“Well, Dad, and now that I’ve finished with college, what do you want me to do?” he asked suddenly.
“Why, dear, you must know what we want you to do, surely?” interposed Mrs Thornton.
“I was thinking,”the squatter remarked quietly, “that your education and your address indicate the Church.”
The Little Lady’s eyes widened with amazement. The young man’s face clouded. Kate alone saw the suppressed twinkle in her uncle’s eyes.
“Would you like to be a parson, Ralph?” she inquired, with a laugh.
“Surely, Dad, you cannot mean what you say?”
“What do you want to do?” he asked kindly. “The choice is yours. Whatever path through life you choose, Law, the Church, the Services, or any of the professions-your mother and I will accept.”
The young man’s sigh of relief was audible.
“I thought you meant that about the Church,” he said slowly. “I would rather-and I mean no reflection on the Church-I would rather carry my swag up and down the Darling all my life thanbe a bishop. I would rather be a boundary-rider than an armygeneral, or a bullock-driver than an Under-Secretary. If there is one thing I’ve learned in this last half-year, it is that I cannot be happy away from Barrakee. Down in the city I feel like a caged bird, or an old sailor living out his last days away from the sea. I want to stay here with you three. I want to learn to be a pastoralist, to breed better sheep and grow finer wool. I hope you approve?”
“Oh, Ralph, dear, of course we approve!” declared Mrs Thornton, leaning towards him with shining countenance. “I should have been heartbroken had you chosen otherwise.”
Chapter Four
Dugdale Goes Fishing
FRANK DUGDALE, not quite twenty-eight years of age, held the position of sub-overseer on Barrakee Station. Ten years before he had found himself almost penniless and practically without friends. He had no recollection of his mother, and when, on the verge of bankruptcy, his father killed himself, the loss left him dazed and helpless.
Mr Dugdale senior was the sole representative of Dugdale amp; Co., Wool Brokers and General Station Agents, and at the time of the crash the son was about to enter the firm. From their schooldays his father and Thornton had been friends, and, whilst lamenting the fact that his friend failed to apply to him for financial assistance, the squatter had offered the youth the opportunities of a jackeroo.
The offer was eagerly accepted. Dugdale came to Barrakee and resided with the bookkeeper in the barracks. In ten years he had proved his worth. At the time that Ralph Thornton left college Dugdale was renowned for his horsemanship, his knowledge of wool, and his handling of sheep.
Of average height and build, his complexion was fair and the colour of his eyes hazel. Ralph and Kate were playing tennis when Dugdale passed, smoking his pipe and in his hand a fishing-line. For a moment he watched the flying figures in the golden light of the setting sun, and his pulse leapt as it never failed to do when he beheld Kate Flinders.
“Hallo, Dug! Are you going fishing?” asked the flushed girl, energetically gathering the balls to serve.
“No-oh no!” he drawled, with a smile. “I am going kite-flying.”
“Now, now, Dug! No sarcasm, please,” she reproved, half-mockingly.
Pausing in his walk he faced her, holding out the line for inspection, saying:
“I cannot tell a lie, as Shakespeare remarked to Stephen. Here is the kite-line.”
“Quite so,” she observed sweetly. “But you should conceal the spinner. Also your quotation is hideously mixed. It was Washington who boasted he never told a fib.”
“And Stephen lived a few centuries before Shakespeare,” Ralph contributed.
“Did he?” replied Dugdale innocently. “I fear my education is fading out. And what year did the lamented Stephen arrive upon the throne?”
“In the year eleven hundred.”
“BC or AD?”
“AD, of course, you ass.”
“Then I am constrained to marvel at your poor arguments. I distinctly said-”
“Goodbye, Dug, and good luck! Service!” cried Kate joyously. She was not sure of herself regarding Frank Dugdale. He said nice things, quaint and unexpected things. He was efficient, neat, and self-assured, but…
Reaching the river-bank, he descended to the boats, and just then the sun faded. This being unexpected for another half-hour caused him to look westward, when he saw a dense bank of clouds behind which the sun had disappeared. Selecting the lightest of the boats, he pulled out into the stream, proceeding to attach the shining spoon-spinner to the line, and then, pulling slowly again, he allowed it to run out over the stern. His end of the line he fastened to the top of thespringer -stick lashed to the side of the boat, so that when a fish “struck” the “springer” would hold it without the line snapping. Thespringer took the place of a second fisherman.
The line set, Dugdale slowly pulled up the sluggish stream, keeping to one side when the absence of snags allowed, pulling out and round the snags when he reached them.
Although the evening was brilliant the air was still and humid. The softest bird-cry, the faintest splash of a fish, was an accentuated sound. When a kookaburra chuckled, the devilish mockery in its voice struck upon the heart and mind of the fisherman as a portent.
Now, for several years, Dugdale had loved Kate Flinders. It was the white passion of pure love which seeks not possession but reciprocity, the acme of love which strives to keep the adored object on a pedestal; not to reach upward to bring it down.
Dugdale regarded the fulfilment of his love as hopeless. He knew himself a penniless nobody, the son of a bankrupt suicide. The highest point to which he could rise in the pastoral industry was a stationmanagership. To attain such a position would be the result of influence far more than of ability. There was no certainty in that dream. It was more probable that he might obtain an overseership; but he had decided that he could never ask Kate Flinders to accept an overseer for husband.
Whilst theThorntons always treated him as an equal, he realized that his position, social or financial, would never reach theirs. There was, however, one way in which his dreams could be realized, and that was to be lucky enough to win a prize in the great New South Wales Land Lottery.
If he were sufficiently lucky to win one of the prizes-and to be so he would have to be lucky enough to draw a placed horse in a lottery-he would possess an excellent foundation on which to build, with his knowledge of sheep and wool, a moderate fortune in a few years. About this, as about themanagership, was no certainty.
He had reached the bend at which Pontius Pilate and his people were camped. His boat was well over the hole gouged out by countless floods, but the spoon bait, many yards astern, was at the edge of the hole when the great cod struck.
The spring-stick bent over and down to the water. Leaving the oars, he jumped for the line, taut as a wire. The boat began to move stern-first, drawn by the fish, and Dugdale waited tensely for the moment when the fish would turn and give him the chance to gain line with which to play it.
The boat was travelling faster than when he had been pulling. Rigid with excitement, oblivious to the excited cries of the blacks on the bank, Dugdale waited. Thirty seconds after the fish had struck it turned, and dashed up-stream beneath the boat.
He gained a dozen yards of line before the fish reached the shortened length of its tether, and then began a thrilling fight. The dusk of day fell and deepened the shadows beneath the gums. The cloud bank, racing from the west, was at the zenith. It was almost dark before the fish gave up and sulked. Slowly he hauled it to the boat, a weight listless and lifeless, as though he had caught a bag of shingle.
That it was a huge fish he knew by its dead weight. Slowly he brought it alongside. The boat unaccountably rocked. For a moment he caught the outline of the broad green back, and then searched aimlessly with a foot for the crooked lifting-stick.