Читать книгу Gentlemen at Gyang Gyang - Miles Franklin - Страница 6

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Miss Gaylord's attitude towards Gyang Gyang was much that of some revolutionist on the way to Siberia, only the Siberian exile might have in his heart the fire of a cause with a sustaining determination to escape and continue his self-immolation. At the core of Miss Gaylord remained only ashes and a scourge of humiliation to provide her with a pulse and a temperature. While there is pain there remains that matrix of illusions—Life. For the present, however, Bernice Gaylord had reached a dead end which she mistook for the end of all things. The doctors spoke of a strained heart and hinted at T.B., a diagnosis welcome to Bernice. It camouflaged her secret and explained the suspension of her career to her family and the Australian public interested in her unusual promise, which had suddenly dried up. Her father's letter, preceded by a cable, had been so generous and entreating that she had consented to return to Australia.

Now she was desperately tired after a hot night journey in the train and thence in the mail service car to Goonara. Though she was at the end of all things, the deep cool gullies bowered in perfumed bloom of the big daisies (Podolepis acuminata) and the shrubs, with the sun striking in grand shafts between the barrels of the stately timber, had had a beneficial effect on a consciousness attuned to beauty, and she was soothed by the practical kindness and detached friendliness of the driver. She was given the front seat and comfort while the men passengers squeezed between parcels including cases of petrol, loaves of bread, and packets of cigarettes—all remembered by the mailman without a written list.

The last of the passengers got off at Waterfall Gully. The mailman said scarcely a word to Bernice, she never a word to him except in answer. At length they traversed Rocky Plain, crossed and recrossed a tributary of the Snowy, and the several roofs of Goonara shone like silver in the hot afternoon glare.

"I see the Gyang Gyang car coming over Herringbone," remarked the mailman. "You'll go out that way across Black Plain around Telegraph Hill." He tossed his head, which might have meant any of three directions to Bernice. She made a tiny sound of assent. "I believe it's Mr Laboss, come himself in his old Studebaker to meet you," the mailman continued as a car pulled into the township ahead of them and stopped at the pub.

A clear view was blocked by two unprepossessing youths flashly got up in the fancy dress of the cowboys in American films, with sombreros, bandanas, and long spurs, and mounted on heroic ponies of Monaro shagginess. They frogged their little day by riding on to the pub veranda and calling for drinks. They would have ridden into the bar, but were shooed therefrom by a large bristling broom fiercely wielded by a large hairy old man.

"The flims has got into their brains," observed the mailman. Their ambition was to impress Mona Drew, but her eyes were fixed unswervingly on the tall man who had alighted from the Studebaker. When the disguised drover boys moved away, the mailman added, "No, it ain't Mr Labosseer. It's Black Peter Poole."

The man stood by his car till the mailman came within hail.

"Good day, Poole! Here you are, miss! This is Mr Labosseer's overseer."

Bernice nodded slightly. The overseer raised his wide felt hat, disclosing that he was not an aboriginal, or even a half-caste. His hair was black as a horse's tail and his skin baked a rich brown, but Bernice noted a forehead of that blue-white which is the glory of certain brunette beauties. Eyes startlingly blue and teeth enviably white flashed in a thick black beard.

He handed his passenger to the front seat, arranged his parcels, and, with a few words to the mailman and a nod to the young girl on the pub veranda, started away across the plains where a slight trace of wheels amid the tussocks marked the way.

Mona withdrew to the shade of the black veranda, where Doll and Belle, who had been peeping from the front parlour, joined her.

"She doesn't look much, does she?" began Doll. "Her dress was quite long and dowdy; and did you ever see such an old hat? She must have bought that at a bargain sale at the time Nelson lost his eye; and not even got her hair shingled!"

"You can't tell," said Belle, who had been to Sydney. "Some of the dinky-di swells when they come up here put on any old thing. She looks pretty old, doesn't she? What do you think, Doll?"

"I don't know...I can't see why, but sometimes those queer-looking birds are just the most fascinating to the men."

Mona was watching the car, now a dot on the plain, and envying the stranger her drive with Black Peter, who never took any girl for a car ride, or asked one to dance, or presented her with chocolates, so far as Mona knew. Doll left her sister gazing wistfully across the plain while she went to receive another car, a Dodge, that arrived from the opposite direction. A young man stepped out of it.

"Have you a cool drink for me?" he inquired in a manner which immediately informed Doll that there might be other possibilities than the Dude. He asked for directions to Gyang Gyang and learnt that the Gyang Gyang car was hardly out of sight. He did not hurry after it but indulged in more than one cool drink and gathered miscellaneous information from Granddad. He also bantered Doll, who came out to the car and beamed upon him as he swung round on to the track recently taken by Peter.