By Blow and Kiss

CHAPTER XXIII

With its extra load the boat was perilously deep in the water; it had picked up the other people off a patch of high ground, where they had been cut off, and were being threatened by the still rising waters; but the current carried them towards the township with little more exertion than was required to keep the boat pointing the right direction and to dodge the flotsam that at times swept dangerously near their overloaded craft.

But they came at last to the bridge and swept past the end of it, and their line was caught by the watchers on the bridge, and they were hauled into safety and helped stumbling with weariness up the slope to the township, and hot food and drinks pressed on them, and the hospitality of the whole township flung wide to them.

Trooper Dan and Mrs. Dan were waiting with the others to see the landing, and Mrs. Dan ran to Steve. “Man alive, Steve,” she said, “you’re like a walkin’ corpse. You’re just fair beat. You must come to us and stay a day or two, Steve. There’s a bed all ready for you.”

Steve straightened his shoulders and laughed.

“I’m fit as a trout,” he said jauntily; “nothing wrong with me. And there’s Miss Ess there – Scottie’s niece. It might be better if you took her than let her go to the hotel. Where’s Scottie?”

“Off riding up and down the east bank in case you were carried in higher up,” said Mrs. Dan. “Steve – is it the girl?”

“It’s the girl we went to look for,” he said, pretending to misunderstand her. “Miss Ess – Scottie’s niece.”

But Mrs. Dan laughed in his face and darted to her husband. “Dan, come an’ help,” she said hurriedly. “We must take the girl with us. Back me up now, and if we don’t get her, I’ll never forgive you – never.”

“Niver’s a long word, mavourneen,” he said. “But come on an’ we’ll try.”

“She’s coming with us,” said Mrs. Dan to the ones who were helping Ess up the bank. “We’ll care for her till her uncle comes.”

Ess, a little confused by all this bother and welcome, looked at her. “It’s very good of you all,” she faltered. “Couldn’t I go – isn’t there an hotel?”

“Ye can’t,” said Dan, promptly. “What am I to be after tellin’ your uncle when he comes back, if I let ye go to a hotel? We’ve got everythin’ ready, an’ your uncle will be comin’ straight there to look for you.”

Mrs. Dan slipped a hand under her arm. “You don’t know me, my dear, but that doesn’t count these days. I know your uncle, and I’d like you to come. And I’m a friend of Steve’s.” She said the last words in the girl’s ear, and at the hint of colour that drained in her pale face and the soft “Very well – I’ll come,” Mrs. Dan was flushed with a sense of coming victory.

So Ess went with Mrs. Dan and swallowed the food they gave her, and let Mrs. Dan help her to undress and bathe and to stumble into bed, with the sleep closing her eyes before she had lain down. She slept there for a solid twelve hours, and never even heard her uncle come in and stand looking at her with wet eyes, or felt the kiss he dropped lightly on her cheek.

Mrs. Dan woke her at last, and gave her food and warm soup, and made her lie down again, although she protested that she was all right now and had slept enough. And even as she protested her eyes closed drowsily, and she snuggled back in the warm blankets, and was asleep again in five minutes.

Mrs. Dan seized the chance thrown to her hand by Scottie’s call, and proceeded to make the most of it and to extract some information to work on. But she could hardly have found a man so hard to fossick anything from. Scottie was not given to gossip or idle talk at any time, and the merest suspicion that he was being pumped was enough to re-double his native caution.

Mrs. Dan talked first about the flood and the damage it had caused, and the good the rain had done the country. She passed from that on to the narrow escape Ess and Dolly had had, and how thankful she was they had been found in time.

Scottie thanked her and thanked her again for her kindness in taking Ess in. Mrs. Dan seized the opening.

“I could never let a pretty young girl like that go to an hotel by herself,” she said warmly, “and of course we didn’t know when you’d be in again. But there’s nothing to thank me for. It’s glad I am to have her, and I took to her the first minute I set eyes on her.” She laughed lightly. “But it’s not me or you will have the keeping of her long, Mr. Mackellar – she’s too pretty a face for that.”

