Capricornia

“Yes,” she whispered, looking up quickly.

“You’d give anything?”

“Yes Daddy.”

“If I had to die today to let you go?”

She looked down.

“Answer truly dear, like my own truthful Conny. If I were to die today and Shillingsworth were to come to take you, would you stop crying?”

“No Daddy—I could never stop.”

He smiled. After a while he said, “My dear one! But I reckon you’d nearly stop. But honey, would it break your heart to know you couldn’t go?”

She stared for a moment, then said, “But Daddy—you said he’d come for sure. Isn’t he going to take me?”

“Yes dear. He’ll take you. He’ll have to. His heart can’t be stone. When he realises he will.”

“Isn’t he—can’t I go now Daddy?”

“Yes dear. But he’s busy just now. We’ll have to go over to Missus Lace first.”

“Not Mister Shillingsworth?”

“Of course he’ll take you in any case. But Missus Lace might take you first. Anyway, we’ll see. We’ll have to go soon so’s not to miss her. What’s today?”

“Wednesday.”

“Train-day. We’ll have to go tomorrow. Get Bootpolish to catch two horses—old Walleye for me.”

“But you’re too sick to get up Daddy.”

“I’ll have to talk to Missus Lace about you.”

“But you can’t ride a horse.”

“I can ride old Walleye.”

“But he’s got the swamp-cancer. He’s dying, Daddy. He’s nearly dead.”

Differ smiled as he said, “All the better. Dying horses for dying men.”

She stared.

“You don’t think I’m dying, do you?” he asked.

“No,” she whispered.

He smiled and whispered, “Well I am—strange as it may seem.”

In the red dawn of the following day the naked Bootpolish carried his master out of the house and set him in the saddle. Differ scarcely knew what was happening. During the night he had vomited blood till it seemed there could be none left in his body. His skin was as white and limp and dry as paper-bark; bloody froth oozed from his lips. Bootpolish fixed a blanket on the horse’s bony withers, and laid his master forward. Walleye staggered under the puny weight and groaned. Oh wretched horse! He could scarcely hold up his head. His breast was eaten almost to the bone by a frightful sore. It was merciless to load him; but he was the only quiet horse that Differ owned.

They set out. Constance rode ahead, holding in her own impatient mount and leading Walleye. Bootpolish walked beside Differ and held one of his flaccid arms. Thus they travelled towards the railway, following a short-cut through the sterile stony hills. In the red evening they came within sight of the white roofs of the Experimental Station. Constance saw it first and cried out joyfully. Bootpolish looked up from weary feet and told his master, and getting no response, tugged at the arm and said, “Close-up Boss—look see.” Still Differ did not answer. Bootpolish tugged harder, and to his astonishment, and the horror of Constance, tugged him out of the saddle. Differ fell like a bag of sand.

Constance cried out. Bootpolish bent over Differ and took his outflung hand. Constance dismounted and came running. She found her father staring. She fell to her knees and said anxiously, “Daddy!” Still he stared, rather malevolently, and without winking a lid. “Daddy!” she said. “Oh Daddy don’t look at me like that! What’s the matter?”

A pause.

Constance looked wide-eyed at Bootpolish, who turned away and spat. She turned back to her father and clutched his thin shoulders and whispered hoarsely, “Daddy—Daddy.” Her voice rose high and shrill. “Oh Daddy if you look like that—I—Oh Daddy don’t be dead—Oh don’t you—I—I—Oh Daddy dear—my Daddy!”

Mrs Humbolt Lace was gone. She was hundreds of miles away. The steamer from Singapore, always erratic in her movements, and especially so just then when more than reefs might lurk to do her harm in the lonely Silver Sea, had arrived in Port on Tuesday night instead of Friday as expected, and had departed at noon next day.

Mrs Lace had rushed up to town on Tim O’Cannon’s motor-trolley. Her spouse had stayed at home. Because the lady took much baggage, there was neither room nor power left in the vehicle for the conveyance of another passenger. Her spouse was glad, having had too much of the lady’s going as it was, it being rather like the coming of a myall cow to the Station’s stockyard branding-ramp, a panting, stamping, straining, goggle-eyed business. Lace thought in such terms these days, having become the State Stock Expert since the collapse of the cotton-boom, and therefore being in daily contact with bovine beasts.

Mrs Lace was quite a young woman, bride of only a year, but no longer the sprightly heifer that her spouse had wooed. She was a grown cow now, and a cow in calf at that, than which there is no more irritatingly irrational creature on the earth. Not that Lace did not respect her nor feel concerned about the burden that so angrily she often told him he had thrust upon her; far from it; he thought a great deal of her, even supposed he still loved her; but of late she had become extremely tiresome.

She had not voluntarily parted thus hurriedly from Humbolt. To her it seemed indecent that a pregnant woman of her standing (Government Service) should have to board the steamer without a husband to go with her and dispute about her accommodation and whisper anxiously to the doctor and stewardess—almost as indecent as a Government Service woman’s having her baby in the hospital in Port Zodiac with the wives of workingmen and Greeks. She had tried hard to induce Tim O’Cannon to give up the driving-seat to Humbolt. Tim said that to do so would be a breach of Rules and Regulations, for which, in military style, he was a stickler.

