The eldest girl at home was nine or ten, with a little old face and lines across her forehead: she had an older expression than her mother. Tommy went to Queensland, as I told you. The eldest son at home, Bill (older than Tommy), was ‘a bit wild.’
I’ve passed the place in smothering hot mornings in December, when the droppings about the cow-yard had crumpled to dust that rose in the warm, sickly, sunrise wind, and seen that woman at work in the cow-yard, ‘bailing up’ and leg-roping cows, milking, or hauling at a rope round the neck of a half-grown calf that was too strong for her (and she was tough as fencing-wire), or humping great buckets of sour milk to the pigs or the ‘poddies’ (hand-fed calves) in the pen. I’d get off the horse and give her a hand sometimes with a young steer, or a cranky old cow that wouldn’t ‘bail-up’ and threatened her with her horns. She’d say—
‘Thenk yer, Mr Wilson. Do yer think we’re ever goin’ to have any rain?’
I’ve ridden past the place on bitter black rainy mornings in June or July, and seen her trudging about the yard—that was ankle-deep in black liquid filth—with an old pair of Blucher boots on, and an old coat of her husband’s, or maybe a three-bushel bag over her shoulders. I’ve seen her climbing on the roof by means of the water-cask at the corner, and trying to stop a leak by shoving a piece of tin in under the bark. And when I’d fixed the leak—
‘Thenk yer, Mr Wilson. This drop of rain’s a blessin’! Come in and have a dry at the fire and I’ll make yer a cup of tea.’ And, if I was in a hurry, ‘Come in, man alive! Come in! and dry yerself a bit till the rain holds up. Yer can’t go home like this! Yer’ll git yer death o’ cold.’
I’ve even seen her, in the terrible drought, climbing she-oaks and apple-trees by a makeshift ladder, and awkwardly lopping off boughs to feed the starving cattle.
‘Jist tryin’ ter keep the milkers alive till the rain comes.’
They said that when the pleuro-pneumonia was in the district and amongst her cattle she bled and physicked them herself, and fed those that were down with slices of half-ripe pumpkins (from a crop that had failed).
‘An’, one day,’ she told Mary, ‘there was a big barren heifer (that we called Queen Elizabeth) that was down with the ploorer. She’d been down for four days and hadn’t moved, when one mornin’ I dumped some wheaten chaff—we had a few bags that Spicer brought home—I dumped it in front of her nose, an’—would yer b’lieve me, Mrs Wilson?—she stumbled onter her feet an’ chased me all the way to the house! I had to pick up me skirts an’ run! Wasn’t it redic’lus?’
They had a sense of the ridiculous, most of those poor sun-dried Bushwomen. I fancy that that helped save them from madness.
‘We lost nearly all our milkers,’ she told Mary. ‘I remember one day Tommy came running to the house and screamed: ‘Marther! [mother] there’s another milker down with the ploorer!’ Jist as if it was great news. Well, Mrs Wilson, I was dead-beat, an’ I giv’ in. I jist sat down to have a good cry, and felt for my han’kerchief—it WAS a rag of a han’kerchief, full of holes (all me others was in the wash). Without seein’ what I was doin’ I put me finger through one hole in the han’kerchief an’ me thumb through the other, and poked me fingers into me eyes, instead of wipin’ them. Then I had to laugh.’
There’s a story that once, when the Bush, or rather grass, fires were out all along the creek on Spicer’s side, Wall’s station hands were up above our place, trying to keep the fire back from the boundary, and towards evening one of the men happened to think of the Spicers: they saw smoke down that way. Spicer was away from home, and they had a small crop of wheat, nearly ripe, on the selection.
‘My God! that poor devil of a woman will be burnt out, if she ain’t already!’ shouted young Billy Wall. ‘Come along, three or four of you chaps’—(it was shearing-time, and there were plenty of men on the station).
They raced down the creek to Spicer’s, and were just in time to save the wheat. She had her sleeves tucked up, and was beating out the burning grass with a bough. She’d been at it for an hour, and was as black as a gin, they said. She only said when they’d turned the fire: ‘Thenk yer! Wait an’ I’ll make some tea.’
After tea the first Sunday she came to see us, Mary asked—
‘Don’t you feel lonely, Mrs Spicer, when your husband goes away?’
‘Well—no, Mrs Wilson,’ she said in the groping sort of voice. ‘I uster, once. I remember, when we lived on the Cudgeegong river—we lived in a brick house then—the first time Spicer had to go away from home I nearly fretted my eyes out. And he was only goin’ shearin’ for a month. I muster bin a fool; but then we were only jist married a little while. He’s been away drovin’ in Queenslan’ as long as eighteen months at a time since then. But’ (her voice seemed to grope in the dark more than ever) ‘I don’t mind,—I somehow seem to have got past carin’. Besides—besides, Spicer was a very different man then to what he is now. He’s got so moody and gloomy at home, he hardly ever speaks.’
