Inheritors

by Неизвестный

  “If I hadn't been merciful he'd be humping his drum.”

  “It was that Coyle. You know that.”

  “Coyle's his friend, isn't he?”

  “Yes, but that's what I'm asking you. You can save him from them. Otherwise God knows what wickedness they'll lead him into. This strike and the union and all—it's gone to his head. But how can you blame him. What else have you given him to hope for?”

  “He's made his own bed,” Cabell muttered. “Let him lie on it.”

  “Oh, we've all done some wrong, haven't we? If you and I had to pay for what we've done we'd never be through.”

  He looked at her suspiciously again. “You are threatening.”

  “What would be the use? It's not your hurt, it's my own peace I'm after. Give Larry this chance and I'll die blessing you, Derek. You want to get something for Harriet you've never been able to get for yourself, don't you? It's the same for me. If Larry's set up I'll know that what we did that night wasn't such a sin. If he just drifts off with Coyle and ends up in jail what was the purpose of it?”

  “A damn-fool question,” he said, eyeing her shiftily.

  “I was a damn fool not to ask it of myself at the time.” Anger tightened her stooped shoulders and the lax lines in her face. “When I stood in the doorway, and the flames all around you, and M'Govern choking the life out of you, both doomed and blind as bats, I might have stopped to ask it then and been a sight richer now and nobody else the wiser. But,” she sighed and stopped again, “I didn't. And if there's any justice you'll remember now. If you don't—oh, how can you expect better for yourself than you're giving me. It's the same life has us both in its hands, and if it lets you do the dirt on me it will let somebody else do the dirt on you too. Don't you see that?”

  “Don't you get putting the hoodoo on me,” Cabell mumbled, then roared, “I won't make him manager. So stop jawing. I've got work to do.”

  “I didn't think you would,” Emma said at last, breaking a long silence through which his pen scratched furiously.

  He watched her under the brim of his hat as she went back to the house, dragging in the dust her heavy greenhide boots which took a fantastic shape from the callouses on her feet. The sight gave him a queer feeling in the stomach. “That's the first time I've heard her speak like that in years,” he thought, “the first time I've ever seen her without fight in her!” Then he realized, all at once, that the vital spark of Emma's life was going out.

  He had seen death in many forms, strange and terrible, but its reality had never been so vivid as when he whispered to himself now, “SHE MUST BE DYING.” Emma dying! The thought that she whose energy for hate and hope had seemed inexhaustible, who had struggled against and beside him for forty years, would soon cease to be, made his hand drive the pen through the page before him. “Well, everybody's marked for it sooner or later,” he told himself, but the queer feeling in the pit of his stomach persisted. Whether it was pity, remorse, or fear he felt would be difficult to say. His emotions were all mixed up and kept taking his mind away from the figures in the ledger.

  At last he laid his pen down and went to the window. Before him spread the valley—HIS valley. The boundary-fence wobbling away through the tawny grass, sheep coming in to be shorn, returning to their paddocks, cattle dozing in the river, horses tail to tail under the trees, the noise of the shearing, men burning off across the flats, their smoke like monsters materializing from the weird forest of ringbarked gums, the ratta-tat of hammers preparing the drays for the wool trip, the thunder of a mob of draught-horses invisible in a cloud of dust coming up the valley, like a storm low down on the earth—yes, everywhere abundant fulfilment of his strength and desire.

  He took a deep breath, moved by the only happiness, the retrospect of obstacles overcome. “To win—that's everything. That's living. Life's for the winners, not the losers. They kotow to me now, because I'm a winner. I've beat the bush. I've beat 'that mob' in Brisbane. Damn it, I'll live to a hundred.” He returned to the counter and set to work energetically on his ledger once more.

  But soon the pen went dead in his hand again, and for a long time he stared frowning at the page as he heard Emma's tired voice speaking the threat which of all threats frightened him most. “. . . if it lets you do the dirt on me it will let somebody else do the dirt on you too. . .”

  “Who's done the dirt on her? I married her. I got her shot of Black Jem. I helped her brother.”

