Gripped By Drought

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “Four hundred per annum.” Smythe saw the pain in Mayne’s eyes. He gripped Mayne’s hand in a firm, strong clasp.

  “Au rcvoir, my dear fellow! You’ll have a battle about the butler and the chef. Feng will help you fight it and win it. Au revoir, and the very best of luck!”

  They escorted him to his car. He beamed on them both. The chauffeur awaited his signal. He leaned out over the side of the car, drew them together and close to him, and said, in what was supposed to be a whisper, for Mrs. Leyton Bancroft was emerging from the big house gate:

  “Cut–cut–cut!” Then he was gone.

  THE THIRD YEAR

  CHAPTER XVI

  “SELL ATLAS!”

  I

  FRANK MAYNE sat on the Seat of Atlas. Around the edge of the spacious platform had been erected a low wooden balustrade to enable Little Frankie to romp or play with his toys on those occasions his father took him there. The child now was sturdy in physique and vivacious in spirit. Thirty-odd years before, Frank had been taken there by Old Man Mayne, to be shown his inheritance, to be given that pride of all pride–pride of the ownership of land.

  It was an afternoon in early June, quiet, gently warm in sunlight, brilliant with diamond hardness. Since the conference between Mr. Rowland Smythe, Feng, and himself, more than seven months had passed with the wearisome slowness of time to a man tramping on the treadmill of frustrated hope. During those seven months and few weeks, eighty-two points of rain had fallen in one fall dated November 26th. Since that date no measurable rain had fallen anywhere on Atlas, although Tin Tin had benefited by two thunderstorms that dropped over an inch of rain in March.

  To the Seat of Atlas Mayne came ever more often to fight the repeated skirmishes that were now becoming a general battle against adversity. The several dry spells that had ended in light rain, and which had lured him to the belief that a more prosperous season was definitely assured, were now become one continuous life-taking, shrivelling, choking drought. Day after day, week after week, month after month had passed–and no rain. It seemed that never again would it rain, that some vast natural disturbance had cut off the rain for ever, and that his world would quickly now be but a boundless dust-heap.

  As Elisha of old he had sat on the Seat of Atlas and watched the cloud no larger than a man’s hand–watched it remain the size of a man’s hand. With hundreds of other anxious men he had observed, time and again, throughout the ghastly months, a knife-edged belt of dense clouds sweep from the north-west with rumbling thunder and stabbing lightning, which let fall a few shilling-large drops of water, and sped on to the eastern mountains. The burning earth had steamed for ten seconds. During the whole of one afternoon in March he had sat watching terrestrial water-dogs coalesce over Forest Hill, and with hope surging through his heart and mind observed the forming of the resultant enormous black mass that began to move eastward towards the river–then to sweep southward several miles, describe a mighty arc, and with roaring anger and flaming breath let fall its treasure of water on the property of his neighbour.

  Even though despair racked his vitals he did not begrudge Ann Shelley her stupendous good fortune, which delayed her artificial feeding some three months and filled many of her dams to the brim. And Ann had rung him up on the telephone, consoled him with brave words, and then had wept.

  The first to succumb to the drought were the small men. They watched their flocks of three or four thousand sheep dwindle and vanish, helpless to save them, unable to meet the expense of artificial feeding. Millions could be found to finance the building of bridges and railways in and about the coastal cities, but nothing could be spared to save these heartbroken men and women, and relieve the agony of tortured animals.

  Several of the selectors came to Mayne to implore him to give them employment, but he was putting off men who had worked for him for years. They applied to other squatters with like result, and finally many packed up and fled to the cities, there to secure employment in factories and on trams–never again to return to the accursed bush.

  The recent summer had been long and hot. Throughout it he had not spared himself. The heat had bleached white his hair at the temples, had creased and varnished almost black his skin, had roasted into hard lumps the flesh at the corners of his eyes, so that they peered, this cool, cloudless, early winter’s day, through twin slits.

