Beyond the Black Stump

  “I think she would. I think that then she would begin to discover the people, and she might discover them to be exactly as we are.”

  They sat in silence for a time. “Do ye mean this, Judge? If we was to set our minds upon a small town in Australia, the same as this town Hazel in America, a town with the same number of people, raising grass seeds, maybe, just the same? And if we was to set our minds upon a Presbyterian family in that town, well regarded and good members of the kirk? And if we was to think of Mollie settled down in such a place, would that be the same?”

  “I think that is precisely right,” the Judge said. “I think it would be exactly and precisely the same.”

  There was another silence. “It’s an awfu’ and a sobering thought,” the mother said at last.

  “The more so,” the Judge observed quietly, “because she’d be nine thousand miles away.”

  “Is it that far?”

  “I have not measured it exactly. But I would think that that would be about the distance.”

  The Scotswoman got heavily to her feet. “Well, I must think on it. It’s a long, long way from her own folks for a lassie to be unhappy.”

  Stanton Laird came to Laragh at about five o’clock that afternoon. As he got out of his jeep he hoped that Mr. Pat Regan was still over at Mannahill; although he had become on friendly terms with the grazier he had a notion that initially the mother would be easier to deal with, a notion which was to be proved quite erroneous. Mrs. Regan and Mollie were seated on the verandah; the girl got up and came out into the sun to meet the jeep.

  “Good afternoon, Stan,” she said, a little shyly.

  He got out. “Afternoon, honey,” he said. He took her hand, and looked into her eyes. “Sorry about anything yet?”

  She shook her head, smiling. “Not yet,” she said. “Are you?”

  He took her hand. “Not yet,” he repeated. “In fact, I’d even say I’m kind of glad.”

  She laughed outright.

  “Your Dad back yet?”

  “Not yet. I told Ma, Stan—about us.”

  “Fine. I guess I’d better go and let her give me the once over. How’d she take it?”

  “Very well,” the girl said. “She thinks a lot of you, Stan. The only thing she seems sorry about is that we won’t be living a bit nearer. She seems to think America’s so far away. I told her it was only two days from Sydney in an aeroplane, but I don’t think it really registered.”

  “It is quite a way, honey. I can see it from her point of view.”

  The girl tossed her head. “It’s not as if I was an only child. She’s got nine other children living in Australia. She can spare one.”

  He smiled. “Did you tell her that?”

  “I did.”

  “What did she say?”

  The girl hesitated, and glanced at him. “Ma’s a bit outspoken sometimes.”

  He laughed. “I found that out already. What did she say, honey?”

  “She said if I was going to talk like that she’d better set about having a few more kids as spares.”

  He laughed. “I guess there’s no answer to that one.”

  She turned towards the verandah. “Come on in and talk to her, Stan. She’s all right.”

  They went together to the verandah. Stanton said to Mrs. Regan, “Good afternoon. Mollie says she told you about us.”

  “Aye,” said the mother, “she did that. I told her you were too good a man for her, an’ that I thought the worse of you for asking, but it all flowed off her like water off a duck’s back.” She motioned to a chair. “Sit ye down, Mr. Laird, and tell us whatever made ye do such a daft thing.”

  He laughed, and sat down. “I guess everyone goes a little daft when he’s in love,” he observed. “But I’d say that this is the most sensible thing I ever did in all my life.”

  Mrs. Regan smiled at him kindly. “Ah well, she’s a good girl, an’ let’s hope that you won’t live to regret the day.” She turned to her daughter. “Mollie, go off and start getting the tea. I want to have a talk with your young man alone.”

  “Can’t I stay, Ma?”

  “No, ye can’t. Be off with ye.”

  She went reluctantly. When she was gone the Scotswoman turned to the geologist. “Now, Mr. Laird, we’ll talk practical politics. I’ll have ye know, in the first place, that ye’ve a good name here, and that I could’na wish a better man for Mollie. Ye need not think that I’m against you, nor her father either. But there’s one or two things to be settled before this goes any further.”

  He nodded. “I’d say there might be.”

  “In the first place, when were you two thinking of getting married?”

