"You silly old fool! You'd carry
her like a lamb if I let you."
Then the Maluka's reply came, and Mac whistled in amazement. "By George!"
he said to those near him, "she IS a goer, a regular goer"; and after
much careful thought wired an inane suggestion about waiting until after
the Wet.
Darwin laughed outright, and an emphatic: "Wife determined, coming
Tuesday's train," from the Maluka was followed by a complete breakdown at
the Katherine.
Then Darwin came in twos and threes to discuss the situation, and while
the men offered every form of service and encouragement, the women-folk
spoke of a woman "going bush" as "sheer madness." "Besides, no woman
travels during the Wet," they said, and the Maluka "hoped she would prove
the exception."
"But she'll be bored to death if she does reach the homestead alive,"
they prophesied; and I told them they were not very complimentary to the
Maluka.
"You don't understand," they hastened to explain. "He'll be camping out
most of his time, miles away from the homestead," and I said, "So will
I."
"So you think," they corrected. "But you'll find that a woman alone in a
camp of men is decidedly out of place"; and I felt severely snubbed.
The Maluka suggested that he might yet succeed in persuading some
suitable woman to come out with us, as maid or companion; but the
opposition, wagging wise heads, pursed incredulous lips, as it declared
that "no one but a fool would go out there for either love or money." A
prophecy that came true, for eventually we went "bush" womanless.
The Maluka's eyes twinkled as he listened. "Does the cap fit, little
'un?" he asked; but the women-folk told him that it was not a matter for
joking.
"Do you know there is not another white woman within a hundred-mile
radius ?" they asked; and the Maluka pointed out that it was not all
disadvantage for a woman to be alone in a world of men. "The men who form
her world are generally better and truer men, because the woman in their
midst is dependent on them alone, for companionship, and love, and
protecting care," he assured them.
"Men are selfish brutes," the opposition declared, rather irrelevantly,
looking pointedly at the Maluka.
He smiled with as much deference as he could command. "Also," he said, "a
woman alone in a world of men rarely complains of their selfishness"; and
I hastened to his assistance. "Particularly when those men are
chivalrous bushmen," I began, then hesitated, for, since reading the
telegrams, my ideas of bush chivalry needed readjustment.
"Particularly when those men are chivalrous bushmen," the Maluka agreed,
with the merry twinkle in his eyes; for he perfectly understood the cause
of the sudden breakdown.
