The Penguin Henry Lawson Short Stories

by Henry Lawson

  ‘Come – inside,’ she said, ‘and sit down. I see you’ve got the wagon outside. I s’pose your name’s Wilson, ain’t it? You’re thinkin’ about takin’ on Harry Marshfield’s selection up the creek, so I heard. Wait till I fry you a chop, and boil the billy.’

  Her voice sounded, more than anything else, like a voice coming out of a phonograph – I heard one in Sydney the other day – and not like a voice coming out of her. But sometimes when she got outside her everyday life on this selection she spoke in a sort of – in a sort of lost groping-in-the-dark kind of voice.

  She didn’t talk much this time – just spoke in a mechanical way of the drought, and the hard times, ‘an’ butter ’n’ eggs bein’ down, an’ her husban’ an’ eldest son bein’ away, an’ that makin’ it so hard for her.’

  I don’t know how many children she had. I never got a chance to count them, for they were nearly all small, and shy as piccaninnies, and used to run and hide when anybody came. They were mostly nearly as black as piccaninnies too. She must have averaged a baby a year for years – and God only knows how she got over her confinements! Once, they said, she only had a black gin with her. She had an elder boy and girl, but she seldom spoke of them. The girl, ‘Liza’, was ‘in service in Sydney’. I’m afraid I knew what that meant. The elder son was ‘away’. He had been a bit of a favourite round there, it seemed.

  Someone might ask her, ‘How’s your son Jack, Mrs Spicer?’ or, ‘Heard of Jack lately? and where is he now?’

  ‘Oh, he’s somewheres up-country,’ she’d say in the ‘groping’ voice, or ‘He’s drovin’ in Queenslan’,’ or ‘Shearin’ on the Darlin’ the last time I heerd from him. We ain’t had a line from him since – le’s see – since Chris’mas ’fore last.’

  And she’d turn her haggard eyes in a helpless, hopeless sort of way towards the west – towards ‘up-country’ and ‘Out-Back’.

  The eldest girl at home was nine or ten, with a little old face and lines across her forehead: she had an older expression than her mother. Tommy went to Queensland, as I told you. The eldest son at home, Bill (older than Tommy), was ‘a bit wild’.

  I’ve passed the place in smothering hot mornings in December, when the droppings about the cow-yard had crumpled to dust that rose in the warm, sickly, sunrise wind, and seen that woman at work in the cow-yard, ‘bailing up’ and leg-roping cows, milking, or hauling at a rope round the neck of a half-grown calf that was too strong for her (and she was tough as fencing-wire), or humping great buckets of sour milk to the pigs or the ‘poddies’ (hand-fed calves) in the pen. I’d get off the horse and give her a hand sometimes with a young steer, or a cranky old cow that wouldn’t ‘bail-up’ and threatened her with her horns. She’d say:

  ‘Thenk yer, Mr Wilson. Do yer think we’re ever goin’ to have any rain?’

  I’ve ridden past the place on bitter black rainy mornings in June or July, and seen her trudging abut the yard – that was ankle-deep in black liquid filth – with an old pair of blucher boots on, and an old coat of her husband’s, or maybe a three-bushel bag over her shoulders. I’ve seen her climbing on the roof by means of the water-cask at the corner, and trying to stop a leak by shoving a piece of tin in under the bark. And when I’d fixed the leak:

  ‘Thenk yer, Mr Wilson. This drop of rain’s a blessin’! Come in and have a dry at the fire and I’ll make yer a cup of tea.’ And, if I was in a hurry, ‘Come in, man alive! Come in! and dry yerself a bit till the rain holds up. Yer can’t go home like this! Yer’ll git yer death o’ cold.’

  I’ve even seen her, in the terrible drought, climbing she-oaks and apple-trees by a makeshift ladder, and awkwardly lopping off boughs to feed the starving cattle.

  ‘Jist tryin’ ter keep the milkers alive till the rain comes.’

  They said that when the pleuro-pneumonia was in the district and amongst her cattle she bled and physicked them herself, and fed those that were down with slices of half-ripe pumpkins (from a crop that had failed).

  ‘An’ one day,’ she told Mary, ‘there was a big barren heifer (that we called Queen Elizabeth) that was down with the ploorer. She’d been down for four days and hadn’t moved, when one mornin’ I dumped some wheaten chaff – we had a few bags that Spicer brought home – I dumped it in front of her nose, an’ – would yer b’lieve me, Mrs Wilson? – she stumbled onter her feet an’ chased me all the way to the house! I had to pick up me skirts an’ run! Wasn’t it redic’lus?’

