Selected Stories (23 page)

“About a week before that I was down in the bed of the Redclay Creek fishing for ‘tailers’. I’d been getting on all right with the housemaid at the Royal—she used to have plates of pudding and hot pie for me on the big gridiron arrangement over the kitchen range; and after the third tuck-out I thought it was good enough to do a bit of a bear-up in that direction. She mentioned one day, yarning, that she liked a stroll by the creek sometimes in the cool of the evening. I thought she’d be off that day, so I said I’d go for a fish after I’d knocked off. I thought I might get a bite. Anyway, I didn’t catch Lizzie—tell you about that some other time.

“It was Sunday. I’d been fishing for Lizzie about an hour, when I saw a skirt on the bank out of the tail of my eye—and thought I’d got a bite, sure. But I was had. It was Miss Wilson, strolling along the bank in the sunset, all by her pretty self. She was a slight girl, not very tall, with reddish frizzled hair, grey eyes, and small, pretty features. She spoke as if she had more brains than the average, and had been better educated. Jack Drew was the only young man in Redclay she could talk to, or who could talk to a girl like her; and that was the whole trouble in a nutshell. The newspaper office was next to the bank, and I’d seen her hand cups of tea and cocoa over the fence to his office window more than once, and sometimes they yarned for a while.

“She said, ‘Good morning, Mr Mitchell.’

“I said, ‘Good morning, Miss.’

“There’s some girls I can’t talk to like I’d talk to other girls. She asked me if I’d caught any fish, and I said, ‘No, Miss.’ She asked me if it wasn’t me down there fishing with Mr Drew the other evening, and I said, ‘Yes—it was me.’ Then presently she
asked me straight if he was fishing down the creek that afternoon. I guessed they’d been down fishing for each other before. I said, ‘No, I thought he was out of town.’ I knew he was pretty bad at the Royal. I asked her if she’d like to have a try with my line, but she said No, thanks, she must be going; and she went off up the creek. I reckoned Jack Drew had got a bite and landed her. I felt a bit sorry for her, too.

“The next Saturday evening after the rainy Monday at the Doctor’s, I went down to fish for tailers—and Lizzie. I went down under the banks to where there was a big she-oak stump half in the water, going quietly, with an idea of not frightening the fish. I was just unwinding the line from my rod when I noticed the end of another rod sticking out from the other side of the stump; and while I watched it was dropped into the water. Then I heard a murmur, and craned my neck round the back of the stump to see who it was. I saw the back view of Jack Drew and Miss Wilson; he had his arm round her waist, and her head was on his shoulder. She said, ‘I
will
trust you, Jack—I know you’ll give up the drink for my sake. And I’ll help you, and we’ll be so happy!’ or words in that direction. Athunderstorm was coming on. The sky had darkened up with a great blue-black storm-cloud rushing over, and they hadn’t noticed it. I didn’t mind, and the fish bit best in a storm. But just as she said ‘happy’ came a blinding flash and a crash that shook the ridges, and the first drops came peltering down. They jumped up and climbed the bank, while I perched on the she-oak roots over the water to be out of sight as they passed. Half-way to the town I saw them standing in the shelter of an old stone chimney that stood alone. He had his overcoat round her and was sheltering her from the wind…

“Smoke-oh, Joe. The tea’s stewing.”

Mitchell got up, stretched himself, and brought the billy and pint-pots to the head of my camp. The moon had grown misty. The plain horizon had closed in. Acouple of boughs, hanging from the gnarled and blasted timber over the billabong, were the perfect shapes of two men hanging side by side. Mitchell scratched the back of his neck and looked down at the pup curled
like a glob of mud on the sand in the moonlight, and an idea struck him. He got a big old felt hat he had, lifted his pup, nose to tail, fitted it in the hat, shook it down, holding the hat by the brim, and stood the hat near the head of his doss, out of the moonlight. “He might get moonstruck,” said Mitchell, “and I don’t want that pup to be a genius.” The pup seemed perfectly satisfied with this new arrangement.

“Have a smoke,” said Mitchell. “You see,” he added, with a sly grin, “I’ve got to make up the yarn as I go along, and it’s hard work. It seems to begin to remind me of yarns your grandmother or aunt tells of things that happened when she was a girl—but those yarns are true. You won’t have to listen long now; I’m well on into the second volume.

