Читать книгу Old Blastus of Bandicoot - Miles Franklin - Страница 5

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The old, quaint songs, alas, are sung,

Their singers gone to come no more,

But mem'ry lingers softly strung,

And sweetly sound the chords of yore.

Old Barry moved in and out on various chores and roared to Mabel: "Bring me a bottle of that balsam I made up when Bally was down."

Mabel produced it with her ceaseless, tireless efficiency and disappeared again quickly before her father could say anything.

"I'll ride around by the travelling sheep. They'll do a service to eat down a bit of the grass, but in the name of reason can you understand a man who would say a thing like that to the boy?"

"People like to say something nasty that they know will sting, and if they've been given the chance, you have to put up with it, and grin on the other side of your face."

"I believe it would have been better to bring him and Dora up knowing. We've only got to face it some day."

"It's better for the young people as it is. Say nothing and it will pass over." Mrs. Barry continued to tickle the earth in her flower pots on the back veranda of the house. It was connected with the kitchen veranda by a wide awning of galvanised iron supported by adzed gum posts. She was a placid looking woman with mousy brown hair going grey, screwed in a bun at the back and frizzed in front. She was wearing a dress of zephyr and a large white bibles apron with crochetted lace on the hem. Her husband often bent to her will as the boisterous do to the meekly-mannered. He took his coat off a nail on a post of the kitchen wall, and his old donkey supper hat, with the fly veil, from a peg near-by, and, after inspecting himself in the mirror for men's toilets, went off to his neighbour's aid.

Old Mrs. Turpey kept the post-office and a lolly shop several miles away on the roadside. There was also a blacksmith shop when "the boys"—her grandsons—were home; but they had some weeks since gone clown the Riverina shearing and thus she had sent for Barry. Everyone sent for him when in need. Practical experience upon industry, strength and innate giftedness gave him unsurpassed knowledge in all that appertained to the land on the Southern Tableland. He knew more than all the stock inspectors, vets, and agricultural collegians combined, and never jibbed at a request for help or advice. In addition, he was always at hand. He had had but few trips to Sydney in his life, and since he had reached fifty rarely went farther afield than Queanbeyan once or twice a week, or to Yass occasionally.

As he dropped out of view in the direction of Turpey's, Tom Harris, who lived beyond Lindsey's on the other side, hove into sight on the ridges Queanbeyanwards. He was driving a score of mixed cattle he had picked up to put on the surplus grass that the season promised, and as one of the animals had developed a swelling that he did not like, he left the herd in an angle near the Bandicoot while he came to the homestead for Barry's opinion.

Tom was a long, narrow, awkward young man, who did not know what to do about his hat. He lacked the courage to raise it with the dash of Ross Lindsey, or the fortitude to keep it tight on his head as did Concertina Mick, and between two minds generally foozled it. He was wearing a greasy felt hat and coloured shirt, grey moleskin trousers, with leggings, and hobnailed boots. He was entitled to equal social standing with the Lindseys, and financially, Blastus was fond of declaring that he had a banking account of his own while all that Ross had was his father's overdraft.

In the hope of seeing Dora in passing, he had contemplated a mid-week shave, but had funked at the last lest such lah-de-dahing might announce what was just dawning on himself, that Dora could attract his ten-stone-eight ten or twelve miles as easily as a magnet a needle.

He rode up and asked Mrs. Barry for the Boss. She invited him in, and he, hoping to see Dora, entered sheepishly and then told his business about the cow. Mrs. Barry explained her husband's absence and his sure return by dark. No word or sight of Dora. Tom arose in the attitude of a man fearing his garments may slip, and murmured: "I must he getting back or the beasts may stray."

Mrs. Barry advised him to put his stock in the paddock and stay the night. Tom mumbled something unintelligible and withdrew, still in trouble about his hat, peering into it and circuitously shuffling it into place. Nevertheless he was sufficiently tenacious of purpose to hang about till the return of Barry, who was firm about the cattle being put in the paddock and Tom staying the night. It would be easier to diagnose the cow's infirmity by daylight.

