Inheritors

by Неизвестный

  “You've got a lot to tell. Come and have a drink.”

  He wanted a drink badly. They went into the Travellers' Rest.

  Berry was shocked to see the way he drank, tossing off half-glasses of raw spirit like water. Berry paid and watched and asked questions, but Larry would not answer. He glanced at Berry sideways now and then and reached for the bottle. At the seventh glass he became quarrelsome. “Mind your own bloody business. It ain't nothing to you where I been or where I'm going.”

  “Get along now,” Berry said. “We been mates long enough for a man to show interest.”

  “I'm no mate of yours,” Larry said. “You're a crawler. You ran away from my old man and let Coyle be taken by the police.”

  “Here, that's not a fair thing.”

  Larry pounded the bar. “You're a scab and a whiddler. You were scared of my old man and left your mates in the lurch. But I ain't scared if you are. I'm going back. One of these days. . .”

  Even Berry's simple mind detected a hollow sound in this and he began to notice that there was something soft and sodden about Larry's mouth, his whole down-at-heels appearance. He remembered Larry as a stockman-dandy, always fidgeting about spots on his white Canton moles, and a madly reckless fellow who talked little and did wild things. “Poor devil, he's gone to the dogs.”

  Larry looked at the empty bottle. “How about another drink?”

  Berry was ashamed. Had Larry Cabell sunk to pub-crawling? He bought the drink and hastened to excuse himself. “If you're ever out near us, Larry. . .”

  Larry turned away. He felt sorry for what he said as soon as he spoke and wanted the drink to make friends with Berry over it; but he felt more sorry for himself because of what Berry had not said. He had expected Berry to protest, as of old, against his threats, as though they were real ones. Did even Berry know what a coward he had been?

  Long after Berry had gone he sulked over the bar. The rum turned stale in his stomach and he looked round for someone to pick a fight with. . . On his way home Berry turned the cart back to the Travellers' Rest, annoyed with himself for having judged Larry so hastily. When he found him lying in the gutter outside the Rest where they had thrown him half an hour before, he felt much to blame. Larry was hopelessly drunk and covered in blood. Berry lifted him gently into the cart and took him home, put him to bed in the loft over the threshing floor, and laid out a clean shirt and a clean pair of dungarees for him.

  In the morning there was no sign of Larry. Berry saddled his horse and overtook him a few miles along the road. “Come back, man,” he said. “It's a rough place, but it's something. I've told the old woman and she's pleased to have you.”

  “I don't want no handouts from no man,” Larry said.

  “It's not a handout,” Berry said. “I need someone round the place. It's too heavy for me and the girl and the old woman with the harvest coming on.”

  Larry wanted to go back. A place to live in again, a horse to ride, cows to milk, a roof to sleep under, and a mate, who knew him, to talk to. . .

  “I called you a crawler yesterday,” he said.

  “That. Aw, you'd had one too many.”

  “I don't want forgiveness from you,” Larry began, but turned his face away and muttered, “Besides you knew I was lying—what I said about my old man. It was ME let Coyle down. I could've saved him but I ran like a dingo. Nobody wants to be mates with a bloke who done a thing like that.”

  Berry was wise enough to say nothing more except, “You please yourself. If you'd stay over the harvest we'd be right grateful.”

  Larry went back with him.

  Berry's homestead was a slab house of two rooms and kitchen, whitewashed inside and out and so clean that after nearly two and a half years of filth and rags Larry had to be pushed into it every time Mrs Berry called him to a meal. She was a happy, fat woman who cooked enormous feeds of corned beef and pumpkin pie and laughed till the tears came into her eyes every time she looked at Larry's crooked beard. She told long, pointless stories about sick cows and dogs which had died from tick and made Larry feel at home with her tacit assumption that he was privy to all the involved relationships of Strawberries and Daisies and Blossoms dead ten years ago.

  When the harvest was over Larry agreed to lend a hand with the threshing—then he did not want to go. Something had happened to change the whole direction of his life, or so he thought.

  Jean Berry, Berry's only child, was twenty-one years old, big like her father, with big, red hands used to milking and guiding a plough, full, thrusting breasts, red hair, broad, sunburnt face, a little turned up nose, merry eyes, a ripe mouth, and her mother's ready laugh. She seemed to have no cares in the world, although she had to work from the first flush of dawn till late at night and got nothing for it except a cotton dress and a pair of stockings and shoes once a year.