  Then he remembered with a chill of resurrected fear how that night he lay in the yard with his head in her lap while the flames crackled through the house showering sparks, like vicious ants, upon them, and how, knowing what she had done for him, against her desire and interest, he had sworn to make it up. But what had he done?

  “What does she expect me to do? Hand-feed him? I had to make MY own way.” He said it aloud but, his confidence rapidly giving out, did not believe it. Not he, not his masterful will, but a hundred and one lucky chances were responsible for his success. Luck and Emma—yes, he owed them both his life.

  He admitted that grudgingly with a resentful underthought, “If it was any other time but now. . . all this mining business coming ripe! The bitch!” Under his pity and remorse he cursed her, as though all her humility was just put on to prejudice fate against him.

  Sambo and Larry came up the slope, Sambo holding forth. They passed the window without noticing him, the one so intent on listening, the other on expounding the unimaginable felicity of life in the Land of Cockaigne, known otherwise as Frogs' Hollow.

  “. . . never drink nothin' but booze outa bottles with gold paper round the top. And the tarts! Jeez, Larry. There was one there like a regular pitsher. Oughta seen her. Couldn't stand still a minute. Haw-haw, wasn't she a doer! And every bed in the house had a feather mattress! Then you oughta see the museum. Skeletons in glass cases and. . .”

  “All right,” Cabell thought, and deeper down he thought, “I won't let them get the better of me. Just wait till I've finished in Brisbane.”

  He went across the yard to where Larry was preparing to chop some wood for Emma. “Here, you.”

  Larry looked up and let the axe swing at his side.

  “Your mother's been talking about you being thick with the scum down there.” Cabell jerked his head towards the shearers' hut. “She's worried.”

  “They're not scum. They're men.”

  “They're not the sort of men for anybody with my name to be mixed up with. That fellow Coyle—his father hanged and so will he.”

  “They're men the same as I am. They're not convicts and that's what you can't get out of your head. You think you can treat them the same as you did in Moreton Bay. They're free men like you.”

  “Just the same you're too thick with them. I been thinking,” he paused but made himself go on, “one of these days I might make you manager.”

  “I don't want to be manager,” Larry said like a shot.

  “Oh? You don't, eh?”

  “No. I'm not a boss. I'm a man, same as them. They're my mates. You can keep your job.”

  “Suits me down to the ground. I only offered for your mother's sake. She thought it might save you from where you belong.”

  “For Mother's sake!” Larry spat. “A hell of a lot you'd do for Mother's sake.”

  Cabell put his fists in his pocket. “That settles it then. You go to hell your own way.”

  But Emma, watching through the kitchen door, ran out into the yard. “Don't go, Derek. For God's sake.”

  He paused on his way back to the store.

  “He doesn't know what he's saying,” Emma cried. “He's a fool and they've twisted him round their fingers.” She took hold of Larry's arm and shook him. He did not resist but looked at her with an obstinate frown. “Can't you understand? He's offering to make a boss of you, a manager? What're you sulking for?”

  “I heard him. I don't want any favours. I'm satisfied as I am.”

  “Satisfied to be a lousy hand when you can be a gentl
eman! You're out of your mind. What do you think I've slaved for but this? But you're pigheaded. You don't mean it. You're angry because he thrashed you. But can't you understand—it's ME you're hurting, not him.”

  “I don't want to hurt you, Ma,” Larry mumbled. “Only I know better. And as for the thrashing,” he glared at Cabell, “he needn't crow about that. He'll get it in the neck. Before long there won't be any bosses here.”

  Emma sneered. “What will there be then? Blackfellows and dingoes again?”

  “There'll be a bushman's republic. Like Gursey said.”

  Cabell laughed.

  “You'll laugh on the other side of your face,” Larry shouted. “You can't stop men joining the union. There'll be a hundred thousand bushmen with rifles. Laugh at that.”

  “I heard that yarn in a convict settlement nearly fifty years ago,” Cabell said and laughed again.

