Читать книгу Up the Country - Miles Franklin - Страница 15

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Before spring came again and melted the snow from the passes of the Bogongs, a change had taken place in the household of Curradoobidgee. The altered appearance of old Pool had been for some time the pabulum for wit-sharpening among the settlers of his district.

"He's dug out a Christian name. He's become James Pool," sniggered Timson of Wombat Hill to Squeaky Gilbert of Maryvale and Larry Healey of Little River.

"Yes, an' he's cut a yard off his beard an' half a yard off his hair an' got a new hat!"

"He was mighty flash in his young days maybe, an' he's breakin' out again in his dotage," said Larry Healey.

"It's the Mazere connection is going to his head," said Timson.

"Old Mazere, I hear, keeps as cool as a Greenland seal about that an' won't have Philip near the place." This from Gilbert.

The next time they met, old Healey began, "Did ye hear that all the fish is dead in the Yeuecumheen? Pool's Creek runs into it an' he took a bogey after twenty years!" This raised loud guffaws. Larry Healey had a sharp tongue in his head.

Then, when Pool was seen in Cooma in a fine suit of Parramatta tweeds and a collar—in broad daylight, by the vast population that frequented the two stores and pubs, the smithy and carpenter's shop—they said he was either going to turn bushranger and outdo Jacky-Jacky as a swell, or get married. They were right on the last count. Miss Harriet Mayborn was to become the second Mrs Pool.

The fact that Pool should marry her was not as surprising as that she should marry him, in that society in which every girl who had four limbs and reasonable features lived in a state of siege from the age of fourteen until she capitulated.

"Pretty good for an old boko of forty-seven!" chuckled Timson. "Sure she's no chicken herself, must be all of that!" said Healey.

"Aye, but a highly educated lady from England—" interposed McEachern of Gowandale.

"Och, ye don't know what's behind these ladies from England. I reckon she's never had another chance. Lots of them over there don't."

Miss Mayborn was herself the most surprised of all to realise that she was now Mrs Pool, an estate she could never have countenanced save for the fact that she had for ever cut the painter of her past. Coming to Pool's Creek with a mind unprejudiced by the rumours that had dogged its master, she found him shy but neither exclusive nor disagreeable. She saw him in a light that his fellow settlers would have incredulously derided. Some months after her arrival it had occurred to her, as she sat before the fourteen-foot hearth on winter nights enjoying one of the good novels of the day, that he had no similar outlet, and she suggested reading aloud.

"Oh, all right," he had said, not without suspicion. She began with the up-country papers to which he listened with avidity. Next she experimented with an adventurous romance of Bulwer Lytton and then went on to Scott. The effect was magical. It opened up a captivating world to that half-wild, restricted, lonely mind that had never known a lecture or a play. Since man began to keep home in a cave, he has been held captive by the story teller; this one listened greedily to any sort of a story with a naive though quick understanding and a memory as photographic as a child's. Robinson Crusoe caused him to walk up and down with excitement, his taciturnity vanished in a flood of discussion.

Then, one evening, after she had been with the children about eighteen months, Miss Mayborn remarked, "Dear me, the children are all getting on so well with their lessons that I'll have to leave you and find fresh pupils!"

Thoroughly alarmed by the prospect of losing the new world that had been opened up to his deprived understanding, Pool waited till the children were in bed and then plunged in desperately. "Supposin' you an' me should get spliced like them people you're readin' about?"

Miss Mayborn, scion of the English aristocracy, was dumbfounded but did not lose her head. Pool, fearing disapproval, hurried on, "You ain't got anyone belonging to you an' the youngsters won't be so long disappearing now. Besides, they are all set on you.

"Please say no more. I must think about this."

"How long will you take to think—a week?"

"Oh, no, two months at least."

"I'd rather you'd make it only one," said Pool.

Miss Mayborn retreated to a disturbed and sleepless night. She was in a cleft stick. She must accept his proposition or abandon this refuge where she was free from the tragedy of her past. To find another such refuge would be more difficult each year and all hope of a competency in old age had gone in the effort to save her brother twenty years before. This life was primitive and lonely when compared with what she had been brought up to expect, but it was sweet to be free from ostracism and among people who loved and had need of one.

To gauge the children's attitude, she hinted at leaving them. Their spontaneous response was to burst into wild howls of dismay. Her heart was warmed and reassured.

What better could she do with her life?

She was of that managing disposition which found greater satisfaction in reconstructing a tumbledown house along her own lines than in being presented with a palace unalterable. Women of her type revel in improving the most unlikely material. Pool was only about her own age and a splendid physical specimen. Clipped and dressed properly, she recognised he would be handsome. All her snobbery and sense of superiority left her. Someone really wanted her, found her companionship a source of delight. Her motherliness and generosity saw a man who only wanted a chance.

She capitulated.