  They had a sense of the ridiculous, most of those poor sundried Bushwomen. I fancy that that helped save them from madness.

  ‘We lost nearly all our milkers,’ she told Mary. ‘I remember one day Tommy came running to the house and screamed: ‘Marther! [mother] there’s another milker down with the ploorer!’ Jist as if it was great news. Well, Mrs Wilson, I was dead-beat, an’ I giv’ in. I jist sat down to have a good cry, and felt for my han’kerchief – it was a rag of a han’kerchief, full of holes (all me others was in the wash). Without seein’ what I was doin’ I put my finger through the hole in the han’kerchief an’ me thumb through the other, and poked me fingers into me eyes, instead of wipin’ them. Then I had to laugh.’

  There’s a story that once, when the Bush, or rather grass, fires were out all along the creek on Spicer’s side, Wall’s station-hands were up above our place, trying to keep the fire back from the boundary, and towards the evening one of the men happened to think of the Spicers: they saw smoke down that way. Spicer was away from home, and they had a small crop of wheat, nearly ripe, on the selection.

  ‘My God! that poor devil of a woman will be burnt out, if she ain’t already!’ shouted young Billy Wall. ‘Come along, three or four of you chaps’ – it was shearing-time, and there were plenty of men on the station.

  They raced down the creek to Spicer’s, and were just in time to save the wheat. She had her sleeves tucked up, and was beating out the burning grass with a bough. She’d been at it for an hour, and was as black as a gin, they said. She only said when they’d turned the fire: ‘Thenk yer! Wait an’ I’ll make some tea.’

  After tea the first Sunday she came to see us, Mary asked:

  ‘Don’t you feel lonely, Mrs Spicer, when your husband goes away?’

  ‘Well – no, Mrs Wilson,’ she said in the groping sort of voice. ‘I uster, once. I remember, when we lived on the Cudgegong River – we lived in a brick house then – the first time Spicer had to go away from home I nearly fretted my eyes out. And he was only goin’ shearin’ for a month. I muster bin a fool; but then we were only jist married a little while. He’s been away drovin’ in Queenslan’ as long as eighteen months at a time since then. But’ (her voice seemed to grope in the dark more than ever) ‘I don’t mind – I somehow seem to have got past carin’. Besides – besides, Spicer was a very different man then to what he is now. He’s got so moody and gloomy at home, he hardly ever speaks.’

  Mary sat silent for a minute thinking. Then Mrs Spicer roused herself:

  ‘Oh, I don’t know what I’m talkin’ about! You mustn’t take any notice of me, Mrs Wilson – I don’t often go on like this. I do believe I’m gittin’ a bit ratty at times. It must be the heat and the dullness.’

  But once or twice afterwards she referred to a time ‘when Spicer was a different man to what he was now.’

  I walked home with her a piece along the creek. She said nothing for a long time, and seemed to be thinking in a puzzled way. Then she said suddenly:

  ‘What-did-you-bring-her-here-for? She’s only a girl.’

  ‘I beg pardon, Mrs Spicer.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know what I’m talkin’ about! I b’lieve I’m gettin’ ratty. You mustn’t take any notice of me, Mr Wilson.’

  She wasn’t much company for Mary; and often, when she had a child with her, she’d start taking notice of the baby while Mary was talking, which used to exasperate Mary. But poor Mrs Spicer couldn’t help it, and she seemed to hear all the same.

  Her great trouble was that she
‘couldn’t git no reg-lar schoolin’ for the children.’

  ‘I learns ’em at home as much as I can. But I don’t git a minute to call me own; an’ I’m ginerally that dead-beat at night that I’m fit for nothink.’

  Mary had some of the children up now and then later on, and taught them a little. When she first offered to do so, Mrs Spicer laid hold of the handiest youngster and said:

  ‘There – do you hear that? Mrs Wilson is goin’ to teach yer, an’ it’s more than yer deserve!’ the youngster had been ‘cryin’’ over something). ‘Now, go up an’ say ‘Thenk yer, Mrs Wilson.’ And if yer ain’t good, and don’t do as she tells yer, I’ll break every bone in yer young body!’

