Chapter XIX The Order of Release
“Don’t you think it’s time Garth was home?”
Aileen Macleod was standing by the garden gate, shading her eyes as she looked across the paddocks. Her husband, who had come upon her unexpectedly, laughed a little.
“Oh, hen with one chick!” he said, “will you ever learn to let that boy out of your sight for an hour?”
“Indeed, I think I’m very good,” Aileen defended herself. “I let him go all over the country, which you know very well, and climb enormous trees, and go swimming with the O’Connor boys, and use an axe, and do all sorts of things that would have filled us both with horror six months ago. And I take hold of myself with both hands and say, ‘Aileen Macleod, you’re not going to be nervous and make a poodle of your son!’ But this is the first day he has ridden Roany to the township, Tom: and, you know, Roany isn’t old Jane!”
“No, thank goodness!” said Tom with fervour. “But you needn’t worry, really, dear: he manages Roany quite well, and the pony is perfectly safe. And you are good, and so am I, because often I’m just as nervous about the blessed kid as you are—so there!” They smiled at each other. “Anyhow, here he comes. The little beggar’s racing, too!”
Garth came into sight, sitting very straight, with his hands well down, and with Roany going at his best hand-gallop. He took the shortest cut across the paddock, which included a fair-sized log, over which the pony hopped gaily, while both parents gasped.
“I didn’t know Garth could sit that!”
“Neither did I,” said Tom, with a grin. “Oh, he’s developing! I wonder what’s making him hurry so.”
“I wonder where are his bundles,” said the lady of the house, with some concern. “I provided him with two sugar-bags, and he was to bring bread and meat, and all sorts of oddments, and to come home slowly. Can anything be wrong?”
“He doesn’t look as if there were,” Tom said.
He did not. As he caught sight of the two who waited for him at the gate, he took off his hat and whirled it round his head with a mighty shout, digging his heels into Roany, who shot up the hill in response. They pulled up.
“What’s your hurry, old son? And where are your bundles?”
“You don’t know who’s coming!” Garth cried, with dancing eyes.
“’Possum?”
“No! ’Possum can come any old day. This is a most awfully special visitor. Hurry up and guess!”
“The only person who would be that,” said Tom slowly, “is old Metcalfe——”
Garth gave a little shout of joy.
“Good old Daddy! I knew you’d guess!”
“I say, it isn’t really, Garth?”
“Yes, it is. He’s coming out now, too.”
“Now! But when did he come?”
“He came by last night’s boat. He wrote, and sent you a telegram, too, but of course we haven’t sent in for the mail for three days—I ’specs they’re both in this bundle,” said Garth, hauling a packet of letters from his pocket. “So when he got here and found no one to meet him he wouldn’t come out last night, and he stayed at the hotel. I met him just starting out in a buggy.” Garth gave an irrepressible chuckle. “He didn’t know me from Adam. I rode up, and said, ‘Hallo, doctor!’ and he said, ‘Who are you, young man?’ and looked at me as if I was a wombat.”
“What did you say?” asked his mother.
“I just laughed and laughed, it was so funny. And then he suddenly said, ‘By Jove, it’s Garth!’ and he jumped out of the buggy and came and felt me all over, to see how fat I’d got. So I gave him all the bundles, and I raced on ahead to tell you. He’ll be here in two jiffs.”
“Then, this is where I hurry,” said Aileen. “Thank goodness, I turned out the spare room two days ago! It must have been a brain-wave!”
“Come and we’ll help,” Tom said to Garth. “Let your pony go.”
They flung themselves at what remained of the morning’s housework with such good will that preparations for dinner were well established, and every room shining, when the hotel buggy drove up, and they all trooped to the gate.
“Well!” said Dr. Metcalfe, pausing on the veranda. “Let me look at you all.”
He looked from one to the other, until Aileen complained that the look was becoming a stare. Perhaps it was upon her that it dwelt longest. Garth and his father had filled out and broadened beyond belief: they were deeply tanned and clear-eyed, and in each was a curious look of resoluteness that the doctor had never seen before. But the change in Aileen was deeper. The fragile, willowy girl of Toorak had gone: in her place was a woman with lines about her eyes, yet a new beauty in her face. A gracious woman, with perfect health on her brown cheek, and in her eyes perfect happiness. He looked at her hands: in the old days they had been like the inner petals of a rose, as soft and smooth, and delicately pink. Now they were still smooth and well-kept, but hard, and bronzed. She held them out to him with a quaint little gesture.
“You needn’t look at my hands—I told you I was a working-woman!”
He took the slim hands in his, and bent over them.
“I find them extremely good hands,” he said “And all of you make a tonic for tired eyes. I haven’t seen three such visions of health for years, and the curious part of it is that though you’re lone exiles you don’t look unhappy!”
“I’m afraid we’ve given up the ‘exile’ stand-point,” Tom said, laughing. “It was pathetic, of course; but it grew so ludicrously incorrect that we had to abandon it for the sake of our own self-respect. Come in, old man, and get your coat off.”