"What's your hurry? There's plenty grass, and Mick can give us a tune on his hurdy-gurdy."

Dora later found Tom washing on the kitchen veranda with her father and looked at him contemptuously. The encounter with Ross Lindsey and his father had grown a new bud on her standards.

After the evening meal they gathered in the "best" room, a ceremonial apartment dedicated to the piano and enlarged photographs of Barry's champions. The latter, elaborately framed as for the Royal Academy, were hung all around the walls, and a growing array of trophies rested on a silver tray on a sideboard. Anti-macassars of elaborate crochet, and fat cushions of wool-work covered every available space. There were also some photographs of people. It was the day of photographs and silver frames. It was Dora's ambition to have photographs of celebrities standing about as certificates of social standing as the clergyman's fife had in her drawing-room.

Mick Bell was a celebrated performer on concertinas and such and owing to this proficiency was known as Concertina Mick, or more intimately, Concertina. Dora hated Mick and his accordion. His beard also offended her ripening womanhood. The male social lights of the younger broods were clean-shaven to a man. Mick's beard, of a rich brown with scarcely a grey hair despite his fifty years, was the variety that sprouts on a chin never scraped, and as wide east and west from the cheeks as southward from the nose. A veteran pipe usually marked the whereabouts of his mouth.

Tom borrowed the razor he had secretly given Arthur two years before, but even at that date it had been "as blunt as a butter knife," so Tom did not look much better for its passage.

Father had an ear for music and was proud of Dora's singing and mastery of the piano and it was irritating to her that he insisted upon her singing now when she was trying to acquire the new method of the expensive teacher from Goulburn. She was perforce overborne because Father thought he knew as much about music as merinos. The evening was an increasing trial to the girl. She sang the old songs demanded by Dad: "We wandered to-day to the Hill, Maggie"; "Her bright Smile haunts me still"; "Shades of evening close not o'er me";—-the tried favourites with which he had courted his wife. Tom sang "Sweet Belle Mahone," to Mick's accompaniment, and with his eyes closed, and also "The Letter that never came." In response to his request Dora sang: "Then fly with me across the sea, and leave the wo-o-rld behind, for here am I-I, to live or die-i, as you prove hard or kind, as you prove ha-a-rd or kind. Oh-ah-ah-la-ah, as you prove ha-a-rd or kind."

Tom was entranced, unable to discern that as she trilled she was filled with discontent and craved the inspiration of a more congenial audience than sleepy sawny Tom, and Mick with his large beard and nipping remarks.

Between numbers Father detailed the symptoms of Turpey's old hollow-backed mare, and asked Tom's advice.

"It sounds like a fistula," he offered. "But I wouldn't venture with an expert like you in the field."

"Tom's makin' a track to Dad's heart to git near Dorer," whispered Concertina aside, taking himself farther, if possible, from Dora's regard. She was relieved by Arthur's demand for "Where did you get that Hat?" This made Arthur chortle, but he was sent to bed well before nine o'clock. Father's bright idea was to leave Dora and Tom in the parlour for a little chaste companionship amid the champions. Dora was nearly a woman now, and he meant to look ahead for her. No use in going against nature. Dora developed unknown fatigue, and Tom was too Bauch to improve his opportunity, so they all wound up in the kitchen where Mabel provided tea and cake, and a fire which was still cosy in the evenings.

Dora was noticeably uncordial in the morning when Concertina offered to give Tom a hand, and Father went with them to see the cow. Father so disapproved of her attitude that he decided to speak to her. He came back after seeing the cow and called for morning tea to further that purpose. He had no hesitancy. He sat down on one of the cane chairs on the veranda, and began: "Dora, I want to speak to you."

