Joe Wilson and His Mates [84]
`It wasn't your fault, Walter; but if you had been at home
do you think the fairies would have taken the children?'
`Of course they would, Maggie. They had to: the children were lost.'
`And they're bringing the children home next year?'
`Yes, Maggie -- next year.'
She lifted her hands to her head in a startled way, and it was some time
before she went on again. There was no need to tell me
about the lost children. I could see it all. She and the half-caste
rushing towards where the children were seen last, with Old Peter after them.
The hurried search in the nearer scrub. The mother calling all the time
for Maggie and Wally, and growing wilder as the minutes flew past.
Old Peter's ride to the musterers' camp. Horsemen seeming to turn up
in no time and from nowhere, as they do in a case like this,
and no matter how lonely the district. Bushmen galloping through the scrub
in all directions. The hurried search the first day, and the mother
mad with anxiety as night came on. Her long, hopeless, wild-eyed watch
through the night; starting up at every sound of a horse's hoof,
and reading the worst in one glance at the rider's face.
The systematic work of the search-parties next day and the days following.
How those days do fly past. The women from the next run or selection,
and some from the town, driving from ten or twenty miles, perhaps,
to stay with and try to comfort the mother. (`Put the horse to the cart, Jim:
I must go to that poor woman!') Comforting her with improbable stories
of children who had been lost for days, and were none the worse for it
when they were found. The mounted policemen out with the black trackers.
Search-parties cooeeing to each other about the Bush,
and lighting signal-fires. The reckless break-neck rides
for news or more help. And the Boss himself, wild-eyed and haggard,
riding about the Bush with Andy and one or two others perhaps,
and searching hopelessly, days after the rest had given up
all hope of finding the children alive. All this passed before me
as Mrs Head talked, her voice sounding the while as if she were
in another room; and when I roused myself to listen,
she was on to the fairies again.
`It was very foolish of me, Mr Ellis. Weeks after -- months after, I think --
I'd insist on going out on the verandah at dusk and calling for the children.
I'd stand there and call "Maggie!" and "Wally!" until Walter took me inside;
sometimes he had to force me inside. Poor Walter! But of course
I didn't know about the fairies then, Mr Ellis. I was really out of my mind
for a time.'
`No wonder you were, Mrs Head,' I said. `It was terrible trouble.'
`Yes, and I made it worse. I was so selfish in my trouble.
But it's all right now, Walter,' she said, rumpling the Boss's hair.
`I'll never be so foolish again.'
`Of course you won't, Maggie.'
`We're very happy now, aren't we, Walter?'
`Of course we are, Maggie.'
`And the children are coming back next year.'
`Next year, Maggie.'
He leaned over the fire and stirred it up.
`You mustn't take any notice of us, Mr Ellis,' she went on.
`Poor Walter is away so much that I'm afraid I make a little too much of him
when he does come home.'
She paused and pressed her fingers to her temples again.
Then she said quickly --
`They used to tell me that it was all nonsense about the fairies,
but they were no friends of mine. I shouldn't have listened to them, Walter.
You told me not to. But then I was really not in my right mind.'
`Who used to tell you that, Mrs Head?' I asked.
`The Voices,' she said; `you know about the Voices, Walter?'
`Yes, Maggie. But you don't hear the Voices now, Maggie?' he asked anxiously.
`You haven't heard them since I've been away this time, have you, Maggie?'
`No, Walter. They've gone away a long time. I hear voices now sometimes,
but they're the Bush Fairies' voices. I hear them calling Maggie and Wally
to come with them.' She paused again. `And sometimes I think
I hear them call me. But of course I couldn't