Читать книгу Ten Creeks Run - Miles Franklin - Страница 5

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Quite a party left Ten Creeks at sunrise on a glorious morning at the close of the muster. Young Lindsey, Poole's man, had charge of the Curradoobidgee strays, and Teddy O'Mara, accompanied by his redoubtable thieves, was lending him a hand. Poole and Milly rode behind them, Poole leading Corroboree, who followed with the eagerness of a neophyte while Milly had Romp trotting amicably beside Readymoney.

Larry Healey and Ronald Dice joined forces to take their contingent, and, since they had Aily with them but no stockman, SP-over-J remarked, "I'll give you a hand till you get a start."

"You needn't bother, Mr Stanton, unless you like," said Tommy Roper with a wink at Tim Porter. "I'm making their way and can kill two birds with the one stone."

"I want to see what the dingo-trappers are after out by Wamgambril, in any case," said Stanton. Tim returned Tommy's wink.

It worked out that the young men careered round the loose horses, and Stanton rode with Aileen, who was pretty, ever so pretty, and alluringly young. She was also deferential and unfailingly agreeable. It was dawning on her that there was more than banter in what people said of her and Stanton, though she did not take it seriously. Ronald was delightful in his disparagement of an older rival as "gran'pa" and "uncle".

"You be careful," he rode up and whispered to her as they were splashing into the home paddock creek. "It's dangerous to an elderly gosling like that to become lovesick. He might take a fit and you be blamed." The crude wit convulsed the simple Aileen.

The riders kept together till the river crossing where Boundary Creek joined the larger stream. Here Poole branched off to the south and the others continued towards Wamgambril Flats. Milly had the last words:

"You'll come to Neangen for me, won't you, Uncle? You'll have me there, won't you, Aileen? If it's too much trouble for Uncle Jack to go all the way I can easily get down to Stanton's Plains with Ronnie. You're sure to be going to Neangen, aren't you, Ronnie?"

To these suggestions Aileen cordially assented. Ronnie, with a grin at Aileen, also agreed. Uncle Jack intercepted the wink that Tommy Roper threw at Dice and said to Milly, "You get down to Neangen and let me know and I'll collect you from there without troubling anyone."

The Bool Bool contingent remained on the left bank of the Coolgarbilli while the others clattered and splashed among the boulders of the stream transparent as glass rushing onward to the Murrumbidgee. Poole watched them go in a meditative frame of mind. Thirty years ago he and old Jack Stanton had ridden away on similar expeditions with the aunts of Aileen and Milly's generation, and just as gaily as young Dice today, "cut out" rivals and jockeyed for first place. Clearly in the glass of memory stood two girls that were dead—one claimed by cramp in the treacherous Mungee, the other a victim of a confined life in old-world sunless damp—those whom the hands had discussed round the hut fire in the evenings. All the actors in the drama of the previous generation insisted that both these beautiful young women had loved him, Herbert Poole, to the exclusion of all others till the end.

Ah, well, it was all past now, or rather, as he noted the blushes wreathing Aily's delicate cheeks when Ronnie made some remark, it was only the players that changed in the eternal tourney. He enjoyed life as much as ever and found himself more careful to preserve it than he had been thirty or forty years ago, but something had gone out of it. What would he not give to feel again the delight and excitement that once bubbled in his veins! There were plenty of old chaps who still chased the "properties" of youthful joy more greedily than did the young. There was old Jack squinting at little Aily Healey.

"Nonsense, there is nothing in it. I'm getting as bad as the old gossips," he thought. They had been connecting himself and Jack with every eligible and ineligible woman in the district for the last thirty years and would be at the game for the next thirty, by the look of things. If it amused small minds, it did no harm to him and Jack.

As they lost sight of the others among the tall timber and dense shrubs, Poole looked at the bright face of his companion with its button nose and freckles, the hat elasticked under the round childish chin, and the long pigtail aft, and his eyes softened with indulgence. Bless the youngster, a man could never have the mulligrubs while she was about! He reflected with satisfaction that a man was never too old for the affectionate joys provided by the avuncular relationship. There had been a successive crop of such nieces, some of them expanding matrons now, but all retaining their affection for Uncle Bert.

"Do you think goanna fat mixed with wombat grease would take the freckles off your nose, Milly?"

"It might be as good as those recipes they have for making straight hair curly," laughed the little girl. "My freckles go away in the winter, or if I stay inside, but I'd rather be outside."

"Then I suppose we must bear up under the freckles." His eye wandered to Romp, of a beauty to delight Abd-el-Kader, son of Mahi-ed-Din himself, and probably better topped through her thoroughbred English strain than any ewe-necked prodigy that ever carried the great emir. "Think we can make something of the roan mongrel?"