  The poor little devil stammered something, and escaped.

  The children were sent by turns over to Wall’s to Sunday-school. When Tommy was at home he had a new pair of elastic-side boots, and there was no end of rows about them in the family – for the mother made him lend them to his sister Annie, to go to Sunday-school in her turn. There were only about three pairs of anyway decent boots in the family, and these were saved for great occasions. The children were always as clean and tidy as possible when they came to our place.

  And I think the saddest and most pathetic sight on the face of God’s earth is the children of very poor people made to appear well: the broken worn-out boots polished or greased, the blackened (inked) pieces of string for laces; the clean patched pinafores over the wretched threadbare frocks. Behind the little row of children hand-in-hand – and no matter where they are – I always see the worn face of the mother.

  Towards the end of the first year on the selection our little girl came. I’d sent Mary to Gulgong for four months that time, and when she came back with the baby Mrs Spicer used to come up pretty often. She came up several times when Mary was ill, to lend a hand. She wouldn’t sit down and condole with Mary, or waste her time asking questions, or talking about the time when she was ill herself. She’d take off her hat – a shapeless little lump of black straw she wore for visiting – give her hair a quick brush back with the palms of her hands, roll up her sleeves, and set to work to ‘tidy up’. She seemed to take most pleasure in sorting out our children’s clothes, and dressing them. Perhaps she used to dress her own like that in the days when Spicer was a different man from what he was now. She seemed interested in the fashion-plates of some women’s journals we had, and used to study them with an interest that puzzled me, for she was not likely to go in for fashion. She never talked of her early girlhood; but Mary, from some things she noticed, was inclined to think that Mrs Spicer had been fairly well brought up. For instance, Dr Balanfantie, from Cudgegong, came out to see Wall’s wife, and drove up the creek to our place on his way back to see how Mary and the baby were getting on. Mary got out some crockery and some table-napkins that she had packed away for occasions like this; and she said that the way Mrs Spicer handled the things, and helped set the table (though she did it in a mechanical sort of way) convinced her that she had been used to table-napkins at one time in her life.

  Sometimes, after a long pause in the conversation, Mrs Spicer would say suddenly:

  ‘Oh, I don’t think I’ll come up next week, Mrs Wilson.’

  ‘Why, Mrs Spicer?’

  ‘Because the visits doesn’t do me any good. I git the dismals afterwards.’

  ‘Why, Mrs Spicer? What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, I-don’t-know-what-I’m-talkin’-about. You mustn’t take any notice of me.’ And she’d put on her hat, kiss the children – and Mary too, sometimes, as if she mistook her for a child – and go.

  Mary thought her a little mad at times. But I seemed to understand.

  Once, when Mrs Spicer was sick, Mary went down to her, and down again next day. As she was coming away the second time Mrs Spicer said:

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t come down any more till I’m on my feet, Mrs Wilson. The children can do for me.’

  ‘Why, Mrs Spicer?’

  ‘Well, the place is in such a muck, and it hurts me.’

  We were the aristocrats of Lahey’s Creek. Whenever we drove down on Sunday afternoon to see Mrs Spicer, and as soon as we got near enough for them to hear the rattle of the cart, we’d see the children running to the house as fast as they could split, and hear them screaming:

  ‘Oh, marther! Here comes Mr and Mrs Wilson in their spring-cart.’

  And we’d see her bustle round, and two or three fowls fly out the front door, and she’d lay hold of a broom (made of a bound bunch of ‘broom-stuff’ – coarse reedy grass or bush from the ridges – with a stick stuck in it) and flick out the floor, with a flick or two round in front of the door perhaps. The floor nearly always needed at least one lick of the broom on account of the fowls. Or she’d catch a youngster and scrub his face with a wet end of a cloudy towel or twist the towel round her finger and dig out his ears – as if she was anxious to have him hear every word that was going to be said.

  No matter what state the house would be in she’d always say, ‘I was jist expectin’ yer, Mrs Wilson.’ And she was original in that, anyway.

  She had an old patched and darned white table-cloth that she used to spread on the table when we were there, as a matter of course (‘The others is in the wash, so you must excuse this, Mrs Wilson’), but I saw by the eyes of the children that the cloth was rather a wonderful thing for them. ‘I must really git some more knives and forks next time I’m in Cobborah,’ she’d say. ‘The children break an’ lose ’em till I’m ashamed ter ask Christians ter sit down ter the table.’

