BACK TO BILLABONG
And thro’ the night came all old memories flocking,
White memories like the snowflakes round me whirled;
“All’s well!” I said. “The mothers still sit rocking
The cradles of the world!”
—W. H. Ogilvie.
SO you’ll come?” David Linton asked.
“Yes, and glad to.” Jack Archdale pulled at his pipe, which would not draw. He took it out of his mouth, shook it, and put it back again with a shrug. It needed a grass stalk to clean the stem; but that is a performance that demands two hands, and one hand was given over to Babs, who sat on her mother’s knee on the next step of the verandah, imprisoning her father’s big finger in her moist little grasp. So the pipe went out, its owner deriving what comfort he might from holding it in his mouth.
“I never want to see the place again,” Archdale went on. “I’d have left it long ago but for the one thing. Now I’d go to-morrow if I could. Wouldn’t we, Mary?”
Mrs. Archdale nodded. Babs had one forefinger tucked into her neck, and nothing else mattered very much just then.
“Do you see, Jack?” she asked, smiling at him. “It’s her old trick; she always put her little finger into my collar. She hasn’t forgotten anything.” They bent together over the baby form, and forgot the world.
“I’ll have to sell off here,” Archdale said, straightening up, presently. “That won’t take very long, though. Then whenever you’re ready for me, sir——?”
“Any time next month,” the squatter answered. “The storekeeper goes on the first, and I suppose Mrs. Brown will want a few days to have the cottage put in order for you. She has violent ideas on disinfecting; not that I’m quite sure what she wants to disinfect, but it seems to make her happy.”
“But come soon,” Norah said eagerly. “I want to see Babs again before I go back to school.”
“I guess,” said Jack Archdale,—“I guess what you and Mr. Wally want about Babs is likely to happen, if ever I can manage it. You’ve got a sort of mortgage on her now, haven’t they, Mary?” To which Wally, who was lying full length on the grass with Jim, near the verandah, was understood to mutter, “Bosh!”
“Maybe it’s bosh; I don’t know,” Archdale said, drawing hard at his cold pipe. “But that’s the way we look at it. I—we . . . Well, it’s no darned good tryin’ to say anything.”
“It was only a bit of luck,” Wally mumbled, greatly embarrassed.
“Any one would have found her,” said Norah, incoherently. “We just happened to.”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Archdale said, her cheek against Bab’s black curls. “I suppose I may be foolish—but it seems to me it was a bit because you cared so much. It—it seemed to hurt you, just like it did Jack and me.”
“And lots of people would never have noticed that the kid wasn’t really a picaninny,” Archdale put in. He put his great hand down and took Bab’s little bare foot in it, looking at it with eyes half misty, half proud. “Well, thank the Lord, you wasn’t born flat-footed, my kid!” he said—and Babs chuckled greatly.
She climbed down from her mother’s knee presently, and after falling over Jim and Wally, and treating each with impartial affection, toddled off round the corner of the house, on a voyage of discovery. It was curious to see how little she had forgotten, and what joy she found in the old familiar places. Archdale watched her go, and with the last flutter of the scanty blue frock heaved his long form up from the step, and followed slowly.
“It don’t seem safe to let her get out of one’s sight,” he said as he went. “I wouldn’t trust that black gin not to be hanging round in the timber.”
Mrs. Archdale followed them both with her eyes.
“Jack swears he’ll tell the police if old Black Lucy shows up,” she said. “But I don’t want him to. It wouldn’t do any good—and I’m too happy now to care. She had lost all her kiddies, poor thing—and, after all, she took care of my baby.”
“You would have been sorry for her if you’d seen her,” Norah said. “I know you would.”
“Well, after all, you can’t judge them by our standards,” said the squatter. “They are only overgrown children, and we haven’t left them so much that we can blame them altogether for seizing at a chance of happiness. Probably old Black Lucy’s family owned Billabong, and can’t quite see why I should hold it now; and certainly she would find it hard to understand why her babies should all die while other women keep their children.”
