THE FALL
I
THE morning of September 5th saw Feng Ching-wei at work in the Atlas office studying, as he had studied a dozen times before, the shearing tallies. The figures made heartrending reading even now, those terrible figures that revealed the harvest of Drought, those same figures that had sent Frank Mayne with brooding eyes and sunken shoulders out into the wilderness to fight the cloud of despair in the shadow of which he moved.
The previous year Atlas had shorn forty-five thousand sheep, and the year before that sixty-six thousand. This third shearing in the great drought had brought the total shorn down to twenty-three thousand, and of that number over three thousand had died of cold after being shorn. At that instant, taking into account the sheep that had perished on their way back to the paddocks, it was doubtful if there were more than twenty thousand sheep on all Atlas.
Unstinted money had been poured out to save the flocks. The men had worked loyally and without complaint, ignoring the set number of hours per week laid down by the Arbitration Court. MacDougall had fought the drought as though the sheep had been his. Mayne had slaved as hard as MacDougall, whilst Feng had laboured no less. To no avail. From sixty-six thousand to twenty thousand! Of this number the great majority were the hand-fed ewes and rams, but by Christmas the total might well be reduced a further six thousand; by the end of the coming summer, if no rain fell, their number might have shrunk to five thousand–because the end of the stream of money was now in sight.
The wool clip had been transported to the railway at Menindee and dispatched to the brokers. It was, for a huge run like Atlas, a miserable consignment of six hundred bales, two-thirds of the number dispatched the year before, and but one-third of the number sent down the year before that.
To worsen the situation, the wool markets were rocking. Buyers from England, Europe, Japan and America awaited the opening sales, no one knowing what the cable advices they were daily receiving might contain, none being able to foretell to what maximum they would bid.
On Atlas the days passed with dull monotony to the wreck of a man driving a car or riding a horse over the desert that once had been a vast natural paradise: to the woman in Government House, disillusioned, racked by illicit desires, torn this way and that by taboos, affections, and longings; to the pale-faced man working at books and documents in the quiet station office, impotent to avert, unable to close his eyes to, the doom approaching Atlas.
September the twelfth fell on a Thursday, the day of the week the mail-car reached Atlas at eleven o’clock in the forenoon. Feng took the outward bag to the driver, and from him accepted the inward bag. With forced cheerfulness he asked the man how matters went with the people of Menindee.
“Crook, Mr. Ching-wei,” the driver replied, rolling a cigarette. “The pubs are full of blokes spending the last cheques they’ll make for some time, and the tracks are covered with blokes looking for jobs wot won’t come to light till the rain falls again–if ever it does rain again, which I doubts. Isn’t there a song which goes–‘It ain’t gonna rain no more?’ I bet an Aussie bushman wrote it. They tell me that Mornington Station has busted, and Myall Creek Station has sacked all hands and is leaving the sheep to take their chance.
Boynton and Reynolds took over Thunder Downs, and offered Fairway, the owner, five hundred pounds and the station car to go away with. They found old Fairway in a water-hole the next morning. Well, I must get. No passengers this trip, and I’ve got to open and close all the darned gates myself.”
So Mornington had crashed! It was one of New South Wales’s biggest sheep-runs, and was considered the most solidly financed. And Boynton and Reynolds had taken over Thunder Downs from the owner, Fairway. Poor old Fairway! He had owned Thunder Downs for thirty years. Of course, other crashes would follow. The strain was too severe to be borne by any but stations governed by super-shrewd men or which, like Tin Tin, had been blessed by rain from chance thunderstorms.
Feng was followed into the office by Eva and Todd Gray, who conversed in low tones whilst he sorted the contents of the bag. Handing them the mail for Government House and the men, he was left with two private letters and the Atlas business mail. The first letter he opened was that which on the reverse side of the envelope bore the imprint of Messrs. Boynton and Reynolds, the brokers and station financiers. The contents acknowledged receipt of six hundred and two bales containing wool which would be included in the first of the series of sales that would start September 25th. The brokers added their opinion that the price would average thirteen pence per pound.
Thirteen pence per pound! Rapidly Feng figured the average amount each of the Atlas bales would bring at thirteen pence per pound. The resulting estimate was twelve pounds sterling per bale. And last year it had been twenty-two pounds per bale for nine hundred and ninety bales. He rang up White Well.
“Do you know where Mr. Mayne is?” he asked Fred Lowe, who answered the call.
“No. Haven”t seen him for a week.”
