Читать книгу Cockatoos - Miles Franklin - Страница 5

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March and April passed to May, and a couple of days of light drizzle laid the dust. The Healeys were taking advantage of the change to clear up their premises. Ignez wielded a broom of messmate boughs while Mrs Healey sprayed her fowlhouses with a vermin-killer.

In the hope that the coming moon would bring rain Healey had been ploughing for barley fodder. Once more he freed the bony horses and came towards the house, the cold west wind flapping his patched waistcoat and penetrating his thrummy moles. An agony of irritation and a sense of helplessness crushed him.

"God!" he muttered. "A failure! Fifty years more to be corked and bottled in these wallaby gardens!" Old Sool'em ran to meet him, but his master with a rough boot sent him yelping.

"I can see what's coming," said Mrs Healey to Ignez. "The horses have been getting pie all day."

"Such a pity, can't you stop him?"

"I have no respect for a man with little children who can't control himself and think of them and the woman who bore them."

Contempt for the woman who continued to bear in such circumstances shot through the girl.

"If I had to live here always, I think I'd take to drink," she said. "It's so ugly. No creeks or ferns, and such scraggy timber. The people on these places have no more in them than a hen."

"Potterers and muddlers! It's harder for a woman than a man—with children always coming."

"I don't think a woman is a good mother to let them come if there's not a chance of success."

"Humph! You don't understand what it is to be married."

"I'd understand enough to keep out of it, if it's so awful."

"We'll see the great strokes you'll do when your time comes!"

In the morning Healey borrowed Ignez's hack and put a halter on one of the plough-horses, a brave old coacher, and then dressed himself in his shabby best suit.

"I might as well get a little to pay for the seed. No sense in letting the horse die for nothing now that the ploughing is done," he explained.

"When you need a plough-horse you'll have to buy one at a high price. More debt. You never learn sense. You're the worst..."

Healey rode away without response. He had learnt the value of silence.

The evening drew in cold and still drizzling, but Healey did not return. At dusk a forbidding-looking Assyrian hawker requested shelter—a reasonable demand, but the man's countenance made Mrs Healey fear murder, and she railed to Ignez of her husband's defection as a protector.

Ignez's music lesson was due on the following day. "I'll start early so I can get to the hotel and send Mr Healey home before he has all the money spent."

"I don't know what your father would say."

"It's an emergency. Father and mother never hold back in emergencies. I remember how they turned out the time the baby was lost on Ten Creeks Run."

"But a young girl going to a public house among drunken men!"

"Lots of girls marry drunken men. That's going a lot farther than seeing them at a pub. They won't lead me to drink. I'm not a boy."

She left at daybreak, having decided that the Assyrian was harmless. She had a poor nag, weak and unshod. She rode him off the metal, nevertheless he grew tender-footed and halting. The drizzle penetrated her hat and ran down her neck. Her collar collapsed, her gloves were soaked, and where the saddle's horns made hollows of her skirt the water reached her skin. She dismounted and walked to get warm, but the specially designed skirt could not be held in accordance with modesty in one hand while she dragged a protesting horse with the other, so she clambered up again. The narrow pipeclay hollows and stony ridges covered with stringybarks and underbrush, where a primitive homestead stood in a clearing every mile or two, seemed to have multiplied, but at length Goulburn came to view down a long slope, and finally she turned into the broad main street with a hotel at nearly every corner. Which one at present was draining the price of the Healeys' bread?

Throwing the reins over the post at Doolan's she went to a side entrance. On the asphalted floor of the veranda lay a youth but little her senior. He had been placed there on the previous evening when helpless, since there was a regulation against serving liquor to men already drunk. A cotton shirt and tattered coat were all that protected his upper half from the cold, dungarees encased his legs and the sockless ankles had a chafed ring above the rough boots. His hands were seamed and cracked from rough labour in the frost. He was a wood-carter, a patient bush lad to whom alcohol was something to warm him and an adventure in budding manliness.

While Ignez debated what she should do to rescue him, a richly dressed girl appeared in the doorway. Ignez knew her for the publican's petted only child, a musical prodigy being trained at the Convent.

"Do you know if Mr Lawrence Healey is here?"

"I'm sure I don't know. You'd better ring for the servants."

The reply was condescending, and aroused Ignez, who felt that Petty Doolan's voice was a mere squeak compared with her own.

"Aren't you going to do something about that poor boy?" she demanded.

"Papa does not wish me to come in contact with any of the people about the place."

