Colonial Born.

by G. Firth Scott.

CHAPTER I.

THE ROMANCE OF TAYLOR'S FLAT.

Where the road to the west from Birralong dips down to the valley of Boulder Creek, a selection stretches out on the left-hand side, well cleared and fenced, and with the selector's homestead standing back a couple of hundred yards from the main road. Slip-rails in the fence, serving as a gateway, open on to the half-worn track which runs from the roadway to the house; and on either side of it there are cultivation paddocks, the one verdant with lucerne, and the other picturesque with the grey sheen of iron-bark pumpkins showing from among the broad leaves of the still growing vines.

The house, unpretentious and substantial, has long since taken to itself the nondescript hue to which the Australian sun soon reduces the unpainted surface of hard-wood slabs and shingles. A square, heavy chimney, smoke-stained and clumsy at the base, rises above the sloping roof at one end, and a roughly fashioned verandah runs along the front of the house, the opposite end to where the chimney is situated being occupied by an odd collection of water-tanks. By the side of the door, and under shelter of the verandah, a saddle is standing on end, while a bridle hangs from a peg in the wall overhead. A heap of two-foot logs is near the water-tanks, with a short-handled axe stuck in an upturned stump which does duty for a chopping-block.

Behind the house a few gum trees in the paddocks lead the eye to where the untouched bush grows thick and sombre in the strength of crowded timber, the bleached trunks of the dead ring-barked trees, where the sunlight plays upon them, gleaming white against the dark purple-blue of the distant foliage. Towards the valley of the creek the land slopes away, and over the course of the stream a faint, blue, vapoury haze hangs in the hot air, beyond which the high table-land on the other side rises like a ridge, the deep tones of its shadows so strongly impressed against the clear transparency of the sky that it seems to be wonderfully near, until the stretch of vapoury haze below corrects the trick of vision. The roadway, as it pa.s.ses the boundary fence of the selection, gleams yellow under the strong glare of the sun, until, winding behind the cl.u.s.tering trees and bushes, it disappears.

It is a scene fair to look upon, either to one in search of change and contrast, or to one whose perceptions are softened by the glamour and charm of Australian a.s.sociation; but especially to the man whose energy and toil made the bush yield at that one point to the needs of civilization. He, stolid, hard-working bushman, with no ambition for anything beyond what he termed "bush graft and square meals," leaned over his slip-rails and looked up and down the road, wondering what else a man wants for contentment beyond work, food, and sleep.

For years he had been a lonely man, living by himself in solitary bachelor simplicity, but withal contentedly, peacefully, happily.

Fifteen miles down the creek there was a cattle station, but none of the station hands ever came round by the selection; and Taylor was never disposed, for the sake of a brief yarn, to ride the score of miles he would have to cover to get to the men's huts. A dozen miles to the east, over a stretch of timbered table-land, the nucleus of a bush township was struggling to a.s.sert itself, and thrive, in spite of the weighty handicap of the name of Birralong, and the fact that, after five years'

existence, it had not succeeded in pa.s.sing the preliminary stage of bush township life--the stage when a "pub," a store, a constable's cottage, and a post-office make up the official directory, the constable combining with his own the offices of postmaster, and another individual representing both the branches of distributing industry, or, in bush parlance, "running both the shanty and the store." There were other residents in the township besides these two; men who came along the road from the east to the west, some with business and some in search for it; some with a record they wanted to leave behind, and some with an empty past they hoped to turn into a well-filled future in the mighty plains of the rolling lands of the virgin western country; men of all qualities and shades of vice and virtue; stockmen, mailmen, and drovers; stray gold-seekers, fossickers, or prospectors; swagsmen who were _bona-fide_ bushmen, and swagsmen who, as sundowners, only arrived at a station or a township too late in the day to be given work, but not too late to partic.i.p.ate in the open hospitality of the bush; shepherds, selectors seeking land, and timber-getters moving on to the scrubs of the table-land beyond the creek; but men, always men, who brought the population of the township up to tens, but never yet to hundreds, and who in a few days had gone further west--mostly--and whose places were taken by others.

But to that township in the early days of its existence Taylor rarely went, for even amidst a floating population there are floating jests, and the man at whose expense they are made does not learn to appreciate them any the more by reason of new arrivals learning them and keeping them alive. To the men of the township his selection, which he had proudly named Taylor's Flat, was known as Taylor's Folly; and the owner of it, dull-witted and slow of speech, was loth to face the raillery his presence always called forth.

