"You've knocked about the bush a good deal?" I asked. I couldn't think of anything else to say, and I thought he might break loose if I let him brood too long.

"Yes," he said, "I have."

"Been in Queensland and the Gulf country, I suppose?"

"I have."

His tone and manner seemed a bit more natural. He had knocked about pretty well all over Australia, and had been in many places where I had been. I had got him on the right track, and after a bit he started telling bush yarns and experiences, some of them awful, some of them very funny, and all of them short and good; and now and then, looking at the side of his face, which was all he turned to me, I thought I detected the ghost of a smile.

One thing I noticed about him; when he spoke as a madman, he talked like a man who had been fairly well educated (or sometimes, I fancied, like a young fellow who was studying to be a school-teacher); his speech was deliberate and his grammar painfully correct--far more so than I have made it; but when he spoke as an old bushman, he dropped his g's and often turned his grammar back to front. But that reminds me that I have met English college men who did the same thing after being a few years in the bush; either they dropped their particular way of speaking because it was mimicked, because they were laughed and chaffed out of it, or they fell gradually into the habit of talking as rough bushmen do (they learnt Australian), as clean-mouthed men fall, in spite of themselves, into the habit of swearing in the heat and hurry and rough life of a shearing-shed. And, coming back into civilized life, these men, who had been well brought up, drop into their old manner and style of speaking as readily as the foulest-mouthed man in a shed or camp--who, amongst his fellows, cannot say three words without an oath--can, when he finds himself in a decent home in the woman-and-girl world, yarn by the hour without letting slip a solitary little d.a.m.n.

The hatter warmed up the tea-billy again, got out some currant buns, which he had baked himself in the camp-oven, and we were yarning comfortably like two old bushmen, and I had almost forgotten that he was "ratty," when we heard the coach coming. I jumped up to hurry down to the road. This seemed to shake him up. He gripped my hand hard and glanced round in his frightened, haunted way. I never saw the eyes of a man look so hopeless and helpless as his did just then.

"I'm sorry you're going," he said, in a hurried way. "I'm sorry you're going. But--but they all go. Come again, come again--we'll all be glad to see you."

I had to hurry off and leave him. "We all," I suppose, meant himself and his ghosts.

I ran down between the two rows of pines and reached the road just as the coach came up. I found the publican from Ilford aboard--he was taking a trip to Sydney. As the coach went on I looked up the clearing and saw the hatter standing straight behind the fire, with his arms folded and his face turned in our direction. He looked ghastly in the firelight, and at that distance his face seemed to have an expression of listening blindness. I looked round on the dark bush, with, away to the left, the last glow of sunset fading from the bed of it, like a bed of reddening coals, and I looked up at the black loom of Aaron's Pa.s.s, and thought that never a man, sane or mad, was left in such a depth of gloomy loneliness.

"I see you've been yarning with him yonder," said the publican, who seemed to have relaxed wonderfully.

"Yes."

"You know these parts, don't you?"

"Yes. I was about here as a boy."

He asked me what my name might be. I told him it was Smith. He blinked a while.

"I never heard of anyone by the name of Smith in the district," he said.

Neither had I. I told him that we lived at Solong, and didn't stay long.

It saved time.

"Ever heard of the Big Bra.s.singtons?"

"Yes."

"Ever heard the yarn of the house that wasn't built?"

I told him how much I had heard of it.

"And that's about all any on 'em knows. Have you any idea who that man back yonder is?"

"Yes, I have."

"Well, who do you think it is?"

"He is, or rather he was, young Bra.s.sington."

"You've hit it!" said the publican. "I know--and a few others."

"And do you know what became of his wife?" I asked.

"I do," said the shanty-keeper, who had a generous supply of whisky with him, and seemed to have begun to fill himself up for the trip.

He said no more for a while, and when I had remained silent long enough, he went on, very deliberately and impressively:

"One yarn is that the girl wasn't any good; that when she was married to Bra.s.sington, and as soon as they got to Sydney, she met a chap she'd been carrying on with before she married Bra.s.sington (or that she'd been married to in secret), an' she cleared off with him, leaving her fortnight-old husband. That was one yarn."

