Chapter XII: Responsibilities

MOTHER had gone to Melbourne, much against her will, to see the dentist—that useful person who secures for many Bush mothers their only chance of a holiday to the city. But on this occasion Mrs. Weston was not in the least grateful for the trip. In better times, when a visit to Town meant pretty clothes, theatres and smart restaurants, the necessity for a few painful hours in the dentist’s chair never seemed a high price to pay. But now, with so little money to spare that her beloved twins had to work at home, the journey was merely a nuisance, and she resented having to spend so much upon herself—after the fashion of mothers. Melbourne was hot, dusty, and empty of all the people she knew: they were all at the seaside or in the cool shelter of the hills. Mrs. Weston harried the dentist until he consented to hurry through her treatment, and thankfully sent a telegram to Emu Plains to announce her speedy return.

Tom Holmes brought the telegram out, driving his father’s car. A long trail of dust marked his dash up the track through the grassless paddock. The twins, just returned from bathing, met him on the verandah.

“Lucky people—you look disgustingly cool,” said the stout youth, pushing his broad Panama back from his hot forehead. “How do you manage it?”

“Swimming,” said Jean, shaking her damp curls. “There’s still water in the bathing-pool, though very little in the other part of the river.”

“Well, it’ll soon be the only place in this district that isn’t solid dust, if we don’t get rain before long,” declared Tom. “Our billabong and creek are bone-dry, and the river’s only a trickle. Father says he’ll have to send every hoof off the place—not that he’s got many left.”

“The whole country looks awful,” Jo said. “It doesn’t seem possible that there was ever thick green grass on those bare paddocks—or that there ever would be any again. How are your horses, Tom?”

“Poor as crows, except two or three that we keep in the stable. Of course, there are hardly any here now; they’ve all gone away for change of air,” said Tom, laughing rather bitterly. “Well, I’m generally keen enough on being at home, but I’m beginning to feel I can stand a change of scene myself; it gives a fellow the blues to see nothing but dust and half-starved stock. For once in my life I’d rather drive the car than ride; one gets about the country more quickly. That reminds me. I thought I’d bring out your mail. There’s a wire for you.”

“Father’s out, so we’d better open it—I expect it’s from Mother,” Jo said. “Yes; and she’ll be home to-morrow, Jean—hooray! It seems an age since she went away, and it’s only four days. Thanks, ever so, Tom. Do you feel like tea? Or a lemon squash?”

“If I’m to be strictly truthful,” said Tom, “I feel like both. A squash would make me less like a sandy desert, and then I’d enjoy some tea. At present, tea would be wasted on me: it would merely hiss when it struck me, and immediately vanish in steam!”

“Poor boy!” laughed Jo. “Come along, and we’ll brew the squash before tea comes in. Thank goodness Father planted lemon-trees near the spring; they haven’t the least idea there’s a drought on. Would you like a wash first, Tom?”

“I was afraid I looked like that,” said Tom unhappily. “Yes, please. Bathroom on the verandah?”

“Yes. And you really didn’t look like it, only I thought it might make you feel a bit happier. Is it necessary to say, ‘Don’t waste the water,’ or would you be insulted?”

“I should think I would,” declared Tom; “we’ve got a drought of our own, haven’t we?” He strode off, returning presently to find a brimming tumbler awaiting him in the cool dimness of the shaded dining-room.

“That’s gorgeous!” he declared, putting down the empty glass. “I had a drink from the tap in the bathroom first, because, of course, no drink is really long enough in weather like this, and——”

“You shouldn’t have drunk that water,” stated Jean anxiously. “It isn’t drinking-water. Now we ought to sterilize you.”

“Any water’s drinking-water in weather like this,” said Tom, unmoved. “Besides, it will get thoroughly boiled when I go out into the heat again, so why worry? Water is always purified if you submit it to a high enough temperature—and goodness knows the thermometer is doing its best to break records to-day. How’s your pupil-teaching going, Jean?”

“Oh, well enough,” Jean answered. “We’re beginning to feel we’re making some progress. At first we were very scared of our job, but we are plucking up courage now. Rex is getting much more like an ordinary boy, and that’s a comfort. We were afraid he’d never be ordinary, but it’s surprising to see how soon polish like his disappears among plain and honest folk!”

“Is that what you are?” Tom demanded, round-eyed.

“Yes—very plain and honest. Don’t you dare to say we’re not, Tom Holmes!”

“All right,” said Tom, meekly; “I won’t; only just you remember it wasn’t me that said you were plain. And what about the riding-lessons? Is the kid shaping well at that?”

