Читать книгу Billabong's Luck - Mary Grant Bruce - Страница 13

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THE last few miles of the road that led to Creek Farm were evil going for a car. Bob Rainham always took them slowly, edging in and out to avoid the worst places: not from any natural prudence, but because the car was Tommy’s especial property, bought for her in their second year in Australia, when the Goddess Success had been so lavish with her smiles that they had fancied she had no other aspect.

Tommy rode well for one brought up in complete ignorance of horses. She had quickly realized that riding was necessary, setting herself to acquire the art with the doggedness that was part of her nature. But the car was her delight. In her handling of it was something of the comprehension of an engine that had made Bob notable as an airman in the War. It was to her a living, feeling comrade. The district agreed that few of its men could get as much out of a car, or take it through queerer places, than little Miss Rainham of the Creek.

Bob was proud of his “partner’s” ability; happy that he had plunged in buying the blue car, even when later reverses made it seem an extravagance. When he used it himself he treated it with care and respect—cherishing, privately, dreams of a day when he would attain to a sports model and break records on land as he had broken them in the air. He had also dreams of an aeroplane, but only in his wildest moments.

Such wild moments seemed very remote this evening as he crawled along, even more slowly than usual. Tommy’s game of “thinking-true” was becoming harder and harder for him to play. He had tried it honestly, and had admitted to himself that it paid; when worry-thoughts were swiftly headed into other channels everything seemed to go more smoothly than when he brooded over bad luck and permitted unpleasant possibilities to haunt him. He had slept better, and fewer bad dreams had troubled him. But to-day there was a letter in his pocket that had brought back the shadows in full force.

He turned in at the gate and increased his speed up the gravelled track through the homestead paddock. Tommy was visible in the garden, plying a hoe—having hurriedly laid aside a spade when she saw the car coming. She waved to him gaily. He ran the car into the garage, brought out mail-bag and parcels, and came across to the house.

“Tea’s ready on the verandah, Mr. Bob,” Sarah informed him, as he dumped part of his load on the kitchen table. “I’m just comin’ along with the teapot.”

“Thanks, Sarah. Hallo, Myrtle—what are you doing under the table?”

Sarah’s three-year-old daughter crawled out rapidly, scrambling to her feet.

“Choc.?” she asked, hopefully.

“Now, what made you think of that?” demanded Bob, severely. He sat down. Myrtle emitted a squeak of joy, entrenching herself between his knees. She clawed at his pocket.

“Wrong again, old lady,” said Bob, laughing. He put his hand into another pocket, producing a small package, at sight of which Myrtle’s squeak swelled to a high chant of joy. Bob lifted her to his knee, watching the quick fingers that tore at the paper bag.

“You fair spoil that imp, Mr. Bob,” said Sarah, beaming on them both.

“Oh, I don’t bring her a parcel every time, Sarah,” protested Bob. “And she’s just as contented if I don’t.”

“Well, as long as you don’t make it a regular habit. I couldn’t have her expectin’ it always. That ’ud be cupboard-love. And it ain’t no cupboard-love Myrtle has for you an’ Miss Tommy—though you do let her boss you.”

“Up to a point,” Bob said, smiling. “Myrtle and I know where the point is.”

“She’s gettin’ a handful to manage,” said Sarah. “What d’you think I caught her at this afternoon? She got away from me while I was cleanin’ meself, and I called an’ called, an’ never an answer. So I came out—in me mackintosh, ’cause I was too scared to wait to dress—an’ there was me lady down the paddock, drivin’ in the cows! The limb!”

“Well, it’s only an inherited instinct,” said Bob. “She sees her mother do it often enough; and it isn’t her mother’s job, either! So you can’t blame Myrtle, Sarah.”

“I might have known you’d take her part,” grinned Sarah. “Now, Mr. Bob, the tea’s made, an’ Miss Tommy’ll go on workin’ in the garden until you go an’ make her stop.”

“All right, Sarah: I’ll go and be firm with her.” He rose, putting Myrtle on the floor. She trotted after him, but was whisked back by a determined mother.

