Читать книгу All That Swagger - Miles Franklin - Страница 8

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Evans's advertisement appeared when Delacy's family had no idea that he was missing. A lost man in days when convicts were for ever escaping did not attract much attention.

Moore shared a subscription to the Sydney Morning Herald with a friend in Sydney; when opportunity permitted he sent Delacy copies, but opportunity did not occur at the date. Mrs Urquhart did not read and Urquhart was busy. For one reason or another the news of Danny passed unnoticed.

The surgeon continued to marvel that life could be retained during the typhoid state which accompanied the gangrene lingering in the amputated leg. The sufferer showed dangerous irritation under light or noise, so the window was darkened and he was left in quiet for hours. He would take a sip of nourishment only from the hand of Mrs Evans. The probability that he was a person of importance was discounted by his Irish accent, and the fact that he had not been sought. His hosts had the idea that he was an escaping Irish rebel. They were conservative, but too kind to hand over to officialdom any creature so helpless and suffering, and the surgeon was curious to see how long his patient would last.

Also at that time they had bigger worries than a helpless person to whom they had grown accustomed. Hostile blacks kept them in suspense. In that region there had been bitter encounters, with each side guilty of gruesome atrocities. There were floods, and scab in the flocks, and a struggle with an unscrupulous overlander, who tried to usurp Kilpoonta. Evans too met with an accident—broken arm and collarbone—which gave his wife and the surgeon a second patient. As Mr Evans convalesced, Mrs Evans had more time for her first patient and insisted that his improvement was so marked that he would recover. She and the surgeon watched with renewed interest. The poison slowly drained from the wound and at length youth and strength returned Delacy from death. No rontgen rays ever revealed to what extent his brain box had been injured. He regained his mind one morning following an easy night to find himself in a neat bed. A lady was sitting near fashioning tiny garments. That was all for the time. He fell into a long restoring sleep.

A day later he awakened to refinement and easy circumstances as compared with the primitive hut and fur rugs where he had left Johanna and the children. The gentlewoman—still sewing—reminded him of his mother in Ennis, so far away. Was it a dream? If he spoke would this angelic presence dissolve? He slept again.

When dawn once more reddened the levels, he recognized the guffawing birds. The lady was replaced by a rough, sunburned man. Neither heaven nor Ireland.

Another twenty-four hours and he had strength to demand, "Where am I? What has come to me?"

"You had an accident—nasty crack on the head."

His hand went to his shaven poll. "That dayvil of a Lancelot got rid of me; to some extint that I should be in bed with me hair off and not to know it."

His questions were cautiously answered.

"Is rue leg broke?" he demanded, noting the hump in the bedding. "It certainly is."

Danny was tractable. A broken leg was a mere inconvenience. The surgeon insisted upon sleep. Danny slept, too weak for anything else. At each awakening he was increasingly alert. He gave his name and history, but at intervals the surgeon shut off talk in the interests of Danny's head.

He was astonished to be so far out of his course, and startled when he found that the season vacated before Christmas was now into autumn. "Be the powers, me poor Johanna will be thinking I'm dead and eaten by the blacks all this time. How could it happen that I have been in darkness so long?...and a centipede could have recovered all his legs since then."

"Fever reduced you to death's door. Crutches are ready when you get a little strength."

By damn! he'd try his leg that very minute. Mrs Evans was summoned by his loud tones. She explained gently that the fracture had been compound, that to save his life, well, it had been necessary to remove a portion of the bone.

Danny's eyes blazed in blue flame with resistance. He flung the bedclothes back and saw that the mass of lint stopped short. He shouted. He tore the linen away and found an unpleasing stump. When he knew that he had but one leg he gave way, heroically unashamed. Such was his courage that he could afford to be. Implicit in his spiritual and mental fibre was a quality that excluded fear of conviction of cowardice, by himself or others.

Mrs Evans petted him like a child. When his paroxysm subsided he fell asleep and did not wake until the birds were laughing against the sinking sun. Had some long lost god endowed them with derision?

Danny sat up. Mrs Evans protested that he would bring on his death. "Not at all. 'Tis all in the moind, and my moind is set."