  “I haven’t talked about that with Mollie yet, Mrs. Regan,” he replied. “It’s all pretty new. But I’d say my job here would be finished within three months from now, and I was planning to resign from the oil business then, and go back home to help my father. He owns a garage and engineering business back in Hazel, ’n he wants to turn that over to me, mostly, while he goes road-contracting.”

  She nodded. “Mollie told me that. It sounds like a good opening.”

  “It’s a good opening all right. With the share of profits I’d be earning around twenty thousand a year—dollars, that is. That’s quite a bit more than I’m making now.” He paused. “I haven’t talked this over with Mollie,” he repeated. “But I’d say that the right time for us to get married would be before I leave here to go home.”

  She sat in silence for a minute, studying her sewing. Then she said, “She tells me you’re a Presbyterian.”

  He nodded, sensing trouble. “That’s right.”

  “She’s a Catholic. I would not say that she’s a very good Catholic, with three hundred miles to go to attend Mass. But she’s a good girl, and she’ll want to do the proper thing. Were ye thinking that you’d have a Catholic marriage?”

  “I haven’t thought about that yet. Perhaps a civil marriage would be better.”

  “Aye,” she said quietly, “if you’re both willing to give up your principles, which she’s not and I don’t suppose you are. However, leave that be, and let’s suppose that we get Father Ryan to come here and marry you, for all the ill he thinks of Laragh Station. Would your father or your mother be coming to the wedding?”

  “I wouldn’t say so,” he replied. “It’s quite a way to come.”

  She nodded. “It is that.”

  She sat sewing in silence. Presently she said, “What that means, then, Mr. Laird, is that Mollie would be married to you here and go off with you to a foreign country, to a country that she’s never seen but only read about, married to a foreigner, to go to settle down alongside relations that she’s never seen at all. It’s a big jump in the dark you’re asking of her, Mr. Laird.”

  He nodded slowly. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  “Ye’d better start thinking of it, then, and thinking hard. I tell ye, Mr. Laird, for all that you’re well respected in these parts, I think you’re asking too much of a decent lassie if you ask her that.” She paused. “Many a girl has taken a big chance like that and come well out of it, but there’s some that haven’t.”

  “Do you think she ought to pay a visit to us first, in Hazel?” he asked. “My folks would like that.”

  She nodded. “Aye. I was thinking the same thing. I was thinking perhaps if she went back with you and stayed three months or so, and then for you to be married in Hazel.” She looked up at him, smiling. “Maybe I’d come over for the wedding, an’ see America myself.”

  He sat in thought for a few moments. Although he had been the first to propose this plan, it was vaguely distasteful to him, as though Hazel and himself would be on trial. “I’d like to talk it over with Mollie, Mrs. Regan,” he said. “I see it from your point of view, and I think it makes sense, but it does mean a pretty long engagement.”

  Her mother shook her head. “It does not,” she said. “She’d not be engaged to you until she makes her mind up that s
he wants to get married, and I wouldn’t want to see her do that till she’s met your folks and seen the way you live.”

  “You wouldn’t want us to get engaged now?”

  “I would not.”

  “Why not, if she wants to marry me?”

  “She doesna know enough about you, Mr. Laird. Maybe when she sees the way you live in your own place she’ll want to change her mind.” She glanced at him. “Be easy, now. She may not want to change it, and I hope she won’t. I’ve told you you’re well regarded here. But if she went with you to meet your folks as an engaged girl, then it’s going to be difficult for her to change her mind if she should want to. Now, that’s what I won’t have.”

  “I’d like to talk it over with Mollie, Mrs. Regan.”

  “Aye, ye can do that. An’ I’ll talk to her, too. She can go with ye to America and stay as long as she likes, but she goes as a free girl, Mr. Laird—a girl who’s free to get into the train an’ come home, or go on to England, any day she likes, and no promise broken, and no harm done to anybody.”

  “It’s going to put her in a kind of an unusual position, Mrs. Regan,” he pointed out. “I mean, she’d be travelling halfway around the world with me and staying in hotels, in all kinds of places. Some folks might think that kind of strange behaviour.”

