CHAPTER 11
It was a long time before Mrs Gildea received an answer to her letter. She had begun to despair of ever getting another line from Colin McKeith, when at last he wrote from Moongarr, six months later.
MY DEAR JOAN,
Your letter has made me think. I could not write before for reasons that you'll gather as you go along. I shall do as you ask and tell you everything as straightly and plainly as I can. I feel it is best that you should know exactly the sort of conditions I'm under and what a woman would have had to put up with if she had been with me—what she would have to put up with if she were going to be with me. Then you can judge whether or not I'm right in the decision I have come to as the result of my thinkings. You can tell my wife as much as you please—of the details, I mean. Perhaps, you had better soften them to her, for you know as well as I do—or better—that her impulsive, quixotic disposition might lead her into worse mistakes than it has done already. Of course, she'll have to know my decision. I am sure that if she allows her reason play, she will agree it is the only possible one.
I'm not going to talk about what happened before she went away, or about that evidence—or anything else in that immediate connection. I was mad, and I expect I believed a lot more than was true. I don't believe—I don't think I ever did really believe—what I suppose you would call 'the worst.' But that doesn't seem to me of such great matter. It's the spirit, not the letter that counts. The foundation must have been rotten, or there never would have been a question of believing one way or the other—because we should have UNDERSTOOD. Explanations would not have been needed between true mates. Only we were not true mates—that's the whole point. There was too great a radical difference between us. It might have been a deal better if she HAD gone off with that man.
But to come now to the practical part of the situation. You know enough about Australian ups and downs to realise that a cattle or sheep owner out West, may be potentially wealthy one season and on the fair road to beggary the next. It will be different when times change and we take to sinking artesian bores on the same principle as when Joseph stored up grain in the fat years in Egypt against the lean ones that were coming. That's what I meant to do and ought to have done at any cost. But—well I just didn't.
The thing is that if I could have looked ahead, perhaps even six months, I might not have thought it acting on the square to a woman to get her to marry me. If I could have looked a year ahead, I wouldn't have had any doubt on the subject.
But you see I justified it to myself. One thousand square miles of country—fine grazing land most of it, so long as the creeks kept running—and no more than eleven thousand head of stock upon it, seemed, with decent luck, a safe enough proposition, though you'll remember I was a bit doubtful that day on your veranda at Emu Point, when we talked about my marrying. The truth was that directly I saw Bridget, she carried me clean off my head—and that's the long and short of it.
Besides, I'd been down south a good while, then, figuring about in the Legislative Assembly and swaggering on my prospects. I'd left Ninnis to oversee up here, and Ninnis didn't know the Leura like some of the old hands, who told me afterwards they'd seen the big drought coming as long back as that.
I remember one old chap on the river, when he was sold up by the Bank in the last bad times, and his wife had died of it all, saying to me, 'The Leura isn't the place for a woman.' And he was right. Well, I saw that I was straight up against it that spring when we had had a poor summer and a dry winter, and the Unionists started trouble cutting my horses' throats, and burning woodsheds and firing the only good grass on my run that I could rely upon. I didn't say much about it, but I have no doubt that it made me bad-tempered and less pleasant to live with.... That was just before the time Biddy went away. Afterwards, the sales I'd counted on turned out badly—cattle too poor for want of grass to stand the droving and the worst luck in the sale-yards I'd ever known.
First thing I did was to reduce the staff and bar everything but bare necessaries—I sent off the Chinamen and every spare hand. Ninnis and I and the stockman—a first-rate chap, Moongarr Bill—worked the run—just the three of us. You can guess how we managed it. A Malay boy did cooky for the head-station.
After Christmas I left Ninnis and Bill to look after the place. I had to go to Leichardt's Town. I had been thinking things out about Biddy all that time—you know I'm too much of the Scotchy to make hasty determinations. Well, I had that Parliament Bill, allowing divorce after two years desertion in my head, from the day Biddy left me. It seemed the best way out—for her. I had heard about that fellow going Home in the same boat with her, and never guessed but that it was a concerted plan between them. That note Harris showed me made me think it was so. I don't think this now—after what you told me.