Scottie murmured something unintelligible into his teacup. (Mrs. Dan had made him wait to drink a cup of tea, and took care to give it to him scalding hot, so that he could not be too quick over it and go before she had pumped him dry).

“And didn’t I hear some word of her being engaged already?” she asked. This was a pure shot in the dark, except for the half light she had from Steve’s remarks about the girl he had lost being engaged.

“She was – she’s not now,” said Scottie, briefly. This did not help much, for she did not know if the engagement referred to was to Steve or the other man.

“That might be as good a thing as it might be a bad,” she said. “There’s only one thing worse for a girl than breaking her engagement, and that’s keeping to it – if they’re not likely to be well matched.”

Scottie made no reply but to gaze absent-mindedly at her.

“Was it any secret who she was engaged to, or that she was engaged?” she asked.

“No,” said Scottie, slowly, and applied him to his cup again.

Mrs. Dan fidgeted. She told Dan afterwards that she had never been so tantalized in her life, nor made so to feel that she was an inquisitive gossiping busybody. “Not a thing would the man tell me except what I asked him point-blank; and then he’d dodge it if he could.” And Dan had laughed at her.

“Who was it, Mr. Mackellar? I’m not asking out of idle curiosity,” said Mrs. Dan. “I’ll be having a talk with her soon, and I might be able to help her. You know a woman can often tell and ask another woman things she can’t or won’t a man.”

“It was Ned Gunliffe,” said Scottie. Mrs. Dan mentally clapped her hands.

She dropped the subject as lightly as she could, so as to take a new line.

“He’s a man I don’t know much of – well or ill,” she said, “but I’ve no doubt Miss Ess will have acted wisely.”

“I’m glad ye’re sure o’ that,” said Scottie, drily. Mrs. Dan felt uncomfortable. “But aren’t you?” she asked.

“Me?” said Scottie, with a slight air of surprise. “I’m never sure what a woman is doin’, right or wrong; or what she’s thinkin’.”

“Small blame to you,” said Mrs. Dan. “For she often doesn’t herself. Miss Ess has been living down in the cities most of her time, I hear?” Scottie made no reply. He was acting on the truism that “if no questions are asked, no lies need be told,” and he improved on it by adding “and no truths.”

“She’d find the men out here a thought rough after being used to folks with city ways,” said Mrs. Dan, “although you’ve some real well-spoken an’ well-educated men at Thunder Ridge – Ned himself is that, and so is Aleck Gault and Steve Knight. Though Steve’s the best o’ the bunch to my way of thinkin’. Don’t you think so?”

“He’s the best horseman we have,” said Scottie.

“He’s more. He’s the best and the whitest man on the Ridge,” cried Mrs. Dan. “You know I think a lot o’ Steve. He once did something for Dan and me that I’ll never forget. And I’d give a hand to help him.”

Scottie said nothing, and laid his empty cup down carefully. Mrs. Dan saw her chance slipping away. “You like Steve yourself, don’t you? You don’t believe he’s as bad as some make out?”

“I’ve kenned waur,” said Scottie, non-committally.

“Would you have anything to say against it if you knew Steve was in love with Miss Ess, or she with him?”

“There’s nae need tae answer that till I ken they are,” said Scottie, smiling calmly.

“Do you think they are?” said Mrs. Dan, desperately.

“It hardly matters what I think – it’s what they think themselves that counts,” returned Scottie, imperturbably, and moved to the door.

When he had gone Mrs. Dan sat down and fanned herself with a weekly paper. “What a man,” she said to herself. “Oh, what a man. He’d drive me mad in a night. I feel as if I’d been slapped and told to mind my own business. And what have I got for it all? She was engaged to Ned Gunliffe – and I could have had that for the asking from any man on Thunder Ridge to-day or, I suppose, anyone in the township in a week. And it’s broken off. I’d have got that from Steve or from her presently, for a hint of a question. I could swear at myself.”

So the attempt to pump Scottie dry failed – possibly because he was dry by nature.

Mrs. Dan had more success with Ess herself when the time came for a confidential chat.

“I believe I have to congratulate you on your engagement,” she said brightly.

“No, oh no,” cried Ess, hotly. “That – that’s over – it’s broken off.”

