The Penguin Henry Lawson Short Stories

by Henry Lawson

  The second year I made a rise – out of ‘spuds’, of all the things in the world. It was Mary’s idea. Down at the lower end of our selection – Mary called it ‘the run’ – was a shallow watercourse called Snake’s Creek, dry most of the year, except for a muddy waterhole or two; and, just above the junction, where it ran into Lahey’s Creek, was a low piece of good black-soil flat, on our side – about three acres. The flat was fairly clear when I came to the selection – save for a few logs that had been washed up there in some big ‘old man’ flood, way back in blackfellows’ times: and one day when I had a spell at home, I got the horses and trace-chains and dragged the logs together – those that wouldn’t split for fencing timber – and burnt them off. I had a notion to get the flat ploughed and make a lucerne-paddock of it. There was a good waterhole, under a clump of she-oak in the bend, and Mary used to take her stools and tubs and boiler down there in the spring-cart in hot weather, and wash the clothes under the shade of the trees – it was cooler, and saved carrying water to the house. And one evening after she’d done the washing she said to me:

  ‘Look here, Joe; the farmers out here never seem to get a new idea: they don’t seem to me ever to try and find out beforehand what the market is going to be like – they just go on farming the same old way, and putting in the same old crops year after year. They sow wheat, and, if it comes on anything like the thing, they reap and thresh it; if it doesn’t they mow it for hay – and some of ’em don’t have the brains to do that in time. Now, I was looking at that bit of flat you cleared, and it struck me that it wouldn’t be a half-bad idea to get a bag of seed potatoes, and have the land ploughed – old Corny George would do it cheap – and get them put in at once. Potatoes have been dear all round for the last couple of years.’

  I told her she was talking nonsense, that the ground was no good for potatoes, and the whole district was too dry. ‘Everybody I know has tried it, one time or another, and made nothing of it,’ I said.

  ‘All the more reason why you should try it, Joe,’ said Mary. ‘Just try one crop. It might rain for weeks, and then you’ll be sorry you didn’t take my advice.’

  ‘But I tell you the ground is not potato-ground,’ I said.

  ‘How do you know? You haven’t sown any there yet.’

  ‘But I’ve turned up the surface and looked at it. It’s not rich enough, and too dry, I tell you. You need swampy, boggy ground for potatoes. Do you think I don’t know land when I see it?’

  ‘But you haven’t tried to grow potatoes there yet, Joe. How do you know – ’

  I didn’t listen to any more. Mary was obstinate when she got an idea into her head. It was no use arguing with her. All the time I’d be talking she’d just knit her forehead and go on thinking straight ahead, on the track she’d started – just as if I wasn’t there – and it used to make me mad. She’d keep driving at me till I took her advice or lost my temper – I did both at the same time, mostly.

  I took my pipe and went out to smoke and cool down.

  A couple of days after the potato breeze, I started with the team down to Cudgegong for a load of fencing-wire I had to bring out; and after I’d kissed Mary good-bye, she said:

  ‘Look here, Joe, if you bring out a bag of seed potatoes, James and I will slice them, and old Corny George down the creek would bring his plough up in the dray, and plough the ground for very little. We could put the potatoes in ourselves if the ground were only ploughed.’

  I thought she’d forgotten all about it. There was no time to argue – I’d be sure to lose my temper, and then I’d either have to waste an hour comforting Mary, or go off in a ‘huff’, as the women call it, and be miserable for the trip. So I said I’d see about it. She gave me another hug and a kiss. ‘Don’t forget, Joe,’ she said as I started. ‘Think it over on the road.’ I reckon she had the best of it that time.

  About five miles along, just as I turned into the main road, I heard someone galloping after me, and I saw young James on his hack. I got a start, for I thought that something had gone wrong at home. I remember the first day I left Mary on the creek, for the first five or six miles I was half-a-dozen times on the point of turning back – only I thought she’d laugh at me.

  ‘What is it, James?’ I shouted, before he came up – but I saw he was grinning.

  ‘Mary says to tell you not to forget to bring a hoe out with you.’

