cursed with tender feet caused by long spells of standing on floor-boards, his feet occupied his sober moments, whilst the stars occupied his mind to the exclusion of all else when influenced by whisky.

  “Wot’s it feel like to be back, Mr. Mayne?” he inquired, pushing away his plate.

  “lt feels good, Todd; darned good.”

  “You should never have gone all that time. The bush is a jealous slut. You had to come back, didn’t you, though?”

  “Yes, I had to come back.”

  “Course you did! All dinkum bushmen has to come back to the Darling. Still, you shouldn’t have stayed away so long. Like as not the bush will have her revenge. You look out! Be terrible careful when you’re hoss-riding alone, and are well away from water on a hot summer day. You only need to make one slip, and the bush will see to it that you never leave her again. There was old Te––”

  “Croaker!” Mayne chided, laughing. “I’ll hear no more now. When you are in Menindee, never forget that I am expecting you back this day week.”