Ethel Turner

“ She wondered if it was Larrie’s fault or Dot’s. Larrie’s she was sure. She wished Dot was her one little girl again, so she could take all the troubles for her.
‘How did Peggie like the new soap I left her?’ she said, anxiously flying from topics that made Dot’s brows frown.
‘Bother Peggie,’ said Dot. ‘She washed baby’s nightgowns with it, and the whole world’s placarded with advertisements that say don’t. Idiot!’
‘The oranges are ripening beautifully,’ said the poor little mother.
Dot went over to her and kissed her passionately.
‘You’re the best woman in the world,’ she said. ”

“ A CONFLICT OF WILLS
‘What things wilt thou leave me,
Now this thing is done?’ Wednesday loosened itself from the other pearls and dropped off the string of days into the strange awful place where have fallen all the days that have ever been. Thursday slid along the thread, trembled and fell. Friday moved on to fill its place. Such a little time, and it too, and the things of it would be gone beyond recall for ever.
Larrie had grown visibly thinner in the short space. He was staking all the happiness of his life on the issue of this. ”

“ Mr Wooster’s words had been as a flash of lightning illuminating all her future life. What dreams she had over the piano as she climbed to clear B’s and wonderful birdlike upper C’s! How proud Larrie would be of her, what fame should be hers, how they [p 76] would travel with the wealth to come, and oh, what a brilliant, beautiful future baby’s should be! ”

“ Even the creeping roses that bloomed eternally, hung crushed and wet or dropped their poor spoiled petals on the spongy paths.
Three months ago the back paddock had been a place of delight for the eye, all tall waving lines of Indian corn grown for the fowls, there had been poppies amongst it, real scarlet English poppies that some one had sown, as well as the white and pink garden [p 84] varieties. Dot had hidden there for fun one light evening with baby in her arms, and Larrie had sought her vainly for half an hour, it was so tall and thick. ”

“ Dot gave a hysterical laugh.
‘All this because your food’s not ready to put in your mouth; men are as bad as animals in the Zoo when meal time is delayed!’
‘You fail in your duty in every respect, look at this kitchen, Dot, think of the dinner, listen to your child.’
But Dot, utterly tired and overwrought, burst into a passion of tears and brushed past him.
‘I h-h-hate you,’ she said, ‘I wish I wasn’t married to you, oh I do wish I wasn’t.’
‘And so do I,’ returned Larrie grimly. ”

“ On Thursdays and Saturdays the mother used to come down to the cottage and put it straight, and help poor Peggie, and bring a new knitted jacket or bootees or a hood or pinafore for baby.
The house was a big lonely place for such a little woman. She was even smaller than Dot. She had a tiny fragile figure, and a tiny face, brown and shrivelled with Australian suns. Her eyes were very big and pathetic, something like Dot’s in wistful moments, and her mouth with its infinitude of lines, was very sweet. ”

“ She would love him better he felt certain; he told himself there was more truth than half the world dreamt in the saying that wife-beaters, [p 108] always provided they are neither drunk nor brutal, are best beloved by their wives.
But he knew in a calmer mood he would despise himself for doing it, and he felt, too, how imperfect would be the victory.
‘You are going?’ was all he said, and ‘Yes,’ she answered.
Wheels sounded a little distance off, they both knew what it was.
‘As surely as you go, Dot, you will repent it.’ Larrie spoke slowly, quietly, his face was deathly pale. ”

“ From the long open window came the sound of Dot’s voice, singing. The [p 29] baby was listening as it lay in the hammock. Larrie was listening as he smoked, though in a half reluctant way.
When little souls are born, just before they come to us from the wonderful place of souls, they have to do with a lottery. To a thousand little blind struggling souls, there are half-a-dozen great good gifts. Nine hundred and ninety-four draw blanks, but the band of six come down to us blessed, rejoicing. Dot had been of the six. She had drawn a voice. Generally Larrie rejoiced because of it. ”

