Australian Lassie Page 5

  CHAPTER V

  JOHN BROWN

  John Brown's life had hitherto been a curiously rough and tumble sort ofexistence. There had been a season, brief and entirely unremembered byhim, when his home had been in one of Sydney's most fashionable suburbs;when a tender-eyed mother had watched delightedly over his first gleamsof intelligence, and a proud father had perched him on his shoulder fora bed-time romp. When he had been taken tenderly for an "airing" by thetrimmest of nursemaids, and in the daintiest of perambulators. When hehad worn tiny silk frocks and socks and bonnets. When hopes and fearshad arisen over "teething-time." When he had been carried round adrawing-room, to display to admiring friends, his chubby wrists, hisdimpled fat legs, his quite remarkable length of limb and growth ofbone.

  Then Death slipped in unawares, and called the sweet young mother fromthat happy home, and little John Brown became a perplexity and a care toa grief-maddened father.

  For a space it was conjectured that the baby, pending the arrival of astep-mother, would be handed over to the cook, a rotund motherly personwho was fond of asserting that she had buried thirteen children andreared one.

  But conjectures have a way of falling beside the mark.

  One morning an old schoolmate of poor little Mrs. Brown's arrived from"out back," packed up the baby's things with her own quick brown handsand returned "out back" the same evening.

  The perambulator, the cradle, the cot, the dainty baby basket and amultitude of other things were sold the next week along with the tablesand chairs and other "household effects," and Mr. John Brown, senior, acabin box and a portmanteau, left by a mail steamer for Japan.

  And the small suburban house became "to let." Thenceforward the patternof little John Brown's existence became altered. He was one of threeother children, and not even the baby, although scarcely one year old.

  His elegant lace-trimmed silken and muslin garments were "laid by." Hewore dark laundry-saving dresses and neither boots nor socks. He wasnever carried around for admiration, for the very good reason thatvisitors were few and far between--and there was (except to dotingparents, perhaps) very little to admire about him. He lost hischubbiness and his pink prettiness and became thin and wiry, brown facedand brown limbed.

  He was always abnormally tall and abnormally strong, so that he becamealmost a jest on the station. He learned to fight at three, to swim atfour, shoot at seven, ride, yard cattle, milk, chop wood, make bushfires and put them out again, ring bark trees all before he was eleven.In short, to do, and to do remarkably well, the hundred and one thingsthat make up a man's and boy's existence on an Australian station.

  At thirteen he learned that his name was Brown, and that he had a fatherother than the bluff squatter he had grown up with. And at thirteen hewas taken from the station-life he loved, and, after much travelling,delivered by a station-hand into his father's care in Sydney.

  Before he could form any idea as to what was about to happen to him, andto this grey-bearded father of his, he was taken across the blue harbourwater, and thence by coach to the little township over the northernhills.

  They walked past the small weather-board school together, and few, ifany, words passed between them. For the man's thoughts were away downthe slope of many years, and the boy's were away in that flat country"out back" where he had been brought up.

  They were close to the great iron gates when the man broke the silence;pointing beyond them he remarked--

  "This is where your home will be in the future, John."

  John considered the prospect thoughtfully and shook his head--

  "I'd rather go home," he said. "Let me go home."

  "No," said his father, "it can't be done. I ought to have fetched youaway sooner, only I shirked a duty. Open the little gate, I see the bigones are padlocked. Push, it's stiff."

  They walked up the long red drive, John's mind busy over the questionshe wished to ask his father and he began to lag behind considering them.

  "This will be your home," repeated Mr. Brown quietly, "and it's amarvellous thing how life has arranged itself. The turn of Fortune'swheel, we may say. Walk quicker, John."

  When they stood before the great front door, Mr. Brown becameretrospective again.

  "We played here together," he said--, "down these very steps, along thesevery paths. It is strange how life has fallen out--how my boy willbe----" He put out his hand and pulled the bell vigorously, then turnedhis back to the house and surveyed the garden.

  "Is it a school?" whispered John. But before his father could reply thedoor had rolled back and a man-servant stood looking at them.

  Mr. Brown walked in, put his hat on a table, motioned to John, andopened a door at one side of the wide hall.

  "It's me--Brown," he said as he entered the room. "I've brought theboy."

  John followed very quickly, being curious now. His father stood half-wayacross the room, looking hesitating and apologetic.

  A man of sixty or so, with a red, merry-looking face, and anunmistakable sea-captain air, glanced up from a paper he was reading.

  "Eh?" he asked.

  Then he sent his look--it was a quick darting look that saw everythingin the twinkling of an ordinary person's eye--to the thin badly-dressedfigure in the rear. "Eh? The boy? Oh--ah! My newly-found grandson."

  "He is scarcely what I had hoped to find," said Mr. Brown, apologeticstill. "Yet his mother was a good-looking woman and----"

  "Be hanged to looks," said Mr. Carew. "He'll get on all the betterwithout 'em. And you were never anything to boast of yourself you know.What's his name?"

  "John."

  "Um! John Brown. John Carew-Brown, we'll say. It's a pity it's not JohnBrown Carew."

  "That's a matter that can easily be altered. It can be merely JohnCarew, if you like, and let the melodious Brown go hang."

  "Eh? What does the boy say? What do you say John to changing your nameand letting the Brown go hang?"

  To Mr. Brown's surprise and consternation, the boy gave an emphatic"No."

  "Ah!" said old Mr. Carew, "and how's that? Speak up, John."

  "The boys 'ud forget me," said John anxiously, "and I'd have to beginall over agen."

  "What with?--Leave him alone, Brown."

  "Thrashing 'em. They know me everywhere about Warrena. I can make 'emall sit up. I don't want to change my name."

  A sparkle came into the old man's eyes.

  "Well said, my lad," he snapped. "I'd not have given a rap for you ifyou'd have cast your name away as easily as a pinching pair o' boots.Stick to your own name, John, and you'll look all the better aftermine."

  He waited a bit, eyeing the boy up and down keenly. The thin brown face,with its square determined mouth, quiet grey eyes and high forehead; thesturdy figure, countrified clothes, copper-toed boots, all passed underhis scrutiny.

  "So you're of the fighting kind?" he asked at last.

  "Yes," said John proudly.

  "Ah! You never were, you remember, Brown. Things might have beendifferent if you had been."

  He waited again. Then he smiled queerly.

  "John," he said, "your father's going away again to-night. You're mygrandson. It may not seem a great matter to you now--but it is, all thesame. You stay here. You and I have to take life together, boy--thoughyou're at one end of the ladder and I'm at t'other. Your name's yourname right enough, but I want you to be good enough to tack mine on toit, and to do a bit of fighting for mine too if necessary. I've foughtfor it hard in my day too. And now, John Carew-Brown, we'll have a bitof lunch if it's all the same to you."