FullReads

Douglas, by the way, was, publicly, supposed, for her sake and because of the little girls, to be away in West Australia on the goldfields.

Time passes without much notice out back, and one hot day, when the sun hung behind the fierce sandstorms from the northwest as dully lurid as he ever showed in a London fog, Lord Douglas got out of the train that had just finished its five-hundred-miles’ run, and not seeing a new-chum porter, who started forward by force of habit to take his bag, he walked stiffly off the platform and down the main street towards his wife’s cottage.

He was very gaunt, and his eyes, to those who passed him closely, seemed to have a furtive, hunted expression. He had let his beard grow, and it had grown grey.

It was within a few days of Christmas–the same Christmas that we lost the Pretty Girl in the Salvation Army. As a rule the big shearing-sheds within a fortnight of Bourke cut out in time for the shearers to reach the town and have their Christmas dinners and sprees–and for some of them to be locked up over Christmas Day–within sound of a church-going bell. Most of the chaps gathered in the Shearers’ Union Office on New Year’s Eve and discussed Douglas amongst other things.

“I vote we kick the cow out of the town!” snarled One-eyed Bogan, viciously.

“We can’t do that,” said Bob Brothers (the Giraffe), speaking more promptly than usual. “There’s his wife and youngsters to consider, yer know.”

“He something well deserted his wife,” snarled Began, “an’ now he comes crawlin’ back to her to keep him.”

“Well,” said Mitchell, mildly, “but we ain’t all got as much against him as you have, Began.”

“He made a crimson jail-bird of me!” snapped Bogan. “Well,” said Mitchell, “that didn’t hurt you much, anyway; it rather improved your character if anything. Besides, he made a jail-bird of himself afterwards, so you ought to have a fellow-feeling–a feathered feeling, so to speak. Now you needn’t be offended, Bogan, we’re all jail-birds at heart, only we haven’t all got the pluck.”

“I’m in favour of blanky well tarrin’ an’ featherin’ him an’ kickin’ him out of the town!” shouted Bogan. “It would be a good turn to his wife, too; she’d be well rid of the—.”

“Perhaps she’s fond of him,” suggested Mitchell; “I’ve known such cases before. I saw them sitting together on the veranda last night when they thought no one was looking.”

“He deserted her,” said One-eyed Bogan, in a climbing-down tone, “and left her to starve.”

“Perhaps the police were to blame for that,” said Mitchell. “You know you deserted all your old mates once for three months, Bogan, and it wasn’t your fault.”

“He seems to be a crimson pet of yours, Jack Mitchell,” said Bogan, firing up.

“Ah, well, all I know,” said Mitchell, standing up and stretching himself wearily, “all I know is that he looked like a gentleman once, and treated us like a gentleman, and cheated us like a gentleman, and ran some of us in like a gentleman, and, as far as I can see, he’s served his time like a gentleman and come back to face us and live himself down like a man. I always had a sneaking regard for a gentleman.”

“Why, Mitchell, I’m beginning to think you are a gentleman yourself,” said Jake Boreham.

“Well,” said Mitchell, “I used to have a suspicion once that I had a drop of blue blood in me somewhere, and it worried me a lot; but I asked my old mother about it one day, and she scalded me–God bless her!–and father chased me with a stockwhip, so I gave up making inquiries.”

“You’ll join the bloomin’ Capitalists next,” sneered One-eyed Bogan.

“I wish I could, Bogan,” said Mitchell. “I’d take a trip to Paris and see for myself whether the Frenchwomen are as bad as they’re made out to be, or go to Japan. But what are we going to do about Douglas?”