“Oh I don’t see much difference between a black lubra and a yeller one. Anyway, Tim O’Cannon’s lubra’s father was a Chow, which makes her a full-blood and his kids half-caste. But this is a distasteful subject. I don’t like this Black Velvet business. It makes me sick.”
“You’re like the majority of people in Australia. You hide from this very real and terrifically important thing, and hide it, and come to think after a while that it don’t exist. But it does! It does! Why are there twenty thousand half-castes in the country? Why are they never heard of? Oh my God! Do you know that if you dare write a word on the subject to a paper or a magazine you get your work almost chucked back at you?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. Why shouldn’t such a disgraceful thing be kept dark? Is that what you’re writing about in this book of yours?”
“No fear! I’ve learnt long ago that I’m expected to write about the brave pioneers and—Oh bah! this dissembling makes my guts bleed! But talking about Tim O’Cannon, Oscar—most of the men in this district go combo, mainly on the sly. How can they help it? There are no white women. Would moralists prefer that those who pioneer should be sexual perverts? Well, if there are any kids as the result of these quite natural flutters they are just ignored. The casual comboes are respected, while men like O’Cannon and myself, who rear their kids, are utterly despised. Take the case of your brother Mark for instance. A popular fellow—”
“All this talk about Mark has got to be proved.”
“There’s plenty more examples—popular and respected men, their shortcomings laughed over, while Tim O’Cannon’s been trying for years to get a teacher sent down to Black Adder for a couple of days a month to get his kids schooled a bit. The Government tells him again and again to send them to the Compound School—”
“Well, if he’s so keen on getting ’em schooled—”
“Better have ’em ignorant than taught humility, the chief subject on the curriculum of the Compound. But O’Cannon’s a taxpayer. He pays his whack towards the upkeep of the State School up in town—”
“Can’t he send ’em there?”
“Who’d look after ’em if he did? Who’d protect ’em from the contempt of the white kids? All he wants is a teacher sent down once a month to stay the couple of days while the train’s down the road. They won’t do it.”
A long pause fell. Both men smoked, and stared into the black breathless night. At length Differ said earnestly, “Don’t send the kid to the Compound, Oscar. It’ll mean the ruin of him. He’ll grow up to learn nothing but humility. And after all the Government will only send him out to work for some brainless cruel fool like Driver. My friend, any person who can adopt a half-caste as his own and doesn’t, will surely burn in Hell, if there is such a place. Think of the life before the kid—like Yeller Elbert’s—worse—like poor savage Peter Pan’s. Life-long humiliation. Neither a whiteman nor a black. A drifting nothing. Keep the boy a while, Oscar, teach him just a bit to test what I’ve said. You’re a good-hearted man I know. I’m sure you’ll see the good in him when it begins to show, in spite of the prejudices bred in you and drummed into you by Australian papers and magazines that use the Binghi as something to joke about. Remember that though his skin is dark and there is Aboriginal in his blood, half his flesh and blood is the same as your own.”
Oscar turned on him angrily and cried, “I told you that’s still got to be proved!”
Oscar let Nawnim play with Marigold, just for an hour or so now and again. Then Nawnim began to change, not in his own little body, but in Oscar’s idea of him, and came to be not so much a family disgrace as a personal problem, a fascinating terrible problem. If he were to grow up to be a cringing drudge like Yeller Elbert or a pariah like Peter Pan, how would fare the half of him that was proud Shillingsworth? Oscar began to think about him more than anything else that concerned him just then, and came at length to the decision that if it were proved that he was the son of Mark, he would see to it that Mark took care of him and would himself advise Mark how best to do so.
Another fortnight passed. Then Oscar went in to meet the train, fully expecting to get a letter of denial or contrite confession from Mark, and half expecting to see the fellow himself, since during the fortnight of changing and softening opinions he had forgotten how harsh was the letter he had sent him. Neither Mark nor letter came.
Oscar was annoyed. Much of the new softness hardened in a matter of minutes. He thought for a while, then telephoned the Princess Alice Hotel and learnt that Mark was still there. He spoke to Heather, but did not say who he was. She went to get Mark, and, in Oscar’s opinion, returned with him, because, although she said that she had been unable to find him, her manner of asking who was speaking and what his business was gave him the idea that she was repeating what someone near was whispering. He told her nothing but that he wished to speak to Mark concerning a matter of great importance and would be obliged if she would see to it that he was at hand when he would ring again at five.
Oscar came out of Mrs McLash’s little post-office prickling with heat and anger. As he did so, Mrs McLash crept out of her bedroom smirking. She had been listening. She guessed that it all had something to do with Nawnim, as she told Mrs Blaize of Soda Springs when she telephoned to learn what had been said by the other party.
At five o’clock Oscar rang the Princess Alice again. This time he would have no dealings with Heather when she said that Mark was still away. He asked for Mrs Shay, who addressed him by name and told him just what Heather had before. All his softness was callousness now. He went home vowing to teach Mark a lesson.
Two days later Oscar came to the Siding again, this time dressed for travelling and bringing with him a portmanteau and laughably-clad Nawnim. That was return-train day. As soon as Mrs McLash saw him she said to people sitting with her that she would bet her bottom dollar that he was taking Nawnim up to town to throw him at Mark’s head. Sure enough, Oscar asked if he might use the telephone, and rang up the Princess Alice. She heard him tell someone that he required Mark to meet him at the train in town, that Mark must be got if getting him necessitated calling in the help of the police.
As soon as the train left the Caroline, Mrs McLash rang up Mrs Shay, as it was usual for her to do, to tell her how many passengers were likely to require lodging at her hotel. She also told why Oscar was coming. Mrs Shay had no love for Mark and did not know that Heather had much; when she returned to the dining-room whence she had been called, she passed on what she had heard. Thus, while the train was still in the Caroline Hills, most of Mrs Shay’s lodgers knew that Mark was going to have a half-caste piccaninny thrown at his head that night. That was the first that most of the lodgers knew of the existence of a child of Mark’s. Indeed it was news to Mrs Shay herself. To Heather it was a thunderbolt. While landlady and lodgers laughed over the news, Heather stole up to her room and wept. Mark was down at the beach at work on his ship.
The people who heard the tale from Mrs Shay took it down to the station when they went to meet the train that evening and passed it on to the crowd. Before long it was generally known, so that as much attention was given to watching for Mark as for the train.
True to the tale, a sullen-faced Oscar arrived with a half-caste brat. But no Mark was there to have it thrown at his head. Mark was gone, sailing out into the Silver Sea. For Heather had gone to him to learn the truth and had told him everything. He denied Nawnim, but declined to prove himself by facing Oscar. She left him, telling him that she never wanted to see his face again. In two or three hours he completed arrangements for his pearling-expedition that otherwise he might have dallied over for weeks. He was not fleeing from responsibility for Nawnim, but from the shame of exposure before the town.
Oscar was infuriated. His reason for wanting Mark to meet him was mainly that he wished to save himself the embarrassment of having to carry the child through the town and hand him over to Mark in a public place. He never dreamt that Mark could be warned