“I reckon they’ll have a more peaceful tea if you stay in the kitchen,” said Sarah, firmly.

Tommy was on the verandah when Bob came out.

“You have been doing great work,” he told her, looking at the neat beds. “Three letters for you. I gave Sarah the parcels. Oh, by the way, Tommy, you didn’t put bread on the list. Was that a mistake?”

“No. Sarah and I have developed a new ambition,” said Tommy, pouring out tea. “We are going to bake at home in future.”

“I say!” He raised his eyebrows. “Isn’t that a lot of extra work?”

“Oh, no. A very little thing. Sarah is going to teach me. It will be great fun, and we shall save much money.” She smiled at him. “You know I love learning new things.”

Bob pondered this in silence. He was not without experiences of his own in bread-making.

“If you only did things in the house I wouldn’t say anything,” he broke out. “But you’re all over the place—sheep-work or cutting ferns, or any job that’s going. You call them all fun, but——”

“If I do, it is because they are fun,” laughed Tommy. “And you are not to have any other thought about them. The only thing that could make me unhappy would be to keep out of the work. When we are rich squatters and I have to behave beautifully, I shall look back with envy to the days when I played about with a fern-hook on the Creek!”

“You’ll certainly deserve your luck—when it comes,” he told her.

“Bob, I have my luck now. When I think of the old days in England; that horrible time when I was an unhappy little drudge, and you were in danger all the time—why, I never cease to be astonished at the luck I have now! Whatever does work matter? The thing that matters is the way we think about it. And you are to remove that furrow from your brow and eat more scones!”

Bob grinned, and tried to do both. He talked of his trip to the township, of the people he had met, of the shaky condition of the bridge three miles away, which only needed another flood to finish it: in which painful event they would be cut off from the township. He made the most of these and other topics, talking with a laborious gaiety which he fondly hoped was convincing, but uneasily conscious of the keen young eyes across the tea-table. Tommy sustained her end of the conversation calmly. Bob’s eloquence lasted until tea was over, when it came to an abrupt end. He cudgelled his brains for a new subject, but none came.

“Now that you have said all that,” remarked Tommy, pleasantly, “suppose you tell me what is wrong.”

“Who said there was anything wrong?” countered her brother.

“You had not put on the face you prepare for my benefit when you were walking across to the house,” said she. “And it has not fitted very successfully since. Tell me, Bobby.”

“There was a great Sherlock Holmes lost in you,” he said, trying to smile. “Oh, well—you’ve got to hear it some time. There’s a rather disagreeable letter from England.”

“Yes, Bob?” She looked at him questioningly.

“Things are pretty bad there, you know,” he said. “Dividends crashing, and all that. The lawyers write that some of ours have gone west. We—we’ve got to face having very little money sent out for a good while. The next payment will be only about half what it ought to be. I was counting on that money, you know, Tommy, to meet the next payment on the place.”

She nodded. “Can we do it?”

“I don’t see how. I’ve been racking my brains ever since I got the letter. There are no more bullocks fit to sell, and the sheep won’t bring us in anything for a good while.” He looked at her rather pitifully. “I’m afraid I’ve slumped on your ‘thinking-true’ business.”

“We can’t do that,” she said, firmly. “We said we would play the game, no matter what happened. Even if we have to get a mortgage on the place we should work it off in time, Bob. We could do without Bill and Sarah, if necessary.”

“That’s the last thing I’d do. They’re cheap, as servants go, and Bill more than pays for what he costs us. And I won’t have you without anyone, in this lonely place, apart from the work. It isn’t safe. No, we’ve got to think of some other plan, Tommy. I suppose it will have to be a mortgage—if I can raise one. But once you mortgage a place you never seem to get clear.”

“That’s not thinking-true,” said Tommy, stoutly. “Of course we’ll get clear; we’ll just keep all our minds on that, and shut out every other thought. Bob, I know it’s the way to win out. If we have to tighten our belts—well, we will find ways to do it. But we will keep smiling.”

