There Were Times When The
Links In The Chain Seemed All Blessing.
Waking warm and refreshed, the sick man faced the battle of life once
more, and the chief taking command, and the man quietly and hopefully
obeying orders, the woman found her promise easy to keep; but the mate's
hardest task had come, the task of waiting with folded hands.
With the
same quiet steadfastness he braced himself for this task and when, after
weary hours, the chief pronounced "all well" and turned to him with an
encouraging "I think he'll pull through now, my man," the sturdy
shoulders that had borne so much drooped and quivered beneath the kindly
words, and with dimming eyes he gave in at last to the Maluka's
persuasions, and lay down and slept, sure of the Dandy's promise to wake
him at dawn.
At midnight the Maluka left the Quarters, and going back just before the
dawn to relieve the Dandy, found the sick man lying quietly-restful, with
one arm thrown lightly across his brow. He had spoken in his sleep a
short while before the Dandy said as the Maluka bent over him with a cup
of warm milk, but the cup was returned to the table untasted. Many
travellers had come into our lies and passed on with a bright nod of
farewell; but at the first stirring of the dawn, without one word of
farewell, this traveller had passed on and left us; left us, and the
faithful mate of those seven strong young years and those last few days
of weariness. "Unexpected heart failure," our chief said, as the Dandy
went to fulfil his promise to the sleeping mate. He promised to waken
him at the dawn, and leaving that awakening in the Dandy's hands, as we
thought of that lonely Warloch camp our one great thankfulness was that
when the awakening came the man was not to be alone there with his dead
comrade. The bush can be cruel at times, and yet, although she may leave
us alone with our beloved dead, her very cruelty bungs with it a fierce,
consoling pain; for out-bush our dead are all our own.
Beyond those seven faithful years the mate could tell us but little of
his comrade's life. He was William Neaves, born at Woolongong, with a
mother living somewhere there. That was all he knew. "He was always a
reticent chap," he reiterated. "He never wanted any one but me about
him," and the unspoken request was understood. He was his mate, and no
one but himself must render the last services.
Dry-eyed and worn, the man moved about, doing all that should be done,
the bushmen only helping where they dared; then shouldering a pick and
shovel, he went to the tattle rise beyond the slip rails, and set doggedly
to work at a little distance from two lonely graves already there.
Doggedly he worked on; but, as he worked, gradually his burden lost its
overwhelming weight, for the greater part of it had somehow skipped on to
the Dandy's shoulders - those brave, unflinching shoulders, that carried
other men's burdens so naturally and so willingly that their burdens
always seemed the Dandy's own. The Dandy may have had that power of
finding "something decent" in every one he met, but in the Dandy all men
found the help they needed most.
Quietly and unassumingly, the Dandy put all in order and then, soon after
midday, with brilliant sunshine all about us, we stood by an open grave
in the shade of the drooping glory of a crimson flowering bauhenia. Some
scenes live undimmed in our memories for a lifetime - scenes where we have
seemed onlookers rather than actors seeing every detail with minute
exactness - and that scene with its mingling of glorious beauty, human
pathos, and soft, subdued sound, will bye, I think, in the memory of most
of us for many years to come:
"In the midst of life we are in death," the Maluka read, standing among
that drooping crimson splendour and at his feet lay the open grave,
preaching silently its great lesson of Life and Death, with, beside it,
the still quiet form of the traveller whose last weary journey had ended;
around it, bareheaded and all in white, a little band of bush-folk,
silent and reverent and awed; above it, that crimson glory, and all
around and about it, soft sun-flecked bush, murmuring sounds, flooding
sunshine, and deep azure blue distances. Beyond the bush, deep azure
blue, within it and throughout it, flooding sunshine and golden ladders
of light; and at its sun-flecked heart, under that drooping
crimson-starred canopy of soft greygreen, that little company of
bush-folk, standing beside that open grave, as Mother Nature, strewing
with flowers the last resting place of one of her children, scattered
gently falling scarlet blossoms into it and about it. Here and there a
dog lay, stretched out in the shade, sniffing in idle curiosity at the
blossoms as they fell, well satisfied with what life had to give just
then; while at their master's feet lay the traveller who was to leave
such haunting memories behind him: William Neaves, born at Woolongong,
with somewhere there a mother going quietly about her work, wondering
vaguely perhaps where her laddie was that day.
Poor mother! Yet, when even that knowledge came to her, it comforted her
in her sorrow to know that a woman had stood beside that grave mourning
for her boy in her name.
Quietly the Maluka read on to the end; and then in the hush that followed
the mate stooped, and, with deep lines hardening rigidly, picked up a
spade. There was no mistaking his purpose; but as he straightened
himself the Dandy's hand was on the spade and the Maluka was speaking.
"Perhaps you'll be good enough to drive the missus back to the house
right away," he was saying, "I think she has had almost more than she can
stand."
The man looked hesitatingly at him.
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