Milly responded with a toothsome grin of understanding: she and Uncle Bert were mates. She was being permitted this as her last tomboy expedition. Upon her return she was to be tutored by Mr Blenkinsop, who had gallantly yielded to importunities to undertake the responsibility for the remainder of the summer at Ten Creeks, and later at Turrill Turrill for the winter, depending on how they progressed.

*

Dice's company parted from Stanton at the head of the Wamgambril, a sister stream of the Coolgarbilli, which took an opposite course to reach old Mother of Waters.

"We'll put up for the night at The Gap and get Mrs Tim and young Tim to give us some songs," suggested Dice, a sociable fellow.

"I must push on," said Larry.

"You and Tommy can push on with the horses at daybreak. I'll see that Aily gets to Neangen in good condition. What do you say, Aily?"

"Whatever you and Larry do will suit me," said she, with a rosy smile.

As young Celia Brennan could sing like a thrush and was pretty to boot, Larry fell in with this suggestion after hesitation. As Tommy Roper was inordinately curious and had time on his hands he fell in with Larry.

Next morning Larry got away at daybreak. Dice at a more leisurely hour set off with Aileen. He decided to go by Bool Bool and have lunch with old Mrs Mazere at Three Rivers—the old lady was his great-aunt. He enlisted Tommy Roper to deliver the spare nags at Bookaledgeree.

*

Larry reached home in time for midday dinner, and in response to his father's inquiry said, "I left Aileen at The Gap to come on with Ronald Dice."

"And what the devil did you do that for? If she hasn't any more sense to look after her reputation, what were you there for?'

"Ronnie's not dangerous," ventured Larry, jun., "and if he was, Tommy Roper is there to keep a sharp eye on him."

"If she's not showing by two o'clock, you'll go back after her."

Mrs Healey began to worry as soon as the stipulated hour was reached. Her husband was an unamiable old scrub and she the chopping-block of his displeasures. Three o'clock and five passed without Aileen. Mr Healey waxed ferocious; Mrs Healey was in a stew.

"Her to be capering about the country like a streel and her character gone to the winds," he raged. "I'll turn her out! For two pins she needn't darken my doors again."

"There needn't be such a mighty dust about that," young Larry was game to say. "Ron Dice would be glad to have her darken his."

"Him with not a penny to his name; a waster ridin' about the country after every bit of rag in the world, and the place pin' to the dingoes and briars, and mortgaged up to the neck."

"Well, if he can't put up enough spondulics to suit you, old Jack Stanton wouldn't mind relieving you of her, unless I'm more green than I'm cabbage-looking. You'll have no trouble getting Aileen off your hands; it's Joanna and Norah will be the tussle," said their brother ungallantly.

"What evidence have you of that?"

"Old Skinny Guts was leering at her all the muster like a sick dog at a firestick. He actually danced with her and came all the way to Wamgambril huts—pretended he wanted to look at the dingo-tracks, but he stuck too close to the old chestnut to see any. It will do him good to be jealous of Dice, will bring him up to the scratch."

Larry, sen., ceased to rage. Stanton was rich and a swell. The Stantons of Stanton's Plains were of the earliest pioneers of Bool Bool, and, with the Mazeres, Pooles, Brennans, etc., ranked as first families among the squattocracy.

"Be the hokey-pokey!" Healey exulted to his wife. "If this is true about old Stanton, why there isn't a man from here to Wagga Wagga half so well-fixed as him—a cold-blooded cautious feller as solid as Mount Corroboree. You give Aily a speakin'-to when she comes home. She doesn't want to be compromising herself with young Dice if there is anny hope of Stanton. Dice won't have a stiver to his name when the banks get their share."

"He's such a nice young fellow," said Mrs Healey weakly.

"Nice, nice! You fool! What's the good of nice—it's the dough that counts. If a man's as ugly as old King Billy and as nasty—sure, he can be as nasty as he likes if he's only rich enough."

A woman of spirit might have said that some were ugly and nasty without being able to afford it, but Mrs Healey was not a woman of spirit.

Aileen did not reach home till seven o'clock. In addition to Ronald she was accompanied by his sister, Ida, which took the wind out of Healey's grizzle about the proprieties. Ida was a dashing girl with the Dice charm, capable of making herself agreeable even to old Larry, so that he could not erupt while the Dices were present, and he remarked as they went on their way in the moonlight, "'Tis a pity the Dices have no ability to hold money. She'd make a nice pair with Larry, though he would be better fixed up at The Gap. Old Tim must be a pretty warm man by now with that good property on both sides of the river."