  “If you’re thinking of her reputation, Mr. Laird,” her mother said, “ye can put your mind at rest. She comes from Laragh Station, so she’s none to lose.” She bent a stern eye on him. “But while we’re on the subject, Mr. Laird, I tell you there’s to be no funny business or I’ll see to it she never marries you at all. Ye needn’t think ye’ll put a chain on her that way. We’re well acquaint with bastards upon Laragh Station, an’ we can always use another.”

  He was appalled at the turn the conversation had taken. “Say,” he protested, “you got me all wrong, Mrs. Regan. I wouldn’t ever do a thing like that.”

  She sat in silence for a minute. At last she said, “Well, maybe not.” Her doubts if this was the right man for Mollie were reinforced. “But if the thought should come into your head one day, ye’ll just mind what I say.”

  “I can assure you,” he said earnestly, “she will be safe with me. I do think it might be better if we were engaged before we start travelling around the world together, Mrs. Regan—it makes it more regular. But if you think it best the other way, well, I’d agree. But I want to hear what Mollie thinks about it first.”

  “Aye,” she said tranquilly. “Nae doubt ye’ll get together after tea in some dark corner. Do na’ distress yeself, Mr. Laird, and do na’ take offence from my rough tongue. We all like you fine, but Mollie’s our first care, an’ there’s a lot to be got over an’ smoothed out before you two get married.”

  “I certainly do appreciate the way you look at it,” he said. “She’ll be my first care, too.” He sat in silence for a moment, and then said, “Would she be the first of your children to get married, Mrs. Laird?”

  She shook her head. “Mike’s married, down in Perth,” she said. “Mike Regan, that is—by my second marriage. He married a young lady from Melbourne; she was up here once, but she didn’t like it and she’s never come again. Phyllis married a man in Adelaide last year, a wool broker he is; she was my first child by Mr. Foster.”

  “One of your children is in England, isn’t he?”

  “Aye, that would be Charlie, Mike’s brother. He’s a doctor, in a place called Harley Street, but he’s not married.”

  Pat Regan arrived back from Mannahill in time for tea; Mr. Rogerson had returned at midday in a plane chartered from Carnarvon. “Sure, he was tearing into them like a madman the time I left, as though he was the Lord Bishop and him preaching against drink,” he said. “He flew in just as we finished the burying, with the doctor himself reading a service over the poor lad, or what was left of him when Fortunate was done. But there’ll be no wake at Mannahill this night.”

  “What happened to the jackeroo, Daddy?” Mollie asked. “Is he going to be all right?”

  “Aye, he’s doing fine. He sent a message to you, to thank you for finding him.”

  “What’s happened to him now?”

  “The doctor’s after taking him to hospital, in the aeroplane.”

  “Will he be coming back to Mannahill?”

  “He will not. He wants to go home to England.”

  Stanton Laird said, smiling, “Well, what do you know!”

  Mrs. Regan said placidly, “Aye, there’s some that’s fit for working in the Lunatic, and many more that’s not.”

  “There’s a true saying,” said her husband.

  She turned to him. “Mr. Laird here has been asking for Mollie,” she said.

  “May the saints preserve us! Would he be after wanting to wed her?”

  “I guess that’s right, Mr. Regan,” said the geologist. “That’s the way it is.”

  The grazier stared at him. “Well now,” he said affably, “isn’t that a great wonder, that the like of you would want to wed a girl like her! Was it in the dark night ye asked her now, and the two of you sitting by the wood fire under the bright stars, waiting while I came to find ye in the truck?”

  Mollie laughed. “That’s right, Daddy. That’s when it happened.”

  “Sure, and I had my suspicions,” her father said, “and you with all the starlight in your eyes. Go and get the bottle, girl.” He turned to the other. “This is the one time ye’ll take a drink, Mr. Laird, even if it lays ye flat as all the boys at Mannahill.”

  Stanton Laird compromised. “It’ll have to be a very small one, Mr. Regan.”

  “Aye.” The grazier winked at his prospective son-in-law. “Just a quarter of the bottle.”

