Читать книгу Ten Creeks Run - Miles Franklin - Страница 6

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The most interesting public event for a year round Bool Bool was to be the opening of the new bridge. The punt that had carried the main street across the Yarrabongo to join the Great Southern Road from Sydney to Melbourne had in the late sixties been replaced by a wooden erection. This structure in turn had given way to a bridge with ornamental arches painted white, the pride of the inhabitants, and the New Crossing on the edge of Stanton's Plains had been furnished with a punt. It was this punt, which in the course of progress was being superseded by a second bridge, that Lewis Mortimer, the local M.P., had bagged for his electorate. Mortimer had been invited to open it, but the old warrior was more renowned for his tact than his oratory. Old Mrs Mazere, the oldest pioneer and chief of the chief clan of the district, should open the bridge, while he made a speech about the wonders of the valley and the intelligent progressive spirit of the constituents whom he had the honour to represent.

The celebration coincided with Mrs Mazere's seventy-eighth birthday, and the double event was bringing people from a wide radius. The bridge was to be opened in the morning and clinched by a banquet, the evening to be given to a grand subscription ball and supper. The Rev. Archdeacon Fish and the Rev. Father O'Halloran were both patrons of this. Tickets were a guinea each, proceeds to be divided between the local hospital and the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches. Considering the good cause, old Mrs Mazere had consented to open the ball. The subject put the price of wool and maize and cattle and horses in the shade for a day or two and temporarily eclipsed local scandals, only to germinate a fresh crop.

When Milly arrived at Neangen, Julie, her immediate contemporary among the young Healeys, pleaded for her to remain the intervening nights instead of proceeding to Bool Bool. This suited SP-over-J, and Poole, always of placid mind, thought it better not to add to the household of Three Rivers while preparations were raging.

"There's been a great struggle to get Great-grandma Mazere rigged up for the shivoo. Fannie sent to Sydney to get Rhoda to choose a new bonnet, but Great-grandma jibbed at it. It's been picked to pieces two or three times and made look as nearly like the old one as possible, the one she took to when old Mr Mazere died," said Joanna.

"Old Bill Prendergast is coming from Gundagai to drive her over the bridge to open it with his grey four-in-hand, and they've got about an acre of tents put up for the banquet," added Larry, jun.

Uncle Jack felt convicted of family dereliction to be cavorting with the Healeys, and to have Milly and Poole there with him while his sister was away back at Ten Creeks. As a compromise he sent Tommy Roper to fetch her, coupled with the courtesy of announcing that he and Milly and Poole would be coming together.

*

Thus when the big day dawned the Healeys had the honour of Poole and Jack Stanton as their escorts. Larry, sen., wife, Joanna, and small fry filled the shabby buggy drawn by a pair of long-tailed horses. Young Larry, Alf Timson, and Norah galloped away from their dust on horseback.

Poole was surprised that Stanton should appear on such an occasion with the Healeys instead of with his own people from the Plains. He knew it would be unpleasant for Lucy Saunders to have Milly in that company, and he felt he owed it to the child to stay with her. "Old Jack must be fairly collared," he mused, looking on. "Old fool, at his time of life! The little girl is sweet and pretty, but weak—the breed is lacking—an old fool with a young wife is as bad a team as a Clydesdale yoked to a sprinter."

Milly and Julie capered round Uncle Bert, but Julie's old Neddy was outclassed by the incomparable Romp, groomed till her hide was like polished granite, richly caparisoned and with smartly hogged mane and tail. The little girls amused themselves counting the snake-tracks in the soft dust, counting the goannas that ran up the trees and looked at them, counting Tommy Roper's dead beasts or Riverina dead sheep, counting anything that made a game.

Aileen, a picture of slender grace in a new habit on her easy old chestnut, Miss Muffet, was attended by Uncle Jack on a showy four-year-old. Movement was to be seen as they turned out of the timber on the Neangen road and came in view of the iron roof of Bookaledgeree among its bower of fruit and ornamental trees, with the cleared mile between the homestead and main road.

