A Woman's Way.

Observer, 9 December 1912, Page 22

A Woman's Way.

V~ * HE blaze of a February mid-day sun made /(J [\ the clearing lie sort of supine from excese Vr of heat and absence of moisture, and i> the sizzling heat of a bush clearing, particularly when there are bush fires about, is something reminiscent of the cake ovens of Hades mentioned in the Sunday school reader and other classical mythology. Self and Long Mat O'Brien had taken up a post and strainer splitting contract on these particular miles of emptiness, punctuated with dessicated timber the job being to reduce every available piece of totara to fencing posts and strainers at the greatest profit to ourselves and old Winter, who made additional profit by running a job lot of jumbucks over the landscape It was smoke o, and the climate being unnecessarily hot, as mentioned, and the labour oi cross-cut and axe being tiresome exertion, we were lying in the only available coolth, which was under the roots of a fallen rata. There was an imperceptible haze of smoke everywhere and the distant bush seen through it shone with an intensified and unnatural greenness. An empty meat tin half a mile away flashed unintelligible heliographioe. Besides the faint, droning song of the circular saws of the timber mill away beyond the only sound was aloft, where the upper air was made musical by a myriad of bees, lhey were pleasant drowsy sounds, inciting a man to resist the demands of civilisation and storekeepers. We didn't need any incitement, but we took it kindly Long Mat and self had been swapping lies, theories and experiences about life in general and women in particular, until I couldn t distinguish his drawl from the drone of the far-away saws. I had relapsed into a comatose condition, dreaming of how sweet it would be hear the gushin- of the wave far off to mourn and rave, as the poetry book says about the lotus eaters which we were at that time emulating, when I was surprised into wakefulness by Mat's heel being jabbed suddenly into the vicinity of my fifth rib. He heaven himself into the glare, discovered the billy from out of a hole in the ground and filled two mugs of cold, strong, syruppy, refreshing tea. Therl he took his axe and expertly spliced a plug of tobacco on a stump, filled his pipe, handed me the residue, and lit up. I followed suit. T? eMT H Mat heaved himself into comfort. Regarding " says he, " what I lately said about man s proclivity to law 'n order an' wimmin's converseness, I'm reminded of an example." As I hadn't regarded I just waited. "It was up a place called Valhalla in the back of New South. I don't know why they called it such, because the Valhalla I read of in the school books was a sort of Heaven for forcibly retired old pirates, full of booze, whiskered warriors and valkvries. Them same valkyries, as far as 1 can make out, were sort of prehistoric suffragettes. Well I was up there in this Valhalla, which apart from a certain quantity of booze an being pi'etty much of a rough shop, seriously belied its name. It's half way up some mountains an it s mostly a gold mine with a population according, leavened, you might say, with a sprinkling of half-starved cockies an' some ancient survivals in the way of fossickers. The indentured goldgrubbers were mostly Irish, like me only worse, some New South Welshers an' a few Tassies. There was none of your Methody Cousin Jacks m that r0 ' l as"this," says I, "a true and veracioiis story with villainy-vanquished and virtue-triumphant in the last act that you're giving me, or is it a guide book extract of the industries and customs, together with population statistics, of the district of Valhalla, N.S.W. ?" "Be not impatient, my son," says Mat .Lvery story must have its yard or so of local colour meesen scene an' such, an' generally the gist ot the yarn is only a slight excuse for the preliminaries. I've come to the yarn. In the gang which contained me was a cove named James Hagen, but commonly called Black Jack on account of his resemblance to the ace of spades. Well, a fine, big devil of a man he was, with forceful habits that would have shocked a Paddington push and an uncommon fondness for animals. Can't say that Black Jack was any more rampageous than the rest of the boys exceptm he was a holy terror when he got on the tank. The marvellous thing about him was that when, on

For The Observer Christmas Annual

account of Ms predeliction for smashing things when agitated by liquor, the local John Hop was iorced to request him to desist, he always desisted most affably. The John Hop they had up in Valhalla was fat, inoffensive and given to indulgence in spirituous an , fermented liquors, which was likely the reason he was shoved into the job — there were extensive opportunities for pursuing hobby in the intervals when he wasn't upholding Law J n Order. None of your butting in now. Ii I'm committin' a digression I'm aware of it, an it's needful. I'm saying that the essentials oi Law an' Order were pretty well kept, considering. No one killed anyone or stole anything, and nobody ever got seriously hurt in a mix-up while x was there, an' if a man got drunk an' incapable or drunk an' fightable there was always plenty o. mates to accede to his needs or requests as the case may be. I reckon that John had an easy time. He wasn't officious an , didn't go making unnecessary trouble for himself by enquiring into the conduct of pool rooms or nosing round for th y scent of private stills. The right of comin' up an' saying ' stop it ' when there was a street row on was accorded him out of good fellowship, as long as he didn't interfere. I never knew him to, an' so the boys never had any need nor felt inclined to fracture the dignity of the Law's representative, so maybe it was to humour him that they condoned his little officiousnesses."