“You must bring him to the kitchen when he’s ready,” Aileen declared. “If I don’t cook the dinner there won’t be any, and you needn’t think I’m going to miss any of his visit!”
“We’ll come and help cook,” the doctor said.
He watched them, later—Aileen, with her sleeves rolled above her elbows, compounding pastry, while Tom prepared vegetables, and Garth scrubbed potatoes.
“Do you always manage this way?”
“Mercy, no!” said Tom. “She won’t let us. She’s proud, and haughty, and insists on doing everything herself, and she hunts us out into the paddocks to toil in the heat—doesn’t she, Garth?”
“And then they come in, and bully me outrageously, and turn me out of my own kitchen!” said Aileen, laughing. “Isn’t it a nice one, doctor?”
“It is,” said the little doctor, looking round the white kitchen, with its gleaming tins and bright stove. “I never saw such a companionable place. Do you mind if I spend most of my time here?”
“Not a bit,” said Aileen. “We do, ourselves.” She peeped through the oven, door at tartlets that were becoming puffy and brown. “But you must see all the estate. Tom will take you after dinner.”
“You must come, too,” said Tom.
“If I can.”
“H’m,” said Tom reflectively. He nodded presently to Garth, and they slipped away.
“Just ride over to ’Possum,” Tom said. “Tell her we’ve got a visitor, and ask her can we borrow her for a bit. Mother mustn’t be too much tied for the few days the doctor can spare.”
Garth nodded, and fled to the stable for his bridle; and thus it was that, just as dinner was over and Aileen was experiencing the momentary inward pang that comes before tackling clearing away and washing-up, ’Possum rode up.
“Got a free afternoon,” she said, having greeted the stranger shyly. “There’s not much doing on the farm just now. Thought I might do a few odd jobs.”
She fell upon the remains of the meal and removed them to the kitchen, Aileen following, protesting.
“Now, look here, Missus,” said ’Possum, “ain’t you got a visitor?—I mean, haven’t you? And here am I with not enough to do to keep meself warm. Just you all go out an’ show him the place, an’ I’ll clear up an’ get tea.”
“Oh, ’Possum, you are a dear!” said Aileen gratefully.
“Poof!” said ’Possum. “An’ I’m comin’ to-morrow, an’ every day while he’s here. Not often I get a chance to use that little stove!” She looked affectionately at the glass door of the oven, and then removed Aileen gently but firmly from the kitchen.
They wandered over the estate throughout the afternoon, pointing out to their visitor beauties of sheep and calves, whereat he was politely unappreciative, and beauties of fern gullies, and lake, and hillside, which made him as enthusiastic as the most exacting proprietor could desire. They showed him where the crops had been, and where the lucerne defied the approach of winter and still grew green and strong; and they quoted for him prices of cattle, and sheep, and pigs, of fowls, and eggs, and vegetables, until his brain reeled. They dragged him up the ladder into the loft, full of fragrant hay ready for the winter; they took him to the racks where golden maize-cobs were drying, and to the shed where sacks of peas stood. “Thrashed them myself, with a flail,” said Tom proudly. They introduced him to the fat Berkshire piglings in the sty, and to the incubator which was to hatch enormous broods of chickens and make Aileen’s fortune; they showed him sheds and stables, tool-room and garden implements, and crops of root vegetables and winter cabbage, until he gaped with awe. And at last they brought him into the front garden, where masses of bronze Japanese chrysanthemums blazed in the warm sunshine of late autumn; and on the veranda ’Possum had long chairs ready and a tea-table, brave with bright silver and china, with tea-cakes smoking in a hot dish over a spirit-lamp, and a copper kettle bubbling. The weary visitor sat down thankfully.
“Eh, but this is the most comfortable place I’ve seen for a long time!” he said. “The very look of this veranda would make a man hungry, Miss O’Connor!” At which ’Possum blushed hotly, and thanked Providence once more that the tea-cakes had turned out like feathers.
She rode away after leaving the supper-table ready. They watched her cantering across the paddock. To-day she rode a fiery young mare of her father’s, sitting it as though she were part of the animal. It shied violently at a bunch of dead leaves, and the little doctor gasped, but apparently ’Possum had not noticed any movement. A clump of trees hid her.
“So that’s the right-hand man?” the doctor said thoughtfully.
“That’s the godsend,” Tom answered.
“That’s the dearest, best-hearted——” Words did not come easily to Aileen. But she looked after ’Possum with a smile.
“Well, I knew from your letters that she was an extraordinarily good farm-hand,” said the doctor. “But you didn’t prepare me for finding an uncommon nice girl as well.”
“That’s Aileen’s doing,” said Tom.
“Indeed it’s not,” Aileen said quickly. “I have only put on a little polish. But ’Possum is her own dear, honest self. She has taught me more than I could ever teach her; and not only work, but things that matter more.” But she would not say what those things were.
