Читать книгу The Outlaw - John David Hennessy - Страница 6

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The clanging of a bullock bell announced to the family that the teacher had arrived and dinner was ready. As may be imagined, to have an educated stranger from Sydney to dinner at the Careys' was not an everyday occurrence, and the visit of the new teacher had been a matter of no little concern to them all.

Poddy Carey was glad to have his boys and girls taught, but he hated fuss. His wife, however, was a woman whose superior intelligence had largely assisted in securing a teacher for the district, and she had prepared for his visit with a foresight worthy of herself and the occasion.

The long dinner table was loaded with savoury viands, a chair stood at either end for the heads of the household, and one for the school-master, with two long forms to accommodate the rest of the family.

"That's Bob, mister," said Poddy Carey, as a tall young man came in and, with some bashfulness, took his place at the table. Pat and Alice and Madge and Judy, and others to the number of nine, were similarly introduced to the teacher's notice, and the meal was begun without further formality.

The visitor having made a few remarks about the heat of the day and want of rain in the district, settled down to enjoy his dinner, and for a time there was a somewhat awkward silence, broken only by the clash of knives and forks and occasional clatter of tea-cups, as they were copiously replenished by Betsy lower down the table.

Mrs. Carey was naturally quiet and talked but little, but she kept a hospitable eye on the teacher's plate, to make good any remissness on the part of her big husband; but at the same time, unobserved, she watched his face and wondered, as a woman will, over a score of things regarding his personality and propensities.

"I suppose he drinks a bit," she thought to herself, "or they would not have let so good-looking a man come down to an out-of-the-way place like this. I wonder how he got that scar on his forehead; you can see it now he has removed his hat. He looks like a married man, or he would not be so neat and tidy with his clothes; but then, he's too clever and gentlemanly for any of our girls. What white teeth he has! He is a nice man by the look and talk of him. I'll answer for it that brazen Kitty Conroy will be making up to him. I wish he would talk a bit about Sydney and himself. I'll ask him presently what schools he has taught and whether he has been long in the Colony. I'm rather sorry he's not boarding with us—he might have taught Jim and Pat a bit at night—but we're too far away. He looks an obliging, pleasant-tempered man, and is evidently well-bred." And then the good woman sighed, as she thought of the rough work and hard and uncouth surroundings of her married life, and for a moment compared them with earlier days when she was a girl, in the pleasant home of her parents in Herefordshire.

Mrs. Jim Carey was well liked and respected by all the neighbours. She had kept her husband straight, and her knowledge and sagacity and kindly nature and persevering industry had largely aided his success in life. The sobriquet, which first attached itself to him when he used to ride through the district buying up poddy calves and weaklings and an occasional cow or bullock without a brand, still stuck; but he was now a comparatively well-to-do man. He might have been a magistrate, and had Government men at his beck and call to work and flog; but Mrs. Carey had influenced her husband and indeed almost all the neighbourhood, to keep the district clear of convict labour. "Things are bad enough for a mother with five girls to rear, without that," she would say. And rough and hard as big Jim was, he agreed with her.

"How do you like the school-house we have put up?" asked Mrs. Carey, presently.

"It's very comfortable and central," replied the teacher.

"A bit out of the way, though, isn't it, schoolmaster?" said big Jim, passing his cup down for more tea.

"No, I don't think so," said the teacher.

"Been better more to this way," persisted Poddy. "I wanted it put nearer the south side of the creek, so that you might have boarded with the Mitchells. You may thank my Missis there for the shed for the horses and the skillion to your shanty. I drew the slabs for the school with my bullocks, and, as there were a few over, got the chaps to use 'em up in the lean-to and sheds. I see you've got a dashed fine horse. Chaps like you don't often get hold of thoroughbreds; if you'd been a stranger like, and not a teacher, we should have reckoned that you might have come by it on the cross."

The whole family laughed at this as a good joke, "Fancy," whispered Alice to Madge, "a schoolmaster coming by anything on the cross!"

The teacher laughed with the rest; but Mrs. Carey was annoyed with her husband, for she was watching her visitor closely when the question was put to him and thought he gave a start, as though he resented it. However, the laugh seemed to have broken through the teacher's reserve, and put them all upon a more friendly footing, and by the time a big pudding was brought in by Madge, with a dish of cream, Mr. Bennett was chatting away pleasantly with his future pupils and their parents.

"I suppose you have taught school in several places before in the Colony?" queried Mrs. Carey.

The teacher hesitated a moment, and then replied: "No, not in a district or town school in New South Wales, Mrs. Carey."

"I thought I heard that you were a teacher at Patrick's Plains or Maitland?" replied the good woman, somewhat discomposed.

