“Just look at the thermometer!” exclaimed Miss Augusta. “Wait till it gets cooler, child.”
“Oh, I love the heat!” I replied. “And I am sure it won’t hurt his lordship. He’s used to the sun, to judge from all appearances.”
“Yes, I don’t think it can destroy my complexion,” he said good-humoredly, rubbing his finger and thumb along his stubble-covered chin. The bushmen up-country shaved regularly every Sunday morning, but never during the week for anything less than a ball. They did this to obviate the blue—what they termed “scraped pig”—appearance of the faces of city men in the habit of using the razor daily, and to which they preferred the stubble of a seven-days’ beard. “I’ll take you to the river in half an hour,” he said, rising from his seat. “First I must stick on one of Warrigal’s shoes that he’s flung. I want him tomorrow, and must do it at once, as he always goes lame if ridden immediately after shoeing.”
“Shall I blow the bellows?” I volunteered.
“Oh no, thanks. I can manage myself. It would be better though if I had someone. But I can get one of the girls.”
“Can’t you get one of the boys?” said his aunt.
“There’s not one in. I sent everyone off to the Triangle paddock today to do some drafting. They all took their quart pots and a snack in their saddlebags, and won’t be home till dark.”
“Let me go,” I persisted; “I often blow the bellows for Uncle Jay-Jay, and think it great fun.”
The offer of my services being accepted, we set out.
Harold took his favorite horse, Warrigal, from the stable, and led him to the blacksmith’s forge under an open, stringybark-roofed shed, nearly covered with creepers. He lit a fire and put a shoe in it. Doffing his coat and hat, rolling up his shirtsleeves, and donning a leather apron, he began preparing the horse’s hoof.
When an emergency arose that necessitated Uncle Jay-Jay shoeing his horses himself, I always manipulated the bellows, and did so with great decorum, as he was very exacting and I feared his displeasure. In this case it was different. I worked the pole with such energy that it almost blew the whole fire out of the pan, and sent the ashes and sparks in a whirlwind around Harold. The horse—a touchy beast—snorted and dragged his foot from his master’s grasp.
“That the way to blow?” I inquired demurely.
“Take things a little easier,” he replied.
I took them so very easily that the fire was on the last gasp and the shoe nearly cold when it was required.
“This won’t do,” said Beecham.
I recommenced blowing with such force that he had to retreat.
“Steady! Steady!” he shouted.
“Sure I can’t plaze yez anyhows,” I replied.
“If you don’t try to plaze me directly I’ll punish you in a way you won’t relish,” he said laughingly. But I knew he was thinking of a punishment which I would have secretly enjoyed.
“If you don’t let me finish this work I’ll make one of the men do it tonight by candlelight when they come home tired. I know you wouldn’t like them to do that,” he continued.
“Arrah, go on, ye’re only tazin’!” I retorted. “Don’t you remember telling me that Warrigal was such a nasty-tempered brute that he allowed no one but yourself to touch him?”
“Oh well, then, I’m floored, and will have to put up with the consequences,” he good-humoredly made answer.
Seeing that my efforts to annoy him failed, I gave in, and we were soon done, and then started for the river—Mr. Beecham clad in a khaki suit and I in a dainty white wrapper and flyaway sort of hat. In one hand my host held a big white umbrella, with which he shaded me from the hot rays of the October sun, and in the other was a small basket containing cake and lollies for our delectation.
Having traversed the half mile between the house and river, we pushed off from the bank in a tiny boat just big enough for two. In the teeth of Harold’s remonstrance I persisted in dangling over the boat side to dabble in the clear, deep, running water. In a few minutes we were in it. Being unable to swim, but for my companion it would have been all up with me. When I rose to the surface he promptly seized me, and without much effort, clothes and all, swam with me to the bank, where we landed—a pair of sorry figures. Harold had mud all over his nose, and in general looked very ludicrous. As soon as I could stand I laughed.
“Oh, for a snapshot of you!” I said.
“We might have both been drowned,” he said sternly.
“Mights don’t fly,” I returned. “And it was worth the dip to see you looking such a comical article.” We were both minus our hats.
His expression relaxed. “I believe you would laugh at your own funeral. If I look queer, you look forty times worse. Run for your life and get a hot bath and a drop of spirits, or you’ll catch your death of cold. Aunt Augusta will take a fit and tie you up for the rest of the time in case something more will happen to you.”
