Читать книгу Capricornia - Xavier Herbert - Страница 11

OSCAR held dominion over six hundred square miles of country, which extended east and west from the railway to the summit of the Lonely Ranges, and north and south from the horizons, it might be said, since there was nothing to show where the boundaries lay in those directions.

Jasmine had said that he worshipped property. It was true. But he did not value Red Ochre simply as a grazing-lease. At times it was to him six hundred square miles where grazing grew and brolgas danced in the painted sunset and emus ran to the silver dawn—square miles of jungle where cool deep billabongs made watering for stock and nests for shouting nuttagul geese—of grassy valleys and stony hills, useless for grazing, but good to think about as haunts of great goannas and rockpythons—of swamps where cattle bogged and died, but wild hog and buffalo wallowed in happiness—of virgin forests where poison weed lay in wait for stock, but where possums and kangaroos and multitudes of gorgeous birds dwelt as from time immemorial. At times he loved Red Ochre.

At times he loved it best in Wet Season—when the creeks were running and the swamps were full—when the multi-coloured schisty rocks split golden waterfalls—when the scarlet plains were under water, green with wild rice, swarming with Siberian snipe—when the billabongs were brimming and the water-lilies blooming and the nuttaguls shouting loudest—when bull-grass towered ten feet high, clothing hills and choking gullies—when every tree was flowering and most were draped with crimson mistletoe and droning with hummingbirds and native bees—when cattle wandered a land of plenty, fat and sleek, till the buffalo-flies and marsh-flies came and drove them mad, so that they ran and ran to leanness, often to their death—when mosquitoes and a hundred other breeds of maddening insects were there to test a man’s endurance—when from hour to hour luke-warm showers drenched the steaming earth, till one was sodden to the bone and mildewed to the marrow and moved to pray, as Oscar always was when he had had enough of it, for that which formerly he had cursed—the Dry! the good old Dry—when the grasses yellowed, browned, dried to tinder, burst into spontaneous flame—when harsh winds rioted with choking dust and the billabongs became mere muddy holes where cattle pawed for water—when gaunt drought loafed about a desert and exhausted cattle staggered searching dust for food and drink, till they fell down and died and became neat piles of bones for the wind to whistle through and the gaunt-ribbed dingo to mourn—then one prayed for the Wet again, or if one’s heart was small, packed up and left this Capricornia that fools down South called the Land of Opportunity, and went back and said that nothing was done by halves up there except the works of puny man.

Red Ochre was so named because an abundance of red ochre was to be found in the locality. Not far from the homestead was a cleft hillock of which the face was composed entirely of red ochre that was scored by the implements of men of the Mullanmullak Tribe who had gathered the pigment there for ages. From the hillock a score of red paths diverged as black ones do from a colliery, one of them leading to the homestead itself, trodden, so it was said, by Tobias Batty, founder of the Station, who went mad and took to painting his body after the fashion of the blacks.

Red Ochre was founded twenty years or more before Oscar settled there. His predecessor, who succeeded the mad Batty, was a man named Wellington Boots, formerly a Cockney grocer, who had a young wife whom he worked like a horse and five young children whom he kept perpetually in a state of virtual imprisonment. It was said that he used to weigh out the rations of his native riders in niggardly quantities on loaded scales. He was killed by a bull on the plain to the south and eaten by ants and crows and kites till buried in a sack by his wife.

The homestead stood in these days just as Batty had built it. It was of corrugated iron on an angle-iron frame. In the dwelling the materials even of the doors were such as could not be destroyed by termites. The windows had been sheet-iron shutters till Oscar glazed them. But in spite of the materials, the house was airy and cool; for the walls stopped short of meeting the sprawling roof by a foot or two, leaving a wide well-ventilated space between the iron itself and the ceiling of paper-bark, the entry of possums and snakes and other pests being prevented by wire netting. The walls were lined with paper-bark, pipeclayed and panelled with polished bloodwood. The floor was of ant-bed, the stuff of the termites’, or white-ants’ nests, which when crushed and wetted and beaten hard makes serviceable cement. Mrs Boots was responsible for most of the interior fittings. Oscar had improved on them. Carpets and marsupial skins lay about the floors; bright pictures and hunting trophies such as tusks of boars and horns of buffaloes adorned the walls. Broad verandas surrounded the house, each screened with iron lattice covered with potato-creeper, and decorated with palms and ferns and furnished with punkahs and rustic furniture made by Oscar.

The homestead was about twenty miles from the railway. It stood on the brow of a hill about which the Caroline River, hidden from view by a belt of scrub and giant trees, flowed in a semi-circle. It was the northern side of the house that faced the river, a side that was raised on a high stone foundation because of the rapid slope. The veranda on that side was the part of the house most used in dry weather. On the eastern veranda were the snowy mosquito-netted beds of the family, which now unhappily numbered only two. Peter Differ and his half-caste daughter Constance lived in a little house of their own at the rear. Differ worked on the run as foreman. Constance, who was aged about eleven, worked in the house as a sort of maid. The eastern veranda was sheltered by two great mangoes, part of a grove that led down to the river. On the opposite side were poinciana trees and cassias and frangi-panis and many other tropical growths that made the place very brilliant and fragrant in Wet Season.

