Back To Billabong - Mary Grant Bruce
There were many people on the platform, and, wonderful to relate, a band
was playing--Home Sweet Home; a little band, some of its musicians still
in the aprons in which they had rushed from their shop duties; with
instruments few and poor, and with not much training, so that the cornet
was apt to be half a bar ahead of the euphonium. The Lintons had heard
many bands since they had been away, and some had played before the King
himself; but no music had ever gripped at their heartstrings like the
music of the little backblocks band that stood on the gravelled platform
of Cunjee and played to welcome them home.
Suddenly, as they stood bewildered, there seemed people all round them;
kindly, homely faces, gripping their hands, shouting greetings. Evans,
the manager of Billabong, showed a delighted face for a moment, said,
"Luggage in the van. I'll see to it; don't you bother," and was gone.
Little Dr. Anderson and his wife, friends of long years, were trying to
shake hands with all four at once. They were the centre of an excited
little crowd--and found it hard to believe that it was really for them.
The train roared away, unnoticed, and the station-master and the porter
ran up to add their voices to the chorus. Somehow they were outside the
station, gently propelled; and there was a great arch of gum leaves,
with a huge WELCOME in red letters, and beneath it were the shire
president and his councillors, and other weighty men, all with speeches
ready. But the speeches did not come to much, for the shire president
had lads himself who had gone to the war, and a lump came in his throat
as he looked at the tall boys from Billabong, whom he had known as
little children; so that half the fine things he had prepared were never
said--which did not matter, since he had it all written out and gave
it to the reporter of the local paper afterwards! Something of
speech-making there undoubtedly was, but no one could have told you much
about it--and suddenly it ended in some one calling for "Three cheers!"
which every one gave with a will, while the band played that they were
Jolly Good Fellows--and some of the band cheered while they played, with
very curious results. Then David Linton tried to speak, and that was a
failure also, as far as eloquence went; but nobody seemed to mind. So,
between hand grips and cheers, they made their way through the welcome
of Cunjee to where the big double buggy of Billabong stood, with three
fidgeting brown horses, each held by a volunteer. Beyond that was the
carry-all of the bush; an express wagon, with a grinning black boy at
the horses' heads--and Norah went to him with outstretched hands.
"Why, Billy!" she said.
Billy's grin expanded in a perfectly reckless fashion.
"Plenty glad!" he stammered--and thereby doubled his usual output of
words.
Willing hands were tossing their luggage into the wagon--unfamiliar
luggage to Cunjee, with its jumble of ship labels, Continental hotel
brands, and the names of towns all over England, Ireland and Scotland.
There were battered tin uniform cases of Jim and Wally's, bearing their
rank and regiment in half effaced letters: "Major J. Linton"; "Captain
W. Meadows"--it was hard to realize that they belonged to the two
merry-faced boys, who did not seem much changed from the days when
Cunjee had seen them arrive light-heartedly from school. Mr. Linton ran
his eye over the pile, pronouncing it complete. Then Evans was at his
side.
"The motor you sent is ready at the garage in the township if you want
it," he said. "But you wired that I was to bring the buggy."
"I did," said David Linton, with a slow smile. "I suppose for
convenience sake we'll have to shake down to using the motor. But I
drove the old buggy away from Billabong, and I'll drive home now. Jump
in, children."
He gathered up the reins, sitting, erect and spare, with one foot on the
brake, while the brown horses plunged impatiently, and the volunteers
found their work cut out in holding them. Norah was by him, Evans on her
other hand; Jim and Wally "tumbled up" into the back seat, as they had
done so many times. David Linton looked down at the crowd below.
"Thank you all again," he said. "We'll see you soon--it's not good-bye
now, only 'so-long.' Let 'em go, boys."
The volunteers sprang back, thankfully. The browns stood on their hind
legs for a moment, endeavouring to tie themselves in knots; then the
whip spoke, and they came to earth, straightened themselves out with a
flying plunge, and wheeled out of the station yard and up the
street. Behind them cheers broke out afresh, and the band blared once
more--which acted as a further spur to the horses; they were pulling
double as the high buggy flashed along the street, where every house and
every shop showed smiling faces, and handkerchiefs waved in welcome. So
they passed through Cunjee, and wheeled to the right towards the open
country--the country that meant Billabong.