“ Peggie departed, surprised displeasure on her face: she wondered who was the strange gentleman her mistress was on such good terms with, and she thought it most inconsiderate that she should want afternoon tea when there was so much ironing on hand. But she slipped a fresh muslin pinafore on the baby and put on his best little red shoes, before she carried him in to them all warm and flushed with his afternoon sleep.
‘I believe you thought I was only a girl, Mr Wooster,’ Dot said with a merry laugh as she stood up with her beautiful darling in her arms for inspection. ”

“ He felt a sudden contempt for Larrie and an overwhelming sorrow for himself; what a very sweet little child she was with those soft flushed cheeks and wide darkening eyes! And to think there was a lifetime of hunger for one man because he could never touch one of those soft, boyish curls, and the other who had all of her, held her so lightly. ”

“ You have chosen your life, you can go on the stage altogether if you like, but I shall not let you have the child.’
In all he said he would not degrade either of them by the mention of Wooster’s name, but there was nothing else in his thoughts, and only everything else in the world in hers.
A great weariness came to Dot, a weariness of all her present life. She dropped her chin on her hands, and stared out at the pale, creeping light. Her heart was quite cold, she did not seem to care about anything in the world. She looked at Larrie and away again. ”

“ Larrie by nature was an order-loving and somewhat methodical man, and had an inborn objection to see Dot’s pretty slippers lying about the house, or stray articles of baby’s clothing on the verandah chairs. He thought breakfast things too ought not to be left on the table till all hours in the morning, and when Dot asked him how he could expect Peggie to dress baby and make the beds and wash up by ten, he retorted brutally that she was a lazy little slattern, and should do it herself. ”

“ Larrie closed his lips very tightly and strode past her into the house.
‘I might have known she would turn into that kind of woman,’ he muttered, casting off his straw hat in the dining-room. ‘A man never knows a girl till he’s married to her, she never shows herself in a true light before.’
He went into an adjoining bedroom for a linen coat to get cool in.
Baby was disporting himself in the high-sided cot; his little legs were bare and kicking against the pillows, his arms were bare, and his soft, sweet neck. ”

“ Peggie set her bandbox down and followed at his heels into the kitchen.
Dot was standing over the fire. Nearly every piece of crockery in the house stood dirty upon the table. Egg shells lay about, the sugar jar, the currant, the peel, the pepper, the flour, and all the store cupboard were in evidence. She turned a peony face towards them. ‘Dinner’s not ready yet, and it’s no use being cross, Larrie, if only you knew what a bother I’ve had with the fire.’ She lifted a saucepan with a groan and set it aside. ”

“ And he could only see two paths for Dot to walk in, one that was right and would lead to happiness once more, and one that was so utterly wrong that she would step into it not carelessly and unknowingly, but wilfully and with wide open eyes.
It could only be love that would make her do another man’s bidding rather than his. ”

“ He put his face down to hers.
‘Darling, think of our happiness, how can we go on living if you persist in breaking up everything like this. There must be a head, Dot, in everything, there must be obedience. What would a ship be without a captain, or [p 103] soldiers without their chief, an office with no one in authority? And the husband must be the head of the wife. Darling, say you will obey me in this.’
But Dot could not. All her pleading had gone for nothing, why should she listen to Larrie’s? ”

“ Dot dusted this room herself every morning, then before she could put the duster away, the piano would tempt her, and the rest of the house be forgotten. But for Peggie what a place it would have been!
Peggie was a real Cornstalk. She was fully five-feet-eleven, and had impossibly long arms and an impossible number of freckles. But she had also all a Cornstalk’s warm, honest heart; she was devoted to Dot and Larrie, and absolutely worshipped the baby. She made no better a servant as far as work went, than the average untrained Australian girl ”

“ One had a flat sea-green cushion of plush, one a triangular one of silk with frills of coral pink; there was a lovely pith sofa lounge, wide, inviting, with a pile of pillows in cool Liberty silk. In a corner the piano stood, a beautiful instrument though very plain. It was not draped in art muslin, and it had no photos or bric-à-brac on it to jingle and spoil the wonderful music Dot brought forth from it. ”

