Gripped By Drought Read online

  Old John’s hands were clasped tightly together. For a moment his face was as that of a saint regarding heaven. Then quickly the eyes became moist and his chin sank to his massive chest. He said:

  “It’s quite impossible, my boy. Sheffield is a square man, and you must write and thank him for me. No, it is impossible now. How is Sheffield keeping up the old place?”

  “First-rate. It was the most beautiful place I saw in England. I wonder no longer at the Englishman’s love of the Old Country.”

  “It is the finest place in all England, Frank. It was first built by Sir Hugh Blain in!717. The cost almost ruined him. His son, Sir Richard, made a fortune in the West Indies, and really founded the family fortunes. I wonder how long they will call it Blain Chase after I’m gone. If only Dick had survived the War! If only his mother––Damnation!

  “Frank, when one becomes old, one becomes weak and sentimental. Yes, I’ll come to the dinner, and thank you. Have those photographs to show me, and that son of yours too. It is fortunate that I knew your wife’s father. That will provide a chain of interest between her and me. Did you say that Alldyce Cameron was also dining with you?”

  “Yes. We have not yet met him. Neighbour, you know. Must ask him.”

  “He’s a flash, Frank,” Old John said sternly. “He reminds me of–you know. Easy talker, easy mannered. Expressive eyes and a silver tongue. The kind that can recite poetry to a pretty woman when the moon is up. Poetry! Faugh! However, I’ll be polite to the fellow.”

  “Good!” said Mayne, chuckling, seeing the old man regain his habitual buoyant good-humour. “Be ready at six. How has Feng been looking after you?”

  “Thoughtfully, as always. You two are good boys. You are like your father, Frank, in more ways than in looks, and Old Man Mayne knew what he was doing when he picked up Feng. I am indeed fortunate. Now, you be gone! I have valet’s work to do. I am a better man than any of the Blains, because I can valet myself.”

  And, when the old man lost sight of the figure of Frank Mayne among the trees, he looked down on the log seat and found there a package of photographs of Blain Chase and its grounds.

  CHAPTER IV

  THE MANAGER OF THURINGAH

  I

  ETHEL MAYNE dressed with care late in the afternoon for the house-warming dinner. She had selected an evening gown of black crepe-de-Chine, unrelieved by any colour. Surveying herself now and again in the full-length mirror, she for the first time felt a thrill of thankfulness that her father’s financial standing had not permitted the services of a lady’s maid for his three daughters; for now, when the services of a good maid were impossible, her practised reliance on herself stood her in good stead.

  The gown clung to her slim, well-moulded, youthful figure, accentuating the soft curves, and throwing into relief the cold, lovely face, on which emotion was so seldom pictured, crowned by the shining, cropped black hair. Undoubtedly her greatest accomplishment was how to dress. She knew she was beautiful, and was pleasantly conscious that her choice of dress made her strikingly so.

  She wanted this evening to create surprise and admiration. Her guests, excluding Feng Ching-wei, were two Australians, a man and a woman. Of the man, Alldyce Cameron, she had learned a little from a conversation with Feng, who drank tea that morning with her and her husband, and what the little Feng had said in his suave, guarded manner was sufficient to fire her lifelong passion for sexual conquest. Coming to realize thus early that her social world here at Atlas was so limited, she felt that of necessity she must make the best of every opportunity.

  Then there was the woman, Ann Shelley, mistress of a run almost as huge as Atlas itself. Of her, Feng’s veiled reticence, added to her husband’s less diplomatic statements, aroused in Ethel Mayne a growing desire to know more of past history and precisely what part in that history had been played by her husband and Ann Shelley. Old John then was of no interest to her. She had forgotten him, a broken-down baronet living on Atlas charity.

  The third daughter of the Very Reverend Dean Dyson, the whole of her pre-married life had been lived in the somewhat narrow social atmosphere of a cathedral city. Hers had been the unenviable lot of the youngest daughter in a ménage where money, or, rather, the lack of money, was of paramount importance. The Dean’s stipend, plus a small private income, was drained by many pipes, the largest of which was that supplying the Dean himself, who was an ambitious man of extravagant tastes.