***

One afternoon a few days after that of the incidents at the Siding, Oscar was sitting on the front veranda with his daughter Marigold, watching an approaching storm, when the child pointed to the scrub by the river and said, “Look Daddy—dere’s a niggah wit sumpin on his back.”

Oscar looked and saw a blackfellow in a red naga toiling up the flood-bank with a strangely clad half-caste child on his back. The man came to the veranda steps, panting and sweating profusely, and set his burden down. “What name you want?” asked Oscar. For answer the blackfellow stooped and took from the waist-band of the spotted blue breeches of his burden what proved to be a crumpled letter. He gave it to Oscar, who opened it and read

Dear Oscar, Herewith my nigger Muttonhead. I sent him acrost you with little 1/2 carst boy belong to your brother Mark his names No Name and belongs to Jock Driver of the Melisande Ma McLash reckons you knows all about it he got lef here in a truck we found him and trid keep for Jock nex train but carnt do it because hees too much damn trouble here Oscar hees gone bush 3 times allready and wats kwonskwence we friten for sponsbility to lose him plese you keep him there for Jock I will tell him if I heres from him hees good kid No Name and got good sense for yeler feler but too damn cunin like a dingo be a long way corse if hees look after I reckon heel be O.K. corse you see we gotter go out to work and Ma McLash wont have no truck with him and no good of putin him with nigers seen hees your nefew and seen as how hees one for goan bush like he does. Plese you give my niger Muttonhead a feed and a stick of tobaco or he wont do nuthen more hees cheeky swine thet Muttonhead belt him if he givs you trouble excuse pensl and hast hoppen to find you as it leves me at present. I remain Your obediant servent Joe Ballest Ganger 80-Mile.

Oscar raised a flushed face and looked at Nawnim, who was standing with hands clasped behind him and dirty yellow-brown face elevated and black eyes staring intently at Marigold. In a moment Nawnim became aware of Oscar’s gaze and lowered his face slightly and regarded him slantwise, assuming an expression almost baleful that reminded Oscar of Ballest’s reference to a dingo.

Then a stream of white lightning poured from the heavens. The dead air stirred. Nawnim started, looked at Muttonhead. Thunder crashed, and monster echoes pealed through valleys and caverns of the mountainous clouds. Nawnim thrust his head into Muttonhead’s belly. Again the white lightning poured; the thunder crashed; a blast of cool wind struck the trees and whisked a few leaves on to the veranda. Then rain came rushing across the river—humming drumming rain—and up the hill and over the house—hissing roaring rain.

“Round the back,” yelled Oscar, pointing. Muttonhead took Nawnim’s hand and ran.

Oscar and Marigold went into the house and through and out to the back veranda, from which through the teeming rain they saw Muttonhead and Nawnim crouched under the eaves by the wall of the detached kitchen. In spite of what Ballest had said about Muttonhead, he was evidently too well-aware of his humbleness to enter a whiteman’s shelter uninvited. Oscar had meant that they should go to the back veranda. Seeing that they were fairly well sheltered where they were, he let them stay.

Oscar bent to Marigold when he heard her reedy voice.

“Is dat a lil boy Daddy?” she cried in his ear.

He nodded and smiled weakly; and, because the wind had changed and was blowing the rain in on them, he led her inside to the dining-room, where he sat and held her between his knees.

“Dat not a lil niggah boy, Daddy?” she asked.

“No.”

“What kind lil boy is he den Daddy?”

“Little half-caste.”

“Like Conny Differ?”

He nodded, began to roll a cigarette.

“Is dat Mister Differ’s lil boy Daddy?”

Unpleasant subject. He frowned and said, “Now don’t start asking silly questions.”

She fell silent, and gazing through the back door at the rain, turned over in her mind a mass of thoughts about this boy, who, since he did not look like one of those prohibited Dirty Little Niggahs, might make a playmate. She was allowed to play with Constance, which was very pleasant, although Constance was more than twice her age and evidently not as eager to play as she herself. Carried away by her thoughts she asked, “Daddy—who dat lil boy’s farver?”

The question came as a shock, because it interrupted thoughts of Mark. He looked at her almost suspiciously, then said, “Go and play with your toys and don’t worry me.”

He went outside and lounged about, occupying himself alternately with looking for leaks in the roof and studying his crouching nephew, till the rain stopped; then he went into the yard. After looking at Nawnim for a while as best he could—Nawnim slunk behind Muttonhead at his approach—he said to the blackfellow, “You takim piccanin back longa you boss.”

“Wha’ name?” asked Muttonhead, shaking Nawnim from a leg.

“Takim back longa Mister Ballest. Me no wantim. Him no-more belong me.”

Muttonhead gaped for a moment, then said, “Carn do it.”

Oscar frowned and snapped, “Don’t be cheeky or I’ll crack you.”

Muttonhead cringed and said, “Mist Ballest him say, ‘Takim dat one pic Tonga Boss Chilnsik—him belong him brudder.’”

“I don’t give a damn what he said. Takim back. Here’s some baccy—now then—what say?”

