Читать книгу Up the Country - Miles Franklin - Страница 3

It was the night, remembered long after by the old hands, of the greatest flood ever seen up the country.

After a thirsty January with rain long overdue, the showers that began on Saturday at noon were wholeheartedly welcomed by the graziers, even in the valley of Bool Bool which, situated at the lower edge of the wild, mountainous regions of south-eastern New South Wales and veined by scores of rivers and a thousand crystal creeks, had never been known to go dry.

"The rain," remarked Philip Mazere Senior, master of the property known as Three Rivers, complacently on Saturday evening, "is just in the nick of time to save the harvest and top up the stock for the autumn."

But on Monday morning his old friend Brennan, of The Gap, squinting shrewdly at the heavens, exclaimed, "By the pipers, we've had enough for this time of year! It had better leave off now." For there was danger of it flattening the tall, tasselled maize that adorned the flats of Three Rivers farm and those near by, and which was said to grow taller there than anywhere else in the world.

On Monday afternoon, coach-driver Cornstalk Bill, Parramatta born and so named for his lanky height, came in from Gundagai with the mail. He had left his vehicle, which, with more regard to courtesy than accuracy was called a coach, at Billings' Half Way House on the other side of the Yarrabongo River and had finished the trip on horseback.

"My oath!" said he, flinging off his steaming oilskin in the great kitchen of Three Rivers and shaking the water from his wide-brimmed cabbage-tree hat with its bobbing cork fly-chasers. "Another hour and I'd never have got through with the mail bags. Ole Boomerang was almost swimmin' as it was, and in the Bulgoa we was carried near half a mile below the crossin', the current was that swift."

There were various reasons for Bill's appearance at Three Rivers. For mostly Ellen, the servant woman, was a grass widow far from decrepit whose unfortunate squint militated hardly at all against her in the undersupplied market of marriageable women. Further, Bill was agent for Miss Rachel, whose wedding to Mr Simon Labosseer was to be celebrated the next day. When the trousseau materials had originally arrived from Sydney, it had been found that the ribbon to be put on or puffed out or sewed up, or something as recondite or as indispensable to one of the bridal costumes, was missing. The little general stores up the country, though prodigies for their era, were unequal to remedying the deficiency, and it had been necessary to send all the way to Sydney again, with Cornstalk Bill as an important link in the chain of messengers. As this was the last day upon which the ribbon could arrive in time for the wedding, the bride had been on tenterhooks waiting for the trusty Bill, who had no more than reached the kitchen before Emily, the third daughter of the house, a handsome girl nearing sixteen and chief bridesmaid on the morrow, appeared, representing her sister.

"Good afternoon, Miss Emily! I got it," Bill announced. "At least I got somethin' in here. I thought I'd have to tie it on me head crossin' the Bulgoa."

"Was the river so very high?" she asked, eagerly awaiting the parcel that was making a bulge inside his shirt.

"It's a banker, miss, an' risin' fast. If that young man of Miss Rachel's doesn't turn up with the parson within half an hour, there won't he no weddin' tomorrer, nor the next day, nor the next."

"He's a pretty good swimmer," said Emily in her pleasant way.

"He'll have to be a fish, if you arsk me, with the river a mile wide at Gundagai by now—an' wot about the poor ole Bishop?"

"We'll just have to get a balloon or build a raft," said Emily gaily, departing with her spoils. "Thank you, Bill. Ellen will give you something to eat."

"She might and then again she mightn't! Go an' drain yourself off on the verandah. This ain't a fish pond, you know, especially not for sharks," said Ellen tartly, but with a sufficiently flirtatious glance that Bill, going out obediently, felt encouraged to stand near enough to the door to converse.

"Where's the Boss?" he inquired, lowering his voice. The master of Three Rivers was known as a real old John Bull, with a temper to match.

"He went over to the flats this mornin' to see how the crops an' stock are farin'."

"He won't get back except by boat if he don't cross hack pretty soon. By this time tomorrer the melons will be well on the way to Gundagai, if I know anythin'."

