BURNT OUT
And the creek of life goes wandering on,
Wandering by;
And bears for ever its course upon
A song and a sigh.
—Henry Lawson.
A DROVER on the road with store cattle miles away saw the glow in the sky that night, and reported it next morning to a farmer driving in to Cunjee; and before noon half the township seemed to be out at the station.
Little Dr. Anderson, in his motor, was the first to appear. He found the Billabong inhabitants straying about the ruins to see what remained to them. The overseer’s cottage and the men’s hut had given them shelter for the remnant of the night after the fire had been finally extinguished, except Mr. Linton and Jim, who remained on guard until morning.
Within, the devastation was only partial. Most of the rooms in front were practically untouched, though all had been damaged by water. The back of the house had suffered most; little but the walls were left. Jim brought a long ladder for further explorations, for the stairs were unsafe, being burnt through in two places. He found that the rooms belonging to his father, Norah and himself bore traces of flood rather than of fire. The walls were cracked with heat, but otherwise they were intact. But the water had done its worst, and he groaned over the spectacle of Norah’s pretty room, its red carpet a vision of discoloured slush, and the white furniture stained and blistered. All its little adornments were lying in confused heaps, swept down by the water. It was a gruesome sight.
Within the wardrobe and chest of drawers, however, clothes were unhurt. Jim took up a rope and lowered bundles down to his father, so that when Norah and Jean awoke, very late in the morning, it was to find clean raiment laid out for them by Brownie, and breakfast waiting for them in Mrs. Evans’s neat little kitchen.
“Isn’t it a mercy?” Jean confided to Norah. “Last night it didn’t seem to matter at all running round before all Billabong in a nighty and a coat, but I went to sleep wondering how they’d look in the daytime!”
Brownie and the maids were the most to be pitied, for they had lost everything but a few cherished possessions, snatched up as they ran out of the house. Mary and Sarah were not hard to clothe—but Mrs. Brown was a different proposition. The united wardrobes of Mrs. Evans and Mrs. Willis, the men’s cook, contrived something in the nature of a rig-out by dint of ripping out gathers and tucks and using innumerable safety pins. “I’m covered, if not clothed!” said Brownie, “an’ thankful to be anything!”
Mr. Linton had resolutely put away his trouble, and was inspecting the remains with a keen, businesslike face.
“It’s a matter of restoring rather than rebuilding,” he told Dr. Anderson, who was spluttering with indignation still, more than an hour after his arrival. “The insurance should cover the damage, I fancy; and the back of the house can be built after more modern notions, which won’t be a disadvantage. The stables? No—they will go up again precisely as they were. And the place will look the same, in the main; we don’t want it altered. It will look abominably new, of course; our old mantle of ivy and virginia creeper is destroyed, and the walls will be bare for a long while. Poor old Hogg is mourning over his dead roses and the general havoc in his garden.
“Well, you take it calmly!” said the little doctor, explosively.
David Linton shrugged his shoulders.
“No good doing anything else,” he answered. “And, after all, I have such immense cause for thankfulness in getting Norah out of that confounded place unhurt, that nothing else really matters. It’s a nuisance, of course, and what I’m to do with the youngsters’ holidays I don’t know; it’s pretty rough on them. But—good Lord, Anderson! I want to go and feel the child whenever I look at her, to make sure that she’s really all right! It seems incredible—I never saw so hideously close a shave!”
“Norah’s absolutely matter of fact over it,” the doctor said. “I rebuked her in my best professional manner for doing such a mad thing, and she looked at me in mild surprise, and remarked, ‘Why, if I hadn’t, Jim would have gone!’ It seemed to finish the argument as far as she was concerned. Wonder if your fellows have got Harvey?”
“Oh, they’re bound to get him,” the squatter answered. “And I wouldn’t care to be Harvey when they do.”
Murty O’Toole had commenced detective operations with break of day. He had not ceased to abuse himself for failing to be at the stables in time to help.
“A set of useless images,” said he, in profound scorn. “Slapin’ an’ snorin’ like so manny fat pigs—an’ Miss Norah an’ Masther Jim on the shpot! Bad luck to the heat an’ the races!—ivery man jack of us was aslape almost before we was in bed, ’twas that tired we was. But that’s no excuse!” Murty refused to be comforted, and only derived faint solace from the determination to find out the cause of the fire.
