While the Billy Boils by Henry Lawson (best value ebook reader .txt) 📕

She pondered over this for some minutes, as a result of which she said she thought that she did.

“Lizzie! Do you think you can love me?”

She didn’t seem able to find an answer to that. So he caught her to him in both arms, and kissed her hard and long on the mouth. She was agitated now⁠—he had some complexion now; she struggled to her feet, trembling.

“We must go now,” she said quickly. “They will be waiting for tea.”

He stood up before her, and held her there by both hands.

“There is plenty of time. Lizzie⁠—”

“Mister Br-o-o-k-er! Li-i-z-zee-e-e! Come ter yer tea-e-e!” yelled a boy from the house.

“We must really go now.”

“Oh, they can wait a minute. Lizzie, don’t be frightened”⁠—bending his head⁠—“Lizzie, put your arms round my neck and kiss me⁠—now. Do as I tell you, Lizzie⁠—they cannot see us,” and he drew her behind a bush. “Now, Lizzie.”

She obeyed just as a frightened child might.

“We must go now,” she panted, breathless from such an embrace.

“Lizzie, you will come for a walk with me after tea?”

“I don’t know⁠—I can’t promise. I don’t think it would be right. Aunt mightn’t like me to.”

“Never mind aunt. I’ll fix her. We’ll go for a walk over to the schoolteacher’s place. It will be bright moonlight.”

“I don’t like to promise. My father and mother might not⁠—”

“Why, what are you frightened of? What harm is there in it?” Then, softly, “Promise, Lizzie.”

“Promise, Lizzie.”

She was hesitating.

“Promise, Lizzie. I’m going away tomorrow⁠—might never see you again. You will come, Lizzie? It will be our last talk together. Promise, Lizzie.⁠ ⁠… Oh, then, if you don’t like to, I won’t press you.⁠ ⁠… Will you come, or no?”

“Ye-es.”

“One more, and I’ll take you home.”

It was nearly dark.

Brook was moved to get up early next morning and give the girl a hand with the cows. There were two rickety bails in the yard. He had not forgotten how to milk, but the occupation gave him no pleasure⁠—it brought the past near again.

Now and then he would turn his face, rest his head against the side of the cow, and watch Lizzie at her work; and each time she would, as though in obedience to an influence she could not resist, turn her face to him⁠—having noted the pause in his milking. There was a wonder in her expression⁠—as if something had come into her life which she could not realize⁠—curiosity in his.

When the spare pail was full, he would follow her with it to the little bark dairy; and she held out the cloth which served as a strainer whilst he poured the milk in, and, as the last drops went through, their mouths would come together.

He carried the slop-buckets to the pigsty for her, and helped to poddy a young calf. He had to grip the calf by the nape of the neck, insert a forefinger in its mouth, and force its nose down into an oil-drum full of skim milk. The calf sucked, thinking it had a teat; and so it was taught to drink. But calves have a habit, born of instinct, of butting the udders with their noses, by way of reminding their mothers to let down the milk; and so this calf butted at times, splashing sour milk over Brook, and barking his wrist against the sharp edge of the drum. Then he would swear a little, and Lizzie would smile sadly and gravely.

Brook did not go away that day, nor the next, but he took the coach on the third day thereafter. He and Lizzie found a quiet corner to say goodbye in. She showed some emotion for the first time, or, perhaps, the second⁠—maybe the third time⁠—in that week of her life. They had been out together in the moonlight every evening. (Brook had been fifteen years in cities.) They had scarcely looked at each other that morning⁠—and scarcely spoken.

He looked back as the coach started and saw her sitting inside the big kitchen window. She waved her hand⁠—hopelessly it seemed. She had rolled up her sleeve, and to Brook the arm seemed strangely white and fair above the line of sunburn round the wrist. He hadn’t noticed it before. Her face seemed fairer too, but, perhaps, it was only the effect of light and shade round that window.

He looked back again, as the coach turned the corner of the fence, and was just in time to see her bury her face in her hands with a passionate gesture which did not seem natural to her.

Brook reached the city next evening, and, “after hours,” he staggered in through a side entrance to the lighted parlour of a private bar.

They say that Lizzie broke her heart that year, but, then, the world does not believe in such things nowadays.

One o’clock on Saturday. The unemployed’s one o’clock on Saturday! Nothing more can be done this week, so you drag yourself wearily and despairingly “home,” with the cheerful prospect of a penniless Saturday afternoon and evening and the long horrible Australian-city Sunday to drag through. One of the landlady’s clutch⁠—and she is an old hen⁠—opens the door, exclaims:

“Oh, Mr. Careless!” and grins. You wait an anxious minute, to postpone the disappointment which you feel by instinct is coming, and then ask hopelessly whether there are any letters for you.

“No, there’s nothing for you, Mr. Careless.” Then in answer to the unspoken question, “The postman’s been, but there’s nothing for you.”

You hang up your hat in the stuffy little passage, and start upstairs, when, “Oh, Mr. Careless, mother wants to know if you’ve had yer dinner.”

You haven’t, but you say you have. You are empty enough inside, but the emptiness is filled up, as it were, with the wrong sort of hungry vacancy⁠—gnawing anxiety. You haven’t any stomach for the warm, tasteless mess which has been “kep’ ’ot” for you in a cold stove. You feel just physically tired enough to go to your room, lie down on the bed, and snatch twenty