Back to Billabong Part 18

"Asleep," said Norah promptly. "Oh, I don't know--I don't believe Brownie's asleep."

"I know she's not," Wally said. He and the old nurse-housekeeper of Billabong were sworn allies; though no one could ever quite come up to Jim and Norah in Brownie's heart, Wally had been a close third from the day, long years back, that he had first come to the station, a lonely, dark-eyed little Queenslander. "She's made the girls scrub and polish until there's nothing left for them to rub, and she's harried Hogg and Lee Wing until there isn't a leaf looking crooked in all the garden, and she and Murty have planned all about meeting you for the hundred and first time."

"And she's planning to make pikelets for you!" put in Norah.

"Bless her. I wouldn't wonder. She's planning the very wildest cooking, of course--do you remember what the table used to be the night we came home from school? And now she's gone round all the rooms to make sure she couldn't spend another sixpence on them, and she's sitting by her window trying to see us all on the Nauru. 'Specially you, old Nor."

"'Tis the gift of second sight you have," said Jim admiringly. "A few hundred years ago you'd have got yourself ducked as a witch or something."

"Oh, Wally and Brownie were always twin souls; no wonder each knows what the other is thinking of," Norah said, laughing. "It all sounds exactly true, at any rate. Boys, what a pity you can't land in uniform--wouldn't they all love to see you!"

"Can't do it," Jim said. "Too long since we were shot out of the army; any enterprising provost-marshal could make himself obnoxious about it."

"I know--but I'm sorry," answered Norah. "Brownie won't be satisfied unless she sees you in all your war paint."

"We'll put it on some night for dinner," Jim promised. He peered suddenly into the darkness. "There's a moving light--it's the pilot steamer coming out for us."

They watched the light pa.s.s slowly from the dim region that meant the Heads, until, as the pilot boat swung out through the Rip to where the Nauru lay, her other lights grew clear, and presently her whole outline loomed indistinctly, suddenly close to them. She lay to across a little heaving strip of sea, and presently the pilot was being pulled across to them by a couple of men and was coming nimbly up the Nauru's ladder, hand over hand. He nodded cheerily at his welcome--a fusillade of greetings from every "digger" who could find a place at the railings, and a larger number who could not, but contented themselves with shouting sweet nothings from behind their comrades. A lean youngster near Jim Linton looked down enviously at the retreating boat.

"If I could only slide down into her, an' nick off to the old Alvina over there, I'd be home before breakfast," he said. "Me people live at Queenscliff--don't it seem a fair cow to have to go past 'em, right up to Melbourne?"

The pilot's head appeared above on the bridge, beside the captain's, and presently the Nauru gathered way, and, slowly turning, forged through the tossing waters of the Rip. Before her the twin lights of the Heads opened out; soon she was gliding between them, and under the silent guns of the Queenscliff forts, and past the twinkling house lights of the little seaside town. There were long coo-ees from the diggers, with shrill, piercing whistles of greeting for Victoria; from ash.o.r.e came faint answering echoes. But the four people from Billabong stood silently, glad of each other's nearness, but with no words, and in David Linton's heart and Norah's was a great surge of thankfulness that, out of many perils, they were bringing their boys safely home.

The Nauru turned across Port Phillip Bay, and presently they felt the engines cease, and there came the rattle of the chain as the anchor shot into the sea.

"As the captain thought," said Jim. "He fancied they'd anchor us off Portsea for the night and bring us up to Port Melbourne in the morning, after we'd been inspected. Wouldn't it be the limit if some one developed measles now, and they quarantined us!"

"You deserve quarantining, if ever anyone did," said Norah, indignantly.

"Why do you have such horrible ideas?"

"I don't know--they just seem to waft themselves to me," said Jim modestly. "Anyhow, the quarantine station is a jolly little place for a holiday, and the sea view is delightful." He broke off, laughing, and suddenly flung his arm round her shoulders in the dusk of the deck. "I think I'm just about insane at getting home," he said. "Don't mind me, old kiddie--and you'd better go to bed, or you'll be a ghost in the morning."

They weighed anchor after breakfast, following a perfunctory medical inspection--so perfunctory that one youth who, having been a medical student, and knowing well that he had a finely-developed feverish cold, with a high temperature, and not wishing to embarra.s.s his fellow-pa.s.sengers, placed in his mouth the wrong end of the clinical thermometer handed him by the visiting nurse. He sucked this gravely for the prescribed time, reversing it just as she reappeared; and, being marked normal and given a clean bill of health, returned to his berth to shiver and perspire between huge doses of quinine. More than one such hero evaded the searching eye of regulations; until finally the Nauru, free to land her pa.s.sengers, steamed slowly up the Bay.