It did not require sleuth-hound abilities. The little paddock had burned in patches, for here and there were green expanses of clover that had checked the fire, and the hawthorn hedge had helped to stop it at the boundary; but the west wind had taken it straight across to the stables, and in the morning light the brown, burnt ground led Murty quickly to the clump of lemon gums. Behind them a kerosene tin stood, inverted, and the burn began there. When the stockman picked it up the blackened square of charred grass beneath it showed out sharply.
“That ain’t the kind of thing that happens wid an accident,” said Murty between his teeth. He looked further.
Behind the burnt ground, the place where a man had lain was easily visible in the long grass. There were cigarette butts in plenty, and a little further away an empty cigarette box. Murty pounced upon it in triumph.
“Humph!” he said. “Harvey smokes that brand—an’ no wan else on Billabong.”
Then the whisky bottle, half hidden in the hedge, caught his eye, and he picked it up. He was sure now. The smell of fresh spirit was still in it; and he had seen the bottle in Harvey’s room two days before. And, with that, black rage came over Murty’s honest heart, and for five minutes his remarks about the absent Harvey might have withered that individual’s soul, had he indeed possessed such a thing. Then Murty replaced his evidence, and went for Mr. Linton.
He led the men away from the homestead an hour later, each as keen and as enraged as himself.
“Mind, boys, you’ve promised not to hurt him,” David Linton said, “He’ll get all that’s coming to him—but I won’t have the station take the law into its hands. We can’t be absolutely certain.” The men were certain: but they had promised, unwillingly enough. They went down the paddock at a hand-gallop, with set, angry faces.
Wally had ridden into Cunjee, to send telegrams and letters, and with an amazing list to be telephoned to Melbourne shops, since the township could not rise to great heights in the way of personal effects, saddlery, or even groceries. Billabong was, in patches, blankly destitute. Not a decent saddle was left, save those belonging to the men: buggies, harness, tools, horse feed—all had gone in the destruction of the stables. Norah and Jean were completely hatless, their head gear having been downstairs; and as Jim was wont to keep most of his every-day possessions in a downstairs bathroom where he shaved and dressed, he had nothing left but his best clothes, and a Panama sternly reserved, as a rule, for trips to Melbourne.
“Nice sort of a Johnny you look, to be wandering round ther—ruined ancestral hall!” Wally told him derisively. “You might be a bright young man on the stage. It’s hardly decent and filial for you to think so much of personal adornment at a time like this!” Further eloquence was checked by sudden action on the part of his friend, who was too unhappy over his own grandeur to bear meekly any jibes on its account. He had headed the telephone list with urgent messages for riding breeches and leggings, and a felt hat of the kind his soul desired. There was something little short of appalling to Jim in finding himself suddenly without any old clothes!
Following Dr. Anderson came riders from other stations, policemen from two or three scattered townships, and many other people anxious to help, so that the fences near the homestead were soon thickly occupied with horses “hung up” in every patch of shade. There was, of course, nothing to do. Nor could Billabong even maintain its reputation for hospitality, since it had been left almost without provisions. The storeroom containing the main quantities of groceries, as well as the meat house, had been amongst the first parts of the house to catch. Bags of flour could be seen, burst open, in the ruins, and thick masses of what looked like very badly-burned toffee, and had been sugar. The men’s hut had fed the exiles, and further supplies would be brought out from Cunjee by Evans in his buggy—the only vehicle, except the station carts and drays, left on Billabong.
“It’s really rather like being cast on a desert island,” said Jean.
Norah laughed.
“I guess it’s like that to all the people who have come out,” she said. “Just fancy, Jean, we can’t even give them a cup of tea. There’s milk, and that’s all there is. Isn’t it awful?”
But the visitors had not come to be fed. They condoled, and looked round the ruins, and made strong and unavailing comments, and then, in the Australian fashion, offered all they had, from their houses to their buggies, to fill in any deficiencies. Invitations to find shelter at neighbouring places poured in upon Mr. Linton and his family. The squatter would not leave the homestead, but he considered the question of sending Jean and Norah to spend a week in Mrs. Anderson’s friendly care, finally referring the matter to the girls themselves, and finding them so horrified at the idea that he promptly withdrew it.
“I don’t want to crowd Evans’s cottage out altogether,” he said, half apologetically.
“Well, Mrs. Evans has a spare room, and she lets us wash up, and I’m going to bath the baby to-night!” said Norah. “And she wants us to stay—and Jim and Wally and you are going to sleep in the tents, anyhow. Oh, Daddy, don’t send us away. I would hate it so!”
“All right, all right, you needn’t go!” rejoined her father, laughing. “But it will be very dull for Jean: you can’t ride or drive, and the cottage isn’t as comfortable in this heat as Billabong.”