"Which you don't, if you want my opinion," retorted Ellen, going out to look with him across the rich flats, grey with rain. From the rise on which Three Rivers homestead was placed in the fork of the Yarrabongo and Bulgoa rivers, eastward across the Yarrabongo stretched one of the most fertile valleys in the colony. The boast of its inhabitants was that the soil was so rich that the melon and pumpkin vines wore out their produce dragging it after them.

"Must have rained a dooce of a lot higher up," observed Bill. "It doesn't look like givin' over," said Ellen. "Don't you think Mr Labosseer'll be able to get the parson here?"

"He won't get himself here, if you arsk me. Aw, Labosseer's such an old codger! I don't know why Miss Rachel chose him when there's plenty of nice young fellers who'd be glad to be in his shoes."

"She likes 'em a bit grown up, not these young things just weaned," said Ellen, feeling the authority of her twenty-six years against his twenty-two.

Bill's reply was drowned out by an influx of children. They were led by Fannie and Rhoda, the youngest members of the Mazere family, aged four and a half and two respectively. (Though their mother fervently hoped that they might be the last of her brood, she was still not able to feel out of the woods at the age of forty-four in that era where there was no circumvention of natural fecundity save affliction more devastating than child-bearing itself.) Next came Georgie Stanton, aged three, firstborn of the eldest Mazere Isabel. Her second, a banding of twelve months, was taking his afternoon nap.

Isabel and her husband, George, had a run at Mungee, about thirty miles distant. They had arrived at Three Rivers on horseback on Saturday, just before the rains started, the husband carrying Georgic before him on the pommel and his wife holding the baby in her arms. George's younger brother, Jack, who had been helping with fencing at Mungee, accompanied them. A sturdy old piebald packhorse was laden with their wardrobe and other requirements, including an axe, a quart pot, a gun and jingling hobble chains that made music as they went. Eliza, their servant lass, rode a safe old brumby in the rear. Her employers could not safely leave her behind at Mungee, not with miscellaneous men abounding like prey and not another member of her own sex within thirty miles.

Richard, the second Mazere son, had likewise arrived on Saturday for the wedding. He had come from Nanda, twenty miles in the opposite direction, carrying his infant of eleven months and bringing his wife, Amelia, and her servant girl, all on horseback, to swell the numbers.

"Oh, Bill, I saw what you brought for Rachel," cried flaxen-haired little Rhoda, pretty as a valentine and adored by all.

"I've seen it too. Did you bring me something?" asked the more practical Fannie.

"Did I promise the little girls lollipops?" said Bill, fumbling in his pockets. "I do declare, they must've melted in the Bulgoa!" Anxiety and expectancy mingled on the little faces as Bill, with solemn face, turned out his pockets one by one.

"Aw, he's only gammoning!" said Joseph Mazere, aged seven and the youngest son of the house, who had come into the kitchen with his Man Friday, otherwise Mick Slattery, son of Ellen, aged six and a half. In their wake was little Philip, grandson of old Mazere. Charlotte, his mother, had been a member of the Three Rivers household for some time, having gone there for the birth of her son. Her husband, also called Philip, had gone off to the first gold rush at the Ophir about a year before. Ellen and Charlotte had their grass widowhood as a bond, the difference in their situations being that at intervals Charlotte received letters from her spouse, whereas Ellen heard nothing from her Charlie and did not know if she could rest easy in the rumours of his demise, which more than one candidate for the absentee's conjugal prerogatives was anxiously persuading her to do.

When the old hands up the country tell their yarns of long ago, they are prone sometimes to be garrulous and to hold up the main theme of their narrative to prospect up its tributaries; at this their audience impatiently exclaims, "Gosh, he's like the possums when he starts to spin a yarn!" For possums, when excited by the barking of dogs at the foot of the trees in which they have refuge, will run up and down every branch in turn before returning to the main trunk. So now, while the waters rush and swell in the Jenningningahma, the Nanda, the Bulgoa, the Mungee, the Yarrabongo and a score of water channels thereabout, the good example of the dear old hands must be followed, and the branches of this history explored by the fruitful method of possuming.