Mary sat silent for a minute thinking. Then Mrs Spicer roused herself—
‘Oh, I don’t know what I’m talkin’ about! You mustn’t take any notice of me, Mrs Wilson,—I don’t often go on like this. I do believe I’m gittin’ a bit ratty at times. It must be the heat and the dulness.’
But once or twice afterwards she referred to a time ‘when Spicer was a different man to what he was now.’
I walked home with her a piece along the creek. She said nothing for a long time, and seemed to be thinking in a puzzled way. Then she said suddenly—
‘What-did-you-bring-her-here-for? She’s only a girl.’
‘I beg pardon, Mrs Spicer.’
‘Oh, I don’t know what I’m talkin’ about! I b’lieve I’m gittin’ ratty. You mustn’t take any notice of me, Mr Wilson.’
She wasn’t much company for Mary; and often, when she had a child with her, she’d start taking notice of the baby while Mary was talking, which used to exasperate Mary. But poor Mrs Spicer couldn’t help it, and she seemed to hear all the same.
Her great trouble was that she ‘couldn’t git no reg’lar schoolin’ for the children.’
‘I learns ‘em at home as much as I can. But I don’t git a minute to call me own; an’ I’m ginerally that dead-beat at night that I’m fit for nothink.’
Mary had some of the children up now and then later on, and taught them a little. When she first offered to do so, Mrs Spicer laid hold of the handiest youngster and said—
‘There—do you hear that? Mrs Wilson is goin’ to teach yer, an’ it’s more than yer deserve!’ (the youngster had been ‘cryin’’ over something). ‘Now, go up an’ say “Thenk yer, Mrs Wilson.” And if yer ain’t good, and don’t do as she tells yer, I’ll break every bone in yer young body!’
The poor little devil stammered something, and escaped.
The children were sent by turns over to Wall’s to Sunday-school. When Tommy was at home he had a new pair of elastic-side boots, and there was no end of rows about them in the family—for the mother made him lend them to his sister Annie, to go to Sunday-school in, in her turn. There were only about three pairs of anyway decent boots in the family, and these were saved for great occasions. The children were always as clean and tidy as possible when they came to our place.
And I think the saddest and most pathetic sight on the face of God’s earth is the children of very poor people made to appear well: the broken worn-out boots polished or greased, the blackened (inked) pieces of string for laces; the clean patched pinafores over the wretched threadbare frocks. Behind the little row of children hand-in-hand—and no matter where they are—I always see the worn face of the mother.
Towards the end of the first year on the selection our little girl came. I’d sent Mary to Gulgong for four months that time, and when she came back with the baby Mrs Spicer used to come up pretty often. She came up several times when Mary was ill, to lend a hand. She wouldn’t sit down and condole with Mary, or waste her time asking questions, or talking about the time when she was ill herself. She’d take off her hat—a shapeless little lump of black straw she wore for visiting—give her hair a quick brush back with the palms of her hands, roll up her sleeves, and set to work to ‘tidy up’. She seemed to take most pleasure in sorting out our children’s clothes, and dressing them. Perhaps she used to dress her own like that in the days when Spicer was a different man from what he was now. She seemed interested in the fashion-plates of some women’s journals we had, and used to study them with an interest that puzzled me, for she was not likely to go in for fashion. She never talked of her early girlhood; but Mary, from some things she noticed, was inclined to think that Mrs Spicer had been fairly well brought up. For instance, Dr Balanfantie, from Cudgeegong, came out to see Wall’s wife, and drove up the creek to our place on his way back to see how Mary and the baby were getting on. Mary got out some crockery and some table-napkins that she had packed away for occasions like this; and she said that the way Mrs Spicer handled the things, and helped set the table (though she did it in a mechanical sort of way), convinced her that she had been used to table-napkins at one time in her life.
Sometimes, after a long pause in the conversation, Mrs Spicer would say suddenly—
‘Oh, I don’t think I’ll come up next week, Mrs Wilson.’
‘Why, Mrs Spicer?’
‘Because the visits doesn’t do me any good. I git the dismals afterwards.’
‘Why, Mrs Spicer? What on earth do you mean?’
‘Oh,-I-don’t-know-what-I’m-talkin’-about. You mustn’t take any notice of me.’ And she’d put on her hat, kiss the children—and Mary too, sometimes, as if she mistook her for a child—and go.
Mary thought her a little mad at times. But I seemed to understand.
Once, when Mrs Spicer was sick, Mary went down to her, and down again next day. As she was coming away the second time, Mrs Spicer said—
‘I wish you wouldn’t come down any more till I’m on me feet, Mrs Wilson. The children can do for me.’
‘Why, Mrs Spicer?’
‘Well, the place is in such a muck, and it hurts me.’
