The Penguin Henry Lawson Short Stories

by Henry Lawson

  The sick child in the bedroom coughed and cried again. Mrs Baker went to it. We three sat like a deaf-and-dumb institution, Andy and I staring all over the place: presently Miss Standish excused herself, and went out of the room after her sister. She looked hard at Andy as she left the room, but he kept his eyes away.

  ‘Brace up now, Jack,’ whispered Andy to me, ‘the worst is coming.’

  When they came in again Mrs Baker made Andy go on with his story.

  ‘He – he died very quietly,’ said Andy, hitching round, and resting his elbows on his knees, and looking into the fire-place so as to have his face away from the light. Miss Standish put her arm round her sister. ‘He died very easy,’ said Andy. ‘He was a bit off his head at times, but that was while the fever was on him. He didn’t suffer much towards the end – I don’t think he suffered at all … He talked a lot about you and the children.’ (Andy was speaking very softly now.) ‘He said that you were not to fret, but to cheer up for the children’s sake … It was the biggest funeral ever seen round there.’

  Mrs Baker was crying softly. Andy got the packet half-out of his pocket, but shoved it back again.

  ‘The only thing that hurts me now,’ said Mrs Baker presently, ‘is to think of my poor husband buried out there in the lonely Bush, so far from home. It’s – cruel!’ and she was sobbing again.

  ‘Oh, that’s all right, Mrs Baker,’ said Andy, losing his head a little. ‘Ned will see to that. Ned is going to arrange to have him brought down and buried in Sydney.’ Which was about the first thing Andy had told her that evening that wasn’t a lie. Ned had said he would do it as soon as he sold his wool.

  ‘It’s very kind indeed of Ned,’ sobbed Mrs Baker. ‘I’d never have dreamed he was so kind-hearted and thoughtful. I misjudged him all along. And that is all you have to tell me about poor Robert?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Andy – then one of his ‘happy thoughts’ struck him. ‘Except that he hoped you’d shift to Sydney, Mrs Baker, where you’ve got friends and relations. He thought it would be better for you and the children. He told me to tell you that.’

  ‘He was thoughtful up to the end,’ said Mrs Baker. ‘It was just like poor Robert – always thinking of me and the children. We are going to Sydney next week.’

  Andy looked relieved. We talked a little more, and Miss Standish wanted to make coffee for us, but we had to go and see to our horses. We got up and bumped against each other, and got each other’s hats, and promised Mrs Baker we’d come again.

  ‘Thank you very much for coming,’ she said, shaking hands with us. ‘I feel so much better now. You don’t know how much you have relieved me. Now, mind, you have promised to come and see me again for the last time.’

  Andy caught her sister’s eye and jerked his head towards the door to let her know he wanted to speak to her outside.

  ‘Good-bye, Mrs Baker,’ he said, holding on to her hand. ‘And don’t you fret. You’ve – you’ve got the children yet. It’s – it’s all for the best; and, besides, the Boss said you wasn’t to fret.’ And he blundered out after me and Miss Standish.

  She came out to the gate with us, and Andy gave her the packet.

  ‘I want you to give that to her,’ he said: ‘it’s his letters and papers. I hadn’t the heart to give it to her, somehow.’

  ‘Tell me, Mr M’Culloch,’ she said. ‘You’ve kept something back – you haven’t told her the truth. It would be better and safer for me to know. Was it an accident – or the drink?’

  ‘It was the drink,’ said Andy. ‘I was going to tell you – I thought it would be best to tell you. I had made up my mind to do it, but, somehow, I couldn’t have done it if you hadn’t asked me.’

  ‘Tell me all,’ she said. ‘It would be better for me to know.’

  ‘Come a little farther away from the house,’ said Andy. She came along the fence a piece with us, and Andy told her as much of the truth as he could.

  ‘I’ll hurry her off to Sydney,’ she said. ‘We can get away this week as well as next.’ Then she stood for a minute before us, breathing quickly, her hands behind her back and her eyes shining in the moonlight. She looked splendid.