  ‘You clear off home!’ I said, ‘or I’ll lay the whip about your young hide; and don’t come riding after me again as if the run was on fire.’

  ‘Well, you needn’t get shirty with me!’ he said. ‘I don’t want to have anything to do with a hoe.’ And he rode off.

  I did get thinking about those potatoes, though I hadn’t meant to. I knew of an independent man in that district who’d made his money out of a crop of potatoes; but that was away back in the roaring Fifties – ’54 – when spuds went up to twenty-eight shillings a hundredweight (in Sydney), on account of the gold rush. We might get good rain now, and, anyway, it wouldn’t cost much to put the potatoes in. If they came on well, it would be a few pounds in my pocket; if the crop was a failure, I’d have a better show with Mary next time she was struck by an idea outside housekeeping, and have something to grumble about when I felt grumpy.

  I got a couple of bags of potatoes – we could use those that were left over; and I got a small iron plough and harrow that Little the blacksmith had lying in his yard and let me have cheap – only about a pound more than I told Mary I gave for them. When I took advice I generally made the mistake of taking more than was offered, or adding notions of my own. It was vanity, I suppose. If the crop came on well I could claim the plough-and-harrow part of the idea, anyway. (It didn’t strike me that if the crop failed Mary would have the plough and harrow against me, for old Corny would plough the ground for ten or fifteen shillings.) Anyway, I’d want a plough and harrow later on, and I might as well get it now; it would give James something to do.

  I came out by the western road, by Guntawang, and up the creek home; and the first thing I saw was old Corny George ploughing the flat. And Mary was down on the bank superintending. She’d got James with the trace-chains and the spare horses, and had made him clear off every stick and bush where another furrow might be squeezed in. Old Corny looked pretty grumpy on it – he’d broken all his ploughshares but one, in the roots; and James didn’t look much brighter. Mary had an old felt hat and a new pair of ’lastic-side boots of mine on, and the boots were covered with clay, for she’d been down hustling James to get a rotten old stump out of the way by the time old Corny came round with his next furrow.

  ‘I thought I’d make the boots easy for you, Joe,’ said Mary.

  ‘It’s all right, Mary,’ I said, ‘I’m not going to growl.’ Those boots were a bone of contention between us; but she generally got them off before I got home.

  Her face fell when she saw the plough and harrow in the wagon, but I said that would be all right – we’d want a plough anyway.

  ‘I thought you wanted old Corny to plough the ground,’ she said.

  ‘I never said so.’

  ‘But when I sent Jim after you about the hoe to put the spuds in, you didn’t say you wouldn’t bring it,’ she said.

  I had a few days at home, and entered into the spirit of the thing. When Corny was done, James and I cross-ploughed the land, and got a stump or two, a big log, and some scrub out of the way at the upper end and added nearly an acre, and ploughed that. James was all right at most Bushwork: he’d bullock so long as the novelty lasted; he liked ploughing or fencing, or any graft he could make a show at. He didn’t care for grubbing out stumps, or splitting posts and rails. We sliced the potatoes of an evening – and there was trouble between Mary and James over cutting through the ‘eyes’. There was no time for the hoe – and besides it wasn’t a novelty to James – so I just ran furrows and they dropped the spuds in behind me, and I turned another furrow over them, and ran the harrow over the ground. I think I hilled tho
se spuds, too, with furrows – or a crop of Indian corn I put in later on.

  It rained heavens-hard for over a week: we had regular showers all through, and it was the finest crop of potatoes ever seen in the district. I believe at first Mary used to slip down at daybreak to see if the potatoes were up; and she’d write to me about them, on the road. I forget how many bags I got but the few who had grown potatoes in the district sent theirs to Sydney, and spuds went up to twelve and fifteen shillings a hundred-weight in that district. I made a few quid out of mine – and saved carriage too, for I could take them out on the wagon. Then Mary began to hear (through James) of a buggy that someone had for sale cheap, or a dogcart that somebody else wanted to get rid of – and let me know about it, in an off-hand way.