“Oh, rather. Father says he took to it from the start like a duck to water. He goes cantering round the home-paddock now on old Merrilegs, with Billy on one of our ponies. Sits well too, and he has good hands. He tried to jump a log the other day, and came to grief, but he didn’t mind.”

“He wasn’t hurt?”

“Oh, no. You see, Merrilegs has ideas of his own about jumping, now: he thinks he’s too old, and it takes Billy all he knows to get him over a log. So, when Rex rode him at this one—it was only a wee little log—he just propped. And Rex shot over the log all right, except that the pony didn’t go with him. Rex was awfully disgusted, but he wasn’t hurt.”

“And, of course, Billy yelled with laughter?”

“Well, that’s what Billy _would_ do,” said Jo. “All the same, I think it’s very likely that Master Rex will go off by himself some fine morning and get Merrilegs over that log—just as he did with swimming.” She told the story of the boys’ early-morning bathe, and Tom nodded approvingly.

“Shows he’s got something in him. Well, I went to school with the other Forester boys, and they certainly weren’t the kind of chaps to be beaten by anything.”

“And, of course, his sister Helen is the same. Why, she was Captain of Merriwa!” said Jo, as though that assertion implied every possible virtue. “Only, Rex hasn’t had a fair chance, between illnesses and being handed over to a prim old governess who did her best to make an Early Victorian young lady of him. He was like nothing earthly when he came, but there’s a good deal of commonplace small boy cropping out now, thank goodness!”

“And how about you two?” demanded Tom, with a grin. “How’s work suiting you?”

“Oh, work’s all right,” said Jo shortly.

Not even Jean knew how her twin longed in secret for the school-life they had lost. School had always been a glad prospect ahead of them, for Mrs. Weston had loved her years at Merriwa and she had brought up the twins in happy anticipation of just as good a time when their own turn should come. And it had been all, and more, that they had hoped. Lessons, thanks to their mother’s good grounding, had been not too difficult: out of school hours the time had been all too brief for the packed interests, the jolly friendships, the long, intimate talks. Their first year had gone in a happy whirl: they had looked forward to others as good. And now it was all over.

Not that Jo was discontented with home-life. It was not in her nature to be discontented with anything for more than five minutes at a time. She loved her home, and there was plenty of interest in each day’s work and play, besides the solid satisfaction of knowing that she and her twin were doing something really worth while—something that helped to lift the burden from her father’s shoulders. But they were not yet sixteen: and sometimes there came over her a wave of longing for the care-free days when there had been no worries, no responsibilities. “We were just kids, last year,” she thought, sometimes. “It’s a bit sudden to be grown-up.”

Then she would wonder if Jean thought the same. But, whatever Jean thought, she made no sign.

Something of this longing for the life of last year came over Jo at Tom’s careless question. She looked at him half-resentfully: he was so unconscious of any real worries, although he grumbled cheerfully at the heat and the drought. They really touched him very little: he would go back to school, bored at going, feeling certain that before he returned the drought would be broken and the country smiling again. He was a year and a half older than they, and yet he was only a child, playing: and they were workers——

She gave herself a mental shake.

“Well, you are a pig, Jo Weston!” she addressed herself silently. “Jealous and bad-tempered, and altogether piggish! Be ashamed of yourself!”—and forthwith smiled cheerfully at the unconscious Tom.

“Work’s really rather a lark when you get going,” she stated unconcernedly. “We get a lot of fun out of it.”

“Well, you both look as if you were always on the grin,” said Tom. “Goodness knows, there’s not much laughing going on at our place. Father’s always growling at the drought, and Mother says she’s tired of looking at bare paddocks and she means to have a flat in Town. And Father says he’d rather be shot than live in a flat. So there it is, and I’m beginning to think it won’t be so bad to go back to school, though the bare idea of swotting over Latin gives me the creeps. Hullo, Sarah! how are you?”

“I’ve been better, and I’ve been worse,” said Sarah, non-committally, putting down a loaded tea-tray. “And how’s yourself, Master Tom?”

“Oh, first-rate,” Tom said. “Is it hot enough for you, Sarah?”

“That’s one of them questions as ought to be put down by an Ack of Parlyment,” said Sarah testily. “I druv into the township with Miss Jean yesterday, an’ it was just as ’ot as ’ot: an’ every one arsked the same thing, no matter what shop I went into. A body knows she ain’t lookin’ ’er best with ’er face the colour of a tomato an’ perspiration droppin’ off ’er forehead, an’ it sort of rubs it in to be arsked all the time, ‘Is it ’ot enough for you?’ Anyone lookin’ at me with ’alf an eye could see it was a good deal more’n ’ot enough for me. But they kep’ on arskin’, all the same.”