  It had always been the Dean this, and the Dean that. Or: “You must remember, dear, that your father has his responsibilities and his position to keep up. We simply cannot increase your dress allowance.” And again, when Agatha, the eldest, was to be married: “Agatha’s wedding will be most frightfully expensive, remember. The Dean simply cannot permit a quiet, inexpensive function. We must consider the Honourable Edward’s people as well as ourselves. No, you must go to dear Aunt Emily this summer.”

  Scrape, scheme and plan everlastingly to make a crown go as far as a pound note! It had been sickening, and even her shallow soul had at times revolted against’ the hollow pretence of affluence. And into that world of make-believe riches, where the skeleton of poverty lurked behind every peal of laughter, every tinsel colour, there entered one day Frank Mayne.

  They had met at a garden-party whilst he was the guest of the Bishop. It was the Bishop who in all innocence later described Atlas and Old Man Mayne, when he, the Bishop, had been on mission work in New South Wales; and consequently when, after a friendship of only three weeks, Mayne proposed marriage, the whole Dyson family was aware of the precise acreage of Atlas and the probable value of the property.

  Here plainly was a golden avenue of escape from her small world of horrid pretence, parsimony, and genteel poverty so cleverly dissembled. Mayne’s impulsive declaration astonished, although it pleased; for in Market Wallop he was already regarded as a prize, a rich Australian squatter around whose head was the aura of gold and power. Were not by tradition all Australian squatters wealthy and powerful?

  To be sure, marriage with Frank Mayne meant being a good deal in the wild back-blocks of Australia; but, with his three-quarters of a million acres of land, and some seventy thousand sheep, he could provide her with a decent dress allowance, whilst almost certainly they would move in Vice-Regal circles three months of every year.

  After a proper show of maidenly hesitation, she accepted this Colonial Midas. She liked his well-bred, if easy, manner. She liked his boyish impulsiveness, recognizing in it the certainty of her easy ascendancy over him as his wife. Yet his passion for her did not fire her blood, and cause her pulses to leap beneath his touch, and because no man had fired her it is not to her discredit that she married less for love than for worldly things.

  Followed her acceptance of him, a whirlwind courtship, a period spent in a sudden rain of gold, for Frank Mayne showered gifts on her worthy of the fabulous Colonial millionaire. They were married at the end of a month. The golden shower continued. The magic carpet of gold carried them around Europe, some way into Asia, through America, back again to England, where she had her baby, then to proceed at a slower rate, till finally it stopped at Atlas.

  The solidity of Atlas pleased her, solidity and security. A tour of the homestead conducted by her husband was a revelation. She had expected to see a log-built ranch-house and roughly constructed out-buildings, her mind having been coloured by the vivid word pictures portrayed by the most popular American and Canadian novelists. She found her bush home to be well built, spacious, set amid an oasis of fresh green vines, plants, and trees, beautifully furnished, lighted by electricity, and staffed by a woman cook and four maids, supervised by a housekeeper who relieved her of all household worries. The men’s quarters, she saw, were roomy and comfortable for mere hired hands, each compartment containing but two iron bedsteads.

  The huge shearing shed, with its long row of pens on one side flanking the board on which twenty-four men could shear, the wool-sorting room, the great presses, and the maze of yard
s and runways outside further impressed her. The carpenter’s shop, the saddler’s shop, the blacksmith’s shop, the poison house and the poison carts, the stockyards, the store-rooms, and the most important looking office, as well as the barracks in which lived the bookkeeper, and the jackeroos–a completely independent establishment–all spoke of solidity, all proclaimed that Atlas was founded securely on gold produced by the thousands of sheep scattered over the vast territory she presently was to see.

  The old hatefully dependent life was far behind her. No longer had she to defer to others: people deferred to her. She had but to command to be obeyed. In her own small rosewood secretaire lay a cheque-book and a bank pass-book. Every quarter-day her bank account was enriched by three hundred pounds. Lying in her chests and hanging in her cupboards were costumes, gowns and lingerie of which she always had dreamed, but never possessed until she had married this rich Australian squatter.

