Читать книгу All That Swagger - Miles Franklin - Страница 9

Table of Contents

When Dunn, the ex-felon, turned back from his employer, he thought of a fellow lag who kept a sly grog shop in the ranges beyond Gounderu. He had stood to his trust when left in solitude, but a terrible craving, irresistible as sexual lust, suddenly began to torture him. For years he had been content with the station ration of rum, but an internal fire now sent him on a jag of weeks which dissolved his horses and gear. He returned to consciousness a pariah. Weeks had passed and Delacy would be home. Dunn felt himself a horse thief and worse. He was compelled to disappear.

Johanna waited valiantly. Dunn was to have returned at the end of four clays. At the end of eight she concluded that Danny had needed him for longer, and composed herself for Danny's return, at the end of a month at latest.

She had neither messenger nor mail service, but the aborigines had. The cattle moved restlessly in the gullies of the wild runs. Doogoolook reported from smoke signals that his people were moving on Burrabinga. The lad was intelligent and of noble character. He could make himself understood by signs to Maeve, and she interpreted to Johanna.

She had an idea of making out to Keebah, but the army was approaching that way, and how was she to climb the mountain walls with a babe in arms and two little girls?

"Mary, Mother of God, help me," she prayed, dormant phrases coming to her lips.

The first wave of fear past, her courage and experience re-established her. These were Doogoolook and Maeve's people, so she sent the lad to inform them that she would give them some beasts.

The tribe was fat and hearty. Game was plentiful. The boogongs at Keebah had been more than they could consume. Even the gins were gorged. The whole family, including gins and piccaninnies, were making a detour to call on their patrons, out of curiosity, friendliness, and as part of the annual walkabout. Some of the gins, who wore a rag of clothes, were already known to Johanna since the Bewuck encampment, and when they called on her, her Irish warmth delighted them and cemented sisterhood. They talked to Maeve excitedly in their soft voices and filled the place with their laughter, in distant aeons captured and standardized by the big grey kingfishers. They were proud of Maeve's position among the whites. A miracle greater than reversal of a "boning" had established Danny as a chief of good magic. Here was Doogoolook, strong and happy, a member of a white tribe.

In warm weather he dressed in knee pants, and Johanna made him a gaily decorated shield for his scarred chest, which his people took to be the regalia of royalty.

"Minetinkit, that pfella budgery!" they guffawed.

In honour of the bullock they staged a feast and a play corroboree, in which women had the part of accompanists. Johanna was treated with honour and with her brood beheld a spectacle seen by few white women.

She gave her friends all that she could spare from her stores in the way of clothes, tobacco, flour, raisins and potatoes. They prized the potatoes, which the warriors carried away on their spears. They neither thieved nor destroyed otherwise and at the end of a few days moved on, working their way down the river before autumn, and looking for fight. They left the valley unspoiled. Not a tree was mutilated except to extract a possum. No bush fires followed in their wake. Graciously, peacefully they had ceded their territory to Delacy.

Enlivened by the leis, Johanna turned with fresh heart to her tasks, while looking hourly for Danny. He must have gone on to Parramatta, she concluded, as the weeks ran into the second month. Day followed day, but no horseman emerged from the mighty aisles of curabbi and peppermint at the other side of the little flat where the curlews wailed so friendlily. There was only the ceaseless song of the river like a wild wind, and chortling birds, the warbling magpies and clouds of other songsters, or the "pheasants" mimicking her cock, to embellish the haunting stillness of the cathedral forests, and Doogoolook's shadow-like presence to accentuate the solitude. At night there were the unfailing boobooks and dingoes to augment the curlews' concert, and the native cats to make raids upon her precious hens.

Still no halloa or whip-crack announced Danny's return,

Rations were running low, and at the end of six weeks Doogoolook took a letter to Keebah. Doogoolook drew with a stick on the ground the fetching of Urquhart, but Johanna substituted his reading the letter, and Doogoolook returning next day. This was conveyed by one lie-down in sleep—head-on-hand with closed eyes—and quick jump-up.

Still a child in years by white standards, and mute, he went faithfully on his errand; Johanna watched him to the edge of the clearing, and, bereft of her protector, turned about in he? internment camp and attacked a snake which had appeared as the boy departed.

She retired early, drawing her chicks about her, but doors cannot be barred against loneliness and fear. Bewuck, despite its bunyip and ghost, was by comparison, a centre of population. In those days she grew fond of Maeve, who was always cheerful, and unafraid of the great bush.

At the end of the fourth day the forest was still without Doogoolook, and Johanna grew uneasy lest the mare had lost her footing on a bad pinch, and hurtled into the gulf. However, Maeve was a good fisher, and the hens laid.