Lace had at the back of his mind a desire to go combo. He had had it ever since he came in contact with the comely lubras of the district. But at first it had been kept in check by what he called his Sense of Decency. Not that he was a prude. Apparently he was only colour-proud. Then he had met Miss Carrie Oats, holidaying niece of the Government Secretary, promise of conjugality with whom had made thoughts of going combo baser still. Then the realisation of the promise had ousted such thoughts completely; or almost completely; for when the joys of wedlock began to pall, he found that the roots remained. The roots began to put forth their weeds again when in his flaccidity he observed how potent bulls could be with a variety of wives. Still he dared not try to emulate the bulls while Carrie was about.

Such was the man to whom came Constance the Javan Princess, exotic enough to spice desiring her with the barbarity of comboing, ordinary enough to save the spice from the suspicion of being poison. But it was not as a Princess that she came to him. She came as a distracted child leading a dying horse on which lay her limp dead father. As such Lace saw her first, and as such regarded her for some time to come, except in moments when without wishing it his eyes enjoyed her curves and sturdiness.

He was very kind to her. He telephoned to the police in town and with their permission buried Differ, and of his own accord, and being a man who respected Religion, read over him the Burial Service, consigning him to Eternal Life. Then he sent for Oscar and heard with genuine sympathy the story of Constance’s life and hopes. So kind was he that he did not directly tell her that her hopes were dashed, but said that though it seemed unlikely that Mr Shillingsworth would be able to take her down to Flinders, it was not unlikely that some day Mrs Lace might do so when she found it became necessary for her to make the trip again. It was his intention to send her to the Compound, not hurriedly and harshly, but bit by bit as it were, by carefully talking to her about it and trying as a Protector of Aborigines to prepare the way for her. She made him sorry for the half-caste race, so much so that he determined to draw the attention of the people of the South to their plight some day, and began his good work with a practical expression, by buying her some expensive clothes to replace her rags, though it pleased him to catch a glimpse of her pretty body that the rags made possible.

Constance liked him. He was about thirty, twice her age, but younger by far than any whiteman she had ever spoken to but ugly Frank McLash. And he was handsome. She liked his curly brownish hair and kind blue eyes. He was like the men in magazines, whom one always saw with women in their arms, crying passionately, “I love you.” How well she knew that phrase! Pleasant tales were those of the magazines, telling of a world in which she lived in dreams. No world that of weary open spaces and inevitable Wets and Drys and snakes and ants and kangaroos and eternal trees and cancered horses. She had lately read a tale called The Hybiscus Flower, which dealt with a half-caste girl of the Oceanic Isles whom a young man like Lace wooed delightfully at first, then gave a baby to and treated badly. Constance, associate of lubras, was not nearly as innocent as her father had believed. And then the hero of the story, after many adventures, in which he acted with meanness that would seem unforgivable to anyone less simple than Constance and the author and publisher of the tale, fell back into love with the girl, and, defying all the principles that at first had worried him, married her in a mission-church and settled down to make her happy ever after.

At first she slept in a little hut not far from the station house, in which had dwelt a bevy of young lubras who had drifted in as soon as Mrs Lace was gone. After a few days’ residence there she was allowed to sleep in a real bed under the elevated house in a little cane-screened room that Lace had had rigged up for himself when he tired of the bridal bower. She was glad to have the pretty little room, and therefore did not deny what Lace said about the danger of her being molested by niggers if she remained in the hut, though she did not think the danger existed.

Thus many days passed quietly. Constance stopped grieving for her father. Lace began to be troubled in his mind, or rather in that part of it where what he called his Decency held sway, because that part of it where the desire to go combo lurked was prompting him to stop thinking about sending her to the Compound. Gradually they became more friendly. Once he asked her if she were sorry he was married, and argued till she said Yes to please him, then told her that if he were not he would marry a girl like herself. She was pleased. Later she was puzzled by his begging her to forget what he had said. And she was puzzled by his conduct in the matter of her drinking whiskey. He forced her several times against her will to drink it, then scolded himself for having done so, saying It Isn’t Right.

Then one night while she was undressing by the light of a candle, she heard a noise outside the little room, and thinking that it was some prowling animal, rushed half-dressed to the curtain to see what the creature was. It was poor peeping Lace.

He rose as though his backbone had been turned to lead. She was much too astonished to retreat. After a moment he gasped, “You all r-right?”

She simply stared.

“I-I-I thought I heard you c-call.”

Still she stared.

“Afraid?” he gasped.

“No,” she murmured, and becoming aware of her nakedness began to retreat.

He held up the curtain and blinked, murmuring, “Th-thought I heard y-you sing out.”

She snatched up her nightdress and donned it hastily, then said, “I thought it was a dingo.”