We were the aristocrats of Lahey’s Creek. Whenever we drove down on Sunday afternoon to see Mrs Spicer, and as soon as we got near enough for them to hear the rattle of the cart, we’d see the children running to the house as fast as they could split, and hear them screaming—
‘Oh, marther! Here comes Mr and Mrs Wilson in their spring-cart.’
And we’d see her bustle round, and two or three fowls fly out the front door, and she’d lay hold of a broom (made of a bound bunch of ‘broom-stuff’—coarse reedy grass or bush from the ridges—with a stick stuck in it) and flick out the floor, with a flick or two round in front of the door perhaps. The floor nearly always needed at least one flick of the broom on account of the fowls. Or she’d catch a youngster and scrub his face with a wet end of a cloudy towel, or twist the towel round her finger and dig out his ears—as if she was anxious to have him hear every word that was going to be said.
No matter what state the house would be in she’d always say, ‘I was jist expectin’ yer, Mrs Wilson.’ And she was original in that, anyway.
She had an old patched and darned white table-cloth that she used to spread on the table when we were there, as a matter of course (‘The others is in the wash, so you must excuse this, Mrs Wilson’), but I saw by the eyes of the children that the cloth was rather a wonderful thing to them. ‘I must really git some more knives an’ forks next time I’m in Cobborah,’ she’d say. ‘The children break an’ lose ‘em till I’m ashamed to ask Christians ter sit down ter the table.’
She had many Bush yarns, some of them very funny, some of them rather ghastly, but all interesting, and with a grim sort of humour about them. But the effect was often spoilt by her screaming at the children to ‘Drive out them fowls, karnt yer,’ or ‘Take yer maulies [hands] outer the sugar,’ or ‘Don’t touch Mrs Wilson’s baby with them dirty maulies,’ or ‘Don’t stand starin’ at Mrs Wilson with yer mouth an’ ears in that vulgar way.’
Poor woman! she seemed everlastingly nagging at the children. It was a habit, but they didn’t seem to mind. Most Bushwomen get the nagging habit. I remember one, who had the prettiest, dearest, sweetest, most willing, and affectionate little girl I think I ever saw, and she nagged that child from daylight till dark—and after it. Taking it all round, I think that the nagging habit in a mother is often worse on ordinary children, and more deadly on sensitive youngsters, than the drinking habit in a father.
One of the yarns Mrs Spicer told us was about a squatter she knew who used to go wrong in his head every now and again, and try to commit suicide. Once, when the station-hand, who was watching him, had his eye off him for a minute, he hanged himself to a beam in the stable. The men ran in and found him hanging and kicking. ‘They let him hang for a while,’ said Mrs Spicer, ‘till he went black in the face and stopped kicking. Then they cut him down and threw a bucket of water over him.’
‘Why! what on earth did they let the man hang for?’ asked Mary.
‘To give him a good bellyful of it: they thought it would cure him of tryin’ to hang himself again.’
‘Well, that’s the coolest thing I ever heard of,’ said Mary.
‘That’s jist what the magistrate said, Mrs Wilson,’ said Mrs Spicer.
‘One morning,’ said Mrs Spicer, ‘Spicer had gone off on his horse somewhere, and I was alone with the children, when a man came to the door and said—
‘“For God’s sake, woman, give me a drink!”
‘Lord only knows where he came from! He was dressed like a new chum—his clothes was good, but he looked as if he’d been sleepin’ in them in the Bush for a month. He was very shaky. I had some coffee that mornin’, so I gave him some in a pint pot; he drank it, and then he stood on his head till he tumbled over, and then he stood up on his feet and said, “Thenk yer, mum.”
‘I was so surprised that I didn’t know what to say, so I jist said, “Would you like some more coffee?”
‘“Yes, thenk yer,” he said—“about two quarts.”
‘I nearly filled the pint pot, and he drank it and stood on his head as long as he could, and when he got right end up he said, “Thenk yer, mum—it’s a fine day,” and then he walked off. He had two saddle-straps in his hands.’
‘Why, what did he stand on his head for?’ asked Mary.
‘To wash it up and down, I suppose, to get twice as much taste of the coffee. He had no hat. I sent Tommy across to Wall’s to tell them that there was a man wanderin’ about the Bush in the horrors of drink, and to get some one to ride for the police. But they was too late, for he hanged himself that night.’
‘O Lord!’ cried Mary.
‘Yes, right close to here, jist down the creek where the track to Wall’s branches off. Tommy found him while he was out after the cows. Hangin’ to the branch of a tree with the two saddle-straps.’
Mary stared at her, speechless.
‘Tommy came home yellin’ with fright. I sent him over to Wall’s at once. After breakfast, the minute my eyes was off them, the children slipped away and went down there. They came back screamin’ at the tops of their voices. I did give it to them. I reckon they won’t want ter see a dead body again in a hurry. Every time I’d mention it they’d huddle together, or ketch hold of me skirts and howl.
