The Pioneers
Page 5
CHAPTER V
In the morning the tall man's eyes followed Mary as she went about thework of her house.
As though he were dreaming, he watched her break dry branches and sticksfor the fire across her knee. Then it occurred to him to offer to breakthem for her, and he fetched an armful of wood from the stack in theyard. He gazed as if it were strange and wonderful to see a womanwashing dishes, sweeping, and cooking at her own hearth. He saw herleg-rope and bail the cow, lead the cow and calf to the fenced paddockon the top of the hill after the milking, and carry buckets of waterfrom the creek to the house, the sunlight touching her bare head andflashing from the water in her pails.
Mary did everything in a serene, methodical way, going from one task toanother as though she were happy in each, and in no hurry to be donewith it. He heard her calling to the fowls as she threw a handful ofcrumbs to them; and, seeing that he was watching, she told him, smilinga little, that the matronly, buff hen. Mother Bunch, was a very good henindeed, laying every day, except Sunday, in the summer and spring time;and that the smart, speckled-backed pullet was no good at all forlaying.
"She gives us a little brown egg now and then," Mary said, "and makessuch a fuss about it! That's why I call her Fanny. She is so like MissFanny at home who could not sew at all well, but when she made a dressthat a woman could wear all the countryside knew about it. He"--sheindicated the lordly rooster--"is called the Meester--that is the Masterin English."
A smile showed in the man's sombre eyes.
Early in the morning she had given him a bowl of porridge and had eatensome herself. A bowl containing porridge for Steve when he wakened wasset by the hearth.
The house was in order, Davey bathed, and put in his basket in the sun,and Mary was making bread of the little flour and meal left in the bags,when Steve awoke.
He sat up on the bed and looked uneasily about the room. He was a frail,sickly-looking creature. The fever had left him, but there wereapprehension and desperate fear in his eyes, as with a quickened lightthey rested on her.
"He's awake!" Mary called softly to the man out of doors.
He sprang across the threshold.
"It's all right, Steve," he said. "This woman's a friend."
She had stooped to the hearth and lifted the bowl of porridge.
Steve ate like a hungry dog, tearing at the bread, and thrusting largespoonfuls of porridge into his mouth. Mary gave him a cup of hot milk.He swallowed it at once, and coughed and swore as it scalded his throat.
"If you could see what you can do for us in the way of clothes, ma'am,"his companion said, "we'll be moving on."
Her eyes were troubled.
"If harm came of my helping you," she began, "if--"
"Innocent blood were shed," he said.
There was bitterness in his voice.
"You're like the rest of them. Good, bad or indifferent, you herd us alltogether--convicts. If you mean," his eyes sought hers, "if you meanyou're afraid that instead of helping to give a man another chance forhis life you may be helping a wolf to harry the lambs, you're making amistake, ma'am. I swear by all I hold sacred, you'll not repent of whatyou have done for me."
Mary smiled, her tension of spirit relieved.
"I believe you," she said simply.
She took Donald's working clothes from the pegs where they hung behindthe door. They were worn, but whole. From the heavy sea-chest that stoodin the far corner of the room she took a grey flannel shirt, also one ofunbleached calico, and a pair of dingy black trousers; then she broughta pair of broken boots and a torn felt hat from the shed where theplough and tools were kept.
"There's only one hat, and I'll have to stitch it for you," she said,"but he"--with a glance at Steve who had fallen asleep again on thebed--"he won't have need of a hat for awhile with that bandage on hishead, and when the cut is healed, you had better give him this one towear, and you will be able to say you have lost yours."
The tall man glanced from Donald's heavy boots to Steve's bruised andblackened feet.
"You had better put on those yourself," Mary said, following his glance,"perhaps he could wear mine."
She sat down and took off her shoes.
While he measured her shoe against Steve's foot, she slipped her feetinto a broken pair of green-hide covers clamped with nails that Donaldhad made.
"They will be right for him," he said. "I'll waken him now and we'll geton our way."
She took the bread that had been browning on the hearth stones and putit on the table. The hut was filled with the warm, sweet smell of thenewly-baked loaves.
"You can change in here while I put Davey to sleep outside," she said."And there's a pail of water and soap there by the doorway; it will doyou no harm to dowse with it."
The tall man laughed. It was a boyish burst, that laugh of his. Thepiece of advice, womanly in its essence, and delivered with an air ofmaternal solicitude, touched a forgotten well-spring of merriment.
Mary lifted Davey into her arms, and sang to him softly as she walked upand down in the sunshine.
A long, straggling figure came to her a few moments later, clad inDonald's clothes. She smiled to see the way they hung short of hisankles, hitched over the long, thin legs. But the dowsing of creek waterhad done more than cleanse his body; in an indefinable way it hadpurified and stimulated the inner man. He had found Donald's shears,too, and had clipped the shaggy growth about his chin to a modest beard,and shorn his head of some of its shock of hair.
"You have the air of a daffy young Englishman just arrived in theColonies to make your fortune," she said.
"Ma'am, isn't that what I am?"
There was a blithe recklessness in his voice. He swept her the bow thatwas considered gallant in the old country.
Steve appeared in the doorway.
"Are you going now?" she asked.
He nodded.
"But I must give you some bread and milk to take with you," she said."It will be a long time before you strike Middleton's. It was there Iwas thinking you might make for at first. It's across the ranges to theeast. If you follow the track across the clearing, you will find a stockroute. You've only to keep along that and it will bring you to thestation. It's four or five days' journey from here, I think, and maybethere'll be a job with cattle there. Drovers are being wantedeverywhere--they were when we came up from the Port nearly a year ago."
"Yes," he said, "we heard in the Island that every man in the country'swanting to be gold-hunting, and that the cattle-owners can't get beaststo the market. They're running off wild, where the stockmen have leftthem. We want any job that'll bring food and money to begin with, andthey say men with cattle are not making too particular inquiries as towhose doing their drovin' so long as it's done."
She put Davey in his basket, and went back to the hut. When shereappeared, it was with some bread and a bottle of milk wrapped in apiece of bagging.
"You'll have no trouble about water, because there are creeks allthrough the hills," she said, as she put the bundle into his hand.
Steve had gone off without speaking to her. He was slouching towards thetrees.
The tall man took the food from her. Their eyes met.
"Have I ever seen you before? I seem to know you," she asked, distresson her face.
"Pray God not, ma'am," he said.
"What is your name?"
"You'd better not know."
For a moment, in a storm of gratitude and emotion, his mind trembled onthe verge of self-revelation. His face worked uncertainly.
"I cannot say what I want to," he said at last, as if restraint deniedhim almost any expression at all. "This is a debt, ma'am. If ever, inany way, I can repay, I will. But there's no way of letting you knowwhat you have done for me."
For a moment his eyes held hers. Then he turned away, and she watchedhim stride across the clearing and disappear among the trees.