Mrs. Dan looked at her gravely. “I’m sorry for that,” she said, “the more by reason because Steve is a friend of mine.”

“But it isn’t – nobody knew – I mean I thought everybody knew it was Ned Gunliffe I was engaged to,” said Ess, in confusion.

Mrs. Dan missed nothing of the confusion nor of the flurried words, and before Ess finished speaking had the whole plot of the story clear in her mind. “But it isn’t” – Steve. “Nobody knew” – about the engagement to Steve. So – Steve and she were engaged secretly; they had quarrelled; the girl had immediately become engaged to Ned Gunliffe, and now that was broken off. The conversation she had had with Steve some time before helped her of course to piece the thing together. The next thing to do was to find if Ess were still in love with Steve – she was sure enough he was with her.

So she talked of all the odd things under the sun and dropped Steve’s name casually, and led the conversation round to the rescue from the flood and the part Steve had played in it. And Ess told with sparkling eyes of the struggle of the boat against the current, and her overwhelming joy when it drew in to the tree.

“Ah, and I know Steve would have been just as glad to see you,” said Mrs. Dan.

She saw the girl’s face fall. “No,” she said slowly, “I hardly remember getting into the boat or what he said; but he didn’t say much afterwards. He scarcely spoke all the way back.”

Under her breath Mrs. Dan made uncomplimentary remarks about the absent Steve.

“He’d have seen you were worn out and didn’t want to talk,” she said.

“No,” said Ess, “it wasn’t that, because I spoke and thanked him, and he just barely answered, and no more. And I was sorry for it because I wanted to be friends with him again. I – ” her voice sank till Mrs. Dan could barely hear, “I was once unkind and rather cruel to him, and he hasn’t forgiven it.”

Ess was sitting on the sofa, and Mrs. Dan crossed the room to her, and sat beside her and laid a hand on her knee.

“My dear,” she said very kindly, “I know well how cruel a girl can be; and the more she loves, the more she’s hurt, and the crueller she can be. But a man forgets the cruel parts if kindness follows.”

“But if the man doesn’t want the kindness – if he doesn’t care?” said Ess, with her voice trembling.

“My dear, my dear, can you be so foolish?” said Mrs. Dan, tenderly. “Won’t you tell me the whole story, dear? Maybe I could help you better. It won’t pass my own lips again, not even to Dan. And maybe it will help you to the tellin’ if I give you this first. Steve loves you, girl; worships the ground you tread. I’ve seen him myself start and change colour and tremble at the thought and the word of you, when I spoke it not knowin’ who it was I spoke of, but the girl the heart of him was breakin’ for. There, there now, my dear, tell me all about it an’ let me help.”

Ess was weeping quietly in her arms when she finished, but presently she sat up and dried her eyes, and steadied her voice and told the whole pitiful tale. She made no attempt to spare or excuse herself in any way. She told of her shame and anger at the proof she had found of his guilt, and of his refusal to clear himself, although he denied it. She told of the blow she had struck him – and Mrs. Dan’s eyes looked down on her bowed head with a curious hardness at the telling of that – and of her promising herself to Ned there in his hearing because – because – she hardly knew why, except, perhaps, that she was so angry with him, and thought that it might hurt him. She told, too, how the engagement had fretted her, and how she had broken it off, and how she had longed to make it up again with Steve and be friends, even if he would have her for nothing more. And Mrs. Dan’s eyes were soft and wet with tears when she finished, and she comforted her, and petted and mothered her as best she knew.

“It’ll all come right, my dear,” she said. “And now don’t let’s talk about it more for the minute. I want to think it over, and I’ve got little Danny to give his bath. Wait here while I do that – or would you like to help me?”

So Mrs. Dan went and fetched in little Danny from the office where he played while his father pretended to work, and did a deal more play than work himself; and enjoyed it more than the child, maybe.

And Mrs. Dan bathed him and made Ess help, and took care that she had the handling of his chubby three-year-old body. And Ess took him on her knee, and towelled him and wiped his soft skin as tenderly and carefully as if it were a delicate hand-painted china, and then hugged and squeezed him as if he were made of unbreakable india rubber. And when they had got him ready for his bed, and heard him say his prayers, and fondled him and petted him and kissed him to their heart’s content, the two women put him to bed, and came back and sat down and looked at one another, and talked whispered baby-lore and mother-talk, with their heart-strings still thrilling under the touch of the baby fingers.