“Tahng you very mush Boss,” said Muttonhead, placing a stick of tobacco behind each ear. Two sticks of tobacco valued at tuppence each were perhaps small reward for a forty-mile walk with a child on his back, but no more than he expected. But he continued to protest, saying, “Carn do it, Boss. Me no-more go back longa railer line lo-ng time. Me go foot-walk longa Lonely River country for lookim up Ol’ People.” He jerked his thick lips in the opposite direction to that in which he had come.

“Then take the brat with you,” snapped Oscar, and walked off.

Muttonhead turned out to be quite as bad as Ballest said. Oscar found that out some hours after dismissing him. He was superintending a job in the smithy when he heard a commotion in the kitchen and went to investigate and found Nawnim being belaboured by the lubra cook. The lubra turned an angry face when he entered the kitchen. Nawnim’s howls died in his gaping mouth.

“What’s the matter?” demanded Oscar.

“Him come sinikin longa brett,” cried the lubra, pointing to bread-tins that stood on the table ready for the oven. Nawnim tried to get behind her. She seized him, flung him back into exposure. He yelled.

“Shut up!” shouted Oscar.

There was dough on Nawnim’s face and hands, and on a leg of the table. Oscar stepped up and grabbed one of his skinny arms and demanded, “What name you no-more go away all-same me talk?” Nawnim blubbered and shrank away. “Which way Muttonhead?” demanded Oscar of the cook.

“Him go longa Lonely River, Boss.”

“Blast him!” cried Oscar. “Left me with the brat after all!” He looked at his captive, stared at him sourly for a while, then sighed and said, “Well I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, poor hungry little devil. God help you! Oh give him some tucker, Princess, and don’t hurt him. Get someone to wash him—he stinks.”

Nawnim spent his first night at Red Ochre in the quarters of the native servants. It was not the servants’ choice, nor a particularly good one of their master’s, since the place was not so far away from the house as to leave the occupants unaware of what was going on there when the going-on was as loud as Nawnim’s. He wailed all night, set the dogs barking in the camp on the river and the dingoes howling in the bush and the pigs squealing in the sty and the horses snorting in the yards. The servants could pinch and punch and smother him into periods of silence, but could not still the external racket he had raised, which seemed to be worse when he was silent and to his ears quite devilish, so that before long he would be moved to start again. The red day dawned on a red-eyed household and on a half-caste brat who was covered with red wales and regarded with general malignity.

Oscar gave him into the care of Constance Differ. All went well throughout the day, because he slept. When he woke at sundown he set up a worse wailing than ever, and tried to escape, so that Constance had to lock him in. He would neither sit nor lie, but stood in a corner with hands clasped behind, watching Constance and venting his incessant tearless grief. Constance was gentle and patient as no-one he had ever known but Anna. But she looked rather too much like Yeller Jewty. Differ tried his hand with him, first with food, then with dancing and singing and playing tricks, finally with a strap. At last Oscar rushed in and spanked by hand, and because the matter had become much worse, took Nawnim by the scruff of the neck and threw him at a blackfellow for removal to the camp. There was some peace in the homestead that night, but none on the river.

Three days passed, during which the people of Red Ochre adapted themselves to broken sleep and kept away from the native camp. Oscar sent a message to the Siding to learn whether Jock had inquired after his uncoveted property, and learnt that he had not. He settled down to wait for word, hoping that Jock might not be drinking at Copper Creek and that he might not go on his way forgetting his responsibilities.

On the afternoon of the fourth day Oscar was wakened from his siesta on the front veranda by sound of cat-like moaning in the yard below, and, rising to investigate, saw little Nawnim standing in the reddish shadow of a poinciana near the steps. Nawnim stopped moaning for about five seconds when Oscar’s head appeared, then resumed. Oscar stared in astonishment. It was obvious from the way in which the child was studying him that the moaning did not interfere with his ability to take an interest in things about him. In fact he was not so much weeping as expressing a vague sense of misery he had felt ever since parting with Fat Anna. He stood in his usual attitude of hands behind back and eyes glancing sideways. When Oscar came to the head of the steps the moaning rose a note higher; but the moaner did not move. Oscar saw Marigold peeping from the hall and told her to go inside, then went down the steps, muttering. Nawnim did not move till Oscar reached the ground, when he retired slowly, walking sideways, watching with one eye and gouging the other with a grubby fist.

“Come here,” said Oscar.

The moan rose by another note. Nawnim continued to retire. Oscar hurried. Nawnim yelled and ran. Oscar stopped. So did Nawnim, and dropped his voice to the moan.

“Blast you!” cried Oscar. “Shut up!”

Steady moan.

“Shut up!” roared Oscar, and moved. Nawnim moved. Oscar snatched up a stick and rushed. Nawnim fled howling, to fall shrieking when Oscar caught him a sound whack on the seat of the spotted blue pants. Oscar pounced on him shouting, “Shut up—shut up—shut up!”

Gritting his teeth with rage, Oscar picked him up and carried him down to the camp, prepared to ease his feelings on those he considered he could flog without stooping to cowardice, the delinquent natives. But they were not there. Nawnim had worn their patience to rags. They had taken their belongings and gone bush. He had been driven to the homestead by hunger and loneliness.