Milly looked for her friend Ronald to put the right valuation on Romp's excellencies. Milly was a wholesome young thing still mentally undisturbed by her budding womanhood. Ronald was her chum and admirer; that she might be an intruder had not yet occurred to her. Julie, not of such wholesome mind and absorption, watched for Ronald with an excitement born of words overheard.

As the Bookaledgeree party grew clearer, Aileen's heart fluttered deliciously to recognize Ronald with his sisters Ida and Olive. Mrs Dice and younger members of the family followed in the buggy. Old Dice had been dead some years. Mrs Dice had been Jane Freeborn, daughter of old Mrs Mazere's brother Matthew.

The Dices reached the public road as the Neangen riders neared. Notice of Milly's prodigy could not be omitted. Ronald, while giving this, employed a stratagem to get Aileen, and left Jack Stanton and Poole with Olive and Ida, who made themselves excessively agreeable. Milly was floored by the defection of Ronald, but he was speedily topping the next ridge with Aileen on her silly old chestnut, which everyone was agreed was only fit for dingo baits. Something in the air checked Milly's impulse to overtake them: she had to be content with the admiration won by Romp from every other traveller.

"Look, Ma, Aileen has galloped away from Mr Stanton with Ron Dice," observed Julie, riding close to her parents' shandrydan to whisper sententiously.

"I'm not blind," replied Mrs Healey.

"Hold your tongue, and ride away or you'll get the horse's foot between the spokes," said her father roughly.

The day, one of the hottest of the season, had started auspiciously with a sharp thunder-shower that left the air clear and sparkling and laid the dust, so deep on the rich river flats that if disturbed it could be so dense as to cause collisions. The organizing committee had arranged a procession to approach by way of the right bank and cross the new bridge. Terence M'Haffety, butcher in the old days and later landlord of the Royal Hotel, was Mayor that year, and a fine hearty father of the township he proved, always ready to put colour and dash into his functioning. For the bridge affair he had an energetic coadjutor in his old colleague, Prendergast, another publican from Gundagai, and in the old days "Cornstalk Bill", redoubtable coach-driver. He ran the best hotel in Gundagai, and in the beginning had owned several of the subsidiary lines of coaches later swallowed by the world-wide Cobb & Co.

Prendergast was a coaching authority, and had driven six-in-hand before the Governor in Sydney. He was unhappy away from coaches and horses, and after retiring to be host of the Cornstalk Arms, had returned to the road for his health. In her widowed years old Mrs Mazere made visits to her son Hugh, beyond Cootamundra, and always arranged her journeys for the days when William, as she addressed him, was driving. He was unfailingly delighted to have her. On such occasions the box-seat was sacred to her, and he put extra dash into his driving for her appreciation. There she enjoyed his skill with four or five coachers, which like as not of late years bore the Jinninjinninbong or Ten Creeks brands on their hides. Mrs Bill, or "Squinty Ellen" of earlier years, had been reared in the Three Rivers kitchen, and the pair treated the old lady as a State guest and dined with her in a private sitting-room.

It was now two or three years since she had gone to Cootamundra; time and rheumatics were restricting her activities. The appearance for the bridge was in the family sociable. The coach had had to be abandoned because the box-seat was now too high for the old lady to reach with comfort. Mr and Mrs Prendergast arrived the clay before with the four-in-hand of iron-greys, driven at a rattling bat to steady them for the procession.

The ceremony was timed for 11.30. About an hour earlier there was a muster at Three Rivers. The Mayor and Mayoress were to go first, followed by Mortimer, M.P., and his wife, and then Mrs Mazere, decked in new black silk and the adapted Sydney bonnet. Her grandson Philip lifted her up beside Prendergast. The seat held three, so Mrs Prendergast had the honour of sitting beside the great lady. In the back were Mr and Mrs Philip Mazere and Mr and Mrs Jacob Isaacs and Mrs Rachel Labosseer and Emily. After this came Archdeacon Fish and Father O'Halloran, the banker, the lawyers, other business and professional people, and numerous old pioneers.