  Solidity! Security! Power! All were hers. All were given her lavishly, without stint, without question. They were given her as tokens of love, rendered her in rightful expectation of her love in return, and, deep in her heart, Ethel Mayne knew that the recompense she made for these gifts was unworthy. At intervals–very far apart–she recognized that she did not love her husband with the fire, the passionate devotion with which he loved her; recognized, too, that sometimes he was disappointed by her coldness and lack of response. Ethel Mayne had hitherto loved but one person, and that was Ethel Mayne; but now she loved two, herself and Little Frankie.

  2

  Notwithstanding her selfishness, her pride, and her passion for luxury, Ethel Mayne was not indifferent to the duty she owed her child. No doubt had entered her mind that she always would be a good wife and mother. Her happiness on attaining worldly success was at first darkened by the arrival of Little Frankie, because the incident of child-bearing had so spoilt her figure and had compelled retirement from the excitements and the pleasures which were her right as the wife of an Australian squatter. Not maternal love, but repulsion did she feel at first sight of the baby. It was only latterly, when the child began to bloom into real loveliness, when her figure again was lithesome, when the child so evidently was a credit to her, that she came to love him. It was the beauty of the child and not love of its father which inspired that love.

  A knock on the door of her room announced her husband. Turning from the mirror she saw him surveying her, one hand still on the door-knob behind him, his eyes lit with the admiration that in any man’s eyes thrilled her to consciousness of her sex appeal. Whilst his eyes swept over her she incuriously wondered at the power her body held over this man.

  “Do you like me in my black frock?” she inquired coolly, as though questioning another woman.

  “You look–you look just superb,” he replied haltingly. And then, with quick, restrained earnestness: “EtheI, you are wonderful.”

  “I shall become wonderfully vain if you go on in that strain. Still, I am glad you like my frock. I want to look nice to meet our neighbours.”

  When he left the door and approached her, her alabaster lids drooped, shutting away the light that came into her eyes as the slats of a blind turned down will shut out the light of day. In her husband’s face she saw his hunger for her, but felt no responsive warmth.

  “Don’t touch me, old boy! I’ve taken lots of trouble with my toilet,” she cried out protestingly.

  “Very well, dear.”

  Mayne stiffened into immobility, standing still to study her face feature by feature: first the semi-closed, languorous eyes, then the rather long, straight nose, and finally the perfect mouth and the slightly pointed chin. Lovely though she looked to him at that moment, he wondered how still more lovely she would look if only her face was flushed with passionate love. He said:

  “Sorry, sweetheart, but you are so adorable, and I–I love you.”

  “I know you do,” she told him, a thrill of satisfaction in her low, rich voice; now, in privacy with him, free from the affectation learned in the elocution class. “Yet I mustn’t be pulled about. You are not yet dressed. Do hurry I”

  “Indeed, I must. I popped in to tell you that Old John is in the drawing-room playing with Little Frankie. I wanted to introduce you before the others arrive.”

  “He–he is all right? Dressed, I mean.”

  “Come and see for yourself. I think you will approve.”

  He held open the drawing-room door for her to enter, and her first sight of Old John was of him on his knees facing the babe, who clung to a chair but two yards distant. And, even at her soft entry, Little Frankie suddenly left the chair and staggered on his stocky little legs across the adventurous sea into the safe harbour of the old man’s arms.

  “Why! He walks!”

  Her voice was raised in ecstatic surprise. Her face lit up with an inner light that for the moment melted her cold beauty into ravishing loveliness. Thus it was that Old John, with Little Frankie in his arms, first saw Ethel Mayne.

  “Madame, Boy Blue has the makings of an international athlete,” boomed the deep voice of the old man when he stood up, still holding the child.

  “But he has never walked before!”

  “He has been waiting for encouragement–to gain applause.”

  “Ethel, this is Sir John Blain,” Mayne interposed. “John–my wife.”

