第23章 Part I.(22)

Next morning things looked a lot brighter.Things always look brighter in the morning --more so in the Australian Bush,I should think,than in most other places.It is when the sun goes down on the dark bed of the lonely Bush,and the sunset flashes like a sea of fire and then fades,and then glows out again,like a bank of coals,and then burns away to ashes --it is then that old things come home to one.

And strange,new-old things too,that haunt and depress you terribly,and that you can't understand.I often think how,at sunset,the past must come home to new-chum blacksheep,sent out to Australia and drifted into the Bush.I used to think that they couldn't have much brains,or the loneliness would drive them mad.

I'd decided to let James take the team for a trip or two.

He could drive alright;he was a better business man,and no doubt would manage better than me --as long as the novelty lasted;and I'd stay at home for a week or so,till Mary got used to the place,or I could get a girl from somewhere to come and stay with her.

The first weeks or few months of loneliness are the worst,as a rule,I believe,as they say the first weeks in jail are --I was never there.

I know it's so with tramping or hard graft:the first day or two are twice as hard as any of the rest.But,for my part,I could never get used to loneliness and dulness;the last days used to be the worst with me:then I'd have to make a move,or drink.

When you've been too much and too long alone in a lonely place,you begin to do queer things and think queer thoughts --provided you have any imagination at all.You'll sometimes sit of an evening and watch the lonely track,by the hour,for a horseman or a cart or some one that's never likely to come that way --some one,or a stranger,that you can't and don't really expect to see.I think that most men who have been alone in the Bush for any length of time --and married couples too --are more or less mad.With married couples it is generally the husband who is painfully shy and awkward when strangers come.

The woman seems to stand the loneliness better,and can hold her own with strangers,as a rule.It's only afterwards,and looking back,that you see how queer you got.Shepherds and boundary-riders,who are alone for months,MUST have their periodical spree,at the nearest shanty,else they'd go raving mad.Drink is the only break in the awful monotony,and the yearly or half-yearly spree is the only thing they've got to look forward to:it keeps their minds fixed on something definite ahead.

But Mary kept her head pretty well through the first months of loneliness.

WEEKS,rather,I should say,for it wasn't as bad as it might have been farther up-country:there was generally some one came of a Sunday afternoon --a spring-cart with a couple of women,or maybe a family,--or a lanky shy Bush native or two on lanky shy horses.On a quiet Sunday,after I'd brought Jim home,Mary would dress him and herself --just the same as if we were in town --and make me get up on one end and put on a collar and take her and Jim for a walk along the creek.She said she wanted to keep me civilised.She tried to make a gentleman of me for years,but gave it up gradually.

Well.It was the first morning on the creek:I was greasing the waggon-wheels,and James out after the horse,and Mary hanging out clothes,in an old print dress and a big ugly white hood,when I heard her being hailed as `Hi,missus!'from the front slip-rails.

It was a boy on horseback.He was a light-haired,very much freckled boy of fourteen or fifteen,with a small head,but with limbs,especially his bare sun-blotched shanks,that might have belonged to a grown man.He had a good face and frank grey eyes.

An old,nearly black cabbage-tree hat rested on the butts of his ears,turning them out at right angles from his head,and rather dirty sprouts they were.He wore a dirty torn Crimean shirt;and a pair of man's moleskin trousers rolled up above the knees,with the wide waistband gathered under a greenhide belt.

I noticed,later on,that,even when he wore trousers short enough for him,he always rolled 'em up above the knees when on horseback,for some reason of his own:to suggest leggings,perhaps,for he had them rolled up in all weathers,and he wouldn't have bothered to save them from the sweat of the horse,even if that horse ever sweated.

He was seated astride a three-bushel bag thrown across the ridge-pole of a big grey horse,with a coffin-shaped head,and built astern something after the style of a roughly put up hip-roofed box-bark humpy.His colour was like old box-bark,too,a dirty bluish-grey;and,one time,when I saw his rump looming out of the scrub,I really thought it was some old shepherd's hut that I hadn't noticed there before.

When he cantered it was like the humpy starting off on its corner-posts.

`Are you Mrs Wilson?'asked the boy.

`Yes,'said Mary.

`Well,mother told me to ride acrost and see if you wanted anythink.

We killed lars'night,and I've fetched a piece er cow.'

`Piece of WHAT?'asked Mary.

He grinned,and handed a sugar-bag across the rail with something heavy in the bottom of it,that nearly jerked Mary's arm out when she took it.

It was a piece of beef,that looked as if it had been cut off with a wood-axe,but it was fresh and clean.

`Oh,I'm so glad!'cried Mary.She was always impulsive,save to me sometimes.`I was just wondering where we were going to get any fresh meat.How kind of your mother!Tell her I'm very much obliged to her indeed.'And she felt behind her for a poor little purse she had.`And now --how much did your mother say it would be?'

The boy blinked at her,and scratched his head.