"Was it?" I said.

"Yes," said the publican. "That yarn was a lie." He opened a flask of whisky and pa.s.sed it round.

"There was madness in the family," he said, after a nip.

"Whose?" I asked. "Bra.s.sington's?"

"No," said the publican, in a tone that implied contempt at my ignorance, in spite of its innocence, "the girl's. Her mother had been in a 'sylum, and so had her grandmother. It was--it was heridited. Some madnesses is heridited, an' some comes through worry and hard graft (that's mine), an' some comes through drink, and some through worse, and, but as far as I've heard, all madnesses is pretty much the same.

My old man was a warder in a 'sylum. They have their madnesses a bit different, the same as boozers has their d.t.'s different; but, takin'

it by the lump, it's pretty much all the same. The difference is accordin' to their natures when they're sane. All men are--"

"But about young Mrs Bra.s.sington," I interrupted.

"Young Mrs Bra.s.sington? Rosy Webb she was, daughter of Webb the squatter. Rosy was the brightest, best, good-heartedest, an' most ladylike little girl in the district, an' the heriditry business come on her in Sydney, about a week after she was married to young Bra.s.sington.

She was only twenty. Here--" He pa.s.sed the flask round.

"And what happened?" I asked.

"What happened?" he repeated. Then he pulled himself together, as if conscious that he had shown signs of whisky. "Everything was done, but it was no use. She died in a year in a 'sylum."

"How do you know that?"

"How do I know that?" he repeated in a tone of contempt. "How do I know that? Well, I'll tell you how. _My old wife_ was in service at Bra.s.sington's station at the time--the oldest servant--an' young Bra.s.sington wired to her from Sydney to come and help him in his trouble. Old Mrs Bra.s.sington was bedridden, an' they kep' it from her."

"And about young Bra.s.sington?"

"About young Bra.s.sington? He took a swag an' wandered through the bush.

We've had him at our place several times all these years, but he always wandered off again. My old woman tried everything with him, but it was all no use. Years ago she used to get him to talk of things as they was, in hopes of bringin' his mind back, but he was always worse after. She does all she can for him even now, but he's mighty independent. The last five or six years he's been taken with the idea of buildin' that cursed house. He'll stay there till he gets short of money, an' then he'll go out back, shearin', stock-ridin', drovin', cookin', fencin'--anything till he gets a few pounds. Then he'll settle down and build away at that b.l.o.o.d.y house. He's knocked about so much that he's a regular old bushman. While he's an old bushman he's all right an' amusin' an' good company;--but when he's Bra.s.sington he's mad--Don't you ever let on to my old woman that I told you. I allers let my tongue run a bit when I get out of that hole we're living in. We've kept the secret all these years, but what does it matter now?--I ask you."

"It doesn't matter much," I said.

"Nothing matters much, it seems to me, nothing matters a d.a.m.n. The Big Bra.s.singtons come down years ago; the old people's gone, and the young scattered G.o.d knows where or how. The Webbs (the girl's people) are away up in new country, an' the girls (they was mostly all girls) are married an' settled down by this time. We kept the secret, an' the Webbs kept the secret--even when the dirty yarns was goin' round--so's not to spoil the chances of the other girls. What about the chances of their husbands? Some on 'em might be in the same h.e.l.l as Bra.s.sington for all I know. The Bra.s.singtons kept the secret because I suppose they reckoned it didn't matter much. Nothing matters much in this world--"

But I was thinking of another young couple who had married long ago, whose married life was twenty long years of shameful quarrels, of useless brutal recrimination--not because either was bad, but because their natures were too much alike; of the house that was built, of the family that was reared, of the sons and daughters who "went wrong," of the father and mother separated after twenty years, of the mother dead of a broken heart, of the father (in a lunatic asylum), whose mania was not to build houses, but to obtain and secrete matches for the purpose of burning houses down.