  II

  JOE WILSON’S LUCK

  THERE was good grass on the selection all the year. I’d picked up a small lot – about twenty head – of half-starved steers for next to nothing, and turned them on the run; they came on wonderfully, and my brother-in-law (Mary’s sister’s husband), who was running a butchery at Gulgong, gave me a good price for them. His carts ran out twenty or thirty miles, to little bits of gold rushes that were going on at th’ Home Rule, Happy Valley, Guntawang, Tallawang, and Cooyal, and those places round there, and he was doing well.

  Mary had heard of a light American wagonette, when the steers went – a tray-body arrangement, and she thought she’d do with that. ‘It would be better than the buggy, Joe,’ she said. ‘There’d be more room for the children, and, besides, I could take butter and eggs to Gulgong, or Cobborah, when we get a few more cows.’ Then James heard of a small flock of sheep that a selector – who was about starved off his selection out Talbragar way – wanted to get rid of. James reckoned he could get them for less than half-a-crown a head. We’d had a heavy shower of rain, that came over the ranges and didn’t seem to go beyond our boundaries. Mary said, ‘It’s a pity to see all that grass going to waste, Joe. Better get those sheep and try your luck with them. Leave some money with me, and I’ll send James over for them. Never mind about the buggy – we’ll get that when we’re on our feet.’

  So James rode across to Talbragar and drove a hard bargain with that unfortunate selector, and brought the sheep home. There were about two hundred, wethers and ewes, and they were young and looked a good breed too, but so poor they could scarcely travel; they soon picked up, though. The drought was blazing all round and out back, and I think that my corner of the ridges was the only place where there was any grass to speak of. We had another shower or two, and the grass held out. Chaps began to talk of ‘Joe Wilson’s luck’.

  I would have liked to shear those sheep; but I hadn’t time to get a shed or anything ready – along towards Christmas there was a bit of a boom in the carrying line. Wethers in wool were going as high as thirteen to fifteen shillings at the Homebush yards at Sydney, so I arranged to truck the sheep down from the river by rail, with another small lot that was going, and I started James off with them. He took the west road, and down Guntawang way a big farmer who saw James with the sheep (and who was speculating, or adding to his stock, or took a fancy to the wool) offered James as much for them as he reckoned I’d get in Sydney, after paying the carriage and the agents and the auctioneer. James put the sheep in a paddock and rode back to me. He was all there where riding was concerned. I told him to let the sheep go. James made a Greener shot-gun, and got his saddle done up, out of that job.

  I took up a couple more forty-acre blocks – one in James’s name, to encourage him with the fencing. There was a good slice of land in an angle between the range and the creek, farther down, which everybody thought belonged to Wall, the squatter, but Mary got an idea, and went to the local land office, and found out that it was unoccupied Crown land, and so I took it up on pastoral lease, and got a few more sheep – I’d saved some of the best-looking ewes from the last lot.

  One evening – I was going down next day for a load of fencing-wire for myself – Mary said:

  ‘Joe! do you know that the Matthews have got a new double buggy?’

  The Matthews were a big family of cockatoos, along up the main road, and I didn’t think much of them. The sons were all ‘bad-eggs’, though the old woman and girls were right enough.

  ‘Well, what of that?’ I said. ‘They’re up to their neck in debt, and camping like blackfellows in a big bark humpy. They do well to go flashing round in a double buggy.’

  ‘But that isn’t what I was going to say,’ said Mary. ‘They want to sell their old single buggy, James says. I’m sure you could get it for six or seven pounds; and you could have it done up.’

  ‘I wish James to the devil!’ I said. ‘Can’t he find anything better to do than ride round after cock-and-bull yarns about buggies?’

  ‘Well,’ said Mary, ‘it was James who got the steers and the sheep.’

  Well, one word led to another, and we said things we didn’t mean – but couldn’t forget in a hurry. I remember I said something about Mary always dragging me back just when I was getting my head above water and struggling to make a home for her and the children; and that hurt her, and she spoke of ‘homes’ she’d had since she was married. And that cut me deep.

  It was about the worst quarrel we had. When she began to cry I got my hat and went out and walked up and down by the creek. I hated anything that looked like injustice – I was so sensitive about it that it made me unjust sometimes. I tried to think I was right, but I couldn’t – it wouldn’t have made me feel any better if I could have thought so. I got thinking of Mary’s first year on the selection and the life she’d had since we were married.