“Catch a death of cold!” I ejaculated. “It is only good, pretty little girls, who are a blessing to everyone, who die for such trifles; girls like I am always live till nearly ninety, to plague themselves and everybody else. I’ll sneak home so that your aunt won’t see me, and no one need be a bit the wiser.”
“You’ll be sun-struck!” he said in dismay.
“Take care you don’t get daughter-struck,” I said perkily, turning to flee, for it had suddenly dawned upon me that my thin wet clothing was outlining my figure rather too clearly for propriety.
By a circuitous way I managed to reach my bedroom unseen. It did not take me long to change my clothes, hang them to dry, and appear on the main veranda where Miss Augusta was still sewing. I picked up the book I had left on the mat, and, taking up a position in a hammock near her, I commenced to read.
“You did not stay long at the river,” she remarked. “Have you been washing your head? I never saw the like of it. Such a mass of it. It will take all day to dry.”
Half an hour later Harold appeared dressed in a warm suit of tweed. He was looking pale and languid, as though he had caught a chill, and shivered as he threw himself on a lounge. I was feeling none the worse for my immersion.
“Why did you change your clothes, Harold? You surely weren’t cold on a day like this. Sybylla has changed hers too, when I come to notice it, and her hair is wet. Have you had an accident?” said Miss Augusta, rising from her chair in a startled manner.
“Rubbish!” ejaculated Harold in a tone which forbade further questioning, and the matter dropped.
She presently left the veranda, and I took the opportunity to say, “It is yourself that requires the hot bath and a drop of spirits, Mr. Beecham.”
“Yes; I think I’ll take a good stiff nobbler. I feel a trifle squeamish. It gave me a bit of a turn when I rose to the top and could not see you. I was afraid the boat might have stunned you in capsizing, and you would be drowned before I could find you.”
“Yes; I would have been such a loss to the world in general if I had been drowned,” I said satirically.
Several jackeroos, a neighboring squatter, and a couple of bicycle tourists turned up at Five-Bob that evening, and we had a jovial night. The great, richly furnished drawing room was brilliantly lighted, and the magnificent Erard grand piano sang and rang again with music, now martial and loud, now soft and solemn, now gay and sparkling. I made the very pleasant discovery that Harold Beecham was an excellent pianist, a gifted player on the violin, and sang with a strong, clear, well-trained tenor, which penetrated far into the night. How many, many times I have lived those nights over again! The great room with its rich appointments, the superb piano, the lights, the merriment, the breeze from the east, rich with the heavy, intoxicating perfume of countless flowers; the tall perfect figure, holding the violin with a master hand, making it speak the same language as I read in the dark eyes of the musician, while above and around was the soft warmth of an Australian summer night.
Ah, health and wealth, happiness and youth, joy and light,
life and love! What a warmhearted place is the world, how full of pleasure, good, and beauty, when fortune smiles! When fortune smiles!
Fortune did smile, and broadly, in those days. We played tricks on one another, and had a deal of innocent fun and frolic. I was a little startled one night on retiring to find a huge goanna near the head of my bed. I called Harold to dislodge the creature, when it came to light that it was roped to the bedpost. Great was the laughter at my expense. Who tethered the goanna I never discovered, but I suspected Harold. In return for this joke, I collected all the portable clocks in the house—about twenty—and arrayed them on his bedroom table. The majority of them were Waterburys for common use, so I set each alarm for a different hour. Inscribing a placard “Hospital for Insane,” I erected it above his door. Next morning I was awakened at three o’clock by fifteen alarms in concert outside my door. When an hour or two later I emerged I found a notice on my door, “This Way to the Zoo.”
It was a very busy time for the men at Five-Bob. Waggons were arriving with supplies, for it was drawing nigh unto the great event of the year. In another week’s time the bleat of thousands of sheep, and the incense of much tar and wool, would be ascending to the heavens from the vicinity of Five-Bob Downs. I was looking forward to the shearing. There never was any at Caddagat. Uncle did not keep many sheep, and always sold them long-woolled and rebought after shearing.
