Capricornia. Xavier Herbert

Alice and show him to Mrs Shay. The lady seemed amazed. He cursed himself for having trusted to the telephone, but not nearly so vigorously as he cursed Mark for deserting and Mrs McLash for tattling. That night Nawnim slept in his arms in the best room in the hotel. He had to be held in arms because, distrustful as he was of the strange surroundings and the noises of the bar, he was disposed to wail. Oscar was glad of the room to hide in.

      Next morning after a quiet breakfast in the room, Oscar took Nawnim to the Aborigines Department and handed him over to the Protector, confessing with malicious pleasure that he was uncle to the child. He confessed because he wished the Government to take action against Mark. It was a mistake. Just then the Compound was being closed owing to an outbreak of measles among its people, on account of which the Protector could not admit Nawnim without endangering his life. The Protector said that Aborigines were particularly prone to die of the disease, and suggested that Oscar, as the child’s uncle, should continue to take care of him till the danger was past. Oscar dreaded measles since the death of his infant son, and was loth to expose Nawnim to it, but resented being expected to act charitably on account of a relationship he did not recognise. He became angry and told the Protector to place the child in some other institution. The Protector responded to his anger and told him that the measles was everywhere, and that he considered it extremely mean of him to avoid a trifling inconvenience that might be the means of saving the child’s life. Oscar went off in a rage, with the prospect of having to keep Nawnim with him in the town during the eleven days till next train-day.

      Before returning to the hotel he took Nawnim to a Chinese store and bought him a tusser-silk suit and sandals and a sailor hat. A mighty improvement was effected in the child’s appearance. Oscar did not slink back to the hotel nearly as shyly as he had slunk away from it. Mrs Shay called Heather to look at Nawnim, little knowing that Heather’s eyes could scarcely see anything for tears of which Nawnim was the innocent cause. Heather came for fear that a refusal might set her mistress off suspecting what was the cause of the headache that had kept her out of company these many hours. The result of her coming was a further improvement in Nawnim’s appearance; for in spite of the pain his existence caused her, she was touched by the sight of him; she saw faults in his dress that were invisible to Oscar and a Chinaman, and therefore took him back to the store and had his suit changed, and at Oscar’s expense bought him more clothes and a Teddy Bear she found him staring at and a huge bag of lollies. Then she took him back to the hotel and bathed him, and had a cot fitted up for him on the veranda outside her own quiet bedroom. Oscar was grateful, but reluctant to let a Poundamore make free with a Shillingsworth disgrace.

      For three rather miserable days Oscar lounged about the town, trailing or carrying Nawnim, since Heather was usually too busy to mind him and he would not suffer the company of others. Then the problem of disposing of the burden suddenly appeared to solve itself. Freddie Radato, the half-caste Philippino barber, while shaving Oscar one morning and talking about Nawnim, who sat near, offered to take care of him for thirty shillings a week till Mark returned. Oscar jumped at the offer. He left Nawnim in the saloon. But he did not experience the feeling of relief he had expected. He left Nawnim howling, and, because Radato’s house was near the hotel, heard him howling for hours afterwards. And he felt distinctly mean about abandoning him. Next morning at breakfast, to the sound of Nawnim’s howls, he confessed to Heather that he had come to like him.

      When three days later the doctor came and told him that he must take Nawnim away from Radato’s at once because one of the Radato children had contracted measles, Oscar was not really dismayed. That night he took him to Tommy Tai Yun’s open-air picture-show and showed him his first moving pictures. Next day he took him aboard the mail-boat and showed him the wonders it contained, including the captain’s monkey, which he was even moved to try to buy for him. The days that followed were by no means miserable. There were more pictures—free pictures this time, because the last performance had been interrupted in the middle by a thunderstorm—and motor-rides out to Tikatika Point, and a fishing expedition down the jetty. Oscar came to find pleasure in watching Nawnim’s delight in these simple entertainments, and in teaching him to speak English properly. And he came to feel that it would be pleasant to introduce him to the mighty world as he had dreamt of introducing Roger. But at the same time he did not entirely give up trying to dispose of him nor forget to write to Mark a stinging letter in which he stated that if he refused to accept his responsibilities he would see that an action for affiliation was brought against him.

      At length the day of the return journey came. Nawnim went down to the train with Oscar in Joe Crowe’s cab, clad in a neat little khaki suit and khaki topee. The rest of his belongings were packed away in Oscar’s bag, together with pencils and pads and slates and primers and picture-books. Oscar led him through the crowd with little of the shame he had felt when last he trod that ground with him. And Nawnim, holding the big brown hand he had come to love, felt none of the fear he had felt there only six weeks before.

      Just as the train was moving out, a yellow face, round as the moon at full and wide-eyed and open-mouthed, came bobbing through the crowd towards the open window of the coach where Oscar and Nawnim stood, screaming, “Nawnee—Nawnee!” He recognised it. His eyes brightened. His body tensed.

      “Nawnee—Nawnee! Hello lil manee—which way you walkim?”

      “Who’s that?” asked Oscar, leaning out to stare—to stare back as the train passed on.

      It was Fat Anna. But Nawnim did not know her name, nor much about her beyond the fact that she was something pleasant come suddenly out of the misty past. She was soon lost to view. Thus Oscar never realised how close he came to solving the problem completely.

      They returned to Red Ochre. And as though it were true that clothes make a man, before many weeks were out, little Nawnim, under the respectable name of Norman, came to live in the Shillingsworth household as a Shillingsworth of the blood.

       MARS AND VENUS IN ASCENDANCY

      MARK’S pearling-expedition took him far. He made the acquaintance of most of the islands of the Silver Sea, Australian, Dutch, and Portuguese, and many of the Coral Sea as well. He might never have returned had he not been forced to do so when, towards the end of 1914, Freedom of the Seas suddenly ceased to be. The Spirit of the Land was dogged from island to island by gunboats, like a city loafer by police, received with suspicion at every port, sent on her way again and again, till at last she fell in with a particularly officious gunboat that escorted her home.

      Oscar had almost forgotten Mark. The first he heard of his return was when he was disputing over the telephone with a Chinese storekeeper in town concerning £30 worth of stores he had not bought. The Chinaman told him that Mark had bought the stores in his name. Mark was at the time away on the Christmas Banks, pearl-fishing. He had bought the stores to go there, believing that he would be back with means to pay the bill before it was presented. Oscar had to pay to avoid the cost and inconvenience of having to face the legal action with which the Chinaman threatened him. He was furious. For a while he contemplated proceeding against Mark as he had not long before against Peter Differ for a similar imposition. It was only the thought of the severe lesson he had learnt in Differ’s case that restrained him.

      Differ had long since drunk himself out of Oscar’s employ. He had taken up land on Coolibah Creek, a tributary of the Lonely River, where, with Government assistance, he had planted peanuts. He was also reluctantly assisted by Oscar to the tune of some £50 while preparing his plantation. In spite of this, one time while in town he bought £20 worth of stores in Oscar’s name from a storekeeper who thought that he was still employed by Oscar. He did so in belief that he would be able to pay the bill, before it was presented, out of the profits from the sales of his first crop of nuts, the harvesting of which was about to begin, considering himself forced to adopt such means, because no storekeeper would give credit to one who must hand over his crop for marketing to his principal creditor, the Government. Unfortunately the price of peanuts was not nearly as high when the Government sold his crop as it was when he made bold to impose on Oscar. There was just enough profit to meet the Government’s demands.

      The Differ