Bob squared his shoulders.

“Right-oh!” he said, and managed a smile. “You do buck a fellow up, Tommy, and no mistake. I’ve been wondering all the way out how to tell you, but I might have known the way you’d take it.” The smile became a real one. “I suppose if I’d thought-true I’d have just said, ‘Oh, Tommy won’t fuss!’—and left it at that.”

“It is so much easier not to fuss,” she laughed. “Don’t you remember when we were little we learned to take castor-oil smiling? Well, we have to take any medicine smiling now. The Goddess Success is only having a game with us—we’ll show her who can play it best. And now we won’t talk about it any more, but just believe some brilliant idea will come along.” She paused. “You have not to take any immediate action?”

“Oh, no; I’ve a month yet.”

“Then you will hurry and get the milking done, and we will play backgammon this evening.”

It was a successful evening; and the days that followed were happy ones. Bob put his troubles resolutely from him, playing Tommy’s game manfully: filling each day with hard work and with hope. He had no clear ideas of what to hope for; if he let himself reason out things, no avenues of help appeared. Therefore it seemed more comfortable not to reason, but to let himself be like a child that believes that good luck must come. It was certainly restful; he found himself marvelling at the ease with which he was able to play the game. Time enough to think, he told himself, when it was actually necessary to face his bank manager and discuss mortgages.

Tommy played her game steadfastly, carrying on as though nothing had happened: contriving to be with Bob as much as possible and to keep their talk to the future more than to the present. They dreamed great dreams in those days—plans of what they would do when success smiled, of extending the property, of breeding sheep of a magnificence unknown to the district. Fancy soared beyond the Creek to a station of their own, modelled on Billabong: they built the dream-house on it, a remarkable mixture of French and English architecture. They were very young; it was not hard, once the effort was made, to put the shadows aside by building castles in the air. “If you make them very good castles,” remarked Tommy, “some day the stone foundations will grow up from the solid ground!”

She had kept so much by his side that Bob was faintly surprised when, one morning, she announced that she was going to Cunjee.

“For a load of bricks for the castles?” he asked, with a twinkle.

“I might meet one,” she said. “Who knows? Luck is always waiting if one goes out to meet her.”

“Well, put hobbles on her if you do,” said Bob.

“Certainly, I will. But you must be watching for her, too.”

“It’s stretching things to imagine that Luck is going to spring at you when you’re hoeing ragwort,” said Bob. “But I’ll keep my eye skinned for her.”

Tommy drove off, a trim, alert little figure in the blue car. She took the bad road at a speed far beyond Bob’s careful pace; when the shaky bridge was passed she accelerated, flying at the racing pace she loved. Light fingers on the wheel, happy face lifted to the rush of the keen spring air: no one who saw her could have dreamed that any shadows were on Tommy’s horizon. AH too soon Cunjee was in sight. She slackened as she came into the main street, casting a quick glance up and down, then giving a little sigh of relief. No other car was in sight: and for her own reasons Tommy did not want to see the Billabong people just then.

She ran in by the footpath. Getting out, she closed the door carefully. Her hand lingered for an instant on the glossy blue surface.

“That was a good run, my friend,” she said to the car. “Well——” She shrugged her shoulders lightly, and went off.

Bob attacked the fast-growing ragwort all through the morning. He was glad that he had not brought lunch out with him: lacking Tommy’s merry presence it was not so easy to hold the visions of the Goddess Success. The tough weeds spoke more readily of mortgages, of debts; when such pictures rose in his mind he tried to play Tommy’s game by imagining that he destroyed them as he abolished the ragwort, with great sweeps of his hoe. It was not altogether satisfactory. “It’s better fun to build with Tommy than to knock down by myself,” he muttered, as he shouldered his hoe and strode homeward.

Tommy was already home: she came out to meet him, looking very cheerful.

“Hallo!” Bob said. “I didn’t see you come; and I was looking out for you. Had a good time?”

