THE CHOSEN VESSEL.
She laid the stick and her baby on the grass while she untied the rope
that tethered the calf. The length of the rope separated them. The cow
was near the calf, and both were lying down. Feed along the creek was
plentiful, and every day she found a fresh place to tether it, since
tether it she must, for if she did not, it would stray with the cow
out on the plain. She had plenty of time to go after it, but then there
was baby; and if the cow turned on her out on the plain, and she with
baby--she had been a town girl and was afraid of the cow, but she did
not want the cow to know it. She used to run at first when it bellowed
its protest against the penning up of its calf. This satisfied the cow,
also the calf, but the woman's husband was angry, and called her--the
noun was cur. It was he who forced her to run and meet the advancing
cow, brandishing a stick, and uttering threatening words till
the enemy turned and ran. "That's the way!" the man said, laughing at
her white face. In many things he was worse than the cow, and she
wondered if the same rule would apply to the man, but she was not one
to provoke skirmishes even with the cow.
It was early for the calf to go "to bed"--nearly an hour earlier than
usual; but she had felt so restless all day. Partly because it was
Monday, and the end of the week that would bring her and baby the
companionship of its father, was so far off. He was a shearer, and had
gone to his shed before daylight that morning. Fifteen miles as the
crow flies separated them.
There was a track in front of the house, for it had once been a wine
shanty, and a few travellers passed along at intervals. She was not
afraid of horsemen; but swagmen, going to, or worse, coming from the
dismal, drunken little township, a day's journey beyond, terrified her.
One had called at the house today, and asked for tucker.
Ah! that was why she had penned up the calf so early! She feared more
from the look of his eyes, and the gleam of his teeth, as he
watched her newly awakened baby beat its impatient fists upon her
covered breasts, than from the knife that was sheathed in the belt at
his waist.
She had given him bread and meat. Her husband, she told him, was sick.
She always said that when she was alone, and a swagman came, and she
had gone in from the kitchen to the bedroom, and asked questions and
replied to them in the best man's voice she could assume Then he had
asked to go into the kitchen to boil his billy, but she gave him tea,
and he drank it on the wood-heap. He had walked round and round the
house, and there were cracks in some places, and after the last time he
had asked for tobacco. She had none to give him, and he had grinned,
because there was a broken clay pipe near the wood-heap where he stood,
and if there were a man inside, there ought to have been tobacco. Then
he asked for money, but women in the bush never have money.
At last he had gone, and she, watching through the cracks, saw him when
about a quarter of a mile away, turn and look back at the
house. He had stood so for some moments with a pretence of fixing his
swag, and then, apparently satisfied, moved to the left towards the
creek. The creek made a bow round the house, and when he came to it she
lost sight of him. Hours after, watching intently for signs of smoke,
she saw the man's dog chasing some sheep that had gone to the creek for
water, and saw it slink back suddenly, as if the man had called it.
More than once she thought of taking her baby and going to her husband.
But in the past, when she had dared to speak of the dangers to which
her loneliness exposed her, he had taunted and sneered at her. She need
not flatter herself, he had coarsely told her, that anybody would want
to run away with her.
Long before nightfall she placed food on the kitchen table, and beside
it laid the big brooch that had been her mother's. It was the only
thing of value that she had. And she left the kitchen door wide open.
The doors inside she securely fastened. Beside the bolt in the back one
she drove in the steel and scissors; against it she piled the table and
the stools. Underneath the lock of the front door she forced
the handle of the spade, and the blade between the cracks in the
flooring boards. Then the prop-stick, cut into lengths, held the top,
as the spade held the middle. The windows were little more than
portholes; she had nothing to fear through them.
She ate a few mouthfuls of food and drank a cup of milk. But she
lighted no fire, and when night came, no candle, but crept with her
baby to bed.
What woke her? The wonder was that she had slept--she had not meant
to. But she was young, very young. Perhaps the shrinking of the
galvanized roof--yet hardly, since that was so usual. Something had
set her heart beating wildly; but she lay quite still, only she put her
arm over her baby. Then she had both round it, and she prayed, "Little
baby, little baby, don't wake!"