  ‘I want to thank you for her sake,’ she said quickly. ‘You are good men! I like the Bushmen! They are grand men – they are noble. I’ll probably never see either of you again, so it doesn’t matter,’ and she put her white hand on Andy’s shoulder and kissed him fair and square on the mouth. ‘And you, too!’ she said to me. I was taller than Andy, and had to stoop. ‘Good-bye!’ she said, and ran to the gate and in, waving her hand to us. We lifted our hats again and turned down the road.

  I don’t think it did either of us any harm.

  VI

  A CHILD IN THE DARK, AND A FOREIGN FATHER

  A CHILD IN THE DARK, AND A FOREIGN FATHER

  NEW Year’s Eve! A hot night in midsummer in the drought. It was so dark – with a smothering darkness – that even the low loom of the scrub-covered ridges, close at hand across the creek, was not to be seen. The sky was not clouded for rain, but with drought haze and the smoke of distant bush fires.

  Down the hard road to the crossing at Pipeclay Creek sounded the footsteps of a man. Not the crunching steps of an English labourer, clod-hopping contentedly home; these sounded more like the footsteps of one pacing steadily to and fro, and thinking steadily and hopelessly – sorting out the past. Only the steps went on. A glimmer of white moleskin trousers and a suggestion of light-coloured tweed jacket, now and again, as if in the glimmer of a faint ghost light in the darkness.

  The road ran along by the foot of a line of low ridges, or spurs, and, as he passed the gullies or gaps, he felt a breath of hotter air, like blasts from a furnace in the suffocating atmosphere. He followed a two-railed fence for a short distance, and turned in at a white batten gate. It seemed lighter now. There was a house, or, rather, a hut suggested, with whitewashed slab walls and a bark roof. He walked quietly round to the door of a detached kitchen, opened it softly, went in, and struck a match. A candle stood, stuck in a blot of its own grease, on one end of the dresser. He lit the candle and looked round.

  The walls of the kitchen were of split slabs, the roof box-bark, the floor clay, and there was a large, clay-lined fireplace, the sides a dirty brown, and the back black. It had evidently never been whitewashed. There was a bed of about a week’s ashes, and above it, suspended by a blackened hook and chain from a grimy crossbar, hung a black bucket full of warm water. The man got a fork, explored the bucket, and found what he expected: a piece of raw corned beef in water which had gone off the boil before the meat had been heated through.

  The kitchen was furnished with a pine table, a well-made flour bin, and a neat safe and side-board, or dresser – evidently the work of a carpenter. The top of the safe was dirty – covered with crumbs and grease and tea stains. On one corner lay a school exercise book, with a stone ink-bottle and a pen beside it. The book was open at a page written in the form of verse, in a woman’s hand, and headed:

  ‘MISUNDERSTOOD’

  He took the edges of the book between his fingers and thumbs, and made to tear it, but, the cover being tough, and resisting the first savage tug, he altered his mind, and put the book down. Then he turned to the table. There was a jumble of dirty crockery on one end, and on the other, set on a sheet of stained newspaper, the remains of a meal – a junk of badly-hacked bread, a basin of dripping (with the fat over the edges), and a tin of treacle. The treacle had run down the sides of the tin on to the paper. Knives, heavy with treacle, lay glued to the paper. There was a dish with some water, a rag, and a cup or two in it – evidently an attempt to wash up.

  The man took up a cup and pressed it hard between his palms, until it broke. Then he felt relieved. He gathered the fragments in one hand, took the candle, and stumbled out to where there was a dustheap. Kicking a hole in the ashes, he dropped in the bits of broken crockery, and covered them. Then his anger blazed again. He walked quickly to the back door of the hou
se, thrust the door open, and flung in, but a child’s voice said from the dark:

  ‘Is that you, father? Don’t tread on me, father.’

  The room was nearly as bare as the kitchen. There was a table, covered with cheap American oilcloth, and, on the other side, a sofa on which a straw mattress, a cloudy blanket, and a pillow without a slip had been thrown in a heap. On the floor, between the sofa and the table, lay a boy – child almost – on a similar mattress, with a cover of coarse sacking, and a bundle of dirty clothes for a pillow. A pale, thin-faced, dark-eyed boy.