‘“Yer’ll go agen when I tell yer not to,” I’d say.
‘“Oh no, mother,” they’d howl.
‘“Yer wanted ter see a man hangin’,” I said.
‘“Oh, don’t, mother! Don’t talk about it.”
‘“Yer wouldn’t be satisfied till yer see it,” I’d say; “yer had to see it or burst. Yer satisfied now, ain’t yer?”
‘“Oh, don’t, mother!”
‘“Yer run all the way there, I s’pose?”
‘“Don’t, mother!”
‘“But yer run faster back, didn’t yer?”
‘“Oh, don’t, mother.”
‘But,’ said Mrs Spicer, in conclusion, ‘I’d been down to see it myself before they was up.’
‘And ain’t you afraid to live alone here, after all these horrible things?’ asked Mary.
‘Well, no; I don’t mind. I seem to have got past carin’ for anythink now. I felt it a little when Tommy went away—the first time I felt anythink for years. But I’m over that now.’
‘Haven’t you got any friends in the district, Mrs Spicer?’
‘Oh yes. There’s me married sister near Cobborah, and a married brother near Dubbo; he’s got a station. They wanted to take me an’ the children between them, or take some of the younger children. But I couldn’t bring my mind to break up the home. I want to keep the children together as much as possible. There’s enough of them gone, God knows. But it’s a comfort to know that there’s some one to see to them if anythink happens to me.’
One day—I was on my way home with the team that day—Annie Spicer came running up the creek in terrible trouble.
‘Oh, Mrs Wilson! something terribl’s happened at home! A trooper’ (mounted policeman—they called them ‘mounted troopers’ out there), ‘a trooper’s come and took Billy!’ Billy was the eldest son at home.
‘What?’
‘It’s true, Mrs Wilson.’
‘What for? What did the policeman say?’
‘He—he—he said, “I—I’m very sorry, Mrs Spicer; but—I—I want William.”’
It turned out that William was wanted on account of a horse missed from Wall’s station and sold down-country.
‘An’ mother took on awful,’ sobbed Annie; ‘an’ now she’ll only sit stock-still an’ stare in front of her, and won’t take no notice of any of us. Oh! it’s awful, Mrs Wilson. The policeman said he’d tell Aunt Emma’ (Mrs Spicer’s sister at Cobborah), ‘and send her out. But I had to come to you, an’ I’ve run all the way.’
James put the horse to the cart and drove Mary down.
Mary told me all about it when I came home.
‘I found her just as Annie said; but she broke down and cried in my arms. Oh, Joe! it was awful! She didn’t cry like a woman. I heard a man at Haviland cry at his brother’s funeral, and it was just like that. She came round a bit after a while. Her sister’s with her now.... Oh, Joe! you must take me away from the Bush.’
Later on Mary said—
‘How the oaks are sighing to-night, Joe!’
Next morning I rode across to Wall’s station and tackled the old man; but he was a hard man, and wouldn’t listen to me—in fact, he ordered me off the station. I was a selector, and that was enough for him. But young Billy Wall rode after me.
‘Look here, Joe!’ he said, ‘it’s a blanky shame. All for the sake of a horse! And as if that poor devil of a woman hasn’t got enough to put up with already! I wouldn’t do it for twenty horses. I’LL tackle the boss, and if he won’t listen to me, I’ll walk off the run for the last time, if I have to carry my swag.’
Billy Wall managed it. The charge was withdrawn, and we got young Billy Spicer off up-country.
But poor Mrs Spicer was never the same after that. She seldom came up to our place unless Mary dragged her, so to speak; and then she would talk of nothing but her last trouble, till her visits were painful to look forward to.
‘If it only could have been kep’ quiet—for the sake of the other children; they are all I think of now. I tried to bring ‘em all up decent, but I s’pose it was my fault, somehow. It’s the disgrace that’s killin’ me—I can’t bear it.’
I was at home one Sunday with Mary and a jolly Bush-girl named Maggie Charlsworth, who rode over sometimes from Wall’s station (I must tell you about her some other time; James was ‘shook after her’), and we got talkin’ about Mrs Spicer. Maggie was very warm about old Wall.
‘I expected Mrs Spicer up to-day,’ said Mary. ‘She seems better lately.’
‘Why!’ cried Maggie Charlsworth, ‘if that ain’t Annie coming running up along the creek. Something’s the matter!’
We all jumped up and ran out.
‘What is it, Annie?’ cried Mary.
‘Oh, Mrs Wilson! Mother’s asleep, and we can’t wake her!’
‘What?’
‘It’s—it’s the truth, Mrs Wilson.’
‘How long has she been asleep?’
‘Since lars’ night.’
‘My God!’ cried Mary, ‘SINCE LAST NIGHT?’
‘No, Mrs Wilson, not all the time; she woke wonst, about daylight this mornin’. She called me and said she didn’t feel well, and I’d have to manage the milkin’.’