But Jean reassured him, hastily. She had no desire to migrate to a world of strangers.
“It is hot, though, Daddy, that’s a fact,” said Norah. “I was thinking——” She broke off, watching him a little doubtfully.
“When you think in that tone, I have generally no chance of escape,” said he. “What is it this time?”
“Well, there’s another little tent.” Norah hesitated, half laughing. “Jim would put it up and fix up bunks for us. Couldn’t we come and join your camp down there?” She pointed towards the lagoon, where Jim had already taken two small tents and was hunting about for ridge poles. The bank looked cool and shady, fringed with groves of wattles and big box trees. “We could keep our things up at Mrs. Evans’s cottage, and dress there: but it would be lovely to sleep in a tent. That little room is certainly hot.”
Mr. Linton pondered. The lagoon was only a hundred yards from the cottage. Certainly, there was no great objection to the plan. And Norah was still bearing traces of the previous night, in white cheeks and heavy eyes: it was hard to refuse her anything in reason.
“Well, you may,” he said, “if you can arrange matters with Jim.”
“Oh, can we, Daddy? You are the blessedest——!” said Norah. Suddenly he was alone. Two strenuous figures in blue frocks descended upon the hapless Jim.
“Whatever’s the matter?” Jim asked, looking up as they raced down upon him. “Not another fire? And aren’t you two hot enough without doing Sheffield handicaps across here?” He had borrowed a pair of blue dungaree trousers from the wardrobe of Mr. Evans, and was, in consequence, much happier.
“Want you to put us up a tent,” Norah said, cheerfully. “You don’t mind, do you, Jimmy?”
Jim whistled. “What does Dad say?”
“Says we can if you’ll fix it. You will, Jimmy, won’t you? We’ll help you ever so. It would be so lovelier than sleeping in a hot little room!”
“Oh, all right,” said her easy-going brother. “You’ll have to make yourselves scarce in the mornings, you know—this is our bathing place.”
“Yes, we know. We’ll do whatever you say,” said Norah, with amazing meekness. “You’re a brick, Jimmy. Shall we carry down the tent? I know where it is.”
“No, you won’t,” said Jim, severely. “You can’t try to commit suicide over-night and then make yourself a beast of burden in the morning. Wal. and I can bring it when he comes out; he ought to be back soon. Just you sit down in the shade and think of your sins.”
“That won’t keep me busy,” Norah retorted. But she did as she was told, and they sat peacefully under a big weeping willow until Mrs. Evans summoned them to dinner.
After lunch there was nothing to be done at the homestead. Mr. Linton had gone to Cunjee in Dr. Anderson’s motor to transact much business and talk on the telephone to Melbourne insurance people and building contractors. Wally appeared about three o’clock, hot and dusty, and reported the condition of the township.
“Every one’s talking fire,” he said. “The police and half the men are out after Harvey. I’ve never seen Cunjee so excited—it seems quite appropriate that they’ve still got the Christmas decorations in the streets! They’re considerably withered, of course, but it seems to indicate that something’s in the air. I guess Harvey will have a lively time when they catch him.”
“Wish I could be in at the death,” said Jim, grimly. His father’s wish had kept him from joining the pursuit, but he had stayed unwillingly.
“Yes, it wouldn’t be bad fun, would it? Wonder is they haven’t got him already. He must be pretty well planted,” Wally said. “He’s certainly the man you’ve got to thank: if he’d a clear conscience he’d be in Cunjee now, instead of nobody knows where. Whew—w, it is hot! Come and have a swim, Jim.”
“No swim for you yet awhile,” Jim told him, grimly. “You’ve got to come and fix camp.”
“Me?” asked Wally, blankly. “Of all the unsympathetic, slave-driving wretches——”
“Yes, that’s so,” grinned his chum. “All the same, you’ve got to come.”
“I felt there was something in the wind,” said Wally, lugubriously. “I left you as beautiful as a tailor’s block, and looking very like one, only woodener, in your best suit; and I find you in dungarees and a shirt, and hideously happy. It isn’t fair, and me so hot. Isn’t he a brute, Norah?”
“Not this time,” laughed Norah. “You see, it’s our tent you’ve got to fix. Go on, and we’ll get a billy from Mrs. Evans and brew afternoon tea for you down by the lagoon.”
So they spent the hot hours in the shade, while the boys made the little camp ship-shape, their tent and that of Mr. Linton close together near the bank, and the girls’ a little way off in a clump of young wattles. Jim fixed up bunks in bushman fashion, with saplings run through bags endways, and supported on crossed sticks.