Evans could not send a messenger because the blacks were again hostile. Not a man could be spared. Danny was of opinion that the blacks had not been properly treated. He suggested that they should be conciliated with offers of sheep. "Why should ye not pay rint to the poor dayvils?"

This was dismissed as nonsense by the richer and more warlike squatters who had settled on the overland line. Delacy was a sentimental Irishman who had long been "out of his head". The alarums of encounters with aborigines served to detain him while he gained strength.

The tan had faded, leaving his cheeks white. Always spare, his flesh had wasted to show bones as slender as a girl's. He could have passed for a boy but for his beard. The pipe had been lost. He declared that he was the father of three children living, and two dead. His friends' hearts were moved by the hampering loss of a leg to one with such heavy domestic responsibilities plus the fate of wresting a livelihood from impenetrable wilds.

After the first outburst no word of repining was heard. "Sure, better min than meself have achieved greatness with wan leg." Delacy's cheerful pluck endeared him to all. At the end of a week he insisted upon mounting a horse, and would have departed but for the impending siege.

When the blacks retreated towards the Murray, the elder Evans returned from pursuit and agreed to accompany Delacy. He refused the escort of the younger brother because Mrs Evans was on the way to motherhood. She gave her patient her own mare. David Evans limited each day to Delacy's endurance and to prevent the re-opening of the wound. They cut distance by passing Keebah.

Danny could scarcely conquer the flesh during the last half-day. The mare trembled on the edge of the descents, but followed the more ruthlessly urged animals without falling, while Danny clenched his teeth and hung on. Evans suggested camping by the spring, now called Breakfast Lookout, but Danny would not leave his Johanna another night in solitude and doubt. He thought to find her there. What had she to do but superintend Dunn and Doogoolook? lie accepted heroic passivity as Nature's design for women. When he was down on the level he asked for a nip of rum and his hand shook as he took the flask.

Onward, onward, the pain in his mutilated limb overlooked in the excitement of return! None but mild ridges remained. The horse track led where a salt shed was an obelisk of settlement; then the homestead with a timbered rise beyond. The sun had set behind a wild peak leaving the cultivation flat and house plot bathed in molten afterglow, and peopled with birds which had come down from the snow lands for the winter. Scrub wallabies and kangaroos scurried into the shadows at the approach of the horsemen.

Delacy raised his Irish halloa, and the shrill coo-coo-ee-coo that he had learned from his black friends.

"Munny-munny-lumby-adjong-cooo!" *

[* I am indebted to Mrs W. A. Lampe (nee Wilkinson), for this lovely aboriginal call. She grew up on Yellowin Station, one of the early squattages situated in the fountain country of the boogongs and tea-tree and tree-ferns. The first Wilkinsons were gentle with the blacks, gave them bullocks for their annual feasts, and enjoyed friendship with them. The gins used to do the station washing, and Mrs Lampe relates that when they went to the creek for water they were often slow to return. One piccaninny used to wail when his mother thus left him. The other gins would try to pacify hint without avail, awl then resort to the call which meant "Hurry-up, hurry-up with the water!" The last word, "coo", would be prolonged, and many notes higher—a clear, ringing top note.—M.F.]

No baying of dogs. No whuffing of Rover—pari bloodhound—who guarded the children and their mother. Not a yelp from a cattle cur. Only the click of the disturbed plovers, and the vesper chortles of the master ironists tossed from point to point, taken up and repeated softly from afar, as in an orchestra— crescendo-diminuendo-dacapo-coda.

No smoke above the chimney. The nearing homestead looked strange and small. Delacy's senses had to accept the impossible. The main portion of his home had vanished as completely as the fences and lakes that melt upon approach from the vast levels of mirage land. No woman nor children, nor black retainer, nor cow; only the voice of the wild river which deepened a lornness ghostly and dismaying.

They reached the remains of a fire where a home had been. Desolation. It looked like the work of marauders. There was no message or sign of Johanna. The blow was too heavy for Danny in his weakness, his physical agony. He wept and called to high heaven for his wife and little ones, whom he never more would see.

Evans sat him down gently. He insisted upon camping. Night was falling and Delacy was unfit to go on. Exhaustion and rum brought him to sleep despite all.