Norah of Billabong

by Mary Grant Bruce

“A good riddance!” uttered Brownie, turning from the window. “Wonder if he favoured his pa or his ma?” Ruminating on this important point, she returned to cleaner matters.

Harvey, however, did not go far.

It was very hot, and his swag, although it contained little enough, was heavy upon his weedy shoulders. Even the bundle of food bothered him. It took up his free hand, and made it hard to keep away the flies that buzzed persistently about his face and crawled into the corners of his eyes in maddening fashion. He tried balancing it upon his stick across his shoulders, but the pressure of the stick hurt him, and the parcel kept slipping about, and nearly fell more than once. He abused it with peevish anger, including the heat, and Mr. Linton and Billabong generally in his condemnation. Finally, he stopped and kicked the dust reflectively.

“Blessed if I start in this darned heat!” he uttered.

He looked about him. To return to the house was clearly unsafe. He scowled, remembering Brownie’s determined face, and her evident resolve to rid Billabong of his presence. Ahead, there was very little cover for a few miles, and Harvey was rapidly sure that he did not intend to walk so far in the heat. Clumps of box trees were scattered about, but a man sheltering in their shade was easily visible from the house, and he had no mind to be visible. Where could a lone wayfarer dispose of his unobtrusive presence?

Looking back, a little to the west of the stables, a thick clump of low-growing trees caught his eye—lemon gums, planted by Mr. Linton as shade in a little paddock where a few horses could be turned out when it was necessary to keep them close at hand. They grew in a corner, hedged in on two sides by a close-growing barrier of hawthorn. It was a tempting place, cool and shady. A man might lie there unseen of any one, although it was but a few chains’ distance from the stables.

Harvey glanced round. No one was in sight. Behind him the homestead slumbered peacefully, its red roofs peeping from the mass of orchard green. That abominable dog had retreated, much to his relief. Puck always caused him to feel uneasy sensations in the calves of his legs when he rent the air behind him with yelps. It occurred vividly to Harvey that it would have been gratifying to have been able to kill Puck before he went away. Then he left the track, and hurried across the long grass to the little clump of trees.

He reached it unseen, and flung himself on the grass, dropping his swag and bundle thankfully, and tucking himself as far back into the shade of the hedge as the hawthorn spikes would allow. It was the only green thing; the lemon gums looked dry and parched, and the long grass of the little paddock was quite hard and yellow. Still, it was a good nook for a lazy man; the trees hid him from the stables and the house, and the hedge from any other point of view. He stretched out luxuriously—and then jumped up with a nervous start, as an old kerosene tin, nearly hidden under the hedge, rattled and banged as his boot caught it. Harvey told the kerosene tin just what he thought of it, flinging it further away in childish anger. Then he lay down again, and went to sleep, his mean little face half hidden under his battered hat.

When he awoke it was long past the usual dinner hour, and he was hungry. He unpacked Brownie’s parcel, abusing her in a muttered snarl as he did so, and fell to work eagerly on the provisions. Then he dived into the recesses of his swag, and produced a whisky bottle which he had already visited several times during the morning, and washed the meal down with the raw spirit. He tried to sleep again, but sleep would not come, so he propped himself against the trunk of a lemon gum and smoked cigarettes during the hot afternoon, occasionally seeking solace from the bottle. After a time the latter gave out, which annoyed him greatly; he flung it into the hedge, and continued to smoke.

As long as the whisky lasted Harvey had no complaint to make about his day, which was, indeed, a picnic of the kind his soul most desired. He considered that a man not compelled to work, and supplied with food, whisky and cigarettes, has very little more to ask in this troublesome world. It was regrettable that, even to obtain these, it had been necessary to perform something even faintly resembling work. Still, work did not exist on his present horizon; his cheque would last a little while, and beyond that he did not trouble to think—at least, while the whisky yet remained to him.