  When I went in she’d cried herself to sleep. I bent over and, ‘Mary,’ I whispered.

  She seemed to wake up.

  ‘Joe – Joe!’ she said.

  ‘What is it, Mary?’ I said.

  ‘I’m pretty sure that old Spot’s calf isn’t in the pen. Make James go at once!’

  Old Spot’s last calf was two years old now; so Mary was talking in her sleep, and dreaming she was back in her first year.

  We both laughed when I told her about it afterwards; but I didn’t feel like laughing just then.

  Later on in the night she called out in her sleep:

  ‘Joe – Joe! Put that buggy in the shed, or the sun will blister the varnish!’

  I wish I could say that that was the last time I ever spoke unkindly to Mary.

  Next morning I got up early and fried the bacon and made the tea, and took Mary’s breakfast in to her – like I used to do, sometimes, when we were first married. She didn’t say anything – just pulled my head down and kissed me.

  When I was ready to start, Mary said:

  ‘You’d better take the spring-cart in behind the dray, and get the tyres cut and set. They’re ready to drop off, and James has been wedging them up till he’s tired of it. The last time I was out with the children I had to knock one of them back with a stone: there’ll be an accident yet.’

  So I lashed the shafts of the cart under the tail of the wagon and mean and ridiculous enough the cart looked, going along that way. It suggested a man stooping along handcuffed, with his arms held out and down in front of him.

  It was dull weather, and the scrubs looked extra dreary and endless – and I got thinking of old things. Everything was going all right with me, but that didn’t keep me from brooding sometimes – trying to hatch out stones, like an old hen we had at home. I think, taking it all round, I used to be happier when I was mostly hard up – and more generous. When I had ten pounds I was more likely to listen to a chap who said, ‘Lend me a pound note, Joe,’ than when I had fifty; then I fought shy of careless chaps – and lost mates that I wanted afterwards – and got the name of being mean. When I got a good cheque I’d be as miserable as a miser over the first ten pounds I spent; but when I got down to the last I’d buy things for the house. And now that I was getting on, I hated to spend a pound on anything. But then, the farther I got away from p
overty the greater the fear I had of it – and, besides, there was always before us all the thought of the terrible drought, with blazing runs as bare and dusty as the road, and dead stock rotting every yard, all along the barren creeks.

  I had a long yarn with Mary’s sister and her husband that night in Gulgong, and it brightened me up. I had a fancy that that sort of a brother-in-law made a better mate than a nearer one; Tom Tarrant had one, and he said it was sympathy. But while we were yarning I couldn’t help thinking of Mary, out there in the hut on the creek, with no one to talk to but the children, or James, who was sulky at home, or Black Mary or Black Jimmy (our black boy’s father and mother), who weren’t over-sentimental. Or, maybe, a selector’s wife (the nearest was five miles away) who could talk only of two or three things – ‘lambin’’ and ‘shearin’’ and ‘cookin’ for the men’, and what she said to her old man, and what he said to her – and her own ailments over and over again.

  It’s a wonder it didn’t drive Mary mad! – I know I could never listen to that woman more than an hour. Mary’s sister said:

  ‘Now if Mary had a comfortable buggy, she could drive in with the children oftener. Then she wouldn’t feel the loneliness so much.’

  I said ‘Good night’ then and turned in. There was no getting away from that buggy. Whenever Mary’s sister started hinting about a buggy, I reckoned it was a put-up job between them.

  III

  THE GHOST OF MARY’S SACRIFICE

  WHEN I got to Cudgegong I stopped at Galletly’s coach-shop to leave the cart. The Galletlys were good fellows: there were two brothers – one was a saddler and harness-maker. Big brown-bearded men – the biggest men in the district, ’twas said.

  Their old man had died lately and left them some money; they had men, and only worked in their shops when they felt inclined, or there was a special work to do; they were both first-class tradesmen. I went into the painter’s shop to have a look at a double buggy that Galletly had built for a man who couldn’t pay cash for it when it was finished – and Galletly wouldn’t trust him.