That afternoon Johanna and Maeve went seeking the cow that had escaped, Johanna carrying the baby. Kathleen Moyna and Della were left at home, and what happened, who can say? They had heard their mother speak of the need to keep the fire in because that morning there had been trouble to relight it from the ashes. From across the clearing Johanna saw smoke issuing from the roof. She deposited the baby and sped to the rescue. She readied the threshold in an agony of fear and found the children in flames. She extinguished the smaller in a tub of water, but Kathleen Moyna ran screeching into the breeze, with her mother in pursuit. She caught the child at length, and in beating out the flames was herself scorched on wrists and hands.

She screamed to Maeve to go after the baby lest ants or snakes should be endangering him, while she attended to Kathleen Moyna. The house was a bonfire.

As a fire precaution Danny had placed the kitchen at a ludicrous distance from the house. In this were the beef casks and other stores, and the distracted woman had this shelter when the fire in the main house subsided. Maeve had recaptured the cow, so the babies' principal diet was assured.

Kathleen Moyna's body was shockingly burned. Mercifully she had passed beyond consciousness and lay as if asleep. Johanna's hands were so painful that only despair and the demands upon her kept her from fainting time after time. The sole alleviation was in keeping her singed flesh in the cold water of the river. Maeve did the same for the other child, who was but slightly burned.

Morning came. Della was free from pain and slept safely. The fire had died out of Johanna's hands, but they were like bladders. She tore up her undergarments and bound her fingers in grease. Kathleen Moyna still breathed though Johanna saw that she could not last long, that indeed it was better that she should not recover, though the mother's heart cried out against bereavement. The day was loud with jackasses, morn, noon and evening. The plovers clicked on the eerie flats with their tea-tree groves, beautiful as Asiatic art, and as alien to the early British settlers.

There was firewood to place against the loss of the fur robes at night. Only Doogoolook's remained. Johanna was doubtful of finding the track to Keebah and transporting three small children, one of them dying. Doogoolook had taken the quiet mare. It was unlikely that she could catch another horse. Even so, how could she carry sufficient provisions and tackle to camp during their slow and painful progress? Maeve was sure that she knew the way, and that she could carry the baby, with Della also walking, while Johanna nursed Kathleen Moyna on the horse. Johanna remembered the Burrabinga to be crossed three times. She had to abandon the project until her hands could heal. She would have welcomed a bushranger.

Meanwhile, Doogoolook had reached Keebah. Urquhart and most of his men, like Danny, were away with sheep to a boiling-down plant. Mrs Urquhart, with an immigrant woman and a ticket-of-leaver, was at the station, but they were all illiterate. There was no other neighbour within thirty miles. They could not understand Doogoolook's sign language, nor he make sense of theirs. He drew figures to indicate Mrs Delacy and the children. Those assembled understood that it was something about Mr Delacy. Had he tumbled down? No. It seemed to be some business between Danny and Sandy. Mrs Urquhart could only await a person who could read. At the end of four days Doogoolook grew so uneasy that he slipped away on foot in the dead of night.

Maeve discerned him reappearing one morning from the boles of the timber. He conveyed that Mr Urquhart was absent and that the others shook their heads over the letter. His return gave slight hope, but Kathleen Moyna ceased to breathe an hour later. Her mother determined to set out for Keebah with the body. Maeve and Doogoolook yarded the second quiet horse and it was packed with provisions and the rug. Johanna perched on top with the dead child, wrapped in a sack, in her arms. The boy took his turn with Maeve in carrying the baby. Della, clad in charred rags, toddled bravely at the beginning. Up the steep pinches Doogoolook held the horse's tail and put Della on his shoulder. In places he had to take his charges singly. Now and again Johanna struggled along on foot with her burden, while Maeve, with the baby in her arms, rode with Della behind her.

Kathleen Moyna had been named for the aunt who had sheltered Johanna, and also for the cousin who had aided her elopement. Johanna felt that old Cooley's curse had now reached even to her helpless child. Despair deadened her anguish and kept her calm. Progress was painful to her tortured hands in meagre binding, and to Della's scorched face and limbs.

They were settled for a third night when Urquhart found them. He was shocked by the tragedy and their present plight, and to learn that Mrs Delacy had been so long alone. He persuaded Johanna to let him take Kathleen Moyna and left the exhausted party settled with Doogoolook while he rode hard to Keebah for assistance.

He was back a little after daylight with helpers and comforts, and they all reached Keebah by ten o'clock that night.

Janet was awaiting them beyond the stables with hot soup and a capacious heart. Johanna was laid in a comfortable bed. Della screamed with pain and weariness and clung to Maeve until bread and honey tempted her. Doogoolook was commended as a budgery pfella in ear-splitting shouts. All waste of breath, but the gestures nourished his affections. Finally all were at rest.

Kathleen Moyna was buried at the foot of the flower garden beside an Urquhart infant who had succumbed to convulsions.

Delacy's horses had not returned and there had been no letter from him, though the mail had been collected from the nearest township. Janet kept Johanna in bed. To ease her mind Urquhart rode to Bewuck and thence to Mr Moore at Bandalong. He returned without news of Delacy. Mr Moore was much concerned. He started inquiries, but by now the Evanses were no longer on the alert for anything of the kind.

