Over the Sliprails Part 9

There seemed to be a long pause. Then the old woman said, "Ah, well, I must get my work done, and Mary will stop here and keep you company, Mr.

O'Breer." The arrangement seemed satisfactory to all parties, for there was nothing more said for a while. (Mitch.e.l.l nudged me again, with emphasis, and I kicked his shin.)

Presently Alf said: "Mary!" And a girl's voice said, "Yes, Alf."

"You remember the night I went away, Mary?"

"Yes, Alf, I do."

"I have travelled long ways since then, Mary; I worked hard and lived close. I didn't make my fortune, but I managed to rub a note or two together. It was a hard time and a lonesome time for me, Mary. The summer's awful over there, and livin's bad and dear. You couldn't have any idea of it, Mary."

"No, Alf."

"I didn't come back so well off as I expected."

"But that doesn't matter, Alf."

"I got heart-sick and tired of it, and couldn't stand it any longer, Mary."

"But that's all over now, Alf; you mustn't think of it."

"Your mother wrote to me."

"I know she did"--(very low and gently).

"And do you know what she put in it, Mary?"

"Yes, Alf."

"And did you ask her to put it in?"

"Don't ask me, Alf."

"And it's all true, Mary?"

There was no answer, but the silence seemed satisfactory.

"And be sure you have yourself down here on Sunday, Alf, me son."

("There's the old woman come back!" said Mitch.e.l.l.)

"An' since the girl's willin' to have ye, and the ould woman's willin'--there's me hand on it, Alf, me boy. An' G.o.d bless ye both."

("The old man's come now," said Mitch.e.l.l.)

"Come along," said Mitch.e.l.l, leading the way to the front of the tent.

"But I wouldn't like to intrude on them. It's hardly right, Mitch.e.l.l, is it?"

"That's all right," said Mitch.e.l.l. He tapped the tent pole.

"Come in," said Alf. Alf was lying on his bunk as before, with his arms under his head. His face wore a cheerful, not to say happy, expression.

There was no one else in the tent. I was never more surprised in my life.

"Have you got the paper, Alf?" said Mitch.e.l.l.

"Yes. You'll find it there at the foot of the bunk. There it is. Won't you sit down, Mitch.e.l.l?"

"Not to-night," said Mitch.e.l.l. "We brought you a bottle of ale. We're just going to turn in."

And we said "good-night". "Well," I said to Mitch.e.l.l when we got inside, "what do you think of it?"

"I don't think of it at all," said Mitch.e.l.l. "Do you mean to say you can't see it now?"

"No, I'm dashed if I can," I said. "Some of us must be drunk, I think, or getting rats. It's not to be wondered at, and the sooner we get out of this country the better."

"Well, you must be a fool, Joe," said Mitch.e.l.l. "Can't you see? ALF THINKS ALOUD."

"WHAT?"

"Talks to himself. He was thinking about going back to his sweetheart.

Don't you know he's a bit of a ventriloquist?"

Mitch.e.l.l lay awake a long time, in the position that Alf usually lay in, and thought. Perhaps he thought on the same lines as Alf did that night.

But Mitch.e.l.l did his thinking in silence.

We thought it best to tell the Oracle quietly. He was deeply interested, but not surprised. "I've heerd of such cases before," he said. But the Oracle was a gentleman. "There's things that a man wants to keep to himself that ain't his business," he said. And we understood this remark to be intended for our benefit, and to indicate a course of action upon which the Oracle had decided, with respect to this case, and which we, in his opinion, should do well to follow.

Alf got away a week or so later, and we all took a holiday and went down to Fremantle to see him off. Perhaps he wondered why Mitch.e.l.l gripped his hand so hard and wished him luck so earnestly, and was surprised when he gave him three cheers.

"Ah, well!" remarked Mitch.e.l.l, as we turned up the wharf.

"I've heerd of such cases before," said the Oracle, meditatively. "They ain't common, but I've hear'd of such cases before."

A Daughter of Maoriland

A sketch of poor-cla.s.s Maoris

The new native-school teacher, who was "green", "soft", and poetical, and had a literary ambition, called her "August", and fondly hoped to build a romance on her character. She was down in the school registers as Sarah Moses, Maori, 16 years and three months. She looked twenty; but this was nothing, insomuch as the mother of the youngest child in the school--a dear little half-caste lady of two or three summers--had not herself the vaguest idea of the child's age, nor anybody else's, nor of ages in the abstract. The church register was lost some six years before, when "Granny", who was a hundred, if a day, was supposed to be about twenty-five. The teacher had to guess the ages of all the new pupils.

August was apparently the oldest in the school--a big, ungainly, awkward girl, with a heavy negro type of Maori countenance, and about as much animation, mentally or physically, as a cow. She was given to brooding; in fact, she brooded all the time. She brooded all day over her school work, but did it fairly well. How the previous teachers had taught her all she knew was a mystery to the new one. There had been a tragedy in August's family when she was a child, and the affair seemed to have cast a gloom over the lives of the entire family, for the lowering brooding cloud was on all their faces. August would take to the bush when things went wrong at home, and climb a tree and brood till she was found and coaxed home. Things, according to pa gossip, had gone wrong with her from the date of the tragedy, when she, a bright little girl, was taken--a homeless orphan--to live with a sister, and, afterwards, with an aunt-by-marriage. They treated her, 'twas said, with a brutality which must have been greatly exaggerated by pa-gossip, seeing that unkindness of this description is, according to all the best authorities, altogether foreign to Maori nature.

Pa-gossip--which is less reliable than the ordinary washerwoman kind, because of a deeper and more vicious ignorance--had it that one time when August was punished by a teacher (or beaten by her sister or aunt-by-marriage) she "took to the bush" for three days, at the expiration of which time she was found on the ground in an exhausted condition. She was evidently a true Maori or savage, and this was one of the reasons why the teacher with the literary ambition took an interest in her. She had a print of a portrait of a man in soldier's uniform, taken from a copy of the 'Ill.u.s.trated London News', pasted over the fireplace in the whare where she lived, and neatly bordered by vand.y.k.ed strips of silvered tea-paper. She had pasted it in the place of honour, or as near as she could get to it. The place of honour was sacred to framed representations of the Nativity and Catholic subjects, half-modelled, half-pictured. The print was a portrait of the last Czar of Russia, of all the men in the world; and August was reported to have said that she loved that man. His father had been murdered, so had her mother. This was one of the reasons why the teacher with the literary ambition thought he could get a romance out of her.

After the first week she hung round the new schoolmistress, dog-like--with "dog-like affection", thought the teacher. She came down often during the holidays, and hung about the verandah and back door for an hour or so; then, by-and-bye, she'd be gone. Her brooding seemed less aggressive on such occasions. The teacher reckoned that she had something on her mind, and wanted to open her heart to "the wife", but was too ignorant or too shy, poor girl; and he reckoned, from his theory of Maori character, that it might take her weeks, or months, to come to the point. One day, after a great deal of encouragement, she explained that she felt "so awfully lonely, Mrs. Lorrens." All the other girls were away, and she wished it was school-time.