Читать книгу Gentlemen at Gyang Gyang - Miles Franklin - Страница 11

Table of Contents

On the third morning of Bernice's presence, while the men were at breakfast in the kitchen, and she snug in her bed, a violent clap of thunder accompanied by blinding lightning shook the house and fused the telephone connection. A torrent of rain instantaneously poured down the valley, continuing for an hour or two so that the men remained in camp. Spires, efficiently protected by a great oilskin coat with armadillo shoulder reinforcements, and borrowed from Burberry, ran his quarry to earth under Burberry's car in the shearing-shed.

"Well, Pete, old dingo, I've not had the chance of a yarn with you so far. I didn't know you at first glance the other day with that horse's tail glued on your dial."

Peter clattered his tools savagely. If the horse-hair was ineffectual as a disguise there was no need longer to submit to its disfigurement.

"I'm hanged if I should have been sure of you when you turned round, only for your headlights, but there's no mistaking them."

Peter reflected with increasing rage that there was no way of dyeing his eyes or growing whiskers on them. Black goggles did not appeal to him. Spires rattled on.

"As a matter of fact, I'm as lucky as a dead Chinaman to find you here."

"I reckon the only luck a Chinaman would have near you would be to be dead," growled Peter.

"I'm in a bit of a hole and I'd rather you give me a leg out of it than ask a stranger."

Peter was unresponsive. Spires's latest turf transactions made it happier for him to be away from Sydney in places like Gyang Gyang or Blackfellow's Hollow.

"If you could let me have a hundred quid for three months..."

"Haven't got a hundred threepenny bits."

"But you could raise a hundred easy enough...three months at ten per cent. I'm stony motherless broke and it will be to your interest to raise it. You can do it easier than I can."

"You're a thundering sight smarter at taking people down than I am. You could raise a blister on a camp-oven. I'm only the mug that pays."

"Here's a fine chance for you to pay now, in consideration of which I'll overlook the mug business."

Peter arose from under the car and walked out into the downpour without a coat. Spires accompanied him as if it was the most natural promenade. Peter inspected the dog kennels cut in the hillside and roofed with logs and earth. He deepened the drains round one or two that were in danger of being flooded, then turned his back on Spires and strode away to the protection of the Cook's company. Spires's lips closed in a thin line and his eyes glinted and narrowed as he watched him.

"All right, old cock," he muttered. "Gyang Gyang is a safe neighbourhood for me till you shell out."

Heavy showers continued all day so that the men were jubilant concerning results that would follow on the burnt country. It was a day of pottering in the woolshed with the cars or pack-saddles and other harness, or of harassing the Cook in the kitchen.

Spires improved the idle hours with Bernice. She was confined to the general room and, not having a bedroom, had no place of escape. Any being clad in youth and femininity afforded entertainment to Spires, with further hope of sport. The only women who had terrors for him were the ascetic or intellectual. Bernice withheld all leads as to what or who she was. He could not be sure if she were clever or merely modern. There was always the chance that the latter rewarded pursuit. Some of them made life juicy without regrets or entanglements—just come and help yourself and when the game was played no hang-overs or biliousness.

"You will find life at a camp like this very different from what you have been used to," he ventured.

"Life is life everywhere, and that at Gyang Gyang particularly appeals to me for the present."

"But not for always?"

"That would be a great deal to expect of any sort of life."

"Too true, it would, but I have known livelier spots than this."

To this she did not reply. The talk fell apart again. Spires had rarely found a woman who couldn't be complimented on her beauty, be she never such a gorgon, and the cruder the compliment the better it seemed to vouch for the sincerity of the author.

"Coming from Paris, it is a wonder you have not cut your hair. You remind me of an old painting—that type of beauty, I mean." He had picked that up somewhere. He knew nothing of paintings old or new, or of beauty beyond that on chocolate boxes.

"You are discerning," said Bernice gravely. She puzzled him. Was she satirical, or was it possible that other people had told her that? Could it be an established fact? Were there people in cities—foreign cities where they had queer notions—who considered her a beauty? Her hair and skin had a strange silver sheen, and now that he was put to it, he recalled that her narrow face had seemed much better-looking the second morning than at first glance, and looked better now than yesterday. Would it go on improving and tantalizing a man till he found himself so firmly on the hook that he wouldn't want to get off? Whew! An interesting possibility!