*

Larry, sen., was neither rich nor nice, nor yet happy nor beautiful. He was the second son of his family, which had gone up in the social scale like a rocket, but the second generation showed no ability to hold or improve what had been gained.

The first Larry and his wife, Aileen, had settled on Monaro among the earliest pioneers. They had tabled themselves as Irish immigrants and were reticent about their past. They were neighbours of the original Poole. By assiduity and disregard of scruples they had secured a good estate. The old days had been enlivened by a rumour that a squatter—some said about Goulburn—had gained his wife by a roistering bet, but none were sure of the man's identity. This story had been fastened on the Healeys in a dramatic manner in the fifties by a bushranger who subsequently died in Berrima jail. On the historic occasion while he held up the whole gallimaufry of first families at a ball at Gowandale he had audaciously claimed Mrs Healey as his wife in full hearing of the company, thus casting the aspersion of illegitimacy upon the whole boiling of young Healeys. The Healeys carried this off as best they could, and it had been taken as wild clash. Nevertheless it had disintegrating results upon the morale of the Healeys. The boys in altercations would be insulted as bastards, and old Healey had had to divulge that it was better for his sons to lie low and take the allegations as lightly as possible rather than stir up the mud of "thrubble".

"Sure, if ye keep quiet it will dhrop, an' there's those that niver want to stir it up. M'Eachern of Gowandale for one, his son bein' married to the bushranger's daughter, an' her yer half-sister, an' there's others. Sure, they're not all married on legitimate daughters of the nobility."

The dearth of maids in that region and generation had made it necessary for the most pretentious to marry a shepherd lass or a fille de joie or go unwed. But to be compelled to turn the other cheek because they could not batter the other fellow's nose was as bitter as the milk of seeding lettuce to the belligerent young Healeys. It curbed their dash and crumpled their amour-propre.

Dennis, Larry of Neangen's elder brother, had reigned for a time on Eueurunda, which the Healeys had acquired by planting dummies on Simon Labosseer while he was disabled and so that his wife had had to retreat to Coolooluk. The wife of Dennis, a barmaid from Goulburn, was used to wine and spirits, and Dennis, always that way inclined, grew too fond of his drop. As he reached middle age he was a loud, fast man and many women had too many charms for him.

There were rumours of more bastards than his father's. It was the grandfather of one of these who met Dennis one night and nearly finished him. The task failed only because Dennis, like a carpet snake, recovered after being left for dead. He denied that he and old Lindsey, the selector, had met in the dark of the moon where Poole's Creek runs with a velvety Monaro song to join the Eueurunda. It was through old Lindsey that the story got abroad.

The district knew that Jenny Lindsey had gone wrong. The distraught young woman had prevailed upon her destroyer for one more interview. At this, old Lindsey, acting sleuth, had punished the guilty with violence. He then rode madly to Braminderra, a one-pub township where there was also a constable and lock-up, and had given himself in charge. The constable did not know whether to believe him or not, so cursed him and kept him till daylight, when he rode abroad to collect the evidence. Constable Pigeon was of comfortable form and mind and the scene of the murder was twenty-five miles distant.

Lindsey was unable to produce the corpse. "Here's where I waited for him," he insisted. Tracks confirmed this. "Here's where I drug the —— ole scoundrel and swindler and bastard horse-thief from his saddle. When I got through bashing him I flung him down the side there." There was a mark as of a sack dragged across the track and broken sage-bushes, but no sign of Healey.

"You've evidently got 'em," said the constable. "But I'll keep you in custody till I see Mr Healey."

They had gone off towards Eueurunda, calling at Curradoobidgee for refreshments. Here the constable found the vehicle of the doctor from Cooma and Mrs Healey's carriage. Poole on coming home the night before had heard groans from below the level of the road. Search had shown Dennis Healey held on the side of the declivity by the sage-bushes and bracken. Healey was unable to move or speak. Poole returned to the homestead for assistance. Messengers had also gone forthwith for Mrs Healey and the doctor. The state of Healey was that while there is life there is hope, so the constable credited Lindsey's story and took him away with him.

As soon as he was able to make a deposition, Healey asserted that he had been riding a fresh horse, which, startled by a snake, had unseated him. His foot stuck in the stirrup and this accounted for the terrible battering he had received. A thunderstorm late the day following the affray made further reference to the tracks impossible. Lindsey had been released.

Healey never mounted a horse again. His wife met the catastrophe by getting rid of the station and taking a hotel in Goulburn. She was tired of station life. She was no rider, and had not been accepted by the squattocracy as she had hoped. The Pooles and M'Eacherns held aloof because she had not been congenial to them, and also they resented the way Dennis had treated an old friend and neighbour.

