Читать книгу Up the Country - Miles Franklin - Страница 6

Table of Contents

There was an uproar at Three Rivers when Mazere Senior learned that his firstborn had, after the way of his sex, looked below him.

"Never, never, will I have that baggage here!" he roared.

"Who ever said she was such a thing?" inquired his wife mildly, but alert and skilled in the rising gale.

"She's a hussy, you fool woman. What else can she be—the daughter of that old lag—and you know what her mother's morals must have been."

"Poor soul! She might be let rest in her grave. And what does it matter when the first child came, as it's in the grave with her?"

"The only time I ever saw her, she seemed a shingle short."

"You might have a whole roof short if you'd had thirteen children, and half of them not surviving."

"You'd like to drag your own son down to convict level! You'd—"

"Since when has Charlotte been a convict?"

"I'm not talking of the hussy—the old gorilla's the one I mean! Don't pretend to misunderstand me, Rachel," shouted Mazere.

"And Philip is not marrying the old gorilla, as I have ever heard," returned his wife.

"Who ever got anything but foolishness and equivocation in return for trying to reason with a woman! They've nothing inside their heads! The devil's invention, the lot of them! If he marries that hussy he'll never have a shilling of mine, and if you countenance him, I'll turn you out with him."

"You'd be very glad to turn me in again," said Mrs Mazere imperturbably.

"If he marries her, I change my will. Take note of that!"

The changing fortunes of the new district of Bool Bool and the unfailing increase of Mazere's family and property necessitated the drafting of a new will or codicils at least yearly, so this threat failed to impress Mrs Mazere. And Philip would have been a puling specimen at variance with his generation and environment if, in weighing a slice of his father's run against that rare prize of a beautiful maid, the scales had not gone down with a hump.

Old Pool liked Philip's courteous, kindly ways and Philip found Pool most obliging and capable. Further than this the young man knew not what Pool thought, for he kept his usual silence and let matters take their course. And the course from which Philip would not be deflected was that up past Billy-go-Billy and on to the Pool homestead at Maneroo. Those were the days when certain horses, known as "ninety milers", were capable of ninety miles on Saturday and ninety again on Sunday night—and what miles! So steep in the ascent that the rider abandoned his saddle and was towed up by his beast's tail, so sheer in the descent that the horse's hind legs often propped far ahead of his forefeet. Girth-galls and backs sore enough to wring pity from the Inquisition were familiar, but wind unbreakable and splendid bottled hoofs that had been moulded by the granite ridges of the area carried young love along the marked-tree bridle tracks around precipitous sidelings where the leaping, lilting Jenningningahma has its source amid the Bogongs and beyond, up and on to the roof of Australia.