  He was now regretting that he had not instantly followed Smythe’s earnest advice to “cut–cut–cut”. After that last conference he had deferred the ordeal of acquainting his wife with the true state of the Atlas finances, and then the rain had given him fresh hope that the drought at last was ended. Not till the end of January had he come thoroughly to realize the seriousness of the position, and doubtless would still have procrastinated had it not been for Feng’s outspokenness. At the time Feng both hurt and annoyed him, but now he knew that Feng had been justified in pulling him up to face hard and sinister facts.

  His continued refusal to face facts–a refusal that came as a revelation to his friend, knowing him as one ever ready to look squarely on matters financial–lay in his deep-rooted love for his wife. He believed, and rightly so, that she would acutely feel the period of mental depression following the first period of delighted interest in the bush, and the chief reason he had taken her to New Zealand, and on their return had gratified her every wish, was that she might successfully live through the period of mental depression, to emerge into that lifelong content that is the reward of him or her who continues with determination to live in the Australian bush.

  He was not then to know that Ethel’s frantic desire to escape to New Zealand, and her subsequent passion for relays of guests, were based on something of much greater significance than homesickness. It was beyond the limitations even of his dreams that for twelve months and longer his wife had been honestly battling against an illicit passion for Alldyce Cameron. Even now, during the moments he sat on the Seat of Atlas, the personality of Alldyce Cameron did not intrude between him and the problem of his wife’s coldness, dating back almost to the time he first had brought her to Atlas.

  This worry and the worry created by drought were sending Mayne in upon himself. He found relief in getting away from the homestead and personally joining forces with MacDougall and the hands in their titanic struggle to pull the sheep through the summer. Those long, scorching weeks of incessant labour so absorbed his mind that not until he returned home did his worries descend on him with dreadful, soul-crushing weight. And the name of the weight was–Impotence.

  “Cut–cut–cut!” had urged Rowland Smythe with utter seriousness.

  “Cut–cut–cut!” Feng had almost snarled, his calm, controlled demeanour submerged by the desperate need of Atlas.

  Mayne remembered every word of that interview with his lifelong friend. Feng had begun:

  “The first cut we will make, Frank, will be my salary. Since your return from England I have been receiving four hundred per annum. While this drought continues my salary shall be cut down to-nothing. It is a lead you cannot refuse to follow. I have sounded Barlow, and I know he has saved sufficient on which to retire. Let him go. He must go. We can’t even afford to feed him. His work can easily be added to my own. There are eleven men on Atlas employed as temporary hands. They must go. Even if they agreed to work for their tucker, which the law won’t permit, we cannot afford to keep them. No matter how much it hurts you to put them off, they have got to go.”

  “But we needn’t––”

  Feng banged both fists on the table. His face was unnaturally white and unusually marked by emotion.

  “Cut–cut–cut!” was what Smythe said. Smythe is no fool. I am no longer fool enough to go on watching you rush to the precipice. From now on to the end of the drought, you and I will work for nothing, and ten times harder. It will be up to your wife to make equal sacrifices. She must discharge her butler, her chef, some of her maids, the kitchen man, the boots, and the chauffeur. Object–go on, object! Refuse to face the plain f
acts–and you’ll lose Atlas. Do you hear, Frank, damn you! Do you understand? You’ll lose Atlas. Here, look at this. Here are figures which will prise open your eyes and keep them open, no matter how hard you try to close them. Read them! Read them again, and Cut–cut–cut!”

  2

  The night following Feng’s outburst had been the most dreadful in Mayne’s life. He had taken the rough balance-sheet Feng had prepared to the office, and there had asked Barlow to get out, and had locked the door. He refused to answer the dinner-gong; he refused to open the door, first to Feng who feared suicide, and finally to Ethel, who blamed a bad temper. Until dawn he had wrestled with figures, thought and schemed for a way to avoid discharging those men and depriving his wife of her luxuries and pleasures. But there was no way out, and in the morning he had paid off the men, and afterwards had brokenly explained the situation to Ethel.

