Roger said knowledgeably : "But you won't get anything choice here, Grant."
"By choice you mean—?"
"The finer stuff. The softwoods—cedar, maple." '"You don't call the hardwoods choice ?"
"No."
'Then you're wrong. I'm on to something very choice. Look." He nodded further down the scarred hill.
"Blue gum." Roger was patently unimpressed.
"A whole valley of blue gum, and with a higher-yield eucalyptus than I've ever found yet. It must be the location, it must suit these blues. Why, the oil isn't just waiting to be won, it fairly oozes out. It's all very crude so far, but the potential's there. Are you aware of the price of eucalyptus now ?"
"Yes," admitted Roger.
"Come and I'll show you," Iron said.
Selina and Roger followed Joel Grant down the raw hill. At the bottom there was a crudely built but that made Roger visibly wince. But he could not refrain from being impressed with the fifty-gallon drum of oil that Grant showed him next.
"Just ten days' work," the iron man grinned. "But what work !" Roger was teetering between
dismay and envy.
"But what a price !" Iron grinned again.
"You'd need a good return," Roger said a little pettishly.
"You sound as though you know the process." The older man was lighting his pipe.
"Days to cut the leaf, days to cut the wood, days at keeping the fire burning," recited Roger. "Then piping off the vapours, condensing them."
"Finally collecting the fat cheque," and-Iron smiled all the way this time.
Selina was looking at the red tips of the blue gums' leaves, she was breathing in gum tang, which, she had decided long ago, was the very breath of heaven. She had noted that all-the-way smile and been disgusted. Money, money, money. Everything this man did was for money. She picked a sprig of gum and snapped a leaf to sniff it.
He must have been watching her, have read her disapproval of him, for he addressed himself now to Selina.
"You just wasted several cents of oil, Miss Lockwood."
"I'll pay you, of course," she flashed.
"Of course, or I'll have it out of your hide."
She looked at him incredulously, then looked around for Roger to back her up, but Roger was exploring further down the scarred hill. She went and joined him, hearing softly, for her ears alone, Joel Grant's low bantering laugh.
When Selina reached Tall Tops again, Uncle Claud was sitting on the verandah, and he looked particularly well. He was in an expansive mood and asked
Roger to stop for a drink . . . Iron Grant had not come back to Tall Tops . . . and when Roger accepted, he was very pleasant with his overseer.
"Uncle, you can be nice when you like," Selina beamed after Roger had left.
"Of course I'm nice. I've had a nice life. Your nice mother saw to that when she came along one day and brought with her a nice girl."
"Two nice girls." Selina felt she should say that.
"Don't know about that one," Unk shrugged, "I only know I was as glad for her to go to that flash boarding school and later that American university as she was. If she ever complains, young Selina, just point out that she cost me about as much as I'm leaving you."
"Oh, Uncle, not that again !"
"Don't want to lose me, eh? All right, we'll talk about other things."
And talk he did. He talked of their valley and how it had looked when no man yet had stepped into it, of the first bush humpy to be built, of the first axe-ring in the clear sweet air. Of the bullock teams, not just one team like they kept now for the hard-to-get trees, but teams of teams, because there was no mechanism then. Of the ringing oaths of the bullock drivers.
"Also," went on Unk, "no mechanical saws."
He talked into the night, the night that Iron Grant had suggested could provide Selina a clip for her hair. He told dingo stories, snake stories, a story about a convict who had lived in a hollow tree-trunk for five years. Then he talked about his trees, of the men who had cut them. Some of them had been chip-mad, he said, not good clean deep cutters. Generally the chip
ones, he went on, had chips on their own shoulders.
He said a few things that Selina could not follow . . . like it being the best way, and she would know it was so in the end. Then he leaned back and talked about the Big Feller, the grey gum whose ancestors had been pushed out of the white gum community, the boyo, who, just to spite the whites, had reached up two hundred feet.
