Gripped By Drought Page 4

  Whilst Mayne walked to the shearing shed he could hear Todd Gray singing, in a cracked voice, a song in Latin.

  CHAPTER III

  OLD JOHN

  I

  AFTER leaving Todd Gray, Mayne, glancing at his watch, noted that it was nearly half-past eight, and remembered that his breakfast would not be served till nine. It was a nice hour to breakfast. He had become quite used to it; and yet, in passing over the creek bridge, he could not but mark the incongruity of a sheepman breakfasting at nine. Why, the day was then half sped!

  Approaching Feng’s bungalow, he saw a strange woman stoking a portable copper near the back door; and, seeing her jabbing at something beneath the rising steam, wondered why his friend’s washerwoman was not doing the work in the homestead laundry, where there was every convenience. When the woman stooped to push a billet of wood into the fire beneath the copper, the revealed width of her hips engaged his interest. Her huge arms, bare to the shoulder, were whitened with suds. After pausing before the opened front door of the bungalow, he entered and called loudly:

  “Hey, Feng! Are you up?”

  Feng answered from the interior of a shut-off room at the precise instant that Mary O’Doyle surged along the passage to the hall wherein stood Mayne. Confronting him, Mary at once fell into one of her fighting attitudes, standing square on her feet thrust into elastic-sided stockman’s boots, hands on hips, her large red face thrust forward, the button of a nose twitching, the brilliant blue eyes unwinking.

  “Who might you be, raising hell at this hour of the morning?” she demanded.

  “My name is Mayne. Who are you?” he replied, with difficulty keeping amusement from his face.

  “Oh!” Mary O’Doyle’s fighting attitude relaxed. “Morntng, Mr. Mayne! I didn’t know, for sure I didn’t. Me, I’m Mary O’Doyle, born in County Clare when the grand John Redmond was in his prime, Was you wishin’ to see Mr. Feng?”

  “I was.”

  A door was opened. Resplendent in a rose-hued dressing-gown, Feng smiled at them impartially. “Come in, Frank. Mary, a cup of tea for Mr. Mayne.”

  “I’ve already had two cups.’ the squatter protested.

  “An’ a third’ll go good,” emphatically stated Mary, turning back to her kitchen.

  Within his friend’s bedroom Mayne stood looking about him. The old severe plainness had given way to luxurious comfort. Feng said:

  “When I had your house redecorated and furnished, I took the liberty of removing the old furniture that did not harmonize with the new period scheme. You see here some of it, added to pieces I bought with yours. How do you like my bedroom?”

  “I like it well. I am glad you launched out. Europe taught me the meaning of luxury, and when we can afford luxury, why the dickens can’t we have it in the bush of Australia? By the way, Ethel is most pleased with your taste in furnishing. The interior of the house quite surprised her.”

  “Ah! I am delighted. I had some little fear that my taste would not meet with her approval.” At this point Mary entered with Mayne’s tea, and lingered for a moment to fuss with the cup and the plate of biscuits. When she withdrew Feng asked: “How does work appeal to you?”

  “Good! I’m as keen as anything. By the way, we expected you to dinner last night.”

  “Thanks! I thought, however, that Mrs. Mayne would like time to settle down. Er–you see, Frank, one cannot now be too unconventional. Not as we used to be in the bad old days. Which is why the coming of a mistress to Atlas will do us both much good. I think, too, that you both will benefit by enjoying a degree of privacy, even during meals. I know, were I married, I would not relish always having other people at my table. Already I am thinking that I’ve secured a jewel in Mary O’Doyle, and I am enjoying immensely the–well, the independence of my establishment.”

  “Excellent! I was afraid you might feel out of it now I’ve brought home a wife. Feng, we want no one, not even a wife, to come between us, do we?”

  “Of course not, Frank,” replied Feng Ching-wei, once again noting Mayne’s trouble of spirit. “Of course not. It would be unthinkable. To insure against such a remote happening, I refurnished this house and installed Mary O’Doyle. Naturally, I’ll be delighted to accept an invitation to dine as often as your wife sends me one. I hope to invite Mrs. Mayne and yourself here sometimes.”