The procession turned upstream to the new bridge, and those assembled cheered its arrival. Mrs Mazere nodded and smiled under a tricky little parasol in acknowledgment; several rushed to the bit-rings while Bert Poole helped his old friend to alight. It was his arm she leant upon to stand with the Member, the Mayor, and clergy. It was an honour accorded Poole and in sentimental favour since long ago he had been engaged to lovely Emily Mazere, drowned just after her engagement to him had been announced. A little Brennan girl came forward with a bunch of roses. Mrs Mazere took them, kissed the child, and handed the flowers to her eldest great-granddaughter, Marcia, who was lady-in-waiting. The Mayor presented the gold scissors and Mrs Mazere cut the ribbon and smashed the bottle of champagne with a few baptismal, God-fearing words. Poole lifted her back to her seat and the hard-banded hoofs of the coachers made imposing thunder on the decking of the new structure as amid prolonged cheering they crossed it. Then amid handshakings and greetings and congratulations to the banquet in the marquee at which Mrs Mazere sat at the top of the chief table with the Mayor and Member on either side, and an exchange in wives on either side of them, and so on.

There were those who early were not so happy as might have been. One was Flash Billy in his strapped trousers and cabbage-tree forgathering among his kind on the outskirts.

"Did yous see ole Poole ridin' the Corroboree colt, an' him actin' as tame as ole Flea Creek with a couple of hundred of salt on him?" inquired Long Billy, joining him. "It seems he wasn't no outlaw after all."

"Hell!" said Flash Billy. "You know a terrible lot, don't you?"

"What's the matter?"

"Oh, shut your gob, you—. I've bitten me tongue."

"Did yous twig young Aileen and Ronnie with their horses sweatin', an' a long way behind them ole Skinny Guts stuck with Olive and Ider? Ron cut out the old bloke at Bookaledgeree." This from Tim Porter.

"The reel fun," said Tommy Roper, "was the missus when I come an' told her the boss was stayin' with the Healeys and she had to come on her own."

"An' young Milly," contributed Jerry Riddall. "You should er seen her ridin' up on the Young Whisker filly as simple as if it wuz the ole mare. What do yer make o' that, Billy?"

"The —— fillies 'll let women an' lunatics ride 'en every time, that's well known, ain't it? Ain't you heard ole know-all Mick Muldoon skitin' about it, blast you, as well as Mr Eustace Lord Muck the Earl of Blenkinsop?"

"Yes, but Poole an' Corroboree ain't no lunatic nor ole woman neither."

"If you ask me, I think his brain is softenin' an' he is becomin' an ole woman, an' the horse knows it."

"My cripes, I don't know when I've laughed so much," said Tommy Roper. "There was the missus drivin' with ole Dan Spires sittin' up with her like an ole cluckin' hen. Good iron wingey, she was pleased!"

She certainly had been in Roper's ironic sense. Arrived at the bridge she sprang straight over the wheel to express her displeasure to her brother.

"I expected you at Stanton's Plains last night to come with me in the procession," she said.

"You can drive as well as I can."

"I can drive better for that matter, but where on earth were you?"

"At Neangen. I sent you word."

"Among that crowd! It is foolish to encourage such people. I won't have Milly getting familiar with them. They ought to be ashamed of themselves to appear on an occasion like this!"

"Great snakes, it's a public function and the bridge will be of more use to them than anyone."

"Yes, but it's a Mazere and Stanton and all our crowd's affair, and considering what old Denny Healey did to the Labosseers about Eueurunda I consider—"

Milly interrupted by rushing up to greet her mother and to announce that the procession was coming. Mrs Saunders turned perforce towards the business of the day. Meeting Aileen Healey on the way to the platform she gave her the curtest of nods, which covered Aileen with confusion since there had been no coolness during the muster. Old Larry she refused to recognize at all, and she recalled Milly sharply from Julie's embrace. Others besides her brother noted these actions.

The banquet was a tedious function with jellies melting and blowflies attacking the meats. Many of the younger fraternity stole away to flirt and gossip in the shade of the big gums along the river-banks, while the Mayor presided flamboyantly and his wife supported him like a sunflower. The more platitudinous, flowery, and distended the speeches the more highly were they esteemed as gems of oratory and wit, and the bridge, officially christened in honour of Mortimer who had secured it, was better known as old Mrs Mazere's.

