第13章 The Hero of Redclay(3)

It was a nice little place, taking it all round.

"I remember a ball at the local town hall, where the scrub aristocrats took one end of the room to dance in and the ordinary scum the other.

It was a saving in music. Some day an Australian writer will come along who'll remind the critics and readers of Dickens, Carlyle, and Thackeray mixed, and he'll do justice to these little customs of ours in the little settled-district towns of Democratic Australia.

This sort of thing came to a head one New Year's Night at Redclay, when there was a `public' ball and peace on earth and good will towards all men -- mostly on account of a railway to Redclay being surveyed.

We were all there. They'd got the Doc. out of his shell to act as M.C.

"One of the aristocrats was the daughter of the local storekeeper; she belonged to the lawn-tennis clique, and they WERE select.

For some reason or other -- because she looked upon Miss Wilson as a slavey, or on account of a fancied slight, or the heat working on ignorance, or on account of something that comes over girls and women that no son of sin can account for -- this Miss Tea-'n'-sugar tossed her head and refused Miss Wilson's hand in the first set and so broke the ladies' chain and the dance. Then there was a to-do.

The Doctor held up his hand to stop the music, and said, very quietly, that he must call upon Miss So-and-so to apologise to Miss Wilson -- or resign the chair. After a lot of fuss the girl did apologise in a snappy way that was another insult. Jack Drew gave Miss Wilson his arm and marched her off without a word -- I saw she was almost crying.

Some one said, `Oh, let's go on with the dance.' The Doctor flashed round on them, but they were too paltry for him, so he turned on his heel and went out without a word.

But I was beneath them again in social standing, so there was nothing to prevent me from making a few well-chosen remarks on things in general -- which I did; and broke up that ball, and broke some heads afterwards, and got myself a good deal of hatred and respect, and two sweethearts; and lost all the jobs I was likely to get, except at the bank, the Doctor's, and the Royal.

"One day it was raining -- general rain for a week. Rain, rain, rain, over ridge and scrub and galvanised iron and into the dismal creeks.

I'd done all my inside work, except a bit under the Doctor's verandah, where he'd been having some patching and altering done round the glass doors of his surgery, where he consulted his patients.

I didn't want to lose time. It was a Monday and no day for the Royal, and there was no dust, so it was a good day for varnishing.

I took a pot and brush and went along to give the Doctor's doors a coat of varnish. The Doctor and Drew were inside with a fire, drinking whisky and smoking, but I didn't know that when I started work.

The rain roared on the iron roof like the sea. All of a sudden it held up for a minute, and I heard their voices. The doctor had been shouting on account of the rain, and forgot to lower his voice.

`Look here, Jack Drew,' he said, `there are only two things for you to do if you have any regard for that girl; one is to stop this' (the liquor I suppose he meant) `and pull yourself together; and I don't think you'll do that -- I know men. The other is to throw up the `Advertiser' -- it's doing you no good -- and clear out.'

`I won't do that,' says Drew. `Then shoot yourself,' said the Doctor.

`(There's another flask in the cupboard). You know what this hole is like. . . . She's a good true girl -- a girl as God made her.

I knew her father and mother, and I tell you, Jack, I'd sooner see her dead than. . . .' The roof roared again. I felt a bit delicate about the business and didn't like to disturb them, so I knocked off for the day.

"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.