“To be broken-hearted with loneliness—and then to find a little child wandering alone in the scrub—oh, I don’t know that I blame her,” said Bab’s mother, wistfully. “You—you’d really think it was sent to you. I only lost one, and I thought my trouble was greater than I could bear. And she had lost three!”
“Yes—but you can’t quite look at it that way,” Mr. Linton said. “The blacks don’t regard a child’s life quite as we do.”
“Don’t they?” Mary Archdale asked, doubtfully. “Perhaps not.” She pondered over it, and shook her head, at last. “Oh, I don’t believe your colour makes much difference to you when you’ve lost your baby!” Her voice broke—just for a moment she was back in the wilderness of pain, where she had wandered for so many weary months.
Then, round the corner, came her husband, with Babs perched high on his shoulder—triumphant in her elevation, yet with her tangled black head nodding sleepily, and the sandman’s dust making her eyelids droop.
“Some one’s sleepy,” Archdale said, smiling at his wife. “Coming, mother?”
“I’ll put her to bed,” she said, rising and stretching her arms to the little daughter. Archdale put Babs tenderly upon the grass.
“I guess there’s two of us in that contract,” he said. “Say good-night, Babs.”
They watched her with quick curiosity to see if the command would be intelligible. It was long since Babs had said “good-night.” But some far-off echo was awake in the childish brain, and she obeyed mechanically; moving from one to the other with drowsy, soft kisses and drowsier “Dood nights”—until the last was said, and she turned to her father again and held up little brown arms to him. He picked her up, with infinite gentleness in his strength. One arm went round his wife’s shoulders as they disappeared into the silent welcome of the lighted house.
* * * * *
Outside the slow moon climbed into a starry sky, and for a while no one spoke. Far off, a bittern boomed in some unseen marsh—the eerie note that makes loneliness more lonely, and warm companionship the more comforting, by contrast. Then two mopokes began to call to each other across a belt of scrub, and a fox barked sharply. The fragrant peace of the summer night lay gently upon the blossoming garden.
Norah leaned back against her father’s knee, with Jean close at hand. It was to Jean that Mr. Linton spoke presently. There were many times when, between him and Norah, speech was not necessary.
“Well, you’re not having anything resembling the holidays I planned for you, Jean,” he said. “All the same, they have not been without incident!”
“It’s lovely!” Jean breathed. “Thank goodness, they’re not over yet!”
For to-night they were to sleep in Mrs. Archdale’s little blue room. The men of the party, scorning the excitements of the hotel, were to camp near the scrub; already preparations were made, and the white tent glimmered faintly in the moonlight. To-morrow would begin the ride back to Billabong.
“I heard from Town to-day,” the squatter observed. A sheaf of letters had awaited him at Atholton. “They will be able to begin work on the house next week, so the rebuilding won’t be so long drawn-out an affair as I feared.”
“That’s a mercy, anyhow,” Jim said, fervently. “I’ll be jolly glad not to see those blackened walls. Seems to hurt you, somehow. But how does that affect your plans, Dad?”
“What plans?” Norah asked.
“Well, Jim and I, as the only level-headed members of this irresponsible party, have been planning,” said her father. “Billabong being unfit for habitation, and two young ladies, to say nothing of one Queensland gentleman, on our hands, justly expecting an agreeable vacation——”
“Dad, how beautifully you talk!” said Norah.
“Such wealth of language!” breathed Jim.
“Diogenes revivified! Or was it Demosthenes?” said Wally, uncertainly.
“Diogenes inhabited a tub, if I remember rightly,” said Mr. Linton, laughing. “As far as I can see, I am likely to be driven to somewhat similar expedients, until I have a house again. However—not that any of you deserve my kind explanations, except Jean, who probably wouldn’t deserve them either but that she’s too shy to voice her thoughts in the way you do.”
Jean giggled assentingly.
