Skeeta ( An Old Servant's Tale )

Our Skeeta was married, our Skeeta! the tomboy
                 and pet of the place,
No more as a maiden we'd greet her, no more
                 would her pert little face
Light up the chill gloom of the parlour; no more
                 would her deft little hands
Serve drinks to the travel-stained caller on his way
                 to more southerly lands;
No more would she chaff the rough drovers and
                 send them away with a smile,
No more would she madden her lovers, demurely,
                 with womanish guile -
The "prince" from the great Never-Never, with
                 light touch of lips and of hand
Had come, and enslaved her for ever - a potentate
                 bearded and tanned
From the land where the white mirage dances its
                 dance of death over the plains,
With the glow of the sun in his glances, the lust of
                 the West in his veins;

His talk of long drought-stricken stretches when the
                 tongue rattled dry on the lips;
Of his fights with the niggers, poor wretches, as
                 he sped on his perilous trips.
A supple-thewed, desert-bred rover, with naught to
                 commend him but this,
That he was her idol, her lover, who'd fettered her
                 heart with a kiss.

They were wed, and he took her to Warren, where
                 she with his love was content;
But town-life to him was too foreign, so back to the
                 droving he went:
A man away down on the border of “Vic.” bought
                 some cattle from “Cobb,”
And gave Harry Parker the order to go to “the
                 Gulf” for the mob:
And he went, for he held her love cheaper than his
                 wish to re-live the old life,
Or his reason might have been deeper - I called it
                 deserting his wife.

Then one morning his horses were mustered, the
                 start on the journey was made -
A clatter, an oath through the dust heard, was the
                 last of the long cavalcade.
As we stood by the stockyard assembled, poor child,
                 how she strove to be brave!
But yet I could see how she trembled at the careless
                 farewell that he gave.
We brought her back home on the morrow, but none
                 of us ever may learn
Of the fight that she fought to keep sorrow at bay
                 till her husband's return.
He had gone, but the way of his going, ‘twas that
                 which she dwelt on with pain -
Careless kiss, though there sure was no knowing,
                 when or where he might kiss her again.
He had ridden away and had left her a woman,
                 in all but in years,
Of her girlhood’s gay hopes had bereft her, and
                 left in their place nought but tears.

Yet still, as the months passed, a treasure was
                 brought her by Love, ere he fled,
And garments of infantile measure she fashioned
                 with needle and thread;
She fashioned with linen and laces and ribbons a
                 nest for her bird,
While colour returned to her face as the bud of
                 maternity stirred.
It blossomed and died; we arrayed it in all its soft
                 splendour of white,
And sorrowing took it and laid it in the earth
                 whence it sprung, out of sight.
She wept not at all, only whitened, as Death, in
                 his pitiless quest,
Leant over her pillow and tightened the throat of the
                 child at her breast.

She wept not, her soul was too tired, for waiting is
                 harrowing work,
And then I bethought me and wired away to the
                 agents in Bourke;
'Twas little enough I could glean there; 'twas little
                 enough that they knew -
They answered he hadn't been seen there, but might
                 in a week, perchance two.
She wept not at all, only whitened with staring too
                 long at the night:
There was only one time when she brightened, that
                 time when red dust hove in sight,
And settled and hung on the backs of the cattle, and
                 altered their spots,
While the horses swept up, with their packs of blue
                 blankets and jingling pots.
She always was set upon meeting those boisterous
                 cattle-men, lest
Her husband had sent her a greeting by one of them,
                 in from the West.