There were seventeen miles of road ahead, but the browns made little of
them. They had come into the township the evening before, and had done
nothing since but eat the hotel oats and wish to be out of a close
stable and back in their own free paddocks. They took the hills at a
swift, effortless trot, and on the down slopes broke into a hand-gallop;
light-hearted, but conscious all the time of the hand on the reins, that
was as steel, yet light as a feather upon a tender mouth. They danced
merrily to one side when they met a motor or a hawker's van with
flapping cover; when the buggy rattled over a bridge they plainly
regarded the drumming of their own hoofs as the last trump, and fled
wildly for a few hundred yards, before realizing that nothing was really
going to happen to them. But the miles fled under their swift feet. The
trim villas near the township gave place to scattered farms. These in
their turn became further and further apart, and then they entered a
wide belt of timber, ragged and wind-swept gums, with dense undergrowth
of dogwood and bracken fern. The metalled road gave place to a hard,
earthern track, on which the spinning tyres made no sound; it curved in
and out among the trees, which met overhead and cast upon it a waving
pattern of shadows. Grim things had once happened to Norah in this belt
of trees, and the past came back to her as she looked at its gloomy
recesses again.
They were all silent. There had been few questions to ask of Evans, a
few to be answered; then speech fled from them and the old spell of the
country held them in its power. Every yard was familiar; every little
bridge, every culvert, every quaint old skeleton tree or dead grey log.
Here Jim's pony had bolted at sight of an Indian hawker, in days long
gone, and had ended by putting his foot into a hole and turning a
somersault, shooting Jim into a well-grown clump of nettles. Here Norah
had dropped her whip when riding alone, and her fractious young mare had
succeeded in pulling away when she dismounted, and had promptly departed
post-haste for home; leaving her wrathful owner to follow as she might.
A passing bullock-wagon had given her a lift, and the somewhat anxious
rescue party, setting out from Billabong, had met its youthful mistress,
bruised from much bumping, but otherwise cheerful, progressing in slow
majesty towards its gates. Here--but the memories were legion, even to
the girl and the two boys. And David Linton's went further back, to the
day when he had first driven Norah's mother over the Billabong track;
little and dainty and merry, while he had been as always, silent, but
unspeakably proud of her. The little mother's grave had long been green,
and the world had turned topsy-turvy since then, but the old track was
the same, and the memory, and the pride, were no less clear.
They emerged from the timber at last, and spun across a wide plain,
scattered with clumps of gum-trees. Then another belt of bush, a narrow
one this time; and they came out within view of a great park-like
paddock where Shorthorn bullocks, knee-deep in grass, scarcely moved
aside as the buggy spun past, with the browns pulling hard. The track
ran near the fence, and turned in at a big white gate glistening with
new paint. It stood wide open, and beside it was a man on a splendid bay
horse.
"There's Murty, and he's on Garryowen," spoke Jim quickly. "The old
brick!"
"I guess if anyone else had wanted to open the gate for you to-day, he'd
have had to fight Murty for the job," said Evans. "And Garryowen's been
groomed till he turns pale at the sight of a brush, Great horse he's
made, Mr. Jim."
"He's all that," said his owner, leaning out to view him better, with
his eyes shining. He raised his voice in a shout as they swung in
through the gateway. "Good for you, Murty! Hurroo!"
"Hurroo for ye all!" said Murty, and found to his amazement that his
voice was shaky. "Ah, don't shtop, sir, they're all waitin' on ye. I'll
be up as soon as ye."
Norah had tried to speak, and had found that she had no voice at all.
She could only smile at him, tremulously--and be sure the Irishman did
not fail to catch the smile. Then, as they dashed up the paddock, her
hand sought for her father's knee under the rug, in the little gesture
that had been hers from babyhood. The track curved round a grove of
great pines, and suddenly they were within sight of Billabong homestead,
red-walled and red-roofed, nestled in the deep green of its trees.
"By Jove!" said Jim, under his breath. "I thought once I'd never see the
old place again."
They flashed through mighty red gums and box trees, Murty galloping
beside them now. There was a big flag flying proudly on Billabong
house--they found later that the household had unanimously purchased it
on the day they heard that Jim had got his captaincy. The gate of the
great sanded yard stood open, and near it, on a wide gravel sweep, were
the dear and simple and faithful people they loved. Mrs. Brown first,
starched and spotless, her hair greyer than it had been five years
before, with Sarah and Mary beside her--they had married during the war,
but nothing had prevented them from coming back to make Billabong ready.
Near them the storekeeper, Jack Archdale, and his pretty wife, with
their elfish small daughter; and Mick Shanahan and Dave Boone, with the
Scotch gardener, Hogg, and his Chinese colleague--and sworn enemy--Lee
Wing. They were all there, a little welcoming group--but Norah could see
them only through a mist of happy tears. The buggy stopped, and Evans
sprang out over the wheel; she followed him almost as swiftly, running
to the old woman who had been all the mother she had known.