" Mat," said I, " the habits and peculiarities 01 policemen, even of such an ordinary variety as you describe, have only a temporary and occasional interest for me. Onward, my unchristian soldier, and recover your story from the morass of disquisition and digression in Avhieh you have plunged it."

" Ye're a poor listener," says Mat, " but I wi'labbreviate an , simplify accoixlin' to the capacity of your intelligence.

" This here Black Jack Hagen was not especially bad as men go, in mining camps, but he outraged convention by reason of his not possessin' a legal certificate of right to his wife, which is conducive to busting up of the home, wrecking the marriage tie an' several other things which I have read in reports of winimen's political leagues. Not that such nefariousness is uncommon in the cities, but it was mighty uncommon in Valhalla, where there wasn't twelve females within a radius of fifteen miles. This wife of Black Jack's was one of them tired-lookin', small women, with a figger like a plank an' hair sort of mousey and nothing to write home about. We never knew that Jack wanted her much—he didn't ever let it be noticed, but she had sort of fastened herself to him an' just tailed on behind whenever he decided to change his location. We couldn't see the sense of it, for all she got in return for faithful service was lodgings in a two-room shack, a liberal education iii the art of libellous and consecutive cussing, ana some punching when Jack was more than usual inclined to damaging things.

"Now there was a long slab of youthful cockj, who farmed several thousand feet of gums, two cows an' some-goats up on the hills, an' who took on bush felling contracts in his spare time, which was frequent. He contracted the habit of coming down to the township more often than seemed needful. When it was discovered that he spent most of the time leanin' over Black Jack's gate an' talking to Mrs Black Jack about cows an , the weather, Jack being engaged with a drill underground at those times, the boys came to the conclusion that Stuttering Willy (that being the cognomen of the cocky cove) felt the need of female companionship and that he was as good as Jack anyway. In consequence of which Mr Black Jack Hagen was unaware of the goings on until one Saturday Stuttering Willy drives into the village with a mournful looking substance dressed in black clothes and wshriskers, in a four-wheel vehicle which looked to be composed mostly of green-hide.

" Jack having been more than ordinary agitated with booze a few days previous was the cause of thi3 new turn we surmised, but there it was. The black an' whiskered image proved on close inspection to be a parson. Two of the boys not over friendly to Jack were roped in as witnesses, while the parson cove did a record in nuptial ceremonies, declaring the lady to be now Mrs Stuttering Willy, an' handing out the duly autographed deed of assignment just as Jack appeared in the landscape, making dust towards the scene of the disturbance. It seems that some of the boys who was fond of a joke had put him on the lay, an' he comes up just as the happy couple were gettin' aboard the green-hide wagon.

" Now, here's where what I said about man's law-abidin' proclivities conies in. Black Jack lets loo3e the vowels of his Avrath and demands to know what Willy is doing with his wife. Mrs Willie stands up doing nothing but looking scared. Willie produces the contract and flourishes it at Jack.

Says he, stuttering, " It's all right, Jack, y' cant take 'er, she's mine—l got the receipt.'

" Black Jack just spits disgusted an' emits more language. 'Well,' he says, sort of puzzled, 'I ain't go no blanky receipt/ an' he turns away."

" What I said about the converseness of wimmen comes in here. The newly-allotted Mrs Willy, when she sees him going, just raises her hands, and calls out, ' Oh, Jack ! an' Monday is Christmas. Are y' goin' to let me go like that ?' Well, it was Christmas time, but none of us had been keepin' it very steadily in view—an , what it had to do with the disturbance I don't know. But there y' are, wimmen have got a wonderful instinct about anniversaries an' such, an' p'rap3 it struck her that Jack ought to have someone to fill his little stocking.

" When she calls out, Black Jack turns round. ' Well, Mary, he says he's got the blanky receipt, ain't he ?' Then she does some more unexpectedness. She runs up to him an' falls up against him an' gurgles a lot of ununderstandabilities about 'all the years I've slaved for you — cast me off as though I was nothin', an' the like. Then ahe says, with the tears runnin' down her face, ' Oh, come inside,' an' with that she claws him, all bewildered, into the shack, an' just as the door slams, Willy, who had been struck stupid standing, stutters, ' Say, but Mary, I got the receipt,' which was the last words he says as he climbs into his green-hide wagon."

" From which I concludes my inference," said Mat, " that men are generally given to obeyin' law 'n order an' that the comprehensiveness of wimmen doesn't include such proclivity, they havin', as you might say, more partiality for their preferences. Time we did a bit more yakker."