Johanna felt in her lonely nostalgic mind that Danny had deserted her for livelier adventures or the seductions of a fresher woman. This was unjust to her experience of Danny. Urquhart maintained that it was too early to regard Delacy as a deserter, that he was a pure merino who would not abscond from a fine young wife and children.

"Straight goers among men," said Johanna, "nevertheless don't care how crooked they are with a woman whin another takes their eye."

Mrs Urquhart nodded her head, and Sandy, remembering passages, steered from the subject.

Urquhart and Moore were of opinion that violence had ended Delacy. The disappearance of Dunn, transported for a criminal act, lent colour to this. Urquhart tried to rally Johanna, but she was haunted by sick fears and lacked inner sanctuary. She had repudiated her own creed and could not adopt Danny's personal brand of free thought. No dogma guilty of imposing mental shackles could have lasted with Delacy. Even in youth, tolerant and philosophical though he was, Johanna had found him adamant in Protestantism in so far as it meant freedom of thought. No womanly blandishments had ever affected him in this direction; as well have tried to cajole him to dishonesty. It was hard on Johanna. She accepted her trials as emanating from her father's curse, and retreated upon stoicism. The Uquharts were Presbyterians. With them she found hospitality, friendship and companionship after loneliness, but no religious solace.

Her future had to be considered as the weeks passed without news of Danny. Mr Moore wanted her back at Bandalong. Johanna desired to return to Bewuck. Danny or no Danny she had renounced Burrabinga for ever. Hitherto she had accepted the faithful Doogoolook as complacently as a dog, but now, despite his muteness, he had become something between an elder son and a younger brother.

Mrs Urquhart's welcome never waned. Her comfort in a companion was born of woman-scarcity and isolation, and the Delacy children mingling with the Urquhart's added zest to life.

So time sped and another day had broken at Burrabinga. Rain had obliterated tracks long since, but Evans found utensils that had been used after having been through the fire, and potatoes remained as evidence that there had been no robbery by blacks.

"Your family will be safe with the nearest neighbour," Evans remarked.

Danny's soul was renewed by hope. He set out for Keebah immediately, but his mind could not force his tortured flesh to the whole journey in one day.

It was a great moment when the travellers came within range of Mrs Urquhart's candles. Here was a Danny with one trouser leg pinned up, a Danny no longer as swift as a steel spring in recoil, an emaciated fragile Danny noisily clouting his way, but with authentic flame-blue eyes and booming voice, dismissing his pain in the excitement of finding wife and weans, with Doogoolook executing capers of welcome; a Danny without self-consciousness as to how a wife might regard a mutilated spouse, a crippled breadwinner; a Danny so overjoyed that speculations about his Johanna's attitude were crowded out.

Her resentment of imagined desertion was washed away in the reunion, but site was conspicuously pallid and unresponsive, the iron of tragedy fresh in her soul. The full extent of the catastrophe could not be withheld from Danny. He was already so near to collapse from pain and exhaustion that Evans enlisted Mrs Urquhart to prepare a bed and in it, with the aid of rum, his charge took this final blow lying down.

Delacy survived that journey as well as the shock of the calamity that met him, though he was compelled to lie up for several weeks at the Urquharts'.

He spoke of erecting another hut at Burrabinga, but Johanna vetoed this. "Me wits forsook me to go there in the first place to such a lost hole—collecting asses' loads of sorrow and heart-scald. Even ye should have more sinse than to think ye can scale those walls with wan leg. 'Tis a goat with four ye had better be, for ye'r owld Bunratty Castle."

"Arrah! Haven't I just been up and down with me wan leg, and me not yet restored to full fighting trim. Wan leg is as good as two if the moind is set."

"And what is more, Danny Delacy, while ye are capering about from wan place to the next, how am I to know if the leaks in the roof at Bewuck haven't dripped on me few best bits, and the weevils to have eaten the rest, if the place is not burned down entirely and somewan walked off with the unprotected remains?"

Danny's leg was, still as sensitive as a boil, and his head had an unprecedented tendency to ache in the sun. He took to an outsize in straw wide-awakes that year and filled it with the cool leaves of the peppermint. When his head had recovered, the leaves had become a habit. They made his head look enormous, but his actions, motivated by utility, were unrestricted by what the timid might think. When the wags made him their butt, he was contemptuous, "With the wits of jackasses, and destitute of conversation, they should be thankful that I supply a subject."

The death of Kathleen Moyna, combined with Johanna's attitude and state, forced him to relinquish Burrabinga temporarily. He attributed his retreat to advancing winter and the need to procure an artificial limb. He was so proficient with his crutch that he sometimes resembled an escaping kangaroo. As soon as his strength returned, he departed with Doogoolook, leaving Johanna at Keebah.