“H’m,” said Mr. Linton, gazing at her severely “I thought so. If ever there was an unfortunate brow-beaten, burnt-out man, he sits here! Well, to come to the point—if you’ll all let me—Jim and I came to the conclusion that we must migrate somewhere for the remainder of the holidays. We thought of the seaside—Queenscliff or Point Lonsdale, or possibly the Gippsland Lakes. That was to be a matter for general consideration. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t adhere, in the main, to the plan. But since the workmen will be at the station, we’ll have to choose a spot not far away, as I must be most of my time at home. I can go backwards and forwards, and Brownie can go with you to keep a watchful eye on your pranks.”
“H’m!” said Jim thoughtfully. “That’s pretty rotten for you, isn’t it?”
Nobody spoke for a few minutes. Then Wally said.
“What’s the matter with Billabong?”
Jean conquered her shyness with a tremendous effort, sitting up abruptly.
“If you’re going away for me, Mr. Linton,” she said, speaking very fast, and plucking grass with great determination of purpose, “please don’t. I don’t want to be taken anywhere.”
“But, my dear child,” David Linton said, “I can’t have you all in tents. And there isn’t any house. You didn’t come for your holidays to rough it.”
“There isn’t any roughing it,” said Norah, quickly. “If Jean and Wally don’t mind——”
“Mind!” said Wally. “Why, I’ll feel like a motherless foal if you take me away, and go about bleating!”
“Well, there you are!” said Norah, inelegantly, but very earnestly. “Oh, Dad—let us all stay! We don’t want to go away. You don’t want us to go, do you?”
“Why, no; I don’t,” said her father, in perplexity. “As a matter of fact, I’d far rather be at home; indeed, I couldn’t be away for more than a very few days at a time. But the whole place will be upset, and I can’t see much fun for you youngsters in being there. It doesn’t seem quite fair to you.”
Jim began to laugh.
“It’s uncommonly difficult to plan for people who don’t want to be planned for, isn’t it, Dad?” he said. “Such a waste of noble effort! I believe we may as well give it up—they don’t seem to hanker after fleshpots!”
“Well, are you any better?” asked his father, laughing. “This was to be your holiday, too. You know you’ve put in a year of fairly hard work on the place, and I think you’re about due for a spell.”
“Me?” said Jim, in blank amazement. “Why, I haven’t killed myself with work—at least, I didn’t think so!” He grinned widely. “But I’m glad to know my valiant efforts impressed you. Anyhow, you needn’t make plans so far as I’m concerned; the old place is good enough for me, and if the other chaps don’t want to go away, I’m certain I don’t!”
“You see, Dad,” said Norah, earnestly, “we’ve got the tents—and perhaps we might put up a bigger one, in case of bad weather, and make a really ship-shape camp down by the lagoon, and just have our meals at the cottage. And everything will be so interesting at the house—and we’d have the horses!”
“It’s really all your own fault, sir,” Wally told him. “You’ve given us the taste for tent life, and you can’t blame us for becoming nomads. There’s already something of the Arab sheikh about Jean, and any one would mistake Jim for a dervish! Fancy shaking down to a boarding house at Queenscliff after this!” He waved a brown hand towards the dim outline of scrub, seen faint against the starlit velvet of the sky.
“It would be awful!” said Jean, with such fervour that every one laughed.
“And we can’t leave you, Dad,” Norah said. “It would spoil everything. I don’t believe you’d enjoy it, and certainly I wouldn’t call it really holidays unless we were with you. It seems all wrong to go away—not a bit like being mates. And we’re always mates.”
David Linton found her hand looking for his in the dusk, and gripped it tightly.
“Very good mates, I think,” he said. “Well—if you’ve all agreed, I’m not likely to want to hunt you into exile. Only remember, it will not be quite like home—tents are a poor substitute.”
“But—it’s Billabong!” said Norah, happily.
THE END
Ward, Lock & Co., Ltd., London.
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.
Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.
Some illustrations were moved to facilitate page layout.