  ‘What are you doing here, sonny?’ asked the father.

  ‘Mother’s bad again with her head. She says to tell you to come in quiet, and sleep on the sofa to-night. I started to wash up and clean up the kitchen, father, but I got sick.’

  ‘Why, what is the matter with you, sonny?’ His voice quickened, and he held the candle down to the child’s face.

  ‘Oh, nothing much, father. I felt sick, but I feel better now.’

  ‘What have you been eating?’

  ‘Nothing that I know of; I think it was the hot weather, father.’

  The father spread the mattress, blew out the candle, and lay down in his clothes. After a while the boy began to toss restlessly.

  ‘Oh, it’s too hot, father,’ he said. ‘I’m smothering.’

  The father got up, lit the candle, took a corner of the newspaper-covered ‘scrim’ lining that screened the cracks of the slab wall, and tore it away; then he propped open the door with a chair.

  ‘Oh, that’s better already, father,’ said the boy.

  The hut was three rooms long and one deep, with a veranda in front and a skillion harness and tool room, about half the length, behind. The father opened the door of the next room softly, and propped that open too. There was another boy on the sofa, younger than the first, but healthy and sturdy-looking. He had nothing on him but a very dirty shirt. A patchwork quilt was slipping from under him, and most of it was on the floor; the boy and the pillow were nearly off, too.

  The father fixed him as comfortably as possible and put some chairs by the sofa to keep him from rolling off. He noticed that somebody had started to scrub this room, and left it. He listened at the door of the third room for a few moments to the breathing within; then he opened it gently and walked in. There was an old-fashioned four-poster cedar bedstead, a chest of drawers, and a baby’s cradle made out of a gin-case. The woman was fast asleep. She was a big, strong, and healthy-looking woman with dark hair and strong, square features. There was a plate, a knife and fork, and egg-shells and a cup and saucer on the top of the chest of drawers; also two candles, one stuck in a mustard tin, and one in a pickle bottle, and a copy of Ardath.

  He stepped out into the skillion and lifted some harness on to its pegs from chaff-bags in the corner. Coming in again, he nearly stumbled over a bucket half-full of dirty water on the floor, with a scrubbing-brush, some wet rags, and half a bar of yellow soap beside it. He put these things in the bucket, and carried it out. As he passed through the first room the sick boy said:

  ‘I couldn’t lift the saddle of the harness on to the peg, father. I had to leave the scrubbing to make some tea and cook some eggs for mother, and put baby to bed, and then I felt too bad to go on with the scrubbing – and I forgot about the bucket.’

  ‘Did the baby have any tea, sonny?’

  ‘Yes. I made her bread and milk, and she ate a big plateful. The calves are in the pen all right, and I fixed the gate. And I brought a load of wood this morning, father, before mother took bad.’

  ‘You should not have done that. I told you not to. I could have done that on Sunday. Now, are you sure you didn’t lift a log into the cart that was too heavy for you?’

  ‘Quite sure, father. Oh, I’m plenty strong enough to put a load of wood on the cart.’

  The father lay on his back on the sofa, with his hands behind his head, for a few minutes.

  ‘Aren’t you tired, father?’ asked the boy.

  ‘No, sonny, not very tired; you must try and go to sleep now,’ and he reached across the table for the candle and blew it out.

  Presently the baby cried, and in a moment the mother’s voice was heard.

  ‘Nils! Nils! Are you there, Nils?’

  ‘Yes, Emma.’

  ‘Then for God’s sake come and take this child away before she drives me mad! My head’s splitting!’

  The father went in to the child and presently returned for a cup of water.

  ‘She only wanted a drink,’ the boy heard him say to the mother.

  ‘Well, didn’t I tell you she wanted a drink? I’ve been calling for the last half-hour, with that child screaming and not a soul to come near me, and me lying here helpless all day and not a wink of sleep for two nights.’

  ‘But, Emma, you were asleep when I came in.’

  ‘How can you tell such infernal lies? I –. To think I’m chained to a man who can’t say a word of truth! God help me! To have to lie night after night in the same bed with a liar!’