I had not much opportunity of persecuting Harold during the daytime. He and all his subordinates were away all day, busy drafting, sorting, and otherwise pottering with sheep. But I always, and Miss Augusta sometimes, went to meet them coming home in the evening. It was great fun. The dogs yelped and jumped about. The men were dirty with much dust, and smelt powerfully of sheep, and had worked hard all day in the blazing sun, but they were never too tired for fun, or at night to dance, after they had bathed and dressed. We all had splendid horses. They reared and pranced; we galloped and jumped every log which came in our path. Jokes, repartee, and nonsense rattled off our tongues. We did not worry about thousands of our fellows—starving and reeking with disease in city slums. We were selfish. We were heedless. We were happy. We were young.
Harold Beecham was a splendid host. Anyone possessed of the least talent for enjoyment had a pleasant time as his guest. He was hospitable in a quiet unostentatious manner. His overseer, jackeroos, and other employees were all allowed the freedom of home, and could invite whom they pleased to Five-Bob Downs. It is all very well to talk of good hosts. Bah, I could be a good hostess myself if I had Harold Beecham’s superior implements of the art! With an immense station, plenty of house room, tennis courts, musical instruments; a river wherein to fish, swim, and boat; any number of horses, vehicles, orchards, gardens, guns, and ammunition no object, it is easy to be a good host.
I had been just a week at Five-Bob when Uncle Julius came to take me home, so I missed the shearing. Caddagat had been a dull hole without me, he averred, and I must return with him that very day. Mr. and Miss Beecham remonstrated. Could I not be spared at least a fortnight longer? It would be lonely without me. Thereupon Uncle Jay-Jay volunteered to procure Miss Benson from Wyambeet as a substitute. Harold declined the offer with thanks.
“The schemes of youngsters are very transparent,” said Uncle Jay-Jay and Miss Augusta, smiling significantly at us. I feigned to be dense, but Harold smiled as though the insinuation was not only known, but also agreeable to him.
Uncle was inexorable, so home I had to go. It was sweet to me to hear from the lips of my grandmother and aunt that my absence had been felt.
As a confidante Aunt Helen was the pink of perfection—tactful and sympathetic. My featherbrained chatter must often have bored her, but she apparently was ever interested in it.
I told her long yarns of how I had spent my time at the Beechams’; of the deafening ducts Harold and I had played on the piano; and how he would persist in dancing with me, and he being so tall and broad, and I so small, it was like being stretched on a hay rack, and very fatiguing. I gave a graphic account of the arguments—tough ones they were too—that Miss Augusta had with the overseer on religion, and many other subjects; of one jackeroo who gabbed never-endingly about his great relations at home; another who incessantly clattered about spurs, whips, horses, and sport; and the third one—Joe Archer—who talked literature and trash with me.
“What was Harry doing all this time?” asked Auntie. “What did he say?”
Harold had been present all the while, yet I could not call to mind one thing he had said. I cannot remember him ever holding forth on a subject or cause, as most people do at one time or another.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Idylls of Youth
In pursuance of his duty, a government mail contractor passed Caddagat every Monday, dropping the Bossier mail as he went. On Thursday we also got the post, but had to depend partly on our own exertions.
A selector at Dogtrap, on the Wyambeet run, at a point of the compass ten miles down the road from Caddagat, kept a hooded van. Every Thursday he ran this to and from Gool-Gool for the purpose of taking to market vegetables and other farm produce. He also took parcels and passengers, both ways, if called upon to do so. Caddagat and Five-Bob gave him a great deal of carrying, and he brought the mail for these and two or three other places. It was one of my duties, or rather privileges, to ride thither on Thursday afternoon for the post, a leather bag slung round my shoulders for the purpose. I always had a splendid mount, and the weather being beautifully hot, it was a jaunt which I never failed to enjoy. Frank Hawden went with me once or twice—not because Grannie or I thought his escort necessary. The idea was his own; but I gave him such a time that he was forced to relinquish accompanying me as a bad job.
