Part 49 (1/2)

”My dear, do you think I want to be a limpet?” she said, ”if I don't you know we'll never catch the train when it starts again.”

”Never have a free hand,” he muttered.

She was puzzled. It seemed impossible to keep a constant watch on a man of Louis's temperament. He resented her vigilance though he demanded it.

If she seemed to be leading him, he bolted. If she let him have his head, he still bolted.

When they were in the train again, drawing away through miles of scrub further and further from the cities, she felt very glad that the strain was going to end soon: she would get a rest and so would he where probably he would have to go fifty miles to get a drink. But she tormented herself with the fear that inaccessibility was not going to strengthen him; rather it would weaken, she was afraid.

At five o'clock the second day the train, which had dwindled down to one coach and five trucks, rattled and groaned into Cook's Wall. The station consisted of a rough wooden platform raised on wooden supports with a weather-board hut which the stationmaster called porter's room, booking-office, luggage-office and station hotel. Someone had ambitiously painted the name on the station. ”COOK'S WAL” and ”STATION HOT” appeared in green letters on the face of the structure. ”L” and ”EL” appeared round the corner in red.

The surroundings of the station looked quite hopeless; a few sun-baked sheep-pens and races stretched behind the Station Hotel, s.h.i.+mmering and wavering in the heat haze; half a mile away was a collection of home-made huts consisting of boxes and kerosene tins piled on top of each other. A primitive winding-gear and a heap of slag marked the position of a small manganese mine which had been the cause for prolonging the single line railway so far into the Bush. To the west and south and north stretched scrub and bush, right away to forest and purple hills on the far horizon. Eastward the glittering rails shone back to the city, sending out blinding little flashes of light as the sun caught them.

The guard and driver got leisurely out of the train and stood on the platform; the stationmaster-c.u.m-porter-c.u.m-hotel-keeper, in a pair of dungaree trousers and a dusty vest of flesh-coloured cellular material which gave him the effect of nakedness, stared at them as though pa.s.sengers were the last phenomenon he had expected to see.

”Cripes! What yous want?” he said.

”Are we far from anywhere?” asked Marcella, smiling at him. He spat a.s.siduously through a knothole in the boarding and looked from her to Louis.

”Depends on what you call far,” he said reflectively. ”There's Gaynor's about fifteen miles along, an' Loose End nigh on thirty. Where yous makin' for, then?”

”I should say Loose End would suit us, by the sound of it,” said Louis with a laugh. ”But it isn't much use starting out to-night.”

The stationmaster looked proprietorially towards the station and the hotel site. There seemed room for tickets, and for the man who sold them--if he were not a very large man. There was not much hope for visitors.

”I'm running up a bosker hotel soon's I can get a bit of weather-boarding and a few nails along,” he said hopefully.

”That doesn't solve th-th-the immediate problem,” said Louis.

”Let's sleep with half of us in the hotel and half on the platform,”

said Marcella, delighted with the authentic lack of civilization.

”Be et up with h'ants,” the driver informed them. ”Look here, chum, if I was you I'd sleep in the train. She don't set off till between seven and eight to-morrow.”

They jumped at the idea, and the stationmaster, suddenly helpful, offered them the loan of his hut, his spirit lamp, his kerosene tins and his creek which was half a mile away among a few trees, low-growing, stunted blue gums.

”Have to have a wash,” the stationmaster told himself unhappily, and suggested the same course to the driver and guard as there was a lady to dinner. Then he piloted Marcella and Louis to his hut.

It struck a homely note in several ways. The name of Rockefeller came to them in the flattened out kerosene tins which, nailed to supports, formed the roof; boxes stencilled with the names of well-known proprietary English goods formed the walls. Inside was a bed in shape of a frayed hammock; upturned boxes formed the chairs and there was an incongruous leather-topped, mahogany-legged writing-table. A kerosene tin was the toilet apparatus: another, cut in two, was used for boiling water. Given a supply of kerosene tins in the Bush, one can make a villa and furnish it, down to cooking utensils and baby's bath.

”Next time's yous happen along, I'll have a bonser hotel,” he said, and leading Marcella outside showed her, under the shade of a tree, a _cache_ of dozens of eggs laid by the hens that ran wild, and buried in the earth; half a sheep wrapped in canvas, surrounded by great clouds of flies gave evidence that it had been long dead.

”Help yourself, missus. We'll all kip together. You'll find a bag o'

flour in the hammock,” said the stationmaster, and wandered off to get on with his hotel and his station.

Marcella looked at Louis and laughed.

”What luck! Here's a chance to experiment! If we get to the station where they want a cook, to-morrow, I'll be able to say I gave every satisfaction in my last place.”

”Always supposing we're aren't all dead before then,” said Louis.

The first job was to boil water and wash the plates on which she amused herself by tracing the remains of quite half a dozen different meals.