As Oscar’s precepts would not allow him to copy the wisdom of the natives, he had to carry Nawnim back to the house. He dumped him under the scarlet tree where he had found him, and left him bawling, to go find Constance. Constance was away on the run with her father.

Oscar came back fuming, to find to his surprise that Nawnim was as quiet as a mouse, standing in his usual attitude, staring at Marigold. When he saw Oscar he prepared for flight. Oscar was too wise to go near him. He crept back to his chair.

“Can I play with the lil boy Daddy?” asked Marigold.

“No—stay where you are.”

“But I wanna play.”

“Stay where you are.”

“But Daddy—” she said, coming towards him.

The instant she passed out of Nawnim’s sight was announced by a long-drawn moan. Realising at once what was the cause of the good behaviour, Oscar said quickly, “Go back to the edge and stay there.”

“But can’t I play?”

“No—go back—for heaven’s sake go back!”

The moaning stopped. But Marigold did not stop entreating. “Why can’t I play wid him Daddy?” she begged. “He’s not a lil niggah.”

“He is. Now be quiet. Throw him that doll—anything—everything if you like—but stay where he can see you. Let me have a moment’s peace for heaven’s sake. There’s been no peace in the place since that brat came near it.”

There was peace that night and thenceforth. Nawnim went to sleep on a lounge on the back veranda within sound of the last sleepy words of Marigold. Next day he spent under the poinciana tree, playing with a doll and watching Marigold, seeing her not merely as a desirable playmate as she saw him, but, since she was so different from any creature he had seen and clad in garments that amazed him, rather as a human monstrosity like Anna’s Japs an’ Chows.

After a while he lost his distrust of Constance and could be placed in Differ’s house. He slept there in the cot that had been bought for his cousin Roger. Constance taught him to use a knife and fork and spoon, discouraged him from the practice of voiding urine indiscriminately, and made him a laughable suit of clothes.

But Oscar’s troubles were far from done. The child was still his nephew. He believed that in his heart though he would not admit it. The sight of him was a constant reminder of terrible disgrace. And Marigold made matters worse by pestering him for permission to play with the child, taking advantage of a situation he had created by frequent sentimental talks about Dear Mumma and the loneliness to which that faithless one had left them both, backing up her petitions with such heartrending statements as, “Oh dear I am such a lonely lil girl Daddy—no mumma an’ no nobody even to play wiv—Oh Oh, I am so lonely lonely!”

When Oscar and Marigold next went to meet the mail-train, Nawnim went with them, not for a treat as he and she supposed, but for the purpose of being disposed of should a chance occur. Oscar had lately learnt that Jock had left Copper Creek for home, not by the usual route that would take him past the Melisande telegraph-station, but by one that lay far to westward, being forced to go out of his way because the Melisande River was in flood. And according to the report the fellow had gone on his way blind drunk. Oscar’s hope was that there might be someone on the train going out Jock’s way to whom he could give Nawnim. It turned out to be a vain one.

At the Siding he left Nawnim in the buckboard with a black boy and well out of sight of the house, and studiously avoided any form of conversation with the people there that might lead to questions concerning him. He felt sure that they were laughing at him. When Mrs McLash told him that some unknown person had sent her a box of unwanted kittens up from town last train he frowned and left her.

It happened that the people at the Siding had no need to ask questions about Nawnim. Differ had been in a couple of times for grog since the child’s arrival at Red Ochre and had talked; and Frank McLash had been out there for beef when the rioting was at its height. As a matter of fact the story of Nawnim’s doings since his coming into the district was known to nearly everyone on the one hundred and fifty-seven miles of railway. Mrs McLash had gossiped about it over the telephone to Mrs Blaize of Soda Springs; and since all the railway telephones were connected to the same line and all the bells rang together and all the operators made a practice of listening to every conversation whether the signal-rings told them it was intended for their ears or not and then passed on what they heard, such gossip, in that country where all news was good because it was scarce, could travel quick and far.

Oscar learnt from passengers that Mark was still in town and staying at the Princess Alice. It did not strike him as strange that he should be staying there, not knowing that he had been avoiding Heather previously. As a matter of fact Mark and Heather had lately come together again. Mark had got bold through having got rid of his shame. Heather was going to help him with his pearling.

Oscar did not think of Heather at all. He was thinking of how annoying it was that he could not telephone Mark and ask if there were truth in Jock’s assertions without telling his business to the world. Before he left he wrote Mark a letter.

Thus Nawnim’s ride to the Siding turned out to be a treat after all. He went back to Red Ochre sitting high on the stores in the carrier of the buckboard, listening to Marigold’s and Oscar’s singing, and loving them with all his little heart.

That night Differ came to Oscar to see the papers that had come by the monthly mail from South. Oscar was glad to see that he was sober, even if reeking with drink. Differ was a drunkard; train-days were his weak-days; but lately he had been drinking less through having been threatened with dismissal if he continued in the old sottish way.

“Well,” said Differ, after learning of the failure to dispose of Nawnim, “and what’re you going to do with him now?”

“Think I’ll send him up to the Compound on Friday’s train,” said Oscar.

“Eh?—Oh that’s a hell of a place. He’d be better with the black Binghis.”