  Such happy-go-lucky ways, such uncomplaining acceptance of life on a few stony acres when the squatters fattened on the pick of the land irritated Larry. Didn't she resent it? No, she said, what was wrong with the farm? They didn't starve.

  “But why should my old man be as rich as a Jew and yours have hardly the feed for a few cows? Why should my sister get any fandangle she wants and you not have hardly a pair of shoes to your name?”

  “Ach, what's it matter? Your old man can't eat more than three meals a day and your sister can't put on all her silks and satins at once, can she?”

  “It's got to be made more just,” Larry said.

  She laughed. “Now then, don't you start in about parliaments and votes and that. We get more than a bellyful of it from Dad.”

  Larry thought she was laughing at him and dried up.

  “Oh now, Larry, don't be savage at me for laughing. Only—what's the use of it? You talk and talk and talk and go on strike and put yourself in danger, what for?”

  “Because it ain't right him having everything.”

  “It'll never concern me what he has,” Jean said, “as long as I get feed for the chicks and pigs and my own kids.” She looked at him along her shoulder. “If a man wants me, that is.”

  “Aw,” Larry said. He was piling straw away from the threshing floor. She lay on a heap of it watching him, her loosely-bundled hair spread out behind her like a fine silk kerchief. Her brown legs were bare to the knee where her dress was caught up. Her thighs and hips and broad, big breasts pressed through the thin cotton stuff of her dress, which was stained with sweat under the armpits. She breathed quickly from the exertion of swinging her pitchfork, which she held between her knees, slowly stroking the white haft as she gazed abstractedly at Larry. Her heavy, almost stupid face, made a strange contrast with his, deeply lined by his self-obsession. It was not at all a stupid face when you looked at it closely, a peasant's face unexpressive merely of superfluities. Her big, prostrate body had the beauty of its utility and the grace of complete relaxation.

  Larry moved away, stabbed the trusses and slung them into the loft in a hurry to be done.

  “You'll tire yourself out working that way,” Jean said sleepily. “Here, sit a while, why don't you?”

  “There's no time,” Larry said and went on pitching till there was no straw left except what she lay on. He paused beside it, eyes averted, waiting for her to get up.

  “Oh, come here, Larry,” she said. “Why must you be ever slaving and hurrying and looking black, as if the devil was on your heels. Now sit awhile or I'll make you.” She reached out and caught him behind the knee and pulled. Larry's leg gave way and he fell heavily across her. He tried to rise, pushing with one hand on her breast, while she held him, laughing, gasping, and enveloping him in her smell of sweat and hay and sunburnt hair. “Now I'll see if you've got a laugh in you,” she cried. She twined her legs round his, her arm round his neck, and tickled him.

  He fought roughly away and stood up, red as a turkey, tucking in his shirt.

  “Oh, I'm real sorry. Are you savage?” she said, but the sparkle in her eyes belied her.

  Larry
gave one look at her red face and tousled hair and thighs uncovered and went quickly up the ladder to stow the straw in the loft.

  She watched his legs go and ran to the door. Her father was down in the paddock mending the fence, her mother singing in the kitchen. She twisted up her hair and went back to the ladder. “Hallo, Larry, are you there?” she called huskily. “I'm coming to give you a real tickle up this time.” As her legs vanished into the loft they kicked the ladder away.

  Chapter Seven: Hobo's Blessing

  Life went more or less smoothly at the Reach thanks to Harriet's firm mind and the affairs which kept Cabell almost continually at the mine or in Brisbane.

  But Cabell was on pins and needles. The year was well on and Cash was not gone yet. He would go next month, and when next month came decided that the weather wasn't quite right, or he was waiting for a new sail from the sailmaker, or he was too lazy, or the crew got tired of standing by and he had to look for a new one. Now he had decided to wait over till the Melbourne Cup, and confessed that he had not even begun selling his racehorses yet. Cabell lived in fear that Harriet would see some mention of Cash in the newspapers and know that he had lied, or that Cash would keep his promise to write before he sailed. More recriminations, tears, and angry words—that was the least he could expect.