One by one the old, familiar landmarks opened out--Mornington, Frankston, Mordialloc, while Melbourne itself lay hidden in a mist cloud ahead. Then, as the sun grew stronger the mist lifted, and domes and spires pierced the dun sky, towering above the jumbled ma.s.s of the grey city. They drew closer to Port Melbourne, and lo! St. Kilda and all the foresh.o.r.e were gay with flags, and all the ships in the harbour were dressed to welcome them; and beyond the pier were long lines of motors, each beflagged, waiting for the fighting men whom the Nauru was bringing home.

"Us!" said a boy. "Why, it's us! Flags an' motors--an' a blessed band playin' on the pier! Wot on earth are they fussin' over us for? Ain't it enough to get home?"

The band of the Nauru was playing Home, Sweet Home, very low and tenderly, and there were lumps in many throats, and many a pipe went out unheeded. Slowly the great ship drew in to the pier, where officers in uniform waited, and messengers of welcome from the Government. Beyond the barriers that held the general public back from the pier was a black ma.s.s of people; cheer upon cheer rose, to be wafted back from the transport, where the "diggers" lined every inch of the port side, clinging like monkeys to yards and rigging. Then the Nauru came to rest at last, and the gangways rattled down, and the march off began, to the quick lilt of the band playing "Oh, it's a Lovely War." The men took up the words, singing as they marched back to Victoria--coming back, as they had gone, with a joke on their lips. So the waiting motors received them, and rolled them off in triumphal procession to Melbourne, between the cheering crowds.

From the top deck the Lintons, with the Rainhams, watched the men go--disembarkation was for the troops first, and not till all had gone could the unattached officers leave the ship. The captain came to them, at last a normal and friendly captain--no more the official master of a troopship, in which capacity, as he ruefully said, he could make no friends, and could scarcely regard his ship as his own, provided he brought her safely from port to port. He cast a disgusted glance along the stained and littered decks.

"This is her last voyage as a trooper, and I'm not sorry," he said.

"After this she'll lie up for three months to be refitted; and then I'll command a ship again and not a barracks. You wouldn't think now, to see her on this voyage, that the time was when I had to know the reason why if there was so much as a stain the size of a sixpence on the deck. Oh yes, it's been all part of the job, and I'm proud of all the old ship has done, and the thousands of men she's carried; and we've had enough narrow squeaks, from mines and submarines, to fill a book. But I'm beginning to hanker mightily to see her clean!"

The Lintons laughed unfeelingly. A little mild grumbling might well be permitted to a man with his record; few merchant captains had done finer service in the war, and the decoration on his breast testified to his cool handling of his ship in the "narrow squeaks" he spoke of lightly.

"Oh yes. I never get any sympathy," said the captain, laughing himself.

"And yet I'll wager Miss Linton was 'house-proud' in that 'Home for Tired People' of hers, and she ought to sympathize with a tidy man. You should have seen my wife's face when she came aboard once at Liverpool, and saw the ship; and she's never had the same respect for me since!

There--the last man is off the ship, and the gangways are clear; nothing to keep all you homesick people now." He said good-bye, and ran up the steps to his cabin under the bridge.

It was a queer home-coming at first, to a vast pier, empty save for a few officials and policemen--for no outsiders were allowed within the barriers. But once clear of customs officials and other formalities they packed themselves into cabs, and in a few moments were outside the railed-off s.p.a.ce, turning into a road lined on either side with people--all peering into the long procession of cabs, in the hope of finding their own returning dear ones. It was but a few moments before a posse of uncles, aunts and cousins swooped down upon the Lintons, whose cab prudently turned down a side street to let the wave of welcome expend itself. In the side street, too, were motors belonging to the aunts and uncles; and presently the new arrivals were distributed among them, and were being rushed up to Melbourne, along roads still crowded by the people who had flocked to welcome the "diggers" home. The Rainhams found themselves adopted by this new and cheery band of people--at least half of whose names they never learned; not that this seemed to matter in the least. It was something new to them, and very un-English; but there was no doubt that it made landing in a new country a very different thing from their half-fearful antic.i.p.ations.

"And you really came out all alone--not knowing anyone!" said an aunt.

"Aren't you English people plucky! And I believe that most of you think we're all black fellows--or did until our diggers went home, and proved unexpectedly white!"

"I don't think we're quite so bad as that!" Bob said, laughing. "But certainly we never expected quite so kind a welcome."

"Oh, we're all immensely interested in people who take the trouble to come across the world to see us," said Mrs. Geoffrey Linton. "That is, if they don't put on 'side'; we don't take kindly to being patronized.

And you have no idea how many new chums do patronize us. Did you know, by the way, that you're new chums now?"

"It has been carefully drilled into us on the ship," Bob said gravely.

"I think we know pretty well all we have to face--the snakes that creep into new chums' boots and sleep under their pillows, the goannas that bite our toes if we aren't watchful, and the mosquitoes that sit on the trees and bark!"