‘Was that all she said?’
‘No. She said not to go for you; and she said to feed the pigs and calves; and she said to be sure and water them geraniums.’
Mary wanted to go, but I wouldn’t let her. James and I saddled our horses and rode down the creek.
Mrs Spicer looked very little different from what she did when I last saw her alive. It was some time before we could believe that she was dead. But she was ‘past carin’’ right enough.
Ever since we were married it had been Mary’s great ambition to have a buggy. The house or furniture didn’t matter so much—out there in the Bush where we were—but, where there were no railways or coaches, and the roads were long, and mostly hot and dusty, a buggy was the great thing. I had a few pounds when we were married, and was going to get one then; but new buggies went high, and another party got hold of a second-hand one that I’d had my eye on, so Mary thought it over and at last she said, ‘Never mind the buggy, Joe; get a sewing-machine and I’ll be satisfied. I’ll want the machine more than the buggy, for a while. Wait till we’re better off.’
After that, whenever I took a contract—to put up a fence or wool-shed, or sink a dam or something—Mary would say, ‘You ought to knock a buggy out of this job, Joe;’ but something always turned up—bad weather or sickness. Once I cut my foot with the adze and was laid up; and, another time, a dam I was making was washed away by a flood before I finished it. Then Mary would say, ‘Ah, well—never mind, Joe. Wait till we are better off.’ But she felt it hard the time I built a wool-shed and didn’t get paid for it, for we’d as good as settled about another second-hand buggy then.
I always had a fancy for carpentering, and was handy with tools. I made a spring-cart—body and wheels—in spare time, out of colonial hardwood, and got Little the blacksmith to do the ironwork; I painted the cart myself. It wasn’t much lighter than one of the tip-drays I had, but it WAS a spring-cart, and Mary pretended to be satisfied with it: anyway, I didn’t hear any more of the buggy for a while.
I sold that cart, for fourteen pounds, to a Chinese gardener who wanted a strong cart to carry his vegetables round through the Bush. It was just before our first youngster came: I told Mary that I wanted the money in case of extra expense—and she didn’t fret much at losing that cart. But the fact was, that I was going to make another try for a buggy, as a present for Mary when the child was born. I thought of getting the turn-out while she was laid up, keeping it dark from her till she was on her feet again, and then showing her the buggy standing in the shed. But she had a bad time, and I had to have the doctor regularly, and get a proper nurse, and a lot of things extra; so the buggy idea was knocked on the head. I was set on it, too: I’d thought of how, when Mary was up and getting strong, I’d say one morning, ‘Go round and have a look in the shed, Mary; I’ve got a few fowls for you,’ or something like that—and follow her round to watch her eyes when she saw the buggy. I never told Mary about that—it wouldn’t have done any good.
Later on I got some good timber—mostly scraps that were given to me—and made a light body for a spring-cart. Galletly, the coach-builder at Cudgeegong, had got a dozen pairs of American hickory wheels up from Sydney, for light spring-carts, and he let me have a pair for cost price and carriage. I got him to iron the cart, and he put it through the paint-shop for nothing. He sent it out, too, at the tail of Tom Tarrant’s big van—to increase the surprise. We were swells then for a while; I heard no more of a buggy until after we’d been settled at Lahey’s Creek for a couple of years.
I told you how I went into the carrying line, and took up a selection at Lahey’s Creek—for a run for the horses and to grow a bit of feed—and shifted Mary and little Jim out there from Gulgong, with Mary’s young scamp of a brother James to keep them company while I was on the road. The first year I did well enough carrying, but I never cared for it—it was too slow; and, besides, I was always anxious when I was away from home. The game was right enough for a single man—or a married one whose wife had got the nagging habit (as many Bushwomen have—God help ‘em!), and who wanted peace and quietness sometimes. Besides, other small carriers started (seeing me getting on); and Tom Tarrant, the coach-driver at Cudgeegong, had another heavy spring-van built, and put it on the roads, and he took a lot of the light stuff.
The second year I made a rise—out of ‘spuds’, of all the things in the world. It was Mary’s idea. Down at the lower end of our selection—Mary called it ‘the run’—was a shallow watercourse called Snake’s Creek, dry most of the year, except for a muddy water-hole or two; and, just above the junction, where it ran into Lahey’s Creek, was a low piece of good black-soil flat, on our side—about three acres. The flat was fairly clear when I came to the selection—save for a few logs that had been washed up there in some big ‘old man’ flood, way back in black-fellows’ times; and one day, when I had a spell at home, I got the horses and trace-chains and dragged the logs together—those that wouldn’t split for fencing timber—and burnt them off. I had a notion to get the flat ploughed and make a lucern-paddock of it. There was a good water-hole, under a clump of she-oak in the bend, and Mary used to take her stools and tubs and boiler down there in the spring-cart in hot weather, and wash the clothes under the shade of the trees—it was cooler, and saved carrying water to the house. And one evening after she’d done the washing she said to me—
‘Look here, Joe; the farmers out here never seem to get a new idea: they don’t seem to me ever to try and find out beforehand what the market is going to be like—they just go on farming the same old way and putting in the same old crops year after year. They sow wheat, and, if it comes on anything like the thing, they reap and thresh it; if it doesn’t, they mow it for hay—and some of ‘em don’t have the brains to do that in time. Now, I was looking at that bit of flat you cleared, and it struck me that it wouldn’t be a half bad idea to get a bag of seed-potatoes, and have the land ploughed—old Corny George would do it cheap—and get them put in at once. Potatoes have been dear all round for the last couple of years.’