“You won’t want any mattresses on those,” he said: “they’re fit for anyone. What about blankets, Norah?”
“Brownie’s been drying the ones you amateur firemen soaked last night,” said his sister, unkindly. “They’re all water-marked, of course, but they’re quite good enough for camping.”
“First rate,” Jim agreed. “We’ll get ’em. Come along, Wally.”
“More toil!” groaned that gentleman, who had been working with the cheerful keenness he put into all his doings. “Why did I come here?”
“Poor dear, then!” said a cheerful, fat voice. The creaking of a wheelbarrow accompanied it, and preceded Mrs. Brown, who came into view wheeling a load of bedclothes.
“Brownie, you shouldn’t, you bad young thing!” exclaimed Wally. He dashed to take the barrow, and was routed ignominiously.
“Never you mind—I can manage me own little lot,” said Brownie, cheerfully. She pulled up, panting a little. “Lucky for me it was all down hill; I don’t know as I could have managed to get it up a rise.”
“You oughtn’t to have wheeled that load at all,” Jim said, with an excellent attempt at sternness. It appeared to afford Brownie great amusement, and she chuckled audibly.
“Bless you, it pulled me here!” she answered. “I come down at no end of a pace. Now haven’t you got it all just as nice as it can be. Makes me nearly envious!”
“We’ll fix up a tent for you, if you like,” Jim told her. “Just say the word.”
“Not for me, thank you,” said Brownie, hastily. “This open-air sleeping notion is all very well for them as likes it—but I’m used to four walls an’ a winder. I like something you can lock—an’ where can you lock a tent, Master Jim?—tell me that!” She propounded this unanswerable query with an air of triumph. “Besides, it wouldn’t be fair to any bunk to put me into it, bunks not bein’ built on my lines. I’d hate to come down in the night, like that there Philistine idol in the Bible.”
“Why, you wouldn’t have far to fall!” said Jim, laughing.
“Thank you, but any distance is far enough when you’re my weight,” Brownie responded, with dignity. “Now, Miss Norah an’ Miss Jean, seein’ as how I’ve got my breath again, I think we’d better start bedmaking.”
“Don’t you bother, Brownie; we can fix up our own,” Jim said, politely—and greatly hoping that his politeness would have no effect. It had none.
“Humph!” said Mrs. Brown. “Handy you may be with tools an’ horses, Master Jim, but I never yet did see the man or boy that was handy with bedmaking. I’ve noticed that bedclothes seem to paralyse a man’s common sense when he starts to make a bed; he don’t seem to be able to realize what relation they have to the mattress. Generally he fights with them quite desperate, and gets them nearly tied in knots before the job’s done. So just you two lie there peaceful, an’ me an’ the young ladies will do it in two twos.”
The boys’ bedmaking ambition was of no soaring nature, and they were very content to “lie peaceful,” watching the sun dip behind the trees that fringed the lagoon. Then came Mr. Linton, who nodded approval of the workmanlike camp.
“First rate!” he said, warmly. “For destitute and burnt-out people, we shan’t fare too badly.”
“Rather not!” Jim answered. “How did you get on, Dad?”
“Oh, all right. Telephone was as indistinct as usual, but I managed to say a good deal of what I wanted through it. There will be an insurance man down to-morrow.” Mr. Linton smiled at the bedmakers, who came out of the last tent and settled down under the trees thankfully. “They’ve found Harvey,” he concluded.
“Found the brute, have they?” Jim exclaimed. “What did he have to say, Dad? Did they hurt him?”
“Harvey had had luck,” said Mr. Linton, slowly. “He’d hurt himself first.”
“How? Tell us, Dad.”
“Well, they hunted most of the day before they got him. They had every road searched before noon, the police were in communication with all the townships in the district, and there was no sign of him. Then the men left the roads and went across country, hunting up the river and along any creek, and through scrub. But I don’t think Mr. Harvey would have trusted himself in scrub without a horse.”
“Not he!” Jim agreed.
“Murty found him. He was riding across the Duncans’ big plain, and thought he heard a coo-ee; but there was no cover anywhere, and he couldn’t see a man wherever he looked. But he rode about, and found him at last in a little bit of a hollow. Murty said you might have ridden past it a hundred times and never have seen anyone. Harvey had shouted once, but when he saw that it was Murty he was afraid to call again, and tried to lie low.”
“Couldn’t he walk?”
