An Outback Marriage

Gavan Blake, attorney and solicitor, sat in his office at Tarrong,

opening his morning's letters. The office was in a small weatherboard

cottage in the "main street" of Tarrong (at any rate it might

fairly claim to be the main street, as it was the only street that

had any houses in it). The front room, where he sat, was fitted

up with a table and a set of pigeon-holes full of dusty papers, a

leather couch, a small fire-proof safe, and a book-case containing

about equal proportions of law-books and novels. A few maps of

Tarrong township and neighbouring stations hung on the walls. The

wooden partition of the house only ran up to the rafters, and over

it could plainly be heard his housekeeper scrubbing his bedroom.

Across the little passage was his sitting-room, furnished in the

style of most bachelors' rooms, an important item of furniture

being a cupboard where whisky was always to be found. At the back

of the main cottage were servants' quarters and kitchen. Behind

the house, on a spare allotment, were two or three loose-boxes for

racehorses, a saddle-room and a groom's room. This was the whole

establishment. A woman came in every day to do up his rooms from

the hotel, where he had his meals. It was an inexpensive mode

of life, but one that conduced to the drinking of a good many

whiskies-and-sodas at the hotel with clients and casual callers,

and to a good deal of card-playing and late hours. The racehorses,

too, like most racehorses, ate up more money than they earned. So

that Mr. Gavan Blake, though a clever man, with a good practice,

always seemed to find himself hard up.

It was so on this particular morning. Every letter that he opened

seemed to have some reference to money. One, from the local storekeeper,

was a pretentious account embracing all sorts of items--ammunition,

stationery, saddlery and station supplies (the latter being on

account of a small station that Blake had taken over for a bad debt,

which seemed likely to turn out an equally bad asset). Station

supplies, even for bad stations, run into a lot of money, and the store

account was approaching a hundred pounds. Then there was a letter

from a horse-trainer in Sydney to whom he had sent a racehorse, and

though this animal had done such brilliant gallops that the trainer

had three times telegraphed him that a race was a certainty--once

he went so far as to say that the horse could stop to throw a

somersault and still win the race--on each occasion it had always

come in among the ruck; and every time forty or fifty pounds of

Blake's money had been lost in betting. For Blake was a confirmed

gambler, a heavy card-player and backer of horses, and he had

the contempt for other people's skill and opinions which seems an

inevitable ingredient in the character of brilliant men of a certain

type.