“ Anger crept into the mother’s big eyes. ‘Has Larrie?’—she said, ‘Larrie, has he—does he?’—indignation overcame her.
‘Oh no,’ said Dot, ashamed of so nearly infringing the law. ‘Larrie’s all right—what are you running your head against, small woman?’
‘He is good to you?’ suspiciously.
‘Very good.’
She got up and went to the piano. ‘I came to have a good practice,’ she said. ‘One can’t with baby about.’
She screwed up the stool, opened the lid, and got out a pile of music. Wagner was at the bottom of the canterbury, and she sought for him, and then attacked him with level brows. ”

“ I will do anything, anything, oh, Larrie, Larrie, Larrie, don’t be hard, when I’m down, Larrie, and broken, and sorry, and miserable—oh, it is cruel, cruel.’ Her sobs choked her, there were wet warm patches on the green cushion, her eyes were drenched, she was shivering with excitement and misery. ”

“ The household tasks that she took upon herself now did not last long, and the little mother did so much sewing for everyone in the cottage that there was really nothing left for Dot to do, but put on occasional buttons and tapes. She resolved to let her voice fill up the blank in her life, it was her one great gift, and she determined she would cultivate it assiduously and then—but she had not yet quite decided what difference the ‘then’ would make.
The Red Road Country had a little plain church at the top of one of its hills, and Dot led the singing as a matter of course. ”

“ That’s the hardest day.’
‘No,’ Larrie said. ‘Be a good little mum and leave her to me.’
He stood up, all his six feet and odd inches, his young face grave, resolute, his eyes full of seriousness.
‘He looks like a man fit to be trusted with his own wife,’ the little mother told herself as she looked up at him.
Aloud, she said in a tone of wistful resignation. ‘Very well, Larrie, you will be gentle with her, I know—she’s such a little thing.’
Larrie walked home. He was thinking all the way of the new leaf he was about to turn. Dot had behaved in an altogether unforgivable manner. ”

“ Larrie used to brood continually in secret over the change that had come into their lives; his manner grew cold and indifferent and he consumed as much tobacco as a man long years in the bush, and Dot used to shed hot, angry, grieving tears in private and devote herself to [p 59] the management of the house or the baby in the time that once she had always devoted to her husband. ”

“ To nearly all human beings there come during the course of life some moments of complete madness and irresponsibility—Dot’s came upon her now.
She was on her knees by the window; sometimes she beat her head against the wood-work—wild tears were coursing down her cheeks, sobs of impotent anger choked her. ”

“ The baby was blinking happily up at a great fat golden beetle that was making a lazy way up the wattle. It had lost its ‘comforter’ and was sucking its thumb thoughtfully. It had kicked off its white knitted boots, and was curling its pink toes up in the sunshine with great enjoyment.
‘Baby!’ Larrie said. ”

“ There was plenty of work to do even in so small a place; Peggie, however, had cheerfully taken it on her own shoulders at the beginning, and the things she ought to have done and left undone, the little mother did.
It was not until there was a third member in the family that the housework was appreciably neglected. When the fascination of ‘dressing baby’ was no longer new to Dot, and Peggie, its devoted worshipper, begged to add that duty to her others, Dot consented with alacrity. And Larrie looked on and told himself daily these things ought not to be. ”

“ Peggie hastened to her bedroom to change her very best dress for an old one in which she might take command of her region.
‘You really mean to say, Dot, that in all these hours you haven’t been able to cook a little dinner,’ Larrie began. His chin squared itself, his lips closed.
‘It’s no good making faces, my good man,’ Dot said. ‘I’ve cut my thumb, and I’ve burnt my wrist, and had sparks in my eyes, and now this is all the thanks I get.’
‘Eggs when a man comes in hungry for his dinner!—and a pudding not cooked! ”

“ His artistic eye was charmed with the arrangements of the simple drawing-room, it was a real pleasure to run his fingers upon a good piano once more—here was all the music that made the earth a happy abiding place, and above all there was the presence of the sweet little girl with short soft curls, wide, eager eyes, and a voice truly wonderful. ”