Dora was assisting her mother to give the pot plants a spring overhauling. These were in a varied collection of buckets, boxes and kerosene cans set on stands like stairs all painted green.

"Come and sit down and listen properly when I speak to you."

Dora was wrestling with a justicea in a mutilated toilet jug. She halted, pot in arms, but did not make any remark.

"I want to speak about your behaviour. If you want to be pop'lar you shouldn't be so snippy to Mick Bell. It's not lady-like."

Dora had no desire to be popular with Mick Bell. "I thought you said it was the sign of a jail bird to try to be popular."

"Now, my girl, I've told you before not to be pert. Mick Bell is as fine and honest a man as you'll find; and he'll have a home of his own when some of these flash squibs are sold up by the bailiffs."

"Old pipe-sucker! He'll get lost in his beard one of these days. You ought to run a fire break in it for him."

"And there's Tom Harris," proceeded Father undaunted. It would never penetrate his self-complacence that he could be out of touch with the heart of a girl or a youth.

"Gawpy-looking object!" said Dora, equally undashed.

"There's not a finer young fellow in the district than Tom. Honest and steady and unassuming. You'll never see him too big for his boots."

"That would be hard when they reach from here to Brindabullah."

"That's silly exaggeration. He doesn't want flash boots like a jockey or buck-jump rider when he's about his work. He shows his sense."

"He doesn't even know how to raise his hat."

"Any girl who gets Tom will be lucky."

"If he was the last man on a desert island with me, I wouldn't allow him to save my life."

"It's lack of judgment to pass by solid worth for fal-de-rals that are negleegible. I wanted to talk to you yesterday when you came home from town, but Mick Bell was here. Don't let me hear of you talking to Ross Lindsey or the old man again. It's the thin edge of the wedge."

"What wedge?" said Dora, letting the pot crash.

"Now let me know best in this, my girl. Ross Lindsey has got himself up in a scutty turn-out with buttons on the sides of his pants and long boots like a circus rider, and rides a flash horse that isn't half so flash as himself, but it isn't in his breed to be a white man. I've sworn that if ever a Lindsey attempted to darken my door again I'd take a gun to him myself; and if ever one of mine darkened the door of a Lindsey, I'm done with her for ever. Don't let me have to say this again."

Dora felt rebellious, but there was nothing she could do. She sat down and crossed her knees exposing slim ankles which looked a picture amid her flounces. Father became pontifical.

"My girl, I don't want to talk about these things, but never let me see you sitting in that loud way. It is the first symptom of a girl going to the dogs, like a fast woman, if she is immodest about showing her lower limbs. You'll never have a man respect you if you act like that." Those were the days when a man could not name a male animal correctly in the hearing of a "refined" woman.

"I don't want a man to respect me. I'll disrespect a man for a bit of a change," said Dora, relieved by this opportunity for opposition.

"Hush! You don't know the world. I do."

"For goodness' sake, Dora, don't come to issues with your father over nothing. It upsets me so that I can't sleep, and you're shirking your work with these pots."

Mother, though she condemned Dora's standings-up to her father, found them an alleviation of stagnation, Dora put her feet genteelly together. She was chafing to end her father's dull and familiar homily, and to be rid of her mother's tiresome old pot plants, in order to practice her singing lesson and try a new song, and plan her new dress, and day-dream of what might happen the next time she went to Queanbeyan, still six days distant, and no possibility of anything happening till then.

"If you get bold and flippant," pursued her father, "you'll have to give up flashing about to town and help Mabel and your mother with the work."

This was alarming. If Father got his bristles up he would be capable of wasting the tuition fee, or of making the teacher return it. Dora capitulated.

"All right, Father. I didn't mean anything. Old Lindsey only came to the Royal to see Mr. Slattery about something. They're not likely to be there again."

"What could he be after old Slattery for? Old Slattery ought to have more sense than to have anything to do with Lindsey."

"It's no use of trying to stampede others to your way of thinking," observed Mother among her pot plants.