The Barrakee Mystery

Chapter Twenty-Six

In a Cleft Stick

THE MAIL from Bourke arrived at Barrakee at noon on Tuesdays and Fridays, and it was the same day on which Nellie resolved to steal away from Ralph that the official notification reached Dugdale that he had drawn one of the prizes in the Land Lottery, to wit, Daly’s Yard block.

The lucky prize-winner and young Thornton had been out riding most of the day, and immediately on their return they had gone to Mortimore for their mail. Dugdale’s eyes glittered when he read the contents of the long official envelope.

“I’ve been allotted Daly’s Yard, Mr Thornton!” he told the squatter, who was writing in his own portion of the office.

You have, Dug? Well, my congratulations!” Thornton said, genuinely pleased. “Now, I suppose you’llbe wanting to leave us.”

Dugdale became serious. Here at last was decent excuse to tear himself away from Barrakee and all the bitter-sweetness of his life there. But what at one time had seemed desirable now threatened to be a wrench.

“Well, yes; I suppose so, Mr Thornton,” he admitted. “There is, of course, no immediate hurry. Say, after lamb-marking.”

“Fine, Dugdale! We start lamb-marking next Monday. We’ll be at it for about afortnight, or a little over, as usual. Go, then, and look at your land, and then come to me, and for what financial assistance you may need you know you have only to ask. If you serve yourself as well as you have served me, you will succeed. Honestly, I am sorry to lose you.”

“It is kind of you to say that and to offer assistance,” Dugdale told his employer-friend warmly.

Within a few hours everyone in the back country knew the names of the winners and the names of the prizes won. Just before the men’s dinner gong was due to sound Dugdale had a caller in Fred Blair.

“I’ve cometer offer you me congratulations,” Blair explained. “I’m mighty glad you got a block, and as usual mighty disappointed the Board won’t give me one. My gal, who has been waiting all these years, will cry her eyes out. She always does.”

“I am sorry you weren’t lucky, Fred,” Dugdale said sympathetically.

“Not halfso sorry as I ammeself, Mr Dugdale,” Blair rejoined grimly. “Still, it’s no use singing about it. What you must do now is to head a syndicate of a few blokes to take a try in Tattersall’s. The Golden Plate is to be run on August 2nd, and you’ll be just in time. Tickets, one pound three and sixpence; first prize, twenty thousand quid, second, ten thousand, third, five thousand. What about it?”

“Yes, I am agreeable, Fred.”

“Good!” Blair went on: “You’ve got the luck now, and, while you’re getting the run of it, put your name down first. Be sure your name is first, now. Put me down, too, and ’EneryMcIntosh, will you?”

“I will.”

“And you’ll do it tonight before midnight,” urged Blair seriously. “Tomorrow your luck might be out.”

Dugdale laughed. “And what shall we call the syndicate?” he asked.

“Why-Daly’s Yard Syndicate, of course.”

“All right, we’ll do it, Fred,” Dugdale agreed.

“Good! If we don’t pull in the winning horse, my name’s not Blair.”

And so it happened that the Daly’s Yard Syndicate-consisting of Dugdale, Mr Thornton, Ralph, Blair and McIntosh-was formed, and five tickets bought in the Golden Plate Sweep.

Dugdale’s luck was a subject of the dinner conversation that night.

“I am so glad he drew Daly’s Yard,” Mrs Thornton remarked to everyone, the others at table being her husband, niece, and “son”. “But I shall be sorry to see him go. I like Dugdale, and I liked his poor father.”

“His father would have been proud of him had he not-had he lived,” the squatter said, leaning back in his chair in a suddenly reflective mood. “It must have been a terrible thing for the son, faced by the manner of his father’s death. However, he has proved his worth. He will get on all right, no doubt of that.”

“He will find life very lonely there by himself,” Ralph put in. “He will find he’ll have to look out for a wife.”

Whilst speaking he sat his chair in a manner that could not now be described as graceful. He lounged rather than sat. Wearing a black dinner-coat, this and his shirt and tie were faultless; but round his waist he wore a cummerbund of brilliantblue, and from his shirt-cuff there hung a silk handkerchief of the same colour.

Apparently neither Mrs Thornton nor her husband noticed the incongruity of dress, or the slipshod manner of sitting at table he had fallen into. The effect, however, was not lost on Kate Flinders. To her the young man had visibly changed during the few short months since he had finished with college. It seemed that he was quickly losing the polish that a first class college had put on him; and Kate observed this progressive deterioration with an acute sense of regret, as well as anxiety, concerning the hidden reason for it.

The imminence of Dugdale’s departure for his block also weighed heavily upon her soul. He had become, as it were, a part of Barrakee; and, since she had known she loved him, it was a little balm to know she was near him. But now he was going away-probably right out of her life-the loss that was coming to her was overwhelming. And here was Ralph cynically saying that Dugdale would be obliged to seek a wife.