Dr. Metcalfe came from Garth’s bedroom that evening with a very contented face.
“Well?” said Tom and Aileen together.
“I’ve overhauled every inch of your son,” said the doctor, sitting down. “And I would not have thought that eight months could make such a difference. There is absolutely no sign of the old delicacy. He’s just a great, hardy young ruffian, and if you weren’t growing into a bigger edition of the same thing yourself, Tom, I should advise you to be polite to him, in case he handled you roughly! Seriously, I’m enormously pleased. You must have had a hard time, but it has paid you well.”
“Garth is the main thing, of course,” Tom said. “But it has paid in other ways, too. Of course, we have had luck. We struck a wonderful season, and we had no trouble with drought or bush-fires, or anything else. We haven’t made a fortune. But there’s money in it—not enough to get excited over, but enough to make one feel easy about the future. What with the stock, the wool, the crops, and the fowl-yard and vegetable-garden, we’ve had a very decent season, haven’t we, Aileen?”
“Yes,” said Aileen solemnly. “I’m going to have a new hat!”
“You can have the best hat in Melbourne,” said her husband.
“Thank you, but I won’t bother,” said she. “It’s at Barke’s, and it’s three-and-elevenpence. I shall get it next time I drive in.”
The doctor looked from one to another, his eyes very kindly.
“Well,” he said, and paused; “I hunted you away from Melbourne, to make your boy into a strong fellow. And you’ve done it. I don’t want to make rash promises or raise false hopes. But Garth has improved so wonderfully that I cannot see that there is any real reason for you to bury yourselves down here for ever. If you gave him, say, another year of Gippsland, I think you might with perfect safety take him back to Melbourne. You’d have to watch him, of course. But, with an occasional holiday in the country, he would get on quite well.”
Tom looked at Aileen, and she at him.
“What do you say?” said each.
The doctor laughed.
“I’m going out to smoke a pipe,” he said. “You can talk it over together. But it would be safe to come.”
He went out.
“You’d like to go back, dear,” Tom said. “You’ve been most awfully plucky, but I know it hasn’t been easy. I’m glad it isn’t a life-sentence for you. I was afraid it meant that.”
“I don’t think I’d be afraid,” she said.
“You’re never afraid of anything,” said Tom.
“I am still afraid, and I always will be, whenever I turn out a pudding!” Aileen said quaintly. “There is always in me a lurking horror that it will be sodden in the middle! And I will be afraid of snakes until I die. But I have given up being afraid of the estate. I like it.”
Something in her tone made him look at her steadily.
“You mean——?” he said.
“I wish I knew what you wanted,” she said suddenly. “Are you keen to go back, Tom? You did like it all, you know—Melbourne, and races, and dinners, and golf, and theatres, and all the old life. You never would say you missed it, but I knew you did.”
“I did: for a month,” he said. “Then it just faded. I would have gone on missing it, I think, if you hadn’t been so content. I don’t know how you managed it. But it used to make a fellow ashamed of himself for feeling blue, with your happy face always about... and to hear you singing.”
She drew a long breath.
“Then—don’t you want to go back? Ah, tell me, Tom!”
Tom Macleod laughed.
“I’ll go back to-morrow, if you like,” he said. “But otherwise—well, I think there are plenty of people in Melbourne without me.”
“Oh, I’m so glad!” she cried. “Tom, I don’t want to go back!”
“Are you certain?” he asked. “It’s a hard life for you, my girl.”
“Indeed, it isn’t. I’m alive, now—and I don’t think I ever was in Melbourne. I thought I was happy there, and indeed I was. But this is different, somehow. One has so many interests. I feel part of the world now, not just a drone.”
“Just raising chickens and vegetables?”
“Some one has to do it,” she said. “And I didn’t raise anything before—except one small boy, and even that job was nearly spoilt! Now I’m part of the world’s work. Oh, I like it, Tom! You do, too, don’t you?”
“My tastes have become altogether common,” he said, laughing. “I’m enormously interested in the crops we’ve planned out for next season, and I’m going to put in Tasmanian potatoes that will make Cuninghame open its eyes! And I’m going to sow onions, and make an enormous fortune——”
“And I strawberries,” Aileen said eagerly. “Think of the summer visitors, all eating them, and my bank-book swelling!”
“And there’s money in those calves we bought at Metung,” he said. “With that lucerne, and all the winter feed we’ve got, we’ll have something worth looking at in the spring!”
They looked at each other, and laughed.
“So the end of it is, we say, ‘Thank you very much, kind sir, but we don’t want to go back from the land’—and we turn into old farmers,” Aileen said. “Won’t Garth rejoice!”
“And ’Possum?” Tom said.
“Oh—’Possum!” Her face grew very soft. “I told you I would always be afraid of some things, Tom. I should never have been brave enough to tell ’Possum I was going away!”
The End