  He answered Cash's notes with all the amiability he could manage, giving bright accounts of his investments to discourage him from coming near Brisbane. He even went so far as to take over some of Cash's unsaleable land so as to report fat profits paid to his account at the Queensland Bank. To Cash's inquiries about Harriet's health he replied that Harriet sent her best wishes for the journey and again her grateful thanks for his present, which she hoped she would find use for when in the near future she went Home to live. Further, she begged him not to trouble to write, as she was sure that he had as much business as she to prevent him doing so. Cabell spent a long time on this particular postscript and hoped that it was not too transparent. But he did not relax his watch on the mail, nor forget to charge Miss Montaulk, under dire threats, to steal whatever letters came for Harriet.

  The letter came at last, reached Harriet by a lucky chance, and did all he expected of it to blast the tenuous peace at the Reach. Cash ran a horse in the Cup, lost, sold his stable, and returned to Sydney to prepare for sailing at once. Coming in from her ride late for lunch one day Harriet overtook the coach as it pulled up at the gate to deposit the mail. She carried the letters to the house, idly turning them over as she walked along the veranda. Miss Montaulk ran out and snatched them from her just as she saw her own name on an envelope. “Oh, wait, there's one for me.”

  “Let me see.” Miss Montaulk tried to get the letter away. “Now, Harriet, your father specially told me. . .”

  Harriet guessed at once that it was something her father did not want her to have and wild horses would not have dragged it out of her hands. There was an unseemly struggle in front of Ah Lung, which ended with Miss Montaulk's hair coming down and Harriet flying in triumph to her room, where she paused only to lock the door before she tore open the envelope, saw the signature, and tried to devour the clumsy writing at a glance.

  DEAR MISS HARRIET,

  You see I'm still here talking about making a break. [Harriet's heart opened as though it would burst. For a moment she was quite blind. “Oh,” she gasped aloud.] I wonder what Jimmy would say if he knew, after all the good advice I gave him on the same subject. Well, I must be getting old as we agreed. [“I didn't agree to any such thing.”] When the time comes I find a dozen and one things to keep me, which proves I don't want to go, I expect, though God knows what else I'd rather be doing better than filling my lungs with sea air—that is, unless I could break an arm again and have you feed me pap like you used to. [Harriet crushed the letter into a ball against her lips. “Oh, you darling.”]

  But the day has come when I can't make any more excuses. I've sold my horses and top-hats and your father's looking after my business, so by the time this reaches you I'll be gone. The crew is standing by to raise anchor as soon as this letter and one to your father is written. [Harriet's heart closed again. “You fool,” she whispered indignantly, “Why didn't you write before.” Then she thought of her father and the lie he had told her and she stamped. “Oh, the hateful, lying tyrant.” But her eyes ran on quickly.]

  Thanks for the message you sent in your pa's letter. All the same I'm going to write as I promised. [Harriet's mind kept up an automatic fire of maledictions on her father's perfidy as she read.] I suppose the Waterfalls were a bit of a surprise, seeing that you'll have more than enough money when Cabell dies. But it struck me—it's probably like my hide to say this, but if I am wrong there's no harm done, but from a word or two you've dropped I got the notion your wishes in the matter of a husband mightn't coincide with his, and what I thought was, if you ever fell in love with a young fellow who wasn't well off (I know you told me you didn't want to marry, but then you might change your mind) when your father wanted you to hitch up with some Tomnoddy (and Tomnoddies are not in your line, believe me) you'd have enough money of your own to do what you liked with. That's how I figured. Now, Miss Harriet, don't look down your nose at me the way you used to for presuming to know what's in your mind. I'm only going by what you've always said about not letting anything stand in your way if you ever fell in love with a man. I don't believe you would. But your father is a precious obstinate fellow and seems set on marrying you to some dude you maybe couldn't stand the sight of. So if it comes to that you'll always have this money to fall back on.

  Now if I've done wrong and offended you, Miss Harriet, try to forgive me, because I only do it for your happiness which is very important to me, and give the money away to some home for lost dogs or something and accept the humble apologies of,

  Your old friend,

  JACK CASH.