Ten Pot Dick at Mulga Flat announced that he had not seen “the boss” for “hell knows when”. Mrs. MacDougal thought that Mayne was with her husband in the paddock round Burnt Hut, and that they were camped there. Should she ring up Burnt Hut?
“Please, Mrs. MacDougall,” Feng requested. “It is most urgent.”
But it was not until nine o’clock that Mrs. MacDougall connected with her husband and Frank Mayne at Burnt Hut. She telephoned the information to the anxious Feng, since there was no through connection from Burnt Hut, and he requested her to take down a message and transmit it to Frank Mayne. It ran:
Brokers advise wool to be sold September twenty-fifth. Forecast price at thirteen pence per pound. Shall I instruct them to withdraw wool from sale?
Mayne’s answer was:
Yes. We are not giving away the wool.
So immediately the Menindee post office opened for business the next day, Feng wired the brokers to withdraw the Atlas wool until the first sale of the series showed the temper of the market.
To this telegram he received no reply, and was not unduly perturbed, for he expected none. The day continued with the heavy monotony of depression. Mayne came in, stayed two days, and departed, and when he had gone Feng called seven men into the office, explained the position with frankness, and paid them off.
2
It was Mary O’Doyle who shocked the anxious Feng out of the business depression into his former world of speculation regarding Alldyce Cameron and his love affairs. It was when he was sipping the after-dinner coffee that Mary had placed before him that she said dramatically:
“There’s some queer goings-on, I’m thinking, Misther Feng. Goings-on wot tickles me nose:”
“Indeed! To what goings-on do you refer?” he inquired curiously.
“Well, from this here window I can look across to the far side of the Gutter,” she proceeded impressively. “About a week ago I noticed that Eva went off with Little Frankie down the river, and, a moment or two after, she went off up the river. Why does she want to go up the river all on ’er own? She went up the river this afternoon when Eva and Little Frankie went down the river.”
“She?” Feng asked blandly.
Mary O’Doyle jerked her head significantly towards Government House.
“Her,” she said, with utter simplicity.
“Do you mean Mrs. Emily?” Feng asked, referring to the cook.
Not Emily. Her,” Mary said, with what was meant to be cutting sarcasm.
“Oh!” The enlightened Feng tapped his coffee-cup with an apostle spoon. “Well, I suppose Mrs. Mayne is at liberty to take an airing if she desires to, Mary. Perhaps she goes to tend Old John’s grave, for you will remember he was buried in his own garden plot, as he expressly wished.”
Mary O’Doyle smiled scoffingly. She sniffed. Feng had heard that sniff before. So had Todd Gray. It indicated Mary’s emphatic disbelief in a subtle way.
“Well, I ’opes she is enjoying av ’erself a-walking up the river all on ’er own–I don’t think–when ’er own flesh an’ blood takes an airing in the opposite direction. An’ she says to Eva: ‘Take Little Frankie to the Seat of Atlas this afternoon and show ’im ’is inheritance.’ As though she troubles about Little Frankie’s inheritance. She’s a–a––”
“Mary!” Feng exclaimed sharply, just in time.
Again Mary O’Doyle sniffed, then rolled away with her laden tray. Left alone, Feng rose to his feet and walked to the window. Beyond, it was quite dark, and he could see nothing. The night-masked view held for him no interest then, for his mind sought an explanation of Ethel Mayne’s stroll up the river toward Old John’s deserted house, when she had instructed Eva to take Little Frankie to the Seat of Atlas to show him his inheritance. He felt inclined to sneer openly as Mary had done when the child’s inheritance was mentioned as of concern to his mother.
Surely Cameron was not meeting Ethel when he was wooing Eva, the maid?
The thought flooded his mind as a coloured light. And what did Mary O’Doyle suspect? Trust a woman to be correct in her suspicions, whatever they might be! Even so, he could not very well ask her what precisely were her suspicions. But–he bit his nether lip–should Cameron be wooing Ethel, even though he kissed Eva, then the weapon Ethel had given him, Feng, and which Eva in Cameron’s arms had taken away–that same weapon he would receive back again.
After considering these points for nearly half an hour, he decided that he must know why Frank’s wife walked up-river when Eva and the boy had been directed to walk down-river. And, obviously, the only method he could adopt to discover the significance of this behaviour was to spy on Ethel Mayne. To follow her, he must know when she went off, and this could not be known without assistance, for it was impossible to spend the whole of every afternoon in that room just to wait and watch Ethel set out. For his friend’s sake, for the sake of Atlas, aye, and for the sake of the woman he loved, Feng Ching-wei decided to spy on the haughty woman who hated Atlas. He rang for Mary O’Doyle.
