II
On New Year’s Eve there was always a foregathering of the settlers at the Wandoo homestead. They must foregather somewhere, and Wandoo was the oldest and most flourishing place. It occupied the banks of the so-called Avon River, which was mostly just a great dry bed of stones. But it had plenty of fresh water in the soaks and wells, among the scorched rocks, and these wells were fed by underground springs, not brackish, as is so often the case. Wandoo was therefore a favoured place.
“What am I to wear?” said Jack, aghast, when he heard of the affair.
“Anything,” said Tom.
“Nothing,” said Len.
“Your new riding suit,” said Monica, who had begun to assume airs of proprietorship over him.—“And you needn’t say anything, young Len,” she continued venomously. “Because you’ve got to wear that new holland suit Ma got you from England, and boots and socks as well.”
“It’s awful. Oo-er! It’s awful!” groaned Lennie.
It was. A tight-fitting brown holland suit with pants halfway down the shin and many pearl-buttons across the stomach, the coat with a stiff stand-up collar and rigid seams. Harry had a similar rig, but the twins out—did Solomon in sailor suits with gold braid and floppy legs. At least they started in glory.
Tom, in his father’s old tennis-flannels and a neat linen jacket, looked quite handsome. But when he saw Jack in his real pukka riding rig, he exclaimed.
“God Almighty, but you’ve got the goods!”
“A bit too dashing?” asked Jack anxiously.
“Not on your life! You’ll do fine. Reds all go in for riding breeks and coats as near sporting dog’s yank as they k’n get’m. There’s a couple o’ white washing suits o’ Dad’s as he’s grown out of, as I’ll plank up in the loft to change into tonight. We can’t come in this here cubby again. Once we leave it, it’ll be jumped by all the women and children from round the country to put their things in.”
“Won’t they go into the house?”
“Hallelujah no! Only relations go upstairs. Quality into the dyin’ room. Yahoos anywhere, and the ladies always bag our cubby!”
“Lor!”
But it had to be so. For the New Year’s chivoo the settlers all saved up, and they all dressed up. By ten o’clock the place was like a fair ground. Horses of all sorts nosing their feed-bags; conveyances of all sorts unhitched; girls all muslin and ribbon; boys with hats on at an angle, and boots on; men in clean shirts and brilliant ties, mothers in frill and furbelow, with stiffly-starched little children half hidden under sunbonnets; old dames and ancient patriarchs, young bearded farmers, and shaven civilians ridden over from York. Children rushing relentlessly in the heat, amid paper bags, orange peel, concertina-playing, baskets of victuals and fruit, canvas, rubbish and nuts all over the scorched grass. Christmas!
Tom had asked Jack to organise a cricket eleven to play against the Reds. The Reds were dangerous opponents, and the dandies of the day. In riding breeches made India fashion, with cotton gaiters, and rubber-soled shoes, white shirts, and broad-brimmed hats, they looked a handsome colonial set. And they had a complete eleven.
Tom was sitting on a bat bemoaning his fate. He had only five reliable men.
“Aw, shut up!” said Lennie. “Somebody’ll turn up.—Who’s comin’ in at the gate now? Ain’t it the parson from York, and five gents what can handle a bat. Hell!—ain’t my name cockadoodle!”
In top hats and white linen suits these gentlemen had ridden their twenty-five miles for a game. What price the Reds now!
Tom’s side was in first, Easu and Ross Ellis bowling, Easu, big, loose, easy, looked strange and native, as if he belonged to the natural salt of the earth there. He seemed at home, like an emu or a yellow mimosa tree. He was a bowler of repute. But somehow Jack could not bear to see him palm the ball before he bowled: could not bear to watch it. Whereas fat Ross Ellis, the other bowler, spitting on his hand and rolling the ball in elation after getting the wicket of the best man from York, Jack didn’t mind him.—But unable to watch Easu, he walked away across the paddock, among the squatting mothers whose terror was the flying leather ball.
“Your turn at the wickets, Mr. Grant,” called the excited, red-faced parson, who, Lennie declared, “Couldn’t preach less or act more.”
“We’re eight men out for twenty-six rounds, so smack at ’em. If ye can get the loose end on Ross, do it. I’ll be in t’other end next and stop ’em off Easu. I come in right there as th’ useful block.”
Jack was excited. And when he was excited, phrases always came up in his mind. He had the sun in his eyes, but the bat felt good.
“If a gentleman sees bad, he ignores it. He——”
Here comes the ball from that devil Easu!
How’s that!
“Finds good and fans it to flame—fans it to——”
Joe Low, that stripling, had the other wicket.
Smack! Jack scored the first run off Easu, running for his life.
“You can be a gentleman even if you are a bush-whacker.”
Nine wickets had fallen to Easu for twenty-seven runs, and Easu was elated. Then the parson came forth and stood opposite Jack. He at once whacked Ross’ ball successfully, for three. Jack hitched his belt after the run, and hit out for another.
Smack! no need to run that time. It was a boundary.
Lennie’s voice outside yelling admiration roused his soul, as did Easu’s yelling agrily to Ross: “You give that ball to Sam, this over. You blanky idjut!”
Ross picked up the returning leather, and sent down a sulky grubber which Jack naturally skied. Herbert, placed at a point in the shade, came out to catch it, and missed.
Somehow the parson had steadied Jack’s spirit. And when, in a crisis, Jack got his spirit steadied, it seemed to him he could get a semi-magical grip over a situation. Almost as if he could alter the swerve of the ball by his pure, clairvoyant will. So it seemed. And keyed up against the weird, handsome, native Easu, as if by a magic of will Jack held the wicket and got the runs. It was one of those subtle battles which are beyond our understanding. And Jack won.
But Easu got him out in the end. In the first innings, a terrific full pitch came down crash over his head on to the middle wicket, when he had made his first half century; that was Easu; and Easu stumped him out in the second innings, for twenty.
Nevertheless, the Reds were beaten by a margin of sixteen runs before the parson and the gentlemen in top hats set off for their long and dusty ride to York.