“Sorry,” said Tom, laughing. “Stupid of me, Sarah—but when it’s as hot as this all one’s brain turns to dough.”

“Oh, ’ot!” said Sarah, with scorn. “It makes me tired to hear every one growlin’ about the ’eat, and sayin’ there was never such a drought.”

“But you said yourself it was hot yesterday,” protested the bewildered Tom.

“Well, I did; an’ it _was_ ’ot. But I don’t go growlin’ all the time. Summers ain’t nothing to what they was: I tell you, in my young days ’eat was ’eat, an’ drought was drought, an’ no mistake. Just you think what summers was twenty years ago—oh, well, of course you can’t”—as her hearers shouted with laughter—“but any’ow, you can take my word for it we knew what temp’rashur was! Soarin’ well above the ’undred for a fortnight on end. An’ droughts lasted years. Nowadays, every one thinks they’re killed if they get a few days’ ’eat, an’ a bit of a drought like this makes ’em think the world’s comin’ to an end.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that, Sarah. But it’s bad enough.”

“Aw, bad!” sniffed Sarah. “Them old droughts was bad, if you like, when the ground was as bare as Collins Street, an’ all the sheep got boiled down for tallow. An’ there wasn’t the grumblin’ then that there is now.”

“Gammon!” said Tom unexpectedly. “Don’t tell me people didn’t growl, Sarah. Why, anyone on the land will growl even in a good season, let alone a bad one. Did you ever know a man on the land who was satisfied with the weather?”

“Well, no, I don’t suppose I did,” admitted Sarah, gazing with some amazement at her opponent. “Farmers an’ sich especially: you can’t please ’em with weather, not if you made it to order. But what I do say is, that it’s no good grumblin’ an’ grousin’, even if there is a bit of a drought. Keep smilin’, an’ it’ll rain some day.” With which philosophy Sarah collected her temporarily scattered forces and withdrew.

“She didn’t say that, at all, of course,” remarked Tom. “At least, I don’t think she did, but Sarah’s so eloquent, when she gets going, that I’m really not sure. I’d love to take her last bit of advice home to Father and give it to him when he was being really excited about the drought. ‘Keep smilin’, an’ it’ll rain some day!’ But I’d wish to be well out of his reach when I delivered it.”

“You’d think Sarah was such a Tartar, just to listen to her, wouldn’t you?” laughed Jean, pouring out tea. “And she’s really so mild she’d eat out of your hand. She’s been teaching us the proper way to turn out rooms, and polish floors, and to keep the silver, in the hope of making us what she calls ‘house-proud.’ She says no woman is any good unless she’s house-proud.”

“Whatever’s that?” asked the bewildered masculine hearer.

“Oh, being mad keen on one’s house, and having everything ‘just-so.’ It’s really rather fun, too, only poor old Sarah’s so quaint over it; she shows us how to do a thing with heaps of ‘elbow-grease,’ and then she sighs over our doing it at all, and begs us to go and rub cold cream on our hands or they’ll never be as nice as Mother’s! Which they certainly never will,” added Jean, placing a brown paw on the table near her twin’s. “And then she goes and hurriedly cooks something we like for tea. But if we thank her she only looks down her nose and mutters something, and, if you didn’t know her well, you’d think she was offended at being thanked at all. But she’s a darling when you do happen to know her.”

There was a pounding of horses’ feet in the paddock, and Jo ran to the window. .

“Father and the boys are coming!” she cried. “They’ve been out to one of the back paddocks. Look at Rex, Tom—doesn’t he ride decently, for a new-chum?”

There was a cloud of dust, out of which the forms of the riders were looming indistinctly. Old grey Merrilegs came along at a smooth, easy canter, his rider bumping a little, but clearly happy. Mr. Weston rode a little to the right, on a big, good-looking bay, and Billy scampered in front on Punch, Jean’s pony. He rode as if he were part of the little black he was on: his hands down, his head up, all his merry face flushed with excitement.

“Rex’ll never ride like Billy,” said Tom, watching him.

“Oh, but Billy has been on a horse ever since he was six months old and Father used to take him out in front of him,” Jo said. “Billy can’t help riding. But Rex is not bad, now, is he?”

“No, indeed, he’s not. And with goggles, too—I always think glasses must be terribly hampering to a kid,” remarked Tom. “Oh, he’ll do, if only you people can keep him for a bit. It would be no end of a pity if he wasn’t able to follow up his big brothers at Grammar: they’ve been such good all-round men.”

