“What’s wanted here is a Black war like they had in Tasmania,” continues the fair pianist. “Wait till you’ve been amongst our squatters awhile, and you won’t think more of shooting a nigger than of eating your tucker.” The speaker laughs a silvery little laugh, and all her audience, save one, smile in acquiescence. “What are the blacks? They’re only horrid thieves, and are worse than wild animals, and murdered poor old Billy Smith, only a couple of weeks ago, at Boolbunda.”
“Yes,” growls a stern-faced man with dark hairy face and coal-like eyes, a mine manager on the Mount Rose line of reef, “and many’s the time I said to Billy, ‘They’ll close in on you, my boy, some day.’ How he used to laugh when I told him he oughter carry a shooting-iron! ‘They know me too well,’ he’d say, ‘and this too,’ and he’d clap his hand on his coiled-up stockwhip on the saddle. ‘Many’s the yard of black hide I’ve taken off with my bit of twist here.’ But they got him at last, the black devils! Poor Billy; he was a rough sort, but he was true as a level, was Billy.”
“Did they send the ‘boys’ out?” drawls out a languid youth, who has been silent so far.
“Yes, rather!” answers the bright little hostess, with a curious steely gleam in her grey eyes, clasping her tiny hands together on her lap, as a child does when excited with delight or anticipated pleasure. “Yes, rather! Inspector Puttis, my cousin, you know, was at Gilbey’s station at the time when the news came in. And you bet he gave them a lesson they won’t forget in a hurry.”
“Did he catch the murderers?” asks the unfortunate Mr. Jolly innocently, immediately wishing, on noticing the half-hidden sneer on all the faces present, that he had kept quiet.
“Catch the murderers?” the little lady in white repeats, with a grin that spoils for the instant her pretty face. “No, indeed. We don’t go hunting round with sleepy Bobbies here, and summonses and such rubbish.” A murmur of applause rises from the cigar-holding lips of the auditors. “No! Cousin Jack I guess cleared off every nigger from the face of the earth within forty miles of the place. At least, if he didn’t, he ought to. They’re a horrid nuisance, and besides, it’s a long time since they’ve given the ‘boys’ a chance of doing anything.”
The irrepressible new chum however is not satisfied.
“But they’re awfully useful as servants, ain’t they?” he asks.
“Yes, if they’re trained young. You saw that girl of mine, when you were pretending to admire my baby this morning.” And the fair speaker smiles a smile of great sweetness upon Mr. Jolly, as she remembers his unfeigned praise of her child. “Well, she comes from a bad lot of Myall blacks near Cairns. The police have cleared them all out now. Inspector Young gave her to me. One of his sergeants got her at a ‘rounding-up’ about three years ago, before I was married. She was only about six years old then, and had got her leg broken above the knee with a bullet. She’d have got away then, he said, but the dogs found her in a hollow log. He saved her,” continued the lady, in the same tone of voice that a sportsman’s daughter in England would have employed when speaking of one of a litter of foxhounds, “he kept the dogs off her and saved her, because she looked such a strong, healthy little animal. But all this reminds me that Jack Puttis, the Inspector, you know, said he’d call in here to-night, if he could get so far. So I’ll just go in and see about supper.” Rising, the active, fragile speaker trips away, leaving the rather stolid brain of the young Englishman slowly recovering from the shock it has received. His preconceived notions—“young-man notions,” if you like—of woman as a gentler, diviner creature than man, and worthy of the worship of the ruder sex as the citadel of mercy and holiness of thought and action, have received a blow that they will never quite recover from. His thoughts flash back to a line in the “Civilization” of Emerson: “Where the position of the white woman is injuriously affected by the outlawry of the black woman,” and he feels sick and disgusted.
A grave-looking young man, who has sat in silence watching the face of the heretical new chum expounder of the doctrine of Mercy, now leans forward and touches his shoulder.