“After the storm I hurried home to the tent—I was batching with a carpenter. I changed my clothes—made a fire in the fire-bucket with shavings and ends of soft wood, boiled the billy, and had a cup of coffee. It was Saturday night. My mate was at the Royal; it was cold and dismal in the tent, and there was nothing to read, so I reckoned I might as well go up to the Royal, too, and put in the time.

“I had to pass the bank on the way. It was the usual weatherboard box with a galvanised-iron top-four rooms and a passage, with a detached kitchen and washhouse at the back. The front room to the right was the office, behind that was the family bedroom; the front room to the left was Miss Wilson’s bedroom, and behind that was the living room. The
Advertiser
office was next door. Jack Drew camped in a skillion room behind his printing-office, and had his meals at the Royal. I noticed the storm had taken a sheet of iron off the skillion and supposed he’d sleep at the Royal that night. Next to the
Advertiser
office was the police-station and the court-house. Next was the Imperial Hotel where the scrub-aristocrats went. There was a vacant allotment on the other side of the bank, and I took a short cut across this to the Royal.

“They’d forgotten to pull down the blind of the dining-room window, and I happened to glance through, and saw she had Jack Drew in there and was giving him a cup of tea. He had a bad
cold, I remember, and I suppose his health had got precious to her, poor girl. As I glanced, she stepped to the window and pulled down the blind, which put me out of face a bit—though, of course, she hadn’t seen me. I was rather surprised at her having Jack in there, till I heard that the banker, the postmaster, the constable, and some others were making a night of it at the Imperial, as they’d been doing pretty often lately—and went on doing till there was a blow-up about it, and the constable got transferred out back. I used to drink my share then. We smoked and played cards and yarned and filled ’em up again at the Royal till after one in the morning. Then I started home.

“I’d finished giving the bank a couple of coats of stone-colour that week, and was cutting in in dark colour round the spouting, doors, and window-frames that Saturday. My head was pretty clear going home, and as I passed the place it struck me that I’d left out the only varnish brush I had. I’d been using it to give the sashes a coat of varnish colour, and remembered that I’d left it on one of the window-sills—the sill of her bedroom window, as it happened. I knew I’d sleep in next day, Sunday, and guessed it would be hot, and I didn’t want the varnish tool to get spoiled; so I reckoned I’d slip in through the side gate, get it, and take it home to camp and put it in oil. The window sash was jammed, I remember, and I hadn’t been able to get it up more than a couple of inches to paint the runs of the sash. The grass grew up close under the window, and I slipped in quietly. I noticed the sash was still up a couple of inches. Just as I grabbed the brush I heard low voices inside—Ruth Wilson’s and Jack Drew’s—in her room.

“The surprise sent about a pint of beer up into my throat in a lump. I tiptoed away out of there. Just as I got clear of the gate I saw the banker being helped home by a couple of cronies.

“I went home to the camp and turned in, but I couldn’t sleep. I lay think—think—thinking, till I thought all the drink out of my head. I’d brought a bottle of ale home to last over Sunday, and I drank that. It only made matters worse. I didn’t know how I felt—I—well, I felt as if I was as good a man as Jack Drew—I—you see, Joe—you might think it soft—but I loved that girl, not as I’ve been gone on other girls, but in the old-fashioned, soft,
honest, hopeless, far-away sort of way; and now, to tell the straight truth, I thought I might have had her. You lose a thing through being too straight or sentimental, or not having enough cheek; and another man comes along with more brass in his blood and less sentimental rot, and takes it up—and the world respects him, and you feel in your heart that you’re a weaker man than he is. Why, part of the time I must have felt like a man does when a better man runs away with his wife. But I’d drunk a lot, and was upset and lonely-feeling that night.

“Oh, but Redclay had a tremendous sensation next day! Jack Drew, of all the men in the world, had been caught in the act of robbing the bank. According to Browne’s account in court and in the newspapers, he returned home that night at about twelve o’clock (which I knew was a lie, for I saw him being helped home nearer two), and immediately retired to rest (on top of the quilt, boots and all, I suppose). Some time before daybreak he was roused by a fancied noise (I suppose it was his head swelling); he rose, turned up a night lamp (he hadn’t lit it, I’ll swear), and went through the dining-room passage and office to investigate (for whisky and water). He saw that the doors and windows were secure, returned to bed, and fell asleep again.