  And Ethel had sneered and finally had sulked, even though she recognized that her husband was adamant now that at long last he had reached adecision. After that bitter hour when she had paid off the butler, the chef, the boots, the extra maids, the kitchen man, and the chauffeur–having assumed illness to bring her last house-party to an end–she faced her facts with dauntless courage, and saw that but two hairlike strands kept her from answering the persistent call of the first man she ever had loved, Alldyce Cameron, those strands representing her irreproachable father, and Little Frankie, her son.

  For Ethel Mayne had character. Of that there could be no doubt in the mind of any person acquainted with her history. In common with her father and her mother, her career had been without blemish. Almost fanatically she had ever observed the tenets of strict morality and the iron conventions of her class. Her slightly shallow nature was less her fault than that of her social environment and upbringing. In love with love, inexperienced because she never had truly loved a man, she had found a happy release from genteel poverty in marriage with the legendary wealthy Australian squatter.

  Came then into her life Alldyce Cameron to seduce her from loyalty to her husband, to quicken her pulses and fire her blood with his illicit kisses, to give her understanding of sexual love, which taught her that marriage with Frank Mayne was become a horrible bondage.

  She desired and yet detested Cameron. There were moments when she loathed Frank Mayne and yet pitied him. Unacquainted with the conditions of Australian bush life, she could not appreciate her husband’s heroic struggle to save Atlas when once he had consented to face the now serious situation. The abrupt cessation of visitors, the change from perfectly cooked meals to very plain fare, the quietude after months of gaiety, gave her opportunity for self-analysis and the study of her problem.

  To her surprise Mayne, advised by Feng Ching-wei, suggested that she and the boy should return to England, and there stay till the drought ended and Atlas once more became prosperous. Her refusal was based not entirely on the lack of an adequate supply of money, which would compel her to go back to the scale of living she had known in her father’s home. She was conversant with Cameron’s improved financial position since the death of his uncle, knew that he remained at Thuringah merely because she lived at Atlas, and was sure that if she did go to England he would follow. Later, her husband had suggested her taking Little Frankie to Adelaide for the remainder of the hot weather, but she had declined this proposal on the same grounds.

  Those twin, hairlike strands kept her from danger in the shape of Alldyce Camcron. She shrank from the certain hurt she would cause to her white-haired, selfish, but upright father, and her shallow, yet loyal mother, if she gave way to her wild longings; and, as well, she recognized the hurt her adored boy would suffer were she to sacrifice him on the altar of her passion.

  She began to fight a good fight. She spent her leisure in keeping a diary and writing long letters home. She fussed over and played with Little Frankie every day, and during much of the day, knowing that thus she would strengthen the strands that would keep her from the abyss.

  And all this time Mayne pondered on the now obvious failure of his marriage, blaming himself for its failure, yet quite unable to discover precisely where he had failed. It seemed as though the drought had withered his wife’s love, even whilst it withered the life of Atlas.

  If only Old Man Mayne had still lived!

  3

  The homestead of Atlas was unusually silent. At the boss’s table in the spacious office Feng Ching-wei was checking the bank pass-book with the cheque-butts of a used four-cheque-page book. To this quiet, unassuming, neatly dressed man the silence was accounted for by his knowledge that shearing was due to begin in seven days, and that every man of the reduced staff was with Mayne and MacDougall “edging” eastward the depleted flocks. Even the vegetable gardener had been pressed into the service. At the homestead now were Ethel Mayne and her child, her cook and one housemaid, Eva, Todd Gray, and Mary O’Doyle.

  The door opened to admit the housemaid.

  “The missus says, would you care to have afternoon tea with her now?” the girl said, in tone and manner very unlike those efficient maids Ethel had been compelled to discharge.

  “Thank you,” Feng replied. “Kindly inform your mistress that I shall be delighted, and that I will come in one minute!”

  With the closing of the door he proceeded to complete his task, the bland, unwrinkled face ably masking the thoughts running through his mind engendered by the financial position of Atlas at the end of July of the third year of drought. His nights were more sleepless now than those of Mayne. Mayne’s love for Atlas was no greater than the love Mayne shared with Ann Shelley in the heart of Feng Ching-wei.