I told her she was talking nonsense, that the ground was no good for potatoes, and the whole district was too dry. ‘Everybody I know has tried it, one time or another, and made nothing of it,’ I said.
‘All the more reason why you should try it, Joe,’ said Mary. ‘Just try one crop. It might rain for weeks, and then you’ll be sorry you didn’t take my advice.’
‘But I tell you the ground is not potato-ground,’ I said.
‘How do you know? You haven’t sown any there yet.’
‘But I’ve turned up the surface and looked at it. It’s not rich enough, and too dry, I tell you. You need swampy, boggy ground for potatoes. Do you think I don’t know land when I see it?’
‘But you haven’t TRIED to grow potatoes there yet, Joe. How do you know——’
I didn’t listen to any more. Mary was obstinate when she got an idea into her head. It was no use arguing with her. All the time I’d be talking she’d just knit her forehead and go on thinking straight ahead, on the track she’d started,—just as if I wasn’t there,—and it used to make me mad. She’d keep driving at me till I took her advice or lost my temper,—I did both at the same time, mostly.
I took my pipe and went out to smoke and cool down.
A couple of days after the potato breeze, I started with the team down to Cudgeegong for a load of fencing-wire I had to bring out; and after I’d kissed Mary good-bye, she said—
‘Look here, Joe, if you bring out a bag of seed-potatoes, James and I will slice them, and old Corny George down the creek would bring his plough up in the dray and plough the ground for very little. We could put the potatoes in ourselves if the ground were only ploughed.’
I thought she’d forgotten all about it. There was no time to argue—I’d be sure to lose my temper, and then I’d either have to waste an hour comforting Mary or go off in a ‘huff’, as the women call it, and be miserable for the trip. So I said I’d see about it. She gave me another hug and a kiss. ‘Don’t forget, Joe,’ she said as I started. ‘Think it over on the road.’ I reckon she had the best of it that time.
About five miles along, just as I turned into the main road, I heard some one galloping after me, and I saw young James on his hack. I got a start, for I thought that something had gone wrong at home. I remember, the first day I left Mary on the creek, for the first five or six miles I was half-a-dozen times on the point of turning back—only I thought she’d laugh at me.
‘What is it, James?’ I shouted, before he came up—but I saw he was grinning.
‘Mary says to tell you not to forget to bring a hoe out with you.’
‘You clear off home!’ I said, ‘or I’ll lay the whip about your young hide; and don’t come riding after me again as if the run was on fire.’
‘Well, you needn’t get shirty with me!’ he said. ‘*I* don’t want to have anything to do with a hoe.’ And he rode off.
I DID get thinking about those potatoes, though I hadn’t meant to. I knew of an independent man in that district who’d made his money out of a crop of potatoes; but that was away back in the roaring ‘Fifties—‘54—when spuds went up to twenty-eight shillings a hundredweight (in Sydney), on account of the gold rush. We might get good rain now, and, anyway, it wouldn’t cost much to put the potatoes in. If they came on well, it would be a few pounds in my pocket; if the crop was a failure, I’d have a better show with Mary next time she was struck by an idea outside housekeeping, and have something to grumble about when I felt grumpy.
I got a couple of bags of potatoes—we could use those that were left over; and I got a small iron plough and a harrow that Little the blacksmith had lying in his yard and let me have cheap—only about a pound more than I told Mary I gave for them. When I took advice, I generally made the mistake of taking more than was offered, or adding notions of my own. It was vanity, I suppose. If the crop came on well I could claim the plough-and-harrow part of the idea, anyway. (It didn’t strike me that if the crop failed Mary would have the plough and harrow against me, for old Corny would plough the ground for ten or fifteen shillings.) Anyway, I’d want a plough and harrow later on, and I might as well get it now; it would give James something to do.
I came out by the western road, by Guntawang, and up the creek home; and the first thing I saw was old Corny George ploughing the flat. And Mary was down on the bank superintending. She’d got James with the trace-chains and the spare horses, and had made him clear off every stick and bush where another furrow might be squeezed in. Old Corny looked pretty grumpy on it—he’d broken all his ploughshares but one, in the roots; and James didn’t look much brighter. Mary had an old felt hat and a new pair of ‘lastic-side boots of mine on, and the boots were covered with clay, for she’d been down hustling James to get a rotten old stump out of the way by the time Corny came round with his next furrow.