“What else can I do with him? I won’t be able to get in touch with Driver for months.”

“Why not keep him yourself?”

“He’s no good to me. Binghis are as good as half-castes any day, and give less trouble.”

“Other men find good use for ’em,” said Differ dryly.

Oscar looked him in the eye and said “Yes?” It was meant as a thrust. Differ used Constance as a drudge.

It seemed lost on Differ, who went on, “You can do as much good with a half-caste as a white. There’s my little Connie to prove it.” Differ, who was an educated man, had schooled his daughter well.

“She’s young yet,” said Oscar. “Wait’ll she gets out on her own away from your influence.”

“She won’t do that if I can help it. I want to take her South out of this colour-mad hole.”

“No matter where she is, the stigma of the Binghi blood’ll always be on her.”

Differ smiled as he answered, “Ah no—I’ll pretend she’s a half-caste of another race—Javanese or some such race that the mob doesn’t know much about and therefore’ll respect. She could pass for a half-caste Javanese. She could pass for a Javanese princess, in fact. Then she could marry well and mix with the best society.”

Oscar wondered whether Differ were not drunk after all. He asked after a pause, “You mean that?”

“Yes—to an extent. I mean I’m going to do all I can to make up for the crime of begetting her. Certainly I can’t let her stay here and live for ever regarded as an Aboriginal. And she’d be regarded the same down South if I didn’t say she was a half-caste of another breed.”

“But that’s cruel—making her live a lie.”

“How’s she going to live otherwise and be happy as she ought to be? You’ve got to lie to fools—or they’ll crush you for not being to their liking.”

“Half-castes should be left in their place—with the Binghis. That’s the kindest way to treat ’em. If they don’t know they’ve got rights they won’t want ’em. What the eye doesn’t see, you know.”

Differ smiled and stroked his chin, then said, “But why left with the Binghis?”

“Because they’re half that.”

“What about the other half—the white?”

“That’s submerged.”

Differ smiled again, and after a while said smoothly, “You look on Binghis as animals. They’re not really. They’ve got a different code to ours, that’s all—but one no more different in its way than a Chinaman’s. As a matter of fact their code of simple brotherhood is the true Christian one. Retarding sort of thing, of course, when considered in the light of our own barbarous ways, still, the recognised ethical one of civilisation, whether practised or no. Civilised people are still too raw and greedy to be true Christians. The Binghis are a very ancient race who’ve had the advantage of living in small numbers in a land that supplied their every need. Of course they had to limit their population and guard their game to make the advantage a permanent one. At any rate, they were able to overcome the sheer animal greed that is the chief character of the average creature of the races of the Northern Hemisphere. The Binghis are really highly intelligent. Apart from their own very wise practices, which naturally look ridiculous when judged beside our entirely different ones, see how eager they are to learn anything a whiteman’ll teach ’em. Trouble is whitemen won’t teach ’em anything that might raise ’em a bit—”

“Go on! You can’t teach ’em. I’ve tried.”

“Oh? Give’s an instance?”

“Well—Oh I’ve tried lots of things—for instance I’ve tried to teach ’em about the cattle-market—commerce generally—in a very rough way, of course, so’s they won’t think the Government’s my father and keeps me for love, as they do with their communistic ideas—so’s they won’t pole and waste. I put it to ’em very simple. Just as you would to a child. Oh, but they haven’t any idea to this day what I meant.”

“What language did you use?”

“Why—Pidgin, of course.”

“Ah! Now suppose I tried to explain to you in Pidgin how a locomotive works—” Oscar looked thoughtful. Differ went on, “If Binghis were taught English properly, sent to school like other people, instead of being excluded as they are—”

“That may be so. But they’re filthy cows. No get away from that. Look at their quarters here.”

“What about the slums of highly civilised cities? Why are teams of sanitary inspectors employed if the human race is naturally clean? Cleanliness as we know it, Oscar, is something we’ve learnt through living in crowds where it’s dangerous to be dirty. Binghis are clean enough in their camps. If they were properly taught they’d be clean elsewhere. Send ’em to school as infants.”

“But would they go?”

“Not they! Would anyone of us go if we could get out of it? I said send ’em, same as we’re sent as kids. Keep at it for generation after generation. Don’t look for immediate results. Consider how long it took to civilise our own race. Our condition is the result not of a mere ten years or so of schooling, but of ages. See that the Binghis get the same.”

After a pause Oscar said, “Well it’s not much use worrying about ’em now. They’re dying out.”