  Harriet folded the paper slowly, put it into the envelope, and stared blindly at her own name. The tears pat-patted on to the paper and smudged the ink. So all these months while she had been resigning herself to the fact that Cash was gone, he was not gone at all. She could have written and he would have come and everything would have turned out right, for he must love her, he MUST—she was sure of it now. What else could he mean by “making excuses to stay,” and “the only thing he'd rather do than go away was be near her”? Her instinct of it, which she had been afraid too sanguinely to believe, was right. All this time he had been waiting for a sign from her, and her father knew he was waiting, and had lied. “Oh, the vile wretch. I'll make him pay for doing this to me!”

  She heard stealthy movements on the other side of the door. Miss Montaulk was listening. Her anger bubbled over. She took a paper knife from the table, opened the door, and threw herself on Miss Montaulk, who was crouching at the keyhole. If it had been a real knife Miss Montaulk's days would have ended there. As it was Harriet took a long sliver of skin from between her shoulder-blades and tattered the back of her dress before she escaped. If it had been a real knife Harriet's days would have ended too, for she turned back into the room sobbing and pressed the blunt point to her breast till the ivory blade bent and broke.

  Cabell came reluctantly from Brisbane to deal with the new situation, luridly described in a letter from Miss Montaulk. He was tired. The grey was spreading in his beard, the weight of invisible burdens was stooping his shoulders. Worry about Cash and Harriet and the strain of guarding his fortune through anxious times was telling on him. The panic he had foreseen and prepared for was beginning. Even the sturdy Waterfall shares, in which most of his capital was now concentrated, felt the pinch of the market, and bank managers pestered him every minute of the day with testy demands for margin or a settlement of his tremendous liabilities. Thanks to Ludmilla and the lesson he had learnt three years ago he had the resources to see him through, and there was pleasure in watching the misery of those who hadn't, but the future was uncertain. Two big banks, which had seemed as solid as Gibraltar, had closed down
, and land-jobbers, speculators, and squatters with top-heavy mortgages were falling like skittles. But more destructive than worry and overwork was a question which had begun dinning his ears, “What is it all for? Who will thank me?” Twenty times a day he thrust this question aside and the memory of Harriet's face looking at him with hatred the night she avowed her love for Cash, but they returned ever more urgently, mockingly insistent. He fought on with unblunted cunning and ruthlessness, but with failing zest even in the long-imagined triumph over “that mob.”

  There was, for example, the famous affair of the Investment Corporation and Bank with its million and a half of capital, subscribed mostly by small wage-earners in the boom days. The Corporation might have pulled through. Samuelson had been a good manager and had seen that liabilities were covered by good investments, but all land companies were under a cloud and the public, and especially the banks who were its creditors, watched the Corporation suspiciously. A few weeks before Samuelson had told the directors, of whom Cabell was one, that heavy selling of Corporation stock, or even a rumour that the big holders in the company were trying to unload their shares, might start a flutter that would lead to the calling of loans redeemable only by the selling of assets on a bad market. Bankruptcy would follow inevitably. The seven directors, who held five hundred thousand pounds' worth of shares and debentures between them, agreed to support the market, “for the sake of the widows and orphans, our shareholders,” Peppiott said. Cabell gave his word, but he did not trust Peppiott. What if it was a trick to keep his shares off the market while they got rid of their own? Besides, he reflected, a tidy sum might be cleaned up here if these gentlemen really did support the market, not to count what Peppiott would lose if, in spite of all his care for the widows and orphans, the Corporation had to close down. So Cabell discussed the matter with his broker and the next day began to sell his hundred and fifty thousand shares. Most of these the directors bought in, and not suspecting anything called on Cabell to pay his share into the pool. He replied by resigning from the board and letting every one know that he was getting out of the Corporation as quickly as he could. Then he began to sell Corporations forward in Melbourne and Sydney while using every power that prestige and his long association with the Corporation gave him to abuse its credit and spread the rumour among the bankers and speculators and journalists. The directors held out for five days, while small holders and big holders alike threw eight hundred thousand shares on the market where Investment Corporations were hardly worth the paper they were printed on at the end of the week. Three of the directors were then ready to file their petitions, three, including Peppiott, were green with funk, and Cabell was one hundred and eighty thousand pounds in pocket.