‘I thought I’d make the boots easy for you, Joe,’ said Mary.
‘It’s all right, Mary,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to growl.’ Those boots were a bone of contention between us; but she generally got them off before I got home.
Her face fell a little when she saw the plough and harrow in the waggon, but I said that would be all right—we’d want a plough anyway.
‘I thought you wanted old Corny to plough the ground,’ she said.
‘I never said so.’
‘But when I sent Jim after you about the hoe to put the spuds in, you didn’t say you wouldn’t bring it,’ she said.
I had a few days at home, and entered into the spirit of the thing. When Corny was done, James and I cross-ploughed the land, and got a stump or two, a big log, and some scrub out of the way at the upper end and added nearly an acre, and ploughed that. James was all right at most Bushwork: he’d bullock so long as the novelty lasted; he liked ploughing or fencing, or any graft he could make a show at. He didn’t care for grubbing out stumps, or splitting posts and rails. We sliced the potatoes of an evening—and there was trouble between Mary and James over cutting through the ‘eyes’. There was no time for the hoe—and besides it wasn’t a novelty to James—so I just ran furrows and they dropped the spuds in behind me, and I turned another furrow over them, and ran the harrow over the ground. I think I hilled those spuds, too, with furrows—or a crop of Indian corn I put in later on.
It rained heavens-hard for over a week: we had regular showers all through, and it was the finest crop of potatoes ever seen in the district. I believe at first Mary used to slip down at daybreak to see if the potatoes were up; and she’d write to me about them, on the road. I forget how many bags I got; but the few who had grown potatoes in the district sent theirs to Sydney, and spuds went up to twelve and fifteen shillings a hundredweight in that district. I made a few quid out of mine—and saved carriage too, for I could take them out on the waggon. Then Mary began to hear (through James) of a buggy that some one had for sale cheap, or a dogcart that somebody else wanted to get rid of—and let me know about it, in an offhand way.
There was good grass on the selection all the year. I’d picked up a small lot—about twenty head—of half-starved steers for next to nothing, and turned them on the run; they came on wonderfully, and my brother-in-law (Mary’s sister’s husband), who was running a butchery at Gulgong, gave me a good price for them. His carts ran out twenty or thirty miles, to little bits of gold-rushes that were going on at th’ Home Rule, Happy Valley, Guntawang, Tallawang, and Cooyal, and those places round there, and he was doing well.
Mary had heard of a light American waggonette, when the steers went—a tray-body arrangement, and she thought she’d do with that. ‘It would be better than the buggy, Joe,’ she said—‘there’d be more room for the children, and, besides, I could take butter and eggs to Gulgong, or Cobborah, when we get a few more cows.’ Then James heard of a small flock of sheep that a selector—who was about starved off his selection out Talbragar way—wanted to get rid of. James reckoned he could get them for less than half-a-crown a-head. We’d had a heavy shower of rain, that came over the ranges and didn’t seem to go beyond our boundaries. Mary said, ‘It’s a pity to see all that grass going to waste, Joe. Better get those sheep and try your luck with them. Leave some money with me, and I’ll send James over for them. Never mind about the buggy—we’ll get that when we’re on our feet.’
So James rode across to Talbragar and drove a hard bargain with that unfortunate selector, and brought the sheep home. There were about two hundred, wethers and ewes, and they were young and looked a good breed too, but so poor they could scarcely travel; they soon picked up, though. The drought was blazing all round and Out-Back, and I think that my corner of the ridges was the only place where there was any grass to speak of. We had another shower or two, and the grass held out. Chaps began to talk of ‘Joe Wilson’s luck’.
I would have liked to shear those sheep; but I hadn’t time to get a shed or anything ready—along towards Christmas there was a bit of a boom in the carrying line. Wethers in wool were going as high as thirteen to fifteen shillings at the Homebush yards at Sydney, so I arranged to truck the sheep down from the river by rail, with another small lot that was going, and I started James off with them. He took the west road, and down Guntawang way a big farmer who saw James with the sheep (and who was speculating, or adding to his stock, or took a fancy to the wool) offered James as much for them as he reckoned I’d get in Sydney, after paying the carriage and the agents and the auctioneer. James put the sheep in a paddock and rode back to me. He was all there where riding was concerned. I told him to let the sheep go. James made a Greener shot-gun, and got his saddle done up, out of that job.
I took up a couple more forty-acre blocks—one in James’s name, to encourage him with the fencing. There was a good slice of land in an angle between the range and the creek, farther down, which everybody thought belonged to Wall, the squatter, but Mary got an idea, and went to the local land office and found out that it was ‘unoccupied Crown land’, and so I took it up on pastoral lease, and got a few more sheep—I’d saved some of the best-looking ewes from the last lot.
