Читать книгу Up the Country - Miles Franklin - Страница 10

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Bert's breathing soon announced the dreamless slumber he had earned, but Mrs Mazere lay awake awhile, contemplating the significance of the milestone she had reached. A murmur of voices came from the young couple's tent and she felt a great tenderness towards them as she thought of all that lay before them, It came gradually, thank heaven. She felt particularly tender towards Charlotte, for in her experience God's will towards women was hard and unrelenting. But Charlotte had the good fortune to be starting off with her own dear gentle boy. She herself had been rushed into marriage at the age of seventeen. Not with her consent would any of her own daughters marry before eighteen, and if the deed could be warded off till they were twenty-one, so much the better.

It seemed but yesterday that Philip was a little blue-eyed, baldheaded thing whimpering as he first nuzzled for her breast and now...she pulled up with a jerk. It was many years since his christening had made his father "Old Philip". She recalled the shock with which she had first heard her husband spoken of as "the old man", but he was six years her senior and she had soon settled down again. Now, since yesterday, she had become old Mrs Mazere. Old Mrs Mazere. Mrs Mazere Senior on envelopes, but by word of mouth—old Mrs Mazere.

She sat up on her couch. Old! No more children! Old...stiff...helpless!

The time had fled like the mists from Three Rivers flats on a winter morning when the sun came up. Time seemed to be bolting downhill, out of control. Another twenty-five years and she would nearly have completed man's allotted span. What then would it matter whether one had borne ten or twenty children, or if one's spouse had been bad-tempered or easygoing? Taking him on the whole, Philip Senior had not been so bad. He was a good provider, not mean with his money, healthy, honest, energetic, sober, always in the lead..."God give me strength to bear what may come to me in the future as Thou hast done hitherto, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen," she whispered and, turning on her couch, she too slept soundly, leaving the early-summer night to the exquisitely eerie wail of the curlews and the jingle of hobbles and bells, as the horses grazed around the camp.