  “A good suggestion!” agreed Mayne, smiling again. “It will break routine, and I must never allow Ethel to become bored with routine. We are giving a house-warming dinner to-morrow night. We are sending word to Ann and Cameron, and I intend walking down to Sir John after breakfast. That reminds me to ask you, what kind of a fellow is Cameron?”

  Feng was placing a used match on the bronze ash-tray, and Mayne did not see the slight contraction of the eyelids over the black eyes. But there was no change in either expression or voice when Feng looked up, saying:

  “He’s a good sheepman–above the average. In appearance, smart. Possesses culture of a kind. He was managing a place in Central Queensland before coming here. A little too partial, possibly, to women; no snobbery where they are concerned. There was some difficulty last year with a maid, I believe. Has his good points, of course.”

  “Humph! Well, we will see the fellow to-morrow night. My wife met his uncle, the shipping man, somewhere. Neighbour, you know, and all that. Where are you to spend your holiday?”

  Feng laughed in his soft, chuckling way.

  “I am going to spend it here, and enjoy a real good loaf,” he said. “There are several pictures I want to finish, and two I wish to paint.”

  2

  Later in the morning Frank Mayne set off to visit Old John. When he came out through the main gates in the paling fence, facing westward toward the office and store buildings, he turned to the north, and, walking round the fence corner, followed it almost to its end at the edge of the steep river bank, when the beaten path he trod branched away to continue along the bank.

  Save for a single line of small puff-cloud the brilliant sky was clear. The south wind caressed Mayne’s neck with cool touch and, with a sound like the distant hiss of many snakes, rustled the leaves of the red-gum trees beneath which he passed. Occasionally the kookaburras burst into apparently uncontrollable laughter, and with high-pitched screeches a roosting flock of galahs impertinently gibed at a passing school of the big black cockatoos that replied in a lower, more raucous tone.

  Elsewhere than at the bends the river in many places was easily fordable. Here slabs of granite forced the stream to flow swiftly through a channel at the foot of a stretch where the bank was grey mud; beyond, the stream expanded to the width of the bed to flow sluggishly into a rock-girt hole many feet in depth. Cranes flapped awkwardly up and down the river course level with its banks; shags stood high on dead branches, wings outstretched to dry; whilst finches hopped and chirped among the branches of the grandest avenue of trees in Australia.

  Following the narrow man-trodden path, Mayne walked on till he came to the edge of a belt of lantana bush, which was on a much lower level than the surrounding flats, and accordingly was flooded when the river was moderately high. A quarter of a mile wide beside the river, it spread to several miles in width two miles westward, where a bank of sand-dunes prevented further expansion.

  The path wound sharply downward to the lantana belt, there to wind in and out among the giant masses of tangled, cane-like bush. Down here among the lantana the sunlight seemed to wane and thin, and at the moment of entering it was as if the sun was suddenly masked by a cloud. Midway across, Mayne came to a little natural clearing, where lightning first had killed and a windstorm subsequently had uprooted one of the gums. Beyond the clearing the path re-entered the lantana, and the river was not again seen until the higher flats beyond were reached. And then, after walking a third quarter of a mile, Mayne could see the Australian seat of Sir John Blain.

  The house was built on high land, immediately behind a point composed of snow-white, large-grained sand, round which the
river flowed into a very cavern of a hole where lurked the forty-and fifty-pound cod when the stream ceased to run. The dwelling was constructed of sheet-iron nailed to a wooden frame. Facing east, its front was protected by a walled shed, or veranda, built entirely of cane-grass, a shed almost as large as the house itself, and used by the tenant as a dining-room and a kitchen. Within the hut a window faced west, a window without glass, a wooden drop-shutter being raised on hinges when light and air were necessary.

  This small bush home was surrounded by a well-kept kitchen garden, the whole being securely net-fenced against rabbits. The exterior of the hut–the garden and ground adjacent–was kept scrupulously clear of rubbish; an oasis set amid a trackless desert littered with leaves and dead branches flung there from the great gums by the winds of the season. A splash of red rose from the south side of the grass shed and almost covered its roof, formed by the countless little flowers of a creeping vine, the name of which none knew, not even Sir John, who years before had brought the cutting from Adelaide.