“What—with thousands upon thousands of ’em still in this country and many yet never seen a whiteman? Why, do you know that even as far as can be judged there are more more-or-less wild Binghis in this country than there are white people in India? Ah!—what you have just said, Oscar, was said twenty—fifty years ago too. If only the Nation’d give a little time to trying to understand the Binghi, they’d find he isn’t such a low fellow after all. All sorts of evil breeds—the sex-mad Hindoos, the voodooing Africans, the cannibals of Oceania, all dirty, diseased, slaving, and enslaving races—are being helped to decent civilised manhood by the thoughtful white people of the world, while we of this country, the richest in the world, just stand by and see our black compatriots wiped out. They’ll be like the Noble Redman someday—noble when gone! They put up as good a fight for their rights as the Redman, and without the guns of Frenchmen to help them. Why, the kids of this country honour the Redman in their games! What do they think of that just-as-good-if-not-better tracker and hunter and fighter the Binghi? And how was the Redman any better than the Binghi but in that he wore more clothes and rode a horse? You don’t need clothes in this country, and you can’t ride kangaroos. And look at the Maoris. They have seats in Parliament these days, go to the best schools, even receive knighthoods. They were as basely treated as the Binghis at first. How did they win honour? Why—someone put them in the way of handling firearms, sold them firearms as trade! And then one of them was taken to England, where he was given so many presents that he came back as a rich man able to buy enough firearms to start a great war against the whiteman. Matter of luck in getting hold of the firearms to show the whiteman they were as good as he. Poor Binghi missed it. Study the Binghi, Oscar, and you’ll find he’s a different man from you in many ways, but in all ways quite as good. Study him, and you’ll discover that dominant half of the inheritance of the half-caste you despise.”

Oscar pondered for a while, then said, “Oh, but half-castes don’t seem to be any good at all. All the men here are loafers and bludgers, the women practically all whores—”

“Do the men get a chance to work like whitemen? Look, the only half-castes of all the thousands in this country who are regularly employed are those who work on the night cart in town. Occasionally others get a casual labouring job. When it peters out they have to go back to the Old People for a feed. They get no schooling—”

“There’s a school in the Half-castes’ Home.”

“Bah! A kindergarten. A hundred children of all ages crowded into one small room and taught by an unqualified person. I’ll tell you something. Once I had a look at that school, hoping to get the job of running it, knowing that the teacher barely taught ’em more than A.B.C. and the fact that they’re base inferiors. The teacher there then—a woman—thought I was a visitor from South or somewhere. She led off by telling me not to get false notions into my head about her pupils’ unhappy lot. With a smile she told me they were Only Niggers. So ignorant of her job was she that one quarter-caste kiddie I pointed out she said was a half-caste, and to prove it called the child out and asked her, as one’d speak to a prisoner in jail, wasn’t her mother a lubra. As it happens I was right. A cruel ugly business. Of course the kiddie took it calmly, not knowing any other kind of treatment. Just think of it—when those kids leave that lousy school they have no-one to go to but the Binghis; and so they forget even the little they learn. The language of Compounds and Aboriginal reserves is Pidgin. A few score of words. No wonder such people come to think like animals! You said the women were whores. What chance have they to be anything else? Moral sense is something taught. It’s not taught to half-caste girls. They’re looked upon from birth as part of the great dirty joke Black Velvet. What decent whiteman would woo and marry one honestly? It wouldn’t pay him. He’d be looked upon as a combo. Look at Ganger O’Cannon of Black Adder Creek, with his half-caste wife and quadroon kids, a downright family man—yet looked on as as much a combo as if he lived in a blacks’ camp. Isn’t that so?”

“Oh I don’t see much difference between a black lubra and a yeller one. Anyway, Tim O’Cannon’s lubra’s father was a Chow, which makes her a full-blood and his kids half-caste. But this is a distasteful subject. I don’t like this Black Velvet business. It makes me sick.”

“You’re like the majority of people in Australia. You hide from this very real and terrifically important thing, and hide it, and come to think after a while that it don’t exist. But it does! It does! Why are there twenty thousand half-castes in the country? Why are they never heard of? Oh my God! Do you know that if you dare write a word on the subject to a paper or a magazine you get your work almost chucked back at you?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. Why shouldn’t such a disgraceful thing be kept dark? Is that what you’re writing about in this book of yours?”

“No fear! I’ve learnt long ago that I’m expected to write about the brave pioneers and—Oh bah! this dissembling makes my guts bleed! But talking about Tim O’Cannon, Oscar—most of the men in this district go combo, mainly on the sly. How can they help it? There are no white women. Would moralists prefer that those who pioneer should be sexual perverts? Well, if there are any kids as the result of these quite natural flutters they are just ignored. The casual comboes are respected, while men like O’Cannon and myself, who rear their kids, are utterly despised. Take the case of your brother Mark for instance. A popular fellow—”

“All this talk about Mark has got to be proved.”

“There’s plenty more examples—popular and respected men, their shortcomings laughed over, while Tim O’Cannon’s been trying for years to get a teacher sent down to Black Adder for a couple of days a month to get his kids schooled a bit. The Government tells him again and again to send them to the Compound School—”

“Well, if he’s so keen on getting ’em schooled—”

“Better have ’em ignorant than taught humility, the chief subject on the curriculum of the Compound. But O’Cannon’s a taxpayer. He pays his whack towards the upkeep of the State School up in town—”

“Can’t he send ’em there?”

“Who’d look after ’em if he did? Who’d protect ’em from the contempt of the white kids? All he wants is a teacher sent down once a month to stay the couple of days while the train’s down the road. They won’t do it.”