The old lady was returning to Three Rivers after the banquet to rest for the evening function. Prendergast's greys stood reefing at the bits, with eager volunteers holding the rings. Charlotte, wife of old Mrs Mazere's eldest son, went with her and persuaded her husband to go too, to be out of the way of the drinking. Young Mazeres or Stantons or Labosseers filled up the back for the ride in the chariot of honour, and because one place is as good as and occasionally better than another to the infatuated. Beside her mother went Mrs Rachel Labosseer of Coolooluk, Mrs Mazere's widowed daughter. It was against her husband that the Healeys had employed dummies to obtain Eueurunda, the Monaro station on which the Healeys never throve.

On the contrary, Mrs Labosseer had since prospered and was honoured second only to her mother. Now a handsome woman in the fifties, she was surrounded by sons that were paragons and daughters that were accounted perfect. Her ringing laugh could be heard as Poole assisted her into the sociable and said something about engaging her for a polka at the ball.

"Oh, Uncle Herbert, did mamma ever dance?" exclaimed Emily in surprise. All of the Mazere clan called Poole uncle because of his engagement to their beautiful Aunt Emily.

"Your mamma could dance better than any girl I know when she was your age. She once gave me lessons."

"Mamma, you never let us dance at all! I thought you did not believe in it."

"Because I did certain things when I was young and wicked is no reason I should countenance wickedness now," said mamma, with the finality which distinguished all her pronouncements on matters of conduct for her family.

The volunteers let go, the greys bounded away; no one missed the fine sweep of them up the approach to the bridge and as they lilted round the edge of Stanton's Plains by the way they had come.

"Ah," said Terence M'Haffety, who had a prominent place in the departure. "Sure, they're all roight in their way, but the bist Oi iver saw was ould Poole, the dad of Bert here, swhinging five bays up through the town there, ivery wan of thim on their hoind legs, an' his missus with a baby in her arms sittin' there unconscious as if 'twas a perambulathor! There was a man for ye!"

"You should not have mentioned that," said Isaacs, drawing him aside. "That was the time old Poole came to the twenty-first birthday ball of Emily, and she was drownded just after."

"Maybe Oi shouldn't have, Jacob. Poor ould Mrs Mazere, gettin' very whoite. The last of the rale ould wans left. Not another of the originals left of the first whoites on the Yarrabongo. All the ould Saunderses and Stantons and Brennans with their wives in the cimitery this sivin years or more. Sure, whin the ould lady is gone, Jacob, it's me and you next."

*

"This makes me feel young again, William," remarked Mrs Mazere, when the horses had settled down on the level plains. She had enjoyed the outing and reception. "It reminds me of the days I used to go riding over the mountains to Monaro and thought nothing of it."

"You must come with me to Gundagai one of these days. It is too long since you came our way."

"I expect I shall not take many more runs till I go to rest beside Papa in the hollow," she remarked, but not gloomily. "If the Lord spares you to my age, William, you'll know that it is a lonely condition—not one left of my own age for me to talk to about the things we knew."

"I never thought of that before, Mrs Mazere. It will be dashed lonely for some of us to be without you when the time comes. Now ain't those leaders pearls!" he observed to divert her. "I'd like to be driving them for a wedding couple, the next best thing after this here today."

"There will be plenty of weddings about presently, with so many young people. I cannot remember who they all are...I'd like you to drive me at my funeral, William," she added.

"Well, I'll be blowed, Mrs Mazere, for you to think of such a dull thing on this happy day! You're good for another ten or twenty years yet, I'm hanged if you're not! You'll very likely be at my funeral first."

"And I hope everyone will come to my funeral—all the women and girls as well as the men, and say a last good-bye to me. I have known so many of them since they were born, since before they were born, so to speak, and I pray to meet them hereafter."

She had insisted upon attending Emily's funeral long ago against the usual custom for women, and all her women friends had supported her on that tragic occasion. She had continued the practice of seeing all her friends to the grave. In the case of old Tim Brennan of The Gap, and one or two others, Prendergast recalled that she had been the only member of her sex to pay the departed this last courtesy.

