CHAPTER XIX The Selwyns return South
November counted away its days, and tramped down the long stairs of Time. At its heels arrived December. Now was Summer at last begun in this far land.
Seven days of every week a fiery sun rolled through a wide, high, empty sky. Seven noons of every week discovered that sun mounting a little higher. All day long the roofs of the iron houses glared across the distance, and the walls answered hot to the touch. But Surprise—and all that lies within its gates—was not dismayed. Evening by evening, when the sun was getting to bed, frowning clouds banked upon the horizon, and Mrs. Boulder, Mrs. Bloxham and Mrs. Niven, gasping in the doorways of their humpies, looked southward and said the rains were coming. And Boulder, Bloxham and Niven put an eye to the roof here, and an eye to the wall there, and thoughtfully picked up hammer and twine. But always in the morning, when the sun rolled out of the East, the least cloud had fled away.
Round went the wheel of affairs at Surprise Valley. The whistle blew shrill at eight o'clock, and the waiting cage emptied the men into the dark ways of their subterranean world. Overhead the women bustled about their doors, and the children, grown a little browner and a little harder, pattered about the burnt places and sent abroad their calls. Mr. Neville, manager, made his tumultuous early round. Mr. Horrington, general agent, made his nine o'clock march to the hotel. The teams groaned in with firewood. The weekly coach rolled in and out again. The same goats examined once more the same thread-bare strips of ground. The same long-tongued curs dropped down in familiar patches of shade.
Early in December Mrs. Selwyn put her foot down finally and to good purpose. She would not be cooped up in this desperate place with a prospect of presently drowning. If Hilton would not come he could stay behind and take the consequences; but she was going by the very next coach. How they would survive the journey in this heat was beyond her powers of comprehension. Landing her here without an idea for getting her away was exactly what Hilton was capable of.
Selwyn bowed to his wife's decision. Here he was, asked to pack up traps for home just as the river was at its lowest and there was some thundering good crocodile shooting to be had. Soft-hearted fool that he was!
As a result there fell about a great packing up of rods and guns, and a strapping of trunks; and a grey December dawn found the Neville homestead up and awake and hard engaged upon the utmost business of departure. A fire kept vigil in the kitchen, conjured there by Mrs. Nankervis who had forsaken bed to speed a favourite guest. There was coffee in the dining-room, and a generous breakfast of bacon and eggs, though Mrs. Selwyn could not touch a thing. Fortunately Selwyn was better able to prepare against the rigours of the day.
Breakfast proved an uneasy meal, disturbed by comings in and goings out, with Selwyn wandering between the window and the table, and Neville strolling round, stick in one hand and coffee cup in the other.
"Well," said Selwyn presently, feeling considerably better now he could boast a decent lining to his stomach, "you people have given us a first-rate time here, and you wouldn't have got rid of me yet had I my way. Gad! I'm a different fellow." He smiled benignly on the assembled company, and presently met Maud's answering smile. "Some day we may have the good luck to find the way here again. In any case we are soon to see you down South I hear?"