By Blow and Kiss. Boyd Cable
twenty to thirty thousand sheep, the ownership of Coolongolong station, and – if she had only known it – incidentally, of Ess’s own life.
The tank was almost dry. Only a tiny pool of foul, thick, muddy water remained in the middle of a stretch of clay that ran from dry, cracking cakes round the outside edge to slimy, greasy, sticky mud near the centre. For days now a gang of men had done little else but toil in the gluey mess, black and fouled to the waists and the armpits with hauling out the sheep that were too weak to extricate themselves. A small army of men worked at top pressure cutting down the trees – all the men of the station and extra hands hired in the township. They lived in calico tents that shone white in the glare of the sun, and at nights their fires flickered and danced in the darkness. All day long the ring of the axes and the wail of the sheep went on under the pitiless sun; the dust lifted lazily, and eddied thick under the feet of everything that moved; the mirage danced and quivered out on the plains.
Ess was fascinated with it all – fascinated, and day by day growing more fearful. She was coming to understand better what lay behind all this activity of man and placid indifference of Nature. She could appreciate better what every twenty-four hours meant as she saw the increasing numbers of the sheep that had to be dragged from the mud of the tank, and noted the thinning of the remaining trees, and she began to fear this cruel, relentless sun, and scorching air, and hot, dry barren earth.
The boss was whirling past her tent when he saw her, and pulled his horses down to a fretful walk.
“You’re looking tired, my dear,” he called. “Don’t let the sun get you down, you know. Come over to the station any time. We’re making a move to-morrow, back to the hills. It’s the last ditch you know, but we’ll win through at that, we’ll hope. We’re not beaten yet – not beaten yet,” and he slacked his reins and disappeared in a smother of dust.
Ess sent a scribbled note to Steve that night, asking him to come over, as they would be moving off next day.
Steve had dropped in on their camp-fire circle on several of the past nights. Ess made welcome any of the men who cared to come and sit and chat with her and her uncle, for the old boss’s words stuck in her mind. “Cheer the boys up – it all helps” he had said, so she was doing the little she could to help.
Most of the men were shy and quiet, but she set herself to draw them out, and led them to talk about the sheep, and the weather, and their work – things they knew well, and were interested in, and at home with, and could make talk on.
And Steve came over alone, or with the others, and every time he came she was a little the more glad of his coming.
His wit was so keen and his tongue was so sharp that she enjoyed talking with him, and the play and fencing of words and ideas brightened and livened her, she told herself.
Usually, she had to admit ruefully, she had the worst of the bouts of fence, and only the night before she had again suffered defeat.
They had been arguing over the sentiment of the verses to the refrain of “He travels the fastest who travels alone,” she attacking and he defending it.
“It’s a most abominably selfish creed,” she cried.
“The writer wasn’t concerning himself with the ethics of it – he was merely stating the fact,” he retorted.
“I don’t admit it is a fact,” she said.
“Few women will admit the truth of what they don’t like,” he said, and “That is mere instinct,” she answered, “because mostly what they like is good, and the truth is good surely.”
“Sometimes truth is only a point of view,” he said.
“Nonsense – truth is truth, as right is right.”
“Then how do you account for it that I claim this writer’s words as the truth, and you claim them to be untruths? The world judging it might be divided as we are. How can you say which is the truth?”
She could not answer this, so swiftly struck at a side issue. “Badness is worse than untruth, and if the principle is bad, why glorify it in verse?”
“But I say it is true; if you admit the truth, to attack the badness, you’re saying the truth is bad.”
“The truth may be a very bad truth,” she cried triumphantly. “It often is. You are a truth, but you may be very bad. You’ll notice I spare you, and don’t say you are.”
“Thanks. But my badness again is a point of view. Here, as I am, if I marry three wives, I’m very bad; if I’m a Mormon or a Turk, I may still be a good one.”
“We’re leaving the subject,” she said; “I began by saying it was an abominable sentiment. It is.”
“Reiteration isn’t argument,” he returned coolly.
“What authority has he for a statement of the sort?”
“Some writings are on conviction, not authority. This may be one; or it may be from experience.”
“Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne, He travels the fastest, et cetera,” she quoted. “How can that be experience? He hasn’t been to them.”
“Not the physical ones, if there are such, but mental ones possibly. Have you never touched a Gehenna or a Throne?”
“No, I can’t say I have.”
“You will some day,” he said; “every woman does, and unfortunately she usually drags a man or men along with her.”
“But if she drags him there, he travels the faster for it. Therefore the writer is wrong.”
“Cleverly turned,” he admitted. “But I fancy the Throne the writer speaks of is Success. It appears so from the context.”
“You said the writer probably spoke from experience. You admit that he has that, and has travelled fast and far to Success?”
“Decidedly so,” he agreed.
“Then I have you,” she cried, clapping her hands in triumph. “You know that he is married?”
“Yes,” said Steve, grinning at her. “But he travelled his fastest and farthest before he married. You must admit that.”
“I don’t. I don’t know enough of his work or current opinions of it.”
“You know that he made his name and his way to Success before he married?”
“I know you agree with him because it’s an excuse for your own possible wickedness. And I hope you’ll always be forced to travel alone and prove the truth or untruth of your theory.”
Steve dropped the bantering tone he had used throughout, and leaned forward to look hard at her.
“That’s hitting below the belt,” he said, and rose abruptly. “And you’ve missed your best argument. To travel fast and far is not everything; it may be a very little thing compared to a corner in a dark humpy; and the ‘warm hearthstone’ be worth far more than all the ‘high hopes.’”
Then he said good night smoothly, but abruptly, and went. And Ess that night was not a little thoughtful – and sorry.
She was afraid that he might stay away this last night, and because all the time in camp had been so happy for her, she had no wish for him to take away unhappy thoughts of it.
So she scribbled her note, “Come over to-night. Sorry I was rude last night, but remember our compact. E.L.,” and folded it and wrote his name boldly on the back, and gave it to her uncle to read and to carry to Steve. “I was a little unkind last night, uncle,” she said, “and I don’t want to be that.”
When he came over this last night, she smiled at him and asked “Have I apologised enough for my rudeness?” and “The compact is more to me than the rudeness,” he told her.
“Very well,” she said gaily. “Now I’ve an endless string of questions to ask. Uncle here never understands that I don’t know as much about sheep and the rest of it as he does, and he gives the most meagre information.