“I believe, Mary,” he said, when that mighty woman appeared, “I believe, Mary, that you are a woman of discretion. That being so, I know you will not ask me what I am thinking about or tell me what you are thinking about. That is, our thoughts regarding ‘Her’. When next you notice Eva and Little Frankie going down the river and observe ‘Her’ set out walking up the river, please come to the office at once and let me know. Now, not a word! And not a word to anyone–most certainly not to Eva.”
Mary O’Doyle’s small blue eyes gleamed delightedly. She opened her wide mouth to its utmost extent, and then shut it with snapping teeth, so that her jaws became emphatically clenched, and her lips were clamped into a straight line. Without speaking a syllable she had conveyed to her employer her silent promise to remain dumb on all matters concerning “Her”.
3
September 25th saw Frank Mayne about the homestead, a silent, physically weary, spiritually depressed man. The post-shearing work had been finished, the sheep having been reclassified and placed in the best of the desert paddocks, with all the breeding ewes adjacent to White Well, from which depot Tom Mace and Ten Pot Dick hand-fed them with maize. The few surviving lambs had been marked and the rams occupied a paddock south of the homestead.
On Westmacott’s old selection there was not a hoof. One could ride over it all day and not see a living thing, not a crow or an eagle. Of the two hundred horses a bare fifty survived to be drafted into one of the western salt-bush paddocks to which MacDougall now trucked daily sufficient water for them. In that same paddock the three surviving bullocks were also put. The country between the outstation, Forest Hill and White Well–tens of thousands of acres–was a vast stretch of river sand and dying scrub trees. It had not rained for eleven months.
“It is tough on those men being put on tramp, Feng, but you did right,” Mayne said whilst he and his friend waited for the Adelaide telegram to be sent over the telephone to the Menindee postmaster. That telegram would give them the opening prices of wool in the first series of this season’s sales.
“There was no help for it, Frank.”
“No, I know. And now we shall have to dismiss two of the married men, as well as the teacher, if the wool prices are as low as the brokers estimate they will be.”
Feng made no comment. He knew that never since the drought early in the history of the century had Atlas been unable to afford a teacher for the children. Not only three children of the married family to be retained, but also five others who rode horseback from as far as seven miles, would be deprived of schooling. Why comment on the dismissal of the teacher? The position was so hopeless. Until the rain came, Atlas and many other stations would be reduced to the position of mere selections.
The telegram arrived a few minutes before six o’clock, sent by a wool expert, acting for Mayne, who had attended the sale. It read:
Average price over day twelve pence halfpenny pound.
Feng, who had taken down the dictated message, had turned his back to Mayne after giving him the slip. From it Frank Mayne looked out through the window that revealed the bare earth stretching away beneath the sturdy river-flat box trees. Pushing back his chair, he rose and passed out, and when the dinner-gong sounded he was on the Seat of Atlas.
4
blow fell on Atlas on the first day of October. It was struck by the Postmaster-General, when the mail-driver delivered the letter-bag. Mayne, being in the office, opened Boynton and Reynolds’ long envelope and perused the contents. When he had read part he began again at the beginning, reading aloud to Feng:
As per our communication of recent date, the average price of wool over the first of the recent series of sales was a fraction below thirteen pence per pound. At the second of the series the average dropped fourpence.
Your consignment of six hundred bales was divided into those two sales and the amount realized after all expenses therewith deducted totals £4,985.
There is no evading the disturbing fact that the world’s warehouses are overstocked with finished goods. As the financial outlook of all European countries and the South Americas is extremely bad, no rise in prices can be expected for several years. You will consequently readily understand that the depreciation of wool values will be instantly reflected in the values of station property and stock.
In view of these regrettable facts we were unable to withdraw the Atlas wool as requested, and the amount realized will be set against your indebtedness to us, the balance remaining of your indebtedness being at date forty-three thousand, five hundred pounds.
Governed by these circumstances, we must request you to dismiss all your employees save a cook and one maid for service in the house, to cease artificial feeding when present supplies of maize and lucerne are exhausted, and to turn the sheep into the best of your paddocks to take their chance of survival of this drought.
All future financial accommodation will have to be most carefully scrutinized, and our Mr. Rowland Smythe will be visiting you shortly to explain the situation fully to you. Whilst expressing our sympathy…
Mayne stood near the table looking blankly at Feng, who was seated. He was swaying slightly on his feet, his face drained of colour. His voice was hardly louder than a whisper.