"Oh, Brownie--Brownie!"
"My precious lamb!" said Brownie, and held her tightly. She had no hands
left for Jim and Wally, and they did not seem to mind; they kissed her,
patting her vast shoulders very hard. Then Mrs. Archdale claimed Norah,
and Brownie found herself looking mistily up at David Linton and he was
gripping her hand tightly, the other hand on her shoulder.
"Why, old Brownie!" he said. "Dear old Brownie!"
They were shaking hands all round, over and over again. Nobody made any
speeches of welcome--there were only disjointed words, and once or
twice a little sob. Indeed, Brownie only found her tongue when they had
drifted across the yard in a confused group, and had reached the wide
veranda. Then she looked up at Jim and seemed suddenly to realize his
mighty height and breadth.
"Oh!" she said. "Oh! Ain't 'e grown big an' beautiful!" Whereat Wally
howled with laughter, and Jim, scarlet, kissed her again, and told her
she was a shameful old woman.
No one on Billabong could have told you much of that day, after
the first wonderful moment of getting home. It was a day of blurred
memories. The new-comers had to wander through the house where every big
window stood open to the sunlight, and every room was gay with flowers;
and from every window it was necessary to look out at the view across
the paddocks and down at the gardens, and to follow the winding course
of the creek. The gong summoned them to dinner in the midst of it, and
Brownie's dinner deserved to be remembered; the mammoth turkey flanked
by a ham as gigantic, and somewhat alarming to war-trained appetites;
followed by every sweet that Brownie could remember as having been a
favourite. They drifted naturally to the stables afterwards, to find
their special horses, apparently little changed by five years, though
some old station favourites were gone, and the men spoke proudly of some
new young ones that were going to be "beggars to go," or "a caution to
jump." Then they wandered down to the big lagoon, where the old boat
yet lay at the edge of the reed-fringed water; and on through the home
paddock to look at the little herd of Jerseys that were kept for the
use of the house, and some great bullocks almost ready for the Melbourne
market. So they came back to the homestead, wandering up from the creek
through Lee Wing's rows of vegetables, and came to rest naturally in the
kitchen, where they had afternoon tea with Brownie, who beamed from ear
to ear at the sight of Jim and Wally again sitting on her table.
"I used to think of you in them 'orrible trenches, an' wonder wot you
got to eat, an' if it was anything at all," she said tremulously.
"We got something, but it was apt to be queer," said Jim, laughing.
"We used to think of sitting on the table here, Brownie, and eating hot
scones--like this. May I have another?"
"My pore dears!" said Brownie, hastily supplying him with the largest
scone in sight. "Now, Master Wally, my love, ain't you ready for
another? Your appetite's not 'alf wot it used to be. A pikelet, now?"
"I believe I've had six!" said Wally, defending himself.
"An' wot used six pikelets to be to you? A mere fly in the ointment,"
said Brownie, whose similes were always apt to be peculiar. "Just
another, then, my dear. An' I've got your fav'rite sponge cake, Miss
Norah--ten aigs in it!"
"Ten!" said Norah faintly. "Hold me, daddy! Doesn't it make you feel
light-headed to think of putting ten eggs in one cake again?"
"An' why not?" sniffed Brownie. "Ah, you got bad treatment in that old
England. I never could see why you should go short, an' you all 'elpin'
on the war as 'ard as you could." Brownie's indifference to national
considerations where her nurselings were concerned was well known, and
nobody argued with her. "Any'ow, the cake's there, an' just you try
it--it's as light as a feather, though I do say it."
Once in the kitchen Norah and the boys went no further. They remained
sitting on the tables, talking, while presently David Linton went away
to his study, and, one by one, Murty and Boone and Mick Shanahan drifted
in. There was so much to tell, so much to ask about; they talked until
the dusk of the short winter afternoon stole into the kitchen, making
the red flames in the stove leap more redly. It was time to dress for
tea. They went round the wide verandas and ran upstairs to their rooms,
while old Brownie stood in the kitchen doorway listening to the merry
voices.
"Ain't it just 'evinly to 'ear 'em again!" she uttered.
"It is that," said Murty. "We've been quare an' lonesome an' quiet these
five years."