“He’s going to be just as good as they are,” declared Jo hotly. “When he gets stronger he’ll probably be able to leave off the glasses altogether—the oculist said so. And his muscles are developing already.”

“Yes, and he can box, too,” chimed in Jean. “Father gives them lessons every night, and he says Rex will have a punch like the kick of a mule!”

“And you’re just like a pair of old hens with a turkey-chick,” grinned Tom. “You know what delicate little squeakers they are at first—have to be fed every hour, and all that sort of thing. And then, suddenly, they get big and strong and turn into proud gobblers! Take care, or that’s what young Rex will be doing—and proud gobblers have no sort of a time when they go to school.”

The twins laughed, but they accepted the big fellow’s warning meekly enough.

“We’re going to be awfully careful, really. He’s such a nice kid—when he isn’t polished—that it would be easy to spoil him; and then, it does feel as if he really were our own turkey-chick. And we keep remembering how small he is, and that his mother’s thousands of miles away. But we’re trying hard to keep our feelings to ourselves, when he’s about: and Father has promised to come down on us heavily if he sees any signs of molly-coddling. So perhaps there’s hope.” The twins, who had rendered these remarks in a composite fashion peculiarly their own, paused, and looked anxiously at Tom, who suddenly loomed before them as a possible Grammar School senior what time Rex might be joining as a palpitating junior.

Tom nodded, aware of his masculine superiority.

“Oh, if Mr. Weston’s keeping an eye on him he won’t go far wrong,” he said—and then Sarah stalked in, tall and grim, with a loaded tray.

“I made the biggest pot of tea,” she explained, “seein’ as ’ow they’ll all be dusty and thirsty. They’ll be in in a minute; they’re washin’ themselves up now.”

“Thanks, Sarah dear,” said Jean. “Oh, and, Sarah—Mother’s coming home to-morrow.”

Sarah’s dour face suddenly softened.

“That’s good news!” she said. “Some’ow the place is just an ’owlin’ desert when she’s away. Did she say if the dentist ’ad ’urt her much?”

“She didn’t say—there’s only a telegram,” Jean answered.

“I wish she ’ad,” said Sarah anxiously. She left the room, evidently dissatisfied with the deficiencies of telegrams. They heard her joyfully informing Mr. Weston, in the hall, of the news.

“Mother coming home!—that’s great!” he said, coming in. “You’re the mail-man, I suppose, Tom—many thanks. We didn’t expect her so soon. Yes, I’ll be glad of tea, twinses: it’s awfully hot and dusty in the paddocks, and my two boundary-riders must be as thirsty as I am. Here they come”—as the boys clattered up the hall. “Any news, Tom?”

“Nothing that I know of—barring drought,” Tom answered.

“That’s not news now, worse luck!” Mr. Weston said. “It’s what you might call ancient history turned into an established fact. Well, I heard some news, and it isn’t good news, either: a man who was mending a fence next ours told me there are big fires at Gulgong Flat, fifteen miles away. Several poor souls have been burned out, and a lot of damage done. Of course, with such a season, it’s a wonder that we have not had fires in the district before this: had there been more grass to carry them they would certainly have come, for the whole country is as dry as a stick.”

“Father was saying a good many fires have started, but they have been quickly got under,” Tom remarked.

“Yes—that’s one advantage of a drought. Fires won’t run over bare ground, and most of the paddocks are bare enough. Even the roadsides have been eaten right out by travelling stock. But there is plenty of lightly timbered country about Gulgong Flat, and of course fire will travel very fast in that. We can only hope they will get it under before it comes our way.”

“Well, Emu Plains is safe enough, Mr. Weston,” said Tom.

“The house is, of course. There’s scarcely any chance of danger here, for there’s no grass to carry a fire up to us, and no timber to speak of. But I don’t want my back paddocks burned out—that’s about all the grass I’ve got left; and I can’t afford to lose fencing. We may have to move the cattle in a hurry, if the fire spreads; the boys and I rode round them to-day, and drove them out of the timber, to accustom them to the move, in case it has to be made.”

“It was grand fun,” said Rex. “And, Jean—I jumped a log, and I didn’t fall off!”

“Didn’t I tell you you would?” said Jean, smiling at him. “How are the cattle, Father?”

“Well, they’re holding their own, and that’s about all one can say,” her father answered. “The water is good, of course: that helps a lot. Goodness knows, there can’t be much nourishment in the sort of grass that’s left, but, somehow, they are managing to pick up a living. I suppose, some day, if rain doesn’t come, they’ll decide that it really isn’t worth while, and they’ll lie down and die. But there’s always hope that rain will come.”