“Splendid!” She slipped her hand into his arm. “I saw Dr. Anderson, and we are to go to play tennis on Saturday.”

“Oh, I——” began Bob.

“Now, you need not say you have no time. We have all the time there is, and part of it is going into tennis—you know you love it, Bob, and it keeps you fit. At all events, I have promised, and all the Billabong people are coming, and it will be fun,” she ended breathlessly.

Under this burst of eloquence Bob yielded meekly.

“Well, you don’t get so very much fun these times——”

“I get more fun than you know,” Tommy interposed. “So you need not put on that grandfatherly air, Bobby. We are going to be young and gay on Saturday and forget all about work. And lunch is ready—so hurry!”

She looked very young and gay at the table. Bob registered a private vow that he would send her more often into the township—she always came back glowing. Most people found the run into Cunjee tame enough, but Tommy always had a thousand things to tell after the trip. Sarah, going about her work in the kitchen with a lugubrious face, heard the happy voices and an occasional shout of laughter from Bob.

“Listen to ’em!” said Sarah, darkly. “Beats me what they’ve got to laugh at. I feel more like howlin’, meself!”

There was coffee after lunch, at sight of which Bob raised his eyebrows. Coffee was one of the minor luxuries that the Creek had given up.

“ ’Stravagance!” he said. “You seem in a very wild mood to-day, Thomas.”

“One must be wild now and then,” she told him, “I dream beautiful castles on coffee. Come and we will have it on the verandah.”

“I ought to rebuke you, but the scent of coffee is too much for me,” he said, following her out. He dropped into a chair luxuriously.

“No, you must not rebuke me for anything,” she said. There was a trace of nervousness suddenly in her voice. “Bob, I have something nice to give you.” She put a piece of paper on the arm of his chair, smoothing it out with fingers that trembled a very little.

“Where have you been picking up cheques?” asked Bob, lightly. He glanced at it; and as the amount caught his eye he uttered a startled exclamation.

“Tommy! You haven’t been borrowing!”

“Certainly not,” was Tommy’s cheerful answer. “I didn’t need to. Bobby, dear, you must not mind—I have sold the car.”

“Sold it! Your little car!” His voice was almost a groan.

She nodded happily.

“We did very well without a car before. We will do quite well now. And you can just bury the idea of mortgages for awhile—for ever, perhaps.” She patted his shoulder. “Bob, don’t look like that—I was so happy to do it.”

“I’d rather anything on the place had gone,” he said, heavily. “You love that car so. You shouldn’t, Tommy—you shouldn’t!”

“But I should. Nothing else would have brought in enough. It was really great luck that Mr. Petrie told me last week he would give me a good price if I wanted to sell it soon. And it will have a very good home!” finished Tommy, quaintly.

Bob got up and went to the edge of the verandah. He stared blankly across the garden.

“Bob,” said the quiet voice. “You promised to play my game.”

“This is no game!” he said, wretchedly.

“But yes!” She took his arm. “This is where we think-true harder than ever—just glad of the money when we need it, and being quite happy about it: and looking forward to the new car we shall have when the luck turns. Latest model, new gear-changing, and all the lovely things the catalogues talk about—I’ve been planning it all the way home!”

“How did you get home?” he flashed.

“Mr. Petrie brought me to the gate. I would not let him come any farther for fear we met you. Sarah saw me, and she has been in depths of woe ever since. But there is not going to be any woe about you and me, Bob. Don’t you see it will spoil it all if we failed to be happy?”

In the silence that followed Bob had his first real glimpse of what Tommy meant by her “thinking-true.” If a sacrifice bought happiness, then it ceased to be a sacrifice. If he failed her in that—even though the money met his payments—the little blue car would have been sold in vain.

With that light breaking upon him he swung round, putting his hands on her shoulders.

“All serene, partner!” he said. “We’ll play your game. We’ll drive in triumph in the old buggy, and we’ll plan the most gorgeous new car. Will it be blue, Tommy?”

“It will,” she said, joyfully. “And now I had better go and heat up the coffee!”