  Stanton escaped with two fingers of rum drowned in a tumbler of water, and found it not unpleasant. He discovered that the new relationship occasioned no particular surprise; at Laragh Station with its many children, marrying and giving in marriage, whether formally or informally, was an everyday matter. It did not occur to Mr. Regan to enquire into the American’s position or his ability to support a wife, or even to enquire if he had ever been married before; such things in his view were matters that concerned the contracting parties alone.

  Stanton Laird commented on that later that evening, as he walked arm in arm with Mollie beneath the stars in the direction of the wool shed. “You know somethin’, honey?” he said. “It’s quite different here from how things are at home. Back home you’d be getting up an engagement party, ’n you’d show your ring to all your friends, ’n I’d have to go meet them all. And then there’d be all the relations to meet, yours and mine—a kind of a social whirl. But as things are, I haven’t even got a ring to give you right now.”

  “If you give me one, Ma says I’m not to wear it. She doesn’t want us to be engaged till I’ve been to America with you.”

  “I know, honey. How do you feel about that?”

  “I think it’s rather silly, Stan,” she said. “I’m not a baby, and I know exactly what I’m doing.”

  “I guess that’s true,” he said. “I’d say your mother was right if it was in the United States, where you could come and visit with my folks before we got engaged. But as things are, it’s going to look mighty funny for you, if you travel with me to the States.” He hesitated.

  “Funny in what way, Stan?”

  “Travelling together, honey—in hotels. We’d be spending quite a few nights in hotels on the way—at Perth, at Sydney, maybe at Honolulu and quite probably at Portland or Seattle.” He thought for a minute. “It might be possible to fix it so we stayed in different hotels.”

  She said, “It ’ld be all right if we didn’t stay in the same room, wouldn’t it?”

  “You wouldn’t mind travelling like that?”

  “Of course not, Stan. Two rooms would be perfectly all right.”

  “You wouldn’t be afraid that folks might talk?”

  “Of course not, Stan. You can’t make love through a brick wall. Besides, it’s nothi
ng to do with anybody if we did.”

  “I guess that’s right,” he said doubtfully.

  She glanced at him, aware that he was still troubled. “I’ll travel any way you think best,” she offered. “Tell me, will it start a lot of gossip in Hazel if we travel like that? It wouldn’t do so here.”

  He smiled down at her. “I’d say things might be just a little bit different in the Lunatic from what they are in Hazel,” he observed. “I wouldn’t say that people gossip back at home. It’s not a place like that. But at the same time, it’s not like the Eastern States, New Jersey, or Connecticut, or places like that. Hazel’s a small town, honey, where everybody knows all about everybody else, and not much else to talk about.”

  They strolled on in the darkness. “It’s like that here, of course,” she said. “We’ve got nothing else to talk about here except what goes on on the other stations—or up at the oil rig. I don’t suppose there’s much difference between this place and Hazel.”

  “Maybe not,” he said, still a trifle doubtful. “Maybe it’s the kind of way you look at things that’s different.”

  She pressed a little closer to him. “We’re foreigners, of course, Stan, for all that we speak the same language. We’ll have to work quite hard to get to understand each other.”

  He stopped, and took her in his arms, and kissed her. “I wouldn’t say that’s going to be difficult,” he said. And presently, when they were walking on again, he said, “I’ve been wondering about one thing, honey.”

  “What’s that, Stan?”

  “It’s about your mother, when she was married to your Uncle Tom, and then she was married to your father. Didn’t that make things kind of difficult when they all went on together, living under the same roof? Back in the States, in Oregon at any rate, it wouldn’t hardly be possible.”

  “I wasn’t born, of course,” she said slowly. “I can see it might seem funny to you, but it worked out all right. I can’t ever remember any trouble; we were all a very happy family, I think.” She paused. “I don’t think Uncle Tom was the man for Ma at all. She probably only married him because she was having a bad time after Mr. Foster’s death, working in the bar with two children to look after. Daddy was much more Ma’s type, but of course she never met him till she came back here with Uncle Tom.”