In the Roaring Fifties

by Edward Dyson

'Your prettiness is all dying out of you, dear,' said Mary; 'you must rest yourself, you must go into the air and let the roses freshen again, or the boy won't look at you when he wakes.'

''Twill all come back fast enough when he is well,' Aurora would answer; and it was into her pale face that Jim gazed with a long look of childlike gravity when he opened his eyes to consciousness. She detected the light of reason in his gaze, and her fingers clasped his hand. From her face his eyes went slowly round the apartment, lingering with an intent look on familiar objects, and then they went to the roof, and for fully twenty minutes he watched the glowing patch where a sunbeam struck the canvas cover, and there was in his face something of the wonder of a creature born into a new world. Aurora was very grave: she did not smile, her heart felt no elation—it was numb and old. Jim had a perplexing sensation of feathery lightness; he felt like a frail snowflake in an unsubstantial world. The bed under him was a bed of gossamer, if not wholly visionary. He might fall through at any moment, and if he did he might go on falling endlessly, a pinch of down in a bottomless abyss. He tried to close his fingers on Aurora's strong hand. He knew she was there, and she was real, substantial, although something of the wanness of this mysterious world was about her.

'Joy,' he whispered. She bent her head to him. 'Where—what—' He relapsed with a sigh. After all, it did not matter.

'You have been very ill, Jimmy,' she said.

His eyes moved to her face again, and he tried to nod, but found that that was too much trouble too. It was too much trouble to pretend to understand even. Aurora would hold him and prevent his floating out into the fantastical, fairy atmosphere. It seemed right and natural that she should be there. He had quite expected it. But had he? The train of thought was too laborious: he abandoned it. Joy gave him something to drink. She poured it into his mouth, and it ran down his throat. It was good, wonderfully good—nectar, surely. Had he been told it was water he would have resented the lie with as much energy as he was capable of putting into any thought, and that was just the thin, silken line, next to none at all. As a matter of fact, Joy had given him nothing but water. It seemed to add to his weight, to give some little quality of substance to his being. He thought he might thank her with a pressure of his fingers presently, but the necessary power did not come, and he drifted into sleep.

XX

THE Christmas of 1854 was the gayest ever known at Boobyalla; never had Mrs. Donald Macdougal been so prodigal, never had such lavish hospitality been dispensed under Macdougal's roof-tree, and the squatter wore a dour and anxious look as he saw the liquor flowing, and heard the music, and the laughter, and the clatter of dishes, and found himself in collision with his wife's guests in all the passages and windings of his large, wandering homestead. Macdougal, who, in addition to his sobriquet of Monkey Mack, was known as Old Dint-the-Tin by the sundowners, shearers, and miscellaneous swagmen to whom he sold pints of flour out of a pannikin dinted in to shorten the measure, was not miserly in his dealings with his wife and his children. He was reputed to be mean enough to steal the buttons off a shepherd's shirt for his own use, and yet permitted his wife to indulge in all the extravagances of purple and fine linen, and paid, if not cheerfully—for it was not in his nature to be cheerful over anything—at least without open complaint, for social indulgences that ate up a large part of the results of his miraculous economies in station management, and a sedulous penuriousness in everything beyond his wife, his children, and his few favourite horses.

But on this occasion Mrs. Macdougal had outdone herself, and had exceeded all her previous efforts to shine as a generous hostess. Her aim had been to make Boobyalla the centre of attraction for thirty miles round throughout the merry Yuletide, and for nearly two weeks Donald had gone about with an air of lively trepidation, due to an idea that he was being brought precipitately to ruin by all this wasteful and ridiculous excess. When Mrs. Macdougal's guests came upon her lord and master laboriously casting up sums with a stab of carpenter's pencil on bits of waste-paper, or smooth chips, or even on the walls, they understood perfectly that he was satisfying himself, with accurate calculations, that the shameful increase in the household expenses their presence entailed had not dragged him over the jealously guarded margin between income and expenditure.

Mrs. Macdougal's guests did not mind Macdougal in the least, however; the eccentricities of Old Dint-the-Tin were well known to the neighbouring squatters, and from their point of view, as visitors at Boobyalla on pleasure bent, he did not count. They bumped against him in the dark passages of his absurdly disjointed house, and found him on occasions in the drawing-room and the dining-room, but nothing was done or left undone out of consideration for his feelings. If they were content to talk about sheep and cattle, he would converse with them, and he was even capable of enthusiasm on the subject of horses, but evidently had no interests apart from these matters. Nobody outside the family circle had known him to address more than half a dozen words to his wife at one time, and his average remark contained one monosyllable. He behaved a good deal like a stranger towards his own children. Occasionally he went so far as to place a hand on a curly head, with an uncouth show of interest, or to say a few words of kindness; but it was done diffidently, and a close observer might have detected in the man a sensitive shrinking from the idea of bringing his misshapen figure and weird ugliness into contrast with the peculiar beauty of the youngsters. The only human creature about Boobyalla in whose company he seemed to be quite at home was Yarra, the half-caste aboriginal boy, scandalously reputed in the neighbourhood—not without excellent reason, it must be admitted—to be his own son.

We have seen Donald Macdougal, J.P., as he appeared in Melbourne, but that was on one of the few very special occasions when he condescended to 'dress up.' At home on Boobyalla his usual attire comprised a heavy pair of water-tights, old trousers, much the worse for wear more senses than one, hanging in great folds, a dark gray jumper tucked into the trousers, and a battered felt hat, pulled, after long service, into the shape of a limp cone. The only concession to 'company manners' Mack would make was in drawing on a despised black coat over his collarless jumper.