The House of Bliss
THE ORIGIN of tin-kettlingis obscure, and to-day it is practised in Australia with more or less ritual-in the farming areas no ritual whatever. In Central Australia, however, where the huge holdings of land are held by city monopolists andoversea shareholders, women and marriages are rare. Tin-kettlinga newly-wed pair is an event accompanied by a ceremonial of almost religious inflexibility, whilst with our modern motor transport a distance of eighty miles is but an evening’s jaunt. The beating of tinware is merely an adjunct to a house-warming party and the whole affair is often arranged by the bridal couple and the visiting friends beforehand.
On this occasion there followed Stanton and his daughter nearly thirty people. Father and daughter led the procession through the gate in the wicket fence and halted before the main veranda steps, whereupon Jeff called in a loud voice:
“Awake, ye sleepers in the House of Bliss! We are an-hungered and athirst.”
No welcome was there. The house remained in complete darkness. The seconds slowly passed before the leading couple started to circle the house. Whereupon terrific din broke out from wildly-beaten tins-din that continued until the procession again halted at the veranda steps, when the echo of it was continued by numerous chained dogs and a great flock of awakened galahs roosting in the all-pervasive scrub.
“Show us a glimpse of the House of Bliss!” Stanton shouted.
Still no light appeared. Still the sleepers slept. Again Stanton led his procession of ear-splitting beaters round the house. The dogs yelped and howled, and the birds rose from their perches and fled. For the third time they came to the verandasteps, and for the third time Stanton called:
“Open, ye dwellers in the House of Bliss!”
And then a light sprang up in one of the rooms. A window was thrown open, and a voice raised in pretended anger came to them:
“Enough! Who are you who should disturb the slumbers of those within the House of Bliss?”
“We are friends of the bride and friends of the groom. We are in need of refreshment and desire to rest,” was Stanton’s reply.
“Gladly then will you all be admitted.”
The window was closed. Light after light sprang up in room after room, until there was not a dark room in the house. Suddenly the main door was thrown open. A brilliant petrol lamp was brought out and suspended from the veranda roof, and then the veranda fly-netted door was flung back and a man and a woman, both dressed in white, stood looking down on them.
“Enter, friends of the bride!” entreated the woman.
“And of the groom!” cried the man.
“Enter our House of Bliss!” they invited together, and stood back whilst Stanton and Marion mounted the three steps. On the veranda a young man not yet thirty, slim, wiry, fair and good-looking, the born horseman indicated in his stance, and a young woman, small and dark and vivaciously pretty, waited to receive them. The men shook the hands of both with genuine good-fellowship, and the two ladies kissed and petted the bride with real affection.
Bony was the last to be greeted. Dressed in a well-fitting grey suit and wearing spotless linen, his European cast of face and blue eyes expressed understanding sympathy when he bowed to host and hostess with infinite grace.
“This is Bony,” Stanton said by way of introduction. “Meet Harry and Edith Foster.”
Bony found himself being regarded by the keen appraising eyes of Foster, and then the overseer’s hand was thrust towards him, and Foster said:
“I’m glad to meet you, Bony. I’ve heard how you trained the grey gelding, and I’m always glad to make a friend of a good horseman.”
“And will you train a horse for me like you trained the grey gelding, Bony?” inquired the bride.
“It would please me much, if a horse can be found as teachable as Grey Cloud,” was Bony’s smiling consent. The girl’s big brown eyes were unsmiling, although her mouth smiled. Her looks and bright chatter doubtless would make a strong appeal to many men. Bony, however, was unaffected. There was absent from Edith Foster that inward light that made of Marion Stanton a lovely woman.
She and her husband led their guests into the house. The petrol-tins were stacked on the veranda. The ladies disappeared with the bride, and the groom conducted the gentlemen to the long dining-room, at whose farther end several adjoining tables supported great dishes of sandwiches, buttered scones, cakes and rank on rank of bottles and glasses.
“Say, Harry, wot’s it like to be tied up?” asked Ted, the tall, bearded, sun-blackened stockman.
“Great, man! You should try it.”
“Have to becallin ’ you Mister now, Harry. Like they would down in the Mister Country,” drawled Jack Withers, and from long experience Foster knew that Jack was looking at him and not out of the window.
“Better not let the boss hear you,” he was advised, which raised a general laugh.
The ladies came in, and Father Ryan drew the bride’s arm through his and beamed at her with his twinkling eyes, and, taking her to where the groom was, he slipped his other arm through Foster’s and with them faced the company.
“People, look upon the most wonderful and beautiful thing in the world,” he said with softened voice. “Behold love, which is God!” And then, squeezing the arms he held, he said to the newly wed: “Neither of youis of my faith, but please accept the good wishes and blessing of an old man.”
Whereupon young Jeff started up the ageless refrain:
“For they are jolly good fellows!”
Listening, Bony was thrilled by the universal affection expressed by Marion’s sweet voice, Mrs Poulton’s lighter notes, old Stanton’s deep tones, and the roar of other voices, a few tuneful, most of them raucous. There was here none of the ridiculous and childish caste feeling of the cities. It was a gathering of simple human beings, united by sympathy and happiness, together inside a house, set many, many miles from the next human habitation.