"He might catch pneumonia lying there."

"Those bushwhackers are too hardy for that." Petty's glance at Ignez, stained and bedraggled, conveyed that she too was a bushwhacker.

"If he died, you'd be a murderer," said Ignez, her colour rising.

"Does he belong to you?"

"No, he belongs to you. You steal his money and then dress in velvet and put on airs with it while he lies there in danger of pneumonia."

"Papa will have you up if you say vulgar things about stealing."

"I'll tell everyone that you take the last penny from poor boys and then heave them out on the veranda all night in this weather."

Petty longed for her cab, but it did not come. Ignez pulled the bell vigorously. It brought the yardman.

"Is that boy alive, or is he poisoned?"

"She's blaming me for him," whimpered Petty, "and you'll have to go for the cab or I'll be late for my lesson."

"You had better see to the boy first or he might die," said Ignez, her blood up. "Shall I bring the doctor?"

"Doctor! be blowed! He's only soaked. He oughter been flung in the stable last night if he was too far gone to get home."

"Disgusting beast!" simpered Petty, recovering her poise as her cab appeared.

Ignez wandered inside and found the landlord. He informed her that Healey was there but too unwell to ride home just then. Ignez consented to her horse being stood in the yard as it was hours too early for her lesson.

"You're wet," observed Doolan, whose Family Hotel was called "the Mantrap" by many victimized women. "It's devilish cold. You'd better go to the fire," he added, and indicated a room at the end of a corridor.

In this the fire had not yet been laid. After shivering for a while Ignez sought the warmth of a bar parlour adjoining. Here she found her quarry, half tumbling from a chair and trying ineffectually to strike a match on the floor where the spittoons slopped in a sea of their rightful contents. The room was foul with the fumes of alcohol and stale tobacco and the evidence of a hard night. Two or three bar loafers were already playing cards. They were making jokes at Healey's expense and Ignez itched to correct them with her riding whip. Nothing could be done with Healey until he recovered, so she waited to dry herself. The spectacle filled her with sick revulsion. The landlady, finding her and recognizing that she was out of place, asked, "Why are you here? What do you want?"

"When will Mr Healey be fit to travel?"

"Some time, I'm afraid. He was very ill last night. If I had known he was inclined to over-indulge I might have stopped him."

Ignez's lip curled. It was not Mrs Doolan's trade to encourage sobriety, and she was known as a smart landlady.

"The drought is enough to drive anyone to take a drop," Mrs Doolan pursued, without arousing any response. She led the way to a room where her two younger sisters, the Misses Katchem, were making silk dresses. Ignez, unplacated, barely acknowledged the introduction to the stylish young women, and sat down. They returned to their chat of balls and dress and the advisability of wearing the best materials. Mrs Healey's best dress was quite out of fashion, Ignez reflected.

They gushed of the triumphs of Petty. Ignez learnt that she was to be sent later to the best teachers in Sydney. When the time came she departed for her own lesson without so much as a nod to her hostesses. After lunch, at old Mrs Wilson's select boarding-house near the cathedral, she returned to the Mantrap. Healey refused to bulge. The effects of the liquor were still too potent. Ignez composed herself to await his further recovery and to guard him from renewed poisoning, unconscious that there was anything unmaidenly in her procedure.

Two o'clock, three, four passed. Healey remained too disabled to mount his horse. The short winter day drew in. Squatters, dealers, drovers, farmers, auctioneers, butchers, yardmen, cadgers, loafers, touts and tag-rag representatives of all the classes that traffic in livestock, and their hangers-on—returned from the weekly sale. The Mantrap's bar was overflowing in two senses. Not a man but took a drink to warm himself, remarking that Goulburn was the —— coldest place in the world, one shouting for the other and the other returning the compliment. The saleyards had a bleak position and it was a biting day. The invitation of the fires was irresistible and many postponed home-going indefinitely.

The publican passed among his catch. He had the reputation of being a fleecer, was strong and brisk, and so far had not fallen to his own snares. He ordered more wood on the fires, threw a pack of cards on a table, remarked that it was "devilish cold outside", started a half-fuddled young fellow singing songs about true love, stirred up a few to serve as butts, and otherwise spread his nest for the sale-day harvest.

The parlours were full of men with flushed faces, some with bloated cheeks, all drinking, gabbling and craving diversion. The elaborately arranged hair, the gay dresses and affectations, which these men would have roughly condemned in wives or sisters, were attractive in the hotel women. These opulent people had more to stimulate them to be flattering entertainers than had the wives at home, harassed by children's wants and the strain of bringing two far ends together.