"Too big for his boots, Selina," he said, "but Joel will never lop him."
"Joel? Mr. Grant ?" She looked inquiringly across then she got up quickly.
"Unk. . . . Uncle Claud !"
But she knew even as she said it that he could not answer her. It was as quick and as final as that. The old tree had fallen just as Unk had wanted to. No axe. No saw. No mill. Only the wind.
"I'll plant orchids," Selina said foolishly as she ran to the phone and began to dial.
A voice answered and she said a few incoherent words. But she must have been understood, for the voice said : "I'll come at once."
She ran back to the old man, and only then did she realise that she had dialled Redgum Ridge and not the overseer's cottage as she had intended, she had called to Joel Grant, not Roger, for help.
Instinctively she had looked up, not down. Up to Grant's, Ironbark Grant's, the sleeper cutter.
Why? Why? Selina asked herself.
CHAPTER FOUR
BUT it was Roger to whom Selina turned in the days that followed. Angered at the somehow essential way she had appealed to the big man on the ridge almost as if something intrinsic had compelled her to, Selina now determinedly consulted Roger on the smallest issue, had him by her side for the most trivial detail. Roger in return was anxious to help. Every problem was promptly taken away from Selina, a solution found to her approval. Roger was gentle, solicitous, patient, loving, and Selina told herself that she loved him more than ever. She loved his sympathy, his aid, his comforting presence . . . but it annoyed her that Joel Grant was frequently present as well.
She knew she had only herself to blame for this, it had been her own foolishness in calling on him on the night of Uncle's death that had started it. She would never understand why she had reacted like that, why she had done such a thing as telephone him before anyone else, but she did know that the happening had had its repercussions. The man simply came to Tall Tops and went from Tall Tops as he pleased, almost, she often fumed, as though he believed he was entitled to, as though it was his place. Roger did the same, of course, but Roger was different. She might not be the future mistress here, even though everyone seemed to expect and accept that she would be, but she was the mistress now, and, as such, her fiance was where he
should be, by her side. But it was different for Iron Grant. If events turned out as it seemed they would, then Roger must tell Mr. Grant' he was not wanted. Though surely, Selina often thought, that man would understand that in marriage (if not in pre-marriage) a third is distinctly unwelcome.
Roger wanted the ceremony as soon as possible, but though Selina was of the same mind, she still hesitated. She felt for form's sake they should wait a while, and was relieved when Roger, always conscious of convention, quietly agreed. How awful, she thought, if Roger had been a man like—well, like Iron Grant, someone who sneered at niceties, who rode roughshod over things, who insisted that this was today, not yesterday.
She was particularly pleased that Roger conceded without any trouble, since otherwise she might have had to hint to him Uncle Claud's dismay when she had spoken to Unk of herself and Roger. Why, she wondered ... she was posing herself a lot of questions lately . . . had Uncle gone on as he had that day? He could not dislike Roger, no one could, and Roger had proved himself a skilled worker, really a perfectionist. Perhaps, though, Uncle had later turned the page on that little outburst, for he had not mentioned the subject after that and he had been quite congenial with Roger. Congenial with everybody, espec
ially on his last night, bless him. He had been completely unworried then, almost as though his trip down to Tallow Wood had taken a load off his mind, though, and Selina grimaced, a trip with that man would only give her a load.
Though Roger spent his time with Selina, he did not neglect his own work. He apportioned the super-
vising jobs that he always did himself to his immediate
subordinates, and concentrated instead on Tall Tops.
One morning Selina came out and saw him estimating the big grey gum.
"He's far too large, Sellie."
"Yes, Unk always said that, he always said 'too big for his boots'."
"Well, we must do something about it, mustn't we ?"
"What do you mean, Roger ?"
"We must cu—" Roger must have seen a look in Selina's face, for he changed it at once to a diplomatic : "We must lop him."
"Oh, no, Roger !"