CHAPTER XI
COLONIAL EXPERIENCES
Cecilia--otherwise Tommy--and Bob Rainham came up to Billabong three
days later, and were met by Jim, who had ridden into Cunjee with Black
Billy, and released the motor from inglorious seclusion in the local
garage. Billy jogged off, leading Garryowen, and Jim watched them half
wistfully for a minute before turning to the car. Motors had their uses
certainly; but no Linton ever dreamed of giving a car the serious and
respectful consideration that naturally belonged to a horse.
Nevertheless, it was a good car; a gift to Norah from an Irishman
they had known and loved; and Jim drove well, having developed the
accomplishment over Flemish roads that were chiefly a succession of
shell holes. He took her quietly up to the station, and walked on to the
platform as the train thundered in.
Tommy and Bob were looking eagerly from their carriage window, and
hailed him with delight; they had been alone, for the first time since
leaving England, and had begun to feel that Australia was a large and
slightly populated country, and that they were inconsiderable atoms,
suddenly dumped into its vacant spaces. Jim was like a large and
friendly rock, and Australia immediately became less wide and desolate
in their eyes. He greeted them cheerily and helped Bob to pack their
luggage into the car.
"Now, I could get you afternoon tea here," he said; "and I warn you,
it will be bad. Or I could have you home in well under an hour, and you
wouldn't be too late for tea there. Which is it to be, Tommy?"
"Oh--home," said Tommy. "I don't care a bit about tea; and I want to see
this Billabong of yours. Do let's go, Jim."
"I hoped you wouldn't choose tea here," said Jim, striding off to the
car. "Bush townships don't run to decent tea places, as a rule; the
hotel is the only chance, and though they can give you a fair dinner,
tea always seems to be a weak spot." He packed them in, and they moved
off down the winding street.
"Do you know," Jim said, "that I never went down this street before
except on a horse, or behind one? It seems quite queer and unnatural
to be doing it in a car. I suppose I'll get used to it. Had a good trip
up?"
"Oh, quite," Tommy told him. "Jim, how few people seem to be living in
Australia!"
Jim gave a crack of laughter.
"Well, you saw a good many in Melbourne, didn't you?" he asked.
"Oh, yes. But Melbourne isn't Australia. It's only away down in a wee
little corner." Tommy flushed a little. "You see, I haven't seen much of
any country except France and the England that's near London," she said.
"And there isn't much waste space there."
"No, there isn't," Jim agreed. "I suppose we'll fill up Australia some
day. But the people who come out now seem to have a holy horror of going
into the 'waste spaces,' as you call 'em, Tommy. They want to nestle up
to the towns, and go to picture theatres."
"Well, I want to go and find a nice waste space," said Tommy. "Not too
waste, of course, only with room to look all round. And I'd like it
to be not too far from Norah, 'cause she's very cheering to a lone
new-chum. But don't you go planning to settle in one of those horrid
little tin-roofed towns, Bobby, for I should simply hate it."
"Certainly, ma'am," said Bob cheerfully. "We'll get out into the open. I
can always run you about in an aeroplane, if you feel lonesome, provided
we make enough money to buy one, that is. Only new-chums don't always
make heaps of money, do they, Jim?"
"Not at first, I'm afraid," Jim said. "The days of picking up fortunes
in Australia seem to be over; anyway, there's no more gold lying about.
Nowadays, you have to put your back into it extremely hard, if you've no
capital to start with; and even if you have, you can't loaf. How did you
get on in Melbourne? I hope you didn't buy a station without consulting
us."
"Rather not," Bob answered. "We raced round magnificently in your aunt's
car and presented our letters, and had more invitations to sundry meals
than we could possibly accept. Every one was extraordinarily kind to us.
I've offers and promises of advice in whatever district we settle; three
squatters asked me up to their places, to stay awhile and study the
country; and one confiding man--I hadn't a letter to him at all, by the
way, only some one introduced us to him in Scott's--actually offered me
a job as jackeroo on a Queensland run. But he was a lone old bachelor,
and when he heard I had a sister he shied off in terror. I think he's
running yet."
Jim shouted with laughter.
"Poor old Tommy!" he said.
"Yes, is it not unfair?" said Tommy. "I told Bob I was a mere
encumbrance, but he would bring me."
"You wait until you've settled, and Bob wants some one to run his house,
and then see how much of an encumbrance you are," rejoined Jim. "Then
you'll suddenly stop being meek and get swelled head."
"And not be half so nice," interjected Bob.
"But so useful!" said Tommy demurely. "Only sometimes I become
afraid--for you seem always to kill a whole sheep or bullock up in the
bush, and how I am to deal with it I do not know!"