  She smiled into the old, strikingly handsome face of this big man, correctly dressed in evening clothes cut in the fashion of nineteen-ten, and her mind began at once to battle with the items of news she had heard of him, and proceed to obliterate some of them as untruths. The affectation of the elocutionist was strong in her voice when she said:

  “l am glad you came, Sir John–early. I am delighted to know that you are our near neighbour.”

  “Your welcome gives me great happiness, Mrs. Mayne. When I heard whom Frank had married I knew he had married rightly. Now, having seen you, I venture to add that he knew precisely what he was doing. And, and not only has Atlas obtained a royal mistress, it also has got a royal heir. Madam, this child of yours is worthy of Atlas.”

  “I am glad that you approve of us, Sir John,” she said, laughing softly. “But isn’t it wonderful that Little Frankie can toddle? You know, I was beginning to think he was backward.”

  “Backward! Not he! My boy didn’t walk until he was thirteen months old, and he grew into a fine lad nevertheless. Very well, young fellow, you shall try again.”

  The child was struggling to be released from the steady, encircling arms, and the old man set him down on his feet beside the chair. Mayne, still standing near the door, watched the scene with a surging heart, saw Old John fall on his knees, saw his wife standing near him with an expression of rapt joy–an expression which caused him to think that he never had met this woman before. Old John called coaxingly, his face lit by an astonishing light, and again Little Frankie essayed the journey, this time with less success although with not less confidence. Without speaking, Mayne quietly withdrew and went to his room to dress.

  “Your father! Is he in good health?” Old John asked, still on his knees, and addressing Ethel when she became seated.

  “As well as can be expected, Sir John. His nerves are in rags, but he will work so hard. Every moment of his day is occupied by something or other.”

  Her emphasis on particular words jarred him. He could find no excuse for the daughter of Dean Dyson, who had mixed all her life with gentlefolk. It did not even amuse him, as such affectation in the speech of the ignorant would have done. Her good first impression on him already was wearing thin.

  “lt is a great thing to enjoy a busy life’“ he boomed. “Your father and I went to the same school, and I remember him as a thin little fellow anxious to please everyone. You will feel a little homesick for a while, but that is a phase which will be cured by time.

  I said just now that your husband had chosen well. Without impertinence I say now that you are a fortunate woman, for not only is Frank a fine man, but this est
ate which you share with him is well worth the co-rule of any woman. As an inheritance for your boy I know of none finer, save, of course, Blain Chase.”

  “Have you been here long?” she asked unsmilingly.

  “Twenty-five years. A somewhat sordid incident drove me from Blain Chase. Doubtless you have heard of it from your husband. In certain circumstances men sometimes are very foolish. My son then was seven years old. I sent him to school and came to Australia, where I met Old Man Mayne, who persuaded me to stay. Now and then I went home to see my boy, and settle details regarding his education and subsequent career in the Army. After he was killed in action at Mons I felt no desire to go home; and have, with my own hands, built a little place of my own where I can fish and garden and dream away my closing years.”

  “Are you not lonely all by yourself?”

  She saw him smiling at her with a suggestion of wistfulness.

  “No,” he said firmly. “My ghosts are my companions. There is the ghost of my woman who, to me, died many years ago; and there is the ghost of my dear boy. He is ever with me, and I am truly comforted.”

  No emotion was either visible on his face or audible in his voice. The matter-of-fact tones were strangely in dissonance with the subject of his words. He asked for, and expected, no sympathy. It was his simplicity that awed her. He spoke again.

  “Old Man Mayne was my friend, and a very staunch friend he was too. I know something of the long, long battle he fought to make Atlas what it is. He was justified in his pride of possession, because he loved the bush as few men do, and he grew to love Atlas with a love transcending even a woman’s love. When he died, not only did he transmit the property to his son, he also left him his pride of possession and his love for Atlas. I hope–with all my heart I hope–that you will come to love it too.”

  “I hope so,” she said. “Do you know, I think I shall.” But she thought that Old John was over serious, not understanding how anyone could so regard a tract of land and a few buildings.