“There is something in a deaf person’s being roused easily. I know the case of a deaf chap who’d start up at a step or movement in the house when no one else could hear or feel it; keen sense of vibration, I reckon. Well, just at daybreak (to shorten the yarn) the banker woke suddenly, he said, and heard a crack like a shot in the house. There was a loose flooring-board in the passage that went off like a pistol-shot sometimes when you trod on it; and I guess Jack Drew trod on it, sneaking out, and he weighed nearly twelve stone. If the truth were known, he probably heard Browne poking round, tried the window, found the sash jammed, and was slipping through the passage to the back door. Browne got his revolver, opened his door suddenly, and caught Drew standing between the girl’s door (which was shut) and the office door, with his coat on his arm and his boots in his hands. Browne covered him with his revolver, swore he’d shoot if he moved, and yelled for help. Drew stood a moment
like a man stunned; then he rushed Browne, and in the struggle the revolver went off, and Drew got hit in the arm. Two of the mounted troopers—who’d been up looking to the horses for an early start somewhere—rushed in then, and took Drew. He had nothing to say. What could he say? He couldn’t say he was a blackguard who’d taken advantage of a poor unprotected girl because she loved him. They found the back door unlocked, by the way, which was put down to the burglar; of course Browne couldn’t explain that he came home too muddled to lock doors after him.

“And the girl? She shrieked and fell when the row started, and they found her like a log on the floor of her room after it was over.

“They found in Jack’s overcoat pocket a parcel containing a cold chisel, small screw-wrench, file, and one or two other things that he’d bought that evening to tinker up the old printing-press. I knew that, because I’d lent him a hand a few nights before, and he told me he’d have to get the tools. They found some scratches round the key-hole and knob of the office door that I’d made myself, scraping old splashes of paint off the brass and hand-plate, so as to make a clean finish. Oh, it taught me the value of circumstantial evidence! If I was a judge, I wouldn’t give a man till the ‘risin’ av the coort’ on it, any more than I would on the bare word of the noblest woman breathing.

“At the preliminary examination Jack Drew said he was guilty. But it seemed that, according to law, he couldn’t be guilty until after he was committed. So he was committed for trial at the next Quarter Sessions. The excitement and gabble were worse than the Dean case, or Federation, and sickened me, for they were all on the wrong track. You lose a lot of life through being behind the scenes. But they cooled down presently to wait for the trial.

“They thought it best to take the girl away from the place where she’d got the shock; so the Doctor took her to his house, where he had an old housekeeper who was as deaf as a post—a first-class recommendation for a housekeeper anywhere. He got a nurse from Sydney to attend on Ruth Wilson, and no one except
he and the nurse were allowed to go near her. She lay like dead, they said, except when she had to be held down raving; brain fever, they said, brought on by the shock of the attempted burglary and pistol shot. Dr Lebinski had another doctor up from Sydney at his own expense, but nothing could save her—and perhaps it was as well. She might have finished her life in a lunatic asylum. They were going to send her to Sydney, to a brain hospital; but she died a week before the Sessions. She was right-headed for an hour, they said, and asking all the time for Jack. The Doctor told her he was all right and was coming—and, waiting and listening for him, she died.

“The case was black enough against Drew now. I knew he wouldn’t have the pluck to tell the truth now, even if he was that sort of a man. I didn’t know what to do, so I spoke to the Doctor straight. I caught him coming out of the Royal, and walked along the road with him a bit. I suppose he thought I was going to show cause why his doors ought to have another coat of varnish.

“ ‘Hallo, Mitchell!’ he said, ‘how’s painting?’

“ ‘Doctor!’ I said, ‘what am I going to do about this business?’

“ ‘What business?’

“ ‘Jack Drew’s.’

“He looked at me sideways—the swift, haunted look. Then he walked on without a word, for half-a-dozen yards; hands behind, and studying the dust. Then he asked, quite quietly:

“ ‘Do you know the truth?’

“ ‘Yes.’

“About a dozen yards this time; then he said:

“ ‘I’ll see him in the morning, and see you afterwards,’ and he shook hands and went on home.

“Next day he came to me where I was doing a job on a step ladder. He leaned his elbows against the steps for a moment, and rubbed his hand over his forehead, as if it ached and he was tired.