“In the midst of life we are in death,” the Măluka read, standing among that drooping crimson splendour and at his feet lay the open grave, preaching silently its great lesson of Life and Death, with, beside it, the still quiet form of the traveller whose last weary journey had ended; around it, bareheaded and all in white, a little band of bush-folk, silent and reverent and awed; above it, that crimson glory, and all around and about it, soft sun-flecked bush, murmuring sounds, flooding sunshine, and deep azure blue distances. Beyond the bush, deep azure blue, within it and throughout it, flooding sunshine and golden ladders of light; and at its sun-flecked heart, under that drooping crimson-starred canopy of soft grey-green, that little company of bush-folk, standing beside that open grave, as Mother Nature, strewing with flowers the last resting place of one of her children, scattered gently falling scarlet blossoms into it and about it. Here and there a dog lay, stretched out in the shade, sniffing in idle curiosity at the blossoms as they fell, well satisfied with what life had to give just then; while at their master’s feet lay the traveller who was to leave such haunting memories behind him: William Neaves, born at Woolongong, with somewhere there a mother going quietly about her work, wondering vaguely perhaps where her laddie was that day.
Poor mother! Yet, when even that knowledge came to her, it comforted her in her sorrow to know that a woman had stood beside that grave mourning for her boy in her name.
Quietly the Măluka read on to the end; and then in the hush that followed the mate stooped, and, with deep lines hardening rigidly, picked up a spade. There was no mistaking his purpose; but as he straightened himself the Dandy’s hand was on the spade and the Măluka was speaking. “Perhaps you’ll be good enough to drive the missus back to the house right away,” he was saying, “I think she has had almost more than she can stand.”
The man looked hesitatingly at him. “If you’ll be good enough,” the Măluka added, “I should not leave here myself till all is completed.”
Unerringly the Măluka had read his man: no hint of his strength failing, but a favour asked, and with it a service for a woman.
The stern set lines about the man’s mouth quivered for a moment, then set again as he sacrificed his wishes to a woman’s need, and relinquishing the spade, turned away; and as we drove down to the house in the chief’s buggy—the buggy that a few minutes before had borne our sick traveller along that last stage of his earthly journey—he said gently, almost apologetically: “I should have reckoned on this knocking you out a bit, missus.” Always others, never self, with the bush-folk.
Then, this service rendered for the man who had done what he could for his comrade, his strong, unflinching heart turned back to its labour of love, and, all else being done, found relief for itself in softening and smoothing the rough outline of the newly piled mound, and as the man toiled, Mother Nature went on with her work, silently and sweetly healing the scar on her bosom, hiding her pain from the world, as she shrouded in starry crimson the burial place of her brave, enduring son—a service to be renewed from day to day until the mosses and grasses grew again.
But there were still other services for the mate to render and as the bush-folk stood aside, none daring to trespass here, a rough wooden railing rose about the grave. Then the man packed his comrade’s swag for the last time, and that done, came to the Măluka, as we stood under the house verandah, and held out two sovereigns in his open palm. The man was yet a stranger to the ways of the Never-Never.
“I’ll have to ask for tick for meself for awhile,” he said “But if that won’t pay for all me mate’s had there’s another where they came from. He was always independent and would never take charity.”
The hard lines about his mouth were very marked just then, and the outstretched hand seemed fiercely defiant but the Măluka reading in it only a man’s proud care for a comrade’s honour, put it gently aside, saying: “We give no charity here; only hospitality to our guests. Surely no man would refuse that.”