  The child in the first room lay quaking with terror, dreading one of those cruel and shameful scenes which had made a hell of his childhood.

  ‘Hush, Emma!’ the man kept saying. ‘Do be reasonable. Think of the children. They’ll hear us.’

  ‘I don’t care if they do. They’ll know soon enough, God knows! I wish I was under the turf!’

  ‘Emma, do be reasonable.’

  ‘Reasonable! I –’

  The child was crying again. The father came back to the first room, got something from his pocket, and took it in.

  ‘Nils! are you quite mad, or do you want to drive me mad? Don’t give the child that rattle! You must be either mad or a brute, and my nerves in this state. Haven’t you got the slightest consideration for – .’

  ‘It’s not a rattle, Emma, it’s a doll.’

  ‘There you go again! Flinging your money away on rubbish that’ll be on the dustheap to-morrow, and your poor wife slaving her fingernails off for you in this wretched hole, and not a decent rag to her back. Me, your clever wife that ought to be – . Light those candles, and bring me a wet towel for my head. I must read now, and try and compose my nerves, if I can.’

  When the father returned to the first room, the boy was sitting up in bed, looking deathly white.

  ‘Why! what’s the matter, sonny?’ said the father, bending over him, and putting a hand to his back.

  ‘Nothing, father. I’ll be all right directly. Don’t you worry, father.’

  ‘Where do you feel bad, sonny?’

  ‘In my head and stomach, father; but I’ll be all right d’rectly. I’ve often been that way.’

  In a minute or two he was worse.

  ‘For God’s sake, Nils, take that boy into the kitchen, or somewhere,’ cried the woman, ‘or I’ll go mad! It’s enough to kill a horse. Do you want to drive me into a lunatic asylum?’

  ‘Do you feel better now, sonny?’ asked the father.

  ‘Yes, ever so much better, father,’ said the boy, white and weak. ‘I’ll be all right in a minute, father.’

  ‘You had best sleep on the sofa to-night, sonny. It’s cooler there.’

  ‘No, father, I’d rather stay here; it’s much cooler now.’

  The father fixed the bed as comfortably as he could, and, despite the boy’s protest, put his own pillow under his head. Then he made a fire in the kitchen, and hung the kettle and a big billy of water over it. He was haunted by recollections of convulsions amongst the children while they were teething. He took off his boots, and was about to lie down again when the mother called:

  ‘Nils! Nils! Have you made a fire?’

  ‘Yes, Emma.’

  ‘Then for God’s sake make me a cup of tea. I must have it after all this.’

  He hurried up the kettle – she calling every few minutes to know if ‘that kettle was boiling over yet’. He took her a cup of tea, and then a second. She said the tea was slush, and as sweet as syrup, and called
for more, and hot water.

  ‘How do you feel now, sonny?’ he asked, as he lay down on the sofa once more.

  ‘Much better, father. You can put out the light now if you like.’

  The father blew out the candle, and settled back again, still dressed, save for his coat, and presently the small, weak hand sought the hard, strong, horny, knotted one; and so they lay, as was customary with them. After a while the father leaned over a little and whispered:

  ‘Asleep, sonny?’

  ‘No, father.’

  ‘Feel bad again?’

  ‘No, father.’

  Pause.

  ‘What are you thinking about, sonny?’

  ‘Nothing, father.’

  ‘But what is it? What are you worrying about? Tell me.’

  ‘Nothing, father, only – it’ll be a good while yet before I grow up to be a man, won’t it, father?’

  The father lay silent and troubled for a few moments.

  ‘Why do you ask me that question to-night, sonny? I thought you’d done with all that. You were always asking me that question when you were a child. You’re getting too old for those foolish fancies now. Why have you always had such a horror of growing up to be a man?’

  ‘I don’t know, father. I always had funny thoughts – you know, father. I used to think that I’d been a child once before, and grew up to be a man, and grew old and died.’

  ‘You’re not well to-night, sonny – that’s what’s the matter. You’re queer, sonny; it’s a touch of sun – that’s all. Now, try to go to sleep. You’ll grow up to be a man, in spite of laying awake worrying about it. If you do, you’ll be a man all the sooner.’