  Although he was seventy-two, Sir John was one whose forces appeared never to have been sapped by the follies of youth or of middle age, one whose youthful strength obviously had been extraordinary. Despite his years, his back was straight and his legs steady. Six feet one inch he measured in his socks. Snow-white hair and a full snow-white moustache with drooping ends, wide, clear grey eyes that gazed steadily from beneath pent white eyebrows, a firm, dominating mouth, and a square chin made him appear as one of those patriarchal Vikings whose descendant unquestionably he was. A stern, unbending character at one’s first casual observation, it was when one came to study carefully the extraordinarily vital face that the single contradictory feature explained his past history and his present. Even the full moustache failed to hide the lines of his wide mouth, revealing tenderness–nay, weakness.

  He was seated on a sawn length of red gum rolled to within a few inches of the rough-made garden gate. A dried sheepskin hung over the fence, making a comfortable back seat. His feet reposed on a board, for the ground was damp, and two yards beyond the board the ground fell sharply to the river level, thirty feet below. On Atlas he was known to everyone as Old John. In the near township of Menindee, in Adelaide twenty-five years before, and in the South of England twenty-five years before that, he was known as Sir John Blain, Bt., of Blain Chase, near Winchester.

  This morning Old John was dressed in dark-green gabardine trousers, and a frayed and faded Norfolk jacket. On his feet were elastic-sided riding boots, about his neck was a white silk handkerchief, on his great head was set a battered, weather-stained felt hat. He surveyed with the calm eyes of age a resilient gum sucker, six feet in length, thrust firmly into the river bank near the water. From it stretched a white fishing line, the stick acting as a springer which would automatically hook and play a fish. He sat as the artists depict King Canute commanding the sea to come no higher. He looked as ancient, as sturdy, and as defiant as anyone of the trees forming the thousand-mile winding’ avenue down which flows the “Gutter of Australia”, as the Darling River is often endearingly called.

  3

  The crackling of leaves and small twigs awoke into vivid life a small fox-terrier that scampered away round the corner of the garden with short, staccato barks. Old John demanded to know the reason of “Beelzebub’s” sudden departure in a voice that boomed as that of a sailor, then slowly he rose to his feet, stood erect, and turned about. He saw, approaching, Frank Mayne.

  With shrewd, puckered eyes the old man appraisingly examined the visitor, noted how the slightly bowed legs carried the lithe, supple body with the springy step of the horseman. When Mayne rounded the corner post of the fence Old John was quick to see the unusual paleness of his face, lit now with the strange fire of the wanderer at long last returned home.

  “Why, Frank! I’m glad you have come,” he said heartily. “Feng told me the other day that you were expected, but I did not think to see you so soon. Sit down, my boy! Sit here beside me and spin away at all your adventures.”

  “To do that would take me a week, John,” Mayne said, conscious of the undiminished strength of Old John’s hand on his own. “You are looking not a day older. You are looking splendid.”

  “Looks often lie, Frank. I have never been ill in my life, but my heart is getting tired of work, and sometimes complains. Beelzebub, to heel! Silence, sir! But never mind me, Frank. You are married! Well, well, well! Feng tells me that you married the second daughter of Dean Dyson. I have been wondering. Does the Dean come from the Dysons of Tavistock?”

  “Yes, he does.”

  “Then I know him. He was in the second form when I was in the sixth at the old school. Strange–strange! I saved him from a hiding one day, and the little beggar wanted to divide a hamper from his people he received the following week. The jumping Nabob!

  How time flies! Tell me of her, your wife.”

  “She’s a wonderful woman, John,” Mayne said quietly.

  “Of course she is. I don’t want the obvious. Is she a brunette, like all the Dysons? How old is she?”

  “She is twenty-five–taller than I am. Yes, like all the Dysons, she is dark; black hair and brown eyes, and a complexion like rose-tinted cream.”

  “Enamelled?” Old John asked dryly, chuckling.

  “Of course not. Ethel doesn’t paint.”

  “The heir? Is he a Dyson too?”