"Then shape him, trim him a little. Be reasonable, Sellie, one branch is over the eaves and you'll have a cluttered guttering."
"No !"
"Darling, I only said that not to alarm you, but now I will alarm you. For your safety, Sellie, he must be lopped. That branch is quite perilous."
"But, Roger, he's only a young tree, he doesn't need pruning, he's as firm on his feet as I am."
"Are you, sweet? Come clean now. Aren't you a little giddy with love, Selina ? I know I am."
"Oh, Roger !" She appreciated the way he conceded to her at once. I'll make it up to him some day, she thought. Such kindness can't be one-sided. She slipped her arm around him.
In their absorption neither of them heard Iron Grant coming round the side of the house.
"I thought I was at the back garden of a place called Tall Tops," he called, "but I must have lost
my direction, instead I'm at Lovers' Lane."
They had separated by now, and distastefully Selina said : "We were just discussing the big grey gum. Roger considers it should be lopped."
Quite coolly Iron Grant drawled : "It won't be, though."
Although he spoke without heat there was no mistaking the intention in his voice. Roger looked at Selina, and Selina, after looking back a long incredulous moment at Roger, glared at Iron.
"Well, I think it might be a good idea," she said defiantly.
The man pulled out his eternal pipe and took his time over it before he answered.
"Then think out some other good idea," he advised.
"You—you must be meaning the permission councils or shires demand these days for the removal of trees, sometimes even the lopping of them. But good heavens, a forest holding doesn't come under a council or shire ruling."
"Keep talking," Iron invited.
"I'll do nothing of the sort, and I think you should do the same. After all, it's no business of yours."
"It is." Still he appeared unperturbed, for that matter only faintly interested.
"Oh, I know you were a crony of Uncle's," flashed Selina, "but don't let the friendship of an old and .. let's face it .. . no longer discerning elderly gentleman give you ideas that you can air your own ideas."
"Oh, I won't." He glanced up from the pipe. "But" ... the pipe lit at last to his satisfaction . . . "the tree will still not be touched. Now will you step inside, Miss Lockwood. I have a few details to discuss."
Selina knew he meant the memorial service that had still to be conducted in the small bush church on the way to Tallow Wood. Though Uncle had been laid to rest in its acre, it was still an established thing that afterwards the mountain men gathered together on their own accord. Transport was difficult up here for the majority of the woodsmen, it was not just a matter of taking a car, a train, a plane, or even in several instances a helicopter, since a lot of the old foresters who had served Uncle lived in remote valleys, valleys from which they could only climb out of by jinker, or haulage truck. Yet they would all want to say goodbye to their old mate.
Finding time to grimace secretly at Roger, Selina followed Iron into the house. She squirmed, as she squirmed frequently of late, at the rather proprietorial way that Iron Grant went into the study. He nodded to a chair, and she sat down sulkily. He sat down himself.
Uncle's small funeral had taken place nearly a week ago now. Lighting his pipe, Iron proceeded to tell Selina that the service would be exactly a week after.
"By that time all who can come will have done so. I've had letters from as far as South Australia—"
"You have ?"
"I," he reminded her levelly, "inserted the notices in the different interstate papers, so it was only to be expected that I received the replies." As she did not comment, he went on : "Also there were several from Victoria and Tasmania."
"You should have included New Zealand papers, Uncle worked in the forests there, too."
"I cabled there," came the calm reply, "and several
old mates are flying over."
"In short you've covered everything."
"Not everything. Not yet." A pause. "Your sister, Miss Lockwood."
"Madeleine ? But I hardly think Madeleine—" "But you don't know, do you ?"
"I believe I do. She hated the bush as a child, so I scarcely imagine—"
"Children grow up. She might have different ideas now. But different ideas or the same ideas, I think she should be here."
"Why ?"
"You need another woman."
"There are plenty of women. It's only in the bachelor chalets that there are not any women."