A long pause fell. Both men smoked, and stared into the black breathless night. At length Differ said earnestly, “Don’t send the kid to the Compound, Oscar. It’ll mean the ruin of him. He’ll grow up to learn nothing but humility. And after all the Government will only send him out to work for some brainless cruel fool like Driver. My friend, any person who can adopt a half-caste as his own and doesn’t, will surely burn in Hell, if there is such a place. Think of the life before the kid—like Yeller Elbert’s—worse—like poor savage Peter Pan’s. Life-long humiliation. Neither a whiteman nor a black. A drifting nothing. Keep the boy a while, Oscar, teach him just a bit to test what I’ve said. You’re a good-hearted man I know. I’m sure you’ll see the good in him when it begins to show, in spite of the prejudices bred in you and drummed into you by Australian papers and magazines that use the Binghi as something to joke about. Remember that though his skin is dark and there is Aboriginal in his blood, half his flesh and blood is the same as your own.”

Oscar turned on him angrily and cried, “I told you that’s still got to be proved!”

Oscar let Nawnim play with Marigold, just for an hour or so now and again. Then Nawnim began to change, not in his own little body, but in Oscar’s idea of him, and came to be not so much a family disgrace as a personal problem, a fascinating terrible problem. If he were to grow up to be a cringing drudge like Yeller Elbert or a pariah like Peter Pan, how would fare the half of him that was proud Shillingsworth? Oscar began to think about him more than anything else that concerned him just then, and came at length to the decision that if it were proved that he was the son of Mark, he would see to it that Mark took care of him and would himself advise Mark how best to do so.

Another fortnight passed. Then Oscar went in to meet the train, fully expecting to get a letter of denial or contrite confession from Mark, and half expecting to see the fellow himself, since during the fortnight of changing and softening opinions he had forgotten how harsh was the letter he had sent him. Neither Mark nor letter came.

Oscar was annoyed. Much of the new softness hardened in a matter of minutes. He thought for a while, then telephoned the Princess Alice Hotel and learnt that Mark was still there. He spoke to Heather, but did not say who he was. She went to get Mark, and, in Oscar’s opinion, returned with him, because, although she said that she had been unable to find him, her manner of asking who was speaking and what his business was gave him the idea that she was repeating what someone near was whispering. He told her nothing but that he wished to speak to Mark concerning a matter of great importance and would be obliged if she would see to it that he was at hand when he would ring again at five.

Oscar came out of Mrs McLash’s little post-office prickling with heat and anger. As he did so, Mrs McLash crept out of her bedroom smirking. She had been listening. She guessed that it all had something to do with Nawnim, as she told Mrs Blaize of Soda Springs when she telephoned to learn what had been said by the other party.

At five o’clock Oscar rang the Princess Alice again. This time he would have no dealings with Heather when she said that Mark was still away. He asked for Mrs Shay, who addressed him by name and told him just what Heather had before. All his softness was callousness now. He went home vowing to teach Mark a lesson.

Two days later Oscar came to the Siding again, this time dressed for travelling and bringing with him a portmanteau and laughably-clad Nawnim. That was return-train day. As soon as Mrs McLash saw him she said to people sitting with her that she would bet her bottom dollar that he was taking Nawnim up to town to throw him at Mark’s head. Sure enough, Oscar asked if he might use the telephone, and rang up the Princess Alice. She heard him tell someone that he required Mark to meet him at the train in town, that Mark must be got if getting him necessitated calling in the help of the police.

As soon as the train left the Caroline, Mrs McLash rang up Mrs Shay, as it was usual for her to do, to tell her how many passengers were likely to require lodging at her hotel. She also told why Oscar was coming. Mrs Shay had no love for Mark and did not know that Heather had much; when she returned to the dining-room whence she had been called, she passed on what she had heard. Thus, while the train was still in the Caroline Hills, most of Mrs Shay’s lodgers knew that Mark was going to have a half-caste piccaninny thrown at his head that night. That was the first that most of the lodgers knew of the existence of a child of Mark’s. Indeed it was news to Mrs Shay herself. To Heather it was a thunderbolt. While landlady and lodgers laughed over the news, Heather stole up to her room and wept. Mark was down at the beach at work on his ship.

The people who heard the tale from Mrs Shay took it down to the station when they went to meet the train that evening and passed it on to the crowd. Before long it was generally known, so that as much attention was given to watching for Mark as for the train.

True to the tale, a sullen-faced Oscar arrived with a half-caste brat. But no Mark was there to have it thrown at his head. Mark was gone, sailing out into the Silver Sea. For Heather had gone to him to learn the truth and had told him everything. He denied Nawnim, but declined to prove himself by facing Oscar. She left him, telling him that she never wanted to see his face again. In two or three hours he completed arrangements for his pearling-expedition that otherwise he might have dallied over for weeks. He was not fleeing from responsibility for Nawnim, but from the shame of exposure before the town.

Oscar was infuriated. His reason for wanting Mark to meet him was mainly that he wished to save himself the embarrassment of having to carry the child through the town and hand him over to Mark in a public place. He never dreamt that Mark could be warned and would flee. As it was, he had to carry Nawnim to the Princess Alice and show him to Mrs Shay. The lady seemed amazed. He cursed himself for having trusted to the telephone, but not nearly so vigorously as he cursed Mark for deserting and Mrs McLash for tattling. That night Nawnim slept in his arms in the best room in the hotel. He had to be held in arms because, distrustful as he was of the strange surroundings and the noises of the bar, he was disposed to wail. Oscar was glad of the room to hide in.