But what did rub itself into me then was that I ought to let her marry him as soon as she decently could. I couldn't see the matter any other way—I don't now. He has lots of money—though a man who would buy happiness with another woman out of the money his wife had left him—well, that's a matter of opinion. Besides, she has got the fortune the old lady left her and can be independent of him if she chooses. There's nothing to prevent her living any kind of life that pleases her—except me, and I'm ready and willing to clear out of the show. One thing I'm sorry for now, and that is having torn up the draft she sent to pay me back her passage money, and putting the bits in an envelope and posting them to her without a word. I suppose it should have been done through a lawyer, with all the proper palaver. Perhaps she didn't tell you about that. I somehow fancy she didn't. But I know that it would have hurt her—I knew that when I did it. And perhaps that is why I did it. You are right. I haven't acted the part of a gentleman all through this miserable business. But what could you expect?
For you see, my father worked his own way up, and my grandfather was a crofter—and I haven't got the blood of Irish kings, on the other side, behind me.
Now I'm being nasty, as you used to say in the old Bungroopim days when I wouldn't play. YOU were my Ideal, in those days, Joan—before you went and got married. I've been an unlucky devil all round.
Well there! I had to try and arrange things for an overdraft with the Bank in Leichardt's Town, but I went down chiefly to consult lawyers about the divorce question, so that it should be done with as little publicity and unpleasantness as possible. It appeared that it could be done all right—as I wrote you. What would have been the good of my havering in that letter over my own feelings and the bad times I had struck? It never was my habit to whine over what couldn't be helped.
Luck was up against me down there too. I got pitched off a buckjumper at a horse-dealers', Bungroopim way. I had been 'blowing,' Australian fashion, that I could handle that colt if nobody else was able to. The end of it was that the buckjumper got home, not me. I was laid up in hospital for close on two months, with a broken leg and complications. The complications were that old spear wound, which inflamed, and they found that a splinter from the jagged tip had been left in. Blood-poisoning was the next thing; and when I came out of that hospital I was more like the used up bit of soap you'll see by the COOLIBAH* outside a shepherd's hut on ration-bringing day, than anything else I can think of.
[*Coolibah—a basin made from the scooped out excrescence of a tree.]
As soon as I could sit a horse again I went to work at Moongarr. I had found things there at a pretty pass. Not a drop of rain had fallen up to now on the station for nearly nine months. YOU know what that means on the top of two dry seasons. As soon as I was fit, we rode over the run inspecting—I and Ninnis and Moongarr Bill. There's a lot of riding over one thousand square miles, and we didn't get our inspection done quickly. Day after day we travelled through desolation—grass withered to chips, creeks and waterholes all but empty, cattle staggering like drunken men, only it was for WANT of drink. The trees were dying in the wooded country; and in the plains the earth was crumbling and shrinking, and great cracks like crevasses were gaping in the black soil where there used to be beautiful green grass and flowers in spring.
The lagoon was practically dried up, and the little drain of water left was undrinkable because of the dead beasts that had got bogged and dropped dead in it. They were short of water at the head-station, and we had to fetch it in from a waterhole several miles off that we fenced round and used for drinking—so long as it lasted. When we were mustering the other side of the run, it came to our camping at a sandy creek where we could dig in the sand and get just enough for horses and men. The water of the Bore I'd made, was a bit brackish, but it kept the grass alive round about and was all the cattle had to depend on. You can think of the job it was shifting the beasts over there from other parts of the run which was what we tried to do, so long as they were fit for it.
We were selling what we could while there was still life left in the herd, but the cattle were too far gone for droving. We managed to collect a hundred or so—sent them in trucks from Crocodile Creek Terminus, for boiling down and netted about thirty shillings a head on them. That was all. I guess that—by this time, out of my eleven thousand head with No. 666 brand on them I'd muster from four to five hundred. The mistake I made was in not selling out for what I could get at the beginning of the Drought. But it was the long time in Leichardt's Town that had me there.
It was bad luck all through from first to last. Mustering those beasts for boiling down started that old spear wound afresh. Until it got well again, there was nothing for it but to sit tight and wait.