  Larry watched his father's back-thrown head and open, bitter mouth. Across the sunset stillness of the valley Cabell's laughter sounded challenging and contemptuous.

  Suddenly it stopped. The last ray of the sun flickered on the bright head of the axe and flickered again as the axe fell with a clatter among the wood and Larry turned and strode across the yard.

  He was already climbing the fence to the cowyard when Cabell, stumbling backwards, brought up against the wood-block. “You murdering bastard. I'll teach you.” He picked up a piece of wood and flung it at Larry's head. It struck him between the shoulder-blades and sent him sprawling on the air. He picked himself up and trudged off, shoulders slightly hunched, without a glance back.

  Emma sat on the wood-block with her head in her hands and wailed gently, rocking from side to side.

  Chapter Six: Social Lie

  When the shearing was over and the station quiet once more Cabell took Harriet back to Brisbane. Life changed for her again. The gates were opened and people came to the house at all hours. True, most of them were dull business men, but they did not seem dull to her. They made a fuss of her, and for the first time she knew what it was to be treated as a grown-up and charming young woman, for to Harriet even banal compliments sounded original. Gradually the wives and daughters of these lawyers and politicians and bankers and contractors began to insinuate themselves past the basilisk stare of Cabell, and Harriet found herself the centre of twittering tea-parties. She did not get along with the women quite so well. She was too excited about them, too eager, and too inexperienced in society. Perhaps she scared them. They retreated from her wild, gauche enthusiasms behind polite smiles which she took for signs of encouragement and affection until, led on to talk of herself with a too egocentric unreticence, even the polite smiles vanished and she found herself at bay before their downcast, or amused, or disapproving eyes. Then she lost her nerve and her balance, and defended herself with wilder and more gauche talk that was sometimes downright rude. She asserted the rights of women to run away from their fathers, emulate Emma Bovary, smoke cigars, ride bicycles, play tennis, earn their living and any other bizarre proposition which came into her mind and seemed likely to annoy them. But they were not annoyed. That was the most irritating part of it. They looked at each other and giggled or frowned, but at last they all cooed together. What a quaint girl she was! What a little blue-stocking! But of course she did not mean any of it. She was too nice. Oh yes she was. Too nice. She was on their visiting lists so of course she MUST be too nice to believe, or even to understand what she was talking about. A little half-witted maybe, but certainly quite nice. In vain, passionately, Harriet tried to draw closer to them; this passion it was which held them off. Away from the house they smirked, gossiped. What could you expect from a girl whose mother was a so-and-so! But they continued to call because their husbands made them. Cabell was now an important business man in Brisbane.

  Peppiott had introduced him to the fascinating game of landbooming. The workers in the towns were prospering. They wanted houses and land—a stake in the country. Suburban property that was virgin bush less than half a century ago and worth hardly a pound an acre, auctioned for a hundred pounds an acre and more now. You got an option over an estate and on the option you borrowed money and on the money you floated a company to buy the land. You divided the land and sold it on time payment and out of the proceeds, including future payments, declared a handsome dividend. The price of your shares went up and you sold out. Then you formed a land bank and lent the land company money to buy more land. That was the process. It captivated Cabell at once. With Peppiott, Samuelson his old lawyer, and Cash, he began a series of complex financial wanglings. Peppiott was well in with the Government, which lodged its borrowings from abroad with the Queensland Incorporated Bank. With Peppiott's help Cabell borrowed this money, which was supposed to be used for railways and other such developmental works, against his shares in Waterfall on a margin of seventy-five per cent of the shares' stock-exchange value. The nominal value of each share was one pound, and the mine had yet produced very little gold. Journalists came to the house to dine. They heard the inside story of Larsen's new works soon to be opened, of the marvellous assays and the inexhaustible abundance of the red stone which gave six ounces to the ton. This was all quite true, except that Larsen was disappointed with his works: two ounces was all he could get. But the articles about Waterfall, the Mountain of Gold, which appeared in the newspapers every day hinted at nothing of the sort. Waterfalls rose slowly but surely—six, eight, ten pounds. Cabell's liabilities rose too, but so did his wealth. He bought fabulously expensive real estate in the heart of the city. One block, for which he paid eight thousand at nine o'clock in the morning, he sold for ten thousand at four in the afternoon. After that he bought everything he could lay his hands on, in Sydney and Melbourne, and refused to sell. The excitement of the boom had got hold of him properly now.