Next morning after a quiet breakfast in the room, Oscar took Nawnim to the Aborigines Department and handed him over to the Protector, confessing with malicious pleasure that he was uncle to the child. He confessed because he wished the Government to take action against Mark. It was a mistake. Just then the Compound was being closed owing to an outbreak of measles among its people, on account of which the Protector could not admit Nawnim without endangering his life. The Protector said that Aborigines were particularly prone to die of the disease, and suggested that Oscar, as the child’s uncle, should continue to take care of him till the danger was past. Oscar dreaded measles since the death of his infant son, and was loth to expose Nawnim to it, but resented being expected to act charitably on account of a relationship he did not recognise. He became angry and told the Protector to place the child in some other institution. The Protector responded to his anger and told him that the measles was everywhere, and that he considered it extremely mean of him to avoid a trifling inconvenience that might be the means of saving the child’s life. Oscar went off in a rage, with the prospect of having to keep Nawnim with him in the town during the eleven days till next train-day.

Before returning to the hotel he took Nawnim to a Chinese store and bought him a tusser-silk suit and sandals and a sailor hat. A mighty improvement was effected in the child’s appearance. Oscar did not slink back to the hotel nearly as shyly as he had slunk away from it. Mrs Shay called Heather to look at Nawnim, little knowing that Heather’s eyes could scarcely see anything for tears of which Nawnim was the innocent cause. Heather came for fear that a refusal might set her mistress off suspecting what was the cause of the headache that had kept her out of company these many hours. The result of her coming was a further improvement in Nawnim’s appearance; for in spite of the pain his existence caused her, she was touched by the sight of him; she saw faults in his dress that were invisible to Oscar and a Chinaman, and therefore took him back to the store and had his suit changed, and at Oscar’s expense bought him more clothes and a Teddy Bear she found him staring at and a huge bag of lollies. Then she took him back to the hotel and bathed him, and had a cot fitted up for him on the veranda outside her own quiet bedroom. Oscar was grateful, but reluctant to let a Poundamore make free with a Shillingsworth disgrace.

For three rather miserable days Oscar lounged about the town, trailing or carrying Nawnim, since Heather was usually too busy to mind him and he would not suffer the company of others. Then the problem of disposing of the burden suddenly appeared to solve itself. Freddie Radato, the half-caste Philippino barber, while shaving Oscar one morning and talking about Nawnim, who sat near, offered to take care of him for thirty shillings a week till Mark returned. Oscar jumped at the offer. He left Nawnim in the saloon. But he did not experience the feeling of relief he had expected. He left Nawnim howling, and, because Radato’s house was near the hotel, heard him howling for hours afterwards. And he felt distinctly mean about abandoning him. Next morning at breakfast, to the sound of Nawnim’s howls, he confessed to Heather that he had come to like him.

When three days later the doctor came and told him that he must take Nawnim away from Radato’s at once because one of the Radato children had contracted measles, Oscar was not really dismayed. That night he took him to Tommy Tai Yun’s open-air picture-show and showed him his first moving pictures. Next day he took him aboard the mail-boat and showed him the wonders it contained, including the captain’s monkey, which he was even moved to try to buy for him. The days that followed were by no means miserable. There were more pictures—free pictures this time, because the last performance had been interrupted in the middle by a thunderstorm—and motor-rides out to Tikatika Point, and a fishing expedition down the jetty. Oscar came to find pleasure in watching Nawnim’s delight in these simple entertainments, and in teaching him to speak English properly. And he came to feel that it would be pleasant to introduce him to the mighty world as he had dreamt of introducing Roger. But at the same time he did not entirely give up trying to dispose of him nor forget to write to Mark a stinging letter in which he stated that if he refused to accept his responsibilities he would see that an action for affiliation was brought against him.

At length the day of the return journey came. Nawnim went down to the train with Oscar in Joe Crowe’s cab, clad in a neat little khaki suit and khaki topee. The rest of his belongings were packed away in Oscar’s bag, together with pencils and pads and slates and primers and picture-books. Oscar led him through the crowd with little of the shame he had felt when last he trod that ground with him. And Nawnim, holding the big brown hand he had come to love, felt none of the fear he had felt there only six weeks before.

Just as the train was moving out, a yellow face, round as the moon at full and wide-eyed and open-mouthed, came bobbing through the crowd towards the open window of the coach where Oscar and Nawnim stood, screaming, “Nawnee—Nawnee!” He recognised it. His eyes brightened. His body tensed.

“Nawnee—Nawnee! Hello lil manee—which way you walkim?”

“Who’s that?” asked Oscar, leaning out to stare—to stare back as the train passed on.

It was Fat Anna. But Nawnim did not know her name, nor much about her beyond the fact that she was something pleasant come suddenly out of the misty past. She was soon lost to view. Thus Oscar never realised how close he came to solving the problem completely.

They returned to Red Ochre. And as though it were true that clothes make a man, before many weeks were out, little Nawnim, under the respectable name of Norman, came to live in the Shillingsworth household as a Shillingsworth of the blood.