"Allow me to finish, please. You need another woman in the house. For one thing, a lot of the visitors will have to be billeted here."
"Then Madeleine will be useless, she always fled from domesticity," Selina pointed out.
"There are other reasons for another woman in a house as well as home duties. The role of chaperone, perhaps ?"
"Chaperone ?" she gasped.
"Presumably all the visitors will be male, so it would be scarcely the thing for you to be the only other member of the opposite sex."
"Are you serious ?" Selina asked in disbelief.
"Yes."
"Then indeed you did have that remote childhood." She smiled quite impertinently. "I can see it all, Mr. Grant. Father no doubt at the head of the table in that humble bush hut, Mother at the foot,
children with their rules of behaviour in between." "Are you trying to be funny ?" he asked.
"Not trying, because I think it's all riotously funny. The backwoodsman emerges from yesterday ... but not quite." Again the impertinent smile. But the smile faded as he leaned over and took hold of her wrist. The grasp was hard as the tag he went by : Iron. It was iron-hard.
"Yes," he said very quietly, "you could call me an old-fashioned man."
A silence fell, but like all the silences up here, it was a loud quiet. The leaves in the trees talked to each other, crickets whirred, birds twittered, a down valley stream chimed out waterbells, children raised their voices.
"Your sister is coming." Iron Grant broke the silence.
"You really mean you would like her to come. Well, I'm sorry, but I can't supply Maddie's address. She hasn't been in touch for years."
"I have the address. I've written. She arrives today." "What?" she gasped.
"You heard me, Miss Lockwood. By devious methods, I won't waste time telling you now, I found out that she had returned from overseas. I contacted her and she was pleased to agree."
"Oh, yes," said Selina bitterly, "she would say that to a man."
She became aware that he was looking at her quizzically. "I used to think that the female sex was the gentle sex," he drawled. "No, I had no experience of women as a child, my mother had died, and there were never any sisters, brothers, either, for that matter,
but now I see differently. You're as brutal as the male."
"Brutal ?"
"Where is your sisterly love? You should be looking forward to the reunion."
"Perhaps I would if it hadn't been taken out of my hands. Anyway
, the reason for Madeleine is ridiculous. I need no chaperone, particularly when—"
"When ?"
"When I'm shortly marrying Roger." There, it was out. Selina sat back and looked challengingly at him.
He did not answer at once. When he spoke at last it was slowly, carefully. He said : "I wouldn't bank on that."
"What ?"
"Your friend the overseer, to say the least, is—changeable."
"Changeable ?" she asked.
"Take the grey gum, for instance, he soon changed his mind about that."
"But he didn't. You said very autocratically : 'It won't be touched', then gave him no opportunity to answer back."
"He changed his tune," Iron stuck out. "By not speaking himself he established that fact. And once a changer, always a changer. Be warned, Miss Lockwood."
"You—you're abominable !" she said angrily.
"I didn't go to the Academy," he returned blandly, "so what can you expect ?" He waited a moment, then went on, "Your sister arrives in the Sydney plane at three this afternoon. I'll go down to Tallow Wood and bring her up. Will you come ?"
"No. I'll have to prepare her room."
"Get some of the women to help you prepare several rooms then, there are sure to be a few pilgrims on the plane come to say goodbye."
"I wish—" began Selina, then stopped herself. She had actually started to say : "I wish I could bid you goodbye." What right had this preposterous man to take over everything?
She got up abruptly and went out of the house. She looked for Roger. When she found him in the shrubbery he was mending an old bench that had seen better days. She could hear him tut-tutting quietly at the bad repair, and she smiled fondly. Everything about Roger, even his tut-tuts, was quiet, controlled, gentlemanly. So different from the sleeper-cutter. Roger straightened at that moment, and the fair hair that had fallen over his brow righted itself again. How good-looking he was. How very nice to have about you, to show to your friends. But to show to your sister? Selina stopped in her tracks.
Deep in the Forest Page 4