Moongarr Bill left to make a prospecting trip on my old tracks up the Bight—took Cudgee and the black-boy with him. He had an idea that he'd strike a place where we'd seen the colour of gold on our last expedition, but weren't able then to investigate it. I've never been bitten by the gold fever like some fellows, and I daresay that I've missed chances. But I thought cattle were a safer investment, and I've seen too much misery and destruction come from following that gold will o' the wisp, for me to have been tempted to run after it.
Old Ninnis was the next to leave, I made him take the offer of a job that he had. When it came to drawing water five miles for the head-station, and keeping it in an iron tank sunk in the ground, with a manhole and padlocked cover for fear of its being got at, the fewer there were of us the better. Now the station is being run by the Boss and the Malay boy, who is a sharp little chap, and more use in the circumstances than any white man. We've killed the calves we were trying to PODDY*. And the dogs—except one cattle dog—Veno—Biddy would remember her; how she used to lollop about the front veranda outside her room. Now, what the deuce made me write that!—Well, the dog goes with me in the cart when I fetch water, and takes her drink with the horses at the hole.
[*Poddy—to bring up by hand.]
I'm getting used to the life—making jobs in the daytime to keep myself from feeling the place a worse hell than it really is. There's always the water to be fetched and the two horses and the dog to be taken for their big drink. If you could see me hoarding the precious stuff—washing my face in the morning in a soup plate, and what's left kept for night for the dog. When I want a bath I ride ten miles to the bore. Then there's saddlery to mend, and dry-cleaning the place and pipes between whiles—more of them than is good for me. Stores are low, but I've still got enough of tobacco. I daresay it's a mercy there's no whiskey—nothing but a bottle or two of brandy in case of snake-bites—or I might have taken to it.
Thank God I've got a pretty strong will, and I've never done as I see so many chaps do, find forgetfulness in drink—but there's no saying what a man may come to. It's the nights that are the worst. I'm glad to get up at dawn and see to the beasts. And there's that infernal watching of the sky—looking out all the time for clouds that don't come—or if they do, end in nothing. You know that brassy glare of the sun rising that means always scorching dry heat? Think of it a hundred times worse than you've ever seen it! The country as far as you can look is like the floor of an enormous oven, with the sky, red and white-hot for a roof, and all the life there is, being slowly baked inside. The birds are getting scarce, and it seems too much trouble for those that are about to lift their voices. Except for a fiend of a laughing-jackass in a gum tree close by the veranda that drives me mad with his devilish chuckling.
Well, how do you think now, that her ladyship would have stood up against these sort of conditions? Many a time, walking up and down the veranda when I couldn't sleep, I've thanked my stars that there was no woman hanging on to me any more. Most of the men on the river have sent away their women—stockmen's wives and all. There was one here at the Bachelors' Quarters, but I packed her off before I went to Leichardt's Town.
I'm just waiting on to get Moongarr Bill's report of the country up north—how it stands the drought, and what the chances are for pushing out. As for the gold find—well, I'm not banking on that. As soon as I hear—or if I don't hear in the course of the next two or three weeks—I shall pull up stakes, and burn all my personal belongings, except what a pair of saddle bags will carry.
Before long, I'm going to begin packing Biddy's things. They'll be shipped off to her all right.
When the divorce business is over, I shall make new tracks, and you won't hear of me unless I come out on top. I've got a queer feeling inside me that I shall win through yet.
Well, I'm finished; and it's about time. I've run my pen over a good many sheets, and it has been a kind of relief—I began writing this about three weeks ago. Harry the Blower—that's the mailman—comes only once a month now, and not on time at that.
I suppose the drought will break sooner or later, and when it breaks, the Bank is certain to send up and take possession of what's left. So I'm a ruined man, any way.
Good-bye, Joan, old friend. I've written to the lawyer, and Biddy will be served with the papers soon after this reaches you. I'm not sending her any message. If she doesn't understand, there's no use in words—but YOU know this. She's been the one woman in the universe for me—and there will never be another.
He signed his name at the end of the letter; and that was all.