  No, he takes after the Maynes. Now his hair is long and curly, and the colour of ripe wheat. His eyes are wide and deep blue. When he laughs I hear Old Man Mayne, and there was seldom a man who laughed more heartily than did my father.”

  “How old is he now?” asked Old John, gazing fixedly at the fishing-line springer. “Eleven months.”

  “Can he run yet?”

  “No. But it won’t be very long before he does.”

  Old John continued to look down on the sun-reflecting river and his line for nearly half a minute, but the scene before his eyes was not the scene viewed by his brain.

  “You must let me see the lad, Frank. You must bring him along one day,” he said slowly at last.

  “As a matter of fact, we want you to come along to dinner to-morrow evening. Will you?”

  “It isn’t quarter day yet. Won’t be for another seventeen days.”

  “l am aware of that,” Mayne countered. “To-morrow evening we are giving a little house-warming party. There will be Ann Shelley, and the new man at Thuringah, Feng, and, if you will come, yourself. Ethel wants to meet you.”

  The old man pondered with knit, bushy brows. Then:

  “You’ll let me see the boy? You will not have him tucked away in bed?”

  Mayne laughed indulgently. “No,” he said. “You’ll come?”

  “Yes, I’ll come.”

  “Good I I’ll send the car for you about six. Dinner will be at seven, so that you will have an hour to get acquainted with my two people. I also have some photographs to show you.”

  “Photographs! Of what?”

  “Of Blain Chase,” Mayne replied with twinkling eyes.

  Old John swung round to face the younger man. His eyes were clear and strong with light. His voice was a roar.

  “Then why the devil didn’t you bring ’em with you?”

  “I intended to use them as a bait.”

  “Be damned!” came the roar. “Your son is bait enough. Did you go there? Did you have a look-see at the old place?”

  “We did more. We found the Sheffields delightful people, and they invited us to stay a week-end. We duly paid the visit last September. Oh John, John! What a place! What a home!”

  Old John did not speak again for several minutes. Mayne, seeing the old man’s reverie, refrained from breaking the silence. When Old John did speak his voice was low, in it a faint tremble.

  “England, Frank!” he whispered very slowly. “Blain Chase is the trebly refined essence of England. Oh, God! How my heart always has hungered for Blain Chase! If any man knows what Adam suffered a
fter being flung out of the Garden of Eden, I do.” Again silence fell between them, and once more Mayne refrained from breaking it. Then: “Where did you sleep?” came the question wistfully.

  “ln the right wing. You go up to the first landing lighted by the great stained-glass window, then take the right-hand passage, and it was the first room.”

  “The first room? Are you sure?”

  “Quite. We slept there three nights.”

  “Did you know that that room was her room? That it was the room in which I found her–and him?” Mayne suddenly stiffened. His right hand gripped Old John’s right forearm.

  “Was that the room?”

  “It was that room. Strange! Strange that you went across the world to Blain Chase to sleep in that accursed room, when there are twenty-two undefiled bedrooms. Your wife slept there too?”

  “Of course.” “Humph!”

  “Why did you ask that–about my wife sleeping there?”

  “Nothing.”

  After that abrupt reply there was silence for a long time, the old man staring with eyes that saw scenes of long ago, Frank watching idly the fishing-line and Beelzebub, who was racing along the water’s edge. The invigorating breeze rustled the leaves of the giant river trees and whipped the surface of the stream above the sand point into what looked like frosted glass. Now the sky was mottled with tiny clouds like balls of wool–balls of wool littering the floor of a vast shearing shed. Presently Mayne spoke.

  “The sundial you described so accurately and so often is still on the lawn opposite the terrace steps. Mr. Sheffield explained it to me. He made a suggestion about that Sundial.” “Indeed!”

  “He thought that, perhaps, you might like to have a little piece of Blain Chase, and said that if you wish it he will send that sundial out to you.”

  “Remove the sundial! Certainly not, Frank. Blain Chase would be incomplete without that sundial.”

  “Mr. Sheffield made a second proposition. As they have no children, and go into society very little, he would find it quite agreeable to let you the entire west wing, with full use of his domestic service and the grounds. Oh, John, Wouldn’t you like to see it all again? To live there?”