“Oh, God!” he said. “They have got Atlas. They’ve got my Atlas!”
“Frank!” exclaimed Feng sharply, alarmed by the despairing face of the man he loved. Springing to his feet, he passed round to Mayne and gripped his arm. “Frank! Brace up! It is not as bad as all that. Smythe will explain, and, if necessary, will find for us a way out.”
Mayne’s eyes seemed to be flecked with blood-spots. Across his dry lips moved the tip of his tongue. At last he said:
“Don’t speak, Feng. Oh, God! Atlas! My Atlas gone!”
He stumbled once, crossing the office to the door. Feng, moved to the depths, watched him go, saw him pass the front window, and, when he looked out from the door, saw him crossing the bridge over the creek. He knew where Mayne was going, blindly, brokenly. To the Seat of Atlas where, before him, Old Man Mayne often had found peace, consolation, and inspiration. Feng Ching-wei followed.
As he had known he would do, he found Mayne seated on the squared block of wood, looking out blankly over the inheritance the drought now seriously threatened to steal from him, if already it had not done so. If Mayne was aware of Feng’s arrival and his subsequent sitting beside him on the wood staging, he gave no sign. Neither spoke. Both recognized the hopeless situation of Atlas in debt to the extent of nearly fifty thousand pounds at a time when no man was likely to pay a price even as low as fifty thousand for a property that two years back had been worth two hundred thousand.
He recognized, too–and herein lay the hurt–that Messrs. Boynton and Reynolds held them and Atlas in a cleft stick. The fate of Atlas lay in their grasping hands.
For a long time those two sat together in silence, their eyes blind to the drunken dust-columns swaying across the vast desiccated landscape before them, their ears deaf to the cries of the river birds, and the occasional sounds from the quiet homestead.
The sun went down, as now it went down always, an orb of dazzling fire in the cloudless sky. The shadow crept away from them to the far clear-cut horizon, dulling the twin colours of the earth into one great unrolled carpet of black plush, its further edge supporting the flame of the sunset. The light wind dropped to an unruffled calm. In stupendous silence–unbelievable silence to a city-dweller–unbroken by the twitter of a bird or the swish of a falling leaf, night came, took over command of the world from departing day, when lo! the silence was no more, banished by the hoot of an owl, the mournful distant cry of a mo-poke, the far-away scream of a curlew.
It was only then that Mayne moved. His left hand fell on the shoulder of the lower-sitting Feng, the fingers pressing as though seeking consolation from the faithful friend who had followed him into his Gethsemane. Reaching up, Feng placed a hand over the hand on his shoulder. When Mayne spoke his voice was steady.
“Do you think they will give us a chance before the rain comes?”
“Why not?” returned Feng with assumed cheerfulness. “In spite of the fall in wool, the value of the property–real value, I mean–is threefold greater than the debt. We can but wait till Smythe comes. He must capitalize the debt, and we must pay the interest on it. In all decency they can’t take Atlas before finding out how far we can go to meet them.”
“They might not wish to meet us. They might demand their pound of flesh. My private fortune is now less than six thousand, and I have Ethel and the boy to think of. Then there is Westmacott’s place–the instalment to pay to the widow.”
Feng had to restrain an outburst against the woman who never for a single instant had considered her husband–who even now might be meeting her lover at the Rest House. He had been on the verge of offering his own fortune to form a dyke to keep back the flood-water of ruin, but mention of Ethel Mayne kept him silent on that point. She should not waste his money as she had wasted that of his friend.
5
Throughout the following morning Feng was busied making up accounts and drawing cheques. Mayne telephoned the men at White Well to hold themselves in readiness to come in on the truck he was sending for them, and to MacDougall to bring in the two men stationed at Forest Hill, after having instructed his wife to pack in readiness to leave in three days.
“It is the end, Mac,” he told the dour Scotsman.
“Not it! Atlas will come again,” MacDougall retorted.
At the pay-counter Mayne sat with the accounts and the made-out cheques before him. It was two o’clock, and all but those men then being brought in by MacDougall were outside waiting to be called. The spring sun poured its warmth on the iron roof of the building, heating the interior, but Mayne felt as cold as stone. He had refused to delegate the final act to Feng, who had offered to perform it, well knowing that Mayne felt as though he was to stab to death old friends, rather than payoff the supposed enemies of his class–the workers.