Away to the south, forty miles from the Flat, was another township, whither Taylor, when he first took up the land, was compelled to go to pay the instalments of the purchase money to the local Government official. On the occasion of the visit when the last instalment was paid, Taylor saw at the hotel, where he stayed the night, a fresh-faced immigrant girl. She had not been long enough in the country to lose the fresh, ruddy hue from her plump cheeks, but long enough to be wearied by the heat and the worry, of which, experience taught, the ideal life she had dreamed about was really composed.

Perhaps it was the colour on her cheeks; perhaps it was the winsome look which came into her eyes as he told her, in an unprecedented burst of confidence, of the quiet contentment of his life on the selection; but until he returned to it, in all the natural pride of actual proprietorship, Taylor was unaware that anything had occurred to interfere with the even tenor of his existence. As it was, everything seemed to have suddenly lost its charm; the steadily increasing bulk of the largest pumpkins no longer brought enthusiasm to him; the satisfaction of sitting, when the sun was nearing the horizon, with his pipe between his lips, and his legs stretched out in front of him, in well-earned rest, under the shelter of his verandah, was no longer manifest; his own society and the companionship of his stock brought no comfort into his life, now strangely restless and uneasy. It was not in the nature of the man to reason it out, but dimly into his mind there came a connection between the state of affairs and his visit to the southern township. There had been a light spring-cart in the place which had attracted his fancy and roused as much covetousness as his nature was capable of feeling, and to that he attributed his dissatisfaction, persuading himself that the possession of that spring-cart would bring back all the old lethargic content of his life.

He returned to the township, and peace came to his mind as he sat at the long, bare table which occupied the centre of the living-room of the hotel, munching the beef and damper the red-cheeked girl brought to him.

Vaguely the idea came to him that the presence of such a girl at his homestead would be a decided improvement to the loneliness he had for the first time experienced on his return from his former visit to the township, and with characteristic brevity he made the suggestion to her that if she were in want of another place, he was prepared to offer her one at his selection, where she would have no mistress but herself, and none to attend to but him. She jumped at the chance of peace and quiet in the bush, and closed upon his offer there and then.

Two days later, Taylor, peaceful and contented, was returning to the selection, driving the spring-cart which had roused his fancy, and in which there also travelled his wife--the red-cheeked girl--and her few belongings.

For a time everything went well, and both yielded to the conviction that they had obtained all that was necessary to insure their earthly happiness. Then the life began to pall.

She was the first to feel it. Brisk and energetic, she was through with her house-work before the day was many hours old, and the time hung terribly on her hands, for the peace and calm she had so longed for at the bush hotel began to grow very monotonous and trying.

Taylor had enough to keep him going all the day out on his land, but she had nothing when the work round the house was done. He, moreover, had the chance of an occasional chat with a pa.s.sing traveller along the road; but she never saw a woman's face during her first year at the Flat, and however much a woman may scorn the companionship of her sisters when she is surrounded by them, she finds her days unduly long when she is cut off from their society altogether.

As the months pa.s.sed on into the year, and his wife commenced to develop undreamed-of resources of temper, Taylor began to wonder to himself whether he had not been "got at over the marriage business."

At the end of the first year, on his visit to the southern township for his stores, he took his wife with him in the spring-cart, and they spent a few days at the hotel where she had previously been employed. It had changed hands in the mean time, and the newcomer had with him a family of children. During the stay, and on the return journey, there was no sign of the acrid temper his wife had displayed at the selection; but as soon as they were home again it broke out. When he was in the house she railed at him, and if he stayed away among his fences and his stock, she grumbled, as soon as he returned, at his absence.

He left the house before a furious outburst which he was quite unable to understand, and, pa.s.sing down the track to the slip-rails, leaned upon them in the hopes of solving the riddle. An old sundowner, chancing to pa.s.s along the road, stopped in the hopes of a yarn. But Taylor was in no mood to talk on any other subject than that which was worrying him.

He accordingly poured out his tale to the old man, who, having heard it, suggested that perhaps the cause of it all lay in the worry and trouble of the children, or, as he termed them, kids. "There ain't no kids,"

Taylor retorted in irritation; and the old man, looking at him quizzically, observed, "Oh, there ain't no kids, ain't there? Well, then, there y'are."