"Also the tarantulas that drop from everywhere, especially into food,"

added Tommy, dimpling. "And the bush fires every Sunday morning, and the blacks that rush down--what is it? Oh yes, the Block, casting boomerangs about! There is much spare time on a troopship, Mrs. Linton, and all of it was employed by the subalterns in telling us what we might expect!"

"I can quite imagine it," Mrs. Geoffrey laughed. "Oh well, Billabong will be a good breaking-in. Norah tells me you are going up there at once?"

"Well, not quite at once," Bob said. "We think it is only fair to let them get home without enc.u.mbrances, and as we have to present other letters of introduction in Melbourne, we'll stay here for a few days, and then follow them."

"Then you must come out to us," said Mrs. Geoffrey firmly. "No use to ask my brother-in-law, of course; he has just one idea, and that is to stay at Scott's, get his luggage through the customs, see his bankers as quickly as possible, and then get back to his beloved Billabong. If we get them out to dinner to-night, it's as much as we can hope for. But you two must come to us--we can run you here and there in the car to see the people you want." She put aside their protests, laughing. "Why, you don't know how much we like capturing bran-new English people--and think what you have done for our boys all these four years! From what they tell us, if anyone wants to go anywhere or do anything he likes in England, all he has to do is to wear a digger's slouched hat!"

They stopped in Collins Street, and in a moment the new-comers, slightly bewildered, found themselves in a tea-room; a new thing in tea-rooms to Tommy and Bob, since it was a vision of russet and gold--brown wood, ma.s.ses of golden wattle and daffodils, and of bronze gum leaves; and even the waitresses flitted about in russet-brown dresses. David Linton hung back at the doorway.

"It isn't a party, Winifred?"

"My dear David, only a few people who want to welcome you back. Really, you're just as bad as ever!" said his sister-in-law, half vexed. "The children's school friends, too--Jim and Wally's mates. You can't expect us to get you all back, after so long--and with all those honours, too!--and not give people a chance of shaking hands with you." At which point Norah said, gently, but firmly, "Dad, you mustn't be naughty," and led him within.

Some one grasped his hand. "Well, Linton, old chap!" And he found himself greeting the head of a big "stock and station" firm. Some one else clapped him on the shoulder, and he turned to meet his banker; behind them towered half a dozen old squatter friends, with fellow clubmen, all trying at once to get hold of his hand. David Linton's const.i.tutional shyness melted in the heartiness of their greeting.

Beyond them Norah seemed to be the centre of a ma.s.s of girls, one of whom presently detached herself, and came to him. He said in amazement, "Why, it's Jean Yorke--and grown up!" and actually kissed her, to the great delight of Jean, who had been an old mate of Norah's. As for Jim and Wally, they were scarcely to be seen, save for their heads, in a cl.u.s.ter of lads, who were pounding and smiting them wherever s.p.a.ce permitted. Altogether, it was a confused and cheerful gathering, and, much to the embarra.s.sment of the russet-brown waitresses, the last thing anybody thought of was tea.

Still, when the buzz of greetings had subsided, and at length "morning tea"--that time-honoured inst.i.tution of Australia--had a chance to appear, it was of a nature to make the new arrivals gasp. The last four years in England had fairly broken people in to plain living; dainties and luxuries had disappeared so completely from the table that every one had ceased to think about them. Therefore, the Linton party blinked in amazement at the details of what to Melbourne was a very ordinary tea, and, forgetting its manners, broke into open comment.

"Cakes!" said Wally faintly. "Jean, you might catch me if I swoon."

"What's wrong with the cakes?" said Jean Yorke, bewildered.

"Nothing--except that they are cakes! Jim!"--he caught at his chum's sleeve--"that substance in enormous layers in that enormous slice is called cream. Real cream. When did you see cream last, my son?"

"I'm hanged if I know," Jim answered, grinning. "About four years ago, I suppose. I'd forgotten it existed. And the cakes look as if they didn't fall to pieces if you touched 'em."

"What, do the English cakes do that?" asked a pained aunt.

"Rather--when there are any. It's something they take out of the war flour--what is it, Nor?"

"Gluten, I think it's called," said Norah doubtfully. "It's something that ordinarily makes flour stick together, but they took it all out of the war flour, and put it into munitions. So everything you made with war flour was apt to be dry and crumbly. And when you made cakes with it, and war sugar, which was half full of queer stuff like plaster of paris, and egg subst.i.tute, because eggs--when you could get them--were eightpence halfpenny, and b.u.t.ter subst.i.tute (and very little of that)--well, they weren't exactly what you would call cakes at all."

"b.u.t.ter subst.i.tute!" said the aunt faintly. "I could not live without good b.u.t.ter!"