  She had many Bush yarns, some of them very funny, some of them rather ghastly, but all interesting, and with a grim sort of humour about them. But the effect was often spoilt by her screaming at the children to ‘Drive out them fowls, karn’t yer,’ or ‘Take yer maulies [hands] outer the sugar,’ or ‘Don’t touch Mrs Wilson’s baby with them dirty maulies,’ or ‘Don’t stand starin’ at Mrs Wilson with yer mouth an’ ears in that vulgar way.’

  Poor woman! she seemed everlastingly nagging at the children. It was a habit, but they didn’t seem to mind. Most Bushwomen get the nagging habit. I remember one, who had the prettiest, dearest, sweetest, most willing, and affectionate little girl I think I ever saw, and she nagged that child from daylight till dark – and after it. Taking it all round, I think that the nagging habit in a mother is often worse on ordinary children, and more deadly on sensitive youngsters, than the drinking habit in a father.

  One of the yarns Mrs Spicer told us was about a squatter she knew who used to go wrong in his head every now and again, and try to commit suicide. Once, when the station-hand, who was watching him, had his eye off him for a minute, he hanged himself to a beam in the stable. The men ran in and found him hanging and kicking. ‘They let him hang for a while,’ said Mrs Spicer, ‘till he went black in the face and stopped kicking. Then they cut him down and threw a bucket of water over him.’

  ‘Why! what on earth did they let the man hang for?’ asked Mary.

  ‘To give him a good bellyful of it: they thought it would cure him of tryin’ to hang himself again.’

  ‘Well, that’s the coolest thing I ever heard of,’ said Mary.

  ‘That’s jist what the magistrate said, Mrs Wilson,’ said Mrs Spicer.

  ‘One morning,’ said Mrs Spicer, ‘Spicer had gone off on his horse somewhere, and I was alone with the children, when a man came to the door and said:

  ‘ “For God’s sake, woman, give me a drink!”

  ‘Lord only knows where he came from! He was dressed like a new chum, his clothes was good, but he looked as if he’d been sleepin’ in them in the Bush for a month. He was very shaky. I had some coffee that mornin’, so I gave him some in a pint-pot; he drank it, and then he stood on his head till he tumbled over, and then he stood up on his feet and said, “Thenk yer, mum.”

  ‘I was so surprised that I didn’t know what to say, so I jist said, “Would you like some more coffee!”

  ’“Yes, t
henk yer,” he said – “about two quarts.”

  ‘I nearly filled the pint-pot, and he drank it and stood on his head as long as he could, and when he got right end up he said, “Thenk yer, mum – it’s a fine day,” and then he walked off. He had two saddle-straps in his hands.’

  ‘Why, what did he stand on his head for?’ asked Mary.

  ‘To wash it up and down, I suppose, to get twice as much taste of the coffee. He had no hat. I sent Tommy across to Wall’s to tell them that there was a man wanderin’ about the bush in the horrors of drink, and to get someone to ride for the police. But they were too late, for he hanged himself that night.’

  ‘O Lord!’ cried Mary.

  ‘Yes, right close to here, jist down the creek where the track to Wall’s branches off. Tommy found him while he was out after the cows. Hangin’ to the branch of a tree with two saddle-straps.’

  Mary stared at her, speechless.

  ‘Tommy came home yellin’ with fright. I sent him over to Wall’s at once. After breakfast, the minute my eyes was off them, the children slipped away and went down there. They came back screamin’ at the tops of their voices. I did give it to them. I reckon they won’t want ter see a dead body again in a hurry. Every time I’d mention it they’d huddle together, or ketch hold of me skirts and howl.

  ‘ “Yer’ll go agen when I tell yer not to,” I’d say.

  ‘ “Oh no, mother,” they’d howl.

  ‘ “Yer wanted ter see a man hangin’,” I said.

  ‘ “Oh, don’t, mother! Don’t talk about it.”

  ‘ “Yer wouldn’t be satisfied till yer see it,” I’d say; “yer had to see it or burst. Yer satisfied now, ain’t yer?”

  ‘ “Oh, don’t, mother!”

  ‘ “Yer run all the way there, I s’pose?”

  ‘ “Don’t, mother!”

  ‘ “But yer run faster back, didn’t yer?”