“He broke his leg last night,” Mr. Linton answered. “The poor wretch has had a pretty bad time. He was jumping over a log, he says, and came down with one leg in a crab-hole, and it twisted, and threw him down. He didn’t know it was broken at first, but he found he couldn’t use it. So he crawled away from the log, being afraid of snakes, and got a couple of hundred yards into the paddock. Since then he’s kept still.”
“What—out in the open?” Jim asked.
“Yes; not a scrap of cover. And think of the day it’s been—it was 112° in the shade in Cunjee—and Harvey wasn’t in the shade. He told Murty he was badly thirsty before he got hurt, and had been looking for water. His leg is in a bad state, and he must have had a terrible day. Murty came in for the doctor, and we went for him in the car—of course, Murty could do nothing on horseback. Harvey was a bit delirious by the time we got to him. Anderson says he’ll be three months in hospital.”
“Whew-w!” whistled Wally. “Three months!”
“Then he’ll have three munce to reflect on the error of his ways!” said Brownie, implacably. “Oh, I know me feelings aren’t Christian, an’ I don’t set a good example to the young; but what did he want to go and do it for?”
“Break his leg? But did he want to?” Jim grinned.
“You know very well I don’t mean his wretched little leg,” Brownie said, testily. “He never had no call to burn us all out. Now he’s broke his leg, an’ you’ll think he’s an object of sympathy an’ compassion, an’ nex’ thing Miss Norah’ll be visitin’ him in the ’Ospital an’ holdin’ his hand an’ givin’ him jelly!”
“By gad, she won’t!” uttered Norah’s father, with satisfying emphasis. “There are limits, Brownie. But it’s all very well for you to talk—if you’d seen the poor little weed you’d have been sorry for him.”
“Not me!” Brownie answered, truculently. “I only got to think of Miss Norah in that horrid stable, an’ every soft feelin’ leaves me, like a moulting hen.” Brownie’s similes were apt to be mixed, and nobody marked them. “Does he say why he did it? He’s got nerve enough to stick out that he never lit it at all!”
“Oh, no, he hasn’t—not now,” said Mr. Linton. “He admitted it to Murty meekly enough, and Murty says he was awfully taken aback at hearing the amount of the damage; he said he only thought of burning the grass. Whether his concern is for my loss or the possible results to himself, I’m not clear. I don’t regard him as exactly a philanthropist.”
Brownie snorted wrathfully as they rose to go up to the cottage. The sun had set, and Mrs. Evans was calling from the hill.
“I don’t give him credit for no decent motives at all,” she said. “He’s bad right through—an’ don’t you ask me to be sorry for him—he’ll have three munce takin’ it easy in ’Ospital, livin’ on the fat of the land an’ doin’ no work—an’ that’ll just suit Harvey! I got no patience with that sort of worm in sheep’s clothing!” She subsided, muttering darkly, and Wally offered her his arm up the hill, while Jim wheeled the barrow.
Brownie dropped her voice as they neared the cottage.
“Ah, well,” she said—and paused. “I don’t suppose them gaol ’Ospitals is exackly dens of luxury. If you an’ Master Jim, Master Wally, think as how a little strong soup or meat jelly might go in to that poor, wicked, depraved little wretch——?”
“Fattening him for the slaughter, eh, Brownie?” asked Wally, gravely.
“Yes, that’s it,” said the fierce Mrs. Brown, accepting the suggestion with ardour. “P’r’aps he mightn’t get what he deserves if he looked pale an’ thin at his trile!” She mused over the matter. “Wonder if they feed ’em on skilly when they’re in ’Ospital,” she pondered. “An’ a leg like that. Well, well, we’re all ’uman, after all, an’ likely his mother never did much by him—he looks as if he had growed up casual! You find out about that soup, Master Wally.” And Wally nodded, his eyes kindly as he smiled at the broad, motherly face.
“Makes you feel a bit small, though,” he confided to Jim later on. “Because I’m not in the least sorry for Harvey. I think he deserved all he got, and more, and these beggars don’t mind gaol. Suppose I’m a hard-hearted brute!”
“Well, I’m another,” Jim responded. “When I think of young Norah—and the horses! I guess my poor old Garryowen had about as bad a time as Harvey. Says he never thought of the house! Well, he lit the grass three hundred yards from it, with a west wind blowing—that’s all! When I can work up any sorrow for Harvey I’ll let you know!” And the stern and unmoved pair sought the lagoon for a final swim before “turning in.”
“ ‘Brownie, you shouldn’t, you bad young thing!’ ”