On sped the greys, nodding their crested heads in the annoyance of the flies, pulling their burden gaily between the river singing the G minor Ballade over its great boulders and the fields of dark-green maize that stretched away to yellowing grasses that carpeted the foothills of the undenuded mountains where the Gap known as Brennan's let the Wamgambril through.

"If you drive me on my last journey, William," pursued the old lady, "I'd like to be driven like this, and not that dismal creeping pace of funerals."

"Right you are, Mrs Mazere. It shall be as you wish: Mrs Labosseer can be witness. But I hope I'll be too old to handle the ribbons by that time."

*

No thought of their end entered the thoughts of others. Poole headed a committee to arrange impromptu sports. Specially enjoyable were these to the rising generation, and the half-crowns they won seemed better prizes and bulked larger than many later honours.

The day was as full of youthful zest and notoriety to Milly as it was of ripe honour and homage to Great-grandma Mazere. Her pony was the wonder of all owing to the tricks taught her by Flash Billy. Mr Mortimer asked for a special exhibition and Milly made Romp kneel while she mounted, and lie down and pretend to be dead, and jump a bush held up in full view of Archdeacon Fish and Father O'Halloran and the assembled squattocracy.

Another notable was Dot Saunders, Milly's cousin, the leading amateur equestrienne of the district and a belle who had more admirers than she could use. Riding at one of the up-country shows last autumn, the Governor, himself a considerable figure a cheval, had been so delighted with her horsemanship that he asked her to ride at the Sydney Show. This she had done at Easter, carrying off everything she entered for. She, too, was requested to give an exhibition. Hurdles were placed and she entertained the beholders by her own grace and skill as well as that of her famous horse, the Princess. She was active and efficient, with hands strong and quiet, and was good to see in her tight-fitting habit, and her yellow plaits showing under her billycock hat. She had them all dithering because of her vitality, and above all for the egg-boiler cast of her waist, which in those days was equal to a dowry to a maiden in the marriage arena.

With all the admiration Dot was receiving she saw hardly anything of Ronald Dice, the only young man present who attracted her. He and Jack Stanton were increasingly infatuated with Aileen Healey, and making for her the most exciting and successful day she had so far experienced. The Dice girls also had a pleasant day squired intermittently by Poole. There was a sporting chance that he still could be captured, an idea furthered by the comfort of his manner.

Dot was a doer, not a dreamer. When SP-over-J secured Aileen's attention she suggested to Ronald, "What about us riding in the pairs at the next show in Bool Bool, and at Gundagai too?"

"It would have been ripping, Dot," replied Ronald. "Only I have just fixed up with Miss Healey."

"I didn't know she could ride." There was in that locality a gulf between those who could travel on horseback and those who could disport themselves over hurdles.

"She can do well enough for the pairs," said Ronald with that instinct for escaping contention that made him popular. "I didn't dream of looking so high as you, Dot."

"Have you got a horse for Miss Healey?"

"Good enough for the pairs."

"I ought to lend her Susan Nipper, only she takes riding," said Dot to cover her disappointment, and moved away holding her new-fashioned habit smartly round her. So daring an innovation called out observations rooted in admiration and envy. It fitted like a snake-skin to the waist, and as a special feature was destitute of gathers to disguise her back contour, and that was daring for Dot's decade.

She walked straight over to Herbert Poole. "Mr Poole, will you ride in the pairs with me at the show?"

"I should think that grey of Ronald's would pair better with your Princess than anything I've got."

"I've asked him, but he's already fixed up with Aileen Healey." There was a wistful, tired look in the bright sunburnt face, and Poole with his unfailing kindness said, "All right, Dot, if you want me to."

Ronald Dice had a word with Aileen at the earliest opportunity. "I want you to ride with me in the pairs at the show. Don't say no, for I've already said we are going to."

"Oh, Ronnie, how wonderful! However did you think of it! I don't believe I can ride well enough."

"Oh yes you can."

"Perhaps Pa won't let me."

"He'll have to. Dot Saunders is always riding at the shows and she's no end of a swell."

"Yes, but the Governor has praised her, and had her at Government House."

"Well, we'll take it as settled for a start anyhow, and tell anyone who asks you for a dance tonight that you are already engaged."

"Oh, Ronnie, how heavenly!" she breathed, her eyes like stars.