Now his mind was made up, he felt weakness leave him. Trouble never when there was work to do. The horse waited to be saddled at the bottom of the hill, which task he did with the speed of long custom. He had chosen for the day's work the little which carried him from Surprise the night he met Moll Gregory. He had chosen well, for she was staunch and willing—without airs and fancies. Once he turned her towards the river, she held the way like a Miss travelling to school.
The sky was green as he came down the hill; colour faded from it; darkness fell upon the whole country. The stars took their places in the sky, and began the slow turning which he had watched so many years now that they told him the month and the hour as might a clock.
The breeze had to a tremble as he climbed down to the plain, and the night clapped a warm breath upon him. Distant summer[Pg 191] lightnings across the lower skies. The feet of the stepping mare trod evenly upon the and on the bare earth. He chose her often for the day's work because of the speed of her walk; but to-night she seemed turned to him. Yet the road was falling behind. The hill he had climbed was far over his shoulder. The Conical Hill of Surprise had risen on the horizon. Now the green belt of timber was hinted at a few miles ahead. Now he saw it with distinctness. Thought took hold of him again until he found himself in the strip of country where the floods ran in the rains. The warm night was wrapped about him. Crickets everywhere. Several times sounded the of startled kangaroos. Lightnings without pause above the outline of the hills. It seemed to him he was part of great music working in .
Here was the Pool. He knew it was the Pool; but it was too dark to discover the waters. She lived here. He would see her in a few moments. He would see her. He would see her in a moment. He lived through the long day that he might see her a little while in the night. He would see her again when this slow beast had trodden a little farther.
Suddenly he grew cold with such a greediness of cold as the passion of the tropic night could not . He had come to say good-bye. In half-an-hour he would be moving away from the Pool, nevermore while she lived there to ride that way. He could not do that. No, not he. He was but a man. His shaking body was a man's body. He was unworthy to be battleground of contending right and wrong. Not to-night. He could not make an end to-night. To-morrow, but not to-day.... A moment ago he rode by the beginning of the Pool, and now he passed the castor-oil tree. The trees were breaking apart. There stood the hut and the tents.
From a of fancies he presently took hold upon . In the of the hut, looking towards him through the dark, stood Moll Gregory. Lamplight from inside passed her and pierced the night with a long beam. She held an empty basin in her hands. The dark was clear to him who had ridden half-a-dozen miles through it; but she looked before her in a puzzled way.
"Is that you, Mr. Power?"
"Yes, Molly."
He believed he shook when he to her. She was a of water, chilled by snows from high peaks, offered into the hands of a dying man. How she impassioned the night with her loveliness. He would never find her[Pg 193] beauty staling, though he looked on her for ever. All the moments of a day brought new emotions watching from her eyes, new passions sitting upon her lips. He never knew how holy beauty might be until he looked upon her. How the light shone on her brown hair, lying coiled on her head and brooding round her brows.
He found he had pulled up the mare in the doorway.
"I've come to see you, Molly."
Why did she not answer, instead of like that, tapping the basin on her knee and looking first at him, and then away, and then at him again? Did she understand at last he loved her? Another man kneeling in to her. She was frowning a little bit. He found himself dismounting. The dog, grown friendly now, came forward with waving tail. The hut was empty.
"Mum and Dad went over to the a while back," she said just then. "There's nobody here."
He led the mare a little way away; tethered her; unsaddled her. She her head after the day's work. Another hour he would have led her to drink; but now where was the time?
The girl had gone indoors when he returned to the hut. She stood by the table putting the crockery into the basin. The room was heavy with heat. The lamp wick was untrimmed,[Pg 194] smoking a little and lending a light. Nothing was changed.
"Them is to wash up," she said.
He was living again, standing thus beside her. Yet he was weary with knowledge that he waited on her for the last time. He grew entranced with her quick hands in the basin. She nodded her head to the dish-rag hanging on the wall. He took it and faced her across the table, and together they began to wash up.
He knew then that whatever waited for him in the long years to be lived before he became an old man—whether there were other women to meet and other lands to travel—these moments he was living now would walk with him in memory to the very shadow of the grave. That strange mood visited him, which sometimes comes to a man, when he stands out of himself and views the scene as . He peered into future years, when Maud and he journeyed down the road together, and the worst wounds of this summer madness were crusted over. But he knew there would be hours when certain winds blew, or certain drifted out of the scrub, or certain words were spoken, when he must go apart a little while until memory slept again.
The mood passed as instantly as it arrived, and once more he stood before her weary and . She would tire of a face soon. He had carried a long face lately when they walked together. Beauty she, and he the Beast. Strangely she had passed it by. She was still and careless, yet now she had moods when she was thoughtful and a little kind. Never was she heavy-hearted; though to-night she frowned just a little and was as silent as himself. He heard a of cups. Within his heart—growing and growing with the moments—feeling was in , until it seemed excess in him must and fill her barren little heart. They chanced to look up at one moment from their work—up and out at the door—and a great white star fell down the sky.
"Do you know what people say, Molly? Every falling star is a soul hurrying from earth." She shoulders with faintest movement. "I think a man's soul dies, Molly, when hope dies. Perhaps some man's hope has died to-night."
For an instant she turned wide grave eyes upon him, then she went back to work, moving her hands in and out of the basin.
"Molly, you could get along without me, couldn't you? If I had to go away for a while and could not come back, you would not be lonely with other friends to look after you. You have been a good little comrade to me; but I think our friendship was not meant to die of old age. You could get along without me, couldn't you—and Molly, you wouldn't forget me just at first?"
"No, Mister."
"I asked you not to call me Mister. Say Jim."
"No, Jim."
She had finished washing up. She went out into the dark and threw away the water. She found a second cloth, and began quickly to dry the cups he had lingered over.
"You aren't so slick to-night," she said. "You are pretty slick at this kind of thing for a man."
"I was round the run to-day. I came here from across the other side. The Pool is shrinking fast, Molly."
"The rains should be here, Christmas."
"It might be a pool of love, and all the drinks men take from it shrink its . Molly, are you as clever as you pretend at forgetting? If something happens, so that I come no more to the Pool—when you go alone to fish or when you go with others, will you remember that once or twice you fished with me?"
"You aren't to go away. Sometimes I think you couldn't."
The work was done. She turned with a movement of her body as she said the last words, and was putting the cups and saucers on the shelf, and the spoons with a rattle into a box.
"Hang up the cloth, Jim, and wake up. You aren't always asleep. I heard something about you yesterday. They say you are such a daddy man with horses that when you camped out Brolga way, the brumbies came down from off Mount Sorrowful to sing to you. Ah, Mister, I have got you smiling."
"I'm not Mister."
"Jim."
Silence fell again, and once more he grew conscious of the little sounds that accompanied the flight of time—the flutter of wings round a lamp; the swish of a girl's dress; the cries of insects from the dark. It was like standing by a river filled to both banks, which swept swiftly and to the sea, and hearing the small voices of multitudinous waters.... What did she say now?
"I found them this morning. They was a ............