Dealing with the first five men, he spoke words of regret to them, checking the pay-cheque with the account, signing the cheque, and taking for it the signed receipt. To Gus Jackson, the machinery expert, a clever man who could repair a motor-engine, build a house, and drive the shearing machinery, he said:
“Well, Gus, the drought has busted Atlas. It comes very hard to me to have to pay you off after eleven years’ service. I hope you will find another place quickly.”
“I hope the drought ends soon, Mr. Mayne, and you can offer me a job again,” answered Jackson, tall, lean, efficient. “No one can carry on if it never rains, anyway.”
To Fred Lowe:
“I am more than sorry to part with you, Fred. I hope you will come back when the good seasons return.”
“You’ll find me camped in the shearing shed waiting for a job one week after the drouth ends,” Fred drawled cheerfully. “We all
’as our ups and downs. I ain’t grousing, ’cos I’m due for a down. Hooroo, Mr. Mayne! Hope I see you soon for a job.”
The two jackeroos, Mr. Andrews and Mr. Noyes, both fourth-year men, he paid next, smiling with forced optimism whilst wishing them good luck. Then came Todd Gray, his eyes gleaming.
“You want to see me, Mr. Mayne?” he said, a trace of belligerency in his voice. “Yes, Todd. After all these years we have come to the parting of the roads.”
“Who says so?” Todd demanded.
“The Drought,” replied Mayne simply.
“Oh, does it? I worked for Old Man Mayne through good years and bad years. I’m not taking the sack because of no bloody drouth. I don’t walk off Atlas unless I walks off behind you, Mr. Mayne, and you, Mr. Feng.”
“There will be no more money, Todd,” Mayne said, not daring to look from the documents before him, on the top of which were Todd’s account and the cheque.
“I ain’t exactly thinking of money, Mr. Mayne.”
“Nor will there be any men to cook for, Todd.”
“I ain’t thinking of cooking. I’m tired of cooking, anyway. I’m thinking of all the bits of paper what will litter Atlas up, the garden that’ll want watering, the ration sheep that’ll have to be killed,” Todd stated with emphasis. “You can stop me from camping in a hut, but you can’t stop me camping on the river bank. I got a Miner’s Right, and I’ll peg out a claim outside this office before you’ll push me off Atlas.”
Mayne turned to Feng. His eyes were unable to meet those of his friend.
“Are you keeping Mary?”
“Yes, Frank, I am.”
“Very well, Todd. You may stay on, and to hell with the brokers!”
“Of course I’ll be staying on,” said a relieved Todd. At the door he paused, suddenly chuckling, and added: “And if the brokers come, just you leave ’em to me and Mary. Gawd ’elp ’em!”
He vanished, and Mayne called Ten Pot Dick. Through the open window Ten Pot Dick expectorated with wonderful velocity.
“Don’t you worry about me, boss,” he said with hoarse laughter. “I’ve carried me swag that much that I’ve got corns on me shoulders as big as plates. I ’ope you ’as luck, Mr. Mayne. I’ll be ’anging about when the drouth breaks.”
Though his heart ached Mayne was obliged to smile. His men were leaving with courage to face a harder future even than the future he feared. They were leaving as his friends, and not because no more money could be made from their labour.
Three days later the MacDougalls arrived, their gear and one lad stowed on the truck they owned. It was the hardest parting of all. There were tears in Mrs. MacDougall’s eyes when, the Atlas cheque in MacDougall’s pocket, Feng entertained them and Mayne at tea in his bungalow.
“I don’t know what we’ll do or where we’ll go,” she said when about to leave.
“Write sometimes, Mrs. Mac, and when conditions improve I will let you know, and you might like to come back,” Mayne said. So long, Mac, and the best of luck!”
“So long!” was all MacDougall said before releasing the engine-clutch.
Atlas seemed deserted from then on. Tom Mace received permission to gather the wool from dead carcasses, thus being provided with a living for months to come. Todd became Mayne’s companion on the incessant tours round the windmills that raised water for the sheep, most of which charged the car with loud baaings, now hungrily demanding the maize that never appeared.
Mr. Rowland Smythe came to Atlas. He went through the books, checking Feng’s balance-sheet, which revealed a total indebtedness to all creditors of fifty-two thousand pounds.
“Well, Frank, it is easy to be wise after the event,” he said before he left. “You know now how you failed. You believed the drought was ended several times when it was only just starting. That’s not your fault. Where you deserve censure is in not starting to fight the drought a year earlier than you did. Still, you’ll come again, Frank. So will Atlas. Carry on, lad! I’ll try to capitalize the debt, and you’ll pay the interest. Between us we’ll keep Boynton and Reynolds at bay.”