The Boy in the Bush

He stepped ashore, looking like a lamb. Far be it from me to say he was the lamb he looked. Else why should he have been sent out of England? But a good-looking boy he was, with...

Jack was tired and a little land-sick, after the long voyage. He felt dazed and rather unhappy, and saw as through a glass, darkly. For he could not yet get used to the fixed la...

Jack started before dawn next morning, for Wandoo. Mr. George had business which took him south, so he decided to carry the boy along on the coach. Mr. Ellis also was returning...

Two things struggled in Jack's mind when he awoke in the morning. The first was the brave idea that he had left everything behind, that he had done with his boyhood and was goin...

A month later Tom and Lennie went off with the greys, Bill and Lil, to fetch the girls. It had been wet, so Jack had spent most of his day in the sheds mending corn sacks. He wa...

Ah, good to be out in the open air again! Beyond all telling good! Those indoor rooms were like coffins. To be dead, and to writhe unreleased in the coffin, that was what those...

Jack was absolutely happy, in camp with Tom. Perhaps the most completely happy time in his life. He had escaped the strange, new complications that life was weaving round him. Y...

It was a red hot Christmas that year--'ot, 'ot, 'ot, all day long. Good Lord, how hot it was!--till blessed evening. Sundown brought blessings in its trail. After six o'clock yo...

New Year's Eve was celebrated Scotch style, at Wandoo. It was already night, and Jack and Tom had been round seeing if the visitors had everything they wanted. Ma and a few sele...

But in the morning memory was back, and the unquenched smouldering of passion. Easu had insulted him. Easu had insulted him, and that should never be forgiven. And he had this n...

Jack managed to escape. When the rooks were fluttered by the sight of that ghostly white starling, he just ran. He ran in disgust from the smell of lavender salts, the tags of m...

Jack soon got better. Soon he was sitting in the old armchair by the parlour fire. There was a little fire, against the damp. This was Gran's place. But Gran did not leave her bed.

These days Monica was fascinating to Jack's eyes. She wore a black dress, and her slimness, her impulsive girlishness under this cloud were wistful, exquisite. He would have lik...

"Oh, Lord my, ain't there! What's wrong? They're all packing into the buggy. Father Prendy's putting his watch back a few more minutes. He'll have 'em married before you can bet...

"Old woman's got some tea made. If y' want t' change y' bags, hop over 'n take a dip in the pool. Down th' paddock there. Here's th' bag. I've left soap n' comb on th' splash bo...

"My dear nephew, I haven't sent you a letter since the last one which I never wrote, yet you have come in answer to the one you never got. I wrote because I wanted you to come a...

A sky with clouds of white and grey, and patches of blue. A green sea flecked with white, and shadowed golden brown. On the horizon, the sense of a great open void, like an open...

Three gentlemen in evening dress passing along by the low brick wall skirting the Government House. One of the gentlemen portly and correct, two of the gentlemen young, with bur...

"We're going to make some change at Wandoo," said Tom. "I wish I could leave Ma on the place. But Mr. George says she absolutely refuses to stay, and he says I've not got to try...

They knew that Easu was married, but they were hardly prepared for the dirty baby crawling on the verandah floor. Easu had seen them come through the gate, and was striding acro...

At evening he was still riding. But his horse lagged, and would not be spurred forward. Darkness came with swift persistence. He was looking anxiously for water, a burning thirs...

The subconscious self woke first, roaring in distant wave-beats, unintelligible, unmeaning, persistent, and growing in volume. It had something to do with birth. And not having...

The boy Jack never rose from that fever. It was a man who got up again. A man with all the boyishness cut away from him, all the childishness gone, and a certain unbending reckl...

They worked for months at the mine, and still it turned out richly. Though they kept as quiet as possible, the fame spread. They had a bonanza. They were all three going to be r...

But as he rode back to Perth, with Mary rather stiff and silent, and Mr. George absorbed in his own thoughts; and as they greeted people on the road, and passed by settlements;...

Jack was glad to get away from Perth, to ride out and leave no vestige of his soul behind, for them to work mischief on. He saddled his horse before dawn, and still before sun w...