This new factor in the problem worried Taylor still more when the old man, with an uncomplimentary allusion to the sagacity of the owner of Taylor's Folly, continued his way. But time was kind, and he grew more learned when premonitory symptoms of the approach of a light from another world were manifest, and peace lay on his wife's tongue and sweetness ruled her temper.

Then there came the light which made the mother glad and the father bewildered, for, as he explained to the neighbour who came from forty miles away to lend her aid, he knew "nothin' about the rearin' of that sort of stock."

He left his fences alone that day and spent the hours hanging round the house, taking periodical trips into the room where the mother and the child lay, and retiring with a serious shake of the head and a muttered explanation of his want of knowledge on the subject. Then he was startled by being suddenly called into the room, where he stood, strangely abashed and helpless, while the light flickered and went back to its own world. The mother wailed and sorrowed, and Taylor moped and wondered, until, between them, the neighbour was severely taxed to keep things going.

The next night he wandered away from the house to the little railed-in mound in a corner of the paddock where he had put all that remained of the stock he did not know how to rear. He stood with his arms resting on the slim fence and his eyes looking away into the evening's mists, trying, with the aid of a pipe, to drive away the disquietening effect the expression in his wife's eyes had upon him, and to understand something of the emptiness that had somehow come into his life since he had lain, as tenderly as his rough hands could, the fragile little form in its simple grave.

As he stood, as nearly dreaming as it was possible for him to be, he became conscious of the figure of a man running hastily towards him from the direction of the roadway.

"Mate! For the love of G.o.d! Is there any women about?" the man exclaimed as he came near.

"Women?" Taylor repeated vacantly.

"Yes, women," the man replied. "My missus's been took bad down there by the dray, and if there ain't----"

"Here! Come on!" Taylor shouted, his own recent experience sharpening his wits. "Follow me, quick."

A few seconds later and the neighbour was speeding away through the bush, and Taylor was sitting by his wife's side, ill at ease and silent as he tried to decide whether it would do any harm to any one if he re-lit the pipe he had allowed to go out in the excitement of the moment. His wife, catching something of the message so hastily delivered, lay still with wide-open eyes and straining ears.

"Bill! I 'eard it cry, I 'eard it cry," she exclaimed suddenly. "There 'tis again, only louder," she added, as she essayed to sit up in bed just as the neighbour hurried into the room.

"He said she'd gone, poor thing, before I got there; but we must try to save this," she said, as she placed in the lonely mother's arms the tiny morsel of humanity.

"_I_ will, _I_ will," the other cried as she clutched at the babe, clasping it to her breast as she rocked to and fro and crooned over it.

Taylor looked at her vaguely for a moment, and into his mind there stole a new and strange impulse. The emptiness that had been manifest to him as he stood leaning over the slim rail across the paddock seemed to fill up until his throat grew tight and his eyes moist, and for the first time in his life he experienced a satisfaction that had to do with neither eating nor working. He put one hand for a moment on his wife's shoulder, and with the extended forefinger of the other touched the small chubby hand that lay against her breast. Withdrawing it, he stood for a moment undecided whether to repeat the experiment, when the neighbour bustled up, and Taylor shuffled out of the room and into the cool air of the night. There he remembered the man who was in a worse plight than he had been, and he went to seek him.

He found him standing by a horse on the roadside, just beyond the boundary fence.

"You had better camp at the house for to-night," Taylor began, as he leaned over the fence and strained his eyes in an endeavour to make out where the dray the man had mentioned was standing.

"No; thanks all the same," the man answered. "I've fixed up everything, and can shove along."

"But there's the little 'un; and what about the--the other?" Taylor asked, as he put his foot on one rail and made as though to climb over the fence.

The man came up to him from the shadow.

"I've fixed all that up. She'll come along with me, while I leave the little 'un here, if you don't mind, till I've time to come back for it.

This is Taylor's Flat, ain't it?"

"Yes," Taylor answered. "And I am Taylor."

"I guessed as much," the other replied; "they told me back along the road I should reach here about dark."

"Which way did you come?" Taylor asked.

"West," the other answered briefly.

"Far back?" Taylor inquired, somewhat puzzled at the arrival of a woman from the lonely wilderness of the west.

"Fairish," the other replied evasively; and Taylor grew suspicious.