Читать книгу Gentlemen at Gyang Gyang - Miles Franklin - Страница 14

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Next morning Bernice was wakened from deep sleep while the Southern Cross still hung in front of her as if it could be plucked by hand from the tree-tops. The clank of spurs and the boots of the men on the boards raised on piles sounded as on a wooden drum. That coterie was unacquainted with lie-abeds whose need for sleep had to be considered. Bernice peeped out to see horses, men, and dogs departing ere the sun had shot the valley mists with rose and gold and turned the dewdrops on the tussocks and flowers to strings of gems. She waited impatiently for the Cook's summons that morning. She had an appetite and a desire to meet the day.

There was a supply of rain-water in the brave collection of cans and tubs set out against washing-day, and Bernice had been reared in the notion that rain-water was unexcelled for washing the hair. Here, in the privacy of twenty miles north and south, with sunlight like a spiritual cocktail, was an unrivalled opportunity to bring her ash-blonde mane to its proper sheen.

She strolled about during the forenoon making acquaintance with her surroundings. She found Gyang Gyang Creek, which gushes straight out of the hill behind the camp, and swerves under the peak where white gums and mountain-ash grow tall and stately. She discovered for herself that in their saplinghood these trees are graceful as lilies, with spear-pointed tops which in maturity spread out like fans. She found again the perfumed tea-tree heath with a tiny starry blossom and leaves as fragrant as the lemon-gum. She culled it to send to her father, but, as with so many of its compatriots, its glory was evanescent. To enter its paradise one must tread where it grows by the crystal waters where the rivers are made on the roof of the continent. She breathed the glory of a sparkling January day after rain amid the tall timber where there is no humus, no reek of stale perfumes, but all so delicately, aromatically fresh that it is less a perfume than an odour, less an odour than a breath. She sat on a grey boulder in a world of blossoming snow-gums making a heaven of perfume as if all the honey in all the flowers had been distilled into the sparkling air.

All the men, even Messrs Labosseer and Burberry, grandfathers and prosperous gentlemen, had concocted mixtures in tin cans and gone off into this arboreal paradise before sunrise to—kill flies! And they lived here in this queer camp a life that approximated that of boy scouts out to play Red Indians on a grand scale.

Bernice stretched her arms above her head and drew a long breath and emitted a little laugh. The kookaburras laughed with her. The magpies soliloquized about it plentifully. "This place is not real, that's what is the matter. I could almost believe I had passed out without knowing it."

A feeling of well-being was hers, the result of normal sleep and appetite, which she had not known for some time. London and Paris and old wounds and sordid mistakes seemed far and far away, and comfortingly unreal.

"Thank God," she breathed, and she had forgotten to offer such thanks for years. "Thank God for the kookaburras and magpies, for the sun and trees and whole world of blossom, and especially for the tea-tree and the creek, and all this wide and heavenly country with no awful people to drive one to distraction."

It was a wonderful day.

"I'm hungry and should like to wash my head," she announced at the kitchen door.

The Cook beamed upon her, his cigarette glued to his lower lip. "I'll soon have yer dinner, miss, and while you're eatin' it I'll heat a nice can of rain-water for you."