An Outback Marriage - Banjo Paterson (epub e reader txt) 📗

of his latest accomplishment, in which he imitated the yowl of a trodden-on cat much better than the cat could have done it himself.

The air was heavy with scent. All round the great quadrangle of the house acacia trees were in bloom, and the bees were working busily among the mignonette and roses in front of the office door.

Hugh Gordon was a lithe, wiry young Australian with intensely sunburnt face and hands, and a drooping black moustache; a man with a healthy, breezy outdoor appearance, but the face of an artist, a dreamer, and a thinker, rather than that of a practical man. His brother Charlie and he, though very much alike in face, were quite different types of manhood. Charlie, from his earliest schooldays, had never read a book except under compulsion, had never stayed indoors when he could possibly get out, had never obeyed an unwelcome order when by force or fraud he could avoid doing so, and had never written a letter in his life when a telegram would do. He took the world as it came, having no particular amount of imagination, and never worried himself. Hugh, on the other hand, was inclined to meet trouble halfway, and to make troubles where none existed, which is the worst misfortune that a man can be afflicted with.

Hugh walked to the door and gazed out over the garden and homestead, down the long stretch of green paddocks where fat cattle were standing under the trees, too well fed to bother themselves with looking for grass. He looked beyond all this to the long drab-coloured stretch of road that led to Kiley’s, watching for the mailboy’s arrival. The mail was late, for the melting snow had flooded the mountain creeks, and Hugh knew it was quite likely that little Patsy Donohoe, the mailboy, had been blocked at Donohoe’s Hotel for two days, unable to cross Kiley’s River. This had happened often, and on various occasions when Patsy had crossed, he, pony and all, had been swept down quite a quarter of a mile in the ice-cold water before they could reach land. But that was an ordinary matter in the spring, and it was a point of honour with Patsy and all his breed not to let the elements beat them in carrying out the mail contract, which they tendered for every year, and in which no outsider would have dared to compete.

At last Hugh’s vigil was rewarded by the appearance of a small and wild-looking boy, mounted on a large and wild-looking horse. The boy was about twelve years of age, and had just ridden a half-broken horse a forty-mile journey⁠—for of such is the youth of Australia. Patsy was wet and dirty, and the big leather mailbag that he handed over had evidently been under water.

“We had to swim, Mr. Hugh,” the boy said triumphantly, “and this great, clumsy cow” (the child referred to his horse), “he reared over on me in the water, twyst, but I stuck to him. My oath!”

Hugh laughed. “I expect Kiley’s River will get you yet, Patsy,” he said. “Go in now to the kitchen and get dry by the fire. I’ll lend you a horse to get back on tomorrow. You can camp here till then, there’s no hurry back.”

The boy let his horse go loose, dismissing it with a parting whack on the rump with the bridle, and swaggered inside, carrying his saddle, to show his wet clothes and recount his deeds to the admiring cook. Patsy was not one to hide his light under a bushel.

Hugh carried the bag into the office, and shook out the letters and papers on the table. Everything was permeated with a smell of wet leather, and some of the newspapers were rather pulpy. After sending out everybody else’s mail he turned to examine his own. Out of the mass of letters, agents’ circulars, notices of sheep for sale, catalogues of city firms, and circulars from pastoral societies, he picked a letter addressed to himself in the scrawling fist of William Grant. He opened it, expecting to find in it the usual Commination Service on things in general, but as he read on, a vivid surprise spread over his face. Leaving the other letters and papers unopened, he walked to the door and looked out into the courtyard, where Stuffer, the youngest of his nephews, who was too small to be allowed to join in the field sports of the others, was playing at being a railway train. He had travelled in a train once, and now passed Hugh’s door under easy steam, working his arms and legs like piston-rods, and giving piercing imitations of a steam-whistle at intervals.

“Stuffer,” said Hugh, “do you know where your grandmother is?”

“No” said the Stuffer laconically. “I don’t Choo, choo, choo, Whee-aw!”

“Well, look here,” said Hugh, “you just railway-train yourself round the house till you find her, and let me know where she is. I want to see her. Off you go now.”

The Stuffer steamed himself out with the action of an engine drawing a long train of cars, and disappeared round the corner of the house.

Before long he was back, drew himself up alongside an imaginary platform, intimated that his grandmother was in the verandah, and then proceeded to let the steam hiss out of his safety-valve.

Hugh walked across the quadrangle, under the acacia tree, heavy with blossoms, in which a myriad bees were droning at their work, and through the house on to the front verandah, which looked over the wide sweep of river-flat. Here he found his mother and Miss Harriott, the governess, peeling apples for dumplings⁠—great rosy-checked, solid-fleshed apples, that the hill-country turns out in perfection. The old lady was slight in figure, with a refined face, and a carriage erect in spite of her years. Miss Harriott was of a languid Spanish type, with black eyes and strongly-marked eyebrows. She had a petite, but well-rounded figure, with curiously small hands and feet. Though only