Ignez sat enduringly, raging inwardly. Two tap-room habitués came to issues through one calling the other an opprobrious name. Ignez wondered why men should be so touchy about being called bastards when they had no scruples about fathering them. One of these days she would write a book, and it would be of real doings.

Arthur Masters entered to discover the cause of the rumpus. His amusement changed to consternation as he caught sight of Ignez. He took the femininity of the Misses Katchem at a certain valuation—not a low one—and never felt in a hurry to leave the Mantrap when they gave themselves to impressing him, but Ignez Milford had struck a deeper chord in his manhood. She had the power to transform life and fill it with heroic possibilities. His impulse was to carry her out of the place at once. Then he halted. He could not point out the enormity of her presence there, for the enormity was not in her presence but in the scene itself. To impress upon Ignez any sense of defection in her behaviour would merely tarnish his own. He sought Doolan.

"The Missus took her in with the girls," he said, "but she poked herself back there. Hanging about after Healey. A queer sort of a girl."

"Queer in that sty! Get Healey on to his horse. If he's not able to ride I'll need your sulky." The tone was short.

Doolan sought to remedy his mistake by speedy action. The horses were forthcoming. Healey was contrite and always gentle, and set off at a great pace, but the barefooted horse sidled off the metal and could not be driven too hard. Masters overtook them as they left town and greeted them as though he had had no part in getting them started.

"I was thinking of you," he said to Ignez. "I have that book you were talking about by John Stuart Mill."

"Lovely! Will you lend it to me when you've read it?"

"I might," said Arthur, "seeing that I bought it on purpose. It looks like tough reading to me. I got a story to counteract it."

"Stories are only pap that never happens. You wait till I write a yarn. It'll be real."

"Golly, that'll be ripping! When are you going to start?"

"Any day."

"I can hardly write a letter, it's such hard work. How you'd fill a book is past me."

Healey was painfully sick and when they reached the shrubberied paddocks farther out Arthur gave him a rest. He put him and Ignez on the comfortable leaves at the foot of a big tree safe from the cutting blast and soon had a fire. "I often get off and make a fire to warm myself on a frosty night," he said with cheerful mendacity. Healey was in pain all through his frame and Masters helped him to the flask that Doolan had given him at parting.

"I don't know why anyone lives in this district," remarked Ignez.

"It's sounder land than anywhere, when the timber's killed, and very sweet. You'll get better flavoured meat here than off the heavy soils in warmer places," defended Arthur.

He was a native of Barralong, seven miles beyond Deep Creek. The property, which was choice for its area, had been owned by the Masters family since early days, and Arthur held his own position without knuckling under to anyone. The old man was dead, the other sons married and removed, and Arthur ran the place while his mother directed the house.

Warmed and fed with chocolates and biscuits from Arthur's pockets, Ignez went more comfortably. Deep Creek was soon reached. Masters tactfully refused to enter, but said he would reappear soon to hear what Ignez made of J. S. Mill on The Subjection of Women.

"Thank you for being so kind," she whispered, giving his hand a cordial squeeze as he lifted her from the saddle.

He wanted to tell her that she must never go to that pub again, but could not. She seemed to have the innocence of a child and the wisdom of a grandmother combined, so, cheeriness masking intensity, he contented himself with, "If there's anything you ever want, I'll go round the world to get it for you, if you'll let me." He held her hand till she drew it away, which she attributed to sympathy.

"I've done it again," groaned Larry, standing as if petrified in the cold.

"Never mind. Make a fresh start is all you can do." The girl led the horses to the stable and began to unsaddle. Healey came to with a start and followed her.

"If I was to cut my fingers off one by one, the pain would be nothing to the mental pain I feel."

Ignez flowed with sympathy, but was too young, too instinct with potential happiness really to understand his misery of despair and humiliation, his sick paralysing depression. How could one so potentially gifted, so richly endowed to give and to attract, in her immaturity understand one long broken by disaster and failure, scourged for old mistakes with punishment that could never end? Larry's intemperance in conjunction with continuing fatherhood and Mrs Healey's bitter condemnation were a sordid affront to the glamorous day-dreams that were beginning to invest the girl's adolescence.

"I'll be in presently," he said, and stood shivering and sick in the cold, with shattered nerves and wishing that by a miracle Dot would be silent.