  Cash was a bit doubtful. “You better take a pull on yourself. You're getting in too deep.”

  “You're a fine one to talk.”

  “Yes, but I don't like this gambling in the dark.”

  “What's dark about it. The country's developing. That's all.”

  “The money's not coming out of the country. It's coming in. And what happens if the Government can't borrow and the bank can't lend.”

  “Only a bit longer and I'm finished,” Cabell said. “I'll soon be ready to tackle Larsen and Ludmilla. Give me a few more months to sell this land and we'll bring Waterfalls down and I'll buy in.”

  “Haven't you got enough? You must be worth a million or more.”

  Cabell chuckled. “I'll be the richest man in the southern hemisphere. You'll see them crawl then. That slimy dog Peppiott—you wouldn't think he refused to do business with me once. I wasn't good enough. And look at this.” He showed Cash a bundle of papers—mortgages over McFarlane's run. “Samuelson bought them up for me. A pretty stiff price, but worth it. I'll make them dance. And when Harriet goes to England! By God, I'd like to see their faces in Owerbury then.”

  “I suppose it's some satisfaction.”

  “Were you kicked out of your home by a lot of bloodsucking brothers and called a 'voluntary jailbird'? Have you had dirt chucked at you in court?”

  They formed the Northern Land Investment Bank and the Land Investment and Building Corporation to borrow money from the bank, and buy and sell land, and, according to a prospectus drawn up by Peppiott, “to enable the industrious and thrifty classes to participate in the distribution of real estate or secure participation in the large profits made by buying land in big quantities and selling same in moderate sized farms or allotments.”

  Cabell took Harriet to the Corporation's first big sale. Thousands came in buses provided free by the Corporation. From marquees on the ground a free lunch was served and boundless free champagne. A band played “Advance Australia Fair” to open the proceedings, then Peppiott made a speech. “This is no mere sale of land for profit. Brother citizens of this great, free nation, it is a gesture of faith which we owe to our country and the prosperit
y of her future to take unto ourselves some portion of our precious native soil. . .”

  Then the bidding commenced.

  After the sale Peppiott gave a dinner at his house. It was a splendid affair, with footmen and “the nicest people,” as Mrs Peppiott promised Harriet, and much gold plate embossed with the scroll and leaping stag Harriet had seen on the curricle—the coat of arms of the Earls of Peppiott, to which “Albert is most intimately connected,” Mrs Peppiott explained. Champagne flowed again, and they toasted “This Great Land of Ours,” very lovingly, for it had been a highly successful sale. In replying to the toast as a member of the Government, Peppiott was seized by a vision of the country fifty years hence, with a population of a hundred million people, cities as big as New York and Chicago, hundreds of thousands of miles of railway developing its resources—a future full of successful land sales.

  Hearty applause.

  Dr Barnett said cantankerously, when the clapping died down, “Railways aren't development. That's only politicians' talk.” He was a little man with white hair, a burnt-out yellow face, and a temper gone sour in the tropics, where he cultivated sugar and conducted a political battle to have the coastal strip of Queensland turned into a separate state and allowed to become a stronghold of benignly autocratic gentlemen ruling over kanaka slaves.

  They looked at him respectfully. He belonged to “one of the oldest families” (no convict blood), had been to Cambridge, and was separated from succession to the Viscounty of Durlake only by a bachelor suffering from chronic indigestion. “Development is not railways and it's not roads,” he repeated in the voice of a man who is used to being listened to with respect. “It's not a big population either. The most civilized people in Europe have the smallest population and the fewest railways and the worst roads. Norway is a civilized country. This will be when people begin to live IN it, not ON it, like an army of occupation.”