"I know those towns," said Bennett quietly, "and have taught there; but not in any of the town schools."

"Ah," interjected Big Jim, standing up, "you've been schoolmaster on some of the stations! Come outside, mister, and smoke a pipe of 'bacca on the veranda."

Mrs. Carey presently came out with a chair and sat on the veranda with the men, knitting in hand; for she was never idle, and when the washing up was done, the three elder girls joined them, Alice seating herself on the steps with Madge, and Betsy on the verandah floor, on the other side of her father, her feet touching the grass which grew around the house.

Her mother was giving some information to the teacher about a family named O'Grady, whom she wished him to call upon, in the expectation of securing the children as scholars.

Where Betsy sat, with her back against a veranda post, she could look straight up into the teacher's face. He was smoking a silver-mounted pipe, and seemed, to the girl, to be in a fit of abstraction.

"He's not a bit interested in the school or scholars," thought Betsy with a feeling of disappointment. "I wonder what he's thinking about."

"Mr. Bennett," she said abruptly.

"Well, Miss Carey," he replied, smiling.

"I was wondering what you were thinking about, after mother told you about the O'Gradies."

"To tell you the truth," he said, after a short pause, "the name reminded me of a bushranger of that name, and that led me to think of something I heard on the road; something which happened near Singleton, only last week."

"Tell us about it, mister," said Poddy, taking his pipe out of his mouth to refill, "there's no news down here; we only get a neighbour's paper about once a fortnight, and that is often a month old."

He had been half-asleep while his wife was talking, but now evinced considerable interest.

"You girls had better go in and get ready for the milking," said Mrs. Carey, with motherly thoughtfulness.

"Cows won't be up for another hour, mother," expostulated Alice, who was all eagerness to hear the news.

The teacher paused for a good half-minute, when, as nothing more was said about the girls going away, he remarked: "There's nothing very bad about it, Mrs. Carey, no one was robbed or murdered; but the chief actors will have the mounted police after them, hot and strong, for all that."

Poddy Carey gave a short, dissatisfied grunt, as though he thought that, without robbery and murder, the story was not likely to be of much account; but the teacher proceeded.

"You may have heard of Jim McBurton's hotel on the Liverpool Plains Road, a few miles out of Singleton? Well, one day last week Jack Salathiel's gang rode up early in the afternoon, and 'stuck it up,' and made up a jury, and tried old McBurton in the commercial-room, and found him guilty of brutal ill-treatment of his Government men. They flogged him afterwards under his own sign-board."

"Tell us all about it, Mr. Bennett," said Betsy eagerly.

"Wasn't that the man who turned bushranger over a calf?" asked Alice.

The schoolmaster flushed a little and drew his silk handkerchief across his face. It might have been the warm afternoon, thought Mrs. Carey, and the fact of his not yet being seasoned to the humid coastal heat; but he could not resist the sparkling eyes and eager questions of the girls, and presently he found himself telling them far more than he had intended of what he knew about Jack Salathiel and the astonishing bushranging episode which had occurred only the previous week at the Liverpool Plains Road Hotel. "I've heard about McBurton before," was Poddy Carey's comment when the teacher had done, "and it served him dashed well right...But you're a great hand at telling a yarn, schoolmaster," he continued; "why, you might have been there yourself!"

"I've read it in the papers," said the teacher quietly; "the commercial that acted as clerk of the court had once been a newspaper reporter, and he sent a vivid description of it all to the newspapers."

As he rode back to the lonely school-house late in the afternoon, the new teacher, devil-may-care as he was, felt a trifle uneasy in his mind. Both Betsy and Alice were evidently greatly taken with him, and he was afraid he might have trouble with them and some of the other girls he had heard about. "It was a fool's trick to tell them so much about that Singleton affair," he thought; and then he laughed and wondered what Betsy would say when she found out that the narrator of the story was none other than the notorious Jack Salathiel himself.

And yet, after all, he was somehow glad that he had told them; hardened as he was, he had good in him, and neither he nor his men had taken life, except in self-defence and in open combat. It was pleasant, also, for once to have had the chance of defending his character before respectable people, and he fell into a more thoughtful mood.

"Hang it all!" he suddenly ejaculated, "I wish I had some grog in the shanty; if I go on like this I shall become as nervous as a cow."

Then, somehow, he thought of Betsy Carey again, and laughed. She had not shown much nervousness, he thought, and he guessed that it was even possible she might enjoy the joke of an outlaw, whose very name was a terror to thousands, personating a country schoolmaster.

"She would never 'come it' on me," he said to himself, involuntarily making use of an expression often on the lips of the convicts.