Harry Foster’s eyes were bright with unshed tears and his voice trembled whilst he thanked them in unstudied homely phrases. The bride’s eyes remained bright and proud, and Bony decided that here was a hard, well-controlled woman, who undoubtedly would be the ruler. And he smiled at the thought of Gunda and of Moongalliti, her indomitable husband.
Father Ryan was escorted to the refreshment table, and the company were invited to “wade in and help yourselves”. The big room resounded to loud voices and laughter. Corks flew and bottle-tops fell to the table with tinkling thuds. The ladies were served by their escorts, and the feast went on merrily for half anhour, and the bride went to the door and called for Mary.
And Mary, a great fat gin wearing a scarlet one-piece muslin dress, white silk stockings, and blue carpet slippers, ambled into the room with a huge tray, and ambled out again with a pile of used plates and glasses over the top of which she had difficulty in seeing her way.
For five minutes the talk was gradually becoming desultory, when Jeff Stanton asked Marion to play something. Smiling radiantly, she arose and crossed to the brand-new piano her father had given the newly wed; where, seeing her intention, Dash, dressed now as a London club man, opened the instrument and arranged her seat.
“Shall I turn over the music?” he asked softly, his eyes alight with the wonder and beauty of her.
“No. Not now, please. I’ll play a few pieces I know by heart. I wonder if Ted has brought his accordion.”
“I’ll ask him, if you wish.”
She nodded, her fingers fell on the notes, and she began to play a piece from “Lilac Time”. Presently the big stockman, with an exceedingly old but perfectly kept accordion under his arm, stood beside her, and, looking up at him, she smiled and saw the answering boyish grin with a tiny thrill of happiness.
The piece she was playing was brought to a close. The accordion player then seated himself near the piano, and when Marion began to play “Annie Laurie” he joined in with truly exquisite skill.
Listening raptly, the company found interest in Bony, who joined the accordion player and from his pocket took a long green box-leaf, and, holding it lengthwise between his fingers, began to blow on it. The high full tones he produced from the leaf, now as a hurricane wind through kangaroo grass, now as the hiss of rain on water, softened and beautified the coarser tones of the accordion, and when the tune was ended the applause was uproarious.
Bony whispered to his partners and they agreed to what he was proposing. Marion played a few preliminary notes and then the accordion broke into “The Prisoner’s Song”. Bony did not join in for several minutes and when eventually he did it was a little while before his leaf music was heard. The stockman began to play ever more softly. The leaf wailed ever more loudly. Now the accordion was silent, and presently the piano became silent, too, and for a while Bony played alone. The company sat with half-closed eyes, enthralled by the weird tones, haunting, repining notes that cried for light and freedom, the wailing voice of a hopeless prisoner.
And when he finished he rose smilingly and bowed to their applause, and Ted swung round and grasped his hand and squeezed it as mangle-rollers would do.
“Now, someone, sing a song!” called out Marion gaily.
Bony retired to a corner and carelessly dropped into a seat beside Sergeant Morris. Men were urging someone else to sing or recite. Marion was again playing the piano softly, and to Bony the sergeant said in a low voice: “I have two letters for you, Bony, and we must make an opportunity for me to give them to you.”
“Letters? Official?”
“One official, one private, both with the Brisbane postmark.”
“Oh, the chief writes wanting to know what the devil this, that, and the rest of it; and my wife writes that the children are well and that she still loves me,” Bony predicted with a smile. “What do you think of the bride?” he asked.
“What do you?” was the guarded response.
“Nice sort of a girl. Who is she?”
“Daughter of old MacKennie. Owns a run called Willoughby. Comfortable, but not rich. Willoughby is east of Mount Lion.”
“And that tall, well-dressed man-Dash, they call him?”
“He’s a mystery.”
“Good! I like mysteries. What do you know of him?”
“Precious little,” Morris admitted.“Came in nineteen-nineteen. Receives a remittance from London four times a year. Was a jackeroo on Windee for three years, and suddenly threw that up and joined Dot. Quite a retrograde social step, but they get on well together and make money.”
“H’m! Any vices?”
“None chronic. Drinksno more nor less than I do,” the sergeant went on. “Yet no one knows his people, or what part of England he comes from inside Hampshire, unless Jeff Stanton does. People must be big bugs, because Dash is a gentleman in the commonplace acceptance of the word. He gives one the impression he was once in the British Army.”
“No doubt of that by the way he carries himself. Now about the nigs, Morris. Do you know why they are at Range Hut?”
“Oh, just on a walkabout, I think. Have you made any discoveries?”
“Nothing of importance,” was Bony’s evasive reply. “By the way, do you know who gave Miss Marion her ring set with sapphires?”
“Lord, no! Never noticed it. Why?”
“I was just wondering. It is rather a unique ring. The setting is entirely old-fashioned. You see, I know a little about jewellery. Have you sent for Marks’s or Green’s record?”
“Yes. Last week. I’ll let you have it as soon as I get it. But have you discovered nothing as yet?”
“One or two little things.”
“What are they?” pressed the sergeant.
“I have found out that there was a struggle, a fierce struggle, when Marks’s car came to a stop, which was where it was found. When I receive the man’s history I may be able to say how he was killed, as well as prove indubitably that he was killed.”
“And you found no trace of the body?”
“No. I rather think there is no trace to find.”
“No trace? But the body or portions of the body must exist. To totally destroy a body is the most difficult thing in the world.”
“One would think so, to read the newspapers and novels of to-day, wouldn’t one?” Bony said naively.