Mitchell got up, re-lit his pipe at the fire, and mooned round for a while, with his hands behind him, kicking sticks out of the road, looking out over the plain, down along the Billabong, and up through the mulga branches at the stars; then he comforted the pup a bit, shoved the fire together with his toe, stood the tea-billy on the coals, and came and squatted on the sand by my head.
"Joe! I'll tell you a yarn."
"All right; fire away! Has it got anything to do with the Lachlan?"
"No. It's got nothing to do with the Lachlan now; but it's about a chap he knew. Don't you ever breathe a word of this to the Lachlan or anyone, or he'll get on to me."
"All right. Go ahead."
"You know I've been a good many things in my time. I did a deal of house-painting at one time; I was a pretty smart brush hand, and made money at it. Well, I had a run of work at a place called Redclay, on the Lachlan side. You know the sort of town -- two pubs, a general store, a post office, a blacksmith's shop, a police station, a branch bank, and a dozen private weatherboard boxes on piles, with galvanized-iron tops, besides the humpies. There was a paper there, too, called the `Redclay Advertiser' (with which was incorporated the `Geebung Chronicle'), and a Roman Catholic church, a Church of England, and a Wesleyan chapel. Now you see more of private life in the house-painting line than in any other -- bar plumbing and gasfitting; but I'll tell you about my house-painting experiences some other time.
"There was a young chap named Jack Drew editing the `Advertiser' then.
He belonged to the district, but had been sent to Sydney to a grammar school when he was a boy. He was between twenty-five and thirty; had knocked round a good deal, and gone the pace in Sydney.
He got on as a boy reporter on one of the big dailies; he had brains and could write rings round a good many, but he got in with a crowd that called themselves `Bohemians', and the drink got a hold on him. The paper stuck to him as long as it could (for the sake of his brains), but they had to sack him at last.
"He went out back, as most of them do, to try and work out their salvation, and knocked round amongst the sheds. He `picked up' in one shed where I was shearing, and we carried swags together for a couple of months.
Then he went back to the Lachlan side, and prospected amongst the old fields round there with his elder brother Tom, who was all there was left of his family. Tom, by the way, broke his heart digging Jack out of a cave in a drive they were working, and died a few minutes after the rescue.* But that's another yarn.
Jack Drew had a bad spree after that; then he went to Sydney again, got on his old paper, went to the dogs, and a Parliamentary push that owned some city fly-blisters and country papers sent him up to edit the `Advertiser' at two quid a week.
He drank again, and no wonder -- you don't know what it is to run a `Geebung Advocate' or `Mudgee Budgee Chronicle', and live there.
He was about the same build as the Lachlan, but stouter, and had something the same kind of eyes; but he was ordinarily as careless and devil-may-care as the Lachlan is grumpy and quiet.
--
* See "When the Sun Went Down", in "While the Billy Boils".
--
"There was a doctor there, called Dr. Lebinski. They said he was a Polish exile. He was fifty or sixty, a tall man, with the set of an old soldier when he stood straight; but he mostly walked with his hands behind him, studying the ground.
Jack Drew caught that trick off him towards the end. They were chums in a gloomy way, and kept to themselves -- they were the only two men with brains in that town. They drank and fought the drink together.
The Doctor was too gloomy and impatient over little things to be popular.
Jack Drew talked too straight in the paper, and in spite of his proprietors -- about pub spieling and such things -- and was too sarcastic in his progress committee, town council, and toady reception reports.
The Doctor had a hawk's nose, pointed grizzled beard and moustache, and steely-grey eyes with a haunted look in them sometimes (especially when he glanced at you sideways), as if he loathed his fellow men, and couldn't always hide it; or as if you were the spirit of morphia or opium, or a dead girl he'd wronged in his youth -- or whatever his devil was, beside drink. He was clever, and drink had brought him down to Redclay.
"The bank manager was a heavy snob named Browne. He complained of being a bit dull of hearing in one ear -- after you'd yelled at him three or four times; sometimes I've thought he was as deaf as a book-keeper in both. He had a wife and youngsters, but they were away on a visit while I was working in Redclay.
His niece -- or, rather, his wife's niece -- a girl named Ruth Wilson, did the housekeeping. She was an orphan, adopted by her aunt, and was general slavey and scape-goat to the family -- especially to the brats, as is often the case. She was rather pretty, and lady-like, and kept to herself. The women and girls called her Miss Wilson, and didn't like her. Most of the single men -- and some of the married ones, perhaps -- were gone on her, but hadn't the brains or the pluck to bear up and try their luck. I was gone worse than any, I think, but had too much experience or common sense. She was very good to me -- used to hand me out cups of tea and plates of sandwiches, or bread and butter, or cake, mornings and afternoons the whole time I was painting the bank.
The Doctor had known her people and was very kind to her.
She was about the only woman -- for she was more woman than girl -- that he'd brighten up and talk for. Neither he nor Jack Drew were particularly friendly with Browne or his push.
"The banker, the storekeeper, one of the publicans, the butcher (a popular man with his hands in his pockets, his hat on the back of his head, and nothing in it), the postmaster, and his toady, the lightning squirter, were the scrub-aristocracy. The rest were crawlers, mostly pub spielers and bush larrikins, and the women were hags and larrikinesses.
The town lived on cheque-men from the surrounding bush.