And Mrs. Dan told of the other children she had borne – and lost; and of the manner of their losing, and cried a little, softly, over the telling, while Ess strove, weeping herself, to comfort her.

“Four of them I’ve had,” Mrs. Dan said, “and only little Danny left. One by one, and one by one, they went. The first was when Dan was selectin’ out in the back country, and the sun and the prickly heat and the furnace air was too much for the baby, and I watched him wilt and crumple like a flower on a broken stem – till he died. And when the next one came, Dan scraped the money together, and I went down to the inside country a piece, and stayed there till he was nine months old, and as strong and sturdy as a little Turk. And I knew that Dan was fightin’ to keep the place goin’, and doin’ without proper food and cookin’, and I thought the child was strong enough to stand the weather and the heat, especially as the worst of the summer was over. So I went back. And then the bush fires came, and we had to saddle up and ride, and got away with our bare lives and what we stood in. And Dan carried the baby in his arms till we come to the lagoon; and we waded in to the water, and stayed there with the water to our lips and the heat of the fire blisterin’ the cheeks of us, and Dan holdin’ the poor mite with just his head above water and a hat fendin’ off the heat. And he died of pneumonia, and no doctor to be had till all was over… We gave up the selection then, and Dan joined the force and was doin’ well when the third came. He was stationed in a mining township then, and because it was down nearer the coast and cooler, I thought the child would be all right when it came. But I was ill – terribly ill when she came; and I couldn’t nurse her, and – you can think what I felt when they told me – there was no drop of fresh milk to be had for miles round, and the store had but one case of condensed milk, and when they opened it they found every tin of it was bad. And the baby never got over that first few days, and it went – the third of them. And now there’s little Danny there … and I can never have another. Can you understand how precious he is to me, and what I’d do or not do for the love of him? And now listen to this … listen and remember it, for it may help you to understand something some day. Danny was took ill two year ago. Dan was away at the time – away for three days; and there was none of the women in the place could say what to do with him – one advised one thing and another another, and I didn’t know myself, and I was near crazy. And a man rode for the doctor, rode down river after him, and got to where he’d been, and found he had crossed the river twelve hours before. And the river was running a banker, but this man rode in and tried to swim across at the Staked Crossing – and that means more than I can tell you, or more than you can understand that’s never seen the Staked Crossing and the river in flood. A log struck his horse before he’d gone half-way, and it was drowned, and the man was washed back on the same bank a mile below. And they picked him up half drowned and brought him to, and as soon as he could stand he took another horse and tried again – ”

“It was brave – brave,” murmured Ess, listening with breathless interest.

“It was brave, for he was, and is, a brave man. And this time he won through, but, when he came where the doctor had been, he found him gone again. And he rode his horse to a standstill and borrowed another, and rode till he found the doctor and brought him back at the gallop – and the doctor told us he was just in time. And so – well, I have the child, thanks be to the doctor – and the man that brought him.”

“How you must have thanked him,” said Ess, feelingly.

“Thanked him?” said Mrs. Dan. “He wouldn’t listen to my thanks – laughed at it, and made light and said it was a little thing for any man to do. And the same to Dan when he tried to say with words what our hearts was sayin’. But would you wonder if I’d want to do anything in my power for him; that there’s nothing, barrin’ my husband’s life and my boy’s, that I wouldn’t freely give him for the asking; that I’d put my life or my honour or everything I have or ever hope to have in his bare hands. And I’ll tell you the man’s name, and some day maybe you’ll remember and understand why I’m telling it and this story – the man was Steve Knight.”

“Steve Knight,” whispered Ess.

“Yes, Steve Knight – Fly-by-Night – careless, laughing, happy-go-lucky Steve Knight, that you’ll hear tales and love-stories of by the score, but that never did harm to man, woman or maid, that ever I heard of.”

They sat in silence, without move or stir, and each busy with her own thoughts, for long after that, and then Ess spoke: —

“Thank you for telling me, and thank you for listening to me, for of course you’ll blame me for thinking and acting as I did with Steve.”