Larry, the second brother, transferred to Eueurunda, but ill luck attended him too. His wife died. His eldest son was shot dead cleaning a rifle. The Healeys had paid too much for Eueurunda in the first place, and bad management, bad seasons, and disease in the flocks forced Larry to cut his losses and move to Neangen. Another wife and family had succeeded the first, but life seemed to sour on Larry. He was an ill-tempered failure, feeling that God and man were against him. The old Healeys had seceded from "the wan thrue Church", owing, it was said, to a row with the hierarchy regarding their marriage or lack of it, and the consequence was that the Healeys of the second generation had no religion as a buttress of respectability.

Such were Aileen's antecedents at the time of the muster at Ten Creeks Run. Debts and minor distresses were the family's portion at Neangen. The girls hoped for marriage as a way of mending their fortunes, but the two of the first marriage were as plain as kitchen aprons and without style, while Aileen lacked head to market herself, and the family were alert to prevent their best ewe lamb from throwing herself away.

The news about old Stanton was hopeful. Not only was he rich but he had standing, and most of the higher squattocracy now ignored the Healeys unless they needed a night's lodging when business led them past Neangen.

*

Stanton turned back from Wamgambril Flats where the lone selection of his dummy secured the eye of a mountainous horse and cattle run. He retraced his way across creeks and ferny gullies through the cool depths of thousands of square miles of timber broken only by the tiny spring-head flats of the plateaux amid the ranges. There were tucker and tea in his saddle-bags of calfskin, and a quart pot on the D. He went steadily and mused on the draft of colts and fillies, and what he might net from his wool on Turrill Turrill, but most of all he thought of Aileen Healey and felt young again. A reawakening zest in life was throwing a magic veil over things once more.

Many men older than he took unto themselves wives. It was not as if Aileen were a child. She had come of age this year or two. He could set her off in a way that none of her other admirers could approach. Lucy might think him a fool, though she was not situated to say what she really thought to any devastating extent. Why the deuce couldn't she pull it off with Bert? That would leave him, Jack, free and give him an excuse for marriage which a confirmed bachelor so well catered for lacked. It would do old Bert a world of good to get married, but SP-over-J did not believe he had the red blood in him these days. SP-over-J chuckled in the elation of the resurgence of his own blood.

A day or two later he announced his intention of running into Bool Bool to sign some papers. Arrived in the little town he rode to the saddler's and gave a satisfactory order for gear including a smart pair of leggings. Next he called at the house adjacent to the bank, the windows of which announced A. A. RANKIN & SON, SOLICITORS. It was the son, a pleasant man in the forties, that received Stanton.

"Well, Jack, what can I do for you today? How's the horse market?"

"Fair to middling. How're yourself and Fannie?"

"Fine, thanks."

"How are things financially—everyone paid up and independent, or is there a mortgage or two kicking round?"

"As a matter of fact there are a couple going begging, but nothing juicy."

"Do you mind telling me what they are?"

"Old Larry Healey is trying to raise something more on that dingo-run he has at Neangen, and the Dices want a covering mortgage on Bookaledgeree."

"Who has it now?"

"Tom Saunders."

"Is he foreclosing?"

"No, but the Dices probably want to get out of his clutches."

"Bookaledgeree is a wilderness of briars—cost more than it's worth—tears all the wool off the sheep's backs. Neangen would be better for horses."

"I can get you the bank's valuation."

"I want to work through the bank, if you'll fix it up privately. When I have money going, I like to put it in the old district."

"The right spirit, Jack. If more had it the place would progress more rapidly."

Details of the mortgages on Neangen and Bookaledgeree were followed by gossipy chat about people, no taint of ideas on either side, then Stanton withdrew till next day. Two days later he rode home with a feeling of accomplishment. His next move was to complain to his sister that Milly was running wild. He gave instructions for a letter to Poole stating that if he brought Milly as far as Neangen, he, Stanton, would go there to meet her, since he had to go in that direction to inspect horses that were for sale.

The official opening of the new bridge was not far off, so Poole wrote to Mrs Saunders that he would bring Milly to the festival. Stanton could not be too fussy, but not to be robbed of his excuse for going to Neangen he set out to inspect horses as originally planned. He was spruce as to horse and gear. He was wearing a new hat and had trimmed his beard in the fashionable Prince of Wales clip. He would have liked to shave it off, but for the present lacked the assurance for such an innovation.

By some miscalculation, as he said, he got to Neangen in advance of Milly. "Can you suffer me an extra day?" he inquired of Aileen.

Milly and her Uncle Bert arrived next day, Milly riding Romp, the exquisite galloway, now of perfect manners.