“Then we’ll all go and sit and watch the grass grow and the cattle get fat,” said Jo. “Won’t it be fun, Rex?”

“Will they really get fat while you look at them?” asked the small boy, round-eyed behind his spectacles.

“Rather,” said Tom. “Of course, there are a few shy ones, which don’t like getting fat in front of people, and they make for the scrub!”

“I don’t think that’s true!” said Rex solemnly. At which everybody laughed, and Jean offered him a cake, which he ate in puzzled silence, pondering on the queer ways of country folk. They were very jolly, Rex thought, and he had quite made up his mind that when he was grown-up he would own a station and manage it himself. But there was no doubt that they were sometimes difficult to understand, and occasionally they talked a language all their own, full of words that were quite unfamiliar to him. He had mental notes of several queer expressions he would ask the twins to explain: Why bullocks were “poor as crows,” and why a crow was poor, anyhow; and what it was that cattle held when they were said “to hold their own,” and how did they hold anything? Rex had ridden that afternoon round more cattle than he had ever been near before, but none of them were attempting to hold things, their own or anyone else’s. He longed to catch a twin by herself, that he might ask her. Other people might—and did—laugh at him; but never the twins.

Tom said good-bye presently, and they all went out to the gate with him, after the friendly Bush fashion, and watched him disappear in a cloud of dust. The twins hurried back to take out the tea-tray.

In the kitchen they came suddenly upon Sarah, who straightened up guiltily at their approach. But the twins had seen, for a moment, a bowed head, her face hidden in her hands; and as she turned from them to stir a saucepan which obviously contained only hot water they saw that she was pale, with heavy rings under her eyes. Jean looked a minute, and then put down her tray.

“What’s the matter, Sarah?”

“There ain’t nothing the matter,” Sarah said. “What would there be?”

“I don’t know,” said Jean. “But there’s something, all the same. Tell us, Sarah dear—let’s help.”

“Well, I’ve just a little ’eadache,” admitted the gaunt handmaiden.

“It must be a pretty big headache, to make you look like that,” Jo said. “You might as well tell us, Sarah, old thing.”

“It’s me rubbishy old neuralgy,” Sarah said, capitulating. “I do get it ’ot an’ strong, an’ that’s a fack. Comes all over me ’ead. I been tryin’ to beat it all day, but it’s near got me down. It’s like a red-’ot knife goin’ in an’ out of me left eye.”

“Why, you poor old dear!” cried the twins. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Oh, I ’ates makin’ a fuss,” said the sufferer. “I did ’ave thoughts of goin’ to tell you, when I seen you come back from bathin’: an’ then Mr. Tom came, an’ on top of ’im the news of the Missus comin’ ’ome. An’ I can’t go an’ get sick just as she comes. So I determined not to be. But the pain seems a bit ahead of the determination: I expect it got a start.”

“Well, you’re just going to lie down now,” Jean said firmly. “Real lie-down—dress and shoes off: and you’re not to come out again to-night, or to-morrow, or until you’re better. I’ll come in ten minutes with a cup of tea and some aspirin.”

“But the tea!” groaned Sarah. “I got a potato pie made, but, of course, it ain’t time to put it in. Lemme stay till I’ve washed up after tea——”

The twins each took an arm, and propelled her, gently but firmly, towards the door.

“I guess we’ll manage the pie,” Jo said, with the firmness possible to a cookery prize-winner. “Now, we’re coming in ten minutes, Sarah, and just you be lying down, or there’ll be awful trouble.”

They found her, pale, but protesting, when they visited her room, and having administered tea and aspirin, bathed her throbbing brows with eau-de-Cologne.

“That’s lovely,” she admitted. “My word, it’s great to be lyin’ down—but I do ’ate leavin’ everything to you. It don’t seem fair, when you’ve all the work you ’ave.”

“Now, will you just be a sensible old thing and not talk rubbish!” Jean said, giving a final dab with her little sponge. “What do you think Mother would say to us if she came home and found you doing the work and looking like a demented ghost?”

“Demented I was beginnin’ to feel, an’ no mistake,” said poor Sarah wearily. “You really won’t do any more than you ’ave to, will you, me dears?”

“We won’t start cleaning the kitchen, if that’s what you mean,” said Jo, laughing. “Go to sleep, if you can, and forget about everything until you wake up better.” They tiptoed out, closing the door gently, and softly danced down the passage to the kitchen.

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