The moon's rays shone on the front of the house, and she saw one of the
open cracks, quite close to where she lay, darken with a shadow. Then a
protesting growl reached her; and she could fancy she heard the man
turn hastily. She plainly heard the thud of something striking the
dog's ribs, and the long flying strides of the animal as it
howled and ran. Still watching, she saw the shadow darken every crack
along the wall. She knew by the sounds that the man was trying every
standpoint that might help him to see in; but how much he saw she could
not tell. She thought of many things she might do to deceive him into
the idea that she was not alone. But the sound of her voice would wake
baby, and she dreaded that as though it were the only danger that
threatened her. So she prayed, "Little baby, don't wake, don't cry!"
Stealthily the man crept about. She knew he had his boots off, because
of the vibration that his feet caused as he walked along the veranda to
gauge the width of the little window in her room, and the resistance of
the front door.
Then he went to the other end, and the uncertainty of what he was doing
became unendurable. She had felt safer, far safer, while he was close,
and she could watch and listen. She felt she must watch, but the great
fear of wakening baby again assailed her. She suddenly recalled that
one of the slabs on that side of the house had shrunk in length as well
as in width, and had once fallen out. It was held in position
only by a wedge of wood underneath. What if he should discover that!
The uncertainty increased her terror. She prayed as she gently raised
herself with her little one in her arms, held tightly to her breast.
She thought of the knife, and shielded her child's body with her hands
and arms. Even its little feet she covered with its white gown, and
baby never murmured--it liked to be held so. Noiselessly she crossed
to the other side, and stood where she could see and hear, but not be
seen. He was trying every slab, and was very near to that with the
wedge under it. Then she saw him find it; and heard the sound of the
knife as bit by bit he began to cut away the wooden support.
She waited motionless, with her baby pressed tightly to her, though she
knew that in another few minutes this man with the cruel eyes,
lascivious mouth, and gleaming knife would enter. One side of the slab
tilted; he had only to cut away the remaining little end, when the
slab, unless he held it, would fall outside.
She heard his jerked breathing as it kept time with the cuts of the
knife, and the brush of his clothes as he rubbed the wall in his
movements, for she was so still and quiet, that she did not
even tremble. She knew when he ceased, and wondered why. She stood well
concealed; she knew he could not see her, and that he would not fear if
he did, yet she heard him move cautiously away. Perhaps he expected the
slab to fall. Still his motive puzzled her, and she moved even closer,
and bent her body the better to listen. Ah! what sound was that?
"Listen! Listen!" she bade her heart--her heart that had kept so
still, but now bounded with tumultuous throbs that dulled her ears.
Nearer and nearer came the sounds, till the welcome thud of a horse's
hoof rang out clearly.
"Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!" she cried, for they were very close before
she could make sure. She turned to the door, and with her baby in her
arms tore frantically at its bolts and bars.
Out she darted at last, and running madly along, saw the horseman
beyond her in the distance. She called to him in Christ's name, in her
babe's name, still flying like the wind with the speed that deadly
peril gives. But the distance grew greater and greater between them,
and when she reached the creek her prayers turned to wild
shrieks, for there crouched the man she feared, with outstretched arms
that caught her as she fell. She knew he was offering terms if she
ceased to struggle and cry for help, though louder and louder did she
cry for it, but it was only when the man's hand gripped her throat,
that the cry of "Murder" came from her lips. And when she ceased, the
startled curlews took up the awful sound, and flew shrieking over the
horseman's head.
* * * * *
"By God!" said the boundary rider, "it's been a dingo right enough!
Eight killed up here, and there's more down in the creek--a ewe and a
lamb, I'll bet; and the lamb's alive!" And he shut out the sky with his
hand, and watched the crows that were circling round and round, nearing
the earth one moment, and the next shooting skywards. By that he knew
the lamb must be alive; even a dingo will spare a lamb sometimes.
Yes, the lamb was alive, and after the manner of lambs of its kind did
not know its mother when the light came. It had sucked the still warm
breasts, and laid its little head on her bosom, and slept till the
morn. Then, when it looked at the swollen disfigured face, it
wept and would have crept away, but for the hand that still clutched
its little gown. Sleep was nodding its golden head and swaying its
small body, and the crows were close, so close, to the mother's
wide-open eyes, when the boundary rider galloped down.
