They sat close together on the long stool by the table, shy and awkward at first; and she clung to him at opening of thunder, and they started apart guiltily when the first great drops sounded like footsteps on the gravel outside, just as they'd done one night-time before -- twenty years before.
If it was dark before, it was black now. The edge of the awful storm-cloud rushed up and under the original darkness like the best "drop" black-brushed over the cheap "lamp" variety, turning it grey by contrast.
The deluge lasted only a quarter of an hour; but it cleared the night, and did its work. There was hail before it, too -- big as emu eggs, the boys said -- that lay feet deep in the old diggers' holes on Pipeclay for days afterwards -- weeks some said.
The two sweethearts of twenty years ago and to-night watched the retreat of the storm, and, seeing Mount Buckaroo standing clear, they went to the back door, which opened opposite the end of the shed, and saw to the east a glorious arch of steel-blue, starry sky, with the distant peaks showing clear and blue away back under the far-away stars in the depth of it.
They lingered awhile -- arms round each other's waists -- before she called the boys, just as they had done this time of night twenty years ago, after the boys' grandmother had called her.
"Awlright, mother!" bawled back the boys, with unfilial independence of Australian youth. "We're awlright! We'll be in directly!
Wasn't it a pelterer, mother?"
They went in and sat down again. The embarrassment began to wear off.
"We'll get out of this, Mary," said Johnny. "I'll take Mason's offer for the cattle and things, and take that job of Dawson's, boss or no boss" -- (Johnny's bad luck was due to his inability in the past to "get on" with any boss for any reasonable length of time)-- "I can get the boys on, too. They're doing no good here, and growing up. It ain't doing justice to them; and, what's more, this life is killin' you, Mary. That settles it! I was blind.
Let the jumpt-up selection go! It's ****** a wall-eyed bullock of me, Mary -- a dry-rotted rag of a wall-eyed bullock like Jimmy Nowlett's old Strawberry.
And you'll live in town like a lady."
"Somebody coming!" yelled the boys.
There was a clatter of sliprails hurriedly thrown down, and clipped by horses' hoofs.
"Insoide there! Is that you, Johnny?"
"Yes!" ("I knew they'd come for you," said Mrs. Mears to Johnny.)
"You'll have to come, Johnny. There's no get out of it.
Here's Jim Mason with me, and we've got orders to stun you and pack you if you show fight. The blessed fiddler from Mudgee didn't turn up.
Dave Regan burst his concertina, and they're in a fix."
"But I can't leave the missus."
"That's all right. We've got the school missus's mare and side-saddle.
She says you ought to be jolly well ashamed of yourself, Johnny Mears, for not bringing your wife on New Year's Night. And so you ought!"
Johnny did not look shame-faced, for reasons unknown to them.
"The boys couldn't find the horses," put in Mrs. Mears.
"Johnny was just going down the gully again."
He gave her a grateful look, and felt a strange, new thrill of admiration for his wife.
"And -- there's a bottle of the best put by for you, Johnny," added Pat McDurmer, mistaking Johnny's silence; "and we'll call it thirty bob!" (Johnny's ideas were coming slowly again, after the recent rush.) "Or -- two quid! -- there you are!"
"I don't want two quid, nor one either, for taking my wife to a dance on New Year's Night!" said Johnny Mears. "Run and put on your best bib and tucker, Mary."
And she hurried to dress as eager and excited, and smiling to herself as girlishly as she had done on such occasions on evenings before the bright New Year's Night twenty years ago.
--
For a related story, see "A Bush Dance", in "Joe Wilson and His Mates".
-- A. L., 1998.
--
