CHAPTER III
MERRI CREEK
It was late on the afternoon of the following day when Robin Hurst changed from the main line and entered the narrow-gauge train which marked the final stage of her journey home. The little line was a new one, opening up a great stretch of bush country that had hitherto been almost unknown, save for scattered farms and sawmills, where plucky settlers earned a hard enough living among the giant hills. Robin had not travelled on it before: it was still under construction when she had left home after the May holidays. She remembered her drive to the station then, over twelve miles of bad road, in torrents of rain. She and her mother, half-smothered in heavy black oilskins, had tried to be merry as they urged the slow old horse up and down the hills: she had a sudden very vivid memory of her mother’s face, still determinedly cheerful, when the train that they had only just managed to catch puffed out of the station. Mrs. Hurst had stood on the platform, tall and erect, the water dripping from her hat and coat, and forming a widening pool round her: and though her smile had been gay, Robin had never forgotten the loneliness of her eyes.
Now she settled herself in the corner of an empty carriage with an unwonted sense of relief. She did not for a moment pretend to herself that Uncle Donald’s death caused her the slightest grief. He had been her father’s brother, very much older than the big, cheery red-haired father whose death, three years before, had left his wife and child alone and almost penniless. Until then, their home had been in the Wimmera district, and they had scarcely known Donald Hurst: but when everything was over, and he realized the helplessness of their position, he had offered them a home.
They had taken it gratefully enough, and through the years that followed they had tried to please the hard old man: but it had never been a happy home. Donald Hurst’s wife had died many years before, and there had been no children; he was alone in the world, and he had asked nothing better than to be alone. He lived in a house much too big for him, with an old housekeeper as hard and dour as himself, and made the most of his small hill-farm; it would not have been enough had he not possessed a small private income as well. At first Mrs. Hurst had tried to teach Robin herself, for there was no school within five miles. Then, realizing that the girl was beyond her powers of teaching, she had come to an arrangement with her brother-in-law, by which she took the place of the housekeeper, and with the money thus saved he paid Robin’s expenses at a school near Melbourne.
It was a very profitable arrangement for Donald Hurst. The housekeeper had been wasteful and lazy; had demanded high wages and had cooked abominably. Now he saved her wages and “keep,” as well as that of Robin; and if he groaned heavily over the school-bills, he knew well that he was a gainer by the transaction. Mrs. Hurst made his house run on oiled wheels: his meals were better, his monthly store-accounts less. Most of the house remained shut up, but the rooms they occupied shone with a cleanliness they had not known for years. The old man chuckled in the depths of his calculating old soul.
It pleased him, too, to be without Robin. He hated all children, and Robin, with her red hair and her overflowing high spirits, reminded him sharply of the younger brother he had never liked, and of whom he had always been jealous. She was constantly getting into trouble; it seemed almost impossible for a day to pass without a brush between her uncle and herself. Robin had never known anything but happiness. It puzzled her, and brought out all that was worst in her nature, to be in a house where there was no home-like atmosphere—where grumbling and fault-finding were perpetual. She grew reckless and daring; dodging her uncle’s wrath when she could, and bearing it with a careless shrug when to dodge was impossible. Even though losing Robin condemned her mother to ceaseless loneliness she was glad to see the child go.
Holidays had been rather more bearable, although the long Christmas vacations had strained endurance more than once to breaking-point. Robin thought of them now with a surge of dull anger against her uncle that suddenly horrified her, seeing that he was dead, and could trouble her no more. How she and her mother had longed for a tiny place just for themselves during those precious weeks! Even a tent in the bush would have been Paradise, compared to the gloomy house where at any time the loud, angry voice might break in upon them with complaints and stupid grumbling. And now it could never happen any more. “I don’t care if it’s wicked,” Robin muttered to herself. “He was a bad old man, and I’m glad he’s dead!”
The train crawled slowly out of the junction and wound its way between the hills she knew. Robin looked out eagerly. Below her wound the road over which she had often travelled behind slow old Roany: she could see that it had been made freshly, most likely to assist in the construction of the railway. Its smooth, well-rolled surface struck an odd note, remembering what seas of mud they had often ploughed through on their journeys to the township. Slow and toilsome as those drives had been, she looked back to them as the brightest parts of her holidays, since then they had known that for hours they would be free from Uncle Donald’s strident voice.
It was early September now. The winter had been unusually mild and dry, and the hills were gay with wattle-blossom, which shone in dense masses of gold along the line of the creek in the valley below. Already the willows were budding: the sap, racing through their limbs, turned them to a coppery glow against the sunset. “Early Nancy” starred the grass in the cultivated fields with its myriad flowers: Robin almost fancied she could smell their faint, spicy fragrance. She longed to lie in the deep, cool grass, forgetting the long months of Melbourne dust and the school that she had hated. Ayrshire cows, knee-deep in marshy pools, glanced up lazily as the train puffed by, too contented to allow themselves to be disturbed: once a huge bull stared defiantly, his great head thrust forward, the sunlight rippling on his beautiful, dappled brown and white coat. Robin drew a long breath of utter happiness. Soon she would be home: and there would be mother waiting, and before them would stretch the long, quiet evening, with no harsh voice to mar its peace. Surely it was not wicked to be glad!
Gradually, as they left the township farther and farther behind, the farms became fewer and more isolated, giving place to long stretches of rough hill-country. Here there was little dairying land, and scarcely any cultivation; the holdings were only partially cleared, ring-barked timber standing out, gaunt and grey, from the surrounding undergrowth. There was evidence of the ceaseless war against bracken fern and rabbits: paddocks littered with dry, cut ferns showed a fresh crop of green fronds starting vigorously to replace them, and among them were innumerable rabbit-burrows. Already the evening was tempting their inhabitants to appear: as the train came round curves, a score of grey-brown bodies went scurrying over the hillside, and a score of white tails gleamed for an instant as their owners dived into the safety of the underworld.