"It sounds as if you preferred some one to detach an occasional limb
from the sheep as it walked about!" said Jim, laughing.
"Much easier for me--if not for the sheep," said Tommy.
"Well, don't you worry--the meat problem will get settled somehow," Jim
told her cheerfully. "All problems straighten out, if you give 'em time.
Now we're nearly home--that's the fence of our home-paddock. And there
are Norah and Wally coming to meet you."
"Oh--where?" Tommy started up, looking excitedly round the landscape.
"Oh--there she is--the dear! And isn't that a beautiful horse!"
"That's Norah's special old pony, Bosun," said Jim. "We're making her
very unhappy by telling her she's grown too big for him, but he really
carries her like a bird. A habit might look too much on him, but not
that astride kit. You got yours, by the way, Tommy, I hope?"
"Oh yes. I look very strange in it," said Tommy. "And Bob thinks I might
as well have worn out his old uniforms. But I shall never ride like
that--as Norah does."
She looked at Norah, who was coming across the paddock with Wally, at a
hard canter. Her pony was impatient, reefing and plunging in his desire
to gallop; and Norah was sitting him easily, her hands, well down,
giving to the strain on the bit, her slight figure, in coat and
breeches, swaying lightly to each bound. The sunlight rippled on Bosun's
glossy, bay coat, and on the big black horse Wally rode. They pulled
up, laughing, at the gateway, just as the car turned off the road. There
were confused and enthusiastic greetings, and the car dashed on up the
track, with an outrider on each side--both horses strongly resenting
this new and ferocious monster. The years had brought a good deal of
sober sense to Bosun and Monarch, but motors were still unfamiliar
objects on Billabong. Indeed, no car of the size of Norah's Rolls-Royce
had ever been seen in the district, and the men gaped at it open-mouthed
as Jim drove it round to the stable after unloading his passengers.
"Yerra, but that's the fine carry-van," said Murty. "Is that the size
they have them in England, now?"
"No, it isn't, Murty--not as a rule," Jim answered. "This was built
specially for a man who was half an invalid; he used to go for long
tours, and sleep in the car because he hated hotels. So it's a special
size. It used to be jolly useful taking out wounded men in England."
"Sure, it would be," Murty said. "Only--somehow, it don't seem to fit
into Billabong, Mr. Jim!"
"So big as that! I say, Murty!"
"Yerra, there's room enough for it," grinned the Irishman. "Only, motors
and Billabong don't go hand in hand--we've always stuck to horses,
haven't we, Mr. Jim?"
"We'll do that still," Jim said. "But it will be useful, all the same,
Murty." He laughed at the stockman's lugubrious face. "Oh, I know it's
giving you the sort of pain you had when dad had the telephone put on--"
"Well, 'tis the quare onnatural little machine, an' I niver feel anyways
at home with it, Mr. Jim," Murty defended himself.
"There's lots like you, Murty. But you'll admit that when we've got
to send a telegram, it's better to telephone it than make a man ride
thirty-four miles with it?"
"I suppose it is," said the Irishman doubtfully. "I dunno, though--if
'twas that black imp of a Billy he'd as well be doing that as propping
up the stable wall an' smokin'!"
Jim chuckled.
"There's no getting round an Irishman when he makes up his mind," he
said. "And if you had to catch the eight o'clock train to Melbourne
I believe you'd rather get up at three in the morning and run up the
horses to drive in, than leave here comfortably in the car at seven."
"Is it me to dhrive in it?" demanded Murty, in horror. "Begob, I'd lose
me life before I'd get into one of thim quare, sawed-off things. Give
me something with shafts, Mr. Jim, and a dacint horse in them. More by
token, I would not get up at three in the morning either, but dhrive in
aisy an' comfortable the night before." He beamed on Jim with so clear
a conviction that he was unanswerable that Jim hadn't the heart to
argue further. Instead he ran the car deftly into a buggy-shed whence
an ancient double buggy had been deposed to make room for her, and then
fell to discussing with Murty the question of building a garage, with
a turn-table and pit for cleaning and repairs. To which Murty gave
the eager interest and attention he would have shown had Jim proposed
building anything, even had it been an Eiffel Tower on the front lawn.
Brownie came out through the box-trees to the stables, presently.
"Now, Master Jim, afternoon tea's in these ten minutes."
"Good gracious! I forgot all about tea!" Jim exclaimed. "Thanks awfully,
Brownie. Had your own?" He slipped his arm through hers as they turned
back to the house.