One evening—I was going down next day for a load of fencing-wire for myself—Mary said,—
‘Joe! do you know that the Matthews have got a new double buggy?’
The Matthews were a big family of cockatoos, along up the main road, and I didn’t think much of them. The sons were all ‘bad-eggs’, though the old woman and girls were right enough.
‘Well, what of that?’ I said. ‘They’re up to their neck in debt, and camping like black-fellows in a big bark humpy. They do well to go flashing round in a double buggy.’
‘But that isn’t what I was going to say,’ said Mary. ‘They want to sell their old single buggy, James says. I’m sure you could get it for six or seven pounds; and you could have it done up.’
‘I wish James to the devil!’ I said. ‘Can’t he find anything better to do than ride round after cock-and-bull yarns about buggies?’
‘Well,’ said Mary, ‘it was James who got the steers and the sheep.’
Well, one word led to another, and we said things we didn’t mean—but couldn’t forget in a hurry. I remember I said something about Mary always dragging me back just when I was getting my head above water and struggling to make a home for her and the children; and that hurt her, and she spoke of the ‘homes’ she’d had since she was married. And that cut me deep.
It was about the worst quarrel we had. When she began to cry I got my hat and went out and walked up and down by the creek. I hated anything that looked like injustice—I was so sensitive about it that it made me unjust sometimes. I tried to think I was right, but I couldn’t—it wouldn’t have made me feel any better if I could have thought so. I got thinking of Mary’s first year on the selection and the life she’d had since we were married.
When I went in she’d cried herself to sleep. I bent over and, ‘Mary,’ I whispered.
She seemed to wake up.
‘Joe—Joe!’ she said.
‘What is it Mary?’ I said.
‘I’m pretty well sure that old Spot’s calf isn’t in the pen. Make James go at once!’
Old Spot’s last calf was two years old now; so Mary was talking in her sleep, and dreaming she was back in her first year.
We both laughed when I told her about it afterwards; but I didn’t feel like laughing just then.
Later on in the night she called out in her sleep,—
‘Joe—Joe! Put that buggy in the shed, or the sun will blister the varnish!’
I wish I could say that that was the last time I ever spoke unkindly to Mary.
Next morning I got up early and fried the bacon and made the tea, and took Mary’s breakfast in to her—like I used to do, sometimes, when we were first married. She didn’t say anything—just pulled my head down and kissed me.
When I was ready to start Mary said,—
‘You’d better take the spring-cart in behind the dray and get the tyres cut and set. They’re ready to drop off, and James has been wedging them up till he’s tired of it. The last time I was out with the children I had to knock one of them back with a stone: there’ll be an accident yet.’
So I lashed the shafts of the cart under the tail of the waggon, and mean and ridiculous enough the cart looked, going along that way. It suggested a man stooping along handcuffed, with his arms held out and down in front of him.
It was dull weather, and the scrubs looked extra dreary and endless—and I got thinking of old things. Everything was going all right with me, but that didn’t keep me from brooding sometimes—trying to hatch out stones, like an old hen we had at home. I think, taking it all round, I used to be happier when I was mostly hard-up—and more generous. When I had ten pounds I was more likely to listen to a chap who said, ‘Lend me a pound-note, Joe,’ than when I had fifty; THEN I fought shy of careless chaps—and lost mates that I wanted afterwards—and got the name of being mean. When I got a good cheque I’d be as miserable as a miser over the first ten pounds I spent; but when I got down to the last I’d buy things for the house. And now that I was getting on, I hated to spend a pound on anything. But then, the farther I got away from poverty the greater the fear I had of it—and, besides, there was always before us all the thought of the terrible drought, with blazing runs as bare and dusty as the road, and dead stock rotting every yard, all along the barren creeks.
I had a long yarn with Mary’s sister and her husband that night in Gulgong, and it brightened me up. I had a fancy that that sort of a brother-in-law made a better mate than a nearer one; Tom Tarrant had one, and he said it was sympathy. But while we were yarning I couldn’t help thinking of Mary, out there in the hut on the Creek, with no one to talk to but the children, or James, who was sulky at home, or Black Mary or Black Jimmy (our black boy’s father and mother), who weren’t oversentimental. Or maybe a selector’s wife (the nearest was five miles away), who could talk only of two or three things—‘lambin’’ and ‘shearin’’ and ‘cookin’ for the men’, and what she said to her old man, and what he said to her—and her own ailments—over and over again.
It’s a wonder it didn’t drive Mary mad!—I know I could never listen to that woman more than an hour. Mary’s sister said,—
‘Now if Mary had a comfortable buggy, she could drive in with the children oftener. Then she wouldn’t feel the loneliness so much.’
I said ‘Good night’ then and turned in. There was no getting away from that buggy. Whenever Mary’s sister started hinting about a buggy, I reckoned it was a put-up job between them.