“My dear,” said Mrs. Dan, “I’m older than you, and although you’ve lived in the cities where you see and learn a lot, I’ve lived in the out-back, where we don’t see so much, but learn our lessons deep and hard; and I’ve learned never to blame or praise anything that a man or a woman does, for love, or through love. If they’ve done right, they’re above my praise, and if they’ve done wrong, they’ll have their own punishment, without my blame. Don’t do wrong now, and have to bear the punishment for it all your days.”

“What can I do?” said Ess, meekly. “Tell me, and I’ll try to do it.”

“It’s easy to tell, though you may not find it so easy to do. See him and ask him to forget that blow you struck, and ask him to forgive you for ever doubting him. Don’t be sayin’ it as if it was from the teeth outwards, but from the very heart of you. Steve’s not the man I take him for if that doesn’t wipe it off his mind as a dog licks a plate. It’s not so long since I was telling Steve that if he wanted to make it up with a woman who had wronged him, to ask her to forgive him. But Steve has more pride than a man ought to have by rights, or than he’s likely to find of use to him, and I doubt if ever he’d take that easy way out.”

“I was wrong, and I know it now,” said Ess, submissively. “I’m sure he wouldn’t have lied to me. There was a mistake somewhere, and he wouldn’t show me I was wrong because he resented my not believing him. I’ll try to tell him so, Mrs. Dan.”

“And you’ll never regret it, whatever the result,” said Mrs. Dan.

But after Ess had gone to bed that night Dan gave a word to his wife that worried her more than she cared to confess.

“Steve’s down in the bar, and drinkin’ like hell’s bells a-ringin’,” said Dan. “I tried to get him to come up here for an hour, but not he – the divil a fut of him. And he’s done wi’ Thunder Ridge an’ Coolongolong an’ Connor’s Leap an’ all the likes he told me; an’ he’s booked his seat on the first coach out that goes when the roads is passable.”

“I think there’s that here, when he knows it, that’ll hold him longer than the bad roads,” said Mrs. Dan, complacently.

“The river’s droppin’ fast all day,” said Dan, looking at her, “an’ they’re thinkin’ that wi’ extra horses, maybe, they might be passable be mornin’.”

“By morning?” said Mrs. Dan, with a gasp of dismay. “He wouldn’t go in the morning, without bidding us good-bye.”

“He’d go this night widout biddin’ his own father an’ mother good-bye, the way he is now,” said Dan. “’Tisn’t well he is at all, at all, wid the eyes shinin’ out av his head like lighted lamps an’ the two cheekbones of his white face wid a flush on them ye cud light yer pipe at. His chest wounds opened wi’ the rowin’ he tells me – ”

“There’s deeper than his chest wounds opened I’m thinkin’, Dan,” she said. “But don’t take off your boots yet. Go out and see him, and make him promise to come an’ say good-bye at least.”

“I’ve done better than that,” said Dan, with calm satisfaction, as he pulled a boot off. “I’ve fixed it wid them at the stables to tell me the minute there’s word of the horses bein’ asked for.”

Mrs. Dan had to content herself with that, but as they were going to bed, she said quietly, “Dan, how was it you kept that back about Steve?”

Dan stared at her, and then his eyes flickered, and she knew that he understood.

“I never kept back aught about Steve,” he said firmly, “that he didn’t have my sacred word to keep to myself.”

“It’s all right now – only I wondered,” she said. “But, of course, a man’s word is his word, though hearts and the heavens break for it.”

“Mine is,” said Dan.

“Anyhow, I hope the flood’s over the roads another day,” said Mrs. Dan, inconsequently, and a shade uneasily.

CHAPTER XXIV

The roads were reported still impassable next day, and Steve set himself to kill time and thought for another twenty-four hours. He had Dolly Grey and Darby the Bull for company, for Scottie had gone back with the other men to Thunder Ridge, telling the two of them they could wait another day and give the Creek a chance to go down. “I’ll be bringin’ or sendin’ a horse for Ess to ride back in a day or two,” he said, “and I’ll send horses for you both at the same time.”