  Well–they could not carry on with less labour than they were doing. Even before the coming of Ethel Mayne, Government House was staffed with four domestics. Last year they employed thirty-seven hands, but of these fourteen had been put off, leaving twenty-three to move starved and weakened sheep to the shearing. When Ethel was pressed to discharge Eva, she rebelled and kept her on, paying her wages with her own money. Another rebel was Mary O’Doyle. Feng desired to discharge the Government House cook, install Mary, and eat his meals with the Maynes. The Maynes were willing, but Mary most emphatically refused to serve anyone but him. Feng decided to continue to pay her wages himself; but Mary, who had overheard the loud-voiced conversation between Feng and Mayne, when Feng had said that among the cuts his salary should be cut right out, again rebelled, saying:

  “Todd is gettin’ wages wot he don’t earn. I got a good home, Misther Feng, an’ no wages will I take till the drouth is done.”

  “All right, Mary!” Feng had said, smiling–and forthwith opened a banking account in her name and paid the wages into it every month. Fanatic although he had become for economy, there were some cuts he could not accept.

  Ethel Mayne he found seated at the table in the morning-room, the tea-things set out before her. She wore her favourite unrelieved black. Her face was creamy white, with scarlet lips. The dark eyes regarded him with calm scrutiny.

  “Sit here, Feng,” she commanded, indicating a chair opposite her, which placed him at a disadvantage in that he faced the light. “It is nice of you to come. I was beginning to be bored with my own company.”

  “It is nice of you to ask me,” was his smiling acceptance.

  “Permit me to sit here. I am afraid the office work is telling on my sight,” and he moved the chair so that their faces were both in shadow.

  “Let me see–you do not take sugar? I thought not. A sandwich? Are you very busy these days?”

  The question was asked conversationally. Whilst not even guessing its purport, Feng felt sure it preluded questions to answer which he had been invited to drink tea with Ethel Mayne. Till that afternoon their relationship had been governed by a coldness created in her by his resolute determination to stop her extravagance, and eventual success therein.

  “Yes, I am fairly busy,” he answered. “You see, in dry times everyone has to work harder.”

  “And you work
so hard–for nothing?”

  Over his teacup he regarded her with lowered eyelids. Then he smiled, a slow-breaking smile, saying:

  “Yes, for nothing. You see, Mrs. Mayne, in the good days Atlas paid me four hundred pounds for doing odd clerical jobs. When Frank was overseas my salary as manager was a thousand a year. It appears equitable, therefore, that when Atlas is hard pressed one should make sacrifices without thought of self. These hard times are bound to be followed by good times, when, I suppose, I shall again be handsomely paid for doing almost nothing.”

  “That does seem to be fair,” Ethel agreed, watching him. “Do you know, you mystify me? I cannot understand one of your undoubted talents being content to live your life here.”

  “No?”

  “No. Why are you content? You must think me impertinent.”

  “Not a bit, Mrs. Mayne. I will tell you why I am content to stay at Atlas. My father held a high position at the court of the Emperor Kuang Hsü, whose aunt–who ruled during the young Emperor’s minority–he displeased by marrying my mother. They fled to Australia, arriving as poor emigrants, and went to the gold diggings of Tibooburra. There I was born, and there my mother died when I was about two years old. Heartbroken, my father came to Atlas and became the gardener. And then he died. He had lent Old Man Mayne two thousand pounds to help him through a drought. Old Man Mayne reared me, educated me, and when he died in 1918 he left me my father’s two thousand pounds and twenty-five thousand pounds as interest. High rate of interest, wasn’t it? Atlas always has been my home, and your husband my lifelong and greatest friend. I have no desire to desert Atlas, and as a matter of honour would not, even if I did desire it.”

  Surprised by his frankness, by what appeared to be an easy victory, she said lightly:

  “And these really are hard times?”

  “I know no time more difficult in the past,” was his reply, earnestly spoken.

  They were alike, these two, in colouring. Their faces were naturally pale, and still unmarked by the rivers and creeks of age.