"Jesus Christ!" he said, covering his eyes. He told afterwards how the
little child held out its arms to him, and how he was forced to cut its
gown that the dead hand held.
* * * * *
It was election time, and as usual the priest had selected a candidate.
His choice was so obviously in the interests of the squatter, that
Peter Hennessey's reason, for once in his life, had over-ridden
superstition, and he had dared promise his vote to another. Yet he was
uneasy, and every time he woke in the night (and it was often) he heard
the murmur of his mother's voice. It came through the partition, or
under the door. If through the partition, he knew she was praying in
her bed; but when the sounds came under the door, she was on her knees
before the little altar in the corner that enshrined the statue of the
Blessed Virgin and Child.
"Mary, Mother of Christ! save my son! Save him!" prayed she in
the dairy as she strained and set the evening's milking "Sweet Mary!
for the love of Christ, save him!" The grief in her old face made the
morning meal so bitter, that to avoid her he came late to his dinner.
It made him so cowardly, that he could not say goodbye to her, and when
night fell on the eve of the election day, he rode off secretly.
He had thirty miles to ride to the township to record his vote. He
cantered briskly along the great stretch of plain that had nothing but
stunted cottonbush to play shadow to the full moon, which glorified a
sky of earliest spring. The bruised incense of the flowering clover
rose up to him, and the glory of the night appealed vaguely to his
imagination, but he was preoccupied with his present act of revolt.
Vividly he saw his mother's agony when she would find him gone. At that
moment, he felt sure, she was praying.
"Mary! Mother of Christ!" He repeated the invocation, half
unconsciously. And suddenly, out of the stillness, came Christ's name
to him--called loudly in despairing accents.
"For Christ's sake! Christ's sake! Christ's sake!" called the
voice. Good Catholic that he had been, he crossed himself before he
dared to look back. Gliding across a ghostly patch of pipe-clay, he saw
a white-robed figure with a babe clasped to her bosom.
All the superstitious awe of his race and religion swayed his brain.
The moonlight on the gleaming clay was a "heavenly light" to him, and
he knew the white figure not for flesh and blood, but for the Virgin
and Child of his mother's prayers. Then, good Catholic that once more
he was, he put spurs to his horse's sides and galloped madly away.
His mother's prayers were answered.
Hennessey was the first to record his vote--for the priest's
candidate. Then he sought the priest at home, but found that he was out
rallying the voters. Still, under the influence of his blessed vision,
Hennessey would not go near the public-houses, but wandered about the
outskirts of the town for hours, keeping apart from the townspeople,
and fasting as penance. He was subdued and mildly ecstatic, feeling as
a repentant chastened child, who awaits only the kiss of peace.
And at last, as he stood in the graveyard crossing himself with
reverent awe, he heard in the gathering twilight the roar of many
voices crying the name of the victor at the election. It was well with
the priest.
Again Hennessey sought him. He sat at home, the house-keeper said, and
led him into the dimly-lighted study. His seat was immediately opposite
a large picture, and as the housekeeper turned up the lamp, once more
the face of the Madonna and Child looked down on him, but this time
silently, peacefully. The half-parted lips of the Virgin were smiling
with compassionate tenderness; her eyes seemed to beam with the
forgiveness of an earthly mother for her erring but beloved child.
He fell on his knees in adoration. Transfixed, the wondering priest
stood, for, mingled with the adoration, "My Lord and my God!" was the
exaltation, "And hast Thou chosen me?"
"What is it, Peter?" said the priest.
"Father," he answered reverently, and with loosened tongue he poured
forth the story of his vision.
"Great God!" shouted the priest, "and you did not stop to save
her! Have you not heard?"
* * * * *
Many miles further down the creek a man kept throwing an old cap into a
waterhole the dog would bring it out and lay it on the opposite side to
where the man stood, but would not allow the man to catch him, though
it was only to wash the blood of the sheep from his mouth and throat,
for the sight of blood made the man tremble.
THE END