“You are right, dear,” Mrs Thornton agreed, bestowing on the young man an affectionate smile. “But I think he will find it hard to secure a good wife. Nowadays the girls won’t stay in the bush. They must be in the cities, gadding about in clothes which I consider indecent. What the world is coming to I don’t know.”

“Do you hear that, Kate?” the young man said laughing. “You’ll have to lengthen your dress.”

Kate was daydreaming, but awoke with an answering laugh when directly addressed.

“Lengthen it,” she cried, with assumed gaiety. “Why, when I go to Sydney again I shall be obliged to shorten it, if I would avoid being laughed at.”

Ralph turned to the Little Lady: “There, Mother,” he said. “Even in our own family do we find thesinners. ”

“Some were born many years ago,” interjected the squatter, with twinkling eyes.

“I know,” Mrs Thornton countered. “Why, last year, when we were in Melbourne, I saw a woman of forty dressed like a girl of fourteen.”

“I was not referring to the age of the sinners, my dear Ann. I was thinking of the time when quite a young man-before I met you-I went to a music hall in Sydney. And there I was duly shocked at seeing a dancer in a dress much longer that is worn by the average woman today. Each new fashion shocks us at first, till the next shock makes the previous shock seem old fashioned.”

Mrs Thornton sighed. “Yes, John. Perhaps that is it. We are growing old fashioned, you and I.”

Dinner over, they played cribbage, and when Mrs Thornton announced her intention of retiring Kate rose, too, to leave with her. Ralph kissed the Little Lady affectionately. Kate he kissed with equal warmth, whispering:

“Goodnight, Kate. I am sorry I am so poor a sweetheart.”

The girl’s eyes widened with surprise, and she would have replied, had not Ralph gone over to a chair, where lay a novel he was reading. Was Ralph tiring of the engagement? Was he thinking of asking for his release? And then Dugdale’s white face and burning eyes, when he looked at her that night of the party, made her catch her breath.

And an hour later, when she fell asleep, Ralph Thornton was in his room, looking through his clothes. First he selected an old suit and a pair of riding boots, which he placed on a chair. Then he chose a complete change of underwear.

On the floor he spread out a bed sheet, and on that he laid two blankets. On top of these he put the underwear, his shaving kit, a hairbrush and comb, an old hat and a few soft collars. The long sides of the sheet he turned in, and then rolled up the whole into a cylinder, which he strapped. He had created a bushman’s swag. From deep in one of the drawers of the chest he produced a hessian sugar bag, containing smaller calico bags of flour, tea, and sugar. Yet another bag of cooked meat and bread he added to those in the hessian bag, and the neck of this gunny sack he loosely connected to one of the swag straps with a towel.

His preparations complete, he changed into the old suit and donned the riding boots. He was ready for his Great Adventure. With the swag slung over his back, balanced by the gunny sack hanging in front of him, he picked up an old billy and silently opened the door. Two minutes later he was walking through the garden to the bottom gate.

Beyond the gate he halted. It seemed that he was waging a battle that had often been fought before without decision. There he stood on the fine edge of the divide. Behind the gate lay his home, his inheritance, the woman he loved as his mother, the big generous man he looked up to and admired as his father, the pure lovely girl who was to be his wife. Before him, across the billabong, a little way up the river, awaited the goddess of love, that beautiful black girl whose arms were so soft and clinging, whose kisses were so passionate, so full of the very essence of love’s perfect joy.

For, though he had decided, the decision had been arrived at only after much mental struggle. He fully recognized the consequences of the step he was about to take, yet there was that lure of the bush, that call to his blood, that pull at every fibre of his being which at last had become irresistible. His mind was chaos. One side of him appeared to cling passionately to home and love, whilst the other demanded that wonderful freedom from all restraint, compared with which the freedom of Barrakee was as artificial as that which is conceded to the more favoured animals at the Zoo.

The hesitation disappeared of a sudden. He almost ran across to the riverbank, and hurried up the empty river till he arrived at the fallen red gum at which he had always met Nellie.

There was no one, however, awaiting him. But stuck in a cleft stick, so placed that he could not miss seeing it, he saw a dainty silk handkerchief which he recognized as one of his gifts to Nellie Wanting. The handkerchief was wrapped about a folded piece of paper. With a sense of calamity he struck a match to read the almost illegible scrawl:

I can’t come (he read). It would be no good for you. I’m black, you white. Goodbye my Ralphie-my Ralphie.

The young man’s mind ceased to function for a while; Bony’s note, written with Nellie Wanting’s sanction, had the effect of a stunning blow.