Harold Beecham kept a snivelling little Queensland black boy as a sort of black-your-boots, odd-jobs slavey or factotum, and he came to Dogtrap for the mail, but after I started to ride for it Harold came regularly for his mail himself. Our homeward way lay together for two miles, but he always came with me till nearly in sight of home. Some days we raced till our horses were white with lather; and once or twice mine was in such a state that we dismounted, and Harold unsaddled him and wiped the sweat off with his towel saddle cloth to remove the evidence of hard riding, so that I would not get into a scrape with Uncle Jay-Jay. Other times we dawdled, so that when we parted the last rays of sunset would be laughing at us between the white trunks of the tall gum trees, the kookaburras would be making the echoes ring with their mocking good-night, and scores of wild duck would be flying quickly roostward. As I passed through the angle formed by the creek and the river, about half a mile from home, there came to my ears the cheery clink-clink of hobble chains, the jangle of horse bells, and the gleam of a dozen campfires. The shearing was done out in Riverina now, and the men were all going home. Day after day dozens of them passed along the long white road, bound for Monaro and the cool country beyond the blue peaks to the southeast, where the shearing was about to begin. When I had come to Caddagat the last of them had gone “down” with horses poor; now they were traveling “up” with their horses—some of them thoroughbreds—rolling fat, and a cheque for their weeks of backbending labor in their pockets. But whether coming or going they always made to Caddagat to camp. That camping ground was renowned as the best from Monaro to Riverina. It was a well-watered and sheltered nook, and the ground was so rich that there was always a mouthful of grass to be had there. It was a rare thing to see it without a fire; and the empty jam tins, bottles, bits of bag, paper, tent pegs, and fish tins to be found there would have loaded a dozen wagons.
Thursday evening was always spent in going to Dogtrap, and all the other days had their pleasant tasks and were full of wholesome enjoyment. The blue senna flowers along the river gave place to the white bloom of the tea tree. Grannie, Uncle, and Aunt Helen filled the house with girl visitors for my pleasure. In the late afternoon, as the weather got hot, we went for bogeys in a part of the river two miles distant. Some of the girls fro
m neighboring runs brought their saddles, others from town had to be provided therewith, which produced a dearth in sidesaddles, and it was necessary for me to take a man’s. With a rollicking gallop and a bogey ahead, that did not trouble me. Aunt Helen always accompanied us on our bathing expeditions to keep us in check. She was the only one who bothered with a bathing dress. The rest of us reefed off our clothing, in our hurry sending buttons in all directions, and plunged into the pleasant water. Then—such water-fights, frolic, laughter, shouting and roaring fun as a dozen strong, healthy girls can make when enjoying themselves. Aunt Helen generally called time before we were half inclined to leave. We would linger too long, then there would be a great scramble for clothes, next for horses, and with wet hair streaming on our towels, we would go home full belt, twelve sets of galloping hoofs making a royal clatter on the hard, dusty road. Grannie made a rule that when we arrived late we had to unsaddle our horses ourselves, and not disturb the working men from their meal for our pleasure. We mostly were late, and so there would be a tight race to see who would arrive at table first. A dozen heated horses were turned out unceremoniously, a dozen saddles and bridles dumped down anywhere anyhow, and their occupants, with wet dishevelled hair and clothing in glorious disarray, would appear at table averring that they were starving.
The Caddagat folk were enthusiastic anglers. Fishing was a favorite and often-enjoyed amusement of the household. In the afternoon a tinful of worms would be dug out of one of the water races, tackle collected, horses saddled, and Grannie, Uncle, Aunt, Frank Hawden, myself, and anyone else who had happened to drop in, would repair to the fish holes three miles distant. I hate fishing. Ugh! The hideous barbarity of shoving a hook through a living worm, and the cruelty of taking the fish off the hook! Uncle allowed no idlers at the river—all had to manipulate a rod and line. Indulging in pleasant air castles, I generally forgot my cork till the rod would be jerked in my hand, when I would pull—too late!—the fish would be gone. Uncle would lecture me for being a jackdaw, so next time I would glare at the cork unwinkingly, and pull at the first signs of it bobbing—too soon!—the fish would escape again, and I would again be in disgrace. After a little experience I found it was a good plan to be civil to Frank Hawden when the prospect of fishing hung around, and then he would attend to my line as well as his own, while I read a book which I smuggled with me. The fish hole was such a shrub-hidden nook that, though the main road passed within two hundred yards, neither we nor our horses could be seen by the travelers thereon. I lay on the soft moss and leaves and drank deeply of the beauties of nature. The soft rush of the river, the scent of the shrubs, the golden sunset, occasionally the musical clatter of hooves on the road, the gentle noises of the fishers fishing, the plop, plop of a platypus disporting itself midstream, came to me as sweetest elixir in my ideal, dream-of-a-poet nook among the pink-based, gray-topped, moss-carpeted rocks.
My Brilliant Career Page 12